My first guitar, back in early 1972, came from Kays’ Catalogue and was one their basic electric models; rough strings, tinny sound and a whammy bar that put it out of tune every time you used it. I learned to play simple chords on it, using headphones instead of an amplifier.
About a year later I upgraded to a lovely big black Eko Jumbo acoustic that rang like a bell and had me learning quieter more melodic stuff than I’d been attempting before that.
About a year after that I got a Japanese Les Paul copy and an amplifier that saw me back to trying to learn some rockier stuff although I never quite developed the finger speed needed for rock solos. The Eko remained my weapon of choice and I was (very slowly) learning things like Angie and Wild Horses along with Dylan and Donovan things. Played a bit of stuff with friends in garages and bedrooms around this time too… you wouldn’t call us a band, but we had ambitions of becoming one although it never happened. I was also singing in school choirs – in the bass line in The Mikado and in a small group doing medieval madrigals that had us gigging around the local area and giving me a taste for performing in front of crowds.
I got into Scottish folk music for a few years in my late teens / early twenties, wrote some songs, and replaced both the Eko and the Les Paul copy with an Ovation acoustic. This was in 1979, and the fibreglass back things were pretty new at the time (and pretty expensive) but I wanted it, so I got it although it put me in a financial hole that had me selling off books and records in order to eat that term. Around then I also got a mandolin and my folk credentials were cemented with a couple of live gigs that were a lot of fun.
A Washburn 12 string came along about then too. It didn’t come to London with me in ’82 when I left Glasgow, but the Ovation (and the mandolin) did. The Ovation was with me for a long time, in tandem with another Japanese electric, a Fender Squire Strat that I used to bash away at to take out my frustration at the way my life was going in the mid ’80s.
I lost interest for a while in the ’90s… eventually I gave both the Ovation and the Strat away, one to a younger brother in law, one to a nephew.
Then, in the early 2000s, I got the urge again, got a Tanglewood acoustic and an Ozark Dobro… and mostly left them unplayed although I found just about enough time to learn some bottleneck blues techniques on the Dobro. I sold the Tanglewood not long before leaving Scotland to come to Newfoundland in 2007. The Dobro I still have although it has been gathering dust for a while now.
Fast forward … and possibly due to COVID confinement, I got the urge one more time. I bought a lovely wee Fender acoustic, and I’ve been playing every day. I’ve even got some ideas for songs, so the circle is closing, over fifty years in the making.
There’s one song in particular I’m developing, and it’s the one that features in my Sigils and Totems work. It’s called He Sleeps in the Depths and it’s a folky, shouty thing I’m having fun with. I might even get round to doing it on YouTube if you’re unlucky.
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