Hillbilly Heart

by Billy Ray Cyrus

  “Excuse me, Mr. Cyrus, but I was wondering if I could read your cards,” she said.

  I was confused.

  “I don’t have any cards with me,” I said, thinking she meant business cards.

  “No, no,” she said, smiling. “Tarot cards.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “I don’t want to call myself a fortuneteller, but I tell fortunes,” she said. “It’s kind of like a game. I lay down cards and tell you the things I see in your future and maybe some things about your past.”

  “Really?” I said. “Now? At what… nearly two in the morning?”

  “I know,” she said. “It sounds pretty weird. But something told me that I’m supposed to do this with you.”

  She sounded kind of kooky, but I was kind of kooky, too. I was half drunk and high as a kite. So why not?

  We sat at a table in the corner. She reached into a large hippie-type canvas bag and took out a deck of cards. After a quick shuffle, she dealt several on the table.

  “I see you have a brother,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Two of them. And one’s in the band.”

  “And your parents—”

  “I have them, too,” I cracked.

  “They’re divorced.”

  “How’d you—”

  “Your mother… does she have an R in her name? A Ru… Ruth?”

  “Ruthie,” I said, warily. “How’d you know?”

  When she had mentioned my brother, I thought, Lucky guess. I mean she had a fifty-fifty chance there. Or she could have said I didn’t have any siblings, I suppose. But she didn’t. Coming up with my mom’s name? That was good. Then she laid down a few more cards and suddenly, out of nowhere, she jumped backward, startled. She looked straight into my eyes.

  “I don’t believe this,” she said. “What I’m seeing… I don’t believe it. I’ve never—”

  “What?” I asked, leaning forward. “What are you seeing?”

  Her voice dropped to a whisper.

  “You have an inheritance,” she said.

  “What?” I said. “Nobody in my family has money. I don’t know what you mean.”

  “No, not that kind of inheritance,” she said without humor or irony.

  She turned over a few more cards and started to cry. Now I was spooked.

  “Your inheritance has something to do with someone who was here before,” she said.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Every time the wind blows, you’re going to get closer to finding your answers about who it is and what this means.”

  What? She was freaking me out. She also looked a little freaked out herself.

  “A birthmark will confirm everything I’ve told you,” she said.

  “A birthmark?” I asked, not remembering my own birthmark at the time.

  “There’s a reason for everything I’m telling you,” she said. “When you go to wherever this place is, you’re going to see a man who is going to give you the information you need. He will confirm things.”

  With that, she was finished. She came out of the trancelike state, looking relieved and tired. My head was reeling. My nerves were jangled. And my buzz was ruined. This woman had gone to considerable trouble to tell me stuff, all motivated by her own need to inform me. Yet she didn’t answer the one question I wanted answered. Was I going to make it?

  I asked her.

  “You’re probably going to be a very famous person and your name is going to be known around the world,” she said. “But it’s not going to happen as quickly as you think.”

  “Next year? Two years?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “However… I see you playing in Las Vegas… and a lot of people dancing.”

  The Vegas reference made me smile. The rest was too weird even for me.

  A new job did follow. One night, we auditioned at a newer, trendier, hipper place in Irontown, called Changes. Jimmy Getty, the club owner, offered us a gig, starting at $250 a week, an increase from what we were making at the Sand Bar. I liked Jimmy. He was a short, wiry man with curly hair, who bore an uncanny resemblance to exercise guru Richard Simmons. He promised good things would happen to us at Changes, and he was right.

  We quickly became the club’s unofficial house band. We still did shows at the Sand Bar and other places around Ironton, but Changes was our base, and our show turned into the city’s biggest party. We played four forty-five-minute sets a night, and each night was like a powder keg with a slow-burning fuse.

