I met Bob Wayne outside of the Clique Lanes in Grand Rapids, Michigan when he and .357 String Band pulled up in their tour van for the last show of their tour. It was a beautiful summer day in Michigan. The shiny chrome of the motorcycles and hot rods lined up in the parking lot of The Clique was nearly blinding. Ladies with pin curls and retro attire hovered around the front door smoking and chatting with the Relix Motorcycle Club boys.

Bob and I climbed into my Honda Odyssey because the van he and .357 String Band use for touring wasn’t available at the time. The Odyssey isn’t quite as romantic a setting as a dirty, road worn, touring van, but it served its purpose as a venue for the outlaw storyteller to tell his own tale. After all, Bob’s music is a product of a “do-it-yourself” music culture where improvise and “MacGyvering” are standard fare.

Karen: So this interview is going to go on the Unite Webzine site where there are interviews with many punk and hardcore bands. That movement of the early 1980s was rooted in a real do-it-yourself culture. I see similarities now…

Karen: Absolutely.

Karen: So let’s start with where are you from originally?

Bob Wayne: Born in eastern Washington like the desert. A town called Richland. Kadlec hospital. I was born in a Cadillac!

Karen: I was born in Flushing, Queens so that’s not as cool as a Cadillac.

Bob Wayne: Flushing! Love it.

Karen: So how long did you live there?

Bob Wayne: I lived there until I was 16 and then I got out of there.

Karen: How did you get out of there? What did you do?

Bob Wayne: I stole a car and drove to California.

Karen: For real?

Bob Wayne: For real. It’s ok to talk about this now because it’s been dealt with. But, we went to California…

Karen: Who are we?

Bob Wayne: Me and my girlfriend at the time. She was 15 I was 16. My parents had found a quarter pound of weed in my closet. They took it and smoked it and wouldn’t’ give it back to me but it was fronted to me by these Mexican dudes that were going to kick my ass if I didn’t return their money. And it ended up that someone left their keys in their car so I was like, “Let’s go!” We jumped in and drove all of the way to California.

Karen: To someone’s house that you knew?

Bob Wayne: No! We were going to start fresh in California and we ended up living on the beach there in Santa Cruz. We ended up walking down the street and like three kids were like “Doses…doses…” We were like, “Oh, this is the place to be!” Where we came from it was like $5 a hit but it was .75 there for acid…it was the 90s and …we ended up living there for a while and one morning the cops showed up. It was one female cop, she got me and my girlfriend out of the car and they found the car was stolen and she went to handcuff me and right before she did I just bolted and hauled ass and she was like, “Freeze you son of a bitch!” My girlfriend had ended up splitting in the other direction and she ended up in a public restroom where they caught her and I climbed this cliff and dove in this ditch and covered myself with weeds and they had dogs and helicopters. I’m 16 years old and this is the first place I went. I ended up basically hitchhiking into the city. It kind of sucked because my very first guitar was in the car. And I was in the bushes looking at the beach and I could see the tow truck driving away with the car. I was like, “My guitar is in there!” I was all right then and I ended up living in California for a while.

Karen: With who?!

Bob Wayne: Just on the street I made a bunch of friends and we basically went to the Grateful Dead shows. I never went into the shows but we went in the parking lot taking drugs. I didn’t get back home for like about a year and a half. And I then went back home. My girlfriend got home and ratted me out pretty much so there was warrants for me in Washington and California. I had to turn myself in eventually. I ended up that I didn’t actually turn myself in and I was at a party…we were at a kegger…and these two cops were like walking down this trail…we were way out in the boonies…and it was a kegger. My friends had a flashlight and they were walking down the trail also.  The flashlight I thought I would be funny and jump out of the bushes and scare them. So I jumped out of the bushes and I was like, “FREEZE!” And these two cops, were like…I scared the shit out of them and they had me on the ground and arrested me and it turns out there were warrants out for what I did a couple of years ago. I was almost 18. It went for adult. I think it was cause I was like 17 so I went through all of that shit.

Karen: Did you have to do time?

Bob Wayne: Actually I didn’t have to do time that time. I think it was cause it was one of my first offenses. They got me for alcohol because I was a minor. That’s when it all started though. The other stuff. The first, I forget what they call that, its like deferred. If you stay on probation and don’t get in trouble it is deferred prosecution. They ended up deferring it and I ended up keep getting busted for drinking and I had six MIPs within a year and a half. Because I had a metal band. My metal band was always getting busted at parties for playing and I ended up having to go to jail. The judge was like this is your 6th minor in possession of alcohol…and 6th minor in consumption of alcohol. That’s 12 offenses right there and if you get one more and by this time I was 20 years old. And I was like man; there is no way I’m going to make it through the rest of this year without getting arrested and without drinking. So, the whole band we packed up my international travel home and moved to Seattle. Some friends had a house there it was a 7 bedroom big party house. And we moved there and started drinking and partying and doing drugs.

