Tony Scott: 0:21

Welcome to The Jay Franzi Show, a behind-the-curtain look at the entertainment industry, with insights you can't pay for and stories you've never heard.

Jay Franze: 0:50

Now here's your host, Jay Franze, and with me tonight the Sandy to my Danny, my beautiful co-host, Miss Tiffany Mason.

Tiffany Mason: 1:00

Well, good evening everyone.

Jay Franze: 1:02

If you are new to the show, this is your source for the latest news, reviews and interviews. So if you would like to join in, comment or fire off any questions, please head over to jfranzycom. Well, tonight we have a very special guest, miss Tiffany. I said it once, I will say it again we have a very special guest, miss Tiffany. I said it once, I will say it again we have a very special guest. We have a recording artist with us. But you get this as a twist to it. Tonight, miss Tiffany Hold on I like a twist we will get there.

Jay Franze: 1:30

Hailing from the great state of Indiana, we have Mr Christopher Wyze. Christopher sir, how are you?

Christopher Wyze: 1:38

Glad to be with you, jay, and Tiffany especially. I thought you were the surprise Tiffany. But are you Glad to be with you, jay and Tiffany especially? I thought you were the surprise Tiffany, but I guess I'll be the surprise tonight. She's a surprise to everybody.

Jay Franze: 1:49

She is definitely a surprise, mr Christopher. Sir, how did you develop a passion for blues, being from Indiana?

Christopher Wyze: 2:00

Well, it's funny, my brother came home from college, you know, and that'll, like, you know, corrupt you or something. He came home with an album called BB King and Bobby Blue Bland live together for the first time and he put those vinyls on. I remember when he came home from college and it was like whoa, that is super cool. Now my mom listened to people like Sam Cooke and Sinatra, so there was a little bit of that in there, you know. But it was like cooler than that. It was kind of like mixed up with Elvis and all that. So I kind of stuck that in the back of my head and then we had the Mills brothers playing in the house and so forth. So I had a little bit of blues going on there and that's kind of where it first came in. But eventually I kind of made a pilgrimage to Clarksdale, mississippi, and then it just got off the rails, man for me and I just got steeped in the blues, but we'll get into that if we need to.

Christopher Wyze: 2:59

But that's kind of where it all started.

Jay Franze: 3:02

Were you already performing at that time?

Christopher Wyze: 3:04

Well, you know, I performed and sang, you know, musicals and in a choir and things as a kid and in high school and so I kind of came to music as a performer and we had a real good music program. We would like sing the messiah with an orchestra and things like that so I mean it was.

Christopher Wyze: 3:26

It was super cool and you know, I got to, uh, I got to understand, uh, really, all the parts of music. I was a freshman in high school and I was a first tenor, so I could have been in the vienna boys choir and then a sophomore. I was a second tenor and then a baritone and then a bass. So I kind of matured my way through the treble clef into the bass clef but along the way it was like oh, I get it, there's kind of a melody and there's some harmony, and then there's the bass and that's kind of the rhythm and even if it handles Messiah, you get a sense for how it all fits together. So I sang and then I went to school, went to college, I was a writer and a journalist and an advertising guy and I really went away from music for a long, long time and, kind of 20 years or so ago, started singing in a cover band as a front man and uh, the guys were into the blues, the guys who were in that cover band who asked me to be the front man and I of course had to say, wait a minute, what's a front man? I actually said that.

Christopher Wyze: 4:30

I remember I was like, I was like this kind of uptight business guy. I'm like, oh, hold on here, what are you talking about? But I, uh, I eventually did that. And then these guys were just crazy about the blues and it's like whoa, I remember that stuff. So I kind of jumped back into it and I decided to learn the harmonica, which sent me on an odyssey to the Mississippi Delta, and I learned a heck of a lot more there and met a lot of folks who helped me really make records and really get into this business in a crazy kind of way that I never imagined.

Jay Franze: 5:06

Now you say you were brought back into the blues when you joined this band. So what music were you interested in at that time?

Christopher Wyze: 5:17

I listened to, you know, classic rock man. I mean that's what I liked. I liked Supertramp and I liked Eddie Money and I liked Kansas and Boston and Elton John. I liked I mean just all the great kind of stuff. I grew up in the 70s. My sisters were quite a few years older, you know they don't want to admit that, but they listened to the Beatles and God I love the Beatles. They didn't listen to the Stones, they listened to Beatles, the Beach Boys, john Sebastian, just stuff like that. The Monkees, I mean I love the Monkees. So there was kind of music flowing all around. But you know, just, hey, man, rock and roll, baby, this is the 70s. And it was kind of like you know, garth and whatever his name is in the movie. I mean that was kind of the way it was. I had terrible hair at the time. It was really bad, you know.

Tiffany Mason: 6:16

And we thought we were cool, but we were not cool. I have a podcast where I talk to people about music and it's pretty common that an older sibling will expose them to. You know a certain type of genre. So what was that like? Like he comes home and he's like hey, christopher, you got to check out this final or how? How does the conversation go down? Where are you guys end up swapping music?

Christopher Wyze: 6:36

It was more like hey, what are you doing in my room? I mean, just because I'm like that's what.

Christopher Wyze: 6:41

I was expecting, like, have my stuff and, by the way, I'm going to put on some tunes and get out. You know it's kind of like that. But I think I must have had my ear up against the door or something. And you know he's a college kid so he's playing it really loud so I could hear it. We get along famously now, but it wasn't quite that way when we were growing up. You know not, when it's your kid brother, yeah, and I was the younger brother, so it's like, oh, leave me. You know, get out of here, kid, you know you bother me. So it was more like that.

