Luthier

Good one.

Luthier, L-U-T-H-I-E-R.

Oh, yes, of course.

Of course.

Yeah.

But I put Sinker Redwood up on a Luthier group and people show interest.

Okay, okay.

Because

playing a show or whatever and just going back and forth and back and forth and back and forth in a very careful way yeah there's a lot of joy and like and meditation and tedious work and from there i needed something to hold the weaving um weavings and the way i do them don't tend to stand up on their own and with like a painting like it adds more weight so for logistics i needed to add a frame or a hanging device to something to lay the weaving flat on the wall for some reason like it's things still belong on the wall for me maybe it came from being a painter and that's where the the wooden carvings came in um and i wanted the frames to mean something, to reference something.

And which is where like the art Hue came in as a reference for me and my interest in like carving wood and wood staining, which is a skill that I I had picked up one from OCAD, being a student in that Luthier's class, and from being at the castle.

I did a lot of wood sanding and finishing antique and vintage furniture for that place.

And I learned a lot from a friend of mine who was a finisher of antique furniture as his trade that ended up working at the castle.

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I

was just going to say, because there was, I mean, I know that, I mean, I'm on the Hunter and the Luthiers sort of press list and the whole thing, so I get all their bulletins, and they've been putting away an awful lot of, you know, they have been putting funds to use earlier than normal this season.

They have been doing the basic things you would think they would do, like, you know, putting the banning orders on the outside barbecues and having to tell numbskulls that, no, you can't have a barbecue in the middle of the campo in the middle of August.

You know, when I used to live proper campo, you know, miles from anywhere, but it was a beautiful spot on a lake and I would be forever telling people to put the barbecue out in...

And it was.

Funny, because at the same exact time, I learned about Luthier's Mercantile.

Yeah.

And I decided I want to work there.

Can I talk to the owner or whatever? And they were like, oh, okay.

Yeah, they basically, unbeknownst to me, they had been looking for someone to fill a position in the sales department.

So when I went in, when I met Barry, I told him I was like, oh, I have an interview at Luthier's Mercantile next week.

And he goes, oh, you can put me down as a reference.

An extraordinary story of turning trash into art.

World-renowned Luthier Jens Ritter, whose guitars have been played by Prince, Lady Gaga, Dave Grohl, George Benson, Mary J. Blige, Elton John, Phil Lesch, and so many others, is joining us with his newest creation, an electric guitar built entirely from plastic waste, collected right here, yes, on our little red dot in Singapore.

He's joining me in the studio with Echo Business founder and CEO Jessica Cheem to talk about sustainability, craftsmanship, and why this ocean-inspired instrument is spending a year in Singapore before being auctioned off for youth and education programs.

What a pleasure to have both of you with me and, of course, the guitar as well.

So we also could use or can use woods which are actually not suited for the traditional guitar making.

And yeah, this is the possibility or therefore I have the possibility to use materials a classic guitar maker or an acoustic guitar maker just cannot use, right? Yeah.

Jessica, let's come back to you, and we're talking in the studio with Jessica Chiems, the co-founder and CEO of Echo Business, and Jens Ritter, Luthier from Germany, joining us.

Jens, say the name of your town again because I can never say it correctly.