The Importance of Being Bacchus pt. 2

Four months ago, I published the first half of this review of Eddie Campbell's BACCHUS cycle of graphic novels with the promise that Part 2 would soon follow. Since this review was published in its entirety in Comics Journal #273, there was no good reason that it took me four months to get around to publishing the second half. Nonetheless, in the interest of being only flaky rather than a bald faced liar, here is the second half. Lucky for you, you only have to scroll down one entry past my yearly Thomas Hardy poem to get back to the first half. For those disinclined to read Hardy for any reason, just click here. Thanks and I hope you enjoy!

BACCHUS THE YOUNGER

Most of Book Six, 1001 NIGHTS OF BACCHUS, was, in fact, created roughly concurrent to the material in Book Four. It is set, within the chronological context of the story, ostensibly after the events of Book Five. However, this collection of yarns spun at closing time to keep the moping Bacchus awake (and thus the bar he inhabits, open) minimally interacts with the larger continuity of the BACCHUS saga. As such, it reads more like an experiment in working with a variety of collaborators in varying capacities in a specific form, in this case, the short story.
While several of the pieces rate as humorous (“Hearkening and Obedience”), visually stylish (“Rubbing Genie the Wrong Way”), and, on occasion, unexpectedly profound (“O King, It Has Come To My Ears That”), there is enough of a discontinuity between what came before and what comes after to question the placement of this material here.

The two books collected into the EYEBALL KID: DOUBLE BILL are related to one another in a manner very similar to Books Four and Five. The first, HERMES VS THE EYEBALL KID is a return to the ideals of the opening story, not unlike the stories collected in the EYEBALL KID: ONE MAN SHOW. Campbell goes so far to say, in the introduction, that “these two books were my first opportunity to do a good-old fashioned monthly (every month) comic book story...I rose to the challenge by making the first a homage to the Lee-Kirby slugfests of old as well as the Lee-Ditko weird dimensions.”

If BACCHUS was ever intended as an honest attempt to recreate the funky magic of Silver Age superhero comics, HERMES VS. THE EYEBALL KID is without a doubt its most successful attempt. Armed with a veritable cadre of able assistants (including Pete Mullins), Campbell turns out one of his most imaginative long-form serials, involving his entire rather large cast (with the exception, once again, of Bacchus) in a rollicking, if somewhat absurd, super duel for the ages. Whether by virtue of Mullins or just a lot of practice, the idiosyncrasies of Campbell’s style never seem better suited to this exaggerated timbre than they do here. A subplot from this book also introduces a new visual tool into the Campbell palette with Spirograph-aided drawings used to represent the “far-out” dimensions into which Joe Theseus must travel to preserve the order of fate. Though this might seem a little gimmicky without having seen it, Campbell uses it expertly to show scale being shifted quickly in a manner that is both striking and simple that lends weight to the ephemeral characters traversing these wacky outer limits.

But, even as the hysterical ONE MAN SHOW segues into the funereal fifth book, so does the able superheroics of Book Seven transform itself into something quite different in tone and consequence. THE PICTURE OF DOREEN GREY only plays at sustaining the external conflicts (and the romper room antics they inspire) until properly setting Joe Theseus towards the end of his journey to become a god. This sequence, inspired according to Campbell by “those Image boys and their cheerfully naive disregard for any conventional sense of narrative responsibility”, is one of those stand-alone moments in the sprawling BACCHUS saga that offer closure where it is sought. As Joe assumes responsibility for the mechanism of everything, the story that was begun in the opening is genuinely completed. The entire cast (again, with the exception of Bacchus) essentially wanders off the stage, not to be seen again until the final pages of the story.

Most of the BACCHUS comics after THE GODS OF BUSINESS were published in the United States by Dark Horse until the end of DOREEN GREY. Before launching the ninth serial in the new, self-published BACCHUS MONTHLY MAGAZINE, Campbell collaborates with artist Teddy Kristiansen on a twenty-four page, painted comic story for the BACCHUS COLOR SPECIAL. Kristiansen’s blunt but expressive paintings are an excellent foil for this somewhat distilled version of Bacchus. It is also one of those rare moments in the series where Bacchus is allowed to function as a character outside of some predetermined form. The result is quite surprising in its emotional depth and definitely worth seeking out. Artistically, it will prove difficult to mine much Campbell from this (outside of the character designs) but the script he provides is solid and works, perhaps, even better as a stand-alone character study than it does as a genuine bridge into the story ahead.

