August 2011 Nearly Over Already

It has not been a particularly interesting year so far from a personal perspective. It seems that time flies by as I attend to the mundane necessities of life. Each week there are things that beg to be done, leaving not as much time as I would like to do things that don't need to be done.

I have been too lazy to put the boat in the water even one time so far this year. Not sure if I'll get out fishing at all before winter comes again. I have managed keep up with most of the yard work and the housework, but I haven't made any significant progress on all of the projects I would like to do in the yard and in the house. Outside there is brush that needs chipping and land that needs to be cleared of brush and trees, plus the yard could use some serious landscaping to include sod and retaining walls. Then I also had plans to add a large deck behind the garage which is unlikely to get done this year. In the house I really need to replace flooring in just about every room, and I have ten new 6 panel oak doors that need to be prepped with stain and varnish and installed to replace the original cheap hollow core mahogany doors that don't look as nice as they did when we installed them 34 years ago.

I have not made nearly as much progress learning new songs on my guitar this year as I did last year. Probably because I just haven't been as diligent with my daily practice. I'm thinking I'm in a bit of a rut and should probably start taking some lessons again for a while.

Sales of the Guitar Player's Friend transposition tool have been going great this year. 2011 has already produced more sales than 2010 and there is a slim possibility that it could actually double the volume since most of the sales in 2010 were in the second half of the year. I'm still getting about 10% return business with some customers buying from 3 to 10 at a time. The Guitar Player's Friend Website still needs quite a bit of work to have a more professional appearance. I really hate to promote it too much in its current state, even though it is functional and people have used it to buy the transposition tools.

Ham Lake Porcupine

Finally the temperature went above freezing for the first time in weeks. The sun even came out this afternoon and a little bit of the blacktop showing through the snow on the road actually had a spots of liquid water on it. It was so nice that I took a walk down the road just to get out of the house for a while.



This time of year there are a lot of tracks in the snow from a variety of animals. Normally we expect to see a lot of squirrel tracks, a few rabbit tracks, some deer tracks, and of course some dog and cat tracks from the pets in the neighborhood. Today I saw some tracks in the snow that were totally unfamiliar to me. I first saw them on the road and then followed them into a neighbors driveway where the critter that created them must have been heading for the swamp behind the neighbors house. I decided to backtrack to see where the critter had come from, and it appeared that he had come up another neighbor's driveway from the woods. It looked like the critter must have had very short legs because there were marks in the snow connecting the footprints as it wandered down the edge of the road in the half inch of undisturbed snow.



Since I had no way to figure out what the critter was, based on my own knowledge and experience, I looked it up on my computer and in just a few minutes discovered that it was a porcupine that had left the strange tracks in the road. I thought it looked like a pretty small animal made the tracks so I wondered if there would be young porcupines this time of the year. It turns out that the young are born in early winter so it is entirely possible that the tracks were made by a 3 or 4 month old porcupine. I have seen porcupines in the wild occasionally, but never in our neighborhood. So I learned something new today.

Transposing and Transposition Tool

It has again been several months since I have made an entry in this blog. Winter is back creating a cold, bleak, wasteland of frozen white crystals, covering the ground as well as roofs, trees, grass, and dead leaves. We don't usually get this much snow so early in the winter. I have already used the snowblower on the driveway 3 times, and I used the snow scoop at least two more times when there was only 2 or 3 inches of snow. The last snow was at least 12 to 15 inches accumulated over a 24 hour period. I think next year we'll head south about the 1st of December.

I finally got my web site up and running and actually had my first customer on the site. He was an eBay buyer who contacted me afterward via email to ask if he could buy another transposer without going through the auction process on eBay. I was a little reluctant to direct him to my Guitar Player's Friend web site because it is really not completed the way I would like it to be yet. However, it is functional. I knew that because I had my wife purchase a transposer from the site and the test went without a hitch. So I directed the customer to my web site and he was able to order, and more importantly, pay for his order on the site. If you happen to be interested in looking at the site, the url is www.guitarplayersfriend.com . It isn't very pretty, and it is definitely incomplete, but it fully functional now.

If you happen to stumble across this Blog, I would sure like to hear any comments you might have, even if it's just to say hello.

Nothing in Particular

Summer is officially over and fall has begun the rapid descent toward winter. The yard is littered with acorns and the first of the falling leaves. I generally like the fall months of September and October. The temperatures are more to my liking than the midsummer heat or the midwinter cold.

