Champ Hood

A group of high school friends formed a band in Spartanburg, South Carolina in the early '70s, and managed to keep their ambitious vision of an Uncle Walt's Band alive for more than a dozen years off and on, making records and winding up playing on the nationally televised Austin City Limits. That in itself represents quite an accomplishment for what started out as a teenage project, but even more remarkable is that Champ Hood and his partners Walter Hyatt and David Ball each eventually developed solo careers as well. Hood appears on many recordings as a fiddler, but is the most versatile of the three instrumentally, also being a more than proficient guitarist and mandolinist. The guitar was actually his first instrument, and in some 25 years on the Austin music scene he was just as well known for his guitar style, particularly his knack at providing subtle accompaniment. When it came time to pick up the bow, he was one of a minority of great players who start an instrument as an adult. He was playing in a Spartanburg coffeehouse with Hyatt when Ball first saw him, and the former man would also be Hood's partner in a quintet known as the Contenders that was based out of Nashville between 1973 and 1976. Meanwhile Uncle Walt's Band moved back and forth between Austin and Nashville, peaked in the late '70s and had broken up in 1983. Hood had a new partnership with Austin's Jimmie Dale Gilmore by then, followed by some nine years working with songstress Toni Price. Lyle Lovett, a fan of Uncle Walt's Band as a college student, hired Hood for his own Large Band. Threadgill's Troubadours was Hood's pet project in the '90s--finally, his own band after so many years as a collaborator and sideman. His son Warren Hood took up the fiddle and was himself performing on Austin...