Hillbilly Heart

by Billy Ray Cyrus

  I told them how the hill where we sat had been a sacred place for the Chickasaw tribe. At another point, I gestured to the south so we were looking toward Columbia and Spring Hill, where Civil War troops had massed before the bloody Battle of Franklin. The ground echoed with footsteps from the past. We could almost feel them. As the sun went down, we built a fire and talked more.

  A few months later, I found a note on my gate from Raymond. It said, “Mr. Cyrus”—he always called me Mr. Cyrus—“It’s Raymond. I hate to bother you. I’m in town and I have a gift from the guys. I’d leave it by the gate if I could. But I can’t. I want to drop by if anyone is home.” He left a phone number.

  He was at a little hotel nearby, the Goosecreek Inn. My brother Mick and I laugh about that place because the C in the sign often burns out so that it reads Goose reek Inn. Raymond came over shortly after I called him. I met him and his friends at the gate on my dirt bike, trailed by my one-eyed German shepherd, Spirit.

  “Can we go back to the top of your hill?” Raymond asked. “I got something in the back and can’t really get it out here.”

  I tried to look in the back of his van. What was back there—a live animal or something?

  He followed me to the top of the hill, where he got out and pulled open the van’s side door, revealing a massive totem pole. It must’ve weighed four hundred pounds. The guys wrestled that thing out of there, dug a hole, and planted it. I thought it was pretty great. Then Raymond walked me around the back and pointed to where they had carved a message:

  Thank you for the night we spent on Spirit Mountain. It may have been an evening for you, but it was a lifetime for us.

  I was humbled and at a loss for words, which is pretty unusual for me.

  “I feel inadequate,” I finally said, “compared to the gift you’ve given me. The freedom to have a dream, to be a kid that dreamed of being the next Elvis: buy a guitar, start a band, go rock-and-roll. How come I can do that? Because you guys, and men like you and your dads and grandfathers, made a sacrifice so we can live in the greatest country in the world where freedom is the priority…”

  Given experiences like that, my dad wondered why I beat myself up so badly over whether a song was No. 1, 3, or 39.

  “Look around, Bo,” he’d say. “It’s all good.”

  It was. It was better than good.

  I knew that to be true. Like a lot of people, though, I had trouble remembering that life, as Carl Perkins had told me, was about the chase, not the chart. As I’d said numerous times, “Achy Breaky Heart” had been both a blessing and a curse. It had put me on top of a mountain and at the same time in a deep hole. With every album, I was trying to prove myself. Did I have to? Probably not.

  But I did.

  I tortured myself. I still do—and why that is remains a mystery.

  However, my dad understood problems were all relative depending on who had them. One day he showed up at my house with a totem pole the Cherokee Indians in the Smoky Mountains had made for me in appreciation of my song “Trail of Tears.” The totem was called Seven Hidden Eagles, he said, because there were, in fact, seven eagles hidden within the carving. The first few were easy to find; the rest got harder.

  My dad drove it up to where I had my teepee and we spent a few hours digging a hole and wrestling it into the ground. I liked watching my dad work. He was six foot two and strong. He tore into the ground. And he knew how to do everything right.

  Afterward, we rode horses for a while, and then returned to the teepee. We warmed up around the fire as the last bit of sun dropped behind the farthest mountain. Soon we were sitting in the dark, the big old flames dancing in front of us and casting a bit of light onto that new totem pole.

  My dad chose that moment to zero in on me.

  “You know, son, I’m not your manager, and I don’t know much of anything about the business you’re in,” he said. “But it looks to me like you’ve got all your eggs in one basket.”

  “What do you mean, Dad?” I asked.

  “Well, everything I hear you say revolves around whether radio stations are going to play your newest single,” he said. “It’s all one thing, and that limits you. I think you ought to branch out. Get one of those Kenny Rogers–Dolly Parton kind of careers. They do it all—film, television, and music.”

  “Shoot, man, I’d love that,” I said. “But how? I’m not an actor.”

