Home Away from Home No Problem for American Guitar Restoration Maestro

  HELSINKI, Finland – If Scott Morgan’s life were a sheet of music, his personal geography would run up and down the scales.

  I was tracking the American I’d heard about early in my visit to Finland’s capital city: A musician from New Orleans who had settled here.

  When I checked out Scott, it was clear he was much more than a bluesman. He’s a vintage guitar refurbisher of such acclaim that when the heavy metal rock group Metallica played two dates here in June, they recruited Scott to fix their frontman’s busted instrument.

  Introduced through a mutual friend, I set a meeting to answer to the question twirling around in my mind:

  Why in the world would someone of his stature wind up in Helsinki?

Morgan Guitars

  My Uber dropped me off at a warehouse in north Helsinki. Morgan Guitars occupies a small space on an upper floor. Scott calls it his workshop. A long, narrow workbench runs along one wall with assorted tools of his trade neatly dangling above.   Drawers beneath the bench hold the scores of parts Scott uses to work his magic on the guitars that find their way here.

  Across from his work area, seven guitars hang by their necks. They’re beautiful. But I’m clueless to their importance and value. I later learned that Scott’s collection is like a who’s who in the world of high-end guitar brands. Les Paul. Stratocaster. Gibson.

  Scott – no surprise - had a laid-back, chill manner about him that screamed musician. That day, a Monday in August, Scott wore blue jeans and a black T-shirt. He had a neatly trimmed beard sprinkled with gray – he’d turn 50 in a month – short spiked hair and wore black-rimmed glasses. A pair of black loops hung from his ear lobes.

  It had been an interesting summer, not all of it good. In early May, Scott slipped on a patch of pea stones outside his office. The resulting crash shattered his collarbone, sending him into surgery.

  A local musician friend of his, Juho Pitkanen, quipped in a Facebook post: “Finally, a crack you couldn’t repair yourself, bro.”

  A month later, while Scott was still on the mend, the call came from Metallica. The group, which had read stories about Scott, couldn’t believe an American luthier of his caliber was residing in Helsinki.

  The initial repair, a faulty nut on James Hetfield’s White Snakebyte, was an easy fix. Scott being Scott, though, he examined the entire guitar and found that all the frets were worn.

  Ordinarily, Scott would have replaced them. But there was not enough time. So, he cleaned them up the best he could. On June 7, the day of the first concert, he delivered the repaired guitar to the group at Helsinki Olympic Stadium – he hung with the band techies and checked out all the guitars - before returning home to ice his injured shoulder.

  Scott’s friends assumed he earned a big payday for the gig. Not so.

  “I charged them the same as any repair job,” he said.

  Although it was a big moment, for Scott it merely was a reminder of the days when he was on speed dial to some of music world’s biggest stars.

Maine Beginnings

  He was raised in a family of four near Portland, Maine. The first inkling of his future career emerged when a favorite uncle played Van Halen records during babysitting stints.

  “I was four or five and remember thinking, ‘It sounds like that guy is having a blast.’ That's what music sounded like to me as a child.”

  At 7, he was gifted his first guitar. Possessing a good ear, Scott was able to quickly become proficient. A lifelong confidence in his abilities surfaced early. During a lesson with his music teacher, Scott’s attempt at playing “A Whole Lotta of Love” drew criticism. The teacher suggested Scott try more basic tunes and focus on learning to read music. Instead, at home, Scott learned how to play the song flawlessly. At his next lesson, eight-year-old Scott had an adult message for his mentor.

  “I told him, ‘If that’s best encouragement you have for me, I think I’ve outgrown this relationship.’”

  In high school, in the late ‘80s, Scott played in a few rock  bands. Yet it was his ability as an illustrator that turned heads.

  “I actually had more of a gift for art than music,” he said.

  Scott was accepted into the Parsons School of Design in New York. He lasted a year, deciding to take a year off before returning to school. A friend who had just returned from New Orleans told him he could live much cheaper there than in New York. And that he would love the music scene. Sold.

  In 1994, Scott was off to the Big Easy. He was 19.

The New Orleans Years

  It didn’t take Scott long to become a player, albeit by unusual methods. While shooting pool at his favorite bar and restaurant, Le Bon Temps Roule, he was hired as a short order cook even though he had zero experience. Le Bon featured live music and Scott bonded with a number of musicians. Soon his phone was ringing for sit-in gigs around town when a band member was a no show.

  Meanwhile, his ever-improving food service skills were also in demand. From 1994-98, he bounced from one kitchen to another, including stints as a pizza chef and coffee roaster.

  “It was a liberating period with no attachments,” he said. “I was living a free and easy life. I ate well. Enjoyed the local scene. Was able to pay all my bills. I even took art classes at the New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts, thinking I was going to return to school.”

  That never happened.

  Although he wound up in Maine for a spell with art school and a girlfriend on his mind, a long-practiced hobby would turn into his future career.

  “What I really wanted to do was build my own guitar,” he said.

  He read books. Bought parts. Soon he was creating his own instruments. One day he walked into a Portland branch of Daddy’s Junky Music – the largest music store chain in the Northeast – with a box of spare parts he wanted to sell. Scott was so precise in his knowledge of the parts – and their worth – the shop’s owner hired him on the spot as his parts acquisition expert.

