Late on a Friday and the street was a mess of straw hats and glitter yokes...Bar hoppin' hick wannabes shovelin' coal in a glow spittin' furnace. I descended down Broad, 18 and green, black boots on the city sidewalk... past Earnest Tubb's Record Shop down to Tootsie's Orchid Lounge to Robert's... 47 bands playing "Make Up and Faded Blue Jeans" way too fast... killer rockabilly trios..upright bass cats with motor oil chops shakin' their curls like Jerry Lee...
Hillbilly Disneyland to an Oklahoma kid trying to chew gum like George Strait... Studied the songs of Dean Dillon, Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam...soaked up with whiskey the country classics...Hank, Lefty, Bob Wills & The Texas Playboys...Scraped up...bought trailors, vans, PA's, recording time...Start bands...leave bands...start new bands...Work every dancehall, dive, honkytonk and juke joint in Oklahoma 10X over...Watch The Doors at least 40 times...spill cheap red wine on every white shirt I'd own...reciting Wilde...blarin' down the highway to Car Wheels, Heartbreaker, GP...eyes closed...swinging hard as I could...livin'...learnin'...Headed west down 40 in '05...made a record, wore out The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and read East of Eden...never felt more at home than the three years I lived in Los Angeles...Taking chances...trusting too much...spent a lot of time and money on "experience"...learned "perfectionist" and "artist" are contradicting terms... Wrote a record about California and recorded it in about 24 hrs in a beautifully dingy basement studio in Nashville, TN...
And things are changing fast and everyone's just trying to hold on. I've realized music is being made mostly for people who don't listen to it... disposable...irrelevant. I feel an obligation. We have to re-instill and demand value in this occupation. Music must inspire, uplift, console, befriend, make you want to take risks...break...expose...face...things... Passion is a commodity....and you can't sell it if you don't have it. Staying the course... -TJ
Hillbilly Disneyland to an Oklahoma kid trying to chew gum like George Strait... Studied the songs of Dean Dillon, Merle Haggard, Dwight Yoakam...soaked up with whiskey the country classics...Hank, Lefty, Bob Wills & The Texas Playboys...Scraped up...bought trailors, vans, PA's, recording time...Start bands...leave bands...start new bands...Work every dancehall, dive, honkytonk and juke joint in Oklahoma 10X over...Watch The Doors at least 40 times...spill cheap red wine on every white shirt I'd own...reciting Wilde...blarin' down the highway to Car Wheels, Heartbreaker, GP...eyes closed...swinging hard as I could...livin'...learnin'...Headed west down 40 in '05...made a record, wore out The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and read East of Eden...never felt more at home than the three years I lived in Los Angeles...Taking chances...trusting too much...spent a lot of time and money on "experience"...learned "perfectionist" and "artist" are contradicting terms... Wrote a record about California and recorded it in about 24 hrs in a beautifully dingy basement studio in Nashville, TN...
And things are changing fast and everyone's just trying to hold on. I've realized music is being made mostly for people who don't listen to it... disposable...irrelevant. I feel an obligation. We have to re-instill and demand value in this occupation. Music must inspire, uplift, console, befriend, make you want to take risks...break...expose...face...things... Passion is a commodity....and you can't sell it if you don't have it. Staying the course... -TJ