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So...I've been sick and I think I'm a little less sick now. At its worst it was stumble out of bed and heading to the bathroom and then waking up vividly when the pain from both blood clots in my left leg would erupt with a vindictive burst. Then I would put myself together purposefully. Fighting through the nausea and pain and other pains by focusing on any singular action. Focusing and actually saying to myself silently things like, "I am now going to close the door" or "I am now going to heat the water for the tea." and then "I am heating the water for the tea." I would await the calming of my interior and then risk the drive to work. I worked for the allotted eight hours and then prayed the drive home would be uneventful.; Then once arriving I fed me. I fed Ian (14) I gave the animals some treats and limped into bed hoping to sleep as quickly as possible. I would pop a commercial sleep pill and a melatonin or two and wait to drop off. Then the night was intermittent awakenings till, for some reason, I was able to sleep the last four hours or so uninterrupted. Day after day. Every morning and night I would pass by the "guitar room" and wonder what the point was. My callouses began to wear away. I had no desire to play or repair or sell or buy. I could have cared less.I even contemplated selling each and every one. Not much of a contemplation. I had other distractions.Now I am slowly, slowly healing and I have picked up a few and strummed and picked a we bit. I never thought that I could lose my love of the instruments but I did. At my worst I could have burned them for warmth. So, I'm getting a little better but at its worst it was at its worst. I think I'm back from that place. I hope I stay for awhile. 

A Brief Visit From Me To Me

I need to write this quickly. I am in the midst of a battle against a disease (Crohn's....SEVERE Crohns's). It isn't fatal. But it narrows life. It drains color from it and replaces what used to be just living with unexpected and expected pain. With discomfort which is not quite pain. With a new distrust for my body. We are at odds. The reason I write this here is that I haven't played a guitar in weeks. Maybe a month. I don't work on them. I don't think about them. I don't delight in the feel of one in my hands. My life, as I said, has narrowed. Flattened. Washed out. There are cures and I not ashamed to try them even though, in research, it seems they are similar to doing away with your moth problem by burning down your house with you in it. No Moths. There. I need to stop before I want to stop writing. One thing...right before this became awful I got a Gould (sic) guitar that was handmade (it had to be) in Israel. It is quite the thing. Okay. Let me get off before I am someone else.

Vintage Olympia OM C1 CE

Isn't this just so prettty?
Soon it will be in my hands.
I am such an addict!

Guitar work seems to be distracting enough from my distractions that I get distracted.

So....I'm sick. Not I'm gonna kick off tomorrow so gather round and let me share my final wishes sick. But sick enough that the sickness distracts me from any activity that needs concerted concentration over a long period of time. Leaving an activity and then returning after a bout of what I'm bouting is exhausting and requires putting the head in the same place. This is not always easy. But guitar work seems to be distracting enough from my distractions that I get distracted. The changing of strings, The oiling of a fretboard. The examination of the saddle and the nut. The repairs I am capable of. Contemplating the repairs I would like to be capable of. The choosing of the tool and then the re-choosing of a tool. The playing. Ah the playing. I'm improving. It has taken a few decades and the passage through many events both personal and universal. Playing around with a chord or a note. Hearing how that sounds on a variety of guitars. They are all different in how they sing. My ears have become more discerning. I now hear the precision of a high note in the midst of a muddled low note. How each guitar plays the same progression differently. How I play each guitar differently.  How the same string of notes played on a different guitar can either grow or just wither. The difference in the gauge of the strings and how they feel under the callouses of the tips of my left hand. The differences in the brands of the strings and the component metals and coatings.  I order my tools and then reorder them. I love the smell of the wood and the oil and the polish. I smell each guitar like a rose and inhale the differences in age and wood. Mahogany does not smell the same as rosewood. The feel and texture. A satin finished cedar top is so markedly different from a gloss finish of spruce. In the midst of the slow rearranging of my bodies priorities I have been given....shit....I have given myself a continuing low intensity joy. When I told my son Oren that I was ill but that I probably wouldn't kick off for a while I got to joking about the funeral. I said he should try to do it as cheaply as possible. He asked me if he could use a guitar case for the casket. I love that kid!

They come and go..........

