Editor’s note:

This series on Billy Ray Cyrus appeared several years ago in The Greenup Beacon. It was a work provided by Gregg Davidson a frequent contributor to the paper. This series has been revised with some new information ad restructuring by its author. The content presented is of his work and we have protected his poetic license. Any content or opinion in this series is his work and doesn’t express the paper’s stance or opinion.

In the summer of 1992, Billy Ray Cyrus was the most popular performer in the world. Hired as a driver, I got to personally witness history in the making as he and Sly Dog brought their locally forged version of Country Music to every sort of place imaginable – from flatbed trucks at crowded county fairs to sold-out arenas that held thousands. When a popular band hits the road, some of the most unexpected occurrences may take place. Colorful road stories are as much a part of the history of a group as the records that they make, but in contrast, are usually never recorded for posterity.

I have decided to share a few episodes with you here in the course of my continuing story of BRC’s career. When you are famous or simply a part of the satellite group that revolves around a celebrity, you often encounter complete strangers who ask bold favors and make demands of you in ways that old friends or even family members never would. Everybody seems to feel as if they know you when you know absolutely nothing about them. Sometimes they confuse their facts or purposefully lie to impress others. Following are some examples of how tenacious certain fans may be.

Somewhere in Texas, I walked a couple of blocks from the hotel and entered a magazine stand that shared an entrance with a beauty salon. As I began scanning the racks for my purchase, I overheard a conversation between two women chatting as their perms set. They were nearly shouting over the hum of the hairdryers and I distinctly heard one relating to the other about how she had gone to great lengths to get front row seats for the BRC show.

That should have been enough, but she went on to brag about how one of her best childhood friends had been living in Kentucky, and how the friend’s daughter graduated with Billy Ray at “Flatwoods High.” It was all that I could do to keep myself from calling her bluff. Outside of a venue in Louisiana, I was walking past a throng of fans pushing against a chain link security fence and overheard a mullet-sporting twenty-something black man telling a security officer how much trouble the indifferent man was going to be in when Billy Ray found out that he wouldn’t let his own cousin backstage. This claim was repeated several more times on the tour with the relationship varying from Billy’s fiancée to his hairdresser.

When it comes to the lunatic fringe, you cannot hope to spot them on their looks or appearance either. I was sitting alone having a late lunch in a popular Nashville diner early one evening and had forgotten to remove my laminated pass and lanyard from around my neck. From out of nowhere stepped a highly attractive, young blonde who plopped right down beside me and began to explain how she and Billy Ray were soul-mates. I’d heard similar pitches before, so playing along, I asked if she’d ever actually met him.

Without so much as blinking, she went on to say that he’d been coming to her every night in her dreams since way before he was famous and would always read her love poetry, promising to marry her if she could only move to Nashville where they could meet. She said it was only a matter of time before they would be together forever, and offered proof by claiming that a psychic had told her it was in her future and that a long-haired blonde man would introduce them. I was stunned, but revealed no hint of it. Still only halfway through my meal, she excused herself and headed for the restroom. I had the waitress box up the remains and quickly dashed out the door.

Perhaps the most unrelenting fan was a young Mexican girl that came to the show in McAllen, Texas, a quaint town just a few miles within the U.S. border. The venue was surrounded by a security fence, but somehow at least two dozen girls had managed to talk their way through the sparse security force and were gathered near the stage area exit door when I pulled the equipment truck inside. As the stage gear was being carried in, one of them walked over to me and asked what I did for the group. I explained that I was hired to drive whatever they needed driven.

She looked at the truck, then glanced over to the nearby tour bus and asked if I could let her see what it looked like inside. I told her that it was out of the question, since the band members’ personal items were onboard and nobody except the road crew was allowed on outside of the band. She was so persistent, that I finally asked for the key so that I could let her take a brief peek, promising to only let her step just inside the doorway for twenty seconds so that she might quit pestering me.

She actually behaved, but when the deed was done, she still hovered around me until I went through the backstage entrance. During the concert, I spotted her right in the front row, screaming and flinging her long hair around much like the other women her age. Afterwards, as I waited on the laborers to finish loading the truck, she was back, this time asking me to give her a ride to the next town since she didn’t own a car and wanted to watch the next show. I explained that due to insurance purposes, it was forbidden to take on passengers and wished her luck as I climbed into the back to inspect and secure the quarter-million dollars worth of musical instruments and sound gear.

A few minutes later I was back in the cab and heading down the open highway. I drove about fifty miles before I saw my sleeping blanket move in the passenger side floorboard. When I pulled it back, there she was curled up in the fetal position. The girl must have been a Houdini because the truck had a double lock system to prevent break-ins and having a diesel engine it allowed you to warm up the motor while waiting outside of the cab. I always kept them locked whenever I had to step out, no exceptions. I KNOW it was locked. I was angry, but held back as I politely scolded her for being a stowaway and putting my job in jeopardy. How could she be so brash, especially after I had been nice enough to show her the bus? I would have lost too much time if I’d turned around, so I asked her to call someone to pick her up at the truck stop that I knew was only another 10 miles or so away. She sheepishly apologized and told me how she didn’t have anyone to call because she’d ran away from home after her Dad had forbidden her to go to the concert. Realizing that she was going to be uncooperative, I came up with a plan.

As we approached the truck stop, I falsely told her that I had also once run away, and pretended to understand her situation, feigning sympathy. I pulled up to the pump, and pointing to the fuel gage, told her that I had to fill up the tank and asked if she was hungry. When she answered yes, I handed her a hundred dollar bill as I started the pump and offered to buy us both something to eat if she didn’t mind going in to pay for the fuel. She smiled and walked towards the building. As much as I hated to, I stopped pumping and waited for her to enter before I jumped back in and sped away after having only added about five gallons to the tank. What she didn’t realize was that the truck had a reserve tank and it was full. This sort of thing is tame compared to some of the encounters that I can’t share here for a number of reasons, but I’m sure you can imagine. The long and winding road is fraught with many obstacles, snares, hurdles, and distractions, but as the old adage says, the show must go on.

