My 5 Desert Island Discs

My mind is wandering this morning (yes, it CAN be a dangerous thing...), so I thought I would write a blog about my 5 favorite albums. I decided to call it my “Desert Island Discs List”, because that’s what I’ve always heard it called. The inferred question being, “If you were stranded on a desert island and could only have 5 CD’s, what would they be?” Soon my thoughts of CDs were taken over by the idea of being stranded on a deserted island. Would I really be worrying about CD’s? If I was, how would I play them? More importantly, however, how did I come to be on this island? Plane crash? Shipwreck? Was I taken prisoner by an evil genius, like in James Bond movies and left to die here after being interrogated for hours? In fact, if I was the captive of an evil genius, would he allow me to choose 5 CDs to keep me entertained on the island that is supposed to be my prison? If he did, should I take a really long time to decide in the hope that he’d lose interest and I could more easily escape?
If I table the ‘why am I here’ aspect of this already slightly unsettling and potentially horrifying scenario, I am left with the practicality of survival on a deserted island. Is this place truly deserted or are there cannibals or dangerous animals that I will have to fend off? If there are animals, can I eat them if I catch one? (also, can you eat a cannibal? is that morally okay since they would surely eat you...) What about snakes, (of whom I am NOT a fan!)? Would it be like Tom Hanks in the movie Castaway? He managed to do pretty well after he got acclimated to the situation. He did however end up with a bizarre assortment of stuff to survive with; ice skates, a volleyball, etc. Apparently he was NOT asked what 5 CDs he’d like to have with him. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that I have a made a thorough reconnoiter of the entire island and found it to be strangely absent of any other life forms...yeah, right.
I think if I was to be stranded on a deserted island and being a fan and longtime viewer of the show Survivor, I would first like to have fire. A LOT of fire. As Jeff Probst is always saying “Fire means life.” I would ask for an entire carton of Bic disposable lighters. Yes, I realize that disposable lighters would be bad for the environment, but I’m stranded on a deserted island at the moment and if and when I am rescued, I will return here in a boat and restore the island to the way it was...I promise. Next, I’m going to need shelter. This one was tough because it needs to be comfortable, dry, warm or cool depending on the outside conditions, etc. Therefore, I choose a tour bus. They are familiar, comfortable to sleep on and if cannibals or snakes attack, I can just lock the door. The following items are necessary without any explanation; a CD player (apparently), a shotgun, ammunition, Spam, fresh water, bathing suit, a big knife, a machete, a small knife, another shotgun (in case something happens to the first one), a GPS, a satellite phone, a flare gun, flares, my guitar, pictures of my family (this is assuming that they are not with me), salt, pepper, Tabasco sauce, a skillet, a coffee pot, coffee, plenty of socks, a solar powered generator, crackers, a BBQ grill, a hammock,...
As I look over my list so far, I realize that this is going to cost quite a bit. The tour bus alone is about $500,000.00 and after it’s been on an island, it’s probably going to be greatly depreciated. No resale value there! (by the way, when they deliver the tour bus, couldn’t I just catch a ride back with the delivery person?) This brings me to the question; “ In this scenario, is money ‘no object’?”. Is the question; “If you were a jillionaire and allowed to prepare yourself to live on a deserted island, what 5 CD’s would you take?” I have to say that sounds pretty unrealistic to me. If I’m a jillionaire I could afford more than 5 CDs. Also, if I’m a jillionaire wouldn’t I have a staff of people around me that would theoretically protect me from inadvertently finding my way to a deserted island all alone? A more likely headline would be; “Famous Jillionaire Guitarist Almost Lost On Deserted Island, Saved By Very Efficient Staff Members”. If I am a jillionaire, I would definitely have a personal flying machine, like a jet pack or something (in addition to my Segway of course), so I could probably just use that to escape. (That is if I’m the captive of an evil genius of course) I guess to be fair the question should be; “If you are NOT a jillionaire and you find yourself stranded on a deserted island through no evil machinations of any sort and while money is an important consideration your mind is focused clearly on the 5 CDs that you would like to have with you to listen to, understanding that these are the last 5 CDs you will ever listen to...wait...am I to understand that this scenario contains no ‘happy ending’?!? I’m going to DIE on this island?!? Suddenly my appetite for Spam is disappearing. As are my thoughts of what music I want to hear before I die from starvation and exposure. Or maybe I die of thirst because I can’t get fresh water. When I was a jillionaire, I had plenty of fresh water but now I’m just a poor, unfortunate soul with 5 stupid CDs to my name, dying of thirst on this uncharted deserted island. Or maybe there were cannibals after all and they were hiding in those caves that I saw on the other side of the island but I was tired and thirsty and ready to get back to my camp...to listen to my CDs...God this Spam is starting to turn my stomach...one should never eat Spam in the hot salty air! The salty ocean air is scratching my CDs too! Soon they’ll be unlistenable! What was that noise?! I think I hear something in the jungle...
Okay, so the question as I now understand it is; “You are going to die. You are not rich and no one can save you. You are going to die alone on an uncharted deserted island, far, far removed from any known shipping lanes and the chances for rescue are nonexistent. While you are going to die...soon...for some unknown reason, the gods of fate have seen fit to allow you to have in your possession 5 CDs and a device to play them on. If you can stop your mind from dwelling on the fact that you are DYING(!!!), and can concentrate on music purely for the purposes of enjoyment (in these, your last few hours before delirium sets in signaling that final sweet slumber) what CDs would you take with you to this ISLAND OF DEATH?”
That’s the question?....well...hmmm...alright...I guess...

Live - Donny Hathaway
Stone Crazy - Buddy Guy
Electric Ladyland - Jimi Hendrix...


...WAIT! I’ve got it! What if, when the cannibals come for me, I play my CDs to them and they, never having seen a CD player before, are fascinated by the magical box of sound and decide that I am one of their gods! They take me back to their caves and give me food and fresh water and through my time with them, I gain their trust and convince them that cannibalism is just not morally cool. Then we all work together and build an outrigger canoe and we row ourselves into the shipping lanes and are rescued by an oil tanker (probably owned by BP!!) we return to the US, get the cover of People magazine, (one of the cannibals gets caught up in a love triangle with Miley Cyrus and Mel Gibson and ends up on the cover of the National Enquirer...Hollywood can be more dangerous than a deserted island!) get interviewed by Matt Lauer, meet the President, who gives me the Congressional Medal of Survival or something (he'll make up something YUUUUUGE!), we get to make a cameo in the next Star Wars movie, get invited to be interviewed on the CBS morning show and turn them down...after we stop laughing! (who watches the CBS morning show anyway?!?), we do Seth Meyers, Conan, Jimmy Kimmel (where we jam with the band of course) we do Jimmy Fallon just to jam with The Roots (oh, Fallon’s alright, but he seems like he’s just trying a little too hard..), Netflix  wants to have me host a reality show and the cannibals and I are invited to be Grand Marshals of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade! So the moral of this tale is; If someone asks your your 5 Desert Island Discs...RUN!

ALL REVOLUTIONS ARE TEMPORARY...

Recently I rediscovered my old turntable. Covered in dust, neglected and relegated to an unused corner of the den, tucked into it’s “imitation woodgrain cabinet’ along with the dual cassette deck, AM/FM receiver and 5 disc CD tray, MASSIVE remote included, my JVC component stereo system was pretty awesome stuff when Buff and I bought it some 22 years ago, at Circuit City in Nashville. In the ensuing years, it had become just a piece of furniture and thanks to the CD/iTunes revolution, it’s absence wasn’t noticed at all for a looooong time! It was a good place to stack books when the bookshelf was too full (or far away). I had even thought of selling it from time to time. 

 A vinyl record shop re-opening in my hometown (https://www.facebook.com/VarietyRecordLounge) probably had something to do with me “remembering” my stereo, but for whatever reason, sitting down with my record collection made me realize just how much I’d missed it. Buff bet me that it wouldn’t even work anymore but as I dropped the needle that warm, boomy tone jumped out of our speakers that still bear the tattered remnants of our long passed cat General Sterling Price’s passion for well sharpened claws. 

