and we got pulled over and we got called because we matched the description of some serial killers that we were looking for, the Metamorphs. It was in the newspaper. Why isn't that in your bio? Hello and welcome to WNC Original Music Episode 144, the Restricted Securities episode.
This week, very happy to have on the podcast Stevie Tombstone. I'm a big fan of Stevie Tombstone's music and I just want to say it's mainly because, or at least in part because when you hear Stevie talk, he talks like he sings and I love that for some reason. Or maybe he sings like he talks, I don't know. You decide.
Anyway, this is part two of his episode where we talk about his album Raised on Roots and he tells a lot of great stories about his experiences in the music business over the years. You can find his music at all the streaming services and we'll have links to his music and his social media and the show notes, but of course, namely, you can go to StevieTunestone.net. Also, make sure to check out his YouTube channel. A lot of really cool stuff there.
And now here is Stevie Tombstone. I'm genuine. Met a girl down in the valley, not the one out there in Cali. Well, she lived me up and down.
Rolled her eyes to turn around. I ain't the best you'll ever find. But at least I'm genuine. I took her head one night and fill her car with me.
I'll trash him. He'll build a headwind right straight to my head. Like a pistol packing lead. I ain't the best you'll ever find.
At least I'm genuine. Cause I'mma fight her, I'mma ramble her, I'mma lose her, I'mma gamble. I'mma beat your, I'mma fool. Always keep the golden rule.
I ain't the best you'll ever find. At least I'm genuine. I ain't the best you'll ever find. But at least I'm genuine.
Oh man, funny story. I had this record deal on the Greenwood album and I had a new manager and I was supposed to fly out to California to meet them in person for the first time. And I got off the plane in San Francisco. And the first thing they did was check out my hair and my teeth.
Like a horse. And they said, oh good, they're yours. Hell yeah. So, so, so, so, I knew that was gonna be a short lived relationship.
So that whole, that whole song is kind of about that, that just that whole lot, you know, that the entertainment business, you know, that's, that's their main concern, you know, it's the commodity and people, people, you know, if you saw a wider walking down the street, you might have a gun slinger. Right. You know what I mean? So, Hollywood and the media have projected all these stereotypes and every, it's just, there's so, there's such a lot of plastic still out there.
So, I really just want to write a song about, Hey, man, this is me. I can pick it or leave it. I may not be, I may not be what you're looking for, but I'm the real deal, you know, because I'm comfortable with themselves. So that's really all it is.
It's just kind of like, you know, just be yourself. And if it ain't, if it ain't perfect, man, maybe you don't hang out with the perfect people, you know. When I heard, when I heard the song, except for some instrumental breaks, when you start singing a verse, like when you start, when you start, you're singing the whole time, there's no break, there's almost no breath in there. So I'm wondering about the writing.
There's no breath. There's no breath. There's a one from the writing process is that hard to do is it easier to do where you have, you know, you have to fill up this, you know, the second verse to and the third verse, and you want to have that consistency, or is it more time consuming? Well, your key factor is that something's a minute and a half long.
So, there's my answer. So I'm not saying that much. Just show them a little bit and then stop. But I think, I think at a certain point, you know, I wanted to make the song short and I wanted to make it almost parody the commercial.
About not being commercial. Oh, it's a 90 second commercial about not being commercial. Have you ever sort of discovered someone or not discovered them like you made them famous? But have you ever known someone when they were just starting out and kind of knew, okay, this person's going to be really big?
And then that happened? I don't think you know, but you can see the quality and a lot of people that have the drive. I mean, cutting my teeth down in the Atlanta area back in Athens in the 80s, there was a lot of good acts coming out of there. So, you know, one great example is my buddy Charlie Starr.
He plays guitar on that version of Kevlar Hard on this album. He was a guitar player and a lot of really cool bands around Atlanta. And now, you know, he's front and blackberry smoke and writing their songs and has a great career. They're playing big rooms and he hasn't changed a bit.
You know, he's still just as nice as he was back then. There's a lot of the Robison brothers, same kind of same kind of deal in Patterson hood. You know, we used to play shows together. He had a band called Adam's House Cats.
We used to play playing this double wide trailer in Mississippi back in the 80s. You know, so there's a lot of there's a lot of people coming up and maybe what they're doing right that moment may not be the thing that that springboard some but it's really cool to initially cool to watch the process. You know, and I got lucky to be in the right place at the right time a few times and see that happening. That song I wrote that.
The version on this is the original version. There's two different sessions that I did that. And this this version was something I did in Nashville with Kim Coomer and Jeff Johnson and Charlie about playing guitar acoustic guitar on that track and that was the main the main deal. But I just write that about it's kind of a dark anti-loves song, you know.
