Speaker 1: This this Winston Losses with Clay Trevis, play talks with
Speaker 1: the most entertaining people in sports, entertainment and business. Now
Speaker 1: here's Clay Trevis. Welcome into Wins and Losses. I am
Speaker 1: Clay Travis. You're fearless host. This is a podcast we
Speaker 1: do weekly. I hope you guys are enjoying them. About
Speaker 1: to talk with Bobby Bones, who is an incredibly successful
Speaker 1: radio show host in his own right. So you will
Speaker 1: hear two radio show hosts talking, which will maybe drive
Speaker 1: you insane or maybe you will love it. Yes. Uh
Speaker 1: And if you enjoyed this one, I guarantee you that
Speaker 1: you will probably enjoy some of the other conversations we've had.
Speaker 1: Goal is to find people who are interesting in sports, media, politics,
Speaker 1: business and beyond and talk to them about how they
Speaker 1: ended up where they are now. So, without further ado,
Speaker 1: you already heard him. He's Bobby Bones on Twitter at
Speaker 1: Bobby Bones. No, I couldn't you get it. I try
Speaker 1: to buy Bobby Bones from that Bobby of the show.
Speaker 1: It's at Mr Bobby Bones. But the guy who has
Speaker 1: it has like a hundred followers. I don't even want
Speaker 1: to say at Bobby Bones because you're gonna go check
Speaker 1: it out. I tried to buy the Instagram. I tried
Speaker 1: to buy the Twitter, and the guy's like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to sell it. It It means too much to me.
Speaker 1: You don't tweet. If you tweet it every day, I
Speaker 1: would understand. Or if you were like a dog food
Speaker 1: company or something, and the money it's went up. He's
Speaker 1: been He's not even squatting like it means something to him.
Speaker 1: What is his name really, Bobby Bones? I don't know.
Speaker 1: He won't talk to me other than say no. It's
Speaker 1: like girls they don't talk to you other than say no.
Speaker 1: It's very similar. It's funny. I started out kicked the coverage,
Speaker 1: and then pretty soon I was like, damn, I need
Speaker 1: to buy OutKick right like I need to have OutKick
Speaker 1: dot com in the event that somebody tries to go
Speaker 1: find me at OutKick dot com. And it was like
Speaker 1: a German uh, Like, I don't even know what it
Speaker 1: means in German. I'm probably in trouble for that already.
Speaker 1: But it was some sort of German company. And so
Speaker 1: I tracked him down and I tried to send him
Speaker 1: an email, and I was like, hey, you know, I've
Speaker 1: got this website. I'll kick the coverage in English, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, I have no idea if they can read it,
Speaker 1: and I sent it to him, I don't hear anything.
Speaker 1: And then fortunately for me, that company goes bankrupt and
Speaker 1: uh and the site goes into auction and for like
Speaker 1: five grand or whatever it was, I bought out kick
Speaker 1: dot Com. But I would have probably paid ten right
Speaker 1: if they had just responded to my email just to
Speaker 1: have out kick dot com. I didn't have that opportunity.
Speaker 1: But it is funny, like I'm may be fortunate somewhat
Speaker 1: and that at Clay Travis, nobody else is out there
Speaker 1: that's I'm looking at it. Six followers is protected well.
Speaker 1: And you know what's funny is I bet a bunch
Speaker 1: of his followers are people that are your fans, probably
Speaker 1: because if it's protected, they probably and it's probably cute girls.
Speaker 1: And he's like, oh, I'll let them follow me. Mr
Speaker 1: Bobby Bones. I'm I'm a real treat over there. So uh,
Speaker 1: Mr Bobby Bones. So you, for people out there who
Speaker 1: don't know you do a daily radio show country music
Speaker 1: stations all over the country from like how many hours
Speaker 1: a day are you guys on We're on for five, So, uh,
Speaker 1: we work Central time or so we're on five to
Speaker 1: ten Central, but we gotta be on A five, so
Speaker 1: we could be on a six Eastern. Yeah, so you're
Speaker 1: somewhat familiar, like we've met each other really because we
Speaker 1: initially were doing the Fox Sports radio show like right
Speaker 1: next door to you guys here. And we're also up
Speaker 1: insanely early in the morning, and there's like nobody else
Speaker 1: in Nashville who's up at our hours. The traffic is
Speaker 1: not bad whenever you have to drive in a four
Speaker 1: yet that's the only benefit. And I go to bed
Speaker 1: at eight every night, try eight thirty unless I'm tolding
Speaker 1: the way you do that because I see your Twitter
Speaker 1: feed and you're regularly tweeting after that. My goal I
Speaker 1: discipline myself, at least by setting goals, is to be
Speaker 1: in bed by eight if I'm here in the Central
Speaker 1: time zone. Yeah, and how often do you do that?
Speaker 1: Three nights a week? That's pretty good? Yeah. Do you
Speaker 1: actually fall asleep quickly or you like, Yeah, I watched
Speaker 1: The Office probably four or five episodes a night. You
Speaker 1: just hop on Netflix and is it the greatest most
Speaker 1: funny television show of all time? And I can't understand
Speaker 1: why I can keep watching it over and over. I
Speaker 1: can't understand why I continue to be moved by the
Speaker 1: same thing. I was watching the episode last night where
Speaker 1: Jim and Pam get married. Yeah, I cried. I've seen
Speaker 1: it think thirteen times, like I I can quote it
Speaker 1: all back, yet I still got emotional by it. But
Speaker 1: and I wake up with three fifteen every morning, Um,
Speaker 1: just naturally, Nope, No, I hate waking up the morning.
Speaker 1: I'm not a morning per eight mornings to which is
Speaker 1: ironic that we both do morning radio. Like but in
Speaker 1: your ideal life, you would be a night person like
Speaker 1: you for most of your life, where you like I
Speaker 1: wake up at eleven probably yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be it for me. But you wake up
Speaker 1: early in the morning unless I'm touring, which is my schedule.
Speaker 1: Flip flop. So I'll do wake up at three every
Speaker 1: morning until Saturday, you know, Saturday and Sunday. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I'm on the road, or if I'm out in California,
Speaker 1: if I'm doing television and I have to wake up
Speaker 1: at one in the morning, that's brutal. We're gonna get
Speaker 1: into that in a little bit. But so I like
Speaker 1: to start on these shows with like where you grew up?
Speaker 1: And I know where you grew up. I know a
Speaker 1: lot about your history because I read your first book.
Speaker 1: I haven't read the second book yet, but I think
Speaker 1: it's called Bare Bones. Uh. And it's a fabulous book.
Speaker 1: I mean, really really good. I I read it texted
Speaker 1: you after I finished it, and I was like, dude,
Speaker 1: this book is legitimately really really good. So I know
Speaker 1: a lot of your background, so I can ask you
Speaker 1: leading questions here. You grew up in small town Arkansas.
Speaker 1: For people who don't know what your background was, like,
Speaker 1: how would you describe it? Well, I thought it was
Speaker 1: pretty normal when you're surrounded by other people that are
Speaker 1: also living in poverty. Yeah, you know, I never thought
Speaker 1: a rural rural liked seventy two people in the town.
Speaker 1: There's a sawmill that's been closed down. Um this The
Speaker 1: town is still very segregated. There's a railroad track that
Speaker 1: runs down the middle, and there's the white quarters in
Speaker 1: the black quarters still today, which is wild. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's not that many people in either the white
Speaker 1: or the black quarters. And you know there's one store
Speaker 1: now which is like like we used to go to town.
Speaker 1: When you got town, you go to Walmart and you
Speaker 1: would go and tell everybody near you, this sound like
Speaker 1: little house in the prairie. Now I's like, get older,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's just nutty. But you go, hey, we're
Speaker 1: going to Walmart. And that was twenty minutes away into
Speaker 1: Hot Springs, and that was a big deal. I get
Speaker 1: to go to Walmart. It was a big deal because
Speaker 1: you went about once a week and you get to
Speaker 1: walk through and it's like there's all this stuff to
Speaker 1: see you, right, I mean like it's a like for
Speaker 1: people out there who are regularly surrounded by stores and
Speaker 1: everything else, Like it's I feel like we'll get into
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've watched all the Stranger Things yet,
Speaker 1: but I feel like, uh, you know, it's it's crazy
Speaker 1: to me, was watching Stranger Things set in I think
Speaker 1: this most recent version. They're my producer Jason Martin over
Speaker 1: there saying they're closer to World War two almost than
Speaker 1: they are to present day. I saw your tweet about that.
Speaker 1: That blow your mind too. Like when you sit around,
Speaker 1: you're like, holy cow, Like it's it's crazy that we're
Speaker 1: it's almost equidistant between the two and I think for me,
Speaker 1: my all might happened in the nineties and now it
Speaker 1: feels like we're just getting so old. We're getting so old.
Speaker 1: My coast and I needed both talks about fourhead today
Speaker 1: that we are. We had one traffic No, we had
Speaker 1: no traffic lights when you were growing up. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we only got a cell phone tower a year ago,
Speaker 1: so you could still like it was like you're driving
Speaker 1: back in time when you go back to your years ago.
Speaker 1: You had no cell service when you went into my hometown. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's a pretty poor town. We once the saw
Speaker 1: mills shut down, it kind of all went south. Yes,
Speaker 1: So but again I grew up in the middle of that,
Speaker 1: and I really didn't know until I started to get
Speaker 1: older to go, wow, I'm a food stamp kid. Not
Speaker 1: everybody in the world's a food stamp kid. Or you know,
Speaker 1: we were on welfare. We did um. You know you
Speaker 1: had to wait for food on Sunday's uh if when
Speaker 1: the church was passing it out. That was normal until
Speaker 1: I realized later on it really wasn't that normal. Because
Speaker 1: you're your kid, you think whatever surround you was perfectly normal.
Speaker 1: That's what you see is what you know, you really aren't.
Speaker 1: And and again our education was not good, so it
Speaker 1: wasn't like, you know, we had teachers coming in to
Speaker 1: teach us about the culture of France, you know that
Speaker 1: we didn't learn about all these uh nutty places or
Speaker 1: big cities like Little Rock. Uh. So it was fine.
Speaker 1: It was actually a pretty good childhood as far as
Speaker 1: where I grew up. Now, my mom was a drug addict,
Speaker 1: and so we really didn't have a relationship. She ended
Speaker 1: up dying in her forties. Yeah, And and she was
Speaker 1: champion when she was fifteen, right right in fifteen sixteen,
Speaker 1: so she had a struggle, you know, and she had
Speaker 1: a top of My dad left when I was six
Speaker 1: years old. Um, so I went into the hospital. I
Speaker 1: fell off a house and kind of ruptured some of
Speaker 1: my organs inside, and when I went to the hospital,
Speaker 1: he pieced out. So I never saw him again until
Speaker 1: like two years ago when I chased him down. Um.
Speaker 1: Which is the first part of the first chapter of
Speaker 1: my second book where I actually tell that story. So
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't grow up really with strong parental units.
Speaker 1: My grandmother stepped in and adopt me for a while.
Speaker 1: My mom disappeared. My grandmother stepped in and became a
Speaker 1: legal guardian for years. UM. So it was a lot
Speaker 1: of bouncing back and forth, um, moving from places, getting evicted.
Speaker 1: But again I say that, and you know, I'm grateful
Speaker 1: for all of my misstepts, which is what this podcast
Speaker 1: is about, you know, the losses. I'm so grateful and
Speaker 1: I have some big ones to share with you, but
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful for all of that because like, I'm tough,
Speaker 1: I'm resilient, and like there's nothing that I feel now
Speaker 1: that I can't take on and eventually like nothing that
Speaker 1: I can't take on to win. So, uh, you said
Speaker 1: you you your mom, you had shed drug issues, your dad,
Speaker 1: you had limited relationship with what was and he was
Speaker 1: living minutes away for a lot a lot of it.
Speaker 1: Still nothing never saw So I'm once in a store
Speaker 1: and that was it. I remember read that's in the book, right,
Speaker 1: the first book. I haven't read the second book yet.
Speaker 1: So what was your grandmother like? She was great, She
Speaker 1: had a bunch of kids. Her husband had died while
Speaker 1: they were young married, so she raised five kids on
Speaker 1: her own. Basically she was for years what I thought
Speaker 1: a mom should be, very loving. Um, just they're at present,
Speaker 1: which is the biggest thing that you can be with
Speaker 1: someone is just especially a kid. Yeah, so she was present,
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, as I get older and
Speaker 1: look back, you know, she is really probably the biggest
Speaker 1: influence on my early life. So you don't have a
Speaker 1: strong mother presence, you don't have a strong father presence.
Speaker 1: But in your book, I know, uh, television was big
Speaker 1: for you, Like you would watch a lot of difference,
Speaker 1: So for like, how did you spend your time? Like, well,
Speaker 1: I with TV was such an important part of my
Speaker 1: life because I never had a bedroom that we were
Speaker 1: in a tiny house and I slept on a couch
Speaker 1: and my closet was underneath the couch. So the four
Speaker 1: T shirts I had, her pair of pants I had,
Speaker 1: we just put on the couch and everything was always
Speaker 1: in the living room. So the TV always stayed on,
Speaker 1: and so why I always watched television. So for me,
Speaker 1: I think that's how I kind of fell into David
Speaker 1: Letterman being the guy that I looked to as really
Speaker 1: my first and you know, one of my only mentors,
Speaker 1: even though I never met him. There wasn't like I
Speaker 1: had the resources to reach out to anyone that wanted
Speaker 1: to do what I did. No one did any sort
Speaker 1: of communications or comedy where I came from. And I
Speaker 1: saw David Letterman, who was a weird looking guy, had
Speaker 1: a weird looking delivery, and I thought, Man, if he
Speaker 1: can do it, then why can't I. And I just
Speaker 1: kind of studied and emulated that through my early years.
