When you have conversations with your worship guitar player buddies about different Christian guitarists making splashes in the community – the name Spence Peppard may surface . For those of you familiar with his popular YouTube videos you may start laughing just thinking about Spence . If you have never heard of the guy – well – it is high-time you did .
[ WM ] Spence , I am excited to do this interview with you today .
[ Spence Peppard ] Well , I ' m such a hick from East Texas , you might need an interpreter .
[ WM ] Ha ! We will see . My first question is this … It is bad enough that you play guitar so well , but you also nail it on drums . You started playing young because of your Dad ' s singing . Was that because he sang so off key that you had to drown him out ?
[ Spence ] ( laughing ) Oh gosh . Now that ' s a great question because here ' s the funny thing about the drum story . I was helping out at our church that we attended , it was about a quarter of a mile from where we lived and I would ride my bike to the church . I was roughly 10 years old at this time . And they were doing a crusade in the parking lot . There was this drummer that I saw named Jeff Shelton . And he had the old eighties Yamaha electronic kit . It blew my mind . It was like , " That is what I want to do ." It was in that moment where I went , " Nothing else mattered . I want to play drums and I want to play that kit ." My Dad saw my interest and he went out and bought me a drum set shortly after and bought me lessons with the guy , Jeff Shelton , that was playing for that revival .
But we were adding on to our house at the time and Dad said , " You know what ? He ' s going to absolutely drive us crazy if we don ' t insulate this thing well enough ." So , he went and bought soundboard when they were drying it in . He bought the thickest insulation he could find , and he did his best to create a little space where I could practice drums without disrupting the entire neighborhood and driving my Mom
crazy during the day .
[ WM ] Smart man .
[ Spence ] From the very beginning , he always invested in my music and wanted to see me do as well as I could at it . But Dad was a vocalist and he got saved around 1986 and started singing in a choir in our local church that we were attending . And soon they said , " Dan , you ' ve actually got a really good voice ." And so that led to him traveling and doing concerts . And I was his sound man , he ' d show me how to take the little cassettes and rewind them and then set them to where as soon as we hit play , the music would start .
And that ' s kind of what got me interested going to the music stores , watching him pick out music to sing , and then I would be around all these instruments .
[ WM ] Those old Lexicon brand and Christian World background tapes ?
[ Spence ] That ' s exactly right .
[ WM ] So being raised in Nacogdoches , Texas , what Texas blues guitar players did you listen to ?
[ Spence ] So it was really Stevie Ray Vaughn that really got me into electric guitar . Because I started on acoustic and all I cared about was rhythm , until I heard Stevie Ray and his tone . And that tone , and at the time , especially on Texas radio , it wasn ' t unusual to hear Stevie Ray Vaughn or to hear Eric Johnson ’ s “ Cliffs of Dover ”. I mean that was on Texas radio forever . I just soaked it up . It was the tones that really made me want to gravitate towards an electric instrument .
[ WM ] I am familiar with the Fender ' 64 Vibroverb , they only made around 400 of them . That was one of Stevie ' s favorite amps .