No one has ever approached me after a gig and ranted and raved about my guitar playing. Well, no one who knew what the hell they were talking about anyway. That’s because honestly, I’m not very good with a guitar. I get by well enough to support my voice and make sounds where there are supposed to be sounds while I’m pretending to be the guitar player in a band.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t spend a lot of time on sound and set up with my instrument. It also doesn’t mean I don’t know anything about guitars, on the contrary, I have a pretty decent collection of git-boxes that hang on my wall and they all get played occasionally. I kinda pride myself on knowing a good deal when I see one and jumping on it, so I have many in my collection.
I haven’t had an attachment, and by attachment I mean a relationship, with a guitar since my first love. She was a hideous concoction of pieces parts I bought when I was 19 years-old with the first real mad money I ever had. I was pouring molten iron at Idaho Falls Foundry and Machine and I received a $600 Christmas bonus my first year there.
I marched down to Chesbro’s music store the very next day and purchased the guitar that would become affectionately known as the FrankenStrat. A Stratocaster neck bolted into an aftermarket Explorer ash body armed with two Dimarrzio humbuckers controlled by aftermarket Telecaster guts.
Frankenstrat!
I learned to actually play on that guitar, spending countless hours in my bedroom running through rudimentary licks and chord progressions and dreaming of one day being a rock star. At the time I never thought about owning another guitar. Ever. I fucking loved that guitar,it was a part of my personality, an extension of who I was.
Eventually, I graduated from playing in my bedroom to performing in bands, and although I never really made it above a bar room level, I was a rock star in my mind every weekend and life was grand. Then, on October 31, 1990, I came home from work while living in Las Vegas to find my house empty. Everything I had worked for all my life had been stolen, including my Frankenstrat.
I had insurance so all my shit was replaced. I even got a brand new shiny 1990 American Standard Stratocaster Plus. But I never loved that guitar, in fact, I never loved another guitar again. After losing the Frankenstrat, I couldn’t let my guard down and love an instrument the way I loved the guitar I spent so many countless hours learning to play.
Like a man who lost a great love and just drifted from girl to girl, I did the same thing with guitars. I had a good job and money so I bought guitars, just like the guy who has emotionless one night stands with drunk barfly’s, trying to fill an emotional need that couldn’t be filled.
Les Pauls, Telecasters, Stratocasters and a plethora of other brands that were just meaningless purchases. I was unwittingly searching for my Frankenstrat to no avail.
Then, in 2007, I bought my very first Gretsch. I got it used off Ebay for next to nothing. The Gretsch line was normally way out of my price range, but they opened a factory in Korea and began producing the Electromatic line for guys like me who couldn’t justify dropping $4000 on a guitar.
The second I plugged it in I was inspired to write new songs and play new lead progressions and change my whole sound. It was like that girl you meet and the sex is so depraved and physical and emotional that you walk around in a daze for weeks. Yeah, it was that good.
But that love, that emotion that only time can solidify and make real, was slow to come. I refused to get attached to another inanimate object after the Frankenstrat loss. I just wouldn’t let myself feel it.
So today I was pounding out some new material and I realized something. After 22 years of loss, and with much drilling and butchering and remaking this Korean built Gretsch into the unique monstrosity it has become, I can truthfully say, I fucking love this guitar.
It is Clarence Worly. It is my sound. It is a part of me.
All I can hope for is that my beloved Korean built butchered Gretsch Electromatic doesn’t get totally destroyed or stolen again.I know that’s a very real risk. If it does, I’m confident I can get past it and move on. But for now, it sure feels great to be in love with a guitar again.

















