So Rev Peyton, tell me about where everything began for you and Rev Payton’s Big Damn Band.
Ya know, when I was a kid, I got obsessed with blues early on. I really got obsessed with chasing it backwards. Maybe it was Led Zeppelin or someone and I would think, “who inspired that song. Where was their influence? Then you discover Muddy waters and you go, well who did Muddy waters listen to, who was he into? Then you get back to Howlin Wolf and you ask who was he into and who was he listenin’ to?” Then you get back to guys like Charlie Patton, Bukka White and the early heroes of country blues.
Here’s the only known record of “Smokestack Lightning” by Howlin’ Wolf.
Tell me about Charlie Patton because he’s had a very big influence on you.
Oh yeah, arguably the most important figure in American music history, right? Many people won’t have heard about him, but just because you’re ignorant about something it doesn’t mean that it’s not true. I can tell you this much, if there hadn’t been Charlie Patton that it’s very possible that Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf wouldn’t have picked up a guitar. If they had never played, think of what the whole landscape would look like. Even Hank Williams Snr learned to play guitar from a disciple of Charlie Patton.
What is it for you that led you to be hooked on Charlie Patton?
It’s really hard to describe. Here I am, a 12 year old kid and you’re obsessed with everything. “How’s that played, how’s that played”. I got hold of a compilation album that had some Charlie Patton on. When he popped on, it was something and it just spoke to me on a primal level, deep deep down, musically more than lyrically. You can have music without words, it’s the music that matters. It’s that ancient scale that he uses. If you go down to a guitar shop and tell them you want to play the blues, they’ll teach you the minor pentatonic scale, but that’s not really what’s being played. They are either playing slides to get to, or bending up to get to notes that are not in the normal chromatic scale. The 3rds and 7ths are flatted, but not to infinity. If you were to play a Charlie Patton song pure chromatic, then all of the feeling and emotion would be gone. One of my favourites is Mississipi Boweavel. It’s a one chord boogie song. It’s an incredible piece and there’s only 2 true chromatic notes in that song and everything else is microtonal.
Tell me about your own desire to always be a better guitarist than you previously were.
I’m obsessed with being better than I was. You’ll often hear people say that a bands best two records are their first and after that they fall off. Maybe the band then start to fall out with each other and become less cohesive. I have spent every day of my life trying to be better at the guitar. I would say, and this may sound crazy, I am twice if not three times the guitar player that I was 2 years ago. If one day I wake up and decide that I don’t have the passion to be better any more, if I think my best record is behind me, then I think I’ll retire from this. If I get up on stage, it’s only because I think I am better tonight than I was on last night’s show.
In trying to better yourself, do you have a particular guitar practice method that’s for you?
Well, here’s what I do. I try to learn something new every day. It may be as complicated as some kind of theory, or it may simply be that I’ll learn a new song. I’m going to spend some time with it, study it, see how any of that could be used with the way I write songs. I very rarely commit someone else’s guitar solo to memory and I may never touch it again. It’s do I understand why it’s happened, the feel of why it sounds good.
There’s other things I work on too – the feel. The older I get, the more I think that feel is more important than anything else in music. It’s something now that I’m really obsessed with, especially with the band when we get together and rehearse. Try to keep that feel real sticky and those pockets real deep. It’s easy to do slow and very hard to do fast. It’s just how I do music, I swing everything and everything’s behind the beat. I’m probably someone who frustrates a lot of drummers because I like it to be so laid back, so far behind the beat.
For me personally, I try to take my thumb and separate it from my fingers. I try to make my thumb like a good rhythm section, lazier than my fingers. I want my thumb to be as lazy as possible. I try to really unmarry my thumb from my fingers when I’m playing finger style.
Songs are not in keys. Before someone told me about the CAGED style of learning guitar, I’d already worked it out. It’s probably pretty wise. A song is more numbers and patterns. I might try a song in several different keys to find out where I sound the best when I sing. If you want to really get down to brass tacks as a guitar player, you should be able to play a song in any key.
Tell me about inspiration. A lot of your songs have a spiritual meaning behind them, a lot are rural and many are just honest.
I very rarely sit down and say that I’ll write a song about “this”. Wherever these songs come from, I try to be open about it. That’s another thing too that I try to be better at. I’m less concerned about if a song is a little strange, I’m more open to it. I think, “let’s push the boundaries with this”. Here’s an example, in “Too cool to dance”, I played it for Breezy and she said she thought it was the best song I’d ever written, but I was just playing open chords kind of like the Everly Brothers. I was almost offended ya know! Then I started thinking how I would do it with the band. I spent a long time where I, now it’s something I do a lot, I taught myself to be able to play a rhythm with my thumbs while essentially playing Chuck Berry licks. It is a cool song, the finger style is cool.
I was listening to your take on Jesus is a Dying Bed Maker (Patton) and your version of This Little Light of Mine and I hear a strong Gospel influence. Your spin on that is completely different to what anybody else has ever done.
The Gospel stuff really is inspired and heavily influenced my music. I think that it’s one of my biggest influences and it was to Charlie too. He had a tonne of Gospel songs that he released under an assumed name. In terms of blues, rock’n roll, even country, blue grass definitely, the influence of Gospel music is almost immeasurable. It’s everywhere you know. There’s some people that would say that early Rock ‘n Roll is just Gospel music with the lyrics changed. It’s more that that Church vibe, the way that people feel at a music church, that was as much borrowed as was the music. That feeling that you get when you lose yourself into the moment, the music. That was borrowed from Sunday morning.
Tell me about your touring work at the minute. At one point you were doing 250 gigs per year.
We’re still touring an awful lot. This day and age, records don’t make money. The modern social media situation with TikTok and reels has killed music videos. To me good art is about hard work, you nurture your skills so that then your art flows naturally. The one thing that I know that you cannot download, that’s the live show. I whole heartedly believe, with my whole heart, that we are as good a live band as anybody out there. That’s hard to put that on TikTok. We’ve always been a good live band. That’s something that I will continue to work hard on. I love it. Covid taught me that the hard way. It wasn’t the financial or career situation. I literally missed being up there playing songs for people live, in person. There’s something special when a crowd of people come together. It’s communal man. As a crowd of human beings, we need that. Studies have shown that we study the dopermine hit online, we chase the friendship, but it’s not the same as real inter-personal connections. AI is gonna come and do this and that and the other, and things change and this and the other, but you know what, we still are good at doing this live and as long as I still have my health, my God we’re gonna be.
The Interviewer, Guitar Courses and Celebrity Pro Music Masterclasses
Dr Robin Harrison is the founder of www.the-maestro-online.com which includes online guitar courses that focus on improvisation, core skills and a unique creative approach to every song. They give you the skills to become a unique artist in your own rite and not just a copy of others.
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