CULLMAN, Ala. – Whether on warm summer evenings or brisk winter nights, people head into local venues to shake off the work week and hear some music. Cullman has a variety of spots to relax, like Moe’s, Grumpy’s or The Tavern and is adding new places like the Stash House. Familiar faces and familiar songs make the night go by with the warmth of laughter and singing.
Long before people head in, one man has arrived and is lugging in equipment and hooking up cables. Jason Willingham can always be counted on to give all of himself in every performance. He can country up boot scoot boogie and take listeners back to the old days. He sits down with his guitar and flings his shoes to the side, if he’s wearing any and asks how everyone is. Usually in black and always amazing, he performs songs the audience knows and loves as well as originals.
As a photographer that grew interested in photographing musicians, I remember three years ago working up my nerve to approach him at a Second Friday show. I made my way on stage during a break. Not quite sure what I expected, but it was not the soft spoken humble man I met. He was very friendly and receptive to getting his picture made by someone long a photographer but new to having music as the subject. Over the next few years, I followed him to various spots to catch his shows and we became good friends, he never acted like I was in the way, creeping ever closer with my camera. I lived in fear of stepping on a chord and injuring eardrums, but got caught up in the beauty of the sound and trying to capture the man making it. Since then, he has used so many of my photographs for fliers and promotions.
On a windy fall day, I sit down with him to ask him a few questions.
He tells me he began taking guitar lessons from his uncle Tony Willingham at 8 years old and resumed lessons again at 12. His first performances were recitals at Tony’s Music School and when he was 15, he arranged shows of his own in the back room there and shortly after, shows at the civic center.
I ask Jason if he has a dream guitar he would like to own and he says he’s happy with what he has. When he was younger, he had so many low quality instruments he learned to do his best with what was available. He explains so many people are chasing a sound but when you play what you have and make it sound good, you are in the honesty of the moment, change
yourself a little and make it work.
He tells me about Muddy Waters stretching strings on nails to a post coming down from a ceiling in his cabin, making the whole structure a guitar. He says an artist needs no specific equipment to be creative.
Jason loves to play the songs he writes himself and is so thankful every day to do what he loves the most. I asked him, if he could play anywhere, where would it be? He says he would love to organize his own event resembling Woodstock; making it a benefit event. I wrap up my interview by asking what his future plans are and he simply smiles and says “watch and see.”
