by Michael Buffalo Smith

I just got the sad news. Another good friend is gone. A great musician and an even greater human being, Barney Barnwell passed away at 1:30 PM today (March 29).

I had not seen Barney in a few years, and I had heard that he had cancer a couple of years ago, but it seemed he was whipping it’s butt pretty good. From what I understand, it wasn’t even the cancer that took him, it was a stroke. He had been in the hospital for several days.

We had been friends for many a year, and I had been out to his home place in New prospect, near Fingerville, just this side of Campobello, S.C. more times than I can count. There was a period of time when  was doing a little computer design work for him, helping lay out his website when he was first getting it up and running, and creating a mail out newsletter and data base for The Moonshiner’s Reunion that was held yearly on the farm as well as for the Plum Hollow Festival, his other yearly wing ding.

I wrote a chapter about him in my first book, Carolina Dreams: The Musical Legacy of Upstate South Carolina (Marshall Tucker Entertainment Publishing) back in 1996. He was one of my special guests at the book signing party Mrs. Jane Hughes held at the old Pic-a-Book down in Spartanburg.

I have so many great memories of Barney, they all seem to run together at this moment. He always had me to play at his Festival, and that was great fun. Mostly I would play solo, but one year I took a whole band and had a ball. As much as I enjoyed playing myself, I was much more excited to hear the star of the show when he came on with his Plum Hollow Band. All them great songs like “Camp’beller.” “The Hippie Song” and the “mash ups” he did before anybody else, like the medley of “Folsom Prison Blues” and Jethro Tull’s “Locomotive Breath.” I wrote a song about him once called “Psychedelic Hillbilly” which he loved, and I still play on recording it one day.

I loved when you’d call his house and he’d always answer real loud like, BARNEY! Straight and to the point. One of my favorite memories is of the animals. Pet snakes, possums, deer, all sorts of woodland creatures and they all loved Barney,

He called lunch “dinner” and dinner “supper” like many a good Southern fella, and one day while we were working on the website he said “You want some dinner?” He called a local meat and three place that he frequented and made an order, then went and brought it back. All I remember is he got salmon patties, greens and corn bread. I loved watching him eat. He really enjoyed good Southern cooking.

I learned a lot from Barney about his old days of moonshining, mushrooms and pot, and listened attentively to his home spun stories. He could really write great stories too. (I re-posted one below.)

Barney built the perfect venue for his music festivals on his own land, a stage, a grand shed to cover a large amount of people if it rained, a sound booth. Then he constructed on site shower houses and built The Plum Hollow Hotel, with rooms each based on a theme of a certain Southern state. I never saw a harder worker or a more cretive mind. And when he built his Overall Recording Studios in 1999, I was there to write a big article for GRITZ Magazine.

I still recall when he first started dating Debbie and they got married, and how happy he was to have her. They made a great team all the way around.

I am sure I will never forget Barney, his music, or our friendship. As a tribute, I am reprinting our 1999 interview, along with a piece he wrote for me about possums. Godspeed  Barney. See you in the light brother.  •


Here is the interview I conducted with Barney in 1999 for GRITZ Magazine.

Barney Barnwell and The Plum Hollow Band
Open New Recording Studio
Upstate South Carolina
by Michael B. Smith
Fall, 1999


Just up the road "a piece" in the town of New Prospect, a new recording studio has opened it's doors. But this is not "your father's recording studio." It's more like a musician's dream. The studio, called Overall Studios, is owned and operated by Barney Barnwell, a man known to many as the highly-animated lead singer and fiddle player of The Plum Hollow Band.

When did you begin work on the studio?

We broke ground for the studio in May, 1998. Then we dug the foundation. I talked to a lot of engineers about how to go about it. I've been in a lot of studios over the past twenty years, and I didn't want to make the same mistakes I'd seen in some of them. I wanted band members to be able to see one another. I always hated to go into a studio to record and not be able to see the other guys. I didn't want it in a basement or an attic, because it makes it so hard hauling equipment up the stairs. I wanted to have a lounge for the band's guests, where they could see through the control room and into the studio. That way, they are out of the way, but they can see everything. I wanted access to unloading straight into the studio, so we have that. The ramp outside loads right into the actual studio.

