Speaker 1: The first line of the song, better get your attention,
Speaker 1: I mean, right out of the gate, you better say
Speaker 1: something bank, gotcha. You're never truly free until you can
Speaker 1: say no. If I had a record deal that song
Speaker 1: does not get hurt. When everything is out out of
Speaker 1: your control, find the one thing you can still control,
Speaker 1: and control it well.
Speaker 2: I'm raving an arroyo. Welcome to Arroyo Grande, where we
Speaker 2: dive into the wild currents of this culture and talk
Speaker 2: to some of the most incredible culture makers and thought
Speaker 2: leaders anywhere. I'm so glad to hear Country superstar John
Speaker 2: Rich is my guest today. And for anyone who is lost,
Speaker 2: or you've hit a dead end, or just feeling rejected,
Speaker 2: does Jean Rich have some advice for you? Powerful stuff?
Speaker 2: Stay tuned for that. First a little free flow. I
Speaker 2: was getting on a plane the other day and they're
Speaker 2: coming down the aisle was a couple. The woman had pajamas,
Speaker 2: her hair in some kind of bag, and slippers and
Speaker 2: the man with her sported pajama bottoms, a T shirt
Speaker 2: and flip flops. Now bear in mind these people probably
Speaker 2: paid four hundred and fifty bucks between them to fly,
Speaker 2: but they went out of the house into the car
Speaker 2: and through tsay in their sleepwear. Couldn't they at least
Speaker 2: put jeans on? As I watched them come down the
Speaker 2: aisle at me, I thought, here in shambling stark relief
Speaker 2: is American manners in one image, I should have snapped
Speaker 2: a picture slobs at home, slobs in the world. Surveys differ,
Speaker 2: but it's estimated that Americans spend roughly fifteen one hundred
Speaker 2: dollars a year on clothing. Did they have to blow
Speaker 2: it all on pajamas and flip flops to cop and
Speaker 2: distort Dolly Parton's line, I guess it's expensive to look
Speaker 2: that horrible. It's hard to believe that there was a
Speaker 2: time when Americans didn't leave the house without a hab
Speaker 2: on their heads and women actually wore gloves. I hate
Speaker 2: the fact that Americans have abandoned all sense of self
Speaker 2: respect and insist on advertising it to the rest of us.
Speaker 2: Try dressing up for a change, you might feel good
Speaker 2: about yourself. Look, I've made it a habit in recent
Speaker 2: days to wear a hat when I go out. I'll
Speaker 2: tell you why in a minute, but I think it's
Speaker 2: a good idea. It's one of the reasons I love
Speaker 2: going to Texas and Nashville. People still wear hats, nice hats.
Speaker 2: It bespeaks self respect. Gentlemen. Every man in America once
Speaker 2: wore a hat. It was principally to shield them from
Speaker 2: the sun as they walked about. If I guess there
Speaker 2: was any one thing that killed hat wearing or ran
Speaker 2: over it, it was probably the car. The low ceilings
Speaker 2: of cars made hat wearing difficult, and since you weren't
Speaker 2: walking around outside too much, you didn't really need a hat,
Speaker 2: so they fell out of fashion. But I think we
Speaker 2: need to revive hat wearing, and not just baseball cap apps, Stetson's, dobs, Borsolinos,
Speaker 2: and Mazers. Elegant hats with brims. You know why, because
Speaker 2: you can't wear a fedora with pajamas. As the fish
Speaker 2: rots from the head down, the clothing improves in the
Speaker 2: same order. The hat kind of dictates the rest of
Speaker 2: the outfit. You'll notice at the end of each show,
Speaker 2: I put a hat on as a head outside. That,
Speaker 2: by the way, is good manners. Unless you're a lady.
Speaker 2: You should never wear hats indoors. There for outdoor use.
Speaker 2: And all you guys eating with your baseball caps on
Speaker 2: take them off. It's a sign of respect the dinner table. Rather,
Speaker 2: it is not your personal ballgame. Wearing a hat could
Speaker 2: be a corrective for the sartorial sins all around us.
Speaker 2: It's a sign of respect and dignity. People look at
Speaker 2: you differently. Strangers will compliment you. I promise when you
Speaker 2: wear a hat, you know why, because elegance is a rarity,
Speaker 2: and I think we need self respect in the way
Speaker 2: we carry ourselves dress because that leads to better behavior
Speaker 2: in public. Think about wearing a hat as a start
Speaker 2: show the world you are a human being and not
Speaker 2: a slumber party escape. Now let's go into the deep
Speaker 2: for our conversation with a man who is leading the
Speaker 2: way on the hat front. John Rich is a multi
Speaker 2: platinum country artist half of the country duo Big and Rich.
Speaker 2: John has penned some of the best known country songs
Speaker 2: not only for himself but for other artists. He also
Speaker 2: discusses here the setbacks he faced, how he recovered and
Speaker 2: found his groove, the faith that animates him, and the
Speaker 2: terrible day he was caught in the crossfire of the
Speaker 2: Mandalay based shooters attack on a festival he was headlining.
Speaker 2: Here's John Rich John, Thank you so much for inviting
Speaker 2: me to your town. It's nice to being here.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Music City.
Speaker 2: Well, I knew you'd have the hat, so I brought
Speaker 2: my hat at and put it on link. I'm going
Speaker 2: to build up to the hat. Tell me about your father, Jim,
Speaker 2: who was a pastor, but he spread the gospel in
Speaker 2: an interesting way. I read he had always had a
Speaker 2: guitar with him. Yeah, tell me how that marked you,
Speaker 2: what you learned from him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a singer songwriter. Actually went to college on
Speaker 1: a vocal scholarship. You know, he's a real singer. And
Speaker 1: at nineteen he said, I was called to go preach
Speaker 1: at nineteen and so he said, So that's why I
Speaker 1: started doing. He started on college campuses where he was
Speaker 1: going to school, and then when he got out of there,
Speaker 1: he started going. He went to the Democrat National Convention
Speaker 1: right after that, and then he started going to places
Speaker 1: like Marty Grass, the Indianapolis five hundred, all kinds of
Speaker 1: major events around the US. And he would go out
Speaker 1: in the streets and take his guitar and take a
Speaker 1: speaker and on a client's cart, stand it next to
Speaker 1: him and start singing. And I asked him why. I mean,
Speaker 1: I understand the point of why you're doing that. What
Speaker 1: a great thing to do. But man, you're such a
Speaker 1: charismatic guy, You're such a great minister. You could have
Speaker 1: been preaching at a massive church and where he goes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the people I was told to preach to will
Speaker 1: never walk into one of those churches. The people I
Speaker 1: was told to preach to, so prisons, Yeah, Marty Grass
Speaker 1: like go where the people are who are never never
Speaker 1: going to walk in the front door of a church building.
Speaker 1: They're the ones that need to hear what I have
Speaker 1: to see.
Speaker 2: You feel that calling on your life? Now? I think
Speaker 2: you're it in your music now, John.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think to a large degree. You know, an
Speaker 1: audience that I've been able to build up with his
Speaker 1: help since the mid nineties with the band Lone Storing,
Speaker 1: then Big and Rich and then solo and combinations of
Speaker 1: those things. You know, they get used to hearing you
Speaker 1: singing hit country songs and they go, I love you music,
Speaker 1: I love you music. I love your music. Well, now
Speaker 1: when they come up to me, they go, I love
Speaker 1: what you stand for. Uh, I like your music. I
Speaker 1: really love what you stand for. So I guess with
Speaker 1: the skill set and audience I've built over all these years,
Speaker 1: I'm now able to write songs that mean something other
Speaker 1: than just a check or an award or a plaque
Speaker 1: on the wall, like you can put into gear. A
Speaker 1: piece of music that in three minutes can communicate more
Speaker 1: to people, get them to think more, think more deeply
Speaker 1: than if you talk to them for three weeks than
Speaker 1: any speech anybody could ever get. You're a musician, you
Speaker 1: know the power of music. It disarms people, It opens
Speaker 1: up a different part of their mind. I believe a
Speaker 1: different part of their spirit as well. So they're so
Speaker 1: and when they hear something that's real, that's truth, and
Speaker 1: it's wrapped in music. It's a really powerful thing.
Speaker 2: And the guitar. You all, you and your father shared
Speaker 2: guitar lessons when yeah young.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how I learned how to play my dad.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't get real rich preaching and Marty Grass.
Speaker 2: I mean you get reach in different ways John rich Well, of.
Speaker 1: Course, absolutely, but not monetarily. And so he had a
Speaker 1: lot of different jobs. My dad slapped hogs at a
Speaker 1: barn on the weekends. He was the night watchman at
Speaker 1: Amberland National Bank, where I'm from, he sold cars and
Speaker 1: he gave guitar lessons. And so when I was a
Speaker 1: little kid, probably five, my dad goes, he's walking out
Speaker 1: the door and he goes, you want to go with
Speaker 1: me to the music store and do guitar lessons. I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, let's go. You know, I'll get to
Speaker 1: go with dad.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And so I go in there and there's this whole
Speaker 1: like semicircle of adults that got their guitars out. He
Speaker 1: pulls up a little chair for me, golees here, just
Speaker 1: sit right behind me and hands me like a little
Speaker 1: cheapy guitar. Just follow along, follow along. Well, after a
Speaker 1: few weeks of tagging along, I'm sitting at the house
Speaker 1: playing better than the adults were playing. And he went,
Speaker 1: he picked that up pretty fast, didn't you? Aon went?
Speaker 1: I said, it's really fun, you know. And so then
Speaker 1: he said, you want to sit behind me in the
Speaker 1: poolpit sometimes when I go preach at these places and
Speaker 1: back me up. I said, yeah. So that's where I
Speaker 1: got into playing the guitar, was wanting to play with
Speaker 1: my dad.
Speaker 2: What did your dad teach you about spiritual warfare and
Speaker 2: the power of music and the gospel to counter evil.
Speaker 1: My dad priests alon on that still does that Basically,
Speaker 1: everything you see happening in the flesh has already happened
Speaker 1: in the spiritual side. It plays out down here amongst
Speaker 1: all of us, and that it's always really important to
Speaker 1: remember that when you meet an individual that seems vile, well,
Speaker 1: that seems violent, angry, way out of whack. He said,
Speaker 1: look at that person and realize that is not how
Speaker 1: they were born. They were not created to become that.
