Guitar Gear

When I was 8 years old, my school offered a folk guitar class, run by one of the Jesuit priests. I remember him being a pretty cool guy, playing guitar at our weekly school Mass. It was then that I aspired to be a worship and liturgical musician. Unfortunately at the time, my parents really didn’t have the means to get me a new instrument – and now as a parent I understand – I’m pretty sure they didn’t want to make an investment like that since I was so young and could easily lose interest.

So they asked friends and family if anyone had an extra guitar they’d be willing to lend me, and my cousin Willie just happened to have one. It was a project guitar that he had sanded down so he could re-stain and lacquer, but he never got around to it. So he strung it up and gave it to me. Little did anyone at the time know that I would play it – all the time.

In fact, I played that guitar for 10 years before my dad gifted me with “Betsy,” my Yamaha FG-335 acoustic on my 18th birthday. I played that guitar for almost 20 years, performing on stage and in recording sessions. It wasn’t until it fell over one evening and the neck broke away from the body that I got another guitar, and then an amp, and then another acoustic, and then a better PA, and then an electric guitar, an amp, a few effects, then another electric, then a tube amp, and another tube amp, and more electric guitars and more effects, then recording equipment, blah, blah, blah… Aiiiiyeeee!

But I never forgot about that first guitar and how the kindness of my cousin transformed my life. And even in the midst of my buying frenzy, I always made it a point that I would pay gear forward.

And over the past couple of decades, one of the ways I’ve thinned my herd has been to give gear away. And not crappy gear at all. My thought is that if I give someone decent gear, they’ll more likely play it. Plus, I don’t want them to feel as if they’re getting my discarded items. And if the gear is good, they’ll take care of it.

About 12 years ago, my wife and I used to hire a sweet Mexican woman name Maria to clean our house. She would often bring her teenage children with her to help her. Her eldest child, Eric, used to hang out with me in my garage and listen to me play after he got his stuff done.

One day, he commented, “Man, I’d love to play guitar. My friend has one and I’ve learned some chords. My mom is saving to get me one for my birthday.” He wasn’t fishing for a handout. But I could feel the passion in his voice as he anticipated getting his first guitar.

Not wanting to make his mom feel bad, I just nodded, excused myself, then got up and found her. I told her that Eric told me that she was going to get him a guitar for his birthday. She said told me that yes she was, and Eric was so excited. At that, I asked her if it would be okay for me to give Eric one of mine, along with an amp. I told her that I didn’t want her to look at it as a handout. I could see how much he wanted to play, and as I already had a bunch of guitars, I’d be honored to help him get on his way to being a guitar player.

She wanted to pay me, but I refused and said that it was a gift, and shared how my cousin had changed my life by gifting me with a guitar long ago. The tears welled up in her eyes and she gave me hug in thanks.

When I returned to my garage, Eric was plucking the Fernandes Strat I had been playing. It was a Chinese model, but I had it set up and it played and sounded like a dream.

“You like that guitar?” I asked.

“Oh man! This is great! It plays so easy!” replied Eric.

I smiled then said, “I talked to your mom and asked her if it was okay to give you a guitar. If you like that one, it’s yours along with the amp it’s plugged into.”

The kid almost fainted from the shock. I followed that up with, “But here’s my deal: Later on in life, if and when you have the means, do what I did for you for someone else. I got my first guitar from my cousin, and it changed my life forever.”

A few months after that, we ran into a bit of financial difficulty and had to let Maria go as we couldn’t afford a house cleaner. But several years later, we hired her to help prep our house for a party and I asked about Eric. She told me that after he got that guitar, he practiced all the time and had since joined a couple of bands and was playing regularly. He also still had the guitar I gave him, but was thinking about giving it away to one of his cousins. Hearing that made me smile from ear to ear.

It’s amazing how our lives are changed when we receive certain gifts and it’s even more amazing what we can do to change others’ lives by paying it forward.