Speaker 1: Hey guys, welcome to a special episode of The Bobbycast.
Speaker 1: This is before they made it big. I love these
Speaker 1: kinds of episodes. It was super cool to compile all
Speaker 1: of this because over the years, I've sat down with
Speaker 1: artists who are massive stars now, but once upon a time,
Speaker 1: they were just normal people trying to figure out live
Speaker 1: whether going to college or starting a family, or playing
Speaker 1: in a band in their hometown. And I've talked to
Speaker 1: most of them six seven, eight years ago and an
Speaker 1: inside look at what they were doing before they moved
Speaker 1: to Nashville, what made them pull the trigger to actually
Speaker 1: move to Nashville, because again, that's a big decision, and
Speaker 1: then the very beginning of their careers. It's fun to
Speaker 1: listen to them talk about life years ago, the mindset
Speaker 1: they had then. Some of these interviews are from years ago,
Speaker 1: and some of them talking about back before they made it.
Speaker 1: On this episode, you're gonna hear some great stories they're
Speaker 1: in the archives of the Bobbycast. From Thomas Rhet, Dirk Spentley,
Speaker 1: Jacob and Chris Staple, Timbrett Eldridge, John Party, Cole Swindell,
Speaker 1: and Walker Hayes. Let's kick off the special with Chris
Speaker 1: Stapleton talking about his days of playing football in high
Speaker 1: school and coming to Nashville, and originally it was just
Speaker 1: to be a songwriter. The like to look at the
Speaker 1: pictures of the shows. It's been so crazy to watch
Speaker 1: the growth. There's been two artists that I've seen grow
Speaker 1: like the like I've watched this grow, this.
Speaker 2: Part of you, this.
Speaker 1: Chapter of Chris Stapleton, you and Sam and you're not
Speaker 1: the same, but it's like nobody kind of came out
Speaker 1: of nowhere, completely organic, and it's been boom songwriting first,
Speaker 1: like paying dudes writing songs for people, like that's why,
Speaker 1: Like that way you moved, you moved down to write
Speaker 1: song a songwriter.
Speaker 3: I thought that was that sounded like the greatest job
Speaker 3: I've ever heard of, and I heard of even.
Speaker 2: Though singing like you did you want to like, I
Speaker 2: can go be an artist. So let's be honest.
Speaker 3: You know, sitting in a room playing a guitar for
Speaker 3: maybe three hours a day and getting paid to do
Speaker 3: that is probably still the greatest job in the world.
Speaker 2: Would you rather sit in a room and write a
Speaker 2: great song with one of your songwriter buddies or play
Speaker 2: on stage for fifty thousand people.
Speaker 3: I like to play, so that that's hard to say.
Speaker 3: But I like to write a good song too. But
Speaker 3: you know, at this point, I probably have to pick
Speaker 3: playing because I like playing. I like playing a whole lot.
Speaker 1: Do you ever get to where I'm getting kind of
Speaker 1: tired of playing? I just kind of want to write
Speaker 1: songs for a few months.
Speaker 3: No, No, I mean certainly, if you're if you're not
Speaker 3: feeling one hundred percent, if you're sick, you know, there's
Speaker 3: times I'm sure you get out there, not sleeping and
Speaker 3: working nine days a week where you're just like, you know,
Speaker 3: I wish I could just, you know, chill out just
Speaker 3: a minute. But the fear will keep you going.
Speaker 2: The fear. That's why I have fear.
Speaker 1: I'm terrified that I feel like, and I don't know
Speaker 1: if you feel this way, because I'm obviously nuts, but
Speaker 1: I feel like I've been committing crimes for a long time,
Speaker 1: and eventually the cops are gonna catch me, and when
Speaker 1: they do, my career is over because they're if they've
Speaker 1: got me, or everyone's going to figure out that I'm
Speaker 1: not even some imposter syndrome, you.
Speaker 3: Feel like, absolutely, I think I think a lot of
Speaker 3: people feel that. Not a lot of people will verbalize it,
Speaker 3: you know. But I had somebody that uh and I
Speaker 3: won't say his name, but uh, you know it was.
Speaker 2: A hero of mine. You have that very thing.
Speaker 3: He's like, I'm just waiting for everybody to figure you know,
Speaker 3: figured out, and I'm just like, I was just like,
Speaker 3: even you feel that way.
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, all right, do you feel that way? Oh?
Speaker 3: Sure, everybody you know to some degree, nobody you know.
Speaker 3: But then you know the flip side of the corner.
Speaker 3: I used to say to people when even when you
Speaker 3: walking to meet somebody, hey you doing man, and be like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm far better than I deserve.
Speaker 2: I used to say that the people.
Speaker 3: And then I had I met somebody and then and
Speaker 3: they were walking up on the bus and there was
Speaker 3: another artist and he said, uh, he said, well me too,
Speaker 3: But do you know, maybe we all deserve great things?
Speaker 3: And it really made me. It took me back for
Speaker 3: a minute, and I was just like, wow, that's uh okay,
Speaker 3: maybe we did, and maybe that makes it okay, you know,
Speaker 3: like maybe that can make the fear go away a
Speaker 3: little bit if you if you just think that we
Speaker 3: all probably deserve great things. You know, not all of
Speaker 3: us get it, but I think everybody certainly deserves it.
Speaker 2: Do you get in your own head a lot?
Speaker 4: You feel like.
Speaker 3: I can in a moment, And yeah, I get in
Speaker 3: my own head quite a bit. That's probably why I
Speaker 3: don't talk that much.
Speaker 1: What's your fear getting in your own head of talking?
Speaker 1: H Like, what's the worst that could happen in your mind?
Speaker 2: What you say?
Speaker 1: You know, I don't want to get in my own head,
Speaker 1: So that's why I don't.
Speaker 3: I might get in my own head on stage. Sometimes
Speaker 3: that's the worst place for it to happen to me,
Speaker 3: you know, like maybe I don't like how something sounding,
Speaker 3: or I don't like the way guitar feels at the moment,
Speaker 3: you know, or it's you know, any little thing that
Speaker 3: can happen, you know, is the danger for me to
Speaker 3: go completely off the edge and just like not be
Speaker 3: able to dig myself out of that moment. It's bad
Speaker 3: when I go down, but I try to avoid it.
Speaker 3: Will you go down like that? Because I'll go down
Speaker 3: like that absolutely, and it can ruin my whole day
Speaker 3: and everybody else's whole day. So I try to be
Speaker 3: conscious of it and not do it for.
Speaker 1: Me my co host Amy can you can notice that
Speaker 1: and she's the one that goes boom and she'll try
Speaker 1: to pull me out of it.
Speaker 2: Is that what Morgan does for you? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, because she can see it sometimes or she can
Speaker 1: see it happening when maybe.
Speaker 2: You can't, or you're just starting. Absolutely, Yeah, same thing,
Speaker 2: just delevery slow because part of the creative part of
Speaker 2: you needs to be in that space. Well, yeah, you've
Speaker 2: got to be on the edge. You just can't fall
Speaker 2: off of it. Do you feel like sometimes you don't
Speaker 2: want to fix yourself because you'll lose your edge. Do
Speaker 2: you ever have that thought? I'm not till now, never
Speaker 2: mind scratch that, because that's something I'll be like, I
Speaker 2: don't know if I should get better because I'll lose it.
Speaker 3: No, you know I used to think those kind of things,
Speaker 3: but I always feel like there's room for improvement and
Speaker 3: and if something's making your your overall health or life better,
Speaker 3: it's not necessarily it's not losing your edge, you know,
Speaker 3: I feel like those things.
Speaker 2: It's not losing edge. It's just it's making making you sharper.
Speaker 1: You finish the show, you come off stage, what's the
Speaker 1: what's the first thing you do finish the show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thank all the local crew guys for for
Speaker 3: the work, and a lot of times my wife is
Speaker 3: retired for the evening before the encore.
Speaker 2: Is over, so.
Speaker 3: I'll go find out where she is if she needs anything,
Speaker 3: and then I'll probably why not hang with the band
Speaker 3: guys for a few minutes in the dressing room and
Speaker 3: then hit the bus and I'll be up till two
Speaker 3: three in the morning watching Face Off.
Speaker 2: For the eightieth time for the eightieth time.
Speaker 1: Do you go back and listen to shows like your
Speaker 1: live shows and then criticize or love on yourself.
Speaker 3: No, not, No, I try not to. I mean, we
Speaker 3: do record now, and we have a pretty elaborate recording rig.
Speaker 3: We basically, you know, have as much of that kind
Speaker 3: of stuff as we can have out there for cataloging,
Speaker 3: and we're trying to put together some live things. But
Speaker 3: it's a real uh, well, that microscope is tough, you know,
Speaker 3: on live shows, you know, because there's so much other
Speaker 3: external things going on. You know that sometimes you can
Speaker 3: be too hard on yourself, so you have to really
Speaker 3: listen to it with a different set of ears, and
Speaker 3: maybe you would listen to something you're really picking on
Speaker 3: in the studio.
Speaker 1: So, well, you look at a crowd, and when you
Speaker 1: look at a crowd, will you focus on the people
Speaker 1: that are having a great time or you see the
Speaker 1: one that's.
Speaker 3: Like anybody that spending my show just knows that I
Speaker 3: don't look at the crowd a whole lot, because that
Speaker 3: a little bit can break focus for me. Like I'll
Speaker 3: look at the crowd when I'm not playing and I'll
Speaker 3: try to interact with them in that way. But if
Speaker 3: I do look out there and I see somebody not
Speaker 3: having a good time, it can do that thing and
Speaker 3: we're talking about or if I see somebody having too
Speaker 3: good of a time, it will make me smile, it
Speaker 3: will make me too happy, and I forget what I'm doing.
