Speaker 1: Hey, it's Granger. This is my podcast, episode fourteen. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for listening today. Wherever you are. I
Speaker 1: am in Ohio and I want to tell you some stories.
Speaker 1: Here we go. I'm sitting in the back of my bus, Wildflower,
Speaker 1: and I'm overdue for a podcast. People come up to
Speaker 1: me meet and greets, and they say, I listen to
Speaker 1: your podcast, and it gives me a great insight to
Speaker 1: who you are as a person, not just an artist.
Speaker 1: And that's worth it to me. That's worth sitting here
Speaker 1: in the parking lot outside of a venue I'm about
Speaker 1: to play, turning on the microphone in my computer and
Speaker 1: telling some stories. I want to talk about some new
Speaker 1: things coming up here this fall. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about the continuation of a story that I've been telling
Speaker 1: throughout all of these podcasts one through thirteen, and that's
Speaker 1: how I got to be the artist that you found,
Speaker 1: whether it was YouTube or social media, or at a
Speaker 1: concert or on the radio. I left off my story
Speaker 1: about two thousand and nine ten. I had just met
Speaker 1: Amber in a music video, and I was working on
Speaker 1: a new album called Poets and Prisoners. Sitting here looking
Speaker 1: out the window in the parking lot and the opening
Speaker 1: band just pulled up, and they pulled up in a
Speaker 1: van just like the one that I drove for so
Speaker 1: many years, beating up that highway. And it's only appropriate
Speaker 1: that now I'm talking about those years. Those years made
Speaker 1: me who I am today. I hear people all the time.
Speaker 1: They'll say, maybe on a radio interview, they'll say, you've
Speaker 1: been doing this for a long time. You know, you've
Speaker 1: been doing this ten, fifteen, twenty years. You've been doing
Speaker 1: this a long time, and they almost say it in
Speaker 1: an negative way, and I always try to spin it
Speaker 1: back to them and say, those years made me who
Speaker 1: I am. I'm nothing without those years, without that van
Speaker 1: and those miles and all of those shows with no
Speaker 1: one coming, and my brother and I who's still my manager,
Speaker 1: forcing ourselves to be innovative and to be creative and
Speaker 1: to think out of the box. I'm nothing without those years.
Speaker 1: And just like I'm doing right now looking out this
Speaker 1: window at this opening band and their van, which I'm
Speaker 1: going to go down and meet these guys in a minute,
Speaker 1: but I'm constantly reminded of those years. Every day could
Speaker 1: be in me on it, son, boys, I got the
Speaker 1: first round could be the last second hell Mary game winning,
Speaker 1: touched them, could be hitting off the one that you're
Speaker 1: hitting No, turning the page new day, finally move in
Speaker 1: on whatever it is. Yeah, whatever it is. If you
Speaker 1: got a question for me that you want me to
Speaker 1: answer on one of these podcasts, and go to social
Speaker 1: media and hashtag Granger Smith podcast, ask your question, I'll
Speaker 1: search for it, just like I'm doing right now and
Speaker 1: searching Twitter here. I see a lot of questions about
Speaker 1: this because last podcast I talked about a throwback concert,
Speaker 1: a concert where I play essentially a request list from
Speaker 1: all my fans that want to hear some of my
Speaker 1: older music, from all the older albums. I think that
Speaker 1: would be awesome, and I really think that's gonna happen,
Speaker 1: And we have toy Burkincamp says, Hey, at Granger Smith,
Speaker 1: you better be serious about that throwback concert we have,
Speaker 1: Anne Marie. She says, retweet if you were to attend
Speaker 1: a Granger Smith throwback show. Trying to prove a point.
Speaker 1: Even Mitch Conall, my old keyboard player. He talks about
Speaker 1: let me know and I'll be there. So obviously this
Speaker 1: is something you guys are interested in me playing a
Speaker 1: throwback concert. And I've already been talking to a bunch
Speaker 1: of people about actually doing it, talking to venues, finding
Speaker 1: a city that you could have an easy airport access,
Speaker 1: so you could come in from wherever, submit your your
Speaker 1: set list, and we will play whatever you want, and
Speaker 1: then maybe we'll end the concert with some of our
Speaker 1: newer songs, some of our newer singles, and of course
Speaker 1: Earl Divils Junior. I think that would be so fun.
Speaker 1: A little tradition I started a few episodes ago in
Speaker 1: this podcast was playing you guys brand new music that
Speaker 1: no one has heard before. They're really just demos, they're
Speaker 1: not even recorded records, but I have so many of
Speaker 1: them that I think this podcast is kind of a
Speaker 1: cool place to debut them. And I know that in
Speaker 1: meet and greets. I've had a lot of you come
Speaker 1: up to me in a meet and greet and say, oh,
Speaker 1: I heard this so and so song in your podcast.
