THE LONG WAY AROUND
Pull up a chair. This might take a minute.
I never really took the straight road to anywhere.
I grew up in a small town in West Tennessee.
I started playing piano when I was five or six. Then came the banjo, then the guitar. Somewhere along the way, I figured out I had things I wanted to say, so by my early twenties, I started writing songs.
I didn’t know where they’d take me.
Turns out, just about everywhere except where I thought I was going.
Then life took a turn.
For more than a decade, I worked as a firefighter and medic. It was a life I loved, and for a long time I figured it was the life I’d grow old doing.
Music was still there. Songs were still being written. Guitars still got played.
But they weren’t the plan.
Then I got sick on the job, and the plan disappeared.
STARTING OVER
I didn’t leave the fire service because I was ready for something new. I got sick on the job, and eventually had to accept that I wasn’t going back.
That’ll rearrange a man’s plans.
So I ended up in the Texas Hill Country and started over.
Somewhere in all of that, the thing that had followed me my whole life — the songs — became the thing out front.
I started playing more. Writing more. Traveling. Meeting people I never would’ve met and winding up in places I never would’ve expected.
Funny thing about losing the road you thought you were on.
Sometimes that’s how you find the one you were supposed to take.
Texas gave me room to start over.
I started playing anywhere that would have me. Bars. Listening rooms. Songwriter rounds. Back porches. Some nights there were a lot of people. Some nights there weren’t.
But I kept showing up.
Somewhere along the way, this stopped feeling like the thing I did on the side.
It became my life.
THE ROAD I DIDN’T PLAN
Starting over turned into a life I never saw coming.
The songs took me across Texas, across the country, and eventually across an ocean. I’ve played little rooms and big stages, songwriter rounds and festivals, and some places I used to only hear about in songs.
I’ve gotten to play Luckenbach. I’ve made the trip to Switzerland. I’ve sat in rooms with songwriters I admire and somehow ended up swapping songs and stories with them.
And I’m still doing it the same way I always have.
A guitar. A story. A song.
Turns out, the long way around was the way I was supposed to go.