Doc Stevens

Tondeleo: We've been talking with Doc and his lifelong friend, Big Dave about growing up in poverty, and having to make do with very little in the way of food, clothes, money and other material goods. There was not only financial and material poverty, but also the poverty of family live and support, the poverty of emotional support and poverty of opportunity.

I've been interviewing Doc and Big Dave for three evenings, and will be publishing excerpts from our several hours of talking. 

Big Dave, you talked about your father being in and out of jail, and having bad health, and alcohol problems. How did that affect you growing up?

Big Dave: Well, you learn not to depend on nobody for nothing. The old man might promise to get you something say for your birthday or Christmas, and you learn not to get your hopes up. He mighta been lying, just BS'ing you, to get you to be quiet. Or, he mighta meant it at the time. You never can know. He mighta said he'd get you a present for Christmas because he had just got paid. 

But that didn't mean he'd get you anything. He mighta needed that money to pay back a loan. Or to pay the light bill. He mighta just drank that money away or smoked it up. Then when Christmas would roll around, you would half hope he'd a gotten you something, but you knew not to get your hopes up. 

If he'd remember to get you a Slim Jim or a candy bar, you'd done all right. Or, he mighta got drunk on Christmas eve and be somewhere else. or in jail. You never could tell. 

Mama would call the churches right before Christmas and try to get something for each of us. Sometimes that worked out pretty good. Sometimes not. Some years she waited too late and there wasn't nothin' left for us.  Sometimes the toys they gave needed batteries and we'd never have money for batteries, so we'd just use them the best we could.

We ain't never had a Christmas tree. We decorated a tree stump out back... 

Tondeleo: How about you, Doc? How did growing up poor affect you and your family?

Doc: I don't really know, Tondy, 'cause that is all we knew. We didn't know what it was like to have nice clothes, or new clothes. But it never crossed out minds to get brand new clothes. People at the church gave clothes to us, in big black plastic garbage bags. We got some stuff from the thrift shop. That's just where we figured clothes came from. We didn't even know about so many things that the rich kids had. They lived in a different world. Kind of a sissy world, if you ask me. But we learnt things they didn't learn.

Tondeleo: Things like what, Doc?

Doc: Well, we learnt not to cry every time we got hurt. We learnt that you could fall down and cut yourself and be bleeding, but that didn't mean you had to cry. That was a good thing.

Tondeleo: You didn't CRY? Why on earth not, Doc?

Doc: Well, the old man didn't like to hear cryin,' and said to save cryin' for somethin' bigger than a cut or bruise or a knot on your head. He said you could get hurt and not say or do nothin', and he did that all the time. You never knew if he was hurt. And he was right. You can get cut or hurt or whatever and not cry.

We learnt not to be picky about eatin'. Food don't have to taste good or be your favorite. Food ain't s'posed to be entertainin', food is fuel. If you're hungry, you'll eat it. Don't matter if it's so called good or not. We learnt to eat anything and everything, Tondy!

Big Dave: We learned how to fight. Rich kids didn't know how to fight, and as soon as they'd get hit, they'd bust into tears and start crying like babies! We learned to fight because we had older brothers who picked on us, neighbors, teenagers, everybody. So we had to defend ourselves. Fightin' aint somethin' you'd choose to learn when you're little, but it pays off when you get to school and people are makin' fun of you because you're poor. You can only take so much, and then you gotta do something about it. 

I remember the rich kids takin' karate lessons. They'd PAY  and go every week to a class where they wore pajama's and then played like they was fightin' in slow motion. We never put on pajamas to fight and I aint never been in a fight in slow motion.

The teachers and principals didn't agree with us given a whoopin' to some snooty rich kid, but ain't no one ever made fun of the teachers and principals. They was probably the ones makin' fun of poor kids when they was in school...

Doc: Yeah, and they was the ones gettin' beat up by us poor kids when they was makin' fun of us and laughin' at us. So when they grew up and got good jobs, they'd always take sides with the rich kids who was laughin' at us.

It ain't fair, but we learned how to not care about fair, 'cause fair ain't nothin' that's ever gonna happen to a poor person.

Tondeleo: Whatever did they laugh at you and mock you for?

Doc: How we looked, how we talked, how we dressed, where we lived. You name it. Our house was a shack compared to where they lived. But it was home, for us.

And, we couldn't go to a barber shop so mama cut our hair with scissors. She wasn't too bad at it, but the rich kids laughed at us for that. Same with our clothes. They was all hand me downs, and didn't fit too good. Either too big or too small. Sometimes they was a little smelly from the last person what owned 'em and sweated a lot. Or, maybe someone gave us jeans and they was woman or girl jeans but we didn't know the brand names, so we wore them anyway.

In gym class, it would be the underwear. I ain't wearin' no thrift shop underwear, so mama made our underwear outta old t shirts or pillow cases. She'd make 'em like shorts and put a draw string around the waist. That's the way they did it in the old days which is why underwear is called "drawers," but ain't no one at school was interested in that.

The girls don't wanna go out with someone what is poor or has homemade underwear. So we had to pick from other poor girls when we got interested in girls and all that goes with it, if you know what I mean.

