Amplify Everything

A few months ago, I bought a bunch of balsa wood to make little furniture for my daughter's dollhouse, I was fully into it for a few days there, but that dollhouse only has room for so much stuff.  I bought way too much wood for the task at hand, and until about a week ago, my intention was to build a few birdhouses.  Out of sheer boredom a few days ago, I started messing around with my surplus of balsa, and decided that it wouldn't be hard to put together a simple stringed instrument.  Soon after building a little box with one string, I did a little research and found out that it's pretty easy to make a contact microphone and turn my little acoustic box into an electric.  A trip to Radio Shack and about twelve dollars later, I was rocking.  I was also obsessed.  I love to tinker around in my basement, making things with my hands, but most things that I would like to do are a little too much for me.  I have basic soldering and woodworking skills, so these electric balsa instruments are right up my alley.  It's also nice that each one only took a couple hours to make.

I started planning my next build immediately, and the next day I went back to Radio Shack to spend the last of the month's grocery money on microphone parts.  Before I dove into #2, I upgraded my first build with two more strings and a few little improvements.

For the next one, I wanted it to be quite a bit longer, and to have frets.  Again, in the spirit of raw simplicity, I decided to keep it as a plain rectangle.  This one worked out really well, and I'm actually blown away by how nice it sounds.

At this point I'm not only obsessing over my next build, but I am completely enthralled by the possibilities these simple contact microphones have opened up, so I started experimenting with those as well.  The difference between a regular microphone and a contact mic, is that a regular mic amplifies vibrations in the air, while a contact mic amplifies vibrations on or in solid objects, or even liquid.  Everything in sight is starting to look like an instrument that needs to be mic'd and jammed upon. These are all functioning microphones, each one costing no more than ten dollars to make.

Stepping up the creativity and craftsmanship factor, here we have the skateboard deck electric slide guitar.  I just put this together in about an hour the other day, and it sounds great.  All of these home made stringed instruments are difficult to get into any semblance of a tuning, but once you're there, they are really fun to mess around with.

My latest and greatest contraption, which I call "Clank", for obvious reasons.  It's a total caveman noise machine.  You can play it with a bow, a pick, your fingers, or just smack it around.  This thing coupled with an effects pedal and a loop pedal through an amplifier will keep me occupied for days on end.

Earth Ain't a Bad Place to be

"Tell me, Connie, tell me what it is you see."

Connie Egge stared back at Dr. Terry Teeples blankly, she stared through him, returning from the depths of a deep trance that the good doctor had pulled her out of only moments ago.

"Sticks and stones and broken bones is all my eyes do see", she mumbled, "All things considered, and truth be untold, Earth ain't a bad place to be."

Nother Friggin Day in Paradise

Jerry Kirchfeld awoke to the smell of a long gone party.  Vomit had dried on his left arm.  It was red.  Vodka cranberries, he remembered.  The alarm clock on the mantle flashed 12:00 over and over.  He was at his brother Zeb's place.  Jerry checked his watch.  Twelve-oh-two.  Goddamn.  The mantle clock was right for once.  He had missed work, or, technically, was still late for work, but he would look even more foolish going in five hours late than he would not showing up at all.  Friggin' Dougie's pissed, Jerry mused.  Fuck 'em.  Life goes on.  Jerry stumbled over to the bathroom.  Friggin' Zebbie ain't gonna be too happy about that puke on his carpet, neither, he thought.  Friggin shitty day.  Killer hangover to boot.  In the bathroom, he had himself a quick birdbath, washed his teeth with his finger, and popped a few aspirins.  A rhyme his daddy used to tell him kept going through his head, on a loop; "Here's to the future, here's to the past, here's hopin' yer ass had a hearty blast."  A hearty blast, indeed, thought Jerry, as he remembered Cheryl Feeney flashing her boobs around for everyone and their brother.  Hot damn, now that was a party.  Cheryl wasn't much of a looker, but she had some nice melons.  Jerry found some 409 and an old sponge under the bathroom sink, and trudged back out to the lazy boy to clean up his mess.  On his knees, scrubbing up puke, Jerry felt defeated.  What a friggin life, he thought.  Is this it?  Is this what I was put on this earth to do?  Get pissed up every other night, get to see Cheryl Feeney's titties, and puke on my brothers floor?  Here's to the future, here's to the past, here's hoping yer ass had a hearty blast.  Friggin hearty blast indeed, thought Jerry.  Friggin hearty blast indeedy.

