Rodney (R.L.) Hargis was born and raised in Selma, NC, a small town on the outskirts of a smaller town about 30 miles southeast of Raleigh NC. Introduced to music through the church and to the guitar through the town bum known as Railroad Spike, Hargis developed a love for traditional music at an early age. Although he didn't pick up the guitar until his mid-twenties, Hargis carried the lessons of his youth with him and when he finally began composing his own works, he combined elements of the spiritual and secular music of his youth with his own poetic vision and personal experiences as a drifter, drunk, and drug addict to craft his own unique style of music which defies classification into any specific genre. Of his music, Hargis remarks, "I don't want to be pigeonholed into any particular category of music. I don't try to be a folk or blues or country or rock singer. The songs tell me what to do, I don't tell them. I just follow the music where it leads."