TY HERNDON AND HIS BROKEN, HEALING HEART
- By Alan Richard
- 7 days ago
- 10 min read
(Editor’s Note: This story contains potentially triggering language about sexual assault and addiction.)
NASHVILLE — Country singer Ty Herndon can break your heart, but he sure knows how to put one back together. The man speaks from experience.
In his intense and candid new memoir What Mattered Most, Herndon recalls how he became a child preacher in Alabama, rose to fame in Nashville, and suffered some devastating personal crashes — eventually coming out of the closet and finding spiritual redemption.
Now in his 60s, super-fit and looking years younger, the country singer has emerged as an activist for change in music and as a songwriter and performer who finally feels ready to hit his prime.
Working on the book for two-and-a-half years has “changed me in ways I did not see coming,” Herndon told a small audience in April at a bookshop appearance in Woodstock, Georgia. “I’ve never known this kind of freedom.”
Known for his 1990s country hits like the No. 1 singles What Mattered Most and Living in a Moment, along with my favorite, A Man Holdin’ On (to a Woman Lettin’ Go), Herndon could be counted on for uptown-country phrasing, masculine bravado, and lyrics most definitely about women.
Now he sings about his husband, Alex, and regularly (and tearfully) opens up about every bend in his journey — courageously so — even with his Mama Peggy in the audience.
Still, as his co-author David Ritz, a biographer of Aretha Franklin, The Rolling Stones, and others, has told Herndon about his music: “There was something there all along that was the truth.”
Herndon’s truth-telling was at the center of a concert and book event in April at the impressive new Harken Hall, one of the Nashville area’s beautiful new music venues.
He told the audience that he copes with his past by learning to “take the best of me out of it” and let his shame go.
Even his mother hadn’t known every detail of the incidents in her son’s life until she read the book. Knowing more about her son, to whom she was close already, she was finally able to give him the hug he deserved after going through it.
“God has had me… (and) He never let me go,” Herndon said, giving him courage toward “loving myself and to tell the truth about it.”
Growing up country
Born in and raised in tiny Butler, Alabama, Herndon was gifted as a child and felt called to preach at the age of 9. At a revival, an evangelist attacked him and paraded him before the crowd while disavowing homosexuality. He blasted the youngster, quoting scripture on Sodom and Gomorrah and other citations often wrongly used to condemn gay people.
“I just felt myself shrinking,” Herndon recalls, adding however that the preacher might’ve regretted his tirade “by the time my aunt and my grandma got through with him.”
At 18, Herndon auditioned and won a job performing at Opryland, then a major theme park anchored by the new Grand Ole Opry in suburban Nashville. He performed at the park’s multiple music venues of the day and found many casual boyfriends among other young men at the park — all in secret.
In 1983, the national TV program Star Search, a predecessor to American Idol, came to Opryland looking for contestants. Herndon sang and earned a trip to Hollywood to appear on the show and was named the male vocalist champion for one week. He eventually lost in the semifinals to future champion Sam Harris, who’d sign with Motown Records and later sing on Broadway.
In Hollywood, Herndon was introduced to crystal meth, learned about the brutality in some quarters of the entertainment industry, and discovered that hiding the truth can begin to destroy you.
One night, Herndon joined a Star Search executive for dinner and drinks. He woke up the next day shocked and sore. He’d never consented to sex with the man and believes he was drugged. Later, Herndon was rebuffed when he reported the incident to a higher-up TV executive. But it was the 1980s, and he was too afraid to approach the police or tell anyone but his best friend what happened.
He lived with tremendous shame for years, which fueled his drug problems.
Around then, he moved to Dallas and became a popular performer in the jam-packed honky-tonks of Texas.
Finally landing a record deal in his 30s, he married his second wife, Renee’, at the suggestion of a label executive. At the same time, he lived in Dallas with a longtime boyfriend.
The record label sent him to France for a week on a songwriting trip, where he was astounded to hang out with new peers like Cher, Brenda Russell (who wrote Get Here by Oleta Adams), rock singer Patty Smyth, and others.
When he returned with great memories of traveling and partying, but no songs, the label chose one for him. Herndon was regularly abusing drugs but gave a sincere performance when he recorded What Mattered Most, about a man who paid no attention to the little things, so his woman left him. In May 1995, it became Herndon’s first No. 1 hit.
