loved it even more for its yoking

good morning ~

(click the Climax view / link to listen)

My Big Breakloved it even more for its yoking

today’s track features the tape recordings I made for the opening boombox blessing I realized at Union Pool over the weekend

in today’s writing I document a personal history of guitars and describe a truly cosmic intermingling involving my friend and collaborator Will Stratton, so maybe this is a good time to plug his album that just came out. it is phenomenal and the most truly “novelistic” collection of songs I’ve heard in a long while (he also let me write the bio for it, thanks brah)

also: next show for me is April 4 at Tubby’s with OHYUNG, get your tickets

The first one I ever really played was my older brother's, left behind after he went away for college. One summer my rented three quarter cello tragically snapped in the heat on my way to orchestra camp. It felt devastating at the time but perhaps this was the best - I was ear faking my way through sheet music and probably would have never made a great classical player. Plus, in his mercy, my brother allowed me limited access to the instruments he left at home when he went to college. I could fuck around with the Squire Stratocaster, I could plug in to the Peavey Bandit 112, I could even use the green phaser / flanger he bought at the Guitar Center in Hollywood. I was strictly forbidden from playing the acoustic, but that didn't stop me from immediately offering it up when some friends of mine at junior high wanted to put together a live band performance of "Adam's Song" by Blink-182 at the 7th grade talent show (sorry). While browsing a guitar magazine at a Barnes & Noble I read something Fieldy - the bass player from Korn - said about EQ on the amps that I remember as "fuck mids, we never use mids, we turn the bass and the hi all the way up." And so that is what I did, too. Looking up tabs online, playing along to my CD copy of "Californication" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers, walking to the Mars Music in the strip mall by the train tracks with birthday card money to buy the hardest picks I could find.

Many years later my bandmate and roommate had to suddenly drop everything and move to Poland for a couple of years, leaving a bunch of shit in our apartment, including an unassuming Fender Telecaster. It was on the surface nothing special - just a standard, fairly common instrument from the factory in Mexico with a crude black paint job on its front. I started playing around with it and found that I really enjoyed the way it sounded - punchy, distinct when picked with the pads of the fingers, and able to accept the weird, low tunings I was obsessed with at the time. Not long after that, I lost the G-string saddle on the Burns Marquee guitar I had been playing when it literally exploded apart in my hands during a solo at Pianos - having to get it fixed meant that the mediocre Tele became my primary instrument. I played it for seven or eight years until Asa finally - and very politely - asked for it back.

Somewhere in there I came into de facto possession of my grandma's Estrella brand nylon string guitar after she passed - a cheap, unfixable, hard-to-play instrument that I still cherish nevertheless. That guitar - as well as my grandma's electric chord organ - have made it onto multiple of my records. Dan loaned me his dad's red SG and I ended up in possession of it for five or so years. And there was the parade of weird used guitars, like the pokey, hot pink shredder axe my buddy Andrew found for meat a garage sale when I was in high school, this was the guitar I chose to take with me to the Brubeck Institute jazz summer program, the only locking tuners on campus. And there was the offbrand, neglected Speed Demon bought from Buckdancer's Choice in Portland, Maine that badly needed new pickups.

But nothing I played regularly ever scratched that telecaster itch again and for the last few months I've been fantasizing about getting my hands on one. I nearly pulled the trigger on a Prince tribute guitar - he famously played a Japanese knockoff Telecaster and there's this purple one with a leopard pickguard that really speaks to me. So I was in a place of great vulnerability the other day when great guitar shop Love of Fuzz posted a particularly beautiful telecaster - deep blue green with upgraded pickups and a tremolo bridge, a nearly ideal instrument. Within an hour of seeing it online I was in the shop trying it out. And within fifteen minutes of playing it for the first time, I was walking out with it. It felt powerful and articulate in my hands, responsive to my impulses, and impressively assertive when I really dug in. It fought back a little bit, too, which I think I really enjoy - the hollowbody I've been playing for the last couple of years is almost too easy to play. Within moments of plugging it in I felt more authentically myself. This was the guitar I had been looking for and when I cranked it up at home Gracelee hollered from downstairs, "holy shit, it sounds amazing!"

The day of my gig in the city last weekend I posted a quick clip of me playing the guitar online, no big deal - just wanted to get people out to the show. Pretty soon thereafter I saw that my buddy Will Stratton had left a comment on the video.

"BEN you bought the tele I built!!"

Moment of confusion, moment of clarity - I sort of remembered that Will built a guitar during quarantine. Hustling out the door I texted him this in response:

"YOU BIULT THISNFUCKING GIITAR ????????"

And in fact he had, very easy to confirm - the unusual paint job is courtesy of a can of Chrysler touch-up spray purchased at the AutoZone, you don't see that shade. Will sold it to somebody in New Paltz a few years ago and it somehow made its way to my preferred shop in Troy. Unbeknownst to me - acting on impulse and on sound yearning - I had assumed possession of my friend's axe. I already loved the guitar for its sound, loved it even more for its yoking. An object when seen to floats specter-like through the brief meat flash of human life. Other people's instruments, other people's tools, the proof and warmth of other people, still ringing in the pickups.

But what about you? What’s yoking you to the others? What objects have persisted? Do you cherish something a little bit more if you have to fight for it?