Wanted/Needed/Loved: Musicians and the Stuff They Can't Live Without WAs a monthly column in The Rumpus. In each installment, SOME OF OUR FAVORITE musicians shareD stories about meaningful objects, which WERE produced by me, and illustrated by Esme Blegvad. We DID 40+ STORIES FROM 2015-2020. Below are the first 3 and THE FULL INDEX CAN BE FOUND HERE.
GREG SAUNIER'S Tour KIT
Deerhoof tours a lot. Each time we rent a minivan, and jam the four of us, plus our sound person, our gear, and our merch inside. There’s no room for anything else. I mean packing it in is a complete science. And when we fly, well for the past few years there’s been insane baggage limits, and just for the guys to bring along their guitars is like $50. Sometimes we can’t even our bring merch. We have to ship it ahead or sometimes we don’t even sell it.
Mary Timony's Exquisite Corpses
As a musician you’re traveling around all the time on tour. You have to learn to live with as few things as possible. When I’m home—and I’ve lived in the same house now for about ten or eleven years—I’m surrounded by stuff on my shelves, weird things I’ve found somewhere like a ukulele or snowmen—junk, but not necessarily stuff I’m emotionally attached to. Looking around my living room now, however, I do see one thing that I am really attached to because it reminds me of time I’ve spent hanging out with my friends, Winston and Emily, and my boyfriend, Jonah.
Mac demarco's signature guitar
A lot of people think this is my first guitar, but to set the record straight, my first guitar was this all-black Yamaha shredder—a crazy metal guy rig. I also had a cheap Strat, and after I’d finished my first year of guitar lessons my mom bought me a really fancy Telecaster. At first I was like, “Yeah!” but then I started going out to see bands in my hometown of Edmonton and all of these guys were playing really shitty guitars. I mean real hunks of crap! But they sounded cool, and I was like, “Oh, I gotta get me one of those!”
So I went to this place called Lillo’s. It’s a music store, but also half like a pawn shop. It’s weird, and old, and disorganized. It’s the kind of place where if you bug them enough they’ll go through the basement and find what you’re looking for.