 First, a disclaimer, I like technology. I am a fan of all things new and shiny and, when it comes to recorded music, iTunes and MP3’s have their place and play a huge part in my personal enjoyment of music as well as in my professional relationship with the art form. I have about 60 vinyl albums at the moment but I have about 4,000 CD’s and according to my iTunes library 7,536 “albums”, so obviously iTunes wins in quanity! As much as I travel, being able to take my entire iTunes collection on the road, via en external hard drive is awesome. Being able to pull up any song on YouTube or Rhapsody, Spotify, Pandora or any other streaming service (I’ll have to write another blog about how artists are getting screwed by the unfair streaming laws) is really a sign of the times for our culture. My iPhone and iPad are instant jukeboxes for me and my car stereo is actually just a flash-drive socket that plays stuff from my iTunes. It was 6 months or so before I discovered that the radio portion of my car stereo wasn’t even hooked up in my car.  We are the “RIGHT NOW” generation. We don’t wait well for anything. In fact, I see examples all the time of how little patience many of us have for, well, ‘patience’. 

 As I sit in the floor (yes it’s best to sit in the floor while listening to records, try it.) and pull out some of my albums I remember how strong of an impact the music has when I can look at the artwork (in a size that you can actually see), read the liner notes, absorb the entire artistic effort and then of course you have to get up and turn the record over to hear side 2 (or 3 or 4 for that matter). The smell of the cardboard and vinyl, the occasional crackle and pop from the speakers as the needle jumps a tiny scratch. The sound of the needle automatically lifting, signaling the time to change sides. 

 Listening to records is a physical commitment that you can’t have with iTunes. In one of the great ironies of technology, listening to vinyl albums is an interactive experience while iTunes is really a static experience. Records require something of the owner and the listener. There’s the aforementioned physical “turning over” of records, not to mention taking them out of the sleeve and placing the needle on the groove (no accident that they’re called ‘grooves’)They get scratched and warped if they’re not taken care of so you have to be responsible. You tend to listen to songs on albums in order and I at least, tend to listen to an entire side of a record before I change to another. Records make it more likely that you’ll listen to the tracks “in order”, in other words, in the sequence that the artist intended for them to be played. When I started making records, it was still standard practice to put thought into the sequencing of a record. They told a story or at least had some kind of thread. Those days are mostly gone and songs drive the popular conscience these days. In some ways I agree, I don’t want to hear an entire album of The Fox (What Does The Fox Say?). Maybe they would do all animals with different senses like; “What Does The Goat Hear” or “What Does The Unicorn Smell” or “Why The Komodo Dragon Cries”. And I could go off on a tangent about how disposable music seems to be to our culture today but I won’t. 

 I pulled out my copy of Prince’s 1999 and remembered listening to it over and over, when I first discovered it back in the late ‘80‘s, studying the cover for clues, reading the liner notes and trying to hear Dez Dickerson’s parts as opposed to Prince’s guitar licks. I remembered the fact that for a double album, I thought it was strange/cool that it came in a single album cover with two inner sleeves. Pictures of Prince and the band on each side. The label on the record was simply a picture of Prince’s eye. Lyrics printed out for the songs! The imagery tying in with the music making it somehow more powerful and stronger. Sure I went on to buy that record on cassette and later on CD and even later on iTunes (I really like that album) but no other format ever had the impact of hearing it on vinyl. Before you think that I’m about to go off on how much “better” vinyl sounds than CD, let me just say that I’ve spent the last 24 years standing in front of LOUD guitar amps and crashing cymbals. I don’t testify to be able to hear any sonic superiority for anybody but me (I know what sounds good to me:)). 

 My stack of Jimi Hendrix bootlegs brought back many memories of being in Japan or Italy or the UK and searching through record stores and flea markets for basically any albums with Jimi’s name or face on the cover. Imagine a 6 week tour of Europe and carrying a stack of albums along with your luggage and guitar! That my friend is commitment! My copy of Santana’s Abraxas album, even in it’s worn and faded state seems to explode with color and imagery. Coming from the same vibe as Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, it just draws you in and says, “Play me!”. I listened to it yesterday and was instantly inspired. I can’t say the same for the 1,000+ times I’ve listened to that record on iTunes. 

 While I would claim to have a fairly cool and extensive CD collection (easier to carry throughout Europe...) and an insane iTunes collection that will require a team of psychologists many years to explain, my record collection is small and more of a combination of cool stuff (Hendrix, SRV, Sinatra, BB KIng, Muddy Waters, George Jones, an insane amount of Earl Hooker records...) quirky stuff; The Carpenters Greatest Hits, and various mysteries that have been lost to time; Why do we have an album of “The Worlds Greatest Sound Effects”, 3 copies of Hank Williams Jr.’s Greatest Hits, 2 copies of the soundtrack to The Blues Brothers Movie, The Best of Tony Bennett Vol. 2 (where the heck is Volume 1?!?!?). 

 One of my best friends and I argue all the time about the merits of being able to hold an album in your hands while you listen as opposed to the immediacy and convenience of an MP3, I’m sure we’ll argue some more after he reads this:) but I didn’t really write this blog to spark any arguments or debates, it’s more of an epiphany for me that, through my “re-discovery” of my record collection, I can easily and immediately revisit specific times and memories in my life and that, to me, is one of music’s greatest strengths and magical powers. Music transcends language, culture, time and even technology!

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Just got back from the gym and thanks to my iPod, I have this nugget of wisdom for you.

GOOD SONGS TO WORK OUT TO:

1. KICK OUT THE JAMS - MC5
2. KICK START MY HEART - MOTLEY CRUE
3. WELCOME TO THE TERRORDOME - PUBLIC ENEMY
4. PRETTY VACANT - SEX PISTOLS
5. ACE OF SPADES - MOTORHEAD

BAD SONGS TO WORK OUT TO:

1. NO WOMAN, NO CRY - BOB MARLEY
2. SO WHAT - MILES DAVIS
3. I’LL WAIT - VAN HALEN
4. KIND HEARTED WOMAN - ROBERT JOHNSON
5. I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU  - WHITNEY HOUSTON

Also, remember to stretch and stay hydrated!

PEACE

Reflections...

 What a great weekend it has been for me personally and for the band! I want to thank all of our friends in the Detroit area who came out to see us @Callahan’s. Thanks to all of our friends in London. It was so great to see so many of you and get a chance to play the first of 2 sold out shows! Thank you to everyone in Windsor. The induction into the Canada South Blues Museum is a tremendous honor and I’m still beyond words!

 You guys have always treated us with warmth and respect and given us so much joy through the music that I can’t begin to tell you how precious you all are to us. Thanks to my amazing band of friends; Dan EUbanks, Tom Larson and Chris “Wingnut” Fuller for once again saddling up and hit the road with me. Thanks to my wife and daughter for understanding me and my need to play music and allowing me to be free to pursue it. A woman like Buff is a very rare thing on this planet and I thank God for her!

 Next up; A new band announcement, some new touring info and some new recording. 2012 is gonna be hot! R U Ready???

A not so brief History of what's on TV...

 Not too terribly long ago, (less than 100 years ago) when I was a kid (the younger version of the kid that I am now), we had 4 channels on our television. We weren’t being punished and it wasn’t because we were poor (we were), that’s just all there was! I grew up near Nashville, TN. Our channels were; 2, 4, 5 and 8 (the PBS station). If you watched television in those days, you were watching one of those 4 channels. If you missed a show, you missed it. You’d have to hear about it at school or work the next day but it was gone. If Evel Knievel was going to jump the Snake River Canyon, it was going to happen at 2:00PM eastern and you’d better calculate the time change to central and be in front of the tube! You could only watch one show at a time, so if you wanted to see Starsky & Hutch you would have to miss the Jeffersons. Then of course, thanks to Charles Paulson Ginsberg and the fine folks at Sony, we were blessed with VCR’s and we no longer had to miss George and “Weezie”. 

