Chapter Six
Ranch Hand and the Road Back
A couple of years later, I helped form a band with some fellow Air Force friends. We called ourselves Ranch Hand. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a group of guys who loved to play, getting together and making the most of it. We played clubs around Abilene for a few years, wherever they’d have us. Nothing big, but it was real.
Those nights onstage taught me things I couldn’t have learned anywhere else—how to read a crowd, how to feel when a song was working, how to tighten things up and keep it moving. Maybe most important of all, I learned how to enjoy the people you’re playing with, because a good band isn’t just about the music, it’s about the connection.
After a while, Ranch Hand went its separate ways. That’s how those things usually go. I still played from time to time, mostly with my songwriting buddy Henry Goff. We wrote a song together called “Roughneck Son,” and it started catching on around the Abilene area. A band called South of Mayhem even picked it up and started playing it. That was the first time one of my songs really took on a life of its own. Not in a big, national kind of way, but in a way that mattered. People were listening, and people were connecting to it.
After retiring from the Air Force in 2008, I went to work in the wind energy industry. That was a new chapter altogether—long hours, hard work, responsibility. Music took a step back during that time, at least on the surface. I wasn’t out playing much anymore, but I never stopped writing. Songs would come to me here and there, sometimes out on the job, sometimes late at night, sometimes when I least expected it. One of those songs was “Ropin’ the Wind,” inspired by the work I was doing.
Even when I wasn’t chasing music, it was still finding me.
For a long time, that’s just how it was. Work came first, and music stayed in the background—quiet, but never gone.
Then I met a young man named Garrett Bryan. He was the stepson of my good friend Jay Greene—we worked together on the wind farm. Garrett was only fourteen at the time, but you could tell right away he had something special. natural talent, drive, and a feel for music that you don’t see every day.
We started playing together, just jamming, swapping ideas, spending time with the music the way I always had. Over time, Garrett told me those sessions helped bring him out of his shell. I didn’t think much of it at the time. To me, we were just playing music.
Years later, he went on to form a band called Belle Plain Revival. They recorded a couple of my songs, “Lonely in Laredo” and “Life in the Trailer Park.” Seeing someone else take your songs and make them their own is a different kind of feeling. It’s hard to explain, but it stays with you.
Looking back now, I can see that even during those years when music wasn’t front and center, it never really left. It was still there in the background, still showing up in songs, still finding its way into other people’s lives, just waiting for the right time to come back around.
Listen: “Ropin’ the Wind”