Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Catherine Powers

Episode Date: October 28, 2016

Ghost Towns. Dirty Angel. Out now. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns. Dirty Angel. Out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. Hey friends, it's me, Duncan, and you are listening to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast. Let's start off with a trivia question. Who out there can identify this commercial? He documents the facts and it covers what people were never willing to talk about. Stonehenge, a visitor fashions a wire antenna in the shape of an ancient Egyptian symbol. He points it at the stones and a surge of power rushes into his arm, knocking him unconscious. Was it all in his mind or was it much more than that?

Do you remember what that's from? If you do, you're old. That's from Time Life, Mysteries of the Unknown. It was a series they released, an amazing series. I had a subscription to it and that piece of the commercial really stuck out to me. The idea that there were places like Stonehenge that had extra psychic energy that would somehow shoot into a coat hanger, that was kind of mind blowing to me and made me want to go to Stonehenge. I think I actually asked my mom if we could go to Stonehenge just so that I could hold a coat hanger in front of it. But I do think there are certain places on this planet that have some kind of unquantifiable metaphysical energy surrounding them and people have different ways of describing these places.

Some people call them energy vortexes. Some people call them haunted. I think one of the best descriptions of this phenomena comes from the movie The Shining. I can remember when I was a little boy that my grandmother and I could hold conversations entirely without ever opening our mouths. She called it shiny. You know, some places are like people. Some shine and some don't. Some places do shine, friends. I've been to a few of them. One of them is a place called Varanasi. It's in India and Varanasi is known as the city of burning and learning. It's where millions of Hindus are cremated every year and their ashes are thrown into the Ganges River. If you go to that city there's a never-ending smoky barbecue

smell which is the smell of these people being incinerated and there is an undeniable energy at Varanasi. When you go there you feel like you're in some kind of surreal dream. Everything seems kind of familiar but it also feels like you're on an alien planet. It's really one of the most beautiful places on planet earth if you can get used to the fact that you're constantly inhaling smoke from bodies being incinerated but you don't have to go to Stonehenge. You don't have to go to Varanasi if you want to experience one of these places of power because they're everywhere and they're not always surrounded by ancient cities or neolithic monuments. Sometimes people have constructed bars on top of them and one of these places is known as the Florabama.

The Florabama is a roadhouse in Perdido Key, Florida. It's very close to the border of Florida and Alabama. It is frequented and sung about by various country stars and I don't know what would happen if you stood in front of the Florabama with a coat hanger but my guess would be someone would bring you one of their bushwhackers which is way more powerful than any kind of psychic energy currently being emanated by Stonehenge. These drinks contain thousands of bottles of rum per drink and they just taste like sweet coffee things. They're dangerous and wonderful. We wandered into the Florabama during one of their free bingo sessions. They have bingo at the Florabama on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays between 1 and 4 o'clock. In this particular

bingo session was being hosted by a woman named Catherine Powers and she was really funny and really fascinating in telling all these crazy stories about Willie Nelson and hanging out with Merle Haggard. She was really funny, really entertaining and as I was throwing back bushwhackers and enjoying this bingo session as though I were watching some really great comedy show, I realized that she would be the perfect guest for the podcast. After she was done calling bingo, I walked up to her, told her that I had a podcast and asked if she would be on it the next day. She agreed to do the podcast and then she pointed to a poster on the stage behind her of a country singer named Freddie Powers and said, do you know who Freddie Powers is?

And I didn't and she said, well, today was his birthday and I just want you to Google search him when you get home so that we'll have something to talk about tomorrow. So I went home, Google searched Freddie Powers and discovered that I had accidentally wandered into the floor of Bama on the birthday of a legend who had recently, just a few months before, left this universe. Here's a clip from a Freddie Powers song. You pick me up off the ground You never one time let me down You put me on a natural high

And I can fly I can fly That's Freddie Powers everybody and that is from his album, The Country Jazz Singer Collector's Edition. Freddie Powers produced Willie Nelson's Over the Rainbow album and he also wrote a bunch of hit songs from Merle Haggard. Freddie Powers ended up getting Parkinson's disease and Catherine Powers stayed with him to the very end and this interview today is really a love story about an incredible romance that happened between two truly amazing human beings and much thanks to the floor of Bama for allowing me to record it in your magical establishment. We're going to jump right into this interview but first some quick business. Guess what you're a homo sapien and if

you want to find out more about what that means I recommend a fantastic book by Yuval Noah Harari called Sapiens a brief history of humankind it's a real mind bender and if it's true then we are the surviving members of many different sorts of human like creatures that used to frolic around the planet until we the homo sapiens figured out a way to wipe them out we did it we destroyed everything that was sort of like us and now it looks like we're going to do the same thing to ourselves hooray sapiens check it out but order it through amazon.com and go through the amazon link which is located at dunkatrustle.com if you look on the lower left hand corner of the page you'll see a little link that says amazon just click on that order sapiens or any other thing that you

need from amazon and we will get a very small percentage of anything you buy so use that link sweeties we also have a shop located at dunkatrustle.com with some beautiful pens stickers t-shirts and posters everything you need to imbue your house with the psychic energy that could very well cause bolts of energy to leap into the coat hangers if anyone who happens to be standing outside pointing a coat hanger at your house check it out just go to the shop located at dunkatrustle.com we also have a forum that you could sign up for at dunkatrustle.com if you like this podcast and you want to get involved in a conversation with some pretty fascinating humans who all gather together at the DTFH forum i would love it if you would join we always want new members

