Andy Powers: Master Luthier at Taylor Guitars

Guy Kawasaki:
I'm Guy Kawasaki, and this is Remarkable People. We're on a mission to make you remarkable. Helping me in this episode is Andy Powers. Andy is a renowned luthier and guitar designer. He was born and raised in Oceanside, California.
He developed a passion for guitar making at a young age. He even attempted to build his first guitar when he was only seven years old, and he pursued his interest in music and earned an Associate of Arts Degree in Music from MiraCosta College, and then he transferred to UC San Diego.
After meeting Bob Taylor, the co-founder of Taylor Guitars at a concert at MiraCosta, Andy eventually joined Taylor Guitars as their master luthier. He has been instrumental in designing and developing some of the company's most acclaimed guitars.
His work has earned him a loyal following among musicians, including Taylor Swift, Elvis Costello, and Jimmy Page. Andy recently launched his own electric guitar brand, Powers Electric. This further cemented his reputation as one of the most talented and innovative guitar builders in the world.
I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. And now, here is the remarkable Andy Powers. What I know about guitars and guitar making could fit in a thimble, so I'm going to have to ask you questions like I don't know what I know.
Andy Powers:
Fair deal.
Guy Kawasaki:
I don't know anything because it's actually true.
Andy Powers:
Can I stop you right there? If you ask me, I think that's a beautiful place to start. I think that's a really interesting place to come from because we all love music. We all love listening. I don't think that I've met, but one or two people in life, when you ask them the question, "What kind of music do you listen to or what kind of music do you like?"
That have responded and said, "I don't really like music." No one says that. That's just weird. And we all have our preferences, and so we know that listening and the way that we consume music is vital to the human experience. But when it comes to actually building an instrument, that's a little odd. When I was a kid, it never occurred to me that instruments were made and they had to be made by a person. I think it's a totally fine place to start and admit guitar making, It's a pretty weird profession.
Guy Kawasaki:
I want to go back in time a little bit, and I noticed that you love surfing. So first of all, can you tell me about the surfboards that you own? I'd love to hear what you own in terms of surfboards.
Andy Powers:
Okay, surfing. Now, you should also understand that I am the product of two ocean-loving parents. So my dad got into it when he was young. My mom got into it and is more of a distance swimmer these days. And so, I grew up around the water and so I have loved all sorts of different styles of surfing, different styles of waves.
We all have our vices, that's one of mine, for boards. It ranges from some early Hawaiian style boards, some Alaia. I've got some Redwood Hot Curl, like giant redwood plank boards that I've made to experience what the ancient style riding is like all the way to modern high-performance shortboards.
We have, in our household, a bunch of longboards. I've got some fishes. I've been really into riding mid-length single fins or short little single fins lately. That's been really fun, because for us here in Southern California, this is the time of year when you can get fun surf, but not usually big surf. Everything's a little cruisier, goes a little slower.
My kids really like riding longboards at one of the spots near our place, and we're riding longboards a lot of times these days. I don't know, man, kind of anything goes, kind of anything goes.
Guy Kawasaki:
And are these longboards like Bing's or Skip Frye's or what kind of longboards?
Andy Powers:
I've ridden both Bing's. I've ridden Skip Frye’s because he's a San Diego guy. I've got a couple right now that my buddy Josh Martin has made. He's a great shaper up in the Dana Point area. His dad, Terry Martin, shaped for Hobie for a lot of years, and so he was pretty well-renowned shaper himself.
And then, Josh got into it when he was young, stepped away for a while, and it is really taken up that torch and building some real inventive kind of boards. For a longboard right now on me, pretty traditional nose rider, big Hatchet fin kind of thing. That's a good longboard flavor.
Guy Kawasaki:
And who makes your favorite longboard?
Andy Powers:
All sorts of stuff. Right now, the last one that Josh Martin built for me, that's a current favorite, that's a really enjoyable surfboard to ride up until maybe head high. By the time it's head high. I want to switch to a shortboard. There's a spot actually not terribly far from our workshop here at Taylor Guitars called Black's. It's a beach break kind of wave. It's more of a winter break, but I really like riding there. And in the winter, it'll get pretty big, so I'll have big wave guns for riding that spot during the winter.
Guy Kawasaki:
Do you have any Pearson Arrows?
Andy Powers:
I do, as a matter of fact. Maybe this is a poor reflection on me, but I still have one that I've never broken. That one's about an “8’0”gun for riding Black's in the winter, and that one's been a great board for me.
Guy Kawasaki:
Well, with Bob Pearson before this interview, he's making a board for me right now.
Andy Powers:
No kidding? How fun. What's he making?
Guy Kawasaki:
He's making me a pig-style longboard. I'm old and heavy, so believe it or not, my boards are eleven feet, so I'm going to get an eleven-foot pig.
Andy Powers:
That sounds fun. That'll cruise. You know what, man? It takes all types. Surfing and music to me are very closely related because there are so many different ways that a person could engage with the act and there are so many different varieties and approaches, aesthetics. It's very exciting for me to watch.
For our own kids, our oldest son, he's thirteen, almost fourteen. I was trying to get him interested in some of my shortboards and trying that. He wasn't really having it. He was having fun on a surf mat and riding Paipos and that kind of thing.