Speaker 3: So I'm I'm very add that way, So I have
Speaker 3: to be real careful about, you know, eye contact. I
Speaker 3: do a very controlled version of it for myself, just
Speaker 3: to try to and make sure I don't lose focus
Speaker 3: of what I'm doing in the circle of everybody in
Speaker 3: the band.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, I didn't know that because I do.
Speaker 1: I've seen you play a bunch and you do kind
Speaker 1: of keep down a bit when you play.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm here, yeahside the circle, like.
Speaker 2: Somebody can see me over the radio or whatever this is.
Speaker 3: And but I'm I'm very much in the guitar and
Speaker 3: I'm in my singing, and I'm in with the rest
Speaker 3: of the band. That's where that's where the stuff's happening.
Speaker 3: And when that's not going on, then the interaction happens
Speaker 3: a little bit more in the crowd. Maybe if I
Speaker 3: take a solo off step out front just for a minute,
Speaker 3: and we can give a little plants here in there.
Speaker 3: But for the most part, I try to keep there's
Speaker 3: this like a little circle happening on stage no matter
Speaker 3: what we're playing that I'm trying to stay in that circle.
Speaker 1: That circle too is important to you. Oh yeah, the
Speaker 1: people in that circle. Absolutely, they're the same people on
Speaker 1: the record. Absolutely Why they's so important to you?
Speaker 3: None of we wouldn't be sitting here talking if it
Speaker 3: wasn't for the people in that circle. You know, none
Speaker 3: of this would be what it is, and none of
Speaker 3: it would be happening at all if it weren't for
Speaker 3: the people in that circle.
Speaker 2: You really care about it, huh, oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 4: Can it?
Speaker 1: Try as I can tell you, I feel like with me,
Speaker 1: I'm as good as the people around me are. Like
Speaker 1: I try, I surromise. The people made me.
Speaker 3: Better, right, And that's that's one of the best things
Speaker 3: you can do if you want to be better, surround
Speaker 3: yourself with the best people you can find and whatever.
Speaker 3: And that extends into you know, when we're on the
Speaker 3: road with a pretty what I will consider a good
Speaker 3: sized crew, and everybody in that crew is that for us.
Speaker 3: And I think that's the key to putting on a
Speaker 3: successful tours is you get the absolute best people to
Speaker 3: work with you.
Speaker 2: Can find at all times.
Speaker 3: And uh, there's four on stage, but the four on stage, Yeah, that's.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's that's the fist for you.
Speaker 4: That's you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the type like right there, those four. I
Speaker 1: mean it sounds like ten, but it's you four.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, that's that's the you know.
Speaker 3: And then you know, Dave Cobbs in there when he
Speaker 3: wants to be in there, and uh, you know, Micky
Speaker 3: rolfe Els in there when he has meant to be.
Speaker 2: In there, and Dave go wherever he wants to be
Speaker 2: whenever he wants to be like.
Speaker 3: That dude, But interpically, Dave likes the show up for
Speaker 3: things that are really easy travel or very high profile.
Speaker 3: Those those are days too. He'll he'll tell you as
Speaker 3: much he likes you know, those the best things to
Speaker 3: go to. You know, this is the easiest things to
Speaker 3: go to. So uh oh, let me talk about Blue
Speaker 3: Egg all right? So all right, let's let's switch.
Speaker 2: It up a bit.
Speaker 1: Uh You you played for Tom Petty, you get to
Speaker 1: play it wriglely with Tom Petty.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: I don't know anyone who loves music, you know, just
Speaker 1: genre less music that didn't love Tom Petty.
Speaker 3: If you don't love Tom Petty, I don't know what's
Speaker 3: the matter with you?
Speaker 2: Ready to go.
Speaker 3: Seek some kind of help. It's you know, if you
Speaker 3: can't find something in some of Tom Petty's music that
Speaker 3: you like, I worry about you a little bit.
Speaker 1: When you're when you're playing before Tom with Tom, did
Speaker 1: you take a second and like take.
Speaker 2: It in when you're on stage?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, you're well, first of all, we're at wrigley Field.
Speaker 3: The first first show we played with him was at
Speaker 3: wrigley Field, And so that alone would be enough to
Speaker 3: be like, hey, we're playing a wrigley Field. But then
Speaker 3: you add to the fact that we're there with Tom
Speaker 3: Petty and the harb Wreckers. It's you know, that's you know,
Speaker 3: if you told seventeen year old me that that was
Speaker 3: going down, my head would blow up. And it still
Speaker 3: felt that way a whole lot. You know, Seventeen year
Speaker 3: old me showed up that day it was like really yeah.
Speaker 3: I was just like, yeah, Wrigley Field with Tom Petty
Speaker 3: sounds great.
Speaker 2: You still get excited? Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Every night it's a new thing, you know, because you know,
Speaker 3: we don't run tracks, we don't do any that kind
Speaker 3: of stuff. So every night anything can happen.
Speaker 2: Which is crazy because again it's for the most part,
Speaker 2: it's four people on stage. Yes, and you don't run tracks.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: It sounds like ten people up there. Well, we're just
Speaker 5: playing your dad can and you and you're playing the
Speaker 5: lead I am, and you're singing. I watch it and
Speaker 5: I'm just like, okay.
Speaker 4: Are you are you harsh on?
Speaker 1: Let's say you're doing a solo, Well you pick a part,
Speaker 1: We're like, oh man, I really I really screwed that up.
Speaker 3: Well I'm gonna screw this. Let's just get one thing
Speaker 3: out of the way. I'm gonna screw up a solo
Speaker 3: at some point in a show, and probably two or
Speaker 3: three solos in the show. But hey, it's that way,
Speaker 3: you know, it's live, and I've I've learned to just
Speaker 3: laugh it all a little bit, you know, and then
Speaker 3: and then see if I can find my way back home,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: So it's Soloing is a very new thing to me. Really.
Speaker 3: It's really only something I started doing pretty much right
Speaker 3: before the Travel record because I had two guys in
Speaker 3: the band quit and it got down to me and
Speaker 3: JT and Derek and we had we had.
Speaker 2: Three gigs that weekend. I was like, hey, you think
Speaker 2: we can cover this. They're like, I don't know that.
Speaker 1: You have a bass player and a drummer. You really don't
Speaker 1: have many options. Except it was out of.
Speaker 3: Necessity that that I started doing that, and I was like, well,
Speaker 3: maybe I uncover it, maybe I'll figure something out, and
Speaker 3: then you know, from there, I've learned to forgive myself
Speaker 3: my shortcomings as a guitar player and just you know,
Speaker 3: enjoy it, because I do enjoy playing guitar.
Speaker 2: I really do.
Speaker 3: It's probably as much as I enjoyed saying I enjoy it,
Speaker 3: and so you know, maybe someday I'll wake up and
Speaker 3: be a real boy, you know, like be a real
Speaker 3: guitar player.
Speaker 1: You know, whenever you hurt yourself, you just didn't want
Speaker 1: to sing, You don't want anybody to come in? Was
Speaker 1: that a like a when you hurt your hand, you
Speaker 1: didn't want to not be able to do both?
Speaker 3: Well, So much of our show is, like I said,
Speaker 3: we don't run tracks. There's not a roadmap necessarily for
Speaker 3: what we do. A lot of it is very much
Speaker 3: something we've developed over time of I'm gonna do this here,
Speaker 3: and you know, and like Derek, A feel things coming
Speaker 3: when I'm playing that he can catch. And so much
Speaker 3: of our show is that if I can't play, we
Speaker 3: can't do a show because nobody coming in is going
Speaker 3: to have that you know, understanding of the musicianship within
Speaker 3: the circle of the piece. It's not gonna work. It's
Speaker 3: gonna be something different. And I feel like that's selling
Speaker 3: a little short and I don't like that.
Speaker 2: When you had to cancel the shows, that sucked for
Speaker 2: you that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well it sucked worse for the people that had
Speaker 3: tickets and plans than it did for me. You know,
Speaker 3: I had to deal with. You know, it's still a
Speaker 3: little aggravating to deal with, but you know, I felt
Speaker 3: worse about the people that I was inconvinced than anything
Speaker 3: I was having to go through. So it'd be fine,
Speaker 3: what's up with.
Speaker 2: These the Eagles. That's that's pretty freaking cool. That is cool.
Speaker 2: I'll say that, be proud. It's pretty freaking cool. Yeah, man,
Speaker 2: it's it was Eagles with Vince Gill.
Speaker 3: So it's just like, yeah, you know, I'm I was
Speaker 3: trying to talk to somebody the other day.
Speaker 2: You know, I paid, I.
Speaker 3: Saved up my money and when the hell is over
Speaker 3: to it was out and I bought me a ticket,
Speaker 3: my brother a ticket, and we would fourth throw up
Speaker 3: in Charleston, West Virginia, and they played for four hours,
Speaker 3: and to this day it's one of the greatest shows.
Speaker 2: I've been to. So they played for four hours.
Speaker 3: They played for four hours, They played us to the
Speaker 3: Eagles for like two hours, and then the Eagles became
Speaker 3: the house bands, so to speak, and they played everybody's solo.
Speaker 4: So, like Henley when did.
Speaker 3: Anything you can think of, yeah, that was solo stuff.
Speaker 3: So that you got the Eagles and all their solo stuff.
Speaker 1: Did you watch the documentary on CNN that like the
Speaker 1: Eagles multi part document you ever see that, No, that's it.
Speaker 6: That's the first of all. It was like a hundred
Speaker 6: hours and way better than Face Off. So it covers
Speaker 6: like it's a on Direct TV. On the bus is
Speaker 6: probably not on Direct TV. Okay, well that's on my
Speaker 6: own entertainment. I don't have TV at home.