okay pals today's guest is a really amazing human being if you happen to be anywhere near the florida alabama border you can go visit her she calls bingo over at the flor abama she's had an amazing incarnation thus far not only was she married to country outlaw legend freddy powers she was also an actress and a model and i just feel incredibly lucky beyond lucky that i got a chance to spend an hour having this conversation with her if you want to reach out to her all the links you need to find her will be located at dunkatrustle.com so now everybody please sit back close your eyes and allow a rainbow of sonic love energy to burst from your heart chakra and head in the direction of the flor abama where it will rain down upon the head of this sweet

powerful beautiful and amazing woman kathryn powers everybody please welcome kathryn powers to the DTFH on you kathryn powers thank you so much for being a guest thank you so much i'm glad to be with you it's great to be with you how long have you been in charge of bingo at the flor abama actually i am basically a fill in i fill in for them ever from time to time and um so it's just you know i'm not really a regular on the bingo but i pretty much have had it for the last couple of weeks and i'll have it for the first part of next week but then i head out to colorado um we'll be doing a little

tribute out there for my husband freddy and then on um november the 19th i go up to nashville for the final service wow which they'll be paying tribute to freddy mack nasty powers because on april the first freddy was famous for having a dirty joke night at john rich's house which is up on mount richmore at the top of a love circle there in nashville tennessee do you remember his favorite dirty joke oh my gosh he had so many dirty jokes it was unreal any come to mind um oh let's see the what about him um he asked it was the preacher it asked one time he said is anybody in here ever seen a ghost and this guy in the back room raises up his hand and he said great well is anybody in here ever had sex with a ghost that guy holds his hand up again he said well come on down here and

tell us about having sex with a ghost he said ghost i thought you said goat that's a great okay that's cool but you you you um when you were doing the bingo show we walked in yesterday and uh you're so funny you you seem like a performer yourself and or like you you have been performing for a really long time yes i have um actually uh like i said i started out in modeling and um so i did a lot of that and then well how long did you model for well i basically on and off pretty much in and out my whole life but um when i got out to south lake tahoe i became what they called a ring model and so which was basically i was on the floor and i was assisting the auctioneer or if they had a boxing match i would get my five and a half inch heels and

walk around and do those you're a ring girl i'm a ring girl you had to you had to hold i hold you up the little round one yeah i have a question about that okay because i know maybe people see that and they think that's easy but to me i look at i think that seems terrifying because it is very terrifying especially when you're in a bikini and you've got five inch high heels on and the first thing you you don't want to do is fall down yeah up there on that stage so yeah you're walking around and you're really kind of nervous but not to mention you're cold too right yeah the air conditioned those places yeah so you're standing back there and you're freezing to death and you gotta go out there yeah so you were a ring girl when was this uh let's see it would have been

let's see what was it about 87 and 88 87 yeah yeah so where were you living when you were doing that that was south lake tahoe south lake tahoe yes i actually um was an auctioneer and a model for a fashion show called the ritz fashion show and so that's where i kind of went from there and took some courses in some commercial acting and that's when i started getting in and doing a few of the little movies and commercials so you started auditioning for stuff yeah what what was the class you took it was it was actually just a commercial acting class right because i was involved in where was it it was in reno nevada okay through the nevada casting agency i see and that was who i was signed with so you started going out on commercial auditions movie auditions yes i

did a few commercials for the casinos and stuff like that right and then um like i said i've been in several different movies of course i started out you know for extra it was like in the pink Cadillac i was an extra in that and moved on up till i finally got me a good little part there in the ty cob story with tommy lee jones wow like i said i'm probably the only person in the world that can actually say they've been shot by tommy lee jones how how many did you have to audition for that or was that friends you had no i was um actually with the nevada casting agency there at arena nevada so i got hired on a lot of things and actually you know i've been there and working with them for so long that i made it up to first call so whenever they had anything to come in i was on

that first call list so i had the first call opportunities when did you meet freddy how did how did all of this oh god that is how did you cross paths well that's kind of funny because i was actually dating his son's best friend whoa but um we weren't doing that great and i do we weren't gonna be a last but and um so his son's best friend yes at some point brought you well actually well actually what happened freddy jr had walked in one day and he said hey this is my dad's new album well he ends it to me of course i looked at the picture and the first thing i did i went that's who i've been looking for my whole life it was just absolutely gorgeous and i always to me i always i grew up saying that when i'm with my man i want us to look like a good looking couple

together right and i was like he and i would look real good together so you had you had an intuition yeah i i did i fell in love with him on that picture and then one had you heard of him before i'm not really you know i my father had that was what was so funny my father was a huge fan of my husbands at the time freddy so that's what was so funny but um actually freddy jr came in one morning and he said hey my dad just called and invited us up on the house both of y'all want to go well of course my mind was like yes and i just got a brand new camaro and i went we can go in my car so we went up and it didn't take us but a few minutes to realize that he and i was a team and wow we have been a team and we were nine days short of 31 years wow so this you had a moment

on a houseboat yes with a legend yes where you fell in love i immediately i hung on every word i was just clung to him all day long and he actually at the time had another girlfriend oh no she was a jazz singer out there and rino and i really didn't think i'd have a chance with him but it was funny because he started coming to my fashion shows okay and he was but the deal was is he was bringing a date another girl well on that houseboat did you did you guys kiss or anything or was there no actually it was one of those things that that evening we've been hanging out all day together and we were going to get up to the marina to get some more beer and on the way back he reaches out and puts his arm around me and he said you know i think you and i'd make a great team

and i just melted i was just like but then all of a sudden i looked up and there was my boyfriend at the time standing on the boat so i kind of had to act like i didn't even hear what he said and ignored it and all that but every time he came into lake tahoe i was there i i would manage to sit beside him i didn't care if i had to move his girlfriend out of the way i was sitting by him there was just no way to stop this no way to stop it he and i was meant to be together and we were together how long before that happened how long before he broke up with his girlfriend and you broke up oh it was probably just a couple of months a couple months and he uh he was actually we had gone to a george strait concert and um freddy had taken several of us and we was all

