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Friday, March 4, 2011

Provision Despite Stupidity (a love story)

Promotion comes from the Lord. That's for sure.

This past week, I accepted a management position within the agency that I work for. Starting Monday, for the first time in my life...I will be somebody's "boss". 9 "somebody's", exactly. I am equal parts terrified and ecstatic.
At any rate, it has made me look back on life and where The Lord has taken me from...up through this point. How far he's brought me in the last 15 years. He's grown me in so many ways. he's taught me lifetimes worth of work ethics, responsibility, loyalty. He's given me the gifts of Husbandry and Fatherhood.

He also gave me the gift of a kick ass guitar. As is my usual lead in around these parts....let me explain:

I had started playing in bands shortly after beginning college in 1992. I played bass and electric guitar in several different musical outfits over my 4 years at school....I dug them both....but it wasn't until I graduated that I fell in love with my long term weapon of choice....

The Acoustic Guitar.

I had scored an Epiphone Acoustic, a halfway respectable guitar, at a yard sale for a song...maybe 65 or 70 bucks....this was back in 1995 or so. Tobacco sunburst with a florentine cutaway...she was one of the prettiest girls at the dance. It was around 1996 or so when I started venturing out on my own into the "solo acoustic" world of live performance which demanded a just-so combination of decent material, rapier-like wit, and quality sound. I developed the first two very quickly...what I was missing was the tone....for as good as my guitar looked....when she was plugged in, she sounded like a transistor radio tuned between stations....just a mass of buzz and feedback that would have made Thurston Moore jealous and everybody else cringe. I knew that in order to progress....my "road dog" Epiphone would have to be retired. One Saturday, I went on a quest to my local music store.

I was young, dumb, ambitious, and had good credit. This is a bad combination for someone entering a music store with the intention of buying a new guitar. I had no loyalty to any particular brand...I just wanted something that sounded stellar. I had absolutely no knowledge of tonewoods and what type of guitar was ideal for what type of playing style. I waltzed up to customer service and got approved for as much credit as they could give me....then I waltzed over to the acoustic guitar room and bought the most expensive guitar I could afford with the credit I was given. Then I waltzed right out of the store with the guitar that I had just paid almost $1,700 for with absolutely no knowledge of what I had just purchased. It was in the Autumn of 1999.

Unbenounced to me....years after the dust settled on my purchase...years after I had to fight off the creditors threatening to repossess my guitar after not making payments for 6 months (remember....young AND dumb), years after eventually paying it off.....after all this...unbenounced to me...I had bought my dream guitar

A Taylor 514ce
Western Red Cedar top and Tropical American Mahogany sides/back. Indian Rosewood binding. Venetian cutaway. Fishman electronics....this girl sung like an angel.

I've played scores of other guitars over the years...and, call me biased, nothing comes close to touching the tone of this baby. Smooth, honest....bright high end....haunting bass....creamy....she's got it all.

I have played this guitar for every gig I've booked since I bought her....hundreds of gigs....several hundred..clubs, bars, coffeehouses, living rooms, churches, meeting halls, outdoors, at work, campfires, back porches, front porches, ...She's held up like a champ...a true workhorse. I've had to put some work into her....a bridge reglue or two and a partial refret, but other than that...she's held her own like a cagey veteran for over a decade.

Once I had to bring it in for a neck adjustment to a local guitar store. the fellow who served as the guitar tech there is a certified Taylor technician....when I came in to pick up my guitar....he mentioned to me that he was blown away at the tone of this guitar....how it had "blossomed" over time....how it was one of the best sounding Taylors he's every played.
See, quality guitars.....more specifically quality tonewood, "opens up" over time...sort of how a good wine gets better with age....it matures....it "blooms"...the tone grows with the player...it's a very interesting relationship between instrument and musician...coupled with the marriage of tonewood, preference, and playing style...perfect for me...I had an opportunity recently to put this to the test....
Taylor offers guitars in many different tonewoods....huge combinations of tops and sides/backs....each one offering a different tone....some strong and bright...others soft and low...and everything in-between....exotic woods....Koa, Walnut, Rosewood, Ovangkol, Ebony, Cocobolo...the list goes on....anyway....
I was at a Taylor Guitar "roadshow" where they showcased guitars in just about every tonewood combination..maybe 15-20 guitars in all...They had a guitar tech work his way down every guitar...playing the same riffs on each, just so we all could get an idea of the different tones offered by Taylor. I listened...with my eyes closed....and when he was done....my perfect tone...the one ideal for me...was exactly in the guitar I had stupidly, blindly purchased over a decade earlier....
The Taylor 514ce
Western Red Cedar top and Tropical American Mahogany sides/back...

I pick up that guitar just about every day....there's something special about it. Not just that it's a 514ce, but that PARTICULAR 514ce.....I truly believe that The Lord brought me to that guitar....He knew that I wouldn't ever be able to afford another guitar like that...He knew that even though I was as stupid as I was at the time, that this guitar was going to be used in so many places and capacities to give Him Glory...thousands of choruses and hymns have poured out of that soundhole over the years....that guitar has been used to lead hundreds before His Throne in worship...and has also thrummed it's way through some mean Johnny Cash around the campfire....this guitar has opened up the way that few Taylors have....it's been to hell and back and still plays like a champ....it can survive huge temperature and humidity swings and not need to be retuned....it is truly a gift.

You can figure out, from the serial number, exactly when a Taylor Guitar was made....I know this....

My guitar was built on July 23, 1999. It was the 142nd guitar made that day.....It was built across the country in California....It was purchased in a crappy music shop in New Jersey...and it was destined just for me.

God wouldn't have had it any other way.

I told you......this was a love story.

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