Nick Schwebach of rural Wakonda has been a mainstay of South Dakota's music scene for many years. He's been playing guitar since the 1950s and performing professionally since the late '50s, early '60s. He's played all kinds of music with many different bands on many different makes and models of guitars. SDPB asked Schwebach about the guitar he normally uses at gigs he plays with Vermillion's Public Domain Tune Band. The band specializes in songs from the 1920s and 1930s and Schwebach's guitar fits the vibe and the sound of those old tunes perfectly.
SDPB: Do you remember the first time you picked up a guitar?
Nick Schwebach: Yeah. I was probably 13 or 14 years old. My parents got me at $25 Stellar guitar out of a catalog. I played it and played it and played it. It was terrible. I didn't know what a good guitar was for about two years. And then somebody says, ‘oh gee, my Dad's got this guitar.’ He had an arch top Gibson and I went, wow! I can play it! Because, you know, the action on my catalog guitar was half an inch, three quarters of an inch off the fret board and it was really… I found it impossible to play. I learned to play “Tequila” on one string but that was about all I could do. And then I tried to learn some chords.
SDPB: What were some of your early influences? What kind of music did you want to play?
Nick Schwebach: I was listening to the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary; Bob Dylan back in those those days. I really, really love that stuff, you know, and so it got me going. I was also listening to rock and roll on the radio and I liked the Ventures albums and I would pick out “Walk Don't Run” or “Telstar.” The big hits that they had. And I played those albums thin. Then of course when the Beatles hit, you know, then everything kind of changed. We were trying to get a high school band together. We did that and we'd play some Rolling Stones songs and simple stuff, you know, some of the simpler Beatles stuff. And we had a good time doing it.
SDPB: Was that the first paying band that you had?
Nick Schwebach: Yeah. We rented the Legion Hall in Dell Rapids and on a hot, hot summer night we had a dance there. I remember it was probably 110 degrees in the Legion Hall. It was so hot. It was full of kids. And I don't know what we charged at the door. Fifty cents or something. But yeah, we went and we made some money, so, wow, that was a big deal.
SDPB: And you've been working professionally ever since on stage and with different groups. How many different groups have you played with?
Nick Schwebach: Quite a few. You know, when I got to college we'd have pickup bands. There was a bunch of good players down at the University (of South Dakota) and we would find each other. Some frat would be having a party. So we’d call one another up and say, ‘hey, they’ll pay us.’ I played a lot of music with my dear friends Comet Haraldson and Ed Johnson, who were real folkies in those days. They were dear friends, you know, I really miss those guys. But yeah, I played through the college years. And then when I got out of college, I started playing six nights a week in a trio in Sioux Falls. I didn't like it because it was a real commercial kind of… ‘God! Do I gotta play this stuff?’ But I did it long enough to make a little money and pay off the decent guitar that I was playing, which was an old – not really old - but probably a mid-sixties Les Paul Deluxe. And that was a nice guitar so played it for many years. And then many bands after that. In the mid-seventies we put the Bitsko Band together. A bunch of good friends. Actually, they were all SDSU guys and they recruited me because I was playing in a band and our drummer's brother was the guy in Brookings. He'd heard me play and said, ‘We've got a good band but we need a guitar player.' So they came to recruit me and I was working other odd jobs to keep my head above water. And I thought, 'God, it'd be kind of a nice change just to drop everything and move to a Yankton.' So then we were down in the Crofton, Nebraska area with a bunch of really, really good guys in the Bitsko Band and we had a lot of fun. We were really poor but we put together a good band . We did that for stuff for years, you know? That was kind of a heyday. We'd be playing out at the Nemo (festivals) that they had every year. A lot of fun because there were a lot of good bands. The Willows (Red Willow) were at the top of their popularity and there were just good bands and you were in the Western part of the state. Some Minnesota bands came over to play at Nemo and you got to know those guys and you'd run into them all the time on the road. It was always a party, you know, because we were just the right age and it was just the right time to be making music and having a lot of fun. And that's what we did.
SDPB: I know that you have a real feel, or an affinity, for older music. I guess I'll call it music from the American songbook. How did you get attracted to that?
Nick Schwebach: My mother was very musical. She played the piano and she would sing all these old, old songs for me from the thirties, I guess. You know, Depression-era songs like “Button Up Your Overcoat” and “Somebody Stole My Gal.” I just heard those songs a lot and she could sing. She was a good singer. So I was just exposed to that, among a lot of other things. I just never kind of got over it. And then, after the Bitsko Band, Owen DeJong and I had an acreage down by Wakonda. We were living together. Owen has an incredible collection of 78s (78 rpm records) and he has some Victrolas and we would listen to 78s and find some pretty obscure stuff on them and we'd pick it out and learn it. And we had a lot of fun with it. So then we'd get a few gigs and we'd get hired. ‘Hey, it's those Bitsko Boys, you know? Hey, let's hire them!' And then we'd come up and we'd play these songs from the twenties and thirties and they'd look at us. ‘What the hell is that? What's the matter with you guys?’ So it was really a struggle because not a lot of people wanted to hear that stuff. Some people did. Some people really liked it. We would get by. And then every now and then somebody would say, ‘You guys still do that thing with those old tunes? Well, why don't you come and play? We like that. Come and play for us.’ So we'd play a few parties and then all of a sudden people really started liking that stuff. So we did more and more of it. And then Michelle Maloney hired us at Carey’s (a bar in Vermillion) to play Friday nights. And I don’t know how long Owen and I did that gig every Friday night. It continues to this day, now with the entire Public Domain Tune band with Larry Rohrer (bass) and Al Remund (drums) and CJ Kocher on sax. But, you know, this is every Friday at Carey’s. We're playing the same songs.
