{"id":2489,"date":"2022-04-04T19:27:21","date_gmt":"2022-04-04T19:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=2489"},"modified":"2022-04-04T19:30:23","modified_gmt":"2022-04-04T19:30:23","slug":"from-the-vaults-guitars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=2489","title":{"rendered":"From the Vaults: Guitars"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By now, readers of these <\/span>FTV <\/span><\/i>ramblings are well aware that \u2018drummer\u2019 is my main musical gig.\u00a0 I was inspired early on by the likes of Dave Clark (of the Dave Clark Five) to be a singing drummer and as such acted as the lead or co-lead singer in every band I was in.\u00a0 I was in second grade when my sister decided she wasn\u2019t really interested in learning to play the piano so my mother\u2019s dream of having a piano player in the family got passed on to me.\u00a0 I did okay but didn\u2019t stick with it long enough to become a fluent player.\u00a0 I remembered enough about the mechanics of playing to revisit my keyboard roots in college, but my mother had to wait until I married my church organist \/ piano playing wife, Christine, to have a true player in the family.\u00a0 I am not complaining because the lessons I took in third and fourth grade helped me a lot when I started my\u00a0 drum lessons in fifth grade.\u00a0 Being pre armed with time signatures, notes, and rhythm pattern recognition (already in my brain from piano lessons) put me a leg up on the other drummer candidates who were starting from scratch.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0I can also thank (or blame) my sister for my interest in guitar.\u00a0 She talked the folks into getting her an acoustic guitar for Christmas after the piano lessons didn\u2019t work out, but I am not sure how much she played it.\u00a0 Around my sophomore year in high school, rehearsing with my future bandmates in The Twig sparked enough interest in guitar for me to dust off sis\u2019s old Airline six string and start teaching myself the basics.\u00a0 Bass player Mike was nice enough to show me how to tune the dang thing and some basic chords.\u00a0 The Airline (a model marketed by the Montgomery Ward catalog store) had a rather thin neck which made fingering chords a little tricky.\u00a0 The strings sat high enough so one could probably have used it to shoot arrows.\u00a0 It was sturdy enough I could have paddled a canoe with it if necessary. \u00a0 For a beginner like me, it helped build my finger strength and calluses up in a short period of time.\u00a0 Noodling around on Gene\u2019s Ovation electric before band practice one day, Mike said, \u201cHey, you have been practicing.\u201d\u00a0 I took this as a compliment until he added, \u201cRaisanen, as a guitar player, you are a pretty good drummer.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When we formed the band Sledgehammer four years later, Mike and I hadn\u2019t seen each other let alone played any music together for quite a while (he was at MTU and I was at NMU).\u00a0 In an almost cosmic replay from The Twig days, I was noodling around on Barry\u2019s Fender Stratocaster when Mike started to say, \u201cYou know, as a guitar player . . .\u201d I finished it for him, \u201cI know, I am a pretty good drummer.\u201d\u00a0 Mike\u2019s look told me he thought I had read his mind so I reminded him this was not the first time he had said this to me.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t quite ready to move to the stage front and lead the band playing guitar, but I had improved.\u00a0 Having carried that old Airline acoustic with me for four summers working while living off the grid (at the Huron Mountain Club near Big Bay and at Northern Michigan University\u2019s field station near Munising), I spent a lot of time practicing.\u00a0 I drove my poor HMC roomies nuts repeating riffs and chords between kitchen shifts.\u00a0 My second year roommate said \u2018If I ever hear that Moody Blues thing again (taken from <\/span>The Story in Your Eyes)<\/span><\/i>, I will scream!\u201d\u00a0 I spent many weekends at the field station holding down the fort alone while keeping the generator running so I was able to practice without driving anyone else bonkers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In between The Twig and Sledgehammer, I got some practical playing advice from my second band\u2019s guitar player, Ray \u2018the human jukebox\u2019.\u00a0 Ray wanted to learn a few acoustic numbers to play at bar gigs when the crowd was thin or they weren\u2019t oiled up enough to want to dance.\u00a0 He took the old Airline, tweaked it into better playing condition and gave me some pointers on playing acoustic rhythm guitar while singing.\u00a0 We learned songs like CSN&Y\u2019s <\/span>Ohio, Teach Your Children, <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Helpless <\/span><\/i>and had a lot of fun performing them durning the odd slow set<\/span>.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 Knockdown was a band ahead of the times as the whole MTV <\/span>Unplugged<\/span><\/i> era was still fifteen years in the future.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t explain all this in response to Mike\u2019s bit of deja vu, but I knew I had progressed enough to satisfy myself.\u00a0 In fact, I had already begun thinking about upgrading to a new guitar.\u00a0 When I arrived in Ontonagon to begin my teaching career in the fall of 1975, the old Airline acoustic came with me.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Credit for scoring my new guitar goes to former Ontonagon Area Schools art teacher Tom Bugni.\u00a0 About the time I began filling in as a drummer for Easy Money, Tom and I had begun discussing music over lunch.\u00a0 He mentioned his friend was coming up north for his annual skiing vacation.\u00a0 Tom said Larry Henrickson owned a shop called Axe-In-Hand in DeKalb, Illinois and on his last trip to Ontonagon, he had brought along a Yamaha six string acoustic guitar for Tom to try.