End of Summer: Old Questions, New Adventures

Toronto. I've had a long affair with this place, but it's been fleeting, and not always loving. When you are on the road over 200 days a year for over 10 years, it's not easy to call it- or anyplace-  a "home town." Toronto has never tried to claim me for it's own, either. I don't belong to it, and somehow the town knows that. Deep in it's bones. Suspicious. It's a place where authenticity tends to flood in from the suburbs: weekend warriors with the right hats, the right gear, sensible pensions, practical daytime professions. Of course I'm jealous. And not.

No, you don't have to suffer in some specific way to appreciate the blues- one only needs to be human. That's complicated enough. This healing music, these healing stories, the placement of the spirit on the edge of the string, on the edge of the chair, the edge of the world, the edge of my pocket knife. Would you jump off, and not come back? Fall off? Would you risk your life? Not on purpose, but by accident? Some strange twist of fate. Down on your knees like the Wolf. Out of your body like Son. Sometimes that's probably what might save your life. Or my life. Or not. Sometimes it's just being near to it. Like dreaming. The sounds you hear before dawn. Pan slinking by on cloven feet. Waking up in the back seat of your car. Waking up in Mavis Staples' hotel room, watching the mist rising off the water, the early sun full of itself and flushed with opportunity.

But that's not Toronto, a town progress has left without strongly identified blues places. The empty lot where the Colonial Tavern used to be: where Buddy Guy and Junior Wells used to come in and play 5 nights, where I saw Wolf on his hands and knees, where Colin Linden and I opened shows for Muddy Waters... The ghosts of Grossman's Tavern, The Silver Dollar Room, The Victory, the El Mo, the Paramount: the memory of neon and smoke, draft beer and laughter spread down Spadina Ave. The Market: Chickens running around. Old, Jewish businesses not yet pushed out by ChinaTown, not yet retired, not yet willing to leave. Sammy, selling me my hats, steaming the brims. Have you heard of a "hat trick?" Uptown: Coming in the back door of the Riverboat. Two shows a night with Sonny and Brownie. Walking and wheeling my Super Reverb through the Market at 3 AM, showtime at Tiger's. Paper Door. Elephant Walk. All the speaks we'd play until dawn.  Jane and Donnie. Ben banging the drums too loud. Wilcox puts his strat on the gaming table. Bo Diddley coming in for a little jam. But it's all gone. Gone. It's all different now. Like everywhere else, the small shows are getting smaller, while the big shows have more production gear and crew than musicians and instruments. It's all different. And it's always different. Not better, not worse. Different. Live music, the way we used to consume it and make it, has changed.

The scene: always changing. Graffiti: a new generation paints new things on the walls. And that's how it should be. The focal points are more properly some of the players themselves. And even these are shifting, moving about from month to month. This cafe, that bar, which second Tuesday, in this band and that. There was a time when there were great blues rooms here in Toronto. And good blues rooms. There still are some cool rooms- but most are smallish, local affairs. Tip jar rooms with long residencies. Nothing wrong with that. In Canada it is mostly about bass and drums. Toronto, long lost in the red glow of my tail lights. You never know. You might get lucky. You might hear a story you haven't heard before. Or not.

Big times in Hollandale, Mississippi. A new stone for Sam Chatmon, unveiled before the Sam Chatmon Blues Festival. Butch, Libby Rae, Roy... and a whole bunch of other good folks helped make this happen. Sam was a great friend and mentor to so many of us! And look at us over 30 years beyond his passing! It was kind of cool to see the words "Stop and Listen" on the new bench next to the stone. I had suggested that, and I guess everybody ran with it. Back in the day, Sam used to tell me "getting old is good for business." That would of been my number two pick. For the bench, that is. But I sure hope he was right!

Meanwhile I've got the Lincoln pointed towards Atlantic Canada. Quick stop in Ontario where I had hoped to do a Toronto Blues Society showcase event for the Ontario Council of Folk Festivals. Not folked up enough, I guess... No, plenty of good acts- I'm just disappointed that I failed to make the TBS cut for a showcase. I didn't get to play the Blues Summit showcases, either. Simply put, there is now an abundance of authentic blues artists in the region and across the country. Quite a few own high end guitars, cigar boxes, custom made microphones. Some have even been to Chicago. Or Memphis. Or both. Of course, I'm jealous. Or not. I need a fret job, and I could put some of that money into new tires- but I do get to play all the magic places lost in the folds of the maps. Yeah, magic places. 

