Singer-songwriter Charlie Sizemore did something for this publication that he finds very uncomfortable—talked about himself. “I have never thought I was all that interesting,” Sizemore admits with a laugh. “When I’m at a show, I will think that I am probably the most boring person in the room. There are fascinating people here, and I’m not one of them. I’ve just never gotten over that hurdle of being entirely comfortable talking about Charlie.”
Ill-at-ease he may be, but Sizemore bites the bullet to discuss his latest CD, Heartache Looking For A Home, his trying times as a lawyer/musician, and his history with Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys.
The Song Man
Nicknamed “The Song Man” by Greg Cahill of Special Consensus, Sizemore lived up to that title once again as he was working on his latest project. “I think it’s a compliment, because for me it’s all about the song,” Sizemore said. “The song is the star. The best compliment that somebody can give me is ‘I like that song.’ That’s a better compliment than saying ‘I love the way you sing,’ because if I can get out of the way of a song, and make the song the star, then I’ve done my job.”
It’s not easy for a song to make the cut on one of his CDs. “If I have a song that I really like, but I don’t think that I can properly present it, then I’m not going to record it,” Sizemore said. “I ran into this on this most recent record. It’s a song that I’ve been carrying around for a year and a half, just really excited about recording it. I couldn’t make it work…maybe next time. I knew I couldn’t do the song justice, and I can’t do that.”
In fact, Sizemore blames his devotion to recording the best songs for delaying the completion of his album. “As usual, it took longer than it should have. I just kept looking for songs. You want to go ahead and record, and then you just find another song. The hardest part of making a record for me is coming up with 12, 13, or 14 songs that kind of fit together and make a record. Maybe I’m behind the times, but I still see a CD as a complete product, not just 12 or 14 individual songs. The songs have to kind of fit. Usually, I’ll find my songs with 3 or 4 songs that I like, but I only have room for one of that type of song on the record.
“I’m not a chronic writer like Tom T. [Hall] or Paul Craft, but I am always on the lookout for songs. When a song makes it onto my list, I’ll sit around and fool with it some myself. That’s the end of some of them. If they make it past that stage, then we try it with the band. Some fall by the wayside there. They make it past that, then we’ll actually get into the studio where I have had them on occasion make it that far and then not work.”
Although he’s quite the tunesmith, Sizemore won’t automatically record a song he’s written. He included none of his compositions on this 14-cut disc. “I expect to write a few between now and the next record. Whether or not they make it on the record, I don’t know. Just because I write it doesn’t mean it gets on my record. It has to make the cut just like anybody else’s songs.”
His CD includes country superstar Alan Jackson’s, “Walking The Floor Over Me,” a remake of “Red Wicked Wine,” and “Ashley Judd,” a fantasy song about women out of a guy’s league. He recorded the latter song with the Clinch Mountain Boys, but it was never reissued. “I figured out fairly quickly after singing that song with Ralph—we recorded it years ago—it just would not feel right singing it with anyone else,” Sizemore said.
“I was glad to do it,” Ralph Stanley said recently. “Charlie’s always been one of my favorites. It’s what a man is and what he feels. It means a lot. He’s a good singer, and he respects my songs and my singing. I would always be ready to help Charlie do a song. Charlie’s a good man.”
Sizemore also put his unique spin on the Osborne Brothers’ “Heartache Looking For A Home,” that songwriter Paul Craft created. “I really liked the Osbornes’ cut on it,” Sizemore said. “I just decided, ‘I wonder what this would sound like if Jimmy Martin did it?’ That’s kind of the way I approached it—channeled Jimmy Martin.”
Another Craft composition, “No Lawyers In Heaven,” co-written with Billy Ed Wheeler, takes a tongue-in-cheek poke at Sizemore’s other profession. “I liked it right away. If I hadn’t been a lawyer, I don’t know what impact it would have had on me, but being one and seeing it from the inside and then having lived a long time not being a lawyer, I can see both sides of that one. No, it wasn’t hard to sing it with a straight face. Listen, I meet a lot of people that see there’s some truth in that song. A lot of people have had some pretty bad experiences. There might be a twinkle in my eye when I’m singing it.”
While Sizemore juggles gigs in court as a trial lawyer with those on the bluegrass circuit, he says the two professions couldn’t be any further apart. “They’re completely different,” Sizemore said. “You really bring everything you are and have ever done into a case and into a courtroom.”
Having the glare of the public eye on him was a daunting obstacle for the musician to overcome in the beginning of his music career. But he says his early years on stage playing music gave him a leg up in front of a judge and jury. “It wasn’t easy, but I am comfortable being the center of attention, which is completely contrary to my nature. That’s helpful in a courtroom. It took a very long time.”
