Happy National Guitar Day!

In 8th grade, my parents bought me one of the records I’d put on the short list of albums I’d listed on my Christmas wish list. Upon completion of the family present-opening time on Christmas morning, I went up to my room to put it on the turntable in my room. Side A… dang. Side B… dang. Side A again… and so on. I don’t recall what time it was when I headed back downstairs, but I’m pretty sure it was when my mom called me to supper.

Two months later when I turned 13, I took some of my birthday money and spent it on Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy. By this time, it was all over, and I was hooked on what would become a life’s journey: music.

Not fully comprehending the concept of multi-tracking, I was blown away by all of the lead guitar lines Jimmy Page was throwing down. I’d only had a few years of piano and percussion lessons in my life thus far, but I was determined to at least try to figure out what kind of necromancy was going on with all this beautiful wall of sound. By the time someone finally explained to me that JP didn’t play all of that stuff simultaneously, I had already taught myself how to play a number of the parts from several LZ songs at the same time on my sister’s beat-up nylon string guitar.

And so it began.

Happy National Guitar Day! This is a little ditty called Bron-Yr-Aur I nicked from Jimmy Page (who, in fairness, probably nicked it from Bert Jansch). In case you need a little guitar in your day.