While he was stationed at Ft. Bragg, NC, another mentor emerged from within that company. Jimmy Herring, a recent graduate of G.I.T. (Guitar Institute of Technology in Los Angeles) who worked in a nearby music store, not only shared what he had learned with Rockie, but made an indelible impression on his eager student. “Musically, he was very soft-spoken but he practiced all the time. He was totally focused and dedicated. That was a great example for me, since there was a lot of down time at night on the base. Even now, if I don’t practice at least two hours a day every day I feel like I’m cheating myself.”
When his three years of active duty were up, Rockie moved on to the next stage of the life he was creating for himself; he loaded up his 1984 Toyota pick-up truck and pointed it west, to Hollywood, enrolling at G.I.T. on the G.I. Bill and renting a small apartment right around the corner. “Man, talk about a fish out of water!” he says with a laugh. “Between my upbringing and the Army, I had no social experience at all. I was so shy and unsure of myself in that environment that I had to buy a pair of sunglasses just to walk down the street. But the school is where I found my place, I didn’t do anything except go to school and hang out with the buddies I made there. We all played at different places, so music was pretty much my life by then. Most of them were either into jazz or hard rock, but I had always gravitated to country music. People figured I was authentic because I grew up on a dirt road.”
After G.I.T., he participated in some of the cattle calls for musicians regularly held in Los Angeles. In one of those, he was among the last two standing for a slot in a band with a record deal. When he didn’t make it, he packed up the truck again and drove east until the road ended at the ocean, this time in Myrtle Beach, where he put it in park while he figured out the next step.
A popular local entertainer, Mike Shane, showed him the way. “After I saw him perform the first time, I introduced myself and told him I wanted to play for him. He hired me and I toured with him for two years as his guitar player and band leader. I watched everything he did. Mike Shane moved me vocally like no one else. Up until then, I had never thought of myself as a singer, but he asked me to do the harmony part on “Set ‘Em Up, Joe,” an old Vern Gosdin song. I did it, and afterwards, he gave me a copy of Chiseled In Stone and told me that if I listened to that album, I would be able to play country music. So, I listened over and over and learned all those songs. That was great advice.”
When Shane went to Nashville in the early ’90s to do some recording, Rockie came along and ended up staying a couple of years when he scored some side jobs playing guitar for some country acts (Noel Haggard, B.B. Watson, The McCarter Sisters).
But, by the mid ’90s, Rockie grew frustrated by the lack of personal expression that type of gig demanded, got back in his truck and hit the road, this time playing solo gigs in “bottom tier clubs” and selling CDs he had recorded himself: for the first time, leaving his career as a guitar player for hire and taking on the role of the front man.
“Everywhere I played, starting from the beginning, I did original material. I love the feeling of going to the next place and playing songs people have never heard. It’s a little scary because you don’t know, but you have to have faith. That’s when my songwriting developed sort of a pop-country hook. If there’s a bar full of people who want to hear “Sweet Home Alabama” and you’re playing one of your own songs instead, you’d better hook them right away. We traveled the whole country, so we’d only get to a place twice a year. The first couple of times, people would write Lynyrd Skynryd songs on a napkin, but by the third time in, they’d be asking for my songs. That was an incredible feeling.”
The whole country is a pretty big place, so eventually Rockie decided that if he was going to build a loyal regional fan base, he needed to pick a region. The Midwest was appealing on several levels and Minnesota as good a place as any. “I had been on the road so long, I didn’t have any roots. To say I moved there would be an overstatement. I stopped there four years ago.” There was Coon Rapids, a short drive northeast of Minneapolis and northwest of St. Paul, on the Mississippi River.
Over time, logging 200-300 dates a year, he accomplished his goal of building a solid regional base of fans, while selling over 40,000 copies of his CD. “Though I never did this with the purpose of getting a major label record deal, I knew I had gone as far as I could go without one. It is a blessing to do what you love. I’ve always been happy, but I’m not satisfied. I would like to sing my songs for as many people as I can. There are 280 million people in the United States. I just need one million of them.”