“United Breaks Guitars,” Song 3: Rhapsody in Bluegrass

As promised, Dave Carroll has released the third and final song of his United Breaks Guitars trilogy. In a special webcast event that happened live last night (recorded & available here; things gets started at about 04:30), Dave introduced the last video and spent another 45 minutes or so telling a more complete, behind-the-scenes story of both his broken Taylor guitar and United Airlines’ profoundly broken customer service organization.

During the webcast, I was fascinated by new details concerning the lengths that United went to in order to mollify Dave after UBG Song 1 went viral on youTube. Clearly the company’s leaders knew that there wasn’t a PR operation or budget big enough to undo the damage from what was then already a worldwide phenomenon, now enshrined forever on youTube and tens of thousands of blogs and media web sites.

Dave relates an almost unending stream of emails, phone calls, and contacts with United, including a later meeting with no less than three inept VPs of the company, who assured Dave that changes in customer service policy were coming, but then were either unable or unwilling to describe just what those changes were or are. (Typical United: They’ve laid off thousands of customer-facing employees and mechanics, but they’ve got a surplus of well-paid executives available to face off with a lone Canadian guitar player.)

For more entertaining and witty insights into Dave’s ill-fated journey with United, the making of UBG Song 3, and Dave’s humble rise to social media/social responsibility stardom, please take time to read his wonderfully-written blog post accompanying Song 3′s debut.

For now though, just enjoy the message-music, which takes the form of bluegrass this time around. For this final UBG song, Dave enlisted a couple of powerhouse “roots” music performers: Jerry Douglas of Nashville is probably the most accomplished player of the dobro guitar to be found anywhere; Ray Legere is one of Canada’s premier acoustic and bluegrass artists on fiddle, guitar, and mandolin.

(And don’t leave early: The music peaks at the end with a dance-off that includes the sublime Ms. Irlweg, tap-dancing as only a well-trained United customer service rep can!)

Enjoy!