Speaker 1: And a couple of episodes ago, I talked about a
Speaker 1: song called I'm a Fan, and I got so many
Speaker 1: responses about that song I'm a Fan that I'm going
Speaker 1: to be releasing that very soon, and very soon i'll
Speaker 1: tell you how. But I'm also going to release a
Speaker 1: brand new one. I'm going to preview a brand new
Speaker 1: one for you on this one episode fourteen. I wrote
Speaker 1: this with some friends Corey Crowter and Stephen Lee Olsen
Speaker 1: on my bus. It's called I Want It. I want
Speaker 1: a Saturday. I want to read you, I want my
Speaker 1: bare feet bottom of a bass book. I want to
Speaker 1: take a trip, take out a stack of twenties. I
Speaker 1: want to rule the dish down in Atlantic City. But
Speaker 1: one thing I'd rather do that's everything. If it's mixed,
Speaker 1: do you. I don't need a reading lead in a
Speaker 1: kiss and second I leave you, O and miss they're
Speaker 1: in a new and you. It's whack. But I want you.
Speaker 1: A got a twin my to keep it ready. I
Speaker 1: dished my plans because I'm on the back. You don't
Speaker 1: ask you if I get you true why, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: stay right here and love you because I want. I
Speaker 1: wrote that song this past summer twenty eighteen with those guys,
Speaker 1: and we wrote another song that same day called why
Speaker 1: Wouldn't We? And I preview that a few podcasts ago.
Speaker 1: So I talked about having this throwback concert, but there's
Speaker 1: another kind of concert that I want to introduce. In
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen and that is ee Fest. This is a
Speaker 1: long time coming. This is something that's been a dream
Speaker 1: of my brothers and I for a while, to have
Speaker 1: our own festival and to have the whole environment be
Speaker 1: sculpted by us and what we want out of a concert.
Speaker 1: This is the first time I've ever talked about it.
Speaker 1: I've never had an interview about this. I've never spoken
Speaker 1: about this on the radio, but I want to bring
Speaker 1: it up in the podcast first because I want to
Speaker 1: hear from you guys. Is ee Fest a good idea?
Speaker 1: What other bands should we bring and maybe most importantly,
Speaker 1: what cities should ee Fest travel to if it's more
Speaker 1: than one city. I think this potentially could be a
Speaker 1: great idea and ultimately a place that ye nation could
Speaker 1: come together from all over with like interest and just
Speaker 1: have a huge party. Speaking of party, next year, we're
Speaker 1: going to be on the Cane Brown Tour. That's January,
Speaker 1: early January through the end of March. And we put
Speaker 1: these pre sale tickets up and you guys did amazing.
Speaker 1: You bought thousands and thousands of tickets using the EEE
Speaker 1: promo code. You did that before most of these shows
Speaker 1: sold out, And I just wanted to say thank you
Speaker 1: for that. I cannot wait to see you all in
Speaker 1: these cities. This podcast is brought to you by ee
Speaker 1: Energy that is a non official official sponsor of mine.
Speaker 1: Because it's my energy drink. I talk about it all
Speaker 1: the time on these podcasts, and I'm telling you the
Speaker 1: truth that this is my favorite drink. And I'm also
Speaker 1: very biased because yes, me and my brothers built this
Speaker 1: recipe from the ground up. The exciting thing to tell
Speaker 1: you about all this is that we are in the
Speaker 1: works right now with a sugar free version. We've had
Speaker 1: so many people talking about having a sugar free EEE
Speaker 1: Energy and so yeah, we're working on that. It just
Speaker 1: costs a lot of money and it's a lot of
Speaker 1: the logistics. As you could probably imagine. We don't really
Speaker 1: make a profit on this. It's just an extension of
Speaker 1: the brand and it's growing the brand and the awareness.
Speaker 1: Plus it's a really awesome energy drink that we have
Speaker 1: available on Amazon Prime or my website grangersmith dot com.
Speaker 1: Try some see what you think. All right, it's time
Speaker 1: to get to the story. This is the story that
Speaker 1: I've been telling since episode one and it's taken me
Speaker 1: fourteen episodes so far. And I'm still even close to
Speaker 1: the present day. But I'm trying to tell everyone the
Speaker 1: story of where I came from musically in my career,
Speaker 1: how I started, and how I got to where I
Speaker 1: am now. And maybe I didn't even realize how long
Speaker 1: this story was, that it was going to take me
Speaker 1: fourteen episodes of a podcast. Now. I know that I
Speaker 1: talk about other things in this podcast too, but right
Speaker 1: now I am sitting on the back of my bus Wildflower,
Speaker 1: and we are in Florida. We're in Pensacola, Florida, and well,
Speaker 1: we've come a long way since I started this podcast
Speaker 1: episode in Ohio. I can't even remember the cities that
Speaker 1: we've been to since then. But I get distracted. I
Speaker 1: have to go to work, I have to go to
Speaker 1: meet and greets, I have to sing demos, write songs,
Speaker 1: and I kind of start neglecting these podcasts. Me and
Speaker 1: Paul are always making videos. I'm sorry. I wish I
Speaker 1: could do these podcasts every day. I wish I could
Speaker 1: continue to just put them out in every city I'm in,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately I have to find kind of find these
Speaker 1: little time pockets, and I have it right now. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what we did this morning. And this is
Speaker 1: something that I've been doing for gosh, probably fifteen years now.
