Hillbilly Heart

by Billy Ray Cyrus

  The backstage area was crowded with roadies loading gear into semis. My rigs were backing in as the rigs belonging to whichever band had played there that night were backing out. Suddenly, a figure emerged from the shadows. I heard him say my name. At first, I couldn’t see him. Then I recognized Kurt Cobain from Nirvana.

  “Hey, man,” he said. “Congratulations. You pissed off the whole world.”

  We shook hands.

  “Thanks, man,” I said. “I guess I did. I really appreciate you saying that.” And we both laughed a little.

  We chatted briefly and realized we both had daughters around the same time. His little one, Frances Bean, was a few months older than Miley. I also told him that my drummer, Greg Fletcher, was his biggest fan.

  “He’d freak out if he knew you were here,” I said.

  “Then don’t fuckin’ tell him,” Kurt muttered.

  We looked at each other. There was an awkward silence as we realized what he had just said and how he had said it. Then we both laughed.

  I shared two laughs and one F-bomb with Kurt Cobain that night. I’ll always cherish that moment.

  Laughter’s a good thing. This one time I bought an old John Deere tractor just because I wanted an old John Deere tractor. I liked the way it looked. I had a ton of fun climbing up on that beautiful piece of machinery. I had no idea what I was doing, but I loved to take it places that had never been mowed. Plowing over virgin ground reminded me of the good old days. Tish would listen to me brag about my tractor-driving skills and laugh at me as I’d get in predicaments, as I was always driving it into places where I got stuck. “One day you’re going to turn that over and cut your arms off,” she warned. She thought I was weird. Can you imagine?

  One afternoon, I was on my way to Crook & Chase, the long-running talk show hosted by Lorianne Crook and Charlie Chase. I drove myself in my front-wheel-drive Cadillac. As I started down the driveway, I decided to check on my horse, Roam. Suddenly I was driving that Caddy on my four-wheel paths, and I got too close to the pond near where I kept the horse.

  Next thing I knew, the front half of my car had slipped into the water. I barely made the show. Tish didn’t stop laughing at me until I got home that night. We had fun just living and loving each other. The simple days were the best. Here’s a typical example: While on a walk through the woods one day, we started to monkey around, one thing led to another, and we got all fired up and made love, or something like it.

  A month or so later, we found out that Tish was pregnant with our son, Braison. He wasn’t planned, but I welcomed the news. I liked the idea of being a daddy again. I was planning my schedule, as was always the case back then, adding tour dates and TV shows. I remember looking across the room and seeing Tish playing with Miley. I loved her and wanted to be with her forever.

  What did forever mean? Well, I had to make a decision. Either I married her soon or I would go on tour, make another album, and she would get frustrated, rightly so, give up on me, and move back to Kentucky. The truth was, she had given me an ultimatum. I had till the end of the year to marry her. Or else.

  I knew what day it was and how much time I had. It was now December 28, three days after Christmas, and I had to make a choice. On the one hand, Tish and Mammy had already planned the wedding. They had booked the preacher from Mammy’s Methodist church. And Tish had bought fake glasses and a mustache from a costume shop for me to wear into the courthouse so we could get the license before the media found out and the circus hit. We would recite the vows in our family room—our house was an A-frame with a two-story cathedral ceiling, so, in a way, it was like a church. Tish had the whole thing worked out.

  On the other hand, right after the first of the year, I was supposed to start a new leg of my world tour, including a performance for the Queen of England. It was going to be big. I’d heard Princess Diana was even supposed to be there. That excited me. I thought she was so beautiful and graceful, and I half-jokingly told my manager that they wouldn’t have to pay me if I could meet her.

  But something about being gone for such a long time didn’t feel right. I have to tell you the God’s honest truth. Instead of wanting to go on tour, I could feel myself being drawn in another direction, and I knew why. I had a chance to have the one thing I had always wanted, the one thing I’d never had: a home where the mom and dad live together with their children in happiness and love.

