Short Takes

In 1990 Yuriy Shishkov was in a damp basement room in the Soviet Union, illegally making guitars with makeshift tools and scavenged parts, selling the finished product for about a $100. He eventually made his way to the United States, where he found himself making guitars for Jimmy Page, as well as Paul Stanley of Kiss. Now he's an ace luthier in Fender's custom shop, where he puts together guitars like a mirror-topped Telecaster for Keith Urban. Sure beats working the night shift at the Tonika plant in Vladivostok. The Los Angeles Times tells his story here and furnished the picture on the the left.

I'm probably the last to learn this but Page put aside his Les Paul and played a 1958 Telecaster on the notable solo on "Stairway to Heaven" ...

This struggling economy is hurting the guitar business. Nashville-based Gibson, which has been around since 1902, is laying off 50 people amid what it says is a 20 percent drop-off in instrument sales in this fiscal quarter. The layoffs will be on the corporate side, rather than the guitar-making side ...

Jimi Hendrix's boyhood home -- the tiny house he lived in when he developed his interest in music --- was demolished this week but it's legacy may live on. "Can you imagine a guitar made out of wood from Jimi's house? Who wouldn't want that?" Pete Sikov, who bought the 900-square-foot house a few years ago for more than $30,000, told the Seattle Times. Sikov is saving and cataloging the pieces from the place, where Hendrix lived from age 10 to 13. Sikov moved the house from Seattle to nearby Renton, Wash., a few years ago with the intention of making it a museum of sorts. But after several development deals fell through, Renton city officials ordered the house, which was something of an eyesore, demolished.

Smoothing Out the C Chord

I might have to give myself a gold star -- a little discreet one -- after making some progress recently. No major breakthroughs but progress, nonetheless.

A couple of weeks ago a friend asked how I was coming along on the guitar and I replied that I was sometimes amazed at how truly awful I still am. I went through the list of musical crimes I have been committing from the beginning -- of shortcomings that have plagued me from the beginning -- fumbling fingers, slow and erratic chord changes.

Shortly afterward, though, a few things started falling in place and, for the most part, I have no idea why. I've got a small handful of songs I can handle if I keep the tempo slow enough and if expectations aren't too high. My repertoire -- if I my be so bold as to call it that -- centers around lots of old countrified Stones stuff like "Dead Flowers," "Torn and Frayed," Rip This Joint" and "Country Honk," as well as what sounds like the playlist at a classic rock station -- "Brown-Eyed Girl," "White Houses" and "Love Me Do." Jackson Browne's "Take It Easy" is probably the highlight of the show.

One improvement I can pinpoint is the way I handle the C chord. It used to give me fits because I was subconsciously trying to lay in my three fingers one at a time. If I tried to do it quickly, I'd miss and if I tried to do it carefully, the song would come to a near-halt. But then I read that you need to apply all fingers at the same time, which certainly make sense. This is one of those basics I should have learned a long time ago but we all learn at our own pace, don't we?

Tales of Ignorance and Generosity

There isn't much I can contribute to a discussion of the merits of switching out a bone saddle in favor of a turq saddle or whether somebody should buy a Larrivee D-05 or go with the Taylor 710 L9. That's why I mostly lurk at at the Acoustic Guitar Forum message board, which is home to some pretty serious players.

But every now and then I find some nugget of guitar information that isn't several miles over my head. And some of the threads are downright amusing, like "Dumbest thing overheard in a guitar store" with many of the tales featuring the sometimes ill-informed sales staff of various Guitar Center stores. My favorites include the salesman who thought bass -- as in the opposite of treble -- was pronounced like the fish of the same spelling and the guy who tried to convince a customer that a guitar with a warped neck was intentionally tilted so the player could have a better view of the fretboard.

And then there was the salesman who urged a man to spend $2,000-plus on new Martin and then take it home and enlarge the sound hole himself because it was the "new thing" to do.

As someone pointed out, that's what Willie Nelson's done to the sound hole of his Martin and he seems to be doing OK.

Sometimes you get a feel-good story at the Acoustic Guitar Forum like the New Jersey man who solicited for a guitar for his stepson, hoping that it would help him through his stay in a rehab facility. The man was out of work but offered to pay off the guitar over time.

Eleven minutes after he posted, a fellow board member was making arrangements to meet up and hand over a nearly new Epiphone. Shortly after that came another offer of a guitar and someone else had a case to donate. Still another person wanted to contribute strings.

The man got the guitar to his stepson that same day and then posted the following:

"I picked up the guitar tonight from a very gracious forum member. She even found a gig bag for the guitar and it looked brand new. I was able to take it to my son right away. I have never seen him so surprised or happy. We went outside to a picnic table and opened it up, he just grinned and grinned. What kid wouldn't with a new Black Epiphone. He then proceeded to play me something he had been working on, 'The House of the Rising Sun.' What a beautiful day. Thanks."

Snake, Rattle and Roll

My next guitar accessory will come from the animal kingdom. Turns out that part of my problem is that I don't have a rattlesnake rattle in my guitar.

