an American songwriter and modern-day troubadour
mp3 click here to check out Ronnie Jay Wheeler's brand new single release from his sparkling fresh CD.
Long Black Veil ** Ronnie Jay Wheeler
label : Alleged Iguana Music
So my producer, Randall Cousins, (I'll tell on
him later) wanted
me to do a homework assignment for
this web site writing down a
bio/story with
influences, etc. Let's do influences all the
way
through. I've loved music since I can remember.
Those
recollections go back to pre-school days at
about age four to
six. For some reason my folks let
me use the record player at
that age, and I dare say,
I probably took as good of care of the
records and
record player as they did. I can remember my
mother's
records I played over and over again like Bill Haley's
"See
you Later, Alligator" and other love songs and
fox trots. And, my
father's records like "Blood on
the Saddle," "Mule Skinner Blues," and
Hank Williams's
songs were played over and over as well. These
were
all on 78s-I can't remember if the player played 45s
and LPs as
well.
By mid-grade school I was tuning in KOMA
from
"The City" (Oklahoma City) and loving stuff like
"Ruby, Ruby"
and "Sheila" and sticking the radio in
the window if I was going
outside to play.
By junior high I really dug
the whole British
invasion and especially the big three. I used
to tell
people, "Everybody loves the Beatles, everybody else
loves
the Rolling Stones, but me, I love the Animals."
I'll never
forget the first time I listened to an
Animals' album, and later, the
first time I saw Eric
Burdon and
the Animals in concert.
By junior high
school I was playing in rock bands
for sock hops that alternated us
with the spinning of
45s. We played stuff like "Blue
Moon,"
"Satisfaction," and "Kansas City." (By the way, I
found
out not long ago there's no 12th Street and Vine
anymore as it says in
the song, just a street sign and
bed of flowers where I had my picture
taken.) By the
end of junior high I was beginning to buy all
the
British and American rock I could and disliked country
but still
bought Johnny Cash when I picked up some
Dylan. In high school
and college I wasted too much
time riding around in '57 Chevys and '55
Mercs and '64
Impalas listening to Eric Burdon, the Doors, and
Led
Zeppelin. Eric Burdon taught me more from his records
than
I ever learned in school. He is one of the
biggest influences in
my life. I always respected him
for paying tribute to those who
influenced him.
One summer while on wheat
harvest, after about a
16 hour day, laying up in a bunk somewhere in
western
Kansas listening to an all night radio station
from
somewhere in Colorado, I heard an announcement for
Leon Russell. I
thought, "What a stupid name for a
band." Then, one night at a
small party with a few
hippie buddies in a shot gun shack dump in Alva, OK,
near the old stock yards
(when they were still in
town), I went out for some fresh air, and
someone put
on a different LP. Through the paper-thin walls I
heard
the most unusual vocal nasal sound I'd ever
heard and most incredible
piano as well. I was then
hooked on Leon as well as Eric
Burdon. I've been to
hundreds of concerts, but to this day my two
favorites
are still Eric Burdon and the Animals at the Cotillion
in
Wichita, KS, 1968, and Leon Russell at the
Fairgrounds Arena in Okla.
City, circa 1972. My two
favorite songs of all time are "White Houses'
by Eric
Burdon and the Animals and "Stranger in a Strange
Land" by
Leon Russell.
All this influenced my
personality and philosophy
of life-but not necessarily the music I
play. The
reason is that I'm not a God-gifted,
play-by-ear
musician (as I like to say). But I loved music
so
much I couldn't help banging on guitars most of my
life.
And this lack of blessing actually turned out
to be a blessing as it
actually helped to create my
style. Since I couldn't ever cover
someone else's
song perfectly, it created my own style/sound.
Some
things I learned by ear, but what I couldn't get by
ear, I got
from songbooks or by watching others or by
creating my own
substitutions. or by leaving it out.
So hopefully my covers always
sound different without
offending the writers. This hampers my
songwriting
somewhat on the musical end, so am glad I have
found
Randall. I'll always consider myself a poet
anyway.
