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John Verity - An interview with the blues guitarist/vocalist from the UK. "I've always moved into a band where the musicians are a lot more capable than me. It's always been a conscious effort and it makes you raise your game."

John Verity

John Verity is a blues based guitarist and singer from Yorkshire, England. Like many other English kids, John was captured by the exciting rock and roll movement happening there in the early '60s. Starting off on an guitar that was barely playable, he persevered on the instrument and eventually acquired a Vox electric guitar. After some woodshed time of honing his playing skills, John began to showcase his craft with various local bands. He would open for bands like John Mayall's Blues Breakers (with Eric Clapton) and Terry Reid. After hearing Terry Reid's great high tenor singing voice, John began to sing as well. He would develop a style similar to Reid's. His group signed with management and took a residency gig in the Bahamas. While there, they were asked to come to Florida - in the US - to open for Jimi Hendrix. John's musical career was gaining momentum. After returning home and going through typical band changes, John was invited to join the band Argent, with Rod Argent of Zombies fame. This elevated his career once again. John states " I've always moved into a band where the musicians are a lot more capable than me. It's always been a conscious effort and it makes you raise your game." At age 70, John shows no signs of slowing down as he continues to tour regularly, playing festivals and top notch clubs with the John Verity Band. I recently chatted with John about his career.

R.V.B. - Hey John. Robert von Bernewitz from Long Island, New York... How are you?

J.V. - I'm doing fine... thank you. How about you?

R.V.B. - I'm doing pretty good. We have a chilly day here. How's it looking over there, across the pond?

J.V. - We're getting winter here now... finally. It's late but it's very cold today.

R.V.B. - Have you gotten any snow yet?

J.V. - We're on the east side of the UK. It's on the edge what's  called East Anglia. East Anglia is really flat... all the way to the sea. We don't really get much snow here at all. There's no mountainous region to encourage it... so it's usually quite mild.

R.V.B. - I see. Thanks for taking this time for me. Congratulations on your career. You've done a lot of great rockin'. What brought you into this world of music?

J.V. - Wow! The '60s... things kind of change. I'm a child of the '60s, really. I was a teenager in the '60s. Everything kind of changes musically, in terms of youth culture. I discovered rock & roll and blues, and that was it. I really wasn't interested in anything else.

R.V.B. - You were just passed that folk revival... skiffle era?

J.V. - Yes, it was just towards the end of skiffle. The music scene here - up to then - was diabolical. The stuff that you used to hear on the radio was just terrible. Then a lot of the American black rock & roll records started to get played on the radio. Strangely enough, the place to listen to music back then was on the armed forces network. A lot of kids my age discovered the radio stations were meant to cater for American soldiers over in Europe. They were requesting a lot of the Elvis, Buddy Holly and things like that. We kind of got turned on to that. Through that, I started to look back into the early blues stuff. Then the Beatles hit and everything changed. It was fantastic.

R.V.B. - You were a typical kid. So you decided to pick up the guitar?

J.V. - When I was about eleven or twelve, I wanted a guitar. My parents bought what they thought was a guitar. It was a really shitty acoustic with action about 1" high. I started to learn on that. Then I wanted it to be electric. I've always been into electronic things. If I hadn't been a musician, that's probably what I would have done. I turned this acoustic guitar into an electric guitar by gluing a contact pickup to it. Then I discovered that you could plug it in to the back of a radio. There was an input that was meant to plug a record player into it. I found that it was sensitive enough to plug a guitar into it. It must have sounded diabolical but it made a noise.

R.V.B. - You got to start somewhere.

J.V. - I'm like a lot of people in my generation. Eventually I went to get an electric guitar.

R.V.B. - What was your first real guitar?

J.V. - It was a Vox guitar. They probably didn't make it to America until many years later. Vox amps were built in the UK. Then they started to make Vox guitars. They were actually built in Italy and marketed in the UK. They were terrible things. Back then there was an embargo on American goods. You couldn't get a Fender or a Gibson over here. These Vox guitars were like look-a-like guitars. They had the sort of shape of a Strat, but they were just awful... Hahaha. It was white and it looked like an electric guitar. It was made out of plywood. It got me to be playing proper electric guitar for a while. It was about the equivalent of $20 back then. This was in the early '60s.

R.V.B. - Did you form a local high school band?

J.V. - It wasn't in a school band. I didn't manage to hook up with anybody at school. Pretty soon after I started playing, I stopped going to school. It took quite a while for my parents to find out. I didn't need to go to school anymore because I was going to be this big rock and roll star.

R.V.B. - You had big dreams.

J.V. - Yeah... so school was no good to me at all. I stopped going from about 14. Then I eventually got thrown out. I went out and auditioned for people and got into a band. That's how I got started.

R.V.B. - What part of the UK were you from as a teenager?

J.V. - I'm a Yorkshireman... so my peers were pretty fearsome, really. The town I come from... the best guitarist in town was Alan Holdsworth. I bumped into Alan when we were both teenagers... at a music store where we were both buying strings. He said "Why don't you come out to my house sometime and we'll play together. So I went out to his house and sat in his bedroom with him... him with his guitar and me with mine. It was about the scariest experience I had in my whole life. He was frightening, even back then. This the mid '60s by now. There was just no way that I could come anywhere close to what he was playing.

R.V.B. - Did you pick up a few things from him?

Allan Holdsworth

J.V. - Oh yeah! Alan had really, really long fingers. I have these dumpy sausage fingers. I don't look like a guitarist at all. Alan had these huge spiders. His span on the fretboard was just ridiculous. He came up with his own kind of style. He invented all that tapping thing, really

R.V.B. - He almost invented his own scales. He was really an amazing player. It's a shame he recently passed.

J.V. - Yeah... he didn't look after himself. Not at all. We remained friends like ships in the night because we were both gigging all the time. We'd just bump into each other occasionally.

R.V.B. - So you started getting your chops up and networking yourself around town?

J.V. - Back then, there was just so much work. Youth clubs had bands on all the time. In the north there were these things called workingman's clubs. They were like social clubs, really. They would have music all the time. You could play just about every night of the week. In the '60s, the whole band thing had really taken off. There was music everywhere. You could get your chops by playing every night. I would just work myself up to a slightly better band, to a slightly better band... that's how I did it.

R.V.B. - In that magical time period, did you see a lot of acts live?

J.V. - Yes... but usually when I was playing at the same place, or on the same bill. I didn't get much of a chance to go out and see anybody because I was gigging all the time. One of my bands played with was John Mayall's Blues Breakers when Clapton was with them. They were still doing clubs at that period. A real eye opener for me in the '60s, I opened for Terry Reid. Are you familiar with Terry Reid.

R.V.B. - Yes, he was on the Epic label.

J.V. - Terry had this amazing voice. He was in the frame for Zeppelin, but he didn't want to do it. Terry Reid was very special, vocally. It made me be a singer. I was just a guitarist in the band when we opened for Terry. He's got an very high vice - or he did back then - and I've got a very high voice. At the time it was really unfashionable. Bands didn't really have singers with high voices. It didn't really happen until Robert Plant and Terry. In the early '60s, you'd be more attractive to a band if you had an Otis Redding type voice. The soul scene happened really big here in the '60s. There were loads of soul bands. When I saw Terry Reid, it made me realize that I could probably be a singer as well. I really, really wanted to be a singer. It made my whole thing change, really. Up to then, all I really wanted to do was be a guitarist.

R.V.B. - What kind of gear were you using at this time? Did you eventually get a Fender or a Gibson?

J.V. - I got a Strat first. I had loads of different guitars but I eventually went up to getting a Strat. I got what I thought was a really nice 1962 Strat... which now would be worth an absolute fortune. I didn't hang on to it. I got to play a Les Paul with P-90's on it. That was kind of my sound. It just hit me , really... It just worked for me. Back then I was using an early Marshall stack... which would have been about 1967, I suppose. That really worked for me. Back then there weren't that many pedals. The guitar would sound good straight into your amp. The P-90's pushing the front end of a Marshall 100... it was just a great sound.

R.V.B. - I can imagine. There's nothing like the sound of a '60s Les Paul and a Marshall.

J.V. - Hahaha... we were playing small venues with this gear. It must of been absolutely deafening. Going straight into an amp like that, you just didn't get any drive unless you turn it up. We were playing pretty flat out in these small venues with these Marshall 100's. It must have been horrendous.

R.V.B. - Hahaha. Not to mention carrying the things.

J.V. - Yeah! It's crazy, isn't it. We humped all that gear around. A lot of gigs were upstairs. Hahaha... it was just madness. I'm paying for it now.

R.V.B. - Was it called the John Verity Band at this time?

J.V. - No. There hadn't been a John Verity Band up to then. Eventually in late 1967 - the gig where we opened for John Mayall's Blues Breakers... it was a festival - I was just a localish' band from my town. Another band approached me and offered me a gig. They were fully professional. The bands that I'd been in up to then were kind of semi-pro, so people had jobs as well. The band was called the Richard Kent Style. They were a soul band, really... with a brass section and the whole bit. I figured that having a brass section and all that stuff, I could maybe talk them into doing some Chicago blues. That's what really attracted me about the band. I joined them and I was with them for quite a while. They were the first band that I ever came to America with. That band morphed into another band called Tunnel. We lived in Florida for a while. That was my first experience of working in America. We did some big festivals. We opened for Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Pacific Gas and Electric... who were big in America but never really made it here, Blues Image... who were pretty big back then as well. When that band split, it morphed into the first John Verity Band. The First John Verity Band was an American lineup, with me. The band split and everybody came home except me... I stayed.

R.V.B. - What part of Florida were you in?

J.V. - North Miami Beach. We had a manager there. It was a really long story. We went from England to the Bahamas. There was a rock club in the Bahamas called Jokers Wild. It was on Freeport, and It's reason for being there was that it was easy to get to from America. The audience was American college kids. We did a residency there.

