A few years ago my folks were visiting me, and my Dad and I went for a walk around my neighborhood with a couple of cigars. He told me that he’d been in Nashville quite a bit before I was born, and on his last trip a big-name country star (name dropping is not essential to the story) had taken him under his wing and given him a place to stay at this big flophouse the star rented for aspiring musicians and songwriters.
“This was gonna be it. But after a few days, I looked around at all these guys, leaving their wives and kids, most of them not going back ‘cause this was their big shot, and just said to myself, ‘I’m better than this.' I missed your mother, and I went home.”
Integrity. I think about that, on some level, every night.