Carl Snow

Carl Snow, a living legend out of the Knoxville scene. Over the course of the past 2 decades Carl's playing cards have included such groups as Koro , Red, Screamin' Boy Blue, Big Stickmen, 30-Amp Fuse, Whitey, Birdhouse, THAT, The Carl Snow Band and now, Carl Snow's Summer of Love.   Carl moved to Knoxville in 1976, and recalls "my earliest influences were my parents, aunts & uncles, and their friends, several times a week they would have a musical get-together. My dad and his two younger brothers were once a Gospel trio, I can vividly remember hearing them covering "Amazing Grace" & "How Great Thou Art". The music that I grew up around, until I was able to buy records of my own, was basically a mixture of blues, jazz and folk. It was my uncle's guitar that intrigued me the most, I would fall asleep most nights up to the age of 6 to the sounds of my uncle and my parents playing & singing. I was entranced by the guitar sound and I can recall wanting to play it, and it being too big for me. Pop had a ukulele that I don't recall touching, looking back I probably viewed it as a kiddy-guitar, and I wanted to play the big guitar. I got my first acoustic guitar in 1976, it was a generic "student" steel-string guitar. My formal lessons commenced immediately". This was followed by a great period of discovery, taking in the sounds of The Beatles. The Stones, The Who, David Bowie, The Kinks, Neil Young, XTC ... which prompted Carl's guitar teacher, Jennifer Hooks, to recommend to Carl that he begin taking guitar lessons from local guitar hero, Terry Hill (who appears on 5 of the tracks on this CD, and to whom this record is dedicated). "Under Terry's wing, I was given the ability to learn many of my favorite songs on my student guitar. After reiterating the basic chord structures that I learned from Jennifer, Terry began to encourage me to invent my own chords. Soon I was proficient enough, "to my father's ears", to get my first "real" guitar. It was a Takamine, and twice the size of my student guitar. I was splitting my musical meals into 3 basic courses at the time; progressive "art" rock, pop music, and the new arrival of oddballs from New York that we would later call "punks". I was very fortunate to be taught my craft by two of the greatest artists to grace the South; Terry Hill, and later, Hector Qirko (who appears on 3 of the tracks on this CD), both having a great influence on my music, and both deep, deep friends. They mentored me in far more than "guitar playing"; opening doors for me on many levels. After a few years (perhaps less) a "guitar lesson" ceased to be a guitar lesson, and became a communion of sorts, with far more emphasis on the inner dimensions of music, and life, urging me onward, both musically and spiritually." Carl needn't search far-'n'-wide for something to write about, as his songs are a reflection of his inner-self, and the things that touch his very existence; passion and pain, love and loss, clarity and chaos, humor and dead-seriousness; all-in-all, for Carl it's all about being real. Singing and playing from the heart comes natural, as does this, his debut record as a solo artist. This CD, useless, has probably been in the works for quite some time, without realizing it. Recorded in Knoxville, the CD kicks off, appropriately, with Useless Song ("I tried to write a bridge, but I couldn't find the chords, got another beer from the fridge, lit a smoke, got bored, and wrote this useless song"), followed by One Of Them ("do you remember when you were young, younger than you are now, that some old scratchy record, rescued you, somehow"). As much as these songs are a reflection of Carl, it's safe to say that you, the listener, will find yourself somewhere within these creations. "Instead of sitting down trying to force a song from something, it's more that a song will demand me to write it. On occasion, I might be playing the guitar or something when all-of-a-sudden that lightning bolt hits, and a song appears in front of me asking me for release." "All these big ideas, small words, good intentions, this war of strings and skins feels like creative pension" is how Carl describes this, "the song-writing process" in his song King, adding "why don't you write another like that, we really like that one, if you wrote a lot more like that, boy you'd really be somethin". Well, Carl has written a lot more like that one, and he really is somethin'. In She Only Loves You When She's Drunk, Carl plays the "30-something punk, who's got his mind on miles, wind & chrome", and yes, he backs that up with the 2 black and chrome Harleys parked in his garage, one belonging to Cindy, and yes, there's a song for Cin too, "when everything is cracked Lord, cracked and crumbled, and I get cut, cut on the debris, there is a calmness, a calmness callin', there is a calmness, waits for me, in Cindy's Arms". Carl explains, "Songs are generally, in my brain, filed under the "shit that happened to me" category. I don't write fiction, although (laughs) I do change the names to protect the guilty. My best songs are the ones written in 5 minutes, (more laughter) unless they're 6 minutes long". The truth of the matter is, Carl's earliest introduction to the sound of music was born while surrounded by blues and folk, followed by 2 decades traveling a much harder sonic road. A biker of sorts, there is a gentler side to this Knoxville porch-swing swinger. It's in no way about reinventing himself, Carl now revisits these (his) roots with useless, a 15 song CD that has already, before its release, been met by acclaim. Carl has many influences here, though it's hard to put your finger on them, only that you'll find yourself feeling quite at home, listening to a record that is destined to join the ranks among your favorites. "I hope you will find these "Useless Songs" to be as useful, both musically and spiritually, as I have". Mike Gibson, staff writer for Knoxville's Metro Pulse paid a visit to Knox's 613 Recording Studio, to capture a glimpse of the creation of Carl Snow's Useless endeavor, which prompted him to write an article; A Local Icon Returns Carl Snow is a portrait of studied resolution poised in front of a microphone stand next to friend and conscripted back-up singer John Tilson. With earphones clamped tight on bobbing noggins, he and Tilson are laying down vocal tracks to a song off Snow's forthcoming Useless CD on a rainy evening at Knoxville's 613 Studio. "MMMMM-wop, wop!... MMMMM-wop, wop!...," the duo croon in something that falls just short of unison. The vocal line is a backing part on the song "One of Them," a gritty, rousing celebration of rock 'n' roll vinyl LPs, though it sounds like nothing so much as some minimalist take on a cappella doo-wop to the studio onlookers who can't hear the main track blaring in the singers' ears. "Wait; we missed that last 'wop,'" Snow says, suddenly breaking off and signaling engineer Rick Wolfe to stop the recording. Much animated discussion of humming and wopping ensues, as the three men try to figure how to achieve a happy synchronicity of parts on the already densely arranged track. All of the recording sessions for the album have had a similarly loose, impromptu character about them, with well-traveled local musicians and FOS (Friends of Snow) trailing in and out, contributing piecemeal parts to a record that will be the first full-fledged label release from one of the city's most accomplished guitarists. Though mostly absent from the local music scene in recent years, Snow is a veritable Knox rock legend, a burly punk-rock madman who played in any number of notable outfits dating back to the early 1980s. His resume includes stints in Whitey, 30 Amp Fuse, Red and Screaming Boy Blue; he was also a founding member of KoRo, a short-lived but seminal 1980s hard-core outfit whose ferocious early demos are still dearly traded in underground punk-rock circles the world over. Snow is a consummate musician—a studio adept, a versatile multi-instrumentalist, a virtuosic guitar player who was at one point on the verge of attending the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. - Mike Gibson (Metro Pulse, January 2003). "I decided 3 days prior to leaving that it would be too cold up there".