Episode 3: Randy Wyatt - From The Jail to The Stage

Episode 3 of Five String Holler is one for the books! This week we sit down with Honky Tonk Pappy himself, Randy Wyatt — bass player, guitar picker, banjo man, former radio DJ, and retired law enforcement officer with enough stories to fill up a Waffle House jukebox.

Randy talks about hosting the legendary Bluegrass Express alongside Fiddlin Verlin Sanders, life behind the microphone, years in law enforcement, and memories from hanging around icons like Gary Stewart, Keith Whitley, Ricky Skaggs, and more. From Carter Stanley showing up at his mamaw’s house when he was a kid, to road stories and music memories from Eastern Kentucky’s and Virginia's golden days, this episode is packed tighter than a Double Kwik parking lot on payday.

If you love country music, bluegrass, old radio stories, and hearing how things USED to be around here, you absolutely don’t wanna miss this one. Pull up a chair and join us for laughs, memories, and a whole lotta holler talk.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

And welcome to the Fun Street Human Human TV Hello, David Benjamin. Let's get in the home and see the day is come on young. Take it to see how to sit down. Let's get going. You all have been great listening in, downloading episodes, sharing the page, help me spreading the word and getting this show out there. We're getting views all the way over in Canada. We're getting views in the United Kingdom. We're getting views in Germany. I mean, it's just amazed me that people just this little old podcast I dreamed up and wanted to try out that people are taking this much interest in it. But I surely appreciate your support and your continued support. And I thank you so much. And if you've not checked out the previous episodes, give episode one a listen and listen to Brent Amberg's story. Great banjo player from Eastern Kentucky. And episode two is our very own Travis Fields from Letcher County. His number one guitar player, great teacher and educator here in the county. Give his episode a listen. But today I've got a very special guest. I've got one of my dearest friends in here. Thank the world, this guy. And luckily, I get to share the stage with him in our country band, The Country Troubadours. This cat right here, he's one of these guys. He reminds me so much of our other friend who passed on Mr. Bill Stacy. He's been he's been around, he's seen a lot. He's been around and witnessed musical moments that we just dream of being able to witness. And this cat has been right there in the front row seat. And we're going to talk more in the show about how he was involved in one of the biggest radio shows in this area. And I mean, he's just got so many good stories and so much musical history. I cannot wait for you all to listen to this episode. But without further ado, I want to introduce my next guest, my good buddy, great bass player, and just a fine fella, Mr. Randy Wyatt.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

How are you doing, bud?

SPEAKER_00 2:43

Buddy, I thank you for coming and do it.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Well, I I appreciate you asking me over. I figured you was at the bottom of the barrel when you called me. Awesome, son.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

No, no, no, no. You you are one of them guys you just got so much you just seen and done a lot, and it's just amazed me, just in the the short time I've just known you for a few years, and just hearing you tell so many stories about being there witnessing the things you witnessed, and I it just it amazes me.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

That comes with old age.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

I'm calling you old now. I I I mean Well, we call it we call it what it is. I mean, even though you are the honky tonk papy. That's me.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

But uh I got that name from my grandbaby. Oh, did you? Yeah. She we had a poppy and uh she decided I was papy and it stuck. Oh. Well, that works. Love it. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Grand youngins make the world go around, don't you?

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Yeah, buddy.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Because you get to play with them and send them back home.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Yep. You spoil them, then you send them back.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

And my let mommy and daddy deal with the fun part.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

And you load them up on sugar.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

Oh yeah. Candy.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Just before they go, candy.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Candy was off and all that good stuff. Oh Lord, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Especially if you keep them late. You know, it's ready to go to bed as soon as I get there.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Oh Lord. Pretty day today. It is, but it's hot.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

How much did you mowing did you get done? A little bit. I thought about you. Did you? Yeah, while I was sitting in air conditioning eating Cheetos. I just thought about you. I didn't.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Yeah, I didn't I didn't do much. I I sort of let my little helper take over the reins. I just kind of sat and just just observed, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Well, that's that's a good way to be. There's days that you have to watch and days that you get to join.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

I gotta take it easy nowadays. I try to at least, but hell though, we had a had a pretty good day.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Well, let me tell you, since meeting you, I've I'm astonished. I I've never seen anybody so versatile. And I mean this from the heart. Uh the first time that I played with you, the stuff that you did on a guitar, I ain't even seen on TV. Oh but then you pick up a banjo and I'm thinking, well, it he can't be as good on the well, I got. And you play the bass. And you now you're playing drums. I don't know how you get all the talent.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Lord buddy, I am not nothing to write home about. I mean I'm trying to learn how to play the drums. And the simple fact is, like I said on the on Told somebody other day, I've got band in a box, you know, and I try to make my song demos, and like band in a box sounds good, but it takes me sometimes hours just to figure out what combination of numbers and letters to put in them little boxes to get the drums to do what I want them to do.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

And you found out it's easier to just do it yourself.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Well, it's easier. I just you know, like, dang, I don't just do it myself, you know. But I mean, we'll see how the drum adventure goes. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

I started out, all I wanted was a banjo. And my dad, he played bass uh with uh uh several groups, Mass of Grass, uh Glenn Robertson, Roland Firestones. Mm-hmm. Um and he said, Well, learn to play the bass. So I had to stand on a box because I couldn't reach that dog ass bass. And I learned how to play it. And I said, Okay, I can play it. He said, Well, okay, we'll learn how to play guitar. And my first guitar was a Decca 12 string.

SPEAKER_02 6:37

Oh, God.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

And he took the six high strings off. So the neck was about as wide as a boat, and and he was stretching my fingers. I didn't know that. So once I learned to play that, then I got the banjo. But I kind of leaned back toward the bass all the time.

SPEAKER_00 6:56

So, like, so was your first instrument the bass? Yes. So, like, going back to when you was growing up, like when was the first time, like it I always ask this question because everybody's got that moment, like their first moment when the when they hear something or they they see something and it just like it clicks.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

Um when I was eight, I sung at the Wise County Fire with the Sanders brothers. That's my uncles, Berlin, Erling, and Lester.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

And uh when I got done, of course I was a little squeaky kid, you know, but when I got done, the applause bit me. And I said, hey, I I like this. So that's kind of that's kind of what got me interested. And then I saw, you know, every time the Tarzan Brothers or any bluegrass band come on, I really watched the banjo player. I didn't know why. And I just got this craving, this desire. And you know, you you need to it's hard to get versatile on a lot of things. I didn't. I got mediocre and a bunch of things. So but I have the knowledge, I just don't have the I just the ability. But I still enjoy it. I still, you know, I was raised on bluegrass uh in my house uh Saturday nights. There was no, you know, going out or everybody came to the house and we played music. And I thought that's what everybody done. I didn't know there was you know, when I got up age to go dating, I wouldn't date on Saturday night much because that's the night we play music.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

So like who was who was coming over on these Saturday nights to pick?

SPEAKER_01 8:42

Well, most of the family, because uh the the Sanders brothers band was the family. We were all kin and we lived on a dirt road and the closest neighbor was like uh well, we had one neighbor you could see. The rest of them was two or three miles away. So I grew up, if I wanted to play with somebody, I had to go up to my cousins, you know, with them. So, but then when they when I was really young, I didn't know this, I didn't know what was going on, I just knew there was music. Everybody under the sun used to come to my my grandma's house, and they'd play music on a porch till two or three o'clock in the morning. We'd go to bed, you know, but and I didn't know all the who all these people were. There were people, um, I've got I can see pictures now. Like out in the road, uh Ernest Tubbs standing with my uncle.

SPEAKER_00 9:35

Really? Um Wow. What year is his?

SPEAKER_01 9:39

Uh early 60s. Was it a band with him? No, it's just him. Just him. He just i at the time when bands were getting started and you got some notice, uh all the music stars just hung around. Yeah. They wanted to they was getting ideas. You know, they were going to listen. What what what were these guys doing? Their names getting out there. And they would pick up corners and use it in their personal life. So I can remember back 64-65, um, this man came up to my grandmother's door. Her name was Ovie, came up to my grandmother's door and knocked on the door, and of course I was a little bitty thing, and I seen him, and she went to the door and let him in, and I didn't know who he was. He was just a you know older man. And he said, Miss Ovie, uh I need a little breakfast. And she said, Okay, well, she went in the kitchen. Of course, I sat down at the table, being nosy like a little kid, and she took three eggs and broke them in a glass. And that was strange because she always broke them in a in a bowl, you know, and beat them. And then she put a little sugar on them and handed him the glass. And he turned it up and drank it. Drinking raw eggs. And I uh a little kid five years old, you know, uh that just didn't that burn in my memory. Uh come to find out, it was Carter Stanley.

unknown 11:05

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

They'd been up to my grandmother's playing all night, burling all of them, and and he's probably been drinking and he needed something to ease his stomach, and my grandmother knew. Because, you know, one of my uncles was a moonshiner, so they knew that's you know what you needed to help you out to the first thing in the morning.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

That is amazing. That you you're you're a kid, and Carter Stanley walks into your grandma's house. Yep, walks up on the porch and sits down and drinks eggs. Raw eggs. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

With sugar. With sugar. I guess that put it over. But I you know, then I I kind of got an idea of you know what the life was like. They run all the time, they they run the roads, and it's very rare for them to have like a Saturday night off. They were playing somewhere. So for them to be there, you know, what do musicians do when they're not on the road? They go to other musicians' houses and they play music.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

I mean, that's the truth. Even even when I was, you know, and I mean I didn't play like no professional, but you know, back when I was playing a lot when I was in college, if we didn't have a show on a Saturday night or Friday night, we was going to other people's shows or we was going to other people's houses and jamming. That's what we done.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Well, that's all we and all that was in our house was bluegrass. And then we moved to Manassas for about 10 or 11 years, and then we moved back. And I'll never forget the first big commodity that dad bought was a great big long stereo that's sitting on the floor. They had a record player and an eight-track player and big speakers. And all the Saturdays, the Saturday days when the doors came open and the screen doors was closed, and that would crank some of the most beautiful country music you could ever hear. I'd say so. I grew up, uh Patsy Klein, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, George Jones. At that time, they were all big. And and that's all that that machine played. And it played all day. I remember my mother dancing in the kitchen, singing along, because she was a member, she was a member of the the group that sung with Sanders Brothers called the Virginia Sweethearts. And it was her and her twin sister, my aunt, and my aunt Goldie. And they sung with them. Um there's pictures up now at the cabin I've showed you of their out in front of the car.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

And for for our listeners here, just to kind of give you an idea, because for the folks around here that's followed bluegrass music, um he when he's talking about the Sanders brothers, he's talking about his uncle fiddling Verlin Sanders, which we all know was a longtime radio DJ at WMMT.

