If you follow Vernon Reid on Instagram you will be aware that life as a travelling musician has its own rhythm, a procession of weird venues, strange hotels, and the occasional disaster, like in 2023, when the TSA dismantled the Living Colour guitarist’s touring pedalboard, a post so disturbing it should have been behind a graphic content warning.
But it also has a magic of its own. Just as travel enriches the mind it can stir the soul, especially when you get the chance to run into a fan at the airport, who just happens to be an electric guitar pioneer in his own right, Mr Jack White, Raconteur, former frontman of the White Stripes, and music publishing/gear entrepreneur extraordinaire.
And this chance encounter made for an on-the-spot deal that’s one of the feel-good guitar stories of the year.
At the time, Reid had just put his name to a new signature guitar from Reverend. White had just teamed up with Fender for the Jack White Collection, the star of which was his signature Triplecaster, a super-modded Telecaster with Bigbsy and an electric guitar pickup configuration that was very much off-menu. Reid suggested to White that they should swap. There was only going to be one answer.
“What do you say when you meet Vernon Reid by chance at the Memphis airport and he suggests you swap signature guitars? You say Yes sir, coming right up,’” writes White, on his Instagram account. “What an honour to trade axes with such a virtuoso guitarist that I remember listening to on a Walkman cassette player while roaming the halls of my high school in Detroit.”
Having enjoyed a safer passage than that of Steve Martin and John Candy, the guitars arrived in time for Thanksgiving, with Reid – in keeping with 21st-century etiquette – posting an unboxing video to reveal the Triplecaster. He duly approved.
“Ho ho ho! Pretty awesome, look at that case,” says Reid. “Wow! This is cool as heck. It’s fantastic. Super-cool tremolo arm, crazy pickups. I love this thing right here. Very cool. This is the Triplecaster and Jack has the Mystery Tramp and this came from a chance meeting.”
White shared some pics of his new Reverend Totem Series Vernon Reid signature models in Mystery Tramp graphic finish, complete with three catseyes, positioned above each of the three pickups.
“The eyes were sent by special request and I couldn’t help putting my III three line signature above each pickup to stare down all enemies and future comrades,” wrote White.
All electric guitars tell a story. Reid’s Totem series has the story all over it. There are three graphic finishes in the series, with the Mystery Tramp joined by the Shaman and Talisman. All three have West African Adinkra symbols on the pickups and headstock.
The circular Mako graphic on the headstock represents the Akan proverb, “All peppers do not ripen simultaneously” – a reminder to help those less fortunate than ourselves.
The fingerboard inlays, meanwhile, are American Hobo code. That criss-cross hash-tag at the first fret? That means jail. The double circle at the ninth warns that hobos will be arrested.
Reid and White’s meeting might have been by pure chance but you can’t help thinking some kind of providence was behind it.
Both are radical, iconoclastic players in their own right, and their signature instruments reflect this. It will be fascinating to here how each is inspired by the other’s guitar.
