Speaker 1: All right, Welcome to The Bobby Cast, episode number seven,
Speaker 1: and this week, recording artist, singers songwriter Craig Campbell brought
Speaker 1: this week it is it's very catchy. Brought you this
Speaker 1: week by no one yet, but I will say this
Speaker 1: that I went to New York this past week and
Speaker 1: we've been doing this for six episodes. This our seventh episode.
Speaker 1: Craig and we really were just doing it from the
Speaker 1: house because we're like, yeah, we'll put some stuff out
Speaker 1: because people if on a podcast, they don't have to
Speaker 1: listen to it. You can always turn it off. There's
Speaker 1: no ratings involved with the radio. Was like, you got
Speaker 1: to get to the point, and if you're not to
Speaker 1: the point, it's gonna be super compelling with this. We
Speaker 1: can just talk about whatever we want. And so I
Speaker 1: went up to New York and then we're like, dude,
Speaker 1: people are playing the part the Bobby Cast like crazy.
Speaker 1: And so that's when I text you. I was like, dude,
Speaker 1: if you're coming bringing the come on listen to so
Speaker 1: thanks for being here. Thank you. Craig walks in and
Speaker 1: he said, hey, I have a gift for you, and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, cour it's gonna bring me like
Speaker 1: a a T shirt because I wanted by Craig Campbell
Speaker 1: or president t shirt. Sometimes it's like Craig Campbell for President.
Speaker 1: And so he brings me up McPherson guitar and I
Speaker 1: was like, dang, dude, but I appreciate that's like one
Speaker 1: of the nicest get anyone's giving me. Like I said,
Speaker 1: you know, we we Uh, I'm a part of the
Speaker 1: McPherson family. And I talked to those guys up in
Speaker 1: the Wisconsin and I said, you know Bobby Bones, the
Speaker 1: raging idiot, we need to get them to be part
Speaker 1: of the family nation. How do you get to be
Speaker 1: a part of the family like that? You know, it's funny.
Speaker 1: I I just straight up cold called. I sent an
Speaker 1: email to uh. Well, I I say it was a
Speaker 1: cold call. I got the email from a from a
Speaker 1: mutual friend and I said, Hey, I'm so and so
Speaker 1: i've had you know, Family Man was on the radio,
Speaker 1: so you kind of given me a resonation. I'm an
Speaker 1: artist and I said I'd love to be playing the
Speaker 1: McPherson guitars and and uh. I got a response of
Speaker 1: what's your address? So that this is family Man was
Speaker 1: like what year that was? It came out two thousand
Speaker 1: ten and and peaked April two thole. This is family
Speaker 1: Man here, this is what got to the mc ferson
Speaker 1: guitar deal. Then on the drive had my coming Home
Speaker 1: the Living Mead and reason that I am family Man.
Speaker 1: What I want to do since Craig Campbell's here is
Speaker 1: I want to go. I just want to start with today,
Speaker 1: kind of make a circle and come all the way
Speaker 1: back to today and then just kind of talk about
Speaker 1: life and music and the kind of the revolving door
Speaker 1: that it is. And so so I want to start
Speaker 1: down with out Scarts of Heaven. So this is a
Speaker 1: song now that is your current song, the outscarts where
Speaker 1: there's dirt roads from the fields and fishing and the
Speaker 1: river now to be totally transparent. And I'm not saying
Speaker 1: this because as you're here, I believe on the air
Speaker 1: last week someone had asked me, what song do I
Speaker 1: think doesn't get enough radio play, like of all the songs,
Speaker 1: and I played that song. I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: not ever gets back to you immediately, It really I
Speaker 1: never know, Like I really don't know what I say
Speaker 1: if it gets back to artists, And I don't say
Speaker 1: it so it gets back to artists, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: I say it because this is how I feel. And
Speaker 1: so they were like, what's the one song that you
Speaker 1: think A listener asked me, isn't getting enough play on
Speaker 1: the radio that you think really cuts through? And so
Speaker 1: I said, it's Craig Campbell out Scripts of Heaven. And
Speaker 1: I didn't tell you I was gonna say that there
Speaker 1: was no It's just such a good song, yea. And
Speaker 1: I can tell you. I ever when you sent it
Speaker 1: to me before it was a single, and you said, hey,
Speaker 1: I played this. I think you're playing around in May.
Speaker 1: I'm just going by memory here and maybe South Carolina
Speaker 1: and so you're and you played it and you were like,
Speaker 1: in the crowd got up and cheered, and I was,
Speaker 1: I listened to it. Can you sent me a live
Speaker 1: version of it? And I was like, I want to
Speaker 1: get up in cheer right now. I'm laying in my bed.
Speaker 1: Um So talking about this Outskirts of Heaven's all because
Speaker 1: I obviously love it, but I want to know from
Speaker 1: you kind of your thoughts you families on the song. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean when I wrote, when I wrote Outskirts of Heaven,
Speaker 1: I had I had no intentions at all of all right,
Speaker 1: I never had radio in mind. And it wasn't you know,
Speaker 1: because as a songwriter, we we that's what we're shooting for.
Speaker 1: We're thinking is this gonna be is this gonna be
Speaker 1: good for radio? Is ready gonna like this? Are they
Speaker 1: gonna like it? Do they want to play it? You
Speaker 1: know that kind of thing. But when when I had
Speaker 1: this idea for this song, it was had. I hadn't
Speaker 1: readio nowhere in my mind at all. I was writing
Speaker 1: it for myself. Um, and I have the idea. I
Speaker 1: told my buddy Dave Turnbull about it and he said,
Speaker 1: he says, I want to write that song with you.
Speaker 1: And we we sat down and I had all the
Speaker 1: pieces in my head. Uh, and he helped me put
Speaker 1: it all together and and um, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: started doing it live and just getting a reaction from
Speaker 1: people that I've never gotten before. Speaking of that Charleston Shows,
Speaker 1: the only standing ovation of the night. It was it
Speaker 1: was a a special moment and which tales. I mean,
Speaker 1: the fans even though they'd never heard that song, they
Speaker 1: they they picked it as the single. You know it's
Speaker 1: weird and I tell and you're not a new artist.
Speaker 1: But I tell new artists because I'll ask you what
Speaker 1: I need to do to get on the radio, and
Speaker 1: I say, it's not chase radio, because unless you're one
Speaker 1: of the Big seven and you're automatically going to get
Speaker 1: on the radio, if you're chasing radio, you're never gonna
Speaker 1: catch it because you don't know where it's going. It's
Speaker 1: like technology. You don't know what's gonna be in two years,
Speaker 1: So what do you invest in it when it comes
Speaker 1: to uh music play? You just don't know what it's
Speaker 1: going to be. And so when I heard it, I
Speaker 1: was like, I think my response to you was this
Speaker 1: sounds like a Craig Campbell song. You did that was
Speaker 1: the and that was the greatest compliment you could have
Speaker 1: given me. And so you have it. It is there,
Speaker 1: and it seems like and we knew. I knew it
Speaker 1: would be and I think you did too. You knew
Speaker 1: it would be difficult, especially at first, to get this
Speaker 1: song to cut through because of the pace of the song,
Speaker 1: which is the thing in radio now, and it's not
Speaker 1: that it used to be. When we first started, you
Speaker 1: couldn't get a ballot on the radio to save your life.
Speaker 1: And now there are a lot of ballads, but still
Speaker 1: it's tough to get any sort of song to cut through.
Speaker 1: So what's the biggest issue right now with the song
Speaker 1: that you hear? That the reason that's not climbing as
Speaker 1: fast as you'd want it to because everybody got an excuse. Yeah, hey,
Speaker 1: and I'm getting a lot of a lot of excuses. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's honestly, the radio stations that are playing it at
Speaker 1: a at a good spot, they are getting extremely great feedback,
Speaker 1: and that's what we thought was gonna happen. The stations
Speaker 1: that aren't playing it, they're they're saying, Okay, it's summertime,
Speaker 1: it's too slow. Um, apparally, that's just an excuse. And
Speaker 1: this cold this could be my stations too, that's just
Speaker 1: an excuse. And there's a couple of stations that say,
Speaker 1: you know, we're going for that P one demographic, the
Speaker 1: eighteen to to twenty whatever year old girls. Uh, and
Speaker 1: we don't think this is gonna gonna resonate with those
Speaker 1: girls or that demographic, which I have evidence on that
Speaker 1: that that's false as well. But it's you know, we're
Speaker 1: getting all these kind of excuses. But I feel like
Speaker 1: this song is is tough, it's gonna it's gonna poke through.
Speaker 1: Can I tell you? Just talking about excuses and I'll
Speaker 1: just go to another artist. So, and I've told the
Speaker 1: story before, but it's one of one of my better
Speaker 1: is that your water is this my water? So it's
Speaker 1: one of my better stories of hearing excuses about songs
Speaker 1: and so and it's been written and said buy me
Speaker 1: a hundred times. But for the sake of this, Cam
Speaker 1: came into our studio and she had a different song
Speaker 1: and she they brought a new single to the show,
Speaker 1: and she came in and she like, I want to
Speaker 1: bring this new single and she played it. I know
Speaker 1: what it was. I don't remember the single that she
Speaker 1: came in. And Cam started as our jingle singer on
Speaker 1: our show like she was, and she still sings are
Speaker 1: dingles now just because we've just been Cam so cool.
Speaker 1: I don't know, do you know Cam very well? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've we've hung out a few times. She's one of them,
Speaker 1: like she's like she's just such a down chick, like
Speaker 1: she's just one of the people. And so she still
Speaker 1: stinks are jingles for us, even though she doesn't have to.
Speaker 1: So she um, she comes in and her first song,
Speaker 1: and I even forget that. What that It was just
Speaker 1: another hubb and dud, just another my mistake. Okay, so
Speaker 1: it didn't do well. Right, she comes in with a
Speaker 1: second song. I don't remember what it was because I
Speaker 1: guess I'm a big jerk and I love cam and
Speaker 1: I was like, hey, play burning House, and so her
Speaker 1: and her band and fantastic they played Burning House and
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, I'm moved, like I'm moving, and
Speaker 1: it's hard for me to be moved because I'm jaded
Speaker 1: by everything because I get to hear everything, and so
Speaker 1: for things to affect me, it's tough because when you
Speaker 1: get to do everything, it's hard to be a But
Speaker 1: I was like, god, so good. So she left, and
Speaker 1: without their knowledge that I was going to do it,
Speaker 1: I played it like four times that day and it
Speaker 1: went to number one on iTunes. So that day. An
Speaker 1: hour later, they switched singles, like they switched. They called
Speaker 1: and said we're switching singles because of what had happened,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, that's that's great. But then
Speaker 1: the pressure lies on me. It was like, oh boy,
Speaker 1: I just spade him switched a single. Not really on me,
Speaker 1: but I really love the song, and I just feel like,
Speaker 1: if I can give the audience my honest truth, even
Speaker 1: if it's not the truth, that's what I say. Sometimes
Speaker 1: my truth is not exactly the truth, but it is
Speaker 1: how I feel. And if I can give them my truth,
Speaker 1: then I've done all I can do. And I played it,
Speaker 1: and do you know how many stations said that song
Speaker 1: We're never gonna play it? A ton they said, we're
Speaker 1: never going to play this song. It's it's once female too,
Speaker 1: it's too slow. Three. I mean, the whole station stopped
Speaker 1: because it's too slow. But what happened was the message
Speaker 1: slowly trickled, the sales happened on the verge happened, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, there's another story about you being on
Speaker 1: the birch to talk about later, which is one of
Speaker 1: the craziest stories too. Um. And it happened in burning
Speaker 1: House happened and girl crushed, the same thing happened. And
Speaker 1: that's just what I hope happens with this song. Is
Speaker 1: because Outskirts of Heaven is so good. And I say
Speaker 1: this and I fight with people, a lot of people.