Do you think the location will make the studio more appealing to the prospective musician?

One thing that I always hated was that the studios were located in the city, like in Nashville. Out here you're on the farm, we have a shower house. The band can come and stay all weekend if they want to. We had a band last week that did that. They came from Columbia, and camped down here after the session. The next morning, we all got back together and mixed their stuff down. In Nashville, we pulled the bus up in front of the studio and parked, and we had to stay on the bus. When your cooped up somewhere it gets to the point where you just want to get through it and get it over with. Then the music suffers. Here, it's relaxed. We put the artist at ease, to make it more comfortable for them.

It seems to be just the right size too.

We didn't want it so big that they felt lost, but we didn't want it so small that they felt claustrophobic.

What are some of the features of this studio?

It's a fully-digital studio which houses a thirty-two channel mixing board, as well as two separate vocal booths, and a drum booth, all of which have windows, so band members are always able to see one another. We also offer an individual head mix. That's something you don't often find in a studio. There is a small box for each player, and he can mix all of the incoming sounds any way he wants into his headphones.

And the studio is just one facet of your larger company, right?

Overall Studios is only one division of Barnwell's Overall Music Management, which also offers a merchandising company that handles-shirts, hats, banners and such, and outdoor festivals at Plum Hollow Farms. (formerly Woodstick) We have our own record label here, but with the growth of our festivals, I have had other record labels take notice. This past week I had three record companies call me, wanting to put their acts at our festivals. They sent me material. They are offering us networking and distribution, so we are talking to some of them. Some are well known independent labels. So we have a lot of contacts. Plus, we get a lot of calls for our group from people who don't have the budget to pay for us, so what we did was, we started booking bands. We've done that over the past two years.

Tell us about the campground.

The campground was also modeled after a lot of things we've seen at other festivals, and designed to work for the bands as well as the attendees. There's even a "shed" we built near the sound board, capable of keeping 1,000 people out of the rain, if the weather takes a turn.

Are you in the market for demos from unsigned bands?

With our new record label, and we're looking for a couple of bands that do something along the lines of what we do. We want people who are blending bluegrass and rock. One of the main things is they have to have at least two bluegrass instruments, either a fiddle and a banjo, or a mandolin and a fiddle. We've had people call up who have five guitars .You can't play bluegrass with no banjo, fiddle or mandolin.

When can we expect to see the first releases from your label?

We have two products we are working on now for the new label, and we will be putting out product in the next six to eight weeks. We will also be offering distribution, as well as a line on publicity. I work with a lot of booking agents as well, East Coast Entertainment, Cellar Door Entertainment, Crescent Moon out of Nashville, Music Garden out of Montgomery, Alabama, so we have those connections available. And we have our own publishing company on site, Fingerville Publishing.

Tell us a little about your two annual festivals here at the farm.

We've been doing the festivals here for the past eight years. But we started the old Plum Hollow Festival's back in 1976, and we had them there for eight years. We started doing them here about eight years ago,and we've been doing two a year. So we ourselves have put on about sixteen festivals. It has continued to grow. Last year, we had right at a thousand people for the Moonshiner's Reunion, and this year, we are expecting more than that. It all works in together. Bands that play here, we try and get them some other work. Same with people who come here to record their cd's. We also have our own arts and graphics department here. We can design their cd cover, their t-shirts, pretty much put a whole package together right here.

Do you see the management company, label and venue all working together to promote certain bands?

We're hoping that the bands that we sign to the label will be the ones we feature at the festivals. We are also providing production for other festivals. Like the one we are doing in Lyman right after we do ours. It's called Messer's on the Hill Jam, the weekend following ours. We're furnishing the production and the bands for that one, it's a one day festival. But everything here works together real well. We have colleges come out and have parties. We have enough showers and facilities on the camp ground to handle five-thousand people. We've also rented it out to their promoters for shows. The name and idea of Moonshiner's Reunion has been trademarked and copyrighted, and we are trying to get a Reunion established in each of the Southern states. This year, we put one in Virginia, and we'd like to have one in Tennessee. Next year we're putting one in Georgia. We're featuring everything from traditional bluegrass to the new wave of jam-grass. There's a lot of that coming onto the scene. That's what we are dealing with is bluegrass, and different, innovative approaches to bluegrass.

