North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic Sponsor Spotlight: LifeWings Peak Performance

interview with Richard Doss

Richard Doss lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but also spends much of his time in California serving as Managing Director of LifeWings Peak Performance, a Minneapolis- and California-based consulting company that works with hospitals and underserved schools to improve infrastructure, especially air quality.

Doss first became familiar with Mississippi during his career working in the paper, pulp, and wood products industry in the 1990s. Back in Minneapolis, his brother’s band mate, Tony Nelson, who is one of the top rock photographers in the area, introduced him to several music industry people.
“There was a place called Bayport BBQ that would have the Burnsides and Kenny Brown and many others come up and play there … in the early 2000s.”

But it was a 2013 North Mississippi Allstars show that would lead him back to the South. After meeting Luther Dickinson and Cody Dickinson, Doss found a Memphis connection through mutual musical links to places like Ardent Studios and Jim Dickinson. Soon enough Doss and a group of friends began making regular trips to Mississippi and Memphis, and the Juke Joint Festival in Clarksdale, where he first met Sara and Kenny Brown.

Because of his previous work, Doss felt it was a fitting segue to additional philanthropy by supporting the North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic.

“A lot of our healthcare work … in hospitals and clinics was inner-city work, so when we had a chance to help Sara and be part of the music, that was a natural tie-in … and that was very exciting to meet more people and be able to help.” In addition to sponsoring the Picnic, his company has also endowed funds to the Holly Springs School District.

In light of the Picnic’s goal of enhancing appreciation and educating the public, Doss feels his company’s ability to lend financial support is only part of the larger mission. “Participation and word of mouth getting as many people down there as possible … As a sponsor, we want to make sure we’re spreading the word.”

To that end, he has also been involved in curating a YouTube channel, North South Central Live, featuring videos of concerts that he credits to boosting the music’s popularity in Minnesota.

The channel has “a lot of different kinds of music, but it’s very heavily driven towards Americana and Blues and Deep Blues …and of course everything Hill Country related,” Doss said. “That’s been really good for the for the fan base in Minnesota, too, making sure we get promotion and get … people to those shows so they can experience and have a little more knowledge.”

“The other thing that we’ve enjoyed is being around the musicians and hearing the stories of the different histories and the different collaborations,” he added.

Doss said he appreciated the environment and structure of the Picnic that make it possible for fans to become immersed in the Hill Country culture. With its intimate atmosphere and close-knit community, both artists and attendees alike can experience the joy of gathering with a mutual love and appreciation of the music.

“You can get down close in, and you can be off to the side, or wherever you want to be,” said Doss. “It’s just incredible music and it’s varied. Charlie Musselwhite last year was incredible, and we’re going to have Robert Finley this year, and it really tells that story. One of the big things that I see is that it’s pushing the word out in a great venue with great acts. Everyone’s there for a reasonable price, having a good time, and you don’t see a lot of corporate interferance.”

From the top of the Mississippi River in Minnesota to the bottom of the Delta at the Gulf of Mexico, Richard Doss & LifeWings Peak Performance are helping to spread the Hill Country love, and we are thankful for his enthusiastic support.

Read the full interview with Richard Doss below (edited for clarity).

On his Mississippi ties:
I know Vicksburg because of the old paper mill down there. But I spent a lot of time all over when I was working for Georgia Pacific, Warehouser, and International Paper and working on all the pulp mills and plywood plants and the OSB mills and particle board and plywood facilities. Everything from Winona and Oxford and Louisville and Philadelphia. Just all up and down; [there are] a lot of wood products in Mississippi.

Was that your main connection to Mississippi?
Well, that’s the earliest, right. I spent a lot of time in Mississippi and Alabama working in the pulp and paper and wood products industry, right when my kids were getting born. Now I’m going to have my first wedding this week. So certainly going back that long. That wasn’t the music connection, but that was my first connection to knowing the state and spending lots of time in the early 90s. [I did] a lot of travel along I-10 and I-20 over the last bunch of years.

