Speaker 1: Pushkin, Margot Price is no stranger to struggle. In early March,
Speaker 1: a tornado raged through her home base of Nashville, just
Speaker 1: as she was preparing to release her third album. A
Speaker 1: month later, as Tennessee residents were ordered to shelter in
Speaker 1: place to prevent the spread of COVID nineteen, Margot's husband
Speaker 1: and longtime collaborator, Jeremy Ivey, tested positive for the coronavirus.
Speaker 1: While taking care of her sick husband and two young kids,
Speaker 1: Margot decided to push back the release of her new album.
Speaker 1: It may seem like a no brainer, but for Margot
Speaker 1: it was a really tough decision, and with her simultaneously
Speaker 1: not being able to be on the road like she
Speaker 1: usually is right now, things in her life just feel
Speaker 1: a bit upside down. But Margot Price is a gifted
Speaker 1: songwriter who always manages to turn adversity into a great song.
Speaker 1: In the past, she's written her way through personal a
Speaker 1: station like the loss of a family farm and the
Speaker 1: death of an infant son. Her new album, That's How
Speaker 1: Rumors Get Started pulls from that same well, but musically
Speaker 1: it was a debt to more carefree rock music like
Speaker 1: The Stones, Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac. In this interview,
Speaker 1: Margot tells Bruce Headlam how playing an open mic at
Speaker 1: a Best Western hotel made her a better songwriter. She
Speaker 1: also talks about hockey, her wedding ring to record her
Speaker 1: first album, and how spending a weekend in jail was
Speaker 1: all the inspiration she needed to refocus her career. This
Speaker 1: is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm
Speaker 1: justin Richmond. Here's Bruce Headlam and Margot Price, who connected
Speaker 1: recently on zoom. So you get at home with your
Speaker 1: two kids now for two months? Yeah, sixty six days.
Speaker 1: I'm one of the psychopaths still keeping fresh. Who Well,
Speaker 1: my son was asking the other day, So I sat
Speaker 1: down and did the math and your husband got sick
Speaker 1: in the middle of all this, didn't he he did? Yeah,
Speaker 1: your husband who's also your co songwriter and you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: a great musician. Yeah, partner in crime. How is he now?
Speaker 1: He is still not fully recovered, but slowly getting better
Speaker 1: every day. It's been a long it's been a long road,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I'm just glad that he is not going
Speaker 1: into the hospital and we've been able to treat it here.
Speaker 1: He's been doing like nebulizer treatments, the breathing treatments and
Speaker 1: sleeping twelve hours a day, taking a lot of vitamins,
Speaker 1: drinking a lot of water. Just there's nothing you can do.
Speaker 1: So you go into the emergency room. And then they
Speaker 1: just were like, yep, I hope you make it. We're
Speaker 1: just going to send you home now because you're not
Speaker 1: bad enough to admit and we can't really give you anything.
Speaker 1: So they gave him like an inhaler and wished him luck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you've had to postpone releasing your new album, which
Speaker 1: is what we're here to talk about. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I didn't have to. I just everything came on so quickly,
Speaker 1: and I thought, Okay, well we'll be able to tour
Speaker 1: this summer, so I'm just going to push it back
Speaker 1: a little bit. And then I've finally came to the
Speaker 1: realization that, like, no, there's not going to be tours
Speaker 1: for probably the whole entire year, and so now I'm
Speaker 1: just focusing on getting it out. But at the beginning
Speaker 1: of quarantine, we could just been hit by the tornado.
Speaker 1: Our friend John Prine died and Jeremy got sick, and
Speaker 1: all those things combined plus having two small children at home.
Speaker 1: I just I couldn't proper release a record. I didn't
Speaker 1: have any like any more music videos to put out.
Speaker 1: I didn't really have any content to work with. You
Speaker 1: mentioned John Prine, who's you know, at the head of
Speaker 1: the list of great musicians who've been lost to this.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a terrific version online of you doing
Speaker 1: Unwed Fathers with him. When did you first meet him?
Speaker 1: I met John on his seventieth birthday at the Rhyman
Speaker 1: and I was asked to come sing in spite of
Speaker 1: ourselves and Unwinded Fathers with him, And it was just
Speaker 1: really surreal because I'd been a student of his songwriting
Speaker 1: for decades and he was so down to earth and
Speaker 1: so nice and funny and real. I just feel like
Speaker 1: there's very few people that remained that grounded throughout that
Speaker 1: kind of success, and he was one of the realest
Speaker 1: people I ever had the pleasure to. Still kind of
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like he's gone because we're not seeing anybody,
Speaker 1: so I just kind of feel like I'm going to
Speaker 1: see him down the road. But every once in a
Speaker 1: while kind of like clicks that you know and you
Speaker 1: remember it. Yeah, just such a loss. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you guys, you have the same tendency. I think, particularly
Speaker 1: in sad songs, you both come up with the kind
Speaker 1: of perfect image, you know, riding high and low expectations
Speaker 1: and why don't you do the math pay gap, ripping
Speaker 1: my dollars in half? You know, there are things you
Speaker 1: can't turn money back into time, which is a line.
Speaker 1: I just love those. A line sound like John Prime
Speaker 1: lines to me. Have you ever sat down and said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to write a Joeing Prime song? Or is this?
Speaker 1: Is this just? Is that just Midwestern sensibility? Well that's
Speaker 1: very high, and I thank you for that. I don't
Speaker 1: I don't think I've come close to his greatest works
Speaker 1: in any capacity, but I definitely have, you know, studied
Speaker 1: what he's done. And I just the thing that I
Speaker 1: love about John is that he uses his entire vocabulary
Speaker 1: and he's not afraid to use quirky, strange words that
Speaker 1: most people would think were too ugly to put into
Speaker 1: a song. You know. And my husband and I actually
Speaker 1: wrote him recorded a couple of summers ago an album
Speaker 1: that we shelved, and it was a psychedelic gospel record,
Speaker 1: and I think on that album, I was you know,
Speaker 1: really trying to mimic his work because we had been
Speaker 1: on the road with him a lot. And of course
Speaker 1: I haven't put that out yet, but there's a couple
Speaker 1: like songs that are floating around out there on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Once called the Devils in the Details, and I've played
Speaker 1: that acoustic for John and he told me that he
Speaker 1: really liked that song, and that was the highest compliment
Speaker 1: I ever got. Really, you're so good at those kind
Speaker 1: of lines. I'm just wondering and what I'm jumping ahead
Speaker 1: because we'll talk about songwriting more, but do those lines
Speaker 1: kind of emerge and then you think that's a great line,
Speaker 1: I'm going to put that in a song at some point.
Speaker 1: Are they just things in a notebook that find their
Speaker 1: way in or do they emerge while you're writing the song.
Speaker 1: Some of them just emerge as I'm writing a song.
