“Trials & Tribulations of a Man” is about my longtime friend, a guy I grew up with and a man whose loyalty to his friends was never something you had to question.
Turk was a fighter in more ways than one.
If you were his friend, you were his friend. Period. He looked after his people, defended them, stood beside them and, occasionally, took that job a little further than the rest of us might have recommended.
I learned that firsthand growing up.
One day, a kid threw a rock at my little sister Jojo and split her eye open badly enough that she needed stitches. My mother and I went to speak with the boy's father about what had happened. Turk followed us across the neighborhood.
When the conversation became heated and the man began mouthing off to my mother, Turk's protective instincts took over. Very quickly.
I'll simply say that I eventually had to pull my friend away.
That was Turk.
Was fighting always the right answer? No. And this song doesn't pretend that it was.
But underneath the temper, the trouble and all those trials and tribulations was something you couldn't fake: loyalty.
He was the kind of guy who would bleed for a friend, raise hell trying to make something right, get himself into more trouble than he ever needed to, and somehow sleep just fine that night because, in his mind, he had stood up for somebody he loved.
That's why this song isn't really about the fights.
It's about the man who survived them.
It's about reaching a point in life where you can finally put down the gloves, look at every bruise and scar, and realize you don't have anything left to prove.
Lay your weapons down tonight.
You ain't gotta prove a thing.
Every bruise and every heartbreak
Built the man you chose to be.
Turk's life has had its share of courthouse doors, hard lessons, stubborn decisions and battles that probably never needed fighting.
But it also had friendship.
Loyalty.
And a heart that could never stand quietly by when somebody he cared about was in trouble.
That's the man behind “Trials & Tribulations of a Man.”
And there's one little detail hidden in the artwork for anybody paying close attention:
20 21 18 11.
T. U. R. K.
Some friendships earn more than a name in the credits.
They earn a song.