Brownfield, Texas is sometimes known for red dust blowing horizontally across the road. You just learn to follow the taillights of the car in front of you on Highway 62 coming back from Lubbock. Lubbock was where you got your culture. Brownfield was where you lived your life.
Kimberly Galloway Holston grew up in Brownfield. She was a cheerleader and did well in school. Pretty much what you’d hope for out of a kid in America in the 1960’s. Except for one thing-her family life was more akin to the lyrics of a Classic Country hit than an Anita Bryant anthem. Her saint of a Mama was beautiful and honorable, her Daddy was the stuff Merle Haggard and Conway Twitty sang about. There’s a song in there somewhere, maybe a double album.
Kimberly always loved to paint and draw. She also was called upon by her Daddy to sing and entertain his friends at the family parties. I can just see her with a twinkle in her eye singing her little heart out and loving the adulation from Daddy’s friends.
She managed to graduate High School earlier than her peers and land a good paying job at the phone company in Brownfield and later transferred to the bustling town of Brownwood (no relation to Brownfield). So she was living the American Dream. Hard work rewarded with good money. She was a Woman In Flight.
And then Kimberly became a single Mama. Raising a baby boy and keeping the cash flow happening is tough for anyone. Kimberly rose to the challenge but there was no time for her art and singing. You just do what you gotta do.
Fast forward several years and life-lessons to 2001. Kimberly runs into a dude from Austin named Johnny Reverb at a club on Route 66 in Amarillo. Good sense would tell her to stay away from a musician, but she had been practicing good sense for several years and was ready to quit trying and just let it be. Johnny was searching for the true meaning of life after many years of not being true to himself.
Johnny and Kimberly talked and there was no need to pretend to be someone else or try to guess what the other one wanted to hear. It was real from the start. And they got each other’s jokes.
So things went along. Johnny was visiting Kimberly at her house when he heard her singing at the other end of the house. He was already blown away with all her original art she had hanging around her house but didn’t expect that she could also sing.
“What were you singing?” he asked her. “Oh just a little song I’m sort of writing” she said, or something like that. And BOOM! Within a day or so Johnny had her singing into a studio mic with headphones on and working on her first original song. Before too long the song list grew to several tunes. Kimberly wrote the lyrics and melodies and Johnny provided the music and recordings.
And so thus was the development of Kimberly’s music that led to the song Woman In Flight. It’s a true story ya’ll. It’s about having a Honky Tonk hero for a Daddy and a Good Hearted Woman for a Mama. It’s about growing up wanting more out of life but being told to be happy with what you have. It’s about never giving up the dream but having to wait for years to let yourself dream again. It’s about being a Woman In Flight. It’s about never being too late to put your wings on tight.
