Month: May 2015

Gone To Texas

pickupcowboy 4 Comments

After band rehearsal on Wednesday afternoon we hung around for a bit as Jonathan was working with his son, Rowan, in the front yard teaching him how to ride his bike without training wheels. It was a beautiful moment, the end of the training wheels and the edge of freedom – we are not much different, Rowan and us. We all need a helping hand keeping it together and getting us down the road, to our next challenge. 

We are headed for Richardson, Texas,  and The Wildflower Festival; our hearts are with the folks who lost their loved ones in the recent storms and tornadoes that passed through the Dallas Ft. Worth area last week.

It’s a long trail, the road from North Carolina to Texas. It crosses the Smoky Mountains, the land of the Cherokee, and heads down the timeless Mississippi River, through the oak covered hills outside of Little Rock Arkansas, across the wind swept corner of Oklahoma and down to the prairie country of Texas and Dallas-Fort Worth.

I think we take a little piece of those towns, of every highway and byway that we cross with us; it forms our conversations and inspires the music we listen to as we travel down the trail.

We left rehearsal that afternoon, Jonathan and Rowan in their front yard, on the greenest grass and beneath a Carolina blue sky, it was a scene right from a Norman Rockwell painting; their laughter echoing to the heavens as we drove off back to our homes.

I admired Rowan learning to ride his bike, how brave he was when he told his dad, who was pushing him across the lawn, to “let go”. He wrecked every time, falling in all sorts of fashion, and on occasion getting banged up, but he kept at it and was not to be denied.

I am trying to keep that spirit alive in my life, the bravery to accept my failures and find the courage to continue. We are headed out Friday morning for another tour and another chance to make music together as a band, out on the edge and gone to Texas.

Adios, Paul

  • Saturday, May 16, 2015 | Wildflower! Music and Arts Festival | Richardson, TX
  • Sunday, May 17, 2015 | House Concert | Allen, TX
  • Wednesday, May 20, 2015 | Sweet P’s BBQ & Soul House | Knoxville, TN
  • Thursday, May 21, 2015 | Barley’s Taproom | Maryville, TN
  • Friday, May 22, 2015 | Down Home | Johnson City, TN
  • Saturday, May 23, 2015 | Historic Cowee School | Franklin, NC
  • Sunday, May 24, 2015 | White Squirrel Festival | Brevard, NC