\u00a0 Bugni wanted to learn to play so he bought it.\u00a0 I inquired if the same model could be purchased with a built-in pick-up.\u00a0 One thing led to another and when Larry came for his next visit, he brought me the same model Yamaha as Tom had purchased with the requested on board pick-up.\u00a0 The string action on the new guitar made it much easier to play thus allowing me to step up my guitar noodling a notch or two.\u00a0 The old Airline ended up at camp and if memory serves me correctly, my sister reclaimed it.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t seen it in over forty years, but I still have fond memories of my first \u2018ax\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When Knockdown would do our acoustic sets, we had to rearrange the stage a little so I could use my vocal boom mic on the guitar.\u00a0 Later, the built-in pick- up on the Yamaha only required a guitar cord and a place to plug it in on the occasions when I got to step out front to perform.\u00a0 The drums were still my main musical gig, but I had a lot of fun playing tunes with John Fischer and Bonnie Wentela at the old Hootenannies held at the Ontonagon Area Schools.\u00a0 John liked the Yamaha enough to borrow it when he sang at weddings (including ours).\u00a0 John always favored a 12-string guitar but said he liked my Yamaha because it almost sounded like his 12-string even though it only had six strings.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The other purchase Easy Money made from Larry Henrickson\u2019s shop was a Yamaha P.A. that Mark, Jerry, and I co-bought.\u00a0 When my first stint with the band was nearing the end of the line, I paid off the guys and took the P.A. home to use for my stereo. \u00a0 After a while, the idea of having a true electric guitar to run through the system began to percolate in my brain.\u00a0 This plan was just being formulated when Bruce Johanson and I took our first extended JH Honors Trip bus tour to the Duluth area.\u00a0 We turned the kids loose for lunch in the mall in Superior, WI where I happened to see a Fender Squire on sale at a music store.\u00a0 The price was right, but it was too much for me to just buy it and surprise my wife:\u00a0 \u201cHey, look what I found on our trip!\u201d\u00a0 The idea stuck with me and I proposed banking my JH Advisor pay for the next year and delaying the purchase until we went back to Duluth the next spring.\u00a0 Armed with my checkbook, I entered the same store a year later only to find they had no Fender Squires in stock and nothing else in my price range.\u00a0 Back to the drawing board.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The internet would have been a great way to research the market for guitars, but in the late 1980s, it wasn\u2019t yet an option.\u00a0 My subscription to <\/span>Guitar Player<\/span><\/i> magazine, however, turned out to be just the source of information I needed.\u00a0 If you are of a certain age, you will remember the old school method employed before everybody and their uncle had a web presence:\u00a0 \u201cSend a stamped self addressed envelope to this address and we will mail you back a list of our available products.\u201d I found an ad in <\/span>GP <\/span><\/i>for Gruhn Guitars in Nashville.\u00a0 The ad mentioned their unusually large inventory of new and used guitars, so I decided to give the old \u2018SASE\u2019 a whirl.\u00a0 I got back seven or eight mimeographed* pages listing all the guitars they had in stock.\u00a0 They included a stock number, the price, and whether they were in poor, good, near mint, or mint condition.\u00a0 (*If you are old enough to remember \u2018SASEs\u2019 I probably do not have to explain what a mimeographed page is.\u00a0 The rest of you will have to look it up).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After scanning the sheet for a couple of days, I found my attention kept drifting back to a used Gibson S-1 that was in my price range.\u00a0 An S-1 has a solid wood body shaped like a standard Les Paul and a pointed headstock like the early Flying V guitars had.\u00a0 A new Fender Squire would have cost about the same amount, but in this case, the Gibson name made the sale.\u00a0 I previously thought I would ever be able to afford a Gibson guitar, new or used.\u00a0 I wrote the check and sent it off by snail mail hoping against hope the guitar I wanted would not be sold out from under me.\u00a0 The only reservation I had was the description:\u00a0 \u2018near mint\u2019.\u00a0 Being new to the used guitar market, I really had no clue how big a gap there might be between \u2018good – near mint – and mint\u2019 condition.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This all unfolded during the dark ages of shipping when there were no package tracking services.\u00a0 After a few days, I stopped thinking about it and was happily surprised two weeks later when the mailman came up the driveway toting a box the unmistakable size of a guitar.\u00a0 I held my breath when I cut the packing tape and popped the staples out of the cardboard shipping box.\u00a0 When I lifted the lid, I found a black guitar case covered with wrinkled alligator skin vinyl.\u00a0 It was scratched and torn in places and looked to have more than a few miles on it. \u00a0 I remind myself the weather worn case was designed to keep the guitar safe.\u00a0 I popped the latches on the case and opened the top cover.\u00a0 The blond wood body was immaculate.\u00a0 There were a couple of scuff marks on the pickguard, but as hard as I looked, I couldn\u2019t find anything wrong with the finish.\u00a0 I thought, \u201cIf this is in \u2018near mint\u2019 condition, I wonder what \u2018mint\u2019 would look like?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The strings were pretty well dead but I had a new set ready.\u00a0 I swapped them out, added my own strap and plugged it in to my only amp, the previously mentioned Yamaha P.A. head.\u00a0 It sounded just as good as it looked.