The Marauder: My Love/Hate Relationship

How did you get the Marauder?

In grade 9, I sold my trumpet which I used for one year in grade 8 band.  I was really bad at the trumpet.  I didn't have the lips nor the will and called it a day after a year.  I still liked music and my dad thought I should buy an electric guitar.  He took me all over Vancouver looking for my first electric guitar.  The quest was really fun though I didn't really understand what goes into an electric guitar.  

We eventually bought my first electric from a grade 12 kid in Vancouver who had it listed in the classified ads in the Vancouver Sun.  (Remember those?  If not, think of a non-digital version of Craigslist that came on -gasp- paper).  The guitar was a 1977 Marauder.  Dad liked it because it had "Gibson" on the headstock.  I liked it because it was black.  The kid who I thought looked like a hairy man demoed the guitar by cranking this huge stack and played what I think were Ted Nugent riffs.  

The man kid handed me the guitar, so I could try it out and asked me what kind of music I played, and I think he wanted to take the guitar back when I said, "Elton John."  I plucked a couple of chords I knew, then passed the guitar over to Dad who strummed his very distinct country chording with the galloping bass line.  The rocker kid did not want to blow the sale, so he tried not to roll his eyes and said, "Uh, nice."  Hairy kid and Dad agreed on a price (my trumpet money plus some extra Dad kicked in) and I walked out of there with the black Marauder and it came with a Gibson case, complete with crushed purple velvet interior.    

How did the Marauder sound?

At first, I LOVED that guitar.  It was cool.  It was black. It had strings and knobs.  It was shaped like the iconic Gibson Les Paul.  I could not really play it that well, but I thought I would with lessons.  I never really knew how the guitar sounded because though I had a cool electric guitar, I did not have an amplifier.  About twice a year, I would plug it into an amp that Dad had, but that old amp would distort and feedback above 2 on the volume setting.  Plus, because the amp had a two prong plug, I would slightly electrocute myself every time I played wearing socks in our cement floor basement.  Good times.

I finally bought an amp three years later.  I didn't know much about sound or specs or practicality.  I ended up buying this huge, heavy Yamaha solid state amp.  I think I bought it because it was big, it had a distortion knob on it, and it cost exactly how much I had saved up.  The thing was built like a tank (I verified this by dropping it accidentally and on-purpose several times over the years), and it had four ten-inch speakers, so it had to sound 4 times better, right?  

I remember this guy at a store in North Vancouver trying to convince me to buy this puny, used Garnet tube amp.  It had three knobs, one little speaker, and it was slightly beat up.  Looking back, that amp only did one thing well: sound amazing.  Me now is kicking myself (teen me) for not getting that amp.  Unfortunately, teen me decided that bigger was better, more knobs (including a decent spring reverb, a farty distortion, and a vomit-inducing tremolo), and 4 speakers was the way to go.  To make matters worse, I don't think I ever tried the amp out before I bought it.  Nor did I try to lift it.  Luckily, my buddy Trev who was taller and stronger was there to lift the behemoth out to my mom's car.  Then Trev carried the beast down into our basement where it stayed for years.

Not the greatest beginning for my first electric and my first amp, but it gets worse.  Before I bought the amp, I always KNEW I would sound so much better once I got an amp.  By then, I was getting better at the guitar, I could play barre chords and did a little improvising using one or two positions of the pentatonic scale.  My ear was always fairly good, and I could play riffs or parts of riffs, and my friends said that I would be amazing once I got my amp.  And when I got my amp, we were all deeply, deeply disappointed. 

The amp's best feature was that it could get really loud. But that was about it.  It was a clean, boring sounding amp.  Later, I found out that some guys were using it for a mellow jazz sound.  This was not the sound I was going for, especially in the 80s, it had the exact opposite sound.

Pair the dead-sounding amp with the Marauder and you have a match made in heck.  The Marauder was heavy in weight, but the neck felt good and the low action made it easy to play.  Sound was a different story.  It had a three way pickup selector switch.  The bridge single-coil sound was nasally and spiky (not good for 80s rock), the neck humbucker pickup sounded muddy and dull, and the middle combined position just sounded confused.  

History and my experience with the Marauder were not kind.