Karen: Were you playing music at this time?

Bob Wayne: Yes. I was playing music at that time but it was a way different style. Real heavy. And that’s where I ended up in Seattle playing metal and drinking and taking drugs.

Karen: Let’s go back to the music, what instrument and when did you start playing?

Bob Wayne: I got my first guitar when I was 8. I always played guitar. My mom played in bands my whole life.

Karen: What kind of bands?

Bob Wayne: My room was actually the music room. It was her music room and I slept next to the piano and the guitar stacks and…

Karen: What kind of music did your mom play?

Bob Wayne: She played like cover pop Pat Benetar covers. She was the 80s rocker cover band. At 8 I got my first guitar. I always wanted to play guitar because it was my favorite instrument in my mom’s band. I learned “Tear in My Beer” and “Hey Good Lookin’” (What you got Cookin’), a couple of Hank Sr. songs, because they were so similar. I was like, “Oh, if you can play one you can play two!” But I ended up stopping after that and then didn’t pick it up again until I was 15 years old. Then I started hammering out the Slayer and the Megadeth. Early Metallica and Pantera. I was into GNR (Guns and Roses) just fucken learning all of that shit for a couple of years. By the time I was 19 or 20 I started hammering out my own, basically my own music.

Bob Wayne: With a band. It was called Stickman.

Karen: So then you were like pissed off with your parents? 

Bob Wayne: I was never really pissed off I was like, “You smoked my weed man!” But they ended up helping me out because those guys were serious. So my parents gave me some money and when I got back because I was like “They are going to kick my ass…it’s a big Mexican gang!” So I didn’t want to fuck with them.

Karen: Stickman.

Bob Wayne: Stickman. Did that till I was about 23. We tried we never got any good shows. We never went on tour or anything.  Seattle is where we ended up and where we played. No good venues. There was a public park that had an outlet so we ended up we would throw shows in the public restroom and it was in this park and no one would have us play a show so we would just do it there. There is kind of a cliquey type scene, I’m sure that’s everywhere. We could never get into that.

Karen: What year is this?

Bob Wayne: Shit, that must have been probably moved to Seattle in 97 or 98 and that was till I was 23 so I don’t know. Post 2000. Post Nirvana and all of that. Seattle was kind of burning out on the grunge thing. It was fun. We got strung out.

Karen: And played in public restrooms…

Bob Wayne: We did.

Karen: You are playing with Stickman…so what is the next step?

Bob Wayne: The house went to shit. The landlord used to call me up at 2 in the morning and my name ended up on the lease. People filtered through I ended up living there the longest. So the landlord would call and say, “Hey can I get like $100 of your guys’ rent this month early?” He would pull up and I’d run out and give him a hundred bucks and he was all cracked out and one day he just stopped coming. He just stopped trying to collect the rent at all. We had no way of getting a hold of him so we just lived in this house and the dude disappeared. I ended up getting back with my girlfriend. The same girl I ran away with. I got back with her and she moved to Seattle. We got our own apartment. That lasted about 6 months till she was cheating on me with one of my friends and then from that point I had a band practice room and I ended up moving into there. I started really indulging hard into drugs…everything…that’s when I hit my bottom. I guess you would say. Heroin, crack, all that…truly bad. I lived there till I was 25. On my 25th birthday I checked myself into treatment.

Karen: What happened?

Bob Wayne: I was at my bottom. I lived in my band practice place and I had sold all of my equipment for drugs and I lived in an empty basement band shed. Even my band members in Stickman…Miles, he had died. Like a year before. (Bob writes about this in his song, “Blood to Dust”).

Karen: And that didn’t scare the shit out of you?

Bob Wayne: No. Everything fizzled out. I was living in a band room and I didn’t even have a guitar at this point. Something happened where I was just like…I was listening to a lot of music. All I had was music. I ended up getting this Johnny Cash new American Recordings. I started listening to that on repeat over and over. I ended up just basically went to a phone book opened up and called the first treatment center in there and was like, “I need help bad. Like really bad.” I thought I can’t go on like this it was either live or die. They ended up taking me in right there. They took me in and put me on a plan so that I could pay them off later. I stayed in there and turned 25 in there. And my life pretty much changed right then. Because I got sober and I’ve been sober ever since.

