Gumption (33 page)

When it comes to acoustic guitars, Trigger’s maker, the estimable C. F. Martin guitar company out of Nazareth, Pennsylvania, has been synonymous with the most desirably crafted American quality since 1833. Although Collings, Gibson, Taylor, Santa Cruz, and a score of smaller makers can give them a run for their money by now, Martin is like the Louisville Slugger or Filson cruiser jacket when it comes to longevity and quality. They are the Zippo lighter of guitars.

The year was 1969, and Willie was playing a gig with his band at the John T. Floore Country Store in Helotes, Texas, when a drunk stepped on his Baldwin 800C classical guitar and destroyed it. Willie’s crew sent the mess to their guitar man in Nashville, Shot Jackson, who informed Willie via telephone that the damage was irreparable. However, Jackson had this Martin N-20 classical on hand into which he could transfer the Baldwin’s electric pickup. For the price of 750 dollars (5,000 dollars today), Willie acquiesced—and unwittingly entered into a marriage made in country music heaven.

The yellow guitar top is Sitka spruce from British Columbia or Alaska. The back and sides are made of Brazilian rosewood, that precious hardwood that is so ideal for musical instruments that its supply
has been almost entirely used up and is no longer available for import or purchase, except in tiny, hard-to-find quantities, like the rarest of pearls. The neck is mahogany, also from South America, and the bridge and fretboard are black ebony from Africa. These precious woods, along with the German brass tuning pegs, are typically ideal for this type of instrument, but Willie Nelson’s guitar style has proved to be anything but typical.

Although he first learned to play western swing and polka, as well as cribbing all the Tin Pan Alley hits he could handle off the radio, Willie had been turned on to the playing of jazz guitar master Django Reinhardt early on the professional circuit, and he was spellbound. He immediately recognized that Reinhardt’s playing was the wellspring from which had sprung all the other riffs he had previously learned, but the original source material was much more pure and variegated. Willie had been learning from fiddle and guitar players who were emulating Django, but now he was thrilled to find the fuel that would spark the fire in his artistic belly for the rest of his life.

Unfortunately, the Martin N-20 was not designed to tolerate the brutal workout of Willie’s fingers, as they mixed Spanish finger style with jazz, blues, and good old-fashioned country strumming, a mélange of techniques that alternated between the use of a pick and just the fingers of the right hand. The pinky and ring finger of his right hand soon wore a hole right through the spruce top, near the sound hole, not to mention the other scars Trigger began to accumulate. Some were accidental, or the result of Willie’s hammering pick, but others were of a decidedly more intentional bent, such as the place where Leon Russell signed the top with his knife.

Willie and his stage manager, Poodie Locke, found a luthier in Austin named Mark Erlewine, who gave the Martin a thorough tune-up and refinishing, but he could have had no idea that he was entering into a stewardship that has lasted nearly forty years. Twice a year he repairs the finish and he adds bracing under the top where and when necessary, thereby keeping Willie in the saddle. Willie has surmised that he and Trigger have played more than ten thousand shows together, logging more than a million minutes of playing time.

Over the years, Willie’s crew have tried to get him to switch to different versions of the same model N-20, both from Trigger’s vintage and newly built “classic reissues,” but no guitar ever feels remotely the same to Willie, and so it would seem that Trigger will see him through to the finish line. That sense of loyalty bleeds over into everything Willie does, whether he’s helping out an animal shelter or just bringing young talent into the recording studio. He seems to have maintained a pertinent sense of humanity in every undertaking, which I suppose is unsurprising by now. Like a Texan Gandhi, he clearly just gets it: “Anybody can be unhappy. We can all be hurt. You don’t have to be poor to need something or somebody. Rednecks, hippies, misfits—we’re all the same. Gay or straight? So what? It doesn’t matter to me. We have to be concerned about other people, regardless.”

Maybe he’s so good at speaking for the rest of us because he spent many years as just another one of the people trying to make ends meet until he could see his way clear to making his dreams come true. Whatever the reason, this particular troublemaker has done little but bring music and good times to a lot of Americans for a lot of years. We should all be so lucky as to make such trouble.

