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YOU
CAN TAKE THE BOY OUT OF THE COUNTRY, BUT YOU CAN'T TAKE THE
COUNTRY OUT OF THE BOY:
I was born two years before the "Summer of Love" (maybe it was
the "Summer of Like") outside a little town in southern Missouri
called Phillipsburg. . .P-burg to those who know and love her.
I guess my earliest memory of music was, like many kids, from
riding in the back seat of the car with my folks. Had I been
born in a more medicated decade (like the 1980s), I probably
would have been put on Ritalin to get me to ever sit still FOR
ONE SECOND!!!. . .luckily for my folks (and me), a Statler Brothers
8-track was the best medicine there was for calming me down.
I'd be bouncing around the back seat like a grasshopper and
all my mom would have to do was put in the Statler Brothers
and the back seat would become like a little sanctuary for me
-- I would melt into their beautiful harmonies -- peace, at
least for the moment, would be restored.
I have memories of all kinds of music from my early days, but
there were two main sources -- my folks' record collection (where
I heard country storytellers like Tom T. Hall and The Statler
Brothers) , and my sister's (where I heard crazy rockers like
Frank Zappa and Cream). Both collections really made an impression
on me. I can remember staying up late listening to the latest
Cream rock-n-roll explosion. . .my sister trying to pick out
Eric Clapton's solo on her plywood Harmony acoustic guitar while
I danced around and strummed along on the rubber-band-string
Tinkertoy guitar she made me. But I also remember as a six-year-old
learning every word of Tom T.'s "Salute to a Switchblade" --
singing it on the bus for my friends and wowing them with the
story of the American G.I. stationed in Germany messing with
the wrong man's fraulein (complete with the snippets of German
dialogue. . .pretty exotic for our neck of the woods). So I
guess I learned early on about the power of music to move others.
. .and me.
After my sister grew up and moved away, my world of music became
almost completely comprised of the 1970s country my folks listened
to (Lynn Anderson, Faron Young, etc.) and the great old songs
my organ teacher gave me to learn each week (Beautiful Dreamer,
The Man in the Moon, etc.). Then my best friend Jim Pierce moved
to P-Burg from Kankakee, IL (a real city!) and introduced me
to . . .CASEY KASEM'S TOP 40 COUNTDOWN!
Rock music! "For this reason a man will leave his father and
mother. . ." (Genesis 2:24)
So, for the rest of my adolescence, I kind of left country music
behind and explored stuff I hadn't heard before -- from E.L.O
to Queen to the "Breakin" movie soundtrack (my introduction
to hip-hop) to Cyndi Lauper to Men at Work to my sister's old
Simon & Garfunkel records. Pretty much anything but country,
I guess. When you're a 14 year old boy growing up in the sticks,
sometimes you dream of leaving the hills and the fields behind.
. .
So, when I hit 18 and graduated from high school, I decided
I was through being a hillbilly. . .so I went to college in
Liberty, Missouri and dressed funny and learned how to sing
opera. I wanted to be cultured and cosmopolitan, I guess. .
.it was a style that I didn't know much about, but I knew it
moved me. I learned a lot about the nuts and bolts of music
there, and I learned one very important thing about singing
classical music:
It's hard, I'll tell you that. Took four years. Singing that
loud ain't easy. . .
But, even in the classical atmosphere of college, country music
still spoke to me -- even if it was just a steady whisper. When
I would get homesick or blue, I would take refuge in a tape
of country music I had made from my folks' records -- put the
tape in my car stereo and go drive around the old dirt roads
around Liberty. With the music playing, those hills and fields
really didn't look much different than good ol' P-burg. . .
After college, I looked in the classifieds and didn't see any
openings for "Opera Star", so I kind of stopped singing for
a while. To tell the truth, I guess I was ready for a change.