Speaker 1: They started out as an innocent little baby. Okay, they
Speaker 1: weren't like that. At some point in their life the
Speaker 1: other side got a hold of them and ripped their
Speaker 1: life to shreds. And this is how they are are now.
Speaker 1: And you know, when you look at presidents, for instance,
Speaker 1: my dad and I had a conversation about that before
Speaker 1: this last election, and he says, well, if Trump wins,
Speaker 1: it'll be an act of God, and if Trump loses,
Speaker 1: it'll be an act of God.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about your origin story. You leave home,
Speaker 2: graduate high school, you go to Opry Land, right, why
Speaker 2: Opry Lad, Why what had you gone there? And said Land,
Speaker 2: I went as a kid multiple tire. You go, yes,
Speaker 2: we love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Oppyland, for people that don't know, is a
Speaker 1: big theme park in Nashville for a very long time
Speaker 1: live country music, bluegrass, gospel, and they had roller coasters
Speaker 1: and log rides and everything else. And so as I
Speaker 1: was a senior in high school, a friend of mine says, uh,
Speaker 1: oh look at this back when we had a newspapers, Oh,
Speaker 1: look at this. Oppyland's having auditions. I went, oh, that's cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: been there one hundred times. He goes, you should audition
Speaker 1: for that.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: I said, they're not going to hire me. He goes,
Speaker 1: why not? I said, because you got to dance and
Speaker 1: do all this stuff. I said. He goes, well, you know,
Speaker 1: going to be a bunch of good looking girls there.
Speaker 1: I said, well, no, that is true. That's a good point,
Speaker 1: because you should just go down there. I'll go down
Speaker 1: there with you. I said, okay, fine, So drove my
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one Dodge Dark Swinger, which I still own,
Speaker 1: by the way, drove it down there and I auditioned.
Speaker 2: And I got the call back with your guitar.
Speaker 1: Just me and a guitar. That didn't make me dance
Speaker 1: or anything. I just sang. Got the call back, came
Speaker 1: back sang again, and they said, can you dance? And
Speaker 1: I said I can two step. I'm from Texas. I
Speaker 1: said I can do that, but that's about it. They go,
Speaker 1: could you learn some stuff? I said maybe, I don't know.
Speaker 1: They said, well, it doesn't matter, because you're hired. You're in.
Speaker 1: So I knew halfway through my senior year I would
Speaker 1: be working at Apeland. So that's the first time I
Speaker 1: ever got real, a real check. I think it was
Speaker 1: three hundred and thirty dollars a week to do Opuland,
Speaker 1: which is where I met the guys that started the
Speaker 1: band Lone Star.
Speaker 2: Right Deep Dean Sean Sam Sam's how did you meet?
Speaker 1: Well, he worked at Appyland what he had been there
Speaker 1: several years, and I wound up on a show with
Speaker 1: him and he heard how high I sang. I was
Speaker 1: first tenor. I was really high, first tenor. And he said, hey,
Speaker 1: we're putting a band together, a bunch of guys from Texas.
Speaker 1: You're from Texas. He said, man, your voice is so high.
Speaker 1: We need somebody that can hit those high notes. We're
Speaker 1: going to covering modern day country music. Because at that
Speaker 1: point he still had a lot of harmony. Rest his
Speaker 1: heart in Alabama and all that. I said, that's cool.
Speaker 1: He goes, you play bass, right, I said, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can play a bass. I'm thinking, how hard can
Speaker 1: it be? It's only got four strings? How how could
Speaker 1: it be? The answer was no, I was not a
Speaker 1: bass player. So he goes, great, learn these songs and
Speaker 1: he hands me a cassette tape of the top twenty
Speaker 1: I think the first twenty out of the top forty
Speaker 1: country songs of that week. So we're we're going to
Speaker 1: have a little get together this weekend. So I called
Speaker 1: a friend of mine who was a pro bass player.
Speaker 1: I said, can you show me how to play bass
Speaker 1: on all these songs this week? And by the way,
Speaker 1: can I borrow a bass and a cable and an amp?
Speaker 1: He goes, sure, I can show you how to do it.
Speaker 1: So he goes, here's the technique, and here's it. So
Speaker 1: I spent eight nine hours a day leading up to
Speaker 1: that little rehearsal with my thumb you're supposed to play it,
Speaker 1: I play it like this now, doing this, trying to
Speaker 1: find all the notes. And went to the rehearsal and
Speaker 1: they said, okay, you can stay in the band because
Speaker 1: you can sing higher than Richie McDonald, which was the
Speaker 1: lead singer. But you got to get better at the base.
Speaker 1: You can't stay in the band. I said, you got it.
Speaker 1: And that's what really made me not go to college,
Speaker 1: because the guys called up and said, hey, we got
Speaker 1: a booking agent that can put us on a road
Speaker 1: for about two hundred dates this year. I said, I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to go to college. I said, I've got a
Speaker 1: full ride scholarship to Belmont University on a vocal scholarship.
Speaker 1: They go, well, you're gonna have to pick. And I
Speaker 1: went to my dad and I said, I don't think
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to college this year. He went,
Speaker 1: do what I said? He said, what are you going
Speaker 1: to do? Instead of that? I said, I'm going to
Speaker 1: get in a van pulling a trailer with a bunch
Speaker 1: of guys who are ten and fifteen years older than me,
Speaker 1: and we're going to go play holiday in lounges, rodeos
Speaker 1: and casinos. This is the dad who preaches at Marty Grass.
Speaker 2: So this is this world.
Speaker 1: But you have signs now. I can't even imagine the
Speaker 1: pit in his that must have given him. But he said,
Speaker 1: what's your ultimate goal? I said, MultiMate goal is I
Speaker 1: want to write hit songs beyond country radio and play
Speaker 1: the grand O Library. I don't know how going to
Speaker 1: college is going to do that. He goes, it won't
Speaker 1: I said, So he goes, that's what you think you
Speaker 1: need to do. You're grown man. I was eighteen. You're
Speaker 1: grown man. So that's what I did. I took off
Speaker 1: on the road and never look back.
Speaker 2: And you have a number one hit. Of course not
Speaker 2: long thereafter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, come crying to me hit number one? That's my
Speaker 1: first number one?
Speaker 2: How did that come to be?
Speaker 1: So in Nashville, when you get a record deal back
Speaker 1: then you would get a de facto publishing deal. Because
Speaker 1: you have a record deal, you get a default publishing deal.
Speaker 1: And when that happens, they'll take these greenhorn songwriters like
Speaker 1: me and sit you in the room with Hall of famers,
Speaker 1: I mean, like the greatest country songwriter minds that have
Speaker 1: ever existed. And you're sitting in the room with them,
Speaker 1: and they're trying to write songs to get on your
Speaker 1: new record. That's the point. And they figured if one
Speaker 1: of the guys in the band is a writer on
Speaker 1: to he'll vouch for the song. We got a better show,
Speaker 1: shoot into the album, right, So I got to sit
Speaker 1: in the room with all these guys, and I guess
Speaker 1: by just really watching them in Osmosis, I started getting
Speaker 1: a lot better. And so Come Crying to Me was
Speaker 1: actually a co write. It was a three way, right,
Speaker 1: so it was me and two established songwriters, but it
Speaker 1: was my title and I had the thing going. I
Speaker 1: was always walking with an idea started and they go,
Speaker 1: that's a really good idea, that's write that. Why not
Speaker 1: being my first number one?
Speaker 2: Wow? What did you learn from them that you didn't
Speaker 2: know before sitting in that room because you always picked great.
Speaker 2: I mean, when you're working with people at the top
Speaker 2: of the game. I always tell my kids, you really
Speaker 2: want to know how this works. Go find the best
Speaker 2: people in this gameit next to them, clean their their
Speaker 2: toilets or offices, do whatever you need to do to
Speaker 2: be near them.
Speaker 1: Yes, do not hang out with people that are at
Speaker 1: your level. If you can keep from it. You know,
Speaker 1: you can say all day, well, I'm really good compared
Speaker 1: to this one, this one and that one and that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but are you pretty good compared to Johnny Cash? Right? No,
Speaker 1: and you never will, but you're pretty good compared to
Speaker 1: George Jones. No, okay, then keep their faces on the
Speaker 1: wall when you're writing, which is what I have at
Speaker 1: my house. What you learn from pro country songwriters is
Speaker 1: which is what I know now and how I do it.
Speaker 1: And if you listen to my songs, you'll hear this
Speaker 1: play out. The first line of the song better get
Speaker 1: your attention. I mean, right out of the gate, you
Speaker 1: better say something bang, gotcha. That way they'll hear the
Speaker 1: second line and the third, and really you want every
Speaker 1: line in the song to be a standalone thought. I'm
Speaker 1: I'm a still picture songwriter. So some people saw all
Speaker 1: different styles. But some people like to write, you know,
Speaker 1: some chronological story and that's fine too. I love those songs.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: For me, ninety percent of what I write would be
Speaker 1: I'm sitting here with you. I take a mental picture
Speaker 1: of this room, and I write what's happening in that room,
Speaker 1: so you could literally watch the picture and listen to
Speaker 1: the song and be in the picture. I write in pictures,
Speaker 1: I try to put you in the spot, make you
Speaker 1: smell it, feel it, taste it. I want you to
Speaker 1: feel what's going on in this situation of the lyrics,
Speaker 1: so almost voyeuristic to a degree. I've been able to
Speaker 1: write songs for other people. Faith Hill said, I wish
Speaker 1: you'd write me a song. Said, I'd love to write
Speaker 1: your song. Faith, What do you want to sing about?
Speaker 2: Mississippi? Being for Mississippi?
Speaker 1: You know, you know my history? You did your homework? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: she says, I said, what do you want to sing about?