standing backstage and freddy said well i've got a booth out here he said if anybody wanted to join me well nobody was saying anything and i went i do because i was like this is going to be my first time to be alone with him so he and i went and sat out front and um he started of course people were coming over and getting his autograph and all this stuff and he looks over and he goes and by the way this is kathryn quarry and at the time when it was kathryn quarry and um so people started looking at me as if i was somebody and they started getting my autograph cool they thought that they had recognized me and this going oh yeah we know who she is can we get your autograph nobody knew who i was did he think that was funny oh yeah he thought it was funny and um so we that night

was our first night to get together and he invited me up to the house both that weekend and we were together ever since and so when you guys got together when you fell in love he was already oh well oh yeah he was already a well-known star and matter of fact at that time murall haggard was wanting to take a break from the road the road and so freddy still wanted he had a band and he wanted to keep him working so he needed a booking agent well i was already in that casino realm doing these fashion shows so i kind of knew all of the entertainment directors all up and down the circuit so um i told him i said hey um i can work on booking you and i thought this was another opportunity for me to get to be a little bit closer with him so i actually started out and

i became his booking agent he must have liked that you had just found out about him that you weren't necessarily a fan no i wasn't my like i said my father was a huge fan when i called my dad this is so funny because i called my father and i said daddy you're not gonna believe where i am and i said i'm sitting here on the houseboat with murall haggard and freddy powers and he was like he got all excited and he was jumping up down saying oh baby girl i'm so happy he said that would be just like me getting to meet my heroes and he's going on and on about how they were his heroes but he ended the conversation with but my baby girl you keep your little ass away from them because my daddy knew all the stories about murall and freddy and all the women womanizing and all

that listen as a father it's like a combat it's kind of the worst thing that can happen is that you hear that your daughter is on a houseboat with your heroes yeah but you're there your heroes that you're going to keep yourself away from them because these are outlaws yeah i mean they're oh yeah these are legendary oh absolutely partying outlaws absolutely definitely it must have been a bittersweet moment for your dad yeah yes and but of course my dad when i finally took him out to meet my parents um they fell in love with him and everything but the funny thing about it is well let me ask you really okay what was that like the drive over to to bring him to meet your parents that must have been a really cool drive it was a very cool drive but at the same

time it was nerve-wracking because um my daddy was very old-fashioned right so living with a guy to him was called shacking up right so i'm i knew we were going to my parents house and we were going to be spending the weekend at my parents so i was really nervous because i didn't know how it was going to work out sure but the sleeping arrangements was going to be so when we got there and that night we started talking to you know my mother was like okay freddy we've got your room set up over here well i knew right then i was going to have my own bedroom and freddy was going to be back there my little brother's bedroom so i so i knew i didn't question it and i didn't say anything but the next day my daddy was really cool about it he goes well i know you two been living together

he said i guess you live together here too so the next night they let me sleep that was freddy yeah that was the acceptance yeah it was finally the acceptance yeah what if freddy think of it i mean this is he's a you know he's a touring country legend and he's come to visit someone's family and now he has to sleep in a separate bedroom that must have seemed really funny to him well he thought it was but you know what freddy was he was still from those old-fashioned days himself so he had a lot of respect for it and all that yeah and he had a lot of respect for my father even though he was older than my father wow and that was a funny story because freddy had led me to believe he let somebody else tell me that he was 49 at the time i was 31 and i'm going

49 31 that's not a big deal what's the number you know but it wasn't until i went to a doctor's visit with freddy that i found out that he was actually 54 wow and when his nurse came in and said oh freddy you've got a birthday coming up next week october the 13th 1931 and all of a sudden i looked over and i went my daddy was born in 34 so my husband was actually older than both my parents too late as too late i was hooked eyes and love and there was no going back you would have fallen in love no matter how old no matter how old it did but you know even when freddy passed it's amazing because freddy passed and yesterday would have been his 85th birthday that's right and he passed away three months ago he did not have a single wrinkle he had every bit of his hair and all of his teeth

and so at 85 people were still or 84 people were still walking in and freddy didn't look much older than 60 wow so when we got together i mean people at that time was thinking that i look like i was 15 and he looked like he was still in his 20s and 30s that's something that's always confused me and i know people say genetics but you run into people who and i don't know how if i'm just assuming if freddy was friends with willy nelson oh yeah i'm assuming he didn't he wasn't necessarily like a sober fellow right he freddy yeah well actually you know by the time i got with him um the whole partying days they kind of basically were over um yeah he and moral haggard and willy and all of them did go through the the cocaine days but one day i mean when you say cocaine days yeah i bet

us mortals can't imagine what that's like well you know in the in the mid 80s i mean that was basically the drug of choice sure pretty much everybody was doing that but it's on it's not it's not just the drug it's that here is someone touring with people who at the time and still are considered basically human gods like you don't willy nelson yeah haggard these are that's the top that is the peak of the pyramid yeah and so to to to be in that vortex of people writing songs for them yeah you are also a human god and so when you say a cocaine period i don't think anyone can imagine what that must be like to be at the center of that yeah it was it was a pretty wild one and but um the deal was is one day moral haggard walked in to freddy and they were

both getting ready to do a line and moral looked at freddy and he said freddy he said you know when you do that stuff you're an asshole wow and freddy looked back at moral and he said well so are you so they decided right then they blew that those two lines off blew them off the table cool and decided they would never do it again so they didn't ever get that stupid yeah yeah matter of fact freddy always said that if the government had a never lied about marijuana he said chances are he would have never done cocaine right he said but when the government lied about marijuana and had everybody thinking that people were going mad and yeah you know killing people and all this stuff off of marijuana and then the first time he tried it he realized that that was not so then of course because they lied

