My Van Halen

Remember in the movie “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” where at the end of the movie, the scroll went through a sort of “where are they now” for the main characters? Jeff Spicoli’s talked about him saving Brooke Shields from drowning and then blowing his reward money by hiring Van Halen to play his birthday party.

Well, Fat Tone Guitars had it’s grand opening party over the weekend and we had The Bottle Rockets appear and play a scorching set of their trademark heartland guitar rock and roll. The Bottle Rockets are from Festus, MO and for some reason that I no longer remember, are my favorite band in the world. So, the fact that I could land them to appear and celebrate the most important event in my professional life was quite a feat if I do say so myself.

We set up the backline sound system at Fat Tone for this event with some of our favorite amps in the store. Brian Henneman, lead guitarist and vocalist for the Bottle Rockets played his custom Creston Trashpicker guitar though a Headstrong Li’l King amplifier; while John Horton, the other lead guitarist pumped his Gibson Explorer through a Gabriel Voxer 18 watt head and 2×12 cabinet. Both these boutique, hand-wired point-to-point amplifiers sound amazingly great and are available at Fat Tone Guitars in Northbrook, IL.

First Sale

Fat Tone Guitars has lost it’s virginity. We took our first sale today, and from a celebrity at that. Tom Holland, of Tom Holland and The Shufflekings, and The James Cotton Blues Band stopped by for a chat and ended up walking away with a brand new Eastwood P90 special in TV Yellow. This guitar is Eastwood’s take on the tried and true Les Paul Special with P90 pickups.

Tom jammed for awhile in the store and sounded great at that.

Wall of Guitars

I’ve always loved guitar stores. I don’t always pick a guitar off the wall or off a stand and play one when I’m in a guitar store. I usually like to stare at the wall of guitars. In my opinion, a good guitar store always has a wall of guitars.

I’m working on Fat Tone Guitars’ wall. It’s about 32 feet long and hopefully will provide some cool viewing–as cool as some of the other great walls in other great guitar stores.

Fat Tone Guitars’ showroom will open for business on Friday, August 3. Come in, hang out…