Missing Pictures part 1

Press

Adam Hill has the passion of Westerberg, the emotions of Townes, and cantake you as high as the hills of East Tennessee where he was raised. I am proud to know him as a friend, and even prouder to be able to play his music on the radio for all to hear..."
Benny Smith WUTK


Adam Hill is like young Steve Earl but more edgy. Crunchy electric guitars and a ragged yet committed vocal delivery all work well together. Quircky and fresh sounding lyrics like .."write your name on the sleeve of my shirt .." work really well together. I hope to hear much more from Adam in the future.
Taxi A & R services.

Hill has pulled from his punk roots for the rawness and urban twist to his folk material. But whats really my favorite aspect of Willingness is its casual feel. Theres an open-air quality to the recording that makes me want to turn it up and listen for the sound of glasses clinking or tapping feet. Even with the accompaniment of his band, The Dead Birds, it retains the quality of something that has been completely unfussed with. While comparisons to Paul Westerberg are certainly warranted, several of Hills songs feel like they could be rough edits of early Ryan Adams penned tracks. Particularly the country blues feel of The Devils Fiddle and the male/female duet, Wattsbar. With Hills vocals in the foreground and the female background vocals drifting in and out it could be, with a little more polish, reminiscent of one of Adams duets. Willingness does have a strong swagger but it also has a real inviting sentiment. His voice has a little coarseness to it and a bit of a drawl but its also got a brand of confidence rarely found outside of a punk show. While singer/songwriters, particularly in the game of folk, are a plentiful lot, Adam Hill has the perfect blend to make him stand out. You knowwe can sit in the comfort of our circle of friends and all complain that our favorite geniuses have turned out to be hacks. We can run to the record store the day a new album comes out from an old standby only to walk away disappointed by the compromises of a half realized product. Or we can recognize fresh air like Adam Hill and the Dead Birds and start all over again. Willingness just might be a great place to start that new beginning and when you put it in and hear songs like in the mood for love I think youll agree.

indieworkshop.com steph haselman 2004


Adam Hill is the sh*t.

Elizabeth Cook(Grand Ole Opry star)


"Willingness.." is lo-fi and a little folksy but with a groove remniscent of .."Let it Bleed.." era Rolling Stones.

Wayne Bledsoe (Knox News Sent) 2004

"Adam Hill sings of a South heard less of in the words of any wistful pastoral; but more a place in common with the Jesus-haunted world of Flannery O..'Connor(or even Tom Waits.) His disturbing stories are gnarled and choked withkudzu and blackjack vines; but his offer to peek into the undergrowth is both enticing and rewarding.Adam Hill is Nashville..'s best kept musicalsecret...But not for long. I..'ll wager that his music will be soon regarded as some of the great.."Idylls.." of our twisted, modern time..."
Col.JD Wilkes (Legendary Shack Shakers)

Adam's lyrics are somewhere between Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Bob Dylan.
Larry Shell (vice pres. A&R Broken Bow Records)

Willingness is intentionally flawed broke down Americana which has caught the ears of many of his peers.

Nashville Rage

The songs of Willingness range from gothic folk to a loose twangy gospel. Hill channels a melancholic, 4 am kind of blues through Hank Williams style sentiment. There......'s an effortless, casual honesty to the music.

Paige Travis Metro Pulse, 2004

The Old Flames are a hell raising combo of hillbilly rock and pop punk glam featuring Paul Westerbergish front man Adam Hill.

Nashville Rage - Nashville, TN

Westerberg style swagger, honky tonk lonesomeness and pop smarts that sound like they could be culled from the archives of Harry Smith.

Metro Pulse - Knoxville,TN

Former Satellite Pump Adam Hill retains all his sly lyrical toss offs, achey breaky crooning and back porch rural twang. Does this guy ever get lucky?

Metro Pulse - Knoxville,TN

Hill..'s somebody done somebody wrong songs are Westerberg and Williams, achingly real, never whiney. Lonely sighs never sounded so rock ready and hearts on your sleeve never looked so charismatic.

Metro Pulse - Knoxville, TN

Hill..'s lyrics are at once honest and vividly picturesque. Yet you get the feeling he is fantisizing a bit too. His words make up some of the most literate heartbreak/love songs around. It..'s rare to hear someone who knows the difference in pining and whining. He could make Paul Westerberg proud...or jealous.