about that well then he figured well heck they must be lying about the cocaine right so of course they got into that cocaine and freddy said actually it was really the worst thing in the world especially for men because you got all the women but you couldn't do nothing with them right yeah yeah it is a paradox in that way and it is a stupid drug ultimately it really is definitely and he does he called it the biggest lie and um actually like I said freddy and I have a book coming out along with our co-writer by the name of jake brown that will hit the shelves in february of 2017 and it's called the spree of 83 and the stories are all about freddy and murl living up there on those houseboats and there's some commentary in there from willy nelson and people like uh john rich

and people like that so what was the houseboat like the houseboat our houseboat um because a lot of people say that they lived in a houseboat together well no it was actually two two separate houseboats murl hangard had his three-decker houseboat it was three decks actually on his second floor was where his hot tub room and it almost looked like a you know a hooker's room with all the red and the white you know the lace and all that and then he had um a crow's nest that he built up on top and the only reason he built that is because murl had tried to put some side rails along the side of his boat well it made it too wide so of course they came in and um forest rangers and all that and told him that he had to take the guard rails off well murl being um he was what you call you know

kind of defiant and rebellious and so when they made him do that he ended up taking the boat taller so he put the crow's nest on top that's so cool but the one thing about our both our houseboats is we had ours was a 57 foot houseboat and we also had um 80 gallons of solar hot water on top cool and it's also was freddy was known as the only aircraft carrier on the lake because freddy had built an ultralight and he put it on pontoons well living out on the lake you had to have a place to put your airplane so they ended up building a hydraulic lift on the back of freddy's boat freddy built an airplane yes he built an airplane while murl haggard sat there and watched him what yes what incarnation are you having right now this is crazy yeah you are living

on a houseboat next to murl haggard and and your husband was your husband at the time yes no we wasn't at we weren't married at that time just just but basically but soulmate your soulmate yeah was making an airplane he built an ultralight airplane um well freddy had always been interested in flying and always wanted to fly so he built this airplane and it was called the natural high and um cool now this is based on the song yes the natural high the song natural haggard yes yes yes which was a number one so freddy would taxi that airplane up to the back of the houseboat right up on the hydraulic lift and then they would set that airplane right up on top of the houseboat so freddy was what they called the only aircraft carrier on lake shasta and the name of

his boat was the ussf boat wow and murals was known as the hotel troubadour wow but we also all had fishing holes in our living rooms so when we wanted to fish we didn't have to go outside and sit in the heat or in the rain we would just pull the plug up out of the middle of the living room floor and sit there and fish did you have a tv there oh yeah so you could watch tv and oh we sat and watched tv and fish one time they had a bass tournament out there it was a murals haggard bass tournament and the night before a friend of mine cindy thompson and i was out there and a thomas and um we were fishing and she was on one end and i was in the other end and all these guys were warming up fishing in the middle well cindy and i was catching all the fish and these guys

weren't catching anything so the next morning i grabbed my rod reel and i was going to go out there and fish and this guy turned around and he goes oh no you're not he goes you get back in the kitchen where the women belong not knowing i had the fishing hole in there so of course i did i went back in there to my kitchen per se yeah pulled my plug and i sit there and i ended up catching the biggest catfish of the day so it's like go ahead send me to the kitchen where women belong i still out fish you that isn't how dirt how i would just think how messy does it when you pull a fishing doesn't it flop all over the floor well no because we had it all sit up you know we it's it was all nicely set up wow so yeah that sounds like they called me they called me ellie bay out

there on the lake because i was one who loved to feed the animals so i'd go around and collect everybody scraps all day long and then i would go over to the the other side of the cove and feed the animals well i also had all these trained fish every night i could drop my light down in the fishing hole and these fish would come up and they would almost come the carps would almost come right up out of the water and take the fish food right out of my hand wow so it's like i had my trained fish and i was like you can't catch it in my trained fish how long did you live in that houseboat i was blessed with it for about three years but freddy and murall lived out there for good eleven half twelve years twelve years and his idea was it in the beginning it was murals

matter of fact murall was already living on the houseboat when he had met freddy and murall ended up buying freddy a houseboat he and freddy had got together was this is i'm sorry this is after freddy wrote a number one no no no at this time so he just recognized matter of fact at the time murall wasn't even familiar with freddy's songwriting he knew freddy as the guitar player and the funny story about it is freddy and murall actually met the first time in 1961 and at that time murall haggard was not the murall haggard we knew him today he was a bass player for a gentleman by the name of win stewart so he was playing bass for win stewart and freddy was playing down the street and freddy was a dixieland jazz band and it was

called the powerhouse four and it was three banjos and a tuba yeah everybody goes three banjos and a tuba so murall was going down and listening to freddy and they were taking turns they kind of got to know each other throughout the war it was actually a 13 day gig and they was going back and forth well at the end of that 13 days they went their own separate race they never stayed in contact they didn't get back together again until it was actually willy nelson because freddy was actually one of the first persons to ever get radio play for willy nelson on a song and it was called heartaches of a fool so freddy was actually the first person to record and get a radio play for a song for willy nelson and then he ended up producing

the somewhere over the rainbow album so it just so happened and this is about 78 79 um willy nelson was playing at harrah's murall hagar was playing across the street at the at cesars and this was all up in south lake tahoe and freddy was playing down the street at a little place called the lake side end well willy had um called freddy and murall over to come and join him and hang out well by this time now murall hagar's famous now when freddy first met him in 1961 he was just a bass player so they sit there and they started visiting still not realizing because murall was making the connection neither was freddy because now freddy was no longer playing banjo he was playing guitar and because freddy had incorporated his banjo style into his guitar now they don't

