On Thursday, October 27th at 9:50 and 12:50 am, hear Mel Jones interviewed on 88.5 FM WFDD in the Winston-Salem region. A radio clip of the interview will be available at
Tell us about the kind of blues you perform.
My band, Mel Jones and his Bag O' Bones, are doing a combination of the country blues, the Piedmont blues, some R&B, some bluegrass tinged stuff, and some old-time tinged stuff…It’s not a traditional band by any means…The Bones has sort of become a catch basin for all of the blues that I’ve been exposed to throughout my playing career. I started as an R&B guy. Rock & Roll, R&B, record blues guy, many years ago as a drummer and a singer. That was really my formative years in Chapel Hill , which was a great blues scene. I did that for a number of years, and played electric music all over North and South Carolina , Virginia , up and down and all around. Then I learned when I moved to Davie County about the wonderful acoustic music that was going on in this part of the world, in the western end of North Carolina, primarily bluegrass and old-time.
How did you learn about bluegrass and old-time music in this part of the state?
In Davie County I was exposed to this great bunch of friends that went every year to the Old Time Fiddler’s & Bluegrass Festival at Union Grove… And being a drummer, I didn’t naturally have an instrument… It was such a wonderful thing for these people to just take these instruments and just wander around amongst each other and jam at will, I thought, “God, what a wonderful talent to have, what an amazing freedom it must be to go from campsite to campsite.” …I became determined to do some singing with that music and to do it with an instrument that was melodic in some way. And the harmonica was my choice, because number one, I had some familiarity with it, and also there weren’t that many harp guys around.
How did you move from the bluegrass/old-time scene at the fiddlers conventions to acoustic country blues?
What I found was that blues was so integral to [bluegrass and old-time], and the reason I found that out was that I was coming from a [rhythm &] blues background, and it wasn’t hard at all to figure out that, yeah, well a break goes here and the chorus goes here and the lead here. Everything was in the same place as it was in blues. And I thought now, wait a minute, this is not an accident here, this is here for a reason. Blues is, in my view, the most influential form of music because elements of it are found in every American kind of music—every pop music, classical music, jazz, rock & roll, on and on and on, country, and bluegrass and old-time. Look at every type of music and the word blues is in countless titles of all these songs. They don’t even try to hide it.
What about as a kid in Chapel Hill , did you ever hear country blues there?
I had some direct [blues influences.]…My grandfather used to keep me when I was probably four or five years old, while my mother worked. He lived on McCauley St. in Chapel Hill , way down at the end of McCauley St . You could look out the back of his house and he’d see the back of the power plant up on Cariman Ave. Just past the power plant, Cameron Ave. dead ended into Merrit Mill Rd. , and at the corner of Merrit Mill Rd. and Cameron Ave. , there was an old store. And that was right there at the edge of the black section of Chapel Hill and Carrboro. What my grandfather did every day after feeding me lunch was walk me up the hill to McCauley St, all the way over on Ransom to Cameron, then all the way back down to the power plant and the little store there and buy me some ice cream and then walk me all the way back…And the old black guy that ran the store found out that my grandfather was a retired preacher, and the old black guy used to play the guitar and sing pretty much the old black gospel stuff in that folk style. My grandfather got to where he really liked to hear him sing, so this became a daily tradition.
What’s the difference between Piedmont blues and country blues?
Piedmont blues is a form of country blues. Country blues would be more a blanket description of all the American forms of acoustic blues that were played in the rural areas throughout the south primarily is where they came from, but were also spread all over the country by folks moving from here to there. The black population in particular moved from here to there. …You see the blues never stayed the same for very long. They’d always go from one form to another. Take Muddy Waters, a great acoustic guy from Mississippi , moving to Chicago and transforming the music.
When you say Piedmont blues, you’re referring to the blues performed in this part of the country?
Yes, in this region pretty much. And we’ll say the Piedmont from Virginia to Georgia is pretty much where it was.
What’s the basic difference musically between the Piedmont blues and the Delta blues?
To me the most obvious difference is the Delta blues is a much harder-edged blues with more slide guitar, more simple play, more strum bangers I call them, people like Lead Belly. Some of those guys, they were really about hard driving stuff. The Piedmont blues, where it still has a lot of energy, it’s a little more melodic…There were some Delta finger players, but more in the Piedmont .
What about the African American store owner from your childhood, was he playing Piedmont blues, Delta blues, holy blues?
I do remember that the fellow strummed, he did not finger play, but he was in the same neighborhood as one of the great finger players in country blues, and that’s Elizabeth Cotton. It’s interesting because just yesterday we played the Carrboro Music Festival, which is one my favorite events…and our stage where we played was within 300 yards of where Elizabeth Cotton actually grew up. So we had to do “Freight Train”. But you see, Elizabeth was there right in that same time with this old guy, and he was playing a different style from her, same basic neighborhood. There was even variety within the styles.
