I Wouldn’t Be Here Without The Oak Ridge Boys…

I was 4 years old in 1983 when my mom took me to see The Oak Ridge Boys play at The Water Circus near our home in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. It was my first concert, but I knew the group’s music because my dad had an Oaks’ 8-track tape that he played when he drove me to daycare every morning in his wrecker. I remember Joe Bonsall was a fireball dressed in pink that bounced around while he sang “Elvira.” When women in the audience jumped up and cheered, I was confused. I’d never seen adults act like that.

Fast forward 41 years to the July news that Bonsall had died. After more than two decades of working in country music, it felt like losing a family member. I’ve interviewed The Oak Ridge Boys several times over the years for stories, and they are avid readers of the newspaper where I used to work. But their place in my story is much deeper than a first concert and years of conversations.

Without them – and country group Exile – I never would have made it to Nashville.

It’s not what you might think. The bands didn’t hire me to work for them. It started simply –they were nice to me. I was a frizzy-haired East Tennessee kid with bad skin and few friends. I grew up so close to Dollywood that when the theme park’s train whistle blew in the morning, it woke me up. I saved my Christmas money for months to buy concert tickets when they went on sale at Dollywood every spring. I saw Sawyer Brown, Exile, Restless Heart, Alabama, The Oak Ridge Boys, Vince Gill, and more at DP Celebrity Theater. After the concerts, most of the artists signed autographs. And if those people were impressive enough to make grown women weep and they were nice to me, I had to be special.

They Made Grown Women Weep—and They Were Nice to Me

I was 11 years old when I joined fan clubs –Alabama, Exile, The Oak Ridge Boys, and Sawyer Brown. My family couldn’t afford to attend Fan Fair, the large country music festival in downtown Nashville, every June, but we could attend fan club parties. Usually held in Nashville during Fan Fair, the artists’ teams organized group activities for the singers and their fans. One year, it was bowling with Exile. Then, it was a picnic with The Oak Ridge Boys. Imagine my surprise when Exile’s singer showed up at The Oak Ridge Boys picnic. Come to find out, Exile’s then-singer Paul Martin was dating Oak Ridge Boy Duane Allen’s daughter, Jamie. The couple got married, had four beautiful, talented children, and now have a family band called Rockland Road.

I was 14 years old in 1993, when Exile celebrated 30 years as a band. Jamie asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. She told me that since I liked country music so much when I graduated high school in six years, I should move to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, go to Middle Tennessee State University, major in Recording Industry, and find Professor Beverly Keel and tell her that Jamie sent me.

In 1997, that’s precisely what I did. I didn’t mean to go into journalism. That was an accident. Journalism was a required course when students chose the business path in the Recording Industry program, and it was in that first news writing class that anyone ever told me I was a decent writer.
I took the next journalism class—feature writing. During that class, the local newspaper, The Daily News Journal, contacted my journalism teacher and told him they needed to hire someone. He sent them me. I walked in the door, and they asked what I liked. I said music, and my editor, Sandee Suitt, said, “Great, write about that.”

Halloween Is My 24th Anniversary In Country Music—Thanks to The Oak Ridge Boys

My first day at the paper was Halloween of 2000. So, I will have been writing about country music for 24 years next week. I started at The Daily News Journal, and my professor and friend Beverly Keel went to work at The Tennessean. She helped me get hired there. The Tennessean spilled into USA Today. I wrote a column about Exile and used a photo in the paper from one of the early meet and greets – me as a child and the singer as barely more than that. I wrote about The Oak Ridge Boys many times. I covered every major act and country music event for two decades and even won a CMA Award for my work. My last story for The Tennessean? A feature on Paul and Jamie Martin’s family band Rockland Road.

I made a critical timing error and tried to switch careers to go into artist management in January 2020.
Let me tell you how hard it is to launch a new artist in a pandemic when no one can attend concerts. That job lasted about a year, and it was time to start over again. Terrifying. I was afraid to try—afraid to even get off the couch. Then, a record label friend called and wanted to hire me to write a bio for my favorite artist. An artist texted and tried to hire me to work on his team. I told him I wasn’t qualified to do anything he needed. He promised we’d work it out. He reminded me I had to pay my mortgage. Of course, he was right. That was in the spring of 2021. Three years later, I’m full-time at American Songwriter and thankfully remembering what a full-time job feels like.

I was writing a story for American Songwriter when I heard that Joe Bonsall died – via a text from my childhood friend Paul Martin. I felt the loss to my core.

Joe is gone, but I have a lifetime of memories and gratitude that all started when, as a pre-schooler, I saw that dynamic Pennsylvania tenor clad in pink bound onto stage and sing.

(Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images)