“I started playing music professionally at 18,” he notes. “I had been playing around for friends previously and fell in love with the performance side of it — it was very intoxicating, that first time performing in front of people I didn’t know, and I began to feel that there was an avenue for me to pursue music as a profession. Of course, one thing always leads to another when networking, and I was told to send some songs to Walt Wilkins.” 

“I often tell people that he taught me how to play the guitar like an adult. I met Walt after I had written a handful of songs and had begun playing around the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. He gave me three of his albums and I lived with them for about six months. I absorbed everything in them. The melodies, the lyrics, and the depth of their production suggested I had a long way to go on my journey.”

After a few months, Wilkins agreed to produce Bobby’s first album, Lonesome Town, in 2006, and it was off to the races. “I try not to harbor too many regrets, but it’s healthy to remember a period of life where I wish I could have done better, he notes. “This was definitely it for me. I was too young to understand how difficult this music life can be. I felt entitled to far too much, but I was humbled rather quickly.” 

“Sometimes you got to take the long road, sometimes fast, sometimes slow,” he sings in the album’s final track, an apt closing note for a collection that took its time, that lives in the questions that can still exist inside contentment. 

“Sometimes you lead, sometimes you have to follow. Sometimes it’s best to not know which way to go.” It’s a journey, after all, and Maybe This Time captures all the twists and turns that make life worth living.