Music Land- facebook artistry, guitar shop, music for 5 year olds, new recording and a custom Stratocaster

In that order...

1)Here's my Facebook artist page:
http://www.facebook.com/joshuasheltonguitar

2) After teaching guitar lessons for the past 9 months at The B String (http://www.bstringguitars.com/) in downtown Winston-Salem's Arts District, I'm going to work there full time.  I'll do a combination of teaching lessons (guitar, ukulele, bass guitar, clawhammer banjo, lap dulcimer, etc), manning the shop, maintaining the shop's online presence via Facebook and Gbase (for gear selling purposes), and beginning an unofficial apprenticeship in the world of guitar maintenance.  It'll also put me in the thick of Winston's music and arts scene, and I'm hoping to have my rock and roll trio (working title: Josh Shelton and the Primordial Ooohs) going by early this fall.

3) Just finished my first ever week as an Orff music teacher at Camp Oonie Koonie Cha (campooniekooniecha.com).  I know it sounds like a college fraternity but really it's a music camp for 4-7 year olds based on the Orff model (Charles Orff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Orff).  Basically kids sing and use body motions to reinforce the words and melodies, and play lots of fun instruments.  It was Jungle Week so we sang lots of songs about monkeys, crocodiles and whatnot.  It was a pleasure. 

4) In AWESOME news I've been approached by a studio in town regarding a new recording.  The focus will be getting a great recording of two or three of my best songs to send to some hefty music folk in New York and Nashville.  We'll see what happens with the songs and whether a full album will be forthcoming.

5) Stay tuned for pictures of my beautiful custom Stratocaster electric guitar, a work in progress.  Just saw the cocabola fretboard last night; it's breathtaking.  Never knew rock n' roll could be so pretty.

Chasin' gitars, uploading wasn't a word when I was born.

Here with my 1976 Electra x410 Jazz Strad (that wasn't a word 40 years ago) on my knee, I'm adding tunes recorded this summer to my Myspace page

WWW.MYSPACE.COM/JOSHUASHELTONMUSIC

and exploring my uneasy truce with this century. We used to talk to eachother; now I tap plastic squares and a machine interprets thats as letters to transmit into a not-space where others read (or more likely, don't) them. Strange.

Looking at my pretentious writing reminds me how deeply indebted/infected I am to/by the gleat (that's late/great) Kurt Vonnegut, whose arrogance was matched only by his accuracy. To go out on a limb then jump, was the Vonnegut way. Now he flies.

I hope all would listen to my new music at my myspace page, and would hear the music of my friend Will McKindley-Ward in his band Ugly Purple Sweater. These folks really have their act together musically and in the ways it takes to get your music "out there." "Unnecessary quotes."

uglypurplesweater.bandcamp.com

Love to all the blogosphere and beyond,

the gaucho

But how does it read on the john?

THERE'S A NOOK IN MY WATER CLOSET.

That would be the headline if there were a newspaper for my life today.

Last week I broke down and bought my first eReader, the lovely (if admittedly old-school by now) 1st Generation Nook 3G/WiFi unit from Barnes & Noble.

Cut to the chase, Gaucho.

I've been reading via Nook for about four days now. I enjoy it thoroughly, and don't identify very much with those who say "I could never part with my hardcovers." Folks, the ebook police are not going to come to your house and confiscate your hardcovers. And they're not going to quit making new hardcovers any time soon either, however inevitable their eventual demise may seem. You can read your Tom Clancy hardcover in your easy chair, and take your Nook on the road, the plane, but subway, to the soccer game, whatever.

Cut to the chase, Gaucho.

Not until this morning after breakfast did I think what should have been the most thinkable thought the very first time I even HEARD of an e-Reader:

BUT HOW DOES IT READ ON THE JOHN?

As uncouth as we are loathe to be in this day and age, we can still be rather Victorian about some things here in this great land of ours. One such thing is reading on the can. We all do it. OK, all of us who read do it. And if you say you don't, either a) you are lying or b) I pity you, oh how I pity you.

At the risk of being called the Prince of Non-Sequitirs (it's OK, I know you were thinking it) I have recently slung a boatload of guitars around. To clarify- A year ago I bought an electric guitar. A few months later I bought another. Within a month I had traded electric guitar 2, a red one, for another one, green/blue (electric guitar 3- I now own #'s 1 and 3). Not too much later I thought I would sell #3, but I ended up trading it for a 4th, root-beer-brown guitar. I now own electric guitars 1 and 4, but #1 is for sale at Brookstown Stringed Instruments, purveyors of fine...stringed instruments.

