Speaker 1: Hey, it's Granger Smith. This is the Granger Smith Podcast,
Speaker 1: Episode three. I want to kind of continue on what
Speaker 1: I started in episode one and episode two, continue down
Speaker 1: the timeline, and that brings me to a subject that's
Speaker 1: very important to me and who I am. Songwriting. Here's
Speaker 1: how all that started. Episode three. Sturgis, South Dakota. That's
Speaker 1: where I am. Have you heard of it? Maybe because
Speaker 1: of Mount Rushmore is right down the road, or maybe
Speaker 1: because of the huge biker rally, which is why we're
Speaker 1: here today, Not because I'm a biker, but because I'm
Speaker 1: here playing music. It seems like I always get to
Speaker 1: go to every town's coolest event, and that's why I
Speaker 1: love my job. How could you not? We get to
Speaker 1: go to your town when she's got her best dress on.
Speaker 1: Of course, it wasn't always that way. It all started
Speaker 1: me in my guitar in my room at home with
Speaker 1: nobody listening, and I was needing to tell a story
Speaker 1: and I had a means to tell it through six
Speaker 1: strings and a few chords that I knew. What happened
Speaker 1: after that was life changing for me. Songwriting provided an
Speaker 1: outlet for me to get out some emotions that I
Speaker 1: didn't want to talk about, or maybe I didn't know
Speaker 1: how to talk about. And then later I come to
Speaker 1: find out that those songs, those ideas would connect with
Speaker 1: other people, and that feeling made it worth it. It
Speaker 1: made me want to dig deeper. And that's what I'll
Speaker 1: talk about on episode three. All right, I'm pulling up
Speaker 1: the trustee Wikipedia right now. Sturgis is a city in
Speaker 1: Mead County, South Dakota, population six six hundred and twenty seven.
Speaker 1: Sturgis as notable as a location of one of the
Speaker 1: largest motorcycle events in the world, which is held annually
Speaker 1: on the second full week of August. Motorcycle enthusiasts from
Speaker 1: around the world flocked to this town during the Sturgis
Speaker 1: Motorcycle Rally. We just pulled in. It's early morning, and
Speaker 1: first of all, amazing foothills surrounding this place. Beautiful town,
Speaker 1: green pine trees, which is a refreshing sight because we
Speaker 1: haven't seen a single tree, and the rest of the
Speaker 1: state of South Dakota as we've been driving through it
Speaker 1: this morning. It's the month of August, but it is
Speaker 1: sixty five degrees outside. That's pretty awesome. At home right now,
Speaker 1: it's ninety one to put it in perspective in Texas,
Speaker 1: so it feels good. It feels like a nice October day.
Speaker 1: Everywhere you look right now, it's motorcycles and black leather.
Speaker 1: I've never seen so many in my life. I'm not
Speaker 1: a biker. Maybe I will be if I'm sixty years
Speaker 1: old and retired and looking for a hobby. I could
Speaker 1: see the appeal of it. It's a big, old, loud
Speaker 1: beast of a machine. You're wrapped up on it, hugging
Speaker 1: a windy two lane road, sunglasses and leather jacket, the
Speaker 1: breeze and beautiful countryside all around you. You stop at
Speaker 1: a little cafe, grab an ice cold draft beer all
Speaker 1: the while. Leonard Skynard is your theme music. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: sounds like a pretty good time. How did music get
Speaker 1: me here? I've asked that question in some crazy places
Speaker 1: all around the world. I remember thinking that in a
Speaker 1: black Hawk helicopter a couple thousand feet above Baghdad in Iraq.
Speaker 1: And that's what I'm thinking right now. And Sturge just
Speaker 1: at a bikeer rally? How did my music get me
Speaker 1: to a bikeer rally? And I don't know all the
Speaker 1: workings of it, but I'm just glad that it did.
Speaker 1: If I was going to narrow down anything, pinpoint anything
Speaker 1: of where things began and music, it's a no brainer.
Speaker 1: Everything starts with the song, and there was a time
Speaker 1: when I had to start writing them. And that's what
Speaker 1: I want to talk about in this podcast. The very
Speaker 1: first ones, the awkward, left footed, very vulnerable first once
Speaker 1: and here's one of them right here. I found this
Speaker 1: old cassette. This is me playing one of the first
Speaker 1: songs I ever wrote. Please don't judge. I'm just a teenager.
Speaker 1: You a small cafe off twenty two. I have to
Speaker 1: tuck her. What I should do? Said, I need a
Speaker 1: place where I could settle down. You look at me
Speaker 1: with the tired brand, said, if I could do it
Speaker 1: all over again, I'd be heading sound without looking back,
Speaker 1: because I've been on the road from coast to coast,
Speaker 1: and there's one place I love lost. If us me
Speaker 1: for ball, it's worth there rained nothing done on earth
Speaker 1: as it is in Texas. So of course I was
Speaker 1: too young to actually go coast to coast. I hadn't
Speaker 1: done that, and I didn't ask any trucker life advice.
