Played until my fingers bled…

…it was the summer of 2006. (Eww. A Bryan Adams reference. What is this blog coming to?)

Yesterday me and Allison (re)started leading praise and worship at our church. For our triumphant return I decided to play my new axe - a Schecter S-1 Elite with black cherry finish. It was my first time playing my precious in front of folks. I typically rely on my Ibanez electric/acoustic or my trusty G&L SC-3.

Because we’re currently a two-person outfit, which makes Jay a one-man band, I had to alter how I played song two of our three-song set. The song “More Than Enough” normally has some really dominant percussion (I like to call them “drums”) and bass. Again, just Jay - no drums, no bass.

So I ended up making the music a little funkier with a lot of very fast strumming and a lot of muting (think *wakka wakka*).

Fast forwarding a bit, we’re about half-way through this song and my right hand starts feeling funny, you know, in the shooting pain kind of way. I look down and there is blood all over my picking hand, down my thumb, my index and middle fingers, and all over the front of my guitar. What’s a guy to do?

I could stop playing but what would that accomplish? Remember, one-man band. I’m guessing the congregation would’ve noticed. Even if I did stop, I would’ve needed to track down some tissues at a minimum. Not a chance. I kept playing.

Soon after making this decision I started having difficulty hanging on to my guitar pick, and I play with large picks. But I made it through the rest of the song and the song that followed.

I darted to the restroom when we were finished and found that in all of my aggressive playing my middle finger had been making contact with the strings enough to rub off a layer or two of skin. I also noticed that the right sleeve of my dress shirt had blood spatter.

Awesome! Actually, it was gross. But I lived to tell the tale. I don’t know if the shirt can be salvaged but the guitar cleaned up nicely, and that’s really what’s important here.

Jay Benfield, Soldier of Rock