After ten solid years of the Tour I really need, more than ever, to connect face to face with more of the Canadian folk festival scene movers and shakers. And that's difficult when they don't often come out to independent live shows over ten provinces and two territories. Without access to the Canadian folk and blues festivals it's getting to be pretty difficult to continue working as I have been in Canada. So, next year it may be a little different. Maybe a lot fewer Canadian shows. I won't blow off the European festivals anymore, that's for sure. (Call me, Franz, I no longer need to room with Willie Nelson.) I probably mentioned in an earlier blog that I am working on a book based on my adventures along the National Steel Blues Tour. It's not about the South. It covers 1000 shows in Canada, mostly by road- but also by boat, dogsled and small aircraft. Critics will eventually tell you what they think it's about. Time will tell more stories.

The business may be getting old, but today, in Canada, the National Steel Big X Blues Tour continues. No agents, managers, tour busses, or fancy new guitars. Apparently no showcases, either. Damn! Come to think of it, that's not so bad. At my age, summer is clearly over. Fall is underway. Winter is in the distance. Snow in the color of my hair. Vulgar vagabond! After 42 years of travel and shows, I still stop for coffee, and piss where I please.

On the Atlantic Tour I've got some really fun shows lined up- including a gig at the East Coast Amateur Boxing Club in Halifax.

Rockford, Nova Scotia. Six rounds, pre-show bare knuckle. A place that doesn't Google well. Near Bedford, Nova Scotia. Yeah, just behind the pounders in the picture there is a boxing ring. When the Tour reaches Maritime Canada in a few weeks time- I'll be there. The East Coast Amateur Boxing Club. Hands down, one of the coolest gigs on the Big X Blues Tour. It's the first show in my career where fans can actually get ringside seats. I may tape up before the gig, I don't know. But I will be in the Ring, with my guitars to back me up. Saturday, November 14, 225 Bedford Highway, near the ghost of Africville.

Africville. Do you know about that? They say that used to be one tough town. Now: all sucked into the big city of Halifax. Africville- exotic colours and smells. Gone. All but forgotten now, it's memory like a mirage in the shadow of the big bridge. I've stood there and looked at it. Squinting in the small hours. The tuneless hum of traffic nearby. There was Blues here. Jazz. A black town in Canada. It wasn't rich, and it wasn't pretty- but it was home to perhaps 500 souls. During the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and beyond- waves of escaped slaves and free black Loyalists settled at Africville. Then, between 1964 and 1970, the City of Halifax moved the residents out and levelled the community. House by house. As a sign of respect, garbage trucks were used to help residents move their possessions. Today, the Bedford Highway creeps down the basin, providing suburban commuters with a toll free run around the bridges.

It's my tenth consecutive year of bringing the Tour to the Halifax region, the Maritimes, Atlantic Canada. I'm pleased to be booked solid across Newfoundland again this year. Prince Edward Island. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia. When I turn off the Lincoln in December, that will mark over 1000 shows for the Tour. And only one boxing ring.

The majority of my shows in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island will be played with local guitar hero, Matchstick Mike. We've done some shows together before, so I know it's going to be pretty neat. Yes, he is the heavily tattooed blues rocker guy! But he's also pretty handy on the dobro, mandolin, acoustic guitar. Sings harmony. Writes. We'll have some big fun.

Some of the shows I'm looking forward to with Mike include BarNone, up in the red dirt hills of PEI, and The Factory, in Charlottetown, where we'll guest with a full band. And we've got some house concerts, some pub shows, and possibly a gig in a tattoo joint... Schedule and posters are now in the Links sidebar. We've still got a couple of open dates, so there's no telling where we might end up.

Then, I'll be on the boat to Newfoundland... Life is always good when the wheels are turning.

Changing of a String

I've had a couple of people post me recently to ask about my string and guitar set ups, so I thought I'd put something up for guitar players. If you are NOT a guitar player, please enjoy the sidebar, and/or skip down to pick up the previous posts of the road adventure which is the National Steel Blues Tour!

I play a variety of electric and acoustic stringed instruments, but mainly I'm known for my finger picking on resophonic guitars. Nationals. With biscuits. That's what I'm going to discuss here. My playing set-up, on my resonators. All about me.