And then, he watched that old Bruce Brown movie, The Endless Summer, and went, "Now that's for me, I want to do that. I want to ride like that." I go, "Okay, let's go play longboards. Well, fine, let's go ride that." And he's really into that kind of riding. He's got good style, good flow. That's just his thing. I think that's great.
Guy Kawasaki:
About a month ago, I was out and Wingnut was in the water.
Andy Powers:
Oh, no kidding? How fun!
Guy Kawasaki:
And Madisun is a very good surfer too, much better than I am.
Andy Powers:
Oh, fantastic.
Guy Kawasaki:
Now, I guess we should talk about guitars a little bit, but first of all, do you name your guitars? You probably name your boards. We name our boards. So do you name your guitars?
Andy Powers:
I never really got into that, but in some cases, yes, I've built instruments that ended up with names. That's a tradition sometimes in the guitar world, but it's very prevalent in the world of violins. Like a lot of the real historically important instruments, Stradivari-built instruments, Amati-built instruments, they develop a name over the process of decades and centuries and go, "This was known as the so-and-so Strad."
Either sometimes known by or named by the person who once owned it, somebody who made it known or prominent, or sometimes it was a description. There's all kinds of different stories where things end up with nicknames.
So yes, I think in our quiver, we have a handful. Some of them are named and some of them aren't. Some of them are just a color like the green one or the board that our oldest son is riding most right now is one of my wife's boards. He snagged that from her, and he knows it as affectionately as The Cucumber because of its color and shape. That's what that board's called. So yeah, sometimes guitars will end up with names like that.
Guy Kawasaki:
About six months ago, we had a Korean violinist and she had a Strad and she and her boyfriend were at a coffee shop outside a train station and her Strad was stolen from her and this whole episode was about coming to grips with having her Stradivarius stolen. So that was a very interesting episode.
Andy Powers:
Man, that's quite a lot.
Guy Kawasaki:
As a guitar maker, is your hero like Stradivari or Gibson or Fender? Do you have heroes like that?
Andy Powers:
I do because I like that saying that we stand on the shoulders of giants. I think that's very true. Now, by that I mean that you're going to take into account the great work that's been done for you. The world of musical instruments is a fairly traditional world, and at the same time guitar specifically as a young instrument, but it's only reached its, what we think of as modern form, within the last century.
And so, it's still in the process of developing and being innovated, being adapted to whatever musicians are doing with it.
If you look at the world of violins, a modern form of a violin was arrived at about 300 years ago. Pianos, clarinets, a lot of instruments have achieved a state of development where they're basically just refining nuances from one to the next to achieve the ultimate fit for a particular musician. The world of guitars is so fascinating because it's still undergoing this evolution.
Guy Kawasaki:
And so, 200 years from now, are you hoping that there's a Powers Electric guitar that's like a Strad?
Andy Powers:
What I'd like to do is add what I am able, my utmost, the things that I'm capable of working on and try to make some great contribution into the world of a musical community. If I can do that and offer an instrument that's a little more than what a musician could ask for, then I'm happy. And I don't really have a grandiose visions of future legacy or a household name or notoriety in that way.
That's not what really interests me. That's not what drives me. What I love is that people play music and I want to do everything I can to build a wonderful instrument to allow them to seek their creative art. I think that's what makes me happy.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, this is the last surfing related question.
Andy Powers:
I doubt that. You put a bunch of surfers in a room.
Guy Kawasaki:
In surfing, if you were to go to Bob Pearson and say, "Bob, I know nothing about surfing, how should I begin?" He would tell you, "Start with something that's ten or eleven feet long, lots of volume, maybe a foam board.
And then, as you get better, then you go from eleven to ten to nine, six, and then go to a mid-length and go to a shortboard." And is there the same progression in guitars that you start with, this is a beginner guitar, it's good for everybody, and then you go to this and this. Is there a progression theoretically for someone beginning guitar?
Andy Powers:
Not in the same way it is with surfboards, because ironically, the easiest instrument to learn to play will always be the very best one. That's part of what makes them best. Something that has great sound, that's comfortable to hold, that's physically easy to play, that makes very accurate notes, that's easy to tune, that responds well to the needs of a musician.
When the instrument is responsive like that, it makes the learning process even for a rank beginner, like your first go out, you want to make that experience as good as it can possibly be.
If you try to do that with an instrument that is very difficult to play, strings high from the neck of the guitar, it's physically difficult, doesn't play in tune, doesn't sound good even when you get it right, that's a very frustrating experience. And so, playing an instrument, it's one of those experiences where the first five minutes of your life as a musician are the worst.
From there it gets better, but the first five minutes are awful because you don't sound good, it's not fun, it's hard to hold, it's awkward and it hurts your fingers. None of those are good things. It's like, "Do you want to jump into an instrument?"
Even if it's not the most lavish or most expensive instrument, I wouldn't recommend necessarily that because you've got to learn how to take care of the thing and make sure you don't damage it, but you want an instrument that's easy to play, that's easy to hold, that sounds good and isn't too precious at the same time.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, I lied. Here comes another surfing question.
