Deacon Claybourne didn't start out as a drunk. In fact, growing up in the hills of Tennessee, he wasn't around drinking much at all.
And moving to Nashville, meeting Rayna Jaymes and starting a career in music didn't make him a drunk either.
Stage fright made him a drunk. Or at least that's what he used to tell himself. And stage fright didn't always get him-heck, he could sing on the stage at the Bluebird any time, drunk or not, but if he knew then what he knew now about how those big arena stages were going to change his life, he might have never started writing the songs with Rayna that got Watty recording their demos and put them out on those big wide stages. Nope. He could have just stayed in his little dive bars, playing his songs for tips and never awakened the demons that drove him to destruction again and again.
"Can you believe this?" Rayna said as they walked out onto the wide stage, the crew quickly loading in their gear. The arena was dark, making it hard to tell just how big it really was.
"Wait til you hear it with a crowd," Bucky said as he walked up behind them. "Tim's bus just pulled in. Once the crew gets everything loaded in, he'll do his sound check and then we can get the band up and run through your stuff."
Opening for Tim McGraw. This really was the big time now.
"I don't know, Buck-how can we ever fill this place?" Rayna asked. "I can't imagine singing to people I can't even see out in those high seats."
"Maybe we better go up and check those seats out," Deacon suggest. "Might give us a better idea of how they're gonna feel when we're up on stage."
"Maybe," Rayna said. She sounded nervous. Now she was making him nervous, too.
"I'll grab a little something for us to share up there-might take the edge off," he offered. Oh, it took the edge off alright.
Four months on the road. Ninety-five dates in eighty-five cities. Four months of taking the edge off the anxiety.
Deacon would like to say that he's holding it together, but to be honest, he's kind of a sloppy drunk. Almost missed that night in Dallas. Pretended he got food poisoning at the Iowa State Fair.
He can tell that Rayna's on to him, but she hasn't said anything. Not until the last night in Oklahoma City.
"We gonna talk about this?" she asks as she takes his hand off the bottle and into her own.
"Too much?" he asks.
She nods. "You think you can stop when we get home?"
He'd like to say yes, but to be totally honest, he's tried to stop. Every single day since their third show in North Carolina.
"Want to," he says instead.
"So, you'll let me help you?" she asks. "Maybe go someplace for a little bit to just rest your mind after this is all over?"
"Like the cabin?" he asked, thinking that the only thing he needed was to just get off of these big stages and back into his quiet life.
"Maybe somewhere a little more structured. With folks to help you," Rayna replied. "Do it for me, Deacon?"
And he did. He did it for her.