Just Wanted to Learn

by William Swafford

  “You suck,” he said again.

  The guy sat in his chair and laughed. He had gotten the attention of the others in the bar. They escorted the guy out of the bar.

  My dad got up and played. I did follow along on the guitar, but I didn’t sing anymore.

  We had gone back to that small bar several of times. I didn’t see the rude guy anymore. Then there was another bar diagonal to the small bar on the four way stop.

  My dad had made sure that we had played at both bars.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I kept practicing my singing and my guitar. Then I got a chance to do something that I had wanted to do for awhile. I wanted to build my own guitar.

  I had bought this kit out of a magazine for four-hundred-and-fifty dollars. It had come with the body and neck, pickups and switches on the pick guard. I got the gold plated tuning knobs and bridge.

  The body and neck was already cut in shape. They just needed painted. I didn’t have the tools to give it a good paint job or know anyone that did. I also couldn’t do any painting in the motel room.

  I decided to just use a wood finish on it. Then use only Tung oil on the neck. To finish up I would just have to put it together.

  I had to do it in my brother’s basement of his house. He lived thirty minutes away out in the country. If it wasn’t for the drive there and back, it would have been the best place to do what I needed to do.

  It took a few days to apply the several coats of finish to the body and then the Tung oil on the neck. I took steel wool to both for each coat. After they were both done, I took the pieces back to the motel.

  The whole time I did this I thought of my dad. I wanted to put together a guitar that my dad would be proud to play. I wanted him to be jealous of the guitar that I put together.

  I couldn’t wait to get started once I was back at the motel. I got high first and then I got started. That wasn’t the best idea that I had. I didn’t think clearly about what I was doing.

  I had started with the body and neck. This wasn’t where I should have started. This should have been my last step. I didn’t know what I was doing.

  I slid the neck into the body. Then put the gold plated neck plate on the back with the gold plated screws. I tried to go slow that way I wouldn’t crack the body.

  This is what I should have done first. I screwed down the bridge. The pickups and knobs were already hooked up to the pick guard. I just sat it in place and screwed it down.

  Then I put the gold tuning knobs on the neck which should have been done also before the neck and body was put together. I striped most of the screws on the tuning knobs.

  I finished it off by putting on a new set of strings. I wish that I could say that I was fully excited about finishing up, but I wasn’t. There was something keeping me from feeling good about it.

  I still had hopes of it being a great guitar, but it didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like it was mine. I had feeling that something wasn’t going to be right.

  I didn’t build the guitar from the scratch. I didn’t fully put it together. It wasn’t my creation. I just gave life to someone else’s design.

  My nervous were shot. I was afraid to even try the guitar out. I knew how I would feel if the guitar really sucked.

  After I had put the strings on, I put my fingers around the neck. I didn’t like how it felt. The fret board was flat and the frets set up too high. There was too much tension on the strings.

  When I had plugged it into the amp, I wasn’t satisfied. I didn’t like how it sounded. I didn’t know what to do.

  I got frustrated. There wasn’t anything I could do with it. I had never known much about electric guitars.

  I didn’t even play a full song on the guitar before I put it down. I felt bad. It was a waste of money and time.

  It took a couple of days to show it to my dad. I had painted my last name and the year on the headstock. I wish that I hadn’t done that. It wasn’t something I was proud of.

  My dad didn’t like how it played. He had the same complaints with it as I did. He also said that the intonation needed set too.

  He told me how to set the intonation. I went to the motel and done the best that I could with it. I couldn’t get it to sound like I wanted it to sound like.

  The guitar didn’t get played much. I didn’t even want to look at it. It was something that I wanted to do and feel proud about, but it just hurt my pride instead.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  My dad and I kept playing at the same bar every Wednesday night. It would get boring some nights. Then there were times when different people would come and sit in with us.

  A long hair man came in named Ben. He was a few years older than me and he played bass guitar.

  He had played with my dad before at the bar. I had heard about him in the storied my dad told of the times before I showed up.

  He would get bored with playing all the country music. He wanted to play heavy metal stuff. He wanted to be a heavy metal guy, but he kept the appearance of country with the cowboy hat and things.

  Ben and I didn’t talk too much to each other. The only thing we had in common was that we wanted to play some songs that weren’t country.

  There was an older lady who would come in. She had long hair all done up like a woman would do back in the days. She was full of energy.

  She had the voice for the blues. I love it when we would play Bobby McKee and she would sing.

  My dad would try and plan for people to come in. That way he would have his equipment.

  He would only get his stuff out of pawn when he knew for sure someone was going to show up. The rest of the time it was just him and the guitar.

  This had always upset me. In order for people to take us seriously, we had to take things seriously.

  He would always pawn things off when there wasn’t anything special going on. I wanted to be better than that.

  I needed to get used to playing my guitar loud. I couldn’t do that at the motel.

