Anarchy In The Music City! The Other Side of Nashville's Musical Pioneers

By Rev. Keith A. Gordon

Since the early 1960s, Nashville has been known worldwide as the "Music City" for its robust country and gospel music industries. For over 40 years now, Nashville has also been home to a thriving hotbed of rock, blues, rap, and Americana music. "The Other Side of Nashville" has grown from a few makeshift bands playing original songs and scraping for gigs into an internationally-respected scene that has attracted creative immigrants from across the globe.

Anarchy In The Music City! is an oral history of the origins and evolution of Nashville's alternative music scene as told by the pioneers that made the music. Using artist interviews culled from the pages of Rev. Keith A. Gordon's critically-acclaimed book The Other Side of Nashville, this illustrated volume includes conversations with both well-known music-makers like Jason & the Scorchers, Webb Wilder, Tony Gerber, David Olney, and Chagall Guevara as well as regional cult rockers like Tommy Womack, the Dusters, Donna Frost, and Aashid Himons, among many others.

The “Reverend of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Rev. Gordon has been writing about rock and blues music for 50 years. A former contributor to the All Music Guide books and website, and the former Blues Expert for About.com, Rev. Gordon has written or edited 25 previous music-related books and eBooks, including Blues Deluxe: The Joe Bonamassa Buying Guide, Planet of Sound, The Other Side of Nashville, and Scorched Earth: A Jason & the Scorchers Scrapbook.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rev. Keith A. Gordon
• Release date: Nov 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9780463041802

Rev. Keith A. Gordon

The "Reverend of Rock 'n' Roll," Rev. Keith A. Gordon has almost 50 years in the pop culture trenches. Gordon's work has appeared in over 100 publications worldwide, as well as in several All Music Guide books and on the AMG website, as well as Blurt magazine and the Rock and Roll Globe. Rev. Gordon is the author of nearly two-dozen music-related books including The Other Side of Nashville, a history of the city's rock 'n' roll underground; Blues Deluxe: A Joe Bonamassa Buying Guide; and The Rock 'n' Roll Archives series.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION: THE OTHER SIDE OF NASHVILLE

In the spring of 2012, I published a thick slab of a book titled The Other Side of Nashville. Sub-titled An Incomplete History and Discography of the Nashville Rock Underground, 1976-2006, the 600+ page, profusely-illustrated doorstop covered over 500 bands and artists that brought rock ‘n’ roll to the Music City, providing brief bios, discographies, and other info for all of ‘em as well as a slew of album reviews and artist interviews that told the story of rock ‘n’ roll’s evolution in the home of country music.

Over the years, some readers balked at the $30 price tag (cheap!) of what I personally see as an invaluable history of the development of Nashville’s rock scene with forays into blues, rap, folk, space music, and Americana artists that helped demolish the city’s reputation as a strictly country cowtown. This book you hold in your hands right now is a response to nearly ten years of pleas for a more affordable (and arguably concise) history of the Nashville rock scene.

Trigger Warning: Anarchy In The Music City! includes nearly three dozen artist interviews that were previously-published in The Other Side of Nashville. So, if you have that book (and, honestly, too few of you do…), then you probably don’t need to buy this one, tho’ I’ll gladly take your money and go out and buy more vintage vinyl for my collection.

Nevertheless, it’s my humble opinion that the interviews included herein provide an in-depth history of Nashville’s rock scene entirely on their own (and for much less than $30!). It’s also the first time this info has been available in eBook format. While some of the artists featured here have become reasonably well-known both nationally and internationally – Jason & the Scorchers, Webb Wilder, the Cactus Brothers, and Chagall Guevara come to mind – all of them were pioneers rebelling against the city’s status quo and developing a scene that today includes acclaimed musical immigrants like the Black Keys, Jack White, Robyn Hitchcock, Aaron Lee Tasjan, and too many others to list here. Honestly, I can’t see any of these folks moving to Nashville if it wasn’t for the efforts of artists like Aashid Himons, Donna Frost, Threk Michaels, Max Vague, and their colleagues in broadening the palette of the city’s musical colors.

The one conceit of The Other Side of Nashville that has come into question through the years is my purposeful dating of the beginning of the city’s rock ‘n’ roll revolution to 1976 with the release of lo-fi D.I.Y. legend R. Stevie Moore’s Phonography album. Moore split town shortly after releasing his ground-breaking album, hiding out in New Jersey for the next 30 years before coming home, leaving the torch for pioneers like David Olney, Afrikan Dreamland, the White Animals, and Jason & the Nashville Scorchers to pick up and run with. Although it’s true that Nashville was a thriving recording center in the late 1960s and early ‘70s that attracted some of rock’s brightest talents like Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Skip Spence (of Moby Grape), and John Hiatt, among many others, to make records, none of these guys were really part of the fledgling local scene.

