Pilgrimage

I had to make a pilgrimage to Elderly Music which is one of a handful of stores nationwide that has such an excellent collection of acoustic instruments. (they do electrics too) What you see in these pictures is just a fraction of their collection. There were at least twice as many mandos and at least 6 times as many guitars, more if you include classical and archtop and all varieties.

I have to say that I played many wonderful instruments. But for the first time in a long time, I came away from an experience like this NOT sick with Acquisition Syndrome of any kind. I brought my Brian Dean octave mandolin and it absolutely blew the ones they had in stock out of the water, tone and volume wise. And while there were some really sweet mandolins, none of them made me feel like trading in my Phoenix... not even a little. I played a few really really nice parlour guitars. One of them in particular... a Martin OO birdseye maple, v-shaped neck... really awesome tone with much more body than you'd expect from a little parlour guitar. But it left me thinking... "maybe I could build these someday" rather than "I gotta have one!". So I got out of there with only some picks and strings, a t-shirt, a few cheap used cd's, and a new gig bag for my OM. Not too much damage.

I went with Don and William from my class. It was actually really nice to get a chance to spend some time with them outside of class and get to know them a bit. There is hardly any opportunity for that during class. William is one of the young guys I've been calling "puppies"... when they are together, they do that thing young guys do together...my theory is that with men and teenagers and dogs, if you have 3 or more, you get kind of a pack mentality and they act differently than they do individually (and it's not usually a good thing). It turns out that William has a sweet side, broader ranging taste in music than I'd have thought, and aspirations that surprised me (based on the very little I knew about him from class). Don is one of the older guys, and also quite nice, who seems to enjoy a catch-and-release approach to buying/selling old Martins.

We had lots of time to talk on the car ride... and analyzed our experiences in the school, talked about the staff and what we think of them. (When women do this, it is called gossip... when it's men or mostly men, it's just talk... a boyland thing). And it is DEFINITELY a good thing to do a trip like this with other music nerds. B/c non-music-nerds have understandably limited tolerance for the level of detailed playing and poking that we guitar geeks have to do at stores like this. Endless comparisons and pulling everything down off the shelf...

Listened to some interesting music on the way home... including some Joni Mitchell (unsolicited by me, even!) All in all a good day.