I want you to picture this kid growing up in Beaumont, Texas, early 1940s. His father is an oil refinery worker and his mother is a homemaker. But there’s a twist because this kid is being raised by a couple who aren’t actually his biological parents.

Now, when Keith Whitley dies of alcohol poisoning in 1989, at the age of just 33. Lorrie Morgan, his widow and a major country artist in her own right, gives Keith’s legendary Martin guitar to Mark Chesnutt.

• So here is the setup to this whole story
• He’s this kid with this massive voice, born into a working class Texas family with a hidden past
• We are going to trace his entire arc from that Beaumont childhood, through the honky -tonks
• Think of the raw traditional honky tonk sound with a big baritone voice
• This kid discovers a kind of music that’s basically the soundtrack of Southeast Texas working life