Christopher Wyze: 7:14

And my sister, you know, listen to the, the Beach Boys and stuff like that. So you know, I heard that kind of coming under the door kind of way as well. So that's that's kind of where it was. But we, you know, we got into, well, like fog hat man, I remember, and the doobie brothers and uh, yeah, it was just so cool. And we, we actually, you know, I remember going to see the doobie brothers and fog hat in in evansville, indiana where I grew up big, big stadium shows and we just thought that was, you know, that was just amazing, it was just super cool. So you know, we kind of had our own music that we got into, that probably everybody did, but we thought it was ours right.

Jay Franze: 7:53

You mentioned the Beatles and the Stones and bands like that growing up. Do you make that connection between blues and that style of music? Because the stones and those type of bands incorporated blues into their music?

Christopher Wyze: 8:08

no question, 100 now not, you know, I certainly didn't recognize it at the time. But when really try to study and learn about the blues and when you do you go, oh, I get it there about the blues. And when you do you go, oh, I get it, there was the blues. And then there was rock and roll. And you know, I didn't know that.

Christopher Wyze: 8:26

And now that I make music and write music and things like that I didn't know how important sort of the pattern of the blues the one, four, five and the 12 bars and all that kind of stuff was to popular music, rock and roll music and rockabilly music, country music, I mean the blues flows through every bit of it.

Christopher Wyze: 8:47

So you know, I've got a bit of a different perspective now that I that I kind of see everything through the lens of the blues, which is super cool and and just kind of a side note, our music's on big radio records. It's part of a company that was founded by Sam Phillips in 1960. So it's called Selecto Hits and Sam Phillips, you know who recorded Elvis and Howlin' Wolf and a lot of great blues men there in Memphis. His nephew and his son run the company today and that's the guys I work with there at Big Radio Records out of Memphis, so it ties right into the blues too, which is kind of you got to pinch me. It's just like so cool to be that close to you know something really important and historic and uniquely American about what goes on with the music that we make here.

Jay Franze: 9:38

We grew up roughly at the same time. What goes on with the music that we make here? We grew up roughly at the same time and if I were thinking of making it in music these days, it would be tough because of the age of the typical artist that makes it these days. But you've chosen a genre that actually benefits the more seasoned people, so do you feel like being in that genre is what's going to lead you to a longer career?

Christopher Wyze: 10:04

Well, there's no question. It's interesting. When I first started writing music and recording music, which was five years ago, for the first time, I wasn't really sure what was going to happen. All I wanted to do was make this record. I'll tell you how we made it here in a minute and I had no idea where it would go.

Christopher Wyze: 10:25

I had no idea if I would just like play it for friends at parties and make sure they had plenty of adult beverages before we put it on and that kind of stuff. But that's not the way this thing went down. In fact, I ended up joining the Nashville Songwriters Association Kind of out of the blue. I took these recordings that I wasn't sure what I was going to do with, and through their mentor program, some folks listened to it and said, hey, we like that. I had one guy say I would buy that stuff, and so then I went to this event.

Christopher Wyze: 10:59

I got to looking around, jay. I was looking for guys that looked like you and I that era, but I was actually looking at folks like Tiffany as well, if you know what I mean. Oh, I know what you mean. I get it songwriting conference and I'm the oldest person here and I might be older than anyone here knows. So I'm like you know, I'm a marketing guy, I was an advertising guy forever and ever and I'm like, whoa, wait a minute, that's not your market, christopher Wise, your market is something else. And so, long story or short story, long Jay. Yeah, it occurs to me that that's the only place I can fit. You know I get it. They're like you're not our guy man and you got to be smart enough to know where your place is. I think, whatever you're marketing or promoting or having people that you want to be interested in it.

Christopher Wyze: 11:54

So it just it all kind of came together, kind of curiously, that oh yeah, I love the blues, I sing in a blues band and I just got into the National Songwriters Association because I didn't know really much about songwriting. So I thought I'd I don't know join an association and see what happened. And that's what happened. It led me to a good decision, which was to get after the blues and to do it after I'd already had my career. I owned a business, I I spent decades being a writer, an advertising guy, writing books, and you know I wrote all sorts of advertising and videos and commercials and technical things, and five books I've got in print and so forth. So I've written a lot of stuff.

Christopher Wyze: 12:38

And so by the time I time I got to the point where I needed to write music. I already knew how to write. I've been doing it for decades. I hired writers. They worked for me. I trained writers, I edited their stuff, and so then I got to do that stuff for me. When it came to writing songs and put it through the same sort of process and hurdles that I used to give to other people. But I do it now with my music. Wait a minute, that's a terrible verb. Where'd you get that? That doesn't make any sense. No one understands that. You're putting me to sleep, man. I'm telling myself this. It's like you've got to do better than that.

Jay Franze: 13:10

So in this genre. This music doesn't happen without an experience, and I think that's what makes the older generations better at the music than the younger generations.

Tiffany Mason: 13:24

Like piggybacking on this a little bit. Yeah, you said you view everything through the lens of blues. So what is that lens?

Christopher Wyze: 13:34

Well, I guess a little backdrop. You know, as I said, I kind of had a business career. I ran a business and I got away from music, so that's the first thing. I sort of put it away. And then I was at a wine dinner it was a church wine dinner, but a wine dinner nevertheless and there's a guy up there on stage and he's playing acoustic guitar. He's really good, he's about my age this was 20 years ago, and I don't guitar. He's really good, he's about my age, this was 20 years ago, and I don't know he takes a break.

