I go back in the outer space again, but I haven't been in outer space for about a year. So. Hello and welcome to WNC Original Music Episode 120, the great assembly episode. Very happy this week to have veteran songwriter and singer and performer Stevie Tumstone.
Stevie has played music all over the country, including Atlanta, Austin, and finally settling down for now in Western North Carolina. In addition to his work with the Swamp Billy Band of the Tumstones, he's got five solo albums and half-dozen music videos. His debut release, 7.38M, had performances from members of Wilco, Jason and the Scortures, and the Bad Livers and the Georgia Side Lights, and he shared bills with people like Leon Russell, Straycats, Greg Almond, Willie Nelson, the Dry Bride Truckers, and Johnny Bush, and the Remotes. He still performs often, sometimes 200 nights a year.
You can find links to his music in the show notes, and you can find him at StevieTumstone.net. Here is Stevie Tumstone. I used to back home with keys, a truth dog blue, Dots and back rope in the sun, and a key, and tie my way back to you. I'm around Texas, wasting, Gates, Grace, and I'm seeing four-doll blue too.
I'm seeing back home with keys, a truth dog blue. I'm seeing back home with keys, a truth dog blue, wasting, Gates, Grace, and I'm seeing four-doll blue too. It's the truth, the twist, and the Gates, Grace, and I'm seeing four-doll blue too. I'm seeing back home with keys, a truth dog blue.
I'm seeing back home with keys, a truth dog blue. Pimidor Blues, that song I wrote for another band, just for the sake, sometimes, sometimes, you know, I can't write a song for myself, I'll pretend I'm writing it for somebody else. So I had a buddy out in Austin when I was living there that used to play with Lloyd Mains and Ali Mains, and he was their bass player for quite a while. When they started the Dixie chicks, they let him go, so he started a band called Dixie Witch.
It was a Southern Rock band. So I wrote Tumidor Blues for their band, but it was about my lifestyle or whatever, because being on the road for how decades, and there's always somebody else on the other end of the deal at home sometimes. But no matter, you know, it's hard to get out of the life. So that was kind of my impetus for writing that song.
I wanted to ask you about meeting Roy Aikof, a song you met Roy Aikof, said as a chance meeting? Oh, yeah. Man, my parents were big music fans, and we went to Nashville a lot when I was a kid. So I was, wow, I think we were one of the museums, and I would be wrong if I told you the exact one, but it might have been the country music Hall of Fame Museum.
And Roy Aikof came up behind me. I guess he hung out there to guard his fill. But the great specklebird, you know, and wreck on the highway and all that stuff, man, was a big part of my youth. So that was the first time I really connected what I heard on the airwaves or on a record, and then was sort of confronted with it in real life in the music world.
So that was, that was, that had an impact on me. You know, I think the first time you meet somebody that you've only seen through media, or heard it's, there's an adjustment there. So that made a big impact on me. It's like me and Abraham Lincoln, you know.
Right. What a dollar room. I would say that I have lived in a hotel room or hotel room is a gracious way to put it, but I live in a motel, probably more than I lived under my own roof. We're in a car, but I was, you know, traveling alone mill of the night.
Always trying to save a couple of dollars. You're, you're always in an $40 room and in a few times I was out on tour, and I got, you know, I would connect up with some other acts that were doing a little better and at the end of the night, they take care of the room. But it didn't matter how big it was, I still ended up in a $40 room. That was kind of a joke to me.
Uh, and after a while, man, you start noticing hotel life, motel life, people that live in motels and they're have a, everybody's got a, got a story going on, you know, room to room and, uh, yeah, over time, you start seeing the similarities, uh, and people's coming and going, you know. So, uh, it, uh, it seemed like something I wanted to kind of capture. Even the stories, the stories in the same room you're staying in, you know, the rooms around you, but also where you're staying of the people that were there right before you and after you. I'm connecting.
It starts with me and I, and then, you know, you're moving around the hotel a little bit and, and I'm thinking back at home. So it's a, it's a whole different, uh, it's a whole different lifestyle. It's kind of, I, I told somebody the other day, I said, you know, it's kind of like living in a spaceship, you know, and then I come home and time has passed, but, uh, I go back, I go back to the outer space again, but, uh, I haven't been in outer space for about a year. So that's, um, it reminded me, it kind of reminded me of, um, like, it really sounded like a song you would hear on jukebox, like in a diner playing in the background.