 The above painting is

Abstract Guitar by Trisha Lamoreaux

I've been off of this for quite some time and it was not from any desire to ignore the thing. It came from confronting various not quite serious diseases that, in truth, are serious. Really. Mostly just annoying but cumulatively exhausting. I have begun to develop a new relationship with my interior and exterior. It pisses me off. I've fed it for years. Washed it almost every day and done my best to provide it with its various animal oriented pleasures. What do I get in return? An array of stuff that has resulted in my ingesting, every day, so many pills that I can make little pill men or pill faces every morning.. The palette of colors and variety of sizes has a certain degree of  interest but it is very fleeting. But, enough about me....let's talk about guitars.

They are coming and going with great rapidity these days. Having had  my income reduced.....REDUCED!!! I have started to buy and sell guitars. Some mean little. I have an ARIA upstairs that has a severe case of Martin envy. Not that it sounds awful or that it looks dreadful. It doesn't sound dreadful. It is just a little soulless.

There are others that have come my way that are seriously difficult to consign to the sale sign. There was another Aria. Oh twas a magnificent thing McGee. Looked real and solid and sounded like bells with cinnamon over ice. There's a Yamaha that is a known quantity. Been around. Reproduced and multiplied. Inhabits whole sub continents. It has had labels of all hues. From the coveted red to the respected tan and a few stops in the black region. But it is solid and light and plays like someone who has rediscovered tap dancing on bronze strings. My fingers have such an easy time moving up and down the neck. There is no effort to a chord. Certainly it ain't no slide guitar.

So, eventually, I do sell them. They are brief but passionate affairs of short lived intense devotion. I carry pictures of them in my wallet and sigh when I show them around the bar.

Electronic Amber: Melissa Hechtman, Melissa Delaguna

I am writing this for a particular reason. The reason is that if anyone does a search on the web with Google, Bing or any of them and they want to know about my late wife (that is just so polite isn't it?) Melissa Hechtman before marriage Melissa Ann Lopez deLeo deLaguna they will end up with a woman, who is nice I suppose, who works at some University in Florida. They would not find any mention of my wife. So...here is the mention. Now she will show up in a search and she will not be lost to the internet. It is a method of preservation. A sort of electronic amber.

"Nothing's for always. I won't pretend."

It's not that I've run out of things to write about. I haven't. I've been running a guitar business and that has taken so much time. But if you're going to have your own leetle business there is a great pleasure in having it be about something you love. I love guitars. I do. I do. I love the feel of my callouses on my left hand's fingers. I love the screwing around without regard to official chords and tunings. What I do is buy and sell guitars. I love the buying. I am not overly keen on selling. However, as I am in need of whatever extra cash I can create I just grit my teeth ( and the dentist has high co-pays by the by) and sell the damn things. Currently there are two. I'll get boring here and you can bail out if you feel a need. No hard feelings. One is an itty bitty little travel thingy called a "Joey" by Washburn. I am no fan of Washburns. For those of you who care for them I ask your forgiveness, I don't like Washburn because even though there was indeed a real company called Washburn that was in, I hope I'm right here, Chicago it went mechullah (Google the word. Yiddish if you must know). Bye bye. The name has been resurrected and there is no connection with the original company other than the fact that, I think, the new company is in Chicago and...well....that's it really. It is not a Washburn. It is something else. Not a bad something else but something else. I understand the marketing aspect. I do indeed. Another similar story can be woven about Epiphone. I actually did a good deal of reading about that company. It is gone also. However it is now the name Gibson puts on it's Gibsons that look like Gibsons but aren't Gibsons because they are made somewhere else where the medium of exchange is not the slowly shrinking greenback. Not that they aren't nice for the money. Well, let me take that back. Some of them are okay. I had one once. A Jumbo. It took three takes to get that picture distributed. I had to go through two of them before I got one that played like it was a guitar and not a representation of a guitar. More of an art project. Oh...this little thing. (I do go on.) is just so adorable. Looks like a larger ukulele or Bilbo's favorite guitar. It is lovely. Solid spruce top. Ovankol back and sides and a neck that is a weapon in six states. "Please mister don't hit me with that guitar. I really did enjoy the song. Honest!" Sounds like feces in E but dances a soprano sort of beauty in A. I am selling it. I do not want to lose it but I will sell it. I am hard man. Rock hard. Knife at the ankle and a sense of doubt about everyone. Arghhhh.  Another one is more disturbing. It is an Aria (owner of the Japanese company that made it was anmed Arai. See. Aria...Arai? Get it. See if you take the i and the a) It is just beautiful. Beautiful. It has a headstock that angles in. I like that. Less stress on the strings. It has a solid spruce top and mahogany back and sides and neck and headstock also I think. It is magnificent. I mean that. It sings like a combination of Janis Joplin. Maria Muldaur and Judy Collins. It picks great and strums wonderfully. It could disguise itself as some luthier's wet dream. I love it. I will sell it. I have to. It's a business isn't it?  For me a very difficult one. However it seems consistent with my life. A life where things kept changing without anyone sending me a note about it. Wrote a song once. "Nothing's for always. I won't pretend that the things I've seen today will come again. Nothing's for always. So far away from now I count the places that I've been. And I count my sometimes friends." So careers come and careers go. Lovers have come and gone. Wives. Gone one way or another. Some out of annoyance some suffering from a severe case of dead. I can't forget most of them. I have remnants of the careers. Radio. Politics. Money. Company's  I've owned and businesses I've started. Places I've lived. So. This exquisite guitar will go. It will. I will never forget it. That's me. I am my own index. Hey. "Nothing's for always. I won't pretend."