These artists all packed up and left town when they were done with their business (although, to his everlasting credit, Hiatt would return and not only create a bunch of great music, but also give a gift to the local scene in the form of his talented daughter Lilly…). By contrast, Moore and friends like Vincent Lovera and Roger Ferguson were playing original music in the early ‘70s, performing in a number of different bands in Nashville-area clubs that would have preferred they play Top 40 hits. They were the O.G.s of the local rock scene, which found its voice in 1976 with Phonography.

I was lucky enough to have a front row seat to the three-ring circus that was the ever-changing, ever-evolving Nashville rock scene. Although I missed the scene’s Big Bang moment in 1979, when David Olney & the X-Rays and the White Animals began converting local music venues to original music (I was in Detroit soaking up the Motor City’s renewed late ‘70s rock scene), I was back in town in 1980 for the aftershocks that would follow throughout the decade. The first shot from Nashville’s new wave was provided by the 1980 release of punk rockers Cloverbottom’s 7" EP titled Anarchy In The Music City (providing inspiration for this book’s title), which was followed the next year by Never In Nashville, a 7" four-song EP that included bands like Factual, No Art, USR, and Cloverbottom that was released by Jack Emerson’s independent Praxis Records label.

Olney managed to sign a deal with folkie label Rounder Records, he and his band releasing the scene’s first full-length album since Phonography in 1981’s Contender. The White Animals’ six-song EP/LP Nashville Babylon and Afrikan Dreamland’s Jah Message would soon follow, providing hipper American music rags like Ira Robbins’ Trouser Press a sign that there was something going on in the Music City. Factual’s Your Way 7 single and Jason & the Nashville Scorchers’ 7 Reckless Country Soul EP (on Praxis) followed in 1982, along with a second Afrikan Dreamland LP and the White Animals’ Lost Weekend and, from this point, the scene was off and running. The appearance of the compilation album The London Side of Nashville in 1982 sealed the deal, featuring bands like Factual (yeah, they got around!), the Hots, Russian Roulette, and Paradox, and while few of these fly-by-night rockers accomplished anything of note with those bands, they provided seasoned musicians for relatively more successful Nashville bands in the future.

As a teenaged rock critic in high school, I had contributed record reviews to Hank magazine, the 1970s-era publication that was arguably Nashville’s first music magazine. Shortly after graduating, I became the editor of my high school buddy Thom King’s Take One alternative newsmagazine from 1977-1978. When Andy Anderson launched his esteemed Nashville Intelligence Report music zine in 1982, I was already publishing my music ‘n’ ‘politricks’ zine Anthem, but I’d hook up with Andy and the NIR gang in 1984. A year later, Gus Palas came to town and, with dreams of creating a publishing empire (see Life, The Universe and The Metro, below…), launched the city’s longest-running music zine, The Metro, in August 1985.

After almost seven tumultuous years, Gus sold The Metro to Radio Lightning and, after a short transition, it became Bone Music magazine. During the interim, I published a single issue of the regional R Squared zine before throwing my lot in with Bone. I contributed to the Nashville Scene, the city’s alternative newsweekly and, much later, Daryl Sander’s revolutionary Cashville 411 website. Along the way, I’ve written a heck of a lot of words about Nashville musicians, some of which you’ll find within the pages of this book, a lot more of which are in The Other Side of Nashville.

I moved away from the Music City in 2006 but the Internet, Grimey’s Music, and an overworked Amazon.com account have allowed me to keep up with Nashville’s ever-changing and now internationally-acclaimed original music scene. The artists interviewed here were the talents that pioneered The Other Side of Nashville, blazing the trail for those who followed. These are their stories…enjoy!

