Self Portrait in Guitars, Part 2
The open mic era.
I am nearing 40 and have just come back east after nine years in the midwest, nine years of working hard as an assistant professor of English, prepping many new classes, serving on search and admissions committees…to finally be denied tenure for a range of “reasons” I’d rather not go into now (or maybe ever). We have bought a lovely, though much neglected house on a dead end street in a rural Connecticut town 20 minutes from the ocean. And I’m working hard on my writing and learning how to fly fish in salt water, tending to a three-year-old boy and a 20-month-old girl, tugging out weeds and poison ivy, painting and peeling off old wall paper—and reconnecting with guitar. It strikes me that my initial discovery of the joy of guitar playing all those years ago at my aunt’s farmhouse also came after a period of upheaval, an ugly divorce, and now I’m recovering from another kind of divorce that was equally ugly and that also left me upended, gutted.
But let me back up a little: it is a cool, fall day, and I’m still in Kalamazoo, and I’ve gone looking for the old Gibson factory. Soon I find the big, brick chimney, the letters in white brick, the “G” at the top, the “N” at the bottom. I don’t know what I expect to find, but I feel, as a guitarist, I should pay my respects here, am drawn to it. As I’m walking around the outside of the run-down building, I notice a light on in a low window, and I get down on my knees, rub dirt off the pane and peer in—and to my great surprise, I see men making guitars, hear the humming of their tools, smell the sweet scent of freshly sanded/planed wood. At first, it feels as if I’m in a dream, or maybe these are ghost guitar builders, and if I could ever find my way down there, it would actually be empty, filled with the abandoned equipment from when Gibson picked up and left here in 1984—the year I graduated from college.
I work my way around to the other side and find an open door, a smattering of cars, on the door a small insignia, “Heritage Guitars, Inc.” I soon meet several of these luthiers, the ones who decided to stay when Gibson left. They show me their guitars, mostly stunning, hollow-bodied electric jazz guitars, that upon further inquiry, it turns out are far beyond my budget. “Hold on a second,” one of the builders says, and he vanishes out of sight to return with a lovely, dreadnought guitar. “Any interest in this? We’re not going to be making these anymore, and this is a second, though I’m not sure why. I can give you a very good deal on it, if you want.” I buy it on the spot, writing him a check (these are the days when checkbooks are a more common form of currency). This is the first acoustic steel-string guitar I’ve owned since my college, bluegrass/blues days, and as my full-time college teaching career begins to unravel, my reconnection with bluegrass, blues and classic acoustic music begins.
And in Connecticut, it is this “new” Heritage guitar that I start to write songs on, songs grounded in a cryptic but somehow necessary poetry. I don’t want to “say” anything ordinary. I just want to enjoy the way words abut in the same way I enjoy the way chords and notes bump up against each other. I don’t want to use any of the cliches you too often find in lyrics. I am increasingly finding a meditative calm when I sit for hours, my kids in daycare now, tinkering with chord changes, snippets of lyrics, finally a song emerging, three verses, a chorus, maybe even a bridge.
And with the encouragement of a relative/friend, Ron, who is himself a remarkable singer songwriter, I soon enter the world of the open mic, quickly establishing a deep fondness for them. Two, sometimes three nights a week I pick the kids up from daycare, throw together something for dinner, and as soon as possible—my wife home from work, kids tucked away, or very nearly ready for bed—I toss my guitar into the back seat of my trusty Volvo 240 and head out. One of my favorite open mics takes place at a nearby bookstore, the store closed for regular business, one room set up with a makeshift stage, a few microphones, a humble PA system, a piano, a smattering of 10-15, sometimes 20 musicians milling about, many getting there well in advance to make sure they get a good spot on the sign-up list. I generally arrive late and often take the last spot, and a few times, there are no spots, so I am just an audience member that night. The general rule is you get two songs. Everyone gets vigorous applause.
The level of music varies wildly. There is Eddy who only sings Hank Williams songs on an old, out of tune Gibson using only two “chords”—that I suppose if you had enough music theory, you could find a name for, but they aren’t “real” chords and are not even particularly pleasant sounding. But Eddy makes do, and while his vocals are equally ragged and out of tune, he sings with a kind of raw power and energy that is a thing to behold. He finishes his two songs, and the crowd erupts, and Eddy gets this huge not fully-toothed smile on his face, blushing a little, and goes back to his seat.
There are the pair of women who sing traditional Irish and Scottish and English ballads, one thumping on a bodhrán (a hand-held Irish drum), the other playing a lovely finger style on a Connecticut-built Flammang guitar, their voices hauntingly melding into each other. Maybe it’s because it’s live or because the quality of performances vary so wildly, but I am always deeply moved by their performance.
Then there is Ron, who draws applause and chirps of approval the second his name is announced. And he quietly comes forward, clutching a lovely Martin or the Guild hybrid he has rebuilt himself, right down to the mother of pearl inlay, settling into a chair, peering out through the thick lenses of his glasses from beneath the rim of a wool newsboy style hat, adjusting the microphones, noodling a bit. And he begins, his stirring lyrics erupting from beneath his heavy mustache, always telling a compelling story, his guitar work, a blend of blues, jazz, rockabilly, and at the same time something all its own—so the other very good guitarists in the room smile and nod at each other or whistle out after a particularly impressive guitar fill. Following Ron at an open mic is the worst of all fates, and if you get to an open mic late, it is often the only open slot.
So I step onto that small stage, nervously hit a chord to make sure I am roughly in tune, look out at all those kind faces, and begin. No one cares if I make mistakes, if my voice isn’t quite in the right key, if I fumble in an attempt at a fill (I am at least better than Eddy)…but this doesn’t make it any easier. There are plenty of good nights, times when I feel, for whatever reason, almost as comfortable as when I am sitting in my own living room, just a dog or cat for an audience. But something else is happening here, something more important; I’m finding something I am looking for, something I need now after academia has chewed me up and spit me out. This community doesn’t care, and even if they are judging me in their hearts, those judgments will never be let loose. I can sing whatever odd little song I have cooked up that I want to, and they will clap encouragingly, and I will leave feeling a bit more healed. I think now of how those first chords my brother and I worked out from our Mel Bay books had the same effect. We were making something all our own, something that sprang from our own fingers and sounded ok, good even, after such a prolonged period of strife, anguish, and uncertainty.
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Music as therapy for when your world is broken…You write movingly of the way an instrument can ease you through hard disappointments and connect you with beauty and the promise of better days.
And I happen to know quite intimately that better days were indeed ahead, your guitar pointing the way:)
Arnie, this beautifully-crafted essay was just the thing on this tired Tuesday morning. Your writing always inspires me to see seemingly ordinary moments in a fresh, more creative light.