Camping with Guitar

I recently wrote about my travel guitar, and now I've had a chance to actually travel with it. Last week was my annual boys' hiking/camping trip, this year to the High Peaks region of New York State's Adirondacks. Five of us crammed our food, gear, and beer into a rental minivan and hit the highway, headed for four days and four nights at the Wilderness Campground at Heart Lake.

Now that the trip is over, I have to say that the guitar met every hope I had for it, and was exactly what I envisioned it to be. It was always handy - I would grab it during post-hike afternoon downtime, or around the campfire at night. It wasn't my intention to play "for" anyone - I didn't want to annoy the guys with it, and thought I would probably take it and go down to the lake and find a quiet spot by myself to play. To my surprise, the guys wanted to hear songs, and tried to sing along. The problem was I didn't have lyrics. Next time I'll make a point to bring my binder of songs from the acoustic jam - at this point I have a sizable collection of printed tabs (chords and lyrics.)

I continue to be very pleased with the guitar itself. I can't recommend the Washburn WMJ 10S Mini Jumbo highly enough. It sounds good, feels good, and looks good - and at a budget price.

My baby's first outing was a complete success. I will be taking her with me everywhere it's possible to bring her. And for the next camping trip, maybe some other guys will also bring a guitar, and we can really have some fun!

"No Quarter" and DADGAD Tuning

I saw a YouTube guitar lesson over the weekend on the Page/Plant acoustic version of "No Quarter". I love the Zeppelin version of this song, especially the live version with John Paul Jones' extended keyboard solo, but this is an interesting rearrangement for acoustic guitar.

It's in DADGAD tuning, which I only know from "Kashmir". The guitar lesson is here, and I re-tuned and easily followed along. I've kept my Seagull tuned in DADGAD ever since, and have been playing both "No Quarter" and "Kashmir" a lot (probably to Darling Wife's distraction.)

I want to find some more songs to play in this tuning - though just noodling around is fun in itself. It produces an exotic sound, which I'm not sure how to describe - Middle Eastern? Arabic? Indian? I just know that I like it - a lot.

Here's the Page/Plant version of "No Quarter":

Travel Guitar

Washburn WMJ 10S Mini Jumbo

 

I had a recent birthday, and when asked the inevitable "what do you want for your birthday", one thing came to mind. I would love to take a guitar with me to various places - to the River, to the beach, to the campground, etc. I love my Seagull, but it's too nice an instrument to take into the elements. So I've been thinking about getting a "beater" or "travel" acoustic guitar.

I did some research, asked some questions, and settled on the Washburn WMJ 10S Mini Jumbo Acoustic Guitar. I heard numerous recommendations for Washburns as decent-quality guitars at entry-level prices. I ordered it from Musician's Friend (using one of the discount coupons that shows up in my inbox just about every day), and it was delivered a few days later.

I've had it for a week now, and I'm very pleased. It looks, feels, and sounds great. I like the mini jumbo size. The action could be a little lower, but that's something I can fix the first time I change the strings.

I'm tentatively planning to bring this with me to the Adirondacks, keeping it at my feet in the van if there's not room for it in the back. And I'm calling it a travel guitar - not a "beater." I plan to take good care of it - but I also plan on taking it with me everywhere I can.

Open Mic at The Rock

I hinted at the end of my last post that I talked with a friend from the acoustic jam meetup, and we were considering playing some songs at the following Tuesday's open mic at The Rock. This did happen - Marylou and I settled on three relatively easy songs that she was comfortable singing:

• Nights in White Satin (Moody Blues)
• For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
• Horse with No Name (America)

ELP's "Lucky Man" was a possibility, but scrapped in favor of "Horse with No Name".

It all went very smoothly. I played my Seagull, which is a straight acoustic guitar. Many of the other players have acoustic/electric guitars (with a pickup for plugging into an amp.) That means they had to set up a mic in front of me, and that worked well enough. Another friend from the meetup let Marylou borrow his gorgeous Gibson acoustic/electric guitar.

We played our three songs and got through them fine. It was a lot of fun, and I'd love to do more things like this - the big caveat being that I need to perform with someone who can sing, as I can't carry a tune.

May Acoustic Jam

Last Sunday was the latest jam session of the Downingtown Area Acoustic Jam meetup group (yeah, Sunday was actually June, but it was the May meetup.) These are always fun, and Darling Wife, who comes along to sing, enjoys them every bit as much as I do.

You're supposed to bring two new songs to every session, and Darling Wife suggested a couple, which I researched and printed out. The first was Neil Young's "Don't Cry No Tears". I wasn't familiar with this song, but it's a good song, and easy to play, with just a few simple chords. She also suggested Eddie Vedder's "Guaranteed" (which I've blogged about playing.) It's a tricky song to finger-pick, but not hard at all to strum the chords.

When our turn came, I handed out "Don't Cry No Tears" - and it went over like a lead balloon. I don't know what the problem was - even if you didn't know it, it's not hard to follow along. But people acted totally lost. I'm not sure what the problem was, but it just didn't fly. Darling Wife was a bit traumatized, and told me absolutely not to hand out the Eddie Vedder on our next turn. So I didn't, and called for an old standby (and one of my favorites) - John Denver's "Country Roads".

Notwithstanding our apparently misguided selection, it was a fun afternoon of good music with good people. Guitar great Doc Watson passed away last week, and a few people brought Doc Watson songs to the group.

As a teaser for my next post, I talked with a friend after the jam session, and we toyed with the idea of playing a few songs at the open mic on Tuesday night.

The set list, as best I can remember (and I know I'm missing a few songs), is as follows:

• Deep River Blues (Doc Watson)
• Peaceful Easy Feeling (Eagles)
• Don't Cry No Tears (Neil Young)
• Act Naturally (Beatles)
• For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
• Let It Be (Beatles)
• Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter (Herman's Hermits)
• I Know You Rider (Grateful Dead)
• Sittin' On Top of the World (Doc Watson)
• Take It Easy (Eagles)
• Country Roads (John Denver)
• Preston Miller (Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer)
• Tennessee Stud (Doc Watson)
• This Land is Your Land (Woody Guthrie)
• Southern Cross (Crosby Stills and Nash)
• Ferry Across the Mersey (Gerry and the Pacemakers)
• Sunshine (Johnathan Edwards)
• Old Time Religion (Pete Seeger)

SRV Gear Setup

I *love* finding stuff like this on the Internet. Here is Stevie Ray Vaughn's guitar rig and gear setup diagram from 1985. It's fascinating to me to see how a pro player actually sets things up. One of the commenters on the message board I found this on noted how simple SRV's setup was - maybe that's true, but it looks pretty complicated to me.  I guess other pro's are far more complicated? Anyway, take a look and enjoy.

SRV's Gear Setup Diagram