Some of us have that one guitar passed down from our fathers. It may not be such a valuable instrument, yet it sometimes gets a rare exhibition. It offers a family heritage of music playing and brings genuine memories to mind. So here it is, a story of one of my dad's old guitars.

In the year 2020, this particular guitar turned 50 years old. The brand is a Grade no 2 García by the company Antigua Casa Sherry-Brener Ltd. of Madrid. It was assembled in Japan with its various guitar components from all over the world as you can see written on the inner label. Photos by the lovely Twila Allen. The top is Spanish pine, back and sides are maple, and the neck is cedar with a granadillo fingerboard. I had to replace the tuners as they had become worn and unusable. Nothing too fancy really, but still an instrument with a little bit of mojo and family history.

I cannot say for certain, but I know my dad acquired this guitar prior to being drafted to Vietnam. He wasn't good about sharing details about his life during that time, but I do know that this guitar traveled with him to Germany, where he served in the army for some duration of the war. At some point during his stay, possibly near his departure from the base where he was stationed, this guitar was stolen. When he made it back to Fort Campbell Kentucky, the guitar also ended up back in his hands. I cannot imagine what it was like to get something back as easily as it was stolen! The locked guitar case was torn open and the guitar headstock was pulled out of the case as if they were trying to remove it from the top part of the case, which makes no sense and is somewhat impossible. It had some pretty good scuffs on the neck and the thief tried to remove it unsuccessfully. Perhaps he was caught in the act by somebody and gave up quickly on what he was trying to do. Nevertheless, this guitar ended up with my father and hung in his bedroom for many years. It ended up with me years later.

My parents divorced when I was young, and I visited my dad on the weekends. I can vividly remember this guitar hanging on the smoke-stained wall by a single nail. A golden string was tied through the slotted headstock of the guitar and wrapped around the nail that housed it in place. Little did the guitar know that it would one day be picked up by his son and remarkable music would be made on it.

I learned general classical guitar on this instrument with its thick 2-inch wide neck and black-diamond nylon guitar strings. I also used it to replicate the sound of Eric Clapton’s, Tears in Heaven, when it was released. Later in high school, I remember learning to finger-pick The Beatle’s song, Yesterday, on this guitar. I remember playing it much faster than it needed to be, as to impress the people I played for. The guitar turned out to be a good guitar for me to play and learn on.

Fast Forward to 2017.

2017 was a pivotable year for me when my music started to take off on streaming services. I had some success with Pandora radio and had just gotten my music on a Spotify Editorial playlist called Peaceful Guitar. Getting on to Peaceful Guitar playlist was a huge thing for me! I would compare it to having a hit song but in a niche instrumental genre. People were streaming my tune, Rest Your Way Home (a song I dedicated to my father) over 3000 times daily! It was incredible! At one point, I had over 1 million monthly listeners! Never in my life did I think that many people would listen to my music!

I wanted to replicate that success. Noticing that most of the songs on the playlist were done with a nylon string guitar reminded me that I had one that I hadn’t played in years! It was my dad’s guitar, hiding in a closet of my new house that we had gotten in 2016.

I grabbed the guitar and set up a makeshift studio in my living room. It was a one microphone set-up and I used Garageband (a general recording software on my MacBook Pro) to record.

I had this little idea that was very moody and captivating. It reminded me of a Spanish-style song you might hear at some sort of dinner round table or perhaps at a memorial of a famous soldier who has passed. I honestly had no idea, so I hit record and played this idea one time through. I listened back and wasn’t bothered by the slight noise of my refrigerator in the background. I covered it up with some simple reverb and compression. It was raining out that day, so I took my dad’s guitar and laid it out in the grass. While it collected some raindrops, I took a photo with my iPhone. I decided to name the song I had just recorded, Raining Slowly. I used a photo editing app to put the text on the photo and I exported and uploaded everything to a music distributor called DistroKid. It was a Tuesday and I did not set it to have a release date. I woke up on Thursday morning to see my song on Spotify, getting 3000+ streams on its first day. I found the good news that it was placed on the coveted Peaceful Guitar playlist! There it remained on the playlist all the way to 2020 just before Covid slowed everything down. All of my songs were removed at that time, but it didn’t hurt as I had found many fans that continued listening to my music and the sting of losing my playlist placement wasn’t as bad as it could have been early on.

You see, maybe my dad’s guitar has some special magic in it. Even though he passed in 2010, his spirit remains in me, and quite possibly in this brown guitar, which now hangs on my wall by the same golden string.

Raining slowly

My Father’s Guitar