Karen: Congratulations. That is a huge accomplishment.

Bob Wayne: Yes, it is.

Karen: No relapsing?

Bob Wayne: Actually when I first started…my first year…now I have to revert on that. I did relapse twice within the first year.

Karen: I don’t mean for that to take anything away from your accomplishments.

Bob Wayne: I was 25 but the first three months. I relapsed a few times but relapsing is like realizing that I didn’t…that I was done. So I got 8 years now. Pretty much when I got out of treatment, I moved into a halfway house for prisoners who were being moved back into society. I did stuff that I never thought I would do. People in the halfway house were like, “You mean you are here because you want to?” I said, “Dude, I have to be here.” I couldn’t just go back to my practice shed. So the counselor there helped me. There were some girls I was hanging out with that were total junkies. No offense if you hear this. They were using. I’ll say that. I couldn’t be around that. I knew I couldn’t go to their house.  He was like, “I’ll get you into this halfway house for prisoners type thing, where there are curfews and strip searches and they drug test you” and I was like “Sign me up!” So I went there and I had to make a serious change. All these guys were like, “God, I have to be here by the court and you’re just here on your own.” I had to make a serious change. I ended up started working construction. I was in the union. The union really helped me a lot. They paid for my outpatient treatment. Cause I kept the treatment going.

So I got a guitar back. The first thing I bought was a guitar. The second thing I bought was a van. I did that because I knew that I waned to play in a band. And of course I wanted to tour. And of course I played metal. And of course I had been listening to nothing but Johnny Cash. That’s when I started writing the first Bob Wayne songs. I didn’t realize what I was doing. I thought I sucked now. The first song I wrote was the “Low down, wound up, roadbound man” (“Roadbound”) and I was like, “What the hell is this?” The second song I wrote was the “Devil’s Son.”  Then I wrote “The Ghost of Johnny Cash Saved My Life” (“Ghost Town”). It was like subliminal for that record.

Karen: Absolutely. I hear you.

Bob Wayne: I was still writing metal too but I was like, “What the hell is this weird shit?” What can I do with this? So I just kept them on the back burner and whenever one would come I would just put it back there. We reformed Stickman and it…

Karen: Was it hard to be back with the people you were with before? Now that you were sober?

Bob Wayne: No, the drummer was sober. Miles was dead so we got a new bass player. So, that wasn’t hard. We got that band together. We were doing some stuff. We opened up for Nevermore and Zeke and stuff like that.

Karen: And the Bob Wayne stuff? It was on the side?

Bob Wayne: No. The Bob Wayne stuff wasn’t on the side. It was just stuff I was writing that I had no idea what to do with it. It was there and it was coming out. I was writing the songs and it didn’t go with my metal project at all. But I was real focused on doing the metal stuff. Nothing ever came of that really. That kind of fizzled out pretty much. I started selling t-shirts for Zeke being kind of like a roadie. That’s where I pretty much got my feet wet on the road. Just rolling around with those guys. And then Zeke did a tour with Superjoint Ritual. The bass player for Superjoint Ritual is Phil Enselmo he had a band with Hank III who was the bass player. And they were on tour with him. The guys in Zeke, they knew about my country songs and they were like, “Dude, your kinda like Hank III style! We should record something and you should give it to him!”

Karen: At this point, was Hank III already doing something on his own?

Bob Wayne: Oh yeah, he’s been doing his thing for a long time. He has been doing Hank III stuff since he was a kid. Since he was a teenager. But anyways that ‘s how they were all telling me to do that. They would be all like, “Hey man, I know Shelton, let me give him your cd or whatever.” I never did anything with it. I have never liked giving out my demos or anything like that. So, how that happened was I had also tried to put together something for the Bob Wayne thing in Seattle and I found a bass player and I found this girl who sang. I wrote a bunch of duets that I still have never used. Those are still on the back burner. But I have a bunch of duets. I just kinda haven’t found the right girl for it. I started with this girl and we were trying to start and do the duets and I mean the band I thought it was really cool. At this point I still hadn’t seen Hank III live or anything. I had heard him on the Melvin’s record but I hadn’t gone to a Hank III show. I loved Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings and all that.

Bob Wayne: So anyway, Hank III had a tour manager quit part way through his tour.  The funny thing is that I brought the tour manager from Zeke with me to see Hank III. I told people,  “You know, I need to see him play. I write this kind of weird country stuff”

Karen: Right. Right, I’m sure.

