It’s a Taylor jumbo single-cutaway, steel-string acoustic. It has a pine top and a rosewood fingerboard, with 20 nickel frets and mother-of-pearl dot inlays. I’m not sure what year it was made (in Mexico), and I’m not sure what to tell people when they ask me what model it is. “This is a great guitar,” they say when they hold it. “Yes, it is,” I reply.
I have been travelling around with my guitar for more than two years now. It’s travelled on planes, boats, on buses, in the front seat and in the trunks of taxi cabs, and on wooden carts.
It’s played in bars, restaurants, back yards, and beaches. The pine is starting to wear away near the soundhole. There’s no need for factory “stressing” on this one. It’s getting worn away the old-fashioned way… by getting played.
My fingers trembled over the bronze-wound strings and my pick kept dropping into the soundhole the first time I played with it solo. It was at a restaurant called Café Campestre on Ometepe Island in Nicaragua. I begged the owner, Ben, to let me play in the back garden during his Sunday grill night. I knew about eight songs. Let me play for free, I offered, but pay me with 1L Victoria beers, a chicken skewer and some grilled plantain. It became my standard rate for years at other bars and restaurants.
Since then, I’ve played that guitar for hundreds of hours, and dozens of other musicians – amateurs and professionals – have also made it their own… for a few minutes at a time. And it’s become the centrepiece of some important personal musical moments. The other night at The Lighthouse, a restaurant sitting atop a hilltop in Little Corn Island, Nicaragua, a young man from Sweden played publicly on stage for the first time using that guitar. He shyly sang beautiful Swedish tunes, because he was too nervous to remember any English songs.
It accompanied me and Laurie while we sang Wild Horses by the Rolling Stones to a raucous crowd at Café Desideri, a beach-side restaurant. She hadn’t sang publicly in years. It “gave me my voice back,” she said afterward.
For me, its fretboard guided me through one of my most enjoyable jam sessions with slide-guitar wizard Deforrest Wiggins – playing a 12-minute version of Sunshiny Day at the end of a long and eclectic musical night that saw more than a dozen musicians take the stage.
I had the pleasure of playing with Ancel Kernan Gonzalez Chang, who besides being the groundskeeper at a local hotel, is also a Garifuna drummer. He hammered out a rhythmic bongo to an old Dire Straits song that I‘ve always sung in my head with his drumming in mind.
There was also the time it helped me through a nervous set with the brilliant Toronto guitarist, Duane Forrest. And a few weeks after that with award-winning singer-songwriter Angelo Spinazzola, who is also the best harmonica player I have ever seen.
Ever heard of the Tona Twins? I don’t blame you if you haven’t, but having that Taylor
allowed me to be part of this aptly-named, one-night-only rum-and-beer-soaked duet with Canadian musician Diamond Dave Russell.
And it’s such a pleasure to play some familiar tunes from my old life in Canada (Spanish Pipedream and John Prine) with Brendan Lewis – even though we can never find time to practice!
It also brought my wife Lisa and me together again on stage. Not in the 80’s cover band ‘The Steamers’ that we were both part of that played bars in Winnipeg, but as an intimate, charming duet that locals now request. The song is called ‘In Spite of Ourselves’ by American folk singer John Prine. We share the chorus and look at each other and sing “Against all odds, honey, we’re the big door prize.” It makes me smile every time I think about it.
I now regularly host an Open Mic night at Tranquilo Café and Gift Shop on Little Corn Island, where locals and tourists take turns with my Taylor, singing everything from Steve Miller and Tom Petty, to folksongs from their homes. “This is a nice guitar,” they say. “Yeah, it is,” I reply.
Toronto, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Orinoco, New York, Paris, London, Sweden, Australia and Argentina. I’ve crossed paths with dozens of musicians from all over the world as they visit.
I didn’t lug that thing around for thousands of miles to let it languish in its soft shell case. It’s meant to be in the open air, handed from one guitarist to another. The strings are meant to be picked and plucked. Scratch it. Ding it. Drop it.
The wear marks on the rosewood fingerboard are beginning to reveal the most common notes and chords – and I can’t wait to hear what it will play next.
Paul Pitura Music 