Speaker 1: She goes, I don't know, write a song where it
Speaker 1: would only make sense if I sang it. No other
Speaker 1: girl singer could even sing it. What do you make
Speaker 1: sense for them? I went, well, that's quite a homework assignment. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, let me think about it. So we're right
Speaker 1: on tour with Tim McGraw at the time, and Faith
Speaker 1: was out there. And during the day you see Faith
Speaker 1: Hill back in the back parking lots by the tour buses,
Speaker 1: flip flops, cut off jeans, ball cap, sipping a corona,
Speaker 1: got her kids playing at a kiddie pool, I mean,
Speaker 1: just mom. And then the concert hits and Faith comes
Speaker 1: walking off the bus in an evening gown and diamond
Speaker 1: earrings and her hair's all done and she's singing, It's
Speaker 1: your love with him, growing kind of thirty thousand people
Speaker 1: and five minutes later, she's right back in the parking
Speaker 1: lot with her flip flops ball cap. I said, that's
Speaker 1: what the fans don't know about Faith, because she had
Speaker 1: been doing some Hollywood movies at that point, and a
Speaker 1: lot of the fans said, oh, she's gone Hollywood. She's
Speaker 1: forgot about where she came from. So I said, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna write a song about where she comes from. So
Speaker 1: the first line of the song, it's a long way
Speaker 1: from Star, Mississippi, her hometown, to the big stage. I'm
Speaker 1: singing on a night. So Martina can't sing that. She
Speaker 1: and I can't sing that. Gretchen can't sing that, Riba
Speaker 1: can't sing that because none of those people are from Star,
Speaker 1: see what I mean. Yeah, So there's approaches that I've
Speaker 1: taken to songs, all various approaches, but in general, it's
Speaker 1: writing in pictures.
Speaker 2: Gretchen Wilson. Then you write red neck woman Forgreting right,
Speaker 2: Wilson after the fall?
Speaker 1: That would know it was right before Faith. Faith came
Speaker 1: to me because she heard you heard that one. She said,
Speaker 1: I want a red neck woman for me. I need
Speaker 1: my song.
Speaker 2: I don't blame her, she's got a good ear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was it was quite a challenge.
Speaker 2: And I wouldn't take you back. What happened with Long Star?
Speaker 2: They boot you out of the band?
Speaker 1: Yes, they did? Why because I deserved it? Why because
Speaker 1: I was a real ass and it's hard to deal with.
Speaker 2: Man, Why were you so difficult? You're feeling your road?
Speaker 2: You got number one hit right out the gate right? Yes?
Speaker 1: And when you grow up? So I grew up in
Speaker 1: a double wide trailer Emerald, Texas. We didn't miss meals,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't any extra laying around, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people around me had said not my dad, but
Speaker 1: others were down on me, down on me all the time.
Speaker 1: Growing up, I was very as you can imagine, headstrong kid.
Speaker 1: And when I finally broke through and made it to
Speaker 1: the other side and had started having real big success
Speaker 1: like that, I took success like a hammer, and anybody
Speaker 1: that had ever messed with me, I just whack them
Speaker 1: in ahead with it. By the way I would talk,
Speaker 1: the way I would live, the way what I would drive,
Speaker 1: how I would present myself, what I would say in
Speaker 1: a meeting, what I would say on a microphone. I mean,
Speaker 1: just one hundred percent totally engrossed with my own arrogance
Speaker 1: and so. At one point the band just said, you
Speaker 1: know what, we've had just but enough of you. Think
Speaker 1: it's time for you to go wow, which sucked because
Speaker 1: the very next song they put out was Amazed Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of their biggest songs in country. And I was
Speaker 1: sitting at home in my little apartment that I no
Speaker 1: longer could pay for because I just lost my income,
Speaker 1: lost my record deal, and lost my what publishing deal
Speaker 1: because by the fault you get the pub deal lost
Speaker 1: them both lost. The management lost a business manager, lost
Speaker 1: the shows on the road, lost all of it. Boom,
Speaker 1: just like that in a phone call. So I'm sitting
Speaker 1: at home watching my old band except the award for Amazed.
Speaker 2: And so and you thought what when you watched it? Oh?
Speaker 1: I was viciously upset at them initially and then started realizing, well,
Speaker 1: I would have fired me too. I would have fired me.
Speaker 1: I deserved being fired over that. So I thought, well,
Speaker 1: now would have I do? Maybe I can get a
Speaker 1: solo record deal. I got one, you got one. I
Speaker 1: got one and it flopped, put out two songs and
Speaker 1: neither one of them hit. So I lost that deal.
Speaker 1: Now I'm a two time loser. I got kicked out
Speaker 1: of a band, my solo deal failed, and in country music,
Speaker 1: that's a big deal. If you can't hit your radio
Speaker 1: goes now he tried, it didn't work. Next, I mean,
Speaker 1: it is just like that. It was at that point
Speaker 1: I got some really good advice from a couple of
Speaker 1: the older songwriters, and they said, listen, when everything is
Speaker 1: out out of your control, find the one thing you
Speaker 1: can still control and control it well. They said, that
Speaker 1: could be what you're eating, how many pushups did you
Speaker 1: do today, whatever, Find what you can still control and
Speaker 1: control it well. Well, for me, that was a pencil
Speaker 1: and a piece.
Speaker 2: Of paper, writing back to your core writing.
Speaker 1: So in the course of about four or five years,
Speaker 1: I wrote around seven to eight hundred songs because you
Speaker 1: couldn't stop me from writing, and I write on every
Speaker 1: single day.
Speaker 2: All were making ends meet. What were you doing?
Speaker 1: There was still a little bit of money coming in
Speaker 1: from come crying to me and a couple of other things,
Speaker 1: but that's about it. That's about it.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: It was burning down then. And then I meet Big Kitty,
Speaker 1: which I know you're gonna ask about, and he was
Speaker 1: kind of the same thing where he was just writing
Speaker 1: every single day and misunderstood by the industry. You know,
Speaker 1: my anglic country music was ac DC was a banjo player.
Speaker 1: That's what it sounded like. That's what I wanted to sound.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I wanted to do save orts, ride a cowboy, lone Star,
Speaker 1: wanted to do mister Mom. They want to do love
Speaker 1: songs and family songs. I wanted to do stuff that
Speaker 1: make the college campus. Yea. So controlling what I could
Speaker 1: control in that time period. None of those songs got
Speaker 1: recorded in that span of time. But the second Big
Speaker 1: and Rich and Gretchen hit al Dean also hit, which
Speaker 1: I wrote four number ones on his first record, and
Speaker 1: then the whole city starts coming to me and goes,
Speaker 1: you got any more songs like these? I go, yeah,
Speaker 1: here's nine hundred. Here you go, you're giving them. So
Speaker 1: there was just a raid on my catalog where everybody
Speaker 1: wanted to cut those kinds of songs, and so all
Speaker 1: the stuff I've been stockpiling now is valuable.
Speaker 2: So what's the lesson for people who find themselves in
Speaker 2: those positions, those predicaments where God maybe hitting you across
Speaker 2: the head was two by four? Yeah, just to reorient
Speaker 2: you do what you can control.
Speaker 1: Is that the lesson boil it down to the simplest
Speaker 1: thing that you can still control. And it could, like
Speaker 1: I said, it could be what you're eating every day.
Speaker 1: It could be that you're going to call your mother
Speaker 1: every day, it could be whatever it's going to be.
Speaker 1: You go find a charity you're going to want to
Speaker 1: go work with, and go do the best you can
Speaker 1: at that you basically start rebuilding yourself. What you'll find
Speaker 1: is when you get that next opportunity, which you will,
Speaker 1: because opportunities continue to come for people that continue to
Speaker 1: push right all that stuff that you screwed up, and
Speaker 1: those first times come to bear again and you go,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, not going to be that guy this time.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be this guy. And that's a never
Speaker 1: ending pass.
Speaker 2: I love that story. I mean I read about this
Speaker 2: that you're rebuilding, but you're also you're quietly and maybe
Speaker 2: unbeknownst to you, rebuilding the future because in that, in
Speaker 2: the panic, in the loss, in the hurt, you found
Speaker 2: why you were here.
Speaker 1: Well there's gone. When you're that upset and now you're
Speaker 1: embarrassed in front of the whole industry and your money
Speaker 1: is gone. Two ways to go, one drink, your face
Speaker 1: off twenty four hours a day and wind back up
Speaker 1: down on Broadway playing in a bar somewhere as the
Speaker 1: guy who used to be in Lone Star. And that's
Speaker 1: your claim to fame for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2: A lot of people do they make that out of
Speaker 2: that path?
Speaker 1: Oh, a lot of them. The other is to drill
Speaker 1: back down into what got you in the game of
Speaker 1: the first place. What's your original goals? Go back to
Speaker 1: piece of paper and a pencil. Cheapest thing in the world.
Speaker 1: Everybody has that.
Speaker 2: How did you and Big Kenny meet? How did you meet?
Speaker 2: And why did the partnership work.
Speaker 1: There was a girl that worked for Fender Guitars named
Speaker 1: Cindy Simmons, and back then, Cindy's job she was an
Speaker 1: artist rep. So her job was to find up and
Speaker 1: coming singers that she thought might get a record deal
Speaker 1: or might and get them early and say, oh, I
Speaker 1: see you're playing that nothing to get your guitar, but
Speaker 1: that's not a great guitar, and they go, that's all
Speaker 1: I could afford. She goes, how about if I get
Speaker 1: you a brand new Fender guitar and they go what
Speaker 1: She'd go, here you go? And she tried to get
Speaker 1: them to play fenders and then when they hopefully they'd
Speaker 1: go hit almost like venture cap right. I can give
Speaker 1: it to one hundred artists, three of them get deals
Speaker 1: and they're playing fenders. So she had done that with
Speaker 1: me and done that with Big Kenny, and we didn't
Speaker 1: know each other. She knew the two of us separately
Speaker 1: and had told him and told me about the other,
Speaker 1: and hit me up one night and said, hey, Big
Speaker 1: Kenny is playing a show down at Douglas Corner. I said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be down here. Come on down here.
Speaker 1: I want you to hear him. I said, can I
Speaker 1: ask you a question? I said, is he big and fat?
Speaker 1: Big and loud, big and tall. That's the dunnest thing
Speaker 1: I've ever heard. Why is he called that? She goes,
Speaker 1: just come see him and you'll it'll make sense when
Speaker 1: you see a show. I said, okay, fine, So I
Speaker 1: go down and sure enough, he walks out on stagers.