[The store owner] was very much a gospel blues guy, but you know the tradition seems to be that most of these guys played blues when they were young, and when they got older morphed into gospel guys. The Reverend Gary Davis is a good example, one of my great heroes. He was a good example of that, and he played the tobacco circuit and was just one of the best that ever was.
Did the Reverend Gary Davis play at tobacco auction time in the 1920s and '30s on Trade St. in Winston-Salem ?
Definitely, there are records of him being through here and over at Durham , Danville , all the big markets, he was there. He lived in Durham for a good while and played out of there because it was a central location. But you know the history of these guys, their actual whereabouts and their paths were pretty sketchy because no one was standing around writing down pretty much of anything. They would turn up here, there’s a record of them recording in this location, their movements were not well documented. There wasn’t a Rolling Stone writing about the acoustic blues guys back in the '20s and '30s, so a lot of what went on we kind of have to piece together.
Do you think your attraction to the blues is connected to your growing up in Chapel Hill ?
Absolutely. The maid that used to keep me, this black maid, the first song she taught me was “Shortenin' Bread”. I did it on the first Bones CD.
What attracts you emotionally to the blues?
I think the blues is the most honest of music. I think emotionally it’s the most direct, and I’ve always been a big fan of the emotions of music. I think that’s very important. I think in my emotions there is a fairly high energy there. I like to work my energy things out in performance. And the blues is the best platform for that for me. It’s the most real of music in my view. It describes the human condition better than about any other music can, both musically and lyrically.
You’re a very entertaining performer, a real showman. How does it feel like to be up on stage? You seem to be enjoying yourself.
Incredibly, yes. I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I didn’t do that. 'Cause it’s always just been part of my life. I think the best way to answer that is that I’ve been asked a lot, “Don’t you get scared when you go on stage?”, and the answer has always been the same—I always get scared before I play. And the reason is if you don’t get scared before you go on stage, there’s something wrong with you because you’re always at risk. That’s the cool thing about putting yourself in front of a bunch of people, you always have the ability to screw it up. So if you don’t’ get a little scared, it’s not any fun. I love to perform and I love to communicate with people …I like to get out in front of people and hopefully make them a little happier than they were when we started.
A number of the songs you perform are classic blues songs, but you also write some of your own songs. Tell us a little about your song writing.
I do it from a couple of different directions. Sometimes I get the idea for a lyric from a poem and then find something that works for the rhythm of the poem as far as musically. And sometimes I work the other way around. I have a tune that needs words.
I’ve worked it both ways. But as far as ideas, ideas for lyrics come from life, from what’s around you. I have a song called “Dime Store Glasses” which is a comment on the wretchedness of old age. It came from my wife one day. We were somewhere, I guess we were in a motel room someplace, and I put my glasses on, which are very cheap dime store glasses that I need these days, and they were all smudged up and she said, “Wipe off them dime store glasses!” And I thought, “Wow, that’s a song!” That wrote itself in about ten minutes as a matter of fact.
Tell us about your CDs and where people can buy them.
I have four CDs. The first Bones CD was called When the Alligators Come to Town… It has some great people—David Holt, David Johnson, Randy Gardner—great players playing on it. I’m very proud of that. It’s a lot of my silly stuff, more of a children’s CD really. I wrote every song on it except “Shortenin' Bread”.
I haven’t mentioned my great friend Danny Wicker that I was privileged to play with for over ten years and still occasionally play with. An amazing guitarist, just an incredibly gifted finger guitar style player. And it was my great fortune to have the opportunity to learn from such a master. He really knows and plays the Piedmont blues as well or better than anyone I’ve ever seen…And we made a CD called Blues from the Porch that we still sell a lot of them today.
My current band, the new version of the Bones, Mel Jones and his Bag O' Bones, we put out a CD a couple of years ago, Bones To Pick. It’s very much what we’re doing now. It’s a combination of a lot of different stuff… That’s what so great about the blues. There are just so many different ways you can go with it and relate to the audience. It’s just a very open type of music.
I have a live CD called Living Bones which was recorded in downtown Mocksville at a club down there. That was when Danny Wicker was playing with the Bones…And that’s all we got, but we’re fixing to make a new one.
What’s your upcoming CD going to be called?
It’s going to be called Bone Head. Our amazing mandolin guy, Kip Snow, is building a studio in downtown Mocksville in the basement of Counter Point Music and we’re just about ready to fire it off. We just can’t look forward enough to it.
Where are your CDs for sale?
Our CDs are for sale at our live performances and at our web site www.BonesBlues.com. When we have a new CD, we’ll put it out at selected places around Mocksville and some in Winston. That information is all available on the web site.
Is there anything else you’d like to say?
I would love to say that I am very proud of what you guys do. I think Carolina Music Ways is a really nicely conceived and executed effort…I think it’s just wonderful. We musicians labor out there in the lonely recesses. North Carolina is a not an easy place to play music. And it’s nice to know that there are people out there that care about the music and about the musicians enough to do things like what you guys.
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