R.V.B. - it's kind of like paradise.

J.V. - Yeah it was. It wasn't the same audience all the time. The kids would only come over for like a week. They'd all go, and then another lot would come and stay. The audience was changing all the time. This was like 1969 so you could imagine how crazy it was, with everything that was going on then. We had about a year there. We came back to England a couple of times in between. The final time we were at Jokers Wild, a promoter from Miami Beach came in and offered us a gig. He took us across to America and got us an apartment and a car. We went and rock and rolled for a good year over there. Then that band fell apart. I didn't want to come home so I found two American musicians, and that's when the first John Verity Band started.

R.V.B. - So eventually you moved back home. How did the gig with Argent come about?

J.V. - During the time in Florida, I was writing... all the time. I did some recording tests with various people. I did some recording tests with Tom Dowd... with Atlantic, but I was having problems with my work papers. Eventually I had to leave. I just couldn't get permanent work papers. I was flying out to Nassau and just getting short term visa's. First they gave me a long one and after that, it was getting shorter and shorter. The last time over, they gave me about four days. I just realized, "I gotta come home." So I came home with all of these songs I had written. When I got home, I got some recording equipment together and made some demos... got my first record deal. Not as quickly as it sounds... it took time. I had to get a band together. What used to happen back then and still happens to a certain extent, was that the record company would put you on a tour, opening for a big band. They put my band on the road opening for Argent. During that tour, Russ Ballard, Argents lead vocalist and guitarist announced that he wanted to leave. He recommended me to replace him. He said "You should look at the guy in the opening band." That's how that came about. It was the right place at the right time, really.

R.V.B. - You did a couple or records with. How was that experience? Did you get to write some songs?

J.V. - I didn't get to write much music material. When you're in a band with Rod Argent, he's a major writer. His biggest success was Time of the Season and She's Not There. He's a Brilliant writer. I wasn't going to get my foot in the door on the writing front. But it was a great experience. I was really out of my comfort zone. As a musician, it wasn't really my type of music... to be really honest. It was just a really good career move. Also, one of the things that I have done throughout my career, as I've moved from band to band, I've always moved into a band where the musicians are a lot more capable than me. It's always been a conscious effort and it makes you raise your game. With joining Argent, everybody in the band was streaks ahead of me, when it came to technique. I really had to pull myself together and get my shit together. For that, it was amazing.

R.V.B.  - Did you tour with them?

J.V. - Yeah! We toured America. Things were changing a bit, in the middle of the '70s. In England, the whole punk thing happened. Kind of overnight, Argent became a really unfashionable band. We were perceived to be these old school rock stars.

R.V.B. - That happened to a lot of bands.

J.V. - The atmosphere in London - which was the heart and soul of the English music scene - was just diabolical. I had made my mind up anyway that I wanted to do something different. I wanted to do something less complicated... more straight ahead... but not punk. I wanted to do a real straight ahead three piece rock band.

R.V.B. - That's where the Phoenix years came in?

J.V. - I would of done Phoenix, even if Argent just kept going. I would of done it along side. We'd had discussions in the band. I'd been honest with everybody. I said "Look... I want to another band, but I'm happy to do it along side Argent, if everybody's cool with that." Strangely enough, a lot of people were doing that. Phil Collins had a band alongside Genesis called Brand X. Quite a few people were doing that. I thought that would work out alright and not upset anybody. But then, everybody in Argent just decided we didn't really want to do it anymore. There was no big fall out, we just decided to stop. At that point, Phoenix became my main project. Because Argent had stopped, I was able to take two of the guys with me. Phoenix was really Argent without Rod Argent.

R.V.B. - This gave you the opportunity to write more.

J.V. - I was the main writer in Phoenix. I also produced the band... it was my band. It was exactly what I thought. I thought it was what the world needed but whilst we were in the studio, the punk thing really happened in the UK. It totally screwed up the whole Phoenix thing. Because we were just wrong... overnight.

R.V.B. - You took that act out on the road a lot, I understand.

J.V. - Oh yeah! We opened up for Aerosmith. We didn't just stop. We knew the UK was a complete non-starter for us. We figured we could still do stuff in Europe and America, but we never got to America. The whole scene in London was just toxic for old school rock and rollers like us.

R.V.B. - You mentioned that you always put yourself with top notch people. I see that later on you worked with Brian Connelly of Sweet.

J.V. - When we decided to wrap Phoenix up, I was doing some producing. I had produced Phoenix and a few other things. I made my mind up that when Phoenix stopped, that I would come off the road, and concentrate on the studio end of it. I produced a lot of stuff. I produced the first Saxon album. I produced Brian. I went out on the road with Brian for a bit. We took the people who recorded the album out with us. We opened for Pat Benatar, in Europe. I did a lot of production for a few years.

R.V.B. - How long did the typical tour last with Aerosmith or Pat Benatar?

J.V. - They were a couple of months. They weren't major world tours. I think Aerosmith had just re-formed actually. They came over to promote a new album. That might have been a couple of months. When Argent split, I think Aerosmith split around the same time. I was asked to join Joe Perry's band. I didn't really fancy it.

R.V.B. - Do you have any interesting stories while playing live? Something that may have went wrong?

J.V. - Hahaha... how many do you want? The guy from Tunnel - that I was in the Bahamas with - reminded me of a story of when we opened for Hendrix. Back in those days, the opening act would often suddenly find that the power would go off... usually if you were going too well. If the audience were really getting into what you were doing, all of a sudden all the power would go off. It would usually be, somebody to do with the main band. They just wanted to stop you. So we were playing away, and it was really, really going well. All of a sudden everything went off. I went to take my guitar off thinking, "That's it." Suddenly all the power came back on. I put the guitar back on and we carried on. I looked across the stage at the bass player Harvey, and he nodded to one side passed me... behind the PA. I looked over, and our manager had a gun to the head of Hendrix's tour manager. He thought that he had pulled the power. He had gone over and held a gun to his head and said "Switch the Fucker back on or I'll blow your head off."

R.V.B. - Hahaha. Where did this happen?

Miami Jai-Alai

J.V. - It happened at Miami Jai-Alai. July 5th 1970.

R.V.B. - I remember those Jai-Alai places.

J.V. - Yeah! We played behind the net. Hahaha

R.V.B. - Hahaha. They used to have them here in Connecticut. They were so crooked.

J.V. - I remember it well because it was two days after my 21st birthday. Opening for Hendrix was very, very scary, actually. I thought I'd be made to look really silly, but it was a good experience.

R.V.B. - Do you have any other gigs that were good?

J.V. - I've been doing this for so long that nothing really sticks out in my head. I've been a regularly gigging musician for over 50 years, so it would be really hard for me to pick anyone out. I prefer small gigs. I've done stadiums and every size gig, really. I've always enjoyed smaller gigs more because you can communicate with people better. The big events, that a lot of people might think I would infuse about... I don't really. It's a lot harder to get a great sound at huge venues. Some venues, it's almost impossible to get a sound. I've done well at Albert Hall... a couple of times here London. People really infuse about the sound in there. It's really difficult to get a sound in there. You've got to be really quiet... because the acoustics are perfect. If you play too loud, you get this weird delay all the time - to the point where you'll have to look at the drummer as he's playing - because you're hearing two snare beats for every snare beat.

R.V.B. - So you have 20 albums under your belt. Do you feel that you're coming up with new ideas as each album passes?

J.V. - Well it's scary because you get to a point where you do an album that you're really proud of, but then all that positive stuff goes away, because you've got to come up with something better - haven't you - next time. How much better can you get? I've got to come up with a new album in the next year or so. My last album, I think was my best album.

R.V.B. - The "Blue to my Soul album?"

J.V. - Yeah! I think some of the stuff on that is the best I've done... and similarly, the one before that. I felt the same way about it. The the same with the one before that. I think I've managed to keep moving upwards. But I don't know how many times you can keep moving upwards. It's really freighting. I write lyric ideas all the time. Just from things that happen day to day... scribble notes down. I'll record little musical ideas from my phone, I think, like everybody does now... just to keep a log of what's coming into my head all the time. When I've got time, I'll come in here into my studio and start laying ideas down properly. In the back of your head, you're thinking "It's got to be better than the last one." There's just a lot of pressure to keep coming up with something new. I do work better when I'm just enjoying myself.

R.V.B. - Where do you play with your act now. Do you play locally? The UK band that I've got, we've doing mostly festivals in 2019. There's quite a healthy blues circuit here. There's quite a lot of blues clubs that keep us fairly busy. There are plenty of good festivals as well. Our first gig this year will be on the 18th of January. This sort of theme here, kicks off towards the end of January. There's a bit of break over the Christmas period. Our first gig is like a three day festival. There be in the region of about 3,000 people there... so it's not massive. It's obviously indoors. We've done that one before. We're quite busy. There's a gig list on my website. I've gone back to playing all the time now and fitting in the recording in between... rather than the other way around.

R.V.B. - Do you teach at all?

J.V. - I have done a bit but to be honest, I don't really enjoy it. People ask me all the time about guitar lessons. I'm not really into it. I'm more into giving people ideas into how to record properly. I did do that for a bit. To be honest, my heart is into playing live. That's what I like best of all.

R.V.B. - What are you proud about with your place in music?

J.V. - I don't want to sound over confident but I'm playing better than ever. I'm proud of that. I'm 70 years old this year. I'm still able to sing properly. I know how lucky I am for that. You do kind of worry that your voice is going to go. As a guitar player, I've improved over the years. I'm just proud of the fact that I've managed to keep going.

R.V.B. - How were your years with Charlie?

