Speaker 1: How do everybody. Welcome to the Granger Smith Podcast. Thank
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Speaker 1: Today's podcast is answering questions. I fielded a bunch of
Speaker 1: them today off Instagram, and I love these kind I
Speaker 1: love to be able to dive in and I don't
Speaker 1: have any notes, so I'm not keeping notes here. I
Speaker 1: feel like maybe the show in a way could be
Speaker 1: better if I went through every question and wrote out
Speaker 1: a little thesis and got it, you know, tried to
Speaker 1: get real interesting with it. Maybe in a way on
Speaker 1: some of these questions, they could be better. I could
Speaker 1: answer them more concisely and give you specific answers. But
Speaker 1: I think it's cool if I just wing it and
Speaker 1: I read a question. I screenshoted to several of them.
Speaker 1: If I just kind of wing it, read the question
Speaker 1: and answer off the top of my head, as if
Speaker 1: we're sitting in a living room together. That's the goal,
Speaker 1: me and you sitting together. Maybe I'm driving, you're sitting
Speaker 1: shotgun and we're just having a conversation. That's how I
Speaker 1: want this to feel. Welcome to episode forty five the
Speaker 1: Granger Smith Podcast, did Chide and d My Time and
Speaker 1: so long line, fool of umping down on back, Crazy
Speaker 1: cover Nation. I think it's fair to say before I start,
Speaker 1: a lot of these questions are based on a new album.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of questions about a new album, so
Speaker 1: I'll try to answer those quickly. But there is a
Speaker 1: new album from me coming out, and you guys are
Speaker 1: gonna hear songs at the end of this month. August
Speaker 1: the twenty eighth, You're gonna expect a couple of new
Speaker 1: songs and then the rest of the album in September.
Speaker 1: Also on that day, August twenty eighth, I will be
Speaker 1: announcing the exact date in September that the album's gonna
Speaker 1: come out, plus more. I can't tell you everything yet.
Speaker 1: There's a lot I can't tell you yet, but there's
Speaker 1: gonna be more after September, more songs, and I'll tell
Speaker 1: you how. And so with that being said, I'll dive
Speaker 1: into some of these questions. Is yee Fest still on
Speaker 1: the radar after this new album? Ye Fest is a
Speaker 1: concept that my brothers and I I have been wanting
Speaker 1: to do for a long time where we could we
Speaker 1: could brand a festival with music and theme it to
Speaker 1: Yee Nation, where we have some of my maybe some
Speaker 1: of my influencer buddies like Matt Character at Demo Ranch
Speaker 1: and Lucker's TV and lake Fork Guy and Outlaw and
Speaker 1: a bunch of these Matt Best like you know, like
Speaker 1: some of these these crazy influencers that I'm in music
Speaker 1: videos with and that some of them are on this
Speaker 1: podcast with and we could all just have a big
Speaker 1: Yege party, play music, have other bands, maybe like Mudding,
Speaker 1: you know, bring your ATV and have like a Mudding
Speaker 1: trail and it would be so fun. And we have
Speaker 1: been putting this off for different reasons. Twenty nineteen had
Speaker 1: a big turn for me in my personal life. Twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: of course, concerts just are not happening that as far
Speaker 1: as festivals are concerned because of COVID. So I would
Speaker 1: really hope and expect you're gonna see a EEE fest
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one, I really hope. So there's a
Speaker 1: couple of ways we could do it. We could do
Speaker 1: multiple EEE fest where we do like an East Coast version,
Speaker 1: a West Coast version, and something right in the middle
Speaker 1: in the Midwest. Or we could just stick with something
Speaker 1: in the Midwest and expect people to come around to
Speaker 1: that and do it for multiple days. Comment below let
Speaker 1: me know which one you would prefer. Will you consider
Speaker 1: making a Christmas CD pretty please? Hashtag ee Yeah. I
Speaker 1: screenshoted this one because I personally won't be making a
Speaker 1: Christmas CD, at least not this year. But we have
Speaker 1: been toying with the idea of Earl Divils Junior doing
Speaker 1: a Christmas song or two or three four and we have.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of Earl Christmas song ideas and
Speaker 1: I think it would be so fun. So the reason
Speaker 1: I screenshoted this and wanted to answer it is because
Speaker 1: I would love for Earl to have a Christmas song.
Speaker 1: I hope that you would too, So let me know
Speaker 1: about that too. Ooh, this is a good one. This
Speaker 1: is a good one. What is the most dangerous thing
Speaker 1: you've done? I like that question? Strange, strange, but I
Speaker 1: like it. I'm gonna I'm gonna. I'm gonna go in
Speaker 1: modern history of myself and not go into the teenage
Speaker 1: version of me that we all have. You know, a
Speaker 1: long list of things we could We could say about
Speaker 1: our teenage years, of dangerous things that we've done, but
Speaker 1: then modern history for me, I would love to think.
