Speaker 1: I Heart Radio presents Inside the Studio I'm your host
Speaker 1: Joe Lee. This time out, we Rode tripped down to
Speaker 1: Nashville to talk with Garth Brooks. Garth told me about
Speaker 1: volume three of his anthology series, which includes his new
Speaker 1: Triple Live album, and we also talked about his recent
Speaker 1: concert for eighty four thousand people at Notre Dame Stadium,
Speaker 1: and he shared details about the stadium tour he's kicking
Speaker 1: off next March, as well as the studio album he's
Speaker 1: releasing next year, which he hasn't gotten around to giving
Speaker 1: a name to yet, despite the fact that he released
Speaker 1: a single from it, a rocking bit of honky talk
Speaker 1: called All Day Long last June. Right now, the basic
Speaker 1: working title is the Fun Album. Just a lot of
Speaker 1: fun on this record. It is untitled on Amazon. Yes,
Speaker 1: it is untitled drives them Crazy because everything's data they
Speaker 1: know exactly, but this one just hasn't been named yet
Speaker 1: so far. It's the Fun Album because it's all about fun.
Speaker 1: And there's a cowboys song on there, a song called
Speaker 1: That's what Cowboys Do, and there's a song on there
Speaker 1: called the Party Girl, and just talking about how Marty
Speaker 1: grow for us guys, I've never heard this term before.
Speaker 1: It's just a honky talk and Halloween and that's what
Speaker 1: it is. And so it's just fun. It's real cage
Speaker 1: in varioushigh to go. But ye, at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's real country, and I think that's what I do.
Speaker 1: So my thing is, you never chase whatever is cool today.
Speaker 1: Congratulations for who's cool, But you've got to be true
Speaker 1: to who you are, because the last thing you want
Speaker 1: to do is walk out that They were going, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go over this. Who am I today? The greatest
Speaker 1: gift I've ever been given by the people that come
Speaker 1: to see us is they have allowed me to be
Speaker 1: me and be okay, they recognize you as a human being.
Speaker 1: At the greatest compliment I read I was walking with
Speaker 1: the four Ladies are Gonna Remain Nameless? Was walking with him,
Speaker 1: and one of the girls, the one that has never
Speaker 1: said anything, she goes. You know, you always just appeared
Speaker 1: to me as one of us that just got lucky.
Speaker 1: Sweetest thing anybody has ever said to me, Just one
Speaker 1: of us that got lucky. Because that's how I feel.
Speaker 1: I mean, You're still you, You're still a regular person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm still the the guy that's just full of flaws.
Speaker 1: That's okay. We met Garth at the house where he
Speaker 1: has his offices and also to studios, both of them
Speaker 1: brand new for himself and his wife, Tricia Yearwood. He
Speaker 1: came to the door holding a baseball bat and wearing
Speaker 1: batting gloves, and he got us something to drink right away,
Speaker 1: made sure we were settled in. So for a superstar
Speaker 1: who's told tens and tens of millions of albums and
Speaker 1: also set a record for North America with his last tour,
Speaker 1: he did seem pretty much like a regular guy. Of course,
Speaker 1: he's not. When he greeted us, he had stepped out
Speaker 1: not from backyard batting practice, but from working on the
Speaker 1: upcoming CBS television special of that concert at Notre Dame
Speaker 1: Stadium he'd played just a few days before. And as
Speaker 1: for that bat Brooks is not just a baseball fan.
Speaker 1: During his thirteen year retirement from touring, he reported for
Speaker 1: spring training three times with the Padres, the Mets, and
Speaker 1: the Kansas City Royals. If you're keeping score at home,
Speaker 1: he went one for thirty nine with the Padres and
Speaker 1: the Mets, which is a point zero to five average,
Speaker 1: But he did get one hit with the Royals. His
Speaker 1: music stats are just a little bit better. He's the
Speaker 1: best selling artist of the sound Scan era. He's tallied
Speaker 1: more than seventy million in the US since when sound
Speaker 1: Scan started, and in fact, sixteen point six million of
Speaker 1: those sales are of his second album alone, Roping the Wind,
Speaker 1: holds the title as the best selling album of the
Speaker 1: sound Scan era. Two years ago, the Recording Industry Association
Speaker 1: and of America certified Brooks as the first artist with
Speaker 1: seven Diamond albums that's ten times platinum or ten million apiece.
Speaker 1: And when he did return to touring in fourteen, he
Speaker 1: did it in a big way. His three year world
Speaker 1: tour with Tricia Yearwood sold more than six point three
Speaker 1: million tickets. He played three hundred and ninety concerts in
Speaker 1: seventy nine cities. Brooks went into arenas, playing four or
Speaker 1: five shows, and most of them sometimes filling them for
Speaker 1: two shows a day, and finishing with seven nights in
Speaker 1: Nashville at the Bridgetone Arena. It stands as the biggest
Speaker 1: North American tour in history. When Brooks tours next year,
Speaker 1: he'll be marking the thirtieth anniversary of his self titled
Speaker 1: debut album, which pretty much laid out all the ways
Speaker 1: that he'd both draw on country tradition and open up
Speaker 1: the new frontiers that helped create the context for most
Speaker 1: of country music today. Brooks grew up on country, but
Speaker 1: also on seventies hard rock like Kiss and Queen and
Speaker 1: singer songwriters like James Taylor and Dan Fogelberg. For sure.
Speaker 1: You can hear that singer songwriter influence on the Dance
Speaker 1: from that first album, Oh Memory, the Dance, Sweet Share
Speaker 1: to Me, the Stars of the Oryma. You can hear
Speaker 1: it so clearly that Brooks hesitated to even record it,
Speaker 1: worrying that it wasn't country enough, and then watching it
Speaker 1: go to number one on the country charts. But if
Speaker 1: you give them more straight ahead country weeper Alabama Clay
Speaker 1: a headphones listen, you can hear the rock side of
Speaker 1: Garth as well. His nag was red as Alabama Clay,
Speaker 1: but the CITs God Away. He's got a factory, as
Speaker 1: he explains in the first volume of Anthology at Deluxe,
Speaker 1: repackaging of his first five albums in a hardcover book
Speaker 1: that tells the stories behind each of the songs. The
Speaker 1: foundation of Alabama Clay Brooks calls it the carpet is
Speaker 1: a guitar running through a Rockman headphone amp, an invention
Speaker 1: of Tom Schultz of the band Boston. It pretty much
Speaker 1: makes your guitar sound like Boston. If you listen to
Speaker 1: Alabama Clay with all the harmonies. Says Garth, here comes Journey,
Speaker 1: here comes Queen. What you're singing about his country as
Speaker 1: a biscuit. That is Garth talking, not me. I don't
Speaker 1: use phrases like country as a biscuit, but anyway, what
Speaker 1: you're singing about his country as a biscuit. But it works.
