The Bill Stone Interview

Tell me about growing up in Old Town, Maine. What was your childhood like? When were you first introduced to music and what initially fascinated you about it? Did you grow up in a creative and musical family during those early days?

My sister and I grew up in the quintessential Ossie and Harriet/ Leave it to Beaver, 50’s upbringing. We walked to school, played in a safe neighborhood, pretending to be cowboys, with occasional interruptions for pick-up games pursuing whatever sport was in season. We gathered with an extended family on holidays, with mother at home and a father working in the family business. He had the same job from the time he returned from WWII until he retired. I even knew my great-grandfather. (His father fought in the Civil War.) As a down-east saying expresses, “Given a sharp knife and a soft piece of pine, I couldn’t whittle a better childhood.” The one downside was and is severe asthma which has plagued me all my life. My father played the trombone and my mother played piano. We had a house full of record albums featuring big band and musicals. My absolute favorite was Three Penny Opera. I wore out Mack the Knife and like to claim the song shaped my moral development. I still have a copy of The Concord Junction Golden Redeemers Jazz Band, an indie production of a Dixieland style jazz band from Concord, Massachusetts. Their random and irreverent, “just for the hell of it,” style influences me now every time I get on stage. Somewhere around fourth grade I took piano lessons and then trombone in hopes it would help my asthma. Piano and trombone were total disasters. I remember at a very early age telling my mother I wanted to play guitar.

What would you and your friends do for fun back in the day? Who were among some of your favorite groups that left a heavy impression on you? Where would you go to see bands perform and when did it dawn on you that music was something that you wanted to pursue with a passion and make this your life’s journey?

As a freshman in high school, I taught myself to play. Early in my learning I heard Donovan’s Catch the Wind and was totally mesmerized. My music is not much like that first album, but I was totally captivated by the Maybelle Carter thumb picking style and still use it for folk, big band, rock, anything I play. I now play guitars from Stratocasters to nylon strings, all flailing away with a thumb pick. In high school I played in a folk group. Our debut, and my first-time playing guitar in public, was at a hunter’s breakfast at 5:00 am. The hunters slurped beans and coffee with occasional glances at the stage as they waited for sunrise and their first day of hunting. As my undergraduate college years drew to a close I was playing semi-professionally, sometimes in a group and sometimes alone. With stars in my eyes, I ran into Jeff Weinstein who was trying to build a business as a booking agent and producer.

When did you first begin to perform live and what was that experience like for you? Were you in any groups prior to setting off on your own journey? Tell me about writing and recording your legendary debut album in ‘70. When and where did this take place?

I had enough material to fill an album so he convinced me to make an LP. I graduated from college during a recession, married and unemployed. I was able to support my wife and I playing in local bars in the Portland, Maine area. While working a few gigs I pursued a master’s degree in guidance finally landing a guidance job in a rural Maine high school. While there I formed a group with two other enthusiasts but it was limited as the “day job” consumed most of my energy. Eventually I pretty much stopped playing. During the years my wife and I raised a family I worked in several areas of education, foundation work, higher education, and management consulting. I have written some career planning workbooks and a self-help guide for adults. I’ve written a fair amount concerning chaos theory, self-organizing systems, and what they tell us about the evolution of a career self-concept. During my research and academic writing years I spoke at a few conferences and taught aspiring guidance counselors. Playing in bars provided excellent training for my teaching and counseling career. Twenty-five years later our daughter announced that she wanted me to play at her wedding. I had a year to get back in shape, but thought my arthritic hands weren’t up to the task. I tried anyway and discovered the guitar playing helped my hands.

I didn’t dare stop so revisited my salad days and began to play out again. I find myself pretty much consumed with music now, including going back to the trombone as inhalation therapy. The recording process for Stone was definitely a bit fractured. I managed to recruit some excellent musicians who were willing to pursue the torturous process on Jeff’s two track Panasonic reel to reel recorder and “bed spring” reverb. Tom Blackwell played guitar, Arthur Webster played bass, Bob Blackwell and Skip Smith played drums. Beth Waterhouse did the backup vocals. We recorded most of the tunes in a “live” format, everything at once, with the music on one track and voice on another. We started in an art classroom at Boothbay high school during school vacation. Early in the process the high school basketball team arrived to practice in the gym directly above us. We retreated to a local pottery studio and continued our efforts accompanied by the howls of a Siamese cat, who was very much in heat. The vocal tracks were completed in an apartment in Old Orchard Beach. Considering where we recorded and the equipment we had to work with, Jeff did a pretty decent job capturing my music. I should add that the album jacket was created and designed by two other very talented volunteers, Doug Bane and Alan Bray. Distribution of the album broke down once the albums were pressed when Jeff joined the army.

What has it been like for you after all these years for folks to take an interest in work after all these years? Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?

I ended up with a handful of LPs and all of the jackets. (I finally recovered the rest of the LP’s when Jeff’s widow sought me out and passed them on to me late in 2020.) Nemo Bidstrup “discovered” me in 2018 and expressed interest in Stone. That led to a contact with Steven Krakow in 2019. He is a producer in Chicago. I believe he is primarily responsible for sparking the re-release of the album by Drag City Records in 2021. It’s had two printings and had some nice international attention. Google “Bill Stone, music” and most of the reviews are there. I don’t really understand my song writing process very well other than I write a lot of songs in the bathroom because I like the acoustics. Most songs are based on some odd chord progression that caught my attention. I often wish I could write a simple song, but it’s a struggle. Usually, the chords form in my mind with a phrase or two and then, after a long time, it falls into place. There’s generally a line or two that has some personal meaning. When I’m singing I find pictures of people and places I’ve known going through my mind. I’ve found myself performing for people who might have been on my mind when I wrote the song and they seem to know they are in the tune. It can be embarrassing.