Conceptual Irregularities

Mark and I

Mark Lebow and I were inseparable during high school even though he lived 2 towns away. When we started Blue Monday in September 1973 with Bill Galey and Mike Webster, we had no idea we would be embarking upon an odyssey that would last more than 50 years through countless bands, trips and other shenanigans. Mark has died from pancreatic cancer. I got to go down to Florida and see him in his last days. Thanks, Debbie, for seeing him through. Thanks, Mark, for being a great drummer, a passable bassist, and a good man in a storm.
I remember my first sighting of Mark when he was walking down the road in the development in North Stamford, CT where he lived up the street from Mike Webster. Mike had convened a jam of musicians whom he knew from various milieus in his life. Eventually Mark and Bill and I would go on without him due to creative differences but I am always indebted for this introduction.
Mark was walking down the road in his matter-of-fact confident manner, head up, shoulders back, holding a pair of drumsticks. We were all good musicians and were able to piggy back on what we offered each other. The Allman Brothers’ Brothers and Sisters had just come out so we ran through Ramblin’ Man.
Bill was an amazing guitarist and an Allman Brothers savant. Mark was in orchestra at school and was studying music. Bill was also trained. I was self taught as was Mike. I would go to Rippowam High School to see Mark perform in the pit for musicals like South Pacific. I was always in awe of this level of musicianship; the reading, the professionalism, the being part of a greater musical source. Eventually, I would experience that in Jazz Band at Brien McMahon High School in Norwalk.
Bill was in boarding school, so we would only be able to play on school breaks. But in January, Mark turned 16 and shortly thereafter got his license. He would drive down to Rowayton and we would hang out. He’d bring his acoustic nylon string guitar and we would play songs out of two songbooks he had: Cat Stevens’ Tea For The Tillerman and Crosby Stills and Nash. Mark would sing a lot of these and when we did our 2024 Copake Grange Concert, we reprised Long Time Gone which his strong baritone enveloped well.
I remember one time he came down to Rowayton with some Stamford friends to bring some girls to this make-out spot in the woods. He had such a way with the ladies, a quality I was always envious of.
He had long thick black hair, an easy smile and the “Lebow Drawl”, his accent, which, while easing somewhat over the years, was still there in the end. I don’t know if it was a Stamford accent or just a general local Connecticut accent but it was slow, deliberate, enunciated and each word was carefully considered. There was a lilt of humor in it, like inside, he was cracking himself up. He was often cracking all of us up but he never seemed like he was trying to. It was just the way he was and we were all laughing with him.

In September 1974, I joined Sea Scouts, a Boy Scouts of America organization, and gained a whole new group of friends. This was a group of kids who liked sailing, playing music and having a good time. The group I was hanging with before were mostly potheads and relatively aimless. While many of the Sea Scouts still smoked pot they had more going on for them than just a party. They were artists, musicians, good students and deep thinkers. I introduced Mark to this group and they loved him. He continued to come to Rowayton and developed his own friendships and romances with folks from this Ship (we had a 36 foot cutter, the Golliwog, which was the center of our world.). Also at the center of our world were the Proctors, the parents who were responsible for the ship. Dave and Bev Proctor had 4 kids, Dave, Joy, Lesley and Craig. They lived in a house on Flicker Lane and when we weren’t working or sailing on the Golliwog, we were there. Dave had a room in the basement which was the ground floor and we had parties there every weekend.

Mark dated a few Rowayton girls but wound up with Joy. He became a member of the Proctor family who were loving and welcoming. Joy was reserved and somewhat shy but had a wry sense of humor and a talent for making everyone feel like they belonged. He remained with her until they divorced in the late nineties.
Dave called his new little brother Sparky. Dave was in a band called Airfix along with Greg Smith, Tom May and Ed Flinn. When some of the older guys were off at college, Mark and I started a band with the people who were locals. This was originally called Broken Wind but when someone informed me of what that meant, we changed it to a variety of other names. This was the melding of Airfix and Blue Monday which eventually became Noyes and The Boyes.
Over Christmas break each year we would have a recording project. Mark was very particular about his equipment, as he was about everything. He was neat and wanted everything just so. I particularly remember us going out to a dinner break at one of these recording sessions and him coming back and saying, in his drawl, “Who’s been fucking with my drums?” I don’t know why, but that has always stuck with me.
Eventually all of us went off to school somewhere, many to Boston, me to Marlboro College in Vermont. Mark would drive up to visit me and, true to form, made a bunch of new friends. One summer he played drums for our band, No Nukes Of The North, when we played a party weekend in Ocean City, New Jersey. Mark brought the acid and a good time was had by all. He was such a good musician that he was able to sub for our drummer with pretty much no rehearsal. And of course, everybody there loved him.

