WAKING ‘SLEEPING DOGS,’ WITH A GUITAR
WHEN JEFF PLANKENHORN MOVED TO AUSTIN NEARLY 20 YEARS AGO, HE DIDN’T HAVE A SIMPLE ACOUSTIC GUITAR.
He had a few instruments that he describes as “good for a sideman, slide guitar work, but I didn’t have a classic Martin box or a dreadnought guitar. I didn’t think of myself as a singer-songwriter, so I didn’t think I needed one.” Then Plankenhorn returned one day to find a Martin guitar on his front steps. “I opened the card, and it said, ‘Happy birthday from your guardian angel,’ ” he says. “The thing is, it wasn’t my birthday. And it wasn’t a frilly guitar with pretty inlays. It was a workhorse Martin, what you need to go start writing songs.” Plankenhorn asked about the “angel” at the shop where the guitar was sold, but they’d been sworn to secrecy. Years later, he finds some magic in the mystery. It even gave him a song, “This Guitar,” which appears on his new album.
“Sleeping Dogs” isn’t Plankenhorn’s first album, but it is the first on which he positions himself assertively as a singer-songwriter and not a slide-guitar whiz leading a session. This record springs from that not-birthday birthday present.
An Ohio native, Plankenhorn found his way to Nashville, as many steel/slide/ dobro players do. He spent a year playing bluegrass, which he calls “a great education, and I had a good time doing it.” But he also was eager to expand the music he was playing. He got an invitation from songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard to crash at his place in Wimberley and make a go of it in Austin. Plankenhorn loaded his instruments, including that new Martin, into a Geo Prism and headed west. “Sleeping Dogs” is an interesting case, in that Plankenhorn, who plays the Mucky Duck on Saturday, is not executing somebody else’s vision this time. So the
record features some of his inimitable lap slide guitar, but he also plays glockenspiel, bass, pedal steel, keyboards and any other instrument needed. In doing so, he’s made a record that falls in the roots/folk mode but with some pop, rock, country and soul touches that lend it a distinctive color scheme.
As a writer, Plankenhorn doesn’t limit his cues. “Homecoming” is among the rare songs about being a touring musician, where the act of being a touring musician isn’t portrayed as a drag. In it, he expresses a longing to be home with his wife, but he also states, “The road’s been good to me.”
And then there’s the song about the Martin. The player and the instrument have, in effect, grown up together over two decades.
“You can look at a guitar as a tool,” he says. “Guy Clark used to say that. ‘Don’t worry if you ding it up. It’s a tool.’ I always loved that. But that guitar has been more to me than just an instrument or a tool. When I got it, I was just overcome with this sort of gratefulness. It taught me a lot about gift-giving, and how you don’t need something in return. So in a way, it doesn’t belong to me. It’s for everybody. Just like what I do.”