Big Dave: I ain't never wanted to date some prissy girl anyway. I liked a girl who could hunt and fish and fight better than some cream puff rich girl who thought she'd get dirty if she let you touch her...and sometimes they would get dirty if I touched 'em!

Bein' poor, you learnt how to fix things instead of throwin' them away. If you couldn't fix something, you could learn how to use it broken or you could make something else out of it. That's how Doc got all his early guitars. Puttin' broken ones together...

Tondeleo:  It must have been hard to grow up poor...

Doc: Times was hard, and still are, but you're gonna grow up whether you are rich or poor. You got to learn how to laugh, too. We learned how to laugh at everything.

We were so poor, when we went to KFC we licked other peoples' fingers... you got to laugh at what problems you can't solve.

And  guess what, Tondy? We all made it! We ate, we fought, we cried a little bit, we made things, we fell in love with poor girls, got our hearts broke by them and probally broke a few hearts, and here we are!

Tondeleo: One thing that impresses me about the poorer rural Americans I have met is their creativity. From the places the live, and the improvements they make to them, to their vehicles, their clothes, musical instruments, what they eat... everything.

Poor people want the same things as the rest of us, only they don't have the money available to just go out and buy the things they want. They want to have their own unique personal style, they want convenience items, they want to have fun... and they have to use their creativity in order to be able to do that. Also, they have to be able to not only use their imaginations to be able to pretend that what they have is what they really want. What got me started on this line of thought was when Doc and Big Dave were talking about their childhoods and some of the things they did and their parents did in order to make do...

Big Dave: Yeah, we didn't have much of anything when we was growin' up. Pop had bad health and couldn't work much. Mama did whatever she could to bring in a few dollars and most of that went to the light bill and rent... four of us kids to feed, We lived in Old Man Adams' yard, in the trailer back by the tool barn. He was good to us as far as understanding when rent was late. the 'lectric company wanted their money pretty much every month and sometimes let us pay late. 

If they cut us off, Pop would run a cord from Old Man Adams' workshop out to the trailer. We had a hose runnin' out to the trailer for our water.

We didn't have much time to play and not much of a mind to play. When your old man is drunk and hittin' mama and cussin' at you you don't want to play. You don't want to play when your belly's empty. We didn't have much fun and ain't nobody talked much about havin' fun, so we didn't miss it.

Doc: We was pretty much the same way. But we did have music in the house. Daddy and mama did like music. We didn't have nothin' to sing about, but we liked listenin' to country music and gospel and blues. 

Pop had a record player he got down to the dump and we got old scratched up records from the dump. We had to make up words alot 'cause the records was scratched and no good - that's why people threw 'em out. 

Same with instruments. Sometimes we found rusty harmonicas or bent up trumpets and stuff. A lot of broke up guitars - well I mean two or three a year. That's how I got started makin' guitars. I could take a neck off a broken guitar and put it on a wooden box or a tool box and cut a hole for the sound to come out. My fingers was never long so I had to learn how to sand the necks down so my hands could fit around them, and make the strings real low. I still do that. 

Big Dave: We did that. We made  drum sets outta dry wall mud buckets and empty paint cans. It sounded pretty good, if you did it right.

Tondeleo: How about food? What did you all do for food? 

Big Dave: Well, we hunted. Deer, rabbit, squirrels, possum, coon. Shot ducks, went fishin'. We did all right. We grew tomatoes, kale, corn, beans and all that. We ate ok.

Doc: We did the same thing. Plus, there's road kill like for deers mostly. If you come home an' there's a dead deer on the side of the road what wasn't there earlier, you know it's fresh enough to eat. Even if it's been there long enough to get stiff, that don't mean it's bad.

Tondeleo: Road kill... OK. Some people would find that disgusting, you know.

Big Dave: So that just makes it one less person tryin' to field dress a deer on the side of the road. More power to 'em.

Doc: I find bein' hungry disgustin'. If it's fresh, it ain't nothin' wrong with eatin; roadkill. At least you know it was healthy when it got hit.
 
Tondeleo: So how DO you know if it's been there long enough that it's bad? 

Doc: Fleas. If the fleas are still on it, then it's fresh enough to eat. If the fleas have left, you don't want to eat it. That's the way you tell.

Tondeleo: How about sweets, dessert, fun food?

Big Dave: We didn't really have fun food. We didn't really have fun, like I said. But in the summer, Mama would get a jar of dill pickles, and we'd get out a dill pickle and dip it in Kool Aid powder. That was pretty  good on a hot day.

Doc: We did that one, too. Also, this is funny. We never could afford ice cream. So mama would give us a couple of spoonfuls of Coffee Mate on a jar lid, and then a ice cube wrapped in a piece of newspaper. We'd dip that ice cube in the Coffee Mate and pretend it was ice cream! It was good enough for us and sometimes I still like it better than ice cream... it's cheaper, too.

Marilyn: We got it so we can play just me and Doc, or Just Rick and Doc, just me, Rick and Doc, just Rick and Doc, just me, Doc, Rick and Jerry or any part of the band and we can give them a good show, can't we, Doc?

