Speaker 1: What's up everybody. Welcome to the Granger Smith Podcast. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening on your favorite podcast app. Thank you for
Speaker 1: watching if you're watching on YouTube, and thank you for
Speaker 1: joining on this journey. It's been it's been a wild ride.
Speaker 1: We've had a lot of episodes. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for all those that have started at the beginning and
Speaker 1: heard this story and heard me talk to some friends
Speaker 1: and heard me hear from some really interesting people. And
Speaker 1: if you're brand new, well thanks thanks for listening. This
Speaker 1: is such a crazy time, such a wild time in
Speaker 1: the music business without a major tour going on, so
Speaker 1: there's so many other other things that we have frian
Speaker 1: and different pans all over the countertop. Here I want
Speaker 1: to tell you some of the ways you can keep
Speaker 1: up with this. Of course, a lot of you guys
Speaker 1: know the Smiths. You could follow us, me and my
Speaker 1: family on the Smiths YouTube channel, on the smith YouTube page.
Speaker 1: You could follow me Granger Smith right here on this
Speaker 1: podcast every single Monday. This is also where you're going
Speaker 1: to find our old Doublis Junior's also where you're going
Speaker 1: to find our truck restoration videos. A lot of you
Speaker 1: guys have been asking commenting every time you see a
Speaker 1: new video pop up on the Granger Smith YouTube site,
Speaker 1: you've been saying where is the truck? How where's the truck?
Speaker 1: In the process of the restoration the seventy four gmc
Speaker 1: uh and I've I've posted on here before. I feel
Speaker 1: like i need to tell you guys. First of all,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry that that series has been stalled a
Speaker 1: little bit. The cab is at the body shop right now,
Speaker 1: and the body shop is you know, we've done everything
Speaker 1: on the frame up into the body, so the cabs
Speaker 1: at the body shop they're putting the new roof on it,
Speaker 1: and they got We got a big heilstorm that hit
Speaker 1: us in Texas about a month ago, and so the
Speaker 1: body shop got swarmed with work everybody. Everybody has to
Speaker 1: understand that they're doing this work for us for free,
Speaker 1: so when real work comes in, they got to take
Speaker 1: the cash. So we totally understand that we're on a
Speaker 1: little bit of delay. But I'm told that as you're
Speaker 1: watching this podcast this week, we're supposed to get a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff done on that cab, where finally me
Speaker 1: and Butcher and Bull could pick it up and start
Speaker 1: that series again. You could also find our series live
Speaker 1: at the EU Farm right here on this YouTube page.
Speaker 1: But it will be moving soon to a brand new,
Speaker 1: new and improved EE Nation fan club that is in
Speaker 1: development that we will be launching very soon and all
Speaker 1: these live shows will be going to that. And we
Speaker 1: don't have an official brand sponsorship today for this podcast,
Speaker 1: so I will talk to you about ee apparel, which
Speaker 1: I always love to talk to you guys about EEU apparel.
Speaker 1: I'm right here sitting here at the headquarters at the
Speaker 1: EE Farm as we speak. This is always a passion
Speaker 1: project for me, as it has been for many many
Speaker 1: years with me and my brothers, and I want to
Speaker 1: first of all always thank you guys for joining EE Nation,
Speaker 1: for being a part of this brand, of this lifestyle
Speaker 1: that is so much bigger than just music or just
Speaker 1: one person. And I am so proud every day to
Speaker 1: know that we have the responsibility of representing this lifestyle
Speaker 1: through this brand. The month of August coming up, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of new stuff we have August second, our
Speaker 1: back to school release that's gonna be really important August fifteenth.
Speaker 1: Some of you might not think this is important, but
Speaker 1: actually we've been working on this for a long time,
Speaker 1: but that's our leggings release. And Amber has been working
Speaker 1: so hard on these leggings. I mean she's been working
Speaker 1: on this stuff for almost a year trying to find
Speaker 1: the perfect leggings. I know that sounds crazy, but it's
Speaker 1: the real deal and these suckers are going to be amazing.
Speaker 1: That's August fifteenth. Then we get into September fourth through
Speaker 1: the seventh. We're gonna have a Labor Day weekend sell
Speaker 1: That one's gonna be really amazing. I've seen some stuff
Speaker 1: all leading up to September eighteenth, our fall launch, and
Speaker 1: you guys know how these launches go. You got to
Speaker 1: get there early. Everything's gonna sell out, but it's so
Speaker 1: worth it. We're gonna have early access through this fan
Speaker 1: club that I'm talking about, and I'm going to release
Speaker 1: a lot more information as that time gets closer. And
Speaker 1: you know what's really cool about the September eighteenth fall
Speaker 1: launch for Yigie Apparel. What's really cool is the next week,
Speaker 1: my brand new album is going to come out September
Speaker 1: twenty fifth. A lot more that you need to know
Speaker 1: about that and that will be coming soon. Today. This
Speaker 1: is a great chat a great friend of mine, one
Speaker 1: of the pioneers in Texas country music. One of the
Speaker 1: guys that many times has been called the king of
Speaker 1: Texas country music, and he has he has lived life
Speaker 1: to the fullest and he has live a life worthy
Speaker 1: of you guys hearing his story because he's had a
Speaker 1: lot of love, a lot of loss, and a lot
Speaker 1: of redemption. So, without further ado, I want to I
Speaker 1: want to introduce you and introduce you guys to mister
Speaker 1: Josh Abbott. Welcome to the Grand Smith Podcast. Did Kids
Speaker 1: in deesel my tires and schools, Long line by four,
Speaker 1: Husband down on back Home Range and co one page. Yeah, you'reation.
Speaker 1: So I believe it was two thousand nine. We were
Speaker 1: at Anton's downtown Austin. Yeah, a party and it was
Speaker 1: like a benefit I think. And there was a bunch
Speaker 1: of artists there, a bunch of Texas country industry people there.
Speaker 1: And I remember I played a couple of songs acoustic,
Speaker 1: a bunch of people played. Yeah. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: bunch And you remember on the nine talking about Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it was like a showcase of sorts. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So my my radio promoter at the time, she said
Speaker 1: to see that guy over there. I think it was
Speaker 1: a red trucker cap you were wearing. That was a
Speaker 1: good memory. Man. She said, that guy is about to
Speaker 1: blow up. He's about to blow up. Was like, what's
Speaker 1: his name? Josh Abbott. That was the first, the first
Speaker 1: time I saw Josh Abbott. I appreciate it. Shout out
Speaker 1: to Angela was the one that did that, and and man,
Speaker 1: she was right, yeah, because you skyrocketed from there. And
Speaker 1: so what do you think I'm right about two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine? Yeah, it's probably, well, I don't know when
Speaker 1: we necessarily skyrocketed, but that was probably, I mean, definitely
Speaker 1: is two thousand and eight or nine, Yeah, because we
Speaker 1: actually started touring in two thousand and eight. So we
Speaker 1: formed our band in two thousand and six just for fun.
Speaker 1: Then we eventually, I think maybe in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: recorded that taste Ep Yep, and it just caught so
Speaker 1: much fire and Lubbock that we were like, Okay, we're
Speaker 1: onto something here. So literally, in January of two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, I dropped out of grad school and signed
Speaker 1: a I didn't really sign any paperwork, but essentially orally
Speaker 1: signed an agreement to be booked by Bruce Kalmick, who's
Speaker 1: now our manager, and so I'll never forget it. I
Speaker 1: mean literally we started in January two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: in terms of like making it. So you know, we
Speaker 1: had we hired Angela to push songs on the radio.
Speaker 1: I don't even know we hired her at that point.
Speaker 1: It might have been a few months out down the road.
Speaker 1: She was definitely, if not then she was definitely in
Speaker 1: talks with you. Yeah, yeah, she's she was great. She
Speaker 1: was a huge supporter and believer in the music and
Speaker 1: really got a lot of Texas radio to play it.
Speaker 1: And when we were just nobody here since since we
Speaker 1: met at least, yeah, man, I mean, you know what's
Speaker 1: funny is that you you reflect on that memory and
Speaker 1: I remember that show. I also remember, you know, I
Speaker 1: also remember on that show. I'm pretty sure my fiddle,
Speaker 1: our fiddle player, Preston he uh he he hd, like
Speaker 1: really slippery boots in that stage was really slick, and
Speaker 1: I think he slipped and fell on it. I'm not
Speaker 1: one hundred percent sure that was the show, but the
Speaker 1: show I remember meeting you guys at two way long
Speaker 1: ago we played a show in Tyler together. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I mean there was like seventy five people there maybe
Speaker 1: or you were already you're already on your way then maybe,
Speaker 1: But I mean same, the reason it was, I wasn't
Speaker 1: I remember it as a weekday night. I think it's
Speaker 1: like a Wednesday night. The only thing I remember about
Speaker 1: that venue was the big red curtain that they had
Speaker 1: that would that would kind of dramatically open up for
Speaker 1: everyone to watch you. And you know, they opened it
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, yeah, baby, there'll be a lot
Speaker 1: of people out there and they're just one. We just
Speaker 1: weren't in a position of celtickets yet, I will say.
Speaker 1: I will say though, I remember that show very well too.
Speaker 1: And and the reason I know you were skyrocketing, First
Speaker 1: of all, you had a bus, and you know there
Speaker 1: was a time when like it was a very defined
Speaker 1: position if you had a bus. And and when you played,
Speaker 1: everyone rushed the stage. They might have been saving. I
Speaker 1: think it's more than saving. It might have been a
Speaker 1: buck fifty, but they all rush the stage, and it
Speaker 1: was like, Wow, this guy's a real deal. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, I think before before we dive into this stuff,
Speaker 1: we need to take care of probably for the listeners here,
Speaker 1: we probably needed to to find Texas Country Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: because as you know, when both of us started venturing
Speaker 1: out of Texas, that was always a question either you
Speaker 1: got it and you knew it or you just said,
Speaker 1: what is Texas Country? Right? This is like a big question.