I think sometimes about what I've and who I sang to. Of the songs I've written and forgotten. I think of the moments when I expressed in song what I couldn't express in words all by themselves. Tonight with the guitar in my hand I think of them and feel a little overwhelmed. But just a little.

Another Note About That Guitar

I now buy and sell guitars. I have a little little little business. Small. So guitars come and go. I have the opportunity to hold them and play them. That is a delight. But that Sigma. That old Sigma has more music in it then any other guitar I have ever owned. I am quite surprised. One would think that these delightful but lifeless objects were just the recipient of inspiration and not the cause of it. I would think that there are many objects that are ultimately interchangeable. A shovel? A rag? A blender? But this guitar enables progressions and combinations that I swear I did not think of. My fingers go to the chord it wants to sing that moment. There are fingerings it demands and rhythms it prefers. This morning I played a B 7th chords at the, what, sixth or seventh fret. As God is my witness I have never played that before. Then to other locations on the fret board that I have not visited often and with little success. I am amazed. I am surprised. And I don't get it. There have been mystical moments in my life. Not a lot and easily pooh poohed ( that is a damn odd phrase ) by people. There is the incident f the Dove soap. Connie, you never met her, was murdered. That was the exclamation point of her life. I cared for her. I affaired with her. I assumed affection on her part. Decades later in an uncomfortable chair at a CLUB that, under normal circumstances, has only just let people of Hebraic origin to propose membership and perhaps be accepted, someone with very blond hair and blue eyes told me how much she loved me. Let us all say hello to Ted the putz. There I was at the store I was running exhausted and exhausted and thinking of her for some reasons. This was decades later. Decades. My co-manager walked in with two bars of Dove soap and told me she thought I would want them,. She was at a loss to explain why I would want them. I asked her how she came to that conclusion As I mentioned she was not up on that one. She was clueless. Then there is the Erik Satie incident. I went to the graveyard/cemetery to dampen my eyes on the day that my first wife, Melissa Ann Lopez deLeo Delaguna (love the whole thing) died. As I left the place I turned on WQXR the classical station in NYC and on came here favorite piece of music. Not her almost favorite. Not my imagined favorite. But her fucking favorite piece of fucking music. Erik Saties' Gymnopedie No. #1. Riddle me one Batman.Now there is the wooden thing with strings. I miss holding right now.

Rode Hard And Put Away Wet - Mojo Magic - The Sequel

Went ahead and posted it. I did. Then, this morning, I cancelled the sale put a new strap on it and played the drek out of it. It is such a damn fine guitar.

Rode Hard And Put Away Wet - Mojo Magic

Somebody else said this....

