Jimmy Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Cat Stevens, Crosby, Stills, & Nash, Neil Young, It's A Beautiful Day, Lilly Hayden, James Taylor, Paul Simon, Jean Luc Ponte, Styx, Kansas, Boston, Thin Lizzy, and anyone who could play a guitar or fiddle that caught my ear...
Sounds Like
Hum...I'll have to think about this one. I sound pretty much like Tim Spencer.
I began playing guitar at the age of 12 years old. I was living in Paris, Texas at the time. We went to south Padre Island one summer for a beach vacation and while we were there my dad picked up a small Mexican guitar in a pawn shop for $13. My dad would try to play and sing songs to us kids at night before we would go to bed.
I began playing with it after a few months and learned a few of the basic chords. I never took it very seriously at first, it was just another hobby to me. Then when I was 14 I began to play it all the time quickly surpassing my fathers abilities. At the same time my family moved to Port Arthur, Texas.
I didn't realize at first what a great music town I was moving into. There were lots of great musicians in the area already like Janis Joplin who had just become famous a few years before. Johnny Winter got signed about that time and Edgar soon followed. ZZ Top was still playing copy songs across the street in Groves, TX. I started playing in church Christmas programs and learned how to finger pick and strum quite well.
About the time I was 17 years old I had a friend who could play pretty good too and he called me to come play at his church with him one Sunday evening as the opening act for a concert they were having. It was the Port Arthur Memorial Baptist Church. The head liner was George Jones and he had a blond singer with him who I believe was Tammy Wynette. Someone in the church knew George and got him to come play at the church. I had never heard of him at the time and took the whole thing very casual: I was hooked on the attention of the crowd, though.
In 1973 I bought a 1961 Fender Stratocaster for $125 which I still have today. I started college at Lamar University in Beaumont, TX and I began playing an old violin I had gotten from my grandmother when she died. I actually took a violin class once a week and got a three hour credit for it at the college. While attending college I played "Classical Gas" in the traveling version of "Ted Mac's Amateur Hour". I didn't win but it was an awesome experience to play for 2500 people at the age of 19.
At the time I was also taking a music theory class and I met a drummer friend who was in a band. They were looking for a guitar player to travel on the road with a singer who had an album he was promoting. I auditioned on Christmas Eve and got the job. I was working on the road full time for the first time January 2, 1974. I loved it and took a semester off from college. I learned a lot about the music business and how it worked. The agents, bar owners and managers, groupies, mis-bookings and band fights in motel rooms and awesome wonderful times I could never have expected when everything went right.
It lasted six months and I returned home to finish college. I picked up lots of gigs with weekend bands until I finished college. One group was Doug Childress and Blackwater. It was a country band that had a steady Saturday night gig at the VFW Hall in Orange, TX. Being a fiddle player, too, it was tolerable. We played several concerts with recording artists like John Wesley Riles, Jeannie Pruit, Johnny Paycheck, and the Earl Scruggs Review, Kenny Dale and several others I forgot along the way when they would book them at the hall. After graduating from college I moved to Denver, CO with a friend and formed a very successful band called Longshot.
After a year I decided I really wanted to work as a solo entertainer and that the acoustic guitar was my calling. I played the mountain jobs for about another year. It was just too cold and I decided to move back to Houston, TX. While in Houston I started working with the Chelsea Street Pubs chain out of Austin, TX. They sent me to Gainsville, FL and on the way back I stopped in Pensacola Beach, FL and got a job at a small oyster bar called Schooners (now closed). It was an awesome place in paradise.
Since then I have played all over the gulf coast from Gulf Shores to Panama City Beach, and at many of the finest resorts and restaurants like the awesome Holiday Inn Sunspree Resort in Panama City Beach where they filmed MTV's Spring Break shows. Also at Flounder's Chowder & Ale House on Pensacola Beach for eight years and McGuire's Irish pub in Destin for five summers. I have performed at the awesome Quietwater Boardwalk Bandshell Arena over 120 times and held the weekend job for the entire summer of 1995. I have also played the Ready Room Officers Club at Pensacola Naval Air Station many times. I have played Seville Quarter and the world famous Trader Jon's in the downtown Seville historical district. And I can't forget to mention the the hundreds of smaller clubs and restaurants that I have enjoyed playing at over the years that buzz with locals every night along the gulf coast.
Hi Tim: I just posted "I'm About to Give In" on my player. It would be nice if you could add some songs that leaned towards Rock'n Roll, because I would be interested in them. Anthony.
Where in the heck are ya at? The town is way too quiet. you aren't at the local haunt. So, ummm...well, I am going to have to try to come back. Left a message on your voice mail. ttyl
By the way...WE met the guy from the 44's this evening? WTH!?!
Hey there! Thanks for the great music! We had a great time@ the Shaker-this is the Tuscaloosa, AL girls..lol Well hope all is well and see ya again soon! God Bless! Take care! Keep rockin!
Hey Timmy! I read your "This is Who I Am" blog entry, and tried several times to comment to it and add today's article about you in the Pensacola News Journal, but I keep getting error messages :(.
You should send the article out to all of your friends in a myspace Bulletin! Great to see that you got some well-deserved attention from the local media.
