I've been intending for a while to do some pages about my guitars and my experience of guitar as a female tradition -- here are the ones I've gotten to so far:

• A page about my Fender Venus (also seen in this page's background :-))
• A page about my Martin "Backpacker" travel guitar
• A page about my Epiphone "Flying VeeWee"
• A page about Gael Baudino's feminist musical fantasy novel "Gossamer Axe"

And these are my other guitars, which will hopefully soon be getting their own pages:

• My old Sigma GCS-6 acoustic looks like the guitar at the top of this page
• Do you know what GAS (Guitar Acquisition Syndrome, though in some forums it means Geek Answer Syndrome instead :-)) is? Here's an example: recently I gave an old junker guitar to a neighbor, and the resulting vacuum somehow sucked into my clutches the Liberty "shooting stars" resophonic guitar I had been admiring ... well fancy that ...
• I also got a Turkish Saz as a present a while back.

Some links I've planned to include in one place or another

The She Zone Guitar Notes Discussion Forum -- the kind of wonderful women's guitar salon that I'd been looking for for years! Moderated by fabulous fingerstyle guitarist Cathy Horner.

ROCKRGRL -- the magazine for women musicians, featuring "no beauty tips or guilt trips".

Indiegrrl started in May of 1998 as a mailing-list "forum for information, networking and conversation about independent music from a female perspective" and has grown to put on events, concerts, tours, compilation CDs, and even start its own indie record label. The mailing list is amazing -- female indie musicians of all genres and levels of experience discussing every concern of working musicians in a very high-volume (no pun intended :-)) list.

Peggy Seeger's description of her A Feminist View Of Anglo-American Traditional Songs workshop

DJ Philly Kid's page of Women and Guitar links

Check out Zen Guitar -- the companion website to the delightful Philip Toshio Sudo book.

alt.guitar.beginner is an interesting newsgroup, ranging from people who just bought guitars and don't know a single chord to very experienced players happy to answer any question. It sometimes gets invaded by spammers and flamers, but still, whatever your skill level, you'll probably find some questions you know the answers to and some answers you might have been looking for yourself.

I was charmed by Girl's Guitar Club's Why Learn to Play the Guitar? page.

And some Santa Cruz links

As a resident of Santa Cruz, California, the kinds of links I'm interested in here are ones that can help aspiring (or perspiring :-)) musicians find ways to participate in our local music scenes/communities. If you know of any other links that you think would be useful in that vein, please send them to me.

scruz_indie, a mailing list "for discussion of indie rock in Santa Cruz, CA. and the surrounding area". This is a great group -- you get to hear about a lot of shows that you probably wouldn't hear about otherwise, including ones in people's houses and at UCSC, sometimes people are looking for artists and/or bands for shows, plus there are all sorts of music discussions, some specific to local issues and some more general.

SCUnderground is another good local list: "In the spirit and guidance of the first ever 'Acid Test' held in Soquel circa 1965, this list was created for the promotion of parties, concerts, gatherings, or any other 'enlightening' events that are happening in the Santa Cruz county area. The emphasis is for 'underground' cultural events not highly promoted, attended, or recognized by the status quo."

The Santa Cruz Underground Music site has long lists of local bands, venues and upcoming shows, and is "... in the process of establishing easy access to local resources. Our goal is provide YOU the tools and the means to organize and publicize your OWN shows. We are currently collecting the necessary information to make future shows a snap to organize."

The South Bay Folks page includes listings for some Santa Cruz area jam sessions and singalongs.

The Celtic Society of the Monterey Bay's events calendar and the Traditional Music Sessions in the S.F. and Monterey Bay Areas page list some local jam sessions.

Rich Kulawiec's Listing of open musical jam sessions is huge and international in scope, but once it finally finishes loading you can do a search for "Santa Cruz". :-)

The Santa Cruz Area Celtic & Related Music Calendar page lists a lot of jam sessions.

Rocky's Café in Felton has been hosting open mikes on Fridays.

Community Music School of Santa Cruz -- click their newsletter link for listings of (mostly folk/Celtic-oriented) workshops and classes in addition to concerts.

Hey, I was in a concert a while back: "Rosewood: Night of 100 Guitars", at the Santa Cruz Vet's Hall. It was a lot of fun! I took the Sigma, because, unlike some of my other guitars, it is (1) acoustic, (2) obviously a guitar, (3) obviously made of wood, and (4) has a rosewood fretboard.

More coming soon ...