Confronting the Guitar Gods in My Basement

I've been playing the guitar for over 20 years. On and off. Sometimes highly motivated and sometimes not.

Lately, I responded to an ad on Craigslist and joined a band with a great bunch of guys.

We play a lot of classic and hard rock: Rolling Stones, Judas Priest, Stone Temple Pilots, Ramones, Tom Petty, etc. As we work up a set list of 30 songs, and prepare to play out live, I've never wanted to practice more. It makes a huge difference to have people around with similar passion, driving you forward as an "artist."

So, of late, I'm down in my basement, at all hours of the night, using a Korg Pandora PX4 to rock out into headphones without waking the family. It's an awesome device, with lots of effects, modeled speaker cabinets, drums and bass to accompany, in different keys and tempos if you want.

Now, I'm studying and playing the chord changes, and the solos of many great players. Mountain's "Mississippi Queen" has been assigned to me for the solo. I've got most of it down now. I don't care that some little kid on YouTube can play it already. Or, that there are fifty other kids there showcasing their Van Halen chops. I'm on my own journey.

I'm somewhere I've desperately wanted to be for many years. I played as a teenager and it was a great time. After that it was hard to meet normal human beings to practice with. So, I just listened intently for many years, and stared at all my transcription books, the jazz standards, the stack of lesson tapes with my old teacher who loved Larry Carlton and Sonny Rollins, and wondered.

I'd pick it up from time to time, but if you want to rock, you need a band. Finally, I made a move.

Now, I'm not only learning the songs, I'm also re-learning the brilliance of my beloved artists from a new point of view, that of technique. The subtlety of their musical phrases, the fingerings of the strings to get just the right sound - so easy to screw up! -- just adds to my appreciation of music I already love. And I want to keep learning until I'm 100.

Because of this, and because the band mates are a great group, all of my problems seem so much smaller. I leave every rehearsal feeling great. It's the kind of thing I read about in Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way." Doing "creative" stuff, and being in a "creative community" is just something you have to do. And I've not done enough of it these many years.

I'm not going to let time pass like that any more, and I don't care if it leads me to perform in nursing homes and jails. That's not the point.

Many people who know me, my wife included, laugh somewhat incredulously at my enthusiasm. To look at me is not to think "rock and roll."

But, when I am alone, staring at the transcriptions, and noticing for example, how Leslie West takes a simple blues lick and turns it into an exquisitely fat, emotional guitar wail, and then I duplicate it, that knowledge is now deeply a part of me. And I know who I really am, and I don't care what anyone else thinks.

Photo used under Creative Commons license courtesy of Tres.