Bob Wayne: My stuff is not really country and it is weird cause its got the bom-chicka-bom-chicka room for fiddles and banjos and stuff. So, I was like I gotta check this guy out. I called up Zeke’s tour manager and I took him to the show. I watched Hank III and I sat in the crowd and I had fired everyone in my band in my head. Watching Hank III, he plays with like the best musicians. He has the best band behind him always.

Karen: Which is kind of hard to look at and feel ok about your own?

Bob Wayne: So I was looking at him and I was thinking, “Oh” and then Hank himself is a legend. He is like the fucking Johnny Cash of our time. So young still? So I mean imagine 20 years from now? I was watching this and I was thinking, “I will never find a band that good for one….and I’ll never…” I walked out of there so inspired and so discouraged. But the weird thing was that Hank had remembered my friend Mike Kesslering who was the tour manager for Zeke and his had just quit or something like that, but Mike ended up taking the job as tour manager.

Karen: Your tour manager that you brought with you?

Bob Wayne: Zeke’s tour manager. And so he ended up from going to that show becoming their tour manager. So now we got Mike Kesselring, my buddy as Hank III’s tour manager…Well two months after that show, literally I was still at home. I had broken my back while working construction, in five places and I was out for a year. I ended up going back to work and this is right about the time I was ending up going back to work. My back was still hurting.

Karen: Was there any problem with doing painkillers?

Bob Wayne: I had to kick the painkillers through sobriety.

Karen: I had a friend who was a heroin addict and she said if I get injured I get so scared….

Bob Wayne: I tried to John Wayne it and take Advil but I broke my back in 5 places so you can’t do that.

Karen: No you can’t.

Bob Wayne: I was on a Diloted drip. I weaned off of them and as soon as I could I switched to a non-narcotic pain medication. I literally, this is a true story…I went to work…I tried to…my boss was having me run bags of concrete back and forth and my back….I was like, “I don’t want to mess it up this early.” So I ended up going home and being like, “What am I going to do if I can’t work construction?” I thought that nobody cares about my metal band. It kinda sucks. I was like, literally sitting in my girlfriend’s apartment at the time and I was like, “I don’t know what I’m going to do?”

Karen: How old were you at this point?

Bob Wayne: I was 28 maybe 27. The phone rings and its Mike Kesselring and he’s like, “Dude, we just had a guitar tech quit! Halfway through the tour. I know you guitar teched for Zeke, you could do this! You play metal and you like country. I think you’d be perfect for this job!” I was like, “Wow. That was quick.” I was like, “HELL YEAH!” I got on a plane that night…literally…that night I was on a plane and I was off to Florida and meet these guys in Hank III’s band as a guitar tech.

Karen: Which entails what?

Bob Wayne: Basically with the Hank III show he does country, hillbilly, punk, rock…it is a full ensemble. He is playing for 2.5 hours a night and screaming and so he has got a lot on his plate as it is. My job is basically to set up his stuff during the day on stage and make sure it is set up and all sounding good and do a sound check for him so that he can take care of the other shit he has going on like interviews. My job is to make sure that his part of the deal is done. Loading stuff and generally to take care of everyone’s stuff. My job focused on setting up his half stacks and changing the strings and making sure everything is set.

Two months prior to doing this I was like “I will never play with musicians this good” and then I look around and here I am playing Hank’s guitar and working with his band and sure its five in the afternoon and there’s no one there but its amazing I’m playing a Hank III song for sound check. I’m getting the fiddle and the dobro and steel guitar and I was like, “Wow, this is crazy!” So, I did that for a while and of course through that I became friends with everybody and we are road dogging it out there and slowly I kind of started showing some of my songs to some of the band during sound checks. For fun. I had to do that during sound check and some of the guys were like, “Wow, what song is that?” I would say “It’s one of my songs.” One night we were playing pass the guitar around and it just slowly became known that I had my own songs too and becoming friends with Hank III and his band and all of that.

One thing I really respect about Hank III and those guys is that they record their own songs. They have the equipment…

Karen: Really? I didn’t know that they did…

Bob Wayne: Yes. Hank III and Andy Gibson and Joe Buck had all recorded this Straight to Hell record on a machine.

