Eko ranger VI: greatest miss during holiday

While spending about three weeks in glorious Brazil, I think I discovered what musicians probably miss most when on holiday. It must be not having your instrument around whenever you feel like playing. The few occasions I did have a six-string under my thumb this holiday some small magic happened.

I have written before about my favourite instrument (see the blog on hardware: Toys for boys.) My Eko Ranger VI is from the late Sixties, and not in the kind of conditions that you want to carry it around when you are on holidays. I mean, Eko's Ranger model sure was build to last, to be carried around by hippies or any other musical nomads, but mine has reached that age that it loves to be played on, and not to travel too much. So I never take it with me when I am away, but always have these moments that I think I should have. Wether it is the people I am with asking for a tune, or it could be myself who wants to get the mind focussed, I grasp in thin air and get a little frustrated for not being able to play a song or two.
Luckily, and often to my pleasant surprise, you enter a household and there it is: in the corner of the room, a guitar! It is the one you don't have to ask for if you can play a little; that's what it is there for in the first place!! (Actually to complete this picture; it does happen that you find a guitar that is there just for the looks. People who have guitars on their walls just to look at, I do not consider music lovers, just non-melodic no-knows and show-offs.) The first time this happened these last few weeks was at a friends' house. I hadn't seen her in like three years, and had really no intention to play, just to socialize. But when she, and her husband, were in other areas of the house, I couldn't help myself. I took the guitar, assessed that it probably hadn't been tuned in, like, ages, but strung a few chords anyway. Just a quick song, an own composition with no lyrics (yet). It was so funny to get the reaction from my friends in the other rooms. They recognized the vibration not coming from boxes, but from an actual instrument, and were thrilled for having live music filling ambiance.

me and Peco, the Gibson is just for show.

The second time I played was visiting other friends. The man of the house plays and sings in a band called Midnight Express, mostly covers from what I could tell. The crowd was a little larger, the children a little louder, but still I played a few songs with rusty fingers and dito vocal cords. Then the host played a nice version of Hotel California, and handed the guitar back over to me. I didn't know what to play next, but I saw a capo laying around, and remembered I was using it back home to cover the song Tree by the River by Iron and Wine. I hadn't yet mastered the lyrics, but I knew it was fun to play anyway. When I strummed the first chords, I saw a few heads starting to hum along, looking at each other with a look like: could this be that song? And it was, I travelled 12.000 km to find out that Iron and Wine, not the most exportable artist to a country like Brazil, had actually landed on the personal playlists of these lady friends. Well, you might think: so what, it is a great song, and since when do Brazilians dislike good music? Still, for me it was that moment of recognition, and the realization that music really transcends boundaries. Now that I think of it, I remember playing a Johnny Cash song 15 years ago at what might be considered an awkard place for a country song: a desolate hermit's cabin somewhere along the Brazilian shore. After I finished 'Delia' the skinny guy smiled, shook his dreadlocks and raised his thumb; we were mates from that moment onwards...