Speaker 1: Hey, So Dan and Shay put out a new song
Speaker 1: today and back in the day, about one hundred episodes
Speaker 1: to go on the Bobby Cast. Dan from Dan and
Speaker 1: Shay came out by himself and I just kind of
Speaker 1: wanted to play it again. You know, they're back up,
Speaker 1: they're blowing up there. They're just I've achieved new levels
Speaker 1: of success. And so this is Dan talking about even
Speaker 1: part of this when they were really really struggling and
Speaker 1: having to steal pizza. So an old episode of The
Speaker 1: Bobby Cast. I'm gonna play for you now and subscribe
Speaker 1: to The Bobby Cast. It's an interview podcast. We talk
Speaker 1: to creatives and we also talk about music. So check
Speaker 1: out the Bobby Cast. We do it from my house
Speaker 1: most of the time. And this is an episode with
Speaker 1: Dan Smiers from Dan and Shay from over a year ago,
Speaker 1: kind of his life story. Check it out. All right,
Speaker 1: Welcome to episode ninety eight of The Bobby Cast with
Speaker 1: Dan Smiers of Dan and Shay. Do you feel like
Speaker 1: I guess the question I've always wondered. Do you feel
Speaker 1: like you've lost some of your identity because you're always
Speaker 1: known as one of the two people I do lose
Speaker 1: my last name a little bit. It's Dan, Dan and Shay.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Because I never say is
Speaker 1: that even how you I've never even talked to you
Speaker 1: as Dan Smiers, is that even how you say that
Speaker 1: this is the first time I like it. It's nice.
Speaker 1: It is how I say it. Officially. You nailed it.
Speaker 1: Usually it's like Smears or Dan s Myers or Dance Myers.
Speaker 1: I've had people be like, oh, Dance Myers, DNC Myers school,
Speaker 1: because you were Dan when you moved down here. You
Speaker 1: weren't Dan and Jay I was. I was. I was
Speaker 1: like the really poor guy who couldn't afford to pay
Speaker 1: his rent. Dan. It was. It was rough times for
Speaker 1: a while. That's gotta be frustrating to be one and
Speaker 1: awesome because there are times too where you can lean
Speaker 1: on someone and it goes back and forth. But to
Speaker 1: be because you're you're a real life human, Like when
Speaker 1: you prick you you bleed. I exist, I'm here, I'm rocking.
Speaker 1: I was late. I was a few minutes later. It's traffic. Traffic.
Speaker 1: Traffic gets me. Yeah, but it's ice. It's traffic. It's
Speaker 1: you just can't win. It's Tennessee, where we're not used
Speaker 1: to this. I'm also not good at preparing either, so
Speaker 1: i'll you know, see it says like traffic is light,
Speaker 1: eleven minutes is your time, and I'll leave eleven minutes before.
Speaker 1: I believe that would drive me crazy. If it says
Speaker 1: eleven minutes, I'll leave twenty one minutes. Really yeah, and prepared.
Speaker 1: That's why you're more successful than I am. That's not true.
Speaker 1: My hill, though, it up here, is just treacherous and steep.
Speaker 1: I was wondering was it bad the last few days? Terrible?
Speaker 1: I couldn't. Luckily, I have a jeep and I put
Speaker 1: the jeep in four wal drive. I've never driven anything
Speaker 1: for wald drive in my life. Yeah. So I bought
Speaker 1: the jeep because I have this humongous hill that I
Speaker 1: live on, and I knew one day I would ice ye.
Speaker 1: So I bought the jeep off for the big build
Speaker 1: up for this last weekend. And it were and I
Speaker 1: tried to get up in a two well drive first,
Speaker 1: and I thought, this is the least interesting story ever,
Speaker 1: But in my heart, it feels good to tell this story.
Speaker 1: I bought this jeep for this one thing, and so
Speaker 1: I I put in two well drive and I tried
Speaker 1: to get up the hill and it wouldn't go. I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, good, good, good, good hard, And then
Speaker 1: I put it in four well drive and just dominated
Speaker 1: the hill and my my pecker got a little puffy sky.
Speaker 1: It was good man. I loved it. And then um,
Speaker 1: but just so, there are two sides of this hill
Speaker 1: where I live and this side over here. I don't
Speaker 1: know which side you came up on, but there are
Speaker 1: cars that park on the side of the road, and
Speaker 1: I've seen other cars fall and just do a nail
Speaker 1: cars all the way down because you can't. Once you
Speaker 1: start sliding, you're done. Almost saw it. I was. I
Speaker 1: was working on my computer in the front of the
Speaker 1: house and we've got a window there and there's people
Speaker 1: were flying down on our street. It is completely covered.
Speaker 1: It's insane. I live in East Nashville, so Gallatin is
Speaker 1: like it looks like there was never snow, But at
Speaker 1: my house on my street, it's completely covered. I could
Speaker 1: ski down it. Some guy was cruising down and I
Speaker 1: mean literally it was like fishtown and like going back,
Speaker 1: and I thought he was gonna just wreck every car
Speaker 1: on the street. But he made it out alive. But
Speaker 1: I know that guy or or girl whoever was driving
Speaker 1: that car when they pulled up, probably a guy. We're
Speaker 1: reckless drivers brought up that stop side. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got out of that one. That was good. Have
Speaker 1: you ever been in a wreck? I have if I
Speaker 1: broke my wrist in a wreck here actually in town.
Speaker 1: It was you know the turnaround down by the convention center. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's that's the round the circle. Yeah, you're round about.
Speaker 1: It was ridiculous. I was coming around the thing and
Speaker 1: a guy just pulls out right in front of me.
Speaker 1: It was I'd still be driving my car. I had
Speaker 1: the same car for like, you know, fifteen years, the
Speaker 1: same one I moved down here with. And a guy
Speaker 1: came out teebone me of course, no insurance, and I
Speaker 1: tried to turn the wheel and I broke my wrist.
Speaker 1: It was turned it on reaction. I turned it on reaction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when the guy was pulling out, and it was kind
Speaker 1: of like a blessing in disguise. I had never on
Speaker 1: stage dropped the guitar before. I was always like the
Speaker 1: guy who strump's underwhelming guitar chords on stage. But we
Speaker 1: were on an acoustic tour. We were opening up for
Speaker 1: Hunter Haze, and I was like, oh, we can't miss
Speaker 1: these shows. We're getting like one hundred dollars a night.
Speaker 1: We don't want to miss out on that money. And
Speaker 1: we didn't cancel them. We had we hired a guitar player,
Speaker 1: got insurance actually to cover for the guitar player to
Speaker 1: come out because otherwise, I mean, I wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to work. So I was running around with a big
Speaker 1: cast on and we're like, this is kind of cool,
Speaker 1: Like we can entertain twice the amount of people in
Speaker 1: the same amount of time if I don't have a guitar.
Speaker 1: So next is a headset Mike m and that, by
Speaker 1: the way, that guitar player also known as Eric Clapton,
Speaker 1: that's how he got to start. It is exactly. It
Speaker 1: was right before cream and then you know, it all happened.
Speaker 1: It was insane, But I have a tea here, so oh,
Speaker 1: I asked the right question because so when you came
Speaker 1: in downstairs, my assistant is down there. She got into
Speaker 1: a wreck today. Oh, someone pulled out in front of her.
Speaker 1: Their side window was fully iced over and they couldn't
Speaker 1: see and she's driving down the road. Oh yeah, they
Speaker 1: pull out. There was no ice on the road, but
Speaker 1: because the cars are cold pulled out and boom, no
Speaker 1: way nailed each other. That's brutal. And so she all right,
Speaker 1: I should get down and check on her. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: go down and check on her. Yeah she's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know she didn't have any talk for a minute.
Speaker 1: But are you okay? Yeah, I just hurt. They're still
Speaker 1: recording up there. Yeah. I just heard he had a rag. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now her she has a SUV. It's completely smoosh. Dude,
Speaker 1: that's brutal. It's crazy when you see metal like that
Speaker 1: go and bend in ways that metal's not supposed to bend.
Speaker 1: And then someone just walks out of there. And both
Speaker 1: of them were okay, that's good. And it also was
Speaker 1: it I don't know. Yeah, somewhere there are some I'm
Speaker 1: about to throw throw our town under the bus. Here.
Speaker 1: There are some bad drivers in Nashville. They are bad
Speaker 1: drivers everywhere, It's true, but here is like especially worse.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. I think it's a
Speaker 1: combination of the Southern face and then a lot of transplants,
Speaker 1: like the Southern pace, like crazy people like me who
Speaker 1: come in from Pennsylvania and are like get out of
Speaker 1: the way, Get out of the way. That's like, let's
Speaker 1: pass this guy, let's turn before the light, you know changes,
Speaker 1: And that's funny. The Southern pace. Maybe that's just the
Speaker 1: pace that I live my driving life because I've only
Speaker 1: ever I went in Arkansas to Austin, which isn't really
Speaker 1: the South, but it's still in the southern part of
Speaker 1: the day to Nashville. Maybe I only know the Southern
Speaker 1: pace because I've only lived in the South. I am
Speaker 1: a slow driver, though I'm I've knocked on wood. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get a ticket on the way home. I've never
Speaker 1: gotten a ticket in my entire life. I've gotten You've
Speaker 1: never got a ticket. My parents or somebody must be
Speaker 1: friends with the police or something, because I've gotten pulled
Speaker 1: over like I don't know five or six times. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna let you off with a warning. I'm always
Speaker 1: like super polite to whenever they pulled me over. But
Speaker 1: somebody out there listening is a police officer. They're like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get this guy's first ticket today. They're gonna
Speaker 1: be looking for me. Yeah, I feel like calling one
Speaker 1: and on you're on the way out, they call me
Speaker 1: in I had a little to drink at the house.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe you want to check this guy out passion
Speaker 1: for Lacroix. He's just that's what he's drinking. I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: you want to water. You definitely want to water. We're
Speaker 1: gonna go talk for now. He's like, I got a Lacroix.
Speaker 1: Yow dude. So I'm I guess I'm interested in a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff that was you before Dan and Shay,
Speaker 1: and I want to get to a lot of this,
Speaker 1: especially now, and people will listen to this for years
Speaker 1: because with podcasts you kind of look through and pick
Speaker 1: things you like totally, and I think people will like
Speaker 1: to see your name and listen to this. So I
Speaker 1: want to get to are we gonna listen to as
Speaker 1: Dan of Dan and Shay or Dan Smiers, Dan Dan Cool,
Speaker 1: it'll get more hits. I'll listen however you want. We
Speaker 1: can listen to mister Smiers and that's it. That's yeah,
Speaker 1: I like that, mister Smiers. My dad Pennsylvania. Yes. So,
Speaker 1: but when you've moved to town obviously, and people may
Speaker 1: not know the story, and you've told on the air before,
Speaker 1: but I'll have you retell it again. Just briefly, But
Speaker 1: you met Shay Whah here I did, but you moved
Speaker 1: here to do what. I moved here to be a
Speaker 1: songwriter and producer. I moved here from Pennsylvania, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I grew up listening to all kinds of music.
Speaker 1: I love country music, and I couldn't afford LA or
Speaker 1: New York even if I wanted to move there. So
Speaker 1: I was like Nashville. When I moved here was twenty ten.
Speaker 1: It was still affordable. Now it's getting a little out
Speaker 1: of hand. But for anybody from LA or New York listening,
Speaker 1: they're like, Nashville is it's so to live there with
Speaker 1: what everybody says, We guess that's so cheap. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: everybody's so nice. But you moved here in twenty ten
Speaker 1: to be a producer and a writer. Huh yeah. I
Speaker 1: moved here with my buddy. We were kind of we
Speaker 1: had actually like never really hung out in person. This
Speaker 1: is kind of like this blind dating, let's moved to
Speaker 1: Nashville together thing. He's like still one of my best friends,
Speaker 1: was in my wedding, has a couple of cuts that
Speaker 1: are going to be on our upcoming album, and he's
Speaker 1: he's killing it now, but it wasn't like that for
Speaker 1: a while, was it. His name is Andy Albert. He
Speaker 1: would be an interesting guy to talk to as well.
Speaker 1: Like he's crushing it as a songwriter. He's written a
Speaker 1: few hits. He wrote She's Got Away with Words for
Speaker 1: Blake Shelton, which was one of my favorite songs Blakes
Speaker 1: put out. I think it ruffled a few feathers when
Speaker 1: he put that song and not to side track, but
Speaker 1: that was the only one of Blake songs to not
Speaker 1: go number one. It was the first one of like
Speaker 1: after thirteen in a row, because some people were irritated
Speaker 1: the song. Yeah, he was bummed. There were a few
Speaker 1: lyrics in there that were edgy, but it's cool. I mean,
Speaker 1: Blake Shelton's that guy. He can put out edgy lyrics
Speaker 1: like that, and I was so happy for him. We
Speaker 1: had been like really struggling, so we moved here. We
Speaker 1: had a mutual friend who his name is Rohan Colie.
Speaker 1: He's now he's actually his wife's in labor like right now.
Speaker 1: He's his kid, first kid. Yeah, and we're sitting like
Speaker 1: trying to pick what songs we're going to record next week. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's crazy, but he put us together. He was like,
Speaker 1: you guys are both trying to do the same thing.
Speaker 1: You this dude Psylvania. Are you in this dude? Where
Speaker 1: he was from Georgia? Yeah, he's from outside of it.
Speaker 1: Didn't move together, you just got here at the same time, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So we we connected on you know, aim was still
Speaker 1: a thing. You know, we had our screen ms. I
Speaker 1: don't know what mine was, like Brandon BOYD two three
Speaker 1: zero nine because I like than yeah, a huge fan
Speaker 1: and uh he's over here laugh and making fun of him.