Christopher Wyze: 14:03

I go up and I say, hey, man, that was that was really good stuff and I really enjoyed listening to you. And he says, well, are you a musician? I don't know why he said that. And then I said, well, yeah, I sing. I was like I don't know why. I said that I really hadn't sung in 20 years. But I was like, yeah, I mean, I think I was at the point in my life where somebody needed to ask me if I was a musician. And then I needed to say, sure, I'm a singer. And so he said, well, hey, what do you like? And we talked about stuff like the Beatles and the blues a little bit. And he goes well, tell you what do you know? This one and this one. I'm like oh yeah, yeah, I sing in the shower all the time, man, I'm pretty good at it.

Christopher Wyze: 14:41

He's like well, tell you what, let me, let me get a glass of wine here and I'll run up on stage. Why don't you join me? I said that sounds great. Yeah, let's do it. So I always enjoy. Yeah, this really happened. And so we run through two or three songs and people are like more, you know, do more. And I I'm like what else you know here, rick? And you know we must have gone for an hour or so. And I was like well, that was fun, I'll see you later, buddy. And he's like whoa, get back here. What's your name and what? What's the deal here, dude? And he says, hey, we need a front man in our band. I think I said this and I did say well, what do you front?

Christopher Wyze: 15:14

man what's that he's like what he goes come over to my house next week we're having a band rehearsal and uh, let's do this thing. Man, and that was 20 some odd years ago. And uh, he was great blues guitar player and you know, we sang covers, a lot of rock and roll but but really all kind of blues based rock and roll. And these guys talking to blues too and decided, hey, I'm just a singer and I kind of had an inferiority complex although you might be surprised by that, yes, because I did hop up on stage. But you know, I thought, hey, I got to contribute more than just singing in this band. I'm going to learn the harmonica. I always love the harmonica in the blues and so I started playing it and I eventually signed up for a one week workshop in Clarksdale, mississippi, where you learn the blues harmonica. And.

Christopher Wyze: 16:07

I was already playing it and I'm playing it on stage and with the band and so forth, but I wanted to learn to get better. So here I plopped down, kind of like from outer space in Clark, the marshdale, mississippi, at the shack up in which is literally a shack, and uh, there's a bunch of like the greatest blues musicians I've ever seen who are really kind and helpful and they want you to learn the blues and some of them are like amazing at guitar and harmonica. And eventually I met at that very first time I went there Ralph Carter, who became my co-writer on Stuck in the Mud, that album back there and produced both of those albums on the wall back there. Well, ralph didn't play the harmonica but he was one of the instructors in the camp because he was kind of rock and roll royalty. He had played and wrote songs and was the tour musical director for Eddie Money. So here's Ralph Carter who's like the kindest man in the world. He's kind of like Jesus, only a lot nicer. But he's one of these guys. I mean, ralph is just a gentle, gentle man and we kind of hit it off.

Christopher Wyze: 17:19

We're about the same era and you know, I go down to this camp and some people bought a harmonica on the way to the camp. I mean, it's kind of like blues fantasy camp and that's okay and they're going to teach them how to play. I was already playing in a band and you know, I wanted to kind of like how do you give me the secrets of this thing? I want to be a really cool guy on stage with this, and so there were people there who could teach me that too. But I remember at the first camp it didn't take too long where Ralph and I ended up sharing a beverage or two and he's like I don't know, we ended up kind of jamming and singing.

Christopher Wyze: 17:54

He's like hey sort of like what are? You doing here you can do this. I mean, it was kind of like that. I'm like, well, I hope so. I, you know. I went back several more times and Ralph began to say, hey, you need to start writing music. I'm like, what do?

Christopher Wyze: 18:10

I know about writing music. You know, we talk and all that, and then and then and then one time he goes hey, we're going to make a record together someday. I said, man, I'd love to be on your record. And he goes we're going to do your songs, you're going to write the songs. And it was like I mean, I'm like I'm shaking, I'm like wait a minute. You're that guy up there on stage with Eddie Money and the videos with Apollonia and stuff like that, and I'm this guy who just sings in a cover band and you're telling me I can do this. It didn't add up.

Tiffany Mason: 18:43

There's nothing better than when somebody really sees it in you and can give you that boost of confidence before you have it for yourself. And that sounds like that's what Ralph did for you.

Christopher Wyze: 18:54

Well, I had a little bit of confidence. No, it's because you know business was serious to me and you know, feeding the family and having people work for me and wanting them to get a paycheck, I mean that stuff's really serious.

Christopher Wyze: 19:11

Making music that's just total joy and fun and ridiculously cool, and so I never sweated that. I just have no frets or worries or anything about music, other than I love it and it's fun. And so you know I'm sort of lucky. I said to Ralph a few years ago I'm like dang, I wish I would have gotten into music when I was younger. I mean, in a big way he goes. You know what.

Christopher Wyze: 19:37

I think it worked out pretty good for you the way it ended up. Because when I got into it now, you know, does it matter whether I have a hit song or this album does? Well, I'm not knotted up about that, I'm just trying to do good music and have people enjoy it, and I probably wouldn't have approached it that way if I was 20 or 25. Right, I'd probably gotten all wrapped around the axle and I'd have tried too hard and I'd have worked too hard and you know what else Too hard, who knows what. Because I asked Ralph what was this really like? What was it really like being a rock and roller? He said, well, imagine anything you can think of that. You know rock and rollers would have done back in that era and that's exactly what we did. So it was kind of like oh, I get it. So, oops, sorry, ralph.