I grew up playing without thumb picks- and therefore without fingerpicks- partially because there were no left handed thumb picks, and partially because most of my early influences mainly played bare thumb, bare finger. I love the voice of resophonic instruments, coaxed out with the bare fingers. I think you get a bigger range of tone possibilities. LOL, yes, even me on my long declared "dead" strings. All that said, the longer I play, the more I believe that each guitar-player combination is unique. And there are times where I would LIKE to be using a thumb pick. I'm not opposed to it in the least, and I wouldn't be surprised to find myself using one of those fancy, left thumb picks sometime in the future. Do I love Morgan Davis' groove? Fred McDowell? Darn straight I do! But that's not how I play.

It's hard to believe that a player like me is as fussy about strings as I am! Bare fingers on dead strings. I have a reputation for rarely changing strings, but I get the sounds I want out of these guitars, and my fans seem to like the sound of them. That's the only important part. Do you like the way your guitar sounds? There's no right and wrong about it. Unless, of course, you are trying really hard to sound like somebody else. Or more like somebody else. All my guitars are strung in a similar way. For my style of playing I prefer slightly lighter bass strings, and slightly heavier treble strings. I like the bass to thump- often dampened- and the treble to carry most of the melodic weight. Also, I hate it when strings squeak- hence my preference for older or seasoned strings. I don't like bright, new strings on my guitars. New wound strings will also grab at the flesh of your fingers- raise blisters, damage callus. I'm not above taking a file, or a little sandpaper to the region of any new strings that will contact my thumb and fingers- my picking hand. I work almost every night, so I don't want to raise a blister- on, or under, even my big, fat callus! And I don't want the slide to be scratchy either- so I may give the whole string a bit of a polish. Flat or semi-flat wound strings may be a good option for some, but I really don't modify to that extent, and I need to use combinations of string gauges not offered in sets. A heavy slide will smooth the strings out nicely over time, too. I use an 11/16 deep socket most of the time on most of my guitars. It's dense and heavy- I like that. I also use some glass, bottlenecks that I've taken off wine bottles. I've got a shotgun barrel slide I've been playing with recently. It's a little light on it's own, but I've jammed a big bolt in the end of it to give it a bit more grab. If your friends are cutting these sorts of weapons down, there's no point wasting the barrels...

The action on my guitars tends to be fairly low. Not really, really, low- I like to whack these strings pretty hard. But you don't need a crazy, high action to play slide- and you probably want to fret the instrument in a conventional way, too. A slightly heavier treble string at a lower action works well for me, and does not result in fret noise.

I don't like strings to break. It's rare that I break a string, and it's even more uncommon for me to break one on stage. It's an event when that happens! Each guitar in the family has it's own similar, but personalized string set. As has been suggested, you can certainly play with fairly light strings on a National. The resonator is going to be pretty loud regardless. And you can mic it up if you want. But you do want enough string underneath your fingers to control, and to ride a slide. As a rule, I really wouldn't change the high E down to .12 on a resonator- if you play very much at all you may well be breaking these, and you probably won't get as much conversation out of the string. A .13, just a tad heavier, might be a better bet. B might be .16-17. For the G you can mix it up: I use plain, unwound Gs on all but one of my guitars. Try a .24. It will never wear out (unlike the wound, .26 strings that last only a few hours before the windings tear), you can still bend it, and it will sound great with a slide. I sometimes use a .26 plain- but that's like bailing wire to most people. I play a lot... My own, typical set ups for the bass side are pretty light- .36-39, .44-48, 48-52. You can run heavier if you want, but unless you are in a bluegrass band, playing with picks, holding a steel, I don't know why you'd need to. I don't need to, anyway. My sixth string is usually not much heavier than the fifth. Works for me.

So read here: I'd suggest buying and changing your strings individually. Keep the string packs- the wrappers- in your guitar case with the date of change written on them. If you break a particular guage more than once, more often than the others, move that string up by one gauge on that guitar. Did it break at the nut or the bridge? Is it mechanical, or does it have more to do with the way you play? After a few months you will have adjusted the guitar-string combination to your playing style and to the personality of the guitar- and, probably, you will rarely break strings. I also apply a little graphite- from a simple pencil- into the nut and bridge slots when I'm changing a string. I think a little more "slip" in these spots can help avoid, or postpone the breaking of strings.

