Mom put a guitar in my hand when I was 3 years old. She had too...she bought herself classical guitar for a music class at what was then Floridia Junior College and I would take and play around with it. So she brought me a plastic guitar that looked like a strat. She would buy me a better guitar later on when I was six but it got destroyed in a fight between my Ma and my older sister Mable. Finally my mother after becoming a teacher for Duval County, gave me the nylon string guitar. Later I took 40 bucks up to an old pawn shop were the Freebird Cafe is now and begged the owner to sell me a Cort knock off strat; I was just 13...way below the age level. I made an amp from an old Panasonic stereo amp/reciever and two mix match speakers. With me starting to listen to Hendrix, Led Zep, Howlin' Wolf and all kinds of music, this grated Ma and drew the scorn of my sisters. My mother was not healthy. 10 years in bad marriage in which a severe beating resulted in a bad transfusion. By 1986 when I graduated, my Ma's liver was ravaged by Hep C. This did not stop her though. She ran for city council of Jax. Beach and won. Her political career was just going good when I got arrested with my cousin and her liver began to fail. Even though my mother never knew about my drug use...I didn't use drugs in our house and always worked so I paid for the pot, LSD and anabolic steroids. However people in Jax Beach used my arrest to to attack her. Sad though, people are small minded little crabs. On February 6, 1995 my Ma got a call that a liver was ready for her translant. She survived that and later Breast cancer, kidney failer and a broken hip. She is 70 years old and I sometimes sit with her playing the same nylon string guitar that she bought for herself over 35 years ago.
Sitting on my sister's Pam porch in Natchez
My friend Timmy Dillard rode with to Natchez to visit my dad in June of '09. I am playing a Epiphone 12 string guitar
The Zen Buddha of Adams County...THE FAT PIMP!!!
This is my father John Henry McIntyre aka the Fat Pimp who has inspired the name of my music project.
MY SHRINE TO JIMI...
Jimi Hendrix has inspired and influenced many but for African-Americans who played guitar during and after his demise, he is the beacon of creativity that shines on in his music. These two guitars were built by myself to the specs that Hendrix used to modify his own guitars during his last years.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Just dropping a line....
It has been awhile...I have been seeing Dr. Baptista for my upcoming lap band surgery. Yeah I am doing it. And with no support from my family who can ask for anything more.
Mike Courson-the man who never stop believing in me!!!
I have known Mike for twenty years. We first met at the Music Shop in Jacksonville Beach; it was ran by the family who also owned Einstein's a Go Go were I happen to see playing there bands like Soundgarden, Living Colour and Nirvana. Back to the Music Shop...Mike was playing some great blues on a guitar with Richard-the guy who ran the instument part of the store. I step to Mike and asked him if he could teach me guitar and he said yes. That was the begininig of a long friendship that even saw us working together at Ponte Vedra Inn & Club were Mike is still employed there. He was not the first guitar teacher but he help me put it together what I learned from the likes of Pastor Charlie Thomas, an old Piedmont style guitar player who I will have more info at a later time. Mike C never faltered in his belief that I had true talent-thanks man!!!
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