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, we we kind of connected on
Speaker 1: the internet. We were like, let's send some demos back
Speaker 1: and forth, and we were like this could work. And
Speaker 1: we moved to Nashville. Found this house on Craigslist. I
Speaker 1: mean literally, this place was a disaster. There's no heat,
Speaker 1: no AC. If there was, we couldn't afford to pay
Speaker 1: for it, so we didn't even turn it on. In
Speaker 1: the summer. It'd be like people are Everybody's like, here
Speaker 1: a liar, you're exaggerating, But anybody who had been to
Speaker 1: that house was like, no, this is It was a
Speaker 1: pretty bad place. Ninety degrees in the summer and forty
Speaker 1: six in the winter. So we were struggling to get
Speaker 1: by and we were just doing anything we could. Like
Speaker 1: we would go I've got a few funny stories, but
Speaker 1: we would go and do like taste testings and like
Speaker 1: research groups. Do you know where those things are? Like
Speaker 1: where here's twenty dollars you try on like ten Haynes
Speaker 1: t shirts and get up in front of the crowd
Speaker 1: and tell your thoughts. So we would do that or luckily,
Speaker 1: like so you were doing that. Oh yeah, that's how
Speaker 1: you guys would make the money. Honestly, I'm still on
Speaker 1: those email lists and I'm like if if it's like
Speaker 1: thirty dollars to go try some pizza, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go do that. How would you get on
Speaker 1: the list? So you would go to the place. It
Speaker 1: was called Nashville twenty twenty Research and it was like
Speaker 1: about off of Rosa Parks. So anybody out there like
Speaker 1: struggling to make some money, struggling to get by, that's
Speaker 1: where you go. And you get on these lists. You
Speaker 1: do one trying to think we did one. We taste
Speaker 1: tested a hard cider, which was pretty cool, and they
Speaker 1: pay you because they want your feedback to either improve
Speaker 1: the product or improve how they're marketing the product. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So we would do pizzas. I mean, you know, we
Speaker 1: would know that it was Domino's pizza, but they would say,
Speaker 1: here's random pizza companies, so and so, give your thoughts
Speaker 1: on this, and I would literally take boxes a pizza home.
Speaker 1: It was insane. Another REDI broke. Oh dude, I can
Speaker 1: go on for hours. This is this is crazy. So
Speaker 1: there's a Hampton in across from Vanderbilt. You know that
Speaker 1: Hampton in Like, uh, I don't know what's There's like
Speaker 1: a Kidoba off at twenty first over there regardless as
Speaker 1: a hotel, and there's a back parking lot. I would
Speaker 1: go every single morning because I couldn't afford to eat anything.
Speaker 1: I would go in the back parking lot. I would
Speaker 1: intentionally wear sweatpants and like dress like I was actually
Speaker 1: staying at this hotel, wait for somebody to walk out
Speaker 1: of the back door to the parking lot, sneak in,
Speaker 1: like hang in the bathroom for a second, then walk
Speaker 1: in and eat Continental breakfast every single morning. Wow, I
Speaker 1: had this whole plan in my head. Two people are like,
Speaker 1: aren't you afraid you're gonna get caught if like the
Speaker 1: Maids or somebody you know is like, hey, we saw
Speaker 1: you the last six days. I was going to be like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm in from out of town. I'm
Speaker 1: a guitar tech for Zach Brown band and our tour
Speaker 1: manager yeah yeah, and our tour manager is not here yet.
Speaker 1: He told us, you know, when we arrive off the flight,
Speaker 1: just to go and grab a little breakfast and he's
Speaker 1: gonna come check us in. And luckily it never happened.
Speaker 1: Everybody was so sweet, They're like, hey, good to see
Speaker 1: you again. You know, the extended stay at the Hanton
Speaker 1: End and I would take like little boxes of rice
Speaker 1: crispy treats, you know, back to the house and survive
Speaker 1: all day off that. So it was. It was rough.
Speaker 1: We also made fake cupons. I'm rambling right now. It's ridiculus.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in this though. So you and him both
Speaker 1: moved to town. Were you both broke? Oh? Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was so. But what are you doing to make money
Speaker 1: or not even make money? What are you doing to
Speaker 1: make a progress creatively? We both, you know, came here
Speaker 1: with probably like a couple hundred bucks in our pockets,
Speaker 1: like nothing crazy, but you know, to pay whatever rent
Speaker 1: we could for the first month. I mean literally our
Speaker 1: rent was like one hundred or one hundred and fifty bucks, nothing, nothing, insane,
Speaker 1: And I was producing demos. I you know, was doing
Speaker 1: Logic then. I hadn't even like I couldn't afford pro tools.
Speaker 1: I got a cracked version of Logic, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: an illegal download, and I was just rocking on there.
Speaker 1: Didn't really know what I was doing, but you know,
Speaker 1: writers and stuff would come to town or artists and
Speaker 1: I'd produce a demo for him, literally like thirty dollars
Speaker 1: a song. I was spending, like, you know, the same
Speaker 1: amount of time I spend making our records now, like
Speaker 1: weeks at a time doing songs and walk away with
Speaker 1: thirty bucks. But hey, you do three or four of
Speaker 1: those and you're paying your rent that month. So did
Speaker 1: anyone back then did you work with anyone that has
Speaker 1: done anything as far as made a name for himself
Speaker 1: in any capacity I'm trying to think. I mean, I
Speaker 1: knew Cassidy Pope. Cassidy Pope and I kind of came
Speaker 1: from the same world. We had done like you know,
Speaker 1: rock and pop kind of music in the past, and
Speaker 1: we had a lot of mutual friends, so we like
Speaker 1: wrote some songs together into demos and Cass is still
Speaker 1: a good friend. You knew her before the boy, she
Speaker 1: knew her from Hey Monday, Ye warped toward days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a lot of mutual friends, and I wrote
Speaker 1: some songs. I got to dig back on the old
Speaker 1: hard drive and see what I could can bring up.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know who else played warp towards? Brandon Ray?
Speaker 1: Did he really? Yeah? He has got the energy for it.
Speaker 1: He has the greatest stories about going out and passing
Speaker 1: out flyers and just try and he would play at
Speaker 1: the eleven am. Dude, I've got warped Towards stories, so
Speaker 1: I would go about who are you playing with them?
Speaker 1: I had a band in high school called Transition, and
Speaker 1: it was like a pop punk kind of I don't know,
Speaker 1: just we believed singer I was. I was, and I
Speaker 1: would I had like long emo hair and did the
Speaker 1: whole thing. I had no idea. This is I'm gonna
Speaker 1: send you some us tonight. You know you knew his
Speaker 1: pop punk stuff? Have you? Oh? I have some here?
Speaker 1: How about this? Here you go? This is a from
Speaker 1: Transition called Excusable Oh, no, you gotta pulled up. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got that word. Every word we said, you have too.
Speaker 1: That's that boy. That's I am so sad today. And
Speaker 1: then you got my mama through my magazine Away. It's
Speaker 1: so urgent too. It's like, right now, you gotta end
Speaker 1: everything right now. Look at this use You guys were
Speaker 1: the real deal. I was like fifteen years old on
Speaker 1: a pole. Have you ever heard of the mic? Come on,
Speaker 1: show that tattoo. You got the tattoo. You got my
Speaker 1: signature tattooed on your arm. That's so funny. How about
Speaker 1: this one? Were you in a bank called bona What's
Speaker 1: what's this one? Yeah? That Bonaventure was the band that
Speaker 1: my buddy Andy and I, who I moved here with
Speaker 1: at the same time, started and we were trying to like,
Speaker 1: do you started here? Yeah? We started it here at
Speaker 1: that house in Nashville, and we let me hear this one.
Speaker 1: Are you singing in this one? I'm not, I'm singing harmonies? Okay,
Speaker 1: So he's singing this one, you're singing? This is a Bonaventure.
Speaker 1: I think you're a better singer Thanice. Dude. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: really enjoy your punk pop. Boy, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: great pop punk boys. I've got some great pop punk
Speaker 1: ideas floating around. We've got like a lot of buddies
Speaker 1: who used to be in that scene, like our buddy
Speaker 1: Paul d. Giovanni. He played guitar in a man called
Speaker 1: Boys Like Girls. He wrote, he wrote our last number
Speaker 1: one song how in a Minute? So, I mean we're
Speaker 1: going there right now. I see Paul on Twitter all
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, pa'l BLG. I did not know that
Speaker 1: he was a guitar player for Boys Like Girls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thats all handsome guy's huhne's bona. He wrote how Not
Speaker 1: to our latest number one song, huh yeah, he wrote
Speaker 1: did you write that with Adam him? He did? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's crazy to me. He was in that band.
Speaker 1: He's dude. He's like the sickest. They call him track guys,
Speaker 1: you know, and he's doing and he's producing Jordan Davis.
Speaker 1: He's got that singles U Up song on the radio
Speaker 1: right now. And I don't know. I mean, he's honestly
Speaker 1: getting calls from guys left and right, like Keith Urban
Speaker 1: or whoever, is like, hey, we need you to come
Speaker 1: and make this awesome. And he's just crushing it. Did
Speaker 1: you know Simple Plan? Hey? Yeah, dude, dude, they were
Speaker 1: awesome to play their music. Holds up. They were ahead
Speaker 1: of their time. They and they were Canadian I believe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were a Canadian pot I used to play. They
Speaker 1: used to play all of our radio shows back when
Speaker 1: I was you know, and they're still doing radio shows.
Speaker 1: I think maybe. Do you remember Bowling Pursuit? Hey? Yeah, Oh,
Speaker 1: we were talking about them the other day, I said,
Speaker 1: I pulled up on Spotify I was Bowling for Suit.
Speaker 1: I was like, this is the coolest idea. And they
Speaker 1: recorded Stacy's Mom and the album cover for the single
Speaker 1: was because everyone because everyone thought we sang this song,
Speaker 1: we actually sang the song, so they did Stacy's Mom.
Speaker 1: That's funny. I remember Jared Well, the lead singer of
Speaker 1: Bowling Pursuit, Yeah, because he was from near Dallas, so
Speaker 1: I knew him. But ninetety five was their big song.
Speaker 1: Do you remember ninety five? It was Do you knew
Speaker 1: that song was written by? It was written by this guy,
Speaker 1: Mitch Allen, who also came from the pop punk world.
Speaker 1: He was in a man called SR. Seventy one and
Speaker 1: he's written like he wrote one to want Me for
Speaker 1: Jason Derulo. He wrote like a bunch of hits for
Speaker 1: Demi Levado. It's crazy look at that. Yeah, here's nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five from Bow Length a Suit. This was a
Speaker 1: for a pop punk song. It became a pretty big
Speaker 1: pop song. Yeah, this was their biggest song. How about
Speaker 1: how about you? And you sound good as a as
Speaker 1: a punk singer. I've never heard you do straight ahead vocals.
Speaker 1: You're all when I hear you, you're doing harmonies for
Speaker 1: sche most of the time. Yeah, I like me in
Speaker 1: the background guy. Now you do though? Yeah, being the
Speaker 1: Dan of Dan and Shay, it's a little less pressure.
Speaker 1: But your name's first though, two, so people would That's
Speaker 1: another thing I want to talk about that. I just like,
Speaker 1: how do you decide who goes first? Dan or Schetes
Speaker 1: at a coin flip? Is there a fight with that
Speaker 1: order of importance? Yeah, that's a right tight you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of other things, you know, But how
Speaker 1: did that? I don't know how that happened. Actually it
Speaker 1: was we were when Shaye and I met. That's like
Speaker 1: a lot later in the in the saga there, I
Speaker 1: guess the Tragic Tale of Dan Smiers in Nashville. But uh,
Speaker 1: whenever we would walk into publishing companies because we were
Speaker 1: just trying to get a publishing deal, we were which
Speaker 1: we just wanted to get paid write songs. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were like, we just want to write songs for
Speaker 1: Rascal Flats or whoever. And we would walk in and
Speaker 1: they'd like, Dana Cha's here again, Danna Shay. And then
Speaker 1: when we became a band, we were searching for band
Speaker 1: names and we had some band names floating around for sure.
Speaker 1: Let me read this because I want to I want
Speaker 1: to get back to that. Uh do this because Lifelock's
Speaker 1: awesome sponsor of the show researcher. Do you because I
Speaker 1: have am I'm gonna put it in. I have a
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Speaker 1: and stuff. I need to see. That's that's enough. I
Speaker 1: don't you should listen to this? Okay, Mike and I
Speaker 1: just had a conversation before down because I'm putting a
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Speaker 1: is not part of the commercial. I read a story
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Speaker 1: or you're you put them in the code, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you're on the open internet and they
Speaker 1: can use this little hacking machine, and everything that you
Speaker 1: see they see. So you're typing stuff that they can
Speaker 1: still pass all the stuff. That's what I don't only come.
Speaker 1: I'm talk about flow rob. Yeah, so I have LifeLock.
Speaker 1: One or four people have experienced I did any theft.
Speaker 1: If you're only monitoring your credit, your identity can still
Speaker 1: be stolen in ways that you can't detect. Theeves will
Speaker 1: sell your information too, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: they have your info. You can get on the dark web.
Speaker 1: That's what I want to do. Like, I want to
Speaker 1: get on the dark web someday and see what they
Speaker 1: have up there. I mean, I shouldn't. Have you been
Speaker 1: on the dark one? No, No, I'm curious about it.
Speaker 1: Me do. It seems like an old Yahoo chat room,
Speaker 1: but everything bad sold there. That's what it seems like.
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Speaker 1: Tell me once I had a guy. This is another commercial.
Speaker 1: But somebody try to open a bank account my name really? Oh,
Speaker 1: I have them. Identity attempted to be stolen at least
Speaker 1: ten times. Dude, we had a situation happened to us.
Speaker 1: This is back to good transition. Back to the house.
Speaker 1: We were living in Andy and I we found this
Speaker 1: painting online. It was I don't know, maybe like twenty
Speaker 1: dollars or something like that. We were trying to make
Speaker 1: our decrepit old house look a little better. We found
Speaker 1: this painting and this thing was massive. I mean it
Speaker 1: was like six feet long, like eight feet highs big
Speaker 1: old canvas painting. And we're like, you know what, we
Speaker 1: should like lie about this on Craigslist and put it
Speaker 1: up and be like this is like a famous like painting.
Speaker 1: It's worth you know, fifteen hundred bucks or something like
Speaker 1: that and see if anybody bites. We put it up
Speaker 1: on Craigslist. I kid you not. Within like an hour,
Speaker 1: somebody hits back and it's like we want the painting,
Speaker 1: like can we email you? And we're like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: this is huge, this is massive. And they hit us
Speaker 1: back and they're like, but we want to pay you
Speaker 1: sixteen hundred. We want to pay you more than what
Speaker 1: we asked for. But it was like one of those
Speaker 1: situations where they try to scam you. You got to
Speaker 1: like send a check so they can cash it and
Speaker 1: do the whole thing. Or no, no, they they were
Speaker 1: trying to scam the scammer. They were trying to scam
Speaker 1: the scam. I'll dude, I've been scammed for years. Still
Speaker 1: did you get any money out of it? So they
Speaker 1: sent us a check and it was for like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, seventeen it was. It was more than what
Speaker 1: we asked for. It was a lot like in the thousands,
Speaker 1: and we took it to it. We didn't want to
Speaker 1: take it to our own bank because we were like
Speaker 1: this could be like we should try to get the
Speaker 1: cash quick, even if we have to pay like a
Speaker 1: low Commission. We took it to Advanced Financial, like one
Speaker 1: of those check cashing places on Nolan's Ville Road, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's like a glass window and you slip
Speaker 1: it through like you're paying at a gas station. And
Speaker 1: they look at the check and they looked at us
Speaker 1: and they're like, uh, we're gonna have to call the police.