The John Verity Band

J.V. - I only did one album with Charlie. Charlie was managed by the same company as Phoenix. We were with the same management company. I was brought in as a producer on the Good Morning America album. Whilst we were working on that, Terry Thomas - who was the guy who wrote all the Charlie stuff - suggested "Would I consider guesting on some vocals?" So I said "Yes." When it came up to discussing the material, I said that I thought we could use a better drummer. Without being unkind, I just thought the original drummer - his name was Steve Gadd, but not the Steve Gadd that everybody thinks - could of maybe stepped back on a few tracks and let somebody else do it. I brought Bob Henritt in from Argent. He originally came in for some recording and they asked him to come in to join the band. At that point there were two drummers in the band. Then Terry asked me if I would play some guitar on it as well. "There's some guitar parts that you can play better than I can." Eventually he said "Why don't you just be in the band." That's how it came about.

R.V.B. - Did you tour with them?

J.V. - No we never did. It was just a studio band. Charlie never really gigged that much. It was more of a recording project and a platform for Terry's songs.

R.V.B. - I appreciate you taking this time with me. You've had a long and successful career. Congratulations on all of the great work that you've done.

J.V. - Thank you... cheers.

Interview conducted by Robert von Bernewitz

This interview may not be reproduced in any part or form without permission from this site.

For more information on John Verity visit his website www.johnverity.com

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Paul Kingsbury - An interview with the writer and former Deputy Director of The Country Music Hall of Fame. "Music and great insights about music were all around me. I just dove in head first and had a blast."

Paul Kingsbury

Paul Kingsbury is an writer/editor and former Deputy Director of the Country Music Hall of Fame. He is now providing communications expertise for the Nature Conservancy, Sustainable Agriculture division. Paul was born in New Haven, Connecticut but his family moved to Memphis, Tennessee when he was around the age of five. In his high school years, Paul would write articles about music and sports for the student paper. He decided to continue his education by enrolling at Vanderbilt University and majoring in English so that he could pursue a career as a writer. Even though Nashville is known as "Music City," at Vanderbilt, Paul didn't really follow country music at all. That was soon about to change when he applied for an editing/writing position at the Country Music Hall of Fame and landed the job. Realizing that he had to get up to speed quickly on the country music industry, Paul buckled down and learned the ropes.

During his tenure at the CMHOF, Paul worked on major restoration and digitizing projects. He had also written and edited many comprehensive publications such as: The Journal of Country Music, Country: The Music and the Musicians, Hatch Show Print - The History of a Great American Poster Shop, The Encyclopedia of Country Music, and many others. He was also instrumental in moving the CMHOF into a new, larger building and assisted in designing and implementing the layout of the new space. Paul has also written numerous books on his own: Grand Ole Opry - History of Country Music, Patsy Cline - Crazy For Loving You, Woodstock - Three Days That Rocked the World, and more. In the past few years Paul has consulted on the new PBS documentary on Country Music by Ken Burns. It will debut later in 2019. I recently talked with Paul about his career.

R.V.B. - Hello Paul. This is Robert von Bernewitz from Long Island, New York... how are you?

P.K. - I'm doing well. How are You?

R.V.B - I'm doing pretty good. It's a little cold here still. How about down by you?

P.K. - We've had a lot of rain here in Tennessee. There's no flooding right now, so we're good.

R.V.B. - I believe I saw that you had about 8" of rain recently.

P.K. - It hasn't been as bad this winter as it was in spring of 2010. We had major flooding across all of Tennessee. We had about 13" of rain in Nashville in less than 48 hours. There is some localized flooding here and there but nothing bad.

R.V.B. - That's good. I think I remember the Gibson factory being damaged in the big flood.

P.K. - Yeah... one of the facilities was damaged. There was also a terrible thing that happened where there was a storage warehouse, where musicians who weren't on the road would store their equipment: their guitars, amps and sound systems. It was called Soundcheck. That place got flooded. Even some very well known musicians, like Vince Gill, Brad Paisley and Keith Urban, had guitars that were damaged or completely destroyed in that flood. It was pretty bad.

2010 Nashville flood

R.V.B. - It kept the luthiers busy because I read that they were able to save some of them.

P.K. - Yes, some of them did get saved. We have a Musicians Hall of Fame Museum here in Nashville. It's a worldwide musicians hall of fame. They also had some damaged instruments in the flood. It has since moved to a new facility on higher ground, so hopefully that will never happen again.

R.V.B. - Thank you very much for taking this time for me. Where are you originally from?

P.K. - I was born in New Haven, Connecticut. When I was five, my parents moved to Memphis, Tennessee... so I grew up in Memphis. I went from Memphis to Nashville to go to college at Vanderbilt University. I've had stints where I lived in New York City and New Orleans for a while.

R.V.B. - The wonderful world of music... how did you get exposed to it. How did you become so involved with it?

P.K. - My father is a scientist - a virologist - and is huge fan of music. He recently retired. He plays piano well, having taken lessons for years as a kid. He loves jazz and classical music... but he also liked folk and pop. He had early Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and Joan Baez albums. In the ’60s, when the Beatles hit, he started buying Beatles albums. He wanted to see what all the fuss was about. So the Beatles were popular in our household. I have four brothers and two sisters and we loved listening to them as did my mom and dad. He also bought other rock albums by artists like the Rolling Stones, Elton John, and Harry Nilsson before he plunged back to jazz and classical. Even though my mother didn't play an instrument, she sang around the house all the time and loved music, too.

When you moved to Memphis, were you aware it was a big blues town?

The Kingsbury clan

P.K. - It's funny... hahaha... my parents were from the New York City area and they didn't really know southern music culture at all. Growing up, we never talked about the blues roots of Memphis or its rockabilly scene. We didn't talk about Sun Records... Stax Records... the R&B stations like WDIA... the blues stations... we didn't talk about anything that was musically happening in Memphis. I grew up in the '60s and '70s and we didn't have the internet. We had three TV networks and a public station. My brothers and sisters and I were musically kind of clueless. I personally didn't start to learn about the musical heritage in Memphis until I went to college... hahaha. I remember friends explaining to me about Sun Records...Elvis... Jerry Lee Lewis... Carl Perkins... and I was stunned to learn all of that came from Memphis. It was an awakening. After I left Memphis, I had to return to the city and learn the heritage that had been right beside me.

R.V.B. - I see that you received a B.A. in English at Vanderbilt. Were you on the track of a music career at that time?

P.K. - I got an English degree because I wanted to pursue writing. I had no idea that I would have a chance to write about music. In Memphis, I was writing for my high school newspaper as kind of a rock critic. I would write about music that I liked, that I thought was hip. I also wrote a little in college publications. Although I was passionate about music, I didn't know how I could connect that with a real writing career about music. With the degree, I was just aiming myself towards some kind of writing and editing. On the side, for fun, I was also learning how to play guitar... not with any ambitions that I would be professional. I just loved music so I wanted to learn how to play.

Vanderbilt University

 

R.V.B. - What kind of guitar did you get?

P.K. - The first guitar that I learned on was a classical guitar that my dad bought my mother. With seven kids, she never really had time to practice. She let me borrow her guitar to bring to college. Then I bought a cheap - no name - electric. Somebody scratched the name off of it. The first decent quality acoustic guitar I bought was a Yamaha. That was about a year out of college. At the time I think I spent $250 on it. I've since expanded my guitar collection. I now have a Fender Stratocaster, a blond Guild F-50, a 1970s Takamine F-340 (the model that was a knockoff of the Martin D-28) and a Composite Acoustics travel guitar.

R.V.B. - In your college years at Vanderbilt - with Nashville being a country town - did you catch any acts?

P.K. - I saw a lot of acts in college and just after: Gordon Lightfoot, the Police, Ray Charles, George Thoroughgood, Greg Allman, Michael Hedges, Amy Grant, Jason & the Scorchers, Tom Petty, REM, the Talking Heads, Joe Jackson, the Stray Cats, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. But not country. To be honest at that time when I was at Vanderbilt, I wasn't really into the country scene. I had only the vaguest notion of what the Grand Ole Opry was and what Music Row was. I didn't listen to much country music in college. I wasn't pulled towards it. So I was going to rock concerts... folk concerts... blues concerts... Christian music concerts, but not country. It was right after I graduated from college that I discovered Music Row is right there... three or four streets away from Vanderbilt. And you can actually go to the Grand Ole Opry to see a cool radio show that's been going on since 1925. What can I say? I was a slow learner. It took me a while. The first country album I ever bought was Hank Williams Greatest Hits. I thought, "These songs and performances are great. I had read people saying, "These songs from Hank Williams are a touchstone for American music." So when I started learning about country music, I went right to the wellspring. Hank Williams. The Hillbilly Shakespeare.

R.V.B. - It was a good choice. He's an imposing 6' 3" figure and a country music icon.

P.K. - I have a lot of Hank Williams music now... in part, thanks to some of the work we did at the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum. Early on when I was working at the Hall of Fame, we issued two LPs of his previously unreleased demo recordings. They blew me away. Just the raw emotion, honesty and poetry of them. Then several years later I helped put out a box set of Hank Williams that includes all of his studio recordings as well as radio transcriptions and even more demos etc. It won two Grammy Awards by the way. When I first stumbled on Hank Williams Greatest Hits, I had no clue that this was the start of anything. But it was.

R.V.B. - That's a good place to start. How did you get the Country Hall of Fame Museum gig?

