Randy Travis still finding reasons to smile
First single since stroke puts country singer back on air
Partway through a Zoom call with Mary Davis and her famous husband,
Randy Travis, they suddenly disappear from the screen.
When the couple pops back into view 20 seconds later, Mary is apologizing, and Randy is laughing.
“Are we back?” asks Mary, who is squeezed next to Randy in the family room of the house on their ranch in Tioga, Texas. “We’re out in the country. You have to forgive me. If it just goes in and out, it’s because the paper cups and the string don’t work real well all the time.”
Randy laughs again. During a conversation about what life has been like for the couple not just since the pandemic started but in the seven years since his devastating stroke — the 61-year-old Country Music Hall of Famer finds several reasons to laugh, and even more reasons to smile.
He isn’t able to contribute more than a steady diet of one- or two-word answers, due to the aphasia that affects his ability to produce and comprehend speech. Instead, he relies on Mary to speak on his behalf.
Mary met Randy 30 years ago but didn’t start dating him until 2010, after they had both gone through a divorce. They married in 2015, two years after his stroke.
Randy’s first single since his stroke, “Fool’s Love Affair,” was based on a demo he recorded in 1984, and the couple has done a number of interviews to help promote it since it was released on July 29. And the song has been so wellreceived (it was streamed more than 1 million times in its first week of release)
that they’re thinking about dusting off other unreleased material.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Q. I thought it was interesting what you said in that Rolling Stone interview about the fact that almost everyone’s lives have changed so much but yours isn’t really all that different.
Mary Davis: Right. People were talking about how hard it was to adjust to life coming to a screeching halt, and things not being normal and going about the way you normally did in life. It made me think back on seven years ago this past July, when just in a matter of a few hours our life changed, because it was such a quick progression from the viral cardiomyopathy to the flat-line and to the stroke and then the brain surgery and five-anda-half months in a hospital.
Then when we got home, it was two-and-a-half years every day of rehab for four or five hours a day. So that was our life just shutting down. It was going a hundred miles an hour and hitting a brick wall. And that’s kind of what the rest of the world did this past February and March.
Q. What’s been the biggest adjustment, if any?
D: For us it was that we had friends that would come by and see us, and that kept us going. Musicians that would come and play. So a lot of that came to a stop. For awhile that was hard. Then you really do feel all alone. But I think we’ll all come out of it stronger, with a little bit better perspective in life. My heart goes out to the mamas out there that have children that now they’re trying to juggle work, if they’re fortunate enough to still have a job. But now
they have the kids to homeschool, and there’s just so many things going on at once for them.
Q. Can you summarize — what’s the story behind the demo, and whose idea was it to try to dig it up?
D: Well, in 1984, Randy was just a new kid in Nashville, and he was still cooking at the Nashville Palace. He really wasn’t a name. I mean, it was before he ever had a label. It’s before he had ever even signed with Warner. Nobody really knew who he was yet. And that’s what the youngsters that come to Nashville do, is they do the demos until they find work. So “Fool’s Love Affair” was written in 1982 by Charlie Monk, Keith Stegall and Milton Brown, and Charlie — who people know in Nashville as “the mayor of Music Row” — had Randy demo it. They were gonna pitch it, I think, to George Jones, or Merle Haggard or somebody. But
they didn’t pick it up, so it kinda sat on a shelf there at Charlie’s office on Music Row all these years.
About three years ago, he contacted us, and he said, “There’s this song that I co-wrote and Randy demo’ed, and I’d really like to put that out to radio. Is that OK with y’all?” We said, “Sure it is!” So he contacted Kyle Lehning, Randy’s lifetime producer, who did all of Randy’s producing for all of these years — I think other than two albums, Kyle did every one that Randy ever did. And Kyle said, “This is great, ’cause I can always do something with Randy’s demos. The voice is always there. But I need the masters (i.e. the official original recording of the song). And Charlie couldn’t find those. He looked for about a year and a half.
Then about a year and a half ago, he found them because he was loading up all of his boxes there at his office on Music Row, and he said he kicked — or somebody came in his door and kicked — this one box, and out fell this master of “Fool’s Love Affair.” And he said, “I knew that was a God wink, that I was supposed to do something with it.” He got so excited. He took it over to Kyle, and Kyle added a few instruments to it. It already had background vocals on it, which he said was very unusual for the time. But Kyle added a few instruments and tweaked it a little bit, and that’s what we hear today. So it had a long shelf life (laughing) — and hopefully it’ll have a long radio life.
Q. What was that like to hear the song when it was finished?
D: Just to hear his voice on the radio again, it’s awful sweet. It was wonderful. And that’s what we’ve heard from people: that just to hear that voice again meant so much. He said, “If I can change one life, or lift one person up with just one song, then I’ve done my job.”
Randy Travis: Yup.
Q. Are there other new songs to come in the future?
D: There are other songs, yes.
T: Yes.
D: There’s a whole album of ’em that Kyle actually found. He had some that could have made an album or could have been on an album, but they just ran out of room. So he went and picked out some of his all-time favorites. There’s about 13 of ’em that would complete an album. And they’re from different times in Randy’s career, so it’s interesting — some are gospel, some are true country, some are a little bit jazzier. One of ’em sounds like it’s kind of Frank Sinatra-era. So it would be fun if we could finally get that out. Once we can find the history on all of ’em.