The Quieter Years of Randy Travis
THAT VOICE. FOR DECADES, THE VOICE OF RANDY TRAVIS WAS A smooth pour of warm syrup on a cold morning. With song after song, his gilded baritone rounded the sharp edges of life for millions of people—and ultimately changed the direction of an entire genre of music, producing a slew of platinum records and 16 No. 1 hits along the way. He could take lyrics that might otherwise be corny or trite and make them poetry. During an era when Nashville’s brightest stars thrived making increasingly shallow, increasingly banal tripe, this lean, winsome young man from small-town North Carolina made music that sounded like it may have always existed somewhere in your mind, waiting to be recognized. At concerts, he’d sometimes hum into the microphone, and his voice would send throngs of women — and plenty of men — into fits of ecstatic joy.
Life is different now, though. It’s especially apparent during his live appearances, like a recent book signing at a Barnes & Noble in North Dallas, about an hour from where he lives. A ferocious thunderstorm has lashed the area all day, and through the bookstore windows, it still looks like the inside of a washing machine out there. But that didn’t stop more than 200 people from fighting the rain and wind to get here. A line stretches across the store, twisting and turning around tables and bookshelves, slowly building over an hour or two.
Some of these people have come all the way from Tennessee. Some have come all
