Authors: Ricky Skaggs
Thing was, I had only myself to blame. The reason I had so much on my plate was that I'd put it there, especially when I demanded to be my own producer. Now, it was worth any headaches for the artistic freedom to control what I put my name on, but it also meant a lot more responsibility. There was no way around that. If a record didn't succeed, the only one to take the heat was me. I also had a lot of extra chores. I had to find the right songs, have enough quality material for a full album, plan all the recording sessions beforehand, and then go in to the studio to cut the tracks and do the overdubs. And always on a deadline . . .
On top of all of that, I had to be out on the road as much as possible. I couldn't afford to miss shows, no matter how much I'd rather camp out in the studio. Ticket sales are how most artists make money to cover their expenses, everything from the bus payments and the salaries of the band and office staff to the mortgage and groceries.
Whenever I was off the road, there was always a project to work onâa video, a record, or a guest host slot on a TV show like
Nashville Now
, where I invited Ralph Stanley on as a featured performer. There was always something to finish up on or something new to start.
Because of these commitments, I only got up to Kentucky to see my folks a couple times a year. Mom and Dad didn't wanna uproot themselves and move to the big city where I was, and I'd never have asked them to do that. Brushy was where their kin and neighbors and church was. But I sure missed 'em, and I wished they coulda seen their grandkids more.
I knew my folks were proud of me, and that's what mattered most. Same with my brothers and sister. For a while, my younger brother Gary worked on my road crew. It was a tough job, with lots of late nights and early mornings and lots of heavy lifting, but he was thankful to have the work, and I was glad to have him. Gary was always happy for my success and always rooting for his brother, same as all my siblings.
Whenever our tour hit the West Coast, my big sister Linda would come to our show and drop by backstage and say hello, and we'd get to catch up for a while. She had moved to the San Jose area because she had multiple sclerosis and the California weather was much better for her health. It was always good to get to visit with her. She passed away last year, and we miss her dearly.
My older brother Garold has always been as proud of me as he could be. He knew that having some hit records hadn't changed me. I was the same kid brother he'd grown up running the woods and jumping creeks and skinning his knees with. He's a hunter and an outdoorsman, and he always will be. You know, Garold recently got remarried, and I drove up to Kentucky for the wedding. Turns out that his bride, Janie Fyffe, was Linda's best friend from their school years, and it was great to get to see the happy couple. Gary was there, too; he also lives in Kentucky with his wife, Regina. It was a nice family reunion.
At the time, staying focused on my career seemed worth the sacrifices. I was making hay while the sun was shining, as the saying goes. There was no telling how long that sun would last. Being a full-time performer, I was a part-time dad, but I made the most of whatever time the kids and I had together. I got to take Mandy and Andrew on the road with me in the summer when they were out of school. They got to see firsthand what their dad did for a living. Plus, they got to see a lot of the world.
It was really great when Mandy and Andrew got old enough to travel with me on the road. After the divorce, I still tried to be the best dad I could, and spend some quality time with the kids. I'd take them on tour with me during their summer vacations, and so we got to see Disneyland and some of the cool theme parks whenever our shows were nearby.
It was like a big caravan back in those days. We'd pull the buses into a park somewhere by a river or creek and set up camp for the night. We'd have a big cookout and we'd fish and we'd have fun just goofing around. The guys in the band would string up a volleyball net, and we'd pick teams and play games.
Me and the kids would stay up late and eat popcorn and watch movies on the VCR. They just loved sleeping on the bus; that was a big deal for them. They had a really good time, and I think they got a good education out there on the road. It really enlarged their view of the world. Mandy got to see Scotland with me on my UK tour in '86. They learned to appreciate other places and other people.
They enjoyed the shows, too, all the excitement and energy that comes from performing for big crowds. Sometimes Andrew would bring my fiddle or mandolin on stage when it was time for me to switch instruments. He was my little roadie, helping out as best he could. Now, Mandy, she was still so shy she wouldn't dare to walk out on that stage in front of all those people, bless her heart!
