The Root Note is a radio show that airs on Sundays from 5-7pm. Trent “TBD” Price has a passion for live music and the arts. On his radio show he spins roots-inspired music, plays some music of his own, and interviews other creatives. It’s a cool experience and you should definitely check it out.
In this episode we talk about my book, Wind Walker, and the writing process. You can hear our conversation starting at 43:40.
You can follow Trent on Instagram if you want to see more of what he’s doing.
We talk about the cover of the book a bit. If you want to see more of Jonas G. you can follow him on Instagram as well.
I was sick, laid up on the couch. I was also in a stage of life where I lacked funds for much. One of my favorite pastimes is to scour Craigslist (and similar sites) for good deals on instruments. One of the advantages of being sick is the ability to check Craigslist posts frequently. When a good deal pops up, there’s a much greater chance you’ll get it if you’re the first to respond. So when I saw an accordion listed for $35 I jumped on that fast! Was I looking for an accordion? No, certainly not. But did I NEED an accordion for just $35? Absolutely! The key bed wasn’t level. Some of the keys were angled up an inch higher than the rest. Other keys weren’t as bad, but “level” would not have been a term I used to describe them. But I’m handy, and it was only $35. So I purchased an accordion.
I found that the keys on the accordion were attached to metal bars on fulcrums to open and shut reed valves. The reason the keybed wasn’t level was because most of these bars were bent a little bit. So I bent them all into the position I thought they should be in. The advantage of working on a cheap instrument is the knowledge that the worst thing you could possibly do is lose $35. But I didn’t wreck it. My idea worked exactly as planned! Now all the keys worked properly. The straps for the accordion were not great, so I bought a more comfortable set of straps for…$40. I know, it didn’t feel quite right, but it made a world of difference, and now I had a fully functional accordion for a grand total of $75. I was happy.
This accordion became a centerpiece of my band for some time. I played guitar, but also accordion. It also featured in a friend’s side project (Brown Bear, Brown Bear). But as time went on, I became disenfranchised with some of the limitations of the accordion. I had to have a mic perfectly positioned and I had to stand very still while playing so as to pick up the sound well enough. You have to understand, I’m not much of a mover on stage to begin with; but I was beginning to feel stifled by the stillness that was required of me. So I found a way to mount a microphone on the instrument itself. I screwed in a rectangular metal plate (it came from a light fixture) with screws and holes that already existed on the accordion (i.e. no permanent modification) and used a special mic mount to attach a mic to the plate. It wasn’t the most aesthetically pleasing solution, but it was functional!
Eventually, even this superb mic-mounting creation was not enough to satisfy me. I could move around, but the sound captured was not as ideal as it could be. Some accordions I had seen had 1/4″ outputs just like guitars…I wanted an accordion like that. Microphones on the inside of the instrument capture the whole sound and didn’t require any modification on my end. This would be cool. As this was some years later, I had more funds available. New accordions that could function this way cost in the thousands of dollars. This was more than I had. But I found older accordions from the 70s and 80s that could do what I wanted. Eventually, I settled on an Iorio Model G Accorgan. It was an accordion with a 1/4″ output, but it also came with a tone box that would allow me to play organ sounds without using the bellows. I found it on eBay for $700. If you’re thinking that $700 is a lot for a decades old accordion…you’re right, it is. But I had traveled down the hole of “what can I get with the money I have?” and this was the conclusion I landed on. Sometimes I make really good purchases like buying an accordion for $35. Other times I don’t. So it goes.
The accorgan came in the mail and I was elated. I sold my first accordion for $125 to help offset the cost. The new accordion did exactly what I wanted it to…but it was bigger than my original accordion, and substantially heavier. The weight of the decision I had made hung on my shoulders every time I played the accorgan at a show. The tone box was large and heavy. I never actually took it to a show. I only used the accorgan as an accordion. After a few years I decided to part ways with the accorgan as it was very heavy and took up a lot of space. I had come to use it infrequently and wanted to fund other musical pursuits. Specifically, a bass guitar. So I listed the accorgan for sale online.
