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Around Christmas time last year I started work on a guide to things you need for the perfect road trip. It was to be a mix of cool tools and useful apps. I tested Wi-Fi hotspots, navigation and stargazing apps, camp stoves, camp chairs, and, on a whim, I asked Orangewood for a guitar. What sort of road trip is complete without belting out some awful cover songs around the campfire?
Orangewood is one of those rare companies that manages to make a high quality guitar without the high price, a market the better-known Martins and Taylors of the guitar world have thus far not chased. Orangewood obliged my request, sending me the Oliver Jr, a beautiful mahogany three-quarter size guitar that's perfect for playing in the back seat. And at only $195 it's not so expensive you’re afraid to throw it in the back seat.
It would have been perfect to play in the backseat.It still will be one day, but in the meantime 2020 had different plans. Road trips were postponed. The world got small, for many of us not much bigger than our living rooms. The Oliver Jr suddenly felt out of place, a reminder of a kind of normal that threatens never to come back.
The Oliver Jr taunted me for a while. Remember when we could hit the road without another thought? Remember when crowds could gather? Remember
Remember when we could gather large crowds of sweaty bodies in tiny rooms, pressed so tightly together you could surf your way across them?
I grew up just south of Los Angeles in the 1980s and 90s. Much of the punk rock movement happened within a few miles of my home. Punk rock had a huge influence on my life. Those sweaty, tightly-packed, rooms were where I grew up. Former Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins, a fixture of the 1980s LA punk scene, once remarked that music is made by those it saves. Perhaps a touch dramatic, but it's not too much of an exaggeration to say music saved me a time or two, and I in turn felt obligated to make a little of it. I played in punk bands
That was a long time ago by any measure, but as Covid 19 spread through 2020 that wonderful world of 80s and 90s punk never felt further away.
Yet somehow every time I picked up that Orangewood and strummed a few bars of Johnny Thunders' I'm Alive, or Fugazi's Blueprint, those carefree days of 80s and 90s punk felt a little closer, a little more alive. I started to play regularly again for the first time in nearly a decade.
I watched friends disappear into cocktails of depression spiked with Netflix binges. I tried but somehow the flickering of images under glass fell flat, failed to hold my attention. I kept returning to the front room, where the Orangewood stood, quietly waiting.
It became my retreat. It never told me millions were doomed, it never promised a miracle cure. It never told me to inject bleach. It stood there, analog, unbreakable, quietly waiting for me.
Eventually I got tired of running though songs I used to know. I even got tired of my own old songs. I dug out a battered microphone I'd tossed in a drawer a decade earlier and downloaded a wonderful piece of desktop recording software named Ardour. A couple of hours of tinkering later I had recreated the recording studio my bass player invested thousands of dollars and several years building back in the 90s. I did it for free in a couple hours using software.
I pulled out the Oliver Jr and started to record. I wrote songs. I woke up the next day and hastily deleted them lest anyone else hear them.
It wasn't long before my kids wanted in on the fun. I wound up back on the Orangewood street, buying a guitar for one daughter, a ukulele for the other. My son is still waiting on his drum kit. Now I don't have to play alone. It's not the sort of music strangers would probably want to hear, but we have fun.
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