  A few weeks later at a companywide seminar, Scott aced an industry knowledge exam to such an extent he was immediately named to Daddy’s elite sales force. He soon provided evaluations and approved purchases of vintage instruments for all of Daddy's stores.

  “That’s when I realized I could make a living from all the knowledge I’d acquired about guitars,” he said.

  While his new job was great, living in Maine was not. Scott missed New Orleans. He returned in 1999 and was quickly hired by the legendary 150-year-old store, Werlein’s for Music, for a position similar to his job at Daddy's. A year later a salary dispute took him to the equally prestigious Guitar Center where he had even more responsibility. Soon, Scott found himself practically running the store and working 60-hour weeks.

  He soldiered on for a few years. But a new plan began to take shape. On the side, he been running repair and restoration projects out of his home.

  “I had all these customers wanting me to work on their guitars,” he said, “but no time for it.”

  By 2003 Scott’s reputation had spread nationally, and he had enough work to go out on his own. He was an immediate success.

  In addition to his repair and restoration work, he was playing nightly gigs all over town.

  “I was having the time of my life.”

  Then, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, forcing Scott to evacuate. Upon his return, he had a stack of back orders that would keep him busy for months.

  Soon after, another opportunity surfaced.

On the Road

  In 2006, Teena Marie, the only white soul and R&B singer ever signed by Motown, heard about Scott through a mutual friend. That summer, Scott, always up for a new challenge, found himself on the road as a techie with Teena’s band.

  “It was a very surreal time,” he said. “Every day I was in a different city. I had no idea when the day started how it was going to end. For Teena Marie, I was the only techie allowed on stage. I never knew who I might meet on any given day. Once I was setting things up when someone said to me, ‘Is it OK if I use that mic?’ I looked up and it was Smokey Robinson.”

  Scott, always in demand, moved from Teena Marie to New Orleans’ Neville family bands to Kenny Wayne Shepard, among others. Since he was constantly on the road his New Orleans workshop remained mostly inactive. On the plus side, he remained the go-to guitar repair and restoration guy to the stars.

  The actor Steven Seagal, himself a blues musician and owner of one of the world’s most valuable vintage guitar collections, called Scott one day looking for someone who could help maintain his collection. The two guitar nerds quickly bonded. Seagal summoned Scott to L.A. to discuss a possible relationship.

  “I remember going through his collection and, like, the first 20 cases I opened belonged to a personal hero – Jimi Hendrix, Albert King, Howlin’ Wolf. It was overwhelming,” Scott said.

  Seagal decided to test him. Holding his favorite guitar, an instrument he’d had for 20 years, he told Scott: “Tell me something I don’t know about this guitar.”

  Scott replied almost immediately: “It had some frets work done to it.”

  Said a stunned Seagal: “How do you know that?”

  Scott explained that the mother-of-peral inlay between the frets had been filled with glue and leveled off. With that response, Scott began a 3-year special-services contract with the actor.

  By 2009, he had had enough of traveling. Money aside, it had become a grind. Meanwhile, another development, this one of a personal nature, was about to alter his career path again.

The Move to Helsinki

  In 2006, Scott met a Finnish woman named Mervi working as an au-pair in New Orleans. A long-distance relationship ensued as it coincided with Scott’s road gig with Teena Marie. By the time he returned home in 2009, they had decided to marry.

  Although Scott had rekindled his dormant repair and restoration business, the couple wanted to have children and had to decide the best place to raise them. Finland, with a minimal crime rate, trumped New Orleans in that regard. Also, in Finland, Mervi was a certified teacher. In the U.S., she would have had to return to school to become legit. Scott, on the other hand, knew he could take his trade wherever he lived. Yet he did have a concern.

  “I wondered whether there was enough work to support me,” he said.

  In the end, Finland won out. They moved here in October 2009.

  “I’ve managed to survive, and I’m still doing what I do best,” he said.

  He and Mervi have two sons, aged 11 and 12. As they’ve grown, Scott has come to realize the significance of the decision he and Mervi made 15 years earlier.

  “The quality of life for my family living here is better than any place in America,” he said. “We have great health care and education system. My kids can walk down any street without me having to worry about them.”

  Although his Finnish remains poor, English is so widely spoken it has not been a problem.

  “I know enough to know when my kids are trying to get away with something,” he said, emitting a rare chuckle.

  Scott stays connected to his mother and brother in Maine through video phone calls and occasional visits with his family.   He and Mervi want their sons to know the States as they have dual citizenship and could live there one day if they choose to.

Scott has adapted to life here. He tries to find beauty in the long, dark, frigid winters and has embraced the country’s famous sauna culture.

  And there’s this: Every Monday for the past decade he joins a group of local musicians for a blues jam session at Bar Mendocino in downtown Helsinki.

  “It’s a way for me to continue to play and keep music present in my life. It’s also a great place for me to network for my business,” he said.

  As it happened, this was jam session day. We agreed to meet at the bar in a few hours. It’s the one night of the week Scott gets to hang with his friends.

  “Monday is my Friday,” said the guy who has lived several lifetimes of Fridays.

Editor’s note: Last in a series from a reporting trip to Finland Aug. 2-6, 2024

___________________________________________________

Reported and written by: George J. Tanber

Editor: Michael Gordon

Photo editor: David Kozy