Blue Monday at Pinkney Park

There are so many memorable musical experiences that I had with Mark. One party we played with Blue Monday early on was a sleep over situation. There was another band with a really good drummer and they played “Moondance” and I remember Mark being particularly impressed with him. We did a series of gigs at Rapson’s in Stamford and that was where Blue Monday really got to cut our teeth. This was on Mark’s home turf and his organization and professionalism really kept us in line.
1977-78 I took the year off from school and lived in Rowayton at my parents house. Mark was also working, at his uncle’s car dealership, Ted Miller Buick and then at Parsons, Bromfield and Redniss, his first surveying job. He was living in a house in Norwalk with Alan Freedman and Scott Wyland and some other people. We would hang out over there, getting high and playing music. In February, during the blizzard of ’78, I walked the 2 miles over there in the snow because I’d rather spend the blizzard with him than with my family. Mark was a good man in a storm, as they say. The snow gets deep and you watch the news; I don’t even remember what we did, probably nothing. But that is what you do with great friends in a blizzard. Nothing. Nothing has to be said. Nothing has to be sung. Nothing has to be drummed, guitared or played in any meaningful way. You can just exist with one another, talking your secret language, your tropes, your accents, your mimicry, your phrases from so far back that you don’t even know why you say it. One time, when I had missed our regular Monty Python Sunday night viewing, he came to my house the next day and we sat at the dining room table while he recited the entire episode I had missed: “Number 1: The Larch”, “It’s all in a day’s work for Bicycle Repair Man!” and so on, doing all the voices and English accents. And years later, one of us would say, “Number 1: The Larch” out of nowhere and crack each other up.
We would go camping on Mohawk Mountain in upstate Connecticut when we were in Sea Scouts and there was a fire tower. He would talk about belaying from the fire tower and then switched it to Ballet From A Fire Tower, which cracked us up, for no apparent reason. Eventually I used that phrase in Loose, one of my best songs. I thank God I have so many recordings of him. His music and humor will live on in me forever.

March 26, 2026 0

Lazy Girl Jobs

At last count I have had 36 jobs. Not counting all the different assignments I might get from a temp agency. Let’s call it 36 paycheck issuers.

My passion has always been music. But I discovered early on that I didn’t want to do it as a career. I was a freshman in the music education program at University of Bridgeport and towards the end of that year I realized that having to put the work and study into music sapped some of the magic for me. I wanted to play. So I knew I wanted to play in bands and do music that way.

This was not new. I had always had a lack of discipline. My first instrument was cello, which I took in the fourth grade. My mother made me practice before dinner and I would lug the huge instrument up to my room. I would have a whack at the lessons but soon it would devolve into an exploration of the sonic possibilities of the cello. This would mostly be making eerie sounds through the harmonic series.

There was a grate in the floor of the bedroom which led down to the dining room. I’m sure my mother could hear what I was doing. I can’t remember if she reprimanded me. Either way, I am still struggling to develop the self discipline to practice. But I get enough of it done so that I am an above average guitarist. But I have always regretted not developing the skills and knowledge required for cello.

So in service of my music passion, and my play passion, I have always had Lazy Girl Jobs. These are jobs that are flexible enough to allow me to do gigs and rehearsals at night and even run off on tour from time to time. I have always had enough money to afford an apartment with roommates, coffee, lunch out, and the ability to go out and see bands. And get a T Pass. I never needed a whole lot and my friends were generally in the same boat. We all graduated from Marlboro College with degrees in the humanities and always knew we weren’t going to get rich.

That wasn’t what we wanted. We wanted life. We wanted to enjoy this burgeoning city we found ourselves in and be able to get on a Trailways back to Vermont every so often. And that simplicity has served us well. Tami generally concurs on this so we are simpatico.

Now, being retired, it’s not jobs anymore but hobbies and experiences. And I need to keep trying to find the separation from commitment which was such a facet of my lazy girl jobs.

