Johnny Moeller of The Fabulous Thunderbirds (clients): I can't read music. I always learned by listening and playing by feel.

I grew up in Denton, Texas, which is north of Fort Worth. There's a big music school there called North Texas. It's a famous jazz school. Lots of great players came out of there. But when I started playing, I went straight to the blues stuff. 

For a time I wished that, after high school, I would have taken some courses and learned to sight read. But then I thought, "I won't be able to play Jimmy Reed if I do that." 

It would mess up my blues sensibilities.

Cris Cohen: How do you shrug off past successes when you're going into the studio and have a clean slate perspective?

Dean Roland of Collective Soul: Good question. When making new records, you live in the moment and you have the creative spark that happens. You are building a new fire. It's not like you completely dislocate from your past. You utilize it. You kind of rearview mirror it to use it as a resource.