In the mid 80s, I bought a super Strat style guitar with a humbucker in the bridge position and a locking trem for those dive bombs.  After that, the Gibson collected a lot of dust or became my loaner guitar.  I think I loaned it to a dozen people; no one loved it.  Later in years, I read on line reviews of the Gibson Marauder and reviewers said unkind, but accurate things like:

• A perfect example of Norlin era Gibson.  A perfect failure.
• Gibson's Edsel.
• Gibson said that people will have a love-hate relationship with the Marauder.  They were half right.
• No wonder Kiss axeman Paul Stanley used to smash these things at every concert.
• The butt ugly mutant cousin of the Les Paul.
• With a bolt-on neck and a single coil bridge pickup, Gibson's attempt at a Tele?

Short of counselling, I tried different things to improve my relationship with this guitar.  I put in a P90 style pickup in the muddy neck position.  I tried different strings and tuners on it.  I tried different amps, pedals, and effects with it.  I tried using it for slide and alternate tunings.  Nothing worked.  Last year, I was starting to Marie Kondo some of my possessions and ended up donating a guitar and an amp to a school that had had some gear stolen.  The Marauder almost got chosen as the give away guitar, but because of the memories of getting this with my dad, I wasn't able to part with it just yet.  (The 80s super Strat-style guitar and a practice amp were donated).

Marauder reborn

I started to rethink how I was using the Marauder, all my guitars actually.  I don't play much hard rock these days, and I had replaced the humbucker pickups with single coils or lipstick style pickups on most of my guitars.  (Remember this?  I took a Van Halen type guitar and turned it into a Danelectro-style).  I think I thought of the Marauder as Gibson's own cheaper copy of the Les Paul, and wanted that thick Les Paul sound and vibe, but now I was starting to rethink of the Marauder as a Fender-type guitar.  From that point of view, the bridge pickup in the Marauder always sounded fine: thin and trebly; but it was the neck pickup that had no character.  I had a spare Strat neck pickup from a project, and I wondered what it would sound like in the neck position of the Marauder.  I tried to find an adapter but just ended up sticking the single coil into the existing holes!  Surprisingly, it fit and the pole pieces aligned.

Sure, the single coil in the big hole makes an odd guitar even odder looking, but I really like the sound now.  The Marauder is no longer trying to be a Les Paul; it is more like if Fender came up with a Gibson shaped guitar.  Kind of Tele in the bridge position, kind of Stratty in the neck, kind of DuoSonic in the combined position, but really it's own glassy funky chimy thing now.*  

(*The funny thing is that Epiphone is now making a $100 Les Paul SL guitar with two single coil ceramic pickups that looks and sounds very similar to this kind of Marauder.  But no stories, history, nor experimentation attached to that guitar yet).

The OLP MM1. Looks count.

This is the story of the complicated relationship I have with MiMi, an OLP MM1.


The Search

After playing a Stratocaster for a long time and a bunch of other single coil guitars, I wanted to play/have a double humbucker guitar.  I didn't have that kind of sound in any of my guitars.  As you remember, I like to buy cheapish guitars because if they fall out of favour andI want to mod them, I have no compunction about doing so.

I had tried several Les Pauls, the classic HH guitar, but they didn't appeal to me.  Too heavy, too close to my weirdo Marauder, and I could not get a decent unmuddy sound out of one on any of my amps.  For some reason, I got it in my head I wanted a Wolfgang.

Don't get me wrong, I love Eddie Van Halen, but I don't really play like him and the stuff I play does not sound like him.  I think I wanted a Wolfgang is because the reviews I read of the Wolfgang guitar said that those guitars were easy to play and had brightish sounding humbuckers in both positions.  So I went in search of an EVH non-Frankenstein guitar.

Found

On EBay, I found an OLP MM1 which was a Ernie Ball licensed knockoff of its own Music Man Axis, except with a photoflame finish (I didn't know what that was) and a non-locking Fender style trem system.  I didn't care about this because I wasn't going to big dive bombs on this guitar.  The best thing about this: $90!  An HH guitar for under a C note?  Done!  Faster than you can say, "Never buy a guitar without touching or seeing it," I hit the BUY button.

