Cagle first picked up a guitar at the age of six. By the time he was 19, Cagle had dropped out of college and moved to Nashville, where he befriended famous songwriter Harlan Howard. Howard took him under his songwriting wing, and Cagle's resulting albums rested on the laurels of the music he grew up on: country rock and Southern boogie rock. Think Marshall Tucker and Charlie Daniels rather than the Eagles or Lynyrd Skynyrd.