 So last night, I’m scrolling through the menu page on our TV, looking for something to watch. I’m restricting my choices to HD channels only to narrow down my options. I browse good old 2, 4, 5 & 8 (or in this case 1002, 1004, 1005 and 1008), nothing really grabs me there so I start to move out. Out past TBS, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Classic, ESPNEWS, ESPNU, CNN, CNNI, HLN, Fox News, MSNBC and into the wild frontier of what is now Cable Television. I see AMC, OVC, HSN (I’m entranced by David Venable and his amazing kitchen wares! So much so that Buff and I almost order a giant spatula. Seriously this thing is incredible!), I see the Food Network. I can’t watch the Food Network too much because it makes me hungry. I like Guy Fieri. he seems like a good guy. Kind of a cooking version of Sammy Hagar. His show Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives has led me and my band to more fantastic lunches on the road than I can count! The Food Network, however, isn’t the only channel that will make you watch food. I stop at the Travel Channel for a moment to watch a show about a guy who goes around eating huge amounts of food within a certain timeframe (this episode was an 8 patty burger, two hotdogs w/slaw, fries, a coke and a milkshake made with butter pecan ice cream and with coffee cake mixed in it. He had to eat it all in 20 minutes. He did it.). I guess they show that on the Travel Channel because he has to ‘travel’ to these places to eat. We have a Weather Channel. The Weather Channel always seems to be talking about the weather somewhere else, usually where there’s a big storm, flood or tornado. It’s kind of like Weather porn. Then you get to the History Channel (and yes there is a History Channel 2 for even more History!) On the surface this channel seems like a great idea for kids. I wish, when I was in school, there had been a channel that I could watch to learn my history homework (Manifest Destiny, The War of 1812, the Missouri Compromise) but then again, in my school, we didn’t spend a lot of time studying Swamp People, Pawn Stars or Mudcats. We studied WWII, where we learned about Hitler but it’s only lately that I’ve been educated about Hitler’s bodyguards. I never really thought about Hitler having bodyguards. I don’t like Hitler. I think he was a real bastard and getting burned up in a ditch with a bullet in his head seems like fair play but I watched every episode of that show. It was fascinating I have to admit. I still think Hitler is an a**hole though. As well as being a crappy painter. You’ve also got National Geographic Channel, Animal Planet and the Military Channel all of which have captured me on many occasions. I watched some seriously disturbed Texans catching diamond-back rattlesnakes the other night, *shudder*!

 Then you come to the “women’s section”. I only call it that because the target audience seems to be definitely female. Lifetime, Hallmark, OWN (which is, of course, the Oprah Winfrey Network). There’s even a channel called Lifetime Real Women, not sure what there after there. When I watch these channels I want to curl up in my Snuggie with a cup of hot tea and just have a good cry. (Oh not really, I don’t watch those channels too much, nor do I have a Snuggie). I do watch a suprising amount of Disney Channel, Family Channel and Cartoon Network. My daughter and I are fans of Adventure Time with Finn and Jake. This may be one of the best shows on television. Seriously.

 The movie channels! Finally! I know that I’ll find a movie that I’ll enjoy watching. maybe Die Hard or Smokey & The Bandit! I remember the first time I heard about HBO. One of my friends went to visit some relatives and came back talking about how they had “home box office”. I thought for a long time that he meant they owned their own theatre. HBO! As a 12 year old, red blooded male, HBO could be your first chance to see real, naked ladies! Probably why my mom fought us getting cable for a long time! As I cruise down the list of HBO channels (Oh yes, the old days of one HBO channel are gone like acid washed jeans and the Fonz) HBO, HBO West (oddly and sadly not full of cowboy movies), HBO 2, HBO Family (probably no naked ladies there), HBO Family West, HBO Signature, HBO Signature West, HBO Comedy, HBO Comedy West, HBO Zone, HBO Latino and (yes, you guessed it...) HBO Latino...WEST! And that my friends is just HBO! You still have Cinemax (a whole ‘nother level of naked ladies, first time I saw it I thought we had somehow gotten free porn! Now it IS porn but it ain’t free!) Showtime, TMC, Starz and Encore. Each of which has at least 3 versions. I’m no mathmetician (and I’m too lazy to go back and add up all the channels) but that is a lot of television real estate. About 5,000 movies per hour or something like that.

 Sometimes I like to watch Univision, Galavision, Telefutura and of course Telemundo. I don’t speak very much Spanish but I think if I watch long enough I’ll get it by osmosis. Still waiting. I like to watch BBC and pretend that I’m British. I’ll sit in front of the “telly” with some beans and toast and get the latest football scores and see what Labour MP Eric Joyce is up too. (Apparently, getting into a bar fight!) I don’t watch much MTV anymore. I used to watch it all the time and sometimes, late at night, they might show a Jimi Hendrix video! I saw Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean video, Prince’s Little Red Corvette video and Van Halen’s Hot For Teacher video. I don’t know what happened. I know artists still make videos. (The Black Keys, Katy Perry and Beyonce are hard at work but with little love from big old MTV) Not so much music videos anymore on the Music Television channel. They might think about changing the name to RTV (reality television). Oh wait, there is an RTV channel already (Retrovision, awesome!). Sorry MTV. Now MTV has a lot of shows about young people living together, having babies, being Italian, a lot of punching, kicking, yelling, drinking and scratching. Kind of like some of the joints I play in (without the baby-birthin’)! Of course you’ve got your VH1’s, BET’s, CMT’s and GAC (wow! I just realized country music has two channels and they still play very little COUNTRY music - George Jones & Merle Haggard are you listening??) There should be a Blues Channel. Satellite radio has a Blues Channel (God Bless Bill Wax!) How come there’s not a TBC (The Blues Channel)? “The Blues Channel, all Blues music all day!” Maybe they could do a news report in the evenings and get B.B. King to read the days news headlines! Buddy Guy could do sports and Shemika Copeland could do the weather. I would only watch TBC for all of my news!! Maybe they could do a Blues version of The Real World with B.B., Buddy, Lonnie Brooks, Kim Wilson, Bonnie Raitt, Lou Ann Barton and Shemika; “This is the true story...of seven blues artists...picked to live in a house...work together and have their lives taped...to find out what happens...when people stop being polite...and start getting real...The Real Blues World!” It would be amazing!

 So I’m back to my own TV quest; 5,386 channels later, no movies to watch, nothing interesting on, I switch off the TV and pick up a book. Books never let you down.

What do you do while your GPS is updating?

 Been a while since I blogged, so I got all coffee’d up this am (thank you Dunkin’ Donuts!) and decided to let it roll! Since the start of 2012, I have really been going through an artistic “re-evaluation” of where I am and “what’s next”, (Ok, I’ll try to quit using “quotations” for the rest of this blog anyway!). My musical background is obviously the Blues. The first music that really made sense to me on guitar was Blues. I know this part of the story has been told to death but Jimi Hendrix was my gateway drug into music. Specifically, hearing Hendrix made me pick up a guitar and learn how to play it. Once that ball was rolling, I had to feed the beast. My first guitar teacher told me that the music that I liked was Blues. He told me this after I brought him a Billy Idol song (Steve Stevens on guitar of course)that I wanted to learn, so I thank God that he didn’t tell me the kind of music I liked was post-industrial, neo-classical, bluegrass-punk!

 He hipped me to Stevie Ray Vaughan, who led me to Buddy Guy, Albert King, Guitar Slim, B.B. King, Albert Collins, Freddie King, Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. It’s a very erratic path that I took; Jimi to Stevie to Buddy to the Kings to Wolf & Muddy and on and on. But there were side roads too; I found Clapton, Beck and Page. Through Clapton I found Robert Johnson and that opened up the whole Delta-type acoustic page of the book to me. I found Skip James, Son House, Fred McDowell, all the “Blinds” (Willie McTell, Lemon Jefferson, Willie Johnson, etc). The more new music I found and the more new artists I was exposed to, the more I wanted to find and learn. Sometimes, it took more than one listen to allow my brain to get wrapped around some of the artists I heard. I remember hearing John Lee Hooker’s Mad Man Blues the first time and almost running out of the room! He later became a cornerstone influence for me and one of the favorite bluesmen I ever met. I spent a lot of time in record stores just flipping through the Blues section looking for people I hadn’t heard of. 

