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TOM: Not too long ago,
I received a letter.

It was a letter from
a desperate young songwriter

asking for advice.

I could tell that the rejection,

the waiting for nothing
to happen

was killing his heart, mind,
soul and spirit.

So, I did what any good writer
does. I wrote him back.

"Dear friend, you asked me
why the hell am I here.

"Well, truly heaven only knows.

"We all got here
the same way, I suppose.

"We followed the song.

"In the beginning God created
the heavens and the earth."

The first sentence in the Bible
talks about creativity.

Create. A verb which means to
bring something into existence.

People have often asked me
about the creative process.

How do you write a song?

A friend of mine
sent me his definition.

It's so good I think
I'll just share it with you.

How do you write a song?

It happens in the shower.

You're soaping up your armpits
and suddenly you realize

that you're humming a tune
that hasn't been written yet.

And when that happens, something
cracks inside your skull

that causes your brain to flood
with one of those chemicals

that causes a man to wanna drive
off the edge of a cliff

if he thinks that he can
brush the cheek of God

for half a second.

And the next thing you do,
I mean the very next thing,

is not rinse off or dry off.

You have to get
your soapy ass to a piano,

a guitar, a xylophone.

Hell, even a set of
water glasses

tuned to a scale will do,

because here's the thing.

That little ditty that you're
humming in your head

has a set of tiny leather wings

and it starts to flap the minute
that you know it's there.

It's scared of you.
It doesn't wanna be caught.

So you have to hold it down
by those tiny little wings

while it thrashes.

And then you look up
and you realize

that you've missed
an appointment,

or worse yet, you've been
ignoring your woman.

And there she stands
with her bags packed

and she says that
she's been saying goodbye

for eight years, but you
were too damned busy

with that flapping thing
in your fist to notice,

and so she leaves.
It's on paper now.

It's shredded and thrown up
into the air like confetti,

and that's all you have
to show for the struggle.

So you get in the shower
the next morning

and gone are her soaps
and shampoos

and lady razors
and that poofy thing

that she uses to exfoliate,

soaping up your lonely life,

weeping for
the broken space there.

And suddenly you realize
you're humming a tune.

There's something in that
whole damned drama

that makes a man
need to be heard.

The struggle
can't be all for nothing.

♪ I hope it always hurts
and makes you cry

♪ Draw the beauty
from your pain

♪ Life is just too beautiful
to put it in a frame

♪ Maybe that's the reason why

♪ Van Gogh went insane

♪ You pour your heart out
on a page

♪ You bear your soul
upon a stage

♪ You got the power
to make us feel

♪ You got the power
to help us heal

♪ And I hope it always hurts
and makes you cry

♪ Draw the beauty
from your pain

♪ Life is just too beautiful
to put it in a frame

♪ Maybe that's the reason why

♪ Van Gogh and Marilyn
and Elvis

♪ Went

♪ Insane

See, you wanna write a song,

create something
that wasn't there before,

but it's dark and formless
and brooding and hovering

and then, let there be light.

And you have an idea
and it's good,

but you're swimming
in the waters of confusion.

And then you spot land
and you have a verse

and there's light
and there's dark

and there's morning
and there's evening

and there's a beat
and there's a rhythm.

And you feel the whole thing
start to come together

and the birds sing a song

over the expanse of the Earth.

But the chaos remains

and you're trying to make
some order

of the jingle jangly chords

and the jumble
of ideas and words.

What is it about after all?

It's really just a love song.

It's a man and a woman,
bone of my bone,

flesh of my flesh,

naked and unashamed.

And magically and mysteriously,

you have
three-and-a-half minutes

of mind altering,
spine tingling,

goose-bumping,
iTunes downloading,

Pandora and Spotify
underpaying music.

And on the seventh day,
we can rest.

Every song is a love song
in some form or fashion.

Good love, bad love,
happy love, sad love,

rollercoaster,
hands in the air love

or throw yourself off

the Tallahatchie Bridge love.

I learned what love is

and isn't at home,
and I bet you did, too.

[ENGINE STOPS]

They say you write about
what you know,

so write about your home.

I'm gonna tell you
about my parents,

Marjorie and Tom Douglas.