What made you decide to move into more production work than performing?

We stay out playing colleges. We play every major university from Princeton down to Old Miss. 'But I don't want to be on the road as much as I used to be. I want to work with these young bands, in the management end of it, and the recording end, instead of traveling up and down the road. Twenty-five years of that is a lot. It's time to start slowing up on that end.

If you had to name one primary purpose for all of this, what would it be?

My dream is to pass along the knowledge I have accumulated from years of experience, so that upcoming bands might be able to have a little bit of an easier road ahead of them. A lot of the bands are great, but they just don't have any direction. You can go out here and play a beer joint for fifty dollars a night for the rest of your life ,but that doesn't get you anywhere. They just need some advice from people like us who have learned it all the hard way.




What follows is a  true-to-life tale told by a genuine mountain man, my friend Barney Barnwell of Campobello, S.C. (Camp'beller, that is.) Barney has lead The Plum Hollow Band as singer and fiddle player for more than 30 years, playing a unique mix of bluegrass and rock and roll that has recently become a trend, but Barney was doing it FIRST. Take my good word for it. Barney is a multi-talented song writer, player, sculptor, visual artist, writer and actor. Please visit him at www.moonshiners.com.


A POSSUM TALE PART- 1
(THE ON GOING SAGA)

by Barney Barnwell

I have raised three hawks, two owls, one crow, four foxes, two coons, two pole cats, two monkeys, eighteen wild turkeys, a ground hog, six lizard’s, two alligators, twenty two snakes and a wolf spider. But I ain’t never had a possum. All my life I have wanted a possum. This past spring I was over at my cousins house. We were sitting at the kitchen table when I seen something run across the kitchen floor. I didn’t pay it much attention until a few minutes later my eye caught something else running out from under the kitchen cabinets. His old lady was fixin' supper when all of a sudden she went to raisin hell. “Get these damn possums out of this house”. A mother had given birth to eight baby possums underneath his house. Around ten o'clock every night they would come up through a hole in the floor beneath the kitchen sink. When the next one came running by I reached down and grabbed him up. My cousin told me I could have him but not to tell my old lady where I got it from.

I am amazed at what all that possum has taught me. The first lesson was - I need to listen to my cousin more. I just thought his old lady was raisin hell. When I brought that possum home. my ol lady run me and the possum out of the house and told me if I came back with it she was leaving.

I knew then, I had stumbled on to something big. I have a small wood shop down in the woods. I found a holler gum stump and laid it in an old aquarium I dug out of the barn. Then me and the possum moved into the wood shop. Right off , that possum seem to like his new home. Then again it don’t take much to please a possum. If they don’t like something you never know it because they don’t bark, cry, holler, moan, bitch, or make any kind of sound far as I can tell. When it comes to feeding one, they will eat anything. Their favorite dish is poisonous snakes. Not to worry. There immune to snake venom . They love eating mice and rats too. As far as health care is concerned, they pose less health problem’s to humans than dogs and cats do. Unlike foxes, coons or other wild animals, they're less susceptible to contracting rabies than any mammal on earth and are immune to most diseases. It’s not only the very first mammal to arrive on earth, it’s the only mammal living today that roamed the earth with the dinosaurs. Unlike most rednecks, evolution has also left them alone . The possum today looks just about like it did when he first appeared on earth seventy million years ago. I told this to one of my buddies down at the local beer joint. As I was showing him my new possum he looked at it and said. “Well, he sure looks good for his age.”

They are one tough animal to say the least. When someone asks me if that possum was still alive, I tell them . “A man that cant raise a possum can't raise nothing.”

