Rock Killough's book, "Front Porch Stories," will be available for purchase at Page and Palette during his visit.

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Want to meet Rock Killough?

Where: Page and Palette, Fairhope

When: Sunday, Aug. 21, 3 - 6 p.m.

What: Meet Rock and listen to him perform with Mac Walker.

Rock Killough says he wasn't cut out to be a songwriter.

He's just lucky.

So lucky that a few musicians you might have heard of, like The Oak Ridge Boys, Sammy Kershaw, Randy Travis, Waylon Jennings, Hank Williams, Jr., Merle Haggard, Latimore, Jerry Jeff Walker, 4 Runner, Hank Snow, David Fizzell, Larry Cordle, and Coon Elder Band, all read his songs, and liked them enough to record them.

After a stint in the Army and time as a guitarist in a local band at Auburn University, Killough said he was just strumming the guitar, which he loved to do, when inspiration struck.

"I was at home, sitting on the side of the bed, playing guitar," he says. "One day words started coming down."

By 1976 those words carried him to Nashville where he began writing as the protégé of legendary songwriter Hank Cochran, the composer of “Make The World Go Away” and “I Fall To Pieces.”

Killough was signed by one the largest publishing houses in country music, where he wrote some of the genre's favorite tunes, including “Take Jesus as Your Lawyer,” “Where Can I Surrender,” “Still Loving You,” and “The House at the End of the Road.”

Still, Killough maintains that he's not a professional songwriter.

"Those guys get up in morning, go to their office and get in there and start writing songs. It doesn’t necessarily include or need inspiration." he says. "I started writing songs by myself and started writing songs about what happened to me. I always wrote by being inspired rather than being at a job."

Killough took a decade-long hiatus from the writing business and moved into a little cabin in a pine thicket, overlooking a corn field near Guntersville, Alabama where he recovered from heart surgery.

He began spending every morning on his front porch, looking out over the land - his coffee in one hand, his guitar in the other.

"I looked right to see the sun come up and left to see the sun go down. I got enthralled with it," he says. "These instances of calmness came from looking at the world around me, listening to the wind and the pines and looking at what God did in the sky."

Inspiration struck again. Killough began writing down what he was thinking. There was no form, or rhyme. He was just having fun.
His friend suggested he publish the musings.

Nah, he told her. Didn't know how to publish a book. Didn't exactly have the drive to do so. She took charge.

Two days later, a publisher called him, and the book deal was done.

Now, "Front Porch Stories" is a 107-page ode to all of that which inspires Killough from that comfortable spot under the sky. He retells funny stories he remembers from his days touring on the road. He writes about the awe he finds each morning not just in that cup of coffee but under the ever-changing sky above. His faithful chihuahua, Tater, makes several appearances.

He says he hopes that readers will sit on their own porch, maybe with a cup of coffee in one hand, and the book in the other, and simply relax.

"Everybody is in such a rush they can’t appreciate the simple things that make peace come to your heart," he says. "When you allow yourself to relax you let God in and you can’t help but be amazed by the incredible creativity of nature.

"By sitting and contemplating you can achieve a moment of timelessness and there is something glorious about it," Killough said. "It is a wonderful experience. I want others to say maybe I’ll try this. Sit on the porch and let time go by and see what happens."