One other annoying thing that kept occurring was something I hadn’t counted on. Many times I would be entering a hotel lobby or elevator, or walking around in a venue’s loading zone or backstage area when someone would approach me thinking that I was Billy Ray’s drummer, Greg Fletcher.

As if having essentially the same first name and both being drummers wasn’t bad enough, we actually resembled one another.

Although I am just a little taller than Greg, we both had long, wavy, strawberry-blonde locks and a similar build, so I guess it was easy to mistake us. Even my own mother once did a double-take. That’s certainly understandable, but at times it became downright irritating when people didn’t believe me after I tried to tell them that I wasn’t him. They would give me a hard time and even call me names when I would turn down their pleas for autographs or pictures. It got so bad after awhile that I actually signed his name a few times just to spare myself from their wrath.

One night in a large city well-known for its lively music scene, I’d just enjoyed a meal at the hotel’s four-star restaurant and was almost in reach the glass elevator when a woman I remembered eating at another table approached me to say that she worked as a journalist and had just finished up an article on BRC. She asked if I’d like to see it, so to be polite, I agreed to give it a look and followed her as she approached the door, knowing that there was a newspaper box just outside. She walked right past it, and when I pointed it out she smiled and said that she worked for a magazine, and her office was just down the block. Reluctantly, I trailed along as we passed a splendid view of the State Capitol building and entered a tall edifice with a lush lobby full of huge, prehistoric looking plants and modern works of art and sculpture.

An elevator ride brought us to a hallway covered in framed, glossy magazine covers and soon she was turning a key in a massive oak door. Inside, she flooded the room with an overhead light then sat behind an ornate desk covered in neat piles of papers. Pushing a couple of sheets in front of me, she offered me bottled water from a tiny refrigerator as I read what I soon realized was nothing but hogwash. It was nothing more than a bunch of speculation, misinformation, and downright fabrications that I might expect from a tabloid, but not from what seemed to otherwise be a classy, high-brow periodical.

I looked up just as she asked, “Did Billy Ray really think he could hide the fact that he’s a spouse abuser and a drug addict?” I was fuming at the allegations and assured her that she was dead wrong on just about every single point in the article.

She calmly stated that she already knew the truth because she’d spoken to his ex-wife Sandy. I knew it was a lie because her name was Cindy and their split was fairly amicable. After another five minutes or so of her attempts to get me to come clean concerning her assertions, I rose to leave.

She apologized, offering me more pages containing the real BRC article which was completely at odds with the prior trash. I shot her a confused look as she explained that the original piece was based on information culled from some people who had contacted her office. It then dawned on me that she’d been trying to confirm it by targeting one of Billy’s own.

Relieved, I complimented her on her devious approach at getting to the truth. As we reached the street, she waved and said, “It was great meeting you Mr. Fletcher.”

At the level of success that BRC had attained, it is inevitable that you run into opportunists on the road. Con men, shysters and hucksters come out of the woodwork for a chance at profiting from you, that is a given. I expected as much, but what I didn’t foresee was the number of nice people who will approach you with a tape of their music in hopes that you might help them to launch their own careers. On one occasion I was dining (again) at a Cracker Barrel in Nashville with a couple of band members when a man approached and introduced himself. It was Bobby Boyd, the man who co-wrote “Two of a Kind Workin’ on a Full House”, a huge hit for Garth Brooks. He explained how despite the success of that and other tunes he’d written, he was still desperately trying to make ends meet in Nashville and hoped someone would listen to his newest tunes.

He handed us an envelope with contact information and a cassette tape before politely thanking us and making his exit. I could have expected such a plea coming from a struggling unknown artist, but I was shocked that a published and successful songwriter was in such a position and it gave me a whole new respect for them. The next time I saw the package, it was lying unopened on the desk in Jack McFadden’s office on payday. I also noticed at least a half dozen similar unopened parcels in the garbage can (In stark contrast, I spied a stack of Billy Ray’s Platinum album awards leaning against the wall). Boyd has since moved to Austin and shifted his career towards Blues and R&B.

Speaking of Jack McFadden, I met him for the first time in Stone Mountain, Georgia. The outdoor concert stage was built facing a tall grassy hillside where the hotel sat at its peak. Behind the stage was the massive stone hillside with a relief sculpture of Robert E. Lee and other leaders that the area is famous for. At the foot of this was a large drainage pond. The tour bus was parked between the pond and the stage along with some temporary trailers for use by the bands and their entourages (McBride & The Ride were the opening act). Jack was a large, imposing man with piercing eyes and grey-white hair.

Despite the summer heat, he was dressed very professionally in a tailored suit. When he came onto the tour bus, he shed his jacket before I shook his hand and when he spoke, I was immediately reminded of Colonel Parker, the manager behind Elvis Presley. As it turned out, it wasn’t exactly just a business call, Jack simply came out to check on his cash cow and get away from the office for a while.

He was very cordial and told a couple of stories as he began to relax, and I soon realized why he was so successful, he undeniably was a “people person”. Steven Van Zandt was also there that day. Already a music industry legend as a founding member of Bruce Springsteen’s E-Street Band, he later became a successful actor best known for his role as Silvio Dante on cable TV’s “The Sopranos.” We chatted about him and Bruce reuniting someday and it did eventually happen. He was a very nice guy who loved to chat and he shared a few stories with me too.

Stone Mountain, GA - Crowd Shot



Gregg and Little Steven

Nashville Platinum