Willie Nelson's 1969 Martin N-20 "Trigger"

Willie Nelson is a Country music superstar and one of the progenitors alongside Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings of the "Outlaw" Country genre and image. For most of Willie's professional career he has played one guitar as his main instrument of choice; a 1969 Martin N-20 that he dubbed "Trigger"

Willie and Trigger in the Early Days

In 1969 Willie Nelson was playing a show in Helotes, Texas. After the show was over he left his guitar, a Baldwin, on the ground and it was stepped on by a drunken concertgoer. Willie took his broken guitar to Shot Jackson, a repairman in Nashville to see if he could restore the instrument and make it playable again. Unfortunately, Jackson recognized right away the the damage was too severe and that any work he would do would be futile. Needless to say Willie felt a bit despondent, so Jackson offered to sell him a 1969 Martin N-20 Classical Guitar for $750 to which Willie assented. Shortly thereafter he named the instrument "Trigger" after the Roy Roger's horse. Nelson would have Jackson install a Baldwin pickup in his new guitar.

The Martin N-20 Classical Acoustic Guitar was not exactly a hot seller, Martin only made 1,101 of them in 1969. It came with a spruce top with Brazilian rosewood back and sides and had a 12/18-fret unbound ebony fingerboard with no inlays, slotted headstock with decal logo, three-per-side open-style tuners with pearloid buttons, rosewood tied bridge and the neck was 25.4 inches in scale.

Willie has singled out "Trigger" as being one of the key components to his unique sound, "One of the secrets to my sound is almost beyond explanation. My battered old Martin guitar, Trigger, has the greatest tone I’ve ever heard from a guitar [...] If I picked up the finest guitar made this year and tried to play my solos exactly the way you heard them on the radio or even at last night’s show, I’d always be a copy of myself and we’d all end up bored. But if I play an instrument that is now a part of me, and do it according to the way that feels right for me [...] I’ll always be an original".

 "Trigger" is easily one of Willie's most prized possessions and he has gone to great lengths to make sure it never leaves his side. Just a year after he bought it, Nelson's ranch caught fire and he made sure to rescue this guitar from the flames while leaving most of the rest of his possessions to burn.  In 1991, while Willie was under hear from IRS for tax evasion, he became quite concerned that the government would confiscate his old friend. Hoping to head them off Nelson asked his daughter, Lana, to take the "Trigger" from the studio before any IRS agent got there, and bring it to his home in Maui. After making sure it was secure, he then gave it to his manager who then hid the guitar until his debt was paid in 1993.

"Trigger"

 One of the more unique things about this guitar is the wide array of signatures that adorn it's body. The first signature on the guitar was made by Leon Russell. Russell had asked Willie to sign his guitar and when he was about to sign it with a marker, Russell asked him if he could scratch his name in the wood instead. He told Willie that this would make the guitar far more valuable in the future. The request piqued Willie's interest, and so he asked Russell to sign "Trigger" in return. Since that first signature, "Trigger" has been signed by hundreds of people ranging from athletes to fellow musicians, friends and business associates.

Another thing about "Trigger" that makes the guitar stand out at first viewing is it's battered condition, along with a gaping hole just beneath the sound-hole. After over forty years of playing, the guitar has certainly seen better days, and the wear and tear inflicted upon it is physically evident. "Trigger" is a classical guitar, meaning it was meant to be finger-picked and thus did not come equipped with a pickguard. Nelson however plays his guitar with a pick, and after years of doing so, eventually a large hole was worn into the body.

Ultimately few other guitar players on the planet have come to become so closely identified with an instrument as Willie Nelson and "Trigger". Nelson has gone on record as saying, "When Trigger goes, I'll quit." After many decades spent together playing music, the guitar and the player have an almost shared identity, they are one and inseparable.