SPEAKER_02 14:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

And for later years, we knew him as the fiddle player, or at least I did, for I when I first saw him, he played with the Appalachian Strange. Yes. I remember seeing him there.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

He frequented the the cabin just about every weekend. When they were strictly bluegrass, he was always there. But they uh uh him and Gary Rake started the show over at WMT called The Bluegrass Express. Really? And it it went off. It just got great.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

And it was huge. So what year was this when they started this?

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Um It was about six or seven years before Gary lost his life in a car accident. Him and his daughter were killed in a car wreck. Um, so they'd already established it. And they were having they were having shows, live shows, putting on big names. Bill Monroe had been there, uh Ralph had been there. There was a lot, Larry Sparks had been there a couple times for their show, for the Blue Grass Express show. And so when he when he passed away, Uncle Varon called me and said, uh, can you come, can you go help me tonight?

SPEAKER_00 15:14

How old were you?

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Uh I was married, so 20, 21. So I thought him, sure. Well, I no, actually I was older than that. I was probably 26 because I worked at the sheriff's office. So I worked it out to where I could be off on Thursday nights. And I went on I went over to help him. Well, seven years later, I was still helping him. And we uh we decided to leave, and we were gone for one week, and when Thursday night came up and we weren't there to to do the show, he called me and said, uh, let's go up to WMBA and start us a show. So we went to WNBA and we bought the airtime, and we had a country and bluegrass show once a week. And we were there about three years. And then he had some health problems and had to take a hiatus, so I did too, so we could kind of let it go. And then I got a hankering for it. And I worked at the college then, and uh a good friend of mine, Ray Spinelli, uh, he was the athletic director over the college. We had a game we played while we were at work. We would make CDs for each other. Ten songs with about two seconds of the start of the song, and that's all we got, and we had to guess.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

Oh, yeah, I played that game for my buddy.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Well, I was really good at it, I could guess. But Ray, which we call him Lefty, he would tell you the song, who sang it, who recorded it, what year they recorded it, what label it was. He was just phenomenal. And I was kidding with him one day, and I said, We need to get us a radio show. Well, he retired. And he called me and said, I'm ready to do that radio show. So we went WAXM and we started Poncho and Lefty. Classic country. I'm I'm Poncho.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

You're a kid. You didn't know that, did you? No.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

You're a kid, mate. We did that for about six or six and a half years, and he he he took a he he took a leave for health issues. And I stayed about another year, year and a half, and it started getting commercial. They wanted more advertisement, and I I wanted to play more music. That's what the people want to hear. So I I left and and uh I decided, well, now I'll I'll display music. I had no idea you done. That's wow. All the bumper stickers we had made, yeah. I'm punching.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

I used to listen to that show.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Daddy.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

In fact, you might have called in a time or two. Maybe. I believe so, because I remember because when they one night they said we had I have a good friend's dad named David Barnett. He owns a contracting business. Why so when they called him, I thought, oh yeah, well, well, I built it up, you know. And then he said, I didn't call you. So then we decided it was another David Barnett. Probably me, yeah. But I enjoyed that immensely, had a lot of listeners.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

Um I miss radio shows like it's it. They don't they don't do that no more, man. It was so much fun.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

If it hadn't been the the commercial end of it, you know, wanting to do so many commercials every 10 minutes or so. What we did, we had we we went and got one sponsor, and we just paid for the radio time. It was so much an hour. So we he paid us enough to pay for that four or four and a half hour slot, and we didn't get nobody else. We didn't want it. We would play music, play his ad on the bottom of the hour, and then play the music for an hour. So we were constantly, and I had a lot of music that I brought, but uh Lefty he brought suitcases. He had the albums. We do we spun vinyl. Did you? Uh everything he had he put on CDs. And somebody would name a song, and I'd it would it would be um uh Troy Hillman from 1955. Something you never heard of, and he'd say, Let me see, and he'd say, Well, I don't have that one, but I got this kid of his, and we would play it. And I also I learned, I learned a whole lot. I learned more off of him, I guess, just being with him and listening to him talk. And he had a real good radio voice. He he was just he was just a master. And at one time um after he left, it was hard for me to do, so I uh I hired my son. And he went by outlaw. And um he stayed several months, and then he's young. And you know, you know how young people are, they you know, when I turned 18 I knew everything.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Get up and go.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

And when I turned 28, I knew that I didn't know nothing. I thought I knew. But that's kind of how I've been. But when I when I went to the college, Papa Joe Smithy was a chancellor. And he um he retired, but he always was involved with the college. And he came to me one day and he said he had a band, Reedy Creek Grass. And his son was a member of the band, Joe Frank. He's a he is a heart doctor, heart specialist. And he asked me, could I play? Because uh Joe's wife played the bass and she she was unavailable. So I said, sure, I'll play. Well, I ended up playing with the band for about five years. Um, I'd always pick up Papa Joe and his wife, and my wife would go, they'd sit in the back seat and they would talk women talking gossip, and me and me and Papa Joe would sit in the front, and he would tell me what was here and what was there. I mean, he his mind was just amazing.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

I'm not too familiar with Papa Joe Smeedy, unfortunately. I I should be, I'm a guess. And exactly like just what kind of just He played old blue, he played Old Old Clawhammer.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Okay. His his his two biggest songs was Butterbeans and Wise Canning Jail. Okay. That was his big agenda. Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

Uh so he'd been an artist for a while.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Oh, yeah, he he'd been play, he'd played for a long time. But then when he joined his uh when he started his band with his son, they, you know, they've been to the Smithsonian. Um, they played all over the world. Right. Um In fact, uh we played uh there's the annual Papa Joe Smithy Bluegrass Festival down at the Brakes, uh at Natural Tunnel. Um it's not the Brakes, but the Natural Tunnel. Every year. And we played that and it was just I mean, we filled it up. It was no seats available. They loved him. They loved that man. He was just a good man. And when he passed, I guess the music kind of left with him. I didn't have the I just didn't have the heart to play. And um then I've got a good friend, Wayne Mefford. He called me up several years after that, and he said, Hey, we're playing for Appalachia Project. It's where these children, these kids come in from all over the world.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

I played for that too.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

And they don't have nowhere to go. So they we provide them with like an hour and a half of live music. And they get up and dance, and and we do it down to the cabin. And he said, Could you help me out? And I said, Sure. So I went down. Well, I had one bass. I didn't have an amp. Because I wasn't doing it. And he said, I've got an amp. Well, we went down and I played. We'd never practiced. I hadn't played electric bass in probably 10 or 11 years. And it was just like putting on a baseball glove. It's like getting on a bicycle. It just felt so good. So the next week I go over to our friend Pat's and I give me a bass amp, and I start getting my stuff together. And we played, you know, you play usually uh June, July, and part of August every week for them. A different crew. And uh some friends was down there playing, and their bass player, he was he was sick, and they called and they said, Could you fill in for him? It was Tony Lawson for the drywallers. And I said, Sure. I don't know what you do, but well, it's country, mostly country. So I went down and started playing with them. Well, you all lost your bass player. And Gary came to me one night and said, Would you be interested in, you know, helping us? Well, sure. That's another Saturday night, you know, that I don't have to worry about something to do. Right. Well, I'm still there. You're still there. I'm still with Tony. Uh we in fact we played Saturday night. Uh after we all played, the Troubadours played Saturday morning at Blackie. Blacky Days, we sure. We loaded up and took off and went back to Norton. And three of us is in both bands. Myself and Richard plays the drums, and Ronnie Dale, he plays piano. Well, they play in the same band. So we were we were we told I told Ronnie Dale we had to get a bigger bus with something we could sleep on, somebody else to drive. Right. But I I'm loving it. I'm I'm really I'm at a point in my life where I'm I'm really enjoying music. That's good. Um you know I think we're I think between all of it, I think I don't get a weekend until Thanksgiving. And it's no problem because I'm retired, so my time, my weekends is Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, or Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Right. Uh I work for the weekends.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

So it's still fun. And if you get into it for making money, you'll starve to death. You got to love what you do.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

Aid that the truth, buddy.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

You uh uh there's been times that I would gladly have paid to got to play that night. In fact, you were with me when we got to back up Leona Williams and Bobby G. Rice. I would have gladly paid them to have that opportunity. That was that was just magical to me.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

It was. Leon was Leon was such a great singer. She is a super lady.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

And I I didn't know any of her music. You know, I I would she's got good music.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

She plays got good country shuffles.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

Well, they gave us an itinerary of what she's gonna sing. So I went on the internet and I downloaded every song. Well, it was back when she was in her 20s, early 20s. So I learned it. That's how I was prepared. Well, she's she's in her eighties. We got on stage. If you closed your eyes, you couldn't tell the difference between what I heard on the recording and what she did live. It was amazing. Still the same keys. And she, yes, the same keys still hit the notes as clear as a bell. And I was just I had to really calm down because I was getting so excited I was going to forget to play. But it was so funny when we walked out and we I was all ready. We had that first song, and she named another song, and we all looked at each other, uh-oh, because we weren't in the right gear, we wasn't in the set mindset to. And I she said, Is that wrong? I said, Well, we made you a list there on the floor, and she said, Scratch that. They've got me a list. And it was it was fine after that. But we also got to play with her son.

SPEAKER_00 26:58

Her son's a he is phenomenal. Yeah, that that Ron Williams can sang the phone book, and I listened to every every word of it.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

And him and her together, they harmonized so good. And we also got to back up Bobby G. Rice. Um, Sugarshack. Oh, yeah. Rock the place. So there's times those times is what is what really you know sticks in your mind, makes you smile. Right. Uh one time I was at the college, I was about uh 12 or 13. Dad was playing, they had a bluegrass show. Of course I was backstage running around, you know, like the kids do. And there was these two kids playing music. One guy had these black horn rimmed glasses, they were real black and heavy, young kid, short hair, and the other kid was a little taller.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

What what year was this?

