Speaker 1: All right, welcome to episode twenty six to the Bobby Cast,
Speaker 1: and the big big recliner next to me is Chris Jansen. Chris,
Speaker 1: I'm doing good, brother, Thank you very much. I love
Speaker 1: your intro music. By the way, Yeah, I don't even
Speaker 1: know where this came from, Mike, do you It's just
Speaker 1: his game show music. I thought you stole it from
Speaker 1: Wayne Newton. It sounds good. It's not unusual. I was
Speaker 1: in Vegas this last weekend and we ran into your boys,
Speaker 1: low Cash because they played the same stage the night before, Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the National Finals rodeo, and they were playing I
Speaker 1: think six of like eight nights, all in different places,
Speaker 1: and so I saw I saw Preston walking around because
Speaker 1: I mean they were playing every night in Vegas there
Speaker 1: every single They're like everywhere all the time, man, and
Speaker 1: they play inn far every year, and You're exactly right.
Speaker 1: They play like they look a seven day residency in
Speaker 1: different places. It is just wild. I don't know how
Speaker 1: they keep up with it, those guys, and Preston came
Speaker 1: because we had pressed it up well like four five
Speaker 1: cents ago, maybe more than that. I talked about you,
Speaker 1: but you guys are close. He's one of my best friends.
Speaker 1: That's what he said. He said, he said, as far
Speaker 1: as like Nashville goes, like, you guys have been friends
Speaker 1: for like close friends, real buddies. We came up together,
Speaker 1: and there's a difference in real buddies and work friends
Speaker 1: that you get along with and work well with, and
Speaker 1: then just the acquaintances and acquaint the people you don't
Speaker 1: like to you know whatever, but you're you're like real friends. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're real friends. The weird thing about the Preston when
Speaker 1: he came over because I like those guys a lot,
Speaker 1: and Preston and I had only ever spent time together
Speaker 1: either doing the radio show or we'd we'd be on
Speaker 1: the road and play We played that thing four shows together,
Speaker 1: the Raging Idiots, and we get to hang out there,
Speaker 1: but we never get to hang out like a real
Speaker 1: human setting. So we just said at the house and
Speaker 1: talked for like forty five minutes after after this year,
Speaker 1: and I was like, dang, like I really I used
Speaker 1: to like that dude. Not I really liked game because
Speaker 1: he has a long story dude, Like he's a he's
Speaker 1: got a lot of wisdom. There's his stories and their story.
Speaker 1: Because we sat in here and do the same thing.
Speaker 1: And they've and have been through it all, but you
Speaker 1: have to. And Christiansen's here and we're gonna start with
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Speaker 1: Blue Apron Better way to cook. All right, Chris, We'll
Speaker 1: start with today and we'll just kind of work our
Speaker 1: way around your song on the radio right now. Is
Speaker 1: holding her here? It's so the first time I heard
Speaker 1: the song was on Buy Me About the Record, and
Speaker 1: I thought it's a good song. It's a good but
Speaker 1: I wasn't moved by yet. Now smash cut three weeks later,
Speaker 1: maybe around the time I was watching it something called
Speaker 1: New Faces in Nashville this last year, and you played
Speaker 1: this And when you get a new album, you kind
Speaker 1: of just popped through every track. When you get it,
Speaker 1: you're like, Okay, I like that one like that. You
Speaker 1: really don't spend a lot of time with a lot
Speaker 1: of songs, and so you played a Hole in Her
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh my god, that is such
Speaker 1: a freaking good song. And I was talking to your
Speaker 1: label head who I really like, to John Esposito, and
Speaker 1: I was like, if that's not the next song you
Speaker 1: put on the radio, like you shouldn't even put songs
Speaker 1: out on the radio, Like just just go ahead and
Speaker 1: Chris back, because that song is so good. And as
Speaker 1: I look today, holding Her is now twenty five and
Speaker 1: still and climbing, so so talk about this song forer
Speaker 1: a second. Well, first of all, thank you for the
Speaker 1: compliments on it and the kind words. It is. You know, well,
Speaker 1: you know my my backstory, my wife and I met
Speaker 1: kids and um CR. As you mentioned the country radio
Speaker 1: seminar show, the New Faces thing where they there was
Speaker 1: like five or six artists. The thing was, Man, it
Speaker 1: was just kind of a no brainer moment. And for
Speaker 1: me it's always been a no brainer moment because obviously
Speaker 1: I'm very married to the song, being the writer and
Speaker 1: singer of it. However, it's such a true it's a
Speaker 1: true life event for me and I live at daily.
Speaker 1: And so the fact that it um that it has
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to come out, the fact that it
Speaker 1: did come out, and the fact that everyone has embraced
Speaker 1: it as they have and by the way, thank you,
Speaker 1: um It's just an incredible blessing to me. Man. And
Speaker 1: you know, there's one thing to be said about songs
Speaker 1: climbing the charts, but when it's climbing the charts in
Speaker 1: a way that is a song that means so much
Speaker 1: to you personally, and I mean on a deeper level
Speaker 1: than just a song that you sing live with your
Speaker 1: shows and people stand up for. Okay, okay, well talk
Speaker 1: about that for a second in case people don't know, Uh,
Speaker 1: why does this song mean so much to you? You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's the truest out of all the songs I've
Speaker 1: ever written, it's the most it's the truest. Um. I
Speaker 1: saw my wife for the first time in Nashville at
Speaker 1: the in an underground pool hall which is is called
Speaker 1: Melrose billiards years ago and she was um working a
Speaker 1: job for a record label at the time, scoping out
Speaker 1: songs and songwriters, and I was down there hanging out
Speaker 1: with friends and I just fell in love at first time.
Speaker 1: I really did follow up at first sight, and you know,
Speaker 1: three years later we got married, which was amazing, and
Speaker 1: it was just like God's timing is perfect timing. And Um,
Speaker 1: I walked into a house that was already a home
Speaker 1: with the kids in it, two kids, and that I
Speaker 1: started calling my bonus kids. It's like, I don't I
Speaker 1: hate the word step kids. And then we had two
Speaker 1: kids together, and really life just became just unbelievable. I mean,
Speaker 1: my life really changed for the better. It was it.
Speaker 1: We've been married seven years agoing on eight, and it's
Speaker 1: just been one of the most incredible blessings ever, aside
Speaker 1: from anything with business or music or anything for that matter.
Speaker 1: And when I wrote this song, James Otto and I
Speaker 1: were on his back porch and um over in Green
Speaker 1: Hills in Nashville, and we had just had George, our
Speaker 1: youngest daughter together and our third, our third child, and
Speaker 1: he said, man, what do you want to write today?
Speaker 1: And I said, dude, I just want to write about
Speaker 1: my family, and and I just it just came out.
Speaker 1: We wrote in about twenty thirty minutes. And you know,
Speaker 1: that song is the oldest song on the Buying Me
Speaker 1: a Boat record, which is what a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't know. It's the is the oldest one on there.
Speaker 1: I wrote it years before Buying Me a Vote or
Speaker 1: anything else on the whole album. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's finally it finally got to breathe um and live
Speaker 1: on this album. And now that it's living on the radio,
Speaker 1: it's a huge deal for me. And I've been playing
Speaker 1: it around for so many years that now when people
Speaker 1: hear it and then they hear it on the radio,
Speaker 1: it's like they're putting two and two together, going, oh
Speaker 1: my god. You know, it's it's been a lot of
Speaker 1: people's favorite song for a lot of years on the
Speaker 1: you know, from touring and things of that nature. And um,
Speaker 1: since Buying Me a Boat was such a big breakthrough.
Speaker 1: Um it allowed you know, allowed my audiences to get
Speaker 1: much bigger, thankfully, and now in the year holding there's
Speaker 1: just a beautiful thing. The cool thing about it is too,
Speaker 1: it's not a traditional radio song, and the fact that
Speaker 1: it is still climbing the charts does speak volumes because
Speaker 1: one it's a valid too. It's a very country ballad
Speaker 1: with talking in it, and still a guitar and still
Speaker 1: so there are all these elements that right now aren't
Speaker 1: mixed together currently moving up the chart. Right well, thank
Speaker 1: you very much, uh, and thanks for making light of
Speaker 1: that too, because I am such a fan of songs
Speaker 1: man like Sunday Morning coming Down or um. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could think of a million songs that have a
Speaker 1: little any kind of Conway song. UM. So many of
Speaker 1: my favorite what you would call now traditional country music,
Speaker 1: UM has has some spoken word in it. Even some
Speaker 1: George Stray records out of the last ten years, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean they have some spoken word in it. And
Speaker 1: holding her I didn't, you know, I didn't really mean
Speaker 1: to go for that. I wasn't like shooting for anything.
Speaker 1: It just happened that way. And UM, when it when
Speaker 1: it feels right to me in my heart. Man, That's
Speaker 1: just how I fault. That's how I gage everything. That's
Speaker 1: how I That's how I just do anything in my
Speaker 1: whole life. When I get up to put my boots
Speaker 1: on in the morning, if it feels right, I'll put
Speaker 1: on that pair. If it feels wrong, I put on
Speaker 1: another pair. Um, holding too big, I'm getting his shoes.
Speaker 1: The eyes, buddy, that they're feeling all right, Okay, get
Speaker 1: some sneakers, man. Uh. But you know that's how Holding
Speaker 1: there came together. And and um, this is a beautiful thing, dude,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm so I'm so grateful for it and and
Speaker 1: for people to take a chance on it at radio
Speaker 1: and and to be playing it like they are, I mean, um,
Speaker 1: like you said, for it to still be moving up
Speaker 1: the chart, and and to be such a different kind
Speaker 1: of song as um, it's pretty incredible blessing. So you
Speaker 1: have actually two songs on the radio right now, one
Speaker 1: that you sing on now, one that you wrote on,
Speaker 1: which is this one, My girl How Always Be? That's
Speaker 1: a good one. So thanks. Funny When did you write that?
Speaker 1: Was it after the record came out? Was this one
Speaker 1: that you were writing for tim? Or writing two pitch
Speaker 1: or for yourself or what what was the process with
Speaker 1: this song. First of all, I love your I love
Speaker 1: these questions, and I really I didn't thank you for
Speaker 1: having me yet this evening. Thanks for having me probably, Hey, Mike,
Speaker 1: you the first one I ever bring a gift like whoa.
Speaker 1: You can thank my wife. You can thank my wife.
Speaker 1: She had the initial idea, and I said, that's that's
Speaker 1: a great idea because I don't know what to you know,
Speaker 1: you're nothing, there's nothing to get me. You're a man
Speaker 1: of many taste, very peculiar peculiar taste, just as I am.
Speaker 1: And you know you gotta be, you gotta be, you
Speaker 1: gotta be touchy feely with what you get. So I'm
Speaker 1: I'm glad you liked it. However, thank you for having me,
Speaker 1: and thank you for these questions because I rarely, I
Speaker 1: want to say, I rarely get to talk about songs,
Speaker 1: and I rarely get to give the back story on
Speaker 1: them and to answer your question about that's how I'll
Speaker 1: always be. First of all, when you played that, I
Speaker 1: just love that song. Even if I hadn't written it,
Speaker 1: I'm so proud of it, say sitting in a room,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you this story. Man, this isn't this
Speaker 1: is an amazing thing. My my friend Jeremy Stover called me.
Speaker 1: He said, Um, hi, se j, let's write a song.
Speaker 1: So okay, fine, So I went over to write with him.