Speaker 1: I would love to think that the most dangerous thing
Speaker 1: I've done has to involve me going to Iraq and
Speaker 1: playing music. And we did this three times, and each
Speaker 1: time we went, we would travel in helicopters, black Hawk helicopters.
Speaker 1: We would take two black Hawk helicopters. One would have
Speaker 1: me and the band and the other one would have
Speaker 1: our cases and our guitars and gear and drums and
Speaker 1: stuff like that, and we would be there for about
Speaker 1: two weeks each trip, each of the tours, and we
Speaker 1: would play about two shows a day for two weeks.
Speaker 1: So do the math. Sometimes three shows, sometimes one show,
Speaker 1: sometimes three, most of the time two. That's a lot
Speaker 1: of shows. I don't even know exactly how many we played,
Speaker 1: but every day we traveled, so that could be. It
Speaker 1: could be. An average day would be like we're in
Speaker 1: a FOB, a small fob forward operating base where people
Speaker 1: haven't seen music in a while, and maybe they don't
Speaker 1: even have a proper dining facility there, maybe they don't
Speaker 1: even have a proper latrine. We saw some places that
Speaker 1: just had tubes that literally PVC pipe tubes that went
Speaker 1: into the ground and that's where you peede, and that's like,
Speaker 1: that's what they had on base as far as latrine
Speaker 1: was concerned. So we loved going to those kind of places.
Speaker 1: So we would play a concert there right there in
Speaker 1: the dirt, and then the helicopters would come in to
Speaker 1: the LZ. They would pick us up and we would
Speaker 1: go to another gig, and we would go to a
Speaker 1: similar place and we would play the gig and then
Speaker 1: we would stay there in tents. So we'd stay in
Speaker 1: the tents. And then that's when it got weird because
Speaker 1: sometimes depending on the flight schedule, because we were like
Speaker 1: the obviously the last on the list of the logistics
Speaker 1: of moving people around for these Blackhawks. So depending on
Speaker 1: the flight schedule, sometimes our flight would leave at two am.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it would leave at like seven am. That was
Speaker 1: mostly early morning, like six, seven, eight am, but sometimes
Speaker 1: we didn't know. Sometimes it was a window, say of
Speaker 1: midnight to three am. Be ready, So we would sleep
Speaker 1: in our clothes with our bags and just lay on
Speaker 1: our bags. And we learned, just like the Army did
Speaker 1: there in the Marines, to fall asleep and lay on
Speaker 1: the bag as a pillow and be ready. If you
Speaker 1: hear the helicopter, they would wake us up say hey, birds,
Speaker 1: you're rolling in. So with that, to get back to
Speaker 1: the question, there's always a danger when you're flying that
Speaker 1: much twice a day in helicopters in a war zone,
Speaker 1: there's always just a certain amount of danger that goes
Speaker 1: to that. Because we would ask them like how many
Speaker 1: black Hawks go down ever in Iraq? I'm thinking maybe
Speaker 1: one or two, and you'd hear about it on Fox news.
Speaker 1: Now I was wrong. They go down a lot, and
Speaker 1: our news media outlet's just don't report it. You just
Speaker 1: don't because it's it's like it doesn't matter anymore to
Speaker 1: the average civilian as far as a news cycle. So,
Speaker 1: but they do go down a lot. And those those
Speaker 1: men and women that fly those oh gosh, that is
Speaker 1: a there's a lot of tough gigs out there, and
Speaker 1: that's one of them that you don't think about us often.
Speaker 1: Those pilots and those crew chiefs and everybody that flies
Speaker 1: in those black Hawks. It's tough, man. They're like, they're
Speaker 1: like the workhorses of the Middle East for American forces.
Speaker 1: They're just going, going, going, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: danger to it. There was several times when we had
Speaker 1: really close calls with with shoulder mounted rocket launcher, grenade launchers.
Speaker 1: I can't even think of everything that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of small armed guns that were shot at us. I
Speaker 1: can't even think of everything that was that was fired
Speaker 1: at us. But we got a little taste of a
Speaker 1: lot of it, and we would have to shoot flares
Speaker 1: out to distract. We would make all kinds of evase
Speaker 1: of maneuvers. I learned really, really fast that those black
Speaker 1: Hawks could maneuver like crazy. They just go up, you know,
Speaker 1: and I mean it's no roller coaster can compare to
Speaker 1: a black Hawk helicopter. It's like you're sitting there and
Speaker 1: then in a fraction of a second, you're completely vertical
Speaker 1: going straight up, and then it turns like this with
Speaker 1: zero reaction time, and then you could be and there's
Speaker 1: no doors, so you're just you know, you're completely sideways.
