“The average player just won't be able to afford it,” Born says.
And the swamp ash supply could soon become still more tenuous because experts expect global warming to continue to make floods worse. The ominous situation shows how climate change consequences can reverberate through all aspects of society-even rock and roll. manufacturer called Music Man raised similar sourcing concerns in 2019, which the company described as having “one of the worst harvests in recent history.” Fender blamed the dwindling supply on longer periods of climate-fueled flooding along the lower Mississippi-which is endangering saplings and making it harder for lumber companies to reach standing trees-as well as the looming threat of an invasive tree-boring beetle. company, and it once was cheap and readily available.īut last year an acute shortage forced Fender to announce it would move away from using swamp ash in its famous line of Stratocasters and Telecasters-reserving the wood for high-priced vintage models only. The wood became an integral part of Fender's DNA over the decades, says Mike Born, former director of wood technology at the U.S. Swamp ash-also called “music ash” or “punky ash”-is primarily green ash, but the term can encompass other species that grow in bottomlands, such as black ash and white ash. Bluesman Muddy Waters, rockers Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones and Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, and other music legends have loved their Fenders many say this wood gives the instruments a warm but crystal-clear twang.
Starting in the 1950s, iconic guitar maker Fender Musical Instruments embraced this type of ash. These wetland trees have thin-walled cells with large gaps between them, creating a low-density wood-and some say a special sound-that has made it the material of choice for some of the most famous guitar players in rock and roll. When the floodwaters recede and soils dry up in summer, logging crews move in. combine with snowmelt along the northern reaches of the Mississippi River to inundate the hardwood-dominated bottomlands of the lower Mississippi.
Every winter and spring, rains across the central U.S.
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