Rebel for God

by Eddie DeGarmo

  We began to tour the country playing the new music from Straight On. Our concert audiences were all over the spectrum. Some nights we played to a couple hundred people. Other nights it would be a couple thousand folks. There didn’t seem to be enough places for us to play. Or, to clarify, there weren’t enough places that would pay us an honorarium to play a concert. Most places and promoters loved to have us play, but it would have to be for free. That was great for the ministry and we saw many lives changed in those concerts. It was a tough way to make a living though.

  One night we played a show at a stately, secular, Southern university in Mississippi, where the sidewalks were lined with magnolias and live oaks and moss hung from giant limbs over lush lawns edged with azaleas. We played that night to a shockingly wild group of “mainstream” college students. It was not billed as a “Christian” event so we had all kinds of students attending. We learned to thrive in those conditions and enjoyed presenting our music, and God’s message, in a neutral setting.

  At the end of the concert I noticed a very attractive female student hanging out by the stage where my keyboards were. I went over to speak with her and she began to ask me very personal questions about my life and so forth. Her questions were a bit too personal, if you know what I mean. I answered some of her questions and made some small talk to distract from the rest. Then she asked me where we were staying for the night. I certainly did not want to tell her, so I called our bass player, Kenny, over to save me. He walked over, and I gave him the eye. He saw what was happening and called me away. Later, after we packed everything up in our truck, we got a bite to eat at a late night restaurant and then proceeded to our motel.

  How this next part happened is something, to this day, that remains a mystery to me. The inn was one of those old style motels where the second floor doors all opened up onto a long balcony with a rail overlooking the parking lot. When I placed the key in the door and opened it, I was first startled to see the lamp was on, but when my eyes focused, I freaked out. The attractive girl from the university was lying on one of the beds reading the Gideons Bible. As I said, we roomed two guys to a room, so Kenny was close behind me and also saw the girl in there.

  After I recovered my wits, I said, “You’ve got to get out of here. Right now!”

  She wanted to talk about it.

  I said, “No more conversation. Get out now!” She got up and left while Kenny and I sat there bewildered by what just happened. And then I made a big mistake. “Kenny,” I said. “I’m really worried about what Susan may think of all this craziness. I don’t want her thinking about stuff like this happening to us on the road. I think it’s better we don’t tell our wives. No need to have them worrying about us.”

  Famous last words.

  A few days later we were having band practice in our rehearsal room behind the house. It was customary for us to rehearse for an hour or so and then take a coffee break for a few minutes. We would all go into our little house through the back door and into the kitchen area. Susan and the girls would usually be around to join in on the conversation and catch up on the goings on of the band members and their families.

  That day was no different. The four of us went inside for a break. Susan and Dana were having a conversation about who knows what when I heard a knock on the front door. I walked over, opened it, and met the stare of a florist holding a long stem rose in a vase.

  “Is Eddie DeGarmo here?” he asked. “I have a delivery for him.”

  “That’s me.”

  The deliveryman handed me the goods, smiling. “Then this is for you.”

  I walked back inside and found all eyes focused on me.

  “Is that for you?” Susan asked. “What is it?” She looked to be in shock. Her face tightened. “Who is it from?” she snarled.

  I opened the note card and it simply said, “Next time you can stay with me, Eddie.” It was signed “Love from Mississippi.”

  Susan then asked me what was written on the card. Either I couldn’t think of the answer, or my mouth momentarily forgot how to form any words at all. Either way, I was dead.

  “I promise, baby,” I began desperately, “This is not what it seems. I swear! Nothing happened! Just ask Kenny. He was there! There was this—this crazy college girl was chasing me. I swear, nothing happened!” I said that last “I swear” while sinking to my knees to the floor in front of her. Next up: full-blown groveling.

  All the band guys were in shock like me. I think they were all either about to drop to their knees and beg for my life with me, or to turn and run. Either was possible. At that point Susan couldn’t contain it any longer. She suddenly burst into laughter.

  She pointed her finger directly toward the end of my nose and said, “Don’t you ever withhold anything from me again. You tell me everything that happens while you are on tour. It’s not right to keep stuff like that from me. You see, I’ll always find out. I sent the flowers!”

  “What?” I gasped.

  “Yes!” she continued, in utter victory. “Kenny told his wife. She told me. I sent you the flowers to teach you a lesson!” She then turned to the band members, who at that moment were trying to sneak out of the back door.

  “That goes for you guys too!” she hollered.

  That taught me a good lesson. I married a wild and spirited woman who is not to be messed with. She can be pretty funny, too.

  Thankfully, I never heard from that Mississippi girl again. I learned through these shenanigans, though, something about the strange way some people relate to people they see as celebrities. Fortunately, that story ended well. Susan made fun of me and also made a strong point at the same time. Those living in the public eye or enjoying a little celebrity of sorts, even if it’s in the Christian realm, can attract this kind of unwanted attention. In fact, sometimes the Christian element just makes it weirder. These moments can begin as amusing or flattering, and usually they involve nothing more than an awkward conversation. But they can turn really scary.