Speaker 1: Can't Turn Money Back to Time. That was something that
Speaker 1: happened like while I was strumming and my husband and
Speaker 1: I were kind of I had written most of the
Speaker 1: song and then we talked through a little bit of
Speaker 1: that chorus and we like it just clipped at that point.
Speaker 1: But I do tend to find lines like that and
Speaker 1: make a note of them, or like if somebody in
Speaker 1: the room says something that's really witty, I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you're not going to write a song about that, and
Speaker 1: I'll write it down. Well, yea the album title. That's
Speaker 1: how rumors get started. That actually was something my guitar
Speaker 1: player said in the bus when we were drunk one night,
Speaker 1: and I just was like, I'm taking it all right. Nice,
Speaker 1: Actually that one another I'm thinking about it. That that
Speaker 1: line you can't you can't turn money back into time?
Speaker 1: What's the line after that? Take it from me, Darlyn
Speaker 1: of mine? Yeah, that's what makes that line that there's
Speaker 1: such a shift, and to take it from me Darlin,
Speaker 1: that to me is just you know how everybody remembers
Speaker 1: the first line of Hallelujah that they say there was
Speaker 1: a secret cord David played. What makes it is the
Speaker 1: second line, which is but you don't really care about music,
Speaker 1: do you, which I think is that people always leave
Speaker 1: off that and that's just that's the killer. And I
Speaker 1: when I heard that, I know, but when I heard
Speaker 1: that song, that's what I thought of. Well, I wanted,
Speaker 1: you know, I had written Hands of Time long ago,
Speaker 1: and I remember this woman in North Carolina. She said
Speaker 1: she was an old family friend and this old hippie lady,
Speaker 1: and she was all drunk one night She's like, you
Speaker 1: gotta write a song for your other kid, and I said, okay,
Speaker 1: I will. And so that was me kind of writing
Speaker 1: like a note to him, like you know, when I'm
Speaker 1: gone on the road, but also when I die. And
Speaker 1: I've been thinking so much of that line as I'm
Speaker 1: home these last couple months, like Okay, well here's your time.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not bringing in money, but I have time,
Speaker 1: and I'm really trying to enjoy it and savor it.
Speaker 1: So I mentioned you and John Prime were both Midwesterners,
Speaker 1: ended up in Nashville. Where were you born. I was
Speaker 1: born in a town called Rock Island, but my folks
Speaker 1: always lived in Aldo, Illinois, and it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: west of Chicago. It's just how I explain it. And
Speaker 1: the town had three thousand and seven hundred people in it,
Speaker 1: and it gets smaller every year. More and more people
Speaker 1: move away because there's less opportunity and there's a really
Speaker 1: desolate area. I mean, after the eighties farm crisis and
Speaker 1: how things have kind of continued to go with corporate farms,
Speaker 1: and it's a great place, but I just I don't
Speaker 1: think I could ever live there because it's it's a
Speaker 1: hard way life. I think for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: how did music start then? For you? I think because
Speaker 1: there was nothing to do. It felt like such an
Speaker 1: important lifeline in my life. You know, my father always
Speaker 1: had the oldies station on, and so there was a
Speaker 1: lot of like classic rock, and he always liked to
Speaker 1: play the dad game in the car that was like
Speaker 1: you know who this is, lots the Beatles, you know who?
Speaker 1: That's Carol King, you know, and he wanted to like
Speaker 1: school me on that's Rod Stewart. So it annoyed me
Speaker 1: and I didn't like that music at first, but then
Speaker 1: it really started to grow on me. There was there
Speaker 1: a particular song or a particular moment that it really
Speaker 1: hit you musically. I loved Tom Petty songs. I loved
Speaker 1: like you know, American Girl and a lot of those songs.
Speaker 1: I felt like he was talking directly to me, and
Speaker 1: he made it seem like it was like okay to
Speaker 1: be from Middle America, like a small town and being nobody.
Speaker 1: He like romanticized it in a way that I really appreciated.
Speaker 1: And in school we still had some good programs, Like
Speaker 1: in fourth and fifth grade we did like these show
Speaker 1: choir things, you know, singing and dancing. And in fourth
Speaker 1: grade the theme that year was like country music, and
Speaker 1: so I got my first a little solo to Patsy
Speaker 1: Klein walking after Midnight, and I did, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of start at that point to enjoy country music more.
Speaker 1: I wasn't always sold on what was on the radio,
Speaker 1: but my grandmother she played a lot of the old
Speaker 1: stuff for me, Loretta and Dolly and Johnny Cash, and
Speaker 1: that was cooler to me than even the nineties country.
Speaker 1: There's still some nineties country that's like okay, you know,
Speaker 1: and now it's like obviously having a big resurgence. But
Speaker 1: my heart is in across the board, whether it's rock
Speaker 1: and roll or country music. It's like the sixties and seventies, right, Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm always it's always funny to me when people are like,
Speaker 1: you know, I like the old stars like Garth Brooks,
Speaker 1: like Rooks. You know, it's like I thought you meant, like,
Speaker 1: you know, Ray Price or Merle Haggard or something, you
Speaker 1: know exactly. We'll be back with Margot Price. We're back
Speaker 1: with Margot Price. So when you decided to become a musician,
Speaker 1: I mean, you could have gone to Los Angeles or
Speaker 1: New York. You chose Nashville. And why was that? Well,
Speaker 1: I wanted to go to Los Angeles and I wanted
Speaker 1: to go to New York, and I think my parents
Speaker 1: were just terrified to let me go that far away
Speaker 1: from them, you know, just being nineteen years old and
Speaker 1: fearless and you know, very trustworthy. And I came to visit.
Speaker 1: I had a cousin living here in Nashville, and she's like,
Speaker 1: I swear it's not all you know, cheesy country music,
Speaker 1: because at that time, I just wasn't into any really
Speaker 1: a lot of the music being made on you know,
Speaker 1: top forty radio or country radio. I just I didn't
Speaker 1: feel like I was going to fit in. But I
Speaker 1: came on my spring break of my sophomore year of college,
Speaker 1: and she took me down to like Rock Block, which
Speaker 1: was like Exit in in the End and all these
Speaker 1: cool like rock clubs, and I went to the spring
Speaker 1: Water and just you know, lots of grungey dive bars
Speaker 1: that kind I kind of started like go into these
Speaker 1: open mics and go into shows at Mercy Lounge and Canary,
Speaker 1: and I thought, okay, I can I could live here,
Speaker 1: and I dropped out of college and moved here just
Speaker 1: two months after I visited. How long had you been
Speaker 1: writing songs by that point? Well, I started writing just
Speaker 1: poems and making like acapella demos when I was I
Speaker 1: don't even know, maybe seven years old or something. Wow.