Andy Powers:
Told you.
Guy Kawasaki:
When Madisun and I are out and we look at these people and they're learning to surf and they're struggling so much and they're all on Costco Wavestorms, and that has got to be the hardest board in the world to learn on, right?
Andy Powers:
It seems like it. It really seems like it. You look at that rocker profile and how much water they're pushing when you go to paddle, oh, that's really tough. I think when they learn to surf, what I would wish that people would do is learn to paddle first.
Just learn to paddle, because once you can get that board balanced well and you can get good momentum so it's planing at a paddling level, your ability to catch a wave is a huge improvement. And once you can catch a wave, then it's pretty easy to learn how to stand up and steer and all that.
It's been fun with our daughter who's just turned ten, she's learning to surf. And with her, I tried a little bit different version where I started to teach her by just riding tandem on a big longboard. It never had occurred to me to go, "Just ride tandem because the hardest part is getting lined up, actually catching a wave."
And then, once you stand up, you go, "I can help you up. I can hold your hand. I can show you where to balance so you're not always falling off." They give a little bit of a head start. And so, once she graduated to riding her own board, it was hilarious to watch how quickly she took to it because she already knew where to line up. She knew how to paddle, she knew how to balance. She knew how to keep a good straight upper torso with bent knees, clean form. She had a lot of the basics right there.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, so can you be very specific? If there's someone listening to this and saying, "God, I want to take up the guitar." Either with a Taylor model or some well-recognized model, what model should a beginner buy?
Andy Powers:
I would start with a Taylor Academy series guitar. That was a series of guitars that I designed specifically for someone who was going to be new to playing an instrument. It's very minimalistic. Everything that doesn't need to be there was taken away. So it's not at all a precious guitar. It's not a particularly expensive guitar, but it's put together very well. They sound great, they play very well. They're incredibly comfortable to hold. Everything about it was a very wholesome instrument to start with.
Guy Kawasaki:
And how much does one of those cost?
Andy Powers:
Depends on where in the world you are by the time you do currency conversions, all that. It's in the neighborhood of 600 to 700 dollars, I think, 600 bucks.
Guy Kawasaki:
It's less than a surfboard.
Andy Powers:
Yeah, they're very enjoyable instruments to build because I think as both a musician and a guitar maker, I go, "How in the world could somebody have something this good for this price?" It's great material, it's solid wood, it's a wonderful instrument. But the way that you do it in that case is we mechanize it.
We industrialize that instrument so that we can make them efficiently and we take away all of the frills, the filigree, the fanciness. It is like mid-century modern minimalist. There's just what you need there. It's like a cup of black coffee or something.
Guy Kawasaki:
And is this happening in the United States that these were being made?
Andy Powers:
Those guitars were built in our Tecate factory. So Taylor Guitars is interesting in the way that we're set up. We were founded here in San Diego and we have one factory here in San Diego still. And we established decades ago a second factory in Tecate. Now, if you look on the map, you can see that there's an international border between those two cities except that they are about forty-five minutes apart.
And so, we go back and forth every single day, all day long between our two factories. The two factories work pretty seamlessly together. So parts for all the guitars are built are started here in El Cajon, parts for all the guitars. Different parts for the guitars are started in Tecate. Some of them cross the border one direction, some other parts cross heading northward. And so, we end up dividing it into style of material.
And so, some guitars, you build the entire box, that whole what we call the body of the guitar out of solid wood, which would be like a take a block of wood and saw a thin sheet off it. And that's maybe the back of the guitar or a side of the guitar. Other materials, you could take that same block of wood and shave an even thinner sheet off and then glue two or three of them together, usually three.
And so, that makes a more durable style of construction and has a lot less waste because you're not losing the sawdust between those layers. And so, we have different equipment for building different style bodies on both sides of the border right now.
Guy Kawasaki:
And don't you have a saw mill or something in Africa or something?
Andy Powers:
Yeah, so the world of guitar making, it's pretty wild the places it takes you, because if you look at an instrument, there isn't a single species of wood that you build the whole guitar with. It's a very special version of woodworking in that you're asking the material, you're working right at the margin of what the materials will allow you to do. And so, for each component of a guitar, maybe the neck of the guitar has one set of characteristics that that piece of wood needs to have.
The fretboard of the guitar, the place where you actually touch would be like the fingerboard on a violin, that has a different purpose. It's a different role to play. It needs a different kind of wood. One that's denser, harder, long wearing. Maybe for the soundboard, the top of the guitar, the face of the guitar, that you need a different piece of wood.
And all of these different materials have to come from different forests, different areas. They're harvested in different ways and they're all brought together. And we have a, call it a philosophy where here we want to invest in the inevitable. It just makes sense. If I know this future is coming, I better prepare for it.
And years ago, we started looking at the future of guitar making woods and saying, "We want to build instruments with wood." And that means that in a world that's rapidly changing, we should think differently about how we source materials, how we harvest it, and what we can do to propagate future generations of instrument building wood.
For centuries, instrument builders have operated like hunter-gatherers. You go out into the forest, you find what you need, you take it, and you're good. You're good for the day, you can eat. We've crossed over in our modern era to behaving more like farmers, where we go, "We better have some foresight for the future."