"Mojo or MoJo comes from the mystical religion of voodoo, a catch-all phrase for most beliefs blended from African and Christian beliefs. Over simplified, mojo is the meta-physical magic a voodoo practicioner uses to influence the physical world.

When used in reference to a guitar or other musical instrument, it refers to the supposed magic the instrument has gleaned from being played by talented, soulful musicians who coaxed sometimes incredible music from the instrument.

Usage example: "That beat-up guitar I scored for twenty bucks from a pawn shop sure looks like ass, but MAN, when I play it, it's like the mojo in it is playing ME! I NEVER sounded so good!"

I buy and sell guitars. I would rather just buy guitars and not sell them. I have pangs of immediate regret each time I list a guitar for sale on Ebay. I get a feeling in my gut of intense potential loss of the thing. It is a thing isn't it? Inanimate. Dead. Lifeless. Of course it is. I know that. But when you interact with a guitar in anyway it is something else. It is not the only object that has this attribute. Any tool becomes something else. A hammer sitting in a tool box is something else five minutes later when it is your hand removing a nail or knocking off stubborn piece of wood from a collapsing structure. It becomes an extension of you. We know that. A musical instrument becomes a means of expression and not just a tool. A guitar in my hand is more than a guitar in a box. A guitar I look at and admire is more than just a construct of wood and other components.I recently acquired a guitar I have decided to sell. The reason being is that I got it for a good price and I can turn around and sell it at a reasonable price and make a profit. I bought it and took it home to photograph and slap up on EBay. But I wasn't able to put it down after bringing it home. This morning when I got up I went into the room I keep guitars in and played it for a few minutes. It is a piece of work and I want to write a bit about it.

It is a Sigma made in Korea somewhere between 1984 and 1993 maybe 94. So at it's youngest it's 17 years old and at its oldest its 27 years old. Not a kid as guitars go. Not ancient but not a kid. It sounds great. Really. I was surprised at the tone. But that is not what fascinates me most although if it didn't sound good I wouldn't be writing this I suppose. When is interesting and romantic is how steadily someone played it and for how long. It is not a walking skeleton like Willie Nelson's guitar. But the wear on the frets is evidence of serious playing. The rosewood has held up well. There are no real grooves worn into the fingerboard but the initial oiled and finished Rosewood is worn away so that the color is lightening. The area above the sound hole has some pick marks made with energy but not a mass of them. The pickguard has some scratches but, likewise, not a huge amount. There are some scratches to the neck.  It appears as if a strap screw was placed into the side of the heal at sometime. There are remnants of a strap still there. Let us now be forensic.  The wear of the frets is almost equal on all the frets from the first to twelfth. So someone was up and down the guitar neck often. Therefore the player must have been a bit more than competent to use the whole board. That requires dexterity and talent and a mess of musical ability. The lack of more than a few scratches above or below the sound hold would indicate a lot of finger-picking in comparison to a lot of strumming. The addition of the strap screw in the heel of the neck would seem to suggest that whoever played it played it standing up. In addition having the strap attached below the fretboard lends credence to my idea about competent use of the fretboard top chording and/or playing a playing notes with a sort of Tommy Emmanuel talent.There are few scratches on the back so, once again, the biped who played it took care to remove the belt buckle from contact with the guitar.

Choosing an early Sigma would, possibly, also indicate a knowledge of guitars because a cheap Martin product is still a Martin product.

So someone played it a lot. This worn guitar. If playing a lot "opens up" a guitar this guitar is wide open. It fingers and chords well and sounds just fine. Just fine.

You shouldn't buy a guitar on looks. I say that a lot. No point really. Sound and character. Sometimes the two are the same thing.

I love this guitar. I do. I do. Will sell it because that is why I bought it but I will miss it when it goes.

Well...shit...maybe I won't sell it.

It has way too much mojo.

It's red and it sparkles.