Speaker 1: Here's Derek Spentley on driving to Nashville with his dad
Speaker 1: and how he had to learn to balance life on
Speaker 1: the road and being a new dad back in the day.
Speaker 1: You mentioned a minute ago in two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: when you say your career is stalled. M M nine, Yeah,
Speaker 1: eight or nine, because right now we see you as
Speaker 1: the guy who has You're now in the A it's
Speaker 1: hard to get in the A group.
Speaker 2: You're in the A group. You're now in the A group.
Speaker 1: I think you're a recent addition, just speaking frankly to
Speaker 1: the your regional edition to the A group. Yeah, B
Speaker 1: plus maybe you're you really are in the I would
Speaker 1: tell you if you weren't plus plus.
Speaker 2: You're in the U.
Speaker 1: You're in the You're in the like you're in that
Speaker 1: mix of is he going to be in the Entertainment
Speaker 1: of Year category. Now it's not He's for sure going
Speaker 1: to be nominated, Like you know Luke is going to
Speaker 1: be nominated, Yeah, and probably gonna win yeh.
Speaker 2: And he didn't win ACML, Dean did.
Speaker 1: But like you know, Luke's gonna be But you're on
Speaker 1: that is he going to be in and it's happened
Speaker 1: in the last couple of years. But it's but you're
Speaker 1: like the consumate grinder. Yeah, I've used that word a lot.
Speaker 7: It's like the hockey player that goes down there and
Speaker 7: not the slap shot guy from out top, not the
Speaker 7: fancy ford that's getting the sweet goals with the guy
Speaker 7: that goes down in the corner and digs the pucks out.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: It's probably that's when I play hockey here in town
Speaker 7: in my little league at the Beer League. That's kind
Speaker 7: of my role in real life on that hockey team,
Speaker 7: and I think in my career, yeah, it's all about
Speaker 7: well grinding. My favorite quote is was written on a
Speaker 7: It was the Calvin Coolest quote. But it's about you know,
Speaker 7: persistence and determination. It's you know, education and talent and
Speaker 7: genius can't take the place of persistence and determination. That
Speaker 7: is the key to my success for sure, and I
Speaker 7: know probably for yours as well. I mean, there's no
Speaker 7: reason why I should be a country singer or a pilot,
Speaker 7: but you know, those are just things that I wanted
Speaker 7: to do. And if you work harder than anyone else,
Speaker 7: you got a better chance of making that happen.
Speaker 1: What what happened in two thousand and eight, two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine, and your mind, where do you.
Speaker 2: Take a step back?
Speaker 7: You know, I went out on the road with I
Speaker 7: played a thousand dates on my own. I went out
Speaker 7: of the road with Kenny, and then I went out
Speaker 7: of the road towards straight and I went back on
Speaker 7: the road with Kenny. And that's usually that's usually the
Speaker 7: platform to jump off of. You know, that's where urban
Speaker 7: flats everyone went through Kenny back when those when we
Speaker 7: were starting off. And if you got the Kenny gig boom,
Speaker 7: you were a couple years in New you be headlining
Speaker 7: on your own, and you know, we were really looking
Speaker 7: like a two thousand and eight. We'd be bringing out
Speaker 7: some video and it's gonna be this kind of the
Speaker 7: ground swell, and really, uh, it's for you know, it's
Speaker 7: just the songs weren't there. That's what it comes down to.
Speaker 7: I was writing pretty much all my own songs, working
Speaker 7: love with some friends mind here in town. And and
Speaker 7: it's not their fault either, it's it's it's nobody's fault.
Speaker 2: I'm so happy that things are where they are. But
Speaker 2: I think I discovered you can't tour.
Speaker 7: I think I was in my mind, I was trying
Speaker 7: to make albums that would be jet fuel for the
Speaker 7: for touring, like how can this album, how can this
Speaker 7: song lead to headlining? And that's and you know, I need,
Speaker 7: I need the song help me get there. And that's
Speaker 7: just a terrible way to make records. And nothing against
Speaker 7: those records. Those records still sound like some are still
Speaker 7: some of my favorite signing records, but as far as
Speaker 7: singles go and songs are going to move the needle,
Speaker 7: and really, uh you know, and I feel like I
Speaker 7: just needed to reset. I don't know, I just I
Speaker 7: was you can only work so hard, man. I was
Speaker 7: working so hard on the road, touring NonStop, you know,
Speaker 7: jumping off stage, I'm stage diving, I'm pulling fans up.
Speaker 7: I'm just you know, known as the hard working men
Speaker 7: in country music, we did like forty one shows.
Speaker 2: In forty five days one time.
Speaker 7: I mean, I'm out there all the time, and I'm
Speaker 7: trying to rush back here and make records and go
Speaker 7: back out there again.
Speaker 2: It just it just doesn't It just doesn't work that way.
Speaker 7: So I was on the road in two thousand and
Speaker 7: eight or nine with Paisley and except I tried my
Speaker 7: headlining thing, it just wasn't working. So it was like, okay,
Speaker 7: retreat Brad was I had a chance to go with
Speaker 7: Brad and it was on that tour and I was
Speaker 7: opening for him, and there's a lot going on that tour.
Speaker 7: Weren't really getting a chance to sound check, and there's
Speaker 7: just the vibe of my band just as it was
Speaker 7: kind of the tour that just everyone just like, you know,
Speaker 7: we're just only playing for forty five minutes, and it's
Speaker 7: just the songs weren't really there. And I just was
Speaker 7: like in the back of my bus one day and
Speaker 7: I remember thinking, I'm gonna make a bluegrass record. I'm
Speaker 7: wanna make a blue grass record and a country record,
Speaker 7: and just I need to get creative. That's what I
Speaker 7: kept thinking, is I need to get creative, because when
Speaker 7: you're you're in that opening slot, especially after you've headlined
Speaker 7: for a little while, it's techic go back and just
Speaker 7: do forty five minutes of the same show every night.
Speaker 7: You know, you're trying to make the most of that
Speaker 7: forty five minutes, so you kind of get locked into
Speaker 7: doing the same show.
Speaker 2: And it just killed all of us.
Speaker 7: So I left and made ended up making just just
Speaker 7: a bluegrass record, and uh it really and I went
Speaker 7: back in the process of making that, being off the
Speaker 7: grid and not worrying about singles or touring or anything,
Speaker 7: just trying to make a great record that stood alone
Speaker 7: by itself and existed just for for itself totally rechanged
Speaker 7: my thinking. And you know, I still looking around people
Speaker 7: like Miranda Lambert and you know she only writes half
Speaker 7: an album, if even that, you know, and Lady A
Speaker 7: and these people at the time were like, you know,
Speaker 7: they're collecting great songs. You know, they came to realize
Speaker 7: that after your second album, you can't write an entire
Speaker 7: album just there's no time. You're touring all the time.
Speaker 7: You saw some man of the responsibilities I had. I
Speaker 7: was married at this point, as kids too, So the
Speaker 7: blue grass record, you know, I was working with the
Speaker 7: guy m John Randall one of my best friends, and
Speaker 7: he was bringing me great songs from Christopherson and Buddy
Speaker 7: Miller and just we started making a collection of an
Speaker 7: album that had my input but also had songs that
Speaker 7: kind of rounded out what I was trying to say
Speaker 7: or the field the album.
Speaker 2: And I carry that on with working with.
Speaker 7: Ross Kapperman into the next couple of albums and uh,
Speaker 7: really trying to make albums that don't worry about touring,
Speaker 7: do worry about anything.
Speaker 2: Who cares? Just make a great record.
Speaker 7: And one of the great things now I don't have
Speaker 7: an A lister, but who are am in my career
Speaker 7: is there's the better off you are doing touring and
Speaker 7: the more of you you have those fans, more freedom
Speaker 7: you have to say, who cares, Let's make the record
Speaker 7: you really want to make. I feel like that's why
Speaker 7: Keith is making like his best records, Keith Thurman's records
Speaker 7: me just get better and better each time because I
Speaker 7: feel like he's even more like I don't care. I'm
Speaker 7: gonna make great music that makes me happy that I
Speaker 7: like and hopefully you like it too. But there's no
Speaker 7: there's no math behind it. You know, it's just totally.
Speaker 7: It's pure art and he didn't have to worry about
Speaker 7: where he's gonna get his next meal. You know, he's
Speaker 7: just making great records. And I feel like there's on
Speaker 7: both ends of the spectrum. When you're first starting off
Speaker 7: and you're so hungry, and then when you get to
Speaker 7: place you have a little bit of success and you
Speaker 7: have that freedom that it brings.
Speaker 2: To you, you can really make your best records. And I
Speaker 2: feel like that's what's happening now. I'm not sure to
Speaker 2: I answer your question, but yeah, you and Keith get
Speaker 2: along pretty well.
Speaker 7: I love him man too. It's hard for me to
Speaker 7: be friends with them because I just have so much
Speaker 7: respect for him. It's like we're good friends, but at
Speaker 7: the same time, like you're Keith Urban.
Speaker 1: It's almost it's almost like why do you This is
Speaker 1: the feeling I have with him because him and I
Speaker 1: are closer than him than.
Speaker 2: Me and other arms.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's one of the guys I like when
Speaker 1: we'll talk to off the show. But it's like what
Speaker 1: I was, like, why do you want to be friends
Speaker 1: with me? He like, you're so smart, yeah, and he's
Speaker 1: so talented and you're so rich, like everything about you
Speaker 1: is way better than why would you want to be
Speaker 1: friends with me?
Speaker 4: That's how I feel with him.
Speaker 2: He is for me.
Speaker 7: He's like a he's like a beacon. He's someone I
Speaker 7: look up to for advice on just for for lifestyle
Speaker 7: and management and how you approach things. And he's just
Speaker 7: he's so present, which is something I always you know,
Speaker 7: that's my main thing with anything I do is trying
Speaker 7: to be as present as possible in the moment that
Speaker 7: I'm in.
