Link Ahead with the City of Dublin, Ohio
Link Ahead with the City of Dublin, Ohio
Hold On Loosely: The 50-Year Journey of 38 Special with Frontman Don Barnes
The legendary Don Barnes, co-founder and frontman of 38 Special, takes us on a riveting journey through five decades of rock and roll stardom. With his signature raspy voice and warm storytelling style, Barnes reveals the fascinating origin of the band's name—a police standoff where an officer threatened to "shoot the lock off" their rehearsal space with his 38 Special revolver.
Growing up in Jacksonville, Florida—what Barnes calls "the Liverpool of the South"—shaped the band's musical foundation as teenagers playing sailors' clubs alongside future members of Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers. This naval town connection forged their musical DNA and taught them the fundamentals of songwriting by covering popular hits.
Barnes shares a surprising revelation about 38 Special's true influences. Despite being categorized as Southern rock, the band drew heavy inspiration from British Invasion artists like The Beatles and Jeff Beck. After their first three albums "went straight over the cliff," they discovered their winning formula: stripping songs down to what Barnes calls "muscle and melody"—powerful guitar work paired with strong melodies and relatable stories drawn from real-life experiences.
Don also shares other passions with Lindsay and Bruce that include keeping sets of golf clubs on the tour bus. And speaking of that bus, it rolls into Dublin as 38 Special and Kansas headline another rockin' Independence Day celebration at Coffman Stadium!
Hello and welcome to Link Ahead the City of Dublin podcast. Well, we are so excited for Independence Day here in Dublin and guess what? So are our residents. Our tables sold out in a matter of days and that was the fastest since 2018. And we have to give credit to the monster lineup this year 38 special in Kansas.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, lindsay, never fear If you didn't get a table, there are still wristbands available for General Mission and we have to say you don't want to miss this. I mean, we're ready to rock the night away with the man and we're ready to make that happen with our guests today. So please welcome. Co-founder, lead singer and guitarist for 38 special Don Barnes. Welcome to Link Ahead.
Speaker 3:Thank you, I'm glad to be here. How's everybody doing here in Dublin?
Speaker 1:We're doing great. We are getting excited, we're ready, we are ready.
Speaker 2:So we talked to Kansas frontman Ronnie Platt a couple weeks ago. And first, how did this tour? You know, how did this come to be?
Speaker 3:It was from last year, our agent, william Morris Agency. They said, well, we're going to have to do something special for the 50th anniversary, and so they put some package tours together. So we ended up. I think it started out like 15 cities and then it kept adding more and more and tickets were selling. We're like, well, now it's up to 30 cities. So you know, we still do 100 cities a year, but that particular portion of it is Kansas 30 cities.
Speaker 3:But they're all a bunch of great guys and they really come in, they throw down, they play all the great songs and everything but great guys. Great guys to hang out with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if I was going to tour the country, I think Ronnie Platt would be one of my top people to do that with.
Speaker 3:He was a lot of fun. Super up here, ronnie is a great guy I listened to it again and I just was laughing.
Speaker 1:He's so funny he's always cracking jokes and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he's a Chicago guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he mentioned that. So you said you play more than 100 cities a year and we found several great quotes from you. And here's one. You say we never wanted to be a band that had maybe gotten a little soft. We're a team and it's an unspoken rule that we don't slack up, we stack up. What a quote. So how do you keep stacking up year after year?
Speaker 3:Well, we've always looked at it as a team. A team of musicians can be like factions of each other, but we went out there as a team every night and it's kind of an old coach term. All right, guys, this is a win, you've got to beat winners here tonight. We don't slack up, we stack up, we don't. We go out there and win a hundred percent, you know. So we've always kind of carried that unspoken rule that that, uh, you know, we, we walk out on stage and and, uh, we have, luckily, fortunately, we have a, uh, a catalog of hit songs that we just bang them up against each other and take them for a ride. We did, we take them for a ride. We take them through all the history of the band, everybody through the MTV years and just, you know everything. So my sound guy, john, he says sometimes we got to turn it up louder because the crowd is singing louder than you are.
Speaker 1:Not a bad gig. Huh, it's a joyous occasion.
Speaker 3:It's a real celebration of that brotherhood that we've had all these years. So people can feed off of that too, that we've had all these years, so people can feed off of that too. They see that we all still like each other, which is pretty rare.