Bob Wayne: No, they did it like on a little machine. A Korg machine. If you buy the cd it talks about it in there. Basically they did it themselves. Andy was like, “Yeah, I’ll help ya!” I ended up going to Nashville and recording my first record with them and you know, Hank’s bass player Joe Buck was like “I’ll play bass on it!” he lived in the house and then Andy was like, “I’ll play all of these…” and they called their friend who played banjo and he showed up. We just had fun and for about 10 days we made my first record. So now I have this cd with these amazing musicians. Actually, Hank got involved a little bit. One day I was going to the studio to mix it and I was staying at his house. Me and him had recorded a bunch of songs on his machine. Just having fun. He set up the mic and recorded it on his machine. One night I came back from the studio and he was like, “Hey, check this out!” He had taken one of my songs and put all of these weird keyboards and a Charles Manson sample and affected my voice and made it sound all creepy. We ended up using that as a secret track on my first record.  Blood to Dust. It sounds like, “dooooo eeeewwwww oooo”…he’s all messing with buttons and knobs. He is crazy on that kind of stuff. He did that and it sounded really cool.

Karen: I know what song you are talking about. I didn’t know that!

Bob Wayne: It turned out the stuff he recorded on his little machine sounded better quality or as good as the stuff that we took into a place to mix it. So anyways, that’s how I got my first cd…and after that…

Karen: So what did you do with that cd?

Bob Wayne: I just had it. Now I got a cool cd with 11 or 12 of my songs on it…at least I got that. Basically Shelton was like, “Hey man you are already guitar teching…” I forgot what it was but a band that was supposed go out or something but all I remember was that Shelton was like, “do you want to open up the show?”

Karen: Oh my God…

Bob Wayne: I was like, “Hell Yeah!” And so I ended up doing some tours. That was the biggest thing in my life pretty much just to be able to do that because his fans automatically….

Karen: They are very loyal…

Bob Wayne: They are the most loyal fans. And they love pretty much anything with banjos and fiddles and stuff like that in it and dark lyrics…and my songs have dark lyrics and “Love songs suck” and “fuck you” and so on…so of course, anyone in his core audience was like, “Hell yeah! This dude’s cool!” and they bought my cds and we couldn’t keep them on the shelf. The laptop, we were burning them and putting them in sandwich bags when we started. He really helped me out by doing that. Pretty soon I was back to guitar teching and there were other bands opening up for Hank again and I had done it for a few tours and basically I would be out guitar teching and doing my job and people would yell out “Play Ghost Town!” or be wanting my autograph and picture and I was just a roadie. I was like, “Wow, people remember it.” I was getting MySpace messages asking me to come play gigs in people’s towns so I was like, “I gotta get a band” I ended up with the guys from Zeke. They became my backing band. We started doing some tours. Some solo tours when Hank III wasn’t on tour and Andy Gibson would come out and Joe Buck would come out and we would jump in a van and run around for a few weeks and play for like $50 a night and try to sell cds and t shirts. From there it just has slowly been growing. It is still growing.

Karen: So who else have you toured with other than .357 String Band?

Bob Wayne: I ended up through the Hank III thing I met Wayne the Train and got on tour with him. I did a tour with David Allen Coe.

Karen: Who played back up? I mean, who played with you?

Bob Wayne: They are always different. They have always been different.

Karen: So this is pretty consistent with .357…

Bob Wayne: This tour is .357…but it’s only in this tour. This .357 tour was basically just that we talked once when we met out on tour and I saw that they were going to Europe and I was going to Europe and its really expensive to buy everyone tickets so I was just like, “Hey since you guys play stuff let’s just jump in one van.” It started out that we were just going to do Europe like that to cut costs and have a two band package, so we were like, “Shoot, we might as well hit the south since we live there.” It turned into a six-month USA tour which, tonight, is the very last night of that tour.

Karen: I know that…OK, so, tonight is the last night of this, where do you go from here?

Bob Wayne: Well, I just signed a record deal with Century Media Records.

Karen: Did you? I don’t know who that is…

Bob Wayne: Basically Zeke’s manager has always been kind of overseeing me. His name is Don Robertson and he is really helped me along too along the way. His team Idol Management, they were kind of like, “Hey you need to this…you need to send posters and you need new t shirts.” He has always been overseeing and helping me along. Now he is he president of Century Media and has shown them my cds and stuff and the owners were like, “Man, this guy’s been doing it.” I toured 265 days a year. I ended up signing this deal because they are going to help me…we’ve been negotiating stuff for a year. I didn’t want to do 5 albums at first. It turned out to be a really good deal and I’m pretty excited about it. I’m friends with a lot of the people there. Basically, now I will have a team behind me. I just recorded the album. Which actually Wayne the Train showed up and we recorded a duet. We did it the same way, we recorded it at the house. But we supped it up this time. Before we just slapped records together real fast in like 10 days. And they sounded great.

But looking back, I am like, “God we really slapped that together.” Now after touring the songs, just you can hear the difference. The record I just recorded…in the eyes of the business or Century Media, the three cds I have already done are like demos. They have never been officially released. I’m burning them and selling them out of the back of my camper.

