Leatherman: Don't Leave Home Without It

I play at church, two services every other Sunday. This Sunday, as I'm getting ready to play second service, my strap falls off the neck-side strap lock. This suddenly drops the neck and puts all the weight on the tail strap button, and the screw hole was all but stripped, and with this sudden weight, just came out.

It was easy to get the neck button back to normal, although this does argue that the Grolsch/Dalco solution is preferable to Schaller straplocks, but I won't go there too far, because the urgent issue is the second button. Here, I pull out the trustly Leatherman and screw a new hole in the already-tortured end of my Tele. I tell the worship leader, "Hold on until I finish", but I was not a reason for delay.

I did notice before too long that my high E was halfway to F, but I could lay out and tune up with the tuner pedal during the first verse and come in strong on the chorus, so I count it as a win.

A Leatherman (or other multitool) is great for these kind of last-minute things. Don't leave home without one.

Roger and "Clarence" Together Again

I think, if you want to quickly grab all the trends in Rock through the 1960s, you can pick up everything you need by getting all the Byrds and all the Yardbirds. Every trend is represented. While the known songs from the Byrds are the early Byrds, my favorite era is Sweetheart of the Rodeo and after, the less vocal-harmony-oriented and more jam-bandish version, mostly with the masterful guitar work of Clarence White and his B-Bender. Marty Stuart has had Clarence White's B-Bender Tele as his #1 Tele for years now.

Here we have Marty and his band, the Fabulous Superlatives (which has to be the best band name ever!) backing Roger at the Grand Old Opry, doing a very true-to-the-Byrds take on Dylan's "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere".