on earth is required to play.

     Danny used to hang out a lot at the original Gruhn Guitars on Lower Broadway before they moved to the corner and eventually to 8th Ave. One day in ’81, George Gruhn called Danny and told him he had an exceptional ’58 Strat, asking $1250. Danny was thinking that was way too much, but he had some Tulsa Time money and George came down fifty bucks. When I talked to Danny recently he admitted, “Everything that has been done to that Strat to devalue it as a collectible instrument was done by me”. He replaced the original tuners with Grovers that were custom fitted. He replaced the original bridge with the brass individual saddle version that so many used in the ’70s, and he put jumbo frets on it. We talked about how we modified our old guitars when we were young, having no idea that if we left them original how much more they would be worth now.

    In 1984, my first number one hit was with Don Williams, “That’s The Thing About Love”, co-written with the great Richard Leigh (“Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue”). I was playing with Bobby Bare on the road at the time. When we were loading-in to the Lone Star Cafe in NYC, Bobby came on the bus holding a USA Today with a picture of Don Williams in the corner of the front page showing my song was number one. Bare knew how songwriting and publishing worked, and he had seen several successes bloom when a writer got to the top of the charts. Bobby showed me the paper and said, “When we get back to Nashville you need to find me a new guitar player, cause you need to stay in town and write some more hits while you’re hot”. It was obviously good advice, and a very cool thing for Bare to do. I asked Max T. Barnes, son of the great songwriter Max D. Barnes, to take my place in his road band.

    The bus arrived back in Nashville from NYC in the middle of the night in a rainstorm. I pulled my amp road case out of the bus bay in the driving rain, got my guitar and suitcase, found my key and wrangled all my soaking wet gear into the house. Barbara and our three boys (eventually there would be a fourth) were sound asleep at four in the morning. I had been gone a couple of weeks and couldn’t wait to see the kids. I looked in the bedroom where Barbara was asleep with Adam, the youngest, about two-years old. After checking on the blissfully sleeping mother and child, I opened the door to the bedroom across the hall that the older boys (seven and five years) shared. There they were, deep in sleep, lightly mouth-breathing and precious as could be. As I gazed on them in the dim light, I leaned in close for a little kiss or gentle forehead stroke. That’s when I felt on the back of my head a thin stream of cold water falling from the ceiling. I looked up, wondering where it was coming from. I turned on the bedside lamp to see the drywall overhead, pregnant with rainwater and about to burst loose on my angels. I then realized that the sheets and bedspreads were soaked, as were the boys’ pajamas. I quickly made a bed of the pullout couch in the den, dried the still-sleeping boys and transferred them, and then took a closer look at the leaking ceiling. I got a broom and poked at it ever so gently, and the stream got stronger. I stripped the sheets and blankets, leaned the mattress and box springs against the wall, and used a plastic trash can to catch the steady flow. Then I started dialing the landlord lady, over and over and over, at least five or six times, ’til I finally got a weak, sleepy answer. I unloaded a tirade unlike anything that had ever come out of me. I had a heavy backload of anger built up with this lady, and it all flooded out with a vengeance.

    I was shouting and spewing into the phone until she finally had enough sense or became awake enough to hang up on me. I immediately called back, and she answered again, still half asleep. Now I was threatening bodily harm. Why so crazy mad? The backstory to this moment explains my behavior, at least partially.

    I guess it would be over the top to call it the worst rent house in Nashville, (I called it a “rant” house), but it was the worst I had ever experienced, and by now I had been through quite a few rentals. There were other roof leaks, the floors were unfinished and warped, the windows would not raise or close, the kitchen linoleum was so grimy that no amount of cleaning could revive it, and the cabinets were all too funky to close right. But the real test was the flooding basement. The previous tenant, Rick Beresford, another transplanted Texas songwriter, had advised me of the procedure to be taken when the basement flooded. That event had occurred just before me leaving on the tour I was returning from.

    When the water got to a certain level in the basement, it poured into the gas furnace and the heat went out, often while snow or rain was coming down. There had once been a toilet in this basement; the sewage pipe that remained was plugged by a rag. What I had to do was get down in the knee deep, dirty water, hold my nose with one hand, duck my head under and search for the drain with the other hand. After three or four attempts, I found it, pulled the rag, waited for the basement to drain, then applied a hair dryer to the furnace long enough to light the pilot. The next move was to get that rag back in the pipe before the sewage started coming in. It was the kind of action that really got your adrenalin charging, then throw in a couple of floating dead rats, and you’re in the “rant house horror movie”.

    Also, this place needed painting more than any house I had ever seen. Repeated requests got no response. I even offered to do the work if she would buy the paint (I would have never done it). I had met Emmylou Harris a few times when we had opened some shows with Guy Clark, and she often came to the park (The Dragon Park) across the street from this rent house with her young daughter, Megan. After visiting, I would always wait until Emmy left before I walked back to my embarrassing, funkier than funky, rant house.

    The wonderful thing about Nashville bankers is they are familiar with what kind of figures hit songs generate, and they are willing to loan according to chart position. At the time of the flooded ceiling, I had a record at the top of the charts, and we found the perfect spot for our young boys to grow up. Soon after we moved, the rant house was demolished. I feel it’s only fair to mention, the rent was really cheap.