The accorgan did not sell quickly, but I had some other money saved up and started to look for a bass guitar. What I wanted was a Fender Jazz Bass that was Made in Mexico. These basses run around $400 used. I had close to that, but I wasn’t quite ready to spend that much without having sold the accorgan. So I kept my eye out for a good deal…and boy did I ever find one. Someone was selling a lot of gear together, including a Fender MIM Jazz Bass, for $400 total. The package included the bass, an electric guitar, a Marshall head and cab, a practice amp, two microphones and a midi controller. So I could purchase all of it, keep the bass, and sell the rest. This was a grand plan.
I reached out to the seller, expressing my interest. He was ready to get rid of the gear and even willing to meet at my place with all of it. Fantastic! The guy shows up a few hours later, I put all the gear in my garage and give him the cash. Done deal! I’m so excited!
The gear is a little dirty/dusty. Maybe has a little smell to it as well. Whatever, that’s what garages are for! I let things air out for the evening and I will work on cleaning it all the next day. An hour later I come out to the garage for an unrelated reason and fully realize the smell…it’s pot. My entire garage smells like pot. Like maybe I could get a contact high from how much I can smell the pot in my garage. This is bad! This is NOT what I wanted. So I crack the garage door and side door and set up a fan to blow on the instruments. Maybe if I let it air out overnight it will be better.
Morning came and I went to check on my new gear. The garage smelled better since the doors had been left open, but none of the gear passed the sniff test. It was still bad. In a defiant act of frustration I took all of the gear out to my back shed. The shed is well ventilated, meaning the smell wouldn’t linger in there; and it was out of the way, meaning I wouldn’t have to constantly see this mistake that I made.
Time, and frustration, passed and I slowly brought each piece inside and cleaned it. I no longer intended to keep the bass…I couldn’t handle the constant reminder of this deal, and I could never quite shake the feeling that maybe I could still smell the pot, despite having cleaned it very well. In the end, after a total of maybe six months, I cleaned and sold all of the gear for a total of $650. The last piece to sell absolved all of my ill feelings towards the situation. The extra $250 in my pocket actually made me feel pretty positive about the whole thing. Now, maybe I can find a new (used) bass and still have some money leftover.
Over the months of listing my accorgan for sale, I got no real bites. I lowered the price regularly and had brought it down to $300. I said I would accept trades for a bass guitar as well. Queue a new email with someone offering their bass for my accorgan. It wasn’t the make/model I was hoping for, but worst case scenario was that I could sell the bass if I didn’t like it. So I met up to make a trade.
The bass had been sitting on a stand, unused, for about 15 years. The neck was badly bent due to the string tension. But I liked the feel of it in general, and it seemed to sound decent as well. I’ve messed with instrument necks before…I could probably fix this. But even if I couldn’t, it’s not like people were knocking down the door to buy my accorgan. This felt like a fair trade of instruments that were unwanted by their respective owners. So we made the trade with no extra cash involved. I was the proud owner of a Kramer Focus 7000.
I began operations on the bass neck the next day. Truss rod access was located on the body end of the neck, so I unbolted the neck and made my first adjustment. I put the neck back on and tested it out. The adjustment wasn’t enough, so I tried again. By the fifth or sixth effort, I had maxed out the adjustments that could be made, but the neck was still bent. So I do what I always do in situations like these…I consulted the internet. The internet kindly told me that I could add a washer onto the truss rod to give myself the ability to adjust the neck further. It also told me to clamp the neck in the opposite-bowed position to help train it into place as well as making it easier to adjust the truss rod.
I didn’t own any nuts that were made for truss rods. So I went out to my garage to see what I could find. I found a nut that was close to the right size, but the hole wasn’t large enough for the rod and the outside was slightly too big to fit in the hole of the neck. Using a file and a drill I morphed a regular nut into the perfect truss rod nut for my bass guitar. I was able to adjust the neck-just barely-into a straight position. I attached the neck back onto the bass and it has been in good working condition for nearly a year now. And that’s the story of how I got a bass guitar.
I don’t own all the fancy tools that they do in professional luthier shops, but I found something that would work. This setup required two decks of playing cards, a clamp, a towel and a couple pieces of fiber board. Main goals were to train the bass neck in a new direction without leaving any marks on my shelving unit. I’m not saying that you SHOULD do this…but I made it work with what I had. Be creative!
The video below features the bass from the story. I’m very happy playing it, as you can tell! I may get a different bass someday, but I will never forget my Kramer Focus 7000.
This is the story of how I got an Alesis Micron. Specific details will vary in accuracy, but the story is true.