I have this idea I can make money selling guitars. I probably can. Not a great deal you understand but enough to make the process worthwhile. The problem with the idea, and modest success, of the thing is my emotional ties to some of the guitars. I have never cared about "things" as anything more than "things". I have a certain residual affection for a few cars. My first, a TR-4, of course. Cool wheels. A particular copper colored 1969 American Motors Javelin. I have attachment to things my son has given me, That makes sense. But at no time did the emotion regarding these things become something that one would have for...well..your dog or your cat. That is not the best analogy but it is the one that just arrived. I have never had an ache for a thing. Never. But I am finding as I age, like a smelly cheese, that I have definite and undeniable attachments bordering on the clinical for certain guitars. Well...that's putting it too narrowly...all my guitars. This has become delightfully melancholic of late with my purchase, with full intent to sell, a solid body electric guitar made by Gretsch. I don't play electric guitars. Never have. I have a few that are ACOUSTIC electric. I even have a cheap ass Squier acoustic/electric that looks a bit like an electric is supposed to look. Hell. I have an amp!! But from the moment this guitar was mine I couldn't take my eyes off it. I couldn't put it down. I couldn't stop putting my left hand on the neck as if it wasn't a guitar but Nefertiti herself. I have changed her strings and polished her. I have cleaned the humbuckers and polished the knobs. I never want to be without it and yet I am selling it. Perhaps the things that we most value are those we can "sell" the best. Perhaps. I really don't don't know. But this is a beautiful, beautiful inanimate living thing. I guess. I have the oddest impression that gad I had this thing earlier in my life (maybe 18 when I was at an alternative college with a bunch of alternative students studying in alternative ways) the chapters after that acquisition mighty have bee different. Did I tell you it's red and it sparkles? Did I tell you about it's neck?

A Guitar Built By Michael Gurian

Sort of a slope shoulder Jumbo.

Michael Gurian and The 92nd Street Y

I was working as an assistant buyer for National Shirt Shops. It was 1969 or it was late 1969 on the way to a nearby 1970.  I was married and had been married for close to two years. I was 21. She was 21. We got married young. We got married, perhaps, too soon. There is no way to determine that. Back then in the pre-internet/Google/Search Engine/List Serv/email/smart ass phone age you found out about things by referencing a piece of paper. This piece of paper could take the form of a flyer which was a single sheet of paper or a sign or a newspaper of some sort. Sometimes you found out about things because someone told you. Sometimes you would pass a place and there would be a sign outside announcing something of some sort. Through the graces of one of these methods of archaic communication I found out about a course in guitar construction. It was to be taught by someone named Michael Gurian. At this point the Guitar cognoscenti reading this are supposed to say, “Ooooooo Michael Gurian!!!” (For those of you who are not saying Oooooooo please go to Google and Google his name.) Wait…I’ll make it easy….here:

http://www.vintagemandolin.com/gurian/gurian.html

The classes were taught at the 92^nd Street Y in Manhattan. That’s YMHA for clarity.  I remember the streets around the Y in the evening when I went to the classes. I remember the sun in the mornings when I traveled into the city from Long Island to take classes. I remember making the metal outline for the top of the guitar. I remember driving to the Bronx with Melissa next to me to purchase tools at Constantine on 2050 Eastchester Rd. I remember that day clearly. The quality of the bright sun and the green of the trees as we drove through some park. I can remember buying my planes and files.

She was so interested in what I was doing. It was fun. Around the same time I was offered a job at a company in semi-rural Pennsylvania. It was a great deal more money and it was near her Aunt and Grandmother who BOTH taught at Bryn Mawr College. I took the job and left the classes of Michael Gurian who went on to build wonderful, wonderful guitars. I still had the template for the guitar tops then. I had it for years but I don’t have it now. I don’t have the planes or the files. I also don’t have Melissa.  That was my wife’s name.

So now I collect guitars. I play guitars and, of course, I want to build guitars.  I wish I had finished the class. It might have altered my life profoundly. It would have. Not that I would time machine my way back there if I was science fictioned in some incomprehensible way. My life is good now, Really. But, still, I might have built some splendid guitars in my workshop with the trees in the backyard and a few kids and dogs and a stream I would hope and…well….and.

Who doesn't?

