Hanging With Nokie Edwards

As many of you know one of my all time favorite bands is The Ventures. Their drummer Mel Taylor was my inspiration to want to play music and be in bands. I've always loved their voice, lead guitarist Nole Floyd "Nokie" Edwards. Nokie can wring things out of melodies, and blaze like hell when called upon. In the early '80s The Ventures had a hit, "Surfin' and Spyin'" (featuring The GoGos on vocals) backed with the rocker, "Black Sand Beach". They hit the road playing small rock clubs and ended up (several times) at Jonathan Swift's in Harvard Square Cambridge MA. On one occasion I brought my Ventures LPs and proceeded to hound each member until I got autographs (Don Wilson got away, damn it!). I caught up with Nokie at the bar, we took stools and began to chat. Nokie is a BIG guy and at the time he loved scotch & sodas, lots of them, one right after the other. We talked for almost half an hour about his approach to finger picking, the banjo tuning/de-tuning techniques he uses in support of vibrato/tremolo fret expression, his influences (Chet Atkins, Les Paul) while he casually took each album and autographed the cover. While we were talking bassist Bob Bogle comes over, "Hey Nokie, we're going on in a couple of minutes" "Okay Bob". 5 minutes later drummer Mel Taylor comes over, Hey Nokie, "We're on in 2 minutes" "Okay Mel". 5 minutes later rhythm guitarist Don Wilson comes over, "Hey Nokie, we're on in 2 minutes" "Okay Don". 30 seconds later Mel Taylor leans in, "NOW NOKIE!!!" "Okay Mel, well Jon, I gotta go. It's been swell talking with you. See you at the party after?" When Nokie took the stage he'd consumed at least 8 scotch & sodas, he played excellently, never looking at his instrument, wearing a smile the whole time and engaging the audience (Hey Billy Zoom of X, you take a cue from Nokie?). Thank you for all the excellence and elegance Mr. Edwards!