I'm Down, Down on the Ground

Back in the '60s there was an interesting theory going around that Paul McCartney was actually dead and had been secretly replaced in the Beatles by an imposter. There was a fairly convincing body of evidence, based on lyrics and album cover photos, to support the theory, too.

It turns out Paul managed to outlive two bandmates, as well as one wife, and survived Wings, a duet with Michael Jackson and Heather Mills. Hurricane Ike, however, laid him low in Houston.

I snapped the "before" picture (above) in the summer of 2007 when my dad took me to see the statues, which are about 30 feet tall and show the lads in all their Sgt. Pepper finery. They're the work of David Addickes, who has done giant busts of all the U.S. presidents, as well.

When Hurricane Ike blew through the Houston-Galveston area in September, it knocked Paul face down on his Hofner bass but left the other three Beatles standing. Ike must have been more of a Lennon guy.


Addickes says he expects to get Paul back on his feet eventually. I hope he also fixes Paul's missing right arm and John's missing left one (although oddly enough they each have two hands).

And isn't that White Jumpsuit Elvis walking in front of the fallen Paul? Apparently he's not dead either.

(The pun in the title of this post is the only decent one I could come up with based on a Beatles' title or lyric. Feel free to add your own as a comment.)

This, That and the Other Thing

There's a DIY guitar shop in Scottsdale, Ariz., for aspiring luthiers. The folks at the Phoenix Guitar Shop furnish the materials, tools, workspace and instruction while the students design and construct their own guitar, inlays and everything. It costs $425 for the materials and $1,625 for the class (that's enough for a lesser Martin) and the process takes about a couple of weeks, according to the Arizona Republic ...

For now, at least, I'm sticking by my stated intention of not naming my guitar. However, I have decided that if I ever do hang a name on it, I'm going to call it Senor Alvarez. Or maybe just The Senor ...

I've come across something that brings me a teeny measure of accomplishment and, as my biggest fan says, sounds almost musical. From the Nils vids I picked up the intro to "Stand by Me" -- simple strums of G, E minor, C and D -- and I can make it recognizable. I can do the changes cleanly and it helps that the tempo is not too fast. Of course, I have no idea where to go after those four opening chords but it's fun doing them over and over.

The High Cost of GAS

In a weaker man, this little book could easily trigger an outbreak of GAS -- the dreaded guitar acquisition syndrome, which is defined as the obsessive and irrational purchasing of musical related equipment. David Schiller's mini-coffee table book "Guitar's -- A Celebration of Pure Mojo" has eye-popping photograhs of some 500 guitars -- some beautiful, some bizarre, some historic and some rightfully obscure. Mixed in is text about their makers and players.

The most interesting guitar was The Log, Les Paul's 1941 creation, which is generally considered to be the first solid-body electric guitar. It was a 4x4 piece of lumber attached to a Gibson neck and headstock with a pickup made from an electrical clock, Schiller says. In order to make it look more guitar-like Paul grafted halves of an Epiphone body to the 4x4.

Shortly after The Log came Leo Fender (left), a reformed accountant who liked to tinker with electronics and became the guitar industry's Henry Ford. Through design, quality and sharp marketing, Fender guitars became a musical icon. They were so popular that Leo sold his company to CBS in 1965 for $13 million, which was $2 million more than CBS had paid to buy the New York Yankees a year earlier.

It turns out Leo couldn't even tune a guitar, much less play one, so maybe there is hope that I, too, will have a meaningful impact on the music business someday.

As tempting as those guitars look in Schiller's book, I think I'm immune to GAS for the time being. Instead, as mentioned earlier, I have a case of GPAS (guitar pick acquisition syndrome), which is considerably more benign due to the affordability of picks. Also, a couple dozen picks are much easier to store and hide from your wife than a couple dozen guitars.

Check This Action

A wall of gold records, a mantel lined with Grammys, a warehouse full of money and stadiums packed with adoring fans would all be nice but the best thing about being a rock star would be having an action figure created from your own likeness.

Groupie action figures sold seperately.

Some company makes a Keith Richards action figure but I wouldn't buy it. It looks much more like Bill Wyman.

Squeezing the Neck

I've discovered the capo. I don't know how to fully utilize it, of course, but it's fun to play around with. Capo is Italian for head and for the small percentage of people who know less about guitar playing than me, a capo is a padded clamp that goes across the strings, essentially shortening the guitar's neck and raising the pitch. You play the same way but get a different sound.

My capo (above) comes from Kyser Musical Products of little Canton, Texas, and is nice because you can put it on and take it off with one hand. If you dig around in your desk, though, you can come up with the materials to make your own, like the one on the right. I bet it would go well with a cigar box guitar.

