Deep Roots

Deep Roots

Kentucky Headhunters keep their ties alive

BY JEN CALHOUN

When the Kentucky Headhunters started hitting the Billboard music charts in the 1990s, the country/ Southern rock/blues band experienced the kind of respect that opened the doors to international fame and awards.

But Richard Young, one of the band’s founders and its designated spokesman, doesn’t really want to talk about all that. Not just yet, at least. What Young really wants to talk about are telephones. Specifically, he wants to tell the story of the old-time phone installed at the store his grandparents once ran in the crossroads village of Wisdom, Kentucky.

Back in those days, few rural people owned phones or even had lines running to their homes. But the Young family needed one to order supplies for the store. As a result, shoppers would borrow the phone for calls, making it a gathering place for all the local newshounds.

“My dad said there were many women who’d try to plan their shopping around some of the phone calls so they could eavesdrop on what the other people were saying,” Young says with a laugh. “Daddy said it got to be a thing that all the local ladies would know when somebody was calling about something, so they’d just go to the grocery store and sit around the fire there and listen. There was no such thing as a private call.”

PARTY LINES

Years later, Young himself remembers his grandmother, Effie Young, occasionally listening in on the party line — a telephone circuit shared by more than one family in an area. She, he says, was a bit of a spitfire — a mover and a shaker in the community who was instrumental in getting blacktop on the old dirt roads. He thinks she may have even worked with SCRTC to get phone lines run to the rural areas. She loved the region and her community, and that meant she wasn’t afraid to speak up when she got irritated.

“There were a lot of young couples — high school kids, or whatever — courting in the community,” he says. “My grandmother would get on there and listen. Bless her heart, she was probably bored to death when she got older. Then, she would get mad because they wouldn’t get off the phone. Sometimes she’d say, ‘Oh, you all have been on the phone long enough!’ And sometimes, she’d just lay the receiver down so they couldn’t get back on the Richard Young jams on “Don’t Let phone. If one phone was Me Down,” a Beatles cover the band off the hook, nobody could included on their latest live album, “Live From The Ramblin Man.” make a call. They’d have to come to my grandmother’s house to make her put the telephone back on the hook.”

These are the kinds of stories passed down through the community and told for years, Young says. The stories make up the foundation that helped make the Kentucky Headhunters who they are today. It’s also what keeps the band members living within a few miles of each other to this day. “We’ve had the backing of our families and our loved ones and the community for a long time,” he says. “It has to start at home.”

Richard Young jams on "Don't Let Me Down", a Beatles cover the band included on their latest live album, "Live From The Ramblin' Man".

BECOMING THE HEADHUNTERS

Founding members Richard Young; his brother, Fred Young; and their cousins Greg Martin and Anthony Kenney formed the band Itchy Brother in 1968. The band’s lineup has changed a few times over the years. Longtime member Doug Phelps joined up in 1986, when the band changed its name to The Kentucky Headhunters.

Back in the early days of Itchy Brother, when the guys were still very young, the noise was a little much for their family, Young says. “We were just getting started, and it was driving my parents crazy,” he says.

That’s when his grandmother, whom he calls Mama Effie, came to the rescue. She had recently bought a farm with an old farmhouse on it that she let them use to practice. It became known as the Practice House, and it has welcomed everyone from Rolling Stone writers to music executives and even the late blues legend Johnnie Johnson, who was a big part of Chuck Berry’s success. Richard Young’s son, John Fred Young, and his own worldwide sensation hard rock band, Black Stone Cherry, have also used the Practice House.

When outsiders comment on the complexity of their music, Young has to laugh. Then he explains. His late father, James Howard Young, was a well-known history and English teacher in town who loved big band music. His mother, Gwendolyn Young, loved the blues. In the tobacco fields as kids, they’d hear workers emulating Jerry Lee Lewis or Elvis, while others sang African-American spirituals. At the milk barns, they’d hear Hank Williams before they’d run off on their own to listen to the Beatles or The Rolling Stones.

“We had all this coming at us at one time,” Young says. “It’s like we were destined to be bound to all this different kind of music. Whatever it did, it got us.”

KEEPING IT REAL

Today, the band has sold more than 20 million albums and continues to tour the world. But Richard Young would still rather talk about the people around him — the people who shaped him, kept the band grounded and provided a home base with plenty of love and care.

With that strong foundation, Young believes the band members’ families and the community helped them grow musically and spiritually. “I think it blows people’s minds that we’ve maintained our lifestyles from where we started from,” he says. “We’ve stayed true to our roots.”

Lead guitarist Greg Martin uses a slide on one of the bluesy songs from the Kentucky Headhunters’ latest album “Live At the Ramblin’ Man Fair.”

KENTUCKY PROUD

Staying connected to fans has always been important to band members. “It’s a joy to play music every night,” Greg Martin says. “We’re ecstatic that people still love what we do.” He enjoys playing guitar during the blues segment of their concerts, with hits like “Stumblin’” and “Have You Ever Loved A Woman.” Both of those songs are tracks off their latest album, “Live at the Ramblin’ Man Fair,” a blues-rock return to their roots.

“What thrills me the most is that fans are reacting to the newer songs, which tells me that after 50 years as a band we continue to grow,” Richard Young says. For more information on tour dates and music, check out the Kentucky Headhunters’ website at kentuckyheadhunters.com.