Speaker 1: I figured out a long time ago that I have
Speaker 1: to take care of my mental health as a musician,
Speaker 1: whether it's the highs of being a musician or the
Speaker 1: lows of being a musician. I have to work to
Speaker 1: stay grounded because this business is very different than a
Speaker 1: normal job, and it can affect you. And I have
Speaker 1: seen it affect many people around me over the years
Speaker 1: in a negative way. And you know, you always hear
Speaker 1: people say, oh, fame changed him, And it's not just fame.
Speaker 1: It happens at the small level of music too. It
Speaker 1: happens with the guys that are struggling, the musicians that
Speaker 1: are struggling, because there's this feeling of trying to bring
Speaker 1: your art to the world, and if the world accepts
Speaker 1: it and loves it, that can go to your head.
Speaker 1: That can affect you. If the world doesn't accept it
Speaker 1: and they reject you, as in they don't go to
Speaker 1: your shows, they don't buy any music, maybe it even
Speaker 1: boo you on the stage. But regardless, if that's the reaction,
Speaker 1: that could affect you too, because then you go back
Speaker 1: and you get inside your head and you say, I
Speaker 1: hate this. I have created this, and no one likes
Speaker 1: I said, I suck, I'm terrible. And so point being
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago, I discovered one of the hacks away
Speaker 1: around it. And then there's many things that I do
Speaker 1: to try to keep this mental health together. But one
Speaker 1: of the things I discovered is going to a nursing home.
Speaker 1: I don't remember exactly how this happened the first time,
Speaker 1: but I remember we were having a bad day on
Speaker 1: the road. The band was in a terrible mood. I
Speaker 1: was in a terrible mood. We were traveling long distances,
Speaker 1: no one was reacting to the music, and I thought
Speaker 1: to myself, I have to make a change. So I
Speaker 1: got out the you know, the phone, and pulled out
Speaker 1: a map and typed in nursing home. And I remember
Speaker 1: there was you know, probably seven or eight wherever we
Speaker 1: were at the time. I think it was in North Texas.
Speaker 1: There was seven or eight that popped up, and I
Speaker 1: just started calling these numbers and I said, Hi, I'm
Speaker 1: a musician, I'm I'm in a band. Would you mind
Speaker 1: if we stopped by and played some music to the
Speaker 1: folks there in the nursing home? And the reaction is
Speaker 1: always what you know, what's the what's the catch? Why
Speaker 1: would you want to do that? And then after I
Speaker 1: kind of explained the story a little bit and just say, hey,
Speaker 1: there's no catch. We just we have our guitars and
Speaker 1: do you mind if we stop by and play a
Speaker 1: few tunes? And they usually say well, yeah, sure. So
Speaker 1: long story short, I've done that almost once or twice
Speaker 1: a year for fifteen years, and I did it today.
Speaker 1: We just got back. I just came back from that
Speaker 1: in Pensacola. We had some time. I know that somebody
Speaker 1: out there at one of these nursing homes always needs
Speaker 1: it more than I do, and there's always somebody I
Speaker 1: never know who it is, but I have to believe
Speaker 1: that everything happens for a reason, and that someone out
Speaker 1: there needed me to come. And I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: say up there and play my radio singles. I might
Speaker 1: play one of my songs, but usually it's Todd and
Speaker 1: I am my guitar player, and we start playing things
Speaker 1: like You Are My Sunshine and Old Hank Senior and Elvis,
Speaker 1: and today we played like Lean On Me and we
Speaker 1: basically say does anyone have a request, and they're all
Speaker 1: out there in their chairs, and they're usually not too talkative,
Speaker 1: but you could see them light up when you play guitar,
Speaker 1: when you sing a little bit, you could just see
Speaker 1: it in their eyes. And music is such a powerful thing.
Speaker 1: And when someone smiles, I could just feel my brain healing.
Speaker 1: I could feel the power of that purpose. It's like
Speaker 1: we have a purpose. It's greater than a radio single
Speaker 1: or a chart position or an album sale. This is
Speaker 1: way bigger than that. This is music, at its fundamental level,
Speaker 1: helping people. And when it helps people, guess what it
Speaker 1: helps the musician. It helps me. It help me remember
Speaker 1: where I came from and why I'm doing this. I
Speaker 1: remember one time, several years ago, playing one and there
Speaker 1: was just the sweetest lady in there, and she was
Speaker 1: in her nineties and it was her birthday, and she
Speaker 1: had a couple balloons tied to the back of her
Speaker 1: wheelchair and she swore that her son set this up
Speaker 1: for her because it was her birthday. Her son called
Speaker 1: and had a band come in and played for her,
Speaker 1: and she said, I knew it. I knew he was
Speaker 1: going to do something. I knew my boy was going
Speaker 1: to do something for my birthday. But The sad thing
Speaker 1: is the nurses later told me that they don't even
Speaker 1: know who her son is. He's never been in there.
