Wesley Pruitt Jr

| June 28, 2015 | Reply
Courtesy photo

Courtesy photo

By Billy Keith Bucher

One of the joys of writing articles about various musicians is that, for a time, it’s as if you become a part of their minds. You can sit back and listen to the music they are making and hear the words and the lyrics to their songs. You become a part of the ideas that they are trying to get across. Whether the musician is a man or a woman, it is great fun to do an interview and then sit back and listen to their CD and hear the web of words which they can create and follow the flow of their music.

It is even more fun to hop from musician to musician like a mischievous fly and deal with total different styles and moods they evoke from their different influences which they have used to make their music come alive. That is just one of pieces which makes their songs and music come alive and to make it relate to the audiences which are so important to the writer’s life.

And the singer/songwriters are so unique in themselves. Recently,I found myself sitting across a the table from the burly and amiable Wesley Pruitt Jr. at the Backwoods BBQ in Canton, Texas. It is the town where he grew up and where it seems he knows everyone from the owners of the establishment to two women with their kids who followed us in the front door. The owner gave me a big “good afternoon smile” and said, “Yes, sir, I’ve known Wesley here since he was a small boy. Now, we’re gonna have to name a lunch special after him.” He laughed as he finished up making up our plates. “We’ll have a Wesley Pruitt plate, for sure.”

From the first upbeat to the highly unusual ending, The Wesley Pruitt Band’s debut CD “Line ‘Em Up” is a unique adventure both in Wesley’s vocals and songwriting ability to his wailing and soulful guitar. From the very beginning, there is hardly time to take a breath between songs.

“The next CD is in the making,” said Wesley between bites, “but we’re thinking of doing a live one this time. We’re doing a test runs at the Moore’s Store in Ben Wheeler. It’s a fun place and it’s a good place for an artist in a lot of ways. It has a great sound system and usually there is enough of an audience packed in there to dampen the sound some and just let it rip! Joseph Drew, whom I’ve known since we were in junior high band together, is the sound man, and has played enough and heard enough to know what goes with what. He knows just what every band that comes in there wants to sound like. When I came into junior high band, Joseph was the guy you had to beat out for a spot in the jazz band.”

There was a pause as we chowed down on our food. Big plates of chopped beef and sliced sausage links with fried okra, cole slaw and potato salad. It gave me a minute to phrase my next question. I had noticed that morning that Wesley and his band had recently headlined the 10th Annual T-Bone Walker Blues Fest.

“So how have things been going lately?” I asked, “As you get ready to get down to work on the next album, is the band moving on up?”

“Over the last couple of years, things have been really good for us. We’ve done a lot of blues festivals and two International Guitar Festivals which went to several states and we’ve done the State Fair of Texas for the last couple of summers in a row. I’d say things have been very good for us, indeed!

“I’ve had the good luck of playing at Moore’s Store with my band and then going and playing with Joseph Drew, my old friend from high school, and we’ll do a duo at the Forge. It has been the best of times for me and then I’m not traveling as much. I mean, I have a one-and-a-half-year-old little boy these days to help raise. These things make my time in the immediate area all the more sweet to me, for sure.

“And then this spring along came the Van tornado. In the beginning I knew I was going to play

Proceeds from benefit to aid the Van, Texas, tornado victims

Proceeds from benefit to aid the Van, Texas, tornado victims

on the benefit. But in all of the years which I’ve played professionally I’ve played a lot of benefits which didn’t come out as well as they could have if people would have come into it headed in the right direction and Joseph and I were real nervous about it. But, we wanted to stay with the Memorial Day weekend for the day of the benefit. I was just going to play on the benefit, but with the tornado hitting so close to home and Ben Wheeler, it just made it a whole different thing. With my grandmother living in Van, my bass player just coming within yards of the tornado hitting his house, my girlfriend’s sister lost a lot of things —all of these things drew me into becoming more and more involved and pressed us to get money to Van as soon as we could. We did have some sponsors like Mother Frances donating those big tents in case it did rain. A lot of other people wanted me to headline, but I just didn’t wanted to be headlining, I just wanted to be involved. And in the space of a few days, Sara Brisco (owner of The Forge in Ben Wheeler) and I were having meetings every day and (a) booking agent and I were lining up the acts. I can’t believe we got it all done and I think I’m still tired from doing it,” he added with a big laugh.

And if then all that wasn’t enough, Wesley and Joseph Drew put together a new group called PhD. It consisted of Pruitt, Drew, and Buddy Henderson, son of legendary blues guitarist Bugs Henderson. They put on an incredible show on the 20th of June. It was icing on the cake and a real treat for all the people who were there to catch the group. The set was filled with Wesley’s biting and howling guitar licks intermingled with Henderson’s blazing drumming and Joseph’s creative bass work. It was like a slap in the face of the tornado that had come and done so much damage. But this small North East Texas community had come back and gotten everyone moving forward once again.

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About the Author ()

In the music production business, including event production, booking, photography, reporting, and other such essentials, since 1980.

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