Part of the reason for this is that for the last two books, BACCHUS becomes a very different creature. While Bacchus occupies the stage in body for the remainder of the series, his presence as a character is overwhelmed and then made mute by the dizzying agendas of the new supporting cast of thousands. In KING BACCHUS, Bacchus distractedly governs a renegade pub, The Castle & Frog, after it secedes from the United Kingdom. His own adventures take place mostly alongside his new lady-love, Collage, in an abstracted idea-space called the Landscape of Sex. The remainder of the narrative is given over to an allegorical exploration of the Direct Market with appearances made by Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Dave Sim, and John Constantine alongside a holy host of other suggestive figures, some more fictional than others.

As we move into Book Ten, BANGED UP, Bacchus becomes distant to the point of almost complete silence as he is sent off to prison. After a stretch of repeating gags about prison bullies and masturbation, the prison erupts in a riot that leaves Bacchus once again in charge of the ungovernable. As he reunites with Collage and his new child, Bacchus finally runs out of juice and enjoys a brief curtain call alongside the other major players before sailing off into the aethyr. While these last two volumes display a level of craft consistent and sometimes surpassing earlier BACCHUS volumes, one cannot escape the sense of anti-climax as the saga draws to an end. Unlike Joe Theseus, the man who sought to be a god, Bacchus, the god who would be a man, is never allowed to do so. He doesn’t fulfill his quest. He makes his peace in abandoning it.

Still, with a publishing record that stretches over a decade, through a dozen or more publishing venues, and targeted to a variety of different audiences, BACCHUS stands as one of Eddie Campbell’s crowning achievements as writer, artist, and executive creator. While it may lack the more literary qualities of his autobiographical material or the cohesion of FROM HELL, BACCHUS displays the heft and imagination to similarly command our attention and respect. With the exception of Dave Sim’s CEREBUS, there have been precious few comic book titles in the past twenty years so dedicated to pushing boundaries and boldly staking out new territory in the process. The effort made Campbell a better artist and storyteller in every facet of his work and makes the receptive reader, richer by association.

The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

As always, to celebrate the New Year. Best to you all in 2008.

The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervorless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled though
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

31st December 1900

The Importance of Being Bacchus pt 1

For the Comics Journal #273, I contributed a review of the ten books of Eddie Campbell's BACCHUS cycle. While I harbor the personal suspicion that this corner of Canpbell's universe has the honor of being the most criminally underread, it is my sincere hope that this review will inspire a few folks to hunt these down. The review, in full, is nearly 3000 words and so I'm presenting it to you here in two segments.

And when you are done, go check out Eddie's blog if you aren't already reading it.

Best, RV

The Importance of Being Bacchus- Part the First
A Review by Rob Vollmar

BACCHUS Volumes 1-5
Eddie Campbell & various
Eddie Campbell Comics/Top Shelf
Variable price and length

Eddie Campbell’s output as a cartoonist is boiled down, by many, to essentially two works: the autobiographical ALEC saga (a life-work in progress that, in more recent years, has dropped the pretense of fiction supplied by the series’ once eponymous stand-in) and his much-lauded collaboration with writer, Alan Moore, on FROM HELL. Why this is so is hardly a mystery. The first brought Campbell notoriety as an able creator of serious comics. The second brought him a wider audience than most mainstream efforts can claim in these days of lowered expectations as well as, at least, a measure of the success long due to him by merit of diligent excellence alone.

Yet, there is an invisible third in this presumed duet that often goes unrecognized; namely, the BACCHUS saga. Most recently in print from the now-defunct Eddie Campbell Comics (ECC) as ten collected editions, this series of stories represent an enormous body of work cultivated by Campbell between 1986 and 1997, that was produced concurrently with his other, more oft-celebrated efforts. This article will consider the material as presented in the canonical ECC editions (which range from slightly to widely differing from the source material), but will critically address Campbell’s re-sequencing of the material for these editions as warranted.

