Speaker 1: All right, this is a a very special episode for us,
Speaker 1: episode one hundred. I always said from the infancy stages
Speaker 1: of this podcast, and once we hit one hundred, we
Speaker 1: are officially a real podcast. So after this episode concludes
Speaker 1: with Christian Bush, we will be a real podcast. And
Speaker 1: I thank you all for listening to this thing and
Speaker 1: making it big and relatively speaking big and might deep.
Speaker 1: Good job. My friend been been at it since the beginning.
Speaker 1: I bought all the equipment, didn't tell the company what
Speaker 1: we're doing it. Mike set it up, been in two
Speaker 1: houses and here we are episode one. How didn't get
Speaker 1: your hands up? We're about to start with a Christian
Speaker 1: in a second. But I just want to say thank
Speaker 1: you so much for listening. We're trying to get on
Speaker 1: songwriters and producers and artists and have our long conversations
Speaker 1: just can't hear anywhere else. I think we've been able
Speaker 1: to do that. And check out just scroll through and
Speaker 1: check out Mary Moore's, Chris Stapleton and Ross Comperiman and
Speaker 1: Shane McNally. There are so many there, just stories up stories.
Speaker 1: We've tried to bring that to you. Even John Oates
Speaker 1: from Hall of Notes. You know, we've had a John Mayer,
Speaker 1: a lot, a lot of ones that aren't in the
Speaker 1: format too. So I want to say that on the
Speaker 1: Nashville Podcast Network and here we are, Episode one hundred,
Speaker 1: we also have a network of shows. I like to
Speaker 1: encourage you to check out Good Company with Jake Owen.
Speaker 1: I like to encourage you to check out Geeking Out
Speaker 1: with Christian Bush, which is not even about music really,
Speaker 1: it's just about people geeking out over things. Whiskey ref
Speaker 1: Raff with the guest from Whiskey Riff to a show
Speaker 1: from Chicago about country music has the fans perspective. So
Speaker 1: thank you for letting us do that special music for
Speaker 1: episode one hundred. Although I might keep this and I'll
Speaker 1: like to you like I kind of fee all and
Speaker 1: I love that get your hands up. Here we are
Speaker 1: Episode one hundred. Here we are, Episode one hundred. I
Speaker 1: didn't know would be so much funding. Episode one hundred.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna in this down. We're gonna start
Speaker 1: with Christian Bush. But appreciate everybody for listening. And Mike,
Speaker 1: let's keep this music, okay, because I feel like eating
Speaker 1: something human. It feels like a zombie movie. Alright, Christian Bush,
Speaker 1: Episode hundre. Here we go. I welcome to the biggest
Speaker 1: episode in the history of our podcast. For two reasons, yeah,
Speaker 1: for two reasons. One, it's our one episode. Yes, oh
Speaker 1: my god. We were going to do some sort of
Speaker 1: special for one hundred. This is honest, God truth, and
Speaker 1: I said, well, Christian is going to come up in
Speaker 1: the next few weeks. So we saved episode one hundred
Speaker 1: because I wanted it to be you, and that's why.
Speaker 1: So it's all. And I've always said a car or something,
Speaker 1: no does everybody in the room is a thing. Not
Speaker 1: so much. But you can have my hat. I guess
Speaker 1: we can trade hats. So it's are I've always said
Speaker 1: to myself, you're not a legitimate podcast that has proven
Speaker 1: that you will stay the test of time until you
Speaker 1: hit one hundred episodes can be, but you needed a
Speaker 1: hundred so people trust that you were going to be there.
Speaker 1: And so we have over a hundred hours of content
Speaker 1: of artists, producers, songwriters, and this is our one hundred.
Speaker 1: So we're officially today. We're really yes, that's right, we
Speaker 1: are a real podcast. Everyone yep, So that decide. I'm
Speaker 1: very happy you're here. Mr Christian. Well, thank you for
Speaker 1: having me, but so much to talk about, and I
Speaker 1: feel like, why don't we start with today? Because Christian
Speaker 1: has a new podcast that's up now and we'll get
Speaker 1: to that, and we're gonna get to life. But why
Speaker 1: don't we just start with today and let's talk about
Speaker 1: sugar Land coming back. So I had mentioned to you
Speaker 1: that it was difficult for me to interview you and
Speaker 1: Jennifer because I just knew too much. I knew you
Speaker 1: guys were coming back together before, and I'm a good
Speaker 1: secret keeper. Yeah, but we'll back story that. Okay, I'll
Speaker 1: back story for you. And this microphone the right one. O. UM,
Speaker 1: I remember the moment where uh, my phone blew up
Speaker 1: because um, people and that were listeners, and especially people
Speaker 1: in the industry knew that you and I knew each
Speaker 1: other because I you invited me to write on your
Speaker 1: your first record, and you had said something on the
Speaker 1: air about, you know what, why don't we bring sugar
Speaker 1: Land back together together? And that was like a week
Speaker 1: after I had gotten a phone call that said, hey, so,
Speaker 1: if by chance, would this be something you'd be interested
Speaker 1: in from Jennifer and and her people. And I was
Speaker 1: like huh, and she said, look, do you can't tell
Speaker 1: anybody that I've called you. And the first thing that
Speaker 1: I thought to myself was, oh, my god, they think
Speaker 1: I told Bobby, And well, that's what I was worried
Speaker 1: because I have like five friends on Earth, and I
Speaker 1: would consider you one of them. But I'm not sure
Speaker 1: I would have disclosed that to you even if we
Speaker 1: were friends. I did not, but I immediately thought that
Speaker 1: I was. Oh. So I called my people and say,
Speaker 1: can you call Bobby's people and tell him that he's
Speaker 1: too close to the truth. He's flying deep throat, is
Speaker 1: too close to Watergate. You know, I'm random. And because
Speaker 1: I got a call that day from Tom, who we
Speaker 1: both worked with, and Tom says, hey, can you come
Speaker 1: to the office, I said, yeah, sure, I really get
Speaker 1: called in. He just didn't want to tie text anything
Speaker 1: or he goes, hey, I need to not talk about
Speaker 1: sugar Land. So I think it's a great idea. What
Speaker 1: if we got him back together for one show? Hey,
Speaker 1: we need to not talk about sugar Land because they're
Speaker 1: talking about sugar Land. And I was like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: out nothing. It was completely random and rare, and I
Speaker 1: just felt my heart like they should be together again,
Speaker 1: and I'm if for everybody listening that thinks maybe there
Speaker 1: was nothing up. No, but I love your thank you.
Speaker 1: Apparently it has the ability to will things into existence.
Speaker 1: So I'd like you to say some other things on
Speaker 1: the on the air, like you know, still the same
Speaker 1: number one record. I feel still the same should be
Speaker 1: a number one record. So I was trying to think
Speaker 1: back because I don't know how we know, how we
Speaker 1: actually met met? Okay, I do, I do? I do.
Speaker 1: I loved Southern your record, That's what I want. What
Speaker 1: I felt was because I didn't know you. I felt
Speaker 1: like Trailer Hitch was one of those songs they screwed
Speaker 1: up on Big Time because it was so good and
Speaker 1: radio didn't give it the shot that it deserved. And
Speaker 1: I remember just screaming about radio just I couldn't believe
Speaker 1: that that was not a massive hit because it was
Speaker 1: so good, and I was a little bit upset everybody,
Speaker 1: and I said, hey, why aren't we helping this song?
Speaker 1: It's so good. I didn't know you. We never met,
Speaker 1: and that was the first time that someone said, hey,
Speaker 1: you would you like to meet Christian And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: sings and I didn't know came up came to the studio.
Speaker 1: We talk, We talked a bit, but a lot of
Speaker 1: people come to the studio. I talked a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and I don't ever even do anything outside of my bubble,
Speaker 1: and uh, I say, hey, we should get together, and
Speaker 1: never do I follow that up because I never think
Speaker 1: it's real. But for some reason I felt like you
Speaker 1: were real, Like you like, hey, you want to just
Speaker 1: come over, we'll do something. We'll right. And so you
Speaker 1: were back in town because your permanent residences in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: your main residence, and you're like, hey, I'm not gonna place,
Speaker 1: come over. Well, I was writing a record and I
Speaker 1: went over and we wrote every day is a good day.
Speaker 1: Every day it is a good day, and that's how.
Speaker 1: And I was like, I have to be friends with
Speaker 1: that dude. He has three iPads going seven guitars to
Speaker 1: mandolin's his whif he's playing with his feet on a
Speaker 1: poco ball. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: He's crazy, like I have it in a different way.
Speaker 1: And then I thought, yeah, we should be friend. And
Speaker 1: then since then we've actually kept up a relationship. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't live here, so I can't. I don't have
Speaker 1: a whole lot of, you know, time, but I also
Speaker 1: I'm not here very often. I know you're not, but
Speaker 1: I do appreciate it. You know. It's I've been doing
Speaker 1: this for a very long time, and it's very rare
Speaker 1: that you find like minded people within the same work
Speaker 1: that you do or and like minded for me also
Speaker 1: includes this um passion would drive of things that you
Speaker 1: want to do. You know, It's like I wake up
Speaker 1: in the morning and I feel like there's just not
Speaker 1: enough time left to write all the songs I want
Speaker 1: to write, or to do all the things I want
Speaker 1: to do, and I kind of get that off of
Speaker 1: you when I'm around you, Like I get that feeling
Speaker 1: like and I may be wrong, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'm being presumptuous, but you got a lot you know
Speaker 1: that you're that you're it feels like in my imagination
Speaker 1: that you want to jump into Like if it was
Speaker 1: a movie time, you'd be like, yeah, let's make a movie. Hey,
Speaker 1: you want to go? You know, do we have enough
Speaker 1: money with Let's let's buy a ticket on SpaceX, you know,
Speaker 1: let's you know whatever it is. My therapist, you nail me,
Speaker 1: and I kind of but I like that about and I,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm super suspicious of human beings after doing
Speaker 1: this long enough that not everyone's intentions are out in
Speaker 1: front of them. They're always a little bit guarded, and
Speaker 1: your intentions are always in front. So I appreciate that
Speaker 1: about you. You know, it's funny too, as I was
Speaker 1: mentioning to you before we started, can you turn the
Speaker 1: air down a bit? It's a little hot near and
Speaker 1: Mr Bush isn't a coat, and I want to make
Speaker 1: sure I'm in my French provincial outfit. To me a
Speaker 1: vest under a nice jacket. Well it's actually stitched into
Speaker 1: the jail. What the jacket with the vest built in?
Speaker 1: How about that? Very lazily French. And then there's a
Speaker 1: little French up here. We French. What did you do
Speaker 1: today to be so dressed? You know? And look I
Speaker 1: I even put on my leopard glass, my kind of
Speaker 1: leopard breathing glasses. Um. I was helping Tyler Farr pick
Speaker 1: songs for his new record that I'm producing, and I
Speaker 1: thought that, um, the way I would intimidate the song
Speaker 1: pictures that I'm the the side of the table was
Speaker 1: to bring my pencils and my pencil sharpener and dressed
Speaker 1: this way today. This is the opposite of Tyler farr
Speaker 1: And and and just quietly sharpened my pencils to a
Speaker 1: fine point while I looked at their songs as they
Speaker 1: pitched me crappy songs and then and then yeah, I
Speaker 1: just needed I needed something today to intimidate, because I'm
Speaker 1: the least intimidating person on earth in my imagination when
Speaker 1: I woke up that this is this is what would help.
Speaker 1: It's crazy and cool that you're working with Tyler, because
Speaker 1: I like Tyler a lot. And I feel like because
Speaker 1: now I kind of know you as a producer because
Speaker 1: a Lindsay and you know, you did a wildly successful
Speaker 1: album and it's not even started to be a successful
Speaker 1: it's going to be. And you did it with at
Speaker 1: a time with Lindsay when they did have a single out,
Speaker 1: like they did an odd thing and said go make
Speaker 1: a record, and you and Lindsay go make a record
Speaker 1: and there was no single plan, there was nothing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you made a record with going into it with out
Speaker 1: of sound a sign to you, right, And I think
Speaker 1: that's maybe where I can help when it's an artist
Speaker 1: and you did with her, and I was you know,
Speaker 1: Lindy and I are still close, but we were really
Speaker 1: closed in Apparently I was the very last to know.