We can see that this forest isn't going to supply everything that we would want or need, and yet we want to leave this in better condition than the state we found it in. So we're going to go start planting. We're going to harvest in different ways. We're going to approach the resource in a totally different method.
And so, in different parts of the world, we harvest in different methods, whatever works best for that part of the world. So operating in Central America, we've partnered with different villages that have rights to harvest trees so we help them with forest management plans so that they're never just clear cutting chunks of forest or burning it to turn into cattle land or something like that. We go, "Well, there's value here.
There's commerce that can be done, but not too much. Be very careful with the resource." So in some cases we'll work that way. In other cases, like you mentioned our mill in Africa, that's where ebony comes from.
That's the part of the world where very dense blackwood ebony that was traditionally used on violin fretboard or fingerboards, guitar fretboards and different components, that's where that comes from. And about a decade ago, we had the opportunity to purchase this mill. And once you go there, you learn about it. You can't unlearn, you can't un-know what you've discovered.
So we realized we need to go in here and start doing this work ourselves because it was a case of a good operator displacing a bad operator to go, "We can make a change here. We can make a change for the people who are working with this mill, the conditions that they're working in, the way that they're harvesting materials.
We can work with others who have local knowledge that we can start replanting these trees in addition to planting fruit trees or other shorter term economic crops that can help the entire region." And so, in different parts of the world, you do different things, but the goal is to leave things in better condition than the way you found them.
Guy Kawasaki:
And how do you get your koa?
Andy Powers:
Koa is another interesting project, because for years we would find koa when it would come onto the market, go, "Great, there's a neat piece. Let's make some guitars from it." A number of years ago, we were looking for koa and one of our wood sourcing specialists said, "I can't find any koa, but how about you buy a piece of land that has a bunch of koa trees on it and sent us a real estate listing for someone who was trying to sell a koa's forest?" And he said it half in jest, he's joking about it.
And we talked to another partner of ours whose specialty is cutting spruce soundboards up in the Pacific Northwest region. And he said, "That's not a bad idea, actually, let me look into it." So he did some research, came back. He goes, "We could do this, just not that particular chunk of forest. That one's not good."
And so, that started this partnership that we now call Paniolo Tonewoods Siglo for century, where we are working with a variety of different organizations there on the islands, but we also own our own piece of land where we are propagating koa trees for future generations of use as well as harvesting the dead and dying to improve the condition of what forests are there.
So you can go into a koa forest or what was left of a planted one and look at the trees that are good and healthy, those stay. And then, the others that are deceased, that are dying, that are damaging things, you can remove those ones. And so, what we've worked out with Kamehameha Schools and some different groups that own land is that we can improve the quality of the forest that they hold as forest land in exchange for stumpage in doing that forestry work.
And so, we're planting koa trees, we're harvesting some old koa trees or some damaged koa trees usually. One of the big problems in Hawaii with koa specifically is cattle. Cattle ranching is the biggest detriment to the koa tree that there could be, because there is apparently nothing more succulent to a cow than a young koa sprout. The seeds are all over the place, but I can't make this stuff up.
And so, when these koa trees sprout, cows will go through and eat them off right to the ground, and then what you end up with is a stunted little bush that should have been a big, tall koa tree. And so, a lot of what we see coming out of a koa forest now are these bizarrely deformed, twisted, damaged trees that were planted a generation or two ago that had been damaged by cattle ranching.
So the biggest hurdle to cross in a lot of those cases or in those forests are fencing. Got to keep the cows out. Keep the cows out, the koa trees grow, the seed's viable for a very long time.
Guy Kawasaki:
What island is this?
Andy Powers:
On the big island mostly.
Guy Kawasaki:
Switching gears a little bit, can you just explain to me philosophically or emotionally or psychologically, what's the difference between someone who plays an electric guitar and someone who plays an acoustic guitar? Are these two different kinds of people?
Andy Powers:
No, typically not. They can be, but oftentimes what you have is a musician who's looking for a different response, a different setting, different context. It's similar to if the surf is triple overhead. I'm not going to take a longboard out into that. I'm going to take one of my bigger wave boards.
I might take a Pearson Arrow out and go, "All right, big thick leash, let's be ready." That's a different scenario. If it's waist high, glassy, and clean, surface small, and just a nice point wave, yeah, I'm not going to be taking a big wave gun out into that. I'm going to take a longboard with a big single fin. I'm going to go nose riding. There are different scenarios.
And so, for musicians, you want to pick an instrument that fits the context of what you're looking for. Maybe one's more in a band environment, one's more of a songwriting environment. Sometimes you are playing an acoustic guitar with a band, but it might be amplified.
Maybe you're playing a rhythm part, maybe you're playing a finger style part. It has less to do with the personality of the musician because most guitar players end up playing multiple styles and multiple instruments. It just depends on the context.
Guy Kawasaki:
And is it heresy to plug acoustic guitar into an amp?
Andy Powers:
No, of course not. That's not a problem at all. We, in fact, build some amplifiers that are specifically geared toward acoustic guitars and for vocal use as well, because sometimes you just need the thing to be louder. You look at everything that way and go, "It's a practical response. How do you want to manage this thing that's coming out, this sound?"
