The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Oh sure, Albert was smart, real smart, I’ll give him that. Knew a lot about relativity, black holes, time warps, all that voodoo stuff nobody here on terra firma cares much about, especially now that science is pretty much on the way out for half the population. So he says, yeah, like he’s a psychiatrist too, that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Big whoop. Maybe he never heard that when you conduct an experiment, say looking for subatomic particles, the results change depending on the guy running the experiment. Same thing, do it again and again, but different result.

So okay, I tore down my last acoustic guitar I built over a year ago, pre-Covid, don’t ask me why, I just did, all right? I’d built 5, figuring the next one would be an improvement, and the one after that might be, well, maybe not perfect or anything, but surprisingly good, possibly more than good, even amazing. Halfway through the teardown I felt Albert breathing down my neck, whispering his little litany about insanity and repetition and expecting better results, kind of like having some punk walking behind you with a stick after dark dragging it across a picket fence, ominous beyond reason.

I had hoped the lessons I learned from those 5 guitars might serve me well, but the first 2 didn’t, the first 3 weren’t much improved, and the 4th, well, it seemed worse. And here I was deconstructing the last one, making a mess of it, growing impatient, wondering why I was going to the trouble and listening to the ghost voice of Mr. Unified Theory of the Damn Universe, give me a break. At one point I almost smashed the thing on the shop table I was so pissed off at how it was going, maybe give Albert a quick review of the Big Bang or Galactic Entropy, but, being the mellow man I am, I just smashed some other stuff and plowed gamely on.

I will make no more guitars. How’s that for a learning curve? How do you like that for a definition of Sanity? The trouble is, though, you put your nose to something like this, give it your best shot, try to improve, try to learn from your mistakes, try to justify the hours and the days and the weeks you spent, only to come up short … and that little worm of failure starts to eat at you, starts to make you question all the other misadventures you tried, the other follies that seemed worth trying at the time but, in retrospect, seem, oh, silly or stupid or just incredibly wrong-headed. And then the worm digs a little deeper and you start to think maybe this is the story of your life, these wrong turns, these pratfalls of projects, this whole way of looking at things, until you stand at the edge of your own personal black hole, and yeah, okay Mr. Super Smart, you’re looking at what might be your own insanity, too late to change all the mistakes now, just line up those 5 guitars and listen to them not so gently weeping in your nightmares.

At least they’re not banjos. That would be a madness unendurable. Although I’m certain my next banjo will be a masterpiece….

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A buddy I met this summer gave me a book called ‘Clapton’s Guitar’ about a luthier in a small town in the Appalachians who was building Eric Clapton a custom guitar. The book was great, a chronicle of constructing a six string from scratch, an instrument worthy of a guitar legend that also waxed philosophic about country living, old time music, tonewood selections, luthiery skills and the life of a consummate and modest craftsman. I was knocked out. I was so knocked out I decided I would build a guitar too, inspired straight into insanity.

It’s as if I’d seen a Picasso and the week after decided I’d just go ahead and paint a masterpiece of modern art. Why not? Isn’t that what we want art to do, launch us off the ground we thought we were gravitationally bound to?

So okay, let’s understand right off the Get-Go that no, I knew I wasn’t going to get a commission from Clapton or Jimmy Page to make them a custom Skeeter axe, I just wanted to see if I could make one at all, something playable, something pretty, something that might even sound good, something that wouldn’t fall apart. At least not right away. Not that I need another guitar — after all I have 3 electrics, 4 acoustics and one steel guitar. Plus a couple of ukes, a mandolin and half a dozen banjos mostly homemade. But NOT a guitar I’d made myself.

The mizzus shook her head, once again, but as always knew I was going to go right ahead and make a fool of myself or drive myself crazy trying. I’m a couple weeks into this and managing both of the above nicely. Guitar luthiery, for any of you uninitiated, entails specialized tools and skills I do not have nor will I acquire in the course of a one-off instrument. And even though the book that kickstarted me on this quixotic journey pretty much described in detail each step of the process, I had no clear idea how HARD this would be. No doubt I could bore you with horrorshow details of my sad attempts at everything from bending sides to cutting kerfings, but I want to keep moving forward, not looking back, otherwise I would need grief counseling now and never get to the end. Whatever the End is.

So I’m reading about bracing strategies and radical soundhole placements on the side, not the top as usual. I know, it would make sense to keep it simple, stick with the Tried and True, follow instructions, yada-yada, but … I’m only building ONE, why not make it unique, why not shoot for Art, maybe go for the Picasso too as long as I’m lost in the fantasy? When I’m done — if I ever am — I may not know how to play the blues on that fancy new axe laying in pieces down at my shop, but I should be well versed in what the blues are. I’m living them every day now.

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