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Chris Scruggs of BR549

A Conversation with Shaw Wilson of BR549 (continued)

PM: On the other hand, and on the up note, their successors, Geoff Firebaugh and Chris Scruggs, bring a ton of personality and musicality to the outfit.

SW: Yeah, that's what makes it happen. If they were both lame, I guarantee you I wouldn't be on the road right now.

PM: Well, let's talk a little about Chris Scruggs. What's he like as a new member to work with, and how do you describe what he brings to the table as a person and a musician?

SW: I know that the word is thrown around too much, but I really believe him to be pretty much a pure genius.

PM: I see.

SW: He's so young and so talented that you know that he's only got the rest of his life to express himself the way he will. And he does it all the time. And it makes me laugh, because--and it makes other people laugh, too. And I think, are they laughing at him because he's got those funny glasses and they think he looks like Buddy Holly?--and he hates it when that happens, because he is who he is.

PM: [laughs]

SW: But his guitar--he pulls stuff out all the time that amazes me. He's like Donnie in that sense. Donnie was always doing that for me. Back in the dark days when things seemed like they were going downhill, Donnie would pull out a fiddle solo or mandolin solo or whatever, and then me and Donnie would lock in and like bring everybody into the thing. It's like, "Come on, I know we had problems today and some people are mad at each other, but not now."

PM: Right.

SW: And then everybody would wake up and go, "That's right." And Chris is able to do that in a single bound. And it's just so weird, because he just turned twenty-one.

PM: Wow, twenty-one...

SW: I met him when he was sixteen. Hillsboro High, I guess, allows a couple of students a year to pursue their dream and they give them special privileges. I don't know what her name was, but there was a girl who was training for the Olympics in some event, and they gave her access to the gym and special hours for training and all, because they wanted an Olympian to come out of their school.

And Chris got the same treatment in Music City like that, because he is an "Olympian." So at sixteen years old he's in a bar downtown playing in his three-piece rockabilly outfit.

PM: Excellent.

SW: And that's how we met him. The Hot Town Tigers. And people started coming out to see these goofballs put a show. And it was really exciting, and very teenage.

PM: Right.

SW: And then he'd sit in when we were back in town. That's kind of how the new BR lineup happened, was that Chris was just sitting in down at the Bluegrass Inn, and we were the Hillbilly All-Stars, because it wasn't just who we were now. We'd have other people come up, like Pete Sievers, and Pete Finney would play steel sometimes. It was just a show on the weekends to make some tip money. So when you play with the caliber of people like that, it's got to be good.

PM: Yeah, those Hillbilly All-Stars days, when it all came back together, that must have been exciting, and also very difficult to see that whole legacy kind of rewind and reform.

SW: They were very unsure times. And I guess music conquered it. I mean, that's what we were there to do, so we just did that, and it kind of took care of itself.

PM: What's Chris Scruggs like? Is he quiet, or is he a kind of flamboyant guy?

SW: He's not flamboyant. He's very introspective at times. You'll just look at him and you know he's somewhere else. He's thinking, you know? He is an incredible steel guitar player, even though you never see him play it.

PM: Really?

SW: Oh, yeah. He's obsessed with steel guitars, and that's great, because he's got all his favorite steel players and the different tunings. I mean, he sat on a plane back from Europe the first time we went over there, and he got the Inflight magazine. It's like a nine-hour flight. And Donnie fell asleep next to him. He started out showing Donnie one tuning. He's got a Sharpie, and he covered I don't know how many pages. He created a book out of that magazine. It was nothing but the varieties of steel tunings you can get. And Donnie wakes up a couple hours later and Chris goes, "Okay, Donnie, check this out." He goes, "Okay, if you want that Wally Murphy sound, this is the steel tuning here." And Donnie just woke up and he's like, "Ahhh, hey what are you doing to me?" And he never stops.

PM: [laughs] Wow.

SW: "If you want to do, like, Don Helms or something, this is the tuning you need for that." And he's just a--Chris and Donnie, we call them hillbilly savants because they--

PM: [laughs]

SW: --they just shine when they play music. They take care of business otherwise, but what they do best is play music, and God bless them for that. And they don't make things difficult otherwise, they just don't really care about anything else.

PM: They're busy thinking about things that have to do with strings.

SW: Yeah. And the other part, Chris is--well, he's a corn dog sometimes, and sometimes he's a real dry wit. He makes me laugh, and I make him laugh, and we appreciate each other's humor--I mean, we all do. And it's just like anything else, you're asleep, and then you're awake, and sometimes you're quiet, and sometimes... He never gets too wound up unless somebody feeds him too much to drink, which he doesn't really do very often.

PM: I remember meeting him with his mom somewhere one time and was struck by, jeez, what a nice, well-mannered, interesting guy he was, just a real nice person.

SW: Uh-huh.  continue

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