The Guitar Hero series on Jemsite features interviews with guitarists and musicians who may not have star status YET (yet being the key word!) but their current situations have shaped them to be who they are--determined, fond of their craft, and heroes in their own right. Perhaps you'll see in these upcoming entries the next Jimi Hendrix, Melissa Etheridge, or Duane Allman. Or perhaps they'll become household names by doing what they do best--doing their thing.
For our second interview, we capture the voice of Jack Pribek, a guitarist and songwriter who's recent health problems only made him more determined to succeed. Read on to find out how this musician used some bad luck with health to better his luck and his career, then log onto his official website to see how it all turned out.
Ava: Give me some background on yourself and tell me how you got started in music and the guitar?
Jack: Ha! Well, my full name is Raymond John Pribek III. I go by Jack; Jack Pribek. I grew up mostly in a small town on the Missouri River called Hermann, Missouri.
I got interested in the guitar several years before I started playing. I remember seeing B.B. King on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. I was maybe 8 or 9 and something about what he did really grabbed me. When I was 14, I saved $50 up from mowing lawns and bought a Supro guitar and Supro amp from a guy who was a couple of years older. I messed around with it on my own and took a few lessons. Eventually, I ran in to Ron Roskowske, who is a great teacher. He was working at a music store in Washington, Missouri. I took lessons from Ron sort of off and on. I would go for a couple months and, see this was a deal, where my Mom had to drive me 30 miles each way so; I’d take a break for a few months and absorb what Ron showed me. It’s a good way to learn really.
A: What kind of guitar/guitars do you play? What is it about the guitar that moves you?
J: I play electric almost exclusively. A Telecaster with Barden pick-ups. I have a resonator that I do some delta type slide stuff on when the mood strikes.
I have always been intrigued with the notes in between notes; the bends. You can make the guitar sing but, there’s also a real physical, percussive side. With all of that combined, there is a lot of emotional content that you can put out there with the guitar.
A: How did you start writing songs?
J: Well, that one could easily turn in to the little bitty question with the great big answer.
When I was a kid, I had a couple of friends that when they got a new radio or something like that, they would tear it apart to see how it worked. I was always like that with songs. Why does this work!? Then, when I started to play guitar that fascination took a life of it’s own.
Ron, mentioned above, was good at stressing theory. It wasn’t about learning licks and scales with that guy, it was learning how music worked. Then, I did go to college for a couple of years as a music theory/composition major. The school I went to didn’t consider guitar a “legitimate” instrument. See, these guys were telling me that there was legitimate music. So, I would say, “what’s all this other stuff I’m listening to then, illegitimate music?” It wasn’t a real good fit.
One day, out of the blue, I got a call from a guy who offered me a job playing bass full time in a country band! I had not had much experience at all playing country or bass for that matter but I took the job because I felt the need to ramble. I was just about to turn 20.
So, I went on the road. This was at a time where a guy could make a living, not a great living but, enough to get by on, playing in cover bands on the road. I didn’t cut it as a bass player but, I ended up playing guitar in rock bands, top 40 bands, country bands, “variety bands”, all kinds of bands. It was a job that allowed me to practice guitar all day. Play the gig at night, practice all day. And, it was a job where you had to constantly learn new material. That in itself is really more song study.
All this time, I sort of dabbled with songwriting. I figured at some point, I would run in to some cats that were musically like-minded, start a band, and play original music. But, it didn’t go down that way because, I was always on the road. I was hung up on making ends meet and, I was never part of a local “scene’, where I could meet the right players, I guess.
Along the way, I started working with a booking agent who was semi-connected in Nashville. He had his hand in some fairly lucrative music publishing. I thought, hmmmm…that’s an interesting idea there; make money writing songs. So, I had an official meeting with this guy, along the lines of, “how do I get in to this?” He was real honest and he laid it out. He said something like; “You write a song, I get a piece, this guy gets a piece, and this other guy gets a piece…” Sounded to me like there weren’t enough “pieces” to go around so, it really kind of soured me on the idea.
