Nashville wasn’t always like it is now. There wasn’t {insert famous country artist name}’s bar and grill and there wasn’t a television show depicting love triangles and romanticized music industry life. This was at a time when lower Broadway in Nashville was a mix between honkey-tonks and businesses with XXX on the sign. Downtown Nashville was a place my parents told me I couldn’t venture when the city would have their summer concert series on the river.

From northern Indiana, Jay moved here in 1992. Jay didn’t move to Nashville to form a career in music; Jay moved to Nashville to be among fellow musicians, to be around people of like mind. It is an odd thing to imagine but there are cities in the U.S. where you don’t get live music like we do in Nashville and do we take it for granted? Maybe?

A tall and affable guy greeted me at the Nashville Musicians Hall of Fame entrance. From there, I was given a brief tour of the museum from the perspective of the Multi-Media Curator. The joint offers a nice collection of artifacts from the many genres of music that has been made and performed in Nashville, Tennessee. They also have many interactive exhibits throughout the museum where visitors can mix beats on DJ gear, take drum lessons with a virtual Ringo Starr and jam out with fellow musicians on a decked out stage.

After the quick tour, Jay and I sat down for our chat.

When did your music career begin?

I met a group of guys and they were complaining that their guitar player wasn’t showing up for practice. And I asked “for like one practice?” And they said “no, for like three or four practices.” So I said “it sounds like you don’t have a lead guitar player.” That’s how I met the guys from Hellbilly. I went to their next practice, half thinking that the guy was going to show up this time and it would be awkward but he didn’t show up. We played and did about a year to a year and a half, and then BR549 came along. One of those guys came to a Hellbilly show. They were telling me what they were doing down on Broadway. Which in ’92 – ‘93 lower Broadway was scary, weird and great. Adult book stores, prostitutes.. it was the best. I went down there, it was typically singers and songwriters…it wasn’t bands. These guys were just getting going. They had an electric bass player but needed an upright bass player. I was drinking down there one night and I asked if they needed an upright bass player. They asked me if I knew anybody and I said “yeah, me”. Even though I never played upright bass, I was like “I’m the guy”. I loved the guys in Hellbilly and I loved what we were doing but this was too good of an opportunity to pass up on. I didn’t join BR5-49 assuming we were going to sell records and make a ton of money; we were going to play this great music and have a blast. The records and traveling was a bonus.

So, when you moved to Nashville, you wanted to be around people of like mind?

Right, I wanted to meet people and play music but it wasn’t like I showed up and I was going to be in a band to make a living. I worked in a tile warehouse and a clothing store and kind of hustled around. In Hellbilly, we all had day jobs and played on the weekends but in BR549 we played every night. They were all committed to it. That was another nice thing that was different from Hellbilly. Some nights we would make $12 but that was our job. Some nights we would do really well.. it just depends on the tourists..we had a tip jar in there. But it was a really lucky time. Broadway was just ripe for something like that to happen. You go to see bands here and nobody dances. Typically it’s just musicians standing there checking out the bands. It’s just a different atmosphere than anywhere in the world. Knowing how it is, I have watched bands come to town and they are a total smash hit success. The band comes off the stage and feels like they failed because the crowd is so quiet. The crowd may be blown way but because they are musicians, they politely applaud. The band is thinking that in other cities, the crowd is flipping out but here everyone is cool and laid back. With lower Broadway, it wasn’t that way. There was dancing and everyone was having a good time. There weren’t snobby musician types, they were there but they were playing shows in the rest of the city. I go down there now and it’s busy and crazy and there is no parking and I’m just happy as hell about it. I wished that’s what it was. When I moved here, I went down there and it was dirty and empty.. I wished it was then what it is now.

What happened with BR5-49?

I started in February of 95 with them. Our first record came out in 1996. 2011, the events of 9/11 happened. I thought I gotta have kids. I still had a year of commitments and I stepped out in 2002. They went on to make records.. they made two records after I quit. I gotta say.. I was friendly with them. There were no hard feelings and everyone was friendly about it. I would have hated to see them sell a million records after I left. I wasn’t wishing for them not to succeed but it was hard to watch them go on. They made good records and they traveled a bit and then they hung it up.

