A bit of history here. And an acknowledgement of my siblings in shaping my musical journey.
In the beginning
When I was around twelve, my father was very much into listening to music. When we moved into the new house, 2 years before, he had invested in a Bang and Olufsen Stereo Hifi set, including record player, so he could play is classifical albums. He was very much into classical symphonies. He then invested in an Akai tape recorder, so he could record Albums on high capacity tapes, what you might call a playlist, although of course listening to all the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerts on Sunday was a bit ‘heavy’. As regards more modern music, I remember all we had were two albums by the Dutch ‘supergroup’ Focus, the musical Hair, and ‘Tubular Bells’ in the original and the Orchestral versions.
At the same time my younger sister had been given a beginners Spanish Guitar (I got a bow and arrows) to make our garden unsafe. In any event, due to the exigencies of work, and as a consequence of my elder brother being a techie, the tape deck migrated to the boys room, and was replaced by an Akai cassette tape deck, alltogether more straightforward to use. My brother, by the 15 or 16, started borrowing Albums from his classmates and friends, to record them, and soon had about 10-20 hours of listening collected, including the complete Beatles Albums, most of the Led Zep, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, a fair collection of Folk Rock and local flemish ‘kleinkunst’, which of course he played for hours on end. I kinda got indoctrinated. After some years passed, my sister had completely lost interest in her Spanish Guitar, and (after moving again) I kind of ‘saved it’, restrung it, and tried it. With what pocket money I had, I invested in a tuning fork, and bought my first guitar songbook - the Beatles Revolver Album - and spend happy hours trying to learn ‘Taxman’ and ‘I am only sleeping’ which was rather appropriate for the kind of dreamy teenager I was at the time. Not very successful attempts, mind, and definately no inkling how to sing a tune.
Folk music
Fast forward by 4 years, I am studying now. I have a great interest in Folk music, and lo and behold, in my first year in University there is the Rotterdam Folk Festival. 3 days of hearing the greats in Irish, Scottish, English and Breton Folkmusic. Then I joined a folk club called Matrix, helped out by serving at the bar, listening to the Jam’s. Worked in Rotterdam Port for three weeks in a Chemical plant, doing viscosity tests on plastic pallets, and with the resulting proceeds, went to the neighbourhood music store, and bought myself a Fender Dreadnought. I went through the pile of Teaching Books, and found myself 2 books by Russ Shipton, “Folk Guitar Styles of Today”, with tunes by Dylan, Donovan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and the like, definately more American then European Folk styles, but even a few Beatles Songs (Black Bird, Here there and everywhere). No accompanying record with examples, no instructional video.
For some of the songs I could chase them down and record onto cassette tape, but mostly I was clueless what I was attempting to play. Some of it stuck however, like The needle and the damage done because it sounds nice by itself as an instrumental and some I learned only much later, like “Don’t think twice its allright”, once I learned to sing. Obviously, many of these songs I never learned - I haven’t outgrown these books yet.
Both the Fender and the 2 Russ Shipton Books survived all these years, were constant companions. I did get myself also the Maud Karpeles songbook - with 80 songs collected in the Appalachian Mountains to keep me occupied - and a pocket book of 2 inches thick with all the Beatles songs, which I tried strumming through (lots of weird named chords in there).
What was of course disspointing is that I never found my way to all these nice weird people with violins and irish bouzouki’s, girls in long flowery dresses and bearded guys playing together and therefore never learned to lay down a Jig or a Reel, or play Matty Groves. So the irony is that as a non-singer I ended up in singer songwriter territory.
Catching up
Fast forward a few decades, and three continents later. I have landed in Germany of all places - which although of limited geographical distance, initially was a very big mental distance to clear. I haven’t really been intensely playing in the intervening years, only to get through periods of need, basically not learning any new stuff, but basically trying to keep what is there. Work and relationship issues kind of squeeze out available time and incentive.
