For over 20 years, Steve Staples has been the proprietor of International Vintage Guitars, a vendor of prime instruments that can be found these days tucked into a picturesque carriage house on Algiers Point. In the 1960s, Staples played with New Orleans teenage psych garage-rockers the Gaunga Dyns, who reunited for the 2013 Ponderosa Stomp, and now play most Thursdays at the Old Point Bar. Just before that first reunion show, Staples told me his place was designed to be similar in spirit to the music stores of his youth: a musicians’ hang, where young guns could rub shoulders with established stars, trade licks, and talk shop.
“We’d be hanging out talking about the latest pedal that came out, or the new amps” at the music store, Staples told me then. “That’s what we’d be doing on Saturday morning.”
International Vintage Guitars has long been a favorite of both local players and visiting acts. Richie Havens once came by and wound up giving Staples a three-hour guitar lesson. Billy Gibbons, of ZZ Top, checks in when he’s in town and sometimes calls from the road, when he’s not.
The most recent celebrity to visit was Bruno Mars, who apparently hung around New Orleans for a couple of days after his sold-out gig at the Smoothie King Center on Saturday night (June 7.) Ashley Hewitt, the rhythm guitarist who shares the band, the store and her life with Staples, posted a photo of Mars at the shop on her Facebook page Monday afternoon. The soul singer had stopped in and left with a trio of three very nice vintage guitars: a 1966 Silvertone 1454 Archtop electric, a 1955 Fender Esquire Blonde, and a 1982 Fender custom shop Telecaster thinline in Dakota red, the 97th guitar made in the custom shop. All three guitars, Hewitt said, are rare and highly sought by collectors. Judging by Mars’ playing in the shop Monday, she said, he deserves them.
Bruno Mars’ “Moonshine Jungle” tour continues, hitting Birmingham, Columbia, S.C.; Raleigh, N.C.; and Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Ohio and New York state this month, and continuing on into the fall. Watch for the new gear.