Euphoria

I have always loved music, all the way to joining the Columbia Record Club and having them send the records to the wrong address so I wouldn't have to pay for them. I ordered every Kingston Trio album through the club and never paid a dime. It was the middle of the folk era, and there were many clubs up and down the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
I got into music basically to meet girls, no doubt about it. Women have always been an influence on my music, good and bad. It looked like the greatest job in the world. I was in college at the time, a freshman at Auburn University. I was a shy, awkward kid from Mobile, kind of a wallflower. My roommate had a guitar, and even though he knew only 3 chords, he always seemed to be the center of attention with women. I said, "Teach me those chords."
So I learned the guitar and started hanging out around folk clubs, watching the bands. The all had big, shiny Martin guitars; I would've given my right arm for a Martin guitar. And the women-all the time women-were hanging around the band. I thought: this is the job for me.
I was always a lover of the lyrical song, and I think the people who influenced me in those days typified my upbringing. I grew up in Mobile, and my relatives on my grandfather's side were a kind of Cajun, Indian, wild people from that area. My grandfather was a sailing-ship captain who migrated from Nova Scotia. So it was a gumbo type of musical experience. I'd listen to the radio from New Orleans-Benny Spellman, Irma Thomas, and great old black New Orleans artists, which is contrary to what most people think. They assume if you come from Alabama, you listen to country music. I didn't really like it much; all my early influences were out of New Orleans.
I first started playing in folk clubs, and I drew on all this great Gulf Coast, New Orleans, black input. I was also listening to people like Gordon Lightfoot and Joni Mitchell, who were great writers above everything else. I wanted to try to write clever, good songs like those people.
I was in Nashville in 1971. I'd been turned down by 26 record labels and couldn't get songs published. I had wrecked my ex-wife's car, and I had no alternative, I thought, but to look toward warmer climates. So I took an expired Diner's Club card, held my thumb over the expiration date, went to the TWA counter, and bought a ticket to Miami. I was supposed to have a job at a little coffee house called the Flip, the "in" place for folkies in south Florida then. At any rate, I got to Miami, and of course there was no job. I was in Florida, with no job, and I was broke. Fortunately my old friend Jerry Jeff Walker had a house there and took me in. So I lived in Coconut Grove for about 6 months and worked the folk circuit. I had always wanted to got to Key West. Watching Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart in Key Largo was the catalyst that sent me further south. So we got into Jerry Jeff's '47 Packard and took the old overseas highway to Key West. We got there sometime in November; the temperature was 85 degrees, there was a sailboat race going on, I found a bar, and the rest is history.
Strangely enough, when I first got to Key West there wasn't a real musical scene. There was much more of a literary presence, which was good because I had been a book reader for a long time-a great fan of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. So that literary side attracted me because I loved reading and felt comfortable in that atmosphere.
I was basically one of the few performers there. I started working in a place called Howie's Lounge on Duval Street. I worked the cocktail hour behind the piano bar. It's a dive shop now, but in those days it was a God-fearing establishment. I thought that if God was going to end the world, he would start with Howie's Lounge. I liked Key West because I was the only "fish in the pond" from a musical standpoint. Things changed a little later, but that's the way it was.
The first hit was "Come Monday" off an album called Livin' & Dyin' in 3/4 Time. Everyone asked me why there was no reference in any of the songs to 3/4 time. I was still working on a song called "Nautical Wheelers" then, and I said I knew there were no songs titled "Livin' & Dyin'," but I liked the line and decided to use it as the title for the album. That's when the people at the record comapny knew I was crazy and probably uncontrollable.
I was in Europe on a film documentary, shopping in a department store in London, when I heard "Come Monday" over the loudspeaker. I thought I'd better call home and see what was happening, and by that time it was #10 or so. I had to stay in Europe for 3 more months, yet everything had taken off in the U.S.
I came back and met with a great guy, Corb Donahue, who used to work for the record company. He said, "Things are going real well here. You should consider going on the road, but I don't know if you could handle it, knowing your lifestyle. You must recognize what this involves." I didn't think even for a minute of not going for it. A lot of frustrated artists are people who didn't take the oppurtunity when it was presented. There's a very small aperature of success, and when it opens, you'd better jump through or you'll regret it for the rest of your life. Next thing I knew, I'd gone from the idyllic lifestyle of a beach bum to spending 300 days a year on the road.
I always hoped that success wouldn't spoil my lifestyle-I really did. I made a conscious effort to make sure that didn't happen. I was pretty much established, I thought, the way I wanted to live. I didn't want to move to Hollywood or New York. I hoped I could make my music and live where I was comfortable when I wasn't on the road. So far, that's worked out.
The first time I made a lot of money I made them cut 2 checks. I gave one to the accountants, and I spent the other on a boat. When I started this whole thing, I thought that if I could make just enough money to buy a boat and find a bar to play in, I would be happy. And i still believe that. You have to have a bail-out plan all the time.
So that's what I did. After all the years of looking at the beautiful boats at the boat shows, I could really do it. I eventually bought one from a Miami boat show, but I didn't know what to call it. My friend Tom Corcoran was with me taking pictures. Anyway, I had this T-shirt on from a place called the Euphoria Bar, and that, coupled with the look on my face, gave us the name: Euphoria.

Excerpts from MCA interview, 1985

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