Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's John McEuen Hits the Road Following Triple Bypass Surgery: 'Changed My Life' (Exclusive)

The album the legendary vocalist he had worked on feverishly for nearly a decade was finally ready for its worthy release when tragedy struck

Things couldn’t have been going better for John McEuen.

Back in April, the treasured co-founder of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band found himself at a near perfect point of his long and illustrious career. Not only had the legendary vocalist just returned home from a series of successful tour dates, but the album he had worked on feverishly for nearly a decade was finally ready for its worthy release.

But then, everything faded to black.

"I was on a frontage road driving my wife somewhere, and I passed out," McEuen, 78, tells PEOPLE in a recent interview. "I hit the car in front of me and the next thing I remember is my wife [Marilyn] standing on the road on the driver's side telling me to wake up. I just had no concept of it happening. Fortunately, it wasn't on the freeway. It could have been a lot different if I had passed out on the freeway."

After further evaluation, McEuen’s medical team determined that one or more of his heart arteries was almost completely blocked. "One was  98% blocked and one was 97% blocked," McEuen says of the underlying cause of his "blackout" episode, a scary episode that his doctors referred to as 'a warning shot.' "It's obvious if you have blocked arteries and they're restricting that much oxygen, guess what's going to happen?"

But what happened next was even more shocking, as the country, bluegrass, and Americana legend then proceeded to have not one, but two heart attacks — eventually resulting in the Grammy winner having to undergo triple bypass surgery on April 9. All in all, McEuen would spend over two weeks in the intensive care unit at Ascension Saint Thomas Hospital West in Nashville recovering from the serious surgery.

"There I was laying in the bed, my chest ripped open and sewn back up thinking, 'I hope this works,'" remembers McEuen, who is set to receive the musicians lifetime achievement award on Oct. 27 at The Josie Awards, which recognizes and celebrates independent music artists, songwriters, and industry professionals. "The surgeon was very confident, telling me everything was going to be OK. I decided I was going to believe him."

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And through it all, McEuen's wife Marilyn never left his side.

"She was instrumental in me being alive," he says. "If it hadn't been for her, I wouldn't be here."

Coincidentally, it was during those grueling days in the ICU that McEuen's spoken word album The Newsman: A Man of Record officially came out. And now more than ever, McEuen says he believes that it is this album that will serve as a crucial part of his overall musical legacy.

"I'm not going to be a singer that gets recognition, but I might be able to tell a good story," concludes McEuen, who also just released a new children’s book, The Mountain Whippoorwill: (Or, How Hill-Billy Jim Won the Great Fiddlers’ Prize). "I feel like people have listened to music for so long. Verse, verse, chorus, instrumental verse, chorus, instrumental. It's like, OK, I want to have something that takes me somewhere. I want to hear a story. I want to tell a story."

And certainly, there is much more story to tell.

Just a month after his surgery, McEuen says he was back walking more than a mile a day, and now has received a "clean bill of health" from his doctors. Now with all of this behind him, McEuen says he can’t wait to embark on his much-anticipated headlining tour starting Aug. 3 in Canada.

"This has changed my life," McEuen tells PEOPLE. "I feel so much more awake now. I mean, I never did any drugs. I was a clean guy. That is probably what made my recovery as quick as it was. I’m just so thankful that everything is OK."

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