Funny how the blues will introduce you to somebody.
I met Jerry Dugger on TikTok.
At first, he was just this interesting dude who’d come into my broadcasts at night. He’d hang around, listen, talk a little, and every now and then leave a comment on one of my videos.
Then I found out Jerry was a musician.
A blues musician out of New York, at that.
Now think about that. Here I am down in Alabama playing THE BLUES, and somewhere up in New York this cat is hearing what I’m doing and digging it. Then I started listening to his music.
Jerry had a different way about him.
Different sound. Different delivery. Soul in it.
So we followed each other on TikTok, and somewhere along the way, without either one of us making some big damn announcement about it, we became friends.
That’s the funny thing about music.
Sometimes you meet somebody across a table. Sometimes backstage at a club. Sometimes on a front porch with a guitar between you.
And sometimes you meet your brother through a little screen.
Over the years, Jerry and I kept talking. He told me about going down to Memphis for the International Blues Challenge. I didn’t get to meet him then, but I remember thinking, Damn, that’s about as close as this New York dude has gotten to Alabama.
Maybe someday we’d finally shake hands.
Later on, Jerry wound up moving down to New Orleans.
I thought that was cool as hell. A bluesman making his way South.
Then one day the man tells me he’s gonna stop in Alabama on his way back to New York.
Yeah, right.
Then my phone rings.
“I’m right down the road from your house.”
No shit.
Jerry Dugger had come to Alabama.
He came over and spent pretty much the whole day with me. We talked. We laughed. We hung out. And I ain’t ashamed to tell you, it meant something to me.
Because this wasn’t just somebody I knew off social media anymore.
This was my brother sitting there with me.
Now Jerry gets to laugh at me while I’m trying to get Fat Mule Records up off the ground. But somewhere in all that talking, we figured something out:
We ought to make some music together.
So that’s what we’re gonna do.
Jerry Dugger is going to be part of this Fat Mule journey, and we’re working toward a project together.
And I’m excited about this one.
You need to hear this man for yourself. Jerry’s music is out there on Spotify and the streaming platforms. His voice and style are hard to put neatly into somebody else’s box—and maybe that’s the point. There’s some old-school soul in there. Some blues. Some smoothness. But mostly, there’s Jerry.
And that’s what I want Fat Mule Records to be about.
Not chasing whatever everybody else is doing.
Finding people with something REAL in them.
So safe travels to my brother Jerry Dugger as he makes his way back to New York.
Keep your ears open for JD Jerry Dugger.
Because something tells me the best songs this man has got in him ain’t been sung yet.
And Jerry, brother...
Welcome to the Mule.