  Now I had toys, homes, cars, trucks, horses, and land. I even traveled by Lear jet. I had everything that money could buy. But money couldn’t buy family. Not a happy, loving family. And here it was, right in front of me. Why was I hesitating?

  I’ll tell you why. Because it meant I had to get married.

  So, here’s what happened. That morning of the twenty-eighth, with the clock ticking and Tish waiting, I went to the place where I did all my serious thinking, the highest peak on my thirty-two acres. There, I crawled into my Apache Nest, a little shelter I’d built out of roots and sticks and mud. I lit a fire and I tried to imagine what the future looked like, how it would roll out if I went on tour, what I might say to Princess Diana if I got to meet her, and how it might feel to stand next to Tish and say, “I do…” And of course the look in the kids’ eyes as they realized Daddy was here to stay.

  It didn’t take long before I said to myself, “You know what? I’m going to trade the Queen for the King, and the King is Almighty God… and I’m going to marry Tish. I’m going to be a good husband and a good daddy. I’m going to do what my family needs.”

  I walked back to the house, and when I went inside, Tish was in the kitchen with Brandi, Trace, Miley, and Loretta. They all had the same look on their face—annoyed. They couldn’t wait for me to come down off that hill. I walked straight to Tish and stood in front of her.

  “You still wanna get married?” I asked.

  “Are you serious?” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Just recently Tish reminded me that after the big wedding, the two of us went out to dinner. “Do you remember where we went?” she asked.

  “I’m sure I thought you deserved the best,” I said.

  “You sure did.” She laughed. “We went to Burger King. Do you remember what we got?”

  “Of course. We both got the chicken sandwich.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Storm in the Heartland

  FOUR MONTHS LATER I was in a room at the Regal Riverfront Hotel in St. Louis when I turned on the news and heard that Kurt Cobain was dead. The news devastated me. We had crossed paths several times since our first meeting, and each time we exchanged greetings. Under different circumstances, we might’ve been friends. I could also close my eyes and see myself three years earlier listening to Nevermind in my Chevy Beretta as I was getting a divorce, losing my home and my cat.

  I knew the circus had overwhelmed him. I feared it could get like that for me, too, if I didn’t cool my jets. As a result, the following month, after Tish gave birth to our son, Braison, whose name was inspired by all the brazen chances I’d taken, I finished my tour and hunkered down at home. I needed to step away and focus on family and the things that mattered.

  My dad used to say nothing is as good for the inside of a man as the outside of a horse, and he was right. I woke up, saddled Roam, and rode for five miles. I saw deer, quail, rabbits, and a flock of wild turkeys. A double shot of Mother Nature was what I needed, and I made those rides part of my daily routine.

  One day I took Miley for a ride on my four-wheeler. She was around two years old and game for anything. “Let’s go for a spinner,” I said, using her term for ride. Her eyes lit up as I strapped her into a baby-toter on my back and zoomed across the large, flat fields and up the hill into the woods. Every time I stopped to check on her, she was all smiles, Smiley Miley. She loved to go fast.

  On the way back, I sped over a spot where some trees had fallen during a recent storm. In that instant, I had to make a quick decision: duck or stop. I ducked and made it.
But I forgot I had a baby on my back. I heard a thwack—and stopped.

  “Oh my God,” I exclaimed.

  I knew without looking that Miley’s head had hit a branch. Blood flowed from a gash in her head. I raced home and Tish helped me wash her down. I thought the worst, like possibly I’d broken her neck. Fortunately, she was laughing by the time Tish swaddled her in a fluffy towel. But I still remember this with a shudder as the day I almost took her head off.

  The mishap did nothing to dim my passion for the outdoors. Nor Miley’s. The land touched my soul in a special way. It was the freedom that came with it. There was no end to its beauty. I had recently tried to purchase twelve additional acres next to my property, which would have given me about fifty in total. But when the sellers found out I was the buyer, they doubled the price. I was insulted. I walked away and put out word that I wanted to move.

