Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sense Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today songweather musician Hey. He's called Hey. He's
Speaker 1: good to have you on the podcast. Hey, Bob, it's
Speaker 1: great to be here. So to what degree has COVID
Speaker 1: nine team affected your career? Touring and Saturday Boy? Way
Speaker 1: more than I could have imagined. I mean it initially,
Speaker 1: it ended it. You know, I was I was in Seattle,
Speaker 1: just about to start a tour and we did one
Speaker 1: show at half capacity and and we just canceled it
Speaker 1: and flew home. And UM, I was fortunate to be
Speaker 1: had I'd been on the road for a couple of months,
Speaker 1: so I was in decent shape financially and um, and
Speaker 1: you know, nobody knew how long this was gonna go on.
Speaker 1: So we thought we were okay and just try to
Speaker 1: do some fundraising and help people out. UM. But then
Speaker 1: as it continued, you know, it started to hit me.
Speaker 1: The way I make my living, or had made my
Speaker 1: living for the most part for twenty years, was gone,
Speaker 1: and we didn't know when it was gonna come back.
Speaker 1: So we started doing a lot of people did and
Speaker 1: doing live streams. I had done that years before on Facebook.
Speaker 1: I used to do a showdown in Austin at a
Speaker 1: place called the Saxon Pub and I would we would
Speaker 1: stream it on Facebook. We just never thought to monetize it.
Speaker 1: I thought, how cool is this The people in Ireland
Speaker 1: or Ireland are watching my show, or people in Idaho
Speaker 1: or wherever. I was reaching all these people, and that
Speaker 1: was significant to me. And I knew there was something there,
Speaker 1: but I just never thought to put a tip jar up.
Speaker 1: And um so when the pandemic came, I had some
Speaker 1: experience with that and and and so now with the
Speaker 1: ability to for people to support you, um we were
Speaker 1: up and running. And uh so I started doing them
Speaker 1: and and uh I was afraid that, you know, every week,
Speaker 1: I just thought this isn't sustainable because it was people
Speaker 1: were being very generous and and but at a certain point,
Speaker 1: I thought the bottom was gonna fall out. So I
Speaker 1: started working two. Um. I made it a priority to
Speaker 1: show my appreciation and decided that I wanted my show
Speaker 1: and then supporting my show to be the last thing
Speaker 1: that they took out of the budget, you know, the
Speaker 1: sort of discretionary income. So my wife's a musician as well,
Speaker 1: and she was doing shows and she was sending postcards
Speaker 1: to people, um who had supported her, and so I
Speaker 1: started doing the same. And then I started making a
Speaker 1: new postcard every week. And then I started um uh
Speaker 1: adding set lists and and um and doing two three
Speaker 1: four hour shows, and I started taking requests and asking
Speaker 1: people to tell me stories about their life and what
Speaker 1: was going on or about my music. And over a
Speaker 1: period of about a year and a half, I did
Speaker 1: uh sixty five shows or something and built up a
Speaker 1: community um and uh it felt like a family. I
Speaker 1: just got much closer to my audience in a way
Speaker 1: that than I ever had before. And that was really
Speaker 1: uh significant for me, not just emotionally, uh not just
Speaker 1: financially during that time to keep us alive, but but
Speaker 1: and like everybody else, we were isolated and kind of
Speaker 1: quarantined and and too even if I couldn't see people,
Speaker 1: to know, there was five thousand people every Tuesday at
Speaker 1: six pm tuning in and I was sending on postcards
Speaker 1: and they were sending me request and there was there
Speaker 1: was a relationship there in a connection and it was
Speaker 1: really incredible and kind of made me rethink my my career,
Speaker 1: which had always just been about touring, touring, touring, grinding
Speaker 1: on the road, and uh so, um it gave me
Speaker 1: a really good chance to reset and an opportunity to
Speaker 1: connect with my fans and kind of re prioritized and
Speaker 1: figure out what was important to me. Okay, let's start
Speaker 1: with the actual live stream. The first time you did it,
Speaker 1: How did you make people aware that you were doing it? Well,
Speaker 1: I did a couple of things that prepared me for
Speaker 1: the pandemic. I had a Patreon page going. This is
Speaker 1: probably five years ago, and I had I had sort
Speaker 1: of hit a a point in life where I was
Speaker 1: struggling creatively and and it had been four or five
Speaker 1: years in between records, and so I got Patreon really
Speaker 1: just to have an outlet for music because I was
Speaker 1: starting to feel pressure on myself too. Um, my creative
Speaker 1: flow was blocked and and so I just wanted a way,
Speaker 1: a a pressure way to release music and songs that
Speaker 1: I thought were cool and working producers that I thought
Speaker 1: were interesting. Um, that didn't affect my career in my life,
Speaker 1: And so I started Patreon and then I started doing
Speaker 1: the live stream, and I combined the two. Well, well, well,
Speaker 1: let's stay with Patreon then, since you started there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so when you first started Patreon. How did you drive
Speaker 1: people to Patreon? Just social media? Basically, I I just
Speaker 1: went on. I made the banners of all my pages,
Speaker 1: you know, an image, and only most people didn't know
Speaker 1: what it was at the time. I didn't know what
Speaker 1: it was. My my manager at the time, uh, Mike Crowley.
Speaker 1: I brought this idea to me, and um, it seemed interesting,
Speaker 1: so we we set it up and I just tried
Speaker 1: to figure out what I was gonna do, which was okay.
Speaker 1: We got a lot of things going on here. You
Speaker 1: say Mike Crowley was your manager, which would imply he's
Speaker 1: not your manager anymore. Correct. What happened there? We just
Speaker 1: we had a really good run, um uh for close
Speaker 1: to fifteen years, and you know, I just reached a
Speaker 1: time where it was it was time for us to
Speaker 1: move on, and so we did. We're still friends and
Speaker 1: uh no ill will of any kind. Just uh. I
Speaker 1: have a lot of gratitude for him. And do you
Speaker 1: have a manager now? I do? I do? UM, I
Speaker 1: had I got a second manager after Mike, and then
Speaker 1: um we split up during the pandemic and uh now
Speaker 1: I work with Holly Lohman with Red Light Management. How
Speaker 1: did you get hooked up there. Uh, she works with
Speaker 1: some people I know, and UM, a lot of folks,
Speaker 1: my my wife, my attorney, UM, and just a lot
Speaker 1: of people in the business who knew I was looking
Speaker 1: and needed help. UM recommended her. Her name just kept
Speaker 1: coming up. So I I just cold called her and said, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, let's meet for lunch and and talk it over.
Speaker 1: And so we we hit it off and she had
Speaker 1: room for me, and and so we've been at it
Speaker 1: for uh, you know, almost a year now. Okay, Now,
Speaker 1: red Light is a unique business model. I won't go
Speaker 1: into all the depth at this point in time, but
Speaker 1: they're managers to have individual acts, but they all work together.
Speaker 1: Do you find any benefit having your manager part of
Speaker 1: a larger organization in this case red Light. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I think there's still things I'm waiting to see,
Speaker 1: you know, how much they pay off. But I know
Speaker 1: that she can see what's happening with with a lot
Speaker 1: of other acts, and she's in close contact with a
Speaker 1: lot of other managers. UM. And and I think some
Speaker 1: things as basic as they send out a memo saying
Speaker 1: you know this, these people are looking for a song
Speaker 1: for a commercial, or here's a here's an opening opportunity
Speaker 1: or you know supports lot or that might be good
Speaker 1: or um. So it's it's similar to you know, if
Speaker 1: you're with a booking agency, some things are going to
Speaker 1: come across the table that may not have been aimed
Speaker 1: at you, but but you and benefit from them. So
Speaker 1: you made people aware of Patreon. On social media? What
Speaker 1: platforms are you on? Which ones work? And how active
Speaker 1: are you? I am on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and
Speaker 1: I guess I'm on Twitch, although I don't know how
Speaker 1: I'm smile. But if you're on Twitch, begs a question
Speaker 1: are you a gamer? And I'm not? No, okay, but
Speaker 1: you're on Twitch, so yeah, go into those three platforms
Speaker 1: and how you're using, etcetera. I have gone back and
Speaker 1: forth over the years from being very involved to uh
Speaker 1: not touching them from a month and it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a struggle. I think a lot of musicians and a
Speaker 1: lot of people period, but I seem to have this
Speaker 1: conversation all the time with folks. Uh, it's this love
Speaker 1: hate relationship like where we know it's essential or we
Speaker 1: feel like it's essential. We feel like we're missing out
Speaker 1: if we're not posting everything. We do all the time
Speaker 1: and building this rapport and forming people I don't even know.
Speaker 1: I struggle with how essential it really is. Um. But
Speaker 1: but most of the time I think it's incredibly important
Speaker 1: and something that I need to do. But I also
Speaker 1: don't like doing it and I'm really uncomfortable doing it.
Speaker 1: Um it's all my insecurities come out with it. Here's
Speaker 1: here's what I'm thinking. Do you like me? Here's the
Speaker 1: thing I'm gonna do. Are you gonna respond to it?
Speaker 1: And and then I'm looking at other people's reactions and
Speaker 1: it's hard not to compare and say, well this this
Speaker 1: person has way more followers, or this person is funnier
Speaker 1: than I am, and I find that it can lead
Speaker 1: to uh kind of unhealthy um thing for me. And
Speaker 1: and um it's also time consuming. So um I my
Speaker 1: my wife the last couple of months has been helping
Speaker 1: me out um with it, and it's been a godsend
Speaker 1: because I now I just pick it up if I
Speaker 1: want to look at the new is or something. But
Speaker 1: I don't have to. It's a full time job, you know.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's I want to be writing songs, you know,
Speaker 1: are living life. So you mentioned your insecurities said, those
Speaker 1: may feed your creativity, but what are your insecurity since
Speaker 1: you mentioned them, well, my insecurities point, um, yeah, I've
Speaker 1: got them all. It's uh, it's a constant work. I
Speaker 1: mean insecurities about my my talents, my my my voice,
Speaker 1: my looks, my physique, my career, my um, you know,
Speaker 1: the job as a parent. Um Uh, there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of self doubt and uncertainty and
Speaker 1: healthy amount is healthy. Um. But well, I guess the
Speaker 1: question would be, you know, we live in an era
Speaker 1: where people boast, and especially on social media institum am
Speaker 1: being the prime example of that. To what degree does
Speaker 1: that self confidence and people do you think help them
Speaker 1: or hurt them? Musicians? I'm speaking of the self confidence
Speaker 1: people we you know, we all know we forget the
Speaker 1: raw level who someone really is in terms of evidencing
Speaker 1: themselves in public. A lot of people demonstrate an incredible
Speaker 1: self confidence. And if you have insecurities, you know, I
Speaker 1: find this myself. I have insecurities and then all these
Speaker 1: people got they're all telling me I have the great
Speaker 1: and they're beating me down. And then every once while,
Speaker 1: I can you know detach and said, well, I've met
Speaker 1: a lot of people. This has got more to do
Speaker 1: with that person than me, and it's just bluster. But
Speaker 1: should I evidence more self confidence? So to become a
Speaker 1: public figure and musician, that requires a certain amount of
Speaker 1: belief in yourself and self confidence. So did you feel that, Hey, man,
Speaker 1: I've got something to deliver, I'm entitled or is it?
