If you hate waiting in line for customs, imagine how long it takes Taylor Swift?
The country starlet’s “Red” tour is one of the biggest stadium tours ever constituted, with 109 semi trucks, a 300-person and over 100 instruments with dozens of guitars.
In 2009, U.S. Customs officials began to enforce the century-old Lacey Act protecting certain types of precious wood, That meant possible increased scrutiny of guitars for illegal material but, luckily, Customs officials are saying musicians will generally be exempt from the law.
The once-obscure Act, signed by President William McKinley in 1900 as the first far-reaching federal wildlife protection law, gained national attention in 2009 and 2011 when raids on Gibson Guitar’s facilities in Memphis and Nashville targeted the company for allegedly obtaining wood for its instruments that was illegal in India and Madagascar.
Agents claimed that the Indian wood was used in violation of the original Lacey Act (amended in 2008 to include plants), which prohibits the use of plants and wildlife that have been taken or traded in violation of foreign laws.
Gibson denied the charges, saying that the Indian wood seized in the raid (as well as a shipment of ebony from Madagascar seized in 2009) was legally obtained by a Forest Stewardship Council-certified supplier and that the wood from Madagascar was also legally obtained. The company’s CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, argued at the time that Gibson was using the same woods as its rivals, as well as furniture and architectural firms.
After the raid, which was undertaken by armed agents, Gibson settled with the Department of Justice in August 2012 by paying a penalty of $300,000 as well as $50,000 in community service payments to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
“The reality is that the amendments put forward to the Lacey Act in 2008 and now being enforced via regulation won’t have that much of a direct impact on traveling musicians,” said Mary Luehrsen, director of public affairs and government relations for the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM). “Lacey has a more direct impact on wood imports, guitar manufacturers and the shipment of guitars that need warranty work or repair.”
However, she said that while traveling musicians and their personal instruments are not included in the regulatory oversight of the Act, questions about Lacey from NAMM’s 9,000 global business members (which include Gibson, Yamaha and Steinway) and customers revealed that there was concern about the realities of traveling with rare, vintage or even some new instruments among musicians and manufacturers.
Those concerns centered on how those instruments would be viewed outside of the U.S. relative to the international endangered species treaty signed by more than 120 countries around the world that covers plants, animals and wildlife.
After facing those questions, U.S. regulators proposed a fix in May of 2013 that would develop what Luehrsen said is an “instrument passport.” In collaboration with the American Federation of Musicians, NAMM helped work out the details of the voluntary passport, which will cost users $75 a year and will be good for three years.
Under the new rule, she said that if an instrument was manufactured with endangered materials, it can be registered and the musician can then safely travel from country-to-country without fear of hang-ups at customs. She also debunked the myth that a musician could face issues traveling with the aforementioned instruments state-to-state within the U.S. “These changes offer validation about what we’ve been trying to articulate about that fear of traveling with these instruments,” she said. The passport provision was approved in May and is slowly being phased in the United States.
George Balady, an agriculturist and part of the plant protection and quarantine team at the Plant Health Inspection Service under the USDA, said that he, too, has been working to clear up the misconception about the Lacey Act changes. “From our perspective, the primary focus is on commercial-scale shipments, and individual instruments or performers with several instruments would not fall under consideration under normal circumstances as being involved in a commercial-scale exercise,” he said.
Balady said he has heard of some concerns from a few small companies who belong to the Association of String Instrument Artisans about the Lacey changes. “But if they are following the rules there is not going to be a problem.”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service posted a blog in September 2011 focused on these same concerns, which explained, “Individual consumers and musicians are not the focus of any U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service law enforcement investigations pertaining to the Lacey Act, and have no need for concern about confiscation of their instruments by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.” It also noted that anyone who unknowingly possesses an instrument containing wood that may have been illegally obtained will not have criminal exposure.
Jackson Haring, general manager of San Francisco-based High Road Touring, LLC, whose roster includes such internationally touring acts as Alabama Shakes, Emmylou Harris, Wilco and Robert Plant, said he has not heard of any issues with Lacey enforcement from any of his acts to date.
Interviewed for this story: Jackson Haring, (415) 332-9292; George Balady, (301) 851-2240; Mary Luehrsen, (760) 438-8001