I’ve sort of always wanted a brass-body guitar, and I will take any opportunity to ride on a ferry boat. So when I found a nickel-plated guitar for sale on Craigslist that required a ferry ride to purchase I couldn’t resist.
The guy selling the guitar, Billy, lives in Vallejo California. There’s a commuter ferry that runs there from San Francisco. My friend Denise excitedly offered to accompany me on the boat ride, immediately after saying of Vallejo “I hear it’s a real shithole”.
The ferry ride was very nice — comfy boat with lots of good views of islands and bridges and whatnot. Also windy.
The Vallejo ferry building is also very nice — we met Billy there and he proved very long-winded so we ended up settling into a waterfront cafe that also seemed very nice. At one point I asked him if he could suggest a nice walk in Vallejo and he made a lot of very uncomfortable faces and at last delicately described his hometown as “The anus of California” and left me with the impression that if we were to walk in any direction from the ferry terminal we would be immediately sapped and robbed. So instead we just sat in the cafe and enjoyed the view which, I admit, consisted strictly of industrial ruins.
Billy turns out to be Billy Ray Martin, formerly of country act ‘Red River’, and even more formerly Bill Martin of punk band (Impatient) youth whose music I’ve been listening to a bit since our meeting.
The guitar is a ‘Johnson,’ a Chinese reproduction of a National tricone from the 30’s. Billy transplanted some actual National resonators into it and generally tricked it out so that it sounds extra good. It is also extremely shiny!
It turns out that I have not spontaneously learned to play slide guitar in the intervening decade since I last played one of these… but even if it winds up a wall-hanger it can’t be beat.