With the exception of the red one (#2) (maybe), I played all of these guitars on the john. I have even developed a philosophy of "you really don't know what you think of a guitar until you play it on the john." Some days I take it further- "You really don't know a guitar until you play it on the john."

Cut to the chase, Gaucho.

So this morning I realize that I've apparently been suffering some massive neuro-disconnect in that I had never thought of my Nook or eReaders in general in the same way. Enter today's elimination excursion with attention to education.

The bottom line: Not until after hands were washed and the entire event was over did I even REMEMBER that part of my purpose in there was to see how the Nook reading exprerience in that context compares to a pbook (physical book) experience. It took me a second to realize, but that was a veritable epiphany, and one that fares very well for eReaders- both the devices and their devotees.

So if you did not suffer the same mental eclipse that kept me from wondering about this crucial regard of e-readerdom, wonder no more. You needn't worry that 21st century reading technology will put an end to 20th century reading pleasures.

Happy trails.

Time for a Change

So I'm at work Googling "I hate my job." I don't hate my job. I quite like parts of my job. But I really really don't like parts of my job, and more to the point, I know it's a dead-end street- time to change streets, even if only to join a short street that connects me to some other street...that connects me to the highway I want to join eventually, which I won't know until I get there. Or maybe it's always a web of back roads....In any event-

Google "I hate my job" and you'll actually find oodles of useful perspectives on life, work, career, purpose, satisfaction- big stuff. By far the best I found was a little chestnut called escapingthe9to5.com. The gal's name is Maren Kate and I find myself insanely jealous of what she has accomplished in just a year more than I have on the planet, and perhaps more so by what she AIMS to accomplish by 30. Her site and her posts remind me very much of the life changing book (that I need to re read to keep my life changed) "The Magic of Thinking Big" by David J. Schwartz.

Finding a brand, finding a sound, being so you that no one else can mistake it for anything but....if I could just get my guitar gear settled so I can figure out that sound. In the words of "Ignore Everybody's" Hugh MacLeod- "The idea doesn't have to be big---it just has to be yours."

Happy trails...

the Gaucho Joshua Shelton

The Dream Machine

After pining after this guitar for nearly a year, I am now the proud owner of late 70's Ibanez Les Paul copy that was on consignment at Ralph's shop, King Music Center. This was one of the results of Ibanez flat out plagiarizing (if I can use that word for a guitar) the Les Paul- being sued- and then barely changing enough things so that they couldn't be sued any more.

The guitar came at a high cost- namely selling my (formerly my brother Ben's) SG to Mike "B" Bennett at The B String guitar shop downtown. I hope the "Solid Guitar" is on its way to some other aspiring electric guitarist and it will help them with their music as much as it did me.

The next chapter of the story just happened. I'm currently downtown at Chelsee's cafe, across from the B String. Moments ago I stopped into the guitar shop to show Mike the reason I sold the SG. He had told me before that he is familiar with these Ibanez Les Paul copies, including ones like mine that differ from real Les Pauls mostly in the neck- Gibsons have a "set neck" design where the neck is physically set into the neck (more expensive, stable, and resulting in the incredible note sustain that Les Pauls are famous for); my Ibanez has a "bolt-on" neck (you get the picture) like Fenders, which results in a little bit brighter, snappier sound. The end result is lots of the beefy tone of a Les Paul but with a bit more versatility and brightness like a Stratocaster.



I set the case up on Mike's counter, and a curious look came over his face as I unlatched the top and opened it up. He inspected a few parts of the guitar before concluding that this is the very Ibanez Les Paul copy he had owned and sold at The B String a few years ago!

I'll get my first chance to see how it performs tonight at Elliot's Revue for their weekly jam. So far I am unbelievably pleased with the instrument. With all love and respect for my beloved former axe, this guitar is as much a step up as my acoustic Gibson was from my first guitar, that little Epiphone acoustic-electric some of you remember.

On we go!

the dawning of the age of aquarius

Well really it's not that grand but I did notice today that we are fewer than 18 months from 2012. I am thinking about gathering up non-perishable foodstuffs.

An update...

I continue playing acoustic music with folks in King, NC. I'll have my first real gig with Ralph & Rex McGee, storied musical brothers of Stokes County and beyond, on July 31 in Clemmons. Here's hoping I can hold down my end of things.

Otherwise I'm enjoying electric guitar muchly again, after a hiatus, more or less, from the instrument. Currently I'm looking for other like-minded musicians with which to start an electric outfit, aiming to get rooted with blues and folk-derived music and see where it may go from there. I also have tons of little musical clippets and snippets stored in my loop pedal, and am seeking venues to get some of that stuff out of that box and into other spaces. We'll see.

it has been brought to my attention that the photo below didn't work out right. Here we go again.