And I was in a, you know, I draw a little bit some pieces from my relationships and sometimes it'll be kind of Frankenstein out of conversations or snippets of this and that but never all one, one continuous thing, you know. So that came out of a, that came out of a relationship thing, you know, where I was seeing somebody that was still seeing somebody else and I was trying to not let that bother me. And then moved on, you know, one of those kind of deals. I think that was the storyline but it was taken out of two or three different scenarios and points in time, you know.
Sort of I'll do like a cut and paste method sometimes and change the first or second or third person, you know, point of view on it and and come up with a, like a plot, you know, like a new plot. So that, that, that, that, that worked out really good. Yeah, it has a, it has that feel of when you, when you listen to it, even if you're not, like I'm someone who listens to a song and doesn't really closely pay attention to the lyrics, especially the first few times, but you hear it and then just the mood of it almost feels like it's telling a story. Like it fit just the musicality and the vocal, the production feel, I'm like, I could, I could listen to it not hear a single word and at the end of it's think, I bet that song, you know, had a, like you said, had a plot told a story.
You adjusted a great job with the production on that and pulling the right textures together. That was a, that was a really, really good session to learn, to learn some production. Where were these songs recorded? I recorded that one in Nashville, Tennessee.
The songs on that record are from probably from the 90s all the way up to 2018. Oh, okay. 2019. Yeah.
Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a compilation of a couple of EPs that, the song tracks off the EPs and some singles and then we had some, some other sessions that never got, alternate versions that never got used. Okay. So I'm going to put that together, get them all in one spot. Man, you know, I wrote that song.
There was a couple of instances that caused me to write that song. And they were both touring, touring stories. I've been a traveling musician since the 80s off and on. So both, both times I got detained on, on I-10.
The first time, first time I was with my band and, and we got, we got caught in a, we got caught in some kind of drag net or roadblock for, there was a, there were some killings done in Mexico in the late 80s. And we were gone from, I think, like Houston to Atlanta. And we got pulled over and we got called, because we matched the description of some serial killers that they were looking for, the Metamoras. It was in the newspaper.
Why isn't that in your bio? So we got, you know, I don't know, that should be in there. Anyway, for your, so that we got hung up with that. They finally let us go after like four or five hours, search to everything, and then give me a ticket for, for having an expired tag.
And then flash forward maybe 15 years later, I'm by myself and I'm going from Houston to Atlanta. And I get pulled over by the, by a tobacco firearms Homeland Security type thing, just for the heck of it. My appearance, maybe. And anyway, they pulled me over and searched everything in my, in my car.
They, they, they dropped my guitar and cracked it. They didn't find my stash. They, they, they, they obviously came over and he goes, what do you do? And I said, well, I said, well, don't you know who I am?
And he said, what do you mean? And I said, I'm a country music superstar. Can't you tell? I said, I had this expense.
I had a, I had a burned out old Chevy van, you know, and a, and a futon in the back and a couple of amplifiers in my merchant, you know, I was, I was on tour and they laughed so hard they let me go. But, but, you know, there was no reason to pull me out. I just, I think that they're doing their jobs, but I just felt like, you know, I've noticed over the decades, man, that the communications have gotten faster, the laws have gotten more oppressive to me in some situations, man. And, and I just didn't like what I saw happening, you know, with, with, I felt like we were getting sort of choked off a little bit.
And that song was kind of talking about that, really, man. I just trying to sum it up, you know, but, and then the same, about the same token you need to, as they say, take your head off and stick it in a drawer sometimes to get away from all that, you know. So, so, you know, that's kind of the message of that song is got a twofold thing, you know, I'm sort of making note of the more, the more advanced we get the more the less freedom sometimes we have and give yourself a break every once in a while, too. Do you have like a, like a dream or a fantasy instrument, like something you'd really have always wanted to own?
A fantasy instrument? Wow. Or dream, dream guitar, that sort of thing. You know, I'd like, I'd love to, you know, I'd love to have a pump organ in here and just full of dust.
I'd like to have one of those in the cabin, you know. That would be one of my, one of my things. And I always regret it. I love piano.
I'm horrible at piano and that was one of my, one of my, I would just love to have a nice piano and be able to play it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Uh, it's as simple as that.
But, but if I could have the, take it to the little more extreme, maybe some kind of pump working would be cool. Yeah. I bet you could find something like that. Like, I see, you know, old church organs on, on Craigslist and stuff for free all the time.
You know, you haul it up. You can have it. Who knows how good it works. But a lot of times I'll say, you know, good working order.
It's the floral hold here at the cabin. Yeah. Okay. More from Stevie in just a few moments.
I want to remind you that you can find his music at StevieTumestone.net. Also go check out his YouTube channel. Look for his music online. Just look for Stevie Tumestone.
