My Guitars

My first bass (on the left), a Schecter custom P-Bass from the 80s (made in California), is ironically my current favorite after years of disuse. I taught myself to play on this bass and I moved 7 times before I started using it again most recently in LA's PEOPLE and now on my second record (Summer '09). It used to be cherry red stain, but I sanded it down and then stained it with a dark natural finish and used tung oil over and over between steel wool rub downs. It took two tries. I had to remove a heart that was carved into the body. I lent it out for a year or so. I under-valued this guitar for sure.

It's a P-bass with bartolini pickups (not original), drift wood body, black pickguard that I had to steel wool for a while to remove the super glue from when I attached fragments of broken CDRs (it refracted in little rainbows live). I love this bass. the neck is thinner than most Pbass necks, almost a jazz bass neck. I actually kept in under my bed for years unused.

The Red one on the right is an Ibanez Road star I got cheap for a friend, but he didn't want it and I can hardly sell a stray. My son loves this strat style cherry bomb. I suspect it'll be his first guitar.


The purple Pedulla Rapture on the left was an unsellable item at a Long Island Guitar Center. I guess the manly men of Wrong Island couldn't handle the purple. I bought it for my wife though. It has a big soap bar Bartolini pick-up, a flip hip shot on the E tuning machine for Drop D, a hand carved bronze nut, and a Bad Ass II Bass Bridge. Its super light, small, and fast. Sounds super huge through an Ampeg SVT.

The Fender Jazzmaster Japanese Reissue 1996 (first reissue year) is the only guitar I play these days. It plays like a strat but sounds like Sonic Youth from the first. The red pick guard and sunburst body rock. I stuffed kleenex under the strings behind the bridge to cut down on the chimeyness of the jazzmaster when I'm recording (so I don't have noise all over the track). The thinner jazzmaster sound lends itself for easier stacking of guitars (strats are fatter, and Les Paul's even more fat to my ears) and I love to stack guitar parts to make an orchestra of sound. I usually rewrite/simplify my work later when I'm tracking but initially my song writing has lots of guitar parts.


This Fender Jazz Bass, a Highway One American Standard, was a gift and I use it exclusively for all my finger playing. It is a workingman's bass. It has a Bad Ass II Bridge and a hand carved brass nut. Everything else is factory, its post-millennial work.

The Epiphone is a 70's acoustic-electric that feels a little like a Gibson (which is why I use it for all my live acoustic gigs).


This Gibson C-0, classical 1961 beauty from Kalamazoo. It was my Dad's. He gave it to me after years of letting me borrow it. This is my baby. I wrote almost all of my debut on it. The Schecter is the only instrument I've gotten more songs out of. It sings clear and true so I can easily hear and build melodies.

The original owner (i think my dad was a teen in Iowa) thought the heavy metal seal in the headstock through out the neck so he replaced it will a good resonating wood (and destroyed the possibility of it ever being sold as All Original), and I believe its because of this, that it has survived as long as it has and in the condition it has. I've never played another of its like. i don't know how many survived. It may be older than 1961. There was some weirdness when I was tracking down the info. Either way, I taught myself to play on this guitar when my dad wasn't watching, and his old Kasuga when he was (a long gone japanese cheaper acoustic steel string guitar).

I love guitars, but as of now I hope I don't get too many more.

I'm running out of room.

Reading aloud Dr. Seuss

Have you read Dr. Seuss lately?


"BIG F, little f, what begins with F?
Four fluffy feathers on a Fiffer-feffer-feff"
-Dr. Seuss's A B C


Trying to say that fast is harder than it might seem especially when you get to the tongue twister Seuss's.


"Pete Briggs pats his big pink pigs all day.
(Don't ask me why. I cannot say.)
Then Pete puts his patted pigs away
in his Pete Briggs' Pink Pigs Big Pigs pigpen"
-Oh Say can you Say? by Dr. Seuss

My father-in-law told me actors and anchormen alike use the tongue twister books to work on their diction before hitting the spotlight. I can definitely sing faster if I get my daily Seuss recitals in. Take the A B C one to the next level add some rhythm and speed to it, before you know it your lips and tongue will feel thick and slow.

Add it to the Rider:
Oh Say Can You Say
by Dr. Seuss
http://www.amazon.com/Say-Seuss-Green-Back-Book/dp/0007175221

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Notes from the Road - Fillmore/Blondie

I've been traveling lately. Eating up miles of highway going down to LA to rehearse and perform with PEOPLE (or www.myspace.com/peoplerock). 

I mostly listen to NPR.

I mostly travel alone.

But I did get to go to the Fillmore to see Blondie in San Francisco. Their keyboardist (since 2008), is Matt Katz-Bohen, guitarist/singer for Daddy and Feast of Friends (Ty Dennis and Shawn Pelton have both played on drums with FoF). I recently did a show down at Molly Malone's with Ty, Matt, Chad Dinzes and the man behind Go Green Expo in LA, Bradford Rand. He invited me to the Fillmore show. I was excited to take my wife out since we haven't gone out to a show together in years (we have a young son...)  Anyway the only shows I see are ones that share the stage with us that night, or festivals if they give us a general admission pass... (like Dfest I got to see Zappa plays Zappa. It was brilliant. Roto used to jam with Dweezel in Joe's Garage back in the 90's).

 

So it was great to see a friend play with some living legends and to get in free with backstage passes. 

We left our son, James, at his Aunt's house with his Uncle and cousin. He waited until we returned home at 12:30am... for a little man used to 9pm bedtime, he was holding up pretty good. The next day my buddy Gibson witnessed him oscillate from being meek to throwing a huge tantrum in 20 minutes... It was an interesting next day.