ACOUSTIC SOUNDBOARD
JEFF HUSS
I’m trying to help my 14-year old daughter
learn to play the guitar. Anyone who has a
teenage daughter knows how this works. It
is a well established fact among teenagers
that the two dumbest, most embarrassing,
irrelevant, out-of-touch humans to ever
waste space on this earth are the very two
people that mixed up the DNA cocktail that
created them in the first place. I suggest
songs to work on; she rolls her eyes in that
special teenage way. It takes an incredible
amount of patience. I usually possess just
a little less than an incredible amount. But
we’ll get through this. She’s actually growing
out of this phase a bit already. I asked her
the other day if she wanted to go to a movie
with me, just the two of us, where we might
be seen together in a mall. She actually
considered it before saying no, but she did
suggest that if her older brother went along
she would go. He’s 20 and has some scruffy
facial hair that I guess must have some magical power to absorb some of the dork rays
that must be radiating off of me.
But she is interested enough in learning
to play that she is willing to put up with
dear old dad, and interested specifically
in acoustic guitar (thank you, Taylor Swift).
There is something magical about the
acoustic guitar. Electrics are cool, but lots
of things that are electric are magical: the
automatic coffee maker, the lost television
remote, the microwave oven. (I remember
two old men back in the ‘80s arguing about
whether food heated in the microwave
would then cool down faster.) But the
acoustic guitar just sits there in your lap
on the couch, or on the deck or the beach,
and makes music without any sparks except
for the ones you supply.
Dads, Daughters and Guitars
I was about 14 when the guitar bug first
bit me. My brother-in-law’s family joined
my family for a Thanksgiving dinner. After
we ate, they pulled out an acoustic guitar
and played “The Letter” by the Box Tops
with full three-part harmony. I had never
been that close to anyone playing a guitar,
and I knew I had to get one. My first was a
plywood sunburst beginner model that was
actually playable and stayed in tune, even
if its tone was not something we try to
replicate in the shop these days. I worked
my way through some chord books and got
some help from friends who played. I used
the money I made in high school working
as a busboy to buy LPs and expand my
musical knowledge beyond what I could
hear on the radio. Eventually I traded up
to a better guitar. In college, my roommates encouraged me to play my guitar,
especially after I got a banjo. I traded up
for yet another guitar and started putting
all of my music on cassettes so I could listen in the car. I was an entrenched holdout
when CDs first came out, as I wanted to be
sure they didn’t go the way of the 8-track
or the Betamax—but of course I eventually gave in. I still have all of that stuff in
boxes somewhere in the basement. Now,
of course, it’s all on my iPod. Talk about
magic.
Last night we were on our way home from a
softball tournament. My daughter’s team has
been struggling this year, and they had just lost
a heartbreaker in the championship game—and
we had what looked to be a long, just-lost-a-heartbreaker-in-the-championship-game type
of ride home. But after a couple of miles of
silence she asked if I could help her to learn
Jack Johnson’s “Angel” on the guitar, because
she thought it would be a good song to play
the next time the family all got together, maybe
Thanksgiving. We spent the next two hours
listening to songs on her iPod, talking about
which ones would be easy or hard to learn and
planning when we could find time to work on
them. Maybe I’ll grow some scruffy facial hair,
and we can play them together.
54 PREMIER GUITAR OCTOBER 2009
Molly Huss with her dreadnaught and her laptop.
Jeff Huss
Jeff Huss, co-owner of Huss & Dalton Guitar Co.,
Inc., hails from North Dakota and moved to Virginia in
the late eighties in pursuit of bluegrass music. Along
with the music came the opportunity to build acoustic
guitars and banjos. In 1995, he and business partner,
Mark Dalton formed their business and have established world-wide recognition for building high-end,
boutique style guitars and banjos.