SDPB: People love hearing the same songs.
Nick Schwebach: They do. They do. There's a lot of good stuff. Every now and then, once in a great while, we'll learn something new. ‘Oh yeah, we can do that. God, we used to do that. How did that go? Ah, give me a minute, you know, let's try to find that chord. What is that? What is that?’ Then it kind of comes back. You relearn stuff. ‘We used to do that 30, 40 years ago. Why did we stop doing it? Well, I forgot about it.’
SDPB: Tell me about the guitar you play for those gigs and with the Poker Alice band.
Nick Schwebach: When we do Poker Alice gigs or something more electric, and that's a pretty eclectic band you know, it's rockabilly, bluesy - whatever we want to do we can do because we've been doing it for so long and played so many different kinds of music between us that we can kind of pull off about anything. But when I play the twenties and thirties kind of stuff I use this guitar mostly just ‘cause it's a good chunk, chunk, chunk. I'm playing rhythm behind the boys, you know, and it's just got it. It's really a fine old instrument. It's not not rare by any means. It's a Gibson ES-150. And I call it a 1949 because there were three years that Gibson did not put serial numbers on these guitars. I was born in ‘49 so I say this guitar is a ‘49. Gibson made a lot of them from, well, they started in ‘36 and then they didn't make them during the war years. And then from ‘46 to ‘56 they made this model and they're still out there. You can find them, so they're not an extremely rare bird. In the early days of the Red Willow band Chris Gage (Red Willow band member) was living in Baltic and I was living on a farm up by Chester and every now and then I'd go down to Chris's house and he had a 150 like this and he'd play the piano and I'd play his guitar. I loved that guitar, you know, and Chris still plays it. He played it a lot in the Willow band in those days. I thought someday I really would like to have one of those guitars. I suppose about 10 years ago, when I got this guitar I thought, man, if I'm ever going to get one of those guitars, I better start looking for one. And I found this one. It was out in the Philadelphia area and I called the store and talked to them about it and talked to the manager. I started asking and asking more questions. 'Cause I had lots of questions to ask, you know, about the setup or the tuners and the shape of the frets and the straightness of the neck and the electronics. But after I'd asked them about I don’t know how many questions I said, ‘Would you let me talk to the guy who set this guitar up?’ And he said, ‘Well, I'll have him call you back.’ So he called me back and I asked him the same questions, only a lot more, and he was getting tired of it. He's answering my questions and he just stopped and said, ‘Look. If you buy this guitar, I guarantee you're gonna love it.’ So I said, okay. And they sent it to me and I love it. Yeah. It really plays great. It's a (hollow body) electric guitar. It's got really nice jazz tones either for soloing or just backing up. In the Tune band with CJ (Kocher) and Owen (DeJong) as soloists, I just let those guys go. They're such incredible players that I just sit back and get to listen to them like everybody else. It's always a pleasure and it's always different. Those guys are such great inventive players that I’ve played with on for 45 years now maybe, and it's always an adventure.
SDPB: Now in terms of the pickups and the electronics, are they original to the guitar?
Nick Schwebach: Yeah. When Gibson first made this guitar it was called a Charlie Christian model. He was just a young kid from Oklahoma that somehow Benny Goodman got ahold of. And when he played for Benny Goodman he was so wild. I guess Benny Goodman was kind of a task master and not an easy guy to play for, or like, you know? And here's this black kid from Oklahoma just knocking things out and Benny just let him play. I think Benny Goodman was the first to integrate his trios and orchestras with black players and Charlie Christian was one of the first. He played this but he had a different pickup. It was called a bar magnet pickup and those guitars are very rare. From the ‘30s. I've never had my hands on one and I don't know how well that bar magnet works. When they started reintroducing this guitar they put on these P-90s Gibson pickups. They put them on the early Les Pauls until the ‘50s when Gibson went to the PAF pickups. The ‘patent-applied-for' humbuckers. They're a really a hot pickup and that made those guitars hot. I have an older Les Paul and it's got a lot of punch. A lot of everything! And then I have a newer one with humbuckers. That's a nice guitar too.
SDPB: Have you played Fender guitars?
Nick Schwebach: Yeah, absolutely. One of my favorite guitars. I played a fender Strat (Stratocaster) that I bought in the mid-eighties that I just loved. It was really, really a good guitar. It was my number one guitar for about 25 years, I suppose, until my hands changed. And then the neck was too small for me and I had so much trouble playing it. I had some other guitars where the same thing happened. I have rheumatoid arthritis. When that happened - luckily it didn't happen to me any earlier in life, it's only been about 10 years - but it messed with my hands and fingers and stuff and there's things that I can't do that I used to be able to do. One of those things is about the comfort of the neck. The older guitars have bigger necks. The early, early Les Pauls, the early Fenders, they all had bigger necks. So I've been downsizing. I was able to give those (smaller-necked) guitars to some friends who really, really loved them. And they were familiar with the guitar and it meant something to them and I said, ‘Good.’ You know? Because I’m not playing it. You love this guitar. You get it. You play it. I also had a 1952 0018 Martin that had a real small neck and I gave that to another dear friend. And I had another Telecaster that I’ve given away. But I bought a reissue of the early 1952 Telecaster with a big neck and I play that guitar quite a bit. Cause that, that really works for me. I found it used and they sent it to me and it was unplayable the way it was set up. And I was going, ‘God, no wonder somebody wanted to get rid of this guitar!’ So I spent about an hour and a half setting it up and adjusting the tunings and presto, it was, ‘Hey, this really works for me.’ So I'm playing that guitar quite a bit. It just fits me.
Below: Listen to Nick Schwebach performing with the Public Domain Tune Band on an episode of SDPB's "No Cover No Minimum