I've been thinking a lot this week about the first episode of the show.

Ray Wiley Hubbard was the very first guest.

And I remember driving up to Bowling Green, Kentucky

and meeting Ray at a venue after sound check.

He was very generous and very optimistic and supportive about this whole thing.

But I was doing a lousy job of explaining what I hope this show might be, what it might become.

I was trying my best to be humble about it, but I had some very definite, strong ideas about what I wanted the show to be.

Some of them were probably a little too high-minded for my own good, no matter how humble I was trying to be.

So at one point, after I was probably going on about some delusional Alan Lomax ideas that I might

have had, some parallels I was trying to bring forth, Ray just smiled really big and leaned

back in his chair and said, keep the dream alive, Otis, keep the dream alive.

I laughed really good, and that saying has stuck with me ever since then. I'll be around the house, and I'm an extremely opinionated person,

and I try my best to keep it to myself, but sometimes we just let it fly without realizing it.

So when I get on my high horse and I start throwing about a bunch of high-minded ideas

and high-falutin facts and opinions, I'll stop myself and I'll think about Ray.

I'll say, keep the dream alive, Otis, keep the dream alive.

Music Keep the dream alive. Hi, friends, this is Otis Gibbs, and you're listening to Thanks for Giving a Dam.

I'm sitting here in my living room in East Nashville.

This is a personal journal.

This is a bit of an experiment. I like to say right up front that I have the slightest idea of what I'm doing, but I decided to do it anyway.

And this show was founded with the idea that there are only two people in art that matter.

It's the creative individual and the person experiencing it.

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