The same advice goes if you like the sound of brand new strings- nothing wrong with that, and they are easier to tune. They do stretch, though. And why go up on stage to tune a package of spanking new strings over and over again? New, but not brand new. The best time to change out a set of strings is probably AFTER a show! Strings will help make, or break, your show and your sound- but you and your hands are still the most important part of your gear. No rules. Go with what works for you. If you've got the sound in your head, with a little work you can probably get it to come out of your hands using almost any guitar-string combination. If you don't have sounds in your head, it's not going to matter how cool your guitars, or strings are. Through my limited contact with Hubert Sumlin, I observed that he always sounded the same, no matter what guitar he was playing. Hubert was cool. The guitars didn't matter. I've told you what works for me.

 I'm changing out the 5th string today because I've had some tuning concerns with it, and because the string seems to have gone beyond the dead thump I like. Who would of thought that the string would last for eight years! That's a lot of shows on my number one guitar. And thousands of hours of busking in all weather. Finally wore through and wore down the windings over the length of it. Changing it out, I'm seeing that the frets, fretboard, and neck also have substantial wear. The frets are cut down to the wood in a couple of places, and form deep ruts everywhere else. The fretboard has some deep hollows, and is quite scalloped in places along the treble side. The neck has now got a little twist which is a little bigger and a little more twisted than it once was. Like me. If this had happened overnight, the instrument would not be playable. As it is, the guitar is played hours every day, and is usually on stage doing shows. To a point, our playing and tuning adapt to the slow changes of an instrument. After that... guitar hospital.

My 1929 National, Type O has not had any work done to it in about 35 years. Well, I fix a machine head every once in a while, but that's it. Soon, she'll take a break and visit a luthier while her sister- the Dark Angel- my 1935 Duolian, gets the centre stage. Meanwhile,  the Type O will finish this 10th annual, National Steel Blues Tour with me. And probably make the next album. Neither of us have retirement plans. She probably has at least another 86 years left in her career.

Riding Over the Hump: Northern Ontario

How quickly the prairie is lost to the shield. Eastbound from Winnipeg, where I spent the morning with my frequent tour pal, Big Dave McLean. He told me that the producer/director of his recently released bio-pic had cut me out to save money. That's the second time this year I've been able to help this way with a bio-pic, so it gives me a strong, move ahead kind of feeling. Right now I'm moving ahead through the scrub lands north and east of Winnipeg. The roads are good for a while, but they grow rougher as the farmland fades to abandoned properties, as the rocks and trees become more prominent.

How quickly do I reach the edge of Manitoba. The eastern edge- where the flatlands die off. Abandoned fields. Forty years of scrub and brush to blow off a hundred years of labour. Medonites. Magazines with stories about Medonite sex. Big, blonde women who wear dresses and braided hair. Men who buy rye in plastic bottles at 4:30 on a Monday afternoon. Ice. Coffee cups. We sit outside a Ukrainian cemetery and drink. The groaning trains on the main line, just behind the trees, the almost forgotten graves. Clever candle holders cut into some of the stones. When was the last candle lit and burnt here? Never to be Forgotten. Mother. Father. Sister. Burn a candle for me when I'm gone. On my birthday. Until I, too, am forgotten, and the stone, lichen covered, tilts dangerously. Soon this stone will fall to join the other forgotten stones, forgotten souls, smashed and run over by the challenged one who drives the lawn tractor. But now it is the black flies that drive us away: the truck in a storm of dust. My car, into the little church parking lot where I shall sleep tonight.

It's a nice ride out of here in the early morning light. A couple of black bears saunder across the road. My camera is buggered up, so by the time I've stopped the car and got it ready, I'm alone on Hwy 44. From here, it's a pretty quick ride out to Ontario. It has a low speed limit, and a low tolerance, so I set the cruise on "slow," turn up the stereo, and roll towards my gig in Kenora, ON. I'm back on the TransCanada, and desperately seeking coffee.

In Kenora, I hit the coffee joint, work the internet, and then go out to check on the Thrift stores. Nothing today. I'm looking for those china, Queen Elizabeth, Canadian bourbon glasses. Nothing like having the old girl scowl at you while you have a drink. These are pretty popular with my pals on the southern route, so I try to stock up when I can.

Although Kenora, ON has come a long way in the past decade, it still has a tough underbelly of lost and damaged First Nations people. Change is underway. Changing economy. Changing opportunities. Changing mind set of a new, younger population with new dreams and ideas. The mercury poisoned residents of Grassy Narrows no longer stagger up and down these hard slopes. Or not as often. Still, I make sure my car is locked up tight when I'm away from it. Syringes litter the sidewalk of this downtown street. Blue skies overhead, I can smell spring flowers in the air.

