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"O Death, Wont You Spare Me Over Til Another Year..." Sung by Ralph Stanley in the Coen brothers film "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"

Now I know why my grandfather always read the obituaries first when he read the afternoon newspaper at our house before supper. When you get to a certain age, friends and colleagues start falling out on a daily basis. Recently I lost two of my closest friends, Charles Murphy and Ken Collins. Charlie was a correspondent at ABC News and we worked together for five years from 1983-1988. He was a great writer and a hard news guy, who was one of the best at turning a feature. Charlie covered the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam War, Johnson White House, troubles in Northern Ireland and the Middle East and he narrowly escaped death several times. By the time we teamed up, he was a senior correspondent, Dallas Bureau Chief, and well-known for the features he did for World News Tonight. When nothing was going on, we would sit around the office, drink coffee and try to decide what story to pitch. If we could come up with two or three amusing bits, we would likely get to do it. We had carte blanche to go anywhere in the country to do features. Charlie had an Okie drawl and Twain-like wit. Peter Jennings really liked Charlie's work and our pieces were often used to end the broadcast.

Kimberly and I visited him on his last day, just a few hours before death's ice cold hands opened the door to eternity. We were in Dallas. Seeing Charlie was the first thing on our agenda after checking in with my son, Justin and his fiancé, Holly. Charlie woke up, and I played him some of my songs. He liked them and asked good questions about Nashville. Later that night, I got an email from his daughter, Meredith, that Charles Murphy had died in his sleep at 94.

I was Charlie's producer when I worked with him in the Dallas Bureau. We covered hard news and feature stories and worked with camera crews anywhere in the Southwest or Mexico. Once we got script approval, the video editor and I would put the story together and transmit it to New York via satellite, often with mere seconds to spare to make air. The editor I most often worked with in Texas was Ken Collins. Not long after Charlie died, I got word that Kenny had also died at 72 from lung cancer, the same thing that killed my father. Bad stuff.

Kenny was a freelance editor and sound man. When I found out he was also a guitar player and singer from San Antonio who learned Hank Williams from his father, I immediately had my drums shipped to Texas. Along with another friend, a freelance cameraman from Corpus Christi named Joe Cantu, who played bass, we formed a trio, Los Cutaways, cutaway being a TV editing term and Los as a nod to Joe's Mexican heritage. We played parties and in the garage for our own enjoyment. It was the first time I really played and sang country music.

Other people meaningful to me also passed on to the other side recently. John Criswell was a friendly, compassionate news anchor I worked with at WFAA and really became friends with at KTXD, the Texas Daily. John was 83.

David Bohrman was a brilliant senior producer at Nightline and World News Tonight when I was with ABC. He was a technical wizard, who made it possible for Ted Koppel to talk "live" with people all around the world nightly. He died at 69 after complications with hip surgery.

David Kunkle was Chief of Police in Grand Prairie, Arlington and Dallas, and he was my neighbor in Arlington. We had many conversations about life and police work. I think he had a good chance of becoming Mayor of Dallas, until Lewy Body Dementia cut him down at 72.

Jeff Adams was an outstanding guitar player from my adopted hometown, Boylston, Massachusetts. Jeff excelled at the blues, the English style we all liked and the original Mississippi Delta and Chicago styles we came to love. White, suburban kids like us were introduced to American Blues by a bunch of Brits: Keith Richards and the Stones, John Mayall, Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, Peter Green and the original Fleetwood Mac, Jeff Beck Group, Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin, Alvin Lee and Ten Years After, and Americans like Johnny Winter, Mike Bloomfield, and of course, the Jimi Hendrix Experience. That's how we came to appreciate Muddy, the Three Kings, John Lee Hooker and Howlin' Wolf. Jeff went to a different high school and we played in different bands. We were all very competitive, and I supported my guitar player, the late Fran Dagostino, so we never became good friends, but we were always friendly. Jeff gave us something to shoot for. He made us better. He died at 70 after a long illness.

I was lucky to have known all of these fine people and I wish them Happy Trails and condolences to their families and closest friends.

Nitty and Gritty

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"Stories with a Beat" - Ross Holmes with Don Wall

Here is my "Stories with a Beat" interview with Ross Holmes, fiddle and mandolin player with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. I first met Ross when he was ten years old at Valerie's Music Studio in Burleson, Texas, where my daughter, Eva, was also taking fiddle lessons. I took guitar lessons from the same guy that was giving Ross fiddle lessons. Before joining the Dirt Band, Ross played with Mumford and Sons, Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers, ChessBoxer, and Cadillac Sky. Ross has contributed to more than 500 albums since 2002. Most recently, Ross and Aaron Malone put together a Nashville orchestra to support Tyler Childers playing Radio City Music Hall. I can say I knew Ross when he was a kid. He has agreed to play on my Nashville recordings. Thank you, Ross! You're still a kid to me, but you are a Hoss... make that a Stallion.