Speaker 1: I was like, well, that ain't country. That is country
Speaker 1: to me. There isn't really a definition of what is
Speaker 1: There isn't country because listen, I grew up in Arkansas
Speaker 1: and when you're our age too, you're influenced by lots
Speaker 1: of different kinds of music, like no doubt about it
Speaker 1: around you. Um Like, I would say, there's newer country,
Speaker 1: and there's more sounding traditional country. But the thing about
Speaker 1: that song is there such a place inside of the
Speaker 1: format for that sounding traditional song. I feel like it.
Speaker 1: I feel like there is. I mean, I don't when
Speaker 1: even when we wrote it, when we when we them
Speaker 1: or went in to track it, make it, you know,
Speaker 1: make the album the song itself. I said, Hey, this
Speaker 1: song is about the lyrics, about the melody, but I
Speaker 1: do want it to hit pretty hard. And I said,
Speaker 1: but it's gonna sound traditional no matter what, just because
Speaker 1: of the song that it is. Um But I feel
Speaker 1: like where we are and or at least I feel
Speaker 1: like the Craig truth is that you know there's room
Speaker 1: for every for for this is what was anything else?
Speaker 1: And also if you fail with it, that's okay too,
Speaker 1: because it's you. Like That's how I feel about my stuff.
Speaker 1: Is I fail a lot. I try a lot of
Speaker 1: things that don't work. Out and some people to know
Speaker 1: about it because it fails and you just don't know.
Speaker 1: But if you put out something in your heart is
Speaker 1: really in it and it doesn't work, at least your
Speaker 1: heart was really in it. Because I know there have
Speaker 1: been things that I've been okay, you know, I'll do it,
Speaker 1: and then it didn't work. I was like, man, I
Speaker 1: just wish I would have done it my way and
Speaker 1: not kind of fall in a certain way because I
Speaker 1: was told that's what I needed to do. You know,
Speaker 1: it happened recently and I'm saving this something really frustrating
Speaker 1: happened in my career. Um in the last no woulds
Speaker 1: a month or so, and I'm holding on to kind
Speaker 1: of see where it falls. But I kind of went
Speaker 1: against my values, not in a like dirty way, but
Speaker 1: I have what I do where I maintained to myself
Speaker 1: and I keep all, uh everything kind of unlock. I
Speaker 1: don't share a lot with people of where I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go and what I'm gonna play. Who I'm in the back. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't go to a lot of social events because
Speaker 1: I don't like to get into the circle of Nashville
Speaker 1: because it's so buddy buddy and who do you know
Speaker 1: about scratchy? And so I don't do all that, and
Speaker 1: I got into it a little bit, but people were like, hey,
Speaker 1: you need to start doing this a bit because this
Speaker 1: is the biggest show and you and I don't like that.
Speaker 1: I got into that, and some thing's happened, and and
Speaker 1: then eventually it'll come out. It's just a little sensitive
Speaker 1: right now because I end up getting a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1: But I hate that about myself, like I really and
Speaker 1: so I hope that if this song were to die tomorrow,
Speaker 1: you would still be like, I'm so proud I put
Speaker 1: that song out. Well, there's no doubt about it. You. Uh, okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back to the initial conversation I had with
Speaker 1: Benny Brown, the who owned your lab, and I said,
Speaker 1: I really need I don't I don't know what all
Speaker 1: this means, like all this like the standing ovations and
Speaker 1: the messages I was getting. I said, I don't know
Speaker 1: what this means, but I don't think it means something.
Speaker 1: And I said, I truly don't know that. I could
Speaker 1: sleep not knowing that we had this song right here
Speaker 1: and we didn't go with it, we didn't run with it.
Speaker 1: And and ever since then it's proven itself and I'm
Speaker 1: getting messages listen to this, this is crazy. I had
Speaker 1: a guy Facebook. Man, I get these at least two
Speaker 1: or three times a week, pretty much the same same
Speaker 1: I don't know what you would call it, but the
Speaker 1: same subject matter. Had a guy told me. He started
Speaker 1: out by saying, you don't know me, but I need
Speaker 1: you to know that a couple of days ago, I
Speaker 1: was thinking about killing myself. He said, I just lost
Speaker 1: my dad and I didn't like being in this world
Speaker 1: without him. And he said, I heard Outskirts of Heaven
Speaker 1: and it was immediate peace. I knew that my dad
Speaker 1: was in the place that you were describing and he
Speaker 1: was good. That's for selfish reasons. I want the song
Speaker 1: to succeed because I need you know. This is my career.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, this song is special. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it too, and it's not just sit in
Speaker 1: front of me. I said it when you were in
Speaker 1: front of me. So when we could come back to
Speaker 1: that Outskirts, haven't hope you guys download it because you know,
Speaker 1: and here's the thing to radio in general. They look
Speaker 1: at a lot of research and they research songs, but
Speaker 1: you know, it's a big researchers people's money, and when
Speaker 1: people like something, they buy things. People go they're buying it.
Speaker 1: Guess they must like it. There's no more better research
Speaker 1: than buying it. So if you listen to this and
Speaker 1: you like that song downloaded, if you like any song,
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, down don't, don't stream that crap.
Speaker 1: We artists don't get paid crap or streaming like you don't.
Speaker 1: I mean, listen, that's not that's the big you know,
Speaker 1: one of my buddies and I would you know, I
Speaker 1: have very few people that would call it like real
Speaker 1: friends that I call like and talk to a couple
Speaker 1: of times a weekend. We have four or five in
Speaker 1: our life that we really I have a friend named
Speaker 1: Lee Miller, Lee Thomas Miller's writing name. He's a writing
Speaker 1: we've had a matter of fact, on my second album,
Speaker 1: we had a song, uh called That's Why God Made
Speaker 1: a Front Porch. So you've written like he is my
Speaker 1: due dude, like like one of the best humans I've
Speaker 1: ever met. And he is the guy that goes and
Speaker 1: testify the front of Congress and says, here's why streaming
Speaker 1: we need to be paid for stream here's I need
Speaker 1: to paid for it, and you know we like are
Speaker 1: against each other. I'm not against anybody, but it's like
Speaker 1: I worked for radio and you know we put and
Speaker 1: he's like fighting radio. But then we come and it's
Speaker 1: you know, we have our merry fun ways, but don't
Speaker 1: stream My point hey just by it just wasna, we
Speaker 1: don't make any money. You guys don't make any money. No,
Speaker 1: I've never made and I says, and you're a real
Speaker 1: right you make songs because you're right, ato's your career.
Speaker 1: They I've never made a penny right in a song,
Speaker 1: and I've written some songs. They've got like our raging
Speaker 1: it is. Albums have sold like crazy. I am a
Speaker 1: penny off crap because people don't know what happened to
Speaker 1: the record. You take out a loan basically whenever you
Speaker 1: get directed, Yeah, it's an advance. They give you money.
Speaker 1: Explain this they give They say, okay, Craig Campbell, we're
Speaker 1: gonna give you a record. To what happens. That means
Speaker 1: they're gonna give you the money to make a record. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it's essentially is your money. They're giving it to
Speaker 1: you early. You're gonna give you the money to make
Speaker 1: a record. They're gonna give you the money to pay
Speaker 1: some people to ride around with you and fly around
Speaker 1: with you, to go to radio stations and say, hey,
Speaker 1: we need you to play Craig's News. Cost money. All
Speaker 1: the travel costs money, just like the but like it's
Speaker 1: it's the artist's money in advance. So they're basically loaning
Speaker 1: you your money against yourself and that you eventually have
Speaker 1: to pay back. So any money that you make with
Speaker 1: all of yourselves, it has to all of it goes
Speaker 1: to them first until you're caught up even and then
Speaker 1: you start to get just pieces of it. So for
Speaker 1: you as an artist, I guess you make your money
Speaker 1: tory touring is is our main money money. Uh, but
Speaker 1: if we have songs that do well on the radio
Speaker 1: that we wrote, we make uh we make a decent
Speaker 1: portion of that. We don't get at all, just a
Speaker 1: good piece of it. Are you a guy that do
Speaker 1: you want all of the songs to be your rights
Speaker 1: and you always get them the singles? Or are you
Speaker 1: you know you'll listen for songs you're like like like
Speaker 1: kind of what's your what's your thing? Yeah, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a I love to hear hit songs no matter who
Speaker 1: wrote him. And I've always had the belief of the
Speaker 1: best songs we'll win. Like shoot, my my two biggest
Speaker 1: two of my biggest songs were songs that I didn't write.
Speaker 1: I didn't ride out of my Head. That's a Cold
Speaker 1: Swindal song that, yeah, I can't get you out of mind.
Speaker 1: So when you get a song like this from Cold Swindel,
Speaker 1: does he sing it? When I got a dem When
Speaker 1: I got the demo, it was him singing yeah. And
Speaker 1: I texted him and said, hey, bro, I said, this
Speaker 1: song is awesome. He's like, how do you How did
Speaker 1: you get it? I said, well, I don't know. It
Speaker 1: just showed up in my email. Is this the Scotty
Speaker 1: mcarry song? Yeah, Okay, this is a crazy story. This
Speaker 1: song was supposed to be sent to Scotty McCarry was
Speaker 1: already on hold with Scott, so Scotty already said I
Speaker 1: would like to put the song at home. Maybe. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna cut exactly. So you got it in your
Speaker 1: email you weren't supposed to, and you reply back and
Speaker 1: go love it and he's like, he's like when it's
Speaker 1: like we need a text and you don't know the
Speaker 1: name on it. The text. You see a number and
Speaker 1: you're like, who is this? So you reply back and
Speaker 1: you say what No, Me and Cole, we we're really
Speaker 1: good buddies. We've been buddies long way back when. So
Speaker 1: when he knew it was me, so but I told him,
Speaker 1: I says, hey, I promise you, I'm going to cut
Speaker 1: it before Scotty does. Can you do? Is that legal? No?
Speaker 1: But he gave me. He gave me his thumbs up.
Speaker 1: And so what did McCurry say about that? Because you
Speaker 1: you cut a song out underneath them with their little
Speaker 1: tention there. No, no, he our folks reached out to
Speaker 1: his folks and told him this is our situation. We're
Speaker 1: going to cut like next week. We want this song.