  We warmed up with what I called the dinner set, which I played sober. During the break, I asked the bartender for a cold beer and maybe had a shot or two of whiskey backstage and, possibly if not probably, a hit of some gangi, though I really can’t remember. Some of my brain cells are gone… OK, maybe more than some. And by the third set, the party was on. Occasionally someone would send up one of those fancy flaming drinks, and I would make a show of drinking it. The fourth set was our zero-gravity show—no one was in their seat, everyone was flying.

  At twenty-three, I felt certain that my life was headed in the right direction. On Thanksgiving, I thanked God for his blessings, and even though I still lived in my boyhood bedroom, I sincerely meant it. But as I settled in on the sofa for post-turkey football with Cletis, Kebo, and Mick, I had a sudden urge to get out and go for a drive. I needed air, and the wind was blowing. It reminded me of the night I met the fortuneteller.

  When I got in my car, it was like I was on autopilot. I turned on US 23, took a right, and kept driving north along the Big Sandy River and eventually out to Louisa, Kentucky, the tiny burg where the Cyrus family had originally taken root. I’d been there as a kid, but I’d never driven there on my own. I drove past an old farmhouse and up a hill, following the road as far as it went. Then I parked, got out, and walked and walked.

  Soon I found myself standing in the middle of the Cyrus family cemetery. I went to my mamaw and papaw Cyrus’s grave. It was the only place I knew there. But every time the wind blew, my boots moved, leading me this way and that, until finally I found myself standing at the headstone belonging to Joe Cyrus, my great-grandfather. I knew a little something about old Joe, mainly that he had lost one arm in an accident. I remember my dad saying that he’d been scared of him.

  I looked down and saw on the headstone that he had been born in 1872, on August 25. My birthday was also August 25.

  “Oh my God!” I exclaimed. How did I not know that?

  It was weird. Even weirder was the feeling I got as I stood there. It was like I was in the grasp of an enormous hand. This wasn’t altogether unfamiliar. I’d experienced this sensation before, first at the Neil Diamond concert and then at Mary Magdalene Pitts’s grave. I shut my eyes, breathed deeply, and looked heavenward.

  “Why me?” I cried out.

  I heard a reply immediately.

  “Because you’ve been given all the things that I didn’t have.”

  Who was talking to me? Was that voice coming from the grave in front of me?

  There was more.

  “I’m sorry to lay this burden upon you. But my soul and spirit depend on what you do with it. When you reach the end of your time it’s going to be the end for both of us. The game is going to be over. You’d better be ready to meet your maker. I’m counting on you.”

  I knew this was weird. I was hearing voices. I felt like I was losing my mind, if I hadn’t already lost it. However, it was really happening to me. Beyond that, I was at a loss for explanations. Now, looking back, I can say that I don’t believe we walk through life alone. Maybe Robbie Tooley was still hanging with me. Maybe Mary Magdalene Pitts was with me. Maybe it was my grandfather. Or my great-grandfather. Heck, I don’t know. Maybe all of the above. I don’t claim to understand what was going on or why. I’m just telling you what happened.

  I finally hiked back to my car and drove through the woods. As I passed an old farmhouse where Joe Cyrus had lived, I saw an older man stepping out o
f the front door. I slowed and recognized my uncle, so I stopped and rolled down my window.

  “Billy Ray Cyrus, what are you doing up here?” he asked. “Does your dad know you’re up here?”

  “No, sir,” I said. “I just drove up.”

  He invited me inside. I’d never been there without it being packed with fifty other Cyruses and people lined up for chicken and mashed potatoes in the backyard. I looked around and saw pictures of Joe Cyrus and his wife, Sarah, on the walls. My uncle said Joe was “a tough old bird.” He told me a story about a time he got in a fight in a bar near the Big Sandy River and was stabbed.

  “Where’d he get stabbed?” I asked.

  My uncle pointed to a spot just to the side of my belly button, but a little lower.

  “Right about there.”

  “Oh my God,” I said to myself. “That’s exactly where I have a birthmark.”

  A birthmark will confirm everything I’m telling you.

  My uncle saw me freeze up and asked what was wrong. I had a sense deep down that not only was nothing wrong, but, in fact, everything in my new rock-and-roll life was unfolding exactly as it was meant to.

