My love for music started when I was around 3 or 4 years old. My father,
“Buddy” Upchurch, played guitar. His friends, “Scruggs on fiddle”
and “Frank on a Gibson J45”, along with my father on his Gibson
SG would play and sing well into the night, songs of old school
country and bluegrass
as well as gospel. I would be sent to bed long before they finished
but would listen from my bed until I fell asleep.
As the years passed I would listen to him whenever I had the chance and he would let me hold his 67’ Fender Telecaster and pluck the strings one by one. (I know now where I get my patience from.) At 14, I traded an old beat up console stereo that hardly played, (I’m not sure it was even mine to trade, but after all, it was in my room…) to a friend down the street for a 1963 Sears Silvertone electric guitar, the kind that had the amplifier built right into the guitar case. It was missing a few strings but I still thought it was the best. My Dad replaced the strings for me and cleaned it all up. He showed my how to tune it and taught me 3 chords. These 3 chords just happened to be the chords for Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues”. This would be the first song I ever learned. After that, everything I learned, I taught myself by watching people on television or anywhere else I could watch their fingers and tried to do it myself. Till this day, I don’t read a single note of sheet music, everything I play is by ear. I was just lucky I guess to be blessed with that ability.
When I was 18, Monica and I had our first date at a Jimmy Buffett concert at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. I was hooked from that point on. Monica wrote the words to “A Pirate Looks at 40” for me on a paper plate and I sang it at a bar called Dylan’s in Decatur Georgia. I thought I was on top of the world at that point.
After many bands and playing with a bunch of musicians, inevitably “real life” took over and my dreams of only playing music had to take a back seat for awhile…about 20 years to be exact. However, after all my travels and endeavors I somehow found my way back to my home in Atlanta. As those chapters ended in my life, the one I’ve always wanted started all over again.
As my great friend Alison West told me ( winner of 4 CMA awards out of Knoxville, WIVK), “do what you love…and you’ll love what you do.”
I think my high school buddy, the Reverend Jeff Mosier, said it best…”Live music is the ultimate “Hi Def”.”
Ya’ll don’t ever give up on what fills your soul with happiness and “Lord willin’ and the crick don’t rise” I’ll be seeing you soon.
Robin Upchurch