Speaker 1: This is a fraudulent check. And we're like no, no, no,
Speaker 1: like seriously, we don't know what's happening. Like we just
Speaker 1: try to sell painting on Craig Exist this guy like
Speaker 1: and they're like, Okay, well you need to get out
Speaker 1: of here immediately because this is a FRAUDCT. I guess
Speaker 1: this person had done it before and h we sprinted
Speaker 1: out of the twenty dollar painting. No, we got the painting.
Speaker 1: We never sent the painting. We never said the painting. No,
Speaker 1: the whole issue. I don't know how this scam worked.
Speaker 1: We figured it out one time, but it was, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was we didn't what's what you deserved? You were
Speaker 1: trying to cheat and that it was a good painting.
Speaker 1: Though it looks pretty good. Do you still have it?
Speaker 1: He still has it, honestly still has it. It's funny,
Speaker 1: so you and him moving to this house, moving in
Speaker 1: this house, You're both what's he doing? You're out cutting
Speaker 1: demos for artists? Yeah, what's he doing kind of the
Speaker 1: same thing. You know, he was writing and just like
Speaker 1: scraping by on what he could. Were helping each other.
Speaker 1: We supportive of each other. Two guys living together. No,
Speaker 1: we were. We were working together, were writing songs together,
Speaker 1: and you know, putting We started putting the Bontomventre band
Speaker 1: together while we were down there, and we were like,
Speaker 1: you know, we had a little bit of stuff going on.
Speaker 1: We had connections, I guess from what we had done
Speaker 1: in the past and who we knew before we moved
Speaker 1: to Nashville, and we like we saved up our money
Speaker 1: or I don't know how we did, or like borrowed
Speaker 1: my dad's airline points and flew to New York one
Speaker 1: time and showcased for Mercury Records, this guy David as Bonaventure.
Speaker 1: So we were like, we didn't know whether we were
Speaker 1: obviously writing country songs, but we were just telling people
Speaker 1: whatever they wanted to hear. So this pop label like
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, come in and play for the President.
Speaker 1: I mean this guy signed like massive acts and we
Speaker 1: go up there. I have a banjo, five string banjo,
Speaker 1: and he had an acoustic guitar. This was before like
Speaker 1: the resurgence at the banjo and pop music happened, like
Speaker 1: Mumford and Sons and imagine Dragons put a mantle in
Speaker 1: in their pop track. This was like before that became cool.
Speaker 1: And I would walk into this New York office Mercury Records,
Speaker 1: and it's the two of us singing country songs and
Speaker 1: they're like, so, you guys want to sign it this
Speaker 1: pop label. Huh. We're like, yeah, we'll do anything you want,
Speaker 1: Like have you ever thought about being in a country act?
Speaker 1: And we're like no, no, absolutely, just telling them what
Speaker 1: they wanted to hear, what we thought they wanted to hear,
Speaker 1: and they're like cool, yeah, we'll be in touch. And
Speaker 1: we went back to Nashville. Nothing never came a bit.
Speaker 1: So did you guys break up the idea of Bonaventure
Speaker 1: after they didn't work? It was kind of not immediately there.
Speaker 1: We were kind of just fizzling out, like focusing a
Speaker 1: little more on the writing thing. We I mean, we'd
Speaker 1: been here for like four or five years before Shane
Speaker 1: and I met, and what was the big. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: even say break, but what was the pop for you?
Speaker 1: Where you go? Okay, I can at least relax a
Speaker 1: bit on rent. So when I signed my publishing deal
Speaker 1: to Warner Chapel, I had sixty three dollars in my account,
Speaker 1: like cold sixty three that I know that number for
Speaker 1: a fact. And I mean my rent that month was
Speaker 1: like one hundred and fifty. So I was I hadn't
Speaker 1: figured it out yet what I was going to do,
Speaker 1: but it was pretty nice. While we were like, you know,
Speaker 1: negotiating deals and with a record label and the publishing company,
Speaker 1: we would we would. There's this guy Alex Heddel, he
Speaker 1: run He's a big machine publishing. He still like gives
Speaker 1: me a hard time because he was like, we wanted
Speaker 1: to sign you guys, and you just like let us on.
Speaker 1: And we went out to soul Shine and spent like
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred dollars at the bar and like I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: we did. We went out one time and got a
Speaker 1: pizza and a beer. But we always give each other
Speaker 1: a hard time about it. So whenever you're doing that,
Speaker 1: if you're an artist out there and like you're you're
Speaker 1: being courted by labels. If they want to buy you
Speaker 1: a car, if they want to buy you, just take it.
Speaker 1: You know. It's funny. How I knew you guys first
Speaker 1: was not as friends who were trying to be artists.
Speaker 1: I don't think we had a deal at that point.
Speaker 1: You didn't have a deal. No, but that's not always
Speaker 1: like I had these friends. Then we were doing karaoke, yeah,
Speaker 1: and I was like Dan and Shay. She was like,
Speaker 1: it's Dan and Shay And I was like, we had demos. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, cool. The artist thing wasn't a thing.
Speaker 1: It was just not as friends, not as friends who
Speaker 1: like drank other people's beer and partied and yeah, this
Speaker 1: is crazy. I knew not a way back. I met her.
Speaker 1: She was working I think she was working for a
Speaker 1: pop station or doing she was for the River, Yes,
Speaker 1: for the River and Boys Like Girls who I know,
Speaker 1: and I'd go way back with those guys. They were
Speaker 1: still doing the band, and they came and played a show,
Speaker 1: a Christmas show, and I met Nada there. She was
Speaker 1: like doing promo for the station and they did an
Speaker 1: acoustic radio show and I was hanging with Paul and
Speaker 1: Martin from Boys Like Girls, and I met Nada and
Speaker 1: we became friends, and she'd been to that terrible house.
Speaker 1: She knows all about it. That's funny. I just think
Speaker 1: back because all these memories are hitting out, because that's
Speaker 1: right when I moved to town. Yep, is it right
Speaker 1: about the time you guys went on with Warner right
Speaker 1: and became a thing. But again, you weren't Dan and Shay.
Speaker 1: You were Dan and Shay. Yeah, two dude just to
Speaker 1: her friends. Still looking for a band name. Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: We were honestly under SoundCloud. I don't know. I hope
Speaker 1: it's private because somebody's gonna go out there and find it.
Speaker 1: We were on SoundCloud as Ragtop Red. That was our name.
Speaker 1: We were like big Tim McGraw fans and we're like,
Speaker 1: well we has red ragtop what if we like flip
Speaker 1: it Ragtop Red. There have been much Dummer names. There
Speaker 1: is one. We were in Austin, Texas. We did south
Speaker 1: By Southwest and we were down there. It was I
Speaker 1: don't remember exactly the timing of this. No, this was
Speaker 1: the first. We've done south By Southwest twice. The second
Speaker 1: time Justin Bieber came out on stage with us. It
Speaker 1: was a whole I remember that. I remember the whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was crazy. The first time we did it, there's
Speaker 1: a picture of it. Was only we played a showcase
Speaker 1: and like Shay's lawyer at the time, this guy Jim's, I'mwalt,
Speaker 1: the man, great guy. He was like, come down to
Speaker 1: do this showcase and we can hang out. And we
Speaker 1: were like, this is awesome. You know. We went down
Speaker 1: and there was literally three people in the crowd. My lawyer,
Speaker 1: Jonathan He's the man, Jim's I'mwalt, and Paul d. Giovanni,
Speaker 1: the guy boys like girls keeps coming up in this situation.
Speaker 1: I don't know why he was there. I think he
Speaker 1: was just I think the band was on a break
Speaker 1: or something at that point and he was just hanging out.
Speaker 1: He was literally standing in the crowd and there's We
Speaker 1: watched this the other night. We were cutting together videos
Speaker 1: for Tequila, and my buddy Pete Tracy, who does like
Speaker 1: all our content, he found a video that somebody had
Speaker 1: taken and it was showed us like rocking on stage.
Speaker 1: I'm wearing like a Boston Red Sox hat and we're
Speaker 1: dancing around like we got something going on, and he
Speaker 1: zooms out. Literally, no one in the crowd. It was
Speaker 1: so embarrassing, But what was your name? So we go
Speaker 1: to p F Changs after that little showcase and Zombie's like,
Speaker 1: you guys are poised to be the next big stars,
Speaker 1: Like whatever, we need to come up with a name.
Speaker 1: So he's got his little iPad. We're sitting at the
Speaker 1: roundtable in the corner PF Chains in Austin, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I got it, and we're sitting there like you might
Speaker 1: have it. This is awesome, let's hear him out. He's
Speaker 1: like not showing us. He's like got a big surprise,
Speaker 1: and he's typing it out on this little iPad and
Speaker 1: he flips it around. And his big pitch to us
Speaker 1: was that the name should be schools Out. Oh you
Speaker 1: told me this school schools Out. Yeah. So, like, if
Speaker 1: we ever get big like Dirk's Bentley or something and
Speaker 1: can do the you know, country, that's funny. I remember that. Man.
Speaker 1: It's so funny because I think of you guys as
Speaker 1: part of my memory when I first got to town,
Speaker 1: because you guys were being a thing right when I
Speaker 1: whatever I was being and whatever I am, I started
Speaker 1: to be a thing right when you guys were being
Speaker 1: a thing. At the same time, people hated all of us.
Speaker 1: All of us. They we were ruining country music and
Speaker 1: still are, by the way, we're still running country music.
Speaker 1: It's a very vocal minority. It's it's insane, it's it's
Speaker 1: I've never seen anything like it. I was talking to
Speaker 1: someone that I do business with the other day and
Speaker 1: we were talking about the people that let's country music, sure,
Speaker 1: And I said, you can't pay attention to the people
Speaker 1: that talk to you about it, right, because the people
Speaker 1: they're satisfied and love it. They quiet, they just love it,
Speaker 1: and they consume what they like of it. They don't
Speaker 1: complain about what they don't. They just go to what
Speaker 1: they like. Yep. The people that are the ones going
Speaker 1: this sucks that ain't country, they're out there. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: they're the loudest and they're a very select minority group.
Speaker 1: They're aggressive too, man, they mean, yeah, they're every once
Speaker 1: in a while when I want to like get into
Speaker 1: it on Twitters, I shouldn't do this. Oh like search
Speaker 1: Dan plus Shay not country, you know. And there's some
Speaker 1: like really vulgar stuff in there, like really aggressive. It's like,
Speaker 1: if you don't want to listen to our music. Just
Speaker 1: don't listen. Nobody's forcing anyone to do anything with anything creative. Yeah. Period,
Speaker 1: It's crazy. It And at this point in my career,
Speaker 1: I've always been hated because again by a vocal minority,
Speaker 1: because when I was doing pop, I was too country. Sure,
Speaker 1: when I do country, I'm too pop. When I was
Speaker 1: doing alternative, I had too much of a Southern accent.
Speaker 1: When I was doing sports, I'd never been a professional athlete, right,
Speaker 1: I just can't win. I've never fit anywhere. But it's
Speaker 1: thickened my skin so much. But it's also made me
Speaker 1: more like the people that actually consume totally. And that's
Speaker 1: been what was to me the hardest thing in the
Speaker 1: biggest obstacle was oh I'm never fitting. I actually fit
Speaker 1: exactly with the people that are consuming it. They just
Speaker 1: don't scream. Yeah, it's great. It's interesting you say that.
Speaker 1: Do you ever like, are you impacted more by the
Speaker 1: haters than like there'll be I talked to Thomas Rhett
Speaker 1: about this all the time, and his dad always is
Speaker 1: like Thomas, he gets so bent out of shape about
Speaker 1: the people on Twitter, Thomas Rhett, and he'll hit people back.
Speaker 1: I see it on as he has so many followers
Speaker 1: on Instagram. He's got millions and millions of people saying, Thomas,
Speaker 1: You're the greatest artist I've ever heard. I like have
Speaker 1: your lyrics tattooed on myself. And then one guy comes
Speaker 1: on there and it's like, why are you wearing those jeans?
Speaker 1: You look like whatever, you know, and your music's not country.
Speaker 1: He'll reply to him and he'll hit him back and like,
Speaker 1: but you just girl past I love your song. I
Speaker 1: love your song. You guys are amazing. The show is
Speaker 1: amazing night. Then there's one hater out there. It's like
Speaker 1: nice haircuts, whatever, and it's like, oh, I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: that guy. I'm gonna get that guy. You know. I
Speaker 1: was talking to Kip More about this, and Kip More
Speaker 1: and I had the same management, yep, and we were
Speaker 1: sitting in a room and he was talking about at
Speaker 1: times he can be upset by people not enjoying the show.
Speaker 1: He could say, there, let's say nine percent people are
Speaker 1: just rocking out, and it keeps intense, and you talk
Speaker 1: about some loves his art, Yep, that's it keeps like, Man,
Speaker 1: I have everybody going, but the one person, I'm one person.
Speaker 1: I'll focus on is the guy who's just looking at
Speaker 1: the ground, and I'm like, how do I win him over?
Speaker 1: And I can't win him over him and he says,
Speaker 1: what do you do so well? When I do stand up? Well?
Speaker 1: I also like to read about really good, famous people. Sure,
Speaker 1: I'm a B minus comic. I'm funny if you want
Speaker 1: to come to the show. But I'm nothing like this.
Speaker 1: I'm nothing like the people that are really good, like
Speaker 1: it's their profession. I'm a really good radio host. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm an okay comic. But Steve is one of my heroes.
