Category: memoir
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When you go back thirty seven years, the stories may suffer from memory distortion. You wonder, did that really happen? I reminded Terri, when we had played in Chillicothe, Ohio, how she asked me if I would accompany her on an elephant ride that the fair offered.
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Just before 11, we get a text from David. “Where would you like to meet? Maybe we can go to Waffle House near The Opry and break bread, have a hang and chat a bit.” This sounded perfect because it was on our way home, and we hadn’t been to the Opry Waffle House. Would…
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If I had to choose an element that was my grandmother it would be fire. As many of you know, I grew up in a rowhouse on Symington Avenue in Baltimore during the 1960s. I’ve always counted myself lucky to have grown up in a home that had an extended family, having my parents as…
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When we got home I found out that a song I had co-written with Jeni Hankins, “Mr. Wilson, the Stonecutter,” had been chosen to be included in a radio show titled, The Place I Can’t Forget, for Jon Stein’s Hootenanny Cafe.
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It was an extraordinary evening. A southern night at its finest with good food, good drink and good conversation; a story I have told numerous times. A night to be grateful for. A kairos day. Forever changed.
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In the spring of 1986, I got a call from Ansley. He was Jeanne’s bandleader, and he asked me if I would be interested in playing rhythm guitar and back-up singing with her band. It had been a dream of mine to play the Opry since 1975 when I first listened to it in my…
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My pop gun was broken, and Grand Pop Cage could see that I wasn’t happy about it. We each got a ten ounce bottle of Coca Cola out of the frig and sat at the bottom of the stairs out back on Symington Avenue. The bottles of pop were delivered every Saturday from Uncle Lou’s…
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January 2016 Early January usually has me thinking about the year ahead for Jeni & Billy, which tea to drink, my high school friend Cotton who’s birthday is on January 7th, and stringing up instruments with new strings. This year is no exception. Jeni and I headed to Florida on January 14 to play seven…
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I am a fan of recording devices, musical instruments, musicians, singers, songs, and new music. I became a fan of these things from the first time I saw or heard them. For example, my paternal grandfather was an attorney who practiced law from the 1930s until the 1970s. Early in his practice he used a…
Billy Kemp 