How Can Something So Small Be So Hard?

By Bob Wire, 11-29-07

	Caption: FEEL MY HILLBILLY WRATH!

I’ve been playing guitar for over 30 years. I’m competent, but with that much playing under my belt, I kind of thought I’d be better by now. Practice? Sporadic at best. I know I should play every day, but I don’t have the kind of discipline it takes to maintain that kind of focus, except perhaps when it comes to masturbating.

I also play a little bass, can keep time on the drums, and I’ll pick out “Alley Cat” on the piano if there’s enough liquor at the party. But lately I’ve been intrigued by the sound of a certain bluegrass instrument, and I succumbed to my curiosity and pulled the trigger a few days ago.

I bought a mandolin.

Don’t worry, the bluegrass world is safe. I just want to learn a few major chords and be able to play along with songs around the campfire, or in somebody’s living room (if nobody’s home). Who knows—I may get to the point where I can actually say, “I play the mandolin.” But it’s not bloody likely. If I can get three chords down, I’ll be able to play about 90% of all the country songs ever written, even the Gretchen Wilson stuff. Then I will quit practicing. It is my way.

A while back I asked a good friend of mine, an accomplished mando player, if he had an old beater I could borrow just to mess around with. He declined, and I was disappointed yet not surprised. I had already told him about getting liquored up while playing a wedding last summer and falling on my guitar, and about how a college girlfriend smashed an acoustic over my head during a fight (the fights with her were so exciting they led to a short marriage). He said he’d rather not have one of his babies turned to kindling, thank you very much.

He was kind enough, however, to explain that there are two styles of mandolins. The A-style is the plain, fat teardrop shape that minstrels and other twinkle-toes play when they’re prancing through the forest, singing emo songs to the woodland creatures. It’s called the A-style, presumably, because the mandolin namers of yore were anticipating a couple dozen different styles. But so far we’re only up to two. The second style, the F-style, is the one with all the fancy-pants scrolls in the body and headstock. The name probably comes from the reaction it evokes (“F-in’ A, look at that fancy-pants mandolin!”).

So I left my mandolin itch unscratched, until I just happened to be perusing Craigslist one day, looking for a married woman with a mustache in her late 50’s who’s comfortable at either end of the whip, when I spied a used hundred-dollar mandolin in Missoula. I drove to the seller’s apartment and she showed me the instrument. It had been hanging in her closet for years, she said, after she and her husband had inherited it from a friend. I cradled the dust-coated A-style mando, not knowing exactly what I was supposed to be looking for. There were certain standards I needed in this instrument. First, it had to not be a banjo. Check. The parts need to all be there. Almost check. The neck had to be intact. Check. No blood stains or dried guacamole. Check.

She was asking sixty bucks, but I pointed out the discoloration on the Johnson lever and offered her forty. Fortunately, she knew even less than I do about these things, and accepted my two crisp twenties.

I stopped by the music store on the way home and bought some new strings from Dave and Paul, who asked if maybe I shouldn’t finish learning to play guitar first. I waved them off and took my treasure home to clean it up.

To my delight, the mandolin (I named it “Mandy”) was in very good condition under all that dust, and I got it polished up and stripped off the rusty strings. I attached the eight new strings, and tuned it up with the help of an online mandolin tuner. These things are tuned like a violin, which came as a complete surprise to me. Once I had it reasonably in tune, I fingered a D chord and gave it a strum. The sound that came out was akin to the dissonant wail of a lost soul trapped in the horrifying purgatory of the undead. Call it a K-minor diminished ninth.

This wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought. Obviously, with the crazy-ass violin tuning, none of my guitar knowledge was going to translate. I needed help. Not wanting to admit my massive ignorance to anyone I knew, I went to Barnes & Noble and searched their undersized music section.

“Mel Bay’s Complete Book of Mandolin,” a fat, spiral-bound volume, seemed the obvious choice. As any stringed instrument player will tell you, he’s the Stephen King of instructional manuals. Crazy prolific, and he’s been around forever. A copy of “Mel Bay’s You Can Play the Lyre” was found aboard the Kon-Tiki. Hell, the guy is so famous he had a leaf named after him. But I found his comprehensive book to be pretty far over my head, what with all the reading of music and everything.

I leafed through a slimmer book, “Mandolin Playing for Dummies.” The title was a little insulting, and I wondered why they couldn’t just call it “Mandolin Playing for People Who Previously Had Not Played the Mandolin.” Okay, it’s a bit wordy. The book was still too baffling, and it joined Mel in the reject pile. Ditto “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Mandolin.”

“The Total Drooling Moron’s Pop-Up Book of Man-do-lin,” by Richie Sambora, looked promising. “Now Entirely Monosyllabic!” it exclaimed on the cover. I opened it to the first page, and was delighted to discover an A-style mando with eyes called Manny Mandolin, and his buddies Rhythm Squirrel and Chordy the Rat. Now here was something I’d be able to follow, and I wouldn’t be wasting precious time that could be spent rubbing one out.

So now I know two chords, and I’ve almost got this mando mastered. I’m asking for a hammered dulcimer for Christmas—I’ll bet Craftsman makes a good one.

[Bookmark NewWest.net/BobWire today, or else Bob will bring his mandolin to your house and make your life a living hell.]

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