Speaker 1: And before I was born in the eighties, so I
Speaker 1: didn't really get to experience Steve Martin as when he
Speaker 1: was new and it was groundbreak. Sure, but he would say,
Speaker 1: watch the top of their heads, don't watch their faces,
Speaker 1: because everybody experiences joy differently, and you're you're projecting how
Speaker 1: you experienced joy on them, and if they're not experiencing
Speaker 1: joy how you experienced joy, you think, oh, they're not
Speaker 1: enjoying it. Yeah. So we had that conversation, and then
Speaker 1: we talked about why we get effected so much by
Speaker 1: when someone says something bad about us, right, and I
Speaker 1: tried to go, you know, what. I'm better than that,
Speaker 1: and I don't let it get to me. But it's
Speaker 1: so hard. I keep myself the same reason I'll keep
Speaker 1: sweets my refrigerator. I don't go to Facebook. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: show Facebook because it's people that a lot of people
Speaker 1: that are just angry, and I can't. It drives me
Speaker 1: so crazy. I just know that's my weakness. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it hurts my feelings. And I'm a sensitive artist. It's tough, dude.
Speaker 1: We are we are And honestly, we played a show
Speaker 1: with Kip Moret. I hope Kid doesn't he because he'll
Speaker 1: kill me. You know, he wants to put off the
Speaker 1: tough guy. He's sensitive guy. He's like in touch with
Speaker 1: his feelings and his emotions. I mean you could hear
Speaker 1: it in his music as an incredible songwriter. Play this
Speaker 1: thing called the Pepsi Golf Coast Jam. I believe whoever
Speaker 1: hears this is not gonnaver book us there again. But
Speaker 1: it was. It was an interesting show. It was like
Speaker 1: I blame the fact that it was insanely hot. It
Speaker 1: was like one hundred and ten degrees outside. It was
Speaker 1: in Florida, and Kip had just gotten off stage and
Speaker 1: we run the bus. He's like pounding on our bus store.
Speaker 1: He's like, boys, let me come up there and hang out.
Speaker 1: And he's like he was so bummed about there was
Speaker 1: like the crowd was we saw his show. People were
Speaker 1: throwing beach balls around and like they were for the
Speaker 1: most part having a good time. But it was hot
Speaker 1: and it was late in the day. You know, it's
Speaker 1: probably seven thirty or eight at night, and they were
Speaker 1: like a couple of guys down in the front row
Speaker 1: or in the pit who were probably drunk or hungover,
Speaker 1: and they were giving him a hard time and he
Speaker 1: was like, a bad it. I'm done with this, Like
Speaker 1: I'm never playing. We're like sor right. We talked it out,
Speaker 1: but he was emotional about it, and yeah, he's a
Speaker 1: passionate guy. That's awesome. Though his true fans like can
Speaker 1: feel that he believes for his art and it's like
Speaker 1: that's why heard he has die hard fans and he's
Speaker 1: die hard and I kept and I got into a
Speaker 1: huge blow up one time because I go, well, I'm
Speaker 1: commentating on what's happening, good or bad. I've at one
Speaker 1: point made friends and enemies at the same time of
Speaker 1: every single artist's just about because where I've said I've
Speaker 1: really enjoyed them, I've also said things I don't like
Speaker 1: about them, just because if I say enough things, eventually
Speaker 1: they're all not going to be great, of course, so
Speaker 1: and I can't worry about that. And at times it
Speaker 1: makes an awkward in town, but then again it comes
Speaker 1: back around and we're cool, and then we're not cool again.
Speaker 1: But with Kip, one time I said, Kip, you gotta
Speaker 1: relax on the cell phones. This is me talking over
Speaker 1: the air. Stop yelling at people with their cell phones.
Speaker 1: Everybody uses their phones now. Hear the selfie song or whatever. Yes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he got so pissed at me and we ended
Speaker 1: up three months later after we just wouldn't refuse to
Speaker 1: talk to each other, going to breakfast right for like
Speaker 1: three hours, we just talked it out. Yeah, and there
Speaker 1: was an understanding that we're both super sensitive in different
Speaker 1: ways totally, and we're not on the same exact wavelength,
Speaker 1: but we're absolutely on the same highway for sure. And
Speaker 1: since then it's been fantastic. That's awesome. He is. It'll
Speaker 1: shoot you straight, and I'll still make fun of him
Speaker 1: if I need to. He sent me a video I
Speaker 1: went to Hawaiian. I don't know how to you know,
Speaker 1: and I told you this, I don't know how to serve.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to do any of the water stuff.
Speaker 1: You know. Never grew up around wavy water. I only
Speaker 1: grew up around lake water. Right, So I could have
Speaker 1: supposed to be a paddle stand up paddle boarding, and
Speaker 1: you'd take that strap and you put it on your ankle.
Speaker 1: But I put it on my wrist because I'm an idiot.
Speaker 1: I thought you FoST put on your wrist. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so I talk about the story I actually talked about
Speaker 1: with you guys when you came on the show and
Speaker 1: kept heard that segment. And he sends me a video
Speaker 1: of just him over and over strapping. I think to
Speaker 1: his like, that's all the video was with him strapping
Speaker 1: himself to a board, over and a. Yeah, he keeps
Speaker 1: a passionate dude. And I like Kip. Yeah, I like
Speaker 1: him too. He is a good guy. Okay, well let's
Speaker 1: get back to this. Wow, Warrey Parker back on. Look
Speaker 1: at that. I have so many pair of Warry Parker glasses.
Speaker 1: I want to just do the spot in real. Oh, dude,
Speaker 1: you can go in. I don't even know what the
Speaker 1: spot says, because I haven't looked at the Warby Parker
Speaker 1: store is like a candy store. They have so many yeah,
Speaker 1: cafe over there, and they don't have them brick and
Speaker 1: mortar stores everywhere they do in Austin to do in
Speaker 1: Nashville and which, by the way, I live right near
Speaker 1: that PF Changs where it schools out and awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I live right there. Buy that PF change so um.
Speaker 1: Warby Parker has all these glasses for like one hundred
Speaker 1: bucks and it's like a shopping spree. Okay, there's a
Speaker 1: free home trial program from Warby Parker. I haven't I
Speaker 1: haven't pre read this, so I'm just gonna read it.
Speaker 1: But I think I know most of this. I bought
Speaker 1: them so many times. Order five pair of glasses and
Speaker 1: try them all for five days. There's no obligation to
Speaker 1: buy the ships for free, and it includes a prepaid
Speaker 1: return shipping label. Basically, what happens is they send you
Speaker 1: these five pair of glasses and you can try them
Speaker 1: all on and see which frames you like and the
Speaker 1: ones you don't. You can send them back. Go to
Speaker 1: Warby Parker dot com slash Bobby to order your free
Speaker 1: home tryons today. Glasses started ninety five bucks, including prescription lenses.
Speaker 1: Lenses include anti glare and anti scratch coatings. For every
Speaker 1: pair you buy two a pair of distribute to somebody
Speaker 1: in the So there's also a warwy Parker iTunes app.
Speaker 1: The try a home kit thing really is fantastic though,
Speaker 1: because it comes right to your house and you put
Speaker 1: them on, and the ones you don't like, you go, oh,
Speaker 1: these don't put in my face, you just send them back.
Speaker 1: And so there is there any part of this that
Speaker 1: I don't know about yet, because all that I just
Speaker 1: know from my heart. If you have an iPhone X,
Speaker 1: you can download the war Parker app and use their
Speaker 1: brand new feature fine to your fit. Well, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: It uses the iPhone x is true depth camera to
Speaker 1: map and measure key facial features. Yeah, I need that
Speaker 1: to see if I'm ugly. I can do that even
Speaker 1: for not the glasses U warwy Parker dot com slash Bobby.
Speaker 1: If you're a glass is aware, just go to Warwyparker
Speaker 1: dot com slash Bobby. That's a pleasant treat having morew
Speaker 1: Parker back. This podcast has gotten so big and we
Speaker 1: never expected it. It's amazing. Dude, it's killing it, I guess.
Speaker 1: But look, it's this equipment. This is equipment that I
Speaker 1: just bought. It might put it together. This is not
Speaker 1: even a real studio. And now we have two million subscribers.
Speaker 1: It's it's absolutely insane. Cool. Okay, So here we are.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I've tried to get you in
Speaker 1: for months and either you could do it and I couldn't.
Speaker 1: R I could do it and you couldn't, and finally
Speaker 1: we got it. We're here and we're hanging I like it.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. Man um story is so ridiculous. No, No,
Speaker 1: over the point, I didn't know some of this, and
Speaker 1: a lot of times I know everything. I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna keep giving lessons to all the struggling artists out
Speaker 1: there or trying to get by. So we had like
Speaker 1: Microsoft paint on our computers or like some some iteration
Speaker 1: of it, and we would make we're scammers. We made
Speaker 1: like fake cupons, or we would find a cup on
Speaker 1: that it was expired and we would change the date,
Speaker 1: and then we would go to CC's Pizza. You know,
Speaker 1: CC's amazing, so good. CC's like two ninety nine buffet
Speaker 1: it's four ninety nine, which was out of our price range.
Speaker 1: So what we did is we made it like buy
Speaker 1: one gate one free SCS because when you're in like
Speaker 1: the two fifty range, it's like it's okay. Not only
Speaker 1: did we do that, we would go with the CCS buy.
Speaker 1: Our house would close at nine pm. We'd go at
Speaker 1: eight forty, and we would order two pizzas like custom
Speaker 1: we back in mac and cheese and Buffalo chicken or
Speaker 1: something like that, pizzas right off the front, and they'd
Speaker 1: be like cool, and they'd make them up and then
Speaker 1: we'd be sitting in there and then they'd be like, gentlemen,
Speaker 1: we're about to close the store. And we'd be like,
Speaker 1: what are all those pizzas up on the thing? Are
Speaker 1: you guys throwing those away? And they'd be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have to take him to the dumpster. And we're like,
Speaker 1: if we meet you out back, could we take the
Speaker 1: leftover pizzas? And I mean the people working in CC's
Speaker 1: were like sure, we don't care. Sure enough. We'd walk
Speaker 1: around the back of the place with the two custom
Speaker 1: pieces that we had just had made, and then we
Speaker 1: would get the like the pizzas they were throwing away,
Speaker 1: and we would literally eat off this pizza for like
Speaker 1: six weeks at a time, and as it became not
Speaker 1: really edible anymore, we would put it on the grill
Speaker 1: out back. It was dark times. So what did your
Speaker 1: parents do? My dad's a chemical engineer, he was. He's
Speaker 1: retired now. He coaches middle school soccer now really yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So was he a soccer player? He was? He played
Speaker 1: in college? And were you an athlete? Yeah? I don't
Speaker 1: mind me noticing you're built like an athlete. Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe that speedo I wore in here is a bad choice.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, So I played football for a year in college.
Speaker 1: I went, that's like the weird thing about what I'm
Speaker 1: doing because I graduated from college from a great school.
Speaker 1: I graduated from Karnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, Which is I'm
Speaker 1: playing that theater Karnegie Theater. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's amazing,
Speaker 1: it's beautiful. That's not. Colby kel A play there one
Speaker 1: time and Jimmy E World in the Pop Bung days.
Speaker 1: It was killed her. I love Colby kel A so good.
Speaker 1: She came through. We went to lunch one time. I
Speaker 1: don't think it was a date, could have been. It
Speaker 1: could have been a date though. Yeah, but she played
Speaker 1: and Amy would know the real story because she's yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter, it's that's for a different day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I need to hear this story that. Yeah, I need
Speaker 1: I need to make sure it's right though before I
Speaker 1: say it, I need to I need to get you know,
Speaker 1: it's been so long. You want to talk to the
Speaker 1: people that were also experiencing it with you to make
Speaker 1: sure it didn't turn into some fantasy in my head. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so all these stories are now that we're talking, all
Speaker 1: these like crazy stories I have when I'm of here
Speaker 1: coming back. I got another good one on deck here
Speaker 1: in a few minutes. Whenever you played for one high school,
Speaker 1: what would you play a position to play? I played
Speaker 1: running back, so I actually was touring through high school,
Speaker 1: so I and then I I played all growing up,
Speaker 1: and then like the band, the Transition band started sort
Speaker 1: of happening a little bit. We were touring on weekends,
Speaker 1: and then my parents like they hated me. We had
Speaker 1: kind of a weird falling out when I was in
Speaker 1: high school because they were like, you're so good at sports,
Speaker 1: you should play sports, and I was like, screw your
Speaker 1: mom and dad. I'm playing music like I want to,
Speaker 1: like drop out of high school and go on the
Speaker 1: Warp Tour, which I wasn't even invited. On the Wark Tour,
Speaker 1: we would show up and we would build the stages.
Speaker 1: There was like the Kevin Says Stage. Kevin Lyman, who
Speaker 1: ran the Warp tour, had this thing called Kevin Says
Speaker 1: Stage and it would just be new and upcoming artists
Speaker 1: get up at six in the morning every day, you know,
Speaker 1: Lee put in like trusts and pipes and all that
Speaker 1: stuff together and build the stage and like two of
Speaker 1: the acts would get to play. So there would be
Speaker 1: days we'd build the whole stage right to stage down
Speaker 1: and not even get to play. We were Wow, it's
Speaker 1: like an open mic here in Nashville. Show up, but
Speaker 1: maybe you get on maybe, but you had to drive
Speaker 1: the van from city to city. So I bet a
Speaker 1: lot of people did that. You know, you're all so
Speaker 1: young at the time, and I was like, this is awesome. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's how I feel when I was seventeen eighteen nineteen
Speaker 1: radio going to school full time, taking twenty hours broke
Speaker 1: as a joke. Yeah, it was I think the happiest
Speaker 1: time in my life, totally much happier than now because
Speaker 1: I've I've now put all these problems into my head
Speaker 1: that really don't don't matter, and money's like it absolutely unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it's the reality of what we do. I mean, I
Speaker 1: wish I could just like write a million songs and
Speaker 1: just chill, but like we have to go out and
Speaker 1: play shows and you know, travel through the night or
Speaker 1: take red eye fights to play shows, like because we
Speaker 1: have bills to pay, and we have to pay our
Speaker 1: band and we have to you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: There's not even hard compared to what normal people like
Speaker 1: my step dad worked at the sawmill. Yeah, every day,
Speaker 1: hated it. That was hard work. Absolutely, what we do
Speaker 1: is not hard work. No, it's not. We spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time creatively competing against other people. It's exhausting.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we can still be mentally exhausted and physically without sleep. Sure,
Speaker 1: but when I was grinding it and actually doing the work,
Speaker 1: when I was getting paid, I was so happy because
Speaker 1: I didn't know any better, and money wasn't a problem
Speaker 1: because I never had there was an option of any Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was no option of money, so I just enjoyed
Speaker 1: the art. I agree with you that that's that's so true.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we were we were grinding. We had nothing,
Speaker 1: we were not getting paid. We're doing these shows and
Speaker 1: like we would have a CD or a demo, we'd
Speaker 1: be selling them to the line. You know, I have
Speaker 1: the whole pitch down. I had like a little headphone
Speaker 1: set and it's like you guys like fall out Boy
Speaker 1: and they're like no, we like like hard stuff like
Speaker 1: No Effects or something. We'd like, you're gonna love our stuff.