BACCHUS THE ELDER

The opening volume of the BACCHUS saga, IMMORTALITY ISN’T FOREVER, establishes all the major themes and characters via a rollicking battle between its two principal characters, Bacchus and Joe Theseus, that never actually takes place. From the first panel, it is obvious that this is a different Eddie Campbell at work than what the world had seen up to that point. This is Eddie Campbell with a kung-fu action grip, thrilling his inner twelve year-old with fisticuffs and intrigue more informed by early 60’s Marvel comics than the conversational formalism of his ALEC material. Everything is big. Figures regularly burst their panel borders in the excitement and the character designs seem to revel in the extremity provided by the rich mythological source material.

As quickly as he develops his superheroes-as-gods motif, though, Campbell also enables the story to transcend the tradition from which it borrows by virtue of the sophisticated discourse he is able to establish between its archetypal players. Case in point: The opening volume pits Bacchus against Joe Theseus and uses their conflict to introduce a startling amount of information to the reader about both characters. Then (in classic Marvel fashion), their role as foe versus foe is suddenly upended, resulting in a fugue narrative lasting for the rest of the series that finds them both cast in their respective tragedies as the hero.

Book Two: THE GODS OF BUSINESS then is, first and foremost, a noticeable departure from Book One if only because Bacchus himself barely appears in it. It is also important to note that at Book Two, Campbell takes on the first of his many BACCHUS collaborators, Ed Hillyer (aka Iyla), presumably in order to meet the rigorous demands of publishing these issues in a timely manner. Without plumbing the historical record in order to discover under exactly what configuration this collaboration took place, there are a few broad generalizations that one can quickly make about the artwork. The layouts, consistent with Book One, remain eclectic and are frequently altered to suit the contour of the narrative as it shifts regularly from the players to the story. Even as the figures take on a more polished look, some also develop the quality of a drawing of a drawing, losing visible potency in the distillation, though the principal characters seem to resist this tendency more than the supporting cast.

With the reorientation of Joe and his sidekick, The Eyeball Kid, as the protagonists of this sequence, Campbell uses THE GODS OF BUSINESS to introduce a recurring antagonist for them, Chryson, The God of Capitalism. Despite its excursions into violent histrionics, this is quite a bleak story that results in Joe’s wife and child being eventually murdered, his sidekick receiving the injury to the eye motif (don’t worry he had 18 to spare), and Joe himself entering into a self-exile at the bottom of the sea. While the superhero tropes and influences built into these stories are still more than obvious, the serious thematic concerns common to most of Campbell’s works remain equally present and deliver, from this humble framework, a story of surprising richness and gravity.

DOING THE ISLANDS WITH BACCHUS returns the reader to more familiar and ironically stable ground as Bacchus takes an extended maritime tour of Greece and, along with it, his own past. While the contents of Books One and Two are quite obviously structured to suit the demands of serialized comic books, these shorter pieces are formed by the demands of the stories they contain. The layouts maintain a nice fluidity as the timbre of the individual stories shift but the burly dynamism of the earliest stories is replaced by the more familiar, conversational side of Campbell’s visual storytelling.

Also in contrast to the opening books of BACCHUS, DOING THE ISLANDS yields a few individual flowers that truly stand out from the plant as a whole. One story, in particular, a collaboration with the second enduring BACCHUS contributor, Wes Kublick, merits closer scrutiny as an example of some of Campbell’s strongest work from any period. “Afterdeath” is a haunting yarn about Bacchus’ acolyte, Simpson, and the psychological ramifications of his extended stay in the Underworld that expertly manipulates the short story form to create an existential sermon of the finest sort. Riffing on the notion that “time dies and we keep on going,” Campbell employs a variety of well-considered visual tools (repeating static panels, fields of solid ink as the “Void”) to envelop the reader in the palpable dread of Simpson’s account. Fueled by a narrative that teeters on the brink of lyrical genius (“At the very least one might have hoped that death could be a pleasant leave-taking from one’s senses like sleep. But now even sleep is denied me. The dead can not escape that way.”), “Afterdeath” sounds a somber note that resonates far beyond the concerns of this particular story, collection, or serial as a whole.

Even as the last ripples of DOING THE ISLANDS are dissipating, Book Five, THE EYEBALL KID: ONE MAN SHOW comes storming back with another Campbell/Hillyer collaboration. This appears to be a slightly different configuration though as it appears that Campbell is scripting and Hillyer is handling the art duties alone. While the earliest of the DOING THE ISLANDS stories were completed a year before this serial originally ran, the closing material was finished, in some cases, long after. As opposed to the storytelling employed in DTI, which reads more like a time-exposed photo showing development in style and poise, ONE MAN SHOW is an autonomous unit. The visual composition is markedly tamer than THE GODS OF BUSINESS but in place with a consistent style from the beginning of the story. While some of the charm of Campbell’s solo efforts at this more action-oriented type of story are absent, the end result is closer visually to the material it emulates through satire and, measured by that criteria alone, is probably more successful.

