One weekend Brenda took the boys to Live Oak.

Owen picked all night with Larry and John Gillis.

In the morning, they asked him if he was in a band.

"No," he said, "I am in high school."

They asked him if he wanted to join the Gillis Brothers band.

He said, "I'll have to ask my mom."

Owen joined the Gillis Brothers band.

Brenda would take Friday afternoon off and drive him to a bluegrass festival. They'd spend the weekend and come home Sunday night.

Balder bought an upright bass and started going, too.

Brenda would make a potato salad and fry chicken.

The Drop-Out Prevention Program limited the number of absences a student could have, for any reason, so Owen dropped out.

That is, the Drop-Out Prevention Program forced Owen to drop out.

We bought him a secondhand Toyota station wagon for $2,000, gave him a BP gas card, and sent him off to live in one of the Gillis's yards.

The Gillis Brothers bought gas, fried chicken, and cigarettes on that credit card all the way to Kanloops, Canada, and back.
Owen was 16.

Two summers Balder went on the road with the band. One summer he played bass and the next summer he played mandolin.

He was 13 and 14.

When Owen was 16 he got his Uncle Wayne to loan him the money for two hours of studio time and 1,000 tapes. Maybe it was 500 tapes.

Owen made a cassette tape called 12 Gauge Fiddle.

It was him and the Gillis Brothers plus Glen Tyson on mandolin.

Potter played rhythm guitar on one song and Balder played mandolin on one song.

They spent an hour tuning up and getting the mikes right and cut every song in one take.

He gave Wayne a producer credit on the album.

He paid the band with copies of the tape and paid Uncle Wayne back out of the proceeds from the sale of the tape.

He sold the tape at shows, after the Gillis Brothers played on stage.

This was my old swinette-picker dream.

Owen was realizing my dream.

Or, I like to think he got the idea of producing his own tape, at 16, from me publishing my own pamphlets, and selling them on the streets of my native town out of a musette bag, like Johnny Potsherd sowing sherds in Indian Sites throughout the Southeastern United States.

I dream of playing the swinette on stage, at Americana music festivals, selling my books at the record table afterwards. A swinette, you stretch two horsehairs across a hog's ass and pick it with your teeth. Brew mounts the steps, walks across the stage with great dignity, takes a stuffed Miss Piggy doll out from under his robes, lifts her skirt, presses her butt to his face, and squeals like a stuck pig. Great cry and little wool, as the Devil said when he sheared the hogs.

Sex, drugs, and Flatt and Scruggs.

Yee-haw!