Riffarella is born!

The Making of Riffarella

In early 2023, I found myself wondering if there was a way to create more diversity in the guitar industry. Having worked in the industry since 2014, and often finding myself being the only woman in the various departments I was working in, I thought back to many varied experiences of finding other women like myself who worked within our world.

Some wrote articles that were so powerful, they made me feel extremely seen - like Chelsea Clark's "Is There a Bra on my Bench?", in which she discussed being a female repair technician who had previously apprenticed with Dan Erlewine of StewMac fame (we later met up at NAMM and shared a moment of solidarity). Some started their own podcasts, like Emily Harris of Get Offset, and created space for people to get excited about exploring new pedals and just being in love with trying gear.

This mindset was where Riffarella was born.

My background in guitar

I remember working at my first retail job and telling myself “this is okay as long as it eventually all leads back to music” because my beginnings in the music world were unique. When I was 14 years old, I told my guitar teacher Bill Schrey that I was looking for my first job. Since Gelb Music Teaching Institute was a bustling hub of 6-8 instructors, they needed someone to navigate the front desk downstairs, call lessons and check in folks who were coming in for their lessons. I leaped at the opportunity.

People in high school used to say “HOW did you get a job there? I turned in an application and never heard back”, so I felt incredibly lucky. It was at Gelb that I fostered an incredible relationship with some very power-house instructors, like Tony Lindsay of Santana and legendary drummer/drum collector Mike Curotto (owner of The Curotto Collection), not to mention the amazing instructors who taught me much of what I know today over that four year period: Tony Baker, Richard Healy, Chris Stone, Peter Booras, John Costalupes and of course Bill.

*Monique working at Gelb Music Teaching Institute in 2005.*

It wasn’t until 2014 that I had a bit of an awakening. I was working in adtech at the time and had just released my first EP, The Strangle and the Struggle. I recall a note I had made for myself in 2011 where I had remarked ‘after much thought, I believe life has been trying to tell me “everything is in its right place." Maybe now is the time to start looking for a luthier apprenticeship...’. But after a few rough years, and one incredible first time experience at the Winter NAMM Show through Fargen Amplification, I found a job opening at San Francisco Guitarworks, who were looking for a shop manager with a background in digital marketing. And my world was suddenly opened up to lutherie and guitar repair.

‘after much thought, I believe life has been trying to tell me “everything is in its right place." Maybe now is the time to start looking for a luthier apprenticeship...’

“Can I speak to a tech?”

Interacting with the general public about their instruments became an interesting experience. While my day-to-day was overwhelmingly positive, I had a few bad apples that didn’t believe I was there for anything other than to answer the phone and smile. My boss, esteemed luthier Geoff Luttrell, and all our wonderful technicians there (Lewis Santer, Jake Palladino, Mike Gardner, Thomas Nguyen, and Philip Milner) showed me the ropes for pretty much everything: how to install a Sustainiac, diagnosing 75-year-old Martin neck resets, what a perfectly crowned fret should look like and how to operate our CNC machinery, the Plek. So why was I still being asked “may I please speak to a tech?” when I answered the phone. It may seem harmless to many reading this, but ultimately it started to bother me, as though my knowledge was any less valuable because I happened to be a woman.

But amidst all this, I was able to give back for the first time. In 2015, I organized a local donation drive to the Bay Area Girls Rock Camp that raised $6,000 worth of gear donations. I remember recalling how different life was for me as a kid by prioritizing music, after starting to learn guitar at the age of 7, and playing saxophone throughout middle and high school, consuming all my free time with jazz band, concert band, pep band and marching. It’s hard to get into bad stuff when you have no free time. ;)

*Monique making cleats for an acoustic guitar repair.*

Things started to change rapidly once I started to pursue music full time. My digital marketing background in adtech opened a lot of doors for me, and after nearly 4 years at SF Guitarworks, I started doing video and how-to content for EMG Pickups, picked up a Marketing Specialist role at Guitar Tricks, and after a few years, landed my first Head of Marketing role at Gimme Radio. In 2019, after a very strange year where many of my immediate family passed away, I decided to go back to SF Guitarworks temporarily while hunting for my next great gig…just in time for the pandemic to begin.

Support Through Community

It was during COVID-19 that I was really humbled. Suddenly I was unemployed and desperately trying to find work in the middle of the pandemic, which ravaged the music industry in many different areas, but strangely not guitar repair. People were buying guitars faster than you could put them on Reverb, and it was still a weird time where companies were on hiring freezes. During this time, and frustrated by the murder of George Floyd, I joined the Color of Music Collective as a volunteer and SEO consultant. Also feeling hungry for development, I enrolled at San Francisco City College to obtain a certificate in Audio and Video for the Web.

Organizations like MasterClass and MusiCares (an org hosted by the Recording Academy) acted as conduits for inspiration and also as financial support. And while I was only out of work for a few months before I was thrust into guitar repair again, I kept asking myself how I could give back to these orgs that had given so much to me and enriched my life along the way and which had made space for others like myself that needed opportunities that weren’t just unpaid internships. I joined SoundGirls and Womens Audio Mission to fill the growing hunger.

And just like that, another opportunity presented itself. I accepted a role as Associate Director of Digital & Content Marketing at Seymour Duncan, where I got to create some pretty powerful activations. I put together our company’s first Womens History Month initiative, where we highlighted Lari Basilio, April Kae, Annie Shred and the legendary Carol Kaye. I was able to introduce talented folks like Alyssa Day, Esmee Van Sinderen, and Tainá Bergamaschi to not only our AR team but our 1.5 million combined social media audience. Somehow, in some way, this felt like an area I needed to keep pursuing further.

So when I talked to my husband about creating a new platform for guitarists and he recommended the name Riffarella, I knew another project had been born.

What is Riffarella?

I want to make a place on the internet where people of all backgrounds who play guitar and build gear have a home. Even in other diversity-centric publications, I noticed that time and time again, metal and punk musicians were being left out of the conversation. And with the rise of more women & LGTBQ+ identifying luthiers coming into focus, I wanted to create a community where those people could be featured and interviewed. After spending a lot of time job searching myself, I also wanted to bring awareness to jobs in the music product industry since so much effort around working in the music industry is based around unpaid internships (and let’s face it - unpaid internships are exploitative and many people can’t afford to work full-time for free, which I certainly could not do when I was still in college).

If you’ve read this far, I must thank you for taking the time to learn a little bit more about me and my hopes for Riffarella. Let’s change the music industry for the better.

And hey, if you have an idea for someone or something I need to feature on this site, hit me up.