Speaker 1: He is tall, he's about six y four, but all
Speaker 1: his hair and he's going everybody. He's like Willie Walker,
Speaker 1: and I was like, what is that. Hagrid didn't like
Speaker 1: him at all. I'm like, that's a strange individual. I
Speaker 1: wonder what he sings like. And then I hear about
Speaker 1: sixty minutes of his set and I went, I don't
Speaker 1: know what I just heard, but that was some of
Speaker 1: the most creative things I've ever heard somebody.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So when it was over, walked up to him, Hey man,
Speaker 1: I'm Johnny goes, oh, hey, I've heard about you, right,
Speaker 1: and he goes Cindy says, we ought to write a
Speaker 1: song because what are you doing tomorrow morning? I go,
Speaker 1: I'm not doing anything. He goes, well, you want to
Speaker 1: come over to my house and write a song, so
Speaker 1: she'll leave us alone. Basically, I said, yeah, I'll come over.
Speaker 1: We wrote that next day. That was October of ninety nine.
Speaker 1: Next day, we wrote again, next day, next day, next day,
Speaker 1: and we have written hundreds and hundreds of songs. And
Speaker 1: as a joke, people started calling us big and rich.
Speaker 1: We'd show up at somewhere late at night to come
Speaker 1: hang out and go, oh look it's big and rich.
Speaker 2: Ha ha.
Speaker 1: That's where that came from.
Speaker 2: That's where it came from. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Kenny is Kenny and are really polar opposites on
Speaker 1: many many things, including creatively, and so what's interesting about
Speaker 1: that is I'll come at you with a straight line,
Speaker 1: and he's coming at you with flowers. So, like I said,
Speaker 1: Kenny likes to smell the flowers and I like to
Speaker 1: mow him down. But when you lock those two together,
Speaker 1: what do you get, Raymond get? You get a three
Speaker 1: sixty view at the whole song, at the whole subject
Speaker 1: that you're writing, whether it's a love song, party song,
Speaker 1: whatever song. So that that locking in of the two
Speaker 1: opposites like that have really created something.
Speaker 2: So I know it's hard to describe why partnership were
Speaker 2: a creative partnership works. It's always hard. I mean I
Speaker 2: remember talking to Jerry Lewis about why he and Dean
Speaker 2: Martin worked right, and he knew but he didn't know.
Speaker 2: M h, how would you why does this partnership work?
Speaker 1: I would take that answer. I would say, you know,
Speaker 1: but you don't know. One of the reasons that prop
Speaker 1: Jerry said it was love. Well, okay, I would say
Speaker 1: on between Kenny and I, it's mass respect for the
Speaker 1: other person's competency and ability and creative energy. I don't
Speaker 1: have what he has and he does not have what
Speaker 1: I have, and we both know that. You know, It's
Speaker 1: like in a relationship. If you're both the same, one
Speaker 1: of you is irrelevant. That goes for marriage to That
Speaker 1: is exactly right, you know, it's the opposite's a track. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a real thing. I mean, you want to be
Speaker 1: strong where they're not, and you want them strong where
Speaker 1: you're not. And I think even though you know, we've
Speaker 1: disagreed over the years strongly on a lot of different things,
Speaker 1: like what we've disagreed on political things, We've disagreed on
Speaker 1: musical things, business moves. You can imagine it's a duo.
Speaker 2: Man, it's hard.
Speaker 1: Both have to agree or it does not happen. Right,
Speaker 1: And so if you had, you know, three people, or
Speaker 1: it's a band like lone star, majority rules. There's no
Speaker 1: majority in a duo, yeah, right, it's one in partnership. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but throughout Now you're looking at twenty years since our
Speaker 1: first record came out, came out in two thousand and four.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 1: We're still on the road doing fifty sixty cities a year.
Speaker 1: The crowds are, I would argue, maybe bigger than they
Speaker 1: were back in the day. You know, all our original
Speaker 1: fans are all still there and now it's their kids
Speaker 1: are all coming out. You got college girls hanging out
Speaker 1: with their moms going save of Ours right again, loving it,
Speaker 1: and then the Patriot crowd from songs like Eighth of
Speaker 1: November Right. It's just massive at our shows. So I
Speaker 1: think we're a good example of how Americans ought to
Speaker 1: try to be. Me and Big Kenny, are you get
Speaker 1: your first record deal? You had to be worried about
Speaker 1: that first record coming off of what you would.
Speaker 2: Come off of.
Speaker 1: Well, the whole music industry, except for one guy, said,
Speaker 1: big and rich music is what is that? I mean,
Speaker 1: is this a clown show? What are you guys trying
Speaker 1: to do? I mean, first of all, John kicked out
Speaker 1: a loan star, his solo deal totally failed. And what
Speaker 1: is a Big Kenny? I mean really, And you've got
Speaker 1: a big black, rapping cowboy cowboy Troy who at that
Speaker 1: points working at foot locker in Dallas, Texas. They're like, guys,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a lot of fun. Enjoy playing that
Speaker 1: in the bars. That was everybody's answer except one guy
Speaker 1: named Paul Whirley. And Paul Whirley is one of the
Speaker 1: best record producers, guitar players it's ever been, highly creative guy.
Speaker 1: He signed the Dixie chicks and a bunch of other
Speaker 1: He was producer Martina McBride, and he heard about us
Speaker 1: at a jam we were doing called the Music Mafia,
Speaker 1: where Paul's daughter Ashley had started coming to these On
Speaker 1: Music Mafia, seventy eighty people crammed into a room on
Speaker 1: Tuesday nights, me and Kenny and other artists that we
Speaker 1: knew that nobody had a record deal. We would jam
Speaker 1: and Paul came down and saw that. He goes, you, guys,
Speaker 1: want to come to my office tomorrow. I just became
Speaker 1: the president of Warner Brothers Records last week. We went, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'd love to come to your office. We're thinking we're
Speaker 1: going to pitch him a song for somebody. We get
Speaker 1: in his office, he goes, no, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about Big and Rich. I think that's a thing. We
Speaker 1: go to his office and he said, play me some
Speaker 1: songs that you would play if you had your own record.
Speaker 1: So we started playing those songs and he goes, he
Speaker 1: slams his hand out on the table. He goes, boys,
Speaker 1: I want to do this. Kenny goes, you want to
Speaker 1: do what? He goes, I want to sign Big and
Speaker 1: Rich to Warner Brothers Records. And I looked at Kenny,
Speaker 1: I said, are you hearing this? He goes, are you
Speaker 1: serious right now? And he goes, yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: do it, And we went well, all right, and we
Speaker 1: high fived, ho was it? And off to the races.
Speaker 1: So he was short of him seeing that there was
Speaker 1: something there. I doubt you'd have ever heard of us.
Speaker 2: Horse of a different colors at first time? Right. They
Speaker 2: fought you though on Oh they including some of your
Speaker 2: biggest hit.
Speaker 1: The industry hated that record. Why because it didn't sound
Speaker 1: like anything that had ever happened. And Nashville goes through
Speaker 1: these phases. I think it's in one right now. It
Speaker 1: starts trying to break out where it sounds like they
Speaker 1: all went to the school of redundant.
Speaker 2: See school, you mean the truck I left my truck
Speaker 2: running school.
Speaker 1: I mean, same tempo, same court progressions, everybody looks the same,
Speaker 1: the storylines are all the same. And it's kind of
Speaker 1: gotten back into that. There's a few breakouts starting to
Speaker 1: push out now. But at this point country music, that's
Speaker 1: where it was at that point, and they said, you
Speaker 1: don't fit on country radio. What are you even singing about?
Speaker 1: I mean, really, you guys writ songs based off of
Speaker 1: bumper stickers you saw, which is exactly what save worst
Speaker 1: RD A Cowboy was, what, oh, he has a bumper sticker?
Speaker 2: You saw a bumper sticker.
Speaker 1: This friend of ours saw it, yeah, and said that'd
Speaker 1: be a funny song.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We're like, yeah, it would be a funny song. Let
Speaker 1: me go right, And it was a funny and it
Speaker 1: is a funny song.
Speaker 2: But they said, no, don't do it. They said this
Speaker 2: wouldn't This is saying to trivialize you.
Speaker 1: If you put this on the record, guys, nobody's going
Speaker 1: to take you seriously. And we said, but yeah. When
Speaker 1: we played at Music Mafia, people go nuts. They're like, okay,
Speaker 1: we'll put it on the record. We'll just bury it
Speaker 1: in the track out. We'll put it at track seven
Speaker 1: or eight. It's not going to be a single though,
Speaker 1: that's fine. Just let us put it on the record.
Speaker 1: So we put the record out. A song called wild
Speaker 1: West Show was our first single, and when that single
Speaker 1: came out, the whole record became available, so fans started
Speaker 1: buying a record. Next thing you know, radio stations are
Speaker 1: getting hey, can you play track seven on the horse
Speaker 1: of a different color record on Drive Time. On Friday, Wow,
Speaker 1: a station in Florida played it one time. Phones exploded
Speaker 1: and we went. The record label goes, well, I guess
Speaker 1: it's going to be the single A single vout. Thank goodness,
Speaker 1: because if we walked out and didn't play save Ors
Speaker 1: RD a Cowboy, they'd be throwing stuff at us. You know,
Speaker 1: how do you write?
Speaker 2: And where do you write?
Speaker 1: Well? I write for various You say, how.
Speaker 2: Do I write? You know, I like to be in
Speaker 2: my room. I like quiet. I don't like a lot
Speaker 2: of noise when I write. But I'm not writing music right,
Speaker 2: So where do you go? Do you have to be
Speaker 2: in a place so you write wherever you are.
Speaker 1: I sat next to Tom Petty one time in La
Speaker 1: at the ASCAP Expo, which is a huge songwriters deal.
Speaker 1: It was usher, Tom Petty and me. I'm the country
Speaker 1: guy on the panel, and a lady asked Tom Petty
Speaker 1: from the audience, mister Petty, how do you get your
Speaker 1: ideas for your songs?
Speaker 2: I didn't ask you that one. I know, bumper sticker.
Speaker 1: He's leaning back in his chair. He goes, well, I
Speaker 1: just stick my antenna there as far as it'll go
Speaker 1: and wait for a song to drift across it. Then
Speaker 1: he just stopped talking. The whole place went Okay, start laughing,
Speaker 1: yay Tom. And I heard that answer, I went, that
Speaker 1: is not far off from exactly how it is. I
Speaker 1: don't know what it is in a songwriter's brain, but
Speaker 1: you don't just walk around thinking about songs all the time.
