A Memory

Recently, a group of friends and I were sitting around–masked and socially distanced–and talking about favorite Christmas memories from the pre-pandemic life we all once lived. One of my favorite Christmas memories was from back in the mid 1980s (probably ’84 or ’85), when I was living in Nashville and had to work Christmas Eve at Cat’s Records. After the store closed, I went back to Goodlettsville, north of Nashville, where I lived alone in an apartment that was inside the office building of my producer and publisher Earl Richards. I went to bed when I got there after work, thinking as I fell asleep, that I’d already missed the annual Christmas Eve gathering with Pansy Cody Wallin, my dad’s sister, her husband Edison and my cousin Donna. I woke up around two or three o’clock Christmas morning, showered to wake myself, loaded a bag and my guitar into the orange Mercury Bobcat I drove, and headed for Walnut, North Carolina.

I made my way south to I-40 and drove east into the stilly darkness of Christmas morning. I remember stopping here and there along the way, at convenience stores mostly, and noticing the deep quiet of the night and the interstate and the brightly lit pumps and parking area of the stores. I stopped maybe three or four times through the night, and it was such an old-time treasure of a feeling to go inside for a Mountain Dew and a Moon Pie and to wish the sleepy clerk a Merry Christmas on my way out.

I rolled into the driveway in the morning light that heralds the sunrise. I’d love to say that the old Reeves place was covered in snow like a Christmas card. But Mom and Dad and Jerry were there, and from the time I walked in, Christmas morning carried on as it always had.

A Gift

Given that Leesa and I didn’t marry on Christmas Day, given that Lane and Raleigh weren’t born on Christmas Day, I can easily name some of the best earthly Christmas gifts I ever received — from Santa, a football uniform with a Dallas Cowboys helmet when I was small; from my uncle JD, a solid gold Star Trek insignia ring when I was in my twenties. Those and others were incredible gifts. Yet they and so many others are now lost to time and living.

But THE GIFT? I received it in 1975, when I was seventeen years old, forty-five years back from Christmas 2020 when I’m writing this. Ever since, it has been my constant companion, over many miles and across many years, and much of the life I’ve lived and much of the man I’ve become are bound up in this one extravagant gift from my parents.

Back in the days of the White Water Band, guitarist Jim Stapleton and bassist Harlon Rice worked at Dunham’s Music in Asheville. I’m fairly certain that the two of them gave Mom and Dad the employee discount and that Harlon delivered it to the house on Christmas Eve. I was, I recall, in my room and was only vaguely aware of a visitor stopping by after we’d returned from the Wallins’ house.

Then, in the wee hours of the morning, I awoke and knew I wouldn’t be going back to sleep. So, I got up quietly and slipped out of the room Jerry and I shared when home. I continued as quietly as I could into the living room and made my way, by a light that shone in from out by the highway, to the tree and poked around until I got the lights plugged in.

It was in this way that I first saw the gift by the light of our Walnut Christmas tree at three o’clock in the morning, looking much like this —

After forty-five years and untold miles–one end of the USA to the other and east to the Czech Republic–its finish no longer shines as it did that Christmas morning in 1975, but I’m certain that the music coming from it sounds better now than then (with little thanks for this to my minimally improved guitar skills).

I could recall hundreds of memories of moments with this guitar in my arms–writing, recording, performing. So many songs! I remember a beautiful, moonlit Montana night, sitting on a stump in the Thompsons’ yard during my visit to their caboose Bed & Breakfast in Stevensville, south of Missoula. I played my songs for the Thompsons and a group of their neighbors.

When Gary Morris recorded “The Jaws of Modern Romance” in the late ’80s, the Nashville studio musicians had a bit of trouble getting the right feel for the song. Gary or somebody called to ask if I could come to the studio and play during the tracking session. I grabbed my guitar and headed to the studio. My guitar track ended up making it on the record. You can hear it best at the beginning.

One more. This is my guitar and me on stage in Vimperk, Czech Republic, singing a song we wrote called “The Bells of Vimperk.”

Montana, Nashville, and Vimperk represent many wonderful and rare moments. Many, many more are the moments of just sitting around the house with the guitar in my arms and listening to it sing for me and sing with me.