Speaker 1: Oh really as her producer, you know, and I live
Speaker 1: here and you and I knew each other, but I
Speaker 1: had no idea. And so I'm in there like helping
Speaker 1: her pick songs and like, oh, I hear you're writing this.
Speaker 1: I don't know, what do you think about this? You know?
Speaker 1: And I just never brought up the question, like in
Speaker 1: relationship songs that sounds like you're feeling good about a relationship.
Speaker 1: I never asked what relationship. So finally she had to
Speaker 1: actually stop me and go, hey, I just want you
Speaker 1: to know. I know you don't listen to the radio
Speaker 1: often and because in Atlanta we don't get your show.
Speaker 1: Uh and um, She's like, I want you to know
Speaker 1: that you know, Bobby and I are dating. I was like,
Speaker 1: you're freaking kidding me for a while and she was
Speaker 1: like no, really, I was like, well, thanks, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: So which songs am I ascribing to this? You like
Speaker 1: to think of me in the head and you have
Speaker 1: right now she has at the time of us recording,
Speaker 1: this her highest song ever with Criminal. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: twenty nine right now, her highest song ever. Yes, and
Speaker 1: I remember hearing the work text and then after she
Speaker 1: was done with you, I was like, oh yeah, Christians
Speaker 1: adding a whole live bit. It's like, too brilliant. It's
Speaker 1: really cool to see you in that element. I've been
Speaker 1: able to see all the sides except the dad's side.
Speaker 1: Have me as your kid, and then I'll have it all.
Speaker 1: I'll know at all. Let me come living every one
Speaker 1: of your kids and I get it. My kids are
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, well that's okay. I got sidetracked
Speaker 1: by far. You are doing Tyler's I'm doing Tyler's record
Speaker 1: with him right now, and Matson and Budlines record. Pardon
Speaker 1: Who's uh? Who's the duo? You did? Uh? Walker McGuire.
Speaker 1: I didn't produce that, but I wrote their song that's
Speaker 1: on the radio and an that's what it is called. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's why you put it in the force. I was
Speaker 1: in that little box. I was just it was I'm
Speaker 1: having to pinch myself recently. You know, you you do
Speaker 1: this work for so long and you have to get
Speaker 1: no so often that there are times in which things
Speaker 1: fall into place, much like you know you see actors
Speaker 1: on movies, like suddenly they look like they're super hot
Speaker 1: because they're in five movies at the same time. Well
Speaker 1: that wasn't really the case. They made the movies at
Speaker 1: different times, and the studios just accidentally released them all
Speaker 1: at the same time. And suddenly, you know, Iron Man
Speaker 1: is Robert Downe Jr. Has a comeback or something. Well,
Speaker 1: you know what, you know, all this stuff happened, and
Speaker 1: now it wasn't didn't happen on top of each other.
Speaker 1: It just released on top of each other. And I
Speaker 1: have a very difficult time taking the moment to stick
Speaker 1: of candles into a cake and light them and then
Speaker 1: blow them out and take a moment to acknowledge what's happening.
Speaker 1: So I've been trying to do that this year a
Speaker 1: little bit, and things have been all in on top
Speaker 1: of each other. I mean, I'm just so proud of
Speaker 1: the work that that Lindsey did and and and edited
Speaker 1: with her. And then it's Walker McGuire single. I had
Speaker 1: no idea. I mean, we wrote that in forty five
Speaker 1: minutes at high noon on a Tuesday at a lake somewhere.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know these guys, and I loved the song.
Speaker 1: But then they decided to record it. And I'm not
Speaker 1: sure I've had a song on the charts with someone else.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I wasn't in the band at the same
Speaker 1: time that surely, and now's we're back in the things
Speaker 1: that all these songs are kind of hitting at the
Speaker 1: same time. And I was giggling the other day because
Speaker 1: someone said, Okay, so it's either you or you that's
Speaker 1: going to be the most added this week. And I
Speaker 1: was like, what do you mean? And I was like,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? So I've always
Speaker 1: wondered about these guys who live here in town and
Speaker 1: they have like nine number ones in a year or
Speaker 1: something something astronomical. I'm like, how does that happen? Um?
Speaker 1: Now I now at least know what kind of the
Speaker 1: storm looks like. I don't know if it's the perfect storm.
Speaker 1: I hope there are many perfect storms to come. Man.
Speaker 1: I guess I missed the first round of sugar Land.
Speaker 1: I didn't miss it as a fan because I went
Speaker 1: to a Sugarland show even as a fan better, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I missed it in Laurel, Arkansas. I went and
Speaker 1: watch Sugarland. I wouldn't watched you guys play with Kenny
Speaker 1: So and that's where I saw all the excitement and
Speaker 1: jumping around, and it's I mean, it's a lot, That's
Speaker 1: what I remember, Yeah, very much, so, lots of bodies
Speaker 1: moving around and so. But I was a sugar Land
Speaker 1: fan more so than a Kenney fan, frankly at the time.
Speaker 1: So I went to the show and before I moved
Speaker 1: to Nashville. You guys weren't sugar Land, right, We never
Speaker 1: crossed paths, right. So the first time we crossed paths
Speaker 1: was you doing your solo record, which I think is
Speaker 1: cool too because I liked you for you. So when
Speaker 1: everybody gets out to say be my friend, just remember
Speaker 1: I liked you for you, just like Blessing do the souls.
Speaker 1: She likes me for me. You remember those guys? Did
Speaker 1: you know those guys? I did not know them, but
Speaker 1: I know this. Let me talk about this for a second.
Speaker 1: So sleep number. Oh yes, So I did this podcast
Speaker 1: in my bedrooms actually, which about the way we have
Speaker 1: to like shut the door and Michael, people will come
Speaker 1: up here because it's weird my bedroom doors open, but
Speaker 1: I guess they do. See the old sleep number bed
Speaker 1: in there. I have a sleep number because for me.
Speaker 1: I do struggle with sleep. And the great thing about
Speaker 1: sleep number is it's actually for me. It's the ideal
Speaker 1: firmness for me. I went into a sleep number store
Speaker 1: where you buy the bed and you can lay on
Speaker 1: the bed there and there's a screen the one I
Speaker 1: went to the screen above, and you look at it
Speaker 1: and it shows you how you're laying and maybe why
Speaker 1: you're not laying right or not getting the right amount
Speaker 1: of sleep. And they give you a sleep number that's
Speaker 1: just for you. And my sleep number setting was and
Speaker 1: I've been back since. But it's a thirty. And if
Speaker 1: your partner has a different one, you both can have
Speaker 1: your own sleep number setting. The beds are so smart
Speaker 1: they sent you every move that automatically adjust to you,
Speaker 1: keeping you sleep comfortably to the night. There's even adjustment
Speaker 1: for snow and lift up a little bit. I don't
Speaker 1: know if your bed does that. And honor of fift
Speaker 1: two weeks of an honor of fifty two years of football,
Speaker 1: not weeks, but years of football. Take fifty dollars off
Speaker 1: any item from over a hundred bucks from Sleep Number, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, the pillars are awesome there too. Sleep
Speaker 1: number dot com slash Big Game to because you're fifty
Speaker 1: two dollar coupon now through February four again sleep number
Speaker 1: dot com slash Big Game. So I don't really know
Speaker 1: the origin of you you guys coming together. She really
Speaker 1: was this interesting beginning, you know. Um yeah, if you
Speaker 1: put it in time. Um. I was signed to a
Speaker 1: record deal in Atlantic Records in New York as a
Speaker 1: rock act, like a folk rock act called Billy Pilgrim,
Speaker 1: and we were kind of a critics darling and for
Speaker 1: us we were a huge success. But compared to our
Speaker 1: label mates, which were like Matchbox twenty was signed the
Speaker 1: same time we were, and Hootie and the Blowfish and
Speaker 1: and I uh ed Roland and the Soul and those guys,
Speaker 1: we were all at you know. It was all out
Speaker 1: of the Southeast at the exact same time. And our band, um,
Speaker 1: you know, Rolling Stone loved it. The review of our
Speaker 1: first album was in the Kurt Coobing issue when he died.
Speaker 1: So if you ever want to go read my first
Speaker 1: band's first national review, it wasn't that issue. Yeah you
Speaker 1: can find it. Oh yeah, there you go. My hair,
Speaker 1: who's insomniac? G's what's the vocal situation here? That's me singing,
Speaker 1: and my partner Andrew was also a singer, and that's
Speaker 1: my friend Ellis Paul there in the background. I'm going,
Speaker 1: but I'm the lead singer on this again. Down the
Speaker 1: Black Hands, sad the textures? Do you sing? Do you sing? Different?
Speaker 1: And a little bit. I mean I was twenty two,
Speaker 1: you know, but I've always had a raspy quality of
Speaker 1: my voice. But I was worried that country music wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna take it. It wasn't gonna accept my raspy voice.
Speaker 1: And at the time, Billy Pilgrim was kind of in
Speaker 1: its waning years. We had had a really pretty good
Speaker 1: run of it, you know, hundreds of thousands of records,
Speaker 1: which for us was giant, And we've been on tour
Speaker 1: around the world. Like I we opened from all of
Speaker 1: Ethadge for a couple of years, and we had opened
Speaker 1: for Bob Dylan and Beck and Tom Petty and all
Speaker 1: these bands, right and learned how to travel the world
Speaker 1: playing arenas. And I wasn't even twenty six yet, and
Speaker 1: I had a terrible tragedy. My mom died. Um, then
Speaker 1: they flew the planes into the buildings. Um. We I've
Speaker 1: been working on other people career. We'd helped John John
Speaker 1: get started in Seawan Mallins and he had moved to Atlanta.
Speaker 1: He had moved to Atlanta at the time and was
Speaker 1: he with Clay When I met him. He and Clay
Speaker 1: were working and my brother Brandon worked on that first
Speaker 1: record with them and then worked on John's first record UM.
Speaker 1: And our bass player from Billy Pilgrim was Dave Jabrier.
Speaker 1: So the first record do you mean like the EP inside,
Speaker 1: Once Out or Over Squares which which UM the first
Speaker 1: record on Aware, which was Room for Squares, and then
Speaker 1: the one before that was kind of the one that
Speaker 1: had like the sweatshirt song, and that's just Brandon working
Speaker 1: on that. Your brother he worked on both those records,
Speaker 1: and so that's that was the world I was in.
Speaker 1: I was kind of trying to help new artists get
Speaker 1: started UM on the Coat Tails or whatever. Billy Pilgrim
Speaker 1: was able to go forward, and that's how I knew
Speaker 1: Jennifer as she was an opening act for Billy Polgram
Speaker 1: as Jennifer Nettles as Jennifer Nettles AM, and before that
Speaker 1: it was a duo she was in and then they
Speaker 1: broke up, and and then she went on by herself
Speaker 1: to keep making money in the Atlanta scene, and I
Speaker 1: had a major label record deal, so that was a
Speaker 1: it was a big feather in the cap from down there.