Speaker 1: So and I know that it's defined differently, but how
Speaker 1: do you Josh Abbott, the one who has seen I
Speaker 1: could say that you are top five ever of all
Speaker 1: artists that have experienced the extreme presence of what Texas
Speaker 1: Country has to offer. So how do you define it? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I appreciate the compliment. I definitely think we've
Speaker 1: you know, we accomplished a lot more than I thought
Speaker 1: we would. But you know, it's a music. It's music
Speaker 1: that speaks to our culture. I almost I almost think
Speaker 1: of Texas Country as the same way you would if
Speaker 1: you found out you went to if you go to
Speaker 1: Europe and you found out they had their own kind
Speaker 1: of music scene over there some other specific place, right,
Speaker 1: Because you know, we sing about these locations in Texas,
Speaker 1: and even if we're not like name dropping Rivers and
Speaker 1: and that whole kind of like stereotypical, cheesy quote unquote thing,
Speaker 1: but there's just something about like our culture, the way
Speaker 1: we are raised down here, right. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: very different as a whole compared to a lot of
Speaker 1: the other a lot of the rest of the country.
Speaker 1: There's there's a very strong sense of pride. You know.
Speaker 1: I caution on the word nationalism because that just seems
Speaker 1: to be like so grossly interpreted these days. And I
Speaker 1: don't want anyone to think I'm referring to like Nazis
Speaker 1: or anything. But I just what I mean is Texas
Speaker 1: we think of ourselves as a nation. You know, we're
Speaker 1: our own country Texas. Yeah, that's fair enough. So I
Speaker 1: just think, yeah, we have our own music scene, we
Speaker 1: have our own seen a music that that people support,
Speaker 1: and it's you know, it's just very uniquely different than
Speaker 1: anywhere else in the country. I mean, I think the
Speaker 1: Seattle Portland, that kind of Northwest Coast rock scene is
Speaker 1: probably you know, maybe as close as it gets to
Speaker 1: kind of mimicking what we do. It could even maybe
Speaker 1: even argue like the Southeastern kind of style and even
Speaker 1: a little bit of that, you know, Southern rock kind
Speaker 1: of has its own thing. But still there's just nothing
Speaker 1: infrastructure wise like we have in Texas, where there's venues
Speaker 1: stacked on top of each other, across the state and
Speaker 1: you can play a city four times a year and
Speaker 1: they're not going to burn your crowd out, which is crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: infrastructure absolutely, fans are absolutely part of that. It's hard
Speaker 1: to define the actual style of the genre because especially
Speaker 1: it's Heyday when you have you have Jack Ingram, Whiskey Myers,
Speaker 1: Kevin Fowler, you have some very different styles of music
Speaker 1: all under the same umbrella. It could all play a festival.
Speaker 1: It is a little weird like that, but you know what,
Speaker 1: in the same sense, it's kind of like that with
Speaker 1: national mainstream country, you know. I mean there's Luke Combs, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's Miranda Lambert, and there's Carrie Underwood, and there's
Speaker 1: Carly Pearce, and you know, there's Florida Georgia Line and
Speaker 1: you know, there's a whole spectrum of music that kind
Speaker 1: of gets put under the same umbrellas. It's almost the
Speaker 1: same in Texas, I think, you know, with just there's
Speaker 1: some of different styles. Yeah, there's more singer songwriter guys.
Speaker 1: There's more rock bands then that you got your honky
Speaker 1: tonk cowboy hat wearing, you know, fiddle playing bands, and
Speaker 1: I don't know, we've fallen there somewhere. Could you could
Speaker 1: tour in the state of Texas and you specifically could
Speaker 1: put on jat Best, specifically in Lubbock, And how many
Speaker 1: tickets would you sell average on a Jabfest in Loveock, Texas.
Speaker 1: This was supposed to be year ten. I say supposed
Speaker 1: to be because I really don't think that we'll be
Speaker 1: able to have a jab Fest. I understand that I'm
Speaker 1: hoping I'm wrong, but we've had it nine years and
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure we've sold out the Saturday night starting
Speaker 1: in year three every year. How many tickets is that? Oh,
Speaker 1: a little over seven thousand. And then we added a
Speaker 1: Friday night show a few years ago, and we've sold
Speaker 1: it out a couple times, but we don't play both nights.
Speaker 1: We did one time, and I honestly didn't enjoy playing
Speaker 1: two nights in a row because I just kind of
Speaker 1: wanted to hang. So now we just have it to
Speaker 1: where we have other bands headlined the Friday night and
Speaker 1: I'm off. I just get to hang, yeah and visit
Speaker 1: with them and friends and family, so that when Saturday
Speaker 1: comes around and it's a show day, I'm not distracted
Speaker 1: by all that stuff. But yeah, it's pretty it's been great.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just an unbelievable number, seven thousand tickets.
Speaker 1: Most people, way, especially from the mainstream nationals. People that
Speaker 1: are listening to this, you know that are your fans
Speaker 1: from across the country, or they might not even know
Speaker 1: who I am. Right because of this podcast, they'll discover me.
Speaker 1: And for them to hear that we have venues where
Speaker 1: we put five thousand plus people in there, they're probably like,
Speaker 1: what the yeah? Oh yeah, and that's what again, that's
Speaker 1: going back to what we talked about originally, is that's
Speaker 1: what makes Texas music so unique. Yeah, we could have
Speaker 1: a chart system with number one songs selling merch. I
Speaker 1: mean I learned merch from Texas Country, agreed, I mean
Speaker 1: far beyond anyone I've ever seen. You know, It's funny.
Speaker 1: Hold one, when I've been asked this question before about
Speaker 1: what's the difference between Texas Country and mainstream country, I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know what, Honestly, we don't put our faces on
Speaker 1: our shirts. Yeah, and we just talked about this. I've
Speaker 1: never seen the Texas Country artists put their face like
Speaker 1: on a shirt, like a tour shirt and sell it
Speaker 1: at shows. But every mainstream artist does it. And it's
Speaker 1: I have no idea why there's a difference. I don't either,
Speaker 1: except for when we first started open up for national
Speaker 1: acts and and our merch would have like ten times
Speaker 1: to merchant. We would be at nobody. The other tour
Speaker 1: managers would be just saying, hey, you got a limiture merch,
Speaker 1: this is crazy. You got to take some of the
Speaker 1: os are way too high, looks like old Navy said over.
Speaker 1: But we learned that partly because that was just a
Speaker 1: big part of our income. Yeah, and Donna Hue taught
Speaker 1: me that early on. That's one of the things I
Speaker 1: wanted to tat me don hu and Watson Man and
Speaker 1: gotta throw a foul in there, because see, for sure, dude,
Speaker 1: he would take me. He would take me as a
Speaker 1: nobody opening act and bring me over to the merch
Speaker 1: table at the end of the night, and then as
Speaker 1: this endless line if people were coming to take a
Speaker 1: picture or get something signed, he would say, did you
Speaker 1: meet Granger? Yep? And you know what, man, A lot
Speaker 1: of artists do that. And I think that's another thing
Speaker 1: that separates us, because first of all, just the act
Speaker 1: of signing. How many country artists on the national mainstream
Speaker 1: charts sign autographs after shows, yeah, you know, and I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm not critiquing that because for some of them,
Speaker 1: that would be that would be horrible, that would be
Speaker 1: a really horrible experience for them. Right, they get done
Speaker 1: playing into a huge show, and they got there to
Speaker 1: sign autographs and they're there for five hours, you know,
Speaker 1: And then what people don't understand is that's not really
Speaker 1: fair to the venue and the staff have been there
Speaker 1: all day long. And now you know, if you sign
Speaker 1: autographs for hours and hours and hours, it's cool for
Speaker 1: the fans, but all those people that work there, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not really cool for them to Nebraska. So you
Speaker 1: have to learn that balance. But that's a big difference
Speaker 1: I think between the two scenes as well. It's just
Speaker 1: the op that I think, would you have a closer
Speaker 1: relationship with fans? I mean, because you know, we're all
Speaker 1: from Texas, right, most of us, So it's kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, you your fans probably are friends with someone
Speaker 1: you went to high school or college with at least
Speaker 1: early on, or you know, even as you've I've been
Speaker 1: around now for a little bit, but now you know,
Speaker 1: I meet people all the time who, hey, I move
Speaker 1: next door to your old room mate from college, and
Speaker 1: so there's just a real kind of closeness to that.
Speaker 1: You know, the proximity feels really close. Whereas you know
Speaker 1: you're not going to find that in mainstream quite as
Speaker 1: much because looking at the country as opposed to the state. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a feeling in the crowd in a
Speaker 1: Texas country concert. There's a feeling that, hey, I want
Speaker 1: to do that. I could do that, I could make
Speaker 1: a CD. It's literally what I start a band and
Speaker 1: do that. It's literally what I said when I went
Speaker 1: and watched, So take me to that moment. So I
Speaker 1: was already playing guitar, started playing guitar probably around twenty one,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty twenty one, not the year at the age.
Speaker 1: It was a long time ago. And I started writing
Speaker 1: songs maybe in two thousand and four, three somewhere in there,
Speaker 1: you know. And I was going to the Blue Light
Speaker 1: and love it because I was going to Texas Tech,
Speaker 1: and you know, Wade Bowen was obviously he was the
Speaker 1: guy everybody listened to because he was a Tech alumni.
Speaker 1: He was just older than me by a couple of years.
