Lee Roy Parnell - Road Scholar
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Story and Interview by Brian Williams
If you turn on country radio today, you’ll hear a lot of different things. Yeah, you’ll still hear plenty of fiddles, steel guitars and songs about Mama. But if you listen close, you’ll hear some things that simply weren’t there 25 years ago. In a town where the Fender Telecaster once ruled the roost, you’re now more likely to hear slide guitar licks played on Les Pauls and overdriven Marshall stacks. Yessir, Nashville is a town full of progress, and mainstream country music has embraced the very sounds that just a few short years ago would have been considered blasphemous. But what caused this remarkable open arm acceptance? Simple. Country Music has evolved just like country people have evolved. For instance, country folk are now just as proud to lay claim to Lynyrd Skynrd as they are to Hank Williams. And if you find yourself at a field party out in the sticks these days, you’re likely to hear kids blasting The Marshall Tucker Band back to back with Alan Jackson. Just listen to Jason Aldean’s latest hit single “My Kinda Party” for proof. But all this didn’t happen overnight. It was a gradual process and there were some distinct milestones along the way. And none of those milestones were more important than the career and development of Lee Roy Parnell. When he came to Nashville in 1988, Lee Roy Parnell was a nearly broke and struggling young guitar picker from Austin who not only sounded and looked like Duane Allman, he even played the same guitar rig: a 50’s Les Paul through an old Marshall Plexi head. But in 1988, neo-traditionalists like George Strait and Randy Travis ruled the little big town, and Music Row was not yet ready for the Allman Brothers. In order to succeed, Parnell had to adapt. He knew instinctively that nobody ever remembers the guy who comes in second and there wasn’t going to be another Duane Allman. So he put the Gibson under the bed and made the intentional shift from the comfort of his trusty Les Paul to a new and unfamiliar instrument - the Fender Stratocaster. Along the way he changed from the standard Allman tuning of open E to the more expressive open G tuning in the vain of Bonnie Raitt and Lowell George. He even subtly changed his playing style from a hard blues based sound to a more melodic approach similar to what David Lindley had done with Jackson Browne. The transformation was complete and young Lee Roy was ready drop a bomb on an unsuspecting Nashville establishment. As Parnell put it in his own words, “Fender was king” in Nashville in those days and he knew the Gibson sound was just too radical for country radio. The switch to the Strat made his tone more palatable to the masses and it became the perfect platform for his new melodic style. Check out his singing tone on hits like “What Kind Of Fool Do You Think I Am”, “On The Road” and “Tender Moment” to get a taste. Almost instantly Nashville was smitten with Parnell’s slide guitar and he was welcomed into the fold enthusiastically. His influence spread quickly. By the mid 90’s not only was Lee Roy lending his own distinctive slide to recordings by other artists, but slide guitar in general was turning up everywhere from sitcoms to beer commercials. During this period Lee Roy Parnell found himself a very busy man. As he put it, “I can remember going from before ‘What Kind Of Fool’ where we were making $750 a night, toughing it out in a van, hauling gear, you know, the whole thing. Then ‘What Kind of Fool’ hits and William Morris signs us and all of a sudden we’re making $7,500 a night. And nothing’s changed, nothing’s changed. Only the perception has changed.” Yes indeed. And that wasn’t the only thing that had changed. Slide guitar was now par for the course in mainstream Country Music, and Nashville producers began to use it liberally. Listen to mega hits like Shania Twain’s “(If You’re Not In It For Love) I’m Outta Here” or Toby Keith’s “A Little Less Talk” to hear some of Parnell’s licks played by others almost note for note. Indeed the die had been cast and slide guitar in Country Music was here to stay. Then in the year 2000, a funny thing happened. Parnell split with Arista Nashville and signed on with Vanguard, a independent label known for it’s promotion of honest American roots styles. The relationship was short lived but it nonetheless produced Tell The Truth an album that found an older and wiser Lee Roy returning to the Les Pauls and Marshalls of his youth. Gone were the fiddles and steel guitars of his Nashville days, and in their place were stripped down arrangements featuring Parnell’s grittiest recorded material to date. The record was an epiphany to fans who had wondered if there was more to Parnell than his Nashville records let on. Lee Roy comments, “I was eventually able to go back to the Gibsons because by then my sound was established enough that I could play a Gibson through a Marshall head and it still sounded like me.” When told that he helped pave the way for many of today’s Gibson wielding session players in Nashville, Parnell nonchalantly shrugs it off saying, “yeah, there’s a whole lot of that going on now. We couldn’t get away with it back then!” And maybe that’s true. But, all humility aside, no one can deny Parnell’s influence on helping usher in a new era of country music. But before we get carried away, let’s rewind a bit. What made a country boy from Texas think his brand of swinging blues n’ soul could cut it in Nashville anyway? What makes him tick? And how did he achieve that legendary tone? In an exclusive interview with VirtualWoodshed.com, Lee Roy opens up about his humble beginnings, his family connections to the legendary Bob Wills, his lean and hungry early years and his eventual path to success. Fans of Texas music will find plenty to interest them here as they read through Parnell’s deep understanding of all kinds of music from the Lone Star state. Country Music fans will enjoy getting a birds eye view of the Nashville scene in the mid 1990’s. And of course guitarists will enjoy Lee Roy’s rock solid advice on how to get a great tone, who to listen to, and what really matters about equipment. Virtual Woodshed founder (and long time Parnell friend) Brian Williams was ecstatic to handle the interview chores. And we’d like to extend a special thanks to David Wilson at Tonequest Magazine and Katherine Phillips for helping us track down the photos. So, as usual, grab yourself a beverage of some sort, sit back and soak in the wisdom of a brilliant and largely unsung American guitar hero. Let us know what you think!
