Waylon (56 page)

We were going from Greensboro to Tampa when Will turned to me and asked, “Waylon, wha’chu believe?” That’s how he said it;
a Southern expression.
Chu.
It’s almost a greeting, or a serious question, depending on the context.

“Yeah,” I replied, way down in my throat.

If you’re going from Greensboro to Tampa on a “stagecoach,” you know a conversation need not be rushed. We were quiet for
a long time. Finally, Will said, “‘Yeah?’ What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Uh-huh,” I answered. The conversation ran aground.

Will thought about that exchange, reflecting on the state of my cast-iron soul, and all he knew of me, and the next day he
told me it was one of the most profound affirmations of faith he’d ever heard in his life.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

I didn’t understand it that well myself. All I was telling him was that I was a believer, whatever that was. There wasn’t
much else to say. That I could say.

Over the next fifteen years I thought about the question he’d asked me.

What is believing? I knew it wasn’t like those television preachers, with their thousand-dollar suits and trimmed mustaches
and gold chains, saying you could be saved depending on how much money you donate to their theme park. And I understood that
there were things we couldn’t understand, that we had to take on faith, like the love I feel for Jessi, the bond a father
feels for his child, or the spirit of music as it touches Heaven.

In my own way I’m a believer

In my own way, right or wrong

I don’t talk too much about it

It’s something I keep working on

I don’t have much to build on

Just a faith that’s never been that strong

I started writing the song in 1993, trying to be as plain with the words as I could. Sometimes poetry obscures the meaning
of what it’s trying to say, and I didn’t want to confuse myself. I kept thinking of when Will was invited to speak at a congregation
on the border of Harlem, in New York. I don’t know if it was a black church or a white church, but when they asked how they
could do something to benefit the community, he looked around at the sumptuous furnishings and fine decorations, and shrugged
his shoulders. “You people wanted me to come and talk to you about how you might break down some of the barriers between you
and those living across the street. Maybe if you sold this building and spread the proceeds around a little bit, that might
help a lot.” They didn’t invite him back; he didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear.

There’s a man there in that building

He’s a holy man they say

He keeps talking about tomorrow

While I keep struggling with today

He preaches hell and fire and brimstone

And heaven seems so far away

It’s not the religion. Being born, it’s between you and God. That’s the one-on-one. For me, your contribution to the world
is what you’ll be judged on, come judgment day. It’s something from deep inside of you. Help one another along, and try not
to intentionally hurt anybody. We’re here for each other. God loved David’s singing, his harp playing, and maybe, just maybe,
He was amused by David’s dogged determination to find his own place in the world. That may be one man’s interpretation, but
at least it’s mine.

I believe in a higher power

One that loves us one and all

Not someone to solve my problems

Or to catch me when I fall

He gave us all a mind to think with

And to know what’s right or wrong

He is that inner spirit

That keeps us strong.

When I finished the song, and before the Highwaymen recorded it, I showed it to Will.

“That’ll preach,” he said.

Yeah. Uh-huh.

At this point, I’ve given up everything but oxygen. I’m still on drugs, taking handfuls of pills, only this time they’re for
my heart and my blood sugar and my well-being.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss my wild days. “Sometimes when I hear the wind, I wish I was crazy again.” I sent that
song of Bob McDill’s to John Cash once when he had gone straight and I was still messed up. We wound up recording it as a
duet, which seems fitting. It can get rough, keeping to the straight and narrow, especially when I’m trying everything I can
do to live. My hands hurt, and even though they’ve operated on them, they can still get so numb I can’t even feel the guitar.
I get dizzy spells; lightheadedness. Maybe it’s riding the bus. Some of these things might have been affecting me when I was
on drugs, and I just didn’t know it. I liked to get above the pain. Go out in a blaze of glory.