Speaker 1: So everybody loved Wade and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: through that I started hearing about Randy Rogers band and
Speaker 1: Eli young Ban and I mean we would we would
Speaker 1: listen to their CD at the pre party and we'd
Speaker 1: all roll up there together, we'd pay our ten bucks
Speaker 1: or whatever seven bucks to get in, yep, and we'd
Speaker 1: watch these bands. And I remember just feeling so just
Speaker 1: what's the word, I'm looking infatuated, just inspired by there's
Speaker 1: this little stage and there's this band that looks like
Speaker 1: they're having the time of their life and they're playing
Speaker 1: their own songs. I've never heard any of them until
Speaker 1: a friend of mine gave me this CD and said
Speaker 1: you should listen. And you know, I would always be like, well,
Speaker 1: how come they're not on the radio. And it's like
Speaker 1: it's a different thing. You'll you'll learn, you know. And
Speaker 1: because for me, growing up, even though I grew up
Speaker 1: in love it, Texas country was not a really it
Speaker 1: wasn't a thing that was played on the radio like
Speaker 1: it is today now it's very normalized, but back then
Speaker 1: you never heard it on the radio. So I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, who are these guys? Which makes it even
Speaker 1: more cool? And yeah, and so I remember I was
Speaker 1: at specifically as a Randy Rodgers show one, not at
Speaker 1: blue Light, and I just remember being like, I can
Speaker 1: do this. I could totally be that guy, like I'm
Speaker 1: an okay singer and I'm an okay writer. And looking
Speaker 1: back now it's both. There's a mixture of being naive
Speaker 1: and maybe cocky in those statements, but I'd like to
Speaker 1: think it was just more confidence. I was just like,
Speaker 1: I can totally do that. So I started writing songs,
Speaker 1: put together the band with my fraternity brothers, and we
Speaker 1: just started playing blue Light once a week. And you know,
Speaker 1: I won't lie about it. I mean, I think part
Speaker 1: of the reason we caught some success early on, if
Speaker 1: you know, if I'm being humble about it, is, uh,
Speaker 1: we were all on a fraternity right, and specifically my
Speaker 1: bass player at the time, shout out know Hugh he was.
Speaker 1: He's pretty popular in our fraternity and a lot of
Speaker 1: people just love Neil. So we would go play blue
Speaker 1: Light on Tuesday Wednesday night. Am I talking close enough
Speaker 1: to the mic here? Right? Okay? I didn't know. They
Speaker 1: are pretty directional and so anyway we'd show up, Well,
Speaker 1: we were the it thing to do on Tuesday night,
Speaker 1: so you know, all our fraternity brothers, not all of them,
Speaker 1: but a bunch of them would come out and they'd
Speaker 1: bring their girlfriends, well, they'd bring their sorority sisters and roommates,
Speaker 1: and then they'd bring their boyfriends. And the next thing,
Speaker 1: you know, I was like, yeah, I mean, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna lie. There were some nights where there was fifty
Speaker 1: people there, but there were a lot of nights were
Speaker 1: in college and there's it's sold out on a Tuesday night,
Speaker 1: and me and all the guys are making like five
Speaker 1: hundred bucks each and we think we are kings, Like
Speaker 1: it does not get better than this, right, Like this
Speaker 1: is great? And yeah, I just kind of went from there.
Speaker 1: And what's crazy is and I say this a lot,
Speaker 1: but sometimes those days it's all relative to where you
Speaker 1: are in your life, because maybe that was maybe it
Speaker 1: didn't get any better than that, because well, those were
Speaker 1: pretty awesome nights. They were pretty great, you know, when
Speaker 1: you're the in five hundred at the time, when you're
Speaker 1: a college kid, five hundred bucks is a lot of
Speaker 1: money single college did, yeah, you know, and you can
Speaker 1: pack out the blue light and not have to worry
Speaker 1: about traveling expenses. Make five hundred bucks. It's not a
Speaker 1: bad deal, but you know, you realize real quick, can't
Speaker 1: do that forever, right, So you have to at some
Speaker 1: point parlay that and take the next step. And that's
Speaker 1: what we did. So took the next step. A couple
Speaker 1: of the band members changed because they just didn't want to.
Speaker 1: They honestly did it for fun and they didn't want
Speaker 1: to be in a touring band. They just didn't want
Speaker 1: that wife, and so me and the banjo players stuck
Speaker 1: it out. We found Preston on the fiddle, and we
Speaker 1: found Eddie on the drums, and literally the four of
Speaker 1: us have been, you know, work together since two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight. It's a hard thing at the beginning finding
Speaker 1: guys that you say, hey, we got a gig on Friday.
Speaker 1: I know you have a job, but we got to
Speaker 1: leave at like two pm. Yeah, And they're like, man,
Speaker 1: I can't get off till five, know, And eventually you
Speaker 1: got to say, you can't be in this band anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny you say that. So again, I was in
Speaker 1: grad school. The rest of the band was all in college,
Speaker 1: except for I think Eddie, our drummer. He was he
Speaker 1: had already finished his music, his two year program at
Speaker 1: South Plain's Music School, and so Preston was in school
Speaker 1: in Amarillo at West Texas A and m or Kenton
Speaker 1: Canyon just outside of Amarillo, and so I was like,
Speaker 1: he's such a great fiddle player and a fun dude
Speaker 1: to hang with, and I love the kid. Like, we'll
Speaker 1: adjust on his schedule. So we had like we set
Speaker 1: it up to where Thursdays we had to play within
Speaker 1: three hours of Lubbock Max, so we would never take
Speaker 1: a gig pass that. So luckily for us in the
Speaker 1: Texas scene and Lubbock, we would play Amarillo, Midland, Odessa,
Speaker 1: San Angelo, Abilane, Wiched All Falls, or Lubbock's and that's
Speaker 1: what we'd play on Thursday night, and then from there
Speaker 1: we'd rout it right and we'd go to like Dallas,
Speaker 1: Fort Worth, Hill Country, San Antonio, Austin, and then on
Speaker 1: Saturday we might venture to East Texas Corpus, Houston and
Speaker 1: Sunday the long drive all the way back to Lubbock.
Speaker 1: And that's what we did for a couple of years
Speaker 1: living out there, and then we all finally kind of
Speaker 1: moved and relocated in twenty ten when things were hopping
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah, things were hopping a little bit
Speaker 1: in the spring of twenty ten is when She's Like
Speaker 1: Texas came out, which was kind of the That's what
Speaker 1: changed the game for us, because not only did we
Speaker 1: have that song, She's Like Texas, which has become just
Speaker 1: kind of a massive regional success story, changed life. It
Speaker 1: changed my life. And then we followed that up with
Speaker 1: the duet I did with an unknown artist at the
Speaker 1: time named Casey Musgraves. And the music video is pretty wild,
Speaker 1: isn't it For everybody listening that doesn't know. Granger and
Speaker 1: his wife are in the music video. And I don't
Speaker 1: want to give away the plot because it's actually like
Speaker 1: a little controversial, and but y'all's makeout scene is still
Speaker 1: it's top notch. That's you know what I mean. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's underrated because, you know, because we were never
Speaker 1: a big band at that time, so it never got
Speaker 1: the attention to deserve. But that's that's a cool music video,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate you being in of course. Man. Fun fact,
Speaker 1: Amber was pregnant with London on that shoot, showing yet
Speaker 1: so then she's eight Now. I just remember being like,
Speaker 1: I knew it was your wife, but I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, no, you know, I can't tell the story
Speaker 1: because I don't want to ruin the plot for the video.
Speaker 1: But she was like she did not you know, she
Speaker 1: was like she didn't want to kiss me. And I
Speaker 1: was like, well, look, I don't blame you. It's fine.
Speaker 1: I totally get I'm not here as good looking as
Speaker 1: your husband. This doesn't we're just acting here. I like,
Speaker 1: this doesn't have to be real. And she kissed me
Speaker 1: on the cheek and it worked for the video because
Speaker 1: really it didn't need to be any more than that.
Speaker 1: So well, if you're watching on YouTube, we'll link that
Speaker 1: music video top of description series. That's funny, Yeah, amazing memories.
Speaker 1: So where do you think go back to Texas Country?
Speaker 1: Where do you think it came from? This thing that
Speaker 1: became so huge and so regional and so accessible to
Speaker 1: a young musician and so appealing to a fan that
Speaker 1: had a lot of state nationalism. And it wasn't just Texas.
Speaker 1: I mean Oklahoma jumped on sure, Arkansas jumped on board,
Speaker 1: Wesan jumped on board. New Mexico did Oklahoma more so? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I would almost argue they have something different
Speaker 1: than what's Texas Country. We all get closed in together.
Speaker 1: Texas country red dirt country. I think there's two very
Speaker 1: distinct sounds and approaches. So where did all of this
Speaker 1: come from? Well, you know, that's a great question. And
Speaker 1: why I don't pretend to be a historian, I would say,
Speaker 1: you take a look at like, I hope I'm using
Speaker 1: this word correctly. The epistemology m the way we view
Speaker 1: the world, right, I think that's what that means. And
Speaker 1: so in Texas again, we have you know, we come
Speaker 1: from descendants of people who you know, want Texas to
Speaker 1: be their own country again, right, So there's that very
Speaker 1: independent sense among us. So it creates this pride. And
Speaker 1: we're a big state. So that allows geography, for sure,
Speaker 1: for a lot of area to to kind of sing
Speaker 1: about and cover. And you know, honestly, I just think
Speaker 1: some there's always been I don't but I think there's
Speaker 1: always been some sort of disdain for the mainstream radio.
Speaker 1: Which is so funny because you know, I listened to
Speaker 1: old country from the seventies and eighties and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I love this. But at the time, the guys who
Speaker 1: were in the Texas country scene, they knocked on you know,
Speaker 1: Terry Allen, you know, He's got a song called the
Speaker 1: Flatland Farmer, who talks about this farmer up in the
Speaker 1: middle of the country who never got famous, but he
Speaker 1: he he can outpick out play in the Nashville Star.
Speaker 1: And we actually covered that song one of our records.
Speaker 1: But anyway, so yeah, I don't know. I don't want
Speaker 1: to get too wordy here. I'm not a historian. I
Speaker 1: bet there are some guys that probably have a better
Speaker 1: understanding of maybe who started it and how it dominoed here.
