Osprey Lodge Guitar Noontide

The joys of a sunny afternoon guitar jam are not to be underestimated, with flaring eyes and flying fingers and noise, noise, noise to keep me standing up. I’m exhausted, five hours of sleep for three nights, my irregular sleep schedule of 5:00 AM wakeups catching up to me, and Neil Young’s “Down By The River” is making for one hell of a jam.

The place is the Osprey Lodge, a lovely dilapidated building with bird sized holes in the walls, occasional birds flying through at night, a ping pong table, a drum kit and some miscellaneous extra chairs. Outside, everything is glowing and green for the first time after a long season of winter and mud. Maine is really truly beautiful when the sun finally decides to shine. The time is right after lunch. My friend and cabin mate Ethan has lent me his electric guitar and is taking a shot at the drums. We have twenty minutes until the start of the next class. I punch the distortion and let loose.

It starts off slow and crunching, a bluesy midnight cross-country driving rhythm jam. We hit the chorus and both of us scream the words “Down by the river…” before diving back again into instrumentalism. Hit the low E, hold it, then the A string– hold it, repeat and solo high on the neck. The low and high notes dance around each other in a distorted frenzy, and the sound starts soaring like a bird coated in sludge.

-Baylor Obabashian

San Francisco, CA