  For example, a few years later, after the release of our Mission of Mercy album, our popularity rose to a new level. We enjoyed a few big hits by then. I was working in the studio producing Farrell and Farrell’s Choices album while off the road between tours. Oddly, I began to receive small gifts in my home mailbox with simple, handwritten notes to me. They were weird things like stuffed animals and various trinkets. Over a period of a week I found a few of those things. I showed them to Susan and it weirded us out a little bit for sure.

  One night we were home watching TV, and Susan noticed a person watching us through our window from a car parked on the street in front of our house. She got up, opened the front door, and the car immediately started up and sped away. Then it happened again a few nights later. Our phone rang a lot, too. We noticed that if Susan answered, the caller would hang up. A few minutes later it would ring again. If I answered it, I would hear the cheery voice of a girl who worked in the Nashville office of a company D&K hired to provide press, publicity, and promotional work for us. I started to put two and two together. It takes me a minute, sometimes.

  She called one night and I thought I was smart enough to talk some sense into her. That was a big mistake. Susan didn’t like it at all so she just walked over and unplugged the phone from the wall.

  “You can’t talk any sense into her!” she shouted. “My gosh, she’s driving down here from Nashville at all hours of the night and stalking our house. There is something wrong with her.”

  Susan was right.

  A few days later, I was driving to Ardent in the morning to work with Bob Farrell and stopped to get a cup of coffee at a convenience store. When I came out, I noticed the same girl from Nashville sitting in her car staring at me. She even waved. I nervously waved back in a state of disbelief and got in my car and drove away. She lives over 200 miles away, I thought to myself. That really disturbed me.

  After a long day at Ardent I left to go home at around 6:00 p.m. I walked out of the building and there she wa
s, waiting for me right outside the studio door.

  “I just gotta talk to you, Eddie,” she said. “I know we are supposed to be together. God told me so!”

  “Well, He didn’t tell me that,” I insisted. “What in the world are you doing? Please leave. You need to go home.”

  She blocked my path as I tried to walk away. “Why won’t you talk to me?”

  “Because this can’t go anywhere! I’m going home to my wife. You gotta leave me alone.” I seethed while I spoke.

  She just smiled. Then it dawned on me she got what she came for; attention from me. Any attention. It didn’t matter if it was positive or negative. The really scary thing was she was not crying, screaming, or even upset. She spoke calmly and seemed rational—other than she was CRAZY!

  The next day when I came to the studio she was still there. I think she slept in her car. I had no choice but to call the police. They told me they couldn’t do anything without an order from a judge about stalking. Hopefully those laws have changed. By then I was thinking about Clint Eastwood in Play Misty for Me or the ending of Fatal Attraction. Neither one ended well. Those guys crossed the line of decency in those movies. I did nothing improper, but I was really freaking out, thinking this girl could still shoot me.

  Bob Farrell offered to go out to her car and talk to her. He actually got her to leave.

  Unfortunately, when we came out in the dark at the end of the day to go home, she was back!

  I ran inside and had no choice but to call the folks she worked for to hopefully get a contact for someone in her family who could help her. I tried not to do that because I knew it would probably mean she would get fired. Finally, I was able to get her parents’ phone number and I called them immediately. Her father answered the phone.

  “Hello sir, my name is Eddie DeGarmo and I’m calling about your daughter.”

  Before I could get another word out he said, “I know all about you. I know what you’ve done to my daughter. She’s told me everything. You should be ashamed!”

  I said, “Look, I absolutely haven’t done anything to your daughter, but you can believe what you want to believe. I can’t change your mind about that for now. But, your daughter is living in her car, as we speak, in a recording studio parking lot in Memphis, Tennessee. She’s been there for a few days. You need to come help her and take her home.”

  He began to settle down after I said that. He drove a few hundred miles that night to Memphis and rescued his daughter. Thank God.

  It can be difficult to know how to act as a public person while maintaining a private life. You want to be friendly and open. I didn’t want to put boundaries around me and be removed from “real life” in terms of friends, neighbors, or church. I also needed to be accountable to those around me and those who love me. It’s not always easy to know where to draw the line. It’s a balance. But sometimes, well, things can definitely get weird.

  TWENTY

  Special Kind of Love

  One of the tours we mounted in support of the Straight On album took us east to Washington, DC and on up to Maine. I was driving one afternoon on a beautiful two-lane road through the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia on our way to our first show in our nation’s capital. Happy Truck suddenly began to shake violently. It felt as if the truck was acting like a Hawaiian hula dancer while barreling down the road. I had to stop immediately.

  When all five of us sweaty bodies rolled out of there to assess the problem, we discovered the right dual rear wheels appeared very loose and oddly tilted to one side. Upon closer inspection we found six of the eight lug bolts designed to hold the rear wheels in place on the axle had sheared off. The wheels were only being held by the two remaining lug bolts. We were very lucky the wheels didn’t come flying off at full speed.

