Sometimes moms know...

1984, a small, Midwest, nothing town in the corn desert. A dumb young kid who thinks he's gonna be rock star drummer is assuring his mother not to worry. She's infinitely patient as usual, but tries to at least steer him away from the steel jaws of impending and spectacular failure, even if she can see -- by now -- that music is always going to be part of his life, one way or the other.

She resigns herself to that fact, and gently offers the best advice she can, considering the circumstances.

"Well, I think if you're going to do music you ought to concentrate on your songwriting," she says flatly. "You seem to be good at that. There are lots of drummers."

Oh come on, mom, he thinks. I've written like four or five songs. I don't know how to write more! No, I'll just be a drummer. I wanna rock!

He tells her she's wrong. She nods, like she always does when her oldest son's stubborn, know-it-all streak rears its head.

The kid goes onto play drums in a dozen or more cover bands, rocking out in the animal clubs and smoke-filled bars of the 1980s. He works steady, sure. But come on...who cares? Wow...playing other people's songs! How cool is that? For his next trick he's going to do an interpretive reading of the Sears catalog.

He goes to college, gets a job, gets married, starts a family, experiences tumult and disaster, gets divorced and nearly loses his sanity.

And then, 30 years later, The World's OKest Drummer begins finding much more success and fulfillment doing what?

Writing songs.

Thanks mom, for knowing me better back then than I even knew myself. I'll bet she doesn't even remember that conversation. But I do.