Speaker 1: When I get to a studio on Barry Hill, which
Speaker 1: is over on the other side of Nashville, a friend
Speaker 1: of ours Texas bo at the same time named Jamie
Speaker 1: Polly said, hey, man, all, hey guys, you know, um
Speaker 1: can we can I come over and either of you
Speaker 1: available to write? And we say, hey, we're actually together.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you knew that, but he didn't. Um,
Speaker 1: once you come join us. He got there, he's kind
Speaker 1: of having a rough day, man. Um. He he got
Speaker 1: there and he started explaining what was going on is
Speaker 1: mom had pretty terminally ill cancer, and um, we it
Speaker 1: just hit everybody pretty hard, to be frankly honest with you,
Speaker 1: and so we just tried to lighten the mood by
Speaker 1: doing something and writing songs is what we do best. So, UM,
Speaker 1: I knew mcgrawl was pretty much done recording at that
Speaker 1: at that point. And UM, thankfully I've been able to
Speaker 1: get to know him a little bit and and um,
Speaker 1: here's some inside things. So I thought, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we maybe have missed the record this time, but let's
Speaker 1: just write something. I said, guys, I would like to
Speaker 1: write I'd like to write another side of my story,
Speaker 1: the other side of holding here, like like my backstory
Speaker 1: as a man, you know, and I tell a little
Speaker 1: bit of that. Let's write it in the vein of
Speaker 1: mcgrawl and man, maybe maybe for the next record he
Speaker 1: might like it, you know. And so the song really
Speaker 1: came together and it meant a lot to all three
Speaker 1: of us, but it really meant a lot to me
Speaker 1: personally because, Um, all the words in it are my story.
Speaker 1: It's a very true to life song for me, every
Speaker 1: every single little bit of it. And the most important
Speaker 1: part is UM. I sent it to Byron Gallimore, like
Speaker 1: three days after we wrote it. We did a little
Speaker 1: work tape demo of it. He's, oh my gosh, I
Speaker 1: love this. Yeah. Sorry. So Byron Gallimore produces Tim mcgrawl.
Speaker 1: He produced part of the Buy Me a Boat record.
Speaker 1: Um is a great friend of mine, and UM a
Speaker 1: great friend of ours, and and just just love Byron
Speaker 1: and Um. He and his wife, they both worked with Tim.
Speaker 1: His wife finds, you know, find songs for Tim every
Speaker 1: now and again, and and Byron produces the songs. And
Speaker 1: I sent it to Byron to see what he thought.
Speaker 1: He was like, oh my god. So I sent it
Speaker 1: to Tim and immediately I get put on this email chain.
Speaker 1: It's Tim loves that he's gonna cut it, just like
Speaker 1: I mean, how many days hours. I don't know what
Speaker 1: we're talking here, from the minute you sent the work
Speaker 1: tape or the demo to him to the fact that
Speaker 1: you're on the email going, hey, I love this song.
Speaker 1: Within within I mean within the first fifteen minutes, I was,
Speaker 1: I was that quick swear to god, man, I got
Speaker 1: it from Jeremy. I was like her, you get it
Speaker 1: to me, her, he get it to me, her get
Speaker 1: to me. You know. I'm like, I'd like a hurry
Speaker 1: up and wait kind of guy. I just can't stand it, Okay,
Speaker 1: I just have to get going. And I said, can
Speaker 1: you please send it to Please send me. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: just getting the vocal. Rest forget the vocal, just send
Speaker 1: me the track. So I sent it to Byron. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, Chris, I just love this is what Byron said.
Speaker 1: And uh, and so he talks. He got back and
Speaker 1: sent it to Tim. Within fifteen minutes. I was never
Speaker 1: forget I was leaving FedEx in Cool Springs, done in Franklin,
Speaker 1: and I mean it just happened. And I mean you
Speaker 1: never know. I mean some I've had a million artists
Speaker 1: we're gonna cut oh my god, we love it, and
Speaker 1: then never cut it. I never even look at it.
Speaker 1: You know. Dude, Tim is a man of his word,
Speaker 1: and he's very he's very good about keeping it too.
Speaker 1: And he recorded the song. He said, and you know
Speaker 1: one thing that I'll never forget Tim mccrawl telling me
Speaker 1: was thank you for writing me the song I always
Speaker 1: wanted to record. This was really amazing moment for me.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know that I was being a part
Speaker 1: of the song that he always wanted to record. I
Speaker 1: just knew that he likes, you know, he likes Don
Speaker 1: Williams type things. He likes um uh, Guy Clark. He
Speaker 1: likes you know, old stray dogs and guitars play, and
Speaker 1: he likes Tom t Hall, you know, those those sorts
Speaker 1: of things. And it was just a really it was
Speaker 1: a really gratifying moment for me. Now fast forward, the
Speaker 1: songs on the radio is doing good and and and
Speaker 1: looking like it maybe that's fantastic. It was doing great,
Speaker 1: thank you, but the potential to really be a number one, hefully,
Speaker 1: you know, either either way, it's it's already a hit,
Speaker 1: it's already a big top ten. But here's the thing,
Speaker 1: the most part and part of the story and the
Speaker 1: journey is, you know, rewind Up told you about Jamie
Speaker 1: and his mom. Jamie's mom just passed away a little
Speaker 1: a little while back here, right about the time how
Speaker 1: long is he was coming out and was about to
Speaker 1: hit the top twenty, and so this is a really
Speaker 1: trying time for his family. I know he's I know,
Speaker 1: he's you know, been going through a little bit personally.
Speaker 1: He's a great guy. And um, you know, Jamie at
Speaker 1: this point being the third co writer man at this point,
Speaker 1: like Jeremy's had a ton of number ones. He just
Speaker 1: wrote I Love Somebody for our boys low Cash. Like
Speaker 1: he's he's on fire. He produces justin MORI mean, he's
Speaker 1: like all over the board and um and thankfully, you know,
Speaker 1: since boat Man, things have really been seeming to go
Speaker 1: my way and and Jamie um has had some good
Speaker 1: cuts to his name, but this is his biggest one yet.
Speaker 1: And with the chain of events that everything has happened
Speaker 1: in his life. That just really makes me smile because
Speaker 1: I'm I'm proud that he got ahold of Us. I'm
Speaker 1: proud that he is a third songwriter on this song
Speaker 1: and that the story. You know, if we if we're
Speaker 1: fortunate to have a number one with it, man, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be an awesome, very emotional party. I saw Speaking
Speaker 1: of My Girl, you're gonna be playing with McGraw I
Speaker 1: think at the end of this week or early next week. Yes, Saturday,
Speaker 1: Saturday night, we're playing in Vegas. Okay. So I just
Speaker 1: came back from Vegas and I saw everywhere Tim McGraw
Speaker 1: and Chris Jansen, you know, and it was a picture
Speaker 1: of you. Yeah, and I was like, that's cool, you know,
Speaker 1: because you're everywhere. Like it's obviously a Tim poster, but
Speaker 1: very prominent Christ Jansen on the poster, which doesn't always happen.
Speaker 1: Because there was another one that was like Toby Keys
Speaker 1: and the tiny letters that goes with a big and
Speaker 1: rich and I was like, wait, they're bigger than they
Speaker 1: should have just with bigger. But it was really Tim
Speaker 1: McGraw with Christ Jansen with you know, you had your
Speaker 1: picture with your trap over and so I'm getting in
Speaker 1: the elevator. I was talking about this on the air
Speaker 1: this morning because they had us in a really fancy
Speaker 1: party MGM. Because when you we played MGM the Raging Idiots,
Speaker 1: then they put you in a really nice hotel, put
Speaker 1: us in the suite. You're in the fancy place. And
Speaker 1: I got into this elevator and it's all mirrored out
Speaker 1: and like chandelier on top. And I I'm not exaggerated.
Speaker 1: I swear to you as I'm in can of snapchat
Speaker 1: at it. As I'm in the elevator to this fancy hotel,
Speaker 1: I hear you know there's playing as I'm going down kidding. No,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. And they weren't like playing just country. It
Speaker 1: was all different music and they were playing a hold
Speaker 1: on hers. I was going to let's talk about how
Speaker 1: you got here for a second. You are born and
Speaker 1: raids in Missouri. I was born and raised in Missouri,
Speaker 1: just above Arkansas. Were you from you? So? As a kid,
Speaker 1: you were what kind of kid? I was a very
Speaker 1: shy kid um at times. I boy, we've never talked
Speaker 1: about this is gonna be good. I I was very
Speaker 1: shy kid at times you know. I always was a musician,
Speaker 1: always a musician. How are you a musician at seven? Right?
Speaker 1: Where are you playing? Man? I started when I was
Speaker 1: eight years old. I got my first stratocastra guitar and
Speaker 1: immediately started playing the blues. And I started playing. My
Speaker 1: first song ever learned was keep your hands yourself Georgia Satellites.
Speaker 1: And I love the blues, man, I love the blues.
Speaker 1: I love rock and roll. I loved country music. My
Speaker 1: first album I ever got is Garth Brooks, the one
Speaker 1: where he tied his belt sideways a double double sided shirt.
Speaker 1: And my second one was Randy Travisman. And remember my
Speaker 1: dad used to sing digging up Bones around the house
Speaker 1: all the time and stuff. And I've always been a
Speaker 1: musician and I've always been a very musicians at all.
Speaker 1: And the family that kind of maybe say, hey, you
Speaker 1: should pick up a guitar. So my parents are not musicians. Um,
Speaker 1: my dad took a swing at drumming there for a
Speaker 1: while when I was like an early teen. Um, but
Speaker 1: he would tell you like it was just a for fun,
Speaker 1: you know, garage band, drink some beer kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But um, you know, traditionally, like my my granddad played
Speaker 1: a little guitar, but not much, and his father before
Speaker 1: him was a pentecostal uh a tent revival evangelist, uh
Speaker 1: and he played fiddle and that kind of thing. So
Speaker 1: I guess music probably runs in my in my veins
Speaker 1: at some point, very kind of appellation, you know, kind
Speaker 1: of country blue grass kind of stuff. But there wasn't
Speaker 1: anyone in your life that said, here's the piano or
Speaker 1: a guitar, you should start playing. No, no, not at all.
Speaker 1: It was me. It's totally me. I wanted, man, dude,
Speaker 1: I wanted to be who did you see though? At eight?
Speaker 1: That made you want to pick up a guitar? Because
Speaker 1: something had You had to see something with your eyeball
Speaker 1: guns and roses. So that's what I was. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I was like, I want to be Deaf mccagan, and
Speaker 1: I want to be that you picked up and now
Speaker 1: later on you more get the guns and rose than
Speaker 1: a minute. But later on, I mean, but so it
Speaker 1: wasn't Slash, it wasn't Axel, and it was Deaf mccagan.
Speaker 1: I thought, dude, I do with the with the long
Speaker 1: blonde hair was like just cool looking, I mean, and
Speaker 1: he is cool looking, it's like I want to be that.
Speaker 1: I want to be that right there. And I I
Speaker 1: always thought David Lee Murphy was the bomb, Like I
Speaker 1: mean where I come from. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: he is and everybody thinks so. Second of all, where
Speaker 1: I come from in the Midwest. You know, we grew
Speaker 1: up right across the Mississippi River from each other. Literally,
Speaker 1: I bought my first car with lawn mowing money out
Speaker 1: of his hometown, two blocks away from the street he
Speaker 1: grew up on, small world. I was a huge David
Speaker 1: Lee Murphy fan as far as country music goes. And
Speaker 1: he was, you know, he's still like, he's kind of
Speaker 1: a rock and roll type, jeans wearing kind of guy.
