Joey + Rory's Rory Feek on Grammy Nomination: ‘Everything Is Bittersweet’
Rory Feek has an unusual claim to fame, which he states without a bit of irony: “I’m kind of famous for loving my wife.” That statement stems from the story he’s shared with fans via his personal blog for several years — a chronicle of his wife Joey Feek’s battle with cervical cancer, to which she succumbed in 2016 at the age of 40.
Rory is known for his musical collaboration with Joey in Joey + Rory, which first attracted attention on the Country Music Television singing competition Can You Duet? in 2008.
The duo is nominated for Best Roots Gospel Album for the release Hymns at this year’s Grammy Awards, which will be presented Sunday in Los Angeles.
Rory Feek made the decision to let fans further into the story of his life and marriage via a documentary, To Joey With Love, and an autobiography, This Life I Live, the latter of which will be released on Valentine’s Day and gives an unvarnished look at the Feeks’ relationship and family backgrounds.
Rory, who is a father to three children (his toddler Indiana, with Joey, as well as two older daughters from a previous marriage) sat down with Yahoo Music to discuss the process of writing the book — as well as his thoughts on this year’s Grammy nomination.
YAHOO MUSIC: If you were to win the Grammy for this record, it will obviously mean quite a lot to you, given your circumstances. Do you have any idea how you will feel if your names are called?
RORY FEEK: I think it would be bittersweet. Everything is bittersweet [pauses]. We were playing in the snow the other day with the baby, and it was beautiful … and tough. It’s just the way life is right now.
How do you think Joey would feel about winning, if she were able to tell you?
I think she’d be thrilled. She’s watching above, and I think she would be proud of being part of it, even now. We made lots of music over the years, and there’s a part of me that thinks that some of this is being nominated for even more than music. Which is really special.
Does it mean even more to you that you are being nominated for a gospel record rather than one of your country efforts?
Yeah. It would mean so much to my wife, and means so much to me. [The album has] done amazing — I got told the other day that it sold half a million copies. That’s a big, big deal in the climate today. So it means a lot to people hearing it; that’s beautiful. I’m just very happy that my wife’s music is still out there and being shared. I think for the rest of my life I’m going to want to champion her and her story and her music, so this is just a beautiful thing.
You are releasing a book on Valentine’s Day that gives a complete picture of your life, including your marriage to Joey. It’s a very honestly written story that exposes both positive and negative — and very personal — things. Was it a conscious decision to let fans into your life this intimately, or did it all come out as you began writing?
I decided to write a blog for a couple of years, and told our story that way for a couple of years. We were very honest, we didn’t gloss over any part of it. In those last few months when people were picking up the story by hundreds of thousands, I realized that they were really only getting to see four or five months of our lives. So I just wanted to continue telling more of the story. It wasn’t a conscious decision to say, “I want to tell this or that.” I always am telling everything I have room to tell.
In the fall, we were able to release a documentary from all the footage I had over two-and-a-half years. That’s the clearest story you can tell — I couldn’t tell anything but that; I couldn’t go backwards. So I felt that although people maybe discovered us over that four or five months, now they know a little bit more of the story from that, and have a little bit better of an experience with Joey.
And now with the book — I get to tell a much bigger story. My nature is just to share more, and share as honest as possible. The problem was that, even with all of that, there’s still so much more to share. I just didn’t have time. You just share as many vignettes as you can in 70,000 words.
An interesting aspect of your book is how it portrays a realistic view of marriage in general. So much of the press surrounding your and Joey’s story had an almost “fairy-tale,” romantic aspect to it, but you spell out very clearly that — like all couples — you had various issues and challenges to work on.
I think that’s a really good thing, because people need to hear it if they want a realistic version of what our story is. If you were sitting down talking to us, that’s the same story we would tell you: “Yes, our marriage is amazing, but let me tell you where we came from.” It’s all part of a bigger story. I’m kind of famous for loving my wife. But to know why that’s so special to me, you really have to understand where I came from. And if I don’t tell you where I came from, you won’t have perspective on how special it really is.
You also portray many sides of Joey that the “romantic” snapshot does not tell. She was adamant about wanting a career; she didn’t initially want children. She was very much her own person.
She was extremely strong. Her story is similar to mine in that some of the things that she thought were important ended up not being important. Sometimes you have to let go of what you have a strong hold on, and then you can have what you desire. But it has to be in God’s time and for the right reasons. So just like me, she learned to grow. She was always an amazing, badass woman, for sure.
And of course, you share a lot of things about your own past that might be sensitive, such as incidents in your childhood and your failed first marriage. Was this difficult for you?
It’s my life. I feel like there’s so much power in weakness. I mentioned in the book: The things I thought I would be most embarrassed by or that I wouldn’t want anyone to know tend to be the things that I want to share first, because that’s where all the growth has happened. And that’s what people can relate to the most — I think they can, anyway. I might be wrong about that, but I believe they can.
Was there anything in particular that was most challenging to revisit?
I had written a lot about Joey and I over the last five months in my blog, and I was trying not to re-cover a lot of that in the book. So probably the most difficult was parts of my life – my mother, my father. Revisiting where we came from, and getting some perspective on their journey and their story. That was kind of hard, because I learned so much in the writing of it and I remembered so much. I was able to put some things in perspective in my own mind.
I found myself breaking down in tears when I was reading the audiobook. There would be so many times that I couldn’t talk; I couldn’t even breathe, because it was almost like it wasn’t my story and I was reading it for the first time. I’m emotional telling the story, but not in a bad way, but in a “This is so beautiful” way. It’s so beautiful how far God has taken me, and Joey, and our marriage, and our lives, and our music, and our children. In order to really understand that, you have to bear it, share it, and feel it.
Have either of your older daughters read the book?
[My oldest] Heidi read it and she absolutely loved it, she loved the honesty of it in general. She cried and laughed her way through the book and was just very emotional about it all. She learned a lot of things about me that she didn’t know. She knows our story and she’s very protective of our story, but she felt it was shared well, and is excited it’s out there.
You have such a positive and accepting attitude regarding your story. Was there ever a moment where you found yourself angry at God for taking your wife? Some consider that a normal, perhaps even essential, faith-based process in dealing with grief…
No. I don’t still. That doesn’t mean that it won’t happen. And maybe some people are like “You’re just repressing everything,” or whatever. But Joey, she had a lot more to be unhappy and angry with God than I had. And she had moments where she was frustrated and hurt, and confused and disappointed. I have a little audio tape of her where I’m sitting beside her, and I just pushed record and we started talking — this was last winter — she was talking about the kids, and what her hopes were for the kids, and for me and the baby, and what her wishes were when she was gone. And she talks about, “Am I mad at God? No.” I mean, she breaks down, she knows the end is coming, and she says, “How can I be upset with Him, after all He’s done for me?” That’s the truth — she felt that way to the very end.
If I were in her shoes, I don’t know how I would handle it. I don’t think I could be as strong as she was. I’m not in her shoes, I’m in different shoes, but I feel very similar to her — “after all that God’s done for me.” All I wanted was a little bit of good in life, and a little bit of a beautiful relationship, and look what He did. And when you look at it that way, I can’t sit here and get mad because it’s not turning out the way I wanted it to. It’s everything I wanted times a hundred thousand for more years than I ever dreamed.