Speaker 1: And you also said, I remember reading in your book
Speaker 1: that you had, like there's a set of encyclopedias, and
Speaker 1: you would just read, you know, like any because you
Speaker 1: were curious and still are an intellectually curious guy, right, so,
Speaker 1: and you would just read straight through and learn. Well,
Speaker 1: what I would do is I would mow yards and
Speaker 1: rape leaves and save money. And the two things that
Speaker 1: I bought were school clothes and encyclopedias. It's amazing and
Speaker 1: at the at the food for less. But this is
Speaker 1: way before the Internet people, because there's people listening to
Speaker 1: us right now, they're like, what is an encyclopedia? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it used to It used to be a huge
Speaker 1: deal to be hava Wikipedia on paper. It used to
Speaker 1: be a huge deal to have access to Encyclopedia's right,
Speaker 1: you would go to the library and for me, you
Speaker 1: had to do a school assignment or something you look
Speaker 1: it up and information right, and I would go and
Speaker 1: I would buy encyclopedias with the money that I had saved.
Speaker 1: And I would go and I remember on the front
Speaker 1: side of the grocery store they had encyclopedias. You could
Speaker 1: buy them one at a time, and I'd freaking save
Speaker 1: up and for you know, seven dollars, I would buy eight,
Speaker 1: you know, a L and then I would go and
Speaker 1: get a L to a So how many did you
Speaker 1: end up buying? The well, the whole set, which my
Speaker 1: uh step grandfather later in life ended up building a
Speaker 1: bookcase for them. So they were probably you know, forty
Speaker 1: or so you read those? I probably read them all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at that point I probably read through all of them
Speaker 1: because it was really the only books that I owned,
Speaker 1: where the encyclopedias, and also bought them with my own
Speaker 1: money and anything I bought my own money that I
Speaker 1: was so proud of. Why do you think you were
Speaker 1: so attracted to the idea of the encyclopedia? Have you
Speaker 1: psychoanalyzed yourself? Um? I think that that was my road out,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if I gave you a larger world.
Speaker 1: I just thought if I could educate myself, I could
Speaker 1: go to the places that we're seeing on TV. Like
Speaker 1: I just I knew if I needed to make it,
Speaker 1: I had to get to the places I could see
Speaker 1: on TV, if that was New York or Los Angeles
Speaker 1: or wherever. You know. I thought, for me to do
Speaker 1: what I want to do, I need to be where
Speaker 1: the people are they're doing what I want to do,
Speaker 1: and the way to do that is to read books.
Speaker 1: And I knew I wouldn't be able to afford college.
Speaker 1: So how do you get to college? You get good
Speaker 1: grades that you get great, good grade you learned. So
Speaker 1: I think it was just me even going through the
Speaker 1: steps backward at seven years old. So how were your schools?
Speaker 1: Meaning the education wasn't the best because there were small schools.
Speaker 1: Are the teachers? Again, you can ask about any school
Speaker 1: and not great and me I went to a poor
Speaker 1: public school. Um, I love my teachers looking back, because
Speaker 1: they really did some extra for me because of my
Speaker 1: socio economic situation, Like some of them really sucked our
Speaker 1: next out for me at the times, helped. So in
Speaker 1: that way, they were great. But my education wasn't good
Speaker 1: unless I got got a good education from myself, which
Speaker 1: comes back to reading the encyclopedia, which is reading and studying.
Speaker 1: I'm Clay Travis is the Winds and Lost his podcast
Speaker 1: We're talking with Bobby Bones. Bobby Bones show uh at
Speaker 1: Mr Bobby Bones on Twitter because he can't get the
Speaker 1: guy who has the Bobby Bones Twitter handle too to
Speaker 1: allow him to get it. So, um, you also had
Speaker 1: some crazy injuries as you were growing up. You mentioned
Speaker 1: that when you were six years old you had a
Speaker 1: significant injury and that was the last time you saw
Speaker 1: your dad also had an eye injury. What happened, like
Speaker 1: growing up, you just had some wacky things happened to you,
Speaker 1: Like talking to doctors now because there's a a lot more,
Speaker 1: a lot more is known medically now about what we
Speaker 1: went through then. Yeah, and so in my brain, which
Speaker 1: I thought was an injury, but my right eye doesn't work.
Speaker 1: It gets eight percent vision, almost no vision of your
Speaker 1: entire life, my entire life. What they think happened now
Speaker 1: is that when I was, you know, inside of my mom,
Speaker 1: she was doing drugs basically, and so a lot of
Speaker 1: me didn't develop. So my eye just didn't develop. It's
Speaker 1: in my brain. They can't fix my eye, so it's
Speaker 1: it's and they gave you a patch, right, they thought
Speaker 1: they got the crap beat out, and it was terrible,
Speaker 1: like you were a pirate, like a kid, they they
Speaker 1: and then you just said the patch you're not gonna work.
Speaker 1: If you had warned the patch, which your eyesight have
Speaker 1: helped her, probably not. It was like a defeated purpose anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I was doing what they thought I should do.
Speaker 1: Then can they do anything? Now? Nothing. I've been to
Speaker 1: so many specialists and they go, if you get stem cell,
Speaker 1: you know, we probably do something, But no laser because
Speaker 1: it's not in my eye, it's in my brain, so
Speaker 1: in my brain it doesn't work down to my right eye.
Speaker 1: So that happened. I lived with that. But again, it
Speaker 1: would be like if I had three and you had
Speaker 1: two eyes, and I'm like, I can't believe you don't
Speaker 1: have a third eye. I don't know what it's like
Speaker 1: to have both working eyes. And I was still a
Speaker 1: pretty good ball player two with one eye. So you
Speaker 1: just you learn. And uh, for me, I also fell
Speaker 1: off a house and ruptured a bunch of my organs
Speaker 1: and have my spleen taken out. So but again, you know,
Speaker 1: I I I was so young, it was just kind
Speaker 1: of what I was handed and it was kind of normal.
Speaker 1: It was normal for me. Be sure to catch live
Speaker 1: editions about Kicked the coverage with Clay Travis week days
Speaker 1: at six am Eastern, three am Pacific. When you are
Speaker 1: growing up, like I've read, also you study mentioned sports
Speaker 1: like you idolized your high school football coach. I think
Speaker 1: it was right. I depended on him. Yeah, for a
Speaker 1: lot of things. I think he has instilled a lot
Speaker 1: of the discipline that I still have in me today.
Speaker 1: His name was coach big Gandoff, and with him it
Speaker 1: was they're just there aren't excuses, Like they don't exist
Speaker 1: because they do nothing for you. And if you're working,
Speaker 1: if anything setting you back, you shouldn't let it exist, Like,
Speaker 1: don't let anything pull you back. So it was I
Speaker 1: don't live with excuses ever, even if they're real, legitimate excuses,
Speaker 1: they just don't count with me and my show, with
Speaker 1: my environment, like what can we do to move forward
Speaker 1: instead of talking about why we moved back? So he
Speaker 1: put that mindset into me early, and I think I'm
Speaker 1: a pretty hard worker because I have a lot of
Speaker 1: the values he had still to me too. You mentioned
Speaker 1: watching David Letterman, you also were big sports fan. What
Speaker 1: do you remember growing up in Arkansas? I know Razorbacks.
Speaker 1: We we recently went to go watch the World Series
Speaker 1: game in Omaha. I know you're a huge Arkansas Razorbacks fan.
Speaker 1: What did they mean to you? And how much sports
Speaker 1: did you watch growing up? It was all that we
Speaker 1: have in Arkansas is all that we had, still all
Speaker 1: that we have. Um So, Arkansas is a big deal
Speaker 1: to anyone that comes from the state because you know,
Speaker 1: in Arkansas we have no professional teams that's are you know,
Speaker 1: those are our Dallas Cowboys. So I watched everything. Umt
Speaker 1: of those guys Razorback basketball years were I mean, I
Speaker 1: was young, so I don't think I really appreciated it
Speaker 1: how I should because I was like, oh, this is awesome.
Speaker 1: Will be there every year, you know, we go to
Speaker 1: the championship, we we win the championship, It's like Nolan
Speaker 1: Richardson's gonna be here forever. Forty mints of hell is
Speaker 1: always gonna work. So but then we hit a dry
Speaker 1: spell of almost forever. Uh So I listen, I'm die
Speaker 1: hard everything Arkansas and basketball. And we had a couple
Speaker 1: of good runs in football under Houston Nut. You know,
Speaker 1: the big her with us was Tennessee and start bumbling
Speaker 1: the full its one of the beds, one of the
Speaker 1: last good memory Tennessee football fans have. Trust me, I
Speaker 1: know I am one. And then ninety nine we beat
Speaker 1: you guys, but it didn't matter, like but then it
Speaker 1: mattered to Tennessee because they might have been in the
Speaker 1: title game if they had no loss. That Petrino got
Speaker 1: us close. Yeah, we were a game away. We were
Speaker 1: playing L s U undefeated. Do you remember where you
Speaker 1: were when you heard the Bobby Petrino, you know, like
Speaker 1: wrecked his motory motorcycle scandal story. No, because it wasn't
Speaker 1: that much of a shot to me. Too many friends
Speaker 1: up there that told you that a little bit of happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I was like, I don't remember where I was
Speaker 1: because I was like, well, something was gonna happen. This
Speaker 1: is what they're saying. Would you have kept Petrino? Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, just because I just want to win, man.
Speaker 1: I think that's how most Arkansas fans are, right. If
Speaker 1: you're not doing anything illegal, you're not hurting kids, do
Speaker 1: not hurt animals. Just win me games. Yeah, it didn't
Speaker 1: affect me to win games. It's always like to ask, um,
Speaker 1: what would Nick Saban have to do for Alabama to
Speaker 1: fire him? And people are like, well, you have to
Speaker 1: commit murder. And I'm like, actually, if it wasn't on tape,
Speaker 1: Alabama fans would be like, you know, this is just
Speaker 1: Auburn fans trying to frame the probably like it was
Speaker 1: totally made up, right, Like we live in this tribal era,
Speaker 1: and I'm kind of comfortable with it in some ways,
Speaker 1: be because I've made my living writing and talking initially
Speaker 1: about SEC football and then it's kind of it's expanded
Speaker 1: in the sports universe before that, but it's the most
Speaker 1: tribal universe there is. So people are like, oh, Republicans
Speaker 1: only believe Republicans now and Democrats only believe are Democrats now?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, you ever seen Alabama Aubert? You ever
Speaker 1: watched any SEC football rivalry, if you've done sports in
Speaker 1: the South, That's just what SEC football has always been like, right,
Speaker 1: Like there's always conspiracy theories, there's always arguments like you'll
Speaker 1: justify anything that your side does the other side. You know,
Speaker 1: it's total heathens, right, And so I hope we get
Speaker 1: out of that. In the political realm, at some point
Speaker 1: because to me, it's basically just like the sec football
Speaker 1: ization of the country right now. Will Um. But it
Speaker 1: is wild to to follow along. So you go to
Speaker 1: uh high school. You said you kind of have the
Speaker 1: sense that you needed to have good grades in order
Speaker 1: to get into college. Were you a good high school student? Oh,
Speaker 1: that was great, I ad one being typing um. School
Speaker 1: wasn't that hard. So it's one of those things too
Speaker 1: where school is not that hard. How much how are
Speaker 1: you gonna work out? So I did what I did
Speaker 1: in school, but I also had to work full time
Speaker 1: all the time and pay car payment and work maintenance
Speaker 1: at a golf course, which was very early. I worked
Speaker 1: at a marina, I worked a hobby lobby. I waited tables.
Speaker 1: I mean I started a dishwasher. I went to dis
Speaker 1: diswasher bus boy waited tables. What place did you wait
Speaker 1: tables at. It's called the Disoto Club in the Hossprings
Speaker 1: village and it was at tuxedo every night. So you
Speaker 1: talked about how you weren't cognizant of, you know, like
Speaker 1: not having very much at that point, I was, yeah,
Speaker 1: you could, like there's a lot of rich people who
Speaker 1: were coming in and I'm having to wait tables on them.
Speaker 1: How did they treat you? I was really good at
Speaker 1: being a waiter, so you treated me already well. And
Speaker 1: also I was in a tuxedo. He now somebody in tuxedo.
Speaker 1: You gave me fancier than a guy in a tuxedo.
Speaker 1: Did you ever spill anybody or have any disaster? I
Speaker 1: had one in particular. I think it was like a
Speaker 1: six top and I had it all put on one tray,
Speaker 1: which wasn't aggressive move. Maybe in retrospect, yeah, probably wasn't
Speaker 1: the best idea. I've done it before. But I walked
Speaker 1: and I dropped the entire tray on the table. Want
Speaker 1: a guy on the dad of the group, and so
Speaker 1: it was a dad and his kids. It was a dad,
Speaker 1: his two kids, his wife, and then probably one of
Speaker 1: their set of parents. And so I dropped the whole
Speaker 1: tray on him. And this sits with me still today
Speaker 1: as I'm like, oh my god, I'm wiping him down
Speaker 1: and I'm the whole the whole food, it's everything, everything,
Speaker 1: it's everything on the table on him. And I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm done, and I continued to wait on and I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm so sorry. And he left, and he
Speaker 1: left me maybe the biggest tip that I've ever received.
Speaker 1: And he just a note that said, hey man, this
Speaker 1: happens to all of us, Like stay in it, and
Speaker 1: like I remember that you were held at seventeen years old.
Speaker 1: And I mean for people out there listening, it would
Speaker 1: have been easy for that guy to go off on
Speaker 1: you getting pissed. Wanted a free meal, none of it.
Speaker 1: He sat. I think they gave him a T shirt,
Speaker 1: chain shirts. He ate his meal, um, and then left
Speaker 1: a note that was like, hey man, this happens to
Speaker 1: all of us. It's not about out you know, if
Speaker 1: it happens, It's about when it happens and how you
Speaker 1: react to it. And I remember that exact feeling, going huh,
Speaker 1: all right. I probably remember this for a long time,
Speaker 1: and I still do my thirties now, and I can
Speaker 1: still remember looking at the note. So you have all
Speaker 1: these jobs and you're saving up money to try to
Speaker 1: think like I couldn't have money. I was broke, dude,
Speaker 1: So I was buying insurance and car payment and study.
Speaker 1: What I did pay for though, was um a CT
Speaker 1: prep course because I knew is as quickly as I
Speaker 1: could retain information as good. I was it just remembering
Speaker 1: things for these tests, and I was. I was good.
Speaker 1: I was captain of the quiz Bowl team in seventh grade,
Speaker 1: of the twelfth grade quiz Bowl team. Yeah, like I was.
