one hotel room because that's all the money we had. We had hard times for sure, but the love of the music kept me going. I tried other jobs, I did carpenter work and was a janitor for a while. I've had to sell guitars to pay bills when I have to, and might have to do that again with this virus and everyone is out of work. But it's okay, because some people don't have guitars to sell. It's a bad situation in the world. Some people think I'm a wealthy rock star because of my resume, but I'm not, I was a sideman. But, I play music every day at home because I love it.
Recently I've seen a photo from the 70s of Renegade in front of a large colonial house. What is the story behind this band? Are there any recordings or video from this period and what was the epilogue of this group? That was a promo photo that Renegade hired someone to take to try to get us some work. We struggled for a long time. It was a great band, but, at the time disco was king and we didn't fit in. We played everywhere we could but it was tough times. That's just the way it was in the south in the late 1970's.
In 1979 you moved to Austin Texas, homeland of the blues, where you had the chance to share the stage with leg- ends such as Stevie Ray Vaughan and Bonnie Raitt. Do you have any favorite memories or stories, particularly of SRV before his great success? Lots of great memories. I moved there to play with my brother Lee Roy Parnell. That was our 2nd band together and it was a good band. We played Austin, Dallas, Houston a lot, then did a tour of Colorado for five weeks
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and then made our way to NYC and made some noise. In Austin, we rotated weekly gigs with SRV at the Rome Inn before Stevie got famous. One time he borrowed my amp be- cause his blew up. It was a Fender pro reverb and he liked my EV speakers I had in it so I think he put some in his amp. We played to- gether some later. I also got to play with Bon- nie Raitt, Doug Samm, Kinky Friedman, WC Clark, Rick Vito, and so many others while was there. Sometimes it was like the Blues Brothers movie where the band at the end of the night owed the club more than we made. (Laughs) That was back when I first met Reese Wynans and we've been friends ever since. He played in my band after he moved to Nashville, now he is with Joe Bonamassa.
In 1980 -like the film by Cameron Crowe - you took a Greyhound bus back to Tennessee with your guitar and am- plifier. It was a difficult time for classic rock with the birth of synthesizers. How did you get through this phase of your life? Oh my how do you know about that bus ride? I got on a bus in Austin and it took days to get to Nashville. That bus stopped in every little town between Austin and Nashville. It as a
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