Part one was the event itself. This is the conversation after the dust settled, about what it actually takes to build a guitar convention from nothing, including the room that would have cost thirty thousand dollars before a single person walked in.

The thing he is proudest of

Everybody who talks about that weekend says it was the people. Paul Richards even joked that you are contractually obliged to say it. It is true, but Matt gave me a sharper version.

For all the times he heard someone shout hey Matt across a room that weekend, he never once heard the follow up: hey Matt, what are we supposed to do now.

That is the whole job of running an event, stated better than most event planners could state it. Hundreds of people, several venues, four days, and nobody was ever standing around wondering what happens next.

Where the idea actually came from

Most people assume it grew out of the 2020 build off. It did not. His friend Carlos Lopez and Curtis Novak had done a NAMM adjacent show a couple of years back, and Matt looked at it and thought, this is just a big party for Carlos. I like parties. Why do I not have a big party too.

So he bolted the party onto the build off, which was already in its fifth year, and deliberately refused to keep it in one building. He knows a lot of people who do cool things. The plan was to turn them loose and let them each do their thing.

The money part nobody talks about

They started by looking at wedding reception halls, because the Woodwire and Volt show had been in one.

Denver, July, eight hours. Some of the quotes came back at fifteen thousand dollars for the hall alone. Then a bar minimum on top, as high as another fifteen. Then a food minimum on top of that, also mandatory.

His math was simple. He was not going to clear thirty thousand dollars in year one, so he was not going to spend it. He walked.

Joy found Tradecraft instead, the way you find anything now, by turning something up and having the algorithm hand it over. They drove there at half seven one morning and looked through the window and knew. The venue then did the opposite of the wedding halls: no bar minimum, and when he asked whether his friend who owns a brewery could set up, they said you would be a fool not to, and told him he could use their equipment for nothing.

They had been close to pulling the trigger on the old Chrysler building in Denver, the one people call the Sports Castle, where Metallica once rented the place out. Tradecraft turned up first.

He has done this before

This is the part that explains the rest. Twenty eight years ago Matt worked for a magazine that had been running an annual Las Vegas convention since 1980. His whole job, all year long, was that one event.

So he is not a guitar builder who accidentally threw a convention. He is somebody who spent a year at a time building conventions, who now also builds guitars.

What changes for 2027

Less driving. Almost everything this year was within ten miles, his shop, Odyssey Beer Works, Henriksen, the expo hall, the place making hats. The outliers were a haul, and people told him so. He does not want to condense it into one room, he wants the same loose vibe with less windshield time.

The food vendor fell through this year, so 2027 gets redundancy there. He is also booking early: he already gave Cassie the pinstriper next year’s dates to put in her phone.

The wish list, in his words pie in the sky: double the guitars in the build off to ninety, more exhibitors, Rock and Vodka as a sponsor, and if that happens, Rick Nielsen as a judge.

For Texas Toast specifically he wants to lean harder on the dealer network. Fewer generic one offs, more models built for a specific dealer, the way Jeff at Majestic Guitars and Dylan already have their own.

And he dropped a teaser I am obligated to pass along. He is thinking about changing the contest rules and has not announced it. What he would say is that they are not building Telecasters again.

The cheat code

The part he most wanted on the record was not about venues at all. It was about how much of this was Joy.

His word for having her help was cheat code. The swag box everybody raved about was hers. Left to himself it would have been, here is your shirt, it is the wrong size, wash it in hot.

His point was that there is an artistic component to merchandising, and people absolutely notice when it is done half heartedly. Without her, and without a pile of friends who opened their taprooms and shops, this would have been a very different weekend, assembled at the last minute and slapped together.

The next one is July 8th through the 11th, 2027, same venue.

Find them

• Texas Toast Guitars, Arvada, Colorado
• Henriksen Amplifiers
• Milehouse Studios
• Dylan Talks Tone

Follow along

One guy in a small shop on his father-in-law’s property in Lindsborg, Kansas. IT Director by day, maker by obsession. Equal parts problem solver, craftsman, and curious human. If you’re the kind of person who takes things apart to see how they work, or watches people who do, you’re in the right place.

Uncut shop sessions go up on YouTube and I stream on Twitch. Everything is @carverwoodworking. There is merch in the shop, or you can buy me a coffee.