Speaker 2: And he really is a true reflection of that.
Speaker 7: I mean when when you speak to him, and you
Speaker 7: talk to him, he's so focused on what you have
Speaker 7: to say. He's listening, and uh, it's very uncommon in
Speaker 7: this business full you know, singers and people are trying
Speaker 7: to look at me and you know are have like
Speaker 7: five seconds look into your eyes and they're kind of
Speaker 7: thinking about the next thing. He's just really focused and
Speaker 7: present and has great advice and he's been through a lot,
Speaker 7: so he can offer a good good gems. But whenever
Speaker 7: I see him a choosing on a Sunday, uh and
Speaker 7: we're doing some with our kids or something, and I'm
Speaker 7: like coming off the road and just beat up my brain.
Speaker 7: His brains are aready functioning faster than mind. Anyway, I'm
Speaker 7: coming off like no sleep, I'm tired. I'm trying to
Speaker 7: make conversation with him, like hopefully I see you one day,
Speaker 7: and I'm not like just so exhausted because it'd be
Speaker 7: fun to.
Speaker 2: Talk, like have an actual real conversation.
Speaker 8: Hang tight, the Bobby Cast will be right back. Wow,
Speaker 8: and we're back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 4: What was that for you?
Speaker 1: What was the song that were you kind of switched
Speaker 1: it up for You're like, oh boy, we're a different
Speaker 1: plant Field now.
Speaker 7: As man, I think my career has been so different
Speaker 7: than anyone else's. I know it's it's just been so
Speaker 7: such a long slow.
Speaker 2: What comes to mind where you're like, I'll be talking
Speaker 2: a plane changed a lot for me. I'm getting drunk
Speaker 2: on playing. I mean the biggest song, this song had
Speaker 2: a big like body.
Speaker 7: The most important song of my whole career, and I
Speaker 7: say every night when I'm on stage is as I
Speaker 7: Hold On. That's a song that like connects the most
Speaker 7: of the whole most personal song for me. I wrote
Speaker 7: a rap my I passed away and the audience, man,
Speaker 7: those it's a song in the show where like we're
Speaker 7: having a party.
Speaker 2: Thing's fun. It's awesome.
Speaker 7: We're all fully connect because we're all having so much
Speaker 7: fun and throwing a party. In this song I play,
Speaker 7: it's just like it loses in a different direction. It's
Speaker 7: it's it's more just like this instead of this. It's
Speaker 7: like we just come together over the let's share sentiment
Speaker 7: of the whole amount of things that mean something to you,
Speaker 7: and it's it's more important song.
Speaker 1: The important, but not the one you felt flipped you like,
Speaker 1: oh boy, this is it. I remember the day drunk
Speaker 1: on a playing like I heard of at the first time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you brought it into the studio. I hadn't been played yet,
Speaker 1: and you were like, I want you to hear this song.
Speaker 1: I was like, this is a real song, drunk on
Speaker 1: a playing. I thought you were messing with me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I almost didn't even put it on the record. Really,
Speaker 1: who makes that call then to put it on the record.
Speaker 7: Just you know, I'm so everyone I work with there's
Speaker 7: such an open communication.
Speaker 2: If I like even the label.
Speaker 7: With Mike and sending everyone to Capital, If if I
Speaker 7: have doubts about something, they don't immediately jump on that
Speaker 7: new set to promote their agenda. Everyone just just like cooling,
Speaker 7: work out together and work with Mary and we just
Speaker 7: kind of like and our tour and my executive producer
Speaker 7: and Ross and just okay, let's put it on there,
Speaker 7: you know.
Speaker 1: But then they make it a single you're talking about
Speaker 1: like completely left of center.
Speaker 2: I know.
Speaker 7: I remember I had some people like that's all will
Speaker 7: never worked. Man, Red necks don't fly like I don't know.
Speaker 7: I don't know if it will work either, but it's
Speaker 7: it's I'm a pilot and I love you know. At
Speaker 7: the time, it was a few drinks and it was
Speaker 7: it was. But it is a huge song for me,
Speaker 7: for sure.
Speaker 1: It was a month it was. It was a monster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then it flew up the charts. Yeah, it was big.
Speaker 1: I remember the day it came on the radio. We
Speaker 1: did a debut, like a world premire of it, and
Speaker 1: it played all day long. And I won't say what
Speaker 1: it is, but I was like, man, this sounds really good, right,
Speaker 1: because I like things that are different. Yeah, I don't care.
Speaker 1: I like taking big chances and hitting home runs more
Speaker 1: so than being consistent and just you know, having that
Speaker 1: three hundred bating average.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it came out I was like, man, I love
Speaker 1: this song because this is sound like anything else, and
Speaker 1: that one of our radio guys, with a big radio guy,
Speaker 1: he was like, this sucks.
Speaker 2: Sucks, We're gonna work. It's too weird. No, it's not.
Speaker 1: Obviously it wasn't right because but like I love this song.
Speaker 1: You know a song I loved yours it didn't work
Speaker 1: for you was Bourbon in Kentucky. Yeah, well you and Casey.
Speaker 1: I loved that song too.
Speaker 7: That album cycle is so funny because I put up
Speaker 7: Bourbon it didn't work, pulled it back, put out I
Speaker 7: Hold On, which probably you know, was a huge songf
Speaker 7: for me, then Drunk on a Plane, which was obviously
Speaker 7: the biggest song off that album. But Bourbon, it was
Speaker 7: a great song that Hillary Lindsay wrote, and I just
Speaker 7: I love that song. And I had to call her up.
Speaker 7: She's down Orange Beach. She had a few drinks and
Speaker 7: I was like hey, She's like, hey, what are you doing.
Speaker 7: I was like, you're not gonna believe this, but we're
Speaker 7: pulling that song and she was like so confused. She's
Speaker 7: just like I thought the next time I heard from
Speaker 7: me would be like the number one party. I'm like
Speaker 7: I've never had a pull song for my life. But
Speaker 7: it's the middle of summer and I'm getting all his
Speaker 7: feedback that the song's too dark, and that's why I
Speaker 7: loved it, though I know, I mean, I know I
Speaker 7: love it too, and I just everyone's everyone around. He
Speaker 7: was like, it's just not gonna work, and you can
Speaker 7: either work it for thirty weeks and have it die
Speaker 7: in the thirties or make a change now. It was
Speaker 7: the first song off the record, and I hate that.
Speaker 7: It was a great tune, but yeah, just that's what
Speaker 7: happens sometimes.
Speaker 1: What for you, because the artists will come in and say, hey,
Speaker 1: this is like, for example, I think, who was it?
Speaker 1: My American kids like Kenny cut a little big town
Speaker 1: had it yeah, and Kenny cut it yeah, and so.
Speaker 2: No, no, Kenny had it. Wait, yeah, a little bit
Speaker 2: down had it. Yeah, a little bit down had it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Shane was telling the story. Okay, now it's all sorts
Speaker 1: of yeah, a little Shane had it. He's on a
Speaker 1: flight and uh, he's on a flight with Kennedy. He
Speaker 1: plays his song for Kken. He's like, I gotta have
Speaker 1: the song. But Shane's like, I'm too scared to tell
Speaker 1: him a little bit now I's already cut it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he has to call they have to call a
Speaker 1: little big down and Kenny said like, I would love
Speaker 1: to have this song. And Shane's like oh, and Kenny's like,
Speaker 1: I want to make this the single. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: He's like, it's up to you, guys, it's your song.
Speaker 1: You've already started paying your your tracking it. And so
Speaker 1: a little big town gave this song American Kids to Kenny.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people come to the stories like, man,
Speaker 1: I had this song and then I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: last minute, I let it go.
Speaker 7: I have a bunch of songs that like I heard
Speaker 7: and I because the main thing if you're picking singles
Speaker 7: you got to pick are picking songs. You gotta pick
Speaker 7: songs that are hits, but also their hits for you,
Speaker 7: and that's that's that's how you get the big hits
Speaker 7: out of the park.
Speaker 2: And I hit three hundreds.
Speaker 7: When you pick singles that are like made for you,
Speaker 7: you think of songs like Don't Close your Eyes by
Speaker 7: Keith Whitley, songs that like We're just as a singer
Speaker 7: was made for that song, John Party song during my Boots.
Speaker 2: I heard that song. I think before he you know,
Speaker 2: before he cut.
Speaker 1: It, and what did you think when you heard it?
Speaker 2: Huge hit? This is a monster, This is a huge song.
Speaker 2: There's a line there about.
Speaker 7: A tractor, you know, and I was like that, I
Speaker 7: don't have that tractor factor.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't have that thing. It's not what
Speaker 2: I do. So, like, I could either try to change
Speaker 2: this song up to make it work for me, or
Speaker 2: just let it go and help those guys, you know.
Speaker 2: I don't want the songwriters.
Speaker 7: I want them to find for songwriters, man, they might
Speaker 7: get one or two great Oh these guys, they probably
Speaker 7: get five great songs.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 7: I don't want to stand away someone's like baby and
Speaker 7: tied up, because that's the way Nashville used to be.
Speaker 7: People to hold songs like yours, you know, hold thirty
Speaker 7: forty songs to the record, and the hold was respected
Speaker 7: nowadays as it should be. It's not like you either
Speaker 7: cut it or you don't. And if you're you're you're
Speaker 7: taking your time. I'm gonna pictck it to somebody else
Speaker 7: and get them to cut it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Songwriters have more power now, I think than they did
Speaker 2: back in the late nineties.
Speaker 7: But so that song Whiskey Lullaby is a song that
Speaker 7: came that I oh, that's a good herd and I
Speaker 7: was like, ah, and then and why why not that one?
