And here we enter the great computer crash of 2018. Has to happen now and then. We'll have it sorted out shortly... for now, to contact Scott CALLS ONLY (no texts) to 512-395-5126. Thanks!
UPDATE FRIDAY 8/24 - back up, eccentric computer guys are usually pretty good because they speak code and circuit... here are a couple of things to hold you over 'til next week. First, a show by some guys I knew when their band was called "Blues Condition" about 18 years ago. Ladies and gentlemen (...and Andrew), Amplified Heat. High octane balls out stoner trio Cream / Experience / Blue Cheer goodness with a Texas twist. Yes, those are amps behind them. Yes, they're all on. There is simply no way to open for the Ortiz brothers - ask me how I know. Brace yourselves... Coolest guys, music that makes me want to flail like a muppet, and I was SO excited to see they're still at it when I looked them up on YouTube.
And, hey I came of age with early '80s Journey - Steve Perry has come back out into the world, is releasing an album, and while the kickoff single is no "Don't Stop Believin'" or "Lights" or "Stone In Love" or... OK, I could go on and on. Fact is he's back, he's doing what he CAN do, and gave a fantastic interview to Eddie Trunk. Humble, gracious, grateful, and they even talked about this moment when Journey's current singer Arnel (quite a story and class act there too) met his idol for the first time. This is how you approach a man whose fate cast your destiny. A wonderful interview. Have a great week folks! ~Scott
This One's For Chuck
This week, a tribute to a troubled genius who did his best and left his mark, filling the world with tools of tone as best he was able. The world of instruments lost Charles Lindert late last week. Let’s get the troubled part out of the way – not because I want this great man to be defined by that, but because if you’re given a podium in life it’s good to share what could help another. And I may not know you but I care. We all tried to cheer Chuck up, but it wasn’t until CHUCK tried to cheer Chuck up by getting into counseling and needed medication that his life actually began to brighten again.
His Facebook post from early afternoon on August 5th mentioned “…it is like coming back from a lifelong war where I fought my own mind everyday. It was like having it start up first thing in the morning and play me every rotten thing that has happened in my life and every fear and every loss endlessly while I tried to think of other things.” And “…slowly it has changed to where I do not have that endless chatter of discouragement running wide open anymore. And it has been a slow change but I can feel it. So it is now a feeling of calm in my thoughts and I can start to think of things I want to without them being drowned out.” LISTEN, if you feel that get help! Yes it’s a tough world and a rough walk, but if you feel more despair than hope find someone to talk to and don’t be embarrassed about getting treatment. It’s great he did but I can only imagine how much more he would have gotten out of and given to life had he done it years ago… Charles didn’t get to see it through; within hours he would have a stroke, and he passed Thursday Aug. 9, 2018.
I tell you about Mr. Lindert because – like others early in my journey to THIS – he took the time to offer advice and give suggestions to some young dude deciding he wants to be building guitars. He didn’t have to – he’d been absolutely REAMED by the business end of things a few years earlier, to the point his life would never recover, but instead of filling my head with horror stories he encouraged me. We talked a few times and that was that until years later I found & friended him on Facebook. We had some good talks through messages. He helped out many people in little ways he couldn’t imagine as being as helpful as they were… he always thought big. He had a big heart and was an absolute mechanical genius. His oddball thumbs-up headstocked guitars were unique, sounded amazing, and though from a different perspective (“Guitars are something a factory makes…” he saw himself as providing a good working piece to produce) I found them fascinating. I had one in my hands when I decided “I’m gonna call this guy.”
In my world, though – Chuck’s a hero. Because in the middle of his world, his company, all he worked for, his dreams, people he trusted, places he loved, all turning or being taken from him over money as Lindert Guitars was taken over and run into the ground… just pile driven... the guy hands in one more design. The Lindert Greenback is the single biggest kiss-off, the greatest F.U. I think I’ve ever seen. Years later he decoded the whole thing (for someone outside the country)...
Charles Lindert, I salute you. I am honored my company, in bloom from seeds including a few you tossed my way long ago, could play some bit role in cheering you on the past few years. A few templates from your shop hang in mine, and any victories and blossoms from here are part yours too – carrying your ripples on with ours. You are responsible for thousands of instruments out into the world still being played and enjoyed and collected, and contributing to musical moments that bring folks together… may there be peace for you now.
