C Hayward – Production Notes

The last time I recorded with Tom Rush he talked about the guitar he has that has an inlay in the fretboard of a naked lady. He has mentioned this inlay before and actually has 3 guitars with the same naked lady. This time, however, he mentioned the name of the woman who had done the inlay work. When I got the footage home and was working on the show I heard the name, Christine Hayward, a few times so I decided to Google her to see if she was still around. There are a few Christine Haywards but one person was an artist and had a website.    http://www.christinehayward.com/.   I used the contact page to email her and asked if she was the person who had done the “Naked Lady” inlay on Tom’s guitar and she said that she in fact was.

I had the idea that I would shoot a short, 2-3 min, video with her talking about the guitar and meeting Tom and that would be that. For some unknown reason I assumed she lived nearby in the Boston area and I could just bop over, shoot the video and be on my way.  Christine agreed to do the video but she lives in Connecticut a 2 1/2 hour drive from Salem. By this time I had realized that she does more than inlay and that the video could be longer and be more like the ones I had done for my series “RESONANCE”.   

https://marksteeleproductions.com/resonance.  

I packed all the necessary gear in my car and headed out. I brought 2 cameras, 2 tripods, 2 lights, a couple of different microphones and my audio box to record the sound. When I got there and met Christine she was very nice and welcoming. Did I forget to mention that it was a very hot day. The thermometer in the car said the outside temp was 85 degrees and it was humid. And Christine’s air conditioner in the house was on the fritz. She has a very nice house but it was hot inside. While setting up the cameras and other stuff I was perspiring quite a bit. Fortunately, the LED lights don’t produce heat the way the old Halogen lamps did. If that had been the case it would have been too hot to shoot. So, I set up a boom mic because I am trying to avoid using a lavaliere mic whenever possible. I’m trying to make my productions look the best they can and having a noticeable mic in the shot is not cool. I had a lot of wires, cables and extension cords all over the place as I usually do and we were ready to shoot.

By this time I was pretty over heated and glad that the set up was done. Usually I would be more collected in my thoughts but because of the heat I was not exactly myself. I was a little stressed. But Christine is a trooper and we were ready to go. After framing the cameras, focusing and getting a good audio level I hit record on the 3 devices. Christine gave a very nice description of the early days in Boston working at E U Wurlitzer on Newbury Street and meeting Tom Rush, creating the inlay and then other people she had met in that guitar shop that all the musicians in Boston would frequent. When I called “cut” and stopped the cameras all was good. When I stopped the audio recorded it gave me a warning message that the file had not recorded. YIKES…. I’ve had that box for about 10 years and never had a problem with it. I tried to find the file and it wasn’t there. I recorded another 10 seconds and when I hit stop I got the same message. The 14 minutes of audio I needed to go with the video wasn’t there. The cameras record audio using the built-in mics they have but that audio is usually not useable because it is too far away from the source and picks up a lot of room noise. I told Christine that I was sorry but we’d have to start over. I patched the output of the audio box to the input on the camera and everything was copasetic. That is a different take on a lesson I have learned many times. There are no short cuts!!!  If I had patched the audio to the camera in the first place the backup to the camera would have saved the take.

But, the other thing that is true is that many times, when someone is a little nervous, the second take is better. In this case that was true too. The stories and descriptions that Christine had were very interesting. She was at an intersection of the music scene in Boston at E U Wurlitzer and going to the Boston Tea Party a lot. She met J Giles Band, The Cars, Aerosmith, The Allman Bros. When Duane was alive. Played Dicky Betts guitar and did the inlay of the “Naked Lady” on Tom Rush’s guitar.  She does Trompe l’oeil paintings (trick of the eye) and has a large collection to Bonsai trees that she tends to, and more.

I’m so glad that I do these videos because I get to meet and hang out with the most interesting people.

Christine Hayward