Christopher Wyze: 20:26

I hope I'm, not selling you down the river. He has a lovely wife.

Jay Franze: 20:29

All right. Well, you mentioned something in there. I want to make sure that we touch on before we get past it. And that was performing and performing live and the passion you have for it. But blues performing is different than rock performing and it's got a different feel to it and it also incorporates humor. So how do you approach performing live?

Christopher Wyze: 20:53

humor. So how do you approach performing live? Well, it's all about the audience. I see so many performers.

Christopher Wyze: 20:55

I saw I won't say his name at a big venue here in Indianapolis a couple years ago and there were parts of the show where this guy who's selling zillions of records or whatever they sell nowadays, he's not even looking at the audience. I mean, he's kind of turned around, he's kind of sullen. It's like really, really that that's what that's about. And so I approach it like look, these people took time out of their lives and their days and whether I'm singing at a you know a small little brewery or something in the beer garden or something bigger than that, they deserve the best that we can do and sort of be taken away from the things they left to come and do this. And so I take that seriously with a big old smile on my face because that's really what it's about. So I like having fun.

Christopher Wyze: 21:44

You know the blues I'll have guys. You know we'll start a blues song and it's. You know they're kind of vamping over there. And a lot of times I'll just tell stories. And what will I tell a story about? Anything that occurs to me.

Tiffany Mason: 21:55

I'm like.

Christopher Wyze: 21:56

I just tell stories. Sometimes they turn into songs, you know. You know I might say, hey, how's everybody doing tonight? You know you say that you go. Is everybody being nice to you? I said is there anybody out there who had a bad day? Seriously, raise your hand. You have a bad day. I'll tell you what, that's all.

Christopher Wyze: 22:13

I just might go into this riff and it might go five minutes when we're all talking about what kind of day we had and how it was bad, and by golly we're going to put some music at you, and we're going to throw the blues in your face and this is going to go away, and that's kind of our job. Are you?

Tiffany Mason: 22:30

doing a song about this when we're finished. It's like mer mer, mer, mer mer. I was on the Jay Frenzy show Mer mer, mer mer mer.

Christopher Wyze: 22:40

Yeah, I've got it. I've got the song man.

Tiffany Mason: 22:43

Okay, we're looking forward to it.

Christopher Wyze: 22:45

I like that. That's the ringer on my phone. You can have that ringer on your phone. That riff is my ringer, of course. So how do you get the performance and the humor and that kind of stuff? And that's what the blues guys did. You know, I would listen to Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters and they would tell stories. Junior Wells oh my goodness, he might go on for five minutes about stuff, and it was like. I'm not trying to mimic it, I just kind of feel it. I know what, I know what there's, I know what they're feeling well.

Jay Franze: 23:20

Blues is about hard times, and you can't get through hard times without having humor yeah, right, yeah, and it's just so cool that it goes back so far.

Christopher Wyze: 23:31

I mean, the blues is old man and people figured out that kind of has a gospel tradition too, that when you sing about having hard times and you bring everybody together, that feels better, and so I think that's where the humor is. You can see the light-heartedness in it. I don't know, man, it's special. Singing the blues, playing the blues and being able to perform for people, that's really special.

Jay Franze: 23:58

So you mentioned earlier that you're actually writing stuff, so can you tell us about your writing process?

Christopher Wyze: 24:06

Well, this whole adventure started with Ralph saying you should be writing music. And then I saw an article in the Wall Street Journal about a recording studio in Muscle Shoals and I snapped a photo of it. I'm a business guy, I'm reading the Wall Street Journal and I sent it to Ralph. I said, hey, here's, we're going to make our album. And I was really just kidding. And he said, yeah, when are we going to do it? So I was like whoa, I think he's serious.

Christopher Wyze: 24:33

And then it kind of occurred to me. I've been a journalist, wrote for a daily newspaper and magazine advertising. There's always a deadline, you know. And the thing is I learned that as a writer, all I need is a deadline and a subject and I'll get it done. I will get it done. And it was almost like when Ralph said, yeah, let's do it, I'm like, well, of course let's do it. This guy thinks I can do this. I'm not about to let him down and, plus, all I need is Pavlov's dog. You give me a deadline and something to do and I write, man, I write 50,000 word books. I know how to crank out a lot of copies, we say in the business.

Christopher Wyze: 25:11

But what Ralph and I did. We said, ok, our deal was this I'll get started writing lyrics, we'll meet in Clarksdale in a few months I think it was like three months and I'll bring my pile of lyrics with me. And Ralph is, I mean, he's a master musician, plays every instrument, he scores things, he writes music. I mean he has a studio in ventura, california. I mean he knows this thing backwards and forwards and I I know that if I can get some lyrics, he'll turn them into music and together we can make these things work. So I decide, okay, we're going to meet in mississippi, because he goes down for these harmonica camps, he also does guitar camps and he does songwriting camps, so he spends a lot of time in Clarksdale.

Christopher Wyze: 25:53

I said, hey, after your last camp's over, I'll meet you at the airport. Or he was flying in and I said I'll pick you up at the airport in Memphis, we'll drive down an hour and a half to Clarksdale and I'll have my lyrics and we'll sit there for three days and let's just get this thing done. And then we'll be up in Muscle Shoals, where we were scheduled to record I don't know a couple of months later. We're like, okay, that sounds like a plan, let's do that, and so we did. I will tell you one of the craziest things while I was on my way down, I drove from Indianapolis. It's about eight hours. You drive through six States to get to Clarksdale, which is kind of fun. But I remember looking down at the map you know the GPS thing in the car and I'm like where in?