Speaker 1: But there is a spot that if you give me
Speaker 1: three or four minutes, it's almost like you can turn
Speaker 1: a key and it opens up. I always point to
Speaker 1: this down in my head. It feels like they come
Speaker 1: out of here for some reason, but all of a
Speaker 1: sudden it opens up and you as a songwriter, I
Speaker 1: will hear melodies, rhythms, lyrics, all kinds of stuff. It's
Speaker 1: almost like a faucet. Turn it on and turn it off,
Speaker 1: turn it on. Every now and then one will hit
Speaker 1: me so hard that I wasn't in the frame of
Speaker 1: mind to write a song, and it will literally just
Speaker 1: come into my head like as loud as you can imagine.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't happen very often. It happened with a
Speaker 1: song called Revelation. That's when you grab a guitar off
Speaker 1: the wall and tell everybody, Okay, I'm going off in
Speaker 1: another room. I need an hour and get your pencil
Speaker 1: out and you get to going out.
Speaker 2: But you write Alonge, you like quiet when you write,
Speaker 2: when you're working the song.
Speaker 1: I'm working now, I gotta be by myself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, what I figured.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you're you're wrestling with your own thoughts.
Speaker 2: You know, is it harder writing for others when you
Speaker 2: write woman or easier? I mean you're a for Taylor
Speaker 2: Swift as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, easier writing for somebody else because you can see
Speaker 1: the whole person. I think for you, you can't see me.
Speaker 2: It's harder writing I can see you.
Speaker 1: You want me to write a song about you and
Speaker 1: about this podcast on I can do that for you
Speaker 1: in about ten minutes. I can have you a song
Speaker 1: ready to go, a new royal ground think so I
Speaker 1: can see you, I can hear you. I know what
Speaker 1: you're about. I know what the point of this is.
Speaker 1: But if you're writing it from your own perspective, man,
Speaker 1: that's a deep spot to go to because you're there's
Speaker 1: nobody to bounce it off of and you're just you're
Speaker 1: wrestling with your own thoughts. What am I feeling about
Speaker 1: this subject that I need to get on the paper
Speaker 1: as strongly as possible.
Speaker 2: We'll return to John Rich in a second. When John
Speaker 2: agreed to join us, it got me thinking about another
Speaker 2: singer who stuck to his guns. This story has its
Speaker 2: own lessons, and wait until you hear how it ends.
Speaker 2: George Harvey loved ranching in his native Texas, but when
Speaker 2: he joined the army, his whole life changed. In nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy one, he was sent to a base in Hawaii
Speaker 2: and an army general put together a country band to
Speaker 2: entertain the troops. He cast George as the lead singer.
Speaker 2: It was the first time he had ever sung country music,
Speaker 2: and he thought it of suited him. In college, George
Speaker 2: Harvey assembled his own band, Stony Ridge. They were called
Speaker 2: and kept singing, and he had from the start dressed
Speaker 2: like a cowboy on stage, complete with his hat and jeans,
Speaker 2: at a time when it had fallen out of style. Well.
Speaker 2: When George finally broke down and headed to Nashville, he
Speaker 2: was signed by MCA Records, but there was a producer
Speaker 2: there who had two demands for the singer. He needed
Speaker 2: to change his name and lose the cowboy hat. George
Speaker 2: had a fateful decision to make. Wait until you hear
Speaker 2: how it ends, and this is how it ends. George Harvey,
Speaker 2: after years of playing rodeos and honky tonks, had finally
Speaker 2: made it to Nashville and he was signed by MCA Records.
Speaker 2: But his producer wanted George to dress up, lose the
Speaker 2: cowboy hat he had always worn on stage, and replace
Speaker 2: his jeans with slacks. George would have none of it.
Speaker 2: He was determined to keep his hat and his jeans.
Speaker 2: His manager told the MCA executive, you don't understand where
Speaker 2: he's from. That is dressing up. Georgia's decision inspired many
Speaker 2: acts that would follow him. Alan Jackson, Garth Brooks, Toby Keith,
Speaker 2: even Lady Wilson would don their stetson's on stage following
Speaker 2: George's example. He was just a Texas boy being true
Speaker 2: to his roots. But to these performers, the hat was
Speaker 2: part of George's mystique. The MCA executive also suggested that
Speaker 2: he change his name to Cain Cooper. Thank goodness for us,
Speaker 2: George Harvey strait kept his birth name and write this down.
Speaker 2: When you're true to who you are, others will inevitably
Speaker 2: figure it out and follow your lead in time. George
Speaker 2: Strait has had eighty six singles on the Billboard Country Charts,
Speaker 2: and in twenty twenty four, he became the first artist
Speaker 2: to hold the largest concert in the United States, breaking
Speaker 2: all attendance records. And he's still wearing his hat. Now
Speaker 2: you know how it ends. Here's the rest of my
Speaker 2: conversation with John Rich, who is also wearing his hat.
Speaker 2: Why have you gone more political in recent years? Is
Speaker 2: that just where you feel God taking you, the times
Speaker 2: taking you and your music.
Speaker 1: I think after my two sons were born and started
Speaker 1: to get old enough to realize dad is part of
Speaker 1: this industry here, and they would watch me get upset
Speaker 1: at the television screen like we all do, and say,
Speaker 1: be talking to my wife about something going on in
Speaker 1: the music industry that I didn't like. But then turn
Speaker 1: right around, cowboy up, walk out the door, hit the
Speaker 1: red carpet, go play Patty Cake with all these people
Speaker 1: I was just yelling about is hypocritical. That's being a
Speaker 1: hypocrite in front of your own two sons. And one
Speaker 1: day that hit me really hard. I said, I am
Speaker 1: being a hypocrite. Not only am I upset that they're
Speaker 1: watching me do that, I'm upset that I'm watching me
Speaker 1: do that. How long am I going to keep this up?
Speaker 1: Because the record labels in the industries are telling me
Speaker 1: at this point, do not do that interview with Raymond,
Speaker 1: do not go on that network, Do not talk about
Speaker 1: this on social media? No, no, no, no no. They
Speaker 1: would have meetings about it. I'd make a comment something,
Speaker 1: you know, something they didn't want me talking about, and
Speaker 1: they'd have a full blown meeting with the press they're
Speaker 1: press people at the record label and bring me in
Speaker 1: and say you got to stop doing that. You're going
Speaker 1: to blow your career up. And I listened to that
Speaker 1: for quite a while. I'd go, Okay, well, I don't
Speaker 1: want to blow my career up, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to cost Kenny his career, and you got a band
Speaker 1: and crew and bus drivers and yeah, wife and kids,
Speaker 1: and okay, okay, I'll back up. But after a while, man,
Speaker 1: it got to the point where I said, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: being a hypocrite. And so if it means that I
Speaker 1: got to say exactly what I know needs to be
Speaker 1: said and do it like it needs to be done,
Speaker 1: I run the risk of losing this industry that has
Speaker 1: put more plaques on my walls than I can count.
Speaker 1: They will be done with me if I ever go
Speaker 1: to this point. But can I live with myself if
Speaker 1: I keep playing this stupid game with these people? And
Speaker 1: the answer was no, you can't. And by the way,
Speaker 1: your sons are watching you, and what are they going
Speaker 1: to do when they grow up and get out of
Speaker 1: the house, They'll go, well, yeah, I really don't like
Speaker 1: how this is going. But you know what Dad did.
Speaker 1: Dad just yelled at the TV, rolled over and took
Speaker 1: the check, kept going. Which is the problem with a
Speaker 1: lot of Americans and Christians that they'll just roll over
Speaker 1: and get along, get along and stay in a nice, easy,
Speaker 1: comfortable spot instead of taking the harder route and punching
Speaker 1: through it.
Speaker 2: It's a good time to talk about revelation. You mentioned
Speaker 2: it a moment ago, which is this incredible soult you
Speaker 2: wrote this year, and you said, I'm gonna quote it
Speaker 2: felt like a hammer hit me in the back of
Speaker 2: the head. Was it physical? Was it a jolt? No?
Speaker 1: I mean no, not like a physical hammer. But it
Speaker 1: was if you could take a thought and pound it
Speaker 1: into your head, as if you hit yourself with a hammer.
Speaker 1: That's what it felt like. It was mine in my
Speaker 1: own business, and I mean out of nowhere Boom. I
Speaker 1: could hear the melody, I could hear the lyrics. I'm
Speaker 1: seeing that Revelation. This is when you know, there's been
Speaker 1: so much intensity placed upon our country and so many
Speaker 1: things going on that I have read about in the
Speaker 1: Bible my entire life, and I've heard it preach my
Speaker 1: entire life, and not until recently have many of those
Speaker 1: things even been possible to be carried out. You know,
Speaker 1: most of Revelation and Daniel and Second Thessalonians and places
Speaker 1: that talk about the end times seem like science fiction
Speaker 1: to people, including my own father. He goes, We never
Speaker 1: could understand and how these things could be possible, he says,
Speaker 1: until recently, and now it's really easy to track everybody
Speaker 1: on the face of the earth. It's really easy to
Speaker 1: control how you spend your money and what you're allowed
Speaker 1: to buy and sell, which is what the mark of
Speaker 1: the Beast is about, he said. With the advent of tech,
Speaker 1: where we are in the world today, the globalization of
Speaker 1: everyone that is new, that's new that allows for these
Speaker 1: things to now take place. It doesn't mean they're going
Speaker 1: to take place tomorrow or even in my lifetime. But
Speaker 1: it's now possible and we're looking at it. So I've
Speaker 1: been thinking about that and really scrutinizing things and watching
Speaker 1: and that's when that song came and I realized, Raymond,
Speaker 1: nobody had written this song. I started going back through
Speaker 1: gospel bands, Christian artists, contre artists. I could not find
Speaker 1: anybody that literally wrote what the book says in the Book.
Speaker 2: Of Revelation, and and Saint Michael the Archangel and the
Speaker 2: battle with Lucifer. I mean, the whole thing is in there.
Speaker 2: All of that is there, all of in the song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's throughout the bios the song. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The video.
Speaker 1: The goal of the video was can we show what
Speaker 1: spiritual warfare would look like if it came into the physical.