The internet has happened in the meantime, and somehow I stumbled across Justin’s website. Moreover, my significant other is intrigued by the fact that I have this guitar, and looks for a place to learn guitar. I find her a guitar school in the place where we lived, Zobels Guitar School. The way it worked out was that after one year I joined the school, and after a failed attempt to have me play classical pieces, I went right back to my comfort zone, and brought my newly acquired Justin Guitar Songbooks, and my newly acquired Ibanez electric guitar (Full hollow body ASR-70) as a more affordable alternative to the Epiphone Casino along (Me being in John Lennon mode). I kind of liked the guitar, however it was badly set up, could not het a straight tone out of the B string without buzz. And I had no clue as regards amps etc. Moreover, my better half does have highly sensitive ears (especially as regards high pitch tones), and she developed an aversion for the Ibanez, which did not help too much. (Now its set up properly, and when played through the acoustic amp it has a very nice clean tone.) As regards music, obviously the 1990s had not passed by totally unnoticed, and the Clapton Unplugged album had been a constant companion on my travels, which also then became a more conscious entry point into the Blues.
Three major impulses
Somehow I developed an interest in doing more than accompanying nobody with the guitar, and there weren’t any singers around even closely interested in the kind of music I was into. Luckily my wife had visited with a friend of hers a concert by an all female group featuring a Jazz singer, who also provided singing courses. They kind of thought it might be a good idea 
for me to go there. Somehow that happened, and it worked out just fine. That proved important to me, because I got to record my own playing, and could bring it as a backing tape during singing lessons. One of my first strummy songs I attempted to sing was Eric Claptons ‘Let it Grow’ (471 Ocean Boulevard), and it was quite clear that I did not have the range to reach them high notes back then. Typical beginners issue of over estimating one’s ability. I learned also about transposing songs to match the vocal range, as she would often tell me to increase the pitch by 3 to 5 halftones, in order for me to sing it comfortably. That being said - the singing I did was between me, her and the four walls of my practice room. No public appearances.
The second major impulse was to allow GAS to take hold. My wife convinced me to leave the Ibanez well alone, and perhaps buy another acoustic. I went to the premier Guitar shop in Rotterdam, and they were carrying a Canadian brand, Seagull, which I researched online, and got very good reviews. These Seagulls also came with under saddle pickups and pre-amps, which became a must item for me - at some point I was going to need amplification, right? Recognising that with her very sensitive hearing, my wife had a stake in the matter, I asked her to accompany me for the final go ahead. I played the Seagull in the shop, with and without amplification, and she was not impressed. What now? The logical step was to escalate, and I picked up the then new models by Martin and Taylor, a Martin OMCPA4 and a Taylor 300 Series Guitar, and play those. Obviously, that meant exceeding my maximum budget by a factor of 2. Both passed the test, with a slight preference for the OMCPA4 in view of the clear high tones. That was a lucky choice, because it is not only a very beautifully sounding guitar, but it has proven to be a wonderful guitar on stage, as with its Orchestra body shape it is not as bulky as the dreadnought models, and good for both fingerstyle and strumming. It has deserved its name , Klara, a thousand times over.
The third major impulse came when, on account of my health, I went away and stayed in a clinic for 2-3 months. I brought Klara along, and a stack of Justin Guitar songbooks, to have something to do in the downtime. Little did I know, but I got noticed as the guy who had brought a Martin Guitar, and soon I found myself playing with another guy who was very much in Americana songs, more specifically the kind of songs that Johnny Cash had recorded in his final years. Then there was a keyboard player singer, and then there were 2 more singers, then three, and another guitarist, and all of the sudden I found myself learning songs that I had never heard before. The idea was to ‘perform’ at Christmas, at the clinic. And then to perform on New Years Eve, which all happened. There was so much music - in the end there were 3 sets of 10 songs - way too much of course. Fortunately many of them came from the JG songbooks I had brought.
And, I did not need to rely on my singing yet - I could focus on ‘just’ accompanying, with the heavy lifting being done by the keyboarder.
[to be continued]
if only, just a heck of a commute from Johannesburg.
en grijs Nederland
I liked all three, but Gallow’s Pole caught me most. Nice and moody, great playing and singing. Harmonicas sounded real good as well. Thanks for sharing these with us!