Rev. Keith A. Gordon

Somewhere outside of Buffalo NY in America’s Rust Belt

October 2021

Anarchy In The Music City! is dedicated to those Nashville scenesters that we’ve lost along the way: Aashid Himons, Jack Emerson, Max Vague, David Olney, Chris Feinstein, Perry Baggs, Paul Kirby, Don Mooney, Chip Chilton, Ric Harmon, Michael Godsey, Billy Chinnock, Barry Felts, Argyle Bell, David Schnaufer, Lee Carr, Drew Claesges, Rick Moore, Robb Earls, Stacy Fleeman, Bruce Hackemann, Ric Harman, Tim Krekel, Vince Liveri, Will Owsley, Brooks Phillips, Jamie Simmons, Al Collins, Brad Smith, Joey Rossi, Thom King, Jim Ridley, Gary Serkin, and anybody that I may have forgotten…

AASHID HIMONS: THE LION OF NASHVILLE

Aashid Himons

One Heart, One Love, One Dream, One Destination! – Aashid Himons

Aashid Himons was a giant of a man…standing nearly seven feet tall with a leonine head haloed by a mane of lengthy, graying deadlocks, Himons was a force of nature, a charismatic musical alchemist that pursued his muse wherever it might take him. That’s not the best formula for success in the music industry, yet Himons managed to forge a career that spanned five decades, influenced countless other artists, and forever changed the image of Nashville from that of the home of country music to a rock ‘n’ roll mecca that includes the Black Keys, Jack White, and JEFF the Brotherhood among its residents.

A musical innovator that fused traditional country blues with reggae and world music during the late 1970s, Aashid – as he is known to his many fans – is best known for his popular blu-reggae band Afrikan Dreamland, which put Himons’ myriad of musical influences into play in creating an energetic and unique sound that took flight when performed live. With bandmates Darrell Rose and Mustafa Abdul Aleem, the trio recorded six albums during the 1980s and was the first reggae band to receive airplay on MTV. Himons’ roots ran deep, though, and included a formative background in blues and soul music.

Himons was born in rural West Virginia in 1942, learning the piano by age 3 and the drums by 5 years old. Like many blues artists of the era, Himons sang in the church, and the talented youngster subsequently appeared on several radio and television shows, including The Today Show with Dave Garroway. Himons left home as a teen, hitchhiking to New York City and later joining the army. After serving his stint with the military, Himons settled into the Washington, D.C. music scene, forming the R&B group Little Archie & the Majestics. During the 1960s, Himons would record a number of sides for various labels and with different bands, but it was a 1966 deal with Dial Records that would result in a pair of singles – All I Have To Do and You Can’t Tie Me Down – that would become known as highly collectible classics of northern soul music.

During the late 1960s, Himons worked throughout the country as an itinerant blues musician, performing coffeehouses and street corners as West Virginia Slim. He landed in Toronto in 1969, forming the short-lived duo God and I with musician and actor Jim Byrnes. I first met Archie, and that’s what I’ll always call him, in the deep dark winter of 1969. I guess we were both on the run from something, says Byrnes. I had been attending this sort of ‘literary salon’ called The Soft Cell which met regularly at a little spot in Toronto and which did attract a very interesting crowd. Writers Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje were regulars, the actor John Neville, a number of avant garde visual artists as well. There would be readings, discussions, and there was an open mike where I would regularly perform.

One night I got a call saying you’ve got to come down, there’s a fellow here you should meet, says Byrnes. Well, I scurried down and was introduced to an extraordinary individual, all six feet seven of him in a full length yak fur coat and with eyes and a smile that could stop you dead in your tracks. We jammed together that night and hit it off immediately. We learned a bit about one another in conversation, our similar interests in music; our, let’s say, bohemian outlook; and that we shared the same birthdate, albeit I was six years younger. Byrnes remembers, Archie had just arrived in Toronto from Pittsburgh under mysterious circumstances. He had some friends from his one-time home in Lexington, Kentucky who were young war resisters putting together a new life in Canada. We became fast friends and spent a load of time hanging out, swapping stories, smoking pot, listening to and playing music…

As to how the duo came to be known as God and I, Byrnes recalls A few of us were hanging out, pleasantly baked, listening to music, playing along and trying to plot a course of actions to get some gigs and make a little scratch when one of the assembled crew said ‘hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we heard you guys on the radio and they said, that was God and I?’ Well, that’s how stoned we were, we said, ‘yeah, cool, that’s who we are.’ Here was a happening acoustic music scene happening in Yorkville before its gentrification and we became a fixture at a number of coffee houses, experimental theatres, booze cans, you name it. When someone would ask which one of you is God? their standard reply was can’t you tell?

