I’ve been playing the same 20 songs For the last 20 years For the same 20 dollars. —Steve Brantley When I was about 13 years old, I played my first paying gig, at Beech Island Teen Town, down in Beech Island, S.C. The pay was $20. Soon after, my band, The Fleshmen, recorded a regional hit record, “Go Funky.” The gigs—and my pay—got a lot better. Pretty soon, I was making more money than my daddy, Jabo Jowers. I kept a big wad of cash in my sock drawer, and every now and then, Jabo would ask me if he could borrow $20. Since he was the one who bought my guitar, my amp and the band’s bass rig, drums and sound system, I figured he had the 20 bucks coming. I also worked for Jabo, in the business he called Martinez Metal Works. When Jabo started the metal shop, he built cookie-sorting machines for Murray Biscuit Company. During the summer, he’d wake me up about 10 o’clock and say, “Get your feet on the floor, boy, and come on out to the shop. I need you to bring up the ignorant end today.” My job was to load all the heavy cookie sorters into Jabo’s red GMC pickup truck. When I got that done, Jabo drove us over to the Murray Biscuit plant, where I unloaded all the cookie sorters and carried them through the maze of dough mixers, ovens and conveyor belts. Jabo and I had done jobs like this before, and we had a plan. Once inside the plant, Jabo and I would split up. He’d install the cookie-sorting machines, and I’d go over to the coconut macaroon line and steal warm macaroons off the conveyor belt, about six at a time. Steal more than six, and somebody would come check the macaroon line for faults. We ate as many warm macaroons as we could hold and stuffed the rest into our toolboxes and jacket pockets. A couple years later, Jabo dropped dead on the dance floor of the Augusta, Ga., Amvets Club, the victim of a heart attack brought on by the bugaloo. By this time, “Go Funky” had fallen off the charts, and my wads of cash had been replaced with milk jugs of pocket change. I was 17 years old, and the light and water bills were past due at the Jowers house, which I lived in by myself. I needed a job. So I went down to the Murray Biscuit plant, where I thought they liked me, and asked if I could have one. The woman who interviewed me recognized me instantly. “You that boy who steals the macaroons, ain’t you? We don’t need no cookie stealers in here. Cookies are money!” I just turned around and walked out. Soon after, disco came along and destroyed my rock ’n’ roll band, like a neutron bomb blast. The amps, instruments and truck were fine, but the brains, flesh and souls of us four musicians were degrading. We were baritones, not falsetto singers. We wore jeans and sneaks, not polyester and high heels. We couldn’t get a gig. My guitar player and bass player grew Grizzly Adams beards and joined a country band. My drummer increased his already extraordinary use of contraband medications. By now, wife Brenda (then girlfriend Brenda) had moved into my house. We were keeping the lights on and keeping the house warm by way of modifications I’d made to the electric and gas meters. I needed a job. So I started reading the want ads. In those days, in Burnettown, S.C., a good job was working weekends killing rats in the basement of the cotton mill. I was looking for something simple, something that I could leave as soon as something better came along. I found an ad that interested me. Some entrepreneurs over in Gloverville were setting up a brand-new rabbit-processing plant. I thought to myself, “Now, there’s a job where they can’t turn me down.” So I went to Gloverville, and I told a nice lady that I wanted the job. “It’s skinning rabbits and chopping them up,” she said. “I would love nothing more than dismembering rabbits and preparing their little parts for shipment,” I said earnestly. “Let me at the bunnies. You won’t be disappointed.” The woman opened the door and motioned me out. I didn’t have the right rabbit-skinning stuff. I was not right for their rabbit-killing organization. So I went to see my dear, sweet Uncle Guy, who helped my daddy build the Jowers house, who bailed my daddy out of jail more than once, and who was in charge of a big strip-mining operation. Uncle Guy sat me down in his den, put a serious look on his face and said, “I can get you a job driving a bulldozer, son. I know you’re smart, and you’ll be able to get the hang of it pretty quick.” “When do I start?” I asked. “Well, wait just a minute,” Uncle Guy said. “There’s one thing that I need to make plain: I don’t need a guitar player. I need a bulldozer driver.” Gotta love Uncle Guy. He did know how to make things plain. It was band or bulldozer, and no going back either way. Brenda and I moved to Nashville the next week.