Speaker 1: Even if you put the Boston Big crunch in, it
Speaker 1: is still going to be country, so you can turn
Speaker 1: up your guitar and still be country. Those lessons resonate
Speaker 1: country music to this day. What Brooks accomplished building off
Speaker 1: that first album is pretty much mind boggling. My just
Speaker 1: the sales, which are legit mind boggling, but the music itself.
Speaker 1: He could draw in country storytelling tradition, in which the
Speaker 1: narrative and detail of a feature film can be packed
Speaker 1: into three minutes of music, to sing about both vengeful
Speaker 1: wives and murderous husbands in songs like the Thunder Rolls
Speaker 1: and Papa Love Mama. But he also sang about equal
Speaker 1: rights regardless of race, gender or sexuality, and we shall
Speaker 1: be free when the last chop cries pulled acrosststum Brand.
Speaker 1: He made Billy Joel sound like the Eagles when he
Speaker 1: covered Joel Shameless. Then he added fiddle to an Arrowsmith song,
Speaker 1: the Fever. A few years later he did classic country
Speaker 1: like two of a Kind working on a full house
Speaker 1: in American Hockey Talk Bar Association. But he also got
Speaker 1: all singer songwriter in ballads like the River and really
Speaker 1: that's just scratching surface. No, his dream is like a
Speaker 1: river ever changed, and that he's a flow, and the
Speaker 1: dreamer's just a vessel that must follow where it goes,
Speaker 1: trying to learn from what's behind you. I haven't even
Speaker 1: mentioned Friends in Low Places yet, for the fact that
Speaker 1: Garth had a number one country hit with a cover
Speaker 1: of Bob Dylan's to Make You Feel My Love ten
Speaker 1: years before Adell got a hold of it, Blown In
Speaker 1: and the whole world game out off You Make You Feel.
Speaker 1: The anthology series put together by Brooks with help from
Speaker 1: Warren Zanes, the former guitarist of a band called the
Speaker 1: Del Fuegos, who went on to write a really good
Speaker 1: biography of Tom Petty a few years ago, functions as
Speaker 1: an oral history of Garth's life and career told by
Speaker 1: Garth and those alongside him. The latest volume, again a
Speaker 1: hardcover book packed with five c ds, is particularly rich
Speaker 1: and well constructed. It tells the story of Garth's growth
Speaker 1: as a live performer, and it begins with the HBO
Speaker 1: concert broadcast, HBO's first ever with a country performer, when
Speaker 1: Brooks played to a crowd of nine hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: thousand people in Central Park in New York City, and
Speaker 1: then it goes back to his childhood, his college years,
Speaker 1: his first stabs at playing music professionally, and his explosive
Speaker 1: popularity in the nineteen nineties when his albums, live shows,
Speaker 1: and television special made country the biggest commercial power in
Speaker 1: American popular music. One of my favorite details comes in
Speaker 1: the mid eighties when Brooks was touring Oklahoma as a
Speaker 1: member of the band Santa Fe. As he explained it,
Speaker 1: Santa Fe loves Southern rock and Brooks love George Straight,
Speaker 1: perhaps the greatest of the neo traditional singers who put
Speaker 1: honky tonk values back at the center of country music
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties. We went into these dance halls,
Speaker 1: explains Brooks, and it was exactly what those places needed
Speaker 1: because during the breaks from the live band, the DJs
Speaker 1: would be playing rock and pop. We brought the rock
Speaker 1: and roll feel right into the live set. They also
Speaker 1: set records on beer six. So today when you hear
Speaker 1: Florida Georgia Line integrating hip hop and pop into their
Speaker 1: country sound, they're expanning on the lessons Brooks picked up
Speaker 1: in the dance halls of Oklahoma playing with Santa Fe
Speaker 1: and then put into his music. Moving forward, when Kenny
Speaker 1: Chesney packed stadiums with his country meets Jimmy Buffett vibe,
Speaker 1: well he's drawing on how Brooks transformed country with his
Speaker 1: Queen vibe or his James Taylor vibe. And you could
Speaker 1: say the same thing for Or Swift, who seems to
Speaker 1: have soaked up some business lessons from Brooks. He owns
Speaker 1: his masters, and he remains very cautious about digital music.
Speaker 1: His music now streams and is downloadable through Amazon, but
Speaker 1: only because Amazon last year absorbed the online music store
Speaker 1: that Brooks himself had launched in early on in Anthology,
Speaker 1: Part three. Garth describes the stage as a pulpit. You're
Speaker 1: either seen from it or you're watching it, he says,
Speaker 1: and as you're about to hear he does sound a
Speaker 1: bit like a preacher when he starts talking about music.
Speaker 1: I think the only other artist I've ever spoken with
Speaker 1: who is as compulsively quotable and as intensely passionate about
Speaker 1: the dynamic between the audience and the performer is Bruce Springsteen. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, Church his in session in the sermon
Speaker 1: this week, it's pretty good, Garth Brooks. Welcome to inside
Speaker 1: the studio. Thank you. So we're actually inside your studio,
Speaker 1: so let me welcome you inside the studio. We have
Speaker 1: got a lot of ground to cover, got a new
Speaker 1: volume of anthology, Anthology three, which has your new live album,
Speaker 1: Triple Live. We've got your upcoming stadium tour, your upcoming
Speaker 1: studio album. But let's start with the show you played
Speaker 1: just recently at Notre Dame, which was filmed for something
Speaker 1: Else upcoming coming to Special in December. And this turned
Speaker 1: out to be um a bit of a Neither rain,
Speaker 1: nor sleep, nor snow nor heavy winds can stop Garth
Speaker 1: Brooks from his appointed rounds. It was one of those
Speaker 1: things where you were worried that the weather was going
Speaker 1: to take front stage, center stage, and then right before
Speaker 1: showtime everything just kind of went on. The whole day
Speaker 1: started off with nice weather, temperature drops, you start to
Speaker 1: get rain and then hal and then snow, so it
Speaker 1: was it was like a typical day in Ireland. It
Speaker 1: was cool man. So the greatest days start with a night.
Speaker 1: But for Friday night we do this thing called Students
Speaker 1: sound Check. It's a new tradition that we'll have with
Speaker 1: the stadium tour. Any students with Student i D get
Speaker 1: in free, and faculty and staff have to pay like
Speaker 1: a ten dollar fee to get in and then all
Speaker 1: that money goes back to a scholarship before the college
Speaker 1: we're playing. So we were expecting what maybe five hundred
Speaker 1: six hundred would have been fantastic people shows up this thing.