On LifeWings Peak Performance:
The company Life Wings was a health care consultant in the hospital business helping with process improvement all over the United States. And then when the pandemic came, things changed. Everyone stopped spending. A lot of things stopped at hospitals, right? At the same time, the California School Board Association hired us as part of a COVID strike team. They wanted some folks who had a lot of public health experience, which we did, working for big safety net hospitals, [such as] Saint Luke’s in Houston and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and Baylor Health in Dallas. We … worked at Huntsville, lots of places all over the country. And we had also done a lot of work with the hospitals connected to the University of California system. We were working in the operating rooms and doing consulting and training and coaching and also working in the mother and baby units’ emergency departments. The California School Board Association wanted someone to help with the ventilation assessments during COVID, and we had an engineering partner in Minneapolis. So that’s where the whole connection to schools came. We’d been working in a lot of states, but then it got bigger and bigger, and of course California had a lot of infrastructure needs. Then I started living out here three weeks a month, so it became a very heavily California centric operation over time, since COVID.

I really live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that’s where the music story will come. And it’s pretty simple. My brother is in a band in Minneapolis; [one of his band mates] is one of the top rock photographers in town. I had met a number of people that were involved in all kinds of music in Minneapolis, but also, the Blues type stuff. There was a place called Bayport BBQ, and the proprietor there, his name is Chris Johnson, who died right after the Juke Joint festival. He was involved with the Deep Blues and Roots Festivals. But it was Bayport BBQ in Bayport, MN, and he would have the Burnsides and Kenny Brown and many others come up and play there. And Lightnin’ Malcolm and all those guys …

But that was into the early 2000s … and then I went to a North Mississippi All Stars show in about 2013 in Minneapolis, and I was on of those meet and greet deals and started talking with Luther and Cody … that’s when Lightnin’ Malcolm was playing bass.

I met all those guys, and there was a Memphis connection because the punk rock band from Minneapolis, The Replacements, had recorded at Ardent Studios in Memphis. Of course, Jim Dickinson had produced that record, right? He produced some solo records for Tommy Stinson, the bass player in the Replacements, too. Because Big Daddy was involved, you know, we chatted a little bit, Luther and I.

And then my group of guys that I hung out with, we would make annual trips down to Mississippi and to Memphis and started going to the Juke Joint Festival. And we had some other connections with the band Big Star out of Memphis. We knew Jody Stephens because he played with some Minneapolis guys. Tony Nelson, the rock photographer, had introduced us to a lot of these guys. So we would take people through and do tours at Ardent Studios in Memphis. Boo Mitchell is a good friend of ours, too; we know Boo from another producer buddy of ours. So we would go see Boo and we’re in Memphis all the time too. And Royal Studios in Memphis, there was that connection … and that’s how we learned a little bit more about Stax and Royal Studio. So all that happened about 10–11 years ago.

We would start making those annual trips, and that’s when we first saw Kenny play … at The Shack Up Inn at Juke Joint Festival, probably eight or nine years ago.

We met Sara and got interested because our philanthropy includes helping underprivileged schools. I mean, that’s what we do. The State of California and the and the Energy Commission get money … and we’re out there helping all the school districts get new plumbing and new HVAC units, because it’s targeted first at underserved schools. A lot of our healthcare work before that in hospitals and clinics was a lot of inner city work, so when we had a chance to help Sara and be part of the music, that was a natural tie in for the work that we’ve already been doing. And it had the connection to the music that we were already doing so much with in Mississippi and Memphis. So that was very exciting to meet more people and be able to help. And we’ve given some money to the Holly Springs schools when they’ve had some other things occur.

It’s an incredible history and there was a longtime connection to Minnesota going back to some of those guys, but unless you come down there, spend a lot of time to learn how it really goes from county to county to county, the styles of music and the players and the bands, and the influence, especially when you get there in the Hill Country with the Burnsides and Kenny Brown. And then naturally it’s a little different when you get over towards Oxford, and it’s different when you get to Greenville. Just kind of going across, you just keep driving … Even guys like Robert Plant and Jimmy Page and the others, they had to learn that later on too, right? To spend time and go town to town or county to county.

