OK, I'LL SAY IT: HE AIN'T HEAVY

The photo above is pretty telling. It's of my brother Tim, gazing lovingly at a Telecaster that had been hanging in a guitar shop. Left for dead, it's body scarred by fire, and deemed unsavable, it was a magnet for Tim, who took it home and rebuilt it, from its naked charred body up. After adding a new neck, tuning pegs, bridge and all of the electronic gizmos, it turned out to be more than playable. And, although he had about a dozen better guitars at the time, it held a much more significance for him. It was, first and foremost, oddball. But it was also something that no one would want. Discarded, overlooked, unloved, funky, challenging, weird, dirty and pretty fuckin' homemade cool.

Today is our birthday, we are twins. He passed away roughly 13 years ago. And he is the reason for this blog. Because he was my primary source for musical dialogue. And, if you knew him, you know that he was wild about music. Let me rephrase that: he was wild about wild music. And he loved to talk it. So, I had to start doing this to make up for the conversations I so missed.

Because of our impending birthday, last night I wrote a friend of Tim's, to thank her. She was one of the last really good friends Tim had made, and really special to him. So, I wrote her and didn't think much more about it. I looked at a few photos of Tim and, while doing so, the terms "big shot" and "bad ass" both came to mind. Not really in a chest-beating sort of way, but kind of self effacing, but also with a little bit of truth. Then today, I received an email back from Tim's friend. It was a long, stream of consciousness email, in which she splattered some of the best words written about my brother. She's was one of the last people to know Tim well, and she pretty much summed him in one particular spurt (of many). She described him as "one amazing freaky free rock n' roll sweet bad ass nice guy..." I give. That pretty much pegs him.

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Happy Birthday bro. I'll post some music tomorrow.