There are a bunch of old Linderts for sale out there – go buy one and make some music happen with it. And if your dreams turn bad, never lose your song. Go plant some more dreams and sing while you do it. If you lose your song THAT IS NOT REALITY – fix it so you can go find it again and just sing it for the joy of the song... and plant those seeds. Keep a few extras to toss in others’ lives and don’t be surprised later on if someone walks up with a fresh tomato for you when you really need it.
Listening to: Joel Scott Hill LA Getaway, cool podcasts, and the soothing drone of the AC.
Cookin' Up Tone!
(Just today I learned of the passing of Charles Lindert yesterday – Chuck was a genius, designed oddball guitars, had a company and gave me some early tips as I was getting into the biz. He deserves a full write-up I’ll give him here next week. Meanwhile, condolences to his family and friends from all of us here at Birdsong Guitars.)
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The past couple of weeks have found the homestead’s recently upgraded kitchen in good use, pursuing new and improved taste experiences. If you’ve asked me questions about tone I invariably bring up food; cooking in layers, seasoning, etc. Creating sound machines and cooking are parallels whether you’re a Subway assembler at either or a Chef. I’ve learned more about how to voice instruments from preparing food than anything else except maybe about preparing food from voicing instruments.
When not trying to layer deep lows, sweet mids and clear highs – along with sustain, overtones, warmth, and richness of notes – into short scale bass guitars, “Family sauce” is one of the things that happens. There is Ragu out of a jar, and then there is this. They are the same thing but are not the same. They have similar ingredients and are used the same. What makes one better than the other for your table are whether it’s convenience or ceremony, time or skill considerations, and what the meal means and matters to you. Both have their place. But having grown up among Italians (Sicilians to be specific), in houses that smelled of oil and garlic when the front door opened at the top of the icy stairs, at some point in my adult journey I realized that it was time to develop a few sauce recipes. And I did; but now having the place to do it for real rather than on a 2-burner in a shack, it was time to go for the gusto – Sunday gravy.
Now, Italians can argue over a head of lettuce but to me it’s sauce until you put meat in it – then it’s gravy. That’s just me. Also me is that I don’t eat meat, and though there are plant-based fake sausages and all that are fantastic and I cook and eat them all the time, I didn’t know if they would brown the way one does it before putting them in the sauce, would render down anything of value into the pan to deglaze and pour in, or would withstand the 3+ hour slow simmer the now-gravy would be in for. Talkers talk and theorize; doers do. So I got after it. Same way the bass & guitar recipes happened – I gathered what I knew, dove in, took notes, prepped the ingredients in some way before they were used to bring out their best, and took a good old-fashioned wild guess on the proportions. I like depth – it’s not just crushed tomatoes, some paste, and some dried herbs. That’s the $99 Guitar Center P-bass copy. It’ll do, it’ll cover spaghetti, it’s just not the three kinds of tomato, Italian Chianti, fresh basil, slow cooked to the sound of Sinatra extra virgin olive oil and love sauce with the sautéed garlic, seasoned in layers, and chunks of sausage and meatballs taken out and presented on the side with caramelized onions. It’s not.
I think I’ve got a good basic recipe now I can work with, varying it with a bit more of this or that, leaning it this way or another for use on different pastas. Little thicker. Little more wine. Just like the line of basses; it’s sauce, it’s gravy. Which subtly different version will suit your ultimate plate better? It’s made of ingredients but then it becomes an ingredient in a bigger assembly – and the big bits of amazingness in life, this is often how the thought process is on the way in. It’s not just tab A into slot B, let’s eat. It’s the preparation of those then combined into something that is then layered in with other preparations, and how they all combine to work together and bring out the best in texture, flavor, aroma. Then even those as part of a plate of food are now part of a table, a moment, an interaction. A scene. An event. And what is helping that to be great goes all the way back to the first pour of the oil and the slicing of that first clove of fresh garlic. You can slap it together and it’ll work, or you can craft it and make a table full of tongues slap their faces silly trying to get those next bites in the pie holes.
Either way and anywhere between, be grateful. If it’s God to you, thank the Heavens; if the Earth, thank the seed. If it’s all chance, thank the wheel for turning your way. Then together we eat. Mangia.
Listening to: Boyd Rivers, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Dean Martin Sings Italian Inspired Songs, Frank Sinatra, Izzy Stradlin and the Ju Ju Hounds.
