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