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Rickter Scale: The Bride takes a slide

The Rickter Scale is an irregular column in the Goldstream Gazette
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Joan Stiebel plays a tune on a ukulele. (Photo courtesy of Rick Stiebel)

The Bride’s musical odyssey began, ironically, on the steel-like ice at Seaparc Recreation Centre in Sooke.

Joan approached our Sunday skating lessons with the same ‘damn the torpedoes’ determination that’s a trademark of every new endeavour she takes on.

Unfortunately, she missed the mark while working on her backwards stride and stumbled awkwardly into the boards before tumbling with a silent thud onto the unforgiving ice.

The drop-in clinic diagnosis of a badly sprained wrist was an initial relief, but two days of working through the steady increase in pain coupled with my constant nagging convinced her to get an X-ray.

Our worst fears were confirmed and the Bride had surgery the next morning. She left the hospital with a heavy heart weighed down by the addition of a cast and the plate with 10 screws required to mend a wrist broken in five places.

Several months later, out of a combination of boredom and an inexplicable desire to spend time with me, Joan tagged along to a trade show I had to cover for the Gazette.

After I got the details for another photo highlighting my mediocre skills, I noticed the Bride was involved in quite a conversation with a young man at the Tom Lee Music booth while she clutched what looked like a child’s starter guitar. Turns out it was a ukulele, which she had decided would be a great way to rehab her wrist.

After a couple of weeks, it became quite clear this was something she was going to stick with, so I suggested she upgrade from her plastic toy to something more the real deal, blindly oblivious to where that might lead.

Five years later, the Bride is now the proud owner of seven or eight ukuleles. I stopped keeping count after five, and just shrugged when she ordered the first of her three-string slide guitars.

A couple in the collection are electric, so the Bride now has a couple of wee amplifiers as well-named Mega and Honeytone, and we have officially changed the name of the computer office downstairs where I work to the music room.

I creep up to the door occasionally to gauge the remarkable progress in her strumming, singing, picking and playing –everything from Delta Blues to Metallica, with lots of stops in between.

When the Bride reluctantly signed off on this column, she insisted that I not include a direct link to the section of the website where she shares some songs. After some back and forth negotiations between our lawyers, however, Joan grudgingly agreed to include the main web address.

So if you would like to join the 1,200-plus people who’ve sampled her songs, you can check out ultimateguitar.com, and after some sifting, you’ll find her. You’ll also find comments from Horatio, a punk rocker in Mexico who really enjoyed her take on an old Iggy Pop tune.

(For the record, I’m keeping an eye on Horatio, and you as well, Dave in Belgium.)

Rick Stiebel is a semi-retired local journalist.

Columns are the opinion of the writer and do not represent the viewpoints of the paper or Black Press Media.

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