January 16, 2026 0

Happy New Year 2026

I am wishing nothing but the best for you. I am sipping a cozy Manhattan on New Year’s evening. Actually, it’s an “It May Choke Artie”, a concoction of my own made of rye, Cynar, Dolin Rouge, and walnut bitters. I have one dog under my legs and another on the floor. We have a goat in the kitchen who had a stroke of sorts and she’s recuperating. The 2 cats are around here somewhere. And my wife has her feet on my lap.

2025 presented a whole new set of problems.

I retired in February 2025. That took me a little getting used to. I wasn’t used to having all of this time to myself. I read a lot newspaper, periodical articles, mostly political and sociological stuff. Very interesting. Relatively useless.

On March 6, I was driving to Hudson. I was on route 82 (or 9H as it may have been there) and I was drinking coffee and it went down the wrong way and I started coughing. I was coughing hard and I wanted to pull over but before I could pull over, I found myself coming to in the bushes. I had driven the element off the road and wrecked the front end. A car right behind me saw the whole thing and pulled over. She was an off duty cop. She called emergency services and let me sit in her car until they came.

The ambulance took me to Columbia Memorial Hospital and I stayed there for a few hours in the emergency room while they ran a battery of tests. I called Neil after a few hours for him to give me a ride home and we got the car towed to a yard and dealt with the insurance and it was pretty much totaled so that was that.

About a week later Tami’s Mini also died, having clutch problems and that was gonna cost like $5000 to fix and we thought that was just too much so we set off on finding new cars.

I was determined to get an Element which they haven’t made since 2011 but they are out there. I wound up with a 2007 Element which is two years newer than the one we had so hey,bonus! Tami wanted an electric car and she found a 2021 Mustang Mach E for around 20,000 bucks. It’s a good car and it’s all electric which presents its problems but we at least get to feel good about ourselves. It’s a really slick car so that’s cool.

I also started playing seriously with Carolynn Murphy and we have started a band called Mursey. We have done a few gigs and have about 25 songs we are ready to play out. Carolynn and I sing well together and jam well. We are able to work up a frenzy during my leads. I get a lot of space to explore improvisation and we both have a ton of influences bringing their powers to bear. I look forward to developing this band. It’s the first time in years that I have felt fully challenged by another musician. And, she tap dances. So that’s something to look forward to.

As we step into 2026, I am dealing with a lot of COPD and a fair amount of dizziness. All my peers are experiencing old age sickness. I am hoping it blows over….

January 8, 2026 0

Granddaddy

My mother’s father, Howard Barnes, was a man of the 20th century, in the modern sense. He was sophisticated and wore his erudition on his sleeve. He was a drama critic for the New York Herald Tribune, an alumnus of Yale and Oxford, a man about town and one heck of a piano player (at least to my three year old ears.)

He was also a drunk and a womanizer. But that is not what I remember. I remember sitting on his knee at the piano, banging the keyboard with him intoning, “Gently, gently”, at my ear. He was endlessly kind and patient with all of us and now that I see my friends with grandchildren, I begin to get it, but with him, I just took it for granted.

He and his third wife, Cassie, had an apartment in New York city on the upper east side of Manhattan. My memories of visiting him there are mostly smells and taste. I can taste the New York water in the little fridge in the tiny kitchenette. I can smell the florist down on the street, the cut flowers in the foyer of their building, the delicious aroma of bakeries with croissants and brioche.

He was elegant and handsome but not a smooth handsome. His face was lined and drawn, lived in, the crags dug both by the picks of experience and the storms of tobacco and drink. I like to think of him as a bourbon man, but I guess I don’t really know. I believe he smoked Camels, but it might have been Chesterfields like my dad. He also smoked a pipe. These smells sit with me to this day.

Cassie worked at Macy’s, one of the executives and a powerful working woman, back before it was a thing. The two of them were part of the Manhattan high society in the forties and fifties. They both had illustrious friends from their professional lives. My mother would tell the story of how they took her to the famed New York restaurant, 21, on her 21st birthday which they celebrated with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.

Cassie and Granddaddy gave the best Christmas gifts. Once I got a clarinet and another year I got a microscope.

When he wasn’t reviewing plays and she wasn’t pushing fashion, they retired to their country house in New Hartford, Connecticut, Hickory. He had it built in the mid thirties on a beautiful side of a hill. It had a long driveway leading up to a landing between the house on the left and the meadow below. The house was simple, a long ranch with a big living room in front and the master bedroom behind it. The kitchen was on the other side of the stairs in the entryway. Upstairs were 3 bedrooms where we stayed. There was a long hall going down the middle of the second floor leading to my parents’ room. The hall was kind of creepy and mysterious. It was dark and it echoed. It was claustrophobic yet big at the same time.

