Kentucky Traveler

by Ricky Skaggs

  When he said those words, I felt like I’d been grabbed and shaken. Here I was feeling hate, and Andrew was talking about forgiveness. I knew right then I was the one who needed to forgive. How could I hold bitterness in my heart against the man when Andrew had already forgiven him? God was teaching me through my son. He’d been raised up right by his mother, and his grandparents, too, and he’d been taught Christian values, so his natural reaction was to forgive.

  I told Andrew how happy I was to hear him say that he forgave the man. Then I told myself I needed to forgive him, too. I knew it would take some time for me to get to that place, but I would. The only way to reach complete and lasting forgiveness is through the Lord Jesus and His example on the Cross, when He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” How can we hold unforgiveness when God has forgiven us so much?

  Right then, though, I had other things to deal with. The doctors had run more tests, and there was a problem. After studying the X-rays, they found a slight bruise in Andrew’s carotid artery. It was caused by the vibrations of the bullet as it went through his neck. Those vibrations were strong enough to damage the lining of the artery and almost puncture it. That “almost” is what saved Andrew’s life, and here again, we were reminded of God’s grace.

  He’d been spared, but now there was the matter of the damaged artery to reckon with. Tiny as the bruise was, it could become dangerous if it went untreated. There was a young doctor and an older doctor. They told us there had to be a decision made. The younger one thought Andrew would be all right without risking another operation. But the old doc was leaning the other way, and he advised us to take care of it now. “This is your call,” he said, “but I feel like we need to go in and repair the artery just in case. If he were my grandson, I’d do it.”

  He told us that Andrew might be fine without the operation. But someday he could be playing football or engaged in a strenuous activity where he worked up a big sweat and got his blood pumping, and that was when this artery could go out on him. So we had to decide whether to take the risk of operating or just hope for the best down the road. We decided to let the doctors do their work.

  The operation took an hour and a half, the longest ninety minutes of my life. The surgeons found a bucket-handle-shaped tear in the inner layer of the artery, just what they were looking for, and they stitched it up. When they told us the operation was a success, we prayed and thanked the Lord again for His faithfulness.

  Get-well cards and best wishes came pouring in, mostly from strangers letting us know they cared. We heard from old friends, too. We got a phone call from Johnny Cash, which was so encouraging for Andrew. John told him, “Not everybody is tough enough and brave enough to go through what you’ve been through. God must have a real special plan for your life, son, if He spared you like this.” How cool was that? That lifted Andrew’s spirits, and who wouldn’t feel better after being told by Johnny Cash how brave they were? It was quite an act of kindness, and an example of how great a man he was.

  Andrew was getting cards, flowers, balloons, and presents from all over. There were so many flooding in that the nurses had to store ’em in another room. FAO Schwartz, the toy store in New York City, sent a huge box of stuffed animals and toys. Andrew was embarrassed by all the attention. He said, “Dad, I can’t take all these presents for myself.” So he gave a lot away to the other kids at the hospital.

  The biggest get-well card came from Knoxville. It was a poster-sized card signed by truck drivers from across the country who wanted us to know how sorry they were. They wanted to make sure Andrew understood that most truckers were hardworking family men who loved to blow their horns for kids, and that they were on the road to help people, not to hurt ’em.

  After Andrew came home from the hospital, things were still really tough. It was a long, slow recovery. It was months before he could eat solid food, and even longer before he could go back to school and play with his friends. It was hard on everybody, but especially for Mandy, with her brother needing so much attention. She was a wonderful big sister, though, and she helped her mama a lot.

  I know that for me, Andrew has been a big part of my faith journey, and what happened on that highway in Virginia was only the beginning of it. He would bring me to my knees a few more times.

  The truck driver got forty years in prison. Somebody asked me if I thought forty years was long enough. This person didn’t think it was, not for such a heinous crime. I said it was enough punishment. I was satisfied, knowing justice was done. By then, there was no anger. There was nothing I could do to call back what had happened.