Doc: Yeah, it ain't an issue. Sometimes a whole band will back us up, if it is just one or two of us. Like we played over to a place in Waldorf an' everyone but Handsome Brian the Bishop Garner, our drummer could make it. We weren't gonna cancel 'cause of that. And we weren't playin' without a drummer.

So when we got there, we started askin' around, and Jerry found a drummer named Bradley who was playin' with another group. I think he turned out to be from Bowie, MD, up the road about an hour.

We talked to him a bit about how we sound and what kind of music we do, and when we got up, Bradley got up with us and played just like he'd been with us for years.

Marilyn: He was truly anointed and that is what makes the difference so it can sound like he had been with us forever. The Holy Ghost was in him and the Holy Ghost HAS been with us forever, and He knows all our songs and just played them through Bradley. 

Doc: That, and Bradley is a good drummer in the first place. We never seen him before and ain't seen him since. But if we're out somewhere and need a drummer and he is there, we'll ask him up to play again.

Tondeleo: But doesn't that make you at least a tad nervous? That would give me an ulcer!

Marilyn: NO, you got to have faith, Tondy, you got to have faith.

Doc: Marilyn's right. You gotta have faith, and then open your mouth and ask around. You'll find the people you need! 

Tondeleo: Whenever I hear Doc and Marilyn and the band play, I always hear songs that I have never heard before in  my life. Some of what they play I have heard somewhere before, but most of it is new to me. They sing a lot of originals, but a lot of what they do, Doc says is old stuff, stuff that everybody ought to know. 

But I have asked other musicians at venues and events where they play, and other musicians also shake their
heads and say they have no idea where Doc and Marilyn's songs come from. Like me, they are familiar with some of them, or others they might say they might have heard when they visited their grandmum's house years ago, but they basically don't know where the songs come from, or why they are played the way they are.

Doc: I play the songs I love and I play them how I feel them. Marilyn does, too. That's it. I don't never try to play it like the original 'cause I couldn't anyway. Matter o'  fact, the original artists ain't play them again like they did on the record - 'cept for George Thorogood, cause he always plays it word for word, note for note from the record to one concert to the next - but everybody else changes it from one time to the next, depending on their mood.

Like, when the original group is recording, they might do five or ten takes of the song. Finally, they get enough of it right that they can mix it into a song. But all of those takes ain't identical. Close, but not identical. Then when you hear the group play live, they always change it up a bit from the record as we know it.

But the deal is this. They don't sound just like the record, but they always sound like themselves, not somebody else. So if I play it or you play it or someone else plays it, why are we supposed to sound like the original band did on that one take that came out as the final release?

Guess what? We ain't gonna sound like them if we tried. Maybe close, but mostly not. The voice will be different, the tone will be different, other things will be different. But worse than that, we won't even sound like ourselves! I ain't gonna be happy tryin' to sound like someone else and failin'! I might as well sound like me and play the way I feel it.

If I don't like a song, I ain't gonna sing it. I ain't gonna play it, neither. If I DO like it, I'm gonna FEEL it. And that is the only way I'm gonna play it. Marilyn's the same way. So's the rest of the band. That's how we all got together in the first place. We just play what we love and play it the way we feel it. Most of what we play, the rest of the band ain't never heard the original anyway.

Tondeleo: So, WHERE do you get your material? Most of us have never heard these songs before... 

Doc: Well, Tondy, some of them I grew up hearin' from my relative's record players, at family gatherin's and such. Others I found on records what we got from the landfill, what other people was throwin' away. Some was so scratched up I had to make up the words where they wasn't playin' right, and I still don't know the right words.

Others were just songs that we all sang growin' up, when we'd get out the instruments and all sing together. Uncles, aunts, cousins, grandma, grandpa, neighbors and friends. A lot of 'em we got from church. Gospel concerts, fish fries and other things at church, you know, picnics, barbecues and all that.

Pentecostal churches always have good music. You can learn alot by goin' to a Pentecostal church. Jerry Lee Lewis, he came from a Pentecostal church. Elvis did, too. Aretha was a church girl. Otis Redding came from church, and Little Richard. Some of them's daddies was preachers. A lot more came from churches and that is where they learnt to play and sing and perform at.

Like with Marilyn, some of the songs she grew up with, she never heard the original. She just heard me an' my friends play 'em or heard them at church, and that's how she thought they was supposed to sound. Then later, she mighta heard one of them on a jukebox somewhere, and she'd say, "Uncle Doc, I heard 'I Believe To My Soul' on the jukebox today and it didn't sound right!"

I'd tell her that it sounded right for that take in the recording studio when that band recorded it; sounded right for them that time. the way we play it sounds right for us, at whatever time we sing it. She's old enough now that she gets it, but when she was 12 or 13, she just figured that our way was right and the other ways were wrong!

It's easier to play a song if you only play it the way you feel it whenever you play it. You're not tryin' to copy anybody, and you're free to holler it as you feel, and play it for as long as it takes for you to be done with it. That's how we do it, anyway.