Change comes to people's lives in many forms -- it came to me
in the form of a musical genius named Tom Livesay. If I hadn't
met him and played music with him, I'm not sure where I would
be today. He helped me to really MAKE music for the first time
-- how to be influenced by everything you hear, but still make
something that's your own. Sounds easy, but it's not. I was
in three bands with him. . .all with funny names (he's a funny
guy): Wig Newton, The Young Johnny Carson Story, and Foolish
Sad Robot. All of these bands had their own sound and are hard
to categorize, but let's call it "nerdy pop" for want of a better
term. The music I did with him and all the other fine folks
in those bands (especially my man "Country Giant" Jeff Clayton
Brown) is still some of the stuff I'm most proud of. . .I think
we made ourselves and a lot of other people happy, which has
pretty much been my musical goal ever since.
Sometime during the years of playing with Tom Livesay and "Country
Giant" Jeff Clayton Brown, the three of us started hanging out
with two amazing bands. One was a real, honest-to-God white
country blues band called Trouble in Mind. They were white,
they even wore glasses for Pete's sake!. . .but their music
had soul like I had never heard before. The other band was wildly
different. . .meet The Dhurries, a couple of hippie-esqe, world
music fans who sat on the coffeehouse floor and made up their
own beautiful mind-expanding musical concoctions using sitar,
violin, guitar, and hand percussion. You might have heard of
them -- do the names Betse Ellis and Phil Wade ring a bell?
These were my two favorite bands in Kansas City. Here's where
it all starts to come together. . .
Even though I was playing a lot of "nerdy pop" with Tom and
Jeff, in my spare time I had been toying around with some of
those old Tom T. Hall songs -- again, that country music wouldn't
leave me alone. That's when I was lucky enough to get a chance
to play in my first "jam". . .it was a party after one of my
favorite Kansas City coffeehouses closed down (we miss you,
Whistler's Mother!) The folks from Trouble in Mind were there.
. .I sang a couple of old Tom T. songs with them, and I strummed
along while they sang some great old blues and country songs
I'd never heard before. It felt good. Really good. I'm not sure
how Betse and Phil learned about Trouble in Mind, but it wasn't
long before all of us. . . my band The Young Johnny Carson Story,
Betse and Phil's duet The Dhurries, and the Trouble in Mind
boys. . . started getting together and playing country and blues.
Some of the best music I've ever heard or been a part of came
out of those giant jam sessions. . .everybody contributing their
very diverse talents for the good of the song.
As time went on, my old love for country music kept coming out
more and more. . .besides playing with my friends, I also started
playing at local nursing homes and talking to those wonderful
folks about the old country songs they loved. Maybe I just needed
(and finally had) an outlet for this music; maybe I was just
tired of trying to pretend I wasn't a country kid from the sticks.
. .or maybe sometimes you just need to leave a thing behind
so that you can remember how much it means to you.
So, while I was on my own personal journey back into country
music (and especially back into its roots), Betse and Phil were
on also on their own road to a country sound. The Dhurries concerts
were becoming less and less about world music and more and more
about folk and country music. My band with Tom had finally come
to an end (as bands tend to do) and The Dhurries were starting
to turn into something else. So, I gave them a call and said
something to the effect of "Hey, I've really been getting into
old country music lately. . .sounds like you guys are headed
that way, too. Can I join up with you and play some hillbilly
music?"
"Heaven bless her, she said 'Yes, sir!'. . ." (from the 1925
song "Dinah")
I guess that's when The Wilders were born.
*******
MY GRANDFATHER'S GUITAR:
Since that day, The Wilders have been rolling steady -- learning
new songs, playing new places, (hopefully) getting better all
the time, and learning how to entertain and educate. But there's
one more event that needs mentioning -- a thing that happened
about a year after we started playing that really brought everything
together for me. The source of it was a man I never knew: my
grandfather, Leo Myers.
I didn't know much about him -- he really wasn't mentioned much
while I was growing up. That was because he and my grandmother
died in a tragic fire when my mom was only in her 20s -- I can't
even imagine how hard it was for her to have to live through
that. So I can understand why it was hard for her to talk about
her folks without being faced with the awful memory of how they
died. Still, every once in a while, the cloud of sadness surrounding
their memories would lift and mom would give me a precious peek
into their lives: the whole family living in a little "tent
town" while my grandfather worked on the construction of Route
66. . .living on the Virginia coast during World War II and
the frightening air raid drills. . .my grandfather driving a
water truck and making the rounds of the local farms, delivering
water for their tanks. . .big fish fry/bonfires on the Niangua
River with plenty of music and fun.