 Buddy taught me about Earl Hooker, Little Walter, T-Bone Walker and Sonny Boy Williamson II. I was already a fan of Elvis, George Jones and Prince but the musicians that I worked with in Buddy’s band taught me about P-Funk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Youssou N’Dour and Earth, Wind & Fire. It was like reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica of Music!

 Somehow, in the maelstrom of my musical engulfment, I also found; Otis Spann, Little Brother Montgomery, Sonny Sharrock, Sly Stone, James Brown, Mozart, Grant Green, Rachmaninov, Big Joe Turner, Eddie Van Halen, Jerry Lee Lewis, Robert Nighthawk, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Joni Mitchell, Roy Buchanan, Motley Crue, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ali Farke Toure, Koko Taylor, Elliott Smith and a literal cast of millions!

 This blog is just about my musical influences, so I’m not even mentioning my parents (my first influence), my wife and daughter (my most consistent influences), Martin Luther King, Jr., Muhammad Ali, Eddie Murphy, John Wayne, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Portis, Bernard Lansky, John Ford, Steven Spielberg, Thomas T. Goldsmith, Jr. & Estle Ray Mann (Google them), Leo Fender, Les Paul, Ernie Ball, Jim Dunlop and Seymour Duncan just to name a few. 

 As an artist, you are like a musical and cultural sponge. You take on all of the sights, sounds and feels that cross your path and they all filter into your work somehow. As I start to mentally “build” my next record, I think it’s going to sound like a dusty old Fender amp and eau de club (stale beer, cigarette smoke and fried food). Of course, knowing me, it might start that way and end up smelling like a brand new spaceship, orbiting Saturn!...Stay Tuned

2012...When she's dreaming and the other thing...

New Years. A reset. A Do-over. Like rebooting your computer. Fresh as a daisy. 2011 is in the books. What a year! It’s been a year of wars, victories, lies and scandal and that’s just in the SHB! Joke! Actually, once again, I’ve been blessed with an amazing group of people who have made it a year that feels like one big WIN! (No offense Charlie Sheen!) I’m proud of the band and the way we’ve been able to create music and entertain people. Our drummer, Marshal Weaver left the band in August and it was a rough time for me for sure! I never made any official announcements about it, just because it hurt! Marshal and I have been friends and family for a long time. That’s how it is when you’re in a band; you’re family. Forever. Marshal and I have had more of a brotherly relationship that anyone in the band; we both can really piss each other off, but if someone comes between us, God help ‘em! I think that’s where the best music comes from. It has to have an edge. I’ve always said that I hope people love us or hate us but anything in between is apathy and that’s the worst thing in the world. Marshal’s one of the best drummers I’ve ever worked with and certainly one of my favorites. I truly love and respect him. I know whatever he does he’ll be amazing. 

 What a miracle that Tom Larson, former SHB drummer, would be willing and able to step in and fill the gap! I can’t believe the blessing! Tom is an amazing percussionist and also a brother and another favorite musician/drummer. He played in the SHB for several years before leaving to pursue other musical opportunities. The SHB’s like the Mafia; you never really leave...

 Dan Eubanks is leaving now to pursue his solo career. I truly hate to lose him! He’s been a brother on the road and we’ve gone through stuff that you couldn’t imagine. I’ve loved the music that we’ve created and he’s made me a better musician by being here. He’s an incredibly gifted songwriter and singer. If you’ve seen any of the shows in the last few months, you’ve seen Dan opening the gigs with amazing solo sets. You’ve seen the Dio jacket, the Big Nasty perch on top of the bass rig and the sheer rock and roll on the right side of the stage. He’ll be successful and my love and respect for him will remain unabated (I used a football term just for you D!). 

 So what’s next? I’m really not sure. I have a lot of music written, a lot of gigs to play and I’m looking forward to 2012 and creating a new body of work. The videos that I’ve been posting on YouTube are works that we’ve recorded over the last year. They’re slated for recordings that might never see the light of day, (at least until I’m dead and my daughter releases the box set!) I hope you dig the videos and I really hope you dig the songs! I’m very proud of them. You know, there are a lot of free programs out there that allow you to record the audio from YouTube to your computer. I’m just saying that it’s an interesting fact. Sometimes after an artist posts 10 tracks or so, he might even post a running order to let you know how he’d sequence the record. Not that I would ever condone recording the audio from the videos I’m posting! I’m just saying it’s possible and they’re good songs that I’m proud of. 

 In the South, we have a New Years tradition; the tradition is to eat turnip greens, black-eyed peas and hog jowl for New Years Day. It’s supposed to bring good luck for the year. I’ve eaten it every year for the last 35 or so and I have to say, it must be working! Luck or blessing or whatever, I’m so grateful for my wife and daughter, for the family and friends that I have, you all have enriched my life beyond measure. May God bless you as He’s blessed me for the coming year! See you soon!

LOUD IS GOOD!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

  This year will mark the 7th annual Have A Blues Christmas benefit. It’s a concert/auction/feast that Xtreme 4X4, Natalie Stovall and I have put on for 7 years in a row. It was originally conceived as an “end of the year” concert in my hometown, basically, just a reason to play at home. I wanted to have an event at home to end our touring year and play for my family and friends. My brother, Keith Throneberry and I cooked it up over a BUNCH of Dos Equis one night with our wives (they had margaritas). As we brain stormed we decided that just having a concert wasn’t enough, we both wanted to do something for the community. To try and give back. 

 I moved a lot as a child. We lived in Texas, Mississippi, and all over Tennessee before settling in Columbia. My mother tells the story that I asked her, after kindergarten, where I’d be going to school next year and she decided then and there that we would be staying right here. 

 I grew up here. I made my life long friends here. I found my wife here. I spent some VERY formative years just south of here on my Uncle Carlton’s farm. I learned to drive a tractor, shoot a gun, drive a car, swim and play a guitar here. I learned about work and responsibility here. I learned to shoot a gun, found Jimi Hendrix, Prince and Buddy Guy here. My daughter was born here. My family’s here. This is my home. 

 On Christmas Day, my daughter will awake to a tree full of presents. Santa Claus will deliver on schedule! I’m blessed. Blessed because for one, I’ve got a home for my daughter to wake up in, a lot of folks don’t. A lot of folks don’t have a tree or stockings or presents. I’m sure some of you more “sociopolitical” brothers and sisters will say that it’s ‘their own fault’ or some other crap. Some can say; “it’s not really my problem” or “I’m sure they’ll be okay”. The thing is, I’m not preaching. I won’t be serving in a food line this Christmas, I won’t be offering a homeless person my home as a place to sleep. I’m not Mother Teresa. I’m not saying that if you just take care of yours you’re wrong or less or whatever. I told you to begin with, I started this as a selfish reason to play a gig for my family. What I can do, is one day a year, help put on an event and raise money for the kids in my area that might not otherwise have a Christmas and in the spirit of that, try and shame others into giving!

 This benefit provides vouchers for toys. Nothings else. ALL of the money goes to toy vouchers that can’t be used for anything else, so that kids can have something under the tree. Every kid deserves to have a visit from Santa. Santa is all of US! Every person that works at this event is working for free. Everything involved in the event is donated. Nothing is paid for so that all monies go to the kids. 