Karen: From their perspective…yes….

Bob Wayne: From their perspective and from any like there isn’t any official packaging. I just burned them and sold them So I was able to take some of the best or better songs from those cds and use them on the new record. It is the same microphone but my performance is better, when I recorded Blood to Dust I hadn’t ever even played a live show! I was kind of like, <sings> “I’m a low down, wound up, road bound man…now its like I’M A LOW DOWN!”…So my fans that liked my other cds, they will want this cd because…

Karen: So, you haven’t played it for anybody yet?

Bob Wayne: No one. It’s not released yet. It’s not even finished mastering yet. It’s being mastered right now.

Karen: I’m curious to see how you feel about that…

Bob Wayne: About what?

Karen: What it sounds like. Do you like the sound of it better totally?

Bob Wayne: Well, we recorded it the same way. Same house. Same band…Hank IIIs guy Andy…

Karen: So you are saying that the process of recording is the same. That’s not changed. It is more you that has changed…this is about YOU.

Bob Wayne: No, the recording is the same. It’s me and the performers. And it's me going, “I want fiddle here…”

Karen: So this is more your work of art. This is more you.

Bob Wayne:  This is more me, and Andy, making a record for real. Taking the songs and not hacking through them. Not that we hacked through them but we were always rushed. Slap em out. On 13 Truckin’ Songs some of the songs didn’t even have bass because we didn’t have time.

Karen: <laughs> I don’t know if I noticed that.

Bob Wayne: I don’t think people notice but basically, we didn’t cut any corners this time and took our time and really focused to make the best record we could. I’ve never done that. I’ve always just slapped through it. Burn it. Let’s sell it out of the camper.

Karen: So you are pretty excited about how this is going to represent you?

Bob Wayne: Yeah, and my vocals are more confident. I’ve toured on these songs. Songs kind of change. I’ve played them 300 times on the road so when I went in the studio I went in there with experience under my belt and the experience of having recorded the other cds. With Century Media, they were really cool about this. They were really cool about this. They were like, “You just do what you do and we will pay for all of it.”

Karen: That’s cool…that’s rare.

Bob Wayne: They paid us to do it. We got paid to record my own record and basically, they trust me with producing it and doing everything myself. They like what I’ve done. I just turned it in and they were like, “Hell Yeah!” I mean, Mike Guitter, my A and R rep was there and I would send them tracks and they would hear the difference. They wanted it to sound better. When you put the old songs to the new songs, they wanted it not to be polished but we got to take the best takes…we really tried.

Karen: I would argue just from my understanding of human performance that the fact that you did this…you played those songs 300 times, that is going to make a really big difference, right? You know how you want it to sound because you have heard yourself singing it so many times.

Bob Wayne: Yes, and I’ve never like…listening back to the other cds I realize that I sing these songs really differently now. It is an opportunity…

Karen: It is an opportunity that a lot of people don’t get…

Bob Wayne: I can take those old songs and re-record them in this package and with these guys that are going to help promote it and get a publicist. Also, all of these fans that have been buying my cds, the last three years, will have the old burned copies but they will still want this one.

Karen: How have they been buying them?

Bob Wayne: I have them on iTunes, I have them on MySpace, I sell them at the shows…I burn them myself and write on them and put them in little cd jewel cases.

And I still get to do that. These three I can still do that.

Karen: So, if you were going to characterize this experience right now, with this new company, would you say that you feel like you’ve arrived someplace that you wanted to go? Or would you say that your life is such that things are just falling in place and you are following it?

Bob Wayne: That’s what it is. I’ve never sought after really stuff. I mean, sometimes its just like, “Hey, Wayne the Train, you’re going here? Dude, I’m going to be crossing your path so let’s join up…” It’s all organic. I have had record labels make me offers before but they haven’t had a good enough plan that they presented. Now, me having friends and family on the inside, knowing that I can trust these guys and that they really care about it. How it all came to be was very natural. Things just keep happening the way they are supposed to happen. For me its getting…not that it is getting too big…but it is getting overwhelming.

Karen: Is it?

Bob Wayne: Yes. It’s getting overwhelming. I booked my own tours. I am my own merch store. I write the songs. I record the songs. I find the band. I put it all together. It’s getting big…now there’s Europe involved. It’s really overwhelming. I have still found time to write and keep writing more stuff. I’m missing out on a lot by not having…

Karen: Professional representation…

Bob Wayne: Right. Because I don’t do a lot of stuff. I don’t do a lot of stuff. Like this interview. Normally I would like lose my phone or something. I miss out on tons of interviews so just having a management team and a label setting stuff up. Saying they will take care of promoting stuff. They send my tour posters now. All of these things do add up. They order my merch…they keep the store going. They are taking over duties and setting me up with more of a professional agent so…I can always call these clubs. I know the people. It is the same tour and the same group of people. It is growing slowly, but with these guys in place it will take a big weight off of me having to do every little thing.