  CHAPTER 11

  Too Rock for Country

  WE PLAYED AT CHANGES virtually nonstop through the summer of 1984. The marquee out front rarely changed from TONIGHT: SLY DOG. With loyal fans coming every night, we needed a 45 to sell, so all of us chipped in $500 for a session at Barnhill Studios in Catlettsburg. “Suddenly” was our single, and “What the Hell Is Goin’ On” was the B-side. We pressed fifteen hundred copies and sold them for $2 at our shows.

  J.R. and I also went shopping at the Pied Piper music store, investing about five grand apiece in new equipment. We also spent an additional $105 each on insurance policies.

  “Is he just trying to sell us something?” J.R. asked, as we stood outside in the parking lot.

  “I think we have to get it,” I said. “But that was every dollar I have.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Well, this is what I’m doing with my life,” I said. “And if something happens, if some asshole breaks into the club and steals our shit, I’m in trouble.”

  I also made a few trips to Nashville, looking to take my career to the next level. I’d travel with my guitar and a bag full of our 45s. But I was naive about just how difficult it was to get noticed in Music City. Take my visit to Music Mill Entertainment, an iconic Nashville recording studio. Nobody even came to the door. Instead, after I rang the buzzer, a woman spoke to me on the intercom.

  “Do you have an appointment?” she asked.

  “No ma’am,” I said. “I just wanted to leave a tape.”

  “Sorry, no soliciting,” she said.

  As I turned to leave, a large tour bus pulled up in front. I looked up at the people taking pictures and craning their necks to see if I was someone they recognized. The driver provided narration: “This is the famous Music Mill, where the group Alabama recorded all of their hits.” I thought, why doesn’t he just go ahead and say, “And there’s a bum with a guitar they won’t even let inside”?

  The few who did let me in either said I was too rock-and-roll for Nashville or else wanted money—lots of money. On one trip to Nashville, a buddy of mine named Jimmy McKnight and I met a “producer” at a Shoney’s restaurant. He rolled up to the table in a wheelchair, wearing the worst toupee I’d ever seen. He gave us his pitch—“For ten thousand dollars, I can set us up with the best session players in town and make you sound like Alabama”—then set out a brochure and excused himself to go to the bathroom.

  “I’ll bet he’s not even a cripple,” Jimmy said.

  A few minutes later, he returned and said, “Well? Are you ready to be the next Alabama?”

  “I already have a band,” I said, “and I want to make records like Bruce Springsteen does with his band. He makes ’em his way. I want to make records my own way.”

  “That’s nice,” he said.

  Indeed. I stood up, patted him on the back, and thanked him for his time. I think he knew the jig was up. We left, and that day I realized what made Nashville’s Music Row go ’round, and later that night Jimmy and I wrote a song about it called “Cashville.” “I’m in Cashville, where money talks and bullshit walks and everybody’s out for number one…”

  A few months into the gig, the fortuneteller lady from the Sand Bar popped into the club. It was a rare slow night at Changes, with only a handful of people there, and she took a seat in the back. I recognized her immediately. She looked scared, almost sick. Her face was pale. I knew she needed to see me.

  After my last set, I chatted with some of the guys in the band and walked up to the bar. I was doing my best to ignore her. It didn’t matter. She found me. Her dark black eyes were locked on me when I turned and looked down at her.

  “The girls with the Ouija board,” she said. “Don’t go around them no more.”

  “Huh?” I asked, startled. “How do you know about them?”

  “I don’t know nothing,” she said, standing firm but looking even more frightened. “All I know is there’s some girls with a Ouija board in a trailer, and don’t you go around them no more, because there’s something there that wants what you got.”

  With that, she walked out of the bar without saying another word or looking relieved for having talked to me.

  I knew the girls she referred to. There were two of them, and they looked really good. I’d met them there at Changes, had some drinks and smokes, and they’d invited me back to their trailer, where they got out their Ouija board. The next time I went home with them, they got the board out again, and I was hooked.