It was so fast when it happened. When it happened it didn’t seem like anything was happening; we were having such a good time. And then Timothy White, the editor of Billboard Magazine was drinking at Roberts. The Mavericks were happening already. The drummer was sitting behind him and he waived over at me, telling me to talk to him. So I talked to him and the whole time he is telling me that he wants to put us on the cover of Billboard, people need hear about us and that he just loves what we are doing. The next day, Jim Bessman called and he was assigned to write the story. He was like “I don’t even know who you guys are. You don’t have a record out for Billboard. I got nothing to write about.” We met up with him and he interviewed us. And the next week we are on the cover of Billboard as Nashville’s next big thing. That’s what led to the record deal. All the labels showed up and we signed with Arista. We sold moderately well.. we didn’t have any big hits. But we were able to travel and go all over the world. Sold a few million records.

How did you guys initially do outside of Nashville?

It was pretty similar all over. What we learned was that there were pockets of people in every city. The internet was not really happening yet. And we find out that there is a kind of underground movement all over. There is this group of people in Chicago like this traditional country stuff, western swing, rockabilly. Southern California had it for sure. Georgia, Atlanta. Cincinnati. Pittsburgh. New York. These cities all have their own scene of these people. And one thing that was unique about us was we went for country airplay on the traditional country stations but we also went for alternative radio and college radio and anywhere that we could get it. Some nights we would be playing at this punk rock club to all the blue hairs, and then the next night we’d be at another town playing the boot scoot to all the starched jeans line dancers. Then the next night we’d be opening some show for a rock band. So that was nice, changed it up. It wasn’t the same old routine. It was different every night. And different crowds from city to city. And then what would happen is the next time we went back to, Pittsburgh for example, the first time we played in Pittsburgh it was for some college radio station had picked up the song. That’s who it was all marketed to and then six months later we had a bit of success on country radio there so it was kinda blending those two crowds. And then we would see it build that way. What we learned right away was not to change what we did. We just did what we did. We wouldn’t try to play more edgy if it was for kids than if it was for old people. We just did what we did.

We did a tour with the Black Crowes really early on and our thinking was that there are these pot-smoking kids and should we play different and do different stuff and the guys in Black Crowes were like “no.. do what you do”. That’s what we want. Our fans are music fans. They will appreciate it. That was really good for us. We did two tours with them. There were people that would follow them.. die hard Black Crowes fans. We made a lot of good friends out of that. We did stuff with Bob Dylan, we toured with him. Brian Setzer’s Orchestra and the Swing Band. It was a hell of a ride.. so fun! I guess it all started and happened so fast. You’re playing shows and the next thing you’re on the Letterman Show. It just seemed like Overnight. Oh My God we’re on the Grammys. Next thing Oh My God we’re playing with Dylan, Buck Owens. Every day there was something else that was amazing. I couldn’t keep up.

Did you get to interact with Dylan a lot?

Some.. He really fixated on one song of ours. And he wanted to know who it was about and kept pinning our writer Chuck (Mead). It was called Lifetime to Prove. He really was into that song and wanted to know all about it. That cracked me up because I have heard Dylan in interviews kinda push back on that. Yet he was kinda like pinning us down. “Is this about you? Who is this person? What’s this line?” It was flattering but it was also funny to see him like be so fixated. I saw him in 1989 up in Indiana. Steve Earle opened and Steve Earle’s steel player ended up being in Dylan’s band when we played with him. He plucked the steel player out of Steve Earle’s band. All these years later, Dylan stole our steel player. And he is still with him.

A non sequitur that leads into early inspiration.

