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The Opry is well known to be the citadel of country conservatism -- an ornery character like Earle, more rock oriented and bolder lyrically, might use the word conformity -- but Travis will pay homage to tradition. Earle will joke about his "heavy-metal bluegrass" sound, and share, with Crowell and Griffith, a high regard for the personalized regionalism of the Texas singer- songwriter Townes Van Zandt. Oslin sings with a voice that has as much Broadway in it as Biloxi, and Kieran Kane of the O'Kanes will talk about a hypnotic love song of theirs called All Because of You just like this: "The music sort of drifts off, gets real atonal and out of time, which is not normal in country music." Lovett, now he's not normal, with his spooky, funny tunes about ponies sailing oceans. But atonal, for Lord's sake. That's not normal, that's close to sacrilege.
And that's not for Travis. He speaks with reverence of the greats -- Patsy Cline and Hank Williams, Merle Haggard and George Jones, Lefty Frizzell and Jim Reeves -- but he has to be pressed to single out a contemporary. Even then, the answer doesn't come easily, and those he mentions -- like George Strait and Reba McEntire -- are straight, no-chaser country types. Growing up in Marshville, N.C. (pop. 2,011, right on the South Carolina border below Charlotte), Travis, with five brothers and sisters, got an earful of teen tunes, from Kiss to Clapton, Led Zep to ZZ Top. "My brothers and sisters, people I went to school with -- I mean all of them -- were definitely into rock 'n' roll. Sure, I heard it. I mean, if I was riding in a car with them, I didn't have a lot of choice. But it never really appealed to me that much." What got to Randy was his dad's collection of old country 78s, and even now Travis can recall the immediacy of the music and loving the sound of the voices before he could make full sense of the lyrics.
It was likely that love that kept Randy's rocking peers reasonably respectful of his musical interests. The family was Baptist affiliated, but Daddy Harold Traywick, a hard-tempered turkey farmer and horse trader, and Mama Bobbie, a textile worker, bent the church rules a little bit and had the kids perform at V.F.W. halls and Moose lodges, doing a country act as the Traywick Brothers. (Randy changed to his current moniker when he signed with Warner Bros. Records, which suggested that "Travis" might sound a little . . . well, fleeter.)
Travis packed high school in when he was 15 ("I didn't even finish the ninth grade"), but the year before, he had commenced a different kind of education when he was caught driving drunk and trying to outrun a cop. "I can't count the times I've been in jail," he says. "I never had to go to prison, but once, for ten weeks, I had to go to the Monroe jail every Friday night and leave Monday morning." Finally, at about age 17, Randy got busted for breaking and entering. Looking at five years in prison, he had some luck. In his more respectable moments, he had hooked up with a woman named Lib Hatcher, who ran a club in Charlotte called Country City U.S.A. She gave him a job, stood up for him in court, and the judge let Randy go with a warning: "Son, if you come back to my courtroom, bring your toothbrush."