Speaker 1: Have you been tentative along? I've been pretty tentative. I mean,
Speaker 1: there there are times, just like in life with my
Speaker 1: my personality in real life, there are times where I'm
Speaker 1: incredibly confident and um, and there are times where I'm crippling, crippling,
Speaker 1: lee insecure, and there's times where I have a pretty
Speaker 1: good balance. Um. And you know that's probably been reflected
Speaker 1: in my social media. UM. I just I find the
Speaker 1: I am expected to be or I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: expected to be confident or I need to be confident
Speaker 1: to put stuff out there, and that feels like a
Speaker 1: disconnect sometimes because I want to. Um, I work really
Speaker 1: hard at being connected with myself and not getting disconnected,
Speaker 1: and there feels like a major disconnect sometimes when I say, hey,
Speaker 1: here's this great thing going on, and I may not
Speaker 1: be in a great place that day. It's not reflective
Speaker 1: of my actual life. It's reflective of one part of
Speaker 1: my career or or one moment in my life. And
Speaker 1: and so that's a that's just a thing that I've
Speaker 1: battle with is is uh. It does not feel seamless
Speaker 1: like here, here's where I am in life, and then
Speaker 1: here's why I'm on social media. Um. That that bothers me. That, Um,
Speaker 1: I feel like I have to to put out some
Speaker 1: sort of something. I don't know, maybe I take it
Speaker 1: all too seriously, but it's this is great. No, you're
Speaker 1: you're being honest like you are in your music. And
Speaker 1: that's why it resonates, which begs the question using that
Speaker 1: term again, what works on social media? What gets a reaction? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I find that when I am honest, that
Speaker 1: tends to work when I tell uh some part of
Speaker 1: my story in a real way, because I can post, hey,
Speaker 1: I here's something cool I did and crickets and I
Speaker 1: can say here's a struggle I had, and I get
Speaker 1: a response. And so that's been informative to me. Doesn't
Speaker 1: make it necessarily easier to put that out there, but
Speaker 1: I have I have learned that I think people want
Speaker 1: connection and and that you know, asked about the pandemic
Speaker 1: that that was. That was my big takeaway was people
Speaker 1: wanted connection, They wanted something authentic and and I think
Speaker 1: I spent many years feeling like I needed to be
Speaker 1: something that I wasn't because there I needed to be
Speaker 1: a front man, I needed to be a rock singer,
Speaker 1: I needed to be a drunk and whatever. And and
Speaker 1: it's really hard to just be what you are, whatever
Speaker 1: it is in that moment, to be vulnerable and and
Speaker 1: when you're in the public eye. And so yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's I guess the struggle. Okay, so which of these
Speaker 1: platforms you mentioned Twitter? You mentioned Facebook and Instagram for
Speaker 1: your audience, which one has the largest audience in terms
Speaker 1: of when you actually say something as opposed to the
Speaker 1: number of followers, It says probably Facebook still um, with
Speaker 1: Instagram being second and Twitter as a distant third for me. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's go back. You decide to go on Patreon.
Speaker 1: There's a way to spur your creativity. You put out
Speaker 1: the message. Two things, one how many people actually bite
Speaker 1: and the nature of Patreon is their different tiers. What
Speaker 1: were the different tiers you established? I think my initial
Speaker 1: so I've had two sort of runs with Patreon, and
Speaker 1: the first time I did it for a couple of
Speaker 1: years and I had three four folks on there, and
Speaker 1: my tears went from a dollar to a hundred dollars
Speaker 1: And essentially I just told them you're going to get
Speaker 1: a song a month and then here's a few extra things.
Speaker 1: I wasn't all that creative with it, but I just
Speaker 1: tried to figure out some way to make it worth
Speaker 1: their while financially. But the money. I wasn't looking at
Speaker 1: it to live off the money. I was looking at
Speaker 1: it to get money to pay producers so that I
Speaker 1: could go. I worked. My first one was with John
Speaker 1: Levinthal and then I went work to Charlie Sexton or
Speaker 1: just different people um um uh that I just really
Speaker 1: wanted to play music with. And and so that's what
Speaker 1: it was. I wasn't really profiting off of it. It
Speaker 1: was just giving me the opportunity to to pay people
Speaker 1: that I wanted to work with. Okay, so if someone
Speaker 1: signed up for a hundred dollars, what they get, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't even remember what I was offering back then.
Speaker 1: I'll just skip real quick to where it is now. Well, well,
Speaker 1: let's let's hold that for a second. Okay, So you start,
Speaker 1: you're doing it for creative purposes. People are paying monthly
Speaker 1: to what degree? And I think it's inherent. You're seeing
Speaker 1: whether the numbers are staying steady, going up, going down?
Speaker 1: And to what degree did you feel you had to
Speaker 1: service people to a degree in order to make sure
Speaker 1: they stayed on? Yeah? I, Uh, the numbers were pretty
Speaker 1: consistent as long as I was consistent. But then I
Speaker 1: stopped being consistent, and then people express frustration and say,
Speaker 1: you know, what are we paying for? You're not really delivering.
Speaker 1: And so I felt like I was taking my best
Speaker 1: fans and and rather than making them closer to me,
Speaker 1: that I was making them regret trusting me. And I
Speaker 1: didn't like that. So, and I had just made a
Speaker 1: new record using a lot of the songs, you know,
Speaker 1: different recordings, but a lot of the songs that I
Speaker 1: had written and recorded initially on Patreon um and so
Speaker 1: I decided to shut it down and so I could
Speaker 1: pay attention and focus on the on the record, and uh,
Speaker 1: that's what so I gave it. It was about two
Speaker 1: years that I went with it, and it was it
Speaker 1: was wonderful to get to make music. But then it
Speaker 1: felt like a job, started to feel like a full
Speaker 1: time job, and I was I had a pretty busy
Speaker 1: life at that point. Decided to put it away for
Speaker 1: a minute, but you restarted it. What was the motivation
Speaker 1: of restarting? What's different or the same about it now? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that was another another result of the pandemic UM
Speaker 1: and I was fortunate that even though I had shut
Speaker 1: it down, I still had I don't know, three hundred
Speaker 1: or so of my the followers were still there. And
Speaker 1: so I just put it back out and said, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start charging uh per month again, and I
Speaker 1: reworked the tears and UM and then I got like
Speaker 1: around seven hundred patrons, and I think people were feeling,
Speaker 1: you know, like they wanted to help out. They knew
Speaker 1: musicians were in a tight spot. So so I got
Speaker 1: more significantly more than I had the first time around,
Speaker 1: and I expanded it all the way up to a
Speaker 1: thousand dollar level UM. And so you'd asked, what the
Speaker 1: what you get? I think at like a five dollar level,
Speaker 1: I send you a signed set list from a show
Speaker 1: of your choice, or UM, you can get a v
Speaker 1: I P meet and greet at a show. Um, at
Speaker 1: the hundred dollar level, I'll do a cameo, I'll sing
Speaker 1: you know, a personalized song for you or something, all
Speaker 1: the way up to a thousand, which after a year,
Speaker 1: i'll do a I'll do a concert at your house
Speaker 1: like a you know, acoustic show or um, I'll send
Speaker 1: people guitars and signed lyrics and and uh, all my
Speaker 1: vinyl and basically anything I can think of. I just
Speaker 1: try and make it worth people's while to to support me.
Speaker 1: So if you've done any live shows, of course, the
Speaker 1: pandemic has continued, and how many people will pay a
Speaker 1: thousand dollars on long Well, I currently have two people
Speaker 1: who who do that, and UM, I'm very grateful for them.
Speaker 1: So if you've done the live shows yet, yeah, I
Speaker 1: did one. I did one of them. What was that experience? Like?
Speaker 1: I was cool? It's um Uh, it's just a very
Speaker 1: generous guy who, um, who loves music and is financially
Speaker 1: in a position to to support stuff that he loves.
Speaker 1: So it's um, he supports me through through Patreon and
Speaker 1: then every single live stream I would do, he would
Speaker 1: support me through that and and so uh and you
Speaker 1: know sometimes it's uh, I spent a long time kind
Speaker 1: of being too close to my fans and then sometimes
Speaker 1: you know, keep really keeping a distance because it it
Speaker 1: didn't feel um, I was just trying to establish some boundaries. Um.
Speaker 1: And but Patreon has has been good for me and
Speaker 1: that um uh. You know, the people that are on
Speaker 1: there or in my experience of been solid folks who
Speaker 1: just want to support something that they appreciate, and so
Speaker 1: I keep the guidelines. There. You have the two people
Speaker 1: paying a thousand dollars. You know, you mentioned your insecurities past.
Speaker 1: You know, if you put up a date and you
Speaker 1: go to a club that's an established business, you play,
Speaker 1: you get paid, assuming people come. When someone sends you
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars a month, do you have any guilt?
Speaker 1: But you just say, this is a business. Obviously they
Speaker 1: can afford it, and I'm giving something back. It's transactions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: If I have any guilt, it's maybe maybe sometimes I
Speaker 1: just feel like I'm not doing enough, But I also
Speaker 1: have to realize that I do. I have a lot
Speaker 1: going on in my life and uh, and if they're
Speaker 1: not happy, they can, you know, they can let me know,
Speaker 1: and I try to. I try to reach out and
Speaker 1: stay in contact and just make sure folks are doing
Speaker 1: doing well. Um, I lucked out and I found a
Speaker 1: woman to help me out with this stuff. Before I
Speaker 1: had a manager. Um finding my last manager and and
Speaker 1: help me keep it all together. They're organized, Otherwise I'd
Speaker 1: be lost, um fulfilling all this stuff. So UM, No,
Speaker 1: I don't feel guilty. It's ah. Um. I do a thing,
Speaker 1: they appreciate it and and they support me, and I
Speaker 1: appreciate them for that. So the people, let's you know,
Speaker 1: the steady three people on Patreon, that's the result of
Speaker 1: them being so close to you online and limited in
Speaker 1: numbers supposed to a big like a big act. Do
Speaker 1: you actually know them and interact with them? Uh? Some
Speaker 1: of them? I mean, and I know a few of
Speaker 1: them just because they're friends, are supported and then I
Speaker 1: know a few of them, Um, through meet and greets
Speaker 1: and stuff. They'll come to the show and you start
Speaker 1: to recognize names. You know, there's some people who are active.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of people who sign up and I
Speaker 1: think don't ever read my emails because they just want
Speaker 1: to support me. They don't actually want to listen to
Speaker 1: everything I have to say. Um. And I know that
Speaker 1: to be true because I support a lot of people
Speaker 1: on Patreon and and I. You know, there's a certain
Speaker 1: percentage that I just delete because I don't have the
Speaker 1: time to to go through it all. But um, um,
Speaker 1: and that's fine. I appreciate them just wanting to support it. Okay,
Speaker 1: So how many people do you support on Patreon? I
Speaker 1: currently have six people that I, uh support and with
Speaker 1: those big names that the average person recognizes or they're
Speaker 1: more personal friends. Yeah, I'm not sure who. I mean,
Speaker 1: what one is Amanda Palmer, who's the biggest act on there,
Speaker 1: and and I And that's more educational for me, um,
Speaker 1: just trying to study, you know, how she got to
Speaker 1: where she's at and and um, and how she engages
Speaker 1: with her audience, which is I don't know how many
Speaker 1: thousands of people, but it's it's pretty impressive. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then the other ones Joe Pug who's a great songwriter
Speaker 1: and has a great podcast called The Working Songwriter, Will
Speaker 1: kimbro It's a great fantastic musician, guitar player places and
Speaker 1: the Harris and Binding crowd a bunch of people. Um.
