Dear Boxcar Sho~Bud,

I realize that you've been very good to me, never breaking a string and staying in tune that one hellish rehearsal in an unheated storage unit with an ambient temperature of 25 degrees or so, but... Well, there's always a "but" isn't there?

We've both known that you're an old guitar, vintage even, and that you can be heavy and tempermental and a little eccentric. In spite of this, I've tried to be good to you. I keep you in fresh Jagwire strings (mail-order from Michigan!) and I tune you as best I know how (Mean tone now) and I bought you an ATA-spec road case to wheel you to shows.

And we do get to play shows! Sold-out rooms and empty dives and good shows and bad, we've been through all of these.

We've agreed that, when I get money, you get to go into retirement and stay home while I carry a lighter and smaller guitar to shows. And I'll introduce you nicely to your new brother, Boxcar Williams, and make sure you get along.

But, so help me, if you don't stop breaking knee-levers hours before CD release shows (necesitating frantic phone calls to Nashville and hours underneath you with a wrench and a file and enough profanity to make a sailor blush) I will "retire" your sorry ass to eBay!

With the love that a man feels for his steel guitar,

~Boxcar Dewey