Yesterday I played my guitar at a senior day care center with my new friend, Larry, who plays the fiddle. It was Larry's gig and he invited me to accompany him while he played his Celtic fiddle tunes. Larry put on a great performance and had the audience practicing clogging and singing along to some old standards. As part of the gig I was asked to sing a few solos with just my guitar for accompaniment. Of course I was happy to do it. The funny thing was that Larry had never heard me sing before, so he had no idea whether I could even carry a tune. We had only met a few days ago and at that time I just played a few chords while Larry played his fiddle. Fortunately I was able to carry a tune so Larry didn't have to give me the hook. Anyway, what this rambling was leading up to is that for the very first time in my life I actually got paid for playing my guitar and singing. I never considered that was even a remote possibility. It was so easy I should have thought of that before I started working for a living. HaHa!
If you somehow got to this Blog without buying one of my Guitar Chord Transposition Booklets, you should know that I began selling them on eBay again in July, and business has been very good with over 35 sold in the last 60 days. Eventually I will have a website where I will sell direct to guitar players, but in the meantime the Guitar Chord Transposers are only available on eBay or a very few guitar shops in Minnesota.

I have noticed a couple of things at the jam sessions I attend that could stand a little improvement. First, it seems that almost all of us tend to play our songs a bit faster than the original versions. I'm not sure why that is, but it doesn't allow for some of the special qualities of the song to be brought out in the jam session performances. Second, it seems that there are participants who can't detect that their instrument is out of tune. That seems like it should be easily corrected with the availability of the electronic tuners that most guitar players use. In a jam session environment one poorly tuned instrument can make it sound like someone is playing poorly, or it can make the whole performance sound like a train wreck.

One thing I started doing when I bought my first electronic tuner was to check the tuning on my guitar every day before I begin practicing. It doesn't take much change in the ambient temperature and humidity to change the tuning on your guitar. There are some days when the tuning has not changed from one day to the next, but there are a lot of days when there is more than one string slightly out of tune. Since I like to sing as I play my guitar, I consider it extremely important for my guitar to be totally in tune. Otherwise I might actually be singing slightly off-key to adapt to my out of tune guitar.

If your guitar becomes difficult to tune, or if it still doesn't sound quite right even when the tuner says it is in tune, it is time to change the strings. I know that changing strings is not the most fun thing to do with a guitar, but if you practice every day your strings will wear out and they will not produce the quality of sound your guitar is capable of. I have found that using a soft cloth to wipe off the strings after I practice seems to add a bit of longevity to my strings. I know some strings do wear better than others and the best strings are not typically cheap. However, when I hear players say it has been 6 months or more since they changed strings, I know their guitars would sound much better if they would change the strings more often.

I alternate my practice between 2 guitars and sometimes a 3rd, and I have found that my strings sound great for about 2 months and OK for about another month. By the end of the 3rd month the strings have worn to the point where the sound they produce has deteriorated enough that I don't enjoy practicing. Then I know it is time to put on new strings, and I clean and polish the guitars at the same time. Now I'm just talking about acoustic guitars in this article. I think you can probably get away with using older strings on your solid body electric because your electronics will probably compensate for the loss of tonal quality in the older strings. If you use strings too long they will wear enough that they might break while you're playing.

Summer 2010

A sad note to start this blog. A special old guitar playing friend, Dan Brodhead, died in May this year. I met Dan in 2003 when I decided I wanted to take guitar lessons again. I say again because I had my first guitar lessons over 50 years before. Dan had run an ad in the local shopper offering guitar lessons for $10 for a half hour. I thought that seemed reasonable so I began taking lessons with Dan. We developed a weekly routine where we would spend a half hour on my lesson and then we would have a cup of coffee and talk for an hour or so after the lesson. From these talks I learned a great deal about Dan, and I learned that we had something in common. Back in 1963 and 1964 we were both attending Yale University. Dan had actually completed his PHD in Physics at Yale, while I was only there courtesy of the US Air Force language training program to learn Mandarin Chinese.

Unfortunately for Dan, he developed a mental illness that prevented him from reaching the great potential he had as a physicist. His illness was severe enough that he was able to qualify for Social Security Disability, but with medication Dan was able to function pretty well in most situations.
After a year or so of guitar lessons Dan told me that he had taken me as far as he could and that I would have to find a more experienced teacher to help me develop futher skills on the guitar.
By this time our friendship had developed to the point where we decided we would continue to get together once a week and practice together and learn some new songs.