Weeks later, his world seemed to fall apart.
An arresting moment
In June that year, Herndon was scheduled to play a police convention in nearby Fort Worth. He’d been up for two days high on meth and watching porn. On his way to sound check, he stopped for gas, then ventured into a public park known as a cruising area for gay men.
Looking back, he was almost certainly entrapped by a rogue undercover police officer, but that didn’t matter at the time. The man cuffed him and hauled him off to jail. It was the first time he’d missed a show because of addiction, including the time a friend pulled him out of a bathtub in Las Vegas, barely breathing.
He was scheduled to fly to Nashville for a party to celebrate his No. 1 song, but the event was cancelled when word spread of his arrest.
Herndon figured his career was over. It could’ve been, but with so much time and money invested — and maybe some compassion and enlightenment about their bright new country star — the Sony record label team stood by him. Herndon apologized to everyone at the label and was met with tears, hugs, and expressions of confidence.
He went to his first stint in rehab, where a counselor suggested he stay closeted. (Not helpful in the long run.) but found hope for the future. His record company blamed the arrest on addiction alone, and he continued to release hit records.
“What Mattered Most is the cry of a shattered man. That was a part I could play,” Herndon writes in his book.
“Country music, like so much of American music, is based on lamentations’” he continues.
“Love found and love lost. Heartache. What Mattered Most is powerful country blues, sung by a man who reaches deep into his soul to express excruciating regret.”
He found an evangelical church in Nashville that was affirming toward LGBTQ+ people. He re-recorded some of his country-pop classics alongside songs that expressed his religious beliefs, coming full circle from his childhood.
“The music had saved me my entire life,” he said. “I was born with it. I’ll die with it.”
What mattered most
Herndon takes readers through many other episodes of his life.
He had a destructive, drug-drenched relationship with the gifted singer Waylon Payne, son of country star Sammi Smith and now part of Willie Nelson’s band. By then, Herndon’s drug problem was so bad that his mother flew to Los Angeles to confront him.
“She handed me a photograph of a coffin,” he writes. ‘That’s yours,’ she said. ‘I’ve bought it.’”
While it didn’t make her son stop the drug abuse right away, it would lead to a turning point.
He made the decision to come out in 2014. How exactly does a major country artist come out of the closet? Herndon spoke with Chely Wright, another popular 1990s singer who made the decision and sacrificed income because of it.
Wright introduced him to GLAAD, a national organization that marshals celebrities for LGBTQ+ causes. With the help of Zeke Stokes at GLAAD (who’s now his manager and close friend) and others, they did interviews with People magazine and Entertainment Tonight.
Many hours on the phone with Wright helped Herndon “understand that I was beautiful and I could be authentic.” She also issued a warning of what may be necessary for him to heal as a person.
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TY HERNDON’S HITS:
Three Billboard No. 1 songs on the country charts: What Mattered Most in 1995, Living in a Moment in 1996, and It Must Be Love in 1998.
Three other singles made the top five, another made the top 10, and 10 other songs made the country top 40. Many of his songs spent months on the charts.
The album Living in a Moment hit No. 6 on the country albums chart, and the album What Mattered Most made the top 10.
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Meaning in music
Herndon returned to performing, the only profession he’d ever known.
He became a visible advocate and led the Concert for Love and Acceptance in Nashville for several years — which gave LGBTQ+ allies a way to express their support. He was also recognized by the Human Rights Campaign and the anti-bullying Trevor Project for his advocacy work.
He made several well-received albums, including 2019’s Got It Covered, with a new version of What Mattered Most with the right pronouns. He also recut A Man Holdin’ On and added favorites like Marc Cohn’s Walking in Memphis and Mike Reid’s (and Bonnie Raitt’s) I Can’t Make You Love Me.
In 2020, he suffered a major relapse in Nashville. Miserable and spent, he held a handful of pills, ready to take his own life.
It was then, he said, a 21-year-old cousin named Josh who’d died of an accidental overdose appeared to him and told him his family couldn’t handle another similar death.
Then the phone rang. Or he dialed a number — he can’t remember. Either way, on the line it was his friend Debbie Carroll with MusicCares Nashville, supporter of hundreds of artists with mental and physical health care over the years.
