today’s audio is a demo of the mountain goats’ song “white cedar”. it was arranged by myself, joseph fink, and meg bashwiner for a workshop of a musical we spent the last week working on.
i am by no means a mountain goats’ completist, but between opening for them numerous times and spending the summer of 2021 as the 5th mountain goat playing guitar and keys, i have had my ears and hands on a fair number of their songs. “white cedar” was new to me, and i am so grateful joseph and meg brought it into my life. it falls into the mountain goats’ bucket i call “stunningly beautiful piano harmony and vocal melody”, which is probably my favorite mountain goats’ bucket. other buckets include: literary acoustic thrash, pretty drone grooves, and ersatz metal anthems. may all us songwriters be so lucky to have as many beautiful buckets.
while we worked this week, i mostly sang, placing the piano playing into more capable hands. in my hands though was something unique: someone else’s guitar. in specific, my friend daniel’s low budget gretsch jim dandy, a fine fine looking entry level small acoustic guitar with a funky mid-century style pickup.
where, you may ask, was my guitar? the tiny, metallic silver rocket of a parlor guitar you’ve seen me play exclusively onstage since 2019, the guitar affectionately known as “little guy”.
my friends, i am sorry to say that little guy was the victim of an airplane crush. i do wish by that phrase i meant that little guy met someone at the airport, sat next to them on the plane, shared little nips of flight-sanctioned alcohol with them. that little guy enjoyed stimulating and spontaneous conversation that led to a clandestine hand under a blanket, or a visit to the bathroom for a solo flight on the mile high club. or even, as i heard someone tell just last night, a chance airline meeting resulting in a several year relationship.
nope, not that kind of crush.
instead, little guy was literally crushed on the airplane. to be precise: as little guy was being loaded onto the plane, they “fell off a truck and were run over”. these were the words of the poor southwest gate agent tasked with relaying this news to me, before we even boarded the plan at the detroit airport.
the saga began earlier in the day, when a mistake in the spelling of my name on my ticket, triggered a series of annoying stops and backtracks as i tried to go through security. so when the gate agent called me to the podium before departure, i assumed it was because there was yet another problem with the person named erin mckweon.
instead, grim-faced, the agent took me aside and very softly told me there had been an accident with my guitar. without realizing it, i laid a hand on their bicep.
“wait what” i managed to say.
and in that position they recounted the accident and showed me pictures. first the case… which was deeply mangled.
if you saw this picture, what would you think the guitar inside might look like:
and yet the agent showed me another picture and said this was all the damage they could find. the fun little tone and volume knobs that gave little guy such a unique flair, were crushed into the top, amid a series of long cracks.
i am actually quite good in a crisis. easily slipping into a calm, though dissociated, state. i kept my voice even. i did not faint. i did start to get angry at the agent, but quickly caught myself.
“i know its not your fault, so i’ll spare you my feelings.”
“have all your feelings”, she said, “it’s my job.”
but really, i’m not the kind of person who yells at workers, especially ones tasked with owning someone else’s mistake.
8hrs and two flights later, when i landed at hartford, i didn’t even need to introduce myself to the baggage agent, he was waiting for me. in his arms was my mangled case. seeing it in person, the violence in 3 dimensions, was truly upsetting. while i take my cases for granted, after all they are meant to get dirty, to get damaged in the service of protecting their precious cargo, this was beyond what i had ever had happen to any of my cases.
as i slowly opened it to inspect little guy, i slipped further into dissociation. i was merely a detective observing a crime scene, looking for clues, filing data into my mind for later correlation and supposition. this was not my guitar, it was simply a guitar.
and what i found was frankly miraculous. indeed, the only damage i could find was the crushed corner of the sound board. no neck damage. no other dents scratches or cracks.
hey yall! announcements are short and sweet this episode!
it’s time once again for my annual Anti-Holiday Spectacular, the world’s first anti-capitalist, pro-queer, suspicious of christmas-as-patriotism, sex-positive, not safe for work, multi-ethnic, radical leftist Anti-Holiday show.
there will be shows in: new york; hollywood, sacramento & bay area CA; olympia and seattle WA; and eugene and portland OR. if you’d like to be a cranky caroler at any of these shows please email me erin@erinmckeown.com. its super fun, easy, and you get to wear your worst holiday gear, and for some shows i can offer you a free ticket too. as always tickets here.
if you can’t make these shows, please consider giving the gift of Anti-Holiday cheer via my online store where there’s a few CDs left and the revised 2nd edition Sacred Hymnal among other goodies.
and at the very least, i hope you’ll stream my albums F*CK THAT! and F*CK U TOO! as you cook or clean or gift or host or decorate. tis the season!
i have been a professional musician since i was in high school, traveling all over the world with my instruments. sometimes i carry them on. in later years, i have invested in great cases and checked them. in all these years of traveling, i had never had a guitar damaged.
i had a TSA agent put their hand through the delicate paper of an amplifier speaker, totally ruining it. i had a keyboard midi controller lose several of its keys despite being surrounded by pillows in a suitcase. and of course i have seen the social media pictures of artists who have had their instruments destroyed by airline mishaps. many of my friends have had this happen. its a trauma, no two ways about it, but right or wrong, its also a cost of doing business.
for these reasons, most musicians i know have multiple sets of instruments: the ones they play at home or write on, the ones they record with, and the ones they travel with. the true definition of an instrument: an object, fit to purpose, to help you accomplish a task.
i have a big, ancient gibson acoustic guitar that i bought in high school. i only play it in the recording studio. it’s too unwieldy for home use, and too valuable to bring on the road. incidentally, part of why it is so unique and amazing sounding is that it too was airplane crushed, long before i got it. one side of it and the neck are one material, the other side and the back another type and color of wood. there are several sets of patches across its back and side, the result of being speared by a mic stand. these were the stories told to me, when i bought the guitar. the wood that makes the instrument sound so sweet also carries a history of violence. scars, just like my own.