Speaker 2:All right, let's talk about that ride that you've been on with 38 Special. So, together for 50 years, sales exceeding 20 million units, and since 1976, the band has released more than 15 albums. So, don, what is the secret to 38 Special all these years?
Speaker 3:We were all young boys with a dream, just like anybody else. We had day jobs way back there in the 70s and Donny Van Zandt, who is still my partner he and I own the trademark and we played in. I've known him since he was 13. We played in little teen club bands and dance bands through the teen years. But we came from Jacksonville, florida, so Jacksonville is a Navy town, so there's four Navy naval bases there in Jacksonville. So everybody who came from that area people think it was in the water or something.
Speaker 3:But Dwayne Allman, greg allman, ronnie van zapp, all the skinner guys, molly hatch everybody at 15 years old played sailors clubs. They played all the cover songs of the day. At a young age and it was, it afforded us an opportunity to to learn the foundations of songwriting. We had to, you know, had to go to the practice in the garage or somebody's living room, whatever, and learn the new songs of the day Young Rascals and Three Dog Night and all those old guys and playing for Sailors. We were underage, we loved the cover songs and they're out there, 22, 23,. They're drinking and fighting and everything but kind of like the Liverpool of the South. Liverpool was a port town as well, like the Liverpool of the South. You know, liverpool was a port town as well, and that's where all the Beatles and all the groups came from, because they had that absorption, I guess, of all the cross-section styles of music and everything. So, yeah, I guess we all owe our careers to the Navy.
Speaker 1:Well, making music has changed a lot over the last half century. What's been good about the changes and what's challenging about them?
Speaker 3:There's been some good ones. I mean the fact that social media you're able to reach out to more people and branch out and just from a click of a button you know you get it all around the world. The MTV days that was a real plus. We were the 13th video on the first day of MTV. Wow, hold on loosely. Of course. You fail so many times Getting back to the learning, cover songs and everything.
Speaker 3:You learn the structures of songwriting and you get a little cocky. After a few years of doing that you think, oh, I can write my own songs. And that's when you go starve for the next 10 years. So it's not something I highly recommend. But you do learn the process and you fail. And I've said before, you can write 500 songs and maybe publish 50. And of those 50, seven or eight hit songs, 10 songs if you're lucky, you know. So I tell these young guys I said you know I don't really highly recommend it.
Speaker 3:I don't mean to sound discouraging, but it's a tough road you have to put. You have to sacrifice everything. You've got to sacrifice holidays and anniversaries because you've got to rehearse. You've got to be down there every day. We were at day jobs and we'd all pile an old, rusted-out car with bald tires and we'd go out to this little shack because you get the cops called on you. We'd rent someplace $50 a month and pool our money to get to have something anyway.
Speaker 3:So I tell guys, have a good time on the weekend, play with your buddies, have a beer together, all that. But when you start trying to pay your bills from it, that's when it really gets tough. So you have to be about five steps ahead of yourself all the time. You have to have songs written and if you get a record deal, most people think, oh, they got a record deal, they've made it. No, that's just. The door opens for you to play in the big leagues and if you can't deliver in the big, they're going to send you back to the clubs. It was a pretty daunting task and pretty fearful. I mean, it's one of those things you start questioning what am I doing with my life?
Speaker 1:Well, I say you've done pretty well for yourself. And hey, you mentioned having the cops called on you and I read something about. Is that how you got the name for your band? Tell us the story.
Speaker 3:About the uh, the uh shack out there in North Florida. We, of course we had rented other places. One of them was funny with uh, you're looking for some back room you could rehearse in when the place is closed. It was a storefront or whatever. And there was one place called johnny's barbershop and he, you know, ran a whole barbershop business during the day. But he had a back room that we would load in and rehearse and then we'd have to take all the equipment out before he opens his shop. Well, he'd come in in his shop and all the bottles are rattled off the shelves and everything. Oh, no, trying to break in.
Speaker 3:But this, uh, this one we found out Ocean Way, it's a middle of nowhere out there and uh, that we had been out there about a couple of months and we I mean we had shoveled all kind of garbage out of this place because it's 50 a month. It was condemned building but it had electricity. There's no running water or anything. So we had a big tractor chain going through the door and then drilled a hole in the cinder block and locked the tractor chain so no one could get in there. So, as irresponsible as we were, somebody lost the key to the lock.
Speaker 1:Oh no.