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Uh early 70s. So, like how old was you then? Well, I was I was twelve. Twelve years old. Yeah, I was born I was born back in the uh fifties, we'll say. But they were jamming on a guitar and a mandolin.

SPEAKER_02 28:11

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

And they were picking s uh it's a m it's a it's a uh Mandolin song. Something about fire. I can't remember. It's just a driving song, don't hardly ever change gears. Fire on the Mountain? I can't remember. But it's just a driving. Well, they were driving it. I mean they were real so I pick up Jack Cook's bass, it's laying there, and I start playing bass with them. And we're all grinning and laughing, you know, and we're just, you know, just boys. They come back and shut us down. They said we're too loud. People could hear us out on stage and they were at a show. Oh boy. So I left thinking I'm in trouble, you know, and I get out of there and I go out in the stands and I see it. In just a minute, Ralph Stanley comes up to play. And here's these two same kids on stage with him with these real flashy shit coats on. And they introduced them as Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley. But we were kids, you know. I didn't know. I just knew, you know, the Bluegrass family was all family. Right. Um, probably the best memories I have is not during the show. It's after the show's done and you go through the campground. That's when you really that's when you really hear what's out there. There's some uh I know you understand this. There's great musicians that that could make a living at it, but they won't take that chance because they got to have that check coming in to feed their family and pay the bills, and they'll do it on the weekends. And when it starts to get more taking more time, which uh a musician that makes his living, it's seven days a week. You know, if you're not playing somewhere, you're practicing, or you're trying to take care of your house and your yard and your cow, cattle, and so that's like me. I never made that, I never made that step. My first country band. I don't know if you uh know these people, but I know you know some of them. Uh it was in the early 70s. I played bass with a man named Chuck Johnson.

SPEAKER_00 30:21

I know Chuck Johnson.

SPEAKER_01 30:22

And we called it the Green Book Band. Uh we had a we had an absolute phenomenal guitar player, which he still is, Randy Bright, Randall Bright. Uh-huh. Oh, I know Randy. And we had a uh steel guitar player by the name of Clark Bailey.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

I know Clark too.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

And that set me in motion. That's when I decided right then and there, this is what I want to do. I want to do country.

SPEAKER_00 30:47

So, so like, was that your first country band you played in? That was the first true country band. Well, so what what what year and how old was you?

SPEAKER_01 30:57

Uh well I was let's see, I was 21 or 22. I just recently well, I I got married when I was 18 and divorced when I was 21. So it's right in that 2021 area. Um and and fell in love with it. Um, of course, yeah, we've played in bars and the moose clubs and the nightclubs, and sometimes it got rough, and you just kind of learned as you went. But some of the music that came out of that was it's on cassette tape somewhere. Chuck never threw nothing away. Of course, we lost him a couple years a few years ago. But he I went into his house one night and he was recording a new album by himself. And he said, Give me this man, I'm putting a drum track on. And he had a shoebox with a rubber band around it and a hairbrush. And he was putting drums on his recording. And when you play it back, you cannot tell it from a set of drums. You do what you had to do what you could do. But he would put the bass and the guitar and the lead guitar and the harmonies and by himself. And I thought, man, you just need one guy. But he was he was great. I've I've played with him probably two or three different times. We would break up and then we'd sell everything, you know, to make bills. Then you'd buy it back, and you'd get the hanker and to go back. And that's the way everybody was. Right, right. So we had there's never been a time in my life when I didn't have, even when I worked at the Sheriff's Department, I didn't have a chance to play music, but you know what was playing in my police car all day long. Um, Jonas Riley, his first CD. It started wobbling. I had played it so much. Really? Yes. And you played with Jonas and Marcus. Oh, yeah. Good guys. Very well know him very well. In fact, I missed him Saturday. We I would have stayed and listened to uh Will Cottle because uh he was playing with him. Well, yeah. And I would have liked to have seen him, but I had to we had to hit back to Norton to play the second show.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

Well, you had to head back to Norton, though, to feed Ronnie at Fish Tales.

SPEAKER_01 33:17

Well, we did well we did that too.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

Yeah, uh as that at fishtails and hush puppies, you know. I I had dreams about those hush puppies. Oh they uh I I broke down and had a salad.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

And Tony did too, and we wished we hadn't. Oh god. There was enough salad there to feed three people. And I'm not one to waste any food. You can see by my stature, I don't get away from a table a whole lot. But it was good. But then when we got down there to play, I wanted to know if we had nap time before we went on to play because I'd eat too much. But we have it's it's about having a good time.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

You know, if they come up and say, well, here's you know, you made three dollars tonight. I it doesn't matter to me. Because you can't put a price on fun. No. And and you know yourself. When it's good, it's good. And you don't think about nothing but just playing it.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

I I've had I've had nights where with us and the Troubadour band and or when I'm working with playing with somebody else that I I don't want the show to stop.

SPEAKER_01 34:23

Yeah, in fact, we know that because you keep right on playing.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

Especially when the especially when the guy when the groove is when the groove is right.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

When it's in that slot, you you don't want to let it go. And if they wouldn't say no, you can't, we would play. I would I don't never turn off until I see everybody's because you never know. You know, I I'll jump back in there.

SPEAKER_00 34:48

Well, yeah. I think James Brown said something one time about to the effect of if it don't if it don't move, it don't groove.

SPEAKER_01 34:57

That's right. Or something like that. But if it's grooving, it's a move. God, son. But I've just um you you wouldn't believe all the things I've done. I've uh when I was 16 I got my first job in a printing press. A printing press. In a printing shop. And the man it owned its name was Tom Countis. And he was a member of the Fallen Stars. It was a group that got their start, I guess, at the end zone it was. Mm-hmm. Um They ended up recording albums at Bradley's Barn with Owen Bradley. They were phenomenal. Tom's voice was and the guitar the my the uh lead guitarist was uh Ron Swindle. And once I got to know him, he had a recording studio on Gift River in his house. And I started going in and as uh as the house bassist. Well, they would come, somebody would come in, uh uh there was a preacher that came from Kentucky one time, and he had all the sheep music. And he handed it out to everybody. Well, when he got to me and Tuck Robinson that played the drums, he took a piece of paper and wrote the chords down. And the man said, Do they not read music? And he said, No, but trust me, they'll feel it and they'll be fine. Well, he was kind of upset because you know he had paid for studio musicians. Well, the first six takes we did in six tries. And he said, You got any more of them guys that can't read music that wants to come up and play? Because I can't. I can't read music, but I can feel it.

SPEAKER_00 36:33

Me either. I I I learned by ear. I still learn by ear. I didn't learn the theory stuff like I was talking on the last episode with Travis. I didn't learn none of that stuff until I got older.

SPEAKER_01 36:45

Well, I I guess I'm too old. I don't uh Gary was trying to uh Gary Joseph was trying to teach me how to read the the Nashville the number system.

SPEAKER_00 36:57

It ain't too bad.

SPEAKER_01 36:58

And and I tried to get in my mind and I threw it out because I said, just play me the song.

SPEAKER_00 37:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:05

And after two bars and half of a course, I'm ready. Yes. You know, unless you're doing a chord change, if you'll just say we're going up, I know what to do. But if you say we're gonna the words, the big word, I'm I'm lost.

SPEAKER_00 37:19

Yeah, it's like me, it's like me. I I said uh my first studio session, you know, I walked in and this guy handed me this paper, and it was a chart with all these numbers on it. I'm like, so what's this? And I did God my that guy turned pale as a ghost. Say, look, what he turned pale as a ghost because they're paying me good money. He's like, Oh no, you can't read charts. I said, I got this. I said, let me listen to it one time. So he he let me listen to it one time, I put my part down. One time put my part down. And I got it done in a reasonable amount of time. And he afterwards he came up to me and said, You done really good. So, but you really need to learn how to read charts. He said, if you're gonna do this, he said, uh, but you done good though the way you done it. And I said, Well, you know.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

So then that's when I started It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks.

SPEAKER_00 38:15

Well, not only that, but like I'm I'm one of these people, and I guess I'm I I believe in in music has to come from your soul and you have to feel it. Yeah, yeah. It's not something mechanical.

SPEAKER_01 38:30

It's something that gets in your bones, and and when it gets in your bones, you can't help but either want to jump in and do it, or pat a foot, or pat your leg. It comes out.

SPEAKER_00 38:42

See, I I'm actually a fan of it, and I know a lot of people probably ain't, you know, I I can do like do recording track by track because I do it by myself here all the time. But in all honesty, the best records I've ever made with people, everybody's been in the studio and cutting it live on the floor. Yes. That's when that's when the sound comes together. That energy that you can't replicate that. You cannot replicate it.

SPEAKER_01 39:13

We uh we were at the recording studio one time and this group came in, there's four of them, and they had that old lonesome harmony, gospel harmony. And they put them in a booth, each one in a booth, and it was terrible. And they couldn't understand why. And Ron came out and said, We'll we'll fix this. What studio is this? Uh Homestead Recording. So Ron pulled them all out and put them in a room with one mic in the center of them. It was hanging down, great big looking thing. And he said, now let's do it. And it make you it's making her on my arm stand up right now to this day because when they opened their mouths, they felt each other. And it was first take and it was nailed it to the I mean, it was great. And they said, We've never thought about doing that this way. And he said, Well, the rest of the album will. So when we got done, they wanted to know if they could go back and do the first two over and do it that way. Because, you know, I didn't know this till just a couple years ago. I always watched uh Tony Rice. And he would sing lead and he would back off. And and your nemesis up there, he would step in the middle. He never just stepped up to his mic, he always stepped to the middle, and I just found out why. He had to hear both both singing in each ear so he could blend. Yeah. And so that's you're talking about Crow. I'm talking about J.D. Crow. Yeah. And he would walk up and Doyle would, he would be on this side, and Tony would be on this side, and he would step in the middle, and you know, I don't have to tell you what that was. That was history.

