This Old Guitar

I am anything but an idolater. I don't worship things. I don't even place the same emphasis upon things and owning or possessing things that many people do. Things come and they go. This is life on Planet Earth. Things decay and break and are lost or stolen. I cannot possibly recall all of the things that have been in my possession through a lifetime.

But thirty years ago I had an irresistible desire to play guitar and sing songs. I wanted to play well and learned that in order to play well a good instrument is required. Bob Webb advised me about C.F. Martin Guitars and I bought a brand spanking new D-35 [with the three part back and the fingerboard binding] off the shelf in the former Chapman and Hewitt Music Store in London, Ontario with my tax return.

That guitar has been a joy to me from the start and it was yesterday too. It has endured and matured and taken on a resonance that is sweet to my ears and close to my heart where it regularly rests as I play it. This package of wood and wires and glue and metal parts has been one of the greatest gifts I have received from Life. It has been my constant companion though many travels and adventures and all through my complex journey through life and through the world.

Many people buy numerous guitars. I could not afford that in several ways. So I bought one really excellent guitar to play through a lifetime, and perhaps more lifetimes when my guitar gifted son inherits it some day. We have traveled back and forth across the continent numerous times, that guitar and me. We went to many universities together, including Princeton.

We traveled to China together and had a Great Adventure there. We have hitch-hiked together, flown, ridden on trains and boats and in every kind of automobile and truck. The guitar was even hit by a car traveling sixty miles per hours [about 90 km/hr] and flew a hundred feet through the air. It was largely undamaged thanks to the unbreakable original factory case and it was still in tune after that rough ride. The car missed me though! Lol

This Old Guitar brings joy to me, my family, my friends, fellow musicians and countless others who have had the pleasure of hearing it. It's a tool, a toy, a friend and a part of me at this point in our journey together. It has appeared on numerous CDs too.

I even have a little pet name for this sweet lump of wood and wire. I like to think of it as “the best guitar in the country” [Canada]. I certainly have never seen another that I would prefer to own or play. [Although I've always had my eye on a Gretsch Country Gentleman].

A person's instrument is more than a mere possession. It clarifies and carries our hopes and dreams and stories and longings from our minds and hearts to those of others who share our music with us. It moves the feet, the hands, the tongues, the minds and wills of others. It it a special link between imaginations and a medium for communicating the most intensely outrageous or subtle ideas and feelings and impulses.

Music is a tonic for the soul and playing our instruments is important to our health, well-being and the integrity of our minds and souls and bodies and social circles. We should cherish and protect them and respect the ownership of others who also cherish their instruments. They are the wings for our art.

When all friends abandon us and we are alone with our thoughts, feelings, fears and hopes, our instrument will find a way to express the complexities in which we are ensnared and show us the way to freedom. Others will follow, dancing, tapping a foot, singing a chorus and dreaming their own musical dreams.


Jake Willis – Guelph, Canada – February 18, 2009 – Jake Willis Daily

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