 We live in a very cynical world. We’re always braced for the next con. I got an email today saying that someone wants to transfer $94,000.00 into my bank account. Seems like everybody’s got a scam. But Christmas is my favorite time of the year. To me it’s a pure, invincible time. It’s owned by Santa Claus and he calls the shots. It’s about dreams and, as Abraham Lincoln once said; “the better angels of our nature”. I love this time of year. I believe that there’s a little Clark Griswold in all of us. Just because it won’t be perfect doesn’t mean we shouldn’t expect it to be perfect. (We’ve all got a “Cousin Eddie” I’m sure.) I can do without the commercialization, the debate about “holiday trees” versus “Christmas trees” (my take is I could NOT care less). But the spirit of Christmas; being the better version of ourselves that we can always be. Wishing people a merry Christmas, sending cards to people that we haven’t sent a letter to in 364 days, just keeping an extra smile in our pockets for emergencies. It’s a really cool time of year. 

 We’re putting on an amazing concert. Natalie Stovall http://www.nataliestovall.com is one of the most talented people you’ll ever see. Her music is phenomenal and her band is second to none, (well maybe second to mine:) JOKE!) My guys will play they’re butts off like they do every night. The donated items will sell for big $$$ and the BBQ and drinks will flow. The T-shirts will be the fashion item of the year. If you can be there, DO! If you can’t, at least consider donating to our pay-pal page http://www.xtreme4x4.net/donate  It’s secure and you can donate a dollar and tell others you donated $1000.00! I promise your secret is safe with us! 

 Wether you participate in our event in any way or not, I wish you and your loved ones a blessed holiday season. I pray that you’ll find a warmth and happiness in your heart and that you’ll allow yourself to express it to others. Trust me, it’s not as easy as it sounds!

Be Better...

I haven’t written in a while. A lot’s happened. Life’s like that, a lot always seems to happen. I’ve lost and I’ve gained. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference but I keep trying. If you keep up with my Facebook (or the Facebook of hundreds of my friends) you know that we lost a great human being; Chris Kent. Chris was a dear friend and an amazing example of what I’d love to be. He was a positive, beautiful spirit, who faced unimaginable challenges with a complete faith in God and and he never gave up. If I could be so bold and with no blasphemy intended; he could’ve given Job a lesson in faith. 

 Chris and I were in a band together. He’s one of the greatest musicians I’ve ever known and I never could understand why he’d want to play with me. He brought such an elegance to the music that at times I was almost ashamed to play as though my notes might “mess up” what he and Drew Wiseman and Derek Wiseman were playing. Of course, before you think I have no ego at all, I did manage to turn up louder and play anyway!:) They always forgave me. Chris and I rarely saw each other after he left the band. Not out of animosity, but probably out of the same reason that you might not talk to someone that you were close to in high school. Life’s rivers just drift you apart. We stayed in touch, my wife is another amazing spirit and those folks tend to drift into each other’s orbits more often, so Chris and I would keep up on the internet through Buff and his correspondence. He would come out and jam when we played in Nashville and I was always thrilled. I miss him. I miss knowing that he’s here. That’s a selfish thought but it’s true. I feel the same way about everyone I’ve lost. I wish they were here. I think I’d be different, more proactive about getting together and catching up. I know that I wouldn’t but I know that I would love the chance to do it over. 

 Sometimes I think that’s the worst thing about life; continually forgetting what we’re here for. Focusing on the “stuff” and forgetting the ones we love until it’s too late. We get so caught up in the day-to-day and forget that what’s most important is flying by faster than we realize. 

 The younger you are, as you read this, the less sense it will make, but you look in the mirror one day and you see a few more lines. There’s some grey in your hair. Maybe when you got out of bed some muscle ached that never hurt before. If you’re like me, you just ignore it and roll on but it’s there. Tapping your shoulder, nudging your ribs as though to say; “Better hurry up, I ain’t got all day!” 

 So what’s the point of this blog? I have no idea!!:) All I know is Chris passed away and the accolades came pouring in about what a positive influence he was, how many lives he touched and how many people he affected. He was an amazing musician but that rarely came up in his tributes. People talked about his strength, his positivity, his faith in God, his warmth. Having personally known Chris, I can say that no amount of praise could be considered “too much”. He was that good of a person. I practice my guitar playing everyday. Chris’ lesson to me is  to practice being a better human being. 

Video: Ray Charles and Dolly Parton Indian Leg Wrestle!

Grateful. That’s what I am today. I try and remain grateful all the time. Sometimes it’s hard because life can throw more curve balls than Sandy Koufax. I got to watch my daughter’s play tonight (Willie Wonka Jr., she plays the role of Charlie!!) and was blown away. Yes, I am her father and I’ll always think she’s an amazing genius, but she IS! She obviously got more of her mother’s genes than mine! She’s beautiful inside and out just like her mother. 

 All day I’ve been watching the Conrad Murray trial on HLN. Propofol. AEG. Millions of dollars and at the end of the day, just a sad end to a tremendously talented, under-appreciated artist. My thoughts keep going to Michael Jackson’s children. My daughter is roughly the same age and she can see and hear CNN so I’m sure they do too. Hearing the graphic, gruesome details of your father’s passing is horrible. They’re in my prayers. 

 I’m grateful for my wife. My best friend, my most trusted confidant, my “Yoko of the South”! No one gets me more than she does. I’m grateful for my friends. They listen to me vent, worry, fret, revel, howl, brag, joke, cajole, and often just make a jackass out of myself. I’m grateful for my family. My mom, my brother, my in-laws, my adopted-laws, my MF brothers, my friends who don’t even realize we’re friends.

 I’m grateful for not so spiritual stuff too, of course. I’m grateful for my Jimi Hendrix collection. I’m grateful for Jimi Hendrix! I’m grateful for my guitar collection (humble by guitar player standards but still pretty goofy). I’m grateful for my truck that defies all mechanical logic and continues to operate perfectly. I am especially grateful for a certain guitar that allows me to “cheat” on her periodically and simply reminds me of her perfection every time I pick her up. 

 Sometimes it’s hard to be positive. Sometimes, it’s hard to be grateful. It’s easy to wallow in the mire of your own personal misery and feel like you invented woe and trouble. I’m ashamed to say that I am guilty of that sometimes. There’s a saying in the South; “I’ve got more than I can say grace over.” It usually means; “I have more responsibilities than I can deal with.” For some reason, I always hear it the other way; “I’m being blessed so much, I can’t thank for all of it!” I always think of that phrase when I get pissy. I can’t thank for everything, because I can’t THINK of everything. I’ve got more than I can say grace over. When I go to bed tonight, I’ll pray like every night. I’ll pray for my wife and daughter, my family and friends, my soul, the sick and hurting, and YOU. I can’t think of it all, so I just remember what I can. I’m grateful for you. I am GRATEFUL!

Rick Perry and Mitt Romney both name Scott Holt their favorite guitar player!

Driving home from the gym today, I took a route that I don’t usually drive on. It got me to thinking about the fact that when you live in a town (wether it’s all your life or just for a couple of years) you tend to “learn your way around”. You learn the fastest routes, the best routes for red lights or traffic and even the route that allows you to do all of your errands in order!

 As a traveling musician, there’s a similar thing that happens from being on the road. The more you travel on certain roads, the more you learn about the area. Whenever we get a new person in the bus with us, they comment on how we seem to know where every Starbucks on the interstate. We also are pretty good at remembering where we left the Red Robins, Chipotles, Five Guys and every bbq joint we’ve ever been too. 

 Lately, we’ve been running the same route through St. Louis, just about every week. It goes like this; Nashville to Paducah, KY on I-24. Then through Metropolis, IL., Mount Vernon, IL., East St. Louis and then St. Louis. From there we might go north or west. Funny how we always manage to hit St. Louis at lunch time and Zia’s is always “on the way”!

