the crossing of blurred lines

“…I got a picture of us back when we were close
Before we had somebody picking out our clothes
But you always dressed in your Sunday best
Even when we didn’t have nowhere to go…

…I got a picture of us playing in a bar
And your shirt cost more than your guitar
But you played so heavy, and you always let me sing a couple
Even though you were the star…”

---

Jason Isbell doesn’t need me to defend him…so I won’t.

In fact, I’m not defending, condemning, rationalizing anyone involved in this dustup that’s emerged of late – like most things we read about on the internet, it’s none of my business…but as a songwriter for 40 years or so (as well as someone who’s struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts on and off for most of my life), the whole situation resonates on an emotional level no matter how I look at it.

So – no judgements here. None. I’m just collecting my thoughts in one place and sharing them for the sake of discussion. Nothing more, nothing less.

But some of you have read this far and have no idea what I’m talking about…so, let’s recap a bit.

---

“…I saw a picture of you laughing with your child
And I hope she will remember how you smiled
But she probably wasn’t old enough, the night somebody sold your stuff
That left you on the bathroom tiles…

…Got a picture of you dying in my mind
With some ghosts you couldn’t bear to leave behind
But I can hear your voice ring, as you snap another B-string
And you finish off the set with only five
And for a minute there, you’re still alive…”

---

These lyrics are from Isbell’s song When We Were Close from his latest album, Weathervanes – the song is a remembrance of fellow singer/songwriter Justin Townes Earle, whose demons claimed him as a result of an accidental fentanyl overdose a few years ago. He was 38 when he died, leaving behind a wife and three year old daughter.

The record came out ten months ago. But a few days ago, JTE’s widow took to social media to voice her displeasure with the song – apparently spurred on by a characterization of the song that emerged during an interview where Isbell said, “…that song was one of those where I had to say, how many victims [will there be] if I tell the truth, how many victims if I don’t. And then you make that choice…usually if you tell the truth, you make less victims than if you don’t.”

---

“…It’s not up to me to forgive you
For the nights that your love had to live through
Now you’ll never need to look me in the eye…

…I am the last of the two of us
But the Fort Worth blues isn’t through with us
You’ve travelled beyond the Great Divide
Oh, but why haven’t I?”

---

I understand that Jason and Justin had become estranged some time before JTE’s passing – having been in similar situations with people I’ve known who passed while a wall still existed between us, I’ve found that losing someone with whom there might’ve still been unfinished business lands in a different way. If the ties are severed completely, it’s one thing, but if there’s still a tension surrounding the ties, it manifests itself within the layers of grief in a way that makes the loss harder to come to terms with. The title of the song itself, “When We Were Close”, insinuates all by itself that the notion of being close is past tense…and yet, the song doesn’t seem to paint JTE as a self-destructive villain – and it’s not until the final stanza of the song that Isbell sidesteps judgement by saying, “it’s not up to me to forgive you, for the nights your love had to live through…“.

I remember being impressed by his restraint during my first few listens to the song when I was absorbing the album as a whole – loss and grief are often accompanied by anger, whether rational or not, and I thought he did a really good job of avoiding taking the usual shots at the subject of the song that some songwriters find so hard to resist. It’s framed as if he’s looking at old photographs and remembering a wayward friend and the thoughts the photos conjured…and asking questions as to how he managed to survive as one of two people who were arguably headed down similar paths of self-destruction. In fact, if anyone had wondered aloud fifteen years ago which of the two would be “found on the bathroom tiles”, it could well have been a toss-up.

Having said ALL of that, though – I do believe that if my partner died in a similarly self-destructive manner…giving over to demons that had plagued her since puberty – and then someone committed some of the details to words and music, and that song became the #1 most played song on Sirius XM’s Outlaw Country channel for all of 2023…

…well, I’m gonna have thoughts on the matter.

And – well, if you’ve read this far, or if you’ve followed me on social media, you likely already know I wouldn’t be inclined to remain silent about said thoughts, either.

So I completely understand why she needs to voice her frustrations with some of the circumstances around how this whole thing has unfolded over the course of the time between the album coming out, having to manage the feelings of Justin’s daughter upon hearing the song, having to hear him say things in the press that she construed as dismissive of her victim status – and her position seems to be that the song shouldn’t exist in the first place.

For me, that part gets complicated.

Contentious as it might’ve been, Isbell did have a relationship with JTE – he’s not writing the song from the vantage point of a rando internet fanboy (that would’ve been my job) – and while the song does mention his “child” and his “love”, it’s not revelatory in doing so, save to indicate that he did, in fact, leave a partner and a child behind.

Could Isbell have handled it differently? Could he have reached out to JTE’s family prior to releasing the album? Could he have backburnered the song until everyone was older and there were more miles on the odometer?

Yeah. He could’ve done any one of those things, or a combination of them, even. Why didn’t he? I wouldn’t pretend to know.

I’ll say that in my own life as a writer, I let my self-censorship talk me off the ledge A LOT at various times in my life, and I couldn’t even venture to guess how many songs went unwritten because I was fearful on some level of the consequences of saying difficult things out loud in a song and committing it to some degree of permanence by putting it out into the world.

I still remember how naked I felt standing in front of a crowd that included my first wife, singing songs from my debut album that chronicled the deterioration of our relationship…and I’d have been more at ease standing at the entrance of the Holland Tunnel wearing nothing but a pair of socks.

Isbell appears to have vanquished such fears a long time ago.

This isn’t the only emotionally uncomfortable song he’s ever written – in fact, his reputation as a wordsmith was largely earned by his willingness to open a vein and let it spill onto the paper, and he’s better at it than the vast majority of folks plying their trade in his own or any genre right now.

I don’t think having that kind of talent gives us a blank check, but I think that there has to be some degree of fearlessness to rise to the level that Isbell has, and this isn’t the only song on Weathervanes that opens a door into some uncomfortable rooms. “If You Insist” comes to mind.

I hate that this rift has become a thing. Considering Isbell’s non-relationship with JTE when he died, I can’t imagine that the circuit with his widow was any less strained or awkward, and I won’t speculate as to any of the details that exist on that timeline at all.

The broadsides to Isbell’s internal fortress over the past couple of years – the release of Running With Our Eyes Closed that shed some unflattering light into his relationship with his wife and then-bandmate, Amanda Shires (from whom he’s now divorced) and losing a charter member of his band, the 400 Unit (bassist Jimbo Hart) had to have been sobering in the time since the new record came out. Not trying to make excuses for him, but things like that have a way of becoming…preoccupying.

But even when I try to sit in the bleachers on the widow’s side of the field – when I consider having to try to tread the minefield of navigating my daughter’s feelings around the song or the confusion around the whys and hows of how Jason’s camp handled (or didn’t handle) the sensitivity of the songs’ release…when I put it all on the table and weigh everything that’s happened and everything that didn’t happen…

…I keep coming back to one central thought.

Hearing the song may be painful to me in the same situation…but I don’t know that Isbell’s actions have nearly the power to inflict the kind of pain and hurt into my life that JTE’s had, and will continue to have.

If not for that fatal miscalculation on his final night, the song wouldn’t exist, after all.

There are losses that every one of us will suffer – personal losses that stem from varying circumstances, whether natural causes or otherwise – that will become part of our identity. All of us are the sum total of our experiences, our circumstances, the chances we’ve taken, the losses we’ve suffered, being in the right or wrong place at the right or wrong time – and the people who’ve gone on before us become part of the fabric of who we are, if we choose to carry them with us…and in many cases, we should.

My wish for everyone involved would be peace – I don’t know if that’s possible, honestly, but I wish it were.

a month of somedays

---

I carry a notebook around most of the time – I mean, I also carry a smartphone, but the vast majority of the time I’m too set in my ways to use it for songwriting, for the most part. (The one exception is a song called Fade Away that I dictated into my phone in its entirety while driving to Philadelphia for a show in 2021, during a COVID respite – and it’s a great thing to have in my pocket when the notebook is out of reach, when I’m driving, or otherwise unable to commit to pen and paper.)

I’ve been jotting down titles for this record that I’ve been working on over the past few weeks – trying to come up with something that reflected the spirit of the content of the songs on the record. It’s not a concept record, but there are some themes that reoccur throughout the body of music, so it felt bigger than just slapping a few words together to take up space on the cover.

I went over all the songs on the record looking for a snippet from a line of a song, and there were a few titles that presented themselves, but I wasn’t in love with any of them. But at one point, I wrote “running out of somedays” in there and that felt like a good match for the material – but I didn’t like the finality of it.

So, ultimately, the title that I landed on sprang out of that one, and while I wasn’t head over heels with it out of the gate, the more I thought about it, the better I felt. When you arrive at the place in one’s life that I find myself in now, the folly of putting things off for some indeterminable amount of time while you deal with life’s other priorities and distractions becomes pretty apparent – when large chunks of your contacts in your cellphone can’t come to the phone because they’re deceased, the line from Bonnie Raitt’s Nick of Time starts to sound like an alarm….life becomes more precious when there’s less of it to waste. These themes surface a lot in this record, and the title works on a level that I didn’t really anticipate when I initially considered it as a possibility – so we now have a title and a mockup of the cover.

As of this weekend, I’ve set a rough release date within a few days in the last week of July, I’ve gotten a mix engineer onboard, and I’m wrapping up the last few overdubs on the tracks that have made the track listing – I’ve set a few personal deadlines and have narrowed down the track listing and we’re moving forward with this thing, FINALLY.

I’m currently brainstorming what “releasing an album of original music in 2024” actually looks like…but here’s the plan as it currently stands:

There’ll be a vinyl release of the record on the release date, and it’ll go live on the streaming services the same day.