My father was
a steel salesman

with U.S. Steel Corporation,

and part of his territory was
Shreveport, Louisiana.

A friend introduced him to a
beautiful brunette bank teller.

Can I get a cup
of coffee, please?

She wore the fragrance of roses

and floated across a dance floor
on a Glenn Miller tune.

Stephen Sondheim,
the great Broadway composer,

says God is in the details.

So load up your lyrics
with sight, sound,

smells, taste,
touches and motion,

and your audience will engage
the songs all the more.

My parents married after
a brief courtship in 1945.

And they say songs and stories
are kinda like onions.

You have to peel them down
till they make you cry.

You see, it was my mother's
second marriage.

Her first husband,
a young Navy pilot,

was killed in the opening days
of World War II,

and the war department sent
a telegram to her at work

and she fainted.

They say that we should
all cry about once a week,

so don't shy away
from your emotions

because the tears
brought on this one.

♪ I pulled in
at the shopping center

♪ And saw a little boy
wrapped around

♪ The legs of his mother

♪ Like ice cream melting
they embraced

♪ Years of bad decisions
running down her face

♪ All morning
I've been thinking

♪ My life's so hard

♪ And they wore

♪ Everything they own
living in a car

♪ I wanted to tell him
it would be okay

♪ But I got just
got back in my Suburban

♪ And I drove away

♪ I don't know
why they say

♪ Grown men don't cry

♪ I don't know why they say
grown men don't cry

♪ I am sitting here with
my kids and my wife

♪ And everything that
I hold dear in my life

♪ We say grace
and thank the Lord

♪ Got so much
to be thankful for

♪ Then it is up the stairs
and off to bed

♪ And my little boy says
I haven't had my story yet

♪ And everything
weighing on my mind

♪ Disappears just like that

♪ When he lifts his head
off the pillow and says

♪ I love you Dad

Well, the story continues.

It's 10 years later, 1963.

I'm 10 years old.

My family and I
go roller skating

early one Saturday morning

and my father falls
and breaks his arm.

My mother takes him
to the doctor's office

to get a cast and 50 opioids.

And he gamed the system
and he needed more

and more and more,
and he was an addict

right then and right there.

And he had to go
to a sanatorium,

which is really like a rehab.

My mother covered for him
with his bosses

while he was gone,
and took him around

on his sales calls
when he got back.

And it took a while
and he recovered.

Until he didn't.

I come from a long line
of storytellers.

Masterful yarn spinners.

Every holiday, every Sunday,
every vacation,

somebody would always say,

"You know, that reminds me
of the time..."

And I'm telling you my story
not because it's the best one,

it's just the one
that I know the best.

I wish that I'd recorded my
grandmother playing the piano,

my mother's laugh, my father
strumming the ukulele,

my father-in-law reading
the Book of John.

What I wouldn't give
to have those memories.

Tempus fugit,my friend.

[ENGINE STARTS]

February 9th, 1964.

It was a Sunday night.
It was cold,

it was my mother's vegetable
soup and cornbread on TV trays.

My mom and sister
sat on the couch,

my dad sat
in the big easy chair.

I sat on the hearth
with my back to a roaring fire

and Ed Sullivan said
to 73 million Americans

and the four Douglas's,

"Ladies and gentleman,
welcome The Beatles."

My father loved The Beatles.

All the other fathers thought
The Beatles were

the devil's right hand,

but not Thomas
Labert Douglas Junior.

He loved their songs,
their harmonies,

their Nehru jackets,
their haircuts.

That's the first time I really
remember the power of a song.

I was 11, my father was 53.

What did I know?

What I did know was that a boy
loves what his father loves.

And that's the day
I became a songwriter.

And then we went to Metro Music

and bought a red,
six-string Hagstrom guitar.

Took it home
and I was practicing.

The next day he burst
in my bedroom and he said,

"Man, we gotta
take that guitar back.

"You gotta be a bass player
like Paul McCartney.

"It's gonna be so much easier
for you to be in a band

"as a bass player
than a guitar player."

Big Tom, always my biggest fan
and the easiest to impress.