I do know that my new direction is for the better. I have a stable, easy life; everybody around me tries to take care of me.
I may have to watch what I eat, but Maureen cooks meals that are as healthy as they taste good, Jessi pumps vitamins down
me and makes sure I take my medicine, and Shooter tells me what White Zombie is up to on the Internet.

I haven’t slowed down. I’m not sure I even know what the words would mean. I keep thinking about leaving the road, but I never
do. It’s a cycle. Even after the bypass, when I was ready to quit, I went out once and got that instant feedback and appreciation,
with people shouting, girls dancing, and folks putting babies on their shoulders, and was back for good.

I’ve always got a song I’m working on in my hip pocket, or an idea that might need coming to fruition. You’re never really
done with your work in a lifetime, though sometimes other people are able to carry it on for you. The other day I went over
to Emerald Studios in Nashville and cut a track of Buddy Holly’s “Learning the Game,” with Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits.
It’s one of the simplest songs Buddy ever wrote, and I saw him record it on a tape recorder in his living room, right before
we left on the final tour. I don’t think it was finished. It’s only one verse and a chorus, but the way Mark stretched it
out, it seemed complete and realized.

Music passes along. Buddy taught me things about what he was doing, and I picked out certain elements and made them my own.
The same with Ernest Tubb or Carl Smith or Hank Williams. You never hear a piece of music the way the artist intended. You’re
hearing it through your ears, and your own imagination. Somewhere, a kid in a bedroom is listening to one of my records, and
maybe he’s picking up on a chord progression, or a vocal inflection that catches his fancy, and he tries to learn it. He gets
it almost right. In that “almost” is where you can find his personality, his creativity, his style. Hers, for that matter.
Ours.

All we need is the willpower and determination to see our vision through. Clayton Turner is a friend of mine who is a graphic
artist. He’s also a quadriplegic, and he draws by gripping a pencil in his mouth and painstakingly stroking each line just
so. His pictures are large, and when he gets up as far as he can reach, he has to turn the picture over and work on it upside
down.

If art is the answer, what’s the question?

One of the strangest gigs I ever played was on a tour with the World Wrestling Federation. The idea was that I would open
up the night’s mayhem, though they left it up to me whether I wanted to go two falls out of three with Hulk Hogan. At one
arena, the stage was set up behind the chairs, which were bolted to the floor facing the ring. For the entire show, the audience
had to watch us twisted in their seats, craning their necks and contorting their bodies.

Needless to say, we cancelled the rest of those venues. I thought about that what-are-we-doing-here again last year, when
I scheduled a series of acoustic shows: “unplugged,” as they like to call them these days, and thought it might be an interesting
change of pace.

It’s a good idea, on paper. I enjoy singing my songs accompanied only by an acoustic guitar. It’s how I initially write them,
and the intimacy of the setting allows you to hear each nuance, syllable against syllable, emphasizing interpretation. I’ve
always had fun taking a song and changing it to fit my mood, shaping it as the spirit moves me.

In a honky-tonk, though, you ain’t got a chance. Cowboys are whooping and hollering, half drunk and the other half drunker,
shouting out for their favorite songs and having a good ol’ time on a Saturday night.

I’m playing with just an acoustic, with Jigger on another acoustic and Fred Newall on dobro, and you can’t hear anything.
It’s packed to the rafters. There’s a constant hubbub in the room, and I’m trying to sing louder. They’re shouting out for
“Honky Tonk Heroes” and “Hank” and I’m getting mad.

Mad at these fine people who are excited as hell, happy to see me, giving me some of the hard-earned money they’ve worked
for, and wanting me to be the guy that most of them have followed for decades.

I’m sitting up there on a stool trying to be everything but what I was when I started. The thing that brought me to town,
and made me what I am today, and I’m trying to pretend that it doesn’t exist. They want me to be ornery, like the song says.

That honky-tonk would have been set alight with a band. I didn’t have anything with which to fight back the noise. I didn’t
even have my hat.

Black, creased Texas-style, with a silver belt around the crown. The hat.

