Rising Stars: Meet Jesse Hopkins of Hazel Park

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jesse Hopkins.

Hi Jesse, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I built my first guitar when I was 18 or 19 years old as a student at Central Michigan University. This happened to coincide with my disillusionment with the traditional collegiate experience. It was around this time that my father, having watched me as a kid go through legos, tinker toys, and erector sets like they were oxygen, told me about a guitar making school here in Michigan that he’d discovered. Having sampled the deep, tactile-satisfaction of making that first guitar, this sounded like a great idea. And speaking of hidden gems in Michigan, Bryan Galloup’s School of Lutherie in Big Rapids is certainly worth your time to investigate. Anyway, back in October of 1998, I went through Bryan’s “Journeyman” program and dove headlong into the guitar industry.

I started off doing repair work for local music shops and this led to getting hired on as a builder by (then-local/now-international industry-legend) Joe Naylor at a small guitar manufacturer in the Detroit area called Reverend Musical Instruments in January 2000. Talk about your career highlights! I got to help build THOUSANDS of literally award-winning guitars. I remember wanting to learn EVERYTHING there. It was such an exciting time and I’m beyond thrilled that these days, I get to work on some of those instruments occasionally as part of my repair business. It’s like time-travel in the coolest guitar-shaped “DeLorean” I could ask for.

I stayed at Reverend until 2006 when I got a job offer that I couldn’t refuse from a very well-funded custom guitar shop on the east coast. Reverend was recalibrating their business model at the time such that there was going to be less in-house fabrication and that’s exactly what the new job was offering. Which was exactly what I wanted to be doing. And there was a bigger salary. And I was getting married. It seemed like fate. I had just bought a house a year prior but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from following my destiny and rented it to a good friend.

And for a brief and shining moment, I had everything I’d ever wanted in life. EVERYTHING. Me. This weird kid who loved guitars and Swedish Death Metal and making sawdust. Well, fate is funny and hindsight is 20/20 (That rhymes!). I realize now that I set out to First Act’s Studio For Artists in Boston MA to learn. Holy moly…be careful what you ask for. Learning? Oh yes. The place was run by former Gibson luthiers. Guys and gals who before coming to the First Act’s custom shop, had cut their teeth crafting instruments for a company that was at the absolute bleeding edge of the electric guitar’s development back in the golden age and at least for a time, was one of the vanguards of quality. Working along side these folks, I was able to build on and refine the foundation that had started back when I was just a kid building that first guitar. And in that regard, it was an utterly glorious time with more high-fives being thrown around than I’d ever seen.

The other side of the coin showed up when I left First Act to come back to Michigan just in time for the housing market collapse and ensuing Great Recession. My professional collapse dovetailing less-than-conveniently with the collapse of my first marriage. Ahhh, to be young and resilient…

Those were dark years. And long ones too.

In one of my favorite pieces of music, the singer roars “There are mountains to cross for those that are willing. There are never ending treasures that await you!” And that’s kinda how it’s gone. Like I said, I owned a house that I was able to hold onto through the fallout and even though I couldn’t find work in my field, I had a workshop in my basement and a spray booth in my garage which was all I really needed to start over.

Things slowly started to turn around. I met my current wife (together 15 years) at the hardware store where I was working at the time and in 2010 I asked my dad if he wanted to help build electric guitars with me. He and I went on to spend the next 15 years developing a line of guitars that I think rivals the best of what’s out there regardless of price point. As a professional who over the years has worked on the very best of the best, that’s a pretty good feeling to go to bed with at the end of the day. And to have all that confirmed by not only people that I trust and deeply respect but by players for whom the term “virtuoso” absolutely applies, is enough to make a fella feel like his efforts are worthwhile. But more than anything, to have gotten to do this work with Dad, who has always been my oldest and dearest friend, has been nothing short of wealth beyond wealth.

These days, I own and operate Clay Ave. Guitar Co. just outside of Detroit in Hazel Park MI where I mostly build those guitars I just mentioned. I say mostly because I do repairs for Motor City Guitars in Waterford (another local gem) to keep the lights on because when you’re independently/creatively self-employed in an industry that is simultaneously in renaissance and over saturated with both talent AND mediocrity, the money doesn’t always flow in massive torrents. Dad is winding his time down with the operation so I’m learning his tasks and with that comes appreciation for the time otherwise spent languishing in obscurity; I’ve got time to learn what I still need to. To that end, I’m pivoting my business and focusing on doing the best I can with what I have to work with. And as always, there are still mountains to cross for those who are willing.

Cheers!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I don’t know that I’ve experienced any challenges that were more unique than anyone else trying to grow a highly specialized yet weirdly archaic skill set and rise above the formidable competition in an increasingly saturated industry, has had to contend with, LOL. But yeah, things like 9/11, the ensuing economic stagnation, the housing market collapse, and the pandemic right up to the current inflationary period haven’t exactly helped per se. Although the pandemic, more specifically the shut down, was the precipitating event that led to me finally going fully independent.

The biggest “hurdle”, has been maintaining some base-level faith in myself as the decades roll by, that I’m not wasting my life pursuing this craft. A business teacher I once had suggested that learning to be “comfortable with ambiguity” was one of, if not the most important thing an entrepreneur could do and I tend to agree. The modern world, harsh and uncertain, seems to demand it.

Fortunately for me, given a long enough timeline, the challenges tend to reveal themselves as lessons that I needed to learn one way or another in order to move forward.
In that regard, it’s been a pretty gloriously long (if occasionally frustrating) road, but not a particularly “bumpy” one. I’ve been really lucky in that I’ve been afforded so much time in the barrel so to speak.

Occasionally, people will play my guitars and ask me (this has really happened and this is an actual quote, btw) “Jesse, why is this the best guitar I’ve ever played?” I would then try to explain while referencing the technical side of things like material interaction, dimensional considerations, and the electrical alchemy that occurs between a vibrating steel string and a thoughtfully built & positioned series of electromagnetic coils. But the most elegant explanation, and by that I mean the simplest answer to what is a deceptively complex question, is that I love it and I put my whole life into this work. That’s why my guitars look, feel, and sound the way they do. Kinda like how a sandwich from Mom always tastes better than one from the store.

My hope is that when I’m long gone, someone examining my body of work will conclude that I really endeavored to do my very best. That I really wasn’t messing around.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m a professional luthier which, by today’s definition is someone who builds and/or repairs stringed instruments. Guitars in my case.

While I try to maintain a high degree of proficiency in all the disciplines within my craft, if I had to choose an area of specialty, it’d be fretwork. While my approach doesn’t utilize some of the fancier tools like neck jigs and PLEK machines, it is rooted in a deeply comprehensive understanding and traditional methods that consistently satisfy the most discriminating players,

Points of pride for me, aside from all the nice things people say about the guitars I make, are the occasions when I actually take the time to sit down and play one and think to myself “Man, nice job!” LOL

Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
While I haven’t had one specific mentor, I’ve always looked for people more successful than me to learn from. The best things I ever did was listen to those people when they had something to say and absorb constructive criticism when it was offered.

Getting acquainted with the words of Rudyard Kipling has been helpful for me. “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same”

Pricing:

• $4500-$6500

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.clayavenueguitars.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clayaveguitarco/
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