I pulled out my guitar today for the first time in more than a year. I’m not a guitarist, don’t pretend to be a guitarist, never touched a guitar until I was 25 and pretty much stopped playing by my mid-30s. But I’ve been working on learning some new songs as a vocalist, and unless you want to buy a bunch of CDs and become Karaoke Boy, you need to play a little guitar to help you out in that process.

I owned some nice guitars in my 20s — particularly a sweet Alvarez acoustic-electric that sounded great plugged in — but since my late 20s, I’ve owned this Yamaha FG-335II. I paid $100 used for it in 1989 and it came with its very own crappy cardboard case. I have to put extra-light strings on it to stop from cutting my non-calloused fingertips, but the thing has a spectacularly good tone for what it is. It’s made out of cheap wood laminate but it also has some nice binding around the edges and soundhole, and the neck has stayed straight and true over the years.

Because I play so little, I easily forget what a pleasure it is to play this guitar. My chording is so bad now that I’m basically a beginner again, but the guitar still sings to me. There are a lot of memories and good times tied up in this old guitar, and they start to flow out every time I hit something as simple as a G chord. That’s all you can ask out of your axe.