Karen: So in your mind, what do you see that will open up for you? What do you want to do with that time and energy?

Bob Wayne: I also write scripts and screen plays. What I want to do is…my songs are pretty much stories. So I’ve already written one screenplay for my song “Mack “and that turned into about 5 of my songs all connecting into one screenplay but it is huge. It is a huge screenplay it’s nothing I can do on my own. Century Media is going to help try to pass that out to people. But, what I’m going to try to do…

Karen: Wow! Really? I didn’t know that. That’s pretty cool!

Bob Wayne: So what I am going to try to do is…I wrote that screen play not thinking about budget at all. There are semi trucks…there’s no way I could do that on my own. But I have a lot of other songs that are simple stories that I can do. Work of the Devil…the one about the guy finding his girlfriend cheating and burn that woman, dig a hole…that doesn’t take much. I got a couple of film crews in Seattle I am friends with so in August, I am going to take my spare energy and I am going there and I am writing a script for Work of the Devil…no music…its basically the story of the song but all acted out. Like horror film style. So, when you come to my shows you can buy Work of the Devil the song or the film. I’ll have more merch on my table too and it’s a cool for fans of that song to own. I’m going to be in it…as an actor and I will direct it…

Karen: You will act? Cool…

Bob Wayne: I’m going to start trying to do my stories that are songs into short films that I can afford to do that are cheap that don’t have semi trucks blowing up or crazy shit like that.

Karen: That’s great! So then do you see this all coming together? Putting them together that is?

Bob Wayne: Right now I am just going to do the one and see what it does. Just see how it goes. I’ve never filmed anything…I’ve never directed anything. Luckily I have friends…

Karen: There’s not going to be any music?

Bob Wayne: Well there might be some…but it isn’t going to be like a video for the song…its going to be all acted out. There will be some direct things from the song…but acted out with dialogue. Murder scene. I don’t’ know how it is going to go. But when I went in and did Blood to Dust I didn’t know how it was going to go either. So I just kind of went in the studio and did it.

Karen: Do you have pictures in your mind about how you want this to look?

Bob Wayne: Yeah, I’ve already watched it…when I’m writing a screen play…writing “Mack” the screenplay was a huge experience. I got into the screenplay writing programs like Final Draft so I learned how to do all that real good and it took me like 3 or 4 years. I still have to go back and make changes. But…

Karen: So you were just self-taught using programs?

Bob Wayne: I self-taught through friends who write screenplays and asking them some questions and reading about it. I bought a couple screenplays. I bought Boogie Nights and I read them.

Karen: I LOVE THAT FILM!

Bob Wayne: I love that film too! So when I read it, I was like, “That’s how they did that!” That’s what you see on the TV…this is what they wrote on the screenplay…so what I see in my mind I figured out how to do it…

Karen: So it was already in your mind and you were just taking it out and putting it down in words.

Bob Wayne: So now I know how to do that so I am going to do it for a smaller thing. "Work of the Devil." A 30 min clip of the story. It is a good experiment. It will be something cool for fans that like this song. Obviously my music is story telling. Here’s an acted out story in a short film with nudity and murder!

Karen: You can’t beat that!

Bob Wayne:  <laughs> So we will see how it goes. Hopefully I can act. We’ll see, I’ve never tried.

Karen: You’ve killed the first obstacle to acting that is fear of getting up in front of people. You’ve got that over with.

Bob Wayne: In a way, singing and performing is acting. I think it is going to be fun no matter what.

Karen: How great you get to use your time to do that!

Bob Wayne: So now I am going to switch gears, the music is recorded and I got some time before major tours. I am going to do this short film and do the best I can. Film stuff has nothing to do with the record label. Who knows what will happen. What I can do on my own which is separate from the record label, it is acting so it is a whole different thing. I can have a different website and sell my films. Basically, at this point in time, I am being a DIY filmmaker…the way I was with my music. I’ve been telling stories with music and melody and rhyme, and now it is taking that same story and translating it through a different medium.

Karen: It is different in that you are incorporating the visual in a way that you didn’t before.

Bob Wayne: Yes, but not a music video. It is not like the music playing and you are watching scenes. The beginning of the song is “I woke up this morning in a ditch again…” a guy laying there in a fucking ditch, gets up and walks home and catches his wife cheating on him and so it goes. It will all be acted out with dialogue.