Speaker 1: There's the desert right there. You're thank god you're strapped
Speaker 1: in with these five point harness and then you're back
Speaker 1: the other way and you don't even know that you're
Speaker 1: being pursued by some enemy fighter that's trying to kill you.
Speaker 1: So we had several of those experiences. And we also
Speaker 1: had experiences where we actually played concerts and a mortar
Speaker 1: we'd had incoming mortaround into the base and hit close
Speaker 1: to where we were playing, because probably because they could
Speaker 1: hear the music and the enemy could hear the music,
Speaker 1: and we would have to go into a bunker and
Speaker 1: then we'd have to wait for a long time in
Speaker 1: these concrete bunkers for the all clear. All that being said,
Speaker 1: I have to when I tell stories like this, I
Speaker 1: have to say that I don't want to at all
Speaker 1: tell a story like this and try to diminish or
Speaker 1: raise myself on a pedestal of look how scary this was,
Speaker 1: because there's men and women that do this daily. Is
Speaker 1: part of their job, that's just what they do. And
Speaker 1: so for me to come in and say I did
Speaker 1: two weeks as nothing, So let me just throw this
Speaker 1: out there that that was probably the most dangerous thing
Speaker 1: I've done, is those series of shows, those series of travels,
Speaker 1: But it does not compare to the people that actually
Speaker 1: do it for a living, and that's part of their lives.
Speaker 1: Because I remember when those when those black Hawks would
Speaker 1: land and we would jump off, and we had to
Speaker 1: jump off fast because their schedule was so tight there
Speaker 1: to another mission. And I remember a couple of times
Speaker 1: after these crazy maneuvers, after the crazy incoming and RPGs
Speaker 1: are coming in and we're dropping flares, crazy maneuvers, they
Speaker 1: drop us off. We get off on the LZ and
Speaker 1: we're moving and I look back. Those birds are already gone.
Speaker 1: They're going right back into Baghdad, right back into the
Speaker 1: hell zone. And I'm just thinking, God bless them, man,
Speaker 1: God bless them. They're just going right back where they
Speaker 1: came from because that's their job. So yeah, I love
Speaker 1: talking about that subject. And to Colin from Instagram, it's
Speaker 1: probably the most dangerous thing I've done. I'm gonna take
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Speaker 1: Like if I'm making an album and I'm listening to
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Speaker 1: your first pair of features. I love answering these questions
Speaker 1: for you guys, And here's one that says, have you
Speaker 1: ever thought about coming to Canada's prairies. I know you
Speaker 1: have a lot of fans here, and I screenshot of
Speaker 1: this because I was like, we've played Canada a lot
Speaker 1: and I've never heard, specifically someone say, have you ever
Speaker 1: thought about coming to Canada's prairies. I actually don't even Jeff,
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that means. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: assuming you're talking east of Calgary. When the mountains start,
Speaker 1: You're talking about going east where the prairies are? You
Speaker 1: guys got to help me with this. But regardless, Jeff,
Speaker 1: we love playing Canada. Some of my favorite fans. I
Speaker 1: feel like we've played coast to coast in Canada. Not
Speaker 1: nearly enough, but we have played coast to coast on
Speaker 1: several tours, and so, yes, Buddy, count me in for
Speaker 1: Canada's Prairies. Here's a question that says, is there gonna
Speaker 1: be Earl Dibbles junior songs on this new album? Yes, Buddy, Yes, Yes.
Speaker 1: The So the album as a whole, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of songs on it. There's going to be three Earl
Speaker 1: Devils junior features. I'll go ahead and tell you now
Speaker 1: two of them. This is exclusive podcast information two of
Speaker 1: them are just Earl, so it's like your typical earl
Speaker 1: like you did City Boy, Stuck and Comfortable Song and
Speaker 1: Countryble We Love and America Don't Tread on Me Is.
Speaker 1: There's two of those, and then there's one where he's
Speaker 1: with Granger with me. It's always weird speaking third person,
Speaker 1: but when he's with me, like in Holler when he
Speaker 1: comes in at the bridge. You're gonna learn a lot
Speaker 1: more about this in the next month, but dude, I'm excited.
Speaker 1: Earl songs are always so fun immediately to add them
Speaker 1: to a show, a live concert, it's because we could.
