James hand Article from Austin American-Statesman

'The Truth' may set Hand free, but will it make him happy?By Michael Corcoran
AMERICAN-STATESMAN MUSIC WRITER
Saturday, March 11, 2006

When you go to see an act at a record store, you're not expecting musical magic or spontaneity, but a sampler set on the way to the autograph booth. The acoustics are not great, the sun's still out and half the folks are there for the free beer.
But country singer James Hand's March 1 set celebrating the release of "The Truth Will Set You Free," the 53-year-old's first nationally distributed album, just seemed to mean more. With the packed store in full support, he turned Waterloo Records into a moving, stirring, thrilling box full of memories. Remember the '50s and '60s heyday of country music? The mournful-voiced Hand is not a throwback, but a continuation.

"We've got time for one more," the native son of "Last Picture Show" Texas said in introducing the up-tempo "Little Bitty Slip" from the new Rounder release. But when that number was over, Hand and band played another one and then another, pulling out a Hank Williams song that Hand rarely sings anymore because he's become weary of comparisons to the tragic country legend. The crowd, which ranged from couples who could've met at the old Skyline roadhouse on North Lamar to tattooed hipsters, hung on every vocal swoop and moan, cheering Hand on like a marathoner at the 20-mile mark. The lovefest ended with Hand singing an a capella yowler, accompanied only by the tears escaping from his dark, deep-set eyes.
James Hand had done a lot of living, a lot of losing to get to this point. Nobody from Waterloo even considered making the "wrap it up" sign; this true-blue honky tonk original could play as long as he wanted.

A day earlier, Hand sat in a beer joint disguised as the Willis Country Store, near his home in Tokio, about 10 miles north of Waco. Exceedingly polite, answering questions with "yes, sir" and "no, sir" and calling everyone "Mister" or "Miz," Hand often slid from jovial into gutters of gloom during a three-hour interview. Hand bore little resemblance to a 40-year veteran of country dives and dancehalls, who's on the verge of national attention for the first time.
"I don't know if I've been more blessed or cursed," Hand said, looking back at the hard life he sings so beautifully about. "But I've been diversified." He's one of those guys who taps your forearm when he throws out a good line.

In the blessed column he's got the gift for honest, direct songwriting and the voice to match. Hand was raised by a loving family, embraced by neighbors who look after him. He's got the backroads and woods of northern McLennan County as getaways for his soul. He's got Willie Nelson in his corner.

On the cursed side, Hand will tell you — tap, tap — is everything else.

"I just want to feel worthy," he said, staring down at a trio of Coors Light bottles sent over by fellow customers. "Right now, my life ain't worth a damn."

His happiest years, he said, were from 1990 to 1993, when he lived with a schoolteacher and drove a gas truck from 4 a.m. to 1 p.m. for $270 a week. "The straight life suited me just fine," he said. "If they didn't sell the company, I'd still be working there."

Just as at his concerts, when he balances the moments of despair with galloping swing numbers, Hand swings the full emotional pendulum when he's just hanging out. Ol' Slim, as he's known back home, is a constant jokester who recently bought the boys at the Willis Country Store a round by announcing, "Country music's been very good to me: I made $15 last weekend." When the barflies chuckled, Hand said, "If you think $15 ain't much money, try to borrow it."
En route to Wolf's Bar in West, a favorite hangout, Hand's eyes welled up when he pointed out the farmhouse his parents built on 14 acres of land they bought in 1959. His mother passed on in 2002, his father in 2005, both from lung cancer. Hand lived with them at that house for most of his life. His loneliness thickens the air around him.

His father, a horse trainer, took a turn for the worse in early 2005, just as Hand had finished the basic tracks of "The Truth Will Set You Free," which features several re-recordings of songs from Hand's three previous, locally released albums. With the elder Hand given just a few more weeks to live, Hand headed back to Tokio, with the album 90 percent done and a block of studio time put on hold.

"I sat at Daddy's bed for 60 days in a row," Hand said, then he thought about something. "Well, I done told a lie there. There was one Sunday afternoon I came down to Austin to redo a couple vocals. I hired a policeman friend from Cleburne to drive me down because he could drive as fast as he wanted and not get a ticket."