Speaker 9: What?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 4: What? That?
Speaker 7: It's just uh, I don't know just what, you know.
Speaker 7: I didn't hear it as a duet that the way
Speaker 7: Brad heard it, which is genius.
Speaker 2: It just wasn't. I don't know. I just didn't have it,
Speaker 2: didn't do it, didn't do something for me. I don't
Speaker 2: know what it was.
Speaker 7: But there's that happens all the time, but for me,
Speaker 7: it's there. I ever go, oh my gosh, I'm kicking myself.
Speaker 7: I'm always like, I'm happy for that that song found
Speaker 7: the right home and made its way.
Speaker 2: There's there's always another song out there.
Speaker 1: Who have you heard the opposite where you got this long?
Speaker 1: Because somebody else was like, and you made it a
Speaker 1: hit and they have to be well, man, you know,
Speaker 1: somewher on the Beach was a big deal.
Speaker 2: It really was.
Speaker 10: Man.
Speaker 2: That was like, uh, yeah, I.
Speaker 7: Had this song on hold. And there's five guys who
Speaker 7: wrote that song. And there's a lot of people wanted
Speaker 7: that song, and I just who wanted it wrote One
Speaker 7: of those the writers of the song. I'm totally drawing
Speaker 7: a blank right now. My brain is what happens when
Speaker 7: you're on the road for three days straight. But well, actually,
Speaker 7: Michael Knox, I think I think Michael Knox wanted it
Speaker 7: for one of his artists of what it was, and
Speaker 7: we kept saying, you know, our tour. I luckily I
Speaker 7: don't to fight those battles. My one of my producers
Speaker 7: really goes in the trenches for that stuff and it
Speaker 7: worked out as a big hit for for me and
Speaker 7: it helps him go on the road and kind of
Speaker 7: have a song and talk about But at the same time,
Speaker 7: I know it's to be tough.
Speaker 2: When you're a new artist.
Speaker 7: You know, a big song that that's different you can
Speaker 7: kind of set you apart from other people.
Speaker 2: But I hopefully they're happy it was a big hit.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: It's like Lady A you know, Lady has You Look good? Notice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that was Thomas Rhetts first. That's his song,
Speaker 1: and it was he didn't write it, he had it
Speaker 1: okay and he was like he was gonna cut it huge.
Speaker 1: It's awesome the whole I mean and the whole. But
Speaker 1: every artist does different things with it too. Yes, that's
Speaker 1: what we don't know too, Like, yeah, what are you
Speaker 1: gonna do different about? Like Kenny's totally was like this
Speaker 1: beach vibe. Who knows how Little Big Tow went cut
Speaker 1: it and tracked it when what they would have had
Speaker 1: as a part of.
Speaker 7: This song, and it's it's yeah, totally, it's you know,
Speaker 7: I think all you can do. I mean, it's just
Speaker 7: the business we're in and in life in general, is
Speaker 7: you have to like you cannot like hold like that
Speaker 7: you could. You got to be have an attitude of
Speaker 7: gratitude and be thankful for what you got. And if
Speaker 7: something it's all meant to be, it's it's it's there's
Speaker 7: a reason why you didn't cut that song. There's just
Speaker 7: wanted someone else to cut the song. And otherwise you're
Speaker 7: gonna drive yourself crazy and you're gonna be resentful and you're
Speaker 7: gonna be you're you're playing a small game and you
Speaker 7: should be playing a much bigger game where you're looking
Speaker 7: at a macro view of it, not just this micro.
Speaker 2: Like song song, song, song song. If you're you know,
Speaker 2: that's not that's not the work.
Speaker 1: Jake Cohen says he owes his career and where he
Speaker 1: is today to the Nashville songwriters that he met real
Speaker 1: early on. Because here, I'll tell you, I was talking
Speaker 1: to Ross Kapperman and good Man.
Speaker 4: We were talking about you know, we had a.
Speaker 1: Really good talk and he's coming to the stand up
Speaker 1: show Saturday. Just talked to him and we were you know,
Speaker 1: you kind of get lost in these conversations and didn't
Speaker 1: feel like this microphone in front of you.
Speaker 2: For a while.
Speaker 1: And we're talking about songs, and I'm just so interested
Speaker 1: in the songwriter part of it for me, Like that's
Speaker 1: why I started this thing. Were like, I'm interested in
Speaker 1: songwriters and why they write songs, artists, artist or songwriter,
Speaker 1: songwriter a song I just wanted to know, Like I
Speaker 1: want to put some light in a place that really
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of lights shined on. And so
Speaker 1: I was like, so tell me you write these songs.
Speaker 1: These these guys take these cuts that aren't theirs, Like
Speaker 1: most artists, if it's fifty to fifty or if it's
Speaker 1: sixty forty, they'll still go with their own song over
Speaker 1: another cut if if it's close. And he was like,
Speaker 1: you're right, that does happen a lot, he said, But
Speaker 1: you know, here's what Kenny Chesney had told him. He said,
Speaker 1: you will sell more and merch if you have a
Speaker 1: hit it's not yours. Then if it's a great song,
Speaker 1: then if you have a good song, it is yours.
Speaker 4: The money you'll make.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he.
Speaker 1: Was like, that's what a lot of artists. And again
Speaker 1: he's a songwriter who isn't and who's not on the radio.
Speaker 1: So you gotta understand way's come up from a biased
Speaker 1: agenda phil place. We all are, I am, your everybody is.
Speaker 1: But he was like, you know, that's what the new
Speaker 1: artist should know, and that's what artists should know, Like
Speaker 1: you should take outside song from songwriters, because here's Kenny Chesney,
Speaker 1: who I don't know that Chesney writes anything on his
Speaker 1: records anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he has very little. Yeah, so but.
Speaker 1: He's not he doesn't, it's not it doesn't matter to him.
Speaker 1: He wants to find great songs.
Speaker 2: Well, he said, what's.
Speaker 11: Yeah, And that's why Kenny's always been great. He's found
Speaker 11: the greatest way possible of doing something, whether it be
Speaker 11: a song, whether it be a show, whether it be
Speaker 11: his body working out. Like the guy does everything to
Speaker 11: a high level, and he expects a high level of
Speaker 11: of everything and his music. He's written great songs that
Speaker 11: were number one hits. You know, I go back, you
Speaker 11: wrote that by himself? I think, but a lot like
Speaker 11: I've learned from him being on the road as many
Speaker 11: much as I was. Where he was like, Jake, you
Speaker 11: just got to take what's the best song. And he's right,
Speaker 11: because my first two albums I wrote every song everything.
Speaker 11: And it wasn't until I recorded Barefoot Blue je Night
Speaker 11: and heard Eric Possel singing the demo on it, I
Speaker 11: was like, man, this sounds like me. And I didn't
Speaker 11: write it, but it sounds like me. I thought, was it.
Speaker 1: Tough for you to take an outside song for the
Speaker 1: first time and go, well.
Speaker 11: Here's what a lot of people don't know either, Like
Speaker 11: when you come to town, when you're come to town
Speaker 11: and you're just a guy that is trying to make
Speaker 11: it and be validated as a great Like I wanted
Speaker 11: people in town to be like, man, have you heard
Speaker 11: this j Kid. He's a great singer, he's a great songwriter,
Speaker 11: He's a great I felt like in order to get
Speaker 11: that buzz happening, I had to write my own songs
Speaker 11: and write with other songwriters and show that I could
Speaker 11: I could do that. But and I was also with
Speaker 11: a buddy of mine who was helping me. We were
Speaker 11: writing everything together, and I was being loyal to him
Speaker 11: and never realized that by reaching into this beautiful, deep
Speaker 11: well of songwriters.
Speaker 2: That you can have a hit that and and people
Speaker 2: don't care. They don't.
Speaker 11: You're just as much validated if you have a if
Speaker 11: you because you know, what's funny is, I think probably
Speaker 11: a lot of people thought I probably wrote Barefoot Blue
Speaker 11: j Knight because it was so much like me, but.
Speaker 1: It also made it sound like you too. That's also yeah,
Speaker 1: well thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 11: I think that's what I realized is that I had
Speaker 11: hits by songs I wrote. I had a career song
Speaker 11: by taking an outside song, which that career song started
Speaker 11: a string of Alone with You was next and went
Speaker 11: number one. Uh, Anywhere with You was the third one.
Speaker 2: It went number one. Well a second, let's let's learn
Speaker 2: over a second. Le me tell you my favorite.
Speaker 4: Jake On song.
Speaker 2: This one here.
Speaker 9: Songhand and that's not some beechy coastal song, you know,
Speaker 9: it's just a song that I And what's funny is
Speaker 9: Shane Mcanawly wrote this song and I told him for
Speaker 9: a year before I recorded it, I didn't even have
Speaker 9: it on hold.
Speaker 2: I was just like, dude, I love that song. I
Speaker 2: was like, I hate the line in.
Speaker 12: It you got edge every time you call?
Speaker 2: Uh? He said, you you don't have to, I sang
Speaker 2: and change the lyrics.
Speaker 12: You've got me out on the edge every time you call.
Speaker 11: You know what he said originally in this in that line,
Speaker 11: no kidding, said you've got me running.
Speaker 2: With scissors now the hall, Yeah, you know, okay?
Speaker 11: And he said because he was right reading a book
Speaker 11: called running with Scissors.
Speaker 2: Another book, dude. And I was like, no, that's terrible.