Virtual Woodshed: Lee Roy, years ago you wrote a song called “Country Down To My Soul” and you had a line in it that said “Me and Bob Wills used to sing the San Antonio Rose”. A lot of people probably don’t realize that is autobiographical. Can you talk about what it was like growing up in central Texas in the 60’s and having Bob Wills as such a close friend of your family? Lee Roy Parnell: Well, when you’re a kid, you think whatever is available to you is what every kid has. So I kind of thought everybody had a Bob Wills in their family or in their house. But Dad and Bob were just real close friends. And they had been knowing one another since they were youngsters. The only music that I recall in my household early on was Bob Wills records. Now, my mother had some Sam Cooke records that she really loved. So that would explain a lot about where my singing come from. I think my singing has a lot of Sam Cooke in it. But the Bob stuff that I grew up around is what I really remember catching my ear. There was always the fiddle music that was part of the Texas culture of cowboys and living in ranch country. The ranchers that lived out there, they were their own entertainment. They’d have house parties and so forth and that’s how my dad got started in it and that’s how Bob got started in it. Virtual Woodshed: Did your dad play fiddle? Lee Roy Parnell: No, he played guitar. In fact, his guitar is still on my wall it’s very workable. But Bob’s real influence was the blues. That’s what he loved as a kid and one of his favorites was Bessie Smith. I remember him telling the story of being twelve years old and riding a mule fourteen miles to hear Bessie Smith sing. That was his favorite. But, a lot of people think of Bob as being purely fiddle music, and it truly was that too. Bob’s dad was a Texas fiddle champion and of course Bob was. But [Bob's] grandfather also was [a champion fiddler] so it had been passed down in the Wills family for many, many years. All those fiddle reels and Scots-Irish tunes, you know, by the time it reached Texas, it had been filtered through the migrant cotton pickers who were mostly black. My grandfather was one of those migrant cotton pickers and his best friend was an old black gentleman by the name of Lee Roy. So he named my father after Lee Roy and I was named after my father. But you know, Texas music fits in a real funny place in the world, culturally speaking. Today we got computers and web sites and what not, but in those times you carried your folklore with you in music, and story and poetry. And I think in that little section of Texas you had all those Scots-Irish immigrants that had come down from Tennessee and Virginia who had come to Texas for free land. And they met up with Mexican immigrants, and of course everybody was influenced by the black man who was carryin’ the blues. So it was a real gumbo for all this music that ended up becoming indescribable. Even to this day, it’s just Texas music and I can’t really explain it. I mean, what would you call Delbert McClinton? Is it blues? Yeah. Is it country? Uh huh. Is it rock n’ roll? You bet, yeah. So when I got to Nashville and started making records and they would try to get me to comment on what kind of music I played, it was very difficult and I struggled with that for a long time. But I don’t really have to do that much anymore. I don’t find myself being boxed in like that. So that’s probably a long way around the barn to get to what you were asking about. But the whole Bob Wills thing was second nature to me because that’s what was available to me and that’s what I knew. When I heard the Bob Wills records, as much as I loved [the fiddle aspect of it], what really caught my ear was things like “Trouble In Mind”, “Sitting On Top Of The World”, “Milkcow Blues”, all of which were simply adaptations of things that had been done by the blues guys. Virtual Woodshed: So you got to sit down with Bob knee to knee and he showed you some of this stuff? Lee Roy Parnell: Yeah, uh huh. Bob had two strokes. One debilitated his right side, his bowing hand. It left him completely paralyzed on his right side. But when [my family] came to Fort Worth, I was pestering my dad about guitar and there was a company here in town called Leonard Brothers which became Tandy Corporation which of course became Radio Shack. It was a true department store in downtown Fort Worth, back in the days when there was such things. And anyway, they had all kinds of cheap guitars. So dad bought me a little cheap Korean guitar for $18 and we took it straight over to Bob’s house. [Bob] felt the neck and what have you and he said “it’ll do for now”. I remember that very clearly. As I recall, he was in bed most all time by then. And almost every time I would go over there, he would be listening to Emmet Miller. It was very hard to understand him back then, but he kept telling me “this is the missing link”. And if you go back and listen to Emmet Miller… [Lee Roy interrupts himself] Have you ever heard Emmet Miller? Virtual Woodshed: No I haven’t. Lee Roy Parnell: Oh, man, you’re in for real treat. There was only one album ever recorded or made available. He was from Macon, Georgia, interestingly enough. The first album that came out had like a cartoon type drawing of him in blackface. And [the label] pulled that after just the first pressing. So that was the first one I had. But Emmet was a direct link between what we would consider delta blues and, not country music, but… put it this way, if Jimmie Rodgers was the father of country music then Emmet Miller was the grandfather. Virtual Woodshed: So you’re talking about early to mid 20’s?