Outside, to the left of the house and up a little hill was a cement swimming pool built on a rock ledge and fed by a cold spring. It’s hard to say how big it was but it might have been as small as ten by ten. But it was perfect for kids. We spent a lot of time in the pool.

In the back of the house, out behind the kitchen, was a big cubical rock. It was too big for us to climb to the top of easily and we spent way too much time trying to figure out how to get up there.

At the end of the parking area, there was a shed. This was the domain of Mr Hecht, Granddaddy’s all around handyman. Mr Hecht was missing part of a finger which he lost in a chainsaw accident. It weirdly fascinated me and to this day I have a timid respect for the tools.

Down below the meadow lived the cleaning lady and her two kids, a boy and a girl about our ages. We spent a lot of time playing with them. His name was Michael, I think, but I can’t remember anything else.

But I don’t really remember a whole lot about Granddaddy himself. He was there, a kind presence but really more comfortable with the adults than us, probably. I remember his “stuff”, his armchair and his chestnut coffee table which I believe Mr Hecht built. I still have both of these things and cherish them. One of the best songs I have written is “My Grandfather’s Chair” so I hope he sings through me.

Cassie died in 1964 or so and then he met Eileen in an AA meeting. They both fell off the wagon, got married and then he got Emphysema. My last memories are of him sitting in the kitchen coughing his lungs out while we packed up the car to go home.

We had a funeral in New Hartford with a reception at Hickory and that was that. He didn’t leave a will so the bulk of his estate went to Eileen, most importantly, the house,but we got several acres which we never developed or even visited. We sold that land some time in the seventies.

I hope other people will chime in with their memories of Howard Barnes. I see so much of him in me, from the music to the drinking to the smoking but, unfortunately, not the womanizing…. 😜

February 28, 2024 0

Why Not

When asked why one does something the most honest yet least informative answer is “Why not?”

September 3, 2023 0

Hanging

We’ve been living in the country 6 years now. One of the first things that happened to me after we completely left Melrose was that I jammed my knee walking down Neil’s back steps. We were staying in the Orchard House and hadn’t even moved into 707. The pain was excruciating. I spent a night dealing with it and went to Rapid Care in the morning. Thus started a long haul of engagement with the medical team at Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson, about 30 minutes away.

After that there were follow-ups at the bone and joint center for a few months and then, after we threatened to operate, the pain subsided. In the first few years of being here, my gall bladder was removed, I was diagnosed with emphysema (the disease that killed my grandfather), my tinnitus became really noticeable, I got torn triceps in both arms and my dizziness got worse.

I generally don’t like to dwell on my ailments but this weekend I started to feel really knocked out by them. I worked a table advocating for a local solar farm on Saturday morning and went to a fair in Great Barrington in the afternoon. But at the fair I really started to feel unsteady and dizzy and had Tami drive home. I took it slow for the rest of the weekend.

I have been struggling with exercise out here. I took a yoga class for a couple of years but during the pandemic the time changed and it became hard to fit in. I try to walk the dogs for about a mile every day but I don’t always do it. I don’t like riding my bike on the roads here because it’s really hilly and the cars are all going 55 mph, much faster than the city which I am used to. Now Tami has gotten me an e-bike, which is good because it can give you an assist going up hills. I haven’t ridden in about a week due to dizziness and stuff, but I think it will help me in the long run.

A lot of good stuff has happened to me since we’ve been out here. But it occurred to me this week that my health has really taken a dive compared to the city. And I was spoiled by the world class Boston healthcare. Plus, I’m getting old. All of my peers are suffering the same ravages of age that I am. I feel like the healthcare system here is not going to produce any miracles so I will need to mostly rely on myself for health maintenance. I have a few prescriptions and I have a good pulmonologist, Dr Mehjabin Zahir, a wonderful Bangladeshi woman who is both smart and caring.

I’ll be on Medicare next year. I’ll be okay. My mother raised us healthy which we hated at the time but which is paying off now. Years of smoking and partying are no match for Virginia Hussey’s vitamins, natural foods, and clean living.

