Hey Buddy, Can I borrow Your Wife?
So, what would be the typical response to such a question? I would tend to think it would not be a well received question unless you just happened to hold an active membership to the swinger’s club downtown or maybe you were at a family picnic re-union and the question just happened to come from your brother-in-law or cousin? Most guys would automatically jump to the wrong conclusion no matter what the actual intent? Like; what the hell? Why? For What!
Funny thing is; this is the actually a similar emotion that musicians tend to have when it comes to people playing on their gear. Particularly the main part of their rig like the guitar, bass, or drums! For the last twenty years or so I have been playing live shows and slowly (very slowly LOL.) I have come to realize that a decent sit in is not necessarily a bad thing? Sometimes, it actually adds some spice or spark to the show kind of like bringing in a guy off of the bench in Basketball or a back-up QB in the NFL coming in and torching the defense. My current band is all about the “sit in” and we have had some unexpectedly great live jam sessions as a result, but, we do have a saying to musicians who want to get up and jam with us; “just don’t get gonged!”
On a pro level, you see a guest spot here or there and sometimes it’s just a fabricated compilation to create hype and sell downloads, sometimes it’s genuine as in the case of artists like Santana; who actually thrive on joining forces with other artists to garner creativity and maybe channel a different emotion for the piece. It reminds me of a show I saw years ago; I went to see the band Ratt with special guests L.A. Guns and MSG (McCauley Schenker Group was that rendition) and this was at a time (Detonator Tour 199?) when Ratt’s guitarist Robin Crosby had departed the band (mid tour no less), and MSG was the opening band, after the LA Guns set, Ratt took the stage as a 4 piece band with only Warren DiMartini on guitar, they ran through about 5 or 6 songs mostly newer material and some of it was a little empty with only one guitar, then they start in on arguably their biggest hit song “Round and Round” and right in the middle of the solo where the dual harmony guitar leads break in, Michael Schenker comes walking out onto the stage with his signature flying “V” and nails the Robin Crosby parts! It was an epiphany for me personally, I mean, to see 2 of my favorite guitarists not only on the same tour but actually playing with each other on stage was incredible, and to sweeten the deal, Michael stayed out there for the remainder of the show and played brilliantly through all the classic Ratt hit songs from the 80’s. Even though these guys were big rockstars, they put the egos aside and joined forces and the result was a better show and experience for the fans. The key was Schenker played on his own rig! So he was never out of his own comfort zone?
This brings me back to my point. I recently sat in with a friend of mine at a local club and he had a brand spankin’ new red Gretsch hollow body guitar, it was beautiful instrument and he asked if I wanted to play it or his Ibanez “Iceman”, I said “I’ll play the Gretsch!” We started to run through a Buckcherry cover song and about halfway through I thought the low “E” string on the Gretsch slipped out of tune? I started to try to tune it back up to 4/40 and my buddy comes over and reaches down and I’m thinking maybe he has a “drop tuning switch” but instead he snaps the string back into the saddle on the bridge (it had slipped off) which caused the tuning to then jump up high so I frantically try to tune it back down to 4/40, all in the middle of the song too? Yikes! It was at that moment I realized this used to happen to me regularly back when I had a hollow body Epiphone with a similar saddle bridge system, my attack is simply too hard when applying a muff technique and it was the main reason I quit playing on hollow body electrics altogether?! My friend was real cool about though and he said; “Next time if you come out to sit in, bring your axe or play the Iceman bro?” That way, you’re not trying to dance with someone else’s wife dude?!
By Russ Rohrer
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Westminster, Colorado
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