Lee Roy Parnell: Yeah, mm hmm. And all those recordings were done in New York and [legendary jazz pioneer] Jack Teagarden was involved with that. Anyway, the name of the collection is called Minstrel Man From Georgia and I think you can readily find it. It will really show you how the blues and string music, let’s just call it that, come together. Because there was no such thing as Bluegrass or Country & Western at that time. Virtual Woodshed: You mean Hillbilly Music! Lee Roy Parnell: Yeah! Just Hillbilly music. In fact, I even heard Bob call it that many times. But Bob never considered his music “country”, ever. If you wanted to get a fight going real quick, you could call any one of those Texas Playboys a “country musician” because they weren’t. They were jazz musicians! They were heavy duty jazz musicians. Anyway, that album is worth checking out, Minstrel Man From Georgia. Sadly enough, Emmet Miller was found dead on the side of the road selling watermelons out of his truck. So there’s a little trivia to send you down the road with. Virtual Woodshed: Let’s fast forward a bit into you teenage years. Can you talk about your earliest gigging memories and how you got hooked up with Kinky [Friedman]? Lee Roy Parnell: Well, I remember the first job I ever played was when I was six on the radio with Bob. But that was just an impromptu thing. It wasn’t like a weekly thing, it just happened and thank God we got it on tape. But the first paying job that I played: I didn’t even live in town, I lived near a little town, and anyway, Friday night football in Texas was the big thing; it still is. But I realized that after the games there was nothing to do. And I had this idea, well, I’ve got a few people that play music, a Silvertone amp, a mic, and a makeshift mic stand that I’d made. So I just went down the recreation hall right near where the football games would let out, and thought, this would be a something good for the people to do [after the game]. I think this would have been 7th, maybe 8th grade. So my mother took fifty cents at the door and put it in a shoebox and I think we all walked out of there with a couple hundred bucks! Virtual Woodshed: Man, that’s pretty enterprising for an 8th grader. Lee Roy Parnell: Yeah! Well, it was the last real money I made in music! [laughs] So anyway, it turned out to be a pretty good idea and we started following the football team around. You know today they’ve got the TV show and all that stuff, Friday Night Lights and what have you. High School football is a really big deal in Texas. Virtual Woodshed: I hear it’s like the NFL down there. Lee Roy Parnell: Maybe bigger. I can remember driving by any business in Stephenville after 3:00 on a Friday, there’d be a sign “CLOSED - gone to game, Go Jackets!” or whatever. So we would dump all our gear in my mother’s Chevrolet station wagon and she would take us to play. She would take money at the door and we played nearly every weekend in the fall. So that was really the beginning. The rest of the year I would just hole up and try to find people to play with. There was a college close by that had a music program so I went over there in the 9th grade and put up posters in the band hall and the student union building, trying to find people who were serious musicians. I was extremely serious about it and sorta ended up with a band full of college guys. Virtual Woodshed: What year was that? Lee Roy Parnell: ‘72. Virtual Woodshed: Had you gotten into the Allman Brothers and all the blues guys by then? Lee Roy Parnell: Yeah, I had drank the Kool Aid by then. I remember we were doing anything we could get by with two or three chords, because that’s about all we could manage. But I distinctly remember the first time I heard the Allman Brothers. It was far enough along in their career that [Live at] Fillmore East had just come out. The sound that I heard coming off [Duane's] guitar was like nothing else I’d ever heard. It was like a woman’s voice or something. I kept saying, who is this? And [people] said, oh man, you don’t know about these guys?! So I bought everything I could find, and this was long before you could learn anything by book. It was just me sitting in my bedroom with a turntable, picking up that needle going back and forth, back and forth, trying to catch every little lick and trying to figure out what he was doing with that bottleneck thing. And nobody ever clued me in that it was open tuning. So I sort of fell into it and figured it out. I said to myself there’s no way he could do that unless his guitar is tuned differently than mine is. And the first year I really struggled through those licks in regular tuning. Shortly after that I think I read where Ry Cooder said in Guitar Player magazine that he had tuned to a chord. So once I figured that out I said, man, this is a piece of cake! There were a couple guitar players in Stephenville. One guy, John Burleson, was into acoustic music. I think he’s still around in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. Anyway, he was a very intelligent guy, a real wizard with numbers and math and all that. And he kind of clued me on people like John Fahey and people who were way further engulfed in what I was about to get into and didn’t know it. There was Craig Webb who I formed a band with. Then there was Lennis and Frank Summers who both lived down the street from me. And that was first place I ever saw a two pickup Les Paul Special. I had a white SG with a single P-90 pickup in the back. I bought it for $50. Virtual Woodshed: Was it a [Les Paul/SG] Junior? Lee Roy Parnell: Umm, well it was an SG that had a P-90 with a black dog ear cover on it, in the back position. But anyway, when I first saw Lennis Summer’s guitar it had two pickups on it so I thought it must be twice as loud. I mean, that’s