Speaker 1: All right, about to hop into a Bobby Cast with
Speaker 1: Jay de Marcus a Rascal Flats. Hope you enjoy this.
Speaker 1: Hes got a book coming out. I do want to
Speaker 1: mention a couple other things. First of all, um, we
Speaker 1: have our whole layers of of podcasts. By the way, Mike,
Speaker 1: I gotta text from somebody else that's about to come on?
Speaker 1: Does she sign? I think they're we're very soon to
Speaker 1: announcing a new podcast on being able to announce that. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: also have a very good for you as it. Thanks
Speaker 1: for the opportunity, right, um. Yeah, So we're got doning
Speaker 1: out the new podcast on the network, and I guess
Speaker 1: we can't yet, can't yet, But Caroline Hobby's podcast get
Speaker 1: Real is doing fantastic and it's always been great and
Speaker 1: I'm just glad that we can finally shine a light
Speaker 1: on it and let you go wow. Because she had
Speaker 1: on Taylor Young, Brett Young's wife. It's a really good
Speaker 1: one where she's like they broke up and she had
Speaker 1: to watch Brett Young get famous six years and he's
Speaker 1: like he's like he's out gotta go anyway, not as
Speaker 1: quick as that, But you shouldn't listen to that it's
Speaker 1: called Get Real with Caroline Hobby and it really is
Speaker 1: a fantastic podcast. Kelly Henderson has a podcast called Velvet's
Speaker 1: Edge and you know, she just had a big hit
Speaker 1: on that that very cavalry show, which was good for her,
Speaker 1: and she brings people on from that show onto our podcast,
Speaker 1: so you can check that out. Um, I'll mention that
Speaker 1: we the Raging Idiots are going on tour starting uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know when you hear this, but I will
Speaker 1: be all summer off fall, but Raging Idiots dot com.
Speaker 1: We're bringing out Walker Burrows from American Idol, the red
Speaker 1: haired kid who was really good playing the piano, look
Speaker 1: like Harry Potter and Emma Klein. And then, um, you
Speaker 1: can always check out Amy's podcast Four Things with Amy
Speaker 1: Brown really needs no introduction. If you love Amy, you'll
Speaker 1: love the podcast. Dude, what's her latest episode which she
Speaker 1: talks about, Oh, she has the Q and a one
Speaker 1: up today which she does every Tuesday. She answers people's questions.
Speaker 1: And then the last one, Um, she had on the
Speaker 1: guy from the Indiogram talking about like the is that what?
Speaker 1: Dave Heywood was like, what's your indiogram? Now? Yeah, don't
Speaker 1: you be able to come in here talking about that?
Speaker 1: I need to remember what mine is. I think mom
Speaker 1: is the three with the Yeah three watch three be
Speaker 1: like super douchy with small weener and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: thats um. So there's that. And then if you're into sports,
Speaker 1: check out The Sore Losers with Lunchbox and Raymundo and
Speaker 1: produce ready as they put up a new show like
Speaker 1: four times a week. That being said, there's this one
Speaker 1: we're about to get into. Is there anything I'm forgetting?
Speaker 1: I think that covers it. Yeah, coming up on this show. Um,
Speaker 1: I believe we have a Jude in the Lion podcast
Speaker 1: coming up, possibly in the next week or so. Morgan Evans,
Speaker 1: that's true. Who I Mike and I were talking off
Speaker 1: the end of the day. I can't believe he hasn't
Speaker 1: been on yet. I've talked with him about the podcast
Speaker 1: about ten times. Morgan Evans, who has um Sometimes you
Speaker 1: gotta kiss somebody, you know, uh he uh. He's a
Speaker 1: big listener, so shout out Morgan Evans. And he's also
Speaker 1: a friend, which I guess is why I didn't feel
Speaker 1: like I had talked to him on the podcast. I
Speaker 1: talked to him in real life. Um, so yeah, he'll
Speaker 1: be on two and um yeah, we're trying for some
Speaker 1: other ones. How's the have we Uh, Lauren Dagos gonna
Speaker 1: come by, not not this week or next week, but
Speaker 1: probably next month. Yeah, probably next month. And Belliray stars
Speaker 1: working on you, buddy. I know, how hard does it get?
Speaker 1: Maybe the little Nozak stuff got him because it was
Speaker 1: too busy right now, but maybe next month too, we'll
Speaker 1: be here. That being said, tell your friends about this
Speaker 1: if you don't mind, go back and check out any
Speaker 1: of the library of podcasts. And yeah, here we go
Speaker 1: with Jada Marcus from Rascal Flats trying to get a nut,
Speaker 1: trying to I'm the ultimate squirrel, always trying to get
Speaker 1: a nut, me too, buddy. And it's a book you
Speaker 1: name it, Episode one seventy seven with Jada Marcus Rascal Flats. Um,
Speaker 1: so we're talking, we're about to start saying us off
Speaker 1: the air because, uh, it's tough to sell books, especially
Speaker 1: when it's not what you're known for. Because that that's
Speaker 1: been my thing, is that write a book? What what
Speaker 1: what's Bobby? What does Jay know about books? And so yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to kind of go out and rehustle. You do. Wait,
Speaker 1: musicians can write. I read exactly, Yeah you do. I
Speaker 1: mean I'm always for a new challenge, though I'm I
Speaker 1: think you and I are wired more alike, probably than
Speaker 1: we know. I love to work like idle time does
Speaker 1: not serve me well. I can't sit around and you know,
Speaker 1: spend I'll start spending out about the silliest things if
Speaker 1: I do. You know, is it some sort of deeper,
Speaker 1: um maybe psychological thing that we like to work? Like?
Speaker 1: Are you trying to prove? Who? Are you trying to
Speaker 1: prove something to yourself? I think if you read part
Speaker 1: of that book, it would be my dad. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of me that feels like I never
Speaker 1: quite lived up to what he expected me to be.
Speaker 1: I guess that put a lot of pressure on me,
Speaker 1: which I used as fuel early on in life, but
Speaker 1: it still fuels me. And for me, it's been like
Speaker 1: I grew up in pretty close to poverty, and so
Speaker 1: it's like trying to prove to yeah, to everybody that
Speaker 1: so I wish my idol time. My my itchiness with
Speaker 1: idol time was just because I do love working. But
Speaker 1: I think I've convinced myself I love working because I'm
Speaker 1: trying to prove it to everyone that I can make it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that I have a little bit of that
Speaker 1: in me too. It's like when you whenever you have
Speaker 1: some success and you celebrate it, you don't celebrate it
Speaker 1: and live in the moment long enough, because I go
Speaker 1: I gotta do I gotta do more because I haven't
Speaker 1: done it, I haven't done enough yet. I gotta get
Speaker 1: back after it and go back out there and do
Speaker 1: something good again, and a lot of it. I like
Speaker 1: to try to prove to myself too that I can
Speaker 1: take on new challenges and have some degree of success
Speaker 1: with it, you know. And I guess I'm just wired
Speaker 1: that way. I am truly a workaholic. There is no
Speaker 1: doubt about it. I think it drives my partners crazy
Speaker 1: sometimes partners in all capacities or you're talking about in
Speaker 1: the band, and I'm talking about in the band, meaning
Speaker 1: you're always wanting to do what well. I always want
Speaker 1: to go. I mean, if there's money on the table, dates,
Speaker 1: let's go get it. If their work to be done,
Speaker 1: let's go do it. And Gary, I wish I had
Speaker 1: a little more him in me, because he loves to
Speaker 1: go out to the farm decompressed. I mean, he could
Speaker 1: stay out there for big chunks of times, and there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with that. We're just wired differently so to
Speaker 1: exist in the same band. Sometimes I'm like, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't think I can sit around for five months.
Speaker 1: I gotta do something but write a book. How long
Speaker 1: the um start to be a seed in you? I
Speaker 1: think years ago because I kept I keep journals, you know,
Speaker 1: I like keep notes of things so I can remember them.
Speaker 1: And I started keeping notes when Rascal Flats did our
Speaker 1: first radio tour literally that long ago, because I wanted
Speaker 1: to remember certain things in certain aspects of what we
Speaker 1: were doing. And I always thought, someday we may have
Speaker 1: a chance to write a book out into the future,
Speaker 1: sometime when this all comes to whatever close it's gonna
Speaker 1: it's gonna look like. And so I started keeping notes.
Speaker 1: And the more that I did, the more I started
Speaker 1: to reflect on my life, just myself, and and really
Speaker 1: reflect on all of the things that transpired to get
Speaker 1: me here to eventually meet Joe do on one day
Speaker 1: and then Gary come to town and us do what
Speaker 1: we have done. And it started to I started look
Speaker 1: at and go maybe there are some people that can,
Speaker 1: like be inspired by some of the crap that I
Speaker 1: went through, and maybe they can find their own hope
Speaker 1: to forge ahead and to get up, dust themselves off,
Speaker 1: keep moving forward. Because you know, a lot of times
Speaker 1: we see our favorite entertainers, actors, musicians, whatever they are,
Speaker 1: you see the culmination of a lot of stuff and
Speaker 1: a lot of hard work that got them to that point.
Speaker 1: You didn't just end up on American Idol one day
Speaker 1: by accident. You went through a lot of things to
Speaker 1: get you there. I didn't end up in Rascal Flats.
Speaker 1: I went through a lot of crap and a lot
Speaker 1: of hard stuff to get me there. And I think
Speaker 1: people deal with the same things you and I have
Speaker 1: done with, and they deal with the same adversity, the
Speaker 1: same tough times, and sometimes you want to quit. I mean,
Speaker 1: there were many times that I wanted to throw the
Speaker 1: talent in and move back home and just forget the
Speaker 1: silly dream of music career. And I didn't. I felt
Speaker 1: some ounce of hope here and there, some friend or
Speaker 1: some text or some something that would happen just in
Speaker 1: time before I would give up to how keep me going?
Speaker 1: The name of the book let me shout the book
Speaker 1: out here. Everybody knows you, but uh, Jada Marcus of
Speaker 1: Rascal Flats. It's called Shotgun Angels, My story of broken
Speaker 1: Roads and unshakable hope. And it's funny you mentioned all
Speaker 1: the crap that you go through, because and the first
Speaker 1: book that I wrote, I had to kind of relive
Speaker 1: some of that stuff which I just kept compressed for
Speaker 1: so long, just pushed it down inside, and it was
Speaker 1: tough to not just acknowledge it, but to kind of
Speaker 1: kind of dredge it all back up and relive it
Speaker 1: to to be in my form of accurate about it.