Speaker 1: And they were like, you know, we're never cool with it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they said, we're basically said, we're not going in for
Speaker 1: another while now, so we're not gonna hold this song up.
Speaker 1: If you know what, that's night. That's that's really cool
Speaker 1: in this town with fights over songs, for sure. That's
Speaker 1: really cool that Scott and McCurry camp. So here you go.
Speaker 1: It's a it's actually emailed to you. Wow smiling. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you cut this. Do you know it's good? Well,
Speaker 1: here's here's a whole another story. When we went into
Speaker 1: the studio to cut for the new single from the
Speaker 1: new album, it was the single from the previous album,
Speaker 1: had Died. We needed it, we needed something new, something fresh.
Speaker 1: We had a song that we had found that Cole
Speaker 1: Swindell wrote, uh called My Baby's Daddy, and we were
Speaker 1: Everybody at my previous record label was extremely pumped about it.
Speaker 1: So we went in cut that song first. We cut
Speaker 1: four more songs. We had time to do one more
Speaker 1: song and Keith steak All, my producer, he said, what
Speaker 1: do you want to cut? I said, I want to
Speaker 1: do out of my head, you know, this is that's
Speaker 1: what I want. The last minute, very last second. Let's
Speaker 1: just throw it on here. Let's see, you know. And
Speaker 1: we were tracking it and it started happening and Keith,
Speaker 1: you know, he looked at me and he said, this
Speaker 1: might be the one. Yeah, just just like that. I
Speaker 1: want to asked about that because a lot of artists say,
Speaker 1: you know what, it was the last thing that I heard.
Speaker 1: And I started to think, Okay, this isn't a coincidence.
Speaker 1: It must just be. There's a lot of good stuff
Speaker 1: out there, and it's just the right time when it's
Speaker 1: about to wrap, and you get something good right at
Speaker 1: the right time. More so than it's just lucky that
Speaker 1: it's just the last thing. What's your thought about? Because
Speaker 1: I hear a lot of artists go, man, we weren't
Speaker 1: gonna cut the song, and all of a sudden, it's
Speaker 1: right before we finished up. We wrapped it up and
Speaker 1: it was the big hit. What's the what's the what
Speaker 1: in your mind? Why did that happen? Well, songwriters they
Speaker 1: there's a strategy too. If they know when you're going
Speaker 1: in to cut, they'll send you songs the day before.
Speaker 1: Is that right? I had no idea. They'll send it
Speaker 1: right before you going to cut, just because they know.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you hear a song and you'll get excited about
Speaker 1: it and you do that to people. Of course that's crazy.
Speaker 1: That's so smart too. It's like, because I get that
Speaker 1: way about anything. Like if I'm like, oh, if something
Speaker 1: comes to my head to have this segment idea and
Speaker 1: it's hard from me, if it's I know, I need
Speaker 1: to wait till Friday for it, and and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I gotta it tomorrow. I just got this great idea,
Speaker 1: that's such a great freaking player. Out of my head.
Speaker 1: Out of my head was not that case. I loved it.
Speaker 1: It was getting my people over a bigger picture to
Speaker 1: love it. So Keith he he wasn't so hip on
Speaker 1: it as much as I was. It wasn't like that
Speaker 1: song was sent to me last second. They just kept
Speaker 1: pushing it to the side. Oh you know, it's an
Speaker 1: okay song. It's an okay song. Will well. And then
Speaker 1: finally there was some time left on the session, I said,
Speaker 1: I want to cut this song. Was that your first
Speaker 1: song that really popped for you to where people were like, okay,
Speaker 1: I know that song from the radio. Well, family Man
Speaker 1: went to number twelve. It was, oh, it's okay, that
Speaker 1: around my favorite piece. Und it gives me strange to stay.
Speaker 1: Did you write family Man? Okay? So when you write
Speaker 1: a song and it ends at twelve, like, what kind
Speaker 1: of money comes from the number twelve song? Enough to
Speaker 1: buy a car? Yeah? Yeah, from it from a number twelve?
Speaker 1: Who'd write with how many people? The three people you
Speaker 1: have the three with a fourth person, right or three
Speaker 1: three people? Three? And that's about normal. That's yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean most of the songs written in Nashville are three ways.
Speaker 1: So if you do family Man and it hits twelve,
Speaker 1: then that's your biggest At that point, where where did
Speaker 1: fish end up? Fish was? It was an anomaly. It
Speaker 1: was we didn't even go for ads. It just people started.
Speaker 1: This song. Was never like a song that you went
Speaker 1: to radio and said, hey, start playing it. This is fish.
Speaker 1: It turns out my baby loves to fish. She won't
Speaker 1: do it all the time, early in the morning and
Speaker 1: the middle of that Jesus, and now she can't get them.
Speaker 1: Man that girls show love to the thing. No radio was.
Speaker 1: Radio was telling us we're playing that song whether you
Speaker 1: like it or not. That's a good problem. It went
Speaker 1: this is no joke. I could show you on emails
Speaker 1: because I kept all the emails. It went from. It
Speaker 1: debuted fifty something and then it went to forty one,
Speaker 1: then went to thirty two. I mean it leaked frog,
Speaker 1: no support, no one going hey, play play, play play.
Speaker 1: The fact that it charted and charted is fifty. If
Speaker 1: he had fifty, that's the fact that it charted accidentally.
Speaker 1: It's crazy where it ended up peaking. It peaked at
Speaker 1: that's crazy. It's my most downloaded song. Fish is your
Speaker 1: most downloaded song, and he was that end of two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven and and five years ago and your most
Speaker 1: downloaded song. Okay, so Fish is there? Yeah, family, man,
Speaker 1: I feel like I think I want to get to now.
Speaker 1: So it was it was. It was like I said,
Speaker 1: it was a strange deal. That song did so well,
Speaker 1: but what didn't do well on the chart? Like, um,
Speaker 1: it was. It was. It's fun. It's it's weird to
Speaker 1: compare Fish to Outskirts of Heaven. It was, but it
Speaker 1: was the same excitement we had Fish. I was doing
Speaker 1: it at the shows, but the album wasn't out yet.
Speaker 1: People were saying, we gotta get our fingers on this song.
Speaker 1: We're in Uh so we we says, well, we gotta,
Speaker 1: we gotta harness this enthusiasm. So we we came with
Speaker 1: it before the album came out. We decided it should
Speaker 1: be the second thing. That's a really cool story, like
Speaker 1: you had no idea. That's like the LFO you say
Speaker 1: with Summer Girls, the LFO song I like girls that
Speaker 1: where I have a Crombie and Fitch. The Station of
Speaker 1: Memphis played at one time. This is before I mean
Speaker 1: I was like a kid and one station played it
Speaker 1: and they were like, well, we gotta play it thing
Speaker 1: all of a sudden every once a while, and each
Speaker 1: format you get one of those songs that do that
Speaker 1: that really like I've done it with songs, but that
Speaker 1: was because I'm a big jerk and I like to
Speaker 1: fight my song just play them over and over again.
Speaker 1: But the fact that just radio, because it's different though,
Speaker 1: because I have an audience of five million people. But
Speaker 1: for this to happen for you with this song, and
Speaker 1: stations were taking a station by stations even better, it's
Speaker 1: even a better story. But when we got to the
Speaker 1: crunch part of the chart, the the I guess you
Speaker 1: would call them the Bible Belt stations says we can't
Speaker 1: play that because because of the double on tundre, the
Speaker 1: what double my missing here? I'm with you, Vagina. Well
Speaker 1: know the whole had everything we needed in the bed
Speaker 1: of my truck. Turns out my baby loves to fish
Speaker 1: on fish. She wants to do it all the time,
Speaker 1: early in the morning, and the man, are you kidding me? Dude,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, I loved and even then I can
Speaker 1: hear where maybe they could say it was part of it.
Speaker 1: There been like to I would never have thought that though.
Speaker 1: I mean, let me listen more in the morning and
Speaker 1: the middle of that Jesus and now she can't get them. Man,
Speaker 1: that girl shoh loves to the thing. I can't believe
Speaker 1: that if this, if I would have been a brick wall,
Speaker 1: if I would have been alive at this point, in
Speaker 1: this format, I would have been protesting. I've been screaming
Speaker 1: my brains out. I was selling almost twenty thousand a
Speaker 1: week on the charge. I can't believe that's what stopped
Speaker 1: that song. I even got my first piece of hate
Speaker 1: mail over this song, like a real letter. I'm the
Speaker 1: seven and what did what happened? I played it at
Speaker 1: the Opery when we decided it was a single. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you know when you played it. When we played the Opery,
Speaker 1: we played the new the current song and this lady
Speaker 1: and granted, I see what they were saying. As far
Speaker 1: as the difference between family Man and Fish She she said,
Speaker 1: you know, we were a big fan. We we love
Speaker 1: the song family Man. I brought my kids to see you,
Speaker 1: and then you played that filth. She was upset about it. Mike,
Speaker 1: did you catch that now when you have to explain
Speaker 1: it like I but even then that to this day,
Speaker 1: I mean, I was felling my hair out just because
Speaker 1: I said, Okay, you're telling me radio don't or people
Speaker 1: listening to the radio doesn't want to hear this song.
Speaker 1: But a week yeah, wow, okay, So there I want
Speaker 1: here listen to this story, and then I want to
Speaker 1: get into some live stuff. But so you're on a
Speaker 1: label and you have this song called keep Them Kisses Coming,
Speaker 1: and your label the time is called Bigger Picture. Bigger
Speaker 1: Picture doesn't exist anymore, by the way, But what I'm
Speaker 1: doing just rounded up. We got all sentimental little something
Speaker 1: happen to you, just keep them Kisses Coming? Like I
Speaker 1: love it. I love the song. When kind I was like, man,
Speaker 1: this song is fine, stupbeat, it's cool, this country. It's Craig.
Speaker 1: I don't really know you that well. Then, but dude,
Speaker 1: you gotta come to the studio, you know. And so
Speaker 1: your label disappears, and so we have a company, go
Speaker 1: we gotta put Craig. This is an on the Verge song.
