New Guitar Takes Away Sour Notes
When I saw that musicians were going to be playing at the front of the restaurant, I almost suggested passing it in favor of a neighboring place.
Normally, I like live music, but Sunday had been a fairly hectic day for me and my friend, Susan. I felt cranky and for some perverse reason wanted to hold on to the emotional sourness.
A gaggle of freshly sated diners gathered on the Wall Street sidewalk outside Cassis Restaurant in Huntington, simultaneously bidding each other adieu and blocking our entry, which served my appetite for annoyance. We squirmed past and waited to be seated at a two-top against the wall.
While we ordered, a bearded, balding guitarist prepared to play, and a pleasant-looking woman, presumably his regular vocalist, yielded the microphone to an older, local man wearing a fishing cap and jeans. He - Sam - sang an old song in a soft, high voice, while Susan and I chatted.
I became increasingly distracted by the sound of the guitar and, later, the incredible range and matching delicacy of the woman's voice. I found myself all-too-often interrupting Susan's narrative with (and, this is not recommended behavior for any man in the company of a woman): "What?" and, "I'm sorry," and, "Who?" until, finally, I confessed that I had lost an entire anecdote to the guitarist and, moreover, to the guitar.
It had the fattest neck of any guitar I'd ever seen, and four tuning keys on each side-so, it wasn't a standard guitar, nor a 12-string guitar. And, somebody was playing bass runs, though nobody was playing a bass. Moreover, there were no frets beneath the two lowest strings, only under the six, regular guitar strings.
Trying to excuse my rudeness, I said I had never seen a guitar like it. That didn't impress Susan, until after a few, stunning tunes later, the duo took a break. We then learned from Sicilian-born Michele Ramo and his Michigan-raised wife, Heidi Hepler-Ramo, both now of Forest Hills, that there was no other guitar like it. There would not be another until the following night, when Ramo was to pick up his second, 8-string, custom-built guitar from luthier Rich DiCarlo, of Massapequa Park.
Trained in classical violin, and retrained in jazz violin (so well that he regularly accompanies jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli on recordings), Ramo said he had been inventing the 8-string in his head for 20 years. He discovered classical guitar-maker DiCarlo through an advertisement in a jazz magazine.
DiCarlo confirmed yesterday that Ramo had visited Monday night and picked up his second "Ramo Hei-D Mostro (Monster)," so named, DiCarlo said, "because it's only one octave shorter than a piano. Its 34 frets go up to a double high-D, and the lower string is like the D on a bass fiddle. So, it's a 6-octave instrument. He wanted a whole orchestra in one instrument."
DiCarlo, who until he retired four years ago worked for almost all the incarnations of what was The New York Telephone Co. since he started in 1968, tinkered with making guitars for years but devoted himself to the craft in the early 1980s. His Web site, www.dicarloguitars.com, is loaded with information about his work. The Ramos' Web site, www.RamoMusic.com, includes biographies, photos, sound tracks, tributes and credits.
Ramo and his wife have been playing Sundays at Cassis for three years, although they recently have reduced it to alternate Sundays.
DiCarlo finished the first "Hei-D Mostro (Monster)" in January. "We weren't sure it was going to work, at first," he said. "We spent a whole day at LaBella Strings in Newburgh for custom strings. At first, we had regular, nylon, lower bass strings, but the tension wasn't correct.
"When I first met Ramo, he was living in Detroit," DiCarlo said. "We didn't hit it off, right away. He wanted this, and he wanted that, and I said, 'I really don't have time for this.' Two years later, he wanted a 7-string guitar, and I built it. Then, he came back with this idea. He's crazy about what he wants.
"But, you know, as a luthier, you always look for a guitarist who plays your instrument to the max, and Ramo is a fantastic player. Nobody does what he's doing. I'm lucky to be hooked up with him."
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