John Rich

And my plan was to go there and go to college.

And I'm in Nashville and I'll try to get a record deal, you know, and go to college.

If I don't get a record deal, well, I went to college and I got a degree.

Maybe I go do something.

I don't know.

But instead of going to college, I went out on the road with some guys I literally barely knew from Texas who were older than me.

I was 18 going on 19.

And instead of going to college, I went out and played about 200 nights a year in a van pulling a trailer all over the US playing holiday in lounges and county rodeos and off-brand casinos and basically anybody that would hire us.

because I wanted to be on the radio, I wanted to play the Grand Ole Opry, and I wanted to write number one songs.

And I couldn't understand how college was going to make that happen.

Fair.

It can't.

I mean, it just can't.

So I said, I'm going to just go do it.

And so that band became a band called Lone Star, which we got a record deal a couple of years after we started, sold four or five million records with them, wrote my first number ones with them.

So in those moments...

where you gambled to that level and then you win and then everybody loves it.

It is just a constant high five.

I mean, it's just a constant celebration because that is so hard to do.

It's like an Olympian winning a gold medal.