It's all over the place. One thing I like about Stevie's stories is you kind of can't tell if he's told them a hundred times or if this is the first time he's still in the story because it seems very spontaneous, but also very thorough. I just love that natural feel of his, um, reminisces, I guess. Hey guys, this is Kendra.
This is Zach from the Brown Mountain Lightning Bugs. And this is Waves from our new album, Folk-ish, which you can find online. You can stream it. You can download it or you can buy physical copies from our website, which is BrownMountainLightningBugs.com.
We also have some really cool t-shirts and some stickers. So head on over there. You can also find us on all of the social medias. I mean, love for you to come join us.
Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast, WNC Original Music, wherever you get your podcasts, or go to wncoriginalmusic.com. There's some links to the side to subscribe or just Google it every couple of days. That would really help me out in a lot of ways. Get me out of a jam, maybe.
Corrections and clarifications from last week's episode with Julia Sanders. Nico was a kind of an indie rock folk singer from the 60s and 70s and later. And also there was a Nico who was a gorilla in Longleat Safari Park in Wiltshire, United Kingdom. And I apologize to everyone for the confusion.
This is Matt Walsh and you're listening to WNC Original Music. My Rody, where will it's approved? This is probably my favorite song on the album, I think. Man, thank you so much.
That song was banned on radio in San Antonio the first time it came out. Oh yeah. It is about, maybe I should listen to it closer. I left home and I was around people that left home at an early age.
It's about runaways now, and teenage runaways and living on the streets. It's not a happy story. And some people survive and some people don't. But growing up as a young person and as a musician, and like I said, I would stay anywhere to be able to do what I wanted to do the most, which was play music.
And I was in a lot of different situations. And I saw a lot of people's lives that were affected by that. So that song was just kind of a narrative about that subject, without getting too heavy. Just a kid trying to act older and having to deal with the repercussions of putting yourself in that situation.
Have you ever thought about it? You've got a lot of experience. You've been a lot of places. If you owned a venue, if you owned a music venue, what's something that you would do different, or you've seen other places that you want to make sure to have, or something that would just make your venue special, or are you just so opposed to owning a venue that you wouldn't even think about?
Well, you know, I would do it if I could do it in a way that made sense to the artists that came in there. I've been on both ends of the stick of selling my talent and buying other people's talent. I worked in clubs and I was younger. And I noticed over time, a lot of venues take on the business model that they expect the artist to be the promoter.
And I think the artists should be the artist and the venues should do the promotions. And they throw that in the artist's lap. And it's good to do DIY stuff and pull your weight on the PRN. But I don't like the current business model.
So if I had a place, I would structure things differently. And I mean, I most definitely would. When I started playing music, I think there weren't so many people out there doing it. There weren't as many venues.
It was a little harder to get a gig. Maybe it was harder. I don't know. I know there was no internet and we had to pull over and pick up a pay phone and call and go, who's playing the night to make sure we were still on the bill if we had to drive to Florida?
Making your flyers with the Xerox machine with Scott's tape. Just having to use our map. Colin, trying to get on your morning radio shows. Crawling through the jungle with your bowie knife between your teeth.
I've seen it all. I think there's a happy medium. I mean, the bigger promoters, they take a lot and they seem to just work with the taste makers and the people that are filling the seats. There's got to be another way to do it.
I'd like to see it. I'm real happy to see house concerts, private shows, listening rooms and stuff like that. I mean, those weren't happening when I started out. So things are changing.
I've been fortunate enough to see the music industry change more than any other time I think in history like, well, I've been alive. And it's been, just that in itself has been really cool. I don't like the way that the technology has caused the devaluation of some of the art because of the way that it's transmitted. But at the same token, this is, I mean, we're talking, you know, we can't get together and we're together right now.
So. Oh, yeah. Then my mom's family is from this area and I spent a whole lot of time here. When I was a kid, my grandfather was the, was the constable here in this lake lore.
And his dad was a made liquor and my uncles were law enforcement. I've got family out here, really cool family history. I spent a lot of time here with my cousins. I'm as close to now as brothers and sisters, but we were, I spent a lot of time here when I was little and then I went away, you know, and pursued my dreams.
And I went out west and I started touring again and started coming back through this area. And I kept getting drawn back here and spending time and I realized, you know, how connected I was to this area. I mean, I moved back and it's, it's awesome. So that was just sort of like, another one of those songs I wrote really fast to, and I read it, I read it on, on one of my, one of my trips here before I moved back.
And then it just sort of became part of the set, you know, and hung on there. My buddy, about the railkill who lives up in a Fayetteville, North Carolina's playing banjo on that. And I don't know if you're a bad livers fan or not, but Ralph from the bad livers is the fiddle player on there. So it's also kind of special, because I got a few, and they both toured with me at different points in time.