A few weeks later, I got an email saying my guitar has arrived.  That was the good news.  The bad newses were: I had to come and pick it up at the distribution centre (about 45 minutes away) and there was a $60 handling fee from the courier.  I wasn't happy about either of these, especially the $60 fee on a $90 purchase.  Still a deal, but not a smoking one.

Not what I had in mind

When I got the big box home, I opened it up and strapped the guitar on.  It had a little bit of neck dive, but the neck in my hands felt really good.  I plugged it in and for an HH guitar, it had a little spank to it.  Too much in fact with the amp I was using.  No problem, I'll just crank down the tone a bit, and then I remembered: this guitar does not have a tone knob.  It didn't bother me at first because I would just adjust the treble on my amp, but after playing with the band for a bit, I realised not having a tone know was a pain.  I couldn't smooth out the tone on the fly in the middle of a song.

I remember showing the band my shiny new axe for the first time.  They were NOT impressed.  I didn't notice the photoflame (a picture of flame maple projected onto a piece of formica) being that bad at first, but they did.  It had a 60s bowling ball look to it, and not in a good retro way, more like in a "my mom made a wanted to try crafting a faux wood finish so she Q tipped one onto a piece of countertop and glued it to my guitar" way.  It looks like flame maple from far away, like from space.  Up close, not so much.

To recap, MiMi (I name all of my guitars):

• felt good (especially after I put an oil finish on the neck).
• sounded okay.   I missed the tone knob.
• looked really, really ugly.  

I thought I would get used to the looks, but I never did.  I'd keep it in a cupboard where the band would practice because it was such a small guitar (hence the neck dive), and if someone stole it or broke it, oh well.

MiMi lay pretty well unused for several years, and I thought I would probably sell it or give it away (I loaned it out a few times, and no one ever begged to keep it).

Mod Project

I think it was because of a bunch of Youtube videos I watched on modding guitars, that I decided old MiMi was going to become my sacrificial project guitar.  After all, I could not make it uglier.  Before when I was playing it, I would pick off the headstock photoflame finish in between songs.  There would be little red dandruff all around me after we'd play.  When I decided to mod it for real, I borrowed my crafty friend Janet's heat gun.  It took off the formica in a couple of minutes.  I kept the formica on the body intact because I thought it was a nice flat painting surface after a little sanding.

I painted the body and the headstock with blue sparkly auto paint.  I did an OKAY job. There were some pits and drips.  Lori, the bass player, thought it looked like the surface of the moon from her angle.   I had originally wanted to go with a gloss white, like my new kitchen, but the cream binding on the edge of the body would have looked bad against it.  Cream on white white?  Ugh.  The blue was a great improvement over the 80s looking red zebra, though the blue did have complexion issues.

Search for a thinner sound

I wired in a tone knob (thanks Youtube) and changed the knobs to two chrome ones.  I played it like that for a few years, and I was much happier.  I experimented with the sound by removing the pickup polepiece screws on the white part of the zebra pickups.  That's when I realized, I am really a single coil guy now.  In my earlier hard rocking days, I wanted distortion and high output.  Now I am looking for a smoother, thinner sound.

I even turned the neck pickup 180 degrees to get the pole pieces further away from the neck.  I liked the sound I was getting with the middle toggle position now.  Before both humbuckers sounded like eating too many carbs.  Now, it was Tele-like.

I liked it so much that I started looking for ways to wire MiMi like a Tele.  I bought a harness that would split the humbuckers into single coils by pulling on the tone knob.  It was a great idea in theory until I pulled out the pickups and realized the pickups were not 4 wire (which is what the harness required).  I found instructions on how to make the stock pickups 4 wire, but it seemed like too much work when I could just buy new 4 wire pickups.  But then I realized, why would I want to buy more humbuckers when I know I don't love their sound?  Plus, because MiMi's pickups are direct mounted, screwed right into the body, I'd have to do some extra mods just to get new pickups to fit.

Lipstick is not just for your face

In the meantime, Danelectro put out a new guitar and there were several Youtube videos reviewing it. I really liked the sound of the nasally lipstick pickups and thought they looked cool too.  I couldn't see a way to mount the beautiful single pickups in MiMi, but I did find some double coil lipstick pickups on the Guitar Fetish site.  I didn't buy them because to buy two it was going to cost me more than what the guitar cost me (especially if I got stung for handling charges again).

