Doc Stevens

Tondeleo: I'm trying to learn more about the guitars and equipment that Doc Stevens uses, because I have noticed that when I have been with him and Marilyn, that other musicians come up to them and ask about their equipment, and apparently whatever equipment a musician uses denotes some level of status or another.

As I mentioned earlier, many of these rural people who barely seem to have life's necessities may have, for example, a couple of dozen or more guns. It is not uncommon for a rural American to have maybe ten or more rifles; (a long gun that shoots bullets) These typically would be what are called, "22's" referring to the calibre of the bullet. A 22 is a "rabbit gun" or "squirrel gun," and yes rural Americans intentionally shoot squirrels so they can eat them! I cannot imagine this, but Doc, Marilyn and their friends have served squirrel to me, without telling me what I was eating. If I had known, I would have been ill. Doc says that a 30 ought six is also common. I am not certain what that means.

These same Americans with maybe ten or a dozen rifles would also have several shotguns of various sizes, mostly, from what I hear, .410's, 12 gauges and 20 gauges. Twelve gauges seem the most common. So a poor American may have more than two thousand dollars worth of guns, yet live in a small bungalow!

In addition to rifles and shotguns, rural Americans typically have a few handguns. These seem to be in the following sizes: 22's, 25's, 38's, 45's, 380's and 9 mm's. I am not certain what these mean. Doc says a 38 or 45 is good for home protection, but not as good as a 45.

He says if you shoot someone with a 45 and he is still standing, you want to stick your head through the hole to see what is propping him up. In America, that is considered humourous. And Doc said to tell the world that he has not shot anyone before.

I said that to say this. In addition to having small arsenals of weapons, rural poor Americans may also have collections of musical instruments and equipment. I find this a bit odd, since they are clearly poor.

I mentioned already some of Doc's guitars, and will continue with this, as long as he will let me. I have seen some that are clearly special, and I hope he will let me take pictures of them.

He has several small guitar amplifiers, and at least three bigger ones. His small ones are mostly home made, and I am including pictures of them in this posting. Some of them are mains powered, and some are battery powered for when he and Marilyn are busking.

For busking, he says all you need is about 15 watts of power for the guitar, and a mic for Marilyn's harp. He says a busker shouldn't need a mic for vocals because a busker "develops pipes" by playing out in the street singing louder than the traffic. I know that he and Marilyn definitely can sing loudly without amplification.

Here is a pictures of one of his small amps, with brief explanations:

Doc: "This here is one of my favourites for busking. I made the box for it, so it would be strong, but easy to carry. I put a battery pack holder in it so I don't need no 'lectric. Takes 6 D cell [torch] batteries. Them bigger batteries give you longer play life.

Then I wired in the plug in adaptor for if you DO have someone who'll let you plug in. I fastened the adaptor inside and then plugged it in to a small extension cord.

Last, I hooked in a adaptor for a car cigarette lighter, so I can run it off a car if I need to. I've done that plenty of times, like at car shows what is outside. I plug in and play.

The front with the speaker in it is hinged so I can aim the sound up a little bit so it carries. It's got a pin on the side to fasten it shut when I'm carryin' it. This amp is 15 watts. Loud enough for busking and is two channel, so me an Marilyn can play and she can plug her mic in for her harps.

Lookin' at the picture I can tell it needs somethin' to make it stand out. I will put a couple Cadillac emblems on it when I get a chance. I got some out in the shop I will put on it.

I put a shoulder strap onto it as you can see, so I can carry it and a guitar and still have a free hand. That's pretty much all on this one. Got a handle on the top. Got a eight inch speaker with two cones.

I got others. Some made from old amps and old radios. But they all do the same thing. Ain't nothin' to write about, if you know what I mean."

Tondeleo: I was able to call on Doc Stevens and Marilyn briefly on my way to Dulles International Airport (in VA, about an hour and 45 minutes from Doc and Marilyn's place in Nanjemoy, MD) on Saturday the 27th. I rang them up to let them know I was coming, because Doc is suspicious of anyone coming down the twisted dirt drive that leads to his house, and after dark he comes out with a fully loaded 12 gauge shotgun if he is not expecting visitors. "Aint nobody come down this road by accident, Tondy. If I aint invited them or Marilyn aint, then they got no business down here and need to be run off." That seems to be an attitude that is common among rural Americans.

