A Weedhawks biography/ story

Weedhawkstory Current mood: animated Category: Music
A grizzled journeyman rocker washing dishes to pay the bills, meets a charming and talented symphony violinist.She moves in with him while he's in the midst of a Hank Williams/honky-tonk obsession.She starts to dread the orchestra and begins exploring classic country music and western swing stylesWhen the two met Ruby Jean also played violin in a local band called The New Relics. Ruby remembers: "The Relics had their own studio, a brand new van and more equipment than they could use but they couldn't grab anyone's attention. Bobby Lane on the other hand had only his songs,his guitar and everyone's attention." Their partnership raised a lot of eyebrows in their little town. Ruby remembers being warned about getting mixed up with this nut job:"Bobby had attained a reputation around the area as being quite a wildman. Everybody from my parents to even our landlord told me to get away from him, but I thought he was a nice guy deep down.He was the first person that I ever played with who put on a show from start to finish."Their difference in age is 19 years. Bobby Lane, born in July 1962, played his first show in 1981, when Ruby was two months old.Ruby Jean was named after her mother Ruby Kay and her Grandmother Jean Hornsby.She started formal training at the age of 3 and a half with WVU graduate student Beth Williams.Bobby Lane was named after his Grandfather, Robert A Hurley a former Connecticut Governor.He started informal training after seeing a Springsteen show when he was 16 in August 1978.Three days later Bobby bought a Fender guitar and set out on a mission to learn to make it talk."I remember the big decision back then was between a Fender or a Gibson. I chose a Fender because Ed King in Lynyrd Skynyrd played one and I really liked his sound, and of course Springsteen had that old Esquire that he held on the cover of Born to Run."Ruby Jean's house was filled with music while she was growing up in the hills just outside of Morgantown."My dad played guitar and my mom played harmonica. Mom took me to see Kathy Mattea in concert when I was 8 years old.I knew that she was from West Virginia so I felt a connection with her.That show inspired me to want to sing more .My dad and I learned some songs together and he took me to an open mic when I was 8. That started my interest in becoming a performer."While Ruby Jean was being inspired by Kathy Mattea, Bobby was playing in a thrash metal band called Senslis Killin.He also ran a small recording studio in an office building where he lived on the sly and made demos for Death metal bands for rent money. It was there where he recorded a demo for a New York band called Brutal Truth that helped lead to a recording deal for the group and got Bob a job as traveling sound man. "Danny Lilker in Brutal Truth asked me if I did live sound, and I lied and said yes because I loved their show and wanted to work with them. My first gig as a sound man was at The Ritz in New York City in front of four thousand people. Talk about being thrown into the fire." Bobby traveled the USA with different bands bands as a sound man, roadie, and driver for the next couple of years. In 1992 he formed a group called Brain Police that toured on and off through '95. It was while on the road with Brain Police that the band got caught in a blizzard in Morgantown, West Virginia at the end of 1995. "We were stuck in Morgantown for a week and everybody was so nice we just fell in love with the town and the people." After getting back home we all decided to pack up and move back to Morgantown. "It was a great place to get away and concentrate on song writing which at that point was my main interest."Fast forward to Morgantown, Fall 2001. Ruby Jean is a student at West Virginia University. "9/11 changed the way I looked at life. I was thinking If it can all be over in a minute do I want to be having fun or be locked in some room with a bunch of orchestra geeks. Around this time I met a really flashy eccentric guy named Marcus and he kept telling me 'you gotta meet my room mate, Bobby Lane.' He said that he was a singer/songwriter doing his own thing, which was what I aspired to be. The afternoon that I met Bobby we passed the guitar back and forth and played our songs for each other. I found Bobby's songs to be very personal and I related to them immediately. Bobby remembers: "Ruby and I were on either side of my room mate and while we were singing this Steve Earle song together he had this freaked out look on his face. The blending of our voices was really there and for some reason he got up and quickly rushed Ruby out the door. I didn't see her again for months. I kept asking him for her number, but he was wouldn't give it to me. After a while I was almost ready to turn him upside down, so he finally gave me her phone number. I walked to a pay phone right away and invited her to perform with me at a show I had two days later. That was December 27, 2001. A week later she moved into a new apartment with me and we've been playing music together ever since."Ruby Jean decided to quit school and focus on music full time in 2002. The pair stopped at any place that sold beer and had pick up trucks parked out front. They would whip through a quick 3-song burst, pass a tip jar, and head out the door to the next joint. "Hit 'em and quit 'em" they called it. Soon a steady stream of gig requests started coming in.Competing with bands who played for only beer as payment was the battle. Bob looks back on those days: "If you wanted to earn the money, I figured you had to play harder,better and longer than the competition. We had one gig back when we first started that promised a decent guarantee and then only four people showed up. I knew that If we took a break they'd try to cut our set short and send us home with less money, so we played straight though for four hours without a break.We didn't even pause between songs,just bang bang bang bang until 2AM. They gave us our money."This became a way for us to stand out from the crowd. We were starting to become known as the band that plays all night without a break. One night we played for seven and a half hours straight. One group would leave and another would come in so, we'd just keep going. We definitely had something to prove, and I think we proved it."The other thing that separated us from the pack was our original songs. We had a lot of good ones and people came to hear them. It wasn't a question of sneaking them in, the way other bands spoke of doing. If anything we were sneaking in Hank Williams,and Johnny Cash songs in between our own.We were making a living doing what we loved on our own terms and at that time that was enough for us.
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