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, now sound check becomes the
Speaker 1: concert and it was great and it kind of set
Speaker 1: the tone for the whole weekend. And it was miserable
Speaker 1: that night, misty, rainy. Everybody was soaking wet in the
Speaker 1: stands on the stage, but nobody seemed to care. And
Speaker 1: that kind of set the whole attitude for the weekend.
Speaker 1: What made you pick? Well, Notre Dame kind of picked us.
Speaker 1: We're supposed to take this year off and I got
Speaker 1: named Rob Beckham at w M E called me one
Speaker 1: day and he goes, I know you're taking the year off,
Speaker 1: but there's a phone call I think you're gonna want
Speaker 1: to take and uh, just due to music business mergers,
Speaker 1: everything that's changing always now some of the most prolific
Speaker 1: colleges in our history are opening up for the first
Speaker 1: time ever to have concerts in their stadium and Notre
Speaker 1: Dame was the first one to make the call, so
Speaker 1: there had never been a concert in that space before, never,
Speaker 1: so it was it was pretty cool. And they when
Speaker 1: you the sweet thing was they're the nicest people on
Speaker 1: the planet at Notre Dame. But immediately you realized they've
Speaker 1: never had a concert because none of them knew anything
Speaker 1: about concerts. So it's pretty good. You got to hold
Speaker 1: their hand, they got to hold our hand because we
Speaker 1: don't do stadiums, and it was a good marriage, so
Speaker 1: good that right in the middle of everything, right in
Speaker 1: the middle of the concert that night, it was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, it only makes sense we had forty
Speaker 1: five thousand tickets into the on sale. Thirty minutes into
Speaker 1: the on sale, we still had sixties some thousand people
Speaker 1: in the waiting room. So you were not able to
Speaker 1: do another show because these are just unique individual shows.
Speaker 1: They were so sweet, so good during the show that
Speaker 1: I said, I'll tell you what, let's just make a
Speaker 1: date and right there and trust me, I know all
Speaker 1: our people are having a heart attack. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: start the stadium tour Notre Dame, and we're gonna end
Speaker 1: the American leg of it back Notre Dame will come
Speaker 1: full circle. I was just talking to some of your
Speaker 1: team here and that announcement came as a surprise. Was
Speaker 1: that a spur of the moment thing for you? Just
Speaker 1: anybody that's listening, they gets to do this for a living.
Speaker 1: Put Notre Dame on your list. The greatest community, the
Speaker 1: greatest sound and stadium planet. It's heaven, you know, and
Speaker 1: field of dreams that hey is it's heaven. No, it's Iowa,
Speaker 1: it's Notre Dame. Is heaven when you get to play music.
Speaker 1: So you called that audible on stage. You routed the
Speaker 1: tour right then and there, and it's really interesting how
Speaker 1: the book portion of it functions as an oral history
Speaker 1: of your life because it's telling the story of you
Speaker 1: as a performer, going back to the very very beginning.
Speaker 1: But one interesting thing that stuck out to me was
Speaker 1: I forget who said it said you get a set list.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean anything ever. See parts of the Criban.
Speaker 1: They're not rules, they're more like guidelines. That's what a
Speaker 1: set list. So so is that still the case you're
Speaker 1: gonna call audibles? Yes, that's all we did, and notre
Speaker 1: dame because it's average changing. If you've ever been to
Speaker 1: a guard show, the one thing you're going to know
Speaker 1: more than anything is the guy that's name is on
Speaker 1: the marquee is not the boss. It's the people in
Speaker 1: the seats. They're the boss. Where they want to go,
Speaker 1: we go. So it makes it fun for us. So
Speaker 1: instead of the fiddle player knowing, well, this is what
Speaker 1: I do, I'm gonna grab my fiddle here fiddle, the
Speaker 1: fiddle player is holding both the guitar and the fiddle
Speaker 1: in his hand, looking at you because he knows he's ready.
Speaker 1: The lighting guy, the lighting guys telling all the guys
Speaker 1: stand by stand by because I get a fit boom,
Speaker 1: We're going to a different song. And everything now is
Speaker 1: so computer program with video and media. Those guys in
Speaker 1: the back room are going crazy when you change things up,
Speaker 1: but they handle it so well. It's interesting. Anthology three,
Speaker 1: you tell the story that each step along the way
Speaker 1: is you going to school? Amen? Going back to one
Speaker 1: thing that really stuck with me was you talk about
Speaker 1: how your bouncer, and as a bouncer you learn which
Speaker 1: songs packed the dance floors and which ones don't. Where
Speaker 1: is school for you? Now? School just started at Notre Dame.
Speaker 1: I could fill up three legal pads with what I
Speaker 1: learned in two hours on that stage. Everything from which
Speaker 1: way the grating and the flooring is going on, everything
Speaker 1: from that to where the points go out as opposed
Speaker 1: to the clusters. You're just taking notes the whole time
Speaker 1: while the crowd is spurring you on to just go crazier, wilder, deeper, under,
Speaker 1: bigger better. If the crowd should live in the momment,
Speaker 1: but the entertainer should live in the moment before. That's
Speaker 1: where you live, because if you can surprise them, they
Speaker 1: will surprise you. So you were talking about where the
Speaker 1: points go, You're talking about the way out of the stage.
Speaker 1: Vet you Now, do I have this right? You had
Speaker 1: a whole new stage for the Notre Dame show, which
Speaker 1: you're scrapping and building another stage for the stadium tour. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Notre Dame show was supposed to be the blueprint
Speaker 1: for it. But what we did with Notre Dame was
Speaker 1: we realized to all the things that work really well
Speaker 1: and the things that don't. What are some of things?
Speaker 1: Give me an example. It wasn't working. So let's take
Speaker 1: the Cowboys Star. So the Cowboys Star looks like a
Speaker 1: star on a badge. Right, So at one point, the
Speaker 1: point is going to be facing fifty yard line one
Speaker 1: side of the stadium, but the other side has two
Speaker 1: legs on it that neither one of them face the
Speaker 1: middle of the stadium. So never are you getting to
Speaker 1: play to more than of the audience at any time
Speaker 1: in the round. That was a big lesson. So now
Speaker 1: replace it with a Mariner star which points north, south,
Speaker 1: east and west. Elongate your east and west because the
Speaker 1: field is longer than it is wide, and now you're
Speaker 1: getting closer to everyone. Because the whole thing with us
Speaker 1: is it all starts with the very first premises. We
Speaker 1: don't golden circle. You don't pay more to be on
Speaker 1: the floor than you do at the very top of
Speaker 1: the stadium. It's all luck of the draw. When you
Speaker 1: see somebody sit. If you're up high and you see
Speaker 1: somebody sitting on the second row, they just got the
Speaker 1: luck of the draw in the computer when it flag
Speaker 1: went down for the ticket on sale, every ticket the
Speaker 1: same price, and that's something we've always had, always done that,
Speaker 1: never done the golden circle, where the closer to the
Speaker 1: stage is more expensive. A gets no offense against people
Speaker 1: that do that. It's just never been our thing because
Speaker 1: it just makes the crowd one family. So you've always
Speaker 1: kept it. Every ticket is the same price. There's a
Speaker 1: philosophy on merchandise too. For me, we didn't come from money,
Speaker 1: so anything you can ever get that you feel like
Speaker 1: you gotta steal on or bargain on. It fits better,
Speaker 1: it tastes better, all that stuff, so it's pretty cool, man. You.