Speaker 1: I mean I can recite you a bunch of names,
Speaker 1: especially from the Lubbock area, you know, going all the
Speaker 1: way back to like the Flatlanders and even before them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the word of mouth is just it's unreal how
Speaker 1: that worked because this was before really social media at all,
Speaker 1: and it was word of mouth that was taking these concerts. Like,
Speaker 1: for instance, I was in College Station in early two
Speaker 1: thousands and I remember seeing Pat Green core Mora was
Speaker 1: opening at Shadow Canyon Old Club there right there on
Speaker 1: the University and it was just packed, I mean slam packed,
Speaker 1: and everyone knew all the words, including me. Everyone had
Speaker 1: the record, including me. Yeah, and then Corey starts the show.
Speaker 1: Everyone knew all the words and everyone had the record,
Speaker 1: and that was just no one thought about it in
Speaker 1: terms of is this guy on the radio or not?
Speaker 1: It was it represented a good time with our friends
Speaker 1: and pat saying about all the He was the background
Speaker 1: music to all of our fun parties that we had,
Speaker 1: and so is Corey. In the year two thousand and
Speaker 1: that became the soundtrack to our lives then. And I
Speaker 1: think there's something attractive about the unknown, right like moths
Speaker 1: to a flame. There's something about that because in the
Speaker 1: process of discovery with music, I mean, don't you even
Speaker 1: still to this day you discover. You might listen to
Speaker 1: a band who has one song and you're like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I love them. I got to share this,
Speaker 1: right yeah, And you want to be able to You
Speaker 1: want to be the guy to share it with your
Speaker 1: friends and be like, y'all got to listen to this
Speaker 1: because I think this is going to blow up. This
Speaker 1: is huge. You know, I still do it all You're
Speaker 1: really good at that, and well, you know, social media
Speaker 1: platform has always partly been really helping younger artists. I
Speaker 1: love doing it and I think if I was going
Speaker 1: to have a job in the music industry besides being
Speaker 1: a singer, would be A and R because I've just
Speaker 1: always had some sort of natural ability to see a star,
Speaker 1: you know, even when they weren't necessarily shining bright at
Speaker 1: the time. But to me, it's always like you see
Speaker 1: a star, you know it, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: everyone knew you were super talented. You just had to
Speaker 1: like get out of the Texas country scene and sign
Speaker 1: a record deal and crush it, you know. And seriously,
Speaker 1: hats off to you, because I mean, you've done it.
Speaker 1: You've accomplished so much. My record deal came way later,
Speaker 1: so did yours. Yeah, we didn't sign a record deal
Speaker 1: until twenty fifteen, really, and it's crazy what all the
Speaker 1: stuff that happened before that. It's crazy to think that
Speaker 1: was all brought on by the infrastructure of Texas country,
Speaker 1: for sure. You know. I remember you did a quote
Speaker 1: one you did an interview years ago, and you talked
Speaker 1: about how the Texas country scene was kind of like
Speaker 1: the It was was almost like the miners that would
Speaker 1: prepare for the majors. Quote. You know what, though, I
Speaker 1: didn't think that you were necesscessarily wrong. I think that
Speaker 1: just some people in Texas kind of took it wrong,
Speaker 1: because again, no one wants to feel inferior to any
Speaker 1: other genre or any other state. But I totally got
Speaker 1: what you meant. What you meant by that was it
Speaker 1: trained you to visit radio. It trained you to get
Speaker 1: your band and crew and infrastructure set, and it trained
Speaker 1: you in a way that like when you when you
Speaker 1: signed your record doing you started touring nationally and being
Speaker 1: on like big tours with all these other huge artists,
Speaker 1: you were way more prepared than for that. Then let's
Speaker 1: say the normal act who had moved out to Nashville,
Speaker 1: signed a record deal, had the first song on the radio,
Speaker 1: and then got put on a tour and they had
Speaker 1: no clue how to tour as a band. I have
Speaker 1: no clue what they're doing with their merch absolutely, and
Speaker 1: I totally got what you meant by it. So just no.
Speaker 1: I remember you text so fans should know this. You're
Speaker 1: such a good guy. You texted me an apology for
Speaker 1: making that statement, and I remember replying to you like,
Speaker 1: you do not have to apologize for this statement because
Speaker 1: I get what you meant, and if people want to
Speaker 1: misconstrue that, then you can't. You can't be responsible for interpretation.
Speaker 1: Let me que responsible for intent. I want to take
Speaker 1: a quick break on here, and then I want to
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what I said in the interview that
Speaker 1: became notorious. So I was this was coming off of
Speaker 1: a national radio hit for me, and a reporter said,
Speaker 1: how do you attribute having this hit coming from nothing
Speaker 1: and having this hit on national radio? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: it came from Texas Country. And he said, well, what
Speaker 1: does Texas Country mean to you? And I said, man,
Speaker 1: it's everything to me. It taught me everything I know.
Speaker 1: It taught me just like you said. It taught me
Speaker 1: how to make my first radio call, how to walk
Speaker 1: into a radio station and say here's me, and here's
Speaker 1: my band, and here's my song. It was the minor
Speaker 1: leagues for everything thing in terms of training. It trained me.
Speaker 1: But that one quote again got screenshot out of an article,
Speaker 1: and then it stood. It floated around, and there was
Speaker 1: a couple guys that took it really bad, a lot
Speaker 1: of guys probably were neutral on it, and a couple
Speaker 1: of guys actually defended me. I talked to all of them,
Speaker 1: all the above. I talked to everybody because when that
Speaker 1: came out, it crushed me because I thought, here, I
Speaker 1: am thinking, I'm trying to pay homage. Yeah, to the
Speaker 1: only reason I'm actually standing on this stage. Yea, and
Speaker 1: the whole thing collapsed underneath me. Again. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: not trying to be prophetic, but again, you cannot be
Speaker 1: responsible for interpretation. You have to be responsible for intent.
Speaker 1: Your intent was pure, and anyone that knows you knows that.
Speaker 1: So if anybody wants to misconstrue it and be an asshole,
Speaker 1: they can be an asshole. Yeah. Yeah. And I stand
Speaker 1: to this day saying I have nothing in my music
Speaker 1: career without Texas Country and the infrastructu Sure that it
Speaker 1: taught me the grind that it taught me, the resilience
Speaker 1: and and persistence that it taught me through through a
Speaker 1: lot of times at the at the midnight rodeos when
Speaker 1: we were having a really bad night and I got
Speaker 1: back in the van and decided to go do it again. Yep.
Speaker 1: And a lot of national acts that sign a record
Speaker 1: deal right out of the gate, they don't ever have
Speaker 1: that opporationality to do that. They never do that because
Speaker 1: first of all, they're shielded. Their booking agency and label
Speaker 1: won't let them go put themselves out there and be
Speaker 1: vulnerable and show up and play to nobody. It's not
Speaker 1: their fault. To their credit, they didn't have what me
Speaker 1: and you had, right, They just they hunker down, they
Speaker 1: visit radio, they get a hit, then they go on
Speaker 1: to her, and then they open for somebody who's big.
Speaker 1: So you're naturally in front of crowds, and then you
Speaker 1: get a false, a false reading on how you're doing.
Speaker 1: For sure, there's there's acts that will go for years
Speaker 1: never headlining their own show. I'm not even at a club.
Speaker 1: They spend years on the road with somebody big, and
Speaker 1: they think, I think things are pretty good. I think
Speaker 1: crowd loves me. And then they go out for the
Speaker 1: first time at Cotton Ideas or whatever in Knoxville and
Speaker 1: no one comes and they cannot understand it. And so
Speaker 1: then they just they think they need to rethink their
Speaker 1: whole sound and everything they do. Yeah, and they think
Speaker 1: they have to pander and play a bunch of covers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly right, Like you know what I mean, Hey, let's
Speaker 1: you know, we don't want them to be bored tonight,
Speaker 1: so let's, you know, let's play ten covers or you
Speaker 1: played twenty songs, you play ten covers, you know, And
Speaker 1: I know when you're a young band, you don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of originals, so that's you know, there's something
Speaker 1: to be said for that. But it's like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've gone out and I've seen some of these you know,
Speaker 1: shows of people and I'm like, you know, they might
Speaker 1: have one hit, right, yeah, and they're opening and they're
Speaker 1: playing a twenty five minute time slot. Well, the other
Speaker 1: five songs were covers. I'm like, yeah, you just played
Speaker 1: me five stuff cover songs and then your hit. You
Speaker 1: didn't take this opportunity to show all these people that
Speaker 1: you have more than the one song. So weird and
Speaker 1: we said the right word there there. They haven't understood
Speaker 1: the vulnerability of standing there and delivering an original music.
Speaker 1: And maybe they're not going to clap at you. Maybe
Speaker 1: they're going to go to the bathroom or go get
Speaker 1: a drink, and that is really that kind of rejection
Speaker 1: is really hard. The one of our very I wish
Speaker 1: my band was in here with me because we laugh
Speaker 1: about these stories all the time. One of our first gigs,
Speaker 1: when again we signed with Bruce, he puts us out
Speaker 1: on the road. God bless Bruce. At the time, you know,
Speaker 1: he was still very young and green in his career, right,
Speaker 1: so he's doing the best he can. He books us.
Speaker 1: I think we were getting like five or six hundred
Speaker 1: bucks to play a steakhouse in Madisonville. I always remember that.
Speaker 1: So we go there, we get we get like free food,
Speaker 1: and so that that alone, it's kind of worth it,
Speaker 1: right for a bunch of young dudes. And so we
Speaker 1: set up and play. There's only like three people there
Speaker 1: listening to us, and I kid you not. At one point,
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone was in there except for the
Speaker 1: waiter pushing the broom across the floor in front of us,
Speaker 1: like cleaning. And I was like, Okay, we have to
Speaker 1: have a little more pride than this, you know. I
Speaker 1: mean we may be nobody's but yeah, we're not doing
Speaker 1: any good playing to nobody, you know, like we've got
Speaker 1: to be We have to get in front of people.
Speaker 1: Send my whole philosophy's flip to I'm going to open
Speaker 1: for everybody and anybody, and I don't care if it
Speaker 1: pays fifty bucks, five hundred bucks, or zero dollars. I
Speaker 1: want to be in front of a crowd, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. My goal as a young artist was
Speaker 1: I want to open, and I want people leaving talking
Speaker 1: about the opener, So I would fire up my guys
Speaker 1: every night. We're bringing it tonight. Every night we're bringing it.
