pickin’ & grinnin’
By Pam Creech • Photography by Allison Potter
the quintessential bubba
Chris Bellamy could be your next-door neighbor.
He wears camouflage T-shirts. He has a chocolate
Labrador named Skipper. He has a fishing boat
trailered in his front yard. He also has a recording
studio inside his house.
Bellamy’s studio contains five acoustic guitars, each made
from different types of wood, several
microphones and photographs of
Bellamy’s hunting and fishing excur-sions.
However, the studio’s most
unique feature is an analog mixer.
“It keeps you honest,” Bellamy
says. While most artists prefer to
use digital based mixers that make
it easy to edit their work and hide
mistakes, Bellamy enjoys his old-school
recording equipment.
“You have to have a good perfor-mance,
and that’s what a really good-sounding
record is all about,” he says.
“I’ve played with Emmylou Harris.
I’ve played with Jimmy Buffet,” he
says. But Bellamy had his first perfor-mance
as a fourth-grader. “We had to
“I’d rather play for
ten people that listen
than 10,000 that don’t,”
Bellamy says.
memorize poetry, and I just could not remember it, so I started
playing chords with it. Then, it had a tune to it,” he says. “But
I was horrified to play in front of the class.”
Nevertheless, Bellamy’s elementary-school performance
was a success — his teacher was amazed.
“She called my Mama, and she told her that I had a gift and
she should encourage it,” he says.
Bellamy began booking gigs shortly after his classroom
debut.
“I had my first TV appearance when I was 14,” he says,
reminiscing about his appearances on the Homer Briarhopper
Show. “I was on the show a lot.”
Bellamy actually started playing the guitar at age 7, with the
help and encouragement of his family.
“My Daddy was a guitar player. He was certainly an influ-ence,”
Bellamy says. “My Daddy told me ‘If you ever want to
amount to anything in the music industry, you need to be the
man out front singing.’”
Bellamy has other relatives in the music business as well.
The Bellamy Brothers, best known for their song “You Ain’t
Just Whislin’ Dixie,” are his second cousins. “They created that
male duo, country harmony thing,” Bellamy says. “They were
pre-Brooks & Dunn.”
Although Bellamy has been a professional musician since
those teenage years, each album he releases is expressive and
unique. “Bubbafied,” his ninth album, is no exception.
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“‘Bubbafied’ is different in the
fact that it’s a story of my life, so to
speak,” Bellamy says. “The way we
define Bubba is just a good ol’ boy.
A bubba is a guy who’ll stop on the
side of the road and help you when
you’re broke down.”
In “The Story of a Bubba,” one
of “Bubbafied’s” bonus tracks,
Bellamy discusses what it means to
be Bubbafied. With folksy picking
and a Southern drawl, Bellamy says,
“Bubba lives in the heart and soul of
most every southern male. … Bubba
might be a little overweight and he
might not use real good English, but
you know what he means when he
talks to you.”
However, not every track pertains to the Bubba theme. For
decades, Bellamy and his guitars wintered in the Florida Keys.
“The Ballad of John Ashley” tells the story of an infamous
bank robber and bootlegger who lived in the Everglades in the
1910s and early 1920s. Bellamy’s steady guitar rhythms and
storytelling lyrics bring the legend of Ashley, a criminal who
lived nearly a century ago, to life.
Bellamy’s live performances do not disappoint. At his
“Bubbafied” CD release party at The Pub at Sweet & Savory in
May, Bellamy sat on a patio under a tree decorated with small,
white lights as audience members tapped their feet and sipped
their beverages, enjoying his intricate picking and folksy vocals.
But Bellamy doesn’t let his talent get to his head. He nodded
at friends as they arrived, and hugged them or shook their
hands in between songs — it’s clear that Bellamy appreciates
each person who listens to his music.
“I’d rather play for ten people that listen than 10,000 that
don’t,” Bellamy says.
Copies of “Bubbafied” can be purchased at The Fisherman’s
Wife or online at www.chrisbellamy.com