Three Dollar Guitar
words and music by Michael Faubion

I really did buy a guitar for three dollars. And after some additional investment it became my main gig ax for 60/40. Except for the paint job and playability, mine is just like the one in the song.

The idea for the song actually goes way back to the first band I was in--the Ecumenical Country Band. This was back in the mid-seventies with Marcy Rae, Mike "Beerheart" [can't remember his real last name. help me out Bugs], and Don Kieth. One of the gigs we played was at the Alcoholics Anonomous and there was an old guy who asked to get up and play "Crystal Chandeliers" with us, claiming he was the true and forgotten author of that song and had played it on the Grand Ole Opry sometimes back in the fifties. I remember him saying "It took me 20 years to get on the Grand Ole Opry and a week to drink myself off of it." Or maybe it was two weeks. He had since sobered up and was living the AA life in Portland, but still clung to the memory of his moment of glory.

We later came to doubt his authorship of the tune, but he did sing it pretty well. He probably played two or three other songs with us. I can't remember if his timing was good or if, like a lot of sitter-inners, he dropped or added beats to measures randomly. It was my first experience backing up a jam guest and there have been many more since. It's always a tough gig, but usually they do the easy songs. The same easy songs. In my day it was "Good Hearted Woman" or "Tulsa Time." Or "Today I Passed You On The Street Key of C Charlie."

I think the AA guy was named Bill. We started thinking among ourselves in the ECB (Ecumenical Country Band), what if you were playing some lowlife honky tonk and the ghost of Hank Williams showed up and asked to sit in and this magical moment occured and then he disappeared, leaving behind some token that could only have been a connection to the legendary Hank. A Grand Ole Opry guitar pick or a napkin from the Ryman Auditorium or a picture of Hank Jr. when he was a baby that the world has never seen.

In writing Three Dollar Guitar I put some of these speculations and experiences together for the story of a guy who can "sing like Waylon Jennings but didn't know how to count." In thinking about such pickers you wonder if some of the great legends of country music might have wandered the trails of obscurity like the rest of us if they had not had that one lucky break, or that magic difference of talent, desperate ambition, inside connection, that led them to the highway of fame and glory. What if it was some fatal flaw that overuled their talent? Drink, an inability to count to four consistently or learn barre chords, any of the traps and obstacles that distract or deter us along the way. What if Johnny Cash had gone to Milwaukee instead of Memphis after he got out of the army? He might have been like the old guy with the old guitar, playing other people's songs in smoky dives when they'd let him get up on the stage, selling refrigerators in the day time and being known among the musicians around downtown Milwaukee as that grizzly ol guy with the deep voice and solemnity and a weakness for truck driving pills.

And so I dedicate "Three Dollar Guitar" to the memory of Johnny Cash. I cop his style for this song not in mockery but in homage. I believe Johnny Cash always remembered and always sang like he remembered that but for Fortune and the Grace of God he might well have spent his life selling appliances instead of singing songs.