 Between Nashville and Paducah, there are only two Starbucks. Both in Paducah; one’s at Lourdes Hospital (always fun to stop at the hospital with a new guy and tell him we’re going in for a quick blood transfusion!) and one’s in the mall. Depends on what time we’re blowing through town and just how fast we’re rolling as to which one we stop at. Coming out of Nashville on I-24 there’s a big hill that you have to drive over and it has two big cell towers on the south side of the interstate. If you’re rolling before daybreak and especially if it’s foggy, the flashing lights on top of the cell towers look just like police blue lights. Always a great way to get the heart rate up for driving! Passing through Clarksville I always think of Jimi Hendrix and his time there with the 101’st Airborne and gigging there and later in Nashville with Billy Cox. Metropolis; I look for the water tank with Superman on it. There’s also a Exxon gas station on I-24 that sells BBQ’ed fried baloney sandwiches! I’m pretty sure there not that good for you. Mostly because they taste soooo good! Carbondale is the next place for Starbucks and they also have a Steak and Shake right across the street. Good place to re-fuel at the Flying J too. On I-64, especially coming home, I see the signs for Nashville, IL and it always feels like a cruel joke knowing that we’ve still got some miles to go. Crossing those rivers; the Tennessee, the Ohio and especially the Mississippi still excites me. I never get used to the magnitude of those big rivers. 

 Then of course there’s the soundtrack. When you’re driving, it’s important that you’ve got good music to listen to. Also, it’s important that you have the right music to listen to. Usually, we leave Nashville and it’s been a couple of days since we’ve seen each other. It’s usually about a half-hour to an hour of what’s been going on at home and general chit-chat before everyone settles into “long-drive” mode. Some sleep (I’ve been in too many wrecks for that ever really work for me), some read and everyone pops the little white ear plugs that Apple kindly gave us (for a nominal fee of course) and for the next 5-6 hours it’s dead silence. Somebody will get a phone call or maybe need to stop for something but for the most part an entire CD can play through before you stop. You need music that keeps you engaged and alert, not soothing stuff, no matter how much you enjoy it. Depending on my mood and what I’m into at the time anything can go either way. Lately “good” driving music has been; Jimi Hendrix, Hank Williams, Muddy Waters, Waylon Jennings, George Jones, Tammy Wynette, BB King, Dwight Yoakam and Steve Earle. “Not good” music is usually instrumental music. Bach can get you killed if you’re not careful! If the ‘drowseys’ start to set in, just wake somebody up and get them talking. Sometimes that’s as good as a cup of coffee for getting you back on point. As I read back through this ramble, I realize that the person writing it could very well be a truck driver or a traveling salesman. The only thing that makes what we do different is the gig at the end of the trip. Thank God for the gig!

Going to the Chapel and we're gonna get marrarrarried...

 Twenty years ago, I knew everything. Smart! I was fresh out of school, fresh off the farm and playing guitar for a living and a legend. Wise! I was rubbing elbows with Clapton and Santana, I was playing the same stage with the Rolling Stones and traveling the globe. Worldly! I had really, really great hair and no tattoos. Twenty years ago, in the midst of all my “smartness”, I did the smartest thing I’ve ever done. I walked into a church, in my hometown and in front of God and everybody, I promised Buffy “‘til death do us part”. 

 I was late. The wedding was supposed to start at 6:00 and I think I showed up at 5:50. Technically on time, but by all other standards...late. Cold feet? Not even cool feet! As a matter of fact, I had hot feet! I’ve been hot footing it after Buffy since I first saw her! One of my best friends and groomsmen, Joe Frye and I went shooting. .45 automatics at helpless cans and bottles (I should write a coffee table book; “Death Of A Budwieser Bottle”). Being born and raised in Tennessee, popping away in a corn field is a good way to keep nerves at bay. If I’d had any...nerves that is. I’ve been sure, completely sure, of only a few things in my life but marrying my wife was one of them. I have loved her since the first day I laid eyes on her, (that’s not an exaggeration). The second time I laid eyes on her I knew we would be married someday. These days, every time I lay eyes on her I know it was one of the smartest things I ever did. 

 Shooting with Joe wasn’t actually what made me late. Technically, I wasn’t late. Twenty years ago I thought that being ‘technically’ right was all that mattered. I went home, showered, wrote letters to my parents, put on my fancy tuxedo and rolled over to the church at 5:50, right on time! Twenty years ago being ‘technically’ on time was being “on time”. 

 I stood at the front of the church with the preacher and my best men; my dad and my brother. Candles were lit, family and friends were all seated, one of my favorite musicians was playing songs I had chosen on piano, (yes I had Hendrix, Clapton and Albert King played at my wedding). The doors opened and all the breath went out of me. (I don’t know everything) I had just seen her the day before. I had looked at her practically everyday since we’d met. I knew she was beautiful. I knew she was amazing. As she walked down the aisle, I realized that I had no idea how beautiful she was. I realized that I had never really seen her. I realized that I had never, ever had my breath truly taken away. (I don’t know anything). She had to help me light the unity candle because my hand was shaking so bad, cutting the cake and taking pictures went by in a blur, we left in my Jeep with the top down (the confetti was still in there 6 months later). I went into the church being the smartest guy in the world. I walked out knowing nothing. 

 Twenty years later, I’m used to her shaking her pretty little head at me when I do something that I think is smart. I’m used to hands on the hips and rolled eyes. I’m used to being the fourth smartest person in our house (I’m just behind Henry, our Labrador). I’ve learned that “technically” is never to be used as a defense...ever! I did one very smart thing, twenty years ago and if I never do another one, I’ll be just fine with that. Happy anniversary Mrs. Buffy Holt, you are the absolute love of my life...‘technically’ I wasn’t late...:)

The Sword Of Damocles

My office is a wreck. That’s not a complaint or even an admission of guilt, it’s just an observation. Kind of like; “the sky is blue.” When I’m on the road, Buffy cleans up my office and puts everything neatly away. Then I come blowing in with 15 guitars and bags and CDs and magazines and small crumpled bits of paper with song lyrics on them and receipts and turn a once neat room into a cluttered catastrophe, once again. Thank you to my beautiful wife for taking care of me for the last 20 years!

 As I sit writing this blog, listening to an excellent Jeff Buckley bootleg (02/02/95, Skala Espacio - Fukuoka, Japan), I can feel the teetering stacks of CDs behind me. I turn around and choose one stack at random (there are currently 6 stacks total, behind me) and here’s what’s in the pile;

Steve Earle - I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive

Jesse Johnson - Verbal Penetration

Johnny Cash - Personal File, Bootleg Vol.1

Hank Williams Jr - Whiskey Bent And Hell Bound

Harry Nilsson - Nilsson Schmilsson

Elton John - Tumbleweed Connection

Elton John - Madman Across The Water

Willie Nelson - Honeysuckle Rose Soundtrack

Townes Van Zandt - Live At The Old Quarter, Houston TX

Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Annie Lennox - A Christmas Cornucopia

Keith Richards And The X-pensive Winos - Live At The Hollywood Palladium

Cage the Elephant - Thank You Happy Birthday

Jeff Beck - Rock And Roll Party

Rush - Moving Pictures

Whitesnake - Greatest Hits

Beady Eye - Different Gear Still Speeding

Foo Fighters - The Colour And The Shape

R.E.M - Collapse Into Now

John Lennon - Walls And Bridges

John Lennon - Plastic Ono Band

John Lennon - Rock And Roll

John Lennon - Sometime In New York City

"I'm giving her all I got captain..."

 I really can’t say enough about the great band of guys I am surrounded with. This weekend was a great example of the talent, focus and determination that these guys are putting forth daily. We’ve been having some kind of mechanical issues with our touring vehicle and thought we’d fixed it by staying in Moscow, ID for 4 extra days a couple of weeks ago. No luck! After an uneventful ride home the problems came back about 250 miles into a weekend run that had us going just north of Chicago and then to Quincy, IL., before getting back home in time for Easter. 

 After an incredibly useless stop at a mechanic on Saturday, we limped through the weekend and made it home in time to celebrate Easter with our families. I couldn’t have done that with any other group of guys! Dan, Marshal, Pappy & Shelton; Thank you all so much for your dedication, energy, talent and belief!

Who is John Galt?

