Not as a guitar. As a van. In 1998, I gave up my VW bus for a brand-new GMC Savanna with a diesel engine and an extended wheelbase. I was behind the wheel for almost every mile it traveled. The interior configurations changed over the years, but one thing never did: there was always a place to sleep inside. We put a lot of miles on that van. It carried the band, the gear, the luggage, and me all over the country. It was transportation, sleeping quarters, an equipment hauler, and an occasional home away from home. It went to gigs. It went cross-country. It accumulated stories. And eventually, it died.
Why Throw It Away? By the time the engine gave up, the GMC wasn’t worth much on the used-car market, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t worth anything to me. Then my dad said: “Why don’t we part it out?” That sounded like a good idea. It turned out to be a lot of work, but it also turned out to be a surprisingly good idea. I started selling the parts on eBay, one piece at a time. In the end, I made about five times more from the parts than I could ever have gotten from selling the entire van—even if someone had been willing to pay top dollar for a vehicle with a broken engine. So the GMC became my Boneyard, and I started looking at its parts differently.
The Moment. One day, while I was sorting through the parts in our backyard, I picked up the timing chain cover from the 6.5-liter diesel engine. For some reason, it felt like a guitar—not metaphorically, but actually felt like one. The shape, the weight, the openings, the mechanical history of it—it had already done a job, spending years as part of an engine that moved a van and a band all over the country. Now, it wanted to make music. You can see the TimingChain cover in the lower left of the photograph from that day. That was the beginning of TimingChainCover.
The Boneyard Rule became especially meaningful during #stayhome: Use what you already have. Don't shop for materials just because the original idea calls for them. No starting over because the piece in front of you isn’t conventional; look around, see what you’ve saved, and figure out what it might become. That is how a dead GMC became a guitar. The engine timing chain cover became both the body and the tailpiece, a Cherry carpenter’s level became the beam, a piece of spruce stair tread became trim, and violin parts and boat hardware found their way into the mix. The parts weren’t chosen because they belonged together; they belonged together because they were here. That distinction is important.
Sculpture That Happens to Play. TimingChainCover is classified as a Simple guitar, but there isn’t anything particularly simple about the story behind it. The body is essentially automotive sculpture. The maple neck has a rosewood fretboard and a 24.75-inch scale with 24 frets. A Tune-O-Matic bridge keeps things familiar where it matters, while a vintage chicken-head knob adds just the right amount of mechanical weirdness. The guitar has a humbucker and an AC-1 Rhythm VOX amplifier, powered by USB. The amp is small. The story isn’t.
From the Road to the Boneyard. This one has a nice symmetry: that GMC spent years carrying music around the country. When it could no longer do that job, I took it apart and sold the pieces to people who could use them, but one piece refused to stop traveling. The timing chain cover became a guitar. So instead of carrying the band to the gig, it became part of the gig. That’s what I like about the Boneyard. The objects don’t necessarily get preserved—they get reassigned. A guitar can become a guitar again, a broken instrument can become a neck, a carpenter’s level can become a structural beam, and a piece of a dead diesel engine can become the body and tailpiece of a musical instrument. Nothing has to remain what it was. It just has to be interesting enough to save.
The GMC of #stayhome. The Stay Home collection was built during a strange period when the world got smaller and time got bigger. I couldn’t go out and find whatever material I thought I needed, so I went through what I already had. In this case, that included the remains of a vehicle that had already carried me through years of traveling, playing music, sleeping on the road, and collecting stories. The GMC was finished. The guitar wasn’t. So I gave the GMC one more job. TimingChainCover is a piece of transportation history that learned how to play—the GMC of #stayhome.