EARTH, WATER, AIR & FIRE, the fifth book of the series, is something of a curious sequel to its predecessor. For the first time since the story began, all of the major players are involved and its two leads actually spend time inside the panel together. But, from the opening splash of somber minimalism, the timbre is completely reversed from the brash playfulness of their last meeting. Black ink swallows up ever-larger portions of the panel; men in black suits, silhouetted figures, the cloud that erupts from a volcano, even the sea, at sunset. The kinetic qualities of the previous story are all but completely dissolved in philosophical conflicts and verbal consequence. By the volume’s end, both leads have lost someone vital to them and are set adrift on their respective, dissolute journeys towards a final destiny; their paths, never again to cross until it is all finished.

Diffuse

“Now I am guilty of something
I hope you never do
Because there is nothing
Sadder than losing yourself in love…”- Rowland Salley, “Killing the Blues”

I returned late last Friday night from a five-day vacation at the Lake of the Ozarks. This was the second year that Kendra and I have been there together in the fall and her third year vacationing there. Before you run screaming from the computer in fear of the obligatory slide show, don’t. The only pictures I took were of a squirrel that decided to take a sun bath on the supporting beam of our upper balcony and those were on someone else’s camera. When/if said cute squirrel pictures come available to me, I’ll be sure to share them!

In all honesty, I have almost nothing in the way of a travelogue to offer either. Mostly, I sat on the balcony overlooking the lake and read on a copy of Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that I picked up on the cheap at a local bookstore. I hadn’t read Decline since junior high and, with research on a related new graphic novel now starting to accrue in a way that will make the project painful not to develop, it seemed like it was time to go back to it and see how it informed and was informed by the more contemporary historians I’ve been mining. For all of his erudite sentence construction, Gibbon really knows how to convincingly argue a position without the benefits of empirical methodology that haunts modern historical writing. He keeps his prejudices on display throughout in his language choice but plays the devil’s advocate against himself often enough to consider it a fair if not always objective account.

It was also a sober reminder of the contrast between Gibbon’s world of the 18th century and that of our own stumbling into the 21st. Consider this quote from Gibbon, highlighted in the introduction by editor Frank Bourne, as a picture to contrast our own feigned zeal for education, self-initiated or otherwise…

“…In my French and Latin translations, I adopted an excellent method which, from my own sources, I would recommend to the imitation of students. I chose some classic writer, such as Cicero and Vertot, the most approved for purity and elegance of style. I translated, for instance, an epistle of Cicero into French; and after throwing it aside till the words and phrases were obliterated from my memory, I retranslated my French into such Latin as I could find, and then compared each sentence of my imperfect version with the ease, the grace, the propriety of the Roman orator.”

In other words, if you were worried that we, as a species, are throttling headlong towards a new Dark Age, don’t bother. We’re already there. Here’s your candle. I won’t even start on the innumerable and imminently disturbing comparisons to be drawn between the Rome of then and the United States of today. I’m sure it is an exercise of vanity that every citizen of an ascended nation that found itself mysteriously in possession of an empire allows his or herself, no doubt, ten years into the decline of said superpower. It’s a sad story, really, so it’s little wonder that we keep acting it out, over and over.

I’m meeting with the band later today to rehearse for our show this Friday at Danny Bob’s in Edmond. Most of the gigs I’ve played this year have been in the acoustic duet format with just me and Shelly but we’ve got a couple electric shows booked between now and the end of the year. We played our first in several months at Studio 360 here in Norman at the beginning of October. The set was composed of mostly original songs (18 total) with just a few covers. While I know that every idiot out there thinks his band rocks and is the best, we played with exceptional vigor and precision and it stuck out in my mind as one of our best performances as an ensemble whether with Shelly (for the last four years) or when we just played as a power trio (dating back to 1989). We’ve got a lot of material to cover to prepare for Friday (A four set show! 3 hours of music! Kill me now!) but I feel like we are coming into it with some momentum and looking to extend on that.