We went out to Ronnie Hawkins’ farm to hang out with Dick Gregory and John Lennon, who was planning his ‘Bed-In’ in Montreal with Yoko, says Byrnes. We played at The Mosport Festival, an attempt to recreate Woodstock with Sly and the Family Stone, Procol Harum, and a raft of others. We were strictly an acoustic act; I guess you could say we were very much in a Richie Havens kind of bag. We played blues, we played originals which were very much blues and gospel flavored…Archie’s mother had been a COGIC preacher. We played contemporary hits from Neil Young, CSNY, the Beatles, the Stones…R&B, standards, you name it.

Sadly, Byrnes and Himons never recorded together, and the two artists drifted apart and into other musical projects. Eventually the whole thing came to an end as the scene changed, says Byrnes, and I decided I had to get out of town and clean out my head. I moved out west and had my ups and downs. As I had sort of found my way back into normalcy, I had a serious road accident that ended up with me losing both of my legs and spending most of a year in recuperation and rehab.

Even as Byrnes and Himons pursued their individual careers, they would get back together to perform several times throughout the 1970s. We did keep in touch, says Byrnes, Archie and Christine (Himons’ soulmate) did come out west where we did some gigs in Victoria, BC. He went to Mexico and then, a couple of years later, we hooked up again in Portland, Oregon and put together some pretty cool shows opening for Robert Cray, Third World, and Jimmy Reed, about six weeks before he died in ‘76.

Himons’ restless spirit would lead him to Mexico City, where he performed with a local blues band, but it was during a trip to the Honduras in 1972, where Himons experienced a performance by Count Ossie & the Mystical Revelation of Rastafari, that he had a musical and spiritual epiphany that led to his conversion to Rastafarianism and the creation of his blu-reggae style. Himons decided that the Music City was the place to pursue his musical vision. Aashid moved to Nashville in August of 1979, but he had visited the city before. Back in about 1966 or ‘67, Himons said in an interview we did for Nashville’s The Metro magazine in 1990, I was working with Buddy Killen at Tree Music and Dial Records, so I used to come to Nashville all of the time.

I had been living in Pittsburgh, he remembered, that’s when I started the whole Afrikan Dreamland project, because it came into my mind to fuse blues and reggae together, so I started putting this album concept together. I had decided that I wanted to leave town and started to head to Minneapolis until I thought of how cold it gets up there, so then we decided to stop in Nashville and see old Buddy. I’d let him hear my new stuff and see what he thinks of it.

You have to realize, Aashid continues, that he hadn’t seen me since about 1967. I had a process and wore pointed-toe shoes and sharkskin suits and ties…I was really weird, in bad shape. That’s what he remembered, so I walked into his office in 1979 with dreadlocks and a tie-dyed T-shirt and the whole thing just freaked him out. He listened to the music and he regrouped…he said ‘you know, this music has got something, but you’ll never do anything with it here in Nashville.’ When he said that, I decided that I’d stay here in Nashville, so I did.

A hybrid of country blues, R&B, and reggae that was influenced by Count Ossie’s mesmerizing nyabinghi rhythms and the Jamaican style popularized by Bob Marley, blu-reggae would later influence contemporary blues artists like Corey Harris. Himons landed in Nashville during the late 1970s; now known as Aashid, he formed Afrikan Dreamland with Darrell Rose and Mustafa Abdul Aleem. The trio would quickly become one of the Music City’s most popular bands, Afrikan Dreamland helping kickstart an original local music scene that had little to do with the city’s country music tradition.

Mostly written by Himons, Afrikan Dreamland’s positive lyrics preached a philosophy of peace and love, and triumph over adversity, whether caused by economic or social injustice…a thread that would carry through Aashid’s entire career. Aside from their popular recordings and seemingly ubiquitous performances, Aashid and Afrikan Dreamland would use their drawing power to help young bands, and many of Nashville’s early rock ‘n’ roll talents got their start opening for Afrikan Dreamland and the massive crowds the band attracted.

In our 1990 interview, Himons explained how a reggae band from Nashville ended up on MTV. "We put together a video called Television Dreams, he remembers. That was when MTV was coming to Nashville looking for stuff, looking for country music. They were coming to tell people how to make better country videos; country videos used to be terrible, so they were showing them how to upgrade. They had a meeting downtown, which I couldn’t go to, so I asked Mustafa, who was a member of the band, to go. He’s also a lawyer and he’s always late…this time it paid off. Everybody was there already when he walked in with his dreadlocks, and the only seat left was next to the MTV people. He handed them his card and told them about the video. They wanted a video from Nashville so bad, we immediately sent it to them. Afrikan Dreamland became the first U.S. reggae band to be played on MTV."