Speaker 1: And it was otherwise, you know, we'd be like you
Speaker 1: like no Effects, are like no, we like pop music
Speaker 1: like fallut Boy would be like you're gonna love our
Speaker 1: you and we would like sell CDs for five bucks
Speaker 1: to get to the next city, and that's just what
Speaker 1: people buy them. They would, yeah, they would. I mean
Speaker 1: people were generous. I don't know if that still is
Speaker 1: a thing, but I mean that hustle, Like all the
Speaker 1: guys in our band and our touring crew came from
Speaker 1: that world. So we all kind of have that mentality.
Speaker 1: And I you know, we have an amazing team around
Speaker 1: us now, We've got amazing connections at country radio and
Speaker 1: we have amazing fans. But I try to still keep
Speaker 1: that mentality with what I do. You know, here in Nashville,
Speaker 1: it's like people like, why are you doing so many
Speaker 1: things or writing all these songs or applying to fans
Speaker 1: on social media and stuff. But it's just what I
Speaker 1: what I'm used to, what I came up on, and
Speaker 1: it's I mean, now we've got more of a platform,
Speaker 1: there are more fans that will come to the shows,
Speaker 1: you know, without me begging them to come to the shows.
Speaker 1: But I try to keep that same mentality. If I
Speaker 1: work as hard as I did when I was building
Speaker 1: stages at Warp Tour, We're gonna have a lot of success.
Speaker 1: You know. You know that there's a parallel that I
Speaker 1: see between we were talking about Kit, between Kip and
Speaker 1: you and Shay in that you have very passionate fans.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and you guys grind the road hard, harder
Speaker 1: than people give you credit for it. But you know what,
Speaker 1: you're not looking for credit. So it's a weird thing
Speaker 1: to say that people don't give you credit for it
Speaker 1: because you're not looking for the credit. But you, guys,
Speaker 1: just from knowing what it's like to tour, because I
Speaker 1: do a little myself can buy and seeing you guys
Speaker 1: all out, you're on the road a lot more than
Speaker 1: the normal country act. Yeah, we are. We did I
Speaker 1: think one hundred and seventy three shows last year, which
Speaker 1: and just to compare, most people to do weekends. Yeah,
Speaker 1: most like the bigger acts will do eighty five shows
Speaker 1: a year. Then that's a big touring here. But and
Speaker 1: we try to. I'm you know, we're with CIA, our agency,
Speaker 1: And when we met for the first time, I was like,
Speaker 1: I come from the you know, the world of Warped
Speaker 1: tour where you're playing five six nights a week. Like now,
Speaker 1: I like the country thing. I like doing three nights
Speaker 1: and then coming back to Nashville and resetting the years.
Speaker 1: But we were like, let's just tour like a rock band.
Speaker 1: Let's go out and do We don't need to just
Speaker 1: play Friday and Saturday night. We can play a Tuesday
Speaker 1: night or Wednesday night if you're playing clubs or House
Speaker 1: of Blues or whatever. It is. Like we were grinding
Speaker 1: playing every night. We're still doing that. I mean, we
Speaker 1: would go even when we're on tour. We're on tour
Speaker 1: with the Flats this summer, but we're booking our own
Speaker 1: headlining dates in between because our fans are passionate. Man,
Speaker 1: they're die heard and they want to see the full set,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's opportunity obviously business wise to go
Speaker 1: do those shows. But it's good for us too to
Speaker 1: be in those cities playing for those fans, not just Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna play the major cities you need to. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the thing about country There are country music fans everywhere,
Speaker 1: so you're not just playing New York and Boston or
Speaker 1: you know, big major cities. You're playing all over the place.
Speaker 1: And sometimes those shows are even crazier because the fans,
Speaker 1: you know, in the middle of nowhere, like no one
Speaker 1: ever comes here. I enjoy going to places where they're
Speaker 1: not huge circles on the map with a big city
Speaker 1: because people are so much more appreciative. And I may
Speaker 1: not sell many tickets exactly, but the great thing about
Speaker 1: what I do so in the radio. Most radio people
Speaker 1: don't do things outside of the radio show, right, I do,
Speaker 1: And I think one of the greatest things I get
Speaker 1: from it is getting to have a dose of reality sure,
Speaker 1: and actually seeing and meeting people. Because I do it
Speaker 1: every unless I'm sick. I've only ever not done it
Speaker 1: two or three shows ever unless I'm sick or something
Speaker 1: as went wrong, I always go and that the theaters
Speaker 1: get mad at me for doing it, but I go
Speaker 1: in and talk to people, meet people because that is
Speaker 1: important to me to stay grounded. I can be in
Speaker 1: a room absolutely and just talk to my friends and
Speaker 1: it goes over the airwaves, but I will lose what's
Speaker 1: really happening totally in the world. Yeah. Me being able
Speaker 1: to go out and see people as much as I
Speaker 1: do reset it me back to normalcy. Yeah. I like that.
Speaker 1: It gives me out of the bus. And for you
Speaker 1: guys too, you get out of Nashville, you see what's
Speaker 1: really happening, ye, not what's in this stupid bubble of well,
Speaker 1: what's the coolest thing that's happening right right? It is
Speaker 1: a bubble. And I mean where I grew up with
Speaker 1: a bubble too. It wasn't until I moved out and
Speaker 1: started touring. It was like I thought everything was perfect.
Speaker 1: It was awesome. But it's not always like that. And
Speaker 1: you see the way like certain people live. And that's
Speaker 1: why we try to when we're on stage, even if
Speaker 1: there's like technical difficulties, if the venue sucks or whatever,
Speaker 1: it is like give one hundred and ten percent because
Speaker 1: even like, if there's five people there, those five people
Speaker 1: don't care that there's not six people there. That was
Speaker 1: a hard thing for me to do, but absolutely right.
Speaker 1: You have to give your all to those people because like,
Speaker 1: and it's even more impactful than when you play for
Speaker 1: twenty thousand people in an arena because those people they
Speaker 1: feel special. And like I remember being a kid going
Speaker 1: to shows and if an artist got up there and
Speaker 1: phoned it in because the show wasn't sold out, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I don't know if I love that artist,
Speaker 1: but if we go out there and play, like, you know,
Speaker 1: in front of five people, like we're playing in front
Speaker 1: of big festival crowd, it's it's gonna get a long.
Speaker 1: We've always had that mentality, so it's that took me
Speaker 1: a while and I somebody wrote a book. Charlie Daniel
Speaker 1: for the book said, uh, don't look at the sea.
Speaker 1: And That's something over the past couple of years that
Speaker 1: I've really appreciated is putting forth the effort when when
Speaker 1: it feels like you should be down, like, oh man,
Speaker 1: this didn't sell out, but again, nobody know. I want
Speaker 1: to watch Adam Crowler here's an example, Mike, did I
Speaker 1: want to watch Adamcolo and yeah at tea back and
Speaker 1: the place was half full, and I was and I
Speaker 1: was looking around like, wow, why is it that full?
Speaker 1: I kind of feel, but nobody there was looking behind
Speaker 1: them at any single seat. And it again. Going to
Speaker 1: shows reset me on how to do shows, absolutely absolutely,
Speaker 1: because you also, you know, on the other on the
Speaker 1: flip side of that, you'll go to shows and see
Speaker 1: artists who do notice those empty seats and are complaining.
Speaker 1: You could tell they're just cutting set short and doing whatever,
Speaker 1: and you're like, that's the guy. I don't want to
Speaker 1: be so And I was early that guy, but now
Speaker 1: I'm exact opposite, that's all. And I appreciate it because
Speaker 1: and I went to a John mayrshow in Minneapolis and
Speaker 1: I went through the meet and greet line. Yea, not
Speaker 1: as later later I went I hung out. I was
Speaker 1: cool later, but it was on the show at the beginning.
Speaker 1: I wanted to go through a meet and greet line
Speaker 1: to see what it's like to go through a meet
Speaker 1: and greet line because where I am now, I get
Speaker 1: a lot of things right because in my position, people say, hey,
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. And I've known John Mayor for
Speaker 1: a bit. We've probably had ten instances together. Yea, so
Speaker 1: I don't know him know him, but professionally, right, we
Speaker 1: know each other, and now we actually follow each other
Speaker 1: in social media and stuff. So maybe we'd recognize he'd
Speaker 1: recognized me, I'd recognize him. I'll be like, what up.
Speaker 1: So but I went to the meet and greet line
Speaker 1: and it was forty five minutes or so, and I
Speaker 1: sat and I just talked to people, and it just
Speaker 1: gave me a new respect for even people that come
Speaker 1: to the meeting. Totally. It was just it was it's
Speaker 1: really good for me to do stuff like that. It
Speaker 1: blows my mind. We were just in Europe, were in
Speaker 1: Europe in December, and it's like we came a long way.
Speaker 1: We're like really far from where Shay grew up in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: where I got in Pennsylvania, where we live now in Nashville.
Speaker 1: We're an ocean away and there are people who like
Speaker 1: canceled their plans, booked flights, whatever it is to come
Speaker 1: see us play that. It kind of blows my mind
Speaker 1: that it doesn't make me feel a little guilty. It
Speaker 1: does to me. It does I feel like to see me,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't go see me. I wouldn't go see me either, exactly.
Speaker 1: And I'm so grateful to people that do. But I
Speaker 1: almost want to apologize before the show ye and say,
Speaker 1: oh you just been maybe you know the thirty bucks totally?
Speaker 1: And I hope I do good. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I
Speaker 1: feel like we have We're so lucky. Our fans are
Speaker 1: probably all listening right now. But if you've got fans,
Speaker 1: our friend Kayla, she's like our biggest fans. She's so
Speaker 1: good to us, so loyal. We played the halftime show
Speaker 1: at the Steelers game the other day and she her
Speaker 1: and her friend like took a flight or drove and
Speaker 1: came all the way to the game to see us
Speaker 1: play two and have songs like die Hard. But last
Speaker 1: night her and a bunch of other fans of ours
Speaker 1: started gifting, like people not just buying our song on iTunes.
Speaker 1: They were like, the guys are in the top ten
Speaker 1: on all genres, we should see if we can get
Speaker 1: them to number one. Literally, we're just with their credit
Speaker 1: card and the thing gifting our song to like anybody
Speaker 1: who DM months Twitter, probably spending one hundred dollars like
Speaker 1: gifting the same song over and overun that's amazing, And
Speaker 1: I felt I had a message. I was like, look
Speaker 1: so nice, if you you can stop, like I want
Speaker 1: to go to number one too, but like you're just
Speaker 1: like too kind and I feel guilty. That's yeah, you
Speaker 1: feel like I do. Anyway. I feel like, man, I'm
Speaker 1: just not worthy of this. I feel the same, and
Speaker 1: I hope I never don't feel that way, if that
Speaker 1: makes sense for sure, because I don't ever want to
Speaker 1: take it for granted. Neither do I. It's a good
Speaker 1: thing about being in a duo if we ever one
Speaker 1: of us ever is like starting to get a little
Speaker 1: bit taking it for granted. It's like you need to
Speaker 1: shape up, like get you know, punch the other guy
Speaker 1: in the arm. So when you guys finally decided on
Speaker 1: Dan and Shay the name, the name, like we're really
Speaker 1: just gonna it probably had to be like, well, we
Speaker 1: couldn't come up with the name, so we're just gonna
Speaker 1: be Dan and say yeah, yeah. What was that conversation
Speaker 1: And who was the one that said, Okay, we think
Speaker 1: it just should be Dan and Jay was it Espo?
Speaker 1: I don't remember exactly how it happened, but we are managers.
Speaker 1: We work with Scooter or Braun you know which. By
Speaker 1: the way, it's funny because I was Scooter two weeks ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Scooter goes hold on and facetime's you. He's the
Speaker 1: king of facetiming. While I'm sitting with Scooter in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: I don't know where you guys were. You were driving.
Speaker 1: You were driving though we were on the bus, I
Speaker 1: think you're doing or was I at home? I don't know,
Speaker 1: well whatever, I remember it. Yeah, So Scooter's part of
Speaker 1: the Hey, we're gonna name you guys, Dan and Shay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was part of that. He was like, you guys
Speaker 1: are like recognizable by your names. Because we had met
Speaker 1: with Scooter, we'd flown out. We've had like insane experiences
Speaker 1: at Scooter's place. Like Scooter, by the way, it's Justin Bieber, Kanye,
Speaker 1: Carly class us manager like yeahs Ariana Grande, anybody, and
Speaker 1: we would like go out and jam with Justin Bieber
Speaker 1: and Selena. We'd be playing guitar and singing and doing
Speaker 1: all the stuff and like crazy like these nights that
Speaker 1: you see in you know, at HBO series, like crazy
Speaker 1: stuff and Uh. He was always just like everybody knows
Speaker 1: you guys is Dan and Shay. It's cool, like for
Speaker 1: the branding and instead of having some man name that
Speaker 1: you have to reinvent some new moniker, It's like, why
Speaker 1: not just go buy your names then people you know
Speaker 1: you guys and do whatever. We're like, we don't have
Speaker 1: any other ideas, Sure, let's go with it. And then
Speaker 1: I got with my buddy Pete Tracy. Pete Tracy also
Speaker 1: moved to Nashville with me when I moved here. He's
Speaker 1: from Pittsburgh and like he was on the Dark Time,
Speaker 1: the Dark training with us for a long time. But
Speaker 1: he's crushing it now. He's he did did you see
Speaker 1: Jillian's new video Jillian Jaqueline? I did, yeah for reasons,
Speaker 1: Yeah amazing, Yeah, three months she opened for She's fantastic.
Speaker 1: I put her in my class of twenty seventeen and
Speaker 1: saw that and took her out for three months as
Speaker 1: she opened for it, and Brandon Ray's open it for me.
