Some dreams die singing "Seminole Wind"

In 2019, a lifelong dream died in the Hocking Hills near Logan, Ohio, to the sound of John Anderson’s Seminole Wind. That’s how dreams are: most of them have to die — but not all of them.

When I was 12, I wanted to make movies. Films. Pirates of the Caribbean had come out on something called a DVD that had these special features. I watched the making-of featurette and thought, “Keira Knightley is incredibly hot,” but I also thought, “This looks like the greatest job in the world.”

I saw the pirate ships on set in the harbor in Saint Lucia, the midnight-blue ocean, the parakeet-green palm trees (the brown of Keira Knightley’s eyes) — all of it whispered to my soul: this is the dream.

And I didn’t want just any job on set — I wanted to be the Director. The guy in the chair, with the megaphone. I’d see all those names in the credits, the thousands of people, from the guy who picked up the coffee to the guy who held the boom mic, all coming together to make that director’s vision into a reality.

I wanted to walk the red carpets, nod gracefully when I didn’t quite win the Oscar — but it would be impressive to my former classmates that I was even on the invite list to the Kodak Theatre, let alone nominated. In my mind, I was already measuring myself for a fancy suit.

Art be daggumed — that’s what it was really about: being impressive to my friends, the cute girls at Indian Trail Middle School, and anyone else who thought I was a loser.

I don’t know what it is about the combination of middle school and liking girls, but it’s when every loser discovers he’s a loser — and that there’s something he has to do about it. Like make pirate films or show up to the Oscars on the arm of a British brunette with eyes as brown as the bark of a palm tree.

My original de-losering plan was to play the guitar at the Indian Trail talent show. I’d been taking lessons from a bluegrass guy named Dave who’d tried to teach me to flatpick. When I saw a bluegrass band, they always seemed to be having a good time, and the people watching were always smiling, clapping, and hollerin’. You didn’t walk out of a show with a banjo without a smile on your face. I could see myself on a stage, strumming away, singing Rocky Top as the banjo rolled, the crowd clapped, and feet everywhere tapped along.

I loved bluegrass. But the girls at Indian Trail Middle School didn’t, and I didn’t have the patience to learn the scales. So Dave taught me a couple Skynyrd songs, then I quit — filmmaking was the way to go.

In middle school, I made movies with my Legos on our Sony Handicam.

In high school, I made buddy cop movies with my friends in our backyard.

In college, I worked for the Tennessee Vols football team because the film crew shot with the same camera used to make Skyfall.

After college, that turned into more video jobs in the sports industry — because it turns out, in a late-stage capitalistic society, you have to make money. And most people don’t want to give you money to make movies unless you’re as pretty as Keira Knightley.

In 2018, I took the big step: I went to film school. It was a three-year MFA program at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, where I’d be with a cohort of people who could be in my credits, bring me coffee, and help me make my dreams come true.

I found out making big movies is a lot of taking stuff out of big trucks and sitting around while someone fiddles with lights for two hours — all for three seconds of one shot where a pretty actress slams a door in her on-screen lover’s face while shouting a poorly written line with an unnecessary f-bomb.

I stood there holding the coffee I’d picked up for the director, thinking that this wasn’t in those making-of featurettes — and how the pretty actresses gave me as much attention as those girls in middle school.

Then I discovered documentaries.

When I was younger, documentaries were boring, grainy things about King Tut. But in 2018, we were in the early stages of a documentary golden age — where filmmakers weren’t just trying to put high schoolers to sleep. They were telling real stories.

And you didn’t need trucks or a big crew to make them. A professor told me, “You can make a documentary with three people: camera, sound, and a guy to go get the pizza.”

So I wanted to make a documentary, but I needed a subject. In the local paper, I was scanning for any kind of story: “Music Events This Week: The Coal Cave Hollow Boys are playing bluegrass at Eclipse Company Store this Friday Night.”

Bluegrass.

I found them on Instagram, set up a call, and the mandolin player, Thomas, invited me to the show. The boys were awesome. The guitar player, Lincoln, could rip a flatpick on the guitar like Jimmy Martin.

“What’s the song you hate playing the most?” I asked Lincoln when we sat down after the show.

“Honestly, ‘Rocky Top,’” he said.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was from Johnson City, Tennessee.

“Any others?”

“If I get asked to play ‘Wagon Wheel’ one more time,” he said.

Oh boy.

They invited me to go on tour with them that spring. I was excited because they had three stops: Mason, Ohio, and then Knoxville and Nashville, Tennessee.

I experienced what it was like to cram into a Dodge Caravan with four bandmates, four instruments (including an upright bass), and the shirts on our backs. I felt what it was like to stop for the night at 3 a.m. because we had to be in Knoxville the next morning at 10. I even learned how to make a spitter for tobacco out of a Mountain Dew can when a bottle isn’t available — all in the name of picking and grinning our way across Southern Appalachia on our way to Music City.

The venue they’d booked in Nashville was a house show. It was a hop, skip, and a jump from the honky-tonks of Broadway, and the crowd maxed out at 12 — much less than the security staff hired for the big shows downtown.

But the band played as if their audience consisted of one of their moms or 20,000 people who’d paid big money to see them. And afterward, Lincoln let me play his guitar and we sang some old John Anderson songs together.

A few months later, I needed some more scenes to complete the narrative, so I went back to Ohio to film the band playing on an old cabin porch/stage at Duck Creek Log Jam music festival in the Hocking Hills near Logan, Ohio.

That became the ending scene of the film. I don’t know if the guys felt this, but the narrative I told was about how they finally played a show in Nashville — the mecca of all country music — and had found the feeling wanting. The real joy for them was getting to make a living playing music they loved back home in Ohio.

My bluegrass film got into some festivals and was rejected by others. It played on some medium-sized screens, but I knew it wouldn’t win or get me an invitation to the Oscars — and that Keira Knightley would never see it.

But I knew all that by then. I’d already dropped out of film school, and the only suits I was getting measured for were at Men’s Wearhouse for my friends’ weddings.

I think my filmmaking dream died that summer. The guys were camping out after their set, and I stayed, thinking I’d film a scene of them playing around the campfire that’d be perfect for the ending.

Before I could turn my camera on, Lincoln handed me a guitar and said, “Let’s sing ‘Seminole Wind.’”

Then we sat there on the porch of the old cabin stage and played every old country song we knew — She Don’t Know She’s Beautiful by Sammy Kershaw, Red Dirt Road by Brooks & Dunn, Amarillo by Morning by George Strait.

We sang late into the Ohio summer night, the sound of our tunes echoing into the surrounding hills, then fading — like the memory of a dream the next morning when you wake up. I didn’t film a thing.

A few weeks later, I was in town again and went to see the band play at Eclipse Company Store. There was no camera this time — I was just there for the music.

Towards the end of the show, Lincoln shouted at me and held up a guitar. “You want to come play one?”

My feet moved before I could think, and I was throwing on the guitar.

“What do we play?” I said, a little shake in my legs because there was a real crowd here expecting music that didn’t stink.

Lincoln chuckled and said “How about ‘Rocky Top?’”