I’ve never really looked at myself as a guitarist. I just happen to play the guitar. There are many, many, many guys that can really PLAY THE GUITAR. I have just looked at someone who’s participating in music through the guitar. It’s only really been in the last 5 years that I think I’ve actually developed into a guitar player. I didn’t even really understand tablature until about 2000. There lives a certain breed of guitarists who owns every video, book, magazine and seem to collect every vintage pedal, amp, and guitar and participate in all of the discussion groups, message boards, and forums concerning our 6 string obsession. I am not one those BUT I’M NOT KNOCKING THEM EITHER. My geeking lies in different areas; theory, music history, and my album collection! Now, that’s not to say that I’m not interested in guitar sounds and tone, quite the opposite. I have spent countless hours and dollars trying to get a great sound and I’m thankful to the endless supply of information online to help me investigate these things. It’s only recently that I’ve been nuturing my inner guitar geek.

First off, my guitars:

Washburn H335 semi-hollow body electric. This is one of my most special guitars. I won this guitar when I was 14 from the Lionel Hampton jazz festival for winning the “soloist” category. Basically, you play 2 tunes with a trio with you as the featured instrument. There were all types of instrumentalists competing in this category (saxophonists, bassists, trumpeters, etc.) and I’m guessing if one of them would have won, they would have been presented with an instrument they played. Mine happened to be this Washburn. This guitar was later stolen from me and I found it on EBay. It was about 6 months after the guitar was stolen from me, I was online one night. This was when Ebay was new and I’d heard about this online auction site. I decided to have a look and bingo, up came my guitar. It said it was located in Victoria. I called the police and they suggested I buy it and when I got the guy’s email, they would get in touch with him and get the guitar back. Turns out that this guy bought it legitimately at a pawn shop in Vancouver, it just sort of slipped through the cracks. Anyways, I got it back. I have since replaced the electronics on the guitar with a Gibson Humbucker in the neck and a Seymour Duncan Jeff Beck in the bridge. I’ve used this guitar on jazz gigs and Lee Aaron Metal Queen gigs and it rips. As a jazz guitarist, I’ve always played hollow bodies and they are the guitars that I’m the most comfortable with regardless of the style of music I’m playing. I always feel a bit like Alex Lifeson in the 70′s playing all that great rock stuff on a hollow body.

Gibson ES 175. This is my baby. I love this guitar although it once suffered an injury and it has yet to get into the regular rotation. I was adjusting the truss rod and the screw/nut and the threaded end of rod that the screw is on snapped off. I replaced the entire rod, but the neck has yet to comfortable get back to 7 thousandth of a millimeter of relief at the 7th fret.

Gibson ES 135. This guy has been my workhorse through the last 5 years. One of my favorite guitarists is an Isreali guitarist named Ofer Ganor that I went to Berklee with. I hung out and played a couple of times with him and he played one of these guitars. He played it through a pignose and it was such a great sound!!! This is one of my main guitars with Soulstream.

Kinal Stratocaster. I decided that I wanted famed Vancouver guitar builder Mike Kinal to build me a guitar, but I hadn’t decided what to get. My decision came from one of the most unlikely sources: Dr Dre. I have always loved those early NWA (Straight out of Compton) and Snoop Dogg (Doggystyle) albums and the session guitarist for those records had this great strat sound. Growing up, I was obsessed with Stevie Ray and Jimi Hendrix, so a strat was a sound that has always been in my head. Mike builds beautiful instruments and I’m lucky to have this guitar in my collection.

Fender Reissue Japanese Telecaster. I always thought that Andy Summers from the Police had the coolest guitar. In 98 when I saw that Fender had reissued that 50′s sunburst tele with the binding around the edges, I had to have one. While playing Joseph and the Technical Dreamcoat, I met a friend after the show briefly and left the guitar in my car. Someone broke in and stole it along with my Roland Cube 60 amp. I was devastated. I did so much work to that guitar (Gibson Humbucker, Gotoh bridge, Tung Oiled Neck). I looked for years to replace the amp and guitar to no avail, scouring Ebay and Craigslist weekly. A year ago some guy walked into the guitar shop I was teaching at with one and I ended up replacing not only the guitar, but also the roland amp a few days later.

Ibanez RG 550. I bought this for the Cirque Pop show at the PNE that required me to play a Joe Satriani tune….plus it just feels so good!!! Everyone should own an Ibanez hockey stick shredder with a Floyd Rose, if for no other reason than fun!

Aria (Made in Spain) nylon string electric acoustic. I bought this at a time when I was just learning how to play classical and fingerstyle in general. When I worked on the cruise ships in 2000 I brought 3 guitars and ended up using this almost exclusively.

Amps:

Vox AC30 2xCCH with Alnico Blue celestion speakers and 2 x 12 extension speaker cabinet with Alnico Blues. The best thing I ever did was buy this amp. I first heard these amps live (aside from the obvious Beatles, U2, Queen, and Radiohead) when I opened for Heart with Lee Aaron. The guitarist had a row of these and his tone was buttery sweet. Then, I heard local guitarist Marc Wyld gushing about the one he just bought and I just happened to be in L&M one day and plugged one in. I just about died. I bought it the next day.