Speaker 1: They don't even know if she has a son, or
Speaker 1: if he's even alive anymore. But because we came, she
Speaker 1: lit up. And I don't want to give any credit
Speaker 1: to myself. It wasn't about talent. It wasn't It wasn't
Speaker 1: because I sang good or played guitar or good. It
Speaker 1: was it was just that we went there and just
Speaker 1: delivered music. I love it. I also want to say
Speaker 1: that I don't talk about this or release videos of
Speaker 1: me doing stuff like this. I don't do it so
Speaker 1: that there's glory behind. Oh he's such a sweet, nice guy.
Speaker 1: I don't need that kind of external gratification to keep going.
Speaker 1: I repeat these stories publicly because I hope if someone
Speaker 1: out there is listening, maybe it's a musician, maybe it's
Speaker 1: a band at any level, is listening to this, or
Speaker 1: sees me in some kind of post or video and
Speaker 1: it inspires them to try it. And so here I
Speaker 1: am saying, if you are listening, I challenge you to
Speaker 1: use your gift in a way like this, And it's
Speaker 1: super easy. It's very hard to believe that a nursing
Speaker 1: home would turn you down if you called and made
Speaker 1: this kind of request. And if they did for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: maybe they're too busy, then there's always one just down
Speaker 1: the street, there's another one. You have to go in
Speaker 1: realizing that they're not going to make eye contact with
Speaker 1: you constantly, they're not going to stand up and cheer.
Speaker 1: You have to do the work. You have to float
Speaker 1: the room. You have to go to them and play
Speaker 1: your music. And if you don't see visibly see them
Speaker 1: lighting up, that could be doing it on the inside.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about that, because they're hearing you and that's
Speaker 1: what matters. So I challenge you to try this or
Speaker 1: something like this, and then hit me up. Either tag
Speaker 1: me on social media with a video of you doing
Speaker 1: it or a picture of you doing it, or hashtag
Speaker 1: Grangersmith podcast. I would love to spread this. I would
Speaker 1: love for this to become a thing where people are
Speaker 1: sharing their talents in a positive, non glorifying way. It's
Speaker 1: such healing, not only for those people listening in the
Speaker 1: nursing home, but for us. It's worth it. Everybody's got
Speaker 1: a first kiss, but not everybody makes it last everybody's
Speaker 1: got a long list. Some someday I'm gonna do that
Speaker 1: bo but nobody needs time to let run's out. Oh
Speaker 1: so why I take a left when you can take
Speaker 1: a ride. Now. Everybody's got a beuture, but not everybody
Speaker 1: makes a beast. Everybody's got a chance to take and
Speaker 1: some don't take till it's too ain't the taken back.
Speaker 1: Everybody's got a last friend, but not everybody brings it in.
Speaker 1: Everybody dies, but not everybody left. See, I got way
Speaker 1: off from this tangent. I was going to start back
Speaker 1: on my story, and then I started talking about this.
Speaker 1: But that does tie back because back in the story
Speaker 1: about twenty ten was a time when we were cruising
Speaker 1: in the van and we were beating up the road
Speaker 1: really hard, and we needed days like going to play
Speaker 1: in a nursing home to fuel us. So, if I'm
Speaker 1: going to talk about my career after the album Don't
Speaker 1: Listen to the Radio, which really helped propel me on
Speaker 1: a small level in the regional Texas scene. If I'm
Speaker 1: going to talk about that, then the beginning of the
Speaker 1: next phase for me, the next album, which eventually became
Speaker 1: Poets and Prisoners. It all started with a song, and
Speaker 1: it was a song that encapsulated where I was. And
Speaker 1: I was playing farther away from home, traveling greater distances
Speaker 1: than I had done the previous ten years before that,
Speaker 1: and we were doing it all in a van, and
Speaker 1: we outfitted this van with bunks. I was. It took
Speaker 1: me a long time to figure out exactly how to
Speaker 1: do it, but I knew that I could. I could
Speaker 1: make custom bunks for a Chevrolet van. And I went
Speaker 1: to a welding friend of mine and I told him
Speaker 1: what I needed, and we took the van. We opened
Speaker 1: up the back doors, we took the back two three
Speaker 1: seats out through two seats out, and we looked at
Speaker 1: all the different crevices, you know, in the back of
Speaker 1: the van. And so he custom built these bunks to
Speaker 1: go and insert themselves and then to latch onto the
Speaker 1: Chevy van, and there was four bunks, and it was
Speaker 1: a total lifesaver because we were able then to travel
Speaker 1: greater distances at night and switch off driving. Now, what
Speaker 1: we did was we would obviously we're always sleeping in
Speaker 1: hotel after load in or soundcheck, we would go and
Speaker 1: take a nap. We'd get our hotel keys and by
Speaker 1: the way, we would get many times one room. One
Speaker 1: hotel room was all we could afford. So we would
Speaker 1: get one hotel room and with two queen beds. This
Speaker 1: is not advised, by the way, but we get one
Speaker 1: room with two queen beds, and we would take the
Speaker 1: mattresses off so that you could have two people sleep
Speaker 1: on the box springs. Two people sleep on the queen mattress,
Speaker 1: and then two on the other box ring, two in
Speaker 1: the other mattress, so you could sleep eight in one room.