Speaker 1: Then I just like, I'll just love the new artists man, yeah, fast,
Speaker 1: and they would tell you you're such a big part
Speaker 1: of their careers though, and breaking them. I mean they
Speaker 1: get to a certain level. I mean because of the
Speaker 1: exposure that you give them. So I was stoked on
Speaker 1: Jillian whenever you did that, because I've known Jillian since
Speaker 1: Andy and I moved. We talked about this at the
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame, because you guys came up to my
Speaker 1: radio Hall of Fame. You did, Shane didn't. We were
Speaker 1: both there. Shan just checked out. Yeah he was. He
Speaker 1: was physically there, Okay, Yeah, he was rocking. So you
Speaker 1: and I were talking at a bar in Chicago, yep,
Speaker 1: and it was if I'm stepping out of turn, tell me,
Speaker 1: but you took Devin and Jillian both to the label? Yeah, right, ye,
Speaker 1: it's Warner Brothers. You took them like, yeah, I played, Uh,
Speaker 1: I played Devin's music for our buddy who's now he's
Speaker 1: not at Warner Brothers anymore. And like Davin thought at
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers, Devin's an but our buddy who was head
Speaker 1: of promo over there and played it for him and
Speaker 1: a bunch of people in the label. And you know, oh,
Speaker 1: I have a great relationship with John's talent too. I'm trying.
Speaker 1: I'm trying, can there because they're both fantastic. Yeah, are
Speaker 1: you close to that? Are You're closer to Devin though
Speaker 1: than you and another artist friends, Devin's saying the first
Speaker 1: dance at my wedding. He's great, Like I believe in
Speaker 1: Devin's so much. That's another talk about a guy who's
Speaker 1: passionate about his art. Devin Dawson, by the way, Yeah,
Speaker 1: his records coming out this week. So I mean, he
Speaker 1: is just he's an amazing songwriter. We met first, we
Speaker 1: were just we were writing songs together, and um, I
Speaker 1: was just like, this guy's prolific, Like his words are insane.
Speaker 1: His voice, his voice to me when I first heard him,
Speaker 1: I he was playing at the basement, not the basement East,
Speaker 1: but the regular the small basement, you know, like you
Speaker 1: the basement in your house, Yeah, basement. I don't even
Speaker 1: have a basement, but uh, he was playing at the
Speaker 1: basement and we had written that day. And I told
Speaker 1: my wife Abbey. I was like, Yo, she's a huge
Speaker 1: music fan too. She's like R A and R. You know,
Speaker 1: she knows all the good artists before I do and
Speaker 1: picks our singles and the whole deal. But I was like,
Speaker 1: you gotta go see this guy wrote with today, Like
Speaker 1: he's insane. We saw him at the basement. I was like,
Speaker 1: this guy's a star. Incredible. I mean his voice has
Speaker 1: like a soulful I mean it's like a Gavin de
Speaker 1: Girl kind of sound in his voice. He's got like
Speaker 1: a raspy kind of thing. I don't know. I just
Speaker 1: think that guy and he's got his old branding and
Speaker 1: the monochromatic vibe. And we told he's spent on people. Mike. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when he was playing that you know, the punt he
Speaker 1: was in that scene, he was like, well, we just
Speaker 1: spit on people. Yeah. I loved Devin. He's he's absolutely incredible. Um,
Speaker 1: we share a love of tequila. He brings the nice
Speaker 1: tequila bottles over my house and we enjoy him. But
Speaker 1: Jillian is one of my oldest friends here in Nashville.
Speaker 1: We've been writing songs together since that she'd been in
Speaker 1: that bad house that I was living in, So yeah,
Speaker 1: ask her about that place. But yeah, she's awesome, man,
Speaker 1: and she's she's so cool. She's amazing. She's an amazing songwriter,
Speaker 1: amazing singer, she's beautiful, has a great attitude. She's been
Speaker 1: in this town. I'd like to find that happens. Like
Speaker 1: the people who have the most success have been here
Speaker 1: like cutting their teeth for a long time, like everybody thinks.
Speaker 1: People people think whenever you announced her into that class
Speaker 1: that she was like, oh, this girl just like got
Speaker 1: it made like Bobby's gonna blow her up. Whatever she'd
Speaker 1: been here for she'd been here longer than me. So
Speaker 1: she's been here for probably ten at least ten years,
Speaker 1: and she's a new artist at the same time, exactly right.
Speaker 1: I mean when everyone into a new artists that these
Speaker 1: award shows, I'm like, dude, I've been had this thing,
Speaker 1: but I'll take it. It takes forever to be an
Speaker 1: overnight success. It does. So okay, So you're Dan plus
Speaker 1: sche and that had to be a thing at first
Speaker 1: because I bet everyone's calling you Dan plushe. Oh my
Speaker 1: stay still do this is Dan Plushe with their first
Speaker 1: single nineteen you plus me. It's like, but you know what,
Speaker 1: to be fair, yeah, it is a plus sign. It
Speaker 1: is it is. And we had this like I always
Speaker 1: am like thinking too many steps in advance. I probably
Speaker 1: should enjoy the moment a little more. But Pat and
Speaker 1: I pe Tracy has like been referring to him like
Speaker 1: we had this whole vision for the brand, and you know,
Speaker 1: we could see like Taylor Swift does the heart things
Speaker 1: at our shows with their hands. I was like, I
Speaker 1: want to make our fans, you know if we ever
Speaker 1: have We didn't have any fans at this point. It's like,
Speaker 1: what if they like put their hands up and made
Speaker 1: It's gonna be hard for them to make an ampersand
Speaker 1: with their hands, so like, let's use so they go
Speaker 1: plus signs of their fingers. They yeah, yeah, we don't
Speaker 1: really do it as much anymore our shows like so
Speaker 1: full throttle And you know, did you used to do
Speaker 1: that at the plus signs every show? If you dig
Speaker 1: back on our Instagram, I should probably bring that back.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a cool thing, like yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: i'd take a picture of the crowd, which I stole
Speaker 1: that from Edge here, and he would take pictures of
Speaker 1: the crowd every single night, you know, like even from
Speaker 1: when he was playing clubs and it's cool to watch
Speaker 1: his progress now he's doing five nights at Wembley Stadium.
Speaker 1: But he would always take a picture of the crowd.
Speaker 1: So we would do that and then we would try
Speaker 1: to do the plus sign thing and we'd be like,
Speaker 1: put your hands up and you'd have to explain it.
Speaker 1: At first, kids are like, why am I doing? Okay,
Speaker 1: I see it now, but we'd make them put the
Speaker 1: plus sign up with their fingers and it's a cool thing.
Speaker 1: And nobody does that that that exact thing. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: haven't seen anyone do the plus sign thing, so I
Speaker 1: haven't seen anybody. You should bring it back. I might
Speaker 1: bring it back. It's hard. It's hard to have a
Speaker 1: thing nowadays because everybody's got a thing totally. So it's
Speaker 1: hard to have a thing when everybody's got a thing. Yep,
Speaker 1: that's the thing if you don't have somebody to do it.
Speaker 1: It did like at first, it confused a lot of
Speaker 1: people and aren't Like some folks at our record label
Speaker 1: were like, we should just change it to the end
Speaker 1: like this. I'm like, people will eventually get it. And
Speaker 1: if they're talking about us and they're playing our song,
Speaker 1: so what, it's fine. It's fine. You know, it's just
Speaker 1: one more thing to talk about. So yeah, we had
Speaker 1: to grind away for a few years with the plus
Speaker 1: sign thing, but there are still a few people Dan blush,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, all right, we're done here. You
Speaker 1: bring up Abby your wife, so let's tell me about
Speaker 1: my story's wrong again. You can just always say, hey,
Speaker 1: stop talking. So she was working at your label, she was,
Speaker 1: and you were dating, So she stopped working at the
Speaker 1: label because she couldn't date you while working at the label.
Speaker 1: Is that true? Kind of Yeah, she was. She was
Speaker 1: working at the label. She was a regional, a promo
Speaker 1: rep of ours, which is like the toughest job in
Speaker 1: the entire world. I mean, I did High World, but
Speaker 1: it's a tough job. Yeah it is. I'm a dramatic guy,
Speaker 1: go ahead. But in the music industry, I think that
Speaker 1: is the most difficult job. They as much as we tour,
Speaker 1: they're working five or six artists simultaneously, and they're out
Speaker 1: knocking on radio stations doors. It's six am, saying hey,
Speaker 1: our Dan and Shay record is looking a little weak,
Speaker 1: you know right now, like we need to get some spins.
Speaker 1: And it's just it's like a sales job. It's so tough.
Speaker 1: And then when a new artist like us comes out,
Speaker 1: they go on a radio tour and that's like so grueling.
Speaker 1: We'd be doing four stations a day, and then you're
Speaker 1: going out to dinner and you're hanging with program directors
Speaker 1: and it all pays off in the end. It's great.
Speaker 1: You need to make those relationships. And country radio is
Speaker 1: very you know, close knit, and it's a flashiship for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've had great luck. You know, people have been so
Speaker 1: kind to us. But it's wee guys are nice though,
Speaker 1: because there's nothing super pretentious about you two. When you
Speaker 1: show up in a room and you have Shay, who's
Speaker 1: just like no, no, no, no, no, no, you know, totally.
Speaker 1: He's a good one to Shay. Is my Amy, Yep,
Speaker 1: because I am when I'm not working, I got nothing
Speaker 1: to say the same. I'm quiet. I prefer to be
Speaker 1: creative in my own head, right on a computer or
Speaker 1: right here, and I'm just not that outward. But I
Speaker 1: can take Amy and people will like me. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: Amy's awesome and she's so good garious in the room.
Speaker 1: So but you guys are nice to be around. Thank
Speaker 1: you for saying that. Mike Wise, I never disliked you.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys ever got mad at
Speaker 1: me when I was calling you the Savage Garden of
Speaker 1: country radio. I'll take that man again. People, somebody's talking
Speaker 1: about us. You got a big audience, and people we're
Speaker 1: talking and you guys came in and saying Savage Garden
Speaker 1: and crushed it, and I thought that's when I was like, Oh,
Speaker 1: these guys are better than other people, because to be
Speaker 1: on a certain level, I mean, do you have a
Speaker 1: deal you have to be so good for really, because
Speaker 1: it's a talent of elite talent and the elite of
Speaker 1: the elite. It's a record deal. And then luck involved too,
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of talented people in this town.
Speaker 1: They don't have record deals. Yeah, but I think you
Speaker 1: can make decisions to change your luck. I'm not a
Speaker 1: big luck guy. Generally, I'm just not a big luck guy.
Speaker 1: But that being said, I knew you guys would have
Speaker 1: to be good to have a deal. But when you
Speaker 1: came in after, I would say, all these guys don't
Speaker 1: like the Savage Garden of of country radio, and you
Speaker 1: guys sang. I just remember going, Oh, they're different, they're
Speaker 1: better than everybody. They're woking. Man. You guys weren't around
Speaker 1: a lot because you're touring all the time too. But
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, all, they're better than everybody. They're way
Speaker 1: better than people, and they're not asking for credit, but
Speaker 1: they're way better than people. Give them credit for you
Speaker 1: guys did Boys the Men, which is how Scooter and
Speaker 1: I got to know each other. Do you know the story.
Speaker 1: I don't know the story. Okay, yes, so you guys
Speaker 1: came in and you know, I mean, I love all
Speaker 1: formats and music. I think formats are garbage about. We
Speaker 1: all do, honestly. And the people who say they don't,
Speaker 1: All the people out there who say I only listen
Speaker 1: to a certain thing, they're in their truck or their
Speaker 1: car bumping every kind of music that anything that makes
Speaker 1: them feel something. They're listening to it. Even the most
Speaker 1: we won't I will not mention the name, but even
Speaker 1: the most country of artists that I know, YE loves
Speaker 1: all kinds of it. The part is people yell about
Speaker 1: like that's real country, that's that person is probably listening
Speaker 1: to twenty one Savage right now, like I hate to
Speaker 1: brush bubble, but they got yeah yeah. And if you
Speaker 1: restrict yourself to a certain thing because of its genre
Speaker 1: lines and say I can only listen, or you deny
Speaker 1: yourself from liking a certain thing that you actually like,
Speaker 1: you're just cheating yourself. I was doing a YouTube and
Speaker 1: I'm doing a lot of projects with Scooter now on
Speaker 1: the television side, so um working on multiple ones. But
Speaker 1: the reason is because of you guys. Well what happened was,
Speaker 1: so he's he manages you guys, him and Jason Owen
Speaker 1: at Sandboxingtown. He you guys came in and we were
Speaker 1: going back and forth and you guys were playing all
Speaker 1: these songs out of format and I'm like, oh, due
Speaker 1: this one, and I was singing along doing this and
Speaker 1: he was like, wait, you're not the normal country guy,
Speaker 1: he said, So I started going down the rabbit hole
Speaker 1: of YouTube videos and saw that you do all kinds
Speaker 1: of music and you have a different look about you.
Speaker 1: And he was like, So I thought, I'm gonna keep
Speaker 1: that guy's name and when something comes up and then
Speaker 1: he calls and that's awesome. Then that's how we started
Speaker 1: their business. It was I forgot about this. It was
Speaker 1: you freaking guys. He saw a YouTube video of us
Speaker 1: singing it together. Yeah, we were good at that. So
Speaker 1: let's fast forward, because I don't know how I've been talking.
Speaker 1: I could do five of these. How long we wait? Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go to right now. You and Shay, you plus
Speaker 1: each other, you met, had a baby. I don't know
Speaker 1: what happened. Yeah, we we got all the comments dans
Speaker 1: that equal. I want to tell you about what's happening
Speaker 1: right now and again people will hear this, who knows when,
Speaker 1: but they just put out DANAE put out Tequila and
Speaker 1: what's playing over here? Mike hold on, I turned it off.
Speaker 1: I got it, I got it. So you put out
Speaker 1: the song Tequila. It's doing. It has cut through more
Speaker 1: than any other song I feel you guys have put
Speaker 1: out Initially, you guys have had some monster hits that
Speaker 1: have had slow grinds. Yeah that it's taken people while
Speaker 1: to get to either radio people or the fans. Yep,
Speaker 1: this has been the biggest song for you guys from
Speaker 1: the initial pop. It's been incredible. I've yeah, I've not
Speaker 1: been shy about sharing the numbers or whatever on the internet,
Speaker 1: but it is incredible. We work so hard on these
Speaker 1: songs and making the tracks, and people, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of times don't appreciate what goes into a song.
