Georgia beginnings and a move west
Wes Starr grew up around Rome, Georgia, hearing music in settings that were unusually close to the working lives of musicians. His father was an engineer at radio station WRGA, whose studio hosted visiting performers. Starr watched broadcasts and listened to the musicians talk afterward. At home, an older brother’s bands rehearsed in the basement, leaving opportunities for him to try the drums when the players took a break. Formal lessons and the school band gave structure to that early curiosity.
His first teacher, Patti Tolbert, encouraged a small neighborhood group of aspiring drummers. Starr remembered her lessons as demanding but enjoyable, making practice something the children wanted to do. He also grew up with bassist R.W. Grigsby. They learned their instruments in the same community and played early jobs together, beginning a relationship that would later become central to touring and recording bands. Starr’s early listening crossed Southern rock, jazz, and blues, including the Allman Brothers and Elvin Jones.
A move to California introduced him to Kim Wilson and keyboardist Nick Connolly, both important figures in his later career. He worked in bands there before Wilson encouraged him to investigate Austin. After visiting and auditioning for Omar and the Howlers, Starr moved to Texas in 1979. He arrived in a scene where club work and touring could coexist, and where musicians routinely crossed between blues, rhythm and blues, swing, and country.
Omar, Marcia Ball, and the Austin network
Starr played on Omar and the Howlers’ first album, Big Leg Beat, and continued to record with Omar Dykes on later projects. The band changed size during his tenure, including a period as a trio. That smaller format placed more of the sound in the hands of the rhythm section. Starr eventually left on good terms to work with Marcia Ball, appearing on Soulful Dress. Ball’s piano-centered music supplied a different rhythmic setting and helped widen his work beyond one band’s arrangements.
Sessions for harmonica player Greg ‘Fingers’ Taylor’s Harpoon Man brought Starr into closer contact with Anson Funderburgh. Musicians from Ball’s band and Funderburgh’s Rockets contributed to the project. Starr subsequently played on the early Funderburgh–Sam Myers collaboration My Love Is Here to Stay. The relationships established around those sessions would recur over decades. His working history shows repeated returns to musicians with whom he had already developed a dependable rapport.
He also joined Asleep at the Wheel, taking on a heavy touring schedule in a band centered on Western swing. Away from the road, Austin’s Antone’s provided chances to play with musicians such as Hubert Sumlin, Mel Brown, and Sunnyland Slim. These jobs expanded his vocabulary through direct performance. Swing, blues, and country were connected by the musicians who moved among them, and Starr’s drumming had to work for all of them.
Large stages and a return to Texas blues
With Mason Ruffner, Starr moved from small clubs to arena appearances opening for the Firm, the group featuring Jimmy Page and Paul Rodgers. Sarah Brown played bass in that band. The change of scale gave him experience of a major rock tour, but his career continued to include work closer to home. Recordings with Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Kimmie Rhodes placed him inside songs where a drummer’s restraint and attention to the singer could matter as much as force.
Nick Connolly later helped bring him into Delbert McClinton’s band. Starr toured with McClinton in more than one period, and he also spent several years with Hal Ketchum as Ketchum’s country career expanded. Starr recalled a demanding schedule with Ketchum as the singer’s success brought larger audiences and theater engagements. With McClinton, his contribution during the first tenure was on the road; he recalled making no recordings with the singer during that period.
In 2000 he joined Anson Funderburgh and the Rockets full-time, with Johnny Bradley on bass. Later records brought him back into contact with Omar Dykes and Jimmie Vaughan. On the Jimmy Reed Highway in 2007 and Big Town Playboy drew together musicians including James Cotton, Kim Wilson, Gary Primich, and Lazy Lester. Those sessions linked his Texas work with the economical rhythmic language of Reed’s songs. Starr also played on John Németh’s Magic Touch, produced by Funderburgh, and toured with Németh and Junior Watson.
Golden State Lone Star Blues Revue
Starr and R.W. Grigsby became the rhythm section of the Golden State Lone Star Blues Revue with Mark Hummel, Anson Funderburgh, and Little Charlie Baty. Their long history together was one of the group’s defining assets. The project brought Texas and California players into a compact touring ensemble, allowing two contrasting guitarists and Hummel’s harmonica to work over a rhythm section already comfortable with each other’s timing.
The group appeared on Hummel’s The Hustle Is Really On and released its self-titled album through Electro-Fi in 2016. Its fourteen tracks made the collaboration available beyond the concert circuit. Reviews emphasized the bass-and-drums partnership as an integral part of the sound. Hummel’s later projects continued to employ Starr, including recordings and Harmonica Blowout performances. Hummel’s All-Stars also placed him alongside musicians such as Junior Watson, Funderburgh, and bassist Bill Stuve.
His participation in Ruff Kutt’s Mill Block Blues connected him to another Texas studio gathering, built around James Goode’s songs and Funderburgh’s production. More recent Hummel credits include True Believer. Across these projects, Starr’s musical identity is expressed through the people who repeatedly choose him and through the variety of settings in which he can maintain a recognizable rhythmic presence. The work ranges from harmonica instrumentals to vocal blues and ensemble features.
Adaptation, groove, and the Phoenix sessions
A serious hand injury in 2003 forced Starr to adjust how he held a drumstick. He developed a grip that allowed him to continue playing despite damage around his thumb. His account treats the adaptation as sustained practice rather than a sudden recovery: he had to work until rolls, accents, and changes could again be controlled reliably. That experience became part of a career in which physical technique served a larger concern with keeping the music moving.
Starr describes his job in terms of creating a firm groove and supporting the song, especially the singer. In the 2020s, Bob Corritore brought him to Phoenix for shows and sessions with guitarist Jimi ‘Primetime’ Smith and bassist Bob Stroger. Starr valued both the personal friendship and the ease of their musical communication. His later move to California also led to community radio work in Morro Bay. After decades of touring, the central purpose of his playing remained consistent: give the band a stable rhythmic base and enough room to shape a performance together.