Some years ago, I was at the Wintergrass festival, jamming away and who should pop through the doorway behind me but Tony Rice! He had to walk right through my jam to go where he was heading. I said “Hey Tony! Can I get a picture with you?”
He agreed, and we posed while a friend took the picture (with a camera, not with a phone). Once more people realized it was Tony Rice, people began rushing towards him like lepers at Lourdes. “Hey Tony Rice! Touch my guitar! Touch my guitar!”. Mr. Rice beat a hasty retreat.
I played in a band for a while with a fiddler named WP Shields who claimed his fiddle had belonged to Bob Wills. I don’t know if it was true, but I think he believed it and I think it inspired him.
It didn’t occur to me to have Tony Rice touch my guitar, but I encountered a similar situation years later at IBMA. The Dillards were coming up to play at the CBA suite, but when they arrived, Rodney Dillard didn’t have a guitar with him.
“Does anybody have a guitar for Rodney?”, somebody said, and I quickly produced mineand now my D28 has Dillard magic built in. Oh, it doesn’t make me play even a little bit better, but I treasure the memory.
I recently saw an episode of Dave Grohl’s Sonic Highways series, and in it, he encountered a piano backstage at the theater where “Austin City Limits” takes place, When Dave hears that Ray Charles had played the piano, he’s in awe, and he’s just like the guys who wanted Tony Rice to touch their guitars.
I don’t believe in magic in the Merlin the Magician sense, but sometimes you can feel something emanating from inanimate objects or places. In Seattle, I saw the guitar Jimi Hendrix played at Woodstock, and it was an absolute thrill to be so close (inches away) from an absolute icon of musical history I stared closely at it, and could imagine Jimi’s long fingers playing the Star Spangled Banner on it. I got goosebumps.
One of the only two times I have had a physical manifestation of stage fright came from such a feeling. I had a show at a local music hall whose stage and green room (I’m a big fan of green rooms) had seen the likes of Jerry Garcia, Carlos Santana and other musical giants. I had to sit down for a while in that legendary green room and concentrate on not hyperventilating. The history of the place was overwhelming me, and thought of being on that stage shook me up a bit.
I think most people have encountered things like this – when places or things take on a talisman-like quality. Probably not detectable by scientific instruments, but still real enough!
