Hillbilly Heart (18 page)

So wher’m I gonna live when I get home?

I grabbed my guitar and strolled into the house as if nothing had changed. I sat beside my cat, Mr. Sly, and pulled out my recorder and wrote the last verse.

She decided she would keep my cat

My transportation, I wouldn’t be needin’ that

She kept my TV, the bills she gave to me

So wher’m I gonna live when I get home?

After playing the song from front to end, I pleaded with Cindy to let me stay and promised we’d deal with the situation later. I also gave her half writer’s credit for settin’ my stuff out in the yard. “If you hadn’t a done that, I wouldn’t have wrote this song,” I said. She liked that, but still cussed me out before getting ready for work, which seemed to make her and me feel a little better.

Then I carried my stuff back inside, took a bath, and slept until later that afternoon.

When Cindy came home that night, I was waiting with burgers on the grill for dinner. I told her that she was right. No doubt about it, I was an asshole. She smiled, and for a moment things seemed a little better.

I was mad at myself and depressed when I got to the gig. It was Thursday, and I was still mildly hungover from the previous night, or rather earlier that morning. As I sat in my dressing room (which was really a closet for kitchen and cleaning supplies), I had to decide whether to power up to the next level or deal with feeling miserable. I had a guitar in my hand, as usual, and began to play; I also began to sing, and within a few minutes I had written the song “She’s Not Cryin’ Anymore.”

She used to cry when I’d come home late

She couldn’t buy the lies I told

All she wanted was to be needed

Someone that she could call her own

The love I know I took for granted

Until she walked out of my door

Too little too late to say I’m sorry

’Cause she’s not cryin’ anymore.

She’s not cryin’ anymore

She ain’t lonely any longer

There’s a smile upon her face

A new love takes my place

She’s not cryin’ anymore.

Between sets, Terry Shelton, my guitarist, followed me back into my dressing room and we had something good rolled up, which was always a ripe time for me to let things hang out. I told him what had happened between Cindy and me and then sang what I’d written. He loved it. Me, him, and Buddy Cannon wrote another verse and it would become another hit off that first album.

Both Friday and Saturday went by without me writing anything. In lieu of songs, I sobered up. On Sunday, I was between the third and fourth sets when I saw a stranger at the bar. Sunday night crowds tended to be light, and I usually recognized everyone there for the late shows. Hell, from playing there five nights a week, I pretty much knew everyone who set foot in the place. But this night was one of the sparest I’d seen. In fact, I saw an empty stool at the
bar next to this stranger, and I couldn’t recall ever seeing an empty barstool. Or that guy.

Intrigued, I walked up to the bar for the first and only time since plugging in at the Ragtime that evening. I ordered a cold beer and said, “How you doing, sir? I’m Billy Ray Cyrus.”

He stuck out his hand: “I’m Sandy Kane.”

“I don’t believe I’ve seen you here before,” I said.

He told me he was from Sandy Hook, Kentucky.

“I know Sandy Hook,” I said, immediately thinking back to Keith Whitley. After a moment, I asked, “You’re a Vietnam veteran, aren’t you?”

I had a feeling. Something about the way he looked. His eyes said the most. He opened up and talked about it a little, and I listened intently.

As he finished, the bartender gave me the sign. My break was up.

“I got one more set,” I said. “You got any songs you want to hear?”

He thought for a moment.

“Man, you know any Skynyrd?”

“Oh yeah,” I said.

“Bob Seger?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Credence?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, that’d be perfect for me.”

After rounding up the band, I explained what was what and led them through a superset of Skynyrd, Seger, and Credence. We ended on a powerful version of “Call Me the Breeze.” When I came offstage, Sandy Kane was at the bar, still sitting on his stool, only this time he had a big old smile in the middle of his grizzled face.

“Thank you,” he said. “That was a gift.”

“Hey, thanks for your service,” I said. “Thanks for going to Vietnam. I knew a guy who came back and didn’t have any legs. He was a schoolteacher from our area.”

Sandy nodded.

“You know what they say. All gave some, and some gave all.”

He shook my hand again and walked away.

Instead of partying that night, I got in my Chevy Beretta and drove home, feeling a bit mellow and kind of sad. US 52 was empty. It was like a dark asphalt snake running parallel to the Ohio River illuminated under a sliver of silver moon.

If I hadn’t reached into the glove compartment for my recorder, I probably would’ve completely forgotten that I was in a car, that’s how far away my head was as I told myself the story of meeting Sandy Kane.