  I’d done guest spots on The Nanny and Diagnosis Murder, but neither was a real acting gig. Now I decided to up the ante. My manager put out feelers in Hollywood and some scripts came in. Most were for Westerns and romances; none knocked me out. I was content to wait for something that felt right.

  At the end of 1998, I agreed to do a guest spot on a reboot of The Love Boat, shooting in Los Angeles. I played a singer named Lasso Larry. On my last day on the set, I picked up a trade magazine someone had left on a table and read that director David Lynch was casting for a new project called Mulholland Dr.

  Whether Mulholland Dr. was going to be a TV series or a movie was still unclear at that point, but I didn’t care. I was a fan of David’s work. I loved both Elephant Man and Blue Velvet, so I called my agent and asked if he could get me an audition. Since we were leaving that afternoon, I knew the odds of David having time were small. Yet a short time later, I had an appointment that afternoon.

  If only the rest of the day had been that easy. First off, I confirmed my meeting. Then I changed my plane ticket to a flight later that night. Tish, Miley, and Braison kept their seats on the early flight. As I helped them get into the car, we all remembered that we had two baby chickens living in the bathtub in our hotel room.

  “Dad, we can’t leave ’em,” Miley said.

  I looked at Tish. She was shaking her head, letting me know that she didn’t want to carry them home along with two little kids.

  Earlier in the week, we’d taken the kids to a petting zoo near the beach in Topanga Canyon. As we looked around, we discovered some baby chickens that were being raised to be fed to the large snakes. After a quick family conference, we asked the people in charge if they’d sell us the baby chickens.

  When they said no, we went to plan B. We snuck around the back and stole two of the chicks, one black and one white, and took them back to our hotel, where they lived in our bathtub.

  “All right,” I said to Tish and the kids. “I’ll take them with me and bring them back home.”

  So I had these guys with me when I showed up at my audition. I thought if anyone would appreciate this strange story, it would be David Lynch—and you know what? He did. But I had other concerns. My part had been sent to me less than an hour before, and I hadn’t begun to memorize it or even think much about the character, Gene the Pool Man.

  However, David never asked me to read the lines. Somehow he knew about Mary Magdalene Pitts and my song about child abuse, “Enough Is Enough.” I told him about my dad’s neighbors Calvin and Jimmy, the fire at their house, and the voice I’d heard crying, “Help me. Help me, Mommy.”

  When I finished, he said, “That’s great. I’ll have somebody get in touch with your people.” Sure, I thought, that was Hollywood talk. But before I got to the airport, my agent called and told me I had the job. Now if only I could get the birds through security… I told them they were rare African cockatoos. “They’re very nervous birds,” I told ’em. “They must remain in their cage with a towel over it to shield them from the light.” It worked. I got the chicks home… and the gig with David Lynch.

  As I expected, there was a big learning curve once shooting began in February 1999. Most of it had to do with comfort and familiarity. The script was so dark, I expected David to show up dressed in black, wearing a cape, and burning candles. In reality, he wore blue jeans and a denim shirt and couldn’t have been more normal. But that’s where normal ended on Mulholland Dr., a psychological thriller about an actress who’s involved in a bizarre search for identity across Los Angeles after befriending a woman suffering from amnesi
a.

  For my first scene, I was in bed with another man’s wife when he walks in and finds us. I lay there and said, “Forget you ever saw it. It’s better that way.” The husband reacts by pouring pink paint in his wife’s jewelry box. Then, in the next scene, he and I fight in the kitchen. That was more complicated, and I was unsure of my performance even though David said it was good and got ready to move on to the next scene.

  “Should we try it again?” I asked. “Maybe just get one more take.”

  “No, we’re all good,” he said, smiling. “Acting is about being real in the moment, and you gave me exactly what I want.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m not your manager or your agent or anything,” he said. “I’m talking to you as a director, and you’re what a director wants. You come in here and play it real. I think you can be quite an actor.”