Fender Reissue Twin Reverb. This amp has played over 1000 gigs and sessions for me (think about that….that’s a gig a day for almost 3 years straight!!!). It’s actually literally fallen apart and put back together (thanks Richard at Backline!!) I think I need to make a plaque in its honor.

Roland Cube 60 (old white one). One of the best little amps ever. My old one was one of the orange ones and Darren Radtke installed a push button on/off switch on it when I needed to replace the old toggle type. We just thought it’d be funny. This replacement one that I have actually used to be Dave Sikula’s although I bought it through a consignment at NJAMS through the guy HE sold it to.

Roland Jazz Chorus 120. This was the first real professional guitar amp I ever saw…..ever! When my cousin Gwen got married, the wedding band guitarist had one of these and I’ve held it on a pedestal ever since. I use this in my studio and for the occassional gig. It gets the cleanest clean of any amp.

Peavey Stereo Chorus 212. My second amp ever. The first being a Peavey backstage plus that I loved and kinda wished I still had. I’ve thought about selling this amp a few times, but nostaglia is good sometimes isn’t it?

Pedals:

Because I play so wide a variety of music, including a few cover bands where “nailing the sound” is crucial, I found that I can pretty much cop any tone with these although the Clyde McCoy Vox Wah and the Lexicon LXP 1 are still on the wish list:

Boss TU 2 tuner.

Dunlop Hendrix Wah. Wah is obviously a big part of the funking that I do and I love the gnarlyness of this pedal although the throw takes a little getting used to.

Boss Compressor/Sustainer. I love John Frusciante’s (Red Hot Chili Peppers) really compressed poppy sound on Blood Sugar Sex Magic. I pretty much leave this on always.

Boss Super Chorus. I bought this after the Police concert. No further explanation required.

Ibanez Tube Screamer TS 808. $250 worth of overdrive and worth every penny.

Marshall Guv’Nor. The best distortion and a total steal for $70 (helps ease the pain of the TS808).

MXR Zakk Wylde Overdrive. You can never have enough overdrive/distortion options.

Boss Mega Distortion. I NEVER run this pedal separately – on its own, this pedal sounds like ass but if I run the ZW before the Mega in the chain it totally browns the tone. I keep the settings of the ZW at about 3 for each knob and the only thing I turn up on the MD is the level to about 9 and the the tone and bass I keep at 7. If I want it to feed, I turn the drive on the ZW to 8.

Boss EQ pedal for boost and/tone tweaks for the room or backline amp provided. I can pretty much get “my sound” out of any amp with a few tweaks of this pedal.

MXR Phase 90. I don’t use this too much but it’s good to have on board for things like some of the disco stuff like Car Wash or rock stuff like the 2nd solo in Hotel California or Unchained by Van Halen. Also if there’s a flanger part I need to cop like Are You Gonna Go My Way, the phaser doesn’t usually create any disappointing looks from the band leader and saves me from having to have yet another pedal.

Ernie Ball volume pedal….obvious, but this is probably the most important pedal in the chain. I ride it at 80% for almost everything, 90% to bring out a specific part and 100% for solos. I’ll kick the EQ boost if I need to go any more, but I usually set the amp pretty loud.

Boss DD – 20 giga delay….this thing’s pretty awesome. I MUST have a tap tempo delay unit and this thing is one of the best that I’ve found although I’ve heard great things about the Line 6 one. I keep it on the analog delay patch for everything but I preprogram all of the settings for different rhythms, effect level, and feedback. I run this AFTER the volume so I can do swells and still have it go eniff-eniff-eniff…..but I’m sure you’re all down with the eniff-eniffs. This baby comes in real handy for the obligitory producer request of “…..hey, for this section I was thinking of a U2ish/Coldplay kinda thing here, do you got that type of thing????…..”

Roland GR-33 guitar synth. This is fun for screwing around and inputing stuff into Siballius on my laptop.

I still have my old Boss GT-5 and used it for years and listening to it now, I’m also embarrassed I ever used one. There’s something about those stompboxes that are irreplaceable live.

Lastly is my newly aquired Lexicon LXP – 5. I’m still figuring this out, but essentially it’s a reverb/delay/harmonizer. I really want an LXP-1 if anybody knows where I might get one, lemme know!!!!

So that’s it. Rock on.

First off, let’s get clear on what does it mean to be homeless. I’m not talking about a buddy who’s crashing for a week on your couch until his basement suite is available for him to move into, I’m talking about so called “rough sleepers”. Now to be fair, I know little to nothing of the homeless plight; I mean, this side of seeing Curtis in front of Bar None begging for change. I really have never worked with them or know anything about their life other than what I see and read , although I’m not sure I need to.