Fast forward to several months later, and Guitar Fetish had a sale where I could buy two of these dual coil lipstick pickups (with 4 wire connections) for about the price of one pickup, and it came with mounting rings (that might come in handy when converting from direct mount).  There was just one catch: these particular sale pickups only came in gold.  But faster than you can say, "Never mix your metals," I hit buy.

I got them in the mail about a week later (no extra fees, no having to go far to pick them up).   It took a bit of work and thinking of how to get them in this particular guitar.  Here was my method:

• Remove the old pickups.
• Install the cheapo push pull harness.  
• File down the rectangular pick up feet so they fit in the triangular slots on the guitar body.  
• Drill a big hole in the body so the thicker wires of the new pickups with reach the controls.
• Swear for a bit when you notice the drill shank has rubbed some paint off the body, revealing the red zebra.
• Drill new holes for the pickup rings.
• File down one side of the neck pickup ring so it does not get in the way of the truss rod adjustment.
• Screw in the pickups and rings.
• Take a wild guess on the soldering the leads to the push pull switch because the pre-wired harness does not match the GFS wiring diagram.
• Test the switch.  It was here that I found out the switch only split the neck pick up the way I'd wired it, but that was okay because I liked the sound of the full bridge pick up.
• Touch up the paint using a Q tip, so that no red shows, but MiMi's complexion does any better.

Now, MiMi:

• still feels good.
• sounds great.  Spanky and sparkly.  The tone knob is really important with these very bright lipstick pickups.  
• looks really good.  Mind you, this is in the eye of the beholder.  MiMi has dermatological issues and does have the fashion sense to know you don't mix gold and chrome. 

My phone flipped the image.  

I didn't suddenly become left handed.

The video shows an open chord progression.

• Bridge humbucker only
• Bridge humbucker and neck single
• Neck single only
• Neck both coils

It was a great project to have, especially seeing as I mounted the pickups and rewired MiMi at the beginning of the COVID-19 home quarantine.  For an around $200 guitar, old MiMi does the trick.  It does not sound like anything else I have, and it does not look or sound like it used to.  I now have a playable, useful guitar that I am not embarassed to take out into public.  Though I still don't see myself jumping onto any stages anytime soon.  

The Closet Classic

I went to visit my cousin, and my family stayed with his family for a few days. On the first night, we had a nice dinner and had a great visit, then around 11:00 we all decided to turn in.  His wife took us down to the basement to show us where we were going to sleep.  There was this acoustic guitar in the corner, and my cousin’s wife must have noticed me looking at it, and said, “Oh we got that from one of our aunts.  I think it is a good one.”

She left the room, and my wife went to the bathroom to get ready for bed.  But I just stood there, staring at this guitar.  “Ohmigod,” I thought to myself, “that’s not what I think it is, is it?”  Generally, if there is a guitar in the room, it is the first thing I notice, and this one was just kind of in the corner glowing at me like that scene where they take off the lid of the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark.  I turned on all of the lights that were available in the room, and picked the guitar up.  Very carefully.

I had never seen a guitar like this before, let alone held one in my hands.  It had a mother of pearl logo “Gibson” on the headstock with matching split parallelogram fret markers.  There was no label on the inside to tell me the model.  The covered tuners reminded me of the ones on my 70s Marauder so I assumed it was from the same period, but the buttons were plastic.  The pickguard had a point like a Hummingbird but without the ornamentation.  The body was a sunburst.

When my wife returned, I told her about this guitar and she got into the whole Antique Roadshow vibe to the story.  With her help and going on the internet, I was able to determine that this was a 1956-1960 Gibson Southern Jumbo or SJ.  I found one for sale on line for $4000 in okay condition and another one for sale in England in good condition for over 5000 pounds or over $10000.  The one lying on my cousin’s basement bed was in very good to excellent condition.  There was zero fret wear.  There were no scratches on the finish, though there was the beautiful antique craze patterns in the gloss which does nothing to the sound but shows how old this thing was.   The only defect on this SJ was a small chip in the headstock. 