Speaker 1: And um, so those two things made me really want
Speaker 1: to play man. And it's funny you should ask. I've
Speaker 1: never got to tell anybody that. So you started playing
Speaker 1: guitar at eight years old? When do you start playing
Speaker 1: where people start watching you? Pretty immediately when I started playing, um,
Speaker 1: you know, that was right at the brink of about
Speaker 1: to go into middle school. So you know, I was
Speaker 1: a skateboarder, and I was also in four h and
Speaker 1: I was riding horses. I did a lot of different things,
Speaker 1: as I could do with a lot of stuff. But
Speaker 1: I loved skateboarding the skateboarding community as most no will
Speaker 1: lead you into, like different kinds of communities will lead you,
Speaker 1: like into the hippie crowd and the cool crowd, and
Speaker 1: you know the maybe the um the misled youth crowd
Speaker 1: who listens to punk rock all the time. And I
Speaker 1: got way into that kind of stuff. And Um, I
Speaker 1: started meeting buddies who thought like me, who thought outside
Speaker 1: the box. He grew up in a small town and
Speaker 1: wanted to get out of it and and um found
Speaker 1: outlets in music, and so we all just started skating
Speaker 1: together and we built like a local skate park in
Speaker 1: in Felts Park in town. And man, we we started
Speaker 1: getting our instruments from Shivelbin's Music, which was a town
Speaker 1: thirty five miles away in Cape Girardo. Was a little
Speaker 1: music store there and m dude, we we just got
Speaker 1: the cheapest of the cheap guitars and started playing. And
Speaker 1: me and my buddy Kurt Brewer and um uh Anthony
Speaker 1: Lawnchius and all these kids. Man, we just got together
Speaker 1: from all different grades, middle school and high school and
Speaker 1: started playing music and we play anything anybody wanted to hear.
Speaker 1: What were you in that band that was the drummer? Wow? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you picked up a guitar, then you were the
Speaker 1: drummer in the band. Yeah. I was like the drummer
Speaker 1: one week, and then like if if we needed a
Speaker 1: bass player, I would be like bass player. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's whatever. I mean, we all kind of alternated, however. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, my first instrument is drums. I learned that
Speaker 1: very first, and then the guitar came like the week after.
Speaker 1: I forgot to tell you that. But I'm a drummer first,
Speaker 1: and I'm still a drummer. I play drums every night
Speaker 1: actively in my live concerts, And um, I am the
Speaker 1: kind of person that I'm gonna try it really quick,
Speaker 1: and if i can't get it really quick, I'm done.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna move on to something else. I'm still
Speaker 1: that way. Your small why both of us are Yeah,
Speaker 1: we know, we're very like, we need it. We gotta
Speaker 1: figure Okay, don't we have the same birthday? Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a lot of similarity. We addictive personalities,
Speaker 1: but exactly exactly. I'm back on the dude, by the way,
Speaker 1: So no, man, so like, I wanted to play the
Speaker 1: drums right, let me just tell you. So I learned
Speaker 1: to play them. I learned to play him in school
Speaker 1: and I was like, okay, cool. Then I got the
Speaker 1: stratocaster guitar. I learned to put George the satellites is like,
Speaker 1: I got that. So I got a basic car. I'm like,
Speaker 1: well that's pretty easy, the same thing. And I got
Speaker 1: on piano and I love Jarreley Lewis. I'm like, and
Speaker 1: I figured that out, Okay. I taught myself and m dude,
Speaker 1: I just started hop skipping around and then you meet
Speaker 1: the right kids. And it was usually kids who were
Speaker 1: like unpopular, kids who nobody wanted to hang out with.
Speaker 1: Kids were like green hair and weird ear rings. And
Speaker 1: I mean I grew up in a pretty like Frankly,
Speaker 1: a pretty redneck, you know, white trash, blue collar town
Speaker 1: man like you just if you're not a farmer, you're
Speaker 1: not cool, you know that kind of thing. Like everybody
Speaker 1: hangs out the m f A and city tavern downtown
Speaker 1: and that's just the way it is. And if you
Speaker 1: don't play football, you're a punk and that kind of deal.
Speaker 1: And I was definitely kind of right in the middle.
Speaker 1: So you're playing music. Did you graduate high school? I did?
Speaker 1: I graduated with honors man. I graduated, Um actually got
Speaker 1: I was actually offered to graduate my junior year. Um,
Speaker 1: I know, you got a schull. I'm gonna leading to
Speaker 1: the scholarship with with college credits and stuff. But I
Speaker 1: chose to stay in school because my senior year they
Speaker 1: offered a work program where it could actually make some
Speaker 1: a little bit of cash and and go to work
Speaker 1: and try something that I thought maybe I would want
Speaker 1: to do for a living. Because when you're a kid,
Speaker 1: you don't think you honestly, where I come from, you
Speaker 1: don't really think that, oh my god, I can be
Speaker 1: a music singing star or anything for that matter. I
Speaker 1: can't even have a job doing this. You know, you
Speaker 1: know why. And we come from a similar background. You
Speaker 1: don't think that's not guess people tell us we can't,
Speaker 1: but no one tells us we can because nobody else
Speaker 1: does around because that you're precisely right, like, nobody tells
Speaker 1: you can't, but no one tells you can because no
Speaker 1: one else is doing. And we come from and you
Speaker 1: know what, it's okay because now as an adult, I
Speaker 1: come to appreciate it. And actually, you know, some things
Speaker 1: you kind of missed sometimes weird. But I grew up
Speaker 1: in such a inside the box kind of mindset I'm
Speaker 1: sort of cursed with. I'm still still that way a
Speaker 1: little bit. There's things you never grow out of. But
Speaker 1: I grew up so much around that that it was
Speaker 1: just kind of unreachable. You know. You know when you
Speaker 1: say that, it resonates with me because I speak at times,
Speaker 1: and i'll speak at graduations or i'll speak to youth,
Speaker 1: and and I'll say that a lot, because I'll talk
Speaker 1: to kids who grew up like I did, and I'll say,
Speaker 1: you know, these big dreams, no one tells you you
Speaker 1: really can't do them because they don't seem real. No
Speaker 1: one tells you you can't grow ten feet tall, right
Speaker 1: because everybody knows you're not gonna do it anyway, but
Speaker 1: no one. So I would say, listen, this is what
Speaker 1: I've done. No one told me I couldn't, but really,
Speaker 1: no one told me I can. And so I'll talk
Speaker 1: to the and say tell them they can, you know,
Speaker 1: but they I mean, look at you. Look at you.
Speaker 1: You're a prime example of nobody telling you you can
Speaker 1: but you just went and did Yeah, I I know
Speaker 1: one other kid who did it in my hometown. Man,
Speaker 1: it was the one kid that I consistently stayed in
Speaker 1: bands with. It was also the one kid that I
Speaker 1: consistently stayed in bands and budded heads with because we
Speaker 1: were both a personalities which now we we even still
Speaker 1: keep in touch via email and phone. Actually two of
Speaker 1: my friend can't forget the other one one move to one.
Speaker 1: One stayed in the States and went on having a
Speaker 1: great career playing drums for the Aavoite Brothers and Bob
Speaker 1: Dylan and lots of people. Okay, his nam Jacob Edwards.
Speaker 1: His dad was our band His dad was our choir teacher.
Speaker 1: We had choir teacher and a band teacher in high school.
Speaker 1: My music teacher band teacher flunked me and did not
Speaker 1: like me at all and treated me very badly as
Speaker 1: a kid, very bad. I think that for many years.
Speaker 1: I don't mean this to sound cocky whatsoever, but I
Speaker 1: was a natural music and people like him aren't. They
Speaker 1: are theoretical. They have to read. They like to cocky.
Speaker 1: For you to say you're a natural at music, you're
Speaker 1: a freaking number one song right but you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. But but I don't. I don't mean it pretentious.
Speaker 1: It's not, but nothing about it pious, thank you. But
Speaker 1: but for people who you know, don't know me, I'd
Speaker 1: like to let him know I don't mean that pretentious.
Speaker 1: But but Mr Fisher was not nice to me. He
Speaker 1: was just not He just wasn't nice to me. He
Speaker 1: did and that's a sad thing. In school, man, a
Speaker 1: lot of teachers, you know, they probably got picked on
Speaker 1: at one point. They're really you know, he's a very
Speaker 1: smart guy. However may be a little bit smarter. I
Speaker 1: don't know. But the thing is is I flunked that,
Speaker 1: but I got an a in chorus which I didn't
Speaker 1: want to take, and it was Mr Edwards. His son,
Speaker 1: Jacob is the one I was in the band with. Man.
Speaker 1: He was a free spirit. He was just about just
Speaker 1: do what you want to do and and we're just
Speaker 1: gonna praise your art no matter how bad or good
Speaker 1: it is, doesn't matter. And believe me, we're pretty bad, okay.
Speaker 1: And um Jacob was one of the kids who who
Speaker 1: came out of school and did something with his life
Speaker 1: as far as music and became very successful. And I
Speaker 1: think lives in East Nashville now. And another one of
Speaker 1: my friends who grew up two towns away, and he
Speaker 1: grew up in an even smaller, like, very Catholic community
Speaker 1: where you were very frowned upon if you did any
Speaker 1: kind of music or rock and roll or anything of
Speaker 1: that nature, uh Ian Fisher. And now he's a very
Speaker 1: critically acclaimed singer songwriter in in Europe and and lives
Speaker 1: in Germany and just in his awesome that's what he does.
Speaker 1: He travels around Europe and place shows and just a
Speaker 1: pretty amazing thing. Man. I feel very blessed to have
Speaker 1: the opportunities that I've had. And when you mentioned number
Speaker 1: one songwriter and singer and these things, it still doesn't
Speaker 1: register for me because again, and you know this coming
Speaker 1: from where we come from, your great successes with your
Speaker 1: career as well, it's just sort of unfathomable. And even
Speaker 1: even now in my hometown, I only have about five
Speaker 1: friends who even recognize what I do for a living,
Speaker 1: or they just don't even you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: It just doesn't It's just a it's a two way
Speaker 1: road and it's very disconnected. So you're in the town
Speaker 1: and now you had an interest in animals like veterinary
Speaker 1: I did. Now I got the interest from animals and
Speaker 1: veterinarian because I told you earlier I was. I rode
Speaker 1: a lot of horses as a kid. I did horse showing,
Speaker 1: a whole bunch actually a lot of Middle Tennessee, which
Speaker 1: is a whole other avenue to talk about. But long
Speaker 1: story short. When you get older and you get about seventeen,
Speaker 1: and you know you're pretty poor kid growing up, you
Speaker 1: gotta have a job. I have. I've had jobs since
Speaker 1: I was a young man. My dad said, I don't
Speaker 1: ever want to have to make you work. You know,
Speaker 1: you work when you get older. But I always had
Speaker 1: a job because I never like anybody telling me what
Speaker 1: I could do with my money, and I don't like
Speaker 1: asking for money. Is I'd rather make it myself, whether
Speaker 1: it's if it's two bucks. I got two bucks and
Speaker 1: not in that asked for Veterinarian work came pretty easy.
Speaker 1: There was a guy that played softball with my dad
Speaker 1: on the little softball leagues there and and um doc
Speaker 1: and and Doc Freeman, and he always said, man, if
Speaker 1: you ever want to make some extra bank once you
Speaker 1: just come over and work for me, you know, And
Speaker 1: just do whatever. He's a he's a the only like
Speaker 1: the town, the town main, the main guy, the guy,
Speaker 1: there's always the whatever. Where we come from, there's one.
Speaker 1: There's one person that does everything because we can't handle
Speaker 1: too We didn't mean we couldn't have to gas stations
Speaker 1: and we're gonna have to, man, Okay, it's like you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. They're both gonna run from mayor
Speaker 1: to just go bigger anyway. So Doc Freeman offered that.
Speaker 1: And so in my school too, even though small town,
Speaker 1: they had a vocational program because against so many kids
Speaker 1: grew up in the agricultural business and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And traditionally you either go to the military, you become
Speaker 1: a farmer pretty much it, or you work at Walmart.
Speaker 1: It's one of three things. And um, my senior year,
Speaker 1: I'd already gotten all my credits out of the way,
Speaker 1: so I thought, cool, I'm gonna take a vocational class
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna take him up on it. So I
Speaker 1: want to work at a vet clinic. And I've darned
Speaker 1: near almost became a veterinarian. Like I was pretty serious
Speaker 1: about it, and the fact like I was pulling scholarships
Speaker 1: to almost go to do it, and uh, I just
Speaker 1: kept you from it. I never had it in my heart. Man,
Speaker 1: I was just doing it too to make some money,
Speaker 1: and I knew that it would probably pay good at
Speaker 1: some point. You know, if you become a doctor or
Speaker 1: a um, obviously it pays okay, Um, dude, I played music.