Speaker 1: And we would you know, some people liked the box
Speaker 1: spring because they liked to sleep on a harder mattress anyway,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't ideal, but it worked. We just had
Speaker 1: to sneak each other in and out because the hotel
Speaker 1: clerks don't want that kind of thing happening. So we
Speaker 1: would take our keys and each person would write their
Speaker 1: name on the back of a hotel key. So then
Speaker 1: in the day we would draw names. We would draw
Speaker 1: pairs and those were the teams that were going to
Speaker 1: drive that night. So we would say, okay, team one
Speaker 1: is Frank and Johnny, the team two is Granger and Todd,
Speaker 1: Team three, et cetera, and the team had to get
Speaker 1: up and drive, and it was up to the team
Speaker 1: to decide who was going to drive and who was
Speaker 1: going to navigate, and you could switch off as many
Speaker 1: times as you want. The only rule was you had
Speaker 1: to go for two hours. You had to fill up
Speaker 1: that two hour space, and so if you were so
Speaker 1: tired that you could only drive for five minutes, then
Speaker 1: you pulled over. Your copilot gets over and he drives
Speaker 1: until he starts feeling sleepy. You stop again, even if
Speaker 1: that was just fifteen minutes. But that was the rule.
Speaker 1: The really bad shift was Team two. That was the
Speaker 1: bad shift because Team one, they get in right after
Speaker 1: the show. You have this energy. You're going to drive
Speaker 1: for two hours right after the show, which usually gets
Speaker 1: you to about what you know, three o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1: Then you're really tired. You go to bed. But Team
Speaker 1: two say they only got to sleep for two hours,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't really asleep because you're you still have
Speaker 1: all this energy from the show. So they have to
Speaker 1: get in there at about three am and start driving,
Speaker 1: and they drive till five am, which is the worst
Speaker 1: time to drive, right when the sun's coming up. Then
Speaker 1: Team three gets in a team three. That's not too bad.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've you've been You've gotten to lay down
Speaker 1: for four hours. However you look at it, this was
Speaker 1: a very tough system and this was the life we
Speaker 1: were living. This this is what we signed up for,
Speaker 1: and this is just what we had to do to
Speaker 1: survive at this point in my music career. And it
Speaker 1: was during these times. It was during one of the drives.
Speaker 1: It was during a team two by the way drive.
Speaker 1: So It's about four o'clock in the morning, and I'm
Speaker 1: sitting up there with my navigator and everyone else is
Speaker 1: asleep in the back. I believe we're coming back from
Speaker 1: El Paso, and these lyrics started coming into my head,
Speaker 1: and those lyrics eventually became a song, and the song
Speaker 1: ended up being the foundation of an album. And when
Speaker 1: I listened back to it, it still takes me back
Speaker 1: to that very moment exactly how I felt. Here it
Speaker 1: is for a five piece begets are in a Chevrolet
Speaker 1: Man running the lane. So we're sleeping on the interstate.
Speaker 1: We're a left lane friend threading the cars, passing them,
Speaker 1: black sate lights and stars. We pulled away, sleeping on
Speaker 1: the interstate wide lasttching like a yellow back road and
Speaker 1: change it down, hurry up, we never gonna stop. Yes,
Speaker 1: and the tank music in the song here we Go,
Speaker 1: Here we Go, connecting my glass like ports pressers, trying
Speaker 1: to live more like a lober than center and slave
Speaker 1: the trees so far away sourcebly Interstate. This song is
Speaker 1: called Sleeping on the Interstate. And it's interesting because in
Speaker 1: the next verse I was writing right there on the road,
Speaker 1: and the first line says, freedom is the fuel making
Speaker 1: eight wheels roll, and that had all kinds of meanings
Speaker 1: because we were barely making enough money to put gas
Speaker 1: in that van. But ironically, freedom is also the name
Speaker 1: of my first bus that I would buy three years later.