What a great start to the year 2011 for the SHB! KUDZU, our best record yet, was released in January and we’re getting a lot of radio play including satellite radio now on XM! We had a great time playing on the Mando Blues Show in Nashville earlier this year (www.radiofreenashville.org), what a blast! Great leg of touring just finished with two nights in Moscow ID. John’s Alley is becoming a favorite place to play, thanks to Dave and the staff there as well as the great fans that come out and see us. Great shows in Minneapolis, Fort Dodge, IA., Sioux Falls, Billings and our first ever show in Vancouver! Just an awesome leg of our never ending tour. Buff and I heard That Girl on XM radio over the weekend and it was a big thrill for me to hear our music played on the radio, (that will never get old). It was really important that Buff and I heard it together for the first time. Check out XM channel 74/B.B. King’s Bluesville and request our music!

 Last Saturday was National Record Store Day. Hope you supported your local record stores! Jack White, a Nashville resident and newly named musical ambassador for Nashville, hosted a concert by Jerry Lee Lewis. I’m grateful to artists like Jack who use their influence to protect the best parts of our industry. Thanks Jack!

 I’m looking forward to getting out and seeing more of ya’ll this spring/summer. We’ve got some cool festivals in the lineup and some interesting gigs. I’ll be in NYC in May as part of a tribute to the late Rory Gallagher. We’re doing the Windsor International Blues Fest this year as well as a bunch of other gigs that we’re looking forward to like Stoogefest in Jackson MO for our Jackson friends. We’ve been in the studio working on some new music and hopefully we’ll get some of that out in the next few months, stay tuned!

P.S. If you wondered about the title of this blog, yes I am reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Amazing Book!

In Defense Of The Tangible

 I love technology. I love my iPhone, my Mac, my Kindle, my iPod, etc. I believe that technology is our friend. I’m all “big screen TV’s and wireless guitars!” That being said, this blog is in defense of the “old school”. I recently read an interview with Jon Bon Jovi, in which he was lamenting the seeming replacement of the physical album or CD with MP3’s or Wav's. He blamed Steve Jobs personally, which I don’t really agree with, but much of the interview felt right to me. I reposted the article on my facebook and got some interesting responses. It made me think about my own feelings concerning this topic, which in my line of work is kind of important!

 When I was growing up, (in olden times) music was on albums (33 1/3 baby!!), then we got 8-track tapes (horrible) and then cassettes (ehh), then the glorious CD! Yes, an indestructible, last forever format; except it’s not. They scratch, have a shelf life, and you can break them. Still it was the last physical format to come along before the age of 1’s and 0’s. When MP3’s became the thing, it wasn’t the sound quality that bothered me as much as the physical “not being able to hold something” feeling. My high-school years (my truly formative music listening years) were spent listening to most of my music while driving in my truck, cruising up and down the streets of my hometown, on a really crappy car stereo with a graphic equalizer that did little more than add too much treble, bass and volume. In other words, sound quality was not really a major issue for me at the time. Even now, as I write this, I’m listening to music (Lucinda Williams / Blessed) on desktop computer speakers...sounds fine to me:). A lot of my favorite stuff isn't really “audio-phile” type stuff anyway, I’ve been listening recently to Robert Johnson, not exactly pristine recordings (some things even technology can’t do yet!)!

 When I first heard Jimi Hendrix, it was important that I saw a picture of him. It was important to read the liner notes and see where the music was recorded, who else played on it, when was it recorded, etc. I learned as much about music from reading my CD’s as from listening to them. I learned about Guitar Slim in the liner notes of a Stevie Ray Vaughan, CD. I found out about Earl Hooker from Buddy Guy, but I learned more about his discography from liner notes on Muddy Waters records, etc. I can’t overstate the importance of that source of information and knowledge when learning about music. There IS a reason why there’s a Grammy category for liner notes! 

 When I first started exploring iTunes I was excited about the “compactness” of it; I can carry my entire record collection with me everywhere on a device roughly the size of a deck of cards. That’s awesome! When I started touring, I carried a little CD player and 3 BIG albums of CDs! Very cumbersome!! Once the newness of iTunes wore off and it became a regular part of my day, the limitations started to reveal themselves. Especially after my first hard drive crash that lost my entire iTunes library! 4,450 albums...GONE! That’s a great, (albeit painful) wake up call! I’ve had a couple of crashes and ‘losses’ since then and it sent me scurrying back to my local record store (Grimey’s in Nashville) and made me appreciate, again, the feeling of tearing the plastic off of a new resource and a new friend. 

 I believe in the ability of humans to assimilate new technology and refine it over time. I think that’s what will happen to recorded music; it’s great to have MP3’s, it’s great to have iTunes and be able to buy a song while driving down the interstate at 3:00am (yes, I have done that for some of the most random songs you can imagine!) but I don’t believe 1’s and 0’s will ever fully replace the physical recorded work any more than I believe that texting will ever fully do away with face to face conversation (although it is very handy!!) Buddy used to tell me; “just because something is new doesn’t make it better.” I agree with that.

Finding it pt.2

The meandering stream of life. Can you remember how you came to have the list of ‘favorites’ that you currently have? If today you like eating lobster, did you start with fish sticks? If today your favorite book is Water For Elephants was it once Green Eggs and Ham? If today you are jamming to Born This Way by Lady Gaga, was there a time in your past when it was Fallin’ by Alicia Keys? (Did you know that was 10 years ago?!) Sometimes I wonder why I like certain songs. In my line of work it’s an important thing to try and study. If I could figure it out, I’d be writing this from my private island fortress, while sitting on a stack of gold bars. How did I go from listening to my parents live Sha Na Na record to listening to Lightnin’ Hopkins? How do I draw the line from my love for Hank Williams Jr to my love for Funkadelic? I loved Elvis long before I began to raid his record collection for guidance. I got my appreciation for B.B. King from Buddy Guy. I found out about Guitar Slim from Stevie Ray Vaughan. I learned my gospel music from church but I learned my love of George Jones from my mom listening to WSIX in Nashville. There’s a place in the Bible where Jesus says to become like “little children”. I won’t go into the spiritual aspects of the passage but I will say that a lot of aspects of the creative life (and maybe just life in general) are made better by following that ideal. In my last blog, I spoke about how I discovered music. I discovered it in a random, sort of meandering way that wouldn’t make sense if you were trying find the straight line of discovery. I still find music like a child plays; any toy is fair game, size and proportion doesn’t matter. A 2” tall doll can be friends with an 18” doll and they can live in a house that is in now way proportionate for either of them. When I play dolls with my daughter, I’m the ‘boy dolls’ which tend to be a little less ‘together’ than the girl dolls. My favorite is the one we call business man; he has a tie and suspenders but no jacket and no shoes. She may be a Cinderella or a small girl in a riding outfit but it makes no difference. The rule is; there are no rules. It’s just playing. Imagination.
Music is like that (thank God!). In my iTunes, Donny hathaway is right next to The Doors (alphabetized by first names I guess) I found Robert Johnson like this; Jimi Hendrix - Stevie Ray Vaughan - Buddy Guy - Billy Idol - John Lee Hooker - Robin Trower - Eric Clapton - The Time - Robert Johnson. There was no straight line, no path of logic, just a sort of “Hey, I wonder what this sounds like?” I remember sometimes I would find someone that I wasn’t really ready for and it would be a while before I could come back to them and it make sense to me. John Lee Hooker was like that for me. I had heard Buddy, Stevie, B.B., Muddy and I had heard John Lee’s name enough to know he was “important” but when I bought my first record, Mad Man Blues, it made no sense at all. It sounded out of tune, unorganized and nothing like what I was used to. It was NOT love at first sight. As time went on, I developed a broader sensability, found more music, varied sounds and when I came back to John Lee, it WAS love. I put him high on my list of favorites and consider him one of the greatest bluesmen ever. I heard the Sex Pistols looooong before I loved them. For a long time I liked Adam & The Ants better than the Clash! (What do you want, I was a Prince fan!)
(My List of Greatest Blues Men, order subject to change daily or hourly)
Muddy Waters
B.B. King
Robert Johnson
Howlin’ Wolf
John Lee Hooker
T-bone Walker
Buddy Guy
Albert Collins
Freddie King
Hank Williams

*I add this caveat; Stevie Ray Vaughan was the LAST real authentic blues man. I’ve yet to see anyone access that channel since. Also, I know that I left off; Little Walter, Son House, Sonny Boy Williamson, Albert King, Junior Wells, Elmore James, Little Milton, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Charlie Patton, etc...

