Chapter Eight
A Reflection at Sixty
Looking back now, I can see it a little clearer than I could at the time. Music was never just something I did. It was always there.
It was there in that yard on Wood Street, in those long nights out near Blackjack, in the sound of a fiddle carrying through the dark, and in a broken harmonica on a hickory stump. It followed me into church pews and across state lines, and it showed up in places I didn’t expect—on a piano bench, in a wind turbine, and in a room full of songs inside a red binder.
There were times when it took a back seat, times when work came first, when life got busy, and when I wasn’t out playing or chasing anything, but it never left.
I’ve written hundreds of songs over the years. Some made it onto albums, some got played in honkytonks or churches, and some were only ever heard once, sitting in a living room somewhere. But every one of them meant something. At the time I wrote it, at the moment it came out, it was real.
That’s all I ever tried to do—tell the truth the best way I knew how.
I never set out to make a career out of it. I never chased fame, and I never worried much about where it might lead. I just followed it.
And somewhere along the way, it gave something back to me—a way to say things I didn’t know how to say any other way, a way to hold on to moments that might have otherwise slipped by, and a way to connect with people, with memories, and with something deeper than words alone.
I don’t know what the next chapter holds. Truth is, I never really did.
But I do know this: it’s never too late to listen to that voice inside you, the one that’s been there all along.
For me, that voice has always sounded a lot like music.
And if somewhere out there somebody hears one of my songs, or reads a piece of this story, and feels a little less alone because of it, then I’ve done something right.something
Listen: “This Journey”