It’s not so much a piece of wearing apparel as it is an attitude. If I realized how much the hat made me appear differently
when Shooter asked me to take it off when we went to the toy stores, I also underestimated what it did for me when I walked
on a stage. More important, what it meant to those folks out there, who put on their own hats when they leave the house to
go honky-tonkin’, and who shout out “1962 at [so-and-so]” and “Remember Silver City!” They’re letting me know they’ve been
with me the whole time.

I never want my fans to use the words “used to be” when they come around to see my show. I don’t owe them a change; I owe
them myself, being me, whoever they think I am. They’re the only judge and jury I feel responsible to, and I have enough respect
for their good sense to know that they won’t steer me wrong. They won’t change my music, because that’s the basis for my trust
in them. They like that I went up against and beat the system, and was an Outlaw before the movement ever got a name. They
want me to be a hardass sonofabitch if you get me mad; and they want to know that I’ll never be mad at them.

Every so often, I find myself caught up in being the New Waylon. Change is important, even essential, and it’s one way an
artist can stay ahead of the new-is-better obsession that we get on CNN every day. But you have to think about what you’re
changing, and who you’re confusing, and whether booking shows in symphony halls, leaving my black hat at home to gather dust
alongside Andrew Jackson’s hickory walking stick, is going to prove good or bad in the long run. I always liked turning the
St. James Theatre on Broadway into a honky-tonk; I wouldn’t want to turn a honky-tonk into the St. James Theatre.

Sitting alone with an acoustic guitar on that stage, thinking I was starting to become something other than me, I had to laugh
at myself. Another grand awakening. Even after all these years, you still have to watch where you find your motivations, and
you have to keep on remembering to be who you are.

People may tell me that I look better without my hat. Looks aren’t everything, unless you’re looking at you through me, and
paid to get in, in which case, you better like what you see. A hat isn’t just something you wear on your head. It’s your halo.

I get up early in the morning. Jessi calls me a “springer.” My eyes open and I’m awake, ideas that have been circulating around
my subconscious coming to life, and I have to do something about them.

While the house is still asleep, I walk downstairs and out the back door. Tinkerbell, our large long-haired cat with the pushed-in
face, accompanies me outside.

It’s the end of March. Spring comes early to Nashville, and the trees are already budding. Out in back of the house is a small
room that has a couple of guitars and a karaoke cassette machine that I use for recording my songs as I think of them. Mostly,
though, all I have is a piece of paper and a pencil.

I think I get the most satisfaction out of writing a good song. I’m in no hurry. Sometimes I’ll carry an idea around with
me for a year, not knowing what I’m trying to say, chewing on a line here and there, sure that the song itself will tell me
what it means as it grows in my mind. Songs don’t lie.

You can ride on that high for days, the idea emerging from the music you hear deep within. You may have to strain to listen
for it, pulling it toward your consciousness like a distant radio station through the static, trying not to get impatient
and make it something more predictable when you can’t tune it in as well as you want. I close my eyes and let it fill my heart.

Playing the music inside you. That’s what a musician is.

What I am.

T
here’s a lot of going back, coming back.

Labor Day in Littlefield, and everybody is out for the annual Denim festival, held under a miles-long Texas blue sky with
the heat shimmering waves in the distance.

The bus pulls up alongside the Lion’s Club Youth Center for a Shipley family reunion. Momma ushers me through the whirl of
family, second cousins and nieces and nephews and even Uncle Elvis, who I used to buy those cigarettes for. In the hall where
I first played on stage with my brother Tommy, singing Hank Snow songs and scared to death, I stand in the room and watch
the new crop of kids play out their games on that same stage, chasing each other around in circles, starting their growing
up.

My own growing has taken me a stone’s throw over to the Ag Community Center field along Hall Avenue, where, later tonight,
surrounded by a sea of lawn chairs and fire-breathing bar-b-q cook-off tanks, myself and Jessi, Tommy, and John and June Cash
will take the stage. Like I said: Family.