Most of the things I know about a possum I just learned recently. I’ve always been the kind of feller to take up for the under dog . They seem to have gotten a bad rap. I guess it’s because they look so much like a rat. And most folk’s think it is. Including my old lady. She thinks there the nastiest creatures on earth. I tried to tell her. They wash them selves after they finish eating. Hell, I don’t even do that. She told me she didn’t care if it took a shower every day. I told her I didn’t do that either. That nasty thang still wasn’t coming in the house.

About a month ago me and her had gotten into it about something. I don’t remember exactly what it was. Anyhow she told me I had drove her so crazy she was going to admit her self into a mental institution. Since that time I have been walking on egg shells. I felt so guilty, I've been staying away from beer joints when I can, and I even quit drinking for four hours one day. That one all most killed me. Well me and the possum had not even gotten settled into the wood shop good when she appears in the door way. I come to tell you I was leaving and I ain’t sure when I'll be back. I ask her what mental house she was going to and she said. “What are you talking about.” I told her what she had said to me about driving her crazy and going off to the funny farm. She burst into laughter and said, "you idiot I was only teasing you. I'm going to Hollywood, California on vacation with some friends." Then she pointed at my possum and said. “and that nasty thing best be gone before I get back.” With that she left. Leaving me with my mouth hanging open looking and feeling like a idiot.

The next day I was still madder ‘n hell when the phone rang. It was my cousin wanting to know if I wanted another possum. The sister to the one he had given me. I said hell yea. I will be right over to get it. My old lady just thought she was mad when she left. If he had said he had twenty possums I would have took them all. And when she came back home she would find them all sleeping with me in her bed when she arrived. It would have served her right. Making me suffer like she did. But that was not to be. As it were she would find only two. So I thought. When I went to get the new possum, to my surprise it was twice the size as mine. It was also much gentler and tamer than my possum was. It never occurred to me that possums had different personalities. Or it could be this new possum was raised up by a seven year old girl who spent every waking moment pampering it, whereas me and my possum would go to the beer joint ever night. Never the less. I was so excited because my possum would be reunited with his long lost sister, and have a playmate to boot. The second lesson I was taught by my possum was. Never assume anything about them. When I put that new possum in the box, my possum came out of that gum stump faster than a slug out of a shot gun barrel, he jumped on his sister who was trying to get away from him by running into a box I had put in the pen for her. He shot in after her. You would have thought that box was some sort of wind up toy the way it was a flopping around that possum pen. It liked to have scared me to death. Lesson number three. Never put your hand into a box when two possums are a fightin.' This was not only a easy lesson to learn, it was also one of the faster ones.

When I finally got the possums separated and gave them there own separate box, I took off for the house just as fast as I could go. All them possum facts I spoke of earlier, about rabies and such, I learned that night. Thank God my ol lady wasn’t home. I never would have heard the end to that one. Another lesson I learned that night was possums are loners. I should have known that. There's no such thing as a pack of possums. They ain't got no friends and don’t want any. That’s probably the reason they have been around for seventy million years. •

Our friend Billy Crain of The Outlaws has just returned from a mission trip to Haiti. Today I received the following e-mail from him, and I felt compelled to share it with our readers. I would encourage anyone who is able to send a donation for this cause. It's a wonderful thing, and like Billy daid, no amount is too small. Please help. -Buffalo

Dear friends, as many of you know I just returned from a short term mission trip to Haiti. One of the things the Lord put upon my heart was helping to raise money to buy the church I was working with down there some new musical equipment for the Praise and Worship band. Their equipment is pretty tattered and as you all know money is scarce.

I was hoping that everyone would help a little whether it be $1, $5, $10 or whatever you can spare. You can send cash or checks to :
Billy Crain
P.O. Box 1039
Smyrna, Tn. 37167
Put musicforhaiti in the memo line.
Thank you for your time!!!!!
Billy Crain

Filmmaker Zac Adams has created a documentary that not only sheds a clear light on the events surrounding the great Nashville flood of May 1 and 2, 2010, but also paints a picture of just how much of a community Nashville, Tennessee really is. It is the story of a city that pulled together in a time of crisis. From blue collar workers to politicians to country music stars, neighbors came out in droves to help one another clean up and rebuild in the wake of the flood.