know they've met so murall really liked freddy's style of rhythm guitar playing because it was very unusual and it was hard driven well how unusual well like i said he and it incorporated his banjo chords and banjo licks and that banjo riffs and everything into the guitar so at the time murall was wanting to learn to play lead guitar he was a rhythm guitar and he wanted to be able to play lead so in order to do that he would have to of course have somebody that could play rhythm as good as him if not better and of course that's where freddy came along so after a couple of days of being up there in south lake toa playing together and if you murall told you the story he would say they played for 16 hours yes they didn't stop playing they didn't stop playing and then all

the sudden willy looked down at the clock and realized it was time for them to go back to work it just seems like freddy had this effect on certain people that was he he really did and um and i guess he would freddy would always contribute that to a gentleman by the name of paul paul buskert paul buskert um actually it was the mentor for willy nelson and freddy powers okay so they both contribute their style of playing and and everything to paul busker and everything what's the everything well it's like the style of songwriting basically the instrumentation paul buskert he was a big fan of a gentleman by the name of jango rinehart okay and so i don't know if you know anything about jango rinehart i do a tiny little a little bit well

you know that's a plan that was what paul buskert was really that's jazz right that's that's that yeah and so so jango rinehart precedes busker yes so jango jango rinehart was the busker what busker was to powers that's absolutely the truth yeah this is the lineage right it's the lineage it's coming down so you know naturally when merle and you know he like i said he wanted to learn to play lead so having somebody like freddy rhythm guitar it was what he was looking for so for the next few months freddy and merle were taking turns driving back and forth catching up with each other in south lake tahoe and redding california that was where merle's houseboat was up on lake shasta so after a couple of months of doing this and see they still have not remembered

they met each other in 61 yet crazy so merle says to freddy said freddy why don't you get you a houseboat move up here and live next door to me said i'll put you right next door because merle on the marina there was the silver thorn resort and marina well of course freddy looked at him he said merle i'm not as famous you i don't have the kind of money you got right but merle looked back at him and said well freddy that's the one thing i got and so 85 000 later merle hager to bought freddy a houseboat and parked it right next to him wow and um i mean that to do that merle recognized oh yeah inside of freddy oh yeah was something that yeah that was going to end up making a lot of great songs for him and that well like i said freddy had already produced that album

on uh willy nelson the somewhere over the rainbow album and merle really liked that album and so that's what got him interested when he first met freddy first time he met freddy the first thing he said was i like what you did on willy nelson somewhere over the rainbow album so of course that gave freddy you know the confidence to be able to sit down and visit with merle and feel like he was a part of it but it was actually they were up on you know merle was playing you know working on learning how to play lead and freddy was playing rhythm for him and they got to talk about songwriting and so merle had asked him about you know songwriting and freddy had actually started telling him about some of his bad experiences because the first song freddy ever

had recorded or that he had written and had recorded was with a group called the wilburn brothers and this was back in 1953 okay well the name of the song was called nothing at all and freddy said he must have titled it right because he got nothing at all and then he got ripped off he got ripped off and he got ripped off of another song called there she goes so it was so before before we keep going i'm curious when did freddy start writing when well actually freddy's sister got him interested in writing freddy's sister had already had some cuts by people like haint tomson and um eddy arnold and so freddy thought well i mean i can write too so freddy come from a family of seven children right all seven children were equally as talented and including their mother and

their father their their mother with their sisters was a part of the vaudeville days back in the vaudeville shows and his father was a fiddle player and a dancer he was a tap dancer you know so freddy you know the entertainment of the music career came back when you know he was born with it was it did his family perform together uh yeah they had a family band in the whole nine yards oh my god that's you know and that was the one thing that we you know when freddy was diagnosed with parkinsons i kind of looked at him one day and i said you know freddy i said you gotta realize that you coming from a family of seven children and the lord only chose one that he gave fame and freddy became famous doing exactly what he loved to do playing music writing songs

but then freddy was the one stricken with parkinsons and i was going freddy i said you could look at it this way god gave you the fame for a reason because he knew someday he was going to give you this parkinsons and he knew he could make you an example so even though freddy had been diagnosed with parkinsons even when he lost his ability to walk he had lost his ability to play guitar but freddy never gave up he's still even when we would have to i would carry him out on that stage on my back put him in the chair we would have to literally tie him in that chair so he could still sing and tell his jokes so and the very last performance that freddy had was here in 2012 and it was during the frank brown songwriters festival and he was basically at that time

losing wind and was having a problem getting the words out but because he was such a legend here and been playing here for so many years and people had been a follower of his when he would fall off in the middle of the song or in the middle of the line the audience would pick it up and they would sing it foreign and um yeah i'm sit here and try not to cry but yeah it was the um it was a really beautiful final show for freddy how or why how does sound how is it that someone who is afflicted with something like that well well i think you know being an inspiration and um knowing that there was other people out there just like him and his of course freddy's first thought when they said parkinson's immediately

freddy thought you know this is it it's over i'm going to give up but then when he realized they didn't have to give up and he could still keep doing what he wanted to do as long as he could so then that's when freddy became not only an inspiration in music but an inspiration in life because once freddy got out there and continued to go out there and be on that stage like i said even to the point of being tied into a chair so he couldn't continue to perform all of a sudden a lot of these young musicians that had been diagnosed with parkinsons was coming out of the woodworks and a lot of them were picking their guitars back up sorry he got choked up and um not letting it get them down so that gave freddy that made him drive even harder

to go out there and still perform and show people that just because you've been afflicted with the disease does not mean that life is over you can keep going you may have to change the way you do it but you can still do it and so that's what he did yeah yeah that is amazing matter of fact he actually wrote his last song was down here on this beach um freddy has a little protege by the name of mary sarah who was actually on the voice last season and um freddy knew that it was going to be his last project so he produced an album on mary sarah and he called in all of his big time friends so he had taken this virtually unknown and called his friends and talked to men to do and duets with mary sarah so we did a 13 album i mean 13 songs on this one album with all these big