We all want to be something we imagine we might be. We try on the persona we desire and see if it fits and then play make believe as if we were five and a super hero of some sort flying through the air or defeating some extraordinary foe. When I got to Shimer College I came with a guitar and a vague political agenda. Having written lyrics for a music company for a very short time (and not having an iota of success with any of my partners) I thought of myself as...well.. sort of musical and protesty and intelligent and intellectual. After all I came from New York and had actually spent time in THE VILLAGE. I had heard Pete Seeger. I had heard Bruce Murdoch. I had heard Patrick Sky and The Simon Sisters. I had actually bought copies of Sing Out and Broadside. I even had the pleasure of dressing up in the same shirt as three other guys and making believe we were The Brothers Four or The Highwaymen or The Kingston Trio or somebody. I had even written the words and MUSIC to some songs that, honestly, were not all that good. So I showed in the The Middle of Nowhere, Illinois at what was then, arguably, the strangest college in the country. It is not that I was full of myself. But it was not as if I was empty either. I remember the first time I took the beloved Goya N-21 out of it's chocolate brown case and began to play something or other I had written. Someone, and I do not for the life of me remember who, came around to listen. I finished and said, "I wrote that. I write songs." He replied, "Who doesn't?" Boom. I recovered and the fella in the picture up there with the stinking stupid flower in his hair. (A FRIGGING FLOWER!!) is me making believe I was someone I wasn't but wanted to be for that moment when the camera shutter shuttered. I don't know where he went actually. He began to fade as time went on. Now I am not at all sure I remember him all that well. Of course I am still playing around with guitars. I still write songs but, hell, "Who doesn't?"

More About The Greco G-4

This is a description of the guitar I purchased.

"This guitar was not an entry-level guitar in its day – the Greco line was Goya’s mid-priced offering, hand-built in Yugoslavia by Old World craftsmen. This guitar sold for $69.50 in 1965, which translates to about $470.00 in today’s dollars. Grand concert sized, 12 frets to the body. PLEASE NOTE: This guitar needs a little TLC before it is ready to rock. It could really benefit from new tuners, as the stock tuners are of low quality, and are quite difficult to turn. The guitar could also use a setup. It does not appear to need a neck reset - but I’m by no means an expert on luthiery. The guitar does have an adjustable truss rod. That said, this is a really cool guitar. It’s got an alpine spruce top, maple back and sides, possibly a Brazilian rosewood fretboard (hard to tell if it’s Brazilian or Indian, but Braz was still in common use back in 1965), lacquer finish, celluloid pickguard, nicely aged binding on the top and back, and a nice medium chunky neck that is very comfortable to play."

The Greco G-4

It is pretty isn't it?

Changing Strings

This weekend I restrung four guitars. I also oiled the two satin finish guitars and cleaned polished the the other two. The two satin finish guitars were my Guild DCE-1 and the Goya N21. The remaining two were my Madeira A-9 and my Greco....????. Oi. I can't remember the model of the Greco. Small body. Fifteen inch lower bout and shallow. A beautiful sunburst finish though. A wonderful tan going to a brown without any hint of red. I discovered, in the activity, that this is one of the few activities in my life that is timeless. It is almost meditative in that the activity flows in and of itself without relevance to events around it. In addition, in the midst of the activity, I forgot about how badly I was feeling physically. It doesn't matter what was causing the discomfort. Nothing terminal....I think. The ritual aspect of the process became absorbing. The placing of the guitar on my work table. The neck resting in the saddle I made from plastic foam and covered in soft rubber webbing and then covered again in toweling. Then the removal of the strings with the power winder in which I had placed four new AA batteries. After that the cleaning and oiling or polishing. Buffing is next and then the inspection and, in most cases, rebuffing the guitar, Oiling the fretboard and the bridge with a medical swab I had swiped from Dr. Williams' office the last time I went for a blood test. Wiping the excess oil off with a tissue.Next is the opening of the box of new strings after, of course, reading the blurbs on the outside and reconsidering the gauge I had chosen. This weekend I had decided to increase the gauges staring with 1E at 12mm. I was hoping for a firm feel in the picking and the chording and, perhaps, a bigger sound. I used Dean Markley Helix strings for the first time. There is the opening of the envelope that holds the string and, in my case, the shaking of the coiled wire so that it pops open.  Then the placing of the string in the bridge hole and the insertion of the pin in its correct position. Aiming the string in the stem hole on the tuner and carefully using the power winder to tighten the string using one finger to hold the pin in as I do it. Then the hand tightening and tuning and then tuning again as the strings stretch and then tuning them again and again as the strings settle in. After that is the marvelous moment, one hopes, of some sound that causes a momentary elimination of the rest of the world. Just the sound and me. Just the sound and me. Yesterday was a triumph. Well, mostly a triumph, the 6E on the Greco is a wee bit thumpy but I believe it is the guitar itself. The last guitar I worked on was the Madeira A-9 and after it was done and tuned and strummed I looked at it and was transported to a place of transcendent joy, I propped it up on it's bottom on the workbench and leaned it against the wall and then stepped back. It was exquisite. It was beautiful. So very beautiful. I went downstairs and brought Beth up and asked her to look at it and see how beautiful it was. She agreed. Tonight, when I get home, I am going to play the four them sequentially in the same order that I restrung them. I look forward to it with great and loving anticipation.

