About a month into his search, a sympathetic clerk at the Guitar Center told him about Drogan’s, this under-the-radar shop in Gifford that specialized in repairing and rebuilding vintage guitars. The owner was a legendary figure in the rock world, a former roadie who’d worked with lots of famous people.
“It’s pretty funky,” he said. “Definitely worth a look.”
Drogan’s didn’t have a website, but Sims found a listing in the white pages and stopped there on his way home from work the following evening. It was an off-putting place, a low stucco building that could just as easily have housed a machine shop or a XXX video store, squatting between an ugly office complex and a tuxedo rental outlet on a godforsaken stretch of Lake Avenue. There was no signage and only one small window facing the street, nothing to identify the business or suggest that a visitor might be welcome. Sims entered through the side door, startling the guy behind the counter, a middle-aged hipster who’d just taken the first bite out of a monster burrito. He gazed at his visitor in mute apology, eyes wide and cheeks bulging.
“Jush secon,” he mumbled, his mouth full of beans and guacamole.
“Take your time,” Sims told him.
Still chewing, the guy put down the burrito and slid off his stool, wiping his hands on the front of his jeans. He was around Sims’s age, probably early forties, big and soft in the middle, with thinning hair and Civil War muttonchops.
“Sorry, man. You caught me in flagrante. Don’t get much business this time of night.”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt your dinner.”
“No worries.” The guy took a sip of bottled water, washing down his food. “I’m Mike Drogan, by the way.”
“Rick Sims.”
They shook hands across the counter.
“What can I do for you, Rick?”
Sims hesitated. There were musical accessories inside the display case — strings, picks, capos, tuners, straps — but no instruments in sight.
“I’m looking for a used electric guitar. Not too expensive. But maybe this isn’t—”
“Don’t worry, you’re in the right place.” Mike pointed to a gray metal door, on which the words INNER SANCTUM had been carefully stenciled in black paint. “We keep the guitars in there. It’s easier to control the humidity. Why don’t you take a look while I finish my dinner.”
Sims glanced at the overstuffed burrito on the counter. It was standing upright, protruding from its foil wrapper like a fat banana from a shiny metal peel. A few grains of rice had spilled from the ruptured tortilla onto the glass below.
“Where’s that from?”
Mike seemed pleased by the question. “You know Ernesto’s? Over by the train station? They got this truck that stops by the office building next door, when the cleaning people are there. I basically live on these things.”
“Looks pretty good.”
“Best burrito ever.” Mike tugged on a wiry sideburn, pondering Sims with a knowing expression. “You hungry? I could cut it in half.”
“No, no. I’m not gonna—”
“I’m happy to share,” Mike insisted. “I always stuff myself and then I regret it. You’d be doing me a favor.”
Sims was tempted. He didn’t have any dinner plans, figured he’d stop at Wendy’s on the way home, his last resort on nights like this. Mike’s burrito looked way more appetizing than an industrial chicken sandwich. But it seemed wrong, somehow, taking food from a guy he’d just met.
“That’s okay. I’m gonna check out the guitars.”
“Your call,” Mike said with a shrug. “Just give me a shout if you need anything.”
DROGAN’S HAD a limited inventory, maybe twenty guitars hanging on the walls of the Inner Sanctum, but Sims could see right away that it was an impressive collection, one instrument more valuable than the next. There were no price tags, just index cards identifying the year and model, with a concise descriptive phrase scrawled below — 1957 Telecaster (“a true classic”), 1973 Deluxe Goldtop Les Paul (“Jimmy Page Favorite”), 1968 Chet Atkins Nashville (“all-original hardware”). The only one that seemed remotely in Sims’s ballpark was a 1995 Epiphone SG (“reliable Korean workhorse”), with a white body and black pickguard.
Mike had told him it was okay to handle the merchandise, so he lifted the SG from its hanger and gave it a test drive. It was a lot heavier than the Fenders he’d been considering, but the action was light and fast, and the chunky neck fit nicely in his hand. He strummed the chords to “Down by the River,” and finger-picked the intro to “Stairway to Heaven,” which he’d learned in high school and never forgotten. He was working his way through “One Way Out,” the quick, stuttering riff he hadn’t quite mastered, when he noticed Mike standing in the doorway, looking faintly amused. Sims stopped playing.
“I’m not very good. I’m just getting back into it.”
“Sounds okay to me,” Mike said. “But you gotta plug that thing in and make some noise. It sounds really sweet through this Marshall over here.”
At the other stores he’d visited, Sims had refused to play through an amp. There was always an element of performance when you did that, a sense that you were being watched and judged. The only guys brave enough to do it were the ones who could shred like Steve Vai or Eddie Van Halen, the guys who’d been practicing for years in their bedrooms.
“No thanks.” Sims tried to smile, but his lips felt unnaturally tight. “I’m really not—”
“Tell you what.” Mike tossed him a cable. “Let’s just jam a little. Start with an E blues.”
Sims’s face got hot, as if there were an electrical coil implanted beneath the skin. “I don’t know how.”
“Sure you do.” Mike took a hollow-body Gibson off the wall and plugged it into a small beige amp. “Just play a one-four-five.”
Sims shook his head, a stranger in a strange land.
“It’s your basic blues progression,” Mike explained. “You’ve heard it a million times.”
He started strumming some chords, and Sims recognized the changes right away, the backbone of every Chuck Berry song he’d ever heard. Just an E and an A and a B. He played along until he had it down, at which point Mike broke off for a solo, improvising some tasty licks while Sims struggled to maintain the chug-a-chug rhythm, repeating those three chords over and over, the old one-four-five. Then Mike showed Sims a pattern he could use to play his own solo, a simple five-note scale. Sims’s fingers were slow and clumsy, but it didn’t matter. The notes were right, and they meshed with the chords in gratifying, sometimes magical ways. He felt like he’d cracked some ancient code.
“Jesus,” he said. “It’s almost like I know what I’m doing.”
“You got a nice feel for the music,” Mike told him. “That’s what counts. It’s not about who plays the fastest.”
He showed Sims a basic shuffle, then added some flourishes. They played a slow blues in a minor key and even took a shot at “Born Under a Bad Sign,” with Mike growling the lyrics over Sims’s slightly erratic accompaniment. Sims felt exhausted and exhilarated by the time they called it a night.
“I like this guitar,” he said, carefully replacing the SG on its hook. “Can I ask you what it costs?”
“I’m not sure,” Mike confessed. “Let me check with my uncle.”
“Your uncle?”
“He’s the owner. I’m just helping out.”
“Don’t you have a price list or something?”
“It’s all in his head,” Mike explained. “I’ll try to talk to him tomorrow.”