Speaker 1: What it means is my company and I'm biased this crap,
Speaker 1: and I chose to work for my company. I love
Speaker 1: I her radio And it was like we had to
Speaker 1: pick something that we think is gonna blow up, so
Speaker 1: let's just get on board with the product. We think
Speaker 1: it's already fantastic, and so boom, that's it. You're on
Speaker 1: the very first one, the first one, and his label
Speaker 1: folds as you're the on the verge artists number thirteen
Speaker 1: on the chart. I get a phone call saying, hey,
Speaker 1: um um, you're gonna see the press release tomorrow, but
Speaker 1: well we're closing our doors. So here you are. And
Speaker 1: he was smoking up the chart and you don't have
Speaker 1: a record label, and I remember going, I ever talked
Speaker 1: to you, like, dude, what are you gonna do? So
Speaker 1: I guess you like hired the outside promoter or someone. Honestly,
Speaker 1: the guys that worked for Bigger Pictures continued to call
Speaker 1: and make calls, as well as myself. I started calling
Speaker 1: people that I knew in radios, yourself included, saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, even though the record labels closed, this is
Speaker 1: a hit. You know, I'm still out here working. Let's
Speaker 1: keep it going. And for the most part, radio was
Speaker 1: very receptive to that, like, dude, we got you, and
Speaker 1: it was almost like we wanted you to win because
Speaker 1: we saw something just got swept right after underneath You
Speaker 1: and um the I remember though, getting getting the phone
Speaker 1: call from one of our guys that was working the
Speaker 1: record he he uh. They were not allowed to log
Speaker 1: into media base anymore, so they couldn't see who was
Speaker 1: the media bas What shows the charts by the way, everybody,
Speaker 1: lets think it shows you where songs are ranked and
Speaker 1: how many spins this getting all of it. They can
Speaker 1: look at specific stations and see where if you're losing spins,
Speaker 1: they can find out where they're going, where they're where
Speaker 1: they're getting lost. So they couldn't even see. They were
Speaker 1: flying blind basically. So I was having other record promo
Speaker 1: guys send me screenshots of the ups and down spins
Speaker 1: because I said, you know, if they're down five or more,
Speaker 1: let me know so I can call them and say, man,
Speaker 1: we're still here. Keep let's go and U Fortunately, with
Speaker 1: the help of my the guys that was working the
Speaker 1: song with Bigger Picture, um we we we kept it
Speaker 1: going for another six spots, and so in that peaking
Speaker 1: where seven with no record label. I can remember sitting
Speaker 1: in New York at a table and I remember texting
Speaker 1: you and I'm sitting with Tom Polman, who's the president
Speaker 1: of all of I heard all of the formats, um
Speaker 1: and so like Rod Phillips is my boss, He's the
Speaker 1: head of country and Rod's bosses over all the formats
Speaker 1: I remember seen with home like what are we gonna do?
Speaker 1: Like both of them like what are we gonna do?
Speaker 1: And we'll stay at this charity event. It's like man
Speaker 1: pedal to the metal, like this is our dude, let's
Speaker 1: do it and without a record label for like another
Speaker 1: month and a half. I hope you're proud of that.
Speaker 1: And you know what, I think it's the number one
Speaker 1: song that you just got screwed out of. Oh, I
Speaker 1: believe it. I believe it. It was the dumb the
Speaker 1: metrics on the song that downloads, the the way it
Speaker 1: was moving and people adding it and converting it at radio.
Speaker 1: It was it was moving too fast for it not
Speaker 1: to to peak at number one. Um I. But I
Speaker 1: even sent a text message to Clay Hunkah who was
Speaker 1: uh he was? And because I felt bad that that
Speaker 1: had happened on the very first on the Verge. I
Speaker 1: felt I felt like I let Clay down and he's like, dude,
Speaker 1: you you didn't have you didn't have any You know
Speaker 1: that it wasn't your fault, but I still felt a
Speaker 1: little responsible on behalf of a bigger picture that they,
Speaker 1: for lack of a better, couldn't hold it together long
Speaker 1: enough to see it through on that label at that time.
Speaker 1: Who else was on Bigger Picture? We know Lucy hell
Speaker 1: was there, but that was a Disney partnership because I
Speaker 1: remember her coming in and her being, um, who else
Speaker 1: was on Bigger Picture? Jansen? Chris Jansen? Right? I think
Speaker 1: Chris Cagle had already been had already separated, went his
Speaker 1: own way. Um, they were developing smith Field. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: but now they're they're starting to kind of pop up again.
Speaker 1: I think that's it. But it was it was you.
Speaker 1: You were the leader of that label, and then Jansen
Speaker 1: had um better I don't and it had done okay,
Speaker 1: and then he got dropped for a long time, and
Speaker 1: the whole buy Me a Boat stories a whole different
Speaker 1: anomaly of of of what happened there. Wow, that that
Speaker 1: losing your record label at the high end of your
Speaker 1: career is a crazy story. It was. It was a
Speaker 1: very deflating. I didn't I didn't see it coming at all. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, in retrospect, I saw signs of struggles, you know,
Speaker 1: financial struggles. I knew something was something was shaky. I
Speaker 1: didn't know it was enough to shut down those especially
Speaker 1: knowing the seeing the finish line, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like you could actually see the big success webbing up
Speaker 1: front and the and obviously having a hit song and
Speaker 1: following it up with another song. We felt like the
Speaker 1: momentum the train was strong. So I was I was
Speaker 1: super shocked. So I do know for a while, Like
Speaker 1: as we get away from music for a second, you
Speaker 1: used to work in a jail or there's different a
Speaker 1: jail of prison. Which did you work prison? You worked
Speaker 1: in the real deal as what I was a correctional officer,
Speaker 1: So you were correctional officer for a mail president. Which
Speaker 1: which president? The first prison I worked at was down
Speaker 1: in Glennville, Georgia. How did you get that job? Um? My,
Speaker 1: my stepdad. He he was he was very uh connected
Speaker 1: with the Georgia Department of Corrections. He was he was
Speaker 1: the maintenance farm and basically took care of all the
Speaker 1: trooper vehicles, the farm, the tractors, and he was he
Speaker 1: was a fairly big deal at the at the prison
Speaker 1: not far from my house. And then my also my uncle,
Speaker 1: my daddy's brother. Um, he was head of security, like
Speaker 1: head of training for the whole entire state to Georgia.
Speaker 1: So it was a it was a they were hiring
Speaker 1: like crazy anyways, but it was it was cool to
Speaker 1: go in and say, hey, I'm I'm Wayne Campbell's son.
Speaker 1: Uh so I got I got um stationed at a
Speaker 1: prison about thirty miles from my house. What's it like
Speaker 1: your first day going into a prison? Oh, it's it's
Speaker 1: Is it intimidating anything? Very especially I was eighteen years old,
Speaker 1: So you're going at eighteen, you're a prison guard, you're
Speaker 1: automatically hated. No, honestly, I mean there's a there's a
Speaker 1: misconception with with prison. There's I mean the inmates have
Speaker 1: a job and have a role, as well as the
Speaker 1: correctional officers. For the most part, I would say nine
Speaker 1: of the people in prison they just want to They
Speaker 1: just want to have a smooth existence. They don't want
Speaker 1: to cause any trouble. Where is there any trouble while
Speaker 1: you're working? I never saw any hardcore trouble. Um. I
Speaker 1: did see a few fights, um, which is probably natural
Speaker 1: when together a bunch of dudes that lived together and
Speaker 1: to see each other every day. And there's there's not
Speaker 1: many resources or no you know, no outlets or whatever,
Speaker 1: but so you would. I mean, it's just things are
Speaker 1: gonna come to a head where they're like shanks and
Speaker 1: stuff all around. Oh yeah, yeah, we we found those.
Speaker 1: But after after working there for a while, I realized
Speaker 1: that most of the things that we found during searches
Speaker 1: and whatnot, we're there for us to find, so that
Speaker 1: we wouldn't find the big stuff exactly. We'd find a
Speaker 1: we'd foind a what we call buck. It was basically
Speaker 1: a milk jug or a bladder full of homemade whiskey.
Speaker 1: But that was just to throw you off so you
Speaker 1: wouldn't find the big stash. Was there ever a time
Speaker 1: where you felt, as you were working inside the prison
Speaker 1: where you were really vulnerable, maybe put yourself into a
Speaker 1: position it was too vulnerable for being there at that time?
Speaker 1: There was one guy that I wouldn't say I was
Speaker 1: his friend, but he was. He was. He was in
Speaker 1: the R and B. He loved to sing. He was
Speaker 1: singing all the time, and I loved it. So we
Speaker 1: would we'd sing in the hallways. We go out into
Speaker 1: the hallway and just shoot, you know. He'd sing some
Speaker 1: boys the men, and I joined in sing harmony with him,
Speaker 1: so we hit it off. I think I think there
Speaker 1: might have the relationship might have been too close for
Speaker 1: inmate officer, you know, because I I liked him. I mean,
Speaker 1: he was in there, he was it was a very
Speaker 1: low security prison, so he couldn't have been in there
Speaker 1: for nothing too bad. So my guard was down and
Speaker 1: and but I enjoyed. I enjoyed hanging out with him.
Speaker 1: You never were, did anyone like corner you or no?
Speaker 1: I have one guy one time, and this is I
Speaker 1: remember this because it was the only time he was
Speaker 1: he was being disrespectful to me. And that's and that's
Speaker 1: the whole key. I feel like when you work at
Speaker 1: a prison, just got a maintained respect for those guys
Speaker 1: that respect you because of the badge. But there was
Speaker 1: one guy he was he was giving me all kinds
Speaker 1: of grief and and just wouldn't do what he was
Speaker 1: supposed to be doing. And I and and out. Man. Honestly,
Speaker 1: back eighteen nineteen years old, I was a DW five pounds,
Speaker 1: just this five eight, you know, a little bitty dude.
Speaker 1: I barely could grow a mustache, uh, and I vowed
Speaker 1: up at him. I says, man, if you for one
Speaker 1: minute think that I can't handle myself, you're mistaken. And
Speaker 1: from that point forward we have we had the greatest
Speaker 1: We had the greatest relationship because because I mean, I
Speaker 1: was honestly, I was scared to death, right, But I've
Speaker 1: separated him from them, from the general population. Obviously, you don't.
Speaker 1: You don't confront a man in front of his friends,
Speaker 1: because then you know he's not gonna have that. So
Speaker 1: I said, let's follow me, and we talked, and I said,
Speaker 1: and that's when I said, I said, if you if,
Speaker 1: if you don't, if you think I can handle this,
Speaker 1: you that's the biggest mistake you're gonna make. So at
Speaker 1: eighteen years old, and how long did you work at
Speaker 1: the prison, I would say two and a half years.
Speaker 1: Were you playing music to make money as the beginning
Speaker 1: part of a career then, or was that still just
Speaker 1: kind of a dream that you wanted to try later.
Speaker 1: I wasn't playing music yet, so no music, No I was.
Speaker 1: I was basically just on the weekends, I'd go to
Speaker 1: a bar and try to find a band I could
Speaker 1: sit in with. But the thing is for you, because
Speaker 1: I know you started playing young, like you played playing piano,
Speaker 1: but nineteen years althing like that. Well, I played piano
Speaker 1: for my church from the time I was I don't know,
Speaker 1: nine years old. And how at nine do you start
Speaker 1: playing piano for your church? They didn't have anybody else.
Speaker 1: And so did you start taking lessons when you're away
Speaker 1: young grandma? You know I took lessons for a minute,
Speaker 1: and uh, the story my mama tells me is that
Speaker 1: the the teacher came to them after about three or
Speaker 1: four lessons and said, listen, this is you're wasting your money.
