A Conversation with Jeff Black (continued)

PM: I don't know much about your pre-Nashville days as a musician, or even your early Nashville years. Maybe you'd give us a little bit about those two things, what you were doing musically before you got to Nashville, and what you were doing here in your early days.

JB: Well, I started knocking around Kansas City like in the early '80s. There were only about half a dozen of us with acoustic guitars running around town up there.

PM: Amazing.

JB: And even before that, I have a very humble musical legacy in my family. My grandmother played piano in church. My great-granddad played a little guitar. And my dad played a tenor banjo. My Uncle Lyle played a little guitar. And they used to play little barn dances at folks' houses. I was separated by a generation, maybe two. My folks were a little bit older when a lot of us kids were born, so I was only exposed to all that stuff through stories that I'd heard, and it had hit me at a really impressionable age.

I had a music teacher who whispered in my ear one time that I had a fine singing voice. And I found this little thing that I could do, and I held on to it as tight as I possibly could from the first day that I thought, wow, this is something I'd really like to do. I had no idea where to even begin.

And I always played my guitar. I drove my family completely insane, learning half a song here and there, and just messing around on the guitar. And it seems like I always had it with me. I was really fortunate to know what I wanted to do when I was very young. I started knocking around and just trying to find little shows, and I got my little P.A., and knocked around Kansas City.

I found a little place, a little blues club down in Westport. They had acoustic acts that played from 8:00 to 10:00 at night, and then they had the bands come on. Ignorance has always been bliss for me. I just went down there. I remember I put on a nice shirt, and took my guitar down there. And I said to the owner, "I'd really like to audition to come down here and play." And he looked me up and down and said, "Well, all the early acoustic slots are filled up. But I could use a bouncer."

PM: [laughs]

JB: And so I took the job. I was just trying to get as close as I could to what I was trying to do. And people started showing up. I was just a few years into the whole songwriting part of it. I played all kinds of covers, and just got exposed to all kinds of music from Johnny Cash to Tom Waits, some Woody Guthrie songs. All my covers were very obscure.

Beyond that, I started trying to get other gigs in town and stuff. And I got to be friends with Iris Dement through a little songwriters' night. A friend of ours named Norton Canfield used to host a little open mic up there. I met Iris, and we did a couple little things. I actually played on a demo of hers doing her first little version of "Our Town."

And then she turned around one day and said, "I'm moving to Nashville." And I remember I got this knot in my stomach, because there was somebody going and chasing their dream, and I was still on the outskirts of whether or not I had the self-esteem to try to even chase something like this.

PM: When was it that Iris said that she was coming to Nashville? Mid or late '80s?

JB: Probably '87, '88. Something like that. And then she got down to Nashville, and she wrote me a letter. She said, "I think you should move down here. I think you'd really shine down here."

PM: Wow.

JB: I remember going down there and I saw her play at the Bluebird Cafe on a writers' night one night. And then about six months later, I was down there. I moved to Nashville in 1989.

PM: That's also when I first moved here. That was a good time.

JB: Yeah. It was back before everything went to hell in a hand basket.

[laughter]

JB: It was really cool. Downtown was very seedy, and it was before the big boom. It was a really interesting time to come into town. And all through those years and everything else, I played regionally, and I was just doing it--just cutting my teeth on whatever I could get a hold of. And then I moved to town, and I was really lucky to find some folks that loved what I was doing and what I was trying to do.

PM: Who caught on right away?

JB: I'll tell you, the very first person that got it, I don't even think he's in the music business anymore, was a guy named Darrell Huddleston. He used to work at SESAC. And he introduced me to a guy named Greg Riggle. And it turned out we were all mutual Jerry Jeff Walker fans. My brother had brought home some Jerry Jeff Walker records from Okinawa.

PM: Wow. Remember how incredible that first record was? "My Old Man" and some of those beautiful tunes, "Little Bird."

JB: Oh, yeah. It still kills you it's just so wonderful. And from there I gave Greg a little demo. At night I'd make these really strange little guitar vocals on my little cassette deck. And then I took him some stuff. And Greg was the very first person that pointed me in the right direction. I've always felt like I had a little angel on my shoulder anyway, to make sure I kind of stayed the course, whether or not financially it was going to be the best way to go. And he turned me onto a guy named Gary Overton who was at Warner/Chappell Music at the time. And this was about six months after I got to town, and I got a little publishing deal.It was just enough to barely pay the bills, it kind of pulled me into it, because the idea of somebody paying you to write songs, that was beyond me. I was floored. I was happy with whatever they gave me.

PM: Sure.

JB: I just started playing in town, and everywhere I could. And it was almost 10 years after I had lived there that I got a deal with Arista Austin. And they put out the first record, Birmingham Road, in 1998. continue

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