We continued our weekly visits until last November when Dan's chemotherapy for cancer made him too sick and too tired to be able to practice on his various musical instruments. Dan suffered from lung cancer which was diagnosed almost 2 years before it finally took him.
Needless to say, I really miss Dan and the weekly visits that we kept up for nearly 7 years.

That's all I'm going to put in this post.

Winter in Ham Lake, Minnesota

January is nearly gone, and the daily average temperature is supposed to be beginning to rise. The average is supposed to be in the lower 20 degrees, but today the high was around 12 degrees. I had to shovel a little snow again today. We are way below average on snowfall for the month so I'm happy about that. I've only had to use the snowblower twice so far this winter.

We didn't go to S. Carolina in Dec. as we have done for the past few years. Marlene is on oxygen, and she is taking medication for heart problems so we decided it might be best to avoid the 2 or 3 day car trip to SC. We may decide to take a trip in the early spring instead.

So far I'm ahead of my goal of learning one new song per month. I have added 6 more since my last post and have 2 more that I'm working on memorizing now. I think the trick is to find the songs you really like and add them to a list of songs you want to learn. That way you should always have new songs to work on when you are ready for more.

On a somber note, we lost one of our key jam session members a few weeks ago. His name was Jim Perleberg (he always said it sounds like whirlybird). He was not only a very good musician, but he was also a very good friend to everyone who participated in the jam sessions with him. He played guitar, banjo, and mandolin equally well, and he wrote a great song that he often performed at the jam sessions. He was 76 years old and had prostate cancer for 2 or 3 years before it got the best of him. I truly miss him.

Reminder: If you are lucky enough to own a quality acoustic guitar now is the time of year you should be using a humidifier to prevent damage to your guitar. If the wood gets too dry it will crack and your guitar will lose value even if it does not immediately affect the playability.

If you stop by this blog please feel free to comment or leave a helpful tip or just say hi.

Another Summer Bites the Dust

Fall in Minnesota can be beautiful. September was warm and dry, ideal for doing just about anything outside. October brought much cooler temps and much needed rain. Acorns and black cherries are falling abundantly from the trees, and soon the leaves will begin to join them on the ground. I would love fall more if it weren't followed by such long and bitter winters as we have here in Minnesota.

I have begun to list my transpostion books "Guitar Player's Friend" on eBay again. I didn't list them much during the summer primarily because I had more pressing priorities to take care of this summer. I did spend some time learning a few new songs that I will be able to perform at the monthly jam sessions. I have about 27 songs that I can play and sing from memory. My goal is to learn one a month for the next year. That is not a difficult task, it requires just a little more effort during the hour or two of daily practice that I normally fit in my schedule. I have at least 50 music books that I have accumulated over the years, so there is no shortage of good songs that I really want to learn.

There are some great sites online where I have found lyrics and chords for songs that I really like from long ago. One of my favorite websites is Cowboy Lyrics.com. If there is a particular artist you like, you may find exactly the song you always wanted by that artist. There are quite a few similar sites that are easy to find if you spend a little time with google. Just enter a song title on google search and you will get a ton of results to point you to sites that have recordings, lyrics, sheet music, chords, and tabs. I have bought sheet music this way, but most of the time I just look for the free stuff that provides the lyrics and chords.

Usually, what I do is edit what I find online to put all the lyrics on one page and transpose the song to a key that suits me. Many times you will find that there are errors in what is posted online, but it is not hard to figure out what they are and make the appropriate changes. The biggest problem I have found is that when you copy from the website to MSWord on your computer, you may lose the format so the chords are a little out of position. My solution is to print directly from the website so I can make the appropriate format corrections by using the hard copy as a reference.

I'd be happy to hear any tips you might have to pass along to our guitar playing friends.

Summertime in Minnesota

I love the month of June. It is the best time of the year for fishing in Minnesota. The first week in June is when I spend a week fishing with my brother on Pelican lake at my Breezy Point time share and take a side trip to his place to do more fishing on Cooper lake near Longville. The fishing was not fast and furious this year, but we caught plenty of fish so we could have 2 meals of fish during the week and take home a meal or 2 of fish to fry later. Mid June I took my neighbor, Denis, fishing on Rush lake north of Cambridge. The lake was weedier than I have ever seen it in the past 30 years. We were able to find the bluegills in shallow water where the weeds weren't too thick. We kept about 2 dozen altogether and considered it a pretty good outing. Two days later I took my grandson, Chris, and his girlfriend, Leah, to the same lake and we also had a lot of fun catching bluegills in Rush lake. We only kept about a dozen because the kids weren't interested in taking any fish home to eat.

