Born Country

by Randy Owen

  Vertigo can also be triggered by stress, and, Lord knows, it can cause stress. It makes you leery of doing anything or being in any situation where a sudden attack would render you incapacitated. Obviously, performing was my first concern, but also simple things like driving, flying, or anything else that might set off vibrations that could cause a sudden lack of equilibrium. I didn’t drive for a long time after the initial incident for fear that I could be stricken on the road and end up being killed or killing someone else.

  Oh, yeah, we were in the middle of a major tour at the time, the last major tour. If I had obeyed my initial impulse, before the idea of a farewell tour ever came up, to just get away for a year and not do anything musically except maybe write a song or two, a health problem like this would have been no big deal. But that option was long gone. We had major obligations—a whole year of shows—and I just couldn’t not go onstage and do the job, vertigo or no vertigo.

  After all those tests, we finally hit upon a regimen that allowed me to perform without the fear of falling being uppermost on my mind, not that it wasn’t in the back of my mind at every concert. It was always a distraction to me and often a confidence deflator. I kept thinking of all the other sensations that might set it off—flashing cameras in the audience, for instance, or a wave of arm movements, or just the sheer reverberation from all the noise. In the end I got through it fine without anyone outside of our small circle of comrades even knowing there was a potential problem. I never fell or got nauseated or went into a strange state of altered consciousness. I did get sporadically dizzy onstage, especially at my first performance after the initial attack, in Tallahassee, Florida. If I started feeling weird, I would simply grab the mike stand and hold on and hope to God the spell would pass before it got worse. It always did. I still had spells of vertigo, but thankfully, they didn’t happen onstage to the point of causing a major disruption.

  Kelly’s reaction to all of this was blunt: “Frankly, I don’t see how the guy did it. When vertigo hits me, I have to immediately withdraw, take some medication to calm me down and help me to sleep, and hope it’s gone by the time I wake up. It was gut wrenching for me to see him up there. I mean, whether you’re singing onstage or trying to do housework or office work, vertigo is vertigo. It doesn’t matter. It has no mercy on anyone.” It turns out she wasn’t the only one with experience with vertigo—both Dale and Greg Fowler had been hit with it in the past. Dale summed up his view of my problem by saying, “Anyone any less dedicated would have announced he was going to take the next five years off and then walked away.”

  Unfortunately, much like the health scare I had in the early ’90s, not everyone involved with Alabama was as understanding or forgiving. No doubt the stress of performing added to the stress of anticipating the vertigo, and I wasn’t great at hiding this stress, but the cavalier attitude of some others was just plain hurtful. While I saw the situation as brutal and unforgiving—at the time, I considered it one of the most devastating things that had ever happened to me—others saw it as an overreaction to the pressures of the Farewell Tour or maybe another way for me to withdraw and feel sorry for myself.

  I was taking medication that keyed me down and probably, to some, gave the appearance that I was distant and uninvolved. In this day and age, all it takes is for one surly or condescending comment to get out on the Internet before a world of bloggers thinks you’re dogging it or playing for sympathy. I was doing neither. I was just trying to get through the show, give the audience their money’s worth, and not blow it.

  Long after the tour was over, I’m still trying to get a diagnosis that will help me combat this ailment. My symptoms now are intermittent motion movement, the sense that things around me are undulating and unstable and I can’t quite get my bearings. I will continue to see doctors until we get it figured out. And maybe by writing about it here, people who are unfamiliar with vertigo’s devastating effects or dismiss it in the same way we used to dismiss serious ailments like dyslexia or ADD will see it in a new and more understanding light.

  The second round of farewell concerts was equally full of lasting memories, which I will attempt to capsulize by describing one event in Little Rock, Arkansas, on July 26, 2004. First, a little background: some time before that night, a young lady named Jennifer Leidel had shown up at a fan-appreciation event wearing a West Point cap, where she was attending at the time. The next thing I knew, we got a letter from First Lieutenant Jennifer Leidel, now with the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq as a helicopter pilot. She said it was pretty rough over there and sent a picture in which she is holding an American flag up in front of her helicopter.

  She and Kelly kept writing back and forth, and in her last correspondence she said she’d been told that she was coming home soon. Meanwhile, we heard that her best friend in Iraq had been shot down and killed while evacuating wounded soldiers. Very concerned, we tried to locate Jennifer. Finally Greg Fowler made a call to Fort Bragg, and there she was, back in the States and back in training for a new assignment.

  We had hoped to meet up with Jennifer at a concert in Fayetteville, North Carolina, but for some reason she couldn’t make it. Finally we arranged for her to come join us at the concert that night in Little Rock. We introduced her and her husband-to-be, Jason, onstage, and in a very touching gesture, she presented me with the very same flag she had proudly displayed in the photo from Iraq. It had served on many combat missions in the Iraq War. The audience reaction was overwhelming. I wouldn’t trade that old flag for all the Grammys on earth.