Speaker 1: They're There's so many other songs that really depend on
Speaker 1: if the crowd knows them and if the crowd is
Speaker 1: going to sing along, if they're familiar with the new
Speaker 1: song yet. But Earl doesn't matter. Like we could play
Speaker 1: an Earl song tomorrow. You've never heard it, we've never
Speaker 1: played it, and it's just going to work. So I'm
Speaker 1: really excited about that. And as far as a live
Speaker 1: show is concerned, here's a question from Holden Anderson. It says,
Speaker 1: what is the most you've missed out from being Let
Speaker 1: me read this again, what is the most you have
Speaker 1: missed from being out on tour, And I'm assuming what
Speaker 1: is the most you've missed from being out on tour.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming you're talking about the stuff at home, Like
Speaker 1: what have I had to skip because I'm on the
Speaker 1: road touring and that is that has always been a
Speaker 1: struggle with not only me but my band and crew.
Speaker 1: It's a sacrifice we make. And there is a Garth
Speaker 1: Brooks song called not Lament. It's an unknown album cut
Speaker 1: song night Writer's Lament and a man I've always loved
Speaker 1: that song because it just talks about this cowboy that's
Speaker 1: that's out on on on a drive with his few
Speaker 1: cowboy loner buddies, and he gets a letter from home
Speaker 1: and he reads it and the letter talks about his
Speaker 1: old girl is now married and she's doing great, and man,
Speaker 1: you really you really missed the boat when you didn't
Speaker 1: come back, and and you get all you get this
Speaker 1: sad feeling like, man, he sacrificed a really cool life
Speaker 1: and a really cool girl all for this life is
Speaker 1: being a cowboy. But then when he gets to the bridge,
Speaker 1: it says, ah, but they've never seen the northern lights,
Speaker 1: They've never seen a hawk on the wind. They've never
Speaker 1: spent spring in the Great Divide, and they've never heard
Speaker 1: Old camp Cookie sing. And it gives me chills just
Speaker 1: thinking about it. It's like you sacrifice such a normal
Speaker 1: life to be on the road, but there's certain things
Speaker 1: you get out of it that are worth it. And
Speaker 1: that's the way I feel about touring. I've missed a
Speaker 1: lot in my life. I've had to sacrifice a lot,
Speaker 1: but it's not all in vain. Like if it was
Speaker 1: in vain, I wouldn't do it anymore. I would quit.
Speaker 1: But there's there's things that we get. There's smiles that
Speaker 1: we see, There's there's hugs that we're able to give.
Speaker 1: There's lives that we can foreseeably change with music and
Speaker 1: with touring, and we're making memories. All those helicopter stories.
Speaker 1: I just told you that that doesn't happen without touring.
Speaker 1: If I'm if I'm safe and i'm home and I'm
Speaker 1: living my safe, little predictable life, I don't have those stories.
Speaker 1: I don't have a potential to make someone smile on
Speaker 1: a bad day, bring someone out of a place that
Speaker 1: they didn't want to be, in a dark place that
Speaker 1: been only a music concert on the Saturday Night could
Speaker 1: have brought. And this is not at all bragging on me.
Speaker 1: It's a testament to what music and live music and
Speaker 1: touring does. All that being said, buddy, holding your question,
Speaker 1: what is the most you have missed from being out
Speaker 1: on tour? Man, I've missed. I've missed countless birthdays for
Speaker 1: my kids, my wife, I've missed anniversaries. I've missed every
Speaker 1: single wedding from everybody you could possibly imagine that I've
Speaker 1: had from high school and college, and we all have
Speaker 1: and that has just been part of that's been part
Speaker 1: of the sacrifice. We just don't go to weddings because
Speaker 1: weddings are on Saturday nights and we're playing. That's when
Speaker 1: we're making money, that's when we work. That in comparison,
Speaker 1: Saturday night to me is your Monday afternoon. Like that's
Speaker 1: your work day, that's the day you gotta go. You
Speaker 1: gotta go to work, you got to clock in on Monday.
Speaker 1: That's just when you go. I gotta clock in on
Speaker 1: Saturday night. And with that, my choice is I'd say, hey,
Speaker 1: sorry tour, sorry band, sorry crew. I got a buddy
Speaker 1: from college and he's getting married, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: go be at that wedding, and some of you listening
Speaker 1: might think, well, that would be the noble thing to do.
