JOPLIN, Mo. — For more than a week now, budding country singer Kaleb McIntire has sat and slept inside a Joplin hotel room, slowly mending from a horrific car accident that took place outside Oklahoma City late last month.

For a man known for his high-energy stage performances and constantly on the move, the dormant lifestyle inside the hotel room has been torture.

“Not being able to play and do my thing, the things I love to do?” McIntire paused to shake his head. “It’s driving me absolutely crazy.”

For the self-proclaimed “reformed bad boy,” 2012 had been shaping up to be a banner year for the regional Colgate Country Showdown winner.

McIntire had released his newest single, “Redneck In All of Us” back in January -- reaching No. 33 on the Country Breakout Charts by Music Row. A music video, with portions filmed in Joplin by veteran director Julian Cjojnacki, soon followed.

He fielded a number of offers from interested record labels, driving back and forth between Joplin and Nashville, Tenn. to sit through one long meeting after another.

And all the while -- three or four times a week -- he and his band performed at night clubs and honkytonks throughout the Greater South.

“Music is the only thing that makes sense to me,” McIntire said, who grew up in nearby Diamond. “I am a guy who just worked his whole life to fulfill this dream. Right now we’re doing better by ourselves than what we’ve gotten (in offers) from some (record labels). I’m waiting for a dynamite offer.”

And than the accident outside Oklahoma City happened.



‘Lucky dude’

He was driving eastbound on Interstate 40, from Dallas to Nashville, the lanes around him empty save for a white pickup truck way ahead of him. Glancing down to fiddle with his Tahoe’s CD player, he looked up in time to see the back end of the pickup truck filling his windshield.

“I was a half-inch off his tail,” he said.

He reflexively swerved out of the way, losing control, crossing the medium into oncoming traffic. In the next few seconds, one-by-one, four different vehicles would smash into his SUV.

The first three cars crushed the Tahoe into a box surrounding him in the driver’s seat, though he sustained no real injuries.

“It made a wall right in front of me; all around me, (but) it didn’t touch me.”

The fourth vehicle had enough time to swerve, so the subsequent impact was a glancing blow. But this one did all the damage to McIntire.

The impact nearly decapitated him. It wiped away his elbow and part of his biceps muscle on his left arm in a spray of blood. All his ribs were broken; his sternum cracked; his left lung punctured; and two back vertebrae cracked, causing his left foot to go numb.

But he was alive. Somehow.

“Man, I tell you, the Lord was with me,” the singer said. “I was one lucky dude.”



Broken bones, broken heart

He was in the hospital for a week. That was bad. Worse is what the doctor told him.

“The doctor told me that I wouldn’t be able to move hands or my (left) arm for at least six months (and) there was a 50/50 chance I’d never be able to play again.”

That assessment came about because of his battered left arm, which had receive two reconstructive surgeries and was filled with an assortment of metal plates, pins and screws.

His initial reaction was understandable.

“I was extremely heartbroken,” he said. “But I was also sitting there, trying to think of a way of somehow playing again.”

For nearly two weeks he’d sat there without holding an acoustic or electric guitar in his hands -- the longest streak of his career. He also couldn’t drum -- his favorite musical instrument and the one that most relaxed him.

One night he decided to grip a guitar. He worked with his cast, bending it until the guitar could snugly fit into place. And he played.

It hurt -- hurt like hell -- to move his left hand and fingers, but he did it, and he could play. McIntire laughs at it.

“I was ready to play a steel guitar (which sits in the lap) if I had to.”

Overall, he had a one-word answer to his doctor’s outlook.

“No,” he said, shrugging. “I wasn’t going to stop playing. It’s what I do. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”

His large fan base proved instrumental. His “Kaleb McIntire Band” Facebook page, for example, has more than 850 friends and is pockmarked with words of encouragement.

“That’s the coolest part,” he said. “That’s what kept my head up and kept me going, my fans. I’ve got great fans.”



Playing again

His arm in a cast, stitches all over his body and his back “really killing me” hasn’t prevented him from booking more solo acoustic gigs. He performed Friday night at the Ole’ Broncs restaurant and bar in Diamond.

“I will have a cast on and broken EVERYTHING,” he wrote on his Facebook site last Tuesday, “but it’s what I need” to do. A benefit concert will be held at the restaurant on Aug. 18. Donations and funds raised during the event will help with McIntire’s medical costs.

Right now, he faces a $15,000 hospital bill. He also lost his vehicle, clothes, musical instruments and promotional flyers, posters and T-shirts.

“I lost everything.”

But he’s committed to the goal he’s made for himself, of signing with a label and making country albums.

“I was talking with my friend, Rich, and it was the first real serious conversation about what I was going to do (with my life) and he gave me some great advice that I’ve never forgotten. He said, ‘Man, Kaleb, if there’s anything in the world that you would, for even a split second, think you would rather do, than the music business is not for you.’

The music business is a heartbreaker, he said. But at the same time it can be great. One minute a singer can be in the gutter, then a minute later stand on top of the world.

“But I just want to play,” he said, lifting his broken left arm. “And I’ve (certainly) paid my dues.”





Fundraising concert

A fundraising concert for Kaleb McIntire will be held Aug. 18 at Ole’ Broncs, located at located at 1630 Highway 59.

For more information on Kaleb McIntire or any questions concerning the video please visit www.kalebmcintire.com.