Walk to Beautiful: The Power of Love and a Homeless Kid Who Found the Way

by Wayne, Jimmy

  “What?”

  “That’s enough.” I felt as though someone had just reached out a long hook and pulled me off the stage.

  I didn’t learn my lesson, and a short time after that, I tried to do another performance without my karaoke background tapes. This time I attempted to perform “My Only Friend,” the song I had written about my friend’s mom, with Bea in mind.

  I sat on stage at Highland Junior High and started noodling through it, but I couldn’t do it. I tried several times but couldn’t get my fingers and mouth to work together at the same time.

  “Close the curtain,” I said disgustedly.

  “Come on, Jimmy!” people in the crowd called out. “Sing!” They had heard me sing at various functions around the area but always with backup music, never to my own accompaniment.

  “I can’t,” I whined.

  “Yes, you can. Come on, sing for us.”

  I muddled through the song, but it was terribly embarrassing, especially with my friends in the crowd and with Bea sitting on the front row.

  I was so discouraged about my guitar playing that I almost gave it up. I enjoyed singing to the background tapes. Who needs a guitar, anyhow?

  I did. Nashville is a guitar town. I knew if I were ever going to make it as a singer, I needed to be able to play guitar. I kept practicing, working harder to learn the guitar; I wanted to play so badly. When I first started playing, I practiced in the bathroom, sitting on the bathtub, facing the wall. I turned out the lights so I couldn’t see my hands. Slowly but surely I got better and didn’t have to stare at the strings as I played. So I am living proof that singing in the shower might help.

  ONE OF THE MORE ROWDY VENUES WHERE I SANG—WITHOUT my guitar—was at a karaoke contest sponsored by WSOC radio station at Coyote Joe’s, a popular bar and country dance club, with a large American flag hanging in the back of the room and a spacious dance floor. It had a small stage and a balcony, where people could sit and watch the performances. On weekends hot regional bands played at Coyote Joe’s, but during the week, the owners kept the place busy with crowds of people coming to hear their friends singing karaoke. I entered the contest every Thursday night I could. A cash prize of seventy-five dollars was awarded to the winner, which was determined by audience response—how much noise the friends and fellow drinkers could make on behalf of their favorites. One of the songs I sang frequently was Garth Brooks’s hit “The Thunder Rolls,” written by another premier Nashville songwriter, Pat Alger, and the crowd always responded enthusiastically. I frequently came home from Coyote Joe’s with an extra seventy-five dollars in my pocket.

  My girlfriend, Tonia, went along with me and supported me. I had met Tonia at Ingles grocery store shortly after my heart had been broken by my former girlfriend. I was rather shy, so I didn’t immediately go out and try to get another girlfriend. But when I walked in the grocery store and saw a young woman with bright green eyes, long blonde hair, and a vibrant smile working behind the cash register, I really wanted to meet her.

  I made frequent trips to the store because I didn’t have much money, and, especially while I was living with Bea, I didn’t have a lot of space to store food. I simply bought what I needed or wanted for that day. I pretty much bought the same things every day—an apple, some bread, and maybe some sandwich meat.

  After I had been in the store several times, Tina, one of the pretty girl’s coworkers, approached me and gave me the new girl’s name and phone number. “Don’t say I told you so, but the cashier over there would like to get to know you.” I was thrilled to have her number, but I was still too shy to call her.

  A few days later I was in Ingles, standing in Tonia’s line, waiting to check out. Her line had four guys in front of me. At another register a few aisles away, a less-attractive young woman had a totally empty lane.

  “Aisle Four is open,” she called out in a squeaky voice. “Aisle Four’s open,” she repeated, looking directly at the five of us guys in Tonia’s line. Nobody moved. A rugged-looking guy in front of me turned around and nodded toward Aisle Four. “You can go over there.”

  “Nah, I think I’ll wait right here.”

  “Me, too,” he nodded. “She sure is pretty, isn’t she?”

  “That’s my girl,” I said impulsively.