Narrated by Billy Bob Thornton, the movie features footage of the flood waters and the devastating damage they caused to homes, businesses and landmarks like Opryland and Soundcheck, the huge rehearsal space and instrument storage facility that alone suffered around $10 million in damages and lost property. Known as the “Thousand Years Flood,” the total damages rose above the two billion dollar mark.

The film is truly inspirational. The personal interviews attest to that fact. It is a triumph of the human spirit that reminds us all that people do still care for other people in a time of crisis.

The 30-minute film will premier at The Nashville Film Festival on Thursday, April 14 at 7:00pm - April 15 at 2:30am, and will go national on PBS this summer.

- Michael Buffalo Smith

www.nashvillerisesmovie.com

I am happy to announce the following features have recently been added to Universal Music Tribe. We sure hope you enjoy them, and please be sure to e-mail us and let us know what you think. Keep On Rockin. Buffalo

New Interviews.
Elvin Bishop shares memories of his years at Capricorn Records and working with The Allman Brothers Band and talks about his latest album Red Dog Speaks.

Paul Thorn talks about his life, his music and his art.

Reviews of The March Beacon Run by The Allman Brothers Band. Nightly reviews of the Allman’s shows during their annual New York residency,

New CD Reviews: Doug Gray of The Marshall Tucker Band “Soul of the South,” the lost R&B solo record; The Marshall Tucker Band Greatest Hits; Iggy & The Stooges “Raw Power Live;” Wanda Jackson “The Party Ain’t Over;” also new releases from The Bridge, Gregg Allman, Chris Dair and more.

News updates- Deaths, Ronnie Hammond of Atlanta Rhythm Section, Owsley Stanley; also Further on the road and more.

The Buffalo Zone - (Buff’s Blog)  For The Love of Moogis

Videos: New Alan Parsons, Paul Thorn jams with Elvin Bishop and Delbert McClinton, Chris Dair, Band of Heathens, classic Winters Brothers Band, Kate Bush.

FREE DOWNLOADS: Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit; Meat Puppets, Tommy Talton, Molly Hatchet, Paul Thorn   •

Moogis is one of the most important technological inventions of our time. Well, at least for us die hard music lovers. I mean, let’s think about it for a minute. A live, streaming connection to a sold out concert. Multiple camera angles and hi-def viewing. The ability to hook your computer into a  big ol' monitor or TV, pump the sound through a pair of Bose speakers, or in my case, headphones. An ongoing chat room during he show for people to rave, rant and complain when the signal freezes up for a couple of seconds.

But of course that’s our mindset these days. Most of the folks complaining are young folks who are not really all that impressed with the new technology. Many of them can’t imagine a world without cell phones, home computers with internet, Google, You Tube, and Heaven forbid, a world without Facebook. It is a society that demands instant gratification. If news happens, they want to know within 60 seconds. No small wonder newspapers are literally yesterday’s news.

So when someone in the Moogis chat room starts freaking out over a brief stutter in the system, I just laugh out loud. I am still remembering my dial up connection and the night back in 1994 when I waited over four hours for a 30-second film clip of Demi Moore stripping to download so I could watch it.

The idea Butch Trucks came up with is just the beginning I am sure. I have read that he’d like to see the cameras set up at venues all around the country so people can log in and watch all sorts of great live shows. I find this very exciting, especially as I get older, grumpier, and not so thrilled with fighting the crowds at the live shows any more.

This is the way to see The Allman Brothers Band. Best seat in the house. And now we get to see the entire Wanee Music Festival as well. Just how cool is that?

So if there is a stutter in the signal here and there it’s okay with me. I feel privileged to be witnessing the beginnings of a whole new model here. A whole new way to enjoy live music. The kinks may not be all worked out yet, but it’s still the coolest online experience of my life. The 2009 Beacon run was amazing, and 2011 i shaping up to be just as good.  Thanks Moogis.