I got a guitar.. my father played. I was able to pick out 3 chord songs. I found buddy holly music.. 3 chords. I can do that. I was probably about 7. I got my own guitar. I remember early on making that connection it’s all connected. Once you learn one thing, later as you learn more, you see how it’s all connected and interwoven. It’s just there to find. I am still trying to find it.. you never get it all. It was really early on when it hit me.

Now there are YouTube videos.. It’s just more readily available to learn now. It’s amazing. That is what drove me, hearing rockabilly stuff. And again, being in Indiana, it’s just wasn’t around. You could find somebody that new a little about it and pick their brain. And find someone else.. Even if it was a little twangy it turned me on, it was exciting. I moved here and everyone knows that music, it’s all around. That was another draw to come here. I wouldn’t be the one person out of a town, I am one out of a million that know that stuff and appreciate it. Going down to Broadway now and you can hear.. I got nothing against new country music.. Whatever turns people on to come here is great.

Do you remember what your first guitar was?

It was an Alvarez acoustic. I think it was $110 at about 1975. I looked at it like it was a beginner guitar. I got an electric of my own.. a Gretsch, later. And I still had that Alvarez for a while. It until it was years later that I saw that it aged.. it was a solid guitar. And then in my early twenties, I sold it.. probably to pay rent or something. I do wish I still have that guitar. But I look back on that.. a lot of instruments went through my hands that I wish I still had. My dad had a lot of guitars around the house. He noticed that I was strumming on his so he bought me that Alvarez. I remember the guitar feeling big to me.

About how old were you?

I was about 5 or six. I remember it feeling big to me and I definitely remember it seemed not too long that it became more manageable. With my kids, they do a lot of things where I think they’re too young and they will prove me wrong. I am a strong believer in that I don’t want to force kids to play music. I don’t make my kids play… I make it available to them.. it’s around. I feel that everyone should take some sort of lessons of something musically so that they are exposed to it at a young age. Nashville schools do have pretty strong music programs. It’s interesting to see how fast.. some kids never get it and some kids are drawn to it and figure it out. There are times in the museum when a little kid will come in and pick up drum sticks and start playing. You can tell they have the natural beat, the natural feel of it. One hand I think I should teach them but the other part of it is I should let him do his thing. The old idea of a kid that has never seen a guitar, he grabs it and holds it an entirely different way. Maybe he will play it completely different and it’s going to unlock other musical things. There’s a time when I want to sit back and watch how their minds approach it.

Was your dad your inspiration for getting into music?

The biggest one. He didn’t play professionally.. he just played for fun around the house. He was always listening to music and playing. He played guitar and I was learning. I liked playing guitar with him but I looked at it like I should play the saxophone or I should play the drums because to me it made more sense to jam with him. So I got a drum set and we played together. I did get a saxophone for the school band in fifth grade. Thinking that those old records had sax on them… because there wasn’t guitar offered in the school band. My dad was definitely a big influence. I do remember moving here and my dad being like “keep music for fun, don’t make it your living”. That’s like what he did. He still plays. At the same time BR5-49 happened and we got to do all that fun stuff, he loved it. He would fly out to certain things we were doing. If it was a big show or a TV thing, he would come out be part of it. He got to kinda live through that, live through BR5-49. I was born when my dad was young. He kept a job, responsible. He wasn’t “I’m going to join a band and go off … I gotta good kid I gotta good job.” I asked my dad, “you’re a pretty good musician, why didn’t you pursue it?” He never told me it was because I came a long but he was grounded because he had a kid and did the right thing.

What kind of music did you have around the house?