legends doing duets with mary sarah and it was people like murall haggard and willy nelson and ray price what's the album called it's called bridges and it also has dolly pardon and tanya tucker and even deal sedaca is on their withers so um but like i said that was freddy's final project with mary sarah but he also wrote his last song was down here on this beach with mary sarah and a gentleman by the name of mark sherrill who wrote the oh red for blake shelson what was the song oh red oh oh dreamin it's called dreamin and um and actually it was a song that ray price when um he had he when he realized you know how sick freddy was and everything ray price and this is even after he had already been diagnosed with cancer and all that himself he said i got to do a freddy

power song at least one so we sent him the song dreamin and he loved the song but ray ended up getting too sick and he passed away before he ever got to cut the song but it was called dreamin and and it still to this day has not been recorded by anybody besides mary sarah wow so i just to be with someone that long to have found a soulmate oh the love of my life and for that to go through that with someone where did you find your strength oh him because i you know it's kind of funny because i did i was not only in love with this man but i was also a fan i always laughed and teased and said i was his number one fan and i actually had a t-shirt made that said i'm freddy powers number one fan and um i just felt it was more important

to actually pay my bills and but to keep fueling that bus and keep freddy out there on the road we were still going out with moral haggard trying to keep him out there we were going out with big and rich i mean i did everything i could to keep freddy is active is what i could so my strength came from wanting him to live not only quantity but a quality life still trying to do what he loved to do oh yeah you know freddy and i really did go through that period of of the anger and the depression of course you know he was depressed because he couldn't do the things he always did and i was getting depressed because i felt like i you know i i felt like i was almost in a trap situation i wanted to be able to do what he wanted to do but we couldn't and but like i said we learned

how to do things different um when freddy first started losing his ability to walk i got to where i was his feet so i would prop his feet up on mine because he wouldn't i didn't want to see him go into a wheelchair yet so i would prop his feet up on top of mine and i would walk him leaning up against me with him walking on my feet and then it got to where you know i actually had to start carrying him so i would carry him like a baby and um just cradle him in my arms and carried him everywhere i go i've even walked all the way out there on my beat on that beach with carrying freddy on my back piggybacking him so he could go out and sit on the beach but i loved him i still love him and i will love him to the day i die um i always say that there would be no there is no seconds to him

and any man who would want to be third i couldn't love him because i couldn't respect him enough to be settling for third so i'm going to be happy just hanging around with my friends getting to be the grandma and being with my grandkids because i did have to sacrifice that time with my grandkids and everything to keep freddy you know and out there as much as i could this was he passed away four months ago yeah it was um june the 21st yes it's been almost a little over three months ago and it's just so beautiful because you know we knew right away when you were doing bingo we could feel this love coming out of you well talking about him i what i say and i tell everybody right now um i consider everybody my therapist so i open the show by telling them that they

are become doctors of the day and they are going to be my personal therapy and my therapist so and it does it is my therapy because when he first passed of course it was very hard i didn't want to get out of bed i didn't feel like i had a reason right um we had this you know really strict routine where i would get up in the mornings and first thing i would do was have to go in of course and take change him and then i would give him his medications feed him his breakfast brush his teeth get him dressed for the day and then every three hours throughout the day i was giving medications and in between that was either feeding or changing or whatever so i had this routine that i lived by for a little over eight years

so of course when he passed it you know it took my breath away and i was like i don't know what to do and i don't know how i'm going to do it and i laid in the bed and and i was very blessed because um melissa here at the florabama called me about calling bingo and it was just like a new day for me um i get up now and i have a reason to get up i come here and i have fun i get to talk about freddy and our lives together and i get to go have away free prizes i give away free stuff all day long i like doing that it's the coolest you do it every day or yeah it's um monday through friday from one to four it is so fun really is and where do you get the stuff to give away they give it to you um yeah um the florabama gives it and

but here lately i've actually been pulling out of my own personal stash i have a lot of um promo pictures of murray haggard and willy nelson of course and freddy and um i even had a few of george jones and stuff and so i've been giving away a lot of headshots of those guys as well as cds i just like i said i pulled from my own personal collection because i i feel like i if i can give them to a good home i know they've gone somewhere good where do you think freddy is now oh freddy is in heaven right now he is in heaven along with murrell and ray price and george jones and i'm going to tell you the lord is getting one of the best concerts he could have ever had if he can keep them from getting in trouble what do you think heaven's like well you know

what i read this one day and it's one of my favorite sayings heaven is like we're all dogs you ever loved before come to greet you wow so one's enough that's right so if you got someone up there it's they're coming they're there they're to greet you do you do you feel him now though do you think when oh i feel him it's like i have to tell you yesterday was freddy's birthday it was actually it would have been his 85th birthday and freddy was a pilot like i said and i was actually a pilot in training he actually made me go and take a uh course a crash course in landing because i was flying with him a lot so i ended up taking my flying lessons and all that so freddy always wanted to get to go up in one of those flight simulators yeah so yesterday

for freddy's birthday i got to go out here to the naval base here in pennacola and i got to go up in the blue angels practice simulator and i got to fly and so i felt like it was freddy's present that he gave to me and he was sitting there with me the whole time and when you say that you don't mean like you imagine you could feel him oh i could feel him there and matter of fact i hit that was so funny because um i'm sitting there you know with the instructor and i'm flying and he asked me if i wanted to fly under the bridge and so i'm actually in this simulator i'm flying all around predito key so there's the theo bar bridge down here and he asked me if i would like to try flying under the bridge and at four first i was like i don't know and he said willy said i

