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I’ve been build­ing up a col­lec­tion of new music for France. Stuff I’m sav­ing for when I’m on the plane, or the train, or walk­ing the streets. I can tell these tracks will define my time there, as well this point in my life.

Most of it has been dri­ving. Not nec­es­sar­ily loud or aggres­sive, but songs that mark the time with bass and a steady beat, remind­ing me that I’m still mov­ing, and that life won’t wait for me to catch up.

axe

hot.

I played around with Darren’s Seagull and imme­di­ately under­stood how vis­ceral it is to hear and hold a decent gui­tar. The tone response and res­o­nance was delight­fully tac­ti­cal on the larger instru­ment. The log­i­cal result of this is me sav­ing up for a Taylor NS32CE six-string nylon acoustic/electric of my own. It has every­thing I’m look­ing for in a guitar:

• nylon strings (for a won­der­fully mel­low sound)
• a grand con­cert shape (which is suited to my smaller frame, and the pro­por­tions of clas­si­cal nylon gui­tar never appealed to me)
• a cut­away (for eas­ier access to the high frets)
• a 1 7/8 inches nut width (which is closer to clas­si­cal string spac­ing, and hence bet­ter suited for fingerpicking)
• a solid wood body (sitka on top and sapele — a com­mon alter­na­tive to African mahogany — on the back and sides)
• a non-flowery, non-metallic rosette (which I find far too com­mon on typ­i­cal nylon string guitars)
• a gloss fin­ish on top (though the sides are satin, and I don’t know how I feel about that cause satin dents really eas­ily in my experience)
• bonus: a slot­ted head­stock (which I find to be more classy than reg­u­lar ones)
• bonus: no fret­board mark­ers (cause I don’t like most, and this would help me cor­rect the bad habit of always look­ing at the fretboard)

Also, the sapele is a gor­geous dark red with light strip­ing that con­trasts allur­ingly with the light sitka on top. But money has been super tight lately, and I’m try­ing to hold off on all pur­chases until I come back from my trip, since I don’t know how much I’m going to spend over there.

daddy

My dad sent me pic­tures of his new drum set, bought for him by some women whose name and rela­tion­ship with him always seems to escape me. A full-out kit with three toms, a kick, a high-hat, a snare, a crash, and a ride. It’s prob­a­bly the last thing most peo­ple expect to see my dad play­ing, but I remem­ber when I was a young boy him men­tion­ing the fact that he likes drums. Along with a new Honda sport motor­cy­cle and a new Mercedes SUV, it’s hard to deny the fact that he’s liv­ing his dreams now. Darren jokes that he’s exactly where we are now — bach­e­lors, get­ting into music, no real respon­si­bil­i­ties, just try­ing to live as hap­pily as pos­si­ble — only he’s almost 30 years older than us.

He signs his e-mails to me as “Daddy”. It always reminds me that I’ll always be his lit­tle boy.

under warranty

My tenor uke is sit­ting in a box packed with Styrofoam, wait­ing to be picked up by courier. There was a defect in the neck that caused a buzzing on the 1st fret of the C string, and every string after the 12th. I wasn’t will­ing to put up with it for the price I paid, so I’m get­ting it replaced by the man­u­fac­turer. I’m glad I hadn’t named it yet.

I destroyed the strings on Joolie (my Mahalo Les Paul-style con­cert uke) and was too lazy to restring her. There was a length of time when I didn’t have a playable uke, and this lead to the real­iza­tion that I’ve devel­oped the habit of pick­ing up and pluck­ing away on one impul­sively every hour.