My Guitar

"Shaped like a woman and fun to hold, tight wound strings the color of gold. Strumming out a rhythm and taking the lead.."

         - Traveling By Guitar" Tia McGraff and Tommy Parham

I don't remember a time I didn't love the sound of a guitar. My favorite musical sound in the world is an acoustic guitar accompanying a great voice. My earliest memories of a guitar and voice are that of my mother. She would sit on her bed and play songs from an old spiral bound notebook she had filled with handwritten lyrics and chords. Old country and gospel songs, and an original or two.

She kept the door closed when she played, but I would sit outside the bedroom in the entryway, listen, and quietly sing along.

I remember thinking she had a voice as good as any on the records and 8-Track tapes we had.

Those songs are deeply ingrained in my memory. They are part of me. He’ll Have To Go, Four Walls, The Blue Tail Fly, Cindy, and more. There are very few things in life I believe are absolutely inevitable- my taking up the guitar as an instrument was one.

When I decided I wanted to play, I bought a $30 plywood guitar from a pawn shop in my home town. It was beyond terrible. It looked bad, it played bad, and it sounded....bad. I tried to refinish it, as though doing so would solve the other issues. It looked some better, but it was still, just, truly terrible. My second guitar was an electric. I traded something a friend had given me for it. It's an old Sears mail order guitar. When I got it, it was, also, terrible. This time, however, I had a couple of friends who could help me make it playable. We gutted the electronics, stripped off the 1950's paint, and put on a natural clearcoat, and the beautiful old mahogany showed through. We dropped some 1980s parts in it, and I played that guitar for a long, long time. I still have it, in pieces in my office. I talk to her sometimes, and promise to put her all back together. I probably will, someday, after I've found all the parts to put the old girl back the way I found her. Ironically, I'd like to have that guitar sounding more like it did when I found it. My love, however, in the guitar world, is a great acoustic.

I am an absolute believer that the "right" instruments find the player. I had a series of OK and even "good" acoustic and electric guitars along the way. Then, my Santa Cruz acoustic found me. I am serious when I say the guitar found me. It's a hand-made custom instrument which I should NEVER have been able to afford. I really got a steal on this beauty. I'm convinced we were supposed to find each other. To this day, when I say "my guitar," it's the guitar I mean. From the very moment it picked it up, it just absolutely fit my hands. The Santa Cruz talks to me. It calls me to play, it's made me a better player. It's the only acoustic I've owned longer than a year or two, and I'll have her until I'm gone from this world. I have been so very many places with that guitar. It's played songs for my son, songs for my wife, songs for church, songs for crowds, weddings, funerals, and campfires, and classroom breaks- and just been one of my very best friends for over 25 years.

I should mention, as a guitar, she's turned many a head. She is a lovely, lovely girl. Great musicians have gone starry eyed with that guitar in their hands. I've watched virtuoso players coax sounds and riffs and notes from her I will never be able to play. Yet, when she lands back in my hands, we are just us. Russ and his guitar. I get why so many musicians name their instruments, but I just call her "the Santa Cruz".

Before you dismiss this post as guitar nerd emotional drivel (which it well might be), I have the following things to say to you:

Stevie Ray Vaughn and Number 1

B.B. King and Lucielle

Brian May and the Red Special

Paul McCartney and the Hofner

Eric Clapton and Blackie

Jimmy Paige and the Dragon Tele

Willie Nelson and Trigger

I'm just saying, I'm not the only one.

In addition, I've known many, many great players over the years who have a guitar they just love- the one they pick up when they don't know what else to play. The one that fits.

I've been less than kind to the Santa Cruz through the years. I've tried to protect her. I have a second, really good guitar I travel with on school trips and keep in my room. But- the reality is, you can't travel with and play a guitar without leaving some wounds. She had to have her top and neck fixed immediately after I got her. She'd been neglected. She's got tell-tale scars of wear on her back and top and sides. There are dings from being dropped or carelessly being bumped into things. Her bridge started to lift a few years ago, and I was terrified, afraid I would lose some part of her in repair. I was without that guitar for 3 weeks, and it was miserable. Would the kind, old gentleman who said he could fix her do that surgery and still let her have her voice? He did. :)

This old guitar and I just seem to work together. She fits me. She also fits my wife's voice, and there, I'm in a bit of heaven on earth. I love to play and sing- I really do, but given the choice, I'd play for my wife to sing along with anytime, anywhere. That guitar is part of our family. It's not an idol, I don't worship it, but I do really love having, playing, and just enjoying it. The guitar brightens dark days, and brings joy to bright ones. I can't imagine not being able to play. My wife told me, once, that when she hears the "Livin' on a Prayer" line "Tommy's got his six string in hock, now he's holding in what he used to make it talk so tough..." she thinks of me without a guitar. I think that might be pretty fair.

So, there it is, today's post. No original poem today, just a little bit of stream of consciousness about one of the few "things" in my life that I just really, deeply value. I HOPE everyone who reads this has something in their life which gives them the sort of peace, the release, the enjoyment I get from my guitars. Find that thing that brightens your world just ever so little much. Until next week: I bid peace to you all.

Have a Blessed Easter.