Little mikey made his first banjo outta a cigar box and some fishing line his pa left down by the pond. His pa was always leaving stuff here and there. You do that when you're a drinker and man, his pa was a drinker, that's for sure. Now that old banjo, homemade as it was, had the sound, a sound you ain't gonna get from no dang store bought thing. High lonesome it was. Real lonesome. Like an angel crying into an empty shot glass.
Down the road a bit, about the time mikey got his first pair of store bought shoes, he got his first guitar. It was a pretty thing, wood, with a smooth and candy like finish. He banged on that thing until his fingers hurt but it was a good hurt, pure. It wasn't nothing like the hurt you get from taking a fucking whipping.
When the farm went belly up, a postage stamp speck of a dirt patch in North Carolina, his pa and some other kin packed up what homestead they had and moved up North. They all took jobs in some old car factory. It was hard and fucked work but it sure as heck paid the hard and stupid bills. City life was like that back then, tough, and guess what? It still is. If you wanna tell someone something, anything, tell them that. City life is fucked.
One day walking down the street mikey heard the Spirit and this old Spirit just happened to be lookin for a guitar picker. So, by golly, him and his cat, lulu the spacecat, said right there and then, "Fuck! We're in!"
They been singing and testifying ever since.
--Dateline 1956
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