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THE LONG VERSION

you know those small towns that you only seem to see in movies? the heart-of-america type places where everybody seems to know everyone else and they throw parties and festivals for just about any reason imaginable. where you can't do anything without your mom finding out about it or ever being able to live it down? you can rest assured that if you blow up the dumpster behind the diner that they'll still be talking about it ten years later and if you get caught drinking on the water tower on prom night that the arresting officer is your uncle? yeah, that's exactly how buchanan, georgia is. in a lot of ways, it was the ideal place to grow up; cute, quaint, tight knit, the whole nine yards. in others, though, the pitfalls outweighed the perks of small town life and from the day that payton murphy was capable of thinking for himself, the one thing he was certain of was that one day, one way or another, he'd get out. it wasn't that he didn't love the place or the sometimes questionably quirky people that resided within the city limits, but there was a world outside of the mom and pop shops and the family diner and damned if he wasn't going to experience it one day.

growing up wasn't always easy, especially being the only child of a single mother. despite being a teen mother with having no idea where payton's poppa had run off to after finding out that there was going to be a bouncing baby boy in his life, teresa murphy did everything in her power to make her son's life as good as possible, even if that meant working days in her family's diner waiting tables and nights in the local tavern pouring drinks. even though money was tight sometimes, she went out of her way to keep payton active and involved with friends and the community. any free time that she had was spent with her son, taking him to peewee baseball games and weekly piano lessons with the creepy old lady who smelled like moth balls and cheap perfume and lived next door. she would help him with his homework, sing him to sleep at night and even taught him to play guitar, just like her daddy had taught her. it wasn't until the time payton had entered high school that teresa had saved enough money to open her own restaurant and was finally able to devote more time to her son.

now, high school wasn't anything spectacular for payton. it was the same old thing that most kids experience in high school, only when you lived in a town as small as buchanan, rumors spread about ten times faster... if there was any privacy at all. sure, he wasn't a social pariah by any stretch of the imagination, but he wasn't exactly mister popular, either. in fact, the time that wasn't devoted to his studies was spent participating in the school's jazz band and art club, as well as on the swim team, or pretty much just doing about anything that would look good on a college application and would lend in his favor of getting a scholarship. luckily, all his hard work paid off in the end and needless to say, when he announced that he'd gotten a full ride to new york university's tisch school and would be moving the hell out of the vortex that was buchanan, it didn't shock the small town but it did hit hard when he left.

so, at the ripe young age of seventeen, with stars in his eyes and hope in his heart, he packed his bags, kissed his momma and gran good-bye and headed north for bigger and better things. needless to say, being a small town boy at heart and very much your typical southern gentleman, moving to new york city put our hero in the middle of a culture shock that he wasn't entirely sure how to handle. in fact, not six months into his new life, he was ready for a breakdown, hardly able to keep up with his school work, a part time job as a bike messenger and be able to maintain a social life. these new york girls scared him, he wasn't sure how to handle being approached or how to handle large parties where no one knew anyone aside from the guy who seemed to be manning the keg tap even though he probably didn't have to. it was one fateful night at one of these aforementioned parties, that an already drunk payton was offered his first line of cocaine and told that he seriously needed to loosen up. With a shrug and an open, albeit intoxicated mind, he had his first taste of blow and it was the best experience of his life. the world was alive in hypercolor, his senses were heightened and he finally felt like every little thing wasn't going to cause a massive panic attack. it goes without saying that at only eighteen, he was already hooked and couldn't make it through a normal day without getting his fix; the high was perfect, it made him excited, socially savvy and granted him the power to talk the panties off of pretty much any girl he chose, he was able to keep up with his school, go to work, jam out with a couple of kids from school, get in a catnap and still feel like a normal person at the end of the day.

the next year seemed to go buy in a flash, between a steady diet of barbiturates, cocaine, burboun and just about any other drug offered to him. school seemed to rush by and before long jam sessions turned into normal practices, covers of jawbreaker songs seemed less and less important than the music penned by hand and the often sullen lyrics that came along with it. the band started small, recording a few demos here and there on a cheap pro tools mockup in a friend's garage. after the release of a self produced, recorded and distributed album called the attic tapes, a bunch of stupid kids who'd dubbed themselves 'outlaw country' were playing shows in local dive bars and much to payton's surprise, actually generating a crowd. the truth was that never in his life had he actually imagined music becoming a career option., it was always just something he enjoyed, often leading singalongs at parties or found hanging out in the quad at school, playing meaninglessly for passersby. but one day, it seemed to happen. in mid 2002, less than a year later, they were releasing their first studio album (self-titled) and well on their way to success. still, payton devoted himself to school, working as hard as he could between studio time and shows and small tours here and there.

then came sam. she was smart, she was beautiful, she was funny, hell she was everything that payton could ask for in a girl. it was love at first sight, a feeling that payton had never felt before. she made him want to settle down, and for a while, he did. over the course of the next year, sam and payton maintained a healthy and happy relationship, even through the typical trials and tribulations most couples had, especially considering he was gone half the year. in fact, it was her influence that made him want to clean up his act, to quit the drugs and the recklessness and keep himself clean. for a while, he was able to do just that and it wasn't hard to tell that he was head over heels in love with the girl and he had taken quite a few leaps in life with her and she'd even stood by him after he landed in the hospital as a result of diabetic ketoacidosis brought on by the until-then unknown type one diabetes. from sharing and apartment to planning for the future, they seemed like they were going to go far. but dreams only last for so long, don't they? one fateful night, after a six-week tour of the east coast, payton came home to find his apartment empty, save for the voicemail on the machine explaining that she just couldn't be with someone like him. she wasn't in love anymore and she needed to exist on her own. the next thing he knew, payton was sharing an apartment with four other people and falling back on his old habits of drinking, drugs and sleeping with any girl who bothered to look at him.

