Many years ago, my wife, She Who Must Be Taunted, and I went on a driving vacation to Nova Scotia, where we visited, among other lovely places, a historical village called Louisbourg, where you park your car and take a bus to a restored 18th century town. As we got off the bus, SWMBT grabbed my arm and pulled me to the back of the line, because she knew there was a reenacter at the town gate who picked on some unlucky visitor to question them about the nature of their curious clothing – the “what is this internet you speak of” sort of nonsense. (But the joke was on them, because the folks who restored the town didn’t use period-appropriate carpentry techniques.)
This is just a long way of saying that SWMBT and I have been on the road for a while, and now that I’m home, I don’t recognize my guitar.
Some of my music friends, like my old pal Steve Rapson, like to combine their vacations with their musical activities, booking gigs and visiting open mikes as they travel from place to place. That sort of thing has never appealed to me. First, when I’m on the road, I don’t have anywhere to practice. Second, a guitar would take up valuable space in our automobile, which, although Tardis-like, is not quite big enough on the inside to encompass an instrument alongside all of our other traveling paraphernalia. Finally, and most importantly, SWMBT is an equal partner on our journeys, and I’m not about to ask her to waste her valuable vacation time listening to the same damn crooning that she can hear while she does the dishes at home.
To be honest, I did, once, attempt to do something musical on one of our car trips. The first time we drove across the country, in 2007, I purchased a travel guitar with the idea that I would chronicle the trip in song. Two bad songs later (and no, you can’t hear them), I realized I could either memorialize the trip or actually experience it – I couldn’t do both. I also discovered that I truly hated travel guitars. And then I was stuck with it for another 8,000 miles.
In any case, I’m home now. And there’s this weird cello-shaped instrument on my sofa that I have some vague memory of knowing how to play. Plus there’s this “gig” thing that I seem to have in a week or so, on a “stage” with (one hopes) an “audience”. I don’t remember what any of these things are, but we can only hope that sometime in the next seven days I’ll remember. So stop by the Somerville Armory on October 7, where you’ll either discover that I recall how to do this, or you’ll find me staring into space, asking random passersby for guidance. It’s gonna be entertaining, one way or another.