Anyone who buys the album on vinyl will get a free digital download of the record on release day.

There will be multiple packages available – and price points will either include a maxi-EP of acoustic versions of some of the songs from the record, or the deluxe CD version of the album which will contain ALL the songs from the vinyl release PLUS either three or four bonus songs as well. There’ll be a few online preview shows and a couple of videos and likely a “making of” long form video of sorts – and it’ll be the first project I’ve done during the entirety of my career that’ll also be available on the streaming services.

And yeah, I feel like I need to take a shower just typing that in a place where other people will read it, but…this is where we live now. I’ve accepted the notion that physical product is dead and that the number of people who embrace the notion of actually OWNING music is dwindling and will continue to do so – but there are still enough folks who care about having something to hold in their hands while they listen to the music, who want to ensure that they can listen to it without a wifi connection, who want to experience album art and liner notes and the actual process of listening to an entire body of work in sequence – and I want to believe that a substantial chunk of my potential audience will be among those numbers.

But – you gotta be on Spotify. In this day and age, you just do. People on my rung of the food chain almost never see any actual revenue from it, but it’s the only channel that a lot of people utilize for music, and I guess I’ve been absent from it long enough.

There’s a LOT of work to do, and it’s a little overwhelming – especially since I’m going it alone on this project.

(and when I say “alone”, I’m saying that I played every instrument on the record, all of them actual non-virtual versions save for the B3 and keyboard stuff, sang all the parts no matter how painful, and with the exception of mixing and mastering, I’ll be overseeing everything else from the album art to DSP placement to video creation to posting and responding on social media platforms. it’s gonna be a handful.)

But it’s also the first album of strictly original material that I’ve put out since Our Mutual Angels in 1997, and I don’t know that I felt as strongly about those songs as I do this batch.

There’s enough songs in the can for a second album, plus the David Lindley tribute record I’m currently working on – so when I add in the companion acoustic record that I haven’t recorded a note for yet, the plate is pretty full.

But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

If you’ve read this far – I sent out an email to everyone on my email list last night asking for feedback about what they’d like to see in terms of a release strategy…do they care about vinyl? Do they prefer to just listen to music on Spotify, or do they want to be able to buy product and invest in the success of the record (making music isn’t cheap, even if you do it in the least expensive manner possible as I’ve done)? It’s helpful to know what people are interested in, and if you have thoughts on the matter, feel free to either leave them in the comments or drop me a note and let me know what you’re thinking.

Thanks – gonna get back to thinking about merch designs now. 🙂

music and mattresses

“Do any of your kids have the same musical talent you do?”

It comes up from time to time, and the answer is always yes – Jayda, my oldest daughter, was picking out and singing harmony lines before she was old enough to go to public school, and Dylan started noodling on bass and guitar at an early age…but, aside from Jayda singing with several bands in her late teens and guesting on my records and Dylan’s brief flirtation with drums in junior high jazz band, neither of them chose to fling themselves into it in the manner their wayward father did.

I usually qualify my answer to that question with the notion that – while neither of them ever expressed it to me in so many words – that they probably spent much of their childhood watching me pound my head against the same proverbial wall long enough that they just decided for themselves (whether consciously or otherwise) that it just wasn’t worth it.

That’s a valid choice, based on the evidence presented to them, for sure.

But there’s an argument to be made for exploring musical aspirations without the added, self-imposed weight of tying them to commerce in some form or fashion – of singing or playing for the pure joy of singing or playing. The great thing about that mindset is that it’s never too late to start, and whether they do or not – or whether I’m here to see it – is their call, to be certain.

Danny, my youngest, has started going down the rabbit hole and exploring his own tastes, which tend to lean towards 80’s pop (Oingo Boingo, Duran Duran, OMD, etc.) and obscure Soviet Bloc bands like KINO. I’ve told him a couple of times while listening to music in the car that if he ever wanted to explore the mechanics of how those tracks were made, that he couldn’t be in a better place to do so (unless he were the son of Howard Jones or Thomas Dolby, etc.) and that I’d be happy to set him up with a controller and an interface and show him how to use them, the whole bit – but he’s shown no interest in the notion up to this point.

I haven’t pounded it into his brain, and I haven’t nagged him about it – in fact, it probably hasn’t been brought up more than four or five times – but the other night in the car, we were listening to something and I remarked about how easy it was to program some of the older drum machines to come up with sounds and such, and an analogy crept out that flipped a switch for me:

I love naps. But would I love naps any more than I already do if I stuffed my own mattress?

Applying that same analogy to food, I usually appreciate food more when it’s made by someone else, so that underscores the original point even more.

And the fact is, it’s not at all important to know how it’s made in order to enjoy it.

I’ll go one further and say that once you know what’s in the recipe, the food doesn’t taste quite the same anymore.

I’ve written about that before – about how I used to hear music with a sense of fascination and wonder as a kid listening to my clock radio, and about how that mystique faded as I got repeated glimpses behind the curtain. Now, to be clear, I certainly don’t love it any less – I still get excited when I hear something great or unique or clever and there’s still a period that lasts anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes where I’ll marvel at how awesome something is when I hear it for the first time…but the other side of my brain will eventually kick in. I’ll hear the intro to Jason Isbell’s “When We Were Close” and soak it in and revel in what a great riff it is, how the chorus lifts the song, his obvious skill as a songwriter…but in a few minutes, I’ve got the clipboard and the magnifying glass: “I don’t think either he or Sadler are capo’ed or tuned differently, the riff is too locked in – but the separation…they’ve gotta be playing pretty different guitars – maybe one has a drier signal than the other…”

It’s neither voluntary nor involuntary, and it’s not a bad thing – it’s the sense of curiosity that’s been the force that led me to the place I’m at in my life that takes over and asks those questions, but I do know this: that sense of wonder and curiosity and the mystique that exists when you don’t even know to ask those questions, much less have any of the answers has been replaced by something else. Not better, not worse, just…different.

And I have to confess that I miss it sometimes.

Now, would I trade away everything I’ve learned over the course of the majority of my life to reset the counter to zero just to experience music that way again?

Naw…that’s just crazy talk.

But there is something to be cherished in experiencing music without the filter that accompanies all those glimpses behind the curtain, and I don’t see any point in ruining that for my youngest – so I’m gonna shut up and let him revel in listening to the music that he loves without trying to screw it up for him.

It’s perfectly OK to enjoy sailing down the road with the wind in your hair without lifting the hood, after all.

The Intersection of Advice and Experience

It’s story time, friends…make yourselves comfortable.  

So I’ve always said that where instruments are concerned, that I could unquestionably hear the difference between a $149 guitar and a $500 guitar, and the difference between a $500 and maybe a $2k guitar…but after that, the differences were all but inaudible because the factors that affect cost past that price point usually have little to do with the sound – it starts to speak to collectibility or scarcity of materials (or some level of ornamentation that goes above and beyond the boundaries of good taste, usually).  While hearing the difference past that point becomes a matter of debate, there’s definitely some stark differences in sound quality between the classes of instrument at the bottom of the budgetary food chain.

That has nothing to do with the moral of our story, but there’s a parallel that comes into play later, so I had to get that outta the way.  🙂

Another lifetime ago, I used to be a part of a thriving little clan of like-minded folks who called themselves the Philadelphia Recording Community – it was a great little collection of highly opinionated engineers and enthusiasts from all walks of professional life in the Philly studio community, and there would be meetings – usually in a studio somewhere in town – on a regular basis where everyone would get together, tour whatever studio we were meeting in, there’d occasionally be reps from manufacturers who’d stop in to show off new gear – of course, there was a Facebook group – it was an invaluable exchange of information for someone who’d  been floundering and absorbing input from online forums full of armchair quarterbacks.  These folks were legitimately hands-on and there were some heavy hitters who’d worked on significant records in the ranks…so you could show up and ask questions and get legitimate advice and feedback from folks who actually showed up to work every day and did this for a living.

But when you get advice from people you look up to, there’s a tendency to take that as gospel and file it away as infallible – and I’ve recently learned that there are benefits to keeping an open mind about such things.

(if you’re not a practicing musician or involved in recording, you could be forgiven for moving on from this particular missive at this point – no offense taken.)

Most folks know that the vast majority of music is recorded onto computers now, with hard disks replacing the old analog multitrack tape machines that were once the center of studio operations, along with the console…the console accepted signal from microphones and routed it to the appropriate tracks on the tape recorder until all the parts were recorded, at which time the individual tracks were routed back into the console for mixing.

Now, though, as computers have taken over the job of storing the recorded audio, consoles have become extinct in almost ALL home studios, and a large number of professional rooms as well – with mixing taking place “in the box” (inside the computer itself) with the recording software taking the place of the console that once took up the entire control room.

With the evolution of this new landscape, two new elements of the signal chain have emerged as the focus of attention for people recording off the grid:  

* Converters – the tool that converts analog audio signal to digital information to be stored on the computer

* Standalone Microphone preamps – devices that were once integrated into the console that have been moved into standalone status so that musicians and engineers can have anywhere from one to four preamps for recording, rather than an entire console.  

The tradeoff in space and expense has been a game changer.  Rather than spend tens of thousands of dollars for a full-size console or a tape machine the size of a dishwasher, someone can outfit a home recording space with a laptop, a converter, and a couple of professional grade mic preamps and they’ll have the same quality in their signal chain as most full service studios, and the entire rig can fit in a case that would qualify as a carry-on at the airport.