Music is meant to be shared, and that means that you want to be sharing it with an audience. If it's a small audience, that might be okay to play acoustically. But what if it's an audience of one hundred people or 200 people or 1,000 people? You want that sound to go a long ways. You want to be able to let everybody hear it and enjoy it. You got to figure out a way to make it louder.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, I'm glad to hear that. Going back to surfboards, I put pads on my surfboard because I hate wax, and I put a handle in my surfboard because they're so wide and people look at me like it's heresy. And the only person who doesn't think that's heresy is Bob Pearson himself.
Andy Powers:
The heretics tend to be people who are very insecure and it tends to come from a place of they're just not confident in what it is they're seeing and doing. If you look at a lot of things very practically, you go, "If the board's wide and it's hard to carry, put a handle in the middle of it. Who cares?" If it doesn't affect the way it's riding, but it makes your experience a lot better to carry the thing. Why not? Go for it.
A lot of instruments, I approach the same way. There was an era before my time where people wouldn't like what we call a cutaway on a guitar. Now, if you were to look at, say, the form of a guitar and it's a figure eight sort of a shape, the highest notes on the fretboard or on the neck of the guitar, they weren't very accessible because you run into the body of the instrument. Your hand can't get to those highest notes the way it can on a violin or a cello or something like that where your hand reaches over the body.
Some makers started to make an asymmetrical shape. It looks like a shark bit, took a bite out of the one corner of it and they go, "Now you can get your hand around it and you can play the high notes." There was a time when that was viewed with disdain. And then, eventually you realize this actually works really well. Why not?
You would see the same resistance to change when the electric guitar was being first developed, the idea that you could make a guitar and have it not hollow. That's weird. Really, a solid chunk of wood that you put magnetic pickups on and that's what you play? That just seems strange.
Is that even an instrument? Yeah, it's a new form of guitar. You're still playing a guitar, but you could look at a Les Paul or a Telecaster or a Stratocaster, go, "We recognize them as guitars now, but at the time, those were pretty outlandish ideas." I don't think that there's anything wrong with making changes when the change is beneficial to the user.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Going back in history a little bit, about how old was Bob Taylor when he hired you?
Andy Powers:
Let's see. He would've been in his mid-fifties, late-fifties, something like that.
Guy Kawasaki:
And was the theory that he had to hire young Andy Powers to pass the baton over so Taylor Guitars would continue?
Andy Powers:
Yeah, so the way that Taylor had formed was he and our other partner, Kurt Listug, had founded the company when they were young adults, nineteen and twenty-one, and started this thing with the purpose to build good guitars and put them into the hands of musicians.
And at a certain age, Bob started realizing, "Wait a minute, this is going to become just another company that's making widgets. It will lose the ethos of the guitar maker. It will lose an element of its original purpose. So I need to go find a person." And that person needs to be young and experienced. And we have this big list of criteria.
And our paths crossed a couple of different times in different contexts. And one day he called me out of the blue and goes, "Hey, come down to the shop. I want to talk to you alone." And I thought, "Oh man, I don't know what I did to irritate him. He's going to push me into the woodchipper or something."
Because I had grown up building instruments, but from a different perspective. So I had started building guitars when I was just a little boy, and I figured I would always work alone because I liked working in my workshop. I liked working on instruments at a more of a craft level. It would've been what I call now a private practice style of guitar making.
And I was fortunate because that worked out very well. I was loving the work that I was doing. I was getting to surf a lot, play a lot of music, build my guitars in my workshop, and my bills were paid. This is important. I realized at that point, "Oh, this is like a job. I'll just do this in place of a job."
And so, when he approached me and said, "Hey, look, if you could combine what you are good at doing with what Kurt and I have started, the world of our musical community, the world of guitar players would be better for it.
Let's try to do this so that Taylor can continue another generation forward with a guitar maker having the seat at the table. "Don't let this just become a corporation turning out widgets. We want to stay true to the original purpose, which was build great instruments that are inspiring for musicians to play."
Guy Kawasaki:
I hope that Madisun is my Andy Powers because I'm seventy.
Andy Powers:
How cool. That's great.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm putting a little pressure on her. I know she's hearing this.
Madisun Nuismer:
I got you, Guy. Don't worry.
Andy Powers:
It's interesting. It's not always the, in fact, I would say it's not easy at all in many cases, because in my case, I had a direction that I thought I was going. And the way that Bob had approached me, I thought, "I'm not even sure I have a chance to do this." When I was a little boy, I started building guitars and they blew up into a pile of splinters because I didn't know what I was doing. But by the time I was twelve or thirteen, I was doing repairs and restoration work for the local music shops.
I was starting to build some new instruments for other friends and friends of friends and people who wanted to order a customized instrument for me. And by the time I had finished college, I was several years deep on a waiting list. I went, "Oh my gosh, I don't know what I'm going to do. All my friends are going to get jobs. I can't stop what I'm doing because I'm three years back ordered and I've taken deposits on this work. I can't quit even if I wanted to."