Speaker 1: I remember telling my video director, Doc Abbott, who lives
Speaker 1: here in Nashville. He goes, how do you think how
Speaker 1: do we do that? I go, probably CGI. I said,
Speaker 1: I've got a great guy that works with Tom McDonald,
Speaker 1: who's probably my favorite rapper, alive out in California and
Speaker 1: he has a lot of CGI in his videos. I
Speaker 1: called Tom told him the idea. He goes, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you need to work with Jareded. Jared's up in Washington State.
Speaker 1: So I sent it to Jared. He goes, that's going
Speaker 1: to be difficult, but I'm definitely capable of making that happen.
Speaker 1: I said, I want the Devil and Michael the Archangel
Speaker 1: to have a battle, with me standing in between them.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm looking for. He goes, okay, and so
Speaker 1: we shot it, and that's what the video is.
Speaker 2: Have you ever seen a video like that? No, I've
Speaker 2: never seen a video like that. I never heard a
Speaker 2: song like that either. Yeah, it's a pathetic song in
Speaker 2: many ways. Do you think of it that way?
Speaker 1: No, because the song is not really even a song.
Speaker 1: It's me saying what the pages of the book say.
Speaker 1: I just made them rhyme. Those are not my words,
Speaker 1: those are John's words.
Speaker 2: Well, but those are prophetic. It's a prophetic yesterday and.
Speaker 1: Today spoken by the prophet John as he was exiled
Speaker 1: to Patmos. He's writing what he's seeing and hearing, and
Speaker 1: that becomes a book of revelation. And two thousand plus
Speaker 1: years later, we're standing in situations that look an awful
Speaker 1: lot like what he was talking about. And so here's
Speaker 1: your lone songwriter who think God doesn't have a record deal,
Speaker 1: publishing deal, or any company that can tell me I
Speaker 1: can't put that song because you would have been not
Speaker 1: in a million years never, you would have never heard
Speaker 1: a song if I had a record deal. That song
Speaker 1: does not get heart.
Speaker 2: You've got a new song that I just heard. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it has read it, but I've been reading about it.
Speaker 2: And tell me about this song.
Speaker 1: Well, if you can say you're inspired by by Sean Combes.
Speaker 1: I saw a video a couple of weeks ago of
Speaker 1: that monster looking right into the microphone bright lights on
Speaker 1: a stage. He looks in the camera and he goes,
Speaker 1: I own your soul. I own it. I determine what
Speaker 1: your kids wear. I determine what your kids listen to.
Speaker 1: I determined all these things about your life, about your
Speaker 1: kid's lives. And he's got that look in his face,
Speaker 1: just look like looking straight at the devil. And I said,
Speaker 1: look at this guy walking out here in broad daylight,
Speaker 1: saying he owns us and owns the souls of our children.
Speaker 1: Reminded me of Goliath walking out, mister hih and mighty,
Speaker 1: mister powerful, biggest guy on the block walking out when
Speaker 1: Glath called out the Israelis and he's just mocking them incessantly,
Speaker 1: and they all stood back, like, what are we going
Speaker 1: to do? He's too powerful, he's too big. And then
Speaker 1: David walks up and hits him with a rock, which
Speaker 1: didn't kill him, oh so helped him down. He takes
Speaker 1: a gliass On sword and cuts his head off. So
Speaker 1: I go, okay, okay, Sean Combs. So your weapon of
Speaker 1: choice is music? Correct? Mine? Too nice to meet you,
Speaker 1: So I thought, you know what, nobody's written a song
Speaker 1: about these devils. Nobody's written that.
Speaker 2: So well, it's really not about the devils. It's about
Speaker 2: the defiant reaction to the devil.
Speaker 1: Correct. We are not supposed to, as Christians, be weak.
Speaker 1: The people that wrote the books and the Bibles were
Speaker 1: not weak people. Jesus was not a weak. Jesus was
Speaker 1: so strong he allowed human beings to torture him to death.
Speaker 1: He allowed them to do that. It says in the
Speaker 1: Bible that we are supposed to be weapons in the
Speaker 1: hands of God to tear down the thresholds of Hell. Itself,
Speaker 1: a weapon cannot itself. An axe cannot cut down a
Speaker 1: tree by itself. It takes an operator to pick that
Speaker 1: axe up. Now, you hope when you pick it up.
Speaker 1: That it is heavy, and it is sharp, and it
Speaker 1: has cut trees down before. And when you start wailing
Speaker 1: away at that tree, chunks of wood are going to
Speaker 1: go flying. You hope that tool is ready when you're
Speaker 1: ready to pick it up. So I look at myself
Speaker 1: and I look at other Christians in this country, that
Speaker 1: we better be preparing ourselves to be the tool He
Speaker 1: created you to be. Maybe one guy's an axe, one
Speaker 1: guy's a screwdriver, one guy's this, one guy's that they
Speaker 1: do this. Everybody's got their job. But be prepared for
Speaker 1: him to use you and the way he wants to
Speaker 1: use you to bring it to these people, Raymond. The
Speaker 1: most egregious sin I believe a person can commit is
Speaker 1: to harm children. And the reason I believe that is
Speaker 1: because Jesus Christ himself said in the New Testament, you'd
Speaker 1: be better off to have a millstone tied around your
Speaker 1: neck and cast into the sea than to ever cause
Speaker 1: one of these little ones to stumble. He didn't say
Speaker 1: to kill them or hurt them or abuse them. He
Speaker 1: said to mess with them at all, to mess with
Speaker 1: their innocence at all. He'd be better off dead than
Speaker 1: ever being that person. So we know how Son of
Speaker 1: God felt about it. And now we look around our
Speaker 1: country and Tom Holman's going, there's three hundred to five
Speaker 1: hundred thousand missing kids that we know about that have
Speaker 1: come across the border. That's not even taking into account
Speaker 1: all the other ones they didn't come across.
Speaker 2: The American citizen bingo.
Speaker 1: And we're allowing this to go forward. And then you've
Speaker 1: got people like Sean Combe standing there on television telling
Speaker 1: us that he owns our souls and owns our kids' lives.
Speaker 1: How long are we going to sit around and just
Speaker 1: let them keep talking to us like that, because it
Speaker 1: ain't just talk. They're doing it. So that's what set
Speaker 1: you off to all the same time, can you tell?
Speaker 1: Can you tell? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can. I could feel it in the lyrics.
Speaker 1: Face is getting hot talking about it.
Speaker 2: Tell people about this song. About the lyrics, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's basically go and repent now, brother, while I go
Speaker 2: get my gun. This is not I'm gonna go pray
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 1: At point is song is you come after my kids.
Speaker 1: Horrible things are going to happen to you. You will
Speaker 1: not survive what happens to you if you come after
Speaker 1: my kids. You will not survive. You think you're tough,
Speaker 1: try it one time. Come on, come on up my road,
Speaker 1: Come on up and try to get my kid one time.
Speaker 1: Try to take one of my sons and see what
Speaker 1: I do to you. Is what the song is all about.
Speaker 1: It and it talks about because we fight with the
Speaker 1: sword of the Heavenly Father and we ain't afraid to die.
Speaker 1: Are you afraid to die for your kids? Me either?
Speaker 1: I would stand right in front of whatever I had
Speaker 1: to gladly, happily. That song is going to to keep them,
Speaker 1: you know, to keep these demons off my kids.
Speaker 2: That song is going to be a huge hit, not
Speaker 2: because you wrote it to be a big hit, but
Speaker 2: because it resonates.
Speaker 1: I wrote it out of sheer anger towards these people,
Speaker 1: and I want most of them. Probably won't hear this song.
Speaker 1: I don't even know when I'm going to put it out,
Speaker 1: probably pretty soon. It doesn't matter if they don't hear it.
Speaker 1: I want parents to hear it. I want parents, moms
Speaker 1: and dads to realize we do not have to put
Speaker 1: up with these people and listen to them and give
Speaker 1: no rebut back to them. Because they're so powerful, they
Speaker 1: have no power their power comes from the Father lies
Speaker 1: and we all know what happens to him. He gets
Speaker 1: utterly destroyed in the end. You see what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: I do, And John, I love that you're writing. This
Speaker 2: is the path of every artist, whether it's Irving Berlin
Speaker 2: or the great novelists of the eighteenth century. They're writing
Speaker 2: about their time and they're using their art to speak
Speaker 2: to that moment. Correct, And that makes it like the
Speaker 2: Book of Revelation. It's true in the moment it was written,
Speaker 2: it's true for all time. In the case Revelation, it's
Speaker 2: going to happen in the future too. So it's the
Speaker 2: alpha and the omega, it's all of it. Art has
Speaker 2: that same power, though in some ways Do you feel
Speaker 2: a part of that and has that and why aren't
Speaker 2: others speak to that same country? Music always reflected the
Speaker 2: heart of the people in a powerful direct way, and
Speaker 2: we're still singing he stopped Loving Her today and we're
Speaker 2: still singing those songs. Yeah, because they were so true
Speaker 2: in the moment they were written. Do you feel this
Speaker 2: is a part of that tradition?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just feel that the age were in currently
Speaker 1: in the world and in our country. Sometimes I wonder
Speaker 1: if Johnny Cash was alive in twenty twenty four, what
Speaker 1: would he say if Charlie Daniels, who was a good
Speaker 1: friend of mine, if he was still around he died
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, right before it all got crazy, what
Speaker 1: would he say?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: These are old men, and I have to think there's
Speaker 1: a big advantage to being an old man, being in
Speaker 1: your eighties that you just don't care anymore. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: not an old man. I'm fifty, so I'm not a
Speaker 1: young guy. But I'm not an old guy and I
Speaker 1: don't care. As a matter of fact, it worries me more.
Speaker 1: If something is laid on me to go say and
Speaker 1: I don't say it. That is more dangerous than saying it,
Speaker 1: because guess who you just upset?
Speaker 2: The boss.
Speaker 1: I put that on you and you did not follow
Speaker 1: through with it. So guess what. I ain't sending you
Speaker 1: any more of those or whatever else he might decide
Speaker 1: to do. I think he opens doors for people who
Speaker 1: have enough nerve to run through them. I don't think
Speaker 1: he opens doors for everybody. I think he opens especially
Speaker 1: the dangerous doors, the doors he goes. I need this
Speaker 1: to be said. I need this. I need people to
Speaker 1: hear this message song, whatever it might be, and so
Speaker 1: I'm going to put it in that kid's brain and
Speaker 1: see if he's got enough, you know what, to carry
Speaker 1: through with it. And I'll be honest, it is unnerving
Speaker 1: to talk about those things, those subjects.