  The next day my real estate agent found a house she described as “perfect.” It was the former residence of architect William B. Cambron, who had lived there from 1972 until his recent death. The house was a replica of Andrew Jackson’s Nashville mansion, the Hermitage. But it wasn’t so much the house that made it perfect for me as it was the land, 212 acres of rolling hills and woods, which she described as unbelievable.

  “The house even has an indoor pool,” the realtor said enthusiastically.

  “Sounds like I’ve got to see it,” I replied.

  The next morning I rode my motorcycle to the house. I was in the country when I came upon the driveway, which snaked up past fenced pastures and tree-covered hills. It was green for as far as I could see. The actual house was still up ahead, well out of sight, yet what I could see gave such an instant sense of calm and comfort that I said to myself, “Cyrus, you’re home.”

  My real estate agent and Mrs. Cambron were waiting for me when I coasted up to the front of the house. They invited me inside for a look around.

  “I don’t need to,” I said. “I already love it.”

  A gravel road went past the house and disappeared into the woods. Mrs. Cambron said I was welcome to explore it. I said thanks and roared off. About twenty minutes later, I returned, grinning as if I had found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The women wanted to know what I thought.

  “I’m in,” I said. “Let’s work it out.”

  The real negotiation was with my wife. As far as Tish was concerned, the Federal-style mansion was too far out in the country. She also thought that it needed a ton of renovation, and she hated the indoor pool. That crushed me. I thought that was the coolest part. It kind of made us like the Beverly Hillbillies. I was already practicing hollering, “Hey Miley, get the monkey and meet me at the cee-ment pond.”

  Tish had no desire to be like the Beverly Hillbillies. I don’t think she watched that show.

  Still, I couldn’t resist the temptation and bought the home and all 212 acres that came with it.

  However, by the fall of ’94, we still hadn’t moved in and the house sat empty. We even talked of selling it since it seemed like I might be too busy to generate enough enthusiasm and energy for the family to make the move. I was getting ready to release my Storm in the Heartland album. The fourteen songs covered social issues like the struggle of America’s farmers (“Storm in the Heartland”), appreciation of the earth (“Geronimo”), intensely personal topics like child abuse (“Enough Is Enough”), and the trials of raising a family (“I Ain’t Even Left and It Already Don’t Feel Right”).

  We shot the video for the first single, “Storm in the Heartland,” at my farm. The footage included my neighbors and their kids, all farmers, doing the work their families had done for generations. At the center was Mr. Harris, a proud, lifelong farmer who cut my hay. He was straight out of Central Casting: big and strong, with sun-weathered skin and eyes that reflected the wisdom of an eighty-year-old man who’d worked the soil his whole life.

  The first day of shooting was wonderful, but we didn’t finish until late at night. I had a call for sun-up the next morning, so instead of going home, I called Tish and said, “You know what? I’m just going to stay out here in this house.”

  “But it’s empty,” she said. “There’s nothing in it.”

  “I got me a little food from the caterer,” I said. “I’ll borrow a coffeemaker. I’ll be fine.”

  I woke up the next morning, put on some coffee, and walked out the front door, where I came face-to-face with a rising sun, a blanket of fog lifting off the field, and the diamond-like shimmer of morning dew. It looked like heaven. I walked slowly off the porch and into the field, and took a leak. Why not? There were no paparazzi, no tabloid reporters or snoops of any kind.

  “Freedom,” I thought. “Here it is.”

  Later that day, I spoke with Tish and told her that she and the kids had to come out and stay just one night. She did, and we never left.

  I was devastated when the single “Storm in the Heartland” stalled at No. 39 on the radio chart. Though I did all the press I could to ensure its success, the song fell off the charts as quickly as it appeared, and the album itself just missed the top 10. It hurt. I loved that album; I’d poured my soul into every song, and so I’d expected more enthusiasm. I didn’t get it, though, and there was plenty of blame to go around. But it didn’t matter. I knew I’d hit the flip side of having so much success. The song “Throwing Stones” from the previous year said what I had already known: “What goes up, must come down.” And I was on my way. Upset, frustrated, and hurt, I called Jack McFadden and said, “I ain’t going to the CMAs. If they’re going to allow ‘Storm in the Heartland’ to disappear, the hell with it. I don’t care. If it ain’t about the music, then I don’t care.”

