It's a good thing for me that success is measured in small steps. Here are some of mine:

• Bill Mack, WBAP's Midnight Cowboy, included one of my songs on a tape he produced.  You see, my big bro' John and I recorded "Travelin' Jones" while John was on a break from driving his big rig.  It just so happens that Bill produced an audio tape every quarter for all the drivers of John's company to take out on the road with them and listen to, and hopefully take in some tips.  He'd give messages like, "Hey, it's getting cold, so if you gotta use your fuel line antifreeze, make sure you get the receipt back to Carla to get paid for it."  In between all these tips, he'd spin some tunes as if it were his radio show.  So we sent him our song, and he opened with it on the next tape he did!  Our copy is in the fambly archives.
  

• While on stage, I was on the receiving end of what law enforcement would consider an actual death threat!  No, really!  I was lucky enough to have my friend Jay Johnson playing with me.  We were doing one of my tunes about my fictional bad mother, when a stuttering stammering coot of a drunk woman approached us.  She said, "I've never wanted to kill a songwriter more than right now!".  Pointing at me, Jay told her, "HE wrote it!"  What are friends for?  The worst part was that we had just sadly lost a songwriter friend the week or so before in a barroom gunfight over a good woman's honor.  So we took this threat very seriously.  Of course, we finished the song like the professionals we are.  But I had my "drunk coot woman" radar on all night.