Play the ever-lovin' hell out of it

Moooooore controversy we demand moooooooore of it well, okay, here you go.
It's late, I can't sleep, and I'm mad, which is just a great combination for blogging.

I got into good music relatively late, and although part of me wishes I'd been involved in it longer, the other part of me is still hearing amazing songs that, for everyone else, have probably been done to death.
Listening to Hendrix tracks as an adult for the FIRST TIME has been rather a precious gift.

This post started percolating due to Levon Helm. I don't remember when I started listening to The Band. Couldn't have been more than a couple of years ago. They blew me away, collectively, but Levon was my favorite.

Levon was touring the Northeast this spring.
I debated it; I'm cheap, and those tickets were expensive.
He's a legend, a hero, and his live shows looked like everything you could ask for from ANY touring artist, never mind someone his age.

I knew his health was failing, that this would probably be my only chance to see him. And I chose not to go, and then very shortly thereafter, he passed away.
As it turns out, it wouldn't have mattered - the shows I was mulling over (one in New York, one in Massachusetts) were both cancelled.

Ultimately, the reason I decided not to go was the ticket cost. I couldn't justify it.
I thought about the dozens of remarkable artists I've been seeing regularly over the past couple years, little hard-working bands that don't have huge followings (yet), solo artists that are paying their due diligence and not sitting around waiting for deals to be handed to them.
Bands that literally are giving their blood, sweat and tears to their art.

And I thought, you know, if Levon and I were friends, I bet he'd say, don't spend the money on me. Don't spend that money on Ticketmaster fees. Take that money and split it up and support the young bands.
And so I took the advice of Levon-in-my-head.

But this tied into something else I'd been thinking about - collecting instruments or gear for the sake of owning it (which is really just about SAYING you own it, to impress people), versus actually playing or using it, and enjoying it.

Recently my soundguy friend Erick posted a link to a microphone used by Les Paul, which sold for $28K, and he said "As cool as that mic probably is I'm pretty sure I could outfit my entire studio for that".
A studio which could then facilitate a conceivably countless number of albums, furthering music by how much? Who knows what'd come out of that studio?
Or you could have that one mic. It depends what matters to you.

Two examples, and you'll have to forgive me because I know I mention these guys ALL the time (I do, just click the tags at the bottom of the post and you'll see how much), but they're my favorites and they're really fairly matched in terms of skill.

Chris Thile plays a $200,000 Lloyd Loar Gibson mandolin, and when that one's in for repairs goes back to a Dudenbostel. It's likely that his custom Dude cost in the neighborhood of $15,000. (I'm not critical of this, I'm just re-stating facts found on the internet. No hate, please, he's a hardworking guy.)

Rushad Eggleston's most expensive cello reportedly cost about $6,000, and the ones he usually plays at shows are "beaters", picked up from pawn shops and people who just want to sell a cello, frequently well under $500. 

I'm just interested in these two very different approaches.

Thile was quoted in a wonderful interview in the May/June 12 issue of American Songwriter as saying:

"The thing about having a great instrument...is that it should be played. It shouldn't be babied, shouldn't be preserved like a museum piece, it should be played. It's not a Van Gogh, it's not to be looked at. It's to be played, and whatever you have to do to make it playable, that's what you do. It bothers me when people worry about hurting their instruments by using them for what they were made for. If something is in playable condition you should play the ever-lovin' hell out of it."

And he takes his own advice! He plays hard. He's thoroughly in tune with that mandolin, freakishly so. I remember one show last year where he kept picking it up and listening to it in between songs, making faces of dissatisfaction, you could tell he was hearing something was off... and then on the last song the G string broke. WHAT WE'RE BLOGGING ABOUT C-THEEZY'S G-STRING? TITTERING FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY!

Rushad, meanwhile, is what could only be described as tenderly abusive with cellos. He pushes them well beyond the limit. They're duct-taped, strapped, jury-rigged, strings break, the bows shred, I saw the bridge (which had been propped up with a book) pop off one time during a particularly wild encore. 
The obvious advantage of having a cheap cello is that it frees him up to do far more crazy things with it (swimming, regular crowd-surfing, electrification and distortion, and a whole pile of stunts we don't even need to go into here). 
The "good" cello gets a bit better treatment, but even so, it's being PLAYED. 

Yo-Yo Ma has caretakership of Jacqueline du Pre's million-dollar cello. I don't know how much he plays it.
Joshua Bell and Hilary Hahn regularly play on Stradivarius violins valued in the multi-millions.
No idea how much Edgar Meyer's bass is worth, but it's not a cheap one.


(I would love to hear what Rushad could do with a million-dollar cello, because I'm pretty sure it would be the best thing you could ever hear. )
But at what point do you say, enough is enough, at what point do you "cap" your "need"? When does it simply not matter any more?


I've said this before about speakers: the difference between a $50 pair and a $150 pair is remarkable, and the difference between a $1,000 pair and a $5,000 pair is not so noticeable, whereas a $120,000 pair will change your life permanently. It can ruin you, if you're not careful.
I don't know enough about string instruments to know if the same holds true. I only know what sounds good to me.

Ultimately I've always thought it's not about the instrument, it's about the person playing it. 

You'd rather hear someone skilled playing a cheap instrument than someone unskilled playing the very best in instruments, this is obvious.

So where's the sweet spot? Skilled people playing good instruments? Playing great instruments? 
Does the average listener at a Punch Brothers or Tornado Rider show know or care about the cost of the mandolin or cello? Does it purely boil down to how much you ENJOY what you're doing? 


Because in that case I'd venture Thile and Eggleston are truly equals, no matter how different their playing styles are. I'd kill to hear a duo album from them, down the road. 
No matter what they're playing on, they're playing the ever-lovin' hell out of it. 


And I think there's a lot we can take away from this. Levon-in-my-head says so. I miss the Levon-in-this-world. But these guys have that same spirit. There is hope for music's future. 


Good morning. I'm going to try and sleep now.


Yours, always,
Earworm