is victory meaningless w/o the struggle?



Dr. Paul Benjamin hard at work.

I am stuck at a music shop in Tulsa, hopelessly shuffling through their sheet music bin, staring at Mariah Carey's Christmas Through Her Eyes, waiting for Paul Benjamin to arrive.

Paul Benjamin is the guitar doctor. You see the first night of tour did not go as planned. Planning on the jinky little stage in the beloved Colony (which has vibe but shittier equipment than most garage bands), my Epiphone tried to commit suicide.

10:25pm - I leaned over to adjust the falling mic stand with stripped nuts, and... KABOOM!

I have dropped guitars in the past, but never heard a crash quite so loud.

Ironically, this was supposed to be my guitar's big debut. After lengthy discussions w/ Agustin about how I need a better guitar & my counter-argument (I can't afford a Gibson 335 right now), I decided to put $500 into my $350 guitar to install fancy pickups. I won't lie -- I LOVE the way my guitar looks. That's why I bouight it. Fire engine red has always been my thing. And it feels right. And sounds good... unplugged.

But last night, this was all going to change. These new pickups make each note ring from the heavens. And suddenly bands that I love but thought I had nothing in common with... the XX, Beach House... I realized, I could play like that.


And then
           yet
                however
                       oh no
                 the one thing South Austin Guitars forgot to do when they upgraded my baby was to put the strap locks back on after they finished working on it. (Strap locks keep your guitar from slipping out.)


KABOOM! And just like that... one pickup was dead. Nada. No sound.


We fumbled through the set me playing all treble, all noise, all distortion, none of the beautiful gliding over ice we had practiced in rehearsals all week. It's like if you ordered a trombone and a penny whistle showed up.


So now we are doing the Hail Mary pass, standing over Paul Benjamin, Tulsa's premier guitar doctor -- and begging, pleading like a mother waiting to hear if her child will walk again.


He is dismantling switches & pulling off nobs... It looks like that childhood game Operation, watching him pull out the wires 'n guts of my guitar.


All the innards laid bare.

No wires cut; need resoddering.

Is it the switch? They don't have any of those in stock.... 

Nope, not that.

What then? What?



I won't tell you how the story ends. All I know is that somehow or other, we will leave Tulsa & end up in St. Joseph, Missouri this evening, and get onstage and do something.

And last night's show was so painful -- all I could think about was what was not -- that tonight's will be beautiful. Even if we will it so with our hearts and desire to move people, not the sounds from the strings.

I thought Blog Post #1 on this tour would be about getting to hear Jeff Tweedy (Wilco's frontman for those who don't know) do an interview in the intimate PBS studio. Lots of inspiration there.

But no... instead, we'll start w/ a lesson about the indie DIY touring world. Vans break. Expensive guitars break. Shit gets stolen. Hearts break sometimes. You come home tired & mostly broke & if all goes well (somehow, against the odds, it usually does), excited to do it again.

ps-- Tulsa, invest in your fuckin' sound systems. A decent PA ain't that expensive. And delicate pretty indie bands like us don't want to write you off. But the music comes first.


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