THE CLASSICAL GUITAR DISPATCH S1 Ep 1: Cochran & McAllister in Sutherland, Scotland I’m Matthew Cochran. Welcome to the first episode of the Classical Guitar Dispatch, a new podcast dedicated to telling the story of the guitar. The first season of the show covers music from Asencio to Dowland to Tárrega. I speak with current and former members of the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, discuss economic and demographic trends affecting students and educators, and I go behind the scenes at international guitar festivals. I’ll dig into arranging and recording, and you’re all invited to join the Classical Guitar Dispatch Book Club. This summer’s read covers A Life On the Road, Tony Palmer’s fly-on-the-wall account of Julian Bream at the peak of his career. This week’s show is part memoir and part travelogue, a format I plan to return to from time to time. As the show finds its footing, I’d love to hear your ideas and suggestions. My hope is that the Classical Guitar Dispatch provides a sounding board for all members of the guitar community. Wherever you are in the world, whatever your interests, whether you’re just starting out or you’re a grizzled, road-hardened pro, or, if the sound of my voice just helps you get to sleep, all are welcome. Today’s Dispatch comes from County Sutherland in Scotland, where Matthew McAllister and I visit luthier Michael Ritchie, busk at a bakery, lead an accidental singalong, and take home a brand-new guitar. Let’s get started. It’s not easy to travel from my home in Traverse City, located in Michigan’s northwestern Lower Peninsula, to Strath Halladale in the northern part of mainland Scotland. But the promise of a new guitar from luthier Michael Ritchie and the start of a spring tour with my duo partner, Matthew McAllister, more than justified the effort. After a series of flights, Matthew and I met in Inverness. He flew from his home base in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and was in jolly spirits as he retrieved his bag from the luggage carousel, which he balanced alongside two guitar cases, one containing a traditional six-string guitar and another with a ten-string instrument. Matthew has made this trip several times, and he has that “just wait until you see this” face that I’ve come to expect from trips like this. I arrived in Inverness after flying without a guitar for the first time in recent memory. It was an eerily peaceful experience, traveling without the constant, low-grade anxiety of handing over the primary tool of my livelihood to an overworked baggage handler or an irritable flight attendant. As the throng of golfers and salmon anglers passed by, Matthew and I met the men we had come to see, master luthier Michael Ritchie, flanked by his son, Hamish. We loaded guitars and gear into Michael’s Volvo, one of those classic wagon models with a mileage counter that loses its relevance long before the car loses functionality. We began the last two-and-a-half hours of our trip starting on the commercialized A9 and then moving onto a 40-mile stretch of single-lane road that’s more populated by grazing sheep than motorists. We passed iconic dry-stone boundary walls through the Flow Country of Caithness and Sutherland, where the world’s first peatland, designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, teems with birdlife and bog moss. The dirt road narrowed, and we arrived at a stone cottage on an idyllic piece of farmland in Strath Halladale, featuring a handful of outbuildings dedicated to the two ventures that keep the family busy, Michael Ritchie’s guitar shop and his partner Susan Wallace’s small batch pop-up bakery, Loaf, known online as the Peat Bog Baker. In his previous life, Michael Ritchie was a guitar tech traveling for months-long stints with indie bands like Belle and Sebastian and Franz Ferdinand, who rode to prominence during the heyday of the corporate touring economy in the 90s and early aughts. Michael problem-solved overheating amps, readjusted truss rods, and maintained fussy vintage gear while thousands of concert goers chanted along to “Take Me Out.” Meanwhile, Susan was (and still is) the lead singer of the Glasgow-based trip-hop duo Cinephile, who built their reputation on television and film soundtracks. On paper, it might be difficult to square Michael and Susan’s transition from road-dog to peat bog, but after spending a couple of days with the Ritchies, it’s easy to see the appeal of a mostly off-grid lifestyle in rural Scotland devoted to family, bread, and guitars. Michael showed me to the cabin where I would stay, a cozy hut just big enough for a bed, a heating unit, and a toilet-and-sink combo. Meanwhile, Matthew got the in-house option, bunking in Hamish’s room alongside Legos and remote-controlled cars. It was Friday, which meant Susan and her assistant Paco were busy in the baking shed, preparing the 350 or so individual sourdoughs, pastries, loaves, and cakes