Fiberglass Claves (played by Les Wirth - read the story) (limited to 1)

I bought these claves from a guitar shop I worked at in Florida in about 1999 or so.

They are made from fiberglass and they are very hard and very LOUD. These are for the stage. I have a few sets of wooden ones I use for recording.

Back in those days during the the holiday season, my friends would form a Christmas band and play around Pensacola, Florida spontaneously. There was typically between 6 and 8 people in the band. We would print Christmas song tabs off the internet and learn the songs in the afternoon. At night we'd roam around looking for places to play. We'd wander into restaurants and bars uninvited, and for the most part people were happy to have us.

Besides having the best night ever, our secondary goal was to make enough in tips to go to Waffle House and have dinner. If you don't like Waffle House please shut your laptop and throw it in the trash. I'm kidding, but it is a great place to eat.

One night we set up outside Seville Quarter, a New Orleans themed bar in Pensacola which is quite large and famous. It was about midnight and 100's of people were pouring out of this bar. Many of the people coming out of this bar were very trashed. Instead of dispersing, people were gathering around us and blocking the sidewalk and street, and singing very loudly with us. It was quite a spectacle.

At some point an older homeless man joined our band. He had a big white beard and vaguely looked like Santa Claus so I was happy to have him be in the band. I had a bag of percussion stuff with me and I pulled these out and gave them to him. He began banging them very hard and occasionally dropping them in the street. You can see the dents in these claves. Every dent or chip in these claves was from this one man playing these for 20 mins on that fateful night.

I don't even know how it's possible to dent these. They are hard as rock.

Later we went to Waffle House and this gentleman came with us. We learned that his name was Les Wirth. (I saw it on I.D. when he pulled it out for some reason). I was struck by his name Les Wirth. I thought it must have been a hard name to have because it almost spelled Less Worth. He was a homeless alcoholic and I'm sure he had a very hard life.

Anyway, my real band Twothirtyeight wrote a song about him called "Les Wirth" and it was released on our record "Regulate The Chemicals". I sort of imagined what kind of person he was when he was younger in this song. We never saw him again after that night and I'm sure he never knew about the song.

I know $100 is a lot for some claves. I mainly wanted to tell the tale that these red sticks are burdened with. I'm happy to keep them.

If you do buy these I'll be very grateful and I'll use the money to make my next record.

You can carry these around and make new stories with them. You'll annoy everyone within a mile radius.

I will print this story out on nice paper and include it with your claves.