Speaker 1: Did you go through that at all? I went down
Speaker 1: joke the other day that I had a bottle of
Speaker 1: Vodkas sitting right by the laptop because I'd have to
Speaker 1: shut it and take a break sometimes. And when the
Speaker 1: stuff comes spoiling back up to the surface and you
Speaker 1: do relive it, if you're an emotional person at all,
Speaker 1: you feel those emotions all over again and how you
Speaker 1: felt when you were living through that. And that was
Speaker 1: one of the things that I didn't expect that kind
Speaker 1: of caught me off guard a little bit, that I
Speaker 1: would actually go back into it so deeply. But I
Speaker 1: definitely did, and and there were times and I just
Speaker 1: take a break from it. I stepped away, and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe that still
Speaker 1: affects me as strongly today as it did, you know,
Speaker 1: thirty years ago. It's wild to me. As I was
Speaker 1: reading Um, I didn't get a chance to finish it,
Speaker 1: and I might be read the whole thing, and he
Speaker 1: pulled out some parts for me to read. Um, the
Speaker 1: the how you guys got together, it's very interesting to me.
Speaker 1: I think we'll start there, and then I want to
Speaker 1: go back to the Christian band in the scholarship. There's
Speaker 1: a lot again stuff that and I felt like we've
Speaker 1: known each other, at least semi socially for a while.
Speaker 1: I had no idea a lot a lot of the
Speaker 1: stuff which is interesting, just on the music side of things.
Speaker 1: And so we'll go to back to the beginning of
Speaker 1: the Flats or Rascal Flats, not the Rascal Flats. So
Speaker 1: if for everybody's listening right now, call him the Rascal Flats.
Speaker 1: Dear God. So, um, we're gonna we're gonna move past college.
Speaker 1: We're get back to that in a minute. You're in
Speaker 1: town and you have a cousin that you guys weren't
Speaker 1: super close we were growing up, but we lost times
Speaker 1: last time, and which is Gary? Yeah? And Gary had
Speaker 1: been winning some karaoke competitions. Yeah. So I kept hearing
Speaker 1: grumblings back home when I would go back for the
Speaker 1: holidays that hey, you know your cousin Gary, he's been
Speaker 1: singing a little bit. And I'd be like, really, that's
Speaker 1: neat um and and and it wasn't that I was
Speaker 1: being mean about it, but I was following my own
Speaker 1: path and I had the Christian band. And then somebody
Speaker 1: told me that he was talking to a producer in
Speaker 1: l A about doing an R and B thing and
Speaker 1: that he and Jamie Fox had spent some time together.
Speaker 1: My uncle had actually told me that, and I was like,
Speaker 1: he knows Jamie Fox. That's kind of cool. And it
Speaker 1: was lost on me that again, he was talking about
Speaker 1: singing and doing a pop thing. And then my mom
Speaker 1: called me one day and she goes, now, your cousin
Speaker 1: Gary's gonna call you, and you need to listen to
Speaker 1: him singing. He's been winning some contests up here. He's
Speaker 1: been singing in Ohio, you know, Yeah, and you need
Speaker 1: to listen to him sing. I was like, Mom, are
Speaker 1: you kidding me? The last thing I want to do
Speaker 1: is tell some family member who I'm not really that
Speaker 1: close to anymore, you shouldn't try this. And she said, well,
Speaker 1: I've talked to She called Judy Gary's mother, Jude Babe.
Speaker 1: They were closer than sisters. They still are. She said, well, listen,
Speaker 1: I've already told Jude Babe that you're gonna listen to him,
Speaker 1: so you just need to let him come over there
Speaker 1: when he's down there and sing for you. Well, he
Speaker 1: was on his way to vacation in Florida, and he
Speaker 1: stopped by my apartment in Brentwood and I sat down,
Speaker 1: and I believe, if I'm remembering correctly, the first song
Speaker 1: he sang was One Last Cry by Brian McKnight, and
Speaker 1: I knew it well enough on the piano to kind
Speaker 1: of hack through it, and he just stopped me in
Speaker 1: my tracks. I mean, when he opens his voice and
Speaker 1: you hear that come out of him, it's otherworldly. I mean,
Speaker 1: I describe it in the book, is all of these
Speaker 1: ingredients of God, spool and R and B and country
Speaker 1: rolled up into one. I'd never heard anything quite like it. Before,
Speaker 1: and it had an immediate, identifiable personality to it that
Speaker 1: was just shocking to me. And we kept talking over
Speaker 1: the next several weeks, several months, and I said, you know,
Speaker 1: you got to move to town. It's never gonna find
Speaker 1: you in Columbus. And he was. He was struggling because
Speaker 1: he had a great job, he had debt, he had bills,
Speaker 1: he'd already forged a life for himself. And he called
Speaker 1: me one day and he said, that's it, I'm coming
Speaker 1: to town. I can't do this anymore. And if I
Speaker 1: don't do it, I'm afraid I'll regret it for the
Speaker 1: rest of my life. And he lived on my couch.
Speaker 1: I had a one bedroom apartment and he lived on
Speaker 1: my couch and we played everywhere we could, and when
Speaker 1: people would hear him, the reaction was just undeniable. You
Speaker 1: could see it in their faces. They were like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this guy is up there singing Merle Haggard,
Speaker 1: but singing like r and b licks in it. And
Speaker 1: now if you turn on country radio, you hear a
Speaker 1: whole host of singers that were touched by him and
Speaker 1: influenced by him. And that's a testament to what his
Speaker 1: gift was and what he was able to bring to
Speaker 1: this town and build upon. So you guys are playing
Speaker 1: show as a printer's alley a couple of nights a week,
Speaker 1: a few nights a week and doesn't even exist anymore.
Speaker 1: In the place we played it was a fiddle and
Speaker 1: steel guitar bar. I think it's a boutique hotel now.
Speaker 1: So you go and say, hey, Gary, we're gonna get
Speaker 1: a gig, just the two of us. And how do
Speaker 1: you get that gig? You go up and to say, hey, guy,
Speaker 1: here's the tape. What's that? I'll tell you. So the
Speaker 1: guy playing up on stage, we'd go in and hear
Speaker 1: him sing, and he would let us sit in and
Speaker 1: do a song. The owner was in there one night,
Speaker 1: Allison was her name, and Greg Perkins. They owned it together,
Speaker 1: and she walked over and she said, would you guys
Speaker 1: want to do a night here? And Gary said, I
Speaker 1: don't even live here full time. I'm just visiting on
Speaker 1: the weekends. She said, if you guys will do a
Speaker 1: couple of nights here a week, I'll fire him and
Speaker 1: give you his gig. The guy that you were singing,
Speaker 1: and the guy that was letting, the guy that that
Speaker 1: helped you. That's how cutthroat Nashville is. And and we
Speaker 1: so we left and we talked about it, and I said,
Speaker 1: do you do you want to do this? And then
Speaker 1: that that's I think that's around the time he called
Speaker 1: me and said, I'm moving to town. Let's take that
Speaker 1: gig and see see what happens. And it was the
Speaker 1: two of us sitting beside a cigarette machine. I had
Speaker 1: my keyboard and he had a mike, when I had
Speaker 1: two mikes, and we sometimes there were two people in there,
Speaker 1: sometimes there were twenty, sometimes there were forty. But slowly
Speaker 1: but surely, we we started to build a following that
Speaker 1: would come in and see us. And then the owners
Speaker 1: came to us and said, we're thinking about buying the
Speaker 1: other side of this building, knocking down the wall that
Speaker 1: separates the two, putting a stage together. Would you put
Speaker 1: a band together? And I knew a bunch of guys
Speaker 1: from various bands, and I was sitting in with and
Speaker 1: Gary and I were friends with a circle of buddies
Speaker 1: that were great musicians and had been playing in different
Speaker 1: places with them. So we put a band together. And
Speaker 1: so you're playing with Shelley right at this time to
Speaker 1: write like, as your main right, you're play keys? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was, I was your band later. Okay, so you're
Speaker 1: running the band, your playing keys, and you had hired
Speaker 1: a guitarist, which was Jodan. And so when you're putting
Speaker 1: the band together, is that when you bring Jodan in. No,
Speaker 1: he didn't start playing with us right away. A guy
Speaker 1: named Shane Sutton played with us. Fantastic player, fantastic singer,
Speaker 1: and we were playing down there for probably several months.
Speaker 1: And then I get a call one night and Shane says, man,
Speaker 1: I can't get out of bed. I've got the flu,
Speaker 1: I've got a fever, and I'm sorry to do this
Speaker 1: to you, but I can't make it tonight. It was
Speaker 1: on a Monday night, and I thought, oh, no, what
Speaker 1: are we gonna do. I know who can play this.
Speaker 1: I know who can do it. I'm gonna call Jodan.
Speaker 1: I called him up and I said, hey, what are
Speaker 1: you doing tonight? And he's like nothing, I'm just sitting around.
Speaker 1: I said, let's let's uh, let's play tonight. You want to?
Speaker 1: You want to sit in with us? I said, I've
Speaker 1: been telling you about my cousin. Anyway, I want you to.
Speaker 1: I want you to hear him and meet him in
Speaker 1: real life. And I've been telling, you know, Gary about
Speaker 1: jod On how talented he was. And so we pull
Speaker 1: up at the club and jod On sitting his guitar
Speaker 1: amp up and he's up there tuning up. Gary looks
Speaker 1: at me, he goes, who is that? I said him out, man,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to tell you this, but Shane sick,
Speaker 1: and he goes, are you kidding me? This guy isn't
Speaker 1: gonna know a thing that we do. We gotta play
Speaker 1: a little three am and if this sucks, I'm out
Speaker 1: of here. You can have this by yourself. And I
Speaker 1: was like, Gary, please, like, just give him the shot.
Speaker 1: He would barely even speak to jod On. It was
Speaker 1: so funny. He was so frustrated. And I understand. See
Speaker 1: Gary was getting up at four thirty am to throw papers.
Speaker 1: So we finished in the club at two. He slept
Speaker 1: and he go right right to work throwing papers. So
Speaker 1: I understood his frustration. But man, we got up there
Speaker 1: together and the first song, I think we played it
Speaker 1: on one of your shows. The first song we ever
Speaker 1: played together was Church on the Cumberland Road by Shannondah,
Speaker 1: and we hit that first course, man, and I don't
Speaker 1: know what happened, but it was just we all knew immediately.
Speaker 1: We looked at each other like that is good and
Speaker 1: we've got to have more of that. So Shane, that
Speaker 1: original guitar players a name, right, he basically wally pipped
Speaker 1: and while he played far Spaces for the Yankees forever,
Speaker 1: and while he got hurt, nothing, he didn't do anything wrong.
Speaker 1: And he got hurt, and uh, here it comes Loue Gary,
Speaker 1: who's gonna fill in? And then here it's now the
Speaker 1: Lue Gary world. What does Shane say about that? Shane
Speaker 1: Shane still buddy of Arrish. We still see him out
Speaker 1: playing with different artists and playing guitar. But he you know,
Speaker 1: he obviously gives us massive amounts of crap for us
Speaker 1: firing and basically you never I had to call him
Speaker 1: and tell him he couldn't come back, and that was
Speaker 1: really awkward. I was like, I think we're gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and stick with Joe Don but I think anybody
Speaker 1: that heard us sing together, and he would definitely tell
Speaker 1: you this to God, that there was a special, uh
Speaker 1: chemistry in a blend that we had that was not common.