Speaker 1: I've always played music, no matter what I mean. On
Speaker 1: the weekends, I was playing on hay wagons in in
Speaker 1: on eighty Acres down and on the East End, and
Speaker 1: for you know, um, just a bunch of beer drinking
Speaker 1: hank junior songs and skinnered covers and those kind of things,
Speaker 1: and I just had music in my heart. I've never
Speaker 1: written a song at that point, but I loved playing
Speaker 1: and whatever band I was in at the time. So
Speaker 1: when he got right down to it, about a week
Speaker 1: before I was going to go off to college, I decided, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna do that, So I'm just gonna go
Speaker 1: to the closest place that has music. And I wanted
Speaker 1: to get away from you know, you always want to
Speaker 1: get away from where you come from, and then when
Speaker 1: you get out, you want to have some of that back,
Speaker 1: which is interesting because I'd love I love small town lifestyles.
Speaker 1: My wife from a small town. I you know, I
Speaker 1: love it, um, but Nashville was the closest. So I
Speaker 1: packed up on I decided on a Thursday and packed
Speaker 1: up on Thursday afternoon and I moved came back. So
Speaker 1: you moved to Nashville. You're out old, I was. I
Speaker 1: just turned nineteen. So you move here at nineteen? And
Speaker 1: where do you move? I'm moving a two door Monty
Speaker 1: Carlo that you can um the folks can see. You
Speaker 1: know that that we talked about that country radio seminar
Speaker 1: show that I did. We did the video for it
Speaker 1: and I put the Green Money Carlo my video like
Speaker 1: kind of a lifestyle. Lived in the car. I lived
Speaker 1: in the back seat of a car with the back
Speaker 1: seats would fold down, you know in those cars. They
Speaker 1: don't make cars like that anymore. It's really cool thing
Speaker 1: because it's not safe. Because I'm glad they don't make
Speaker 1: list they made sense back then there was more room,
Speaker 1: but we used to stand in the seats. I have
Speaker 1: written on so many consoles of bills with my head
Speaker 1: sticking out the old school sun roof. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. We'd run the back of the truck,
Speaker 1: like you can't all that's gone, dude, lay in the
Speaker 1: ever lay in the back of the ever lay to
Speaker 1: get to get warm in the back window of like
Speaker 1: a cutlass. Yes, and on the on the like the
Speaker 1: reverse console because that's where the heat comes that when
Speaker 1: the window comes down in that spot. Yeah. Do you
Speaker 1: ever travel like nine hours on a camper shell on
Speaker 1: the back of the truck because with blankets? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a road trip. It was. You get the
Speaker 1: truck and they're like five of us getting the campers
Speaker 1: shell in the back of the trump with blankets with
Speaker 1: a grandpa who's like um, kind of mean and and
Speaker 1: only makes sweet hands to ham sandwiches and will not
Speaker 1: pull over at Cracker Borough. I mean, I'm saying that
Speaker 1: in a very nice way. By the way, same moved
Speaker 1: in Nashville. You're living in your car. I'm living in
Speaker 1: the Tudor Monty Carlo. How do you find a play
Speaker 1: the park? I mean, like, what do you park to live? Okay,
Speaker 1: here's a good one for you. So I pulled downtown
Speaker 1: and I pulled what's now Hockey Tounk Central on Lower
Speaker 1: Broadway in Nashville used to be Shawnicky as Irish Pub,
Speaker 1: which was before my time here. I pulled into the
Speaker 1: parking lot back there, and this is still when Lower
Speaker 1: Broadway is kind of like undeveloped. It's you know, it's
Speaker 1: still kind of dangerous at night, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And um, so those listening. Lower Broadway is the main
Speaker 1: like tourists place in Nashville work. All the cars are
Speaker 1: where people come and they go to see all the
Speaker 1: music and where a lot of people go frankly to
Speaker 1: to try and quote make it, you know, and so
Speaker 1: um it's just the bright lights and big city kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So I pulled there. I got a boot
Speaker 1: on my car the first night because I had never
Speaker 1: paid a meter. I have never paid a machine to
Speaker 1: get a take them out. And no, I mean, who
Speaker 1: would know coming from I wrote it, boy that in
Speaker 1: my book that I was like, when I moved to
Speaker 1: Lot Rock and need to pay for parking, I was
Speaker 1: blown away. You had to pay to put your car.
Speaker 1: It was a shot. It was a shock that I
Speaker 1: had to pay to put my car somewhere. Believe me,
Speaker 1: I know, I got a boot the first night. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, this is awesome. So but anyway, dude,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm sleeping in the fold down so half in
Speaker 1: the trunk, half in the car kind of thing. And uh,
Speaker 1: I literally moved to her quintessential story with the back
Speaker 1: a physical backpack full of CDs homemade you know, just
Speaker 1: basically what you would call now garage band demos, UM
Speaker 1: that were really made in a garage on a two
Speaker 1: track dub recorder and UM transferred over to CD with
Speaker 1: a sticky on top, you know. And so I came there,
Speaker 1: and I was just basically busting up down Lower Broadway
Speaker 1: with a guitar case totally Averacrombie to out Berkenstocks, the
Speaker 1: whole deal, and UM, asking for gigs. And I'll never
Speaker 1: forget I walked into I walked into Twitsias, like at
Speaker 1: ten o'clock in the morning, and UM, the bartender was like.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I'm here for a gig. I
Speaker 1: thought they were going to hand him out. Like I
Speaker 1: could go to my hometown somewhere and just find a
Speaker 1: gig at a local pub or restaurant, you know which
Speaker 1: would you could do pretty easy? And UM, I'll never
Speaker 1: forget this bartender named Susan, I'll never forget it. She
Speaker 1: look me around the eyes laughed in my face, and
Speaker 1: because easy to get the hell out of here. You're
Speaker 1: never gonna make it here ever, never gonna make it.
Speaker 1: Just get out of here because of how you look.
Speaker 1: I think because of how I looked. I was so young.
Speaker 1: I mean, and believe me, a nineteen, I looked like
Speaker 1: I was twelve. So it was like you put two
Speaker 1: and two together. It was a weird thing. So I left,
Speaker 1: and I'm going up down the street and I'm asking
Speaker 1: toga on stage, and nobody let me on stage. Did
Speaker 1: you ever play on the street? No, I was. I
Speaker 1: just never wanted to go there. Man, I never wanted
Speaker 1: to go there. I I just figured this, if I
Speaker 1: if I'm not good enough to get into the bar,
Speaker 1: if I can't get in there to sing, which at
Speaker 1: that point to me was like, holy cow, I'm making it.
Speaker 1: You're singing in Nashville. I mean, people are in Nashville
Speaker 1: watching I'm famous, like it's happening. It's like that's the feeling.
Speaker 1: You get your right. So I go back that night
Speaker 1: and I finally get I begged doorman to get me
Speaker 1: on stage. It puts me on stage was so nice.
Speaker 1: It was like midnight, puts me on stage, and do
Speaker 1: you wanna hear something crazy if I moved here? CRS week.
Speaker 1: So CRS is when all country radio comes to town
Speaker 1: and the artists are in town and there every labels.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a really busy radio e we Yeah.
Speaker 1: So when a long story short, he puts me on stage.
Speaker 1: I played fulsome Prison Johnny Cash and I started the
Speaker 1: song out, and of course the band I was wondering
Speaker 1: where they were looking at me and rolling their eyes. Gun,
Speaker 1: oh my god, because they've already played it twenty times
Speaker 1: that day, starting at ten o'clock in the morning. It's
Speaker 1: about midnight, it's two hours left play the song. Crowd
Speaker 1: goes wild, the owners from the bar, dude leaves over
Speaker 1: the countercats, can you finish two more hours? I said,
Speaker 1: that night right then I said yes I can. So
Speaker 1: he looks at the other dude I swear to this
Speaker 1: is swear to God, looks at the other dude who
Speaker 1: was singing. I just let me up on stage. He goes,
Speaker 1: you're fired, go ahead, and I was like, okay. So
Speaker 1: I played two more hours worth of just anything I
Speaker 1: could think of. Hank Williams, you just called him out
Speaker 1: to the BANDELM. I mean literally just start songs and
Speaker 1: they would just do it, you know. And so that
Speaker 1: was my intro to Nashville. And I got done about
Speaker 1: two thirty in the morning. The next morning, I had
Speaker 1: a gig. They asked me right back, I done, said,
Speaker 1: can you be here in the morning to play? You
Speaker 1: want a gig? You want to gig? I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: ten o'clock in the morning. I said, ten o'clock. Who
Speaker 1: plays at ten o'clock in the morning. I mean, what
Speaker 1: are you talking about. Well, there's like They're like, well
Speaker 1: that's what time the hockey talks open down here and
Speaker 1: if you want a gig, yes or no? I said absolutely.
Speaker 1: So I came in, I played acoustic, and then I
Speaker 1: got done with that one. It was a four hour show.
Speaker 1: I got done with that one. Same thing. Dude was like,
Speaker 1: hey man, we had a two o'clock, actually cancel you
Speaker 1: want to play the two to six? Go put a
Speaker 1: band together. So I go on that. By the way,
Speaker 1: my car is still booted sitting in the parking lot. Okay,
Speaker 1: never moved. I never really left. Okay, And plus I
Speaker 1: don't know what to do with the boot And plus
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get a gig and he's just trying
Speaker 1: to make it go put a band together. I had
Speaker 1: like fifteen minutes, so I just started gathering people off
Speaker 1: the street, just people walking down with amps and guitars, asking, Hey,
Speaker 1: what do you play? I there's so many musicians down
Speaker 1: there anyway, still are I mean, there's you go down
Speaker 1: there right now in Nashville. There'll be fifty guys walking
Speaker 1: into different bars and coming out of bars with pedal
Speaker 1: carts full of nice instruments and things. Okay, drums or whatever.
Speaker 1: So I put a little band together and I played
Speaker 1: the two to six, same thing for the six to
Speaker 1: ten they go once you go to the back room
Speaker 1: with tood season and played the sixth ton. Okay, fine,
Speaker 1: Now keep in mind I started at ten o'clock that morning,
Speaker 1: so then I played the six to ten, and then
Speaker 1: I got the ten to two that night. So I
Speaker 1: played sixteen hours in one day and never left the bar.
Speaker 1: And I did that continuously for three sixty four more
Speaker 1: days and until I got discovered for the first time.
Speaker 1: So he played a whole year. Yeah, I did sixteen
Speaker 1: hours a day. Now, what did you finally get a
Speaker 1: roof though? Okay, so I got a roof? Um, I
Speaker 1: was crashing in the car man for pretty good a
Speaker 1: little bit there, and and of course what's a little
Speaker 1: bit three or four weeks and you know, almost a
Speaker 1: solid month living in your car. Yeah, but you know
Speaker 1: you meet people too, and you know I'm talking about
Speaker 1: from bar backs, you know, just some nice dude slinging
Speaker 1: slinging cases of beer or doormantor just whoever. H Tyler
Speaker 1: farr Um, the the guy who owned the bar's son,
Speaker 1: you know, who was a college kid at the time,
Speaker 1: you know, and you you know, you gotta have showers
Speaker 1: and stuff, of course, So I mean you crash the
Speaker 1: couch to or three times a week, maybe here and there,
Speaker 1: but most of the time, I mean I'm living very
Speaker 1: much living out of the car. And then about a
Speaker 1: month into it, I was able to, you know, get
Speaker 1: my own apartment, which I shared with uh a doorman actually,
Speaker 1: the guy who first put me up on stage. Um
Speaker 1: Tyler farr was also crashing couches and doing that kind
Speaker 1: of thing and kind of jumping from apartment department, so
Speaker 1: he would sleep at our place a lot than um.