SPEAKER_02 40:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

And and for our viewers that that might not understand this, what he what he's talking about is, and JD actually, he's still done this even with the new South. He done this every time I watched JD, they pretty much they this is how they usually do, they'd have three vocal mics in the middle of the stage. And like, if let's say for example, Tony Rice was singing in the middle mic, when it came time to sing harmony parts, Tony would move to the stage left mic, and Doyle, Lawson, Ricky, whoever's doing tenor, would be in the stage right mic, and Crow would come up in the middle to sing the third part, the baritone. Yep. So he could he could hear lead in his left ear, the tenor in his right ear. Yeah. And it does that that does make a whole more sense.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

I watched a little podcast and he told that. He said, he said that's the only way I could hear.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

And that and that's kind of like they done back in the old days with the one condenser mic. Yes. But they just done it with three, you know, single-directional mics.

SPEAKER_01 42:00

I've got some photos of my Uncle Verlin uh singing at WNVA. And they're singing around this great big square-headed RCA mic hanging from a pole, and they're all looking up at it and singing. And I'm I was thinking, how how funny would that be? What were they looking at? But actually what they were doing, they were they were pitching their voice toward the ceiling, and it would bounce down instead of singing toward the wall and bouncing back. And that was a that was a little help to get feedback away. That's the reason they hung it up.

SPEAKER_00 42:34

So So this tell me about this WMVA. Where where is this at?

SPEAKER_01 42:40

WMVA was uh it was a radio station when I was growing up. Um uh I can't think of his first name, Baker. Jim Baker. He was the only DJ. It was in a house in the basement. And it was up uh, you know where Shelton Weed is there in Wise. Uh it was up in Gaudon, it was in the house, which it uh it it was until it stopped, until it ended. But that's how we got our school bus schedule. You turned the radio on at 6 a.m. and Jim would come on and say, school has been closed for Wise County or on a snow schedule. That's the only way we had, because we had a party line phone.

SPEAKER_02 43:24

Right.

SPEAKER_01 43:24

We had a party line, you had to listen for your ring, two shorts and long, or you didn't answer it. Of course, we all answered it because we all listened in on everybody. Right. That's what we did. Right. But that's how it got started. Well, when I it went through a few hands, and the owners lived in Florida and they leased it out. And what we did, we me and Verlin went up and we bought our time. We bought it's ten dollars an hour, and you didn't do anything but walk in and sit down and hit flip the button, and you did whatever you wanted to do, your show.

SPEAKER_00 43:57

What did you and Verland call your show? I know we talked. About earlier.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

The big country and bluegrass show. That's just what we named it. Okay. And because Verlin, now Verlin was like me. Verlin, he grew up in bluegrass and played bluegrass all his life. But his his albums like yours here in the stacked up is all country. He had a country side of him that he didn't ever play, but he knew it.

SPEAKER_00 44:22

Because I always wonder like that. Because I it seems like I remember like um seems like I remember when I used to go watch Appalachian Strangers at the Country Cabin. Um, you know, Lawrence always sung all kinds of stuff. Oh, yes. It didn't matter. That that band was always cool to watch. If somebody asked for it, they he'd play it. Yeah, and and Kevin was so good to me when I was a kid too, about you know, showing me stuff on the banjo, Kevin Horn. And I used we used to go watch him all the time, and like seems like I remember like Lawrence would always sing uh country songs, like shuffles, and like Pick Me Up on your or Cora may have sung Pick Me Up on Your Way Down.

SPEAKER_01 45:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 45:04

And like, you know, she would walk that bass. And I remember Verlin playing the fiddle parts. I can remember that.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

Yes, he would.

SPEAKER_00 45:11

He he was uh even though he might not have plugged in with a drum setting a bass behind him, but he probably could have.

SPEAKER_01 45:18

He could have. You know. He um back in those days when well Verlan played with um Gary Sanders. Gary was a uh uh phenomenal musician. Um uh alcoholism took care of him, but but we uh Verlan played with him, and when he played, he played with his sister, Anita. We called her Gertie. Um and they were they were destined to go places. They were. And he always sung bluegrass. But we've had him sing country a couple songs, and uh as soon as you hear him sing country, you this is where you need to be. But he said, No, my roots are in bluegrass, and that's what he stayed in. But he played they played with he played with those, and then he played with uh Glenn Roberts and the Rolling Firestones. And he played in several bands at the same time, kind of what I'm doing. And he held it together. Um and he knew the songs and uh it it was just part of part of life. I didn't know uh to watch and take it in. I just thought, well, this is the way it is. You know, play music and uh work nine to five Monday through Friday, then you're off all weekend to play music and enjoy life. I didn't know it cost so much, you know. I didn't know bases and amps, amps, they're expensive.

SPEAKER_00 46:47

Like like it the whole saying goes, is we take uh we take uh $2,000 worth of gear, put in a $500 car to drive and play a $50 show.

SPEAKER_01 46:58

Yep, and get beat out of $30 of it because somebody didn't show up. That's true. Um I've had them nights too.

SPEAKER_00 47:05

Um the lowest I ever got paid one time, uh we went I went and played with this bluegrass band. Um my buddy Nikki Joe was in, and we went to this place called the Dew Wa Diddy Music Barn in Berea, Kentucky. And literally this place was a gas station building, an old gas station building. It was small. They had this soundboard that looked like it came from a studio in Nashville. It was like, you know, a hundred-channel soundboard and all this expensive equipment. Well, their their food menu was uh popcorn, French fries, and cheese. And that was it. That was the food menu. And I remember I walked away that night, I made $13.21.

SPEAKER_01 47:58

But was the music good?

SPEAKER_00 48:00

It was fun. I mean it was as well. As long as it was fun. We had we had a good time. There's there there's something happened I can't really tell on the podcast while we was there. There's a lot we can't tell. While we was there, but you know, it it it it was it was cool.

SPEAKER_01 48:14

We we played uh when I played with Chuck, Chuck would start, he would start booking us places. We would quit like in the winter, you know, when it was hard to get around and nobody really was doing anything in winter. A lot of places didn't have heat, so they'd clo well like the cabin. You know, the cabin, it's a big building, hard to heat, so they closed down like January through April. Um they he got us a show at this place over in Castlewood, we'd never heard of. And we drove over, and it's called the uh rain barrel. Large block building with one door and had door on end, and we pulled in, and the man come out and said, You the band, I'll open the door. He opened the door, he walked right in on stage, and it's covered with chicken wire. It's got wire, chicken wire all the way around it, you know, top ceiling to floor.

SPEAKER_00 49:06

You know, I saw that in the Blues Brothers movie when I was a little kid. This was true. And I always wondered if that was actually a real thing.

SPEAKER_01 49:13

And the drummer at the time, he said, I guess that's to keep us from uh flirting with all the pretty women, and the man turned around just as serious, and he said, No. He said, That's to protect you if you're no good. And we all just kind of looked at each other and looked at Chuck and said, What have you got us into? And just as they come on to announce this, the guy said, Now, if you want to win this crowd over, everything you know that's fast you play. Well, we were scared to death. So the first set for an hour and 15 minutes, it was every fast song we knew. We were playing hot legs and uh it was just anything we knew that was fast. And what happened was we wore them out. Oh. And it was, you know, there was drinking involved, uh, I think off-premises, but there's a lot of brown bags on tables. But uh, but we wore them down. Well, then when we come back for the second set, they start asking for waltzes and slow songs. They called it uh belt buckle rubbing music. We call it belly rubbing. Or belly rubbing. Yeah. Well, and we went we won them over. But when we left, none of us wanted to go back because you know, what if you have a bad night? I don't know if that chicken ward holds back rotten tomatoes and flying beer bottles. We didn't know, but it was exciting. You know, nothing happened. We had a good we had a good time, but still it it's you know. Um you deal with the back then you dealt with a lot of alcoholism. You had members that, you know, drank too much, and then there was there would cause a riff. And um, but when you've got a good group like like right now, none of us drink, we are all after the same thing to sound good. Right. And it's just every time we go up on stage and plug in, um, it's just I don't know. I d I I could sit there and play all night. And then there's some nights when I I really want to. When you're in the groove, you don't want to leave. No, no. I wouldn't care if all the people left and they turned the lights off. Just let us stay, you know, keep playing. Uh we used to do, you we used to uh, if it was a real good night, we would stay an extra hour and practice. You're already in the mood, you're already set up, and we would do new songs where nobody could hear, you know. And the cleaning staff, they would dance while they were mopping, and they let us do that. So that's how we used to do. That's how we used to do back in the day. That's a smart idea, that ain't a bad one.

SPEAKER_00 51:49

So you worked in uh law enforcement for a while.

SPEAKER_01 51:52

I did. Started at the uh Wise County Sheriff's Office in 1984. Wow. Um I worked there, I l I say I worked there until 2000. I worked under Bill Kelly and then under Ronnie Oaks. Uh did about seven years as an investigator. Used to work real close with with the boy over here. Uh uh his name was Back, his last name was Back. He was investigator at Letcher County, and we really teamed up where both our counties touched. Right. Um but I left in 2000 and went to UVOY's police department and worked there, became a lieutenant, and I retired in 2009. And I went home and I made it I made it about a week, and the honeydew list became four pages, so I went back to work. I went to work for Steve Blankenbecker, Virginia, Kentucky Communication, and what I did was I built police cars. I did the decals, the cages, the radios, antennas, and I was still involved, you know, but I did that for about uh ten years.

SPEAKER_00 53:03

I I know you you've told me, you know, you've had a lot of titles over the years, but would you say like you worked in law enforcement the longest?

SPEAKER_01 53:11

No, I drove a truck the longest. Oh, really? Uh I drove uh drove a coal truck and then I bought my own coal truck, drove it about four years, bought a tractor. You know, you can tractor you can haul more coal. Right. You know, more money. Right. Uh I hauled equipment. I was a heavy equipment hauler for about three years. I worked for uh Jesse Trucking. We c we hauled uh I've been to California and brought equipment back for for carter equipment. Wow We've been I was that job I was everywhere and it was a good job because you could only haul heavy equipment from an hour after sunset or sunrise to an hour before sunset. What they didn't tell you was when you were empty, they expect you to drive 24 hours a day. Right. But that was a good job. I I enjoyed, I enjoyed trucking. But I actually uh when I when I sold my truck, uh that's when I went to the sheriff's office. Okay. And it was on a fluke. I was looking for a job and I needed to work, and I'd been to a couple strip jobs. I really didn't want to go back on a strip job and run a hauler or loader or dozer. And my mother was a payroll clerk at for the county. And she knew the sheriff real good, Sheriff Bill Kelly. And he was hired. So he came in uh and gave me a job interview, and I walked in and seen him. Of course, my hair was on my shoulders at the time, you know. This was 84, that was the style.

