Dad’s Boxing Gloves
What do you get when you mix engine grease, bloody knuckles, with a little scientific finesse? Don’t know? Okay—how about drinking from the hose during a drought in the middle of the wettest part of Oklahoma? Still nothing?
Okay, how about being stranded on the side of the road with semis whizzing by, just after hearing your father’s last words before moving from this life to the next: “Make a good one for me, son.”
It’s clear. You know when you’ve been punched. Something shakes and after the initial shock wears off you don’t know whether you should laugh, cry, or run through a wall.
I think you can only make music this good—this real—when it comes from a place of pain and nicotine, marred by dust, sweat, and blood. The man in the arena—one who spends himself for a worthy cause, daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold, timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
Thank you, Stephen Wilson Jr., for putting on the boxing gloves your Dad gave you and delivering some of the heaviest blows this side of the Calico.