Friday, February 08, 2008

the weirdness of cigar box guitars

I had a weird experience. I was Googling CBG blogs and clicked on one of them to find "yours truly" embedded in someone elses blog. It was one of my Youtube vids and the guy was talking about it in very complimentary way. (Thanks whoever you are Chris). It set me off on a thought train about this whole CBG thing and how weird it is finding myself out there in cyberspace playing a guitar made from a cigar box for the world to see. I've never been one for wanting to attract attention but I got a weird sort of buzz from it. How did I get to that point and all the other stuff it's led me into. It's like one of those conversations you start off on one track and it goes here and there and ends up on another subject and you suddenly think "How did I get here What did we start out talking about"?

So back tracking to two years ago it all started for me when I was idly looking at old guitars on Ebay and I found a CBG for sale. Fell in love with it and had to have it. From there it was having a go at making my own which meant searching for boxes, machine heads, wood for necks etc. Then designing logos, writing up this blog, building a website, learning how to make short videos and putting them on Youtube. Now I'm making amplifiers from cigar boxes and a custom made case for the guitars. Making a bass drum from an old suitcase - it just gets weirder and more exciting all the time. I have people looking at my stuff from all over the world and e-mails from strangers who have become cbg buddies. Brilliant but bizarre when you stop and think about it and all this from a casual mooch on Ebay.

So how much weirder can this get. Well I had this bizarre thought today. How about a giant cigar box coffin? I can just see it now, a 6 foot long Monte Christo box with SMOJO written on the side and "Baby please don't go" playing on a CBG as it slowly disappears through the curtains and on to the incinerator. Talk about "smokin".

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Serendipity