Speaker 1: And then around that time too, my mom put me
Speaker 1: into piano lessons, and so I took piano for several years,
Speaker 1: and then with my eighth grade graduation money, I bought
Speaker 1: a Japanese guitar, about a salmon guitar. My parents were like,
Speaker 1: we really think that you should buy a computer for
Speaker 1: your school work, and I was like, well, I had
Speaker 1: my eye on this guitar, and I immediately started learning
Speaker 1: how to play chords and learning how to play songs,
Speaker 1: just kind of self teaching. That was. That was when
Speaker 1: I really got bit by the bug. I'd say, like
Speaker 1: thirteen fourteen. I mean, you did have an uncle who
Speaker 1: was a songwriter in Nashville. Yes, Bobbie Fisher who wrote
Speaker 1: You Live for the McIntyre. He has written so many songs.
Speaker 1: He's still writing songs and he's in his eighties and
Speaker 1: just sharp as ever, he sent me a song last week,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to try to put and put some
Speaker 1: music too, if I can find five seconds to pick
Speaker 1: up my guitar. But he I mean, he wrote for
Speaker 1: George Jones, he wrote for Charlie Pride, Tanya Tucker's. He
Speaker 1: was just really driven and also came from the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere and got a start later in life. So
Speaker 1: it was inspiring to see that. And we'd come down
Speaker 1: to go to Florida and we'd always stop in Nashville
Speaker 1: and stay at his house and I'd like look at
Speaker 1: his gold records on the wall, and you know, he
Speaker 1: had stories about Garth Brooks and stuff then too. That's
Speaker 1: who he was hanging out with, like Rebot and Garth
Speaker 1: and all the top Nashville cats at the time. Right,
Speaker 1: did you play your stuff for him? I did when
Speaker 1: I first moved down here. I think, you know, my
Speaker 1: mom thought it was going to be easy to like
Speaker 1: connect the dots, like, oh, you go to your uncles
Speaker 1: and you play him your cute songs and he's just
Speaker 1: going to find you record label and you know, a
Speaker 1: manager and plug you in with the right people. And
Speaker 1: I went over to his house and we went in
Speaker 1: his writing room and he's like, all right, well seeage
Speaker 1: you up. He sits there and I tune up and
Speaker 1: I play him a song that I wrote. It was
Speaker 1: called no Love Lost, and I thought it was pretty
Speaker 1: decent and played him to other songs and he just
Speaker 1: sat there in complete silence, stared at me, and he's like, well,
Speaker 1: this is what you need to do. I need to
Speaker 1: go to your apartment. You need to get rid of
Speaker 1: your TV, get rid of your computer, and you just
Speaker 1: need to sit and just keep writing songs. Just write
Speaker 1: a song every day and you'll figure it out. And
Speaker 1: that tough love like hurt so much because I knew.
Speaker 1: I mean, he didn't say. He didn't say it, well
Speaker 1: I like this, but I don't like this. I mean
Speaker 1: he basically was just like, just keep trying, and so
Speaker 1: I would, Like I said, I was going to all
Speaker 1: these like open mic writers nights, and one that I
Speaker 1: was going to pretty frequently. I'd go almost every week.
Speaker 1: It was it was the best Western and there was
Speaker 1: a bar in there. It was called the Hall of
Speaker 1: Fame Loud and there was never really a wait, like
Speaker 1: to play, and there was a lot of good unknown
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't know who a lot of these
Speaker 1: writers were, and I assumed that, you know, not many
Speaker 1: of them had a lot of cuts because they were
Speaker 1: just playing in the in the hotel bar. But but
Speaker 1: I made friends with some of the like older pickers there,
Speaker 1: and you know, I was hanging out with like sixty
Speaker 1: year olds as a twenty year old, and they'd buy
Speaker 1: me drinks and kind of would sit and swap stories
Speaker 1: and I'd get advice, and I was really just studying
Speaker 1: the crowd's reaction to like everybody who played, like, okay,
Speaker 1: well why did everybody laugh and like clap for this guy?
Speaker 1: But nobody nobody reacted when you know the next person played.
Speaker 1: And I think at that point, you know, I was
Speaker 1: just trying to get my head around, like what is
Speaker 1: a good song. There has to be humor and darkness,
Speaker 1: a lesson, but not too many cliches that you know,
Speaker 1: all these things started kind of firing off, and that
Speaker 1: is where I really began to study, you know, what
Speaker 1: makes a sound good. But you know, in retrospect, your
Speaker 1: uncle gave you great advice, oh, without a doubt. But
Speaker 1: it must have hurt at the time. I cried. I
Speaker 1: called my mom. I was like, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I should be here. He said my songs weren't good.
Speaker 1: She's like, did he say that? I'm like, oh no,
Speaker 1: But I'm reading between the lines. And he's really proud
Speaker 1: of me now though, and he's very complimentary and he's
Speaker 1: always sending me different articles and telling me stories. He's
Speaker 1: got this guitar that just everybody has like tattooed this
Speaker 1: guitar with. He has like a tattoo gun and you
Speaker 1: at your name in it. And the day that he
Speaker 1: asked me to sign that guitar, I really felt like
Speaker 1: I'd accomplished something amazing. There are two things I do
Speaker 1: want to ask you about from your early days, which is,
Speaker 1: did you really hawk your wedding ring so you could
Speaker 1: make your first album? I did, Wow, I got it back.
Speaker 1: I got it back at the last minute. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there was We sold a ton of music gear, a
Speaker 1: lot of cool microphones and reels, real machine, and of
Speaker 1: course my husband sold the car, which I thought he
Speaker 1: was absolutely nuts for doing. But once he did that,
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, well, let's just try to get
Speaker 1: as big of a budget as we can and do
Speaker 1: this right. Because I didn't want to do another kickstarter.
Speaker 1: I had done that. I didn't want to ask anybody
Speaker 1: for money. I didn't have anybody I could ask for money.
Speaker 1: I'd already begged my way out of multiple problems at
Speaker 1: that point, so there, Yeah, that was seemed like the
Speaker 1: only option at the time. The other thing I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask you about is after you did your first album,
Speaker 1: you signed with Jack White's company. How did that come about,
Speaker 1: because you've gone through a lot of rejection. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: sent that album out to probably fifty record labels, but
Speaker 1: I had this write up in Rolling Stone. We did
Speaker 1: a video in a hotel room for Since You Put
Speaker 1: Me Down, and Rolling Stone wrote it up and they
Speaker 1: said sounds like Jack White produced Loretta Lynn. So I
Speaker 1: always wonder if that's how it got on his radar.
Speaker 1: But my Pedal Steel player, Luke Schneider, he told me
Speaker 1: that Ben Swink was interested in hearing my record. And
Speaker 1: Ben is, you know, Jack's right hand man, and so
Speaker 1: I sent it to him and he was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is good, Okay, I'm coming to a show. And
Speaker 1: he came out to a show at the Basement East
Speaker 1: and I heard he was there like afterwards, and I
Speaker 1: was like, I can't go talk to him. I'm too nervous.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't want to go talk to him.