Speaker 1: It was it's almost like a precursor. The back half
Speaker 1: of the verse talks about these bunks that we were
Speaker 1: sleeping in in the van and they were so hard
Speaker 1: to get good rest because they were so bumby. It
Speaker 1: goes like this, we need missed the fuel making eight
Speaker 1: wheels roll. We close our eyes, think about home. So
Speaker 1: it's okay sleepin on the interstage and there's me in
Speaker 1: the back and a six foot bunk getting used to
Speaker 1: the racks of the road. It's tough, but how finally
Speaker 1: sleepin on the interstag. If you want to kind of
Speaker 1: get a picture of who I was at that time,
Speaker 1: you can go to YouTube. There's a music video called
Speaker 1: Granger Smith Sleeping on the Interstate official video. And I
Speaker 1: filmed a lot of this and then I had someone
Speaker 1: if I was in the video myself, that's a band
Speaker 1: member holding the camera, and then I edited this. I
Speaker 1: think this is my first music video that I made
Speaker 1: all by myself, and it's funny because it's a great
Speaker 1: little collage of who I was at the time, and
Speaker 1: me and the band and where we were and that
Speaker 1: old van and the days that we had. The video
Speaker 1: itself has one hundred and seventy two thousand views. To
Speaker 1: put that in perspective of how how tiny those views are,
Speaker 1: more people will hear this podcast in just a few
Speaker 1: days than the entire views this YouTube video. And that
Speaker 1: encapsulates the fact that nobody was watching me back then.
Speaker 1: Nobody paid attention. A lot of people tell me now
Speaker 1: that I've been following you for ten years, Well you're
Speaker 1: if you were then, you're only a few these people
Speaker 1: that even watched that music video or listened to that song.
Speaker 1: But regardless, it was a very important part of my career,
Speaker 1: and that song sparked an entire album called Poets and Prisoners,
Speaker 1: the title taken from that song. And that song and
Speaker 1: the rest of the album was recorded in a little
Speaker 1: house in Round Rock, Texas, in the Downtown Historic district.
Speaker 1: This was a house built in the nineteen twenties and
Speaker 1: Amber and I was just a two bedroom house, and
Speaker 1: Amber and I were living in there, and it was
Speaker 1: such a cool old house, and one of the bedrooms
Speaker 1: was the studio where I recorded Poets and Prisoners. Most
Speaker 1: of the songs were written at that house, right there
Speaker 1: on this old front porch, and I did a lot
Speaker 1: of my writing late at night, and sometimes I would
Speaker 1: write a song and go right into recording it. And
Speaker 1: some places on that album you could still hear the
Speaker 1: crickets because the crickets were so loud late at night
Speaker 1: at that house, and you could hear it either from
Speaker 1: the front porch or from the windows in that studio.
Speaker 1: Fun fact about this album, too, is the backup singer
Speaker 1: for this record was this young girl that I'd met
Speaker 1: through a couple of shows in Texas, and her name
Speaker 1: was Maren Morris. Does that name sound familiar? Maren has
Speaker 1: gone off and built an incredible name for herself, and
Speaker 1: she was so talented back then, just nobody knew about
Speaker 1: it yet. It's funny looking back now thinking about Marion
Speaker 1: pulling up in that little car and in front of
Speaker 1: Amber and I's house and coming in there and spending
Speaker 1: the day singing background vocals on me, who was a
Speaker 1: nobody's record at the time. That's an interesting part of
Speaker 1: history for me. There are so many stories about these
Speaker 1: songs on this album, just looking at all the titles.
Speaker 1: Letters to London, Saturday Night means Sunday morning, oxygen, sleeping
Speaker 1: on the Interstate red dirt, element number ten, nothing to proves,
Speaker 1: so surrounded to my tongue, Sunset, Merry Go Round the
Speaker 1: Old Rock Church, I'm wearing black. I could tell you
Speaker 1: a story about every single one of these songs, how
Speaker 1: they came, about the meetings behind them, but that would
Speaker 1: make this podcast way too long, so I'll pick a
Speaker 1: few Letters to London. That's interesting because people have asked
Speaker 1: me a lot that you understand that my daughter's name
Speaker 1: is London, but this song was written before her. This
Speaker 1: was actually a title ambergate to me and she said, hey,
Speaker 1: I got a great title. For you. It's called Letters
Speaker 1: to London, and I said what does it mean? And
Speaker 1: she said, I don't know. I just think it sounds cool.