how country I was! Anyway, between us all we learned as much as we could. But my head and heart was not in my studies or sports or anything else. I was completely consumed by music and the minute I could get out of there, I did. That took me to Austin first and it was starting to come into it’s own. Nashville would have been the closest [big time music town], but for some reason I was drawn to New York and ended up going there on a wing and a prayer. I had met one guy in Austin who worked for [legendary talent agency] William Morris in New York City, and I had his number in my back pocket and that was all I knew. I had no place to stay, no place to go. Virtual Woodshed: How old were you then? Lee Roy Parnell: Nineteen. Anyway, so I met this guy and it turns out he’s just an intern with a desk out in the hall! He didn’t know anybody. But some reason or another he knew Kinky [Friedman] and he said that Kinky was looking for a guitar player. And I said, I just left Texas! What’s he doing here?! Virtual Woodshed: Oh, so you already knew Kinky at that time? Lee Roy Parnell: Well, [pauses] I didn’t know him. He was older than I was and he had already been through the whole Austin thing and gone to New York. At that time, New York was very much in love with Texas. Anything Texas, music, styling, I mean, Willie coulda been president of the United States and the Lone Star Cafe was sort of the central club that everybody went to. If a big act was playing Madison Square Garden, you could bet that they would end up at the Lone Star Cafe later that night. So I ended up getting a job at the Lone Star Cafe playing guitar for Kinky. It’s funny ’cause our music didn’t have a thing to do with one another but we had a healthy respect for one another and he’s turned out to be a great friend over the years. I tried to always help him in his political aspirations. I think he’s back on the ballot for this next election, so we’ll see what happens. Virtual Woodshed: How long did you play with Kinky? Lee Roy Parnell: Off and on for a long, long time. But after my father got sick I had to head back to Texas. The closest thing we had to any sort of musical center was Austin and it was really hoppin’ at the time. That was pre-Urban Cowboy. Austin was more along with what was going on in San Francisco at the time. It was a very liberal town for hippies and people who played music. And there were lots and lots of clubs in town. Nobody was making much money but it didn’t take that much money to live down there at the time. So it was a real breeding ground for all kinds of new music and it allowed me to sort of grow up in a musical way with a lot of people around me. Stevie [Ray Vaughan] was there and he was a friend. Jimmie [Vaughan] was there, he was a friend. And the T-birds were king in that town at the time! [Legendary Austin blues club] Antones was alive and well and all the great blues players who were still alive, and most of them were, all played there. I saw Muddy, Willie Dixon, I saw, let’s see… Virtual Woodshed: Albert King?
Lee Roy Parnell: Oh yeah, many times I saw Albert. Saw Bobby Bland. They all came through and played Antones. ‘Cause there weren’t that many clubs around that supported blues bands. Clifford Antone pretty much dedicated his life to keep it going in anyway he could; sometimes legal, sometimes not so legal [laughs]. Clifford ended up on vacation courtesy of the State of Texas a couple times because of the not so legal stuff. Nothing that would hurt anybody you know, just ways to make a little extra money so he could keep these guys employed. Suffice to say he was a friend of the farmer! [laughs]. But that was a felony in Texas at the time. Virtual Woodshed: He was a broker of cash crops? Lee Roy Parnell: Yeah, cash crops! Virtual Woodshed: That Gold Top Les Paul you have, the one that’s pictured in the liner notes of Tell The Truth, I think it’s a mid 50’s model, was that your main axe back then? Lee Roy Parnell: That was the only axe! I bought that guitar when I was fifteen. It was fifteen too. We’re both ‘56 models. [chuckles] There was a guy in Fort Worth and he had put an ad in the paper, “Two Les Pauls - Gold. One old, one new”. So I had a friend take me over there and he pulled ‘em out from under the bed. I suppose this is one of those holy grail stories you hear about. Anyway, he pulled them out and one was like one of those late 60’s Gold Top reissues with the P-90’s. It had that big chunky thing on the headstock where [Les Pauls] used to break a lot, and it was really heavy. And [the guy] said, now this one I’d have to get $350 for since it’s newer, but this old one, you can get it for $300. And of course, $300 happened to be exactly what I had in my pocket. But also, I just knew by playing the old one that it was much lighter and I could feel the wood vibrating against my body, so I was much more drawn to [the old one]. And I said, well $300 is all I’ve got and he said, well I guess this is the one you’re gonna get! [laughs]. And that was the only guitar I owned til I was 30 years old. I had it and I had a 100 watt white Plexi Marshall. And that was only amp I had, and the whole rig fit very snuggly in the back of my 1969 Plymouth Fury III that would do 140mph. So I had everything I needed to do anything I needed to get done! Virtual Woodshed: That’s a bad car! Lee Roy Parnell: It would do 140, we know that to be a fact. One time I had to back down at 140 when I realized that I had re-treads on it. Virtual Woodshed: Your early years sound like an old ZZ Top song. Lee Roy Parnell: Oooo!! [laughs] Well, it kind of was. If we could think of it, we’d do it. I mean, none of us thought we’d make it to 25 anyway, so we figured we’d better wind it on out while we could, and so we did. ‘Course now, here I am at 53 saying, whoa, I wish