Rock ’n’ Retail:
Former Punker Calls Tunes for Wal-Mart

‘Guido’ Welsh Revs Up Troops With His Original Songs;
‘The Brand Name Is Me’

By Ann Zimmerman
The Wall Street Journal, September 3, 2003

HOUSTON — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is so thrifty that its managers — including top brass — still share hotel rooms on the road. Companywide manager meetings are held in Texas in steamy August and in Kansas in frigid February, when the hotel rooms are cheapest. But the famously frugal company would never consider scrimping on one frill: Joe Welsh, a 48-year-old, bleached-blond guitarist and songwriter who goes by the name Guido and, with four other musicians, is the company’s unofficial house band.

“He follows us everywhere,” says Jane Thompson, president of Wal-Mart’s financial-services division.

At 6 a.m. on a recent rainy Thursday, Wal-Mart managers gathered for a midyear merchandise meeting. While the streets around the George R. Brown Convention Center here were dark and deserted, bleachers inside the cavernous hall were packed with 4,000 Wal-Mart employees clapping and gyrating to Mr. Welsh’s rendition of Jeff Beck’s Freeway Jam, their name badges bobbing with the music.

“What time is it?” shouted Mr. Welsh, as he hopped around the purple-and-red-lighted stage in sunglasses and checkered sport coat.

“It’s Wal-Mart time!” the crowd shouted back. On cue, Mr. Welsh’s band launched into his anthem of the same name:

Well, c’mon everybody, it’s time to rock
Wake yourself up, it’s nearly 7 o’clock
We’ve got a whole lotta things we’re gonna talk about
Do a cheer or two where we’ll jump and shout
I know it’s early, I’ve been here all night
We’re busy working on Wal-Mart time.
Oh, don’t you know it. We rockin’ now b-b-b-baby.

The song, which comes at the end of a 20-minute set of classic rock tunes, ends in a rhythm-and-blues version of the Wal-Mart cheer: “Give me a W, Give me an A, Give me an L, Give me a Squiggle — [everyone shimmies] — Give me an M, Give me an A, Give me an R, Give me a T. What’s that spell? Wal-Mart. I can’t hear you. Wal-Mart. Who’s No. 1? The customer. Always. Uhn! Whose Wal-Mart is it? It’s my Wal-Mart.”

For the next hour and a half, the company’s top executives took the stage and updated the field officers on the state of Wal-Mart’s business and expectations for the second half of the year. They spent the rest of the day looking at new products for the holidays in a replica of a Wal-Mart supercenter.

“These are long, challenging meetings and Guido gets the blood flowing,” says Wal-Mart Chief Executive Lee Scott. Mr. Scott’s wife, Linda, is such a big fan that she hired Mr. Welsh to play at their son’s wedding in 1997. “In fact, Guido’s the only reason my wife comes to the meetings,” Mr. Scott says.

Mr. Welsh is more than just a warm-up act. “He’s a culture builder,” says Joe Huber, 31, manager of a Wal-Mart supercenter in Spencer, Iowa, who plays Mr. Welsh’s two Wal-Mart-themed compact discs for employees at store meetings “to get them energized.”

An independent music producer in Nashville, Mr. Welsh plays 30 days a year for Wal-Mart, including the annual shareholders meeting, which draws 20,000 people to the Bud Walton Arena at the University of Arkansas. It’s an unusually appreciative audience, even at the usual 6 a.m. show time.

Joe Welsh took on the name Guido years ago after a bar owner said his original country band should wear cowboy hats. Because he is short and round, Mr. Welsh thought he would look stupid. So he donned a Panama hat instead, and the band strarted calling him Guido, the Italian cowboy. Neither Italian nor a cowboy, he went on to have a punk band at first called Guido Toledo and, later, the Guidals. Eleven years ago, broke and dejected after The Guidals failed to get a national recording contract, he availed himself of his brother’s help in getting work as a sound engineer with Vista Productions, a Missouri company that handles sound and lighting for major Wal-Mart meetings.

He began work choosing background music and then played instrumentals for the meetings. His big break came in 1993 when Randy Parker, who was special-events coordinator for Wal-Mart, called and asked him to write a song. Inspired by all the Wal-Mart trucks on the road as he drove sound equipment to Dallas, he wrote “Wal-Mart Proud,” which got a 15-minute ovation and launched a new career.

Mr. Welsh has since played every Wal-Mart meeting in the U.S. and one in Canada. He has composed more than 30 Wal-Mart songs in his Nashville studio, funded by his Wal-Mart income. For inspiration, he mines legendary founder Sam Walton’s biography — he has read it five times — or picks up messages conveyed in the meetings.

For Wal-Mart’s big merchandising kick-off meeting in Kansas last winter, Mr. Welsh wrote “It’s My Wal-Mart”:

There is no big secret to our great success
Just pride and a legacy with which we are blessed
It is more than a tradition… there is more we can do
We can make a difference because the brand name is me and you
It’s My Wal-Mart….”

“It’s not a hip gig, but it’s a great gig,” he says. “It’s a million people in tune with you. It’s almost like a cult.”

Mr. Welsh refers to Wal-Mart’s more than one million employees as Wal-Martians. Managers often gather around the stage to greet him when he’s finished. They’ll frequently ask him to play more current music, but he is careful to keep the music inoffensive — the toughest part of the job, he says.

At a meeting in 1994, he started dating Margaret Brandon, a Wal-Mart district manager from Arkansas — “a nice country girl with a good job,” he says —and married her two years later.

One night during a Dalls meeting, his Wal-Mart fans saw him at a club and began shouting his name, much to the chagrin of the blues trio that was performing. Mr. Welsh apologized to the band, explained the situation and asked to sit in for a number so the crowd would behave. The band refused and then, to embarass Mr. Welsh, announced to the crowd that Mr. Welsh was now working for Kmart, according to Mr. Welsh and Brent Hoad, a Kansas City musician who plays in the band.

Mr. Welsh walked out, and his Wal-Mart fans followed, emptying the room.

Mr. Welsh won’t disclose how much he makes working for Wal-Mart. “It pays the bills,” he says.

Mr. Welsh still dreams of making it big, but he thinks his best shot is as a record producer. He has cut two albums recently, including a rock ’n’ roll disc of mostly original songs, called Lucky Man Clark. Mr. Welsh’s lyrics are a little darker than the ones he writes for Wal-Mart. In a song called “Apocalypso,” he writes:

Take a look outside … it’s getting darker out there
Craziness and rounders swarm around us everywhere.

©2003 The Wall Street Journal