Chords for Randy Travis Reveals All His Money Is Gone

Author Ken Abraham admits that part of the challenge of helping Randy Travis write his
first-person autobiography was finding words and phrases that sounded like Randy.
As a kid, I was singing his songs because my daddy was a big Hank Williams fan.
I love to laugh.
I can laugh at myself.
Hey, you might as well learn to laugh at
yourself because everybody else is going to laugh at you.
I'll never get out of this world [E] alive.
_ That's [G] about all I know of it.
[E] _ Thank you, Rob.
_ In a sense, Ken was giving the Hall of Famer his voice back after a 2013 stroke robbed him
of a world-famous instrument, an instrument responsible for some of the most pure country
music ever created.
[A] I told you so.
_ _ _ _ _ [C#m] _ _ [D] _
_ [E] _ Travis [D] is happy [G#] to explain the ups and downs of his life and revisit old songs in print,
but is he satisfied?
No.
He wants his real face back.
Yeah, [G] it's not enough.
And we're not giving [E] up on that. _ _ _
[G] I'm gonna [A] love you [D] forever and [G]
ever, [E] forever and [D] ever, amen.
The book is called Forever and Ever, Amen, and it's an unflinching chronicle of Travis's
turbulent life and career, from his humble beginnings in Marshville, North Carolina,
to the night he accidentally blew off Mick Jagger's dinner invitation,
to today, where he sits happily married but financially devastated by misplaced trust,
bad bookkeeping, and medical bills.
Millions and millions of dollars he thought he had saved while married to and managed
by Lib Hatcher simply weren't there any longer, and no one has figured [N] out why yet.
Is it a pretty dire situation today?
[E] Okay, I don't want you to get too detailed, but, uh, [C] you need to work.
There's still need to have some income coming in.
Yeah.
Hopefully the book will help.
I'm going back to a better [G] place, I'm a loser.
In a way, Forever and Ever, Amen is part survival and redemption story,
and part cautionary tale for anyone making a career in music.
Travis, now 60 years old and preparing to move back to Nashville full-time, doesn't hold [G#] back,
even when retelling old stories of arrests, abuse, and several near-death experiences.
He agrees that writing this book wasn't easy, but it was liberating.
Somebody once said it's almost like taking a knife and pulling it across a wound that
has not yet had the opportunity to congeal and heal.
And that's what we were doing.
We're taking a knife over some of those things that really had been
untouched for a long time, for a lot of years, and that's tough to deal with.
Randy has always [N] been so, so faithful, so, so honest, so true, so humble.
And, you know, you just hope other people will grasp that same type of humanistic,
you know, attitude [F#] and say, you know what, I did maybe do some things I shouldn't have done.
Just like you said a second ago, we've admitted where we were wrong,
and we hope that they will do the same thing because there's so much freedom [E] in knowing that.
[A] You literally [D] can't tell Travis' story without his wife Mary [C#] alongside him.
The couple have known each other for decades, but married in 2015, nearly two years after
doctors gave him little chance to survive cardiomyopathy and a devastating stroke.
She's his rock.
She's the one that fought for him.
The doctors had pretty much given up on Randy.
And [G] then that moment when Mary is confronted with the doctor saying,
pull the plug and all of that, [F#] and she comes to Randy and says, Randy, do you want to keep fighting?
_ And she sees that tear come down his face, and she knew that there was still a fighter in here.
And then he squeezed her hand.
He squeezed her hand there in the hospital room,
and she knew he wasn't going to give up. _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [D#] _ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [Bm] _ So much is made of Mary's responsibilities as his caretaker and the one who can speak for him
that it's easy to overlook the fact that in many ways they're just like any other couple.
They watch TV together, and they even bicker. _
[F] Do you bicker?
_ [C] _ Yeah.
_ [A#] _
_ The pair also know a deeper form of communication that Mary talked about
when we flat out asked, what's Randy Travis like as a husband?
[N] He's a warrior.
He's an angel.
He is, you know, when you go through life and you have someone that is so dear to you that can
[F] tell you every day how much they love you and how special you are, how pretty you are, how,
you know, thank you for this, thank you for that, you take that for granted.
It's one of those things that I often tell people, I say, listen fast, talk slow,
um, _ appreciate every single day.
If, if, if somebody you think talks too much, just listen,
you know, act like you're [B] listening anyway.
But he can't do that in words like most people can,
but it's so precious how loved I feel, um, by him in his silence.
In silence, Randy Travis finds his voice.
Thanks for watching this episode of Unfiltered.
For more inspiration and episodes you might have missed, click this playlist. _ _ _
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