Monday’s Friend: Ricky Bush

Today I am pleased to welcome Ricky Bush to the blog, to talk about the influence of music on his writing technique.

Winging It
By Ricky Bush

Call me a “winger”. Yep, and it’s simply because I prefer it to the term “panster”, and because “winging it” describes my style best. As I self-taught myself to play blues harmonica, or blues harp as we like to say, I did so by listening to tons of blues harmonica recordings, but never learning music theory. My playing was by ear and feeling. Once I felt proficient enough to stand on a stage with other blues musicians, and did so, I found that I could hang with most any blues songs called out. I might not have known the song, but had played enough blues scales that “winging it” worked just fine.

As a teacher of journalism, English, and geography for almost three decades, I was required to turn in detailed lesson plans designed to meet certain goals each class period. I wrote them to satisfy the administration, but never followed them and “winging it” worked just fine. Of course, being intimate with the material was instrumental, like the blues scale, in getting the lesson of the day across.

After deciding to move into the realm of fiction, after writing about blues music and blues musicians, I began “winging it” once again. My general idea revolved around the deaths of John Lee Williamson, Little Walter Jacobs, and Henry “Pot” Strong, who were all famous blues harp musicians, and who were all murdered in Chicago in the fifties. I sat down with a legal pad, words flew, and I had no idea where the story would turn next. What I found remarkable, was that it really seemed as if I was reading a book and had no inkling as to what the next chapter held until my pencil began “winging it”.

I did have two blues harp playing protagonists set to investigate the murders of harmonica musicians sixty years later, particularly the death of their good friend, but it took me little longer to develop the “bad guys” in the story. The story winged along, though, and came at me when I least expected. Maybe on my morning walk, or while sitting in church, or listening to a blues recording.

There were plenty of starts, stops, scratch outs, and revisions. I did decide on fictionalizing the Chicago murder victims at some point. Plenty of times my internal GPS screamed, “RECALCULATING” at me because it didn’t exactly know where I was heading or which route to take, but at some point I did arrive at my destination, now called River Bottom Blues. The debut novel finally saw the light of day by being published by Barking Rain Press in January of this year. The second in the series featuring the blues playing crime fighting duo of Mitty Andersen and Pete Bolden, The Devil’s Blues, will sprout wings this November.

I may not always be a “winger”. My WIP keeps whispering, “C’mon man, at least jot down some plot points”, but I keep stubbornly resisting the urge.

Bio

Richard “Ricky” Bush has been listening to, playing, and writing about blues music for most of his adult life. His two novels, River Bottom Blues and The Devil’s Blues, meet at the dark crossroads where blues and murder mingle deep in the heart of Texas.

River Bottom Blues is available at all the usual online suspects, his website/blog, and Barking Rain Press. The Devil’s Blues is due out in November.

http://www.richardbushbooks.com
http://www.bushdogblues.blogspot.com
http://www.barkingrainpress.org

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