Tim McCasland

I'm Tim McCasland, born September 15, 1954, and a guitar player since 1966, when I figured out the chords to my earliest favorite song - Roger Miller's "Do Wacka Do." My family owned very few records, so I memorized them all: the soundtrack from South Pacific, the "Best of the Sons of the Pioneers", and the opera "Carmen". My mother was a music teacher in the public school and a very good piano, clarinet, accordion, and violin player. My father was a cotton ginner and in no way musical.

I play several instruments well enough to have recorded on an electric guitar, acoustic guitar, banjo, dobro, slide and steel guitar. I started learning guitar at age twelve out of pure lust for the instrument and all forms of popular music. My obsession became economically trustworthy by age sixteen, when I started teaching on the side while playing in a very well-booked rock band and going to school. I have not worked an honest day since!

I guess I belong to the first generation of players who learned not from flesh and blood mentors but from vinyl and transistors. I copied all I could from the Doors, Hendrix, Johnny Winter, that guy from Grand Funk (because it was so easy) and Terry Kath (Chicago). When I decided at age 19 to go into more country music I bought the Earl Scruggs Banjo book, and bought bluegrass records. All of the other instruments I play I learned for non-altruistic economic reasons, but, I do love to play them.

I learned guitar the hard way, I suppose, but everything surely "stuck". I mean, when you have to lift the needle on phrase 2 of "Purple Haze", hone the lick, locate one note, then put the needle back down and wait for that spot to roll around again to check it, check it, listen to the next note and start over again---you had better love to learn the guitar! Luckily I didn't have to learn to love the guitar! I did not even use my reading skills - learned in order to teach lessons at the music store - to help me personally learn anything! I do now, of course. Now, I teach several instruments and watch my students struggling with the same stuff I tried to conquer. I wish I would have had me (myself, Tim) as a teacher. I could have helped myself over many hurdles. I could have told myself that Dicky Betts used the MAJOR PENTATONIC, not the MINOR! That would have saved me a year or so. And how about that right hand blocking technique on the steel guitar? Learn it first, and thoroughly, before getting gigs at dances! And how about learning the appropriate clichés for each form of music you claim you play? What's the use of describing yourself as a bluegrass banjo player if you can't play "Dum da da doody deet-a-dobby-dooby do ya know?" I mean, you generally play music for music fans, not other musicians. Generally, the musicians in the crowd got in free and are too poor to buy any drinks anyway. And besides, if they are such great musicians, why aren't they out on a gig too? That's the part of music that's hardest to learn - to learn to play what people will like. Once you establish that with your audience (and yourself) you can stretch out and enjoy yourself as a musician.

But I digress.

Chronologically, professionally, my first gig was at the party house beside the public pool when I was in the seventh grade. My band knew all the tunes on two Rolling Stone albums plus a couple of the easy Beatles songs and a few a.m. radio tunes. The gig went well. We got free cokes and cookies, my mom (our driver and liaison) got to hang around outside for hours waiting for us, and the whole band made five dollars. We didn't pay mom her cut, as I remember. By ninth grade I was playing in a copy band four nights a week at a hotel lounge. By age sixteen, I was on my way, playing whatever music was the rage. To me, music is music. Country, rock, bluegrass, pop, classical, it's all notes.

My greatest musical experience, if I had to choose just one, was at a fraternity party in Lubbock around November of 1971, when I first got the Monster, or reached the Zone, or opened the door to the Big Room or whatever you want to call it. You self-taught musicians know what I mean. I listened to myself play a killer solo to a song I'd been playing for a couple of years, and had that peculiar out-of-body experience you never forget, and never recapture. You golfers know the feeling---that time your five iron went a hundred seventy five yards to the green, hit, spun, and backed up to within a gimme of the hole. Since that frat party I have been on quite a few albums, somewhere between fifty and a hundred, I guess. I have backed up Slim Whitman, Boxcar Willie, Johnny Gimble, B. J. Thomas, Chubby Wise, Redd Stewart (who wrote the Tennessee Waltz), Rex Allen, Justin Tub, Tom T. Hall, Joe Ely, Stonewall Jackson, and God knows who else.

I am a music instructor at South Plains College in Levelland, Texas. Look on your map at Amarillo, go south 120 miles to Lubbock, go west 25 miles to Levelland. We have a very original and unique Commercial Music Program, for which I have worked for twenty years, teaching most every instrument you can name. I enjoy teaching country music, even though my roots are in Rock music.

Being old, I find the current body of rock music either idiotic or woefully wimpy, so I officially belong to the old-timers club which states as its creed "music just ain't what it used to be". For instance, when I was 16 I used a good guitar and an acceptable amp. Today, twenty-five years later, my equipment list includes: a good guitar and an O.K. amp.

So much for technology, at least for me. My amp is a Peavey MX, a tube amp. My guitar is a Blade, far-and-away the best I've ever owned. I teach commercially on video tapes produced by Texas Music and Video, a large and very successful video instruction company. Thus, I have students all over the world. I teach dobro, guitar, and steel guitar on various tapes. Here at South Plains College I teach private lessons on dobro, classical guitar, electric guitar, beginning acoustic guitar, lap steel, pedal steel, and occasionally banjo. I have two country bands at school and one rock band. The school itself has many country, rock, pop, gospel, variety, acappella, and show groups as well as the traditional band and choir programs.

Finally, a word about learning an instrument. Whatever you are planning, you must decide to DO IT! When some person from the crowd says to me, "Boy, I sure wish I could play guitar like that," I usually respond: "All you need to do is dedicate six to eight hours a day for ten to twenty years, and Presto! there you are. There are many folks out there who own guitars or dobros, or whatever and who might pay good money for books, etc., but you must decide to actually do it!

Okay, I'm through. Thanks for listening. I feel much better! I hope to meet you someday.

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