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:

• Do you know what GAS (Guitar Acquisition Syndrome, though in some forums it means Geek Answer Syndrome instead :-)) is? Here's an example: a while back 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 ...
• My old Martin Sigma GCS-6 acoustic looks like the guitar at the top of this page (and you can see it hanging on the wall in the picture at the top of my Fender Venus page). It hasn't been getting a lot of attention since I got the Liberty, but when I was in the "Rosewood: Night of 100 Guitars" concert (fun!) a while back 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.
• I also got a Turkish Saz as a present a while back.

Some of my personal history

My first guitar was a garage-sale Yamaha acoustic I had received for either my tenth birthday or for Christmas a couple weeks before. (Unfortunately I no longer have it, many years back having loaned it to a coworker who I then lost touch with.) As I shall elaborate more upon here later, in my experience having and playing a guitar was one of those ordinary things girls did in that time and place, like being in Girl Scouts.

At the time PBS started rerunning episodes of a beginning-guitar program -- each week the female host demonstrated a new chord and one or more simple folk songs featuring it to play along with. I learned all the easy open major, minor, and seventh chords this way, and also from a Mel Bay book of chords which I still have, but was very resistant to playing any barre chords.

I noticed that my mother's books of popular songs for piano also had guitar chords, so I enjoyed playing and singing along with some of those songs as well. I had a feel for the way the circle of fifths worked without knowing what it was, so it was easy for me to transpose songs into ranges that worked better for my voice, and for that matter with so many folk and rock songs not using much more than the I-IV-V chord progression anyway, it was also easy to figure out chords for an awful lot of songs I didn't have sheet music for.

I was too shy and too picked on in junior high and high school to ever perform as yet another girl-with-guitar act at school talent shows, but would sometimes get together with friends to all strum and sing along together -- I remember one time at Anne's house where she and I and Karen and Marla were all playing and singing songs like "Lola" and "Killing Me Softly" together.

* * * to be continued * * *

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, contests, 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

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.

More coming soon ...

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

Celtic

If you have any interest in learning/playing Celtic music you should definitely check out the Santa Cruz Celtic Slow Sessions on the first and third Sundays of each month (and the second-Sunday moderate/intermediate session) -- see the mailing list page or the Facebook group for complete information.

David Brewer's free weekly Celtic Music Nights at Saint Andrew Presbyterian Church of Aptos are fantastic! Every Tuesday from 7-8pm David and guests do a concert and Q&A, followed by an open jam session for all levels.

Check out Community Music School of Santa Cruz's -- (mostly folk/Celtic-oriented) Concerts & Events and Classes & Activities pages.

Bluegrass and old-time music

On the fourth Sunday of each month at Oceanview Park there's a huge bluegrass and old-time music jam session with multiple circles all over the park. Potluck at noon, and then playing from 1-5.

The Abbott Family hosts multiple bluegrass/old-time/ roots music "JamShops" in their home every week, some for more advanced levels than others.

Fins Coffee hosts a bluegrass/ old-time jam session every Tuesday night from 7:30-10:30.

Jazz

Tuesday nights from 7:30-9:30 the Jazz Society of Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz Parks & Rec sponsor a jazz jam session for musicians and singers of all levels.

For more experienced jazz players, there's a jam session at Bocci's Cellar every Sunday from 3:30-7:30.

Kuumbwa Jazz Center offers free "master class" educational demonstrations and workshops by top musicians about every other month. As you can imagine most of them are not directly guitar-related, but they're all amazing, and everyone is free to participate or just watch/listen as they please.

Rock, Gospel, Mariachi, Classical, etc.

I wish I knew about any local jam sessions other than Celtic, Bluegrass/Old-time, and Jazz! If there are any that you know of, please send me email about it.

Cabrillo College

Cabrillo College offers extremely-low-cost group learning classes in many styles and levels of both solo and ensemble guitar playing -- jazz, pop, rock, classical, Latin American music (I've signed up for that one myself for the Fall 2009 semester), plus music theory of course.

Just for teens

While teens are definitely welcome/appreciated at the sessions/classes above, there are some fabulous teen-specific learning/playing opportunities in Santa Cruz as well:

The Santa Cruz Boys & Girls Club, in partnership with the Santa Cruz chapter of Guitars Not Guns, offers free music lessons and use of their recording studio.

Santa Cruz Parks & Rec runs regular "Be In Your Own Band" classes at the Teen Center.

Celtic Teen Band meets weekly and also performs at various events around town. Also, I know so many people who have attended and loved the summer Celtic Teen Camp and/or Celtic Kids Camp over the years.

Misc links

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."

Not in Santa Cruz?

Alas, do you live too far away to come jam with us? Check out the great "folkjam" site for finding all kinds of jam sessions and musicians local to you (or in places you'll be visiting or traveling through), or organizing and publicizing your own jam sessions.