Musings

There I was, photographing a one-of-a-kind Mosrite Ventures-style tenor guitar in the dust and debris of an old machine shop in Tulare County.

Sleeping in the bunk of a van barreling down the highway at seventy miles an hour isn’t easy. You have to train yourself, mentally and physically.

Betsy had a fascinating history. She was one of the original Little Rascals in the Our Gang series back in the 1930s. Then in the 1940s she began a career in Western music.

In typical Garrett style, he could have done it the easy way, but chose to do it the right way. He made a new replacement neck for the mandolin, used the original fingerboard and headstock cap…

This is the grave of Moses Dickerson the First. He’s my great-grandfather eight generations back. Moses Dickerson fought in the Revolutionary War so that we wouldn’t have to answer to a king.

Had a fun trip yesterday to meet Merlene Travis at Norman’s Rare Guitars to help shed some backstory on a guitar owned by her father, Merle Travis.

If you’re not in Los Angeles, and you’re watching the news somewhere else in the USA (or overseas), let me clarify a few things about what you’re seeing.

Eventually I realized that all my previous prejudices against music from the 1970s were incorrect; there was great music in the 1970s and bad music in the 1970s, and Sly Stone was absolutely the turning point in that personal realization.

The Whippersnappers and I recently recorded a batch of new hot-rod-themed songs for an upcoming EP, and yesterday we shot a video for a song I wrote called “Ridin’ with the Devil (Goin’ Fast as I Can Go).”

In 2009, I had the honor of meeting and interviewing Letritia Kandle, the pioneering female steel guitarist from Chicago who invented the “Grand Letar.”