Speaker 2: What do your colleagues say to you?
Speaker 1: Most of them that are my actual friends. Thank you
Speaker 1: for saying that. Ah, I wish I could say that.
Speaker 1: I get that a lot.
Speaker 2: I'll bet I'll have some.
Speaker 1: Of the biggest country artists out there, even some of
Speaker 1: the new ones that are massive right now back channel
Speaker 1: and direct message of me on X. Hey, I heard
Speaker 1: that interview you did with so and so, keep it up.
Speaker 1: Wish I could say that. I could show you those
Speaker 1: over and over and over that say that, and I go, well,
Speaker 1: that's I wish they would say it, but I understand
Speaker 1: why they don't. They're right in the middle of what's
Speaker 1: going on. I know what's at stake. So maybe my job,
Speaker 1: Raymond is right now is to keep your mind standing
Speaker 1: wide open and he hits you with something that he
Speaker 1: wants to be said, write it down, do it the
Speaker 1: best you can, and unapologetically slam it out there.
Speaker 2: I forgot you were at the Mandolay Day shooting. Right
Speaker 2: you were performing with Jason Alden. What did you think
Speaker 2: when that hill of gunfires started falling on these poor people?
Speaker 2: It almost hit you. You were there, what forty minutes before?
Speaker 1: I was there forty five minutes before the bullets started
Speaker 1: flying through the drum risers on the stage. So big.
Speaker 1: And we opened for Aldean that night, and so as
Speaker 1: soon as we got through playing, we left on the bus.
Speaker 1: Actually had a Rednick Riviera kind of satellite little bar
Speaker 1: over there, and I we'll go over there and hang
Speaker 1: out with the local band and you know, get ready
Speaker 1: to leave town. We get over there and we're up
Speaker 1: there singing a little bit. The security man comes up
Speaker 1: to me and he says, he go stop the music.
Speaker 1: Stop the music. I'm like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: He goes, stop the music. They pulled the plug, killed
Speaker 1: the pa. I'm like, what is going on? And they say,
Speaker 1: there's a mass shooting happening at where you guys just
Speaker 1: were at the concert.
Speaker 2: I'm went what?
Speaker 1: So everybody got quiet. We turned on the local news.
Speaker 1: We had, you know, we had TVs everywhere, and the
Speaker 1: local news is reporting if you were anywhere near Mandalay Bay,
Speaker 1: Bellagio or Caesar's Palace. Get away from the windows. Well,
Speaker 1: we were looking right at Blagio. We're looking at the
Speaker 1: fountains and all that. I'm like, everybody, get away from
Speaker 1: the glass. So you go get off in the corner.
Speaker 1: And I remember looking down you can hear all this
Speaker 1: racket going on. We're kind of up high. We're looking
Speaker 1: down and you could see police squads moving through the
Speaker 1: streets down below. I'm like, okay, so somebody's on the
Speaker 1: loose through the town. So I said, somebody needs a
Speaker 1: whole point on this front door. And I asked, has
Speaker 1: anybody got a weapon in here? And everybody went, h
Speaker 1: I know, well I did the only one. I had
Speaker 1: a Colt forty five in my belt, so I pulled
Speaker 1: it out start walking to the front door. We got
Speaker 1: a glass door and this big old cop officer brown
Speaker 1: flops his badge out and I looked at him. I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm in trouble because I have a firearms. First thing
Speaker 1: I thought, he goes, I'm a police officer Minneapolis Police Department.
Speaker 1: I'm here with my wife on our honeymoon. Can I
Speaker 1: have that and let me protect the door? I said, yes, sir,
Speaker 1: and I turned the gun around. I said it's not chambered,
Speaker 1: and he grabbed it, went it is now, and he
Speaker 1: racked it, got down on one knee and put his
Speaker 1: elbow up on the T shirt table there and just
Speaker 1: held point on that door because for all we knew,
Speaker 1: somebody was coming straight through the door. Got back home
Speaker 1: after all that had happened, and going through my suitcase,
Speaker 1: and I found the hotel key because we were staying
Speaker 1: at the MGM. Found the hotel key, and I'm watching
Speaker 1: the news, and I'm looking at the room number on
Speaker 1: my hotel key, and I'm looking at the news, going,
Speaker 1: hang on a minute. My ceiling of my room was
Speaker 1: the floor of that guy that was lobbing those bullets
Speaker 1: shouter all day. I'd been up in that room just
Speaker 1: waiting for the show to start. He was literally right
Speaker 1: there all day long.
Speaker 2: Are you satisfied with the answers that we've gotten about
Speaker 2: this guy?
Speaker 1: What answer?
Speaker 2: This old man running back and forth between how you
Speaker 2: know how long? That's sweet? Was?
Speaker 1: What answer? There are more cameras per square inch in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, Nevada than probably any city on the earth.
Speaker 1: There are cameras everywhere everywhere, can't find any camera footage
Speaker 1: the cameras we don't have cameras. Reminds me of other
Speaker 1: things I've heard since then. And then you start thinking about, well,
Speaker 1: how in the world can one guy sit in a
Speaker 1: hotel room like that, because my hotel room would have
Speaker 1: been exactly like his and fire thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: rounds and not choked to death. That's the first thing
Speaker 1: I thought, I'm a shooter. I'm like, man, if you
Speaker 1: fire enough rounds outside, you can serve. Okay, clearly are
Speaker 1: he's inside a hotel room doing this? And then you
Speaker 1: think about what the local news said, get away from
Speaker 1: these hotels and get away. And then national news took it.
Speaker 1: And I remember seeing the big FBI guy leaning over
Speaker 1: that sheriff while the sheriff hands are just shaking like
Speaker 1: a leaf, trying to read the statement. There's the FBI.
Speaker 1: I'm going, what is going? What happened? What really happened here?
Speaker 1: Anybody that was there, anybody that was around that situation.
Speaker 1: None of us believe a word that we were told.
Speaker 1: And I'm hoping in this new administration that is one
Speaker 1: of the things. There's many, but I hope they tell
Speaker 1: us what that actually was, what actually went down to
Speaker 1: a lot of people, that over fifty people got killed
Speaker 1: at that concert.
Speaker 2: Your fans, yeah, your fans. You had met with some
Speaker 2: of these people who were victims of this right before
Speaker 2: the concert.
Speaker 1: Died. Yeah, that died. A young young man came through
Speaker 1: with his wife and the meet and greet, big fan
Speaker 1: took pictures with him. And I got word that when
Speaker 1: the bullets came in, he turned his back to where
Speaker 1: the bullets were coming, shielding his wife, and he took
Speaker 1: several rounds in the back and he died. And you know,
Speaker 1: they deserve answers. We deserve answers. And pardon me for
Speaker 1: being so skeptical when you go through something like that
Speaker 1: and you go back and look at it and go,
Speaker 1: that is not true. That is not true what they're
Speaker 1: telling us. And America knows that a lot of things
Speaker 1: have happened in our country that America knows is not
Speaker 1: the truth.
Speaker 2: We need answers particularly for that. I mean, that is
Speaker 2: a that well the shooting here in Nashville too, that's
Speaker 2: school shooting here not sufficient answer now, and we're talking
Speaker 2: about babies, and.
Speaker 1: You, Valdi, why are their cops standing in a hallway
Speaker 1: for an hour while this guy's executing kids, and they're
Speaker 1: all got bullet proof vest rifles, everything they need to
Speaker 1: walk in that room and take that guy out, and
Speaker 1: they just stand there for an hour as the shots
Speaker 1: keep popping and killing these kids. Yeah, America is sick
Speaker 1: and tired of it. Honestly, that's one reason why Trump
Speaker 1: won it. It is the gravity that is that finally
Speaker 1: got together of all these things, put all into one
Speaker 1: big package and drop it in your lap and go Trump,
Speaker 1: fix this. Tell us the truth, tell us what's going on.
Speaker 1: I have a feeling if we all know the real
Speaker 1: truth about everything, it would change America's future for probably
Speaker 1: a century, because it'd be real hard to trick us
Speaker 1: in anything again for a long time.
Speaker 2: Tell me about Rednick Riviera. I've loved the Rednick Riviera
Speaker 2: because I know the origins of that. But I'll bet
Speaker 2: a lot of people, yeah, the Gulf Coast. Tell people
Speaker 2: where that title came from. Why you had to call
Speaker 2: it Redknick Era.
Speaker 1: As a as a songwriter, it's one of my favorite
Speaker 1: phrases because it's funny. First of all, I like funny stuff,
Speaker 1: but it's basically back in the sixties, people living on
Speaker 1: limited income, which is still the way it is today,
Speaker 1: couldn't afford to go to the French rivi era. So
Speaker 1: where would they go. We've got to go to the
Speaker 1: Rednick Rivier. So that's like destin Florida golf shores as
Speaker 1: small city beach, and the beaches are pristine, and the
Speaker 1: food is great, and there's music everywhere, and you can
Speaker 1: drive there, you can afford to stay there for a week,
Speaker 1: and your family have a good time. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: I always thought, man, what a great phrase. Growing up
Speaker 1: blue collar myself, I thought, Yeah, I remember calling it
Speaker 1: Rednick Rivera when I was a kid. First time I
Speaker 1: ever got stung by jellyfish was in Panama City Beach.
Speaker 1: My dad drove us down there in the station wagon.
Speaker 1: And so I thought that should be a brand into itself.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to step out and build all American,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent made in the USA brand that reflected
Speaker 1: my life. Like basically, I grew up blue collar. My
Speaker 1: brain still works that way. But you go to a
Speaker 1: place you can afford because it's truly nice, and you
Speaker 1: make memories with the family. And can we get back
Speaker 1: to veterans to a brand which we have to fold.
Speaker 2: How many tuitions have you paid?
Speaker 1: The folds and on it a lot, It'd be hard
Speaker 1: to say how many tuitions we've The brand has generated
Speaker 1: one point six million dollars since twenty eighteen. That's a
Speaker 1: lot for any brand, much less privately owned, small upstart brand.