Before he signed his deal with prominent roots music label Rounder in 2004, Hand wasn't sure he'd ever make another record. But Hand had his champions, such as KUT DJ Tom Pittman, who craved another minor masterpiece like the 1996 debut "Shadows Where the Magic Was." Pittman put Hand's farm-noir sound in the hands of Rounder label head Ken Irwin, who caught an especially frisky Thursday night set at the Saxon Pub and offered a deal.

"Ken asked me, 'How's his business sense?' " Pittman recalled, "And I told him, 'It's the worst you've ever seen.' James is even uncomfortable selling you a CD after a show. He thinks that if you give him $15, he should come over and mow your lawn."

But Hand's "aw shucks" humility is one of the reasons he's probably the most beloved figure on the local country scene since National Guard retiree Don Walser started singing at the short-lived country paradise Henry's on Burnet Road about 15 years ago.

Like Walser, Hand wears his authenticity like cologne. He's as backwoods as moonshine, able to name more rodeo clowns than former U.S. presidents. "I used to drive to West High with a shotgun in my truck and nobody thought nothing 'bout it back then," Hand said. These days that would draw a SWAT team.

Hand is so country he can introduce a song as "one of the bestest I ever wrote" without a tinge of affectation. Who else can look and sound so much like Hank Williams ("You even walk like him," Ray Price told Hand a few years back) and not come off as a wannabe? When Hand sings "Just an Old Man with an Old Song" it sounds as if he was born with that tune in 1952, the same year Hank Williams died. There's such a depth of expression in Hand's "If I Live Long Enough To Heal" and "When You Stopped Loving Me, So Did I" that this music is truly his own.
"I've gotta believe that the same forces that moved Hank, also move James," Pittman said of the Hank-like way Hand's shoulders jump to the rhythm.

"I guess I've just been a haunted bastard my whole life," Hand said. He said he knew he was different in the first grade. "They made us put our heads down on a towel and take a nap," he said. "Then they'd play a lullaby and I'd just start sobbing. Nobody could tell me why."
Like Williams, who died at age 29 from drug and alcohol abuse, Hand has tried to negotiate his partying ways with God-fearing beliefs. "I pray every night," Hand said, "but I also like to drink just 'bout every night."

Other true-life honky tonk outlaws might parlay a weekend in the pokey into "doin' time," but when Hand was asked about his rumored scrapes with the law, he deferred. "Now, when I put on my hat and sing, that's the public's business," he said. "But when a door closes behind me, that's my business."

Records show, however, that Hand was convicted of possession of amphetamines in 1988 and sent to prison, where he served nine months. To not put that marketing bonanza out there is kind of like a gangsta rapper trying to pass off bullet wounds as birthmarks.

Rounder's promotional effort makes good use of Willie Nelson, whose proclamation of Hand as "the real deal" is on the back cover of every Hand CD. The two met in 1980 when a 27-year-old Hand was a bouncer at Wolf's and Nelson was showing his "Honeysuckle Rose" co-star Amy Irving around his old stomping grounds. "It was Halloween and when they came up to the door I said, 'Well, if you ain't him, you sure look like him,' " Hand said, "and Mr. Nelson said, 'I'm him.' "
The two talked music for a while, then Hand went home and got his guitar. After he played Nelson a few originals, Willie grabbed a napkin and scribbled on it, "James Hand can record for free."

Several months later, Hand redeemed the napkin at Nelson's Pedernales studio, where he laid down demos for a couple hours. Nelson has also taken Hand out on tour with him several times as the opening act.

Much more often, though, Hand plays beer joints back home, where it could be anyone playing in the corner. On such nights, when Hand's guitar struggles to be heard over the chatter, the singer sometimes introduces classics as originals, just to see if anyone's paying attention. "Here's another one that done real good for us," he said recently, then went into "Your Cheatin' Heart." His son Tracer, a former bull riding champion, fell out of his chair laughing, but everyone else just kept on yapping.

