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Song writing has been a hobby for a long time. I really got more into with Dave Peters. I started writing songs when I was in eighth or ninth grade. Fluffy little stuff, garageband kind of things. I didn't do a lot of writing again until I got out of college. It was sort of an outlet. I had always wanted to write songs rather than play other people's songs. When we got the band going, it was a better outlet to do that. We basically got the group together to write songs. It was never intended to be a performing band.
The awards came through getting involved with a couple of song writing associations. I just joined to figure out the craft of song writing. You may have an innate ability to form melodies or tell a story, but a certain amount of it is a craft, just like any other craft.
I became a member of the Atlanta and Louisville songwriter associations. They provided avenues to have your songs heard by industry professionals. They had competitions each year and Dave Peters and I just started entering songs.
Awards don't mean much unless you get published. They're nice... to get recognition from your peers, but I didn't really get into the whole thing to win awards. If you're writing songs for public consumption, it's different than what publishers want or what they perceive is going to sound good on Top-40 Radio. The bottom line, that's what they're interested in. There are a top of people making great music, but it never gets heard. It's all flying below the radar.
What advice do you have for someone interested in getting into song writing?
If it's something you like, I think it's great to play an instrument. It's something you can do for the rest of your life. It typically gets you involved with other people who are interested in the same thing. It is a good way to express yourself. Several of my songs have a subtle underlying protest to them, political or environmental or whatever happens to be a hot topic to me. It's a way to vent to some degree. I play banjo a little bit, if a song calls for it and David Brose isn't playing it. That was really the first instrument other than the ukulele that I learned to play. I just gravitated to guitar because it's more of a universal instrument. It's easier to write and join in on an ensemble with.
What is the band working on now?
We're working on another CD. We're going to redo an old CD and add six or eight songs to it, some live, some current originals, including ones that I and Dave Peters have written recently. We've got 20 more songs in some sort of recorded form that we'll do another album with. Hopefully we'll have something totally new by the end of the year if we get enough time to get everyone together. We don't go to a studio; we just record everything live. The last album, "Small Towns," we recorded most all of it in [Chinquapins]. We did some of the vocals in a quieter place - Dave's living room. We laid down some of the nuts and bolts of the songs in the store live. We'll take those tracks and if we need to add another instrument, we'll do most of it down at Dave's.
Does the next album have a name yet?
No. We've tossed around a few. We were tentatively going to call it "Close the illegal go-go bar." Dave wrote the song when he was in Ohio last year. This guy had painted the entire front of his business with protests related to a strip club that had just opened a couple hundred yards from his business. The neighborhood was in an uproar about it. Dave just thought the whole thing was so comical that this man had used the entire front of his building as a hand-painted billboard that said "Close the illegal go-go bar."
Dave wrote the song and then asked me to help him with the chord structure and the melody. We got that song pretty much finished, but we're not sure if that's going to be an appropriate title for the album. Some of the stuff we've written recently are fairly hard-hitting protest songs directed to some of the type of development stuff going on around here. Neither one of us is necessarily opposed to development, it just seems that there seems to be a lot of it around here without much conscience to it.
Has the band considered digital distribution or selling tracks online?
We've got a MySpace and there are four songs on there. But we've not looked into it further. To behonest with you, someone else would have to take that and run with it because I'm so technically illiterate. I just don't have much interest in doing that.
How do you manage your businesses and the band in addition to being president of the
CCCRA?
The band gets together one day a week. It's just like a hobby. When we get into recording, however, it can be a couple of days a week, sometimes four to six hours at a time. I just have to do it at night and take care of everything else during the day. It makes for long days, but that's not a constant thing.
Everyone involved in the CCCRA has a lot of work to do. We've got three projects right now we're involved in: The mountain bike and hiking trail, we'll be involved in some way with the interior courthouse restoration because we were basically involved with the exterior restoration and then, the Pioneer Village project. Really, what this all turns into is... a job. A volunteer job. Sometimes it seems like it's full-time.
Has there been any decision as far as the future of the old courthouse?
Not yet. I think there's some suggestion boxes out. I think that's a good ting because it makes the process transparent, so everyone, if they want to, has an opportunity to put their two cents worth in. In a small community that's a good way to go.
A large part of [the CCCRA] is hoping we can incorporate some tasteful retail in the bottom of it. Either local and regional arts and crafts and demonstration and maybe a small welcome center. The retail would provide a little funding for general maintenance. I think the upstairs would make a great community room or gathering place for meetings. It could be rented out for weddings, music, drama, any number of things...
Will the move of the courthouse affect business on the square?
I don't think so. It's obviously going to take some traffic away from downtown. I have the feeling that if we're able to make the transition and we can turn that building into a magnet for something other than legal issues, then we'll be way ahead of where we were with having court here. I don't necessarily have a problem with building a new courthouse. I wish they had thought more about putting it down here near the community services building and maybe making everything a little more centrally located. But decisions were made and that's water under the bridge now. The only disappointing thing to me is that we're not going to gain any retail space initially out of the registrar of deeds and tax office.Apparently they're going to use that building for additional officespace, because they don't have much officespace in the new
courthouse. I was hoping we'd get that building and maybe the county officesbuilding and somehow create some additional retail because I think the future of the town is small retail, more of a pedestrian type retail experience. A lot of people are looking for that and it will happen. We've got great additions in town like the butcher shop, Square One, the Copper Door... It's slowly evolving into what it once was - the retail center of the county. I don't think you can buy this kind of ambiance and historical setting.
Where do you expect Clay County to be in ten years?
There's obviously going to be a lot of change. There's been a tremendous amount of change in the last ten years. I think that the population's going to continue to increase. I hope that we can hang onto some of the things that have brought people here in the past: the heritage, culture and scenic beauty of the area. I hope development doesn't spoil too much of the reason people are here.... It's sort of my attitude that we're quickly becoming "generica" instead of America. People seem to be bent on having every place look the same. In reality, the reason people come here is because it's different, whether they realize that a year after they're here or not. It seems to me that every bypass and every town in America has that same sort of vanilla look to it. All the malls are anchored by the same people. The great thing about small towns is the fact that they can be unique if you can keep enough of that crass commercialism out.
Have you ever considered getting involved in the county government?
I've never really been much of a fan of politics or politicians. I'd run away. I don't think you could chase me hard enough to get me involved. I like to be involved in things that have a sense of impact of preserving the place we have here. And I realize that at some point it's up to the county officials to help in that regard.... It ultimately falls into the hands of the elected officials to have the guts to step in and say, "Look, this is worth saving." We can still have development but we need to be sensible about it. We live in an area where a large percent of the county is dependent on construction and contractor trades. There's a fineline to walk if you're an elected officialand I don't envy them.
I do think that as you lose more and more of the bottom land to development and more and more of the private ridge slopes get littered up with scarring and improper site development and preparation it dramatically changes the way the county looks and feels.
There's nothing wrong with holding onto a little bit of the past, because that's why people are here.
What is your favorite flavor of ice cream?
I don't eat ice cream. I hardly ever do. Probably the blueberry cream pie if I had to pick. Anything with fruit flavors. I've never been much of an ice cream eater. I don't eat a lot of sweets. My mother's such a great cook and she bakes some outrageous cakes. I love apple pies. I could probably hurt myself with a pie.
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