P.K. - I had been doing a few writing gigs around Nashville--writing and editing for a sports publisher and then at Vanderbilt University in the school magazine department. There was a job opening for a writer and editor at the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1984. Two of my good friends that I knew through Vanderbilt, both of them knew a man named Kyle Young... who at the time was the Deputy Director for Special Projects at the Country Music Hall of Fame. Kyle said, "I'm looking for a writer and editor. They don't have to know a lot about country music but they have to like music... They need to be curious and be a good writer. Our staff will teach you everything you need to know about the music." My friends, whom Kyle had asked to recommend a writer, both told Kyle, "You ought to talk to this guy Paul Kingsbury. He’s not a country music expert, but he likes music a lot and he’s a good writer and editor." So I applied for the job and interviewed with Kyle, and other members of the staff, and lo and behold, I was hired. I jumped in. Kyle was a great mentor. He pointed me to the books and music I needed to absorb. He said, "Okay, now you've got to dive in and learn this stuff." The first book he handed me was Bill C. Malone's Country Music U.S.A. The first great history book of country music. Kyle said, "You need to read it and become fully conversant with this stuff." I dove right in immediately and read that. He recommended other books too as did other staff members at the Hall of Fame. The beauty of the Country Music Hall of Fame staff is you have so many passionate, deeply knowledgeable fans of country music and also other styles of music. The hallway conversations were so great. People would say, "Hey... have you heard this new music by Steve Earle or Lyle Lovett or Iris DeMent? Have you ever heard this old Bob Wills cut Brain Cloudy Blues or Johnny Paycheck’s Pardon Me, I’ve Got Someone to Kill? Let's pull out a record player... you need to hear this." At the same time, I was working with these fellow staff members putting together historic reissues of important music like the Bristol Sessions and the key recordings of Kitty Wells, Bill Monroe, Webb Pierce as well as music that had never been publicly for sale before like the Hank Williams demos I mentioned. Our audio engineer Alan Stoker would constantly be working on re-mastering projects, and every day—several times a day—I’d walk by his studio office and hear all of this great country music that he was doing restoration re-mastering on.

R.V.B. - It sounded like you were a kid in a candy store.

P.K. - Yeah! For me, I needed to be open to listening to these experts on our staff and be open to the sounds they were trying to turn me on to. Music and great insights about music were all around me. I just dove in head first and had a blast. I worked on many great projects for years and years.

R.V.B. - What was the first main project that you were assigned to?

Paul with Kyle Young and writer Nick Tosches

P.K. - One thing that really brought up my knowledge fairly quickly was... I was told when I was hired that one of my jobs would be to edit a magazine that the Country Music Hall of Fame did "The Journal of Country Music." It had started out originally an attempt at an academic journal. It had been started by the Country Music Hall of Fame's first director, Bill Ivey. When Bill hired Kyle, they felt there wasn't much demand for the journal and they weren't finding good scholarly articles for an academic journal of this kind, so they morphed it into a serious magazine about country music and it became less academic. That’s the point where I came in and became the editor of The Journal of Country Music. So I was assigning and commissioning articles for it - I was reaching out to journalists... sometimes they were academics like Bill Malone and Charles Wolfe...but mostly music journalists and music authors. The writers who worked with me and who we published were the cream of the crop: Peter Guralnick, Nick Tosches, Greil Marcus, Robert Palmer, Alanna Nash, Colin Escott, Holly George-Warren, Chet Flippo, Ken Tucker. I too did writing for the Journal of Country Music myself. In the process of working with all of these great writers and researchers, and having to do my own interviews, it was just a great education. The first big book project that I did was our big pictorial of country music that came out in 1988 called "Country: the Music and the Musicians."Nobody had ever put out such a lavish and carefully researched pictorial history, covering the entire commercial history of country music. It was from the 1920's and it took us through 1988. We commissioned top scholars and writers to write about country music in that book. So it was a multi-author book... edited by me. It was a blast working on it. It was really hard work to put it all together—I remember that among other things I wrote extensive captions for more than 500 photos!--but it turned out well. It got amazing reviews and won a Ralph J. Gleason Award from Rolling Stone magazine. It sold well, too. We went to a 2nd hard cover edition in 1994. I have a photo on my living room wall of Bruce Springsteen in his living room with that book on the coffee table. You gotta love that. That was the first really big project besides The Journal of Country Music.

R.V.B. - I understand that you were also involved with the displays in the museum?

P.K. - I became more involved in the late '90s when we were moving to a new Country Music Hall of Fame Museum building. The original building was on Music Row. We had outgrown it. We had too much that we wanted to do and had too many archival items for the space we had. So we made plans to move into a brand-new building. When we were making that move in the late '90s into the early '2000s, I had risen from being editor at the Country Music Hall of Fame to being Deputy Director of Special Projects. Kyle Young, who had that job before me moved up to the CEO slot... the Director of the Country Music Hall of Fame. I had a staff of nine and we were working with another Deputy Director at the time on planning out all of the exhibits. I was very intimately involved in helping to select the right artifacts to displaying the right costumes, song manuscripts, instruments, etc.

R.V.B. - Elvis Presley's Cadillac!

P.K. - Yeah... things like that. Also writing the text panels for the exhibits so that people know what they're looking at. I was also the supervising producer for some of the new films at the CMHOF. I was helping to pull together audio stations as well. It was a busy time for those two or three years, but very rewarding. Have you ever been to the Country Music Hall of Fame?

Country Music Hall of Fame

 

R.V.B. - Yes I have. I was there Approximately six or seven years ago. A lot of things stuck out in my mind. The main thing was Maybelle Carter's guitar. Another thing that stuck with me was when I walked up the stairs, I saw the Wanda Jackson movie. It was near the beginning of the tour.

P.K. - That's right. You're remembering it right. Everything is arranged in chronological order. When you get off the elevator and pass the early string bands, early duets and cowboy singers, you see Wanda Jackson up on a big screen shimmying in her dress. It's a film we created with a lot of footage of rockabilly singers of the 1950's. So you've got Wanda Jackson there juxtaposed with Jerry Lee Lewis... Elvis... Buddy Holly... Roy Orbison... Johnny Cash... it's a great little looped video. It's still running today.

R.V.B. - And of course the Cadillac. It's was very nicely laid out. You have the big grand hall when you first walk in... I guess where the restaurant is?

P.K. - Yes... when you first walk into the ground floor of the Country Music Hall of Fame, there is a big glassed in lobby, with beautiful wood flooring and great stone work on the walls. It's a great multi-purpose lobby. It has a restaurant that serves food and it leads to the ticket counter. You take the elevator to the second floor and that's where you start your journey. When you've completed the second floor, you take some stairs down past the Wall of Gold Records. See, when you get to the end of a hallway, you see this enormous wall covered with gold and platinum records. One of my jobs in developing the new Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum was putting together that wall filled with all the gold and platinum records that country artists had earned from the beginning when the RIAA started to award gold and platinum records up to the time we opened the museum in the early 2000's.

R.V.B. - I remember that for sure. I took a picture there.

Inside the Country Music Hall of Fame

P.K. –Then when you go through a doorway to the spiral staircase to the next exhibit floor you realize wall on the back side is full of them also... hahaha. That was a really fun thing to do. I remember when we were brainstorming that idea. We realized it would be easy for us to work with the RIAA to get duplicate versions of all these gold and platinum records for the wall. I think it's kind of visually stunning, and it's really cool to see them in chronological order.

R.V.B. - It's a lot of gold and platinum.

P.K. - Yeah... it's a lot of gold and platinum.

R.V.B. - I remember when I went to Nashville, I didn't realize that it was spring break and there were a ton of kids there. I went to the Hall of Fame to get away... hahaha.

P.K. - Hahaha... that's good.

R.V.B. - This leads me to Hatch Show Print. You wrote a book on the history of them?

P.K. - Yeah... the Country Music Hall of Fame acquired Hatch Show Print in the late 1980's. Hatch Show Print was founded in the late 1800's and did these marvelous show posters for all matters... shows of traveling entertainers... the circus... minstrel shows... and as the country music industry got going, and needed show posters, Hatch Show Print started printing posters for them... Minnie Pearl... Gene Autry... Eddy Arnold... Elvis Presley... Johnny Cash and others. The interesting thing about Hatch Show Print is that not only is it an old shop with an interesting history of printing entertainment posters but it kept the old printing plates and wood blocks and continues to use the old style process that was used to make the original Gutenberg Bible. You’re taking wood blocks and metal blocks and you're inking them, and rolling a piece of paper over the inked surfaces. Every time you want to put a new color on, you have to clean off all the previous ink... arrange the new blocks and add the new color. You repeat the process until all the desired colors and images are complete. It's a beautiful process. The Country Music Hall of Fame acquired Hatch Show Print because it was kind of being orphaned. It was outdated technology and a lot of modern companies didn't want anything to do with it. So for historical purposes, the Country Music Hall of Fame acquired it. I was in charge of both Hatch Show Print and the division where we published books about country music and related culture. We also developed our own in-house books. We would not only publish outside authors who came to us and had good book ideas, we also created our own books like the pictorial history that I described earlier. So we realized once we had a good handle on Hatch Show Print... we were running it well... we knew what the inventory was... it was time to write a history of this amazing poster shop. I got together with Jim Sheradden, who had been a long time manager of the shop, and Elek Horvath, who at the time was Jim Sheradden's right hand man. Those guys really knew what was in the shop. They knew a lot of the history that had been passed down. They found a lot of historical documentation and sales records. We pooled our knowledge together and wrote the book. Fortunately, we found a really great publisher - Chronicle Books - in San Francisco, which understood our vision that really showed off these beautiful historic posters through the years. The book is still in print. It goes through edition after edition. There are a lot of people who like that old style of printing and the music history that's tied up with it. Myself included!

R.V.B. - Because of the process, it kind of makes each individual poster, one of a kind.

P.K. - Yes. Each one is just a little bit different. You're exactly right. It's as far from digital as you can get.

R.V.B. - It's similar to the Andy Warhol prints. Was the building  on the strip on Broadway the original location?