Speaker 1: My friend Amanda was like, no, come on, I know
Speaker 1: I'd be super nice. He's really down to earth. And
Speaker 1: I went out there and he was like kind of
Speaker 1: slur in his speech, and he was just really drunk.
Speaker 1: He's been, he's sober now. He's one of my very
Speaker 1: best friends, and I'm so grateful that he came out
Speaker 1: and washed our watched us perform. Like the record was
Speaker 1: very instrumental in everything coming together. I don't want to
Speaker 1: talk too much about your early Nationville days because you've
Speaker 1: written about it so beautifully. Your first album starts with
Speaker 1: the Hands of Time, which is like a memoir that
Speaker 1: would take somebody else three hundred pages, it takes you
Speaker 1: six minutes. Are all your songs still that autobiographical? Um?
Speaker 1: I think this third album that I am putting out
Speaker 1: here is it is still autobiographical, but there's other elements
Speaker 1: of like I don't know that really could be more
Speaker 1: about anybody else. And some songs have you know, it's
Speaker 1: like I I wrote them to multiple people, if that
Speaker 1: makes sense. Like that's how rumors get started. It's not
Speaker 1: just to like one of my friends that didn't make it.
Speaker 1: It's to like multiple friends that are kind of struggling
Speaker 1: and like caught in their same bad habits, and and
Speaker 1: then there's um like I'd die for you that that's definitely,
Speaker 1: you know, Jeremy and I's relationship based off of that
Speaker 1: letting me Down. Jeremy and I we each wrote a
Speaker 1: verse and we wrote to both of us wrote to
Speaker 1: different people in our past that we went to high
Speaker 1: school with that you know, we had different experiences with
Speaker 1: both of them. But like, his friend was a burnout
Speaker 1: drug addict who like joined the army, and he wrote
Speaker 1: it to that friend, and I wrote it to a
Speaker 1: friend of mine who had been raped and had a
Speaker 1: really tough childhood. And so we we wrote them towards
Speaker 1: different people and then worked on the chorus together. So
Speaker 1: it's each one's different. We'll be back with more Margo Price.
Speaker 1: We're back with the rest of Bruce's conversation with Margo Price.
Speaker 1: So you've switched labels on this one, right, Yeah. I
Speaker 1: had two albums with Third Man, and then for this
Speaker 1: third one, they're still doing their pressing the record at
Speaker 1: their pressing plant in Detroit, which I think is really cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just had the opportunity to Loma Vista was like
Speaker 1: there and ready, and I wanted to get this out. Actually,
Speaker 1: last spring within I pregnant, so it's just taken a
Speaker 1: while to get it out. Did you make the album
Speaker 1: while you were pregnant? Then, yeah, I started making it
Speaker 1: in December of twenty eighteen. This is going to sound
Speaker 1: like an odd question, but you've got such a powerful voice.
Speaker 1: Does it Does being pregnant affect how you sing? Does
Speaker 1: it affect you physically in a way? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: early on, when I was in the studio, I was
Speaker 1: I was wearing a baggy Fleetwood mac T shirt. You
Speaker 1: couldn't even tell I was pregnant, really, But I worked
Speaker 1: on it for months and months, and as time went on,
Speaker 1: it didn't get harder to breathe. I mean, you've got
Speaker 1: child pushing on your rib cage and your diaphragm. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, I was being so good to
Speaker 1: my body, and I was like working out and sleeping,
Speaker 1: you know, eight nine hours every night, and I wasn't
Speaker 1: drinking and I wasn't smoking any weed, and I felt
Speaker 1: like I had incredible control over my voice. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I think I gained a few notes up here in
Speaker 1: my head voice, so I felt like it benefited me
Speaker 1: in a way. And I was even I performed just
Speaker 1: a few nights before I had Ramona, I sang with
Speaker 1: Mavis Staples. I mean, I was massive and it was
Speaker 1: harder to sing at that point. But right, well, that's
Speaker 1: not too intimidate any being on stage with her. She's
Speaker 1: so nice though, and she just was like, had her
Speaker 1: hands on my stomach. She's like, I'm going to be
Speaker 1: the godmother's She's like, I don't have babies anywhere on
Speaker 1: my own, but I got babies all over the world.
Speaker 1: I'm a godmother to hundreds of babies. You can name
Speaker 1: you baby Mavis if you want. It was incredible to
Speaker 1: be up there with her, and she was grabbing my
Speaker 1: arm and helped lead me on stage like it was
Speaker 1: it was something else. It was her eightieth birthday with
Speaker 1: the Rayman and your Your daughter's middle name is Lynde,
Speaker 1: isn't it? And that's for that's for Loretta. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Now were you friends her? I am? I am? I am.
Speaker 1: I was talking to her daughter. When Loretta's last album
Speaker 1: came out, she felt ill and so they asked me
Speaker 1: to come up to Ernest Tube record shop and do
Speaker 1: a little interview and kind of talk about her and
Speaker 1: sing a song for her. And I was pregnant at
Speaker 1: the time. I had just found out. I hadn't told anybody,
Speaker 1: and I was talking to her daughter, Patsy, and I
Speaker 1: just started kind of picking her brain. I was like,
Speaker 1: you did never like present your mom because she was
Speaker 1: on the road all the time, did you? She was like,
Speaker 1: oh no, we never knew any other way, you know.
Speaker 1: It was just Daddy was home and he took care
Speaker 1: of us and mommy went out and made the money.
Speaker 1: And sometimes we go on to her and it was great.
Speaker 1: She's like, are you thinking about having another baby? I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, maybe, I don't know. And a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks later, Loretta called me and I told her
Speaker 1: at that point and she's like, well, I tell you
Speaker 1: what you can use. Lens is a middle name, is
Speaker 1: a boy or girl name. I give you the blessing
Speaker 1: and I hope you have you know, I hope you
Speaker 1: have five more. She's like, you can do it. I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm done. Uh. You know what. A lot of fans
Speaker 1: loved your first couple of records. Um, you had like
Speaker 1: a kind of pitch perfect seventies Nashville sound. I don't
Speaker 1: want to confine it just to that, but you had
Speaker 1: the kind of telecaster, the bright telecaster, that the pedal
Speaker 1: stee You had a great band. So I was a
Speaker 1: little unprepared for this new album, which first of all
Speaker 1: starts with this beautiful little piano part by Tom Petty's
Speaker 1: collaboratory Ben Montage. How did, first of all tell me
Speaker 1: how it came about that you recorded the album the
Speaker 1: way you did, and what you were thinking about when
Speaker 1: you recorded this album. Well, obviously, country music, I think
Speaker 1: it always goes through these kind of resurgencies where it
Speaker 1: becomes really you know, popular and um like. Instead it
Speaker 1: becomes fashionable, like both in just what people are wearing,
Speaker 1: but also in people trying to have that more traditional sound.