Jay Franze: 26:35

the heck am.

Christopher Wyze: 26:36

I and I looked down and it said three hours from Memphis. And I said three hours from Memphis. I think I might have even said it out loud and I'm like, holy cow, that's a song. I had this idea for this song just pop into my head, I don't know how. I wrote a song called Three Hours from Memphis about a guy who's on his way to Memphis to see a music man because he thinks he's going to be a star, he's going to make it. He's been paying his dues for 15 years. I write this song.

Christopher Wyze: 27:08

The idea for the song pops into my head. I'm driving and I'm like I'm too scared to pull off the road. I'm afraid I'm going to forget the idea. So I got out some paper and I set it on the armrest over here and I wrote the lyrics to the song as I'm driving with one hand I'm used to playing harmonica and driving, so I'm OK with this. I literally I mean it's real, this really happened. This is not. It didn't happen. He's just making this up. I can't believe why he's. He's a fabulous, but that's not true. This really happened. And so I remember when I was done, kind of scribbling, I looked down and it was like one hour of Memphis. It's like I can't account for those two hours. I can't account for how that idea came to me. Now, here's the crazy thing. So I meet him in Memphis, blah, blah, blah. We do this.

Christopher Wyze: 27:56

We then go to Muscle Shoals a few months later we record this album for God knows what reason. We don't know what we're going to do with it. Later I sign a record deal with a record label in Memphis and I had no clue. And so later I'm looking at the lyrics to this song after I recorded it. I'm like wait a minute, this is autobiographical. This is about you, you big knucklehead. You're on your way to Memphis to meet a music guy and you're going to be a star. And it's the spookiest thing. And I, you know I. I talked to other songwriters and you, you listen to other songwriters about their craft and how they do it, and they're like I don't get it. I don't know. I don't know where it came from. It came through me. I don't feel like I did it and I'll tell you what that, that song right there. I don't know what happened, but it was my life story before it happened and so it implies when you're having fun.

Christopher Wyze: 28:47

Yeah, it's kind of weird, I'm sorry. I'm sorry to weird you out, I don't know. So my process is I just need a story idea, I need a deadline and I kind of, you know, get the blues a little bit. And then I have some great co-writers Ralph and I wrote eight songs together on our first album Eric Deaton, a guy that plays with the Black Keys, and Hank Williams Jr, and he played with Tony Joe White, an incredible musician. He and I wrote a song on the album.

Christopher Wyze: 29:14

Me and my bass player wrote a couple, and me and Kerry Hudson, who's a great Americana artist, who I met at a songwriting camp and asked him to help me with a couple of songs that I had lyrics for, and so he and I put those together in Clarksdale, mississippi. So my process is to have a story, an idea, and then to tell the story in a few hundred words. You know, that's all I've got, which isn't really terribly challenging. I'm used to, you know, writing a story and having it be done in a couple hours. I mean, that's the way I learned to write, and I don't, you know, I just I write. That's what I do, that's what I know how to do.

Jay Franze: 29:53

What studio did you record in?

Christopher Wyze: 29:56

We recorded it in Ivy Manor at the Shoals, and it was new at the time and what I liked about it that caught my attention is you go there and you live there. It's in an old mansion that this guy, michael Wright, kind of refurbed and made into a studio, and so we stayed there. On Monday morning I met the band. We didn't have a band, so Ralph wrote charts and he auditioned the studio musicians. He brought Eric Deaton to the sessions, our guitar player, and you know I picked up Ralph in Clarksdale. We drove up to Muscle Shoals and I met everybody who was in our band on Monday morning and Thursday afternoon we cut everybody loose and we stuck around and did some vocal stuff on Friday and pretty much walked out of there Saturday with a with a finished record from a group of guys I'd never played with. These songs didn't exist. Being in a cover band, I had recorded several CDs of, of just covers. You know that we would. You know, hey, we're a good band.

Christopher Wyze: 30:59

Listen to our covers here you know and and the thing is, and they were good, I liked them, good old blues, to our covers here, you know. And. And the thing is, and they were good, I liked them, good old blues songs and so forth. But you know, the thing with that is, by the time I recorded them I probably performed them, you know, a hundred times. And so we go in the studio and it's just like turn the thing on, man, let's go. We know this song.

Christopher Wyze: 31:17

We went in the studio on Muscle Shoals and no one had ever heard these songs, including me. We didn't know what they sounded like. We had me and Ralph on my iPhone sitting at a picnic table going it kind of sounds like this, and so that's all we had. So it wasn't that we were going to record these songs that we had created. It was that we went there to create these songs that we sort of intended.

Christopher Wyze: 31:45

We had the words, we had the ideas for the songs. It's kind of like saying, well, I got an idea for a painting and here's the paints and here's the brushes and I know how to operate them, but you still gotta make a painting. And that's what ralph carter did as, uh, as the producer, producer, which I didn't know what a producer did, and now I know that what he does is he can play all those instruments. He would say, hey, I'm hearing a little hand and organ here, or I want that Wurlitzer piano, or Justin, I don't like the timber of that snare, but what else you got, Michael, and you pull a different snare drum off the rack and you put it out there and he listens to it and says hmm, hmm, hmm, let me think about that.