CONAN O’BRIEN

M
egan and I share an e-mail, simply because it’s all the e-mail address we ever needed. Like many of you, we often feel oppressed by the amount of correspondence in which our business obligates us to partake, and so it has never occurred to us to update or enlarge our computer-using capabilities. As a married couple, this sharing also affords us a considerable degree of transparency, since every electronic letter that we receive by computer is available for perusal by the household. It’s not “my e-mail” or “her e-mail,” it’s simply: “the e-mail.” I like the system for its convenience and its inherent sense of fidelity.

Thus, when an e-mail comes in from “somebody good,” we consider it fair game for both of us to enjoy. This explains how Megan came to learn about my secret second family in Spokane (but perhaps that’s a tale for the next book). She also read, and subsequently insisted that I include in the book, the following exchange between Conan and myself. Much of my solicitation contains the same language that you have previously seen in my electronic note to George Saunders, so I will cut to the chase wherever possible.

Dear Tall Sir,

8/15/14

I want to ask you for a significant favor, and, despite our secret, long-suffering passion for one another, I mean to do so with (approximately) the same pomp with which I have petitioned Oprah Winfrey.

I am working on my second book for Dutton Books . . . etc., etc. . . . looking at religion, technology, human rights, nature, guns/war, tobacco, hand-crafting, advertising . . . hopefully with a chuckle. Hilarious, right?

Since my list of swell Americans must necessarily be quite subjective, I can’t help but think of you and your, frankly, carnal dance moves and the sense of humor behind which you proffer a mighty intelligence and gentle compassion. I’ll be honest: I intend to lionize you. To supplement my detailed recollection of your rippling abdominals, glistening with sunscreen in the Seattle half-light, I would love to engage you in an interview.

If we can nail down a date, I thought it would be really fun to make some sort of destination or adventure out of our interview; nothing too buccaneering, per se, but someplace we’d like to go and rest our weary hindquarters and enjoy a chin-wag. Fresno, I guess, is what I’m driving at.

It could be a hike, or a rooftop where Scotch is served, or it could also be your household fire pit or the ridiculously opulent hot tub at our new digs.

It’s also worth mentioning that, as you may be aware, my bride, Megan, is doing a Terrence McNally revival (
It’s Only a Play
) on Broadway from September through the top of January, so if you’re
heading east at all and you’d like to come as our guest, perhaps sporting a playwright of your own [Liza Powel-O’Brien is a playwright!], do simply holler. I would relish squiring you to any meal or diversion in New York City as well. The Bull Moose Room at Keens. Perhaps I could row you across the Hudson in an historic Whitehall skiff, and that is not a joke. I know a guy.

Sincerely,

Nick Offerman

It took the sluggard an entire day to get back to me, but I was otherwise rather pleased with his response.

Nick, you insufferable bastard,

8/16/14

How much time will you need? Forty seconds? A full minute?

Count me in, old chum. Let’s figure out a date and I will disappoint with meandering tales. And I will move heaven and earth to see Megan’s play. I would watch that woman read from the phone book and ask for an encore.

On a related topic, we must eat beefsteaks soon at a down-on-its-luck Chop House. It has been too long.

Your steadfast friend,

Conan

I guess the headline here is: We talk to each other like total nerds. Passionately. Unabashedly.

The first time I truly beheld Conan was when Megan was doing
his
Late Night with Conan O’Brien
show in New York City, circa 2001 or so. I was nothing short of tumescent to meet this impossibly tall man who had already brought me so much mirth with his televised comedy stylings; a hairdo like Kenickie’s wet dream; and brave, high weirdness—weirdness that I would later come to understand as the collaborative goulash of chef O’Brien and his coterie of writers of the highest (silly) caliber, like Mike Sweeney, Robert Smigel, Bob Odenkirk, Louis C.K., Jon Glaser, Brian Stack, and Brian McCann (four of whom have appeared on
Parks and Rec
, as Officer Dave Sanderson, Councilman Jeremy Jamm, Ted, and Freddy Spaghetti), with many others over the years.