Yeah. On the jukebox. It was, uh, it wasn't really, uh, it's supposed to be almost a mood piece, you know? Uh, and I, uh, I previously didn't put a chorus.
I just created another section there instead, uh, to let the other lyrics sort of sink in, you know, and have some movement to it. So, uh, I appreciate that. No, I wish it wasn't every jukebox in the background. Well, maybe someday as it gets more popular and then there are fewer jukeboxes.
It'll meet them. It, uh, there, there's some commercial stations that have picked it up and I'm, I'm grateful for it nonetheless. Uh, uh, uh, and I'm never surprised that it, that what I do doesn't catch on a massive level because I kind of, I kind of like being in the pocket where I am. Sometimes you know, more from Stevie Tombstone.
And just a few moments, one remind you to go to his website, StevieTombstone.net. And we'll have links to that and all of his music in the show notes. When you do visit Stevie's website, you can find information about upcoming shows. You can find some videos he's done.
They're really cool. His biography. He's got some merchandise there. Uh, and of course, uh, his music is there.
And, uh, links to also his social media and just pretty much everything about him. I think it's birth certificate, shopping list. Uh, you'll see. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast, wherever you get your podcast.
Just search WNC original music or go to wncoriginalmuse.com or you will find links in the bio. Also follow us on Facebook and Instagram, a couple other places, but mainly Instagram Facebook. That is where it is happening. Hi, this is Rory Babin with Snacks Up at Night and you're listening to WNC original music.
You need to take more and more, too, tries. Take this pain in my heart that I had. I have wondered to start world love. Got it by all the angels I've known.
It's one little bit of a phone. I have wondered to start world love that sky. Take this pain in my heart. Like a bug you can't see what's inside.
You need to take more and more, too, tries. Take this pain in my heart. Can I take this pain? Take this pain.
Man, that song is literal. I wasn't a bicycle accident. No, and I was laid up really bad for for months. And I really couldn't I couldn't get comfortable.
So, while lying in bed for a couple of months, letting my body heal, I sort of had time to do a little song, right? Your mind starts to wander after a while. So I started out with the injury. And then I tried to take it to a different place and use that for the jump off.
I was saying, if I never got that bicycle wreck, I never would have written the song. But then I sort of tried to make it a little more towards like a redemption theme. And the whole suffering and pain and redemption. It just seemed like a good play on it.
But if I hadn't gotten that wreck and laid there and done a little internal reaching inside myself or whatever to think about it. Well, while you're laying here, what can I change? What kind of message can I throw out there? So that's one of those songs I wrote in five minutes.
I had that one idea and the whole song popped out. Some of them do that and some of them don't. Some of them I have to. They're really hard to get out of the hole.
But that particular one was like an automatic type deal once I had that moment of realization, you know, can you tell me about I like this question because it rhymes. Can you tell me about your first show and your worst show? Oh, man, my first show, I would say, well, I did talent shows when I was a kid. Oh, yeah.
My first pay bar was a different story. My first show was probably at a high school or a county auditorium, you know, when I was maybe 12 or so. And I would say the other the first show that I remember like the first time I got paid in the club, I was in a rock and roll band in Atlanta. It was before I was in the tombstones.
I was pretty much living in hotels, living anywhere. I was just I was playing music. I was sleeping on stages sleeping in nightclubs and they closed. I had a I had a a few times shop that would let me sleep in the window in the display window, you know, and I stayed there just so I could be near the club.
The first show, I remember like the first time I got a paid gig, man, our drummer. We were playing at this club down in town Atlanta and our drummer, he had way too much to drink. And he fell off the drummerizer and the guy that got me the gig was in the headline band. The singer comes out, he goes, hey, man, I can play drums.
And I was like, oh, great. What do you know? He goes, I'll I know his money. So we played that song Money for like an hour and a half.
That's all he knew. So we just played that over an hour and a half. I paid and I was so amazed that I was a professional musician. That was my first like paid gig and worst gig probably combined.
Watch your poison tonight. Now your pale friends come over again to watch the sunrise. And for my sis, let's hear it go. Take you away yourself back in.