Speaker 1: You know, even if somebody's out there criticizing a song
Speaker 1: and doing whatever that song had to like, start with
Speaker 1: somebody writing it right, maybe on an acousi guitar, piano,
Speaker 1: and then be demoed and somebody at a label how
Speaker 1: to be like, yeah, I like that, we should go
Speaker 1: in the studio and pay for that to be recorded.
Speaker 1: We should cut that. Then it gets mixed and mastered,
Speaker 1: and then there's a lot of steps that a song
Speaker 1: goes through from when it's written to when somebody hears it.
Speaker 1: And to see this song doing so well, I start
Speaker 1: tracing those steps back and it's like I spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time working on that track, you know, producing
Speaker 1: the you know, the drum loops or whatever, and editing vocals.
Speaker 1: We do it all at my house, so it's like
Speaker 1: a lot of time went into that, And I was
Speaker 1: so nervous before we put it out because it starts
Speaker 1: with the piano and a vocal, which you know, for
Speaker 1: the people out there who don't know, is like a
Speaker 1: little bit risky at country radio or radio in general,
Speaker 1: because it's like ballads are tougher to fit into a
Speaker 1: playlist because it's slowed down the base of your radio station.
Speaker 1: But we're just are in this place now where you know,
Speaker 1: luckily ballots have worked for Dan and Jay, we've had
Speaker 1: success on from the ground up. Was our biggest song previously,
Speaker 1: and that's out, and this one had probably the second
Speaker 1: biggest from the From the beginning, we felt it. This
Speaker 1: was a big one. It was big for us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we've been It's it's funny because that this song
Speaker 1: is our biggest hit, changed our lives, changed our career.
Speaker 1: We've been on a whole other level since this song
Speaker 1: came out, but since Tequila came out. That's the stat comparison.
Speaker 1: So all get emails from s BO or you know
Speaker 1: whoever from the label and it says Tequila has sold
Speaker 1: in the first four days it was out, thirty two
Speaker 1: thousand downloads on iTunes versus fifteen thousand of from the
Speaker 1: ground up, so almost double. An additional stat is that
Speaker 1: the market in general on track sales is down fifty percent,
Speaker 1: Like you're going up, all the markets going down, so
Speaker 1: you can hypothetically say it's almost double what it is.
Speaker 1: So it's if you do that in your head, it's like,
Speaker 1: this is so impactful and just to see how that's
Speaker 1: how far that song went for us is insane, and
Speaker 1: this one is, I mean, it's been number one on
Speaker 1: the country chart, which is incredible. But then there's some
Speaker 1: heavy hitters in the all genres chart there's Bruno, Mars
Speaker 1: has Filthy out Right Now are just timber Lake, and
Speaker 1: Bruno has Finesse imagine Dragons Thunder. All these songs are
Speaker 1: in the top ten on the radio pop, which is
Speaker 1: an insanely big audience. And Tequila for some reason is
Speaker 1: like the little engine that could, and it's just camped
Speaker 1: out in the top five or top ten, you know,
Speaker 1: the last couple weeks and is I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: it's surreal to me to see that happen because it's
Speaker 1: still so early in the radio, you know, country radio climb.
Speaker 1: It's it's a long time for a new artist, but
Speaker 1: it is. And this song could cross over a bit.
Speaker 1: I don't know. You probably have thought about that, never
Speaker 1: said it out loud, but this song could cross over
Speaker 1: a bit. Yeah, I think on this round we you know,
Speaker 1: we did face a lot of the haters. I think
Speaker 1: that was kind of our evolution. When we first put
Speaker 1: out our you know, the Where It All Began album,
Speaker 1: we didn't know what we're doing on that album. That
Speaker 1: was just demos that we were doing in my living
Speaker 1: room or whatever on Logic and we were just kind
Speaker 1: of like two guys figuring it out in the second record.
Speaker 1: We kind of were reacted a little bit of those
Speaker 1: people on Twitter or at festivals saying like, you guys
Speaker 1: are ruining country music with that Myrtle Beach song, the
Speaker 1: nineteen Ue and Me song. You know that you guys are,
Speaker 1: So we were like, we should do a little bit
Speaker 1: more of a country thing, and yeah, this was the
Speaker 1: one that ruined country music, I guess, but oh yeah,
Speaker 1: totally ruin them. Everybody's saying it every time it came
Speaker 1: on the right You know this now and this is
Speaker 1: like down the middle of country, but at the time
Speaker 1: it was very left the center. But all the artists
Speaker 1: that break through. Sam Hunt whenever his stuff came out,
Speaker 1: was like so pushing boundaries, or even Kelsey or anybody
Speaker 1: who's doing their thing. But now you listen back to
Speaker 1: that and you like, that sounds like a normal country song,
Speaker 1: more traditional than some stuff on the radio. And what
Speaker 1: you just talked about has been done a thousand times.
Speaker 1: But just my conversation with Garth about this specifically, and
Speaker 1: I talked Garth is the pioneer of that. He said
Speaker 1: they want to run him out of town because what
Speaker 1: he was doing was so different than everybody else that
Speaker 1: he was ruining country music. And not to compare Kelsey
Speaker 1: or you or Sam to Garth because everybody's in their
Speaker 1: own space. But it's just the same story, even from
Speaker 1: the biggest people. Yeah, where you think, oh, that's what
Speaker 1: country is like he always was. No. I sat with
Speaker 1: Garth and he said, they told me that this is
Speaker 1: not country music. Yeah, I should stop making it for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean on this record, we were just we were
Speaker 1: just like, you know what, we love, what we love.
Speaker 1: We take all our influences. Obviously, we moved here because
Speaker 1: we want to write country songs. We love country music.
Speaker 1: But we were just like, we should just record what
Speaker 1: we know how to record and record great songs, no
Speaker 1: matter who writes them. Figured that on our last record.
Speaker 1: We you know, we came here as songwriters, but to
Speaker 1: have a successful artist career, you need to always record
Speaker 1: the best song, whether you write it or you don't.
Speaker 1: Adam Hambrick wrote how not too We heard that demo
Speaker 1: come in. That's a funny story too. But that song
Speaker 1: came in and we didn't write it, and we were like,
Speaker 1: you know what this is that? No, this doesn't even
Speaker 1: heard he rerecorded it. I think this sounds amazing. Here's
Speaker 1: the demo, you got it, here's the work tape. I
Speaker 1: never heard this, you know. So if we took out
Speaker 1: him out with us and he played with the Raging
Speaker 1: Idiots for four months, so he would play the song
Speaker 1: and every every I played out a little bit of
Speaker 1: you guys in my heart. I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, you talk about artists writing for you,
Speaker 1: you also write for other artists. Yeah, we've had a
Speaker 1: little bit of luck with that. We're still always it's
Speaker 1: a little bit difficult now that we're doing our own
Speaker 1: projects because you write, you know, I think I wrote
Speaker 1: like ninety four songs last year or something insane. But
Speaker 1: you always want to keep the best songs for yourself,
Speaker 1: you know. Our artist career is obviously the most important thing.
Speaker 1: And then when somebody hears something like that tequila song.
Speaker 1: I wrote it with Nicole Galleon, who I think you've
Speaker 1: talked to her. Yeah, we talked to days a matter
Speaker 1: of fact. Yeah, she's brilliant. She's like one step ahead
Speaker 1: of everybody else. She wrote right now, She's got female
Speaker 1: from Keith Urban out there. She's boy for Lee Bryce, which,
Speaker 1: like some of the best most well written songs on
Speaker 1: country radio and my friend Jordan Reynolds, and uh, what
Speaker 1: was I talking about writing that song? Oh? Yeah, we
Speaker 1: wrote that song and it was one of the ones
Speaker 1: from the ground. It was the same thing where we
Speaker 1: sat on the demo for a little while, sat on
Speaker 1: it for like a year before we recorded it, and
Speaker 1: it had circulated to other artists, you know, publishers and
Speaker 1: even tequila circula tequila. Yeah, and it's circulated. I would
Speaker 1: get texts from artists and be like, dude, if you
Speaker 1: guys aren't cutting that song, I'm cutting that like I'm
Speaker 1: gonna put it on my record. And then you're like,
Speaker 1: should I get that song away? Because you never know
Speaker 1: what's gonna end up making. That song may never have
Speaker 1: made our record, you know, we may have beat it
Speaker 1: or written something else, Like I should have gave that away.
Speaker 1: But you know, it always finds the write home somehow,
Speaker 1: I don't know, or the home that it has is
Speaker 1: just what you know. It's true because there could have
Speaker 1: been songs. Listen. I'm just not I'm just not a
Speaker 1: destiny guy. Yeah, I'm but you make your own. I
Speaker 1: do enjoy tequila the song. I've never actually tasted tequila
Speaker 1: to drink. But I do enjoy to thank you of
Speaker 1: the vocals on Man that I saw you post that
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Yeah, like the first time ever.
Speaker 1: On the track, we just do all yeah right there,
Speaker 1: that little Justin Bieber thing in the back, I should
Speaker 1: have put up my I saw Zach Krow was on here,
Speaker 1: like soloing out tracks. We'll do that next time. It's tequida.
Speaker 1: So I just took the tequila thing and it shifted
Speaker 1: it up towel sense and it's made that little crazy
Speaker 1: tequila sound. And the thing is, you're such a pretty
Speaker 1: like this is you doing this stuff? People don't know
Speaker 1: that you're that. Shay is excellent. It's it's such a
Speaker 1: great team. Yeah, because for the most part, you're the
Speaker 1: brains that's putting these sounds together in its in a
Speaker 1: lab and singing his freaking brains out on stage. But
Speaker 1: you're both are doing the other things too. For sure.
Speaker 1: It's literally the best singer I've ever heard. It's like insane.
Speaker 1: It's amazing to watch somebody who's like never heard him
Speaker 1: singing person watch their reaction. Oh that's what happened to me.
Speaker 1: When you guys came in the front. I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're the best. Yeah, the game over. Yep, it's insane.
Speaker 1: I still get blown away by it. I'm like when
Speaker 1: when he's in the studio, especially live, is there's a
Speaker 1: lot of great live singers, but in the studio is
Speaker 1: like very vulnerable place, and I mean just the timing
Speaker 1: and the tone and like I look at you know,
Speaker 1: I'll pull up you know, a pitch thing and look
Speaker 1: at where he is. I mean, he's like spot on.
Speaker 1: It's it's a gift, it really is. I mean it's
Speaker 1: and he can wake up in the morning and sing too.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, come in on the radio show
Speaker 1: and sing Boys to Men, which is like that's a
Speaker 1: hard song to sing. Yeah, I didn't ask you guys
Speaker 1: to sing the last time because I was like you
Speaker 1: whim saying. I was like, no, I think they need
Speaker 1: they let's let's have a little time there in the middle.
Speaker 1: You guys have just crushed it so many times. So man,
Speaker 1: I'm happy for you guys. Thank you. Man. You've been
Speaker 1: there since the beginning, so it's been a kind of
Speaker 1: not really but kind of like, I mean, you've been there.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what I was doing when you started
Speaker 1: I wish I could have been the guy that was
Speaker 1: like dannit say the best ever. You should trust me.
Speaker 1: I don't even know I was talking about, you know
Speaker 1: what I think Now we've settled into our places after
Speaker 1: we were like kind of on the same timeline, and
Speaker 1: we've settled in and we just do us, you know,
Speaker 1: like you're doing your thing. If there's a few haters
Speaker 1: out there, so what they don't have to listen. You
Speaker 1: do your thing, and we're making the music we want
Speaker 1: to make. And that's what we did on Tequilo. Like
Speaker 1: we could have went more country, could have went more pop,
Speaker 1: but we just did what we knew how to do.
Speaker 1: And we're like, you know what country music is just
Speaker 1: about great songs and great stories, and that's what we did.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's maybe about it, maybe slower than some
Speaker 1: of the other stuff we've recorded. Explained yourself, everybody, And
Speaker 1: I feel like you've been built defensive because people have
Speaker 1: been saying, oh, yeah, I'm just being honest. Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: screw it, don't be defended. We just didn't. Don't explain it.
Speaker 1: That's right, and it's awesome, thank you, thank you. That's it. Likewise,
Speaker 1: no no do about me. I did. It's true though,
Speaker 1: you're doing your thing Bellerini's album title. Yes, but it's true.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're doing your thing and you have a
Speaker 1: huge following and it's massively successful because you're doing your
Speaker 1: I want to talk about me. You gotta shake that explanation.
Speaker 1: I have to explain. Cool, how many number ones you
Speaker 1: have right as an artist? Three? Okay? And how many
Speaker 1: of you written on two? So it's funny though nineteen
Speaker 1: You and Me was one of our biggest songs, went
Speaker 1: to number eleven on the chart. That's all that song
Speaker 1: went to eleven? You know me? I went to h
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. I was hanging with Keith. I started
Speaker 1: named Drapa too much. Even I know myself, so I start,
Speaker 1: I'm hanging with Keith every one. We're talking about songs
Speaker 1: and he's like, man, he's like, I don't if it
Speaker 1: was Stupid Boy or whatever. It was like, it wasn't
Speaker 1: the number one song, and it's what, I don't remember
Speaker 1: which one it was specifically, like our favorite song, you know, yes,
Speaker 1: And he was like, it wasn't the number one song,
Speaker 1: but it's the one that people just want me to
Speaker 1: play the most. The fans don't know. They don't care.
Speaker 1: If they love a song and it hits them like
Speaker 1: it makes them feel something, they don't care where it
Speaker 1: ends up. We in this town, we care, and I
Speaker 1: everybody out there I care. I want our songs to
Speaker 1: go to number one, obviously because you want to eat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you have it is rewarding. I mean, it doesn't
Speaker 1: get any higher than going number one. So that's that's
Speaker 1: a great place except number one for two weeks. Listen,
Speaker 1: there's only a place I'm gonna spiral of. That's why
Speaker 1: I go to therapy. But the fans, if it connects,
Speaker 1: like we've had stuff die had thirty five on the
Speaker 1: chart that pop off at our shows. I talked to
Speaker 1: Thomas read about this here I go name drop vacation,
Speaker 1: vacation that to him get crushed him to the song
Speaker 1: didn't do that well at all. Yeah, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I play it live and people freak out. Well, we
Speaker 1: were in the back of the bus and he was
Speaker 1: about to go to radio with that song and he
Speaker 1: said there was like eleven guys that had hit him
Speaker 1: up and said I will never play this song. And
Speaker 1: he was like, you know what, it's so good at
Speaker 1: my show. If we can get any visibility on this song,
Speaker 1: it's going to be even better in the show. So
Speaker 1: screw it. And that was awesome. That was a risky
Speaker 1: that was a bold move of him, and it's I mean,
Speaker 1: we toured with him. It goes off at his show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he even played it in New Year's Eve and I
Speaker 1: texted him afterward. I was like, dude, it was great.
