John D. Wyker
(6:54) Johnny Wyker discusses the music industry, songwriting, and living on the Tennessee River. This interview was conducted as part of a joint project of the Music Preservation Society and the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library. This project focus was oral history interviews with area residents...
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| Format: | Electronic |
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Florence-Lauderdale County Public Library
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| Online Access: | https://cdm15947.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/oral_hist/id/146 |
| format |
Electronic |
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| collection |
Oral Histories Collection |
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Florence-Lauderdale County Public Library |
| publisher |
Florence-Lauderdale County Public Library |
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Oral histories -- audios and transcripts |
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Oral histories -- audios and transcripts John D. Wyker Florence-Lauderdale Public Library |
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Oral histories -- audios and transcripts Music industry; Muscle Shoals, Ala. |
| description |
(6:54) Johnny Wyker discusses the music industry, songwriting, and living on the Tennessee River. This interview was conducted as part of a joint project of the Music Preservation Society and the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library. This project focus was oral history interviews with area residents who had lived or worked on the Tennessee river.INTERVIEW WITH JOHN D. WYKER
December 6, 2007
Decatur, Alabama
John D. Wyker: um, it was about ten below zero and they had space heaters on the boat, a sixty foot yacht but it still wasn’t enough to keep it warm. I told my partner, Art Shilling, told him that uh we should write just the opposite of you know where we were at. I mean it was cold and you know desolate and desperate and no, no leaves on the trees.
Castles in the Sand that uh, uh basically says while the steel guitars were playing, the palm trees on the beach were swaying, we walked along dressed in moonlight, our hearts were pounding like the tide. Uh, for just a night we two were lovers, run together in the sand, but when the morning found us laughing, it washed away our castles in the sand. Of course it’s delivered different [ 1: 00] with the music. And, um, the second verse is similar, but it’s upbeat, you know, wonder if I’ll ever see her; that one, one night love affair, you know,
Interviewer: Yeah
JW: that you wish could have developed and uh and so uh. Probably one of the ones that I’m known, I’m known, for locally like Baby Ruth is almost become an anthem in all the clubs down there. It’s a must for every band locally even to this day, to play Baby Ruth. But like Leon Russell’s partner from England used to say, “ Hey John, play that uh, little Liza Jane type song”. And basically that’s he hit the nail on the head. I didn’t realize it when I wrote it I mean, it’s not, I didn’t steal it, but it’s only, only stays in one, [ 2: 00] I remember when I wrote it I said I’m going to write something simple that doesn’t change keys so anybody that can jam on it and they don’t have to be told, or be shy about where the chord changes are. And the other thing, uh I heard somewhere that if they haven’t bought it by the third verse they’re not going to buy it so I usually don’t write a third verse to my songs. ( Laughter) I think too much is uh, people have a tendency to believe that if somebody’s good enough or if the song is good enough that it’ll, it’ll rise to the top but it’s not true.
JW: But what I really want to do is stand- up comedy, that’s the last frontier. I love to be, I love to stand on stage and be totally unprepared and just uh be scared to death.
Interviewer: That’s your next career, huh ( laughter) [ 3: 00]
JW: That, and or somebody hand me a guitar and when the red light goes on I don’t even start thinking about that you know.
Interviewer: Right. Do you remember, I’ve seen on your web site the picture of your great- grandfather’s ferry boat. Do you remember stories, any stories about him? Did you know him at all? JW: I didn’t know my great grandfather, but the hardware store he started in 1888 ran all the way til 1985, almost made a hundred years and uh, I went to work there in ’ 78 just begging him to give me a job doing something. I got so burnt out on the music business that I couldn’t walk in a room with the music going on without asking somebody to turn it off. I mean, I’d spent so much time analyzing music and trying to figure what makes a hit and you know trying to think of a way to pay the rent that month and you knew that uh, even if you came up with a hit today [ 4: 00] it would be two, two or three years before you seen anything off of it, if then and uh. But the paradigm’s been changed and shifted due to the internet to where um a band can actually do like we did in the old days in a different way. Used to, you could walk into WBOK or Birmingham, WSGN if you were ah had your act together and impressed them and played your record for them and they liked it they’d put it on the radio. I mean now days you got to go through all kinds of lawyers.
4: 41
JW: Motorcycle mama I wrote pretty much the whole album, sang on it , was the lead act, owned part of the publishing and I think when you broke it down I was supposed to get like out of a sale [ 5: 00] of twelve dollars and something I was supposed to get like nine cents.
5: 00
JW: Wild water ski weekend which is about as on Shoals Creek
Interviewer: Right ( laughter)
JW: as you can get. I always heard these, these commercials by the Village Shop, you know.
