I can remember driving through Kansas in the pitch black with tornado sirens going off in the distance. The wind was blowing my Toyota 4-Runner back and forth across the road, and the 5×8 U-Haul I was towing felt like it was going to roll at any minute. I couldn’t see anything either, on account of the rain.
It was just me alone in the car. Screaming. AHHHHHH! AHHHHHH! AHHHHHH!
“I’m here, son,” my dad’s voice calmly said. It was about 1 a.m. when I called him.
I was terrified. Bad weather in the middle of nowhere with no one around. I don’t think I saw another car for an hour, and the view of the landscape only was visible when cracks of lightning illuminated the sky.
“There’s a tornado somewhere, and I can’t see it. I am going to die. I can’t see a thing. This trailer is about to flip. Fuck!”
That might seem a little dramatic, but inclement weather has been a fear of mine since I can remember. This was my nightmare. To be fair, I was going straight through Tornado Alley in May.
My dad didn’t get flustered or freak out. He remained calm and stayed on the phone. “I’m looking at the weather now. It looks like you should be through it in about 20 miles. And it’s moving west, so you’ll be in the clear after that,” he said with a hopeful tone in his voice.
He was right. About 45 minutes later, the sky was clear. I found a rest stop near Big Springs and pulled in to take a moment and calm down. It was about 2 a.m.
What was supposed to be an easy 10-hour first leg of my trek from Vail, Colorado, back to Fairhope had turned into 14 hours, with the last three being stressful as hell.
I dozed off.
“Son? You there? You OK?” I was startled a bit and looked at the clock on my dashboard. It was 3:30 a.m.
I had been asleep for a while. I looked at my phone and saw that the timestamp on the screen read 3:30 (give or take a few minutes). It was still counting. Dad never hung up.
We had been on the phone for almost four hours, and I’d been asleep for the last hour and a half.
“I’m OK. I’m OK,” I said, wiping the sleep from my eyes and yawning. “I’m gonna stop in Kansas City and crash with a friend.”
“Want me to stay on the phone?” Pops asked. “No. I think I’m good. It’s only about 45 minutes from here.”
“OK. Text me when you get there. I’m here if you need me, son. Love you,” he said. Then we hung up.
That was something my dad said to us our whole lives. “I’ll be here if you need me.” As we got older and life got more complicated, he incorporated a second part to it: “I’ll be here even if you don’t.”
I know a lot of people say things like that. But he meant it. I would call my dad at 3 a.m. during grad school when I was writing a paper and needed a break. “What’s this one about?” he’d ask as soon as he answered.
“This is about the over saturation of sports coverage in the media and how that has impacted long-form narratives,” I replied.
“Sounds like something too complicated for an old man like me,” he’d jokingly replied.
I’d FaceTime him randomly when I caught a signal on a hike. “Check it out,” I said, panning the camera around so he could see the view of the Waipi’o Valley in Hawaii. I was hiking into the valley around 7 p.m. Island Time, which meant it was 12 a.m. back in Alabama.
“Too cool!” he said, his screen still black because he had answered in the middle of the night while asleep.
“Doing some astrophotography,” I said. “I’m waiting until it gets dark to take some sick photos.”
“That sounds cool, dude! Call me when you’re done so I know you’re safe,” he said.
On days when I’d be slammed with work, or maybe sick and hadn’t talked to him in a few days, he would text me: Just checking in, dude. Here if you need me! Here if you don’t.
My pops was always there.
When I started my new job in July 2022 I was listening to a lot of Billy and the boys. I was really digging the 3-night set from Saint Augustine 2022 at the time, which I had the pleasure of attending. There’s also the show at Koka Booth Amphitheatre from 2022 that has a killer cover of “Willin’” that I couldn’t get enough of.
While I was working the jam portion of songs (i.e., no lyrics) would suck me in like a tractor beam. WOOOOHHHMMM. So I wasn’t paying attention to the lyrics like I normally do. I was in the zone analyzing data, mannnnnnnn!
After my dad passed, I found this little playlist I had made on Nugs called Billy Beats. Not sure why I named it that, but I like it. Makes me think it’s some hip-hop crossover of Billy Strings.
Among the songs on the playlist are: “Willin’,” “Show Me the Door,” “Know it All,” “Watch it Fall,” and “Love Like Me.” Without fail, I listened to that playlist every night when I went to sleep…or I would turn on one of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies and listen to it like an audio book.
Anyway, while moving through all of the grief bullshit, I had one of those moments people sometimes talk about where they feel as if their loved one is speaking to them. An echo, if you will.
For me, that was finally ‘hearing’ the lyrics to “Show Me the Door.”
” I’ll be here if you need me. I’ll be here, even if you don’t.” Those are the first two lines of the chorus.
I would listen to the song OVER and OVER. I knew every part of it, all the way to the end where there’s stage banter among the band about looking for a guy named Joe (not your average Joe) in the crowd.
I’d cry listening to it because it was the mantra that my dad had recited to me my whole life. I have vivid memories of him saying this, like during that drive across Kansas or when I was writing a stupid paper for graduate school.
When I spoke at my his service I recited that mantra. Everyone in attendance felt it. Even if he never said it to them directly, they knew that was the energy he gave the people he loved. If someone there that day didn’t feel it, then didn’t know my dad for shit.
In December that same year, my wife and I took my mom to see Billy in New Orleans. It was night one of his two-night New Year’s Eve run. It was my mom’s first time seeing him, and she was SO excited. We stood in line and got her a poster from the show and other merch.
She proudly wears her merch and talks about that show. She always asks, “What’s the name of that last song he played? The one about the Cadillac?”
Of course, buried in his first set was “Show Me the Door.” I cried as soon as I heard the guitar start up and Billy sang the first few lyrics: “She ebbs and flows like water/And she feels just like wine…”
I cried. I’m crying thinking about it now.
I could feel my pops there with the three of us. I could hear him say:
“I’m glad to finally get to hear Billy Guitar. It seems like that’s all you listen to now. Maybe he’ll play that cool cowboy song! That fucker can play the guitar, Trippy! Look at him go.”
The song was written by Jarrod Walker and Christian Ward, and sung by Billy.
I’d like to thank you, Mr. Ward and Mr. Walker, for unknowingly creating a piece of music that brings my dad’s mantra to life in a new way. Thank you, Mr. Strings, for breathing life in to the lyrics with your voice and guitar pickin’. I always look forward to hearing it live.
I play it when I’m happy. I play it when I’m sad. No matter what I’m feeling, I can hear my dad:
I’ll be here if you need me, son. I’ll be here even if you don’t.