Speaker 1: I was in it and I was quick. But still
Speaker 1: I knew that there was a bit of a formula
Speaker 1: to these tests. So I I saved up and I
Speaker 1: went to this a CT prep class at Fountain Like
Speaker 1: High School and I went every day for two weeks
Speaker 1: and so, um, this is probably eight or ninth grade
Speaker 1: when I did this. But I took the test in
Speaker 1: eighth grade and I I gotta score high fin a
Speaker 1: grade to have a full scholarship anywhere. Um, But I
Speaker 1: knew just a scholarship was gonna do it for me.
Speaker 1: I needed to get room, I need to get food
Speaker 1: and get books. And so by the time I finished
Speaker 1: and twelfth grade, I had it all. I had taken
Speaker 1: the test five times and it crushed it. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: then you go to college, layer, I went, well, I
Speaker 1: was going to Arkansas, UM, and I needed a job,
Speaker 1: And about two weeks before I was to move, the
Speaker 1: radio station in my hometown hired me. Had you been
Speaker 1: a radio fan? Yeah? I used to call the radio
Speaker 1: station at thirteen years old and begged to be put
Speaker 1: on the air to talk about any and everything. I
Speaker 1: just to introduced songs. My name was Bobby the Barbarian,
Speaker 1: and I would watch wrestling and the Barbarians, like one
Speaker 1: of my favorite wrestlers was Bobby the Stinger. So you
Speaker 1: would listen. In addition to watching television all the time,
Speaker 1: you listen to a lot of radio. Yeah. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to be the person. It wasn't ever about the music.
Speaker 1: It still isn't really about the music to me. Um,
Speaker 1: But I wanted to be the guy that if someone
Speaker 1: was sitting in their car, so I could be like,
Speaker 1: oh man, this isn't so terrible. Like I wanted to entertain.
Speaker 1: And I had started, you know, watching a lot of
Speaker 1: stand up comedians at the library too. So I'd go
Speaker 1: to the library and do the Old Machine and much
Speaker 1: old at Sullivan Tapes and Jack bar Um. So you know,
Speaker 1: I was doing a lot of that, and I would
Speaker 1: call the radio station every night during the countdown and
Speaker 1: try to get on. I just knew I wanted to
Speaker 1: be on in all these different ways, and so um,
Speaker 1: I got a job at the radio station right before
Speaker 1: I was to move off to college, and so I
Speaker 1: switched really quickly to a liberal arts school in South Arkansas,
Speaker 1: Henderson State University, which was about an hour and a
Speaker 1: half away, So I would drive that hour and a
Speaker 1: half every day. What do you think at the time,
Speaker 1: I want to work in radio? Was that your outlet
Speaker 1: to get out of the city, Like, how tough was
Speaker 1: that You're an Arkansas fan to not go to Faytable.
Speaker 1: I loved radio, and I love the idea of the
Speaker 1: rest of my life more than I loved anything else.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't that tough. It sucked because I always
Speaker 1: wanted to go to Arkansas, However, more so I wanted
Speaker 1: to be an entertainment so it really wasn't a hard
Speaker 1: decision for me. So I packed up with to Henderson
Speaker 1: State and I started in radio. And it was never
Speaker 1: about just being in radio. It was just that's just
Speaker 1: the quickest thing I could do. They weren't hiring me
Speaker 1: to be on television when I was seventeen years old,
Speaker 1: so I could get into radio. Later on. I know,
Speaker 1: I enterned a TV stations while doing radio and realized
Speaker 1: this blows, you know, doing TV news. I had no
Speaker 1: interest in that. So radio was the quickest thing, and
Speaker 1: it was also I got the most responsibility the earliest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you just show up. So how many hours are you
Speaker 1: working in radio while you're going to school? I was
Speaker 1: taking in school about nineteen to twenty hours a semester,
Speaker 1: and I was working full time every night an hour
Speaker 1: and a half away. So I was probably working forty
Speaker 1: five hours a week at the radio station. It was
Speaker 1: I had no life. It's not like I have a
Speaker 1: life now. I know you're listening to fancy Bobby's probably
Speaker 1: doing all the funt listen. I got no live now.
Speaker 1: I work a lot. I work a lot. You work
Speaker 1: all the time. It's inside of me. I'm the same person,
Speaker 1: you know. I think the guts remained the same, and
Speaker 1: I've been wired a certain way to always feel like
Speaker 1: I'm in survival mode. I don't have to survive anymore.
Speaker 1: Like things are going pretty good for me right now,
Speaker 1: but I still feel like every morning I wake up,
Speaker 1: I still feel that way, like I'm just surviving. And
Speaker 1: so how long to take you to graduate the first time?
Speaker 1: Like two and a half years. So you're graduating, you
Speaker 1: got the job, and you're working towards you think working
Speaker 1: full time at the radio station. What's your first job
Speaker 1: when you graduate? Well, I was working full time at
Speaker 1: the radio station. I was, you know, eighteen years old.
Speaker 1: I was doing nights full time. Um, and I had
Speaker 1: taken some college classes in high school and then I
Speaker 1: was just crushing as much as I could when every
Speaker 1: times in college. Yeah, but then I had signed a
Speaker 1: new contract at my station, so I got another degree. Uh,
Speaker 1: finished there, and I moved to Little Rock, which was
Speaker 1: about another hour away, and I worked at Q one
Speaker 1: hundred doing nights, and I was there for about six months.
Speaker 1: How did you get the job at Q one begged?
Speaker 1: It was just like, hey, guys, like, I'm down in
Speaker 1: Hot Springs. I don't know. I know, you don't know
Speaker 1: who I am. But my dream was to live in
Speaker 1: a big city. And for me, I was like, are
Speaker 1: you kidding? I get to go where they have tall
Speaker 1: buildings and freaking ned Permy, the the Channel seven weather man.
Speaker 1: That was the coolest thing to me. So I go
Speaker 1: to Little Rock for about six months, and that's really
Speaker 1: where I had my first major career set back and
Speaker 1: got into a lot of trouble. And and that would happen,
Speaker 1: you know, four or five months into my stay in
Speaker 1: Little Rock. Okay, So, uh, you go to Little Rock,
Speaker 1: what do you do to get to get you any trouble? Well,
Speaker 1: we were up against another top four radio station, and
Speaker 1: it's weird that people now just consider me the country guy,
Speaker 1: which I am now and I love it and I've
Speaker 1: chosen to come over in this format. But for most
Speaker 1: of my career I did hip hop and pop because
Speaker 1: that was just the first place that would accept me.
Speaker 1: And I also knew that people didn't care about what
Speaker 1: kind of music like there there's not such thing as
Speaker 1: a format in people's minds. So I was like, just
Speaker 1: put me somewhere, you know, I'll be good wherever you
Speaker 1: put me. So I go over and I'm doing a
Speaker 1: pop station against another pop station and they can rock
Speaker 1: Arkansas radio battles, which if you which is which is
Speaker 1: the big deal? Then? Man, for people out there who
Speaker 1: are listening, they may think, oh, this is crazy. But
Speaker 1: if you're in radio like radio rating competitions is a
Speaker 1: big deal in those markets rights where advertising dollars come in.
Speaker 1: It's what whether or not you're a success, Like you
Speaker 1: get defined by the ratings book no matter what city
Speaker 1: you're in based on who you're competing against right now
Speaker 1: you live and die by can I get a four
Speaker 1: and a half share in Irock? And so we were
Speaker 1: up against station called Alice, one of seven point seven,
Speaker 1: and my stunt guy, my guy that I would send
Speaker 1: out to the streets, would go and they put stickers
Speaker 1: all over our van. Was like, that's not cool. So
Speaker 1: I called my guy back and I said, Hey, we're
Speaker 1: gonna go over. We're gonna burn the place down. And
Speaker 1: he's like, what do you mean. I said, well, just
Speaker 1: hang out because after our show we're going over that
Speaker 1: to that building. And so we got off the air. Yeah,
Speaker 1: against the other night. So I got off there at
Speaker 1: ten PM, and I knew that night show didn't get
Speaker 1: off the year until eleven. So they had a brand
Speaker 1: new country station they had turned on. So I dressed out.
Speaker 1: My son got like a cowboy, and I drove him
Speaker 1: over and I said, hey, you're to go up to
Speaker 1: the beat on the window and say hey, you're new
Speaker 1: to the country station. He dressed like a cowboy. How
Speaker 1: are they gonna say no and tell them that you
Speaker 1: need to be letting the year? By the way, this
Speaker 1: would have been Wright two thousand two, Justin Guarini and
Speaker 1: Kelly Clarkson were fighting it out in the finale of
Speaker 1: American Idols right around that time. So he goes up
Speaker 1: to the to the window and beats on it and
Speaker 1: they they I see him talking outside my car, and
Speaker 1: he goes, okay. They let him in, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh boy, it's about to be on. And so what
Speaker 1: I had done is I had trained him in my
Speaker 1: studio and how to run aboard based on the pictures
Speaker 1: of their control room that was up on their website.
Speaker 1: So we looked at all the pictures of the st
Speaker 1: and this is how you turn the phone up. I
Speaker 1: gave him a class and how to run their board
Speaker 1: because they had posted basically the blueprints of their radio
Speaker 1: station on their website. So he gets into the building
Speaker 1: and he goes and he stands on a toilet for
Speaker 1: uh probably forty five minutes or the hours, so no
Speaker 1: one sees extra feet in the building. He hangs out
Speaker 1: and he goes, all right, everybody's gone. I watched the
Speaker 1: night guy that whose team would come out, hits me,
Speaker 1: hey man man, all right, cool. So the night guy
Speaker 1: drives out. There's only no one left in the building.
Speaker 1: So I showed him. He goes, I'm going in. He
Speaker 1: walks into the studio and they're playing like I remember
Speaker 1: the song that was on. It was a freaking Celine
Speaker 1: Dion song. And he calls me from the cell phone
Speaker 1: from the actually he calls my cell phone from the
Speaker 1: inside of the studio and I see the alice one
Speaker 1: of seven point seven request line pop up my phone.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my god, we're in and we're so
Speaker 1: far in. I'm about to be fired from all the
Speaker 1: radio or be the king dangling of radio. One of
Speaker 1: the two is about to have it. And so I
Speaker 1: picked up the phone like hey, he goes, a man,
Speaker 1: it's Gill again. I'm in. And so I showed him
Speaker 1: how to turn the phone up over the air and
Speaker 1: how to pull the music down halfway, because if you
Speaker 1: pull it out all the way, an engineering alarm will
Speaker 1: go off and they'll go we're off the air, and
Speaker 1: the engineers will come up. So he turns it down
Speaker 1: about halfway and he turns my phone up and he goes,
Speaker 1: all right, you're on. And I waited for him to
Speaker 1: walk out of the building and get in the car
Speaker 1: locked the studio door on the way out, so no
Speaker 1: one could get in, and we drove around little broadcasting
Speaker 1: on their station for probably thirty minutes, and I remember
Speaker 1: grabbing the phone and going, all right, you want to
Speaker 1: mess with me, this is Bobby Bones. This is the
Speaker 1: last time you will ever mess with me. And we
Speaker 1: went for a while until someone unlocked the studio got
Speaker 1: in and shut it down, and we thought we were
Speaker 1: then we were gonna be legends in radio, and we went.
Speaker 1: I remember going to a waffle house that night. We're
Speaker 1: having a little celebration like f them. And I got
Speaker 1: a call at eight o'clock the next morning and it
Speaker 1: was my general managers. I need to see you immediately.
Speaker 1: No one calls the night guy at eight in the
Speaker 1: morning to go to bed until three. So I get
Speaker 1: up and I walked into the room and he says, okay,
Speaker 1: And I remember the sales office was right by all
Speaker 1: of excuse yeah, the sales officer was next to the
Speaker 1: general manager office. And he calls me into his room
Speaker 1: and he leaves the door open. He's screaming at me,
Speaker 1: spits coming out of his mouth, and he's like, that's
Speaker 1: the dumbest thing. That's an FCC violation. Uh, I should
Speaker 1: fire you, right now, and I remember thinking, God, everyone
Speaker 1: can hear this because he left the door open, and
Speaker 1: he says shut the door, and I'm like, holy cow,
Speaker 1: if he's gonna do this with the door open, what's
Speaker 1: he about to do to me with the door shut?
Speaker 1: And he shuts the door and he takes his right
Speaker 1: arm and sticks out and goes, dude, that was awesome.
Speaker 1: He goes, if you ever do that again, I have
Speaker 1: to fire you. But I've never heard of anything like
Speaker 1: that before. So all the trade magazines and radio start
Speaker 1: to write about this twenty two year old kid who
Speaker 1: had done guerilla radio. Austin, Texas calls me and goes,
Speaker 1: you should come do nights here. And so I'd never
Speaker 1: been to Austin, packed out my car and six months
Speaker 1: after he started, six months and packed up my car
Speaker 1: and just drove down. So, uh, where'd you come up
Speaker 1: with the idea? I don't think. It wasn't anything. When
Speaker 1: I sat down in went beautiful mind, it was just
Speaker 1: how can I get back at him? Um? When you
Speaker 1: when you got the call of eight, did you think
Speaker 1: you were getting fired? I was just no, I was like,
Speaker 1: what is that? I didn't I didn't know what was
Speaker 1: going on. It was so early in the morning. No,
Speaker 1: I actually thought that no one knew. I guess I
Speaker 1: thought that somewhere there's a tape. Yeah, I haven't heard it,
Speaker 1: but there are a couple of tapes I'm searching for.