And then, I realized, "Wait a minute, this is like a job. All my bills are paid. I love building these instruments. I'll just keep doing this. This could work." And in my head, I was pretty set in that direction.
And then, when someone else comes at you with what feels like a left turn, that took me a minute to think about and go, "Why would I want to make that change? What would this look like? And for what benefit?" And it is a difficult choice for a person to make. Do I want to do that? How would I want to do that? Why would I want to do that? But ultimately, it made the most sense because it was a greater purpose.
In fact, Bob himself had said, he put it to me this way in the course of our conversations, he goes, "Look, working the way you work, you can make a dozen people very happy every year. You could build a small handful of instruments, put them into the hands of those musicians. They'll appreciate them, they'll enjoy them. Their audiences will love that music that they make. And you can provide for your wife, your kids, yourself. That's great. That's a noble living. That's fine. Or you could take what you're gifted with, this one little thing that you have in life that you've developed, fostered, and you could use that to provide for 1,000 employees that we have here at Taylor Guitars, for thousands of people around the world whose livelihoods depend on supplying materials to build these designs, for thousands of retailers whose livelihoods depend on selling these instruments that we build, let alone the hundreds of thousands of musicians around the world who get to enjoy playing these instruments. What's the better use of what you've been entrusted?"
I go, "If you put it like that, okay, I'm in. We can do this." And so, it's not really what I set out to do when I was a kid, but I can see the beauty and the benefit to the community that I love in doing this work.
Guy Kawasaki:
It's like when Steve Jobs said to John Sculley, "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water at Pepsi?"
Andy Powers:
Yeah, I suppose so. I suppose so. It's a question mark. What is it you want? Because I do believe that people, we're all blessed with some gift, a set of unique experiences, a unique perspective, the ability to develop your skills, the ability to learn things that you're not familiar with, all kinds of unique abilities. And for every person, it comes down to one place, "Wow, this is a thing that is so individual and unique to that person."
Then where do you spend that? Spend it wisely. Find the place, that purpose where you could benefit those around you, because in the end, I don't think that our lives are just about ourselves. They're about what you can do for the people around you. So how do you use what you've been entrusted with?
Guy Kawasaki:
Not to put any pressure on you, Madisun. So I have some geeky question to ask you.
Andy Powers:
Please go for it.
Guy Kawasaki:
Can you tell if it's a Taylor guitar just by hearing it?
Andy Powers:
Oftentimes, yes. But I will say that instruments are, they're endlessly fascinating to me. But I'll answer with an equally geeky response. The sound we hear coming out of an instrument is never just the instrument, it's the hands of the musician, the heart of the musician, plus the instrument. It's the relationship between the two that we get to hear.
Think of it, let me pick some examples from the world of piano players. If you were to take three piano players, say Vladimir Horowitz, McCoy Tyner, and Dr. John, radically different approaches to playing a piano, yet they all played on similar instruments. And why is it that they are so distinctly themselves? Now with the world of guitars, it's even more direct, those uniquenesses, because you're not separated from the strings that are initiating that sound.
Your fingertips are actually articulating those strings. And so, you can hear a person's touch in the instrument. You can sense their emotional state. You can sense the kind of sound they want to coax out of that instrument. And so, when I hear a guitar, yeah, you can hear models, this wood, this design, but what you're really listening to is the relationship between the musician and their instrument.
Guy Kawasaki:
Could you explain how the tone of a guitar changes as it ages and why?
Andy Powers:
That gets real geeky real quick. What happens? Okay, so let's say in general, guitars, musical instruments are one of the rare things in life that get better the older that they are. The more they're used, the better they become. Very few things that could be made or used fall into that category. It can't be more than a handful or two.
Maybe an old baseball mitt is better than a new one. A cast iron pan gets better the older it gets. There's just a handful of things. But a wooden instrument, as it gets used, it becomes more able to resonate due to some changes, some physical changes that happen within the piece of wood.
Wood's made of, it's a natural product. All woods are built with this fiber content that's built of a few different types of cellular structure. And just like a pair of jeans that goes through the washer and the dryer and get softer and looser, more flexible, the more times they've been washed.
A piece of wood slowly loosens up the more it resonates, the more it vibrates over time. It goes through climate changes where it expands and contracts and becomes slowly more stable in terms of its ability to change with the weather over time and yet becomes more resonant over time.
And so, those two factors, there's a couple other real nerdy sorts of things that happen, but those general factors mean that a guitar becomes, I describe it as riper the older it gets. It gets sweeter. It becomes more touch sensitive. It becomes better able to respond to the fingertips of the musician.
Guy Kawasaki:
And is this true just for acoustic guitars, or is it true for electric guitars too?
Andy Powers:
It's absolutely true for electric guitars. Acoustic guitars, it's very dramatic. But electric guitars, in my opinion, they can be equally as dramatic. You look at an electric guitar, and most people are picturing what we describe as a solid body electric, where it's a plank of wood for the body of the guitar, and then the neck or the arm of the guitar that holds the fretboard that the player is playing on.
And everything's resonating. Everything's moving all the time. There are no stationary parts of any guitar. They're all in motion. And every single time that string is struck, the whole thing is going to respond in different ways. And that's always going to happen. And so, the more it happens, the more that piece of wood develops, loosens, becomes more resonant. It sounds more musical the more it's been played.