Conan’s take on
Late Night
, replete with his undeniably fetching gyrations (Try and deny it! You can’t!), his masturbating bear (not a euphemism, nor golden sidekick Andy Richter—there was an actual man in a bear suit and diaper pleasuring himself), the ineffably irresistible Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, and Pimpbot 5000, had overwhelmingly become the flavor of choice for my generation. The ever-winning David Letterman, to my way of thinking, would always remain our elder statesman of hilarity who had carried forward the legacy of Johnny Carson as the jocular and sidesplitting uncle upon whom we depended for daily humor and wisdom. Don’t get me wrong, Dave’s still got it, but Conan behaved in a way that our parents’ generation could only have described as “deviant” or “squirrelly,” and that, by God, made him
ours.

Wide-eyed and grinning with delight, backstage in the dressing room hallways of 30 Rockefeller Center, I was also digesting my first of many visits to the art deco wonderland of a building from whence
the television comedy legends of
Saturday Night Live
and Letterman had sprung, not to mention straight-up hunks like Phil Donahue, Dr. Oz, and Rachel Maddow. Despite the fact that I was merely the frightening, shaved-headed boyfriend of a beautiful sitcom star named Megan Mullally, who was to appear as his guest that evening, Conan could not have been friendlier or more generous to me, and the same goes for his team of producers and writers—a company of brilliant goofballs; erudite and ribald sweethearts who were tickled pink at being paid to create fresh, challenging comedy on a daily basis.

As we shook hands, cracked wise, and engaged in some general grab-ass there in the hallway, a murmur suddenly ran through the throng: “Make way!/Look at his jewels!/Don’t give him no jive!” and the crowd parted to reveal the arrival of none other than Mr. T, grinning and hugging everyone around whom he could wrap the tree limbs that he calls arms. I had always been an ardent fan of the man who portrayed both B. A. (Bad Ass) Baracus and Clubber Lang, all while promoting good manners, generosity, and kindness, especially to one’s mother, so I was triply excited at this bonus. In the early years of our marriage, riding shotgun with Megan afforded me a great bounty of such thrilling experiences, but Conan somehow proved to be special, and not just because he looks like a handsomer Ivy League version of something out of
The Dark Crystal
.

Although when measured empirically, Conan O’Brien tops out at nineteen hands of height, or a lofty seventy-six inches with his delicate feet clad in only the finest stockings of China silk, with the additional sheave of flaxen ginger stalks atop his noble pate, he strikes me as much closer to ten feet tall. This suspicion of loftiness is redoubled
when examining his early achievements. A pubescent Conando took time out from editing his high school newspaper,
The Sagamore
, to win a story-writing contest held by the National Council of Teachers of English, before wrapping it up by graduating as the valedictorian* of his class (*a Latin-ish term that I think means he was in the top several throwers of the javelin [it’s no wonder, with that wingspan!]).

He then attended Harvard University, which I’m told is a “college” school on the “East Coast,” where in 1985 he earned his BA (also pretty badass) in American history. While attending “Harvard,” Conan was twice elected president of the hallowed parody magazine,
The Harvard Lampoon
, a double distinction awarded to only two other persons in history: the humorist Robert Benchley, in 1912, and one Matt Murray, who most recently worked as a writer on the seminal “television” comedy
Parks and Recreation
. (I am not at all “certain” how quotation marks work.) Conan topped off this trajectory by graduating magna cum laude, which I believe is Latin for “terrific at noisome self-abuse.”

The fascination with American history exhibited by young Conan would come to play a pivotal role in my own development. While visiting the amazing New York apartment of Conan and his winning bride, Liza, Megan and I did ooh and ooh, and ooh again, in a prolonged fashion, and
then
we would aah: at the interior design, at the art, at their beautiful kids, who looked like they were prepared by the most talented dressers of Bloomingdale’s Christmas window displays, and at the breathtaking view overlooking Central Park from the balconies of the Majestic apartment building, just one door south of Yoko at the Dakota.

