Bob,

It is truly grand to be in touch with you here. Your music has been a part of my life for the last 40 years at least. And I really want/need to thank you for that.

My main problem is MS. Check out Robert Frost's poem "The Oven Bird" It ends with the line: "...what to make of a diminished thing."

I spent 20 years "diminishing"---with a decade of spinal surgery for the same symptoms as MS, wearing Depends secretly, falling down more and more frequently, bowel dysfunction, totaling my car because I couldn't find the brake or the gas pedals, hands getting more numb all the while, a slew of missed diagnoses from carpal tunnel to spinal stenosis--each time thinking, "Damn, this time I'll get the right skinny on everything."--- Finally, I got to Mayo Clinic. After yet another neck vertabra fusion there---and a MAJOR MS exacerbation while in their hospital--(so they could watch me in action) -- well, 2 months in hospital there----ultimately led to the MS diagnosis. That was '97.

Knowing what it was felt positively liberating!! I finally KNEW! --- (And they found prostate cancer as well ;-) They ARE thorough up in Minnesota.


Bob, the instruments were a larger part of what I did than anyone knew I think. I followed my own lead---guitar and banjo were like a pitch pipe for my singing--a metronome too.--I'd do a riff or two or three so I could think of the words--or cover a mistake--or just to catch my breath. Never did it the same way twice. Never, ever, worked in a group. Group structure and discipline didn't go well with my music and 6 or 7 note range. (Nobody ever quit my group either. Got to keep all the cash too. ;-)

And here is a main point: First symptoms were about 1982 or 83. By the time I quit, 1997, accurate chording was impossible. I'd tried all the above "suggestions" and maybe 50 more -- all without anyone knowing I was adapting at all. I went to a 000-18 instead of a D-28. I used a cane to walk in public---and a walker at home. Adapting my Martin to a 9-string guitar and making up that KING OF THE NINE STRING GUITAR blurb was a smoke-screen to cover diminished picking skills and needing to strum more instead.

Folks were shocked and some were angry when I "gave up so easily"---as they saw it. How do you explain to friends and fans, who look, and are, so hurt by your abdication that you've been fighting this thing for 15 years and it's now at the point that it is simply too far from what you need/want it to be.

I've tried to make these points in various threads over the years here, but your being involved, Bob, has prompted me to more candor than usual---even for me. I'm not sure why that is, but it is.

I made a project of going through all the tapes given to me after I did gigs over all the years. From those I culled eleven 90-minute cassettes of songs that were not on any of my released records or CDs. It's a slew of material--and Dennis Cook has put all of it on CDs for me to pick and choose from. A tedious job, I'm sure. But that's where the material came from that should eventually be a new CD for me.

The banjo (only in the open-G tuning) is something I still mess with whenever our granddaughter, Chloe Moon Thieme, feels like dancing.

As I said, It's great being in touch.

Art Thieme