graduation day never came for payton murphy. with only a few months left to go until he actually accomplished something for the first time in his life, he dropped out of school without notice, insisting that he needed to focus on his music, but the truth was he was kicked out for consistent failing grades and almost never attending classes anymore. the band had just dropped their third big album and he was going to keep with it. with a big tour planned, there was as much excitement in the air as there was stress and nerves. mix that with the recent break up, the stress of school finally coming to a close and an already existing drug problem and well, it was easy to lose himself in everything that was going on. concerned for his well being after picking him up off the floor for the thousandth time, his bandmates forced him into rehab, insisting he work on himself before the band went down the drain. after six months of drug and alcohol counseling in a private, upstate facility, payton was released in early 2004, recovering and looking forward to pumping out a new album for all the fans that he'd disappointed in the past. the following year and a half became a blur, trying to do too much, too fast. with nobody's darlings recorded by the middle of 2004, set to be released at the beginning of 2005, a tour on the horizon and not enough hours in the day to keep up with the demands that seemed to be coming at him, he relapsed again. he knew it was the easy way, but it was all that he could do to keep up with how fast life seemed to be moving around him while he couldn't keep up. 2005 brought more changes than he could imagine with it: another tour, a label change, a fifth album, outlaw country: dreaming in america, which was accompanied by a documentary. then there was amber.

she'd moved into the apartment during the winter of 2005. she was pretty, she didn't care who he was or what he did and she didn't really seem to care about him at all. sure, he could have afforded to move out at that point, to get a nicer place with fewer people, but he didn't mind sharing a place with his bandmates and despite as much of a jerk as he could be sometimes, he willingly opened his door to someone who needed a place for a while. for almost six months, he managed to keep his hands off of her, to stay away from her. she didn't seem to notice the constant looks her gave her, she lived in a world all her own. still, on one cold and lonely night, both parties fueled by alcohol and payton having consumed enough drugs to make sid vicious jealous, well, neither of them really remembered it all that well. waking up the next morning lying naked next to someone wasn't a big deal for him, but for that someone to be amber? well, that was something different entirely. needless to say, when he got the news sometime later that he should be expecting a mini-him in the coming months, he didn't take it all that well. today, he'll have no problem admitting that he doesn't even remember recording two-thirds of the band's sixth album, released in late 2006 because he was so strung out through it all.

despite amber's insistence that she could do it on her own, that he didn't need to stick around, with the birth of his daughter rapidly approaching, payton did what any logical person would do: he put his best foot forward, promised to clean himself up for the kid. he was going to get off drugs, he was going to get his life together. he was going to do everything in his power to be a good father because the last person he wanted to be like was his own dad, who'd never bothered to ask if the kid he'd made was even alive. like a lot of other things in his life, he seemed to fail miserably at that, as well. although he managed to stay sober enough to actually be present at the birth of his daughter, to let amber scream and yell and use him as a punching bag during one of the most horrific looking scenes he'd ever watched. it was the stress of being a parent, of feeling like he'd mess that up, too and fight after fight with a girl who wasn't his girlfriend, a higher turnover in sexual partners than a mcdonald's drive through, some of which professed their love for him on the very first day and the headache caused by of a record label breathing down his neck, his self-proclaimed sobriety lasted little more than two weeks into molly's life and he did the one thing he'd sworn not to do. he ran away. worse now then ever, he'd become what he'd hated most and all but walked out of the life that he'd built for himself. no band, no amber, no baby, no paycheck. just a sad boy with a broken down guitar in a dingy studio apartment in brooklyn heights.

to be honest, payton doesn't remember how he wound up in rehab the last time, but he remembers falling asleep on a mattress on the floor and waking up in a room filled with bright light and a friendly looking nurse (who he'd later had a short affair with in an attempt to score some oxycodon, which failed miserably). another six months went by, more therapy, private sessions, group sessions, treatments, the whole shebang he was released in early 2008 complete with a clean bill of health and vowed that he'd never power his nose and that the only needles that would come near him were either attached to tattoo guns or were for his daily doses of insulin. after a lot of deliberation over drinks with his bandmates and a couple arguments with amber, everyone decided that it was all of their best interest to get the hell out of new york while they could. it was literally a stroke of luck that the band wound up with nashville, as payton had simply closed his eyes, bit his lip and thrown a dart at a map. the move came with another change of labels, this time not from one indie to another, but with payton's newly found sobriety, the boys took a leap and landed themselves a four-record deal with universal records. the year following the move was a big one; payton, rather than living with his bandmates, purchased a small house in a quiet nashville suburb, that he shares with his daughter and amber, he laid down the tracks for the bands newest, not to mention what was basically their reunion album and started work on a solo project. the turn of the year brought the release of payton's solo album, a seven track record dubbed last pale light in the west, inspired by cormac mccarthy's novel, blood meridian or, the evening redness in the west

three years have passed since an almost-too spur of the moment move from new york to nashville and to this day, payton doesn't regret a moment of it. still clean and sober (...ish, while he's quit the drugs, he still is known to go overboard drinking at times) payton is doing everything in his power to keep his life as together as he can. he now knows that his friends, his bandmates and his family are there for him through thick and thin and that he has too much to look forward to and live for than to risk throwing his life away for a temporary fix. recently, he's even confessed feelings for amber and promised her that while he may not be the best guy in the world, that at least he can try. the two are currently dating and while she doesn't know it yet, he has something up his sleeve.