“Okay, I understand this now. I’m starting to see a correlation between what I’ve been taught - this traditional Southern Music, and then what they were doing. ‘Cause “Honky Tonk Women” really is a country song, you know?
Yeah. It is. I mean, I get goose bumps just talking about it. All of a sudden it was like everything was illu- minated, you know. I’m like “Wait a minute. I’m starting to get that rock and roll music comes from this.” And then, I didn’t have really any friends to share that kind of information with. That is anyone who would care. You know what I mean?
Yeah. And thanks to the Stones and Bob Dylan, I started digging into the blues and got into Robert Johnson and Charlie Patton and Son House and Mississippi Fred McDowell and Mississippi John Hurt. Because they were such champions of that music.
True. They carried the flag for Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and Jimmy Reed and were proud to let the world know that these are the real he- roes. But at the same time, I got into Led Zep- pelin and Black Sabbath and Aerosmith. I wanted to rock, you know, I wanted to play loud! (Both laugh) My entire musical life has been trying to balance all of that, I think.
I fully get it. Did you listen to any of the Southern Rock bands when you were growing up? I did. I was just telling a friend the other day that I heard The Allman Brothers very early on. You know, before you got old enough to really care about buying your own records or cas- settes it was the radio. The radio is what I heard most, and whatever my mom was listening to - and so I got great doses of especially Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers on the radio and that sort of gets into your fabric, you know, the fab-
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ric of your being, and it never goes away. Growing up in the South, you get it daily. And I remember obviously loving the radio hits, the Skynyrd radio hits and I had a friend, back when I was about 11 years old, and I actually bought my first electric guitar from him. But he had Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Second Helping, the album. Of course, I had heard “Sweet Home Al- abama” and I had probably heard “Call Me the Breeze” and “Needle and the Spoon.” I’m sure they were all being played on the radio at that time. But I remember the first time I heard the “Ballad of Curtis Loew” and there again, I was like, “Okay, this is the same stuff,” it’s the same, this is like traditional country music, it’s very rootsy. It’s coming from that same place, you know, that Bill Monroe was kind of coming from.
Really, yeah. And it blew me away. I was like, “I gotta have this.” So that started it. I think I might have gotten The Allman brothers Band At Fillmore East around the same time. I’ve still got that copy. But for a little while, I put that away. I was like, “I don’t really…” You know, I’ve heard this, I’ve experienced this. I know “Gimme Three Steps” back to front. I don’t need to… It’s like, okay, now I really love Little Feat. You know, I’d go through these phases.
Yeah, I think we all do, really. Yeah.
I am fortunate to have been dubbed the “Ambassador of Southern Rock,” which is quite an honor, but by the same token, there’s times I tell people, “If I never have to play ‘Gimme Three Steps’ again in a show, it’ll be alright with me.” It just gets to the point where, like you say, you’ve done it so much. Yeah, well…
I’ve got a list of 50 songs I never want to sing or play again.
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