\u00a0 There was a toggle switch for changing the combination of three pick-ups and a five position rotary dial to give more tone options.\u00a0 I finally found the one thing I thought may have prevented this S-1 from being listed as a \u2018mint\u2019 guitar:\u00a0 one of the three positions on the toggle switch would occasionally need a little wiggling to get it to work.\u00a0 Oddly enough, former Easy Money guitarist Norman Morin later bought an identical S-1 and upon comparing notes, we found his toggle switch also had the same flaw.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t really matter because I was more than ecstatic about my new toy.\u00a0 I added a fuzz box and a wah-wah pedal to my gear and enjoyed all the new sounds I could coax out of the S-1.\u00a0 Over the years the only modifications needed were a new paint job on the case (the vinyl was peeling off by bits and pieces) and a new plastic cap for the toggle switch (which got brittle and broke into little shards).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0During the year when I was asked to be the elementary reading teacher, I tried to mix things up by exposing the students in my classes to things that went along with some of the stories we were reading.\u00a0 Working my way through an anthology of American folk tales, I happened upon the classic story of <\/span>John Henry<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 After we had covered several chapters of folk lore, I made it a point to end with the story about the \u2018steel drivin\u2019 man\u2019.\u00a0 The next time we met, I had three video versions of John Henry\u2019s story, now set to music, cued up.\u00a0 The original song dated back to around 1900 and since the advent of the phonograph record, there have been more versions of this tune recorded than one can shake a stick at.\u00a0 The first example I played for them came from somewhere in the late 1940s.\u00a0 The second one came from Johnny Cash\u2019s 1963 album <\/span>Blood, Sweat and Tears<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0 AI asked the kids, \u201cDo you think anyone might still be writing songs about John Henry today?\u201d Next, I\u00a0 pulled out Joe Bonamassa\u2019s 2009 recording, <\/span>The Ballad Of John Henry,<\/span><\/i> from the album of the same name.\u00a0 This video version featured a full band doing an extended live concert version.\u00a0 You need not wonder which one the kids liked the best.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0How do songs about John Henry relate to guitars?\u00a0 The next week, I had my acoustic and electric guitars propped up on a front table in my classroom.\u00a0 I reminded the students the first two videos they had seen showed people playing acoustic guitars.\u00a0 The Joe Bonamassa video I had shown them last was taken from a Black Country Communion concert.\u00a0 BCC was a band Joe had put together with some high profile musicians who also happened to be his friends (like drummer Jason Bonham and keyboard player Derek Sherinnian).\u00a0 The clip featured quite a bit of animated stage behavior, particularly from the band\u2019s bassist, Glenn Hughes.\u00a0 \u201cHave you ever wondered how much effort goes into playing music with a guitar strap slung over your shoulder?\u201d\u00a0 I asked.\u00a0 To show them what I meant, I had each student \u2018try on\u2019 my S-1 to get an idea of how heavy some guitars can be.\u00a0 I should have taken pictures because the astonished looks they gave when they found out how heavy it was were priceless.\u00a0 I assume they caught my message:\u00a0 watching people prance around on stage while playing guitar looks a lot easier than it actually is.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Do not get me wrong.\u00a0 Even though most drummers play seated behind a drum kit, a four hour gig takes a lot out of you.\u00a0 With that said, I never had to spend a full gig standing with a guitar hanging on my shoulders so I can only speculate how much energy it takes.\u00a0 In a recent interview with <\/span>Guitar World<\/span><\/i>, Steve Vai mentioned having shoulder surgery that kept him from playing guitar for many months.\u00a0 Vai said, \u201cThe tendon repair was necessary because the doctor told me he had never seen that much damage that did not involve a physical accident.\u201d\u00a0 Add to that a more minor procedure to correct a \u2018trigger finger\u2019 condition in his right thumb and Vai contends he is just happy to be playing guitar again after many months of recovery.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Instrument sales have been given a kick in the pants by the COVID-19 pandemic.\u00a0 People have been looking for things to do while sheltering at home.\u00a0 I won\u2019t say this is a good thing, but if we are searching for any ray of light from the past two years, it would have to be the proliferation of new music and new players produced as we looked for ways to keep our sanity.\u00a0 Sales of musical instruments have also climbed during the past two years.\u00a0 Let us just hope the pandemic won\u2019t affect the prices of used guitars like it has automobiles.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Top Piece Video:\u00a0 I will let you guess which riff in THE STORY IN YOUR EYES drove my roomies nuts!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By now, readers of these FTV ramblings are well aware that \u2018drummer\u2019 is my main musical gig.\u00a0 I was inspired early on by the likes of Dave Clark (of the Dave Clark Five) to be a singing drummer and as such acted as the lead or co-lead singer in every band I was in.\u00a0 I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,8,12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-humor","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2489"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2492,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2489\/revisions\/2492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}