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Avalon Music no more…

Avalon Music as it existed when I was involved…

Yesterday, when I was doing some background research for this weblog, I discovered, to my sadness, that Avalon Music in Rochester, MN no longer exists. Apparently they went out of business a year or so ago. As far as I can tell, this is the only store that offered “higher end” guitars in Rochester.

With disruptor online stores like Reverb, it is probably very challenging to own and operate a successful music store in a moderate sized town. I imagine that the nearby Twin Cities were also a source of serious competition. Of course, this is all speculation as I have no idea what really happened to the store, other than the proprietor selling the building for a little over a million dollars.

Avalon Music was a very nice store with a broad inventory of instruments, and a nice selection of Taylor Guitars. It was a very important music store to me as it is where I reinvested myself in guitar playing while at the Mayo Clinic for a seven week medical treatment cycle. I bought a very nice Taylor 914ce there and took lessons from an excellent fellow and they still influence me today .

The store itself was located on the main floor and lessons occurred upstairs in a series of rooms. There was a nice “living room” up there to await your lesson and to warm up. I learned some fascinating facts about that building while surfing around trying to understand why the store closed down.

The building was originally the Northwestern Hotel established by Sam Sternberg in 1919 where Jews could stay as the other hotels surrounding the Mayo Clinic would not house them… ugh… In 1944, a new owner changed the name to the Avalon Hotel and it became the first to host African American guests, including Duke Ellington. Mississippi John Hurt popularized a country blues tune called “Avalon Blues” and though I am not sure a connection exists, there sure might be.

The Avalon Hotel…

The building has been converted to offices and another of many Bistro’s that come and go in Rochester. The only constant in this world is change…

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Railroad Bill… a Piedmont Country Blues tune…

Piedmont Country Blues is a finger style guitar blues with the thumb alternating on the bass strings and the fingers (varying in number depending on the player) plucking out the melody. Etta Baker from North Carolina was one of the most beloved players of Country Blues.

Etta Baker

Among her many well known tunes, Railroad Bill is one of the best known and most recognized. This tune was played by the late Ms. Baker as an instrumental; however there are lyrics that speak to the actions of an African American train-robbing desperado. Apparently Railroad Bill was done wrong by a train company and he sought revenge by waylaying trains and robbing them until he met his unfortunate end.

Railroad Bill seems deceptively simple on the chart, but it’s not… getting the phrasing correct is an ongoing challenge; however, I am getting pretty close. Here below is my current rendering of the tune.

You’ll note that unlike most Piedmont Blues players, I am playing electric guitar (Taylor T3 Custom) through a variety of tone pedals giving it a bit of a haunting sensibility.

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Currently on the bed stand…

During the July 4th weekend, Nettie, Parker and I went to Kansas City. Among our activities, including witnessing the musical Hamilton, we also visited the World War I Museum and Memorial. It was, for the most part an excellent museum with attributes such as simulated trenches, shell blasted holes and a deep collection of military hardware and uniforms.

In my judgement, the absolute highlight of the museum was the introductory film about the root causes of World War I. The film itself pointed out how obscure the causes for the war were. Most of us are aware that the spark initiating the war was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. If you’re like me the first reaction to that fact is: What?!?! There were actually a confluence of causes, many of which seem to still exist today including great disparities in wealth and national boundaries eroding in light of cultural differences across populations…

Archduke Ferdinand

Deeper into the museum there was another film located in this very interesting “simulated battlefield” theater which spoke to the war itself and elaborated on the forms of conflict, particularly trench warfare. The film ends with the briefest mention of U.S. involvement in the war, which I found to be unsettling. This was an American museum was it not? The museum staff were unapologetic about the film’s short shrift treatment of General Pershing and the AEF (American Expeditionary Force), suggesting somewhat evasively that it was controversial.

So, I picked up a nice used copy of Yokelson’s Forty-Seven Days off of Amazon to dig deeper and, so far, it’s an excellent read. In short, Pershing and the AEF, at great cost to American lives, broke the trench war stalemate and helped, in large part, to end the war. The controversy the museum staff alluded to had to do with the unequal treatment of African-American soldiers. The preponderance of American soldiers who fought on the front lines were white; however, there were some black soldiers who fought under the leadership of the French, but most worked behind the battle lines helping with logistics.

