music and to play that electric guitar. The first song I ever heard on the radio that made me want to play music was Johnny Horton’s version of “The Battle of New Orleans.” My early influences were well rounded but I leaned towards guitar bands. I was in this band called the Doomsday
While I was away at college, I played in
a lot of country bands. In fact, while in school I got an offer to play with an up-and-coming country singer named Barbara Mandrel. For me personally, some of my early influences were Allen Collins, Eric Clapton, Leslie West, Barry Bailey, and the bands Free and Cream and on the coun- try side, Jerry Reed is a awesome player
So you were in Jacksonville - did you know the guys in Skynyrd or 38 back then? We all grew up with in a few blocks of each other. I was in Cubs Scouts with
Refreshment Committee. The keyboard player was an older guy and he asked me one time if I had ever heard the blues. I said, “What is that?” and he pulled out some of the great blues players and I was blown away by them and it really inspired me to play. We would go see the band Second Coming (ED. Note: An early Dickey Betts/Berry Oakley band) play. The only problem was (that) Ron- nie was the only one old enough to get in as the club was a bottle club. The rest of us would have to beg the kitchen help to let us sit in the kitchen to listen. On Sunday at the Forest Inn, they had these things called Be In's and all the people would come out and sit around and play and, over the course of time, we saw the Allman Brother's band form and take off. I think that was an inspiration to us all seeing them from the beginning and seeing them make it to the level we all wanted to reach.
Billy Powell and Leon (Wilkeson) ived two streets over from me and I can remember jumping on my bike and riding over to Allen Collins house, so yeah, we all knew each other and played around in different bands together. I still look back in amazement at all the people who lived so close that made such a difference in the musical world.
Tell me about some of those early bands. Well, one I remember was with Donnie (Van Zant) and Ken Lyons and it was called Sweet Rooster, but that was just one of many.
So how did you get from Atlanta back to Jacksonville? When I got out of college with my degree in architecture, there was a recession on and not a lot of people banging down my door with
10
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44