Speaking of music, my current favorite album is Raising Sand, an album featuring Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant and bluegrass sweetheart Alison Krauss. Produced by T-Bone Burnett, Raising Sand is one of those albums that, from the first listen, make such perfect sense that you can’t imagine how it took this long for someone to think of it. Krauss’ voice is such a high soprano that there is nowhere for Plant to go in harmonizing with her but into his more natural tenor (as opposed to his falsetto) and the effect on his voice is startling. The production quality is perfectly suited to the eclectic nature of the material, minimal in its approach but still featuring strong performances from guitarist Marc Ribot (the Les Paul of the 21st century) and bassist Dennis Crouch. Highlights include “Killing the Blues” (quoted in the opening of this blog entry), Gene Clark’s “Through the Morning, Through the Night” and the heart-rending album closer, Doc Watson’s “Your Long Journey.” If 20,000,000 people are willing to fight to get the chance to see a reunited Led Zeppelin play one show, this album more than deserves to go platinum and beyond.

On a final note, I posted a review up the week before I left on Manga Worth Reading of Bride of the Water God Volume 1 from Dark Horse. It’s never too late to zip over and read it, especially if you are fond of elaborately costumed Korean sunjeong manhwa. But then again, who isn’t?!

Inanna's Tears #2 out this week!

Inanna’s Tears #2 hits the stands!

Greetings! The second issue of Inanna’s Tears hits the stands this Wednesday. The official solicitation text looked a little something like this…

Entika begins her reign over the city, testing the loyalties and counsel of those who might serve her. Outside the city gates, the Lugals consolidate their own standing among the people of the Tents even as Belipotash seeks out ancient magics in order to tip the balance of power in his favor.

While response to issue one was largely positive (and occasionally glowing, a few readers noted that they were a little lost in the specialized vocabulary of the story in issue one. While I can sympathize with their frustration, I felt like it was important that the reader be asked to work a little bit and draw the meaning for terms like “Ugula” or “Dinghir” from the contexts in which they are used. I think that issue two provides a healthy measure of this context and should go a long way towards clearing up some of that confusion. This issue also introduces one of my favorite characters, the Sanga!

If you have already pre-ordered issue 2 from your local comic store, fantastico! If not, there is still time for you to get one ordered. Issue one is also still available for re-order from any reputable comics dealer in the English speaking world. You can procure either of these issues by marching down to your LCS and plunking the following codes down on the counter.

JUN073244 Inanna’s Tears #1 $3.95
AUG073377 Inanna’s Tears #2 $3.95

If you are interested in religion, women’s issues, goddess worship, feminism or ancient history and think comics might be an interesting vehicle for such issues, we need you to get out NOW and help support us in the Direct Market and beyond!

The Weeb Says...

Relax!

Castaways Softcover in November and slightly more

Greetings! The softcover edition of the NBM re-release of CASTAWAYS is up for order this month and so this is my gentle reminder to anyone reading who also enjoys reading my comics that pre-ordering is the nicest thing that you can do short of buying me beer. Here's the official pitch...

THE CASTAWAYS SC
by Rob Vollmar & Pablo Callejo

The first graphic novel by the best-selling team of “Bluesman.” An emotionally powerful tale, drawn from the fabric of America itself, that follows the adventures of young Tucker Freeman as he is compelled to hop a train to escape from the crippling poverty of his rural existence. Armed with only fifteen cents and the memory of his occasional hobo father’s counsel, Tucker must find his place in this broken America of the Great Depression before the realities of being young, poor, and homeless consume him.

This new NBM/ComicsLit edition of THE CASTAWAYS features a six page conclusion/epilogue not featured in the original release as well as a new two-color look, and will stand as THE definitive edition of a book nominated for an Eisner in the Best Single Issue/One Shot category in 2002. Diamond order code: SEP073861

If that sounds like something you might enjoy, simply take that occult conglomeration of letters and numbers (you remember, SEP073861...) to your local purveyor of comics and ask them to order you one. Orders will be due by the last Tuesday of this month so don't delay! The future depends on you!

In other news, I was interviewed recently by Rebecca Buchanan of Sequential Tart and they've posted the results online. Ms. Buchanan was one of the first online reviewers to cover the Absence of Ink Theater where Castaways was originally serialized way back in the dizzay and I had a great time chatting with her about Castaways, Bluesman, and my latest graphic novel, Inanna's Tears. Check it out!

