The Blind Man Society

I have been playing guitar for 30 years.  Back in the beginning, it all started seeing Chuck Berry in concert with my parents and hearing the song “Johnny B. Goode”.  I think Mr. Berry was playing a Gibson ES-345 in that show, and after, I replayed that concert for a LONG time in my head.  It wasn’t long after this that I became at my most annoying and charming by turns with my parents to get a guitar and amplifier.  I was 12 years old.

I played for a long time and got very technical, with complexity and a never-ending string of notes – but the truth is I never FELT what I was playing very much.  I was not physically moved by the music.  In fact, most of it was, to quote some who heard me, VERY LOUD NOISE.  So, I hung my guitar up for a couple years and got to work on other ambitions.

One day I was on my lunch break, and I watched a video of American slide blues players, and was just mesmerized.  Hound Dog Taylor, Mississippi Fred McDowell, and of course Robert Johnson and the movie Crossroads. And Ry Cooder, “Feelin’ Bad Blues.”  I had a job at the time, so I went right out and bought a metal slide, came home and changed the tuning of my guitar to Open G and let it rip. 

That slide from the third to the fifth fret on my electric guitar made my hair stand up.  I had a musical rush, like I had never experienced before.  If I could have bottled that sensation and sold it, I’d be retired.  Also, for a brief moment, I sounded like I knew just what I was doing.  A fleeting one, mind you, but blissful…and from that point forward I was hooked.

38 years later, and early this morning, I was playing my acoustic with a blue glass bottleneck slide and watching the sunrise.  I love to start the day this way, sitting out on the steps before the heat of the day comes on, thinking all kinds of crazy thoughts and making all kinds of even crazier music.  There was feeling.  There was movement.  And, there was great creativity.

I’ll leave it here.  But, if you have an old guitar – acoustic or electric – and are looking for something new to breathe some life back into your playing and take things down a different road, I suggest you buy a couple of these albums, or go to YouTube and check out the songs first…and THEN buy a couple of these albums.  The blues fueled music from all of the world for a LONG time, and it was very interesting and fun to learn about this when I first did.  A nice, inexpensive change of pace…

As always, please feel free to leave comments in the box below and have a great day!