Last week's three days of rain, including a damp Saturday, definitely left me with much undone work. But sometimes a rain is welcomed by the earth and its inhabitants as an opportunity to rest and replenish.

So, while constructive pursuits were on hold, I did have time to spend a day having fun. I took the opportunity to mess around with a new guitar and pedal that I purchased a several weeks ago. Luckily, everyone was gone for most of the day so I got to 'rock the house' to my heart's content. With a family, music usually must be of the quiet nature, so I usually utilize my headphones. The guitar and pedal I bought helps recreate the sounds of famous guitars and amps of the 1950s, '60s and '70s, as well as a banjo and famous acoustics (flat-tops). It also models effect pedals all the way through the present and has a few other tricks up its sleeve, like numerous reverb options, a gate and a compressor. If those items sound like some kind of spaced-out science to you, don't feel like you're the only one. I've been trying to educate myself more fully for the past 20-some years now, but the lessons just keep on coming.

Much of what I knew before I had learned as a teenager with a little chain of pedals on the floor and more hair than any one boy needed. While that understanding was simplistic, it seemed complicated at the time. Now it seems that the complete knowledge of it all is as far away as it was then. Only by looking back do I realize how much I've learned.

In other words, there is so much to learn about sound systems, reverb, pedals and effects that I'm not sure anyone knows it all. The list of 'stompboxes' and 'modulators' alone is enough to keep a normal mind busy for years, but adding in the complicated mixes thereof with reverb choices, loopers, recording devices, microphones, pickups distortion, amplifiers, cabinets and guitars baffles me.

Most of what I know about music I learned by experimentation and watching others.

Prior to actually learning to play, I took a few lessons as a youngster, but found them difficult to follow and boring. My first instructor was a burly fellow named "Junior" whose idea of a hot guitar lick was a rousing rendition of "Beaulah Land" in the key of G on a big old Gibson J200 acoustic guitar. I'm sure the man had a whole name (likely something, Jr.), but I don't remember it. If I could only remember his daddy's name....

Actually Junior was a very talented and accomplished musician in his own right, but his wisdom was falling on deaf ears. While I now can appreciate the beauty of hymns, it's hard to sell old gospel favorites to a boy who has his eye on an electric guitar and a tube amplifier.

I ended up taking about three or four lessons before giving up. When I started back as a teen, I was dreaming of rock-n-roll greatness. It's no surprise that local garage bands were my first inspiration. Looking back, I now know that most of those bands were terrible. None of them had any real success and very few of them ever even played more than a few shows in front of a live audience.

None of that mattered. Commercial success and the trappings of capitalism (or truth and honesty, for that matter) can't compare to the fantasies of budding teenage rock stars.

Anyway, after several years of learning, playing and recording music 'back in the day,' I realized that my fantasies weren't going to become reality. Even so, sometimes the journey means more than the destination. As the years pass, it has been the passion for music—a love of playing and performing—that has kept my interest. Obviously, the dreams of fame are long past.

As soon as I learned enough, I would spend hours mimicking the sounds of a favorite album as they echoed through the stereo.

The equipment I had then is now considered 'classic,' like the old tube amps and classic Fender Stratocasters. At the time, they just seemed like old guitars.

As time has gone by, much of the equipment I once had has been sold, traded or given away, leaving me without the sounds of my youth.

Nostalgia doesn't form until after the fact, that's why everyone has to go back and pay big bucks for the stuff that was considered junk 40 years ago.

But that's where the new pedal comes in. Perhaps it's a bit of an early symptom of a mid-life crisis. Most men buy sports cars, but I ended up with a guitar. I don't suppose that there's anything wrong with that, so long as it's not combined with a bottle of hair dye, a comb-over and an too-small, worn-out leather jacket. I can remember being around 20 and meeting a fellow in his 50s who had won a recording contract in the 1960s, only to lose it all when a crafty manager stole all the equipment and left the group stranded. He had maintained his hair style, clothing and attitudes from that time and

I don't think he realized he was aging. Now 50 doesn't seem old at all, but at 20, it was ancient.

When he played, I could still hear the young, talented guitarist who would have graced stages in the '60s. The music never grew old. I understand that better now than ever. Music is like a memory trigger. Each generation records its passion, its thoughts and aspirations, to be opened later and savored like fine wine—Jim Croce's bottled time.

A song can easily erase the fog of years, cutting through to a specific moment, complete with vivid sights, sounds and smells of days and nights long forgotten. Such is the power and 'magic' of the music: the power to take our minds back in time to places our bodies can never return.

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