# Wait...Randy Travis is experiencing a downward spiral into drunkeness and despair? Randy Travis?!! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 9, 2012, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971 "2012-08-09T16:16:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 12:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/21 "2012-08-10T12:25:08Z")
Was Randy ever known as a songwriter? I think he’s written some, but he mostly got fame as a good singer of basic, traditional country songs. And he’s already gone through a Gospel phase. Randy is not one of those guys with some well-hidden years teaching English Lit in abortive attempts at graduate degrees, turning their poetic gifts into songs for the Nashville machine. He’s a guy with a good voice who had a long-standing business & personal relationship that ended. He was never trendy at all & the trends of Country Pop Radio have moved on. There are younger, cuter hat acts out there. He never wore a hat… ---
**Author:** ![TheChileanBlob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thechileanblob/32/435_2.png) [@TheChileanBlob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheChileanBlob)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/22 "2012-08-10T12:31:46Z")
I saw this coming from a mile away. Ever since he stole that song from [Peggy Hill](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0620283/). ---
**Author:** ![jasg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f0a364/32.png) [@jasg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasg)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/23 "2012-08-10T15:02:02Z")
I keep hearing Dean Wormer saying “Angry, drunk and naked is no way to go through life, son.” ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/24 "2012-08-10T16:20:08Z")
> [@MOIDALIZE](#): > > This just strikes me as odd. I’m trying to think of another performer as bland and inoffensive as Randy Travis whose life melted down publicly, and I can’t. The list is so very, very long. . . [Frankie Lyman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankie_Lyman). Two quickie marriages, both legally suspect, dead of a heroin overdose at 25. [Richard Carpenter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Carpenter#Personal_life), addicted to drugs while his equally wholesome sister, Karen, lived with her parents until she was 26, then had “a whirlwind courtship” and marriage, then died of anorexia. [Tanya Tucker](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Tucker), the really talented 14-year old country singer who later had the misfortune to hook up with Glen Campbell while he was spiraling downhill. Teen hearthrob [Andy Gibb](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Gibb#Career_decline). [Freddie Prinze.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Prinze) His rise, fall and suicide happened so quickly he didn’t have time to develop a bad reputation before everything crashed. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2012, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/25 "2012-08-10T22:10:25Z")
> [@Tangent](#): > > He was “boozing in front of a Baptist church.” If he can keep from hurting himself or others, that’s something I’d support just for the principle of it 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![kittenblue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ba8739/32.png) [@kittenblue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kittenblue)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/26 "2012-08-11T00:45:16Z")
I just loved the interview with the man from the convenience store who said that earlier that evening Travis had walked into the store naked, wanting to buy cigarettes, and the only thing the guy asked him was how did he plan on paying for them, since he didn’t have any money and no pockets to check for a stray ten. In the film of him being released from jail in his paper suit, you can see a pack in the pocket of the top, so he got some somewhere. ---
**Author:** ![lisacurl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/41988e/32.png) [@lisacurl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisacurl)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/27 "2012-08-11T20:22:05Z")
I’m generally in favor of public meltdowns involving nudity. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/28 "2012-08-11T20:26:22Z")
> [@jasg](#): > > I keep hearing Dean Wormer saying “Angry, drunk and naked is no way to go through life, son.” Yeah, but pick any two and it can be pretty fun. ---
**Author:** ![randwill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a3d4f5/32.png) [@randwill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/randwill)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/29 "2012-08-11T21:18:04Z")
Is this the one who’s married to Nicole Kidman? ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/30 "2012-08-11T21:46:53Z")
> [@randwill](#): > > Is this the one who’s married to Nicole Kidman? If I am being whooshed, so be it, but no, that’s the Australian Keith Urban, not Travis, who’s American… ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/31 "2012-08-11T22:01:59Z")
I’ve been into some crazy shit in my day, but how do you end up in public naked and driving a car? Not only that, but you stop off to buy smokes when you are butt ass naked? You don’t think that will tip the cops off that you are driving drunk? Plus not get you any cigarettes because you have no money? I think this advances my own pet theory that alcoholics are simply people who have an enormous tolerance for alcohol. Most regular people have a few drinks and feel tipsy. If they have 7 or 8, they crawl into bed and go to sleep, feel like garbage the next morning and don’t do that again for a while. An alcoholic can stay functional through all of that. God only knows how shitfaced drunk you have to be to walk into a convenience store naked and try to buy cigarettes. Any normal person would have been passed out hours before that, and hence, no DUI arrest. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/32 "2012-08-11T22:08:54Z")
