It was a moment when the angels did sing. Wanting to chat with his de facto big brother, one fateful day in the summer of 1969, 12-year-old Stevie Kimock walked into to his grandmother’s house in Bethlehem,

Making his way upstairs, Stevie peeked into the bedroom where Kenny was staying, but he wasn’t there. On the bed, though, was a shiny gold guitar… Cue the choir and mystical beam of light.

“It’s one of my most-vivid memories,” Kimock says. “It was the first guitar I’d ever seen in person, and I was transfixed. I had never seen anything so beautiful – the shape of it, the color, and a shaft of light coming through the window on that metallic gold top.”

Of course he couldn’t resist picking it up… “And immediately, a string broke.”

To this day, he swears he didn’t touch a tuning key or pluck a note on that ’68 Les Paul, but in the moment, all he could do was sit in shame, awaiting admonishment. When Kenny returned, though, he noticed the boy’s sheepishness.

“He goes, ‘I think I broke your guitar,’” Siftar remembers. “But all he did was break the high-E string (laughs). And back then, Ernie Ball put two of them in every set.”

Recalling more of his earliest music-related memories, Kimock flashes back to several years before that day.

“My aunt, Dotty Siftar, was a folk singer in the ’60s,” he said. “She was a big part of the Philly folk scene and ran the Eastern Cooperative Recreational School, where they did arts and crafts, folk dancing, and music. She sang with Pete Seeger.

“I remember her long, black hair and nylon-string guitar with the rope strap, and her playing work songs from the 1890s on an autoharp.”

Though integral to Kimock’s musical foundation, Dottie wasn’t responsible for putting an instrument in his hands.

“One day when I was junior-high age, my mother, realizing I was headed toward juvenile delinquency, said, ‘Would you like to play an instrument?’ I thought about it and decided the coolest would be a violin.

“In our neighborhood was a family that had one, and I went to check it out. As I walked up to their screen door, I saw their boy, phone to his ear, cord stretched. He was holding an electric violin plugged into an amp – I remember seeomg the big chrome dust cap on its speaker. I heard him tell the person on the other end, ‘Hey, listen to this!’ as he hit a note. It was loud, unpleasant, and scared the hell out of me. I ran, screaming (laughs). After that, I did not want a violin.”

Enter Plan B – a trip to Sears, where his mother bought a Silvertone acoustic guitar for the boy.

“I learned a D chord, but that was about it,” Kimock laughed.

Fortunately, Kenny had decided to stay in town to play in a band that covered songs by Jeff Beck, Led Zeppelin, and Fleetwood Mac. He’d often sit with the boy and their guitars, the elder demonstrating how to find notes to songs on the radio.

“Watching him move his hands, playing double-stops like Keith Richards or Chuck Berry, I thought, ‘Wow!’ and I realized it was possible to play those songs,” Kimock said.
Interest became infatuation, and Kimock began to sit with his Silvertone for hours every day. When “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” aired on Sunday nights, he’d watch intently as Tommy picked his Guild D-55.

“I noticed the way he used the inside four strings to play chord voicings up the neck,” he recalled. “When Joan Baez was on, they did a close-up of her right hand and I remember pressing my nose to the screen, wondering, ‘How is she doing that?’’’

Bolstering his education was the entertainment section of each Sunday’s Bethlehem Globe Times, which printed lyrics and chord charts for popular songs.

“I’d sit with the guitar, strumming one chord for 10 minutes (laughs), then figuring out the next one to play ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’ or ‘Nowhere Man’.”

After getting an import electric with “three pickups and seven switches,” he learned “Mr. Tambourine Man” and the lick from “Satisfaction.” By 16, he had a Fender Jaguar and was playing in bands that covered the Allman Brothers’ “Whipping Post” and tunes by Johnny Winter, Eric Clapton, Roy Buchanan, Mike Bloomfield, and Peter Green.

In 1970, Siftar’s band folded. Without a gig but still needing to pay rent, he sold the ’68 goldtop and his ’69 Twin, the former to an acquaintance, making it clear that if he ever decided to sell it, Siftar would get a call. Then, he was off to the Army.

Fast-forward to 2012. Set to retire from his day job, Siftar took a call one day from his friends at Guitar Villa, saying his old goldtop was for sale online. Though his days of buying guitars had passed, he called.

“The guy was asking a lot more than the $300 I’d sold it to him for,” he laughed. “Still, I figured Steve would be interested.”

He was right.

“I called him right away and said, ‘Take it down. I’m coming with whatever you need’,” said Kimock.

Today, the goldtop is Kimock’s “emotional #1” guitar though it splits time at gigs with his 1960 Strat. Others require his mid-’60s L-5, ’47 L-7, a mid-’60s SG, a ’60s Supro lapsteel, or his ’46 ES-300.

“The goldtop is such an expressive guitar,” Kimock says. “If I need something that’s got to feel like me, I’ll reach for it. There’s a deep emotional attachment; it’s even better than 12-year-old me could have imagined!”

While it left Kalamazoo with P-90 pickups, Kimock has tried several types including mini humbuckers from ’68. Today, it has a coverless Alnico “staple” pickup at its neck and a P-90 in the bridge, both from ’55.

“It’s perfect!” he says. “Both pickups sound like a million bucks.”

When the guitar was still new-ish, Siftar replaced its bridge with a “no-wire” Tune-O-Matic from a ’50s ES-335 he found at a guitar shop in Tulsa. Ditto the gold “speed knobs,” which are also older than the guitar.

Besides touring and recording for more than 40 years with Zero and the Steve Kimock Band, the Pennsylvania native was a fixture on the Bay Area scene, playing in Kingfish, Bob Weir’s RatDog, The Other Ones, Phil Lesh & Friends, and the Rhythm Devils. He has shared stages with a litany of luminaries including Taj Mahal, David Lindley, Jorma Kaukonen, Bonnie Raitt, Allman Brothers, Derek Trucks, Elvin Bishop, Little Feat, Peter Frampton, and many others. This year, he’s touring with Jazz is Dead and Oteil Burbridge.

Siftar, meanwhile, backs a singer/songwriter in Bethlehem using goldtops from ’73 and ’80 and other Les Pauls from ’81 and the late ’90s.

To see Steve Kimock playing the goldtop, go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9CzE0fawpE

This article originally appeared in VG’s April 2024 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.