Speaker 1: You they didn't hand them out like candy like they
Speaker 1: do here. It was one at a time. So we
Speaker 1: were after the Black Crows and before Sean Mullins. Actually
Speaker 1: we would have been right after the Black Crows and
Speaker 1: then Collective Soul, then Billy Pilgrim, then Sean, then John
Speaker 1: Mayor then back to sugar Land. Then this is all
Speaker 1: out of the same four blocks. I mean, it's all
Speaker 1: right there. It's all in one space. And if you
Speaker 1: go backwards, it was the Indigo Girls, and then it
Speaker 1: was Um Michelle Malone and Dragged the River, and then
Speaker 1: you then you're kind of moving towards Athens like um
Speaker 1: to be fifty two s R em Pylon and those
Speaker 1: those bands Um and maybe after us there was hoped
Speaker 1: for a Golden Summer, which was like a more Athens
Speaker 1: Atlanta band and more alt. But did they start looking
Speaker 1: for bands in that area since there was success because
Speaker 1: a lot of times with the sound, well just use Seattle,
Speaker 1: which is the one that choosed a lot when that
Speaker 1: Seattle sound happens and Nirvana turns all the hair bands
Speaker 1: into now It's grunge, and they go find Pearl Jam
Speaker 1: and they go find out they find they start to
Speaker 1: search the scene from where do they do that in
Speaker 1: Atlanta to where they Okay, we have a few, so
Speaker 1: let's go see what else is in this? Very much
Speaker 1: And it would come through either a lawyer or two
Speaker 1: that they were friends with, A and R people on
Speaker 1: Sony or different places, and they would come and they
Speaker 1: would you know this this little club and we played
Speaker 1: it was called track Side Tavern. And then the guy
Speaker 1: who was the bartender their name Eddio, and opened up
Speaker 1: Eddie's at it, and so we all. I was the
Speaker 1: first show at Eddie's really painted the walls the night
Speaker 1: before and opened for Michelle Malone on the Wednesday. And
Speaker 1: I graduated from college three days later and u and
Speaker 1: got a record deal that summer on Atlantic Records. So
Speaker 1: I have had a major label record deal since I
Speaker 1: got out of college, which is really like, it's it's asinine,
Speaker 1: it's a it shouldn't probably have happened. But did you
Speaker 1: and Jennifer when you met was it? Hey, we're just
Speaker 1: artists and we're our own respective artists, or was it hey,
Speaker 1: we should maybe share ideas, or saying, how does that
Speaker 1: happen because she's coming out of a duo, obviously that's successful.
Speaker 1: Well she it wasn't. Actually it was an invitation. UM.
Speaker 1: I didn't know her very well. So during Billy Pilgrim World,
Speaker 1: she came in and she was recording with Corey I
Speaker 1: think in the studio where I recorded all the time,
Speaker 1: and I remember walking in on one of their sessions
Speaker 1: and going, oh, that's kind of cool. But I didn't
Speaker 1: really know her, and she opened for us, and I
Speaker 1: unfortunately have to say at that time I didn't show
Speaker 1: up early to hear the openers all the time. UM.
Speaker 1: And I regret that I do it a lot more now. UM.
Speaker 1: But we never became friends. And then I remember being
Speaker 1: on a writer's night with her, which I think is
Speaker 1: irony at some we're not irony, but I think it's fascinating.
Speaker 1: After Billy Pilgrim was kind of slowing down, I had
Speaker 1: started um writing songs with a local songwriter named Kristin Hall,
Speaker 1: and she was the third person in Sutterland at the
Speaker 1: very beginning. Kristen was the guitar tech for the Indigo girls. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they just knew that she was a great songwriter
Speaker 1: and she had moved back to Atlanta from l A
Speaker 1: and she wanted to write songs and she knew me,
Speaker 1: and she called and said, you have any songs left over?
Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, I have a lot because
Speaker 1: Andrew and I aren't working as much, but I still
Speaker 1: have the same amount of songs. She's like, well, why
Speaker 1: don't you come over and help me and let me
Speaker 1: help you finish them. It's like okay, And within two
Speaker 1: or three weeks she's like, let's start a band. I
Speaker 1: was like, I need a band, like I need a
Speaker 1: hole in the head. I already have a band and
Speaker 1: I don't need another band, but I would. I'm enjoying
Speaker 1: writing with you, and so we asked Dave Librier to
Speaker 1: come over and I was like, you know, I like
Speaker 1: being in a band with him. He and John were
Speaker 1: working at the time, and we wrote a song called
Speaker 1: Girl called Tennessee and it was on the first sugar
Speaker 1: Land record and we just kept writing songs and pretty
Speaker 1: soon Dave didn't show up anymore, but Kristen kept calling
Speaker 1: and saying, look, I've got a band in the basement.
Speaker 1: Where you come, right. I was like, really, okay, well
Speaker 1: all right, and I would show up and we would
Speaker 1: audition a singer because I was pretty convinced that my
Speaker 1: voice was not going to make it against Billy Currington. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you thought that, you thought I'm not going to
Speaker 1: be the front voice. I don't. I didn't think I
Speaker 1: could sell it because at the time two thousand and
Speaker 1: two country music singers were all they were all smooth.
Speaker 1: It was very interesting. And I kind of said, all right, well,
Speaker 1: what do you suggest and she said, well, I suggest
Speaker 1: we get a female singer because there's a big hole
Speaker 1: in the world that's been left by the Dixie Chicks
Speaker 1: them stopping working. I think it's some of the best
Speaker 1: music I've heard. And I said, all right, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I can get on board, but let me
Speaker 1: work at this a little bit. And I went out
Speaker 1: and I started. I bought UM an Emmy Lou Harris record,
Speaker 1: uh that Daniel lamb Wide produced and it was called
Speaker 1: Wrecking Ball. And the reason I bought it it's because
Speaker 1: when my My the Billy Pilgrim record before that went,
Speaker 1: the guitar player who was hired UM was producing Emmy
Speaker 1: Lou Harris up until that moment, and he put one
Speaker 1: of my songs on hold, and I had never had
Speaker 1: a song on hold in my life. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what that meant. And because I thought you had to
Speaker 1: write the songs that you're sang, I didn't know there
Speaker 1: were two different jobs. And I was fascinated because the
Speaker 1: day after we finished that Billy Pilgrim record, or the
Speaker 1: day we finished it, I walked out into the hallway
Speaker 1: and left, and I met a guy named Steve Earle
Speaker 1: that was in the waiting room, and and he had
Speaker 1: just gotten out of jail, and he was he was
Speaker 1: coming in to make as record with the same band,
Speaker 1: with the same producer in the same building. And I
Speaker 1: thought to myself, note to self, whenever this guy puts
Speaker 1: out his record, go buy it, because it's gonna sound
Speaker 1: exactly like your record. And wouldn't that be cool to
Speaker 1: see what it sounds like when the same band plays
Speaker 1: a different kind of songs? Right? Um? So I had
Speaker 1: then bought also a Steve Earl record, very close to
Speaker 1: the time I bought that Emmy Lou Harris record, and
Speaker 1: between the two, um, I thought to myself, well, if
Speaker 1: this is country music, I can do this because it
Speaker 1: sounds like YouTube plus country music, right. Um. And what
Speaker 1: I've quickly learned is that country music had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with a fiddle, which actually was my first instrument.
Speaker 1: Like it, It had more to do with the story
Speaker 1: of this in the songwriting, and in the nineties, we
Speaker 1: weren't telling stories. We were telling emotions, right we had.
Speaker 1: We were just trying to make you feel what it
Speaker 1: felt like it was in that lyric. And so as
Speaker 1: soon as I knew this, I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: I think I can do that. I went over to
Speaker 1: Christin's house and I started playing things, and we started
Speaker 1: auditioning people, and there were five or six different people,
Speaker 1: and we came up with rules where we had to
Speaker 1: write a song or two with each audition to see
Speaker 1: if we could write with them. And so if you
Speaker 1: look at the first sugar Land record, five or six
Speaker 1: of those songs have writers on it that none of
Speaker 1: them are Jennifer because she wasn't even in the band yet,
Speaker 1: Like we were just cycling through and the songs were
Speaker 1: so good that we were getting and so when she
Speaker 1: came into auditions, she sang the songs and uh, I
Speaker 1: remember there was one song. It was a song that
Speaker 1: was the namesake of the band. It's called sugar Land
Speaker 1: and I kind of wrote it in my shower one
Speaker 1: morning and came in and brought it to this group
Speaker 1: of people in the basement of Christin's houses. Is it
Speaker 1: wrong or a curse if I write a song with
Speaker 1: called the name of the band that we heared out
Speaker 1: last night? And she was like, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I think bad Company has done it or things like this.
Speaker 1: And I was like, all right, well, if this is
Speaker 1: a curse, it's my fault. And Jennifer auditioned on that
Speaker 1: song and when she got to the bridge of that
Speaker 1: song and was singing it, I just about lost my mind.
Speaker 1: I was like, that that I can do. And so
Speaker 1: we sat down and we wrote two songs and the
Speaker 1: first song was it was a song called honky Ton
Speaker 1: Kevin and I don't think that it exists anywhere. We
Speaker 1: recorded it, but we didn't give it, we didn't show
Speaker 1: it to the label. And the second song we wrote
Speaker 1: was a baby girl. Wow? Is that right? Damn? My dad?
Speaker 1: How about that that quick found it? Found it? Did
Speaker 1: you know you found it? I knew the song was good,
Speaker 1: and so it's hard to know. So we decided to
Speaker 1: play a show, and we only had four songs or
Speaker 1: five songs that we could play, um like four the
Speaker 1: ones we had previously written, maybe six maybe. We played
Speaker 1: hockeytoll Agavan that night and Baby Girl, and no one
Speaker 1: knew who our band was because we hadn't played out.
Speaker 1: But we each had individual crowds, like Jennifer had a
Speaker 1: crowd that we had two or three other people that
Speaker 1: come see her, and Billy Pilgrim, you know, we had
Speaker 1: a couple or more people that would come to see us.
Speaker 1: And Kristen had a following of people that would come
Speaker 1: see her. And we thought, well, let's just play like
Speaker 1: a Tuesday or something, bill it as sugar Land and
Speaker 1: then put our individual names in there and see if
Speaker 1: anybody shows up. And we got to Baby Girl and
Speaker 1: we played it and people cheered after the lad when
Speaker 1: it got to the last course, they just got on
Speaker 1: their feet and started cheering. And I was like, holy crap,
Speaker 1: this must be what it's like if you're Darius Rucker
Speaker 1: and you finally sing hold my Hand for the first
Speaker 1: time and everybody goes bonkers, you know, and um, so
Speaker 1: I remember telling her. I was like look, I really
Speaker 1: don't want to do this in a van. I want
Speaker 1: if we're gonna do this, I've done this before, I
Speaker 1: want to do it in a bus. And I want
Speaker 1: to shoot for arenas or stadiums, like I want the
Speaker 1: target to be so high that if we miss, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be awesome. That costs money. We had no we
Speaker 1: had nothing to even do it, so we we bankrolled
Speaker 1: it all from our little place. Um. We got our
Speaker 1: record deal because we we sold tickets on a gray
Speaker 1: on a bus that we rented. I got a passenger bus.
Speaker 1: We sold fifty dollar tickets to fifty fans, and we
Speaker 1: bought a keg of beer and put it on the bus,
Speaker 1: and we got a gig at the last place I
Speaker 1: had gotten a record deal out of Nashville, which was
Speaker 1: twelfth and Porter. I got my Billy Pogram record deal
Speaker 1: out of that room. So I called the same piece.
Speaker 1: Can we play and you know whatever your showcase time
Speaker 1: is before you have to really open for business. And
Speaker 1: they said sure, and they said you know you're you
Speaker 1: can only have the tickets that you sell. And I
Speaker 1: was like, that's cool, we don't need to sell any tickets.
Speaker 1: And they were like what do you mean We're like,
Speaker 1: we're we're bringing all of our people. They were like okay,
Speaker 1: and they were kind of confused, and and we said
Speaker 1: what we really need or the seats for the like
Speaker 1: record people, because we couldn't get anyone to come to
Speaker 1: Atlanta where we actually had two or three people that
Speaker 1: show up, So we bust everybody in and walked in
Speaker 1: and played our five or six seven songs and then
Speaker 1: handed our copy of our homemade record out to the
Speaker 1: record they won. Luke Lewis signed us that night. Did
Speaker 1: you feel like this might be a little too fast?
Speaker 1: Did you feel like we're ready? Oh, there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as that. For me, I had already done it. It
Speaker 1: It might have felt that way to other people, but
Speaker 1: I've been on a major label for eight years before then.