“The next day I began my mental health journey,” Herndon said.
He spent four months in a Houston mental health facility, where for the first time he was treated for bipolar disorder, ADHD, dyslexia and more. In his own words, Herndon said it had been like Flight of the Bumblebee was playing throughout his entire life, but once doctors determined the right medicines and treatments, the bumblebees stopped, he said.
“Everything was clarity,” he said.
On Jacob in 2022, named for the Biblical character whose biggest weakness became his greatest strength — after reading the story in rehab — he sang duets with Terri Clark, Wendy Moten, Shelly Fairchild, and other Nashville talents.
Thirty Vol. I, released last October and marking his three decades of music, includes duets with LeAnn Rimes on What Mattered Most, Ashley McBryde on A Man Holdin’ On (to a Woman Lettin’ Go, and with Broadway star Kristin Chenoweth. A second volume of Thirty is planned for the end of the year, all duets, including a rerecording of his own 1990s hit Living in a Moment.
Besides more book-related appearances, Herndon will release a deluxe edition of his Grammy-nominated gospel album, Journey On from 2010, with three new tracks this summer. The first single arriving May 15 will be a remake of the contemporary Christian classic Testify to Love with Michael Passons formerly of the group Avalon.
A sort of homecoming
Last week, Herndon’s Nashville homecoming on his book tour with an appearance and full-band concert at Harken Hall in Madison. His husband, Alex, and even his Mama Peggy looked on from the with love. His mother even joined his younger friends for burgers and beverages afterward.
Interviewed on stage by actress and singer Chrissy Metz, who released her own book with the same editor and publisher, Herndon said he’s realized that many people “see themselves in these pages.”
After coming out in 2014 in People and on Entertainment Tonight, Metz asked him why he hadn’t written the book sooner.
“There was too much fear,” Herndon said. “Two months into the process I wanted to stop. … I didn’t think my story was worth telling. I didn’t think it would help anyone.”
Two of the toughest things to write about were the full story of his arrest and, separately, his sexual assault when he was a young man.
Detailing the arrest “was something I never thought possible,” Herndon told Metz. “Honestly, it had just worn me out over the years.”
He never imagined finding the strength to say “rape” out loud. “I prayed about it really
hard” before including it in the book, he said.
“I don’t know a lot of people who could’ve gone through that,” Metz replied.
Herndon’s willingness to discuss the assault has led to “Me, too” moments for others, he said. “I’ve known so many people who’ve been through it and haven’t been able to talk
about it.”
During the Nashville book event, I was moved when Herndon even expressed mercy for that rage-filled preacher who’d belittled him as a child. “He was trying to save me from some of the pain (that he’d likely felt),” the singer said.
The book tour has been a deeply emotional experience that has required Herndon to laugh, cry, and take pictures with fans, right after spilling his guts.
“I am exhausted in the most beautiful way,” he said.
Steady forward
Herndon’s exhaustion didn’t keep him from performing at the Nashville event. Nothing was going to stop him.
Bandleader Erik Halbig and other musicians backed Herndon as he sang She Wants to be Wanted Again with Metz, followed by favorites like Loved Too Much, Ready to Go, and How You Get to Heaven, a song featured on the 2023expanded version of the album Jacob.
Herndon yodeled on the rocker, I Want My Goodbye Back, then sang What Mattered Most following an audio clip from Bob Kingsley’s ’s country countdown show on May 27, 1995, announcing the song as the No. 1 hit in the country.
He grew emotional during Lies I Told Myself, which featured a powerful music video that highlighted oppression against LGBTQ+ and many others. “It’s the beginning of me telling the truth,” he said. There had been many “lies I told myself I’m glad I didn’t believe,” he sang.
Toward the end, Herndon was joined on stage by close friends Passons and Melissa Greene formerly of Avalon. The trio sang Testify to Love, the former gospel hit and forthcoming single. There’ll even be a dance version available in June. (With this more authentic religious music, maybe it’s time for a new genre of progressive gospel.)
On How You Get to Heaven, Herndon began crying and couldn’t make it through a couple of lines about a grandfather’s quiet dedication to his faith:
It's not where you go on Sunday
It's what you do on Monday
Cause you can't say you love your maker
If you can't even love your neighbor…
And that's how I believe
You get to heaven
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