Yoo and Tanner Lee Boyle

This is a story 'bout a boy named Yoo
who lived in a town where there's nothing to do
and no one around to do anything with
except Mrs. Greely and and Old Mr. Smith
and Tara and Fern, the Beverly girls
and Tanner Lee Boyle, only friend in the world
that Yoo's ever known and though sometimes a pain
Tanner Lee means well, goes out of his way
to help out a friend, to aid and abide
Yoo and Tanner Lee would spend their time
all of this summer at each others side.
Our story begins on a morn soaked with dew
outskirts of a town with nothing to do
'cept riding one's bike where one doesn't belong
through empty lots and other folk's lawns
and into the fact'ry that's since been abandoned
and out to the lake, and into the campground
'til under the bridge we find our friends
Yoo and Tanner Lee smoke cigarettes
and play poker with cards with pictures of women
without any clothes on and they try to spit in
an old tin cup 'bout a meter away
and so do our friends carry on with their day
til the day subsides and falls to night
back on their bikes our boys take flight
through the camping grounds, factory, other folk's lawns,
back through the lot where Yoo heard a sound
off of his bike he did spin around
onto his knees with an ear to the ground
heard strange rumbling, tumbling some where
deep in the earth he heard crumbling there
Tanner Lee stopped, and looked to the sky
time stopped for Yoo and they both wondered why
or what it could be, a freight train or plane
or had their young brains just gone insane
for this sound was too loud, it was really a feeling
Tanner Lee spun, but Yoo was still kneeling
when out of the sky came rolling and ripping
a great ball of fire, sped over the city
and into the trees not a mile due west
“The end all”? Asked Tanner Lee under his breath
Yoo said “Aliens, I think have just landed”
without one more word the boys had abandoned
the factory lot and did head for the fires
they could see the glow from no more than two miles
Here's Harlan Juniper's old Chevy truck
it looked like our boys may just be in luck
Harlan pulled up and the boys jumped inside
and they raced off to see what might have collided
and what could've shaken the ol terra firm
it wasn't too long til they got to the turn
out by Terry Fry's place, and then Hap Todd's farm
they wheeled into Hap's drive, and there in the yard
was Hap, his wife Linda and their only boy Cy
standing round embers at the top of the drive
As things turned out, or at least in the paper
the scientists up at the research center
said “about 8:52 on this twelfth of July,
a large piece of space junk did fall from the sky”
but Yoo and Tanner Lee know that the truth
that large piece of space junk did change their youth.
The world seemed so small, and how big the sky
the image of fire in Hap Todd's drive
was forever embedded in our boys young minds
and for years ever after they both would find
that every spring, when they'd smell that smell
They'd remember the wonders of life and swell
with pride in their hearts and recall from their youth
the space junk storm of two thousand and two.

Vacation (All I Ever Wanted)

Until I was 34, I had never been on a real vacation.  My wife, Grace, gets the wanderlust every few years, and asked me if I would like to go abroad for a week or so.  I agreed, and left her to the task of choosing where we would go, and planning the trip.  Basically, she did everything, and I kicked in some money. In February of 2010, we went on a two week trip to Nicaragua.  This would be my first passport, first flight, first time out of the continental United States.  This was an eye opening experience for me.  Being lost in another country where no one speaks your language, feeling like you're in a movie but knowing it's real.  We rode horses, swam in the ocean, pushed our way through the packed market places, and walked for miles down deserted dirt roads.  We slept in grass huts next to the ocean, rode buses down dirt roads next to people with live chickens tucked in their armpits, blazed through towns in taxis that went too fast for comfort, and awoke to the shrieks of the jungle in the morning.  Everything went according to Grace's schedule, and we were never treated poorly, scammed, or robbed, with the exception of one guy that made a weak attempt at Grace's wallet.
I brought a cassette walkman on the trip, and kept a daily audio diary of the trip.  I also recorded the sounds of the Jungle and the marketplace.

About two weeks later, I was to take flight once again, this time with my boss, to Las Vegas for three days, to attend the 2010 Bar and Nightclub Convention.  This trip was more like a drunken nightmare with glimpses of sunshine and awe.  Highlights included :
- The convention itself, which was a stadium sized floor, with about 500 booths, each trying to sell their alcohol, beer, or nightclub related merchandise.  Basically, every ten feet you stopped to do a shot of something, all day long.
-The Stratosphere, highest building West of the Mississippi, I think.  Its a casino / mall / amusement park stuffed into something like Seattle's Space Needle.  Looking down from the top was dizzying.
-Being able to walk freely anywhere with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other.
The flight back was a bumpy, drunken hellride, and I missed my home badly.  Too much time with my boss, too much of the air conditioned daymare.  It was so good to get home, I had barely unpacked from the Nicaragua trip yet.  Getting away really helps you appreciate the things you take for granted, and reminds you that there is a world outside of the borders of your mind.

