Bakersfield celebrates it’s unique sound with (Homer) Joy!

We moved from Heber Springs, Arkansas to Bakersfield, California, then to Spokane, Washington, when I was 5 years old... We arrived December 25, 1950, Christmas Eve... That Christmas I received a "lone ranger" guitar. It had 3 strings on it and someone had knocked a big hole in the front of it, but to me it was a piece of gold... Though no one but me in my family had an interest in music. All my uncles and cousins in Arkansas played, and I grew up listening to Hank Williams on the radio every morning at 5:00...So I always loved music and even wrote little songs for myself back then... My Dad went to work for Diamond Ice and Coal in Spokane, Washington. He shoveled coal for $0.10 a ton... I hit the streets with my little guitar. Snow up past my knee's, I would trudge from corner to corner in what was the skid row area of downtown Spokane, singing my little songs for anyone who would listen... I tuned by 3 strings to an open "E" and learned to bar the neck with a plastic comb. That worked out pretty well, since I could break the teeth out of the comb and make "guitar picks" out of them...On many days, I would come home with more money in my pocket, than my Dad did, shoveling coal all day long... Before long, I had enough money to buy a whole set of guitar strings. Now, I was really in heaven... When I was about 8 or 9 years old. My aunt Robbie moved from Arkansas to live with us in Spokane. She taught me how to play a "D" chord and it got easier from there...A nieghbor lady by the name of Hazel Nichols, gave me an "F" hole, Harmony guitar she got from someone else in her family. She didn't play, but she liked some of my songs and I'd play for her a lot... We moved to Elk, Washington, 30 miles north of Spokane, when I was 14. I began practicing with a couple of my friends and we became a little 3 piece band. I played rythum and lead as well as did all the singing. My other friend played Bass and another friend played drums...Later, we added a guy who played lead... One night, we went to a "sock hop" at the Camden Grange Hall. They were playing records and had a D.J., but none of the kids were dancing. Since my friend lived right across the road and that is where we practiced. A lady asked if we would go get our gear and play for the kids, since they didn't seem to be enjoying the music otherwise... We got our gear, fired up and by the end of the night the dance floor was full... They paid us a huge $2 for only 2 hours work...They also invited us back the next Saturday night... For the next 7 years, we played there almost every Saturday night. We got 60% of the gate and the Grange got 40%... In those 7 years, they built bathrooms inside the building, put in new seating, a kitchen, a new roof and a new hardwood dance floor. Every Saturday night, we had over 400 paying customers in a building that would comfortably hold around 75 people. We ended up playing every dance hall in the country, as well as gigs in local bars, beer joints and clubs... I grew a moustache and sideburns when I was 16, so I could play in the places where you had to be 21 to get in... In 1969, my brother Jim asked me why I didn't record some of my songs and send them to someone. I tried to get out of it by telling him I couldn't afford it. So in making a long story short. We ended up in the SOUND recording studio in Spokane, and recorded 5 songs. My brother Jim paid for it all. I had them make "one" copy of the tape. My brother asked if I wasn't going to send more than one tape. I told him no... Buck Owens was ..1 at the time. So I was going to send a tape to Buck Owens and if the songs weren't good enough for Buck Owens, I didn't think they would be good enough for anyone else either... My brother didn't agree, but let me do what I wanted to. I send the tape to Bakersfield and Buck Owens on Thursday. Monday morning, I got a call that got me out of bed. My wife told me it was Buck Owens Enterprise calling. I thought it was my brother Jim, just calling to harrass me...I had worked a gig the night before, so I was tired and not really in a joking mood... I got on the phone to tell my brother how stupid it was of him to call me so early, just to find out, it really was Buck Owens Enterprises calling me... About 2 years after I signed with Buck Owens Enterprises and his Publishing company, Blue Book Music... I found out that my break in the music business came because no one could believe that HOMER JOY was my real name. It seems that Buck was getting about 600 tapes a week. Nearly all of them went straight into the waste basket, since no one could listen to all the material... One day while throwing tapes into the waste basket. The man who was running Buck's publishing company at the time, Dusty Rhoads. Came across a tape with the name HOMER JOY on it... He said he thought that surely, someone had made that name up. That just could not be anyone's real name...So he decided to listen to it... Buck Owens band, the