I saw my first fawns of the year about the middle of June. I first noticed the doe near the back of my property by the swamp and soon the two very active fawns followed her as she slowly wandered off to my neighbors yard. I also saw a wild turkey in the front yard a few days later. I wouldn't have noticed it, but our dog happend to look out the living room window and started barking at it. It must have heard the dog, because it didn't stop moving until it got into the woods in my neighbor's yard.

This is the first year I actually played guitar outside. My friend Dave and his wife Betty came up to my friend Dan's place and we set up outside in front of Dan's apartment building and played for 2 or 3 hours. Then yesterday I went to a jam session at the Lion's park in Lindstrom, MN, about 25 miles from home. It was really windy, but that didn't have much impact on our playing and singing. There were 8 or 9 guys there, and we drew a crowd of 15 to 20 people including wives and friends of some of the participants.

Tip

Many guitar players already know this, but if you are a new guitar owner you may not be aware that it is very important to provide a good environment for your guitar. This is especially true if you have a quality guitar that would be costly to replace.

You should keep your guitar in an environment that is not too hot or too cold, and not too dry or too damp.

If you keep your guitar in your home, you probably don't have to worry much about temperature extremes. However, you do have to be concerned about humidity levels. Winter tends to greatly reduce indoor humidity, and low humidity can cause cracks to develop in the thin wood that is used in the body of quality guitars. Once a crack develops your guitar will not only lose a great deal of its value, but you will be lucky if it doesn't affect the quality of the sound from your guitar. The good news is that humidifiers for guitars are pretty cheap and readily available in guitar shops and from online music stores. I like to use the humidifiers from December through March in Minnesota. That is when the extremely cold and dry winter air presents the biggest challenge to indoor humidity levels.

Carrying your guitar in your vehicle may also require some precautions to avoid exposing it to temperature extremes. Before you put your guitar in your vehicle it is a good idea to let your vehicle warm up in the winter and cool down in the summer. That way you won't risk causing structural problems due to rapid expansion or contraction of the guitar's fragile components.

Guitar Player's Friend

It has been more than a month since I was last inclined to put anything in this blog. I can't say I haven't had the time since it is still winter in Minnesota and I'm not inclined to spend much time outside enjoying the weather this time of year. I'm still having fun with jam sessions and memorizing new songs to play and sing. I have about 2 dozen now that I am comfortable with performing from memory now. I'd like to double that number this year.

I'm still having some success selling my "Guitar Player's Friend" transposition tool on eBay, but it is not very profitable by the time I pay all of eBay's fees and PayPal's fee. I would like to try getting a web site set up to allow people to buy direct from me to see if I that would provide a little better profit margin. I have sold 140 so far since I started in mid 2005. I think that's enough to show that there is a market for this handy little device, but I need to figure out a relatively inexpensive way to get exposure to a larger audience of guitar players.

I'd like to hear from anyone who stumbles across this blog if you have any ideas for subject matter or thoughts about my ramblings.

Back to Minnesota

It has been a while since I was last motivated to add to this blog. In the meantime I drove to South Carolina and spent about 3 weeks with my youngest son, Richard, and his wife Amber at their home in Irmo, SC. It was nice to get out of Minnesota while winter was taking over the northland. The weather in SC was more like spring than winter. There were only a few days the temperature stayed below 50 degrees and there were a lot of days in the 60 and 70 degree range. We decided that it wouldn't be a bad place to live during the winter months.

We also visited Marlene's brother and his wife in North Carolina for a couple of days. They live about 3 or 4 hours away from Rich's place. We both enjoyed our visit and all the good food they provided while there. I also enjoyed playing my guitar and singing for them for a couple of hours.

Now we're back in Minnesota enduring seemingly endless subzero temps and more snow than we've had for a few years. Thankfully we are healthy enought to deal with all the little inconveniences that come with living in this rather extreme winter weather.

I'm looking forward to another jam session at the senior center next Tuesday, and I signed up to participate in another new jam session for electric guitars and equipment on the 29th. That one should be interesting because the focus will not be country music or bluegrass, but geared more toward rock and pop music. It has be a while since I did much of that, but I thought it would be fun to see how it goes at least once. If it's a good fit for me I will add it to my schedule and make it the 5th monthly scheduled jam session.

