Make It Right New Orleans Guitars

[kurtschoen]

Schoen Musical Instruments has just worked out a sponsorship with the "Make It Right" Project in New Orleans, Louisiana. In order to jump start long overdue reconstruction in the poorest and hardest hit quarter of New Orleans, Make it Right is building, via donations, 150 homes for existing property owners in the Lower 9th Ward. These aren't gift homes for the homeless, these are homes for families who owned property there which has since been swept clean, and even abandoned by the mayor. With the architecture and planning part covered by a 5 million dollar grant from the Pitt Foundation, the bill for putting the structures up will be $150,000 per home. We have agreed to purchase one of the homes. The way we will do it is a bit unusual.

We have arranged to build 100 resonator Turbo 6 guitars from wood salvaged from the former homes in the neighborhood. We will donate 100% of the proceeds from the sale of these instruments to Make It Right. The guitars will be sold through various venues as the project gets rolling, and we are working out the details with Make It Right and some of our celebrity endorsers.

The instruments will be architecturally similar to my Turbo 6, with a few significant features. I am flying into New Orleans tomorrow to secure the wood used. The sound ports will be in the shape of Fleur-de-lis, and the guitars will feature a special crescent plate to commemorate the Crescent City.

If anyone is interested in pre-ordering a guitar, we welcome early purchases. These will help us fund the setup cost do accomplish this project. It will not be tax deductible for you, since you will simply be buying a guitar, albeit a very cool one with roots as deep as the blues and jazz New Orleans has given all of us.

Info : www.makeitrightnola.org
contact: [e-mail]

[Michael Messer]

Much respect to Kurt Schoen for what he is doing with MAKE IT RIGHT charity in New Orleans.

Sometime in the not too distant future I will have some Schoen instruments, so anybody interested will be able to see them. I will keep you posted.

If you want to see the real story of what Hurricane Katrina did to the people of New Orleans - you should watch Spike Lee's amazing documentary film 'WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE'



Shine On,
Michael

[growler]

Michael
I saw the documentary by Spike lee, it was very good ,compelling but so sad

regards Growler

[kurtschoen]

I just went down to New Orleans to check things out, meet with some people in the Lower 9th Ward area of town, and source some wood for the project. What great people! Imagine though, a neighborhood where, at present, the maximum occupancy on a block is about 50%! There are some blocks (oh about 40 homes per block) with only 3 or 4 homes occupied. And one area, with nothing left but the concrete footings for homes. Everything swept clean! Lots of government supplied trailers parked next to homes that are still awaiting repairs. (These are not mobile home trailers. These are the size trailer, on wheels, that you would take the kids on holiday). Imagine living like this for 28 months!

Anyway, there are great things springing up to make things right again, and one of them is the deconstruction of unrecoverable homes. The materials from some homes date to the 1860's to 1910 era. I was able to pick through organized stacks of this material from a couple homes, and selected some actually very nice cuts of wood. We are having the wood processed now (to meet US agriculure standards for interstate transport). I will have at cutting into it in about a month, after which it will acclimatize for another month, and then we willstart in building the instruments.

The guitars will have beautiful red grained southern heart pine and cherry bodies (yes, unusual, but cool), fleur-de-lis shaped sound ports, and mahogany or southern pine necks.
I am very excited to get at them! The coverplates will be of recovered rusted sheet steel, hammered and sealed to retain all the mojo.

If you wish to pre-order an instrument, please contact me through this forum and we'll get you on the list! 100% of the sales from these particular guitars will go directly into Lower 9th Ward Katrina reconstruction.

[Deleted]

Hey man, love the idea, and those are some pretty cool looking intruments! When you say you're selling 100 Turbo 6s to fund one $150,000 home, would I be right in deducing that this means a cost per guitar of $1500? (If so this sadly puts it out of the price range of a penniless student such as myself!) All the best