By: Chris Tamase, New Jersey

The night before Thanksgiving 1988 is an evening that I hold special place for in my heart. No I didn’t see a great concert; in fact I didn’t even get into the Chestnut Cabaret (located in West Philadelphia near Drexel and the University of Pennsylvania) that night. Here is what happened…..I heard some great rock and roll, saw a few glimpses of a great showman, met him, and walked away with a cool keepsake.

I was well aware of who Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers were before that night in November. They had such a buzz going around the Delaware Valley as a great rock and roll band who but on some amazing shows. I was an aspiring guitar player and had a lot of the same influences as Tommy: George Thorogood, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, etc. so the music already had me hooked.

Within that year they got signed, had an article in “Rolling Stone”  and put out the Rumble record yet I still hadn’t caught them live. Around the time of Rumble’s release there was photo and blurb in Rolling Stone talking about Tommy’s Guild Hollow body guitar and the signatures he got carved on it. I figured if he could do it so can I. I vowed to get some of my rock heroes to carve their names in my hollow body guitar (a copy of an ES-335). The first carving I got was Brian Setzer, who couldn’t understand why I wanted to carve up guitar. After a little convincing, he carved his initials, BS, into it.

I was on a roll! Search out one guitar player, get one carving. The next one I wanted was simple, Tommy Conwell, he was playing at the Chestnut Cabaret on Thanksgiving Eve. So my girlfriend, now my wife, and her brother went up to the Chestnut. At the time I wasn’t old enough to get in so we waited. And waited. And waited. We had arrived at the club around the time the opening act was just going on. And it was freezing cold out. So, we stood out in the freezing cold for hours. What I was thinking, I’ll never know. Maybe I was concerned that there was going to be a bunch of people waiting around with guitars to be carved….I don’t know. Time passed …the Young Rumblers came on and you could feel the place explode with excitement. From time to time the side door would open and I’d peer in to catch a glimpse of what was going on. What I saw was pure down and dirty rock and roll….what I love.

Finally, the show ended. The club emptied out into the cold morning and I made my move. I grabbed my guitar and went into the club and waited. Someone asked if I was looking for Tommy. When I said I was, they said “just go on back, he’ll be out”. Sure enough, he strolls out in a leather jacket and hat, stops and says hello to everyone. He sees me with the guitar, stops and says “cool guitar”. I asked him if he would mind carving his name in it and he was thrilled. He probably took about fifteen minutes to do it. To this day, his is the biggest and deepest carved name on the thing. While he was carving we talked about different players: Setzer, Thorogood, BB King. He told me he was really into Jimmy Vaughan and I should check out early Fabulous Thunderbirds albums. When Tommy was done carving, I expected him to give me the guitar back but he sat down on a road case and started playin’. It was unbelievable! He showed me how he used to play rhythm when the band was a three piece and he had to fill in the sound. It was too cool!

He finally returned the guitar and walked with me out of the club into the cold night. My girlfriend and her brother, whom I left standing outside, were waiting and snapped a few pictures to capture the moment. At a later show, I gave Tommy a picture of us with the guitar. He thanked me for the photo and I figured he would toss it. What a surprise to find out that he actually kept it with his memorabilia and it ended up on the website.

Since then I’ve gotten some other people to sign the guitar: Rich Robinson, Dave Davies, Joan Jett, plus a few more.

I’ve played the guitar in clubs since I’ve gotten it and people sometimes check out the carvings. The Tommy Conwell signature always gets the most comments: “ Is this his guitar?” “ Man, I love him” “Did you play with him?” “How long did it take him to carve it?” “We used to see him all the time”.

So much has changed since those days but those memories…wow!