Speaker 1: That's your buddy, But where do you draw the line
Speaker 1: and where do I say I have an obligation with
Speaker 1: my band and crew to play this show or with
Speaker 1: my fans to play this show. At what point do
Speaker 1: I start saying no to a buddy or at what
Speaker 1: level of friendship does he need to be if I'm
Speaker 1: going to say yes to his wedding man Johnny Wazenski,
Speaker 1: my bass player, I missed his wedding because we had
Speaker 1: a show that night and we had to get a
Speaker 1: fill in bass player. I'm not trying to be mean,
Speaker 1: are are cynical or crude by any means. That's just
Speaker 1: what we signed up for. And we don't skip. We
Speaker 1: don't skip touring to stay home and go to birthday
Speaker 1: parties and weddings. Now, all that being said, we try
Speaker 1: our hardest to be as present as possible when we
Speaker 1: are home and when we are with our friends and
Speaker 1: make up for it. And when my kid has a
Speaker 1: birthday on a Thursday night and I'm gone, when I'm
Speaker 1: come home Sunday, we're doing a birthday party and we're
Speaker 1: gonna make it big and we're gonna make it special.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna FaceTime on that Thursday, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: send them secret notes that they're hidden in the room
Speaker 1: that they're gonna find under their pillow. I'm going to
Speaker 1: I'm going to go try to go an extra mile
Speaker 1: on those days to make up for it. But unfortunately
Speaker 1: that's part of the sacrifice. That's a good question. Here,
Speaker 1: here's one speaking of cowboys. When are you coming to Wyoming? Buddy?
Speaker 1: If you're listening to this in real time on Monday,
Speaker 1: when this podcast comes out, I'm coming to Wyoming Thursday.
Speaker 1: In three days, I'll be driving to Wyoming. So we're
Speaker 1: going Cheyenne this coming Thursday. So we are touring here
Speaker 1: and there. It's sparse, but we are here and there.
Speaker 1: Iceberg ask, what kind of music making software do you use?
Speaker 1: And I'm assuming you're talking about recording. You say music
Speaker 1: making software, I'm assuming you're talking about audio recording software,
Speaker 1: and that is pro Tools. It's what I'm using right
Speaker 1: now for this podcast. Directly behind this camera, I'm running
Speaker 1: my laptop and I'm running pro Tools, and it's recording
Speaker 1: this microphone into pro Tools. It is a software recording
Speaker 1: that I have used since two thousand and three. I
Speaker 1: believe I've used pro Tools for seventeen years, y'all. I
Speaker 1: was using it when it was old and black and white,
Speaker 1: and it was great back then. I was going to say,
Speaker 1: when it's old, black and white, not that good, but hey,
Speaker 1: it was great in comparison, Like it was always, it's
Speaker 1: always been top of the line, you know, cutting edge technology.
Speaker 1: It's always it's always been very user friendly, which is
Speaker 1: what I love about pro Tools. But if you guys
Speaker 1: are thinking about it, it's kind of the industry standard too.
Speaker 1: There's just a few others that people use, and the
Speaker 1: industry standard is typically pro Tools. So if I'm recording
Speaker 1: in pro Tools, I could send it to a buddy
Speaker 1: who's going to put a guitar down in pro Tools,
Speaker 1: and I could send it to my other buddy who's
Speaker 1: going to mix it in pro Tools, and my other
Speaker 1: buddy who's going to edit in pro Tools. So most
Speaker 1: people use. It's industry standard, and if it's not, if
Speaker 1: someone's not using it, you could easily bounce down to
Speaker 1: wave files and send them that for the software that
Speaker 1: they're using. But I'm a big, big advocate for it,
Speaker 1: and I've used it for seventeen years and a lot
Speaker 1: of albums. Every album you've ever heard, every vocal you've
Speaker 1: ever heard has come from my computer on pro Tools,
Speaker 1: different versions. Here's one. I'm take a break in a minute,
Speaker 1: and so I don't want to get into this is
Speaker 1: a good one. Both of these back to back are good.
Speaker 1: So here's Mike. He says, when are the new songs
Speaker 1: coming out? So I'll reiterate one more time that the
Speaker 1: album is coming out in September. There will meet, there
Speaker 1: will be more after that. That announcement's coming on August
Speaker 1: the twenty eighth, where you're going to get two new
Speaker 1: songs on August the twenty eighth, and then you'll on
Speaker 1: that same day you'll get the announcement of how and
Speaker 1: why and when the rest of the music is coming.
Speaker 1: Joe says, will your new album have any previously released singles?
Speaker 1: Much love this bump, Joe. It will have one song
Speaker 1: on the digital that you know, and that's that's why
Speaker 1: I love Dirt Roads. So that will be the only
Speaker 1: song on the digital release. That's Spotify and Apple Music
Speaker 1: and Pandora and all the other digital platforms. Uh, that
Speaker 1: will only have that's why I love Dirt Roads, that
Speaker 1: you know, but the physical, the actual CD which is
Speaker 1: not coming out yet, it's that's that's a little bit
Speaker 1: later announcement that come soon that will have Holler and
Speaker 1: that's why I love Dirt Roads featuring Leathan Warlick on
Speaker 1: the CD. So the CD will have all of that.