Speaker 1: He's not learning anything. He's memorizing it, so I would
Speaker 1: remember where my hands go as opposed to knowing what
Speaker 1: I'm reading. So she said, all he wants to do
Speaker 1: is learn how to play songs. She said, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: teach him three or four songs to play at church.
Speaker 1: And that was it. And then the church the piano
Speaker 1: player quit and I was the closest thing they had
Speaker 1: to a piano player. So so you're ten years old
Speaker 1: and the church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday, vacation, Bible school.
Speaker 1: I was I mean, now, I was the guy so
Speaker 1: you are you learning though at ten eleven, twelve years old,
Speaker 1: So that was the real learning for you. It went
Speaker 1: from hunting and picking you to literally, you know, being
Speaker 1: able to carry on the full services. And I've said
Speaker 1: this about you before because I've seen you play and
Speaker 1: a lot, and I think it's it's something. If I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a couple of things. I think you
Speaker 1: were grinding a long time and as you grind, you
Speaker 1: learn and you pick up. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: there's some sort of musical intuition inside of you too
Speaker 1: that you can figure things out as you go. And
Speaker 1: they really great ones of a combination of both. And
Speaker 1: I think as far as musician wise, you're one of
Speaker 1: the really great ones. And I'll talk about why coming
Speaker 1: up in a bit. But when you sit down and
Speaker 1: you hear a song, how do you figure it out?
Speaker 1: Do you see colors? Do you do your hand? Do
Speaker 1: your hands fall to a certain place? Because every artist
Speaker 1: is a different way, they go, Okay, I'm hearing this song.
Speaker 1: Let me let me chase colors. He sees colors. I
Speaker 1: don't see colors at all. I do here no umbers
Speaker 1: or see numbers like I can. I can hear it
Speaker 1: and say, oh, that's a six minor or two minor,
Speaker 1: you know, and that's the national You can hear it
Speaker 1: and go, I know what that is. That's as long
Speaker 1: as you tell me what kids and I could I
Speaker 1: could play it by the number system. So you're learning
Speaker 1: to play piano through these years. At what point you're ten,
Speaker 1: you're playing through church. You never think this is what
Speaker 1: I want to do or I'm going to really do it.
Speaker 1: Is that because of where you live and there's wren
Speaker 1: a lot of people that were doing it. Because I
Speaker 1: know for me, that's why I never thought I could
Speaker 1: do anything. Nobody else did it. Yeah, when I when
Speaker 1: I graduated high school, that the prison, that was it.
Speaker 1: That was it was like a sawmill in my town.
Speaker 1: Like you worked at the sawmill when you finished high school?
Speaker 1: And and I was. I had a I had a girlfriend.
Speaker 1: We we uh we were high school sweethearts. Um. I
Speaker 1: got the job at the prison. The first thing I
Speaker 1: did was going by an engagement ring. So we were
Speaker 1: engaged because it was the thing to do. And um,
Speaker 1: but whenever the prison, whenever I quit that that was
Speaker 1: that was when I said you know what, because there
Speaker 1: was a club in my hometown that UM that I
Speaker 1: went to often, South Georgia, little town called Lions, Georgia. Lions, Georgia,
Speaker 1: there's a little club called Carrigan's Country and it was
Speaker 1: a six night a week, full live band, six nights
Speaker 1: a week, so there was music playing. Or for you,
Speaker 1: there was a six night a week gig. No, no,
Speaker 1: there was music. There was a live band Monday through
Speaker 1: Saturday every week, so you could I could go at
Speaker 1: any time and see live music. And that's when I say,
Speaker 1: like when I would leave the prison, I would go
Speaker 1: to town and and who, I don't care who it was,
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask can I get up to sing
Speaker 1: a song? I became buddies with the owner UM, and
Speaker 1: I told him. I says, hey, if I put a
Speaker 1: band together, will you will you let me play her?
Speaker 1: And he said yeah. He said, just you have to come.
Speaker 1: You have to come show me what you got first.
Speaker 1: I'm not just gonna clear my schedule. So we came up.
Speaker 1: We practiced for about four weeks and UM came in
Speaker 1: on a Thursday night and he he told the band
Speaker 1: and let us get up and play all our instruments.
Speaker 1: Who's with you? By the way, the band, like, what
Speaker 1: did you grab some friends from home? Yeaheah, I know
Speaker 1: we were all local. Um, there's a guy playing guitar.
Speaker 1: His name is James Watkins. He lives here now. I
Speaker 1: think the last I heard he was playing for Steve Holly.
Speaker 1: It was a few years ago. So these are guys
Speaker 1: so that you kind of just knew around towns and hey,
Speaker 1: let's get together and go at least make a little
Speaker 1: bit of money. And then the bass player, he was
Speaker 1: just a buddy. We knew. Chris O'Neil. He was he
Speaker 1: lived in Videlia. Um, he he knew a drummer. So
Speaker 1: he's like, let's do this, and so yeah, we put
Speaker 1: together a little set list and we came in and
Speaker 1: played that night and and the owner Gary, he said,
Speaker 1: all right, all right, back be back Monday morning. So
Speaker 1: you go back Monday thinking what we had made it.
Speaker 1: You had made it as what like you're gonna just
Speaker 1: play Monday or you were gonna be that band cleared
Speaker 1: his schedule and why did it? Said the other band?
Speaker 1: You got fired? He different different bands every week. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you went in and you had one week then yeah,
Speaker 1: so he played for a week and then he gave
Speaker 1: me the next week, and and you gave me what
Speaker 1: ended up being thirteen solid straight weeks of playing six nights. Man,
Speaker 1: I bet that was just heaven, right man, because you
Speaker 1: were actually making money even the thing you love. And
Speaker 1: I can relate on to a level. And it's funny
Speaker 1: because I was talking about some friends. We played a
Speaker 1: show and we like played spring Filmssouri and then play Tulsa,
Speaker 1: and we were gonna fly back from Tulison. We're like, scirt,
Speaker 1: let's just get a car, will just drive back ten hours.
Speaker 1: And the great thing about having people in a band
Speaker 1: that you enjoy is that the enjoyment of just the
Speaker 1: fellowship and inside of our group. I get to have
Speaker 1: people that I really enjoy because I get to control
Speaker 1: it and listen. We're not winning, We're not Craig Campbell.
Speaker 1: We're not good, but we put on a really entertaining show.
Speaker 1: It's nuts whatever you you can say that, but I've heard,
Speaker 1: I'm I can't not wait to see you guys. I've
Speaker 1: heard it is a blast and I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1: It's like a dumpster fire with fireworks, Like I can't
Speaker 1: stop looking at it and listen, We've gotten better. But
Speaker 1: my point is, even with the morning show, surrounded myself
Speaker 1: with people that I enjoy being around, the same thing
Speaker 1: with this band, and I'm talking with I don't know
Speaker 1: if you know Brandon Ray at all. Okay, so he's
Speaker 1: a new artist and he's been playing a few songs
Speaker 1: with this and we were talking and I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, for me, I grew up super humble, like
Speaker 1: like a lot of us did. I grew up you know,
Speaker 1: and I mean money. It was a welfare kid, of
Speaker 1: food stamp kid. You know, I didn't have a dad.
Speaker 1: Why why? I have told the story hundred times. But
Speaker 1: I was like, in a way, I look at that
Speaker 1: as a blessing because I knew how to be poor
Speaker 1: and for me to do what I loved to do,
Speaker 1: I had to be poor for a long time. So
Speaker 1: when I got my first radio job and I was
Speaker 1: a teenager and I was making I don't even think
Speaker 1: it was minimum wage, frankly, because you know, sometimes you
Speaker 1: just didn't pay minimum wage. It was just a radio
Speaker 1: station that I already knew how to be poor. But
Speaker 1: I loved what I was doing so much that I
Speaker 1: was able to be poor and do what I loved
Speaker 1: and that's all that mattered. And because I loved it
Speaker 1: so much, I worked so much harder at it, and
Speaker 1: that allowed me to slowly climb that ladder. And I
Speaker 1: wonder as you tell the story, it's almost like I'm
Speaker 1: if it makes this listening to a mirror, because I
Speaker 1: know you're not making any money really playing these weekly.
Speaker 1: You make a little money, you can tell money, but
Speaker 1: it's not like you're making money that you can do
Speaker 1: this to your fifty years old at this point. But
Speaker 1: you have to be loving it, right, you have to,
Speaker 1: And that's you know, I've even even to the to
Speaker 1: where I am today. I have people ask me all
Speaker 1: the times, like, man, Um, they get so frustrated by
Speaker 1: calls they haven't made it, And I'm like, okay, well
Speaker 1: are you having fun? You know, playing morder on Lower Broadway?
Speaker 1: Are you having fun doing it? Man? It's just you know,
Speaker 1: I'll get tired of playing every night. Well, well don't
Speaker 1: do it if you don't, if you're not having a
Speaker 1: good time. They see other people doing other things and
Speaker 1: they wish they could do that instead of just and
Speaker 1: we're all guilty of this at some point, um. But
Speaker 1: if they see people around them doing bigger things and
Speaker 1: think why can't that mean me? But you know what,
Speaker 1: those people who are making it now at one point
Speaker 1: where the same person looking at other people going why
Speaker 1: can't that be me? And it's really rare that that
Speaker 1: doesn't happen to someone. So back to you. You're playing
Speaker 1: thirteen weeks in a row, and you gotta be like,
Speaker 1: this is it? This is awesome? Like I'm playing music
Speaker 1: and I'm paying my bills, Like what greater thrill to
Speaker 1: do something that you love and to support yourself by
Speaker 1: doing Because most people were lucky, dude, Most people hate
Speaker 1: their jobs. Most people in life hate I believe that
Speaker 1: my my stiddad hated job worked and so hated his
Speaker 1: job every day came home was always like I hate
Speaker 1: this job, but he did it so we could eat.
Speaker 1: And he hated a job, but he did it for us.
Speaker 1: I never hated my job like I had jobs and
Speaker 1: I was younger when I golf force maintenance or you know,
Speaker 1: when I worked at the marina. But I loved my
Speaker 1: job even when I was like, now you're loving your
Speaker 1: job and you're playing music every night, and so when
Speaker 1: do you go, Okay? I think I'm ready to try
Speaker 1: something a little bigger than this. We had get to
Speaker 1: our player. He quit once and then he went to
Speaker 1: another regional band and then he um. He came back
Speaker 1: to us and we did that um and then he
Speaker 1: he quit again. And when the when a band member
Speaker 1: quits in this situation wherever you're you're doing a regional
Speaker 1: stuff and you're playing six nights a week, it's very
Speaker 1: it's very uh rehearsed. Like the sets you play five
Speaker 1: sets a night, forty minutes sets. You each set has
Speaker 1: its transitions and this and that. And I said, you
Speaker 1: know what, I don't want to have to learn. I
Speaker 1: don't wanna have to teach you to get to our
Speaker 1: player of the set. I just don't want to do it.