“He wanted to hear Credence, Seger, and Skynyrd,” I said, speaking into the recorder. We gave him a double shot of our southern best, and when he left, he said, “All gave some, and some gave all.”

The recorder was going, so I just started singing to the melody I heard in my head. I thought back to a statue I used to see when I was a kid, somewhere we used to travel to when we played football. It was a monument to veterans. I could still see it in my mind. It read:
All Gave Some, Some Gave All.

I knew a man called him Sandy Kane

Few folks even knew his name

But a hero yes was he

Left a boy, came back a man

Still many just don’t understand

About the reasons we are free

I can’t forget the look in his eyes

Or the tears he cried

As he said these words to me

All gave some, and some gave all

Some stood through for the red, white, and blue

And some had to fall

And if you ever think of me

Think of all your liberties and recall

Some gave all

Now Sandy Kane is no longer here

But his words are oh so clear

As they echo throughout our land

For all his friends who gave us all

Who stood the ground and took the fall

To help their fellow man

Love your country and live with pride

And don’t forget those who died

America, can’t you see

All gave some, and some gave all

And some stood through for the red, white, and blue

And some had to fall

And if you ever think of me

Think of all your liberties and recall

Some gave all

And if you ever think of me

Think of all your liberties and recall,

Yes recall

Some gave all

Some gave all.

I finished without pausing. I never wrote a word on paper. All of it came out as a piece. I was so freaked out that I woke up Cindy. Breathless, I sat on the side of the bed with my guitar in my lap. “You’re not going to believe this,” I said.

Instead of telling her what had happened, I sang her the song. When I finished, I asked what she thought of it. She wiped her eyes.

“Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.”

I knew “Some Gave All” was different from my other songs. From that night on, it felt like it was my child. It was part of me. It became my mantra and my attitude toward life. I knew the song was
special, so the next day I drove to Flatwoods to play it for my mom, who had the best set of ears of anybody I knew.

After playing “Some Gave All” for her and seeing her reaction, I was even more confident about the song. I knew what I had to do: give it to Charlie Daniels. He was such a big supporter of Vietnam veterans I thought it was a natural for him, and he might even make it a hit.

My mom said, “That song is going to change your life.” I told her about my Charlie Daniels idea. “He’ll record it and I’ll be a songwriter,” I said.

“Oh no, Billy,” she replied. “I love Charlie. But that’s your song.” She shook her head. “That song is meant for you.”

“But—” I started to say.

“No, you are not giving it to him,” she interrupted. “Do not give it to him. That is your song. I have a feeling about it.”

A couple of weeks later, my mom ended up riding with me to Charlie’s concert in Beckley. She hadn’t seen me perform in a long time, and she really did love Charlie Daniels and his sound. She said the way he played the fiddle reminded her of her dad, my papaw Casto. What she didn’t know, though, was that I had made a demo of “Some Gave All” on my four-track and, despite her “feeling,” planned to give it to Charlie. I was obsessed with that; the song was going to bust me through the doors in Nashville.

In the backstage area at the festival, I met Charlie’s longtime keyboard player, Taz DiGregorio. Taz had cowritten Charlie’s massive 1979 hit “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” I showed him my tape and asked if there was any way to get it to Charlie. He pointed out the window to their tour manager and nodded.

“Let’s go,” he said.

I held my cassette but let Taz talk to the tour manager.

“Mr. Daniels is in a meeting,” he said.

“No, man, you don’t have to be like that,” Taz said, clearly knowing better. “This is my friend.”

I ended up handing the cassette to the tour manager, hoping
he would follow through and get it to Charlie. Years later, after the song and the album carrying the same title had been out for a while, I met up with Charlie, who told me “Some Gave All” was one of his favorite songs of mine. He swore he’d never heard it back in the day.

“Well, I gave it to you first,” I said. “That’s the truth.”

“I didn’t hear it or else I would’ve cut it,” he said. “Fate must’ve been on your side.”

And he was right.

CHAPTER 17

A Big “Little Deal”

N
IGHT AFTER NIGHT, WHEN
I went home from the Ragtime, I watched CNN and recorded the bleakest stories on my VCR as if I was documenting the end of the world. I taped ’em all: wars, earthquakes, the depletion of the ozone layer, the slaughter of wild animals, world hunger. If there was a catastrophe someplace, anyplace, I found a way to relate to it.

Sometimes Cindy woke up, came downstairs, and got mad at me. She thought I might be losing my mind and perhaps she was right. But I felt like I needed to feel. For some reason, there was an awakening inside me. The world was spinning fast and I was running out of time.