At any given time I usually have about 15 guitars laying around. Many only get occasional use, like my Fender Telecaster, my Jerry Jones Sitar Guitar, etc. My 3 main instruments are a circa 1990 Gibson "Nick Lucas" re-issue acoustic, a 1960's Teisco ET-320 electric, and a Tut Taylor "Californian" resophonic guitar. I bought the Gibson as a small travel guitar. It has a beautiful sunburst finish but isn't much in the tone department. Still, it's fun to play, and through the Sunrise pickup out of my old tube amp it sounds killer. As one of my guitar player friends put it , it's a rock and roll guitar. I don't think there's a better acoustic made these days than the Collings guitars from Austin, Texas. I have one, but by the time you put it through a sound system live, or in a recording studio where the enginner rolls off the bottom end to make room for the bass player, you've lost so much of the sound quality it hardly matters, and are you sure you want to drag $4000 guitars around in the trunk of your car or in an airplane baggage compartment? My friend Flip Scipio in New York is a master guitar maker/repair dude and I wouldn't use the word frivolously, genius. He can make the worst piece of junk sing. I think I paid $1200 for my Gibson and have easily spent that much trying to fix the poor quality workmanship of the guitar. I think they make them to look cool more than anything else.

Flip is the one who turned me on to the Teisco ET-320. I was at the shop he had on Staten Island and he pulled one out with the lo E string tuned down to an A. I had to have one! He found me a blue one, re-fretted it, put on a bigsby tailpiece and it is funky! I also have a bright red one that is tuned to normal tuning. They come in 2, 3, and 4 pickup models, and have gorgeous tone variations. This is the first electric guitar I've fallen in love with and I can't live without the whammy bar!

The Tut Taylor Resophonic is my first "Dobro" style guitar. Leni Stern gave me a Rickenbacker Lap Steel when we were playing together and I fell in love with lap style playing. It was made of bakelite and my son broke it into 3 pieces! I now have a beautiful 1940's or 50's wooden one with the famous horseshoe pickup, that is loud and bluesy. When I decided I wanted an acoustic lap guitar I went to Mandolin Bros. on Staten Island and played 20 or more Dobros. Most of them had a vibe but a mostly metallic tone, which I think many people want. The Tut Taylor Guitars, which I had never heard of at the time, were stunningly different. I ended up buying one when I was in Nashville at Gruhns. It has a rich warm tone that sounds as close to the human voice as a stringed instrument can.

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