A simple prayer

Dear Lord, if ever I become even somewhat famous, please let me agree to do interviews with the newspapers in the towns whose citizens buy my crap. Please let me at least try to do this every time I go any place with the intent purpose of collecting a check for doing not much more than showing up. Let me make myself accessible because that's a lot nicer than being a millionaire douche bag who is too damned self-important to communicate with the people who make my way of life possible.

Let me remember that doing only six interviews in a calendar year when you're a touring artist doesn't make you mysterious. It makes you an asshole, even if you're Willie Nelson. It makes you even more of an asshole if you're only Kenny Chesney or John freakin Popper.

Oh lord, let me not drive the local entertainment writer up the God damned wall with what amount to certifiably retarded excuses about being busy. Let me remember that I can spare ten minutes on a fucking telephone. Never let me forget that a tour is 75 percent sitting on your ass riding somewhere and another ten percent sitting around going nowhere. Five percent is the show and ten percent is just jerking off. It isn't that hard to work in a conversation on a phone when you're on a bus, waiting for a plane or simply staring at the sweaty cement walls of your basement dressing room.

Let me not go out of my way to insult that little writer's intelligence by saying otherwise. I am sure he gets enough of that at home as it is.

Oh, lord let me also do my best to give that unknown writer my time while I am not having a big bowl of nachos, freebasing cocaine or having a particularly gratifying bowel movement. Let me be nice about it. He didn't call to hear me eat, get high or unleash my stool. He's trying to both help me and give his readers something they want. It's not about the money. If it was for the money, he wouldn't bother with talking. He'd simply wait near the bus with a photographer for that inevitable moment when I do something stupid and probably illegal.

And for this small act of cooperation, this giving of a little time, let me be well-remembered in the future by that writer and the people his article will reach. Let them continue to buy my crap, encourage their friends to buy my crap and do so with joy in their hearts.

Amen.