Days of the Living Dead

My sister Tricia, the closest to me in age, bought a beat up old drum set when I was about 12, and I learned to play some basic rock beats.  Dad played the accordion, so there were always microphones and amplifiers laying around.  My two best friends and I pooled a few bucks together and got a Fender  knock-off electric guitar, and ordered a generic bass guitar from the Sears catalog, and I also got a high hat and some cheap cymbals for my sister's drums through Sears, and we played in my basement and garage on and off from eighth grade until we graduated high school. We landed a gig somehow at a short lived youth center that started out of a former strip club called the Spider's Web.  That bass came in the mail two days before the show.  We didn't know about tuning guitars, how to properly utilize an amp, nothing.  We just choked songs out of our instruments however we could.  At first we used our home stereos as guitar amps, any dirty rocker worth his salt knows how to pull that off.
This will be the only time I go here, at the risk of sounding trite;  When we were kids, it was hard to contact people that you wanted to contact.  Hard to get a specific part for a guitar, bike or skateboard, or to get your feet into some real skate shoes.  Hard to have any idea how a rock band works, because there is simply no one around to explain it to you, as far as you knew.   Any object that was considered “some kind of band equipment” was worth it's weight in gold to us.  We traveled hours to go to shitty music stores.  We traveled hours just to get our hands on good music to listen too.  We made broken skateboard decks work for another week, we repaired drum heads and shoes with duct tape until all they were anymore was duct tape.   Any and all equipment was repaired ten times over before you would consider buying a new one. I want to say we appreciated everything we had, but the truth is we ruined everything we touched..  We thought it was the worst of times, never realizing we had it all.

In the beginning, I don't remember us ever talking about song structure, we were of a hive mind, and we would just make up songs off the top of our head, hitting all the changes together without discussion, just basic rock structure.  We knew nothing about properly tuning an instrument, but we figured out a way to tune a guitar so you could just lay one finger across all of the strings, and it sounded like a proper chord.  I can never recall working these things out, they just happened.  Later on we would consciously write some songs, and that all happened really easily, too.  We were absolutely full of ideas, energy and creativity.  We had to pick and choose from the many, to use only the best ideas.  We would often record our rehearsals, and I still have many of the tapes. One day I figured out how to record vocals over a tape of a song my buddy and I had recorded on to a cassette, and so was born my fascination with multi track recording.  The school faculty eventually let our band, “The Living Dead”, and later “Sixtyseconds”  play at the homecoming pep rally every year through high school.  I think we hated school too much to appreciate the gesture.  I was always bummed out about something when I was that age, just mad at the world.  I would never have thought at the time, just how how fondly I would one day look back upon those days.

Wild in the Streets

I don't remember my friends and I ever being aware of any sort of boundaries in Neillsville.  We went wherever we felt like going, through peoples yards, into abandoned buildings, we would even go through the city's storm drain system, underneath the entire town.  Up until a certain age, none of these things seemed wrong.  Neillsville was our playground.  Over the years we had dozens of  forts, all on someone else's property, we didn't know, we didn't care.  I would be gone all day, come home, and tell my Mom that we had spent the day at our newest fort.  She would casually ask about the whereabouts of this newest fort, and I would tell her what I felt she wanted to hear.  I don't know if she ever really wanted to know. One of those forts was built near an old train track, a fort made mostly out of different doors, solid oak and screen doors.  The abandoned train track was like the main street to our fort, and we put a jump ramp for our bikes that was nothing more than a door, leaning on a three foot tall piece of wood, that was propped against it.  No nails even holding the two boards together, they were just leaning against the other, on that rocky old train track, that you could barely ride your bike on in the first place.  Every third or fourth attempt, the ramp would collapse just as the rider was cresting the top of the jump.  It was considered good style to hit that jump and collapse it, stall in the air for a second, and land back on top of the flattened door, then calmly ride away. One time we were terrorizing the neighborhood on our bikes in the fall, ripping through the piles of leaves that everyone raked to the boulevard.  One of my neighbors up the street caught us in the act, jumped into his black T-bird, and chased us down.  He made us go back and clean up our mess.  That dude was scary to us.  I remember he called himself Billy Con, like the boxer from the 1930's.  There were a lot of shady characters living up the street, another was this woman known only as the Dragon Lady.  When I was a kid, I really had no idea what all the adults around me were up to.  When I got a little older, I learned that the things that I thought were confined to big cities also happened in little towns like Neillsville.  Drugs, violence, even murder.  We were blissfully unaware of how often we poked at the hornets nest, disrespecting the people of the neighborhood, like Billy Con.