Who I am, circles around you. Seven days a week. And after the weather, we'll just have many times have you. Cross the line, little shot.
As morning after the line was the ankle. Take you away. You're the other. I don't want to see some destiny.
Let yourself take you. Man, that song started out to be like a message to some other folks that I knew that were still stuck in their old ways. Everybody should should do whatever they want to do. When I was a lot wilder with the substance abuse when I was a young man.
I'm not a young man or my wild about that anymore. But you know, that was just kind of a letter to some younger folks, man. And but it wasn't, you know, it's a cautionary tale from a first person point of view. Maybe, you know, kind of a level letter or a note to somebody that you know that's that hasn't figured out.
They're not getting the right results out of life anymore. And also just looking back at like, man, I was a wild, wild creature when I was a young person and I would tell about it. So that's the other perspective on that. Tell me about you played a list here somewhere you've played or shared stages, shared bills, it's a long list here.
I won't read them all. Leon Russell, Greg Allman, Willie Nelson, Dryback Truckers, Ramones. How do you how do you compare like the feeling of some of those bands and musicians like playing with them, opening for them? Well, it's different every time.
And and as far you've been comparing like as comparing the different artists or just the difference between opening for Willie Nelson and the Ramones, you know, there's got to be some contrast there and some some. There's a shark hunt. There's a shark hunt. I mean, when I when I I'm a fan of both equally, the Ramones management, I think, when we open for them, I couldn't do sound shot because they they didn't want us to disturb their digestion while they ate dinner.
Oh, so whereas, you know, Willie would have really was like, come on the bus. You know what I mean? So, you know, the Ramones are actually a little more uptight at the end of the night. That wasn't the case, but just in comparison, you know, it's everybody's different too.
I mean, everybody's got their own because when they're traveling, it's like they're moving home and you're if you're the opener, you're you're guests in their home. So there's a different social situation that is the situation going on. And I think the key is kind of, you know, kind of read the room and remember why you're there, but every time it's a it's a great experience unless they don't they're not down for what you're doing. But I've had I've had I've opened for folks that I had no business opening for and I've had some great nights too.
So have you ever have you ever have to say who it was? But have you ever opened for someone and you feel like, you know, I got I got a better reaction out of their crowd than they did? Not nobody of any note. Nobody of any note.
I mean, I really thank you for the opener. I don't know, man. There's been there's been a few times, but everybody's there's this arc, you know, everybody's on these different at these different points and these arcs. And just because maybe if you had a better performance than the headliner that night, maybe you've only played two shows and they've been out for 20, you know, or or make their arc down in your pocket.
But you got to start once you keep that in mind and realize that, you know, that your job is to just warm the crowd up, you know, and it's not about you and your your grace to be there, then then it's it's a little easier to go out of it. But when we were young, everybody wanted to go for the go for the Golden Ring or try to get the best reaction in a I don't know, man, I would have to say everybody I've had the pleasure of opening for men is his I've learned instead of instead of trying to surpass them and I tried to learn from them, which is also my advice. I would give the younger, younger folks. I didn't practice all that when I was when I was starting that.
All right. I want to thank Stevie Tombstone for being on the show. Just had a great time talking to him. This will be part one of two episodes.
Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss the second episode. The second episode is when he plays or does a quiz to see if he wins a painting from Matt Walsh. So you would definitely want to hear that one. It's very dramatic.
Make sure to visit Stevie's website again, that's Stevie Tombstone dot net. Lots of really cool stuff there and make sure to see Stevie live. If you get the chance, check his website to see when he's going to be playing near you. The most important part is the music podcast, WNC original music, wherever you get your podcast providing the closing song for the podcast this week is Michael Paris.
He is a singer songwriter from Millboro, North Carolina. He is a soul member of the nine finger chicken string band. He learned to play guitar while serving in the Peace Corps. And I think you're going to really like his music.
He sent me some really stripped down, sparse sounding songs, but it really lets his songwriting show. Here's Michael Paris. Have a good week. I said you had your life looking for truth.
You are free. Pressing song that you heard. And she woke first just to get the word. Do drops on the leaf of every week.
Blood red shakes his pointy head. And for his love and the life. You are free as a burner. Sitting on the limb, singing and everything.
Song that you heard. Free. I'm like room for you. Let's go back.