Speaker 1: And then Travis Lynnville who is also in my band
Speaker 1: sometimes but he's a fantastic singer songwriter and um so
Speaker 1: maybe not a lot of household names, but if you're
Speaker 1: in the music business, names folks might know. Okay, So
Speaker 1: let's go to the live show. So you start these
Speaker 1: live shows, You've done sixty during the pandemic. Let's start
Speaker 1: with the beginning, because I'm sure there's an arc to
Speaker 1: you know, you put the word out. How many people
Speaker 1: show up and they're free I assume correct, But you're
Speaker 1: encouraged to tip. So how do you sell the tips?
Speaker 1: Into what degree does that work? You generate tips? At first,
Speaker 1: I didn't try and sell it at all. I just
Speaker 1: put it up there and people were again, everybody just
Speaker 1: really wanted to help out, and that was amazing and overwhelming.
Speaker 1: Really just it felt like all of the work that
Speaker 1: I had done in the past twenty years to try
Speaker 1: and be you know, to not only make the art
Speaker 1: and do a good job, but but just try and
Speaker 1: be decent and and somewhat connected with my fans. Uh
Speaker 1: it felt like it was I was, you know, reaping
Speaker 1: the rewards of that and and that harvest. Um uh
Speaker 1: So initially people just gave very generously and um but
Speaker 1: again I just thought the bottom was gonna gonna fall
Speaker 1: out at some point, So, UM, I started finding ways
Speaker 1: to encourage folks. Um, it's like I said, the postcard
Speaker 1: I would I would, just to be clear, that's virtual
Speaker 1: or physical postcards. These are physical postcards. So every week
Speaker 1: I would design a postcard through Vista print, print off
Speaker 1: two fifty or five hundred of them, um, and it
Speaker 1: would be just you know, my wife would take a
Speaker 1: picture of me in the living room, right, take a
Speaker 1: picture of my dog, or or just just some of
Speaker 1: them were funny something, you know, someones Matthew McConaughey's body
Speaker 1: with my face on it. Um, you know, just whatever
Speaker 1: I could do to um to change it up. And
Speaker 1: and so I'll give that out. And then I how
Speaker 1: did you get everybody's addressed? And who actually addressed the envelopes?
Speaker 1: Was at all computerized? No? It was, Um, I got
Speaker 1: the addresses on PayPal. If you tip using PayPal, your
Speaker 1: are address automatically shows up and on Venmo. I just
Speaker 1: I made a point of letting people know if you
Speaker 1: use Vinmo and you want a postcard, type your address
Speaker 1: in the comments and I'm after you tip. So, just
Speaker 1: just to be very clear, if someone were to tip
Speaker 1: you via PayPal, you have instant access to their address. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so you have all those addressed. Now you're telling me
Speaker 1: about addressing the postcard. Yeah, so then I would I
Speaker 1: would my show the last two hours, but it would
Speaker 1: take all week because I would I would, you know,
Speaker 1: find a postcard, do the show, get it all set up,
Speaker 1: and uh and again this is on my laptop or
Speaker 1: my iPad. It's not high quality tech at this point.
Speaker 1: And uh. Then I would go through and and address everyone,
Speaker 1: and I would try and write them. You know, I
Speaker 1: look back now, and it was like I was. I
Speaker 1: was trying really hard to let him know I cared.
Speaker 1: So I would write a paragraph of thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: but it took it would take weeks and and and
Speaker 1: there were times uhum where there's a lot going on
Speaker 1: and would back up. So, um, I told you that
Speaker 1: I um uh found this uh woman, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a manager here in town. I'm Tracy Thomas um. And
Speaker 1: Tracy had hired a woman to work for right as
Speaker 1: the pandemic hit, and so she moved here and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden didn't have work much work to do,
Speaker 1: and so Tracy let me hire let's let's just go
Speaker 1: back where is here. Where are you now? I'm sorry, Nashville.
Speaker 1: I'm in Nashville, Tennessee. Yeah, so she hired this person
Speaker 1: and uh so then let me um higher as well.
Speaker 1: And so then things really got a lot better because
Speaker 1: because um she would address all the stuff and and
Speaker 1: moderate the shows and let people know what was what Okay,
Speaker 1: So generally speaking, how many people would come to a show,
Speaker 1: and how much money could you make in tips my
Speaker 1: first show, there's probably people, maybe two thousand. It was.
Speaker 1: It was it started off really well, and I was
Speaker 1: probably averaging a show something like that. Um. And then
Speaker 1: I started doing the postcards and then uh, and that
Speaker 1: went on for a while, and I think I've maybe
Speaker 1: got as high as for grand or something, um, which
Speaker 1: was incredible. I mean against sitting here at my computer
Speaker 1: and I was having dinner at my own table by
Speaker 1: eight pm, uh, you know, and and just watching money
Speaker 1: come in. UM. And so the thing that really made
Speaker 1: a shift was or give it a boost was I
Speaker 1: started including the set list. I would hand draw a
Speaker 1: set list and print copies off and sign it and
Speaker 1: I said, if you, if you contribute thirty dollars and more,
Speaker 1: I will I'll send you this as well. And then
Speaker 1: so then people started contributing in greater amounts and um
Speaker 1: uh and then I do lyrics each week I do lyrics.
Speaker 1: So I started trying to get a package of nice
Speaker 1: things to make it worth your while and uh and
Speaker 1: it just increased and grew, and we gave a lot
Speaker 1: of money a charity. Um uh. So every week we
Speaker 1: would connect with the charity. My son's is a magician,
Speaker 1: among other things, and he started sending them videos of
Speaker 1: himself doing magic, and that became part of the show.
Speaker 1: My wife would comes thing with us, um um, the
Speaker 1: dogs would be here, and it just became very personal.
Speaker 1: And all these people felt like they were in our
Speaker 1: house and they knew my family and they knew what
Speaker 1: I uh did. And then, like I said, I started
Speaker 1: taking requests and and just people would come and tell
Speaker 1: me their stories of loss or of struggle or of
Speaker 1: joy or how they met at my show and got
Speaker 1: married or how their father loved me. And it passed
Speaker 1: away and and it just was it felt like this
Speaker 1: place for people to come and connect. And the more
Speaker 1: that happens, the money went up. And um, I mean
Speaker 1: by the end, if I went back and average that
Speaker 1: it probably came out to four or five grand the
Speaker 1: show on average. Wow, that's great. And since you did
Speaker 1: sixty five, did you consistently get the same number of viewers? No?
Speaker 1: It uh, it fluctuated a bit, um and sometime around
Speaker 1: after I've been at it about a year, things were
Speaker 1: starting to drop off, and finally I put it away
Speaker 1: for a while because I didn't want to be the
Speaker 1: last one at the party. It was it was uh,
Speaker 1: consistently around seven or eight hundred, and then it got
Speaker 1: it was like five hundred, six hundred, and then by
Speaker 1: the end it was starting to get to round three
Speaker 1: or four hundred and and um, which is still incredible,
Speaker 1: But live work was starting to come back as well,
Speaker 1: and so I thought, um, it might be time to
Speaker 1: get out there and start tourning in. But I see
Speaker 1: you did one with your wife on Valentine's today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what was the motivation there? Into what degreer? Are you
Speaker 1: still doing these live streams? I've done two this year.
Speaker 1: I did one on my birthday. Um. I got COVID
Speaker 1: on New Year's Day and I was supposed to go
Speaker 1: to Colorado for a festival and I couldn't, so I, um,
Speaker 1: I just thought I'll celebrate here at my house and
Speaker 1: that ended up being my best one ever. So I
Speaker 1: got paid more for that than I would have to
Speaker 1: fly to Colorado and do the festival. So it's it's
Speaker 1: been a real eye opening, kind of game changing thing.
Speaker 1: And the Valentine's Day one, Um, we just hadn't done
Speaker 1: a show in a while, and we we do a
Speaker 1: lot of songs together and and and I've got a
Speaker 1: lot of love songs and and uh, and we have
Speaker 1: fun doing it. So we we just thought why not.
Speaker 1: We're here. I'm not working much right now on the road. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you said when we started to discuss all this
Speaker 1: that having had this experience, your eyes were opened and
Speaker 1: you've reevaluated a little bit going forward. So do you
Speaker 1: think you'll just go back into your ole routine primarily
Speaker 1: working on the road, or will be different now? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm trying, like a lot of people, I think, to
Speaker 1: figure out what lesson I've learned here and then to
Speaker 1: apply it and not just fall back into what I
Speaker 1: was doing, because what I was doing wasn't ultimately fulfilling me. Um,
Speaker 1: And so I'm trying to find a balance, Like I
Speaker 1: still enjoy performing for people, and and sometimes I enjoy
Speaker 1: the travel and and um uh, but the grind of it,
Speaker 1: that being away from home. You know, I have a
Speaker 1: home I like, and and and um I live in
Speaker 1: a town and I enjoy and and uh uh. It's
Speaker 1: it's hard. It's harder and harder as I get older
Speaker 1: to to just go out there and you know, stay
Speaker 1: at the holiday and express with a bunch of guys,
Speaker 1: no matter how much I like them. And so I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to find a balance. And and that's that's
Speaker 1: a bunch of things. That's maybe a little less touring,
Speaker 1: but but I still enjoy getting out there, but mixing
Speaker 1: in live streams, making songwriting and publishing and recording a
Speaker 1: bigger part of my income and and work well work
Speaker 1: and then hopefully income. Um And I'm just more interested
Speaker 1: in in the working on my craft and being an
Speaker 1: artist than I am being a road dog. And um
Speaker 1: that that feels like a more balanced life for me
Speaker 1: right now. And that's what I'm looking for. Okay. Prior
Speaker 1: to the pandemic, how many days a year were you doing? Well?
Speaker 1: My early days, I I would do over two hundred annually. Um.
