A guy walks into a bar …

From phone conversation with Robert

December 2009

I’ve been trying to think about when I first met Steve Cripe, it was in Miami. I was playing in a Dead cover band. It must have been in the early 1990’s. At the time we had a relatively successful band, there were a lot of people in the audience, and he comes up to me and hands me his business card made of wood – Stephen Cripe Custom Woodworking. He said, “Yea man, I’m thinking about making some guitars”. And I’m thinking, oh yea, whatever dude. I took the card, and I threw it in my drawer. And I saw him at a few gigs after that and we chatted briefly. Then one day I’m looking at Guitar Player magazine and there is this picture of a guitar that Jerry Garcia had been playing by Stephen Cripe and I thought, Holy Cow!

So, I call him up and say hey Steve, remember me? How are you doing?

He lived in the Tampa area and used to travel to Miami for business building yacht interiors. I told him I wanted one of those guitars. He said I still have all the same wood and stuff. He offered to make it for me for $4,000. He said he made it from the same piece of wood from the opium bed. He worked on it for months. He would send me pictures along the way as he was making it. He sent me all these 35 mm pictures and I was sifting through them and came across some of them.

He made this beautiful masterpiece of a guitar. I played it out for about a year or so. Steve came by my house one day and he was holding my guitar, so I took his picture.

I was in a bookstore about a month or so ago and saw this magazine (Vintage Guitar Magazine) and there was a picture of Jerry. I opened the magazine and there was a picture of Steve Cripe holding a guitar and I recognized it as mine. And that’s my house and I took that picture!

I was with my girlfriend at the time, and I was trying to impress her, and I showed her the picture and sure enough she was impressed.

So, one day I get a call from Cripe’s girlfriend crying saying Stephen had died. He died making fireworks. And on my guitar, there was a little mother of pearl firework on the headstock, and it was really sad to hear that.

So, time went by, and Pat O’Donnell was a friend of his. Pat is a fabulous guitar builder. He makes Cripe copies and Irwin and Phish copies. He’s very innovative in his designs. He basically inherited the shop and all the dyes, left over pieces of wood, cutouts, and unfinished guitars. So, I took my Cripe guitar up to him and he very carefully measured and analyzed it he made me a copy of it. He made it ultra perfect down to the nth degree exactly the same. I ended up selling the original Cripe.

Steve said something like, “my guitar was better than Jerry’s because I put more work into it, knowing that Jerry actually liked the guitar.”

I asked Steve how he got it to Jerry, and he said he knew someone who worked for the Dead and he mailed it to them. They said every guitar builder in the country was sending Jerry guitars and there was a warehouse full of guitars from people sending them. Somehow Jerry found a little time and picked it up and loved it. That was like an amazing coincidence that it even got looked at. And he had someone call up and have another guitar built and sent him some money. I think Pat O’Donnell had a copy of the check.

I never visited Steve’s shop. Cripe hand delivered the guitar to me and that’s when I took the picture.

I had voice mails saved of Steve’s on my phone, and I listened to him after the accident. – Robert

Robert, Thanks for the fax. Your guitar is not even polished yet! I will be a lot shinier when I’m done. It would be polished now if the lacquer was cured. The shape is identical to Jerry’s (due to the fact that it is handmade there will be very slight differences – no two are alike). I arrived at the shape using my prototype (#6 on Cripe’s Notes) before I sold it. I carefully traced around the perimeter of the prototype for Jerry’s and several months ago I made a permanent template for yours. Your guitar is nicer than Jerry’s. When I built the “Bolt”, I kept it simple because I never knew what would happen. Naturally I would have spent more time with inlay and or other details if I knew he was going to love it as much as he did. Steve Parish told me that the Bolt was his favorite ax. No suggestions on a case. The guitar is 39 5/8” long so a case (unprofiled or rectangular) that will take a 40” instrument should work. Anyway, please be patient – I don’t want to rush the finish. Steve

PS The St. Pete Times did an interview with me yesterday and it should be in this weekend’s issue. Also, Japan’s equivalent of Guitar Player did the same. Interesting.

“One day he was working on the Bolt replica for Robert. He had recently incorporated his business and called it SRC [Stephen Ray Cripe] Industries. We talked about putting SRC on the headstock but then I asked Steve to put the firecracker lower in the headstock and add the “C” above it, “C” for Cripe.” – Theresa McFarlane

 

Cripe Remembrance

Cripe’s sister sent this to me. Robert posted somewhere on the internet:

In memory of Stephen Ray Cripe. R.I.P. 1996

“St. Stephen will remain, all he lost he shall regain.”

I first met Stephen Cripe at one of our gigs in Miami about 5 years ago. He gave me a business card made out of wood. He said he wanted to start building guitars. After Jerry’s passing, I was reading Guitar Player and saw in the article how he had built the BOLT guitar that Jerry played. I immediately wrote to the address and a few days later got a call from his fiancé’. She gave me his number in the keys where he was working. I called him and I think we spoke on the phone for at least an hour. He had so many interesting things to say, and he loved to talk. He told me how he had built a guitar from expensive parts and shipped it off to Jerry not knowing what would happen. Well Jerry got it and said in his usually funny tone. “Oh, just what we need, another guitar!”. Well, it seems that every guitar builder in the country was sending Jerry guitars! Well, the instrument got put aside until a few weeks later when Jerry decided to give it another look. Upon closer examination, he realized that this was the finest instrument he ever saw. I mean a neck made out of 9 ply of wood! He called it a “museum piece.” Well, Stephen agreed to stop by my house on his way home from the keys. Boy, was I flattered and exited to meet him. He brought pictures of the instruments he made, about a dozen, I guess. I asked him how much Jerry Paid for his. He told me when Jerry and Steve Parish called him and said, “Build us another”. “How much do you want for it.” I don’t think Stephen wanted any money for it. But Jerry said, “Don’t worry about us, we have lots of money.” and suggested 6 grand. I quickly wrote him out a check. He wanted to give me his driver’s license number, but I just trusted him. It did not matter. As a businessman myself, I wanted to warn him about taking checks from other people, but why spoil an honest guy. There are not many left. Over the next 3 months, we spoke often and exchanged faxes. He always had lots of fascinating things to say. When the guitar was done, he actually drove it 5 hours to my house. Now I expected it to be nice, but upon first look all I could say was “WOW!”. Steve was a perfectionist and always liked to outdo himself. This was obviously the finest guitar he (and may be anyone else) had built. I am amazed that any one person could have done this. Stephen and I spoke regularly after this. He sent me an EMAIL just a few days before. Well, this nice story has a sad ending. Last week I received an Email:

Steve Cripe made Jerry’s last guitar.

Quoted from The Tampa Tribune, w/o permission:

A powerful explosion killed a 42-year-old guitar craftsman Tuesday, sending flames shooting through his workshop and knocking pictures off the walls of neighbors’ homes. Authorities responded to a 2:15 p.m. call for help from residents who reported that a workshop was engulfed in flames.

The medical examiner had not confirmed the identity Tuesday evening, but Sheriff Lee Cannon said authorities believe it was Stephen Ray Cripe.

Cannon said officials have received reports that Cripe was manufacturing fireworks in preparation for the Fourth of July.

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Well, I was crushed when I heard this news. Stephen was a great artist, just like Jerry with a different medium. Had I known he was making fireworks, I would have tried to talk him out of it. I mean, even the Gucci’s blew up their factory. What a loss of talent. I will miss him, but I will play his guitar for years to come. 053096 Go on, my friend, do anything you choose.