P.K. - No. It had actually been in a couple of other locations before that. When the Hall of Fame acquired Hatch Show Print, we moved it into a nice old storefront Broadway, which is one of the main thoroughfares in downtown Nashville. I haven't been on the staff of the Country Music Hall of Fame since the early 2000's, but a couple of years ago they realized it would probably be better in managing Hatch Show Print if they just moved everything out of that Broadway storefront into a brand new space in the Country Music Hall of Fame. It looks great. I've really enjoyed the times that I've gone back to the new Hatch Show Print. They've done a nice job even though it's a new space. A lot of the old memorabilia that they had on display at the old building, and they've managed to arrange it all very nicely in the new space. It's a great blend of old and new, so Hatch Show Print goes on.

R.V.B. - From what I remember on the strip, there wasn't a lot of wall space to display the posters at the old space.

P.K. - I think another big consideration of moving it into the Hall of Fame building was that they couldn't really manage climate control. You're talking about woodblocks that could crack and warp if the air gets too damp or dry. They thought that for the integrity of the collection... and for the safety of everyone... we can control things if we can move it into the Hall of Fame's own building. I should add that Hatch Show Print is still as accessible to the public as it ever was. You can walk into Hatch Show Print through a street entrance without paying admission to the museum. If Hatch Show Print is what you're interested in, there's a very clear public entrance to go in.

R.V.B. - Outstanding... great. People like to go in and buy the posters. I bought a couple myself. Now onto something completely different... you wrote a book about Woodstock?

P.K. - Yeah. One of the publishers I had worked with on a book with the Country Music Hall of Fame... we had done yet another pictorial music history, in the mid 2000's. We did the book called "Will the Circle be Unbroken: Country Music in America." This book gave us the opportunity to again, tell the story in pictorial form with a lot of different authors contributing. But we did this pictorial history in a different way from the previous one. Anyway, the publisher of that book approached me a few years later and said, " You know, I've got an author - a British guy Mike Evans - who would really like to do a book on Woodstock. As good as a rock writer as he is, he needs an American collaborator. Mike's going to make trips over to the US - to the Woodstock area - and talk to artists in person, but we also need somebody to be there who's an American music expert and who understands what Woodstock meant to America.” We published it in 2009 for the fortieth anniversary. In 2008, we got together in the Woodstock area to begin research... We drove around and started interviewing people who were still in the community. We formed our plan of action and got going on it, tracking down the original artists and concert crew. The book is another pictorial history, even though it's got a lot of text. It's got some spectacular photos in it.

R.V.B. - I've been to the Woodstock site many times. I prefer the Bethel Woods concert venue better that the local Jones Beach theater here. It's got better sound quality.

P.K. - When I went to where the Woodstock museum is, in 2008, for the first time I saw that huge natural amphitheater where they held the concert. When you see that landscape, you can imagine it all. I was too young to attend the original Woodstock, but I've watched the movie several times and have seen thousands of photos, but to actually see that natural amphitheater on Max Yasgur's farm... Wow! Of course! I can imagine all of those people covering those fields.

R.V.B. - It's really an amazing feeling when you step on that site. When you look up at the hill, you can almost feel the excitement. It's in the air. It's kind of like being in the Ryman Auditorium.

P.K. - Yeah! It is that kind of feeling. It's hallowed grounds and it's great that the museum is there, preserving the history of that particular festival, and the artists who had performed there. I think the museum is doing a good job.

R.V.B. - It's the big Anniversary this year.

P.K. - Our book is coming back out in the summer. No doubt there will be a lot of other good books about the festival as well.

R.V.B. - You changed occupations and started working for the Nature Conservancy.

P.K. - I worked for the Country Music Hall of Fame for about 16 years. I thought, "I've been working for a long time at something that's been great." Over time I got more and more responsibility and more financial pressures. Eventually I thought, "Okay... I’ve enjoyed as much of this as I can stand—to quote an old Bill Anderson song," so I moved to freelance writing for a while. After five years of freelance writing, I thought it was time for another salaried job. I went to The Nature Conservancy to do communications for them. I had been donating to them. They're a nonprofit organization. Their mission is to protect the land and waters on which all life depends on. It's an environmental conservation organization and they do great work. I joined them in 2006 and I enjoy doing communications for them. I still do freelance writing on the side.

R.V.B. - Do you get to go out in the field and visit sites and trails?

Paul enjoying a nice hike

P.K. - Yes... I've done a lot of that. The Nature Conservancy will sometimes purchase land from willing sellers and create nature preserves. The Nature Conservancy also often buys land and works to create public parks. During the years that I have been director of communications for them in Tennessee, I've been on many forest trails... many caves... paddled many rivers... walked through many streams. I’ve been extremely fortunate. First, I had a wonderful gig working for the Country Music Hall of Fame... getting paid a salary to hear music all the time, interview country artists and write about them...And in this later phase of my career I have a wonderful gig working for The Nature Conservancy, getting paid to walk in the woods or paddle on a river, and write about it.

R.V.B. - You set yourself up. You worked hard and got some breaks and now have a nice career going. What accomplishments are you proud about during your tenure at the Country Music Hall of Fame?

P.K. - One thing that leaps out at me is that researchers are really benefiting from one particular thing I did when I was Deputy Director there. For many years, the Country Music Hall of Fame had an oral history program that was started by a very knowledgeable historian named John Rumble. He would go out with a tape recorder and record interviews with key historical performers... business people... managers... show promoters... record producers... session musicians and developed a great resource. Here we had all these great tapes, with important country music people, going on the record about their careers and what they had witnessed. I said to John, "It's great to have all these tapes. You know what's on them, but nobody else does. We need to go find a grant and get these things transcribed and digitized so researchers can really use them." At that point, all people could do is go to the Country Music Hall of Fame’s library, sit down and listen to a tape. John could tell them, "In general, the interviewee is going to talk about this... this and this," but you're kind of flying blind as a researcher. So we got the grant that we needed.

Paul at the CMHOF with music legends Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown and Scotty Moore

Now the Country Music Hall of Fame oral history collection, which has hundreds of interviews in it, is transcribed and digitized. Now the original tapes are preserved and researchers can read the transcriptions. That's the grunt work of museum archives. In terms of the publications projects, I'm very proud of the pictorial books we published as well as the Country Music Encyclopedia that I directed and edited. We set a goal that we were going to make it the most comprehensive... the most authoritative... the most accurate, country music encyclopedia that you could do. I hired 150+ experts. Some were journalists and some were academics... to write these encyclopedia entries. 1,300 of them. I worked with our staff to develop a comprehensive list of not only country music performers... promoters... business people but country music themes and topics. I put together instructions for these 1,300 articles. It took us about four or five years, but we came out with the most comprehensive and accurate encyclopedia of country music that has ever been published. It’s regularly cited by publications like the New York Times. It came out in 1998, and we revised and updated it in 2012. I'm immensely proud of that. I think it turned out really well. A third thing that I'm proud of is... I'm a huge fan of Patsy Cline... during my tenure as well as after the Country Music Hall of Fame, I had the opportunity to work on various album reissue projects of Patsy Clines music. While I was working at the Hall of Fame I directed the release of the first big Patsy Cline box set. It was put together in 1991. It was called "The Patsy Cline Collection." It was a four CD set. I wrote a detailed booklet based on interviews with many people who knew Patsy Cline well. I'm looking in my office right now at the platinum record award that I received from MCA Records for that boxed set.

R.V.B. - I also see that you had a Grammy nomination.

P.K. - When I was at the Hall of Fame we put together a groundbreaking three CD set on black artists doing country music from the 1920s onward called From Where I Stand. We received a nomination for that.

I continue to write about music as a freelancer and manage music projects in my spare time. In 2013, I was the managing editor and a writer, along with some other writers, for the biographies in the new Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame museum. You can visit that place in downtown Nashville now.

Paul with his wife Peggy and Ken Burns

More recently, I contributed several essays that are in a new compact history book on rock called “30-Second Rock Music,” which was published last fall by the Ivy Press. The book was put together by my British friend and Woodstock collaborator Mike Evans. And for the past seven years, I’ve been a consultant to PBS documentary filmmaker Ken Burns and his team—he did the Civil War series on PBS as well as series on jazz and baseball—for their upcoming documentary series on the history of country music. Early on, I critiqued outlines and scripts, and recently I got to review and make suggestions on the rough cuts of the eight episodes. I can tell you the series is going to be amazing. It will air on PBS in September. I’m very proud to be associated with it.

R.V.B. - Your great work definitely benefited the music community. The music community is proud of your work as you are. You're doing a great service for us. I congratulate you on your career and keep up the good work.

P.K. –Thank you, Robert. It's been a pleasure talking to you.

Interview conducted by Robert von Bernewitz

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John Lilly - An Interview with the Singer/Songwriter and writer from West Virginia. "I think over the years, I've slowly but surely developed a songwriting style that I can be proud of."

John Lilly

John Lilly is a singer/songwriter and journalist who is originally from Chicago and now resides in West Virginia. Having grown up in the outskirts of Chicago, John was able to take in the great blues and folk music that the city had to offer. Some of the performers he saw live include: Willie Dixon, Sunnyland Slim, John Prine, Steve Goodman and many others. Around the age of 14, he acquired his older brother's guitar and along with his singing talent, he began to explore the world of playing music. John took interest in the country music genre and in particular the likes of Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams. After many years of living in different cities and honing his musical craft, he settled in West Virginia. Once settled, he began to write many great songs and began paying his road performance dues. He also began to write about music in local country music publications and national magazines. Two of his articles appear in the book about the beginning of country music "The Bristol Sessions... Writings About the Big Bang of Country Music." Today, John is a seasoned professional musician that performs as a solo artist and also with the band Blue Yonder. I recently spoke with John about his career.

R.V.B. - Hey John... congratulations on your music and writing career. How did you get involved with music? Did you come from a musical family?