Speaker 1: So I called my buddy Um and he said he
Speaker 1: he was going through a hard time. He was already
Speaker 1: living in Nashville. I said, hey, uh, do you have
Speaker 1: any room? He says, man, I'm I'm sorry. I can't
Speaker 1: nothing right now. He said, but um, if I can
Speaker 1: get you a job, will you will you move? And
Speaker 1: I was like, shoot, Chester. He was working Maine. It
Speaker 1: sat an apartment complex. He says, I think I know
Speaker 1: somebody across the way that that is looking for maintenance
Speaker 1: slash groundskeeper. I said, dude, hook me up for ye.
Speaker 1: So I came to town on a Thursday. My interview
Speaker 1: was on Friday three. You come in town to Nashville
Speaker 1: with music in your head, but you know you have
Speaker 1: steps to before you can get to the music. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you so you're gonna work for lack of every time,
Speaker 1: just maintenance, Like I said, So you gotta work mance
Speaker 1: in apartment complex. You go, you interview, I interview. She
Speaker 1: calls me back that that afternoon and says, uh, we
Speaker 1: want to hire you. She said, I know you don't
Speaker 1: know much about maintenance. Because I was honest, I said,
Speaker 1: I've never done this, she said, but I can tell
Speaker 1: that you want this job, she says, So I want
Speaker 1: you to. I want you to have this job like eight.
Speaker 1: But I did get, you know, thirty percent off my rent,
Speaker 1: which was a big deal. Um, So I did that
Speaker 1: probably fifteen months really. And so at that time, are
Speaker 1: you playing the Broadway gigs? No, I haven't started Broadway.
Speaker 1: So you were in Nashville for a year and you
Speaker 1: hadn't started playing music yet, driving you crazy. It was
Speaker 1: just because I didn't know anybody. I was I was
Speaker 1: very secluded, but I would go downtown to Lower Broadway
Speaker 1: into Printer's Alley and I would watch bands and and
Speaker 1: just think, man, I want to do this, and there's
Speaker 1: another level of making it, you know. Um, so's they're
Speaker 1: intimidating for you because if people come to this town,
Speaker 1: they always think I'm good. And then you look, you
Speaker 1: look around, you go, holy crap. These are people playing
Speaker 1: bars and they're fantastic because this is the melting this
Speaker 1: is the concentration of amazing nous. So this as as
Speaker 1: luck would have it. I was at a showcase one
Speaker 1: night at Douglas Corner and there was a guy, um
Speaker 1: he was he had the Saturday night tend to two
Speaker 1: spot at the stage, which was the big place to
Speaker 1: go down, and the tender two spot on Saturday night
Speaker 1: was the spot you wanted. I mean, it's shoulder shoulder.
Speaker 1: So I'm at him and he's like, what do you do?
Speaker 1: I said, I'm a piano player. He said, really, so
Speaker 1: that's what you were at the time. You were the
Speaker 1: keys player. Well, it's just easier for me to say
Speaker 1: that than to say a singer, because I mean, or
Speaker 1: even a guitar player, because everybody does both. So he says,
Speaker 1: what are you doing Saturday? I said, man, I nothing
Speaker 1: to do. He said, come down Saturday night. Said up,
Speaker 1: that's interesting because you were a singer and you did
Speaker 1: play guitar, but you knew that there was to get
Speaker 1: my foot in the door. That yeah, that your piece
Speaker 1: was to play the keys because there were no piano players.
Speaker 1: Downtwn wow. So okay, there are no piano players. You
Speaker 1: go and he says, come play. So what happened? So
Speaker 1: halfway through the night he his name is Josh Brister,
Speaker 1: he said, He said, the gig is yours if you
Speaker 1: wanted every Saturday night. So you you played halfway. You
Speaker 1: played half a set and he comes here and says, hey,
Speaker 1: you're in And is it a thrilled for you to
Speaker 1: be playing in Nashville? My goodness, man, to be able
Speaker 1: to play music and make a hundred dollars or however
Speaker 1: much you make on a Saturday night. I tend to
Speaker 1: spot singing harmony with with a with a rock and crowd.
Speaker 1: It's it was. It was the best thing ever. Were
Speaker 1: you still doing the main it's of the daytime I was,
Speaker 1: and I was on the on call every other weekend.
Speaker 1: So Sometimes I would be on Broadway with my page
Speaker 1: or on sweating thinking if I could, yeah, I would
Speaker 1: have to go make sure and the normally nothing. Most
Speaker 1: times I could talk people out of it. You could
Speaker 1: give them instruction on how to save them. So I
Speaker 1: could just say, hey, can it wait till tomorrow. The
Speaker 1: only thing I couldn't say wait is if it was
Speaker 1: like a one bedroom and there was a clog toilet.
Speaker 1: I had that was did you ever have to leave
Speaker 1: a gig? Nope? You never. I did have to make
Speaker 1: a few phone calls, but never had to leave a gig.
Speaker 1: So you do that that that you're playing keys on
Speaker 1: the stage for how at the stage for how long? Um?
Speaker 1: I did that for three or four years. Three or
Speaker 1: four years I played. I played piano. That was It
Speaker 1: was like a domino effect. I played for him, and
Speaker 1: then the Friday, the Saturday night six to ten guy said, hey,
Speaker 1: I need a piano player. So I would come in
Speaker 1: on Saturday, set up at six o'clock and play both
Speaker 1: shifts and wouldn't even have to tear my stuff down.
Speaker 1: I just play both shifts. And then that went that
Speaker 1: Friday night, and then at one time I was playing
Speaker 1: six nights, uh and two shifts on Friday Saturday. So
Speaker 1: I was making I was honestly making about a grand
Speaker 1: week cash. Okay, so you're making good money, did you?
Speaker 1: Were you able to quite your maintenance job at that point?
Speaker 1: So you and you were just playing piano, keys, key whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: so that's what you're doing. You're think you're the keys?
Speaker 1: Now do you feel like okay, now I can really sing? No? No? Yeah.
Speaker 1: That that was my whole goal, the whole time, or
Speaker 1: my plan. I became, you know, buddy buddy with the
Speaker 1: with the owner at the stage. And I kept every
Speaker 1: time I see you might say when you're gonna give
Speaker 1: me a shift? When you're gonna give me a shift?
Speaker 1: Because during sounds I would sing to check and make
Speaker 1: sure everything's working. And and they knew, they I mean
Speaker 1: they they recognized. And so one night I overheard him saying, man,
Speaker 1: I don't have a I don't have a tended to
Speaker 1: for Sunday. And I'm like here, I'm here. He's like
Speaker 1: you sure, I said yes, So he gave me tended
Speaker 1: to on a Sunday, which is very No, it's it's
Speaker 1: not the most, it's not the most. It's not the
Speaker 1: best light at night on a Sunday. But I showed
Speaker 1: up with a seven piece band. I was so excited
Speaker 1: I had even though I was a piano player. I
Speaker 1: I hired a piano player, bass fiddle, steel drums, guitar.
Speaker 1: I had the whole thing. And it was just another
Speaker 1: one of those I've made it situations. Um, but I
Speaker 1: never got my shift. I never got my own shift,
Speaker 1: uh till a good bit after that. That was just
Speaker 1: the one off. But I just kept on and on,
Speaker 1: and finally he said, he said he had he needed
Speaker 1: somebody for Tuesday night six to ten at the stage.
Speaker 1: It's not a permanent thing, but I want you to
Speaker 1: you know, whenever they're out, I'm gonna give you the call.
Speaker 1: First I said, thank you. It eventually turned into those
Speaker 1: guys and they would kept canceling, so he gave the
Speaker 1: shift to me and I did that for another three
Speaker 1: or four years a year. So, as you're working at stage,
Speaker 1: were there people that came through and you saw come
Speaker 1: through and then go up, meaning can you think back
Speaker 1: to anyone and you're like, Okay, this guy's really good.
Speaker 1: And they ended up being something that came through. Dirk's
Speaker 1: was down there. He would Dirk would come and place
Speaker 1: day he played the stage for a little bit. Was
Speaker 1: he at that point special or did he become special later?
Speaker 1: Do you think I never really got to see him play.
Speaker 1: I do know. I just would hear stories about this
Speaker 1: Dirk's Bentley guy. And he wasn't there long. He was
Speaker 1: in and out like he They gave him a shift
Speaker 1: and then I think he signed his record deal. So
Speaker 1: you play of keys, and at one point you started
Speaker 1: playing keys for Luke now before we had looked did
Speaker 1: you play? Did you go on the road and travel
Speaker 1: with anybody before Luke Brian or was look still so
Speaker 1: young and knew that he was just a guy just
Speaker 1: before he had his record deal? Yeah, okay, so you
Speaker 1: were playing with Luke before a record deal. By So,
Speaker 1: how did you guys even meet? Who set you guys up?
Speaker 1: We had a mutual songwriting friends, um and he his
Speaker 1: name was Galen Griffin and and uh he had told
Speaker 1: or he had overheard Luke saying they needed a piano
Speaker 1: player for some weekend stuff and he threw my name
Speaker 1: in the hat. I met, you know, I met Michael Carter,
Speaker 1: who was Luke's guitar player, was also now he's col
Speaker 1: Swindell's producer and songwriter. UM. And we talked on the
Speaker 1: phone and he says, hey, let's do this and then
Speaker 1: and they were like, hey, you guys will hit it
Speaker 1: off there from Georgia. You're gonna love each other. So UM.
Speaker 1: So they hired me without even ever hearing me play
Speaker 1: went down and it was, you know, a couple of
Speaker 1: college towns. Um, but that was that was one of
Speaker 1: those When I got to do the shows with Luke,
Speaker 1: I knew immediately that he was he was, he was
Speaker 1: on his way. So you could tell with Luke even
Speaker 1: earlier that he was special. Why because I mean we
Speaker 1: he first of all, his his stage presence is is
Speaker 1: the same as it's always been. I mean, he's just
Speaker 1: he is that guy. And we would do these shows
Speaker 1: in these college towns and I was blown away, like
Speaker 1: I'm I mean, I'm they give me a CD to
Speaker 1: learn these songs and and I've never heard these songs before.
Speaker 1: But we'd go down and play Milledgeville, and we'd go
Speaker 1: down and play Statesboro, Georgia, and we play Athens, Georgia,
Speaker 1: and it would be completely sold out. Everybody's singing every
Speaker 1: single word to every song he's singing. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: all of his all of his original songs. I'm like,
Speaker 1: how's he doing this? How did he do this? But
Speaker 1: it was it was a big deal back then. The
Speaker 1: thing about Luke Too, and I like Luke, and I
Speaker 1: just the preface is that he's a good dude. And
Speaker 1: you expect someone to that big, maybe not to be that,
Speaker 1: you know, to kind of lose it a bit. Looks
Speaker 1: a good dude. He's always I mean, he's a good
Speaker 1: dude and so um, you just wouldn't expect Luke Too.
Speaker 1: And I've seen him do it before alone, sit down
Speaker 1: at a piano and just and and people will give
Speaker 1: Luke craps of times because he gets up of dances
Speaker 1: and help dance. They'll do some mack lamore. But set
Speaker 1: that guy down at a piano and have him play.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful. Next time you have, you have him on
Speaker 1: a piano, tell him to render you some gospel songs.
