s u m m e r
peddling the past, no buyers
There's been a lot of Six Days Grey floating around lately so I figured tonight I'd better listen to some so I can remember what the hell it was I was playing and singing about anyway.
Haunting.
I can remember writing these songs. Some of them in the back yard on Hillside using that old Underwood. While packing I found three new ribbons for it. I can use it again.
I remember the winter "Song For My Sister" was recorded, a snowy weekend down in Highpoint, NC.
I remember after practice how we'd always go to Mi Pueblo and eat dinner so we named the label Mi Pueblo Music. The place is still there on Spring Garden, right down from my new house.
I remember the first show and the last. The first at a restaurant called the Blind Parrot, the last at The Cave in Chapel Hill. That last show very well may have saved my life because it was the night my house was crushed by that oak tree. Damn hurricanes.
I remember struggling with harmonies in the recording studio track after track, over and over. The other guys wouldn't let me have anymore beer until I got it right. And I remember the shows where I belted out whatever the hell I wanted, rarely sticking to the lyrics at all and never paying attention to harmony or key. I simply played.
I don't have any pictures of the band. Other bands, sure, but not this one. No, for some reason Six Days Grey was all about the music and very little else. I really never even got to know the guys in the band that well. Only the bass player and I had ever played together before and that was years before, but he (and they) were willing to give me one more outlet.
If I'd thought it was going to be the last band I'd have recorded more. If I'd thought it would end as suddenly as it began I'd have held off on that ultimatum. If I thought that this past Friday I was going to walk into Dave Shepard's to try and sell a guitar 'cause I need the money more than I need the music I'd have just as soon kissed my own ass.
But there I was at the counter.
"Nobody plays these much anymore, hell man there was never a great market for them to begin with," he turned over my 12 string stratocaster and eyed it down the neck like he was looking down the barrel of an old Remington Model 11.
"We sold one of these a few years back, but now...hey, you still got that MG?"
"Yeah, I got it, right outside," I zipped up the gig bag, "so, this thing's not worth much, eh?"
"Man that's a nice car, gotta a second for me to look at it?"
"Yeah, but about the guitar. What do you think I..."
"Keep it man, you'll never get anything for it."
And that's how it went. Dave's out of the hard body guitar business anyway and like he said, who'd what to play a 12 string Stratocaster? Well, me for one. Surely I can't be the only one that wanted to play one of these things. Surely I wasn't the only one to pour out my soul over its strings and beat it at shows loving its thick, heavy sound. Someone out there has loved this instrument too. Somebody has spent hours in the studio with it, cursed its out dated tuning pegs while trying to keep all 12 of the strings in tune with each other.
There must be.
In the meantime I guess there's always eBay.
*grin*
To be truthful I kinda felt strange leaving the shop Friday, guitar in hand. I don't quite know what it was that made me feel that way. Maybe the near full moon. Maybe the realization I don't need the 12 string strat anymore. Maybe the worse realization, it doesn't need me.
All I know is that I didn't feel right carrying that guitar anymore.
It was like for the first time we didn't belong together.
It wasn't a bad feeling, just different. Not unsettling, but like leaving a lover after you've mutually grown tired of each other. I was freed of something, but what?
No more bands. No more stages. No more lights and sweat drenched clothes. No more cheering fans and moments of sheer bliss when everything falls together just right, hanging on a long awaited 8th note.
I've still got my acoustic. And the 4 track. Cullen and I still play and this Spring we'll play out again, but the cars and the roads trips and fast food and long nights of driving and free beer and girls and smokes and dirty clothes, they're all gone.
No worries.
I'll miss 'em, but I've got the CD.
goodnight 10.24.99