Rick Hogue: Well, I was born at an early age (smiles), but prior to that, I was in my mother’s womb and as my dad was a southern baptist minister for small churches in the deep south I was surrounded by music even before I was born. In the 1950’s, you had a little organ on one side and a piano on the other, and you had a choir, and that’s where I cut my teeth – listening to gospel music in the south. That all happened in the late 1950’s, but I was always around church music and the voices and harmonies stuck with me. Both my parents played and sang very well, both of them are accomplished piano, and organ players. Both had studied music at the seminary in Louisville KY where they had met. My sister and I were absorbed with music in my early life, and then like everybody else, we caught the rock and roll bug. First it was surf music, and I remember going into a summer home and finding a record player. We would listen to “Blue Velvet”, and another song called “Sleepwalk” by Santo and Johnny on these little 45’s that were left in the beach rental that my family stayed at. My sister and I would play those records over and over and it was so simple yet so all encompassing. So, I’ve been around music my entire life.

I really got hip to guitar just by seeing bands down south that were playing at these dance clubs. When my family went to a family reunion, held at a state park in Gasden, Alabama, there were dance halls there that hosted country music. I vividly remember these guys in white suits with beautiful Fender guitars amps, and this really got me tuned me into guitars. Like almost every other kid in America, my sister I wanted a guitar as soon as we saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. So my parents gave us a really crummy Sears Silvertone for Christmas in 1964, which is right over here, hanging on the wall. The action was terrible – you couldn’t play it. It was just a cheap guitar. We strummed a few notes on it, and then it got parked in a closet. I was eight years old then and all I wanted to do was be outside fishing. Later in my teens, I really wanted to play again, and my dad bought me a guitar from one of the guys he worked with. It was a 1968 Gibson B 25, a twelve string acoustic guitar, which is a pretty awful guitar as far as Gibson guitars go. It being a twelve string meant that I had to pull off six of the strings to play it as a six string. So, I just took six of them off and just hacked on it to death until I finally sort of figured things out. My sister’s boyfriend at the time, they later got married, loaned me a Yamaha acoustic, which he still has. That guitar had so much history and Mojo with it. Not only did I learn on it, he later gave it to a friend of ours to play in the hospital while he was dying of cancer. My career as a guitar guy was very heavily influenced by that one Yamaha imported guitar. Later on I met a girl and I moved to D.C. from Richmond. I got introduced to a guy named Cesar Diaz who wanted to know about my old guitars. In specific he wanted to know about my old Gibson, and soon after he and I became close friends. Cesar was one the guys who were really influential guys in vintage American guitars and especially amplifiers. He played with a couple of really big bands back in the day and had moved from Puerto Rico with Johnny Nash. He became my friend and mentor, and we would hang out every day. There was a crew of us: myself, Linwood Taylor, Colin Stock, and Cesar. We were just four guys that ran together and I absorbed as much as I could. Cesar, during that period, met Stevie Ray, he met Bob Dylan, and from there, he just went crazy, working with most all of the biggest names in rock and blues. He encouraged me to look for old gear, “You are out on the road, out there doing your medical sales, go find guitars.” So I would look around for guitars. This blue one right here is one I found, up on the wall. It was a dead mint, 1965 Stratocaster in sonic blue. Cesar sold it to John Peden, who was the photographer for Vogue and Guitar World magazine in NYC, and he photographed it for the magazine. It was a centerfold for Guitar World back in the 80’s. You know, I found guitars from him, and it sort of made me feel bad, because he was getting the lion’s share of the profits. I started going to shows myself, and thought I still did a lot of business with Cesar I started doing business on my own. After doing it as a hobby for ten years, from ‘81 to ‘91, I opened Garrett Park Parks, so named for the town where I had a PO box that I had rented to get my guitar mail and because I thought Garrett Park Guitars had a good ring to it.

Rick’s first guitar.

HP: Transitioning from your work as a guitar salesman, your bands that you have played in, and not talking about the ones that you were growing up with – what is going on with the more Maryland based groups? When did you start getting into that playing circuit? And do you see yourself ever going back, or are you doing it now? What is going on with that?

RH: Musically, I will be the first one to admit that I have been a much better guitar slinger than guitar player. Selling guitars and buying guitars, and being a guitar buff, came to me easier than playing. There developed a point for me, musically, after I started this business, as late as the early 90’s, when I started to dive in and develop my writing. I said, “Hey, I am finally going to put some of this stuff down. I’ve got one hundred different sheets of papers, torn out of notebooks, that are these loose snippets of songs, and I want to play them.” So I started to hone my craft and to get better writing and playing and singing, and doing these songs. Dean Rosenthal actually was one of the guys to encourage me to get out there and play, and I would sit in with Van Dyke and Glazier, as well as Dean’s gigs. I played at the Red Door Coffee house. This was all in the 90’s. By the late 90’s and early 2000’s, I had been in a couple of bands, and I was doing this band called the Swamp Daddies. The Swamp Daddies were a neighborhood band that we had, and like a lot of bands that ended up going down in flames. It’s like a line for a Ben Folds song about “the band broke up, and two months later re – formed without me” (laughing), and that was kind of my story on that too. You go through experiences where you learn and I had to learn some lessons about humility and not get too attached and emotionally involved though It’s very hard to not take it personally. It is such a volatile mix of creative types, and with egos all bumping in to each other, there always seems to be some kind of drama or passion, whatever you want to call it. Having said all that the Swamp Daddies was a fun band and was a springboard into my playing in a band setting. After we split up, I did a couple of solo gigs with Jon Gosnell and others backing me, doing various gigs here and there. You can check out my songs at reverbnation.com/rickhogue. One of the great things about Annapolis as a town is that if you have the drive to play, you can play here. If you want to learn to be a songwriter, or if you want to play with other people, if you want to get into a certain genre and go for it, it’s open arms. This is a really strong, supportive, creative music environment here. You have to kind of punch at the wall a little bit to get in, but once you do, people are really good about sitting in and working with each other. It’s a good environment. Fortunately, for a guy like me, as an older dude that has been around for a while, I could begin to play out and have some success. We put together a project that later became the Black Hearted Angels. That was your dad, Matt Pazaryna and I, who were writing songs and put a band together. I think we played about 45 gigs and at one point, we had a pedal steel player, a keyboard player, bass player, two guitars, drums, and a female vocalist. That was a fun thing and we traveled a bit and really enjoyed ourselves. Later I formed “Feed the Good Wolf” and then the “Eastport Rescue Dogs” all of which relied on mine and some of Matts writing. To me, I have always said that I want to do this when I retire. I am working and honing my craft so at the point in time when I retire, hopefully I can be good enough to carry it and do it as a fun kind of side project.

Part of the Fender Room – Rick has a partnership with Fender.