But when the crowd is enrapt in Hand's performance, such as the Waterloo appearance, the songs can be spellbinding. Every one of Hand's songs is about something that happened to him, every lyric means something, which is why he often cries when he's singing.
"I don't believe that crap about how you have to make yourself happy before you can make other people happy," he said at Wolf's, nibbling on orange crackers from the vending machine. "Until I can make people happy first, then I can't even think about feeling better about myself."

mcorcoran@statesman.com; 445-3652

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Van Morrison Goes Country

Pay the Devil
Lost Highway (Due to be released March 7, 2006)
There Stands the Glass (2:16)
Half As Much (2:36)
Things Have Gone to Pieces (3:11)
Big Blue Diamonds (2:56)
Playhouse (4:14)
Your Cheatin' Heart (2:32)
Don't You Make Me High (2:47)
My Bucket's Got a Hole In It (2:22)
Back Street Affair (2:49)
Pay the Devil (3:03)
What Am I Living For (3:57)
This Has Got To Stop (4:44)
Once a Day (2:52)
More and More (2:46)
'Til I Gain Control Again (5:59)

Van Morrison Signs With Lost HighwayVeteran singer/songwriter Van Morrison has aligned with Lost Highway for the release of his next studio album, the country-dominated Pay the Devil. Due March 7, the 15-track set features the Morrison originals "This Has Got To Stop," "Playhouse" and the title cut.

Pay the Devil is rounded out by songs popularized by Webb Pierce ("There Stands the Glass"), Hank Williams ("Your Cheatin' Heart"), Conway Twitty ("What Am I Living For"), Emmylou Harris ("'Til I Gain Control"), Big Joe Turner ("Don't You Make Me High") and George Jones ("Things Have Gone to Pieces"), among others.

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Junior Barnard

RESTLESS, WILD AND WANDERING,
The Dirty Guitar of Junior Barnard

Fiddler and band leader Bob Wills was the big boss of his musical outfit, the Texas Playboys. Often times, he would take liberties with those in his employ, affixing unflattering nicknames, as well as speaking over his singers with relentless chatter and effusive hollers. These folksy adornments became Wills' trademark, his holler was legendary. But Wills carefully selected the best players in the kingdom of western and swing music in the 1930's and '40's to join his band for better pay, acclaim and a few friendly jibes. One such player was Lester Robert "Junior" Barnard, a guitarist from Oklahoma, who seemed to foretell the future of guitar music with his unusual playing and use of equipment.

By the 1950's the direction of music was Rock and Roll, and an early progenitor, Bill Haley had led a western swing band, much like Wills. Guitarists that predated Rock and Roll listened with a keen ear to the jazz and blues stylings of Junior Barnard, whose bluesy riffs and early use of distortion grew to become regular fare in coming rock bands.

Bob Wills took liberties with 230 pound Junior Barnard, referring to him as the "fat man," or the "Booger man," and other pejorative names. Restless, Junior Barnard, though apparently not resentful of Wills taunting, would play with the Texas Playboys, or other Wills family bands for a while, then leave. He would seek employment elsewhere and eventually find his way back. He was a guitarists in demand for his exciting original and innovative playing. But there was a dark side to Junior Barnard that few audience members saw in this audacious guitar player.
Guitarist and band leader Whit Smith, formerly of Hot Club of Cowtown, now leading the Hot Jazz Caravan, was also a listener of the guitar sounds of Barnard. In a recent interview, Smith referred to Junior Barnard's playing as "dirty guitar." "Throughout his troubled life," Smith said, "Junior Barnard's playing was rough-edged, always on time, but nervous, sharp and biting, like he was hiding something we couldn't see."

One of Bob Wills' more interesting songs from the "small combo" era band, after World War II, was "Fat Boy Rag." An instrumental song, it featured the left-handed fiddle virtuoso, Joe Holley, and the guitar of Junior Barnard. The song title came from a jam, where Bob turned to Barnard to signal a guitar solo, saying "Folks, here's that fat boy on the guitar."

Lester Robert Barnard, “Junior,” was born in Coweta, Oklahoma on December 17, 1920. He came from a musical family. His father Hurl Lester Barnard and his uncle Robert were both performing fiddle players in the area. Like a young Bob Wills, Junior Barnard, as a teenager, accompanied his father’s fiddle playing the guitar. Junior later learned to play the fiddle and began to sing.

By age 15, Junior Barnard was an accomplished musician, playing acoustic guitar with various bands in Tulsa. He had his own radio show at KTUL where he also worked as a staff musician, playing stints with such artists as Patty Page, and her Musical Pages from Claremore, Oklahoma. The Bob Wills organization in Tulsa plucked the young Barnard from Art Davis and the Rhythm Riders to play with “Uncle” John Wills, father of the Wills boys, and his band, the Lonestar Rangers.

