Pittman’s musical story begins in the early 1970s at the grand opening of the local town drug store. His late father, from whom Pittman would later inherit his trademark Martin D-28 acoustic guitar, basically forced him to sing a Johnny Cash song, much to the delight of the crowd that had gathered there. Pittman, though he immediately received enthusiastic accolades and even tips, wasn’t havin’ it. “I hated it,” he recalls, “but I In my room, I’m playing air guitar and pretending to be Elvis, but to do it in public as a kid was really tough. It wasn’t that I struggled doing it, it was just more the fact that I was being made to do something. That ended up driving me into a phase where I refused to sing out in public at all.” Even going to a Johnny Cash concert at the age of 5 with his mother wasn’t enough to lure Pittman back into the spotlight, and transcribing the lyrics to hit songs off 45s for his father didn’t quite do the trick either—but it did lay the groundwork for the lyrical depth and flair that Pittman showed so effortlessly right off the bat with his 2019 debut Bluegrass American Dream. “My dad would pay me a dollar a song to sit down and figure the words out for him,” Pittman chuckles. “I have to really question how good I was at it because I was so young, but I guess he was able to use it. Who knows how many of the lines I’d get right at the end of the day, but I think that’s when I got my first appreciation for lyrics.” “Back when I was 7 or 8,” he continues, “country rock was really big, and ‘Lyin’ Eyes’ by The Eagles was a big hit. I remember that song specifically because there were so many verses in it. Even at that age, I could appreciate the darkness behind the cheating and the lying and everything in that song.”

https://youtu.be/v6-c5Vrm1UE?si=-1T2FULAWwJR3yC4