  I hadn’t crossed a sexual line with them yet, but things were looking awfully tempting. One more trip over to their place, and I knew we were all going to be naked. That’s when the fortuneteller showed up. Despite her warning, come Friday night, I set out for their trailer after I got off work at two fifteen in the morning.

  I pulled in front of their place and noticed it was pretty damn dark and desolate. I thought, Shit, I wish they had some neighbors. This trailer was out in the woods. I saw a car… but it didn’t look like the car I’d seen them drive. I paused before stumbling up the wood stairs that led to the front door.

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  I knocked… and knocked again.

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  Something didn’t feel right.

  “Cyrus, get the hell out of here,” I said to myself.

  As soon as I turned around, though, the door creaked open. It was pitch-black inside the trailer. Something was telling me to go inside. Come in… come on in… come in… I debated whether to go. But if those girls were inside, they would’ve turned on the light. And said something.

  I was fairly convinced they weren’t in there. So what was?

  I remembered the fortuneteller lady said something in that trailer wanted what I had. What did she mean? My spirit? My life? I didn’t wait to find out. I got the hell out of there.

  In the middle of the night on August 15, 1984, Changes burned to the ground. The fire broke out hours after I’d gone home with my then-girlfriend, Charlotte. I didn’t find out until I drove back to 2317 Long Street the next morning, walked in, and found my mom staring at the local news. From what I could see, the building and everything in it appeared to have been leveled by the blaze. I had to see for myself.

  When I got there, the club was still wet and the smell of fire filled the damaged space. With a flashlight in my hand, I went straight toward the stage and saw that the drums looked like a melted candle. The rest of our equipment was burned nearly beyond recognition—J.R.’s classic Les Paul, all my guitars—everything except my guitar amp, a Bandit 65. It was charred but mostly intact.

  I looked behind the amp where I kept boxes of our 45s and cash from our sales. There were four or five boxes altogether. The box with the cash was gone, burned. The 45s, it appeared, had all melted. When I opened the last box, though, I found a miniature book, a
collection of twenty-five inspirational verses. I’d found it a few months earlier at the Brothers Four, a bar in Portsmouth. Sometimes I would go outside between sets and read it and pray. I couldn’t believe it had survived the fire intact. With the narrow beam of my flashlight, I saw it was open to a verse:

  With every adversity lies the seed to something greater.

  Once again I felt the hand of fate. Or the hands. I was sure this testament to faith was a sign to keep on keeping on, except to do it someplace else. Over and over again I’d heard I was too rock for country, and so I took this as a sign to take my rebel yell out west, to Los Angeles and rock and roll.

  Right before the fire, we were booked to open for country legend George Jones when he played Melody Mountain, an outdoor festival in Ashland, at the end of September. It was our biggest show to date, in front of more than ten thousand, and though our equipment was borrowed from friends, we played like seasoned pros after George lived up to his nickname “No Show Jones.” For nearly an hour, the promoter stood on the side of the stage and yelled at us to “play one more! Just one more!”

  I was singing Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell” (perfect, right?) when I finally saw George’s bus winding over the hill. By that point, I had nearly exhausted our repertoire, but I’d never had as much fun. Next, we opened for Dr. Hook at the Red Fox, another local venue. Then, after a two-week stint at the Roxy, a rock club in Ironton, I gathered Sly Dog together and announced that I was leaving the band and heading to Los Angeles.

  I’d known I was going to leave since the fire at Changes, and the guys knew it, too. They understood I was going to head west after we made good on our bookings. I didn’t want to abandon them, but my single-minded drive to make it, to reach my goal and most importantly to find my purpose, no matter what, was unmistakable, stronger than anything I’d ever known. It defined everything about me. Interestingly, as we stood backstage after the gig, what kept going through my mind was something I had memorized from the book Think and Grow Rich—a quote from Napoleon Hill: “Persistence is to the character of man as carbon is to steel.”