J.L. - My dad liked to sing a lot and played the harmonica. My mom was an opera lover. I honestly didn't know that the radio worked in the car until I was 16 years old. Every time we got in the car my dad would start singing.

R.V.B. - I see that you were born in Chicago. Did you grow up there?

J.L. - I was born in Chicago and when we were real young we moved to Kansas for about four years. Then we went back to Chicago and my family is still there. I went through grade school and high school in the Chicago suburbs. I went to the University of Illinois for a while and then went to Arizona State. But I'm a Chicago guy.

R.V.B. - When did you start playing music yourself?

J.L. - My mother used to like to tell the story that I would sing Freight Train, Freight Train when I was three years old. One time I got a hold of my dad's harmonica when I had a whole bunch of crackers in my mouth. I clogged up his harmonica so bad, he bought me one. I've been playing music and singing pretty much my whole life.

R.V.B. - When did you pick up the guitar?

J.L. - My brother brought a guitar home when I was about 14 years old. I learned to play it. I still have that old guitar. It's an old nylon string acoustic. By brother said they sold it for $25. It came from a music store where he taught guitar. It has no name on it. It's a handy thing to have around. I have it right here. I leave it where I can grab it at any moment.

R.V.B. - Chicago is primarily known as a blues town. Did you get exposure to the blues?

J.L. - Absolutely! Chicago is a good all-around music town but the blues was a big part of it when I grew up there. I heard and learned a lot of blues.

R.V.B. - Did you see any of the blues artists perform?

J.L. - Yeah, all the time. I saw Willie Dixon, Koco Taylor, Sunnyland Slim, Buddy Guy... a lot of good blues players. I saw B.B. King and Bobby Blue Bland one night. That was a really good show.

R.V.B. - That's some big names. You were lucky to grow up in that area in that respect.

J.L. - I just took that stuff for granted... Spoonful and Sweet Home Chicago. I was also exposed to a lot of country and folk music. I heard a lot of classical music. My dad preferred men's choral groups such as Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians and the Mitch Miller Orchestra. I had three brothers. Me, my two older brothers and my dad were in a number of men's choruses together. We were in the church choir. I had that kind of singing exposure. Once I got a guitar and got into high school I started exploring different styles of music. I was drawn to folk music at the time. People like John Prine and Steve Goodman.

R.V.B. - Did you ever go to the Earl of Old Town?

J.L. - Yeah, all the time. I went to The Quiet Night more often. It was a nice little club down in Old Town. I saw lots of people there. I saw Goodman and Prine... Martin Mull. Do you know who he is?

R.V.B. - Yeah. He was like a musician/comedian.

J.L. - Yeah... with his Fabulous Furniture... I saw Jaime Brockett. They had an under-18 section and I would go there a lot. At the Earl of Old Town, they weren't supposed to let you in if you weren't 21, but we would sneak in the back door sometimes. I got turned away at the door several times. When I went to the University of Illinois, I got a great musical education... not so much in the classroom. I heard George Benson... Charlie Mingus... Asleep at the Wheel... New Grass Revival. We would be a good stop over between Indianapolis and Des Moines... between Chicago and St. Louis. Champaign was a good college town. It would be a good place to pick up a gig in the mid-week for touring musicians. The weekends featured local bands.

R.V.B. - That's a pretty wide variety of music that you were exposed to. You primarily play country music now. How did you work your way into this genre?

J.L. - I was always attracted to it... especially Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams. I was encouraged by people to sing more Hank Williams songs. I had a little break in my voice so I can do the yodel. I started going to folk festivals and was exposed to old-time fiddle music and country duet singing. I followed that back to its source. For a number of years I was involved with instrumental old-time music. I was in string bands and was a professional clog dancer for about four years with a group called The Green Grass Cloggers. Vocally, I was involved with early country music... Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams and also George Jones and the Louvin Brothers. The brothers were a big influence on me. I love their songwriting and their whole approach to music. It was very unusual. I could never explain why I was drawn to the music I was drawn to. People in Chicago would say "You're not really from here, are you?" I would say "Actually I am." In a way, I never fit in up there. I moved from Chicago to Champagne, then to Fort Collins, Colorado... California... Tempe, Arizona... Cincinnati, Ohio... Asheville, North Carolina... Nashville, Tennessee... Morganton, North Carolina and then to West Virginia. I traveled around a good bit.

R.V.B. - What brought you to all these places?

J.L. - Usually music and sometimes women.

R.V.B. - That'll do it.

J.L. - Hahaha. Those two things were the main motivators.

R.V.B. - West Virginia is a lot different than some of those other cities where you have hung your hat. It's very rural and very mountainous. Did you go there to settle down?

J.L. - I never intended to settle down in West Virginia but I've been here for around 20 years. I moved up here in '92 so it's already around 25 years. West Virginia is different than anywhere I've ever been. Part of it is the geography... part of it is the rural nature of it and part of it is the predominance of poverty. That shapes people in some ways. It keeps them very self sufficient. They like to make their own music, so there's a pretty high premium of live acoustic music here. Especially the songwriting community. I think it comes from the do-it-yourself attitude that people in West Virginia have. They're not afraid to make up their own music. People still like to hear covers and familiar songs but there's a good songwriting community in West Virginia and I appreciate that.

West Virginia Capitol Building

 

R.V.B. - Are there enough venues around to showcase these skills?

J.L. - Well we keep busy. There's a real good radio show called Mountain Stage. Have you heard of that?

R.V.B. - Yes... it used to be on Fordham University radio up here every Friday afternoon... great live program. I actually listened to your appearance on there on Youtube.

J.L. - I've been on their several times. It's a great gig! They have had some big names on there. The city puts on a summer concert series called "Live on the Levee." I've played that several times. For the size of the population, there's a surprisingly vibrant music scene.

R.V.B. - Have you ever been on a bill with someone fairly famous?

J.L. - Yeah, over the years. When I was with the Cloggers, we were with a lot of well-known people. We opened for George Jones and Randy Travis one time. That was kinda fun... down in Texas. We had been on bills with Charlie Daniels. We opened for the Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys once.

R.V.B. - You are also involved with preserving culture and writing about it... how did you get involved with that?

J.L. - I've always been a writer. When I was young - on a rainy day - I'd sit around and read the dictionary for entertainment. I eventually got a job at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. I had access to a lot of texts about country music. I ended up writing articles for a couple of magazines... The Old Time Herald and Bluegrass Unlimited. I eventually ended up as the editor for the Goldenseal magazine... for the state of West Virginia. I wrote a lot of articles for Goldenseal as well. I did that for 18 years.

R.V.B. - That was some nice work that you did there. You helped preserve the culture of your area. How do you feel about you role in that?

J.L. - I left behind a whole bunch of pages of texts. I hope people enjoy it. I get a lot of nice comments from people about it. I feel real good about my work at Goldenseal. We try to present the culture of the state from the ground level. It wasn't over glamorizing it or looking up at it. It was about the people in West Virginia and how they live... what kind of music they play... what kind of work they do... how they talk. There are people featured in Goldenseal who were never featured anywhere else. It's a journal of record for a lot of the topics we had covered... including music. We covered a lot of musicians from the area. We were happy to feature them.

R.V.B. - It does leave a historical stamp. How did you get involved with The Bristol Sessions book?

J.L. - I knew Charles Wolfe from when I worked in Nashville. Charles was kind of the dean of country music historians. I knew him through some connections at the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum. I knew Ted Olson through music and I also knew him through the Goldenseal. He was a regular contributor to Goldenseal. I had always been very interested in Jimmie Rodgers. I ran a series of articles in the Old Time Herald magazine. I think it was called Old Time Music Pioneers. They wanted me to write articles about country music people who were successful in the early country music days. I wrote articles about the Carter Family... the Delmore Brothers... Coon Creek Girls... Jimmie Rodgers, and a number of other pioneers. Charles and Ted became aware about some of my writings about Jimmie Rodgers. The two pieces I have in the book are basically a re-print of what I previously wrote for magazines. The Jimmie Rodgers piece for the Bristol book was an expanded version of an article that originally appeared in the Old-Time Herald (Volume 3, Number 3). The West Virginia Coon Hunters piece originally appeared in Goldenseal magazine (Volume 29, Number 1), later republished in the Old-Time Herald (Volume 8, Number 7).

R.V.B. - There wasn't a whole lot of information available on the Coon Hunters. You did a good job of helping to visualize their story.

J.L. - Thanks. There was not much to go on. I reported on what I did know and tried to find out what I didn't know. Different people drifted in and out of the group. We don't know who was actually at the Bristol Sessions so I narrowed it down to a few names. With the Jimmie Rodgers piece, there was more available information to go on.

R.V.B. - I found it very informative. You pointed out that he was a traveler and not so much a holy roller. He took some chances in his life. He had a great network with musicians. The story about the day of the sessions, where he quit the group he was in, and went in as a solo artist.

J.L. - He was a risk taker for sure.

R.V.B. - But he also had to provide for his family... hence all of the railroad jobs. All of this enhanced his music knowledge.

Jimmie Rodgers

J.L. - I think what he responded to was necessity. The Tenneva Ramblers and Jimmie Rodgers parted ways at Bristol, he had to come up with something. When he had the chance to record, he came up with something. When he had the chance to record again - again out of necessity - came up with some songs. He came up with a guitar style. He found out people liked the yodeling so he concentrated on that. He was kind of a desperate guy. He was not far from starvation and had a terminal disease and a family to support... to boot. He figured out what he could do to make ends meet. I don't think he ever dreamed of the impact that he would have or the career he would find.

R.V.B. - That goes with the Carter Family as well. Two totally different paths and ways of approaching music and they were both tremendously successful.

J.L. - It's funny how they intersected at the Bristol Sessions. They crossed paths a few times over the next few years. Mostly the result of Ralph Peer, trying to bring them both together. Have you heard the Carter Family Meets Jimmie Rodgers and Jimmie Rodgers Meets the Carter Family recordings?

