Maroon 5 guitarist leaves Lincoln with more than memories

Maroon 5 guitarist James Valentine, who grew up in Lincoln, left the Capital City with more than memories after Tuesday night’s concert at Pinnacle Bank Arena.

Valentine headed onto the next leg of the tour in Minneapolis with a new guitar made from wood from old Memorial Stadium bleachers, courtesy of Phil Whitmarsh, owner of Old Market Guitarworks.

Whitmarsh said the idea to build the guitar came from Tim Clare, Lincoln’s representative on the University of Nebraska Board of Regents.

“Well, I’m working on a book project with Regent Tim Clare, and he had heard that I build guitars from historic wood, and he was just kind of riffing in the moment and said, ‘Wow, wouldn’t it be cool to give James Valentine a guitar built from the bleacher wood from Memorial Stadium?’,” Whitmarsh said. “And I said, ‘sure, when’s the concert,’ and he said, Oct. 28.”

That was back in mid-September, leaving Whitmarsh about six weeks to get the job done.

Whitmarsh has made other guitars out of wood from the Memorial Stadium bleachers as well as from a World War II-era battleship, but he said this project had special meaning.

“In a sense, it's kind of a full-circle project,” he said, noting that local musician Benjamin Kushner, who helped him with some of his first prototypes before dying of cancer last year, was a friend and colleague of Valentine’s.

“His passing from cancer was really hard on Lincoln's music community, but also musicians around the country that knew him and have played with him, and James knew him well enough that I heard that that had an effect on him as well,” Whitmarsh said. “So I think, presenting a guitar to him that has some of the DNA from Benji and, and Nebraska, where he studied guitar for a while and with professors there … I think it's a nice moment to just remind him that he is still beloved of our state.”

In a video he posted to social media while walking around downtown Lincoln and on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus Tuesday, Valentine joked about his level of celebrity in Lincoln.

"The one place in the United States where I get to feel like (Maroon 5 lead singer) Adam Levine for a second, you know," he said in the video. "I get that kind of attention."

That attention also included Valentine getting a street temporarily named after him by the city of Lincoln.

Whitmarsh gave Valentine the guitar backstage before the concert, and while he strummed it a bit beforehand, he did not play it during the concert.

You can learn more about Whitmarsh's guitar-making skills on a future episode of "What If... Nebraska," Nebraska Public Media's award-winning series about innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship.