A Conversation with Delbert McClinton (continued)

PM: Yeah. Your life would make a very interesting book, no doubt. Have you ever been approached on that, or given much thought to that?

DM: Well, I've started writing some stuff. I started writing some stuff a couple years ago, mainly for my kids. I guess mainly for my daughter. Because by the time she's old enough to give a shit, I'll probably be either dead or senile.

PM: [laughs]

DM: You know what I'm saying?

PM: I do.

DM: So I started writing it down. But I get bogged down in it, because I've read enough of those stories about this music guy who did this and did that, and battled drugs, and two of them died and one of them didn't, but now he's a vegetable, and yadda, yadda. And God, I don't want to read any more of that shit.

PM: [laughs]

DM: You know, it's the same old rodeo. So I started trying to write it more about my life rather than music. Which I think is a good approach to it. But man, there's some old things in there that, even after all these years, it's hard for me to approach.

PM: That still hurt.

DM: Well, yeah, some of them hurt. But then, you know, there's some things that are so important to say, but maybe the person is not alive anymore.

PM: Right.

DM: And I hate to say something when there's nobody there to counter it.

PM: Right. Or to say it's okay if you say that.

DM: Yeah. And then you reach a point where you say, "Now how the hell do I tell this and leave that out?"

PM: Right.

DM: But I'm trying. I'm working on it. And I've probably got, I don't know, 30, maybe 40 pages.

PM: Well, I sure look forward to the possibility of that emerging into the market someday.

DM: Well, it may, and it may not. Somebody may try to finish it after I'm gone or something. But I really do want to do that. And I want to do it unlike it's been done before, because I don't want to read another one of those books, God, I mean, please...

PM: Yeah. Another "Behind the Music."

DM: Yeah, yeah.

PM: Tell us something about your Sandy Beaches Cruise.

DM: Oh, man, that's turned into just the best thing in the world. I did a cruise two years in a row with a couple of guys, oh, how long ago? Eleven years ago? It was just a blues cruise. Everybody on it was blues, you know. And I love blues music, but when you're stuck on a boat with a bunch of mediocre blues bands, man I'm telling you what, you talk about wanting to jump overboard.

PM: Hell on the water.

DM: Yeah. One week, and you can't get away. I mean, they pipe it into your rooms. They pipe it out on the deck--when a band's not playing, the music is playing. But blues music has to be done with a lot of class or it really sucks.

PM: Really. It's got to be special or it's the worst.

DM: It's got to be really good. So I talked to this friend of mine, and I said, "Man, you know, we could do a better job of this." And so we leased a ship and ate it for three years.

PM: No kidding.

DM: Oh, god, it was rough. Well, we had a lot of things that happened. Two years ago we had a ship paid for, we had it sold out, and three and a half months before we were supposed to go, they went bankrupt with our money. So we had to lease another ship. The ship was sold out, so we were able to lease another ship and make the cruise happen, and lose $200,000.

PM: Holy jeez!

DM: But last year it paid back a nice piece of what we got into it, and was the best one ever. And this year it's about 80 percent sold out right now. continue

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