By Robert Downes
From the book, Planet Backpacker
People laughed when I said I planned to take a guitar on a backpacking trip around the world. "You'd be crazy to take a guitar along," a friend said. "You're going to regret lugging it all the way around the world."
"Believe me, I wouldn't dream of going without a guitar," I said. After all, what guitarist could stand to be away from the siren call of his six-string for five months?
And as it turned out, I had no regrets whatsoever taking a half-sized backpacker guitar through 20 countries and across four continents in 2007. That sawed-off acoustic guitar opened doors and cracked smiles of friendship in lands ranging from Ireland to India and beyond.
Those adventures are chronicled in my new book, "Planet Backpacker: Across Europe on a Mountain Bike & Backpacking on Through Egypt, India & Southeast Asia -- Around the World." (The Wandering Press)
TINKERBELLA
As the title of the book implies, I had my hands full even without taking a guitar along. But it turned out to be no problem. My instrument was an inexpensive Crafter, specially-designed for backpacking. While bicycling and camping my way across Ireland, England and down the Danube River in Austria, the guitar was strapped with bungie cords to the back of my 20-year-old mountain bike. It's neck jutted far off the tail of the bike, making us look like a rolling dragon fly.
Back home, I play a Larivee OM at my solo gigs and a Taylor T5 on rhythm and lead vocals in my dance-rock band, The Dawn Patrol. I love both guitars dearly. But on the road, I wanted a cheap guitar because backpacking can be a rough-and-tumble business. My Crafter, nicknamed "Tinkerbella," cost about $225 -- no great loss if it were stolen, stepped on, or wrecked by the rains of Europe.
Truth be told, it didn't have much tone to it -- backpacking guitars being prone to sounding like tin. But it did well enough on single-note picking, and I brought along a brass slide to practice my blues licks.
Speaking of which, a couple of favorites played along the way were "Hoo-chee Coochie Man" by Howlin' Wolf and "Rollin' and Tumblin'" by Robert Johnson. On a number of occasions, I wowed backpackers from Europe and Australia with these pure sounds of Americana. For a moment or two, I was the exotic American with the killer blues sound (in my own mind at least!).
NUBIANS ON THE NILE
I often played impromptu concerts at train stations and outside hostels or guest houses. In Amsterdam, excited tourists leaned far over the rails of their canal tour boats to click photos of the scruffy American jamming on his funky guitar. In Vietnam and India, I gave impromptu guitar lessons to people who'd never held an instrument before. They were so jazzed that their faces lit up like the sun -- more proof that music is the international language of peace.
I gave concerts in a jungle clearing in India, where elephants roamed (performing that old Eagle's hit: "Hotel Ooty-Pooty."); I played for homeless people, and on a dock while waiting for a ferry. I performed for an international group of backpackers, lounging on pillows and Arabian carpets under a tent on the beach by the Red Sea, with the mountains of Saudi Arabia just across the water.
But the thrill of a lifetime was performing with a Nubian drum band while sailing down the Nile in Egypt. Our felucca sailboat pulled to the shore and was joined by two other boats filled with backpackers. That night, the African crew of Nubian tribesmen lit a bonfire and played their drums under the desert sky. They invited me to join in and I picked out an Afro-pop lead to the best of my ability as all of the travelers danced around the fire.
LAND OF MUSIC
We all know that music is the universal language that unites people from every land, but perhaps the most interesting country to any six-string player is Ireland where the acoustic guitar reigns as king. Every pub seems to have some poor slave playing for pennies in the corner and every town has its coterie of street musicians.
On one memorable evening early in my trip, I was hanging out in a pub on one of the remote Isles of Aran off the western coast of Ireland, listening to the locals speak in their strange, buttery Gaelic language and watching rugby on the telly.
I met a local musician there named Seamus and we went outside to have a smoke and talk shop.
I mentioned that I liked the Irish song, “The Hills of Athenry,” about a young man who is transported to Australia on a prison ship for stealing crops to save his baby from starvation. I have played it myself at open mics back home, and have even had tears well up in my eyes when singing it.
“By a lonely castle wall, I heard a young girl calling:
Michael, they are taking you away.
For you stole Trevalyn’s corn,
So our babe might see the morn.
Now a prison ship is waiting on the bay.”
Seamus gave me a hard stare. “I hate that fookin’ song,” he said. “Everyone here plays it to death.”
I guess it’s the “Margaritaville” of Ireland. He wasn’t too keen on Irish music in general.
“Irish music is full of self-pity and sad songs about what the British did to us,” Seamus. “It’s time to get over it -- it’s time to move on.”
MUSIC MEMORIES
It was memories like that which fill my book. "Planet Backpacker" was written in over 100 internet cafes around the planet. After donating my bike to a hostel in Prague, I backpacked on around the world with just my pack and guitar. Many times, that guitar served as my only friend "on the road" as I wandered the beaches of southern India, the streets of Mumbai and the jungles of Malaysia.
Many people in many lands approached to hear my humble playing and to ask if they could have their picture taken with me. I always said yes on one condition: that they hold my guitar in the photo and give it a strum or two. Their beaming faces were all that any musician could ask for.
* Robert Downes is an amateur songwriter. His book, "Planet Backpacker," $13.95 from The Wandering Press, can be ordered through your local bookstore, or via amazon.com or on the Welcome Page of www.planetbackpacker.net