Metro Pulse - Knoxville, TN

Any band that can make me swoon and sigh heavily and want to dance like a fool in a single set is not to be missed. The Satellite Pumps with their combustible combination of down to earth charm, retro sophistication, raw rock..'n..'roll energy, tear in your beer resignment and a vibe that feels right on right now might make them the best live band Knoxville has this summer.

Metro Pulse - Knoxville, TN

hotcw.wordpress.com
Anthemic layers of folk and authentic Americana converge to give us a relaxingly raucous ride over Smoke Trees, the latest distillation from veteran country crooner Adam Hill. Whether sweet-water rhyming, casting catchy love lyrics, or giving a mucho-gusto performance of rockin’ country jams, Hill twines a hearty yarn to pull us in. Susceptible to a syrupy sentiment at times, Smoke Trees triumphs in that it refuses to reflect on its own relish, but invites a vitality that is perhaps unrefined, if not wholly untapped, within the genre. Mesquite flavored and flame seared, Hill serves up Smoke Trees delicious and delectable.---2010 http://hotcw.wordpress.com

Aug 25, 2010 Blood on the Bluegrass.com Sarah Norris
Good music remembers where it came from, and Adam Hill is a living testament to that fact. He was raised in Kingston, Tennessee in Appalachia. He heard all the great old country songs sang by his relatives from an early age, and when he saw the movie “Crossroads” (not the Brittney Spears movie) that was it, he needed to be a part of something great: southern music.
The rest was more than history for Adam Hill, all through high school and college he played and recorded for girls, friends, and himself. He played with this band and that band (The Satellite Pumps, Raggeddettes, Second Manassas, The Old Flames) kicking out great song after great song all through his adult life. What do you get after all of that? An experienced, talented songwriter who is confident and sure. Not to mention, a ton of Appalachian Americana tunes that are equally charming and thoughtful. Now performing with or with out the band The Sunday Best, he brings each crowd he performs for to his attention, and shows them the road he’s been down and where he’s headed.
His album “Smoke Trees” (July 2010) is a perfect blend of beautiful melodies on guitar and voice, all underlined by his bittersweet lyrics. From start to finish the album is a reflective journey through adulthood in the holy vessel of southern rock and roots. It’s a freeing collection of songs of a grown up loner kid’s personal pilgrimage for true love, and life now that he’s found it; most well illustrated in the title track. It’s a soulful proclamation of the security and romantics of his life, and most importantly a sweet but not sappy one. Adam Hill lives in Nashville these days.

Wayne Bledsoe, Knoxville News Sentinel Nov 11, 2010
Maybe it's a good thing Adam Hill didn't hit rock 'n' roll stardom with his former Knoxville band the Satellite Pumps.
"I'm like the worst at the rock 'n' roll lifestyle," says Hill. "I go to bed early. I like to write at 6:30 in the morning. I like to keep on a schedule. If a show starts at 9, I like it to really start at 9."
In a call from Nashville, where Hill lives with his wife and daughter, he says he is finally back on track more than a decade after he and the rest of the members of the Satellite Pumps passed up a recording contract with Bloodshot Records and six years after the release of Hill's solo album "Willingness." Hill's follow-up solo disc, "Smoke Trees," has just been released.
Hill grew up in Kingston, Tenn., just west of Knoxville. He says it was seeing the Ralph Macchio movie "Crossroads," which depicts a Robert Johnson-style deal with the devil that set him on a musical path. "A week after seeing that movie I had my parents buy me a Robert Johnson album," says Hill. "I was kind of a weird kid." The Georgia Satellites' song "Keep Your Hands to Yourself" helped give Hill a love of gut-bucket rock 'n' roll. "Then I heard the Violent Femmes' first CD and thought, 'I could do that.'"Then Hill heard The ill-fated rock 'n' roll greats Replacements and it all came together.
The Pumps followed The Replacements' boozy, argumentative, go-for-broke attitude a little too literally and self-destructed.
"There I was in 1999, I went with another band, then I went to New York and played in folk coffeeshops."He and his then-wife moved to Nashville. Just after the release of "Willingness" in 2004, Hill says, "a lot of things fell apart," including his marriage.
He divorced and ended up living in a friend's basement in Brentwood. "Not to sound cliched or dramatic, but I kind of hit rock bottom for a while and it took a while to dig out of it," he says. "It totally derailed what I'd hope to do with 'Willingness.' I kind of came to the point of 'I'm done writing songs. I'm done with music.' I just took a beating on so many levels." He says that the period actually turned into a positive one, however. He ended up meeting his current wife, and in 2007 the two had a a daughter. Hill also got more involved in church and took a job with Christian book publisher Thomas Nelson.