Speaker 1: We used to prank call in college one or three
Speaker 1: seven the Buzzs the sports station, and there was like
Speaker 1: seven of us and we would get back to back
Speaker 1: to back. Our goal was to go four deep and
Speaker 1: they shut down. They shut down taking calls for like
Speaker 1: a week one time, which Frank like, what would your
Speaker 1: when you call it sports stalk radio. Well, we'd see
Speaker 1: howny times. We can say penis sometimes. So we would
Speaker 1: get on and it'd be like, hey, I just want
Speaker 1: to say, uh man, can you believe I can't believe
Speaker 1: Danny Tardable isn't regarded it's one of the p and
Speaker 1: so we'd really string them along and finally once they
Speaker 1: remember Randy Rainwater, who's still on the air there. I
Speaker 1: think I'm one or three seven the buzz he uh,
Speaker 1: he said, we're not taking calls anymore. The only way
Speaker 1: we'll take your calls if we call you back. And
Speaker 1: one of my buddies who just had all the all
Speaker 1: the nerve in the world. He said, Okay, we need
Speaker 1: your number. We're gonna call you back and make sure
Speaker 1: it's acceptable put you on the air, because I guess
Speaker 1: that they thought if they had your number, it's not
Speaker 1: illegal to prank caller anything. And so my buddys like,
Speaker 1: all right, here's my number, gives him the number. He
Speaker 1: calls him back and they're like, all right, let's go
Speaker 1: to Chris. Chris, what do you want to say, Penis?
Speaker 1: We thought that was the most baller move. He gave
Speaker 1: them their number and still got Penis on the air.
Speaker 1: But there's that tape exists somewhere too. Those are the
Speaker 1: two tapes that that's somewhere inside of my my collection
Speaker 1: of of sound that that I gotta find and I
Speaker 1: don't want to lose. So you Little Rock was the
Speaker 1: big city? What what did Austin feel like? I drove
Speaker 1: down the first day and saw the capital and was like,
Speaker 1: holy crap, this is double the size a little Rock. It.
Speaker 1: I couldn't comprehend. Really, there are a million people to
Speaker 1: live there. It was just like, this is nutty. And
Speaker 1: I moved that there to do nights, and I only
Speaker 1: did nights for six months before almost got fired again.
Speaker 1: We did a bit where I said, Hey, I'm about
Speaker 1: to come on the air and look for backup dancers
Speaker 1: for justin timber Lake, but it's not gonna be real,
Speaker 1: so if you guys can play along with it, that
Speaker 1: be cool. I was just very transparent about what I
Speaker 1: was doing pre but I know that ten minutes later
Speaker 1: a lot of people are gonna be listening that weren't
Speaker 1: listening then, So it really wasn't even that good of
Speaker 1: a bit. But girls lined The whole point was girls,
Speaker 1: girls lined up around the building trying to be in
Speaker 1: this justin Timberlake video, and then we put them all
Speaker 1: up online and we just said and then we got sued.
Speaker 1: I got sued. What was the end result? Um? We
Speaker 1: ended up settling for like a thousand dollars? Yeah? Why
Speaker 1: what was the lawsuit based on that? We put the
Speaker 1: girls picture on the internet without permission? But they were
Speaker 1: lined up thinking they were going to be in a
Speaker 1: video with justin timber Lake where everybody's watching them. The
Speaker 1: whole thing was down. They were down, I was down.
Speaker 1: The whole thing was done. So six did you get
Speaker 1: my trouble for that? I got in trouble of hey,
Speaker 1: if you do anything else again, we have to fire
Speaker 1: you if you get to get a sued like this.
Speaker 1: But right after that, I got an offer to go
Speaker 1: to Seattle and New Nights and I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: I need to go. I don't have a contract here
Speaker 1: in Austin. I love it here, but I just got
Speaker 1: here and they were like, well, what can we do
Speaker 1: to keep you? And I said well, and I was
Speaker 1: twenty two three. I was like, wow, I would love
Speaker 1: to do mornings because I believe just shoot for the
Speaker 1: freaking stars. And I thought they'd come back and go,
Speaker 1: we'll give you more money, but we can't give you mornings.
Speaker 1: But the station was doing so bad they said, okay, sure,
Speaker 1: we'll give you mornings. And they offered me fifty thousand
Speaker 1: allars a year. And I was like, I'm the richest
Speaker 1: human ever in the history of life, because you're thinking
Speaker 1: that I've been in that scenario. When I started practicing law,
Speaker 1: I was making sixty three thousand dollars and I was like,
Speaker 1: this is more than my parents ever made. I was like,
Speaker 1: I do with dollars. I didn't know what to do
Speaker 1: with all my money. I had so much money and
Speaker 1: I had a dirt ball apartment and I paid it.
Speaker 1: It was just life was great, and I was doing
Speaker 1: mornings about about myself. Um and I ended up hiring
Speaker 1: you know people, because I didn't they didn't give any
Speaker 1: money for the show, so I hired a bunch of
Speaker 1: friends and we kind of started out. I was twenty
Speaker 1: three years old doing mornings in Austin, Texas. Fox Sports
Speaker 1: Radio has the best sports talk lineup in the nation.
Speaker 1: Catch all of our shows at Fox sports Radio dot
Speaker 1: com and within the I Heart Radio app. Search f
Speaker 1: s R to listen live talking to Bobby Bones. I'm
Speaker 1: Clay Traviss the Wins and Losses podcast. How how many
Speaker 1: hours they were you on in Austin? Five? I was
Speaker 1: on five to ten, five ten, A lot of music though,
Speaker 1: um so, I was probably playing seven right songs an
Speaker 1: hour then. And I was doing it by myself, and
Speaker 1: they were giving me no support, no money, but they
Speaker 1: weren't supposed to. They never promised me anything. I just
Speaker 1: kind of had to figure it out. Um but but
Speaker 1: I knew that this was my thing. And how long
Speaker 1: how long did you do mornings in Austin? Oh, twelve years?
Speaker 1: And you're and but as As the show grows, you
Speaker 1: add a lot more people and it turns into I mean,
Speaker 1: you have a dominant radio show in Austin, right, Well, yes,
Speaker 1: So what happened was I had been on for a
Speaker 1: couple of years and I found Amy my coast at
Speaker 1: the Culver's just randomly found Lunchbox. He was delivering sandwiches
Speaker 1: at Jason's Delhi. I had no money, so I had
Speaker 1: to go and I would have hired radio people. I
Speaker 1: think I get a lot of credit for coming up
Speaker 1: with this new approach to radi people from outside of
Speaker 1: the world and expense. I just had no money or
Speaker 1: I would have hired radio people. They gave me nothing,
Speaker 1: so Lunchbox don't have a microphone. For the first year
Speaker 1: he worked on the show, and we were on and
Speaker 1: we were struggling for about a year or so until
Speaker 1: Lunchbox got put in jail, which was really here. What
Speaker 1: happened there there was I was watching PBS and this
Speaker 1: guy had panty hose on his head and he was
Speaker 1: going up to ladies like good. It was like a
Speaker 1: black and white movie, and I thought, that's funny. Panty
Speaker 1: Hose over the face are never not funny. If I
Speaker 1: see somebody with an how I laugh, And so I said,
Speaker 1: lunchbox into a store and he went with panty hose
Speaker 1: on his head and they just bought some gum and left.
Speaker 1: That was it. And I was like, let's just see
Speaker 1: how they react. Well how they reacted was the guy
Speaker 1: hit the alarm under the tables. He thought he was
Speaker 1: being robbed, and the cops held him at gunpoint, put
Speaker 1: him on the ground. Um, it's just live on the
Speaker 1: radio that you had him in going to do panty
Speaker 1: hose on it was on the air. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: remember lest I was going, probably not the smartest thing,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, trust me, I'm the radio profession I'm
Speaker 1: making a year. And so he went to jail and
Speaker 1: I remember, I'm calling me from jail. They tried to
Speaker 1: arrest me, but then they went, well we don't have
Speaker 1: anything we get you on. So they all the cops
Speaker 1: showed up at the station. I was suspended for weeks
Speaker 1: with no pay, and never know long. I think in
Speaker 1: the end, like two and a half weeks. How long
Speaker 1: did that seem to you at that time, like two
Speaker 1: and a a half years. And I thought, up there, you
Speaker 1: thought your careers over. I'm done I'm like, this is
Speaker 1: the third time. I'm done, Like, I mean, lives does
Speaker 1: this cat get so? But we came back, and we
Speaker 1: came back. We were number one. We never stopped being
Speaker 1: number one. And you think it was because of that
Speaker 1: the newspaper, the media, like the new the local news.
Speaker 1: Everybody's covering it, right, everyone's covering and every other radio
Speaker 1: show we're like, we told you these guys sucked and
Speaker 1: this like and they were talking about because they thought
Speaker 1: we weren't coming back. And when we came back, everyone
Speaker 1: was dialed in to see one what we'd say to
Speaker 1: what were we doing? What did you say? What was
Speaker 1: the first thing you said when you came back on?
Speaker 1: I came on and they really made me say nothing.
Speaker 1: They made me say nothing because legally, and they charged
Speaker 1: him a terroristic threatening It was the whole thing. He
Speaker 1: couldn't fly for a bit without this was like what
Speaker 1: year two thousand four, I mean he had that's actually
Speaker 1: really making terroristic threats and everything else is ugly. We
Speaker 1: had to hire George W. Bush's attorney because were lost
Speaker 1: and it was a whole it's a mess. And then
Speaker 1: it seemed like the end of the world. But I
Speaker 1: came on and I was like, hey, listen, I'm all
Speaker 1: right the person who worked at the counter because he
Speaker 1: probably thinks about to get shot, Like, I'm I didn't
Speaker 1: mean to do that, um, And I was like, I
Speaker 1: made a brially bone head decision, but we're back, and
Speaker 1: I hope you'll let us, you know, be your morning show.
Speaker 1: And I probably should have been a little more apologetic
Speaker 1: than I was, but I didn't really know what I
Speaker 1: did wrong. And also, let's talk about your age a right,
Speaker 1: when I was younger years old and twenty four year old,
Speaker 1: guys running a six million dollar radio stations are not
Speaker 1: known for their like intelligent long range decision making, right.
Speaker 1: I was just trying to get to the ratings next month.
Speaker 1: That was my goal every month was how good can
Speaker 1: I make these ratings next month? Right? I never saw
Speaker 1: it past thirty days, So twelve years and you eventually
Speaker 1: end up your number one for those twelve years after
Speaker 1: that stunt? Um, How tough is it then, because because
Speaker 1: I've had to make some of these decisions too, I
Speaker 1: still live in Nashville. But it's a good look for
Speaker 1: you out there who don't know. It's a damn good
Speaker 1: living to have a really successful local radio show in
Speaker 1: a city you love. I mean, there's a reason why
Speaker 1: some people will do that for like thirty or forty years. Right,
Speaker 1: They've become institutions, almost like local news. I'm assuming it's
Speaker 1: kind of the same way. Like you mentioned that local
Speaker 1: weather man for a little rock. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: people in Nashville. I'm born and raised here who've been
Speaker 1: doing what local news here my entire life. Like Bob Mueller,
Speaker 1: he looks the exact same now that he did when
Speaker 1: I was five, right, and I'm forty now. So I mean,
Speaker 1: some of these guys become institutions. You could have continued,
Speaker 1: had a great life, lived in Austin for the rest
Speaker 1: of your life. What is it about that that, after
Speaker 1: twelve years of ratings dominance there, you're like, I need
Speaker 1: something new. Well, when I was I think twenty six
Speaker 1: years old, I started to get the itch of spreading
Speaker 1: my show, and I knew that no one would take
Speaker 1: a show from Austin because you gotta be in l
Speaker 1: a in New York probably not even Chicago doesn't do
Speaker 1: it that often, right, And so I went and I
Speaker 1: bought this thing called a comrax that really wasn't used
Speaker 1: for long form transmission at the time, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: if this will work for seven miles, why won't it
Speaker 1: work for three d And so I bought one and
Speaker 1: I saw, okay, well if I do like three stacked
Speaker 1: on each other, I can really make this thing go.
Speaker 1: So I begged the station in which Talk Kansas to
Speaker 1: take me as their only affiliate. They're only there only
Speaker 1: this morning show. They're only my only affiliate, and so
Speaker 1: we went number one there in a year. I was
Speaker 1: twenty years old. I was like, oh, I can do this. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm on an Austin, I'm winning. I'm on a which
Speaker 1: Tom winning how because they just fired their morning show.
Speaker 1: I was watching the news and I actually went after
Speaker 1: seven or eight stations and talk to general managers like
Speaker 1: I will pay for everything. I was making fifty a
Speaker 1: year and I was paying for phone lines, which are
Speaker 1: about five grand. I was brought in the producer, I
Speaker 1: was paying his paying about twenty grand. I was probably
Speaker 1: making about nine thousand dollars a year after all are out.
Speaker 1: So but you were thinking bigger, like hey, this is
Speaker 1: eventually like I want to get my audience as big
Speaker 1: as possible station and Amarillo took me, station Lubbock took me,
Speaker 1: and I was like, I'm on three stations. I was
Speaker 1: then breaking even and Rod Phillips, who now runs on
Speaker 1: Her Country, came and said, hey, we think you're pretty
Speaker 1: good and you're on a four stations. We don't even know,
Speaker 1: so let's start pushing you around to other stations. So
Speaker 1: I built my own syndication company while in Austin, and
Speaker 1: I was probably twenty seven or something. That happened. And
Speaker 1: so as the show continue to grow in Austin, I
Speaker 1: was hustling affiliates, flying all over the places, begging people
Speaker 1: to put me on their stations. How did uh? So
Speaker 1: you said you just would look and see when there
Speaker 1: was availability. Because your show for people out there who
Speaker 1: don't understand the business, the idea is they get your
Speaker 1: local show. Uh. They don't have to pay anything for it.
Speaker 1: They can sell ads against it if you rate decently,
Speaker 1: because a lot of people don't understand the business of
Speaker 1: how we do what we do. But you, already, even
Speaker 1: at a young age, were sophisticated enough to understand the
Speaker 1: business that you were in and to be thinking about
Speaker 1: replicating what worked in Austin into other markets. And I
Speaker 1: knew not to keep it super local while still being
Speaker 1: local at the times I needed to be. You know,
Speaker 1: it was a lot of that. And yeah, they got
Speaker 1: the show for free, so that was the benefit, Like,
Speaker 1: I will cover everything that you need to be to
Speaker 1: save money in your bottom line, just sell it and
Speaker 1: we'll do a privit share. And so I was making
Speaker 1: a pretty good money back into the morning show. So
Speaker 1: I think we have filiates and I was running it
Speaker 1: all myself. We had a room full of just these
Speaker 1: stupid boxes and they would break down. We have three
Speaker 1: affiliates go down sometimes too. We get calls going, hey,
Speaker 1: we're we're down in St. Louis and so. But we
Speaker 1: managed and eventually Clear Channel, which is now I our radio,
Speaker 1: was like, hey, we just let us just buy most
Speaker 1: of your show back from you and you can run
Speaker 1: on the satellite. And that happened to Pop, and so
Speaker 1: I signed a new deal over a Pop and I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, I'm gonna live in Austin for the
Speaker 1: rest of my life and just indicate my show. I
Speaker 1: was making really good money. I was still in my
Speaker 1: twenties and I remember telling a girl I was dating,
Speaker 1: like I think I'm here and I'm good with it
Speaker 1: for the first time, and like that's when two weeks
Speaker 1: later it was Nashville and they said, we want you
Speaker 1: to come to Nashville and we want you to go country.
