A note on the #28….In 1975 I was made aware of the number twenty-eight. We were flying on an alternate Doobie Liner because our original plane had caught fire (still a mystery?). The tour had been separated into two halves and the stewardess on our new plane had been watching me carefully. She was a beautiful and kind woman, and we had a growing synergy. The afternoon of our last gig she mentioned to me that it seemed the #28 was following me around. I hadn’t noticed and she proceeded to point out that the day was the 28th, the address of the last venue had 28 in it, and I was staying in room #280. That night at the gig when I didn’t have a bass in my hands, I held hers. She was wondrous and a Libra just like me. Number 28 has stayed with me ever since. I found it later in my birth certificate, the number of steps in my home, on the screen of my favorite films, and on the neck of PRS I still own. It’s everywhere!

Paul Reed Smith Guitar

I saw this guitar down in Los Gatos at Guitar Center and asked to play it. They took it off the wall and handed it to me and I played it a little bit, and it played like a dream. Then I turned it over and saw Artist Series #28. I knew it was mine. The back of the guitar is mahogany and the neck is rosewood. I used this guitar on my album Playing to an Empty House.

PRS guitars are the only guitars I've ever played that have a tremolo bar. You can take it all the way down and bring it back up, and it comes back up in tune. It doesn't go out of tune, which I love! That's because the tuners are locking. You lock the strings in at the tuners rather than down here. Every time Jimi Hendrix would do a dive like that, it'd bring it up and it'd be out of tune slightly and then he’d have to tune up a bit. But with this guitar, it’s kind of perfect. The first guitarist to play one of these with a tremolo bar was Carlos Santana.