Michael Ruth of Rich Ruth joins us in discussing music that takes us back to when we were kids. Plus, musical obsessions!
Q: What song or artist reminds you of your childhood?
Michael Ruth (Rich Ruth) — Guest Picker
A: The artist that snaps me back to my childhood the most is Tom Petty—specifically the album Wildflowers. My parents would listen to the CD constantly throughout the ’90s. It was one of the only records my folks liked that I wanted to listen to on my own.
Tom Petty - Wake Up Time (Official Lyric Video)
I even dubbed it onto cassette as an 8-year-old. Every time I get to the end and “Wake Up Time” comes on, it makes me think about my whole life and how I felt as a kid listening to the same music.
Michael Ruth's Current Obsession:
DJ Screw. It’s all I want to listen to these days. There’s such a wealth of his work out there that exists in a singular universe. All the music is incredibly slowed down, chopped and screwed, and very psychedelic. It grooves in a way that no other music does, and I can’t believe it took me this long to find it.
DJ Screw – Syrup Sippers (Ch. 131, 1996) [FULL MIXTAPE]
The folklore and stories behind DJ Screw are fascinating as well. He demonstrated the power of what one individual can create and influence by focusing on an approach totally different from everyone else.
Glynn Williams — Reader of the Month
A: “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You.” I was 8 when they came out. We pantomimed with brooms.
The Beatles - I Want To Hold Your Hand - Performed Live On The Ed Sullivan Show 2/9/64
Glynn Williams Current Obsession:
Heirs to the rock throne: Christone Kingfish Ingram and the Glorious Sons are two marvelous examples of vibrant new guitar rock. I gravitate to those who seem to show respect for their influences and in Ingram I hear Hendrix and Duane Allman and the blues greats before them. In the Sons I hear the joy of rock; anthems like “S.O.S.” are just fun to listen to, like Tom Petty or the Tragically Hip or Tull or the Stones.
Kingfish: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert
The Tiny Desk is working from home for the foreseeable future. Introducing NPR Music's Tiny Desk (home) concerts, bringing you performances from across the c...My only guitar obsession is to someday replace the sweet semi-acoustic, violin-shaped guitar I got in 1971 from the Sears catalog. Used to play that through a Fender Bandmaster stack under the strategy that playing loud covered my absolute lack of skill! Hee hee. Now I play a very nice PRS copy that’s about 25 years old and that’s enough for an old guy, although I do lust for a good window-rattling amp occasionally.
Charles Saufley — Gear Editor
A: “I’m Only Sleeping” by the Beatles. As a little kid, it made me feel dreamy, altered, woozy, and entranced—almost as if I was under a spell. Years later, I marveled at how perfectly the Beatles articulated the sensations of mind expansion and transcendence in “I’m Only Sleeping”—and at how the elation and freedom in those experiences were the same feelings the song gave me as a little boy. It made me think a lot about art and music’s more mystical powers.
I'm Only Sleeping (Remastered 2009)
Charles Saufley's Current Obsession:
Bird song. Especially the spiraling call of the Swainson’s Thrush. (Catch you next spring, little buddy).
Nick Millevoi — Associate Editor
A: “Twilight Time” by the Platters. I probably first heard the hook in late-night commercials for ’50s box sets back when I was beginning to form my long-term memory. Eventually, I got into oldies radio and my obsession spiraled from there. Whenever I hear the original recording—or songs like “In the Still of the Night,” “Earth Angel,” and “Love Potion No. 9”—it takes me back to early cable TV and the ’50s-obsessed Jersey Shore.
The Platters - Twilight Time - Lyrics
Nick Millevoi's Current Obsession:
Derrick Bostrom’s totally awesome drum fills.
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Tom Bedell in the Relic Music acoustic room, holding a custom Seed to Song Parlor with a stunning ocean sinker redwood top and milagro Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
A born storyteller, Bedell doesn’t keep his passion to himself. On Friday, May 12, at New Jersey boutique guitar outpost Relic Music, Bedell shared some of the stories he’s collected during his life and travels as part of a three-city clinic trip. At Relic—and stops at Crossroads Guitar and Art in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania, and Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center in Wheaton, Maryland—he discussed his guitars and what makes them so special, why sustainability is such an important cause, and how he’s putting it into practice.
Before his talk, we sat in Relic’s cozy, plush acoustic room, surrounded by a host of high-end instruments. We took a look at a few of the store’s house-spec’d Bedell parlors while we chatted.
“The story of this guitar is the story of the world,” Bedell explained to me, holding a Seed to Song Parlor. He painted a picture of a milagro tree growing on a hillside in northeastern Brazil some 500 years ago, deprived of water and growing in stressful conditions during its early life. That tree was eventually harvested, and in the 1950s, it was shipped to Spain by a company that specialized in church ornaments. They recognized this unique specimen and set it aside until it was imported to the U.S. and reached Oregon. Now, it makes the back and sides of this unique guitar.
A Bedell Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides.
As for the ocean sinker redwood top, “I’m gonna make up the story,” Bedell said, as he approximated the life cycle of the tree, which floated in the ocean, soaking up minerals for years and years, and washed ashore on northern Oregon’s Manzanita Beach. The two woods were paired and built into a small run of exquisitely outfitted guitars using the Bedell/Breedlove Sound Optimization process—in which the building team fine-tunes each instrument’s voice by hand-shaping individual braces to target resonant frequencies using acoustic analysis—and Bedell and his team fell in love.