In my hands, the guitar felt like a dream.  I started to tune it, but the tuners were old and sticky, and there was no way I was going to break one off just so I could diddle around on it.  I was able to get the three bass strings in tune without a lot of resistance, and plucked a few lines on it.  Despite the age of the strings, that articulated Gibson thump was there, just like Libby Cotten or Pete Townsend.  I then slackened off the strings a bit to get an even tension on the neck. 

The next morning, I told my cousin and his wife what I had discovered about that guitar that was in the basement.  I think they were a little disbelieving until I showed them the UK website with one for sale for $10000.  I asked them where they got the guitar and they explained that their aunt had probably bought it, meaning to learn to play, but never got around to it.  She passed away, and it just sat there some more until the uncle was getting rid of a bunch of her stuff, and thought it would be good for their son.  They wrapped it in a sheet and took it home.

They asked what they should do with it.  I told them they had 3 choices:

1. 1)      Sell it.  I don’t think they would get 10 Gs for it because they would have to sell it themselves internationally, but maybe they could sell it for less to a local dealer.
2. 2)      Keep it.  Put it in a case until they figure out what to do with it or keep it as an investment.
3. 3)      Play it.  The guitar was made and bought to be played.  It is one of those dream possessions, like a Harley or a nice piece of jewelry.  BUT, I love guitars, and even I was nervous about wrecking it.  My own guitars are cheap(er) workhorses, meant to be played, tinkered with, and definitely not worried about.  I wouldn’t ride a Harley to work, and I wouldn’t wear a sapphire to the grocery store.

My cousin and his family will have to give it some thought before they deal with this unexpected treasure.  I had always been skeptical of these stories of people finding treasures in their family’s homes.  How could people not know what they had?  But my cousin’s story made a lot of sense.  The whole “chain of knowing” about this guitar had been broken.  It truly was a Closet Classic.

The Slide Has 5 Lives

Last time, I talked about building a lap slide with my limited woodworking skills.  What I didn't talk about was how after I built it, I used it a for a while and then I let it gather dust for a few years.

I think in my head, I was going to use it for David Lindley-type applications, but I began to realize that the only David Lindley song I might try is "Mercury Blues" but after attempting that song (which I don't do well), I had trouble finding more applications.

Dust gathering.

I tried some blues-type songs, but I could get those kinds of sounds, and with far more ease, by retuning a regular electric guitar and using a bottle-neck slide technique a la Duane Allman or Bonnie Raitt.  So if I could get the needed sound out of a regular guitar, why did I need a lap slide?

Dust gathering.

Then I tried to use the lap slide for country-type applications.  Yeah, it added a nice layer of slide guitar on some songs or recordings, but if I really wanted that country sound, I needed those cool intervals that pedal steel guitars have.  But I wasn't able to get those intervals on my G or E chord-tuned lap slide.

Dust gathering.

What was left?  Hawaiian music.  Historically, this was probably the first use of electric slide guitars way back when.  It was fun to play "Aloha Oe" for the first 100 times, but after that, it got a little stale.

Dust gathering.  For 6 years.

New Tuning!
I was looking for something else on YouTube, and I came across this video of some guy tuning his lap slide to a C6 chord.  He was able to get those cool pedal steel intervals, plus the Hawaiian sound from this tuning.   As the name states, the guitar is tuned to a C6 chord, or a regular C chord with an A (the 6th note in a C scale), low to high: CEGACE.  Strummed by itself, the guitar has that dreamy Hawaiian feel to it.  But by picking the 3rd and 6th strings together or the 2nd and 5th strings together, you get those great pedal steel intervals!

String Gauge
I was on holiday when I found the video, so not only did I have to wait to get home to retune and play my lap steel, but I also had to go out and buy 6 individual strings to get the right gauge, (15, 18, 22, 24, 30, 36) for this unique tuning.  I thought I could get away with a regular set of strings, but the tension would be too slack or too tight.  A regular tuning spans two octaves, and the C6 tuning is just over two octaves.  The custom gauge of string helps to keep the proper tension across all the strings, if not, the weight of the slide will pull the strings out of tune too.