Speaker 1: But there was an old cafe on Highway twenty two
Speaker 1: that I love to eat at it. But what ended
Speaker 1: up happening was that song called as It in Texas
Speaker 1: plus nine others made my first ten and I went
Speaker 1: in and recorded them in a cheap little studio in Wiley, Texas.
Speaker 1: I made this album called Waiting on Forever. You can
Speaker 1: still find it. It's out there on the internet. Me
Speaker 1: white cowboy hat, button up shirt, looked like a baby.
Speaker 1: I looked like I was twelve, and I wasn't too
Speaker 1: far from twelve. But that studio album, that first album
Speaker 1: for me, was so important and I didn't know it
Speaker 1: at the time, but it got into the hands of
Speaker 1: some people that ultimately started a chain of events that
Speaker 1: took me to this place called Nashville, Tennessee. So this
Speaker 1: is what it sounds like on the streets of Sturgis,
Speaker 1: South Dakota. Right now, let's turn that off. So Sturgis
Speaker 1: is crazy today. I've never seen anything like this. Thousands
Speaker 1: of motorcycles out here in the street. I mean's like
Speaker 1: a bunch of fire ants going everywhere, and it's it's chaotic.
Speaker 1: This is a time when I really feel thankful to
Speaker 1: be in the back of my nice quiet bus making
Speaker 1: this podcast for you guys. So guess what happened to
Speaker 1: that album Waiting on Forever. Somehow, through somebody, through some
Speaker 1: friend of a friend, that ends up on LeAnn Willmack's bus.
Speaker 1: You remember LeAnn Walmack. Yeah, of course you do. She's amazing.
Speaker 1: So her bass player, his name is Brett Beavers and
Speaker 1: he is a producer, writer, musician, and he has written
Speaker 1: a song at this point for Darryl Dodd called on
Speaker 1: Earth As it Is in Texas. Somehow my CD is
Speaker 1: up on their bus and it's face down. He's looking
Speaker 1: at the back, he's looking at the track list and
Speaker 1: he sees that song as it Is in Texas and
Speaker 1: he says, hey, that's the same title as my song.
Speaker 1: So he plays it and I guess he heard something.
Speaker 1: He heard some kind of potential. So he finds out
Speaker 1: how to get in touch with me. This is when
Speaker 1: things started changing big time. You can take a shot
Speaker 1: if you want to try. And just missed a call
Speaker 1: from Chris, my tour manager. I'm gonna call him back
Speaker 1: because I think he's out there in the street right now. Everybody, Hey,
Speaker 1: did you call? Yeah? Man, I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: been over here to the main street, dude, but This
Speaker 1: is really really cool. I think you would regret not
Speaker 1: seeing this. What's up? What's over there? It's just this,
Speaker 1: thousands of motorcycles, all part of the bars Cato shops.
Speaker 1: It's all really really cool. Okay, well, I'll head over
Speaker 1: there and meet you and see what's up. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what back towards you will meet you, uh at
Speaker 1: that intersection there at the front of the venue. Okay, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'll see you in a second. Okay, So I'll go
Speaker 1: brave the thousands of motorcycles and report back in So
Speaker 1: Brett Beaver sat down with us, me and my family,
Speaker 1: and he said, hey, I heard every song on this album,
Speaker 1: and I think you guys should start considering Granger writing
Speaker 1: songs for a publishing company in Nashville. We hadn't thought
Speaker 1: about this before. This is the first I didn't even
Speaker 1: know what publishing companies were. But there's companies in Nashville
Speaker 1: that will pay you to write songs and then they
Speaker 1: pitch it to other artists. Now, sometimes if you're an
Speaker 1: artist yourself, especially young artists like me, they can kind
Speaker 1: of groom you and prepare you to get a record
Speaker 1: deal one day, and then they own publishing on your songs.
Speaker 1: That's how that works. So by now I'm at Texas
Speaker 1: A and M University. I'm a freshman in the core Cadets.
Speaker 1: So my life is already crazy. My lack of life
Speaker 1: actually is pretty crazy. But I have a band and
Speaker 1: we're playing a lot of these original songs. So the
Speaker 1: next logical step is for somebody from Nashville to fly
Speaker 1: down to little college station, Texas and hear me play
Speaker 1: with my band. So that's exactly what happened. I had
Speaker 1: a couple really cool publishing companies fly down from Nashville,
Speaker 1: had some of their executives come, and they would come
Speaker 1: to this bar it's called Shadow Canyon, and we would
Speaker 1: pack it out just because we knew everybody and it
Speaker 1: was a big party, and you know, for some reason,
Speaker 1: they really liked what they saw and they really wanted
Speaker 1: to offer me a publishing deal. So at this point,
Speaker 1: I'm nineteen, maybe almost twenty years old, and I have
Speaker 1: to make a decision. I have to not only choose
Speaker 1: one of these companies, but I have to decide if
Speaker 1: I'm going to leave college and go to write songs,
Speaker 1: something so unorthodox in a state that I've never been to.
