The first time I drove to Nashville to throw my life away on a band that did not exist yet, I rode shotgun in Taylor’s Honda Element with my knees up around a guitar case and the whole back of the car packed to the roof with amps, cords, and the blind faith you can only afford before you have much to lose.
It was the middle of October 2011. I was twenty-seven. I had quit a steady job in Austin and was about to sell my car. Had you asked me what the plan was, I could not have told you, because the plan was the drive. Taylor knew some guys. The guys could sing. That was enough to point a packed-out Honda thirteen hours northeast and go.
Taylor and I went all the way back. We grew up together in Richardson and had played in bands since we were teenagers. Ricky Young and Joel King were already in Nashville, waiting for the right lineup to arrive. We did not audition one another. We started playing, and it worked. When a band works that quickly, you stop asking why and start being afraid of the day it might stop.
The older I get, the more I respect the kid who got in that car. People talk about chasing a dream as though the wanting makes you clean. Mostly, it is just leaving. You leave the job, the lease, the girl, and the version of your life that was working well enough. You do it on the strength of a feeling you cannot defend to anybody with a mortgage.
I only knew that wherever the music was, that was where I belonged. The music had gone to Nashville without me, and I was going up there to get it.