My family is not an especially musical family. My dad has been playing guitar since he was a teenager, my Mom played piano for a little while, one of my sisters played piano as well as flute when she was in high school, and I guess we all played recorder when we were in elementary school. When I was twelve a friend of my parents' son (who was about 15 at the time) had a blues/rock band, in which he played lead guitar, and my parents took me to a show of theirs. I thought this guy was the coolest person I'd ever seen! Much cooler than my Dad who just played Bob Dylan and Van Morrison all day on his acoustic guitar. So, I was convinced that I wanted to be a lead guitarist too.
My dad started me off on his acoustic guitar, and once I was really hooked, we went out and bought a cheap Stratocaster rip-off and an amp. I took lessons for a couple years, and very quickly fell in love with the instrument. After another little while I got an acoustic guitar, and upgraded my electric guitar to a Gibson SG, and later on a Marshall stack.
A friend of mine asked me to play bass for his band. I had hardly ever even picked up a bass guitar before then, but he assured me that it was basically the same thing as guitar, with less strings, and it was a punk band anyways so I just needed to be a fast picker. From there I joined another band, Blackjacket, with whom I went on tour across Canada. (As a side note, it was during that tour that Ceilidh and I spent our first time together just the two of us, when my band played in Nelson, where she was at the time!)
Since then, my electric guitar has been stolen, so I've only been playing acoustic guitar. Which really isn't the end of the world, because I've been listening to a lot more folk lately, and since beginning to write music, the things I write work best on an acoustic guitar anyways.So now I spend my days in the sun, playing guitar and harmonica with my lover.
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