Speaker 1: And once the mainstream Nashville kind of caught onto what
Speaker 1: the underground was doing, and once they started to mimic
Speaker 1: that and regurgitate it, I wanted to jump ship. And
Speaker 1: there's a lot of things about the country music industry
Speaker 1: that I don't agree with that I've never agreed with,
Speaker 1: and I just wanted to try to get away from that.
Speaker 1: The sexism, the racism and just the overall bullshit politics
Speaker 1: that comes with it. And it's like you speak out
Speaker 1: about one thing that they don't like, and then they
Speaker 1: blacklist you, and then you know, when you die, like
Speaker 1: with Meral Haggard or something, they're like, oh, well, we're
Speaker 1: going to tribute you anyway. So I wanted to get
Speaker 1: out of that, and I wanted to make something completely
Speaker 1: different because I just I see a lot of singer songwriters,
Speaker 1: A lot of people get into the habit of like
Speaker 1: making the same album with the same themes, like over
Speaker 1: and over again, and I just didn't want to become
Speaker 1: stale in what I was doing. And I've always loved
Speaker 1: rock music just as much as I've loved country. And
Speaker 1: that's why I think people like Neil Young, Linda Ronstat,
Speaker 1: people who started the line of both and never were
Speaker 1: confined to a genre. That's the kind of career that
Speaker 1: I want to have something that outlasts like the fad
Speaker 1: of just a genre. But it's one of those albums that,
Speaker 1: like lots of people do their California album or their
Speaker 1: different kind of album, when your album it just doesn't.
Speaker 1: You can hear influences here there. I think particularly letting
Speaker 1: me down. But I think the ghost of Tom Petty
Speaker 1: kind of hovers over that one in a good way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you. But you know, there's that old line about
Speaker 1: originality is when people can and figure out your sources
Speaker 1: or something like that. I like that. I kept thinking,
Speaker 1: I kept thinking, oh, I think I know what she's doing,
Speaker 1: but this is the sound of it is really quite something,
Speaker 1: thank you. You know, like, Hey Child, I could see
Speaker 1: a lot of people doing it as a big kind
Speaker 1: of gospel number and you sort of go there, but
Speaker 1: you don't. It's just it's a really interesting combination of things.
Speaker 1: What were you listening to? What were you thinking about? Well,
Speaker 1: you definitely said Tom Petty and Heartbreakers, Fleetwood Mac that
Speaker 1: was like the kind of overall thought and sprinkle in
Speaker 1: some Bruce Springsteen, maybe the Pretenders. Hey Child. I think
Speaker 1: it was our most Stones influenced song. And we wrote
Speaker 1: that song almost maybe eight should nine years ago and
Speaker 1: we were just super into the Stones and Sturgil was like,
Speaker 1: what happened to that Hey Child song you used to play?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh man, I've already recorded that. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't want to do that song. I don't,
Speaker 1: you know, feel connected to it. And I had sixteen
Speaker 1: other songs, but we ended up recording sixteen songs. But
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, you're right, no one's heard it.
Speaker 1: Let's give it a shot. And everybody on the session
Speaker 1: was like, this is a killer song. I really wanted,
Speaker 1: you know, with the background vocals. I wanted to get
Speaker 1: that like Mary Clayton give me Shelter, kind of like
Speaker 1: vibe going at the end. Oh okay. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I think the fact that, like, maybe because I
Speaker 1: am a woman like doing the Stones, like, people aren't like, oh,
Speaker 1: where is this? It's not like if I was just
Speaker 1: maybe directly pulling from Emmy Lou hair a sort of
Speaker 1: Loretta in like I have in the past. I think
Speaker 1: that's more easy to pinpoint. Right. Can I ask you
Speaker 1: about a couple of the songs that I thought were
Speaker 1: just stand outs and you just mentioned one stone me? Yeah,
Speaker 1: where did that from? Well? My husband threw me the title.
Speaker 1: He's like, hey, I had a song time I thought
Speaker 1: you should write too. I was like, Okay, what is it.
Speaker 1: He's like stoney right, It's like, okay, I know you're
Speaker 1: coming from. And I think he wanted some kind of
Speaker 1: like last dance with Mary Jane, or like let's get
Speaker 1: to the point, throw another joint, you know, like just
Speaker 1: like a stoner anthem. And I tried to write it
Speaker 1: like that and just nothing came out. And then him
Speaker 1: and I had an argument actually when I was on
Speaker 1: the road and he called me a bit and so
Speaker 1: I wrote, I wrote stone me, and I just I
Speaker 1: typed it on my phone in my notes, and I
Speaker 1: was like, it was just a poem, and I sent
Speaker 1: it to him and he's like, oh, that's good, and
Speaker 1: then he sent back like two hours later. He sent
Speaker 1: back the melody and was singing my words in it. Wow.
Speaker 1: And so he got a co write on a song
Speaker 1: that was like about him. But like I said, you know,
Speaker 1: with like some of my songs being about two different people,
Speaker 1: it was like I started writing it about him, and
Speaker 1: then I deflected my anger towards this like hack journalist
Speaker 1: that writes like these smear pieces on me, and so
Speaker 1: it kind of became about this like this blogger that
Speaker 1: have a lot of disdain for But okay, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a combo song. Well, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: say anything bad about you now because I don't want to.
Speaker 1: I don't want to show up in the next album,
Speaker 1: and I mentioned Hey Child, which I think is just stunning,
Speaker 1: and I keep listening to it. Tell me about that one.
Speaker 1: Where did it come out of? I mean, around the
Speaker 1: time that we wrote it. It was after my husband
Speaker 1: and I had lost our son, and we were hanging
Speaker 1: out with a couple bands and all of us would
Speaker 1: play the five spot together in our respective rock and
Speaker 1: roll bands. It was being called the Lonely Age that
Speaker 1: had just moved here from Portland. They were a little
Speaker 1: bit younger than us, and we started hanging out with
Speaker 1: them and like partying a lot. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of drugs going around that scene at the time. I'm
Speaker 1: and so a lot of those lyrics are kind of
Speaker 1: about how everybody was more or less had like a
Speaker 1: death wish and just but it was such a such
Speaker 1: a different time because there was something really exciting happening.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of really good bands, and you
Speaker 1: knew that it wasn't going to last that way forever.
Speaker 1: We were all partying like we had made it, you know,
Speaker 1: like we were partying like we were the Rolling Stones,
Speaker 1: but everybody was like broke and throwing in like four
Speaker 1: dollars for a bottle of like Benchmark whiskey and getting
Speaker 1: blind drunk probably four or five nights a week. Um,
Speaker 1: that's around the time that child was written. Okay, you
Speaker 1: know you mentioned the loss of your son Ezra, and
Speaker 1: you know you've had other losses. A lot of your
Speaker 1: songs are about loss. In fact, even your songs are
Speaker 1: they're about success or about loss, like Twinkle Twinkle or
Speaker 1: Prisoner of the Highway. Just is that kind of the
Speaker 1: way you see the world. How m Glass happened to
Speaker 1: a girl? I you know, I do try to find
Speaker 1: the good in this situation. I found myself recently really
Speaker 1: trying to keep a positive attitude about, you know, well,
Speaker 1: something bad in my life. Every time something bad happens,
Speaker 1: something good does always come out of it. But I
Speaker 1: do like the the melancholy, like a sad song in
Speaker 1: a major key, or a major key song with really
Speaker 1: sad words like a little pain. It's like a happy song.