Speaker 1: But you had to be with that. And for me,
Speaker 1: that's and what are I do? In all aspects of
Speaker 1: my life? Chemistry is the most important thing because I
Speaker 1: can't do anything with that great people around me. Even
Speaker 1: when I do stand up, if I don't have the
Speaker 1: right people running lights and sound, I have to surround
Speaker 1: myself with better people than what I do because it
Speaker 1: makes me better. So here you are, there are three
Speaker 1: of you. You haven't spent a ton of time together,
Speaker 1: and now you're embarking on this new life a little
Speaker 1: was there any apprehension like, man, I don't even know
Speaker 1: if I like these people. Well, I think there's this
Speaker 1: kind of a joy and at least shared ambition. Um
Speaker 1: I knew Kristen kind of. I didn't know enough that.
Speaker 1: I mean maybe I did that she was going to
Speaker 1: get anxious like that was not really a life she wanted. Um.
Speaker 1: I didn't know Jennifer very well at all. But um,
Speaker 1: we both seem to have the skill to be in
Speaker 1: duo's you know. Um we knew how to, we knew
Speaker 1: how make music. It wasn't our first time. This is
Speaker 1: where we gotta pay the bills real quick. I'd hand
Speaker 1: it to you, like I love Christian grabbing for the spot.
Speaker 1: I get so into the stories to forget to do well.
Speaker 1: We get to keep the lights on here. Tax seasons
Speaker 1: approaching in this week is tax Identity Theft Awareness Week.
Speaker 1: So what you're looking forward to getting your tax refund,
Speaker 1: which everybody is tax identity thieves might be looking forward
Speaker 1: to it too, So frosters. Basically they use I R
Speaker 1: S imposter scams. They just take numbers because they're so
Speaker 1: readily available, and they use those numbers to get information
Speaker 1: about you. One or four people have experienced identity sept
Speaker 1: and if you're only monitoring your credit, your identity can
Speaker 1: still be stolen in ways that you may not detect.
Speaker 1: Thieves could sell your information on the dark web or
Speaker 1: get an online payday loan in your name boom. That's
Speaker 1: why live flock exists. That's why I have had life
Speaker 1: flock four years, way before there ever a sponsor or
Speaker 1: client or whatever you call a partner on the podcast
Speaker 1: for the show, I was using life flock way before that,
Speaker 1: which makes it easy to talk about. Life flock detects
Speaker 1: a wide range identity of threats. If they detect your
Speaker 1: information is being used to get alerts on your phone
Speaker 1: and your email. They smoke signal all kinds of things.
Speaker 1: If there's a problem, a US based restoration specialists work
Speaker 1: to fix it. No one can prevent all identities, have
Speaker 1: to monitor all transactions at all businesses. But LifeLock can
Speaker 1: uncover the threats that you missed ten percent off if
Speaker 1: you used the promo code boneslock use bones or LifeLock
Speaker 1: dot com. Use the promo code bones and save ten
Speaker 1: percent now and there you go. They see that's how
Speaker 1: we do it. You are really good at this job.
Speaker 1: That's all I know how to do. You have to
Speaker 1: find what you know how to do in really target,
Speaker 1: just go right into it. So what was the first
Speaker 1: single for sugar Land? Wasn't baby Girl? It was the
Speaker 1: first song, and um, yeah, it took forever. It was
Speaker 1: fifty two four weeks, the whole year, and uh it
Speaker 1: died a couple of times revisionist history. This is just
Speaker 1: a huge song that made you guys instantly famous. It
Speaker 1: was never it was never number one? Why it's so
Speaker 1: funny because I want to like about Sundays kept it
Speaker 1: out of number one? What I about? Yeah, Craig Morgan.
Speaker 1: So I was talking to Keith. He but it's funny
Speaker 1: you say this, and Keith and I were talking about
Speaker 1: number one. I think I was talking about whatever I
Speaker 1: have this convert I'm so fascinated with number ones for
Speaker 1: the sake of it, and how this format throws them
Speaker 1: away so much that the number ones, it's a nice
Speaker 1: little you get a trophy. But those aren't the songs
Speaker 1: that last They were not. I mean it wasn't always
Speaker 1: this It wasn't always this way. Okay, so I know
Speaker 1: the way now and I completely grab I got about
Speaker 1: the system so much and nausea people it's and we're
Speaker 1: also not able to live with music because we're just
Speaker 1: cycling through so much quick now. But the fact that
Speaker 1: that wasn't a number one song and could quite possibly
Speaker 1: be one of the three biggest songs that people associate
Speaker 1: with sugar Land ever, and you guys are grant you
Speaker 1: guys have done at all, and that wasn't a number one.
Speaker 1: That just shows you that a song doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be given a ranking to last to test the time, right, well,
Speaker 1: I mean whether what I learned very quickly is that
Speaker 1: the check that you get is the exact same for
Speaker 1: number two as you get for number one, basically basically
Speaker 1: the same. And and I didn't know that it was
Speaker 1: such a science or a chess game to move up
Speaker 1: a chart. And it was a real humbling for me because, um,
Speaker 1: in Billy Pilgrim, we had we had four number ones
Speaker 1: in triple A, you know, and we we thought that
Speaker 1: was fantastic, but we didn't really know what that meant
Speaker 1: because at the time, you couldn't really tell what was
Speaker 1: the real chart or wasn't. And we remember stepping off
Speaker 1: an elevator at the A c M S and the
Speaker 1: maybe David Mobralely or maybe it was John Anger, one
Speaker 1: of the radio guys came to me and shook my
Speaker 1: hand and said congratulations and said congratulations for what And
Speaker 1: they're like, you have the longest charting single and recorded
Speaker 1: country music history. And I was like, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: And they were, well, it stayed on the chart the longest,
Speaker 1: it went up, the slowest it it. It had the
Speaker 1: longest arc, and I've never forgotten that moment. I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's been surpassed because I think I think Lee Brice
Speaker 1: ended up beating it with like fifty seven weeks. But
Speaker 1: I would say that I love the idea that even
Speaker 1: if it goes slow, as long as it goes, what
Speaker 1: you're doing is just reaching more people. I'm really agnostic
Speaker 1: about the award. I don't really care, but my my
Speaker 1: ambition has always been reached the most amount of people
Speaker 1: that you can reach. What doesn't matter what it is.
Speaker 1: Put it in a commercial, give the song away, put
Speaker 1: it on the radio, put it on television. I don't care.
Speaker 1: Just I want to reach the most amount of people.
Speaker 1: So the song takes fifty let's just say fifty two weeks,
Speaker 1: let's sake of the story. That also to credit your
Speaker 1: label because I wasn't involved. That costs money to continue
Speaker 1: pushing a song, and not only that, it takes their
Speaker 1: heart being in it to go. We know that this
Speaker 1: song is moving slow, but we have faith and not
Speaker 1: only the song but the band. And there's something to
Speaker 1: be said about commitment these days in the creative industry,
Speaker 1: and even these last fifty years, there's something to be
Speaker 1: said about that. So did you feel like, okay, they
Speaker 1: have our back a bit, like they sat and pushed
Speaker 1: us for fifty weeks to record to radio stations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well I was. I was impressed. I had I've really
Speaker 1: had quite a run with record label presidents. I was
Speaker 1: signed by it they turnover. Yeah, well I was signed
Speaker 1: by Ahmed Ard again to Atlantic Records with his very
Speaker 1: first female and our person. It was Jennifer Stark and
Speaker 1: she she she's the one who signed Billy Pilgrim and
Speaker 1: he was in lieu of Uncle Tupelo. I guess they
Speaker 1: didn't accept the deal and they and all that stuff
Speaker 1: and and uh, we you know, we were the second choice.
Speaker 1: But I have to say that the commitment that I
Speaker 1: learned from those employees and and the habits I learned,
Speaker 1: you know, um translated. So when I got to Mercury
Speaker 1: and it was Luke Lewis and and and all of
Speaker 1: the people that worked there at the time, they were
Speaker 1: into making artists. They were not into making singles. And
Speaker 1: I understood that and it made sense. You know, um
Speaker 1: Shania Twain was the big winner on that label when
Speaker 1: we signed, and uh, George Strait was pulling in a
Speaker 1: lot of money, and Billy Currington was the new signing,
Speaker 1: and you know, like it was very interesting at the time.
Speaker 1: And I knew how to stay off their radar to
Speaker 1: keep from draining their coffers because I had learned it
Speaker 1: ten years earlier. Probably had to do it just for
Speaker 1: your own sake. Yeah, And we didn't. We didn't take
Speaker 1: an advance really, you know, we didn't take to our support.
Speaker 1: We we never took anything from the label. I want
Speaker 1: one of the few bands that I think at that label,
Speaker 1: UM got checks, which makes it easier to spend money
Speaker 1: on you if you're not taking money already. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: wanted that was my idea. That's what I had learned
Speaker 1: in the nineties was all my education, which I you know,
Speaker 1: I absorbed everything about how to be in the record
Speaker 1: business as as early as I could, and got out
Speaker 1: of college and applied that knowledge as fast as I could.
Speaker 1: And by the time we got here, um, they were
Speaker 1: still in the business of spending money, but they just
Speaker 1: didn't have to spend it on us. So after that
Speaker 1: song runs its course and puts you guys on the map,
Speaker 1: what did it? What did it? Peak? Number two it
Speaker 1: was there's a moment. You can do this. You can
Speaker 1: have this moment if you want it. Get online, go
Speaker 1: to the YouTube and type in Sherland playing Baby Girl
Speaker 1: the a c NS and you will see people who
Speaker 1: are broke closing the show. We were broke. I was
Speaker 1: forty in debt. Was that when Jenny had our shoes off?
Speaker 1: So that show we were supposed to sing thirty seconds
Speaker 1: of Baby Girl into the presenter microphone early in the show.
Speaker 1: Did something happened with a closing guy? Something happened. So
Speaker 1: if you go back and figure it all out, there
Speaker 1: was there were two or three things that went down,
Speaker 1: and suddenly they asked us, Hey, can you sing a
Speaker 1: minute instead of thirty seconds and do you have your instruments?
Speaker 1: And you're like sure, and they said, okay, I know
Speaker 1: this is short notice, but can you get a band
Speaker 1: here in two days? We're like why. They're like, well,
Speaker 1: can you do an abbreviated version of your song like
Speaker 1: a a real performance? Can you get a drummer? Do
Speaker 1: you have a track? What can you sing to it?
Speaker 1: We're like yeah, we're on the phone calling me. And
Speaker 1: then there they got up to the rehearsal day before
Speaker 1: the show and they said, so, George Straits, that's what
Speaker 1: it was. I remember that sick and we were wondering
Speaker 1: if you would close the show, and so we closed
Speaker 1: the show. We were people that nobody knew, and Jennifer
Speaker 1: had on the same shoes as like Sarah Evans or something,
Speaker 1: and she's like, oh, forget it and just threw them
Speaker 1: off and ran out there. And then the curtain goes
Speaker 1: up and we start singing baby Girl right and I'll
Speaker 1: never forget and I will forever be grateful. There was this,
Speaker 1: to me, incredible pause between us finishing the last note
Speaker 1: and people clapping. It was just nothing. It was like dead.
Speaker 1: And I watched Tim mcgrawl and Faith Hill stand up
Speaker 1: and they were dead sinner in that room, and they
Speaker 1: stood up and started clapping, and then every in my
Speaker 1: mind they guilted everyone looking back. When do you as
Speaker 1: signed that silence to that break? What do you assign
Speaker 1: it to? Huge amounts of adrenaline and shame and worry?
Speaker 1: Like you know, adrenaline slows down your perception. So I
Speaker 1: think we hit the last note. And I didn't know
Speaker 1: if we had sucked or if we hadn't, or if
Speaker 1: we sounded good or if we didn't. I didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about performing on television like that, and sure enough,
Speaker 1: you know, people talk about that day as, oh, that's
Speaker 1: when we found out who you were. That's when I
Speaker 1: remember the shooting, when you started. That's something. I remember
Speaker 1: seeing her on with no shoes, and I was like,
Speaker 1: that's really cool. They seem like normal folks were just
Speaker 1: that alone. That's small and it wasn't a contrived thing.
