ashley&alexia

It was the spring of 1999. I had left behind a 29-year career with Bell Atlantic, sold my house, left all my friends behind to see if I could "make it" as a professional musician in Nashville.

After months of trying to get into the network, on Tuesday, April 20 my phone finally rang. It was C.J. Watson, band leader for Ashley & Alexia Counce, a sister act from Oklahoma City. They were to leave the following night to play a 4-night stint at Cowboy Bill's, a club in Milledgeville, GA.

C.J. asked me to come for an audition that evening at an abandoned slaughterhouse on the Cumberland river not far from downtown Nashville. It was spooky and also scary, since everything I had sacrificed was on the line. But I passed the audition, and the next day all seven of us piled into the Counce's 1991 Econoline van for the trip to Milledgeville. We played four nights at Cowboy Bill's, and each night the crowd got bigger. In the coming months I would accompany the band on a tour of the U.S., covering over 7,500 miles and writing a book about my experiences.

Trip 1 (692 miles)

Trip 2 (1,046 miles)

Trip 3 (5,807 miles)