Speaker 1: I don't care. Yeah, stupid radio says yeah. And I
Speaker 1: love radio and I hate radio, and I can be both. Now.
Speaker 1: Radio is in country music is the driving force behind
Speaker 1: what we do. It's like, you want to have hits,
Speaker 1: but I mean, it would be a lot tougher for
Speaker 1: Thomas start to put out vacation had he not at
Speaker 1: Die Happy Man. You know. So you know, and we'll
Speaker 1: end on this. What's frustrating for me is I wish
Speaker 1: there were a way because people aren't buying music as much,
Speaker 1: they're streaming it more. Not totally, but a large market
Speaker 1: share is streaming music. I wish there was a legitimate
Speaker 1: way to see how many people are playing the song
Speaker 1: because we're not knowing people's algorithms. Sure, I've said this before.
Speaker 1: A Spotify, for example, I have friends that have thirteen
Speaker 1: million plays on a song and they can't sell fifty
Speaker 1: people at a bar. It's true. And then I have
Speaker 1: some friends that have three hundred thousand and they can
Speaker 1: sell hard tickets. It's interesting. It's so weird. What's the metric?
Speaker 1: You know? How do you? They don't tell us? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they also Apple also doesn't reveal theirs. No one reveals theirs.
Speaker 1: But I wish there was some kind of real like
Speaker 1: this is how I would do it in a perfect world.
Speaker 1: First of all, there would be legislation, but there should
Speaker 1: be any way for songwriters. Sure, but in order to
Speaker 1: say a song played this much because it's used for data,
Speaker 1: it has to actually be played singularly for a certain
Speaker 1: amount of time. Sure, we don't know if a song
Speaker 1: is just on a playlist. If one song gets played
Speaker 1: on the place, everybody gets an account of a spin, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Nobody knows, and it probably doesn't. But
Speaker 1: we don't know. And I wish there was a way
Speaker 1: to quantify that. But since it's all private, they don't
Speaker 1: have to. I just wish there were away because it
Speaker 1: would make my life easier to go, oh, that's what
Speaker 1: people are really listening to sure, because music with Spotify
Speaker 1: with title that you can't look at those numbers because
Speaker 1: again they're artists. I've never even heard of that. And
Speaker 1: I have no problem with people gaming the system, buying
Speaker 1: YouTube views, buying that's just part of the game. I'm
Speaker 1: always going to happen else and I've been guilty of
Speaker 1: it too. Yeah, you can't fake Heaven tickets and Absolute Metric.
Speaker 1: What I've ever used it for when I gamed the
Speaker 1: system is too like to get guests. When I was
Speaker 1: starting off in Austin, right right, I would do all
Speaker 1: this stuff and make the show look bigger because people
Speaker 1: didn't know the show would see the number, go oh,
Speaker 1: they must be bigger. Let them book. It was always
Speaker 1: for a letter pressed too. We'll get a hit up
Speaker 1: for an interview. It's like this blog gets this many
Speaker 1: million views or whatever, and we're like, it seems like
Speaker 1: a great opportunity, let's do it. And it's like, is
Speaker 1: that real? I don't know, nothing is real. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: as long as you know nothing is real right now,
Speaker 1: we might have goggles on. So my point is I
Speaker 1: wish there was some sort of thing to look at
Speaker 1: where they used to actually beat record sales but even
Speaker 1: then people would buy it bulk records themselves. It was
Speaker 1: maybe even easier than for just the common common artists
Speaker 1: to do it. Nothing is real. The only thing it's
Speaker 1: real are people's faces that come to shows and buy tickets.
Speaker 1: That's the only real thing. Now is a great time
Speaker 1: to be a new artist, though, because there's so many
Speaker 1: platforms to get your music out there. You and you
Speaker 1: can make music in your bedroom. You could blow up
Speaker 1: a laptop. We made our first record on my laptop.
Speaker 1: You know you can with technology. I agree. Here's where
Speaker 1: I disagree. Counterpoint, there's so many new artists because that
Speaker 1: makes your job harder. It makes radio, it makes even
Speaker 1: the artist job harder. But it makes the quality better
Speaker 1: because that many more people are competing. So as the consumer,
Speaker 1: it makes it better for us exactly because what we're
Speaker 1: getting into is the best of the best of the best.
Speaker 1: It's real good. Yeah. I mean, there's some really good
Speaker 1: songs on country radio and they're all fighting for that
Speaker 1: same spot. It is hard to get a song up
Speaker 1: the chart, and the charges stupid don't even start about
Speaker 1: the charts either. And there's so many songs and they're
Speaker 1: all great because they're not all great. There's a big
Speaker 1: turns or if you look on YouTube, you look up
Speaker 1: so and so's cover of certain songs, Like so many
Speaker 1: of these kids should all have record deals. They're all
Speaker 1: great because are you know most of them are great
Speaker 1: because I don't know, there's other people that are doing it.
Speaker 1: There's just like a lot I don't know. The access is,
Speaker 1: there's so much access, and yeah, it's a little oversaturated
Speaker 1: when you're an artist and you'd like, crap, he's really
Speaker 1: good too. But for the consumer, you're right, there is
Speaker 1: so much good stuff and it's it's the access for it.
Speaker 1: You can listen anywhere Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, I mean
Speaker 1: I didn't even mention Amazon, like that's a huge infrastructure.
Speaker 1: There's a lot. Well, uh, tequila is out. While we're
Speaker 1: looking at time frame for a full record, I'm working
Speaker 1: on it tonight. I was working on them today. So
Speaker 1: we're we're in the process right now. We've recorded maybe
Speaker 1: like ten second quarter year sometime this year. Yeah, middle
Speaker 1: of the area. Yeah, we'll probably sprinkle out a few
Speaker 1: songs and in the meantime, but um pumps when we
Speaker 1: when we hang up here, I'll play you a few things.
Speaker 1: Are we on the phone right now we are. I
Speaker 1: don't listen. I don't listen to songs. You just don't
Speaker 1: like songs. No, no, no, I don't listen to songs. Early.
Speaker 1: I've come from my friends. Yeah, the only people I'll
Speaker 1: listen to you. When Keith Urban sent you a song once, yeah,
Speaker 1: he brought you how to listen to I Just when
Speaker 1: Keith sends you this song come on, you were literally
Speaker 1: blew up and it said Keith on it and I
Speaker 1: was like Keith who, And You're like you try to
Speaker 1: play it off? And it was Keith Urban sent a
Speaker 1: new song or a demo. For some reason, he does
Speaker 1: send me new every time he sends me new songs,
Speaker 1: like two or three weeks. He's in the league of
Speaker 1: his own. He's the coolest guy. Yeah, he is. When
Speaker 1: he was on your show and he was playing the
Speaker 1: mashup of all his hits, I was like, yeah, he
Speaker 1: just wins. He he is. I don't want to gush
Speaker 1: about him too much, but he is. He's awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and as a person even better as an artist, insane,
Speaker 1: just like elevates the game every single time, and anybody
Speaker 1: that works with goes oh oh yeah. I used to
Speaker 1: think somebody was good and took Keith got in. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like humiliating sometimes, you know. So I don't
Speaker 1: listen to music because here's why I hate having to
Speaker 1: do the oh yeah, oh yeah. And if I do
Speaker 1: listen to music, I do it and it's so rare.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even listen to the Stapleton's record. He sent
Speaker 1: it to me early, say Chris, I'm not gonna listen
Speaker 1: to it because I want to experience it with my people.
Speaker 1: That's cool. I like that. So yeah, I probably listen
Speaker 1: to the kids if it was a single over a text.
Speaker 1: But you and I, as I'm thinking about listening to music.
Speaker 1: We had an early bond over Walker Hayes too, Yes,
Speaker 1: because when I first heard I was like oh and
Speaker 1: you were like oh you text me like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's off the wall. Listen to Halloween. Yeah. We took
Speaker 1: him on tour and so did you. Yeah. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: prolific too. Have your words smith Man, You've written a
Speaker 1: song with the movie. Yes, we wrote Nama stay Together,
Speaker 1: oh sick. Yeah, he's brilliant. He's another guy who's like
Speaker 1: one step ahead of everybody in the room. You just
Speaker 1: can't catch up. So you just go along for the ride.
Speaker 1: When he starts using words, he's a it's insane and
Speaker 1: his flow, his jawline go on and gone on, shoulders,
Speaker 1: shoulders of a pretty beef. He's insane and he's got
Speaker 1: He had all his kids. So we were to Amy's.
Speaker 1: Might be three more minutes and I'll be done. I'm
Speaker 1: here all night. We could literally do this three hours
Speaker 1: and just talk about music. But um we went over
Speaker 1: to uh when Amy's kids came in from haiti Ye.
Speaker 1: So some friends came over to Amy's and it was
Speaker 1: all just people in our circle, yeah, because it was
Speaker 1: a very personal thing for her and totally but in
Speaker 1: our circle there are some artists and it was Walker,
Speaker 1: it was Eric Passley, it was Steve Mockler. I grew
Speaker 1: up with Steve. Really my guy. Yeah, nicest guy, the best,
Speaker 1: I mean him, a great sound, nice, the nicest people.
Speaker 1: So another brilliant songwriter in word Smith walk ahead his
Speaker 1: kids and all uh six of them were there and
Speaker 1: it was the first time I'd ever seen them all
Speaker 1: together at one point and it was really this story.
Speaker 1: But they're all like and they're all so well behaved.
Speaker 1: He's so fertile, so fertile yas so buff and fertile
Speaker 1: man he was. We were out on tour Thomas Rhett
Speaker 1: and Walker was on the tour as well, and he
Speaker 1: brought him all out and they were like they would
Speaker 1: all sit down, they would It was like they were
Speaker 1: so well be well mannered. Yeah, he showed up and
Speaker 1: we um if we played a show where we didn't
Speaker 1: fly because he opened for me doing stand up, which
Speaker 1: he was the perfect opener because he had so much
Speaker 1: energy even by himself with the loop pedal. Yes, So
Speaker 1: he shows up and I said, oh, you got a
Speaker 1: new bus, like a small like sprinter van. Yeah, it's like,
Speaker 1: hey gotta He was, no, no, no, that's just our
Speaker 1: family car. He said, I just drove it. I mean
Speaker 1: when you have six kids, you have to have a
Speaker 1: big audio bill. Yep. They rented like a church fan
Speaker 1: or something when we were out and he had to
Speaker 1: drive the kids. Really his wife Land. He's awesome too.
Speaker 1: He's a guy that I really root for. Man. He
Speaker 1: obviously loved the music when I heard it online first,
Speaker 1: that's hit you about it, and we talked about Halloween,
Speaker 1: but getting no him out on the road, like hearing
Speaker 1: his story and when I heard that Craig's I honestly
Speaker 1: crowd when I didn't do so. I texted him immediately
Speaker 1: because I wouldn't listen to it earlier. We were crying
Speaker 1: thinking about it. Right now, we're working on my stuff
Speaker 1: and Walker was producing it because we wrote that song together.
Speaker 1: And then I said, Walk, are you produce? He's I
Speaker 1: never produced anything. I was like, it doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: you have that instinct. You have that instinct. So we
Speaker 1: go on. He's producing it, he's I want you to
Speaker 1: hear Craig. I said, we wrote it at the shack. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we produced at a different place, but we did write
Speaker 1: it in the shack. And so then I said, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna listen to any song with you. But then
Speaker 1: I had it. When it came out, I bought the
Speaker 1: record and I listened to Craig and I cried and
Speaker 1: I don't cry, and I text them, I said, ude,
Speaker 1: I just cried during the song. I was so in.
Speaker 1: We were in Europe and I was like on the
Speaker 1: treadmill and I literally heard him start and I had
Speaker 1: to get off the treadmill and like listen to the words,
Speaker 1: and I broke. It was insane. I played it on
Speaker 1: the show and I played it twice and I think
Speaker 1: I went to number seven. I wasn't even the top
Speaker 1: two hundred. But that's how. That's how not a mean thing.
Speaker 1: That's my listeners. Yeah, it cut through to them so hard,
Speaker 1: so quick. Yeah, you listen. They're smart and they they've
Speaker 1: picked songs like I mean, that's kind of what we're
Speaker 1: trying to do with this next record is pick songs
Speaker 1: that make people feel something, made people react. Don't just
Speaker 1: pick it because it's up tempo and sounds like you know,
Speaker 1: quote unquote what a hit would sound like if somebody
Speaker 1: if we had a song like Craig and played it
Speaker 1: for people and they reacted like that. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I hope a guy like Walker Hayes will take chances
Speaker 1: and put songs like that out of his singles because
Speaker 1: like he can change the game with that. Yeah he can. Well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna wrap. This has been one of the longer
Speaker 1: ones in the history because time had no measurement as
Speaker 1: we were talking. That's right. It was like one of
Speaker 1: those first dates we've known each other, wild one tho.
Speaker 1: First dates where time just goes by and you all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you look up at six am and
Speaker 1: the Sun's coming out. Still need to hear the Colby
Speaker 1: kel story. Yeah yeah, next time. Yep, we got it,
Speaker 1: next time, Okay, Dan smiles. From Dan and Shay, we
Speaker 1: learned which I wanted to know a lot of pre
Speaker 1: Dan and Shay. You can find all the Dana Shay
Speaker 1: stuff online just google it. Yep. I didn't know a lot.
Speaker 1: I didn't know you played running back in high school.
Speaker 1: I didn't know you played college football. I didn't a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff I didn't know. Yeah, I know you're
Speaker 1: stealing from the man. Apologize for that. Get them back
Speaker 1: all right, Thank you very much. What episodes US ninety
Speaker 1: eight with Dan Smyers. Thank you very much for listening
Speaker 1: to the podcast. And Danielle Bradbery should be in a
Speaker 1: couple of days, right, two days? Yeah, yeah, we had
Speaker 1: to postpone that one because of the ice, so that'd
Speaker 1: be the next one out. Thank you very much. We'll
Speaker 1: see you next time. Bye.