Speaker 1: But I just never like songs that are like all
Speaker 1: one way or you know, just how much is that
Speaker 1: doggy in the window of you are My Sunshine? That's
Speaker 1: a good song, though, that's a bittta Lynn and Merle Haggard.
Speaker 1: That's kind of the way they did it. It can
Speaker 1: be in there, yeah, I mean, it can be sprinkled
Speaker 1: in there. But I I've always found myself attracted to
Speaker 1: darker lyrics. I mean, I loved Johnny Cash growing up.
Speaker 1: I loved his attitude. He didn't care what anybody thought,
Speaker 1: and he had kind of this like chip on his shoulder.
Speaker 1: And you know, even after he became successful, he was
Speaker 1: still singing the song of the working man, and you know,
Speaker 1: I mean the whole story of man in black and
Speaker 1: just people who who still carry that burden. I still
Speaker 1: feel for people that are in a bad situation right now.
Speaker 1: You know, even though I'm very lucky, I have to
Speaker 1: remind myself and and do what I can to help
Speaker 1: people that are not as fortunate, because I've I've been there.
Speaker 1: You know, Johnny Cash wasn't really in fulsome prison. When
Speaker 1: you write your songs about your weekend in prison, that's
Speaker 1: the real thing, unfortunately. Yeah, I feel like I learned
Speaker 1: a lot that weekend because I was seeing women that
Speaker 1: were in there for much longer than me. And when
Speaker 1: I wrote the verse about the girl who was in
Speaker 1: the cell with me, she would get up in the morning,
Speaker 1: and I would see all the women line up and
Speaker 1: get their paper cups and swallow their pills, and you know,
Speaker 1: basically she's like, oh, you just should tell them that
Speaker 1: you were, like are coming off of heroin because then
Speaker 1: they'll give you pills and you can sleep all the time.
Speaker 1: And I just had so much compassion for what I saw,
Speaker 1: and you know, like thought to myself, I can never
Speaker 1: come back here. I'm I'm not going to find myself
Speaker 1: back in this position. And so I really did get
Speaker 1: sober and pull my life back together because I was
Speaker 1: in a really dark mental space, like just you know,
Speaker 1: I really debated checking myself into a mental institution. I
Speaker 1: called a friend of mine who had been through AA.
Speaker 1: She was much older than me. Your name was roy Anne.
Speaker 1: She used to hang out with Towns Vand's aunt and
Speaker 1: sing with him back in the day. And she was
Speaker 1: sober and she's like, whenever you're ready to quit your
Speaker 1: rowdy ways, you give me a call and I'll get
Speaker 1: I got a chip for you, you know. And I
Speaker 1: called her and I was like, I think I'm going
Speaker 1: to check myself into a mental institution. She's like, don't
Speaker 1: do it. She's like, we'll have your name forever. It'll
Speaker 1: be a mark on your on your record, and you
Speaker 1: just if you can work through it, you should. But then,
Speaker 1: of course I went out and I drank and drove
Speaker 1: my car stupidly. I did try to call a cab,
Speaker 1: but they never came, and I hit a telephone pole
Speaker 1: in East Nashville, less than a mile from my house,
Speaker 1: right in front of two police officers and about two
Speaker 1: in the morning, and I tried to outrun the cops
Speaker 1: because I had weed on me, I had a pipe,
Speaker 1: I had was in the car, and I'd been drinking
Speaker 1: for like six hours. And I did not obviously outrun them.
Speaker 1: I've eventually pulled over. I thought maybe I could pull
Speaker 1: into a driveway and turn my lights off, like maybe
Speaker 1: I can get all the way home. But they got
Speaker 1: right up on my ass and I pulled over in
Speaker 1: front of a Baptist church and walked the line in
Speaker 1: the rain and failed. And it was humiliating. I mean,
Speaker 1: I had a young son at home, and at that
Speaker 1: point I just knew I had to quit being a
Speaker 1: deadbeat and and focus on my goal again. So is
Speaker 1: music still important to kind of keeping you centered and focused? Oh,
Speaker 1: without a doubt, I've been feeling more depressed in the
Speaker 1: past two months, as I'm sure everybody in the entire
Speaker 1: world is feeling. And I've even before the Pandemic hit,
Speaker 1: I was just kind of feeling like some postpartum depression,
Speaker 1: and I was really looking forward to getting back out
Speaker 1: on tour. I thought, you know what, I just need
Speaker 1: to get back to myself and get back to my work,
Speaker 1: and this album is going to come out. Everything's gonna
Speaker 1: be fine. And then when this hit, I just started
Speaker 1: feeling really hopeless. But I, you know, I have two
Speaker 1: kids to take care of, and I get up in
Speaker 1: the morning and I brush my hair and I fixed
Speaker 1: myself some eggs, and I do typically put a record
Speaker 1: on because whether it's a sad song that I'm listening
Speaker 1: to or a happy song, it's just good to have
Speaker 1: those feelings with music kind of playing in the background.
Speaker 1: And I feel like I've kind of fallen back in
Speaker 1: love as a listener, you know, because there's not a
Speaker 1: lot to do. It's like, oh, I can really fully
Speaker 1: immerse myself into where this song wants to take me.
Speaker 1: And what have you been listening to in particular, Well,
Speaker 1: I've been listening to every Bob Dylan song that he's
Speaker 1: been putting out. I've been listening to the new Lucinda
Speaker 1: Williams a lot. I adore her, so as far as
Speaker 1: you know new music that's being released. Oh and Fetch
Speaker 1: the Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple. I've been a huge
Speaker 1: fan of hers for a long time. Every day, every
Speaker 1: day is something different. I'm just trying to, you know,
Speaker 1: think about starting to write again myself, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to really throw myself into recording a lot of music
Speaker 1: because I can't travel and I can't play songs. And
Speaker 1: I think what's really inspiring about the Fiona album, the
Speaker 1: Fiona Apple record, is just that how long she was
Speaker 1: making that and how you know, she just focused all
Speaker 1: of her energy into that. And I think that there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people that are hopefully writing their true
Speaker 1: feelings and you know, getting back to the core of
Speaker 1: who we are as people. So what's it like to
Speaker 1: think that there are many many people out there who
Speaker 1: are getting through this listening to your music. That's that's
Speaker 1: a good that's a good feeling. I think I've still
Speaker 1: I don't really see myself as that successful. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know why, but I feel like I spent
Speaker 1: so much time like playing dive bars and clubs, and
Speaker 1: I even wrote about it and stone me, you know,
Speaker 1: I won't forget what it's like to be poor. I
Speaker 1: could be there again, that's for sure. And then here
Speaker 1: I am like, Okay, there goes my main source of income, touring,
Speaker 1: and not like, you know, I'm trying to say any
Speaker 1: poor me thing, because I'm doing fine. But I never
Speaker 1: wanted success to change who I am at the core,
Speaker 1: and so it is nice, you know. And my husband
Speaker 1: like reminds me, He's like, you got a lot of
Speaker 1: people out there that enjoy your gift, and it's a
Speaker 1: gift to both you and them. And you know, he
Speaker 1: tries to both, you know, keep me grounded, but also
Speaker 1: make me realize what I have. And I am grateful
Speaker 1: that people are listening. And I just can't wait to
Speaker 1: get this new record out. I just can't wait. You
Speaker 1: really are from the You really are from the mid
Speaker 1: quest Yeah, I can't enjoy this, It's true. Well listen,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for doing this. It's been great.