  I had to let it go, taking a lesson from Andrew, and from the Lord Jesus. I had to forgive the man and release that anger from my heart. Unless you can picture yourself in the person you want to forgive, it doesn’t work. You have to take that person to the Cross with you, at least in your own heart and mind. Having anger toward someone is like taking poison and hoping the other person dies. It will kill you instead.

  I never met the man. I stayed out of it as far as the trial and the sentencing was concerned, ’cause I didn’t want my stature as a public figure to sway the jury in any way. I didn’t need to shake his hand or tell him I’d forgiven him. It was between me and God.

  By this time, my career was driving me, and I was just hanging on for the ride. Later that year, a duet with Sharon, “Love Can’t Ever Get Better Than This,” reached the top ten, earning us the CMA’s Vocal Duo of the Year award in 1987. To share that honor with my wife was the best thing in the world. I was so proud to see Sharon get recognized for her singing talent.

  After this song, Sharon and I wanted to do a whole album of duets. The timing seemed right, and we thought there was an audience for a record by a young couple in love and happy to sing about it. Well, Epic shot down our idea before it even got off the ground. They were worried that promoting my happy marriage with Sharon would hurt my record sales among young single women, who were a big majority of record buyers. I thought that was ridiculous, and I told them so. They didn’t know about the Christian marketplace that would have been there to support us, a great opportunity not taken.

  Soon came more disappointment, and more bad blood between me and Epic. I wanted to do a gospel album, and that idea was also nixed by the front office. They thought a religious record would turn too much of my fan base against me and damage my sales. Looking back, I think they were trying to protect me as much as themselves, as misguided as I thought they were at the time.

  I decided I’d do a gospel album if I wanted to, so I set up a recording session. Right around then, a friend of mine, Bob Jones, called, and I told him what I was planning. Instead of giving me a pat on the back like I expected, he said, “Ricky, you don’t need to do a gospel album to let people know you’re saved.”

  Bob told me what I needed to hear, not what I wanted to hear. I knew I’d been caught letting my pride get the best of me. I canceled the session. I had to come to a painful realization. God was not going to honor my rebelliousness or self-righteousness. I’d convinced myself I was defending my faith, but in fact, I was doing it all for the wrong reasons. It was a good lesson to learn, and I didn’t get bitter. All I could do was focus on the good stuff. I got a chance to record with James Taylor on “New Star Shining.” That was a real thrill for me. I’ve always loved his singing and guitar playing, and here I was getting to sing a duet with him. I’d come a long way since I was that Kentucky kid in a VW Super Beetle cranking JT’s Mud Slide Slim on the eight-track machine.

  When I met him, I told JT the story about crashing my brand-new car while listening to his singing. He said, “So the music was so bad it caused you to wreck?” I told him it was some of the best music ever, and that the album was still a favorite of mine.

  The Whites were by now having quite a bit of success on country radio. They were very excited to become members of the Grand Ole Opry in 1984. They were traveling quite a bit because of their radio success. Touring was
just a part of life, same as making records. One fed the other.

  One night I was out somewhere in the Midwest pulling an all-nighter on the highway to the next show date, and my driver pulled into a truck stop to fuel up. Unbeknownst to me, the Whites’ bus was in the next lane over, also fueling up on the way to a gig. One bus was pointing one way, one bus the other. After both buses fueled up, the drivers went in and had a cup of coffee together.

  It was three in the morning. Sharon was asleep on her bus, and I was probably fifteen feet away asleep in my bunk. After a while, the two buses pulled back onto the highway, Sharon going one way and me going another. Neither of us even knew about it till the drivers told us the next day. It was the weirdest feeling, and it made us think about just how crazy things had gotten. We weren’t like two ships passing in the night, but we were often apart. We took it for what it was, though, the reality of life as a performer.

  I have to admit that I wanted to fire my bus driver for not waking me up. I didn’t, though.

