{"id":124562,"date":"2021-08-22T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-22T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/?p=124562"},"modified":"2023-05-31T20:08:42","modified_gmt":"2023-06-01T03:08:42","slug":"jerry-garcia-1943-martin-d-28-guitar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/jerry-garcia-1943-martin-d-28-guitar\/","title":{"rendered":"Jerry Garcia\u2019s 1943 Martin D-28 Acoustic Guitar Finds a New Home\u2014and New Players"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Andy Logan is more than a guitar collector. Yes, he owns instruments with historic pedigrees\u2014like the two axes he picked up at a Bonham\u2019s auction in December 2019 from the estate of Jerry Garcia<\/a>. His marquee purchase was Garcia\u2019s famed \u201cAlligator\u201d Strat, for a whopping $420,000. But that day he also picked up Garcia\u2019s well-worn 1943 Martin D-28 for a more modest $175,000. It\u2019s cool owning original instruments played by your heroes, but Logan\u2019s Grateful Dead obsession goes much further. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a guitarist himself, and a man of means, to put it colloquially, Logan has spent enormous sums amassing as many Garcia- and Bob Weir\u2013connected guitars as he can\u2014tracking down precise makes\/models\/years, and also commissioning builders to create exact <\/em>clones of the incredible custom instruments the guitarists played in the band, \u201ctrying to have a representative version of all<\/em> their guitars, from \u201965 to \u201995,\u201d he says. And it\u2019s not to put them in some museum. He has given away clones to jam-band guitarists, loaned out others, and even lets guitarists play the originals he owns\u2014under his supervision. \u201cThey\u2019re all meant to be played<\/em>,\u201d says Logan emphatically. His nonprofit Grateful Guitars<\/a> foundation assists in matching instruments with players.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jerry Garcia Martin D-28. Photo by Becky Logan<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Garcia\u2019s D-28\u2014Adirondack spruce top, Brazilian rosewood back and sides\u2014was likely acquired by the guitarist in the late spring of 1970, before his group\u2019s famous trans-Canada train trip with The Band, Janis Joplin, Delaney & Bonnie, et al., immortalized in the film Festival Express<\/a><\/em>. It also turned up during the Dead\u2019s acoustic sets that summer and fall, and it was likely Garcia\u2019s acoustic on the Dead\u2019s landmark American Beauty<\/a><\/em>, and on some non-Dead sessions in the early \u201970s. \u201cJerry gave away a lot of his acoustics, so the fact that he had held on to this one means a lot,\u201d Logan says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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