want to tell you i haven't had a single student that did it and under less than five times attempts i did it on my third attempt a hundred feet off the water i'm flying under the theo bar bridge so it was so cool and i could feel freddy jumping up and down and so excited with me that i just succeeded in doing something that everybody else took at least five tries to do and i did in three that's so beautiful and it's so beautiful you did that on his birthday yeah it was on his birthday yeah it was like i said it was something he always wanted to do how'd you get in there well luckily i've got a navy pilot right here that goes to church when we matter of fact we have a super cool church that i'm a part of here at the florida oh the florida has a church right here at the florida on

sunday mornings this tent out here becomes a church it's called worship on the water and it is a no judgment zone you can come as you are you can sit here and have a bloody merry or drink a bush wacker which were famous far around here and have some eggs benedict while you listen to a sweet message from pastor dan and hear some fabulous music matter of fact we took the old song it's called smoke on the water we changed it to worship on the water so we get down here at church wow that's really cool is it so this is what what type of christianity it's christianity well actually um of course we're christians but we're it's a non-denominational and um that was kind of you know freddy and i both got involved in the church freddy when he first got sick you know freddy's always

been a believer he grew up in a christian home but he didn't ever really go to church or anything to him it was they like going over to the church of god and getting down underneath the church and listening to all him and going crazy up there and singing and stopping the feet right so he really wasn't a church goer but when he got sick his sister norma his baby sister who's a wonderful christian lady she um was worried about freddy and she wanted him to get saved so um we were living in this um rv park there in austin texas called the la hasenda and they had a church there so we started going to the church there and freddy decided he wanted to get baptized so freddy actually got baptized in the swimming pool at the la hasenda rv so the video on youtube on your youtube

matter of fact they have the freddy powers pavilion there and we actually have picking parties there but it was kind of sad because 10 days later after freddy was baptized he ended up in the hospital in nashville tennessee on life support and of course i'm standing there over him crying and begging the lord not to take him and all of a sudden freddy barely opened his eyes and he looked at me and he said mama i'm not going anywhere i just got baptized wow and sure enough freddy came out of it and i brought him down here out of the hospital they said that he only had two to three months on the outside we lived across the street here at the florabama yacht club and our bus for three years freddy lived three years so to tell you what the beach life would do to you it extends

your life it extends your life and we lived here for three years they had us nosed in right up here on the bay side so freddy could watch the dolphins and see the boats and when the blue angels would fly over he could look at his windshield in his side view mirror and i mean window and see the blue angels so he had a wonderful last three years of his life i would the customer service here would come over and help me get freddy out of the bus i would bring him over here and um the musicians here they would at least play at least one song to freddy one of his own songs and you could always see even though he couldn't speak you could see that twinkle in his eyes and um but yeah freddy loved this florabama so we came over here as much as we could till it got to wear the last couple of

months um i couldn't even hardly pick him up get him out of bed without it hurting him so he ended up the last two months of his life he wasn't able to get out of bed that's a rough two months oh yes it was for you for you but oh god yes it was when you think about i mean of course for him yeah but the caretaker the that it seems like caretakers whenever i am lucky enough to encounter them they somehow have aren't aware of how much they have been doing yeah for years until it stops until it stops and is it are you realizing it now oh yeah it takes my breath away like i said all the time when i'm like i said it was hard to get out of bed i didn't feel like i had i almost really felt like i had no reason to go on right but um but the florabama

here and the church here they've been really good to me and they have stuck through it with me and they're there with me all the way so i owe a lot to this florabama yeah this is a good place it's a great place it is a great place and it is a family here yeah i can feel it it's the energy here is real and it's such a positive vibe when i saw the church sign i wasn't i honestly wasn't sure if they were being serious but now i see oh yeah it's the great church you gotta come and check it out sometime it's a great church and we have a lot of fun how do you connect with god in your life i start out the very first thing every morning when i wake up by thanking you thanking him for the life that he's given me and thanking him for you know everything he's going to do for me

in my future i can you know i after what i've been through with freddy and i see the need for people to know how hard the job is but if you love him you'll want to learn how to do things and i have actually you know i learned how to take some things like my one of my foster daughters i call her my foster daughter we kind of adopted each other she's a nurse there and muscle shows joy davis and um she would tell me things and show me how to do something but i always seem to find an easier way to do it and so i can see myself going around hopefully teaching people how to live with someone in a condition like this and how to make it easier for both of you and not only have quantity but have a quality life together

right and that's such an important thing to teach people and i and i and i feel that that is the direction that the lord is sending me in i feel it very strong and like i said i've got this book coming out freddy should be out on this book tour with me but i'm going to be going out on this book tour and that's going to be a lot that i'm going to be talking about have you thought about working with a hospice or starting your own hospice um well that's something that joy um and i have talked about and we've talked about the one thing is the different needs it's like the hospice is there and they're there to bathe them and they're there to um sit with them they have things like that but having someone it's like my car would be dirty

and i needed my car washed well i couldn't just call you know from somebody from hospice to come and do it so trying to find somebody to come and wash my car or go to the grocery store for me um even doing you know getting little pedicures and manicures you know they're laying in the bed they need their fingernails done and their haircuts and things like that so you know that's something that we would like to see is doing hospice care but providing all the things that are other necessary things that are not normally provided right do you have any plans to get this going yeah we've actually seriously been talking about it on this trip to colorado that's going to be one of our major things that we're going to try and see about talking about

putting together um do you have a i guess twitter is a way people could reach out to you if they have any ideas well actually like i said now i have the freddy powers twitter twitter yes what's that what's that's at freddy powers yeah it's at freddy powers and then of course and then i've got the freddy powers facebook and i have my own facebook which is kathryn allen powers okay cool so you can link me up under kathryn allen powers and sure i'd love any suggestions we would love it all so one thing that i have asked people in the past on this podcast and uh i'd like to ask you to wrap it up okay but actually it's a question for you and a question for freddy okay which is so there's i guess it's going to be two answers which is what is something that people listening