Speaker 3:Young and dumb, you know. And so all the windows were boarded up. But there was this window up. It was a two-story building. There was a window above the first floor and so we were in there blasting some cover song or something and we stopped playing and we could hear banging on that big vault door. We didn't have a key to it and bullhorns, and we could hear them through the door, come out with their hands up, you know, trying to make a raid on the place. So we were yelling through the door that we didn't have the key to open that door and and we'd have to come out the top, and one of them said well, I'll just you know, it's like the old west days I'll shoot the lock off.
Speaker 3:I got a 38 special, do the talking for me, something to that effect and we didn't have any, any name for the band. We had our first gig in Gainesville, florida, and we didn't know what to call the band. It was kind of a funny story. We just said, man, we'll just call it 38 Special for now, but we'll come up with something a little better. We just never did. That's how that's done.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's amazing. This may apply to newer bands, but I saw a quote about the music industry that goes you make your art in the studio and sell your art on tour.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. You know, you have. You know industry people. It's the machinations of the record industry. So they call it product. You know we don't like to call it product, but you, you band all your songs together, you mix them and you master them and try to they're like your, your children. You send them out in the world and hope people accept them. You know it used to be that you would go out and sell your product by the live shows. Now it's all turned around and you don't really have to have a new album around because all the live shows are what have taken over, because you can't download a live show. Right, right, you know people come.
Speaker 3:We always felt like you might as well just give your music away because it's going to make a fan of someone. They'll tell 10 people and then they'll come to the show, buy a t-shirt and beer. So you know tickets and stuff. So it, it, it. It all works out. But the fact that the live business and you can see every, every band out there that were back in the eighties, they're. They're out there touring again because they know we never stopped. We were too stubborn to quit. I made it my mission to bring those fans back, make the song sound just like the record. We take painstaking efforts to it's loud and it's clean, but it sounds just like the record and you know we give them a great show. It's a great energy and people can, like I said, they can feed off the camaraderie that we have. We actually love each other. We go back and laugh and roll down the road and trade insults with each other, you know but we're all brothers.
Speaker 1:Well, you mentioned the music, and we're talking about Hold On Loosely Rockin' Into the Night Caught Up In you. I mean, everybody knows every word, every verse, every melody. What's that like, night after night.
Speaker 3:It was strange at first to hear your song on the radio. You know everybody, that's what they live for. Like you've pulled the car over and, oh my God, they're playing. And then after a while you get used to it. But each song that most people don't realize that every one of those songs came from true life experiences. And that's what you have to do. We learned that from Ronnie Van Zandt, from Leonard Skinner, that he put his life into songs. And he would tell us back then in 76, 77, he said stop trying to be a clone of what's already happened before you. You're just copying Marshall Tucker and Ennard and all that. And he said try to find what makes your heart sing, what were your influences? And we found that we weren't really. You know so much Southern rock singing about whiskey and bad women and alligators.
Speaker 2:Sneaking out back doors.
Speaker 3:Yeah right, we were fans of British invasion. We loved Beatles, harmony, we loved all the animals and all those groups yard birds and everything.
Speaker 3:So we started fashioning our own style and it started to completely change the format. People think that Hold On Loosely was our first album. It was our fourth album Wow, all the other three went straight over the cliff. So we stripped everything down. We were pretty accomplished guitar players and so that tends to make you put everything on a record overdubs so much the kitchen sink everything in there and we realized there's too much information for a listener. That's not a musician, you know. A listener just hears. So we stripped it all down to eight notes and we call it muscle and melody. You put a little muscular guitar there and a good, good melody, good story over the top of it, and you know if it's working, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. That was the whole eighties with us. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:So, when you're on tour, what's the biggest rush? Um, you know, and it's probably evolved, but just like just before you go on stage, during the show itself, or when the curtain falls and you hear the roar of the crowd, what is it for you?
Speaker 3:that is it's. It's because this place is packed and they know they're going to get the ride of their life. We're going to. We know, even when we're playing some song, that's just devastating this crowd. Well, we know what's coming up next when you get a load of the next one.
Speaker 3:So, uh, it is again back to the young boys with a dream, that feeling, when, when those lights go out and we have a big intro with helicopters and the spotlights going around and all that. You know, flight of the Valkyries is the theme that has us coming on, and so that still to this day, 50 years later, it still gives you a charge, you know. So it's fun, that part is really fun. And then you go, oh man, we're going to dig in.