Interviewer: Uh huh
JW: Summer’s here again, time to go to the Village Shop and get your new bikini or something like that. ( laughter) and I always would, you know, hear that term so that was my opening line, um Summer’s here again, It’s time to get it together with your friends, Just like the first time you ever been, on a Wild Water- ski weekend. ( laughter) Let’s go down to the water for some summer fun, um, you’ll see lots of suntan skin on a Wild Water- ski weekend, you might catch a wake in London, maybe in gay Paree, c’est la vie, If you want to learn how to do it, I’m going to teach you how to [ 6: 00] water ski ( Laughter). But um, Shoals Creek is, is 50% or more in my blood you know, I mean. I, I, I was born there, and I learned about thrill seeking, like when I was like three years old my uncle Wood, Woody, they called him What- a- man, but he was a teenager and there’d be like 50, 75 people on the pier and I’d be bobbing around out there in a little orange Kapok life jacket and he’d dive in, come up under me, and grab me by the foot and pull me down, down, down, uh deeper green colder, colder you know and let me bob back up and I’d shoot to the top and everybody’d be laughing and clapping I’d say I’m in show biz man. ( laughter)
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John D. Wyker |
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John D. Wyker |
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Florence-Lauderdale Public Library |
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Florence-Lauderdale Public Library |
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1782468788198834176 |
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John D. Wyker Music industry; Muscle Shoals, Ala.(6:54) Johnny Wyker discusses the music industry, songwriting, and living on the Tennessee River. This interview was conducted as part of a joint project of the Music Preservation Society and the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library. This project focus was oral history interviews with area residents who had lived or worked on the Tennessee river.Florence-Lauderdale Public LibraryFlorence-Lauderdale Public LibraryJohn D. Wyker2007-12-06sound; textaudio/mp3 ; text/pdfEnglishIs part of the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library CollectionContact Florence-Lauderdale Public Library for permission to useINTERVIEW WITH JOHN D. WYKER
December 6, 2007
Decatur, Alabama
John D. Wyker: um, it was about ten below zero and they had space heaters on the boat, a sixty foot yacht but it still wasn’t enough to keep it warm. I told my partner, Art Shilling, told him that uh we should write just the opposite of you know where we were at. I mean it was cold and you know desolate and desperate and no, no leaves on the trees.
Castles in the Sand that uh, uh basically says while the steel guitars were playing, the palm trees on the beach were swaying, we walked along dressed in moonlight, our hearts were pounding like the tide. Uh, for just a night we two were lovers, run together in the sand, but when the morning found us laughing, it washed away our castles in the sand. Of course it’s delivered different [ 1: 00] with the music. And, um, the second verse is similar, but it’s upbeat, you know, wonder if I’ll ever see her; that one, one night love affair, you know,
Interviewer: Yeah
JW: that you wish could have developed and uh and so uh. Probably one of the ones that I’m known, I’m known, for locally like Baby Ruth is almost become an anthem in all the clubs down there. It’s a must for every band locally even to this day, to play Baby Ruth. But like Leon Russell’s partner from England used to say, “ Hey John, play that uh, little Liza Jane type song”. And basically that’s he hit the nail on the head. I didn’t realize it when I wrote it I mean, it’s not, I didn’t steal it, but it’s only, only stays in one, [ 2: 00] I remember when I wrote it I said I’m going to write something simple that doesn’t change keys so anybody that can jam on it and they don’t have to be told, or be shy about where the chord changes are. And the other thing, uh I heard somewhere that if they haven’t bought it by the third verse they’re not going to buy it so I usually don’t write a third verse to my songs. ( Laughter) I think too much is uh, people have a tendency to believe that if somebody’s good enough or if the song is good enough that it’ll, it’ll rise to the top but it’s not true.
JW: But what I really want to do is stand- up comedy, that’s the last frontier. I love to be, I love to stand on stage and be totally unprepared and just uh be scared to death.
Interviewer: That’s your next career, huh ( laughter) [ 3: 00]
JW: That, and or somebody hand me a guitar and when the red light goes on I don’t even start thinking about that you know.
Interviewer: Right. Do you remember, I’ve seen on your web site the picture of your great- grandfather’s ferry boat. Do you remember stories, any stories about him? Did you know him at all? JW: I didn’t know my great grandfather, but the hardware store he started in 1888 ran all the way til 1985, almost made a hundred years and uh, I went to work there in ’ 78 just begging him to give me a job doing something. I got so burnt out on the music business that I couldn’t walk in a room with the music going on without asking somebody to turn it off. I mean, I’d spent so much time analyzing music and trying to figure what makes a hit and you know trying to think of a way to pay the rent that month and you knew that uh, even if you came up with a hit today [ 4: 00] it would be two, two or three years before you seen anything off of it, if then and uh. But the paradigm’s been changed and shifted due to the internet to where um a band can actually do like we did in the old days in a different way. Used to, you could walk into WBOK or Birmingham, WSGN if you were ah had your act together and impressed them and played your record for them and they liked it they’d put it on the radio. I mean now days you got to go through all kinds of lawyers.
4: 41
JW: Motorcycle mama I wrote pretty much the whole album, sang on it , was the lead act, owned part of the publishing and I think when you broke it down I was supposed to get like out of a sale [ 5: 00] of twelve dollars and something I was supposed to get like nine cents.
5: 00
JW: Wild water ski weekend which is about as on Shoals Creek
Interviewer: Right ( laughter)
JW: as you can get. I always heard these, these commercials by the Village Shop, you know.
Interviewer: Uh huh
JW: Summer’s here again, time to go to the Village Shop and get your new bikini or something like that. ( laughter) and I always would, you know, hear that term so that was my opening line, um Summer’s here again, It’s time to get it together with your friends, Just like the first time you ever been, on a Wild Water- ski weekend. ( laughter) Let’s go down to the water for some summer fun, um, you’ll see lots of suntan skin on a Wild Water- ski weekend, you might catch a wake in London, maybe in gay Paree, c’est la vie, If you want to learn how to do it, I’m going to teach you how to [ 6: 00] water ski ( Laughter). But um, Shoals Creek is, is 50% or more in my blood you know, I mean. I, I, I was born there, and I learned about thrill seeking, like when I was like three years old my uncle Wood, Woody, they called him What- a- man, but he was a teenager and there’d be like 50, 75 people on the pier and I’d be bobbing around out there in a little orange Kapok life jacket and he’d dive in, come up under me, and grab me by the foot and pull me down, down, down, uh deeper green colder, colder you know and let me bob back up and I’d shoot to the top and everybody’d be laughing and clapping I’d say I’m in show biz man. ( laughter)
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