- Buffalo

The 2011 Beacon Run is well underway following last night's sensational opening night performance by The Allman Brothers Band. After being away from their Beacon home for a year (last year they were pushed aside for Circ de Soleil and forced to move to The Palace Theatre) it was obvious that both the nad and the fans were happy to return to the legendary Beacon.

The Brothers played a great mix of old and new, borrowed and blues, from "Trouble No More" to "Come and Go Blues," and tossed in covers of Dr. John and Miles Davis, among others. So now the stage is set for the rest of the month, with shows March 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 24, 25 an 26.  It's gonna be great, and Universal Music Tribe will be bringing you reviews of every single show. Be sure to visit our Allman Brothers Beacon page  for daily updated reviews.

The Road Goes On Forever.....
Buffalo

Oddly enough, I would have never even dreamed of becoming a writer during my days in grade school and high school, although I did create my own music magazines and comic books as far back as 8th grade. I was more into rockets and outer space and even dreamed of being an asronaut like Neil Armstrong.

I was just 12 years old in 1969 as I sat glued to the black and white TV as Neil Armstrong made that “one small step,” which, according to Buzz Aldrin, was actually a three foot drop from the bottom of the LEM ladder to the surface. By no means a small step.

At the time, I was obsessed with rockets, outer space and the moon. I was all about Star Trek and Lost in Space. I dreamed of being an astronaut. My dad, who worked at the grocery store, brought me home a special gift that weekend. Seems Pepsi was offering a really cool space package if you sent in a certain number of bottle cap corks. Remember those? But the Pepsi man had a few of these items in the truck and gave one top my daddy. I was thrilled. It was a really nice big legal sized folder that tied shut like a document holder. On it was the NASA emblem and the Apollo 11 insignia. Inside were 8 X 10’s of the Apollo 11 astronauts, as well as photos of the moon, Saturn, Venus and other planets, along with a booklet about the “space race.”


I didn’t remember John Kennedy’s famous “moon” speech from eight or nine years prior, but have seen it on TV in playbacks. I was sure JFK would have loved the fact that his promise to go to the moon came true in such short order.

My first real thoughts of writing professionally were spurred by a professor at Spartanburg Methodist College by the name of Dave Shuping, who made me feel as though I had a gift for writing. That encouragement, combined with years of reading music and political writers like Lester Bangs, Hunter S. Thompson, and Cameron Crowe, created a desire in me to get serious about writing.

Back in high school I had written music articles for the school newspaper, The Spotlight. I had a “top ten” co;um called Flipside, and I even had my own Music Hall of Fame. I remember getting some guys mad at me because I panned the Black Sabbath Sabbotage album and they thought it was high art. Of course my reviews of The Allman Brothers Band and The Marshall Tucker Band were always glowing. Go figure.

For several years I wrote fan fiction for various sci-fi fanzines including my friend Becky Hoffman’s Southern Star, even going so far as to create my own zine Paradise One. I also made my own one issue rock magazine called The Coop (named for Alice Cooper) in tenth grade, and during the high school days I created my own comic books on wrestler Ric Flair (as a gift for my buddy The Weasel) and on the band KISS, prior to their first official comic. I must have been ahead of my time.

At SMC, I tried to kick it up a notch. Writing in the school paper about local and national bands and such was commonplace. Somewhere along the line I had my first article published in The Spartanburg Herald Journal in my hometown of Spartanburg, SC. It was a profile on local musician David Haddox, who played drums in my band at the time.

After college I worked at various newspapers in Spartanburg County and in North Carolina, always pushing my agenda for rock and roll writing, which doesn’t really fly with editor’s who are trying to cover the City Council’s board meeting or the latest fender bender out on the frontage road.

While working at The News Leader of Landrum, SC and her sister publication The Polk County News Journal of Columbus, NC in 1990 some friends and I started an ecology newspaper called Utopia. It was all about recycling, Earth Day and all of that good stuff. The two pages in the center were all music and all mine. I did CD reviews, commentary, show reviews and more. Unfortunately, the 500 issue run coupled with the fact that we only published three issues kind of made my efforts go nowhere.