Playing it while we spoke, I was smitten by this guitar’s warm, responsive tone and even articulation and attack across the fretboard; it strikes a perfect tonal balance between a tight low-end and bright top, with a wide dynamic range that made it sympathetic to anything I offered. And as I swapped guitars, whether picking up a Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides or one with an Adirondack spruce top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides, the character and the elements of each instrument changed, but that perfect balance remained. Each of these acoustics—and of any Bedell I’ve had the pleasure to play—delivers their own experiential thumbprint.
Rosette and inlay detail on an Adirondack spruce top.
Ultimately, that’s what brought Bedell out to the East Coast on this short tour. “We have a totally different philosophy about how we approach guitar-building,” Bedell effused. “There are a lot of individuals who build maybe 12 guitars a year, who do some of the things that we do, but there’s nobody on a production level.” And he wants to spread that gospel.
“We want to reach people who really want something special,” he continued, pointing out that for the Bedell line, the company specifically wants to work with shops like Relic and the other stores he’s visited, “who have a clientele that says I want the best guitar I can possibly have, and they carry enough variety that we can give them that.”
A Fireside Parlor with a Western red cedar top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
The Gibson EH-185, introduced in 1939, was one of the company’s first electric guitars.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of electric guitar in shaping American popular music over the last half-century. Its introduction was a revolution, changing the course of modern musical styles. Today, when we think of the guitars that started the revolution, we think of the Stratocaster and the Les Paul, guitars held against the body and fretted with the fingertips. But the real spark of this musical mutiny was the lap-steel guitar.
In the early 20th century, guitar music was moving out of the parlors of homes and into public spaces where folks could gather together and dance. Guitarists needed to project their sound far beyond where their wimpy little acoustic instruments could reach. Instrument manufacturers began experimenting with larger body sizes, metal construction, and resonators to increase volume.
Around this time, George Beauchamp began experimenting with electric guitar amplification. He settled on a design using two U-shaped magnets and a single coil of wire. Beauchamp was in business with Adolph Rickenbacker, and they decided to stick this new invention into a lap steel.
If we put on our 1930s glasses, this decision makes perfect sense. The most popular music at the time was a blend of Hawaiian and jazz styles made famous by virtuosos like Solomon “Sol” Hoʻopiʻi. Photos of Hoʻopiʻi with a metal-body resonator abound—one can imagine his relief at being handed an instrument that projected sound toward the audience via an amplifier, rather than back at his own head via resonator cones. Beauchamp and Rickenbacker were simply following the market.
As it turned out, the popularity of Hawaiian music gave way to swing, and electric lap steels didn’t exactly take the world by storm. But Beauchamp and Rickenbacker had proven the viability of this new technology, and other manufacturers followed suit. In 1937, Gibson created a pickup with magnets under the strings, rather than above like Beauchamp’s.
“When I plugged in the EH-185 I expected to hear something reminiscent of Charlie Christian’s smooth, clean tone. But what I got was meatier—closer to what I associate with P-90s: warm and midrange-y.”
The first page of Gibson’s “Electrical Instruments” section in the 1939 catalog features a glowing, full-page write-up of their top-of-the-line lap steel: the EH-185. “Everything about this new electric Hawaiian Guitar smacks of good showmanship,” effuses the copy. “It has smoothness, great sustaining power, and an easy flow of tone that builds up strongly and does not die out.”
Picking up the 1940 EH-185 at Fanny’s House of Music is about as close as one can get to traveling back in time to try a new one. It is just so clean, with barely any dings or even finish checking. Overall, this is a 9/10 piece, and it’s a joy to behold. Speaking of picking it up, the first thing you notice when you lift the EH-185 out of the case is its weight. This is a much heavier instrument than other similar-sized lap steels, owing to a length of thick metal between the body and the fretboard. The catalog calls it “Hyblum metal,” which may be a flowery trade name for an early aluminum alloy.
This 1940 EH-185 is heavier than other lap steels in its class, thanks to a length of metal between its fretboard and body.
Photo by Madison Thorn
There are numerous other fancy appointments on the EH-185 that Gibson didn’t offer on their lesser models. It’s made of highly figured maple, with diamond-shaped decorations on the back of the body and neck. The double binding is nearly a centimeter thick and gives the instrument a luxurious, expensive look.
Behind all these high-end attributes is a great-sounding guitar, thanks to that old pickup. It’s got three blades protruding through the bobbin for the unwound strings and one longer blade for the wound strings. When I plugged in the EH-185 I expected to hear something reminiscent of Charlie Christian’s smooth, clean tone. But what I got was meatier—closer to what I associate with P-90s: warm and midrange-y. It was just crying out for a little crunch and a bluesy touch. It’s kind of cool how such a pristine, high-end vintage instrument can be so well-suited for a sound that’s rough around the edges.
As far as electric guitars go, it doesn’t get much more vintage than this 1940 Gibson EH-185 Lap Steel. It reminds us of where the story of the electric guitar truly began. This EH-185 isn’t just a relic—it’s a testament to when the future of music was unfolding in real time. Plug it in, and you become part of the revolution.
Sources: Smithsonian, Vintage Guitar, Mozart Project, Gibson Pre-War, WIRED, Steel Guitar Forum, Vintaxe