  My dad would also go out and play on his own if he could find anyone to go with him. All he needed was a vehicle and someone to drive. Serge and my dad would go out sometimes.

  My dad would take his guitar and try to play for drinks. There were times that I wished that I could have gone with him and others I was glad he had gone without me. I would get to hear the stories about it.

  Serge and my dad didn’t have a driver’s license. Serge had lost his license for driving drunk just like my dad had lost his. Serge did have an antique Model T Ford that still required you to hand crank it from the front to get it started. They said that it wasn’t required to have a license to drive one. That’s what they rode in.

  I had taken a ride in this Model T before. We had gone down some back roads. It felt like we were in an old gangster movie.

  Serge and my dad had gone to several bars one day. They were both big drinkers. The two of them together could drink a lot of beer.

  The first couple of bars they were still able to use the hand crank of the old Model T and get going. After a couple of more bars, they didn’t have the same result.

  They had gotten drunk and couldn’t use the crank. They had argued with each other because they couldn’t get it started. People from inside of the bar had to come out and push the Model T to get it started.

  My dad and I had a funny moment in one of my cars too. I had a small 88 four door Caviler. That had a slight problem.

  The car had always been a piece of crap. When my mom had bought it for me, it was supposed to have a bad transmission. I had put a lot of miles on the car.

  My uncle had fixed the fuel pump for me. He had made a mistake and torn off the filter to the new pump. Ever since that happened, my car would run out of gas at a quarter of a tank even though there was still gas.

  We had stopped somewhere while doing some running around. We only were out of the car for a moment and
then got back in.

  I went to start the car but it wouldn’t start. The car was a piece of crap, but it usually started.

  “It’s out of gas,” my dad said.

  “No it’s not,” I said.

  I kept pushing the pedal and turning the key. I didn’t want to be stranded out in the country.

  “It’s not going to start,” he said. He took his cigarettes out of his front overall pocket. “It’s out of gas.”

  “It is not out of gas,” I snapped back.

  He was starting to get on my nerves. I had told him about the fuel pump. Then he wanted to rock back and forth in the car.

  “That’s not going to work,” I said.

  “Yeah it will,” he said.

  I thought that he was just drunk, but we did it anyways. We rocked back and forth this till we got the car moving. I felt like a fool. My dad told me to start the car. The car actually started.

  “I told you,” he said. He took a drink of his beer. “Let’s go.”

  The road had hills and I took it slow. We actually made it back into town and to a gas station.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  My dad still wanted to bring people in to play. We were getting better, but we needed others to form a band to move on.

  I did agree with my dad that we needed to form an actual band. I didn’t know how hard it would be to find people to play with. I didn’t know if people just didn’t have the time, or if it was because my dad didn’t always have the best reputation.

  A guy named Stan had sat in with us. He was a friend of my dad’s. My dad had kept bugging him to play with us.

  He was tall and lean. He had grey hair that he kept in a ponytail. He played a Les Paul and was a good lead guitarist.

  It was cool when we took breaks, because Stan would let me pick on his Les Paul. I had never played on one till then.

  Stan sat in with us for a month, but it really wasn’t what he wanted. My dad wasn’t playing the type of music he wanted to play. We weren’t setup to for Stan to really get into real lead guitar.

  We really weren’t doing anything. We were just playing at the same bar on Wednesday nights.

  We were back to being just two. There were times that it would get boring and frustrating for me. The good times were getting hard to come by.

  My dad and I did get to play at some cool places. They all didn’t go like we had expected, but they were good experiences.

  We had gotten to play at Stan’s brother’s yearly party. It cost five dollars to get in unless you were playing music. They roasted a hog, had beer, and a stage for the bands. There were a lot of people.

  Steve, Stan’s brother, had dark black hair. He was all about riding bikes. He had a three wheel motorcycle that he had built himself.

  We had walked around before the music was supposed to start. I had just followed my dad around. I had never been at a party with that many people before. I didn’t know anyone except for my dad’s friend Serge.

  There were several bands that played that night, and then there was my dad and I. I was a little embarrassed about getting on stage.

  The rest were full bands. They all had their acts together. They played newer music.

  We had got up on stage. My dad in his suspenders, tee shirt, jeans cut off to shorts, and hat, plus he was drunk. We had played the same old music.

  We did the best we could. It was the first time that I had played in a large amount of people.

  We walked around afterwards. My dad’s friend Serge was there. My dad had cost him fifty dollars.

  There was a young guy there. He was trying to get Serge to arm wrestling him. Serge didn’t want to. The guy said that he would bet fifty dollars that he could beat him.

  My dad kept telling Serge to do it. He wouldn’t stop till Serge did. Serge didn’t win.

  Serge wouldn’t talk to my dad for the rest of the night. I don’t blame him. My dad had embarrassed him and also cost him fifty dollars.

  We got to play at a bikers’ clubhouse that was out in the country. My dad had played for them before. They had offered to pay us a hundred dollars.