Speaker 11: I was like I can't know, and like I was like,
Speaker 11: I don't run with ever since my mom was a
Speaker 11: I was a kid. My mom's like, don't run with scissors. Like,
Speaker 11: and I understand the idea of it, but like, isn't
Speaker 11: it more of a metaphor? Now I'm not saying the
Speaker 11: line was right now, I like the line change, but
Speaker 11: isn't it a metapal run with scissors? Like it's a metaphor. Yeah,
Speaker 11: it is a metaphor. And I know it was a metaphor,
Speaker 11: but there's also lines and songs like that's the thing
Speaker 11: getting back to taking outside songs. There's so many times
Speaker 11: I hear songs I'm like, I love it, love it,
Speaker 11: love it, love it, love it, love it, love it.
Speaker 11: What did you just say? I'm like, uh huh. And
Speaker 11: that one thing. It's kind of like, you know, people
Speaker 11: say they're not like vain or whatever, but you might
Speaker 11: be like super into a dude or a guy or
Speaker 11: whatever and be like, oh everything about him, Oh my god,
Speaker 11: he's one like big toe.
Speaker 2: It's just like and it turns you off. Right. I'm
Speaker 2: not saying I've ever done that. I'm just saying.
Speaker 11: People people can be like particular about certain things. And
Speaker 11: that's how I am with songs. Like if I hear
Speaker 11: one thing that, it'll throw me off, so I either
Speaker 11: have to rewrite it and then just say, hey man,
Speaker 11: I'll cut this song. I just had to rewrite this
Speaker 11: one part. But that's one thing I'll tell you I've
Speaker 11: never done. You can ask Eric Paslay this and he
Speaker 11: talked about it on this really for extensively. Like I
Speaker 11: cannot take credit on like even if I write something
Speaker 11: within a song, since the song wasn't originally my idea,
Speaker 11: I can never feel comfortable taking credit for that, Eric,
Speaker 11: because they set me up for the home run. I
Speaker 11: just and I didn't have anything to do with it.
Speaker 11: I'd rather give the credit back to their songwriter. That's
Speaker 11: where it to do. Songwriter's man or songwriters have made
Speaker 11: my I'm a songwriter, but these other songwriters in Nashville,
Speaker 11: Ross Coffin, I mean, he produced and it was a
Speaker 11: big part Shane of my last album. And without these
Speaker 11: types of guys like I wouldn't I wouldn't be where
Speaker 11: I am in my career. I wouldn't have the things
Speaker 11: I have in my life, No way, absolutely not. So
Speaker 11: I always get to give that back to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Eric talked for a long time about how you
Speaker 1: came into that song and fixed it to be you
Speaker 1: a lot and didn't want any credit for it, Like
Speaker 1: he was like it was kind of unbelievable that he
Speaker 1: came in, did so much rearranging of things that made
Speaker 1: it felt like his song and never asked for anything.
Speaker 2: Man, I just I don't feel like it's right.
Speaker 11: Plus, it will all come back around one day, you know,
Speaker 11: like I've always looked at it, like you do the
Speaker 11: right thing right, good things come back around.
Speaker 1: Barefoot Blue Jenn Number one Alone with You number one
Speaker 1: one that.
Speaker 11: Got away When we got away every one. I wrote
Speaker 11: that song, Uh true story about a girl of it
Speaker 11: just came to town in my small town, go to beach,
Speaker 11: Florida and met her one summer and she went away
Speaker 11: and never met.
Speaker 2: Never saw her ever again.
Speaker 11: And I thought this song actually would like as much
Speaker 11: like the reset that story, that person would pop up
Speaker 11: and be like, did.
Speaker 1: You ever look for on Facebook? You never even looked
Speaker 1: for it.
Speaker 2: I don't even have a Facebook, man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that didn't mean you didn't have Facebook, like old Jabe,
Speaker 1: Twitter or something old Jake.
Speaker 2: Maybe my Space. I looked up around MySpace a.
Speaker 1: Lot of places in our lifetime. We've got to see
Speaker 1: it all like start. Yeah, how about uh.
Speaker 2: For Jane too? Yeah? Another song I didn't write. I
Speaker 2: did not write that song. I just love it. David
Speaker 2: Lee Murphy wrote this song, I think with Ben Hayslip
Speaker 2: and Uh, well, man, I feel terrible. I'm forgetting the
Speaker 2: third writer on this song right.
Speaker 11: Now because we had a great night in d and
Speaker 11: my awards or game my show that I did. There
Speaker 11: you came out the first time and introduced team Actually
Speaker 11: if you remember that did yeah you did?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Again, it's been I've been here four years now, you did.
Speaker 2: That's when I gave you that photo.
Speaker 1: Lived twenty years. Yeah, does it feel like you've been
Speaker 1: here one hundred years.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But I love it here, like I moved here
Speaker 2: because I love it here, Dude.
Speaker 1: I love it here. I hate the industry. I love
Speaker 1: the people, and I love the part of the country.
Speaker 1: And I love the listeners of my show because they're
Speaker 1: normal people and I get to be a normal person
Speaker 1: with them.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I hate the music industry. Here's the thing about
Speaker 11: the music industry. And this is dude, I could say
Speaker 11: whatever I want about the music industry and it wouldn't
Speaker 11: matter one way or another as far as you know
Speaker 11: how I feel or whatever. No one gives us a
Speaker 11: crap about what I think. But I do believe that
Speaker 11: there are so and I think you have to admit
Speaker 11: in this, like the music industry gets a rep for
Speaker 11: what it is. But there's so many great people, dude, Like,
Speaker 11: there are so many great people and so many creative
Speaker 11: a lot of people and so many like, there's so
Speaker 11: many people that have helped like, and I keep going
Speaker 11: back to it, like I know because I've messed up
Speaker 11: many of times I've said.
Speaker 2: Things that people I should never said. I've done that,
Speaker 2: like and.
Speaker 11: I've said things that I didn't They weren't even meant
Speaker 11: the way they received them that were played against me.
Speaker 11: But I've learned that like in a town where people
Speaker 11: in and then this business, which is creative, by the
Speaker 11: worst thing you can do is be like the negative
Speaker 11: nanny of the day, you know about the business, because
Speaker 11: I found like it can turn against you quick.
Speaker 1: Here's John Party talking about moving to Nashville and the
Speaker 1: time he got stabbed right before he moved.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot before Nashville. When was it okay?
Speaker 1: So you start making music in California about what age
Speaker 1: when you start actually performing and making some money and thinking, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe I could do something musically.
Speaker 10: Well, I have a first band of fourteen and we
Speaker 10: played the Dixon Mayfair and you know, like during it
Speaker 10: was kind of like rock and roll punkish, kind of
Speaker 10: like the rebellion from being growing up singing Alan Jackson
Speaker 10: and George Strait And.
Speaker 1: Were you still doing some like Nirvana any of the
Speaker 1: nineties mock.
Speaker 2: Me we we did?
Speaker 10: You know, we were in the letter skinnered phase and
Speaker 10: like you know, some classic rock and Tom Petty, lots
Speaker 10: of Tom Petty. All of my friends jammed out to
Speaker 10: like Rage Against Machine and Nirvana and you know, like
Speaker 10: Blink Blink.
Speaker 2: Went a two and Green Day were huge at a time.
Speaker 10: And and and I kind of took that when you
Speaker 10: ask the question when you start like playing for real
Speaker 10: and kind of making tips and stuff. Eighteen but I
Speaker 10: was singing country again, but I had this like kind
Speaker 10: of fast rock and roll vibe to it. And then
Speaker 10: I went to a place called Chico, California, and has
Speaker 10: a college there called Chico State, and it is like
Speaker 10: party down, good time, and formed a country band and learned.
Speaker 10: And I had a mandolin player and he kind of
Speaker 10: taught me a lot about bluegrass. And so we had
Speaker 10: this up about eighteen years old. Here I was nineteen
Speaker 10: nineteen twenty. Basically that lasted nineteen to twenty two.
Speaker 2: And then after that I moved to Nashville.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 4: I was new.
Speaker 2: I wanted to move in Nashville.
Speaker 10: I took some trips out kind of you know, realize
Speaker 10: that I should probably be twenty one so I can
Speaker 10: get into the bars.
Speaker 2: You know, like hang out and like get up and
Speaker 2: do a microphone.
Speaker 10: You get there's still places you can play with back
Speaker 10: in two thousand and eight, you know, even that way,
Speaker 10: maybe I moved here with an atlas, like I didn't
Speaker 10: have GPS on my phone, like it's still kind of
Speaker 10: it was.
Speaker 2: It seemed so like.
Speaker 10: Really, did you have a horse and a buggy? And
Speaker 10: it seems like so long ago, years ago? Yeah, like
Speaker 10: what would you do without your GPS now? But there
Speaker 10: we're back in the day.
Speaker 2: We have maps, and it was pretty easy. It was
Speaker 2: three three highways and.
Speaker 4: What's that drive? What's that drive?
Speaker 2: Like three days?
Speaker 10: Yeah, three days of excitement, you know, twenty two.
Speaker 2: I was excited, like I'm doing it. My mom was sad.
Speaker 2: My dad was like, go get a job.
Speaker 4: Like trying to.
Speaker 10: He's such a worker, but he you know, my dad.
Speaker 10: Everybody pushed me to go to Nashville.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 10: It's they always said, ain't gonna happen here, you know,
Speaker 10: And so saved up some money when I was working
Speaker 10: for my dad, and I got my dog in a
Speaker 10: PA system and I drove to Nashville, found a place
Speaker 10: to live and was on the grind, you know, kind
Speaker 10: of hanging out and.
Speaker 4: You drove three days, three three and a half.
Speaker 1: I think, so you and your dog, you sleep in
Speaker 1: the truck, you stop at hotels that we kept the dogs.
Speaker 10: He'd stay in the truck because sometimes I'm stinking in
Speaker 10: but we had you know, he had guitars and stuff
Speaker 10: back there, and he like, he wasn't the dog that
Speaker 10: you wanted to open the camber fell you would like
Speaker 10: he would bite you and he's scary, and uh so
Speaker 10: he kind of and he was fine staying in the truck.