After the break-up of Afrikan Dreamland in 1987, Aashid embarked on a lengthy and varied musical journey that saw the gifted artist applying his talents to blues, gospel, country, reggae, dub, ambient, and space music. Recording both as a solo artist and with a number of bands, Himons collaborated with a number of Nashville’s most adventurous musicians, talents like Tony Gerber, Giles Reaves, Mike Simmons, Ross Smith, Gary Serkin, and Kirby Shelstad, among many others. Prolific to a fault, Himons would become one of the most popular artists on mp3.com during the 1990s as his musical collaborations resulted in dozens of albums that would capture a worldwide audience for Aashid’s unique musical vision.

We met in about 1985 on a Metro Nashville Bus riding from one spot of town to the other, remembers musician and multi-media artist Tony Gerber. That was probably the only time I ever used the Metro Nashville Bus system and I met Aashid. He gave me his business card and I later called him to come see me on ‘Music Row’ as I had set up one of the first MIDI studios (Masterlink MIDI Studio) in Nashville at Al Jolson Enterprises. I think this was after I went and saw him perform…thus started our friendship and camaraderie over the years until his passing about three years ago.

Gerber and Himons instantly hit it off. I first heard and liked his reggae music, which of course was really popular with the college audiences and such around Nashville, recalls Gerber. However, it was when I heard his mountain/Delta style of blues that it really hit home for me. I was the most attracted to that style as I had some similar roots growing up playing the guitar and listening to people like Leadbelly, Josh White, and the Staple Singers…as well as mountain music from Appalachia, as my mother was from the mountains. Aashid grew up around the mountains in West Virginia, so we had some common juju I think.

It was a little later that I discovered he had a knack for space music, says Gerber, which really came as a surprise, because he was the first black artist I had met who was doing ambient electronic space music. We definitely hit it off musically and artistically, as I did much of his artwork over the years, and design work in addition to performing with him. Gerber is overly humble about his support of Himons’ music, as he was intimately involved with much of what Aashid would create over a period of 25 years. I worked in different capacities with Aashid, says Gerber. It was not all entirely musical. There was much graphic art work, live concert events, genealogy, recording, webmaster, and keeping him up to speed on his MacIntosh. As well, in the end, I took care of him for the last couple months of his life.

Aside from releasing better than a dozen of Aashid’s space music recordings on his own Space for Music record label, Gerber supported his friend in a number of various projects. Gerber worked with Himons on his long-running and popular late 1980s/early ‘90s cable access TV show Aashid Presents, a multi-media project featuring music, interviews, computer-generated graphics, and live performance video. Gerber was a member of a number of Aashid’s various bands, including the Akashic Orchestra and the Mountain Soul Band, and he performed onstage with Himons as part of Mind Orbit, a series of live multi-media concert events held in Nashville.

Gary Serkin, appropriately enough, first met Himons in the studio during the mid-’80s while recording tracks for an early Nashville rock compilation album titled The London Side of Nashville. Although Serkin had previously played with Rose, he wasn’t familiar with Afrikan Dreamland. I had never heard their music until Aashid gave me three of their albums that night in the studio, says Serkin. I liked their music a lot and I went see them play live upstairs at [Nashville bar] The Gold Rush. After the show, I mentioned to Aashid that I had jammed with their records and told him to call me if he ever needed a guitar player.

The call came soon when the ever-prolific Himons first branched out beyond Afrikan Dreamland with a solo album. "The first project was Aashid’s solo album Kozmik Gypsy, remembers Serkin. He played all of the instruments, but he wanted lead guitar on ‘I and I Survive’ and ‘Culture Woman.’ After the record was released, everyone liked what I played and Aashid asked me if I wanted to join Afrikan Dreamland, says Serkin. I worked with them for about a year. I left the band shortly before they broke up and I formed a new group in October 1985 with [Jimi Hendrix friend and bandmate] Billy Cox."

Continuing, Serkin says in 1988, I joined Aashid & the Seen with Michael Saleem on drums and Ross Smith on bass. After that group, we had Aashid & Friends and then Aashid & the New Dream in 1991. Shortly after our last gig, I got a call to tech for the Allman Brothers Band and I went on tour with them. On a side note, both Aashid as Little Archie, and the Allman Joys got their start on Dial Records in Nashville!

Serkin remembers his time playing with Himons fondly. It was great working with Aashid and I’m very proud and honored to have been a part of his music, says Serkin. I enjoyed my time with Afrikan Dreamland the most because we were touring and playing a lot of festivals to amazing crowds, although Aashid & the New Dream was perhaps his best group of players. I also played in Mustafa’s new group, Mystic Meditations too, but my favorite times were with Aashid.