Speaker 1: And in the last five years, it was you know,
Speaker 1: it was down to probably a hundred or so. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back to the beginning. Where did you grow up?
Speaker 1: I was born in Houston, Texas in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: and I grew up about twenty miles north in a
Speaker 1: suburb planning community called the Woodlands, Texas. And what was
Speaker 1: that like being in that planning community. Well, when I
Speaker 1: moved there, there was twelve people. I think now there's
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty thousand, So it was it was
Speaker 1: just a pine forest at first. And he literally watched
Speaker 1: it get built out and the neighborhoods get built out,
Speaker 1: and the schools get bigger, and it was great in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. Um, but it was also, you know,
Speaker 1: mostly white, conservative spot. And and you know, there was
Speaker 1: there was a lot of golf courses in golf course crossings.
Speaker 1: And as a teenager, I mean, like a lot of people,
Speaker 1: you feel sort of constricted by your hometown. And and
Speaker 1: I was into Carolac and Dylan and Willie Nelson and
Speaker 1: and and so I was like, I don't know where
Speaker 1: those guys live, but it's it's clearly not here. So
Speaker 1: I had a really strong desire to to go find
Speaker 1: that out. And so I spent a lot of my
Speaker 1: years just really excited or anxious to to to go
Speaker 1: travel and and uh get a little more life experience. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what did your parents do for a living? My
Speaker 1: parents were both attorneys. And how many kids in the family. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's two. I'm the oldest. I have a brother's nine
Speaker 1: years younger than I am, who's also an attorney. And
Speaker 1: how good were you in school? And were you popular
Speaker 1: not popular? What kind of kids were you? I was
Speaker 1: somebody who wanted to be popular and wasn't, which is
Speaker 1: being unpopular spine if you're okay with it, and I wasn't.
Speaker 1: I struggled. Uh. Um, so I guess I was on
Speaker 1: the cusp. I I played sports, not not great, but
Speaker 1: enough to to be around on the team for as
Speaker 1: long as I could. Um. Uh. I didn't date until
Speaker 1: my senior year in high school. And I got my
Speaker 1: first kiss when I was eighteen. Um and UM, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Just struggled to find my identity and who
Speaker 1: I was. UM. And I got into theater, which became
Speaker 1: a really important thing for me that that opened me
Speaker 1: up to a lot of different Uh. You know, I
Speaker 1: went from being in a locker room with fifty guys
Speaker 1: talking about a certain same thing to being in a
Speaker 1: room with with a much more diverse and uh interesting
Speaker 1: to me crowd. And how well did you do in school?
Speaker 1: I started off okay, I barely, I barely got out
Speaker 1: and I greet I went to college and graduated last
Speaker 1: in my class in college. So I ended up being
Speaker 1: about as bad as well. Let's go a little bit slower.
Speaker 1: So you're in school, when do you get infected by music?
Speaker 1: And when do you pick up an instrument? And to
Speaker 1: what degree your parents push you or to what degree
Speaker 1: is that just spontaneous generation from your friends? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: know my parents didn't push me at all. Um and uh,
Speaker 1: I I just grew up listening to country music. I
Speaker 1: knew that was Some of my earliest memories are listening
Speaker 1: to the Blue Eyes Crying in the rain in the
Speaker 1: back seat of the car. And and um, so I
Speaker 1: loved country, I loved fifties rock and roll, sixties rock
Speaker 1: and roll, and a real I had a couple of
Speaker 1: moments that I absolutely remember that were life changing for me. Uh.
Speaker 1: One was we would we would occasionally attend the Unitarian Church.
Speaker 1: My parents weren't big churchgoers, but we would occasionally go
Speaker 1: to the Interian church, and they weren't known for their choir. Uh,
Speaker 1: So rather than have a choir, they would have acts
Speaker 1: come by and one day it would be somebody reading
Speaker 1: Dante's Inferno. And one day it was a folk trio
Speaker 1: and they came in and sang Dylan songs. And I
Speaker 1: was fourteen and they sang A hard rain is Gonna
Speaker 1: fall blowing in the wind. And I went home that
Speaker 1: day and I told my parents don't wanted guitar. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, like probably thousands of other people who discovered Dylan,
Speaker 1: and uh, because it was I knew I loved music,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know that something about that, the power.
Speaker 1: It just opened me up to the power of song.
Speaker 1: Um and changed my life. So we're the type of
Speaker 1: person playing in your bedroom or seeking other out, other
Speaker 1: people out to play. Did you play live when you
Speaker 1: were in high school? What was going on there? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I did not play live when I was in high school. Um.
Speaker 1: I played in my bedroom mostly, and then you know,
Speaker 1: with my friends around at parties and stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: the one thing I had going I couldn't really sing.
Speaker 1: I didn't think, and I barely new guitar. But I
Speaker 1: could remember all the lyrics to all the songs. And
Speaker 1: there are there are all these guys who could play
Speaker 1: Stairway to Heaven our love song on the guitar, but
Speaker 1: that's all they could do, and nobody, you know, at
Speaker 1: a party, people want to be a part of the
Speaker 1: don't want just sit there and watch you play the
Speaker 1: same guitar nerds stuff over and over. So that was
Speaker 1: my secret weapon was I can see you every country
Speaker 1: song that you want to hear, and so that's kind
Speaker 1: of what I did. Um, but it was just it
Speaker 1: was just for fun of people's houses or you know,
Speaker 1: sitting around drinking beer. Okay, so you talked about where
Speaker 1: you grew up being conservative, but if your parents were
Speaker 1: going to the Unitarian Church, I don't think there's a
Speaker 1: conservative goes to the Unitarian. So that would seem to
Speaker 1: indicate that your parents themselves were liberal. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: that's safe to say. Okay, So you graduate from high
Speaker 1: school and you go to college, where and what your experience?
Speaker 1: What do you do before you graduate? Last I went
Speaker 1: to college, I was looking for a small liberal arts school,
Speaker 1: uh that didn't have a Greek then. Um, that was
Speaker 1: that was my criteria and I ended up going to
Speaker 1: Hendricks College in Conway, Arkansas. UM claim to fame being
Speaker 1: that Roger wenton, Bill's brother went there for a year,
Speaker 1: and Mary Steam Virgin went there for a year. Um
Speaker 1: both of them left for different reasons. Uh and um uh.
Speaker 1: So I went there. I didn't know, you know, it
Speaker 1: was just sort of expected, you're gonna go to college.
Speaker 1: Just just one stop for a second. Yeah, he's is
Speaker 1: your middle name? We always haze. When you started to
Speaker 1: play music, you were Haz. Yeah, No, I was. My
Speaker 1: name is Joshua Hayes Carl. And in high school I
Speaker 1: was josh And I never liked that name and I
Speaker 1: never liked who I was in a way are Every
Speaker 1: year I would come back to school saying, this is
Speaker 1: the year that I'm gonna be cool and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: I'm I'm gonna be different somehow. And then I realized
Speaker 1: is you can't reset these people who have known you
Speaker 1: in their whole lives. And so that never worked out
Speaker 1: like I hoped it would. And then with college, I
Speaker 1: had this opportunity to to really reset, and so I went.
Speaker 1: I told people my name was Hayes. Um, my dad's
Speaker 1: Lloyd Hayes Carl the third, so it's a family name
Speaker 1: and I didn't feel like that big of a a thing, um,
Speaker 1: and I I just took that chance to start fresh.
Speaker 1: So how many people were going to the college, and
Speaker 1: what was your experience in college? And it was hundred folks,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a very small liberal arts school,
Speaker 1: and um, my experience was that I was a terrible
Speaker 1: student who didn't know how to manage this time, and
Speaker 1: it made college not great. There was I remember my
Speaker 1: first day there was this British politics professor and he
Speaker 1: gave me some advice that I wish I had listened to.
Speaker 1: He said, he said, I was drunk every day in
Speaker 1: college and I got a four point oh. And the
Speaker 1: way I did it was I came straight home and
Speaker 1: I did my work and then I went out and
Speaker 1: I had a hell of a time and I flipped
Speaker 1: that and to poor results. You know, I just put
Speaker 1: off everything until last minute and tried to have a
Speaker 1: hell of a time. But it's hard to relax and
Speaker 1: enjoy yourself when you know you've got an exam that
Speaker 1: you're not prepared for. So it was I don't know,
Speaker 1: it was a great experience, and I probably found myself
Speaker 1: in college, but I I regret not being as present
Speaker 1: for it and and uh not being a better student.
Speaker 1: You obviously weren't focusing on academics, were you, you know,
Speaker 1: playing music where you're hanging with the girls, You're getting drunk.
Speaker 1: What was going on? Yeah, all the above, Um, uh,
Speaker 1: it was it was, Um, I try to take advantage
Speaker 1: of all that. Um and uh, you know, being away
Speaker 1: from home. I failed health my first semester because you know,
Speaker 1: I just it was the classes at eight in the morning,
Speaker 1: and I just wouldn't no intention I'm going that early. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just tried to make friends and and uh and
Speaker 1: kind of find my new identity and and I kept
Speaker 1: playing music and started to write some songs and earnest
Speaker 1: and and um figure out how I could play them
Speaker 1: perfect folks. Okay, so what point does this trip start
Speaker 1: to become You want to be a professional musician somewhere
Speaker 1: somewhere in college? I mean there. I live in a
Speaker 1: dry county, so there was nowhere to play music, um,
Speaker 1: except for these kind of coffeehouse things that we would do,
Speaker 1: these little shows. Uh. But I I think I had
Speaker 1: known for a long time it's what I wanted to
Speaker 1: do another idea that I could, that I could that
Speaker 1: there was you know, I thought you either have to
Speaker 1: be on MTV. UM. I didn't know how. I didn't
Speaker 1: know how you go about being a singer songwriter, but
Speaker 1: I knew that I loved it and I had a
Speaker 1: passion for it and that I would always regret if
Speaker 1: I didn't try to do it. So I just kind
Speaker 1: of floated through college with the idea that I was
Speaker 1: going to get out and then go try it somewhere. Okay,
Speaker 1: a couple of questions for those of us who grew
Speaker 1: up on the coasts. You know, though Bill Clinton was
Speaker 1: from Arkansas, since you've traveled the country, if not the
Speaker 1: world at this point and seeing everything is Arkansas state
Speaker 1: of mind like everywhere else are completely different. Uh, I
Speaker 1: think it's uh. I remember coming in, you know, I
Speaker 1: always used to say Texas is the one place, like
Speaker 1: the place where people are the most proud of themselves
Speaker 1: of anywhere in the world, regardless of you know, they
Speaker 1: haven't necessarily done anything to earn it, but there's just
Speaker 1: this pride and and being from Texas and and uh
Speaker 1: I remember getting to Arkansas and kind of wagging around
Speaker 1: I'm meeting some folks from Texas, and hey, we're we're Texans,
Speaker 1: and I thought we were connecting and and they stopped
Speaker 1: me real quickly said, we don't do that around here.