Speaker 1: What was happening in Nashville at that time. Though you
Speaker 1: got you three or now you go, okay, this might
Speaker 1: be something, But what was like the environment like because
Speaker 1: you guys cut through so hard because you were so different.
Speaker 1: Now you kind of aided where everyone else has gone,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't seem like you're that different. You guys
Speaker 1: have opened these roads up for a lot of artists nowadays.
Speaker 1: At the time, who was popping around town where you're where,
Speaker 1: they're like, you know what, You're not like them. We
Speaker 1: don't know if this can be a thing quite yet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, Nashville was was pretty safe back then. I
Speaker 1: mean there were glimpses of pop in music. I mean
Speaker 1: you had your South sixty fives and your uh forget
Speaker 1: Marshall Dillon was around. But they were definitely trying to
Speaker 1: be five guys that danced and we're bringing trying to
Speaker 1: bring the boy band vibe over the country music. And
Speaker 1: it really wasn't resonating because they didn't play instruments. It
Speaker 1: was it felt no offense to those guys that were
Speaker 1: trying to make a living and do something, but it
Speaker 1: felt contrived, honestly, And we were fans of bands that
Speaker 1: were really great harmony bands like Diamond Rio and Shannondoah
Speaker 1: at the time, and the Eagles were a huge influence
Speaker 1: on us. So that's that's really what we were trying
Speaker 1: to do, was bring elements of what we loved about
Speaker 1: pop music still great authentic harmonies and the songs, the
Speaker 1: meat on the bone of the songs with something to
Speaker 1: say in a different way. It's really what we tried
Speaker 1: to hone in on and and make the foundation of
Speaker 1: of what we were. We weren't even really trying to
Speaker 1: be a band. We didn't set out to do that.
Speaker 1: I wanted to produce and write and help Gary get
Speaker 1: a record deal so that I could try to be
Speaker 1: a record producer and and be successful in in that way.
Speaker 1: I had already done the artist thing and we know
Speaker 1: how that turned out. But the book, but it's sort
Speaker 1: of had no aspirations to do another artist thing. I
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of forge a different career. But the
Speaker 1: more we had a following and the more we sang together,
Speaker 1: it just felt like it was evolving into that. Let's
Speaker 1: rewind um. I grew up Pentecostal for a while, my
Speaker 1: grandmother was Pentecostal. You did, yeah, and you know it's
Speaker 1: for me that when they would speak in tongues, that
Speaker 1: scared the crap out of me too. And so I
Speaker 1: remember going and my grandmother who adopted me for a
Speaker 1: long time, uh, and she would speak in tongues and church,
Speaker 1: and it never became something that I was just like, Oh,
Speaker 1: this is I was always scared by it. Um, this
Speaker 1: that that there was so much passion and love in
Speaker 1: a Pentecostal church, no doubt the most by the way
Speaker 1: of all of you know, my time of of you know,
Speaker 1: being really in the fabric of church, that was that
Speaker 1: that was the closest I'd ever seen church. So as
Speaker 1: much as I'm like that scared me, it was also
Speaker 1: I've never seen a close knit group like the Pentecostal church. Um,
Speaker 1: what was your experience, because I know that's that was
Speaker 1: a big part of your life. Much the same I
Speaker 1: was scared to death. They always told you to bring
Speaker 1: your friends to church, and I'd say to my mom,
Speaker 1: why would I ever scare I want my friends to
Speaker 1: see what lunatics you guys act like when you run
Speaker 1: around and speaking tongues and jump all over the pews
Speaker 1: and everything. And and I was never and you know,
Speaker 1: this is the truth though I have to say it,
Speaker 1: I was never very very comfortable in that environment because
Speaker 1: it wasn't the way that I believed that I needed
Speaker 1: to express myself and my beliefs, and it would and
Speaker 1: it always troubled me a little bit, but I admired
Speaker 1: the fact that people were so dedicated to it, and
Speaker 1: You're absolutely right, there was so much love, so much um.
Speaker 1: I've always felt like I was surrounded by a family
Speaker 1: of people that would do anything in the world for me,
Speaker 1: even though I may not have agreed with exactly how
Speaker 1: they went about it, you know. So for me, I'm
Speaker 1: glad that I went through that because it laid a
Speaker 1: really deep foundation to ford the groundwork for my faith
Speaker 1: later on in life. And I had to really figure
Speaker 1: out what I believed and why I believed it, because
Speaker 1: I knew I didn't believe a much of that stuff
Speaker 1: that I was exposed to. And I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: it wasn't real. It was real for them, whatever that was.
Speaker 1: But I had to deconstruct my belief system and figure
Speaker 1: out why I believed when I believed and not just
Speaker 1: because I was indoctrinated with it when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: And so you start to play music, but you're playing
Speaker 1: Christian music. Now, why why Christian music? Well, I wasn't
Speaker 1: allowed to listen to quote unco secular music when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, you know, I couldn't listen to Kiss
Speaker 1: and a C d C. And until later on in life,
Speaker 1: like a lot of the kids were listening to that.
Speaker 1: So I went turned to bands like Petra and Milon
Speaker 1: Lefevre and White Heart and bands that were rock but
Speaker 1: we're using a positive christ centered message. Those were my influences.
Speaker 1: And so going to church and believing in God myself
Speaker 1: and believing in Christ myself, I started to write a
Speaker 1: lot of that kind of music. And the more I wrote,
Speaker 1: the more I really got into that and felt like
Speaker 1: maybe that was what I was supposed to do. And
Speaker 1: when I got to college and I was working at
Speaker 1: the studio there on on the campus, I was doing
Speaker 1: all kinds of demos and having my roommate Neil sing
Speaker 1: the demos, and I was mailing them to publishers to
Speaker 1: try to get a songwriting deal. And I got a
Speaker 1: call from Benson Records one day, Don Cook at Benson Records,
Speaker 1: not the Country, Don Cook, the KO c H. And
Speaker 1: he said, I love your band we'd like to bring
Speaker 1: into town to talk about doing a record on you,
Speaker 1: And of course had to tell him we're not a band.
Speaker 1: I was just trying to get a pub deal. But
Speaker 1: so as you're deciding where to go to school, the
Speaker 1: the these these folks come to you and say, if
Speaker 1: you'll go to school here, we'll pay We'll actually pay
Speaker 1: you away your debt, We'll pay your carpet. Like they say, hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna write you chup by three thousand dollars. But
Speaker 1: it was yeah, something like that, We're gonna pay if
Speaker 1: you come to school here and perform with the band
Speaker 1: that was at school. Yeah. Um, so this this guy
Speaker 1: was known for hand picking the best musicians at the
Speaker 1: school and putting together a recruiting ensemble. So this this
Speaker 1: particular group of kids would be four singers for musicians,
Speaker 1: a couple of other road crew and things, and they
Speaker 1: we traveled on a on a tour bus and um,
Speaker 1: we went around the youth camps, convence youth conventions, We
Speaker 1: went around the churches, we went around the camp meetings
Speaker 1: and going in Pentecostal church. I know, you know what
Speaker 1: a camp meeting is. But we would sing and then
Speaker 1: we would talk about the school and so try to
Speaker 1: recruit kids to come to school. We'd go overseas. I
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to see a whole bunch of the
Speaker 1: world at a very young age playing with that group.
Speaker 1: But as long as you played in that group, you
Speaker 1: could keep your scholarship, you can keep going to school.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what my job was. So a
Speaker 1: lot of these kids that would go home for this
Speaker 1: summer that wasn't me. I toured my all of my
Speaker 1: summers in school, and Neil and I were dear friends.
Speaker 1: We became dear friends, and lo and behold we ended
Speaker 1: up in East West together. And here is uh the
Speaker 1: number one song from East to West, Prince of Peace.
Speaker 1: How long has mit you heard this? Oh, my lord?
Speaker 1: Probably years, probably now as I was doing my research
Speaker 1: about East to West that I look like they were
Speaker 1: more than one lead singer. We both we both shared.
Speaker 1: You both were doing the lead. What's that sort of
Speaker 1: dynamic when you have dual lead singers. Well, it worked
Speaker 1: well for us because I played bass and keys too
Speaker 1: soon and then there's no doubt Neil did the lion's
Speaker 1: share of the lead vocals, and I would take a
Speaker 1: verse here there, and you know, and and and that
Speaker 1: sort of thing, and and maybe sing one song on
Speaker 1: the albums I would sing. So it worked really really
Speaker 1: well because I cared, you know, I was such a
Speaker 1: musician and muso head that I wanted to like play
Speaker 1: everything I could and play a lot of it on
Speaker 1: the record, and so I was content to let Neil
Speaker 1: kind of shine and do his own thing. And he
Speaker 1: was a fantastic singer. But it worked well for us.
Speaker 1: Here is welcome to the next level from East to West.
Speaker 1: When you can hear those Mr Mr and Go West influences,
Speaker 1: can't you definitely an here that era? Yeah, when you're
Speaker 1: in a Christian man, do you get girls? Yes, but
Speaker 1: they've got to be Christians. I'm just kidding, but you know,
Speaker 1: like do you get girls like are they just are
Speaker 1: they like, hey, band, guys, we'd like to have fellowship.
Speaker 1: I mean, let's go to Bible stuff. Yeah, Like yeah, No,
Speaker 1: It's definitely not like it is in country music or
Speaker 1: pop for sure, But there are girls that are hanging around,
Speaker 1: you know, there are It's funny that you know, you're
Speaker 1: you're dull lead singing and that's such a funny question,
Speaker 1: and you're still going. You know, I'm content with playing
Speaker 1: because I think that's a big part of why again
Speaker 1: from the outside looking at and why flats have been
Speaker 1: able to be so wonderful is that you can sing,
Speaker 1: but you're actually okay not being the lead. When I
Speaker 1: stand next to somebody that sings like Gary does every night,
Speaker 1: it's like, what's the point. I love to sing and
Speaker 1: I but I love singing harmony with him because I
Speaker 1: feel like we have something unique and he's you know,
Speaker 1: it's like anything he sings is better ten times better
Speaker 1: than anything I would come up with. And that's okay.
Speaker 1: I think one of our strengths is we realize what
Speaker 1: gifts and strengths we all three individually bring to the table,
Speaker 1: and we try to lean on those with each other.
Speaker 1: And uh, you're right, I am okay because I get
Speaker 1: to sing beside one of the greatest vocalists I've ever
Speaker 1: had the privilege of being around every night. And that's
Speaker 1: a treat, you know, for me. I would listen to
Speaker 1: the Google Dolls and they had this basis and these
Speaker 1: things like one or two cuts every record, get so annoyed,
Speaker 1: like trying to be Johnny Resu be the lead singer yeah,
Speaker 1: I get it's rare that there's a band um. I'll
Speaker 1: give you a couple examples, but they do different things.
