Projects. Some we think about for weeks and months, making notes, researching, structuring and restructuring in our brain. Ciphering on it. Some have been hanging around for years, waiting patiently for our attention. Some we just can’t resist taking on.
There’s a rough running but rust free MGB convertible taking up space in the garage. I need to methodically go through it, adjust the valves, set the timing, gap the points. Put new spark plugs in, sync the carbs, and I believe it should be road ready.
And the Triumph motorcycle that needs to come out into the sunlight, washed, with a fresh oil change and aired up tires, for the riding season. Which is, like, now. These May days are calling and I can do it in a couple of hours. Just haven’t gotten to it yet. Soon. Next week.
But today I have a choice. Stay in the city and tackle the bike and the car, along with other semi cerebral content writing/editing type stuff. Or drive up to Blue Ridge, work outside, mow, plant, feed the birds and horses, along with the same semi cerebral writing/editing stuff. Which, as a non negotiable, I’m going to do wherever I am anyway.
Bottom line, Blue Ridge grass is knee high and has to be mowed. Mother Nature’s project that waits for no man. So I load up the truck, but also bring along a couple of guitars that need some attention and a little love. Taylor guitars.
My introduction to Taylors came at Merlefest in 1989. A seminal bluegrass festival in Deep Gap, North Carolina put on by Doc Watson, one of the great bluegrass guitar players. Doc, incidently, is also completely blind. The festival is in memory of his son, Merle, another great player, struck down in the prime of life by a tractor accident on the family farm.
I walked into the Taylor tent and Doc was there, just inside the door playing from a folding chair, to an audience of just a handful. I moved closer, and stood transfixed as the master played. Between songs he spoke to me.
“How are you today, young man?”
“Mister Watson, just enjoying your playing, sir.”
“Please, call me Doc.”
How he knew I was young, or how he even knew I was there remains a mystery, though one I bank on.
A legend, a superstar. A father who had lost his only son. The obvious joy in his playing belied the tragedy he had known. Or maybe fueled it. I had entered that place where we aren’t often allowed. Recognition of something more. It moved me then, as the thought of it still does.
When Doc took a break I walked around the Taylor tent, and imagined the kind of life I would have if I possessed a Taylor guitar. Too expensive at the time, since then, multiple Taylors have enriched my life. Not as much as Martins but close. Very close.
Anyway.
One of the said Taylors came from my brother, who’d had it since new, but it had been sitting around for a while. I asked him about it and he offered to sell it to me. He was in a phase where he was simplifying his life, jettisoning the unnecessary, slimming down, going all in on the Zen. Minimalist, guitarless. Only owning a simple bowl for his rice. Or maybe just a Frisbee, doing double duty as both a bowl and pastime, in the manner of the wandering hippie priest. I respect that, and tried to help him out. Took a guitar off his hands. The way the world should work.
I pulled it out of the case yesterday, and realized it still had the original strings on it, the strings it probably came from the factory with. Like, fifteen years ago. And the neck had slowly loosened up to where the action was high. Really high. Almost unplayably high. This won’t do, I said to myself, and put it in the truck.
The other guitar I just bought off Craigslist from a guy in Chattanooga. It caught my eye because it is an obscurely interesting Taylor, the last year, 2006, that this particular guitar line was still built in the US, at the Taylor factory in El Cajon, California. It is also solid wood, as opposed to laminated back and sides. A plus for acoustic guitar lovers. The next year, if my research is correct, its manufacture was moved to the Mexico plant, and it was no longer solid wood. Pay attention. There will be a test later.
Matt, the owner, met me halfway between Chattanooga and Atlanta at the Buc-ee’s in Calhoun. In the parking lot I played it and told him, honestly and in a non confrontational way, that this was the worst playing Taylor I had ever played. It was, but I thought I could fix it. Matt was a good guy and knocked another $50 off the price. I paid him, we shook hands, and parted friends. With a new guitar in the back seat, I was giddy all the way home.
So here is where I have to admit. I’m not a very good guitar player. I wish I was, maybe could have been had I practiced more. I have a decent right hand, and can usually find the rhythm in a piece. But mainly, I just love guitars, the shape of them, the look of them, the feel of them.
Like books, I just love the idea of them. Having them around makes me feel better about everything. Food, knowledge, exercise, the economy. Interpersonal relationships. I could go on. Open a book, pick up a guitar. Take a moment for a closer, deeper look. At whatever moves you toward what you seek.
I roll into the cabin drive in the late afternoon rain. Guitars inside, I open the cases and pull them out, lean them against the wall. It’s been a long winter for them of dry central heating, neglect, and no solid food. I’ll leave them there for a day or two, soaking up the fresh mountain air and good Georgia humidity. Then we’ll get down to it, a thorough cleaning, fresh strings and neck adjustment. A little lemon oil and love. Tune em up and play.
Is that a smile I’m seeing or just the seductive curve of your pickguard…
And, as a side note, just ordered Quantum Criminals. Alex Pappademas & Joan Lemay (American Music Series.) University of Texas Press. On Steely Dan, one of the greatest guitar bands of all time. One of the greatest bands, period, of all time. Most people don’t think of them as a guitar band, but no Steely Dan song ever came without impeccable playing by some of the world’s best guitarists, be it Larry Carlton, Denny Dias, or Jeff “Skunk” Baxter. For further guitar reading (you know who you are) check this one out.
The first piece of furniture I ever got with my husband was a 12 string Ovation guitar.. I have it still. We got that INSTEAD of a piece of furniture. He ended up with about 7 guitars.
I learned to play on a 12 string. Ovation makes great guitars!
Smiling guitars! 😊 great story.
When Pam and I moved to Nashville because I fancied myself a songwriter, I NEVER described myself as a guitar player. It was a tool to write lyrics. If u say u r a guitar player there … u better be good!
I believe u have captured the allure & mystique of guitars to those of us who can’t seem to stop adoring them. Great read buddy. SS