Speaker 1: Not really, they tricked me first. They said, we want
Speaker 1: you to pick up the Nashville affiliate for your POP show.
Speaker 1: Come out and talk to the general manager. So I
Speaker 1: came out and I noticed that like Tim mcgrawl was
Speaker 1: saying hello to me, and Lady and Abella was hanging
Speaker 1: out with me, and I was like, what is happening here.
Speaker 1: They're the nicest people to all these to us pop DJs.
Speaker 1: And they cornered me in a room. It's said, hey, UM,
Speaker 1: we're offering you like three jobs. They offered me head
Speaker 1: of Alternative UM run Country. I could have stayed and
Speaker 1: done pop, or to take UM an afternoon sports show,
Speaker 1: National sports show. So they said, here are your options,
Speaker 1: which would you like to take? And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: if there had never been a National country show, and
Speaker 1: I knew I wasn't gonna change, I didn't need to change.
Speaker 1: I was getting in trouble at Pop for putting on
Speaker 1: Dirk Spentley and Willie Nelson and a lot of these
Speaker 1: hip hop guys going, why are you putting country artists on?
Speaker 1: So for me, it was tough to kind of basically
Speaker 1: sell my company that I built. Um, but I said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll just I'll move to Nashville. I remember calling my
Speaker 1: girlfriend at the time, going, hey, they've offered me this job.
Speaker 1: What do you think I should do? And she was like, man,
Speaker 1: you have to move. But she also knew I had
Speaker 1: to break up with her as very selfless of her.
Speaker 1: Is tough. But yeah, I moved to Nashville and they
Speaker 1: hated me. Here we're talking to Bobby Bones wins and losses.
Speaker 1: I'm Clay Travis. So that's tough, right. So for people
Speaker 1: out there, one of the things I like to focus
Speaker 1: on is when you have success, it's great, but success
Speaker 1: can also be like golden handcuffs, comfortable as the enemy
Speaker 1: because you get used to what you're doing and you
Speaker 1: think you could continue to do it for a long time.
Speaker 1: You're dominating in Austin, You've built a good business, and
Speaker 1: then they were like, hey, let's try something completely different.
Speaker 1: You come here and I'm dominating in like twenty cities.
Speaker 1: It's not even just awesome like I had a thing going.
Speaker 1: I have a real mark, and but I just saw
Speaker 1: that I could actually instead of a mark, like I
Speaker 1: just put a freaking footprint into a whole format that
Speaker 1: I used to really love. Wasn't into it then because
Speaker 1: I was so inside of my year. Uh what are we? So?
Speaker 1: You make the decision to come here, and what happens
Speaker 1: when you start? Everybody hated me? Why did they hate you?
Speaker 1: Because I stood for everything they didn't. And by that way,
Speaker 1: I didn't where a cowboy had and where cowboy boots.
Speaker 1: I didn't care. I didn't uh bow down to the
Speaker 1: radio tours, there was no I didn't meet with labels,
Speaker 1: I didn't talk to artists. I didn't go to social
Speaker 1: events like I was anti. I wasn't anti everything. I
Speaker 1: just wasn't pro the things that we're doing here. So
Speaker 1: they just saw that as someone come to buck the system.
Speaker 1: And I wasn't bucking the system. I was just doing me.
Speaker 1: I Also part of it two was I replaced a
Speaker 1: lot of poorly performing local morning shows, and people just
Speaker 1: saw me as the guy coming in to take all
Speaker 1: the local morning shows off, which I did. I didn't
Speaker 1: replace everybody if the shows weren't doing well. They put
Speaker 1: our show on UM and so it was a lot
Speaker 1: of negativity from the end. Even some of my people
Speaker 1: that aren't working in the company now weren't in on it.
Speaker 1: They didn't want me to come in. So even from
Speaker 1: inside it was a little rough at time. How long
Speaker 1: did it take? How long did that negativity last? Today?
Speaker 1: I mean how much? And how and And this is
Speaker 1: always something that fascinates me to how do you deal
Speaker 1: and cope with negativity? Because you said you've been through
Speaker 1: so much negative stuff in your childhood, Uh that you know,
Speaker 1: your skin is pretty tough, right, but it's still tough
Speaker 1: to have people ripping you. I'm resilient, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean I can't feel it for a second. So I
Speaker 1: have thick skin. As far as long term, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be all right. But we couldn't even look at
Speaker 1: social media for a year. I wouldn't let my show
Speaker 1: look at anything. Everyone hated as it felt like that
Speaker 1: we had terrible ratings obviously UM And I remember thinking
Speaker 1: to myself, well, I've got to do something big to
Speaker 1: flip this, which always gets me in trouble. It's never
Speaker 1: done well for me to go it has in the end,
Speaker 1: it's always been, you know, uh, a bit of an
Speaker 1: issue for my bosses. When I go, I gotta do
Speaker 1: something big. And so I remember sitting. I moved to Brentwood,
Speaker 1: which is a suburb of Nashville, and I moved down.
Speaker 1: I had so many uh like physical threats and I
Speaker 1: got jumped and about them. I got a gun to
Speaker 1: my head and little Rock, I've been death threat multiple
Speaker 1: times that in my contract, you have to be in
Speaker 1: a place that is surrounded by X amount of security,
Speaker 1: either gates or codes, because their insurance on me is
Speaker 1: super high. So I was living in Brentwood. I was
Speaker 1: there for like two weeks in a dude murders his
Speaker 1: wife and is running around in front of my house
Speaker 1: with a gun. Story which never happens by the way,
Speaker 1: like you know, five murders in the last fifty years,
Speaker 1: right yeah, And I'm like what so I'm still there
Speaker 1: going I gotta flip this around. This The whole vibe
Speaker 1: is not good for me. And I remember watching a
Speaker 1: story on A thirty for thirty for Brian Bosworth, and
Speaker 1: Brian Bosworth would would at away games sell shirts and
Speaker 1: said I hate Brian Bosworth and I was like, God,
Speaker 1: that's awesome, it's funny. And so I said, I gotta
Speaker 1: do something like that, and so I created a shell company,
Speaker 1: like a fake LLC and ran it through. I studied
Speaker 1: on the internet how to do it so you couldn't
Speaker 1: really track it, which is so easy. By the way,
Speaker 1: it's so easy to buy to buy things and not
Speaker 1: have people know who you are. Everybody's doing it. It's
Speaker 1: so I go, okay, I buy three billboards in Nashville, humongous,
Speaker 1: the biggest billboards in downtow Nashville, for almost thirteen dollars,
Speaker 1: and they just say, go away, Bobby Bones, and that's it,
Speaker 1: just black letters, go away by my show. Didn't know
Speaker 1: my work, didn't know, nobody knew. All that everyone would
Speaker 1: say was, man, who is it? Which artist hates you?
Speaker 1: Which record label hate you? Because it could have been
Speaker 1: any of them. Because it was so wide, everyone was
Speaker 1: picking their own people. Wasn't another radio company, And I
Speaker 1: just was like, I don't know. Never never, I never
Speaker 1: lied about it. I would just always go, I don't know,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to talk about it because it's
Speaker 1: affecting me. And so that was a big turning point
Speaker 1: because people either didn't know who I was and checked
Speaker 1: it out. I felt sorry for me because someone was
Speaker 1: attacking me or agreed with it and just hated and
Speaker 1: wanted to see how I was reacting. And my thing is,
Speaker 1: if I can always just get people to me, I
Speaker 1: feel like I can get them because I'm not doing
Speaker 1: anything to piss people off, not really have opinions, but
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think that your opinions wrong just
Speaker 1: because mine is right. It's I'm not that kind of guy.
Speaker 1: And so um, that was a big flip for us
Speaker 1: because about oh the News was covering it. I mean
Speaker 1: dollars and you created three thousand dollars worth of advertising easily.
Speaker 1: And until I wrote about it my first book, no
Speaker 1: one knew it was me. And I remember writing the
Speaker 1: book and sending a galley out to the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: which is a version of the book that's pretty much
Speaker 1: finished but not all the way but they can read
Speaker 1: it to review it, and that's the story they ran with,
Speaker 1: and they were like, Bobby Bones put up his own billboards,
Speaker 1: and the whole town was like what and people some
Speaker 1: people felt deceived. At that point, people kind of understood
Speaker 1: who I was and they kind of got me, and
Speaker 1: they were like ah, typical, but yeah, that was a
Speaker 1: that was a big moment for me and turning people
Speaker 1: at least to me to give me a shot, not
Speaker 1: to love me, but just to give me a shot.
Speaker 1: What about artists? Were there any artists that liked you
Speaker 1: early and started to because now you can get pretty
Speaker 1: much anybody, and I'm sure they begged to come in
Speaker 1: and be able to perform in your studio now, But
Speaker 1: early on, was there somebody that you met or a
Speaker 1: couple of people who you met that were like, I
Speaker 1: really like this guy and it started to have an impact.
Speaker 1: Brad Paisley was really cool with me outside of the show.
Speaker 1: He was like, hey, man, I'm different, You're different. People
Speaker 1: are gonna like you. It's just how it goes. You
Speaker 1: gotta you just gotta win them. Um. But a lot
Speaker 1: of artists were scared because I didn't do the interview
Speaker 1: where it's like, okay, tell me what you'd like me
Speaker 1: to ask you, which it was traditional for this format,
Speaker 1: like let me safely walk you in, ask you your influences,
Speaker 1: and play your song and then get out. Um. I
Speaker 1: was like, I'd love to have you, but I don't
Speaker 1: know what kind of mood I'm gonna be in so
Speaker 1: let's just see what happens. It'll be good for both
Speaker 1: of it. And so I think a lot of artists
Speaker 1: they didn't not like me, but they were scared of
Speaker 1: just a different environment. And it was again, it was
Speaker 1: rough for a year and a half or so until
Speaker 1: they kind of understood that I was more like them,
Speaker 1: that I was a radio announcer because I'm a writer,
Speaker 1: because I'm a comedian, because and so they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: he kind of gets the creative part of it. And
Speaker 1: now you know. We We did market research, UM, which
Speaker 1: we get all the time, and I'm not a big
Speaker 1: subscriber to everything. I don't think you take everything from research,
Speaker 1: but there are always pieces of things that you can
Speaker 1: do better. But they also evaluate things that you do
Speaker 1: well and things you don't do. And we were always
Speaker 1: told don't put interviews on the air because in the
Speaker 1: current ratings landscape they're not good and people will just
Speaker 1: turn it off. I just didn't believe that, so I
Speaker 1: put people on long form. They would play acoustically on
Speaker 1: the show, and for a national show, that was kind
Speaker 1: of a risk. But we saw through research and ratings
Speaker 1: that UM people felt like the artists treated me as
Speaker 1: more of an artist then when they went into other
Speaker 1: shows than they were being interviewed. So things start going well. Um, now,
Speaker 1: I mean they're going incredibly well. You're also on the
Speaker 1: road touring. You mentioned that we started. I'm Clay Travis
Speaker 1: is the Wins and Losses podcast. We're talking with Bobby Bones.
Speaker 1: Um when you start? When did you start going on
Speaker 1: the road regularly and performing on the weekend. Well, I
Speaker 1: really started when I was about nineteen. I would just
Speaker 1: beg to be put up at clubs and host shows.
Speaker 1: I'd be like, just let me do three minutes at
Speaker 1: the beginning, and I'll go in between comedians. Because I
Speaker 1: just thought that if I was gonna do a late
Speaker 1: night talk show or a talk show at any point,
Speaker 1: I needed to be comfortable on stage. And I wasn't
Speaker 1: particularly good at writing jokes, and I wasn't doing it
Speaker 1: enough to get good at doing stand up comedy. But
Speaker 1: I just wanted to get some sort of comfort in
Speaker 1: a really uncomfortable place. So I started doing it then.
Speaker 1: And I had this bit where I had a band
Speaker 1: I was supposed to play with me called the Raging Idiots,
Speaker 1: and they never showed up ever. In the history of
Speaker 1: my bit. They never showed up. I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: went ready for the radio. I guess they're not gonna
Speaker 1: show up. I'll just play something. And so it turned
Speaker 1: into Bobby Bones and the Raging Idiots, and so Eddie
Speaker 1: my my partner, and I would go out and do
Speaker 1: shows and I would just do stand up for twenty
Speaker 1: minutes and open. I didn't have money to pay an opener,
Speaker 1: so I would open doing stand up. So we um
Speaker 1: we did an Austin a little bit, and we got here.
Speaker 1: We thought, well, if we could raise some money for
Speaker 1: animal shelters and for St. Jude, that'd be cool, and
Speaker 1: we'll go out and see if people like what we're doing.
Speaker 1: We're just doing a dope parodies playing restaurants for fifty people.
Speaker 1: Well fifty people turned into seventy and I started to go, well,
Speaker 1: I can kind of market this thing into success and
Speaker 1: just say every show sold that it was. There were
Speaker 1: like people, but it was like you can't even get in.
Speaker 1: So by doing that, people would go, I need to
Speaker 1: get in. If you're telling me I can't get it,
Speaker 1: I need to get in. So two hundred five hundred,
Speaker 1: you know, now we we hit a million dollars, and
Speaker 1: we said, if we hit a million dollars for charity,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go and pursue a record deal for you know,
Speaker 1: get a comedy record. We had a million dollars and
Speaker 1: donate it all with charity. And we were doing the
Speaker 1: show in Nashville called the Million Dollars Show, which was
Speaker 1: to celebrate our million dollar for charity. And before we
Speaker 1: get the show and we had hit two million dollars
Speaker 1: for charity and we were like, holy crap. So um,
Speaker 1: then we just we got a record deal, put out
Speaker 1: a couple of comedy records. They did fine. I mean
Speaker 1: they went number one on the comedy chart, but who cared?