that would go to market the next morning. The smell was glorious, but my gluten intolerance meant those smells were as close as I could get to sampling Susan’s work without risking an undignified episode in the smallest room of their cottage. For the record, I gave in to temptation twice during my visit. Also, for the record, it was worth it. I tried to nap, but even after a 25-hour trek, the new guitar occupied my thoughts. This particular guitar was about three years in the planning. Matthew McAllister and I gave our first duo concert in February 2023 in Crail, a little seaport town on the East Coast of Scotland. I love playing with Matthew. He makes every phrase sound like he’s making it up on the spot, while simultaneously making it sound as though it always existed. Of course, it’s not all fun and games, and we occasionally need to go into ensemble problem-solving mode. For example, getting our two sounds to match has proved challenging. Some of that is due to the fact that Matthew’s sound is produced by organic matter (i.e., his fingernails), and my sound is produced by synthetic matter (i.e., plastic nail tips and super glue). Those different materials cause a volume imbalance, which is annoying, but they are a far subtler issue than the challenges of balancing the actual instruments that we have played over the past three years. In 2007, Delta’s baggage goons smashed my 1993 Robert Ruck, and the American luthier Stephan Connor came through with an excellent, punchy replacement. The Connor is a loud guitar with a thin top, a sound port, modern bracing, and materials that favor midrange frequencies. Originally built for Eliot Fisk and later owned by Angel Romero, the Connor was an ideal companion for nearly 20 years and has more than earned its now comfortable retirement. As Matthew and I continue to increase our concert bookings over the next couple of seasons, and we develop the material for our second album, we’ve decided to address the problem of matching our dynamics head-on. As someone who makes a living playing, teaching, recording, and writing for and about the guitar, I admit that I have a non-scientific and, at times, downright mystical understanding of what makes a great guitar great. I am more concerned about how I feel and what I hear when I play a fine handmade instrument than I am curious about how it was made. A luthier’s artistry only becomes evident to me when I clock how an instrument feels in my lap, vibrates against my chest, and how I perceive the sound when I play. Subjective? Yes. But that subjectivity led me to a recent fascination with so-called “traditional” Spanish guitar construction, which dates back to the 1800s and began with the Andalusian luthier Antonio Torres, many of whose methods are still practiced today, notably in Granada. I enjoy the balanced frequency range these guitars produce, which, to my ears, gives them a warm, rich, and rounded tone. When it comes to traditional guitar construction, many in the UK consider Michael Ritchie one of the best in the business. So, when Matthew showed up for a duo gig with a brand-new cedar-top instrument fresh from Michael’s shop, featuring a small body and cocobolo back and sides, I knew exactly what I wanted. Matthew and I hatched a plan to approach Michael about making a second guitar with the same design and materials. So, in July of that year, as Michael set up his table for the luthier’s exhibit at the Classical Guitar Retreat at St Andrews, Scotland, I made a beeline for the unsuspecting luthier with a challenge. At first, Michael was resistant to the idea. “I can’t guarantee they will sound the same,” Michael said. “I mean, I can probably get them close if I use the same or similar materials, but it’s not a science. There are countless unknowns when dealing with wood, so if you want the same guitar as Matthew, there’s a good chance you’ll be disappointed.” “That’s fair,” I admitted. “But you know…a pair of guitars made in the same shop by the same luthier using the same materials will get us a hell of a lot closer to the sound we imagine in our heads than what we can otherwise achieve. Plus, regardless of how well the two guitars match, I know it’ll be a killer instrument.” Michael crossed his arms, which I’ve come to know as his thinking pose. After more than a little silence, he nodded, uncrossed his arms, and shook my hand. Challenge accepted. Michael produces guitars in his Strath Halladale shop, but the methods he employs are rooted in his time in Granada, where he lived, learned, and practiced his craft in the storied Barrio Del Realejo. There’s a traditionalism that permeates those building practices, including glue made from all kinds of animal and fish parts, which I try not to think too much about, but if you listen to Michael waxing rhapsodic about affixing a brace using hides and glands, you can see the romance. He says, “There’s something poetic about the old ways, and it ad