Speaker 1: And you know, it works when you're a young band
Speaker 1: and you're a new band and there's an infectious energy
Speaker 1: to that. Yeah. Absolutely, If you are the first music
Speaker 1: artist I've had on this podcast, really you the first.
Speaker 1: I'm honored you're the first. So yeah, we're getting some
Speaker 1: good conversation. And I've told a lot of stories on
Speaker 1: here about music and U and about those early days.
Speaker 1: But you're the first artist that's backing these stories up
Speaker 1: with me. That's I'm honored. Thanks buddy, of course. Man.
Speaker 1: So outside of Texas Country, you've also over the last decade,
Speaker 1: you've you've made it through being i mean, essentially the
Speaker 1: king of the genre. Maybe we had our moment for
Speaker 1: a couple of years. I think that we were. It's
Speaker 1: hard to you know, I use that raise that term
Speaker 1: king very cautiously because you know, it's people like who
Speaker 1: they like, and you know, there's a lot of big,
Speaker 1: popular bands. But I do think that you know, in
Speaker 1: Texas Country, there's been a torch that's been passed and
Speaker 1: it's kind of gone from Pat to Ragweed maybe and
Speaker 1: then to Randy obviously, and I think you know, we
Speaker 1: carried that torch for a couple years of kind of
Speaker 1: being the van in Texas, and man, what a time.
Speaker 1: I wish we could. I wish I could relive those
Speaker 1: days in a way. I wish I wish I could
Speaker 1: relive that success and moment with my life now, if
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Yeah, because you have a wife and
Speaker 1: a lot differently, And so I was going to say
Speaker 1: that over that course of time being the king of
Speaker 1: Texas Country, you also experienced the same highs and lows
Speaker 1: that any major celebrity would go through in such high demand.
Speaker 1: And you you lived your life out in the open,
Speaker 1: partly because you had to because you were in such
Speaker 1: a huge spotlight. But but I watched you go through
Speaker 1: highs and lows in front of everyone, and through all that,
Speaker 1: my hat's off to you for how for you sitting
Speaker 1: here today and uh and still maintaining the integrity that
Speaker 1: you have as a person and as a friend. But
Speaker 1: you yeah, well, but you've been through some low stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and we can dance around it. I can
Speaker 1: just talk about it for a second. I was married
Speaker 1: previously I was a really shitty husband, really shitty. I
Speaker 1: was so focused on my career, I was so selfish.
Speaker 1: I drank way too much every single day, and I
Speaker 1: just had insecurities and I was just a bad person,
Speaker 1: I think for a couple of years there. And so
Speaker 1: we ended up getting a divorce and I deserved it,
Speaker 1: and I think that was a moment where I really
Speaker 1: had to reassess my life, like is this what you
Speaker 1: want with Josh? You know, like, yeah, you've played all
Speaker 1: these sold out shows, Yeah, you got a record deal
Speaker 1: at the time we had one, And it was like,
Speaker 1: but now you've lost you know, the person who really
Speaker 1: loves you and her whole family and a bunch of
Speaker 1: your fans kind of you know, I just don't have
Speaker 1: the same positive view of you. And I'm like, I
Speaker 1: don't want this one thing to define my narrative because
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think I'm a bad guy. I
Speaker 1: don't think i'm that guy. I think I just I
Speaker 1: was a bad guy for a short amount of time,
Speaker 1: and so it's hard to admit that. But I think
Speaker 1: I grew from it in a way where I'm proud
Speaker 1: of where I'm at now. I mean, I don't have
Speaker 1: any issues with the things that I used to have
Speaker 1: issues with, and I have a wife and two kids
Speaker 1: now and life is beautiful in a way that if
Speaker 1: my music career goes away, which right now it is
Speaker 1: right like, no one's doing a career right now. But
Speaker 1: I mean, if it goes away and I have to
Speaker 1: go get a normal job, I'm actually fine with that
Speaker 1: because I love where my life's at right now. There's
Speaker 1: just a happier place. And so yeah, Highs and Lowe's, man,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's been a lot of them. And if anyone,
Speaker 1: if anyone doesn't understand, let me, let me paint the
Speaker 1: scene for you. Josh skyrockets to the top of Texas Country,
Speaker 1: and I hope that we've done a good job defining
Speaker 1: what that is. If you don't know what that is.
Speaker 1: But the fact is you you rose so fast from
Speaker 1: the boy that was in Luveck, Texas looking at the
Speaker 1: stage at Randy Rodgers saying I want to do that
Speaker 1: to just a few years later, you're making, you know,
Speaker 1: any kind of tour date sell out. I'm talking if
Speaker 1: there's a festival, you're probably headlining it or or direct
Speaker 1: support or direction. I mean, but you're equal and we
Speaker 1: have no we haven't earned it. Yeah, we have no tenure,
Speaker 1: we have no You know, you have to pay your dues.
Speaker 1: I don't think we paid our dues long enough, and
Speaker 1: I think that caught some resentment from the traditional longtime
Speaker 1: fans of the scene, as well as some other bands
Speaker 1: who just honestly didn't like to be They didn't like
Speaker 1: a new gap bypassing them. Yeah. So if you're if
Speaker 1: you're trying to put yourself in Josh shoes, imagine imagine
Speaker 1: that where you're in such high demand, You're you're fending
Speaker 1: off the haters that don't understand why you've You've come
Speaker 1: up so quickly. You're trying to satisfy everyone that loves
Speaker 1: your music so much. They don't want you to change.
Speaker 1: They want you to just keep spitting out the same
Speaker 1: record over and over. And I'm like those those records
Speaker 1: we put out early on, there's some stuff I love
Speaker 1: about them, but there's a lot I don't like. If
Speaker 1: I could restart my career now, right, I wouldn't put
Speaker 1: a song like Taste out. And that sounds hypocritical because
Speaker 1: if we hadn't put that song out, I don't know
Speaker 1: that I'm here right now, because that song created such
Speaker 1: a magnetic you know following. I mean you could go
Speaker 1: to to the to the to the river or the
Speaker 1: lake or anywhere across Texas after that song came out
Speaker 1: and people were playing it, and you know, but I
Speaker 1: wouldn't put that song out now. And even a song
Speaker 1: like She's like Texas, I'd polish that up a little
Speaker 1: bit better. There's some there's some lines in there that
Speaker 1: are a little bit understandable, and you can't there. They
Speaker 1: are pieces of history better forever part of you. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. Well. The process informs the results, so
Speaker 1: I can second guess things. Wish I hadn't done certain things,
Speaker 1: but all of these things have led to a moment
Speaker 1: now or I'm good. I live in Tuscaloose, Alabama. On
Speaker 1: the bus We're playing a club that night. I'll never
Speaker 1: forget it. And it was probably three o'clock in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: sitting on the bus, just finished soundcheck, and my crew
Speaker 1: starts kind of grumbling, you're seeing this, you're seeing this.
Speaker 1: It's like, what, Josh, you see this? Josh start passing
Speaker 1: the phone around and you are public on Twitter, Yeah,
Speaker 1: about your your current separation from your current wife. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was dumb. I wish I could take that back.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know, because what I was
Speaker 1: about to say is you could have you could have
Speaker 1: lived that privately. But I think I would like to
Speaker 1: think that you inspired a lot of peace people to
Speaker 1: live life in truth and light and honesty. That was
Speaker 1: the goal, it really was. I think what you did.
Speaker 1: That's what I read in those those tweets. It was,
Speaker 1: you know what, this happens a lot. And I promise
Speaker 1: I'm not the only person that's guilty of cheating on
Speaker 1: their wife and being an alcoholic out here on the road,
Speaker 1: and all sorts of other stuff. And I would never
Speaker 1: name names, right, but there are a bunch of other
Speaker 1: people who are guilty of those and have gone through
Speaker 1: divorces themselves. But everyone's so scared keep it so quiet,
Speaker 1: You're right, don't want to damage the reputation. And I
Speaker 1: think that was just a moment for me where I
Speaker 1: was just over the fakeness and was like, I used
Speaker 1: this celebrity path. I use the word celebrity pretty loosely,
Speaker 1: but you know what I mean, the being in the limelight,
Speaker 1: being in the radio. You know, I mean I'm not saying.
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's different levels oferity, you know, but
Speaker 1: if I I the way I felt about it was,
Speaker 1: if I was gonna use that path and trajectory of
Speaker 1: kind of getting my music out there, being on the
Speaker 1: radio and playing shows and being the guy, it would
Speaker 1: be really, you know, disingenuous, fraudulent, whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call it, for me to like not admit my failures too,
Speaker 1: Like this can't just be a narcissistic praise everything I do,
Speaker 1: which is I'm so over the narcissism that I see
Speaker 1: on a daily basis on social media from other artists.
Speaker 1: But you know, and I'm guilty of it too, and
Speaker 1: we're all guilty. There's there's a balance of self promotion
Speaker 1: and narcissism, yeah, because we are still a product. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, you got to be real. You
Speaker 1: gotta be real, and I wanted to be real with people.
Speaker 1: You played a show that night, too, didn't you. I did,
Speaker 1: because it was like a Saturday I played with the
Speaker 1: Randy opened for Randy in Wichita, Kansas, and he immediately
Speaker 1: after I posted I'm on the bus, I'm in the back,
Speaker 1: I'm bawling, and he comes over there and just he
Speaker 1: literally just walks in the backlune and just sits next
Speaker 1: to me, gives me a hug. It's like, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: I wish you would have talked to me before he
Speaker 1: posted this. You know, he encouraged me to, you know,
Speaker 1: probably the smartest thing in the world be to delete
Speaker 1: it and try to cover up a little, you know,
Speaker 1: a bit and save some face. But it was too late,
Speaker 1: and I just didn't. I was just in I wasn't thinking.