Speaker 1: Thank you for asking great questions that doesn't always happen.
Speaker 1: And before we go, we wanted to share a quick
Speaker 1: interview Bruce did with the uncle Margot mentioned here's legendary
Speaker 1: country songwriter Bobby Fisher. So what was it like in
Speaker 1: the set when you would when you would go plug songs?
Speaker 1: What were you doing? You're going around to different labels, Yeah,
Speaker 1: wherever you could, you know, I found out just how
Speaker 1: how could you do it? Like? You know, I used
Speaker 1: to drink beer with a guy to his wife was
Speaker 1: kin which what he's made? And I'd give him something
Speaker 1: my rote. You know, he'd take a and she didn't.
Speaker 1: Maybe the Conway would be doing breakfast and if it
Speaker 1: felt right, she would show him, showing the song that's
Speaker 1: terrible or whatever. You know. I ended up with two
Speaker 1: Conway cuts, you know, just somewhere down the line. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean when Conway breeds life into a lyric, you
Speaker 1: really got to sell, you know. Yeah. I had these
Speaker 1: two guys, great writers, Charlie Black and Austin Roberts, were
Speaker 1: playing playing poker one night and they said, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we ought to work together. We laughed and have such
Speaker 1: a great time. We're all writers. So they said, you
Speaker 1: find an artist and we'll produce some free write all
Speaker 1: the songs, and then you take over because we don't
Speaker 1: want none of the business part. So I said, oh
Speaker 1: that's great. So we found this artist and I named
Speaker 1: her CC Chapman. It's a great singer, and uh so
Speaker 1: then we uh wrote all ten songs. I got her
Speaker 1: on Curb Records. We put out a couple of you know,
Speaker 1: Mike Kurb had like very tight fishing. He didn't put
Speaker 1: out much for promotion. And so they called me one
Speaker 1: day and said, you don't have anything strong enough left
Speaker 1: in there. You know, we had these singles out and
Speaker 1: they're not going anywhere. And I said, oh, man, you
Speaker 1: should listen to them, and they said no, no, let's
Speaker 1: move on. So anyhow, I was sitting there, I took
Speaker 1: three of them out and I went out to a
Speaker 1: Reba McIntire's office. Never had met her, but as it
Speaker 1: turned out, this is how to me things happened. Did
Speaker 1: you turn the writer or left? That day, I come
Speaker 1: in the lobby. I was going to give them to
Speaker 1: the secretary. But this kid that I just met at
Speaker 1: a little party, he was walking through the lobby. I said,
Speaker 1: would you hand these right to read? He said yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it looked good on him. You know. So about a
Speaker 1: week later she put two of them on hold, and
Speaker 1: she cut two of the three, you know, yeah and
Speaker 1: down the line because one of them was you live
Speaker 1: that we had written each happening, you know. And so
Speaker 1: then somewhere time when we went number one, Curb Records
Speaker 1: called me and said, I didn't think it was a
Speaker 1: hit until I seen him selling uly T shirts. So anyway,
Speaker 1: that was just pitching. But I mean, if I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have walked over there and that guy was walking through,
Speaker 1: you don't have that, dude. Yeah. Yeah, so so far,
Speaker 1: the secret your success is you drink beer, you go
Speaker 1: to parties, and you play poker. That's pretty well it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the world has changed, you know. I know, I hate
Speaker 1: that for people. You know. I've had seven hundred and
Speaker 1: two cuts on my songs. Yeah, so I just most
Speaker 1: of them never come out, you know, it's just just
Speaker 1: shotgun and a lot of them maybe they get a
Speaker 1: cut and they turn out to be something. You know.
Speaker 1: I'm still righting. I got a living song. It's going
Speaker 1: right now that I've writing, so I'm still getting something
Speaker 1: and it's really fun doing it. Somebody likes your lyric enough,
Speaker 1: you know, to work with it. And Margot uh Laurie,
Speaker 1: and I wrote with her husband and her way back
Speaker 1: and right now I've got one with her center a lyric,
Speaker 1: and she e mailed me back and she liked it
Speaker 1: and she's going to work on it. He's a very
Speaker 1: good talent. To hope she broably come up with him. Now.
Speaker 1: She told us the story of when she first went
Speaker 1: there and played you some songs. Huh, Now, what's what
Speaker 1: do you remember of that meeting? I remember you knew,
Speaker 1: you knew that she was talented. I didn't hear her
Speaker 1: really good songs for what they were. My thought always was,
Speaker 1: can can we get something in the charts to make
Speaker 1: some money, you know, because the charts is what it's
Speaker 1: all about. I didn't. I didn't hear that, but I
Speaker 1: heard really great writing and it sounded like a from
Speaker 1: years ago, with the kind of music that I really liked.
Speaker 1: But I thought, you know, you can always grow from that.
