Hockey Star to Country Singer: Music Has Helped Theo Fleury Battle His Demons

This story originally appeared on VICE Sports Canada.

Las Campanas, New Mexico, a desert golf community 17 kilometres outside the state capital of Sante Fe was one the most beautiful places Theoren Fleury had ever laid eyes on.

"It was gorgeous—two Jack Nicklaus golf courses, equestrian facilities, a spa," Fleury wrote in his 2009 autobiography, Playing with Fire. "It was like walking into a picture of heaven."

It was also where the electrifying former NHLer, Stanley Cup winner and Olympic gold medalist, was going to end his own life.

"They call it the land of enchantment, but I call it the land of entrapment," said Fleury, emitting a smoke cured chuckle from his living room couch in Calgary, Alberta—the city he has made his permanent home for the past decade. "But what a beautiful, incredible place it was."

He initially went to Sante Fe in the spring of 2001 as an inpatient of the Life Healing Centre after violating the NHL substance abuse program that he had voluntarily checked himself into the season before. It was the first time the general public became aware that Fleury was struggling with addiction. It was not then known, however, that the origins of his issues were rooted in two years of sexual abuse at the hands of his junior hockey coach Graham James.

While in treatment, Fleury became captivated with the rustic scenery and pueblo architecture leading him to purchase a $1.2 million offseason home. Two years later, the former Calgary Flames captain—who has 455 goals and over 1000 points to his name—relapsed and was suspended by the league for six months.

Fleury returned to the desert and proceeded to go on a three-month bender fuelled by cocaine and vodka until he bottomed out. He reached a critical turning point in the early summer of 2003.

"I basically went there to die," he said. "It's hard to believe a little over 10 years ago I had a fully loaded pistol in my mouth, ready to pull the trigger. Sante Fe was probably the darkest time in my life, so we wrote this song called Sante Fe Kind of Day."

It's the cut that resonates most with him from his debut country album I Am Who I Am which will be released Oct. 23 by eOne Music Canada.

"Really, the gist of the song is get your fuckin' ass home, your kids need you, your family needs you," he said. "There were so many things I had left sort of unfinished here in Calgary."

It took another two years, but Fleury eventually fended off his addictions in September 2005 and has gone on to face his demons publicly since 2009 when he released Playing with Fire. In partnership with author Kirstie Mclellan Day, Fleury came clean in the book not only about being manipulated and abused in the 1980s as a member of the WHL's Moose Jaw Warriors but also about life in the fast lane as a hockey superstar. Drugs, strippers, gambling and all.

So if country music at its core largely consists of belting out songs about one's soul-crushing pain over rusty chords, Fleury has every right to give it a shot, even if his voice doesn't sound as silky smooth as Waylon Jennings and his writing isn't quite yet at the level of Willie Nelson—two of his biggest influences.

"Those guys were hard-living guys. I guess they remind me a lot of myself when I was sort of famous, playing hockey and burning the candle at both ends," he reflected. "I know that I am not the greatest singer in the world, I know I am an ex-hockey player that's trying to break into country music. For any stretch of the imagination I'm not gonna be the next Keith Urban or anything like that. I just love performing and Iove storytelling."

The Death Valley Rebels had a launch party at Symons Valley Ranch in Calgary on Sept. 25 where they gave fans a firsthand taste of the ten-song album which Fleury describes as dark.

"It's a musical version of Playing with Fire," he said. "It talks about all of my experiences—when I was struggling with all this emotional pain and scars that were left behind from childhood and adolescence. We talk a lot about that in the lyrics."

The 47-year-old, born in Oxbow, Saskatchewan, and raised in Russell, Manitoba, is approaching this venture much in the same way he played on the ice—with everything he has, and it's safe to say Fleury is not trying to ride the wave of country music and culture swinging back toward the mainstream.

"Country music today isn't country music, it's country pop, it's country rock, it's country blues" he said. "I was thinking of making a song. Whatever happened to three chords and the truth?"

Music has always been a big part of Fleury's life, and his connection to it is tied to his Metis ancestry. Some of his earliest and fondest memories are of listening to his grandfather play the fiddle while his father strummed the guitar and sang, as well as impromptu jam sessions that occurred on Sunday visits to his uncle Robert's farm.

"Anybody that knows anything about Metis people know that's pretty much part our DNA," he said. "It's amazing, if I am listening to the radio or watching a video on TV and I hear a fiddle, my foot starts tapping."

Although hockey became the focus as he got older, music was never too far out of the picture.

Once the diminutive winger landed as a permanent fixture with the Flames beginning at age 20 in 1989, he was known to hit the stage in local country bars and grab the mic "after a couple of cocktails" and sing with whatever band might have been playing. While it is common place for a professional hockey player to identify as a country music fan in recent times, Fleury got his country fix under the radar in his playing days via a Sony Discman.

"I basically had the trainers pack my own music and I would listen to my own country tunes while I was taping my sticks and all that," he said.

Fleury played 15 NHL seasons from 1989–2003 and was known for his ferocious intensity and playing bigger than his 5-foot-6, 182-pound listed height and weight. Despite a stellar performance in junior, he was selected by the Flames in the eighth round of the 1987 NHL draft mainly owing to his small stature. When it was all said and done, he averaged over a point per game and accumulated 1,840 penalty minutes throughout course of his career.

The case for Fleury's induction to the Hockey Hall of Fame is strong, although he has not received the call since he became eligible in 2010. While 2016 might be the year it happens, he feels his past actions are haunting him. Aside from volatile on and off ice behavior toward the end of his career—including brawling at a Columbus, Ohio, strip club—Fleury walked out on the final year of his two-year contract with the Chicago Blackhawks worth $8.5 million ($4.5 million for the last season). He was also critical of the NHL's substance abuse program.

"I realize that my behaviour toward the end of my career is probably a factor in why I haven't been inducted as of yet," he said. "I have tried to do everything in my power to redeem that part of my life. My whole existence is all about helping people now."

His charitable endeavours began in earnest after releasing Playing with Fire six years after his last NHL game and so, too, did his pursuit of a lifelong goal—writing a song. It was at this time that he sought the help of Phil Deschambault, an old family friend from Manitoba who is a writer and producer for Sony Music, to aid him in his quest.

Fleury travelled to Winnipeg where the two collaborated and came up with his first single, As the Story Goes, which is currently available on iTunes.

Liking what they had produced, Fleury decided to enlist the help of his former longtime drinking buddy Paddy McCallion who had also given up the bottle. McCallion helped assemble the band and Fleury and the Death Valley Rebels were born.

Fleury works with a vocal coach and enjoys the writing process, striving to come up with riveting lyrics like legendary country musicians.

"In Poncho and Lefty there is a line in the song where he said his breath is as hard as kerosene and his horse was polished steel," Fleury said with a glint in his eyes. "Those are the really cool lyrics we as songwriters hope that type of word or phrasing comes into your head."

The song was written by Townes Van Zandt, who, like Fleury, had struggled with mental health, drugs and alcohol. But unlike Fleury, he wasn't able to turn the corner and died as a result of his addictions.

With over 3,600 consecutive days of sobriety under his belt, helping people survive and cope with their struggles is Fleury's mission. He estimates that over 500,000 people have reached out with their stories since he published his autobiography.

It is through helping people that he has been able to heal himself and making music is part of that process now, too.

"The intensity of what I do on a daily basis is sometimes hard and sometimes difficult—to hear these stories, and see the pain in people's eyes," he said. "The music is an incredible outlet for me to sort of express myself and tell these amazing stories."