Tonight I'll be playing a nice club where most of Canada's touring shows stop. Good stage, good lights, good sound. Folks in this old mill town know a lot about music. Some have come here from other places. It's pretty. It's on a big lake. Everybody agrees it has a future. Change is in the wind.

Soon the rocks and trees will be behind me. The rough Northern Sheild just a memory again. The black and white Ontario Provincial Police cruisers- sleek, souped-up SUVs- behind me and no longer following. They were waiting outside my show in Kenora, ON. I didn't get in or start the motor until he hit the traffic circle. Then my pal Dave and I took off in the opposite direction. We circled around to the top of the hill and looked down to watch them looking for the Lincoln. I was good to drive, I just didn't want to go through another Kenora shakedown. I've been here, and had that happen before. But it's a thin line of blacktop across this land. Every escaping criminal running east of west has got to blow through on this little band of road. There's no telling who you might meet. You might get scared. You might suspend constitutional rights for ordinary citizens. Particularly guys in nice looking Lincolns. I could be a doctor, coming in to operate in the morning. The engineer, to assess your bridge. A musician, to bring the Blues to Your Town. Healing music, to a place that still needs healing.

When we got back to the house we played with this 1940s amp that Dave is preparing for me. A very heavy 30 watts! Life is good! Why is the blues so fine? And why do cops love beautiful Lincolns so much? Now, the Tour takes a right hand turn east, and south. The beginnings of a plunge down the map.

Dryden, the smell of money in the air. The mill doesn't employ as many as it once did, and the young folks are drifting away to Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Toronto. No stop this year- but I've played a few shows in the shadow of these stacks. Last winter my car froze solid in this town. Battery shattered, air suspension locked in the down position. Damn cold ride outta here on black ice, semi trucks pushing on my tail, white knuckles on the wheel. Nice to see this place in spring, but I've got six hours of driving- and a time change- before my show tonight. A quick coffee stop, but no time to check in with any of my people.

A quiet night in Thunder Bay. I leave a tour jacket at the Apollo. Did anyone get a picture? My little camera didn't. There's a core of people in Thunder Bay that come out to all my shows, year after year. The Apollo is a great room anyway, but my friends here make every room a great room. I've yet to play the Thunder Bay Blues Festival. But I think I get the picture there. The big picture. Meanwhile, my pals, the band Carmanah, were playing across the street at another venue. We chat between shows, between loading in and loading out. Their first tour. I wish them well, and safe travels.

With construction, it's a ten hour drive to The Sault, ON for tonight's show. My picture is on the door, which is a good sign. But I have not played a show here in 9 years, so I have no idea what to expect on a Thursday night. They have a nice stage and PA, but I end up sitting at the bar- playing a few tunes to the few people that have wandered in for a drink. I'm in here on a door deal, but thankfully the owner gives me enough to cover a tank of gas, plus a bit more. On this Ride Over the Hump back of the Great Lakes, I continue to be thankful for the smallest kindness. We're all on the edge. We're all trying to figure it out. We've all got to ride the wave, or drown.

Hard rock town. Sudbury, ON. Riding the blacktop. Trains outside. Northern Ontario where I used to play six nights at the Colson Hotel. I think that was here. I think that's how you spell it. These places all torn down now. Boarded over in the boarded over mill towns. Faded "cold beer" signs still up on the walls. Places where there used to be a salt shaker on every table. For the beer.

None of the bikers at my gig tonight wore leather. No disputes with the hard rock miners, now mostly retired. Or the railway crews, in from the bush, drinking elsewhere. No FBIs in for a punch up. That's a joke to some, an insult to others. It depends on who's saying it to who, and when. It's not nice. It's historical. It's the way it was. You might laugh. Or you might be mad about it. Part of the almost worn away fabric that covered the seats of this train side town. A place where some things need to be forgotten, and other things need to be remembered. Tonight, it's a mixed crowd of mostly arty professionals and students. Wine and cheese plates. Designer beer. I start early, end early, meet some facebook friends, an old pal from the rough and tumble days. At the end of the night I'm paid $65 by the bar, and make another $50 in tips. Gas money to the next town. I knew this gig was fuzzy around the edges. Not finding it listed on the web, I wasn't going to stop if my picture wasn't in the window. It was. I did. Now I'm going to sleep in the Lincoln Hotel, parked next to the tracks again. These trains will wake me up once in a while. Just to see if I'm still alive. Maybe it is a dream, and I'll wake up in the old Colson to the sound of my drummer screwing a hooker in the next bed. Or maybe I'll wake up to room service at the Best Western in Mobile, AL, wondering, how the hell did I get to this place? Is this the breakfast I thought it would be? Did I order this? Has there been a mistake?