  We were parked on the side of the two lane road down below a gorgeous antebellum mansion sitting proudly on a gentle rise about a hundred yards or so above us. The house was surrounded by acres of manicured, fenced, pastureland and huge oak trees. There were several horses roaming freely near an impressive looking barn that was nicer than most of my friends’ houses. I decided I would hike up the hill to the mansion and ask if I could use their telephone to call a repair shop. Kenny Porter, our bass player on the tour, decided he would accompany me up the hill.

  The genteel old house was indeed an imposing looking edifice—a throwback to the Old South. I could easily visualize southern gentlemen smoking cigars on the front steps while women in hoop skirts drank mint juleps served by servants in tails and white gloves. It was that kind of place. Spooky. I was intimidated by the surroundings, and the thought of knocking on its massive oak doors made me nervous. When we reached the front porch with its tall Greek columns, I was taken aback by the beauty of the place. The tall porch ceiling was painted robin’s egg blue, which I later learned deterred the wasps from building nests because they were fooled into thinking it was the blue sky. I kind of got that same feeling when I was fortunate enough to be able to look out of the windshield riding in the back of Happy Truck.

  I gathered myself and knocked on the door. After a few moments it opened slowly, and a beautiful lady appeared. Although it was the middle of the afternoon, she was wearing a long red evening gown. She whispered in a low and breathy voice, “May I help you?” I was probably blushing so much my face matched her dress, but I got it together and quickly explained our situation. I told her we were a music group headed to DC for a concert and pointed to our broken down truck below on the road.

  “Would it be possible to use your telephone to call a repair shop?” I asked.

  “It’s possible,” she said languidly. “The telephone is at the top of the stairs.” She turned around and pointed the way up a curved stairway rivaling anything in Gone With the Wind.

  I proceeded slowly up the stairs while she and Kenny followed a couple of stairs behind. As I climbed the staircase I thought I heard laughter from the left, beyond the balcony. I continued up, cautiously. When I reached the top balcony I looked to the left and saw the entire second floor of the large house was converted into one big room. I also noticed rows of twin-size beds lining both sides of the room. There were easily eight to ten beds up there. It was like the most elegant Army barracks you could imagine. I also became instantly aware of the fact that upon most of the beds sat a beautiful woman; some more dressed than others, if you get my point. My eyes were popping out!

  Nobody said a word. The ladies were all just staring at me. I stood speechless as I was on my honeymoon. Just as I was about to completely lose it, scream, and bolt down the stairs, a door opened at the far end of the room that looked to be a bathroom. A topless lady walked out into the large room. Upon closer examination of the situation, however, I noticed something bizarre indeed. The woman had no breasts! She was as flat-chested as a man.

  At that moment, I looked at the lady who met us at the front door and blurted out, “Okay. The joke’s on me. What’s going on?”

  The room burst out into laughter and all the “girls” were cracking up. Some were clapping their hands. Then the lady (more on that later) said, “Oh honey, we are all transvestites. We are a band of musicians, too.”

  It turned out they were a show band of female impersonators living together in the mansion. They were just a normal group of traveling troubadour transvestites. That was something we saw every day in Memphis—not!

  Whispering, I asked if it was still okay to use the phone. “Sure,” she—or he—said, “But the closest town is about ten miles away. What’s wrong with your truck anyway, honey? We have a couple of ‘girls’ who can work on those beastly things.”

  They walked down and assessed our situation, drove to town to get the necessary parts, came back, jacked up our truck, and fixed it. Some of them stayed in drag, wearing dresses the whole time while working on the truck. They had to remove the wheels, slide under and take out the broken lug bolts, and then replace them with new ones. It was honestly one of the strangest things I have ever seen,
but they were really nice to help us out like that.

  That afternoon, as we got to know each other, they showed us promo pictures of them on stage, decked out in their best evening drag and playing their musical instruments. We showed them our pictures too. They discussed what they were all about, and we shared with them what we were all about. We told them about how God changed our lives and we were spreading the Gospel of Jesus through rock ‘n’ roll. Truth be told, I’m not sure who thought the other was more strange or weird.

  It was great to experience how God works despite such vast and different backgrounds in this world. We don’t always have to agree on everything to work on some things together, do we? And, we are told to take the Gospel into ALL the world.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Preacher, I’ll Need A Friend

  A few months after we released Straight On cracks began to form in the foundation of Dana and Suzy’s marriage. I don’t know if I’ll ever completely understand it. They were high school sweethearts and grew up dating and going steady. Perhaps the communal life was more than Suzy could handle. Dana was a stubborn one, for sure. He could have a “my way or the highway” type of personality. You had to know how to handle him. I only partially learned how. Maybe Suzy didn’t. Dana was also a wonderful guy with an undying heart for God. He was still a stubborn cuss, though.

  Somehow their marriage fell apart. We were all in a state of shock about it, especially Dana. When they divorced, Dana moved out of the communal house and was able to buy an old house in mid-town Memphis in much need of repair. It was on Morrison Street, about a hundred yards from Ardent Studios. Oddly, it was the same house in which Susan’s mother grew up. That was a strange coincidence for sure.