Page 19 - BiTS_12_DECEMBER_2021

to have black musicians and white musicians playing in the same band. Yes, the Allman Brothers

did it, but there weren’t too many examples of that, and it was extremely popular, and we were
playing modern jazz or what people called progressive jazz, Weather Report tunes and Chick Corea
stuff and that kind of thing. It was extremely successful, and I did that for a while and I just
realised I was not cut out to be a jazz musician, so I started doing other things, more towards rock
and roll and so on.

BiTS: Was it with those bands or something similar that you started to do some work with Richie

Havens as a support act?

WP: Yes. At some point, Ian. The thing about jazz in the US is that whatever the field of study,
whatever the realm of art, there’s always a place that historically you need to be in, in order to
prove to yourself and others that you are dedicated and that you’re the real thing. In the jazz realm,
you have to be in New York City, right? I mean, it doesn’t matter if you grow up in Arkansas,
eventually you have to work your way to New York City if you call yourself a serious artist. I always

dreamt or strategised that I needed to be in New York City in order to really take my career to the
next level and when I moved to New York, at that point I kind of switched over to rock and roll, but
I still saw New York City as my
mecca, if you will. My proving
ground of the degree of seriousness

of my dedication and furthermore as
far as the East Coast, that’s where
the music industry was
Richie Havens
headquartered. I moved to New York
City, and I had been playing in a rock
and roll band and I tell you, Ian, I
guess it’s similar to let’s say you

grew up in the Midlands on a farm
and then you moved to London.

It’s like, holy shit, everything is so
complicated. It wears you out just to have a regular rehearsal and that’s how New York City was.
Everything in New York City is an ordeal. It's a hassle just to go to the post office and I came from a
relatively small southern town. Living in New York City was a distraction to me. There’s a

wonderful thing that happens when you move to New York City because you’re around colleagues
who are serious, and they light a metaphorical fire under your behind and they inspire you to be at
the top of your game artistically. But in order to live in that area, it takes tremendous energy. The
long-winded answer, Ian, is that I decided to simplify when I moved to New York City. It was just
logistically too difficult to have a rock band in New York City, having to pay everybody. It was just

so expensive and so exhausting. I decided to put a simple acoustic group together and I did very
well with it. It was called The Nudes. It was myself and a female cellist and we toured all over
Canada. We toured all over the United States. We played, I would say, 20 days a month in the mid-
90s, and that’s a tremendous amount of work of touring. It was very successful. Like I said, it was
called The Nudes, and at one point, we shared booking agencies with Richie Havens and so that’s
how I met Richie.

I was on the touring trail as Richie’s opening act. When that ended, a couple of years later, I moved
to Nashville and did the singer-song writing thing there. It wasn’t my town. I don’t really
particularly care for it. It’s a little too conservative for me, artistically and I got hired to come back