I’d taken better care of myself. [laughs] But, actually I’m in remarkably good health for all the things I went through at an early age. Virtual Woodshed: So talk about how you wound up in Nashville and when. Lee Roy Parnell: Well, that was a rough period of time. I’d been in Austin, married twice. Had a son with my first wife. Had a daughter with my second wife. And she didn’t want me playing music, and I didn’t know how to do anything else. So that relationship was very difficult. I didn’t want to leave my kids ’cause I was and still am very close to both of them. But one day [in Austin] I picked up the paper and saw that the same guys were playing the same clubs as when I’d gotten there ten years earlier. I was thirty and I thought man I gotta do something different or I’m gonna end up just like the rest of these guys down here making $50 a night. I couldn’t do that, not with a family. So my father was still alive and I think I was really afraid to leave. I didn’t want to leave my kids and I didn’t want to leave my parents cause they were getting on up in years. But my dad talked to me and said Son, if you’re gonna continue doing this, you need to go to Nashville. Because my cousin Robert Earl Keen… Virtual Woodshed: Wait, Robert Earl Keen is your cousin?! Lee Roy Parnell: Yeah. Our grandmothers are sisters. Anyway, Robert had come up here about the same time as Lyle Lovett and they made phone call to me and said hey Lee Roy why don’t you come up here to Nashville and try this? At the time Steve Earle had the number one song on country radio with “Guitar Town”. And they said, you’re writing all these songs, why don’t you come up here and get a publishing deal? They’ll pay you money and these banks up here will lend money to musicians, it’s crazy man, you ought to give it a try! So all I had was what I just told you about, the Les Paul, the Marshall and that car. And I came to Nashville, moved in with a friend I had met in Muscle Shoals along the way, Cris Moore with whom I wrote many of my hits with. He had a mother-in-law apartment at his house, and I had enough money to pay my child support and to pay $200 rent for a beautifully furnished apartment in east Nashville [laughs]. But six months was all I had. I had to get it done in six months. And really, six months almost to the day, I secured a publishing contract with Polygram and I was a staff writer there for twelve years. About six months after I signed that deal, Clive Davis opened up an arm of Arista Records in Nashville and Tim DuBois was heading it up. Tim had been coming to see me at the Bluebird on Blue Mondays. And it was blues! We weren’t really playing any kind of country. But I was writing during the week and I would try out [my songs] on the live audience to see what the people thought of them. And it was through those songs that Tim said I think we can make a country record out of this. And I said how?! I couldn’t imagine what he was smoking to make him think that, but he saw a way because at that time we were going through an interesting time in Nashville. You gotta remember Lyle Lovett was just signed, Steve Earle was considered the bright shining star of country music. Virtual Woodshed: This must have been ‘88 or so. Lee Roy Parnell: It was exactly ‘88. In fact, the night Tim saw us and made the decision to sign us was 8/08/88! [laughs] So we went in the studio with Barry Beckett cause he was the only producer I could get my head around. I loved the records he had made and played on in Muscle Shoals. Barry was trying, and successfully doing it, to become a country producer. But he was bringing this groove with him. I just wasn’t hearing the deep groove, but Barry was all about groove and I have him to thank so much for helping me learn to make records where that feel was in there. Didn’t matter what the lyric or melody was, the groove was king. So we went on to make three albums together, then he got really busy and his engineer Scott Hendricks kind of took over. That’s when we hit the long stride of hits. “The Rock” almost did it. Three singles went to 36 [on the country charts] and died. [laughs] And then we had “What Kind Of Fool Do You Think I Am?” It was important to me that people would know who the artist was before the vocals even came in. All the people that I really respect in Country music had that. Like Merle Haggard’s band The Strangers had a sounds [such that] as soon as you heard the intro to “Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down” you instantly knew it was going to be a Merle Haggard record. You heard Roy Nichols playing guitar and so forth, and you just knew. And I wanted that. But the only thing I had that was unique to me that we could see was the slide. Slide guitar was unique to country music so we let it be the centerpiece. Virtual Woodshed: Was that Barry’s idea or more what your heart was telling you to do? Lee Roy Parnell: It was a collective thing between Tim, myself and Barry. Barry was most interested in the groove and I was most interested in getting something I could be proud of. And Tim’s job was to set a framework that made all that work in country radio. If you didn’t have a record out that was doing well on the charts then you didn’t have a career. I can remember going from before “What Kind Of Fool” where we were making $750 a night, toughing it out in a van, hauling gear, you know, the whole thing. Then “What Kind of Fool” hits and William Morris signs us and all of a sudden we’re making $7500 a night. And nothing’s changed, nothing’s changed. Only the perception has changed. Virtual Woodshed: You glossed over one thing that I think is pretty critical. By the time your second album Love Without Mercy came around in 1992, you had switched to a Fender Stratocaster exclusively and established a very definitive