It was a lot of fun, and it was the best I could do under the circumstances. I was working 250 show dates a year, with a new record to promote every tour. I probably spent way too much time on the road and in the studio, trying to keep all the plates spinning. Sharon and I always tried to make the best of our life together. We had to schedule times to get away, alone. Sometimes, if one of us wasn't working, she or I would join the other one on the road just so we could be together. At the same time my career was taking off, the Whites were starting to enjoy a lot of success. Once in a while they'd tour with me as my opening act, and that was wonderful, because we were together all the time. We were “making it,” and I guess we bought into the idea that the busier we were, the more successful we were.
O
n March 5, 1984, our daughter Molly was born. It was such a watershed moment for Sharon, and it was doubly exciting for me, not just to be a father again but to see how excited Sharon was to have her first child. It really changed our perspective and helped us slow down and take stock of our lives.
Sharon's view of success started to change when she had Molly. She had seen how Cheryl's life had changed when she had her daughter Rachel. I believe in the back of Sharon's mind, she was thinking maybe it was time for her to be a mother, too. We didn't do anything to stop it but just prayed for God's perfect timing.
Sharon didn't want us to have to raise Molly on the road, where things can be unscheduled and inconsistent. She wanted Molly to sleep in her own bed every night. Sharon started touring less. I went home whenever I could. And we hired a wonderful Christian couple named Earl and Sheila Green to be with Molly when we couldn't be.
The Greens were sort of like another set of grandparents for our children. But they did so much more than care for the kids. Earl took care of our yard and the house repairs like our home was a fancy estate. And Sheila did the laundry and housekeeping chores. Earl had served time in Folsom Prison, but he'd been rehabilitated and we saw a gentleness in his heart. He was a humble and hardworking person, and he was good to our children.
Sheila and Earl were truly part of our family. Later, after our son Luke was born in '89, the Greens took the kids to church on Sunday if we were on the road playing weekend shows. And they worked for us for years, even when Sharon was home-schooling the kids for a while, as she did until Molly and Luke were in high school. It took the worry and pressure off Sharon and me to know the kids were with such great folks who loved them as if they were their own. When Mr. Earl passed away, the kids cried their hearts out, they loved him so much. It was like losing a grandparent for them. We were blessed to have the Greens in our lives, and in our family.
Sharon's a great mother, and she's a great musician, too. She has a great voice and great ears as well. I've always admired her ability to hear a good song and recognize how it could work for her and the Whites. She knows a good musician when she hears one, too! There have been some great ones that came through the Whites' band: Jerry Douglas and Tommy White, to name just two. I've got so much respect for her musical judgment.
Sharon has been such a positive force in my life. She believed in me at times when I didn't have much faith in myself. Like in 1985, when I was up for the CMA's biggest prize, the Entertainer of the Year award. I figured the competition was too much, going up against top-selling groups like Alabama that were popular not only with fans but with the Music Row establishment.
In the weeks before the awards show, Sharon kept telling me I was gonna win, saying it was my year. I didn't think so, and I didn't want her to get her hopes up only to be disappointed. But nothing I said would change her mind. When the presenter called my name as the winner, I was as surprised as anybody. Not Sharon, though. She just said, “When are you gonna start listening to me?” We both had a big laugh!
Let me tell you, I was definitely starting to learn. The year before, Sharon had seen something in me that I couldn't see in myself. That time, I paid attention.
We had a two-week tour of Canada coming up, and I found myself without an electric guitar player. I couldn't find a replacement, hard as I tried to. All the guys I knew from Emmylou's Hot Band were busy or unavailable. Albert Lee was working for Eric Clapton, and I couldn't afford James Burton, one of the all-time gods of the Fender Telecaster, idolized by everybody from Keith Richards to Clapton, who said it was James that first inspired him to play guitar. Then I thought about Vince Gill from my Boone Creek days, but he was trying to get a record deal for himself, so he wasn't available, either.
With only a week to go before the tour started, I was in a serious bind. Sharon saw me worried sick about it, and she said, “Ricky, you can play electric guitar. I've heard you play, and I know you can do anything if you set your mind to it.” She'd actually seen me play a little electric Telecaster-style mandolin (I called it a “Mandocaster”) that Joe Glaser had made for me. 'Course, that was an electric mandolin, a whole different animal.
