GUITARWERX Founder, Bruce Barkelew:

I first started playing drums when I was 8 years old.  Soon the "British Invasion" arrived and at the ripe young age of 10, I started playing guitar.  I was heavily influenced by Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, Jimmy Smith, Robert Johnson, and Kenny Burrell.  My band began playing clubs and frat parties at a nearby college town while I was still in High School.  My setup then was a '63 Gibson SG Special with a Blonde Fender Showman amp.  Living in a small town with no local guitar repair shop, I soon learned to do my own setups and modifications to my guitars and amps.  One thing led to another and after graduating from High School in '72, I started playing in a touring band doing all original music.  I played all over the country for the next four years.

I settled in Columbia, Missouri to do studio work and soon produced my first entirely handmade guitar .  When I was performing, my main road guitar was an original 1959 Les Paul Sunburst.  This was a fantastic guitar, but with the variety of studio work I was doing, I wanted something more versatile.  I wanted a guitar that could sing like a Strat and wail like a Les Paul.  As with many luthiers before and after, this was the seed that inspired me to start creating my own guitars.  I hooked up with a luthier from the U.K. while visiting friends in Dallas, Texas.  That was my first attempt at a commercial guitar company but it never got off the ground due to the lack of funding.  Returning to Columbia, I went full time with my own luthier work, opening a small repair shop while building custom electric guitars.  While this was very rewarding on a personal level, it wasn't as financially viable as I would have liked. 

After several years of work and producing numerous guitars, I switched gears and went to College and received a degree in Computer Science.  While in College, I continued playing in bands and working on guitars.  After graduating in 1984, I left for San Francisco to work as a programmer.  I had started writing a communications program my senior year of College that was soon to pay big dividends.  After working in California for less than a year, I moved back to Columbia to pursue the development and marketing of my program full time.  The company I formed was Datastorm Technologies and the program I developed was "ProComm Plus", soon to become the number one communications program in the world.  

Keeping with my love of cars and guitars, I renewed another early habit:  Automobile Racing.  I first started racing when I was 16, but didn't do it seriously until the early '90s, when I started racing professionally.  My team won Rookie of the Year honors our first season out.  I raced Porsche 911s in the 24 Hours of Daytona and other endurance races, but the Trans-Am Series soon became my series of choice.  1999 was the last full season of racing for our team, but you never know when you might see us back at the track.

Meanwhile, my software company, Datastorm, merged with Quarterdeck in 1996, who then merged with Symantec in 1999.  ProComm Plus is still going strong as a Symantec product.  After leaving the software industry in '99, I came full circle and began focusing again on guitars.  Using the experience of growing a successful multi-national company with hundreds of employees, I began the development plan for GuitarWerX.  in 2001, after assembling a group of key employees, we started the long process of designing, conceptualizing, and prototyping our instruments.  All the while creating our marketing plan, business model, and working environment.

...Today, each guitar we make is more exciting than the last one.  The infinite natural variety of the wood adds an almost human uniqueness to each instrument.  We put a little bit of ourselves into each and every guitar we make.  We're proud to be able to create something that keeps giving to others.  Music truly is the universal language. 

It's great having a job you like.  It's even better when you have one you're passionate about...