Guitars and Life

Folks will remember my purchase a few weeks back of the Vintage Gordon Giltrap VE2000GG 12 string to replace my old Yamaha which sadly has seen better days... My requirement was for a nice playable 12 string electro-acoustic.  Most of my stuff is as you know acoustic rock orientated in the David Gray, John Mayer genre.  I'd had my eye on a Gordon Giltrap for a couple of years now anyway since a) I'm a big Giltrap fan b) I'd heard said Mr Giltrap use the 6 string version live a couple of times and was impressed c) it seems incredible value for money. Now then my life was made a touch my complicated by the appearance of the Paul Brett signature 12string.  This is a slight oddity in that this is a parlour sized guitar which to be honest wasn't my initial desire but has received rave reviews and also has been designed as a 12string from the ground up - unlike the Gordon Giltrap which is an adaptation of a 6 string design.  Not unusual to be fair most 12 strings ar...

To be honest after writing the post yesterday about my drinking dream I felt a bit better.  Later in the day I had the chance to call two of my good good friends in AA and talked about it.  Funny one of them I know had shared at a meeting a couple of weeks back he'd had a disturbing drinking dream - it knocked him off his balance too and he is over 20 years sober.  It never leaves us, it is an insidious thing gnawing in our heads and hearts - the compulsion to drink may be lifted whilst I work the programme of recovery, I may have the desire to stop drinking but in my head and my heart it stills weedles away trying to find a way to catch me out.  Non addicts and alcoholics can never probably fully appreciate that or the feelings associated with it.  It was a sharp reminder to me to stay on the right path. "Cunning, baffling, powerful" - Bill W could not have found any other 3 words to better sum it up. Feeling less "unbalanced" and having had a "family...

... slow musical progress ... I played at the regular (every 2nd Wednesday of the month) Songwriters Open Stage at the Nags Head in Rochester last night.  The long suffering Daughter-of-Furtheron came along to support me - although to be fair she was reasonably enthusiastic.  Mrs F was having a hair done! Last time I was there was back in December or January I can't remember, December I'm sure and it was cold, snowy etc. and there was only a handful there.  Good news is that it has picked up as the lighter evenings have come and it was a reasonable crowd in.  Rules are simple, first come first served for a slot - 15min slots from 9pm onwards and original songs only.  This latter stipulation setting it apart from many open mic nights and to me adding the greatest asset of it - original music, stuff people have crafted themselves exposed to the world, often for the first time. I played a new song "In Your Eyes" that I've been working on over the last few wee...

You may not have noticed but I've spruced the blog up a little... well on the right hand side where all the boxes and stuff is... Firstly given it is pretty much the anniversary of my winning the Rock-Til-You-Drop 2010 Outstanding Achievement award I thought I ought to take that off the site.  Also I'm liking SoundCloud a lot so have replaced the Reverbnation player box with a couple of SoundCloud - I might think about actually paying for the premium service as I can then have a larger amount of "sets" to put works in which might make sense to then do and vary from time to time what is on here.  Finally I've added a Facebook button to my Facebook music page if you like my music and are on Facebook please click that and then "like" me as a few followers of this blog already have.  I only use that page to put up music related stuff so you'll not get all the family drivel about how my daughter hates my leather jacket etc. That is about it for this...

I went to Wales over the weekend, to pick my son up. He finished at uni a few weeks back but stayed over so that he could move flat. He has a really lovely bedsit on his own this year. It is super, the only downside being that you need oxygen by the time you reach his landing! Well maybe that is just an indication of how unfit I am these days. I stayed in a pub just a couple of doors along from him and managed to get a cooked breakfast for both of us which was a result. I was lucky on the drive up Friday. It rained all the way pretty much, just as I was on the last stretch up over the Cambrian's into Aberystwyth it started to bucket down, real cloud burst stuff. On the news that night they reported lots of flash floods in mid-Wales and driving back we saw plenty of evidence across the road, I think I was lucky with the timing another hour or so later and I'd have struggled to get through I think. He had already moved into his flat in a week or so ago but needed to get some uti...