Now, it's true I'd played some acoustic lead guitar, but I'd never seriously considered taking over those duties entirely. I told Sharon there was no way I could get comfortable enough on electric guitar in a week to avoid embarrassing myself on stage. But Sharon really persisted, and eventually I started to believe her when she said, “You can do this!”
That night we went to bed, and I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking,
Maybe she's right
. About four in the morning, I went downstairs and plugged a guitar into an amp and turned the volume down low and started playing. I knew all the licks in my head; I just had to figure out where they were on the guitar. The hard part was trying to learn the backup fills the lead guitar needed to play while I was singing. It was a tall order, the toughest challenge I'd ever had as a musician.
So I decided to learn the intros and the turnarounds and the solos on about a dozen songs that absolutely had to have that electric guitar sound. Then I just set down with my records and practiced those backup fills like I used to do with those old Stanley Brothers LPs.
In less than a week I had the lead guitar down good enough to head out on the tour. Well, I was
hoping
it was good enough. The first night I was really scared. Not just for myself, but for the whole band. I didn't want to let them down or embarrass them in front of the fans. Backstage, the guys were as nervous as I was. Everybody was on edge, 'cause we didn't know how it was gonna turn out.
Finally the moment of truth came: I was holding a custom-made purple Joe Glaser Fender Telecaster plugged into an amp. I was armed for battle, and I thought I was ready. Then I looked out at 15,000 people in the seats, and I thought,
What are you doin', Skaggs, are you crazy? They're all gonna know you're green as a gourd
. It was too late to turn back now. We kicked into “Honey (Open That Door),” and it sounded pretty daggone good. The guys gave me a thumbs-up by the first solo, and I could tell by the smiles on their faces it was working. I passed the “Heartbroke” test, and I survived all the breaks on “Highway 40 Blues,” and by then, I knew I could play. To be honest, I'd hate to have to listen to the tape of my performance that night, but it was good enough to get us through the concert.
After the show, I called Sharon and shouted over the phone, “Thank you so much for telling me I could do this! I love playing this guitar, and I love you, too.” For the next four years, along with my other duties, I played the electric guitar in my band, and I enjoyed every minute. You can hear how much fun we were having on the
Live in London
album, recorded in 1985, and yes, that's the purple Glaser Tele that I'm holding in the cover photo. I still have the Tele, and my son Luke's played it and thinks it rocks. Which it does. Purple used to be my favorite color; now it's plaid!
At that time, I had a pretty good-sized organization, with lots of moving partsâa manager, a band, an office staff, and a road crew, as well as two buses and a tractor-trailer to haul our gear to the show dates.
I always tried to be good to the fans on stage and off. It's easy to be polite and smiley-faced when it happens to be convenient, but it's a lot harder when you're dining out or shopping. Country music fans are as devoted as any you'll ever find, and most just want that moment to connect in person. Sometimes it was an autograph or a handshake or a hug. Sometimes it was a picture. Those just-off-the-bus, hadn't-had-a-shower, looked-like-a-dog-and-smelled-like-it-too shots were hard to do, I admit. But most of the time I said yes, because I knew that without those fans, none of the mouths would ever get fed. I had my fans to thank, right after God, for my success, and am so grateful to them.
To this day, I still remember the wise words of Ernest Tubb, “Be good to your fans, 'cause they're the ones who got you here,” and that's the truth.
Around this time, when I was wrestling with success and learning how to handle it, I was lucky to have Johnny Cash as a friend and a role model. I first met him in 1979 when I worked on the sessions for his
Silver
album, which Brian Ahern produced. I played fiddle and banjo and 12-string guitar on a few songs, one of the rare times Cash ever used a fiddle on a record. Talk about nervous: Try laying down a fiddle solo with the Man in Black a few feet away staring you down. Then I had a chance to be a part of his 1983 Christmas TV special, which was broadcast from the Carter Family Fold in Hiltons, Virginia. I sang Monroe's “Christmas Time's A-Comin'” with my country band. It was such a joy spending time there with John, his wife June, and the Carter Family, especially knowing that all the Carter girls had grown up in Maces Springs, just a ten-minute walk from Hiltons. 'Course, A.P. himself had walked these hills. It's hallowed ground for country music.