Augustian Glory
Well it’s been a busy week at the little workshop in the woods, with the birds singing and the Birdsongs becoming. It’s been hot but that is expected for this time of the year in south central Texas, and I think the folks who complain about it aren’t as shocked about it being so hot again as how much hotter it feels to them one more year on down the road. Me? I’ll take it. Sweating is good for you and I’ll never have a real winter again. August is my payment on that.
I do like to try to take August off, well at least that’s the standard line. I think I managed it one year. I know when I set all this “Actual company” stuff in motion to be legit and growing with a real workshop and website and all waaaaay back in 2004, I wanted time off over the Holidays and August off. What I didn’t know then that I absolutely know now is that all of those “Have it to you by the end of the year” builds all come up to get cookin’ on about this time for that to happen. It’s like a lunch rush at a diner. Certainly not complaining, given what I get to do for you all for a living! Grateful for everything. What an amazing position to be in, not only to be building basses & guitars for a living, and working for cool people, but consistently having a bit more of it to do than I’m comfortable with. There’ll be a time for comfort, for a more relaxed pace, for the “I’m only going to build X many instruments this year”… and that’s coming, maybe next year, maybe 2020, but it’s not now. For now I still chase the dream and I’m still all-in and balls-out, doing what I love to do, where I love to be. If you ever talk to a guy in that position who bitches, just reach on through and slap him silly through the phone. Shouldn’t take too long.
I am going to call the days a little earlier in the afternoon until it cools back down in September just for a modicum of self-preservation, but I’ll be working the garden I’ve been blessed to have come my way to tend all through it. And that’s a fact, Jack. You know, this goes back past 2004 when the real company launched – the first Birdsong (as a maker’s name) happened in 2001 from the back corner of my buddy “Uncle” Johnny’s workshop. The first use of “Birdsong” as a model of my first guitars happened in 1999 or so out of the back room of a little music shop in Melrose, MA a year after I first got some sawdust on me during the guitar building process. And I’ve been tinkering, parts swapping Strats and putting together parts-o-casters and Strats-o-various since about 1988. That’s a hell of a run! Definitely everything stepped up in every way in 2004 - life was devoted to it and life changed around it. Most dreamers don’t get a run like this, even the ones who quickly transitioned into DOERS at the slightest spark from the plan and threw everything they had at it. MORE than what they had. More than what they ever imagined was inside them to offer up. That all just gets you a better chance on a big ol' maybe.
While you build the dream it builds YOU into the Captain it needs. Then, if you’re doing it right and not letting life spill its insanity into the dream, what the dream has built in YOU spills out into your LIFE and that gets stronger and better too. I was reminded of this looking through these old pictures of the very first days setting up to become official Birdsong (to post with a little motivational post I put up on Facebook every Monday around sunrise). I'll leave you with the one from this past week. “Never hand over the validity of your dream to others who will never see your vision.”
Listening to: Jazz station 91.7 KRTU San Antonio ALL DAY LONG, some live Dead jams.
Miracle Man
I’ve been gathering my thoughts for a couple of weeks on the passing of a man most of you will never know. He entered my life as an older guitar student back when I had a little music shop on the outskirts of this Texas town, then much smaller than now. We were going to step way back from the layers of theory and "14th upper partials" and what every note in every wild chord inversion he had memorized meant could happen seven other ways and just be able to string some chords together into some simple Willie Nelson songs he loved; something he struggled with. He just wanted to sit and enjoy that but he “Couldn’t get his head out of the way” as we called it. His name was Wyly. And this is where a walk-on changes the whole movie.
What happened was, as I helped a bit with that, our roles reversed – he a wise elder and this incredible (though sometimes jumbled) living, breathing encyclopedia of everything you could possibly do with stacking notes into chords – until I simply stopped charging him and sat at the feet of the master that had come my way. When the student is ready, the teacher appears – even if that was initially you. I think I helped him, but I know he changed my whole world of music and composition and gave me a new path to explore creatively… and technically, since I still can’t play much of what I now hear and compose, this strange jazz coming through my hands. Blazing rock and deep blues? Finger picking? The right lick? An album of songs for next week? Yeah, I can do that. It's what I do. It's fun. But I can fumble through these vast inversions and chord-leading notes and inner melodies and it sounds like spirit moving in the music to me. I love it.
