Something I don't think I have shared about yet is the interesting experiences I have had playing music in Mexico. The ability to play guitar and sing has often saved me from those inevitable situations in which you visit a church somewhere and they ask you 30 minutes before the service to preach--a lot of times they ask me to sing a song instead, which is obviously much easier.The fun thing about borrowing instruments, however, is that you never know what you're going to get. I have been handed guitars, for example, with both a nut and a zero fret! Last time I was in Xalapa they asked me to sit in with the worship band, but I hadn't brought my guitar. They had an old Yamaha electric sitting around, along with a tiny Crate amp. I had until then never played electric guitar in public, but I thought that day was as good as any for a debut. Luckily we had arrived early, so I had a few minutes to try to get the thing in tune. Tuning is always an adventure when the strings are old and rusty, but I was able to make it happen, and we had a chance to run through the tunes. The crazy thing was that the lower frets had grooves worn into them so deep that the strings were buzzing on all my open chords, but the tuning got worse the higher up the neck I went. So I was trying to concentrate on avoiding certain notes while also trying to make up harmony vocal parts on the fly. Nothing in the UNT College of Music could have prepared me for stuff like this.
It sort of reminds me of an interview I read one time of Bill Frisell answering the question of how he learned to play the guitar so innovatively and expressively. He said that when he lived in Belgium for a few years in the late 70s he had a hard time finding guitars that played in tune, so he was having to literally bend the neck of the guitar to try to compensate, and that over time taught him to manipulate a new sound out of the instrument. Maybe I'll come back from Mexico someday and play like Bill Frisell. Probably not.
Another fond memory involves me leading worship with a bad roof leak about ten inches from my right arm and having to concentrate on not kicking over the bowl of water it was dripping into. Fun stuff.