There doesn't appear to be much interest in this blog yet, so I guess I'm going to have to find something more appealing to the masses who might like articles about guitar music and related issues.

Goodbye "Guitar Zone"

I got some kinda sad news this week. The guitar store called Guitar Zone where I bought my Taylor guitar is going out of business. There are several things I liked about this particular store that I'm really going to miss. First, it is the closest guitar store from my home. Second, I got to know the owner and most of the guys who worked there pretty well. Third, they sold more than a dozen of my Guitar Player's Friend books on consignment. It is also disconcerting that this is the 3rd guitar store in the north suburbs to go out of business in the past year or so. The closest one left on this end of town is in Andover which is less than 5 miles away, but they are relatively new and pretty small. They also don't carry any major guitar brands like Gibson, Martin, Fender, or Taylor. I wonder if they will still be around by this time next year. I think there are a couple of major developments that have become a major problem for the smaller independent guitar stores. The internet has made it very easy to buy accessories and sheet music online cheaper than they can be found in the guitar stores. The other thing is that the competition from the Guitar Center chain, and now Best Buy stores, makes it difficult to compete on price and availability of the major brands. Both Gibson and Martin have priced the cost of distributorships so high that a small shop cannot afford to carry their current product lines. It is sad that these guitar manufacturers can't make accomodation for the smaller guitar stores. And it is hard to believe that it would hurt them to have their products displayed in the small stores without charging nearly $100K per year for the privilege.

November - 3rdTuesday Jam Session

Yesterday was the 3rd Tuesday, afternoon jam session at the Ham Lake Senior Center. (Not the 3rd jam session on Tuesday, but the jam session held on the 3rd Tuesday of the month). It was a little strange because two of the long-time regulars weren't there. The wife of one of those two is the one who normally supplies a treat for the mid-session break so there were no cookies or bars or anything for the break. On top of that the lady that usually makes the coffee for the mid-session break was about an hour late so we didn't even have coffee. This was a typical Tuesday session turnout with a total of 9 players. There were 6 guitars, 1 amplified dobro, 1 electronic keyboard, and 1 accordian. The dobro was a good addition to the group. I'm not that fond of accordians or electronic keyboards in an acoustic guitar jam session, but I can live with it.
Since a couple of the players passed on their turns to lead, I was able to do 6 of my songs. Unfortunately one of the songs I did made a lady cry because she lost her husband early this year and the song brought back memories that made her sad. The same lady gave me a Merle Haggard songbook that I know I will enjoy using. Some of the people at the jam sessions call me Merle because I do 6 or 7 of his songs that everyone seems to like.

If anyone out there in blogland has any stories about jam sessions, guitars, wildlife, or any NEW jokes, I'd love to hear them.

Mundane Monday

Not much to write about today, but I don't want to get out of the habit so I'll write about my mundane Monday. Started the day with 2 cups of coffee like I have done every day for many, many, many years. The highlight of my day was lunch with an old friend I hadn't seen for about 15 years. It was great to see him and get caught up with all the things that have happened in his life since I last saw him. When we parted we both agreed to get together again soon, but we didn't make any definite plans. After lunch it was time to get into my normal Monday routine again. Since I retired I have been washing and drying the laundry every Monday, and my wife, Marlene, folds the clean laundry and puts it in a basket for me to carry upstairs to our bedroom. Monday is also the day I have to collect all the trash from the wastebaskets and then take the big trash container down to the end of the driveway for the pickup on Tuesday morning. Neither of these weekly chores take much time so I still have plenty of time to do whatever else I want to do on Mondays. I did practice my guitar and singing this evening so I will be ready for the jam session tomorrow afternoon. The afternoon jam sessions usually have less than 10 participants so we usually get a chance to do at least 5 songs each. I have about 2 dozen songs I can do from memory, so I like to have the chance to to more than 2 or 3 per jam session. A few of the participants don't do any from memory, and nobody makes a big deal about it.