The musical form I love most is blues.
any kind
of blues. I like Freddie King, Savoy Brown, Buddy
Guy, Howlin'
Wolf, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, John
Mayall, Bonnie Raitt, Bessie Smith, Robert
Johnson,
Mississippi Fred McDowell, Mississippi John Hurt,
Elvin
Bishop, and about a million others.
But
country, fiddle, and blue grass crept back
into my life. And,
most recently the Americana scene
helps me relate to what my music is
really all about-a
mixture of so many things and my own style.
This
genre really relates back to Woody Guthrie who
has
influenced my music the most my whole life and whose
birthday we
share.
So, since college when I played in
a
country-western band, I more or less worked my life
away and
played guitar and sang in the closet. My
wife, Rebecca, saw more
in me than I did myself, I
guess, and urged me to start getting out and
playing.
And, I've gotten my shit together realizing I'm
not
necessarily a great musician but a singer/songwriter
and
performer. John Herron, who I could write a book
about that would
leave you astounded, was introduced
to me by Rebecca. He invited
us out to his Rekordio
Studio in Los Angles to make my first CD titled
Way
Over
Yonder.
The title came from a song
it included called
"Way Over Yonder (in the Minor Key)" by Woody
Guthrie.
That album has seven Woody songs, one by Lucinda
Williams,
one by John Prine, and three
originals. It's
basically folk-rock, and I was accompanied by some
of
the world's greatest musicians John had rounded up.
The album
literally went around the world playing on
over 80 radio stations
around the world and on all the
continents and made it onto nearly as
many jukeboxes
and CD players.
I was an
English teacher for 30 years and have
recently retired-hopefully to
play music much more
live than I was able to before. I'm planning
on doing
a "jukebox tour"-not necessarily in tour fashion
or
intensity-but where, in time, I play most every place
Way Over
Yonder and the new CD is on jukeboxes and
public CD players. Oh,
yes, the new CD and Randall
Cousins
who I promised in the beginning to tell you
about! Before I get
into that, though, I will say
that I was honored to be one of the six
musicians
asked to play at Pampa's (Texas) Tribute to Woody
Guthrie
in 2003 along side Jimmy Collier and Pete
Seeger. Most recently I
played the Mantle in
Bricktown, in Oklahoma City, and I hope to see you
on
the jukebox tour or who knows where if the success of
the 2nd CD
takes off and leads me to your town.
This
second CD is called All Over The Map. It
came about by the
success of Way Over Yonder, the
grace of God, and luck, I'm sure. When
Ray Pieters, a
DJ from Mol, Belgium, found my music on CD Baby,
he
liked it and played it and turned me on to Eddie
Russell, a DJ in
Texas. Eddie helped me turn my music
on to DJs all over the
world. One was Dann Hansen
from Denmark who really liked my style
and had a music
business partnership with Randall Cousins in
Brampton,
Ontario, Canada. Randall liked it too and offered
to
do a CD with me on his indie label Alleged Iguana
Music. So,
over Christmas break my last year of
teaching, we were headed to
Toronto to make All Over
The Map. About eight months later
Randall was
finished with the producing, engineering, and
mastering
and All Over The Map was pressed in late
September
2004.
The title of this album is doubly
symbolically
significant in that it is all over the map
musically.
See if you can notice the seven or more kinds of
music
united and blended by my style. It's all over the
map
geographically as over 20 place names are mentioned in
the
lyrics-and it's a long way from Oklahoma to Los
Angles to
Toronto!
Recording this album in Toronto in
five days time
was intense, but yet another dream come
true.
Recording with the original five-piece band with
Chris, Mark,
Neil, and Dave in Dave's FarmHand
Barn
Studio was awesome. Randall worked tirelessly
(and
nearly endlessly) getting all the additional singers
and
musicians added and sculpting the sound and
checking with me about
everything through emails,
phone calls, and sending mixes through the
extremely
slow snail mail. But all was worth it. Get in
the
car, pop it in the CD player, and head out on the
road.
When the slow blues comes on, park it and give
her a kiss.
sign
the Ronnie Jay guestbook*