Speaker 1:Well, you kind of touched on this, but what makes a great rock and roll song?
Speaker 3:You've got to have elements. Again, back to the early days you started learning about these elements. You have to have a beacon. A lot of people don't realize that there's an intro to a song. If it's really a hook, you can have the hook start off right at the back. The new album, by the way, is called Milestone, and you've got to have a beacon. You've got to have something that shouts it's like a horn, it's announcing your presence, and then, of course, a good melody and good strong guitars. But the main thing is songs are like a graph, they kind of follow, and and if you, if you are aware of the listener, you want to keep feeding information that that keeps them there, keeps their attention, because if you do something that's a little quiet and kind of settles down, they might just turn the station or something you know. So, uh, we were always climbing, climbing, climbing. That's why, caught up in you has two bridges, because we love that bridge.
Speaker 2:Nobody puts two bridges great, yeah, I never thought about that, yeah and so we love that.
Speaker 3:It's the fact that we just love the bridge so much and after the guitar solo, well, let's just do the bridge again. It was so great, you know, but you got to have that beacon that people go, whoa, what's that? You know so a lot of people don't. They start with a start with a chord and it's not really a listen to this. This isn't. Yeah, this is a beacon to make you pay attention. You'll hear it on the new album milestone. It's got. Every song has a some kind of beacon that starts off with it tell us more about the new album oh it's, this is.
Speaker 3:It was a different experience because, uh, we had started out, you know, said last year they wanted to do something special for the 50th anniversary and I thought, well, maybe two or three songs for the fan base, you know, just something to EP, release something there. And so, because we were always competitive, it's like, well, if you're going to release something, make it great. And so, and the best thing about it was the the element of desperation is not there anymore. We have, oh sure, like I said, we 100 cities a year. We can't do any more cities. So that element of desperation is was gone. And I told all the guys we went in the studio several times. It was like about seven or eight phases of studio work and overdubbing, you think.
Speaker 2:And I said, let's just have a good time.
Speaker 3:We, you know we don't need it's not like we. Please, like us, please, you know, accept this, because we know the songs are likable. One thing we did do over the years is we we had kind of like a case study in the relationship songs you know about. That hold on loosely was a bit of advice, you know, because people can cling too tightly, they'll lose it if they, if they're too needy, if they're too, you know, smothering and that kind of thing all right, don a couple questions about your influences.
Speaker 2:Who, who were your guitar influences and why?
Speaker 3:we all started off with. You know the early days with clapton and hendrix and you and all those Leslie West from Mountain. We loved the big 10-foot tall amps and the big guitars.
Speaker 2:The Marshalls.
Speaker 3:All the Marshalls and everything and, of course, bad Company ZZ Top. I've become friends with Billy Gibbons and everything, but over the years Clapton was my main guy. I was 15 years old taping his pictures on my bedroom wall, so you just kind of learn, you're the. Jeff beck was a big influence. All these guys are greats, you know. Uh, one of them was mick ralphs from bad company, because he was on the only guitar player in that band and he could create riffs and that would talk, he would, he would make all those bad company songs came. Oh, absolutely Some riffs that he had and it was like how do you do that? Paul Rogers, of course, vocally major, you know, I'm glad to see him going to get in the Hall of Fame Fine Rock and roll, hall of Fame, bad company, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well done. We can't wait to see you here in Dublin on July 4th. And just like a great closing song of a concert, we end all of our episodes with rapid fire questions. So what is the best part about touring?
Speaker 3:The time on stage, we get paid to travel. We don't get paid to play. That's our we enjoy that.
Speaker 1:Wait, Ronnie said the same thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's right, ronnie's a good man. That's the hard part. But when the lights go down and you're like 22 years old, you crank up, crank your guitar to 10 and you're going out there and being everything you'd ever dreamed.
Speaker 2:All right, rapid Fire. 2. What's the toughest part of the road?
Speaker 3:Getting sleep bouncing a bunk on a bus.
Speaker 1:Okay, on tour. What do you do to get away from the music? Can you get away at all?
Speaker 3:We play golf, oh you golf. We have clubs and a bus. We'll go out someplace that's near. They'll do a little reconnaissance before we get there and say, hey, it's a golf club 22 miles away. Who wants to go? You know, some days I have to stay out of the wind and the pollen because singing is good Sure.