The caveat, of course, is that there still has to be a level of quality to rival traditional full service, professional studios.  Then, as now, this varies greatly.  You can’t buy a $100 microphone and a $79 USB converter and expect to get sound quality to rival Alison Krauss’ “Paper Airplanes” – there are a lot of variables that add up to the difference between cheap recording gear and gear used to make records with that kind of fidelity, and I don’t pretend to know shit about them, but they’re certainly quantifiable via price tag.

So with that thought in mind, here’s where I went off the rails for a decade.

I vividly remember more than one conversation during my days of haunting PRC meetings where these hardware topics were hotly debated – especially because the advent of 500 series preamps was in full blossom, and there were a ton of boutique brands making their own flavor of these modular preamps at the time (this hasn’t changed, it’s just not quite as new and evolving as it felt like it was at the time…and maybe that was just my newbieness that made it feel that way, who knows?) – but everybody had their favorite manufacturer, their favorite op amp (GAR vs. Red Dot…oh, the memories), and the great thing to me was that there really were no wrong answers.  Everything in this pursuit is results-driven – if you make a great record on a cassette portastudio (as Bruce Springsteen did with “Nebraska“), the method doesn’t matter as much.  Great records have been made on shitty gear, but generally speaking, no one wants to start from that vantage point if they can help it.

We all want to assemble the best gear we can, because it eliminates obstacles.

So the evolving mindset in some of these conversations was that the best way to set yourself up for success was to assemble the best gear you can in the analog chain – get the best mics you can afford, and the best mic pres you can afford…because the converters have risen to a level of quality where the difference at the converter level was negligible.  Now, nobody ever straight up told me that converters didn’t matter – just that they didn’t matter as much as they might have at one time.  These are engineers, after all – EVERYTHING matters to them. 

The PRC even did a converter shootout at one point back in 2010 – there’s video from the session that’s still on YouTube. 

Still, this mindset that converters were less important in the signal chain became my modus operandi.  I’ve gone through gear since then – had to sell off gear for the Nashville move, reassembled gear in the time since, but I’ve used the same converter (a Focusrite Saffire PRO 40) for almost that entire time.  I made Friends and Heroes with that unit, I made Out To Pasture with that unit, and used it for countless remote sessions over the course of over a decade.

BUT – it’s a FireWire unit, and FireWire is slowly going the way of the two dollar bill.  I had a desktop computer with a dedicated FireWire card in it, ultimately replaced with a Dell Precision laptop with integrated FireWire, but – the clock is always ticking in a scenario like this, and recently…the ticking stopped.

I don’t know if it was the laptop or the Focusrite unit, but that circuit stopped working…and it became apparent to me (after first wiping and reinstalling Windows AND ProTools on the laptop) that I couldn’t really put off the inevitable any longer.  Especially since I was beginning work on a new solo record – maybe it was time to go ahead and look at replacement options.

Replacing the laptop meant replacing the converter, but I’d accepted by this point that they were likely a package deal in my situation…so I got a new laptop with Thunderbolt capability, assuming that I’d likely go the Universal Audio Apollo route (I’d talked to a couple of folks who were Apollo users who spoke highly of them), but the more layers of the onion I peeled back, the more options there were…plus conversations about the future viability of Thunderbolt versus USB 3.0, so more information only bred more confusion.

But as I was dipping my toes into the water, a buddy loaned me a converter to use as a stopgap while I got everything else squared away…it was a unit he’d inherited at one point and had since parked it at another now-defunct studio a couple hours south of Nashville, so we took a road trip one afternoon to go retrieve it and I brought it home and set about scouring FB Marketplace to get the necessary cables to integrate it into my studio.  So everything had to come out from the wall, wires pulled, new wiring and patchbay diagrams, the whole nine yards…and then once that was done, well…

…don’t forget – you get to reinstall ProTools for a third time.

So finally, after not having had a note of music pass through anything in the Overdub Nook for weeks, I finally got the laptop finished and ready to work – got a few templates created for I/O (input/output) in ProTools, and imported tracks from one of my previous sessions into a new session on the new laptop.  I had exported everything, minus any plugins, just raw audio – as I knew any sessions I’d open on the new computer would be dependent on old plugin directories, old I/O settings, and this way just felt…cleaner.

I hit the spacebar to start playback, and…

…holy shit.

Remember that anecdote from the beginning of this missive, where we talked about hearing the difference between a $149 guitar and a $2k guitar?

I’m here to tell you, folks – the same damn thing is true about A/D-D/A converters.

Maybe what the boys at PRC told me all those years ago was true…maybe they have gotten better over the years…but the difference between what I was hearing through this 10 year old Antelope Orion that I’d borrowed and my old Focusrite unit was – shocking.

Clarity, separation, fidelity – I mean, I was listening to a mix of raw audio that was barely altered (save for a few level changes) and the quality was head and shoulders over mixes I’d agonized over when listening through the old unit.  The lows were tighter and more focused, the highs less sibilant – in short, it sounded like the sum of its parts, rather than a stew.

I really hadn’t been prepared for the difference that one piece of gear made in the way my songs sounded…but I am grateful for other parts of that advice that I’d heeded all this time:  get the best microphones and mic pres that you can.  If I hadn’t heeded that advice, chances are I wouldn’t have heard what I heard from that playback in such stark terms. There had to be some degree of fidelity in the raw tracks, or there wouldn’t have been any detail there to reveal through the new converter. Still, I can’t help but wonder how much of a difference it would have made if I’d had that same quality of converters going INTO the computer…

(Now, the one thing I’m NOT retroactively obsessing over is the fact that the converter I’m using right now would’ve cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $3k if I’d bought it new off the shelf, and I’m not one to spend that kind of money on gear. They’re showing up used on Reverb right now for roughly a third of that – but I digress. No, I never would’ve spent that kind of money on something like this at the time. Now, though – the difference it makes sure as hell ain’t lost on me.)

Right now, I’m still chest-deep in the “I want to re-record every single thing I’ve ever touched” phase – I don’t know where that fits on the grand scale…probably between bargaining and acceptance, but I’ll tell you this much:  this one piece of gear has fundamentally changed the degree to which I hear the details of the work I do in my little studio space.  I can’t help but wonder how much different prior projects might’ve turned out if I’d put a little more emphasis on that link in the signal chain before now, but – I’m gonna try to be grateful for the lesson learned, rather than resentful of the time that’s passed prior to the point at which I learned it.

That lesson being – advice is great, but don’t allow it to rob you of experience.

…know when to hold ’em – know when to fold ’em…

For as long as I can remember…for as long as I’ve had a choice in the matter, anyway – I’ve had a particular intuition for when to walk away from something right before the wheels came off.

Forty years ago, I joined the Navy out of high school a mere month before the radio station I worked for was sold and everyone lost their jobs.

Six years ago, I took a random phone call from a recruiter that landed me at my current day gig just as the company I worked for was being sold off – the building I was working in when I took that fateful call doesn’t even exist anymore.

There are tons of other examples I could cite, but it all constitutes a thread that’s run through my life for as long as I can remember…I’m sure there’s tons of stuff that’s happened that I could blame on shifts in my life, too, but that’s a whole ‘nother train of thought.

I don’t always listen to my gut in every instance that I probably should, but I’ve always known when to walk away.

Walking away from this latest musical endeavor feels like another example of that.

I’m not really inclined to recount specifics or point fingers…the fact is, once it became apparent early this year that I was likely headed in this direction, it was almost a relief when I made it official a couple months ago. Everyone deserves the chance to be on a team where everyone is on the same page, and this was an important step in that direction.

I’m not entirely sure what lies ahead for the band – that’s their call, but they’ve replaced me with an alumnus of a prior joint venture and they’re giving every impression that they plan to soldier on. So – for folks who had high hopes for what lies ahead for the band, stand fast…it ain’t over yet. For me, though, I find a certain amount of peace in having freed myself from either the credit or the blame for whatever ultimately comes next, there…and I’m not suggesting in any way, shape or form that my exit will have any bearing on their future – good, bad or otherwise. They’ll take this thing as far as they see fit…I just need to be free and clear of all of it. It’s really that simple.

I honored a few obligations over the summer, but my musical calendar is now clear – as it’ll remain until such time as the Grantham Situation reaches closure. I’ve got two projects in the works at the moment – I’ve already met with and chosen a co-producer whose work I’ve admired for a long time, and I’m continuing to jot down notes on scraps of paper and assembling song ideas for a long, LONG overdue album of original material…it’s just a matter of how and where I’ll fit those efforts in between outings involving neurologists, waffles and enchiladas (not to mention continuing to hold down the aforementioned day gig).

The extended family here at The Brokedown Palace have shouldered a ton of shit that they never asked for over the course of this past seven months, and there’s no way we’d have gotten through all this if we weren’t all on the same page. Thanks to all of you, truly.

I’ve started getting the ball rolling here by retooling this page this evening, and there’s plenty of heavy lifting I can do while our domestic situation coasts to its inevitable transition point – it’s not as sexy as making a record, but it’s all necessary work, and I’ll do the best I can to keep y’all updated.

It may continue to appear quiet around these parts, and some days – that’s all it’ll be.

But I’ve got just a little more noise to make before I’m done.

I once was lost, but now I’m found…

This past Thursday – February 23rd, 2023 – would have been Rusty Young’s 77th birthday.

I’m mentioning this now, because it’s important to keep this in mind as I recount what happened that day.  I’m still wrapping my head around it all.

First – a little backstory (that most of you who stop by here on a regular basis may know already):

When Rusty passed in 2021, the surviving members of the band agreed to go to Joshua Tree at the behest of Rusty’s label to film a tribute show with the band backing a litany of guest artists.  We assembled a “house band” comprised of the remaining Poco members plus Michael Webb (who’d been in the band for eight years prior) and Bill Lloyd (who’d played with Rusty in the Sky Kings some years back) and started rehearsing the set list.

(Yes, this lineup would eventually become Cimarron615, for those following along.)

At some point, Mary suggested that I bring Rusty’s newly refurbished pedal steel that I’d taken custody of way back in 2020 before COVID hit and sidelined the band. I’d taken it to Jeff Surratt at ShowPro for a tuneup and I’d arranged to have a brand new SKB case foamed out and prepped for the road by Billy Alcorn at Alcorn Custom Case. We were getting ready for a few days’ worth of rehearsals, and I wanted to make sure his guitar was ready for him when we got started. His steel was in the back of my car when I got the call that Rusty had died.

I still have a vivid memory of getting in the car to leave for work on the morning I heard the news and turning the key, only to have “Rose of Cimarron” start blasting from the speakers (I’d made a rehearsal mix CD in anticipation of our upcoming rehearsals, and it had been playing on a loop in the car), and then hearing Rusty’s pedal steel shift in the back of the car when I pulled out of my driveway.

At any rate, I’d just picked up the newly fitted case from Alcorn the day before we were to fly out to California before the taping – Mary was in town and she flew out of Nashville with the band, and my son Dylan drove us both to the airport and we checked in at the Southwest counter.

I had multiple instruments to bring along – and for the benefit of those who haven’t done this dance before, it’s a somewhat common practice for groups of people traveling in a band situation to “mix and match” checked luggage to keep the total bag count under the number that incurs additional charges – so Mary and I checked in together and combined our checked bags to make sure we were within the parameters of the magic number.

Yet when we arrived in California, the steel was missing.

Needless to say, panic ensued and we started making phone calls, pestering the appropriate people at the airport and frantically trying to figure out what had happened to the case containing Rusty Young’s road instrument that he’d played every show with for the prior fifteen years.

The last time any of us saw the instrument was when Mary and I walked away from it on the scale at the Southwest check-in counter on June 15th, 2021.

That pretty much brings us up to date.

In the time since, I’ve personally checked Craigslist, Reverb and eBay on an almost daily basis to see if it turned up.  Eventually, I began checking Reverb and eBay less frequently because I had become all but certain that the instrument never left Nashville in the first place, and I felt as though it was going to turn up here if it was going to turn up anywhere. 

Not to veer too far into generalizations, and I realize as much as anyone that there are great pedal steel players scattered all over the globe, but…law of averages and all that. I was certain, for some reason, that it was still in Nashville.

I’ve had a Post-It note stuck to the computer monitor on my desk for that entire time with the serial number of Rusty’s steel on it – it’s been on the monitor long enough that I’d actually memorized it. If prompted, I could’ve probably rattled it off at the drop of a hat.

On the morning of Rusty’s 77th birthday, I woke up, showered, and sat down at my computer to check in with work and take a look at my ticket queue.  I have a morning teleconference every day with the folks in my region, and I’ve developed a habit of checking Craigslist during the call.  It’s become part of my daily routine, even though I’d largely given up hope of ever seeing the instrument again.  Every now and then, someone would list something cool that I wouldn’t have found otherwise if I hadn’t fallen into this habit, so I picked up a couple of bargains on pedals or microphones over the period of almost two years that I’d been obsessively screening the listings.

This morning, though, there was a listing for a “Carter SD10 pedal steel” that was clearly NOT an SD10, so I knew whoever had listed it didn’t know that much about it.

The first thing I noticed was that it was missing the Carter badge.

Rusty’s steel was missing the Carter badge.

He advertised the guitar as having an SKB case….

…Rusty’s guitar had an SKB case.

He’d taken over 15 photos of the instrument, and two of them were of the bottom of the instrument, so I pulled up the hi-res photo to see if the serial number was visible.

I just stared at my screen for a couple of minutes with the earbud dangling from my ear, still hearing the chatter from my call in my right ear, then I waved Wendy over to my desk.

I showed her the Post-it note, and then I showed her the photo from the Craigslist post.

She knew I was on a call, but she looked at me and mouthed the words:

“ON HIS F&*%ING BIRTHDAY!!!!!”

I immediately sent him a message via CL and told him that I was VERY interested and asked him when I could see it – he responded promptly with a phone number, and I sent a number of notes back and forth and set up a meeting for that afternoon at his apartment.

I was overcome with so much nervous energy that I thought I was gonna vomit – I texted Mary and the rest of the band and updated them as to what was going on and talked to Mary within a few minutes to discuss our options.

I had examined the photos and came to the pretty quick conclusion that the guitar had passed through more than one set of hands since we last saw it – the GeorgeL’s pickup that was in it when it left our hands had been replaced, and the seller was including a fifth knee lever that Rusty never used – so, that being the case, it was pretty clear to me that we weren’t buying it from the person who’d gotten it from the airport.  Someone had owned it at some point who was a player and had made modifications to it, but I was all but certain that it wasn’t this guy – since he’d listed it with the wrong model number.

So – we could get law enforcement involved, but then we’d have to go down the road of proving it was ours, and since it wasn’t technically stolen, we’d have to prove some degree of intent on the part of the seller – and this poor bastard wouldn’t know what hit him if we set that machine into motion.

So Mary suggested that we just buy it from him and call it a day – so that’s what we did.

I went to meet him at his apartment, and he had it set up in his living room – I walked over to it and pressed the pedals down to confirm that it was still set up in the Jimmy Day configuration, and proceeded to start packing it up as the guy told me that he thought it used to belong to Terry Crisp from Ricky Skaggs’ band because they’d seen pictures of him on the internet playing the same model without a badge on it.  Once I finished packing it up, I handed him an envelope with the money in it and asked him:

“So do you want to know the REAL story of where this guitar came from?”

His expression changed almost immediately – he wasn’t defensive, just…confused…so I told him the story of what had happened, and he volunteered everything he knew about where he’d gotten it from, who he thought it might’ve come from prior to that.  We’re still considering our options with regard to tracking down the trail from the airport to this guy’s apartment and – while we have some ideas – that’s a story for another time.

For now, the important thing is simply this:

After 619 days of exile to God knows where, Rusty’s steel was no longer missing, wandering in the desert, in the hands of some shady unknown entity…we got it back.

After almost TWO YEARS, we got it back.

I’d felt responsible for having lost it – for not taking the time to make a label or put a card inside the case or somehow making sure it was trackable in the time between when I picked it up the day before and when we left for the airport, and it ate at me.  Now I’d found the Craigslist ad a mere 35 minutes after it had been posted and I managed to get it back. I felt exonerated – as if I’d finally managed to atone for the error of my ways.  

It was a huge weight off my shoulders.

And again, because it’s worth mentioning one last time – these events all took place on what would’ve been Rusty’s 77th birthday.

I guess that’ll be considered coincidence by some folks, but I don’t know that I’m one of them.

Peter Cooper

“…objectivity is the mortal enemy.”

A lot of the obituaries floating around the internet today are leaning heavily on that quote, and with good reason – because he was right.

Peter Cooper knew that objectivity had its place – in the newsroom, the classroom, maybe the pulpit – but for a music journalist, it was a roadblock, a speedbump…an impediment.

Peter knew that there was little else in this world more subjective than music, and he always managed to tell its stories without “cheerleading” (as he called it) – he managed to give you exactly the information you needed in order to see the worth in an artist or an album without shoving it down your throat…and even if it was something that landed outside your own boundaries of subjectivity, he told their stories in a way that you could find worth in them whether you found it in their music or not.

And – like ALL the great ones – he made it look effortless.

I was certainly aware of Peter’s work long before I moved to Nashville, and – once I’d settled into my new neighborhood, I found myself bumping into him at Little League games, as my son Danny and his son Baker played in the same league.  I was struck by how, the first time I went over to him and introduced myself, he was quick to ask about who I was, what I did, what I might have been up to – and if you’ve moved in the circles that exist within musical communities, you know how rare that can be.

When people would ask Ed King what Ronnie Van Zant was like, he used to tell them to pick any six Skynyrd songs and listen to the words, and they’d know who Ronnie was.

I don’t know if that’s a universal truth, because I can think of a few folks whose art I admire that are still an enigma to me, even after multiple deep dives into their work…and yet, where Peter is concerned, I think that even a complete stranger (as I was, once upon a time) can see his most redeeming qualities between the lines he wrote about the art that moved him.

I was always in awe of his deep, deep knowledge of the history of this music, but even more so (if that’s possible) by his vast stores of anecdotes about the people who informed it – the musicians, the songwriters, the people around it.  In his book, he speaks of Don Light and Ann Soyars every bit as reverently as he does of Kristofferson and Cowboy Jack, and – I mean, how can you not love a guy like that?

His love for it all was so infectious that it made you love it as well…made you want to know more about it.  He was an ambassador, an evangelist, a historian, and a talented singer and songwriter in his own right, and…there were a million little things that set him apart and made him special that have been recounted by his friends on social media in the wake of his passing that it’d be redundant to try and catalog them here.

There’s no successor to Peter Cooper.  There’s no replacing Peter Cooper.  

I suppose we’ll all process this in our own way…at some point, after processing the feelings of being robbed of his presence on this plane, I’ll eventually try to get to a place of gratitude that I was actually here at the same time he was, that I got to read and be affected by his work, that I got to know him as a friend over the years, that we got to watch our kids play baseball together…that I have a few great memories of watching him BE Peter Cooper any number of times.

But for now, I’m going to mourn.

It’s a compound loss – we’ve lost a friend, a deeply empathetic and supportive presence in our lives, a genuinely talented craftsman…but on another level, we’ve also lost all the articles he didn’t write, the countless chapters of unwritten books in his encyclopedic mind that we’ll never get to read, and the records he won’t make and the songs he won’t sing.

It’s impossible not to mourn that as well.

Someday, though, when I’m able to get to the other side of that, I’ll try and live by his perpetual advice that he scribbled into my copy of his book, by way of Cowboy Jack Clement:

“Stay in the FUN business.”

Thanks for all of it, man.

The End and the Beginning of an Era

Poco is no more…and it’s generally accepted – and rightfully so – that the band died the instant Rusty Young himself died in April of 2021.

Still, the notion of putting half a century of music and memories into a box and up on a shelf doesn’t sit well with a lot of us, both inside and outside the band. As for those of us in the band, we’re forming a new entity (Cimarron615) and repeating Poco history by “picking up the pieces” and moving forward under a new name, with new songs and a new identity.

But what about the fans?

What about the folks who’ve been going to Poco shows since the beginning, the folks who made the pilgrimage to Wildwood to see Poco year after year for two decades, the folks who’ve formed long lasting friendships around the music of a band that they can’t go see anymore?

I’ve often wondered how many states have this plate registered…I know of at least four personally.

While it’s hard to let go of the band, it’s harder to let go of the trappings that have come with loving this band, with going to shows and enjoying one anothers’ company for untold years…

…and so the notion of carrying on the October tradition at Wildwood was born.

There will be no more Poco shows, to be sure – but what if the folks who made those annual trips to the mountains of Missouri came back every October anyway – and the surviving band members came to play for them?

Drummer Rick Lonow with Dolores Santoliquido (L) and Marc Smith (R)

That’s how the concept for this past weekend was born – I had suggested calling it The Poconut Family Reunion, but that suggestion seemed to have gotten lost along the way…still, regardless of the billing, that’s what it was.

The new band wasn’t able to fully commit to the show (Bill had a pre-existing booking), so we enlisted the skills of Michael Kelsh – ace singer/songwriter/guitarist and old friend of Rusty Young and everyone else in the band – to fill out the lineup of surviving Poco members on guitar, mandolin and good vibes. With Kelsh in place, we were ready to make a setlist and start putting together a show.

Kelsh with his beloved “Chickasaw”, built by his brother Brian. Photo by Dolores Santoliquido

In some ways, it was preferable to have Kelsh along – preferable in that it wasn’t the “official” C615 lineup, and that allowed us to morph into a loose “house band” of sorts that was neither the past OR the future, and there was a degree of freedom in that. We didn’t have to pretend to be Poco and we didn’t have to worry about how this would reflect on our determination to carve out an identity for ourselves as a new band.

I should probably also mention that Kelsh is a neighbor – he lives less than ten minutes from me.

So that’s helpful, y’know.

But being the hermit that I am, I hadn’t really availed myself of the opportunity to get to know him, and that might’ve been the real silver lining of this whole endeavor.

MIchaels Webb and Kelsh during soundcheck. Photo: Dolores Santoliquido

Kelsh and I have a lot in common, especially in terms of how we look at music, how we see the folks we’ve been lucky enough to get to know on our journey, and the reverence we have for the history of it all.

Plenty of good came out of this past weekend, but getting to know Kelsh better was a real blessing.

Still, it threw us a curveball here and there – on Thursday afternoon, I got a text from Debbie Grantham (wife of George, the original Poco drummer) that she’d messed up the meniscus in her knee and she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to make the trip – I told her that if George was ok with the notion of coming without her, that I’d be willing to share a room with him and take care of him for the weekend. I wasn’t sure whether that would fly or not, for a few reasons.

As most of you know, George had a stroke back in the mid 2000’s (onstage with Poco in Springfield, MA, two songs into a set), and George and Debbie hadn’t spent a night apart since then. George has come a long way from where he was, and he’s made a lot of strides, but – this would represent a pretty serious step. Taking George out of his comfort zone is one thing, but taking him out alone is another thing altogether – but they talked about it, and he agreed to the new terms. Both Debbie and my wife Wendy were staying home this trip, and this would be a “Boy’s Vacation” – it felt like a big responsibility, but Debbie made it easy for both of us, and in retrospect – I’m not sure why either of us were worried.

What I didn’t realize – in the wave of planning for the caretaking aspect – was that we were unwittingly agreeing to cut our vehicular capacity by 50%.

Last year, Wendy and Debbie rode together in one car while George and I rode in the other, singing along to Poco songs the whole way and posting videos on Instagram, hashtagged #countryrockcarpoolkaraoke and having a great time…in fact, when we got to town, I sat down with George and read him all the comments from fans on the videos I’d posted – it was a pretty great moment.

But this time around, there’d only be one car – and that didn’t occur to me until early Friday morning when I went to try to pack ALL my gear and my bag AND leave room for Kelsh’s gear (who was riding with us) AND George’s bag…it started to dawn on me as I was loading the car that this was going to be a LOT tighter than it was last time, because we had two cars’ worth of storage then. I spent 40 minutes packing and unpacking to get to the point where I had maximized the space I had, and the only thing I’d left behind was my multi-guitar stand that just wasn’t going to make it into the car. When I got to Kelsh’s house, I actually ended up taking out the lap steel stand that I’ve been using – leaning it against the ladder on his porch and loading his stuff in. It was tight…beyond tight, really…but we made it work.

Thankfully, George had a single bag that we could put on the console between the front seats – so once we picked him up, we were headed north on Interstate 24 for the trip.

GG has the groupies in the palm of his hand. Photo: Dolores Santoliquido

We’d planned on doing more videos for Instagram, but – I think the moment passed, in some weird way. He had no idea that I was recording him last year until after it was a done deal, but this year he had that awareness of last year in the back of his mind, and the Heisenberg Principle seemed to have taken hold in some fashion…he wasn’t quite as vocal as he’d been last year, and…honestly, that was fine. It was enough to just let him listen to the songs and let some of the old memories creep out here and there. I’m sure some folks were probably disappointed that we didn’t reprise last years’ trip, but…you can’t force this kinda thing.

There was a stretch of construction on I-24 and we ended up getting off and taking an alternate route that took us over the bridge above the Ohio River and into a town called Cairo, Illinois – and I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like Cairo since Gary, Indiana.

Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here.

Rush Hour.

We were almost all the way through town before we saw a single soul (on a Friday at lunchtime), and it was an elderly guy with Einstein hair on a motorized wheelchair, zooming along the shoulder of the street.

I said to George and Michael – “are you guys seeing this?”

16 year old me wants desperately to explore these houses. 57 year old me ain’t havin’ it.

The town literally looked like what I’d always pictured the day after the Rapture to look like – empty, deserted, abandoned buildings with almost no signs of life – it was downright bizarre. There wasn’t a single chain store of any stripe anywhere in town. Not a McDonalds or Burger King, no Subway, no Starbucks, no Advance Auto Parts, no Midas, no Jiffy Lube, no Dunkin’ Donuts…NOTHING. Just a long stretch of empty shells of buildings that had been untouched for ages.

Oh, and one building that offered “Pizza – Deli – Grocery – CLOTHES”…with gas pumps out front that probably hadn’t passed anything through them for decades.

The sign continues around the side of the building with “Lottery – Tobacco”.

But anything else you want? They got you COVERED.

We finally arrived in the vicinity of the gig at somewhere around 7pm-ish on Friday night, having made arrangements to meet Jack and his girl, as well as Michael’s brother Brian and his wife at a place called Weir-on-66 for dinner. For those who don’t know the area, Cuba is a Route 66 mainstay and the closest town to Steelville (home of Wildwood Springs Lodge) with the usual amenities – including the aforementioned restaurant, as well as the Super 8 Motel that’s become famous among Poconuts for temporary lodging adjacent to Wildwood.

We had a great meal and caught up with everyone, and…we learned that the owner of the restaurant was a Poco fan who summoned us to the bar in the back, where he had a Poco Legacy poster hanging behind the bar that he climbed up and removed from the wall so that George, Jack and I could sign it.

GG getting warmed up for the after-show routine the following night

Double-G was a bona fide Rock Star and we hadn’t yet played a note in this town.

We parted ways, dropped Kelsh off at the Wagon Wheel where he was staying and headed back to the Super 8, where there was a dining room full of Poconuts hanging out (as they do) – so we took our stuff up to our rooms, and I brought my guitar back down with me. George came down with me and we played and sang for an hour and a half before retiring to our room, taking our meds and calling it a night. Load-in and soundcheck started at 10am the next morning, so we needed to get our beauty rest.

I got GG up the next morning in the clothes we were wearing the night before, and he was hungry. I got him to take his meds for the morning and we scrambled next door to Hardee’s so I could get him something to eat (I could feel Debbie scowling at me in my head) and we got him down the road to the load-in late, but not so much that anyone noticed, because the gear was running a little behind as it was.

Despite not having the practice on the drive that he’d had last year, GG was in good voice during soundcheck and the boys in the band were dialed in – everyone was in good spirits and happy to be back in a place that represented so many great memories, and it just felt…right. We were where we were supposed to be.

Soundcheck. Photo: Dolores Santoliquido

Jack Sundrud and Tom Hampton comparing notes. Photo: Dolores Santoliquido

After soundcheck, I decided I was going on a mission to find some guitar stands (I left my own back in Nashville, and I didn’t want to have my stuff strewn about the stage), so I typed “music store” into Apple Maps and a place in Rolla, MO came up as closest – Metz Music. I told GG that we had a little detour in store on the way back to the hotel and off we went.

I had known that there was a store nearby the Young Cabin that Rusty had taken a shine to, but I never had occasion to ask him about who they were or anything of the sort – and when we pulled into the parking lot, the place didn’t offer any notion that it was anything special. But we walked in and struck up a conversation with a kid who worked there, and it surfaced soon enough that this was, in fact, the store that Rusty used to frequent back in his day. We had a great conversation about Rusty and the band with George, who’d known Rusty since Denver – what a surreal moment.

Anyway – back to the hotel…shower…change clothes…become gig-ready.

Debbie had packed a couple of dress shirts for George, but he opted for a T-shirt…what with George being George and all…

Michael Webb keeping George in stitches in the Green Room

But y’know, he was a trooper – it was the first weekend he’d been away from Debbie in twenty years and he was having a ball.

We got to the gig, checked in with everyone, and joined in a 5pm “Toast to Paul Cotton” that Mary had thoughtfully arranged just prior to dinner – I brought a flask filled with white label George Dickel bourbon and symbolically “poured one out” for Paul before raising it skyward – I also played a short version of Paul’s song “Running Horse” – which felt like it summed up the whole day, in some ways:

“…There’s a picture of a horse that’s running – standing here right before my eyes

it’s always there to remind me of the best of old times

with it’s eyes on fire – running like the wind

it’s gonna take me down forgotten trails again

And who knows where it’s going – maybe it’s all gonna show

But I’m betting on a horse that’s running – just like before

It’s never been one to follow – he could set his own pace

There’s nothing that he would allow to take it all away

And when the sun sets on everything and falls into the sea

You can find me on a horse that’s running – that’s where I’ll be…”

“Running Horse” – words and music by Paul Cotton

Raising a glass for Paulie at Wildwood. Photo: Steven Bond Garvan

We had dinner and adjourned to the Green Room to finalize the setlist – George had been a little worried about knowing when to come up and such, but I assured him as best as I could that I would make sure he knew when he was supposed to come up and when it was time for him to take a step aside. We had gotten him a seat right down front with easy access to the stage so he wouldn’t have to work too hard to get up and down, and it worked out wonderfully.

Photo: John Thaler

It feels kinda pointless to try to describe the show to you – there are a ton of videos up on social media, and it seems like a safe assumption that you’ve likely seen at least one or two of them and you probably already have a notion of how things went.

Photo: John Thaler

I will say this – it was immensely satisfying watching George get up and revel in the adoration of the fans who’d come from all over the country to be a part of this – there’s no promise of this night becoming an annual event, so for all anyone knows, this could very well be the last night for all of us. George was up and down more than a devout Catholic at Christmas Eve Mass, and it was absolutely sublime.

We played our asses off – we played like a handful of grizzled veterans newly aware of our own mortality, knowing full well that tomorrow isn’t promised to anyone, and I don’t know if I’ve ever sang better in my life. We played every song we knew until we finally had to circle back and re-play “Call It Love” in the new, Cimarron615 style at the end of the night before the house lights came up.

Michael Webb taking Rusty’s lighted shoes for a spin. Photo: Jean Thompkins

The Final Bow at the end of the show. Photo: Lynn Hoffman Parma

We all went back upstairs to man the “merch table”, and we pulled GG into the center of it…I watched him signing album covers and T-shirts and various other things and feeling like my real accomplishment for the weekend was giving him this experience again – since none of us know whether today is the last time any of us get to do this, anymore.

GG working out the finer points of signing the inside of a hat at the meet and greet…

At my age, mortality goes from being a vague, abstract notion to becoming a cloud that hangs over ones’ plans and dreams like a threatening thunderstorm in the distance. It’s impossible to ignore or dismiss, because by this point in your life, it’s left a footprint that demands your acknowledgement.

Still, after this show, there was a wave of contentment and gratitude that fell over me – and I wasn’t going to let some trivial notion like “sleep” keep me from fully recognizing it.

Kelsh’s handwritten setlist, complete with notes on keys and instrument changes. Photo: John Thaler

After spending an hour at the merch table, we finally broke up and went back downstairs to start packing up our gear – GG was starting to fade a bit, but he was a trooper. He hung in there while I packed up my gear and we got him back to the hotel, got his meds taken care of, and got him into bed JUST as his alarm was going off at midnight.

I went back down to the lobby and stayed up with the Poconut Faithful until 2:30AM, trading stories and songs until none of us had anything left to share – and I stumbled back up to the room with my key card.

I had put TCM (Turner Classic Movies) on the TV before I’d gone downstairs (GG likes to sleep with the TV on) – and when I came back into the room, the TV was still on – there was a Katherine Hepburn movie on, and she couldn’t have been more than 24 or 25. I wasn’t particularly interested in the movie, but I couldn’t help but notice…

…every so often in the movie, I kept hearing the name of her on-screen suitor…

yeah, it doesn’t mean anything, but…

his name was:

Russell Young.

yeah, you read that right.

RUSSELL YOUNG.

(Rusty’s name was Norman Russell Young.)

It felt like that was his way of checking in and letting me know that he was keeping tabs on things…which is totally fine with me.

We still love you down here, man.

Antlers and Acorns 2022

Antlers and Acorns is a brand new festival – last year was supposed to be its maiden voyage, but it joined the not-even-close-to-exclusive “Things COVID Wrecked” club…so this year would be the first.  I’d made the acquaintance of Shari Smith, the festival director, well before this years’ festival started taking shape, and she initially wanted Cimarron615 to play the festival, but there were too many scheduling factors competing to nail that down, so I asked Jack if he’d be interested in doing a pair of duo sets instead, and we were off and running.

The Tuesday before we left, the band spent the entire day – from just after 8am to sunset – at the Cash Cabin filming a music video for “High Lonesome Stranger”, the first single from our record.  It was a long day, for sure…and while there was plenty of repetition to go around, it felt good to spend the day with the guys after everyone being so busy running in different directions for so long.

Rick said in an email earlier in the year, “I feel like we made a kickass record, but I’m not sure I feel like I’m in a band”, and I felt like he was reading my diary – and I don’t think any of us could argue with him. 

Now, though, things are starting to turn around…we’ve got a pretty solid plan emerging for the rest of the winter up to and including the release date, and a few things are starting to fall into place.  Having things to do that go towards the common good feels like progress, like some momentum is building – and that’s reassuring.

Still, with being gone that entire day for the video shoot, the vast majority of trip preparation for this run to Boone, NC had fallen on Wendy’s shoulders.  Once upon a time, it was easy to accuse her of overpacking, but she’s definitely streamlined her process over the years – when most of our family trips have revolved around my participation in a show of some sort, we have to allow for space for gear AND family stuff, and we seem to have largely figured that out at this point – late in the game as it were.

Luckily, it was a light lift for me for this trip – acoustic guitar, mandolin, and dobro – so we managed to make it work without too much bartering.

It was also our first “pet friendly” trip.

We thought about leaving the kitten in Dylan’s hands while we were gone, but when we found out where we were staying and saw the “pet friendly” caption on the hotel webpage, we changed our minds. 

We decided that it was about time that this cat found out who she’d thrown in with.

Get in the car, Cat.  It’s time to earn your stripes as a road runt.

The trip east was a little traumatic out of the gate – we stopped for gas in Cookeville at the famous (in my mind) “Opie Pilot” at exit 287 (where Opie rescued me off the side of the road on a trip to Nashville almost 20 years ago), and I fetched the cat from the car in hopes of bringing it over to a patch of grass by the parking lot.  But she clung to my shoulder, claws out, burrowing her face into my neck – she wasn’t havin’ any of this noise, not today.  I would’ve been thrilled if I could’ve gotten her to just use my legs as a scratching post, since I’d managed to attract every chigger within a five mile radius of Cash Cabin the night before, and my legs looked like the Monkeypox exhibit at the science fair…but I had to settle for rubbing my shoes against my calves the whole trip.

Still…back in the car and back down the road.  We only stopped for gas twice the whole trip, now that I think of it – once then ($43) and once just over the TN line on the way home (also $43) – we wanted to get to NC early enough to check in to the hotel and make it to the theater in time for Kyle Petty’s set, which was the whole reason we left a day early and brought Danny along in the first place.

Some of you know, but more of you likely don’t – Danny is every bit as enamored with motorsports at 13 as I was with music at the same age.  He eats, drinks, breathes, inhales everything that he can consume on the topic, and has amassed an encyclopedic knowledge of the topic.  He walked into the living room earlier this year and recited every Formula One champion from last year back to the mid-seventies from memory, and would’ve kept going save for the one year he wasn’t positive about.

This is the same kid who charmed a reclusive barn find collector who lived in a trailer on the side of a hill almost half his life ago by identifying a torque converter that was covered in leaves and rust lying near his feet.  SO many Danny Stories like that one.

We got there in time to check in, and got to the theater to pick up credentials while Kyle’s set was just getting underway – I found out when we were picking up passes that backstage was off limits, even to performers, which admittedly blindsided me.  I thought “All Access” meant “All Access”, and I’d shelled out for an extra night’s hotel stay out of my own pocket specifically to engineer a meeting between Danny and Kyle Petty, and I wasn’t really sure what my next move was gonna be.  One of the folks working the desk said to stick around, though – it was early and we’d figure this out.

So we went upstairs between sets and watched the next band, Damn The Banjos – and as they were wrapping their set up, I saw him come from the back out towards the lobby, so I brought Danny back out and introduced the two of them.

“Meet and Greets” have become part of the touring vernacular over the years, and a lot of acts capitalize on them by selling access to the artist.  I’ve played with bands that played that game, and I’ve played with bands that would stay after a show and talk to every single person that wanted to talk to them until we were all asked to leave.  I stood with Rick Willis on the floor of a casino in Boosier City, LA after a show and talked to two Marshall Tucker Band fans who’d driven all the way from San Antonio, TX to see the band – I know how that sort of thing has made me feel as a fan in the past, and I’m here to pay it forward when the chance presents itself.

Often, pre-packaged M&G opportunities are a line for autographs and a group photo and it’s hard to see the appeal in something like that for a fan, but – they show up and they pay their money and who am I to say whether they should or not?

For this festival, there weren’t “meet and greets” – there was a VIP package, but it was built differently than the typical “press the flesh” bit.  There were also opportunities for people to go on hikes with some artists, to go fly fishing with others – they really thought this through, and made those encounters part of what I would imagine will evolve into the overall brand of this particular festival over the coming years.

My ego and I had collaborated to just waltz Danny backstage and introduce him, but that wasn’t on the menu at this point…and yet Kyle came back out to the lobby – I introduced myself and my son, and he shook Danny’s hand and they started talking for a bit.

As a participant in these conversations from both sides of the table, there are typically three kinds of encounters: there are folks who just want to thank you and maybe get a photo or an autograph, there are folks who really want to connect but fall short (they’re usually the ones who talk about a specific show or a specific song or ask elementary questions…they really want to connect somehow, but they just don’t have enough information)…and there’s that one person who knew something about your song or your record that you thought was an easter egg, or asked a really empathetic question about something that touched you, or told a story about what a song or a show meant to them.

That third person is pretty rare, but encountering them makes the other folks worth the trouble.

Anyway – Danny and Kyle Petty start talking about the track at Michigan, and how it used to be a D-shaped oval, until they repaved it, and when they repaved it…and I’m starting to see Kyle’s demeanor shift a little bit.  Danny starts talking about an Indy finish that happened in 2005, and Kyle said, “man…you weren’t even BORN yet!”

As a lifelong fanboy who never grew up, who still holds most of his heroes in some degree of esteem, standing there watching Danny and Kyle talk and connect over their common passion actually choked me up a little.  The guy could not have been nicer, and I think that if he hadn’t committed beforehand to going back onstage for the encore, he and Danny might still be standing in the lobby of the Appalachian Theater talking about the new car and the changes in the tires and how the higher number of crashes this season is to blame on changing both in the same year – Kyle walked back into the theater and as we started to walk back to the car, Danny said, “I could’ve talked to him for another hour, easy.”

We went to the grocery store to grab some stuff for the hotel room, and at one point, Danny said – without prompting – “sometimes…it’s actually cool to meet your heroes.”

So…it’s confirmed, then – I guess some degree of hero worship is hereditary.

I hope he continues to be as lucky as I’ve been for most of my life in that regard.

We decided to grab something at Cookout before we went back to the hotel for good, and I took that opportunity to call Jack, who’d signed on to do the shows with me on Friday and Saturday.  I had collected his badge at the theater and he was in the same hotel as me…and besides, it was still his birthday for a few more minutes.

Thursday, we’d decided beforehand that we were going to drive out to North Wilkesboro where the Speedway is and try to get a look at it, since it had just reopened – but then Wendy found out that there was a press conference happening at noon to announce that the NASCAR All-Star race would be held at North Wilkesboro.  

Sure enough, when we got there, there was a car at the gate, monitoring traffic and a sign on the gate assuring trespassers that they’d be prosecuted, and Danny just locked down…dude didn’t even want to get out of the car.  

So we took a photo and went on our way.

Next time, maybe.

There was an actual, honest to goodness diner just outside town in Boone – Troy’s – so we stopped there for dinner, and it was really nice, save for the bun on Danny’s burger.  I thought that, after our Brown’s success, that maybe his horizons were expanding, but the bottom of the bun was a dealbreaker.  Tough break.  Still, the strawberry shake he brought back for dessert seemed to make up for it.

After Jack arrived, he and I put our heads together and decided on a loose set list for both of the shows – Friday was every bit a perfect day, and we were playing on the rooftop of the Horton Hotel downtown in Boone, and it couldn’t have been nicer.  Performance-wise, there was a thin layer of rust, for me, for sure…too many down days, too much not playing and singing – but the set was safe enough that we got through it.  My old Navy buddy Pat had come down from Illinois (her sister Natalie lives in NC, and they came to the show together – in all the years I’ve known Pat, I’d never met Natalie until that weekend).  There were a couple other friends from social media that I’d never met in person who came to the shows as well.

Don Chapman, who plays with Larry Burnett from Firefall, arranged a dinner meetup for everyone after the show – I had parted ways with Pat & Nat already, but I went back to the hotel and grabbed Wendy and Danny – and Jack joined us for the ride back into town so we didn’t have to take an extra car.

Danny had just eaten only a few hours before, but I ordered him another cheeseburger in an attempt to soften the diner blow from the night before, but somehow, yet again – the bun was just identical enough to the bun from the night before.  So his burger became dessert for his dad, the food janitor, back at the hotel later that night while we were engaging in our ritual viewing of Almost Famous before bed…and we internally christened this run to be known as the “Danny Hampton ‘These Buns Are Bullshit’ Tour 2022”.

We woke up to rain on Saturday and the news that all outdoor shows had been moved indoors, which meant moving down to the bar for those of us at the hotel – Larry and Don played before us, and then Jack and I set up to do our set.

Larry came back in shortly after we started and sat down at the bar right in front of us, maybe ten feet away at most – so I called an audible in the set a few songs in.

“How many folks here remember the first record they ever bought with their own money?”

A bunch of hands went up.

“How many remember the first FIVE records they bought with their own money?”

Most of those hands went down, save for a couple.

Jack then interjected, “How many folks here are named Tom Hampton and can remember every record they ever bought with their own money in chronological order?” and got the exact reaction he should’ve gotten…it’s generally accepted that there’s something amiss with regard to how my brain works as it is. 🙂

After the laughter subsided, I told the story of how Firefall’s “Undertow” album was the fourth record I ever bought, and I bought it because I’d had the 45 of “You Are The Woman” and it had a Larry Burnett song on the flip side called “Sad Ol’ Love Song” and I’d become intrigued with his writing as it compared and contrasted to Rick Roberts’ songs – and I played and sang Larry’s song “Business is Business” from the Undertow album with him sitting pretty much directly across from me.

It was a magic little full circle moment, for sure.

As I had done the night before, I dedicated “Rose of Cimarron” to Shari Smith, the festival director who’s become like a sister to me in ways I don’t fully understand – we’ve lived these parallel lives that are only just beginning to reveal themselves in terms of where we grew up, how we grew up – our stories are eerily similar.

And yet somehow, the entire time we were at the festival, we never crossed paths.

One of the folks who’d come to the Saturday show was a Facebook friend who’d asked if I could show him how to play “Indian Summer”, so I grabbed my guitar and we walked out into the lobby and I had him videotape me playing the song with his phone so he could take the video back and teach it to himself.

Maybe there’s something innately uncool about that kind of thing, I don’t know – but that particular brand of kindness has been extended to me so many times over the course of my life that I can’t not pay it back.

And frankly – I’m pretty OK with being uncool, as it is.

When we got the car loaded, Jack, Wendy and I went over to see Jacks’ friend Mark play and ended up bumping into Steve Conn in the lobby.  I hadn’t seen Steve in years, even though we live in the same town.  We chatted for a bit and he mentioned he had another set coming up at Lost Horizon, right around the corner, at 4:30 – so we all walked over to see him play…we ordered an appetizer plate and a round and settled in just as he was starting.

I have to admit – it had slipped my mind somehow as to just how damned good Steve Conn is.  I’ve always known he was a great player, but his voice is as strong as ever and his demeanor on stage is funny and welcoming as well.  His song Anna Lee just killed me…it started out good and then twisted the knife with two lines in the bridge:

“…I asked if she ever thought of me…

and she said – someday, I will….”

That’s just not fair, man.

Boone is a college town (Appalachian State University), and on this particular day their football team was playing the number six-ranked Texas A&M…and the game was on TV elsewhere around the room.  I wasn’t paying attention, as I was focused on Steve’s performance – but when he wrapped up, I noticed that ASU was leading A&M by three points with barely a minute and a half on the clock, and the vibe in the room was shifting accordingly.  ASU had gotten the ball back and was running out the clock…and when time expired and they had won, the room ERUPTED.

Steve had already started loading his gear into his car so we said our goodbyes and walked outside into a surreal scene – the only thing I could really compare it to was the scene in Titanic where the boat had disappeared under the surface of the water and there were disembodied screams coming from all directions.  There were people shouting from inside buildings down the street in both directions, from across the street – cars were rolling by with people hanging out the windows…Jack, Wendy and I headed straight back to the car and started back towards the hotel and as we were driving out of town, throngs of kids were running towards the center of town where we’d just come from.  

As it turned out, we got on the last chopper out of Saigon – if we’d waited another ten minutes or so, there would’ve been no getting out of there.  It apparently turned into a celebration for the ages, from the news reports that were surfacing the next day.

As for the three of us, we celebrated by going back to the hotel and having Jack join us for a screening of “Battered Bastards of Baseball” on Netflix before calling it a night.

Monza was on the next morning, so we got the race up on TV for Danny while we packed up four days of hotel room clutter for checkout…the final Indy race was going to air at 3pm Eastern, so we hatched a plan to find a spot somewhere along the road home to try to catch the race, and if that wasn’t an option, we’d hit a rest stop and hotspot the laptop so he could watch it there.

As it turned out, we were passing through Knoxville at just about that time, and thanks to Google, we found a place – Calhoun’s On The River – that was not only pet friendly, but they had an outdoor patio right on the river where we were able to harness the kitty and let her roam about a bit, grab a bite to eat, and a really nice guy named Adam diverted one of the TV’s on the deck to the race so Danny could watch it before we got back on the road.

