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PROVIDENCE -- Longtime fans of Paul McCartney are well aware that he's coming to Utah. His so-called "Up and Coming" tour stops off at Rio Tinto Stadium next week.
Since this is his first visit to Utah, McCartney will be receiving some thank you gifts, and a Cache Valley man will play a big role in that.
Dave Jorgensen's Providence home includes a small shop just off of his kitchen. There he has saws, drill presses, sanders, all sorts of woodworking tools and several guitars in various stages of construction.
But there is one guitar that's all done and ready for delivery. It's a handmade, hand-carved, left-handed electric bass guitar for McCartney.
The instrument is built to McCartney's specs, based on the Hoffner bass he's played for years.
"His Hoffner bass is really quite an unusual bass," Jorgensen says. "It's a short scale, 30-inch bass."
Jorgensen has been a fifth-grade teacher for 25 years, and has been building one-of-a-kind electric guitars in his spare time for about 20 years. It takes him about six months to build one.
The McCartney gift guitar was fast-tracked. As soon as the concert was announced in May, Jorgensen got to work. He's put in about 200 hours working on it.
"The body is made of maple. It has the British flag in kind of a translucent lacquer on the back," Jorgensen explains.
The fret boards have inlaid symbols in honor of McCartney's former band mates, including John Lennon's glasses, the Hindu ohm for George Harrison and a star for Ringo.
"What I like to do is take some kind of theme, like a businesses or something, and put their logo into it, their colors into it," Jorgensen says. "That's what's been really fun for me, is to build off the theme -- have them give me the big idea, and then I kind of use my imagination and creativity from there."
Jorgensen built a guitar for a friend with the Cache County Sheriff's Department. On the body of the guitar is the department logo. There are bullets on the frets and the words "call 911" at the top of the neck.
A friend who has a transformer business in Arizona wanted something with a "high voltage" theme. Jorgensen put lightning bolts on the pickups, an engraved high voltage tower on the top and a schematic diagram on the back of the instrument.
Jorgensen's unique McCartney bass is all polished, strung and ready to play. It's one of several gifts that Rio Tinto will give to McCartney on concert night.
Jorgensen, a lifelong Beatles fan, says he'd love to be able to hand the guitar personally to McCartney, but the main thing, he says, is that McCartney gets it.
"It'll sit in security until whatever happens. If I know that he gets it, that's good," he says.
Jorgensen not only builds bass guitars, he plays one in a band named "Get Back" -- a Beatles cover band, of course. His band will be at the Utah State Fair later this summer.
To see more of Dave Jorgensen's work CLICK HERE.
E-mail: kmccord@ksl.com