July 17, 2023 0

What America Looks Like

We love Costco, despite the fact that we don’t need mass quantities of household goods. We have a small family, just 2 adults, 7 goats, various geese, chickens, koi, dogs and a cat. But we like our coffee and we can get bags and bags of dark roast at Costco.

When you go in the front door a worker checks your Costco card. Makes you feel important (if you have one). In the line going in are black people, white people, brown people, other people. People in hijab. People speaking Spanish, Turkish, Khmer, Chinese, every language. These are the faces and families that make up America today. They were different families and faces in generations past, maybe more European, but still people who had embarked upon a massive trek to get here from dicey circumstances.

People have always been migrating. 200,000 years ago we were moving out of East Africa and we haven’t stopped. Always seeking a better circumstance. All animals do it. I see little turtles crossing the road and I’m like, “Oh, little dude, why? You’re gonna get run over”. But he’s like, “But there might be something better over there!”

These families in Costco, dancing around shopping carts full of huge boxes of cereal, TP, detergent, a shed they will assemble in their new back yard, $20 jeans and a bag of underwear, they will not replace us; they will only enhance us. They are working hard, starting businesses, sharing their food, music, traditions and in the process making America.

This is a continent that will never stop being made. Ever since the founding fathers and mothers came across the Bering Strait, we have been making ourselves and our opportunities. Countless civilizations have risen and fallen. We give to the world and we take right back. We rise, we fall and we enhance it all.

As we check out of Costco (a company which consciously invests in its employees, I might add) a middle aged Latina woman checks our cart against our receipt, swipes a black sharpie and and tells us, “Have a nice rest of your day!”

July 2, 2023 0

The Grange Concert

Copake has a Grange, #935 to be precise. From Wikipedia: “The Grange, officially named The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, is a social organization in the United States that encourages families to band together to promote the economic and political well-being of the community and agriculture.^[1] The Grange, founded after the Civil War in 1867, is the oldest American agricultural advocacy group with a national scope. The Grange actively lobbied state legislatures and Congress for political goals, such as the Granger Laws to lower rates charged by railroads, and rural free mail delivery by the Post Office.” Essentially, in Copake, we are a community organization that does stuff to enhance the quality of life in the community. It’s a membership organization like the Lions or the Elks; we put on events and we reach out to the community, doing food drives, cleaning up roadways and the like.

And like most Granges, it has a Grange Hall. In this Grange Hall, built in 1903, we have dinners, movies, baking and cooking contests (we have a full service industrial kitchen), plays and concerts. Our grange hall has a theatre with a box office and stage and green rooms. It has about 100 seats and the wooden walled stage sounds great. There is a piano, a sound system and some lighting. There is a whole common room next to the theater where we have dinners and dances.

Before we moved out here, knowing that there was a Grange, I knew I wanted to start an open mic at the Grange. I have been intrigued by the concept of the grange hall as a rural community gathering place for years, dating back to my song Peaceful & Clean with the line “Violent gyrations at the Grange Hall Dance.” This would give me a way to play music out regularly without having to go through the onerous process of constantly seeking out gigs.

In Boston, in the nineties, I spent a lot of time at the Cantab Lounge where Geoff Bartley held a legendary open mic on Monday night where many performers got their starts. I loved playing there and met a lot of musicians. I started playing in several bands as a result of that experience. It was a great social life and a great musical experience.

So, out here in the hinterlands, I run an open mic. It is the first Friday of every month. We tried some other days but we landed on Friday. We’ve been going since June 2018. The pandemic got a little intermittent but we powered through. Originally we were lucky if we got a dozen people and the evening would mostly consist of me playing. Now we get 30-40 people and a full night of performers. We have a good amount of really talented writers and poets. We have a group of tween children who come and play instruments, sing, and excerpt musicals. And we have a bunch of excellent singer songwriters who play individually and in groups. I get to play with some of these people, notably House Band, Noyes and the Boyes, and The Solar Plexus.

This March we preempted the open mic to present a concert by my ukulele teacher, Charissa Hoffman. She was coming through town up from Nashville on her first tour since graduating Berklee College of Music in Boston. I thought she would be a good fit for the Grange so I arranged to have a concert. We had another young performer, Geneva O’Hara open for her and I backed up Geneva on guitar. We had about 40 people who loved it and it was a great success.

The best thing was having all these people staying at our house. Geneva and her girlfriend, Shelby, and her mom, Tami’s best friend, Maria, all slept scattered throughout the first floor and Charissa and her band, JJ Halpin and Garrett Goodwin, stayed upstairs in the guest rooms. It was the last night of their tour and after a week of couches and floors they deserved something nicer.