I pull down their long winding dirt driveway, wondering how they ever found this place to live in. I am a regular visitor and still drive right past it sometimes, and each time I come down the driveway at night it seems longer than it did the time before.

I pull up near the front of the house and honk my horn a couple of times and cut the engine off. Doc's dogs, Dale Junior and Stubby are barking and growling and charging at the fence, hoping that they can devour me for their evening meal. Marilyn comes running out to greet me shouting over her shoulder, "Doc! It's TONNN - DEEE-EEE - and he's in a RED rent-a-car! A RED one, Doc! Ha ha! They gave him a RED one! " and she opens the front passenger door and begins mucking about with the tuners on the radio of my rented Ford 500.

The Ford 500 sounded (by it's name) as if it would be an exciting Yank car to drive, when I contracted for it. It isn't fun at all. It is designed more for the infirm, the elderly and the cluelessly boring. It is a poor handling, underpowered and unimaginative and unflavoured piece of rubbish that Ford US has been attempting to sell to Americans unsuccessfully, so they have unloaded bulk of them to the rental companies and fleet buyers.

Anyway, Marilyn is trying out the stereo and going from station to station, and adjusting the balance, tone and fade. I hear the screen door open and close, but Doc is nowhere to be found. Then I look into the rearview mirror and see him coming from behind my car, fumbling with his trousers a bit.

"Doc you weren't whizzing on my rent-a-car, were you?" I ask incredulously, fearing the answer.

"Naw, Tondy, I was lookin' at the sight of you in a red car instead of the sissy green ones you always get... Yeah, I DID give it a little "country boy car wash" back there ... just the bumper. How was your Christmas? Didja get anything from your family over there in England? Did they send you some crumpets?"

Doc knows a few English terms that he's picked up somewhere, and uses them as often as he can, usually in an effort to take the mickey out of me. I tell him Christmas was ok, but that I am waiting to return to UK to celebrate with my mates. Doc and Marilyn invite me in, and offer me some leftover turkey, ham, turkey "stuffing" and some American food I am not familiar with.

"Tonnnn- dyyyy! You oughta see the HARPS I got for Christmas! Good ones, this time instead of Doc's old ones from when he played harp! He got me some real PROFESSIONAL ones! Lee Oskars! Eight of them! Now I can play like I want to instead of suffocatin' on Doc's old wore out harps...!"

Marilyn is so happy she is squealing in a singsong fashion that I have only heard in females of the Appalachians and some parts of North Carolina. This makes sense of course, because Doc and Marilyn's family come from the Appalachians and they have lived in various places in North Carolina and still have relatives there.

Doc says that he called his old friend and bandmate from the 1970's, a Dog-mess Jonny (whom I have just looked Googled and discovered is a real person! He was a harp player for Vigilantes of Love, and now resides in Athens, GA, and teaches at University of Georgia!), and that Dog Mess told him to get Marilyn the Lee Oskars. So he did.

"I painted a boy's 29 Chevy rat rod and used some of the money for them harps. Got 'em off the innerweb. This gal down the road showed me how to do it and paid for it on the innerweb too, and I gave her the money to take care of it. Them's the ones what Dog-Mess Jonny said to get Marilyn and I done it. He's a pro on that harp."

I ask about the name "Dog-Mess" and Doc says that back in the 70's he and Jonny played in a band called the Colored Man Blues Band and he gave that nickname to Jonny and... "he still uses that name to this day. But he aint playin' blues all the time no more. He went to college and then to that next kind of school and is a professor at a COLLEGE down Athens, Georgia! He's a teacher down there, and he is Jonathan Evans to them! That is all they know him by, Tondy! He got 'em fooled and they don't even know he plays the blues. They think he's just a geek. But me an' Marilyn know better. She played for him over the cell phone and he said she is real good. He's right. He's a pro, and Marilyn is real good. But them college boys thinks he's a professor, and we know he's a bluesman! "

I ask Doc what's so funny about that, and he says it "just is." I remind him that people don't know all the things that HE does and he tells me that it is different for him 'cause he has a lot of things he had to learn to put food on the table, and "it don't mean nothin'."