Hill actually drew inspiration from the movie "Julie and Julia," which told the true story of how writer Julie Powell began a successful blog about cooking every recipe in Julia Child's "The Art of French Cooking." "She came to the conclusion that nobody was going to publish her book, but she could still blog. I kept trying to 'make it' and I didn't know how to do it. All I knew how to do was write songs and that's all I could do, so I decided I was just going to enjoy writing songs." The result is "Smoke Trees," which contains 11 of the 30 songs he felt were good enough to be recorded, and contains musical contributions from Legendary Shackshakers members Mark Robertson and J.D. Wilkes.
The songs might not be as hard-rocking as the music he once made, but it's earthy, heartfelt and accomplished.
"I changed a lot of the ways I thought about making music," says Hill. "I got back to following the art, not the dream."

Paige Travis (@rocknrollsoapbox.com
Adam Hill’s new CD, Smoke Trees, conjures the atmosphere of your favorite bar and its superb jukebox, a place more comfortable than your home because it’s not full of your junk (literal and metaphorical), and you don’t have to wash dishes or vacuum.

Maybe I have that image in my mind because the disc’s first song is “Let’s Go Out Tonight,” a sweet invitation to his darlin’ to shake off the day. Hill’s songs create a musical scrapbook of human efforts to make existence more than just subsistence. Uplifting days are evoked in rollicking, shuffling tempos. Romance peeks around the corner comes in the form of Julie Higginbotham’s honeyed harmonies. The lonesome times are in there too—gentle, bluesy lullabies rimmed with harmonica. Hill’s crusty, twangy voice tells every tale with a knowing weariness that hasn’t quite worn through. He knows there are days of both varieties still ahead.

If you like Whiskeytown, Justin Townes Earle, Hayes Carll and their sardonic, folky ilk, you are likely to find Southern comfort in the sounds of Adam Hill, who lives in Nashville but originally hails from Kingston. He spent some time in Knoxville as well, making music in one of our city’s most hailed indie bands of its or any other era, The Satellite Pumps.

Matt Everett -Metro Pulse Nov, 2010
It’s been a long road for Adam Hill. Back in the late ’90s, Hill played guitar and sang for the rowdy local honky-tonk romantics the Satellite Pumps, one of the finest Knoxville bands of the time. When the Pumps broke up, Hill went to New York, recorded some demos, moved to Nashville, recorded some more demos, got dropped from a publishing deal, got divorced, moved into a friend’s basement, and recorded some more demos. None of it went anywhere, and Hill dropped out of the business, though not too many people noticed.
For the last few years, though, he’s been at it again, and he has his first real solo album, Smoke Trees, produced by Nashville pro Steve Mabee, with contributions from members of Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers and paid for by Hill himself. It’s a subdued affair—more subdued than the Satellite Pumps, anyway—but a solid effort. Hill’s twangy almost-tenor is surrounded by gentle reverb and acoustic strums, and his songs navigate familiar country-rock territory with energy and imagination. (And there are some great guitar solos.) Hill will be playing songs from the new album as well as old favorites at this homecoming show, which he expects to be the first of many in the next few months. (Matthew Everett)

T-Bone's Prim Cuts Adam Hill Dec 2010
Article here

Satellite Pumps
Rock 'n' Roll Kissin'

At a time when alt.country was the buzz word of the moment, the Satellite Pumps two-stepped in and left ironic pretenders in their own Bakersfield-wannabe dust. While this foursome mined classic country roots, they also understood the way in which country influenced rock 'n' roll; their sound is a charmingly rusty mix of Hank Sr., Paul Westerberg, the Darlin Family, Buddy Holly, and even Motown guitar. Rock 'n' Roll Kissin' from 1997 reeks of the last honky tonk nights at Gryphon's, when the Knoxville hip kids dressed up in their Sunday best to actually cut a rug and shed a tear in their PBR while crooner Adam Hill hiccuped heartache—"Drinking alone, I guess you're gone with your drunk punk boyfriend again/ I don't hear his band on Nashville radio," he sings in "WSM 650"—and pined for crushes he could reveal only in songs like "Goodbye": "The jukebox in my heart might just play you a song/ If you come around and kick it on." And when Hill and bassist/chanteuse Joy O'Shell trade heavy-breathing sighs on the slinky stray cat strut that is "Hands Are For"... well, you'll need a cigarette by the time it's over.
(Shelley Ridenour Metro Pulse)