Guitarist Mike Simmons was another well-known Nashville rocker that fell into Aashid’s wide-ranging-and-eclectic musical orbit. The first time I met Aashid was in a band house I shared with Gus Palas and my brother Paulie Simmons, says Simmons, referring to his globe-trotting band the Stand. Aashid and I hit it off immediately. It was as if we had known each other for hundreds of years and later we used to talk about that very possibility! Palas was the publisher of Nashville’s local rock ‘n’ roll rag The Metro, which had run a story on Afrikan Dreamland penned by this writer in 1985, and evidently Palas had invited Himons to the band’s rehearsal.

"We did a run-through of one of our instrumentals for the Stand that day and I’ll never forget seeing him over there grooving and then eventually dancing to this metal instrumental, Simmons recalls. He loved the Simmons brothers from that moment on. I think he even started hitting me up to come and jam with him that first day and I had never even heard his music. I said ‘Of course! Tell me when.’ Who would not want to spend time with this guy? asks Simmons. He exuded peace and love in a way I had never seen. His vibe was so good you just wanted to be in his presence!"

On the surface, the mixing of Aashid and the Stand was an unlikely pairing. You have to understand, we were total Iron Maiden, Van Halen meets Rush type metal heads says Simmons. I was fairly open-minded, but I was not into reggae or space music. That being said, he remembers, when I first went over to jam with Aashid, I was blown away. I credit him alone for much of what I have today musically because he opened my heart and mind to all the possibilities in music, and I have approached guitar differently ever since.

Continuing, Simmons says, "it wasn’t something he would tell you either, it was something you learned from playing with him. He taught me how to listen, I mean really listen. I learned so much from listening to him and watching him. Not only when we were playing music, but how he related to people. His honesty flowed through everything he did. The short answer is I was a fan from day one. Simmons soon began working with Aashid on various projects. The very first thing we did was a recording and a video of a song called ‘Home.’ It was the Stand and Aashid, says Simmons. We recorded it at Tim Coats’ place and did the video at our rehearsal room. It used to play on the local cable access channel all the time. I used to come home from a gig and see that thing at 3AM many a morning!"

In 1995, Aashid reunited with his former bandmates Rose and Aleem, as well as a number of his more recent collaborators, under the Afrikan Dreamland name to release the two-CD set The Leaders, which further explored Himons’ signature blu-reggae sound. A few years later he tapped me to be his guitarist in the Afrikan Dreamland reunion, remembers Simmons. We did some big shows around Nashville in the mid-’90s. It was so much fun! It was very loose, stream-of-consciousness kind of playing within the framework of his songs. Some amazing things happen when you play like that.

That morphed into the Pyramid Underground which was Aashid, the Simmons Brothers, Giles Reaves, and Kirby Shelstad, says Simmons after working on The Leaders project. I was running Underground Sound at the time and we had access to state-of-the-art digital recording gear. We would set up down at the warehouse and just record for hours. After Giles edited and mixed it all, we ended up with at least four or five albums of stuff. I am going to make much of that stuff available online soon. That music needs to be shared and heard!

One of Himons’ pet projects during the late 1990s was the failure of the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville to induct harmonica player DeFord Bailey. The first African-American country music star, the first artist to appear on the Grand Ole Opry, and a popular live performer, Bailey not only influenced a generation of Southern artists like bluesman John Lee Sonny Boy Williamson and country star Charlie McCoy, his early support of American music legends Roy Acuff and Bill Monroe helped them both establish their careers. Himons lobbied tirelessly to get Bailey inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, a goal that he accomplished in 2005.

In the late 1990s, Aashid formed the Mountain Soul Band to experiment with country blues and Appalachian-inspired hillbilly music. Working again with friends like Reaves, Gerber, and Kirby Shelstad, the Mountain Soul Band also included the talents of brothers Victor and Reggie Wooten, and multi-instrumentalists Jody Lentz and Tramp, then of the Nashville trio Bonepony. This collaboration resulted in a pair of critically-acclaimed albums of pure Americana: 1998’s studio release Mountain Soul and the live West Virginia Hills, released a year later.

For over a decade and well into the new millennium, Aashid explored the potential of space music and ambient electronic music, much of it released worldwide by Tony Gerber’s Space for Music label. In this, Himons was also a trailblazer. "I signed Aashid to my label because he was one of the only black space musicians I am aware of