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An Indispensable Companion…

I retired recently, which is several years before my wife, Annette plans to do the same. So most mornings she packs off the university to do her good work as an academic unit director. For me the house goes instantly quiet, which would be a bit unsettling were it not for my constant companion, my dog Nike…

Since my childhood, I’ve always had a dog or two around. In fact, I could not imagine life without a dog… I’m a dog person… I’ve had cats too and they’re fine; however, every cat I’ve ever owned has gone bad, soiling the house… No more cats…

Of the several dogs I’ve had live with me, some have been excellent, but Nike by far is the best dog I’ve ever been involved with. Indeed, as I was writing this piece she interrupted so that I would let her in the house from the backyard and then she promptly jumped onto my lap. She is a most attentive creature.

Nike is a Brittany. As her breed suggests, her gene pool was refined in the French province of the same name. At one time they were referred to as Brittany Spaniels; however, some years ago the AKC decided they were different enough from their Spaniel cousins to drop the designation. Now they are just plain Brittanies. Brittanies were bred to be hunting dogs, specializing in pointing and retrieving game birds. The characteristics required to be an excellent “gun dog” include toughness, endless energy, and intellect. Nike possesses all those characteristics in spades. She is the brightest dog I’ve ever taken into my life. In fact, she’s scary bright. Very little gets by her, she’s exceptionally attentive to her people and quite demanding too. When it’s time for her long evening walk, she will let it be known with a verbal lecture.

as a pup on the hunt…

Like most dogs too, she can be a pain in the ass at times… Stealing food from the kitchen counter, seeking attention by dragging out underwear from the dirty clothes basket, or excavating the yard. Nevertheless, taken in balance Nike is an indispensable companion and member of the family.

I do not hunt, so Nike does not get to express her instinctual gifts in the field, but she compensates… She roams a nicely sized yard bound by an “invisible dog fence” which gives her the freedom to police her kingdom. Living adjacent to the woods, there is enough wildlife activity to keep her in Defcon 1 mode most of the time. In fact, as sweet as she is to our family, Nike is a stone cold killer. She’s recently bagged three ground hogs, two of which I was able to save, and just the other day while Annette and I were sitting on the back porch, she nailed a big fat squirrel and dispatched it before I could intercede!

Fact is, she’s becoming a much more effective hunter over time. She studies the behavior of rabbits, ground hogs, birds and squirrels like a Talmudic scholar and knows intuitively when they make a mistake and expose themselves. Like a P51 Mustang fighter plane going after a Japanese Zero, she goes in high and fast and makes the kill… It’s a bit unnerving but I love that dog and she keeps me good company.

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Not Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock… but good enough…

CVAGA performance at Overman Park bandshell… About my clothes… I was at the gym earlier and thought I would have a chance to change… I was mistaken…

I’ve written before that playing in front of people is equal amounts of stress I and excitement; however, the most important thing about it to me is that performing helps me to take myself more seriously as a musician, such that I am… this past Friday night I had the opportunity to join several guitar players on stage at Overman Park in Cedar Falls, Iowa. The “concert” took place the couple of hours before dark, after which a film is shown on an outdoor screen… that night it was Ironman…

Each musician or group of musicians was granted a 15 minute time slot, which in reality was more like a suggestion, as some players seemed to linger on the stage for much longer…

the Bandshell looking outwards…

The entire experience actually lasted quite a long time. As a player, I was asked to help set up. I arrived at 4:30 in the afternoon and was early, so I took the opportunity to climb on the stage and look out at the park before people would arrive in a couple of hours. The weather was lovely for a mid-August date… Days like that are the payoff for suffering through long, brutal Iowa winters.

  • Sound system set-up…
  • CVAGA Banner at the Bandshell…

It was not long before the other performers and the sound tech arrived for set up. The sound system was a real pro rig, including monitors for the players which I had never used and was delighted to get the experience. You can see in the image above right that the event is hosted by CVAGA or the Cedar Valley Acoustic Guitar Association. Rick Vanderwall, a friend of mine, and original founder of the Association invited me to perform. I was somewhat ambivalent, but he insisted, and I am glad, in the end, that I agreed.

Overman Park Bandshell during set up

You can see from the image to the left that Bob’s Guitars underwrites the concerts. The Bob was there with his wife Avis and their dog Scout. You will most often find them all at his shop when its open. I’ve written about their shop before…

Yours truly awaiting my turn for sound check. Note my pedal array at my feet which allows me to sculpt my own idiosyncratic interpretation of country blues.

It was a bit nerve wracking waiting for sound checks to occur. Here I am on the left patiently waiting for my turn. Despite the fact that the host organization is an acoustic society, I was told there were no hard/fast rules, so I decided to play my semi-hollow bodied Taylor T3, along with my pedal array. My teacher and family all concurred with my decision to go electric. Ah yes… I think that Bob Dylan would have approved too… Other than one snide comment that I brushed off, everyone else was cool with my choice.