My daughter, who has become one of my best teachers, shows me every day how to ‘learn like a child’. She discovered the song You Really Got Me not from Van Halen like I did, not from The Kinks but from Alvin & The Chipmunks. Not trying to be cool or hip, she just found the version that to her ear sounds ‘good’. She learned Hank William’s I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry from a film version of Beverly Hillbillies. I learned the same way; my first Clapton record wasn’t Derek & The Dominoes or Cream, it was Behind The Sun. Good record but not the record responsible for his “godhood”. Not the ‘cool’ record you want to say was your first. My first Buddy Guy record was a Vanguard compilation. Then I accidentally came across Stone Crazy on Alligator, (still my favorite and I would argue his best). I heard Elton John for years and saw his videos through the 80’s and early 90’s but couldn’t be bothered to even own an Elton John record. Then one day it just clicked into place and a casual purchase of his greatest hits (because I am determined to own every record ever made) led to me deciding that he is one of the greatest pop music geniuses of the 20th century. (Yes I am prepared to argue that point with anyone!) I liked the Monkees before I liked the Beatles. I liked the Beatles before I liked The Rolling Stones. I liked 70’s jumpsuit era Elvis better than 50’s era (I still do sometimes) because that’s the one I was exposed to first. I like Merle Haggard doing Lefty Frizzell better than the originals. I like to discuss music. I will debate (not argue) with you about my choices if challenged, but in the end it’s about what you like as an individual. There are 31 flavors of ice cream for a reason (except in Libya where there is just the one flavor; Kaddafi Krunch! Bahahahahahaha!! WINNING!)

Random:

Just my Monday morning thoughts; Congratulations Packers! Christina Aguilera should be forgiven for messing up the National Anthem, it’s a lot of pressure to perform solo in front of the entire world. I don’t think that it should put your patriotism into question if you can’t remember the words. The Black Eyed Peas were actually pretty good for a Super Bowl Half Time show. Not sure what you’re supposed to expect from something like that but I thought they performed well, actually sang live and made it interesting. The commercials this year were probably the most unimaginative and dull of any year I can remember. I think the Bill O’Reily interview with President Obama was strange. I thought the president handled himself well but I’d rather see John Madden interviewing. Doesn’t anyone else remember that Bill O’Reily was the host of A Current Affair?
Buffy gave me a Kindle for Christmas (thanks again Beautiful!) and I have read more in the last two months than I have in the last two years! Best books so far; The Kennedy Detail, Hellhounds On His Trail, A Terrible Glory, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest.
TODAY'S PLAYLIST:
1. ALICE IN WONDERLAND - BILL EVANS
2. A LOVE SUPREME - JOHN COLTRANE
3. GYPSY WOMAN - MUDDY WATERS
4. WICKED AS IT SEEMS - KEITH RICHARDS
5. CONTREDANSES (12) FOR ORCHESTRA - BEETHOVAN
6. SUNSHINE OF YOUR LOVE - CREAM
7. CLOSED CAPTION DEMO - FUGAZI
8. SINCE I'VE BEEN LOVING YOU - LED ZEPPELIN
9. HOT PANTS - JAMES BROWN
10. MY BABE (LIVE) - SONNYBOY WILLIAMSON

All Hail The King!

“Before Elvis, there was nothing.” - John Lennon

Elvis’ birthday is today. He would have been 76 years old. I, like many people, called him the King of Rock and Roll today on Facebook and was challenged to explain how he could merit that title. So here goes;
It’s hard to imagine how different the world was 60 years ago. Nowhere was our cultural differences more broadly expressed than in music. Pop music was divided into ‘black’ music and ‘white’ music. The names for the categories were much more genteel; white music was either ‘pop’ (short for popular music) or country & western (yes, both kinds!) black music was first called ‘race records’ and then was changed to ‘r&b’. Of course all of these distinctions were only invented by the recording industry to sell records. In the real world, ‘white’ people would listen to ‘black’ music and vice-versa.
When Elvis walked into Sun records in Memphis, TN in 1954, he stood in front of the mic and let loose a new kind of music. An uptempo, countryfied version of an old rhythm and blues song by Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup called That’s Alright Mama. This was the birth of Rock and Roll. Rock and Roll transcended boundaries of culture, race, gender or nationality. The music was embraced by kids all over the nation and soon the world. Elvis started the avalanche of artists that followed; Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, etc. He influenced everyone from Buddy Holly to Led Zeppelin. Keith Richards, in his recent autobiography, had this to say concerning Elvis’ imprint on his own career; “Heartbreak Hotel...was the stunner...when I woke the next morning, I was a different guy.”
No other single artist or group influenced more artists or a more diverse group of artists than Elvis. In the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland there are a collection of drawings made by a young Jimi Hendrix in grade school, the subject of one drawing; Elvis Presley. Bob Dylan referred to listening to Elvis like, “busting out of jail”. Little Richard called Elvis “an integrator”. Rod Stewart said; “Elvis was the king. People like myself, Mick Jagger and all the others only followed in his footsteps.” Elton John said; “If it hadn’t been for Elvis, I don’t know where popular music would be.” In a career that only lasted 20 years, including 9 years in Hollywood making movies instead of rock and roll records, it would be easier to make a list of 20th century artists who weren’t influenced by Elvis...it would be a very short list.

6th Annual Have A Blues Christmas

Well, another year is almost gone and once again we were able to have our annual Have A Blues Christmas charity event to raise money for the needy kids in my hometown. After 6 years, the generosity of people still amazes/blesses me! This year it seemed like everything was working against us; we lost our venue from the last two years, we were having trouble securing a ‘backup’ venue, the economy remains hard on everyone and by the time we got in position to announce the event and start selling tickets and accepting donations, we were about a month behind schedule. Even with all of that, we managed to sell out the venue and raise over $12,000.00 for the charity.
The heavy lifting for this event is always done by Keith Throneberry. It’s impossible to describe the amount of work that he selflessly puts into this event to make it perfect. He’s in charge of every aspect of the event from securing the venue, to printing and selling the tickets, to handling the T-shirt design and sales, organizing the lights and sound, staffing the event, gathering donations from large contributors, arranging the meal and drinks, coordinating the band’s soundcheck and load-ins, and probably a dozen other items that I’m not even aware of and he does all of this while maintaining his own business, full time! It is a LOT of work. Those of you that have been to the event know what I’m talking about; Keith is there when you get there (no matter when you get there) and he’s there when you leave (no matter when you leave). I can’t praise or thank him enough for taking this responsibility on his shoulders every year for the last 6 years.
Ms. Natalie Stovall and her fantastic band donate their time and talent every year and I truly believe that her show is worth the price of admission alone! Natalie is an extremely talented young lady with a bright future in front of her and it’s an honor and a privilege to share the stage with her every year.
The Xtreme 4X4 club provides the manpower (and woman power!) every year and we literally couldn’t do the show without them. Every chair, every table, every trashcan, every ‘overexerted’ audience member is taken care of by these incredible people and it’s an honor to work with them as well!
We’ve also been blessed with the donation of items to sell through the events silent auction. These include works of art from many local artists (including my extremely talented wife Buffy!) and sports and music memorabilia. This year we had a football autographed by Chris Johnson from the Titans and a guitar autographed by Robby Krieger, Joe Bonamassa, Mick Taylor, Natalie Stovall and myself.
If you still want to be a part of this great event, we have T-shirts for sale (contact Keith Throneberry: iceman@xtreme4x4.net ) All money from sales will be delivered to the charity until Dec.24, so it’s not too late!!
Make your plans to make it next year!! Merry Christmas!!