tone. How does a dyed in the wool Gibson guy of almost twenty years can change to a Strat overnight? How did that happen? Lee Roy Parnell: Well, that was intentional. There were so many parallels being drawn between myself and Duane Allman at the time, I realized that nobody ever remembers the name of the guy who flew around the world the second time. I knew I needed to find something that set me apart and gave me a voice of my own. So I bought, well it wasn’t even a Fender, it was a Tokai Strat, which was made in Japan. And at that time, the Tokais were actually a lot closer to what the old Strats would have been, with the “V” necks and so forth. They were closer than what Fender was building at the time anyway. In a nutshell, Brian, I’ll tell you this: I put my Les Paul under the bed, I put my Marshall away, I bought a blackface Fender Concert that [Paul] Rivera was making at the time. I liked that amp a lot, and I had two of them actually, and just lost both of them in the flood. It was a real exercise in trying to find my own voice and in doing so I had to put those instruments away and I also had to change my tuning from open E to an open A or G. Those G tunings were more popular with the West Coast players like Lowell [George], Bonnie [Raitt] and Ry Cooder, even though Ry probably used E and D as much as he played A and G. By losing the ability to play the fifth on the top of the Elmore James sound, that helped me create a more lyrical and melodic sound that was not so boxed into the pentatonic blues framework. So basically by changing instruments, that helped me find a different voice, and by changing tunings, that helped me find a different voice. But it you’ll notice, my stuff has never been complex. It’s not hard to do. It’s really just the melody or a harmony to the melody, it’s all moving around the melody all the time. Now, honestly this is something I never thought about real hard. I just did it. But in addressing, what you’re saying about the Les Paul, I had to put it away for a lot of years and you’re right, what you’re hearing on those Arista records, that’s a definitive “Strat-through-a-Bassman” tone. I didn’t know it at the time, but the minute I played through a Bassman I went, Ahh, I love this! It had a midrange growl to it that was just incredible. Virtual Woodshed: Are you talking about a narrow panel 50’s tweed Bassman with 4-10’s? Lee Roy Parnell: Mm Hmm. That’s the one. But [Fender] had started reissuing them by that time. That was just the beginning of the reissues. So there was the Strat and the Bassman and no pedals involved. The only thing between the guitar and the amp was a little bit of Fender tube reverb that added just a little bit of compression, and then there was the sag of the rectifier tube in the amp itself. And that turned out to be the sound we used for “On The Road”, “What Kind Of Fool”, all that stuff. That’s where it started, right there. Virtual Woodshed: Did you have that sound established on your first album or was it still in development?
Lee Roy Parnell: It was evident. It was coming through. But the first record was more of a mixture. It was still a Fender, but we’re talking late 80’s and you gotta remember that Fender was king as far as country radio was concerned, so that sort of helped eschew me into a sound that was more palatable to the country listener. But today, I mean, I rarely listen to country radio, but when I do I hear a lot of Gibsons and Marshalls. Virtual Woodshed: You really paved the way for a whole lot of Duane acolytes out there in Nashville. You hear an awful lot of that stuff on the radio today. Lee Roy Parnell: Yeah, there’s a whole lot of that going on now. But we couldn’t get away with it back then! [laughs] We had to create something that was somewhat similar to [the Nashville establishment's] taste and liking, but still different enough that it was doable for me. But we still had a little steel guitar peppered in, which I fought like crazy. Not because I didn’t like it so much, there were some steel things that I did like. But I just didn’t want my records heavily laden with a bunch of steel guitars. So Tim and I argued about that a lot. And he wanted the [Hammond] B3 out of the sound but we managed to keep it in. But it was never a power struggle, ’cause we made a deal and it worked. He said, I tell you what, you don’t ever ask me to put out a record that I don’t want to put out, and I’ll never put one out that you don’t want me to put out. The lines were blurred at times on that, cause there were a couple records that I wasn’t too crazy about and there were a couple that he wasn’t too sure of either. Like, when Love Without Mercy was done [Tim DuBois] said, well that’s nothing but R&B! I said, yeah, but I think it’s gonna work, and sure enough it did. Virtual Woodshed: That’s kind of an ambiguous agreement you two had there! [laughs] Lee Roy Parnell: Yes, it was, but it was the best we could come up with. It was sort of an “agreement to agree.” Virtual Woodshed: You once told me that you credited David Lindley for a lot of the lyricism in your playing. On some of your more melodic songs like “Done Deal” and “Wasted Time”, you really come about as close as someone can get to capturing the feel and essence of Lindley’s playing. Was that a conscious decision? Lee Roy Parnell: No, it really wasn’t. I think when you consider some of the “strummy” songs like “On The Road” and some of those straight four mid tempo things like “Tender Moment”, it was very reminiscent of a Jackson Browne type thing that he had done earlier in the 70’s and 80’s. And then of course with Lindley laying his melodic lap steel on top, it was like Ah Ha! there’s a way to fit it in here. This is proven, tried and true and I think this will work. Lindley is such a melodic player and yes, I