Electric axe

This is my main electric guitar. It's a Yamaha Pacifica. The cat, of course, is none other than Flintlock himself, shooting his magic blue shit out of his claw. On the other hand, he's been de-clawed in the front, so where the blue shit comes from is beyond me...

A nice skully rattle

...that the missus got me a few years ago. Looks good on the Vodou Drum, n'est pas?

Kalimba 3

Here's a homemade kalimba using a coconut body, luan sounding board, an electrician's grounding bar as the bridge, and garden rake tines as the, uh, tines. The "buzzies" are from an old vegetable steamer.

In other news, I have to admit that I am winding down. I am frankly scraping the bottom of the barrel for goodies to blog about, and I'm afraid I won't make it until August (365 days). I've learned that 365 days of anything is a lot of things. I will continue on for a few more weeks, and I have a couple of interesting goodies left to show, but the end is near, dear readers.

I intend for my last post to be a panoramic image of the room I call "Flintlock's Arsenal", where most of my goodies are housed. When that day arrives, I shall also announce my next blog project, which will be quite different from, yet keeping with the aesthetic of, this one.

Another Djembe

A modern, mass produced one, but with great tonality and depth.

Kalimba 2

Another Kalimba. This one is handmade in Africa, but is probably a tourist item, since it doesn't have the rich overtones of the real deals. That said, this one produces some interesting tone colors, and it sounds nice in my homemade kalimba orchestra. Note the "buzzies" are little bits of aluminum can wrapped around the butt end of the lamellae. These are all printed in some foriegn (i.e., non English) font.

Washburn guitar

My main acoustic guitar, a Washburn D10S guitar in Caribbean Blue (it's faded to a drak greenish). I added the green/purple abalone shell pick guard as an aftermarket upgrade. Sorry the picture doesn't do it justice.

Djembe 1

Here's a little hand drum of African origin. Known as a Djembe (pronounced "Jem-Bee"), this is an hourglass shaped drum similar to the Middle Eastern Doumbek, but can be tuned using the lacings. This is a modern version, with a small (8") diameter head for travel.

At some point, I'd love to host a drum circle with all of my friends and hand drums...

Doumbek 1

Clay-shelled doumbek hand drum of recent make. I love hand drums, and have many of them in the Arsenal.

Kalimba 1

I love musical instruments, and I have made and played many. One of my favorite portable instruments is the m'bira, kalimba, or "thumb piano", a plucked idiophone most often associated with Africa. Virtuoso players such as Stella Chiweshe can make these sing in an ethereal, trance-inducing polyrhythm.

This one is a commercially available facsimile that only scratches the surface of this wonderful class of instruments. This one is nice becasue it fits in my breifcase or backpack, and can be played quietly on a train, hotel room, or park without disturbing anyone.

Big brass shell

This brass shell casing is an old Winchester 10 gauge shotgun shell. It has an interesting story behind it. A few years ago, whilst working for a client at their offices at an old farm house in New Jersey, I found this old shell in what we called "the Muskrat Room". It is one of several artifacts I found on the property, including an old horseshoe nailed to a tree out back.

Fast forward a few years, and I finally got to meet my wife's (then, fiancee's) best friend, Marianne. Marianne was later to become my wife's maid of honor at our wedding. In talking to Marianne, I got to telling her about my job and where I worked. As it happened (it's a small world), the house in which my office was located used to be the home of her (my wife's friend) grandmother. She vividly remembered the house and hunting for Easter eggs in the yard, and she even remembered the "Muskrat Room". She didn't know that my client had bought the house years after the death of her grandparents.

Now here's the spooky part - Marianne also remembered (as a little girl) an old horseshoe that was nailed to a tree in the yard. Well, imagine her surprise when I went into Flintlock's Arsenal and retrieved that very same horseshoe for her to keep. I also gave her an old door lock that we found in the barn out back - probably dating from the original 1700's part of the house.

Well, long after I gave her that old horseshoe, and even after she was my wife's maid of honor, I myself was honored when Marianne asked if I would be willing to officiate at her wedding ceremony. I promptly joined the Universal Life Church, and performed said ceremony on the beach in a beautiful and highly secular exchange of vows. I count this as one of my favorite 10 experiences in my entire life, along with my own marriage and birth of my son.

Back to the shell - this I kept. I now use it as a slide for a lap steel guitar that I refinished last year. Go to my My Space Band page to hear some of my blues music (if not this slide or guitar). I can't play slide with this shell without thinking about the improbable chain of events that surround it.

Hoodoo Voodoo?

This piece represents a wild departure from my usual posts. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I also collect odd, unusual, or "ethnic" musical instruments, which I also play. This overlapping of my interest in weapons and music makes my wunderkammer particularly interesting (at least to me). Also added to the mix is my keen interest in "primitive" religions (and I mean this without value judgment). I dig "voodoo" (and the popular perception thereof), hoodoo, shamanism, African and Asian animism, among others. While not a beleiver of any sort myself, I appreciate the mechanisms by which religion may have come into being, and also the ways in which the African diaspora incorporated European rites into their belief systems fractured by the abhorrent institution of slavery. For example, Haitian Vodou (or Vodun, but never "Voodoo") is intriguing in the way in which it incorporated Catholicism into half-remembered Dahomey beliefs imported by slaves. It's both sad and enlightening. Read Voodoo in Haiti by Alfred Metraux, or the works of Zora Neale Hurston, or even Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou by Donald J. Cosentino to learn more (the latter work is beautifully illustrated).

To this end, today's entry is a wooden drum from Haiti. It is reportedly from the late 1800's, and is by all accounts a drum used in Vodou rites. It stands over 4' tall, and sounds with a deep, booming bass that reverberates in ones thorax. It makes an imposing addition to the arsenal, and complements the weaponry motif with a touch of the Caribbean (along with other artifacts).