Speaker 1: Lincoln Park had two singers. They had uh Mike Shinoda
Speaker 1: and they had um In Chester Bennington. Chester would be
Speaker 1: the vocalist, the straight and Snoda. Would you like the
Speaker 1: rapping bear naked ladies that Stephen and Ed? And Stephen
Speaker 1: was the big singer and Ed was kind of the
Speaker 1: rappi guy, which Steven got kicked out of Manford the
Speaker 1: whole thing. Yeah, did you guys ever talk about that
Speaker 1: in flats where like you would do songs. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to be that annoying guy. It's like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: we know the bass player sings too. But I will
Speaker 1: tell you when we played the clubs, you know, we'd
Speaker 1: have to play five hours a night. So we passed
Speaker 1: around the lead vocals a lot more often back then,
Speaker 1: because it's a lot to ask Gary to sing five
Speaker 1: hours a night in in smokey barbers. Back then you
Speaker 1: could still smoke in the bar rooms, and so we
Speaker 1: did sing a lot more. But I saw the value
Speaker 1: of having that lead vocalists established, and the sound that
Speaker 1: he had was so identifiable. And so great that it
Speaker 1: wouldn't It just wasn't that important to me to have
Speaker 1: a song on the record where I sing. Now, Joe
Speaker 1: Don and I have sung verses here and there on
Speaker 1: some songs, but I just don't think it's that important
Speaker 1: to either one of us to like, oh look at me,
Speaker 1: I can sing a lead vocal too. I love bands
Speaker 1: that have multiple lead singers, by the way. I mean
Speaker 1: the Eagles, I mean Lady Annabellum. I love that they
Speaker 1: all sing. I love that, you know, we can go
Speaker 1: back to Chicago, Peter s Terror and Bill Champlin and
Speaker 1: you know Terry Cat when he was still alive. So
Speaker 1: there is a merit in that, I think, and we
Speaker 1: could certainly sing a song, but it's just never been
Speaker 1: that important to us. Today's technology makes it a lot
Speaker 1: easier for a lot of things because you're connected. Your
Speaker 1: cell phone is connected to your tablet, your tablets connected
Speaker 1: to your smart TV, and they're all connected to your WiFi.
Speaker 1: But it may take only one week clean and all
Speaker 1: those connections for criminal to get in. That's why LifeLock
Speaker 1: identity depth protection adds the power of Norton security. While
Speaker 1: life Flock uses pro prietary technology to detect possible threats
Speaker 1: to your identity, like your info for sale in the
Speaker 1: dark web. Norton Security helps protect up to five of
Speaker 1: your devices from online threats like ransomware, and if there's
Speaker 1: a problem there, dedicated agents will work to fix him.
Speaker 1: Of course, no one can to prevent all identity depth
Speaker 1: or cyber crime, or monitor all transactions at all businesses,
Speaker 1: but LifeLock with Norton gives you more protection for today's
Speaker 1: connected world. Join now get ten percent off your first
Speaker 1: year head to life flock dot com into the promo
Speaker 1: code bones. That's promo code bones for ten percent off
Speaker 1: your first year LifeLock dot Com promo code Bone. So
Speaker 1: how'd you get ready today? To shower, brush, teeth, wash face,
Speaker 1: doyle your hair. I'm asking because it's a proud member
Speaker 1: of Dollar Shave Club. I'm here to tell you that
Speaker 1: no matter what you do to get ready, Dollar Shape
Speaker 1: Club has everything you need to look feeling samell your best.
Speaker 1: If you want to clean mouth and fresh breadth right,
Speaker 1: the intense peppermint flavor of Dollar Shaped Clubs toothpaste will
Speaker 1: wake you up and last a surprisingly long time. They're
Speaker 1: hydrating body cleanser smells awesome skin tells you right after
Speaker 1: your shower, but hope, showering and brushing your teeth are
Speaker 1: just part of how you get ready. But no matter
Speaker 1: how you do, Dollar Shave Club has everything that you need.
Speaker 1: And I haven't even mentioned their razors and shave butter
Speaker 1: that everybody knows them for, including myself. Right now, you
Speaker 1: can get a Dollar Shape Club Starter set for just
Speaker 1: five dollars each. They got a shower set, a tooth basted,
Speaker 1: a toothbrush set, all their famous shade butter, the razor,
Speaker 1: any of those sets just five bucks and it's the
Speaker 1: best way to try out their amazing products. It's a
Speaker 1: great gift after your starter set products ship at a
Speaker 1: regular price. Right get your today Dollar Shaved Club dot
Speaker 1: Com slash bones Dollar Shave Club dot Com slash Bones.
Speaker 1: You know, for me and I related with the first
Speaker 1: part of your book as it starts, because I've just
Speaker 1: I've been at the right place a few times, but
Speaker 1: I've been at that place when it's the wrong place
Speaker 1: many many many times, and where you just sit there
Speaker 1: and go, man, just can't wait for my shop one
Speaker 1: day on one day, one day, and you know, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden I'll give you an example, um,
Speaker 1: because I think your book starts with a really great
Speaker 1: story about just life in general. Um, just a recent example.
Speaker 1: I've been working on Idol now as a mentor you
Speaker 1: know have you know, I'm on every episode, have a
Speaker 1: bit parts, but that's Luke and Katie and Lionel Show
Speaker 1: and Ryan Show and I come on and I'm on
Speaker 1: ten fifty minutes two hours, which great, a great look
Speaker 1: for me. But Ryan got sick and they're like, it's
Speaker 1: fifth team. Minutes before the show starts, we need somebody
Speaker 1: to host the show, Bobby, we need to host American Idol.
Speaker 1: And I'm like great, Like for fifteen years, I've been
Speaker 1: just waiting for this shot, right way to wait. And
Speaker 1: you know, you read the news the next day and
Speaker 1: it's like, wow, this guy lucked out. He got I
Speaker 1: was like, wait, I've been in the wrong place so
Speaker 1: many times, like ten thousand times, nothing's happened. And I
Speaker 1: find and then but because of that that one look
Speaker 1: I got where Ryan got sick. Now a lot of
Speaker 1: these doors have opened up because I got a stage
Speaker 1: and I was able to do relatively well. And and
Speaker 1: your book starts with the dude get it's like a
Speaker 1: dude get six snow storm. He's stuck in a snowstorm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can't. He can't get there, so you you sing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The owner of the venue said, I've got a house
Speaker 1: full of people and no artist. What are we gonna do.
Speaker 1: Can somebody go out and like, do af you praise
Speaker 1: worship songs and explain our situation? And I said, I
Speaker 1: got a keyboard, like I can go out and sing
Speaker 1: some songs. And you know, miraculously enough they stayed and
Speaker 1: we ended up doing about an hour, you know, And
Speaker 1: it was one of the first legitimate times I thought, well,
Speaker 1: there's opportunity meeting preparedness, like I had practiced my whole
Speaker 1: entire life for that one moment, really, and I was
Speaker 1: a nervous wreck, but you know how those things go.
Speaker 1: You feel confident in your ability and your skill set
Speaker 1: enough to go. I'm a nervous wreck, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: overcome and suppress these nerves so I can go to
Speaker 1: go out there and do what I feel like I'm
Speaker 1: meant to do. And I even say then in the book,
Speaker 1: there was a moment where everything slowed down. I took
Speaker 1: a deep breath, and I was like, Yeah, I'm in
Speaker 1: my element. This is what I'm supposed to be doing.
Speaker 1: Isn't that crazy? I felt the same way. It was like, White,
Speaker 1: I have to one a fifteen minutes. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: no time for rehearsal. But about a third of the
Speaker 1: way through the show, I went, oh, like yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a big deal. But this is what I've been
Speaker 1: waiting to do, Like I've worked to get here, and
Speaker 1: my skill set is that to be good on the prompter,
Speaker 1: good with people. I know. I know Luke and Lionel
Speaker 1: really well know Katie a little bit, so I can
Speaker 1: talk with them, and well, for get the prompter. You're
Speaker 1: good on your feet too. More importantly, yes, you know,
Speaker 1: the prompter could go dead, and I'm quite sure you
Speaker 1: could carry the whole show by yourself. And that people.
Speaker 1: It amazes me too, because I've I've done a little
Speaker 1: bit of that. I've done some acting, I've done a
Speaker 1: little bit of podcasting and hosting some things here and there,
Speaker 1: and I co host the Tennessee Miss Tennessee pageant with
Speaker 1: my wife for the past twelve years. And people don't
Speaker 1: appreciate how hard it is to get up in front
Speaker 1: of a crowd, especially live television, and have to stretch
Speaker 1: and fill in blank spaces while people are screaming into
Speaker 1: your ears what's coming next and what you need to
Speaker 1: talk about next? And I have to say, even to
Speaker 1: this day, you and I don't spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time visiting with one another, but you're one of the
Speaker 1: best set and I've ever seen, and and and and I.
Speaker 1: You know, the future is only going to get brighter
Speaker 1: for you. Man, you're scratching the surface getting older. I'm
Speaker 1: older than you. You know your wife, Though I like
Speaker 1: your wife a lot, he's only been super kind to me.
Speaker 1: She's awesome. So she has I come through yet with
Speaker 1: finding me a girlfriend. Every time I serious that I
Speaker 1: want to set you up, never not once. Well, you
Speaker 1: know you need to um start a Christian band. I
Speaker 1: apparently I don't need this wart any more. Band get
Speaker 1: a girl pregnant, then you get kicked out of that
Speaker 1: said Christian band. So okay, that was the first story
Speaker 1: that I and for me when I wrote my first book,
Speaker 1: I just wonder what they were going to run with,
Speaker 1: like because you send it out to people click bait
Speaker 1: and you go what clickbait? Well, they create and yours
Speaker 1: was said, you gotta go a pregnant and so at
Speaker 1: the gap, but you're gonna play at the gap you
Speaker 1: met out the gap, although that had been a great Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the clickbait. You get pregnant at the gap, inter gap.
Speaker 1: Yeah in both. Yeah, that would have been truer, that
Speaker 1: would have been true. Uh, so many places that could go.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, that was You know, people people have said
Speaker 1: to me, it's hard to believe that you had sex
Speaker 1: one time, and there's no reason to make that story up.
Speaker 1: It coulduced as easily say we had sex a hundred
Speaker 1: times and I ended up getting pregnant with the same result.
Speaker 1: But it is the truth. It was one time condom broke.
Speaker 1: My life turned around in one instant, and everybody that
Speaker 1: had anything to do with me in my career at
Speaker 1: that point in my life, um, most of the people.