Hampton Sides

I just finished reading "Hellhound on His Trail" by Hampton Sides. The title is taken from Robert Johnson's song of the same name. The book deals with James Earl Ray and the worldwide man hunt led by Hoover's FBI to bring him back to Memphis for the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. James Earl is playing the Hellhound role. The book's chapters alternate between King a few years after his Civil Rights successes trying to continue his message in an increasingly violent late 60's, James Earl Ray breaking out of Jefferson City's Prison in a bread box and heading to Mexico with dreams of directing porn films, Lyndon Johnson mired in Viet Nam and his Great Society falling apart and J. Edgar Hoover, still at the head of the bureau and seen as a bit of a kook. The narrative starts a few weeks before King is gunned down in Memphis at the Lorrainne Motel and culminates with Ray's capture at Heathrow Airport in London England. Scotland Yard Gumshoe makes good.

The whole book resonated with memories for me and the Epilogue was a good reminder for me that I grew up in a world marked by both men. In 1977 when I was 4, James Earl Ray broke out of Brushy Mountain. Reading names like Governor Ray Blanton and remembering hiking trips to Frozen Head State Park and always when we passed Brushy Mountain, there was the mention that James Earl Ray was serving life there. The world that JER traverses is strong in my memory. I can smell White Rain hairspray and cigarettes. I can see snuff cans and hair creem. I can hear the dusty shuffle of my shoes on linoleum floors. Old late 60’s cars with their plastic leather seats. My great uncle firing off broken down shot guns at tin cans. Dirt roads gravel overflowing onto asphalt. Ghosts made of dust billowing in a car's wake. I was born 5 years later. I spent summers in North GA and Eastern KY where people's mention of King was usually trouble maker or communist. Then of course there was the cult of personality reverence thrown on him too. When I was 10, about 15 years after the crime, I wasn't aware of how fresh it must have been in the minds of the people around me and the poor white south and the veil placed on it as a means of control. Some would tell you poor whites were turned on poor blacks by the rich to keep control and that it was by design. A big part of me just thinks it was the evil in human nature, to want to feel like your better than someone.

I picked this book up because earlier this year I had finished "Bloods a Rover", James Ellroy's final installment of his 1960's tour de violence starting with JFK's assasination and ended with a ficticious offing of Hooever. Of course Ellroy's book is fiction but it's constructed upon the myriad of conspiracy theories born from the tri assassinations of the 60's; JFK, MLK and Bobby K. I was never aware until then, but shouldn't have been surprised that there was a great deal of controversy surrounding King's murder. Hampton Sides book makes a passing mention of Lloyd Jowers, the greasy spoon owner whose restaurant's alley faced the Lorrainne and witnesses claim a plan was hatched on the tables of the dive. He doesn't touch the stories of U.S. Army Intelligence on the roof of the Memphis fire dept, the film they shot or the memphis public works cutting all the grass in the lot across from the Lorainne the morning after the shooting. Elrroys' tale was nail biting and left you feeling like the car was on two wheels. The odd thing is that Hampton Sides work has very much the same effect. One seems fantastic and layered, the other seems mundane but brutal. For some reason I always figure the less exciting is probably the case because the truth always lacks something. The truth is stranger than fiction? Maybe. The danger is in thinking there is no truth, someone pulled the trigger, but the why and how may be lost to a myriad of memories.

Apparently dance lessons are what did James Earl in. That and bartending school. You read that right. Ray was one enterprising screw up. You have to read this book just for the part where he swears up and down that he's not James Earl Ray and then asks to call his brother Jerry Ray. Yes you read that right too. Jesse Jackson appears in the book a-lot. His self aggrandizing and habits of hyperbole found their birth in King's assassination. Fitting I guess, I'm sure it was a profoundly earth shattering day for him. It's these little stories that Sides gleamed from newspapers and interviews, biographies and tomes that make this book great. Once he had culled them, he distilled them into a terse yet colorful prose. It reads part crime novel part southern gothic tale of murder, which for my money is a ride worth taking.

