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Artist
JD Myers
12+ albums
countryAlt-countryamericana
about
JD Myers Raised near the Appalachian Trail in southwestern Virginia, JD Myers spent his youth watching the truckers plow through town on their way to anywhere else. Troutville had three traffic lights and a Waffle House and Myers knew that like the big rigs, he was headed for someplace bigger. It all began August 16, 1977, the day Elvis Presley died. Myers was 3, but the memory is still vivid for him today. His father, then a truck driver for Pepsi-Cola, had just come home from work and was reclining in his favorite chair. His mom was doing laundry. Network newscasters kept interrupting the TV: The King was dead. "I was a little guy and my parents had this big console TV and I remember watching it all night and I knew this was something huge," Myers says, "I remember feeling the despair. I was hurt by it. It was all I heard for weeks and it was my first memory of Elvis. His death was the beginning of music for me. If it weren't for him, I wouldn't be doing this." His mom had a scratchy copy of "Blue Hawaii" and he played the grooves out of it. She bought him a box set of Elvis music, and Myers memorized every note. She bought him a left-handed guitar and paid for lessons. "They never taught me what I wanted to know," Myers says. "I wanted to play 'That's All Right Mama' and they were more concerned with teaching me to read music." Later a Cherokee truck driver- who once played a date with Johnny Cash and was Myers' personal hero- taught the then 14-year old a few chord