Speaker 1: So you do your merch you do it out of
Speaker 1: a dent cotton, so it's gonna last forever. I see
Speaker 1: those shirts twenty years later at concerts. I see those
Speaker 1: shirts on eBay. They look brand new still, So that's
Speaker 1: what we do, and they're not fifty bucks a piece
Speaker 1: or bucks piece something like that. And it's cool. My
Speaker 1: thing is as an entertainer, you're what they call working. Okay,
Speaker 1: this has never been work ever. Okay, last time I worked,
Speaker 1: I was rough on houses when I was twenty three.
Speaker 1: This is you come out of the hole and they
Speaker 1: look at the ticket, they see the price, they look
Speaker 1: at the stage, the lighting, rig, everything, and they go,
Speaker 1: holy crap show and even started yet. And I feel
Speaker 1: like I got my money's worth already. Now when you
Speaker 1: come out of the hole, that crowd is happy. That
Speaker 1: crowd is not sitting there going okay, you better make
Speaker 1: this worth it never And when you get to come
Speaker 1: out to there, it turns to a party like that,
Speaker 1: and then the party goes all night long. It's fantastic, man,
Speaker 1: because you're never playing a gig for the gig itself.
Speaker 1: You're always playing the gig for the next time you
Speaker 1: come back. You want to be invited back. And I
Speaker 1: have shamelessly at the end of concerts had such a
Speaker 1: good time like in Notre Dame, and just pretty much
Speaker 1: invited myself back because I'm having the best time in
Speaker 1: the arena in the stadium. You were just talking about
Speaker 1: that feeling you get when you you come out of
Speaker 1: the hole, you come to come up to the stage.
Speaker 1: Do you still get nervous, because there's an interesting moment.
Speaker 1: Anthology three, the very start of it starts with the
Speaker 1: HBO special in Central Park, and there is documentary evidence.
Speaker 1: There's photos where you say I looked white as a ghost,
Speaker 1: and indeed there's photos of you backstage before you go
Speaker 1: on and you do not look well, brother, don't. I
Speaker 1: was scared of that. I mean literally scared of that. Shaken,
Speaker 1: and this is kind of what you do for a living,
Speaker 1: so you think you're gonna be okay. The problem was
Speaker 1: I didn't want to see the audience before you saw
Speaker 1: me see the audience because it's live TV and I
Speaker 1: want all those reactions. What I didn't plan on was
Speaker 1: walking towards the stage, the parks guys with me. He
Speaker 1: hands me a note. I said, what this. He goes,
Speaker 1: this was ninety minutes ago. This was the count ninety
Speaker 1: minutes ago. I under the note. The note says eight
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thousand, and I look at him. I said,
Speaker 1: you're telling me we have eight bout there. He goes no,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, ninety minutes ago you had eight d
Speaker 1: fifty people, and man, when when you look, I'm my
Speaker 1: town seventeen thousand people when we moved there. Okay, my
Speaker 1: towns now bedroom community of Oklahoma City. It's a lot bigger.
Speaker 1: But I've never seen that many people in my life
Speaker 1: in one place, and it scared the hell out of me,
Speaker 1: I'd be honest, and it took the whole show for
Speaker 1: me to even kind of absorb it. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of things when I see that show now that I
Speaker 1: don't even remember because you're just so damn scared and
Speaker 1: you still get nervous coming on stage. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: fun part, though, isn't it. It's the fun part. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you ever do like water slides anything
Speaker 1: like that. You're scared of death standing up there, but
Speaker 1: as you go, it's the most fun thing on the planet.
Speaker 1: Will imagine that getting to be new every time, And
Speaker 1: there's only two things in my life that are like that.
Speaker 1: Music is new every time and Miss your Wood is
Speaker 1: new every time you see her, And those are the
Speaker 1: things that bring you touring. Let's talk about how touring
Speaker 1: has changed for you over the years. Because when you
Speaker 1: go out next year, you're gonna be celebrating a thirty anniversary. Now,
Speaker 1: I want to go back to something you talked about
Speaker 1: in the anthology about your first tour in I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote you here. I love getting in a van with
Speaker 1: a bunch of stinky guys, laugh your ass off, go
Speaker 1: to a club, eat shitty food that's been there three days.
Speaker 1: The bologna has the rainbow on it, and then the
Speaker 1: girls show up for the boys and the band to
Speaker 1: play for It's the greatest thing, Yes, it is, so
Speaker 1: imagine the food's gotten a little better, yes, but it's
Speaker 1: still for the girls, isn't it. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: is I mean the thing about music that people don't understand,
Speaker 1: which I get. You don't get into this thing for money,
Speaker 1: because if you do, your your ship out of luckmost
Speaker 1: there is none. Right, there's no money when you start
Speaker 1: this thing. So when these guys come in and they
Speaker 1: want to make big business deals and they throw the
Speaker 1: money around, you look at him, go, that's laddering. I'm humbled.
Speaker 1: But the truth is, have you seen the stars born?
Speaker 1: When he looks at her and says, you're gonna have
Speaker 1: to dig in your soul and find your legs. Why
Speaker 1: are we doing what we're doing? So if you're gonna
Speaker 1: come and throw money around, great, that's that's fabulous. But
Speaker 1: what are we doing? Are we doing something that's going
Speaker 1: to define the time? Something like that. That's what I
Speaker 1: want to be a part of. I think that's what
Speaker 1: we all want to be a part of. But what
Speaker 1: things have changed? I mean, these songs, some of them
Speaker 1: have been with you for thirty years. How does the
Speaker 1: songs change for you? I'm not sure that they do
Speaker 1: tell you the truth that the thing all starts with
Speaker 1: the seed. And the seed for here was Alan Reynolds,
Speaker 1: the producer and the mentor, and his goal was he
Speaker 1: told me this when we first started, He goes, my
Speaker 1: goal is for you to look at that set list
Speaker 1: and the song that you're singing doesn't sound anything like
Speaker 1: the song you just sang, or the song that's coming after.
Speaker 1: And when you look down there and you see the
Speaker 1: thunder Rolls and you're playing the thunder Rolls, your goal
Speaker 1: this is any thing like Rodeo And it's sure nothing
Speaker 1: like We Shall be Free, which is coming up next,
Speaker 1: and after we Shall be Free. As much too young
Speaker 1: to feel this damn old that doesn't sound like anything
Speaker 1: we've done yet he did a great, great job that way.