Speaker 1: There were some great friends that stood by me and
Speaker 1: supported me and loved me no matter what. But most
Speaker 1: of the people, some of whom had jobs because of
Speaker 1: my career scattered. I got dropped by my record label, management,
Speaker 1: booking agency at all just went away. And I say this,
Speaker 1: I believe all too often people that call themselves Christians
Speaker 1: kill their wounded instead of nursing them back to health
Speaker 1: and making sure that they're okay. And that's what pisces
Speaker 1: me off so much about organized religion. It's so judgmental,
Speaker 1: and it's so easy to cast a stone at somebody
Speaker 1: when they've got a million problems of their own and
Speaker 1: they battle millions of demons themselves. And that's what I
Speaker 1: wanted to write the book for, was to say there's
Speaker 1: a different side to being a believer, and being a
Speaker 1: believer doesn't mean that you're perfect. It's actually quite the opposite.
Speaker 1: It's admitting that we're all flawed human beings that need help.
Speaker 1: I don't believe any of us are meant to live
Speaker 1: through this life alone and handle all of this crap
Speaker 1: by ourselves. You know. It's almost that their strength and vulnerability,
Speaker 1: you know, the same thing that you're saying right there,
Speaker 1: like we think that the right thing is to be
Speaker 1: the right whatever right means, by the way, it was
Speaker 1: um right, yeah right? So so the only a sex
Speaker 1: are one time Connor broke? Did you know immediately the
Speaker 1: Connon broke? I knew, I knew it broken. You know,
Speaker 1: we're getting down in the weeds here, yeah, we are.
Speaker 1: We are did the well, I I realized after we
Speaker 1: had finished, and I freaked out so badly she she left.
Speaker 1: She didn't want to anything to do with me. She
Speaker 1: was like, you're freaking me out. This is so weird.
Speaker 1: It's not like that these things aren't happen. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be okay. I said, you don't understand. And I was
Speaker 1: really freaking out because I had made a commitment to
Speaker 1: myself and and the trying to do it the right way.
Speaker 1: I was gonna wait till I was married, have have
Speaker 1: sex on the wedding night, do the whole thing that
Speaker 1: you're taught to do when you're a Bible believing Christian,
Speaker 1: and I wanted that was important to me and I
Speaker 1: failed in that. But the first to have sex ever
Speaker 1: though well during while I was in the Christian band,
Speaker 1: though I definitely lived when I was trying to stand
Speaker 1: for you know, but when you're in the Christian band,
Speaker 1: like like, would you have sex with girls? No good
Speaker 1: for you? I did before. I mean when I was
Speaker 1: in college, I went through a phase where I lost
Speaker 1: my mind. But when I when I was in the
Speaker 1: Christian band, I was very good about and I dated
Speaker 1: a girl that was in a was a Christian artist too,
Speaker 1: so it was easy for us to help keep each
Speaker 1: other in check and make sure we didn't cross those
Speaker 1: lines that we couldn't, you know, we wanted to. But
Speaker 1: that's a good though, because I'm a big believer, and
Speaker 1: if you surround yourself with the best people, then you
Speaker 1: do make the best decisions. So if you have her
Speaker 1: with you, and they doesn't have to be this one
Speaker 1: even instance, but if she's a good influence on you,
Speaker 1: it makes you make good decisions. Uh, you go to college.
Speaker 1: You said you lose your mind in college a little bit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I definitely was one of those kids that had been
Speaker 1: sheltered a little bit. And I always and you know,
Speaker 1: I tell the story about my mom and how she
Speaker 1: struggled as a single parent. I always tried to keep
Speaker 1: my nose clean as a as a teenager and as
Speaker 1: a kid growing up because I saw what my mom
Speaker 1: was doing to make sacrifices to make sure our life
Speaker 1: was good. And so I didn't do a whole lot
Speaker 1: of partying in high school. I didn't, you know, I
Speaker 1: kept my nose pretty clean. I did have sex when
Speaker 1: I was seventeen with my girlfriend, but I felt really
Speaker 1: guilty about it and never did it again. But then
Speaker 1: I got to college and I was around a whole
Speaker 1: group of like minded people like the party a little bit,
Speaker 1: started hanging out with some you know pastor's girls or
Speaker 1: when they when they get out of the nest, they
Speaker 1: like to get out, and um, you know, test that
Speaker 1: new found free him. And there were moments that I'm
Speaker 1: not proud of it. I went through a lot of
Speaker 1: you know, um, what, what's the word I'm looking for? Debauchery?
Speaker 1: In college. I think we should shout out your mom
Speaker 1: real quick, because you do mentioned that single mom work
Speaker 1: two jobs and to put you in a Christian private school,
Speaker 1: Like you're broke and she's working to put you in school,
Speaker 1: which showed what she valued for you are kid, And
Speaker 1: I mean that's a not even just a clothes on you.
Speaker 1: But I also make sure you get into a Christian school.
Speaker 1: I know it was remarkable now when I look back
Speaker 1: on it, and you know, not until later on in
Speaker 1: life did she tell me how much money she would
Speaker 1: have left in her wallet or how much food we
Speaker 1: would really have in the pantry. That she was going on,
Speaker 1: How in the world am I gonna make this last
Speaker 1: through the weekend living paycheck to paycheck. Somehow, some way
Speaker 1: it all came together, and she would she told me
Speaker 1: stories that's unbelievable about boxes of groceries showing up on
Speaker 1: our front porch, and she would not know where they
Speaker 1: had come from. Things like that that I had no
Speaker 1: knowledge of until much later on in life. You know,
Speaker 1: it's wild you say that because for me growing up,
Speaker 1: we we I finally figured out who it was, but
Speaker 1: it was the church. They would drop off Christmas presents
Speaker 1: in food and the p t a because you know
Speaker 1: my mom or my grandmother when she was just raising
Speaker 1: me and my little sister, they would know they would
Speaker 1: drop it off and we would get to eat. Or
Speaker 1: I remember once for Christmas, I got a color by
Speaker 1: number paints. It was only gift. I got the whole
Speaker 1: year color by number paint set and I painted it
Speaker 1: was the stupidest duck, but it was the best duck
Speaker 1: ever painted, like it was my Christmas gift. And the
Speaker 1: church brought it and left it at the door with
Speaker 1: a bow on it and didn't say who. Well, I
Speaker 1: we found out it was a church. But it's funny
Speaker 1: you say that, because I love those stories. Zoon Man
Speaker 1: and I think those have lasted with me to how
Speaker 1: I tried to treat people too. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it has for you, like if that's left in depression
Speaker 1: with you. Definitely it definitely it makes me think about
Speaker 1: the way that I treat people. But it also I
Speaker 1: think has allowed me to live in the moments and
Speaker 1: the life that I've been able to live and appreciate
Speaker 1: it to a deeper level too, maybe than some others would,
Speaker 1: because I wake up every day and this is no
Speaker 1: joke thanking God for the chance to do what we've
Speaker 1: been able to do for nearly twenty years now, which
Speaker 1: is almost in heard of too in this day and age.
Speaker 1: But I really don't take it for granted because I
Speaker 1: feel so blessed, far beyond what I ever imagined I
Speaker 1: would have been and it and it's not lost on
Speaker 1: me how hard it is to make it in the
Speaker 1: music industry. You see it all the time, how many
Speaker 1: people come to this town every single day hoping for
Speaker 1: a career in the music business. And I'm just so
Speaker 1: grateful to be able to look back on all I
Speaker 1: have been through, but to know that all of that
Speaker 1: was for a very necessary reason. And now on the
Speaker 1: other side of it, I can really look at it
Speaker 1: and go thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you
Speaker 1: God so much. Mm hmm. You talk about being twenty
Speaker 1: years in twenty years and to to maintain a level
Speaker 1: of success for that long, But I look back at
Speaker 1: like your first let let's play your first thingle here,
Speaker 1: let's let's go back, Let's go, let's go, let's do
Speaker 1: I have the whole thing here, let's do uh. These
Speaker 1: days before the video was shot, as you right, you
Speaker 1: that are well? You thought you had a heart attack. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was dealing with panic attacks pretty badly in my
Speaker 1: mid to late twenties, and I would have them periodically,
Speaker 1: but this one was a really bad one and I
Speaker 1: thought I was having a heart attack. So I drove
Speaker 1: myself to St. Thomas and I spent most of the
Speaker 1: night there. But this is also right before the video.
Speaker 1: Right before the video. Yeah, I called our manager and
Speaker 1: said I don't think I think we and he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a bigger deal than what you think. It just
Speaker 1: move a whole entire video shoot. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm exhausted. I've been at the hospital all night. They've
Speaker 1: been running blood tests, and I don't think I can
Speaker 1: make it, and he goes, come in as late as
Speaker 1: you can, but please do your best to be there,
Speaker 1: because we we we can't move these times. And I
Speaker 1: showed up and sat down beside Allison in the makeup chair.
Speaker 1: And that, by the way, is your wife. Now, as
Speaker 1: the book says, she wasn't getting listen. I'm up precisally
Speaker 1: a little bit about this because you sit down in
Speaker 1: the makeup chair as you go, and you're tired, and
Speaker 1: you've had a heart attack slash panic attack the night
Speaker 1: before first video. You sit down, They're gonna make you pretty.
Speaker 1: And there she is. Yeah, and what do you say?
Speaker 1: I said, Hey, how are you doing? She's like fine,
Speaker 1: nothing back, like playing tennis by yourself. She doesn't have
Speaker 1: a ring on. Take it off of the video. It's
Speaker 1: exactly right. So I'm like, I'll try again. Where are
Speaker 1: you from, Jackson, Tennessee? Again? Playing tennis by yourself? Nothing?
Speaker 1: No lab back? Where are you from? Oh Columbus, Ohio.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you asked, you know, I'm just sitting there
Speaker 1: like working so hard, you know, Like so if have
Speaker 1: you heard the song before? And she's like, I don't
Speaker 1: really listen to country music. I think I heard one
Speaker 1: of your songs like called Waiting for Midnight, Like, well,
Speaker 1: actually it's Praying for Daylight. A really big fan, I
Speaker 1: can tell, So, uh is she was? She was not cold,
Speaker 1: but stand office, you know, And now looking back, I
Speaker 1: understand why. But as the day went on and the
Speaker 1: longer the weights were in between each setup and each take,
Speaker 1: we started to talk and I really really enjoyed her company.
Speaker 1: Let me stop you for a second, but stand office,
Speaker 1: because she was engaged, right, I just didn't know that.
Speaker 1: I did not know that. In my defense, I did
Speaker 1: not know that. And so you guys are shooting the
Speaker 1: video and you're getting to know each other and you're
Speaker 1: you're you're feeling a vibe. Yeah, I mean, all I
Speaker 1: know is I like being around her, and she was
Speaker 1: she was hot. I mean she was really hot, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: And so I would go find her. I would seek
Speaker 1: her out and I'd sit down beside over and she
Speaker 1: was mildly annoyed by me, I could tell. But you know,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of quick on my feet, funny and make
Speaker 1: people laugh. And I started to make her laugh some
Speaker 1: and well, she's not impressed by the music. Thing. She
Speaker 1: could have cared Less absolutely could have cared was hired
Speaker 1: to be in the video. You guys here they are
Speaker 1: Nashville sign ba boom ba boom. This is nothing, huh.