  Without that vote of confidence from David Lynch, I doubt I would’ve continued to act. After Mulholland Dr., I felt like I had done something incredibly dark. My power came from wanting to share God’s light and love. It fueled my drive and passion. I feared I might’ve tampered with a force that I didn’t want in my life.

  On a flight home from L.A., I prayed for guidance. If God wanted me to be an actor, he’d send me a project that he wanted me to act in. A couple of days later, I came home and found an envelope on the table from my manager. Inside was the script for Doc, a values-heavy family drama about a Montana doctor working in New York City.

  Tish read the script first and, later that day, when I asked her what she thought, she said, “It’s so you. It’s about everything you represent.”

  I sat down with the script and loved it more with each turn of the page. Doc made me think of Brian’s Song, a made-for-TV movie I’d loved as a kid. Although it was a very different story, Doc pulsed with the same kind of heart: tons of emotion, sadness, and beauty that made you feel better—or inspired to be better.

  “I can see you as Clint Cassidy,” Tish said that night after we’d put the kids to bed.

  “Me, too,” I said. “He’s the underdog. He’s all about overcoming adversities. And that’s me.”

  At that point, Doc was slated to be a movie for Pax TV, a new cable network. If ratings were good, it would get picked up as a series. Either way, I had mixed feelings. My intuition told me that I’d get the part if I auditioned. However, I didn’t know if I wanted to commit myself to the project. I had signed a new deal with Monument Records, and I was in the midst of making my Southern Rain album, which I loved. I also loved riding my horse, taking out my dirt bike, and playing with my kids. I loved my freedom.

  My mind played this game of Ping-Pong until finally I called my manager, Al Schiltz, and said I wasn’t going to do Doc.

  “Call ’em and cancel,” I said.

  “Man, I think you’re passing up a big opportunity here,” he said.

  He knew me well enough to tell me to go up to my teepee and pray about things. “Call me back tonight before I cancel your flight,” he added.

  I took his advice. I got down on my knees in that desperate man’s prayer pose by the fire, and said, “God, I’m confused. Do you want me to go to this audition? Do you want this to happen?”

  Now I know God most likely wasn’t taking a time-out from the much more important matters on his schedule to deal with my career decisions—or indecisions. Then again, within a few minutes, a voice said, “Go to the audition. If they hire you, you’ll know the answer is yes. If they don’t, you’ll know you didn’t miss an opportunity intended to do my will.”

  That was it. I returned home and called Al.

  “Keep my seat on the plane,” I said. “I’m going to the meeting. It’s in God’s hands. What’s meant to be will be.”

  CHAPTER 24

  “Stand Still”

  BEFORE DOC HAPPENED, I got involved in another production: the birth of my youngest daughter, Noah. She came into this world on January 8, 2000, the day the Tennessee Titans were playing the Buffalo Bills in the AFC Wild Card playoff game. Both events were memorable for the same reason—they involved a miracle.

  Tish felt wonderful the whole nine months our little girl was growing inside her, and she’d scheduled the delivery so we’d be sure I’d be in town when it happened. But she woke up on the eighth feeling like the baby might be coming, so we went to the hospital early.

  By the afternoon, nothing had happened. We had long ago decided to name the baby Noah Lindsey, after my papaw Cyrus, whose middle name was Lindsey. I had brought an old photograph of him preaching and hung it in the corner so he could oversee the birth of his namesake. What I liked about the picture was that it showed the woodcarving on his pulpit. It was one of his favorite sayings: EXPECT A MIRACLE.

  And we were expecting a miracle.

  Tish even said, “It’s going to be a miracle if I can get this baby out of me.”

  Meanwhile, the Titans started playing the Bills. We could practically see the stadium outside the window of Baptist Hospital. Unfortunately, we couldn’t watch the game or hear the cheering because the TV in our private room didn’t work. Tish didn’t care about the game, but I followed the doctors and nurses into a waiting room, where there was a TV that worked. Every few plays I checked on Tish. Well, sometimes a nurse went in my place because the game was so close I didn’t want to leave and miss the action.

