Musical Instruments I Own and Play

My first love and hate is the accordion. Learned to play it when I was about 13 years old, and it has been good to me. I did a bit of teaching which paid for my extras when I was in High School (at which time I also played, poorly, the flute and piccolo). But, then after I got married, and a whole lot more mature and worldly, I decided that it just wasn't all that “cool”. So, it got sold and accordion was forgotten.

But, everything old is new again. And a few years ago I was in a little used musical equipment store and saw a good looking Excelsior. Bought it for very little and have had a lot of fun with it.

I was amazed by how quickly I re-learned it to play. Great instrument for doing polkas and old-time waltzes! Click on the picture on the left for a nice, full-size picture ... and some interesting information on my book deal. If anyone can shed some info on its age I'd be grateful. All I know is that on the back it has “Model 312”. I think that is was made in the mid 1960s, but that really is just a guess.

After discarding the accordion (a foolish thing now that I look back on my life), I bought a small Yamaha spinet organ. Traded up a few times and bought my ultimate machine somewhere around 1989, a Kawai KX2000. Cool fun.

So after all that, what next? Well, I figured it be fun to play in a band and how hard could it be to play a simple instrument which only did one note at a time? Gotta be easy ... right!

Started to play tenor sax in 1997. I think I am started to understand it now. I went though a few cheapies before getting my current Keilwerth SX90 tenor—in my opinion an awesome horn.

I also have a nice little soprano and a really gorgeous 1920s C-Melody.

Here's pictures for you to drool over.

Now, you would think that this would be enough. Well, almost. I also have a Casio WK-3000 and, of course the usual assortment of percussion odds and ends.

Never a quiet night around here!