They Got a Tiger by the Tail
JIM IRSAY COLLECTION SUPPLEMENT
They Got a Tiger by the Tail
Jerry Garcia’ s Tiger sold for $ 11.56 million. Twelve times what it brought at its last auction. The following night, Derek Trucks played it at the Beacon Theatre.
When the gavel came down, Bobby Tseitlin of Family Guitars— seated just across the aisle from me— had just paid $ 11,560,000 for Jerry Garcia’ s Tiger, blowing past a pre-sale estimate of $ 1 – 2 million. Derek Trucks was sitting next to him. Afterward, they cracked open a bottle of Trucks’ s own APW brand Tennessee whiskey. It seemed fitting. By the following evening, Trucks was on stage at the Beacon Theatre with the guitar, playing it as if it had simply resumed its purpose after a long interruption. Thirty-one years after Garcia last played it publicly, Tiger was back under stage lights and Truck’ s fingers. Jim Irsay would no doubt be smiling.
Family Guitars runs a living collection comprising Beck’ s guitars, Anastasio’ s, and now one more of Garcia’ s, kept in rotation and in players’ hands rather than behind glass. Tiger spent 24 years in Indianapolis the same way: Irsay made a point of keeping his instruments visible, audible, and in motion. One custodian passed it to another.
Tiger was commissioned from Northern California luthier Doug Irwin, and the contrast with Gilmour’ s Black Strat could hardly be sharper. Gilmour’ s guitar came off a Fender production line, built by workers whose names no one knows— one of thousands that left the factory that year. Garcia’ s instrument was the opposite of a commodity.
After receiving Irwin’ s earlier guitar, Wolf, in 1973, Garcia encouraged the luthier to build something even more ambitious, giving him wide creative latitude. What followed took nearly six years and an estimated two thousand hours of work. The finished instrument was constructed from laminated layers of cocobolo, maple, purpleheart, and vermilion hardwoods, with extensive brass binding, ornate inlay, and a complex electronic system incorporating coil switching, onboard preamps,
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