owe a great deal to David Lindley. What a gentleman and a prince of guy he is. Actually I saw him just recently when my friend [legendary Texas guitarist] Stephen Bruton passed away. Anyway Stephen had four Dumble amps and certain person who has a propensity to play through Dumble amps and will remain nameless recently bought all four of them at $40,000 a pop. I was talking to Lindley on the phone one time and he said, hey I’ve got an extra Dumble Overdrive amp that you really need to have. I said wow, how much do you have to have? And Lindley says, well I’ll sell it to you for $5,000. I thought, $5,000, who would ever pay that for an amplifier?! [laughs] And that was one of those moments where you whack your head and say I coulda had a V8! [laughs] So, while I did get the Les Paul under the bed for $300, I passed up the Dumble for five grand! [laughs] Virtual Woodshed: You seem to have done all right without it. Lee Roy Parnell: Aw, I’ve done alright I guess. [chuckles] I eventually found that same era Marshall [as I had previously had] in a 50 watt version. It was actually one that I had played through, so I knew the amp and I just kept missing that sound. While I was still playing the Strat, I had gotten a hold of [an old Marshall] from my old friend Ray Hennig who is legendary down there [in Austin]. He helped Stevie [Ray Vaughan], hell he helped us all. He’d take anything in on trade, motorcycles, cattle, you name it! Anyway, we were talking and I said do you have a 50 watt? And he said I’ve got THE 50 watt, the one you loved! The guy bought it couldn’t pay for it and had to bring it back. I said, send it to me! I think I paid $700 for it, something like that. And I ended up finding two more along the way. But you know I still liked the open 4-10 speaker configuration of the Bassman, so I set the Marshall head right on top of the Bassman and let it fly. And people always tell me, you’re gonna blow those speakers, but it’s funny cause I never have, even to this day. Recently I picked up a Reinhardt, which is 50 watt version of [the Marshall plexi], and I think it’s gives you a good idea of what those amps must have sounded like when they were new; very tight and all that. But Larry [Reinhardt] is building great amplifiers and lately I’ve just been playing through that cause you don’t have to worry about it. You can chunk it in the back of car or bus or whatever and you don’t have to worry about it. Those [old Marshalls] you know, they’re 40 years old now and a lot can go wrong with ‘em. Virtual Woodshed: There’s a guy in North Carolina making [high end Marshall replicas] named Greg Germino. Have you tried one of his? Lee Roy Parnell: Yeah, they’re nice. Those are real nice amplifiers indeed. Once you have the topology on those amplifiers, they’re pretty straightforward. But anyway, I was eventually able to go back to the Gibsons [around 1999] because by then my sound was established enough that I could play a Gibson through a Marshall head and it still sounded like me, or whatever the “grown up” version of me turned out to be. Virtual Woodshed: I get the feeling the Strat was more of a courtship than a love affair. Lee Roy Parnell: Well, you know still, they’re awfully handy. Even as of late I have picked up a Telecaster. Teles were always difficult for me to play because they hung weird. The E chord seemed a lot further away from me than it did on a Les Paul. Strats weren’t that way, but Telecasters were difficult ’cause it seemed like it was just a long way down there [to the end of the neck]. And then of course [Fenders] have the longer scale and all that. But as of late my friend [former Hot Links guitarist] James Pennebaker has started working for Fender and I’ve been getting rumblings about these Mexican Road Worn Teles. And he had one come through that was really good and light. Anyway, I played it and I loved it, just loved it. I popped in a couple pickups from a guy in California named Ron Ellis and it turned out be a great instrument. So if I’m building a track, there seems to be always a place for the Gibson, a place for the Tele, a place for the Gretsch. There’s a sonic stamp to a [Fender]. And you know, one Gibson in a track is a lot. Virtual Woodshed: Gibson’s take up a lot of room in the track, don’t they? Lee Roy Parnell: Yeah, they take up a lot of room. So having those other instruments allows you to create a sonic pallet that’s not overbearing in mid range and that sort of thing. Virtual Woodshed: Are you still involved with Gibson personally? Lee Roy Parnell: Oh yeah, Gibson is like part of my family. They’re good people. Just yesterday I was signing guitars at a picnic for ‘em. It kind of honored the folks that are winding pickups and shaping necks on guitars and so on. You know, those folks are working every day at their stations and they don’t get a chance to get out to meet and greet that often. So we take it to them as much as we can. Virtual Woodshed: You said a minute ago that your stuff “isn’t hard to do”. And I guess compared to something super technical, it’s not all that complicated. But you do something that the vast majority of technical players could never do, and that is to play with an intuitive feel and a superb tone. What do you tell these young guitar players today about how to slow down and get a great tone? Lee Roy Parnell: You know I think if we go back and study what BB King does, I mean, it isn’t necessarily hard as far as, can you hit the notes? can you do the bends? But it’s the way he does it. He can say more with one note than most [players] could say playing the complete jazz book from A to Z. It’s all about feel, it’s all about touch. I am convinced that it doesn’t matter what kind of guitar rig you’ve got. You can go out and buy anything you want and it’s still gonna sound like you.