Somewhere around this time I started a regular column called Southern Accents. Modeled after Lewis Grizzard’s famous column, I just wrote about whatever crossed my mind. The column ran in the Inman Times (Hilda Morrow was the first to give me a break by publishing it) , The Polk Country News Journal, The Landrum Leader, The Boiling Springs Chronicle and later in EDGE Magazine and GRITZ.

In 1991, I was working at WTYN Radio in Tryon, NC while at the same time reporting for the paper The Tryon Daily Bulletin. I was doing a play at the Little Theatre when I met James Irwin, and within three months he and I were publishing the first alternative press newspaper in Greenville, SC. The bi-weekly tabloid was called EDGE Magazine, and for three years we had a blast. This was my first real, honest to God forum for my editorial commentary. I got to do reviews and music writing on my own terms and it was a blast. I was given the chance do interview everyone from George Harrison to Gene Simmons, from Paul Riddle of Marshall Tucker to Artimus Pyle of Lynyrd Skynyrd. It was a great training ground.

Those years at EDGE were a blast, working with James Irwin, Charlie Bergman and David Morris, (all three of whom are now sadly deceased) along with a staff that included Julie and David Moss, Mickie Ansell, Bethany Williams, Jill Greene, David Windhorst, Phillip Knighten, Gary X and many more.

Then in 1994 I broke ties with EDGE and started the decidedly more artsy The Color Green, which continued along the same lines, bringing interview opportunities with Chet Atkins, Carrot Top, Peter Criss from KISS, and Gregg Allman.

Somewhere along the line there a friend named Russell Hall introduced me to his editor at Goldmine, the national monthly magazine for record collectors, and I started writing reviews and articles for them. Soon I became their go-to guy for Southern Rock. Besides writing huge 10,000 word cover stories on blues diva Koko Taylor, prog-band Kansas and head-banger Ted Nugent, I created deep cover stories on The Marshall Tucker Band, Charlie Daniels, The Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Texas rocker Edgar Winter and Gov’t Mule (in their first national cover story) among others.

Soon I was writing for online venues like Suite 101, Y’all Magazine and print publications like Relix, Hittin’ The Note, Blue Suede News, Mojo, Discoveries, and many others. Of course all of those gigs took a back seat when we started GRITZ in 1998. GRITZ afforded me countless opportunities, including getting up close and personal with the very finest Southern rockers and other musicians on the planet.

Some of the high points right off the top of my head were my three hour plus conversation with the late Tom Dowd, a man who went from working on The Manhattan Project to producing the greatest LP of all time, The Allman Brothers Fillmore album. Talking to Gary and Dale Rossington of Lynyrd Skynyrd while they were on tour in Scotland was cool, and getting to know so many heroes before they died, Dru Lombar, Duane Roland, Little Milton Campbell, Ray Brand, Hughie Thomasson, George McCorkle, Jakson Spires, Jo Jo Billingsley and Tommy Crain among them. Of course it was a thrill to interview Dickey Betts, Bonnie Bramlett, Gregg Allman - and Charlie Daniels has been great each time we have done interviews, which has been six times in ten years. And meeting and interviewing Capricorn Records alumni like the late Phil Walden and producers Johnny Sandlin and Paul Hornsby were also quite high on my list. Of course, interviewing and getting to hang out with Billy Bob Thornton is up at the top of the “most fun”  list.

Now it seems I have finally found my true bliss. With Universal Music Tribe, I feel comfortable writing about great music of all types, from Miles Davis to The Ramones, from The Allman Brothers Band to Los Lobos. With Gritz I kind of painted myself into a corner. Now I am able to enjoy Southern Rock as a part of my whole love affair with music.

God knows how much I love playing music myself and getting onstage and just rocking the house. I love acting on both stage and screen, drawing my cartoons and entertaining. But if you ask me what my true bliss is, the reason I feel the good Lord put me on this Earth, it is writing. Writing is my solace. My escape. Ronnie Van Zant once sang “All I Can Do is Write About it.” Me too. If I didn’t have that, I’d be one sad bison.


From the upcoming memoir, Prisoner of Southern Rock © 2011 by Michael Buffalo Smith, All Rights Reserved