Speaker 1: I was just in a really bad spot. I just
Speaker 1: knew my life was crumbling, you know. I mean we
Speaker 1: were on the record label for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: At that moment, we still hadn't had a single radio
Speaker 1: you know. Here it is, my life's falling apart, and
Speaker 1: it's like Johnny Cash moment for me, you know, and
Speaker 1: walk the line, you know, where you reach that point
Speaker 1: where it's like, Okay, you better get your shit together, dude.
Speaker 1: And so I'd like to think that since then I
Speaker 1: got my shit together, you definitely have, as you mentioned now,
Speaker 1: beautiful wife to beautiful children. And so looking back on
Speaker 1: that tweet, does it not feel like that's part of
Speaker 1: your life and you need it is? But you know what,
Speaker 1: there's also a part of me I went, I cringe
Speaker 1: at the idea of my daughter talking to me about
Speaker 1: it one day. Yeah, dad, how could you do that?
Speaker 1: Why are you such a bad husband to your first wife?
Speaker 1: And you're gonna you still have a long time. And
Speaker 1: another thing is, you know, there's I almost feel like
Speaker 1: I carry a scarlet letter on me. I don't anymore,
Speaker 1: but for years I did. In fact, we when we
Speaker 1: released front Row Seat album, I almost made the album
Speaker 1: cover an a and it for Abbott, but also write
Speaker 1: the scarlet letter. So but it sucks for my wife, right,
Speaker 1: my wife now, who's everything and is so gracious and
Speaker 1: perfect for me in my life and I would do
Speaker 1: anything for her, does it. But I think it sucks
Speaker 1: for her because I put myself out there like that
Speaker 1: and now there's people think like, oh, that's her husband,
Speaker 1: you know, but he oh, I got you? Does that
Speaker 1: for her too? And she probably you know, I think
Speaker 1: she's probably self conscious of some of the things of
Speaker 1: the mistakes I've made in my past and probably embarrassed
Speaker 1: by them. But in the same sense, if I hadn't
Speaker 1: gone through that road, right, I wouldn't be with her
Speaker 1: now and have these kids, and so it's kind of
Speaker 1: like you know you, you you know, people say I wouldn't
Speaker 1: change a thing. I would change some things, right, but
Speaker 1: I would hope that my path got right back to here.
Speaker 1: And when you change things, am I not? Yeah? So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that you have a long time to come
Speaker 1: up with that answer to your daughter. But it's somewhere
Speaker 1: along the lines of baby. Let me tell you, I
Speaker 1: have made mistakes. I've learned so much. And then I
Speaker 1: learned from those mistakes, and then I got better. And
Speaker 1: then I met your mama and she taught me. She
Speaker 1: changed and I've never known. And then you were born,
Speaker 1: and then I looked into your eyes for the first time,
Speaker 1: and you taught me. I knew kind of love that
Speaker 1: I didn't think I was capable of having agreed all
Speaker 1: because of my broken past. I've balled my eyes out
Speaker 1: when my daughter was born the moment I got to
Speaker 1: hold her. I mean I was crying. Same for my
Speaker 1: son too. But really, he'll listen to this one day
Speaker 1: and be like, what the hell did more from my daughter?
Speaker 1: Because you know I I just after going through everything
Speaker 1: I went through, I didn't think that I would have
Speaker 1: a family. I was like that ship sailed. Right, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna be the single bachelor guy for the rest
Speaker 1: of my life probably, and maybe if I get married
Speaker 1: one day, I'll just marry someone who already has kids. Right,
Speaker 1: So having a daughter in that way was just, uh,
Speaker 1: it changed, just changed everything for me. And I'm proud
Speaker 1: of of my life now and I'm proud of you
Speaker 1: know what we're doing. And you know, we might not
Speaker 1: be our band. We're not probably as popular as we
Speaker 1: used to be, because you know, when you're the it band,
Speaker 1: it only lasts so long, right, it goes away. It
Speaker 1: goes away for everyone right now away everyone who comes
Speaker 1: is the it guy for country music, and he is.
Speaker 1: He is badass and probably going to stay at that
Speaker 1: level for a long time. But at some point he'll
Speaker 1: he'll be the He'll be the guy with five or
Speaker 1: six albums instead of two albums. Right. It also doesn't
Speaker 1: mean he's any happier than you are, are in a
Speaker 1: better place in life than you will. I don't know.
Speaker 1: And you know that, Oh yeah, you do know that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And ever since I've known you for over a decade,
Speaker 1: you you have a tendency in conversation to kind of
Speaker 1: backfedal and play yourself down a little bit. I do
Speaker 1: you always have? You did that when you were the king. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and my point to all that is you you have.
Speaker 1: You had that ability to rise so fast and to
Speaker 1: fall in love again and be renewed and then have children.
Speaker 1: You have all that ability. There's nothing to say that
Speaker 1: there's something on the horizon. Isn't even bigger than everything
Speaker 1: in your career wise? I hope so, because I'm so
Speaker 1: proud of the music that we're putting out right now.
Speaker 1: The newest song that we put out, it's called the Luckiest.
Speaker 1: It's how we named our son luck I think it's
Speaker 1: the best song we've ever put out. And the thing is,
Speaker 1: every artist says that, every artist says their newest song
Speaker 1: is the best song they've ever put out. But ask
Speaker 1: me in five years, because I didn't tell you, Luckiest
Speaker 1: is my favorite song. I think it speaks to my life,
Speaker 1: the direction, the gratefulness and my kids and the appreciation
Speaker 1: for everything that's come along the way. You know, that's
Speaker 1: a love song not only do my wife and kids,
Speaker 1: but it's also a love song honestly to the fans too.
Speaker 1: Like right in that song, I don't know that you've
Speaker 1: heard it. It says, you know, I can't believe the
Speaker 1: life I've been given. Yeah, I'm lucky. I know it's true,
Speaker 1: but I feel the luckiest to be loved by you
Speaker 1: so good, and I think that's i' will be able
Speaker 1: to sing that to the fans every night and be
Speaker 1: like lucky because of y'all. Y'all all paid a concert
Speaker 1: ticket price to come here, and some of you bought
Speaker 1: our shirt. There's millions of bands that you could spend
Speaker 1: your money on, and you came to do it for mine.
Speaker 1: I don't want to take that for grants, especially when
Speaker 1: we get to play again one day. That's going to
Speaker 1: even mean it more to us. Togethers like us that
Speaker 1: people are risking a lot more just to see us,
Speaker 1: and I think we'll even feel that gratefulness even more.
Speaker 1: But man, if you say that your latest song is
Speaker 1: your best, I don't think anything else matters in your past. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you say, Every artist says it, but I don't think
Speaker 1: you can really believe it unless it's real. Yeah, Oh,
Speaker 1: I believe it. You know I believe it. Let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break and then I want to talk about
Speaker 1: possibly post music for you. Let's do it. So politics, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had to go here. Yeah, everybody, everybody sees that
Speaker 1: I probably post more about politics, and a lot of
Speaker 1: other artists I would say, do you have aspirations in
Speaker 1: the political world, I'll say this, yes, yeah. Even ever
Speaker 1: since I was in college, I thought I wanted to
Speaker 1: be in politics, but I didn't know that I wanted
Speaker 1: to be the politician. When I got out of college.
Speaker 1: Between college and grad school, I actually worked on a
Speaker 1: political campaign on as on a representative campaign, and I
Speaker 1: realized real quick I did not want to be on
Speaker 1: the political team unless I was the politician. Just a
Speaker 1: lot of grinding for not a lot of pay, and
Speaker 1: kind of saw the trajectory of that, and I just
Speaker 1: I never wanted to move to Washington, d C. Anyway.
Speaker 1: So I was just kind of quickly like, you know,
Speaker 1: if I'm ever going to be in politics, i'm going
Speaker 1: to be I'm going to stick to Texas and I'll
Speaker 1: cross that road down down the line. But obviously I've
Speaker 1: been focused on my career for the last I mean,
Speaker 1: like I said, we started touring making it serious in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, so twelve years now. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: been doing it for fourteen. But I think I'm at
Speaker 1: a point now where it's an interesting like hmm, you know,
Speaker 1: And I've had talks with Governor Abbit and Senator Cornyn
Speaker 1: and some other elected officials, and they all know that
Speaker 1: I'm fifty percent serious about maybe me running for governor
Speaker 1: one day so Texas could see another Governor Abbit, they
Speaker 1: could yeah, you know, but I won't run against Governor
Speaker 1: Abbit now because what did you say, by the way,
Speaker 1: when you talk to him about it, Hey, things, it's great,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean obviously you know, what's what's he
Speaker 1: gonna say? No, Tosh, you would hate this job. No,
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, if you're called to do it,
Speaker 1: and you he's like, you know, I don't know if
Speaker 1: there was him that said it, or corn In or
Speaker 1: someone else, but they're all kind of like the general
Speaker 1: consensus is. You know, normally, when you're going to be
Speaker 1: in politics, you really have to work your way up
Speaker 1: to get that name recognition to be able to climb
Speaker 1: the ladder. Right, It's where you've got to start local small,
Speaker 1: you get bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. He's like, you know,
Speaker 1: you've spent the last twelve years getting name recognition on
Speaker 1: radio across Texas. You have more name recognition than them.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of politicians do. So yeah, if
Speaker 1: you ran, you already have that gone for you. So
Speaker 1: it's just got it's about, you know, wanting to accept
Speaker 1: the challenges that come with you know, running for politics
Speaker 1: and then obviously being elected. So I do entertain the idea.
Speaker 1: My wife is very against it, really very So I
Speaker 1: won't run unless she unless she gives me your blessing,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if she will because I think
Speaker 1: she's you know, we have kids, and I think she
Speaker 1: doesn't want to see my name and some of the
Speaker 1: things I've done in the past drug out again all
Speaker 1: across the newspapers. Which it's not like I've you know,
Speaker 1: it's not like I had a DWI or murdered someone
Speaker 1: or anything. But I mean, you know, just being a
Speaker 1: country music singer and kind of going through the stuff
Speaker 1: I've gone through. You know, she's just afraid there might
Speaker 1: be a picture at leaks of me smoking though you know,
Speaker 1: there might be you know, some stories that come out
Speaker 1: that aren't flattering, right because they were so long ago.