Speaker 1:Right. Well, on July 5th, if you want to golf in Dublin, you let us know. We know people Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Okay, okay great. Oh yeah, we've had guys out there that own the club.
Speaker 1:You know people too, huh.
Speaker 3:And the cart too with us, you know, and they give them free tickets, so fun.
Speaker 2:So Ronnie Platt told us he restores Corvettes in his free time. So what do you do when you're not recording or on the road?
Speaker 3:Well, I had a boat. I had to let it go because I wasn't out there enough, you know. So it just sat out there. But yeah, I play golf here too. Nobody's going to make the tour anytime soon. We all kind of suck, we go out there.
Speaker 1:That's what the pro-am is for. Okay, You're a great singer, songwriter, showman and guitarist. What is a?
Speaker 3:hidden talent that people might not know about you. We know it's not golf. I don't know if I think I've expressed all my talents. I'm not a man of many talents I can do that. I have been interested in producing, producing other groups and demos and things for other groups. You know Made many friends. Collective Soul are from Atlanta as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:We actually did some tracks in their studio. The first four tracks we did. And so you know we tried to get together and go out and see other guys at their shows, you know, and and, uh, kind of razz them a little bit from the crowd.
Speaker 2:Uh, all right. Finally, what's your advice to young musicians who haven't had that hit song yet and may be struggling a bit and need the motivation to keep making music? What would you tell that person?
Speaker 3:Well, it's a tough road. If you're going to, you have to commit yourself all the way and you can't do it for the money, you can't do it for the girls, or in partying and everything, because you can't be partying, you got to be. It's a business, you have to stoic about it and so, if anything, I've tried to, I've tried to teach young people. I just did a little music, some emporium thing with some young, young people that just out of high school I said try to find stories that move you emotionally, find a title that you can really get with and then write that song to that roadmap. You have to write songs inside.
Speaker 3:Out you have to know where your destination is going, because it's like Tom T Hall of all people said, you can drive around, aimlessly around, but out you have to know where your destination is going, because it's like tom t hall of all people said, you can drive around, aimlessly around, but if you don't know where you're going, you're just going to be driving around, so you have to know your direction. Sometimes you, you rhyme something that before the title has happened, but that rhyme is going to rhyme with the title once it's eventually, and so when people hear it they go. How? How did they do that? How did they know to do that? It's all the craft of learning that thing. So I was just thinking maybe you could do a mashup.
Speaker 1:There's something there, I think.
Speaker 3:Is it the state song In?
Speaker 1:your spirit, yeah. Mccoy's Rick Derringer, you will bring the crowd to their feet if you do that. Just a little request from me.
Speaker 3:You know, mtv had so much exposure and we had songs from movies and we did a song called Teacher. Teacher know MTV.
Speaker 2:You had so much exposure and we had songs from movies, and we did a song called Teacher, Teacher. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that was filmed here in Ohio.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it was yeah Downtown.
Speaker 2:Yep downtown Columbus.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but you know it charted okay, it was top 40, but it wasn't anything that we felt like it was any big, not going to change?
Speaker 3:your life, you know. So, your life, you know. So we were in that. We were down in panama city, panama way, down there with the panama canal, playing in a baseball stadium and we came up with that song and that entire stadium went crazy. We were looking at each other, what's happening? They because mtv had reached out out there they, they just loved that song and they sang every word. The whole stadium singing every word to this song. That we kind of didn't really take that serious, you know.
Speaker 2:Don Barnes. What a great guest. Thank you. We can't wait to see you in 38th Special on Independence Day here in Dublin. Thank you for joining us on Link.
Speaker 3:Thank you, it's my pleasure and everybody make it out. We're going to have a big time. As I said, it's a ride through the history of the band Some new surprises. We're going to have a big time as, like I said, it's a it's a ride through the history of the band. Some new surprises. Gonna play a new song from the album. We're eventually going to get more songs from the new album, but you want to get some familiarity going with with the new album. But uh, it's all these songs that people like. Like I said, we bang them up against each other and then people go, oh that one too, and right, yeah
Speaker 1:we put together a little playlist when we made the announcement and it's hit after hit, after hit, and people love it. So well, we can't wait to see you on the fourth.
Speaker 3:I look forward to it and thanks so much and good luck with your career. Wish you all the best.
Speaker 1:And to our listeners. Thank you as well for taking the time to connect with your city. Tune in next time as we continue to explore the many personalities and experiences that make Dublin a thriving place to live, work and grow.