Guitars and Sunflowers, Part One
with Gary Mockford
I first picked up the guitar when I was fourteen. It was this guitar.
No, actually, it was an acoustic guitar. But I DID get this guitar when I was fourteen. My mom bought it for me, from a co-worker who was getting married. I thought this lady was mad to give up such a thing because she was getting married! I think it had to do with money and travel, but at the time, I was chafed.
This is how I looked with it in the living room as a teenager:
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I was mugging here for my stepmom’s camera, but yeah, take away the Motley Crue makeup and I totally dressed like that in high school.
I was listening to progressive rock, like Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Yes, Rush. I was listening to things with odd rhythms, like the Pretenders, or unusual sounds, like Big Country. I wanted badly to understand and play the guitar.
But when I went to take guitar lessons, the teacher tried to make me play Mary Had a Little Lamb. After three lessons, I got frustrated and gave up.
One day in a guitar magazine, I found the tabs to the Pretenders’ Back on the Chain Gang. I wanted to play that song. I tried and tried, so very hard, but I just wasn’t getting it. I could not play the song. I had everything laid out in front of me, in a chart, and I couldn’t play it. I couldn’t make the chord changes fast enough, and I couldn’t jump to this part here, and couldn’t play that chord there, and….ugh!
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with Scott Skulmoski
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So I never did truly play the guitar back then. I toyed around with it from time to time, but what I really wanted was to sing, And I didn’t have the courage to sing in public anyway, so what was the point? I could just sing along to the stereo, in private.
The guitar got moved around a lot, until I ended up here at the Treehouse. I rarely played it. It was difficult, and I didn’t really understand it, beyond a few basic chords. Besides, my old hollowbody was badly out of shape, and wouldn’t stay in tune. For years, it served a decorative purpose, and eventually went high up on the wall, above a bookcase.
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I decided to start playing guitar again with a bang. I had a very bad day at work. I no longer loved my job, and was ready to leave, but scared to give up my career. I had poured my heart and soul into Human Rights work for eleven years. I didn’t even know what else I could do with my life.
I walked out the door at the end of that work day, and instead of turning left to go home, I turned right and walked up to the pawn shops. I was determined not to come home without an acoustic guitar, so I could finally start learning to play.
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It was a Fender. Someone had replaced the bridge with the end of a rat tail comb. It cost $125.
I replaced the bridge the next day, and played my Fender every night for an hour after work. Then I made dinner. Then I played for another two hours. Naturally, my fingers blistered. I popped the blisters and put fabric bandaids on my fingertips. I HAD to keep playing. My fingers were bleeding, I was still playing.
What a little nutcase I was. 🙂
It was about 2 years after I started playing again that I decided to form my first band, Scully and the Mulders. (They wanted to be Scully and the Foxy Mulders, but I nixed it.) And I wanted to play some Pretenders. Back on the Chain Gang was the first song on my list.
I still play it in my sets. Every time I do, I feel a little shoulder-lift of triumph. It took me a few years, squared. But I got there.
I haven’t yet performed Back on the Chain Gang on the electric guitar I failed to learn it on, all those years ago. But it’s on my list for Dodie Goldney & the Instamatics. I only recently got the electric working again, which I will tell you about in Part Two of Guitars and Sunflowers.
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with Gary Mockford and Drummy Pryce
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It’s only been within the last year that I started putting my guitar down sometimes, when I sing with a band. Singing without it been a good skill for me to learn, both for my vocals and my performing skills. But I also find that the guitar and I have a symbiotic relationship that’s hard to separate.
The rhythm of my breathing when I sing is absolutely inter-meshed with the rhythm I am playing on the guitar. Singing without the guitar makes me lose confidence in my timing. It’s actually a lot harder for me to learn to sing a song if I don’t also learn to play it. In fact, even on songs I don’t play on, I run the rhythm guitar through my head. I almost want to say it’s like a metronome for my voice. But more.
It’s funny that it took me so long to get there with the guitar. Once, I didn’t understand it, and now, I can’t imagine I would ever want to perform an entire show without it.
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Just because you are bad at something once in your life, it doesn’t mean you will be bad at it forever! I am not a brilliant guitarist, but I am a competent one, and I can hold my own without a band behind me. It may take some serious dedication, but I think everyone has the creative capacity to learn and push themselves to acquire a new skill.
One of the best things about music and other creative arts is that it’s never too late to start learning something new!
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next up: Guitars and Sunflowers, Part Two
Dodie Goldney
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related posts by Dodie Goldney:
Women’s Work is in the Home (Renovations)
The Grass is Always Greener Where You Water It
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The Treehouse by Dodie Goldney 
I remember, way back, when you would sit by the stereo and learning to play the guitar from your Def Leppard album – and the time their bus was loading up across the street from where I worked in downtown Vancouver and you hustled downtown to come and meet them – and they autographed your album for you before they hopped on the bus, Remember that?
I do. 🙂 I can still play that song, too.
That looks like an old Gretsch Duo Jet
I wish it was! But sadly, it doesn’t play like a Gretsch at all.