Our time was mostly pre-Birdsong; I then got very busy and it was time to tend the garden offered to me to tend. He would pop into the old Birdsong workshop just smiling, laughing, telling everyone how great they were at what they were doing. Maybe offering a line of scripture that related to something he saw that impressed him, or offering a thought he had written in a little notebook about a connection between that and this bit of music theory and how it might apply to a particular movement through chords on a guitar. That was Wyly, the Wyly I knew. I've never met anyone like the man and just walking by him in the bread aisle or the post office of our little town you'd have no idea the depth of just how much was going on in this guy's head. And I got a little bit of that!
Our paths crossed now and again over the years, the last two times being a great dinner at a local Mexican restaurant last year with he & his sweet, loving wife Nancy where he was still sharp enough to hear how much he meant to me as an influence on my path. He laughed it off and passed any credit upwards toward the Heavens, as always. The last time I saw him was this spring; it was difficult. But I did bring a player and some Willie Nelson CDs, and left them with him. Music is its own medicine and it was all that was left for me to offer. If music is important to you, your way, your life – go find someone who brought some to you and let them know they changed you – brought you something bigger - helped form you – and that their ripples are safe; that they will live and spread with yours. If you answered life’s road alone and wound up even reasonably whole – find one who filled you unexpectedly in some way and let them know. To them sometimes it was merely a moment of exchange, what to you seemed a miracle.
I moved young very far away from any family. I love them but my path was different; it called, I answered, and I was gone… and there is still great distance. So I had to search out here to find the footsteps I would follow and the handful I did have deep and profound threads in the fabric of my life that stay, woven in as part of the tapestry of whatever I am, whatever I do, and whoever I become from here. And wherever they are, wherever they have been led, I wish them peace on their journey. Their chapters changed and path now different, it called - they answered - and they are gone.
Rest in harmony Wyly. I’ll keep practicing, and I know I’ll get it.
Listening to: Aerosmith Rocks and John Coltrane; it was a hot week and these always work as sonic forces on my side to help get on it and stay there.
It's Still a Trip
I’ve never really experienced an altered state. Now, those who know me might think I am never UNaltered… but no, it’s all natural there bub. Let’s just say life has cracked open other doors into that room. Being as music is my life and I relate to everything through it, I can’t help but think about which I’d like to experience in a state beyond everyday consciousness. Somewhere in inner space where one can swim on the sound waves and of color and maybe – just for a bit – lose the line where you end and the sound begins. Yeah yeah I know, just shake it off. It’s not contagious. But dig this – we’re atoms, right? Just like everything else physical, right? And atoms are a couple of little mammerzammers spinning around each other, kind of like – oh I don’t know – a tiny little solar system? Right? OK. That space; that movement. It’s all vibration, friends. It’s only solid to us. And being as that vibration effects vibration (think harmony, dissonance, transference as resonance, nothing physically touching but suddenly that guitar over there is humming to this piano note), music affects us deeper than we think. You still there? Yes, I SWEAR I’ve never tripped; life has been a trip OK? OK.
SO… in that deeper state, with access to that level of involvement with the music filling the air around me and the space around the little spinning doohickeys giving me form, (and – of course – sentiently transcending ALL of that outwards) I imagine I’d like to listen to Alice Coltrane’s World Galaxy album. “Alice Coltrane With Strings”… it’s a dense, layered, lush soundcape and I know somewhere deep it’s beautiful but it’s just on the other side of the line for me. I’d love to REALLY taste it. Same with a lot of the – for lack of a better term – “Spiritual free jazz” of the ‘60s, like all those super cool Pharoah Sanders albums. Coltrane’s A Love Supreme always moves me and is about as “out” as my ear goes, though the occasional Sun Ship experience is enlivening. But I know I’m not getting everything out of it that was put into it. It’s frustrating. I really want to be one with this stuff. Something in it calls to me deeper than my mind can access to answer.
Chanting from all over the world gets me as close to where I want to be as I can get at this time, but there are also other kinds of sonic sailing I’d sign on for. I bet Blue Cheer’s first album Vincebus Eruptum at sufficient volume with a speaker on either side of your head in a dark room would really be something. Count Basie’s big band stuff… I’d weave my consciousness through all those layers of brass. Anthem of The Sun by The Grateful Dead would be colorful I bet. One you’ve probably never heard of that I find a bit vibrationally shifting to begin with is from a band called The Electric Prunes. Mass In F Minor was a slapped-together, studio-musicianed attempt to perform a Catholic Mass in Latin to psychedelic rock with just miles of wailing guitar feedback, that just about broke up the band yet somehow completely transcended itself. If that sounds the least bit like something you’d fancy, go find it and it’ll be your new favorite album. Me? I want to EAT it. I want to CONSUME it and have it shine out of every hole.
