Dana Bourgeois’ involvement with guitars predates by many years the company
that carries his name. His work has, in fact, enriched the steel-string guitar world
for almost 40 years. Although Bourgeois began playing guitar shortly after seeing
the Beatles’ historic performances on The
Ed Sullivan Show, his journey with the
craft of lutherie began in earnest while
attending Maine’s Bowdoin College in the
early ’70s. After devouri
ng Irving Sloan’s landmark book Classic
Guitar Construction, Dana figured he’d
give it a shot in his dorm room. “My
grandfather was a machinist, and my father
was an amateur wood worker, and between the two of them, I received
enough help to actually build a
guitar,” he remembers.
Clearly, Dana had found his
passion. By 1977, he had
established a one-man shop in
Brunswick, Maine, which soon
led to his first commission for
a hand-built guitar. “From the
mid-’70s to mid-’80s,” he says,
“my bread and butter was
repair and restoration, but I never stopped building guitars.”