SPEAKER_02 54:50

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 54:50

And I had a beard. And um he said, Well, you got the right size. He said, You do something with that hair, and I want you to go talk to the party and have them call me back a good rapport about you. So three hours later I walked back in his office and he said, Can I help you? And I said, Well, yeah, I did what you said, and he said, What happened? I went across the street and had a military haircut, had all my beard cut off except my mustache. It was my family reunion. So I just went to the family reunion, and eight of the nine party members was my uncles. So I just got up on the picnic table and told him, Y'all need to call Bill, I want a job. Right. So when I walked in, he said, Well, you didn't, I said, Yeah, I did, done talk tomorrow. Then the phone started ringing. And he said, Well, be here Monday morning. Go get you a gun and and go get you some uniforms. So Saturday I went and got uniforms, and Monday I walked in with a badge, and that's the way I started.

SPEAKER_00 55:57

You have to buy a young gun.

SPEAKER_01 55:58

You had to buy a young gun, you had to furnish your own car. Wow. But I got on a share program where I rode with somebody else for a while because uh two weeks after I started they got 10 new cars and we shared them. Oh. The next year they got 10 more and we all got our own car. Right. But yeah, when I first started, when I started uh in 84, the starting pay was uh I think eleven thousand seven hundred a year. But July the first, two weeks after I started, they passed the thing at state. We all got raised to sixteen thousand seven hundred. And I thought, well, I'm rich. Yeah, well, at the time that was. At the time that was well, it was decent money. It wasn't, you know. You don't it's like music. You don't put a uniform off if you're gonna get rich. Right, right. But I did that, uh, I enjoyed it. I miss it. I miss working with the people, helping people. Um would I go back? No, not in this day and time. No. Too many. Back then it was the good old boys, and you could talk your way into stuff and out of stuff, and and you treated people. My my boss, well, both sheriffs told me, treat the people how you want to be treated. Right. And, you know, I never got mad at a at a drunk because I knew it was alcohol talking, not not the person. Right. And I've had many of them come the next morning and say, man, I'm sorry you had to put me in jail last night. You know. But you treated me right. So that's that's the way I looked at it. And then you have some that don't want to don't want to pertain to the program, you know, you had to get a little rough with. Right. But there's that in everything. But I wouldn't no, it's just too it's too much paperwork. Them poor old boys now. Uh we didn't have paperwork back then. You signed a daily sheet and that was your day of paperwork. Right. So but I enjoyed that part of my life.

SPEAKER_00 58:00

I I thought everybody that any day they can do that job, that's a job I absolutely there's no way.

SPEAKER_01 58:05

It it's really, it's really hard. It's you have to you have to wear two faces. You know, sometimes you get so mad at some what somebody's done, but you have to understand you have to go by the letter of the law.

SPEAKER_00 58:18

You have to go by uphold the law.

SPEAKER_01 58:19

It's really hard. Yeah. It's it's hard from you, you know, you they've beat up a a female and she's really bad shape. You just want to go out there and you know, but you can't.

SPEAKER_00 58:30

You have to do what the if I if I had to go to a call and a guy beat up beat a kid up. Oh child. I I couldn't.

SPEAKER_01 58:40

They they put me and my friend Dale Stover on this team where we we were advocates for children. Um, and me and her played good cop, bad cop, and she was the greatest. She she could play she could play good cop so good, but one day we reversed it. And I didn't know she was so good at playing bad cop. She was great. And it she really helped me out a lot. She she said it's not the you know, it's not the person, it's something inside of them. Um and she kept me from out of jail a few times too. She was she was good.

SPEAKER_00 59:15

I know in the nursing world I've had a couple of inst uh instances when I worked uh like in emergency rooms and stuff, children coming through. Coming through, something's happened to them, and you want to just rip somebody's head off.

SPEAKER_01 59:31

Well, you know, there's there's a there's a line there. I don't know how you cross it, but uh would I ever want to be a nurse or work in the medical field? No way.

SPEAKER_00 59:41

I don't recommend it.

SPEAKER_01 59:42

Would you ever want to be a police officer? No way. But both jobs were just as dangerous. You didn't know what was gonna happen, you know, in that emergency room. Anything can happen. It's just one of those jobs for I think I liked it because of something different every day. I don't like doldrum, you know. I don't like doing the same thing over and over. I couldn't work in a pie factory. Number one, I'd be so heavy. I'd eat every pie coming out. Number two, it would be this it's it's like a conveyor belt, and I just that I always wanted to be outside. You know, they uh they offered me the jail. They they let me work in the jail two weeks and working dispatch two weeks. And uh I found out why. It's to give those people consideration for I got to be out here in the air and ride around, and they didn't have that option. So then you really you really cared about them. You know, if my dispatchers called and said, Can you make a tea run? Well, yes, sir, right now, ma'am. What how many in what flavor? Because they didn't have no way to get out, and I did. So you respect them. The jail too. The jail was the same way. They were of course they had the kitchen and stuff, but you know, there's only so many ways you can make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You know, so so we respect I respected them too. Yeah, I worked for some uh I worked with some comical fellers. Uh one in particular was a good friend of mine, Tuck Robinson. Tuck, uh he was police officer in Y S PD, and then he got out to the sheriff's department. He was one of my investigators. He he taught me a very valuable lesson, young on. We were working a case and we were hitting no doors, nobody home. It was just a half of a day of wasted time. And he said, we'll go to plan B. We went to Coburn and got two large bags of popcorn and two large slushies and went up on high knob and parked on the side of the road. And I said, What are we gonna do? He said, We're gonna eat our popcorn and drink our slushies. And we sat there for an hour. And when we got done, we solved the case. We had a moment to just clear our minds. We went right down to a house, walked in, and the guys were carrying the stolen stuff out the back door, and we arrested them right then, all over a bag of popcorn. So sometimes the hardest things are the easiest when you just, you know. But Tuck was he was a drummer. Um he played for a lot of he played for Gary Stewart.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:21

Yeah, you you told me a while back that you had uh you kind of got to to know Gary.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:28

Yes, yes, he was comical fella.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:31

Um, I'm a big Gary Stewart fan. Like, I mean that that man, I you know, I love a lot of a lot of singers, and you know, for me, George Jones is always gonna be number one, regardless, because George just does it for me. But my uncle Willie, who Willie Purry, who taught me my first chords on the guitar, I remember when I was a kid, he used to sing this song all the time. Because, you know, he he was a church piano player and he and he loved the Lord, you know, and he played in church, but he liked country music too. And he used to sing this little song called She Turned Our Bedroom into a Battleground.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:13

Well, it took me, you know, when I got into country music to figure out that that was a Gary Stewart song. Yes. So I've been listening to Gary, because Willie sung quite a few Gary Stewart songs. And from early age, you know, I always had that, I had them floating around, and when I got older and finally dove into Gary catalog and and learning, oh God, that that dude right there, gee.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:40

Gary uh Gary was two people. It was on stage, Gary. Mm-hmm. When he was he was the honky tonk king. I mean, he could he could just settle any crowd by his singing. And his vibrato and his voice was just it was just scary good. But then to go out and talk to him and just be around him, he was he was a comical. He reminds you of a piano player me you know of really good. Oh yeah. Being just laid back and he was uh it's just but that was a persona that when you go up on stage, that's you know, you he always caught it, you know, that Nashville didn't take him good. Nashville kind of wrote him off. Even though he was making hits, they just he didn't he didn't they didn't approve of his style. Frick, he didn't he didn't kiss no babies.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:31

Well, I I I know I I listened to uh and another another podcast I recommend to our listeners um is a guy by the name of Dylan Will, and he does one called The Drifting Cowboy. He done an episode on Gary Stewart and had Gary Stewart's daughter, um, one of his road managers, the guy that wrote the book about Gary, which is a super good book. I'm gonna I'm gonna order me a copy and read it. And uh one of Gary's guitar players, uh I knew his nickname is Boogie. And um they always talk told that he was, you know, he he went to Nashville and he recorded Nashville, but he wouldn't like he wasn't doing the thing like Roy A. Cuff and him, all them people doing, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:19

He didn't want to go by their guidelines.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:21

Exactly. He he he he was kind of an outlaw in a way.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:25

I think in the studio one time they they told him he needed to do this and this to affect his music much better, and he said, Well, this is the way I've been doing it, and this got me here, so I'm not gonna change it. And they said, Well, you know, you gotta change it, or he said, Well, then I'll see you. And he walked out. And he and he he was headfast, he he was steadfast in what he was doing, got him to where he was at, and he wasn't gonna change.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:51

Yeah, they they said he he really loved his like he was one of these guys, he was a music, like deep into music.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:59

Oh, yes. Oh, piano player, uh guitar player, he he he played a whole bunch of instruments nobody knew about. And when they put him on stage without anything with a microphone, he said he felt naked. Let me play something.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:15

I heard he was a really good uh child. I mean, I've I've seen a couple of videos, but they said his piano play was r was really something.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:22

He he was just uh he was fluid. And it and he could go from he could play you a classical tune and go right into uh uh Jerry Lee Lewis in Heartbeat and never miss a lick. And even uh I always liked it when he had those growling songs where he really had to push his voice and it was right on the money. Just but some of those well in fact coming over here, I listened to two. I mean, he you know he has a new album coming out in July. And uh I've already pre-ordered it because it's it's 10 or 20 songs never been heard.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:01

Um they were talking about that on that Drifting Cowboy podcast. Uh there's a song on there called Fourth of July, I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:09

Uh there's one on there about uh the the uh the steel bars behind the steel bars again. You can you can let you can listen to that.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:19

I'll definitely be a listener to it, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:22

It's good stuff. It's Gary, it's true.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:24

And I mean I mean, I like, you know, I like empty glass and I like she's acting single and drinking thing. But for me, Gary Stewart, I love like whiskey trip. Yes. Um the one my Uncle Willie used to sing, she turned our bedroom into a battleground.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:43

