Getting Started

The summer of 1971 I had just graduated high school. A family friend, and man who had bought some properties from my dad, had asked me to check on his two cabins periodically through the summer. The reason for this is that a year before, someone had taken a truck to one of them and taken almost all his furniture and other items from the fairly secluded cabin. In the fall he paid me an amount for the summer. From this pay I kept out about $90 to be used to buy a guitar.
I added another $10.00 in the spring and went to see Cecil Lance at Lance Dry Goods and Music Store. He had a nice little Yamaha FG180, but wanted to get $130 for it and the chipboard case. I went to my dad to see about getting the difference from him. He called Cecil and negotiated it down to $110 and I went to pick up my new guitar.
So the spring quarter of my freshman year at UGA, I began my road to playing music. I listened especially to everything John Denver came out with and tried my best to learn some of his music. Vocally it was way beyond me, and instrumentally was also beyond my abilities at the time. Still I worked on songs such as House of Rising Sun, Blowing in the Wind, Proud Mary, and some folk songs. Some friends would kid me about the 3 songs I knew. This did not bother me as I was working on more songs, was proud to know at least three, and knew that was more than they could do.
For most of my life I had been drawn to music for reasons that I did not understand. But it was pursuing me and now I was pursuing it. My dad had bought a fiddle for me before I started to school. I still have that fiddle and will tell you more about it later. I also had an old Stella guitar. Unfortunately, it had a warped neck and was almost impossible to fret. My new Yamaha allowed me to really start trying to play music.
David Buchanan and I were already friends from high school and our parents house was about 200 yards apart. David worked as a lifeguard at Vogel in the summers. My family put in a swimming pool at our house, mainly for my younger sister. She and her friends would use the pool during the day. I and my friends would use the pool at night, often at 11:00 pm, midnight and even later. The pool was heated, which helped, since the night air was usually around 60 degrees or cooler.
David already new some guitar and had been playing some around church, and school chorus. At that time we decided to work some together on music. This started a musical partnership that has lasted ever since, with several different incarnations, and a few times performing apart as well.
The first incarnation of performing with David came as the Blood Mountain Boys. That began after I had taken up the banjo and he had begun to play the mandolin. We picked up Mike Toms of Warner Robins on guitar and lead vocals, as well as another Blairsville friend Rusty McClure on bass and bass vocals, as well as being all our entertainment with his humor and funny stunts. Later we added Steve Colwell on guitar and vocals, and even later Mike's friend Jay Bryant joined us.
Over the years I have mentally beat myself up for all the time I spent on music, instead of concentrating on working to make more money. The bottom line is that the music has been at least as important to my life as money could ever have been. It would be hard to imagine my life without the music in it. I have been happiest on stage, though I still get a little nervous before going on. Once started, I feel at home.
I have now gone through several instruments and have the best guitar I have ever owned and the one that fits me completely, my Gallagher Doc Watson. I also have a banjo that I expect to stay with from now on as well, a GTR copy of a pre-war Gibson Mastertone. It is wonderful to play on these outstanding instruments. It is like that feeling I got when I first played on that Yamaha and realized a dream to play a guitar. I am a long way from playing as well as I want to still, but a long way from that beginning. If I could have heard how I play now when I started, I would have thought "If I could only play that well, I would be happy". Satisfaction with how you play is a moving line. I am happy to be where I am, but feel a strong desire to continue to improve.