Why I play guitar!

There are a lot of reasons why I play the guitar, but here are just a few ...it's the excruciating pain of the strings against my callusing fingers. It's the smell the guitar gives off when you open the case (especially when they're pre-WWII era acoustics, thanks for sharing Mike!)

It's Tobacco or Cherry-sunburst colors; the fancy inlay on the fretboard and the intricately depicted Dove perched among tree branches and shrubs on my pick-guard.

It's the feeling I get when I hear a simple chord or note progression go so well together that nothing in the world compares to it.

Tonight I had my first guitar lesson in more than 5 years. The inspiration for this started a while back, but it wasn't until a recent jam-session in Reno that solidified it for me. I needed to get back to the basics (despite how many previous times, my former band, Three Strike Loser had a gig or airtime on 96Wave.)

After the lesson, on the drive back home, while heading down Hungryneck Blvd. and merging onto  I-526E as I looked out to my left and saw the skyline of downtown Charleston, speckled with lit-up Palmetto trees, I heard a compilation of rock that only yesterday would have made me gag and change the station.

I was instantly transported back to when I began guitar as a kid, at Schmitt Music, in Illinois. All of a sudden, the excitement that I first experienced with an acoustic 1994 Ibanez,  came like a cresting wave and then crashed down without mercy.

And, on this night as, "Ziggy Stardust" came through my already-shot speakers; I cranked up my volume; head-banged as if I had a part in the film, "Wayne's World," during the "Bohemian Rhapsody," scene and sang as passionately as if it were karaoke-night in Kyrgyzstan and I was signing something by the, "Righteous Brothers."

This is why I play guitar!