Royce Campbell is running late for his nine o'clock gig at The Cellar's jazz night on Tuesdays. Luckily, he's a jazzman and, if anything, he's just following protocol.
"Of course, if a jazz musician started on time it would be news," he joked after bringing in his equipment: one guitar and a small black square amp that rose to his shins. "There are years of tradition starting late," he said.
Nestled before one of the front booths of the restaurant, Campbell sits on a stool - behind him is a large window exposing a panorama of the wet Blacksburg night.
At the wooden table closest to him sits his wife, Elisabeth Gumnior, a professor at JMU who teaches writing and rhetoric. The two drove down from Harrisonburg for the evening. A colossal blue book, decorated with green and pink post-its seems to be her main focus while her husband gets ready.
Clad in a Hawaiian shirt full of tropical flowers in dull red and beige colors, a pair of gray slacks, and beige moccasin-looking shoes with no socks, Campbell begins his set at 9:14 p.m.
It's not loud or abrasive; his large, varnished, maroon guitar secretes notes slowly and sporadically, like a machine wearily warming up for the long haul.
The sound picks up and becomes well-integrated into the hum of the crowd. It moves at a mellow pace matching perfectly with the drizzly environment outside that is Campbell's background.
He looks comfortable hunched over his guitar. Every once in awhile, his head jerks up, eyes closed, face strained as if the notes coming out of his amp are being pulled from a part of him. There's a reason he looks like he could just be on his couch, casually dishing out jams to the television: his whole set is improvised.
"There's no preparation at all," he said about getting ready for gigs such as jazz night. For him, it is an opportunity to go out and play for others a stream of conscious told by his guitar.
During his whole set, the music never stops. There's never a moment when his concentration snaps and the song derails. Although such an undisturbed flow might be the product of natural talent, it might also have something to do with 47 years worth of playing experience.
When he first picked up a guitar at the age of nine, Royce had no idea that it would be the tool on which he would build his life. In fact, it is the only tool he has ever used to make money.
"I'll play any kind of music to keep from the dreaded day-gig," he said with a little smile. "That's one thing I've been fortunate enough, never done anything else but play music, never done a real job. Never. I'm fortunate."
Since he began to play professionally at 17, the self-taught musician has had an exciting career. Among the people that he has toured with or played for include Marvin Gaye, Quincy Jones and Henry Mancini, a famous orchestra composer most known for composing the theme for "The Pink Panther."
"He was so popular that in the '60s, he toured with an entire orchestra," said Campbell about Mancini, who had been renowned for his wide variety of musical compositions which also included a jazz aspect, "I was with him from the mid '70s till the mid '90s."
Today, Campbell makes most of his income by writing something called 'muzak,' music intended for elevators and restaurants. His real passion, though, is jazz, and he is always willing to go anywhere to play his favorite type of music. In fact, last May he headlined at a jazz music festival in Australia.
"The thing that's so awesome about jazz to me is that it has the feeling of the blues, but then it's more advanced intellectually, too. And so you have sort of the best of both worlds, you have the advanced harmonic and melodic concepts but with the feel still of blues," he said.
Though Campbell isn't quite a household name in Blacksburg, he has made a bigger name for himself oversees in Japan and Europe, where he has toured each 10 times over the span of his career.
"Japanese musicians tell me I'm very famous over there," he said. "I told them 'that's interesting, because I'm virtually unknown where I live in Virginia,' and they don't understand,"
Despite his general anonymity, Campbell finds that "all the greatest musicians I've known are totally unknown."
After an hour, Campbell puts down his guitar to take a break. Ambling over, holding a glass of scotch on the rocks, he sits down to talk.
He takes a seat and eventually asks a waiter for a glass of water.
"Moving on to the hard stuff, agua," he said.
The interview is adjourned after 20 minutes because of a steaming calzone resting across from where his wife is sitting. He has to eat soon because the food will get cold and he has another improvised set to play.
Sidebar:
As far out as Staunton, musicians come to play to the laid-back crowds of couples and huddles of friends that assemble every Tuesday evening for The Cellar's jazz night.
"There's a very impressive wealth of jazz around in this area that people don't realize," said Thom Novario, a server at The Cellar who is responsible for booking bands for jazz nights. Novario would know - upon obtaining the booking position, he was given a long list of jazz performers.
"You won't generally see the same act for two months," Novario said on the regular appearance of acts. At times, several musicians will band together to play a full-band show, which helps give more show time to solo performers who might only get limited chances to play.
"I normally hire one guy, and it's up to him to hire the rest," said Novario.
"There's a group of them, a loose-knit group of them, that they all, if they need a guitar player, (ask) 'can you come?'" said John O'Connor, a graphic design professor at Radford who, with his two daughters, has been coming to The Cellar and other places that feature jazz music in Blacksburg for as long as he can remember.
"We had some bar babies," said Jessica O'Connor with a laugh. Jessica O'Connor is one of John's daughters, who, as a resident of Blacksburg, owns a place down Lee Street.
The O'Connors have made a tradition out of The Cellar. To them it is the one meeting place where they can feel right at home.
"This is pretty much the only venue in town that I know that has jazz," O'Connor said. "We really enjoy coming here ... Jazz is hard to come by here, which is a shame, because there are very talented individuals that play. And a lot of times many of them get together and play together."
"The Cellar's the best place in town," O'Connor said. "I lived here since 1974, moved away three years ago up to Salem, but I still come back because both my daughters live in town... (T)his is the place we always come to."