Speaker 1: It was like eleven record sold to get nuber one
Speaker 1: the comedy chart. Uh. So then I just started doing
Speaker 1: stand up all the time. And he's got kids, um,
Speaker 1: and so he was like, I don't know, I tore anymore.
Speaker 1: But now we're we're back at it and it's a
Speaker 1: comedy music show. So like you're playing the opera tonight, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm playing the operation time. Have you ever done the
Speaker 1: opery before? Yeah? I think it's my eleventh time. Okay,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that, but that's pretty crazy. So what's
Speaker 1: the reception to you that you get in the Opery.
Speaker 1: Sometimes and it's not good because it's just a different
Speaker 1: crops your audience. Right, Yeah, sometimes it's great and they're
Speaker 1: not expecting comedy, so you kind of have to break
Speaker 1: them a little bit. And now I kind of I
Speaker 1: love my grandmother and I listen to the Opery twice
Speaker 1: a week as a kid, so to me, the Opery
Speaker 1: super special. To be able to play the first time,
Speaker 1: I don't even remember it really. I was just kind
Speaker 1: of blacked out and you don't see people and you're like,
Speaker 1: I hope I don't screw this up. But now I
Speaker 1: really enjoy it because it meant so much to my grandmother, UM.
Speaker 1: And I remember once UM, I went up and did
Speaker 1: her favorite joke. And you don't cover jokes as a comedian,
Speaker 1: but when I up and covered a joke and I
Speaker 1: was like, this is Jerry Cloward joke and I told
Speaker 1: everyone and I did it, and I think it's my
Speaker 1: second time up in the crowd roared and I was like, man,
Speaker 1: I think this is gonna be so I go back
Speaker 1: and I can play that. I can play the crowd.
Speaker 1: They're a little older, um, but For me, it's really
Speaker 1: one of the more special things that I get to do.
Speaker 1: You don't get paid, it's like a hundred bucks or something,
Speaker 1: but it's never about that there um, But I'm playing
Speaker 1: tonight for the eleventh time and it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: a cool thing for me to get to go and
Speaker 1: play the grand old opera. I was on the freaking
Speaker 1: billboard I was driving in. It was like playing the
Speaker 1: opera tonight, Bobby Bones. So how many songs will you do? Well?
Speaker 1: They give everybody's Tonight's Friday night. Everybody gets nine minutes
Speaker 1: on a Friday night. So I'll go up and I'll
Speaker 1: do I'll do stand up and then I'll do like
Speaker 1: a minute and a half song and do more stand up.
Speaker 1: And I have my Eddie with me, and so he
Speaker 1: kind of sits out the comedy part. He just sits
Speaker 1: over there, and so we kind of weave it in
Speaker 1: and out of and the opera has a superstory tradition
Speaker 1: of comedy. And I think they like it that I'll
Speaker 1: come up and do something other than to just play songs.
Speaker 1: So how many cities will you do? Like how many
Speaker 1: touring shows? In addition to you the fact that you
Speaker 1: do the radio show, oh and uh and American Idol
Speaker 1: and everything else, which we'll get into here in a second.
Speaker 1: But how many weekends a year will you be on
Speaker 1: the road actually doing a show. I'll probably doing it
Speaker 1: on thirty cities theaters. Yeah, and you're selling out big
Speaker 1: theaters now, right, Like I mean, yeah, most of them
Speaker 1: are selling That's not always Like we played Denver last
Speaker 1: week and it wasn't a sell out, but the theater
Speaker 1: was a little bigger than I was used to. Um,
Speaker 1: so we did thousands of tickets. I can't believe people come.
Speaker 1: And the show is getting better. We've gotten better because
Speaker 1: they keep allowing us to do it, and the show
Speaker 1: is good now. It wasn't always at the beginning. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we're doing you know, two or three thousand tickets and
Speaker 1: most of the shows are all top See. Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Like when we finished today, I'm gonna go downtown and
Speaker 1: I've got you know, a partial small ownership steak in
Speaker 1: a bar that's on Broadway right and we're gonna have people,
Speaker 1: hopefully who show up for that. But I hate having
Speaker 1: to show up and not knowing if people are going
Speaker 1: to be there even now, and I'll tell you why,
Speaker 1: because I'm the first book that I wrote. And I
Speaker 1: think anybody who's ever done a performance like this, I
Speaker 1: bet you have to. You show up and no one's there,
Speaker 1: and like that will stick with you for or ever.
Speaker 1: So a part of me is always like our people
Speaker 1: actually gonna be there, and so having to produce crowds
Speaker 1: is something that stresses me out, Like I just don't
Speaker 1: enjoy it. I don't enjoy having to promote it and
Speaker 1: everything else. You had to get past that, right. But
Speaker 1: I bet also you've been times where there's been nobody there.
Speaker 1: When I was twelve, I saved up twenty five dollars
Speaker 1: and I rented out the old gym in Mountain Pine.
Speaker 1: It was this gym was built like the fifties. It
Speaker 1: was where they used play half court basketball, like the
Speaker 1: women's basketball team only played half courts where they played
Speaker 1: their high school basketball. And I've been sitting there and
Speaker 1: you can rent it for twenty five dollars, and I
Speaker 1: rented it, and I paid the five extra dollars for
Speaker 1: the roller skates, and I thought, we're gonna have a
Speaker 1: freaking birthday party. I'm gonna buy all my friends and
Speaker 1: we're gonna play volleyball, roller skating hockey with brooms, and
Speaker 1: nobody showed out one person. One person can on birthday party.
Speaker 1: And that is what it feels like every time a
Speaker 1: non sale happens, because we announced and put a tour
Speaker 1: at all at once, and so you you have to
Speaker 1: get over it, but you don't. I look at ticket
Speaker 1: accounts every three days just to see if I can
Speaker 1: tell you every city I'm going into and where we
Speaker 1: are in tickets and what percentage we're at every single city,
Speaker 1: because and again, I'm still that kid that people didn't
Speaker 1: come to his birthday party. So I feel like, man,
Speaker 1: are they still gonna come to these shows? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the way I feel for all these public events. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot. Maybe there's some people who
Speaker 1: get over that. I don't think I'll ever get over it.
Speaker 1: And success creates confidence. Um, and I've had some success
Speaker 1: and I'm still waiting for that confidence. I used to
Speaker 1: look at it every day. I mean, if anything it's
Speaker 1: a move in the right direction, I maybe like every
Speaker 1: three days now, But I it's tough it and I
Speaker 1: think that's why it does. It pays pretty well, Like
Speaker 1: we're now making money for ourselves on the road because
Speaker 1: we're just spending so much time out there. There's a
Speaker 1: charitable component to everything that we do. Merch Um, we
Speaker 1: had a part of every ticket goes to musicians on Call,
Speaker 1: which I'm on the national board for. But if I
Speaker 1: were to say we're not making money now, I'll be
Speaker 1: lying because I just spent so much time like working
Speaker 1: on my craft and taking it out. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you you you always wonder how tired? Are you? Pretty
Speaker 1: tired right now? It's Friday. I'm pretty tired right now.
Speaker 1: I'm always My thing has always been, You're always I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be tired. But can I make mine when I'm
Speaker 1: feeling the worst better? Because if I can make when
Speaker 1: I'm feeling the most tired, if I can produce better,
Speaker 1: then then when I'm feeling great, it it automatically is
Speaker 1: gonna rise. When I was doing Dancing with the Stars,
Speaker 1: I've never been so tired because I would train for
Speaker 1: twelve hours, do the radio show for five or six,
Speaker 1: sleep for three or four, and be back at it.
Speaker 1: I was exhausted, but I got so good at doing
Speaker 1: that show tired that when I'm not tired, I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm freaking Chris Rock. I'm so freaking funny right now.
Speaker 1: I'm all right. I'm like a stick level comedian, you
Speaker 1: know in Paduca. But I'm good if I can be
Speaker 1: my worst better. It's like golf, if you can limit
Speaker 1: your bad shots. It's not about your great shots. You'll
Speaker 1: just get lucky and hit a great shot occasionally. But
Speaker 1: if you can make your bad shots less, then your
Speaker 1: score will go up more so than if you make
Speaker 1: your great shots better. Be sure to catch live editions
Speaker 1: if iut kicked the coverage with Clay Travis week days
Speaker 1: at six am Eastern, three am Pacific. I'm Clay Travis.
Speaker 1: This is Wins and Losses. We're talking with Bobby Bones.
Speaker 1: All of the professional direction we've gone. Now you're still single? Yeah, listen,
Speaker 1: it's my fault though. How old are you? Thirty nine years?
Speaker 1: Also never been engaged. What's the longest relationship you've been in?
Speaker 1: Out of four and a happier relationship you think you
Speaker 1: were gonna get married to her? So you're thirty nine?
Speaker 1: What is your dating life like now? Because of let
Speaker 1: me come, let me cut you off? You ever seconcause
Speaker 1: there's a lot of guys out there that are gonna
Speaker 1: be listening right now. I'm forty, I've got three kids
Speaker 1: who got an eleven and eight and a four year old,
Speaker 1: and and in August I will have been married fifteen years,
Speaker 1: so we're around the same age. You have lived through
Speaker 1: a crazy trajectory, right, Like I was out with a
Speaker 1: buddy a few years ago and he saw Tender for
Speaker 1: the first time, and he was like, I swear to God,
Speaker 1: dead pan, I would have never gotten married if I
Speaker 1: knew Tender was coming, right, Because you're in entertainment a
Speaker 1: little bit. But if you're got tough to meet girls, right,
Speaker 1: if you if you advance in careers and everything else,
Speaker 1: now you're a little bit different because you could go
Speaker 1: out to things for entertainment related re But what would
Speaker 1: how would you describe your life? Now? Let me peel
Speaker 1: back and give a little look behind the cart. In
Speaker 1: the conversation with you and I had we were flying
Speaker 1: up to Omaha, yes, and to go watch Arkansas play
Speaker 1: in the College World Series, and I was asking you
Speaker 1: about kids because I think I want to have kids
Speaker 1: one day, and we were like, it's the greatest thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got three boys. They're the greatest part of my life.
Speaker 1: And I came back and talked about it, and I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, Clay, it was like, it's the greatest
Speaker 1: thing to have kids. And I wanted to have kids anyway,
Speaker 1: but to see you be like, man, it's like I
Speaker 1: want that eventually. Yeah. Um, now, when they're babies and
Speaker 1: they're not sleeping through the night and everything else, you're
Speaker 1: gonna be like, fuck, Clay Travis. He was totally lying
Speaker 1: to me. But once they get to like, you know,
Speaker 1: the age where they can start giving you something back,
Speaker 1: which might be you know, six eight months and on up.
Speaker 1: Like I think my boys are at perfect ages right now.
Speaker 1: I would hit pause on my life, Like if I
Speaker 1: could hold them where they are right now. They're happy,
Speaker 1: they're healthy, they still enjoy being around my wife and I.
Speaker 1: Generally speaking, I don't know what it's gonna be like
Speaker 1: when they get to be teenagers and they go off
Speaker 1: and start to spin off in their own direction. But
Speaker 1: I love coaching Little League Baseball, like waking up every
Speaker 1: day and my kids being there and even breakfast with
Speaker 1: them and everything else. So that's that's right now. But
Speaker 1: there certainly are a lot of people who are listening
Speaker 1: right now, like my kids are really young. I never sleep.
Speaker 1: They drive me insane. So there are parts of that
Speaker 1: time as you're saying, I got you a good time
Speaker 1: for that, look, I mean I think and also my
Speaker 1: wife is is fantastic. I think who your partner is
Speaker 1: matters a great deal in that. But it's like, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine what I would be doing without kids right
Speaker 1: now and if I were forty and single. And that
Speaker 1: same conversation, I showed you this dating and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's awesome called Ria and you have to be accepted
Speaker 1: on it, and it's kind of uh, it's an exclusive
Speaker 1: dating app. Yeah, it's the lure of Riah. It's hard
Speaker 1: to invest in it now. By the way, are you
Speaker 1: an investor in it? Because you're you're naming it now.
Speaker 1: It was an r y A r A y A
Speaker 1: r A y a okay, And so it's like the
Speaker 1: famous person app. There's more than that, Like most of
Speaker 1: the dudes are famous, most of the chicks are is
Speaker 1: a hot, really good looking. Yeah, and so I was
Speaker 1: I was kind of showing showing you something. So there's
Speaker 1: all it's solid talent on the app. So I mean,
Speaker 1: that's my life now. Is a mix of that, like
Speaker 1: getting on the dating app and not really having trouble,
Speaker 1: but also like what it's not gratcha Marks would say,
Speaker 1: don't want to be part of any club that would
Speaker 1: have me. It's like, why don't want to date any
Speaker 1: girl that want to date me? Especially because if she
Speaker 1: wants to date you because of the success that you've had, right,
Speaker 1: because super scared of that. So what super hot chick
Speaker 1: would want to date me if it weren't for the
Speaker 1: success that I had. And I know that I'm that
Speaker 1: It's not lost on me that I'm you know, you're
Speaker 1: a normal looking guy, Ryan Gosling, right right. You know
Speaker 1: I'm not terribly good looking or terribly funny. I'm just
Speaker 1: a normal dude that's been pretty successful at what I
Speaker 1: do here. Uh So I often get in a relationship
Speaker 1: with girls that are way hotter than me and go, Okay,
Speaker 1: this isn't going right, she's too hot. There's something up um,
Speaker 1: and it would go out a few times. What's your
Speaker 1: range now? Probably twenty seven to eight? No, it's like
Speaker 1: it's like twenties seven to thirty four. So, like, I
Speaker 1: still want to have kids, and I still want to
Speaker 1: have a few years before I have kids or maybe
Speaker 1: a couple, and so that's probably, but I would break that.
Speaker 1: What would be your ideal age to get married right now?