Speaker 1: We'll have all the new songs plus those. So we
Speaker 1: didn't think you needed to get it on did you
Speaker 1: didn't didn't need it to get anything that existed already
Speaker 1: on digital because you're already having digitals right there. But
Speaker 1: for the collector's item, which is basically what CDs are
Speaker 1: these days, are collector's items, it'll have some extra stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get to some of these ooh, these
Speaker 1: deeper ones quick bread. This episode's brought to you, guys
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Speaker 1: Com slash Granger. I want to get into a deeper
Speaker 1: question here, and it says, how do you deal with
Speaker 1: a negative review from the media? Yeye from New Zealand.
Speaker 1: I need to say, first of all, media is not
Speaker 1: really really. Then the negativity is more from social media,
Speaker 1: from people you know, commenting hate on social media, and
Speaker 1: it's even that is rare, And I maybe it's rare
Speaker 1: because I don't look for it and I don't want
Speaker 1: to deal with it. I just try to skip over
Speaker 1: it and I don't see especially in country music, there's
Speaker 1: a lot that there's not a lot of negative reviews
Speaker 1: in the media because everyone pretty much plays nice or
Speaker 1: they just don't talk about it at all. It's like
Speaker 1: the old grandma saying, if you don't have anything nice
Speaker 1: to say, don't say anything at all. But I can't
Speaker 1: I'd be lying to if I didn't say that there
Speaker 1: are times when I make a post or put out
Speaker 1: a video, or put out a song and scroll past
Speaker 1: good comments looking for a bad one. And I don't
Speaker 1: know what it is about human nature that makes us
Speaker 1: want to look for a fight or drive around looking
Speaker 1: for looking for trouble. This is basically what it is
Speaker 1: when you're on social media just scrolling, you're basically that's
Speaker 1: the old days, are driving around looking for trouble. And
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is about human nature that
Speaker 1: makes you makes that that little bit of that little
Speaker 1: the little spark in the brain that goes, so I'm
Speaker 1: gonna find something bad, like, oh, one good, one good,
Speaker 1: one good, one good, this is the worst all perfect.
Speaker 1: Was this guy saying what he's saying about how bad
Speaker 1: this song is. It takes practice to get away from that,
Speaker 1: to get out of that habit, to try to avoid that,
Speaker 1: but needless to say, it does happen. So I took
Speaker 1: this this little poster off my brother's wall next door,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of hard to read because it's gold
Speaker 1: and it's it's got glares on it. But Theodore Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: who I've spoken about many times in this podcast, who
Speaker 1: I have tattooed on my arm, dear mighty things, on
Speaker 1: my left arm. He speaks to that. He speaks to
Speaker 1: your question, dude, He speaks to exactly what you're saying,
Speaker 1: how do you deal with a negative review? And this
Speaker 1: is what Theodore Roosevelt would say. It's called it was
Speaker 1: a speech made, and the speech has been commonly titled
Speaker 1: the Man in the Arena, And it says, it is
Speaker 1: not the critic who counts, not the man who points
Speaker 1: out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer
Speaker 1: of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs
Speaker 1: to the man that's actually in the arena, whose face
Speaker 1: is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly,
Speaker 1: who errs, who comes short again and again, because there
Speaker 1: is no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does
Speaker 1: actually strive to do the deeds, who does great enthusiasms,
Speaker 1: the great devotions, who spins himself in a worthy cause,
Speaker 1: who at the best knows in the end the triumph
Speaker 1: of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails,
Speaker 1: at least he fails, why daring greatly so that his
Speaker 1: place shall never be with those cold and timid souls
Speaker 1: who know neither victory nor defeat. Good Old Teddy. I
Speaker 1: could not have said that any better. So how do
Speaker 1: you deal with a negative review? You know, listen to
Speaker 1: it unless they're in the arena with you, blood, sweat
Speaker 1: and tears, fighting right there alongside of you. Those are
Speaker 1: the people you listen to. You can name those people,
Speaker 1: each of you on this podcast listening and me, we
Speaker 1: could all name on one or two hands the people
Speaker 1: that are in the arena with us, fighting our battle
Speaker 1: with us, right and if you're not, if you're not there,
Speaker 1: So say, for instance, me if I put out a
Speaker 1: song and there's some random dude up high in the
Speaker 1: bleacher seats, and the analogy of the arena, the gladiator arena,
Speaker 1: as Roosevelt was thinking, there's a dude up in the
Speaker 1: nosebleeds and he goes, oh, I don't like it. I
Speaker 1: can't hear you. I can't hear you down here because
Speaker 1: I'm fighting a battle and the floor of the arena
Speaker 1: and there's men that want to kill me, and we're
Speaker 1: all fighting and sweating and bleeding, and there's a few
Speaker 1: guys with me here fighting with me. We got swords
Speaker 1: and shields, and you know, but that guy, those Bleeds
Speaker 1: who just came in to watch the fight. I'm sorry, dude,
Speaker 1: I'm I can't listen to you. I can't. I can't
Speaker 1: even hear you. So that's not me. That's not a singer,
Speaker 1: that's not a country singer. Or this is life. This
Speaker 1: is so many things in life. This can apply you,
Speaker 1: name it, plug it in. It applies to you in
Speaker 1: your life. Boom the next one. Do you ever struggle
Speaker 1: with self confidence? Yes? Yes, that's an easy answer. That's
Speaker 1: an easy question, easy answer, But it's much more complicated
Speaker 1: than that. Do you ever struggle with self confidence? Daily?
