Hillbilly Heart
Authors: Billy Ray Cyrus,Todd Gold
Tags: #General, #Religious, #Entertainment & Performing Arts, #Personal Memoirs, #Music, #Biography & Autobiography, #Composers & Musicians
Johnny Cash sent this letter to me in June 1992.
Letter courtesy of The John R Cash Revocable Trust
Text copyright © 2013 by Billy Ray Cyrus
Jacket photograph © Nancy Lee Andrews
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Amazon Publishing
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781477800720
ISBN-10: 1477800727
Credits appear on
page 274
.
His truth shall be your shield and your buckler.
—
PSALM
91:4
Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat.
—
NAPOLEON HILL
Expect a miracle.
—
PAPAW CYRUS
This book is dedicated to the dreamers.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART I Country as Country Can Be
CHAPTER 2 Back When I Was Young
CHAPTER 3 A Series of Adjustments
CHAPTER 4 Silence Speaks Louder than Words
CHAPTER 8 “Buy a Guitar and Start a Band”
CHAPTER 11 Too Rock for Country
CHAPTER 12 Baby Toys and New Cars
CHAPTER 13 “Roses in the Winter”
CHAPTER 14 “King of the Ragtime Lounge”
CHAPTER 17 A Big “Little Deal”
CHAPTER 18 “Don’t Tell My Heart”
PART III Be Careful What You Wish For
CHAPTER 19 “Achy Breaky Heart”
CHAPTER 21
Storm in the Heartland
CHAPTER 22 “It’s About the Chase”
CHAPTER 23 What’s Meant to Be Will Be
CHAPTER 26 “I Want My Mullet Back”
CHAPTER 27 “She’s Hannah Montana”
CHAPTER 30 “Ready, Set, Don’t Go”
CHAPTER 31 “Back to Tennessee”
PROLOGUE
W
HO KNOWS HOW THIS
stuff works?
Not me.
I’ll tell you a story. In 1993, I was shooting a video for “In the Heart of a Woman,” the first single off my second album,
It Won’t Be the Last.
We made the video in the center of the Navajo Nation in the Grand Canyon. I had never seen a natural landscape any more dramatic, beautiful, or spiritual than Canyon de Chelly National Monument. Its towering sandstone walls and ancient dwellings are magical.
After the shoot, one of the tribe’s elders introduced me to a little boy who had Down syndrome. When I asked if he had an Indian name, he quietly answered no.
I noticed a picture of an eagle on his T-shirt and said, “Well, you’re Soaring Eagle.”
Suddenly, the elder bent down, scooped up a handful of dirt, threw it in the air, and said, “Huh, Soaring Eagle!”
The tribe repeated it. “Soaring Eagle.”
The boy’s face unfolded into a grin of pure joy. It was a beautiful sight, every bit as magical as the land where we stood.
Several hours later, I was back on a plane to Nashville and eager to see my soon-to-be wife, Tish, and our six-month-old daughter, Miley. Even though I was working on my second album, I was still riding the rocket of the “Achy Breaky Heart” phenomenon, and it was a crazy time for me. I don’t think I slept for a year, maybe longer. Indeed, by the time I got home from the video shoot, I had been up for a couple of days, and I guess I looked like it, too. Tish sent me straight to the bathtub and told me to use the soap.
Afterward, as I sat in the bedroom, re-acclimating to being home, I flashed back to that little boy I’d met in the canyon. I wanted to tell Tish about him, the way his smile had come from inside and taken over his entire being, and how fortunate he had made me feel about being a new daddy to a healthy baby girl.
Suddenly, those emotions turned into words. They filled my head, and I found a pen and piece of paper and wrote them down as fast as they came to me.
When they stopped, I had a poem. I titled it “Trail of Tears” and showed it to Tish.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I think I’m going to buy a frame and hang it on the wall,” she said, and that’s exactly what she did. We later moved and the poem came down.
Almost three years went by before I thought about that poem again. It was late 1995, and I was enjoying the early morning on top of the hill by the fire I had built that sits in the shadows of my teepee. It’s like a church to me—where I escape and think and get in touch with timeless stories that emanate from the land. It’s a surefire place to get perspective on things.
I don’t remember why I went out there that particular morning, whether anything was bothering me, but I do recall myself thinking about the Indian families and children who had been marched across nearby land in the 1830s, along what became known as the Trail of Tears. The trail ran close to my land. I pictured those uprooted families—daddies and mamas like myself and Tish, and
their children, tears in their eyes, fear in their hearts, many of them barefoot, marching through mud and snow—and that’s when I remembered my poem about that little boy, Soaring Eagle.
The words came right back to me, only this time I heard them with a bluegrass melody reminiscent of the old Earl Scruggs and Bill Monroe records that had provided the soundtrack to my early childhood. Up there, all by myself, I put words to music and sang that song for the first time ever.
I had a show that night in Canada. On the plane, I noticed guitarist Don Von Tresse, who had written “Achy Breaky Heart,” had brought a mandolin. I had never played mandolin before, let alone a right-handed one. But I picked up Don’s beautiful little instrument, turned it around for my left-handedness, strummed once or twice, and said to the guys in my band, “Listen to what I wrote today.”
Too many broken promises
Too many Trail of Tears
Too many times you were left cold
For oh so many years
Too many times you walked away
And was made to feel ashamed
And though you only tried to give
You were often blamed
How can this world be so dark,
so unfair, so untrue?
How did the cards of life
fold right on top of you?
God in Heaven, hear my prayer
If you are still above
Send the children hopes and dreams
And lots and lots of love
For this I only ask of you
To conquer all their fears
And let them soar like eagles
Across the Trail of Tears.
I played the poem exactly as I had heard it. And now it was a song, and the guys in my band were into it.
Ordinarily, we rehearse a new song for a few weeks, if not longer, before adding it to the set list. But I was eager to share “Trail of Tears,” and so we worked it up during sound check and performed it that night. As I told the audience, I needed to share it with them. Why else would that song have come to me?
For me, sharing music is what I’m all about. As I write this, it’s been twenty years since “Achy Breaky Heart” became a multi-million-selling smash hit around the world, transforming me in blinding speed from a hard-working barroom country rocker into a household name. Since then, I have released thirteen albums, more than a dozen hit records, starred in two hit TV series, made two handfuls of movies, and recently starred on Broadway in the hit musical
Chicago
. Best of all, I have been married to the love of my life for nearly two decades and raised five children in a business where few people do either one.
I’m not saying it’s been a smooth ride. From the beginning, I battled for respect from Nashville, and like a lot of people, I’ve also battled myself.