R.V.B. - I have... and to tell you the truth, I'm not that impressed with them. I think they tried to make something happen by throwing them together and nothing happened.

J.L. - I think you're right. I did think the Sara Carter and Jimmie Rodgers duet was good. It's clear that they had separate paths and didn't really have an association with each other. In fact they didn't really cross paths in Bristol. They were there several days apart.

R.V.B. - With the diverse musical artists that were recorded at the Bristol Sessions, do you think that the isolation and the rural area musicians at those sessions is similar to what it's like in West Virginia?

J.L. - That's an interesting question. It's kind of different. West Virginia is not totally out of the loop - with the internet and the modern entertainment world - but there's a lot of stuff that goes on here. Like my son and I play music here together sometimes. He had a gig in a little town called Auburn, West Virginia. We were up there on Saturday night and he sang the ballad Barbra Allen, and some woman came up to him and said "I hadn't heard that song in 30 years" and thanked him for singing it. That's not likely to happen in Cleveland or Long Island. There's a tie to rural traditional music in West Virginia that might be more prominent here, than it is elsewhere. But there's also a lot of variety here. There's jazz... classical... rock... rap, and all kinds of music in West Virginia. I don't mean to paint West Virginia as all log cabins and hillbillies.

R.V.B. - Everybody's part of the modern times now. There's no getting away from the internet. The internet is a very good thing for music, in rural areas as well as urban areas.

J.L. - Not only the internet but Facebook in particular. It's a very useful tool to promote your shows and music.

R.V.B. - You mentioned diversity in West Virginia music... I understand you met the avant garde composer George Crumb at the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame induction.

John and Little Jimmy Dickens

J.L. - I met modern composer George Crumb when he was inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame in, I believe, the fall of 2007. Other inductees that year included Bill Withers, Billy Edd Wheeler, Hazel Dickens, Little Jimmy Dickens, Blind Alfred Reed, Clark Kessinger and others. There was a good bit of “down” time during rehearsals and run-throughs, and I did my best to meet and mingle with our honorees during that time. My conversations with George Crumb were brief and casual, but satisfying and informative. The induction ceremony took place at the Cultural Center (now called the Culture Center) on the West Virginia State Capitol Complex, and George told me that he grew up literally at that location. His boyhood home was physically moved to make room for the Cultural Center in the 1970s. We also spoke a little about his music, including his unique methods of notation. He was lighthearted and friendly. I seriously doubt that he would recall our visit, but it made a positive impression on me.

R.V.B. - Can you tell me what your duties were at the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum?

J.L. - I was a tour guide. My sole responsibility was to take tourists and school children through the museum... keep them on schedule and answer their questions, and tell them a little bit about what they're viewing.

Studio B in Nashville

I knew the museum inside and out, and I knew a great deal about the articles on display. The museum also ran a studio called RCA Studio B. It's about two blocks from the old Hall of Fame. The new one is now downtown on a street near Broadway. I worked at the old one. When I was not giving tours and had some downtime, I would sit in Studio B. We did tours of there as well. We would hang out, and sometimes we would write songs. At the main museum, I took every opportunity I could to interact with the research staff... the historians and writers. Some of them were quite gracious to me. I would go down into the research area whenever I could. I learned a lot by interacting with Charles Wolfe, Bob Pinson, Paul Kingsbury and the editorial staff there.

R.V.B. - I admire your gumption. I'm sure it helped you with your future writings.

J.L. - I'm a curious person by nature. I'm always searching for information, details and get the spelling right.

R.V.B. - I presume you've played in Nashville. Have you ever performed at the Bluebird?

J.L. - Yes, I've played at the Bluebird... I've played Douglas Corner... Puckett's. I've always wanted to play the Opry. When I was living there, there was a television network called "The Nashville Network." They had quite a few shows that you could get on as a performer. So I was on the Nashville Network a number of times. I was on a show called "You Can Be a Star," which is a talent competition show. It was really a fun thing to do if you just felt like going down there. You could go to one of these tapings and see some great people. There was a show called "Nashville Now" that Ralph Emery would host. He had all kinds of people... Chet Atkins... Dolly Parton. You could go see them for free. One time they had a show that was like a game show called "Top Card." You had to answer country music trivia questions. I went on and was all over that. If you got the questions correct, they would give you one of these great big cards. It was more or less like playing blackjack. You had to get as close to 21 without going over. I answered all the questions that they asked, right off the bat. I got up to 20 points. One person went over and the third person had like 18 points, so he had to get the question correct and hit 21 points. He had to pull a three. He did both and beat me.

R.V.B. Hahaha. Oh well. You did all you could do. What do you think of today's country music?

Vernon Dalhart

J.L. - Hahaha. I don't listen to a lot of modern country music. I don't hear the melodies... I don't hear the lyrics. The songs don't resonate with me... generally speaking. There are a few people that I like. I like Tyler Childers real well... I like Jason Isbell... Gillian Welsh is very good... I like Marty Stuart.

R.V.B. - I have a Gillian Welsh album and pretty much every song is depressing on it.

J.L. - Yeah, she's pretty sad. There's nothing wrong with that. She's really worth seeing. I like a woman named Brennen Leigh and another named Nora Jane Struthers. There's a lot of good acts out there. You got to go find them. They're not getting on the radio. One thing I learned coming out of the Hall of Fame is there's always been a part of the country music industry that's looking to reach the broadest possible audience... with pop music influences. They've done that ever since Vernon Dalhart. It's more or less still happening today. People are trying to add hip hop influences to country music.

R.V.B. - Vernon was promoted that way but I think the artists that are unusual will eventually overshadow the pop influence artists in the long run. What are you proud about with your accomplishments in music?

J.L. - I think over the years, I've slowly but surely developed a songwriting style that I can be proud of. Lately I have been going back over some of my older material. There are some songs that I maybe have forgotten about. I think I've written a lot of good songs. I've got a good catalog of original material. My band Blue Yonder plays almost all original material that I have written. My solo act is an entirely different repertoire. I've got quite a few albums of original material that I have recorded. I'm really proud of that body of work. The original songs and the recordings I've made of them.

R.V.B. - You mentioned Blue Yonder. You have a couple of good players in that band.

J.L. - Robert Shafer is a great guitar player. I'm glad to have him in the band. Will Carter is a good bass player. He's kind of an entrepreneur. He's the one who really manages the band and pulled the band together in the first place. He's a good judge of material. I bring songs to him and he determines if the band can do them. We have a steel player whose name is Russ Hicks. Whenever he's available we use him. We have other steel players that we use as well. We have a drummer named Tom Kirk. He plays with us locally. We use other drummers when we go out on the road sometimes.

R.V.B. - What do you have going on these days?

J.L. - We've been working with a promoter and manager in LA who is trying to get us on more of a National stage... festivals and high profile gigs. We've been making progress. We've been on a number of radio shows. We just finished a tour. We went to Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga and a few other places. The next step for the band is to go touring on a more National level. We're working to try to go to Europe next year.

R.V.B. - Very nice. It sounds like you've got a lot of exciting things happening. Thanks for sharing your story.

J.L. - Thanks for asking.

Interview conductd by Robert von Bernewitz

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Dr. David Evans - An interview with the blues historian/musician and retired professor. "My field research was focused on gaining an understanding of the blues tradition and how it worked."

Dr. David Evans

Dr. David Evans is a blues historian/musician and retired professor who makes his home in the greater Memphis area. In his youth, he was exposed to a wide variety of music such as: classical, spirituals and popular standards, but when he heard the Kingston trio, he became very interested in folk music. While exploring the roots of folk music, he would learn about Leadbelly, the Weavers and other earlier folk artists. This would eventually lead him to discovering the blues, where he made it a lifelong journey of learning, researching and performing it. In his college years, he would make frequent trips to the south to do field research and this would be very instrumental in documenting and recording the blues right from the source. A few examples of the important results are in his books: Big Road Blues (Tradition & Creativity in the Folk Blues), Tommy Johnson, The NPR Curious Listener's Guide to the Blues and many other writings. He also recorded many known and undiscovered blues pioneers. David took his knowledge as an ethnomusicologist and had a very distinguished career as a professor at the University of Memphis. As a musician, David has showcased his skills in performances and workshops all over the world. I recently corresponded with David about his career.

R.V.B. -  In your youth --- prior to the Folk revival years --- What music were you exposed to?

D.E. - My parents, especially my mother, exposed me to classical music, especially 19th century romantic composers like Tchaikowski.  I was also exposed to Negro spirituals as performed by artists like Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson.  And I took trumpet lessons around the age of 11-13 and played in a Junior High School marching band (baritone horn).  I listened to rock and roll music on the radio in the late 1950s.  I enjoyed all of this, but none of it attracted me strongly as blues music would later.  (Of course, some of the rock and roll was blues, but I didn’t know it by that name.

R.V.B. -  The Kingston Trio sparked a tremendous avalanche of interest in folk music with the release of Tom Dooley, how did this change your interest in music?

D.E. - The Kingston Trio and Harry Belafonte were the first “folk” artists I heard.  Of course, they were revivalists and not really folk singers, but the songs seemed more based in reality and more interesting and more mature than the popular music of the time.  From these artists I soon moved to the Weavers.  I noticed that many of their songs came from people like Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie, and so I began to seek out recordings by them.  Lead Belly led me to seek out other blues recordings, and by 1962 I was able to see live blues (Sleepy John Estes and Hammie Nixon).

R.V.B. -  The greater Boston area was a focal point for this exciting new period of music in the late 50s and early to mid 60s... did you go to the coffee houses and clubs to watch the new revival performers as well as the older legends. How did it shape your future as far as performing and further studies?