Speaker 1: And and I realized. I started to realize, not only
Speaker 1: is it obnoxious, but uh, um, you know, our Kansans
Speaker 1: had a lot of pride about where they were from.
Speaker 1: And uh and and just like I found that everywhere
Speaker 1: in the country has something to offer and um uh
Speaker 1: you know most folks appreciate that and and and um.
Speaker 1: So so okay, so you graduate from college, you're going
Speaker 1: to be a singer songwriter. What are your parents the
Speaker 1: attorneys to have to say to what degree did they
Speaker 1: support you? And what are your initial moves? Well, they
Speaker 1: supported me by uh, just emotionally encouraging me. Like I
Speaker 1: got very lucky in that. You know, they never they
Speaker 1: were not the type of folks who were super concerned
Speaker 1: or at least outwardly with you know, how are you
Speaker 1: going to make a living? They just let me do
Speaker 1: what I wanted to do, and so that that was
Speaker 1: a blessing. So I got out of college, I went
Speaker 1: in detasseled corn in Iowa for the summer um with
Speaker 1: some friends uh. And then moved down to Crystal Beach, Texas.
Speaker 1: UM on the ball of a peninsula, which is this
Speaker 1: very remote beach. It used to be the cheapest beach
Speaker 1: in America. It probably still is. And um and so uh,
Speaker 1: I'm I started hanging out in bars down there and
Speaker 1: um with the idea that I was just gonna live
Speaker 1: by the water and write songs. And uh that's how
Speaker 1: I got to start. But my parents, I remember telling
Speaker 1: him I wanted to be a singer songwriter and my
Speaker 1: mom said, can you sing? Uh? You know, it was
Speaker 1: very surprising to them. Um. And she also said, you know,
Speaker 1: I grew up in this planning community and and I said,
Speaker 1: I want to be a country singer. And she said, well,
Speaker 1: you can't be a country singer, like what are you
Speaker 1: gonna sing about? How they ran out of towels at
Speaker 1: the country club and uh, you know, so she told
Speaker 1: me I had to be a folk singer, um sitting
Speaker 1: down and play. But um. Anyway, so they were they
Speaker 1: were supportive, and they're good natured about it. And and
Speaker 1: I think they were probably very skeptical that anything was
Speaker 1: gonna happen, but they gave me room to to find
Speaker 1: out what I wanted to do. And to what degree
Speaker 1: did they financially support you? And while you were down
Speaker 1: there at the beach plane in bars, what are you
Speaker 1: living on? Uh, let's see, financially supporting? Well, the they
Speaker 1: didn't give me money but uh um um, but they
Speaker 1: were there if I needed them, which you know is reassuring.
Speaker 1: And I didn't need them. Um. I was fortunate to
Speaker 1: get by. I lived pretty cheaply and and um uh
Speaker 1: and I had jobs. I was doing landscaping or or uh.
Speaker 1: I was a bartending and waiting tables and it was
Speaker 1: a medical test patients and I man did anything I
Speaker 1: could to scrape together some money and then I would Uh.
Speaker 1: There was a bar used to hang out at uh
Speaker 1: called Bob's Sports Bar and world famous grill, and uh.
Speaker 1: I went up to the owner one day and I said,
Speaker 1: can I set up in the corner and uh play music?
Speaker 1: You don't have to pay me, I just you know,
Speaker 1: I'll put a tip jar out and he said sure.
Speaker 1: So I got a four hour gig and uh that
Speaker 1: started working for me. I started getting other shows up
Speaker 1: and down to this remote beach, planned for two people,
Speaker 1: ten people or whatever, and um um but I started
Speaker 1: making fifty bucks a night, you know, a hundred bucks
Speaker 1: a night, um on a good night. And and back then,
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't have a bank account. It's all cash,
Speaker 1: so you know, I wouldn't paying taxes and and and uh,
Speaker 1: I wasn't making much money, but I didn't have much
Speaker 1: to spend it on. And we're playing covers or originals.
Speaker 1: It was all covers. So that's where my my memory
Speaker 1: of lyrics came in handy because I could whether I
Speaker 1: knew the song or not. Uh, musically, I mean I could.
Speaker 1: I usually figured out with a capeo and my limited
Speaker 1: knowledge of chords. Um, but I could always remember the lyrics.
Speaker 1: And so people would come in and they would request
Speaker 1: Jimmy Buffett or Paul Simon or Steve Miller or John
Speaker 1: Prine or Chris Christopperson or Willie Nelson, whatever it was
Speaker 1: I could. I could usually pull something out that would
Speaker 1: satisfy them. Okay, so what's the next step? How do
Speaker 1: you start writing songs? And how do you move up
Speaker 1: the ladder? So to speak? So I really got lucky
Speaker 1: in I mean I was writing songs through college and
Speaker 1: then and then continue to at the beach, and I
Speaker 1: was waiting tables in Galveston Island, which is uh, you
Speaker 1: take a ferry across the bay to the island. And
Speaker 1: and one night after work, I was ah going out
Speaker 1: with some co workers to a bar and the bar
Speaker 1: was closed, and so I'm walking back to my car
Speaker 1: and I hear music coming down an alley and I
Speaker 1: take a left down this alley with another one of
Speaker 1: those moments that completely changed the course of my life. Um,
Speaker 1: and I followed the music and walk into this bar
Speaker 1: and there's somebody on stage playing guitar and singing. And
Speaker 1: there's a shrine to Towns van Zant on one wall
Speaker 1: and another shrine to Lightning Hopkins on another wall. And
Speaker 1: it's a place called the Old Quarter Acoustic Cafe. And
Speaker 1: the original Old Quarter was in Houston and it was
Speaker 1: a bar um that Town's VanZant recorded an iconic live
Speaker 1: record at. And this offshoot was owned by his former
Speaker 1: bass player again named Rex Bell. And uh, it was
Speaker 1: an open mic night. So I asked the rec like,
Speaker 1: can you can I get up there? And he said sure.
Speaker 1: So when out grabbed my car, my to my car
Speaker 1: and got my guitar, came back in and got on stage,
Speaker 1: played a loud love It song and that became my
Speaker 1: second home. UM. I started at tending bar there, hanging
Speaker 1: out doing open mics and um and so I've been
Speaker 1: playing covers six nights a week down on the Peninsula,
Speaker 1: but this was a place where I could play my
Speaker 1: own songs and and Rex started letting me open for people. UM.
Speaker 1: And there was a touring circuit, which I didn't know
Speaker 1: was a thing, and all these singer songwriters, uh Willis,
Speaker 1: Allen Ramsey and Steve Fromholtz and Shake Russell and Dana
Speaker 1: Cooper and sisters Morales and Ray Wiley Hubbard and all
Speaker 1: these folks will come through and they had careers like
Speaker 1: they did this for a living, but playing their own music,
Speaker 1: and people would buy ticket stuff to see it, which
Speaker 1: was just uh incredible to me. And I started to
Speaker 1: get into open for the open for these people. UM
Speaker 1: and a few of them started taking me on the
Speaker 1: road two open shows in Houston or San Antonio or
Speaker 1: Dallas or Austin. And so that's when things really started
Speaker 1: kicking into gear. Was was other musicians kind of showing
Speaker 1: me the ropes and taking me out, get me started.
Speaker 1: And how do you end up making a record. Well,
Speaker 1: one of those musicians was Lisa Morales. She had a
Speaker 1: band called Sisters Morales, and UH, I had some songs
Speaker 1: together and and I was going to just make a
Speaker 1: a record. I had no idea how I was going
Speaker 1: to do in somebody's garage probably and it would have
Speaker 1: been a disaster and I probably wouldn't be here today. UM.
Speaker 1: But Lisa stepped in and offered to produce the record,
Speaker 1: and I said yes, And so we went to Willie
Speaker 1: Nelson's studio and put Analysis, Texas, and she got a
Speaker 1: great crew of players and we made a made a record,
Speaker 1: and UM, I sent it to a guy named Brad
Speaker 1: Turcott who had a upstart label called UH Compadre Records,
Speaker 1: and he didn't he had done a couple of compilations,
Speaker 1: but he didn't have any actual acts artists, and UM
Speaker 1: I sent it to him and he he signed me
Speaker 1: to a licensing deal. So UM, another really good stroke
Speaker 1: of luck, because I had no idea how to get
Speaker 1: a record out there, and so all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: now I had a record that was professionally produced, and
Speaker 1: I had a record label UM that didn't have any
Speaker 1: other artists but UM, and the guy was younger than
Speaker 1: Brad was probably younger than I was. I think he
Speaker 1: was twenty three and he was in law school and
Speaker 1: running a record label. Um but uh, but he did
Speaker 1: a great job of it, and and it showed me
Speaker 1: here's what a publicist is, here's uh, here's your first tour.
Speaker 1: He got me an agent and and um uh, here's
Speaker 1: a radio promoter and all these things that I had
Speaker 1: no idea about any of this. I was just you know,
Speaker 1: a cover singer in a bar and then but you
Speaker 1: know who was writing songs on the side. So, um,
Speaker 1: this really opened up my world. Okay, so you paid
Speaker 1: for all that yourself or he paid. I paid for
Speaker 1: the record. I took out a loan, a line of credit.
Speaker 1: So I made the record and then I licensed it
Speaker 1: to him, and then he paid for everything after that.
Speaker 1: So we had a seven year licensing deal and which
Speaker 1: was also he paid for the publicity, etcetera. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So what was the ultimate reception of that record? We
Speaker 1: sold fifty six copies the first week. I still remember
Speaker 1: that number. Um, and uh, you know, it didn't do
Speaker 1: a ton, but it got me all those elements. The
Speaker 1: radio and the publicity, got me on the radar a
Speaker 1: little bit, got me out of state touring UM and
Speaker 1: helped me start to build up a little bit of
Speaker 1: an audience around Texas. UM. UM, there were certain clubs
Speaker 1: where I could go and make money now doing my
Speaker 1: own songs, which before that had not been a reality.
Speaker 1: So what's the next step with the next album. Well,
Speaker 1: I met Mike Crowley, who I told you about UM
Speaker 1: and be my first manager. I Well, I went and
Speaker 1: made a second record, paid for the second record on
Speaker 1: my own as well, UM, and took it to Brad
Speaker 1: and asked if you wanted to to put it out
Speaker 1: and he passed. And so I was a free agent
Speaker 1: and I was looking around it at different labels that
Speaker 1: there were a couple of labels who were offering me deals.
Speaker 1: But I grew up reading all the books about how
Speaker 1: musicians get screwed and how you can sell a million
Speaker 1: records and end up owing your label money and all
Speaker 1: these kind of things. Uh. And I always was determined,
Speaker 1: like I never thought I would actually have a shot.