Speaker 1: I guess she was just one of the same shoes
Speaker 1: as someone else. Yet still didn't Oh yeah, I wasn't
Speaker 1: on purpose. But I mean, if you put in your head,
Speaker 1: I mean I try to remind new artists of this
Speaker 1: all the time. That you can close the A C M. S.
Speaker 1: And seven hours earlier you were in your hotel room
Speaker 1: trying to do computer programming in order to pay your bills.
Speaker 1: Because you in the hole like that's real, that's going
Speaker 1: to happen, and you're gonna have to make those choices.
Speaker 1: Early on, we didn't take publishing deals, we didn't take anything,
Speaker 1: you know, we just went the long way. And sometimes
Speaker 1: that's the right choice. It's not always the right choice
Speaker 1: for everyone, especially not today, but um, at the time,
Speaker 1: that's what it is. So there's this kind of authenticity
Speaker 1: to the song being performed by people who actually done right. Um.
Speaker 1: But in retrospect, you know, I we didn't have a
Speaker 1: number one song until our second albums. That yeah, on
Speaker 1: the first On the first record you had what talking
Speaker 1: what were the hits? Um, we had a baby girl,
Speaker 1: and then we had something more. Now I know all
Speaker 1: the answers to this as you're talking through that, I'm
Speaker 1: not letting you tell I know all the answer. I
Speaker 1: don't like to know all the answer we had. We
Speaker 1: had a song called just Might Make Me Believe, which
Speaker 1: was Kristen's song. It was the only song that she
Speaker 1: wrote myrself and then we had um uh down in
Speaker 1: Mississippi and up to No Good, which was on that record,
Speaker 1: and then they then Kristen quit right at the end
Speaker 1: of that and we had to go in and make
Speaker 1: a second record in two weeks. So really she and I,
Speaker 1: Jennifer and I wrote that whole second record in two
Speaker 1: weeks in jan January? Did you not have to write
Speaker 1: the record? Had to shoot all the photos and the
Speaker 1: whole image had to be kind of altered, right because
Speaker 1: everything you had all this. Yeah, we we started over,
Speaker 1: but it was kind of cool and we knew how
Speaker 1: to start over because we had just done it, I
Speaker 1: guess a couple of times, you know. So it was
Speaker 1: just I had to keep reminding us that you just
Speaker 1: start over. And for Terryll and then to want to
Speaker 1: was on that change and a minute just kids could
Speaker 1: stop it span and we could thank it three, you know,
Speaker 1: and then um my version of the Who which was
Speaker 1: settling that. And if you listen to that song and
Speaker 1: you listened to Sweet Louisiana Sound, you'll hear a lot
Speaker 1: of the same stuff from Billy Posum. Maybe I won't,
Speaker 1: but you would, because this is a jam. Yeah up straight,
Speaker 1: it's that to me. I hear the nineties ish third
Speaker 1: Eye Blind on that Yeah, same thing. Yeah, because that's
Speaker 1: where I'm from. Um, and then uh, what Everyday America
Speaker 1: was the next single, and then we were pulling from
Speaker 1: my bag of old billy pogram tricks during that because
Speaker 1: we just needed songs. I was like, pull out of
Speaker 1: this basket. We'll write whatever the lyric is. And I
Speaker 1: had had that song for a lady named Beth Wood
Speaker 1: in the early nineties, and I just redid it and
Speaker 1: we got to rewrite it with Lisa Carver and Jennifer
Speaker 1: loved it, and so we rewrote that whole song and
Speaker 1: then uh, then stay, you should know we don't have
Speaker 1: to live this way, don't. We recorded this three or
Speaker 1: four times, and this is me and my brother and
Speaker 1: Jennifer playing at once. So that's Brandon playing Hammon and
Speaker 1: he and I are looking at each other and doing
Speaker 1: the little brother speak because there's no tempo and I'm
Speaker 1: watching her singing and we're doing it live. So that's
Speaker 1: one performance. This track is one performance, no click track,
Speaker 1: just visual cues. Yeah, that's it. And I it was
Speaker 1: a song that she had written by herself years before,
Speaker 1: and the Kristen who was in the band didn't really
Speaker 1: like the song and I kind of did, and so
Speaker 1: when it came up on the second record, it was
Speaker 1: I was like, hey, what do you think about that?
Speaker 1: And she was like, oh, I love that song. But
Speaker 1: we tried it with a band. We tried it sound
Speaker 1: like the Black Crows. We tried all these different different
Speaker 1: and it didn't work, and Uh, we were kind of
Speaker 1: at the end of our rope. I was like, can
Speaker 1: I just call my brother? Can we just do that?
Speaker 1: It seems like sure? And it was magic? Was that
Speaker 1: the song that stadiumed it for? You guys? Well, I
Speaker 1: think that Kenny stadium Us is what happened, and we
Speaker 1: were a very good compliment to his show. I went
Speaker 1: to that show. We were like, he taught us a
Speaker 1: lot about how to take your music and do that.
Speaker 1: But I think, um, I think settling probably turned us
Speaker 1: into a stadium act and stay Uh showed people that
Speaker 1: her voice and her ability to emote was so highly developed.
Speaker 1: The video moved people to when you think of over
Speaker 1: the last ten years, the videos that really stick with you,
Speaker 1: I remember that video. So they we ran out of
Speaker 1: money at the label. They didn't want to put out
Speaker 1: any more songs, and we said, but we want to
Speaker 1: why don't we try this? When they were like, you
Speaker 1: want to put out an almost five minute acoustic song
Speaker 1: for the radio, and they're like, well, I mean all
Speaker 1: you have to say is no. And we said, can
Speaker 1: we have a video budget? They're like, no, you're out
Speaker 1: of money. You have like fifteen or thirty thousand dollar
Speaker 1: or something to do this, which bought us half a day.
Speaker 1: So that video is the way that it is because
Speaker 1: we didn't have anything. We we had just played the
Speaker 1: stadium in Philadelphia the night before we shot that, and
Speaker 1: we were doing it in New York in a sound
Speaker 1: stage that we could have word with somebody who would
Speaker 1: only work until two or three o'clock. And I didn't
Speaker 1: even have a good like my guitar. Tech forgot to
Speaker 1: put a guitar in the back and I had to
Speaker 1: borrow a guitar. I ended up buying the guitar a
Speaker 1: borrow and I loved it so much, but um we
Speaker 1: we We went in and filmed two passes or three passes,
Speaker 1: and Jennifer was on the edge in her personal life
Speaker 1: at the time, and she just started weeping absolutely real,
Speaker 1: and I got an upset the director. I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: I was like a gorilla. It's like, why are you
Speaker 1: imagine making her do this everybody else? And she's like
Speaker 1: I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay. And then
Speaker 1: there's a second pass of the video and then she
Speaker 1: just kind of loses it to stop singing at some point,
Speaker 1: and we didn't have a chance to do anything other
Speaker 1: than what you just saw. And the people at the
Speaker 1: label loved it because it was so real, and then
Speaker 1: they said it they sent it to the record company
Speaker 1: or the radio stations, and I think the video is
Speaker 1: what really helped the programmers get on board. Um, and
Speaker 1: I'm forever grateful. I mean, geez, that's from one of
Speaker 1: a Grammy, you know, like, that's unreal. The video, it
Speaker 1: just sits with me. That's cool. And now that I
Speaker 1: know the story, the video is so awesome. Guys, you're yeah, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it was the end of what was going
Speaker 1: to happen, and then we were supposed to just go
Speaker 1: make another record. And I'm so happy that that song
Speaker 1: had what it had because it it creates this thing
Speaker 1: that I see a lot now, which is you get
Speaker 1: momentum on something like um like girl Crush or something
Speaker 1: like I was. I was telling those guys. I was like,
Speaker 1: you guys got one. You got one of those, because
Speaker 1: your next one is going to be all of the
Speaker 1: fuel that that one generates you will burn on your
Speaker 1: next rocket stage. And it's incalculable and you can't you
Speaker 1: can't predict it. But if you keep your head down
Speaker 1: and you keep working, you'll come across it. So that
Speaker 1: song does what it does. There's an immense pressure to
Speaker 1: follow up a monster with another monster, right, so what
Speaker 1: do you do? We went to Atlanta and we told
Speaker 1: everyone that we were no longer making records in Nashville
Speaker 1: and you will have to come to us. And how
Speaker 1: did that go over? Like a lead bricks? But you know,
Speaker 1: you gotta remember, like we rolled into the studio where
Speaker 1: Springsteen had been making The Rising, where Stone Temple pilots
Speaker 1: and made all their records, or Pearl Jam made their records.
Speaker 1: We rolled into the exact same place, right, and we
Speaker 1: brought our producer down in our our Nashville kind of players,
Speaker 1: and we wrote that record while we were on the road.
Speaker 1: But it took a while, and we were obsessed with
Speaker 1: using the acoustic nous and the authenticity of the music
Speaker 1: we grew up with in atlat which was like Aaria
Speaker 1: I'm and the Indigo Girls and and Black Crows and
Speaker 1: all these kind of Atlanta southern but pop but rock.
Speaker 1: But we're based primarily on country music. You know, um,
Speaker 1: Georgia satellites and all this stuff, and can we make
Speaker 1: that kind of album? And I think everyone was expecting
Speaker 1: us to go, at least in the in the record label.
Speaker 1: They were hoping that we would go super anthemic, gigantic, whatever,
Speaker 1: and then we made this essentially acoustic rock record. Um
Speaker 1: love on the inside. I had all I want to
Speaker 1: do totally love that. Had U shi it happens? Had happened?
Speaker 1: Did you try to go and write that on the CD?
Speaker 1: And they said make it happens. But we did that
Speaker 1: when we were writing it. We wrote that with Bobby Pinson.
Speaker 1: He kind of had the groove to it, and we're
Speaker 1: really fast writers together, and Bobby did a great job
Speaker 1: on that song. I was trying to get it in
Speaker 1: there because I thought it would be funny, and then
Speaker 1: already Gone was on that record. Many songs were going
Speaker 1: to the top of the chart in even ten weeks
Speaker 1: at a time, So where we had been fifty four
Speaker 1: weeks on our first song, we're now eight or nine
Speaker 1: weeks on a song, going from when it hits the
Speaker 1: chart to the top of the charts. We were burning
Speaker 1: through songs um and this tour ended up being on television,
Speaker 1: so we had a summer special. I was obsessed with
Speaker 1: remembering seeing concerts on television. I remember seeing the Karth
Speaker 1: Park's concert and York New York one, and I was like,
Speaker 1: how do we do that? And this record, Jennifer and
Speaker 1: I were completely aware that the distance between what was
Speaker 1: happening in culture and what was happening on television was closing.
Speaker 1: The gap was closing, and we vowed to each other
Speaker 1: that every song on this record would be on television
Speaker 1: some way, somehow. We would make it so that every
Speaker 1: single song we would either perform or there'd be a
Speaker 1: video or something. And we did it. We pulled it off,
Speaker 1: and I don't know how we did it, but I mean,
Speaker 1: we're four performances later on the A c M. S
Speaker 1: playing what I'd Give or something. We're like in deep
Speaker 1: deep tracks. But we had a summer special in ABC.