All of that being said, I feel sorry for the guy. People, men especially, can react to a divorce in nasty ways. I had a friend who’s wife left him with the house, took the kids and left the state. He was a regular guy before that, but afterwards simply drank all of the time. He quit going to work and got fired. He didn’t or couldn’t pay the bills anymore so the cable and TV and then the phones and electricity got shut off around him. He actually got to the point where he was uprooting his hardwood floors and burning them in the fireplace to keep warm in the winter, all the while drinking. (The money never seemed to run out for cheap vodka). He finally snapped out of it. ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/33 "2012-08-11T23:41:10Z")
My God! He just ‘snapped out of it’? What happened to him then? Is he back to whatever normal is? ---
**Author:** ![MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MPB_in_Salt_Lake)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2012, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/34 "2012-08-11T23:46:55Z")
Does anyone else think ol’ Randy Travis’ mug shot makes him look as mean as a motherfucking rabid rattlesnake? (yeah, I _know_ that reptiles can’t contract rabies) But seriously, he has a look on his face that is pure, unbridled malevolence, a guy I would most certainly cross the street to avoid walking past… ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2012, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/35 "2012-08-12T00:04:22Z")
> [@salinqmind](#): > > My God! He just ‘snapped out of it’? What happened to him then? Is he back to whatever normal is? This was many years ago and I was a teenager. I remember a bunch of us, including my Dad, going over and convincing him to move back in with his Mom. He stayed there for about a month, fed him, sobered him up and got his mind right. He flew out to where his ex-wife was and tried to convince her to come home. It didn’t work. He eventually ended up meeting someone else any moving away. I last talked to him maybe five years ago and he is happy with a new wife and saw his (now grown) kids from time to time. Maybe “snapped out of it” was too simple, but he reversed his decline to lead a semi-normal life. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2012, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/36 "2012-08-12T15:46:57Z")
> [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](#): > > Does anyone else think ol’ Randy Travis’ mug shot makes him look as mean as a motherfucking rabid rattlesnake? (yeah, I _know_ that reptiles can’t contract rabies) > > But seriously, he has a look on his face that is pure, unbridled malevolence, a guy I would most certainly cross the street to avoid walking past… Well, in fairness, if you had just gotten so shitfaced drunk that you drove naked, stopped by a convenience store to buy smokes…while naked, and then crashed your car and passed out next to the road…also naked and were awoken by police officers who probably roughed you up a little because you got combative because you were so shitfaced drunk…and naked, then I would gather that the look on your mugshot would not be the same look that you had on your face for the birth of your first child. 😉 Just saying. ---
**Author:** ![Yorikke](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yorikke/32/4335_2.png) [@Yorikke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yorikke)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2012, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/37 "2012-08-12T17:23:28Z")
Jesus Christ, driving a 98 Trans Am? Straight outta the holler, yo! ---
**Author:** ![3trew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/13edae/32.png) [@3trew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3trew)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2012, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/38 "2012-08-13T02:10:36Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > Well, in fairness, if you had just gotten so shitfaced drunk that you drove naked, stopped by a convenience store to buy smokes…while naked, and then crashed your car and passed out next to the road…also naked and were awoken by police officers who probably roughed you up a little because you got combative because you were so shitfaced drunk…and naked, then I would gather that the look on your mugshot would not be the same look that you had on your face for the birth of your first child. 😉 Just saying. I have seen the look I had after the birth of my first child. As happy as I was, there was a striking similarity. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2012, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/39 "2012-08-13T03:37:22Z")
> [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](#): > > Does anyone else think ol’ Randy Travis’ mug shot makes him look as mean as a motherfucking rabid rattlesnake? (yeah, I _know_ that reptiles can’t contract rabies) > > But seriously, he has a look on his face that is pure, unbridled malevolence, a guy I would most certainly cross the street to avoid walking past… He just looks like he has a lot on his mind. Well, on his head. He has an unusually large forehead, is what I’m getting at. Wait, I think I told that wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Sodalite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/34f0e0/32.png) [@Sodalite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sodalite)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2012, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971/40 "2012-08-13T05:19:39Z")
_sigh_ From Wikipedia: > [@](#): > > Marshville is a town in Union County, North Carolina, United States. Its population was 2,360 at the 2000 census. Marshville is known as the birthplace of country music singer Randy Travis. Growing up in Union County, I heard about Randy Travis constantly. A lot of the people I went to school with either knew him or were related to him. I wasn’t into his music and didn’t care about him one way or another but there were a lot of people who did. When you drive into Marshville, you are greeted by huge signs that say, “Welcome to Marshville, HOME OF RANDY TRAVIS”. He’s pretty much the only thing that place has going for it and they’ve always made a huge deal out of it. I have wondered how he kept going with that kind of burden weighing on him. Having the expectations of on entire town on your back has got to be a hard way to live. Honestly, I thought this would have happened years ago. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wait-randy-travis-is-experiencing-a-downward-spiral-into-drunkeness-and-despair-randy-travis/630971.md?page=3)