Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 28, 1994 TAG: 9410280034
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Richard Jessee has endured enough cheesiness to last a lifetime.
First, there was the tribute band. "It was cheese - ultra cheese," Jessee said. The band played amusement parks and Atlantic City and featured 10 tribute singers covering everyone from Elvis to Michael Jackson to Loretta Lynn. Jessee was the bored guitarist.
Then there was the cheese metal band. "It was a four-chord, bad-hair-day, rock 'n' roll type of group," he said. The band toured the East Coast, used Van Halen's old gong as a prop and molested young women. Some of the group members smoked crack.
Again, Jessee was the bored guitarist.
Now, he is through with cheese, through with playing rock star, chasing the next good time and going nowhere. Now, he is content with carving his own musical niche as a first-rate guitarist in a class with Joe Satriani or Eric Johnson, two of rock's most highly regarded guitarists.
"I'd rather be more of a cult thing than a household name any day," Jessee said, much wiser now at 29, with the tribute group and metal band in his past. He talked about his experiences during a recent interview over multiple cups of coffee and a series of cigarettes at a Blacksburg doughnut shop.
Today, Jessee lives in Blacksburg, he is married to a horse trainer, teaches guitar lessons at Mainstream Music, and he is strictly serious-minded about his band, The Richard Jessee Project. The band will play at Ward's Rock Cafe in Roanoke tonight.
Decidedly anti-cheese, the group falls in the Satriani-Johnson guitar-virtuoso mold.
"Techno-delic neo-rock jazz blues shred metal," Jessee calls it. Or, in other words, anything but boring.
The question is: Does Jessee have a legitimate chance at making a name for himself beyond Blacksburg and Roanoke? The easy answer is yes. There's no question he has the drive and talent. But the hard truth of the music business is that no matter how much ambition or ability he might possess, success is still a long shot.
Either way, his story is not unique. To outsiders, it offers a look into the struggle shared by dozens of other local musicians and countless more across the country. And for those struggling along the same path, his story is a study in lessons learned and advice to heed.
Born in Richmond, Jessee moved around often as a youth. He lived in a half-dozen states and attended 15 different schools, while his father, Charles Jessee, bounced from job to job before finally settling on law school. He is now a lawyer in Abingdon. Jessee's mother is a librarian.
Moving around so much made it difficult for Jessee to make friends, so he turned to the guitar for companionship, first learning the basics from a guy who lived next door, then starting formal lessons at age 12.
In high school, he attended the Birmingham (Ala.) School of Fine Arts. At the same time, he started playing in bands on the nightclub scene, at first on the sly and then with reluctant approval from his parents.
He was shot once outside one of those clubs, grazed by a stray bullet in a gunfight that erupted during an argument that he wasn't involved in. The episode didn't scare him away from the clubs, however. "At that age, you don't care," he said. "You're not spooked by anything."
After high school, he completed a one-year program at the prestigious Berkeley School of Music in Boston. His goals afterward reflected that of the 20-year-old he was. "I wanted to have a good time. I wanted to kill the world in one day."
He joined a lounge band in Abingdon and then a regional Top 40 band that paid $350 a week, plus room. Then came the tribute band, which paid a little better, but it wasn't his scene, either. The singers were egomaniacal show people in the worse sense, and the band's management valued the musicians like cattle.
He eventually quit, returning his final contract renewal to the management company. "It's for older guys who don't care anymore," Jessee said, which is not all bad. It beats working at a factory.
"But if you've got any kind of lava in your gut, then it's not for you."
He spent the following summer in Ocean City, Md., living above a bar where he played in the house band at night doing covers of "Louie, Louie" and other drunken-beach-crowd favorites. That winter he migrated to Philadelphia, where he tried to make it as a studio session player and lived in his car for several months.
He mostly recorded commercials and remembered one session for a juice spot during which the director kept making him play his part over. With more feeling, the director told him. "So, I made faces and played it the same damn way and he said, `that's better.`"
In 1988, he returned to Abingdon and through Mainstream Music in Blacksburg heard about a millionaire in Richmond who was backing a heavy-metal band to play parties and travel the East Coast club circuit.
Jessee signed on as the guitarist, mimicking the riffs of AC/DC, Metallica and other bands, while the group partied into oblivion and acted like spoiled rock stars. Most of Jessee's stories from this two-year period can't be repeated in a family newspaper.
"It was as degenerate as you could get." He isn't kidding, and he isn't glorifying the band's behavior. One episode involved a passed-out co-ed at a party in a Fort Lauderdale hotel room that could have amounted to charges of sexual assault.
In the end, he realized it was an empty lifestyle. "Your chops are more important than your partying," he said, offering advice to other musicians tempted by such excesses. "Your playing is going to speak a lot louder than your personality."
Again, he returned to Virginia, settling in Blacksburg. He formed The Richard Jessee Project. The band's current lineup includes Jeff Hoffman on bass and Eric Spencer on drums. Since 1991, the group has built a small but loyal nightclub following in Blacksburg and Roanoke.
In local music circles, Jessee is considered the best rock guitarist in the region. "By far the best," said Shirley Thomas, owner of the Iroquois Club in Roanoke. "People come to marvel at his ability," said Linda Ruth, owner of the South Main Cafe in Blacksburg.
Howie Petruziello, an announcer at WROV (96.3, FM), said he has seen both Jessee and Joe Satriani perform live, and he was more impressed with Jessee. "I really thought what Richard was doing was a lot more fun."
This year, Jessee self-released a CD, "Intro-P," which features songs such as "Elegance," "Fetus in a Blender" and "Il Barbiere Di Siviglia (The Barber From Hell)." He hopes to peddle the album to a major distributor or generate interest from a record label.
He is optimistic, yet realistic. He acknowledges that his music is not the type to create MTV hysteria, but he is confident that an audience will eventually find him. The question is: How long is he willing to wait?
The answer is: as long as it takes. There is no going back now.
"I've played enough cheese," he said.
Keywords:
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by CNB