Speaker 1: They allowed us to do this. Now they didn't. They
Speaker 1: we had to pay for it ourselves, which the entire
Speaker 1: filming and the recording and everything. So we took the
Speaker 1: money from our shows and we had a twenty two
Speaker 1: camera shoot in Lexington, Virginia. One time. We had one
Speaker 1: shot and then we took all the footage back and
Speaker 1: they edited it together and they made a an hour
Speaker 1: and a half concert video and then they edited it
Speaker 1: down to forty five minutes and put it as a
Speaker 1: primetime special in the summer. Did they buy that back
Speaker 1: from you? No, So you take your money and create it,
Speaker 1: they air it, but they don't buy it back from you. Um,
Speaker 1: we got the label paid us for our investment, but
Speaker 1: we didn't get any money after that. And UM, what
Speaker 1: we decided was they were going to put it out
Speaker 1: as a They were afraid people are gonna buy DVDs anymore,
Speaker 1: and uh so we put out a cover record to
Speaker 1: go with it, and they sold it. They were doing
Speaker 1: exclusives with different box stores and this one was with
Speaker 1: Walmart and so they bought three copies and then never
Speaker 1: came out again. I don't think you can get it
Speaker 1: anywhere right now. But that was the kind of trajectory.
Speaker 1: Is that we had to keep investing in ourselves and
Speaker 1: um using our money because the labels were going broke.
Speaker 1: Then remember less than less money was coming in and
Speaker 1: by love on the inside, we were making more sales
Speaker 1: for the label than anyone else on the label. So
Speaker 1: suddenly we're carrying the We're in the front of the
Speaker 1: cart where Shanaya used to be and it was weird.
Speaker 1: And then we went and essentially made a rock record
Speaker 1: that everyone thought we were crazy for and now it's
Speaker 1: probably one of my favorite records we ever made. Was
Speaker 1: the incredible machine, you know, and it had it had
Speaker 1: stuck like clue on it again, did you write this one? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Did you write this with Kevin? It did? Actually Kevin
Speaker 1: pitched me the chorus to this song. So Kevin, by
Speaker 1: the way, Kevin Griffin from Better than I probably the
Speaker 1: twenty better than I was such a diehard better than
Speaker 1: as in. And so last night we played a show
Speaker 1: at the Rheman and I had Kevin came out and
Speaker 1: we did good and desperately wanting it was a great
Speaker 1: Christian I've got to play and do a lot of
Speaker 1: cool things in my life. Did that freak you out?
Speaker 1: It might have been my favorite musical moment that I've
Speaker 1: ever been a part of. And Kevin so nice and kind,
Speaker 1: and he says, whatever, whatever you want to do, we'll
Speaker 1: do it. And I said, well, I would play deeper
Speaker 1: tracks like this time of year, or I said, but
Speaker 1: the the fans won't want to hear good obviously, And
Speaker 1: so we played good and desperately wanting and I was
Speaker 1: just doing b g VS and was playing guitar and
Speaker 1: I knew this song when I was a kid, right,
Speaker 1: But and then he threw to me and let me.
Speaker 1: It really was full circle. There were two things that
Speaker 1: happened last night. And we had actually invited you guys
Speaker 1: to come play, and then you were hosting a different award.
Speaker 1: Then you got the flu and they do. But but
Speaker 1: um so Darius came out and Darius my first ever
Speaker 1: radio interview at seventeen years old, first person that ever interview,
Speaker 1: my gosh. And so Darius and I have paralleled with
Speaker 1: each other for a long time and yeah, and so
Speaker 1: he's been my guy, like in different formats. And so
Speaker 1: Darius comes out and he jumps on stage and the
Speaker 1: metal we're close enough where Darius just walks out the
Speaker 1: end of our set. He doesn't care. He just walks out.
Speaker 1: We're doing Purple Rain. Darius walks out and starts singing
Speaker 1: Propple Rain with this and he's like, I sing the
Speaker 1: song with my I said, I'm gonna sing it. So
Speaker 1: him and Natalie Soball are going back and forth and
Speaker 1: it's amazing. Than he does his new single that his
Speaker 1: waggon well, and I said, hey, you can't interrupt our
Speaker 1: set without me making you do something extra. So I
Speaker 1: played Cracked Review five million times on tape and then
Speaker 1: DVD A on CD, and I said, I would like
Speaker 1: for you to do hold in my Hand and I'd
Speaker 1: like to sing it with you. And he goes, okay
Speaker 1: with a little love and he passed it over and
Speaker 1: I'm like, this Heaven I did better than ever and
Speaker 1: Hootie the same night, This is awesome. So that was
Speaker 1: pretty exciting. But Kevin Griffin wrote that song with you,
Speaker 1: and I have to say that I attribute our drummer
Speaker 1: Travis McNabb, who i've referenced a toimes our conversation. But
Speaker 1: Travis was originally who helped me and Billy Pilgrim get
Speaker 1: our record deal, and then he went on to play
Speaker 1: in a band called the Beggars where maybe he was
Speaker 1: in Seven Simons. Then he worked with me and all
Speaker 1: my recordings, and then he went on to be in
Speaker 1: the Beggars, and then he went and joined Better Than
Speaker 1: Ezra for fifteen years. And I called him at some
Speaker 1: point when sugar Land had kind of graduated into Kenny
Speaker 1: Chesney stadium shows and said, hey, man, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: believe what I'm doing now, but I have a country
Speaker 1: band and I could really use your drumming awesomeness. I
Speaker 1: see that Better Than Ezra is not on the charts anymore.
Speaker 1: What are you doing? And he was like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I'll come audition, and so he came an audition and
Speaker 1: eventually got the job right. And so I've always felt
Speaker 1: a little terrible that I had taken right. And uh So,
Speaker 1: at some point Kevin uh try Us started representing, Hey, look,
Speaker 1: let me let Kevin pitch you a song. I said, well,
Speaker 1: Jennifer and I are writing incredible machine all by ourselves.
Speaker 1: We're not going to take outside songs. And if I
Speaker 1: if I open it up to that, I gotta call
Speaker 1: Bobby Penson. I gotta call all these people you know
Speaker 1: that had been on our records that a very small
Speaker 1: amount of writers that we had written with, because I'm
Speaker 1: taking money off their table. If I don't allow them in,
Speaker 1: and if I get one guy in and it happens
Speaker 1: to be the all rock guy, they're gonna kill me.
Speaker 1: I'm just starting to make friends, you know. He said, well,
Speaker 1: just let me pitch. Having pitched one thing, I said,
Speaker 1: we'll make sure it's not a full song and make
Speaker 1: sure that um if we if we don't like it,
Speaker 1: we don't have to take it. And if we do
Speaker 1: like it, then we can write it to make it
Speaker 1: fit as sugar Land because we're the only people who
Speaker 1: know how to make a Sugarland song. No, we've never
Speaker 1: cut an outside song. And uh, he pitched us that
Speaker 1: chorus and it freaked me out. I loved it so much.
Speaker 1: How does the chorus it? Uh? It was the go
Speaker 1: Beat again, hawk Beat Again. And he had a co
Speaker 1: writer named Shy Carter who was new in town. He
Speaker 1: was like a Nellie writer or had written in the
Speaker 1: Nellie's camp. And I was half being kind to Travis
Speaker 1: to just because he asked me, and I felt guilt.
Speaker 1: And then the other half is the song was so
Speaker 1: catchy and it was at the very end of our
Speaker 1: recording sessions, and I was like, geez, Jennifer, I kind
Speaker 1: of like this. It scares me and I like things
Speaker 1: that scare me a little. And she listened to it
Speaker 1: and she's like, okay, I'm game. So we wrote the
Speaker 1: rest of it and sent it back to them and
Speaker 1: said do you hate this? And they're like no, no, no.
Speaker 1: I got right ahead and we recorded it that day
Speaker 1: and Kevin, you know, I had to keep calling him
Speaker 1: because I said, you know, this is gonna be a single.
Speaker 1: The label likes it the most, and it's got to
Speaker 1: like a rap part in the back of it. I
Speaker 1: hope you don't hate it. But we were gonna we
Speaker 1: were going to get a guy from Atlanta to rap
Speaker 1: and he wanted like hard cold cash. We thought, well,
Speaker 1: with save the money and Jennifer, why don't you just
Speaker 1: do it? So I went upstairs and we wrote the
Speaker 1: rap in the back of it, and then people started
Speaker 1: on radio cutting the rap out and like radio programmers
Speaker 1: were shortening the song on their own, and it caused
Speaker 1: a bit of a stir, and so I had to
Speaker 1: call Kevin and say, Kevin, I don't know your co writer,
Speaker 1: but can you get him to keep signing off on
Speaker 1: these promos because the writers all have to agree to things.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know the guy, and he was causing trouble.
Speaker 1: He was like, no, I'm not gonna sign that, and
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do this. And I was like, look, Kevin,
Speaker 1: you need to get your buddy in the because I've
Speaker 1: been over backwards to make this work and I love it,
Speaker 1: and I think it's actually polarizing enough that people are
Speaker 1: listening to it and it sounds enough like Shirley and
Speaker 1: but also it was weird. You know, it's challenging people
Speaker 1: because no one had ever had a rap or anything all.
Speaker 1: Dean didn't exist with his collaborations yet and so we
Speaker 1: were kind of getting carved out of Oh. I think
Speaker 1: Jennifer and Christian went off the reservation. I think we're
Speaker 1: now done with the big string of hits with sugar
Speaker 1: Land and the record. They will kind of stayed on it,
Speaker 1: and Shy came around and started to understand that he
Speaker 1: could get more business if we did this, and uh,
Speaker 1: and then things started to smooth out and that that
Speaker 1: song went really well and the album sold really well,
Speaker 1: and we then we launched probably the most ambitious tour
Speaker 1: we've never done. Was that tour. If you saw a
Speaker 1: sugar Land tour that you will never forget, it will
Speaker 1: be that. I remember we were playing and you've been
Speaker 1: nice enough to play with my goofy band, the Raging Idiots,
Speaker 1: And I was like, Christian, I felt. I was like,
Speaker 1: we played, You're like, no problem, I'll play. Get talking
Speaker 1: about with sing songs? And I ask and you said, hey,
Speaker 1: when you're playing stadiums, like, is it just amazing? You know?
Speaker 1: You know what? Sometimes sound done work in stadiums. Either
Speaker 1: it's like you're playing at a bar, like you get it,
Speaker 1: you get one year that where it's just bigger. I
Speaker 1: still remember that conversation. You're like, you think it's everything's perfect,
Speaker 1: but sometimes it's worse because there's just so many more
Speaker 1: things to happen. Yeah, like that you're messing with in
Speaker 1: your head that nobody even knows. Yeah, there's a whole
Speaker 1: psychology to performance that on those large scales. That's that's
Speaker 1: super interesting, and it's there's no one to ask because
Speaker 1: not a lot of people, you know. I remember asking Kenny,
Speaker 1: how do you start your show in the back of
Speaker 1: the stadium and he said, oh, because you can't once
Speaker 1: you walk out in front of those stadium speakers. The
Speaker 1: delay is so great that in your microphone you're hearing
Speaker 1: yourself two or three seconds after you're singing right. And
Speaker 1: I said, how do you do it on the other
Speaker 1: end of the stadium when you're like come up out
Speaker 1: of the ground magically? He said, Oh, I learned this
Speaker 1: from the rolling stones, the flicker light. There's a strobe
Speaker 1: that keeps you on time. Just sing to the to
Speaker 1: the light. So how do you learn that unless somebody
Speaker 1: You're in a stadium of practice? Right? What is that?
Speaker 1: What you guys did? You're in a big space of
Speaker 1: practice this singing to no no. But it's invaluable that
Speaker 1: kind of wisdom. And that's why I take my mentoring
Speaker 1: so seriously. When I'm working with new artist, is like, look,
Speaker 1: there's no book and most of these people quit and
Speaker 1: the people who taught me are not here to teach you.
Speaker 1: So it's my job to pass this flag onto you.
Speaker 1: Here are the following tricks I learned. Go pass it
Speaker 1: onto somebody else. You guys have this phone conversation you're
Speaker 1: talking about coming back, and you come back, and then
Speaker 1: here's this song when you hear it on the radio
Speaker 1: again after you've been through it and not through it,
Speaker 1: And is it cool to here struggle in on the
Speaker 1: radio again. I haven't heard it yet. You have it.