In Conan’s library, the first thing one noticed (after the thick stench of his pomade, Danger Dan’s Dappity Dazz) was his collection of fine guitars—only a handful, but clearly chosen by a player with style, which most assuredly describes this comedian. For those of you who would have (rightly) drooled over such beauties, please adjust the book away from below your spit hole before reading further: There sat a 1963 Gretsch Tennessean, a 1957 orange Gretsch 6120, a 1946 Martin acoustic, and a green-and-gold Gretsch (Bono’s model) that was signed for him by the members of U2, so he’s afraid to play it.

Once you were done with ogling the guitars, the next detail you noticed about the walls of stuffed bookshelves was the proliferation of books about either American history or the Beatles. As he says himself, “Two-thirds of the books in the house are about weird American historical figures, and the other third are about guitars and the Beatles, and the Beatles’ guitars. I actually have a book called
Beatles Gear
. I have two textbooks about the Beatles’ amps.” Many of the best comedy writers I know or have known are obsessed to inebriation with the music and lyrics of the Beatles, but Conan’s preoccupation may be the inebrationest.

My own eye, however, was drawn to a collection of titles about Theodore Roosevelt. A set of substantial tomes which I proceeded to steadily borrow and consume, one at a time, until I, too, was firmly clasped in the former Rough Rider’s grip.

“Think about it,” Conan said. “We couldn’t have a president like this anymore. He was an explorer. He was a naturalist. He read and wrote in several languages. He had served in war and was also a diplomat, and the list goes on and on.

“And you know, the big thing we’re always trying to figure out today is ‘Who’s being real?’ Is anyone being real? . . . And, man, you know Teddy Roosevelt was Teddy Roosevelt. He was completely a sincere character, and no one’s ever doubted that. He was curious, and I love curious people. I think some of our more recent leaders have not been curious people, and we’ve suffered for it. I think having leaders today who are curious about other cultures, willing to accept that they don’t know everything, but they want to know—those are qualities that were great about Teddy Roosevelt.

“The flip side is that I really believe that he was—he needed to be medicated.”

His scholarly knowledge strikes me as another tangible proof that some of our most trusted and relevant televised brains (and their crack teams of writers), like Conan, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert, have a fascination with our nation’s history, particularly in the revisionist way it’s been spun for the public. I don’t know if it has occurred to them cognitively, or if it was just an instinctive choice, but perhaps in this age of the ever-shrinking Candy Crush attention span, Mother Nature understands that we need to receive our important information from people who are less serious (read: boring) than straight news anchors. To wit: It had never occurred to me to study Theodore Roosevelt until professor Conan sold me on him.

After college, Conan and fellow Haardvark, television comedy kingpin Greg Daniels, the creator of shows like
King of the Hill
and
The Office
, and cocreator of the quality program
Parks and Recreation
, were hired as a writing team on
Not Necessarily the News
. Like Mr. O’Brien, Greg is relatively tall and lanky, a fact from which Conan drew a
certain amount of neurotic comfort, but sadly, Conan simply could not “deal” with Greg’s conventional hairstyle, and it eventually tore them apart. Daniels was never heard from again, outside of some scattered “hit” TV shows and some four Emmys from twenty nominations. I’ll gratefully remind you that it was Greg who named my character Ron Swanson.

O’Brien struck out on his own, snagging prestigious comedy-writing gigs on
Saturday Night Live
and then
The Simpsons
, where among the episodes he penned was the beloved “Marge vs. the Monorail.” According to the other
Simpsons
writers, had Conan not left to take over
Late Night
, he would have soon ended up show-running that estimable cartoon program that is, by now in its twenty-seventh season, possibly the greatest body of work in the history of comedy. It’s either that or Ann Coulter’s political parody books. Or, of course, that old bowl o’ chestnuts, Leviticus.