Capos have been around since the 17th century but some purists call them cheaters and say using them is a shortcut for people who are trying to avoid learning barres and other difficult chord shapes. To me, that sounds like disparaging someone for driving to Philadelphia when they could have walked.

Capos even have their own online museum.

'Dillo on the D String

If not for T-shirts, how would we communicate our interests, politics, wit, likes and dislikes to other people? How would we let them know where we went on our last vacation? Sure, we could talk about these things or even write about them but the T-shirt makes it so much simpler.

That's why this T-shirt (click for a better view) has moved to the top of my rotation. You've got your guitar and busting right through it you've got your armadillo, that little nine-banded, armor-clad fellow who became an icon in Austin in the mid-70s when I was in school there. I proudly own a taxidermied armadillo and if I ever get a tattoo, which I'm not, it will definitely be an armadillo.

Only Willie Nelson was more beloved than the armadillo in Austin in the '70s. The popularity of Dasypus novemcinctus was tied in to the Armadillo World Headquarters, the legendary music hall that brought in a mile-wide variety of music and helped give birth to a new genre of music that was variously called outlaw country, progressive rock, country rock and redneck rock.

And so this T-shirt (get your own here) celebrates the guitar, music, AWH and me clinging to the past. The art is by Jim Franklin, who first incorporated the armadillo into his artwork and did bunches of surrealistic dillocentric posters promoting shows at the AWH, such as the one on the right. He also helped found the AWH.

Now I've gone and made myself all nostalgic and homesick. To say nothing of hungry for Mexican food.

Hello, I'm Definitely Not Johnny Cash

I never shot a man in Reno just to watch him die but one time in Vegas I did accidentally step on a guy's foot in the airport. And I never fell into a burning ring of fire but the other night I slightly burned my forearm pulling something out of the oven.

I figure that's enough to qualify me to learn to play that trademark Cash guitar intro, which Mark introduced me to at last night's lesson. It's similar to what you hear on "I Walk the Line" in the video below. I can already drop my voice down low and mutter, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash," which was how he used to begin all his shows.

The picking pattern is fairly simple but to get that true Tennessee Two sound you have to mute the picking. That involves lightly resting the heel of the right hand on the strings as you pick, creating a rougher, slightly muffled sound. I'm having a little trouble getting the muting even. And as an instructional Web site says, "Guitar players with poor palm muting skills are really quite painful to listen to."

I distinctly remember the first time I heard Johnny Cash. I was about 10 years old and the family was visiting West Texas. We were in a little place that my uncle ran and I stopped in my tracks when the jukebox started playing this guy with the extra-serious bass voice singing about how he had to keep a close watch on his heart and how someone, apparently a woman, was making him walk the line. I didn't understand it but that voice sure made an impression on me.

iPod Jukebox

I shook up the iPod and this is what fell out:

• 'Don't Let the Devil Ride,' Buddy and Julie Miller
• 'Hand and Glove,' Arthur Conley
  
• 'Streets of Bakersfield,' Dwight Yoakam
• 'Last Letter,' the Gourds
  
• 'Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You,' Wilson Pickett
  
• 'Stranded in the Jungle,' New York Dolls
• 'Blackwater Blues,' Lightnin' Hopkins
  
• 'Burn Down the Mission,' Elton John
  
• 'One-Woman Man,' Marty Stuart
• 'Satellite Radio,' Steve Earle
  
• 'No One,' Johnny Adams
  
• 'Cowboy Peyton Place,' Doug Sahm
  
• 'Dear Abby,' John Prine
  

Where else can you find the New York Dolls followed by Lightnin' Hopkins?

I Now Have a Protege

The guitar and fatherhood came to a lovely intersection Saturday night when my 16-year-old daughter and I had a beginner's jam session.

Usually there are only three things my daughter asks me for -- money, a ride to a friend's house and privacy -- but this time she asked if I could show her a thing or two on the guitar. I told her it would take only about 15 minutes for me to show her every single thing I know about the guitar so we started playing around.

She had her old Washburn, the guitar that had been in solitary confinement in a corner of her bedroom for a couple of years until I dusted it off back in November. She quickly realized how tough the strings can be on beginning fingers so we stuck with the single note stuff. She especially liked the "Jingle Bells" thing and picked it up pretty easily. I made the mistake of telling her that in 20 minutes she had learned what it took me two weeks to master (actually, it was only one week) and now it's a running joke with her.

Maybe we'll get to chords soon and maybe not. Whichever, it's nice to share something sweet like this. I believe there was even a hug involved.