Barry Kemp
I was raised in a bloodline soaked in the real American soundtrack—Gospel, Blues, Country, and Rock & Roll that has been burning since the 1950s and still won’t quit.
As a kid, I snatched my brother Billy’s old acoustic and started hunting down every song bleeding out of the radio. One afternoon Dad caught me working a tune and threw down the gauntlet: learn this song and the electric is yours. Joke was on him—I’d already owned it.
Guitar in hand, Billy and I locked ourselves in that room for hours, stacking harmonies until the walls shook. That’s where the voices learned to bleed together. Church choir came next and shoved me into the light, giving me the nerve to stare a crowd down and own it.
Through the teens and twenties, I tore through band after band, stealing every secret the older cats would give up. Recording studios haunted me. I needed to know every fader, every track, every dark corner of the board. That hunger dragged me straight into a Multi-Track Mixing and Mastering course at the legendary Ardent Recording Studio in Memphis—the moment the spark became an obsession to build my own house of sound.
The '70s found me in a band backing a country singer, trading stages with Kenny Rogers, T. G. Sheppard, and O. B. McClinton. When the ’80s hit, the rock virus took over. After bouncing through a mess of outfits, I locked in with J. C. Roberts, Van Toomey, Kenny Blann, Mike Lowrimore, and Evan Leake. We built Billy and the Blasters from the ground up and rode a hardcore following for years, night after night of pure voltage.
Today it’s still J. C., Van, and me—shoulder to shoulder, writing, tracking, and capturing other artists under the KRT Sound Lab banner.
Long road from that first borrowed acoustic… and I’m still chasing the same high, every single minute of it.
Jay Roberts (J.C.)
Born in 1944 in Pueblo, Colorado, to a Mississippi Air Force dad and an Italian-American mom who owned the stage as a nightclub singer, I was a military brat with stamps from California, New Mexico, Oregon, New Jersey, the UK, France, Germany, and Hawaii inked across my passport. Wanderlust was the family business—music became mine.
England, 1962. Cliff Richard and The Shadows lit the fuse. I ordered my first electric guitar straight off the television, talked Dad into the down payment on an amp, and started ripping whatever was burning up the British airwaves with the airmen at the base club. That was the night the virus took hold.
Back on U.S. soil, I never put the guitar down. New Jersey—joined a hot local outfit until the next transfer. Booneville college days: Soul Seekers out of New Albany, four guys grinding rock and blues. Then Cleveland, Mississippi—I stretched the truth just enough to grab the bass chair in The Reets, one of the baddest bands ever to crawl out of the Delta. Real horn section. Pure R&B and soul that packed Ole Miss and Mississippi State frat houses until the walls sweated. Memphis hit next.
Days selling gear at Berl Olswanger Music, nights living inside pickup bands. One of those crews took us to Boston for a month at the Improper Bostonian under Your Father’s Mustache. Jeff—Clarksdale guitar assassin—was in the lineup. The keyboard player got yanked into National Guard duty the night Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and the gig evaporated. Same Jeff rode shotgun on the USO tour through Southeast Asia and the Philippines with Marvel Thomas (Rufus’s son) locked in on keys.
When the Air Force plane touched down in Hawaii to refuel, I never got back on. Found work, met Deb, the woman who would become my wife. Decided to finish my degree at Delta State, but missing her hit harder than any hangover. I called, asked her to marry me. She flew to Cleveland, Mississippi; we said “I do,” stayed until the diploma was in hand, then pointed the car toward Memphis.
In the early ’70s, I opened Good Vibrations—my music-store fortress for nearly twenty years. Shelves stacked, gear talk flowing, and the stage still calling. First band: four-piece with Memphis keyboard legend JB Bowie and drummer Robby Payne—the guitar chair was a revolving door of killers. Next: Magic, a five-piece pop machine with vocal harmonies so tight they could cut glass, owning the Mid-South circuit. Somewhere in the middle I found the ones who became blood. Two of them are teaching the angels how to bend notes now; one is sidelined by health, but the other three are still writing, tracking, and producing fire. That’s what happens when the band becomes family.
The store closed, life threw the usual plot twists—car lots, moves, the long detours—but the guitar never left my hands. These days I’m in Oxford, Mississippi, a short drive from KRT Sound Lab HQ.
The road’s been long, the stories are louder, and every one of them still starts the same way: plug in, turn it up, and let it bleed.
Van Toomey
I was born into an Air Force family in rural Mississippi, always chasing the horizon.
Bases in Texas, Massachusetts, Hawaii, and Japan kept us moving while my father—an electronics master who taught cryptography—worked the precision end of the spectrum. I went the other way. I chased the raw energy of six strings.
Seventh grade. A Woodstock recording. Jimi Hendrix’s “Star-Spangled Banner” detonating through the speakers. That was the spark. I started on a Sears Silvertone acoustic, learning by ear—Duane Eddy twang, Jeff Beck fire, Pete Townshend power chords, Jimmy Page swagger, and of course pure Jimi.
On my 13th birthday, the first electric arrived: a First Man by Teisco. Instantly I was jamming with base friends, trading licks and chasing that electric high. When we finally settled back in Memphis, I rolled into Whitehaven High School with one year left and zero interest in the ordinary path. I joined the Jazz Band, stretched my ears, and never looked back.
After graduation, I hit the mid-South circuit hard, locking in with bass player J. C. Roberts and paying my way through Memphis State (now the University of Memphis) with lead-guitar gigs while earning a business degree. The nights belonged to the stage.
I tore through power-trio intensity with Triple Threat, then burned through Trix, Hi Rize (tracking at Al Green’s private studio), and Fatz. With Billy and the Blasters, I hit the hardest—grinding out relentless gigs across the Memphis scene while cutting tracks at Cotton Row Studios. Those bands owned the mid-South circuit: continuous bookings, packed rooms, and a fan base that showed up ready to rock.
Later, the volume shifted, but the fire stayed. I ran sound for two churches in DeSoto County, Mississippi, then stepped back out front as lead guitar in praise-and-worship bands for a pair of large congregations. The studio calls kept coming—Ardent in Memphis, three CDs carrying my playing.
The old crew never really left. I reconnected with Barry Kemp, Jay Roberts, and Mike Lowrimore from the Blasters days. We lit the original-music fuse again under the name Three Miles from Memphis. After Mike’s passing, we returned to Billy and the Blasters and cut Blastin’ Off Again—proof the chemistry never cooled.
I’m still writing, still sharpening the blade on a growing arsenal of guitars. When I’m not tracking at KRT Sound Lab, I’m in the shop building amplifiers, effects pedals, and electric guitars under the Van T. name.
Same hands that learned by ear on a Silvertone are still chasing tone—only now I build the tools myself.
The passion never quit. It just keeps evolving.
