WHEN HE WAS told he was going to die, Bryan Wayne Galentine started to think about what he wanted to leave behind. Every day, for however long amyotrophic lateral sclerosis allowed him to live, the disease was going to steal from him. It would come for his legs, and then it would attack his lungs, and then it would rob his voice. His recourse, his way to fight the inevitable, was to make damn sure it didn't take his legacy.
First, he recorded an album. When his diagnosis came on April 6, 2017 -- ALS, no known cure, two to five years to live -- Galentine was living in Nashville, Tennessee, where he had moved to become a country music star but found his niche as a songwriter, a down-home poet.