“All I wanted was to be there on stage in the lights.  It was all I thought about.  I would sit in class and underneath my homework I’d be lifting up the paper and writing a song.  I never wanted to be like anybody else.  My mother has notes in boxes that I wrote in kindergarten that say, ‘I want to go to Nashville to be a star.’  I always knew that I wanted to come up here.”

A hotshot on guitar by his mid teens, Eric Heatherly joined a series of bands that played VFWs. Pool parties, drugstore openings, car lots and anyplace else that would have them.  After a year of college on a full music scholarship, he told his parents he wanted to make music his life.  In 1990-91 he rose to prominence as the star attraction at a Chattanooga collegiate club called Yesterdays.

He moved to Nashville, ten spent three years on the road, bringing his high-octane style to a  boil in front of some of the rowdiest, drunkest crowds on the North American continent.  That period of his life ended with a near-fatal car crash in Illinois that destroyed almost every bit of the equipment he owned.

“The car was totaled.  Flipped upside down.  But there was the green Strat lying out on the highway.  So I ran over, picked it up and strummed one chord and it was still in tune.  I said, I’ll use this guitar forever.

He limped back into Nashville in 1994, this time with a staff songwriter’s job at Orbison’s Still Working Music publishing company.  He parked cars at the Hermitage Hotel, shoveled gravel on roadways and worked for a landscaper.  All the while the fire kept burning inside of him.

“I had gone to I don’t know how many labels and producers, just banging their doors down.  They all wanted me to put on a cowboy hat, a buckle and some boots.  I told every single one of them the same thing:  “I’m a guitar slinger.’  I was doing Carl Perkins ad dreamy Roy Orbison-y ballads.  They didn’t want anything without a hat and a big acoustic guitar.  I didn’t practice for 20 years to stand on stage and strum three chords.  I wanted to solo on guitar like Ricky Scaggs and Steve Wariner and Vince Gill.  I wanted to be the next guy like that.”

Thoroughly discouraged, Eric decided to head for the wrong side of Nashville’s tracks to blow off some musical steam.  In late 1996 he settled in as a weekly noise maker at one of Music City’s most legendary beer joints, Tootsi’e Orchid Lounge.

“I said, ‘I don’t care if we get paid or not.  I just want to play every single week with a band doing all my original tunes and just make as much noise as I can.’  I was dressing the guys in thrift store ties and vests.  The room was gritty and grimy, just a no-hype juke joint.  The owner said, ‘I really don’t think you’ll last more than two or three weeks.  But if you want to waste your time and do it, come on in.’.”

Within weeks a “scene” developed around the charismatic Eric and his sizzling country-rockabilly combo.  By the time word reached Music Row about this young dynamo who lit up lower Broadway like a firecracker, women were dancing on top of the bar and hundreds were singing along. 

“These label people walked in and saw 250 people singing the words to every song and they couldn’t believe it.  I would watch the exact same people who weren’t interested a couple of years before all of a sudden begin to light up.  As they would walk out they’d give me that grin and wink and drop their business cards right in the tip jar.”

Shania Twain hired him to back her on the 1997 Country Music Association Awards Show and he subsequently offered a slot in her touring band.  But Eric Heatherly stuck to his guns.  After the TV awards he returned to Tootsie’s and waited for fate to smile on him.  It did, Twice.

He met his wife Heather, a Tootsie’s bartender.  When they wed last year she became, that’s right Heather Heatherly.  The Mercury Records at last turned him loose in the studio with producer Keith Segall (Mercury Nashiville’s Sr. VP of A & R ) to make music his way.  No hat, No boots, Just talent.

“I asked Keith, ‘Do I need to tone my style down a little?  He said, ‘No man, just hit it.’”

Hit it, he does.  Eric Heatherly’s album is the work of a fire-breathing rockabilly evangelist.  It brings back all the “edge,” excitement and honesty that contemporary country music has nearly lost.  Millions can now hear the sound that Lower Broadway’s honky tonkers found so delightfully infectious. 

“There was a truck driver who came though St. Louis and somehow always made sure he got here for our show.  I talked to that guy and said, ‘I can’t believe you do this every week.’  He said, ‘It’s what keeps me going.’.”

Amen, brother.