"Well, I was passing by a pawn shop in an older part of town, something caught my eye and stop and turned around / I stepped inside and then I spied in the middle of it all, was a beat up old guitar hanging on the wall / 'What do want for that piece of junk?' I asked the old man / He just smiled and took it down and put it in my hand / He said, 'You tell me what's it worth... you're the one who wants it..."
-- Guy Clark - "The Guitar"

The author with his first guitar crush, a white Gibson SG Jr.

​The ongoing relationship between a musician and their favorite instrument usually represents a lifetime commitment.

At first, you pick this thing up and it makes that initial impression. A connection is made. Time stands still. From that point on, you don't ever wanna let go. Life is good. You're in this for the long haul together.

We never forget that first axe crush. Mine was a white Gibson SG Jr. It had no traveling case or gig bag. A previous owner had apparently left it sitting in the sun for years, and the paint job was cracked like an intricate spider web. Once hospital white, it had turned the color of pale urine; a warped black plastic pick guard bulging at the screws, one single coil pickup and two lowly control knobs: volume and tone. Both dials were turned to "10" and never adjusted.

The thing was barely a guitar. I was barely a musician. Perfect fit all the way around. 

It was ugly. And badass. Got it for a hundred and fifty bucks at Pete's Pawn and Music in Garland. I traded it a couple of years later for an ounce of bunk weed. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Not sure why. My values were clearly askew.

Like Chris Rock often says in his act, "A man is only as faithful as his options."

Doesn't really matter what kind of instrument it is; real musicians usually love to interface with one specific machine -- and that's what a musical instrument is, a machine -- that facilitates the manifestation of their particular creative expression.

Without a guitar, bass, keyboards, horn or drums, we're left to making noise with electronic gadgets and record players. Are we not human? Let's explore the organic route to making noise.

This week, I've asked an odd batch musicians -- both local players and/or Dallas expats -- to get personal and spill their guts about the stories behind their favorite pieces of gear.

(Refer to original DALLAS OBSERVER blogposting for the entire article.  Here are some exerpts:)

Barry Kooda (Nervebreakers)
"I still have the 1955 Gibson Les Paul Special that I bought in 1978 from Charley Wirz of the legendary Charley's Guitar Shop. I was bitchin' about my sound, as usual, and Charley and I put over sized magnets in the rear pickup, which makes it scream. Later, I was thinking about trading it off and Charley said, 'Don't sell that guitar.' Then he died and I figured I'd better keep it forever. That, and my 1963 Fender Super Reverb is all I need. For rock, anyway. When I played a show with Al Jourgensen and Ministry, Ibanez built 3 AE2 acoustic guitars specifically for the show. Al gave me one, kept one and gave Mike Scaccia (from Rigor Mortis) the other. That's the other one I'll keep forever."

Cricket Taylor (The Electro-Magnetics)
My most favorite sentimental instrument is a Takemine acoustic guitar covered with Batman stickers; and it was given to me by Nick Brisco of Fever In The Funkhouse. It was his favorite (and first) guitar, so it is very special to me. I needed a guitar for songwriting and when his band got their record advance and bought all new instruments, he gave the guitar to me as a gift with conditions: That I NEVER remove any of the stickers. 15 years later, I've written tons of songs with it and some of my favorite musicians have played it during jams at my house. It's been to five different countries and I've never removed a single sticker, although I've added several more to it during that time."

Gary Myrick

​ Gary Myrick (Gary Myrick and the Figures)
"There are three custom instruments that I've owned throughout my career. One looks like a big rockabilly semi-hollow body, yet it has a solid body. It was made of Amazon rain forest light solid wood with 24 frets and an old Strat type knob setup and quite tough sounding EMG pickups. Everyone thought it was some weird vintage instrument. I had them add a Floyd Rose whammy bar that I could beat the shit out of and still stay in tune. It has a sunburst body with white binding and the signs of the playing cards inlaid in the neck fretboard. It is called the TEXAN.

My Lap Steel, the Lonely King, I had built by the talented Bill Asher. It is simple, great sounding and is very versatile. It has beautiful stars on the fret-board plate inlay, much like the Everly Brothers signature acoustics they played in their 50's era. Bill added ruby red Sparkle extra thick as paint, and added 1920's haunted house looking brass doorknob plates to house the two volume tone knobs. Last, but not least, is my old beat up Mexican Triumph Telecaster. I was going to sell it and took it to my friend and pedal board guru Brian Brown (works with Tom Petty and Phish). He got it in shape. Polished the frets and added a new 1950's style bridge and new bridge pickup, and also did some internal work on the electronics.

I added some artwork; an aging leather old cowboy engraved pick guard, a Triumph Motorcycle ancient emblem belt buckle and transformed it into a wild amazing tough Telecaster, which I love for its simplicity. It plays fantastic and sounds classic and tough. I thank the Lord I'm lucky enough to have and play them."

Ken Shimamoto (FW Weekly)
"I got my first electric guitar -- a Silvertone Harmony 1478, built in 1965 -- along with a shitty Tempo solid-state amp, for my 15th birthday in 1972. I think my old man paid fifty bucks for the pair. It looked like the Fender Jazzmaster that Chris Dreja was holding on the covers of the first two Yardbirds albums. It was red, and I liked the way the cutaways (which I called "horns") looked (although not as much as the ones on the Gibson SG that I'd replace it with). The pickups, which resembled the toaster-top humbuckers on Rickenbackers, were so shitty that you could talk into them and you'd get signal through the amp. Running it through a Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face, I could pick up radio transmissions from Canada (in Spanish, for some reason) just like Hendrix at the Isle of Wight (although minus his musical aplomb).

For two years, I had been lying to these two black guys I knew at school, telling them that I knew how to play, and as luck would have it, their funk band split in two the same week I got my guitar, which necessitated finding a new lead guitarist: needless to say, myself. I knew three cowboy chords that I'd learned from my sister on an acoustic guitar I'd co-opted from her, and had just started stealing licks off B.B. King Live At the Regal and a budget-line John Lee Hooker record, inspired by seeing teenage Nils Lofgren wax obscuro legend Roy Buchanan's tailfeathers at the climax of Buch's PBS special. All of my solos started the same way, with me sliding my finger up the neck to find 'the note.' Somehow, I managed to get by.

I wound up breaking the neck off that guitar in my parents' basement after experiencing an epiphany: the first time I ever played my stolen licks and actually made 'em swing (to my ears, at least) like B.B. It wasn't just me, either: these two younger cats that used to hang outside my folks' house when I practiced asked me later, 'Who was that playing your guitar before?' Last year, I saw an Austin band playing at Lola's 6th Street in Fort Worth, and the front guy had my guitar. When buddy Frank jokingly told me, "If you wanna grab it, I think I can take him," I was tempted. It was the first time I had ever heard somebody that could really play using one of those guitars. Later on I went up to the Austin cat and asked him how much he'd paid for it. He got it for four bills, probably at Workhorse, an Austin shop that sold nothing but old Silvertones, Danelectros, and Kays -- guitars people used to throw out. The last time I saw one online, they wanted $800 for it."

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This Christmas, go nuts and give your kid an electric guitar.

See if doesn't make your whole family dive headlong into something meaningful and real.

Trust me when I say that there is nothing like that feeling of making noise with an instrument in your hand for the first time. It's like speaking a new language, or tapping into a different intellectual wavelength.

And if your kids can learn to trust and respect their chosen musical instrument, they might even be able to unconditionally love another human being someday.