In 1936, Barnard joined Will’s cousin, Son Lansford’s Sons of the West, based in Amarillo, Texas. He remained with the Sons for a year, as lead acoustic guitarist, before returning to Tulsa and radio station KTUL. In 1937, he bought his first electric guitar and by November, Junior Barnard had achieved enough skill and ability playing the electric guitar that he replaced legendary guitarist Eldon Shamblin playing in Dave Edward’s Original Alabama Boys. Shamblin had moved up to lead guitarist and arranger for Bob Will’s big band, the Texas Playboys in Tulsa.

By 1938, Johnnie Lee Wills, Bob’s younger brother formed his own band, the Rhythmaires, after playing rhythm banjo for years in the Texas Playboys. Barnard joined the Rhythmaires band where he stayed for six months before joining Will’s father again in a new iteration, Uncle Johnny and his Young Five. The Bob Wills’ organization operated the makings of two bands, a string band, and a horn band, interchanging players as needed. Barnard was soon moved to Johnnie Lee Wills and his Boys band where he stayed off-and-on until the start of World War II. While with Johnnie Lee, Barnard and the band recorded with Decca in 1941. By this time, and after a huge hit with the recording of “New San Antonio Rose,” featuring the Texas Playboys horn band, Bob Wills was dividing time between Tulsa and Hollywood. As the war drained musicians from Wills band, he called on Junior Barnard. Barnard had received a draft deferment because of his excessive weight. In the fall of 1942, with Bing Crosby, who also had a hit with “New San Antonio Rose,” Bob Wills with Junior Barnard played in Hollywood for a war bond rally. Wills then enlisted in the Army, and the musical organization was put on hold, except for Johnnie Lee Wills and his Boys, who took over Bob’s work, including a regular weekly gig at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa.

Junior Barnard went to work in a defense plant in California. By 1943, he returned to Tulsa and joined Johnnie Lee, but left again to work as a welder for the war effort in Houston.

After Bob Wills was released from the Army in 1943, he located in the San Fernando Valley of California, in proximity to work in the film and recording industries. Meanwhile, in Tulsa, Junior Barnard, while drinking and driving, was involved in a hit and run auto accident. A Tulsa woman was killed, and the Wills’ organization with their local influence was able to get Barnard released. Bob sent for him to join the band in Hollywood for film work. Junior’s driver’s license had been revoked, so his younger brother, singer and guitarist Gene drove him to California. By early October, Junior Barnard was with Wills, as one of five string musicians appearing in films. Junior Barnard as a string band member appeared in five Russell Hayden Columbia western movies, “Saddles and Sagebrush,” “The Vigilantes Ride,” “Wyoming Hurricane,” and “The Last Horseman.” He also appeared with Bob Wills in a musical short film for Universal called “Frontier Frolic.”

While in Hollywood filming, and on weekends, Bob’s six-piece band was playing local venues including the Venice Pier, where in three nights played to fifteen-thousand people. In effort to re-create the success of his Tulsa years, and recognizing the audience potential of the dust-bowl immigrants in California, Wills relocated his musical organization to Fresno. He and the band would be right in the middle of the Okies, Arkies and Texans who now lived and worked in the San Joaquin Valley. Both the Barnard brothers landed in Fresno, and Gene was hired to join the band as well. Prior to the brother’s arrival in California, jazz guitar great Jimmy Wyble was playing with Wills until his move to Fresno. When Junior took over for Wyble, he joined Wills in both of his Fresno venues, the Fresno Barn, and “Bob Wills Round Up,” a fifteen-minute radio show on station KMJ. Meanwhile, the band was traveling to dates throughout California while also trying to stay close to home.

In 1946, Wills and the Texas Playboys, with Junior Barnard on lead guitar, were recoding the Tiffany Transcriptions in San Francisco. They were also appearing on network radio for the Fisher Flouring Mills, makers of Zoom wheat cereal, broadcasting from radio station KGO in Los Angeles. In September, the Texas Playboys were recording again in Hollywood. Bob wanted to duplicate the sound of his famous “big-band” horn section, with recordings, like “New San Antonio Rose,” and “Big Beaver,” but he was unable to find horn players. Wills instead used the guitar in place of horns, and based on the success of the smaller “string” band at venues like the Venice Pier, and the economy of less musicians, he moved to the smaller “all string-band” sound, what became known as the “small-combo era.” The guitar work of Junior Barnard took over choruses and provided much more exciting jazz improvisation. The guitar in place of horns duplicated the swing sound Wills’ fans were accustomed to, while allowing a repertory of much broader Wills’ music.