Then he dropped me off
at Morris Brandon Elementary

and I boarded a yellow
school bus with some friends

and classmates
and some teachers,

and we went to Atlanta Stadium
to hear, you guessed it,

John, Paul, George, and Ringo.

And I can still hear the girls
screaming in my ears.

Dropping me off
to go see The Beatles

would be a little bit
like taking your

11-year-old to Bonnaroo saying,

"Have a good time, sweetie.

I'll come back and pick you up."

It was pretty radical,
but then again,

Big Tom was pretty radical.

He had the radio on
in the morning when he shaved,

the radio on in the afternoon
when he swam laps at the Y.

They had a big Victrola
in their bedroom.

He kept that
black vinyl spinning.

Little did he know that I would
end up in this crazy business,

living in a heartbreak town.

Hey, I just want you to know

what you're
getting yourself into.

The writer has to learn to live

in a space of
unresolvable conflict.

First you have to face
the dark overlord of apathy.

And she sits in the corner
of your writing space

and she smokes cool cigarettes
and sips espresso

and she growls, "No, no, no,"

with every strike of your
Blackwing Palomino pencil.

And then you have to face
the face in the mirror,

the one that
looks at you and says,

"You're a fraud. This didn't
work out well yesterday,

"it won't work out well today

"and it won't
work out well tomorrow."

That voice is a rat that sits
on the edge of your piano

with a long tail
and gnarly teeth

and it utters
profanities at you.

You have to walk over,
pick it up by the tail,

put it in a mason jar,
screw down a brass lid,

walk it out to the driveway,

-load up a 12 gauge
-[GUN COCKING]

-and blow it into smithereens.
-[GUN FIRES]

And that's just to get
the song started.

In the spring of 2009,

the rat started talking to me.

"The next big thing
is coming to your studio

"in a couple of weeks, big boy.
What you got for us?"

I didn't answer. I walked over,

carefully picked him up
by the tail,

avoid biting as he screamed
profanities at me,

put him in the mason jar,

screwed down
the brass lid, kaboom.

If a cat has nine lives,
a rat has 99 times 99 lives.

You never kill the rat,
you just have to

deal with him over
and over and over again.

We have to stay focused.

We have to block out
the distractions.

Don't worry about
getting it right,

we just have to get it written.

And we can rewrite and rewrite
and rewrite.

In the spring of 2009,
the rat got in my head.

I failed to follow
my own process.

I started thinking about
trying to write a hit

instead of finding
a point of inspiration.

That's the kiss of death.

[ENGINE STARTS]

The next big thing was coming
on Monday morning

and I couldn't rhyme blue
with shoe.

The weekend before,
I was gonna run

the Nashville Marathon,
26.2 miserable miles.

I started the race with
my two best friends.

They abandoned me
at the halfway point.

It's the desolate wasteland,
the metroplex.

It's boring and it's heartless,

running through
a nondescript office park.

I saw a guy
in a yellow chicken suit

and orange flip flops.
He sailed by.

And a mature group of women
in matching purple tutus,

they raced by.

Then I saw him, or at
least the back of him.

His t-shirt read,
"I run this town."

I was thinking of metaphors
and similes and analogies.

I was delirious. I run this
town like a mafia boss.

I run this town
from point A to point B.

I run this town like a mayor.

I followed him for miles.

I developed a hatred for him.

I really hated myself
and I really hated running.

My life was a mockery.

I thought of the rat
sitting comfortably

back on the edge of my piano,
laughing at me in my misery.

All I know is I run and run

and never seem to get there.

Monday morning 10 a.m.,
the fresh faced trio

come into my studio.

They pull up three chairs.

They say,
"What do you got for us?"

They didn't see the rat.

You see,
I'm an alleged professional.

I've had weeks to prepare.
My publisher has set this up.

I walk over shakily
to my keyboard

that I've had since third grade.

I put my hands
on the ivories and I say,

"I run from hate,
and I run from prejudice

"and pessimist,
and I run too late."

I turn around and I imagine that

they're packing up
their backpacks,

slowly edging out of the studio.

Instead, they jump up
in unison and they say,

"That's genius!
You're brilliant!"

And I say, "Oh shucks,

"I've been saving that
for you folks

"for a couple of months now."

That's the first time I met
and wrote with Lady Antebellum.

