Page 13 of Beneath a Tennessee Sky

My pen hovers over the first page. Which song to lead with?

A memory barges in, sharp as a knife—Dad’s voice, rough from years of yelling over tractor engines: “Music don’t feed you, boy. You’ll starve with that guitar.”

I’m thirteen again, standing barefoot in the barn, sweat slicking my neck, arms burning from lifting hay bales too heavy for a kid my size. My shirt’s stuck to me, my hands blistered raw, and I’m blinking back tears, trying to hide them before he sees.

Dad’s voice slices through the dusty air like a blade. “You think music’s gonna feed you?” he sneers. “You’ll starve before you ever make a damn dime with that guitar. Your mother fed into that nonsense. I blame her for making you weak.”

“I’m not weak,” I retort with all my teen bravado.

“You don’t learn to work, you won’t survive,” he said, like it was law. Like the only way to be worth anything was to bleed for it on some damn farm.

I wanted to scream that I didn’t want to survive. I wanted to live. I needed a chance. Just one.

“I am working,” I argue.

“Get your damn boots on. You’re going to be helping with the branding.”

I wanted to cry. I hated branding. It was cruel and I hated the smell.

I can still hear the cows crying. It’s a sound that follows me, even years later.

I tap my pen against the paper. What song to lead with? “Midnight Drive” has the catchiest hook, but “Southern Cross” has the better lyrics. “Whiskey Confession” always gets the biggest reaction at shows. Not that I’ve ever had a drop of whiskey. Had my share of beer and even tried some moonshine once, but never whiskey.

I grab my song lyric notebook and flip through the songs. It’s funny how things changed. There’s a before-Jinnie era and an after-Jinnie era. I went from writing about open fields, haying and farming to love.

I flip to one of the ballads I wrote about losing something you love. It was a combination of a song about my mom and the many pets on the farm we lost. It was a ballad that was well-received when I sang it at the bar. My dad heard me play it once. He lost his shit. He hated it. Called it sappy and weak-kneed.

But looking back, he could have only made that judgement after he’d listened to the whole thing without me realizing he was there.

I smile thinking about the song and one of the many dogs it was written about. Rusty. Mangy old thing when we first found him limping near the edge of the property, ribs showing through his coat, one ear torn like he’d lost a few fights and didn’t mind losing more. I was maybe ten, and I begged to keep him. My dad said no, flat out, but Mama snuck him scraps and let him sleep in the barn. He followed me everywhere after that. Wouldn’t even eat unless I was sitting with him.

Rusty didn’t care when I came home muddy or when I cried because I’d flunked a math test or taken a punch at school. That dog was loyal in a way people never were. After Mom died, Rusty seemed to know. He got more protective of me. He stuck by me, even when I was bottle-feeding calves.

The day he didn’t get up, I thought maybe he was just tired. He was old. Moved slower every year. But by dusk, I knew. I sat with him all night in the hay, holding his head in my lap while he took his last few breaths. I buried him myself the next morning behind the shed, even though Dad told me to just toss him in the woods. Said he was just a dog.

And then there was Beans.

Scrappy little barn cat with half a tail and a death wish. Always picking fights with raccoons twice her size. She’d curl up on my chest when I lay out in the grass after chores, purring like a damn engine. She got into the grain silo one day and didn’t come out. I looked for her for hours. Days. But she was gone, just like that.

I remember thinking—I can’t keep doing this. Loving things just to lose them. That kind of hurt sticks. Gets into your bones.

I swore I’d never let anything matter that much again.

Then Jinnie came along.

And now I’m starting to think I was full of shit.

My grip tightens on the pen. Not anymore. With this contract, I’ll never have to stand by helpless while something I love gets taken away.

I jot down a couple more songs I know will be worthy of being recorded. I have heard stories about artists being denied creative control over their albums. I think that might partially be because the artist’s music wasn’t good enough. The industry experts would know what worked best. I wanted to present the best of my catalog.

Catalog.

The thought made me smile. I had a catalog. Some of my earlier songs were pretty silly. The musings of an adolescent boy who didn’t know the first thing about life. I wrote about tractors and farming equipment because that’s all I knew. I wrote a particularly embarrassing song about my first kiss. It wasn’t technically my first kiss, but it’s the one that should have been. The other one doesn’t count in my book.

I, of course, add the songs Jinnie helped me with. And I definitely add the one that I wrote about her. When I’ve got fifteen songs that I love and have been audience tested, I start the task of putting them in order. I’ve got some practice doing that with my set lists. I’m getting a lot better but again, I’m sure Liz and the experts are going to have an opinion. But I don’t want them to think I’m a total novice. “Jack? You alive in there?” Aggie’s calls out.

“Yeah, come in.”