They say he came out of the Georgia hills, way up north near the Tennessee state line. Walked out of them woods with a guitar on his back and a dream, back in those wilder days. He'd wander from town to town, singing songs with power in them, songs that called to the lonely and the desperate and the strange. Every town he went through, one or two or five of these misfits would just pick up and follow him when he left. He never asked, and he never offered. They just came, and put their faith in him. Pretty soon what had been one man with song on his lips turned into a traveling carnival, a circus where folks slotted themselves into roles they discovered they had all been born to play. They got big enough so that real circus acts heard tell of them and joined up too. Made things respectable, at least on the outside.
The circus followed the roads, going wherever he wanted. It got a bit of a rep, too. A little dirty, a little dangerous, and while he'd always come out to sing and make the ladies swoon, in the back alleys behind the tents there'd be darker stuff going on.