[PLAYS PIANO]

♪ I run

♪ From hate

♪ And I run from prejudice

♪ And I run from pessimists

♪ But I run too late

♪ And I run

♪ My life

♪ Or is it running me

♪ I run from my past

♪ And I run too fast

♪ Or too slow it seems

♪ When lies become the truth

♪ That's when I run to you

♪ This world keeps
spinning faster

♪ Into a new disaster

♪ So I run to you

♪ Baby

♪ When it all starts
coming undone

♪ You're the only one
that I run to

♪ I run to you

I really had an idyllic life
until about 1975.

I graduated from college,
my sister getting married,

my father retiring
from U.S. Steel

with a gold watch
and a 45-year pen.

It should've been
the best of times.

It was, in fact,
the worst of times.

'75 to '82's kind of
a watercolor blur.

Let me describe it for you.

It was days and days
of my father staying in bed,

hefty black garbage bags filled
with every pill imaginable.

It was doctor's offices,
psychologists,

psychiatrists, hospitals,
shock treatments,

Mount Paran Church of God
healing meetings.

It was lifelong friends
of my father whispering

as they passed him
in the hallway,

banished from the locker room.

They gave up, he gave up,
I wanted to give up.

But I can't give up
on something that I love,

and you can't either.

I was driving myself crazy

chasing my songwriting dream
in Nashville.

And my mother called me
and I could tell that

my father's slow motion suicide
was driving her insane,

so I brought my father
to live with me in Nashville.

And when he left home,
he would never go back

to Atlanta again,
and my mother and father

would never live together
under the same roof.

My songwriting wasn't
gaining any traction

and I couldn't care
for my father,

so I reinvented myself
as a real estate broker

and my father and I
moved west to Dallas

to drive my sister and brother
-in-law crazy for a while.

You can't give up
on something that you love.

The only way that I could pierce

that fog of anti-depressants
and psychiatric voodoo

all those years was songs.

Songs of Nat King Cole
and Sinatra

and Waylon and Willie and Hank.

And freedom's just another word
for nothing left to lose,

and feeling good
was good enough for me

and my Bobby McGee.

My father loved
Kris Kristofferson.

As poorly as I had done
in the music business,

I actually fared worse
in the real estate business.

But interest rates
went to twenty percent

there was the Savings
and Loan crisis.

It was about 1992 and
sometimes in the afternoon,

I'd go pick my father up

and take him around with me
on my sales calls.

We'd drive out
to some shopping center,

I'd find a shady place
and we'd park

and he'd sleep
and I'd start at one end

of the shopping center
and go to the other.

"I'm Tom Douglas
from Cornerstone Real Estate.

"I lease the shopping center
down the road."

I'd hand them my business card.

At the same time I'm having
an audible conversation

with prospective tenants,

I'm having an argument
with Almighty God

in which I say,
"God, it seems unfair that

"at 39 I'm jaded, cynical,

"and incredibly disappointed
with my life."

Almighty God says, "My son,

"you've been worshiping
the creation

"instead of me, the Creator.

"How's that working out
for ya?"

So there I stood
at the crossroads,

asking myself, "Who am I?

"Where am I from
and to whom do I belong?"

Almighty God whispered,
"You're a writer.

"You're from this family.

"You belong to me.

"Your past is not your poison,

"your past is
your greatest gift.

"Go write about the brokenness,

"go write about the healing

"as you stumble down redemption
road toward home."

About a year later,
I pulled in the parking lot

and walked the dimly lit,
lime green corridors

of my father's nursing home
in Dallas.

Unable to speak, he'd
become a shell of a man

with saggy sweatpants,
soup stained pajama top,

terrible slippers.

Usually, when
I went to see him,

he would just lie
on his bed with hands

laced across his chest
like that of a coffin pose.

My anger, fury, simmering
and disjointed prayers

in a metal chair
with a smiling picture

of my mother between us.

But this day...

this day, I thought
I had the wrong room.

I turned the corner,
the lights were on,

music softly played
on his cassette player

and it was a song
that I had written.

He said,
"Buddy, I love this one."