So that’s been really fun for us. And the Hill Country Picnic, that’s obviously a signature event, especially for us. The Lucero Family Picnic in Memphis, we’ve been involved with that to some degree a couple two or three times. I’ve not been to King Biscuit, but we’ve talked about that, and then some of the folks I work with, Doug Myren, he has been involved for a long time too, and he has a venue in Wisconsin. He’s a lawyer, public defender, but he’s got this venue in Wisconsin, so over the years he’s had the Burnsides come, and we’re talking about having a kind of a northern version of the picnic, I think maybe in the fall this year and have some folks involved, he’s had the Burnsides up in Minneapolis not too long ago, a show with Garry and Dwayne and some others, I think maybe Kent was there, too.

The whole musical connection for me, I think, was when one of Jason Isbell’s roadies, Jonathan, and I started talking and he said, “You know, Rich, you’re up there in Minnesota and I’m down here in Nashville.” So I put together some Minneapolis bands, different eras of music on a USB drive for him. And he gave me names, a bunch of other people that he knew from Muscle Shoals and Nashville and places like that, and then we exchanged and we stay in very close contact. So that’s also where we spent more time around Mississippi and Nashville and Muscle Shoals and then over to the Hill Country.

Then we started a YouTube page about 10 years [ago] now to promote the bands that we would go see and some loose associations with managers and put up videos of the of the bands and called that YouTube page The North South Central congregation. It’s got a lot of different kinds of music, but it’s very heavily driven towards Americana and Blues and deep Blues and lots of Drive-By Truckers, and Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton, and Tyler Childers, and of course everything Hill Country related. A lot of those people have been through the Shoals or come from that area or they come from Mississippi or they spent time in Memphis or are from Memphis. And that’s been really good for the for the fan base in Minnesota, too, making sure we get a little bit of promotion and get as many people to those shows so they can experience and have a little more knowledge.

I would be interested to see a Blues show in Minnesota at the top of the river [as opposed to] down here.
Exactly, that’s the whole north south central connection.

The other thing that we’ve enjoyed is to be around the musicians and hear some of the stories of the different histories and the different collaborations.

Do you attend the picnic every year?

Yes, this will be my fourth or fifth now, and I’ve been to the Juke Joint Festival about three times as well. The Picnic has been an annual thing now for four or five years and it’s been great.

And then we came down and saw Kenny when he played at Proud Larry’s in September last year. You know, when he plays with Eric Deaton, that’s a special night, obviously.

So, we would like to see more, if we could get some other shows along the way, Chicago and Minneapolis, Madison, you know. And they’ve got this other this other venue in Wisconsin too. I think that’s good for people to learn some of that history of that kind of Hill Country Blues and that particular kind of slide guitar.

As a sponsor, how do you see your involvement as supporting the mission of the Picnic?
As far as the mission, it’s to obviously support … [by] endowing funds for whatever purpose, whether it’s RL Boyce’s services or his picnic … or to make sure that they’re able to get the right acts that they want. So obviously money helps with that, too. Participation and word of mouth getting as many people down there as possible, whether it’s locals or … you know we’ve met lots of people … when we’re around town. We spent some time over there at Ole Miss [with Greg Johnson, who’s] doing the Blues Archival project.

And, you know, trying to be plugged in and making sure that people around the country know about that work, too. So some of it’s word of mouth. I’m not too effective on social media, but we do put up a lot of videos of shows we go to, which is good. And we have 3 or 400 subscribers on our YouTube page. So as a sponsor, we want to make sure we’re spreading the word as much as possible.

Then speaking as a music fan, tell me a little bit about your experience with the picnic itself. As an attendee, what’s it like?
The first thing that you recognize is it’s very low key on corporate sponsorship. I mean it’s not ridiculous like these other places are. The size of it is decent. The music is incredible, the food is great. The location is easy to get to. Parking is decent, and it’s kept to the appropriate size. I mean, they’re not trying to do 20,000 people down there. And I think they couldn’t have a better setup.

You can get down close in, and you can be off to the side, or wherever you want to be. It’s just incredible music and it’s varied. Charlie Musselwhite last year was incredible, and we’re going to have Robert Finley this year, and it really tells that story. One of the big, big things that I see is that it’s pushing the word out in a great venue with great acts. Everyone’s there for a reasonable price, having a good time, and you don’t see a lot of corporate interfering.

That’s what all the musicians say when I interview them and ask what is so special about this picnic? They all say it’s like a family reunion.
Yeah, I would say that too. And again, that’s why you know the picnic is so great because it’s so laid back and like you say, a family.