Speaker 1: So you do interviews with people all the time that
Speaker 1: might not really know who you are, or they're doing
Speaker 1: it because that's their job for their magazine or whatever.
Speaker 1: And the one question they continue to ask is if
Speaker 1: there's one song you wish you never had to sing again,
Speaker 1: what would it be? Because they always want you to
Speaker 1: say friends and now Places. But what they don't understand
Speaker 1: is I haven't seen friends and no Places in twenty
Speaker 1: five years. I played the first chord and I watched
Speaker 1: the rest. The rest of the performance, it's it's a
Speaker 1: joy mad by bringing the crowd to the music, and
Speaker 1: by bringing the music to the crowd, it gets if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen a guard show, it gets to where
Speaker 1: you don't know who the entertainer and who the fan is.
Speaker 1: It certainly is that way now, right. I mean, the
Speaker 1: crowd can do most of the job for you. They
Speaker 1: always have, and it didn't matter if there was nine
Speaker 1: of them in the crowd. There's nine, They still do
Speaker 1: the job for you. They because we just don't want
Speaker 1: to come and sing, don't we. It's my favorite thing
Speaker 1: at a show if you want to hear me sing
Speaker 1: But okay, I do, man, I do want to hear
Speaker 1: you singing, because it's the voice of your soul. That's
Speaker 1: what singing is. It's the voice of hope. It's the
Speaker 1: voice of love. And I truly think if God sat
Speaker 1: down it and he opened his mouth, you would hear
Speaker 1: the music. You know, you're talking about the voice of hope,
Speaker 1: the voice of love. And you just mentioned we shall
Speaker 1: be free, And I want to ask you about that
Speaker 1: songs from and for a long time, it felt like
Speaker 1: we were traveling towards the wishes of that song, racial
Speaker 1: and sexual equality and all the other things. And there
Speaker 1: are moments now where it feels like we're traveling back,
Speaker 1: you know, like it feels like we're more divided than ever.
Speaker 1: How does it feel like that song or People Loving
Speaker 1: People and more recent songs, how do those songs play
Speaker 1: for you now? They play the same now? And if
Speaker 1: you're not more relevant, if not more needed to be
Speaker 1: heard than ever right now. Because here's the thing I
Speaker 1: don't buy into what's going on right now. I think
Speaker 1: what's happened is someone has given a microphone to the
Speaker 1: extremists to the point zero zero one of us the
Speaker 1: far left, the far right, and social media has given
Speaker 1: a mic to them that other ninety nine percent of
Speaker 1: us that live in the middle, we're still here. We're here.
Speaker 1: I get to see them every night, thank god. And
Speaker 1: they come and they hug each other, and they'll come
Speaker 1: with a Red Sox jersey on, a Yankee jersey on,
Speaker 1: and they got their arms around each other and they're singing.
Speaker 1: Because for me, music is the bridge, and so that's
Speaker 1: that's what it's all about. So we can talk about
Speaker 1: all day about how bad a shape we're in. I'm
Speaker 1: telling you, when it comes down to the cutting time,
Speaker 1: we'll show up and we're the same country we always where,
Speaker 1: we love one another. We'll pick on each other, but
Speaker 1: somebody outside picks on us, good luck to them, because
Speaker 1: we'll stand together. I mentioned before. One thing I really
Speaker 1: liked about Anthology three is it tells the story of
Speaker 1: your life by talking about you as a performer, going
Speaker 1: way back, going through your college years, back to your
Speaker 1: childhood when you were performing with your family. So we
Speaker 1: did this thing called talent Night at the house. Once
Speaker 1: a week. Mom would disappear one night out of the
Speaker 1: month to go sing at the mooselat Yeah, that's how
Speaker 1: Mom kind of still got her fixed to sing and
Speaker 1: still was a mom with six kids because she used
Speaker 1: to she toured with the swing band and stuff before
Speaker 1: she had children. She was a teenager. But once the
Speaker 1: kids started coming, Mom had to put it away for us.
Speaker 1: And I think that was one of the greatest joys
Speaker 1: of my life was for Christmas when she got a
Speaker 1: tour bus and said, Mom, anywhere we're at any time,
Speaker 1: here's your driver. You can tell us you're coming, not
Speaker 1: just go up and man, they lived on the road.
Speaker 1: They were gone. They were touring all the time. And
Speaker 1: it was the greatest time in my life as far
Speaker 1: as his son, because my sister was out, my brother
Speaker 1: was out with us, our mom and dad was out there.
Speaker 1: That was that was heaven for me those family nights
Speaker 1: that you were mentioning, what kind of stuff would you
Speaker 1: be singing that? Well, the crazy thing is, man, you know,
Speaker 1: we do music in sports, that's what our family does.
Speaker 1: So we have all Americans, we have all Staters, and
Speaker 1: I was never one of those. So I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you it's the same way in music. We have some
Speaker 1: of the greatest musicians, greatest singers, and I ain't one
Speaker 1: of them in our family. And it all spawns from
Speaker 1: my dad was a great musician, and my mom was,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put her in the top five female voices
Speaker 1: I've ever heard in my lifetime. That's where you learned
Speaker 1: to saying, do you feel that's where school started? For sure?
Speaker 1: Mom always then Betsy was the consummate entertainer, so you
Speaker 1: learned a lot from there. So before I ever picked
Speaker 1: up a guitar, I had so much of it in
Speaker 1: my head that playing the guitar was kind of like
Speaker 1: just a formality of where I guess it was hidden.
Speaker 1: But I always thought I was going to be a
Speaker 1: professional athlete because I always thought I was better than
Speaker 1: I was the only thing that kept me from being
Speaker 1: a professional athlete was my athletic ability or lack of,
Speaker 1: you know. And so uh so it was college when
Speaker 1: you realized, Okay, real life now is way, and you're
Speaker 1: not gonna be a professional athlete. What are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: And I got my degree in advertising, I thought I
Speaker 1: was gonna be an advertiser and ended up one credit
Speaker 1: hour short to graduate and had to go back and
Speaker 1: I started playing music to support myself. You say, college
Speaker 1: is where you realize real life is waiting. But there
Speaker 1: are also these stories. In Anthology three, there's a great
Speaker 1: story from Tie England saying I met him. I was
Speaker 1: living two floors up, started playing music and we used
Speaker 1: to put a blanket on the windows so we could
Speaker 1: go all night into the day and just keep playing music.
Speaker 1: So that doesn't sound like real life, was there quite? Then? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, college is that thing where you can run
Speaker 1: from real life. But once you graduate or get out,
Speaker 1: and you've got no excuses left. The difference. The problem
Speaker 1: that killed Ty and me was I was a senior
Speaker 1: and he was a sophomore. So I had the routine down.
