My brother is a bum got hooked on drugs at a young age. He ends up leaching off of women. Randy Travis’ sister was one of them. Randy bought her a mobile home in North Carolina. My brother used to live in it with her.
I doubt that will be in the book though.
That sounds like it will be very interesting. I’ll watch for it in the library.
Sorry to say I’ve never heard of him, or his music, but the face looks sort of familiar. I wish him well.
Tell it brother, I’m all ears.
Had a chance to see him many years ago and I turned it down. sigh. Should’ve gone.
Saying Randy has had a “roller coaster” life is an understatement. He had so many appearances in juvenile court that a judge warned him, “next time, bring a toothbrush, because you won’t be going home.” Got a job washing dishes in a country music club where the manager (Lib Hatcher) discovered he could sing and took him to Nashville. She became his first wife and helped guide him to the early, ground-breaking success Travis had in the mid-80s.
If you were listening to country music back then, you can remember what a rut the genre was in; “Storms of Life” was a game changer that put country music back in touch with its roots, and set it on a new trajectory, opening the doors for many of the neo-traditionalist acts that followed.
Randy managed to keep the demons at bay for a long time. After moving to Hawaii, he began having an affair with the wife of his dentist. He divorced Lib (and paid her a huge settlement) then resettled in Texas with Wife #2 after she divorced her husband. Reportedly, she didn’t see anything wrong with Randy having a drink, so he began boozing heavily and was arrested a couple of times, once for driving around naked in his truck.
Then came the heart attack and stroke that largely robbed him of his voice and left him impaired. I’ve heard that much of his fortune is gone, and he did the book because he needs the money. He still has income from sales/downloads of his past hits, but earns very little in songwriting royalties, because he wrote very few of his own hits.
A sad story for one of the seminal country stars of his generation. Something right out of country song.