Recording and mixing Doug's live album was a seat-of-the-pants adventure - a Rube Goldberg exercise in skidding sideways across the finish line for the win. I packed up a van full of whatever I thought I might need and drove by myself through a snowstorm to Lake of the Torches Casino in Lac du Flambeau, Wisconsin. I backed the van up to the loading dock and wheeled in 3 DA-88s and a mess of cables. Patching into the monitor board eventually worked, while – I'm sure – frustrating the live engineer. The show was high-energy, with clouds of rosin exploding from Doug's fiddle. The next day, we reconvened at Pachyderm to mix the tracks.

During the process I turned to notice Doug holding one of my Roger Miller records, shaking his head and saying, "Oh, Roger …". Roger Miller is one of my all-time favorites, so I just had to ask him if he knew Roger. He said they were old friends … then came the story of he and Roger at the Nashville airport. It went something like this:

"We were waiting to catch a plane when this young man with a guitar case approached us, introduced himself, and asked Roger if he had any advice for a young songwriter just getting into Nashville. Roger didn't miss a beat and said, 'Sure, son … just remember to keep your change and your pills in separate pockets … I think I just took thirty-five cents.'"

Classic Roger Miller from the mouth of one of his friends.

Later, I found out that Doug's song "Louisiana Man" was the first song to be broadcast back from the moon by the Apollo 12 mission. What's cooler than that? It was an honor to work with him.

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