right now could do this week to make their lives better richer fuller to become more of a human if you if freddy could give people out there just any words of wisdom what would those be and what would what would those words of wisdom be from you actually both of us would say open your heart to the lord and the one thing that we always say is when somebody asks us you know or says something about you know i don't believe in the god or whatever it's it was always both of us would go back and say well how's your life been so far right and it's like well if it ain't been that great or you'd like to see it better why not give god a chance how how do you open your heart to the lord talk to him read his word try to believe i mean you know our deal was is believe that's that's

always we even had t-shirts one time that said i believe and just start with i believe what if you don't you know i have listeners and i i know people who when i've said to them oh you should try praying you know it's a really what do you have to lose it is oxygen ultimately you know but if it works great but if it doesn't uh well you know you figured out the prayer doesn't work for you but the that you know the thing with belief i even personally i want to believe i read the new testament the crucifixion of christ the resurrection of christ when i hear that i think that is just it's so hard to believe that so if do you pretend to believe do you still you know how they say fake it till you make it do you sort of pretend to well you know i you know that could be a strategy

that you could probably start with but you know when you sit down and you actually read the stories you know it's it's like it's a beautiful story and somehow in there you get this desire to want to believe and so i have people who say well do you believe that you know moses you know open the sea and all this stuff and i'm going you know what i prefer to believe because if you believe then therefore you've got hope right so i just it's crazy i mean you know i've just i just read this fantastic book called something like the soul of christianity or houston smith and it really is beautiful and but as i'm reading it i just keep thinking like i i want to believe this but you know i i really can't so right sometimes i can but sometimes i can't so in those phases of can't

believe which for a lot of people that phases their entire life right what prayer would you suggest for them to pray don't don't don't get me on that one i like i said i'm a christian and and i read but i'm not gonna be able to tell you which scripture to go to because that's one thing i'm not good at no not read a prayer like were you always a christian well yeah i was i was actually born and raised pentecostal okay so and matter of fact you can actually go on youtube go to worship on the water and put in catherine powers i'm testimony and you could pull up my testimony and i'm basically taught the one thing that i learned growing up in pentecostal you know and all that um of course when i got old enough i didn't maintain that relationship i kind of you know

kind of walked away and i went my own direction but the one thing that i learned is that i really did not have a relationship with god right i knew of him but i didn't have a relationship so it's building a relationship with god right when you start feeling and talking to him it's like you start feeling his presence and then you start having a relationship right so it's building that relationship with god is what i realized at this point in my life that i need that relationship with him because having that relationship with him does give me hope and without hope what do we have hopelessness that's right now can someone just say something like god i don't believe in you are you out there can you say that as a prayer absolutely you know and it's like

you know it's kind of funny because we sit and we'll you think about they always say that you could be on your deathbed and you could be an absolutely horrible person been a rapist and a murderer and a pedifier and all this but all you got to do is ask god for your forgiveness to forgive me and if you really believe that and in your heart and you're really asking in your heart to be forgiven then you're forgiven well people say well i don't want to be up there when you know somebody like that they have that's not fair right but you know what god it doesn't mean that everything and everything in life is going to be fair you know that's cool so so anyone anyone doesn't matter what it doesn't matter and if you strongly

feel him in your heart and you believe it in your heart and you ask for forgiveness you shall receive that's what he says and that's what i believe thank you so much for coming on this show it really is an honor to meet you and to challenge you thank you thank you and i'm glad you're wearing a floorbama hat thanks a lot my dad got it for me yesterday so um how can people get in touch with you we already talked about it a little bit but let's just run through it again in case well i'm actually i'm on facebook it's kathryn allen powers on facebook or you can go to freddy powers on facebook now his page is full and i can't accept any new members but you can go to my page and i can accept new members and for personal contact you can get through me to freddy

powers house and that is freddy with a y it's freddy powers house at msn dot com great beautiful and if you're near the floorbama come on out one new year i am here from one to four monday through friday into the tent at the floorbama guys do not miss this it was my favorite part of my visit to florida you've got to come see her do bico her stories are incredible thank you so much thank you really been great to chat with you that was kathryn powers everybody all the links you need to get in touch with her will be in the comments section of this episode big thanks to harry's for sponsoring this episode if you feel like it go through the amazon link located at dunkatrustle.com give us a nice rating on itunes subscribe to us and subscribe to the idea that love is something

that will happen in your life soon all right we're gonna wrap this thing up uh with a freddy powers song this song is from his album the hottest thing in town available on itunes and it's called on the road to my heart kathryn's song i'll see you guys next week harry christina you're on the road on the way to my heart just follow that old love light that brings you close to me you found a way it makes me want to stay makes me want to stay around and never part you read my mind i guess you're good at bringing out my best you're on the road to my heart do you're on the road all the way to my heart just follow that old love light that brings

you close to me and you found a way that makes me want to stay that makes me want to stay around and never part you read my mind I guess you bring out all my best you're on the road to my heart you're on the road to my heart you're on the road to my heart you're on the road to my heart you're on the road to my heart you're trapped in traffic but then there is a reward for you a model the brand of the fighters you keep calm despite the voicings the long rows and the screams so when you get home it serves this golden and refreshing layer because you know that your patience is worth gold you are a fighter and this is your reward model the brand of the

fighters everything with a measure imported by crown imports Chicago Illinois it's macy's friends and family get an extra 30% off great gifts for her just in time for mother's day when you use your coupon or macy's card and take 15% off beauty essentials or shop specials she'll love while supplies last plus star rewards members earn on every purchase except gift card services and fees at macy's sign up today at macy's comm slash star rewards savings off regular sale and clearance prices exclusions apply