Memphis music was dealt yet another gut-punch last week with the announcement that Jared McStay had succumbed to cancer on November 15th. And while there was no separating the man from his music, what Memphians mourned most was McStay’s winning personality, either as the congenial owner of Shangri-La Records or as the ever-curious man-about-town, eager to check out new music in whatever form he could find it.
Yet any remembrance of McStay’s legacy must go beyond noting that he was a member of the Simpletones/Simple Ones, So Gung Ho, and other bands, for the sheer number of those “other bands” was stunning, as was the prolific pace at which McStay wrote songs. To get a sense of Jared McStay, the musician, I spoke to two local players who knew him best: Tripp Lamkins, best known as the bassist for the Grifters, and John Stivers, best known as the guitarist for Impala. Aside from those more widely recognized bands, the two played with McStay in various less celebrated collaborations, and gained much insight into what made this unofficial Mayor of Midtown tick, musically speaking.
Unsurprisingly, both Lamkins and Stivers were drawn to McStay via the Simple Ones (originally called the Simpletones), who impressed most of Midtown Memphis right out of the starting gate. “One Friday night in 1991, Andria Lisle, Roy Berry and I went down to the Loose End to see the Simpletones,” recalls Lamkins. “It may have been their first gig, or one of their earliest shows for sure. I fell in love with them right away. And Jared was a big Grifters fan, so once he saw me there he announced that their next gig would be with the Grifters. Of course no such show had been discussed or booked or anything. Right after their set Jared came up to me and said ‘Come on man! What do you say? Let’s do this!’ And I was like, ‘Yeah! Why not? Sure!’ This began a long run of us playing shows together and of course a long friendship.”
Stivers was similarly struck by the Simple Ones’ earliest shows, and what he saw seems to have inspired him to co-found Impala. “I’m not sure if I saw their exact first show, but I saw them soon after. I was just like, ‘Man! These guys are playing great music, these guys are rockin out.’ Jared came out of the chute just like a rocket. I thought, ‘Man, this band is tight and the songs are crazy.’ It wasn’t like going to see Chilton or someone who’d already been on the scene for years. These were new guys and they were killing it. It inspired me to want to play more music.” Not long after, Impala was born.
Lamkins, for his part, wanted to be even more involved after that first show. “This began a long run of us playing shows together, and of course a long friendship,” he recalls. “I ended up hanging with the Simpletones all the time. I mixed their first record, which was just a four track cassette outing, and I was usually present whenever they went to Easley-McCain Studios. I was kind of a producer, but mostly I helped rein in Jared some, because he would never stop tweaking a song or rewriting parts on the fly. He was just never satisfied with anything. I’d have to stop him and let him know that what he had was already great. But even after the songs were all done he would keep tweaking them.
“I ended up joining the Simple Ones eventually. I may have been the second longest serving member of the band, though I haven’t done the math on that. Maybe Jim McDermott was there longer than me.”
With Lamkins an official Simple One toward the end of that band’s tenure, and Stivers jamming with the group occasionally, a new group was inevitable, given McStay’s penchant for launching new projects. That would turn out to be the Total Strangers, which included Lamkins, Stivers, Grifters drummer Stan Gallimore, and McStay. “We started Total Strangers around 1998, I think,” says Stivers. “There are a lot of recordings of that stuff. We did a single, with an instrumental that we all came up with, and then a song that Jared wrote, ‘Netherworld,’ which I think is the greatest. We recorded almost an album’s worth of stuff at Easley-McCain, and they were mostly all Jared’s songs. Impala had imploded by then, so I liked just being a guitar player in the background, filling in spots over Jared’s rhythm parts. We played quite a few gigs. We even went on a mini tour in the Upper Midwest.”
Fraysia was yet another band that sprouted from McStay’s imagination, many years later. “Jared pulled Fraysia together,” says Lamkins. “I think it was his dream lineup at the time. I had been Jared’s go to bass player for a while. We had been playing with Andy Saunders, who is the most underrated drummer in Memphis. And of course adding Stivers to any band automatically classes up the joint. Stivers came up with the name Fraysia, since we were a supergroup like Asia but from Memphis. John and I have been playing together since we were little kids so we have a great rapport, but Jared and John had really great chemistry as well. Fraysia was such an easy gig for me because I basically just got out of the way and let the guitars shine.”
Stivers recalls their six-string interplay well. Asked to describe McStay’s approach to the guitar, he says, “It was just pure energy. I mean, absolute pure energy. And I have never, never played with a more enthusiastic musician. He was always so happy to be playing. It didn’t matter if we were screwing it up and sounding awful, it didn’t bother him. He didn’t ever get bothered by that, he didn’t ever get frustrated. And I’ve been in plenty of bands where the frustrations run high when things aren’t working right. Jared just never looked back. Like, ‘Keep going. Because none of that matters. This is the energy.’ It was totally about energy for him.”
While Fraysia’s heyday was some seven years ago, McStay naturally stayed busy with other bands, such as So Gung Ho, one of his latest groups, profiled here. He also launched many combos with his wife, Lori Gienapp McStay. One of the busiest was Relentless Breeze, a cover band in which the erstwhile punk wholeheartedly embraced the complexities of “yacht rock,” featuring the smooth sounds and jazzy chords of Christopher Cross and the like. Appropriately enough, the couple was dedicated to those songs even as they vacationed on the beach with Stivers and his family.
“They bought keyboards and guitars so they could learn songs for Relentless Breeze,” Stivers remembers. “We were on vacation and they were practicing music — after the day was over, after we’d gone to the beach. That’s dedication right there. They liked to always have something cooking, and I love the fact that Jared was involved in music with his wife. Of course, she is a musician and very talented. In fact, they pulled off two or three bands. And Jared just rolled like a tank through music, musical experiences, and bands. And man, I’m glad he did.”
Stivers has to take a breath before stepping back to reflect on a life well-lived in music. “Jared never, ever stopped,” he says. “You know, he never said, ‘God, man, I haven’t done anything for a couple of months, or six months!’ That never happened. He never had any downtime. If one thing kind of faltered or ended, there was something new. I’ve never known anybody with that much of a legacy.”
A visitation will be held for McStay from 4-6 p.m. this Tuesday, November 21st at Canale Funeral Directors. A celebration of his life is being planned for December.
