A cowboy appeared before St. Peter at the pearly gates.

St. Peter asked the cowboy, have you ever done anything of particular merit?

The cowboy says, well, I can think of one thing. On a trip to the badlands of South

Dakota, I came upon a gang of bikers who were threatening a young woman. I told them to leave her

alone, but they wouldn't listen. So I walked up to the biggest, baddest, most tattooed biker,

and smacked him right in the face, kicked his bike over, ripped out his nose ringing through it on the ground.

They yelled, back off or I'll kick the shit out of every last one of you.

St. Peter was impressed and asked, when did this happen?

The cowboy says, well, a couple minutes ago. So, Hi, friends, this is Otis Gibbs, and you're listening to Thanks for Giving a Damn.

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 haven't the slightest idea of what I'm doing, but I decided

to do it anyway.

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

There's a creative individual and the person experiencing it.

And everything else is an artificial filter.

This is a way for me to share things with you guys

without any filters whatsoever. My guess this week is John Lomax III. John's a historian, an

author, a journalist, a publisher, a producer, he's a photographer, and he was also the manager

of Townes Van Zant.

We had a great response for last week's episode where John talked about his family and their impact on music history. If you haven't heard that yet, I strongly urge you to go back and listen

...