Trigger and Some Dudes Named Roy

Born in Brownwood, Texas, Mike Trigg was dubbed Trigger by classmates in the 1st grade and it stuck forever. Trigger’s early experiences with music involved 6 months with an abusive, migraine riddled piano teacher at age 11 and one year of middle school band with a verbally abusive band director. Trigger’s other early music experience was in singing fundamentalist church hymns in the second row on Sundays. That was pretty much it other than listening to his parents folk records and Broadway Musical soundtracks.

At age 30, a twist of musical fate came around for Trigger, as Glen Campbell’s long time bass player, Bill Graham, also from Brownwood, moved in next door. Suddenly there were musicians and songwriters everywhere. Trigger sat in Graham’s studio and observed the songwriting process without saying a word, though lyrics had started popping into his head. He felt he could maybe do this songwriting thing, but he had an urge to do it differently. From his earliest childhood days he had always been drawn to songs that made him laugh.

Trigger bought a guitar and a chord book, learned 3 campfire chords and started throwing words around. His earliest songs were sometimes crude and he found that writing funny and smart at the same time was not easy work. He listened to The Kingston Trio, The Chad Mitchell Trio, The Smothers Brothers, Roger Miller, Ray Stevens, John Prine, Randy Newman, Monty Python, Broadway Musicals, and other stuff to see what humorous songwriters did and why certain things worked. Comedic rhythms, timing, and some verbally twisted senses of humor were the things that got him going.

Bill Graham’s studio was creatively rich. There, Trigger was able to tinker with some recordings of his work with the help of engineer Rick “Ratman” Carpenter, who ran FOH sound for the Bellamy Brothers on tours all over the world. Greg “Doc” Sikes, who played the rodeo circuit with Reba McIntire, was a killer guitar player and a studio regular. Trigger even sat in on songwriting sessions with the late Jerry Williams, who, as a teenager, played with Little Richard and Jimi Hendrix, and as an adult wrote hits for Bonnie Raitt and Eric Clapton, including Clapton’s incredibly beautiful “Running on Faith”.

Yada, yada, yada, Trigger moved to San Antonio, played parties, back porches, and barns, and won honorable mention in a songwriting contest or two, even though there was no genre that fit what he was doing. Nobody knew where to put him, but a couple of songs made their way to local radio. After that, regular life happened for a good long time with day jobs and such, far removed from music. Then up pops, W. Ross Wells.

Mr. Wells grew up in Brownwood, played guitar, and was a studio regular and Trigger fan before ending up in Houston, years later, as a highly decorated film-maker and co-owner of the hot little film production house, Zenfilm. Wells wanted to know “where’s the Trigger music and why aren’t we getting it recorded?”

With no good excuse, the deal was on and up pops Dan Workman.

Dan is President and co-owner of SugarHill Recording Studios and had begun doing some work with Ross Wells and Zenfilm. Dan’s resume is rich. He has worked on projects with Beyonce, Destiny’s Child, Lyle Lovett, ZZ Top and many more. So here’s W. Ross Wells walking into SugarHill one day with some messy bedroom demos of Trigger & Some Dudes Named Roy. Dan was kind enough to listen. He got it. He declared himself in on the project if for no other reason than it was going to be a heck of lot of fun. And fun it has been.