Speaker 1: You know, pay a little rent every now and again,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, and just you just make it
Speaker 1: and I My first place was over in Antioch. Did
Speaker 1: you ever I'm wondering if it's you. Did you ever
Speaker 1: sleep on the lower level on the floor of Eric
Speaker 1: Passley's wife's house. Was it that Jansen? Who wasn't the
Speaker 1: staying in past? It? Yeah, it was Natalie, but it wasn't.
Speaker 1: It wasn't Jansen, not this guy. Maybe it was still
Speaker 1: it was one of the stow man because there are
Speaker 1: a bunch of guys you just hused to migrate around.
Speaker 1: Oh dude, I lived in Antioch over off of Levin
Speaker 1: And Road, and um, right on the back of the
Speaker 1: roilroad tracks. Pretty shady, pretty shady. Appreciate you set. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna lie, you know what shady means. Though, uh yeah,
Speaker 1: it was pretty awesome. But I was like, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of money and you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But hey, you know the deal is, man, you just
Speaker 1: do what you can. And and before I moved to Nashville, Um,
Speaker 1: I saved every penny I could to mowing lawns, selling snowcune,
Speaker 1: a little snowcone business going on. That was a pretty
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial guy. And um, you know one thing, I have
Speaker 1: the other and gigs and that kind of thing. And
Speaker 1: I'm not talking like big money. I'm talking like maybe
Speaker 1: twenty five bucks a show kind of deal, or you know,
Speaker 1: twenty bucks a night on snowcones. But I moved here
Speaker 1: with a little bit of cash in my pocket and
Speaker 1: uh and that sort of thing, and just made it
Speaker 1: from the made it from nothing. He started from the bottom.
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Speaker 1: All right, So you played a totees for how long
Speaker 1: a year? So it's solid here to when you say
Speaker 1: being you you were discovered? Who who saw you? And
Speaker 1: and what did they discover you for? So I would
Speaker 1: say about three quarters the way through the year. Um,
Speaker 1: First of all, I was packing it out like like
Speaker 1: like they say, nobody else ever has was the fire
Speaker 1: marshal shut us down all through the year, all the
Speaker 1: time when I would play that kind of thing. And
Speaker 1: and it's you know, certain times more than others. But um,
Speaker 1: music business is what I mean by being discovered. People
Speaker 1: from the industry, you know, A and R executives, label presidents, publishers,
Speaker 1: booking agents, those kind of things. Um, My first real
Speaker 1: break came from a movie director named Jonathan Demi, who,
Speaker 1: um you know, did hard of Gold for Neil Young
Speaker 1: and UM stopped making sense. I think he just did
Speaker 1: the timber Lake thing too. Um, But anyway, he came in.
Speaker 1: It was spot checking the rhyman until he's just kind
Speaker 1: of downtown, just Nashville as a total vibe for the
Speaker 1: Heart of Gold documentary on Neil Young and saw me
Speaker 1: playing and um and was like, Okay, I think you
Speaker 1: might be great for this documentary, you know, and wanted
Speaker 1: to cast me in it. And that was kind of
Speaker 1: my intro to um a little bit of success and
Speaker 1: maybe perhaps my first paycheck, which ended up being my
Speaker 1: first paycheck. Neil Young caught his attention and they put
Speaker 1: me in the documentary a small part, but a part nonetheless.
Speaker 1: And after that that really, you know, really sparked a
Speaker 1: lot of talk because I was just some kid in
Speaker 1: Laura Broadway and not at the time nineteen my first year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um, not to mention. Then you know, then everybody
Speaker 1: started flooding in from the industry. It wasn't just fans
Speaker 1: and things like that. They were coming amongst the fans
Speaker 1: and I'm talking about um, just anybody who's anybody man,
Speaker 1: And so you have been scotted by the whole town yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't know it though I would had no clue.
Speaker 1: I had no I would. I would have no problem
Speaker 1: sending a tip jar around to whoever it might have
Speaker 1: been at the time. So you say you didn't get
Speaker 1: a paid chake, you were getting paid in tips, tips
Speaker 1: only only tips, And so you'd play. If someone gave
Speaker 1: you a twenty, that was a big one. Huge. You
Speaker 1: play whatever they want? Do you play anything for I
Speaker 1: played something for a dollar. Gives you a twenty? They
Speaker 1: jumped the line. It's a big deal. May I give
Speaker 1: you a hundred? Dude? People used to flood my I
Speaker 1: mean we made likes one night, one night, okay, So
Speaker 1: how do you split that up? If you're the main guy,
Speaker 1: and you're really the main guy coming to watch the
Speaker 1: base although he is doing his work, I'm the dude, right, okay,
Speaker 1: or whoever, for that matter, is the dude or the chick. Okay.
Speaker 1: When it's lower Broadway style, bro, it's mono, I mono.
Speaker 1: It is. Every man is equal, no matter what. That's
Speaker 1: just how they look at it down there, and it's
Speaker 1: just it's just the way it is. So when you're
Speaker 1: tip jarring it, you just split it. You know, if
Speaker 1: there's four people there, so you made night? Was there
Speaker 1: a super corporate vendor something to happen at night? Like? No, No,
Speaker 1: do an you think special about who it was? Did
Speaker 1: it know? I just used to hustle, man, I used
Speaker 1: to hustle. I still hustle. I am a hustler. Like
Speaker 1: I know that sounds so good over I am like,
Speaker 1: I am a hustler, dude. I don't come from anything.
Speaker 1: I come from like I come from parents who worked
Speaker 1: really hard and and did o care for themselves. But um,
Speaker 1: in the grand scheme of things, man, I just never
Speaker 1: forget being told one time, son, I don't have it
Speaker 1: to give to you. And I said, from that moment on,
Speaker 1: I will never live like this. I just I won't.
Speaker 1: And that's not meaning I'm not meaning dirt floor is
Speaker 1: a poor by any means. I'm just saying not extra
Speaker 1: to go around. And uh, I just said right then,
Speaker 1: I'm just not gonna live this way. I'm gonna hustle
Speaker 1: and do whatever I have to do to make money.
Speaker 1: And when you're playing out of a tip jar, you
Speaker 1: damn sure have to hustle. You have to learn to
Speaker 1: make it because, believe me, if you have five people
Speaker 1: in there from ten o'clock in the morning to ten
Speaker 1: o'clock at night. You know, any people, that is five people.
Speaker 1: And then by the way, you got to give a
Speaker 1: tips share to bartenders, tips shared a doorman and you're
Speaker 1: not making much money, so you have to be good
Speaker 1: number one. You have to know your repertoire. Number two,
Speaker 1: and you have to be able to sing anything, and
Speaker 1: I mean anything, because if you don't, they'll go right
Speaker 1: next door to the next bar and find some other
Speaker 1: guy who is as you're doing this and you're playing
Speaker 1: tutsis for a year and listen, I waited tables for
Speaker 1: a year, so I know. And it's definitely not the same.
Speaker 1: But there's a culture, there's a night time there's a
Speaker 1: nighttime culture, and it's a different lifestyle. Yes, Now, were
Speaker 1: you ever caught up in that lifestyle with any of
Speaker 1: the alcohol the drug use, because it's it's crazy. I
Speaker 1: mean I watched I had to stay away from it
Speaker 1: because I knew what I would do. I'd go right
Speaker 1: into it and I would kill myself. Yeah, well, thanks
Speaker 1: for asking. Um. I never had a drink until it's
Speaker 1: twenty two and I've never done a drug in my
Speaker 1: life ever. Not not ever once, never even smoked the pot.
Speaker 1: The pot. That's funny we have because I haven't. We
Speaker 1: have so much in comment. You know, God, it's okay.
Speaker 1: And I haven't drinking eight years. I'm thirty now used
Speaker 1: to two. So did you just drink for a minute?
Speaker 1: I did, And that's how I see you doing, Like
Speaker 1: I don't see you doing anything. Happened, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no no. The last date we had. But by
Speaker 1: the way, my wife and I still didate we're gonna
Speaker 1: date tonight. Here's the thing before we're married. The last
Speaker 1: day we had official one, I'm like sixteen long necks
Speaker 1: in I mean, like, I go hard when I drink. Man,
Speaker 1: it's like, if you're gonna drink, dude, get drunk. If not,
Speaker 1: just what is the point? Okay, So I've never had
Speaker 1: a drink and it's and it feels like it tastes
Speaker 1: it smells like just piss. Oh God, I just hate Like,
Speaker 1: why would I drink if I didn't do? Just want
Speaker 1: to get hammered? Honestly, why would I? Honestly, dude, I
Speaker 1: never had a drink. I was twenty two. Do you
Speaker 1: believe that? Two? And when I did, I was like dude,
Speaker 1: I don't let me get it so much. Stop. I
Speaker 1: stopped because I met the love of my life that
Speaker 1: I wanted to be completely committed to, and um, she
Speaker 1: had kids. Did you do as I do and just
Speaker 1: go okay, have a stop right now? Full? But don
Speaker 1: don don't. I haven't had a drink since crazy. I'm
Speaker 1: thirty years old. Crazy done. I try. I I take
Speaker 1: that back, I'm not. I don't want to lie. I
Speaker 1: forgot this though. I did drink one time, one time
Speaker 1: in the last what is eight or nine years? Okay,
Speaker 1: what was the occasion. The occasion was I was opening
Speaker 1: up for Darryl Singletary in the middle of nowhere in
Speaker 1: upstate New York, and there was nothing else to do
Speaker 1: than just get hammered. And my wife was like, it's
Speaker 1: okay to have like a glass of wine. I'm like, no, no, no, no, Nona,
Speaker 1: just keep on straight now. She's like, no, that's cool,
Speaker 1: it's cool. And then my guitar player at the time,
Speaker 1: it's a great guy with a bad influence, he goes,
Speaker 1: I dare you to drink or try to out drink me,
Speaker 1: and I was like, it's on, that's all I tasted.
Speaker 1: Dare with my feet right now. I did you ab
Speaker 1: my feet right now? Actually, I mean, if you're hurting
Speaker 1: man or whatever. I look, look, look, I'm comfortable moan skin.
Speaker 1: But here's the deal. But dudes, but I'm not that
Speaker 1: way anymore. But um, that's what I wrote. You know,
Speaker 1: we wrote better. I don't about stuff like that. But
Speaker 1: the long story short, man, I was getting so hammered.
Speaker 1: I mean I was so hammered, and I was like
Speaker 1: away from Kelly, I was playing horse shoes and corn
Speaker 1: hole in the back. And if you know, Darryl Seing
Speaker 1: was hery first of all, great guy and had had
Speaker 1: big hits, you know, and one of his songs was
Speaker 1: I ain't never had too much fun? And I was
Speaker 1: thinking these corn holes and I was like, you never
Speaker 1: had that much fun? Happy Darrel? Whoa? I mean, I
Speaker 1: was turned into like such a smarty pants. So it's
Speaker 1: a good thing that I don't drink, man. But other
Speaker 1: than that, I'm completely sober and I've never touched a drug. Man,
Speaker 1: I would. I'm just not that guy. I love cigars.
Speaker 1: I smoked cigars all the time. I had two cigars
Speaker 1: for it before we got on this podcast. But I
Speaker 1: just I don't. I don't smoke cigarettes. I'm allergic to him. Actually, um,
Speaker 1: whatever is in a cigarette, I'm allergic to. Not a cigar,
Speaker 1: though I can smoke them all day and fine, I
Speaker 1: guess because you don't inhale them. But I've never never
Speaker 1: touched a drug. You don't help. I don't know about siguard.
