Takamine

Photo by Mark Webster

While checking up on Takamine friend and favorite Calista Garcia, we ran across her freshly posted home performance of Nancy Wilson’s “You Don’t Know” from the jazz singer’s 1964 album How Glad I Am. We had to ask the 19-year-old singer-songwriter from Arlington, VA how she was familiar with this 50+ year-old Grammy-winning classic. “I was riding in the car listening to Sirius XM Sinatra station," she replied. “The song came on and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I’m a huge Nancy Wilson fan now!”

If you’ve never heard the song “You Don’t Know”, Calista's version is as fresh a serving as you’ll find. Accompanied only by her EF341SC from Takamine’s Legacy Series played in perfectly muted fashion, Calista respectfully approaches the scatty melody written to be sung, and sings it with ease and feeling, making the old song a new favorite. But killer covers of classics do not define Calista Garcia. Her debut EP Wild Woman was nominated for "Best Roots/Country EP" at the 18th Annual Independent Music Awards, shining a well-deserved spotlight on Garcia’s sophisticated songwriting, and setting the stage for more to come.

Calista’s first Takamine, an EF740SGN (first cousin to the current EF261S) was a Christmas present when she was 13. “I've written over 100 songs on that original baby," she recounts. “I've written 41 so far on ‘Odele’, the EF341SC, since getting her last October." And while Takamine would love to take some credit for Garcia’s prolificacy, the following home performance clip of "Under the Magnolia Tree", with its perfectly relevant refrain, “I’ll meet you there when things turn out OK," led us to suspect the gifted songstress may have written just as many great songs on piano.

Regardless, when it comes to helping channel Calista Garcia’s timeless talent, Takamine is proud to be in there anywhere. Keep up with Calista and her music at her web site.