Roundup: 30th Dallas Int'l Guitar Festival

by Lynne Margolis.

Over the din of searing chords and amped-up strums coming from every corner of the Dallas Market Hall, festival organizers Jimmy Wallace and Mark Pollock marvel at what they’ve created.

What started out in 1978 as the Greater Southwest Vintage Guitar Show, a small gathering of 10 or 12 exhibitors, with a $1.50 admission, now lures the top dealers in the vintage market. Heck, it lures the top dealers, period. And the top manufacturers. Today, the Dallas International Guitar Festival draws Fender, Gibson, and boutique names like Paul Reed Smith, whose first guitars are barely old enough to be called vintage. In celebration of its 30th anniversary, the show even earned its own PRS special edition – in three pearly colors (mint, sand and pink).

But Wallace and Pollock also managed to arrange an even bigger score than a custom guitar model: the Holy Grail Guitar Exhibition, a carefully guarded display drawing a steady line of patiently waiting fans throughout the April 20-22 weekend. For this third-decade anniversary, the pair talked the Guitar Center into sending three of the most valuable guitars in the world on a little trip to Texas. Those would be Eric Clapton’s Blackie, for which Guitar Center paid a record $959,500 at the 2004 Christie's Eric Clapton's Crossroads auction; Clapton’s Cream-era Gibson ES-335, bought at the same auction for $847,500; and Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Strat, aka Lenny, for which Guitar Center spent $623,500. These guitars also appeared in Dallas three years ago at Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival, a few weeks before they were auctioned as fundraisers for his Crossroads Centre at Antigua drug and alcohol recovery center.

Like royal jewels, they’re carefully encased in a glass box, surrounded by some of the rarest and most important artifacts in the history of modern stringed instruments, from the Rickenbacker “frying pan” prototypes to a 1923 Gibson harp guitar, Gibson’s first Les Pauls and Fender’s earliest Strats, to Carlos Santana’s custom PRS models. These guitars are most definitely not for sale. The singular exhibit was captured for posterity by documentarians for the new Smithsonian cable TV network and for a companion coffee-table book.

“What’s evolved is not only a guitar show and a music festival, it’s a whole celebration of the guitar,” says Pollock, who took over the show from founder Charlie Wirz when Wirz passed away in 1985. “… This show sets the market price for almost every guitar, for everything from $200 Japanese and Mexican Stratocasters to D’Angelicos and Flying Vs, and, of course, ‘59 [Les Paul] flametops. This is the Wall Street market center for the guitar world.”

You might not know it from the dealers’ decidedly un-Wall Street-like monikers – names like Cool Ass Guitars, Good Guys Guitars, the Bassmint and Make Offer Music. At Virtue Music, a holier-sounding spot where K.M. Williams, who calls himself the Texas Country Blues Preacher, played a 1920s-era Kalamazoo lap steel, dealer Reggie Pope was asked if the instrument Williams had on his lap was for sale. Pope, who’s been exhibiting at the show for 14 years, answered, “For the right price.” Asked what that might be, he laughed and said, “I have no idea.”

But the lap steel market is taking off, he observed, adding, “Ask me in a couple of days. I’ll know then.”

Wall Street was certainly well represented by the Guitar Center, which brought 150 guitars to the show.

“Guitar Center takes part in 30 shows a year,” says the Center’s Jeff Hiller. “In terms of a sponsorship, and a presence like our booth, this is our biggest show of the year, for sure.”

According to Hiller, the company got into vintage and collectible guitars with some Eddie Van Halen axes. “We just felt that we could do a really good job at not stuffing them away in a closet,” he adds. As for replicas of the famed Holy Grails, limited editions of Blackie and Clapton's Cream-era ES-335 have already been released and negotiations are progressing for a Lenny reproduction. “Building the replicas gives a limited number of people a chance to own a piece of history,” remarked Hiller.

Even if you don’t have the cash to pick up one of those pieces, you can check them out at this laid-back show. Except for the Grail exhibit items, you’re supposed to touch and feel and play the beautiful instruments sitting on stands all over the Hall. And, if you want to talk to Paul Reed Smith, or the Burst Brothers (David Belzer and Drew Berlin, who did the bidding for the Holy Grail guitars on behalf of Guitar Center at the Christie's auction) or Johnny A., or Eric Johnson, or some of the other guitar greats in attendance, all you have to do is buttonhole them at the right moment – like, say, once Johnny A. gets through selling his own merch after paying homage to his heroes in an ultra-cool Saturday set (playing his new Gibson Inspired By model, of course) – or after Rick Derringer gets through giving a musical history lesson to a worshiping Sunday crowd.

But, as far as Wallace and Pollack are concerned, one of the show’s biggest achievements isn’t trotting out rows and rows of tantalizing instruments or drawing great veteran players to its stages.

“There was a band earlier today called Young Guns,” says Wallace, “and the drummer is 11-years-old. This is not some kid who can hit with a stick. This is a kid that can hang. They’re brothers. The oldest one in the band is 16. They just skyrocket. It’s like their minds are moving faster than ours did when we were learning to play.

“It’s heartwarming to see those kids playing in front of some of the most famous players on the planet. And that’s what it’s about.”

In other words, while the festival's 30-year history has its place, the event's true significance may lie in paving the way for the future.

Additional Photos

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Related Link
The Dallas International Guitar Show

About Lynne Margolis

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