The Outlaw

Saturday night and the rain is dripping off the redwoods and doing a nice moonlit dance…yes another Felton pre winter night. If I listen hard enough I swear I can hear Bigfoot. Guess he’s moody since I locked him in storage. You know those primal types. I can hear PETA calling me now…

This is going to be my first Felton winter since I moved back to the woods.

If I haven’t mentioned, or just forgot to, I used to live here back in the land before time (the late seventies) and haven’t had a winter here since I was about eight. If you also happen to be wondering if I’m some kind of delusional loner living in the woods with a gripe against society only time will tell. At the moment I’m more of a militant gnome or possibly some breed of North American Leprechaun. I’ll look at my field guide and get back to you.

 I’ve been feeling anxious all this week. It’s nothing too dramatic–just the usual frayed nerves that seem to follow the first stage of something new. Things are slowly changing for and it’s equal parts terror and bliss.  

            I have to really make sense of all these feelings before I can say anything concrete. I’m pretty sure there are blogs out there written by those who have no inhibitions about leading you down every twisted step of their spiraling staircase…but I don’t want to do that for now. It’s easier to take the elevator anyway.

All I will say is that I get the feeling I’m on some kind of a path and while part of me has the sense that I may have just lost my mind completely I know better. After all I’ve been on this path before…it’s just that somehow I always veered off just before it got interesting. It also challenges me in ways that I never felt equipped to handle.  Uh-oh…sort of veering into self-help territory here…shifting gears in 3…2…1…

So that nice guy at Fender sent my bridge saddles and I now have a custom Stratocaster I fused together in the lab. I don’t know what kind of thing they have going at Fender but personal service goes a long way in my book.  These days there are so many choices out there that nobody seems to have enough faith to stand behind anything and make it personal. But that’s another blog. Anyway the guitar looks amazing and has that great old feel. If you’ve ever played ball it’s like the feel of your favorite bat: an extension of your spirit.

The neck on the old Fender I had was worn and maple. Maple necks are fine for those who like a slicker feel but I need the grit of rosewood. It’s that subtle pull of callous against grain that gives it that push. It still needs some tinkering but it can howl.

The tone is bright, which means I have to be careful not to push it to hard on the upper register. I might even want to swap the pick-ups but the payoff is that the lower notes seem too have extra sizzle. There’s a raspy burn there and I like it.

B.B. King has a song from the old days called Lucille where he digs in to a laid back blues and tells the story of how his guitar got her name There’s no need to tell the story here for the master has already spoken. All that I want to get across is that he named it after a real woman he had seen…and a fiery blaze that ensued.

I recommend going out and finding the record. It’s not really going to have the same effect if it’s part of a workout mix or a YouTube playlist. It just might change your life.

 I’m going to name this one Etta because to me she’s got some heat in her voice. You need that for a smoking blues. 

            Playing the Strat (I haven’t earned the right to call her by name yet) reminds me of old records I used to listen to. It has that classic California sound you hear from The Beach Boys and Dick Dale. There’s a rumble there, like a hot rod cruising past Lighthouse Point and making it’s presence known alongside The Big Dipper. There’s a bit of my Santa Cruz childhood in there I guess. Now I never had a hot rod, and never put on a wetsuit and I never had much of a rumble. But I heard it all and somehow it’s in me.

The other sound that takes me back is the Hendrix tone. The first time I ever heard that sound I swore I could feel the vinyl come alive.

 I was ten and thumbing through the record collection of a guy my mom was going out with at the time. I’m not going to go into him too much suffice to say he deserved to get his collection pillaged. Anyway I was thumbing through the records, trying to keep myself occupied by rifling where I didn't belong when something caught my eye.

 It wasn’t Grand Funk or even his live Allman brothers LP.  That fascination would come later with the discovery of beer.  This time it was an imaginary outlaw...different in every way but comfortable enough to flaunt his seemingly alien qualities. His picture, which seemed to pop from the cover, was a collage of three poses, all facing different points. The images were layered and I can remember smoke, as if he had just emerged from a genie's lamp. The name said it all: The Jimi Hendrix Experience. 

Since I was a kid and had no business touching this man’s stereo or the fresh bag of Double Stuff Oreos in the kitchen, I did what I had to do to make sure I could listen to it one day: I shoved it in my windbreaker and robbed him blind.

            After that I held onto it, waiting to decode the sacred information burned into its grooves. It took awhile but when I found myself at the foot of the one-toothed god that went by the name of Denon Stereo record player at my dad’s house I was prepared with my offering. 

I wasn’t sure what I had and really only knew Hendrix by name and the image I had seen on my trips to Haight Ashbury where his head-banned Afro and wild ruffles were plastered on t-shirts and black light posters. I had never really heard his music or his records. This one, just called Smash Hits seemed like a good enough intro as any. It began with something called Purple Haze.

                        I did my careful tug to dismount the snake and laid her down on the black vinyl.  She hissed .as my eyes glazed over the spinning faded orange label and felt my front teeth gnaw at my bottom lip.

Then I heard an electric guitar that felt like a jagged march up a ravine.  Mixed with the low end it sounded like there was a note that didn’t quite belong but it was only preparing me for one of the greatest blues rock riffs ever written by a human being or possibly a psychedelic space cowboy.  I glimpsed out of my Eden into another realm and I wanted more.  

            Early on I was blessed to have an introduction to the power of the blues and classic r&b, having seen the Blues Brothers movie when I was a kid.  Even though it was a crazy coke filled car chase through Chicago it still exposed me to John Lee Hooker, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles and guys like “Duck” Dunn and the “Colonel” Cropper. The music had already found a home in my soul. Jimi just gave it a wild shade of purple.

            After Smash Hits gave me a new window into the blues universe I got Are You Experienced (on CD this time) and my personal favorite, Live at Winterland.  It was years before I would ever pick up a guitar (that came at seventeen) but I think it planted a seed in me I’ve never been able to shake.

                        It now one in the morning and I’m pretty sure anything else I write will disappear with the sobering effects of daylight. I will write about the band more but most of the time it’s all about repetition and getting our sound. We’ve got our space and we’ve set a course. Now I’m looking forward to getting my Strat into the picture. I know I bounce around a lot but that’s just me. If anyone out there is entertained by all this stuff it’s a pleasure. If you’re somehow annoyed and confused it’s even more of a pleasure. Catch you next Saturday night. And remember to let it howl.