Here I go again, driving down a lonesome highway, late at night. This time I’m driving in southern Oklahoma, en route to some guitar stories and the hope of some cool unseen photos to scan for the Mosrite guitar book that I’m working on.
In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this is what really moves me. I’ve always been consumed with curiosity, the thrill of discovery, the lure of the unknown. I’ve always just had to see what was over the hill.
When I first started touring with my band, it drove me crazy if I was on the road with guys who had no sense of adventure, no curiosity about the world, what lay underneath the rock right around the corner beyond the fork in the road. There was so much to be discovered back then, and all the old timers were still alive. It’s a lot harder now, but the thrills are still out there. It just takes a lot of work, and a fairly maniacal inner drive to make It all come together.
The main thing is—and a lot of writers and researchers and historians don’t understand this—you can’t really get a feel for your subject or grasp the true emotions of what you’re writing about unless you get out there, drive on those lonesome highways, knock on people’s doors, ask all the questions, beg them to dig more photos out from their old scrapbooks, and keep turning over rocks until there aren’t any more rocks to turn over.
I’m very grateful for my career as a touring musician for the opportunity to go on these side trips. There is no way it would be financially possible if it weren’t for the gigs paying for the travel. I’m not gonna lie, it’s a pretty cool life. It sure beats punching a clock. But I worry all the time, thinking to myself, How much longer will I be able to do this? How much longer will people care about musical history? What drives me is the fear of people throwing things in the trash that are important. And I’ve seen it all—photographs, guitars, records, master tapes—thrown in the dumpster. That keeps me awake at night. It’s silly, but it’s true. I hate thinking that there’s some piece of history that could have been preserved that got lost to time.
As long as there is a rock to overturn and a lonesome highway to drive on (while blasting Hank Williams and Jerry Lee Lewis and a million other old tunes), I’ll keep on doing my thing. This is what I really like to do.