Speaking of Slides...
Up until I got into the C6 tuning, I was using my regular, hollow, finger-style slide on the lap slide. After a while, I bought a big bullet slide.  Its weight helped with the tone, tension, and tuning while playing the lap slide.  I did find its weight and its size to be a little unwieldy, especially if I wanted to angle the bar so it was only touching one or two strings.  Eventually, I bought a Shubb-style slide. The contours on the sides make it much easier to maneuver the slide while still having sufficient weight to get the right tone.  I am also using a thumb pick to get the right attack on the bass strings.

Education
I found some YouTube videos, some websites, and an ebook that are helping me to rethink the fretboard with this new tuning.  It is like learning a new language, but it is a lot of fun.  I am getting some of those sounds on the old songs my dad used to listen to on country radio.  I've used this tuning on some of the songs I play with the band, but far in the background, as I am still working on the proper voicings and tone.  I still get the "tortured cat" sound from time to time, but I am getting better.

The Moral of the Story
If you have a slide guitar and you want to breathe new life into it, retune it to C6 and expand your horizons!

Making a Slide Guitar (with grade 8 woodworking skills)

I went to a dance (yeah, I know, but it was a school fundraiser), and a rockabilly band was playing.  It was a four piece band: singer/rhythm guitar, lead guitar, stand up bass, and drums.  They were a fun band and really swung.  For a couple of numbers, the lead guitar player pulled up a very basic-looking lap slide guitar, and it sounded really good.  I've tried playing slide on a regular guitar and it hasn't gone well, so I was wondering if a lap guitar would be better for me.  To my wife's chagrin, I kind of stopped dancing after that because I wanted to watch this guy play, but I also wanted to figure out how this guitar was made.  It didn't look hard: a plank, strings, and a pickup.

The next few days were spent trying to find out about slide guitar construction (and being nice to my wife).  On the internet, there wasn't that much information about lap slides, (but there is a lot of advice about being nice to your wife), so I just jumped in.  Doing a little inventory, I found I had a lot of the parts I needed, left over from previous mods, and I just needed some wood, a few electronic parts and a bridge.

The Body
I bought a nice piece of maple that I was going to cut in half and glue together like a sandwich so it would be nice a strong.  But I realized my tuners were not going to fit through two layers of wood, so I made sure the top layer extended beyond the bottom layer.   I still had to rout a bit of the thickness out so the pegs would clear the top.

I used tuners from an old Gibson Marauder.

Like the Marauder, I cut the headstock on an angle
 for a straighter, less-binding string pull.

The Bridge and Electronics
I bought a top-mounted bridge online and installed it on the end of the body.  I routed and drilled out places for the pickup and electronics.  I mounted them on some pieces of hardboard which was cheap, available, and easy to cut.  I didn't have a knob so I drilled out a red die, like on some hot-rodded rockabilly guitars. 

The pickup is a leftover stacked Dimarzio. 

The Frets
Okay, here is where I totally cheated.  A real woodworker gave me a nice thin piece of cherry for the fretboard, and I read about fret distance calculators and scale lengths.  It looked way too complicated.  Wanting to get on with it, I just photocopied the neck of a student guitar.  It was nice and wide, and the 24" scale made it nice and easy to place the nut.  The nut is an aluminum nut cover used to convert regular guitars into high-action slide guitars. 

The fret markers are happy face stickers, 

The "Finished" Product
I strung the guitar up with some Ernie Ball regular slinky strings that I had, tuned it to open G, and plugged it in.  Amazingly, it worked!  I used a lug from a socket wrench set as my slide (until I bought some actual slides).  The fret markers are surprisingly true, so when I put the slide over the frets, the guitar is actually in tune.  The Dimarzio has a lot of bite when I crank up the gain on my amp.  I had to run a ground wire to get rid of a little hum. 

I actually did this project a few years ago which you might be able to tell by the dust in the pictures.  A lot of the things I thought were going to be temporary, (e.g. the unfinished finish, the paper fretboard, etc.) have stayed, so far.  I drilled a hole and strung some leather through it so I could hang the guitar. 

Clyde the Slide

looks kind of like a Chapman Stick.

 

 

I name all of my guitars, and old Clyde is still doing well.  But I'll save more recent activities for future posts.  