Buckaroo's, were rehearsing that morning and just ready to take a break. Dusty asked them all if they wanted to hear a song written by some "clown" named HOMER JOY... They all had a good laugh and said, "sure"... Dusty said they listened to the first song. Then the second. Halfway through the 3rd song, Dusty asked Don Rich to go and get Buck. When Buck came in, Dusty played him the first song, then the second. At almost the same place in the 3rd song. Buck told Dusty to call and see if I had anymore songs as good as those... In my first 2 years with them, my songs sold 3 million copies. Almost unheard of in Country Music back then and totally unheard of by a new writer... I ended up recording 5 singles for Capitol Records and spending more time on the road than I ever thought possible...By 1976, I was living back in Heber Springs, Arkansas and totally burned out on the music business. The time away from home, the politics, the "you can't do this, you can't do that". All of it finally took a toll... So I quit...Retired... By the end of the year, I was unretired and working for a Booking Agency in Seattle, Washington. So we moved back to Spokane... I burned out again in the late 70's and ended up with a divorce that cost me all I owned... The next 5 years was kind of a blur... I got remarried to my first wife in 1983, after I gave my life to the Lord and turned my life around. While playing on the road in Canada in 1990. I had a heart attack. On December 2, 1990, I was admitted to Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane, where I underwent open heart surgery and had an experimental Defibrillator installed... Things got worse from there... After 11 years and a baby girl, my wife and I were divorced again. For the next 15 years, it was a battle just staying alive. I have had 2 open heart surgeries, implanted with 4 Defibrillator/Pacesetter devices (2 of them experimental) 15 stints, 67 angio-procedures and taken more medicine and been through more examinations than even I can believe... In December of 2005, the word came that there was nothing more than could be done for me medically... The doctors installed a Dobutamine pump, with a line running to my heart and began testing me, to see if I was a possible candidate for a heart transplant... Even then, things went from bad to worse. On March 25, 2006... I got word that a good friend of mine had lost his battle with heart disease and passed away in his sleep. His name was Buck Owens...I was hit especially hard by the news, since I had received so many cards and Emails from Buck, telling me to hold on and hang in there. That he was praying the Lord would step in and deliver me from all I was going through. Because by that time I had made the heart transplant list. I wasn't even able to attend his funeral, since I couldn't be more than 3 hours time from the Baylor Medical Center in Dallas, Texas... On August 18, 2006, a visiting nurse stopped by to check on me at home. She took one look at me and told my wife to get me to Dallas, Texas, as fast as she could. I was in full congestive heart failure and had very little time. On the 120 mile trip to Dallas, I remember getting into the truck. I remember stopping at a Quik-Stop on the way. The next thing I remember is waking up in the Operating Room, a couple times in the I.C.U. and then in my room. To this day, the doctors marvel at the fact that my wife was even able to get me to Dallas alive. That I lived the 4 days it took for them to find a new heart for me and that I lived through the procedure at all... Not only did I live through it all... I set the record for heart transplant patients, by getting off the respirator the fastest. Sitting and walking the fastest. And leaving the I.C.U. unit in only 22 hours... I did so well, that in only 3 months, they allowed me to travel to Washington state to spend Thanksgiving with my family there... Almost 6 months to the day from my heart transplant... I was able to do something that means an awful lot to me... With all the fuss in 1988 about my song "Streets of Bakersfield". It was decided that I'd release an album. The first cut on the project was a duet with my friend and the man who had got me into this business in the first place, Buck Owens... When my battle with heart disease took over and made finishing the project impossible. I promised him that one day I'd finish it...So just 6 months from my heart transplant. I went into a recording studio in Dallas, Texas, and kept my promise to my friend. I finished what we had started, all those years ago... The new CD is being released in the next couple of weeks and life couldn't be better... If anyone ever tells you that your hopes and dreams and aspirations are too much to accomplish. Let them know that you will do all you can and that you'll trust God to do what you can't... That combination never fails. I am living, breathing proof of it... If there's another way to get things done. Then all someone has to do is show me... So far, no one has...