  On the evening of the CMAs, I rode my Harley to the highest part of my land and was sitting there when I spotted Mr. Harris in the field, cutting the hay. The sun was about to go down, the shadows were stretched across the ground, and I said to myself, “Cyrus, you know what? I bet Mr. Harris ain’t going to be around here that much longer. He’s probably never been to the CMA Awards. Why don’t you go down there and ask him if he wants to go tonight.” And I was just crazy enough to do it.

  I zipped down the hill and invited Mr. Harris to the show. He took off his hat and thought about it a moment.

  “Is there time for me to throw on a pair of jeans?” he asked.

  He was wearing overalls.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll pick you up in a half hour.”

  Tish looked at me like I’d lost my mind when I told her that I’d changed my mind and was going to the awards show with Mr. Harris. But soon Jack McFadden had a car picking us up and my farmer neighbor and I were cutting through the star-studded crowd inside the Grand Ole Opry. When we arrived, Mr. Harris turned heads. Wynonna Judd said, “That’s the man in your ‘Storm’ video, right?” George Jones stopped him and asked, “Don’t I know you?”

  “No, sir,” Mr. Harris said. “I cut hay for Billy Ray Cyrus.”

  “Oh my God,” George said. “You’re in his video. I know who you are. Let me shake your hand.”

  And Mr. Harris lit up when the Oak Ridge Boys, who’d also joined me on “Storm in the Heartland,” had a photo made with him.

  Storm in the Heartland ended up selling more than 500,000 copies, enough for gold-record status. However, I still think of it as one of the tragedies of my career. I battled with the label over song selection, sequencing, and the cover photo, which I hated. None of the singles went top ten. “The Fastest Horse in a One-Horse Town” died at the starting line.

  All of a sudden I couldn’t buy a hit. I was no longer Mercury’s favorite son.

  My family kept me focused on what was really important, and my friends provided much-needed support that kept me believing in myself as an artist. Ray Walker from the Jordanaires, guitaristsongwriter Ed King from Lynyrd Skynyrd (he cowrote “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Saturday Night Special,” among other classics), and Carl Perkins, the Sun Records rockabilly legend who wrote “Bl
ue Suede Shoes,” were among those who visited me at the farm.

  None were more supportive than Perkins, who became a close friend and confidant. We had met a few years earlier on Ralph Emery’s Nashville Now. We clicked on the air, and during a commercial break, Carl leaned close to me and said, “I really like the way you approach things, hoss. You don’t fit the mold, and I like that.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “You see all these cats in Nashville, and they’re just chasing each other’s tail,” he continued. “They all want to know what the other guy’s doing and then they go do that. But I don’t see that in you. That’s never been my thing, either. Or Sun Records’. The history of this town is about artists who live the music and keep it real and do what they’re doing because they love it.”

  After the taping of Nashville Now, Carl said he wanted to hang out some more. I was getting set to do the video for “Talk Some” off my second album, It Won’t Be the Last. The shoot was in Memphis.

  “Is there any way you’d want to come over?” I asked.

  “Oh, man, just let me know when and where,” Carl said. “I’d be honored.” Then he added, “And you know what else? I want to write a song with you.”

  Carl Perkins, with his hall of fame history, wanted to write with me? I composed myself real quick.

  “It’s funny you say that,” I replied. “On the way here I thought of a good hook—‘Truth is I lied.’”

  “Truth is I lied,” he said, trying out the words on his tongue. “Truth is I lied… huh, I like it.”

  A few weeks later, Carl joined me in Memphis on the set of the video for “Talk Some.” The centerpiece of the video was a live performance of the song, but it was bookended by Carl and me arriving in a black ’56 Chrysler and me leaving in a private jet at the end. As soon as Carl saw the old car, which had been trucked in from a junkyard, he turned to his wife and exclaimed, “That’s Judy! By God, that’s Judy!”