"Album Notes

The first live music I remember was in our old farmhouse south of Springfield, Missouri. Folksingers and fiddlers, classical singers, and poets would perform. There the seeds of my calling were planted, and I've followed that calling ever since. All this happened in the late 1930s and early '40s.

Born during the Great Depression, I am no stranger to hard work and am also on intimate terms with danger. I sing about work and danger because I have experienced them. I could have simply played music all my life, but I chose, along with my music, to join the ranks of other working people from time to time. I have had about 25 different kinds of jobs off and on – fireman, construction worker, VIP driver, Marine infantryman, consultant to a think tank, and steeplejack to name a few.

I put the faces and hands on the beautiful courthouse clock in Frankfort, Indiana when I was in my 60s. Of course, there have been long stretches when all I did was music. Not being totally financially dependent on music can allow you to write and play what you want, where you want.

I've played in many of the roughest honkytonks and bust-out joints in America and some of the best concert halls. I've busked on street corners, done a lot of live radio and recording, written award-winning film music, and narrated other people's prose and my own. Though I've played many different kinds of music, I favor most my effects-laden, high energy, experimental guitar solos, such as "Wild Stallion," gospel, and blues. Six blues are contained here.

When I was a teenager, I hung out at a black-owned shoe shop. The owner played guitar for a gospel quartet. One night, after hours, an older man picked up my friend's guitar and I heard my first live blues. I was stunned by the pure magic of it. I've been doing blues ever since.

I worked with and led "Blind" Tommy Hunt in the early '50s, a fantastic piano man and my main mentor. I was the only white person in five or six black bands. You learn a lot that way. I have played Western swing and Kansas City jazz, rancheritas (Mexican country songs), just about everything. In the late forties and early fifties I started what is now called "high energy, experimental guitar." I am gratified when I hear younger people playing in this style today.

I learned to sing by just putting wings on my speaking voice, not trying to sound like anyone else.

This is my music and it's your music too!

Pat Webb, July 2002
Brown County, Indiana"

All his original stuff is ASCAP.