Steebz Khuan
TDPRI Member
In 2009, my then-wife and me took a trip to India, where she had a spiritual epiphany. She converted to Sikhism practically on the spot, and less than a year later she moved out of our house in Brabant, Belgium and joined the Sikh community in London, England. I found myself sitting in an empty house with too much spare time on my hands, and since I've always been a huge lover of music and didn't want to waste all that free time playing video games and being depressed, I thought I'd try and learn to play an instrument. I'd just discovered some old Son House clips on the Tube and that seemed... doable. So I ordered my first guitar from Thomann and started learning some basic stuff.
I got lost in the joy of playing and listening to music pretty quickly, and started to dig deeper in folk and blues history. After Son House and Charley Patton came the Blind Willies and piedmont picking. Found out about John Fahey and Jack Rose, and learned to play lapsteels. Moved on to Appalachian music and learned to play old-time banjo. And after a couple of years, I met a drummer who became a close friend and we started a rock'n'roll band -- enter the electrics.
Over the past 12 years, a lot of instruments came and went. Some left the house after a week, others stayed with me for years. I've never had a huge budget, and I've always managed to stay in this weird equilibrium of selling old stuff to buy new stuff. It was never about the gear though, or about sounding like somebody else, but rather about inspiration and fun, and about feeling comfortable enough with an instrument to express myself in a natural way. That all ended when I picked up my first tele (actually, my second tele -- the first one scared me enough to sell it after two days) and I fell in love head over heels. To me, the tele is a magical thing. It just does everything.
Below is a chronological list of all the stuff I've owned up to 2016. Everything's gone now -- the drawings and the memories are all that's left. And since drawings sitting in a folder are drawings unseen, I thought I might post them in the TDPRI -- I think I'm in the right place here and some of you might appreciate them. Meanwhile, I'm down to the two trusty teles in my avatar, and I'm happy as a clam.
I got lost in the joy of playing and listening to music pretty quickly, and started to dig deeper in folk and blues history. After Son House and Charley Patton came the Blind Willies and piedmont picking. Found out about John Fahey and Jack Rose, and learned to play lapsteels. Moved on to Appalachian music and learned to play old-time banjo. And after a couple of years, I met a drummer who became a close friend and we started a rock'n'roll band -- enter the electrics.
Over the past 12 years, a lot of instruments came and went. Some left the house after a week, others stayed with me for years. I've never had a huge budget, and I've always managed to stay in this weird equilibrium of selling old stuff to buy new stuff. It was never about the gear though, or about sounding like somebody else, but rather about inspiration and fun, and about feeling comfortable enough with an instrument to express myself in a natural way. That all ended when I picked up my first tele (actually, my second tele -- the first one scared me enough to sell it after two days) and I fell in love head over heels. To me, the tele is a magical thing. It just does everything.
Below is a chronological list of all the stuff I've owned up to 2016. Everything's gone now -- the drawings and the memories are all that's left. And since drawings sitting in a folder are drawings unseen, I thought I might post them in the TDPRI -- I think I'm in the right place here and some of you might appreciate them. Meanwhile, I'm down to the two trusty teles in my avatar, and I'm happy as a clam.