Speaker 1: So I kind of put this thing together where he's
Speaker 1: writing a song about a girl and her name is London.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of connections with that town. Amber's
Speaker 1: families from London. We got engaged in York, England, which
Speaker 1: is a very very special town to us, and so
Speaker 1: maybe it was because of that, or maybe it was
Speaker 1: because of the song, but regardless, that was a big
Speaker 1: influence on naming our daughter London. So what came first,
Speaker 1: the name or the song? It was the song, but
Speaker 1: her little spirit was still with me. I say a
Speaker 1: Hollywood kids, when soft Finger tim Throll that tears down
Speaker 1: my scheme didn't take care a beautiful love? Oh my god,
Speaker 1: what have I done right? Let it be come Letters
Speaker 1: to Love geez. Looking back this album, it really meant
Speaker 1: a lot to me. There's another song that's pretty special,
Speaker 1: and that was a song called Oxygen. I wrote this
Speaker 1: song for Amber for our first dance because we didn't
Speaker 1: have a first dance and we thought about what we
Speaker 1: should dance to and it felt awkward for me to
Speaker 1: dance as a songwriter to dance to someone else's lyrics
Speaker 1: at our wedding. So I sat down one day and
Speaker 1: I wrote the song for her. She is the Lighthouse
Speaker 1: on Mescy. I loved my heart, she fell the key.
Speaker 1: She's want this feeling suppost to be. She speaks the love,
Speaker 1: but leave. I don't ever make a move without her
Speaker 1: right there too, seas in the brath delivery. She's in
Speaker 1: my heart. It beat. She's my life been to take
Speaker 1: her like as a jell. During this time, I did
Speaker 1: a lot of music videos for a lot of these songs,
Speaker 1: including Red Dirt. That's an interesting one that that I
Speaker 1: filmed by we built at a Dolly. We built this
Speaker 1: whole little uh music vide system. My brother and I
Speaker 1: and we went out in front of a tour date
Speaker 1: in Oklahoma and we found this kind of mountain scene
Speaker 1: in northern Oklahoma where it was a lot of red rocks,
Speaker 1: and we set out there and we filmed this music video.
Speaker 1: The problem was it was nineteen degrees it was so cold,
Speaker 1: we were freezing. All we had was a van with
Speaker 1: a heater running, so we just left the van running
Speaker 1: the whole time, full blast heater, and we would shoot
Speaker 1: for you know, forty five minutes and then go back
Speaker 1: and try to throw our hands out. But if you
Speaker 1: go to YouTube and watch the music video for Red Dirt,
Speaker 1: you might be able to see just how cold we were.
Speaker 1: But that was another zero budget music video that Tyler
Speaker 1: and I shot. I think my favorite music video to
Speaker 1: shoot out of this group was I'm Wearing Black? Who
Speaker 1: Let's raise a glass? So slaunch Johnny cashiers to Forginner
Speaker 1: and I've been things better and it would be really
Speaker 1: hard to talk about poets and prisoners and not mention
Speaker 1: I'm Wearing Black. That song did really well for us
Speaker 1: for several years live. In fact, I wish I could
Speaker 1: do it live now. Maybe if more people knew it,
Speaker 1: I could play it again, just saying so. By this time,
Speaker 1: I had been van and trailer touring for about six years,
Speaker 1: five to six years, but it wasn't until this time
Speaker 1: in my career when we truly became road dogs. I
Speaker 1: remember one time we got an offer to play a
Speaker 1: festival in Oregon. I'd never been to the state in
Speaker 1: Oregon before, and they were offering to pay us three
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. That's a lot of money if I was
Speaker 1: just playing just down the street in Texas. That would
Speaker 1: be a whole lot of money, but in reality, it's
Speaker 1: not that much money if you're going to drive from
Speaker 1: Texas to Oregon in a van and you're barely going
Speaker 1: to break even with fuel and hotels and food. But
Speaker 1: we took it because it sounded like a great adventure.
Speaker 1: So we drove pretty much straight through. It was about
Speaker 1: thirty two hours, maybe a little more. We were taking turns,
Speaker 1: you know, drawing our names, going in teams, sleeping in
Speaker 1: the bunks, and we made it all the way to
Speaker 1: Oregon and we played the festival and we had an
Speaker 1: absolute blast. On the way back home, we picked up
Speaker 1: a little show in Colorado. So we were cutting through
Speaker 1: Idaho once again, a state I had never been to,
Speaker 1: in a state that over the years now all of
Speaker 1: those states in the Northwest, I have grown to love
Speaker 1: so much. But the reason that impacted me that particular
Speaker 1: trip was it was the middle of the night. We
Speaker 1: were driving once again, and the moon was full and
Speaker 1: so bright, and we were driving through the desert in
Speaker 1: this little road in Idaho, through the mountains, through this canyon,
Speaker 1: and it was so impactful for me that I had
Speaker 1: to pull over and put the van in park and
Speaker 1: step out and just take this moment in because here
Speaker 1: was this canyon lit up by this beautiful full moon,
Speaker 1: split into a V and we were driving right to
Speaker 1: the center of that v. It made such an impact
Speaker 1: on me that day that when I put out the
Speaker 1: album Poets and Prisoners, I wanted the album cover to
Speaker 1: be that moment in my head. So we hired an
Speaker 1: artist to draw that image of what I told him.