Back in Bluegrass
For the first part of his life, bluegrass music is all the Eastern Kentucky/Magoffin County native knew. Growing up in a musical family where his father and grandfather played banjo, he became fascinated with mountain and bluegrass music. An accomplished guitar player, Sizemore’s first instrument was the fiddle. By the time he was a teen, he was picking with local favorite Lum Patton and hit the road with the Goins Brothers.
“Maybe nothing will make you appreciate getting out and playing music like eight years of sitting behind a desk. Until I started practicing law, of course, I was a school undergraduate or at graduate school/law school most of the time. Other than that, playing music is all I’ve done professionally since I was about 16.
“I did appreciate it. I never got tired of it. I never said, ‘Gosh, I dread doing this’ or ‘Why am I doing this?’ It never occurred to me. Being off the road those seven/eight years and being just completely away from the whole thing, made me realize how big a part of my life that was and how much I did miss it. I do appreciate it a lot more.”
During his first major foray into bluegrass music in 1977, he had the good fortune of replacing Keith Whitley in the lead singing role with Ralph Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys. He had intended to try out for the lead guitar spot, but that slot had been filled a few days earlier by Junior Blankenship. For the next nine years, Sizemore traveled with Dr. Ralph’s band.
“When I think about those days, what stands out most in my mind is riding back and forth to Virginia to meet the bus with [fiddler] Curly Ray Cline,” Sizemore remembers. “I just miss those days. He was never downbeat. He was always up, always happy. Junior Blankenship and I were together the whole time I was in the band, and we hung out together. We got along famously, and we never had any issues. We stay in touch to this day. We were brothers.”
He also recalls a memorable incident that made the pages of the New York Times when he used his guitar-picking hands for another reason at a show in Columbus, Ohio. “I don’t know many guitar players that have the dubious distinction of getting in a fist fight with a guy, especially about twice the size of me,” he says chuckling. They were giving us some problems. The owner didn’t want Ralph to sing gospel songs. Ralph did gospel songs. He was going to. Nobody was going to tell him not to. The owner’s brother was back at the sound board, and I think turned off the microphone and took it upon himself to knock my coffee cup out of my hand as I was walking out. And I took it upon myself to do my best to break his jaw,” he says with a laugh. “That’s the only lick I got in. He was a lot tougher than I was. I ended up with a black eye and a bloody nose. That’s not how, particularly given the stereotype that exists with people from Eastern Kentucky, I wanted my name to be in the New York Times. He really had it coming. I wish I could say I regret that or that there was another way to do it, but I really had no choice in that matter. So, I can’t say I have any regrets. I can promise you I have not been in a fist fight since. So, that was my last one. I’m a mild pacifist, completely harmless.”
Much tamer and living with no regrets, the father of two adult children and a six-year-old son doesn’t look back on his decision to leave bluegrass the first time, but he’s happy to be on stage again. “I can tell you that once I got back out doing shows, at that point, I really realized how much I did miss it, how incomplete my life would be without music and without going out on the road and seeing people,” Sizemore admits. “I’d forgotten how many people I knew. I’m having a lot more fun this time around.”
Unlike some of his friends in the music business, he loves the call of the road. “I feel much more at home on the road than I do anywhere else. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”
In his mind, there are no negatives to life on tour with his band that includes banjo player Josh McMurray, fiddler Paul Kramer, mandolinist Danny Barnes, and bassist Charles Fields. “You have your shows when they’re not as good as they should be or the sound system’s not what it should be or somebody in the band’s getting on somebody else’s nerves. You have all that stuff. I can’t point to anything in particular and say, ‘This is what I don’t like about it,’ because there’s really nothing that rises to that level.”
As an emcee, Sizemore has learned to size up his audiences. “I think most entertainers, if they’re paying attention, will tell you that the audience is at least half the show. I’m very attuned to the audience. Much of what goes on stage is not necessarily in response, but it has to do with the audience. A lot of what I say is very audience specific. It’s harder to do with larger audiences, but not impossible. I think I’m pretty good at reading a jury, and I think I’m pretty good at reading an audience. I can tell what their pace is and that’s where I try to be.”
Some audiences don’t want to hear a lot of talk. Some audiences want to get to know you and the band better and some think, ‘Shut up and play another song.’ I don’t have a canned approach to any show even with respect to the songs that I do. I’ll kick a song out of the repertoire in a second if I just don’t feel like it’s going to fit in the show. On the other hand, and this has happened, if somebody’s driven a hundred miles and they want to hear ‘Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain,’ which I’ve never sung in my entire life, or ‘Fox On The Run,’ I’m likely to try and do it. It’s just music and we’re having fun. I don’t take it all that seriously. If I can make a person happy, I’m glad to do it.”