Some instruments, some specific guitars more than others, some that are built real crudely more like furniture, they don't exhibit that characteristic as well because they weren't very resonant to begin with. But it's true for acoustic guitars, it's true for electric guitars.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. Can you explain the thinking behind creating Powers Electric Guitars? Why is it outside of Taylor?
Andy Powers:
Right. So the Powers Electric Guitars, when I was young, I got really into electric guitars. I'm a Southern California kid, grew up around surfing and hot rods and all this kind of thing. So I've always lived in what people think of as the birthplace of electric guitar. I got really into that when I was young.
And so, as Taylor Guitars, we've dabbled with electric guitars over the years. We have some hybridized versions that we make. We tried some full-blown electric guitars at one point prior to my time here at the company. And so, we had this idea, yeah, maybe someday we'll do some electric guitars again. That'd be fun.
And so, I was playing around with some different designs and they weren't quite it because every brand has a bit of a design language. There's that development of a brand where you have a community of users that understand what the brand means to them. It's ill-advised to go too far outside of that. Let's say if you have a Kleenex, you don't really want to see a Kleenex brand name on a tube of ChapStick. It's just weird. It doesn't seem right.
And so, when I thought about a Taylor Guitar, knowing the design language and working within the design language of a Taylor Guitar, that's incongruent with the way that a player would use an electric guitar. It's incongruent with the stylistic influences, incongruent with the aesthetic behind what I would want.
And so, instead, I approached that design as I'm going to build the guitar that I want. I'm going to build the guitar that I would want it to be like as the twelve or thirteen-year-old, the guitar obsessed, electric guitar obsessed kid that I once was, I'm going to build the guitar that never existed. And to do that, I'm going to put myself through a little mental design challenge to go, "If I was living where I live now, back in the era that electric guitars, the modern electric guitar was being developed, what would I have made?"
That means that there's no parts catalogs to buy parts from. There's no preconceived notion of what the thing really is or should become. So you have a lot of freedom to take things in a slightly different direction, starting with the same influences, but it was as if you just rewound that evolutionary tree and went, "Take a little different approach to this."
And so, I put a different set of design language in there as well as a lot of thoughts, a lot of different ideas that I'd worked on over the last thirty years, went, "I want to take this a little different direction that is more in line with the way that electric guitars started to diverge from the world of acoustic guitars." And because of that, there was quite a big difference in the design language of a modern Taylor acoustic guitar and this thing that became Powers Electric.
So I built one guitar, went, "Man, I like this really neat." A friend of mine saw it and he wanted one. So I built another one, built two more, built three more, built five more, went, "Okay, this is the thing. I'm going to keep making these because these are great instruments to be playing. What do we call it? It can't really be a Taylor because that just doesn't match. So let's try something new." I'm not afraid to try something new.
As Taylor Guitars, we've never launched into different brands. We've always kept it under one brand, and this would be the part where we need to depart from that. And there's a time and a place for everything. You never say never. And this was a time where we said, "Okay, we're going to take a different approach here. We're going to start a different brand so that we can maintain these different ideas as what they should be."
Guy Kawasaki:
One of the reasons why podcasting is so unprofitable for me is because I interview people and then I start falling in love with what they do. I now have a Gerry Lopez surfboard because I interviewed him. I interviewed the president of Specialized Bikes, so I have two or three Specialized Bikes. I have an Isurus Wetsuit, which is the most expensive wetsuit you can get.
I interviewed Halim Flowers, who's an artist, and I bought one of his paintings. Two part question. If I was going to buy a guitar in order to remember and institutionalize this interview, should I buy a Powers Electric or should I buy a Taylor Guitar? And wait, that's question number one. Question number two is, and would you be offended if that guitar is never played because I don't play the guitar?
Andy Powers:
I guess in that case, that answers my first question, which is, well, what do you like to listen to? What do you think you would want to try? It is true that electric guitars are easier to approach as a beginner than an acoustic guitar. They tend to be a little smaller strings, easier on your fingers, just depends on what it is you like.
What kind of look, some people buy instruments because they're visually appealing, they're beautiful, they're absolutely beautiful works of art. They're pretty to look at hanging on the wall. And so, then, you ask yourself, what is it that I like? What do I want? I really love both of those brands that we're working and designing guitars with. I love building electric guitars. I love building acoustic guitars. I'm not sure I could choose. Not sure I could choose. I have them both, so I don't have to choose.
Guy Kawasaki:
I'm not saying that Gerry Lopez shaped the board for me, but if I were to tell you, so listen, I want to board that I know that you made it. Which one would I buy?
Andy Powers:
Right now, you'd buy a Powers Electric. Now, the Powers Electric are, maybe I could use the word small batch. Right now, our production rate on these two brands are polar opposites of the spectrum. As Taylor Guitars, we're a global leader in our field. We build a lot of guitars every day, and that's wonderful because they're great guitars. As Powers Electric, that is more of a small personal project at this stage. So I'm personally working on every single one of those instruments.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, that settles it. So now, so let's suppose that, I don't know, someday Taylor Swift or Dave Matthews walks in my house and I have a Powers Electric Guitar. They're going to say, "Holy shit, you have a Powers Electric Guitar?" Is that going to happen?