Speaker 1: And he's played gospel. It's and it's everything that you
Speaker 1: want him to be, but don't expect him to be.
Speaker 1: And then he is and you're like, wow, So you
Speaker 1: play with Luke now? Were you with him when he
Speaker 1: got a deal or were you gone by that point?
Speaker 1: Had he we had already he had already decided, Um,
Speaker 1: I didn't need to be aside man. So he decided
Speaker 1: did he fire you in a way and in a
Speaker 1: good way or a back? It was great, he said,
Speaker 1: He says, man, I want to help you. Did you
Speaker 1: believe him? I mean, I had no other reason. I
Speaker 1: had no reason not to because someone has to me, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna fire you, but like I'll come on. It
Speaker 1: was it was all I mean immediately. I mean one
Speaker 1: of them is like, hey, I want to help you.
Speaker 1: Want to introduce you to my publisher. Okay, so he
Speaker 1: really like led to you in a direction that he
Speaker 1: invited me to town. Uh Me and Michael, his guitar
Speaker 1: player at the time. We started writing together and those
Speaker 1: were some of my first co writes. Um. He introduced
Speaker 1: me to a guy named uh John Maybe who was
Speaker 1: married to Connie Harrington. She wrote a bunch of big
Speaker 1: songs Terry Clark, y'all y'all, and then I drive your truck. Um,
Speaker 1: and before I met Connie. Before I met Connie, he
Speaker 1: introduced me to John, and John said, well, it's funny,
Speaker 1: you know, meeting you today. He said, my wife Connie
Speaker 1: needs a demo singer for a song. This is years ago,
Speaker 1: and um, he said, are you available? I said yeah,
Speaker 1: So he hooked me up with Connie. My very first
Speaker 1: paid demo was your What was the song? Remember Somebody's
Speaker 1: Somebody Somebody Somebody? What was that song? It never got
Speaker 1: okay because I'm thinking and I don't want to be
Speaker 1: dominant be here. I just don't know. To be honest,
Speaker 1: I just don't know it. Honestly, there's no songs I've
Speaker 1: ever done gotten cut except for one that. It was
Speaker 1: a song called Braid My Hair that Randy o One
Speaker 1: did for St. Jude Ran. Yeah, I even know the song.
Speaker 1: He sings it whenever I go to Saint Jude and
Speaker 1: he's demoed that song. Wow. Okay, so you're a demo singer.
Speaker 1: So here you are? You moving up the ladder. When
Speaker 1: do you start to get sniffed from labels? Oh that wasn't. Um,
Speaker 1: that wasn't until after the whole Tracy Bird thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you play kids for Tracy Bird? So how did
Speaker 1: that end up happening? Um? His tour managers house sitter
Speaker 1: was good friends with my wife and once again It
Speaker 1: was one of those she overheard Tracy needing the piano player,
Speaker 1: and they hired me, gave me a CDs, some CDs
Speaker 1: to learn, and never never auditioned or anything. Just got
Speaker 1: on the bus one night, went to the three shows
Speaker 1: and on the way home, they says, you want the gig,
Speaker 1: it's yours. What was the highlight of your first Tracy
Speaker 1: Bird show? Oh, the highlight was when I messed up
Speaker 1: big time like they they did this Ricky Skaggs song
Speaker 1: and there's a no that it stops, but I let
Speaker 1: us sustain over the entire It was just held it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I held out and everybody else stopped and then they
Speaker 1: all looked at me and that was That's That's my
Speaker 1: one memory from the very first Tracy Bird show. So
Speaker 1: from Tracy Bird, when do you go, Okay, I want
Speaker 1: to grab a guitar and I want to be artist.
Speaker 1: I'm doing this all on Little Broadway at the same time,
Speaker 1: and this is when you're grinding because you can play.
Speaker 1: The thing with Craig too, by the way, is that
Speaker 1: we did but in the show thing for years is
Speaker 1: that we just throw a song at a mc. Craig
Speaker 1: knows every song because you kind of had to when
Speaker 1: you would play for hours at a time, right, so,
Speaker 1: and if you didn't, had to figure it out really quick. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you do four song, four hours of music, and then
Speaker 1: you know, the occasional twenty dollar tip comes in for
Speaker 1: a song you never heard, you go home and learn
Speaker 1: it just in case it gets caught again, you know,
Speaker 1: or requested. But I'm I'm playing Lower Broadway all the
Speaker 1: while doing the Tracy birth thing too. Um. So there
Speaker 1: was a bartender at the stage where I played. She
Speaker 1: was dating a guy that was in the radio promo business. Um.
Speaker 1: And she invited him down and she said, you need
Speaker 1: to come see this guy. Um. And he came down
Speaker 1: and he he would come down every Tuesday night from
Speaker 1: I mean probably two years, always telling me, Hey, we're
Speaker 1: gonna do something you great, YadA YadA, all that. And
Speaker 1: I had gotten to the point where I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: put your money where your mouth is. So one night
Speaker 1: he was he came down. He's like, look, we're ready
Speaker 1: to do this. H we want you to be our guy. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna bring Keith Steagall down to see you that.
Speaker 1: He's a producer. He produced all the Alan Jackson stuff,
Speaker 1: all the Zach brown stuff. Um, And honestly, he was
Speaker 1: number one on my list if I could hand pick producers.
Speaker 1: When I first moved to town. He was my guy.
Speaker 1: And so I couldn't believe it. I said, well, give
Speaker 1: me at least give me twenty four hours notice so
Speaker 1: I can prepare. So sure enough, he says, hey, we'll
Speaker 1: be done this date. Um, We're gonna be there from
Speaker 1: seven to eight. I said, all right, I'll be ready.
Speaker 1: So I hit him with forty five minutes of everything
Speaker 1: I had, and Keith said, come by the office tomorrow.
Speaker 1: What's everything you have that your originals? He throw a
Speaker 1: couple of covers. Yeah, I didn't do any coaches. See
Speaker 1: the originals? Originals? Could you tell by his face? Because
Speaker 1: you know, you auditions, and I audition for acting jobs
Speaker 1: and hosting jobs, and he watched the faces. Were you
Speaker 1: watching his mannerisms? And and how are you feeling as
Speaker 1: it was happening? He was. And now that I've known
Speaker 1: him for a little while, he he was as excited
Speaker 1: as he would have ever gotten. Um, which at the
Speaker 1: moment was kind of not the best facial expressions you
Speaker 1: would expect, you know, for somebody that was excited about
Speaker 1: seeing some music that they were wanting to do something with.
Speaker 1: So I didn't know how to take it. But when
Speaker 1: he invited me to the office the next day, that
Speaker 1: was that was a good sign. And and that was
Speaker 1: in August of oh eight. You sign a record deal.
Speaker 1: Signed a deal in September two thousand nine, So it
Speaker 1: took a year to negotiate um and then started the
Speaker 1: record making the record, and then started my radio tour
Speaker 1: July two thousand ten. And then Family Men came out,
Speaker 1: and so your first song was Family Man. They're the
Speaker 1: world excited to hear on the radio the first time?
Speaker 1: My goodness. I mean it's it's not just the first time,
Speaker 1: it's every time I hear my song, but the first
Speaker 1: time you hear your song on an unsolicited you know where,
Speaker 1: it's not like you're about to play I'm into the station. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was pretty cool. Revolves around It's my
Speaker 1: sacred sting grounds you mentioned earlier. The Cole Swindell think
Speaker 1: is the Cole Swindell link because him and Luke were
Speaker 1: working against he was like working merch for Luke, working
Speaker 1: for Luke or did that did that different? But but
Speaker 1: when Cole moved to town, he wasn't he wasn't doing
Speaker 1: merch for Luke or wait he may he. Okay, I
Speaker 1: don't know the timeline for Cold, but I didn't know
Speaker 1: that when he When Cole first moved to town, we
Speaker 1: met immediately. I think it was through Luke and through
Speaker 1: Michael Carter, and we hit it off and we hung out.
Speaker 1: I mean all that, I mean it was we we
Speaker 1: hung out a lot. So you have a deal. You
Speaker 1: have a song, do you think? And family and peaked
Speaker 1: out of the peak, so it picked the twelve. Do
Speaker 1: you think, Okay, I got this now? Like man, you're
Speaker 1: like I figured it out, Like it's absolutely And as
Speaker 1: I ask you right now, do you think Kevin figured out? No, No,
Speaker 1: that was It's very humbling to see your first song
Speaker 1: do extremely well and then the second song do what
Speaker 1: Fish did and have almost a half million downloads you know, uh,
Speaker 1: and then the third song I do well at all?
Speaker 1: And third song would be when I get it? And
Speaker 1: so the song did not do well. It went to
Speaker 1: thirty eight. So it goes to thirty eight and you
Speaker 1: start to think, man, this is an omaly that I'm
Speaker 1: not hitting it or is it realization of maybe it's
Speaker 1: not as easy as I thought it was. It was
Speaker 1: it was one of those man, you know, because people
Speaker 1: ask me all the time and man, how did you
Speaker 1: get your record deal? And my my response is it's
Speaker 1: that's the easy part keeping it. It is a hard part.
Speaker 1: You know, Are you making money inside your deal to
Speaker 1: live a life where you can actually, like afford a
Speaker 1: truck and a house payment or is it still a struggle.
Speaker 1: It's even more of a struggle because now you've got
Speaker 1: money to pay back. We me and my wife we
Speaker 1: do well. We we um we have we make im
Speaker 1: a enough money for us. She's she's making money too
Speaker 1: with her personal training. But we are able to take
Speaker 1: care of ourselves and our family and the needs we have. UM.
Speaker 1: But if if we if you were to ask me
Speaker 1: or am I already for retirement? I would I would
Speaker 1: say no, you know what I mean? You still love
Speaker 1: going on stage? I love it. I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: because I still love going on the radio, and I
Speaker 1: do it every day like I live for going on
Speaker 1: the air, and I live for going on this stage
Speaker 1: and doing stand up comedy like those I get some.
Speaker 1: I do it all and it's a thrill to everything.
Speaker 1: And that's how I know that's what I'm supposed to
Speaker 1: be doing. I'm the same way, like, I don't. I
Speaker 1: never it. I didn't music chose me. I didn't choose it.
Speaker 1: And that's just how I look at it. It's not
Speaker 1: anything other than it's I feel like this is what
Speaker 1: I was put here to do. I have and you
Speaker 1: have daughters, yes, anymore like you you're gonna try get
Speaker 1: a boy or no, no, no, we're done. I took
Speaker 1: care of that. So having girls, I mean, that's got
Speaker 1: to be. It's you and all women like I grew
Speaker 1: up with all women. All women. We got two girls.
Speaker 1: My wife, my dog, and my cat are both girls.
Speaker 1: It's and your animals are all girls. So, um, which
Speaker 1: daughter did you bring up this thing? Let it go?
