L.A. to L.A. - I Saw the Light.

SLIGHTLY TRASHY

Offering #3

“Those who endure, prevail.”

- R.B. Walker, Esq.

One of the things I’m most proud of in my life is my network of people I genuinely admire who somehow also became my friends.

Not “network” in the LinkedIn sense. I mean actual relationships. People I call because I enjoy talking to them. Musicians. Lawyers. Politicians. Founders. Artists. Real estate developers. Philosophers disguised as rednecks. Rednecks disguised as philosophers. People who have built incredible things. People who have survived incredible things.

And somewhere on that list is Rochester B. Walker.

Recently, R.B. helped me with something deeply important.

A personalized license plate.. and before you roll your eyes too hard, let me explain.

I had just bought a 1972 Cadillac Eldorado convertible I found in Huntsville as a result of scouring the internet that I had absolutely no business owning, and I wanted the tag to say…

HNKYTNK.

The DMV did not appreciate my artistic vision.

Apparently the word “honky” raised concerns. Offensive. Inappropriate. Trashy, even. Every time I went down there, I got denied. And every time I got denied, I became more committed to it.

Which probably tells you everything you need to know about my personality.

Eventually R.B. stepped in and helped untangle the bureaucracy surrounding my incredibly important cultural mission, and after I texted him thanking him for the help, he replied…

“Those who endure, prevail, Benjamin.”

Now, to be clear, R.B. was mostly messing with me.

But for whatever reason, that line lodged itself in my head and wouldn’t leave. I started walking around thinking about it. Thinking about it enough that I eventually did what everybody does now when they start circling an idea too hard.

I googled it.

Google, in all its algorithmic confidence, suggested it was either some paraphrased Biblical concept from the Book of Matthew or loosely connected to William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize speech.

Perfect.

Because it was probably neither and just a good line from my buddy RB. But then I read the speech anyway.

(Click here for speech if you’re interested)

And somewhere in the middle of all that Southern thunder and endurance and human spirit and truth and suffering, I had this strange realization that it was accidentally the perfect doorway into what I’ve been thinking about lately.

Because I’ve spent a lot of my life chasing “real.” Real music. Real people. Real art. Real stakes. Real experiences.

And lately I’ve started wondering if the whole thing might be a moving target… Or worse… Maybe it was inside the room the entire time.

Back at the beginning of this year I was out in Los Angeles for a few weeks and decided to rent a 1966 Cadillac DeVille convertible… a decision my accountant mother audibly rolled her eyes at when I sent her a picture.

I was staying at the Sunset Marquis during Grammy week, and everything about the city felt cinematic in the exact way Los Angeles wants you to feel when you first arrive there.

Palm trees. Morning haze. Convertibles. People casually wearing ten thousand dollars worth of clothes while pretending they don’t care what they look like.

It was truly amazing and just felt right… Which is usually how you know something’s a little off.

I drove that Cadillac up through Laurel Canyon to a house owned by Rick Rubin where Marcus King was doing a photoshoot. The place had been turned into a studio - the same one where Red Hot Chili Peppers recorded Blood Sugar Sex Magik… Which sounds like something you’re supposed to feel more than I did in the moment.

Don’t get me wrong… It was cool. That’s another thing nobody tells you about proximity. Sometimes the mythology arrives quieter than expected. Sometimes it’s actually just a driveway.

I drove the Cadillac out to Malibu one afternoon for no reason other than to say I did it and bought a leather jacket from John Varvatos. (Eye roll. Of course I did.)

Went to Steven Tyler’s Grammy afterparty.

Stopped by the Rainbow Bar & Grill to have a Jack & Coke for Lemmy.

Caught Dwight Yoakam playing a small set at The Roxy on Sunset Blvd.

Ate chicken parm at Dan Tana’s.

Popped into Danny Clinch’s gallery opening at the Morrison Hotel Gallery.

Memory after memory. All of it happening inside that car.

And the whole time, it felt like I had finally landed inside the version of the story I had spent years imagining from far away back home in Alabama… Which is probably why I couldn’t stop thinking about it after I left.

There’s a version of Alabama where every road eventually runs through Hank Williams.

You can try to avoid it but it doesn’t matter. Eventually he shows up.

A highway sign. A jukebox. A truck stop. A photograph. A story somebody’s uncle swears is true… Or maybe it’s just because I grew up here.

Because Alabama treats Hank like both a ghost and a warning.

I’ve been to the grave. I’ve been to his boyhood home. I’ve been to the museum in Montgomery and seen the Cadillac he died in.

I’ve also sat on Hank Williams Jr.’s bus and listened to him talk about the blues record he made with Dan Auerbach.

