Songwriter slips into solo career

SANDPOINT - Depending on his mood at the moment, he hangs one arm over the shoulder of his guitar like an old pal, or pulls it close to him at the waist like a treasured lover. And like a couple who have been close for many years, he and the instrument complete each another's sentences, talking in and around and, sometimes, over one another.

What were those years in Nashville like?

"You know …," the songwriter starts to say, his face bunching up in concentration as he searches for the right words. In the space created by the pause, his left hand creeps up the guitar neck and feels around for the right chord. And then he starts to sing a melody that embroiders a story that answers the question precisely and perfectly.

These days, he performs under the stage name "Bent Whiskers."  Generations of local music lovers would be more likely recognize him by his given name, Johnnie Lawson.

At the end of last year, Lawson punctuated more than a quarter century of picking with what has to be one the longest running musical groups in the region when he retired his Pack River Band. From 1981 through New Year's Eve of 2007, he fronted a group that, at one time or another, featured at least half of the professional musicians in North Idaho.

"We considered everybody who played with us for one night or more - and got paid - a member of the Pack River Band," the leader said.

By that measure, the band's personnel included a total of more than 40 musicians, most of whom shared their talents on the stage as part of the house band at Bert's Place - a friendly roadhouse where cowboys, hippies, truckers and white-collar workers could coexist amicably.

See LAWSON, Page 3

One catalyst for this unusual chemistry was the owner, Bert Lawson, who ran the place like an easygoing mom, but wielded an iron fist to anyone foolish enough to cause trouble. But the second reason the mix worked so well was the music itself. Whether interpreting a country standard or belting out old-time rock n'roll, Johnnie was a musical chameleon who managed to step into each song, preserve its original spirit and make it his own at the same time.

"I never could sing a song if I didn't feel it," he said. "I see what I'm singing and it makes me uncomfortable if I can't put the emotion into it that it takes for me to really feel it."

As bandleader of the Pack River Band, Lawson kept the welcome mat out for great players who had a weekend off and wanted to sit in. They would wander in with their instrument cases in tow and sit somewhere near the stage, knowing that they would invariably be called up "for a song" that would almost always turn into a set-long jam. In that sense, Lawson is that rare type of performer who is at home in the spotlight, but is happy to share its glow with a fellow musician.

Generosity ran in the Lawson family. After the crowd cleared out on Saturday nights, Bert would often hand over the band's pay with the announcement that they were expected to be back on stage Sunday afternoon for a benefit performance to help out a family whose house had burned down, a mother with cancer, or a young couple who had a sick baby.

"We did a lot of benefits over the years," Johnnie said. "Mom was big on helping people. We didn't always go to church, but she was very religious. We broke away from the church, but mom never broke away from doing good."

He shared the story of a Bert's Place patron who said he was down on his luck and told Bert he needed a few dollars to buy groceries. She slipped him a twenty and told him not to worry about paying it back, just as she had done for other folks going through hard times. Later that day, she saw the same man bellied up to a downtown bar instead of picking up food for the family.

"It made me mad that he took my money and then just drank it away," Johnnie recalls his mother saying. "But it made me even madder that he was drinking it away in someone else's bar."

Lawson's singing career started at a wee age, when he helped lead the singing as a 5-year-old in church. He started his first band in the Army while he was stationed in Korea and began performing as a solo artist when he left the military as a chief warrant officer in 1979.

"I was playing with a beat box machine that I called Sidney," Lawson said. "One night, Sidney kept speeding up and slowing down in the middle of songs and I couldn't figure out what was going on. It turned out I had the beat box plugged into the same circuit as the club's walk-in freezer. Every time they'd open or close the door, the tempo would change."

He kept up his relationship with on-stage electronics throughout most of the Pack River Band's existence, mounting a minicomputer in front of his microphone stand and using it as the teleprompter for lyrics to the 400-plus tunes in his virtual songbook.

As Bent Whiskers, the singer/songwriter enters the latest stage of performing with technology. He still has a computer beside him for each show, but these days it triggers entire band arrangements that Lawson has programmed into his "Band in a Box" software.

"So now I can perform my original songs with bass, drums and even some keyboard and fiddle," he said. "I first used the software as a tool to take my own songs to the band and say, 'This is how the song goes - let's learn it.'

"But as Bent Whiskers, I decided to go ahead and use it as my band," he added. "There's so few places where you can book a whole band any more, because they can't afford it. It was great to have the Pack River Band for all that time, but it's hard to get a group like that together and keep it going for years."

As a songwriter, Lawson made the ritual pilgrimage to Nashville and spent two years shopping his songs around. He was there during a dry period when record companies weren't signing new artists, but came away with several new songs from the experience.

One of his latest creations was penned as a fundraising vehicle for the Wishing Star Foundation. Lawson will perform the song, "Wishing Star" as well as another new tune called "Help Us Find a Cure" for the first time on Oct. 25 at 1:00 p.m., when the local Wishing Star chapter celebrates the organization's 25th anniversary at the City Beach Pavilion. He plans to make the songs available on his Web site, with all donations going to Wishing Star and cancer research at Kootenai Memorial Hospital, respectively.

Many of his songs are already available as free downloads on the Internet - a tool Lawson uses to get his music in front of a wider audience.

His lyric tenor voice sounds much the same as it always has - a gentle Willie Nelson vibrato combined with a Hank Williams turn of phrase. But the tone color and the point-of-view have become more world wise, calling for a new character to help reach a new audience.

Enter Bent Whiskers.

"All of my songs follow stages of my life; that's what we write from," Lawson said. "At this stage in my life - as ol' Bent Whiskers - I'm too old to get picked up for a recording contract. I'm an independent artist sharing my songs for free because I just want to get them heard."

For a complete list of musicians who have performed with the Pack River Band, as well as a photo history of the group, song downloads and the story of how local singer/songwriter Charley Packard helped give the band its name, visit www.bentwhiskers.com.