Earle, Yoakam, etc.

There I was, backstage at the CMA Awards, talking to my friend Lou Lunden, who was working for NBC radio. She suddenly said: "That's a nice story, I want you to tell that to a friend of mine. So I did, and her friend was working for Nashville Network, and later on I was on a prime-time show, covering the Awards. But look at my T-shirt. It's showing Steve

Earle at a time that you rather not mention his name in Nashville, because Steve was going through a bad period. Lou thought that they would not broadcast the interview, because of the T-shirt, but they did.

This was Steve in '87, taken at the International country festival in Wetzlar, Germany, that rained out the second day. So Steve had all the time in the world to talk to us, but no show.

The girl on the left is Tacy Peck, who ran Steve's fanclub and did a whole lot more for him. I met her in Nashville. She married in Florida, and I was invited but couldn't be there. She now lives in Virginia as Mrs. Judd.

You see she's wearing a Steve Earle T-shirt I could never lay my hands on. And that wasn't all. She had everything Steve ever done, inclusive what's known as the Mexico demo's.

One day singer-songwriter Marjy Plant had a surprise for us (Ad on the left, me on the right). She wanted to do some demo's at Dave Earney's studio, where Steve recorded his "Early tracks", and she didn't tell us in advance that she asked Steve to come see some friends from Belgium. Well, he showed up, with a load of great stories.

Picture taken on a day I'll never forget. Nashville had gone through some ice storms, leaving the city out of power. I was shocked when I entered Steve's house, because the whole floor was heavily damaged by water.

What happened was that Steve Earle's son Ian wanted some water, but as the house was without power, he didn't get it, but he forgot to close the tap. The family left to sleep elsewhere, but in the meantime the power got on again and as the sink was stopped up, the water kept running, flooding the house, into Steve's studio in the basement. Steve didn't hold it too much against him.

Dwight Yoakam was on the festival too, and didn't have to play either. But we didn't get an interview, because Dwight stepped on too many toes when he was starting, and his management advised him to shut up for a while. Bad luck for us, but at least we got some liners.

Soon he'll start talking into our microphone.

I guess this is prove enough he did.

Buck and his daughters, Sharon and Cheryl, also known as the Whites, was the third act that didn't play because of the rain. For the interview I choose an unusual approach; and to my surprise Buck said it was the best interview he'd done in years.

Same festival, the day before, it was raining cats and dogs. But the show went on  with Stella Parton, Jim Glaser, Doyle Holley and the Seldom Scene, here playing.

I had the honour of talking to John Duffy, who had just, but not quite recovered from a mild stroke. How could he know that ten years later another one would be fatal? He was a perfect American gentleman.