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BBT: Well, you know, there are so many of them. It's funny, you find my record in Tower and the Virgin store in L.A. in the Country section. Other parts of the country, you'll find it other places. But people assume, since I'm from the South and have done some Southern movies and my name is Southern, it must be Country.

PM: When a lot of it is spoken word.

BBT: And it isn't really Country, you know, there's a couple of hillbilly songs on there, but that isn't Country nowadays. But my influences were pretty broad. As a kid, I mainly listened to the music my mother listened to, which was Elvis Presley and the Sun catalog. Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Charlie Rich...I listened to Jim Reeves and Ray Price, Patsy Cline. My mother used to play Rod McKuen records, remember him?

PM: Sure.

BBT: And a girl named Timmy Yuro. She was great, did a really nice cover of "Make the World Go Away." My mother also listened a lot to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. I was real fond of them.

PM: Hell, yeah. I remember wanting Whipped Cream and Other Delights really bad one Christmas, and getting The Lonely Bull instead.

BBT: You wanted that cover, right? [laughter] Yeah, that was a great cover. But that was a favorite record of mine, Whipped Cream and Other Delights. Then I got into the British Invasion.

PM: And you were a Yardbirds guy.

BBT: Oh yeah, definitely. And The Animals. The Animals were the ones that really provided the edge. In fact, a friend told me about Private Radio that it reminded him of The Animals in that period, "Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" kind of thing.

PM: I hear that.

BBT: Then I went crazy and started listening to stuff that was further out. Me and my brother had to be some of the few kids in Arkansas that were listening to Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa and the Straight Records catalog, Wild Man Fischer, and that stuff. [Billy Bob and I had talked about Beefheart earlier in the day, we're both pretty fanatical about his music. BBT and Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) are phone buddies. He's a reclusive and successful painter now in remote Northern CA, and made some of the most adventurous and beautiful Rock records in history.] The Bonzo Dog Band, from England. The Strawbs, and Gentle Giant and a lot of Art Rock later on. Wishbone Ash. It was Rock and Roll through '66, and then Rock arrived in '67. Cream, Deep Purple, and all that.

PM: Summer of Love.

BBT: Right. Then the San Francisco bands, The Dead, Hot Tuna.

PM: So, you're a Jorma [Kaukonen] guy?

BBT: Yeah, I like Jorma. I liked Spirit, too. And who was it did "Panama Red"?

PM: New Riders.

BBT: Right, I liked The New Riders of the Purple Sage, and Commander Cody. All that stuff. What really happened with me is that after '74, I got disappointed in music for a long time.

PM: It was the arrival of Disco, right? There was Steely Dan in there somewhere, but the rest of it a lot of us couldn't relate to.

BBT: Right, and then The Eagles around '77, and that was a relief. But there wasn't a whole lot, you know? Fleetwood Mac was in their heyday, and it was good music, but it wasn't my thing.

PM: It was commercial Rock.

BBT: Yeah. And also, Country had changed. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I believe that Country really became Pop music when Glen Campbell came out with "Rhinestone Cowboy." So Country got a little lean for my tastes as well in that period. So, from the mid 70s through the 80s, what I mostly did was listen to old records by Merle Haggard and George Jones, Cash and Waylon, that kind of stuff, Webb Pierce. I love the early days of Country music as much as anything in the world.

PM: The Golden Years. So are you a fan of Jim Lauderdale, then? He still writes and records beautifully in that style. He was our cover in November.

BBT: Sure, I know Jim, I love his music. He's great. He did a record with Ralph Stanley, right?

PM: Two, actually. The second one is still to be released, I believe.

BBT: Growing up, I listened to a lot of stuff that the other kids weren't listening to. You know, how people will try to get away from where they're from. I was from the South, and at a certain point, I stopped listening to the Country music I'd grown up on. But I'd always come back to it. Webb Pierce, the Wilburn Brothers, I'd heard some Bluegrass -- Flatt and Scruggs, Bill Monroe, people like that. continue

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