  The tough guy glanced at me, looked at the pretty girl behind the cash register, then back at me. He stepped out of line and moved over to Aisle Four, which was still empty.

  When I finally got to the register and worked up enough nerve to talk to the pretty girl, I introduced myself. I fumbled through asking her if she wanted to go get some pizza after work. Surprisingly, she agreed. But when she met me for pizza, she brought along her sister. The sister was ultra-protective of Tonia, so I spent most of the time answering big-sister questions, trying to convince her I was safe, and hardly got a word in with Tonia.

  The following day a woman I had known from Osage Mill textile factory asked if I would sing a few songs at a cookout. I said, “Sure. Is it okay if I bring along a friend?” Tonia went along with me, and I happily sang for hours, using karaoke background tapes. I sang every song directly to Tonia, whether she was looking at me or not. Tonia and I were a couple from that day forward.

  Along with Bea, Tonia believed that I could make my dream happen; she had so much confidence in me that she was willing to go with me week after week to Coyote Joe’s. Normally about twenty or thirty singers competed for the prize each week. Many of the singers were off-key drunks, but there were always several talented musicians as well. Nevertheless, I established a pretty good track record, winning the prize week after week. Since I was working and saving money, I took the bold step of moving out of Bea’s house and into my own place, a ratty trailer near work that I rented for forty dollars a week. I got so accustomed to winning at Coyote Joe’s that I counted on the extra seventy-five dollars every two weeks to help pay my rent.

  One Thursday night I did my usual rendition of “The Thunder Rolls,” and the sound guy did his part, adding a few effects with the sound and lights. I fully expected to pick up my seventy-five dollars at the end of the evening. But that night Johnny Johnson, a guy wearing a big black cowboy hat, got up and started playing the fiddle, and he was hot! The purple lights on the stage made the violin look as though it were smoking. The guy with the fiddle stole the show. He was incredible, speed-playing licks on the fiddle. The crowd started cheering for him; he was so good, I cheered for him as well.

  I lost that night, and Johnny Johnson won. I didn’t like losing, but I was very impressed with Johnny’s talent. Years later I was on a show with Rascal Flatts. I was doing a sound check when a fiddle player started to tune up. I looked up and saw Johnny Johnson, now one of the hottest fiddle players in country music.

  I REALLY DIDN’T KNOW ANYBODY IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS, but my friends Lloyd and Debra Kelso encouraged me to visit them in Nashville. Lloyd had a law firm on the corner of Chet Atkins Place and 18th Avenue, part of Nashville’s famous Music Row.

  In October 1996, I loaded my bicycle—I had not yet returned the borrowed bike that I had been riding the day I met Bea and Russell—in the bed of a 1984 brown Ford truck. I wanted to have the bike just in case the truck broke down on my way to Nashville.

  I drove the longest trip I’d ever driven outside of Charlotte, nearly four hundred miles up Highway 74, across Interstate 40, westbound to exit 209B, Demonbreun Street, also known as Music Row. I spent three days observing and meeting with a few of Lloyd’s friends whom he had met in the music business or represented as an attorney. I met with music legend Don Light, whose publishing fame rested on Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville,” and I sang a few songs for him. I met Charlie Monk, another music publishing mogul, at the church Lloyd and Debra attended. I met with a few executives from music companies, and a few others. I was surprised at how nice these people were to me even though I was a nobody. I made several trips to Nashville over the next few months, just trying to get my foot in the door o
f the music business. But, although the doors opened with relative ease, nobody seemed interested in my songs or me as an artist, and nothing ever came of my visits.

  I was still working full time at the prison. It was relatively easy to make trips to Nashville when Sergeant Newton was kind enough to arrange my schedule so I would have three days off in a row. I could make a hasty trip to Nashville and be back in time to work the third shift, from eleven at night to seven in the morning. But when I took the community work crew job, I had to plan my trips sparingly, using only my vacation days.

