I was just minding my own business one day and John Walker called and told me we should be working with Kevin Kopp because he makes great guitars. For John, being a laconic sort, this was like a normal person screaming with ecstasy and blabbering my ear off. John, Kevin and Ren Ferguson all worked together at the Gibson custom shop in Boseman Montana for about 10 years so that was good enough for me. Well anyway I called Kevin up and we talked about us selling his guitars and I asked if anybody in Minnesota had one that he could bring in so we could play one. Kevin said he knew a guy that had two and said he would ask him to bring his guitars by. So about a week later, Leo Kottke showed up with his two Kopp guitars. Leo had us put in a pickup in one of them and I got to try his Trailboss 6 and 12 string. Earlier, we had a Boseman musician who came in with one with a broken pickup and he was playing that night so we fixed it and were all very impressed with his square shouldered 14 fret D. Leo's guitars sold us.
Our first instrument from Kevin was a K-35, Kevin's version of the the 12 fret sloped D. I had my friend Dakota Dave Hull bring in his 1934 Gibson Jumbo which is pretty much the gold standard for sloped D's to me. We went back and forth playing the Gibson and Kopp and I was stunned to find that Dave actually really liked a new guitar. We even had to put new strings on his Gibson so it would stand up against the Kopp.
A couple of days ago Dakota Dave brought in another friend who was playing in town, Paul Jeremiah. If you don't know about Dakota Dave Hull and Paul Jeremiah, you are missing two of the legendary musicians in American roots music. Anyway, we pulled down a Kopp Trailboss off the wall. Both of these guys, notorious whiners about new guitars just loved the Kopp guitars..it was almost embarrassing.