Speaker 1: I don't know anybody. It's a huge risk, and I've
Speaker 1: got to make the decision right now. Meanwhile, in searge
Speaker 1: to South Dakota, I just made another decision right now,
Speaker 1: and that was to get a tattoo. I'm at a
Speaker 1: biker rally and I'm with my band and there's tattoo
Speaker 1: shops everywhere, and I thought when in Sturgis, so I
Speaker 1: got a Texas tattoo the outline of Texas on my
Speaker 1: right arm. I did just now, and Chris was right,
Speaker 1: is it's total insanity out there. I've never seen so
Speaker 1: many bikes in my life, and I'm glad to be
Speaker 1: back on the bus again. There's now bands playing in
Speaker 1: the background on the stage that we're sitting next to,
Speaker 1: So I apologize if that bleeds through the mic onto
Speaker 1: the podcast, but it's all part of the experience today. Right.
Speaker 1: I'm realizing as I'm telling some of these older stories
Speaker 1: that I'm leaving a lot of gaps. There's a couple
Speaker 1: of gaps in the timeline. But I don't want to
Speaker 1: tell everything. I don't want to tell every detail because
Speaker 1: I want to have stuff to talk about in the future. Right, So,
Speaker 1: by now I'm a sophomore at Texas A and M.
Speaker 1: It's December and I've made a decision. I'm gonna finish
Speaker 1: out my sophomore year and I'm gonna leave after spring
Speaker 1: semester move to Nashville. I'm gonna sign with EMI Music Publishing,
Speaker 1: packed everything I have, which wasn't much, and start a
Speaker 1: life as a songwriter, at least to see what it is.
Speaker 1: I have amazing parents, and they they provided me with
Speaker 1: the greatest gift you can give a child, and that
Speaker 1: was the freedom to dream. They did not hold me back.
Speaker 1: I think they saw it in my eyes. They saw
Speaker 1: they saw that A, this was a rare opportunity to
Speaker 1: sign with a big publishing company and B I'm twenty
Speaker 1: years old and I'm only going to get this chance
Speaker 1: once now before life starts. So I found an apartment,
Speaker 1: moved my stuff in. My mom came with me. She
Speaker 1: kind of helped me get settled in a little bit.
Speaker 1: And on July third, I'll never forget the day she
Speaker 1: left and I officially became a Nashville resident. Quick sponsor
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Speaker 1: because it's my only sponsor and not sponsored by money.
Speaker 1: It's sponsored by love because it's my family, me and
Speaker 1: my brothers. It's our drink, and it's kind of a
Speaker 1: passion project, I guess you could say. But I really
Speaker 1: do love this thing because we made this from scratch
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Speaker 1: and you like to drink EEE Energy like I do,
Speaker 1: you just flip that little four pack box over and
Speaker 1: use it as target practice. Now we're in a lot
Speaker 1: of mom and pop stores all across the country. We're
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Speaker 1: I'm not sure if we want to go that route
Speaker 1: quite yet because it's very close to me and I
Speaker 1: don't want to lose that kind of control. But I
Speaker 1: want you to try it, So go to Grangersmith dot
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Speaker 1: See what you think. Have you ever moved to a
Speaker 1: city by yourself when you didn't know anyone, not only
Speaker 1: in the city, but in the entire state. Well that
Speaker 1: was me twenty years old, Nashville, Tennessee. The only people
Speaker 1: I knew were just a couple people over at EMI
Speaker 1: Publishing that signed me to that job. But you know,
Speaker 1: if I was going to leave Texas and do this,
Speaker 1: I was all in. I wanted to learn the craft,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to immediately start writing with as many
Speaker 1: people as I could, especially some of the older guys
Speaker 1: that had big, old hits on the radio. Because if
Speaker 1: I could learn from them, and I didn't even have
Speaker 1: to get a great song with them, but if I
Speaker 1: could just get in the room with them and learn
Speaker 1: their process, then that was going to be something I
Speaker 1: could take with me forever. So a lot of those
Speaker 1: George Strait songs that I grew up listening to, I
Speaker 1: found those writers and I got in the room with
Speaker 1: those guys and I said, tell me the story of
Speaker 1: you wrote that song. And sometimes we would we would
Speaker 1: intend to write a song together that day, but I
Speaker 1: would get so caught up and asking them questions and
Speaker 1: then listening to their stories that we wouldn't we wouldn't
Speaker 1: get anything, but that was still a successful day for me.
