You probably have heard of his sons.







And if you haven’t heard Jim Avett, you should. He brings his acoustic stylings to Pittsburgh Winery on September 9.







The Pittsburgh stop is the first of a fall tour that will see Avett across the country.







Last week, The Swerve Magazine talked with Jim Avett as he was in New York City visiting one of his two newest grandchildren.







The Swerve Magazine: Your tour starts here, in Pittsburgh, on September 9 and then you are on the road for the fall.







Jim Avett: We had a good week of visiting here (NYC).







It feels like I’ve been on the tour for the last couple of weeks. I’ve played on the weekend for the last three weeks, just warming up. It’s been good.







We did a show in Muncie, Indiana and from Concord (North Carolina) over to Muncie it is about a nine-hour ride. I told Susie that we were going to play a festival on a Saturday. We left early and spent the night somewhere halfway between. Halfway in between as the Ohio River and a place called Point Pleasant.







JA: Have you ever been to Point Pleasant?







SM: No, but I know it is the town of the Mothman.







JA: I walked in (to the hotel), and the guy said, "You are from out of town? You are probably here for the Mothman Festival." I said, "I beg your pardon." I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about.







I’m very interested in history across the board. I asked one guy what was the biggest thing that ever happened in the town, and he said the bridge falling in. In 1967, the Silver Bridge fell in and killed 46 people at rush hour. The National Bridge Standards came on because of that. I started building bridges in 1974. I thought the National Standards had been around a long time, but that is why they were there. It is interesting to stop and see what has happened wherever you go. I have yet to find some place that hasn’t had something interesting happen there.







SM: That town does have some interesting history to it.







JA: The whole Ohio River Valley has got some sordid history to it. There were some land pirates that lived along the Ohio River. I found them quite interesting. You come from where there is big water, and we don’t have a lot of big water where I come from. There are some rivers that are fairly decent rivers, but they are not anything like the Ohio. I like to get up where there is a lot of water. It has been awfully dry at our house this summer. We started out pretty well, and I think El Nino pretty much dried us up. We don’t have the hay that we need. We are looking for a very mild and late winter and early spring. I’m grateful to the people of Pittsburgh for getting me away from the hayfields.







SM: Speaking of Pittsburgh.







JA: I start in Pittsburgh. The next day I’m going to Edinboro and then the next day I’m going to play at Streetsboro, Ohio. It is outside of Cleveland. From there, the next day I play in Dayton, Ohio and from there it is going west to Madison, Wisconsin and out to Portland, Oregon and then to California and Texas.







There will be a time when I got to give this up, but it isn’t quite here yet.







I’m looking to playing with Ali Parker (of Tiger Maple String Band) and be part of that Pittsburgh show. She is going to show up at the Streetsboro show.









Susie is coming with me to the Pittsburgh show. The next morning she is going to get on a plane and go back to North Carolina and stay with Scott’s wife. We have two new grandbabies. Seth has one, which we are visiting with right now. And next week, Susie will come back here and stay with her for a week and then fly out to Portland and finish the tour with me. We are staying relatively busy. For old people, we are staying really busy.





SM: Are you working on new songs?







JA: I just sat down with Seth. He has got a stand-up bass that he is fooling with. He played that, and I played guitar. Of course, I brought up a lot of old songs and he is amazingly familiar with a lot of the older tunes. It is fun to sit down and make music with him.







When you realize how music fits together, it is important that children know how it fits together. It is not important that they get on stage. It is not important that they are really good at it. It is important that they understand how it fits together. It is like studying mathematics.







Bonnie, Scott, Seth and I sat down in February and, also, again in April and put down 16 tracks to choose 10 or 11 of them for a gospel album. It’s all old gospel. Younger people hear it different than I hear it. I hear it the way I heard all those years ago, but they hear drums and piano and harmonica. We have got the roughs down. I would think by the end of the year it would be out. The producer called me back and said he, Scott and Seth would produce me and Bonnie another album if I promised him to stay in the studio longer than I usually do.







I feel like if you get two or three takes, the technology at the recording studio is so very good it can make absolutely untalented people sound great. If you are a little flat, they can straighten you out.







I have more than enough (songs) to do another CD. This was back at the first of the year, maybe January or February, I recorded some demos. I’m not sure if they are going to get any farther than the front porch or not. A couple of them are pretty good tunes. Nobody is buying CDs now. I don’t know whether I need to go broke putting out a CD. There is a lot of other music out, and people can entertain themselves. I don’t know whether I will put it out, but I do have the demos down. I will be playing a couple of them (on this tour).







SM: You could just release them online.







JA: When they go online… my stuff is on iTunes and Amazon. I’m not sure what has got to be done, and I’m not talking about me now, I’m talking about gifted, creative people with the way things are now, one person can buy a tune and give it to 10,000 people. The problem with this is those who are creative people will starve to death. They won’t have the money to get from one show to another. Nobody is making money on recorded music now, and something has got to change.







If you can’t make enough money to pay the plumber, you might as well be the plumber. If you can’t buy the groceries, you need to get a job. And that is unfortunate because there are some really talented people out there that are getting so disappointed in it. I can starve to death at the house, I don’t have to go out and starve to death. I am way too proud to ask anyone for money. I’m not going to start a Kickstarter fund. I’m retired and living on what we got. You hear on TV, people saying ‘Let me invest your money and we’ll make sure you have enough for your life.’ Well, hell, you don’t know how long you are going to last, so you don’t know what you are going to need. We will be fine. I say that if we don’t live past another five or six years, we’ll be fine. After that we may get into a little bit of trouble (laughs). I don’t sweat the future. I have great faith in the future. Something will come along, I sell some music, or I will pick up some cans or I will do whatever I got to do. I’m not going to bother anybody else with this.







We’ll be fine. When it goes to counting your blessings, we have been extremely lucky. We have worked hard for what we have done. I don’t look at a rich man and wonder why I’m not him. I turn around and look over my shoulder, and I see the poorest man in the world. He has never had a square meal. His teeth hurt, his body hurts and I look at that, and I am wealthy. I will make no qualms about this. We are doing really well.







SM: The world could use more people like you.







JA: The trick is being satisfied with what you got. If you forever want more, it is an endless, endless thing. You will be so dissatisfied and so stressed out and so anxious about what is going to happen. Hell, I ain’t worried about what is going to happen tomorrow.







This was years ago. My brother lives way up in Murphy, North Carolina. A couple of murderers broke out over in Tennessee; it was the same jail house that house James Earl Ray. A couple of murderers broke out, and they were from Shelby, North Carolina, so they figured they were going back to Shelby and Murphy is on the way. The cops came by one day and told Wallace that he might need to lock his doors because they might come through there. Wallace said, “I ain’t locking my doors. I got people that live a half mile down below me I need to worry about. They’ve been here all the time.”







My generation says that the new generation is all to hell that is nothing different, they all have said that. They might have been right about my generation (laughs). I don’t know what my generation is trying to do. I know guys that own 20 rental properties. Why would you do that? You are making it hard on young people. They will never be able to save and buy something of their own because they are giving all their money to you. You don’t need it. But what the hell do I know?