The Embers: the song I want played at my funeral.

I refound the song I want played at my funeral.  It is called, "The Embers" and it was written by Billy Cowsill and Jeffrey Hatcher.  The version I know is by Jim Byrnes from his Fresh Horses CD.*

I first heard the song when Byrnes played it at a concert I attended at the Terry Fox theatre.  I don't know if it was poorly promoted or not, but there were maybe twelve people in attendance.  Byrnes, Jesse Zubot, and Steve Dawson still put on a great, intimate show.  When they played "The Embers", it was one of those magical moments.  Maybe it was because there were so few people, it felt moving and personal, like coming across a unicorn in a forest, and you look around like, "Is anyone else seeing this?"  During the performance, Dawson played a slow slide solo on his Weissenborn which unfortunately is not on the CD, but captured somewhat in my memory.  I bought the CD at the end of the show, and the trio signed it. 

Lyrically, the song does not capture my view on love and life, but it does have the right feel for my view on love and death.





*It might be out of print, so you can find it in the first binder of CDs in the computer room. 

Playing with Others

At work a few years ago, we started a little band at work.  I'd probably played longer than anyone else in the band, but I learned as much or more than everyone else too.  The biggest thing I learned, and it sounds really obvious, but playing with other people is different than just playing by yourself.  There are some small things and big things too.

• Being in tune is really important.  At first, we just used to self-tune, but I thought we sounded weird and phasey sometimes when we played together, so I started tuning everyone.  I think they thought I was just being anal until I started recording us, then they all went out and bought tuners.
• A song is not a long solo.  Lots of guitar players, especially when they first start really getting into it, solo all.the.time.  If you want to alienate a band with your awe-inspiring talent or your self-indulgence, keep it up.
• Guitar players also are good at parts of a song (the intro, a riff, a solo), but if you play in a band, you have to learn the whole song, all the way through.  
• Same with playing in time: try not to speed up during solos and choruses, and if you make a mistake, yup, keep playing. 
• Tone is more important than being loud.  This 50 watt modelling amp I have sounds awesome at home.  It is big and bassy sounding.  It can fill the room nicely, and when I crank it up, it can fill the neighbourhood.  BUT when I play with the band, this amp does not cut through the mix.  That would be okay if I am just trying to give atmosphere, but if I am playing the main riff or doing a solo, my guitar does not jump out whereas the other guitar player has this little 15 watt amp that cuts through every time.  I've since switched over to a smaller tube amp that sounds a little thin on its own, but fits nicely in the mix with the band.
• Use effects sparingly.  Stomp boxes are very seductive.  There are so many sounds and knobs and buttons.  Multi-effects or stand-alone units or on-board effects?  So many choices!  But as important as your sound is, the rest of the band won't be thrilled with you scrolling through menus, twiddling knobs, or fooling with your presets.  Do that on your own time because all of that tweaking is getting in the way of the big idea: playing with the band.  All you really need is a clean sound, a dirty sound, and a lead sound, and you need to be able to access them quickly (i.e. without having to plug something in during the middle of a song, stomp on 5 buttons, etc.).  Also, if you play with the same, heavily-effected sound, it is going to get old fast. 
• Singers rule song choice.  Unless you are an instrumental band, the singers should choose the songs or at least the songs should be chosen with the singers in mind.  You might have to give up some great guitar-heavy songs if the songs are not in the singer's range or register.   Think of Lou Reed singing "Stairway to Heaven".  Sure, you can capo or rearrange, but you will probably have to move on.  In doing songs from the singer's perspective, I have moved out of my guitar-based song rut.  My playing hasn't really improved, but my musicianship is definitely getting "wider".
• Decent monitors are essential for playing live.  With another staff band, we were playing at our school talent show.  Listening to the student performers, I was surprised how consistently off-key the singers were, that is, until we took the stage.  Sure, we were on-key because we could hear our amped instruments on stage, but because we were playing to a backing track played on the PA, we were so out of sync with the rhythm track. 

Though these points sound preachy, you need to know that I have made ALL of the mistakes I have stated above.  Of course, these remarks are based on my own limited experience, but heck, so is the rest of this blog!