  At the same concert, Mike Huckabee, Arkansas governor at that time and later a candidate for president, came onstage to give us an award called the Arkansas Traveler Award, which is kind of like the key to the whole state. We’d already spent the day with the governor as he served up a great Southern meal at the newly refurbished governor’s mansion that afternoon. To cap it all off, knowing that he was a pretty mean bass guitar player, we handed him Teddy’s bass, and he played along with us to our song “I’m in a Hurry.” We thought of asking him to join us on tour, but he already had a day job.

  After Jennifer joined us in Little Rock, she asked if I would come down and sing the first song at her wedding reception in Sebring, Florida, that November. How could I turn down such an American hero? Soon after her wedding, unfortunately, Jennifer’s life met with a cruel tragedy. She had survived the dangers of the war, but her husband, Jason, couldn’t survive the dangers of driving on I-95 near Fayetteville, North Carolina. A truck came across the highway and hit their car head on. Jason was killed in the crash, and Jennifer suffered serious injuries but recovered. She has since remarried, and at the time of this writing, she is training other soldiers to fly helicopters at a base in Alabama.

  At every stop on this last trip around the block, we wanted to thank not just soldiers like Jennifer who are out there working for the rest of us every day, but also all the people, from Dick Clark to all the stars who came whenever I called about Country Cares and the June Jam, to every last fan who made the whole damn thing possible in the first place. That’s why I especially liked to sing “The Fans” night after night. “The Fans” was written by me, Teddy, and Greg, and is included in the very first Alabama Greatest Hits CD in 1986. But it wasn’t a hit, technically. It was never released as a single, so it never made an appearance on the country singles charts. We included it in that CD because it was an important message to our fans, and that was doubly so when we performed it for perhaps the last time onstage during the Farewell Tour.

  As for all the others who have helped us along the way, that’s an added blessing for sure. Marc Oswald, who had to ask a lot of people in the music business for favors surrounding the last tour, says people respond because Alabama’s “kindness meter is off the charts.” I’m not sure about that, but I do believe that when you extend kindness to others, no matter what the context, you inevitably get it back in spades. It is a guiding principle of Christian belief—it is better to give than receiv
e—and much more spiritually enriching. Especially in an ego-driven business like country music, where most people most of the time are trying to claw their way up the ladder of success, it’s gratifying to know that a lot of people—from Toby Keith or Kenny Chesney to the local radio programmers in Seattle or Tampa—are ready to jump at the chance to help out in an ever-widening circle of giving.

  Finally, on October 16, 2004, we reached the farewell show of the farewell leg of the Farewell Tour, the end of the end of decades of touring. It was at the Civic Center in Bismarck, North Dakota, and though it wasn’t snowing outside, it was cold. Damn near everyone involved in the history of Alabama who could still walk was there—Dale, Barbara, Greg, crew, staff, and most important for me, my whole immediate family. In an unreleased documentary of the Farewell Tour shot by Breck Larson, Mark says, “I think I’m in complete denial about all of this”—we all were—and you can see Kelly wipe a tear from her eye as I give her and the kids one big hug before I walk on that stage the last time.

  To me, the whole concert was a blur. Marc Oswald remembers it being just as good as the first concert on the extended tour two years before. According to Randa, still just a teenager, the whole family stood offstage and cried the whole show. She goes on: “It was just so big for Dad and so big for all of us. Dad onstage had been my whole way of life my whole life! I remember they played the song ‘The Fans’ and really from the heart, and we just couldn’t believe it. An era of our life was over. It was all really weird for me, because you don’t know what God has planned next, so it was a great feeling to know that we would have him home but weird because all of this was going to be over. I mean…boy…”

  It was hard not to pause at the end of every song in the set to realize that I wouldn’t be singing that one again with Alabama for who knows how long. At the end of the last song of the evening, “Mountain Music,” we decided it was time to bring everyone in our little family onstage so they could all take a bow. We got them all up there—Dale, Barbara, Greg, big Steve Boland, my one-man security force of years and years, all the sound engineers, lighting guys, roadies, and bus and truck drivers. Each and every one of them came to the microphone at center stage, said who they were, where they were from, and what they did. It took about thirty minutes, but no one left the hall. The fans understood that as a working family, we were saying good-bye to one another at the same time we were saying good-bye to them. I must admit, I got a little emotional up there. Many of these people had been watching Alabama’s back for literally decades. This wasn’t, “See you at the next gig.” This was, “Hey, it’s over.”

  Greg Fowler was nice enough to jot down my final words onstage that night. It wasn’t a flowery farewell speech, but it came directly from my heart: “My name is Randy Owen,” I said. “I play guitar and sing for the group Alabama. And I love you, and I always will. God bless ya’ll very much.”

  Afterward, back in the dressing room, we threw an impromptu party and sat around and cried and high-fived one another and told lies and drank champagne. Toasts were made, and again it was very emotional. It was just a great feeling to be there together and look back in wonder at what we all had accomplished as a single unit. It was long past the point for personal differences and petty complaints. All long-lasting musical groups change; people leave out of “creative differences,” or someone dies prematurely from drugs or alcohol, or—like with the Beatles—the whole thing blows apart at once. In that dressing room that night stood the same three guys who started the thing in their teens and early twenties and a drummer who had joined up about the point we went from small time to big. Four guys, twenty-five years of continual success—that was definitely something to drink to.