Speaker 1: I had all my classes in the afternoon. Ty had
Speaker 1: those seven am classes that want you to play until
Speaker 1: five am just playing music. You ain't gonna get up
Speaker 1: for the seven am. So his dad he ainked his
Speaker 1: bud out of college because his grades were horrible and
Speaker 1: took him back home to Oklahoma City. But then again,
Speaker 1: there it is, there's another year of my education. It's
Speaker 1: Tie England. You're walking around with a guy that's a
Speaker 1: beautiful young kid, fantastic guitar player, unbelievable voice. Anywhere we
Speaker 1: would go with hey, garth grade. But that kid right there,
Speaker 1: that ty kid, he can sing. So it was school
Speaker 1: for me. I enjoyed our time together, learned a lot,
Speaker 1: and it only made sense that me and him would
Speaker 1: be buddies when we launched out as a solo artist
Speaker 1: for Capitol Records. So let's talk about Triple Live, the sequel.
Speaker 1: I guess to Double Live, yes, and commemorate. It's the
Speaker 1: tour three hundred and nineties shows, seventy nine cities, six
Speaker 1: point three or is it six point four? It was
Speaker 1: a bunch of voices. It was beautiful. I always say,
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen any from me, I can't call
Speaker 1: them fans, and you sure yourself can't call them tickets.
Speaker 1: You can't call them customers voices because I hear every
Speaker 1: one of them. I've read. Tell that you have incredible
Speaker 1: recall on on the shows you've played. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's the same way if you hang around baseball players,
Speaker 1: they can tell you what the count is, where they're
Speaker 1: at all and they play, you know, a hundred eighty
Speaker 1: games a year, and you're like, I don't know how
Speaker 1: they do that. But music, yeah, all just comes back
Speaker 1: to you. If somebody says, Land Over Maryland and the
Speaker 1: US are Arena. I remember it was the sickest day
Speaker 1: of my life. Remember those things, so you know you're
Speaker 1: talking to the UH, the Beach Wagon and Myrtle Beach.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of things that went on there that
Speaker 1: we can't even talk about, but you remember them like
Speaker 1: they were yesterday, even though they were the clubs that
Speaker 1: held maybe people all the way up to the stadiums
Speaker 1: that you know that the people just went on forever.
Speaker 1: Triple Live. There's a few new songs and recent records,
Speaker 1: but there's one I want to ask you about your
Speaker 1: version of and Ashley McBride's Yes. For her, it's Girl
Speaker 1: Going Nowhere. For you, it's Guy Going no What made
Speaker 1: you want to do that song? But when you first
Speaker 1: hear it, it's like if you hear and people go,
Speaker 1: are you kidding me? You're going to compare these two songs? Yes,
Speaker 1: I will compare these two songs, Guy Going Nowhere and
Speaker 1: turn the page their road anthems. If you've done this
Speaker 1: for a living, you've lived turned the page and you've
Speaker 1: lived Guy going Out and she just she nailed it.
Speaker 1: I just took it to kind of apply to me.
Speaker 1: She took it to apply to her, so her lyrics
Speaker 1: a little different. And so when we did this thing
Speaker 1: live and it got the response, I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: This will tell you what kind of song it is.
Speaker 1: There's a sign in Notre Dame eight five thou people,
Speaker 1: and you don't want to stop this show. You don't
Speaker 1: want to slow it down. You don't want to slow down.
Speaker 1: You sure don't want to slow down with a ballad.
Speaker 1: And you sure don't want to slow it down with
Speaker 1: a ballad they've never heard. Then you play it a
Speaker 1: Notre Dame stadium and it got so quiet you could
Speaker 1: hear a pin drop. And on the things that she
Speaker 1: put in that song where you want the crowd to respond,
Speaker 1: they responded like they had heard it their whole life.
Speaker 1: That's a mark of a great song. It's a mark
Speaker 1: of a great songwriter. And you talk about Ashley McBride,
Speaker 1: she does singing in a songwriting better than anybody. This
Speaker 1: is a song about being told you're gonna go nowhere
Speaker 1: as a country singer. And then when you hear the
Speaker 1: crowd when the lights come up, you feel like you're
Speaker 1: in your place. Yeah. Um, it used to be a
Speaker 1: little tough for me. My dad. My dad and my
Speaker 1: mom were my biggest fans. They really were. But my
Speaker 1: dad was very much a realist, the same way I
Speaker 1: am with my children. So he wouldn't squash your dre aam.
Speaker 1: So she's just gonna tell you, if you're really gonna
Speaker 1: dream like that, it's a hell of a lot of work.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you want to put that much
Speaker 1: work into it kind of thing. And uh, he said, Garth,
Speaker 1: way in the world you move in to Nashville. I said, Dad,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you. I got people that come and
Speaker 1: watch me when I play, and they just say, you
Speaker 1: need to pursue this. And I remember his words the
Speaker 1: rest of my life. He says, Garth. They tell everybody that, yep,
Speaker 1: you're right. They do, You're right. But I'm going to
Speaker 1: believe them to fill in the confidence I don't have
Speaker 1: in myself. I'm gonna take the confidence they have me.
Speaker 1: We're gonna pack up, I'm gonna go, We'll try it.
Speaker 1: And uh, really really glad I did. Obviously, there comes
Speaker 1: a point down the line where you must have had
Speaker 1: a follow up conversation. No, my dad was always a realist.
Speaker 1: I remember telling Dad, I said, Dad, because I didn't
Speaker 1: even know how to tell you this. But we just
Speaker 1: put on her first kind of big outdoor concert, I said, Dad.
Speaker 1: We we sold twenty three thousand tickets to this thing.
Speaker 1: He's congratulations, Bud, But never forget that's twenty three thousand
Speaker 1: people you could disappoint. So, like Holy Count, I never
Speaker 1: saw the other side of the coin. So what he
Speaker 1: was saying, I believe what he was saying. Do your homework, study,
Speaker 1: be ready for it. The victory did not come in
Speaker 1: the selling of tickets. The victory comes by those people
Speaker 1: walking out that stadium going if that guy comes back here,
Speaker 1: I'll be here. And that's what he taught me. You know.
Speaker 1: It's funny. Going back to Anthology three, there's a moment
Speaker 1: where you talk about being on tour and losing touch
Speaker 1: with your own music and Canada, and the advice you
Speaker 1: get from Alan Reynolds is are you listening to the
Speaker 1: songs you're singing? God? Could it be that simple? Could
Speaker 1: it really be that simple? We're in Canada, we're making
Speaker 1: the run across northern Canada, so it's all the greatest
Speaker 1: towns to play too. So it's Winnipeg, it's Edmonton. It's Calgary.
