It’s Not Really Like Riding A Bike

When I was in 6th grade I decided to play cello.   The first time I heard the sound of 4 distinct musical parts played in harmony (violin, viola, cello, bass) I was hooked.   I never practiced playing cello.   It never felt like practice.   It was just that enjoyable for me.   In 8th grade I joined the high school orchestra & in 10th grade I joined the UH Symphony.   And then in college I discovered guitar.

I met a dude at a party & we hooked up; he turned out to be the bass player of a punk band.   We ended up renting out a house together (although the bass player & I did not remain an item) & I bought an Aria Pro II bass (Faith No More!) & ended up playing with a couple of guitarist friends in our lead singer’s living room every day after school.

And then one afternoon we were lying around the living room playing cds, & someone put Metallica’s Ride The Lightning on.   As soon as I heard “Fade To Black” I knew I wanted a 6 string.   I bought an electric blue Washburn Lyon (LA Guns!) the next day & sat down with the tablature.   I had it by the end of the week, along with a lot of missing finger skin.

We wrote a lot of crappy originals, & I experimented at home with my dual cassette recorder recording separate tracks on top of each other.   I found a beautiful Takamine dreadnought in the back of a boyfriend’s closet & wanted it so badly I traded him my cream Ibanez Artist (I was stupid) & a 100w amp for it.   You know, that guy was a bastard & I should have been more careful with negotiations, but I thought that since we lived together it wasn’t like I’d be really losing the Ibanez.   Yeah, right.

I teamed up with a guitarist/songwriter girlfriend & worked on a number of her (very awesome) originals & also performed as a duo here & there.   Later I met a guitarist from a once popular but now defunct metal band in a pool hall & we wrote & recorded a whole bunch of songs together in the back room where the manager did his oil painting, just us & a little Tascam 4 track.

But guitar playing mostly stopped around 1997, primarily due to 2 things: first, I was singing in a band that played Jane’s Addiction & Journey & there wasn’t any sitting down with the Takamine for me.   Second, I was hanging out with a bunch of veteran 80s guitarists who, as nice & helpful as they were, intimidated the crap out of me when it came to guitar playing.   I didn’t even know the right questions to ask so I mostly never asked.   I mostly just stopped playing.

For 13 years every time I thought about playing I also thought about how I’d never be as good as any of those guys & so I kept on mostly not playing.   I focused on my voice, & made a lot of progress there.   One can easily forget that I started out as an instrumentalist, not a singer.   I don’t actually have much of a voice.   Those of you who think I’ve got something here don’t know what I started out with.   My current voice is a product of tons of work, not any kind of physiological advantage.   It’s totally overclocked.   Totally.

For the last few years I’ve been doing an acoustic duo with my friend T, & he has been one of a kind.   I’ve learned tons from him over the last 5 years, just listening to him talk about music.   He’s pointed out all kinds of things that I would never have realized otherwise while we are listening to music & he’s changed a lot of my perspective with his knowledge & his very open viewpoints.   He’s also one of the only male musicians I’ve worked with that hasn’t treated me differently because I’m female.   He hasn’t hit on me, hasn’t sugar coated his opinion for me, hasn’t excluded me from technical conversations even when I have no idea what is going on.   He’s also never annoyed when he had to explain anything.   That’s why I’ve learned so much.   It’s also why I gradually became more comfortable with the idea of picking up the guitar again.

Our acoustic duo, first at a popular restaurant in town & now at a large, speakered-out pool hall, involved me singing & T playing guitar.   We encountered difficulties with repertoire; his was mostly 70s rock which he played with the veteran musicians.   He was initially resistant to “girl” music – Sarah McLachlan, Shawn Colvin, etc.   When we first started out we had to find a whole lot of middle ground & our setlist consisted of a lot of Bread, Dan Fogelberg, & Little River Band, albeit with the key raised a step or two.

At some point last year I realized that certain parts of our songs could use a little extra rhythm guitar & when asked T completely welcomed the idea.   He immediately pointed out various places where it would be a great help, & whatever insecurities I had about it were eased because I had a feeling I might actually be of use.   He wasn’t just letting me play along to humor me.   He actually had use for a 2nd guitarist, as limited as my contribution was probably going to be.

And boy, is it limited.    15 years ago it was nothing for me to sing & play guitar or bass at the same time, probably because I never thought about its level of difficulty.   I didn’t know something was hard back then; I just did it or didn’t do it.   Or maybe it was because I had approached singing from a guitarist’s perspective & now I was approaching guitar from a singer’s perspective.

Announcing that I was going to start playing guitar in our gigs was really hard.   I made all kinds of disclaimers & excuses, & it’s not something I feel embarrassed about.   I was really scared.   I was determined to do it.   I was still really scared.

I went out & dropped $1k on a new guitar.  While I loved my Takamine I needed something smaller that I could plug in.   More importantly, I needed a new start.   And I needed a guitar that I could fall in love with again, because it’s a lot easier to practice on an instrument that you’re in love with.

You know, just walking into Dan’s Guitars is painful.   It’s like walking into a men’s locker room.   They all stare at you & wonder what the hell you are doing in there while picturing you naked.   I couldn’t even go in there by myself; I got a bass player girlfriend to go with me so we could be stared at & pictured together.   We tried all kinds of guitars until I couldn’t even tell which one I liked better & then Daniel busted out the carbon fiber 3/4 & I was sold.   In guy fashion, he had initially handed me the red one, which was a huge turn off, but once I saw that they had the same guitar in black, I knew that was the one I wanted.   My girlfriend ended up taking home the red one.

Spraining my ankle was another big step (Was that a pun?   Sort of?) in my progress.   As I sat in on the couch with my foot in an icy bucket, the only thing that made it bearable was playing guitar.   I don’t know why this is.   Anyone who has had to soak a busted ankle in ice knows that it hurts.   I couldn’t watch tv or read a book.   Somehow playing guitar just made me forget my foot was in the bucket.   Someone explain to me how that works.

That was several months ago.   It’s getting easier playing at gigs, although I still need to strap my Cargo kinda high to save my left wrist & I still make tons of mistakes.   The hardest part for me is still singing & playing simultaneously; I would really like to get more songs into our setlist that someone else can sing so I can have time just playing.   I could do this at home — & I do — but it’s not really the same thing.   Playing alone at home is totally different from playing with other people.   Especially with T, who often uses very exciting syncopations.

My insecurities are still there but taking the first step through them was all I needed to do.   Every consecutive step has gotten easier & almost everyone has been really supportive.   I’d probably feel huge pressure if certain people were in the room, & in fact I still haven’t worked up the courage to invite certain people to my gigs specifically because I’m afraid of playing guitar in front of them.

But I’m playing guitar again.

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