The Bigger Picture

T Bone Talks

by Matt Hendrickson

Was there something distinct about Fort Worth?

Maybe it was just the people who managed to get out of there by playing music. It seemed like a pretty low ceiling in Fort Worth when we were kids. It was a way out. There were a lot of great musicians. Delbert McClinton was playing around. Willie Nelson was in town. It seemed more real to me than anything else was going on. But if we’re talking about Southern culture, so much of it was due to the military/industrial complex that came into the South because they wouldn’t be watched. NASA, Wernher von Braun, the Nazi rocket scientist who settled in Alabama. In Fort Worth, from the time I can remember there were B-52s just circling all day and night. They told us that they were protecting the strategic air force base there because we were the third Russian target in order of priority. That puts no pressure on 6-year-old kid at all. Only years and years later did I find out that the B-52s would fly over the Pacific, refuel and drop the bombs on Vietnam and fly back. That was part of that ceiling that we all lived under and had to get out of. That death from above. It all seemed so pointless. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I still can’t.

Fort Worth has a great art history, were you exposed to that at all?

There was this guy Jim Meeker who was an oilman as well as a major art collector. He used to bring in guys like Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg. It was a huge influence on me. These people looked at things in a way that no one I grew up with had even thought of. They were funny, smart and there was also more of that sense of escape and getting out that was real. Those people felt free. We heard about freedom all the time, but there wasn’t any in Fort Worth. And it seemed like these people had it. I remember hearing in an art gallery someone saying, “I don’t like modern art because that ain’t the way God intended the world to be.” And to Warhol and those people, that kind of thought wouldn’t even graze them.

How did you reconcile that? Religion has always been an important part of your life.

My parents weren’t conservative or liberal. They were live and let live. That was the beautiful thing about most people in Texas in those days. The law was “live and let live.” And it’s turned very much from that to a “mind everyone else’s business” kind of place. There was not a conflict in me because religion to me was about freedom. I thought there was some nexus there. And that’s the nexus I’ve been exploring the whole rest of my life.

What are your favorite places in Fort Worth?

The new Bluebird nightclub and Mabel’s Eat Shop were really great. They were two beautiful blues joints across the street from each other. They were just dives. One day, in fact, Mabel’s Eat Shop fell over sideways. All four walls just went out. It was just laying on the ground. Before that though Mabel had a hot plate and she would cook fried chicken in the back part of the club and then, in the other club, there was dancing. It was very much like a juke joint. The Bluebird is still standing, and nearby was a Baptist church so on Friday night the whole area was just going off. Then there’s the Paris Coffee Shop, which is wonderful Southern cooking. And Kincaid’s Cheeseburgers. In the back there was Old Man Gentry who would grind up the meat. They were so incredibly good that we took every guest in town to Kincaid’s. We took Warhol and all those guys there to show them the true Fort Worth.

Do you have musical idols?

Howlin' Wolf, most definitely. He fought hard and stuck with it. He always paid his musicians health and welfare benefits. He was the only blues cat to do that. He didn’t know how to read or write and he learned when he was 50. He’d be at these honkytonks studying and then he would just get up and scare the pants off the audience.

What are your quintessential Southern albums?

Wilbur De Paris and His Jazz All Stars At Symphony Hall. This album contains the transcendent “Wrought Iron Rag.” This is a band achieving lift off. Howlin Wolf, His Best. It has the indelible “How Many More Years” which was the first rock and roll record with Ike Turner playing piano. And Skip James, The Complete Early Recordings with “Devil Got My Woman,” “Hard Time Killin’ Floor Blues,” and “Special Rider Blues.” It’s conjuring music.

You’ve worked with everyone from Bob Dylan to BB King, have you ever been in awe of anyone?

Not anyone in particular. But I’ve been in awe of life. Someone like Dylan, he’s the Homer of our time. Being a participant in his process at various times has filled me with a sense of awe. I look at Bob and ask: “How do you live in this all the time?” I wouldn’t say I’m in awe of him, but I’m in awe of “the thing.”

What did Dylan teach you?

The big thing was to be fearless. It was hard to get him to commit to something but once he did he was just fearless and did not waver at all in his commitment. That’s who he is.

Are you still learning?

Oh yeah, every day. That’s the great thing about a life in music; it’s a never-ending story. I believe listening to music makes you smarter. An athlete’s skills diminish over time, but a musician’s skills increase as you get older. It’s a beautiful thing.

So is Robert Plant as big of a rock god offstage as he is on?

He is so unpretentious. Out of all of those legends – if you will – he is the most ego-free I’ve ever worked with. It’s astounding.

He seems to have put the kibosh on any sort of Led Zeppelin reunion tour.

People get so hysterical about the fact that he’s doing this tour with Allison instead of Zeppelin. They’re two mutually exclusive events. If he wants to do Zeppelin, he will. But my advice would be to set up shop in a city and do 30 nights. Let people come to you. The rigors of touring are a young person’s game.

You’ve finished records with Elvis Costello, BB King and John Mellencamp and will start with the Who in the fall. Is there a unifying thread for all those projects?

I’m interested in the raw, the truth, stripping away a lot of the polish. Take Mellencamp, it’s a really different record for him, really dark. Let’s just say there’s no “Jack and Diane” on it.

Who would you love to work with?

I’ve worked with everyone from Dylan to BB King. There’s no one.

Come on, really? Radiohead? U2?

U2? No way. I know them too well. I guess if you really pushed me I’d say Sigur Ros. What they do is amazing, otherworldly. But I’d like to give it more depth and make it more otherworldly.

Pawnshop photo by Jesse Dylan
All other photos courtesy T-Bone Burnett

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