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