Probably listening to Stevie Ray Vaughan…I didn’t really start playing guitar until I went to college at East Carolina University. Some cats in my dorm had guitars, and I was like, that’s cool. You know, man, I want to try that. That’s what they were listening to, electric blues. Stevie Ray, Clapton and Jimmie Hendrix.
About that time I was exposed to my uncle, Landon Walker…a jazz bassist from Florida. He was sending me tapes of a radio show, which had all this Texas blues stuff. The older stuff, T-Bone Walker, Lighting Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb to the whole gamut— Little Son Jackson, B.B. King, Louis Jordan, and on and on, Son House, Muddy…
What happened first was I
moved to Florida. Moved down there to be with him. And started digging into the music there. I was just starting—I didn’t know what the hell I was doing at all. But I did know that I needed to go somewhere where music was woven through the city. And Austin was one of the spots I thought of.What takes you to Nashville?
Well, I started working about two years ago with Gary Nicholson, who produced my last CD. He’s a world, world-class writer and producer. And we just became fast friends. Going up there in the last few years, meeting people and, of course, doing the record opened up a lot of new friends…
And change is always good. I wanted to get out of my comfort zone. There’s other reasons too. It’s more of a central hub. It’s a lot easier to get to (tour stops). I am on the road a lot right now, and, in an eight hour radius, you can get to a lot of places. Another big reason is my Mother. She lives in Ashville, which is 275 miles away. So, I can get in my car, go see her, and my Dad, and my sister, and my niece. And, you know…I’m from that part of the world.