Speaker 1: Great places to play, but I cannot find did in
Speaker 1: my soul for the life of me. So I don't
Speaker 1: know if we talk about this in the mythology. If
Speaker 1: we don't, I should have put a bounty on my
Speaker 1: own head to try and get things jumped up. And
Speaker 1: it was a five dollar bounty for anybody who could
Speaker 1: knock me on my ask during the show. Yeah come up, Okay,
Speaker 1: So this was exactly so. It was just to get
Speaker 1: everybody fired up, and we had fun and it was
Speaker 1: moved around. But still, no matter all the tricks, and
Speaker 1: no matter how you dress it up, if it ain't
Speaker 1: burning inside, there's this cold air that comes out when
Speaker 1: you see And so I called Alan Reynolds said, Alan,
Speaker 1: I'm not done. I don't know what it is. I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm tired or what. And Alan Reynolds goes,
Speaker 1: are you listening to what you're singing? And what do
Speaker 1: you mean that they want the thunder Rolls. We played
Speaker 1: exactly this. Now he goes, but are you listening? Man?
Speaker 1: That night I listened to the lyrics of Much Too Young.
Speaker 1: It took me back to sitting on that There was
Speaker 1: a coffee table in a house and still water, no
Speaker 1: chairs around it, or on our knees, sitting there scribbling
Speaker 1: on notebook paper, writing much too young. When Randy Taylor
Speaker 1: looks at me, goes, I just want a line that says,
Speaker 1: a worn out tape of Crystal Dude. That's all along,
Speaker 1: and it all brought it back, and man, everything came
Speaker 1: with it too. Once that fire starts burning, then the
Speaker 1: whole arena started to get on fire. And I have
Speaker 1: not looked back since that day. I have never had
Speaker 1: a cold Speller dry spell since shows some of them
Speaker 1: were fourteen sixteen in twelve days. You were doing two
Speaker 1: shows a day. In some of these places, you're doing
Speaker 1: matinee shows, which used to be you go back to
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, that's the way it was done. Even
Speaker 1: in the seventies. The Stones played two shows a day
Speaker 1: on their seventy two tour. But nobody does that anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I gotta tell you, there wasn't one of those
Speaker 1: shows that was just another show. Never was all because
Speaker 1: of that talk, and that is the power of the song.
Speaker 1: And when people go, what's the future of music and
Speaker 1: music business? We have no future if it's not for
Speaker 1: the song. Okay, since you brought up the future of
Speaker 1: the music business, albums are streaming on Amazon now, but
Speaker 1: you've resisted the streaming era and you still want people
Speaker 1: to interact with your stuff as albums. How long are
Speaker 1: you going to hold out or you gotta you gotta
Speaker 1: hold it. It's it's who I am, So it's it's
Speaker 1: just who I am. All streaming does is become for
Speaker 1: me and and no offense to anybody. This is my opinion.
Speaker 1: Streaming just simply becomes background music for whatever you're doing.
Speaker 1: It's not the reason why you do what you do.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be people that find music and find songs.
Speaker 1: But the truth is, let's define what music is. A
Speaker 1: radio single is the song that pisses the least amount
Speaker 1: of people off. It's safe, it's commercial, fair enough. And
Speaker 1: I've got songs like Unanswered Prayers, i got songs like
Speaker 1: the Change that We're singles that I think you're the
Speaker 1: most important pieces I'll ever speak as an artist. But
Speaker 1: what is that song when you have the barrel of
Speaker 1: the gun in your mouth and you hear that makes
Speaker 1: you stop, makes you think. If you're anybody that's thirty
Speaker 1: years old or older, there's album cuts. It was the
Speaker 1: things that weren't safe. There were the things that really
Speaker 1: took the music and the lyric into your world. Those
Speaker 1: things are here and those things are important to hear.
Speaker 1: So you sit down to listen to Hotel California. There's
Speaker 1: a single on there called Hotel California. The album is
Speaker 1: called Hotel California, and for me, it's thirty something minutes
Speaker 1: of just righteousness of highs lows turning it up. There's
Speaker 1: not a greater song for me. There's that room where
Speaker 1: all the great songs live. Life in the Fast Line
Speaker 1: might be the perfect rock and rolls on, but pretty
Speaker 1: Maids all in a row? Are you kidding me? Just
Speaker 1: as equally strong, as equally as important. One was a
Speaker 1: single and one was not, but yet both affected my life.
Speaker 1: So my thing is just what the album does is
Speaker 1: give the artist a voice. When you look and you've
Speaker 1: listened to a hundred songs and it's a hundred different artists,
Speaker 1: you have a chance of losing what an iconic artist is.
Speaker 1: We're expecting another studio album from you next year. All
Speaker 1: Day Long is the song we've heard from it, but
Speaker 1: that's been out since the summer. What can you tell
Speaker 1: us about this record. It starts with a song called
Speaker 1: the Road I'm on right Now with Amazon. If you
Speaker 1: do the album, you get the Road I'm On with
Speaker 1: and the Road I'm On is just a simple salute
Speaker 1: to very much like if you had the album Fresh Horses.
Speaker 1: It was a song called the Old Stuff on It
Speaker 1: just talked about touring and The Road I'm On just
Speaker 1: talks about the road I'm on now as an entertainer
Speaker 1: as he and being where we're at. Because for me,
Speaker 1: I think music should give you a piece of the artist.
Speaker 1: With everything that's out there, you should know something more
Speaker 1: about the artist once you hear a song. And Notre
Speaker 1: Dame you played something the Music one oh one Trilogy,
Speaker 1: which was a Gabe Dixon song like again and then
Speaker 1: also let it be in hage you how did this
Speaker 1: come to be called the Music one oh one Trilogy.
Speaker 1: What it is is we're gonna launch a new tradition.
Speaker 1: We started at Notre Dame and we played colleges. We're
Speaker 1: gonna do this thing called Music one oh one, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna make sure the kids in the audience do
Speaker 1: not forget the greatest artists and the greatest song. It's
Speaker 1: kind of feel like it's our job. So what we'll
Speaker 1: do is we'll mix something new was something old that
Speaker 1: kind of ties together. So for us, Gabe Dixon, everybody
Speaker 1: here in town knows him. Great session player, great singer.
Speaker 1: He was an artist for a little bit, but you
Speaker 1: can tell his love and passion is in songwriting. He
Speaker 1: was with Paul McCartney for a run and then legend
Speaker 1: has it that Paul asked him to stay on, and
Speaker 1: he said, Man, I just really want to pursue songwriting
Speaker 1: and do my own thing. I don't care who you are.
Speaker 1: If Sir Paul asked you to stay on, I would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you want me? When we sell my family? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know what you know? Whatever I need to do. Yes.
