- 09 Dec, 2025 *
If you are going to do the music thing, you really do have to accept some mysticism. You have to invite it into your life, embrace it. Music in the first place—who knows why we like it? I have thought about it. I am never going to figure it out, so I do not think about it anymore.
Somebody told me years ago—we were just chatting at a restaurant—you have to find the right tools. And I had a neighbor with this horrible Mexican Stratocaster that I loved. I played it all the time. It made me think, I have to find myself a Strat.
I do not particularly like the way they sound. I mostly like the way they look. I had already accepted that was the guitar I liked. I always wished it was a Les Paul or something more “serious,” but I have never kept one.
So I went on t…
- 09 Dec, 2025 *
If you are going to do the music thing, you really do have to accept some mysticism. You have to invite it into your life, embrace it. Music in the first place—who knows why we like it? I have thought about it. I am never going to figure it out, so I do not think about it anymore.
Somebody told me years ago—we were just chatting at a restaurant—you have to find the right tools. And I had a neighbor with this horrible Mexican Stratocaster that I loved. I played it all the time. It made me think, I have to find myself a Strat.
I do not particularly like the way they sound. I mostly like the way they look. I had already accepted that was the guitar I liked. I always wished it was a Les Paul or something more “serious,” but I have never kept one.
So I went on the hunt, and I found one that I kind of knew was it. I did not 100% love playing it. I was not in like with the way it looked. But it felt like the right thing, and I trusted this. That was ten years ago.
The weird thing is you hear all these bullshit artists talk about how a guitar “needs to be played” and all that. I do not know about any of that, but it turned out to be true. Ten years later, I love this thing. It now plays amazing. It has mellowed out in the looks department as well. It is a gold Strat—which is not even a Strat color, more of a Les Paul color. It is all kind of the all same warm shade now. I keep it in a very sunny room, so I imagine it has bleached itself out. The neck went from brand-new-looking to another chilled-out color. It is all nitro, so if you look at it wrong you can give it a ding. And it sound great because it feels great.
I do not know why I listened to that guy that day. I do not know why I went and bought this guitar that had been sitting on the shelf for a long time at a local shop. It was new, no one had ever owned it, and for whatever reason it just would not sell. Now it is really mine.
You have to listen to the world. It is a lot like songwriting, in the sense that you are not listening to the inner critic. I do not know what the draw was, but it is the same thing that tells you whether a song is good or bad.
At the end of the day, when the world is trying to tell me something, I have learned to shut up and listen.