So I get, I get to, I get to have my, you know, little pieces of those, those memories, you know, connected to the song when I, when I get to capture that. So a lot of times I'll take studio equipment with me when I travel and we'll do field recordings and I'll get back on them. We'll mix them all together, I'll compose it. And that was one of those songs that was a composite of field recordings done in four different states.
And just, I just want to clarify, I like to, I like to sort of rib people from South Carolina. But this is, this was definitely written about North Carolina, not South Carolina, right? Oh, it explicitly is a North Carolina song. No one, and it's understood if anybody, there's no song called Carolina, that is a South Carolina, Western music.
So, that's right. Yeah, it's just in Western South Carolina. Yeah. But yeah, I've noticed that nobody has ever, I don't even know if anybody's ever written a song about South Carolina, but definitely, if there's a song called Carolina, it's always about North Carolina, never about South Carolina.
I'm just saying, I don't, I shouldn't talk about that because South Carolina is like the number three state for downloads for the podcast. So, so no offense South Carolina, but that's just a, that's just how it is. You guys have a Charleston. So I guess that's good.
You take back all those times, I break down and cry. 730 a.m. sleep in my eye. Cool, great condition.
Event time rise. The silence is my bitters when I want to do this again. 730 a.m. sleep in my eye.
Cool, great condition. Event time rise. The silence is my walk you this again. That version is the second version that I recorded of that.
That particular line that we did, we did a session at Arlen Studios with my my band, the Texas Timstones, but I'm going to do the, so we we were on tour and those fellows always stayed up real late after the gig and we got, I remember we were up in Arkansas one time and we had a place lined up to stay. I tell us, come on back to my house and you can, you can stay here and I'll put you up in the main room and you won't hear anything and you got to sleep like logs. So it's probably, you know, it's after last call and we get there and they got some nice pallets put out for us. It's beautiful, but there's a huge grandfather clock in the middle of the living room where we're sacked out and it's got this alarm that goes off every hour.
I mean, really loud, like you can feel the wood shaking the play. So I didn't get any sleep, you know. So I started working on that song the next day and I still had that and that ended up being the song about, you know, not wanting to have to get up and get in the car and head back out again. And, you know, while you're driving, you start thinking about stuff.
So we wait too much time to think behind the dashboard. So it was kind of a combination of those two story lines sitting together. Now that sounds a grandfather. That sounds like a really cool, a really cool situation now in retrospect, but at the time where you're like really pissed off, trying to get sleep in this grandfather clock.
Oh, yeah, yeah, because I had to drive. Yeah. I love you. Not usually, man.
Last one down first. Why you got the guitar close by? Do you have any musical impressions that you do? Oh, man.
I really don't, man. That's why. And here's why. Because that's why I started doing my own thing, man.
But yeah, I thought about I wasn't sure if you were asking me what was my impression of a good singer or if I had any impressions, but man, I don't have any. I don't have any. Yeah, I wasn't sure. Do you have any?
Well, answer that way. Do you have any impressions of any good singers? Impression is a good people that stay inside their wheelhouse, man. And don't try to show off other capabilities within the first 45 seconds.
Oh, man. Just serve the song and listen to the lyrics. Those are my favorite singers. They may not be technically great, but if they're comfortable in their own skin, you know, I could never emulate anybody else 100%.
So that's how I ended up writing my own songs was the inability to play everything I heard around me when I was young. I'd, you know, taught myself and say, well, I guess I write my own songs. It's a lot easier to learn those than maybe after look at the sheep music. I don't understand.
You know, so that's how I started writing songs. All right. I want to thank Stevie for coming on the podcast again. Just had a great time talking to him.
Again, I love all those stories. It could have done a separate podcast on each story. He's on probably again, find him at Stevie toomstone.net. Hopefully he'll be out touring again soon.
He does quite a few shows when he is out playing live. So make sure to follow him on social media. So you know when that will be once again. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast WNC original music wherever you get your podcast or just about every four hours go to wncoriginalmusic.com and just click on something randomly there.
Supplying the closing song for this week's episode is Clark Blombquist. Clark is a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist and visual artist living in Carber, North Carolina. He has been a member of several bands including Crank Shaft, The Kingsbury Manks, Work Close, Wamas, Spider Bags, Dan Melkorban, Cold Cream, and Tegyu. Tegyu, Tegyu, Sigau, I should have asked him.
I asked him what to say. I asked him what to say. I asked him how to say that. Anyway, you can find him at calbertblombquist.com or check the show notes for his music.
Here's Clark Blombquist. Have a good week.