On the Road Again

Justin and Holly are planning their wedding in November. They joined us and our friends from the Dallas Songwriters Association for a show at Love and War in Texas, and went to see Stephen Valenzuela and John Mason perform at Sports Garden in Coppell. Stephen won first place and John won second place in the 34th annual B.W. Stevenson Memorial Singer-Songwriter Competition at Poor David's Pub. Then, we went to a hypnotist-comedy show in McKinney and celebrated birthdays with Kimberly's good friends Sam and Cyndy Moore, Jim and Leah Couperthwaite, and Shelli and Keith Howlett.

After that Kimberly and I drove through the wind turbines, solar fields, and pump jacks of West Texas to Amarillo to visit John Pronk. We jammed a bit, and reminisced about the Hot Corn Band and our late friend, Tim Hamilton. John's getting gigs with a new band. He's picked up the banjo again, too.

From Amarillo, we drove to Santa Fe, New Mexico for a couple of days and dined at two of our favorite places, La Fonda and Geronimo. I jammed with Twinhorse on his 22nd birthday on the Plaza, where Twinhorse has been playing since he was 11. I bought Kimberly some turquoise and silver earrings from the Native American jewelers. We enjoyed the Georgia O'Keefe Museum and her paintings of flowers, mountains, skulls, and shells. Then, while hiking along the Santa Fe River, we found a shell that didn't seem to belong, a small, worn conch that somebody must have planted in the river. Or, was it some other force from an ancient past that placed an ocean shell in a magical stream in the Land of Enchantment?

From there, we drove straight north up into the Colorado Rockies to Steamboat Springs, where we camped with my daughter's family, Eva, Nate, Ty, Shep, Nash and Murphy at Steamboat Lake State Park. We hiked nearly to the summit of Hahns Peak before lightning turned us back.

On the way back to Nashville we overnighted in Topeka and thought about John Brown of Bleeding Kansas and his failed slave rebellion at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, which preceded the Civil War. We listened to the band Kansas. Driving through Kansas, it's easy to imagine Kerry Livgren writing, "All we are is Dust in the Wind."

I am co-producing the recordings for my first album with Bryan Cumming, with major help from Jeff Taylor and Ross Holmes. Bryan (co-producer, engineer, tracks, horns, guitars, vocals) currently plays with the Grammy-nominated WannaBeatles, Les Kerr and the Bayou Band, and several jazz ensembles. He spent 12 years in L.A. and toured with ShaNaNa. Jeff Taylor (accordion, piano, organ, Wurlitzer piano, penny whistle) plays with at least nine different bands in Nashville, including Les's Bayou Band. Jeff is a long-time member of the Grammy-winning Time Jumpers.

Bryan and I take my guitar/vocal and build from there. We add bass, drums, electric guitar, saxophone, and harmonies, and send the tracks off to Jeff and Ross. They record piano, accordion, keyboards, penny whistle, fiddle and mandolin parts in their home studios and send them back to us. I could never ever put a band like this together, and yet, somehow it's happening. It's what makes Nashville magic for music. I think of it as Pops Imaginary Orchestra. "Me and You" is the first single from the new album, due out later this year.

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Then, there are the shows. I play regularly at the Commodore, Copper Branch, Bad Axe, Stompin Grounds Writers Rounds, and Twin Kegs II. I've had a chance to host rounds at Copper Branch. I play Music for Seniors 3 or 4 times a month. I help friends from out of town get bookings, like Trevor Valentine from Bristol, England. Wayne Willingham and John Terry are planning upcoming visits. I've played some new places like Just Love Coffee, Hotel Preston, Aloft Hotel, and I had my best show yet, "Vue in the Round" with Arts Bellevue, hosted by Les Kerr. It featured hit songwriters Wood Newton and Jerry Salley. Their friends Linda Davis and Lang Scott came up and did a couple of songs, too. I learned so much just by sharing the stage with these legendary songwriters and artists. Their songs are great, and they know how to tell a good story to get a laugh. Many thanks to my good friend, Les Kerr, and to Lee Jones and Glen Biggs from Arts Bellevue.

Oh yeh, we got a new car. The old Highlander died after 275,000 miles and I bought a 2012 Subaru Outback with less than 100k, good for our road trips.