Revisiting serendipity and presence
During the winter break we revisit a serendipitous encounter from 2018 that I almost missed.
All posts tagged: Running Dog Guitars
Be present when serendipity strikes
You’ll never know that one of your guitar heroes is sitting in the seat next to you if you don’t take your head out of your phone or computer.
Think slow
Our 15-year-old nephew — a budding musician — was in town this past weekend, so I took him to the House of Musical Traditions in Takoma Park. There he could see every type of musical instrument known to humankind (plus some) and, frankly, it gave me an excuse to play a few good guitars. Not that I don’t have good guitars at home. Later in the day my nephew had a chance to see and play my two prized Running Dog guitars made by luthier Rick Davis. Davis was profiled in Tim Brookes’ 2005 book Guitar: An American Life, where the author seeks to replace a badly damaged first guitar with a hand-crafted one “for the second half of my life.” He writes that as he nears 50 years of age, he finds an itch that can only be scratched with a new guitar. And as Brookes notes, “Guitar makers even have a word for these baby-boomers-who-always-wanted-to-be-great-guitarists-and-now-have-the-money-to-indulge-those-dreams: dentists.” “Much later, after the guitar is finished, Rick will refer to ‘the eternal and infinite capacity of …
Practicing
Over the holidays I returned to a book I first read some ten years ago. Glenn Kurtz’s Practicing: A Musician’s Return to Music is, in its simplest form, a memoir of a young child prodigy on the classical guitar who attends the prestigious New England Conservatory of Music and then quits playing in his early 20s when he realizes he won’t be the next Segovia. Fifteen years and a career change later, Kurtz returns to the guitar and finds, in the process, a richer love for music. But like all good memoirs, Practicing is so much more than a simple life’s story. Kurtz has been practicing since he was eight years old, but it isn’t until he returns after his hiatus that he begins to understand all the richness of the various aspects of preparing for performance, or life. “Practicing is training; practicing is meditation and therapy. But before any of these, practicing is a story you tell yourself, a bildungsroman, a tale of education and self-realization. For the fingers as for the mind, practicing …
Guitar: An American Life
Tim Brookes’ 2005 book includes extensive features on Rick Davis – the builder of my two Running Dog guitars.
Guitars and Baseball
James Nash once gave some good advice to aspiring guitarists: Rule #1 for learning to play fast: don’t practice while watching the ball game. Well, tonight…I’m guilty. Two hours after starting, I’ve finally put the last instrument back on its stand. I was watching baseball the entire time. However, I suspect that the San Francisco-based Nash would approve of my choice of ballgame, as the hometown Giants are in the World Series against the Detroit Tigers. And while I didn’t get any real practice in tonight, it sure was fun to multitask around two things that I love. (Note to regular readers: Candice, who has become a baseball fan this year with the emergence of the Nats, is out-of-town. I wasn’t ignoring her.) I grew up as a Giants fan. The Braves hadn’t moved to Atlanta, so we didn’t have a MLB team in the South. And Willie Mays is, to my mind, the most complete player in the history of the game. He was so much fun to watch as a young kid in …
G.A.S. continued: Or how I ended up with another guitar
I hadn’t planned to buy another guitar. Seriously. But sometimes good things happen when you least expect it. I HAD planned to try to meet the maker of my Running Dog guitar on my next trip to Seattle. Since I bought it used from a guitar shop in Amherst, Massachusetts, I didn’t know Rick Davis, the builder who made my parlor style instrument back in 2001. But after playing it for a couple of years, I wanted to meet the guy who built such wonderful small guitars with the beautiful tone. A recent trip to the west coast gave me the opportunity to stop by Rick’s shop in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle (aka, The Center of the Universe). Rick shares his shop with his partner, Cat Fox, and they couldn’t have been more welcoming. Rick told me the provenance of my 2001 Parlor guitar. I learned he was the subject of Tim Brooke’s 2005 book Guitar: An American Life. And I played a beautiful 2011 Ought-3 model. (I also noodled on a baritone guitar, …
Finding my new Running Dog guitar
I’ve been thinking about a smaller guitar for some time, to take my music in different directions and to help move beyond what has been a rather long plateau of musical mediocrity when it comes to playing. But the time was never right, the funds were always tight, and I had other priorities. A couple of months ago I broke through a personal logjam, and in the process started focusing more on enjoying my music. (I am good enough to know that I’m not that good, but I decided not to worry about it anymore.) Candice and I talked, and I told her my dream of getting a new guitar. She said, “Let’s go for it.” Of course I had a plan and even discussed it with some friends. I had a builder in mind and even sought out some of their guitars to test drive. But then I stumbled across a beautiful Running Dog guitar and decided to seize the day. Two weeks ago we were in New England with our twins for college …
The people and places on Main Street
There are few things I like better than walking along a great Main Street. For the past two days, I’ve been lucky enough to walk around four terrific Main Streets: Middletown, Connecticut; Amherst and Northampton, Massachusetts; and tiny Red Hook, NY. You can pick up life lessons on Main Street – like the bumper sticker I saw on a car parked along Northampton’s Main Street this morning: Just say NO to Negativity. You can also meet very interesting people. While taking photos around Northampton, I was approached by a resident of the streets of the city. He must have seen my inner preservationist (sometimes people who look at the world a little differently have great powers of observation), because he told me he liked to work for the “hysterical society.” He then proceeded to point out the historical courthouse (where Calvin Coolidge first practiced law) – a very nice 1885 building seen in the photo above. My new friend then pointed in the opposite direction and identified the Northampton City Hall. “See those turrets?” he …
More to Come... 