If you’re traveling to a gig, you have to bring the guitar. But if you’re just flying on a vacation or business trip, should you take the guitar along? And if so, how?

First of all, yes, you should bring the guitar with you. “Oh, but it could get damaged in flight,” someone is worrying

Well, it could get damaged in a fire or stolen in a burglary if you leave it home, too, you know? Your guitar is not a precious jewel to be safely stored. It is a fine tool — yes, an “instrument” — to be used as much as possible. And when you’re away on a trip you probably have more time to practice (yes, even if it’s a business trip — turn off the TV when you’re in the hotel room, and pick up the guitar). You might be visiting relatives who want to hear you play. And if you’re camping or somewhere else out in nature, there is nothing like picking for yourself, your companion and the trees and birds.

The only way you should leave it home is if there is a guitar you can use at your destination. Check with the relatives you are visiting, and see if they have a guitar, or a nice friend who might loan you one to use while you’re there. If it’s a place you visit regularly, you might even consider leaving a cheap-but-decent guitar there for you to use whenever you’re there.

But let’s say you are traveling BYOG. So how do you do it?

The case — Go to one extreme or the other. You can get a super-heavy-duty travel case from a company like Calton or Anvil, and then check the guitar on. Nothing will happen to it, even if an elephant steps on it. But those cases are expensive and heavy and bulky. Unless you are flying a lot, or flying with more than one guitar, you probably want to go to the other extreme: the soft gig bag.

Really? Leave my regular hard-shell case at home and put my precious guitar in a gig bag? Yes. Because you are going to carry the guitar on. The gig bag slips over your shoulder, making it look less intimidating, and making it actually smaller and easier to fit into the overhead compartment.

Your preparation actually begins when you book your flight (or when you choose the seats). Unless you are flying first class (in which case you will not have a problem carrying a guitar on), choose seats that will board early, which usually means in the rear of the aircraft. You want to board while there are still some fully clear overhead compartments.

When you pack for the flight, you will plan to carry the gig bag and one other carry-on bag. This is allowed. Read the fine print on the airline’s web page about baggage, and you will see that passengers are allowed to carry an instrument and another carry-on. Print out that page and carry it with you in case you have to explain it to an employee. If you have tons of other stuff to bring on this trip, pack a big suitcase and check that on. But when you stroll confidently and smilingly past the ticket-taker at the gate (you are following the rules, so no need to look sheepish), have the gig bag  slung on your back (you can even pack some extra clothes into the bag with the guitar if you need to) and the overnight-size bag in your hand or over the other shoulder. If the gate agent says something about gate-checking the guitar, accept the tag she hands you, put it on the guitar if you want, but still carry the guitar onto the plane with you with the intention of stowing it in an overhead. If any airline employee tries to stop you from doing that, just say calmly and politely, “I believe it will fit in the overhead. Let me try. If it doesn’t fit I’ll be glad to gate-check it.”

Once you get onto the plane, breathe a quick sigh of relief. The onboard attendants don’t care about what you’ve carried on, as long as you can quickly stow it and sit down and they can get the plane on its way. Find an empty overhead. It does not have to be the one by your seat. Place your guitar into it. There is room for your other bag near the skinny end of the guitar. But to be polite, you will place your other bag underneath the seat in front of you, leaving the space near your guitar for someone else. Do keep your eye on it until the overhead door closes, to make sure no one tries to squeeze something on top of your guitar.

What if there just isn’t room in the overheads for your guitar? This can happen if you are getting on late or didn’t book the proper seats, and/or if it’s Christmas season when people are carrying on a lot more stuff.  It also can happen if you have a large guitar and a very small plane — try getting it in from different angles, sometimes an odd one will work, but sometimes it just doesn’t. If you really can’t find space for it, ask one of the attendants for help — maybe she will put it into a closet up front, or maybe she knows of one overhead that has space. But if that doesn’t work (and this is a very rare occurrence, one that has happened to me only two or three times in hundreds of flights with guitars) you will let them gate-check it. That means they tag it and hand-carry it to the dreaded luggage hold underneath the plane, with assurances to you that they will take good care of it. And in my experience they do. They hand it back to you in the Jetway as you get off, just as they do with baby strollers. If you have let the guitar out of your hands for the trip, then make sure to check it for damage as soon as you get it back, and file a claim if necessary. I have heard various stories about the results of claims, from big struggles at getting any compensation to people happy to be compensated for more than the guitar was worth. But before you worry (or drool) about those possibilities, remember that damage is highly unlikely to happen, because the vast majority of the time, you will be the only person handling your guitar.

Addendum on strings — there is a myth that you’re supposed to loosen the strings before you fly with a guitar. Don’t. That guitar is meant to have the full string tension on it. And it’s traveling in the compartment with you anyway, not in any depressurized baggage hold, so no need to do anything special to it.  Do pack extra first and third strings in case you break ‘em on the trip, especially if you’re heading out to the wilderness. And bring your capo, slide, and maybe the lyrics or notes on some tough songs you’re going to work on while you have the time. And have fun!