Smoke Trees is the name of the album

So for the last 4-5 years I regaled you with stories of every mix tape I had in highschool, my thoughts on movies, playing basketball and running but mostly playing rock n roll and writing songs in these days of American Idol.

Statistically I noticed I wrote a-lot in 07-08. I had a-lot on my mind. As I got more into my record and writing it that dropped off. I had less to say and the blog in the last few months has felt more like a chore and a distraction. I am well aware as an artist you have a limited window to catch people. Me talking about tacos and basketball isn't going to sell more records. I'd rather concentrate my time on writing songs and twitter serves the purpose of "Adam really likes drinking tea today."Besides, I have to book shows, manage myself, etc. There just isn't time in the day.

The whole blog has been archived so it's not all deleted it's just not floating around in cyber space. Reading back some of it felt like a diary or a vent, hence part of adamhillrocks was a joke or metaphor, I was no longer making music at the time but wanted to voice my frustrations with things so I was "ranting" and "rocking". I've felt uneasy for a year or so about a-lot of the "ranting" I've had on this blog. None if it I would take back but it's way too much navel gazing for public consumption.

I also have a record called Smoke Trees and am going to work hard at making a name for myself as a songwriter.
Here is the record. Also adamhill.bandcamp.com the link is at the top of the page. Or the link below will lead you to cdbaby.

I woke up One Morning In May

Found on Anthology of American Folk Music- Set Three: Songs; Disc One; Track Four: "I Woke Up One Morning In May" performed by Didier Hébert. "Vocal solo with guitar." Recorded in New Orleans on December 10, 1929. Original issue Columbia 40517F (111390).
Didier Herbert left nothing but one piece of wax to his name. No deathdate, No birthdate. No wife we know. No child we know. We do know, he was in Louisianna, New Orleans to be exact, in December of 1929 for a recording session with Columbia Records. It wasn't even his session, to be exact he was a sideman for Dewey Segura. Dewey was famous as 1929 goes. He had recorded a regional hit called "A Mosquito Ate Up My Sweatheart." According to the liner notes of American Anthology of Folk Music Didier met Dewey at a party and asked if he could come along to his session in New Orleans. Maybe this melody for this piece of wax were getting to was burning a hole in his pocket.
The guitar moves, and it sounds like his hand weighs a hundred pounds but it kisses the strings subtly as the chord turns from light to dark but never completely changing. I can smell dirt in a light rain from an open window. The drapes are caught in a dance. Then his voice comes and it’s in French but I swear I can understand him. It was 15 days before Christmas and a month or so since Black Tuesday. This melody with so much ache and meanign that is too much for it's signer, who either has a voice of the last century that offends our ears, or is doing something local and clutural and enigmatic and specific to cajun and creole culture or he's drunk. but this melody this melody that could cut the fabric takes me somewhere.
It’s early, it’s cold and warm. It’s wet with dew in the grass. I can hear birds. I can smell wet dirt.One last fact, despite no story, no photos and no history the books tell you Didier was blind and perhaps this is why this song to me is like a recorded dream. I've never been to New Orleans. If I close my eyes I imagine a place that is probably nothing like the reality. Much of that imagination is from this song. I see an old boarding house with long halls that are like tunnels to tall windows. Wainscoating down the hall and in the room. High ceilings and broken chandaliers. Water basin with a pitcher made of porcelin. Spanish Moss hanging in the weeping willows like eyelet.

"One Morning in May" was played during Dewey Segura's session where he was accompianed by Didier for "Today Rosalia" and "Far Away from Home Blues" where he is accompanied by one Didier Hebert. Dewey was a bootlegger. They met at a party. Was Didier a customer? Did he get paid in hooch or did he never touch the stuff? For this breathaking dream like piece of light did he get paid in bathtub gin? Did Dewey lead him in or did he use a cane. He could not see slivers of moonlight through his cupped hands as he washed his face in a basin looking out the window this December eve in New Orleans.

When I was in my early 20’s I had a crush on Cleoma Beraux Falcon. I used to wonder. Did she meet Jimmie Rodgerds. Did She meet Dewey. Was Didier around. Did he smell her perfume? Did it grab him around the heart when she sang? Some tempting mixture of sandlewood and lavander?
Dewey Segura.
Didier.

Stringbean

They drove. The road made itself from gravel smoke. Ghosts billowed in the headlights. Tree limbs framed the night.