Tami made us chili for dinner and egg casseroles and vegan French toast for breakfast. I love having the opportunity to show off our house and Tami’s cooking. It’s great having young people here. It was also great to be able to play with such great musicians. I’m hoping to make it a regular thing.

Charissa Hoffman-Panic Attack On A Tour Bus In Philly

March 21, 2023 0

Triple Oh Eighteen

When my mother was growing up, a woman named Edna Conrad used to take care of her during the summers. Edna remained a fixture in her life and subsequently in ours when we came along. She was a Quaker from Philadelphia, born in 1898, whom my great grandfather, Earl Barnes met when she was a teenager. He hired her to help out his family during the summers when they would decamp to his country house in New Hartford, Connecticut.

My mother was born in 1928, daughter of Howard Barnes and his wife, Virginia Hood, known as Hoodie. Hoodie had issues and they divorced by the time my mother was 3. Edna did the bulk of the mothering of mom after that. Edna was a teacher at the Little Red Schoolhouse in Greenwich Village. She lived alone at 8 Bank Street. My mother lived there as well during her 20’s. Edna had a little house in Belmont Vermont where she and a number of other teachers had gotten summer places. I was conceived in that house, or so I’m told.

Mom and Dad at Edna’s the morning after…

When my mother was dying of cancer in 1983, Edna came down to Rowayton and took care of her making macrobiotic meals as was the trend in cancer treatment in the eighties. No shrinking violet, Edna descended upon our household like a whirlwind, cooking, organizing and shuttling between our house, the Irwins’ house, and the hospital. She was in her eighties and my mother was in her fifties. We boys were in our early twenties except for John who was 13. The prospect of a life without a mother was about to dawn on us, though we had been preparing for this for about two years since we learned of the diagnosis in Fall of 1981.

Edna remained a constancy in our lives through the years following until her death in 1993. She would always be a destination in Vermont where we could bring friends, girlfriends and fiancés. Tony and I stopped there on our road trip in June 1991 and talked about the James Gleick book, Chaos, which she was reading at the time. After supper we would play Cows and Bulls. It was a kind of memory game that we’d been playing since we were kids any time we’d go to Edna’s. We believed it was responsible for her sharp mind.

When she died she left us Hussey boys $2500 to be divided between us. I had never had such a windfall.

I’d been going to Daddy’s Junky Music Store since 1972 when Fred opened his second store in Norwalk CT. I went into Daddy’s on Mass Ave with $500 in my pocket. They had a guitar towards the back which had no label but looked like a badly refinished small Martin. Sure enough it was a 1971 Martin 000-18 with a $500 price tag.

That was my main acoustic all through the nineties on the Boston folk circuit. It didn’t have a pickup and I didn’t have the money to make all the repairs needed to accommodate one. I made do with sound hole pickups and SM57s. Thirty years later and I’ve finally got some money. Lenny tells me about a guy in North Adams who works on Martins, whom he has used before. His name is Steve Sauvé.

Steve Sauve working on the 000-18 in his shop.

I bring the guitar up to North Adams. On the way, I drop off Neil at the Volvo dealership where he is getting his high end Volvo. Steve’s studio is in an old mill building. There are Covid restrictions so I can’t go in. An assistant comes down to meet me, goes over the guitar with me so I can tell him what I want done. He then takes the guitar and disappears back into the old building and I drive home and wait for 3 months. I realize I never got a receipt and for all I know that could have just been some guy who steals guitars for a living. I finally call him, expecting him to go, “Who? What guitar? A triple-oh-eighteen? Are you sure?” But he does have the guitar and tells me he was just about to start on it. That week, he does and starts sending me pictures of the progress. He takes off the neck and resets it. He replaces the bridge. He puts in the Fishman piezo pickup I have provided him with. I anticipate playing the guitar and having that magical feeling of a properly set up instrument cradled in my arms.

When I finally do go up to pick it up, I am not disappointed. It plays like butter. We have a discussion about what strings to use and how often to change them, something you would think I had worked out after fifty years but, alas, I haven’t. I pay the man and come home to play the guitar I’ve always had and always wanted. It’s beautiful as long as I remember to change the strings.

September 11, 2022 0

The modern composer refuses to die – Edgar Varese