OK, kids, I'm off to finish a new piece for Manga Worth Reading and I'll post a link here to it when it finally goes up. Wish me luck!!

Guitar

Since I was four years old, I’ve had two dads. My biological parents divorced when I was two. They were both twenty-two at the time and, remembering my own self at twenty-two, it’s been impossible to begrudge them the decision to split up. Hell, I wasn’t stable enough for a serious relationship at that age so the idea of being married and having kids already at that stage just kind of boggles my mind. While not having a Robert Kenneth Vollmar Jr. around as a kid to help me figure out what it meant to be a Robert Kenneth Vollmar the Third was a source of some insecurity growing up, I did manage to cultivate enough of a relationship with my father as a kid to help forge a more complete and satisfying one with him as an adult.

In 1976, my mother married another man, Steve Middleton who became my second father. I was only three and some change when they started dating but my first memories of Steve coming into our life are rich ones. Recognizing that these are memories filtered through the id-driven ego of a young child, his introduction into our household was not without its conflicts. In comparison to everyone else we knew, Steve was ambitious. At the age of twenty-six, he had already purchased what was colloquially known as the Triangle Café and set about slowly transforming it from a greasy spoon diner that fed truckers headed west down Highway 60 to a full-service restaurant that introduced Mountain Grove of the mid-1970s to the sublime majesty that is a Sweet and Sour Chicken buffet. Of course, there’s a whole other blog entry to be savored on the bizarre connection between Americanized “Chinese” food and southwestern Missouri but this narrative demands our attention continue on elsewhere.

Steve was also something known in the Ozarks as a “Yankee”. He had followed his own father, George Middleton, to Mountain Grove after electing out of a management position at the manufacturing plant in his home town of Hicksville, Ohio. As a result of all this Nothernty, my sister, Lisa, and I thought Steve talked funny and, later, we discovered he thought that we all talked funny too. The difference, then, between us was that he became responsible for our upbringing and decided that we needed to talk as much like him as is possible. Now that may seem strange or even draconian to an outsider reading this blog, but believe me, I understand now that our speech was already in severe need of correction. Still, some friends are surprised when I tell that we were sometimes spanked for such grievous crimes as saying, “Ain’t got no” or “not none” or pretty much any of the seemingly endless double-negatives that peppered the day-to-day chatter of nearly everyone we knew, except of course, for Steve and, eventually, ourselves. Now matter where I went for the rest of my childhood, I never again spoke like my peers, though I would become adept at aping their local variations on basic country-folk dialect in order to blend in socially.

However traumatic that changes felt at the time, the positive things that changed with their marriage were manifold, though perhaps easier to see in the light of retrospection. One aspect that I derived immediate gratification from was the fact that Steve, in addition to being a ambitious businessman, was also a musician. I had known musicians in one facet or another since the day I was born. My mother’s best friend, Regina had a brother named David Gowdy that played the guitar and, if my recollection of family mythology serves me, gave me my first guitar as soon as I was stable enough to hold one. Music had also played a giant role in my early socialization. According to my baby book, my favorite band was Edgar Winter and the White Trash but only Iron Butterfly’s In-a-Gadda-da-Vida could make me fall asleep. I became so possessive of my mother’s copy of Rick Derringer’s ALL AMERICAN BOY that they had to buy me my own copy so I’d stop trying to take theirs into the bathtub with me.

Steve was more than just a guitar player though. He was (and is) a musician of the finest caliber. He had been classically trained as a pianist since the age of five, participated in band and orchestra in high school, sung extensively in church and school choir, and gone on to play electric bass for a band he described as sounding, “kind of like Blood, Sweat, and Tears” in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It took me years, of course, to appreciate the full scope of his many talents, some of which he developed (such as the ability to play the pipe organ) when I was old enough to appreciate how disciplined he could be in acquiring new skills.

But, my earliest memories of Steve and music are about him singing with his guitar. I can see us all now at 618 West Main street in Mountain Grove, clustered together in the living room as he sings to us. Though most of his rigorous training had been in classical music, it would be years before I would hear him play that kind of music. For his own enjoyment (and for ours), he played a lot of folk music; traditional numbers mixed in original material from Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Steve owned a copy of Alan Lomax’s The Folk Songs of North America and, in time, I began pouring through it, begging him to play more of the ones I hadn’t heard. As a result, I was as conversant in folk music at 6 as most kids are with pop music in their teens. I could recite big chunks of Alice’s Restaurant by heart and often sang, “This Land is My Land” in the tub though with slightly less optimistic lyrics penned (I think) by either by my mother, my sister, or myself though the cadence of the third couplet sounds an awful lot like one of Mom’s idiosyncratic rhythmic creations.

