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The players hustled across the ice in a blur of yellow and blue. The coaches stood to the side, shouting instructions. The air in the arena was frigid and electric with the energy of these men.
This was the last place I ever expected to interview a country singer.
“Thank you for meeting me here,” Eric Bittle said as I approached, hugging me like we were lifelong friends. “Me and Jack are about to go on our own roadies and won’t see each other for a couple of weeks. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to watch his practice. Lord knows when I’ll really get to watch him play again.”
The Jack he was referring to is Jack Zimmermann, the third out player in the NHL, Bittle’s boyfriend of two years, and inspiration for Bitty & the Biscuits' top-selling single, Blue-Eyed Jack
Surprisingly, Bittle was tight-lipped when it came to his most talked-about romance. “It’s nothing personal,” he said with a wry grin. “But we get so little privacy in our lines of work, I need a little bit of our relationship to be just between us. I hope you can understand that.”
I could, and so I asked about his band instead, and the recent loss of guitarist Justin Oluransi.
“Oh, I cried for days when he said he wanted to leave,” Bittle told me with a laugh. “Ransom – that’s what me and the boys call him – Ransom’s my best friend in the whole world. Of course I was terribly sad that we wouldn’t be on the same team anymore. But he’s also the most talented performer I’ve ever known, and I am so, so happy to see him finally get the recognition he deserves. And who knows?” Bittle added with a wink. “Maybe we’ll go on tour together again soon.”
If that was a hint about Bitty & the Biscuits’ upcoming “secret project,” Bittle certainly wouldn’t elaborate, no matter how much I wheedled and wormed. Eventually, the topic drifted to his rough beginnings, and an important reunion he had just this past summer.
“Everyone and their mother knows I ran away from home at 18,” Bittle said dismissively. “Wound up in Nashville waiting tables and playing in these dirty little dives. It was like a Cinderella story, getting found by my agent and having my demo picked up by a real label. I haven’t been a God-fearing man in a long time, but it certainly made me feel like I had a guardian angel watching out for me.”
Bittle’s story is well-known in the country music world: fearing the worst if he came out to his friends and family in his small hometown, Bittle left home with his life savings stuffed in a sock and a second-hand guitar on his back, somehow making it all the way from Madison, Georgia to Nashville without his family knowing where he’d gone. It would be several years before they’d even learn he was alive.
“I regret it now,” Bittle said. Up until now he’d been all smiles and laughter, but he grew sober as conversation turned to his parents. “They thought I’d killed myself or starved to death or became homeless, with how vague my goodbye note had been. I never called, never wrote. Mama found me on Spotify.” He laughed at this, but it was bitter. “She was listening to one of those ‘Up and Coming’ playlists and recognized my voice. That was a year after I’d left home. She tried to get in touch then, but…well, I’d been right about my family’s reaction to me being gay, and she was real hurt that I’d just up and left. But we’ve been writing letters – so old fashioned, I know – and this past July she came to one of my shows and we got dinner and talked all night long. We’ve got a lot to get past, but she’s my mama. I love her more than anything.”
That heart-warming reunion came only a month before the infamous death threats Bittle received that shook the industry to its core. The incident, still hotly talked about online and in music circles, has been compared to the death threats received by Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines in 2003 after criticizing then-President George W. Bush.
“Getting those death threats was honestly a relief,” Bittle said. “My entire career, being gay in country, I was just waiting for something like that to happen. Not that it wasn’t terrifying,” he added, throwing a hand over his heart. “But it was something I knew I’d have to face. These two men – both behind bars now, thank goodness – were threatening to show up at my show in Oklahoma with guns if I didn’t stop ‘promoting perversion.’ Sitting backstage, warming up with my boys, that was the most scared I’ve ever been in my life. But then, when I walked out on that stage, seeing all those young people out there waving rainbow flags and singing along to my songs…that was the best performance I’ve ever given.” Bittle laughed, bumping my arm with his elbow. “It was like that calm feeling you get when you free fall on a roller coaster. I knew that if those men got past security, I could die any second and I wanted to go out singing my heart out.”
Luckily for Bittle and everyone in the venue that evening, the two would-be gunmen did not follow through on their threat, and were arrested a few months later on unrelated charges. “Good riddance,” Bittle said cheerfully, smile wide and bright again. “Folks with that kind of ugly hate in their hearts get what’s coming to them, in the end. I’m just glad no one got hurt in the process.”
Before I left Bittle to watch his boyfriend’s team scrimmage, I had to ask one last question: what would you say to your younger self?
“You’ll be okay,” Bittle said. “It’ll be hard. People will be cruel. But they’ll also be kind. You’ll find family in your band. You’ll fall in love with a great guy. You’ll do what you love and love what you do and be a role model for people out there who are scared and lonely. Oh, and write your poor mother,” he added with a wink. “She’ll be your number one fan, in the end. You come out on top, kid.”