Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | Texas Monthly

Pure country: I was always known for my drinking songs and my cheating songs, but after my carwreck, I cleaned up my act--and I've never been happier.(The Music Issue (Lives + Times))

Article Excerpt
AS TOLD TO PAMELA COLLOFF

GOT MY FIRST GUITAR WHEN I was nine. We lived way out in the sticks in a little town called Saratoga, in East Texas. Every Sunday we went to the Trinity Gospel Tabernacle. It was nondenominational, but it was akin to Pentecostal. The reverend's wife, Sister Annie, she played the guitar and sang. Sister Annie taught me the basic chords on the guitar, and everything else came natural. On Saturdays a bunch of us would stand outside the popular hangouts where people cashed their checks and bought groceries, and we would sing over a microphone, with a big speaker on top of the car. And then the reverend would preach. It was one of them Holy Roller-type things, real countrified. I loved that guitar so much. I got calluses on my fingers until they weren't sore anymore. All I did was play that guitar. I started playing hooky from school. I'd stay out in the woods and play guitar all...