Speaker 1: But I told myself, if I do have a shot,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna sink or swim on my own. Like I
Speaker 1: didn't want to be dependent on somebody else too too,
Speaker 1: or let them have control of my career or be
Speaker 1: able to sink my career. If I wasn't gonna succeed,
Speaker 1: it was gonna because I wasn't very good, or because
Speaker 1: I didn't work hard enough, not because somebody else put
Speaker 1: me on the shelf or didn't promote in the way
Speaker 1: that you know need to be done. So I met
Speaker 1: up with Mike Crowley and we formed our own label,
Speaker 1: and I put out my second records called Little Rock,
Speaker 1: and it got on the radio. There's a radio station
Speaker 1: in Dallas called h y I, and one of the
Speaker 1: songs on there became kind of a hit, uh for
Speaker 1: you know, a regional hit, and overnight my crowds went
Speaker 1: from twenty people too. And it was the power of
Speaker 1: the radio. H was in full effect. And we ended
Speaker 1: up selling copies of that record, um, which for you know,
Speaker 1: independent artists run as the label was, was a success. Okay,
Speaker 1: how did it get on the radio if you were
Speaker 1: an independent artist? Oh? We hired a radio promoter, same deal,
Speaker 1: just kind of Americana radio promoter. And okay, so this
Speaker 1: record forts quite a lot as an independent. Then how
Speaker 1: do you make a deal with Lost Highway? A woman
Speaker 1: named Kim Boie did an r for Lost Highway, and
Speaker 1: she she came out to his show. I don't remember
Speaker 1: where when, but I think it was in Nashville, and
Speaker 1: and we met and and at some point she just
Speaker 1: reached out and said that they were interested in and
Speaker 1: signing me. And I remember looking at the roster and
Speaker 1: seeing Willie Nelson and uh Elvis Costello and Ryan Adams
Speaker 1: and Lucinda Williams and Van Morrison. It was this fantastic
Speaker 1: roster um and a part of me thought, this is
Speaker 1: a no brainer. But then there was the other part
Speaker 1: of me that had just created a successful record label,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, relatively successful record label. And I
Speaker 1: always remember this quote from John Prine. He's he said
Speaker 1: with when he started Old Boy Records. He said, I
Speaker 1: sell a third of the records that I used to sell,
Speaker 1: and I make three times the money. And that always
Speaker 1: stuck with me. And I was hesitant to let go
Speaker 1: of this thing and be with somebody else. But the
Speaker 1: roster was incredible, and the people that worked for the company,
Speaker 1: we're all incredible, and so I just took a leap
Speaker 1: of faith and and I thought this, this is I think,
Speaker 1: a really great opportunity, and they'll either drop me after
Speaker 1: a couple of records and hopefully my career will be
Speaker 1: bigger and I can go back to doing on my own,
Speaker 1: or it will be a success and everybody will be happy,
Speaker 1: kind of a mix of both. Actually, uh Um. I
Speaker 1: put out my the first record with him is called
Speaker 1: Trouble in Mind and its I don't know what the
Speaker 1: numbers are now, it's probably it's over a hundred thousand
Speaker 1: copies and that's my most successful record, um to date,
Speaker 1: and and uh it did pretty well. And then I
Speaker 1: put out a second one called Came a Yo Yo,
Speaker 1: and it probably did eighty or ninety um and it
Speaker 1: was fine. I've I've I've since recouped, which my wife
Speaker 1: tells me is unusual to recoup from a major label.
Speaker 1: Um uh. But the things started slowing down there and
Speaker 1: I uh uh, they weren't signing new acts, and I
Speaker 1: think Luke Lewis was um Um, who had been really supportive,
Speaker 1: was was moving on and and so they had the
Speaker 1: rights to another record. But he told me it's like,
Speaker 1: if you want to get out of here, you can,
Speaker 1: and and uh you probably it might be a good
Speaker 1: idea because uh, it just seemed like things weren't going
Speaker 1: to be there very long. So uh so I jumped
Speaker 1: out and that was the end of it. But it
Speaker 1: was a really really positive experience. They never asked me
Speaker 1: do anything I didn't want to do, and they were
Speaker 1: They spent a bunch of money promoting my stuff and
Speaker 1: and and raised my visibility to a point that it
Speaker 1: would not have gotten to without him. Okay, you meeting
Speaker 1: of the record independently, and then you made another one.
Speaker 1: The last one was for Dual Tone. How did you
Speaker 1: decide to go with the company again? Well, I did,
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I did a record with thirty Tigers UM
Speaker 1: called Lovers and Levers, and then UM Mike and I
Speaker 1: parted ways and I worked with another manager named Griff Morris,
Speaker 1: and uh, my career was kind of it had taken
Speaker 1: a dip. You know, It's been five years in between records,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't touring as much, and my the that
Speaker 1: Lovers and Levers record was a pretty somber affair. I
Speaker 1: love it. I made it with Joe Henry and I'm
Speaker 1: really proud of that record, but it was very different
Speaker 1: than what I put up before. And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of my fans between the laps or between the
Speaker 1: time that had had had happened between records and the
Speaker 1: tone of that record, A lot of people who had
Speaker 1: come out to drink and shout and dance and fight
Speaker 1: and make out and holler and sing along, it wasn't
Speaker 1: really the thing for them, and so I lost a
Speaker 1: lot of fans. And uh so I think, uh, the
Speaker 1: idea of when I was working with Griff was, we
Speaker 1: need we need some energy here, we need to kick
Speaker 1: start things again, and so trying to build up a
Speaker 1: team with a good record, label, publisher, things like that
Speaker 1: became the priority. And and so we met with dualtone
Speaker 1: and I really liked what they had to say and
Speaker 1: ended up working together. Okay, so at this late date,
Speaker 1: you've been in the game twenty years, do you feel
Speaker 1: you're inside or outside? I mean, the business is completely
Speaker 1: change starting the turn of the century, and you know
Speaker 1: there are these acts that you know, dominate Spotify, and
Speaker 1: then there are all these acts that either used to
Speaker 1: have success or independent from the start. Who were about me?
Speaker 1: Is there a scene or you just one guy who's
Speaker 1: grinding it out? Is there a scene? You know? Early
Speaker 1: on it was it was there was a scene in Texas. Uh,
Speaker 1: just an incredible audience down there that just music is
Speaker 1: part of the culture and life in a way like
Speaker 1: unlike I've seen anywhere else. Um And so that that
Speaker 1: was a big boost for me. And then the Americana
Speaker 1: scene really if if there, I mean, I don't even
Speaker 1: know what the scene is, but the UM I met
Speaker 1: a lot of kind of like minded artists and and
Speaker 1: everything from Canadian songwriters like fred Eagle Smith or Cory
Speaker 1: Blonde to um uh you know folks in the States
Speaker 1: Shovels and Rope or Jason Nesbo or um. You know,
Speaker 1: there were there were there were people that I toured
Speaker 1: with and all ninety seven's and just different bands that
Speaker 1: that uh I connected with and and um I felt
Speaker 1: it was similar to what I was trying to do.
Speaker 1: They were songwriters who had a roots sensibility of country
Speaker 1: and rock, and so that all kind of fell into
Speaker 1: the umbrella of Americana. I guess, well, what would you
Speaker 1: say the state of Americana is today, because certainly it
Speaker 1: was a new thing, you know, at the turn of
Speaker 1: the century, and everybody's talking about it and now everyone
Speaker 1: thinks it's is genre. But other than Jason is Bill,
Speaker 1: you don't hear that much about the act and I'm
Speaker 1: not talking that's not happening, but it doesn't float to
Speaker 1: the general as we say mainstream media. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: the state is pretty good. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: I have no idea, like, no one has ever come
Speaker 1: up with a definition of Americana that I can remember
Speaker 1: or feel like, you know, it makes any sense. So
Speaker 1: it's a pretty catch all thing. But you know, lately
Speaker 1: I feel like whether it's Jason or the Turnpike, Troubadours
Speaker 1: or um Sturgill Simpson or um, I don't know, there's
Speaker 1: there's a long list of folks that are m Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if they would label themselves as any
Speaker 1: of these things. But American or or the the the
Speaker 1: off the beaten path, non mainstream music world certainly embraced
Speaker 1: them and call them their own. And and those people
Speaker 1: are doing big business and and it may not be
Speaker 1: something that uh, I mean, I guess all relative, but um,
Speaker 1: you know, people are playing arenas and and and um,
Speaker 1: selling out stuff left and right, and and uh it
Speaker 1: may not be mains like totally mainstream popular culture, but
Speaker 1: there is absolutely an audience out there, uh, in the
Speaker 1: tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands for or millions
Speaker 1: for some of these folks, and and uh and yeah,
Speaker 1: Brandy Carlisle would be one of those people. And again
Speaker 1: like where I don't want to label people that they
Speaker 1: may not want to be labeled with that, but but
Speaker 1: these are like non traditional A lot of these people
Speaker 1: are doing this without major labels. A lot of them
Speaker 1: are doing it um independently and and uh just completely
Speaker 1: in their own style. So we are you in that hierarchy?
Speaker 1: And what do you want? I mean back in the
Speaker 1: major label era, there are all these songwriters like you mentioned,
Speaker 1: you know Towns, Vian Sand and other people, uh who
Speaker 1: had were icons in Texas, but once you got outside
Speaker 1: the borders of Texas, you have to be paying attention
Speaker 1: to know who they are. Are you someone and says
Speaker 1: well this is what I do or I want more?
Speaker 1: Or are you somewhat depressed because you feel like you
Speaker 1: missed the target? Where are you at on your career
Speaker 1: right now? Yeah, it's trying to figure that out. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of at a point where I'm trying to
Speaker 1: do the work the best I can and and sort
Speaker 1: of accept where the chips fall. And that doesn't mean
Speaker 1: I'm not working hard. Um Uh, my goal is to
Speaker 1: to take care of my family and to do work
Speaker 1: that I'm proud of. Um, I can't worry too much
Speaker 1: about the numbers or where my careers are comparing its
Speaker 1: somebody else's career. It's that's uh, that is not a
Speaker 1: good head space for me, and it's not what makes
Speaker 1: me happy. I finally realized, like if if I sold
Speaker 1: another uh, you know, twenty thousand tickets this year on
Speaker 1: the road, uh, you know, there would there would be
Speaker 1: it would be great to be able to afford the
Speaker 1: buses or or or you know, travel a little better,
Speaker 1: but the overhead goes up and and like with each stage, UM,
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm realizing is there's no finish line.
Speaker 1: There's no oh now now everything is good and they're
Speaker 1: never will be. You know. Garth Brooks is you know,
Speaker 1: he's he's sold more records than Elvis, and he's still
Speaker 1: trying to figure out, uh like at a certain point,
Speaker 1: who who can you compete with? And and so I
Speaker 1: just it sounds try it, I guess, but I'm really
Speaker 1: interested in doing work that will last, and work that
Speaker 1: I can be proud of. And um, and I have
Speaker 1: faith and again come out of the pandemic. It's something
Speaker 1: that I know there's an audience out there. It may
Speaker 1: not be as big as I once had hoped it
Speaker 1: would be, but I also realized I don't need it
Speaker 1: to be um hard. I'm a singer songwriter. I don't
Speaker 1: need to be rocking in front of ten thousand people.