Speaker 1: And this kid was so hell bent on just creating
Speaker 1: music that that's what he does and he's fabulous, a
Speaker 1: great artist. So it starts with Live Again off him.
Speaker 1: But when you play Live Again, if you ever heard
Speaker 1: the song, it's Billy Joel meets Sir Paul McCartney head on.
Speaker 1: It's gorgeous, but it only lent itself to let it
Speaker 1: be and hate Jude. Pretty cool, but that is the
Speaker 1: one and only time probably will ever be played, so
Speaker 1: the music one on one trilogy, then we could maybe
Speaker 1: get Askley McBride's guy Going Nowhere with Bob Seekers to
Speaker 1: turn the page. Yeah, so our job is to just,
Speaker 1: I want to say, educate. But the truth is, when
Speaker 1: songs are so great, I think the kids already know them.
Speaker 1: It's just to make sure that they understand what a
Speaker 1: great song is, what great artists are. And uh, my
Speaker 1: thing is if we go, hey, you know what, we
Speaker 1: already know that, that's a lesson. I don't think you
Speaker 1: can learn enough. Something you brought up a little while
Speaker 1: ago when you were talking about the sanctity of the album,
Speaker 1: what's the song you want to hear? Gun to your head?
Speaker 1: What's the song you want to hear? So, so let
Speaker 1: me ask you, since you brought it up, what's the
Speaker 1: one you want to hear at any time? And we've
Speaker 1: mentioned a couple of them, turn the page. Ricky Skag's
Speaker 1: got a song called two Highways. George Strait has a
Speaker 1: song called I Can't See Texas from Here. The crazy thing, though,
Speaker 1: is we take a fifteen minute break, you come back
Speaker 1: Gun into your head, tell me the songs. There'll be
Speaker 1: three different ones minutes there'll be three different ones. That's
Speaker 1: what I love. I just love music, and I love
Speaker 1: where it comes from. So when you hear Girl Going
Speaker 1: Nowhere or Pretty Maids All in a Row or Princess Musicology,
Speaker 1: all these things come into your head as just great
Speaker 1: music that have kind of built and defined you as
Speaker 1: a person. I would have to ask somebody who's not
Speaker 1: in music for a living to see if music means
Speaker 1: the same thing to them, if it's a fabric of
Speaker 1: their life that they can point too. I'm sitting here
Speaker 1: in this room staring at a young lady that I've
Speaker 1: known since she was a kid, and even though she's
Speaker 1: in the music business, she's not an artist herself, but
Speaker 1: songs have built every minute of her life. When she
Speaker 1: remembers her mother, she'll remember certain artists. Remember your dad,
Speaker 1: You remember certain artists. And I think that's the power
Speaker 1: of music. So here's the bottom line. Record labels own
Speaker 1: the music. Artists do not. So that's the first mistake
Speaker 1: we commonly make is, oh my god, why did that
Speaker 1: artist allow his song to be on an ex Lax commercial. Well,
Speaker 1: we as artists don't own our music. Very rarely does
Speaker 1: that happen, So it's the record labels, so it's more
Speaker 1: like a commodity or a piece of product for them,
Speaker 1: but for us the listener, it's everything. So when you
Speaker 1: say what's the future of music and music business, it's
Speaker 1: still always going to be a business. It's still gonna
Speaker 1: be product that's traded. But for us as a listener,
Speaker 1: I think it's the gospel and I would love to
Speaker 1: see music treated like that. But you understand why I can't,
Speaker 1: because art and business I can't live together. Sometimes they do.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you've harold a little too hardticke and on a
Speaker 1: mildly I want to take page from you know, before
Speaker 1: we go, I just want to ask you one question.
Speaker 1: I'm pulling out Anthology Part three, lovely book that I've
Speaker 1: mentioned a few times, and we open up for those
Speaker 1: of you are listening home, and open up to a
Speaker 1: page with a picture of Garth with one of his
Speaker 1: first Tell me about that mustache. Don't you love it? Man? Okay?
Speaker 1: So this must have been when Sandy, right about when
Speaker 1: Sandy and I got married, because in all our wedding
Speaker 1: pictures I have that mustache. Oh yeah, and Sandy hated it.
Speaker 1: I didn't know anybody that liked it. Well, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not surprised you didn't. What were you thinking? And then
Speaker 1: why did you keep it? Are you kidding me? Man?
Speaker 1: It's cool? Look at that? Is that not cool? It's
Speaker 1: the ugliest thing on the planet. I would vaguely describe
Speaker 1: it as you look like the cable guy, but also
Speaker 1: like you're gonna steal something out of my house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was us, man, But everybody in that band had
Speaker 1: facial hair, so I had to be cool, right. That
Speaker 1: is a great picture. Man. So the kid next to me,
Speaker 1: Mike Skinner, when you say you go to school, he's
Speaker 1: one of my years of education. This kid was a
Speaker 1: self taught fiddle player that played kind of southern rock getar.
Speaker 1: So when I heard a fiddle playing with this kind
Speaker 1: of muscle, it made sense that I love George Straight
Speaker 1: and I love Crystal Doo, but also love Boston Can
Speaker 1: These two music's live together. Two songs in Garth Brooks's career.
Speaker 1: If people are familiar with Garth Brooks's career, Alabama Clay
Speaker 1: and a song called Fit for a King. Alabama Clay
Speaker 1: was off the original album Fit for King off sevens.
Speaker 1: Both of them have the hardest electric guitar i've ever
Speaker 1: heard in country music, and they're both the most traditional
Speaker 1: country music songs that I've ever cut in my career.
Speaker 1: So Mike Skinner was the bridge that showed me you
Speaker 1: could put those two things together. We go through here,
Speaker 1: Jed Lindsay, Tom Skinner, Troy Jones, they all taught me stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm really lucky that anybody that I have sat and
Speaker 1: talked with has been a founding block that has built
Speaker 1: my life. And the great thing is twenty stories later,
Speaker 1: a thirty stories later in the career, as far as
Speaker 1: years ago, I'm still laying down foundational block. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: are things that change my life that I get to
Speaker 1: do in music and fine, which makes me think things
Speaker 1: that last forever usually take forever to build. So my
Speaker 1: job is to do everything I can do while I'll
Speaker 1: live in and breathe, and if I've done my job
Speaker 1: right a hundred years after I'm gone, hopefully the music
Speaker 1: we care about, the artist, the music lives. Garth. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much for joining us all that. It's my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Man Inside the Studio is an I Heart Radio original podcast.
Speaker 1: This episode was written and hosted by me Joe Leavy.
Speaker 1: We'd like to give a big banks to Garth Brooks
Speaker 1: and of course Pearl Records, and you can follow inside
Speaker 1: the studio on I Heart Radio per subscribe wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to podcasts.