Santa’s workshop moves to Weiser

The headline might be a play on the season, but Weiser received an early Christmas present three months ago when Gary Santa Lutherie relocated here. Now just a couple of doors west of the Signal American newspaper office, we cross paths with Santa daily. 

 Santa was named the official luthier of the 2022 National Oldtime Fiddlers’ contest, spending over a week here serving contest and festival musicians out of the industrial arts room at Weiser High School.

 Bringing us up to speed since his move here, Santa said he had practiced his craft out of his Boise apartment for the past 15 years, when some circumstances this past summer in the rental market there left him on the hunt for a new place, or maybe even on the verge of closing his business.

 Luckily for his clients, his relationship to Dennis and Sandy Cooper and his own growing fondness for Weiser, he is now an artist in residence at the Bee Tree Folk School. He’s working steadily for clients from throughout the valley, as well as those who show up from farther away, like one who had flown in from Alaska recently.

 On a personal project, Santa is building his own copy of a pre-war Martin 000-28. He refers to it as a Stradivarius in the making.

 “I know how it all works,” he said. “Where all of these braces and the locations need to be next to each other at a certain place. Anything I’ve been involved in I go into it 100 percent.”

 He told the Signal American he continued as the NOTFC luthier in 2023, but that year had shared the space with a fiddle specialist from Enterprise, Ore., Mike Burns.  Santa became so impressed with the young man he grandfathered Burns in as the official luthier beginning in 2024.

 “Sandy called me in 2023 saying a kid named Mike Burns wanted to share the room with me at the high school,” Santa said. 

 After mentoring with some of the highest caliber luthiers in the craft, Santa has built his own impeccable reputation over the past 30 years, so was naturally guarded about sharing a space with his name attached to it.

 After a conversation with Burns, Santa said they had agreed that Burns could set up in the back of the room and sell violins and bows.

 “He came in and asked if I rehaired bows,” Santa said. “I told him I know how, but can’t do it at the highest professional level so I don’t do it. I had a couple of requests in 2022 and had to say I didn’t do it, so I told him he could rehair all the bows he wanted, and he rehaired at least a dozen that week.

 “I was asking him some questions about revoicing a top,” Santa said. “That’s the same thing I’m doing building this guitar, he does it with violins. His only thing is violins. He doesn’t do guitar, banjo or mandolins. He can work on a cello, anything in the.violin family, but fretted instruments are not his thing. His whole focus, his narrow scope has been violins, and this is the National Fiddle Contest so…”

 It turns out, too, that before relocating to Enterprise, Burns had already built his own reputation among the northwest fiddling community after stints in both Portland and Seattle. 

 “He’s been involved with the fiddle community in the northwest for years and he’s well-known and well thought of,” Santa said.

 Thinking ahead to 2025, Santa feels confident about his Weiser shop tying in nicely with Burns at the Fiddle Contest. 

 “I’ll go see how he’s doing, and let him know my shop is now here in town,” Santa said. “Since he doesn’t work on guitars, banjos and mandolins, I’ll leave him some of my business cards. He can tell them I’m downtown and I work by appointment. That way both of us will be doing what we’re supposed to be doing and that is serving the musical community.”

 Santa’s approach to his first career in bicycle repair and mechanics was the same as he approaches his art as a luthier. Keeping a narrow focus and becoming ever more intentional on achieving the highest results.