I played a 15 minute set of finger-style country blues. Fortunately, I got to play first, which is what I really like to do at open mic events. i.e. Get it over with! Though there are lyrics to each of the tunes I played I did not sing. At this stage of my player development, the finger-style patterns are too complicated for me to sing simultaneously. Further, I am not confident that my singing voice would complement my playing anyway. My set included the following tunes:

  • Corinna Corinna; traditional… arranged by Stef Grossman
  • Railroad Bill; traditional… arranged by Etta Baker
  • Police and a Sergeant; Rev. Robert Wilkins… arranged by Catfish Keith
  • Cocaine Blues; TJ Arnall… arranged by Stef Grossman
  • Shake Sugaree; Elizabeth Cotton… arranged by Stef Grossman

I think I played reasonably well… actually as good as I can at this stage of my development. Iowa audiences are typically very kind and they acted appreciative. My family and friends thought I did well too, but it’s always hard to tell if they are being nice or really mean it… My wife Nettie was particularly pleased with the quality of the sound system and how my playing came across, so that sounded like a legit “mazel tov!” I was most excited that the sound guy, who hears a lot of performances was delighted with the combination of my choice of music, my playing and the tone sculpting that I do with my array of pedals.

Me and my main-man Grant…

In the end I was glad I did it and I was equivalently glad when it was over with. Here I am afterwards relaxing with my main-man and fellow musician Grant, who was kind enough to capture my performance.

All’s well that ends well…

my travel rig the night of the show…
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Best place to buy a guitar?

Donald H. at Bob’s Guitar working on my Taylor 914ce…

Where is the best place to buy a guitar? Pawn shop? Yard sale? A friend? Or more likely, if you are looking for a premium guitar, the best place may be a music store or perhaps online.


Based on my experience, you are best served purchasing a guitar at a local shop that focuses primarily on that particular instrument. The store should offer a premium line or two of guitars, indicating a higher level of seriousness.

Why buy at a local shop? Most importantly, guitars can be idiosyncratic artifacts; consequently, playing the guitar you buy before hand can be quite illuminating. Even so for acoustic guitars this may still be a bit of a gamble because new guitar woods are a bit tight and not ready to yield their final tone… the wood requires time to open up, which can take a year or so… Nevertheless, if it sounds good new, overtime it will probably sound even better.

My friend Grant T. giving a Duo-Sonic a test run…

A local business too will service the instrument if required. You’d probably be surprised at how often that eventuality occurs. Further, a new premium guitar like a Taylor will be under warrantee and the store that you purchase it from will service it for you unless there is some type of catastrophic failure which requires return to the manufacturer.

Local guitar treasure and Bob’s guitar store staff, Jacob L.

A well run local store will offer the expertise of its staff when evaluating an instrument, amp, pedal, tuner, what have you… This is much better than making the decision in a vacuum in front of a computer screen.

Not just new guitars can be found in a typical guitar store. In fact, I’ve purchased two used instruments from my local establishment. Guitars are like cars, in a way… new ones lose value as soon as you drive it off the lot, so getting a used guitar, if in excellent condition can be a great savings!

Not all communities are lucky enough to have a good guitar store. Just recently I learned that Rochester, MN lost its excellent store, Avalon Music. If you are a guitar player, it would serve you well to throw some business to the local store to keep it going.

Bob G. (the Bob) and his dog Scout. Bob is also one of the best guitar players in town.

I am not sure if all guitar stores are like the one in my town, Bob’s Guitars. I think perhaps there are some others, like Rudy’s in Manhattan, NY where a musical community exists around and within it. Spend anytime in the store and you will see the best musicians in the region constantly passing through. Further, if you are a frequent customer in Cedar Falls, you get to hang out with Bob (the Bob) and the other staff and there’s quite a lot that can be learned from them.

In sum, a local guitar store can be a local treasure… perhaps the best place to buy a guitar too… In a future blog post, I will speak to buying a guitar online, which I’ve also done for better or worse…

Grant T. getting a sweetheart deal from Bob G. on a pre-owned Taylor acoustic…
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Guitars and the company’s that support their product…

I do not own a Martin guitar, but there are enough well-established guitarists who swear by them to make me believe that to certain players they possess their share of fairy dust and music magic. I think the same is true for Gibson guitars too, both acoustic and electric.

Me… I prefer Taylor guitars… On and off through the years, I’ve owned eight of them. My first serious solid wood acoustic guitar was a Taylor that I used to replace a starter Yamaha back around 1994. That was a spruce and mahogany large bodied “dread” best used for flat-picking. It was traded a long time ago but is probably still serving someone well because Taylor builds an excellent instrument. Since that time, I’ve accumulated two Taylor acoustics and three electrics, and then there’s another Taylor acoustic that I handed down to my son Parker.

Taylor 510, like my first purchase…

Acoustic guitars (and for that matter electrics) produce their own idiosyncratic sounds based upon design philosophy, so Taylor’s, Martin’s and Gibson’s all have their own characteristic tones. For me the Taylor’s offer a nicely balanced tonal range and great presence so they just appeal to my ear. If you ever become more interested in Taylor Guitars there is a wonderful memoir by Bob Taylor about the founding of the company.

Bob Taylor memoir… an excellent read…

Beyond the instrument itself, another thing I love about Taylor guitars is the support offered by the company itself. I’ve had two instruments that required repair, both of which did not fall strictly within their warranty; however they stood by their product and repaired them (actually as I write one is currently in for repair, but that’s another story), just charging me for shipping to and from California where their main factory is located. For me, that kind of product support is a huge difference maker.

This morning I discovered the below attached video demonstrating the periodic maintenance that an acoustic guitar requires. In this case it is a Martin having some neck, nut and bridge repair work done at their home factory in Pennsylvania. My small bodied Taylor 812 required bridge replacement similar to what’s seen in this video. A large chip broke off the bridge when I was changing its strings. Taylor did a lovely job replacing it. You can surmise in this posting as well as elsewhere in this weblog, I am quite fond of Taylor Guitars.

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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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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.