Eventually, I had my fill of that whole scene and it was dying off anyway. I settled in the Ozarks and I played in different bands, mostly weekends because there isn’t a thriving club thing going on and, doing “straight jobs” during the week. At one point, for a couple of years, I worked as a blacksmith believe it or not. I wouldn’t recommend that for guitar players!
I got a call one day to go to a jam session. The guy who called me was business partners with Bill Dees. Now, Bill is a songwriter with a track record. His biggest hit was “Oh, Pretty Woman”, a song he wrote with Roy Orbison. After meeting Bill and talking to him some, I thought, “now, here’s a guy who really has done alright for himself as a songwriter”. I got interested in how the actual music business, specifically music publishing, works. So, I made a conscious study of it, read a lot of books even law books.
Bill ended up hiring me to run his publishing company. I was engineering song demos, pitching songs and working with writers among all of the drudgework. I started writing some with Bill and it evolved in to a situation where I started writing my own stuff “after hours”.
A: What would you say was your big break? How did it all lead up to this album that was completed in 2006?
J: I was writing these songs on my own and, I didn’t tell anybody about them. It was like a release for me. All day long, there was a lot of, what’s commercial? Is this commercial? How can we make this commercial? I would get on my own time and, I didn’t care what was commercial. I didn’t think about, will people like this? It was important to me that I liked it. It could be any style, a rocker, a blues, jazz; anything. It was therapeutic.
Time went by and I had this stack of songs sitting there so, I made demos of them. Just myself playing and singing, tracking all the parts and I put them all on a disc. One night, we were down in Texas doing some shows to promote one of Bill’s records and I just played him the disc. It had about fifteen songs on it. He had no idea I’d been doing this and he was shocked! Floored! He said; “You got to do a record man!” I said, “these songs are all over the map. There’s no focus”. “I don’t care; I think you got a record”.
So, Bill facilitated the deal and I was able to go in the studio, a great studio, with the players I wanted and those songs ended up being the “Trouble Ain’t Over” album. A: Would you rather be a guitarist or a songwriter?
J: I want to be both! I want my cupcake and eat it too. I want to produce more records for other people. I would love to be in a band, like a jam band with some younger cats that wanted to focus on improvising and original songs. I want to continue to write, play, and explore.
A: You write in your blog that around the time that you began recording this new album, you experienced problems with your hands that obviously could have been detrimental to the guitar. Did you try to look past it and continue?
J: I played a gig one night up in Springfield, Missouri. I woke up the next morning and both my hands were numb and tingly. It felt like a bad sunburn but, my hands weren’t red. It was cold at the gig and, the load in and load out were both rushed. I figured I had tweaked my back or something like that and maybe pinched a nerve.
I went to a chiropractor and she thought the pinched nerve theory made sense so; I did about a month of treatments with her. At this time, I was trying to play with the band, icing down all the time and I wasn’t cutting it. She sent me to a neurologist.
The neurologist thought I had carpal tunnel syndrome at first. He said, “stop trying to play, don’t play at all”. I went through a series of cortisone shots, steroids, electrical shock kinds of tests; no evidence of carpal tunnel. So, then the Doc suspected M. S. See, here’s the weird thing, M.S. rarely presents itself in a person’s hands. That threw the Doctor off track But, really every case of Multiple Sclerosis is different.
I went through a bunch of tests because it takes a certain amount of evidence to reach the diagnoses. All in all, from the time I first had the problem with my hands, to finally finding out I did have M.S.; it took around eight months. A: What your reaction?
J: Inwardly; fear, bitterness and anger. Outwardly, I put on a brave face. Eventually, that all came crashing in on me and things got rough.
What would you tell others who are experiencing the same or similar pain?
Don’t mess around, get it checked out. One problem I have is that I have some extent of permanent nerve damage from the extended diagnosis period. A: When you play do you still experience pain and how do you get over it?
J: Yeah, there are always degrees of numbness, tingling and that sunburn feeling. Some days it’s worse than others. I try to avoid fatigue as much as I can. Fatigue and sudden exertion make it worse.