Virtual Woodshed: Marc Ford said almost the exact same thing when we interviewed him. Lee Roy Parnell: Did he? [laughs] Well, he’s right! It’s still gonna sound like you. I’ll tell you this, one time I was early for a show with Dickey’s [Betts] band and Dickey was not there yet. They said well, would you run a few songs with us on his rig to see how it’s sounding? So I picked up Dickey’s guitar and played it through his amp and it still sounded like me, it didn’t sound like Dickey. So, it is in the fingers, it’s in the hands, it’s in the way you squeeze it, it’s how much skin you’re using. It’s about touch, it’s about feel. One thing about my slide playing, ’cause people do try to emulate that: if you’re trying to do it with a pick you’ll never get it. Cause without that skin… I mean you gotta figure you got glass or metal on your left hand and a plastic pick in your right hand, you are completely isolated from your instrument and the skin never really has a chance to touch the string. And everybody’s touch is different. Did the guy rake his finger across the string just before the note sounded? Or does he prelude the strike with a roll of two dead strings before he hits it? You may hear that. And it’s those tiny little nuances that allow you to say A ha, I know who that player is. It’s all about the touch and I can’t nor did I ever try to become one of those really technical players. It didn’t interest me, it didn’t touch me. But it just killed me when I’d hear BB King play a note or hear Duane hit a slide note and pull it just a little sharp to create a little tension, or may be hit it dead on and let it drop off to give it some release. Therein lies the secret, I believe, to greatness in a guitar player. I think that’s where people will say, “yeah, he played it just like the record”. But is it? No, no it’s not. Because you’d have to approach with the same passion or wild abandon as the cat who played it originally. And I don’t think that can even be taught. It can be talked about. Umm, it’s like you and I playing together. We both understand the touch and the tone you know? I watched a video of you and me doing “Statesboro Blues” on Youtube and it’s about as close as any two guys are gonna come to capturing what Dickey and Duane had during those two and half short years they were together. Cause you understand what Dickey was shooting at, I understand what Duane was shooting at, and if you listen to their playing, it didn’t happen overnight. You could hear it growing. But I guess I’m rambling! [laughs] Virtual Woodshed: No you’re not! It’s good rambling man, good rambling. Let me put you on the spot: can you list five albums that a young player should go out and buy tomorrow if they want to improve their touch and tone? Lee Roy Parnell: Well, I would say certainly [the Allman Brothers] Live At Fillmore East captures Duane at his best. John Hiatt’s record that he did called Bring The Family. That was before Little Village. If you want to hear Ry Cooder at some of his best, that’s the album to get. Listen to “Lipstick Sunset”. That’ll pretty much tell you exactly where [Ry] is coming from. Or “Memphis In The Meantime” from the same album. Try to follow that sometime! Try to pull that one off with your book! [laughs] The period of time where [David] Lindley played lap steel with Jackson [Browne]. Anything from the “Running On Empty” era is fantastic. Um, BB King’s Live At The Appollo. Best blues album. Ever. And I gotta tell you man, since the Vaughan Brothers were so important to this generation and since they were friends of mine, we need to include them. Some guys today exalt Stevie to places he would have never been comfortable with. I knew Stevie and he would never have been comfortable with that, because Jimmie was the MAN, you understand? If you were a hometown boy, Jimmie was just the MAN. However, when [Jimmie and Stevie Ray] finally made that brotherly peace and they made that album Family Style, I would include that in your five albums, because you’re getting the absolute best of what both those guys had to bring. So there you go. Virtual Woodshed: Lee Roy, I can’t tell you how much we appreciate you spending this time with and answering all our questions. Lee Roy Parnell: Well God Bless you brother. Thanks for having me. About the author: Brian Williams got his start with music at the ripe old age of 11 and has been at it ever since. A player who’s as comfortable on Bluegrass mandolin as he is on his trusty ‘62 Les Paul Junior, Brian has the versatility to play in a number of genres. His favorite influences are BB King, Duane Allman, Clarence White, Bill Monroe, Billy Gibbons, David Lindley, Merle Travis, Tony Rice, Joe Walsh, Grant Green, and Merle Haggard. Over the years, Brian has shared the stage numerous time with this month’s featured artist Lee Roy Parnell. But he has also played with AJ Roach, Wayne C. Henderson, Chip McNiel, Scott Fore, Juevos Diablos, Doug Bickel, Old School Freight Train, Lindy Fralin, Poverty Creek and Carrie Johnson among others. Brian currently resides in Richmond, VA where (in addition to running Virtual Woodshed) he is a gigging guitarist, freelance writer, videographer and insurance professional. He also harasses Lindy Fralin on a regular basis and spends a lot of quality family time with his wife and two kids. Lee Roy Parnell - Selected discography: On The Road - Arista 07822-18739-2 (1993 - currently out of print) - Highlights include the title track, “I’m Holding My Own”, “Wasted Time” Every Night’s A Saturday Night - Arista/Career 07822-18841-2 (1997 - currently out of print) - Highlights include “One Foot In Front Of The Other”, “Honky Tonk Night Time Man”, “Baton Rouge” w/ Guy Clark, “Mama, Screw Your Wig On Tight”, plus the superb Tele laying of James Pennebaker and the rest of Lee Roy’s band “The Hot Links”. Tell The Truth - Vanguard Records 79589-2 (2001) - Highlights include “Right Where It Hurts”, “Breaking Down Slow” w/Bonnie Bramlett, “Guardian Angel” and “Takes What It Takes” w/Jack Pearson. This album was Lee Roy’s return to Gibsons and Marshalls and his raw, biting tone reflects that fact. Back To The Well - Universal South (2006) - Highlights include “Back To The Well”, “Don’t Water It Down”, “You Can’t Loose ‘Em All”, “Breaking The Chain”. Lee Roy also played on numerous sessions for other artists including Delbert McClinton, Pirates of the Mississippi, Collin Raye, Diamond Rio, Mary-Chapin Carpenter, and Radney Foster, among others. Copyright 2010 Virtual Woodshed Media LLC All Rights Reserved. No part of this article may be reprinted or otherwise reproduced without the explicit written consent of the author. |
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