Next month is going to be an incredible event that takes place (and I look forward to) every year.  It’s the Dallas International Guitar Festival.  I try to go to it every year.  If you’ve never been, you really ought to try to attend. You’ll see lots of Texas flavored musicians showcased as well as nationally known artists like Rick Derringer and Ted Nugent. 

Yeah, seriously! 

You’ll also have the opportunity to see rows upon rows of incredible guitars and accessories.  Prices will range from dirt cheap to “are-you-outta-your-mind” expensive.  I’ve actually seen guitars that were priced into the seven figure range.  Yeah, seriously!

While planning my schedule for next month and setting the time aside to attend the show, I thought back on my very limited guitar skills, and how I first started playing.  My best friend in sixth and seventh grade, Jim Hughes, was a self-taught player and was pretty good for a pre-teen in the early 70’s. It was his playing that inspired me to want to play (that and watching countless Elvis movies while I was growing up).

A lady at the small church my family attended had heard that I wanted to play.  She had an old Harmony acoustic guitar that she never played so she decided to give it to me.  It wasn’t perfect but it was MINE! 

That old guitar was very heavy.  I imagine that it was made out of plywood or something like it.  It had very heavy gauged strings that, with the weak tuning pegs, made it hard to stay in tune., I swear, those strings could’ve split my finger tips in half!  But the guitar was mine!

Like my friend, Jim, I tried learning everything that I could on that old guitar.  I learned the chords to songs like Proud Mary and Purple Haze and fantasized that I played as well as Fogerty and Hendrix.

In time, I made my case to Mom and Dad that I needed a little bit better guitar. After proving that I did play a couple of songs all the way through, they took me to Central Music on Central Avenue near Camelback Road in Phoenix.  It was there that my parents spent one hundred hard earned dollars for a brand new Hohner Contessa acoustic guitar. 

I cherished that guitar almost more than life itself.  I loved playing it and showing it my friends.  I learned a few more songs and learned a few more riffs but was never good enough to play in a band.  However, I played that song when I was happy and when I was sad.  It served as a touchstone, of sorts, to funnel my feelings and emotions to and through.

I still have that guitar.  I wouldn’t sell it at any price.  I’m a sentimental sot and it’s just not anything that I can ever imagine parting with.  Is the guitar worth a lot of money?  I don’t know and I really don’t care.  It’s the worth to me that makes it priceless.

Next month, as I wonder the aisles at the Dallas International Guitar Festival, and look at the countless guitars, I will wonder what stories are behind those old battle axes.  What songs of happiness and heartbreak were poured through them.  Were they gifts and have been thoughtless sold?  Or, maybe they’re just tools of the trade that were replaced with more desirable gear.

Either way, I hope that the instruments find their way into appreciative hands that will play them in ways that creatively and beautifully express the feelings in the hearts behind those hands.