Regarded as one of the world's preeminent slide guitar virtuosos, Lee Roy Parnell has become synonymous with the instrument and the music that has shaped his life from his youngest years.

Born in Abilene, Texas to Roy and Anna Belle Parnell in the winter of 1956, Parnell was raised with an uncompromising work ethic, a healthy respect for tradition, and an unquenchable love of music. Nurtured by everything from the Grand Ol' Opry, to Cotton-country Blues, Hardshell Gospel and the inescapable sound of Bob Wills and Roadhouse Boogie that permeated the North Central Texas plains, that love grew into a passion before Parnell reached his early teens.

"It sounds a little like a press-release," he said recently, "but the truth is I was raised in a house filled with music. It was as much a part of the soundtrack of youth as my mother's voice and my Daddy's lessons. It was sustenance to me...like water. And it was my way out of Texas. It was my map."

In the summer of seventy-four, he set out for the only destination on that map that made sense: Nashville.

For nearly twenty years, Parnell paid his dues in every honky-tonk and blues bar from Nashville to Austin and back, honing his craft, sharpening his vocal chops, and fine-tuning the blues-infused slide-guitar style that would become his signature.

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"I'm a blue-eyed country soul singer and slide guitar player by trade...that's how I see it," Parnell told a Texas journalist late in 2014. "And I'm privileged to practice a trade that's brought so many blessings to my life."

Blessings that include eight critically-acclaimed albums, and a string of hits that established him as one of Country Music's most gifted triple-threats; as a singer, a writer, and virtuoso guitarist. Talents that brought him nomination nods from the Grammy Awards, the Country Music Association, the Academy of Country Music, legions of hardcore fans, and induction into the Texas Heritage Songwriters Hall of Fame.

But they were blessings that came neither easily nor quickly for this singularly brilliant American artist; a fact Parnell acknowledges and embraces.

"It takes a little while in this business to figure out who you is and who you ain't," he told Rock & Blues Muse recently. "But I'm little older, now, and there's one thing I've realized about myself --

-- I'm a survivor. That's what I am."