Nihil Young

The backstory to this video is the backstory to literally everything else related to this website and everything posted to it by me.

Blame COVID-19.

Having tired of the things that had been passing the time during lockdown, I decided to dust off “my” acoustic guitar. I call it “my” guitar, when in fact it technically belongs to someone else. I’ll cover that in another post. For the sake of this story, I’m going to continue referring to it as “my” guitar since it’s been in my possession for 30 years or so, and I paid to repair it — twice.

I used to own several guitars, and I played frequently. I sold everything I owned back in the early 90s, but kept the acoustic because it wasn’t really mine to begin with. I’d take it out a few times a year, play it for like 15 minutes or until I got frustrated with my diminished skills, and back in the closet it would go.

Faced with ample free time during the spring of 2020, I decided to focus some effort on regaining those skills, so I started playing a bit every day. My fingers hurt like hell, and I was still quite frustrated, but I could tell I was improving. Even better, I was having fun.

I have a neighbor, Chris, whose name will probably be among the 4 or 5 you will see repeated on this site with great regularity, and he is a drummer. Not a professional, but like me, he’s been in a number of bands in his lifetime. He also sings. He and I started getting together every week or so, either on my back deck or on his back patio, socially distanced, and while we’d sip delicious cocktails, I’d play guitar, he’d play a rotating selection of percussion instruments, and we’d both sing and harmonize and enjoy each other’s company.

This is a good time to mention that Chris, one of the kindest and most generous guys you’d ever want to know, is also a retired chef. Yep. Almost all of our acoustic jam cocktail sessions would be accompanied by some “little thing” he made, which was often more delicious and more elegantly presented than anything you’d encounter at a 4-star restaurant. It was not uncommon to hear him say “and a little diced fig” or “there’s some roasted eggplant in there” or “that’s probably the crab” when I probed him on the ingredients. Hard to sing when all you want to do is stuff your face with the delicacies he’d place in front of me.

During one of our sessions, I started strumming the chords to “Heart of Gold”, sort of by accident. I think we ran through the song once, but without any harmonica, and we did not revisit it. But it planted the seed, and a few weeks later I decided to buy a few harmonicas and a couple of harnesses. I had never really played harmonica before (although I did own one that I may have fiddled with once or twice, briefly), and I had definitely never tried to play harmonica while playing guitar.

It was a challenge at first, no doubt. The good news was that by this time, later in the summer, my fingers weren’t quite as sore, and my guitar playing abilities had improved bit, so I could strum a simple chord pattern, like the one in this song, and focus on the harmonica.

I soon discovered that the difference between controlling your breathing while singing and playing guitar, and controlling your breathing while playing harmonica and playing guitar are like night and day. Turns out, this was a good “starter” song. Easy open chords and straightforward harmonica melody.

Days got shorter, air temperatures got cooler, and the jam sessions with Chris ended for the year. Soon it was Halloween season. Thinking it would be fun to actually dress up in costume, and having reached a certain comfort level with this particular tune, the next steps were a foregone conclusion. And without a party to attend, shooting a video to share seemed like a good idea.

Bonus points if you get the name joke/pun.

I’m not sure if I started a tradition here, but I already have something in mind for Halloween 2021. We’ll see how that goes.

All of this — becoming reacquainted with the guitar, playing and singing with Chris, shooting this video — is what led to my decision to buy an electric guitar, which led to my decision to repurpose a storage area in the basement as a “guitar room”, which led to the decision to make that room an actual studio, which led to this website.

Blame COVID-19.