Then, the road turned as if swollen and knotty like an old tree, twisting into the side of the mountain like a cork screw. This went on as they held onto the wheel and the dashboard until finally it let out into a valley and there was the shack. The shack filled with money. The damn walls were wallpapered with cash. The mattress was damn full of money. The well out back was full to the brim with coins. The animals couldn't get under the house because poke sacks full of money were there. The chimney was burning money. The roof shingles were made of money. At least that's what he'd heard.

So the show was on. The Grand Ole Opry was on right now and we could hear that ruckus. We knew right where he was and we knew we was in his house a tearing up the floor boards looking for buckets of cash.

He went off ten minutes ago he said. No it was twenty. No it was just a moment ago and we still haven't cut up all the box springs. And the door opened and I saw all seven foot tall of him brandishing a pistol right at us and we unloaded on Stringbean. The door swung open and light from inside cut the darkness of the yard and showed the white bone underbelly of the grass in the yard that cradled the gravel driveway, where at the end Estelle was standing by the car frozen. She started to run as my feet hit the front porch shaking the planks of wood making the sound like a drum roll. I lept into the yard and drew down on her and shot her and she bust like an apple.

Lester Polfus

Les Paul was born Lester William Polfus, in Waukseha, Wis., on June 9, 1915. He began his career as a musician, billing himself as Red Hot Red or Rhubarb Red. -wikipedia,

Red Hot Red. I wonder if Mary called him that. Mary his sweet. His angel of sound. His choir of pop in one voice. Smoking cigarettes never roughed the edges of her croon. She dumped him though. Or he dumped her. She died. He lived on till today and kicked the amp at 94.
When I was a kid my father in heaven in His wisdom allowed my father here on earth to buy me a Les Paul when I was 16 without the benefit of a part time job washing cars, washing dishes, windows or anything of the like. This is not a Les Paul with bells or whistles. This is the lower middle class LP if there ever was one. No pearl frets, no scalloped body, no pick guard. But yet it is a Les Paul. A Les Paul XR-2 Model to be exact. This allowed me to live out my Jimmy Page fantasies. The Hammer of the Gods was no doubt a Les Paul. Plugged into my Crate Amp this made an awful shriek unto the world. I had started on a Kay with an action so high playing it was a Herculean feat. I had bought a Fender Music Master from a friend. This held me for a while. But then the Les Paul became this symbol. This vision of rock. We bought at it Lynn's Guitars in Knoxville. What's that old saying "Don't go looking for it, it's not there now?" Well that's the truth. I scrawled Orange Crush on the case with a oil marker. I in foolish youth painted in white on the head stock "Westerberg" after the words "Les Paul" customizing somehow a Gibson made just for my 16 year old punk rock hero of The Replacements. I've since scrapped this off. Not because I don't love Paul but because I don't need any damn help. There are twin lightning bolts on the case that glow in the dark. They are reflective. I am sure they were put on there with glee. I wore this axe out all through highschool. My friend Jason and I made a record every weekend. This guitar was the axe. There were so many tones in the variations of the tone and switches. I felt cool with it too. When I was 18 my father again in wisdom bought me a 4 track recorder. I used this and subsequent 4 track recorders over the next decade and 1/2 like a drug. Between the Les Paul and the 4 track I have probably spent more of my life with these 2 things than anything else. Except maybe pants. So it's astounding that Les Paul invented both. I was always amazed at the tough guy bravado twixt artistry that moved him to have his arm set in the guitar position after having it broken in a car wreck.

When I got to college I dove into the music of the 50's. Really though I already had some Hank Williams and a smattering of 50's rock n roll and other weirdness thanks to Nick Tosches and the wrong crowd. In my teens I had I fell into the world of my Mother's 45s. Connie Francis, Johnny Ray, Nat King Cole, Brenda Lee. The list goes on. In my earky 20's I lived in Knoxville and delivered Wicker furniture for a living. I listened to The Q in the van. The Q was a radio station with smooth as silk DJs that sounded like they were stuck in a bunker playing nothing but 30-60's oldies with a pop lean. Vaughan Monroe to Neil Diamond. Somewhere I picked up a few Les Paul and Mary Ford records. These were magic. The discoveries all run together.

When I lived in New York I kept meaning to go see him play. He played every Tuesday night or something like that at some club near Lincoln Center. Anyways Les. Salute.
One of my favorite guitar solos of all time by any player is found here.