And then uh he's been over to WMMT. Has he? There's a sp there's a there's a recording from on the Apple Shop where he did in inside. Wow. It's amazing. You need to watch it. You can just pull up Apple Shop and put in Gary and you'll find it. He's just sitting in a chair in the studio, and he goes into discussion. It's just it's just wonderful to see him. I'm I know this. Tuck told me uh him and Tuck are real close. In fact, they they they played a show somewhere far off, and they didn't want to ride the bus back. So they rented a car and they drove to Wise, and they were going to play at the end zone. That was a popular nightclub there in Wise. And they got here like three o'clock in the morning, and uh, so they slept in a car and they got out to do something, didn't have nothing to do, so they went up to uh a tattoo place and got matching tattoos on their arms. And a real good friend of mine, Tim Cox, he's he's the best photographer I've ever known in my life. He comes driving by and sees them sitting there, so he gets out and takes a picture. And that picture is it doesn't have to say anything or do anything, you just look at it and you can just imagine. Um that was the era when I worked for Tom Countis. Uh they were all friends. Right. They all kind of hung in the same, you know. Uh so it was the same, you know. They there was hippie in them, but it didn't it it wasn't coming out like you know, like we thought of hippies wearing the shirts and they were just they were still we call them long har long hires. My papa called them long hairs, and they and they took it good. I did too. I thought, I won't let my hair grow long, I won't be a long hair.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:34

I know they said he liked the Almond Brothers. He was really into the Almond Brothers.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:38

He really did like the Almond Brothers, he liked Leonard Skinner's. Um he liked he liked harmonies, and he could hear harmonies. Uh he had a knack for hearing a harmony that wasn't there, and he'd put it there, and then you know. But his vibrato was just um a lot of people think, well, that's not control. Oh yes. Oh yeah. That's a lot of control.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:05

And there's a lot of singers that have that vibrato in every in everywhere it's that's a talent.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:13

One of the best bluegrass singers in my mind, and he and he was somebody that I knew, got to know, was lucky, fortunate enough to hang around him. And to me, this guy does the perfect vibrato that is just right, is Mike Lilly, the banjo player. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:33

Yes, you're exactly right.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:34

With Mike, with Mike Lilly, he had that just that it it I can't explain it, but if you listen to Mike sing a song, you can hear it. And it was like the perfect vibrato. It wasn't like over the top.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:46

Well, you know what you've if you listen to some of his recordings when he's singing harmony, you can pick his voice out because he's got that on the end of his harmony, which just adds to the other harmonies. So we could talk, we could talk music for 12 days.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:03

Oh Lord, yeah. I can talk about that one because he was a big influence on me on the banjo. Especially uh when him and Harley Allen played together. Some of that stuff they done. God almighty.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:14

My biggest influence probably was my dad. My dad, he uh uh in his later years he had an old banjo. Um, it was an old um open back banja. He played with two fingers, but he did rolls with two fingers.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:34

I've seen people do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:36

And to what and and I could play with three fingers.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:41

Believe it or not, when I started first started playing, I did play with two fingers. I wore three picks, but just used two fingers till I figured out how to put that third one in there.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:51

Well, my dad, he uh I listened to him and it was so good. It was it was kind of like a claw hammer, but still kind of like a roll. Had movement. Yes. And I I really want I'm gonna learn this. And my mind would not get rid of that third finger. It would come up there and want to do something, and and it's really frustrating. Now that I'm older and dad's gone, um, I find myself it's getting easier. And I'm thinking maybe that's just the way he did it because it was easier for him, and he he made it sound like a role. It's really good. I've got some recordings. I like this. It's just you know, it's just easy to listen to. But he was always and he was the comical one in all the groups. Uh he'd always pull something on you. Uh huh. Um, you had to not turn your head because he'd get you. Um But I mean, just growing up, I thought, well, this is what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to have music in our lives. And now I know why. Uh it's to me it's an escape. Um I could be having a really bad day, and I could walk up on stage and and it's just gone. You know. Saturday, I know Saturday was gruesome for us, for for us three. But you know, at the end of the day, um I went to bed with a smile on my face because it had been a really good day. We had a good show at Blackie, we had a good show at the cabin. Of course, then I had to get up at 4 30 Sunday morning and drive to Roanoke to a graduation for my granddaughter. That was a little hard, but I made it. We made it. Um So how how many kids do you have? I have two children. I have a daughter, she's uh Well, she's carded everywhere we go. She's a little bitty thing, and she looks like she's 21, and she's actually 48. But it's so funny to see her carded. Because she does. She looks like she's 18. Wow. Uh I have a son that's 42. He lives in Norton. She lives in Fredericksburg. Um and I have a granddaughter of my by my son, and I have a granddaughter by my uh by my son's wife, stepgranddaughter, but they're just granddaughters. She's she she graduated yesterday from Holland's University. And the other one is um a whole ten. Um she's the one that named me Pappy. Oh I named her uh Tater Buck. Oh, I got you. My my wife, her, her grandfather, they named her Kitty. And he didn't like it. He wanted them to he wanted her to name Lucy. Well, they named her Kitty. So he never called her Kitty. Kitty Wales? He called her Tootie Buck.

unknown 1:14:47

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:47

And that was her name until his death was Tootie Buck. And so it stuck with me. So I named my granddaughter Taterbuck. Her name is Max Avery, but I I named her Taterbuck. And it fits her because I just call her Bud now. Right. If I knew they were so much fun, I'd had them first. I would have. How long was you and Miss Kitty together? Um we were married 31 years. Wow. Um she had a uh I came home, she had a massive heart attack. She had had cancer twice. Um she beat it both times. But I think some of the some of the cancer stopping drugs that she was on may have weakened her heart. Uh I don't know, we never knew. But um, she's been gone eight years in July, and I miss her every day. But I'm the lucky one. I got 31 years. You know, uh always thought I don't want to grow old. I don't well, I'm proud of getting old. Because there's a lot of people that didn't get the chance to get old. So so I'm I I can't my mind says, yeah, Randy, get up there and fix that leak on the roof, and my body says, Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead, I'll show you. There's been times when I um when I appreciate you all helping me sit an amp up on the stage or carry it out to the car because you know I still have some bad days with my back, but I'm getting there. I'm working on it.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:24

Well now, one thing about though, you do dress out of all of us, you probably which I know Gary's he's got his his his luxury jackets and things, but now I I believe though you you got a little edge though.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:36

I push, I I push Gary. I make if I buy something, well I fact I've sold him a couple.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:42

Well see, Randy here's got his own personal uh tailors that custom make his stuff. It's called TMU. TMU, yeah. And uh they uh they they size up everything. And Amazon Amazon.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:55

Yeah, Amazon, they've helped out a little bit on the Western shirts. But I always thought um you just like to I like to look sharp on stage. Um I don't do it to stand out, I just feel like uh well I'll tell you why. Back in '67 or '68, we went to a festival, country music festival. George Jones, Merle Haggard, the Osborne brothers. Um, I believe uh Tanya Tanya Tucker was there. Well, George was No Show. That was his nickname, No Show Jones. Merle Haggard came out in a strangers. And they all had on a green shirt with a dark green jacket and those little bow evil ties, uh. Little V with diamonds in it. And then of course Merle was dressed a little bit different. And that was just to me, that was uh Bill Monroe. His band wear suits with ties. And it just, to me, that stood out, you know. That's the year uh the Osman brothers were gonna were scheduled to play. Well, they didn't come out at the time they had allotted, and they didn't come out and tell us anything. They just said we're we've made a change, we're gonna put this band on first.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:17

What year would this have been?

SPEAKER_01 1:18:19

Around the late 60s, or maybe early 70, maybe 70. But anyway, they brought the other band out. Well, nobody got mad, but they just weren't wondering, you know. Right. These two old station wagons pulled in. I mean, rough looking, pulled up behind the stage. All these guys got out with their arms in a sling, with uh white tape around their forehead, and it just looked like a bunch off of a movie uh about hospitalization.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:53

Well, it looked like they escaped from a hospital.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:56

And it was the Osman Brothers. Huh. They hadn't had an accident in the motorhome. Wow. And they had to get to the show, so Sonny walked across the street to a car lot, and you know, what's the biggest thing she got here? And they said, Well, we got two station wagons, so he just bought them. And they drove them down there and made the show. Uh, it was uh Ronnie Reno was with them. Um that's when they went to the band to the drums and electric bass. Yeah. And their sound, um, they did the Bluegrass Express. And doing it live, of course, I played that every week, you know, at the radio station. But to hear it live is just different. Yeah, it's just, you know, it's nothing like live. No. There's been times that I've seen people have a record and it's a really good record. And you go out to hear them live, and they've done it live, and it's so much better. It's because they've got used to it. Of course, sometimes it's worse.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:58

Well, I started to say there's there's a bluegrass artist uh that uh really good singer. And uh don't put the emphasis to it anymore. No, I know he's got good music. But he when he does his albums, he duh uses like top shelf studio players. And there's nothing wrong with that. Nope. But when he goes out and plays live shows, he can't reproduce that. Because he can't hire a band to reproduce it. Yep. And it just kind of it puts a it it puts a strain on him, I believe.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:37

When I was growing up in my 20s, one of the biggest songs out was Here's a Quarter by Travis Tritt. And everybody in school was singing it. Everybody was flipping quarters to each other. Here's a quarter, call somebody it cares. Um several years ago, he was over at Bristol at the Rhythm, not Rhythm Roots, but in the the Sunshine Festival where they have the hot air balloons. And he put on an amazing show. It was full of life, and and he came up and did Here's a Quarter. Except he changed the way he worded it. And everybody got mad because everybody was trying to sing along with it, and he had and he told us, he said, when you sung something for 297,000 times, sometimes you got to change it up a little bit. And some guy in the crowd said, That ain't what I paid for. And he might got a little contested. But but I was kind of agreeing with the guy. That's the way I want to hear it.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:41

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:42

Um That's the way that I that's why I bought it. That's why I kept listening to it. That's why I wore it out, and then tear somebody. It's like somebody doing karaoke. Uh they're not doing it like the record is. And you know, it's nice, but you're not gonna buy it. Right. So I I like it to be, you know, like Doyle Lawson. When Doyle Lawson walks on stage, he's gonna do the song just like he did it in 1965. Because it was right then, it's right now. And I think he's coming back. I think I read something where he's gonna come out and play a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:17

Yeah, he's gonna be at Rudy Fest, I think, this year, come to do like a a show or two.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:21

He is uh he's another super nice uh we played at the Appalachians, Home of the Appalachians in Kentucky, and they was on the show with us, or we were on the show with them. And they we come out and played on the Reedy Creek band, then they come out and played, and we went out and watched, and I I know uh my mouth was wide open because it's just the talent. And they had the same instruments that everybody else did. It's just how they can work it.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:51

Do you remember who was playing with Doyle at the time when you saw him? Or what year it was? Uh Daly. So it was Jamie Daly, Barry Scott. Barry and Dale Perry on the banjo or Terry Walkham?

