was after I met Howard. I went to his place, Paradise Garden, you know where that is?
Yes. I went there and we talked and he encouraged me to start doing my art. When I decided to get married, me and my wife got married at Paradise Garden and he brought his banjo. He didn’t perform the wedding. He sang. Howard – he didn’t really know songs. He would make up songs right off the top of his head. And he made up this song and sang it at our wedding. It was called “I’m Just Another Tack In the Shingle of Your Roof To Hold Your House Together.” It was Beautiful! Quite honestly, his banjo was out of tune, and he re- ally couldn’t sing very well but the spirit of the moment – it made is sound like Mahalia Jackson. You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah. I’ve got it on video, and I don’t even remem- ber the preacher’s name. He was a big guy. I gave him a hundred bucks and he was happy and he was sweating so much I thought he was fixin’ to faint and as soon did the cere- mony and got his hundred dollars he was outta there!
Was it outdoors? Yeah – it was in Paradise Garden. So Howard is my biggest influence. The thing that influ- enced me about Howard, just like his music, technically his art looks like a five year old did it. But if you look past that and look at the message of what he’s trying to say, he was real passionate about telling people about Heaven and Hell and the good things about serving the Lord. That was his passion. His passion and my passion are different, but with my art, I want to do what he did and that’s to say something. To me, everybody’s different. When somebody goes to Hobby Lobby and takes a class and paints a flower, to me, that’s
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not art. That’s just something – to me it does- n’t say anything. Real art says something. Real art might make you feel really great or it might make you feel really bad. Art is power- ful, if you do it right. It’s very powerful, just like music.
Did you ever put Howard in one of your paintings? Oh yeah. I’ve got a painting of our wedding, actually. It shows me and my wife standing below and then up above it shows Howard in the sky and he’s got these big wings like an angel and everything. And he’s playing the banjo singing “I’m Just Another Tack In the Shingle of Your Roof To Hold Your House To- gether. “
Oh, wow. That’s neat. I thought I re- membered seeing something like that. It might be in your coffee table book. Is that it? No, it’s on my web site. My wife didn’t like that. I didn’t do a good job drawing my wife and it kinda made her look like Joan Rivers. Nothing wrong with Joan Rivers, but I like to think my wife’s a whole lot prettier – no dis- respect to Joan.
Exactly. So your latest album is Too Blessed To Be Stressed. It’s a nother good one. I was going to ask you – do you guys have plans to do another record already. This one’s only been out for a little while. Yeah. Our band’s been doing this unplugged thing – it’s the whole band playing but we’re all doing acoustic instruments – kind of like one of those MTV unplugged shows. We’re probably going to do a live record of that, and then we’ll probably do a new studio project. The problem with a new record is coming
up with songs that will stand up. That’s the trick. I can write a song every day but I can’t
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