I call this Pen and Ink “Bridge Over Untroubled Waters” and I did it in
1984. This period of my life, 1981-1984, was marked with turmoil. I
was going through a divorce, and I was in the early stages
of the start up of CMT, putting the network together and getting it up
and running. When I could find a moment to slip away, I would go out to
some remote location with my pen and inks and watercolors and get lost
in the process of putting peace and tranquility on a piece of watercolor
paper. Most of my paintings and songwriting came out of this period.
By 1986, I had found peace in true love and the paintings were no longer
needed for an escape. It has been many years since I picked up pen or
brush. It is a strange fact of creativity that many artists experience
this in their personal lives. Songwriters in particular, those intense
creatures that live out their songs, are different in country music,
when compared to their counterparts in pop music, with the content of
their songs. Look at the life of Jimmie Rodgers, who kinda started it
all, battled TB his entire singing and writing career, finally completed
his last recording for Ralph Peer laying on a cot in the recording
room, and after the last song was sung, died two day later, alone in a
Hotel room in New York City. Hank Williams, Sr., documented his pain
in a collection of songs that will stand forever at the top of the mark
for simplicity and truth. Unfortunately, Hank did not live long enough
to come out on the other side with a happy ending. Passing from sleep
to death in the back seat of his Cadillac convertible on the way to
another gig of an alcoholic and pain pill New Year, seemed a fitting end
for his painful music. Roger Miller’s incredible work of writing and
performance was marked by wild excess, however Roger was blessed to find
peace and love later in his too short life, and continued his
creativity in another vein by writing “Big River” for stage. Mickey
Newbury poured out songs that still astound those that love them, while
living a very tumultuous personal life, saying in an interview, “I write
my sadness”. When you listen to him sing, “She Even Woke Me Up To Say
Goodbye” you don’t have to wonder if he is singing of life as he knew
it. His greatest works were in his most troubled times, and he not only
wrote his sadness, he sung it as no one else could.
We, as an
audience of music lovers, take these works, born of pain by the
creators, and absorb them deep inside, to be treasured forever in our
own way. I have songs that play in my mind like a sound track of my
life, going about the days with the music that I love. I don’t know if
other people have that going on inside them or not, but it keeps me
marching to the beat of a familiar melody and I wouldn’t have it any
other way. -Stan
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