Today we’d like to introduce you to David Latchaw.
David, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Growing up in Enid, Oklahoma was fun for a youngster; although the little town didn’t offer many opportunities to get into trouble, the level of boredom was adequate to assure every child would be motivated to find those opportunities, my parents were cognizant of that fact, so my mother diverted the attention of her children toward music. Our church had paid for her piano lessons when she was a teenager; this became a gift that she passed on to her children. My siblings were all successful in marching band, but I was a disappointment, struggling with piano lessons. I tried accordion, but the local public television station carried “Folk Guitar with Laura Weber” and I was hooked.
My father’s old Silvertone archtop guitar wasn’t up to the job, so my sister and brother-in-law purchased a classical guitar while in Cordoba, Argentina and brought it back with them for me. I wore that guitar out playing it. Fredrick Noad created an instructional series for television for the classical guitar, and I transitioned to his pedagogy when Laura Weber’s series ended. To facilitate my continued progress, my mother traded in the accordion for a brand new Gibson classical guitar.
Throughout junior high school and high school, I taught myself to read music. I laid waste to stacks of Bach, Guiliani, Paganini, and Sor, though I didn’t know what I was doing. But my formal music education included singing with the chorus for several years.
My vocal music teacher approached me to introduce me to a shy youngster from the band department. I remember Michael as a quiet but gifted ‘new kid’ in school. His parents had just purchased the downtown music store in Enid, so I was happy to finally meet the guy I saw every Saturday, playing every instrument in the store. Michael wanted to put together an ensemble to accompany the chorus, stage band, and Madrigal singers for the high school Christmas program.
We spent time after school at his kitchen table, where I sat amazed at his ability to transpose and arrange effortlessly. Michael was a year older but had more natural talent in the end of his little fingernail than I had in my whole body. He said that he wanted me to play rhythm guitar. He would play bass guitar, and we had a drummer and a keyboardist. Since this was to be a school assembly, I needed an electric guitar.
So I poured all of my summer lawn mowing money into a used electric guitar. My father found an old tube amplifier in a pawn shop and fixed it into working condition. Caught up in a whirlwind, I struggled to sketch out chord charts on the very same graph paper that Michael always used to write his transcriptions. We didn’t have lined staff paper in my little town of Enid, Oklahoma in 1970, so we ‘went to press’ with handwritten scores.
The Christmas assembly went off without a hitch. Afterwards, Michael approached me to see if I would be interested in sitting in with him at a place called a ‘coffee house’ not far from my house. Being good church people, my folks said absolutely not.
In the fall of my junior year, Michael would have been a senior but he was not back in school. I lost track of him until the following summer when I heard the Phillips University stage band playing an outdoor concert. I saw my friend Michael on the podium, directing the band in one of his compositions. That’s the last time I talked to Michael. He headed to the East coast, then the West coast, where he became a recording artist for Windham Hill Music. Yes, he was THE Michael Hedges.
I soldiered on with the classical guitar, playing an hour every day, until I saw Leo Kottke at Oklahoma State University in the fall of 1974. On a Thursday night before a Friday morning chemistry exam, my high school sweetheart and I had tickets four rows back. I was totally blown away by his abilities. You see, I was largely self-taught, and had no exposure to the concepts of alternate tuning or the glories of the twelve string guitar. I was struggling with the course load, and intimidated by another’s talent, so I closed the case on my guitar.
Until 2015.
I was asked to be a pall bearer for the lady who ran our Bible Study at my day job. THAT VERY WEEK, people who had no idea that I had any idea that I had any knowledge of music whatsoever approached me with questions like, “Can you fix my amp?” or “Do you play guitar?” or “Could you tell me what this notation means?” From that day until today, a steady stream of friends, acquaintances, and new customers have approached me with those same questions.
I opened the guitar cases that had served as time capsules carrying my former musical hobby. Once again, they have come to life.
My high school sweetheart, who is now my bride of forty years, picked out a name for my little enterprise, because “With Strings Attached” was the title of Segovia’s biography, and “With No Strings Attached” was not available as a good Web site name because of its obvious use as an adult dating site.
We chose Unbrokenstring as an homage to the many people, such as my mother, my teachers, my classmates, and my fellow friends and musicians, whose legacies stretch back into the past and into the future, a legacy upon which I stand and which carries me forward.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I believe that because my path is, in a way of thinking, a supernatural one, my path has been surprisingly smooth and straight. The struggle that I perceive is that there are SO many demands on my time that I must schedule appointments in order to adequately serve each of my customers fairly. My wife and I have worked out a ‘time sharing’ arrangement so that we can still spend quality time with each other while supporting my music addiction. I hope to under-commit so that I may over-deliver.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about The Unbrokenstring – what should we know?
When you ONLY know how to use a hammer, everything looks like a nail. My background is sufficiently broad that I can effectively test, troubleshoot, and repair nearly all technologies. To prove that, I publish many of my repair projects on my blog at www.unbrokenstring.com
That Web site has far more traffic than I ever dreamed of, while the Facebook page continues to grow in followers and “Likes.”
Rather than use a brick-and-mortar business front, my shop is hidden. I pick up and deliver everything at the customer’s discretion, in a sort-of ‘Craigslist’ method. This works particularly well for musicians who are retired or disabled (and you might be surprised how many of us Baby Boomers who fall into that category there are.)
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Those qualities and characteristics are not things that I drive. Based on objective numbers, 97% of my customers are the sweetest, most respectable human beings on the planet. Therefore, I approach each new customer expecting them to be wonderful human beings.
Objective numbers also show that two thirds of my business is repeat business.
Oh, and I can fix stuff. I have fixed more flying manned spacecraft than Scotty on Star Trek has even seen.
The identity of those customers who are in the “three percent,” who are sociopaths, will become apparent soon enough.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.unbrokenstring.com
- Phone: 281-636-8626
- Email: theunbrokenstringhtx@gmail.com
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/unbrokenstring
- Other: www.youtube/davidlatchaw
Getting in touch: VoyageHouston is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
