The Black Ram Guitar
Can one tree save a forest? Forest Refuge Alliance believes the answer is an emphatic yes. Our partners at The Montana Project, in conjunction with Jeff Bridges and Breedlove Guitars, have fashioned a craft guitar made exclusively of domestic wood, sustainably harvested, with the top of the guitar made from a 315-year-old tight-grained Engelmann spruce that was felled by a clearcut at the edge of an illegal logging proposal.
The “Black Ram” guitar, named for the region in northwest Montana’s Yaak Valley from which the wood was sourced, has been touring the state and the country, advocating for protection of the threatened old-growth forest from which she came, and for all old and mature forests around the globe, being played by our nation’s finest musicians but also by beginners: for the guitar, like our climate future, belongs to all of us.
Photo credits: (top) Making Guitar — Rick Bass; (lower) Guitar in Case — RA Beattie.