I was eleven when I wrote my first song. It was an elegant work of satire titled, “Hey Hey We’re The Fart Boys.” It may have been strongly influenced by a song with a similar title made popular by The Monkees, but I didn’t care; I was creating something new. This is what I love. I wrote my first completely original song shortly thereafter in the same notebook. I forgot the melody the next day, but that didn’t change the fact that I had written it. Creating music is something I have always done. I am driven to it. To that end, when there are instruments or tools I need to further my musical endeavors, I find ways to get them even if I don’t have the means.
“If you can’t afford it, you can probably make it for less.” Nobody said that, but it is a clear lesson I learned from my dad and I am fortunate to have learned it well. In this case, I was 24 and I wanted an Alesis Micron. Suffice it to say, this keyboard would do everything I needed; it was the perfect fit for the duo I was playing in at the time. My drive was set, but it was $350 new. I didn’t have that kind of cash. I looked around a bit and figured out I could probably get one for $250 used if I was patient. But I only had $100 and it would likely be months before I had more to spend. I couldn’t afford it…could I make it? There happened to be a plethora of electric organs from the 60s and 70s for sale in my area at very reasonable prices. If I could just make one of those portable, it could do a lot of what I wanted the Micron for. So I picked one up for just $35.
I took every piece of the organ apart until all that was left were keys, pedals, buttons, PCB and cables. I built a new case out of plywood and installed all of the organ guts. The case was heavy and bulky, but I was able to take it to shows and play it. In the end, I had spent a total of $80 on building this machine. It wasn’t the Micron, but it was better than nothing. But then it was really bulky. And pretty heavy. I had learned a lot and thought maybe I could do a better job if I did it again; I could make it more portable. I put the organ up for sale online and was able to make my $80 back. I was fully funded for round two.
With a stroke of luck, I found an organ online for free; all I had to do was pick it up. Perfect! This one came with a piano bench. It wasn’t long before I started wondering if I could fit the the whole organ into the bench. I played Frankenstein for the next few days. The end result was a monstrous mess protruding from an otherwise normal piano bench. Various controls rose up in a 16” wall around the entire outer edge of the bench. Controlling this machine live would be nearly impossible. But it still functioned, and I learned a few things along the way. This amalgamation wouldn’t sell, but I had invested $0 this time around.
To begin round three of my organ escapades, I spent some time looking at all my options online. The last one was free, but it had way too many controls. I paid $50 this time to get a specific organ I wanted. Fewer controls. Nice layout. I could make this work. As before, I took the entire thing apart. I cut through the key beds and accompanying PCB––an idea I had tested on the last iteration––to make them fit in the piano bench better. With fewer controls, the final product only rose 8” above the top of the piano bench; and all the controls were on front/top facing panels, easily accessible. It was an incredible success. It even had a detachable cable for the bass pedals so they could transport easily as well. This was cool. This was my Alesis Micron. But I still wanted a Micron. My piano bench organ was a one-trick-pony in comparison to the versatility of the Micron. My drive had not been satiated. But this was still a cool instrument in its own right. “Maybe even worth as much as a used Micron,” the thought did cross my mind. So I posted it for sale online saying I would accept cash or trades for a Micron.
A few days in, I got an email offering a trade; their Micron for my organ + $50. I made that deal in a heartbeat. In my mind, they valued the Micron at $250 and the organ at $200. I was proud to have created a unique instrument that held value. I was also elated to finally have a Micron for a total out-of-pocket cost of $100. And that’s the story of how I got an Alesis Micron. I sold it a few years later. So it goes.
The drive that I have for music and creating is intense. I spent at least a hundred hours working on those organs, delving into the depths of the internet to understand the inner workings of decades-old instruments and how I might dismantle and reconstruct them. When I moved into my current home, the only space I could find for a studio was a glorified walkway-–ninety two square feet in total. I built a new wall to close off one end and added French doors at the other with the help of my dad (there he goes teaching that lesson again). I stepped inside and found a new question. It wasn’t about how I would be limited in this space, but rather the limitless possibilities this space provided. What can I accomplish in ninety two square feet? What can I create? Right now, I write novels, I write and record albums of music, and I make music videos of the recording process. I am driven to this. These are the things I want to do. These are the things I love to do. I am obsessed, and I would like to share a little bit of that obsession with you in my Tiny Studio 92.