  In 1988, my record sales had dipped, and my advocate Rick Blackburn had decided to leave for another record company. One day not long before he left for his new job, I was in Rick’s office and his boss, Walter Yetnikoff, the head of Sony in New York, called. Rick and he talked a while, and then Rick looked at me and said, “Well, he just walked in my office. Why don’t you tell him?”

  I thought maybe I was gonna get a talking-to from the Big Boss Man. By then Epic was owned by Sony, so there were a lot of changes going on. The first thing they do when they change things is look at your record sales. Don’t know if I had that hunted look or not, but it sure felt like it.

  I said, “Hey, Mr. Yetnikoff, how are you, sir?” He said, “Ricky, my boy, we gotta get you selling records in the pop market. That’s where the real sales are.”

  Walter was a very flamboyant character, as loud and persuasive as anybody in the music business, and he meant it as encouragement.

  Well, I wasn’t buying into it, ’cause I knew myself, and this country boy with his high tenor voice wouldn’t have a clue how to make a pop record. But I was polite to Walter, and I told him, “That will be great. Hope we can do that.”

  His call didn’t make any difference, to be honest. I’d already flirted with a new style and approach on my previous album, Love’s Gonna Get Ya!, and it hadn’t really connected with country radio, or with any other radio market. It was my fault as much as anybody’s, ’cause I was the producer. It was a case of trying too hard to reach new ears, I guess. I was trying to venture out and try something different. The pop group Orleans had sent me a demo I liked, “Artificial Heart,” and I’d invited them to sing backup.

  At the time, I’d let my manager go, and I was getting some advice from a New York producer, a guy who’d worked on hit records with Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine. He had an idea to sort of get me crossed over to a broader market, and I was listening. He was in the studio when I was recording and mixing the album, and he was nudging me to not be so traditional. It was kinda of an experiment for me, like, How far can I go and still be country? Well, it turned out I went too far, and my fans didn’t like my new direction. The single for “Artificial Heart” tanked, and so did the album.

  Along about then, Dad said to me, “Son, you really oughta do you a good bluegrass record.”

  Now, Dad, he was one of my biggest fans, probably the biggest of all. And here he was speaking as a fan, and he was seeing that I really needed to reel it back and be true to my musical calling. Because of contractual obligations, I couldn’t cut a bona fide bluegrass record, but I sure could get back down to basics, and that’s what I did.

  So I decided that even if my record sales were down, I wasn’t gonna compromise. I wasn’t a crossover artist and never had been. I made up my mind I was just going to make the best records I could.

  With nothing to lose, I cut an album with the prophetic title of Comin’ Home to Stay, and I meant it. I invited J.D. Crowe to guest on an old Jimmy Martin favorite, “Hold Whatcha Got,” and a batch of other solid songs. I tried to go back to the old-school chemistry I’d had on Waitin’ for the Sun to Shine and Highways & Heartaches, but popular taste had shifted again.

  Folks were ready for new sounds and new faces. By then, me and Reba and George Strait and the rest of the Class of ’81, we’d had a great run for six or seven years. Now there was a new wave of rising stars like Randy Travis, Ricky Van Shelton, and Clint Black, young and hungry as we had been.

  The sales for my records just weren’t there, and Sony suggested it was time to make room for somebody else in the control booth. Well, I had told Rick at the beginning that if I wasn’t selling records and having hits on radio, then I’d take on a coproducer. So I gave into the label’s demand, and it turned out to be a good thing, but not without some struggle.

  My next album, Kentucky Thunder, was coproduced with Steve Buckingham. It was a little rough going at first, working with someone else, but Steve and I eventually found our groove. Buckingham was a supportive producer, and he had a nose for hits. We had a number-one single with “Lovin’ Only Me,” and a top-five single called “Let It Be You,” a beautiful love song that was popular with young couples. It became a wedding favorite.

