John Paul Keith brings a Booker T/Buddy Holly/Stones-y stew

RN: How about the road — is it a grind or do you like it?
JPK: I love being on the road. I don’t consider it a grind. You have to love it or it’s not worth doing. The only thing I don’t like about it is the pay generally stinks, but what else is new? We always have fun and keep the bills paid, although it is getting very tough in this economy.
RN: How has your sound changed over the years, or has it?
JPK: Oh yeah, it’s definitely changed, a lot. The stuff I’m doing now is closest to what I was doing when I first started out in Knoxville when I was a kid. I moved to Nashville around 1997 and got way, way off track, trying to be commercial and be in the major label rock world and do what the people who were working with me expected me to do. It took me several years come back around to doing what I’m good at, which is on the roots-y side.
I wound up in Memphis sort of by accident about 6 years ago, and met Mark and Argroves and started playing unrehearsed covers in beer joints with them just for the hell of it. Before I knew it I was writing songs again, and before too long I was playing more than I ever had, and touring with Jack Oblivian. That led to cutting records for Big Legal Mess, and so on. A whole new, unexpected chapter of my life happened when I moved to Memphis and it’s definitely been the best one yet. Memphis is not for everybody, but it’s been very, very kind to me.
RN: What kind of crowd do you see at your shows? Are they unfamiliar or do you get a feel of a group of fans knowing your stuff yet?
JPK: It depends on the town, of course. We’re only 2 hours from Little Rock, so we play there all the time, and we have a great audience there. If we play a really big city like Chicago, we usually do ok because there might be a handful of die-hard roots rock fans who wait for stuff like this to come through the area. But if we’re in a little rust belt town for the first or second time, the turnout might be kind of sparse. You just have to keep hammering away at it.
I don’t really believe in bands that don’t tour. I sort of feel like you’re not really in the business if you’re not touring. You can make records all day every day and never leave the house, but that just doesn’t feel real to me. I don’t get to tour as much as I’d like to, honestly.
RN: How about writing — is that an ongoing process? Where did you write the material for your most recent album?
JPK: I’ve got a room in the back of my house where I write. My wife stuck me back there with the washer and drier and the litter box. Of course, you have to be able to write anywhere. You never know when you’ll find a good idea to steal. It can happen without warning.
RN: Any other projects you have in the works that we should know about?
JPK: We just started recording the next record at Sam Phillips Recording Service here in Memphis, with Roland Janes engineering. For those who don’t know, just Google him, he is a legend of Memphis music. I could talk all day about it. We’re doing this one straight to 2″ tape, no computer. They don’t even have a computer at Phillips. We have 5 or 6 songs in the can, but I’ve got to write some more so we’re going to reconvene after the tours I have the next couple of months. We head to the east coast the last week of August, and then we’re going to Europe for four weeks starting September 4th. This will be my third tour of Europe but the first one without Jack Oblivian headlining. We’re on our own this time, which is a first for me.