Randy and Mary Travis
Randy Travis
Forty years ago there was a young man with a golden voice named Randy Travis who set the country music world on fire with his debut album Storms of Life that went to number #1 on the country charts. His second album Always and Forever made him a crossover star known throughout the world for his smile, good looks, charm, and the seemingly effortless way he could sing a song and make you feel it in your gut with his songs of heartache, endless love, as well as his later songs of faith and redemption.
He suffered a massive stroke in 2013 that nearly killed him and aphasia developed as a result which severely impaired his motor skills and took away that golden voice, but they couldn’t take away his legendary smile.
With his wife Mary by his side he underwent years of physical therapy to be able to stand and walk (with help), speak some and even sing a little bit. Watch him sing a stanza of Amazing Grace in 2016 at the Country Music Hall of Fame and see if you aren’t dabbing your eyes with the rest of the audience.
With the help of AI, his band, and singer James Dupre’ the world got to hear a new Randy Travis song in 2024 Where That Came From for the first time since 2013 and it felt so good that they made another one called Horses in Heaven.
The reaction was so strong that the whole band got back together with James Dupre’ singing his songs and Randy and his wife Mary sitting on stage being honored and getting to appreciate the fans in person.
But that wasn’t enough. “We heard from so many people that said we need to hear Randy’s voice again,” his wife Mary told me over a Zoom interview. And so his longtime producer Kyle Lehning went to his vaults and got to work remastering an entire album’s worth of his unreleased songs before his stroke. The first one called Fish On, was a fun classic, toe tapping kind of boogie, and the most recently released one as of this writing is called I Don’t Care, an achingly tender song about the pain of being betrayed by someone you love.
Country music has long been known for songs of love and loss but I don’t know that anyone but Randy Travis has ever dealt with it in such an honest and direct way. Just look at the heartbeat of the song.
“I hear you say you’re sorry. You compromised the love we used to share. I don’t know. I can’t lie. I don’t care.”
That’s real hurt right there. When your heart is ripped out, a simple sorry just isn’t going to cut it and Randy Travis makes you feel it with him. The backing vocals and production on this song are absolutely timeless and if you close your eyes while listening to it, it’s vintage Randy Travis just like you remember him from the 80s and 90s and that steel guitar will make you weep.
The next one will be called “Same Old Way” and there will be several more released before the full album release November 13 and as Mary assured me, “these are great songs. They aren’t filler songs.”And even though he has aphasia “ It doesn’t diminish his love for music and the impact that his music has had on the world.”
This interview was conducted over Zoom with Mary doing the talking for him as she does all the time now but I can personally assure you the twinkle in his eye and the joy in his heart are still there.
Inspirations for His Music
I think the great thing about artists and singers is they find a song in the everyday landscape of life It could be just a moment in time, or a passing experience, and they’ll write about it, then write a melody, and I’m fascinated with it and always wondered where some of these songs came from. And these inspirations seem to come out of nowhere and it may not have been his own personal experience (for I Don’t Care), it could have been somebody he knew that was going through it.
Life With Randy
People say, “Oh, it must be so hard.” But Randy makes it so easy on me because he has such a heart of joy. He’s okay with what’s happened. Of course nobody wishes it would happen, but Randy always said, “Why not me?” instead of why me? He got better, not bitter. And he left a beautiful catalog of music and I know the good Lord is gonna greet him at the pearly gates and tell him “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
Randy’s smile is what inspires me every single day. It was a tough road, and we had no idea we would be where we are now over 13 years now since his stroke and certainly didn’t think we would be sitting here, have the opportunity to talk to you and to be on the road taking Randy’s music back to the folks, getting to put out a new album with songs that he recorded across his entire career.
On Prayer
I asked Randy one time, I said, “Honey, when you were in the hospital and you were in the coma, or you were not able to speak because of the aphasia,” and you know he had a tracheotomy, with tubes all down his throat. So I said, “Were you talking to God a lot?” And he said, “All the time.” He said, “I talked to him all the time.”
We were there for five and a half months, and every single night it was just a prayer, “Just, just, Lord, let me have him back in any way, shape, or form. It doesn’t really matter. I just want him back. I want the world to have him back.” And God was faithful. He gave him back to us. He let him spend some more time with us, and I don’t know, from the looks of him, I don’t think he plans to go anywhere anytime soon.
On the Tour
People ask me “Why do you go on the road? Why don’t you just let him live his life out at home and Randy won’t have that. Randy does what Randy wants to do. And, you know, this is just a message for naysayers if Randy didn’t wanna be on the road doing that, we wouldn’t be doing it. He loves to be there with the music. You cannot take that out of him. He said, “Old artists, they don’t really die, they just go somewhere else. They have a new address, and they still live in our hearts.” But Randy wants to be out there with his fans. He wants to hear the music. He comes to life. That energy he’s getting from the audience is what he always thrived on, and he still does.
We do meet and greets afterwards, and get to meet a lot of the fans and hear their stories, and I think that’s one of the great things about the good music that he’s left us, is everybody has a story, and we wanna hear them. And I’m so honored that I get to be beside him for this part of life. And that’s just the magic of music, and the touch Randy had on us with his God-given vocals and his ability to present a song. So being out on the road, we cherish it. When we’re back home for a little while, we miss it. You know, we miss the band and crew. The band that has been with him for years. His fiddle player he’s been there, I think, 45 years and his steel player has been there 41 or 42 years. It’s just a great bunch of folks on the road with us. It’s our, it’s our road family, and we miss them when we’re not with them, and we’re blessed that we get to be there with them.
On Dolly Parton
She was so special, and so dear to Randy. They crossed paths over the years from the late ’80s all the way until, you know, here recently. She said, “Well, I have a size six shoe.” and I said, “Nobody will ever fill that shoe.” Dolly Parton was universal, and not just in her music, in her kindness, in her energy towards the kids and, and literacy. She always had a smile on her face. She was like this guy. (Randy smiling a lot at this point) She just had that energetic,contagious smile. And if there was pain going on behind the scenes, you never knew it. She was a blessing to this world, exactly like this guy.