Christopher Wyze: 32:30

You know stuff like that. The great thing about having a producer you know, I'm still a rookie to this, I've only made a couple records is that he's got the pressure to deliver the song. He's calling on us to do what we do. Chris, can you sing that? You know how to do that. Play the harp, play the harmonica, you know, justin, you play the drums, and Eric, you play this on the guitar and et cetera. And you guys do your thing, because it's an improvisational sort of a genre anyway that you know, we're kind of making it up as we go and that's what I like about it.

Christopher Wyze: 33:07

I don't really read music and I don't know if anybody in the band did, but they get it, and so, yeah, and we just lived there for the week with these guys. You know several of them lived there in Muscle Shoals. The rest of us came into town and stayed there. We ate there, we hung Shoals. The rest of us came into town and stayed there. We ate there, we hung out there. We never left. We left one day and went out to grab a sandwich, but we stayed there for five days and we just became this band and recording artists and the whole thing was kind of magical being in a studio setting like that where we could be away from the world and just make this music and then get out of there.

Jay Franze: 33:45

So your background in the corporate world was in marketing and advertising, so were you able to tie that in to, say, the graphic design and then the promotion of this product? No, question.

Christopher Wyze: 33:57

So if you went to my website, pretty much every word there I've written. I also design and produce the website. So you know I have some design skills. But you know, having an advertising agency, I had art directors, I had designers, I had illustrators. You know I understand photography, I understand I used to own a printing company, I understand the graphic arts, I understand design and so one of the first things I did you know I didn't even have a band name when we went to that studio.

Christopher Wyze: 34:24

When we got done, I had to invent a band name and even a name for myself. That's my stage name. I have a different name in the real world, so I invented that. I've been a marketing guy and a promotion guy. And then I enlisted a guy I'd worked with. He's from Spain, his name's Coldo Barrasso. So you know I directed Koldo to do this illustration and it's so funny. Koldo's never seen the land in Mississippi. He kept making mountains back there. I'm like Koldo, it's flat and he would make it kind of rolling, and then he'd make it a little bit rolling.

Christopher Wyze: 34:56

I'd say, koldo, can you draw a straight line? That is the Mississippi Delta right there, a straight line, that is the Mississippi Delta right there. And you know, I'd give him a picture of a shack and a picture of a tractor and then see that picture of me with that shovel. So I had this idea for the song Stuck in the Mud and the graphic idea here for this cover and I said, hey, sally, grab the iPhone here. We got to shoot some reference photos for Coldo. So you know, I know, from graphic arts, most, most illustrators can't make something up. They need some reference art. So I'm over here behind this wall in my basement. I said, sally, grab the camera. I said I'm gonna do some poses, so I do a couple. She goes okay, I got them. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. We shot 3 000, I 3,000 photographs to get that pose right there of me. And then of course we gave it to Koldo and he made it into an illustration. So you know, I understand that that's what it takes to do quality sort of graphic work and graphic design. That's his hand lettering.

Christopher Wyze: 35:57

You know, I found the shack, a photograph of the shack I liked. I found a tree I liked. I found the tractor I liked. A photograph of the shack I liked. I found a tree I liked. I found the tractor I liked. And you know, I know how to work with creative people and designers to end up with a product like this. And then I produced the thing and put some of my photography in there. I used to be a photo editor at a magazine and then I wrote a booklet. We got a 20-page booklet that's inside of there that tells the story of how this thing came to be. I put the lyrics to the songs. I want people to be able to see what, what, what these stories are about, and I put some photographs of us having fun making records.

Christopher Wyze: 36:30

We recorded three songs actually in clarkstown, mississippi. After I signed the record deal and I figured out I couldn't be a country star, I said, oh, I got to take this record and we even had a couple songs that didn't make it onto the final record. They were they were not blues oriented and so, uh, working with big radio records and johnny phillips, we said, hey, let's really go all in on the blues. So I wrote some new songs and we went down to, uh, clarksdale, mississippi, and recorded them in clarksdale because there were some guys there with that Ralph knew and he was there and I'm like let's just go do it there.

Christopher Wyze: 37:04

And we did, and we were going to record two songs and then the night before I always do this kind of stuff to myself I'm like, ralph, hey, we got the guys here, say what if we did a third song? And he's like, well, what do you mean? I said, maybe, maybe a cover. And I'm like I don't want to do a cover. And and he's like, well, I'll tell you what this is. Late at night he goes well, why don't you write a new song? And we'll do that tomorrow. I'm like, okay, that sounds good.

Tiffany Mason: 37:30

I mean, he gave you a deadline, he did.

Christopher Wyze: 37:32

And so I remember staying up late with Jerry Murphy, our bass player, Murph, and Murph and I had this song that we'd done in our cover band. We kind of took this song and we put kind of new music to it. But I used somebody else's lyrics and Ralph knows that song. He said what about that song? You wrote that, didn't you? I said, well, Ralph, I didn't have the heart to tell you we really didn't write that song. Those aren't my words, he's like those are covered. I said the lyrics, the lyrics are, covers Me, and Murph kind of did the music. He goes why don't you write some new lyrics for that? This is 10 o'clock at night. We're going to record the next morning at like nine.

Christopher Wyze: 38:07

And I'm like, okay, okay, sure, that sounds good, I'll do that, I'll have that. So I remember going to bed and I took a little notebook. I'm in my shack, literally. You stay, have the blues. If you don't know how to write the blues, you will learn how to write the blues, just hang in there. So I start writing this and I don't have anything going. I'm like, nah, I don't have it, I don't know what this song's about. So I go to bed. I don't have the song, I said. But before I went to bed and this sounds like another crazy story I said you know what, when I wake up, I'm going to have this song. I know, and and I did.