The calm and gentle demeanor
of a man whose countenance

I had not seen
in some 20-odd years

sat on the edge
of a neatly made bed

with his hair combed,
freshly shaven,

starched white shirt
and washed sweatpants.

"Tommy, would you like
a piece of Freedent gum?"

the smiling man asked.

After 19 years of living
with a ghost,

my father and I shared
a piece of chewing gum

and a little music.

And I suppose
that's why I love songs

and I believe in miracles.

Here's what he was
listening to that day.

♪ Well I know I've disappeared
a time or two

♪ And along the way
I lost me and you

♪ I needed a new town
for my new start

♪ Selling VCR's in Arkansas
at a Walmart

♪ And I haven't had a drink
in nineteen days

♪ My eyes are clear and bright
without that haze

♪ I like the preacher from
The Church of Christ

♪ Sorry that I cried when
I talked to you last night

♪ I think I'm on a roll here
in Little Rock

♪ I'm solid as a stone, baby,
wait and see

♪ I've got just one small
problem here in Little Rock

♪ Without you
baby, I'm not me

♪ Lying here
upon this motel bed

♪ Thoughts of you
explode inside my head

♪ Like a castle built
upon the sand

♪ I let love crumble
in my hand

♪ I think I'm on a roll here
in Little Rock ♪

TOM: And we followed the song

from the mournful bagpipes
in the Scottish Highlands

and we add a little shake
to Shakespeare

and we Bebopped with Bach
and rolled over with Beethoven

and migrated to the hills
of Appalachia

and breathed death and life
and misery and redemption.

And the low rumbling chants
of the African slave ships

all the way to the Alabama
cotton fields where we met

Robert Johnson and the devil
at a Clarksdale crossroads.

And we bounced across
the Atlantic ocean

to a transistor radio
in Keith Richards' bedroom.

And we followed the song
and the glow

of the rocket's red glare
and we raised the flag

in the dawns early light
to marching bands

under Friday night lights.

With brother facing brother,
in the uncivil war,

the Yankees singing
Nearer My God To Thee

and the Confederates
bellowing Dixie,

to the greatest generation
singing Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,

running down a lost highway
to a bespeckled boy

in Montgomery, Alabama who was
so lonesome that he could cry.

And we followed the song
to the TEAC tape decks

blasting the Ballad
of the Green Berets

all along the watchtower down
the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Walking the line down
the long and winding

yellow brick road with me
andBobby McGee,

and we still hadn't found
what we're looking for.

Talking to a pretty girl
in the chair

with friends in low places,

with Indian outlaws
wearing no shoes,

no shirt, no problem, praying,
"Jesus, take the wheel,"

with teardrops on my guitar,
gently weeping.

One of the fascinating perks
of this profession

are the interesting people
that we get to meet.

A few years ago, Alecia Moore,

you might know her better
as Pink,

reached out to my friend
Allen Shamblin and me

because she loved our song,
The House That Built Me.

Alecia walked into my studio
and sat right down

on the hard concrete floor.

What do you do when
somebody sits on the floor?

Well, you sit down
right next to them.

It's kind of a brilliant
psychological move.

We talked. She told us her
story, we told her ours.

We exposed our father wounds.
It was a magic day.

We wrote two songs.

One of them is called
Love Me Anyway,

which is on P!nk's album,
a duet with Chris Stapleton.

The other one
is a song called Recovering.

The famous, the infamous.
The rich, the poor.

We're all bleeding,
we're all broken,

we're all healing and...

♪ I am a recovering

♪ Anxiety addict

♪ A broken perfectionist

♪ Somewhat erratic

♪ I am a recovering

♪ Constant regretter

♪ Hold it against her

♪ At least till forever

♪ And little by little
Day by day

♪ One step at a time

♪ Shake off the devil

♪ Take back my piece of mind

♪ Tell them I love them

♪ Take back my piece of mind

♪ I am recovering

How did a guy
selling real estate

and advertising in Atlanta,
finally running away from home

at the ripe old age of 27,
to a four-year odyssey

in music city but always
on the outside looking in,

leaving never to return,
settling down in Dallas, Texas

with a beautiful wife
and three children,

sitting down at a grand piano
on a bright blue

Saturday morning with a black
and white composition book,

a good cup of coffee,

finally decide
to tell the truth,

the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth?