I want to LOVE Martin Guitars

I want to LOVE Martin Guitars. I do. So help me I really do. I know I am supposed to covet all the models or most of the models. I know I am supposed to salivate and palpitate and pulsate at the unique and most splendid of sounds, I don't. Once again I want to. I do. Really. I play them when I go to Guitar Center. I play them at Sam Ash. I play other people's Martins. I have been to the Factory. Lo...I have made the pilgrimage with my son. I have walked the hallowed halls. I HAVE TRIED!!!. I have. Lord help me please...I have tried. I have played the sizes and the shapes and yes they are fine but it ain't the sound my soul sings with. This is not to say that the rest of the brethren in the six string convocation (and 12...and, well seven if you're Russian) are not right and I am just deaf. (Pronounced deef). Of course it may be because I'm over here holding it and you're over there listening to it. That is always the problem when choosing and judging and buying a guitar isn't it? That's why those clever luthiers (and Breedlove now owned by "Two Old Hippies" right?) has that top hole in the side aimed at your ears. But....what does that do to the front end? Well.........I play Guilds in that G pantheon of American BIG manufacturers. GUILDGIBSONGRETSCH. I love Guilds. I do not have enough Guilds.I have two and a half. The half being a Japanese Madeira A-9. Which is pretty damn fine sounding thank you.I love my other guitars. I have a few. A few more than a few. Perhaps one day a Martin will thrill me. That sort of enlarged and inflated heartbeat thing.

I think I was 17

I think I am 17 in this picture. I might be older. I am not at all sure. I could be 18. Not that it matters all that much but I think this is the earliest picture of me with a guitar. It is a 1965 Goya N-21 made from Mahogany. I still have an N-21. It is not the same one. The first one was splintered into pieces in an automobile accident. I love the size and the sound. Currently it has Silk and Steel strings on it. I don't know. I liked them initially but they don't shimmer. Capiche?  The young lady to my right was my girlfriend at that time. She was number one on my mother's list of who I should marry and procreate with. I understand her reasoning. Pretty. Jewish and pretty. Jewish and pretty and well off. Jewish and pretty with blond hair and well off and a good sense of humor and her family belonged to the same synagogue. I get the point in retrospect. But Mom, if you are out there somewhere at the eternal and heavenly Hadassah meeting in the sky. You should meet Beth. You'd kvell. *

* KVELL: To beam with pride and pleasure, Jewish parents are prone to kvell over their children's achievements.

Since the age of 16 I have held guitars in my hands

Since the age of 16 I have held guitars in my hands. Of all the external and corporeal elements of my life that exist as a continuous chosen thread guitars are primary if not singular. I accept them as a center of creativity and contemplation. I accept them as a primary meditative device. The very act of holding a guitar seems to be a return to a state of normalcy. Times without one in my hands being emptier. I love them as I love no other non sentient thing. I'm crazy about the things. I love to touch them and smell them. I love frets and tuning mechanisms and bridges and strings. I think that most of the important events in my life have either included or been punctuated with guitars. I have a goodly number but I do not have enough. I love the ones I have and I search for more. They are a source of joy. They are a source of frustration when I can't get rid of a buzz or an overtone or some other problem. They are organic and reactive. Too dry or too damp or too cold or too hot are cautionary measurements that need to be monitored. But, I say with joy in my gut, I love them. I do. I do. I do.