In collaboration with the SmartWood Program, the guitar manufacturer hooked up with the Menominee Tribal Enterprises in Wisconsin, which supplied the maple used for the guitar face, and the Sociedad de Productores Forestales Ejidales, a cooperative in Quintana Roo, Mexico, that supplied chechen for the fingerboard and mahogany for the body and neck. Juskiewicz, along with members of the Rainforest Alliance staff, agreed that the ideal venue for premiering the guitars and drawing attention to their innovative efforts was a concert. Acclaimed artists including Jackson Browne, Carly Simon, Rosanne Cash and Steve Earle played the guitars before a sold-out audience of over 2,000 fans. The certification of musical instruments gradually took off. The popularity of certified musical instruments has recently led to a glitch.
Demand now outstrips supply.
However, program director Richard Donovan feels confident that the problem will soon be curtailed as six months into this year, SmartWood had certified well over twice the number of operations that it did in 1996. It has also made a newly concerted effort to link potential buyers of certified timber such as Gibson with suppliers marketing their product. Needless to say, we've used a lot of wood in the first hundred years at Gibson. In October 1996, at the Alliance's first Smart Sounds for the Planet concert, the guitars made their debut. Since then the certification of musical instruments has taken off.