The Singe Guitar (the guitar that started it all)

In the beginning there were no guitars. There were band names that my best friend Jason and I had made up. There were lyrics in notebooks. There were even odd sounds made on a tape recorder and later my parents computer. But there were no guitars.
One day my brother Devin changed that, he walked into my parents house on Country Lane in Hays, Kansas with a low end Ibanez Electric guitar in his hands. He told me that I was going to learn to play it and that we were going to be in a band together. That single moment changed my life. It's been a long journey, Almost 15 years. Half of my life to this point. It's never been easy, but it's been more fun than at that time I realized life would be. I would have never bought myself a guitar. I am not that kind of person, that type of motion is not in my DNA.In relaying this story I'm struck by how profound the significance each choice that is made or not made is. They won't necessarily all be life changing, but they can be. Every day is a chance to be what you want, or to help someone else be something better. Come home with a guitar every once in a while.
Devin bought the Singe guitar from a want ad in the paper, before the convenience of craigslist or ebay. He looked in the paper, found a phone number, called it, traveled to a strangers house, paid $125 of his own earned money for a guitar and $50 for an amp. The guy had a daughter, she told Devin it was her father's baby. I like to think that she missed the point, that she was really his baby, and that she was the reason he was selling something dear to him.
When Devin left that day he left his new guitar with me, I guess to familiarize myself with it. I took it up to my room. I knew nothing. In some ways it's been that way ever since! I recall my first thought was that I should know what every note sounded like. I made a plan that everyday I would play every note on that guitar at least 10 times. I didn't stick to that notion very long.
Devin eventually took the guitar to his trailer house in Meadow Acres (blog about that place Devin) but I had my own key and I was more than welcome to go there and play it. I would go there some afternoons. I remember what that guitar sounded like in that trailer house through that amp very well. At that point I was printing out tablature and learning the intros to songs I knew, cause I could never play the whole song. I was horrid at playing chords and most single note action was beyond me. Devin helped where he could, and then Joe came along and helped a great deal.

I played this guitar in Singe exclusively. After Singe broke up I got a new guitar for Plaything. The Singe guitar stayed in the Singe era, it was brought out of retirement for this S no S promo photo above, but I don't recall it being playable by then. The electronics are screwy, and the action is jacked and it now rests in a storage shed in Kansas City. No matter, my life's course has been significantly altered already. I might even be the type of person now who would take the initiative to buy himself something that could potentially change his life. I might even one day pass the favor on to someone else.