D.E. - The Boston-Cambridge area was the ideal place to be in for hearing blues.  At first (1961-1962) I saw revival “folk” artists like Tom Rush, Jackie Washington, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, etc.  By 1962 I mostly went to coffee houses and concerts to see the blues artists who were being rediscovered.  I found them to be more interesting than the revivalists.  By the time I graduated from Harvard in 1965, I was determined to find a way to pursue the study of this music.

 R.V.B. -  Who were some of the people that you worked with during this time... in both sharing performance music interests as well as learning about the musical past? How did you go about doing research at this time?

David Evans at Harvard

D.E. - I didn’t do too much “research” while I was at Harvard (1961-1965).  It was mostly acquiring LPs and tape dubs of blues, reading album notes and books and magazine articles, and attending concerts by the artists.  By purchasing about 20 LPs and 3 or 4 books one could become an instant expert on the subject!  I did interview Bukka White, Son House, and Babe Stovall, and wrote articles about each of them.  I met other people who were seriously interested in the music – Al Wilson (later of Canned Heat), Phil Spiro, Dick Waterman, and Laurie Forti (a record collector).  None of them were students at Harvard. 

R.V.B. - How did you enjoy your years at Harvard? Did you have any favorite subjects or teachers?

D.E. - There were no courses in blues or any type of folk music at Harvard, unless perhaps a literary course in the ballad (which I didn’t take).  My degree was in Classics (Greek and Latin language and literature).  I did take courses from Prof. Albert Lord in Epic Poetry and Folk Literature (myth and folktale) and from Prof. Cedric Whitman in ancient Greek epic.  They were my greatest teachers, and their ideas about epic poetry as oral literature greatly influenced my understanding of blues.  Folklorist Bruce Jackson was a postgraduate fellow at Harvard and a resident in my dormitory house, and he introduced me to the academic field of Folklore and advised me to go to UCLA for graduate study.  I had many other great teachers.  Harvard was a wonderful educational experience.

R.V.B. - You went to UCLA for your graduate work. On the way there, you made the first of your field work studies in the south. What was your initial plan in the field and did it go as planned?

Roosevelt Holts

D.E. - Yes, I stopped in New Orleans on my way to UCLA in late August, 1965.  There I met Marc Ryan, who had brought Babe Stovall north to Cambridge for some blues concerts earlier that year.  Marc and I drove to Franklinton, Louisiana, with Babe to meet and record Roosevelt Holts, a bluesman and friend of Babe.  I was interested in the relationships between the music of people who knew and performed with one another, how blues were part of a “tradition."  That was my first real “field” recording session.  It was quite dramatic.  Franklinton was a “dry” town, and Roosevelt was a local bootlegger.  He had just arrived home with a carload of liquor, and all his customers were there.  So the recording session became a big party.  A white policeman was patrolling. the street outside, but fortunately he didn’t approach the house (because Roosevelt had his shotgun pointed at him through the window).  It was a very dangerous scene, but I survived!

R.V.B. -  There was some fine musical events happening on the west coast during the time you were studying there. It had its own folk scene as well as rock and roll... and of course surf music? Did you experience some of these genres as well? How did you maintain your focus on blues research with these potential distractions?

D.E. - The West Coast club scene was a bit different, because the clubs served beer, and there was the commercial influence of Hollywood.  Also by 1965 there was some merging of the blues with rock music.  Electric blues was more acceptable.  The older folk scene had been mostly acoustic.  I didn’t take an interest in surf music.  Actually, surf music had reached its peak of popularity a bit before I came to southern California.  I did take a greater interest in rock music – Beatles, Stones, other British groups, the Doors, Hendrix, etc., and of course my friend Al Wilson began playing in Canned Heat.  But my primary interest remained country blues.

Dave's Friend Al Wilson with John Lee Hooker

 I was able to see most of the same artists that had performed in Cambridge.  I didn’t take an interest in the Los Angeles R&B scene, which I regret.  Yes, there were many distractions – the entire “hippie” scene – and I don’t understand how I managed to stay focussed on country blues and my university studies.  But I did!

R.V.B. - In your subsequent field studies, Did you choose an area to maybe study and search for unknown musicians or did you have a person or people in mind to seek out?

D.E. - My field research was focused on gaining an understanding of the blues tradition and how it worked, so I was looking for musicians who performed with one another.  I was not randomly looking for blues musicians.  Usually I would get “leads” from one musician to another.  I concentrated on certain communities, such as Franklinton, Louisiana, and Tylertown, Mississippi, Baton Rouge and Jackson (urban traditions), Bentonia, Mississippi, and later Como and Senatobia, Mississippi.

R.V.B. - Two famous blues musicians that you have written about in the past... Charley Patton and Tommy Johnson... have similarities in style, as well as differences. One of the differences are their vocal approach. Charley had a rough shouting style delivery and Tommy used a falsetto almost crooning style. Are these differences from local upbringings or more of a regional effect?

D.E. - I became aware of the musical similarities of Patton and Johnson probably around 1964.  But they do indeed have very different voice qualities.  I think their voices were just naturally like that, but it might also reflect their personalities.  Patton was perhaps more of a “rough and tumble” character, and Johnson probably avoided direct conflicts and provocations.  It’s hard to say, because I never met them.

R.V.B. - The great wealth of blues musicians came from the deep south and eventually made their way north as well... There are differences in approach to the blues, such as the blues from the Carolina's and the blues from Texas. Why do you think that some blues musicians were strictly blues musicians and some were both blues musicians and songsters? Do you think the latter were better and more diversified musicians?

D.E. - This is a difficult question.  The so-called “songsters” are indeed generally more versatile as musicians.  They certainly are in their repertoires.  Blues is relatively simple in form and harmony, so it is easy to get started in blues and sound fairly good.  By the 1930s there were many artists who specialized in blues and performed little else.  The artists who came to maturity earlier often had broader repertoires.  There are many factors that cause an artist to specialize in blues – or not.  Some artists and some audiences find blues to be too limited musically.  Others want to provide music for all tastes, audiences, and occasions, so they perform blues and anything else that appeals.

R.V.B. - What do you feel are some of the greatest accomplishments of your field studies?

D.E. - That’s hard to say.  I “rediscovered” some artists who had made earlier commercial recordings – Rube Lacy, Boogie Bill Webb, and I recorded many great artists for the first time – Jack Owens, Mott Willis, Mager Johnson, Ranie Burnette, Isaac Youngblood, Herb Quinn, The Fieldstones, the Hollywood All Stars, and others.  I’ve produced quite a few records of field and studio recordings.  Then there are my books and many articles based on my field research.  It’s hard to pick individual items.

R.V.B. - In the years of your field research and studies, how did these studies enhance your musical technique as a guitarist and a musician?

D.E. - I always tried to watch and listen to other artists, especially the solo guitarists.  I seldom played along with them, never in field recording unless they specifically needed a guitar accompaniment (e. g., a fiddle or harmonica player).  I thought it was important to get a mental image of the sight and sound of a musician.  Then I try to be like that person.  Most of my songs are ones I learned or adapted from artists I know from fieldwork or ones I studied intensively from historical recordings.  So I have a kind of “personal relationship” with the source of a song.

David live in Belgium

R.V.B. - What were some of your favorite gigs or venues that you have performed at?

D.E. - That’s hard to say, because there have been so many.  I like all kinds of audiences and venues, because each one is a different challenge.  Noisy bars and quiet audiences at house concerts or culture centers.  I’ve had some unusual audiences – drunken Scottish sailors at a bar in a port city in Latvia, bikers in a rural roadhouse in Germany, 4,000 students at an outdoor concert in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, a big festival in Venezuela, wineries in France, a barn dance in the French Pyrenees, etc.

R.V.B. - During your tenure at The University of Memphis, you were instrumental for the development of the High Water Recording Company. What was the main way of finding artists to record? Was it also field work or did some just audition... or both?

D.E. - I found most of the High Water artists through fieldwork.  A few I had met before I came to the university (1978 – R. L. Burnside, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Ranie Burnette).  Some were found by students of mine – Junior Kimbrough, the various gospel groups.  A few were already more or less “known” - Hammie Nixon, Hezekiah and the House Rockers, Raymond Hill.  And one – Waynell Jones - was recommended by a friend at another university.  The Jubirt Sisters approached me about recording.

University of Memphis

R.V.B. - What did you enjoy the most about working at the University of Memphis?

D.E. - I most enjoyed the opportunity to work with graduate students on their projects and see them produce good dissertations and other research that resulted in publications.  Of course, I also enjoyed the opportunity to do my own research – fieldwork, recording, writing.

R.V.B. -  Congratulations on the Grammy's that you've received for your Journalism and liner notes. Can you describe what these honors mean to you?

D.E. - Thank you.  The Nomination is really the important thing, because it is determined by a panel of experts.  Voters often choose a product for reasons other than the actual merit.  But the Grammy award gets a lot of publicity, so in a sense it validates all of my writing.  It’s amazing how much importance people attach to it.  I am even often introduced at my performances as a “Grammy winner.”  It’s a bit embarrassing, because my awards are not for performance.

R.V.B. - What are your future plans in your semi-retirement?

D.E. - I’m still very active, both in research and as a performer.  I have two European tours planned for later this year and several trips out of my home area.  Of course, I would like to play larger and better paying gigs – festivals, etc.  But it’s hard to break through to that level at my age.  Also, many people think of me as a researcher/writer and perhaps think that my performances will be “academic.”  In writing, I’m working on a genealogy of Charley Patton and a book about my early fieldwork in the 1960s.  Also I hope to write a revised version of my book on Tommy Johnson and a book on Blind Willie McTell.  And I have many recordings I would like to publish – not only blues from my fieldwork, but also my recordings made in Venezuela, Ethiopia, and Malawi.

Interview conducted by Robert von Bernewitz

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