Main Content
The Froggy Bottom Team
Based in Chelsea, Vermont, Froggy Bottom Guitars custom builds instruments for amateur and professional musicians, and a few authorized dealers. The guitars are built by a talented team of craftsmen led by the founder of the business, Michael Millard.
The bookkeeping; website design, maintenance and writing; photography and graphics for online and print use are all accomplished by independent professionals who are also friends of the Froggy Bottom family.
Michael Millard

Michael began hanging around boatyards and wooden boats in New England when he was ten. He started getting paid to be there when he was 12. Lessons in craftsmanship and woodworking were patiently and lovingly offered by a group of elderly craftsmen ...
Eric Goodenough

Eric was the first person hired during Michael's year-long stint helping Gurian Guitars get back on its feet, following a 1979 fire. In those days he was fond of pitching tape balls and playing Neil Young tunes. Eric built his first complete guitar ...
Michael "Moose" Raymond, Froggy Bottom Shop

Even though he came through a musical family, took up the bass at thirteen and started gigging with “a real grown-up country band” at fourteen, trained in electronics, became a builder, then a contractor, then a master carpenter doing commissioned ...
Larry Sweeney, Finishes

After 26 years of collision repair work, in 2000 Larry focused his spray gun on a different sort of vehicle for the human spirit: the mandolin. After finishing mandolins for six years, he's now focused on Froggy Bottom Guitars. He's the best finish ...
Petria Mitchell, Engraver

Petria is a fine artist whose paintings have been featured in Vermont Life Magazine, The New York Times, and Art New England, among other prestigious publications and galleries. Her engravings are found in some of the world's finest collections and ...
Kristina Stykos, Musician/Producer

One of the rare natives of Ithaca, NY and its music scene, Kristina is a musician, recording engineer and producer of singular vision. In true Vermont fashion, she is also an avid and expert gardener.
Barb Ackemann, Web Developer

Founder of Iris Lines Designs, Barb wrote her first computer programs by making holes in cardboard punch cards in the 1970s. She spent twenty-eight years as a classroom teacher, librarian and computer maven in educational settings, and earned her Mas ...
Scott Ainslie, Musician & Website Editor

You may have seen Scott cradling Froggy Bottom Guitars in various print ads, or heard his music on XM radio’s Bluesville. Scott’s a working musician and author of a book and instructional DVD on the music of Delta Blues legend Robert Johnson and ha ...
Herve Pelletier, Photographer

For more than a decade Herve worked as a Boston-based editorial and advertising photographer. He worked with New Balance, Wang, American Airlines, Inc. Magazine, the Charles Hotel, Boston Magazine, and MIT.
Chris Cardillo, Graphic Designer

Chris founded Diligent Design in 2002, soon after graduating from Marlboro College's Graduate Center in Vermont. Although he specializes in web site and software design and development, he's loved every minute spent exercising his graphic design an ...

Team