It seems to me that there might be a conception of homeless people (even in their own mind or so they would have me believe) that they are down on their luck people that lost their job and had no other alternative than the street. From what I can tell, this isn’t the case. From what I can see there are 3 types of rough sleepers: mentally ill, drug addicts, and 20 something kids who want to stick it to the man.

Many people (friends of mine included) have taken one of three approaches to the homeless and people begging for change: help them by giving them something (food, change, cigarrettes, etc.), not doing anything, or getting in their face about getting a job. I’m not sure that any of these three approaches are particularily effective although I understand the thinking behind each.

I’d like to start my thoughts here by changing the vocabulary a bit. “Homelessness” not only suggests that these individuals are without a home, it also presupposes that they want to have a home. How would you account for the paranoid schizophrenic guy in White Rock then that refuses shelter on the basis of that he thinks the government is trying to capture him and that he believes man should be with nature. Shouldn’t this individual be free to pursue his values? He isn’t harming anyone or anything. Calling him “homeless” would be missing the point/problem.

A capitalist society is truly an amazing thing. I would encourage everyone to read anything by Joseph Heath if you disagree with that statement. Imagine a group of people move into a house together (there was a time in my life where I lived with Jon Bentley, Brad Turner, Scott Tucker, Kelly Brown, Andrew Davies, Darren Radtke, and Sunny Blower all in the same house…..talk about a jazz fraternity!!!). Now most of you know how difficult it can be to manage household chores in a roommate situation. Even when you assign jobs to everyone, there is no guarantee that the other roomates will hold up their end or to the level of expectation that you’d like. The problem is incentive. If your livelihood depended on your ability and quality of doing your chores, things would turn around quite quickly. Also, if you could all divide up the chores to the those that you performed the best at and you found the most satisfying it would be even better. Also, if someone else said that they’d do your job even better than you, it would ensure quality. This is the greatest organizing principles of any society. This is why we enjoy the quality of life that we do. Now what do you do if one of the roommates becomes disadvantaged and can’t perform their job. Well, this begs the question, what is his/her disadvantage?

Philosopher Martha Nussbaum compiled a list of what she considers to be categories of human functioning which if one doesn’t have access to, constitutes a disadvantage. Here is that list:

1. Life – being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length; not dying prematurely, or before one’s life is so reduced as to be not worth living.
2. Bodily health – being able to have good health; to be adequately nourished and sheltered.
3. Bodily integrity – being able to move from place to place freely having one’s bodily boundaries treated as sovereign.
4. Sense, imagination, and thought – being able to express yourself and being able to have experiences.
5. Emotions – being able to have attachments to things and people outside ourselves. Not having emotional development slighted by fear, anxiety, abuse, or neglect.
6. Practical reason – being able to form a conception of the good and top engage in critical reflection about the planning of one’s own life.
7. Affiliation – being able to associate, work, and engage in various forms of interaction with others.
8. Other species – being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature.
9. Play – being able to laugh, play, and enjoy recreational activities
10. Control over one’s environment – being able to participate in political choices. Being able to hold property and employment.
11. Showing gratitude or doing good for others
12. Being able to live in a law abiding fashion
13. Understanding the law

The last three were added from Jonathan Wolff and Avner De-Shalit’s wonderful book “Disadvantage”. All of these disadvantages are based on two premises. Firstly, that these disadvantages are imposed involuntarily. For instance, if someone were to decide that they wanted to only watch Matlock reruns for all of their waking hours, they might make the argument that they are disadvantaged because they don’t have any money, but of course that would be ridiculous. Secondly, these disadvantages are based on capability. A barista at Starbucks may think, I’d like to make the kind of money a doctor makes and cry disadvantage because they make a barista’s salary, whereas if I were a woman in Saudi Arabia I actually couldn’t become a doctor even if I wanted to.

So the question of the “homeless” is what is their disadvantage and is it involuntary? Do yourself a favor, go to the front of the Vogue theater one night and ask yourself if those kids out front of it are disadvantaged or do they just want to smoke pot all day? Then have a look a Curtis, who’s frozen his feet a few times, has a serious crack habit, and is severely mentally ill.

Maybe a better word would be “unemployable”. That brings the problem right into focus. These aren’t people that could sustain a job. I don’t think there is such thing as a functioning meth addict. So what do we do? If we give money to the “homeless” this may help some who are legit, but it also creates a free ride for those who want to not contribute to society’s household chores. What about the ones who are legit, but don’t want government help? Can or should the government force mentally ill to “stay on their meds”?

There is a value to society to help “unemployables”. Less crime, less mentally ill, less poverty, and most importantly perhaps, more human compassion. I would like to see my tax dollars spent for the creation and upkeep of a modest facility that offers mental health and drug abuse assessment, medication, and treatment for rough sleepers….well I suppose for everyone. I wouldn’t force anyone into my facility but I give them incentive to go to it. Dropping off blankets, offering housing, and food is all compassionate, but it’s not providing an incentive to get back into life. There are real solutions now for the drug addicted and mentally ill and we should try to steer people towards that solution. It should sting a bit to be out in the streets and it should feel like the only solution should be to get help.