Wesley Pruitt

By Tom Geddie
Armed with a four-song live recording demo CD, a seemingly endless repertoire of cover songs, and now some of his own songs, Wesley Pruitt is deciding how to make it in the music business. He’s not sure if he’s a blues musician or a rock musician or a country musician, or maybe a little bit of all three.
Labels can be effective marketing tools or can get in the way because they nibble at the edges of who people are; people don’t always fit in boxes.
That’s the “problem” with Wesley, a lead guitar player who likes so many kinds of music that he’s hard to fit into a box that make his music easy to market.
For Wesley, who’ll be 25 on Nov. 24, life is a puzzle with lots of pieces. Growing up as a black kid in East Texas with a bunch of white friends, he was exposed to, and enjoyed, all kinds of music.
“I was around a bunch of soul and older gospel and blues with my dad. And my dad loves bass guitar, so he liked Waylon Jennings, too.”
Wesley didn’t get serious about music until he was 15, when he first heard Stevie Ray Vaughan’s electric blues-rock. His dad, Wesley Pruitt Sr., refurbished an old guitar for him. Influences range from Vaughan and Jennings to B.B. King, Willie Nelson, Aretha Franklin, Mahalia Jackson, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, and more.
He believes he would be a dropout from Canton High School today if it weren’t for music and two of his teachers – band director Rob Toups and English teacher Jimmie Nixon.
“Halfway through my senior year I almost dropped out. But I got to play tuba during the day and in the jazz band later that day,” Wesley said. “And all through school I couldn’t stand to read a book for anything. Miss Nixon and I butted heads the first six weeks, but she taught me how to really analyze and know what the book was saying. I thank her for that.”
Wesley got a two-year degree from Tyler Junior College and considered a law-enforcement career; music wouldn’t let him go.
“If I could just play for anybody and everybody who wants to hear it, I’ll take that over anything,” he said. “I’ve been around your brass rings and your contracts. That doesn’t please me. I want to make a good living and take care of the people who are with me.”
After learning so many other people’s songs, Wesley began seriously writing his own about three years ago. Some of the songs, like life, are puzzles for us to put together. “On It Goes,” on the demo CD, ties together different pieces.
The first verse is about a friend who he believes was murdered, with the murder covered up by arson.
“You’ve got a mystery, and a story waiting to be told. The truth will always come out,” he said.
The second verse expresses feelings about the messy aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
“Lives were destroyed, and there’s a story to be told,” he said.
The third verse came to Wesley while he watched the movie “Sling Blade.”
“An old man dies, a young girl lives, and it goes on and on. Truth will be told.”
The song’s bridge – including the lines “life is given, life is taken away” – sums up the message that people should show their love.
The man who hated reading has become somewhat of a philosopher.
Wesley is more likely to write about national tragedies or an old girlfriend’s plight or another musician as he is to write about himself. Which is just another way of fitting the pieces of the puzzle together.
Tom Geddie-
"as my mind wanders, sleepless, I take the moon in my mouth; it tastes of silver . . . "
www.tomgeddie.com
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