Speaker 1: I mean, she's that good and uh, you could always
Speaker 1: tell there was something there, but there wasn't a lot
Speaker 1: I could do. Said. I tried to win to write
Speaker 1: with her, and we were with different new toss stuff
Speaker 1: back and forth. You know what she's doing right now? Yeah? Yeah, oh, man,
Speaker 1: she tuning wonderful. Yeah. Well, and then later on I
Speaker 1: didn't realize how much other talents she had. She uh,
Speaker 1: you know, she did the operator here quite a while back,
Speaker 1: and I mean she goes over and plays the drums
Speaker 1: and the piano and everything go. Well. Yeah, I took
Speaker 1: another pitch, another pitch story. Uh. My wife and I
Speaker 1: went to a cracker barrel one morning, and so after
Speaker 1: we got done and we come out, and she stayed
Speaker 1: in looking at the knickknacks, and I went out on
Speaker 1: the deck there and this sports headline said this team
Speaker 1: had they got deep, but it said they hit the
Speaker 1: ground running. And my head said, hit the ground running
Speaker 1: when your heart gets hurt. And so in about an hour,
Speaker 1: I wrote hit the ground Running and when your Heart
Speaker 1: gets hurt and corny little song, you know, And I
Speaker 1: got with us Rick Giles, he's a great writer, and
Speaker 1: he cleaned it. He added a Cajun yodo to it,
Speaker 1: and then he was the main thing. But us. He
Speaker 1: was able to do a demo, didn't costlessness. He could
Speaker 1: put that picking on here and everything, and so then
Speaker 1: I would have the demost. My job then to go
Speaker 1: try to get it cut for us, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1: So I was down on music row there and I
Speaker 1: ran into Budd Logan. It's a great producer, musician, and
Speaker 1: he was producing John Connelly and he'd read where he
Speaker 1: was going to be a project for the new upper
Speaker 1: Land Records. I ran into Budd Logan. I know he's
Speaker 1: a real cut and drag. I don't want to hear
Speaker 1: anything that's a wasting time. Now. I ran into him
Speaker 1: and I was pitching cassettes, you know, And I said, Budd,
Speaker 1: to hear you doing John Connolly for Operland and he said, yes,
Speaker 1: I am, And I said I got four songs. I'd
Speaker 1: like to see it. He said, come over to you know,
Speaker 1: like so too. I grow with my four songs, just
Speaker 1: him and I in the office and now hand in
Speaker 1: the first one he listened all the way through. I
Speaker 1: thought he must like it, you know, he said a
Speaker 1: lot of talk about nothing. So I hand him the next.
Speaker 1: He said next, and he listened to he said yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like enough for John. And in the third one he
Speaker 1: said yeah, I like it. Yeah, yeah not. And so
Speaker 1: I had him hit the ground running the demo that
Speaker 1: I've gotten and halfway through he said that would be
Speaker 1: John's new single on opery Land Records. Wow, that's just
Speaker 1: how he did. Yeah, how was first of all, how
Speaker 1: did you find Garth Brooks to do your demos? Or
Speaker 1: how did he find you? I was writing with another guy,
Speaker 1: let's see, there was three of us were writing, and
Speaker 1: he said, next time you do some demos, you ought
Speaker 1: to use this guy that I'm writing with and and
Speaker 1: maybe use him on a demo. Sometimes his name is
Speaker 1: Garth Brooks, and so I said I to try to
Speaker 1: line up with him. Well I never did line up
Speaker 1: with him to write. But anyhow, then another guy named
Speaker 1: Charlie Quill and I wrote a couple of songs. So
Speaker 1: we just hired him to because as Kem Kent Blazie
Speaker 1: had told us to try it. Yeah, and he come
Speaker 1: in and you know what I remember about him, and
Speaker 1: he was in recording in the booth with that big
Speaker 1: cowboy I had on. And so we're just in the
Speaker 1: control room, just me and him and the engineer. He's
Speaker 1: in there singing and we stopped everything and we're talking
Speaker 1: something over. He's looking like worried in there, and he
Speaker 1: comes in. He took his hat off and stood in
Speaker 1: front of us. He said, I'll sing this over as
Speaker 1: many times, as you guys want me to, and I said, no,
Speaker 1: it's not, you know, we're just getting study in it.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, but that's how he is still I think,
Speaker 1: you know, can you could you tell he was going
Speaker 1: to be a star or did you did he impress you? Then?
Speaker 1: I don't think exactly. I mean, because when you're done here,
Speaker 1: you hear so many great talents they're all they could
Speaker 1: all make it, you know, Yeah, you look at the
Speaker 1: ones that are never good that have me. It's just
Speaker 1: you know, there's lots so many more that a great
Speaker 1: talent that didn't make it. What's that? Then? What do
Speaker 1: you think separates is it? Is it as you said,
Speaker 1: just luck didn't make it? People who don't luck? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, and then it gets down to maybe
Speaker 1: it's a great voice, but did you get the rats home?
Speaker 1: Did you get you know, did Kenny Roger get the
Speaker 1: Gambler right at the right time or you know the
Speaker 1: Gambler that had been cut like a couple of times
Speaker 1: before Kenny ever got it right. But it was that
Speaker 1: productions and there that ended into it was the right
Speaker 1: production that he had around it. You know, Larry Butler
Speaker 1: produced those I don't know how people plug songs like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you must have been very sure of yourself and very
Speaker 1: optimistic that you could do that. I was sure of
Speaker 1: the songs. You know. I don't know how many names
Speaker 1: you're familiar with in country music, but you know, I've
Speaker 1: had maybe four Roy Clark scuts and Roy Clark, Julie
Speaker 1: Greenwood's two ReBs, two Charlotte Rides. I mean, just names.
Speaker 1: Do you think I would have sit back and think, oh, man,
Speaker 1: if they just say hello to me. You know you
Speaker 1: were fair and young, didn't you. You've had a lot
Speaker 1: of I had a couple of fair and youngs and
Speaker 1: one a nut. He was that yeah, oh my god. Yeah,
Speaker 1: egotistical but fun. Him and I got throwed out of
Speaker 1: place one time, which was our own fault, but yeah,
Speaker 1: he was always getting in trouble. Yeah. And here's another
Speaker 1: thing I got. I guess you can't see it this year.
Speaker 1: I pull up. Is this the guitar? Yeah? Wow? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And then there's the back so this is all what
Speaker 1: do you you use like an etching tool and put
Speaker 1: their names in it? Yeah, it's like one of them,
Speaker 1: like a Dennis thing, you know. Yeah. I started out
Speaker 1: with an ice pick where you had to try to
Speaker 1: scratch in your hand, just killed your hand finally, but
Speaker 1: trying to get it in there, you know. And so
Speaker 1: I bought one of those little engravers, so now everybody
Speaker 1: put him in any house. So let's see. I was
Speaker 1: gonna tell you two hundred and sixty names on the guitar,
Speaker 1: and I mean it's names that are just you know,
Speaker 1: Chit Acting is on there. Yeah, Garth brook got God
Speaker 1: bless you, Bobby on there and just on and on.
Speaker 1: Just wow, great name and a lot of people you'll
Speaker 1: never hear of, you know. I heard Margot Prices on there,
Speaker 1: Bargo is on there. Jeremy her husband, is on there.
Speaker 1: Ye man. Yeah, well this has been fantastic. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Yeah, well great talk to you. I just
Speaker 1: appreciate you guys so much doing that. Thanks to Margot
Speaker 1: Price for taking a time to check. Make sure to
Speaker 1: look for her new album when it drops, and you
Speaker 1: can check out all of our favorite Margot Price songs
Speaker 1: but heading to Broken Record podcast dot com. Also be
Speaker 1: sure to check out our YouTube channel. You can subscribe
Speaker 1: at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast. Broken Record
Speaker 1: is producing help from Jason Gambrell, Mila Bell Leo Rose
Speaker 1: and Martin Gonzalez for Pushkin Industries. Our theme musics by
Speaker 1: Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond. Thanks for listening.