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What does the Bakersfield Sound mean to me? A funky old Telecaster? Truckers in a smoky room tapping their feet? Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, Roy Nichols, Don Rich, Billy Mize? How about all of the above!

Bakersfield is a guitar town. Worldwide we've influenced not only music, but also “the sound” of the guitar. If Buck Owens hadn't put a sliver of wood on the neck of his Fender Telecaster to fix it, the world of music would be much different.

The Bakersfield Sound is raw compared to the slick Nashville sound. There's a chicken pickin,' finger lickin' sound of a Fender Telecaster and there's not a country act out there now that doesn't use one.

With our share of honky tonks and nightclubs due to the old Highway 99, Bakersfield became a mecca for good music, with a great club scene known from coast to coast. Woody Guthrie hopped trains up and down this valley and wrote songs about the plight of the “Great Migration” and the Dust Bowl.

I've toured all over America and Canada, and everyone wants to know, “Did you know Buck? What's Merle like?”

When my band Big House was touring there were a lot of things that separated us from the pack. We wrote our own songs, we played on our records and we produced them ourselves. I'm most proud that all of us were from Bakersfield. We never realized how much we were influenced by our Bakersfield peers until we went to Nashville. Nobody there produces, writes and plays on their own records.

From The Beatles to Creedence Clearwater Revival, from Bakersfield to Borneo, the Bakersfield Sound has touched just about every part of the globe. While a friend of mine was traveling the world, he walked into a bar in the Thailand jungle and the only music playing on the jukebox was by Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.

Today, I have the greatest gig I could ever wish for — I sing with the Buckaroos at Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace. When I was approached by the Owens family, I didn't really believe it at first. It is very surreal. The band is so easy to work with that sometimes I forget, "Hey, I'm singing with the Buckaroos!"