This Land is My Land
This Land Ain’t Your Land
I Got a Shotgun
And you ain’t got one
You better get off
Before I blow your freakin’ head off
This land belongs
To only meeeeeee….

It also may be slightly funnier if you can imagine me with a shampoo horn while singing.

Sometime in 1976, the year Mom and Steve got married, he bought a guitar. The very guitar I always remember him playing. Now to appreciate the gravity of this, you have to appreciate that Steve is more disciplined with his money than anyone I have ever know in my entire life. Of all the things I wish I could have learned from him, the brother knows how to make a penny stretch. He’ll also be the first one to tell you that being frugal is rarely fun but, given the often dire economic straits we often found ourselves in by virtue of being poor and alive, his ability to budget and purchase only what is absolutely needed was the difference between eating and not eating more times than I care to remember.

But, in 1976, either just before or just after inheriting a family with two young children in it, Steve Middleton bought a guitar. A nice guitar. What I reckon now to be, then, the nicest guitar to be found in Lane’s Music store in Mountain Grove that day. This guitar. The Alvarez DY 90.

I found this review of the DY 90 online and can only say I agree with the reviewer’s assessment wholeheartedly. Alvarez Yairi was the brainchild of Japanese luthier, Kazuo Yairi who was a second-generation craftsman. In the 1960s and 1970s, Japanese guitars did not have a good reputation among American guitar players but Alvarez-Yairi guitars were about as far from your typical mass production unit as a guitar could be. Every AY guitar was handmade and held to design standards that rivaled and, in many cases, surpassed that of their competition. For many guitar purists, the Alvarez-Yairi guitar represented a turning point in Japan’s reputation as a nation capable of serious guitar manufacturing, which today is only second to that of America itself.

In our modern, jaded world, the event of a young man in his twenties walking into a music store and buying a guitar might hardly register on the significance meter. But for Steve to spend that much money on anything could mean only one thing. It was important. It had meaning, if only the meaning that he invested into it. He told me recently that he needed a symbol of better times ahead to carry him through the rough times that seemed never to end. Well, let me tell you, friends, that guitar had meaning to me growing up as well. Its presence in the house told me that men play guitars and they sing as they accompany themselves. It also told me that sometimes the best way for a man to communicate to those that he loves is through song. Fathers play the guitar and the family sings along. As the son, it became my duty to acquire this skill but, in secret.

And so it was that, on those rare occasions that I was left unsupervised alone in the house, I would go to the guitar case and contemplate the beating I was sure would come if I was caught with the guitar. A beating I would deserve because the guitar was obviously not meant for childish fingers. It was a holy object to be worshipped, not manipulated and yet, there I was, compelled beyond my ability to resist to open the case. The rich smell of spruce would come pouring out and, before I knew it, I had it in my hands. I learned chords, furtively studying Steve’s hands with the Lomax book in my lap, mentally drawing correspondences between chord symbols and hand placement. By the age of eight, I could play “Drill Ye Terriers Drill” but, you know, in secret. The secrecy is what made it worth knowing.

Eventually, I got my own guitar and, at least in my own mind, surprised the hell out of everyone by being already able to play it. As time went by, I also surprised the hell out of myself by becoming a pretty salty musician in my own right. Though Steve can still sing and play the piano better than I can, I don’t think he would mind my telling you all that I turned out to be the more accomplished guitarist. That’s what he said, anyway, when he told me, a couple of months ago, of his desire to give me the DY 90. For keeps. This past weekend, after giving him a couple of months to change his mind, I went down to Ardmore where he lives and, after a few beers and a lot of steak and shrimp, I drove it home.

It is sitting in my living room right now and I was hardly able to stop playing it long enough to write this all down for the world to share. It may be silly but I feel like it has fundamentally altered me as a person to take it out of the case and play it for my wife and our dogs and cats knowing that I’m the father now. I’ve got a powerful symbol of my own, now, to wield against the world’s cruelty, a symbol of better times ahead. No more playing in secret, son. This one has got to count.