Lots of guitar instrumental stuff; Link Wray, Duane Eddy, The Ventures, The Shadows and lots of British invasion and. One story I love that my dad told me was that he would listen to country music. He would talk about going along with the crowd, which I’ve done too, everybody in your group of friends has the new ‘whatever’ album. He came back from Vietnam and the first week he was back, everyone was listening to Led Zeppelin II. That was the album that everybody was hot on. He was standing in the record store holding Led Zeppelin II and there was a line of about four people to pay in front of him. He kinda stood there and said to himself that he was buying it because it’s the thing to buy. He wasn’t ate up with it. He looked up at the wall and there was a Merle Haggard record. He heard of him and new it was country but it was completely different from Led Zeppelin, about as far as you could get. He put the Led Zeppelin record back and got the Merle Haggard record. That’s when he started listening to country music. I just love that thought that he went through and awakening and started listening to country. I started listening to the classic country at the same time.. Willie & Waylon, Chris Kristofferson, Dolly Parton. But I always made fun of the bass line in those country songs. They all sounded the same. I’d make fun of it. After BR549 happened, he would rub it in “you know what you’re playing?”. He got a big kick out of that. A big full circle moment.

My parents were really good about exposing me to just different music that they didn’t just put on for themselves. You should know what Peter Tosh and Bob Marley are doing. World Music..jazz classic stuff.. Sinatra. Gave me a really good base of stuff. Looking back on it I realize it was not the go to stuff they would listen to.

Any particular band or musician that you focused on when you were younger?

Buddy Holly. That was a big one. Seeing the Crickets play with Waylon Jennings. They were playing Buddy Holly songs. Spreading out from there, you’re getting really nerdy..from there you got that 50’s stuff. Little Richard over here doing this stuff, you got the Everly Brothers over here doing this stuff. It’s all rock and roll but they are coming from different… Everly Brothers..theres a lot of soul in in that stuff but it’s really white. Little Richard stuff is really black. But certain songs and seeing how they overlap was impressive to me and it was really good to go down that rabbit hole. Seeing how the Beatles, the stones were coming out of that and then finding out from the stones and Led Zeppelin about Willie Dixon and muddy waters. I grew up in Indiana and every year we would go to the Chicago Blues Festival. I was spoiled because in the 70’s I would be able to see those guys. Who were super old back then but were probably like 50. In my mind he was this ancient old wrinkly dude but in hindsight I saw Albert King, Coco Tayler and Etta James and Hubert Sumlin, all those blues greats..but I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time. Looking back I’m amazed that I got to see all those people perform live. That was how I could grasp the Stones and the Beatles…where it was coming from and how it was all connected. Music is a big web and I am still digging through it. I am fascinated by the fact that I collect records and I have more records than I have time to listen to. If I put on every record I owned and played them back to back, I can’t play them all before I die. I still go home and pull one a billion times that I own. As much as you take in, you can’t hear it all… there’s so much. I love that.

What happened for you after BR5-49?

We did a thing with Keith Richards and Keith had 3 days of rehearsals booked in NYC. When shows like that happen, we were playing every day, all day. This thing came up to do a show with three days of rehearsals. Our immediate response was to say no, we don’t need to do rehearsals. Then they said that it was three days with Keith Richards. Then we said yes! We played with him and we hung out and it was awesome. We did the show. We would rehearse a bit and Keith and his band would come in and rehearse some. They would go through one song twelve or fifteen different ways, total reggae, ska, slow blues. It would be like Happy like the Stones did.. like you know the song and they would try it in different ways, doing different arrangements trying to stretch it out. It was amazing to watch the process. When it came time to do the show, the band did it like it is on the Stones record.