Christopher Wyze: 38:49

I woke up and I had this idea for this song called Hard Work, don't Pay. It's a great blues song. It's like I'm tired of working for the man. This hard work crap doesn't pay. And so we wrote and recorded or I wrote that morning and recorded that day Hard work, don't pay. We had the band there. It's like Murph, let's teach him hard work, don't pay. And then I had the lyrics in front of me. We did it, we did a music video and of course I've got the. I've got the music stand in front of me because I don't even know the words. They're not even you know. The ink's not even dry on the paper and we're recording the darn thing.

Christopher Wyze: 39:22

So we really did do that, and Kerry Hudson's such an amazing guitar player and performer he performs all over the South. He's an incredible singer, songwriter, guitar player and he just added so much amazing work to several songs that I wrote and a couple of them I wrote with him like stuck in the mud, which was the name of the of the, the album we had. We had actually intended to record that muscle shoals and Ralph and I were in the studio working with it's like this isn't working. So I met Carrie and said, hey, I got a song I can't quite seem to make work. Would you be willing to work with me on this? And he did. We quite seem to make work. Would you be willing to work with me on this? And he did. We sat at a picnic table at the shack up in and probably in 15 or 20 minutes he's like why don't you do this? And, hey, you got too many words in this thing and let's move this over here, and here's kind of how it sounds. And he's like I gotta go. And I'm like, okay, and so, uh, then we recorded it a few weeks later. So we did a demo that day which, uh, which we almost. We almost kept on the album. It was good. We went and did it inside the Juke Joint Chapel They've got recording equipment there. But we actually ended up doing it in Muscle Shoals.

Christopher Wyze: 40:33

In one take I was in a vocal booth on one floor of the studio and Eric Deaton, the guitar player, was in the basement. I couldn't see him. We had, you know, headphones on cans and this song was called life behind bars. We did one take and, uh, ralph, who's the producer? He said, look, eric, just follow him. And Eric was like, yeah, I got it. And I think we did part of the song and he said, well, let's just try one. So we did it and done. I said I'm never, I'm not doing that again, eric, how about you? He goes, I can't do any better. I said I for certain can't do any better.

Christopher Wyze: 41:08

So that was a one take, charlie on the chemistry yeah, it's called life behind bars about a guy who, uh, well, he's, he lives his life behind the 12 bars. He's kind of a prisoner to 12 bars of the blues and he, his life is behind bars because he passes out in the alley and he, his life is behind bars and so forth.

Tiffany Mason: 41:30

So it's a little bit of story. I love a dual meaning like that.

Christopher Wyze: 41:34

Yeah, yeah. So that's life behind bars.

Tiffany Mason: 41:36

What was it like to? What is the difference in experience? So you have the songs and then you're going to go record them, but you guys put them together with the lyrics, you and Ralph and then three months later you record. Now in this situation you're like I don't know. The songs are coming to me in the morning. I have to imagine that's like super awesome to have this song come to you, be able to cut it that same day, and you're like holy crap's, it's, it's living, it's breathing, compared to the the other time where you know you had three months to kind of sit on it and noodle and think about it and what was that like?

Christopher Wyze: 42:11

but I've got to imagine that's like super cool feeling well, as I said, me and Murph kind of knew the music, so it was pretty easy. I mean, that groove was was inside me, I'd done it a hundred times, and so then it it's just like well, hey, this is like paint by numbers, man, just write some new words to the music that we already had but it was really fun and I kind of liked the the pressure of having to get it done when I woke up and having about 90 minutes to get it done.

Tiffany Mason: 42:40

It's gotta be super gratifying.

Christopher Wyze: 42:43

It was cool and to have it kind of work. You know it's basically take this job and shove it man. That's what that song is, which has been done a thousand times in a thousand ways. But that was our interpretation of that, so it was very fun. It was very fun.

Tiffany Mason: 42:58

Yeah, that's super cool. I love that creative process. I'm also curious how difficult was it to learn the harmonica? It seems very simple to me just slide back and forth, but there's got to be a breathing technique or something like. If we can go back to that a little bit, I was just kind of curious. You know all these people are there.

Christopher Wyze: 43:28

They're maybe not as serious as you, but you're really trying to figure out you know. What do I not know? What did you learn? How do you learn to play the harmonica? Well, it helped to understand the blues, the pattern of the blues. You know the one, four, five pattern and the harmonica is kind of a chord thing. You can blow and you automatically make a decent thing On a piano. You got to have your hands in the right place here. You just kind of blow and draw and it makes the right sound. So I had already been playing on stage and had a few like instructional CDs that I could get by just in, uh, just kind of making sure I was in the one chord when we're on the one chord, and the four chord and the five chord, and I kind of got that. So I mean, within a couple of weeks I was playing it with the band, not in any kind of hey, and now we'll turn the solo over to that guy.

Christopher Wyze: 44:08

I mean I wasn't ready for that, but I could, I could play along. So, uh, I think it's a very uh at least if you have some musical kind of I get it. Um it pretty simple thing. To get up to kind of somewhat competent very, very quickly and then to get really good is a lifetime pursuit. And I'm you know, I'm an okay harmonica player. There's guys who I just melt because they're so amazing, like RJ Michaud, who is a teacher of mine, and Jason Ritchie, who's an unbelievable harmonica player who I've taken lessons from, and things like that. So the next mountain is quite tall and it goes up in the clouds and you don't know where the top is and you'll never get there. But the little foothills are kind of fun and peppy.