SPEAKER_01 1:23:08

No. No, Terry wasn't there. Dale. And and there was a young guy on the bass, uh, and he wasn't a bass, it was a cello, I mean a little smaller one. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:21

Oh man, it was sounded I bet Darren Beechley.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:25

But they're uh but their harmonies, especially on the gospel. I tell you, you can't beat it. It's it's better than it's better than cornbread with butter. Good stuff. Well, let me ask you a question. I'll flip it around. What do you think about today's country? Well does it all sound the same to you? Yeah. I I get that. I hear I hear that, and then I also hear it myself. It sounds, it kind of runs together. It's it's soulless. I can't tell you this I can't tell you who's doing stuff because I guess it's just so many singers. A lot of them sound alike.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:04

The only ones that I think, you know, today that I like is, you know, the younger fellas like Zach Top. Oh my. You know, Jake Worthington is another good one. Zach, you can pick out them them two boys right there, and there's a there's a couple more I'm forgetting. But they're you know, I like what they're doing, but now there's a lot of that stuff. Country music went through a real bad period there from like 2012 to up to just a few years ago. I I call it tractor rap.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:38

I mean they call it uh the Nashville politic politics. It was really bad. Yeah, that tractor that that's a good tractor rap, road country. I mean, just well, I watched uh I watched the video of the night of Jake Warrington doing George's song.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:57

Oh yeah. It's scary, isn't it? And and the cool thing about that is which I if you I may not know this from you might, because you like me, you deep you deep dive. That recording that he done, they've got Tom Killen playing still. Yes, which was George Jones still playing from 1981 to 2013, I think. He played with George for a long time.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:22

And when you get somebody like that, you don't just get the talent, you get the tone. Because what they played on the record, that's what their signature was, and that's what they're gonna give you. And it's he's just he's just amazing. And you know, a lot of people will sing a cover song and they change it to fit their needs, and sometimes it's not a good thing. But Jake, he he could own he could own that song.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:48

Oh yeah, definitely. And I and really he's probably the only one I know that's actually done a cover that's released it and it's you know gained the traction.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:59

Oh, I've I bought a CD, uh uh just a one-song CD, his um Hello Cruddy Day.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:06

Yeah, oh yeah, that's a cute little song.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:10

Uh that's just catchy. And then he had um uh what's her name came up and sung on it with him?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:17

Um Miranda Lambert, I think, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:20

And they had their harmonies is great.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:22

I like that that last record that that or it may have been the one before his latest, but he released a record. It's got a song um not like I used to, I think is what it's called, but it starts out Tanger A 10 in my Amy was a favorite song. He can roll those.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:44

Yeah. He's uh uh same as Zach Top. Zach Top, he's got that clean old sound. I know he sings high, yeah. But I saw some a whole bunch of videos. He started out bluegrass.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:59

Well, I I met him one time, a long time ago. When he was a young boy, he was probably 16 years old. He came with a band, we was playing this festival, and he came with them and he is playing guitar. He got there and he was doing Tony Rice stuff, you like Freeborn Man. He was he was a monster picker then.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:21

Oh, he he can make a tele talk too.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:23

And like, yeah, and and he was a great singer then too. I mean, he was doing he was incredible.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:29

I watched the video the other night. He was he must have been about sixteen or seventeen, and he did uh Freeborn Man and he he rolled it. Yeah he rolled those notes and the the crowd, you can tell by the crowd. When the the crowd knows. They do. They know it's you know that that makes you feel good and it makes you try that much harder.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:51

So And I know I know a lot of people in Bluegrass, you know, they they they're not really accepting of Billy Strangs. But I'm gonna tell you right now I like old Billy. And I and I'm glad Billy's doing what he's doing because I'm gonna tell you something right now. You know, as much as we love some of the the old old timers of bluegrass music and they'll be legends forever just simply because they lived it, sang it, played it. But you gotta give that kid credit. He's he's packing stadiums out.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:22

He's rejuvenating the old sound.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:24

Playing bluegrass. And and then people that go there and listen to that, you know, yeah, Billy probably jazzed it up a little bit, but them folks are gonna leave there and they're gonna go home and they're gonna seek the originals.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:36

And they're gonna discover flat scrubs, they're gonna discover JD Crow, Bill Monroe, Ralph Stanley. All because they went and saw Billy play at a stadium and he done, you know, a 45-minute set of bluegrass covers. I mean, it's just you know, it opens doors.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:52

He's he's just keeping it alive. Yeah. He's um, you know, there's not many left that's keeping it alive. No.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:01

Um and you know, I I thought the other day if I and and I might be wrong, but there's not many, if any, of the original OG bluegrass guys left.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:17

No.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:18

The only the only one I can even think of is Dale McCurry. Dale McCurry, Doyle Lawson. You know, and and I mean Doyle, you know, and Dale might even you might even call them, which I mean Dale played with Bill Monroe. And Doyle played banjo for Jimmy Martin early on, so maybe. But I mean, that's about the only two I can think of. I can't think of nobody else. You've got um Yeah, we lost both the Osman brothers. Yeah, both the Stanleys are gone, J.D. Crow's gone, Tony Rice is gone. Um, you know, of course, Bill Monroe and Jimmy Martin passed away some time ago. Uh both the McReynolds brothers are passed away. I mean, I I can't think of any. I really can't.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:06

Well, it's just you know, it's it's like Bill Monroe said, it's a lost art. We've re found it and it'll be lost again. And someone else will re find it. And maybe he's true. It's um I enjoy listening to the old um The First Cuts at Bristol. Um The Carter family. It was so simple. And the words, but but you listen to the words and it's still a story. Right. And they told a story, and that's what got a hold of you. Uh if you tell a good story in a song, you've you've got you've sold them. If they can feel that and see that, they'll buy it. Yeah. And that's how you make your living is selling, you know, selling records. Us musicians, we make our living at a job and then we play on the weekends. That's it.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:59

Yeah, I I make I make my living so I can buy me a hot dog for a play.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:03

No, you make a living for looking around where I'm sitting, you make a living by hanging, having these wall hangers of all these instruments. I'm looking right now, there's like 12 cases sitting here, and I'm pretty sure there's something in every case. Well, you know, I got a few little things around here. In fact, uh for his birthday last week, I got him a shirt that says I have too many guitars, said no one.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:28

Well, you know, I mean they all they uh and well the thing about it is all of them's got a story of how I got 'em.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:35

That's the thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:36

And they're not it's not as there may be one in here I can think of, maybe one or two pieces where it was as simple as I just like my I my base, I just ordered it. But every one of those banjoes, there was some kind of story of how they come about. Something.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:56

Well, there's always uh uh you know, somebody came to the house one time and said, Why don't you sell some of this? I said, I can't. Why? Just sell that old guitar there. Well, I can. That that belonged to Chuck Johnson. And it means a lot to me. Well, you don't play it. No, I don't, but I got it. Right. You know, and you don't. So it's staying right there.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:18

I've got a I've got a 12-string Glenn Campbell model ovation in that case right there that I got it. I picked it up for nothing, and I wouldn't take a million dollars for it.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:29

There's just always uh my my grandpa, he was uh he was seven-time national fiddling champion. What was his name? How Howard White. He he got his start uh up on White Top Mountain. They used to have a festival. And um Miss Roosevelt came one time and listened to him. But he had won seven championships. He played left-handed. He played it with it down here in a fold of his arm, not under his chin. I've seen people do that. He played the old Tommy way. Um and he passed his fiddle on to me. Well, I can pick up a mandolin and a guitar and a banjo and a bass, and I can do my thing. I would used to, if when I was home, my son lived at home with me and my wife. Uh, if I wanted to watch a race on Sunday and they wanted to watch a movie, I would just go in and get the fiddle and walk in the living room, and they both would hit the porch. And if the door opened, I'd play a couple little licks on it, and I got to watch the race because it was the cats would run.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:37

Well, I I was telling Brent on the first episode, and I didn't think nothing about this during that, but his dad, Alan Ambergy, uh, the fiddle I got was one of his. Because I got a fiddle one time and Brent gave it to me. And I brought it home, and I sat there and was trying to fool with it, and uh my little cat who uh passed away here a while back, Mickey D, came up and bit me on the arm. Telling you And I was like, Well, that's all I need, and I put her in the case. I said, That's that's all I need to know.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:08

Uh Saturday night I heard a good I heard a good song with a good fiddle in it, and you'd never believe who was playing the fiddle. Who? Clark Bailey. Wow. He played the fiddle. Little things you don't know. Uh it's like Verlin. Uh to me, all my life, Verlin played the fiddle. That's all I know him by. Well, we were at a we were at a festival, and this band was coming up on stage, and their um their mandolin player broke his hand on the bus. He was holding on the door, and somebody shut the door and it it broke two of his bones in his hand. They they took him to the hospital, so he was out. And one of them said, Verlum, will you come up here and play with us tonight? And he said, Sure. So I thought, well, they're having two fiddles. So I went around to the stage to where I could see, and and Verlum come out with a mandolin. They're tune the same. And I'm thinking, You well, he burned it up. Afterwards, I said, I didn't know you played a mandolin. He said, It's just a violin without a bow. I mean it really. They're tune the same. He said, he said, only cheating thing is it's got frets and the fiddle don't, so I don't have to guess where I'm at on the mandolin. But I didn't know that that was could be versatile. And so I said, Well, I'm in there now because I can't play neither one. You know, the chords don't. That's just like a bass. If you tell me, uh, well, I know the chords, but if you tell me it goes to a B flat over to uh this now, I don't I don't know. Sometimes I get flustered, I don't really know what you're saying, so I just say play it. And I can hear it. And and you think I know what I'm doing. I I don't know what I'm doing. I just I'm just doing what I hear. Sometimes when you feel it, it just comes out of your hands. That's hard. I mean, you know what I'm saying, but sometimes when the feeling is there and a drive is there, it's just it's natural. If I turn around and I'm talking to Richard, if we're cutting up during a song, that's because it's just flowing. Now, any other time, you know, I can't be a talk and I'm have to think what I'm doing. But sometimes you can just turn around and it's just kind of like a second nature. You you're the world's best at it. Anytime during any song, I can cut up with you and you'll s you'll carry on the conversation, and you're still doing those hot fiery licks. And you're just you're s I I I'm the lucky one to get to learn to to to get the chance to play with you. No, sir. I'm lucky to get played with the music. Well, we're both lucky.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:44

We're lucky that we're that we can gel and I'm just an old, just an old fella that loves to play music and I love the people I get to play it with. That's about all I I that's that's that's the best part about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:56

We d I was telling you about those music festivals, going out through the campground. If you carried a bass, everybody wanted you to play because nobody had a bass. Nobody carried a bass around. So I was a kid with a bass, and uh but you could kind of pick and choose who you were playing with, and what you did, you picked the best sound in the group. And then you'd get some really good sounds. Uh you know, this little this little old skinny bony girl, Swanny, she she looked like she needed to be fed. She's so bony, pitiful thing, but she's pretty, but she didn't talk. One night she came up with a bunch of us jamming and she started playing the fiddle, and she was she just blew us out of the water. So we asked her what her name was. Allison Krause. And she was doing the same thing we were doing. She was going through the campgrounds.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:49

Where is this what festival is it?

