Its been a few weeks since my last blog post (ok more like 15 months but who's counting?) If I had been doing anything worth blogging about in the last year I would have jumped right on this and blogged it up. Who am I kidding, we all know that never would have happened-even if I had done anything even remotely interesting.
So as a reboot, this month's highlight was my niece's wedding in the hills over Easter. As a bonus both Whitney and Dathan came home for the party. Lindsy had asked Whitney to sing at the wedding, and when Whit got the song list her first instinct was to call me for my advice and assistance. That's how I envisioned it anyway. Closer to the truth is that she googled the music, couldn't find any accompaniment that she liked and was forced to ask me as a last resort. As for the second song, "wellllll as long as you're here-and have your guitar you might as well play for that also." But what I heard was pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasedaddypleasepleasedaddy will you accompany me.
One thing I remember Mr. Melton my high school band director saying is: "you never break in a new reed on the night of a concert." I played brass, but it stuck with me all the same and its words I live by. Race coming up? you never break in a new reed on the night of a concert; powerpoint presentation at work? you never break in a new reed on the night of a concert; road trip to Chicago? you never break in a new reed on the night of a concert; want a big bowl of ice cream? you never break in a new reed on the night of a concert-ok so it doesn't always fit, but still.............
The last time I played my guitar was probably 5 years ago when Whit and I played a few Christmas songs. After I dusted off Jeremy (my guitar) and tuned him up it was obvious he needed new strings. So the Saturday before the wedding you never break in a new reed on the night of a concert I went to Guitar Center to get a new set of strings. Did you know GC closes at 6 pm on Saturday night? Me either. Sunday-no trip to SF, Monday-no trip to SF, Tuesday-trip to Guitar Center: "a set of 12 D'Addario acoustic strings please". Paid, bagged, and home by 8:00 pm only to find out they gave me a set for a 6 string. FAIL! Wednesday night back to GC to try again. Of course this is the night Whitney and Dathan flew in and after that adventure we didn't get home till after 1:30 am. It took me an hour to restring my guitar and since you never break in a new reed on the night of a concert, I tried to tune it before going to bed and managed to break 2 strings. One of which I had a replacement for (thanks to the 6 string error) the other I did without.
We had very little time to rehearse but I got through it and Whitney did a wonderful job. And we had a great family weekend. After we got home late Sunday night we did a quick recording of the songs - in our jammies- with my eleven string guitar.
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