  And then we all got on the bus and went home.

  Home for most of us was the same place—Fort Payne. After every tour we went home—the married guys went home to their families, the bachelors and bachelorettes went home to their one-two-or-three-roommate houses, often right across the street from one another. No one flew off to California or Miami. We’d bump into one another pumping gas or buying groceries. Then the call would come, and we’d gather and hit the road again. We lived on pretty much the same schedule, year after year after year.

  And then, all of a sudden, we didn’t. We still saw each other down at the Strand or buying a birthday present at Martin’s Jewelry on Gault Avenue. It wasn’t like the members of an army unit that went back to the base, turned in their gear, and then dispersed back to their hometowns. It was a little surreal. Everything was the same but radically different at the same time. It wasn’t like we had been drummed out of the business and had to hide out in Fort Payne. We just came to a point and stopped.

  On the unreleased documentary, Dale pretty much said it all: “We all know that everything has to come to an end. Everything.

  “But there will never be another Alabama.”

  CHAPTER 11

  MAY THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN

  There’s a place where I live called the Canyon

  Where Daddy taught me to swim

  And that water, it’s so pure

  And I’m gonna make sure

  Daddy’s grandkids can swim there like him

  “PASS IT ON DOWN” BY TEDDY GENTRY, RANDY OWEN, RONNIE ROGERS, AND WILL ROBINSON

  So I went back to doing what I needed to get good at—getting up every morning and slowing down. For the first time in decades, I didn’t have to look at a booking sheet or an interview schedule before I could decide what to do that day. I could breathe deep, take care of my health, be with family and friends, and de-stress.

  I was back to seeing my mama and sisters often, and being around Mama on a more regular basis is a surefire way of coming back down to reality. For all those years, through all the Alabama triumphs, accolades, and constant media attention, she pretty much stuck to her guns and lived the same life she was living the day I took off for the wilds of Myrtle Beach. She worked at the sock mill until her back gave out, played the piano in public every chance she got, and rarely left her mountain home. As Randa once said, “She’s a feisty, feisty woman,” sure in her ways and not given to airs of any kind.

  I long ago gave up trying to “improve” her life in any way with the conveniences of modern living. If I ask her if there is anything I could buy her that might please her, her reply is “No. Most of that stuff don’t bother me one bit ’cause I don’t want it, I’ve got enough, the Lord’s blessed me with enough.”

  When was the last time you heard anyone in this consumer-crazy country say they have “enough”? What about a new TV? “I don’t need another TV, as long as this one’s playing, which it is, thank you.”

  If she wants butter, she gets out her electric churning machine. If she wants biscuits or bread, she makes them. If she wants vegetables, she goes out to her garden and picks them. What about going out to dinner? “I’d rather fix my own food and eat at home as to go out and pay people a big price for something I could make myself. That’s true. I mean that from my heart.”

  She just feels like the world doesn’t owe her anything. One night Alison and I were at home when Mama called and said, “Son, you at home? I need you to come over here.” I immediately knew something was wrong. I thought maybe someone had broken in and accosted her. Alison and I rushed over, gun in hand, ready to kick some butt. We found Mama lying in bed, no intruder in sight.

  She had fallen, she explained, her leg was bleeding, and her arm was extended straight out and slightly twisted. She said, “Listen, son, can you put this arm back right? Just turn it back around, it’ll be fine.”

  I said, “Mama, your arm is broken.”

  She said, “Oh, it’ll be okay as soon as you put it back right.”

  We put a coat over her nightgown, took her down to the hospital, and got her arm set and bandaged up. She went along with it all but never understood what all the fuss was about. I just wonder how many times when she was growing up that someone just jerked on a broken bone, put it back in
place, and let the bone just heal itself? That’s why I drive by her house every morning and honk. At seventy-six, she shouldn’t be setting her own bones.

  If the old mantra was “The music comes first,” then the new one in the time immediately following the Farewell Tour was probably “The land and the cattle come first.” By that time our two oldest kids were pretty much out on their own, and Randa, in high school, loved tending the land and raising cattle as much as Kelly and I did. Over the years we’ve acquired our land piece by piece, buying most of it from people who probably bought it from people I knew growing up. I still refer to certain parcels as the King place, or the Holbrook place, or the Copeland place, or the Jackson place, even though the former owner of that last place, Clyde Jackson, the man who sold my mama and daddy their second forty acres, is long gone.

  To me, every parcel has a story. I look at one piece and say to myself, I used to plow a mule there with Mr. Copeland. Or that land down by the creek, I swapped for some land I owned down in south Alabama because timber companies don’t like to operate up here on this mountain because of the freezing rain and sleet. And then I bought the King place and then several acres from the original Crow place, then the Holbrook place…you get the idea.

  Naming those names and remembering the lives behind them is part of a whole sense of belonging. There’s nothing that I can think of that would bother me more than being in a place where I didn’t know anybody. Some people can live in big, anonymous cities and have a network of a few scattered friends. I guess I’m not one of them.