Something is always for sale in Sudbury...

Down the road to Lavigne, a charming and wonderful gig on the shores of Lake Nipissing. My people. They treat me right. I've been here a few times before. A little, francophone community, so I try out my rough, french language skills. I could stay up all night and swap stories with the owners, but I need to be on the road in just a few hours. Meanwhile, the cops have got a road check set up just over the hill. It's the only bar left in the county, so they have nowhere else left to go. Maybe they can close this place down, too. They'll be long gone by morning, and I'll make some time on these empty, secondary highways.

A soft seater at the Orangeville, ON Opera House this afternoon. Here I am with Orangeville Blues and Jazz Festival AD Larry Kurtz. As well as being a harmonica player, wood worker, festival director- he's also a painter! Who knew?! Pre-show we stopped in at a Main St. art gallery to check out this painting. I'm honoured.

Post-show, at the Mississippi Tourism booth with my friends Connie "Mississippi Queen" Rouble, and Paul Reddick. This is my only Canadian festival this year. Of course, this is also a country where Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman headline "blues" and "folk" festivals, and money looks funny. Remember the Guess Who? How about BTO's "Takin' Care of Business?" I could get used to the funny money- if I saw more of it. Canadian money, that is. Randy must be a blues guy at heart- he made a blues album this year, I think. Just like Steve Earle. Peg Leg Sam used to say "funny things happen in this world!" And he was right! I sure do miss those days when we used to drink moonshine and play all night outside his little cabin: the young girls and the old girls dancing, calling out "hey, Doc-Tah, hey..." Never did play Mojo. And the only business we took care of was hogs, late at night.

Back in the "Big Smoke," Toronto, ON. Not a moment too soon, either. Power steering pretty much done. Air not working. Tires looking a little smoother. Engine trouble light flashing. Ignition coils acting up... Back in my own kitchen for a few weeks. A stranger in my own house. All the drawers look strange, nothing is in the right place. Everything is just as I had left it nearly three months ago. Even the stuff in the fridge. I pace around. Thankfully I've got some shows to go and play. A car to fix. A garden to weed. Gigs to book. I've come to realize that I'm now more comfortable on the road than off. Maybe it's the city itself. I don't know. I do know the maps on the table. It's not a town that's ever had it's arms around me. Well, rolling through with my big band, hanging out at the Elephant Walk, The Paper Door, The Paramount, Tiger's... After hour joints crammed full of musicians: Donnie and Jane, Wilcox, show bands out of Detroit, out of work boxers, bouncers, jazz guys I should of known. Albert's Hall, The Horseshoe, The Elmo, The Holiday, The Jarvis House, The Algonquin, The Blackhawk, Grossman's Tavern, The Colonial, The Riverboat, The Silver Dollar, Sneaky Dee's, The Black Bull, Spadina House, The Victory, The Bev, The Rivoli, The Purple Onion, The Cameron House, Edgerton's, The Chimney, King of Hearts, The Isabella... There were other rooms, too. But I can't remember them now. Crazy. Crazy energy. Crazy neon nights. Playing hard, soaked in sweat, playing the blues. I blew harp in those days. The upstairs joint where Ben lost his drums, and Wilcox lost his strat in an all night poker game. I wonder who has that guitar now? I never gambled with money. Just with life. And it's all different now.

Working girl. Blues girl. This guitar will never be bought or sold. It will change players again sometime: gripping somebody else, edging out strange sounds from the dark side, telling new stories, old secrets. Sweat. Sex. Booze. Conversations overheard. Hard rooms. Cash. Late nights in 49 states, 10 provinces, two territories. Oh, if this girl had a tongue instead of a fretboard...

Big Chuck played her twenty-five years ago. Some day she'll leave me for another, younger man. Or woman. As long as you touch her right she doesn't care. Delta songster. Cold, nickel plated steel. National Type O. Built in 1929. I string her pretty heavy on the treble side, a bit lighter on the bass. Bare fingers. Dead strings. 250 shows a year across North America. Thanks for riding with me on this western leg of the adventure. Soon we'll go south for a couple of months- Chicago, St. Louis, Mississippi, Alabama... then up the eastern seaboard into Atlantic Canada, Newfoundland... The National Steel "Big X" Blues Tour. North America's biggest little blues tour. Watch for some very special guests down the line.