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Stinson's first professional gig was not as a
drummer, but as a rhythm guitar
player on a tour with Dottie West during the
summer after he graduated high school.
He attended college in Nashville for several
years, but was an indifferent student, pre-
ferring to play in local bands. He left school
in 1973 to tour the Southeast with a
lounge band, but ended up back in Nashville a
year later not knowing what to do
next. In the right place at the right time, he
got an emergency call to replace a
drummer who had broken his hand and could not
complete his tour with America.
Stinson scrambled to find the band's albums,
tried to learn their music, and met up
with them in Muscle Shoals, Alabama the next
day. "We did a two and a half hour
sound check where I played the whole show, and
then I went back to the hotel and
listened to a tape of the live show they had
made a couple of nights earlier. I was able
to hear their arrangements and I studied that
tape all the way up until show time. I
went out on stage and played the show with the
bass player yelling cues in my ear and
the drummer with his hand in a cast, holding a
flashlight on my charts. They were so
happy by the time we got to the encore, they
were just giggling on stage." After a
month on the road, he returned home and
wondered what to do next.
The next move was to join a band in Buffalo,
New York, playing in the city's show-
rooms. A year later, Stinson got a call from
America's manager to go out to Los
Angeles to work with another band. When the gig
fell apart after four months, he fell
in with another group that toured as the
opening act for the Beach Boys and the
Doobie Brothers. Beginning in 1978, Stinson
landed a series of extended tours as a
sideman with Al Stewart, Jay Ferguson, and Etta
James, before recording with Peter
Frampton and going on tour with him. When
Stinson finally returned to Los Angeles
in 1983, the music scene had changed to the
point that he felt like he no longer fit in.
The final blow came the following year with the
introduction of the drum machine.
Suddenly all the session work that he counted
on between tours dried up. He turned
to his singing skills and recorded with Juice
Newton and also began to write songs.
On a weekend trip to Nashville to visit
industry friends, Stinson decided it was
time to move back. That weekend, he landed
session gigs to record as a backup singer
to Jimmy Buffet and Pam Tillis that more than
paid for the trip. After making the
move, he worked as a drummer on tour with
Nicolette Larson and recorded with
Steve Earle, then joined his band. Two years on
the road convinced Stinson it was
time to settle down. He recorded with Lyle
Lovett, did a lot of session work, and
landed a publishing contract that got a couple
of his songs recorded by Patty Loveless
and Steve Earle. After a few tour dates with
Rodney Crowell, he quit road trips for
good.
The next phase of Stinson's career began when
he got a call to put together a band
for
American Music Shop. During the second of four
years that the series aired, he
was hired as musical director for
Live at the Roundup with Ricky Scaggs, which
lasted
two seasons. He went on to act as musical
director of a number of programs, including
The Dove Awards, Music City News Awards show,
Trisha Yearwood's CBS pilot
XXX's and OOO's, and two of Kathie Lee
Gifford's Christmas specials. Over the
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