'Scuse Me While I Whip This Out

Chapter One

Outlaws

The life of a country singer can at times be very tedious. You have to pretend that your life is a financial pleasure even when your autographs are bouncing. You often fall prey to the serious songwriters' self-pity syndrome. You begin to believe that all dentists and married couples are happier than you are. Many's the night you feel lonely, empty, homesick for heaven. Everybody you know thinks you've got it made and suddenly you find you're a jet-set gypsy cryin' on the shoulder of the highway. Believe me when I tell you, it's lonely in the middle.

But long before the Outlaw Movement, as we now call it, came along in the 1970s, there were great voices in country music who never fit in wherever they were. Their spirits and songs somehow survived that all-pervasive white noise called the Nashville Sound even before it had a name. I shivered for Jimmie Rodgers, the Singin' Brakeman, standing in the rain waiting for fast freights and faithless women who n ... read full excerpt from: 'Scuse Me While I Whip This Out ebook