I remember identifying with it deeply. Not musically. Spiritually.

Hank Jr. fascinates me.

Not in a celebrity way… but in a survival way.

Hank Sr. had no separation between what he lived and what he wrote and that’s why it still cuts the way it does.

That’s also why it burned so fast.

Hank Sr. was arguably one of the most important figures in the history of country music and he navigated his life without a road map and in an era where no-one had ever achieved what he did before him. He was truly a pioneer. Hank Jr. - also every bit the trailblazer his father was - inherited something too large to comfortably stand inside. So he did the only thing a person can do in that situation.

He broke it.

Then spent the rest of his life rebuilding something that was his while still carrying the weight of where he came from.

And somewhere in the middle of that… is where most of us live.

Trying to honor what made us without becoming owned by it.

Which brings me back to the Cadillac.

Because somewhere between Los Angeles and Lower Alabama, I became obsessed.

Not with the car itself… Rather with what I thought it represented.

I left California and went straight to Key West to do a week long residency at the Hog’s Breath with one of my favorite people and artist’s - Early James… which is a sentence that still feels a little ridiculous to say out loud.

It was one of those weeks where everything just worked. The weather. The crowds. The weird little rhythm you fall into when music becomes the center of the day instead of an interruption to it. And more than once during that week I caught myself thinking.. James might be the closest thing I’ve seen to a modern version of Hank Sr.

Not because he sounds like him… Because of the way he hears things.

One night over dinner I started telling stories from my EMT days. The point I was trying to make was how when you first start off in EMS, you think you’re going to save people… make a difference… be heroic even.

But somewhere along the way you realize a significant percentage of what you’re doing - especially early on - is quietly transporting dead people to funeral homes.

You get really good at carrying weight. Physical and otherwise.

I told him about one of the strangest little intersections I’d ever experienced - that many years earlier I met one of the men who drove Johnny Cash’s body to the funeral home. Just one of those details that sticks to your brain for no logical reason. The kind of thing you don’t know what to do with.

And while I was talking, James got quiet for a second and pulled out his phone.

Didn’t interrupt. Didn’t dramatize it.

Just grabbed something invisible out of the air before it disappeared..

A few seconds later he looked up and said:

“Even the man in black died dressed in white.”

I sat there frozen for a moment as he typed it into his phone and said he’d probably find a place for it in a song later.

And that was the moment it clicked for me. The difference.

Most of us experience life. A few people are listening for what life is trying to say.

I left Key West and went straight to New York for ten days of pure inspiration at the Blue Note Jazz Club with Marcus during his second residency. Another one of those weeks that felt right. From New York - I made my way back south to Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

Different room. Same feeling. The hunt for authenticity has taken me many places.

This particular week I had been hired to produce a massive event with Lynyrd Skynyrd performing for the ribbon cutting of a submarine factory (yes you read that correctly).

The Governor was there. A couple of United States Senators. The Secretary of the Navy. A Giant room. Giant expectations.

All of it impressive. All of it real. And somewhere in the middle of it, I found myself thinking about a man dying in the backseat of a Cadillac on New Year’s Day.

On the way out of town I took a lap past FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound… just because. In the same way people travel to Mecca.. both of these places are holy ground for Rock & Roll. I then drove straight home back to produce a sold-out show in Fairhope with the band, “The Revivalists” as part of a concert series I have been developing and producing for several years in the south end of the state.

Everything was working… That’s the important part. Everything was working.

And I remember feeling disappointed. Not because anything had gone wrong. Because I still didn’t have the car yet. That’s when I realized something might actually be wrong with me.

So on Muddy Waters’ birthday, I drove to Huntsville and bought a 1972 Cadillac Eldorado convertible that I had absolutely no business buying. Towed it back to Mobile. Had some money burning a hole in my pocket and didn’t think twice about it.. and honestly I have just about never been happier with a purchase.

Friends.. There is nothing subtle about a 1972 Eldorado convertible.

They’re enormous. Excessive. Beautiful. Ive explained it several times to people that it feels like you’re driving your couch. Elegant in a way that sits right on the edge of slightly trashy.

Which probably explains why I loved it immediately.

And somewhere in all this, I had another one of those strange overlaps.

While I was towing my new found treasure home I thought about something from another time.. back when I was working as a paramedic, I once transported a man named Clent Holmes who had played with Hank Williams Sr in his band - The Drifting Cowboys.

There was nothing notable or seriously wrong with him. Just another call.. But it was such a memorable experience being one degree of separation from the founding father of country music that I remember wanting to talk about music but we were in the middle of a minor medical emergency. However, he gave me his phone number and later on I tracked him down and we talked for hours.

