October 17th, 2008
Hold Your Applause
Dad, Kevin, and I played a wedding reception this past weekend. The bride requested that we prepare a set of more subdued stuff for the dinner portion of the event, and seeing as how there is nothing subtle or innocuous about the banjo (something you’ve no doubt learned from Steve Martin, if you’ve ever spent 30 seconds with him), we decided I’d switch to the guitar for this section of our performance.
I haven’t played guitar before an audience in almost 10 years. My skills have improved a lot since then, just by virtue of the fact that I still spend a lot of my downtime around the house picking and strumming songs I know and/or learning new ones. My old guitar however, hasn’t gotten any better with age. This is unfortunate, given that it was not a very nice guitar when I bought it, brand new, 12 years ago. Its main flaw, I believe, is that it is comprised almost entirely of plastic. Armed with that fact, my fellow guitar players have wagered a guess as to what kind of guitar I have, and they are cringing. They are assuming that I own an Ovation — the strange, bowl-backed instruments that appeared on the scene in the mid-70s, were embraced by a few singer-songwriters, were subsequently discovered to be not-so-great and sort of disappeared, and then, somehow, experienced a short-lived resurgence in the mid-90s at the precise moment when I was in the market for my first ax.
My fellow guitar players would be half-right. I couldn’t afford a real Ovation, so I ended up with an Applause. And now my fellow guitar players are double-cringing, because they know that an Applause is a product built to Ovation’s already undesirable specs, but in Mexico or Japan, with parts similar to, but not as nice as, those Ovation puts in their line of terrible guitars.
So, we start with that, then add me lugging it to every different place I’ve lived from 1996 ’til now, being an irresponsible youth and accidentally banging it on every waist-high surface in each of these places along the way, and never taking the time to clean it, have any adjustments made to it, or change the strings on it more than once every four years, and, well, for how much I still like to play, a new guitar has been on my list of purchases to make for a while now.
Things fell into place this month when Kevin discovered Taylor’s “Big Baby” at a guitar shop in Raleigh. Taylors are beautiful feeling, beautiful sounding acoustic guitars and they simply don’t make a full-size model that retails for under $800. Money I don’t have. The “Big Baby” is a 15/16 scale (a size difference I didn’t even notice) and, thanks to Taylor skimping on some of their typical frills like elaborate inlays and super-glossy finish, they sell it for $450. (Kevin decided this was the “Toyota of Taylors”: no fancy bells or whistles, but reliable, high-performing, and reasonably affordable.) Since I needed a better guitar I could play at this wedding, and we were paid generously for the gig, I went for it.
And I am one proud papa. Now that I own a Big Baby, I don’t see myself buying another guitar in my lifetime.
My Taylor — which Kevin explained to me is a “real” guitar made out of various “woods” — must be put back in its case every time I am done playing it to protect it from changes in humidity and temperature and my tendency to send beverages cascading onto surfaces they shouldn’t be on. And with my banjo and uke cases already taking up valuable real estate in our incredible shrinking house, there’s just no place for my old guitar and its case in our floor plan.
For a split second, I considered putting my Applause on Craigslist. Perhaps there’s someone out there who doesn’t care about tone or resonation, and would shell out $50 for an old beater they could learn on? I quickly realized I’d feel bad sticking a beginning player with this thing though, even if it is what I started on. (Actually 12 years with this guitar is probably why I’m not better than I am today.)
Also, awful or not, I once practiced sets of songs for hours and hours on this thing. I took it up onstage at open mic nights in college. My roommate was the singer in our act, and we enjoyed some moderate popularity at the bar we played at. A year later, when that roommate and I had a falling out of divorce-like proportions, that saw us dividing up friends and un-mingling our stuff from every shelf and container so I could move out, that guitar was one of the first things I took out of the room. And in the aftermath, when my grades were suffering and I didn’t feel like anyone was there for me anymore, I’d go back to my one-person dorm room and play it and somehow start to feel like maybe all wasn’t lost. And as I continued to go through good times and bad ones, that guitar was always there.
I believe, as a society, we are are too obsessed with material things and that we should all embrace Buddhist philosophy and discover the freedom of limiting our possessions, but when you’re a sentimental fool, this is quite difficult to put into practice.
Recently, the REI messenger bag that was handed down (or technically, up) to me by my sister my junior year of college, that I carried around for the remaining two-and-a-half years there, into all the jobs I’ve had since, and on almost every trip I’ve taken over that entire time, suffered it’s third zipper-malfunction and received a large tear in its main pocket. REI stands behind their products for all eternity and this was stuff that could be fixed. I’ve sent it back for similar repairs before though, and found that the mending never returns the bag to its original integrity and that being bagless for six weeks while it gets shipped around is pretty inconvenient. Thus I took the store’s offer to pick out a new bag and get the full cost of my old bag credited towards the new one. What I didn’t realize, as we finished the transaction, was that they needed to tag, re-enter into their system, and, ultimately, keep my old bag. I guess as hard evidence for the store manager when he has to appear in front of the REI tribunal for letting me buy an $80 messenger bag for $20?
Just after I realized what was happening, the cashier turned to take my worn, ratty old satchel that no one else would ever want away forever and the weight of all the places I’d ever gone with that thing on my back and all the different projects and love notes and life-altering documents I’ve ever hauled around in it hit me all at once. “Can you just give me a moment alone with the bag?” I blurted out. Ok, I didn’t say that, but that was what I meant when I said “Let me make sure I’ve gotten everything out of there!” I had carefully emptied it out at home before I ran my errands; there was no need to check it again.
I’m glad I didn’t have to trade in my old guitar to get the new one. It could have gotten ugly. Instead I packed it up yet again and, this time, moved it into the attic. After everything I’ve put it through, it’s probably thankful for the chance to rest.
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