by niftyprose » Wed Feb 15, 2023 6:40 am
This thread made me think of something I read on the back of an album by last-century Scots acoustic duo The Corries.
The Corries were known for turning up at small venues with half a folk museum's worth of fretted and other instruments. Eventually Roy Williamson of the band got fed up with cramming 17 cases in his car and built two instruments he called 'combolins', which had multiple necks, sympathetic strings and The Whole Nine Yards in terms of performance capabilities.
The result, as he ruefully admitted in the sleeve notes, was that The Corries now carried 19 instruments to gigs.
Type "corries river" into YouTube if you want to hear how it worked out.
Over the last six months I've had a ridiculous amount of fun working out some of the Bach cello suites on a Martin LXM tenor, the cheap but now rather rare four-string version of the Ed Sheeran guitar, and I've started learning concertina on an East German instrument that turned up in the local classifieds. Not sure if I'll actually manage to sell off anything expensive, tho.
Best, NP.
"She opened the case of my guitar and placed six fingertips to the pick-ups beneath the strings. She made me a tea from the dried orange skins on her fire, and taught me the way of guitar voodoo." -- Jim Carroll, 'The Book Of Nods'