  There’s a saying in the music business: you must be present to win. In other words, I needed to move to Nashville before I could expect anyone to take me seriously. I understood that, but I was also wary enough to know that I better have a reason to move to Music City before giving up a real job to pursue what may turn out to be a pipe dream. One morning, after I had worked a long third shift at the prison, I was awakened from a deep sleep by somebody pounding on the side of my rented trailer, banging away right where my bedroom was located. In my pre-coffee condition, I could barely function, but I recognized Tonia’s voice outside the trailer, calling to me, “Jimmy! Get up! I have something to tell you.”

  I stumbled to the front door and invited Tonia inside. “Wha . . . What’s the matter? What’s going on?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, but you need to get cleaned up and put on some singin’ clothes. We’re going to Charlotte.”

  “What’s in Charlotte? Tonia, what in the world are you talkin’ about? I just got to bed a few hours ago. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Yes, you are,” Tonia insisted. “My friend Christy Williams gave me her ticket to the Opryland Theme Park auditions that are being held today at the Charlotte Convention Center.”

  “What? Why isn’t Christy going? She really wants a shot as a female artist.” Christy and I were friendly rivals on the local singers’ circuit, which made me skeptical and quite reluctant to take the invitation seriously. It didn’t make sense. Similar to the “tickets” awarded to contestants on modern-day television shows, such as American Idol, The Voice, and The X Factor, of the thousands of tryouts for Opryland, only a limited number of contestants actually receive an invitation to audition before the decision makers. Christy had received one of those tickets. So why would Christy give away her ticket—and her chance to possibly break into the music business—to me?

  “I am not going to any audition,” I said vehemently. I was convinced that the audition was probably a gimmick or maybe even a scam, trying to bilk money out of hopeful musicians, and I didn’t want to let Christy “get one on me.”

  Tonia refused to take no for an answer. “Come on, Jimmy. Let’s go.”

  “It’s a scam, Tonia. Watch and see.”

  I must have said those words a hundred times as we drove the thirty minutes up I-85 toward Charlotte. Tonia didn’t say a word the entire trip. She just kept driving.

  We finally arrived at the Charlotte Convention Center, parked, and went inside the enormous building. I was overwhelmed and felt so out of place. I was a small-town, country guy; I wasn’t used to the big city. Everything about it scared me.

  Worse yet, we couldn’t find the audition room in the huge convention center.

  “See, I told you it was a scam,” I complained to Tonia after we had walked into several empty rooms. “Let’s go.”

  Tonia said, “Hold on. Let’s try this room.”

  We had finally found room 213A, where a panel of old men—probably in their early forties or fifties, but they looked old to me—were sitting behind a long table. There were no other contestants, no piano, no microphone, nothing; just them. I knew we had the wrong room again, but from the doorway, Tonia ventured, “Is this the room where the Opryland Theme Park auditions are supposed—”

  “Yeah,” one of the grumpy old men interrupted before Tonia could finish her sentence. “Come down here and put your tape in that cassette player, press play, and sing. You’re number 300 and the last one of the day,” he said. He apparently thought Tonia was the contestant and seemed disappointed when I walked in front of the long table and put in my background track. Tonia stood behind me and waited.

  The music came on, and I began singing “Love, Me,” a huge hit song for Collin Raye, written by Max T. Barnes and Skip Ewing, the guy I had seen on Crook & Chase.

  I barely had opened my mouth and hadn’t even finished the first line of the song when the old man pressed the stop button on the tape player and said, “Okay.” He told me to put the other tape in and press play. After listening to 299 other auditions, I guessed that he’d heard enough of “Love Me.”

  I started singing my second song, “Papa Loved Mama,” and I was so flustered, I forgot the words to the song. The judge hit the stop button again, and said, “Okay, that’s it.”

  “Huh?” I asked. That’s it?

  “That’s it,” he repeated loudly.

  “Now we need to see you dance,” one of the other men said.

  “I can’t dance,” I said. “I don’t dance.”

  “Well, try,” he said emphatically.

  Another judge took me to a side room where there was a video camera. “As soon as the song comes on,” he instructed, “start dancing.”

