“This is a song called ‘The Truth,’ ” Winfield Cheek said as he held his guitar in his Bowling Green home. “It’s a short one, but I wanted to play it for somebody.”

His brown hair nearly hung to his eyes.

“The truth is, I’m gonna be here for a long, long time and stay here for the rest of my life,” he sang.

Cheek said his songs could tell his life story.

“I’m like a mad scientist,” he said as he played a new “groove” on a drum machine, keyboard and electric guitar simultaneously.

He’s creating a new life for himself.

At 45, the former pianist for country stars Jim Ed Brown and Helen Cornelius just released his self-titled CD. Cheek also once played for Roy Acuff on TV.

He’s in the Winfield Cheek band with some of the best musicians in town.

He’s on a praise team at Hillvue Heights Church

Cheek likes working at Musician’s Pro.

And for the past three years, the Lexington native, who has been arrested for cocaine possession and trying to outrun the law, has been free of drugs and alcohol.

“I’m so proud of him I can hardly stand it,” said his brother, Tom Cheek, of Lexington. “I don’t think he’s ever been happier spiritually and morally. I really think he’s found his game. He’s a very talented guy, and also a really nice guy.”

Marc Owens, who plays in the Winfield Cheek band, owns High Street Studio and was once drummer for country stars Foster and Lloyd, said Cheek’s keyboard playing is “spellbinding.”

Graham Hudspeth, who has long been part of the local music scene and is now a guitarist for the Winfield Cheek band, said Cheek is “an excellent musician.”

“He’s diverse and excels in whatever instrument he’s playing,” Hudspeth said. “There’s several musicians I know that play a lot of instruments, but to excel in every instrument around town is a gift.”

On “Winfield Cheek,” Cheek does all of the vocals and plays all of the instruments, including banjo, mandolin, percussion, keyboards and guitar.

He made the CD, a mix of rock, pop, bluegrass, funk and the blues, in his home studio.

“Hopefully now if I get some success, I’ll have my ‘Behind the Music’ (TV show) behind me,” he said.

Cheek was born to Ray and Lyde Gooding Turley.

“She was a ball of fire,” he said of his mom, “a Lexington blueblood” who had modeled in New York and was a classically trained pianist.

His father ran a men’s fine clothing store.

His parents divorced when he was 4.

“That was a weird part of my life because mom didn’t want me to associate with him,” Cheek said of his dad, with whom he is now close. “I didn’t get to know him until I was in my 30s. Talk about (fodder) for writing songs.”

Cheek was 6 when his mother moved him, his brother and their sister, Gwen, to small Smithfield, N.C., to live with her new husband, Dr. Tom Cheek, who adopted the children.

Cheek said he loved his new “pop,” who, like his mom, played piano well.

At 6, Cheek set up his own first piano lesson with a piano teacher who had come to his school to recruit little girl students, and became an accomplished classical pianist.

But from a young age, he longed to be a rock star.

It was a dream that had found him in bands with older kids when he was still in grade school. They were the kids who first gave him drugs.

“I was 12 when I got started,” Cheek said.

By high school, Cheek was shooting up and “was a full-blown junkie.”

Cheek’s mother and father tried to intervene. He was grounded and barred from seeing his friends.

“They thought everybody was a bad influence,” Cheek said. “But I was a bad influence.”

Still, after graduating from high school, he went to East Carolina University, where he stayed for a year before going to New York to pursue his parents’ dream of him becoming a professional classical pianist.

In New York, Cheek’s music took the back seat. He worked as a waiter at the drug and scandal laden disco Studio 54.

“I was so into drugs, music wasn’t important,” he said. “I just wanted to have a good time.”

That good time led to an overdose. And Winfield Cheek made his way back home, played with bands and continued to drink and use drugs.

At 21, his parents sent him to rehab.

“But it didn’t take,” Cheek said. “I was getting high the day I got out.”

He moved to Lexington in his early 20s.

“I wasn’t drugging as hard, but was still drinking,” he said, “and told myself if I wasn’t drugging, I was OK.”

A few years later, he overdosed again.

This time, he checked himself into rehab. For a short while, Cheek said, he remained clean. And his music came back to the forefront.

Soon, he moved to Nashville to be a rock ‘n’ roll star. There, he had some success with a song he wrote called “In the Night,” which appeared in what he says was a really bad MGM movie that came out as a TV pilot called “Riviera.”

Also in Nashville, Cheek got the job for Brown and Cornelius and played on TV with Acuff.

“I ended up playing the Opry a lot.”

Still, it couldn’t keep Cheek away from drugs. He did them through a marriage and work.

Finally, he lost his job with Brown and Cornelius because of his heavy drinking.

“You know you’re drinking and drugging bad when musicians won’t work with you,” he said.

Cheek’s marriage broke up, too.

“I was traveling and womanizing and she left me,” he said, “and I really hit bottom.”

But Cheek got work as a piano player at a theater in Eddyville. Then he got a job selling ads and doing commercials at a Paducah radio station.

“I managed to hold it together for a year,” he said.

The he “got two DUIs in two weeks and got in real, real bad shape.”

He called his brother and asked for money. His brother said no, but offered Cheek a place to stay. For a year, in Lexington, Cheek was sober.

“I thought, ‘I’m sober, let me try L.A.,” he said. “I went out there and hated it,” even though he was living and working in a music studio.

Soon, Cheek was using again and got fired from the studio.

“I was totally homeless,” he said.

At times, he said he even slept under bridges.

Then, his mother was put in a nursing home, and his sister, Gwen Spann, of New York City, begged him to come back east.

Cheek did “and managed to get it back together long enough to get a job” teaching music lessons in Paducah.

“By then I was smoking crack,” he said, “and that stuff is the devil.”

Not long after, Cheek was arrested with cocaine on him. He had tried to outrun the police.

“I was sitting in the jail in an orange jumpsuit and thought, ‘I have a problem with drugs and alcohol. It’s not the girls and it’s not the cops.’ “

Cheek came to a halfway house in Bowling Green.

While there, both his parents died. He believes he would have started drinking again if he hadn’t been in the house.

In Bowling Green, Cheek’s life was changing.

“I got a job at Musician’s Pro, where everybody’s sober,” Cheek said.

He started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and Hillvue Heights.

For the first time in years, Cheek reconnected with the Christian faith he enjoyed as a child.

Now, he has no desire to turn back.

“I don’t like bars anymore,” he said. “I don’t mind playing them because I’m busy, but I don’t like going there and standing around because it makes me uncomfortable. I’ve done enough partying for 20 years.”

Cheek will play with his band, which also includes guitarist Derek Mitts, on Thursday at Tidball’s, and Saturday at The Brewing Company.

On Aug. 28, he’ll play at Hillvue Heights, where Owens and Mitts are also in the music ministry.

Here, Cheek’s friends all know his story.

“When everybody in town knows your story, it helps keep you from wanting to disappoint them,” he said.

And he doesn’t want to let himself down either.

“I think I would’ve gone a long way in my life if it wasn’t for drugs and alcohol,” he said.

Now, he hopes he can get a record deal.

“I would like to make a living playing my music,” he said.

Cheek’s the kind of guy who won’t leave Bowling Green even if his dreams come true.

“I’m an hour away” from Nashville,” he said, “and I can be where good people live.”

– All but one of the songs on Cheek’s CD are original. The CD can be bought in Bowling Green at Musician’s Pro, The Great Escape, Tony Lindsey and Co., CD Warehouse and online at www.winfieldcheek.com.