In this video from Fender, Ron Emory speaks on his signature parlor guitar saying:

There's not a whole lot of cool small guitars out there for young ones, and being that I'm a guitar player it was important for me to have something that was this nice for my students to play around on and learn on. Structurally, it's built like a really nice guitar. It's got X-bracing, it's got tapered braces in it. The price point was very very important. We wanted to make sure that everybody that wants to have one of these in in their hands can have on in their hands. This guitar is very important to me that the design of it structurally and the finish on it is really incredible. I wanted a small sized guitar that was reminiscent of the guitars you saw at the turn of the century. There was a lot of small bodied guitars but they had an incredible feel and incredible sound and so when we designed this guitar I wanted it to have that feel and that vibe but I also wanted for kids to have something that is cool looking and feeling and sounding. So we went with this herringbone motif which is around the whole body and binding around the neck and the headstock. We did the loyalty because I'm loyal to Fender. I really felt that it was something I needed to put on there, you know, being that where I had been in my life it was God that got me through what I gone through, so loyal to him as well and loyal to my family.

This was the guitar that Cameron, Mark, and I were passing back and forth when we first came up with the idea to form Midland.

I bought it because I wanted a smaller-sized acoustic to travel with to Jackson Hole, Wyoming for Cameron's wedding. I got there about a week before the wedding and Mark had also arrived early. The three of us swapped songs on the porch of Cameron’s mother-in-law’s house. We performed with it at the rehearsal dinner talent show, which we lost.

I bought the guitar from Musicmakers in South Austin, where now-Midland-guitar-player Luke Cutchen was the sales associate! Buying this guitar was how I met Luke and eventually started playing music with him.

So if there is a guitar at the center of the DNA of this band, this is certainly it. It still has my return flight airline tag on the case.

Mark discusses his use of the Fender Ron Emory Loyalty parlor guitar saying:

I am holding the original guitar, the Ron Emory Fender model, that really helped start it all, start Midland. Jess brought this guitar up to Jackson Hole for Cameron Duddy's wedding, which we were both at to be groomsmen. And this guitar was just kind of a conversation starter, a guitar we were passing around on the porch of Cameron's soon to be, and now mother-in-law at her beautiful cabin that overlooks the back side of the Tetons. It was a majestic location and a pretty magical place to be and there's no surprise that the midland genesis was a result of that atmosphere and the celebration that was Cameron and Harper's wedding and then you add a little bit of alcohol, some nostalgia, and three buddies who are musicians and it was the perfect setting and the perfect chemical reaction to start Midland. So this is the guitar that started it all and I'm pretty excited for someone to own this exciting piece of country music history.