The Legend of The Music Tree | Arts & Culture

Not long ago, while browsing a craft fair in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, I spotted a guitar like no other I’d ever seen. It hung half-hidden behind a display of cutting boards and wooden bowls in the booth of woodworker and luthier David Smith. Noting my hungry stare, Smith gently lifted the instrument from its perch and urged me to give it a try. I cradled it under my elbow and plucked a few chords. The sound was resonant and true. But the most remarkable part was the look of the thing: Its back and sides rippled like a full moon reflecting off a dead calm sea. Mesmerizing.

“What you’re staring at is The Tree,” Smith said, smiling. “It’s the rarest and most coveted wood in the world.”

Eager to learn more, I made an appointment to visit Smith at his studio. He and his wife, Nancy, live on ten wooded acres in Clinton, Maine, in a home they built by hand. Smith started woodworking when he was 15, lying about his age to score an apprenticeship, and returned to it after retiring from a corporate career. In 2009, he bought a kit to build a Martin guitar, and then he taught himself to make guitars from scratch. In 2019, while perusing an online catalog, he happened upon a photo of guitar “sets” made of wood from The Tree. (A set is the back and sides of a guitar.) “It was amazing to look at,” he said. He bought one of the sets, built a guitar and sold it almost immediately. With the money he made from that sale, he bought three more sets and sold three more guitars. “One look at that wood,” Smith told me, “and just about every guitar builder wants it.”

So do guitar players. Saul “Slash” Hudson, best known as lead guitarist of Guns N’ Roses, owns more than 230 guitars, including priceless vintage models. Still, when he first tried a guitar made from…