Chapter Four
"Holy Roller Music.”
From the Pews to the Plains
In 1986, I joined the United States Air Force, and before long I found myself stationed in Alamogordo, New Mexico. It was a long way from East Texas, a different land, a different pace, and a different kind of life.
But some things don’t change. Music followed me there too.
I started attending Mountain View Assembly of God not long after I got settled in. The pastor, Merle Lindsey, played harmonica, and that caught my attention right away because there was something familiar about it that reminded me of home. Every now and then we’d play together during services, just two harmonicas blending in with the music, and that meant more to me than I probably let on at the time.
I also met a guy named Dwight York, and before long we were sitting around playing songs together—old country, folk, the kind of music I’d grown up on. We’d swap songs, trade stories, and play for hours without really thinking about the time. That’s where a lot of friendships get built, right there in the middle of a song.
Before long, I found myself stepping into a familiar role again and became the church pianist. I wasn’t trained and still didn’t read music, but I knew how to listen and find my way around the keys well enough to carry a song, and that was enough.
During that time, most of what I wrote leaned toward gospel music because that’s what surrounded me. But something else was happening too. Songwriting started to get more serious. Up to that point, music had been something I loved, something I did whenever I had the chance, but now I was starting to realize I had a feel for it—a way of turning a phrase, telling a story, and saying something real in just a few lines.
I didn’t have a plan, and I wasn’t chasing anything. I didn’t know where it might lead, but somewhere out there in the desert, between duty, church, and long stretches of open sky, something started to take shape. It wasn’t loud and it wasn’t sudden, but it was there—the understanding that music wasn’t just something that had been handed down to me, it was something I could create.
After I left Alamogordo and ended up in Abilene, I started going out to listen to local artists. One of the local legends was a singer-songwriter named Danny Thomas, and he was the best guitar player I had ever seen up to that point. I started going to watch him perform every chance I got, and one night I mentioned that I wrote country songs and played a couple for him after his show. He really liked them, especially one called “The Geritol Song.”
After that, Danny would let me get up and play a few songs during his breaks, and that was a big step for me since I had never played in a club before. It was a completely different environment, and Danny inspired me a lot. He inspired just about every artist around Abilene.
Listen: “Willing Heart”