Apart from Tania, a Swiss Army knife, an iPad, an iPod and of course iLiner, a travel guitar is essential for me when I’m on the road.\u00a0 It has to be compact, sturdy and able to jam into an overhead bin and yet it must still sound great.\u00a0\u00a0 Not an easy combination.\u00a0 For years I have searched for the perfect balance between sound, weight and cost.\u00a0 Musser, one of my favorite luthiers, custom built me a handmade beauty which sounds superb but looks way too good and I\u2019m always scared someone will nick it.\u00a0 I do take it to Mexico, but I prefer the beautiful Parlor Guitar and a couple of others of his, which are simply exquisite, but of course they are too good to risk. \u00a0A travel guitar needs to take some knocks and not break your heart if it gets pinched. \u00a0I have tried several electric travellers, but then you need to hump all the electronics and you end up playing with headphones or plugging in mini systems which defeats the purpose, which is to play happily while waiting for the wife to get out of the bath.<\/p>\n
To avoid the problem I try and stash guitars round the world in friend\u2019s houses, and I have found kindly disposed guitar shops will hostel them for me, because I don’t like having to haul them on airplanes, I don’t like being in hotels without one and I can\u2019t go for more than a few days without playing because you lose your pads and then it hurts like hell – think of fingering a cheese-grater. \u00a0So this year was a problem.\u00a0 We were off to a wedding in Henley, and then going to Bath and Venice, and it would be at least two weeks before I found my next stashed guitar.\u00a0 Too long.\u00a0\u00a0 And you must sing in Venice, at least to shut up the gondoliers and annoy the tourists, while in Bath\u2026.well there must be a Jane Austen song, or ironically, haven\u2019t I written it yet?<\/p>\n
My lovely luthier friend Danny Ferrington made a beauty of a mini guitar for Jeff Lynne back in The Wilbury days, which I always pick up and admire whenever Jeff permits me to come over and hear his amazing new music (coming this Fall)\u00a0 so I asked Danny to make me one, but that will take him a while.\u00a0 Danny is a sunset man who has his priorities right:\u00a0 and he won\u2019t make a guitar for just anyone\u2026.<\/p>\n
Jeff himself travels with a little rough guitar, which is virtually a plank of wood with a small sound board, which he can chuck into a suitcase, not unlike The Rutles<\/em> guitar I had Danny make for George Harrison, and boy can Jeff make that plank sound great.\u00a0 But then he is Jeff Lynne.\u00a0 I require more help from the guitar, but the Ferrington won’t be ready before the fall, so I faced my usual dilemma, what to take on the road?<\/em><\/p>\n Fortunately this year for my birthday Kevin Nealon, the tall sweet funny man with the banjo, gave me a Gift Card at The Guitar Centre and there I found a guitar as good as almost any I have ever owned. \u00a0It\u2019s a Taylor for less than $400 called a GS Mini, and it’s a real beauty.\u00a0 An absolute cracker.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m crazy about it.\u00a0 I can\u2019t put it down. I can\u2019t wait to\u00a0 pick it up. It sounds great, it\u2019s easy to play, and the acoustics are magnificent. It also comes with a very strong, light, padded, traveling bag, so bless them, they have thought of everything.<\/p>\n I have had Baby Taylor’s before, and even a Baby Grand which I left behind on Tomburoa in Fiji, because the local boys played so well on crap guitars and it was the least I could do, but this GS Mini leaves them all dead in its wake. In fact for pure tone, and for depth and purity of sound it leaves most guitars behind.<\/p>\n I once toured the Taylor factory in San Diego with Clint Black, because I wrote with him a new intro for The Galaxy Song<\/em>, which he recorded for his D\u2019Electrified album.\u00a0 Movingly for both of us it was Clint\u2019s version they played from space\u00a0on the last morning of the Space Shuttle last year.\u00a0 Personally I think they should have played mine but you know these Texans\u2026.Anyway Clint asked for a new intro to the song as opposed to the old Python lyrics:<\/p>\n Whenever life gets you down Mrs. Brown<\/p>\n And things seem hard and tough\u2026.<\/p>\n \u2026.which he felt didn\u2019t apply when he sang it on stage, so together we wrote and recorded this:<\/p>\n When you\u2019re feeling inside out and insecure<\/p>\n And life keeps getting you down<\/p>\n When all life\u2019s daily worries<\/p>\n Hurry through your head<\/p>\n You don\u2019t wanna even get up<\/p>\n You just lie around in bed<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When you feel you just can\u2019t take it anymore<\/p>\n And you wonder what on earth it is all for<\/p>\n Your love life\u2019s like a war zone<\/p>\n Your TV\u2019s on the blink<\/p>\n It\u2019s enough to drive a drinking man<\/p>\n To stop and take a think.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Just remember\u2026etc<\/p>\n (Recorded with Clint Black for Delectrified in 1999) <\/em><\/em><\/p>\n Anyway out of the kindness of his heart Clint gave me a lovely Taylor, and arranged for us to visit the factory, which if you are a guitar freak is fascinating.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s certainly the first time I have ever been in a Board Room where people pulled out guitars for a jam. \u00a0So thanks Brothers Taylor, for this very travelable, very fine guitar, which accompanied me to Henley, Bath, London and Venice, and is now happily accompanying me to Biarritz for a family wedding in a rented Peugeot. The wife is driving, Clint Black is on the CD player, and life is good….<\/p>\n Just remember\u2026.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Apart from Tania, a Swiss Army knife, an iPad, an iPod and of course iLiner, a travel guitar is essential for me when I’m on the road.\u00a0 It has to be compact, sturdy and able to jam into an overhead bin and yet it must still sound great.\u00a0\u00a0 Not an easy combination.\u00a0 For years I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions\/181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericidle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}