About



I'm Jake Wildwood and my business is located in our family store ("The Wildwood Flower") in Rochester, Vermont. This blog is where I post up glamor shots, history, and information about the instruments that I repair, restore, and sell.

I'm self-taught and have been doing this full-time since late 2007 and certainly don't think of myself as a fantsy-pants luthier. I'm more of a country doctor, though I do know my stuff. Instruments are adjusted to play on-the-dot and repairs are practical and sturdy. My focus is on recycling old (and new) instruments so they can live another hundred-plus years in the hands of musicians who will enjoy them. Cheap or fancy, low-brow fixing or high-brow fixing, it's all in the shop every day. I work regularly on $100 guitar-shaped-boxes and $10,000 pieces of guitar-shaped-art. It's all good.

I work primarily on vintage and antique guitars, banjos, mandolins, ukes, you name it... and am constantly on the prowl for the nicest and most interesting players' instruments from the the middle of the 1800s through the middle of the 1970s. My work is concentrated around the doc's motto of "do no harm" while also trying to do the best for the patient. Instruments come out playing as best as they can with as minimal an amount of modification and work as possible to get them to that point.

I happen to live right in the heart of Vermont's Green Mountains -- in the White River Valley -- and love it, even if I complain about -20F winter nights from time to time. I can't tell you enough about how peaceful it is to live up here. If you're ever in the area it's worthwhile to come visit our town as Rochester is a lovely, little, 1000-folk, creative, artsy, and very Vermont place to be.

I have two daughters and a lovely wife and a very supportive and creative family. It's wonderful to be doing work that also involves my passion for music... and I get to enjoy playing all that stuff before it goes back into the world, too!

I need to mention here that my lady, Bonnie Wildwood, is a crazy-talented artist, crafter, and maker of all sorts. Definitely check out her website!

I'm also a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist as well as a repairman. I've been writing songs and recording since I first got into music in high school and have been keeping to a fairly-steady schedule of local live shows for the last decade or so, though I'm on a break at the moment.

I don't do enough to promote my music at all, but I do have most of my recordings available to listen to and download for free from SoundCloud and many of my more recent recordings are currently available on most streaming platforms (Apple Music, Spotify, you name it -- just search my name). I occasionally share my work through my YouTube channel, too.

Here's the most recent album, however:

Latest Album: The Space Mermaids of Europa (Jan. 2021)
   

     
Full Streaming & Download Links

Definitely check out the rest of my back-catalog of albums, though. There's a huge variety of material going back a long ways. You can hear all of that on SoundCloud, too:

Direct Download of Full-Album MP3s

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