Deer and woodpeckers

Today I decided that this blog might be a good place to keep track of some things that I really enjoy about living where I do. Yesterday afternoon we watched a small whitetail doe browsing in our back yard, and she was soon joined by a much larger 8 point buck. The buck had apparently been wounded at some time because he had a very noticible limp in his left front leg. It looked like the buck may have been attracted to the doe, but he never got closer than 20 or 30 feet away from her. We watched them both for about a half hour, and then they slowly wandered into the tall grass and disappeared into the swamp behind our lot. This morning as I came downstairs I caught a glimps of something through the sidelight on the front door. When I stopped and looked out through the sidelight window I saw that it was a pileated woodpecker that had landed on an oak tree in my front yard about 10 yards from the front door. We have always had pileated woodpeckers living in the area, but they are wary birds so we don't see them all that often. They do have a distinctive loud call that we often hear even if we don't see them.

Minnesota Winter Fun

This morning you can tell it's winter in Minnesota again. Little white flakes falling from the sky and the ground starting to take on a bright white look. We never know with the early season snow if it will melt in a few days or spend the next 5 months under the inevitable 40 to 60 inches of snow that will accumulate before the end of winter. It is not supposed to snow much today, so hopefully what falls will disappear in a few days and I can continue harvesting the inexhaustible supply of leaves from my scruffy looking lawn. The onset of winter has brought us an unwelcome guest or, more likely, several unwelcome guests looking for a warm place to spend the winter. It happens every year and we have to set out the traps with peanut butter a few times to get rid of them. This year they did something a little unusual. They decided to take food from the dog's dish and store it in the burner compartment of the oven in our gas stove. The burner is under the bottom of the oven so it is not visible when using the oven. We discovered what the mice had done when we turned on the oven to bake a pizza a few days ago. Smoke started pouring out of the oven vent and quickly filled the kitchen and ajacent rooms and set off the fire alarm in the dining room. We had to open windows in 30 degree weather to clear the smoke, but the scent of burned dog food lingered for a few days afterward.

It looks like the snow is easing up and the light cover that was on the road is partially gone. It's time to get off the computer and get something accomplished today.

Senior Center Jam Session

Thursday evening I attended one of the monthly jam sessions held at the Ham Lake Senior Center. We had a pretty good turnout again. There were 16 musicians and an audience of more than 15 people. We have had as many as 24 musicians at some of these jam sessions, and once in a while we will get an audience of 20 to 30 people. Instruments included acoustic guitars, banjos, horns, accordian, mandolin, electric bass, and a hammer dulcimer. We each got to do 3 songs with 2 musicians passing on their turns, so altogether we played over 40 songs. Players came from Ham Lake, Coon Rapids, Blaine, Andover, Oak Grove, White Bear Lake, and Bloomington. The next jam session is Friday evening at Glen Cary Lutheran Church which is just across the street from the Ham Lake Senior Center. All of the participants at theses jam sessions really look forward to the opportunity to get together and play their music with the groups. I must admit that some of the performances are a little rocky on occasion, but I think that most of them are good to very good and a few done by some of the more experienced musicians and singers are possibly professional quality.

First invitations sent

Today I sent an invitation to a few people on my email address list to take a look at my blog. If they do they will see this post letting them know that it is OK to post comments and ask questions about anything. Keep in mind that anyone reading this blog will be able to see whatever anyone posts to it. So if you're bashful don't say anything you don't want the public to see.

My guitar history

My first guitar was a Harmony acoustic archtop my folks bought around 1957 for about $40. It wasn't a great guitar, but it was just what I needed to begin learning to play. Many years later my mother told me that my repetitious practicing was more than a little nervewracking for her and Dad. Fortunately for all of us I graduated from high school in 1961 and left home shortly afterward. I didn't take my guitar with me, but I didn't forget about it either. When I quit college and went back home, the first thing I did was buy a barely used Gibson electric guitar and an amplifier. It was an ES225 with a single pickup and it was at least 10 times easier to play than the old archtop Harmony. I had that guitar for over 20 years and used it enough that it really needed new frets by the time I sold it at one of my wife's garage sales. I can't remember why I sold it, but now I sure wish I hadn't. The guy that bought it called me a few days later just to thank me for selling it to him. It was only a few years later that I decided that I couldn't live without a guitar to play and I bought a new Howard Roberts signature Epiphone electric guitar from Schmitt music in Brooklyn Center, MN. Since then I have expanded my collection to include a Tacoma 12-string acoustic, a Taylor 710-CE acoustic electric, and 2 Martin dreadnoughts, a D-15 and a D-41 Special. Sometimes I think I don't need that many guitars, but I really enjoy having them, and I do play all of them at least occasionally. Now that I'm retired I have begun playing in several local jam sessions and it is great fun to get together with a bunch of other people who also really enjoy playing music and singing