Speaker 1: You don't have a health cigars? Well, I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess some people do with the real hardcore, but I
Speaker 1: mean that's that's that's not the thing was I just
Speaker 1: thought it was a bigger I what do I know
Speaker 1: about cigars? That was like a bigger cigarette? No, No,
Speaker 1: I think it's just for me. I mean, from what
Speaker 1: I know and the people I know who've smoked them,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of a conversation piece and you just
Speaker 1: kind of puff on them a little bit and enjoyed
Speaker 1: the aroma. And that's kind of what I That's the
Speaker 1: only thing I do with them, dude, youth a cigar, right,
Speaker 1: I haven't eye that. Yeah, I thought they were just
Speaker 1: like big what do I I don't know anybody. Do
Speaker 1: you know? The first thing that song I've heard from
Speaker 1: you was better? I don't moved to town and I
Speaker 1: was like, what is this song better? I doubt damn,
Speaker 1: what's funny? I heard the song and so I come
Speaker 1: to down and it's a whole to do because for me,
Speaker 1: I was the first ever nationally syndicated country morning show,
Speaker 1: and it is, you know, just crazy from the people
Speaker 1: that were excited to people that weren't excited, all of
Speaker 1: these mixed basket of emotions. And I hear this song
Speaker 1: and I was like, man, this guy's nuts. Like I
Speaker 1: just love that. I was like, man, this guy's nuts.
Speaker 1: So I met Chris. Chris was the first ever guest
Speaker 1: we had on our show period, Like we were on
Speaker 1: the air and just Nashville for a week before we
Speaker 1: went on the year nationally, and I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: you sound crazy and good and that's what I like you,
Speaker 1: So why don't you come do the show? So Chris
Speaker 1: showed up and played the song as our first ever
Speaker 1: guest on on a show that no one thought was
Speaker 1: gonna last more than a year, like really, so far,
Speaker 1: we'll see And Chris came in and just and and
Speaker 1: played this so well. Now, but I do think I
Speaker 1: look back at that first time and it was just like, man,
Speaker 1: it's so good. And then from that time, you know,
Speaker 1: all the way until now deal or no deal or
Speaker 1: whatever the occasion, it was just like, let's just call Chris.
Speaker 1: Charity event, non charity event, single, no single. It was like,
Speaker 1: let's just call Chris. Let's just call it Chris. And
Speaker 1: that's just kind of how it's been for three and
Speaker 1: a half years now. Our first freaking guest on a
Speaker 1: show that wasn't gonna make it to a guy that
Speaker 1: they also told, hey, you're not gonna make it, and
Speaker 1: hey we're gonna drop you, and hey we're plenty of times. Dude,
Speaker 1: I wrote that song with Kelly, my wife. Really it
Speaker 1: was better around. That's a true story, as you well know.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this. So your wife also your manager? Okay,
Speaker 1: how does that work for you? It is the only
Speaker 1: way I would do it. So does that mean a
Speaker 1: hundred percent of the money just goes into the money?
Speaker 1: Good questions? I have a manager two and I know
Speaker 1: she gets and so you guys are married. I mean,
Speaker 1: how's that working? You know what? Um? She has a
Speaker 1: co manager that she has, um that she teams with.
Speaker 1: UH that actually teamed with her rephrased that team with her. UM.
Speaker 1: First of all, let me say, without Kelly, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: do anything um in this business. I had already decided
Speaker 1: that Red for by my boat happened. Um. I was
Speaker 1: very happy and very content. And once it did, I said,
Speaker 1: the only the only way that I will go forward
Speaker 1: with this song and and thanks to you for making
Speaker 1: a hit that very first moment um. The only way
Speaker 1: I'll do it is if you manage me this go around,
Speaker 1: and I won't do it any other way. I just
Speaker 1: so she wasn't your manager before. Absolutely, so this round
Speaker 1: now that you the new Jansen, the new label of
Speaker 1: the new that the star now it has been with
Speaker 1: her absolutely And I will tell you and not just
Speaker 1: because not just because she's my wife, and not just
Speaker 1: because I'm trying to pat her on the back, but
Speaker 1: she is the brains behind the operation. Okay I write
Speaker 1: the songs and I sing that, yes, but without her
Speaker 1: just sense of the world, I probably be a train wreck.
Speaker 1: So you wrote this with her? Yes, bath forward. If
Speaker 1: you're not going to be an artist anymore and you're
Speaker 1: writing song because I assume you saw had a publishing
Speaker 1: deal and someone could you still write a songs? You
Speaker 1: just decided to doing me a songwriter was that it.
Speaker 1: You're just gonna be at santime be a songwriter. I
Speaker 1: was gonna be a songwriter and an independent artist and
Speaker 1: just be happy and content with that and just tour
Speaker 1: because I've always had a fan base, thankfully, because I've
Speaker 1: all I've ever known is playing live. You know, It's
Speaker 1: just what I do. So we've been touring forever, whether
Speaker 1: it be in my truck, I mean we stoid, we
Speaker 1: stoud get in my truck man on Craig's. I'm a
Speaker 1: Craigslist junkie, right, So I've had a million trucks off Craiglister, cars, whatever,
Speaker 1: and flip them and sell them just like people do houses.
Speaker 1: And Man were getting at Craigslist truck and drive eleven
Speaker 1: hours on a Friday night to West Virginia. I get
Speaker 1: up and play for an hour for five dollars, drive
Speaker 1: back the same night. I mean, we would just do
Speaker 1: anything we could to make ends meet and support a family.
Speaker 1: And and we've Man, I remember just feeling so rich.
Speaker 1: I mean literally, like I don't know what it was.
Speaker 1: We were like God, we are like doing We're making
Speaker 1: it like this is awesome, and we don't have a
Speaker 1: there's no record, do we not to answer anybody. It's
Speaker 1: amazing thing. And I mean just nothing, you know, just nothing,
Speaker 1: and but do we got to the point we're like
Speaker 1: rolling in a bus and stuff independent, like just a
Speaker 1: full blown prevote tour bus and playing show. Has got
Speaker 1: a great agent. I have the best agent in the world,
Speaker 1: like a guy, a guy who didn't care if I
Speaker 1: had a record doing not like just didn't care and
Speaker 1: just believed in what I did talent wise and for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, man, I didn't have to give a sales
Speaker 1: pitch and he just he didn't have to sell it,
Speaker 1: and he just joined with us and took it in stride,
Speaker 1: just like we do. So you're writing buy me a boat.
Speaker 1: Did you write that for you or were you just
Speaker 1: writing it to write? It's not just writing it to ride.
Speaker 1: At that point, um, brother, I I was listening to
Speaker 1: Hank Junior Records all morning. Came in Christo Ball and
Speaker 1: my co writer was like, what you want to write today?
Speaker 1: And uh, at that point I had already like pre
Speaker 1: I'd already prefaced him in the in like we had
Speaker 1: like one co right before that. I didn't preface him
Speaker 1: like I don't want to be an artist. But but
Speaker 1: he's like, dude, what are you talking to me? You
Speaker 1: want to be an artist like you? You're an artists.
Speaker 1: What you do, it's what you do. We went in and, um,
Speaker 1: I wrote the biggest song of my career. When you
Speaker 1: finished this song where you're like, ah, this is a
Speaker 1: good one, because you write a lot of songs, yes,
Speaker 1: I will say that. I was like, that's a good
Speaker 1: that is awesome. I love I actually loved that. And
Speaker 1: I remember telling Kelly about it before we got the
Speaker 1: demo and stuff. I remember like, I love this song.
Speaker 1: And we got the demo played for Kelly again, the
Speaker 1: brains of the operation said, that's a huge hit. We're
Speaker 1: gonna put that out. We gotta keep your touring going.
Speaker 1: So you put it up on iTunes? Yes, no label, nope, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but just did you? I mean you're running your own
Speaker 1: literally just run them on a little operation. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about it, you know. I'm just
Speaker 1: like whatever. I signed up on tune core of my
Speaker 1: with my like personal email and everything else. I mean,
Speaker 1: just whatever. It's I was like, God, you can click,
Speaker 1: you can go on like twenty different now I'm going
Speaker 1: on on all these man, I won't gonna sell five
Speaker 1: of these things, but this is gonna be awesome. Five
Speaker 1: between five. So, um, the quick version of this. You
Speaker 1: email me the song, I play it. It's skyrockets, Okay,
Speaker 1: all that happens. Now, what I want to know is
Speaker 1: that period between that happening in the song blowing up
Speaker 1: and the period you've signed a record deal. So I
Speaker 1: play it like five times in one morning, and it's
Speaker 1: obviously a hit because the people listening to the radio
Speaker 1: made it a hit. They download it like crazy. They
Speaker 1: love so fast forward past that day and want me
Speaker 1: through the next couple of months as you were trying
Speaker 1: to find a record that were they coming at you
Speaker 1: from different directions, different labels, and what happens then whenever
Speaker 1: there's a song that's huge from an unsigned artist, this
Speaker 1: is a fun part. So that happened. And by the way,
Speaker 1: thank you, you know what to say. That's why I
Speaker 1: glossed over it. You're welcome moving on. I know I
Speaker 1: know that, but I'm I'm just you know what kind
Speaker 1: of person I am, And I'm just I'm always gonna
Speaker 1: praise you for it. Man. You change your life. It's
Speaker 1: you change my kid's life. It's unbelievable. I really do
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Whether you can take it or not, I
Speaker 1: appreciate it. I'm the same way. I can't take compliments,
Speaker 1: but I mean that. Um So, here's what happened. You
Speaker 1: played the song. I wasn't even awake yet, as you
Speaker 1: well know, I know, we woke you up. I mean,
Speaker 1: you gotta understand. We just got back from the beach. Okay,
Speaker 1: I had that song trucky I'm McGraw, and and we
Speaker 1: we spent every little penny we made all that to
Speaker 1: buy an investment property, a little little eaty bitty beach condo. Right,
Speaker 1: we're down there, we're like redoing it. We're like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, we're making it so awesome making it. And uh.
Speaker 1: In the meanwhile, like I'm like, oh crap, I mean
Speaker 1: I got tu got tun quarter tomorrow, Kellers, you get
Speaker 1: two quarter tomorrow. And we're on the way back, and well,
Speaker 1: you know, we got in it. Like why why did
Speaker 1: I make you that like two o'clock in the more?
Speaker 1: You okay, it was we got it like two o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning. And I remember being on for Joy
Speaker 1: Week three weeks prior to that, and you said, if
Speaker 1: you've got anything, just send it to me as my buddy,
Speaker 1: and I was like, okay, and I because people will
Speaker 1: send me music and when I don't ask, I don't
Speaker 1: listen to it, right, But I asked you. I was like, dude,
Speaker 1: whatever you have, send it and you know and you
Speaker 1: know me, I'm just and for people listening to there,
Speaker 1: I'm just not that kind of guy. Like I'm just
Speaker 1: is not that guy. I don't want it to come
Speaker 1: off like oh man, and maybe he'll play my song
Speaker 1: right or maybe not even whoever would play myself. I'm
Speaker 1: just not that kind of guy. And you gotta understand.
Speaker 1: The day before you played it, I'm sitting there telling
Speaker 1: Luke Brian at a table in Deston, Florida. He's like,
Speaker 1: my on, what you guy going on? And I said,
Speaker 1: oh man, just nothing, just touring right and saw you know, Bubba,
Speaker 1: we're down here remodeling this thing. He's like, oh man,
Speaker 1: that's cool. And then the next morning you played it,
Speaker 1: and I saw him three weeks later, he's like, what
Speaker 1: the hell I mean are you kidding? So anyway, you
Speaker 1: played the song, I wasn't even up yet. I get up.
Speaker 1: I'm doing the dad thing. I mean, like Kelly is
Speaker 1: going to start. But We're just doing the normal deal, right.