  My dad wouldn’t take the money. I couldn’t believe it. He was always the one saying that we needed to start making some money.

  “We don’t want your money,” my dad said.

  That wasn’t what I was thinking. The money would have been nice.

  “What do you want then?” a guy said.

  “Just get me a bottle of whiskey,” my dad said.

  What about me? I thought to myself.

  They had agreed to it. Two guys drove an hour to get a bottle of whiskey. I didn’t get anything out of the deal.

  It was bikes, women, weed, and beer. We sat around the fire and played.

  We smoked weed while we played. I didn’t even have to stop playing. People would walk up and put a joint in my mouth. I would take a few hits off of it and then they would take it back.

  They liked the music that we played. They even liked the couple of songs that I had to sing.

  I would have never thought I would have been in that kind of atmosphere. I had always heard of my dad playing for biker gangs, but had never seen it. I had a good time.

  We had a chance to play at a bar that we had never played at before. I had driven past the bar a lot, but had never been inside. The place wasn’t something that we were used to, but it could have been a good thing for us.

  My dad had met a guy who did the promoting and advertising for a beer company in the area. He arranged for my dad and I to play at a bar outside of town. He was doing a promotion thing for his company.

  It was a nice sports bar. It wasn’t a bar that we were used to being in. I was really nervous and I think my dad was too.

  I had no idea how things were going to turn out. The people weren’t the kind that my dad was used to playing for. They weren’t rowdy redneck country folks.

  My dad had a little too much to drink. He had been drinking beer the whole ride. Then he got Jack and Coke as soon as we walked into the bar. It had showed when we got on stage.

  He had a hard time sitting on the stool. He had spilled his Jack and Coke which got everyone’s attention. Then he ended up breaking a string. People didn’t know what to think. I was embarrassed.

  I always thought that he broke the string on purpose. I believe that he was embarrassed too, but just didn’t want to admit it and wanted to leave before it got worse.

  We didn’t have a good night. The guy never helped us out again.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  We still had the same bar to play at on the same night of the week and playing the same thing. Then Bill came into the picture. This had set me back in what I wanted to do.

  Bill was tall and well built. He tried to be a country boy. He liked to get rowdy. There weren’t too many people that would stand up to him.

  I had seen him around town before. He was older than me and I didn’t know anyone that hung around him. This was the first time I had seen him since high school.

  Bill could sing and play enough on the guitar to get by at the house. He couldn’t play the guitar well enough to follow us.

  The thing about Bill was he could only do five songs. After he sang his five songs, there wasn’t anything else he could do. After a few hours and new people had come in, then he could redo his five songs.

  It had me upset. I had still been working on my singing. I still didn’t get the attention that Bill did from the people or my dad.

  It wasn’t Bill’s fault for how my dad was treating him. It did cause me not to want to be friends with him at first.

  It had become my responsibility to help my dad make him sound good. It was a responsibility that I either did or I didn’t play with my dad.

  Bill had liked my black acoustic that my mom had bought me. I didn’t really want to sell it, but I did anyways. It didn’t get played as much as it did whe
n I owned it. I kept the hard shell case that had come with it, because I was using it for my twelve string guitar.

  The three of us went around and played for a while. People liked to hear them both sing. They did well for the most part. That was if they didn’t have too much drink.

  My dad would sing the old country songs. Bill’s five songs were newer country. I just sat back and played guitar.

  Bill’s songs were things people didn’t get to hear my dad to sing. My dad had learned the songs just for Bill to sing. My dad never attempted to do that for me.

  Bill did try to get me to sing more, but my dad wasn’t for it. There was a song that the three of us could harmonize on, but he didn’t like to do it.

  I do admit that I wasn’t close to being the best singer, but I was trying. I was looking for help from my dad, but wasn’t really getting it.

  They both always did a lot of drinking. I have never been a big drinker, so I was sort of the odd man out. I felt like I was only there to drive them around to drink, not play real music.

  My dad wasn’t satisfied with just the three of us. He still had hopes that Ben would want to play more. He did a lot of talking and then there was a band formed.

  It was my dad, Ben, Bill, Dylan, and then me. Dylan was a friend of my dad’s who played the drums. I had problems with things from the start.

  I didn’t have a say in the band name. I didn’t like the name that they had come up with. It was the North Cherokee Band.

  It was there band and I was just there filling up space. I didn’t have any say on the songs that we would play.

  They weren’t going to let me sing at all. I was just a rhythm guitar player. I didn’t even have a choice on the guitar I played.

  I don’t think they would have let me play with them if it wasn’t for my dad. I was never made to feel like I had fit in with the other guys.

  The music wouldn’t let me stop even though I had my problems. I had never done a real band practice before and that took getting used to. I had to get used to everyone being plugged in and getting loud.

  The town that we were staying in always held their annual Derby Days festival. The bar that we played at would always set up a beer gardens and have a draft beer truck come in.