Well....I have no band (any longer). I used to perform with some of my old friends in the form of The Austin Shafer Band. It was composed of some old buddys of mine from Nashville who played for years with the likes of Paycheck, Jones, Twitty, The Wilburn Brothers...etc. It was a great blessing to be honored to even stand among them let alone to have them consider me an equal...they taught me a lot. They were my best buddys, my brothers and I miss them more than I can say...But we split up a few years ago. I lost my voice and health problems plagued the rest of the guys.....so now I just write. Robert Elliott, best friend of 37 years, my old drummer and backup vocalist is my writing partner. We lucked up and were made members of BMI and the Nashville Songwriters Association in 2002 which hasn't panned out. BMI, like everything else in Nashville these days is run by "kids" from NY and L.A. who know NOTHING about REAL country music. They tell us while our songs are great, they are "too country sounding for todays country music"....lol..so, we, like everyone and everything else that is PURE country, have been put on the shelf and forgotten. All we want is a decnet publisher with connections or someone (Indie or not) to record some of the many, many songs we have and get them out there!...lol.
We played everywhere from Lexington Ky to Nashville Tn...lol....radio, t.v...if they would let us, we'd play..lol.
Gosh..I was raised on Bluegrass, Haggard, Jones, Owens, Cash, Jennings, Nelson, Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, The Wilburn Bros, Webb Pierce, Hank sr., Kitty Wells, Little Jimmy Dickens, Ernest Tubb, Carl Smith, the list goes on. As far as writers, Bobby Bare, Roger Miller, Harlan Howard and Hank sr.
Just a plain four track recorder and an old hand made Alvarez accoustic/electric.
I would LOVE to see "traditional" country sounds come back. Nothing against the new artists or bands or songs for that matter...I just love the old honky tonk sound.