UPDATE: Since most airlines have started charging for check-on bags, it has become a little more difficult to carry your guitar on. The trouble is, other travelers carry on much more and bigger stuff, to avoid the check-on fees, and the overheads fill up quicker. But if you follow the advice above and board near the beginning of the line, you still should be OK. And take extra care to watch that no one throws a big heavy suitcase on top of your priceless guitar in the gig bag, since the late-boarders will be trying hard to fit their luggage in somehow!

Katherine Carr Esters of Kosciusko, Miss., actually is Oprah’s cousin, although Oprah addresses her older relative as “Aunt Katherine.” Ted Ownby, director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, recently was visiting with Esters and telling her about the center’s programs. The only ones she was already were familiar with, Ownby said, were a couple of radio shows — Highway 61 Blues and Thacker Mountain Radio — and my book, Blues Traveling: the Holy Sites of Delta Blues (which actually is unconnected to the center except that I am a graduate of the center’s Southern Studies program). Esters told Ownby she carries the book around in her car and refers to it as she drives around Mississippi.

I asked Ownby if Esters has the current edition and he said he wasn’t sure. So I signed a copy of it for her and gave it to him to give her.

I don’t know if Esters has shared the book with her cousin Oprah. But if Oprah wants me to take her on a tour of the blues sites of her home state I’d be delighted!

If a trip to the Delta is in your future, consider going next June to catch Mother’s Best!

“Blues Traveling–The Holy Sites of Delta Blues”–Steve Cheseborough, University Press of Mississippi

Author Steve Cheseborough must be very happy at the reception his Delta Blues guidebook, “Blues Traveling”, has received, for it is now in its updated and expanded third edition.  The book deserves the acclaim it has received, too, for it is hard to imagine how it could be improved upon in the way that it fulfills its primary function: to guide travellers interested in the Delta Blues to the major points of interest from Memphis in the north, to Helena, Arkansas in the west, to Natchez, in the south and to Meridian in the east, in a circular route of the blues country there that can be traversed in whole or in part in either a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction.  “Blues Traveling” goes much farther than simply reciting the names of places of interest and telling how to get to them, though.  It also provides guidance for negotiating the culture that travelers will encounter in the course of such a trip, what can be expected in the way of food and accomodations, and how to comport yourself while on the trip so that Mississipians will be glad to see you again should you ever decided to re-visit the area.

In some respects, “Blues Traveling” bears more than a passing resemblance to guidebooks to the areas of Classic Antiquity, Egypt, Greece, Turkey and Italy, in that a large number of the most interesting sites commemorate buildings that were once important landmarks, but which are no longer there.  So it is that travelers hoping to see where the Colossus of Rhodes or Library at Alexandria were may find an analogous experience seeing where Junior Kimbrough’s juke was, prior to its burning down.  The ephemeral nature of the physical relics of Blues musicians’ lives is not surprising, though, for the blues musicians came from an underclass population,  and didn’t leave much in the way of estates upon their passing; author Cheseborough makes this point, as well.

A high percentage of the places to be seen noted in the book are graves and museums.  Even very small towns often have a musem and “Blues Traveling” is really good about letting you know what you can expect to see at any one of the many museums discussed in the book.  The directions supplied in the book merit special praise, and should be particularly helpful in locating some of the graves mentioned in the book, which are often in very rural, out-of-the-way locations.  Author Cheseborough offers not only directions to the cemeteries, but also directions on foot once you get there.

“Blues Traveling” does a really fine job, as well, of noting the dates and locations of the various blues festivals in the area throughout the year (many of which are free to attend) and clubs and jukes that host live performances of blues.  Steve Chesborough is well qualified to speak to the types of blues one is likely to encounter in Mississippi today, for his tastes in blues embrace present-day electric blues as well as the acoustic masters of the past.  Historical context around the various locations and the musicians who frequent them (or frequented them in the past) is delivered in an easy-going informal fashion.

Some of my favorite portions of “Blues Traveling” relate more peripherally to the blues, and more explicitly to the culture in the larger sense, how to get along with people, and what are realistic expectations with regard to food and accomodations.  The book is protective of the year-long residents of the area and makes a special point of mentioning when a point of interest is currently private property.  To the extent that “Blues Traveling” both encourages tourism in the area by blues aficionados and works to avert cross-cultural mix-ups or tensions between the aficionados and the local populace, it is much to be commended.  That’s a fine line to walk.

“Blues Traveling” concludes with a list of recommended reading and another of recommended listening.  The listening list could use some updating:  the Gus Cannon reliease it cites has been out of print for many years, and there are currently other re-issues of Gus’s recordings that are easier to find.  Taken in sum, though, “Blues Traveling” does an admirable job at what it sets out to do, and is a fascinating read both for blues fans planning to make a trip to the Delta and to those who probably will never make the trip.  The best travel literature works equally well for travelers and homebodies, and by that standard, “Blues Traveling” succeeds in spades.

John M. Miller