Waycross holds weekend festival as tribute to Gram Parsons

WAYCROSS - Gram Parsons, the father of country-rock, left his hometown of Waycross in 1958 when he was twelve years old. His father accompanied the family to the train depot and then went home to shoot himself. <br> <br> That was the end of Parsons&#39; stay in Waycross, but it wasn&#39;t the end of Waycross&#39; influence on him. <br> <br> The town has not forgotten its native son. Two admirers are hosting their fifth annual tribute to the musician Saturday from 4 p.m. to midnight at Little Knights, a Waycross nightclub. <br> <br> The Gram Parsons Guitar Pull and Tribute will feature music by Dave Griffin and Billy Ray Herrin, who play together in Hickory Wind, a band named after a Parsons song. <br> <br> This is the first year the festival has been moved from Griffin&#39;s backyard. <br> <br> Parsons&#39; career started with the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers. He later recorded solo albums and influenced bands from the Rolling Stones to Elvis Costello. <br> <br> He joined the Byrds in 1968 and persuaded them to create ``Sweetheart of the Rodeo,&#39;&#39; an album now considered the first country-rock record. <br> <br> Hickory Wind, the Brooklyn Cowboys with Walter Egan and Lona Heins will perform at the Waycross festival. Heins was nominated for a Grammy last year for her work on ``The Last Whippoorwill,&#39;&#39; a song on the Gram Parsons Notebook CD released in 2000. <br> <br> Parsons, whose birth name was Cecil Ingram Connor, died at age 26 in 1973 when he did what Griffin calls ``the Elvis thing,&#39;&#39; a fatal combination of drugs and alcohol.