Category: Thoughts & Ideas

Some of you have wondered about this very weird guitar that shows up from time to time in photos of me. Meet the Twangoleum! 

 I found the Twangoleum hanging in the window of an antique shop in Seattle, on Aurora Avenue in 1969. I nearly drove off the road! Unfortunately the window faced west and got hot in the afternoon. The only case was a green felt bag, and the instrument was pretty warped. Strung up with steel strings heavy enough to support the Brooklyn Bridge. The family who had sold it to the dealer said their father brought it home from Europe at the end of WWI!

It’s had a few periods of being played a LOT. The “alligator tail” prevents it from being barred up the neck, and the intonation was off from the warp in the face. The saddle has been relocated to try to deal with the intonation. In 1973 I handed it, on permanent loan, to Andy Cohen, who was playing a lot on the street. We were both living in Syracuse at the time. He had fallen madly in love with it and eventually gave it its name. Thereafter, I got occasional missives describing their adventures, plus a huge poster touting “A. Morris Meltzer-Cohen, the Twangoleum King” complete with a great photo. He said, “There’s only one of it, so I might as well be king of it.” He played it on the street for years, and it did its job. Lots of people stopped to listen! I had told Andy that if he were ever done with it, he should give it back. I had moved home to Bellingham, Washington state, right after I handed it to Andy. One night around 3 AM I got a phone call that began, “I’m done with it, and I’ve got it a ride.”

“Huh? What? Who?” Well, once we sorted out what “it” was, I learned that the Twangoleum was headed for Port Townsend, Washington. My benefactor stopped in Bellingham on the way to bring my baby back home. 

It’s history with me has a lot of connections with Port Townsend. I think Rick Ruskin had it for a while next. He’s a great player from Seattle. I have a vague recollection of Elizabeth Cotten playing it during one of her visits, during the late 1970s. It’s gotten around!” Kerry Char of Portland did a restoration that included removing the whole fingerboard and sliding it up towards the headstock until it played in tune again. 

John Jackson whittled it a new bridge pin out of a holly twig one morning at the first CENTRUM Blues Workshop in Port Townsend. The old pin had mysteriously disappeared and John wanted to play my baby! John leaned off the porch, broke a twig off a holly bush, and pulled out his pocket knife. The Twangoleum was passed hand-to-hand among a circle of old blues players, who were delighted to feel the alligator tail vibrate against their chests. It takes care to keep from banging the back of your fretting hand against that tail though. Backs of hands have no padding, and it hurts!

We just took the Twango back to Port Townsend for my brother Joe Breskin’s 72nd birthday concert. It never made it as far as the stage, but was passed hand to hand around the audience (lots of players) while we waited for the concert to get underway. (Music actually starts at about 27 minutes in on that concert link.)

A guitar student asked if a finger pattern for guitar that I had taught
her would work for a particular song she loves. This is what I answered:

Angel From Montgomery is a challenging song rhythmically. I’d suggest
finding John Prine playing it on YouTube, and trying to just strum and
sing along. Or if there is someone else’s version you’ve imprinted on, try to play along with that.

On this one, he’s playing in the key of G. You can watch the chords change, (note the F chord!) and even watch his picking hand go up and down. He’s just strumming. But there’s a spot where the chords change unevenly, on “child that’s grown OLD.” If you try to play along, you’ll find you get lost at that spot. It’s because he’s doing something different there. It may take you many hours, or even longer, to sort out just what he’s doing and find a way to play along.

BUT there is a control for speed now on YouTube. Click the gear for settings in the lower right. Click speed. Then try 0.75, or 0.5, or even 0.25. It’s an amazing program which will keep John singing and playing in the same key. His voice will get really slurred, but you can watch that picking hand go up and down. Count how many up and downs before he changes chords. Listen for the accented strums.

His rhythm is loose and the strums vary. The most common pattern is Boom chucka-chucka-chucka (1  2&3&4&). Except it’s a bit syncopated.

Because of the SlowDowner, it’s possible it won’t actually take you many hours. And if it does, that’s normal. You’re not dumb; it’s complicated.

And it’s worth it. You will open up new neural pathways in your brain that you never dreamed of, and that never existed before.

Also, speed him back up and sing along a ton. Get up and move, walk, dance along, and notice where, in your stride, that bump is.

All of this is necessary analysis, and will teach you more than I ever could. I haven’t done this process for that song, but have done it for lots of other songs. And I’ve noticed the bump go by and know what it means. But how many strums or fractions of strums is he skipping? Are they upstrokes or downstrokes? It’s part of the wonder of that song.

Have fun! And bang your head against the wall, and when you do, remind yourself that this is you, being a real musician!

Here’s a post I made on Facebook a few years ago and a few of the comments that friends added—

There is a difference between singing songs TO an audience, and helping them sing with each other.

I am a musician who was born in 1950 in the USA. Today my husband Zeke and I listened to a bunch of young people singing activist songs from the 1950s and 60s Civil Rights, union and anti-war movements (also known as The Great Folk Scare). The young musicians did very well. Great singers, some excellent instrumentalists. Remembering some of the songs, and seeing and hearing those songs being cherished and offered anew by musicians who weren’t yet born then, brought tears to my eyes.

I also felt odd and bit sad, because though they invited the audience to sing along, they didn’t really facilitate that. The audience sang a little, softly. But they didn’t raise the roof or connect with one another.

I’ve been trying to think about what I do differently, and what Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, and the other people from whom I learned those songs, did differently. I think it involves teaching, leading, and inviting until the audience kinda gets going, and then dropping back so the audience can primarily hear one another and realize they are part of something big. Also, it’s important to offer protection to those who fear humiliation if they sing. All together we are beautiful. But I hadn’t thought about how much it’s a learned skill to get a general audience to sing freely. And how necessary that such singing together be a primary intention if it’s going to happen well.

(Discussion Ensued)

Bob Franke: I think that the many young people who have grown up thinking that music is a commodity to be bought need to be taught that it is a birthright that has been stolen. 

Judy Fjell: Thank you SO MUCH for posting this, Flip. Yes, we folkies of the sixties learned some things we don’t necessarily know that we know. (Good grief it sounds reminiscent of Rumsfeld’s famous ‘known unknowns” quote). I know exactly what you are talking about and I so admire those who can incite an audience to riotous or heart-full singing

Max McLaughlin: This is what Utah Phillips preached from the stage most of his career. It’s why I became involved in the folk music community, it’s why I play and sing, it’s why I perform. To paraphrase Bruce, “The music doesn’t belong to the damned music companies. They flat out stole it! It’s ours goddamn it, and we have to take it back, and bloody well sing it!”

Adrianne Gunn: …you have a tremendous gift/talent for connecting with an audience. Eating out of the palm of your hand and leaning in for every breath kind of enchanting way with an audience….It’s like you’re gently spoon-feeding everyone each bite and phrase of your songs.

Flip Breskin: It’s been my experience that, with an explicit invitation that includes a description of the ways we’ve been silenced, and the specific loss of connection and power connected with that, at least in a house concert or actual listening venue, I can generally coax the audience into singing, even these days. But it takes explaining that group singing is a revolutionary act.