Speaker 1: My friends have all heard it, and my kids have
Speaker 1: heard it, and I was like, oh, I can't wait
Speaker 1: for me to hear it. And you know, it doesn't
Speaker 1: count if someone knows you're listening and they play it.
Speaker 1: I tell this new artist too. If if you're in
Speaker 1: the station and they go, hey, Jimmy, Jim's coming in.
Speaker 1: Here's this new song. We know he's listening right now,
Speaker 1: that doesn't count. You gotta you gotta discover it, huh.
Speaker 1: And I'm really excited to know because as a producer,
Speaker 1: you know, I produced this song as well as wrote it.
Speaker 1: And there's things I want to know on because radio
Speaker 1: processing does something to songs. And I learned from Hugh Pagum,
Speaker 1: who's the guy who made the Police records and the
Speaker 1: Phil Collins records, and he taught me things about how
Speaker 1: to record stuff so that when it gets on the radio,
Speaker 1: it sounds bigger. And that was in three and his
Speaker 1: rules I applied to this song. And I still want
Speaker 1: to see if it's true well, after you hear it
Speaker 1: on the radio, you let me know, because you know,
Speaker 1: I was just I was looking at a lot of
Speaker 1: you because I I love that solo album that you
Speaker 1: did too, and I know what I've been talking about that,
Speaker 1: But I even thought after the solo abum, I thought
Speaker 1: sing Along was such a freaking good song. You hear
Speaker 1: it going. I remember playing it because you and I
Speaker 1: get really disenfranchised with the bubble of Nashville, which is
Speaker 1: why I'm also polarizing, because I will yell at myself,
Speaker 1: which means my people, and be like, what are you thinking?
Speaker 1: Like you're just not seeing the forest in the tree sometimes,
Speaker 1: and I thought that twice with your songs with trailer
Speaker 1: Heads and sing Along. I remember playing sing Along like crazy, Hey,
Speaker 1: listen to this. You know who cares. I'm on a
Speaker 1: hundred stations and I have the like the love of
Speaker 1: this song. How can you and Paduca not love It's
Speaker 1: just you're not taking a risk. I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: so frustrated, Chase. Maybe, well, I thank you. First of all,
Speaker 1: I'm not asking for thanks because I just thought it
Speaker 1: was that good. If you were not here, I would
Speaker 1: say the same thing. I'm so disappointed in just what
Speaker 1: the people that do what I do. And I disappoint
Speaker 1: people too, I know that, but they all disappinted me
Speaker 1: in this that sense. Well, you're a music fan, which
Speaker 1: is different than being a radio host, Okay, and I'll
Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta accept that. But um, I will
Speaker 1: say that, uh before this sugaring phono game, I've finished
Speaker 1: my next solo album which is now sitting here waiting
Speaker 1: and I cannot wait to play it for people. I
Speaker 1: can't do that yet, but um, holy smokes, I had
Speaker 1: no idea, um that all the stuff was gonna land
Speaker 1: on top of each other. But I'm very grateful. But
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this much, and I love it because
Speaker 1: I like it that you're the only one who kind
Speaker 1: of gets this information. Um. I got encouraged by my
Speaker 1: wonderful manager over there and uh and and my publisher
Speaker 1: at the time still publisher, Julie, and the two of them,
Speaker 1: I played a show on the fourth of July this
Speaker 1: past year, and I got asked to do it by
Speaker 1: the guys that I sit on the Grammy board in
Speaker 1: Atlanta with and a guy named uh J Fly who's
Speaker 1: the a drummer An R And b like huge session drummer,
Speaker 1: and he also played with like Bobby Brown and all
Speaker 1: sorts of people. And he said, Christian, will you please
Speaker 1: come out and play? I keep asking you every year,
Speaker 1: but will you and your brother please come out and
Speaker 1: play my Fourth of July show. It's on television. It's
Speaker 1: downtown in Centennial Park. And I was like absolutely. I
Speaker 1: had no excuse this year. I was like, okay, j
Speaker 1: I'll come because I really did need to and I
Speaker 1: had been busy the other years and this year I
Speaker 1: was free and there was no reason I shouldn't do that.
Speaker 1: But I told him, I said, Jay, you know I
Speaker 1: can't imagine that. You know, sixty African American people are
Speaker 1: going to know trailer Hitch or baby Girl? So what
Speaker 1: do you want me to play? Like? I'm trying to
Speaker 1: be entertaining for you. I want to I want to
Speaker 1: reflect well on you help me. And he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I love trailer, which and I said okay, and I
Speaker 1: we we rolled in and we did sound check and
Speaker 1: there were five background singers and they're like seven horn
Speaker 1: players and three keyword guys and I they landed a
Speaker 1: freaking earth wind and Fire song on top of trailer
Speaker 1: hitch and I have never been so happy in my
Speaker 1: entire life. And I remember turning around after that, after
Speaker 1: we had finished the song, and I watched sixty strangers
Speaker 1: dance to a song they probably never heard. And I
Speaker 1: turned around to Jay and I was like, country music
Speaker 1: meets this party. I don't think it's ever seen this party,
Speaker 1: and this party needs to happen, and we ever get
Speaker 1: a chance, let's do that. And I left the stage,
Speaker 1: and I thinked everybody, and I went on with my day,
Speaker 1: and I think I said the same thing to to
Speaker 1: Whitney and to Julian and even my brother Brandon. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: why don't we do it? And I'm like, oh no,
Speaker 1: we can never do that. I don't even think I
Speaker 1: have the songs for stuff like that. And they were like,
Speaker 1: you have millions of songs, just go through them and
Speaker 1: figure it out. So I had this crazy thing happened
Speaker 1: where I took songs that I normally write songs in
Speaker 1: Atlanta and bring them to Nashville and record them with
Speaker 1: Nashville great Nashville musicians, And in this case, I took
Speaker 1: a bunch of songs I wrote in Nashville and took
Speaker 1: them to Atlanta and played them with that band, and
Speaker 1: I couldn't be more confused as to how to ever
Speaker 1: perform these songs live. Like I I remember calling you
Speaker 1: and saying, I just recorded something I can never play
Speaker 1: because I don't know how to do it. Um. It
Speaker 1: was like Aretha Franklin's horn section and Jill Scott's horn section.
Speaker 1: And I was like justin timber Lakes music directors in
Speaker 1: there and and and I mean it was insane what
Speaker 1: was happening. And I love the fact that it felt
Speaker 1: like I was coming so out of control. I was
Speaker 1: discovering my songs through the fingers and the mouths and
Speaker 1: the rhythms of people that were complete strangers to me.
Speaker 1: And it made so much sense. So in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, Um, it felt a lot like what I
Speaker 1: had imagined Paul Simon felt like when he made Grace Land,
Speaker 1: Like you took songs that you knew in a place
Speaker 1: that you didn't know, and you stopped holding onto it
Speaker 1: so tightly and you started to discover what's going on
Speaker 1: around you. And when you say that, you think of
Speaker 1: that record, it's like, you know, Diamonds, Yeah, and how
Speaker 1: that song start? I mean, I have that there are
Speaker 1: things on this set of recordings that I just did
Speaker 1: that I don't know how it happened. Well, I don't
Speaker 1: know when it's gonna come out, but I listen. I can't.
Speaker 1: I cannot wait to share it with everyone, and and
Speaker 1: I hope it happens this this calendar year. Um, maybe
Speaker 1: in pieces or parts it'll start to happen, especially with
Speaker 1: the you know, new attention on shore Land. I'm sure
Speaker 1: people will start digging backwards through our catalogs and our
Speaker 1: solo records and things and start to really assimilate. And
Speaker 1: I may be able to play some of these, I mean,
Speaker 1: if I can physically do it, UM, play some of
Speaker 1: these on while we're on tour. And I'm just super excited.
Speaker 1: So thank you for me for supporting what I like you.
Speaker 1: But if it wasn't good, I was supported, well, I
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Like, don't play the ones that saw Yeah,
Speaker 1: I try not to have so much. Um, do you
Speaker 1: have any more spots that we could perfect? Because I
Speaker 1: have more things? Okay? You brother? By the way, Brandon
Speaker 1: Brandon Bush probably just from Lindsey. I've been I've been
Speaker 1: Brandon before, but just from Lindsay working with she comes in,
Speaker 1: It's like Brandon is one of the greatest musicians. I've
Speaker 1: ever seen him with my eyeball. And Brandon also played
Speaker 1: with train right. Yeah, he was the piano player and trained.
Speaker 1: He likes to call it the nadier of their career.
Speaker 1: But he he got the job after Drops the Jupiter
Speaker 1: because they didn't have a piano player and did they
Speaker 1: have to get one because of that song. Apparently that's
Speaker 1: what Brandon's job was. So, um, they they had the
Speaker 1: song happen and then they just put the piano on
Speaker 1: track because they didn't have anybody who played it, and
Speaker 1: then he went out to audition on the calling a
Speaker 1: meaning they're playing live for the TONI computers just a
Speaker 1: button to play the piano. There's a computer playing the
Speaker 1: piano and then they play to the click in their ears.
Speaker 1: But that song was so popular that I don't care
Speaker 1: who you are. Once it comes on, you start singing it.
Speaker 1: You know. It was It was Pavlaviam for me, and
Speaker 1: I loved the song. When it came on the radio,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my gosh, this is everything I
Speaker 1: wanted from Elton John except through Pat Yeah Monahan. You know,
Speaker 1: it was so good and um Train was kind of
Speaker 1: borne out of the same space as Billy Pilgrim and
Speaker 1: kind of a little bit before John Mayer. It was
Speaker 1: the same of the aware of people or the people
Speaker 1: Ladderman and all the people are that discovered both of them,
Speaker 1: and Brandon joined the band as a sideman, and then
Speaker 1: they were like, oh my god, the same thing as lindsay,
Speaker 1: you're so talented, can you just be a part of
Speaker 1: our bank? So he joined into the band all right,
Speaker 1: as Calling All Angels. That next record came out, and
Speaker 1: he was there all the way through the Ascension of
Speaker 1: sugar Land. And when Pat started making solo records, I
Speaker 1: called Brandon. I said, Man, we're playing stadiums. Will you come.
Speaker 1: I think we can afford a keyboard player? And uh,
Speaker 1: he plays every record I've ever made since I was thirteen.
Speaker 1: There's not been a record he hasn't been on that
Speaker 1: I've either produced or it wasn't an artist. I mean
Speaker 1: two kids that because you played by ear, you know
Speaker 1: you would hear things and play things. And to get
Speaker 1: that once is a lottery win with a kid who
Speaker 1: but to get that twice with one the work ethic
Speaker 1: but to the natural ability, and it's always a combination.
Speaker 1: If you just have even a whole lot of one,
Speaker 1: it usually doesn't work out. You've got to have some
Speaker 1: collective of both, and they can be different levels. But
Speaker 1: you and your brother both where why where did that
Speaker 1: come from? I don't know. That's that's so, but it
Speaker 1: was part of our our are raising like we were raised. Um,
Speaker 1: we both got signed up for the same Japanese experimental program.
Speaker 1: We were. We were kind of guinea pigs at the
Speaker 1: University of Tennessee. You're not making a joke. I'm not
Speaker 1: making a joke. Um. There is a program called the
Speaker 1: Suzuki method, which was this Japanese idea that if children
Speaker 1: learned music at the time their brains learned language, they
Speaker 1: would learn it as a language. And at the time,
Speaker 1: in the early seventies, it was just a theory that
Speaker 1: nobody had proved it, but they were running pilot programs
Speaker 1: around America, and the University of Tennessee Knoxville was one
Speaker 1: of the pilot programs. And my mother signed me up
Speaker 1: when I was three, and so I played violin and
Speaker 1: I was from not Knoxville. I was from the mountains
Speaker 1: outside of Knoxville. So they called them fiddles, but I
Speaker 1: was playing like Bach and Vivaldi and stuff by ear.
