“Mac McAnally and I wrote the song ‘Old Flame.’ I can’t believe it has been 30 years. We were tossing a frisbee and trying for 100 catches in a row. Once we did that, we would write a country song. We started talking about old girlfriends and I said let’s write a song about old flames. He said that was a good title. I wrote it down and we started banging it off of the guitar. Mac was making it a little complex for a country song and he took out a few chords and simplify it. We went to a studio and demoed it. The band Alabama was just getting started and they were playing a show in a bar in our hometown in Muscle Shoals. The town had just gone wet. I thanked them for cutting one of my other songs on their last album. They were glad to meet me and asked if I had any other songs. I had the cassette of “Old Flame” in my pocket to take home and play for my wife. We listened to it on their bus. After the song, there was silence and Randy Owens asked me to play it again because he had chill bumps. I played it again and they asked for the cassette. That was the only copy of the song, but I had to give it to them. A few days later they were cutting it in the studio. The song became a country standard. That day writing in my living room with Mac, I never believed that could have happened. We were just writing a country song. I was driving to Guntersville to fish with a friend the first time I heard ‘Old Flame’ on the radio. It went crazy after that and in eight weeks it was #1 for four weeks. After that, the doors of Nashville opened and were able to follow up with other success. I had a couple of other smaller hits. “Why Does it Have to be Wrong or Right?” was #1 for Restless Heart and “Stand a Little Rain” was #1 for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. I was also a fisheries ecologist. I retired from that, but I am still a songwriter.”