Speaker 1: I'm actually quite uncomfortable doing that. UM. I like to
Speaker 1: be able to to connect with my audience and and UM,
Speaker 1: for me, that's a more intimate way. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I can still tear about hoky talk and and rock out,
Speaker 1: but uh um, at the end of the day of
Speaker 1: what I think I do best is write songs and
Speaker 1: connect to people in a in au from the stage
Speaker 1: in an intimate way. Okay, let's use the classic example
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen. He's been around for a while, different era. Okay,
Speaker 1: delivers a record and the manager says not done. He
Speaker 1: goes right dancing in the dark. Now, that album Born
Speaker 1: in the USA was more upbeat, certainly Nebraska that came
Speaker 1: before it, but some of the other work. But you know,
Speaker 1: across the catalog he had, he had uppers and downers.
Speaker 1: You ever sit there and say, I've been doing this
Speaker 1: a long time. I know what the market is. Let
Speaker 1: me write something that I believe will resonate with the market. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to do that. Just let's go
Speaker 1: back in chapter. How do you do it? In terms
Speaker 1: of songwriting? Well, I used to just be observation and inspiration.
Speaker 1: And you know, I thought I mentioned Carolac and Dylan.
Speaker 1: You know, I thought the key to me a songwriters
Speaker 1: you just take a bunch of pills and drink heavily
Speaker 1: and and live a wildlife and and every once in
Speaker 1: a while lightning strikes and you just write it down
Speaker 1: and and you're just in a channel for it. And
Speaker 1: then that's it. And you either have that ability or
Speaker 1: you don't. And um, I mean they're there's there's something
Speaker 1: to that, but uh, it's not sustainable. It's not a craft.
Speaker 1: And um So for years I sort of did did
Speaker 1: things that way, um, and then it sort of dried
Speaker 1: up and I didn't know what I was doing. I
Speaker 1: didn't know what I was writing about. I didn't know myself.
Speaker 1: And so these days I'm much more interested in the
Speaker 1: craft of it and annoying myself and working through something.
Speaker 1: And um, I'll tell you a quick ancdote if I can't. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: nothing to do is quick, but I'll try to make
Speaker 1: it so. Um. There's a There was a legendary songwriter
Speaker 1: named Guy Clark, who, when I was twenty four, let
Speaker 1: me come over to his house and write a song
Speaker 1: with him. And this is to me. It was an
Speaker 1: icon and somebody I really looked up to. And he
Speaker 1: was very deliberate. He had a basement downstairs where he
Speaker 1: built guitars, and he wrote these songs on graph paper
Speaker 1: and every letter, every square had a letter in it
Speaker 1: for the song. And we worked on something and got
Speaker 1: it started, and I went home and finished it up,
Speaker 1: and I sent him a tape or something with it,
Speaker 1: and he called me up and said, you need to
Speaker 1: change this to that and this here that there these
Speaker 1: very minute details, and I remember thinking, uh, this is unnecessary,
Speaker 1: this is not this, it doesn't matter, um, And it
Speaker 1: was not at all the way that I wrote. I
Speaker 1: did not revise and edit and draft and spend time
Speaker 1: with it. I tried to catch lightning in a bottle
Speaker 1: and if it didn't work, there was nothing there, and
Speaker 1: if it did, that's what it was. Now. I look
Speaker 1: back at that guy, and it's really trying to beat
Speaker 1: myself up. But I'm embarrassed by that, um, because now
Speaker 1: I am I'm not saying I'm a guy Clark's level
Speaker 1: as a writer, but that is much more high. Right now.
Speaker 1: I'm intentional and I deliberate, and songs every one, small
Speaker 1: sometime will come out in a day. I wrote one today, um,
Speaker 1: which was nice and rare to finish a song in
Speaker 1: a day. But these days I'll put weeks and months
Speaker 1: of time into something to make sure it's right. I
Speaker 1: can't let it go anymore. I used to just throw
Speaker 1: it out and go it's good enough, and now there's
Speaker 1: something that's changed where I can't. That doesn't work for me.
Speaker 1: It has to be able to stand up and and um.
Speaker 1: So that's that's the process for me now. Okay, but
Speaker 1: let's go back to the real beginning. Do you say, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to make a record, therefore I'm gonna write songs,
Speaker 1: or you're writing songs and all of a sudden you
Speaker 1: realize you have an album, or or do you say
Speaker 1: I need life, more life experience, I'm gonna wait until
Speaker 1: I got more to write about. We're gonna work every
Speaker 1: day and write a song. What's the process? Well, the
Speaker 1: inspiration was just first of all songwriters, they articulated what
Speaker 1: I felt, and to me, it was the most magical
Speaker 1: thing and the coolest job I could imagine. It was
Speaker 1: it was it was it was magic, um to be
Speaker 1: able to articulate the human experience and describe it and
Speaker 1: and make you feel these things. And so I just
Speaker 1: I was drawn to it, and I wanted to be
Speaker 1: able to do that um uh and and in any
Speaker 1: creative form really, but I have attention issues, So I
Speaker 1: figured I'll never be a novelist because I can't focus
Speaker 1: that long. But a song three minutes, maybe I could.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's hope there. Um. And I just did it
Speaker 1: from my own self. Again, I never had any I
Speaker 1: didn't know how you become a professional anything to do
Speaker 1: with the music business. So it was it was not
Speaker 1: my world growing up, It was not my world in college. UM.
Speaker 1: So I was just doing it because I had a
Speaker 1: dream for it, passion for it, and and so I
Speaker 1: just wrote to wrote to write and um. And then
Speaker 1: I started getting gigs. Then I really kind of kicked
Speaker 1: it up a gear because it was I started getting
Speaker 1: open for people in front of real audiences, and I thought,
Speaker 1: I gotta have something to say here, um, or I
Speaker 1: can just play covers or if I want to have
Speaker 1: any kind of career in my own. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: wrote a song this morning. Was it because you said, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna write a song, I went to my room
Speaker 1: and worked on it, or you all of a sudden
Speaker 1: had an inspiration? Do you do this every day? Try
Speaker 1: to write a song? Well, I try to put some
Speaker 1: time in every day. I don't succeed, um usually, but
Speaker 1: you know today I had a co write. Uh. Guy
Speaker 1: named Driver Williams plays guitar with Eric Church. He has
Speaker 1: a uh he lives here in town. And and um,
Speaker 1: we've had pretty successful run the last year or two
Speaker 1: of writing songs. So um we got together and and
Speaker 1: uh I wrote one that I quite like. So it
Speaker 1: was it was a prearranged deal. To what degree do
Speaker 1: you like working with others supposed to doing it alone? Well,
Speaker 1: it's I used to write everything by myself. And then
Speaker 1: I had a couple uh folks like Guy Clark and
Speaker 1: right Wiley Hubbard who who who showed me about co
Speaker 1: writing and um uh and then I started relying on
Speaker 1: it more and more as I sort of lost my
Speaker 1: own inspiration, I started relying on other people for theirs,
Speaker 1: and then I became kind of an editor of songs
Speaker 1: rather than a creator of songs. And uh now it's
Speaker 1: kind of come to where I I feel like I
Speaker 1: can write on my own. I'm doing a lot more
Speaker 1: of that these days, UM, but also enjoying writing with
Speaker 1: other people. They're times where it's a drag, but there's
Speaker 1: a there's a real magic that happens when you you know,
Speaker 1: you get into a flow and you each have a
Speaker 1: kind of role that you're playing. And sometimes I'm just
Speaker 1: helping them edit, and sometimes they're helping they're just editing me,
Speaker 1: and and or sometimes it's completely even, but it's it's
Speaker 1: it's uh, that chemistry when it works is really cool.
Speaker 1: And and I end up both songs that I never
Speaker 1: would have come up with my own, and and and
Speaker 1: can use other people's talents. And I learned a lot
Speaker 1: too from that. UM. You know, there's no songwriting school.
Speaker 1: I didn't go to one. UM, So to to get
Speaker 1: to sit with with really creative, talented people and watch
Speaker 1: their process, always learn something. And what happens to these songs?
Speaker 1: Are they for you or you try to get them covered?
Speaker 1: They used to all be for me, um, because I
Speaker 1: was the most important thing to me was being the
Speaker 1: artist and and now I'm I'm just as happy for
Speaker 1: other people to go out and do the work and
Speaker 1: make the money so for me. So um, it's a
Speaker 1: bit of both. I'm always writing for myself, but uh,
Speaker 1: I mean that's always in my mind. Um. But in
Speaker 1: the last couple of years, I've really uh leaned into
Speaker 1: just writing to write and and doing these co writes
Speaker 1: and living here. I moved to Nashville. Was in Austin
Speaker 1: for twelve years, and I've been in Nashville for a
Speaker 1: few years now, and and um there's you know, the
Speaker 1: whole uh ecosystem and the music industry's country music is here,
Speaker 1: and and um, so you can write a song and
Speaker 1: it can be and somebody's you know, some of you
Speaker 1: me listening to it that day, and and it can
Speaker 1: be get cut that week, and which is it doesn't
Speaker 1: happen often to me, but but the possibility is there.
Speaker 1: And so that that's that's a fun muscle I've been
Speaker 1: working out lately, is is just to write the best
Speaker 1: song I can and not think about, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: can I do it? And it's something too about my
Speaker 1: my stuff. I relied on my personality and my delivery
Speaker 1: to get a song across and rather than crafting the
Speaker 1: song to be something that anybody could sing. And so
Speaker 1: that's that's something that's important to me too, is I
Speaker 1: want to write a song and not have to be
Speaker 1: able to wink at the audience or deliver it a
Speaker 1: certain way. I want to write it towards bulletproof, so
Speaker 1: anybody can pick it up and sing it and people
Speaker 1: can go, that's a hell of a song. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be my unique delivery, uh to to to
Speaker 1: land it that that it could be a standard. Everything
Speaker 1: could give it up. No, do you have the same
Speaker 1: motivation you have now then you did at the beginning? Uh? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: in a way. I mean, I'm I'm probably a little
Speaker 1: more sorted and I don't have the same fire. I mean,
Speaker 1: when you're in your twenties and you're just trying to
Speaker 1: make a mark and and do something and find yourself,
Speaker 1: that was that was an energy that I will never
Speaker 1: be able to recap. Sure, But uh but yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: I have a lot of work to do and a
Speaker 1: lot of things that I'm excited about still, and I've
Speaker 1: i am still in love with the act of creating
Speaker 1: a song, where they're creating something out of nothing. So
Speaker 1: you have a son. How many times have you been married?
Speaker 1: And now you're married to Alison? Give me the run there.
Speaker 1: I had my son in two thousand three. His name
Speaker 1: is Eli. Uh and um, I'm married. I've been married twice.
