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this sort of reality was life-changing. This woman could no longer speak a word, but shecould sing along perfectly with “You Are My Sunshine” or “In the Garden.” I would sit by her hospital bed and strum the chords on my guitar while she belted out the words clearly and effortlessly. Otherwise she would just stare. It was very heavy stuff. My visits to perform were some of the highlights of her life at that point. I knew that. And somehow I’ve never looked at music the same.
    In general, I think that my parents were a little baffled by the actions of their guitar-crazy only son. They were always supportive, even if they had no clue about the music or entertainment businesses. Yet before long it became clear that my dad, in particular, really loved being with me on this musical journey. My dad has never been a stage parent, and he’s not living any of his unaccomplished dreams through me. More than anything, I’d say that he just wanted to hop on the bus and come along for the ride. From the start, Dad drove me around and learned how to set up a PA system because somebody had to. And after I became a touring artist, he got his commercial driver’s license and started to relief-drive the bus. Apparently, you
can
teach some old dogs new tricks.

    B eing a schoolteacher, my mom worried a little more about her son the musician. But from the sixth grade on, I had a plan. And studying anything other than the
Mel Bay Guitar Book
was not part of it. My grades started to suffer, and so did my mother. She used to beg me to try a little harder in school. But the point was pretty much moot by the time I was eleven or twelve. That’s because just as I was on the brink of becoming a genuine American teenager and probably even more insufferable than I already was, I accidentally fell into the single greatest musical education that a young guitar player could ever have—live radio. And I got there by the power of the pen.
    I was twelve when I wrote my first song. Somehow, out of nowhere, I had an overwhelming urge to do just that. I don’t remember much about the experience, just playing it for my parents the night I finished it. I think they were shocked. Looking back at it,
I’m
even shocked. It’s way better than it ought to be. I’ve written worse songs in the last few years. It was called “Born on Christmas Day,” and I started to perform it that Christmas.
    One day the music director of WWVA—a wonderful man named Tom Miller—came to a Rotary Club luncheon in town to do a little local weather report as a joke. The headmaster of my junior high school, who was also speakingat the lunch, asked me to represent the school and sing a song. It was around the holidays, and so I knew just what to sing.
    After the luncheon, Tom came up to me and said, “You have to come on
Jamboree USA
this week and do that song.” I was floored. The Wheeling Jamboree was the big time, the mack daddy of places you could perform in my area. I took the news with complete maturity—I ran through the house that night when I got home and screamed.
    Here’s another of those amazing strokes of good luck that came to me inexplicably. Right place, right time. Or more accurately, divine intervention. Thankfully, I happened to have grown up only twenty minutes away from the Wheeling Jamboree, which was the second-oldest continually running barn dance and country radio broadcast, right after the Grand Ole Opry show itself. The Wheeling Jamboree was broadcast weekly on a 50,000-watt transmitter from an awesome old Victorian venue called the Capitol Theatre and could be heard by country fans across the entire Northeast.
    Playing the Jamboree was almost like being on the Grand Ole Opry, only I didn’t have to leave home to do it. They even had one of those classic microphone stands that read:
    J
    A
    M
    B
    O
    R
    E
    E
    U
    S
    A
    down the front of it.
    The vast majority of the biggest