“All things considered, and even though I built my first guitar in 1979, I was a late bloomer as a full-time instrument maker.”Įven a cursory glance at Yanuziello’s distinctive work is likely to reveal some guesses at his early influences, but his instruments come together in ways that bely any easy categorisation.
#Joe all the things instrumental full
“I gave up my furniture business to build guitars full time around 1999,” he says. Yanuziello completed guitar after guitar on the side, and some 20 years after the initial infection he just couldn’t fight it any longer. He opened his own shop in this field in 1984, but the virus from that bug that had bitten years ago was slowly taking hold. Putting his experience in house-building together with his art degree, Yanuziello soon graduated from laminating chipboard boxes to more creative work in a high-quality custom cabinetry shop, undertaking fine architectural millwork and other tasks at the more refined end of the woodworking spectrum. There’s some convergence in the decisions that both guitar players and guitar makers are likely to face when life threatens to get real: keep doing whatever it is you do that actually promises to make a living, or abandon all hope of stability and just play the guitar… or make the things. It was also during his downtime in that position that Yanuziello started building his first guitar, a flat-top acoustic that would eventually be joined by an archtop, then a host of others as he honed skills gathered, in that pre-internet age, at the elbows of local luthiers and from the pages of tomes such as Irving Sloane’s book Steel String Guitar Construction. As unglamorous as it was, the work gave him a lot of practising in routing, trimming and filing this difficult material, “skills I use to this day making the metal and plastic hardware for my instruments,” he tells us. Back home in Canada, he was accepted to art college, after which he landed his first woodworking job – a gig covering particle board boxes with Formica and plastic laminates. Simply put, he says “high school was an abysmal time for me.” He dropped out and travelled to Europe with two other friends, an eye-opening cultural experience that turned things around. In other ways, though, the teen years were tough for a kid who, like so many other budding artists, didn’t quite fit the mould. Yanuziello’s experiences in the coffeehouses and concert venues inspired him to start playing the guitar himself, laying a foundation for a more intimate appreciation of the instrument. It still is – I’ve seen him every time he’s come to Toronto.” I saw him three nights in a row, just him, his Martin flat-top, and his Gibson mandolin. One place, the Riverboat, had the best music, and it was there that I first encountered Ry Cooder live. “In 1968 I was 16, too young to get into clubs, but my friends and I frequented coffeehouses downtown. I also got to see Howlin’ Wolf, Bukka White, Rory Gallagher, Blind Faith, Asleep At The Wheel, David Lindley and El Rayo X, Lenny Breau, you name it… as well as all of the great local bands and singer-songwriters of that era in Toronto. “I was lucky enough to see Jimi Hendrix in Toronto,” he recalls, “just after the first album was released here. Playing a part in another artist’s expression is fulfilling and very personal, and hopefully the instrument is inspiring for them as well.” “Once I’ve built an instrument and turned that idea in my head into a three-dimensional object with a life of its own,” he tells us, “the big reward, in my world, is having a musician use it to express themselves.
Yet for Yanuziello himself, it’s still all about the music that will be made with them. The $6,000-plus price tags might give you a clue, but so does the outright quality of the workmanship: the made-in-house hardware and plastics, the bespoke pickups, the chequerboard or tortoiseshell binding – it all combines to declare these guitars as something a little different, and quite special.
Probe these more closely and you uncover so much more than the 1950s catalogue-inspired lines and pickups might first imply. A first glance at one of Joe Yanuziello’s flagship electric guitars tends to elicit a response along the lines of, “Aw, now isn’t that cute!” His hand-made archtops, flat-tops, mandolins, resos, and acoustic Hawaiian lap steel guitars have long drawn gasps of wonder and awe, but the electrics are bringing him more attention of late.
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