Where do guitarists go when they die?
You see, I have this issue with good friends who play guitar dying on me. Recently, a friend Chad has passed away. I don’t know the whole story yet and I don’t know all the details. What I do know is that he is not the first. My best friend through my teenage years, fellow guitarist, band mate, red team goalie, and partner in all thing humorous passed on ten years ago now.
His name was Chris. I gave my only son his name. This is hard for people to comprehend because, well, my name is Chris. Everyone assumes that my son carries my name.
Chris and I met in high school. Me in grade 9 and him a year ahead. We hit it off instantly. Within hours of meeting, Chris demanded that I join his band. After much equipment trouble on the first practice, I was on the way out already. We hadn’t clicked on anything yet. Then, magic. One riff, one hook. That was all it took. He played a backing track and I played a lead lick that I had written several weeks before. They were meant for each other. They belonged, they fit. In our world of outcasts and oddballs, we had managed to find belonging. In our world of mismatched notes, ours had found their complement. It became our jam track.
We would start every practice from then on with “The Ballad of Monkeydog”. We would play the same riff and then improvise leads over top of it until we felt we were ready to rock. Sometimes we could jam this song for 20 minutes when the groove was just right.
For the tenth anniversary of Chris’s death, i decided to record that song. I played the backing track and then looped it on my iMac. I sat down and played a lead lick. For the next 7 or so minutes I played something that I have never been able to duplicate. I can’t even figure out what I played. Divine inspiration? Maybe.
On that anniversary I had placed some tweets about missing my friend. They were sad, yet humorous. Emotional, yet subdued. The first to respond to them was a man by the name of Chad Haverfield. We had shared some dialogue previously but this was where we really connected. He asked to hear the song, I obliged. He told me he was going to figure it out and play it for me one day. He never did.
Chad was a gifted writer of words. He wrote some of my web copy, he wrote my B2Cy formula. Chris was a gifted writer of music. His notes fueled my fingers. Both so gifted, both gone too early.
I would like to think that wherever he is now, he’s playing that song with Chris. Someday I will join them, hopefully not to soon. I’m going to give them time to get acquainted. And when I do get there, all heck is going to break loose into the biggest damn jam you’ll ever see.