I loved all the stories, but especially the ones about music.
I had heard a few of them, but once I started playing in The
Wilders and becoming so interested in country music and its
history, it seemed the stories would come up more often. I imagine
my mom saw that I could finally really appreciate these stories.
. .that she could really share them with me and I would understand
them and the inspiration they had to offer.
It seems my grandfather was a quite a musician. . .he played
mandolin and harmonica, but was most of all a country guitar
player. My mom can remember him sitting in the kitchen playing
"Wildwood Flower" over and over, stomping out the time with
his foot, until my grandmother would have to shoo him into the
bedroom so she could get supper made. Their house was a meeting
place for many local musicians -- my mom remembers Saturday
nights with the porch full of pickers and grinners making music
until late in the night. Being so close to Springfield, Missouri
in the famous Ozark Jubilee days, they would even get the occasional
visit from a famous (or soon-to-be famous) musician -- my mother
remembers Porter Wagoner dropping by a couple of times and even
a young Chet Atkins playing on their porch with all the local
regulars.
What these stories gave me was a sense of stability and past.
. .that this love I have for country music comes from a place
deep within me. . .that even though I never got to meet him,
my grandfather had given me a lot. That was about to become
even more true. . .
A few years ago I was home visiting my folks when my mother's
brother (my Uncle Bill. . .doesn't everybody have an Uncle Bill?)
called and said he had something interesting to bring over for
me to see. I said "sure" and after while he came in the door
with an old guitar case in his hand. I thought maybe he had
found something at a garage sale or antique mall and wanted
me to take a look at it. But I was wrong. We opened the case,
and what he had for me was. . .my grandfather's guitar. It was
an old 1950s Silvertone archtop, right out of the Sears-Roebuck
catalog -- black with a tan sunburst with the most beautiful
Silvertone logo on the headstock. I couldn't believe it! I thought
everything my grandparents owned was burned up in the fire.
Then my mom and uncle explained it to me. . .
My grandfather was one of ten boys in the family, and most of
them played some kind of instrument. . .in particular, my grandfather's
brothers Joe and Otto were also guitar players. So, just for
fun, every once in a while my grandfather and Joe and Otto would
trade guitars for a few weeks. . .for whatever reason, I guess
they had done a swap just a few days before the fire. So, my
grandfather's guitar wasn't in his house as it burned. . .it
was safe at Joe's house. As far as I know, it's the only thing
of his that wasn't destroyed in the fire. My Uncle Bill had
it in his closet for years, but figured since I was playing
country guitar now, maybe I could put it to good use.
Call it God, call it luck, or call it fate. . .but that guitar
escaped the fire that killed my grandfather and, 40 years later,
I brought it home with me to play with The Wilders. For me,
that's when everything came together. . .from then on, the band
really clicked, and more importantly, I had a new understanding
of the music we were trying to make. There's just a spirit that
moves me when I play that old guitar. . .I can't explain it,
but maybe you know what I mean. I don't play it with the band
anymore -- I'd hate anything to happen to it with all the traveling
we do -- but I always have it in my house. And every time I
get the urge, I bring it out and play the old "Wildwood Flower"
on it and thank my family for everything they've given me. .
.and give the old man a wink and tell him maybe we'll meet and
play it together some day.
*******
WELL, THAT'S MY STORY:
Just one more thing for me to do before I close this long-winded
thing out. . .serve up a big helping of praise for my fellow
Wilders:
Folks, there's nothing like being on stage with Betse, Phil,
and Nate. I mean it. . .I wish you could have the chance to
be up there with them sometime. . .Betse bowing her heart out,
Phil sliding up and down that dobro neck, and Nate laying down
a honky-tonk groove. I can't tell you how good it is to be in
the middle of all that. . .it means a lot to me. A good band
is really much more than the sum of its parts -- we're all decent
musicians, but there's just something that happens when we all
play together that makes us more than we are. A kind of magic.
. .again, I can't really explain it, but hopefully you can hear
it. Thanks for listening to my part of the story. . .and thanks
for listening to our music. I hope it gives you a little joy
in this tough, old world.
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