Hillbilly Heart (29 page)

“You want to hold Cod?” I asked.

I had given Noah the nickname, after codfish.

Waylon ignored my question as he took Noah from Jessi and gazed at her with amazement and adoration.

“Don’t call this baby Cod,” he said with a loud chortle, which set off a chain reaction of laughter.

“I told him to quit calling her that,” Tish chimed in.

“It’s Cod, like a codfish,” I said.

“No one gets the fish part,” Waylon said.

I laughed. “Actually, Cod is Doc backwards.”

As Jesse smiled, Waylon shook his head and said, “I’d stick with Noah.”

During
Doc
’s first season, we went to New York, where we took Miley to the play
Mamma Mia!
During the show, she hugged me
and whispered, “That’s what I wanna do, Daddy.” There was no holding her back. For the next three years I was in Toronto, Miley studied acting with Canada’s most respected coaches, including Dean Armstrong, who was also one of the stars on the hit TV series
Queer as Folk.

Eventually Miley left her school in Nashville to study full-time in Toronto. She appeared on several episodes. Periodically, she and Tish flew to L.A. for auditions and casting calls. Miley seemed to know her path from the start.

None of our other kids wanted to get into the business, but Noah still stood in when we needed Gracie. She loved being on
Doc,
and I loved seeing her on the show. I still smile when I picture her at three and four years old, practicing her lines. That little face and her adorable smile.

The episode “Blindsided” was kind of her coming out. In it, Dr. Herbert thinks he’s going blind. Due to high blood pressure, he’s self-diagnosed himself as having early signs of glaucoma. With his vision fading fast, he comes to me, crying, and says all he wants is to see his little girl’s recital. If only God will let him hang on to his eyesight long enough to see Gracie dance.

It had all the emotion of
Brian’s Song,
especially when it crescendoed at the recital, where he was able to see her onstage. I was next to him in the audience. As tears welled up in his eyes, I stared at him and noticed his shirt collar was too tight. It was choking him. I reached up and unbuttoned his shirt. We sat there while Gracie’s show finished. I didn’t say anything else.

Afterward, as we congratulated Gracie, I made a couple of hand gestures and noticed my friend saw them.

“Is your vision coming back to you, Dr. Herbert?” I asked. “How’d you know I put up two fingers?”

“I don’t know, Clint,” he said. “This is actually the first time that my head has not been hurting bad. I could see Gracie fine. What is happening?”

“Well, I just remember there was one little thing I learned back
in my senior year of medical school,” I said. “If your shirt is too tight, your vision starts to go.”

It was true. And it was a light ending to a heavy episode.

As Tish will attest, I was crazy about little Noah. I knew she was going to be the last kid we’d have, and I’d vowed that every second I wasn’t working I was going to be playing with that child, holding her, laughing with her, just being a good daddy.

After 9/11, I made a deal with Pax that I could use their network jet (with the
Touched by an Angel
logo on the tail) twice a month to fly back home. When I arrived, I’d take Noah to a place near our front gate where I’d put a picnic table and hung a rope swing from a giant tree branch. It was on a bluff where the property’s original homestead had been a hundred years earlier. I’d push her for hours.

We shot her swinging and playing in that exact spot in the video for “Face of God” from my gospel album,
The Other Side.
I didn’t write it, so I can brag about what a magnificent song it was, and still is.

I had high hopes for
The Other Side.
It came on the heels of
Time Flies,
an album I did for a small label in the middle of
Doc
that sadly got lost in the shuffle.
The Other Side
was on an even smaller label, one that specialized in Christian music. I wasn’t writing many songs then. Actually, in terms of music, the show had kind of paralyzed my ability to write new songs.

Then one day I wrote “The Other Side,” the only religious song I can lay claim to. I thought since God gave me an original song, He must be wanting me to cut an album. Right after, I got a call from producer Billy Joe Walker Jr. asking if I wanted to make a gospel album.

I had wanted to do a tribute to my dad for a long time. With
Doc
nearing the end of its five-season run, it was a great time in my career to say thank you to both my dad and God for allowing me this wonderful journey.

The album impressed some critics, like
Country Standard Time’
s Dan MacIntosh, who wrote, “[W]ith
The Other Side,
[Billy Ray Cyrus] deserves credit for doing a spiritual album the right way, because this ‘other’ side is also one of his better sides.” Unfortunately, others on the gospel side of the business viewed me as an imposter and treated me as such. In a couple of instances, I’d never been treated ruder.

At times, I felt like my effort to do something different had unleashed Satan’s fury. But I stuck to my message, the same one Papaw Cyrus had preached every Sunday in his church: Christianity isn’t about being perfect. It’s about realizing that we’re all human, and that’s why God sent his son to this earth—to save people like us.

It was a Sunday. I was in my condo in Toronto.
Doc
had run its course. We’d looked at the end of the series after I failed in my bid to get them to move production to Nashville. If that had worked out, I’d probably still be Dr. Clint Cassidy. I didn’t want the show to end; I just couldn’t handle the commute anymore. It was hard on my family, and it took me too far from the essence of my being, which was music.

For whatever reason, I hadn’t written any songs in ages. But then I found myself on this rare Sunday. I say
rare
because I already knew my lines for the next day. My homework was done. And with Tish and the kids at home in Nashville, I didn’t have anything to do.

I picked up my guitar like I used to do and almost immediately wrote “Wanna Be Your Joe,” a song about a guy whose only goal was to be a good husband to his wife and father to his kids. I remember strumming my guitar, shutting my eyes, and feeling a yearning to get back to basics.