Speaker 1: If I told you right now you're thirty nine, you're
Speaker 1: not going to be married, you'd be upset by that.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I mean I would. I'd be irritated. But
Speaker 1: at this point I thought i'd be married twice now,
Speaker 1: like I I really think my second wife is gonna
Speaker 1: be the one. I stick with that. But I'm also
Speaker 1: at the point now where I got it. I have
Speaker 1: a prenup, Like that's not even a thought, because you're
Speaker 1: just nervous enough about the success that you've had, and
Speaker 1: why the woman would be with you, nervous enough she
Speaker 1: could talk you out of it. Now. And I don't
Speaker 1: know anything about money, And I have money now and
Speaker 1: I don't anything about it. Like I grew I have
Speaker 1: no money mentors. We were all broke where I grew up. Nothing.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be like Adrian Peterson. And I was watching
Speaker 1: your on Twitter last night where you were like, he
Speaker 1: spent twenty five dollars a day. How is that possible?
Speaker 1: Um No, I'm the opposite of that. I don't even
Speaker 1: spend I have a nice house, in a nice car,
Speaker 1: and I eat decent food. But other than that, like,
Speaker 1: I'm not someone who spends money. I'm scared of death.
Speaker 1: That because until three three, two years ago, so I
Speaker 1: still I was paying my bills over because I was like,
Speaker 1: because you just needn't know when they were going to be.
Speaker 1: I was like, man, if I lose my job, I
Speaker 1: need to have a couple of months buffer and my
Speaker 1: business manager, which I have to have now. I was like,
Speaker 1: you gotta stop doing that, Like, you'll be all right,
Speaker 1: Like if you get fired today, you can afford your
Speaker 1: cell phone bill. You're good for a few years. Like
Speaker 1: and so where you come when you come from where
Speaker 1: I come from, that's really not a thing. So I'm
Speaker 1: dealing with those. It's a great problem to have, by
Speaker 1: the way, not no woe is me, um, But I
Speaker 1: also feel like that's why eventually I'll get into politics too,
Speaker 1: because I'll be able to afford it. So yeah, so
Speaker 1: that that's something you've talked about too. But I want
Speaker 1: to go to television. I'm gonna jump to politics. So uh,
Speaker 1: you've done you want? Um dancing with the Stars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a great dancer. Um, you have now been
Speaker 1: on American Idol. Yeah for two seasons. Um, you're getting
Speaker 1: to do a lot of television. I get asked all
Speaker 1: the time, and I think it's intriguing. I went from
Speaker 1: writing to radio to TV, and they're all different disciplines.
Speaker 1: You've written a great book, you have obviously had a
Speaker 1: very successful and have a very successful New York. Um,
Speaker 1: you've got the UM, the radio show what you're doing
Speaker 1: really well, and the television shows. I mean, fine, which
Speaker 1: if you had to give up one of those three
Speaker 1: or two of those three for the rest of your career,
Speaker 1: what do you love the most? I would never write
Speaker 1: another book. You're done. No, I'm not done. But if
Speaker 1: I had to give one up, yeah, it's a lot
Speaker 1: of work. I'm just not what I'm good at. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I really had to work hard at it at
Speaker 1: both of them, and even the concepts of them were tough.
Speaker 1: So as I say that, I'm actually working on the
Speaker 1: third book now because I just whenever I go, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I can do that. That That that's what
Speaker 1: motivates me. Whenever I start going, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I can. I have a lot of self motivation to
Speaker 1: prove myself right or wrong. Um, I would give up
Speaker 1: writing books and I wouldn't tour. I don't have to tour.
Speaker 1: I don't know. The touring to me is I'm just
Speaker 1: working a muscle until I can actually use it. And
Speaker 1: I've and I got to use it. When Ryan Seacrest
Speaker 1: went down, he got sick for the first time ever
Speaker 1: in seventeen years, our seventeen seasons of Idol. Five minutes
Speaker 1: for the show started. They pulled me over to the
Speaker 1: side and they go, hey, uh, Ryan's sick for the
Speaker 1: first time ever. We need someone to host the show.
Speaker 1: And I thought, oh, wow, what are you gonna get
Speaker 1: And they said, no, no, if we need you to
Speaker 1: host it, I was like right now, like yeah, we're on.
Speaker 1: We have Union guys cameras. I think they were like
Speaker 1: seven or eight minutes away, and I was like okay.
Speaker 1: And now there wasn't a part of me that jumped like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't do this. I said, okay, Well, the only
Speaker 1: thing I'm really gonna need a stage direction because I'm
Speaker 1: good on a prompter, because I have the television skills,
Speaker 1: I'm good on a stage improv, I have the comedy skills,
Speaker 1: and I knew all the people because I've been working
Speaker 1: on Idol. I said, just tell me what struction to
Speaker 1: walk like on and off camera, because all that matters,
Speaker 1: and I'll be good. And I went out and I
Speaker 1: did a solid B plus with seven minutes prep um.
Speaker 1: Big benefit been at that too, was I didn't have
Speaker 1: time to freak out that a day before, I've been like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is it. But I went out and did a
Speaker 1: good job. But I I firmly believe part of that
Speaker 1: was because I've just been on stages on literal, so
Speaker 1: you're comfortable with the in front of crowds. I felt
Speaker 1: for the first time. I was going, oh, I'm finally
Speaker 1: ready for this, and I'm out underneath the American Idol
Speaker 1: letters and that show is not for me to host.
Speaker 1: That's Ryan's show forever. But I thought, wow, this is
Speaker 1: for me, Like this is not too big. I've been
Speaker 1: working the right muscles. I got lucky, which is just
Speaker 1: I was ready for it when it happened, and you know,
Speaker 1: I did good, So it's it's pretty cool it and
Speaker 1: that will that's led to other opportunities and television like
Speaker 1: you just did Bear Grills, but do you think it
Speaker 1: which which is an awesome story. I'm sure, And I
Speaker 1: don't think you can talk about it yet because it
Speaker 1: hasn't aired. But you were just up in like the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere with him, right, Yeah, we went up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think I can say yet, but we went
Speaker 1: somewhere really far. Took a whole day to get there.
Speaker 1: But it was so you know, Idol Dancing with the
Speaker 1: Stars and Idol and did Miss America most in c
Speaker 1: M a fest which is lead to bear grills. Everything's
Speaker 1: kind of jumped onto something else. So where does it lead? Where?
Speaker 1: Where's the end result? Where you would be like, hey,
Speaker 1: that's what I've you talked about it, and I think
Speaker 1: this is fascinating. Even when you were a kid, you
Speaker 1: were like, logically, I need to be smart in order
Speaker 1: to be able to get into college, in order to
Speaker 1: be able to move outside of the seven person town
Speaker 1: that grew up that you grew up in. Where is
Speaker 1: the end? Destination? Politics maybe the destination, but an entertainment,
Speaker 1: where is the destination? I think I know myself well
Speaker 1: enough now to know there isn't an end that I'll
Speaker 1: drive myself crazy wherever I am, But I think that
Speaker 1: being self aware is my end, meaning I know that
Speaker 1: if I get a talk show on on Amazon or ABC,
Speaker 1: that that's cool for a minute until I'm wanting to
Speaker 1: eat my kid needs because i need higher ratings or
Speaker 1: more streams. So I'm self aware to know that there
Speaker 1: isn't an end. And I would like to have a
Speaker 1: show here in Nashville so I don't have to travel
Speaker 1: so much. I'll be here. I just can't see me
Speaker 1: moving to Los Angeles. Um, So I think that's the
Speaker 1: in for now. I think that's what it is in
Speaker 1: for now. I'm building towards I don't want to be
Speaker 1: a guy hit man that goes out and does a
Speaker 1: couple of shows in l A and comes back. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love doing Idol because they really have trust to
Speaker 1: me when they didn't need to have no reason to
Speaker 1: put me on Idol and and just be like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're the guy all year and we're gonna give you
Speaker 1: a ton of money and let's rock. And it is
Speaker 1: interesting as a guy who was born and raised in
Speaker 1: Nashville and has been here, Nashville can be a destination
Speaker 1: point now and and it's fascinating. I think you certainly
Speaker 1: have been a big part of that. I think there
Speaker 1: are a lot of talented people in this city right now.
Speaker 1: But early when I was doing radio, when I was
Speaker 1: doing writing, I would get asked, Hey, are you gonna
Speaker 1: go to New York? Do you want to go to
Speaker 1: l an Like you need to move right And now
Speaker 1: I hear a lot of people saying, Hey, you know
Speaker 1: the things we can do with you in Nashville, And
Speaker 1: I bet you're starting to get that now. And I
Speaker 1: think that's the cachet of Nashville. But I think it's
Speaker 1: also on the entertainment level, really kind of popped in
Speaker 1: a good way, and per capita. There's many celebrities who
Speaker 1: live in Nashville now as live in almost anywhere else
Speaker 1: in the world. Yeah, I would agree. I think I
Speaker 1: agree in that if you create good content, people will
Speaker 1: watch it more so than getting big guests. I struggle
Speaker 1: at times at getting guests, not any in the country
Speaker 1: music world. So I've got a time at right. People
Speaker 1: aren't coming here like there are New York and Los
Speaker 1: Angeles because television, movie premiers. People just living there because
Speaker 1: the work is there. Like I have a friend named Charletmagne,
Speaker 1: the god who does the hip Hop show, one of
Speaker 1: my best friends, and he gets freaking Kathy Griffin, Drew
Speaker 1: carry hip hop stars because everybody's in New York or
Speaker 1: I'm getting a lot of country artists and occasionally John Mayer,
Speaker 1: who will come by because he's kind of a fan
Speaker 1: of the show. Occasionally. There was a problem with Pickler
Speaker 1: and Ben. They were a talk show based here in Nashville.
Speaker 1: As they did a good job as a morning daytime
Speaker 1: talk show, but they just couldn't get enough guests for
Speaker 1: every day. They couldn't get enough guests. And so for me,
Speaker 1: I've tried to lean away from basing any sort of
Speaker 1: success on the guests that I can get and put
Speaker 1: all mine on what can I do and what can
Speaker 1: I create with my people here. Yeah, and so I
Speaker 1: do think that you can be anyone to be successful
Speaker 1: now if you just create good content. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think if you want to be in Kansas City and
Speaker 1: create your content, dude, you can make a living off
Speaker 1: of Instagram now, off of YouTube videos. Um. And you
Speaker 1: know in my radio show, which radio to me is
Speaker 1: anything that comes off the phone, like this is radio,
Speaker 1: any audio, anything audio basically, And so we've you know,
Speaker 1: when I saw my last contract, part of my deal
Speaker 1: was I want a fully functional multimedia studio because if
Speaker 1: I'm not up for people can see it at three pm,
Speaker 1: or can listen to it eleven PM, or can listen
Speaker 1: to it live. Like it's just not gonna matter anymore.
Speaker 1: You've gotta be everywhere eyeballs and ears are at all
Speaker 1: times and so and I think you've done a great
Speaker 1: job of that too, um and then that's that's what
Speaker 1: you have to do now in the media and so
Speaker 1: and I use I've been lucky that ABC trusted me
Speaker 1: and put me on all these shows, because it's also
Speaker 1: widened my umbrella a bit too. I get in a
Speaker 1: lot of rooms that would have never let me in,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people give me second looks now
Speaker 1: that would have never given me a second look. And
Speaker 1: people will even come by the show now because I'm
Speaker 1: not the guy in the radio, but oh, you're the
Speaker 1: guy in American Idol, you're the guy the one dancing
Speaker 1: with the stars, or you're so and so. So that's
Speaker 1: really been a big benefit to me in the show.
Speaker 1: Fox Sports Dio has the best sports talk lineup in
Speaker 1: the nation. Catch all of our shows at Fox sports
Speaker 1: Radio dot com and within the I Heart Radio app
Speaker 1: search f s R. To listen live. Alright, so you
Speaker 1: mentioned it you might want to do politics one day,
Speaker 1: and moving back, I will do politics one day. It
Speaker 1: just been what what where I get in? How old
Speaker 1: you think you'll be? Well? I got a call. I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: by the way before you enter that. I'm Clay Travis.
Speaker 1: This is Wins and Losses. You're listening to Bobby Bones.
Speaker 1: He's at Mr Bobby Bones on Twitter because the real
Speaker 1: Bobby bones is has been fighting with him for what
Speaker 1: how many years? Yeah, it's been a decade You've been
Speaker 1: trying to get that one. Uh so politics, I could
Speaker 1: see it happening low percentage next in the next four years,
Speaker 1: low percentage like eight or nine meeting between like now.
Speaker 1: Probably not. You'd want to run for governor of Arkansas? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I should probably. I don't have the skill set
Speaker 1: right now to do it, but I would do it. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: Like I was with you, we talked about going to
Speaker 1: the Arkansas College World Series and you talked to the
Speaker 1: Razorback alumni group there and you told them, Hey, one
Speaker 1: day I'm gonna run for governor in your state. I
Speaker 1: think maybe in probably in twelve years. Again, it's so
Speaker 1: much timing too. Yeah, you know, you gotta be in
Speaker 1: the right place at the right year, in the right environment.
Speaker 1: Maybe I would listen. I would love to do in
Speaker 1: the forties because I'm already going in the forties. I
Speaker 1: could be the president of the fifties. That's just one step. Um.
Speaker 1: I do feel like I come from a place to
Speaker 1: where people are looking for someone to represent them. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of politicians, not all, but most come
Speaker 1: from an economic privilege background which allows them to either
Speaker 1: get the education which allows them to be a politician.
Speaker 1: I have a real job, um, but I've kind of
Speaker 1: been through it, and so you know, I come and
Speaker 1: I think I can represent a lot of folks that
Speaker 1: basically just go a poor don't have an education, and
Speaker 1: aren't getting the right education. Just because I know that.
Speaker 1: That being said, the Republican Party of Arkansas reached out like, hey,
Speaker 1: are you consent and run in the next four years.
Speaker 1: They don't even know what what what I am, but
Speaker 1: I guess they just assume I'm Republican, And good for
Speaker 1: them for assuming that everybody can assume whatever they want.