Speaker 1: She could have cared Less. I'm telling you, it was amazing.
Speaker 1: And I was like anything that a younger me or
Speaker 1: any younger musician would use to, you know, to impress
Speaker 1: a young lady, you know, like, hey, look at me,
Speaker 1: Well don't I look sexy when I play with nothing?
Speaker 1: I mean nothing, nothing. And so at the end of
Speaker 1: the night we're talking, I'm on a truck bed with her.
Speaker 1: I never on a tailgate when I'm sitting there, like,
Speaker 1: I hate this because like after we wrap, I'm never
Speaker 1: gonna get to see you again. This is sucks. It's
Speaker 1: been really great talking to you. And she said, well,
Speaker 1: actually I'm I'm engaged. And I know that you didn't
Speaker 1: know that because it made me take my ring off.
Speaker 1: But I'm getting married in about a month or so,
Speaker 1: a couple of months whatever it was, four months, I
Speaker 1: believe you say, yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: so I was just like, this is terrible. But she's
Speaker 1: been really really nice to me tonight, and she's talked
Speaker 1: to me and we've shared, and she finally goes, can
Speaker 1: I go on your bus and use the restroom before
Speaker 1: I leave so I don't have to use the porta potty?
Speaker 1: And I was like, absolutely, I'll take you up. So
Speaker 1: while she's in using the restroom, I pull on a
Speaker 1: piece of paper and write my phone number down, and
Speaker 1: I handed it to her and I said, listen, I
Speaker 1: know you're gonna ask for this anyway, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and give this too, just like that too,
Speaker 1: you know, really cheesy. And she takes it and she goes,
Speaker 1: my daddy raised me never to call boys, but if
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with me, this is
Speaker 1: my number. And I just thought, man, who's going to
Speaker 1: give their number to somebody if there isn't a little
Speaker 1: bit of chink in the army armor there? So I
Speaker 1: kept calling her. She never called me back, honestly, And
Speaker 1: I ran into her at the Old Green Hills Grill,
Speaker 1: and I ran into her again at another restaurant. I
Speaker 1: forget where we were at that time. Was ever with
Speaker 1: her fiance, and she was never with him. She was
Speaker 1: with her mom and her grandmother and a and a
Speaker 1: friend another time, and I ran into her and I
Speaker 1: the second time, and I called her and I said,
Speaker 1: this is the last time I'll call. I promise. But
Speaker 1: if that isn't a sign that we shouldn't at least
Speaker 1: like go to lunch, I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1: So let's just go to lunch. And we went to lunch,
Speaker 1: and honest to god, we sat there for five and
Speaker 1: a half hours. We met at noon, when she left
Speaker 1: there at five thirty, and it was really like I'd
Speaker 1: known her my entire life. Honestly, it was so easy
Speaker 1: and so fun and natural. And you know, now we're
Speaker 1: old and sick of each other, but at the time
Speaker 1: it was I'm kidding. Have you thought that she never
Speaker 1: had a fiance and this whole thing was that, No, no,
Speaker 1: I know him, So yeah, you think, guys, then she
Speaker 1: has to break it off. H Well, it was you know,
Speaker 1: I think that I was more of the straw that
Speaker 1: broke the camel's back. It was headed that way anyway.
Speaker 1: And she she did tell me, she said, I need
Speaker 1: to sort my life out. I've had fun with you,
Speaker 1: and I definitely loved being around you, but I've got
Speaker 1: to make some big decisions and decide what I'm doing
Speaker 1: with my life here and so she cut it, shut
Speaker 1: it down with me for a long time. And one
Speaker 1: day I got a call from her saying that she
Speaker 1: had told her dad she couldn't get married. And we
Speaker 1: went to dinner and we're never apart after that. Here
Speaker 1: we are fifteen years tomorrow. Is that right? Congratulations on
Speaker 1: your big anniversary. Well we gotta leave. People do on anniversaries.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Let's find someone ask him stop. You
Speaker 1: know how much kids cost. And you've seen my wife,
Speaker 1: you know how much money she spends. I need a
Speaker 1: gig on idol or something. Can you get me a
Speaker 1: another judge spots off it? You know. I remember watching
Speaker 1: because I was over in Pop whenever you guys crossed over, Um,
Speaker 1: so I was. I grew up in Arkansas, so I
Speaker 1: was a die hard country family and I went to Pop.
Speaker 1: I kind of checked out a bit because I was
Speaker 1: just consumed by what I was doing with my work,
Speaker 1: and you guys, what hurts the most It was a
Speaker 1: big country and then started to creep into my world
Speaker 1: a bit, right, So I remember watching you guys on
Speaker 1: Yester Dear. It was up for a daytime, Emmy, wasn't
Speaker 1: it performance on there? Listen and I remember thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: I like these guys, because I mean I can remember
Speaker 1: it vividly. You know, yesterday was a sitcom and uh
Speaker 1: they you guys like showed up and they were trying
Speaker 1: to get into your show and then you stole our limo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they got and you guys, but then you're all
Speaker 1: right riding together in the back of the car. That
Speaker 1: that's funny. That's I think my first like real moment
Speaker 1: of knowing who you guys faces were. I'm still dear
Speaker 1: friends with Liza Snyder from that show. We we forged
Speaker 1: really great friendship from that show, and that's a favorite
Speaker 1: memory of mine. That was a fun shoot. It was
Speaker 1: about three days. Well so you're making it over in country,
Speaker 1: but it's gotta be a whole different world once all
Speaker 1: of uh like like, oh yeah, boulders are falling instead
Speaker 1: of it was weird man. When when What Hurts the
Speaker 1: Most was number one on UM Top forty radio. It
Speaker 1: was a moment that I'll never forget because we started
Speaker 1: getting calls to then go to which was unheard of
Speaker 1: back then. It was a different time, not a lot
Speaker 1: of like now, you'll see a lot of country acts
Speaker 1: like Dan and Shaane and Florida, Georgia line and folks
Speaker 1: like that, and a little big town at the A
Speaker 1: M A s and at the Grammys and things. It
Speaker 1: just wasn't that common back in uh, you know, fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago, and we were getting calls to do those shows,
Speaker 1: People's Choice Awards, you know, and it was like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is cool. This is beyond the scope of the
Speaker 1: c M as, the c M T s and the
Speaker 1: A c M s, which we love. But we were
Speaker 1: opened up and exposed to another whole, a whole another world.
Speaker 1: And I remember sitting on the floor of the American
Speaker 1: Music Awards with Gary and Gary sitting next to me,
Speaker 1: and he nudged me and he goes, would you have
Speaker 1: ever thought we'd be able to do this? Sit in
Speaker 1: this room with jay Z, Beyonce, Madonna, Lady Gaga, all
Speaker 1: of these people, And he said, I'm gonna lay something
Speaker 1: on you you haven't thought about. I said, what this was?
Speaker 1: The year two thousand six? He said, We've sold more
Speaker 1: records this year than anybody in this room. And it
Speaker 1: stopped me in my tracks. And he wasn't saying it
Speaker 1: to be boastful or to like be you know, braggadocious.
Speaker 1: About it. He was saying, can you believe what we've
Speaker 1: done outside of just being in country music? And it
Speaker 1: was overwhelming to me. I never will forget that night,
Speaker 1: in that moment that we shared during the commercial break there,
Speaker 1: which is the two of us, It was so cool.
Speaker 1: Did you guys get crap being a mainstream success from
Speaker 1: any of the Nashville you know, hardcore country folks. Not really, no,
Speaker 1: not to be honest, we didn't. We had, I mean people,
Speaker 1: I felt like we're you know, except for the moment
Speaker 1: there when the song was released Murder on music Row
Speaker 1: and they talked about pop coming over an infiltrate and country.
Speaker 1: It was a little bit of a movement there, but
Speaker 1: most people rallied around us and got behind us. And
Speaker 1: you know, there was a there was a batch of
Speaker 1: us doing something different, and Keith Urban and in Us
Speaker 1: and and Shadaisy at the time, and a few people
Speaker 1: that were putting poppy or elements into the country music,
Speaker 1: and I feel like they welcomed it. And it was
Speaker 1: you know, some of the critics, of course, derided us
Speaker 1: early on and we got a bad rap, but most
Speaker 1: of the people in the music industry were kind of
Speaker 1: excited that there was kind of a new movement coming along,
Speaker 1: you know, when Bless the Broken Road another song that
Speaker 1: crept into my life and then slammed into my life,
Speaker 1: played it all the time on pop radio. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you guys are a full fledged not that you're not country,
Speaker 1: but you're a pop act at this time, like it
Speaker 1: was just expected. When's that I'm talking about? From my side?
Speaker 1: When's the next Rascal Flat song coming out? It's really
Speaker 1: cool to hear you say that, because I don't think
Speaker 1: a lot of people are saying that today, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean it was we We had that sweet spot
Speaker 1: where you're kind of in adell, you know, and you
Speaker 1: just sit there in it and soak it all up
Speaker 1: because it seems like you have a moment in time
Speaker 1: where you put a song out it resonates with people,
Speaker 1: and you have your fingers crossed, and you put another
Speaker 1: one out and it resonates with people, and then you
Speaker 1: start to get scared that you're that you're gonna be
Speaker 1: in this spot to where you're never gonna be able
Speaker 1: to put another song at that resonates with anybody. And
Speaker 1: it was such a magical time for us. We had
Speaker 1: about ten years there that We're just phenomenal. And it's
Speaker 1: a testament to the songwriters in this town too, because
Speaker 1: the songs we were able to get our hands on,
Speaker 1: the writers that were sitting in rooms writing for us,
Speaker 1: that knew what we wanted to say, how we wanted
Speaker 1: to sing. It really had their fingers on the pulse
Speaker 1: of who Rascal Flats was. I can't thank them enough.
Speaker 1: The car song, which people know it as the car song,
Speaker 1: I actually know it from Uh any money, No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't ad the money. It's it's not any money.
Speaker 1: It's um the original thing of life, the Highway, Tom Cox,
Speaker 1: Tom Cochrane, that's right. Um, But you guys sing this.