Speaker 1: So if you look at the album of Pots and Prisoners,
Speaker 1: that's that moment. That's what that was, and that really
Speaker 1: encapsulates that time of my life. The cover of Pots
Speaker 1: and Prisoners six string Poet Who I Am? I picked
Speaker 1: it to be in this remalend Man, There's not another
Speaker 1: time I love more. When set Sunday morning, super around
Speaker 1: and see now God rest this American town. F Rene
Speaker 1: go to Warwind Saturday night eats Sunday morning, super around
Speaker 1: the seed Now God rested this American town. I Renes
Speaker 1: go to war Wind Saturday night, met Sunday mo. Now.
Speaker 1: I can get into more stories about this album, but
Speaker 1: I think this podcast would get a little long winded
Speaker 1: if I did. I can tell you about another special
Speaker 1: song called the old rock church. That is a true story,
Speaker 1: and it's Amber is the ghost on that song. By
Speaker 1: the way, everything that she said I reversed on the record,
Speaker 1: so that it sounds very mysterious. If you want to
Speaker 1: really know who I am and where I came from,
Speaker 1: listen to Poets and Prisoners top to bottom. Hear those stories.
Speaker 1: They're all such a piece of my life. Then about
Speaker 1: twenty ten, if you don't have Spotify or iTunes or
Speaker 1: anything like that, you could just stream them right off
Speaker 1: of YouTube. All the songs are. They have the audio
Speaker 1: tracks on YouTube. But most importantly, what I want to
Speaker 1: tell you about this album is how well it did
Speaker 1: not do. It wasn't received very well, and in fact,
Speaker 1: I was on a pretty good string of top ten
Speaker 1: radio single was in the Texas Country regional market from
Speaker 1: the album Don't Listen to the Radio. But when Poets
Speaker 1: and Prisoners came out, none of those singles did well.
Speaker 1: They didn't even get into the twenties, and the album
Speaker 1: didn't sell very well, and people started slowly writing me off, like, hey,
Speaker 1: we thought he was kind of bubbling up a little
Speaker 1: bit with Don't Listen to the Radio album, but then
Speaker 1: he's kind of gone another direction with Poets and Prisoners,
Speaker 1: and maybe they were right, maybe I had gone maybe
Speaker 1: these stories were a little too personal. But it took
Speaker 1: that album to set me on the path that I'm
Speaker 1: on now. It took learning from that record. It all
Speaker 1: boiled down to one meeting I had with a record label,
Speaker 1: a small independent record label, and that was the first
Speaker 1: time I had had serious talks with a record label
Speaker 1: since the days I lived in Nashville. But here's the kicker.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a country record label. It was a rock
Speaker 1: label and the indie rock label. And I met with
Speaker 1: the owners of the label and it was partners with
Speaker 1: this band called Blue October and their bass player was
Speaker 1: part owners in this company. He was a great dude,
Speaker 1: and these are really smart guys. But they sat me
Speaker 1: down and they said, man, we've been listening to this album,
Speaker 1: Poets and Prisoners, and we love it. It really speaks
Speaker 1: to us, and we think that it kind of crosses
Speaker 1: all genres. We think that you can't just label it
Speaker 1: country or rock or pop or whatever. This is. This
Speaker 1: is just something that covers all genres. This is for
Speaker 1: all kinds of people. And I was like, wow, thank you,
Speaker 1: that's amazing to hear from a songwriter and a producers,
Speaker 1: that's a great compliment. And Tyler was with me, my manager,
Speaker 1: and we left and I went home, And the more
Speaker 1: and more I thought about that that conversation, the more
Speaker 1: I became very uncomfortable with that conversation because I'm a
Speaker 1: country guy. I grew up on George Strait, Garth Brooks
Speaker 1: and Alan Jackson, and I didn't want someone to tell
Speaker 1: me that my music was starting to sound more and
Speaker 1: more like it could cross all genres. As grateful as
Speaker 1: I was to hear that, my mind was starting a
Speaker 1: journey on a new path. My gears were turning, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to make a record that made everyone damn
Speaker 1: sure know I was singing for the country people, because
Speaker 1: that's who I was. And everything came down to one
Speaker 1: show when I figured it out, when it hit me.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you all about that on the next podcast.
Speaker 1: Things were changing, changing for the good in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, and it came from poets and prisoners, and
Speaker 1: I'm so thankful for that lost in her view last Yeah,
Speaker 1: when it happens like that, nothing to lose turns right
Speaker 1: into you. Julie. All you can do just to keep
Speaker 1: her around till the moon goes down in her back
Speaker 1: into your house. One thing looks to another, you loving
Speaker 1: each other. When looking, you never look back. It happens
Speaker 1: like that. Thanks for listening. If you want to support
Speaker 1: me or any other artist, the best way is to
Speaker 1: see us on tour. Go to grangersmith dot com backslash tour,
Speaker 1: See you down the road.