Due to to the influence of Scott, I've returned to listening to the Charlie Daniels Band after about a 25 year lull. So far I've gotten the 1976 album Saddle Tramp and a greatest hits collection, The Essential Charlie Daniels, with Nightrider and Fire On the Mountain on the way. Listening to tunes like "Cumberland Mountain #9" and "Long Haired Country Boy" reminds me why I was a country music fanatic when most kids were more interested in Tonka trucks.

I've probably mentioned that I had an older cousin in Chattanooga who would give me his scratched and chipped Kiss albums and dogeared Kiss posters. I talked about nothing but Kiss until about fourth grade, when my uncle began influencing me more than my cousin. On weekends he would drive to Atlanta to blow his week's earnings on the latest stereo gear and country 45's. My dad got into it, too, and I became fascinated with the albums and singles they were buying.

Somewhere along the way I caught sight of Waylon Jennings and decided he was the coolest-looking bastard in the world. My dad's Ol' Waylon LP mesmerized me, and I bought the Music Man album. The song "Clyde" sent me over the edge: I began begging my parents for guitar lessons (although strangely "Clyde" was about a bass player).

In the community school group where I began taking lessons the other kid at the top of the class was also a Waylon fanatic (I eventually edged him out to win "most progressed"). We discussed how Waylon got that crunchy sound on his guitar, and he said it was by pushing the strings over the edge of the neck. How Waylon could bend those strings so far and so fast to get that sound just made him more awesome to me (and it turned out we were totally wrong, that's done with an amplifier or pedal).

I got a cowboy hat at Richway, and my grandmother made me a leather vest. My granddad gave me an old dimestore electric guitar and amp. Dad bought me a microphone and stand at Radio Shack, and soon I was putting on concerts in my grandparent's living room.

Radio station WBIE was constantly on in my room, and one time I even got a shout out on the air because I called to say when I got old I wanted WBIE wired into my hearing aid. Every weekend my allowance went to buy new singles, and a neighbor dubbed Willie Nelson & Family Live for me on 8-track.

I also got two Charlie Daniels albums, one being Full Moon. I had heard "In America" on the playground at the park and decided that was my shit. I memorized "The Legend of Wooley Swamp" and recited it to classmates as we walked on a moonlit trail on a field trip to Rock Eagle. I also bought a Volunteer Jam album, and a photo inside that is where I first saw a Les Paul guitar. I started lusting for a knockoff in the J.C. Penney catalog and vowed one day I would have one (now I have two!).

Around seventh grade, though, I started listening to pop station Z-93, and due to Scott's influence I drifted into Def Leppard and Van Halen and left Waylon, Willie and Charlie behind. Thank God Scott and I have both come to our senses.