 Backroads is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund, with money by the vote of the people November 4th, 2008. My name is Jim Olson. I've been a guitarist all my life. I've played in many bands and I've done a lot of solo work. I guess my main thing nowadays is all instrumental. I played a lot of weddings, ceremonies, social hours, corporate dinner events, things like that. Also playing some bands still, but most of it is solo instrumental. And when did you start playing the harp guitar? The harp guitar is a recent instrument for me, but I was aware of them for years. Back in the 70s, I ran across the guy that had one of the original harp guitars from 1902 or something like that. And he played old style songs and he just really did a great job at that. And I wanted to get the harp guitar and get into it. And it just took a lot longer than I thought it was going to take, but I finally ended up with it. But I really enjoy it because the main advantage with the harp guitar is it adds low bass. And I like to have that kind of that drone bass going on. It's an interesting instrument because when I first started playing it, there were things about it that I didn't realize. One thing, for example, is that I was assuming, okay, you want to play those big low bass strings and then you'd play the rest of the guitar. That's a traditional guitar. And then the top half is the harp side. I thought it would be you just play those notes and then there you have it. Well, I found out that if, for example, you play a G chord, the big low G string will start playing by itself. And then you play a C chord. Well, the C bass string will start playing by itself. And I thought, wow, that's really cool. But it's not so cool by the time you play your third chord, maybe a D, because the G and the C are now taking off at full volume. So I had to learn that it wasn't so much playing them as it was muting them. You had to kind of let them play and let them ring and then kind of mute them out. And that was a whole aspect that I wasn't even aware of when I got into it. But just keep working on it. First get into playing music. Back in 64, I was six and the Beatles came on Ed Sullivan. And that was in February. It took the rest of the year lobbying my folks for a guitar. But finally, at Christmas, I had a guitar of 64. And of course, you know, it was one of those things I had to make the deal with my dad that I was going to take lessons. And so I did that deal and I hated the lessons, but I'm glad I stuck with it because that was a good foundation. And a couple of years after that, I started playing in a little band with some kids from the neighborhood and just kind of went from there. Miss, that was another song that I actually put together when I was down in Gainesboro, Tennessee, which I don't know, you probably don't know Gainesboro. Gainesboro is a small little town in Jackson County, Tennessee, which is about 85 miles east of Nashville. And I lived there for a number of years. Very beautiful, very picturesque, a little rural Tennessee town. But as you know, in Minnesota, we have some extreme weather. It gets 40 blow and a lot of snow and summers are hot. Well, we don't have that in Gainesboro, but what we do have is some other extremes. One extreme, and I suppose this was probably because I lived right by the Cumberland River, it gets incredibly foggy. There would be days you'd get up, you couldn't see your hand in front of you. And I would take my dogs up a bluff up the mountain and we'd be running around and I'd be playing with them and I'd be calling for them, hoping that they wouldn't get lost or something, and all of a sudden they would appear through the mist. And again, I guess I'm writing a lot of songs for my dogs, but like I say, they're great friends and great companions, and that's where that song came from. When did you start going into performing at weddings and banquets? That happened when I lived in Nashville. I did a lot of solo work doing concerts. I did a lot of concerts in churches where it was actually playing and singing. I played with a trio down in Nashville. We traveled all around the country and we would go out on tour two or three months in a row. So when we got back to Nashville, it was kind of like, boy, we really need to take a break and so you kind of would have five or six weeks off. But I still wanted to play and so I would start going to some of the local restaurants and just saying, hey, would you be interested in some music? Well, it kind of evolved that, boy, this was really fun. I like this and people seemed to like it and so it kind of just grew from that. And then people would come up and say, boy, we like your playing, would you play at our wedding? And somewhere along the way, it flipped where when our trio kind of disbanded, more and more weddings came in and more and more solo things came in so I just kind of went that direction. I really do enjoy weddings. You know, it's a festive event. Everybody's dressed up. It's fun. Everybody's in a good mood. And it has a lot of meaning to it and I really enjoy it. Most of my writing is instrumental stuff and it usually will come about because of a little riff or something on the guitar or maybe a different tuning. You can tune the guitar different and then you'll hear some different intervals, things that kind of give you a little inspiration. Or it could be something completely non-musical. I have one song that I do. It's about my dog Max. And that riff came about as just something I was working on and it reminded me of my dog Max running through the woods for who knows why, but that's what came to mind. And that's what it turned into was a song about him. I love Northern Minnesota. I love it here. Whenever I get back here, whenever I'm glad to be here. I've lived in Tennessee, I've lived in Texas, I've lived in Hawaii for a while. They're wonderful places but Minnesota still seems, makes me feel like I'm at home. As far as the music goes, I would have to say I'm thankful that I play and enjoy a lot of different kinds of things because that just opens up more doors. I know there's musicians that like I say, they focus on one thing and boy, they're great at it. But when you're so focused on one thing, you might not get as much work as you would like to get. I'm very content, I enjoy playing and that's what I've always wanted to do and I've been doing it, so I hope to continue. Thank you.