Am I the only one? I know I’m only one, maybe one-and-a-half on a good day. While toying with the eggshell in any kind of far out, socks off, Terence McKenna’s balls manner holds no appeal at all – and frankly neither does anything altering, numbing or nodding while my tools are working and I’m still taking on the world - music has always done things for me differently than others. This is why I became its devotee as a young teen and have followed it into the fall. This is why I think about these things. Is there a way to experience it more fully? Am I able to be more present with it? Can I possibly become more intimate with it? Perhaps someday I’ll dissolve into it; I don’t know. But between now and then there are a bunch of instruments to build, Friday updates to write, and probably a carburetor or two to work into their own state of more blissful mechanical consciousness. Have a great weekend and I hope you never look at music the same after reading this… or your “self.” If the genie doesn’t fit back in the bottle, thank me later.
Listening to: Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros Café a Go Go; Aerosmith Rocks; The Brian Jonestown Massacre We Are Radio; long instrumental Grateful Dead jams from ’73; Allman Bros. Eat a Peach.
Swingin' Into Year 14
Well hello there and welcome to Friday, or as we call it, “Weekend eve.” We’re back into the swing of things after the July 4th 14th anniversary of our little guitar company and it has been a good and busy week, very productive. Which always feels good. Every day here is a list of different tasks along the way from the wood to the drive out of the nest for a FedEx hand-off; each day is different, its own combination, its own medley. The Bosch Colt router put into service a few years ago routed its 200th instrument this week... a wonderful machine.
As I talked about in the anniversary video, I slowed my pace a bit this year. I still write ball busters of daily lists and attack them, but I've slowed down to about one and a half good men… working my way back down to just one good man. Maybe next year. This year there’s still a ton going on and things are rocking and rolling - this week a run of three “PB3” 2-pickup versions of the EB-inspired PB bass landed in sanding hands. A couple of interesting inventory builds and a Fusion & custom guitar are right behind them. A batch of Hy5s is getting the bodies prepped, glued and cut and their necks are now prepped and sanded ready for finishing. Three instruments took the honorable drive out from the nest this week, headed for waiting hands and homes. Fun talks with now new clients and other folks just interested for now – we appreciate all of you and the chance to make you that special instrument! Indeed, a fun week in the workshop.
Got to visit with a great guy and long-time Birdsong client Bobby, out on a road trip, who detoured down to visit. He had his Cortobass with him so I got to lay a little love & adjustment onto Cortobass #117 from 2008.
And then there was this visitor just this morning... hello, little face!
Have been listening to a lot of music, and filling in between the albums & CDs with a fantastic radio station out of San Antonio. KRTU is, for most of the day, the perfect jazz station – actual DJs playing albums, talking about the cuts and giving info on the artists. It’s so fantastic and I know it can be streamed – enjoy it. It goes weirdo alternative overnight, but I remember some great college stations that used to go free form anything goes overnight and I used to love it, so I can dig a lot of this too. But the jazz mornings, days, and evenings? FANTASTIC. I have a list of albums to pick up from listening to the radio, always a mark of quality music spinning to me, and that hasn’t happened in years.
https://krtu.trinity.edu/
Hope you spin some good music this weekend, no matter what else is going on in life around you – it’s medicine. And if I’m a guy that really means it when I say I wish you well, I’ll wish you music!
Listening to: KRTU San Antonio; Morphine, Cure For Pain; Smashing Pumpkins, live in San Francisco ’91; John Coltrane, Live at Newport; .38 Special, Flashback (Greatest Hits); Rage Against The Machine, Evil Empire; Big Sugar, 500 Pounds (that’s what Gordie’s guitar tone weighs I think); The Who, Quadrophenia disc 2; The Jazz Mandolin Project, Xenoblast; and last but certainly not least, BOTH discs of the live Arista Jerry Garcia Band release. Variety is the spice of life! Step up to the buffet and make your plate into a rainbow.