It starts with a guy named Frank Dycus. He was the first songwriter I met when I came to Nashville, in 1973. One day, maybe six years later, I’m over at this place on 20th Avenue called the Third Coast. It was a bar and hotel where all the traveling musicians stayed—the Allman Brothers, Marshall Tucker, Dr. Hook. I’d go hang out with them sometimes. It’d be me and Dickey Betts throwing TVs out of third-floor windows. I was 24 years old, doing crazy shit.