  Earlier, Steve, or “Buck,” as I took to calling him, had asked me and some guest singers to help out on an important project he was working on for Tammy Wynette called Higher Ground. She was going through a dry spell, and he wanted to steer Tammy back to basics and let her shine. There was one track, “Your Love,” on which I recorded several harmony parts, including a vocal so high Buck said, “That’s as high as a dog whistle!”

  I wish I could get my voice up there now!

  Tammy was so appreciative and gracious. Higher Ground was a critical success and a commercial comeback as well. “Your Love” hit the top twenty, and I was so happy for her, ’cause she’d been suffering a lot in her personal life. But she was able to turn that pain into something she could express through her art. She came out of a country tradition where singers lived what they sang and sang what they lived. She truly was the First Lady of Country Music, and that’s why she still has so many devoted fans fifteen years after she’s been gone.

  I enjoyed working on side projects, especially when it was with living legends like Tammy, but I was starting to overextend myself again. I thought I had my career, but my career had me. I didn’t know when to quit. It was too hard to say no, and let me give you an example.

  In 1988, I was in Los Angeles doing a guest spot on Dolly Parton’s TV show. Afterward, I was packing up to leave and asked her when she was gonna do another country record, a real country record. It had been a few years since crossover success had made her a pop star. And she said right back to me, “I’m gonna do one next, and I want you to produce it.” It was that quick and spontaneous, ’cause that’s how Dolly is. I wouldn’t have dreamed of turning her down, ’cause she’s one of my all-time favorite singers and songwriters. And I was so grateful she’d lent her gorgeous mountain voice to my early Epic records, too.

  Next thing I knew, Dolly was calling me to get started, and we went right to work. She’d written a beautiful ballad, “Yellow Roses,” and a bunch of other songs, and I had some tunes picked out specially for her. Talk about talent. Dolly can sing the phone book and make it sound good. She’s also an incredible perfectionist, and she sets the highest standards for herself.

  That project was her return to country music, White Limozeen, and it was such a thrill to collaborate with her in the studio. More recently, she’s gone even further back to her east Tennessee roots with some fine bluegrass albums like Little Sparrow.

  Thing was, it was one of a handful of projects I was juggling at once. I was finishing Dolly’s record, producing a gospel album for the Whites, and then starting another album of my own. Meanwhile, I was on the road for more than two hundred shows dates a year with a full band and road crew, and trying to stay alive on the charts. I knew I needed to cu
t back on my schedule. I was praying that God would open up something where that could happen.

  For a while there, I was a good-sized fish in a small stream. Then came the flood of new artists and young acts, and I found myself in a big rushing river with a whole lot more fish trying to swim. The current was stronger, the dangers were more present. It was starting to feel like I was in survival mode.

  Just when I was trying to slow down career-wise, Keith Whitley’s star was on the rise in Nashville, and it was a long time coming. He had finally found the right producer and the right songs to fit his one-of-a-kind style of singing. He was finding success in his work and happiness in his marriage to Lorrie Morgan, and I was glad that things were finally going his way.

  We did some shows together when we could, and we saw each other from time to time. I remember me and Sharon going over to Keith and Lorrie’s place in Goodlettsville after their son, Jesse, was born. We wanted to see the baby and bless and love on him. I was so happy for my old friend.

  We spent almost the whole day there goofing off like old times, back when we were kids with peach fuzz on our chins and riding with Ralph. Who’d a-known that road would lead us here together, living out our dreams in Nashville, making records and raising families.

  We talked about the night when Whipple Ferguson got in my dad’s face at the bar in Ohio, and we laughed so hard that Lorrie thought we were out of our minds. She’d never heard that story. She loved hearing about Keith and me when we were teenagers. It was great to see Keith so happy with his new family, ’cause I had heard the stories around Nashville about his battles with the bottle. You know, back in the days when we were with Ralph, I saw Keith take a few drinks of whiskey, but in my whole life I never saw Keith drunk.