Speaker 1: I wake up in the morning and I deal with it,
Speaker 1: and there's there's voices in my head in the morning
Speaker 1: when the first thing I gonna wake up says you're
Speaker 1: not good enough today. You're not good enough to be
Speaker 1: where you are. You think you have a podcast? What
Speaker 1: a joke? If you have you heard Joe Rogan. You
Speaker 1: know how many followers he has, how many listeners? Yours
Speaker 1: is a joke. You're not good enough? Why would anyone
Speaker 1: this podcast thing is going to go away. You got
Speaker 1: a couple sponsors on this episode. Good for you, it's
Speaker 1: gonna go away. You probably won't have them next week.
Speaker 1: This goes on and on and on until you learn
Speaker 1: to silence that internal voice. And as we spoke about
Speaker 1: the critic and the last question, the biggest critic is yourself.
Speaker 1: And you got to beat yourself. You got to be
Speaker 1: better than you were yesterday. And a lot of times
Speaker 1: that silencing that voice that wants to tell you you're
Speaker 1: not good enough. So it's a daily struggle. It's a
Speaker 1: daily struggle to not scroll through Instagram and look for
Speaker 1: negative comments. It's a daily struggle to silence the voice
Speaker 1: that wants to tell me that I'm not good enough
Speaker 1: to be here, I'm not good enough. I struggled for
Speaker 1: a long time, and I think I could honestly say
Speaker 1: I probably probably not. I probably can't say this yet,
Speaker 1: but I did struggle. And I remember the first time
Speaker 1: I felt this feeling. It was when I was going
Speaker 1: to Texas A and M and I had a song
Speaker 1: that was that was locally popular called we Bleed, and
Speaker 1: it was about the school, Texas A and M University,
Speaker 1: and it went it went a little bit viral back then.
Speaker 1: It was in two thousand and six enough that I
Speaker 1: was able to move some product, move some songs. The
Speaker 1: little albums EP and then I was able to sell
Speaker 1: tickets at concerts and get a bunch of people there,
Speaker 1: as opposed to the old days when it was like
Speaker 1: forty people. I could actually go in a couple of
Speaker 1: times and see a see if four or five hundred people.
Speaker 1: And I remember being out there knowing that I had
Speaker 1: we Bleed Maroon. That was the reason they came. They
Speaker 1: came because I was the guy that sang we Bleed Maroon?
Speaker 1: How do you think that makes me feel? On every
Speaker 1: other song I sing that night? Completely self conscious? All
Speaker 1: I'm thinking is A, I got to hurry up and
Speaker 1: get the we Bleed Maroon? And B what am I
Speaker 1: going to do after that song's over? Like? How am
Speaker 1: I going to end the show? If that's the song
Speaker 1: they came to hear. So it was a huge struggle,
Speaker 1: and I would think about it song after song. I'd
Speaker 1: be thinking, no one wants to hear this song. I'm sucking.
Speaker 1: I'm not worthy of all these people being here. I'm
Speaker 1: disappointing them. I know it. I'm disappointing these people. They
Speaker 1: came to hear one song, and now I'm disappointing them
Speaker 1: with all the others Instead I could have been replacing
Speaker 1: those thoughts with all Right, I'm gonna try to win
Speaker 1: these people over. They came to hear one song. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try to win them over with another song that
Speaker 1: they don't even know. Then they'll leave here a fan
Speaker 1: of that song. But I would be lying if I
Speaker 1: said the voice that won those conversations in my head
Speaker 1: was typically the voice that said, you are not worthy
Speaker 1: to be here. You're disappointing these people. You're better hurry
Speaker 1: to get to we believe Maroon, and I still feel
Speaker 1: that voice. It's gotten a lot better, a lot better.
Speaker 1: I would say ninety five percent of the shows I
Speaker 1: play now I'm able to enjoy them and play them
Speaker 1: song by song and actually enjoy the moment and be
Speaker 1: in the moment with my band and be in the
Speaker 1: moment with the fans. But they're still that five percent.
