GUITAR RELATIONSHIPS? IT’S NOT THAT COMPLICATED

Guitar relationships are like any other. Some are better than others, and we remember them all.

The best part about guitar relationships? They last a lifetime.

Can’t say that about every relationship, unless there’s a guitar link. There’s something about music creating the ties that bind.

But where does it start? By making something that wasn’t there before you started.

A pile of wood turns into furniture, a roll of fabric turns into a shirt, silence turns into comforting sounds.

Where it started? Jantsen Music in Pony Village.

My parents bought a guitar and lessons for my birthday one year. It felt special because I was the only kid in the family who showed musical interest. The first song I practiced was Down In The Valley.

It was a big hit on The Andy Griffith Show.

My Kay guitar had high action and steel strings and made my fingers hurt. And it wasn’t rock and roll. I switched to the saxophone, a B flat tenor.

My musical interest didn’t make it through school band, but it lasted a few years before my guitar relationships resumed.

Breaking Up Was Hard To Do

In the middle of living happily ever after in my mid-twenties, things changed.

Without the grizzly details, I found myself living alone in Brooklyn, NY. My girl ran off with a loser, and I ran off with her guitar.

She was an accomplished woman who listened to her divorced momma’s advice and dumped me so she could marry a better man, divorce him, marry another better man, divorce him, then get married for real.

Smart kid collecting extra bags along the way.

Her guitar was a cheap classical with nylon strings and a delaminated back in a Gibson electric guitar case. Call it a parting gift from the back of a closet.

The case was the real prize, but the broken backed guitar played like it had distortion on the low strings. It was a step up from the hard stringed Kay.

I bought a tuning fork and fiddled around on the fingerboard while I sat by my Brooklyn window like a character in a Hopper painting watching time drag by.

Mine was an urban neighborhood carved up by expressways that started in better places and ended the same way. The street I lived on dead-ended on a cyclone fence with the fast road on the other side.

On weekend nights, instead of fireworks, the neighbors used the dead-end to dump stolen cars they’d stripped, and set them on fire. It wasn’t my kind of party since I was the new guy, but it was an incredible scene.

No police or firemen ever showed up to that dance.

Guitar Relationships With Other Guitar Players

My first real guitar, a playable instrument, was a present from a girlfriend who knew the way to a man’s heart. At least my heart.

We went to the guitar store and tried a few acoustics. The best one I played was a beautiful Guild. It wasn’t the one I left with.

On the walk home I met a guitar playing guy looking for a practice partner. We got together, learned a few songs, and planned on playing an open mic. The night before the gig he called, drunk called, and told me all about his music career and how good he was and how lucky I was.

He sounded different. I talked to his wife the next day and she explained a few things. None of it good. We didn’t make the open mic.

I learned about the heartbreak of music, the good players who never caught a break and spent their lives in bitter review of who they could have been. That’s not my story, not my regret. I’m still amazed to play a recognizable song.

The guitar I left the store with was a Vega. The claim to fame was the pieces were cut out in Europe and shipped to the Martin Factory for assembly. So it’s a Martin, a Martin-lite. I’ve still got it. Still have my original Kay, but not the Brooklyn classical growler.

Guitar Girls Are The Best

When my wife was still in girlfriend class learning how to land a big fish, me, she figured out my weak spot.

The second after we decided we might be serious, we went to the guitar store. We left with a kit that included a Strat knockoff that wouldn’t stay in tune, and a tiny amp with a three inch speaker.

It was love at first sight. From there we got married and had kids, and when I turned forty, we went to Tigard Music.

The joke about mid-life crisis was a new guitar, or a car. I wasn’t having a crisis, but I was forty.

I had a Midnight Wine colored American Standard Strat for the next decade. Wife called it Eggplant colored and the guitar store guys loved asking how my eggplant was doing.

How cool was that? Not so much. I eventually sold it to guy who played in a church band for $666.00. He didn’t blink an eye.

Man-Time Guitar Relationships

Getting married helped with relationship progress. As we age we talk about what might happen if one of us dies before the other. I’m not the one who brings it up, and I’m not sure why it comes up at all.

“If I die first . . . ,” she starts.

I cut it off with, “You’re not dying, honey.”

“But, if I die first . . . ,” she continues.

“I’m not getting re-married.”

“I don’t want you to be lonely.”

“Remember when we first met? Did I seem lonely without you then?”

“No, you had friends in your building, in the neighborhood, across the country.”

“Did I have a girlfriend?”

“I can’t keep up with who you dated before we got married.”

“If you die first, I don’t think I’ll be lonely. But, if I am, I have a guitar.”

Her: “Are you saying guitar relationships are more important than people?”

Me: “I’m taking requests.”

If this strikes a chord with you, leave a comment, maybe a song.