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Episode 2 of the much-anticipated sophomore season of Inside the Noise with Gabe Dalporto features Taylor Guitars CEO Andy Powers. The innovative luthier was handpicked by Taylor cofounder Bob Taylor to lead the company into the next generation.
“We want to be a guitar manufacturer driven by a guitar maker,” Taylor told Powers. “We don’t want to be just a corporation that’s turning out widgets. That’s not why Taylor exists. We are here to build great instruments, and put them in the hands of a musician so they can go enjoy their music experience. Take what you are good at doing, mix it with what we're good at doing, and all guitar players will benefit.”
Powers’ DIY spirit and curiosity about acoustic guitars started early, but didn’t exactly portend a successful career of crafting inventive guitars and leading one of the music industry’s leading gear companies.
“I was seven or eight when I took a childish attempt at building a guitar,” relates Powers. “I started working on this thing, and it took me a long time, because I didn't know how to make pieces of wood real thin. I didn't know how to put it together. I didn't know that frets were,like, a thing. So, I took a bunch of nails, cut the heads and points off and placed them in the fingerboard. I had a mismatched set of tuning keys, and a used set of guitar strings—which is just gross. And when I got it all together and tried to tune it up, it explodedinto a million pieces.”
But Powers didn’t give up. He studied his family’s acoustic guitar—resisting the temptation to take it apart—and tried again. And failed.
“My third attempt stayed together just long enough for me to play some songs on it,” he says. “Then, it broke. But by the time I was about 13 or 14, I was doing repairs for all the local music shops because they didn’t have woodworking capabilities.”
Powers also reveals how the late-’70s downturn in the acoustic guitar market actually helped the fledgling Taylor company—which was founded in 1974—grow and, ultimately, succeed.
“It’s interesting,” he says. “If you have an established acoustic guitar company producing lots of instruments, and suddenly Saturday Night Fever comes along, and people are playing disco and making different kinds of sounds, taking acoustic guitars off the map—you’ve got to curtail what you’re doing and scale way back. But if you’re still up-and-coming at the same time, that hardship was like the great equalizer. It provided an opportunity for Bob and Kurt Listug [Taylor cofounders] to start growing a bit and go, ‘Well, when the tide comes back in, we’re all going to start floating a little more.’”
But Powers’ Taylor journey was nearly derailed before it started. When Bob Taylor invited him to join the company, Powers was unsure if it was the right move for him. He was enjoying the freedom and direct builder-to-musician interactions of being a boutique luthier.
“Bob told me, ‘In life, we’re all given a few things we can be good at,’” remembers Powers. “‘You are good at making instruments, but working the way you work, you could make a dozen musicians happy every year. But working here at Taylor, you could provide for a thousand different families whose livelihoods depend on producing the designs you create. You could also provide for thousands of people around the world whose livelihoods depending on supplying materials to build these guitars. You could make the lives of hundreds of thousands of musicians better by producing these guitars they get to enjoy. So, what’s the highest and best use of the things you’re good at?’”
Catch the full conversation and other episodes of Inside the Noise with Gabe Dalporto on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or any of your favorite major platforms. When you subscribe, you’ll get new episodes every Tuesday at 3 p.m. PT.