Speaker 1: Chris espressly, right, okay, So this is on the show
Speaker 1: a year and a half persod ago. She comes up,
Speaker 1: let go back, andymore, let go turn away and saying yes, stay,
Speaker 1: let the storm never anyway. And I still get I
Speaker 1: remember her singing at the studio, I haven't heard them
Speaker 1: so long's it's so good and I'm gonna tell you now.
Speaker 1: And we were texting back and forth a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks ago and you sent me a video of her sing.
Speaker 1: By the way, she's got some swagger now like she
Speaker 1: like it looks like that might be what she wants
Speaker 1: to do. As as as bad as I hate to
Speaker 1: admit it, I think it's chosen her. She sings and
Speaker 1: she demands the room. How old is she now? She
Speaker 1: she just she's eight and a half. Okay, so she's
Speaker 1: eight and a half years old, And I'm so correct?
Speaker 1: Is me a video? And I look at the video
Speaker 1: and I think this is Craig my body sending me
Speaker 1: a video And I've watched your kids grow up in
Speaker 1: the last two years, and so I don't post it
Speaker 1: anymore anything because I think this is just the thing.
Speaker 1: And then I see other places if you put it
Speaker 1: out a couple I was like, dude, I had to
Speaker 1: put that out. I thought it was so good she did,
Speaker 1: and it's up on the internet. I ended up not
Speaker 1: putting it up because other people have put it up.
Speaker 1: But if you want to see and you're playing guitar,
Speaker 1: was okay, that's what it was. She was playing guitar
Speaker 1: and perstially singing, and what was the song? She was
Speaker 1: Kelsey's song Peter Ben And I'm just like man like,
Speaker 1: I've watched this girl girl from in kindergarten. So that
Speaker 1: was those three years. Uh yeah, three solid years ago.
Speaker 1: You're proud. I'm very proud. I mean, is it Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's she's uh, you know, we get asked all the time,
Speaker 1: if if, if she's gonna follow in our steps because
Speaker 1: her mom is a great singer to um and if if,
Speaker 1: if she wants to, but it's it's up to her.
Speaker 1: I'm definitely gonna make it available for her. If she
Speaker 1: I'm gonna help her out. Do you teach her music?
Speaker 1: Where we just started last week and she's got piano lessons,
Speaker 1: I don't want to teach her. She sings on She's
Speaker 1: on pitch already, her her pitch and listen, I'm I'm bragging.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I recognize she's around it
Speaker 1: too as well talent. I mean, her pitch is incredible.
Speaker 1: Like sometimes I'm driving down the road in my truck
Speaker 1: and she's in the back just doing acapella stuff, working
Speaker 1: on licks, doing these Megan Trainer licks, and I'm like, wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: she one gets to be around people who can sing
Speaker 1: a wall and two when your parents sing. I mean,
Speaker 1: I believe that there's there's a connection between being in
Speaker 1: the womb too, like men. Mendy her mom had an
Speaker 1: acoustic gig every Monday at Legends Corner from two to six,
Speaker 1: and it got to where Mindy was having to hold
Speaker 1: her guitar sideways for her belly. So the resonation Lord,
Speaker 1: the resonance of the guitar on her belly and hearing
Speaker 1: us sing every you know, every Monday. I feel like
Speaker 1: that had a lot to do with her having music
Speaker 1: when she was born. Why does Mendy not play? She
Speaker 1: moved to Nashville to pursue music. She um it, you know,
Speaker 1: her didn't get drawn. That's and that's the does she
Speaker 1: still hope? No, she's and she's okay with it. You know,
Speaker 1: she h for the longest time. And we wrote songs together.
Speaker 1: A matter of fact, we had a song together on
Speaker 1: my second album called topless Um. And she's she is
Speaker 1: the superwoman of all superwomen. She takes care of them
Speaker 1: girls because I mean, honestly, when I'm gone, I'm and
Speaker 1: she's a single mom. Uh, it's dance, it's school, it's uh,
Speaker 1: she trains, you know, it's so she's happy. She's happy
Speaker 1: with with whe where her life is. The road has
Speaker 1: has led her now. She she does love music, don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong. And we we still play as a family,
Speaker 1: like we'll we'll play music and we'll sit around the
Speaker 1: campfire and do stuff, and and the occasional songwriters around
Speaker 1: that she gets invited to, you know, we'll I'll go
Speaker 1: in and you know, she'll call me and it's it's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. I do miss I do miss
Speaker 1: playing just me and her on Lord Broadway that I
Speaker 1: brought you to together. Yeah, she hired me to play
Speaker 1: piano for she was one of my six Knights of
Speaker 1: playing piano. Man. That's crazy. And we've been together ever since.
Speaker 1: Are you grateful just in general at this point in
Speaker 1: your life right now, as as anybody can ever be.
Speaker 1: I mean, I get to, I get to I get
Speaker 1: I get frustrated a lot with my line of work.
Speaker 1: But I still get to wake up knowing that I'm
Speaker 1: going to go be on stage and sing country music
Speaker 1: and get and get paid to do it. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a it's a surreal thing right now. His song
Speaker 1: is Outskirts of Heaven. When I outskirts Heaven where there's roads,
Speaker 1: fields and fishing, where Trees and Blues, Guys and dreams.
Speaker 1: Lord when I die, the oscars him. I believe you
Speaker 1: when you tell me this, I'll say it again, though.
Speaker 1: I hope that you're so proud of that song, even
Speaker 1: if it were to stop tomorrow. I am. And I
Speaker 1: tell that every time I'm with with anybody, when it
Speaker 1: comes to me trying to convince them to play the song,
Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, what if if it all went
Speaker 1: away tomorrow? The messages that I get on Facebook and
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram and all that about how this song
Speaker 1: has helped them deal with certain situations, That's That's all
Speaker 1: that matters to me. Mike, anything like that's Craig. After
Speaker 1: the interview, Mike call, he has a couple of questions, lingering, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well is your daughter? Does she gravitate towards country? Men
Speaker 1: want to know she's she's a huge Megan Trainer fan, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, Megan Trainer heavy country, like we're talking
Speaker 1: about I think last week, like Kaylyn Smith was in
Speaker 1: and Caitlin and Meghan wrote Megan Trainer's song um like
Speaker 1: I'm Gonna lose you. I'm gonna love you like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna lose you. That's Morton Pressley's most viral video on
Speaker 1: Facebook together Together. But yeah, she but she loves Kelsey.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not saying she don't like country music
Speaker 1: at all. She she just her friends. They you know,
Speaker 1: they lean more towards pop with the stuff they listened to. Cool.
Speaker 1: Is that your first tattoo right there? I've been kind
Speaker 1: of staring at it the whole time. You got Colorada? No,
Speaker 1: this is this is my fifth tattoo. And but what
Speaker 1: is that? Because it's the coloring is new one. It's
Speaker 1: an American flag, Okay, and I've had it about a month,
Speaker 1: but I went back and had the red put in
Speaker 1: the ripes so that it would be very I don't know,
Speaker 1: pop a little better, looks awesome anything else? Mike, what
Speaker 1: was the first song you learned how to playing guitar?
Speaker 1: On guitar? Yeah? Um? What was it? Oh? Today started
Speaker 1: loving you again? Was that? Basically? Ge chords and dye
Speaker 1: back where I really always been. I got over you
Speaker 1: just long enough to let my hearty man, and a
Speaker 1: day I started loving you. My uncle was a guitar player.
Speaker 1: He he had a band. They were my mom's brother
Speaker 1: had a had a Kiss tribute band. He was a
Speaker 1: league talk. So yeah, he's so he That's the very
Speaker 1: first song I ever learned how to play. I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed the chat. No think I'm I have had a
Speaker 1: great time. This is that. This is cool And obviously
Speaker 1: you know I'm a fan and a friend and not
Speaker 1: maybe that order, I think, but if but friend first,
Speaker 1: because I think, yeah, I listen, I'd never listen to you.
Speaker 1: I hate let people bring songs go ahead and play
Speaker 1: for you in front of your face. And I think
Speaker 1: You're probably the only person I've ever let that happen
Speaker 1: to it in my history. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: remember coming into the studio and I was like, I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't wanna do this because I gotta
Speaker 1: because I have to do the thing where I have
Speaker 1: to act like I'm loving it, and I don't know
Speaker 1: if I want to hear it. And it's just like, oh,
Speaker 1: you might be the only person I've ever let that
Speaker 1: happen with because I just don't do I hate it
Speaker 1: and I'm glad you did. I but at the same time,
Speaker 1: that was not my idea. And you know what's funny.
Speaker 1: You came in and with Mary Forest, who's my managers,
Speaker 1: and like she she's I called her my babysitter because
Speaker 1: she managed everything that I do from you know, the
Speaker 1: books and the music and she and she by the way,
Speaker 1: she's fantastic. Well she's I love her to death. I
Speaker 1: was even texted her when she came to work for
Speaker 1: you guys or for you, I said, I hate to
Speaker 1: see you go, but I know you're gonna love that gig. Yeah.
Speaker 1: She left a really good job working at your label
Speaker 1: to come and run me. And she's the best human.
Speaker 1: Holy crap. I really have enjoyed this talk. It's fun
Speaker 1: to sit down and just get to talk for hour
Speaker 1: and there'll be no rules and just see what comes out.
Speaker 1: So everybody, if you're listening, you know and you like it,
Speaker 1: supported spend a dollar twenty nine Outskirts of Heaven. When sir,
Speaker 1: please send all my warmth to the family. All right,
Speaker 1: that's Craig Campbell and that's gonna wrap up Elisode seven
Speaker 1: of the Bobby Cast, brought to you by No One Yet,
Speaker 1: No sponsor yet, no sponsor. I think they told me
Speaker 1: I can't get one notes. I need to find a sponsor.
Speaker 1: They're like, hey, go get one. They can buy a
Speaker 1: sponsorship and I was like dang already like yeah, so
Speaker 1: anyway they're listening. He wants to be sponsored the show.
Speaker 1: Let me know Mike d Stro producing the show. That's
Speaker 1: m I K E d E E S t r
Speaker 1: O on Snapchat. Now, Craig Campbell is Craig Campbell TV.
Speaker 1: Why Craig Campbell TV. By the way, short story, Uh,
Speaker 1: Craig Campbell dot com was taken. Craig Campbell dot net
Speaker 1: was taken. They my Bigger Picture family was already working
Speaker 1: with Big Kenny at the time and he had Big
Speaker 1: Kenny dot tv, so dot tv was available. So my
Speaker 1: website is Craig Campbell dot tv. So then we just
Speaker 1: made all the social media Craig Campbell TV. Interesting long
Speaker 1: story short, I appreciate the time, and uh, they'll look
Speaker 1: back at the career and you know, I'm always rooting
Speaker 1: for you, dude. I'm appreciate it. All right, we'll see
Speaker 1: you and next time it's the Bobby Cast. That's another episode,
Speaker 1: another edition. Thank you very much, and until next time,
Speaker 1: good everybody.