Speaker 1: But that's what we do, That's what that's what our
Speaker 1: society does. In elections. In politics, it's nasty and it's
Speaker 1: find the dirt, even though that has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with someone's ability to you know, actually you know, create
Speaker 1: policy and understand it and work with others. But that's
Speaker 1: what politics is. And so anyway, yeah, long winded answer.
Speaker 1: I do want to run one day, but only in
Speaker 1: my wife will let me. So going back to the
Speaker 1: tweet that we talked about, you know, when I was
Speaker 1: in Tesscalus and you're in Wichita. That makes more sense though,
Speaker 1: to look back and go, yeah, I've had some problems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no right, right, There's no one's gonna come up
Speaker 1: and go, I know something about Josh. You guys don't know.
Speaker 1: Ye'll be like tell me, yeah, you know, because you've
Speaker 1: been very public. That's a good thing. I do still
Speaker 1: hear stories sometimes about me and they're completely wrong. I
Speaker 1: mean there's not even one person accuracy to them. And
Speaker 1: it blows my mind because people be mad, be mad
Speaker 1: at something they've heard from and it wasn't even true.
Speaker 1: Like I'll give you an example. A buddy of mine
Speaker 1: was eating I think he had a Josh Abbat shirt.
Speaker 1: He's a good friend of mine, and he was eating
Speaker 1: at like a Mexican restaurant in Mexican food restaurant in
Speaker 1: New Bronfols or something like that, and it was either
Speaker 1: the waitress, the bartender or something was like, you know
Speaker 1: you like Josh Ababan. He was like, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: like his music. You know. Well she was like f
Speaker 1: that guy, and he's like, why do you say that?
Speaker 1: And she's like, I heard he's got a kid in
Speaker 1: Abilene that he never accepted or sees and doesn't want
Speaker 1: anything to do with. And I honestly died laughing because
Speaker 1: I was like, it's just not true. So he found
Speaker 1: out the name of the person who's claiming this right,
Speaker 1: and you know, I looked her up on like Instagram
Speaker 1: or Facebook or something like that, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I've never even met this person, much less created a
Speaker 1: child with them. Yeah, I don't eve think I've ever
Speaker 1: talked to this person unless it was in a meeting Mary.
Speaker 1: So I mean, like anyway that that I probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: have even told that story. Life be like, Bay, why
Speaker 1: do you tell these stories? It was like a new
Speaker 1: song a child. Oh no, I'm not right, But it's
Speaker 1: just funny because again, you just hear stories and you know,
Speaker 1: we live in a society where we accept truth at
Speaker 1: immediately right truth bias. We we read something in a
Speaker 1: tweet it's true because someone said it, and that makes
Speaker 1: no sense because there's no credibility to a lot of
Speaker 1: that stuff. But that's the world we live in. And
Speaker 1: so you know, headlines and X amount of characters and
Speaker 1: short fragments they do damage. And so again, I want
Speaker 1: to run for office. I think i'd be great at
Speaker 1: it because I am a Republican, but I have some
Speaker 1: democratic views in terms of like social views, you know,
Speaker 1: and I think it's time that the Republican Party gets
Speaker 1: past the antiquated, you know, narratives of being against homosexuality
Speaker 1: and having the others. Everything on the ticket has to
Speaker 1: be one ideology, and it's a huge problem. And if
Speaker 1: that is a huge problem, because if you don't cater
Speaker 1: to that, you'll lose your you'll lose your base. But
Speaker 1: it's like, well that's you know, that's not what I believe.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, if I ever ran, i'd be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a Republican because I'm for small government. I'm for
Speaker 1: I don't think I don't want the national government coming
Speaker 1: in here and tell on Texas how to handle itself.
Speaker 1: Texas can do handle itself just fine. But in the
Speaker 1: same sense, like I'm you know, let's let's put casinos
Speaker 1: on the coast. I mean, how many dollars lead this
Speaker 1: state and go to New Mexico, Oklahoma or Louisiana. How
Speaker 1: many billions, billions right go across the border to those places. Now,
Speaker 1: Vegas you don't really count because that's a destination, But
Speaker 1: how many people drive across these the Texas border to
Speaker 1: go game one these other states? And what if we
Speaker 1: had some casinos in Texas and what if it was
Speaker 1: you know, what if there was like a tax on
Speaker 1: it on those casinos, and you know, people that are
Speaker 1: against it say, we yeah, but you don't, you don't
Speaker 1: understand what it decimates, what it does to the communities.
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, let's let the communities vote on it,
Speaker 1: you know, because some of them may be so hungry
Speaker 1: for economic prosperity that they say, maybe we can manage
Speaker 1: this responsibly as citizens and police ourselves and not fall
Speaker 1: victim to some of the entrapments so to speak that
Speaker 1: occur with you know, with a casino being in your city,
Speaker 1: and so that legalize marijuana. I mean, why does Texas
Speaker 1: have to be so behind on it. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: so many states that are done. It does mean people
Speaker 1: have to do it, and it doesn't mean that we
Speaker 1: have to just full blown like, hey, any amount is fine.
Speaker 1: Smoke as much as you want. Like, there's still a
Speaker 1: lot of rules around it, right, like don't operate a vehicle,
Speaker 1: you know, don't you can only have x amount and
Speaker 1: so forth. And it's been proven so many times that
Speaker 1: it's it's way easier on yourself than alcohol. But we
Speaker 1: get alcohol is very legal. Gay marriage, homosexual marriage, everybody
Speaker 1: uses different terms, right, But I mean, why do I
Speaker 1: care if they get married? Now on a level of
Speaker 1: church for church and state, I don't think that the
Speaker 1: country or the state should be able to tell a
Speaker 1: church they have to marry someone because that would go
Speaker 1: against maybe their their their you know, beliefs system. But
Speaker 1: if there is a church that says, yeah, we'll marry
Speaker 1: a gay gobble, why can't they get married? Like, who cares?
Speaker 1: It does not bother me in my life, you know,
Speaker 1: why can't they have those rights? Why can't they have
Speaker 1: the ability to be on each other's insurance and things
Speaker 1: when they're partners together, Like I just I wonder why
Speaker 1: we can't reach these compromises, and the hypocrisy of it
Speaker 1: all is what kills me, is because especially like I'm
Speaker 1: a Republican, but the Republican party, where the core of
Speaker 1: that is free will, right, small government, free will. We
Speaker 1: don't want the government tell us what to do. We
Speaker 1: want less regulations, less laws, right, So why are we like, no,
Speaker 1: you can't can't be getting married? No, no, you have
Speaker 1: all these restrictions when it's convenient for some sort of
Speaker 1: like Christian conservative narrative. But even that I think is outdated.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of modern Christians, while they necessarily
Speaker 1: wouldn't be like, yeah, homosexuality is is okay. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people are now are like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: the Bible definitely addresses it, but it addresses a lot
Speaker 1: of things we're all guilty of, right, And That's where
Speaker 1: I'm at, Like, my sin is no less or worse
Speaker 1: than someone else's, So you're right. And there's a big
Speaker 1: difference between church and state. And there's no no apostles
Speaker 1: in the Bible. Never did they ever say we have
Speaker 1: to overthrow the government the Roman Empire because they're wrong
Speaker 1: and they need to be Christian. In fact, when the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire did become the Roman Catholic Empire, it actually
Speaker 1: was still really bad. It's really bad for sure. So
Speaker 1: that having that separation of church and state, Uh you
Speaker 1: could you could, you could worship your own way in
Speaker 1: your own church. Yeah, but the lawmakers could make laws
Speaker 1: and it doesn't have to contradict each other. And uh,
Speaker 1: and we've we've kind of been caught up in that
Speaker 1: a lot. And you know, it's just like there's all
Speaker 1: these you know, hypocrisies of the left too. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there's so many right the Party of tolerant, but
Speaker 1: they don't want to be tolerant of people who don't
Speaker 1: believe what they believe, which makes no sense at all. Right,
Speaker 1: And uh, you know in today's culture that we live
Speaker 1: in now, we see these race riots occurring, and we
Speaker 1: see Black Lives Matter as a political agenda and and
Speaker 1: you know, a movement, and there's a balance to it
Speaker 1: all because you have to the way you have to
Speaker 1: tread that right, like, you know, black lives do matter, right,
Speaker 1: all lives do matter. And but you can't but you
Speaker 1: say one it alienates the other something and I do
Speaker 1: think that there's probably some sort of yeah, institutional racism
Speaker 1: that kind of still exists as a byproduct or from
Speaker 1: trickling down over the years, right like laws that weren't
Speaker 1: place years ago, that have just kind of only gone
Speaker 1: away in little bits, and today they're you know, I
Speaker 1: do think that it's very obvious that the African American
Speaker 1: the black community is you know, covered in poverty and
Speaker 1: they need a hand and and you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know how to fix that. But I think when it
Speaker 1: really angers me when I see Republicans who don't think
Speaker 1: it's a big don't think it's a problem. Of course
Speaker 1: it's a problem. What you just said is interesting because no,
Speaker 1: this is that you said the exact sentence that no
Speaker 1: politician is allowed to say. Right now, I don't know
Speaker 1: how to fix that. Oh, but yeah, that's what we
Speaker 1: want them to say. We want we want someone to
Speaker 1: finally tell us. I don't know how to fix that,
Speaker 1: but I'm working on it. I'll put it. I'm putting
Speaker 1: all the best people I know on this, and we
Speaker 1: will figure it out. Right now, I don't have an answer.
