Kentucky Traveler (48 page)

T
hat's me having lunch, 1954.

M
y dad and I are holding my baby brother Gary, 1959.

M
y very first appearance at the Ernest Tubb Record Shop in Nashville, Tennessee. I'm playing alongside my mom, dad, and Elmer Burchett, June 1961.

P
laying my first Gibson mandolin with mom and dad on the front steps of our new home in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, Fall 1961.

M
y dad and I sang for our friends and neighbors at the Blaine High School in 1960. I was six years old. That same year I got to meet and play with my musical hero Bill Monroe.

T
hat's me holding my toy Kentucky flintlock rifle on the steps of Abraham Lincoln's birthplace in Hodgenville, Kentucky, 1961.

M
y high school picture from freshman year. I was thirteen years old, and it was the year I got saved, 1967.

M
y first bluegrass festival with the legendary Ralph Stanley at Camp Springs, North Carolina, in 1970. My best friend Keith Whitley and I had both just turned sixteen.

K
eith and I sitting for our first publicity shot, 1970.

I
n the summer of 1971 Keith and I took our first trip to Texas with the Clinch Mountain Boys. This photo was taken on the day we met Sharon and Cheryl White.

I
joined the band The New South and played alongside J. D. Crowe and Tony Rice, 1975.

A
year later I left The New South with bandmate Jerry Douglas to form Boone Creek. Clockwise, from top left: Tommy Hough, Jerry Douglas, me, Terry Baucom, and Wes Golding, 1976.

H
olding my firstborn, my precious little baby girl Mandy, 1977.