94 played. And I said “yeah.” He said what do you want to play? All I could think of was drums. My other options were horns … you know. The only one I could think of I could play in a rock band would be drums. SD: So you wanted to be in a rock band? DB: Oh, yeah! SD: What kind of bands were you in back in the early days? DB: Early days would have been with a couple of my buddies in church. We didn’t play church music. Here’s the deal, we had a really cool youth director and he always really supported us. He was a musician. He taught the guitar player early on. He basically would get us up when we went to youth group. And we would back him up on like the sing along church songs. Kind of a house band. But then he’d turn us loose at the end. And we’d get to play whatever we want. We’d play AC/DC and Guns and Roses, Black Crowes. More rock and roll. SD: Were you in bands as a young man before you took off traveling and playing? DB: Well the first band that I played in I was twentyone, right at, and that was the first band I traveled with. Randy Crouch and Flying Horse. He’s out of Tahlequah, Oklahoma. I think they call him a Godfather of Red Dirt music or something like that. We traveled quite a bit: southern and central Illinois, Mississippi, Louisiana, like New Orleans, you know, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona. That was our loop. I did that for about five years. SD: You’ve traveled in other places and played in other locations, you want to tell us a little bit about that? DB: I got a real job at Sound Warehouse, the record store in Fayetteville there. I was staying at home more. Trying to figure out what I was doing. I was wanting to
move to New Orleans that’s what I really wanted to do. So I spent about a year or two, probably close to two, really studying New Orleans drummers and the music. While I was doing that and not playing with Randy so much, I took a kind of temporary job with Jason Davis. He had a band called Baby Jason and the Spankers. He’s still around. Plays with Earl (Cate) and them. His bass player and his drummer quit. He had all these gigs booked and I told him I couldn’t be in his band ‘cause I was trying to move out of town but I’d help him finish out the gigs he had booked. I don’t want to leave anyone hanging like that. We played in Nebraska, we played in Memphis. SD: So then you finally did get to New Orleans? DB: I found an apartment in mid-city, which is just what it says, it’s in the middle of the city, pretty close to uptown, pretty close to the fairgrounds, pretty close to the French Quarter, close to the lake (Pontchartrain) all that. So I went down there, found a place, signed the lease. Then my buddy Jason Boland, who I knew through Randy (Crouch), his drummer got married and they were really thinking that he wasn’t going to be in the band anymore and pretty much put the offer on the table for me to play drums with them, which I had to say no because I’d already signed a lease in New Orleans. Ended up the drummer didn’t quit the band. He got married but kept playing, so. That could’ve changed everything. They’re still on the road. They’re still traveling. SD: So the New Orleans experience ended up being a good one, though? Did you play in different bands down there? DB: I did. I played in anybody’s band who would hire me. And the great thing about New Orleans and one of the reasons I loved it, ‘cause we would go down there and play, and I just noticed how everybody played with everybody, down there. You met somebody, they found out that you played, they’d have your number and you were on the list, and they’d give your number to somebody else if they were looking for a drummer. In some places I’ve heard and I’ve