Speaker 1: But this was never a single, No it wasn't. But
Speaker 1: again it was played everywhere. Yeah, and that movie was huge, huge,
Speaker 1: huge for us. And I remember going to dinner here
Speaker 1: at the Capitol Grill with um John Laster, who took
Speaker 1: us out and showed a storyboards of the movie, going,
Speaker 1: I've got this movie about these cars that talked to
Speaker 1: each other. And you saw the storyboard of cars storyboards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I really want you guys to do this, um
Speaker 1: Mon Taj where he's on Route sixty six and he's
Speaker 1: driving and you're doing Life is a Highway and we're
Speaker 1: looking at the storyboards and he's wearing a Toy story
Speaker 1: shirt with Woody on it, and it's weird kind of
Speaker 1: you know, John's a sweet guy, but it's just kind
Speaker 1: of like, can we write a song? No, I really
Speaker 1: want you guys to remake you know, Life is a Highway.
Speaker 1: I'm like Chris LaDue did it in the nineties and
Speaker 1: kind of made it a hit again. And are you
Speaker 1: sure we can't write a song? He goes, it really
Speaker 1: got a vision for this guy's If you'll see these
Speaker 1: cars talk to each other, it's like, wow. So we
Speaker 1: did it and one of the best decisions we ever made.
Speaker 1: First song we ever cut with Dan Huff, by the way,
Speaker 1: who's been on this show and as a dear friend.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I talked to Dan like three days
Speaker 1: ago and not Dan. If you go back and listen
Speaker 1: to an older show, if you're listen to this right now, Dan,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about how he would cut songs for like
Speaker 1: Paula Abduel or Uh. He'd play guitar on them. You
Speaker 1: I know she was even in the vocals. He'd be
Speaker 1: in the airport and I really like that guitar. Lecauld
Speaker 1: brother be like, that's you idiot. Yeah. I mean, the
Speaker 1: guy is so good and he's so humble it's disgusting.
Speaker 1: There's not a kinder human being on the planet and
Speaker 1: he's played on. I mean, you know a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't know this. I'm gonna tell something on Dan.
Speaker 1: He started White Hart, one of the Christian bands that
Speaker 1: I was obsessed with as a kid. He was one
Speaker 1: of the founding members with his brother David, and so
Speaker 1: I followed him early on, before he was even a
Speaker 1: session player in l A and playing on all those
Speaker 1: hit records. There was something special about his playing, even
Speaker 1: in that band, that I knew that I loved and
Speaker 1: gravitated towards. So that's another great blessing in my life,
Speaker 1: was to be able to come back around and work
Speaker 1: with somebody like Dan, have him produce our band and
Speaker 1: being his presence and watch him work. It's just something
Speaker 1: I never would have ever expected or dreamed either, you know.
Speaker 1: And now to be able to call somebody like him
Speaker 1: a true friend is just phenomenal with me. It blows
Speaker 1: blows my mind. You know, was there ever a point
Speaker 1: with you guys, you're three that you're like, this is
Speaker 1: probably it. We're done. When Lyric Streets shut down in
Speaker 1: two thousand ten, UM, we sat around in my man
Speaker 1: room and looked at each other and we're like, do
Speaker 1: we have anything left to say? Even I mean, it's
Speaker 1: been a great ten year run. Um. We were getting
Speaker 1: ready to either quit or make a management change, and
Speaker 1: a lot of things were going to change, and we
Speaker 1: knew it and it was gonna be tough, and we
Speaker 1: sat around and considered whether or not it wasn't time
Speaker 1: to lay Rascal Flats down. And I think after an
Speaker 1: hour or so of talking with each other, it was
Speaker 1: just like, it hurts me to think about the last
Speaker 1: time that I'll look over to my right and not
Speaker 1: see Gary beside me. When I think about that day,
Speaker 1: it makes me emotional. I don't know when that day
Speaker 1: will be, but I wasn't ready to face it and
Speaker 1: to think about never making music with the two of
Speaker 1: them again. But it's something that even though we were
Speaker 1: in twenty years and we love each other like brothers
Speaker 1: and we've certainly fought like brothers before. I love those
Speaker 1: guys with all my heart, and we've done some things
Speaker 1: that a lot of people will never see or never
Speaker 1: be able to do. And we've been in the trenches
Speaker 1: together and we know each other in ways that our
Speaker 1: own wives don't even know us. And to think about
Speaker 1: not having that anymore, I think all of us were
Speaker 1: not ready, and we were willing to stay together because
Speaker 1: we felt like we had more to say and more
Speaker 1: to do, and we still do. I don't know that
Speaker 1: it's going to come to a close anytime soon. I
Speaker 1: think we will. We will all three have things we
Speaker 1: want to do individually as we get older and have
Speaker 1: opportunities to. But I don't see us ever really going
Speaker 1: away and and having an official, quote unquote break up.
Speaker 1: Do you ever think about a sideband? Mh, I'm in one, alright,
Speaker 1: and it's tough to be in that one sometimes and
Speaker 1: the time that it takes in the commitment level, I've
Speaker 1: thought about maybe doingside projects, things like that you're in.
Speaker 1: Why don't I know this? Or do I know this
Speaker 1: is a secret? No? I mean, I mean I'm in
Speaker 1: Rascal Plants. In the commitment I was like, how do
Speaker 1: I not know? No? No, I I don't have I mean,
Speaker 1: I certainly love making music on any level. By the way, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I I opened up a Christian label back in October,
Speaker 1: so I've got artists signed there to that label that
Speaker 1: I'll be releasing records on, so that my time commitment
Speaker 1: there with that the new thing in my life is
Speaker 1: pretty substantial. So I'm gonna try to make sure that's
Speaker 1: as successful as it can possibly be. And I want
Speaker 1: to continue making music and producing for other people. And
Speaker 1: I've had, I've had the chance to do a lot
Speaker 1: of great things, and you know, I'm at a really
Speaker 1: great point in my life now to where I really
Speaker 1: really enjoy everything that I'm doing right now, and I'm
Speaker 1: not just doing it because I have to. You know,
Speaker 1: has Gary ever said how they go do a solo record?
Speaker 1: I think Gary will do a solo record someday. I
Speaker 1: don't know what it will be. It maybe a Christian record,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what it will be. And I think
Speaker 1: here's the thing. I think he should do a solo record.
Speaker 1: I think that if it's in him and something he
Speaker 1: wants to do, I would support that and in his
Speaker 1: aspirations and dreams. One percent. Would you have seven years
Speaker 1: ago or do you feel now you're at a place
Speaker 1: where you're kind of comfortable with where the band is.
Speaker 1: You hit a big you came back, you hit it
Speaker 1: big again. You've had in the last few years, you've
Speaker 1: had number once again. So it's a part of that
Speaker 1: because of all this success, and now you feel a
Speaker 1: little more like we're stationed, like we're a thing. What
Speaker 1: it be to come? You know, after Bless the Broken
Speaker 1: Road and said, guys, I want to do it. This
Speaker 1: is quick solo thing, like like you see Boheman Rapsody
Speaker 1: were like, Fred, you gotta do a solo record. That
Speaker 1: didn't happen at all With you, guys, it didn't happen.
Speaker 1: I think that all of us appreciated where we were
Speaker 1: and appreciated each other and loved each other. And Gary
Speaker 1: was um extraordinarily gracious in the fact that he was
Speaker 1: in a band and and never put us in a
Speaker 1: bad position to go. I think I'm gonna go off
Speaker 1: on my own here for a little bit and and
Speaker 1: try it on my own, and and you know, I'm
Speaker 1: grateful to him for that. The flip side is it
Speaker 1: doesn't turn out well for a lot of people that
Speaker 1: try to leave a group situation and and and go
Speaker 1: out on their own. It's really tough to do, and
Speaker 1: when you've done it at a high level like we have,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, you've got to realize you're
Speaker 1: coming out of your own pocket to pay for all
Speaker 1: the luxuries that you won't have anymore because you're virtually
Speaker 1: starting over. I think it's hard for some people. I'll
Speaker 1: look at you. Here you are with a book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm all grown up, has the book to I've been
Speaker 1: a grind for you, it has been, but it's been fun.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've enjoyed being able to talk about my
Speaker 1: life and being able to celebrate my mother and tell
Speaker 1: my story from a different side. You know. I'm sure, um,
Speaker 1: maybe you deal with some of this too, But I've
Speaker 1: always I've always been, you know, like referred to as
Speaker 1: the funny guy or the cut up in the band
Speaker 1: or whatever, and and I wanted the chance to really
Speaker 1: tell some things from my perspective and and talk about
Speaker 1: my philosophies on life and hopefully people see another, maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit deeper side to me than just being
Speaker 1: the funny guy. Yeah, it probably you know, you get
Speaker 1: to exercise a bit of depth which people don't always
Speaker 1: come to the funny guy for. And so yeah, it
Speaker 1: feels good right like, it feels like it's kind of
Speaker 1: like it's kind of like a Really it's a lot.
Speaker 1: It's a lot to dig up this stuff, and it's
Speaker 1: a lot, even for me. It was tough to to
Speaker 1: re talk about this stuff. Um, but then you start
Speaker 1: to realize, which back to your very first point was
Speaker 1: there are people out there that are struggling with some
Speaker 1: of the same things that you struggle with that I
Speaker 1: struggled with, that feel like they're alone. And if you
Speaker 1: can see that you you know, Mr Rascal Fly, you
Speaker 1: can do it, and how it happened to him and
Speaker 1: could deal with it, then um, that that happened to everyone.
Speaker 1: I think that's the point is you think about people
Speaker 1: when they're by themselves and the lights are off and
Speaker 1: the doors shut and they're behind closed doors. What kind
Speaker 1: of pain and hurt that people deal with on a
Speaker 1: daily basis will never know? And sometimes it's nice to
Speaker 1: know that somebody you know, or somebody you may look
Speaker 1: up to, or somebody you may admire, has gone through
Speaker 1: some of the same things. And look, here's how they've
Speaker 1: dealt with it, and here's how they've overcome it, and
Speaker 1: how how they still still deal with it. You know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't go away. Um, hurt and pain doesn't go away.
Speaker 1: The older you get, you just learn a different skill
Speaker 1: set and you have a different bag of tools to
Speaker 1: deal with it. And that's all I wanted to do
Speaker 1: is just say, look, if you're willing to try therapy
Speaker 1: and you're willing to try pills to balance out chemical
Speaker 1: imbalances and things like that, maybe there's another option. And
Speaker 1: maybe that option could be finding your own faith in
Speaker 1: God and finding your own relationship with Him, because you
Speaker 1: might find some hope and strengthen you you never even
Speaker 1: dreamed before. You say, your greatest blessing isn't the flats,
Speaker 1: It isn't even your family, but it's hope. Yeah. What
Speaker 1: do you mean by that? Well? I meant that hope
Speaker 1: was the only thing I had. Sometimes before I had
Speaker 1: my family, or before I had the flats or anything,
Speaker 1: all I had was hope. And sometimes it would be
Speaker 1: the smallest little ounce of hope. It would be a
Speaker 1: friend that would call me out of the blue and
Speaker 1: go I thought about you the other day. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to check in on you. You're doing okay, And
Speaker 1: it would blow me away because it would be when
Speaker 1: I needed it the most and least expected it. Or
Speaker 1: I would see uh sign of a on a billboard
Speaker 1: in front of a church that would be a scripture
Speaker 1: and I would look it up in the Bible and
Speaker 1: it be, you know, something that would give me like,
Speaker 1: hang in there, you're on the right track. I know
Speaker 1: you can't feel it, but you gotta stay the course.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was my mom. A lot of times it
Speaker 1: was my mom going, you're not coming back home. You're
Speaker 1: where you're supposed to be, and you've got to stay there.
