we'll always challenge the thought that there's one way to understand God
we'll always value grace and respect
we'll always have something that's ours and nobody else's
we'll always do our best to share it with everyone
we'll always fail
we'll always succeed
we'll always value our character over our words
we'll always forget everything we value
we'll always remember everything we despise
we'll always be perfectly flawed
we'll always be

this is my music room, condensed for sake of the photo. i started collecting instruments about a year and a half ago. i started with a cheap little acoustic yamaha my ex-fiancee gave me. pretty soon thereafter i met a good friend who brought his guitar over to my house and we started playing together. then one day he showed up with some tiny children's toy accordion he had from when he was a kid. and i think that's about when things got a little nuts. i really like the old instruments, as far as quality sound and performance goes, they just can't be beat. i think it has a lot to do with the amount of handcrafted care that went into making things back in the day. nowadays materials are cheaper and weaker, production is faster, and quality is watered down. not to say you can't get a good new instrument these days, but something about the old ones just trumps the new ones any day of the week, in my opinion.

in case you were wondering, the big church organ you see on the left in the photo is an estey H model pump organ, from 1930. it has two big bellows in the base, powered by alternately pushing two pedals with your feet to generate air to blow through the reeds. i recently acquired it, and i'm in the process of restoring it. the organ on the right is a hammond L-133, circa late 1960's. i'm looking for a leslie cabinet for it, to get that hammond B3 vibrato that hammond decided to cut back on for some reason after the B series. the weird triangle instrument sitting on the bench is a balalaika, basically a russian ukelele. it has 3 strings, and a really cool sound you just have to hear. the weird thing on the ground to the right of the mandolin is called an autoharp. there's a series of bars that run across all the strings that hold down different combinations to make various chords. the small wooden box with the keys and buttons on it sitting on the floor in the middle of the photo is a weird little compressed air organ i got from an old roomate. it has a switch on the back that turns on the small compressor. there's buttons on the left for chords, a major row and a minor row, and the sound that comes out of it is nothing less than eerie. and i'm sure you all know what an accordion is, but i just have to give a moment of limelight to my baby, affectionately named Serena, my late 50's italian contello. she was in the basement of a church for over 20 years, and came right out of her ricky ricardo tweed case sounding like new. there's something about these instruments that really make a shitty day seem ok, i don't know what it is, but they pacify me. in this digital age, where everything is plastic, pre-fab, and pre-packaged, it gives me something solid, true, and real, a feeling of authenticity that i can touch and interact with. i hope i'm blessed enough to own more and different ones as time moves on. viva analog!!!!

*not in photo - sonovox accordion by sonola, on loan to a good friend

- argentinian thumb piano, various kazoos, whistles, harmonicas, and homemade percussive instruments that also just wouldn't fit in the photo, i don't have a wide angle lens on my camera yet.

the days of old savannah

at the tender age of twelve
my father went to hell
my mother decided we would flee
she'd have no more carolina
left the memory behind her
found savannah in 1873

so we landed on our feet
on a dirty cobblestone street
my mother worked hard down at the mill
but i turned a different leaf
learned as a petty thief
on how to drink hard and rob a till

and so it would be
for a year, or two or three
there's a grain of sand for every tear
shed by my poor mother
i forsaked her and my brother
for fellow urchins at ports and piers

then came a fateful day
sometime in early may
the yellow fever came in on the breeze
that's how my family died
tears stained their yellow hide
as i slept off my drink beneath the trees

that night i found myself
alone drinking to my health
down by the ol' river at an inn
and almost instantly
i was in the company
of tattoos , scars, and evil grins

all i recall of that night
is a blur of pure delight
plenty backslaps and friendly cheer
but unbeknownst to me
my new company
had poured a strange vile into my beer

suddenly i awoke
and began to cough and choke
i tried in vain to hide from the light
i couldn't understand
there's wood where there should be sand
the ground moves from right to left
left to right

i scrambled to my feet to fight
before i regained my sight
i heard men roar with laughter and a whip
i felt a lash across my side
i had been shanghaied
far out to sea on a filthy pirate ship

i plotted mutiny
one man agreed with me
oh i was so young and naiive
he sold me out that day
what a foolish thing to say
to gain mercy of the captain's reprieve

so i was put on the plank
my throat slashed with the shank
my lungs were punctured so i couldn't float
i turned and looked at him
it was now my turn to grin
as i jumped to the hungry sharks below

now captain's in his bed
two pillows beneath his head
his wife is sitting closely by
it kills her to see this man
whimpering with shaky hands
who was so fearless, now so afraid to die

he wrings the sheets and moans
he feels a chill to the very bone
his eyes roll madly in his skull
because he sees me here
and those he slew across the years
there's more than barnacles on the hull

those throats he cut with glee
when he was a slave like me
all stand ready holding knives
and rotting ladies press
against his bed in their finest dress
the count is all 15 former wives

and we all move in with glee
decaying jaws and missing teeth
reach out to him like we know him well
we all scramble over each other
like a child yearning for it's mother
to be the first to drag him down to hell

words

"Fast, Cheap, and Good...pick two. if it's fast and cheap it won't be good. if it's cheap and good it won't be fast. if it's fast and good it won't be cheap."

- Jim Jarmusch