Member Spotlight | August 13, 2025
Myron Hyman and the Good Guitar
From Venice surf jams to Carolina gigs, a mother’s six-word challenge keeps his Martin D-28 singing.
Myron Hyman still hears his mother’s voice each time he slings his D-28 over his shoulder. One afternoon on the Venice boardwalk, she kept time on a tambourine while he busked Van Morrison’s “Moondance.” Myron had brought a backup guitar that day, and as they packed up, she smiled and said, “Next time, bring the good guitar.” Those six words came from a mother whose ear never missed good tone—and confirmed for Myron that, decades later, his 1998 Martin D-28 still had the magic he first heard.
Music was his mother’s gift from the start. She put five-year-old Myron in front of a piano, then, when he turned eleven, invited him to tag along to an adult education guitar class. They first shared her guitar, and he was later gifted a modest acoustic bought with Blue Chip Stamps—its action so high it could draw blood. Yet that hardship forged stamina and set the stage for a pivotal moment. A glamorous woman in the class slid the sheet music for “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” across the music stand and asked the kid if he could play it. One Stones riff later, Myron was hooked for life.
Outside the classroom, Venice became his do-it-yourself conservatory. Mornings often began with a surf check—anywhere from Bay Street up to County Line—and ended with garage rehearsals where Led Zeppelin covers rang until curfew. Fellow teens Steve McGrath and a younger kid from the neighborhood, Robert Trujillo, would later claim world stages with Billy Idol and Metallica, but back then, everyone was just trying to nail a clean G run. “Play with people better than you,” Myron says, “and you grow without noticing.”
He also noticed the gear. In 1974, his friend Steve arrived with a brand-new Martin in its blue case. Myron wanted one badly, but the $700 price tag felt impossible. So he kept refining his chops—first in local bars, then during a three-decade career lighting movies and television.
Two decades later, with his wife, Laura, and all three daughters—Natasha, Aarika, and Alyssa—encouraging him to “get a good acoustic,” he finally made the leap. In 1998, he drove to Guitar Center on Sunset Boulevard, played a dozen D-28s, and found one that shook the room. Mid-test drive, he spotted Monkees alum Micky Dolenz and asked him if he should order it with a pickup. “If you’re buying an acoustic, buy it pure,” Dolenz said. Myron paid on the spot—then, acknowledging gigging reality, installed a pickup the next day.
The new Martin followed him everywhere. On the set of Ally McBeal—during an episode guest-starring Sting—Myron was drafted into the on-camera band. He wound up trading licks on “Every Breath You Take” with the Police frontman while Robert Downey Jr. supplied harmony vocals. He even hauled the guitar to Nashville, serenading cast and crew during a lunch break on the Ryman Auditorium stage.
That D-28 has been his workhorse ever since. When an RV trip dropped the Hymans in Etowah, North Carolina, in 2018, Myron started busking while his wife got her nails done. Persistence turned sidewalk sets into farmers’ markets, breweries, and, these days, roughly 170 shows a year. He hosts weekly open mics that attract up to twenty players, changes his Martin Authentic Acoustic Lifespan® strings at least once a week, and jokes that his luthier knows the guitar better than its builder.
Along the way, he has distilled five rules for beginning guitarists: practice every day, chase songs that scare you, seek out stronger musicians, maintain your instrument religiously, and be politely relentless when booking gigs. They are, in truth, refinements of lessons first modeled by his mother—discipline, curiosity, and faith that music is worth the effort.
Those lessons now carry into a third generation. All five of Myron’s grandchildren—Abigail, Aidyn, Jonah, Devyn, and Charlie—have already shown the family’s musical spark. When he handed a Little Martin to one of them, the youngster beamed at the headstock logo and announced, “I’ve got a Martin!” The moment echoed one from decades earlier, when a mother’s encouragement turned piano scales into guitar chords—and eventually into a life soundtracked by Martins, from his road-worn D-28 to an OMJM and even an Alternative X.
Asked what story his D-28 will tell in twenty years, Myron doesn’t miss a beat: “It’s going to keep on playing and putting smiles on people’s faces.” With surf memories in his pocket, film set cameos in his scrapbook, and his mother’s words still guiding every downstroke, he knows that wherever the road leads, he'll keep bringing the good guitar—just as she would have wanted.
Listen & Catch a Show
Click the links below to stream Myron Hyman’s latest recordings and check out his calendar for upcoming shows in and around Asheville, North Carolina. Come hear his Martin D-28 in person—and say hello to a fellow Martin player.
Myron Hyman Website:
https://sites.google.com/view/myronhymanmusic/home
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0ZGpd7l031zZDi8XsOEN93?si=X-X7rnBUTEiTxBwvUzB8nQ
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/myronhymanmusic/
YouTube:
