I am never certain whether I feel like an introvert or an extrovert. I suppose I could get both answers depending on who I ask.  I know that when I am with my tribe, I am loud and expressive and use my hands when I talk. When I am in a crowd where I know I am safe and loved, I light up and put the “extra” in extrovert. Other times, a crowd can feel like invisibility. Sometimes I want to be invisible. Usually, I don’t. Mostly, I just long to be seen. I reckon we all know that longing. 

A songwriter that I…

When I was a kid, I could not get enough of the Alamo. It is the Texas origin story/creation myth. I read every book I could find in my elementary school library and then at the public library after we moved to Monticello—every biography of Bowie (my favorite), Crockett, and Travis. I got a massive Bowie knife from Santa when I was 10 or 11. I could quote the John Wayne film like my adult self quotes Coen Brothers films. And I knew, like every kid in Texas, that March 6 was a high holy day. 

50 years later…

Monday, March 31, was a good day—hell, it was a great day. We were on day three of a long weekend in Nashville, and I was having a blast with my grandson. Still, when I woke up on Monday, I was nervous.

7:00 am
On the previous Friday, I had submitted our record campaign to Kickstarter and it had been rejected on Saturday. There were changes needed to meet Kickstarter’s rules but only vague indications as to what those might be. After some intense contemplation and huge assists from Kim Currey and Shari Smith…

We usually measure time less by the clock or the calendar and more by moments marked and milestones reached. Birth and death loom large in the way we measure our days… things begun and things ended… entrances and exits. Much of this is connected to the people we love and the connections with those people but it also applies to the work we do and the things we create. 

Just over a year ago I released a collection of songs and stories and that moment was a marker. It provided the context for other markers…

“Pretty as a movie star, homecoming queen in’61…” 

Today is her birthday. 

Lori McKenna’s new song “People Get Old” wrecks me. It wrecks me because I am getting older. It wrecks me because I am a grandfather. But mostly “People Get Old” wrecks me because she never did. 

She was pretty. She was so pretty… pretty enough at 18 to stand on the 50-yard line in a gown and a tiara. At 26, she kept the books at Justin Boots and looked like Bobbie Gentry. At 46, she decorated houses and looked like Dixie…

In the late 1980s, I worked in a high-end electronics store. Pre-Best Buy, we sold specialty audio and video gear. There were a lot of large-screen TVs on display (rear projection!) and I always kept at least one tuned to The Nashville Network. I did not consider myself a country music fan but I kept the TV tuned there in hopes of catching a music video from Dwight Yoakam, Allison Krauss, The Sweethearts of the Rodeo, or… Foster & Lloyd. The first time I saw the video for “What Do You Want From Me This Time” I was blown away by the tight Everly Brothers harmony, the Telecaster twang, and Radney Foster’s long hair, John Lennon glasses, and dangly earring. It was the earliest stage of my return to country and roots music. 

I was, in many ways, a late bloomer. I played my 1st real gig in Little Rock when I was 46 years old. I released my 1st record at 53. I skipped over all the young musician angst and the accompanying dreams of record deals and arena shows. I married my college crush. I got a “real job”. We raised a family. I played and sang at church. Then, with my kids more or less grown, some buddies and I put together a band and we started playing a regular monthly gig at the city’s most revered dive-bar. I had nothing…