Karen: How are you going to select actors and actresses for this?

Bob Wayne: That’s all kind of we are working on it with the people who just got out of film school. They have all the cameras. This guy Sean “The Butcher” Smithson, (Sean Smithson and Nick Lindsay comprise No-Brow Productions , a freelance video production business based out of Seattle, WA: www.youtube.com/nlindsay03) Sean has an online Headbanger’s Ball style TV show for horror called “Nightmare Alley” http://www.dreadcentral.com/story/prepare-enter-nightmare-alley. He is going to help direct it. These guys that have the film background and understand and like the music are going to help me to figure it out. They are all excited about it too.

Karen: It sounds to me like you are kind of a consummate collaborator in the sense that you have the ability to work with all different people. You said that who you are touring with is who you play with.  There’s Bob Wayne and .357 and you have collaborated with both of them…

Bob Wayne: I tour with them. That’s different.

Karen: Yes but you play with them. Tonight you will play and the guys from .357 will get up there with you.

Bob Wayne: They play with me.

Karen: You do that kind of collaboration on stage. You’ve done collaboration in the studio.

Bob Wayne: No no no…dude, yeah, exactly…it’s collaboration with everyone and that is what I like about this kind of stuff. I am like, “You can play banjo? Yeah, throw it on there!” People add to what I’m doing. With the film thing, this is my first try. It will be kind of like it was with music. These people have done stuff before so they are going to help me get my vision across through film.

Karen: One more quick question about you personally…Where is home for you now?

Bob Wayne: That’s a hard one. Basically, I bought a motor home about four years ago. Before that I had a camper, which I pulled behind a van. The motor home is much nicer and bigger. It is a 36 foot John Deere. Right now it is parked in Nashville but I haven’t spent any time there because I’ve been on tour. This is the last night of this tour and then I go to Nashville for a week and a half. I got a Cadillac limousine. I’m jumping in the limo and driving to the West Coast and then going up to Seattle to do the short film.

Karen: Um, why the Cadillac limo? Why not fly?

Bob Wayne: You have two options. I bought the old limo but it is awesome. 80s style all black. I bought it from a funeral home. It has low miles. I am going to record my first short horror film. I can either fly there on an airplane or I can drive a black Cadillac from a funeral home there…cross country…and I have a girl coming over from Holland who I’ve been hanging out with a lot and she’s never seen America and she is really into film and stuff. She actually, when I was in Europe I was telling her the story about how I want to do this and she started coming up with ideas about how to do it. We just started this vision together…it started happening there…I was like, you should come to America and you can help me with it. She is going to film school too. So it’s good for her. We are going to roll to California where I have to do some stuff involving the record…some press type stuff…and then we are going to go from California up the west coast and I’m going to show her the west coast and the redwoods and we’ll end in Seattle.

Karen: Will you see your family?

Bob Wayne: I’ll stop by and see them for a few days. My brothers and my sisters. I talk to my mom like all of the time.

Karen: So all of that came back around? You have no hard feelings with your family?

Bob Wayne: Nothing was every really bad. My parents have always been awesome. I think when you are a teenager you always have some rough patches with your parents.

Karen: I have a 14-year-old son…I get it completely!

Bob Wayne: You got rough patches! I was a little shit. I’m selling drugs out of their house! Of course they are going to take it. That was no big deal. That was just a tiny bump in the road. My mom has always been so supportive of my music. She’s got music. She is proud of me. My family is so proud. My dad that raised me…he’s not my biological father but he has always been there. Everyone’s been real supportive and they are proud of what I am doing.

Karen: Have you ever talked to your mom about the fact that you…followed her…I mean, she was involved in music? There aren’t a whole lot of moms out there who are musicians.

Bob Wayne: She is like so proud. She is like, “Do it! Do it!” I’m like living her dream.

Karen: I was wondering if she had a response like that.

Bob Wayne: No, she’s stoked.

Karen: I wish you all of the best. I appreciate you doing this.

Bob Wayne: No problem. I’m excited to see how this turns out. 

I picture Bob driving off along a sunlit highway with the painted desert all around. Perhaps the Cadillac is older and needs repair. Perhaps it has rust spots and the cloth on the ceiling requires duct tape to hold it together. I imagine he and his lady stopping at questionable watering holes along the way. Bob Wayne is a rock star…an Outlaw Carnie…and his story illustrates this well.

*Special thanks to Nick Lindsay of No Brow Productions for his editorial assistance.