We talked about playing music. About Hank. About the road. About what it was actually like.

And I remember thinking.. This should make it feel more real.

It didn’t. Not because he wasn’t real. It was a really great experience.. But Clent was just a man with an extraordinary story. It’s amazing how the world’s Ive lived in have collided at time. Because that’s not how it works.. But that’s the thing I’ve slowly started realizing and have begun trying to replace my priorities.

I spent years climbing invisible ladders trying to get closer to something “real.”

When I was an EMT Basic, I thought:

If I can just get hired by the fire department - that’s where the real action is.

Then I got there.

Same people. Same stress. Just louder sirens.

The thing I was chasing wasn’t exactly where I thought it was.. So again I thought:

If I can just get to Lifeflight - that’s where what I do for a living will really matter.

After an indescribable amount of hard work I got there too.

While it was definitely higher stakes at times it was still the same humanity. People with mortgages. Divorces. Anxiety. Drinking problems. Good intentions. Fragile marriages. Real fear.

Just people.

And I’ve done the exact same thing with music. With cities. With proximity.

With Los Angeles.

I love Los Angeles.

I really do.

There’s beauty there. Endless possibility. And there’s a concentration of people operating at the highest level of their craft in a way that simply doesn’t exist where I’m from.

But there’s also a layer of performance floating over everything that becomes impossible not to notice once you spend enough time there.

Everybody’s branding themselves. Everybody’s presenting. Everybody’s curating.

People looked at me like I was some kind of strange Alabama alien half the time I was there.. And maybe I was. But there’s something missing there too.

Something hard to explain. Something you think (or at least I do/did) that can only be fixed or fulfilled by getting back to where you come from.. So back home I went to Lower Alabama only to get frustrated in the exact opposite direction.

Alabama is where my roots are. My family. The roads that shaped me. The people who taught me how to be funny and resilient and human and flawed and Southern and emotionally avoidant in the specific regional way God intended.

This place made me.

But I also spend half my time feeling a step removed from the bigger rooms.

So I keep bouncing between the two.

Los Angeles.

Lower Alabama.

L.A. to L.A.

Trying to figure out which version feels more real.

And lately I’m starting to think that might be the wrong question entirely.

The older I get, the more embarrassing fame starts to feel once you fully understand that these are just human beings.

Talented human beings. Special human beings, sometimes.

But still human.

And I don’t mean that cynically… I still love all of it.

I love the proximity. I love the rooms. I love the stories. I love the energy of being around people who are trying to create something meaningful.

I just try to regularly check myself now.

Because somewhere along the line fame stopped being a byproduct of creation and started becoming the reason people create in the first place.

There was a time where people made art because they had no other choice.

Now a lot of people make content because they want engagement metrics and a personal assistant.

The machine has become grossly bloated.

And maybe every generation thinks that.

But I can feel it.

And that’s why I keep coming back to Hank… Because there was no separation there.

No strategy. No brand architecture. No curated vulnerability. Just the wound and the song… And that’s dangerous. Because authenticity sounds beautiful until you realize it can burn your entire life down if you don’t know where the edges are.

And I’m out here buying Cadillacs like I understand any of this.

Driving around Alabama with a tag that says: HNKYTNK.

Which is either a tribute… or a warning.. I’m still not sure.

To try and land this plane and in keeping with the format of each of these offerings.. I present to you..

“The Charge.”

If you’re still reading this, here’s what I want you to try.

Stop chasing the next version of “real” for just a second.

The next city. The next relationship. The next backstage pass. The next promotion. The next level where you think everything is finally going to make sense.

And just look at where you are. The people around you. The work you’re doing.

The conversations you’ve been dismissing because they don’t seem important enough yet… because I’m starting to think this might actually be it.

Not the waiting room. Not the watered-down version.

THIS - the here and now.

And if you’re like me, your ego is going to hate that. Because ego needs the next room. The next mountain. The next proof.

But maybe meaning was never hiding somewhere else. Maybe the whole game is learning how to stop performing long enough to notice what’s already sitting in front of you.

And if you still want to chase something after that - good.

So do I. For the record.. I’m not stopping.

I just don’t want to lie to myself anymore about what I’m going to find when I get there. Because the further down the road I go, the more it all starts to feel the same:

Different room but the same people. Same fears. Same need to be seen.

And every once in a while - if you’re lucky - you catch a glimpse of something real.

Not because of where you are. Because you stopped trying so hard to become somebody while you were there.

And for what it’s worth…

those who endure, prevail.

Sometimes they even get the tag approved. (Thanks again R.B)