My Brother's Guitar
by James Mellick

The other day I was elated to receive a package from my sister-in-law who lives in Gallup, New Mexico. It was my late brother's, 35 year-old Gibson, B-25 12-string which was in mint condition. It is, without a doubt, the most important package I've ever received because the experience was cathartic and redemptive at the same time. I have it for the rest of my life and then I'm willing it back to my niece, Noel, who is currently going in a different direction with music. When I unpacked the precious icon I had new strings and a series of exotic oils and polishes waiting for it.

This was a redemptive experience because prior to 1970 when I put music aside to concentrate on visual art, I had squandered through bad trades and sales some beautiful guitars that were above my ability to play them. In high school and then in college I was driving the Cadillac of guitars on a learner's permit. Getting David's 12-string which was identical to the one that I had, was a small reclamation of my past.

I was a junior in high school when I bought my first guitar from a young female country singer. It was an arch top ES-125 Gibson with "f' holes and yellow sunburst against black. Soon after that, about the time of the British invasion of music, I bought a cherry red, hard body Gibson LPSG, a Les Paul Special from a student for $400.

I went off to college with my Les Paul Special only to find that folk music was the music of choice in academe. The hip, privileged, counter-culture kids from the big city were wearing sandals and blue jeans and played Bob Dylan while the students from small towns still wore matching shirts or sweaters and played Peter Paul and Mary or the New Christy Minstrels.

A group called the New Christy Minstrels did play the gymnasium at our college but there seemed to be few of the original cast so I felt a little cheated. When they took a break, this blind guy guided by a German Shepherd came to the stage and played "Light My Fire". No one knew who he was at the time but Jose Feliciano would go on with the song that made him famous. What did we gringos in the heart of farm country know?

On a trip to St. Louis, on a spur of the moment, I went into a music store and traded my Les Paul Special SG for a Gibson B-25 12-string acoustic guitar by the end of my freshman year. The store manager asked if I realized that I was trading down, but that didn't make any difference to me because the acoustic guitar was in.

At this time my brother David was teaching high school and living at home to earn money for graduate school. He happened to have the identical guitar which was a great match for his new red, Ford Mustang. A memorable summer trip was when we loaded our guitars in the Mustang and took off for Charleston, South Carolina. We were cool, like the TV show "Route 66", but rather than picking up girls he took his camera and made a point to visit every Civil War battle site up the East Coast with the final stop at Gettysburg in Pennsylvania on our way back to Ohio. When we were in a traffic jam on Interstate 80 due to a snow storm, we killed time singing with our guitars.

It may have been the following year in college that I was feeling lonely and depressed. I was out of money so I sold my Gibson 12-string for $50 and hitch hiked 500 miles for a weekend at home. It would be along time before I had a decent guitar again.

And now for the cathartic part of this story.

It is well known that families that sing together often have some of the best harmonies and blending of voices. David and I wrote a few songs and we would sing them together. Given the times, most of them were of the social-political protest genre.

David went on to graduate school at the Ohio State University, married, earned his PhD in philosophy and became a college professor. I married, earned my Master of Fine Arts from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville and taught college in New Hampshire and then in Western New York. After college, I was too busy for music. David held on to his Gibson B-25.

In 1981 I lost my faculty position and moved my family to Columbus, Ohio where David and his wife, Margo provided a home next to them where we could live until we were on our feet again. My spouse, Marcia soon found work in her specialty and I soon became established as a full-time artist in the city.  

In April 1983, David discovered that he had a rare stomach cancer which was terminal and he died in July 1983 at the age of 39. In many ways, for me, that was "the day the music died". David was an amateur painter, a professional philosopher and my best friend. It would be another 17 years before I would pick up a guitar, write songs or perform in front of an audience again.

Soon after David died, Margo, my sister-in-law, was able to adopt a baby girl whom she named Noel. The adoption process was started prior to David discovering he had cancer. After seven years Margo married a doctor who also lost his spouse to cancer and they moved their blended family to Gallup, New Mexico. Baby Noel grew into a beautiful woman with an equally beautiful voice and she is now a student of music at Ohio State.

A few years ago, to overcome the isolation of self-employed country living, I became involved with the praise band of my local church. The band is made up of music professionals, semi-professionals, former rock n' rollers and amateurs like me who are carried by the talent that surrounds them. I'm sort of the jack of all trades and master of none when it comes to music and now music was coming back into my life and I had a new song to sing.

I started by providing harmonies and vocals. When the band needed a second electric bass substitute, I bought a cheap bass and amp and learned to play it. Then I purchased a "knock around" Yamaha dreadnought for $100 at an auction and began to write songs again. I joined the Songwriters and Poets Critique of Columbus, Ohio. I then began to do solo gigs of the new songs apart from the band as special music. One of the songs was aired on a local country music station at a fund raising event.

As for the band, at various times I've filled in for guitar and keyboard but most often I provide percussion with an odd assortment of sculptural instruments that I've designed, some like the gadgets the "Blue Men" play. The band now has me learning to play the congas as well.

Outside the band, I get away from plugged in rock with a new interest (tied to my folk days) in the roots music of Bluegrass which is not just for hillbillies anymore as evidenced by the success of Alison Krauss and Union Station. The music is very different from the packaged glitz of Nashville. I get together now and then in regional and local "acoustic jams" and with a local bluegrass group for practice.

There are a lot of guitar players at these events so I decided to purchase a Tacoma, CB-10 acoustic bass which puts out good volume when unplugged and sounds like an upright when plugged in. It is a piece of 3D art in itself.

As the guitar cases begin to take over our bedroom, my wife must be having some second thoughts about my new obsession. I have played my brother's 12-string guitar every evening for the past 10 days. It is a time machine. It is the sound of the New Christy Minstrels; it is a redemptive and cathartic sound out of the past.

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