Speaker 1: So my first wife is Eli's mom and we were
Speaker 1: married for nine years I think, um, and we got
Speaker 1: divorced h seven years ago. And uh Alison and I
Speaker 1: got married, uh three and a half, it'll be three
Speaker 1: years in May. Where's your son today? My son is
Speaker 1: in Austin. Uh. Uh he's just graduated high school and
Speaker 1: in his uh about to go to college. So how
Speaker 1: did you meet Allison? How do you end up marrying it?
Speaker 1: She has an autistic son with her previous husband, Steve Earle,
Speaker 1: And what how often is the child with you? And
Speaker 1: how does that affect your everyday life? I met Allison
Speaker 1: in two thousand three, I think, uh. We had some
Speaker 1: mutual friends. I was just starting to come to town
Speaker 1: and she um actually sang on my second record in
Speaker 1: two thousand four and uh and we were friendly um
Speaker 1: for years, but I didn't see much of her and UM,
Speaker 1: and we just I invited her to a show. I
Speaker 1: was up in New York, um and invited her to
Speaker 1: a show and and she couldn't make the show, but
Speaker 1: we met up for uh a drink and and UM
Speaker 1: you know, much to our surprise, uh connected UM and yes,
Speaker 1: she has a son named John Henry who UM is
Speaker 1: eleven and is level three autism. He's nonverbal and UM
Speaker 1: her she just released her second book, which is titled
Speaker 1: A Dreamy Talks to Me and it's uh it's about
Speaker 1: about John Henry in life with him and UM. Right now,
Speaker 1: John Henry is in New York with his dad UM
Speaker 1: for the school year, and then he spends the summers
Speaker 1: with us and Alison. Uh. When John hery was diagnosed,
Speaker 1: sort of quit touring so that she could be there
Speaker 1: full time with him and and uh Steve UM continue
Speaker 1: to tour R and um. Uh they split up shortly
Speaker 1: after the diagnosis and so now we we split time essentially. UM.
Speaker 1: And is she going back on the road with the
Speaker 1: status of her career, She's gonna go out her her
Speaker 1: sister's uh wonderful artists and Shelby Lynn and UM they're
Speaker 1: gonna go and do a few dates in April, Um,
Speaker 1: just a week, I think. Um, but that's that's it.
Speaker 1: She's trying to slow down. You know, she's put she's
Speaker 1: put out eleven records and two books, and um, is
Speaker 1: is um trying to to slow down? UM. I don't
Speaker 1: know how much luck she's having with it, but UM,
Speaker 1: so there won't be a lot of touring this year,
Speaker 1: but they do have some dates, which the two of
Speaker 1: them together is really something special. So what is it
Speaker 1: you're trying to say in your songs? What is it
Speaker 1: you want to get across that would make it that
Speaker 1: someone needs to listen to your music? Well, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't look at it that way anymore. I mean,
Speaker 1: when I was younger, it was what I was trying
Speaker 1: to say, was I was trying to put words to
Speaker 1: whatever I was feeling. Um, And I'm not sure, UM,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how important that was. You know, felt
Speaker 1: incredibly important. But uh, these days I don't. I UM,
Speaker 1: I sit down with a song and try to or
Speaker 1: an idea and try to find what it has to
Speaker 1: tell me and then flesh it out and coax it
Speaker 1: in and into the uh, polished it as best I
Speaker 1: can to to where it says something. So uh, you know,
Speaker 1: today we wrote a song about addiction, about somebody who
Speaker 1: dies and and the person that's left behind, how angry
Speaker 1: they are, and and all the emotions, the sadness and
Speaker 1: the anger and then ultimately the forgiveness. And that's interesting
Speaker 1: to me. And I didn't think about it. I wasn't
Speaker 1: thinking about it two days ago. It wasn't I didn't
Speaker 1: think I need to write a song about addiction. But
Speaker 1: there's a lot of addiction in my life surrounding me
Speaker 1: these days, and and and um it's been on my mind.
Speaker 1: And so then it just came up, um in in
Speaker 1: the in the room, we started writing about it. So
Speaker 1: I'm interested in finding those ideas and then and then
Speaker 1: fleshing them out. But I don't walk around thinking I
Speaker 1: need to tell the world this or that. Um. I
Speaker 1: I have some ideas from my own stuff that I'm
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm scratching the the surface of kind
Speaker 1: of finding my voice in a in a new way
Speaker 1: or a point of view. Um, But right now it's it's, uh,
Speaker 1: I'm not there yet, and and those those things kind
Speaker 1: of change and take time. So I'm just trying to
Speaker 1: be patient until I find something I really am passionate
Speaker 1: about saying. So you talk about going out with your band,
Speaker 1: that inherently adds costs. So it's just the same guys,
Speaker 1: what have they been doing? And you could save a
Speaker 1: lot of money going out alone. But would that just
Speaker 1: be a different thing? Well, I do both. Um. I
Speaker 1: started out solo and UM and this year I'll next
Speaker 1: month I'll do probably seven shows solo and then I'll
Speaker 1: go out and do thirty in a row with the band. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I mean, that's the That's one of the things
Speaker 1: about doing this is is figuring out how can you
Speaker 1: how do you best deliver it? First of all, UM,
Speaker 1: And I'm still not sure if I'm better as solo
Speaker 1: artist or with a band or with a sideman. UM.
Speaker 1: But there are some um career opportunities that that I
Speaker 1: don't get as a solo artist that I would with
Speaker 1: a band. So I can go play two nights at
Speaker 1: Green Hall in Texas and do you know fift people
Speaker 1: and and um uh you know, I have a really
Speaker 1: successful weekend at a dance hall. But if I have
Speaker 1: the band, but I can't do the same thing solo. UM.
Speaker 1: But then you know, like you said, A lot of that,
Speaker 1: A lot of that profit is eaten up by salaries
Speaker 1: and hotel rooms and per deems and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: And um, so I'm always trying to trying to find
Speaker 1: a line of where I can do what I need
Speaker 1: financially and um, but keep the band. I like having
Speaker 1: that element. I like being a solo artist, like like
Speaker 1: going out by myself and playing a listing room, and
Speaker 1: I like getting the band together and tearing but a
Speaker 1: dance hall. It's uh, I enjoy being able to do both. Um.
Speaker 1: I think I would get bored if I can only
Speaker 1: do one thing and it's just the same guys each time.
Speaker 1: Oh it's changed over the years, but right now I've
Speaker 1: got a pretty uh consistent abandoned career. And what they
Speaker 1: do to get through the pandemic, well, um, everything from
Speaker 1: Patreon to teaching online music lessons to um, you know,
Speaker 1: government assistance too. I helped out in the beginning where
Speaker 1: I could, Um, one of them became a substitute teacher.
Speaker 1: That's uh, you know, everybody's hustling. Okay, So let's say
Speaker 1: someone is unfamiliar with your work, what are the two
Speaker 1: songs they should listen to that you think would really
Speaker 1: depict where you're coming from that they need to hear.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, Um, Well, I'm gonna go with my most
Speaker 1: recent record. I've got two songs on there that I think,
Speaker 1: UH show at least part of the range. And their
Speaker 1: two songs I'm really proud of I've got the title
Speaker 1: track is called you Get It All and um, which
Speaker 1: is just uh sort of introspective love song. But but
Speaker 1: I feel like it's got all the elements that that
Speaker 1: I'm drawn too in songs, the word play and and
Speaker 1: and a little bit of levity and um uh and
Speaker 1: a country feel. Um. It's it's I think it's well written,
Speaker 1: if I do say so myself. And then um, the
Speaker 1: other one off this record that I think it's it's
Speaker 1: one of the things I'm most proud of that I've
Speaker 1: ever done. Uh is a song I sent to you
Speaker 1: called help Me Remember, and that uh is just one
Speaker 1: of my Uh It's just one of the things I'm
Speaker 1: most proud of. I worked really hard on it with
Speaker 1: with the Josh Morning Star, UM great songwriter, and and
Speaker 1: we really brought it home. I think, yeah, I know
Speaker 1: what it's about. Could you tell if those people were
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with what it's about well, help me remembers about dementia,
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's people struggling with that, and and U and about
Speaker 1: the having a witness to your life um, which is ah,
Speaker 1: sometimes I think about a lot um. So it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's a song written from the perspective of someone
Speaker 1: suffering dementia and and sort of losing the thread to
Speaker 1: their own story and asking their spouse to help fill
Speaker 1: in the blanks about who they were and what their
Speaker 1: life was, what they were about, what their life was like.
Speaker 1: So what do you mean about having a witness? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I was thinking about the idea of not
Speaker 1: remembering who you were. You know, your partner, your friends,
Speaker 1: your children, those are people who saw you through your life.
Speaker 1: They knew what you were about. They knew your actions,
Speaker 1: they knew whether you were where you were good and
Speaker 1: where you struggled. They knew, um, what you aspired to.
Speaker 1: And it's heartbreaking to think about losing that self knowledge,
Speaker 1: but people do. And so the idea of having a
Speaker 1: witness to your life is is exactly that somebody who
Speaker 1: was there for your life and can tell you this
Speaker 1: is what you were about, this is the kind of
Speaker 1: person you were. You were. This is the kind of
Speaker 1: parent you were, it's kind of spouse, it's the kind
Speaker 1: of citizen. Um that that just really struck me. My
Speaker 1: grandfather suffered from dementia just a little bit before he passed,
Speaker 1: and he had too things that happened that really stood
Speaker 1: out to me. One I was riding in his pickup
Speaker 1: truck in Waco, Texas, and he pulled up to the
Speaker 1: stoplight and he turned around to me and asked me
Speaker 1: where we were and I had no idea, and that
Speaker 1: was his hometown. I didn't live there, and I was fourteen,
Speaker 1: and he looked scared, and you know, this was a
Speaker 1: drive he had made ten thousand times he and he
Speaker 1: was lost. And then there was another time. My grandfather
Speaker 1: was a really loving, sweet man, and there was one
Speaker 1: day where he was not being either of those things.
Speaker 1: And I remember my my dad pulled me aside. He said,
Speaker 1: don't remember your grandfather this way. Yeah, this is not
Speaker 1: who he is. And I guess that's what I mean
Speaker 1: is m My dad was a witness, you know, my
Speaker 1: grandmother was a witness. And as my grandfather was starting
Speaker 1: to struggle with knowing who he was and where he was,
Speaker 1: the idea of having people who did know that and
Speaker 1: could remind you. Uh. It seemed like a very powerful
Speaker 1: one and an important thing to have. Well, Hayes, I
Speaker 1: think we've come to the end of the feeling we've known.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being so honest and open. You're a real thinker,
Speaker 1: and you're giving very insightful the answer. So thanks so
Speaker 1: much for doing this well. Thank you, Bob. I'm i'm
Speaker 1: I really appreciate your newsletter and and you give me
Speaker 1: and I can think about every years. Thank you til
Speaker 1: next time. This is Bob Left Sense