Speaker 1: You gotta stay the course. You gotta, you know, dust
Speaker 1: yourself off, get back up on your feet, and keep
Speaker 1: moving forward. And that's what I mean about hope. My
Speaker 1: mom gave me that gift, and I didn't even realize
Speaker 1: she was giving it to me when she was dragging
Speaker 1: me off to church three or four times a week.
Speaker 1: But it was in there and it took deep root
Speaker 1: in me, and I relied on it later on in
Speaker 1: life when things got really really bad. We're gonna end
Speaker 1: with this. By the way, you watch a game with Thrones,
Speaker 1: I don't you are you? Are you? You're your Thrones guy? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I I try not to be the Thrones guy that
Speaker 1: yells about it all the time. Well, I know, and
Speaker 1: I feel so bad. I've given it like two shots
Speaker 1: and I've made it through like three or four episodes,
Speaker 1: and it's just so much to keep up with. I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm watching a high school play sometimes in
Speaker 1: about medieval times, and I'm sure it's great, um, but
Speaker 1: maybe I need to give it another shot. But because
Speaker 1: a ton of people that I love and respect are
Speaker 1: obsessed with that trip, I think it's a great It's
Speaker 1: not my favorite of my life, but I think it's
Speaker 1: the best TV show in my lifetime. And I think
Speaker 1: there's a difference the best. I think your TV show
Speaker 1: in my lifetime not my favorite, So I don't if
Speaker 1: I get to pick one that's not it. I caught
Speaker 1: one episode late one night called The Red Wedding or
Speaker 1: something like that, where everybody know that's one there, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't think I could, Like, I don't
Speaker 1: think I can deal with this weekly. That one was
Speaker 1: a big one. But yeah, it's a lot um and
Speaker 1: you fall in love with the characters and they all
Speaker 1: die right, like, every single one of them. It's like
Speaker 1: fight club. Yeah, you don't talk about it. We don't
Speaker 1: talk about it's a it's a it's a fantastic show.
Speaker 1: But you don't watch The Thrones. What do you watch? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of more on the that I'm on the
Speaker 1: shallow into things like I'm really into Ship's Creek right
Speaker 1: now on Netflix. You know, I matched with the girl
Speaker 1: that's on I don't know if I should say who
Speaker 1: it is, but one of the main actors I'm on
Speaker 1: these dating apps right and one of the main actors
Speaker 1: on the show I matched with on the dating app
Speaker 1: and a little bit you gotta decide. Have you talked
Speaker 1: to her? Yeah, that's awesome. I'll pull up Earth and
Speaker 1: we've been talking about so I love that because the
Speaker 1: apps are crazy. Man, it's like instant everyone you can
Speaker 1: just it's like free, like even ten years ago, you know.
Speaker 1: With It's something we talk about all the time too.
Speaker 1: Don't you love how brave people are on social media
Speaker 1: When they get behind a keyboard, they can just get
Speaker 1: on there and just torpedo you with no repercussions. I
Speaker 1: think that people just want to be heard, and they
Speaker 1: find that the best way to be heard is to
Speaker 1: be the loudest and most obnoxious. It just bugs a
Speaker 1: crap out of me because it's your Facebook or now
Speaker 1: even though I don't look at the show face I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't look at it. And I've almost thought about
Speaker 1: muting my Instagram comments because there'll be a hundred great
Speaker 1: comments and my personality is to zone in on the
Speaker 1: one guy that's being an ass, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: and it will you send me over the edge, you know,
Speaker 1: and be like, dude, what this is? How I matched with?
Speaker 1: You have to say who it is. But we've been talking.
Speaker 1: Do you recognize that for the show? Of course I do. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: You watched the show? Yeah, of course, and that's why
Speaker 1: when I saw I was like, I'll click the heart
Speaker 1: and then I was surprised that the heart came back.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, she's that shows shot in Canada. So
Speaker 1: she's in Vancouver. Um, I'm not sure where. If you
Speaker 1: were out in l A, you can just go up
Speaker 1: up Creaks. Funny. What else you watching? Um? I'm a
Speaker 1: huge Walking Dead fan. Okay, let me ask you a question.
Speaker 1: Me to die hard with my favorite show for years.
Speaker 1: But I got I got kind of lost, and like
Speaker 1: I think I'm like a season behind and I don't
Speaker 1: know where I got lost, and I'm not super into
Speaker 1: catching up. The show is not the same with that Rick.
Speaker 1: It's really lost a little bit. And I gotta tell you,
Speaker 1: it almost lost me for good when they at the
Speaker 1: beginning of a couple of seasons ago when they my
Speaker 1: my buddy Michael Cutlitz was on there and they bashed
Speaker 1: his brains in with the baseball bat, and then they
Speaker 1: with Michael cut Let's play too, he played Abraham Oh
Speaker 1: oh yeah, redhead. And then they killed Glenn off too,
Speaker 1: and they like popped his eyeball out with the baseball
Speaker 1: man everythine or the first episode whenever, yeah, Nigan. And
Speaker 1: I love Jeffrey Dean Morgan. He's a fantastic actor. It
Speaker 1: just they took it so far because of the shock
Speaker 1: factor that they always try to do with that show,
Speaker 1: and you never know who's gonna die. And I get it,
Speaker 1: and I'm such a huge fans of the fan of
Speaker 1: the show, but it started to lose me a little bit,
Speaker 1: to be quite honest. Yeah, I when after Rick was gone,
Speaker 1: I just kind of got lost what episode I was
Speaker 1: and I wasn't just terribly horn to get back at it,
Speaker 1: you know. And I love Darryl, but I don't know
Speaker 1: that he's enough to hold the show by himself. I
Speaker 1: turned into a TV critic all of a sudden, haven't
Speaker 1: a Um, we all are at this point everything is
Speaker 1: so good? If it's not so good, and right up,
Speaker 1: our algorithm are human algorithm to what show we want
Speaker 1: that we just move on to the next thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't love Christley knows best. I've been on
Speaker 1: a bunch of those episodes of Todd. He's a he's
Speaker 1: a buddy of mine. He wrote on the back of
Speaker 1: your book that he wrote, Hey, he's not a douchebag.
Speaker 1: Read the book exactly. He's not the jerk you think
Speaker 1: he is all the time. Sometimes I'm you know, what
Speaker 1: Shill I like is nine one one. I think that's
Speaker 1: a pretty good show on Fox. Have you of the
Speaker 1: first season? She's not in the second season, but um,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty decent. And we what we do is Allison.
Speaker 1: I just binge on some stuff every once in a while,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of what we're what else we're
Speaker 1: watching right now? Watch any of the Marvel stuff on Netflix,
Speaker 1: like The Punisher. I don't is it good? It's the
Speaker 1: best show to base Agents of Shield any good. I
Speaker 1: didn't get into all right. Yeah, I was never torn
Speaker 1: away and he's a big You see the Last Adventures, haven't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw the end Game, so it's amazing. I turn
Speaker 1: off Twitter when Game of Thrones ends because I'm on
Speaker 1: ID at the same time and have to go home
Speaker 1: and look at it. But I'm avoiding Everything Adventures until
Speaker 1: I can watch End Game because it's supposed to be
Speaker 1: so freaking good. Let me tell you, I was amazed
Speaker 1: at how great it was. I mean it was three hours,
Speaker 1: and is that good? You don't know it's three hours.
Speaker 1: I mean it goes buying a blank, doesn't it? You know?
Speaker 1: I mean it really really does. Excited about John Wick three, Yes,
Speaker 1: me too. I actually love those movies. I think Kean
Speaker 1: Reid is my favorite actor. I've I've declared he's not
Speaker 1: my favorite because you can make fun of him. You can,
Speaker 1: but look at his body of work. Respect the body
Speaker 1: of work. So he's now America's favorite actor and mine.
Speaker 1: I love it. And you know what else, I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you, Cobra Kai is fantastic too. I haven't seen it.
Speaker 1: I know it's a YouTube show. You gotta watch it, man,
Speaker 1: It's fantastic. What these guys have done with the storyline
Speaker 1: thirty plus years later, with these two you never see coming,
Speaker 1: It is really fantastic. Now, Billy Zafka, who plays Johnny,
Speaker 1: is one of my lifelong dearest friends. So I've you know,
Speaker 1: I've been a Karate Kid fanatics since the first movie
Speaker 1: came out when I was a teenager. But what they've
Speaker 1: done with the story and how they've taken those two characters,
Speaker 1: you would really really appreciate love interesting. Well, listen, we've
Speaker 1: Here's the question I was gonna ask you before I
Speaker 1: veered off the last question. I ask him, if you
Speaker 1: could tell yourself, you give your your sixteen year old
Speaker 1: self one a little bit of advice from you right now?
Speaker 1: Would you tell them condoms do break? There and there?
Speaker 1: There you have it. Listen, check out the book. It's
Speaker 1: a Shotgun Angels, My story of Broken Roads and Unshakable Hope.
Speaker 1: How was how hard that subtitle to have and to
Speaker 1: come up with it was? It was pretty tough. They wanted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what was the first title of the book, Because I
Speaker 1: went to like nineteen it was called something like um uh, hope,
Speaker 1: Hope in the Hope in the Forgotten places or something.
Speaker 1: I mean, there were so many different variations of that.
Speaker 1: I was like, none of them made me happy. My
Speaker 1: co author, actually Timothy, came up with that because the
Speaker 1: two stories in the book about my folks and also
Speaker 1: the angels that ride shotgun next to you you don't
Speaker 1: even know about. Look at this. He got a book.
Speaker 1: Got a book? You play a couple of songs on
Speaker 1: the keyboards, got a he's got a gift on the piano,
Speaker 1: says occasionally funny things. I'm not I'm glad. He's no
Speaker 1: Bobby Moans. I'll tell you this guy right here is
Speaker 1: no Bobby Bones. Thank god, Um, listen that Jay. Good
Speaker 1: to see you, but good to see you too. Thank
Speaker 1: you for your time. One on nine. Look at this?
Speaker 1: Have you every been ever? Be? For hours straight? One
Speaker 1: on one? Hey, And it's just like adventures in game.
Speaker 1: It didn't even feel like we were both die. I
Speaker 1: don't even know what happened in Aures. All right, listen,
Speaker 1: thank you, We'll see you the next time. Episode one
Speaker 1: seventy seven. Everybody