  I looked ridiculous gyrating around the room in my tight jeans, a dingy white T-shirt, a vest that looked like a Turkish rug, my bargain Jesus Store boots, and my string-tie bolo, with a saddle clip that stuck me in the neck every time I moved. But they wanted me to dance, so I danced. And the judges got a good laugh out of it.

  On the way home I was fuming. “I told you it was a scam!” I kept saying to Tonia over and over. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this, and now they have me on camera dancing, or whatever you want to call it.”

  Tonia just smiled and kept driving, occasionally snickering when I mentioned the dancing. Back home I didn’t mention the botched audition to anyone, even if someone asked how it went. I changed the subject immediately. I tried my best to forget the whole ridiculous affair, and I almost did, until I got an unusual phone call.

  Thirty-one

  NASHVILLE NOVICE

  I DIDN’T GET THE JOB AT OPRYLAND. SEVERAL MONTHS after the audition, though, I received a phone call. “Is this Jimmy Barber?” a man asked.

  “Yeah, who’s this?”

  “My name is Mike Whelan from Opryland Music Group in Nashville, and I was one of the judges at the Opryland Theme Park audition. I got your name and number off your application.”

  “Uh-huh,” I replied skeptically.

  Mike said he wanted to get together to talk.

  “Uh-huh, sure.” I thought my friend David was prank-calling me. “C’mon, David,” I said. “Stop playing games, or I’m going to hang up.”

  “Well, this is Mike Whelan; write this number down before you hang up the phone,” Mike said. He rattled off a phone number.

  I wrote the number but remained suspicious. We talked further, and I told Mike that I was planning another trip to Nashville in a few weeks. “I could come by your office while I’m in town.”

  “That would be great,” the man replied.

  Before we hung up, I asked him to repeat the phone number one more time. I wanted to make sure this wasn’t David rambling off a fake phone number, and if he could remember it, then it might not be a prank call after all.

  Mike Whelan immediately said the numbers again, exactly the same way he had said them five minutes earlier.

  That was the moment when I thought for the first time, This might really be a music executive from Nashville calling me.

  I ARRIVED IN NASHVILLE ON DECEMBER 16, 1996, A COLD, winter day, and checked in at the Best Western hotel near Music Circle, part of Music Row. I drove down the Row the evening before my appointment and found Opryland Music Group (OMG), a three-story, red-brick building with dark, tinted windows. I wanted to know where the company was located so I could be sure to get there on time.

  The follow
ing morning, the closer it got to ten o’clock, the time I was scheduled to meet with Mike Whelan, the more nervous I became, pacing the hotel room floor and staring out the window.

  I arrived at OMG on time, and the receptionist, Jamie Green, kindly instructed me to have a seat and said she would notify Mike. I was in awe of what appeared to me to be one of the most opulent office foyers I had ever seen and was blown away by the fancy surroundings and the magnificent marble floors. Shortly afterward, the receptionist told me to go on up to the third floor, where Mike would be waiting on me.

  Once the elevator doors closed, I took a deep breath and said a prayer. I smiled and said, “God, I wish Bea could see this place.” When the elevator doors opened on the third floor, I got another shock. On the walls in front of me were framed albums of songs that OMG had published, albums by stars such as Patsy Cline and Hank Williams. I even spotted “The Hokey Pokey.” Seeing those iconic records on the walls made me even more nervous.

  Mike Whelan met me in the hallway, firmly shook my hand, and invited me into his office. He was a stocky guy who looked more like a football player or a power lifter than a music guy, but we spent the next half hour or so discussing my music. He didn’t ask me to sing a note; he simply wanted to talk with me. “Do you write your own songs?” Mike wanted to know.

  “Well, yeah, I’ve written at least five or six songs,” I answered naively.

  A glint of a smile crossed Mike’s face, but he didn’t respond negatively. I didn’t know that most successful songwriters have written literally hundreds of songs, not six. But I was so clueless about the music business that I didn’t even understand the role of a music publishing company.