As May quickly approaches, I've been trying to get my next tour lined up for June and have been working on getting shows on the calendar - which hasn't been easy. I was a little slow about knowing my dates and the cities and where I wanted to be and where to go - so some of my ideas have been blocked because the dates are filled up. It's a strange process and I wish I had a booking agent sometimes.
Last night I saw Lukas Nelson, who's a cousin in my big family, and his band do an in-store at Amoeba Records in Hollywood and he was saying that they play 250 shows a year. I would like to do that too and I know I could, but I just have to focus long enough, and sometimes its hard to do that and play shows and write songs and travel - all at once - and transitioning from one to the other isn't always easy too. But the road is calling and by June I'll be ready.
I decided to call this blog the Silvertone Files mostly for my love of the Silvertone line of music gear which was put out by Sears and Roebuck starting back in the 40's and I think up to the present. But the glory days were from the 40's until the early 70's - that's when everything was made in the USA - and preferred by collectors. The did a lot of guitar gear - guitars and amps, basses, lap steels, and then various band intsruments that were all available from the Sears catalog. They were made by several different companies - like Harmony or danelectro, and then slapped on with a Silvertone label. Over the years I've had several different pieces - a few electric guitars including the legendary amp-in-case which came with the guitar with a single coil lipstick pickup and the case which had a small 4 watt tube amp built in, a late 50's one with a similar lipstick pickup - both were cool but they didn't aways stay in tune and I got sick of that fact and ended up selling them - which I sort of regret - well I always regret having to sell gear.
I've also had several acoustic guitars, mostly bought off Ebay. The first one I got was decent - low action, good feel to it. Then I found another one that had a reddish sunburst kind of thing going on and had a floating bridge - it looked cool, was fairly cheap so I bought that too. I would end up getting a pickup that you could just fit into the sound hole and plug that into the amp and play slide. The action, which is how far the distance between the strings and the fretboard is, was usually higher on these cheaper guitars and so were perfect for whipping out a glass or metal slide on. Also since they were cheap, I could sort of beat up on them and not be all that nice - which is not how I would play my Gibson at all. Yes, I play my $1200 guitar much different than I play my $75 guitar.
Since they're cheap and old, the Silvertone acoustics start losing their parts if you don't pay attention and tighten up all the screws - especially in the tuning gears, I've had to buy other ones to use as parts and to keep one going. So I've had several of these guitars over the years. I think I'm about due for another one soon - although I could attempt to combine 3 of the guitars in to one - yeah - my main is getting a little worn down.
The other Silvertone piece, and possibly my favorite, is my amplifier. Its a model 1482 and comes with one 12 inch speaker and is about 12 to 15 watts. It has an interesting look because the knobs on the front run down the side and look similar to the front of an old TV - which is how many people describe it. It also comes with tremolo but on these old models it doesn't always work. I had quite a few of these and I found the first one in a music store by my house for $150. Later I saw one on Ebay for around the same price and ended up buying another one. I took one of them on the road and during that trip I saw another guitar and ended trading the amp for part of the price of the guitar - which is something I had been doing for a few years - buying and trading and selling. It was fun and always interesting to see what you could find in various places. A couple years ago I discovered the great sound of running my acoustics through the amp, along with a few pedals and it delivers a very unique sound, sort of my secret weapon - a nice warm tone fleshed out by a reverb pedal and a tremolo pedal. Now I can't imagine not owning one.
So that's my Silvertone story and I think the end of daily writing - for now - until the next tour which begins on June 2nd in Flagstaff for now - possibly June 1st at Taix in LA - we'll see. Any questions or comments can be sent to me through here:
jeremiah125@hotmail.com
thanks,
Yours Truly,
Jeremiah
Lukas Nelson at Amoeba Records in Hollywood
my Silvertone Collection from 2008 - I only have the amp and two guitars now
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