It was a fun blast into the past with a recent 1.5 hour interview with ONstage Podcast host Christopher Kup!
Podcast Story #1
Did you ever do something outrageous in your youth? Like smashing not one, but two guitars? The first story is in the podcast, but what came later was leaning my vintage Firebird Gibson guitar against a chair (a big-no-no) and down it went crashing to the floor.
I had worked in the local gas station pumping leaded gas to pay for it for almost a year. I was very serious about guitars as a teen, and I was very motivated to be a musician. So you can imagine how horrified I was.
I was in a jazz workshop at York University at the time, and everyone's facial expressions in my jazz workshop turned fully mortified to see the vintage treasured guitar's neck fully broken in half after it smashed hard on to the linoleum floor!
I did repair the guitar, it was repairable, but everything about it was so upsetting that I decided to sell the guitar anyway on consignment where I bought it.
The staff fully assured me the neck was now in fact better than it had been before, but now it was too unsettling to want to play the guitar anymore. Like maybe I felt it was "jinxed for doom," or something. I even felt guilty selling it, but figured after the staff assured me it was still a keeper, since it was vintage, that someone would want it anyway.
That had been one of the most humiliating moments ever. The guitar, a Gibson Firebird, was the guitar my blues mentor, the late Buzz Upshaw had played. I was hoping to copy his guitar playing in every way that I could as a 16-year-old. So much so, that I mimicked him and bought the same model guitar he had, though a different year. I am sure this amused him! He was such a phenom talent. Nobody could play, "Caledonia," as well or as fast as Buzz. Nobody.
Join me for the podcast for further personal tales of smashing-it-up finishing off with a calming Zen sound bath segment!
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