“Is that a Martin?”
“Yes, yes it is”
‘I don’t know much about guitars, but that’s quite a special instrument isn’t it? When did you decide you needed it?"
“I’d been playing for a while and I got to a stage where I was getting serious and starting to record in the studio. My dad decided one day I couldn’t use the one I had”
“What was wrong with it?”
“Nothing, it just wasn’t a Martin.”


Minutes earlier to this encounter, I had stopped a girl with a somewhat larger instrument (I think it was a Cello) but she was in a rush, apologised and ran off to her class, large instrument in toe. Still on an instrument rush I decided to ask Dan as he approached.

Dan told me he was a solo artist , and was recording some music at the moment, not only for his final year dissertation, but some personal work also. While we were talking I spotted the ‘Martin’ logo on his case. (I used to work with a colleague who was very much into his guitars. Due to him I had picked up a few things, one of them being the various acoustic guitar makes which were world-renowned - Martin & Co. being one of them).

Now that I read it, Dan’s answer sounds very much like an advert for Martin, but it wasn’t intended in that way. He was just expressing the reason why his dad thought for him to have a nice guitar, and why not.

I was tempted to ask Dan to take the guitar out, and maybe take a picture with it, but the moment didn’t seem right and he looked like he was heading somewhere so I decided against it.


Humans of Leeds