I thought I was writing songs.
Turns out...
I was writing my life.
I just didn't know it yet.
That probably sounds like an odd thing for a songwriter to say.
After all...
I wrote them.
I recorded them.
I performed them.
Some climbed the charts.
Others quietly found homes in people's lives.
If you had asked me then what I was doing...
I would have told you I was making music.
I would have been wrong.
It wasn't until I retired from touring that I began opening boxes I hadn't touched in decades.
Boxes full of spiral notebooks.
Yellow legal pads.
Old photographs.
Letters.
Ticket stubs.
Newspaper clippings.
The kind of things we all tell ourselves we'll organize someday.
I started reading.
Not because I was writing a book.
Not because I was looking for another song.
Mostly because I was curious.
Somewhere between those old notebooks...
and memories I hadn't visited in years...
something unexpected happened.
I stopped remembering the songs.
I started remembering the people.
My dad.
My mom.
My brother.
The friends who taught me things they never realized they were teaching.
The teachers who believed in me before I believed in myself.
A creek that became an entire world.
The first girl I ever loved... who never could have imagined she'd still be finding her way into my songs more than fifty years later.
I hadn't gone looking for any of them.
They were simply waiting...
patiently...
inside the music.
That's when it finally occurred to me.
The songs were never the destination.
They were simply the breadcrumbs...
leading me back home.
Every lyric pointed toward a person.
Every melody led back to a place.
Every album quietly carried another chapter of a story I hadn't yet learned how to tell.
This website is where I finally get to tell that story.
Not because I think my life was extraordinary.
Because I think it was wonderfully ordinary.
And I've come to believe ordinary lives are where the best stories live.
Together...
we'll meet people who changed me.
Some knew they were doing it.
Most didn't.
We'll visit Willow Creek.
Sit on front porches.
Ride in old cars.
Stand beside hospital beds.
Celebrate victories.
Live through heartbreak.
Laugh more than you probably expect.
And if we're both lucky...
you may find yourself remembering places...
people...
and moments...
that shaped your own life.
Because that's what stories do.
They remind us we're all a little more alike than we ever imagined.
So...
pull up a chair.
Stay as long as you'd like.
We've got some stories to tell.
And who knows...
before we're finished...
maybe you'll remember a few of your own.
Welcome.
I'm glad you stopped by.
Let's go see where the songs began.
— Bill
