Country music star battling cancer at 35: ‘My hearse will cut a lonesome figure’

Alabama Life & CultureNat Myers performs during the 2026 BottleRock festival at Napa Valley Expo on May 24, 2026 in Napa, California. (Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)Getty ImagesBy Brian Linder | blinder@pennlive.comNat Myers has been battling cancer for more than a year, and the young country and blues singer has taken fans along with him on the roller coaster ride.The 35-year-old has managed to stay busy, too, despite the ominous diagnosis. He recently released a new single and also announced that he is planning to release a new album. Myers has also occasionally given fans a glimpse into the mental battle that comes along with the disease, and he did just that again on Monday.“One of them days you wake up tired like you stepping on a trapdoor in the floor of you bones,” he wrote on Facebook. “A loneliness aches in you like an old companion that won’t stop knocking on your door. You break your own heart, frustrated at your circumstances, envisioning the light and life you wanted vs the dark inertias you currently wade. But every day you get stronger, even with death sitting like a wolf in the shade of your heart, even when your eyes have difficulty making sense of the shadows that dog your path. Don’t be like me, sinking into yourself, wading in your woebegone-ness, feeling like you witnessing life go on without me. I know it well. Watching love move on from this minefield kind of living. I make mine my enemies and deny the better parts of us. Is it any better to recognize it, if the agony sustains? “Today I woke up with a punch in my gut,” he continued. “I get asked all the time what the end goal of this is for me. Music, cancer — hell I ain’t too sure. I know my hearse will cut a lonesome figure headed to my grave. I know there’s work left to do. I know there is music and living left to know. Even with pain, these days and struggles that nearly drive me to my early death — I survive em, and try to transfigure this heartbreak into something more than just tis passing pain — as for me I’m glad & hopeful you will never know what im going thru, or talkin about, but I promise yal, despite these things, im still sitting on top of the world.”This comes weeks after Myers returned to the road, having shared that the cancer in his lungs had grown and pushed him into a new round of treatments.“Back on the road, bad luck at my heels after a needed weekend with friends and family,” he wrote on Facebook. “Headed to Eureka Springs, Arkansas tonight. If you make an exodus to Frank Stanfords grave, that’s my thumbpick sitting on his stone. Lollapalooza next week. Hunter Walls and Casey Campbell will be joining me. Getcha on out, I’m in a handshaking shoot the shit kinda mood.”He shared a video prior to that, strumming his guitar and putting his talent on display, despite a warning from doctors.“I had chemo this Tuesday & a biopsy on my lung Wednesday & all that to say it’s got me takin it easy,” he wrote alongside the video. “Docs didn’t tell me I couldn’t sang, but to be fair they didn’t say I could neither. Said I’d cough up some blood but then I’d be good and that’s what happened. I think I’m good but knock on wood. Last week I was feeling a little sorry for myself but hangs north the border at Winnipeg got me feelin ten toes down.“But all that to say I’m up early thinking loving country blues says something about you,” he continued. “It ain’t so much an interest it’s getting thrown into a kind of cahoots. Like knowing a kind of secret language, we are all widows sons and daughters. When I tell those in the know, I’m always offered a bed, or a pallet, or invited to the birthday party. I offer the same. It’s just part the deal, I wade the same river. We know we are all back-alley searchers, lowdown and glad for it. A kind of sign of goodwill, a candle in the window. We know the meanings of certain signs and symbols. Hang your light high, when the way gets dark, you likelier to find a friend that not. Blessed to be forgotten type. American, Spain, Japan, where all, Antarctica, too, bet your ass someone’s listened to least kindhearted blues. I’m sure there’s exceptions to the rule, sometimes ain’t nobody can just get along, but that’s mostly the facts as I seen em rambling around.”Myers previously said he has intimal sarcoma. The Sarcoma Foundation of America said intimal sarcoma is “a rare, aggressive malignant tumor originating in the inner lining of large blood vessels or the heart.”“The main thing is in my pulmonary artery,” Myers wrote on Facebook. “If that sounds stressful, it’s cuz it is. I have undergone dozens of chemo infusions since I was first diagnosed in 2025, including red devil, ifosfamide, and until recently a combo called gem-tax. I received eleven cycles of gem-tax, before fluid buildup in my lungs last month led us to change things up.”Brian Linder is the trending editor at PennLive.com. He has more than 20 years of experience working for newspapers first in South Carolina, then Daytona Beach, Florida and now in Pennsylvania. Linder spent...