It was raining hard on the outskirts of Nashville when we pulled into the driveway, so we unloaded what needed to be pulled out of the car when we got home and most of us collapsed into bed not long afterward.  

I really can’t think of a thing that could’ve gone better for the entire run, and I’m surprised I didn’t need the GPS to find my way back to the office for the day gig on Monday morning…it felt like I’d been gone forever.  After a few months of going back and forth on the seesaw, wondering whether I should even be doing this at all for a while there, it was good to gather some steam and stock up for the months to come.  Validation and redemption are hard enough to come by as it is…especially these days…and it felt good to be back home on the road.

Laziness…Luck…or something else?

unidentified junior high-age hillbilly kid with makeshift drumkit (including homemade parts and broken cymbals) in undisclosed rural house with no indoor plumbing, circa 1979

---

Driving back to the house last night, Danny volunteered from the back seat:

“I don’t think I can be a Formula One driver.”

I immediately asked the obvious question – why? – and his response surprised me a bit.

“I think I’m probably too lazy.”

That sparked a conversation about why he perceived himself in that light, and a pretty lengthy discussion about the roles that talent and opportunity play in the arc of a persons’ life, and whether it’s fair to self-identify as “lazy” when the truth is probably closer to the notion that he lives in a world mostly devoid of opportunity to pursue such things.

Wendy (Danny’s mom) has often said of herself that she’s intimidated by trying things if she can’t do them at a certain level of proficiency right out of the gate…it’s not a fear of failure as much as a fear of humiliation, and Danny certainly shares that.  His frustration boils to the surface almost immediately if he doesn’t meet his own standards in pretty short order, and if he falls too far short of his expectations, it can get ugly.  

None of this is to say that I don’t fall on my own sword on a regular basis when I don’t live up to my own expectations…I’ve never exactly been a bottomless well of self-confidence at any point in my life.  I think that the difference might be that I channel that frustration into anger and use it as fuel to push myself to get as close to my own standards as I can (with some things, anyway…fiddle – as fate would have it – was not one of them).

As we were talking last night, though, I think I realized two things that had never really occurred to me before.

ONE – there’s literally zero reason I ever should have had ANY degree of success whatsoever in the music business.

(and yeah, the whole “definition of success” wormhole is right there, waiting for whoever wants to descend into it to take that leap…for the purposes of this conversation, I define it as “learning to play several instruments, training my ear to the degree that I’ve been able to play in bands, write songs, record in studios and make records that I love for artists I love and for myself”, yada yada…” – seriously, none of those things should have been available to me.)

I was born in Savannah, Tennessee in 1965 and spent my formative years there…other than being just across the state line from Muscle Shoals, there was very nearly NO musical community there.  A few bluegrass pickers and hobbyists here and there, but it was very nearly non-existent.  By the time I reached my teens, I’d managed to find a few like-minded folks here and there, but there were a total of maybe three bands in my hometown…even then.

When the band Alabama played at the football stadium in my hometown in 1980 or so, I think every local band within an hours’ drive was also on the bill as an opener.

My transformation from a comic book-and-baseball obsessed kid into a radio-addicted pre-teen and teenager was one hundred percent internal.  I would stand at the magazine rack at the supermarket and read Circus and Creem and Hit Parader while my mom pushed the cart up and down the aisles.  I listened to the radio incessantly, formulating hundreds of questions in my head about why this band sounded different from that band, I formed allegiances at junior high school based on music and…well, not much else, really.  It’s pretty much all I gave a shit about, so I didn’t really want to be bothered hanging out with kids who didn’t love it as much as I did.  Thank God I found a few.

The fact that I managed to overcome all that and learn what I did and put that information to use is…well, the more I think about it, the more it kinda blows my mind.  I’ve thought about it quite a bit, into the wee hours this morning and throughout the day today as I’ve mulled it all over.

There’s no rational reason it ever should have happened for me.

And, yet…

OK, TWO – in my formative years, I was literally too naive NOT to take wildly unlikely and ridiculous chances.

I had a relative – Loyd Stricklin – who worked in radio as an announcer, and when my mother told me about him, I wouldn’t shut up until she introduced me to him…and I became a pain in his ass.  This is not up for discussion, and I won’t be convinced otherwise…there’s just no way the poor bastard didn’t groan inside when he caught sight of me.  Yet, to his credit, he must have seen something in my boundless curiosity and enthusiasm…because he answered all my questions, he suffered my hounding with a great deal of patience, and he even brought me a box of 45’s from the attic of the radio station.

Later, when he opened WKWX, he’d allow visits while he was on the air…and after the other announcers got to know me, they’d let me watch over their shoulders while they worked as well (well, except for Mel Carnal…I don’t think he disliked me, but he certainly didn’t have the patience for my bullshit that Loyd had.

One morning, I was at the radio station when two guys came in – both with long hair and beards, one blond and one brown – bringing copies of a record they’d just made at their brand new recording studio THAT WAS IN MY HOMETOWN.

I couldn’t believe that there was an actual rock band IN SAVANNAH that wasn’t a bunch of old guys in cowboy hats playing Flatt & Scruggs songs or country gospel quartets that played at church on Saturday nights…and here these guys were, in the lobby of the radio station, hawking their new record.

Did I have questions?

I had questions.

And again, they couldn’t have been nicer.

“So do you guys have a drummer?”

“Well, yeah…his name is Korgy.”

“Korgy?”

“Yeah…it’s actually a box with buttons on it…it’s made by Korg, so we call him Korgy.”

The TL:DR version of the conversation – they weren’t actually playing live shows, so for the time being they saw themselves as a songwriting and recording entity more than anything else…they were trying to get the studio going as a profitable entity, and they were making their own records both to promote themselves and their music AND to try to get the studio on the map.

But I was too young and too green not to go ahead and ask:

“So do you guys hire session musicians?”

They both looked at each other, then back at me and said, “Sure – when we need them.  Did you want to audition?”

So these guys gave me their phone number, the address to the studio, directions, and told me what nights they were usually there, and to call when I’d be able to come by and we could play a few songs together and see where I was.

Now, at the time, I was a drummer.

I was a drummer who didn’t really own a legitimate set of drums, but as far as I was concerned, I was a drummer.

These guys didn’t have to give me the time of day, but they did.

I guess they figured that if I had the balls to ask, that they weren’t gonna piss in my cornflakes and tell me I couldn’t…that’s what I tell myself all these years later, anyway.

But, I mean…not only did I not own a gig-worthy set of drums…I didn’t really know how I was gonna get to the studio.  We didnt’ have a car.

But again, because I wasn’t really capable of shame, I suppose…I got my mom to ask my Aunt Betty to drive me from Walnut Grove to Savannah at the appointed hour and she sat and waited for me while I was inside.

I knocked on the door and Frankie Briggs invited me in with his trademark giant smile and re-introduced me to Pat Durbin, who’d accompanied him to the station – and to their guitarist, Jerry Opdycke…who seemed a little irritated at the time at the disruption, but cordial enough. 

Jerry “Opie” Opdycke playing his Ovation acoustic and sportin’ his Gruhn Guitars t-shirt

It was the first time I’d ever been inside a recording studio, and it seems quaint now to think about how awestruck I was by what was essentially an exercise in floor-to-ceiling carpeting with mic stands hanging from overhead and XLR jacks in the ceiling…but I didn’t want to leave.

the control room at Savannah Sound Studios

They sent me into the drum booth and we played three of their original songs and a cover of “Two More Bottles of Wine” and my life was both saved from an inevitable impending mediocrity and irreversibly scarred at the same time.

I already had an inkling of where I wanted to go, but after that night, I was all but certainly useless to whatever academic pursuit of a “career” might have been forced onto my plate later on in school.

nowadays, you can do the work of this equipment with your phone or a laptop. then…totally different story.

Now, I hear you asking yourself already…and I appreciate your indulgence…

“Did I ever get a call from them for a session?”

Well…no.  No, I didn’t.

I went on to play drums in my friend Jeff’s family band and toyed around with a few garage bands in my early teen years, but they never called me for a session.

They called me and invited me to join their band.

It was several years later, and they’d run the studio as best as they could, but they’d decided that they wanted to start playing live shows…and they wanted to hire a drummer and a keyboard player.  

They still had my name and number on a card on the wall of the studio.

So they read me off a short list of songs to learn over the phone, and I went down and got the gig.

Opie, the disgruntled guitarist, became a lifelong friend, hero, role model, confidante, and – later in life – my head cheerleader as things started to go well for me.

When he died almost seven years ago, I learned that he’d left a handwritten note in the case of his beloved Fender Stratocaster leaving the guitar to me.

When I went to his house to help his partner clean out his belongings, she gave me a bunch of his other stuff as well…books, photos, notes…but before I left, I asked her what she was planning to do with the stuff hanging in the closet.

She mentioned that it’d probably end up going to Goodwill, so I grabbed a dozen or so of his shirts from the closet and kept them.  

I don’t think a week has gone by in these past seven years that I haven’t worn one of Opie’s shirts over the course of a Sunday-to-Sunday span.

I actually wore one to work today, and I’m wearing it as I finish scribbling this story down.

If there’s anything to be taken away from listening to me recount all this, hopefully it can simply be that opportunity comes in a LOT of forms.  Sometimes disguised, sometimes accidental, sometimes created out of nothing because we have no idea what the hell we’re doing.

If I hadn’t been green and naive enough to create those opportunities out of those random, serendipitous moments, I’d never have had the life I’ve had.

But if we put ourselves out there and prepare as best as we can for the moment when talent and luck intersect, you never know what will come of it.