Speaker 1: So a typical morning would be I would have an
Speaker 1: appointment at ten am, and E and I would set
Speaker 1: these appointments up for me these co writes, and sometimes
Speaker 1: I didn't even know who the person was until I
Speaker 1: walked in at ten am. We would shake hands, grab
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee, and I would usually start by
Speaker 1: playing a few things that I'd written to let them
Speaker 1: know who I was and what I was all about,
Speaker 1: and then would we would dive in. They would say, well,
Speaker 1: have you ever thought about something like this? And they
Speaker 1: would play something and I would say, I love that.
Speaker 1: Let's try to write that song, and you know we did.
Speaker 1: We got a lot of cool things. But I wasn't
Speaker 1: writing granger songs. I was writing songs that they thought
Speaker 1: should be granger songs. So I was learning the craft,
Speaker 1: and I was thankful for for that. But I hadn't
Speaker 1: yet found my niche. I hadn't yet found what I
Speaker 1: needed to say to feel something. Yet that was about
Speaker 1: the change. So I'm laying in bed one night, can't sleep.
Speaker 1: I'm gods could have got this lonely feeling to me,
Speaker 1: heartsick from being gone from Texas for so long, looking
Speaker 1: around the room at the alarm clock, and these lines
Speaker 1: start coming to me. I can't fall I can't fall
Speaker 1: asleep tonight. I don't remember that I don't remember the
Speaker 1: bedroom ever, be in this bride from just the alarm clock,
Speaker 1: like it's the alarm clock. It feels like a song
Speaker 1: about me. Now it feels so cold, it feels so
Speaker 1: cold at the end of the sheets. I'll stay I'll
Speaker 1: stay warm as long as I don't move my feet
Speaker 1: over where yours used to be, over where yours used
Speaker 1: to be. Sometimes I closed my eyes and you're not gone.
Speaker 1: I hold you tied and kiss you all night. And
Speaker 1: then I found my hook. Dream on dream dream every
Speaker 1: night in my mind. I put this back in love
Speaker 1: where we belong, dream for passion, bird, emotionster, funny, how
Speaker 1: this bet is seen it all, funny, how this bed
Speaker 1: is seen it all? And now it's just here. Now
Speaker 1: it's just here to dream on to dream. And I
Speaker 1: had a song now that I wrote in about thirty
Speaker 1: minutes that felt better than anything I had written there
Speaker 1: with these professional writers. And by better I mean more
Speaker 1: like me. It was my story. It was the first
Speaker 1: time I ever felt like a real songwriter because I
Speaker 1: had told a story that meant something, that had some
Speaker 1: kind of emotion. It wasn't just rhymes and chords. There's
Speaker 1: a difference right well now I knew there was, and
Speaker 1: I was so homesick from Texas and all my friends
Speaker 1: and my family and being away from them for so long,
Speaker 1: And then I was able to channel that emotion into
Speaker 1: a song. So after five years of writing songs, I
Speaker 1: felt like dream On was my first one, my first
Speaker 1: real song. I'd written a hundred songs before that, but
Speaker 1: this was my first real one. And nothing ever happened
Speaker 1: with Dreamond and that wasn't the point. No one ever
Speaker 1: even heard it, but it was a snapshot of my
Speaker 1: emotion that night in bed, couldn't sleep, lonely as hell
Speaker 1: from being gone from Texas, and that's what mattered. That's
Speaker 1: what made it a real song, as opposed to a
Speaker 1: couple guys in a room drinking coffee thinking about what's
Speaker 1: popular on the radio. So I go on a mission
Speaker 1: to write more songs like dream On, and it's way
Speaker 1: harder than I thought. But it's funny how one song
Speaker 1: changed the entire way that I approached songwriting. It ultimately
Speaker 1: set me on a path that then moved me back
Speaker 1: to Texas, where I started a band, wrote more songs,
Speaker 1: and then found fans to connect with those songs. But
Speaker 1: that's another story. For another podcast. I got a crowd
Speaker 1: I need to connect with tonight and starred to South
Speaker 1: Dakota and they're ready to rock. I'm gonna get dressed
Speaker 1: and go do my thing. This is granger Smith. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to Episode three. Happens that Out of the
Speaker 1: Blue Scat's interview last year. When it happens like that,
Speaker 1: nothing to Lowes turns right into you, dude, Oh you
Speaker 1: can do just to keep her around. To the moon
Speaker 1: goes down in her back into your house. One thing
Speaker 1: will do another. You love each other when looking you
Speaker 1: never lived back. It happens like that. This podcast is
Speaker 1: brought to you by EEE Energy. Come find us on
Speaker 1: tour grangersmith dot com, Forward Slash Tour, See you down
Speaker 1: the road.