Speaker 1: So how do you get a place to lift, Like
Speaker 1: if you're coming from California, northern California or so, and
Speaker 1: you gotta find a.
Speaker 2: Place of people.
Speaker 10: Well, it came to a couple of trips that I've
Speaker 10: come out, you know, like you can easily network and
Speaker 10: you know, kind.
Speaker 2: Of meet people. And I just did that, and I
Speaker 2: you know, I was excited.
Speaker 10: I live within you know, when you're twenty two, you
Speaker 10: live in a bathroom. You know, if you had if
Speaker 10: it was cheap enough to you know, provide and and
Speaker 10: a lot of those people I don't even I don't
Speaker 10: even talk to you anymore.
Speaker 2: It is like that that phase where it's just you know.
Speaker 10: Kind of starting at the bottom, I mean the bottom
Speaker 10: learning learning the town learn to learning how it was
Speaker 10: back in the day. I mean it's totally different.
Speaker 1: Now you move here, you're twenty two, you moving with
Speaker 1: a roommate or two. Yeah, how do you start? Meaning
Speaker 1: if you get here, you met a few people on
Speaker 1: some trips where you come check it out, But how
Speaker 1: do you start making a life in music? What's the first.
Speaker 2: Thing that you do?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 10: I had songs I've written in Northern California with my
Speaker 10: band called.
Speaker 2: Northern Comfort shout out doing the Comfort.
Speaker 10: That were fun, they were upbeat, they were different, you know,
Speaker 10: And so I always had that in my back pocket.
Speaker 10: I never like really even shared that, but I just
Speaker 10: go out and mingle. I got a job as a
Speaker 10: lifeguard and an after school counselor. That kind of helped
Speaker 10: me get by and and and uh, I got it
Speaker 10: back up before really getting down to the nitty gritty
Speaker 10: of how I survived the long haired days. So in
Speaker 10: my neighborhood, while I was living in a basement, there
Speaker 10: was a townhouse that you can get with no payment.
Speaker 4: Down in Nashville.
Speaker 10: Yeah, And my mom was like, she was all co
Speaker 10: signed with it. It wasn't you know, going from California
Speaker 10: and Nashville that townhouse wasn't too bad, but I.
Speaker 2: Had like four rooms and two and a half bathrooms.
Speaker 2: It's like I could totally rent this out. And like
Speaker 2: I literally rented every room at the house.
Speaker 10: And that was I was paying my mortgage and I
Speaker 10: was playing and I had my little lifeguarden job. But
Speaker 10: I did, you know, through mingling basically and kind of
Speaker 10: getting that one shot to get up there and play
Speaker 10: a song at the time, and you know, everybody kind
Speaker 10: of liked and it was fun and we get like
Speaker 10: get down and play that song again.
Speaker 2: And uh.
Speaker 10: That kind of happened in a place called Losers and
Speaker 10: that was kind of like my home. And I ended
Speaker 10: up playing substituting. You know, if the guy couldn't make
Speaker 10: a gig, they'd call me come play four hours. I
Speaker 10: knew a bunch of covers because we played in covers
Speaker 10: and we played for four hours in northern California, like
Speaker 10: we were, you know, we started tending and we ended
Speaker 10: it too, so I was like, I can do that,
Speaker 10: you know, I can do that. So we just kind
Speaker 10: of did that for two years and I landed through
Speaker 10: mingling and taking songs with publishers, and I knew bart
Speaker 10: my co producer.
Speaker 2: Now I kind of knew him, and he would sometimes
Speaker 2: answer my phone calls always to make that joke. Now
Speaker 2: he answered my phone calls.
Speaker 10: But he kind of set me up in with some
Speaker 10: people and and and just kind of climbed the ladder
Speaker 10: to this old school way like shaking hands. You know,
Speaker 10: I'm John Like, yeah, I'm a songwriter. I kind of
Speaker 10: focused on songwriting. I didn't want to go play downtown.
Speaker 2: You didn't want to go play like Broadway where all
Speaker 2: the mornings, right, No, I was I did that, you know.
Speaker 10: I got that I need to learn how to write,
Speaker 10: like what how does Nashville write?
Speaker 2: How can I put? How could I fit into.
Speaker 10: This this system that that there it's obviously songwriters, you know,
Speaker 10: and really focused on that and got a publishing deal
Speaker 10: and then got some songs and you know, how to show,
Speaker 10: you know, started doing We got enough songs for a showcase.
Speaker 10: Three showcases in I got signed by Capitol Records with
Speaker 10: handshake deal.
Speaker 2: It was kind of like and it took a year
Speaker 2: to sign the contract.
Speaker 10: Once twenty eleven we got signed and then they were
Speaker 10: like your first single comes out in twenty twelve, so
Speaker 10: there's another year.
Speaker 2: So two years and I just kept.
Speaker 10: Writing and writing and writing and recording songs, even demos
Speaker 10: and kind of learning learning, and then you know, I
Speaker 10: bet that felt like.
Speaker 1: Forever though, Like from the moment that your handshake signed,
Speaker 1: you're excited and you had your wait two years for
Speaker 1: your first song to come out. I bet that was
Speaker 1: it felt like a slow two years to get that
Speaker 1: first thing out there.
Speaker 10: Well, I mean, we had a great booking agent and
Speaker 10: we had a lot of we had a lot through showcase.
Speaker 10: I found a band, and we had a van, and
Speaker 10: we learned the South and there was a lot of
Speaker 10: places that we still talk about playing and like a
Speaker 10: lot of guys that are still I see all the
Speaker 10: time that that gave us a shot because we could
Speaker 10: play cover. We could do this, you know, we could
Speaker 10: we could play for three hours, you know, with no
Speaker 10: problem with me throwing some originals. Make eight hundred bucks,
Speaker 10: you know, max out your credit card, hop in the
Speaker 10: van and go, you know in the van.
Speaker 2: It is great.
Speaker 10: That's why now why everyboys asked why is music in Nashville? Well,
Speaker 10: it's it's easy for a van to get around really,
Speaker 10: when it comes down to because back in the day,
Speaker 10: it was built for Cadillacs to get around. So, I
Speaker 10: mean the van was really hard to keep up with
Speaker 10: a tour bus. Let me tell you that was like
Speaker 10: play a show, getting a van dry for five hours,
Speaker 10: sleep in a hotel, wake up early to go keep
Speaker 10: you know, trying to trying to catch up. But we
Speaker 10: were always playing. I was always writing, so it just
Speaker 10: and everything was new. You know, I wasn't from the South.
Speaker 10: I learned what college football was all about because back
Speaker 10: in the West it's not as huge as this year. Like,
Speaker 10: so I was learning all this stuff. I was making
Speaker 10: new friends, and of course, you know, I had a
Speaker 10: record deal.
Speaker 2: But you know, one day, it was always one day.
Speaker 2: It's still always one day. But just kept on grinding
Speaker 2: and kept on believing it's still always one day.
Speaker 4: You're right about that, It's still always one day for
Speaker 4: all of us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I try to do a better job. And now
Speaker 1: I had not always looking for one day. One day,
Speaker 1: this next thing's gonna happen. Yeah, one day, this next
Speaker 1: you know, I try, I really try to put myself
Speaker 1: in today. I think that's a struggle for me sometimes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, so let me let's put this a little
Speaker 1: head over.
Speaker 4: Boots from from John Party here before we get back.
Speaker 2: Into the.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the one here. It kind of
Speaker 1: catapulted the next level. Yeah, this was the next leveler.
Speaker 1: It's just the first one off the record.
Speaker 4: Huh.
Speaker 1: This thing came out and it was just like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: well I felt that the record sounded.
Speaker 4: It sounded super.
Speaker 1: Super forward while still being a country record. You know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't one of these where you listen to and
Speaker 1: you go, oh, that's trying to be something new. It
Speaker 1: felt country. Yeah, yet it sounded you're using cool sounds.
Speaker 1: There sounds that I think, am I to you?
Speaker 12: Sonically?
Speaker 2: What's this record about? California Sunrise? You know it was.
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 10: It was a kind of this is where I am now?
Speaker 10: Because I had a first record. I had four singles
Speaker 10: on the radio. My first record is called Rayu Song,
Speaker 10: and we got up all night on the radio. We
Speaker 10: got to number ten, and that let me get my
Speaker 10: album out and my first record. Literally once it got
Speaker 10: on iTunes and people started listening to it, we're selling
Speaker 10: out clubs. We're selling out clubs, is that right with
Speaker 10: with We're we're out selling people with number ones? But
Speaker 10: and then you know, it was just kind of fun
Speaker 10: and you got that that crowd singing back with songs
Speaker 10: that were just on the on the record, you know,
Speaker 10: and and and it's still to this day we play
Speaker 10: songs of that first record. But four years being on
Speaker 10: radio tour, you know, twenty twelve January, Miss New Crazy
Speaker 10: comes out.
Speaker 4: Now, Oh we got it, already.
Speaker 2: Got it, we gotta got it. We got the whole
Speaker 2: story down. Then Up all Night and that was in
Speaker 2: two thousand fourteen.
Speaker 4: Here's a little Up all Night. This is a jam too.
Speaker 1: I gotta come back to this, but yeah, this is one.
Speaker 1: When I moved to town, I think this had had
Speaker 1: lived its life and had gone away, but was still
Speaker 1: one that people were.
Speaker 2: Kind of in love with.
Speaker 4: Still, yeah, this is one. This is one turned up
Speaker 4: a little bit, you know, the wrong baby, were getting.
Speaker 2: A good one?
Speaker 4: You still like that one?
Speaker 10: Yeah, we played we still play it. I still like
Speaker 10: what I can't put down? That was right, That was
Speaker 10: right before Up all Night and I was.