for years, if you saw me play live, you would see me with a green, archtop gretsch hollow-body electric. it was My Thing. a conscious choice starting in 2003 to not be a girl with an acoustic guitar, a designation that assumed a certain sound, low level of guitar prowess, and narrow subject matter. of course i recognize my own self-hatred in these designations! i did not want to be what i was.
so for years i ran from the simplicity of playing the acoustic guitar live. i dragged amps and pedal boards across continents, until my body and budget eventually gave out.
in late 2019, i had a dream my grandfather died. and no joke, the next morning, my cousin texted to tell me that my grandfather died. while i was not currently close to him, the turning over of the universe’s fabric, the last of my grandparents passing, the ending of a generation struck me. the day was sad, resonant. i took it slow.
later that afternoon, i stopped by birdhouse music, here in western mass in search of a specific electric guitar pedal. birdhouse didn’t have it, but before i left i did a quick walk through of their instruments, window-shopping.
and that’s when i saw little guy for the first time. small bright flash of silver, standing out amongst the browns and blondes of the other acoustic guitars. i was intrigued by the size and color and the unusual feature of knobs on the face on an acoustic guitar.
i asked to play it, and then plugged it into the nearest available amp, which was a gigantic bass amp. the sound that leapt out of that little collection of wood and wire was like a mack truck. broad and deep and yet crystal clear on the top end. i detuned the lower strings, as i sometimes do, and played them like an upright bass. the sound was magical. i was sold. this guitar, so unexpected on this weird day, was going to be my next Thing. i knew then i would jettison the electric for good, simplify my touring life. the price of little guy didn’t hurt either. a “mere” $700, which for a professional musicians is a drop in the bucket of what our instruments usually cost us.
the pandemic hit shortly after, so it was literally years before i could take little guy out for a public spin. but once i did, i was rewarded by its sound through a PA. in rooms big or small, it delivered. i had a new signature. and best of all, i could carry a guitar and one pedal. no gear, only music. my body and budget appreciated it.
when people would compliment little guy, i would demure. oh its really not a special guitar, i’d say, since it didn’t cost much and required no outboard shjusjing.
“its a toyota” i would tell you, knowingly. practical, affordable, reliable. if something happened to it, oh well. it was just little guy.
but something happened over the years, something that i didn’t realize until i saw little guy laying wounded in it’s mangled case on the floor of a hartford baggage office. i had long-ago fallen in love, and now my love was hurt. somewhere along the line, little guy had become another definition of an instrument: an avatar of my inward self, an extension of my musicality and artistic vision. i had shaped myself to it, it had shaped itself to me.
in toronto 2 days before the crush. photo by Edward Viveiros.
in the baggage office that day, they asked me if the guitar was a total loss. i truly didn’t know and couldn’t know until i took it to someone who could look inside at the surprisingly delicate guts of an acoustic guitar.
i have been a loyal southwest customer for my entire career. their baggage policy has helped me bring along as many tools as i have needed to projects over the years. being able to change plans easily has fit into the vagaries of a music career.
so even though they crushed my guitar, they also made it right, right away. i walked out of the airport with a check to replace the case and the entire guitar.
the reality is little guy can be repaired, though it will cost nearly as much as i paid for it back in 2019. but i get to keep playing it. i get to keep the bespoke gift-from-a-listener fox and flame sticker that covers the entire back panel. and i get to point to the cracks that will forever be on the soundboard, around its now repaired knob controls, and say, little guy had an airplane crush and lived to tell the tale.
x erin
aaaah!!!! the jacket judy garland wore at carnegie hall!! ICONIC!! and if you’re a nerd like me you zoomed in on this auction catalog page from 1968.
who knew andy from downton abbey was such a great singer-songwriter.
this is super-niche, but i read a fantastic book about rudolph diesel. yes *that* diesel. the guy who invented the engine! that’s named for him! and his life has a CRAY twist that you won’t believe
speaking of “niche”, i sat next to two very young students at a cafe yesterday, who with all their 20 year old authority, pontificated to each other that it was pronounced “neesh”. as a “nitch” person, overhearing them, i had to google to see that i was right, both are acceptable but only one is pretentious.
my dear pal and collaborator quiara has written an absolute bomb of a book. i recommend the audio version, read by my sister-in-crime daphne rubin-vega.
now - June 2026 - Fredericksburg VA
Fredericksburg Area Museum
Out And About: The Walk-in Closet
VISIT
November 21, 2025 - Northampton MA
the snap dragons will open
TICKETS
November 29, 2025 - New York NY
F*CK THAT! Anti-Holiday Spectacular
TICKETS
December 5, 2025 - Los Angeles CA
F*CK THAT! Anti-Holiday Spectacular
TICKETS
December 6, 2025 - Sacramento CA
F*CK THAT! Anti-Holiday Spectacular
TICKETS
December 7, 2025 - Berkeley CA
F*CK THAT! Anti-Holiday Spectacular
TICKETS
December 10, 2025 - Olympia WA
F*CK THAT! Anti-Holiday Spectacular
TICKETS
December 11, 2025 - Eugene OR
F*CK THAT! Anti-Holiday Spectacular
TICKETS
December 12, 2025 - Seattle WA
F*CK THAT! Anti-Holiday Spectacular
TICKETS
December 13, 2025 - Portland OR
F*CK THAT! Anti-Holiday Spectacular
TICKETS
April 10-May 10, 2026 - Chicago IL
World Premiere of OUT HERE @ Court Theatre
TICKETS & INFO
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