Speaker 1: It is interesting I remember this story like the first
Speaker 1: family in Nashville is huge, right, and Bill Frist ended
Speaker 1: up he was a you know, surgeon, neurosurgeon I think,
Speaker 1: or whatever he was, and he's from the h c
Speaker 1: A family. And when he decided he want to be
Speaker 1: a politician, this is amazing story, the Democrats pitched him on, hey,
Speaker 1: you should be a Democrat, and the Republicans pitched him on,
Speaker 1: hey you should be a Republican because he just wasn't
Speaker 1: that into politics, right, he was working so hard on
Speaker 1: being a surgeon. They thought, hey, this guy is gonna
Speaker 1: be an incredible candidate. He's obviously got a lot of money.
Speaker 1: And they both made their pitch and then he's like, actually,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm a Republican. And but he hadn't
Speaker 1: even really set down and ever contemplated what political views
Speaker 1: he had until he decided he wanted to get into politics.
Speaker 1: Always think that's interesting that that might be the situation
Speaker 1: that you would have and you got the party's pitching.
Speaker 1: I think that's what they're doing now. And I think
Speaker 1: you kind of invest early in someone with people with
Speaker 1: stocks the businesses. Yeah, And so I think I'm feeling
Speaker 1: that a bit now. You know, I started toying with
Speaker 1: the idea two years ago and the current governor said, hey,
Speaker 1: would not do that because you're getting too much press. Um.
Speaker 1: And I and I think Govin Hudgins awesome and Arkansas. UM.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we'll kind of see where it goes. Like
Speaker 1: I'm the typical, Like socially I'm pretty liberal, but fiscally
Speaker 1: I'm not. So it's kind of like, you know, I
Speaker 1: get you don't fit. You're a little bit like me,
Speaker 1: Like I get a lot of I don't fit down
Speaker 1: one line, but I don't think most people do, except
Speaker 1: for the tribes they've been assigned to and right. And
Speaker 1: that's why I would argue that even the people who
Speaker 1: were in those tribes, if you get them out and
Speaker 1: pull them out on individual issues, they're like, oh, I
Speaker 1: actually don't fit in that party everywhere, which is me.
Speaker 1: Like with gun control, I had guns in my whole life.
Speaker 1: You're talking to a guy from the South. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: same thing here. Like I was six years old and
Speaker 1: they had me shooting at you know, targets, right. Um,
Speaker 1: I grew up in Nashville and that was very common.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna hear me rail against guns because I
Speaker 1: see people that use guns as tools, literal tools. We
Speaker 1: had to eat. Yeah, I gotta. I got a four
Speaker 1: ten when I was nine in a four ten turned
Speaker 1: into a twenty gage, turned into a twelve, turned to
Speaker 1: thirty six. So you're not gonna tell me that guns
Speaker 1: are just bad when we didn't get to eat food
Speaker 1: unless we had them. So you would hear me talking
Speaker 1: about this and go, oh, he's a Republican. But then
Speaker 1: I'm so gay rights, like as much as you could
Speaker 1: possibly be, and be like, oh for so yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we'll just kind of see where the party's fall,
Speaker 1: because they will shift. They've always shifted. Where I grew
Speaker 1: up in Arkansas, Bill Clinton was a Democrat, and at
Speaker 1: the time, the Democrats were for the poor people and
Speaker 1: the Republicans for the rich people. Now it's shifted a
Speaker 1: bit where it's like Republicans are for the image alicals
Speaker 1: and the Democrats. So like Trump will dominate in Arkansas
Speaker 1: and a lot of the poor people will be voting
Speaker 1: for Trump, and a lot of the poor people would
Speaker 1: have voted for for Clinton back in the eighties, in
Speaker 1: the early nineties when he had his political career. So
Speaker 1: mostly it'll be where the where the party is stamped.
Speaker 1: When I decided to run, because again, I just talked
Speaker 1: to the two main issues where if you heard me
Speaker 1: talking about one you would go, oh he's one way
Speaker 1: or oh he's the other. So I am Clay Traviss
Speaker 1: the Wins and Lost his podcast with Bobby Bones. I
Speaker 1: know you're insanely busy. I appreciate you making this time,
Speaker 1: uh and with the concept just kind of wins and losses.
Speaker 1: And at the end, I like to ask people to
Speaker 1: give advice, right like if you were Let's pretend like
Speaker 1: you and I were young and there's a young version
Speaker 1: of Bobby Bones that is out there listening to you
Speaker 1: right now and he's like, Hey, I want to end
Speaker 1: up doing what that guy does one day. What would
Speaker 1: you tell him or her that you really don't have
Speaker 1: to be that talented to be that successful. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of work and grit. It's it's showing up on
Speaker 1: time every time, Like that's the key, Like there are
Speaker 1: other other elements as well. You gotta make some good
Speaker 1: decisions and you're gonna make some bad and when you
Speaker 1: make the bad ones, you have to learn from the bad.
Speaker 1: Like you really got to get something from when you
Speaker 1: do screw up. But for me, again, I just don't
Speaker 1: consider myself just supremely talented. I do consider myself one
Speaker 1: of the hardest, working, grittiest people that I know. I
Speaker 1: do I even know. I don't know if I know
Speaker 1: myself or not, but um, yeah, just it's just showing
Speaker 1: up on time every time, and also finding people that
Speaker 1: will champion you, because I've often went to people and said, hey,
Speaker 1: like you you we help me if you got me
Speaker 1: like I got you, And so that's been a big
Speaker 1: deal for me as being having loyalty and being loyal
Speaker 1: to people too. But but but it's mostly if I've just
Speaker 1: showing up. It's the most basic concept. It's the building
Speaker 1: blocks of If you don't show up and do the
Speaker 1: little things right, why in the world would I trust
Speaker 1: you do the big things right. You don't get a
Speaker 1: chance to do the big things that you can't do
Speaker 1: the little things. I own some gems here in town,
Speaker 1: and before I got into the business with my business partner. Now,
Speaker 1: I would just go and look at the trash cans
Speaker 1: and see, all right, let's see if the little things
Speaker 1: are being done right. Before I attached my name and
Speaker 1: my money to to this person in this and I
Speaker 1: would look at the trash cans and I I woul look
Speaker 1: at the bathrooms. I didn't look at how many people
Speaker 1: were showing up to class. I'll look at that in
Speaker 1: a minute, Like those are the big things, but let
Speaker 1: me see if we're getting the little things right. And
Speaker 1: he was crushing it with the little things. And I
Speaker 1: know if you're taking care of the small details, the
Speaker 1: big details are are easy if you're doing the little things.
Speaker 1: So that's what I would say. I would say, just
Speaker 1: show up and and do the little things, because you
Speaker 1: will naturally train yourself to do the big things. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And that's what I honestly spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: on with my kids is we live in a society
Speaker 1: where we reward results, and so much of results, in
Speaker 1: my mind is effort. And so what I try to
Speaker 1: get involved in is praising grit, praising tenacity, praising effort
Speaker 1: more than results, because I think if you put the
Speaker 1: time in, by and large, you'll get the results. And
Speaker 1: by the way, you are really really talented. But what
Speaker 1: I have come to admire value is your work ethic right,
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of talented people in the world.
Speaker 1: And I tell my kids this all the time too,
Speaker 1: And this is for everybody out there. Listening. Most talented
Speaker 1: people won't work hard. Right, The more talent you have,
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, maybe the less hard you'll work. Now,
Speaker 1: sometimes you end up with the most talented people who
Speaker 1: work the hardest and obviously they're they're ceiling is the stratosphere.
Speaker 1: But the one recipe that can't be eliminated, I think
Speaker 1: is that tenacity and that drive. My last book is
Speaker 1: called fail until you Don't, and I didn't have the
Speaker 1: title till the very end. I'd written the whole thing.
Speaker 1: And what I did was not only did I wanted
Speaker 1: to highlight didn't want to have my my failures and
Speaker 1: mess ups, and also kind of give my theory on
Speaker 1: anybody can be a success if you just do the
Speaker 1: small things right. It was I grabbed a lot of
Speaker 1: folks like Chris Stapleton, the current governor of Arkansas, UM
Speaker 1: Charles Eston, who plays it was an actor, and I said, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to I want you to tell me your
Speaker 1: story right right in my book for me, but just
Speaker 1: tell me. I don't want to know anything cool. You
Speaker 1: did give me your biggest failure, because I want people
Speaker 1: to see that even the great people are really great
Speaker 1: as sucking too. But you just don't see it and
Speaker 1: so it doesn't get anywhere. And that's what they did.
Speaker 1: That's what my book is. That's what my second book is.
Speaker 1: It's me. It's called fail until you Don't Fight, Grind, repeat,
Speaker 1: and it's me going, Okay, this is where I screwed up,
Speaker 1: but this is how you have to learn from those experiences.
Speaker 1: And it's all those guys that have millions of dollars
Speaker 1: super famous, going oh, yeah, I screwed up massively, But
Speaker 1: it's not that I screwed up. It's what I could
Speaker 1: learn from these times that I screwed up. And I
Speaker 1: just got back up, and I just continued to get
Speaker 1: back up. And that's what I do. I just continue
Speaker 1: to get back up. I'll probably screw up here soon. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, you had the fcct A one million dollar fine.
Speaker 1: I think it's been three years ago now, but that
Speaker 1: is that the biggest screw up that you've had on
Speaker 1: your current station in terms, So yeah, I got bind
Speaker 1: a million dollars, like what I'm that's it And that's
Speaker 1: about as bad as you can do. I thought I
Speaker 1: might be fired, and you played for people out there
Speaker 1: who don't know the emergency like kind of this is
Speaker 1: what happened. I'm on the I'm in Dallas, I'm touring,
Speaker 1: and I'm doing a client event, and so I'm working
Speaker 1: out of a small studio there and in d C
Speaker 1: the local cable network or the local affiliate. We're playing
Speaker 1: the World Series. Someone hits a home run and as
Speaker 1: the balls leaving the park, the E A S Test
Speaker 1: goes off, so they didn't see the home run that
Speaker 1: won the game. And I'm going, Wow, what a weird
Speaker 1: time to have an E S like nine o'clock during
Speaker 1: the World Series. And if you know that's gonna happen,
Speaker 1: maybe you give everybody heads up just in case because
Speaker 1: you're watching the World Series. And I said that would
Speaker 1: be like, and I was talking about this story lead.
Speaker 1: I was telling some roalle dramatic story in my life,
Speaker 1: and right before I got to the ending, I hit
Speaker 1: the that I just took off a YouTube. Turn turns
Speaker 1: out the year before that was like the Obama button
Speaker 1: that Ebola was eating America. I didn't know that it
Speaker 1: was on YouTube. I didn't go and so I didn't
Speaker 1: type what should I not press? I just played and
Speaker 1: so it's it locked up cities all over America and
Speaker 1: we were gonna be fine, far more than one million dollars.
Speaker 1: And what happened was, thank god, there was a station
Speaker 1: in California who took a piece of tone and put
Speaker 1: it in a promo and they find this station like
Speaker 1: ten grand and the wonderful attorn. They were like, you're
Speaker 1: gonna okay, let's look at people that are listening. You
Speaker 1: have signed, you find them ten grand, Let's look at this.
Speaker 1: You can't find us more than a million dollars. And
Speaker 1: so I had to talk to a turn. It was
Speaker 1: a brutal time. I've been through a few of those brutals.
Speaker 1: That was the most brutal because I thought I was
Speaker 1: going to watamo. I was like, well, you realize immediately
Speaker 1: how bad of it I think it was gonna be.
Speaker 1: How long did it take? I gotta call that ten
Speaker 1: minutes later, going hey, um, we've shut off in about
Speaker 1: seven cities, and we have cities you're not even on
Speaker 1: that are doing the same thing. I was like, weird
Speaker 1: because apparently one station is the key and when everybody
Speaker 1: else hears it, it's like a tone and it reacts.
Speaker 1: So not only were radio stations locked up and almost
Speaker 1: full cities locked up, but a t tu verse locked up.
Speaker 1: So what it does, and I don't have a t
Speaker 1: tu verse, but what it does is it goes turn
Speaker 1: to the channel five and it locks on a channel
Speaker 1: and it says you you'll have your message coming up soon. Well,
Speaker 1: I didn't play the whole tone because I wasn't playing
Speaker 1: the whole tone and the end of the tone is
Speaker 1: the release. So I locked it and then left it.
Speaker 1: So it just sat and TV speakers were busting all
Speaker 1: over America because it's going. It was. It was a mess,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know, and I gotta call going. We
Speaker 1: gotta shut down the satellite because this hasn't even air
Speaker 1: in the West coast yet, so they shut down the
Speaker 1: left side of the country up from my show, like
Speaker 1: there are a lot of cities that just it locked up,
Speaker 1: multiple radio stations. It was not a pretty time. I
Speaker 1: was getting deposed. It is not it is not nice.
Speaker 1: But I got through it. And I remember when my
Speaker 1: my the owner of our company who I'm close with
Speaker 1: a now Bob Pittman, we call me and goes, hey, man,
Speaker 1: would you not do that again? And when he kind
Speaker 1: of joked about it, I was like, all right, I'm good.
Speaker 1: But it was hanging over your head for a while. Still,
Speaker 1: I was hanging over my head. That's really the one
Speaker 1: thing where people go, what's your biggest regret. I don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of regrets because I've learned from stupid decisions.
Speaker 1: That's the one that I go. I learned nothing, and
Speaker 1: it was really I just I didn't know that was
Speaker 1: what I was doing. Though this is an accident. I
Speaker 1: really hate to that happen. He's Bobby Bones. I'm Clay Travis.
Speaker 1: This has been wins and losses. If you enjoy it,
Speaker 1: give us a rating, go or follow Bobby at Mr
Speaker 1: Bobby Bones. Right, I didn't screw that up. I'm Clay
Speaker 1: Travis at Clay Travis. Give us feedback. If you enjoyed it,
Speaker 1: check out his show. You can check out my show.
Speaker 1: If you like this, you'll probably like some of the
Speaker 1: others that we have done. They have to help to
Speaker 1: pass the time on great long drive sitting by the beach,
Speaker 1: need a good, informative and hopefully entertaining and helpful conversation.
Speaker 1: This has been one of them. Thanks my man. I'm
Speaker 1: pressed by you and hope we can do this again sometimes.
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, man,