How did he become
just another 25-year,

overnight sensation
writing you a letter of hope,

telling you everything
you never wanted to know?

I gave up and the grace of God
rescued me.

Mine is really
a story of failure.

I didn't work and work
and finally figure it out.

I surrendered.
I surrendered my past

so I could get on
with my future.

In the summer of 2002,
the famed Bluebird Cafe

sent Allen Shamblin
and his family,

me and my family,
out to Sundance, Utah

to do a writer's round.

One morning, Allen came
in the restaurant

and calmly said,
"I've been thinking

"of my childhood home.
What if we wrote a song

"not about the houses
that we build,

"but the house that built me?"

As soon as Allen said that,
the Earth tilted on its axis.

The forks were suspended
in midair,

the water froze in the pitcher.

That's the power of a good idea.

Allen was thinking of his home
in Huffman, Texas.

I took a trip back
to 3018 Argonne Drive,

and maybe, just maybe,
you're thinking

of your childhood home
right now.

An idea is a powerful thing.
It's a metaphor.

It's our details
and our memories,

but it transports you
back to another place

and another time.

You wanna slap somebody that
starts a sentence with,

"Socrates said,"
but Socrates said,

"Man's greatest creative act
is the ability to see

"one thing as another."

He's talking about metaphor.

He's talking about
the house that built me.

I begged Allen
not to utter those five words

to another living soul
until we got back to Nashville.

And true to his word,
we got back,

Allen had written four verses,
I had written three.

We put our first draft together.
It was epic.

It was 10 minutes long.
We demoed it,

we turned it in
to the publisher

and their response was, "Cool."

Which in Nashville
is code speak for,

"We will never, ever,
listen to that song again."

Crushed but undaunted,
Allen and I would get together

over the next S-E-V-E-N years
and work on other songs.

In 2009,
we dusted off the lyrics

to The House That Built Me.

We printed them off,
which by this time were

as voluminous as
the novel East Of Eden.

We spread it out
on my coffee table,

we scratched out, we deleted,
we etched out.

Finally got down
to the absolute essence,

only to realize
we were missing something.

We didn't have the setup line
for the hook.

We didn't have,
"If I can just come in

"I swear I'll leave.

"Won't take nothing but
a memory,"

from The House That Built Me.

This time, we demoed it again.

We turned it in
to the publisher.

The sirens screamed,
the lights flashed,

and people freaked out.

[PLAYS PIANO]

♪ I know they say
You can't go home again

♪ I just had to come back
one last time

♪ Ma'am, I know
you don't know me from Adam

♪ But these hand prints
on the front steps

♪ Well, they're mine

♪ Up those stairs
in that little back bedroom

♪ Is where I did my homework
and I learned to play guitar

♪ And I bet you didn't know
in the shade of that live oak

♪ My best dog is buried
in the yard

♪ I thought if I could touch
this place or feel it

♪ This brokenness inside me
might start healing

♪ Out here it's like
I'm someone else

♪ I thought that maybe
I could find myself

♪ If I could just come in
I swear I'll leave

♪ Won't take nothing
but a memory

♪ From the house
that built me

♪ Mama cut out pictures
of houses for years

♪ From Better Homes
and Garden magazine

♪ Plans were drawn
and concrete poured

♪ And nail by nail
and board by board

♪ Daddy gave life
to mama's dream

♪ I thought if I could
touch this place or feel it

♪ The brokenness inside me
might start healing

♪ Out here it's like
I'm someone else

♪ I thought that maybe
I could find myself

♪ If I could just come in
I swear I'll leave

♪ Won't take nothing
but a memory

♪ From the house
that built me

♪ You leave home
You move on

♪ And you do the best you can

♪ And I got lost
in this 'ole world

♪ And forgot just who I am

♪ I thought if I could touch
this place or feel it

♪ This brokenness inside me
might start healing

♪ Out here it's like
I'm someone else

♪ I thought that maybe
I could find myself

♪ If I could just come in
I swear I'll leave

♪ Won't take nothing
but a memory

♪ From the house
that built me ♪

There's The House That Built Me
and then there are the homes

that we build.