Speaker 1: But I look at that as you know, the only
Speaker 1: reason guys with high school diplomas who grew up in
Speaker 1: a double wide in Texas and nothing fancy get to
Speaker 1: go out here and just shoot at the moon, literally
Speaker 1: just go all the way as hard as you want
Speaker 1: to go and chase the American dream. It's because of
Speaker 1: the United States Military. Short of those men and women,
Speaker 1: you don't get to sit here and be on TV.
Speaker 1: I don't get to go make music. Nobody gets to
Speaker 1: do what they want to do short of life liberty
Speaker 1: and pursuit of happiness being kept in tact by the
Speaker 1: US military, And so Folds of Honor puts kids and
Speaker 1: spouses through college who lost their mom or dad, or
Speaker 1: who have a family members one hundred percent disabled. That
Speaker 1: was the income earner. And so there's people all of
Speaker 1: the US right now going to college partially subsidized by
Speaker 1: redneck Riviera.
Speaker 2: Love that I love it, and you got and you
Speaker 2: have the club here in Nashville, which is a great
Speaker 2: place to one place if you want to come to
Speaker 2: if you're coming to Nashville, you should go to the
Speaker 2: Redneck Revere. It's a lot fun. It's a great bar,
Speaker 2: there's live music. And you were one of the first
Speaker 2: country artists really to start. I mean everybody followed John
Speaker 2: Rich's lead on this way.
Speaker 1: Everybody Alan Jackson had to play. There was a couple
Speaker 1: of the big dogs. Yeah, they had couple places, not
Speaker 1: like it is now. Everybody and the dog's trying to
Speaker 1: get a place. It brought you out, I mean it truly.
Speaker 1: I think every building down there has a country artist's
Speaker 1: name on it at this point. But we try to
Speaker 1: make the bar really be its own thing, and it
Speaker 1: really is. When you walk in the front door, we
Speaker 1: call it the Heroes Bar, and that's where if you're
Speaker 1: a vet, active duty or a first responder you get
Speaker 1: the seat and the first drinks on the house and
Speaker 1: the walls are covered in patches and military coins. Probably
Speaker 1: the proudest moment I've had seeing that place operate was
Speaker 1: a bunch of rowdy guys were down there having a
Speaker 1: batchlor party. That's the Rednick Riviera, And I mean they're
Speaker 1: getting you know, you could imagine you're having a big time.
Speaker 1: And these two old Vietnam vets come walking in with
Speaker 1: their Vietnam Veteran ball caps on. They come walking in.
Speaker 1: It's six deep at the bar. You can't get up
Speaker 1: to the bar. And I watched these bachelor party guys
Speaker 1: see those old men and got up out of their
Speaker 1: chairs and moved people out of the way and said
Speaker 1: take much hair, come on, take much here and sat
Speaker 1: the old man down at their chairs and then they
Speaker 1: got up and that was the coveted spot to sit
Speaker 1: and respected those old men for their service. So that's
Speaker 1: really the culture of that kind of encapsulates the whole brand.
Speaker 2: Really well, and what the country should be.
Speaker 1: The hope we get back to that.
Speaker 2: I think we're getting there. I want to ask you
Speaker 2: quickly before I get to I have a list of questions.
Speaker 2: I ask everybody. Give me the state of country music
Speaker 2: through John Richard's eyes. Now you've said there couldn't be
Speaker 2: a Loretta Lynd today, there couldn't be a Johnny Cash today.
Speaker 2: Why not, especially when you hear those young artists reaching
Speaker 2: out to you privately and saying thank you for saying that.
Speaker 2: Clearly that's where they are still.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the talent of a Loretta Lynn or the
Speaker 1: talent of a Johnny Cash can ex to Nashville and
Speaker 1: does there there are people with unbelievable talent in Nashville
Speaker 1: that are that are coming up through the ranks. The
Speaker 1: part that's different is is the record label's stranglehold on creativity.
Speaker 1: Back in the day, Johnny Cash could sing you know,
Speaker 1: I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die,
Speaker 1: and they would let him put that out and let
Speaker 1: the fans decide if they like a song like that
Speaker 1: or if Johnny Cash is too crazy. I don't want
Speaker 1: to ever hear that again. That's really not how it
Speaker 1: is now. And I know that for a fact because
Speaker 1: I was in it. And then now all these artists
Speaker 1: that come to me and go, I'm gonna play at me.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna send you a song I just wrote. The
Speaker 1: label's not gonnaver let me put it out, but I
Speaker 1: wanted you to hear it. Anyway. They'll send me a
Speaker 1: song and it'll be it'll be making some kind of
Speaker 1: a cultural statement or something, and they won't even bother
Speaker 1: turning it in to the record label. It's almost like
Speaker 1: it's not censorship, because nobody ever puts it forward to
Speaker 1: even be.
Speaker 2: Some self censorship. It's else. They get what they understand,
Speaker 2: what's going to make a no go?
Speaker 1: So why don't even try? And that's not healthy?
Speaker 2: No? Okay, I gotta put my hat on. Can you
Speaker 2: throw that hat to me for a second? I gotta
Speaker 2: put my hair.
Speaker 1: I didn't know. I think that's my hand I got
Speaker 1: it almost looks like a look at that. Look at you.
Speaker 2: That's a big one.
Speaker 1: All right, one tip, pull it down a little bit lower.
Speaker 2: There you go. That's it. That's quite. That guy's ready
Speaker 2: for the grand ole up.
Speaker 1: Really all right?
Speaker 2: Here we go, ladies, And they won't let me on
Speaker 2: the opery. That'll bring down the stage forever. Okay. These
Speaker 2: are my royal grande questionnaire questions I asked everybody. He's
Speaker 2: a rapid fire, but they're important. Who is the person
Speaker 2: you most admire my dad? Why?
Speaker 1: Because he is unyielding and relentless.
Speaker 2: You took the lesson? Well, my friend, who's the person
Speaker 2: you most despise.
Speaker 1: Right now? Sean Combs and anybody like him?
Speaker 2: What is your best feature loyalty, ah, and your worst.
Speaker 1: Hm? Which one should I pick?
Speaker 2: Pick a card? Any card?
Speaker 1: I would say, h rushing to judgment.
Speaker 2: The last great book you read? And your favorite book?
Speaker 2: I think I know the answer to this one.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean discounting the Bible, not counting the not
Speaker 1: counting the Bible. Hill Billy Elogy is one of my
Speaker 1: town favorite books. To be honest with the book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it reminds me of where I grew up, my people.
Speaker 2: The American people.
Speaker 1: What do you fear, John, something happening to my kids?
Speaker 2: We all fear that, all of us. The greatest virtue
Speaker 2: is what.
Speaker 1: Patience.
Speaker 2: I think we have a shared lack of that. If
Speaker 2: it gets out what the word you could not live without? Idiot?
Speaker 1: I say that word a lot every day. Look at
Speaker 1: this idiot. Sometimes I'm looking in the mirror and go
Speaker 1: look at this he Oh.
Speaker 2: No, you shouldn't do that. If you could live anywhere,
Speaker 2: where would you live?
Speaker 1: Probably just outside of Yellowstone?
Speaker 2: Wow? Except in the winter.
Speaker 1: No, in the winter too.
Speaker 2: Gets a little deeper.
Speaker 1: That's why with me. Wow. Yeah, I like it out there.
Speaker 2: Beautiful country, good air, beautiful country. What is your biggest regret?
Speaker 1: John? Not jumping that train and getting the hell out
Speaker 1: of this interview.
Speaker 2: We're almost done. Your biggest regret, John, besides jumping the train, biggest.
Speaker 1: Regret probably disrespecting my father and my youth. H I've
Speaker 1: apologized since then, but still I regret it.
Speaker 2: The best piece of advice you ever got was.
Speaker 1: What You're never truly free until you can say no.
Speaker 1: Who gave it to you, Larry Gatlin?
Speaker 2: Wow, You're never truly free until you can say no.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: If you could not do what you're doing now, you
Speaker 2: weren't a singer and a songwriter, what would you be?
Speaker 2: What would you like to do? What else were you
Speaker 2: called to do? Do you think.
Speaker 1: Something where I can inspire people? Whatever that would be.
Speaker 1: I've always thought if I'd ever gone into the military,
Speaker 1: I would have been a guy that would have really
Speaker 1: probably enjoyed that and excelled at it, being around other
Speaker 1: really competent people, younger ones, especially bringing them up. I
Speaker 1: don't know that it would have been military, but something
Speaker 1: that would have put me in a spot where I
Speaker 1: can communicate, Like.
Speaker 2: That final question, what happens when this life is over?
Speaker 1: When this life is over, every single human being that's
Speaker 1: ever lived stands directly in front of the Son of God,
Speaker 1: and he will either say come on in or he'll
Speaker 1: say depart from me. I never knew you one or
Speaker 1: the other. And the only way you get into heaven
Speaker 1: is by submitting your entire life and will to Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Going to church will not get you in. Academia about
Speaker 1: the Bible will not get you in. All of your
Speaker 1: philosophy will not get you in. Doing good deeds will
Speaker 1: not get you in. If that was the case, the
Speaker 1: thief on the cross would have never gone into heaven.
Speaker 1: That's what happens when you die.
Speaker 2: No, you're on your way there, my friend God, bless you.
Speaker 2: Great John.
Speaker 1: Yes see you next time looks good.
Speaker 2: I've never taken it off. Now here's the least in town.
Speaker 1: Give me one of these.
Speaker 2: There you go, Thank you John. Okay, here's the hole.
Speaker 2: You know. This one idea that always sticks in my
Speaker 2: mind after an interview. I loved what John Rich shared there,
Speaker 2: when everything is out of your control, find the one
Speaker 2: thing you still can control, and control it, do the
Speaker 2: one right thing you're capable of, and build from there.
Speaker 2: The other thing that I think is so good is
Speaker 2: that God opens doors for those who run to him. Oh,
Speaker 2: and keep your hat on. I'll carry a lot of
Speaker 2: those things with me. I hope you'll carry them with you.
Speaker 2: Why live a dry, narrow, constricted life when if you
Speaker 2: fill it with good things, it can flow into a broad,
Speaker 2: thriving Arroyo Grande. I'm raining at Arroyo. Make sure you
Speaker 2: like and subscribe to this episode. Thank you for diving in,
Speaker 2: and we'll see you next time. Arroyo Grande is produced
Speaker 2: in partnership with iHeart Podcasts and is available on the
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.