He Quit The Spotlight In 1988 To Save The Man Behind The Voice
Sammy Kershaw reached a breaking point and stopped drugs and alcohol cold turkey and walked away from the music business in the same bold move
Instead of chasing another nightclub stage he went to work as a remodeling supervisor for Walmart and for roughly two years the mission was no longer discovery but getting his life under control
For perhaps the first time since childhood he stopped building every day around the next stage and tried to save the part of himself that would have to come home when the music ended
That retreat made sense only when looking back at how early adulthood had claimed him
His father died of lung cancer when Sammy was eleven and his mother worked full time while much of the responsibility for three younger siblings fell onto his young shoulders
He took odd jobs and worked around local musician J.B. Perry and by twelve he was already singing in Louisiana honky tonks while other children still measured life by school years and he was helping bring money home
The Clubs Gave Him A Future And Nearly Took Everything Else
Music offered a way forward through his teens and twenties as he played the club circuit and opened shows for artists he idolized and developed a voice increasingly compared with George Jones
Yet years of bars and travel and instability fed serious problems with drugs and alcohol until the life surrounding his ambition threatened his marriage and everything around it
The Comeback Arrived Almost By Accident
Songwriter Barry Jackson persuaded Kershaw to send a demo to Mercury Records in 1990 and a showcase followed and then came the contract he had spent years chasing before walking away
Dont Go Near the Water arrived in 1991 and Cadillac Style climbed to No. 3 and the album eventually went platinum
Hit records followed along with broken marriages and financial trouble and another round of rebuilding
Asked years afterward about the hardest cost of the business he did not mention charts or bankruptcy
He had missed his children growing up because he was gone so much
That honest answer gives the Walmart years deeper meaning and reveals a man who learned that survival mattered more than applause
Bob Dylan of his own honky tonk childhood he was not but Sammy Kershaw carried a boyhood burden into fame and still found the courage to step away and rebuild before the breakthrough finally found him