When I moved my family
to Nashville

the second time in 1997,
a good friend,

a great songwriter,
took me aside for a drink

and said,
"You know pal,

"there's nothing that
a good divorce wouldn't do

"to help your songwriting."

I said, "That's fascinating,

but I better check with
my wife on that one."

My heart and my home
are in Katie,

the love of my life,
and my children,

Katherine, Claire, and Tommy,
my son-in-law, Austin,

my granddaughter, Creasy.

I hope you get married.

I pray you're blessed
with children.

I hope your life is messy
and complicated

and beautiful
and breathtakingly magical.

Remember, it's all a love song.

My wife and children walk
in and out of the words

and the music of all my songs.

Little Rock was about my dad,
but I couldn't stop there.

1994, the son becomes
the father

and my son, Tommy, was born.

My life was evolving
and so were my songs.

When the doctor said,
"Congratulations, you have a..."

He didn't say,
"You have a boy,"

he said, "You have a son."

My life and songs would
never be the same.

Without Tommy,
no Grown Men Don't Cry.

Without Tommy, no Drunk Girl,

which is really just
a fatherly admonition

to a young man how to treat
a young lady

in a compromised situation.

♪ Take a drunk girl home

In 2005, Tim McGraw asked me
if I wanted to collaborate

with him on the end title song
of a movie

that he was making, Flicka.

I flew out to California
and as the sun burned down

on the Hollywood hills,
I entered the movie set.

I was absolutely panic stricken,
'cause they needed

this amazing song in two weeks.

So I flew home to Nashville
the next day

and my family was scheduled to
go on our annual trip to Florida

right after that,
I told my wife Katie,

"I gotta stay here.
I gotta work on this song.

"It's gotta be amazing."

Of course she prevailed
and I got in the station wagon

the next morning and drove
eight hours to Florida.

It's ironic now, looking back,
that I was trying to write

a father-daughter song
completely detached

from my own children
who were 10 feet away.

About midweek, I was sitting
on the porch and I was brooding,

and Katie came out
with two glasses of wine.

You'd think she would
chastise me and lower the boom

for my pity party.

Instead, she gave me
a kiss on the cheek

because you don't give up
on someone that you love.

And then she asked,
"What's the story about?"

"It's a father-daughter
coming of age story."

She said,
"You have daughters.

"Tell me about that."

So I went through a typical day
with my daughters and she said,

"You have an evening ritual."
I said, "I go upstairs,

"I read
The Chronicles of Narnia,

"I kiss the girls goodnight.
I turn off the light.

"I say, 'I love you,'
they say, 'Love you more.'"

My wife is scribbling furiously
in a yellow legal pad

and then she hands it to me
and she says, "Here it is."

I looked at it.
In fact, there it was.

Fathers and daughters,
it's beautiful

and it's complicated.

All my hopes and dreams and
aspirations bled into this song.

♪ You beautiful baby
from the outside in

♪ Chase your dreams
but always know the road

♪ That'll lead you home again

♪ Go on, take on
this whole world

♪ But to me you know
you'll always be

♪ My Little Girl

♪ Someday, some boy will come
and ask me for your hand

♪ But I won't say yes to him
unless I know

♪ He's the half
that makes you whole

♪ He has a poet's soul

♪ And the heart
of a man's man

♪ I know he'll say
that he's in love

♪ But between you and me

♪ He won't be good enough

♪ You're beautiful baby
from the outside in

♪ Chase your dreams
but always know the road

♪ That'll lead you home again

♪ Go on, take on
this whole world

♪ But to me you know
you'll always be

♪ My little girl

I love quotes.

"You can go fast
if you wanna go alone.

"But if you wanna go far,
you gotta go together."

That's an African proverb.

Thirty years after watching
The Beatles

on the Ed Sullivan show
with my father,

after the rollercoaster ride
of addiction and depression,

after the birth and death
and resurrection of a dream,

I came back to Dallas
celebrating my song

going number one in Nashville,
and presented my father

with a silver mint julep cup.

It said, "June 1st,
Number One, 1994,

"Tom Douglas, Little Rock."

It was a symbol
of our achievement,

as much as my father's
as it was mine.

He'd given me
the blessing of his love

and the gift of a song.

