In 2015, we met to discuss my ideas for some of their posters. They were interested and curious but nothing more. However, the year after, they called me up to create a concept and paint it on an actual guitar for one the artists at the festival.

We talked about a bunch of scenarios and finally we decided we’d give the instrument to Flea, the bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Why an instrument?

It was Louis Bellavance’s idea, the festival’s line-up director. He wanted to offer some musicians a personalized gift to mark their time at the festival, a sort of honorary award but not in the conventional trophy or statue format. Louis loves vintage guitars and he’s friends with Pierre-Luc Asselin, an exceptional luthier/guitar-maker. He’s the one who made the bass I illustrated. It was a great project except there was a short deadline, only a few weeks notice… you know, the usual!

We did talk about a more long term project using high quality instruments. We wanted to create a sort of collection of honorary gifts for musicians with original designs that would gain some notoriety over time. We thought that maybe word would get around to people in the music business and that these instruments would become sought after.

The Festival approached you in May and the bass was ready in July, right?

Yeah and I didn’t know the luthier, Pierre-Luc, it was Louis who introduced us. I felt he was concerned about deadline because in order to have a nice finish on a guitar, you need lots of layers of lacquer and every coats takes time because it has to dry properly.

Pierre-Luc and I met and I figured that in order to have enough time get the finish right, I needed the bass the following week and I only had a few days to paint it. I’d never done anything like that before and I had some serious doubts about how the paint would react to the lacquer. I had to research and do some emergency tests to see what would and wouldn’t work because we only had one shot to get it right.

I ended up speaking with specialists that make lacquers and who work with industrial chemicals and that helped me figure out the best products to use. It wasn’t long before my sketches were ready to go and once I got the sculpted piece of wood, I got to work right away.

How did it go? Did you have to get your illustration approved by the festival?

Haha, no, we didn’t have time for that. They had to trust me and it worked out well that way! However, to add to the pressure, I was filmed during the whole project by a camera crew and it didn’t start off well. To save time during the first day of filming, I had covered the bass in Mactac tape and I had cut out a pretty complicated stencil to add my base colours. It was pretty tedious work. The problem was that the solvents in the lacquer absorbed the glue in the Mactac. So there I was being filmed as I peeled off this tape and all I could think about was, ‘it’s ruined’. The bass was so full of glue that I could actually lift it up just by sticking my hand to it. I should’ve removed the tape after a few hours in order to prevent that chemical reaction from happening, but I never could have known…

So right away, I called Pierre-Luc to explain the disaster. He ended up dipping the base in paint thinner overnight to remove the glue and luckily it worked. I started all over the next day and this time, I had no room for mistakes. In the end, everything turned out great. Pierre-Luc and I worked non-stop. I remember him adding the strings and adjusting the bass just hours before we gave it to Flea.

Flea liked it?

Yeah, we gave it to him backstage before the show. He really like it and did a bit of popping with it in between two sips of matcha. He said,” It’s gonna’ get played!”

Mission accomplished

In the drawing on the bass, I added all kinds of elements that have to do with Flea. The bees are a reference to his passion for beekeeping and the set of mechanical dentures with a gap between the two front teeth are a nod to his smile. We also built in a small chili pepper in the head of the bass,

The following year, in 2017, the festival approached Pierre-Luc and I to make a guitar for James Hetfield of Metallica. Unfortunately, the festival wasn’t able to get the green light from the band. The project fell through but the guitar and the design were ready. One day, we might put it up for sale (laughs).

The concept for a guitar for Metallica must have been pretty different.

Yes! It was sculpted like a Flying V but the body was made to look like it was an M for Metallica. It was all black - the hardware, the pickups, everything - except for some white skulls that I had painted on it like they had been splashed on, like droplets of paint. It was simpler than Flea’s bass but it was bad-ass.

I wasn’t approached to make another instrument in 2018. I have the impression the bass for Flea will be only instrument ever made and that it was really a one-time project.