Andy Powers:
It's possible. I don't know if Taylor or Dave have these. I know they both have Taylor guitars that I've made for them. Taylor might have one now actually. I wasn't there personally to give it to her, but yeah, I don't know. They tend to go places. I've been fortunate to work with a lot of neat artists in my field because like I said, I love building an instrument and letting someone go play it and make their magic with it, and that's something that's just special.
The instrument itself to me is a work of art, but part that I love, I would describe as the work of art. It's the work that goes in behind that thing. It's one thing to have an idea, but it's a totally another thing, it's a totally different thing to take that idea and turn it into something. You have to actually go create it.
So you do the chores, the chop wood, the carry water part, that is the work of art, and that's the process that I love. So I love taking these instruments, whether it looks like an acoustic guitar, whether it looks like an electric guitar, I'm going to take that thing and make it to be the very best it can be and put it into the hands of a musician and go, "All right, run with this. Let's see where it takes."
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay. So just to reiterate, if I do this and I never play it, you won't be insulted. Right?
Andy Powers:
Look, I've driven, I like hot rods. I like cars. I think that's, they're fun machines. There have been plenty of times where I've driven a car that I was not worthy of driving. There is no way I'm going to go as fast as this thing is capable of. There is no way that I'm going to put this thing close to what it really is meant to do, but it doesn't reduce my enjoyment of it. I still really like it. Still fun.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, now my last question is related to Taylor Swift. How does Taylor Swift come to become a Taylor Guitar user, and what has been her impact on Taylor Guitars?
Andy Powers:
Taylor Swift, okay, so she is a great musician, wonderful songwriter. Originally, her dad, Scott Swift had approached Bob Taylor and said, "Hey." He sent him like a cassette tape, said, "I'm sure you've heard this a lot of times, but my daughter is really special. She's unique. You should listen to some of her songs." And so, Bob had listened to it. "It's a good song. That's cool. Sure, let's do something."
So we gave her a couple of opportunities. She played at different industry events and things. Did a CD release party here at our campus once when she was very young, and she is a brilliant person. She's a great businesswoman, she's a great artist, great musician. She has captured the hearts and minds of fans around the world with the songs that she writes, the music she creates, the show that she assembles.
And so, her impact to Taylor Guitars is significant because she has played our guitars for a long time and we're grateful for that as well as a host of other musicians who have also made a career playing Taylor Guitars. And so, we're happy to support her in every way that we can, and we are also happy to support a lot of other musicians that use our instruments. Yeah, it's great. It's great when we get to do the work that we do and put it out there and have a musician find their voice with something you've made. That's special to me.
Guy Kawasaki:
You're the only person that I know knows Taylor Swift. So you're verifying she is the real deal. She's not some bullshit made up kind of Disney created musician?
Andy Powers:
No, no, no. She is a good musician herself. She has that rare songwriter ability. I use the phrase she knows how to turn a phrase. So you can take a couple of words, go, "I know all those words, but I wouldn't have put them together in that order. I wouldn't have thought to put them together in that order. But now that you did, that was the right way to convey that emotion or that feeling or whatever it might be." She's very good at that.
And at the same time, she's very smart in looking at how she wants to present her music. I think probably not many people know this, but when she designs a tour, she's actually going to sit down and design the look of it herself.
She knows what she wants to accomplish, and she's going to figure out ways to accomplish it. My hat's off to her. There've been plenty of times we've had chances to sit down, play some songs over different eras. I've had a lot of other friends also perform with her. She's a good musician.
Guy Kawasaki:
Okay, I'm so glad to hear that. Madisun and I and everybody who's going to listen to this considers you to be a remarkable person who has made a difference and made the world a better place and just done some great things. So now, take that as a given. Don't argue, don't go modest on us. How would you explain to someone how you became remarkable, how you accomplish what you accomplished?
Andy Powers:
I would say that I am the beneficiary of a lot of wonderful things that people took time to teach me, starting with my parents and their ability to teach me the process of learning things, starting there and not ever being quite content to just take things at face value.
Because once you can start down the process of being curious and chasing that curiosity down and mix that with the ability to do the work behind art, the work of art, I don't think anybody could stop you. And so for me, that's where it comes from.
Guy Kawasaki:
I hope you enjoyed this interview with Andy Powers. As I said in the beginning, I knew almost nothing about guitar making, but I have come to appreciate his art and I truly respect people who can take strips of wood and make them into brilliant musical instruments. That is absolutely a remarkable skill.
I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. Thank you, Andy, for being on our podcast, and thank you to the Remarkable People team. That would be Tessa Nuismer, the research maven, Madisun Nuismer, producer of the podcast and co-author with me of Think Remarkable, the book. And then, there's Luis Magaña, Alexis Nishimura, and Fallon Yates.
And last, but certainly not least, because they are responsible for the remarkable quality of this podcast, there is Jeff Sieh and Shannon Hernandez. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People Podcast, and we are on a mission to make you remarkable, and I hope you'll let us help you do that. Until next time, mahalo and aloha.