guys n guitars

Today’s topic: Why are guys with guitars so hot?

The most mild-mannered guys are transformed into sexy things the moment they strap on guitars.

Maybe it’s just me, but judging by the bevy of birthday party girls who were climbing all over Tom at Black & Blue’s gig in Fort Worth Friday night, I think not.

The night started unpromising. By 10:30, there were maybe 15 people in the club, including me and a few friends. But an appreciative crowd grew over the course of the first set and during the break, the girls arrived—a whole flock of ‘em in short-shorts and high heels and glitter everywhere. One wore a tiara. This was good news.

“Those are the girls that are going to dance to Honky-Tonk Women,” I told a friend.

I was right, of course. Honky-Tonk Women was the second song of the second set and that’s when the party really began.

It was, we learned, Kaitlin’s 22nd birthday and she was out in a white sequin tank top, white short-shorts, disco ball earrings and tiara, partying with her posse at the Moon bar. It was a mass of writhing, squealing girls, pressed up to the low stage, wiggling for attention. Kaitlin draped a scarf around Tom’s neck and another girl put a tiara on Steve. The girls would drift off for a minute, to get drinks or take cell phone photos of each other, then return, arms in the air, nipples aimed at the band, shaking their bottoms and shrieking.

This display attracted throngs of beefy frat boys and the dance floor grew increasingly crowded. By Satisfaction and Jumping Jack Flash, the room was a hallucinogenic bacchanalia of dancing. It was a notably rhythmless orgy but heartfelt and enthusiastic.

I’d pay money for copies of the photos taken at the end of the show of Tom, looking sweaty, pleased and bewildered, flanked by young girls, pressing in and posing. It was a MySpace moment in the making.

After the last shutter clicked, the girls wandered off and the club began clearing out.

“What was that about?” Tom asked.

Guitars, baby. They do something to us.

Electric guitars properly wielded instill authority, power, mystery and blatant sex appeal. It works for women too, but they become sexy in a masculine way.

I am first of all awed by the ability to stand on a stage and sing, play a guitar and interact with an audience. The skill alone is a turn-on. I am attracted to competence.

But guitars on men are like stiletto heels on women: an automatic come-on.

Guitarist wield their instruments differently. Tom is low-slung and solid and wears his guitar at groin level. He wears t-shirts or his sleeves rolled up, flashing forearms. When he solos, he plants himself even more firmly and works his instrument. (So to speak.) His playing is crunchy and assertive.

Black & Blue’s other guitarist, Steve, is tall, slender and androgynous. He wears his guitar high. He moves on the stage less than Tom but his connection with his guitar is palpable and his solos are complex conversations.

Both different, both hot.

My first major real life rock-and-roll crush was on a bass player. Bass is hot. It vibrates. Bass players don’t need center stage but can be a band’s backbone. Joel, Black & Blue’s bassist, mostly hangs back on stage. He hasn’t started working the crowd yet or maybe he’s going for mystery. Drummers have to work hard for attention, tucked way back the way they are. Chuck seems to like it. He works his ass off behind his drums and enjoys watching the dramas in front of him.

Girls who chase bands know that dating a bass player is different from dating, say, a lead singer. (What do you call a lead singer without a girlfriend? Homeless. That’s my favorite musician joke.) The ego needs are different. You have to be prepared to do an awful lot of ego-feeding to run with rock stars. Rhythm guitarists have lesser ego needs than lead guitarists. Drummers have low-maintenance egos but are infamously flaky. (What do you call a guy who hangs around with musicans? A drummer. Another good one.)

Here’s my favorite rock-and-roll wife story. It was our first wedding anniversary and Tom’s band du jour, Tex Edwards and the Swingin’ Cornflake Killers, was playing at Taco Land in San Antonio. (BTW, big Cornflake Killers reunion on Aug. 8 at Reno’s in Deep Ellum.) Before the show, as the many bands that day milled around and set up, MsKrit, Tex’s girlfriend, and I were, as always, sitting off to one side watching the scene and entertaining ourselves with caustic narrative. At one point, the wife of some other musician in some other band stood before us.

“You wives and girlfriends of the band?” she demanded.

We nodded.

“Me too,” the woman replied. “Makes ya mean, don’t it?”

That night went on to be an epic rock-and-roll night to remember.

But I digress...

Skill counts in guitar-lust, of course. The first time I saw Kenny Vaughan, a successful studio player in Nashville, was at a small-ish club where we very fortuitously stumbled into a show of Nashville notables playing together for fun. I knew of Kim Richey, Jim Lauderdale and Mandy Barnett, who were part of the group, but I’d never heard of the geeky-cute gangly guy with dark hair and big plastic glasses.

But when he started playing I got flustered. He didn’t have a lot of guitar god moves and wore his guitar on the high side, which is interesting but less sexually explicit than all that groin-level diddling. But Vaughan’s playing had shades of George Harrison, my childhood guitarist crush. His chords and progressions hit notes in me I blush to speak of. I shook his hand after the show and my knees trembled.

Guys and guitars. It just works.