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Jerry Garcia… and his guitars…

Photo used for the cover art of the inestimable Workingman’s Dead album…

One of the great all time albums of the early 1970’s, and arguably the best Grateful Dead collection of tunes ever was Workingman’s Dead… Embedded in the illustration above is a link to a very nice Guitar Player magazine article about the Grateful Dead, particularly about Jerry Garcia’s quest for the perfect guitar during his playing days, when he was alive. There are, within the article, some excellent links to Youtube videos of the Dead during that era and later. Unlike Facebook, where an article can be easily linked with an attractive image, I had to find an image myself and then embed the link… WordPress, the platform for this blog gets weird about copyright protection.

The rule rather than the exception for a professional guitarist on stage is to have multiple guitars with varying set-ups, woods, pick-ups etc that may be used for different tunes. Garcia, according to the article, sought for much of his playing career a single perfect guitar that would suffice throughout the epic concerts that the Dead performed on the road… It is an interesting read… and suggests why so many of us who love guitars seem to think buying one more will get us the sound palette we seek.

Garcia’s Tiger… one of several of his “all purpose” axes…

I saw the Grateful Dead once, outdoors, during that time in the early 70’s when they were playing extended sets based on Workingman’s Dead and the excellent sequel American Beauty. It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon in North Carolina during the Spring late in the school semester. I was an undergrad at UNC, and with the collusion of my frat brothers we managed to evade security and get into the concert at Duke University. It was one of those late afternoon mild Spring days that only occur in North Carolina. The band was one of the most “dead-on” professional bands I ever saw and I was right up next to the stage. Almost 50 years later I remember clearly. It was astonishing how good they were.

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On performing with guitar…

Recording artist Mike Dowling and me at a workshop in MN…

Throughout the summer, here in Cedar Falls, IA, the city offers several Friday night “Movies Under the Moon,” located in the downtown located Overman Park, proceeded by a series of short performances hosted by the Cedar Valley Acoustic Guitar Association. Local performing treasure and co-founder of the Association, Rick Vanderwall urged me to play and I somewhat reluctantly agreed to perform for my assigned 15 minutes on August 9, 2019.

I practice quite a bit daily and my guitar playing is slowly improving; however, playing before a crowd can only be prepared for by previous experience of which I have little. I’ve played (the less formal) open mic nights at a local coffee shop and experienced complete dissociation of my fingers from my brain, but that circumstance has reduced in likelihood as I’ve gain confidence by performing several times. On the other hand, open mic night is different from playing before a large expectant crowd so I have now some serious trepidation…

The advantage of performing publicly is that it raises the stakes in terms of my relationship with the guitar. We are in it together and practice is taken more seriously. In the same vein, the performance forces me to take myself more seriously as a musician, which has long term implications. This is not a painless process, but as they say, “if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger.” See you next Friday night…

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A new road… or the end of the road…

Prairie Thistle… beautiful but prickly…

I am frequently asked two things in my early days of retirement:

1) What are you going to do with yourself;
2) How’s retirement treating you?

Both questions probe into the existential nature of what to do with the gift of time after devoting so much of it to a lifetime of work. The answer, within the boundaries of available resources and personal responsibilities is that “I will do whatever I want, whenever I want…”

That said, retirement is as I see it, an open playing field to accomplish as much or little as desired… One of the purposes of this weblog is help me focus and reflect on how best to take advantage of this open playing field. The headings in the weblog menu speak to my initial interests, which include music (guitars of varying type), digital photography, reading, and perhaps in the dead of Iowa winter, scale model building (usually WWII Allied aircraft). Though not listed, a considerable amount of time is devoted to maintaining physical fitness to perhaps extend and enhance the quality of my time before the end of the road…

I invite you to come along with me on this journey by reading and commenting if you wish…

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a first post…

Nike and me in Hartman forest..

I’ve been contemplating some time about finding a new space to post my thoughts and ruminations outside of social media, particularly Facebook (FB)… privacy issues as well as maintaining a sense of well being during my retirement lead me to question my continuing involvement with FB…

I do not want to compare myself to others, nor have others compare themselves to me, which I find problematic on FB… Further, I am increasingly wary of the utterly creepy instances where my involvement with FB indicates a lack of privacy and suggests that my “data” are being used for ill purposes I do not approve…

Consequently, I am going to wean myself from FB, yet I need a place to express myself, and for those who care to peek in, a place where friends and acquaintances can catch up with what I am doing… Call it a public journal… That is what I hope to accomplish on this website, which unlike FB, I must personally finance it, but it’s not that expensive… I do this with some trepidation because there are friends out in FB land that I have great affection for and will miss their reported activities, but after watching the Netflix documentary, “The Big Hack” I am convinced that extricating myself from FB is a good idea for myself and everyone else…

I invite anyone interested in my doings to follow along and comment (in a constructive way)…