Speaker 1: I'm in a bigger show, or it's a TV show,
Speaker 1: or it's a big arena show than I think. I
Speaker 1: got lucky. I just got lucky. I locked my way
Speaker 1: into the show, and I just tricked them. I tricked
Speaker 1: these people into thinking that they should be here to
Speaker 1: hear me, But then they're really going to be disappointed
Speaker 1: and probably end up filing out one by one as
Speaker 1: soon as they realized the jokes on them. I just
Speaker 1: trick I'm a con artist and I tricked them into
Speaker 1: coming to this show. So so yeah, I know that's
Speaker 1: a long answer. But do I struggle with self confidence? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: I do. What life advice would you give to a
Speaker 1: young adult that you wished you knew you would have known?
Speaker 1: Let me read that again. Messed that up? What life
Speaker 1: advice would you give to a young adult that you
Speaker 1: wished you would have known? Question by Sierra. And It's
Speaker 1: taken me a lot of years to realize that there's
Speaker 1: a story worth reading, worth understanding in the Bible. And
Speaker 1: some of you are going to might maybe be repulsed
Speaker 1: by that answer, some of you might agree with that answer,
Speaker 1: and some of you, who I'm probably speaking to, I hope,
Speaker 1: are wondering what that means and maybe intrigued by that.
Speaker 1: And I would have to say because a lot of
Speaker 1: these questions too were like, Hey, are you going to
Speaker 1: do Amber Dozer devotionals every Sunday morning? Are you going
Speaker 1: to do that? And I'm still really in a place
Speaker 1: of figuring out my rhythm right now with this. But
Speaker 1: the truth of the matter is I became a devotional
Speaker 1: junkie a little bit, and I felt like I got
Speaker 1: too much into reading Christian devotionals and hearing these beautiful
Speaker 1: verses and a beautiful explanation of the verse and a
Speaker 1: way that that could applied to my life at the time.
Speaker 1: And I think that's great. But I became a junkie
Speaker 1: about it, and I read every morning and that's what
Speaker 1: I read, that was the extent of it, instead of
Speaker 1: actually getting into the Scripture itself and digging in. And
Speaker 1: when I did that, I stopped devotionals. I stopped the
Speaker 1: influence from man altogether, from preachers and worship leaders and
Speaker 1: devotionals and books and podcasts, and I got away from
Speaker 1: all of it, and I just went into the word itself,
Speaker 1: the Scripture itself. Starting at the beginning, I actually read
Speaker 1: the complete New Testament, first discovered all the beauty of
Speaker 1: the New Testament, all the missing pieces. I heard it
Speaker 1: described one time. It's like a beautiful scripture is like
Speaker 1: a pearl, and you hold it out in front of you, Oh,
Speaker 1: God so loved the world, or you have these beautiful
Speaker 1: verses and it's a beautiful pearl. But then when you
Speaker 1: read it all in context and read why for instance,
Speaker 1: John said three sixteen, and why Paul said all the
Speaker 1: beautiful things he says in Romans and Corinthians, you you
Speaker 1: feel the entire string of all the pearls laid out
Speaker 1: in front of you, and it all just makes sense.
Speaker 1: And so that's been my journey for a while now.
Speaker 1: For this whole year, it's just been avoiding devotionals. And
Speaker 1: it's not that I avoid sermons and preachers, but I
Speaker 1: I start. I start with me and the own word
Speaker 1: and my my own interpretation of the word that I'm
Speaker 1: reading right there in the Bible. So now I'm in
Speaker 1: the Old Testament, for example, and I'm like, wow, this
Speaker 1: is all like all the dots are going to have
Speaker 1: I've gone to Sunday School since i was a little kid. Guys,
Speaker 1: but I know all the stories. I know no one
Speaker 1: they are. I know Moses and the Ten Commandments. I
Speaker 1: know these stories. But when you connect them and you
Speaker 1: create the timeline and you read it as an adult,
Speaker 1: and you read it without someone preaching in your ear
Speaker 1: or without a devotional telling you to turn to this page,
Speaker 1: you just start and it's like, oh my god, this
Speaker 1: story is literally, Oh my god, this story is amazing
Speaker 1: and it's changing my life again. I feel I feel
Speaker 1: like I have died and I've been reborn literally, And
Speaker 1: so I'll get I'll get way more into that, and
Speaker 1: as i continue down that path, I'll kind of pull
Speaker 1: more of those little those little pieces out For you, guys,
Speaker 1: these are awesome questions. Thank you for asking them. If
Speaker 1: you have a question, go to your social media of
Speaker 1: choice and hashtag Granger Smith Podcast. Ask me the question.
Speaker 1: I'll search for it, find it. I'll have guests too
Speaker 1: coming up soon, and so much more to talk about
Speaker 1: with this new album. Love you guys, appreciate you listening.
Speaker 1: See you next time.