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…
Frankie Lyman. Two quickie marriages, both legally suspect, dead of a heroin overdose at 25.
Richard Carpenter, 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, the really talented 14-year old country singer who later had the misfortune to hook up with Glen Campbell while he was spiraling downhill.
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.
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.
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).
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just saying.