Tiffany Mason: 44:58

Yeah.

Christopher Wyze: 45:00

You can do it, tiffany, come on.

Jay Franze: 45:04

Don't give her hope. We've got to have hope. She's going to show up on the next episode with a harp and it's going to wear me out.

Christopher Wyze: 45:13

My wife won't let me play it at home. Seriously, I never play it at home. I only play it in the car or at band rehearsal or practice. That's it. Who wants to hear a harmonica? I don't know Without the whole band.

Tiffany Mason: 45:25

And it causes the dog to go nuts.

Jay Franze: 45:28

All right, going back to your marketing a little bit here, are you now taking that, that knowledge and applying it to social media to grow a following in that world?

Christopher Wyze: 45:39

Yeah, no question. I bet I spend 30 to 40 hours a week on promotion and social media. That's what I do. You know I'm getting a kick out of it. We've them, we recorded and released as a live album and a video that goes with it, and also a 50 minute documentary that I filmed in Clarksdale, mississippi, about the blues, because I wanted to do that and have people see Clarksdale, and people told me you can't do this. I'm going to do it this way. I'm going to be a marketing dude and I'm going to apply what I know here and I advertise every day of the year on Facebook, every day, every day. And you know I make videos, I make posts. I mean, we're active with it because I got to build a following, because I have other dreams for where we're going with this music and we need we need people to get on the old Christopher Wise and the Tellers junk wagon.

Jay Franze: 46:45

And it wouldn't be a bandwagon, that'd be too sophisticated.

Christopher Wyze: 46:48

Ours has to be kind of a junk wagon. So jump on the dang junk wagon or that tractor back there and I do it through marketing. So I spend a lot of time on the marketing and I get that. And when it was my job and I ran an advertising agency, it was work, but you know what it is now. It's like joy. I was like I have fun with this. I get to write the copy and approve the copy. I don't have to send it to a client, I am the client. Of course I work for a jerk now that I'm the client, but whatever, all right, sir.

Jay Franze: 47:24

Well, we do this thing here. We call Unsung Heroes, where we take a moment to shine the light on somebody who may have worked behind the scenes or supported you in some sort of way. Is there anybody that you would like to shine a little light on?

Christopher Wyze: 47:32

Yeah, I'll say Jerry Murphy, who plays bass in my band, and he was at the guy's house who said, hey, come over next week and we're going to have man practice and you're going to be the front man. Well, there was this guy there, jerry Murphy, who was playing bass, and I'm sure he was rolling his eyes. It's like, oh dear God, rick's had a bunch of wine and now he's invited this guy over to be in the band. But from the day I met him he has been like my wingman, supporter, teacher, mentor. He really has taught me the blues and music and performing. He's quite an accomplished musician. He wrote two of the songs on our album Stuck in the Mud. He went down to Muscle Shoals with me a couple of weeks ago. We had a couple of TV appearances in Nashville and Huntsville. I said, murph, how would you like to go on a road trip? And he's like heck, yes, cw, I'll go with you. And I mean, he's just my wingman man.

Christopher Wyze: 48:28

And he's just always there with me and I couldn't do it without him and for me to be able to look across in the studio or on stage and to see Jerry Murphy there, it's like things are going to be all right. I get it. Murph Murphy there, it's like things gonna be alright, I get it.

Tiffany Mason: 48:46

Murphy's in the house, you know Very cool, that's cool, alright.

Jay Franze: 48:48

Well, we have done it. We have reached the top of the hour, which does mean we have reached the end of the show. If you've enjoyed the show, please tell a friend and Miss Tiffany if you have not.

Tiffany Mason: 48:57

Tell two.

Jay Franze: 48:57

Tell two. You can also reach out to the two of us. Hell, you can reach out to all three of us over at jayfranze. com, and we will be happy to keep this conversation going. Christopher sir, we cannot thank you enough for joining us tonight. It has been an absolute pleasure.

Christopher Wyze: 49:12

You will have to come back and share some of the other stories, including this documentary, that we were not prepared for tonight, so I would like to get into that a little bit with you as well, but for tonight, we would like to leave the final words to you well, one of the great things about this little journey I've been on it's really kind of corny, but is making friends along the way, and I think if I'd have been a young man I'd have probably not been nice to people and, you know, I'd have thought I was kind of important and so forth. But what's been fun to do this, after having gone through all that and and maybe grown up a little bit, is to sit back and go. I met jay and I met tiffany today and every day I get one of those or two of those or three of those and and it's like like wow, I like is cool, I met you guys. I really want to know where you live, so to speak, tiffany. Where do you live? You said Florida.

Jay Franze: 50:10

She lives at 924 West 2nd Street.

Tiffany Mason: 50:13

I got directions to your place, Christopher. It's cool.

Christopher Wyze: 50:16

I know you're going to stop me, no, but I guess that's the last thing I would say is I wouldn't be here with all these wonderful people like you. You know you're helping our music. This is like amazing. We've never met before and I want to help you too. But it's just really amazing when people you know help you, and what nice people there are in the world. So I mean it sounds corny but it's dang true. I mean that's the way I want it to be. I mean it sounds corny but it's dang true. I mean that's the way I want it to be. It's just about having fun and making friends and spreading some music. That makes people kind of enjoy themselves.

Jay Franze: 50:51

On that note, folks have a good night.

Tony Scott: 50:54

Thanks for listening to The Jay Franze Show. Make sure you visit us at jayfranze. com. Follow, connect and say hello.