Speaker 1: And as soon as my brother was three years old,
Speaker 1: he did the same thing, and within a couple of
Speaker 1: years he was like, can I not play violin? Can
Speaker 1: I play piano? And that happened so that by the
Speaker 1: time I was in middle school, I was really being
Speaker 1: made fun of for moving a violin case around because
Speaker 1: I was being kind of shipped into the Knoxville for school.
Speaker 1: My parents like, we're trying to get me into a
Speaker 1: private school. And I begged my mother to let me
Speaker 1: play guitar. I just begged her, and she said, you know,
Speaker 1: if you can play one season in the youth Symphony,
Speaker 1: I'll let you do it. She knew I couldn't read music,
Speaker 1: so I I went the long way. I took my
Speaker 1: little walkman that should have just been invented at the time,
Speaker 1: and I've recorded the person next to me on Wednesdays
Speaker 1: and I would learn it on Thursday and Friday, and
Speaker 1: I would perform it on Saturday to it and then
Speaker 1: play it back. I played my ear and that's how
Speaker 1: I survived, and I got to learn to play guitar
Speaker 1: because once I got through that season, she gave me
Speaker 1: a guitar, and within a year I had said, Brandon,
Speaker 1: we need to make a record and I don't know
Speaker 1: how to do that. Let's figure it out. Do you
Speaker 1: believe in the Suzuki method. Oh yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. It's changed a lot. That's my blood. And
Speaker 1: Brandon learned how to read music because they had incorporated
Speaker 1: it earlier than they did with me. I was so
Speaker 1: early in the program um and he is U an orchestrator.
Speaker 1: Now you know when I did the musical last year
Speaker 1: and Atlanta, he was the music director. He's he and
Speaker 1: I have scored things for turn of Classic movies like
Speaker 1: we we do things anytime. Sugarland has a string section
Speaker 1: like still the same, the end of that has this
Speaker 1: giant string orchestra, and Brandon's scoring all of that. I mean,
Speaker 1: you got he did a musical, your solo records, sugar Land.
Speaker 1: You had a wedding song on the on the flupping
Speaker 1: Duke channels at one in the morning, and it's like
Speaker 1: Christian Buss sing about a dress on That's that's pretty
Speaker 1: nutty as Nutty goes that that is almost full Amon
Speaker 1: Joy crazy. I want to talk about your podcast because
Speaker 1: let's talk about a podcast. It's called Geeking Out with
Speaker 1: Christian Bush, and it's about people that geek out about,
Speaker 1: not just music. No, it doesn't have to be you
Speaker 1: told me it didn't have to be done. And it's
Speaker 1: the best because in Granger you're talking to grand Smith
Speaker 1: in the first episode about bee hives. I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you I learned so much on this podcast. Have a
Speaker 1: friend that has be hives. But when you guys were
Speaker 1: sitting you're you're like talking and eating or after. But
Speaker 1: he's taught Granger Smith is so into beehives. And oh
Speaker 1: my god. First of all, I was a Grander. I
Speaker 1: know Grandjer well grandj and I Granja lives in north
Speaker 1: of Boston. I lived on in the the fourteen years that
Speaker 1: we have. You know each other, yes, And I was thinking,
Speaker 1: I did not know you was to nerd about beehives.
Speaker 1: Then I thought, I didn't know behaves is so interesting.
Speaker 1: I had no idea. I had no idea. And that's
Speaker 1: what I love about this podcast. You know that when
Speaker 1: the when you had come to me and said, Christian,
Speaker 1: I'm interested in what you would be interested in. And
Speaker 1: I thought about it for a while and I think
Speaker 1: I sent you two or three ideas. And this has
Speaker 1: really stood the test of time of this concept that
Speaker 1: a podcast is good when you have rules, right, because
Speaker 1: they're boundaries that you can stay keep your conversations within.
Speaker 1: And so the rule for the podcast is, I want
Speaker 1: to talk to you about what you are completely into,
Speaker 1: what you are geeking out on that has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with your job. So people introduce themselves, they tell
Speaker 1: me what their job is, and then we stopped talking
Speaker 1: about their job, and they have to know what it
Speaker 1: is that you're interested in. And I learned so much.
Speaker 1: You will not believe some of the things people say.
Speaker 1: I mean what Granger started talking about bees. I had
Speaker 1: so many questions and he had so many answers and
Speaker 1: all the answers, and I was also blown away at
Speaker 1: how much you knew about freaking bee hives. Huh. But
Speaker 1: so I was this so on multi levels. I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's weird Granger, Wow, bees do that. Wow, it's what
Speaker 1: Granger and bees do that. Christian, well you Christian just
Speaker 1: asked what I was thinking the whole thing. I was
Speaker 1: like you, I'm interested if you like I told him.
Speaker 1: At some point, have you put a GoPro camera at
Speaker 1: the beginning at the opening of your beehive covers. I
Speaker 1: want to see the bouncers, you know that the bees
Speaker 1: that fight the other beasts you can't come in here,
Speaker 1: and who slips through and who doesn't. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: fascinating to me. And then the middle part of it,
Speaker 1: um I then we kind of take the same idea,
Speaker 1: but we do something really quick, like I trade you something,
Speaker 1: like I give, I turn you onto something, and then
Speaker 1: you turned me onto something. And he was talking about
Speaker 1: it's crazy cold water therapy where you dunk yourself into
Speaker 1: like fifty or forty degree water for a certain amount
Speaker 1: of time until all the blood rushes to your core
Speaker 1: and then you get out of the water and the
Speaker 1: blood all rushes back to your you know, extremities, and
Speaker 1: that somehow this cleanses your body, like your bone marrow
Speaker 1: starts to make more blood fresh blood, right, And I
Speaker 1: was just kind of looking at him like this is
Speaker 1: I had not was all I could see when I
Speaker 1: look at you as Earl Dibbeles Jr. And then like
Speaker 1: Granger Smith and I just didn't expect naked Earl Dibbeles Jr.
Speaker 1: In a pool talking about bees, you know, like that
Speaker 1: is cool? To me and is the most interesting part
Speaker 1: about people. And I love that this podcast is happening
Speaker 1: because I can't wait for other people to go through
Speaker 1: this process. Yeah, I went through and think my grander
Speaker 1: two is he he's really ripped, like you wouldn't know
Speaker 1: it because he can you just see Earl Oh. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: he's and and you know, he doesn't seem like a
Speaker 1: guy that would tear his shirt off, right, But he's
Speaker 1: totally a guy who I can tell after meeting him
Speaker 1: and spending time with him. You know a lot of
Speaker 1: people when you feel like your life is out of control,
Speaker 1: you control the one thing you can your body, your haircut,
Speaker 1: your whatever. You control one thing that is completely within
Speaker 1: your control. And it seems like his life has brought
Speaker 1: him into a place of real joy controlling his body.
Speaker 1: And that's cool. I really enjoyed that guy. He's good.
Speaker 1: It's good guy, dude. And I gotta tell you. When
Speaker 1: I was on the record label and they told me
Speaker 1: they were signing him and I went in research him,
Speaker 1: I was like, I think this is a terrible idea.
Speaker 1: You know. I was really concerned about the message that
Speaker 1: the Earl Dibel's piece was doing. I was like, I
Speaker 1: don't think a lot of the fans know that he's kidding.
Speaker 1: So I'm talking with you. I was like, I think, what,
Speaker 1: I don't want white supremacists on my label, you know,
Speaker 1: like forget that. I don't think they understand that this
Speaker 1: is a farce. And uh. It made me very nervous.
Speaker 1: And so I feel even doubly interested in him being
Speaker 1: a first guest because I believe that um, in our
Speaker 1: time of bouncing through information so quickly, that someone would
Speaker 1: miss what a great guy he is. I think they can,
Speaker 1: and I think some do and some don't care. And
Speaker 1: you look at his accounts. I think Earl Doubels has
Speaker 1: a couple million followers, and Green Dress a couple tho.
Speaker 1: You know what, I'd be happy to provide a rabbit
Speaker 1: hole for people to go dive into to find out more.
Speaker 1: Geeking out Christian Bush, I think it's fantastic. I just
Speaker 1: I feel like we could sit here for three hours
Speaker 1: and just talk and then we have and I'll tell you,
Speaker 1: just because I got so close to the Lindsay project
Speaker 1: that I would hear the songs early and then I
Speaker 1: would hear them when they were done. What what you
Speaker 1: and Lindsay did with this song. Here you make me
Speaker 1: feel Champagne the band, you know what's cool about us.
Speaker 1: So the backbeat is me playing acoustic guitar with my
Speaker 1: hand without any cord, so like muted, muted natural day,
Speaker 1: just call me rain until So the rhythm is you
Speaker 1: holding a mutic chord. I can open my own door.
Speaker 1: I think music is beautiful when it's really simple. That's funny.
Speaker 1: You can hear that. I mean, you're so. I would
Speaker 1: have never heard that. And it happened in the right
Speaker 1: here in your left here went yeah, man here that.
Speaker 1: I'll be honest with you. Yeah, at different level, I
Speaker 1: didn't do it. I didn't do the old yamahal Suzuki. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know. I learned to make records by listening in headphones.
Speaker 1: So it's a good rule that if you see my
Speaker 1: name on an album, either as an artist or as
Speaker 1: a producer or writer, even but mostly as an artist
Speaker 1: or profuser, you should take the minute to put on
Speaker 1: the big headphones, the big Princess Leah ones and listen.
Speaker 1: Because I left you secrets law east Reg's yeah and
Speaker 1: so depending when you hear this, and people listen to
Speaker 1: podcasts for years after But as we do, the sugar
Speaker 1: Land is about to go out on the big tour
Speaker 1: and I'll be coming for sure. I'll be coming sugar Land.
Speaker 1: And you have Frankie Ballard and Claire Bowen out, and
Speaker 1: you have Lindsay l and you have Brandy Clark, who
Speaker 1: is one of my absolute favorite. I love Brandy boss
Speaker 1: Lindsay's but raisons again. But Brandy Clark, I don't know,
Speaker 1: man that she is good people, but Brandy's great. Man.
Speaker 1: I'm excited about our openers, you know, a little big
Speaker 1: town with our openers. For about three years, we just
Speaker 1: never gave up on them. I just kept thinking, these
Speaker 1: guys are so good and it's just not falling. The
Speaker 1: cards aren't falling for him, and they just put their
Speaker 1: head down and they just kept working and kept working.
Speaker 1: So I love the idea that people can come to
Speaker 1: a Shutland show and discover music they've never thought that
Speaker 1: they would be madly in love with. And if you
Speaker 1: can trust us for that, much like people trust you
Speaker 1: on your radio show for music. When you turn people
Speaker 1: onto something, I think it's the I think it's a
Speaker 1: trust that you earn and you got to do everything
Speaker 1: you can to keep it look at you, sugar Lands back,
Speaker 1: you gotta secret album, The Troubadour is gonna go and
Speaker 1: Sarah So it's it's being stages in Florida. You gotta podcast, Yes,
Speaker 1: you got, you got a lot. Oh yeah, you're writing.
Speaker 1: You have a song on the radio that you wrote.
Speaker 1: You didn't even produce. You're seeing it. You wrote it.
Speaker 1: I mean, this has been a dry number of years.
Speaker 1: You're like Jennifer Lopez. Man, the desert has been a
Speaker 1: long desert. It's great to see water. Thank you for
Speaker 1: coming over to the house. I really appreciate you coming over.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm a huge fan. I'm a I'm a
Speaker 1: big fan of yours man. Christian Book, Episode one hundred
Speaker 1: and it's been a special episode one. Check out geeking
Speaker 1: out with Christian Bush. Go out and see sugar Land
Speaker 1: on the road. Give him culled bluck. See I'm walking
Speaker 1: down the road. Like you said, it doesn't been dry
Speaker 1: Box one hundred, one hundred and we cast it's episode hundred,
Speaker 1: Cast one hundred one hundred. Thank one zero zero. Appreciate you,
Speaker 1: my friend. Appreciate you. All right, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: You next time about you