SPEAKER_01 1:37:50

Wise County Fairgrounds. They had two festivals and it was big names. The the guys that put it on, they they put the money out there to get the they wanted it big, and it uh we had Tom T. Hall. I like Tom T. In fact, Tom T stayed at one of the promoters' houses that night, and we got to jam with him, and he's he's like your uncle. He was just a laid back fella that he Yeah, he was he was just a regular old Joe. But but he held the guitar under his chin. Yeah, he played weird, he did. And but he's he he could play. Um uh boxcar Willie was there. Um I bet that was cool. Uh all the big names, Bill Monroe, Ricky Skaggs, um uh it was just a really good festival. But as with everything else, at that time when they saw you were making a lot of money, then they demanded a little more money. And it just everybody worked their self out. You know, you couldn't afford to promote it anymore. But those two times, that campground that night, I let's see, I was still playing when the sun came up. Me and my friend, we he had a guitar and I had that doghouse bass, and we were still playing at sun up. There was still you it dwindled down, but you'd hear the music and you just walked in and you know, started playing. And and there was some some people that should have been professional. But they had a date, you know. He said, I work, you know, I one guy said I'm a I work in a body shop Monday through Saturday, so I don't have time to play. And was doing he had a he had a D28 Martin that looked like the a tractor run over it, but had a sound like you never heard. Man, that thing sounded so good. And it's just some of the things you run into.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:43

That's it. That's kind of what my thing is here with this podcast is I want to, because I know a lot of great players, great singers, great songwriters, that you know some of them I just feel like they don't get the credit they deserve. So I wanna You're giving recognition to some of us. I want to try to give them a little spotlight, you know. Man, this is this has been a great episode.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:08

Hey, I I have just I I am truly overwhelmed that you would even ask me.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:13

Buddy, what you what you you this right here, people gonna love this. I know I I always listen back to every episode I record and and to make sure, you know, I er the audio and stuff's good, but I just like I like listening to it again.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:27

Well, I've listened to both yours twice, and you're just you know, you're just a natural. You really are. You just you come over like it sounds like old school. It sounds like you've been doing it. You know, when I first started in radio, um I was really having a hard time. I was for about two years. And one day uh I told Virl and I said he said, You don't talk enough. I said, I I don't feel comfortable. I said, You do the talking, I'll put the I'll do the knobs and the you know all the buttons. And he said, You gotta think of this. You're sitting talking to me. So just talk to me.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:08

That's what we do here.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:08

We just Well then the next thing I know, he he couldn't shut me up. And of course when I got when when I got when I we went to do the Poncho and Lefty show, uh Ray, he he had never he'd been on podcasts like for ball games and uh he uh walked in like he'd been in Nashville for 10 years. He just took me under his wing. I was taking him, but he took me, and we hit it like peanut butter and jelly. Uh if I didn't know something, I knew he was he knew it. Right. His knowledge, my knowledge can had a hole in it, because his was his must have been a 55-gallon drum because he would come up and say, Oh, in 1962 they did that first on the decal label, then they moved over to RCA. And well, I can tell you who it was, and that's the end of my knowledge. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:00

But he was so Well, me, you know, I just I just using all the stuff I've learned over the years being in music and you know, me studying and reading about this person and that person and and all this, and and I've been a podcast listener probably for 10 years. Like I don't really watch TV. I love to listen to podcasts. I listen to all kinds of podcasts.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:22

You know, if we and you had had Google when we was back 10 or 12, we would be awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:29

I've been dangerous.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:31

I could have been a master ace car mechanic if I'd had Google back then.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:36

Dad, my dad is is uh uh become one heck of a mechanic, and uh it's all thanks to YouTube. The man that's the man's put in transmissions, he does all kinds of stuff. He just rebuilt the front end of my truck. Thank you, Dad. And I mean uh he does it all it m YouTube.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:55

Well, I I I will tell you this, I hate to say this, I'm I'm almost 67, be 67 in about two weeks. And I had to get on Google to see where the oil filter was on a Cadillac. I had climbed under the car for five times and it just didn't have one. And I went, I finally said, This is awful. I've got to Google this, and I went and Googled it, and it's on top. You unscrew a cover and it's on a spring, and it's a little thing, it's my lawnmower filter's bigger. But I wouldn't have known that. And I wouldn't have thought to check it on top of a of a car. And then I laugh and think, oh, that was easy, and I don't tell nobody, but of course I just did. But you know, you learn things, and that's how you learn. That's how you learn. I I don't care, I don't care to teach anybody anything that I can help them with as long as they uh remember it. Right. Right. Uh my son's bad to remember it and then forget it. I showed you how to do that once before. Well, I forgot. Those things just need to burn in there. It's like a run on a guitar. You learn this little run and it's just amazing. And all of a sudden it's in your file. That's it. And you come back. I notice when we get out and you turn your guitar on, you've got some little runs that you always do. As soon as you do them, it makes me want to let's play. Right now. Let's do it right now. Because it's just a good little lick, and I would know you're picking anywhere. I would.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:30

Well, buddy, I can't wait. We got a uh we actually this weekend uh folks, me and Randy and Gary and the rest of the country troubers will be playing at Marty and Susie's place.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:43

Lafayette, Tennessee.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:44

In La Follette, Tennessee, and I'll share that on my page.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:47

Good home cooking.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:49

Oh, yeah, they got great food.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:50

They got a good friendly atmosphere, nice dance floor. Yes. Great people. They're absolutely wonderful to us.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:57

We'll um I'll post that on the on the podcast page, and you can also go find Gary Joseph on uh Facebook, and he keeps all of our show dates and stuff. We've got a website, I think it's Gary Joseph and the Country Troubadours.com.com, yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:14

Yeah, we uh we look forward to LaFale. I a lot of people say, well that's just too far to drive. Well, yeah, it's a little ways to drive, but it's uh not as far to drive to Dollywood. Mm-hmm. Uh it's not, you know, I can I enjoy the drive anymore because I listen to music. Yeah. I have got I went and got XM.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:38

We might we might have to carpool that when I think Honey's got to work that day.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:41

Uh-oh. Well, we can fix that up. I've got a big enough vehicle. Of course you have went you have gone uh modular on us. You you have you don't carry the big amp.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:53

Oh no, no, no. I've I've got a little little high-tech with the old Helix.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:58

Folks, he came to play at the little LeStecan Opera one night, and he had a satchel, and looked like he had a um uh saxophone. And he's got this little bitty guitar that ain't got no head on it, and it's a little tiny thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:14

On my little Steinberger.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:15

And he plugs up to some floor pedals with no amp, and he blows us away. He has got smart. We of course now back in the day, we both had to Well now.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:28

I've got a blackface fender twin reverb over in that blue road case.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:33

If you want to help me lug her, we'll lug her. No, I'll pass. Well, I used to play when I played with Chuck, I played through a Sig Erson, had two fifteen, weighed about 300 pounds. We had to put wheels on it about three times it'd wear the wheels at. And I thought, and that's the way you played. No, them days, no. You've got me down to HD 500 that weighs about 31 pounds, and I'm happy, I'm a happy man.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:58

We we we got smart. And if you want to see this fella right here throw down that bass, you come to Marty and Susie's place and we'll fall at Tennessee this Saturday night. If you don't dance, 7 o'clock, we'll guarantee you we'll have your legs moving. And you can watch him play that bass through that HD 500 Heart Camp. And you can watch me and the rest of the country troubadours. We do some good old classic country music. But right now, this this young man over here is looking a little malnourished, and I happen to have in my possession a fine pot of soup beans.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:32

And I'm smelling them, and my billy- that's my belly growling. That's not the cat on the mic. That's my belly because I can smell them. I can smell some cornbread. Seems like I smell maybe some fried taters and it probably is.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:48

And uh macaroni and tomatoes. Honey's helping me out there where we're doing the podcast with the cooking.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:54

If you want to, about 12 o'clock, we'll do another podcast because I can I can sit in there at the table at least till then and eat.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:03

We gotta keep our figures up. We got to. Listen, I I got a I got a big gut to feed.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:08

Listen, if it wasn't for us, they couldn't sell big clothes. That's it. We've got to keep somebody working somewhere. That's exactly big and tall.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:19

Brother Randy, I love you, buddy. Thank you so much for doing this. I thank you for asking me.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:25

I'm very honored and do anything to help you out. You're you're one cool dude, and I'm I'm the better off for knowing you and being your friend. I appreciate it immensely. You're welcome to the holler anytime. Well, I know where it's at. You do. If I smell soup beans, I'll stop in.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:44

Folks, thank you so much for tuning in with us today. I hope you enjoy this episode. Go check out our Facebook page, Five String Holler Podcast. Remember, our podcast airs on all the platforms Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, Amazon Music. Tell your friends about us, and as always, thank you for your support. And we'll see you next time on the Five String Holler Podcast. Thank you.