Junior Barnard’s guitar style was flamboyant, daring and aggressive. Wills often used Barnard, and old friend and band- mate, Eldon Shamblin for synchronized guitar rifts he called the “twin guitars.” With his strong sense of rhythm, Barnard quickly and precisely made his guitar progressions fit into Wills’ arrangements. Guitar Player Magazine, in a 1983 article about Barnard noted, “unlike Eldon Shamblin, who . . . play(ed) a more laid-back, jazz and swing style, Junior was a ‘go-for-broke’ soloist whose incredible technique featured startling runs, rapid hammer-ons, and pull-offs, and even contrapuntal lines.”

According to Jimmy Wyble, “Junior had the ability to turn it on and keep it there.” Barnard was a “loud guitarist who had an overdriven tube sound decades before it became popular with rock guitarists.” Junior Barnard played a “blond Epiphone Emperor arch-top, and a Gibson ES-150.” He used “DeArmond and National lap-steel pick ups, with the two wired out of phase, and each amplified through separate channels.” Barnard’s amplifier of choice was a Fender Pro with a 15-inch speaker, and an Epiphone amplifier. From both steel guitarists Leon McAuliffe and Noel Boggs, Barnard got the idea to use a volume pedal, in ready to come on strong when Bob Wills turned to him for a guitar solo.

Both Junior and brother Gene, in their formative years, were listeners of Charlie Christian, an early jazz-guitar pioneer who played with the Benny Goodman Sextet. Gene Barnard, in a 1982 interview with Buddy McPeters, said “Junior and I both heard Charlie and I copied him but Junior didn’t. He had his own approach which was more bluesy than my style.” Guitar Player Magazine, in a review of the “Tiffany Transcriptions, Volume Three,” in the April 2003 edition said “Barnard was a jazz player that had no problem sleeping in the blues gutter. His distorted solos sound more like rock and roll and blues than western swing, yet his technical proficiency with jazz stuff places his work several notches above the rest.”

In the latter part of 1946, Barnard left the Texas Playboys to join Luke Wills’ Rhytmbusters. Junior Barnard, in his wildest guitar playing, can be heard on the Rhythmbuster’s recordings. Barnard was back with Bob Wills when he relocated the band to Sacramento, and the riverside resort, “Wills’ Point.”

Long-time Playboys vocalist Tommy Duncan, tired of Bob Wills’ excessive drinking and absenteeism, quit the band to go out on his own. Barnard joined him when he played in Fresno. He also joined early Wills’ fiddler Jesse Ashlock, playing a short time with his outfit. Junior returned to Fresno in 1949 and formed his own band, The Radio Gang, playing at the Fresno Barn and other local venues, and radio stations KMJ, KYNO, and KSMA. Barnard and The Radio Gang, whose members included brother Gene playing twin guitar harmony, rhythm guitar, and singing, played successfully at the Fresno Barn until it was sold in 1951. The band moved over to Marigold Ballroom in Fresno, owned by the Local 210 of the Musician’s Union for a short time.

While scouting for other places for the band to play in the Riverdale area of rural Fresno County, on April 15, 1951, Barnard and his brother-in-law, Billie Earl Fitzgerald were killed in an automobile accident. Barnard, his wife Sue, his sister Betty, and Fitzgerald, a Fresno fireman, collided with a sedan filled with six members of the Cal Poly track team at the corner of Elm Avenue and Mt. Whitney Avenues. Fitzgerald, the driver, was killed instantly, Junior Barnard died five hours latter at Fresno County Hospital. Sue Barnard suffered head injuries. Lester R. “Junior” Barnard was survived by his wife, and two sons, Buddy Joe and Jerry Robert.

~Stephen Barile

WORKS CITED

"Condition of Two Crash Survivors Remains Serious." The Fresno Bee. 16 April 1951. A-1/B-1.

McPeters, Buddy. "Hard-Driving Soloist of Western Swing." Guitar Player Magazine. Volume 17, Number 9. September 1983.

McPeters, Buddy. Harley Huggins & The Barn Dance Gang 1946: Liner Notes. East Sussex, England. Country Routes/Interstate Music Ltd. RFD CD27 LC5385. February 2002.

Smith, Whit. Personal Interview. 2 September 2005.

Townsend, Charles R. San Antonio Rose, The Life and Music of Bob Wills. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 1976.

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The Barnboys

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