Speaker 1: She's like, um, oh my god, uh turn the radio. Good,
Speaker 1: good your truck turning radio? Um, my phone's blown up,
Speaker 1: like probably won't playing your song. Like, what are you
Speaker 1: talking about? I mean, that's really what are you what
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't. I forgot I sent it to you.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that's how nonchalant it was, you know.
Speaker 1: And so I get in the truck and then we
Speaker 1: talked on the phone. And in the middle after I
Speaker 1: got off the phone with you and and Eddie and
Speaker 1: the and the crew there. I never forget that when
Speaker 1: I was talking to Edie and he was remember he
Speaker 1: was saying, it's going up the okay, right, I was
Speaker 1: talking to him. I never forget then when you hung
Speaker 1: up the phone and I got my first phone call
Speaker 1: from a record label, and it was Chris Lacy at
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers. And she was like, oh my god, um,
Speaker 1: what's going on. I'm like, I haven't heard from you,
Speaker 1: and like I never hear from you, you know that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. I mean what I mean at this point,
Speaker 1: I'm just whatever, you know, and she goes, do you
Speaker 1: want to record to it? I mean, do you even
Speaker 1: want to record it. I mean, I don't know, do you.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's up? Oh my god, what's going on?
Speaker 1: I mean I'm crying. I mean my dad's crying. I mean,
Speaker 1: what's going on? I mean, That's exactly how the conversation went.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't even know call call my wife.
Speaker 1: She's like, UM, can I call Johnaspisito at Warner Brothers,
Speaker 1: just the president of the label, you know, Can I
Speaker 1: call him? And can we can we just get a
Speaker 1: meeting with you? And I'm like, I'm thinking, boy, how
Speaker 1: the tables have turned and you have leverage? Do you
Speaker 1: have a you have? You have what they want? Which
Speaker 1: did they hit? Well, it's so that happens. And in
Speaker 1: the meantime. In the meantime, phone calls are swarming Kelly's phone, like,
Speaker 1: how did you get my wife's phone number? I'm talking
Speaker 1: like people we don't even know, people from like out
Speaker 1: of state, people from out of country. Literally record labels
Speaker 1: by one o'clock in the afternoon thirteen thirteen, solid real
Speaker 1: record deal offers like big ones, the biggest, the biggest
Speaker 1: you could get. I liked John Esposito and Chris Lacey,
Speaker 1: Scott Hendricks, Peter Strickland. I like the team. It was
Speaker 1: really good sign with them. By the way, thank you
Speaker 1: listen to this so I get in there. The vestage
Speaker 1: had to come. There's a very special lady that works
Speaker 1: at the label, and she would be embarrassing if we've
Speaker 1: even mentioned her. Probably she's like not that kind of
Speaker 1: person like to credit take credit for things. Her name
Speaker 1: is Lisa ray We love her very much, my brand manager.
Speaker 1: She pulled over her car. She was the first person
Speaker 1: I didn't know this. She was the first person before
Speaker 1: Chris Lacey, before anybody knew or even heard on the radio,
Speaker 1: who just happened to be listening to your show. I
Speaker 1: had no idea who I was pulled over a car
Speaker 1: and goes, oh my god, started calling everybody Warner Brothers.
Speaker 1: You have to get ahold of it. Do you know
Speaker 1: who Chris Jansen is? Chris Lace Like, of course the
Speaker 1: dude and turn it on. That's how the whole thing
Speaker 1: started without Lisa ray Man like for real, and she's
Speaker 1: one of our She's she's our tightest compadre at the label. Um,
Speaker 1: but without starting with you, bro, like it just I
Speaker 1: just can't even imagine where we would be. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: We got offered so many record deals. John Asposito was
Speaker 1: on vacation, flew in, we had a special meeting. Um
Speaker 1: I didn't I didn't need to take anymore in person
Speaker 1: meetings than that. See you signed with Warner Brothers, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, John Easo also on his death. But
Speaker 1: it was one of my favorite people in town. Like
Speaker 1: just a great dude. And also you know, ran hip
Speaker 1: hop label for a while. That was what I love
Speaker 1: about Hi, bro. I gotta tell you I've never told
Speaker 1: you this because we're gonna kick out of this and
Speaker 1: not gonna mention names because it it doesn't adder and
Speaker 1: and and I'm still actually you know, acquainted friends with
Speaker 1: these people. Um, we've had great successes together actually on
Speaker 1: other other projects. However, I wanted to tell you that
Speaker 1: two weeks before you played my song, I was in
Speaker 1: a label meeting trying to get signed off of not
Speaker 1: I was trying to get signed up buying me a
Speaker 1: boat and those kind of things. Okay, um off my
Speaker 1: tune Core project was about to come out, and they
Speaker 1: were Um, I just never forget a very very influential
Speaker 1: executive in town going that is not a hit that
Speaker 1: will never work. Country music is not going in that direction,
Speaker 1: and um kind of liked my other stuff, but basically
Speaker 1: just in a very rude way, wasted my time, showed
Speaker 1: up in sweatpants, like I didn't want to be at
Speaker 1: the meeting kind of thing, and it really, it really
Speaker 1: got me in a pretty big funk. I'm not gonna lie,
Speaker 1: and so that was when you played it. It was
Speaker 1: a big deal, and it was a big deal for
Speaker 1: my family, and it was it came at a time
Speaker 1: where I and you know this, I say this with
Speaker 1: a lot of pride. And now it's funny. I didn't
Speaker 1: really want a record deal. I wasn't really looking for one.
Speaker 1: Isn't that funny how life works. That's how a lot
Speaker 1: of life works. Yeah, it's like we were not looking
Speaker 1: for one man. We were not looking at all for one. Okay,
Speaker 1: we've been burnt. We've been burnt once before. I had
Speaker 1: one before that one that we got burnt that we
Speaker 1: didn't get burnt. I just like the label fell apart.
Speaker 1: It was just, yeah, I just didn't have a very good,
Speaker 1: awesome upbringing as far as record labels were concerned. And
Speaker 1: now I finally feel like we don't have a home.
Speaker 1: It's really cool because they really respect my artistry and
Speaker 1: it was more than just buy me a boat. They
Speaker 1: they let me make the records I want to make,
Speaker 1: and they respect my songwriting, which really matters to me.
Speaker 1: It really matters to me big time. And um, you know,
Speaker 1: we just would love Warner Brothers. And by the way,
Speaker 1: there was a guy um named Clay honeycut Um who
Speaker 1: was with my Heart Media at the time. And um,
Speaker 1: you know before I signed my deal, before I signed
Speaker 1: my deal, after you played it, before I signed the deal, um,
Speaker 1: he picked me as the first independent artist for the
Speaker 1: on Diverge program would buy me a boat, which is
Speaker 1: an unbelievable blessing and something that was huge and very
Speaker 1: um humbling for me. Also, before I signed the deal,
Speaker 1: c MT. Leslie fram Um came to Kelly. We want
Speaker 1: to we my my my bosses and and all of
Speaker 1: my cohorts and everybody. We want to come together. We
Speaker 1: want to make a music video independent for buying me
Speaker 1: a boat. And uh they funded the video. It was
Speaker 1: really an amazing thing and they did and then then
Speaker 1: the Warner Brothers deal h came in and took effect.
Speaker 1: After the you know, I had a meeting and everything
Speaker 1: was just such on the fast track, and um, then
Speaker 1: it all just happened and we're still We're like we're
Speaker 1: riding this huge wave and we we we don't want
Speaker 1: to get off of it. We really enjoy it it.
Speaker 1: But we're very thankful. Were very notice that the Grindstone
Speaker 1: we're still the same people, and um, we just we've
Speaker 1: learned a lot. We've learned what it's like to have
Speaker 1: the great successes of the music business now and um,
Speaker 1: the upsides and the downsides and then all the in betweens,
Speaker 1: and um we're join it. So as you talk about songwriting,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go through and I'll play a song that
Speaker 1: you wrote on give me about a fifteen second story
Speaker 1: about each of the songs. Alright, you ready we did
Speaker 1: how I'll always be Why don't we do? Truck Yeah,
Speaker 1: truck yeah? Dude. Um, I got in there with my
Speaker 1: boys low Cash and another cat named Danny Merick. Danny's
Speaker 1: a great guitar player and a great guy on a
Speaker 1: beat box kind of things. I don't know, man, Uh,
Speaker 1: I said, Uh, I said, well if yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: talking like dudes due in the locker room, and uh,
Speaker 1: Preston goes, whoooo, what about truck? Yeah, man, and I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, that would never work, and that's how
Speaker 1: the song came about. In about twenty minutes later, we
Speaker 1: had a song and that was my first ever cut
Speaker 1: recording artist cut period. Yeah, ended up being a single
Speaker 1: in the number one song. I had a couple of
Speaker 1: things recorded that like didn't mean anything. My first cut
Speaker 1: on a major artist was Tim McGraw Truck. Yeah. We
Speaker 1: were pushing Georgia, our youngest thought her around in the stroller.
Speaker 1: We just had her. That's how God works. How about
Speaker 1: this one? I Love this Life with loque freaking okay,
Speaker 1: same cruise, truck Yeah, same exact writers, all three entities.
Speaker 1: What's gonna be interesting is how you tell the story
Speaker 1: because I heard we heard this story from Preston, but
Speaker 1: I want to hear how you tell it because everybody's
Speaker 1: perspective is always different because you come from different sizes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no worse, So well, it will probably be pretty similar
Speaker 1: because we're we're very much on the same page. We
Speaker 1: all showed up at Danny's house and I was wired
Speaker 1: like on fourteen Mountain Dews or something, and I go
Speaker 1: in and, um, I'm just like you Can Can Can
Speaker 1: just playing guitar, and Danny's playing guitar as great guitar player,
Speaker 1: great melody guy, and we all just started rapping off words. Okay.
Speaker 1: And I have to tell you, I have to give
Speaker 1: a lot of credits to low Cash on a lot
Speaker 1: of these lyrics because they were feeling a low Cash
Speaker 1: song and I was feeling it for him. Now, I
Speaker 1: will say when Boys of Summer comes on. Yes, Preston,
Speaker 1: y asked Chris, It's totally my line. I love that line. Right.
Speaker 1: But man, we just started thinking about happy things, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, I don't naturally wake up and write
Speaker 1: these kind of songs. I naturally wake up and write
Speaker 1: like Dean Dylan, George Strait kind of songs. Okay, naturally
Speaker 1: when I wake up. I had to work at this one,
Speaker 1: and I'm proud to be a part of it. How
Speaker 1: about And this is the title track from Justin Moore
Speaker 1: from his record Off the Beaten Path, number one record. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Off the Beaten Path. This is my dude here, love him,
Speaker 1: like him and I have a relationship outside of anything worthwise,
Speaker 1: like when I need tickets. I mean, this is like
Speaker 1: solid dude, he is so solid. Um story behind the
Speaker 1: song fifteen seconds. Jeremy Stover, the same guy, wrote how
Speaker 1: will always be with Um who also produces Justin which,
Speaker 1: by the way, doesn't mean you're gonna get a Justin
Speaker 1: Moore cut. It just happens to be Um. I sang
Speaker 1: this demo actually, and it was a very much I
Speaker 1: don't mean to talk in third person here, but it
Speaker 1: was very much a Jansen song. It was gonna be
Speaker 1: on me as an artist, but I didn't have a
Speaker 1: record at the time, so what did that matter? Justin
Speaker 1: was cutting loved the song. Record of the song ended
Speaker 1: up being the title track to his number one record
Speaker 1: Off the Beaten Path. What's it like when Hank Junior
Speaker 1: cuts one of your songs? I mean, that's gotta I
Speaker 1: mean you mentioned you just go play Hank buddy, And
Speaker 1: then when he cuts one, thank you Julian Raymond who
Speaker 1: has uh produced that record and works at They Machined.