And he showed it to every nurse
and doctor and orderly

that came in his nursing
home room until the day he died.

♪ About the age that he was

♪ Second time he got sick

♪ And retired
with a gold watch

♪ Tick tock tick

♪ He had faith in the doubts

♪ Working out his salvation
me, I'm trying to live up

♪ To my father's reputation

♪ I'm the son of a salesman

♪ I got two-thirds
of his name

♪ First one is Abel

♪ Second one Cain

♪ He got lost between
high waves

♪ In the Book of Revelation

♪ Me, I'm trying to live down

♪ My father's reputation

♪ And love is complicated

♪ Between a father
and a son

♪ Wanna use a son of a bitch

♪ And the other as
a son of a gun

♪ Every song I write
and every fight I fight

♪ I resist
the cruel temptation

♪ To redeem

♪ My father's reputation

♪ Got his picture on my desk

♪ Holding hands
with my mother

♪ Their whole life before them

♪ God they loved each other

♪ He whispers let it go, boy

♪ I'm a new creation

♪ Tell your son

♪ It's your
father's reputation

♪ I carry it home

♪ I carry the name

♪ And I hear his voice

♪ Through the drops
of the rain

♪ Won't you come home

♪ Bill Bailey

♪ He left me some songs

♪ And an old ukulele

♪ And every song I write
and every fight I fight

♪ I have
a greater appreciation

♪ For my father's

♪ Reputation

We all go through
the dark night of the soul.

Sorry, it goes with the job.
Hank said it best,

"Nobody gets out alive."

Ours, yours is a noble calling.
Mark Twain said

the two most important days
in your life

is the day you're born
and the day you figure out why.

Well, we know why.

We know why
because we have to write.

We have to write because a
frightened mom and daddy

on the ninth floor of
a children's hospital

are gonna need something
inspiring to listen to

while they wait for the
prognosis of their sick baby.

And the singer
on a stage in Afghanistan

is gonna need to bring a little
home to homesick soldiers.

And sometimes
you just wanna

roll the windows down
and turn the radio up real loud.

We're overcompensated
and underpaid.

We don't do it for the money.

We would pay them
to let us do it.

We have brilliant advocates
who will help us reconcile

our art and their technology.
Don't sweat it.

If the art is compelling,
we will get paid.

We have a gift
and with that gift comes

an immense responsibility.

We're responsible
not to become the victims

of the catastrophe of failure
where we think that

we're doomed and everything
conspires against us,

or victims of the catastrophe
of success,

thank you, Tennessee Williams,

where once removed from
the struggle of creation.

We're nothing but swords
cutting daisies.

And the result of both
these catastrophes

is that we end up worshipping
the creation

and not the Creator.

Idols ultimately require
everything from you.

In closing, my dear friend,
in the end and in the beginning,

God creates and we recreate.
God redeems and so do we.

We write down the songs
that he gives us.

He allows us to participate
in this heavenly endeavor

and through our anthems,
heaven whispers and leads

the prodigal child back home.

And when we save one boy
and save one girl,

we in fact,
save the whole world.

So tonight all's well,
but put your pen to paper

because sooner or later,
I will get lost

and need you to help me
find my way back home.

Don't give up on something
that you love,

because I'll follow your song.

That's why you're here.
Love, Tom.

TOM: That's why you're here.
That's why.

Love, Tom.

[COUNTRY MUSIC PLAYING]

♪ Through the dirt
and the gravel

♪ Through the years
and the miles

♪ Every road
that you traveled

♪ Through the tears
and the smiles

♪ Through the clear
and the muddy

♪ Through the thick and thin

♪ The quiet nights

♪ The howling wind

♪ Through the good
and the ugly

♪ The blue and the black

♪ To the ends of the Earth

♪ To the moon and back

♪ And through
all of the words

♪ The mean and the kind

♪ Through the strings
that unravel

♪ And the ties that bind

♪ From the crazy
and the different

♪ To the more of the same

♪ From the coast is clear

♪ To a hurricane

♪ Yeah, I'll be
right beside you

♪ On a roll or off the tracks

♪ To the ends of the Earth

♪ To the moon and back

[TYPEWRITER CLACKING]