Songs and Samples

The Long Way Around
Wasted Again
I Think I'm an Addict
The Disease
Tsunami
No Easy Livin'
The Last Shot
Sex Problems
Good Day in Hell
Bloody Murder
Here I Am<

About Russell Ballew

Russell Ballew has written over 300 songs in various genres, including folk, rock, blues and contemporary Christian music. He produces and arranges his own recordings - playing guitar, keyboards, bass and flute - as well as lead and harmony vocals.

Many of Ballew's songs deal with addiction recovery and he has performed in prisons, drug and alcohol rehabs, halfway houses, counseling centers and churches.

Ballew performed at Hazelden's 50th anniversary celebration along with Three Dog Night's Chuck Negron and Judy Collins. And he has also been a featured speaker at schools, churches and civic organizations. 

In the late 70’s and 80’s Ballew played and sang professionally in dance bands in the Tri-state area.  His early musical influences include Jethro Tull, Lynnrd Skynerd, Cosby Stills Nash and Young, and James Taylor.

He earns his living as a professional piano tuner and technician and provides music programs free of charge.

A Message From Russell

I grew up in a small town in central New Mexico in the 70s, the son of a bi-vocational Pentecostal pastor. I was the oldest of three children and I remember my brother and I complaining about having to go to church three times a week.

In my teens I began to rebel against my parents and authority in general. I was often depressed and began using alcohol and drugs, which would turn out to be my undoing.

It would be ten years before I realized I was alcoholic, and twenty before I would discover the cause of my depression was a brain chemistry imbalance linked to A.D.D. I was jailed five times on drug and alcohol-related charges before graduating from high school.

My father kept bringing in what seemed like an endless stream of ministers in conjunction with a community youth program he had organized. They would talk to me to no avail, until one day when Linda showed up. She was with a Christian group dad had brought in from Albuquerque. And she smoked! I was amazed! I thought you couldn't do that if you were a Christian. It flew in the face of my pentecostal upbringing.

So here I was this preacher's kid drinking and drugging, and smoking a pack of Camels a day, sitting on the floor smoking cigarettes with this lady showing me stuff in the Bible. Something happened to me when she put her hands on me and prayed for me that changed me forever. I felt the love and power of God in a way I had never experienced it. I knew this was real!

Within a few months I had quit all the drugs and alcohol and even cigarettes. I was on a pink cloud of emotion, but I was headed for a fall. I was 15 and I knew nothing about addiction.

About six months later I made the mistake of dating a girl who liked to party. My raging hormones did my thinking for me and before I knew it I was loaded again and worse off than ever. I wouldn't be clean and sober again for another fifteen years.

Although I had returned to my party lifestyle, I kept going to church. I continued to read the Bible constantly. It seemed to be alive ever since my encounter with Linda and God. I found a lot of comfort there in spite of my escalating drug and alcohol abuse. But I was in denial. Waves of guilt and shame would nearly overwhelm me. At the age of twenty-three I was married with two kids and in horrible despair. I couldn't quit no matter what I tried. 

I'll never forget the day John D. told me he was an alcoholic. I had gone to his home looking for his stepson, (one of my drinking buddies) with a six-pack under my arm. I offered him one and he refused as he began to explain that his second wife had left him because of his drinking, and that he had to quit.

He talked about the disease of alcoholism and showed me a little flyer with a quiz about drinking. So I read the questions and then I looked on the back cover. It read, "If you answered yes to four of these questions, you're probably alcoholic." And I'm thinking, "Oh my God, I'm an alcoholic!"

Within a year I was in the first of four rehabs over a six-year period that saw me get worse and worse as the disease progressed. I would stay sober for three or four months, go to recovery meetings, relapse, and get worse. These were terrible times for my wife and kids, as well as my parents. I didn't realize it at the time, but towards the end I would ask my wife why she stayed with me and she would just shrug her shoulders and say, "I don't know.”

Finally in 1989, I was at a rehab called Valley Hope and I met David, a man who encouraged me to attend five or six recovery meetings a week after treatment. He would call me two or three times a week, long distance, to help me stay on track. I don't think I could have made it without his encouragement.

By the grace of God, I've been clean and sober since then. David was also the first person I ever heard talk about sex addiction. He was attending a 12-step group for that too. Later, I would have to come to terms with my own sex addiction, and once again, 12-step groups were vital to my recovery.

I have found that the 12-steps and the fellowships that use them have enriched my Christian experience tremendously. In fact, along with my encounter with God the day Linda prayed for me, The 12-step programs have been an extremely powerful influence in my life. I attend four recovery meetings a week and my local church. Today, I need both. 

I am an alcoholic and "everything addict." I can't drink at all. And today I don't have to. However, if I take that first one, I know I'll have no control of the outcome. That's what I mean when I say I'm an alcoholic or an addict. I have to deal with it one-day-at-a-time.