How do you complete daily tasks? (You might want to describe what you wrote in your blog about feeling like you're 14-years old and embellishing on that. It's a great line.)
Little thing like tying my shoes or cufflinks can drive me nuts. I found a pair of those Velcro sneakers in size 13 though. I have to pay attention to details that were second nature like holding on to a lit cigarette. A: When you found out you had Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis, did you feel like that was it for the guitar or did it make you more determined to play?
J: Well, when I first found out about the M.S., I did think my playing days were over. Before the diagnosis, I wasn’t able to play good enough to hold my own and then I went through an extended lay off on top of that.
But, I did try to play. I mean you got to try, right? As soon as I had a small bit of progress, I guess I felt more “determined’ to play well. The real progress started to happen when I found myself having genuine fun. That’s what really inspires me now, when it’s fun!
How did it affect you in terms of guitar playing? Songwriting? (You said that it affected personal relationships and spirituality, perhaps songwriting had a hand in that.)
I’ve gone through different phases and plateaus with my playing similar to someone who is just starting out. That’s what I meant when I wrote; “This has turned out to be the case, my playing improves almost daily. It is kind of like going back to when I was 14-years-old and music was coming at me in leaps and bounds; all was new.”
Here’s the thing though, back when I was young and spending hours every day to develop technique, the reason I felt I needed the technique was to achieve a sound I was hearing in my head. I was learning to play…what I was thinking. As I started to play again, a lot of that technique wasn’t realistic. As I started to gain some ground, what I did not realize is that I was compromising what I was thinking in order to not sound bad. I was pulling my punches. I actually had to retrain my thoughts! But, at the same time, I was still developing as far as musical ideas go. I mean that doesn’t stop. So now, there are things I used to play that I don’t anymore. But, there are things I play now that I didn’t before.
As far as writing goes, as I said before, at one point, I was really angry and some of that came out in the songs I was writing. On a serious note, there was a point where I came to this conclusion; I have to develop spiritually here. If I don’t, I’m not going to survive. That’s how it is for me. As a result, my songwriting lately reflects that. Now, for me, I don’t think it manifests in words. So, what I’ve been working on is instrumental stuff.
There is always a delay between the time you create and the time you release the finished product. Therefore, I have this big batch of songs sitting there, some are very angry, 180 degrees from how I feel at this moment. I had this plan to record and digitally release some of these songs one at a time. Yesterday, my producer, Lou Whitney, called. He’s saying let’s get in the studio. Right now, I feel like doing some of this brand new stuff.
By the way, the first song that I released this way, “Market Street”, a straight blues thing, is available as a free download here at All About Jazz.
A: Your bio says you currently live in a 1973 Winnebago parked at an undisclosed R.V. park in the Ozark hills of southwest Missouri. Tell me about that and how it came about.
J: Ha haa…People are fascinated with the Winnebago. Here’s the dealio, and I don’t want to dwell on the negative, my income has dropped considerably. I had a chance to buy this thing and park it at a campground. It’s the cheapest way to live. It’s cramped even with just me. But, it’s absolutely gorgeous here! If I get restless, I got plenty of woods to walk around in, fresh air and the lake is a stone’s throw. A: How do you deal with the daily struggle to survive and improve?
J: I believe that the moment, this moment…is the truth. I try to be right with this moment. I try to improve myself as a person in that manner. If this moment, I am holding a guitar, I try to be right with it.
A: What would you tell others dealing with daily physical struggles about playing the guitar?
J: I can only speak of my reality. One big problem for me was self-indentifying as a guitar player. Over 30+ years of playing and building everything around that one thing, I had falsely convinced myself that’s who I was, what I was; “guitar player”. “Guitar player” is superficial. It is not “me”. I am thankful that I can play and even improve. But, that can end suddenly. If it goes down that way and I am still here, I will move on.
For our second interview, we capture the voice of Jack Pribek, a guitarist and songwriter who's recent health problems only made him more determined to succeed. Read on to find out how this musician used some bad luck with health to better his luck and his career, then log onto his 
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