At the end of those three days, we were ready to move on and go our separate ways and we asked Keith if he would take a picture with us – BR5-49. He said sure but none of us had a camera. This was 1999 so there were no cell phone cameras. Nobody had a camera and nobody in his group had a camera. We were embarrassed. Keith was really gracious, laughing “you know how many people take my picture every day and when I want to have my picture taken I can’t find a camera”. He sent some guy out and he went and bought a cheap camera.. like a disposable. We got the picture with him. We were with Sony at the time and the next day, I was thinking we need a camera. We keep finding ourselves in these situations where we are with people like Bob Dylan and these big stars, we should have a camera with us. Being with Sony, I asked if they could hook us up with a camera.. like cheap. And they gave me one but it was a video camera that took stills-digital. So all of a sudden I had a video camera. So I just started filming stuff. And then the Dixie Chicks sued Sony and everything locked down. We couldn’t release a record. Sony couldn’t put out any records for like six months. At the time we didn’t know how long this was going to go. They were standing up to the Dixie Chicks and it was ugly and brutal. This was before the whole Dixie Chicks backlash thing, they were on top of the world and had power. Because BR5-49 couldn’t do anything, I have been filming shots of us as we travel. Around 2000, every CD that came out came out with a bonus DVD. I got all this great footage, let’s put a DVD out with all the behind the scenes things. Sony told me they couldn’t put anything out and couldn’t budget anything and just to appease me, they let me use their video editing system that wasn’t being used at the time so in the future when things get going again they can do something with it. They were probably just trying to shut me up but I did it. When we weren’t traveling, I went into Sony like an 8-5 job and started learning the editing system. I started editing video and then Sony started throwing me little jobs to edit for little promo things they had. It was really simple elementary things but at the same time we were going out on the road as a band and I wasn’t there every day. I was enjoying doing it and working on my own footage. When I quit the band, Sony started hiring me because I was more around. I had kids coming so I wasn’t on the road. They started giving me real jobs. I was editing video and loved it. Cliché music videos.. girl and a dog in the pickup truck.. but I loved it. I was so into it. It was so creative. The band got to a point where they would do a record in a week and a half. Travel for a year. But the week and a half in the studio was the only creative part. It was the same cycle and I don’t know how people do that for fifty years. With video it was cranking something out every day. It was a laundry commercial; it was something new and out the next day. If it was a TV show thing it was airing Tuesday and we get it as good as we can and it’s out there. You don’t have to dwell on it. Same thing with music videos, you have a deadline, you work on it the best you can and then it’s out there. So I was really turned on by that. When the museum started, they needed video work and that’s how I got in here. Then I fell in love with the concept of the museum. I still do video work but for about 4 years I was doing this place and other freelance stuff but now that this place has gotten bigger I just do this now. So basically Keith Richards got me in the Musicians Hall of Fame.

Is there any desire to get back into playing music?

I play music everyday so in my mind I have not ever gone away from it. I don’t want to travel and I don’t have any desire to get on the road. And that really stopped me from getting in a band because so many people want to do that. It’s appealing. Well I did all those miles and I am done with that.

About a year ago, I went to the Ryman to see Brian Setzer play his Christmas show and this kid opened up named Preston James and he was great. I ran into him in the parking lot walking to my car afterwards. Turns out he was 17 years old. Didn’t know that at the time. I told him it was a great show and he asked me if I play bass. He told me his mom used to listen to us. He asked me if I still played and when I said yes he asked me to play a show with him. I said sure.. but not really taking it seriously. The next day he found me on Facebook and sent me a message telling me he was playing at the Wildhorse Saloon, asking me to play bass and will pay me to rehearse. I said sure. Then we rehearsed and we did the show. His band was like 17, 18 or 19 and then old man Jay playing bass.. the fifty year old guy but I had a blast, it was a really fun time. He was on the voice and American Idle. He has a great voice, a talented guitar player and song writer. Now he is starting to travel and go… just turned 18 and wanting to take it on the road. Begging me to go on the road.. I said nope.. I will play local gigs with you. That’s been about a year now and we do about two shows a month. He will go on the road and get a regular bass player.. I’ll get squeezed out which is fine with me. I don’t want to go on the road. I hadn’t played a show on Broadway since about 2004 or 2005. I had a lot of fun. It was packed.. It was interesting because when BR5-49 played down there, we were playing stuff from before I was born.. Buck Owens, Spade Cooley.. and Johnny Horton songs.. old country stuff. And now this kid and the rest of his band are playing that old stuff from before he was born which was like Brooks and Dunn.. He does do some Buck Owens and some oldies but he is like let’s do this Alan Jackson song, this Travis Tritt song. It’s not the stuff I grew up playing at all but to these tourists they love it. I got a kick out of that as I was playing some Travis Tritt song that I heard fifty times but I never thought about playing. Kind of a full circle thing.