Speaker 1: I just realized it's a problem. But they always feel
Speaker 1: like they have to talk they always feel like they
Speaker 1: have to communicate like a solution, and sometimes it's I
Speaker 1: don't know if I have a solution, and I don't
Speaker 1: know if my solution is the best one, but here's
Speaker 1: what we have, you know, and and so. But in
Speaker 1: the same sense, you know, these I think the rioting
Speaker 1: and the burning and the looting and all that is
Speaker 1: just it's really just painting and perverting what is a
Speaker 1: what can be a really positive moment in history for
Speaker 1: civil rights, you know. And uh, I think it's okay
Speaker 1: for Republicans to go, yeah, you know, clearly there's some
Speaker 1: sort of you know, there's some sort of reason that
Speaker 1: African American men are being killed at the rates that
Speaker 1: they are by police officers. And I know that I'm
Speaker 1: getting into such deep stuff, right. I know that there
Speaker 1: are people who listen to the podcasts who say, well,
Speaker 1: you have what about black on black crime? Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's we're not talking about black on black crime. We're
Speaker 1: not talking about white on black crime. We're talking about
Speaker 1: police and African American men, and there is some sort
Speaker 1: of weird correlation there, and I think we have to
Speaker 1: address that, you know. But in the same sense, I
Speaker 1: can't I don't personally feel like I can go out
Speaker 1: there and post and tag black lives matter, because even
Speaker 1: though yes, those three words aligned together, Yes, for sure
Speaker 1: they do, but it's become a political movement, and that
Speaker 1: political movement accepts dollars and it becomes a pack and
Speaker 1: donates money to, you know, candidates across the country that
Speaker 1: I might not support, And I don't want to be
Speaker 1: bullied into sup you cannot something that I don't want
Speaker 1: to support. So you know, if you if you act
Speaker 1: one way, or you're racist. If you act another way,
Speaker 1: you're not. And I just think the whole thing is bullshit.
Speaker 1: I think, why can we not just look at this
Speaker 1: from a lens of common sense and agree that, you
Speaker 1: know what, there's some truth to both sides, and let's
Speaker 1: find the real truth in the middle. So what's a
Speaker 1: reasonable timeline your wife willing that we could see Josh
Speaker 1: Abbot on a ticket one day, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: mean ten years, fifteen years. If she told me I
Speaker 1: could run in twenty twenty two and Governor abbotstep wasn't
Speaker 1: going to run for reelection, I would run. I just
Speaker 1: don't want to run against Governor Abbot because you know,
Speaker 1: and we have shared the same last name. First of all,
Speaker 1: it would be just very confusing. Thanks for voters, it
Speaker 1: really would be. Yeah, And I like Governor Abbit, and
Speaker 1: he's in a weird spot right now because the whole
Speaker 1: world is looking at him because Texas you know, opened
Speaker 1: up quote unquote two soon and we saw COVID rates
Speaker 1: spike up again, and then he had to come in
Speaker 1: and do something he didn't want to do, and that
Speaker 1: was shut the state back down. So he's it's like
Speaker 1: he's damned ivy, dude, damnit Ivy doesn't like, he's got
Speaker 1: both sides mad at him because he hasn't done it
Speaker 1: quote unquote the right way. And I'm like, he's in
Speaker 1: a no end spot. Let's all show him some grace.
Speaker 1: This is an unprecedent in time and history, Like this
Speaker 1: is weird, weird. The most developed country, you know, developed
Speaker 1: nation developed in this time of the world and we're
Speaker 1: undergoing this weird pandemic that you know, really sets us
Speaker 1: back to you know, times decades ago. Right Like it
Speaker 1: feels like I feel like we're living in the nineties again,
Speaker 1: where every mills at home and no one travels and
Speaker 1: goes out and yeah, you know, I'm rambling now. But
Speaker 1: you asked about the if I would run. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: run in twenty twenty, and my wife would let me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't see her change in her mind in
Speaker 1: the next couple of years, and I think Governor Abbit
Speaker 1: will run for reelection, So whenever the next one would
Speaker 1: be twenty twenty six, twenty thirty, twenty thirty sounds good man,
Speaker 1: it's ten years from now, right, Yeah. Wait, I'm off
Speaker 1: on my years. I'm a dumb as far as when
Speaker 1: the election years are. I know I'm not off on
Speaker 1: my years because he's not running for governor right now,
Speaker 1: and it's twenty twenty now it's president's Yeah, so every
Speaker 1: other twenty two, I think, is when he's up, and
Speaker 1: then it would be twenty twenty six and twenty thirty,
Speaker 1: so who knows. Maybe in twenty thirty that's the year
Speaker 1: that I run for governor. And let's get that ee
Speaker 1: Nation vote. We'll bring you back on there. Rekindle that
Speaker 1: how many of your fans are so bad at me
Speaker 1: right now for some of my viewpoints. But that's the
Speaker 1: thing is, I would just hope that people could listen
Speaker 1: to the approach I'm coming from because I don't come
Speaker 1: from a very polarizing viewpoint of very far right or
Speaker 1: very far left. I'm more right than left, but I'm
Speaker 1: closer to that middle, and I'd love to see more
Speaker 1: people get there and go. Yeah, man concede that point.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people could use a little
Speaker 1: common sense when it comes to politics, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: exist right now on either side. Yeah. We'll bring you
Speaker 1: back on the podcast in twenty thirty to rekindle that,
Speaker 1: hopefully many times between now and then. But I'll end
Speaker 1: with this too. The one the one fraternity that me
Speaker 1: and you both belonged to that neither one of us
Speaker 1: wanted to get into, was we lost our dads. I
Speaker 1: lost my dad in twenty fourteen, and the first show
Speaker 1: I played back was with you in South Padre Island,
Speaker 1: Texas and opened up for you, remember, And it was
Speaker 1: a terrible show for me personally, in a great crowd,
Speaker 1: terrible show for me personally. I was just really going
Speaker 1: through the motions, and me and you had a good
Speaker 1: talk after the show. One year later, right this sever
Speaker 1: What year was it? My dad died in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: but it was March, that's right, So same month March
Speaker 1: Texas Independence Day. Yeah, my dad was March fifth, so
Speaker 1: the the night of the the invasion of the Alamo
Speaker 1: or the the the night and they breached the walls.
Speaker 1: So I, uh, I have this connection with you because yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember I reached out to you and you lost
Speaker 1: your dad a similar way that I lost mine. And
Speaker 1: it was I don't know why that I that I
Speaker 1: took that really hard with you. And I guess now
Speaker 1: knowing that it was three years but the same month,
Speaker 1: three days apart, maybe it was that point in my
Speaker 1: life where I had kind of come to an understanding
Speaker 1: that he was gone, and then you lost your dad,
Speaker 1: and it just, like I said, I don't know why,
Speaker 1: but it just really hit me hard. And I remember falling.
Speaker 1: We're friends and we empathize with each other, and I
Speaker 1: remember bawling, balling, and I was I'm not a crier.
Speaker 1: I'm not, and I don't just ball all the time,
Speaker 1: but man, I really cried, real tears thinking about your dad,
Speaker 1: who I had never met. And I remember thinking that
Speaker 1: where's the sadness coming from? It? It's not my dad
Speaker 1: that I'm sad about. It's not rekindling an old feeling.
Speaker 1: I think it was me knowing your heart and how
Speaker 1: crushed it was. Was so devastating to me to know
Speaker 1: that someone else, a buddy, would spend a night like that. Man,
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't even talk about it still. It's
Speaker 1: been three and a half years and I choke up.
Speaker 1: That was definitely the hardest moment of my life. He
Speaker 1: didn't get to meet my daughter. She was born two
Speaker 1: months after he died. She was born May fifth. He
Speaker 1: passed away March second, so I think we buried in
Speaker 1: March sixth. So, man, just rough time. That was a
Speaker 1: weird year. We followed that up with and it's just
Speaker 1: so much change, Right, my dad died, had a baby,
Speaker 1: and my wife and I got engaged. You know, our
Speaker 1: story might not be the the Christian movie story of
Speaker 1: you know, high school sweethearts that fell in love, got
Speaker 1: married and then had kids. We dated for a year
Speaker 1: and we were definitely in love. I already knew I
Speaker 1: wanted to marry her. I'd already told my parents that,
Speaker 1: I'd already told some of my team that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we got pregnant first. And so anyway, and in that fall,
Speaker 1: we released the album Until My Voice Goes Out, and
Speaker 1: we were in Vegas for the shootings, and luckily, fortunately
Speaker 1: I wasn't down there. I had just left, probably thirty
Speaker 1: minutes before, to go back to the hotel room to
Speaker 1: check on my wife, who was up there not feeling well.
Speaker 1: And the whole reason she came out was to see
Speaker 1: Jason Aldan. She's like a big fan, right, yeah, big
Speaker 1: fan of all countries, so she wanted to watch Jason Aldan.
Speaker 1: She comes out there and she wasn't feeling good, so
Speaker 1: she stayed in the hotel, and so I went to
Speaker 1: check on her. And that's why I was not on
Speaker 1: the side of the stage or backstage when that happened.
Speaker 1: And maybe my story is a lot different right now
Speaker 1: if I was so so many what ifs. And I
Speaker 1: appreciate your heart and saying that about my dad, you know,
Speaker 1: because you know, I don't want to get into a
Speaker 1: I don't want to try to compare situations at all.
Speaker 1: But I remember when you suffered a loss. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: bawled once again. We were kind of connected with that too,
Speaker 1: because we had seen each other a few days before
Speaker 1: and you took a picture of me and riv and
Speaker 1: texted it to me. Yeah, and that's why did I cry.
Speaker 1: Several times. We just our hearts broke. That was one
Speaker 1: of the last picks. Yeah that I have me and him.
Speaker 1: You took it at Lone Start Jam and so yeah,
Speaker 1: we we have. You know, I don't want to, I
Speaker 1: don't want to end like on this kind of note.
Speaker 1: But but me and you have really intertwined history, some
Speaker 1: highs and some really lows. And I like to think
Speaker 1: that we're not even halfway done with with our history,
Speaker 1: me and you together and uh and I just I
Speaker 1: appreciate you driving over here for this, for this podcast,
Speaker 1: and I hope that we get to do it. It's
Speaker 1: my first musical artist. I hope we get to do
Speaker 1: it many more times down anytime. Ye