  With less than two minutes, the lead changed twice. First, the Titans went ahead on a touchdown drive, and then with only sixteen seconds on the clock, the Bills took the lead on a field goal. They kicked off, the Titans received, lateraled in a crazy kind of Hail Mary, and ran the ball for a touchdown as time expired, winning the game in what became known as the Music City Miracle.

  The cheers that filled the hospital’s corridors turned into tense quiet as the play was challenged and brought under review. It was one of the first times instant replay was used to decide the outcome of a game. The only place the drama was thicker was in Tish’s room. Suddenly it was baby time. The doctors, nurses, and I all looked at Tish, then at the broken TV, and then at one another, our expressions saying the same thing: “But the game!”

  Then two more miracles occurred. First, the TV in Tish’s room lit up. The game was on and officials ruled that the Titans had won the game. Our cheers were just in time to welcome Noah Lindsey Cyrus, whose eyes were wide open and looking around as if to say, “What’s going on?”

  I cut the cord, kissed Tish, and then glanced up at the game, though on the way to the TV my eye caught the photo of my papaw. He might as well have been standing there with us in person. Expect a miracle.

  A miracle, indeed.

  Brothers David and Gary Johnson were the cocreators and producers of Doc. With Andy Griffith and Michael Landon as their biggest influences, their goal was to make a family show with a strong, moral male role model. They dreamed up Clint Cassidy, a Montana doctor who takes a job in a New York medical clinic and brings his country ways to the big city.

  Within the first ten minutes of our initial meeting, David, Gary, and I knew we were meant to work together. Their idea of a family show was exactly like mine. They even put Tish and the kids in a quick cameo in the pilot. If you look closely in one scene, you can see Tish as a nurse checking me out as I walk through the hall. Still, despite the good vibes, I was still plagued by doubts—but as was usually the case with me, that turned into a good thing. I just wanted to keep it real.

  One day, midway through the pilot, I had to take off for a few dates that had been booked before I signed on to the TV series. My plane was delayed on the tarmac in Toronto. As we sat on the runway, with the pilot periodically apologizing for the congestion, I wondered what the heck I was doing there in the first place. It was the same confusion as before. Why am I up here acting like an actor? Why am I not playing music full time?

  Feeling lost, I shut my eyes and flashed back to a time when I really was lost. I was eight or nine years old, and my dad had taken me squirrel hunting in t
he woods. I’d never killed a squirrel. I didn’t have it in me to shoot anything. Who was I to take a life? Even a squirrel’s life.

  While my dad went his own way, I sat with my gun and waited. After a while, I went for a hike and headed deeper into the woods until I was hopelessly lost.

  At that point, my walk turned to a jog and then my jog turned into a run. I called my dad’s name. I knew you were supposed to be quiet when you hunted, but I was hollering, “Dad! Dad! Dad!” I tripped over a log and my gun snapped in two.

  Finally, late that night, I staggered out onto an old country road. A sheriff spotted me.

  “Don’t worry, son,” he said. “Your dad is right up here looking for you. I’ll radio in that you’re all right.”

  A moment later my dad pulled up in his car, got out, and ran toward me. I was thinking he was mad and might pull his belt off. Instead, he wrapped his arms around me, pulled me into his chest, and hugged me. It seemed like he might have been crying a little bit. He knelt down and looked in my eyes.

  “Listen to me, son. When you’re lost, stand still.”

  That moment was frozen in my mind as if it had happened the day before.

  Now, there I was on the tarmac, a grown thirty-nine-year-old man, feeling just as lost as I’d been in the woods that day. I picked up a pen and pulled out the puke bag from the seat pocket in front of me and began to write:

  When I was just a little boy

  I wandered through the woods

  Searchin’ for my daddy through the pines

  I guess I took a wrong turn

  Somewhere along the way

  But the Bible said,

  “Seek and ye shall find.”

  Daylight turned to darkness

  Adventure turned to fear

  When I finally found my way back home

  His words I still can hear…

  Stand still!

  When you’re in the dark,

  Listen to your heart

  And pray for God’s will

  Stand still…