Nowadays the music industry mostly uses rattlesnakes to provide trousers for legions of heavy-metal heroes but they once had a more interesting role. Old bluesmen would drop rattles down the sound hole to give their guitars a little more mojo. Borrowing from a fiddle tradition, other folks used the rattles to keep mice and spiders from nesting inside while still others claimed the rattles gave their guitars a buzz that fleshed out their sound.

I'm not sure if my local guitar shop carries rattlesnake parts. Currently all I have in my Alvarez are a couple of small dust balls, although every now and then I accidentally drop a pick in. Neither provides much mojo, though.

Dueling Guitar and Banjo

It's one of the best known pieces of music in movie history -- right up there with "As Time Goes By" from "Casablanca" -- so why is it misnamed? It's called "Dueling Banjos" -- from "Deliverance," the 1972 movie about the city slickers experiencing all sorts of cultural disparities with the hillbillies in northern Georgia -- but what we see is one guy playing a banjo and another playing a guitar.

The banjo boy was played by Billy Redden, an 11-year-old local found at a casting call on location in Georgia because the director thought his "look" suited the role. The story goes that Redden didn't know anything about the banjo so the banjo work was done by a player reaching around Redden.

The actor with the guitar, Ronny Cox, who was making his movie debut, actually is an accomplished player. He was in bands as a kid growing up in New Mexico and for a while sang backup at Norman Petty's studio, where Buddy Holly did some of his best work. Cox, who would go on to play a Woody Guthrie colleague in "Bound for Glory," has cut several albums and still his act on the road when not working in movies.

"Dueling Banjos" was written by Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith in 1955. The makers of "Deliverance" used the song -- as performed by Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell -- without Smith's permission and he had to sue to get songwriting credit and royalties. The soundtrack version was a big hit and spent four weeks at No. 2 on the U.S. pop charts in 1973.

As for Redden (on the left, all growed up) he's got to be one of the most memorable actors in movie history, considering the brevity of his list of credits. After "Deliverance," his next acting job was in 2003 when Tim Burton cast him as a banjo player in "Big Fish," just because he was so taken by the "Deliverance" scene. He also made an appearance on "Blue Collar TV" but spends most of his time working at the Cookie Jar Cafe, which he co-owns in Clayton, Ga.

The Telecaster Rethought

I've been working on some modifications that I plan to submit to the Fender people. Hope they like them.

Musical Mariners

The Seattle Mariners should challenge the Arizona Diamondbacks to a battle of the baseball bands.

As we learned last season, several of the D'backs are so into music that the team set aside a corner of the clubhouse to serve as a Fender-furnished music room. It turns out the Mariners also have a couple of decent guitarists.

Seattle first baseman Ben Broussard's second album will be coming out this year, full of the acoustic rock songs he writes on the road. He's been playing since he was a teenager in Beaumont, Texas, and says at this stage in his life the music is a complement to baseball.

"Music definitely helps me play (baseball) better," he told an interviewer a while back. "I think I play (baseball) better when I'm able to let loose and play my guitar when I have a bad night. I can write a song about it and just let it go."

His music has been used on TV shows like "Real World" and "Dog the Bounty Hunter." You can hear a sample of his first album on his Web site or iTunes and he also does U2's "With or Without You" on "Oh, Say Can You Sing," a compilation of singing baseball players.

Left-handed reliever Tyler Johnson could be Broussard's collaborator. Johnson, who also takes his guitar on the road, is trying to make the Mariners roster after rotator cuff surgery and says he might try a music career if he doesn't make the cut.

The Royal Guitar

If someone said to me "Roy Rogers guitar," I would picture something like the item on the right -- a vintage-looking toy made of pressed cardboard with some gaudy King of the Cowboys artwork. The Autry National Center of the American West sell this very item for $35.

But if someone from the Christie's says "Roy Rogers guitar," the price is going to be more than $35. In fact, it'll be six figures. The auction house is selling a Martin OM-45 Deluxe guitar that once belonged to Rogers, who was, in addition to being the coolest of all cowboys, the founder of the Sons of the Pioneers.

The guitar was made in 1930 and Roy was the last person to play it. Christie's is selling it in its unrestored state -- just under the bridge is a gold star sticker from a flour promotion campaign Rogers did in the mid-1930s -- and is expecting it to go for $150,000 to $250,000 in an April 3 auction. Three other guitars once owned by the former Leonard Slye of Cincinnati, Ohio, also are being put on the block by the Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum in Branson, Missouri.

I was a big fan of Roy's but I suppose the pressed-cardboard model fits my budget better than the Martin.

Unsupervised in the Guitar Room

Until today I had only really played three guitars -- all of which I paid for, at one point or another -- in my life. I know that sounds ridiculous to a veteran guitar player and it's also a bit self-defeating because of the way it limits my guitar education. But today I manged to get my hands on several different ones and fiddle around to my heart's content. It was a case of the middle-aged guy in the guitar store making like the kid in the candy store.