Doc goes back into his bedroom and comes back out, displaying a garish black and white polka dotted guitar strap at me. I have seen pictures of a blues singer with a white guitar with black polka dots on it, on a CD cover at Doc and Marilyn's, so I suss that this strap MAY have some connection to that CD cover, by the way Doc is handling it so gingerly.

"Lookit that! Lookit that, Tondy! Now THERE'S a Christmas present! You know what that is? That's a BUDDY GUY GUITAR STRAP and it's signed by BUDDY GUY! Buddy Guy SIGNED it, Tondy! Look! It says, BUDDY GUY '08. 08 is when he signed it. That means he signed it this year! This woman what I know went to see Buddy and me an her is kinda close, so she bought it for me LAST SUMMER and kept it a secret since July - an gave it to me for Christmas! A BUDDY GUY guitar strap with his name on it what he wrote himself! With a SHARPIE!"

I ask Doc if he's going to use it, and he said that he HAD planned on using it, but then his friend Bruce "what's got the innerweb, only it's doll up only" looked it up on Ebay and found one just like it selling for $300. So now Doc says it is a family heirloom and is going to be put in his strongbox just to be shown to people who are blues fans and no one else will be allowed to handle it.

"Tondy, something like this, people'll steal. You leave it sittin' out even in your own house, your friends'll steal it. I got customers what would steal this and then look me dead in the eye and swear to God they never even seen it. No, you don't take something like this out in public, Tondy. It's too dangerous and it might get tooken."

Doc carefully folded the Buddy Guy autographed guitar strap and put it in an old billiards cue case. Then he carried it back to the recesses of their house, to hide it somewhere, or to unpack it and lock it in his strongbox to protect it from would be burglars. I am not at all certain that he would totally trust ME with the actual location of this new Stevens treasure.

"Yep, Tondy, I don't know what they got for you when you get back to England, but you tell 'em me and Marilyn sends them American Christmas greetings, and a happy new year and that Marilyn got the harps she been prayin' for and hintin' at, and that I got a Buddy Guy guitar strap what he signed hisself and I did not pray for it or hint at it, but the Good Lord and that woman knew I'd like it and they was both right."

I assured Doc and Marilyn that I would convey their message and that I was getting quite peckish and could we eat. Marilyn let me know that the microwave would ding soon and that my first plate of food would be ready. I DO miss home, but they do their best to treat me like family. Happy New Year.

Tondeleo: Doc and I got into a discussion of the disadvantages of living in the country, as far as police and medical care are concerned. I have always until lately lived in urban areas where both medical health and police are only a few minutes away. My time staying with Doc has taken a lot to get used to. Here are excerpts from Doc's view on being out in the middle of nowhere.

Doc: Bein' far from the police ain't nothin, Tondy. It ain't their job to protect your property an' family. That's YOUR job. A man needs to protect his family and his stuff. Then you calls the cops afterwards, if you had to shoot him or he got your stuff. Mostly if you fire your 12 gauge [shotgun] in the air and tell him you'll blow his head off, he'll take of runnin'. I don't need the cops out here pokin' round my place.

Now ambulances an' all that, well, you gotta know how to fix yourself a little bit. We's bout 20 or so miles from the hospital an' it takes 'em a while to get here from Ironsides. You do the basic doctorin' when you can an' they do more in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.

I invented a way to stop bleedin'. Idea came to me when Floyd had a huntin' accident an' his boy Floyd Jr shot him in the right arm an' he was bleeding all over the place. I wrapped his arm in saran wrap an' blowed Marilyn's hairdryer on it an' it held the bleedin' til Mamie came by an' took Floyd to the hospital. Way I figure, they ought to do that in the ambulance, but use that shrink wrap what gets tighter when you heat it. That's what I invented.

If you put it on the interweb, give me credit. I am the inventor an' if someone's life gets saved, I want 'em to know they's life been saved by a inventor an' body an' fender man - Doc Stevens.

Tondeleo: Two days later Doc came over with some drawings of medical cures and inventions for me to put on the "interweb." Here is the first one, the one to stop bleeding: