Welcome to May – springtime is here, it cannot be stopped. I hope you find the beauty in it despite the strange days we all find ourselves in. Was going to do some music promotion this week, but inspiration led me in a different direction. That’ll come when it’s time. For now, mysteries and circles…
This is a process full of mystery, even to a craftsman that has been doing it for 32 years in some ways. And actually the mysteries multiply as you get deeper in with it – the 23 years involving sawdust, actually making parts, those are deeper and the questions are deeper. Then you have a little hit and get to make it your living – now you live it and breathe it every day and try to refine the process… and you solve two mysteries (at least enough to control the variable outcomes whether or not you understand “why”) but another comes up. That’ll be 16 years as of July 2020. Here are some of the things that go through my mind as I’m gluing up body blanks or carving scrolls or tracing templates onto planks of tree to transform into singing tools of craft and creation…
1. Have I helped to create all of this or has it helped to create me for its own propagation?
2. I can interpret what the wood is saying to my hand when I get that feeling, touching the right piece; but I would love to be my hand and “hear” the conversation. I imagine it’s like I feel hearing “So What” kick in with that cymbal hit on Miles Davis’ Kind Of Blue album.
3. How does sawdust get into my crack?
4. That the recipe is controllable given enough time spent in the kitchen. A thousand instruments in, I’m rarely surprised by the subtle differences in the basic voices of the models I know very well. HOWEVER, every now and then one sings at 110% and I can’t tell you why – only that in there one ingredient’s particular variance tickled a few others, and there you have it. AND that the chasing of that extra bit is what got the recipes to where they are in the first place.
5. How certain music feels so good to have going for certain tasks. Like, why do I rout like a beast to Aerosmith Rocks rather than other similar albums? Synchronicity of song to step? I dunno. It just is that way. Same as Dickey Betts’ first album with the road rolling under or candlelight moments to Kind of Blue.
In other news this week, you know you think you’ve seen it all and then Post Malone – who frankly represents in a nutshell everything I no longer understand in music culture – gets up in a flowered dress with a band of friends and does an entire set of Nirvana songs, and absolutely nails it to the wall. I was completely gobsmacked. I’d heard it happened, that filtered into my bubble, and I thought it was cool he did it. But I loved Nirvana – that was one of the musical waves I got to experience start to finish. A total soundtrack to a chapter of my life. And I try not to be judgmental but… you know, you live long enough looking around and you see patterns and you kind of know what to expect. That’s how life much of the time, with a little luck, gets mapped and doesn’t turn into a shit show. It’s a navigational sense. Sure enough, the first minute watching it on YouTube I was like “This is going to be an absolute shit show.” Then they launched in and I swear it took fifteen minutes for me to keep my jaw closed. Man randomly payed respect to a favorite band of his, raised a bunch for a pandemic cause, and I give the guy – and his buddies – BIG respect.
Word has filtered in today that Texas guitar selling legend Ray Hennig has died. May he be blessed – as ornery as he was, he put a lot of tools in a lot of hands, including some that went on to inspire a lot of people and fill many many lives with music. He figures into Birdsong lore early on too, but that’s a story for another time. The story for today is from years back, when Austin – whilst milking to death the very things that made it noteworthy and leveling many blocks of its musical and cultural heritage in the name of condos and high end apartments to house the… ahh, people who flooded the area for its music scene and cultural heritage… (clears throat)… took out a particular block with a couple of local music stores on it. One was Ray Hennig’s Heart of Texas Music, a legendary shop. One day I took my car up to where it used to stand, and with just a little fenced off rubble left being shoveled aside, I saluted this temple of Texas music history whilst doing donuts in the empty parking lot. It was the most rock and roll thing I could think of to do. Ray, I will never forget the words you told us and they inspired us to do what we did. So any good ripples into the basses or out into the world today, I dedicate to you as they’re partly yours. RIP and condolences to his circle and anyone who is sad.
Out here in the woods there is a skink, a little black lizard, living under & around the stairs into the assembly shop. I named him Buster, after an old three-balled mutt dog my friend “Uncle Johnny” used to have. The grounds have come to life and the little birds are all a-twitter in the springtime sun, trying to nest in the workshop next to it – where the woodworking happens. This is, after all, a little workshop deep in the woods; it’s not a factory. The windows and doors are open, the breeze and bugs freely pass through on their way to do their things, and this is where Birdsongs and the other things we craft happen. I gently discourage the birdies from some areas and leave their growing piled bits of twig and bark in others. Inside the roll-up door? Not so good. Empty top shelf cubby over the routing bench? All yours. I can’t even reach it with a step stool. I’ll work around you when things are happening.
20 years ago, in the corner of another craftsman’s handmade workshop in the woods, many generations’ past brethren of theirs would do the same. My friend “Uncle Johnny” would leave a window open for them and give them their space – some of his space, actually – and once the nestlings were getting ready to fly, they flew. Every year I do the same, and it reminds me of him. The very first Birdsong was being made there and he was helping and really teaching me how to bring my woodworking & finishing up a few notches… and I showed him how guitars went together. Wise ones speak of powerful things moving in circles - the nest, the ceremony around the fire; the storm, the galaxies. The cycles of life and its seasons. And every year the springtime reminds me life does not stop, life is living and rebirth is all around… and, in the rituals of the birds, of the beginnings of this chapter.
Listening to: Some live Queens of the Stone Age; Ted Greene Solo Guitar and other sessions; Thelonious Monk Monk’s Music; Living Country Blues Vol. 1; Kula Shaker Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts.