Dear Reader,

When I’m out on tour, in what could be thought of as an out of the way place, looking for something to do, I sometimes search “vintage guitars nearby”. This particular day, in Des Moines, Iowa was a day such as that.

The first thing that came up for me was Lawman Guitars, so I looked at his inventory and nothing jumped out to me, but I gave him a call anyway. Longtime, collector, proprietor, and local pastor, Michael Lawman was affable and enthusiastic on the phone.

He told me about a few cool things that he had stashed away and one of them was an oddball 60’s custom color Mosrite Guitar, Ventures model, made popular by the surf and hotrod custom car culture of the early 60’s. I was out at lunch when I called him, and saw one of my tour buddies (and guitar enthusiast) standing outside on the phone, and asked Tommy Pryce if he’d like to be my wingman on a guitar safari, so we recruited his friends and drove over to Michael’s home. 

He regaled us with stories of his guitar collecting obsession, something we could both relate to.  Then he showed us this wild guitar shown above.

Yes, it looks like it was painted in a custom car auto body garage in the mid 60’s because it probably was! Some guitar makers would get custom orders, and auto body paints are the same ones used on custom color guitars by Gibson and Fender back in the day. In this case, the order was for a two tone, red and gold sparkle finish, with Gibson parts, and custom gold hardware! This guitar should not exist, but here it is!

I couldn’t help myself, and made a deal with him, and then we later called him & invited he and his wife to our show the next day.

A good time was had by all, and I wanted to share my excitement with all of you.

When I get back to LA, I’ll have my friends inspect it more closely and I’ll swing back with what we learned.

Have guitar, will travel!
Brian