Actually, it wasn't a guitar store but the guitar section of Best Buy. I'm not sure when Best Buy started selling guitars but my little heart skipped a beat when I saw all those electrics hanging on the wall. I lusted for them for awhile and then went in a room about the size of a standard bedroom that was wall-to-wall acoustics. I sat in there among about 100 guitars and played around for almost an hour, getting my hands on Takamines, Taylors, Gibsons, Fenders and even a couple of Martins (these were the relatively inexpensive, foreign-made models with hardly anything over $500). Again, anyone with any experience will find this naive but I was fascinated by the way each had it's own feel and voice. I think I liked the ones with the big, deep sound best.

The reason I'd never sampled guitars before was because I'm just way too self-conscious about the way I play. I'm severely audience-phobic and to go into a place like Guitar Center and be scrutinized by serious players would never work for me. I live in fear that someone is going to ask me to demonstrate my prowess. It was hard enough playing for an instructor when I was taking lessons. Fortunately, I apparently was invisible to the Best Buy personnel and they hardly noticed my presence.

As it is now, about the only people who ever hear me play are family members and they have no choice. Another guitar student with a story similar to mine -- didn't get serious about the guitar until later in life and was at times struggling with it -- told me it had done him a world of good to start playing with others. I'm just not ready for that -- psychologically or skill-wise, I'm afraid. But if I ever do play for any sort of audience, I'm going to do so under a big banner that paraphrases the Marshall Crenshaw album title "I've Suffered for My Art. Now It's Your Turn."

A Blunt Musical Instrument

I recently came across a story that reminded me of the guitar's versatility. Not only is it a musical instrument, it also can be a blunt instrument for administering a sound thrashing.

It seems a man in Wasilla, Alaska*, found someone robbing his house. The homeowner responded by grabbing a guitar and bashing the burglar, who fled, only to be captured a short time later.

The homeowner's choice of weapon follows in the rich tradition of El Kabong, the old TV cartoon character who roamed the Southwest handing out musical beat-downs to deserving miscreants. El Kabong was a Zorro spoof, a masked alter ego of Quick Draw McGraw, the sheriff who was part John Wayne, part Barney Fife. He called his guitar a Kabonger, an otherwise unknown four-string acoustic model from an unknown luthier. This video explains how things worked.

I don't recall ever seeing El Kabong actually make music on his Kabonger but I doubt he was very good at it since he was a horse and fretting would be awfully difficult with hooves.

El Kabong was just a cartoon character but Keith Richards, while he may have some cartoonish qualities about him, is a real-life guitar-swinging vigilante. Watch him take a baseball-style stroke at some fool who rushed the Stones' stage before jumping right back into "Satisfaction." You can almost hear the kabong. (Way to help him out there, Mick.)

* Yes, this is the town that gave us Sarah Palin. Police said Russia could be seen from the crime scene.

Koa and a Cat

I'll concede that I might be a little old for Taylor Swift, the 18-year-old singing/songwriting Nashville phenom, but I think I'm developing a crush on her guitar. Not the rhinestone-covered model she uses for "Teardrops on My Guitar" but the eye-catching koa wood one seen here. She played it at the Grammys last month and also posed with it on the cover of the current Rolling Stone.

Coincidentally or not, that guitar is a Taylor ...

If you're a guitarist on a budget, you might check out www.goingtoday.com. The site offers one random musical item for sale per day and sometimes you can get a decent deal. The offerings might range from a box of harmonicas to a $220 effects pedal but usually are on the inexpensive end of the scale. I got a plug-in mini-amp for the Telecaster that was pretty junky but also a decent clip-on pickup for the Alvarez that plugs into my Fender amp ...

Man, it really irks me that a cat can play better than I can. His technique is better, he's faster and he plays with more passion, although I think the playing-with-the-teeth thing at the end was way over the top. Somebody ought to turn him into guitar strings.

Actually, youtube.com is full of guitar-playing cat videos. Some of the other cats are better than me, too; some not. None of them, though, have this guy's flair. He's a feline Stevie Ray.

The Telecaster

You can tell I'm a neophyte guitarist because I'm just now getting around to posting an adoring photo layout of the newest guitar. A hard-core player would have done this weeks ago.

This isn't exactly the work of Annie Liebowitz (she shoots guitars as well as people, doesn't she?) but the thing is so shiny it's hard to photograph.

Dancing With the iPod

This is a pretty eclectic stumble through the shuffling iPod.

• "Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers," Etta James
• "Out There," Jimmie Vaughan
• "Live Forever," Billy Joe Shaver
• "Take It Easy," Jackson Browne
• "The Valley of Regret," Stone Coyotes
• "So Excited," B.B. King
• "Sad Songs and Waltzes," Willie Nelson
• "Shine On," Humble Pie
• "Hard Times in the Land of Plenty," Omar & the Howlers
• "Everybody Needs Somebody," 13th Floor Elevators
• "Texas Rain," Townes Van Zandt
• "Cowboy in Flames," Waco Brothers

On closer inspection, maybe it's not all that eclectic since six of the 13 acts are from Texas.