Speaker 1: What a great guy. If you don't know him, you
Speaker 1: need to. He's top notch. And thanks Hank Williams. I'm
Speaker 1: an old I'm an old friend of Hank Hanks, an
Speaker 1: old friend of mine. We go way back. Hank actually
Speaker 1: gave me my first opportunity to have a major tour
Speaker 1: Hank and Leonard Skinner and Lardy Friends tour two years
Speaker 1: in a row, and uh Ken Levitan also his manager,
Speaker 1: which was an amazing thing. Man, I got to Hank
Speaker 1: Junior cuts, and they are my greatest musical achievements as
Speaker 1: far as songwritings in certain period, because when you grew
Speaker 1: up listening to Whiskey Bent and hell Bound and Hank
Speaker 1: and and Hank Senior music alive. And then Hank Jr.
Speaker 1: Sends word through the grape vine to brother Jansen that
Speaker 1: he wants something that kind of sounds Whiskey Bent and
Speaker 1: hell Bnest but not Whiskey Bent hell Bond, just updated.
Speaker 1: And you send him those days are gone and he
Speaker 1: cuts it right off the bat. What was the other
Speaker 1: one you cut? God fearing man, It's gotta be cool
Speaker 1: to have when the hero thinks something your wrote. Bro. Honestly,
Speaker 1: my here. First of all, let me say my hero
Speaker 1: is Jesus, and my other hero is It's might surprise you,
Speaker 1: but my other hero, um whom you will meet at
Speaker 1: some point, is my father in law. It's great man,
Speaker 1: great man. We're like two piece in a freaking pod. Honestly,
Speaker 1: just different ages. Hank Junior though, is a musical definitely
Speaker 1: a musical influence, and I would guess you would say
Speaker 1: country music hero of mine. To have him record those
Speaker 1: songs do it was like, I'm telling you my greatest
Speaker 1: musical achievement as a songwriter ever it will always be
Speaker 1: because when you come from where I come, where you
Speaker 1: come for where we come from, born to boogie? Is
Speaker 1: it all my righty friends are coming overnight? That is
Speaker 1: the deal? And dude, not one but two, it was
Speaker 1: that was my great great honor. You played at the
Speaker 1: Republican National Convention instead of truck Yeah, you played Trump? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Whose idea wasn't the change of the word. Honestly, man,
Speaker 1: I got kind of backed into a corner that night.
Speaker 1: It was the Networks, So you're gonna play truck Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was gonna play truck yeah. Absolutely, just truck yeah.
Speaker 1: And um they were like, hey man, how would you
Speaker 1: feel about doing Trump yet? And I'm like, I don't, no,
Speaker 1: no if I feel so good about that? Uh you know,
Speaker 1: And it's not not because I like or dislike Trump.
Speaker 1: It's just I don't know if I feel good about
Speaker 1: doing that. It just wasn't the song in your mind.
Speaker 1: That's it. The song is what it is, right, and
Speaker 1: so it is what it is, A big hit. Everybody
Speaker 1: knows it. I've been warming up all day singing and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, and I was like, cool truck, Yeah,
Speaker 1: whoa right party song. It was their idea. But when
Speaker 1: in Rome do as the Romans do, you know what?
Speaker 1: It kind of worked out because Cruise is getting booed
Speaker 1: off stage. I started singing it and Trump walks out
Speaker 1: and goes he gives me that trump thumbs and I'm
Speaker 1: like with the mouth out, Yeah, it's good. It's so good.
Speaker 1: It was the song. Actually, excuse me, excuse me. It
Speaker 1: made me sappy when you did it. Okay, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. I win the debate. It's over. I won.
Speaker 1: You lost. That's a good oppresion. Dude. Hey man, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what to answer your question, It is true. Um,
Speaker 1: I've only ever played music to play music, that's the
Speaker 1: bottom line. And it was a gig, and it was
Speaker 1: a big gig. And you know what, no matter if
Speaker 1: it's for the left side of the road or the
Speaker 1: right side of the road. A gigs and gigs and
Speaker 1: gigs a gig. And at the bottom line is they
Speaker 1: pay you for that, of course, absolutely no, it was
Speaker 1: a paid gig. I looked at it as a tour show,
Speaker 1: which is exactly what it was. It just happened to
Speaker 1: get a little blown out of proportion because it's a
Speaker 1: big deal here this hold on, let's cling it out.
Speaker 1: I've never talked to you about this, and I wondered,
Speaker 1: whose idea wasn't to go Trump? Yeah, because they didn't
Speaker 1: make your bowls change their songs right. Well, you know
Speaker 1: they were big fans of mine, I guess, and they
Speaker 1: thought I was a rowdy guy. Like you said, this
Speaker 1: guy is a little bit wild and crazy. Um, you
Speaker 1: know what, looking back, to be frankly honest with you,
Speaker 1: looking back, probably wouldn't have done it. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not my song. First of all, it's Tim mcgrawls song.
Speaker 1: And out of respect to Tim, um, it's a mcgrawl song. However,
Speaker 1: it is what it is. You do things along your
Speaker 1: along your career path. You just kind of shoot from
Speaker 1: the hip and you go with it and you do
Speaker 1: what the situation calls for when it calls for it.
Speaker 1: And I didn't want to get stopped, you know, I
Speaker 1: was in the moment just happened. They're commercial this out
Speaker 1: now where they were seeing I don't know who's singing it.
Speaker 1: I don't either. It's weird. There's something to the truck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: commercial for a tripper? Is it Dodge or it's uh
Speaker 1: forward and they're singing truck Yeah. Yeah, it's not you.
Speaker 1: It's not Tim, it's not low Cash, it's not low cash,
Speaker 1: but it's truck. Yeah. They come, they come to you
Speaker 1: and say we're gonna do a Ford commercial queen your song.
Speaker 1: They didn't. I was just as surprised as you were
Speaker 1: when it came on, and just as surprise as you
Speaker 1: just saw it on TV. Where to god, I saw
Speaker 1: it on TV. It's a long story, and I unfortunately
Speaker 1: can't get into all the details. Even though we're getting praised. Um, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we'll get residuals off of because we're sorry
Speaker 1: that you get paid when you're a songwriter. Um. For
Speaker 1: those who don't know, it's it is a job. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's just like any other job, though
Speaker 1: you have to work really hard and hopefully you win. Um.
Speaker 1: But long story short, that didn't go all down as
Speaker 1: we all wanted it to collectively. However, again, some things
Speaker 1: just happen, and some things have to happen sporadically and
Speaker 1: very quick, and um, you know it's it's it just
Speaker 1: is what it is. The commercial is what it is.
Speaker 1: I would have preferred McGraw's version be out there again
Speaker 1: out of respect for my buddy, my friend Tim McGraw,
Speaker 1: who made a giant hit out of our song and
Speaker 1: gave us all a job as songwriters. So before we wrap,
Speaker 1: let's do a quick highlow of your career. Yes, hi, hi,
Speaker 1: not hello, the highest point of your career, just kidding,
Speaker 1: the highest point of my career, in your career, that's
Speaker 1: like the highlight for you here in that here and
Speaker 1: buy me about on the radio for the first time
Speaker 1: that morning. The low, the low, Um, I honestly the lower.
Speaker 1: I try not to pay attention too much to the
Speaker 1: low parts, but I guess, I guess if I had
Speaker 1: to pick one, when uh, when your record label just
Speaker 1: falls apart and you don't know what's gonna happen, I
Speaker 1: want to take you to another play in your personal life.
Speaker 1: Bring it you're high. My wife, well part of it,
Speaker 1: meeting her, marrying her, Um, everything, man, I really found
Speaker 1: true love and that's hard to find. I'm still one
Speaker 1: of the old time thinkers, I guess, classic thinkers. I
Speaker 1: still believe in real love and when you find it,
Speaker 1: you have to take care of it. And I really
Speaker 1: love my wife through I mean, I just love her
Speaker 1: the low the low in my personal life. UM, I
Speaker 1: would say probably any time before, any time before I
Speaker 1: give my heart to the Lord. When was When was
Speaker 1: that a two thousand and one? That's the day it
Speaker 1: became saved? Day became a Christian? Where were you Shelbyville,
Speaker 1: Tennessee First Baptist Church. Did you have a plan You're
Speaker 1: gonna raise your hand? Nope? Actually I said, I'm absolutely
Speaker 1: not doing that. I was at a Ken Freeman revival.
Speaker 1: Ken Freeman is a great um motivational speaker and pastor
Speaker 1: and evangelist. UM at least he was. I don't know
Speaker 1: what he's doing now, but never forget it. He uh
Speaker 1: was talking and it just hit me at my heart,
Speaker 1: and there I went, and I was the only person
Speaker 1: who went to the altar. So he walked up as
Speaker 1: you're walking freaking out, hearts racing, hearts, unbelievably racing. And
Speaker 1: I at that point had never been told about the
Speaker 1: word or at least in a way that I felt
Speaker 1: comfortable with it. That makes sense, And so I went
Speaker 1: up there by myself and that was it. Just just
Speaker 1: like that. I appreciate the talk. Man, It's been good, dude.
Speaker 1: This has been my honor. And I hope everybody listening
Speaker 1: downloads the crap out of hold in her thank you,
Speaker 1: and I hope and I say it not just to
Speaker 1: your face. I say it when you're not around, I tweeted,
Speaker 1: I say it to anybody will listen. Like I think
Speaker 1: propelling you're the best live performer I've ever seen. Thank you?
Speaker 1: Is it unfair to compare you and people with a
Speaker 1: huge pirate. Yet if you put two guys up on
Speaker 1: stage and you just say perform, I don't know it's
Speaker 1: better than you. Thank you very much. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that. I don't you've ever told the bails down
Speaker 1: in this podcast, because it would be alive. I did
Speaker 1: go check the day of everybody. But if you get
Speaker 1: a chance to see Chris out, go see him like
Speaker 1: he if he's playing with an accoustic guitar, he's got
Speaker 1: a full band. Whatever. I do think you are the
Speaker 1: but and I think it comes from having a grind
Speaker 1: for so long like you. You just didn't grow up
Speaker 1: with those skills put on too you. You worked for
Speaker 1: those skills because you can get to hustle. Still grinding, baby,
Speaker 1: and you're still hustling. You gotta always hustle, man. The
Speaker 1: minute you quit hustling, you lost. Chris Jansen download Holding
Speaker 1: Her or if you're listening to this any year whatever
Speaker 1: his song is now on the radio, don't let that
Speaker 1: one yea, I love it. If you're heard this year
Speaker 1: from now his new single that just came out, I
Speaker 1: love that one too. On it it's amazing. I trust me.
Speaker 1: These things last a long time. So yeah, whatever a
Speaker 1: song is, that's my favorite song on the radio, whatever
Speaker 1: it is right now, I love that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, alright, Chris,
Speaker 1: Thanks buddy. My point episode is this. Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to Episode twenties six of the Bobby Cast. Download the record,
Speaker 1: buy me about, check out all those songs, and thanks
Speaker 1: for us songs behind the songs. Thank you for using
Speaker 1: the artists that you aren't that you wrote for. Who's
Speaker 1: the guy behind the guy? Who's the big winner tonight? Mike,
Speaker 1: He's the big winner? That's who Mike? Follow him on
Speaker 1: Snapchatt he's our wonderful producer. Anything to ask before we go,
Speaker 1: You always have a great question or two. Anything you
Speaker 1: said you're back on the do how many of you
Speaker 1: drinking mountain dew? Mountain dew one and a half today?
Speaker 1: Not so, I'm not really back on it. You're the
Speaker 1: worst in mountain due time. Were you drinking? Oh, easily
Speaker 1: close to two twelve packs a day? Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: to drink it three later a day, and I would
Speaker 1: work out and drink it three. Yeah, I'll be like,
Speaker 1: oh feel good, let me have you. Let's get another one?
Speaker 1: All right? All right, thank you guys. We'll see you
Speaker 1: next time here on the Bobby Cast.