Joe works at the steel mill

Works damn near every day

Leaves for work when the sun comes up

Drops the kids at school along the way

When the night is falling

He gets home and hugs his wife

He says how much he missed her

And that he loves her more than life, yeah

More than life…

Joe will never be a rich man

No lawyer or movie star.

He may not own the finest jewelry

And he may not drive the nicest car

Joe has everything he’s ever dreamed of

All the treasures that he needs

No wonder Joe is always smiling

He only aims to please, yeah

Let me be your Joe

Just want to love you and watch our babies grow

I may not be no millionaire

But I want you to know

I wanna be your Joe

You are just a woman

And I am just a man

Though I may not fill every need

I hope you understand

I wanna be your Joe

I wanna be your Joe

Let me be your Joe

Just wanna love you and watch our babies grow

I may not be no millionaire

But I want you to know

I wanna be your Joe

Let me be your Joe

Just want to love you

Just want to be your man

Just want to hold you

Love you with all that I am

I wanna be your Joe

Let me be your Joe

Wanna be your Joe

There was no mistaking the thoughts in my head. That afternoon, still feeling good about that song, I turned on the TV to celebrate. I was curious about the Boston Red Sox–New York Yankees playoff series, and the game was on. It might’ve been the first baseball game I’d watched in years.
Doc
—and everything else—kept me too busy.

Anyway, Red Sox outfielder Johnny Damon stepped up to the plate. I didn’t know who Johnny Damon was at that point, but I saw him and all of a sudden couldn’t take my eyes off him… or, specifically, his mullet. No one was in my room, but I started to say, “That dude’s got a mullet!” It was a damn good mullet, too. It started me thinking about how much simpler my life had been when I had one myself, back in the days before “Achy Breaky Heart.”

Instinctively, I grabbed my guitar, hit some chords, and started to sing:

I want my mullet back

My ol’ Camaro and my eight-track

Fuzzy dice hangin’ loose an’ proud

ZZ Top, they’re playin’ loud.

A simple time, that’s what I miss

Your miniskirt an’ your sweet kiss

Things are changin’, man, and that’s a fact

I want my mullet back!

I had so much fun cranking on that riff, I went ahead and wrote more verses. In one, I threw in a line about Skynyrd, and in another I added a reference to Bob Seger. It was as much fun as I had ever had writing a song, and it was all true. I wished times could be a lot more simple. Who doesn’t?

Terry Shelton and I were already at work on a new album, and “I
Want My Mullet Back” fit right in. We had a few songs, including “The Freebird Fell,” my tribute to Skynyrd and Ronnie Van Zant (cowritten with the band’s Ed King and Artimus Pyle), and “Country Music Has the Blues,” which I credited partially to Trace just because he liked to hang out with me and the band and help us out.

The cool thing about “Country Music Has the Blues” was that Loretta Lynn and George Jones came in and recorded vocals, giving the song just the right touch of credibility. Loretta had just done an album with Jack White, and I thought, why don’t I do anything cool like that? Probably because I didn’t ask. So I asked Loretta, who said, “Billy Ray, I haven’t seen you since our tour buses crossed paths in Branson.”

And George and I had been friends for a few years. In 1999, his wife, Nancy, had interviewed Tish for her book
Nashville Wives,
and the next thing I knew, Tish hung up the phone one day and told me that George and Peanut—his best friend and driver—wanted to know if they could come over and hang out.

“Are you serious?” I said. “George Jones wants to come over?”

A few years later, I was taking George through our house and he saw the letter Johnny Cash had sent me. He was impressed.

“Where were you when you met Johnny?” he asked.

“I’ve never met him,” I said. “And it saddens me. I always wanted to thank him personally.”

“You’ve never met Johnny Cash and he wrote you this letter?” he said, incredulous.

“No, sir,” I said. “And it saddens me. I always wanted to thank him personally.”

George looked at Peanut and scratched his head.

“Peanut, isn’t Johnny at the bookstore tonight signing books?” he asked. “The store down in Franklin?”

“Yeah, I think he is,” Peanut said.

A moment later, George and Peanut were taking me to meet Johnny Cash. I remember asking myself, “How in the hell did my life get this crazy? I’m in the truck with the legendary George Jones, drivin’ down the same highway where he infamously drove his lawn
mower to the liquor store, and now he’s taking me to meet another legend, Johnny Cash. I’m going to thank him for writing me a letter. It’s too crazy.” But hey, it was true.

“I’m proud to meet you, Cyrus,” he said. “Just keep doing what you’re doing and make your music because you love it.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied, thinking how cool it was that Johnny Cash had just called me Cyrus.

“And look at these fans,” he added, casting his eyes down the long line of people waiting to meet him. “If you treat your music right and treat your fans right, they’ll both always be there for you.”

“Yes, sir. Well, I better let you get to ’em.”

As I turned and walked away, I knew I was saying goodbye to country music royalty. But I kept thinking about the advice Johnny had given me. Treat your music right and take care of the fans. I was fixing to do just that with my next album,
Left-handed,
which Terry and I had already begun. It was going to be about me getting back to my roots with country music and some fun, bar-boogie rock like I used to play at the Ragtime. “I Want My Mullet Back” was so into that groove, and it made me excited about finishing the album.
Doc
was going to be done in a few weeks. Only a few more weeks. And then I figured I’d go back on the road. I’d play music for the fans and be in the band for the rest of my life.