Postcards From Across the Pond

My big debut, my solo reunion gig, took place this past Saturday. Despite having a cold and singing to a crowd of disinterested 20 to 30-somethings whose parents were not yet born when the songs I was playing were popular, I’m glad I did it.

Fortunately, I received a lot of support from both my choirs, so I did have an appreciative audience, but singing over the rowdy conversations going on around me was a bit of a challenge. Still, I accomplished my main purpose, which was to prove to myself that I still had the stamina to stand in front of a crowd of strangers and play song after song—from memory—for a few hours.

And, with that behind me, I’m back to the Care Homes, where the songs I play are considered too modern for most of my audience.

The takeaway is, I will not be playing in another pub, probably, ever again, and I got a new guitar out of the deal.

I had been thinking about buying a new guitar for some time. The one I have was bought second-hand and I was never really happy with it. However, since I only played for myself, it was never an issue. But lately, singing here and there in public, I have grown more and more dissatisfied with it.

Then, on Saturday night, a rather inebriated, and insistent, member of the audience said he wanted to play my guitar. This was while I was in my first set, so I told him, “No,” and figured he’d forget about it. Undeterred, he persisted, and when I finished up for the night, he came to me again and asked to play it. Reluctantly, I handed it to him.

“Your strings are too high,” he said, before he even strummed it. “I noticed when you were playing. Look here; the bridge needs to be adjusted. You can’t press the strings down properly.”

Then he demonstrated by playing a bit and holding out his hand for me to inspect. He was obviously a guitar player, and therefore had the requisite callouses, but there were now grooves in his fingertips.

“The strings shouldn’t do that,” he said, and handed the guitar back.

I thanked him, and was genuinely grateful that my notion about getting a new guitar had been justified.

At my earliest opportunity, I went to a nearby guitar shop and found, to my dismay (a dismay I am feeling all too often these days) that everything has changed since I last bought a guitar.

I was looking for a bog-standard, basic, acoustic guitar with a built-in pick-up and tuner. Since my previous, second-hand one had cost £350, I expected to pay around £700 to £800 for a decent one. But there were none to be found. All they had were guitar-like instruments with a strange indentation in the body.

“Any guitar with a built-in pick-up is shaped like that,” the man told me when I asked if he had anything ‘normal.’ “It’s so you can play to the base of the neck.”

“Yeah, because I’m likely to do that,” I said, having mastered the art of British sarcasm.

Resigned to buying this aberration, I asked how much.

It was, to my mind, a ridiculously low price. I told the man so, and had the unique experience of hearing a shopkeeper sheepishly explaining why he wasn’t charging more. Still sceptical, I bought one, traded in my old one, and brought my new purchase home, where it hung on the wall for a few days.

I had plenty of time to try it out, but … what if I realized I’d made a mistake? It was strange, not at all what I had envisioned, and way too cheap.

Eventually, however, I plucked up my courage, took it down from the peg and strummed a few tunes. It was amazing.

The guitar played like a dream. Chords I had been having trouble with (due, I now know, to the strings being too far from the frets) played effortlessly—I equated it to the E-Z Reed that was such a game-changer for my bagpipes—and the sound was full and mellow and, after a minute or two, I didn’t even notice the indentation. (Not that it is ever going to do me any good.)

And so, a banner week, wherein I received a welcome ego boost and obtained a very fine guitar, which my wife has pronounced “Pretty” (although I’m convinced that’s more a comment on the price-tag than her opinion on how aesthetically pleasing the newfangled body is).

Now, if I can just get rid of this cold.