Speaker 2: Like, this is it. This is the one, you know, but.
Speaker 10: It just didn't you know, tests well, and people played it,
Speaker 10: but it got the thirty three and then would put
Speaker 10: up on I O and uh, we got to put
Speaker 10: the album out and which is a big deal because
Speaker 10: you have to have some momentum in a single for
Speaker 10: them to go okay.
Speaker 4: Well, now put some money behind a full album.
Speaker 10: And it was a full album, had eleven songs on
Speaker 10: and it changed the van life basically. And so, but
Speaker 10: what my point is of California Sunrise, there's four years
Speaker 10: of writing and being on the radio. Regardless of what
Speaker 10: you know, I still was always top forty because I
Speaker 10: still have believers in country radio. No matter how high,
Speaker 10: what failures, whatever it, I still believed. Like we got
Speaker 10: in a label. Was always like, it's not a race,
Speaker 10: it's a marathon. You know, you got to take your
Speaker 10: time and like, just keep doing what you're doing.
Speaker 4: Can you believe that what was happening?
Speaker 10: You know, I never really got too worked up about
Speaker 10: it because you know, if you did listen to what
Speaker 10: I was doing, it was kind of it was kind
Speaker 10: of different. You know, it's countrier, but it was upbeat,
Speaker 10: but it was a country and I kind of came
Speaker 10: into my own, like I'm still growing up.
Speaker 2: I was only I got signed at twenty six, and
Speaker 2: I don't even know, I don't even know, I don't remember, but.
Speaker 10: I'm still growing up. As I come into a young man,
Speaker 10: into a man, and I got to do that with
Speaker 10: the record label and kind of under the radar, you know,
Speaker 10: not like just boom, here I am world. I kind
Speaker 10: of got to learn it all and not be like
Speaker 10: the the headliner, you know, where it's just like because
Speaker 10: you know sometimes like boom, I'm here, and it wasn't
Speaker 10: like that for me. And then I kind of became this,
Speaker 10: you know, this is this is who I am. When
Speaker 10: California Sunrise came out and I had friends on worked
Speaker 10: at radio, friends that listen to my music, people are
Speaker 10: giving me great advice and all that just through hard work,
Speaker 10: and what California Sunrise was me is like this is
Speaker 10: what I This is the new take on that. Four
Speaker 10: years of radio touring, country fiddle still you know, all
Speaker 10: the stuff I love, And it was just at that point.
Speaker 1: I remember you posted an Instagram video probably two years
Speaker 1: ago and it was at a festival and the entire
Speaker 1: crowd was singing head over Boots. I remember a message
Speaker 1: you go one good God, like it's this is amazing,
Speaker 1: Like they were singing all of it. Watershit, it was
Speaker 1: watersheded yeah, and George Comma Washington yeah, and it was
Speaker 1: the Gorge.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Gorge.
Speaker 2: I probably spelled him wrong. Was so exciting.
Speaker 4: Is it Gorge not George?
Speaker 2: No, it's the Gorge.
Speaker 1: I've played that well. I played Watershed. I thoughtay, thought
Speaker 1: it was George Washington. I thought it was the Gorge
Speaker 1: and George.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's cooler George Washington.
Speaker 1: I always thought that was the thing I was like,
Speaker 1: named George Washington.
Speaker 4: Did you ever think that, my dear tonight, I thought
Speaker 4: it was a gorge.
Speaker 1: Oh, it is called the Gorge. I thought it was
Speaker 1: the Gorge and George. Anyway, I'm an idiot. But moving on,
Speaker 1: I remember watching that video and going, oh, this has
Speaker 1: now arrived on.
Speaker 4: Kind of a macro level.
Speaker 1: No, it's not just a song that is cool and
Speaker 1: it's going to come and go like it's still the
Speaker 1: one when you have a whole thirty or forty thousand
Speaker 1: people singing every word of the Yeah.
Speaker 4: Give me some of that again.
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole crowd was out of their minds
Speaker 1: singing that song.
Speaker 12: Bonkers.
Speaker 2: It was fun.
Speaker 10: That was That was the first that was probably one
Speaker 10: of the most surreal, Like, wow, this is the first
Speaker 10: you know, you can't get emotional and stuff, and it
Speaker 10: was that was that was really cool and uh, I
Speaker 10: always I always remember that because that.
Speaker 2: Partico there we go with them words, but.
Speaker 10: That slot was uh we finally got you know a
Speaker 10: little later on, and like Merle Haggard was supposed to
Speaker 10: play either I think right in front of me or
Speaker 10: right behind me.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 10: It was like, you know, but he passed like two
Speaker 10: months before and then then came out and played before us,
Speaker 10: and it was like kind of crazy that like with
Speaker 10: that moment and Merle Haggard was, you know, gonna play
Speaker 10: right for me, which probably would have been like no,
Speaker 10: Marl not playing before me, but it was like he
Speaker 10: just passed it, and it was It's one of those
Speaker 10: things like dang, you know, uh from that crowd and
Speaker 10: that kind of just that introspect of me and Merle
Speaker 10: would play together and it didn't happen.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's one of the moments I'll never get.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a good one just watching it so
Speaker 1: that that hits and then it was like, all right, right,
Speaker 1: what's happening next with John Party?
Speaker 4: He had head over Boots. Surelie's not gonna put another
Speaker 4: songid Boots in it.
Speaker 1: And then boy, did you ever I mean and you
Speaker 1: raised that. I mean you saw Boots and you raised
Speaker 1: that funkier Boots man. Yeah, what's that conversation like where
Speaker 1: you go, all right, we got another song that we love,
Speaker 1: but it's name is basically the same thing.
Speaker 4: What do we do?
Speaker 1: Is that a room conversation whereverybody's sitting around?
Speaker 2: Well, I, you know, I research a lot. I you know,
Speaker 2: I listen.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 10: iTunes is great because they have like they have you know,
Speaker 10: things like playlists of like, hey, you know, new artists
Speaker 10: from all top of the levels, and you know, I'm
Speaker 10: always like listening and stuff and so like I do
Speaker 10: pay attention. And I pointed out that Keith Urban had
Speaker 10: two head at that year. He had cop car and
Speaker 10: then somewhere in my car and I was like, well,
Speaker 10: this is another car song, other Boots song out, you know.
Speaker 10: And my favorite was the president of Universal, Mike Dungan,
Speaker 10: was like, you know, I don't care about back to
Speaker 10: back Boots songs. I care about back to back hits.
Speaker 10: That's literally what he said. And I was like, all right,
Speaker 10: put it out.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I always say to everybody asked me, I wear boots
Speaker 2: all the time. I we're on boots right now. So
Speaker 2: it's not it's not like something that it is just
Speaker 2: a thing.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I have a lot of boots.
Speaker 4: Look at that two Boots songs in a row, you know.
Speaker 1: Look at that hit after it hit you started. So
Speaker 1: when did you go from the band of the tour bus.
Speaker 1: That's a big step in the life because the tour
Speaker 1: bus is expensive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well there's still expensive.
Speaker 4: Two of them are really how you go too? Now?
Speaker 4: The humble brack right there. Oh, it's so expensive, it
Speaker 4: really is, it really is. Uh.
Speaker 10: Now went up at the end of the year when
Speaker 10: Up All Night was was peaked and we started going
Speaker 10: in and we started own records and kind of selling
Speaker 10: out clubs.
Speaker 2: We got our bush. It was fun.
Speaker 4: I want to bring up this story about you getting that.
Speaker 2: I didn't know.
Speaker 4: I felt like I knew everything about you already. I'm stalker,
Speaker 4: a big jump party fan, my man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I know you got stabbed, uh huh in
Speaker 1: a belly Yeah five times?
Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't see.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know it was five times. So you're
Speaker 1: at you're at a like a bar.
Speaker 2: No, I was eighteen, So the first two or just
Speaker 2: slices on the arm. But who get so where were you.
Speaker 10: I was out in the country and I was at
Speaker 10: my one of my best friends, and we were two
Speaker 10: towns that were not rivals, which just you know, you
Speaker 10: always kind.
Speaker 2: Of have bad kids in your town.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 10: There's always the guys that always get in trouble or fight,
Speaker 10: you know. And uh, in this town and on name
Speaker 10: towns or anything. He got jumped by my hometown by
Speaker 10: guys I didn't even know. But he found out that
Speaker 10: I was from my hometown. And you know, we had
Speaker 10: a great time at this party. I met a bunch
Speaker 10: of new people and we were you know, I was
Speaker 10: nice to meet you. We gotta go then, and uh
Speaker 10: he was waiting outside for me and he was like
Speaker 10: having me pinned out.
Speaker 2: And I was walking back.
Speaker 10: To the to the car, and he came up and
Speaker 10: asked me where I was from, and I told where
Speaker 10: I was from. I said, yes, you know, and he
Speaker 10: popped me in his mouth, knocked me down, yeah, busting
Speaker 10: my lip.
Speaker 2: I got back up and I started, you know, I
Speaker 2: started fighting him, you know.
Speaker 10: And it wasn't he said, he got scared and pulled
Speaker 10: a knife out, but he started to fight, you know,
Speaker 10: and and uh, I ended up with losing that fight.
Speaker 2: You know, you know, he's just swinging. You know, I'm
Speaker 2: not like a trained karate man or something. You know,
Speaker 2: I was just swinging. I just it's you know, had
Speaker 2: adrenaline at eighteen. It's like ah.
Speaker 10: And then I didn't even know I got stabbed, and
Speaker 10: my buddy came and broke up the fight and pushed
Speaker 10: me back in his hands full of blood. And then
Speaker 10: that was like the beginning of.
Speaker 2: The ride to the hospital. So what happens.
Speaker 10: So we're in the country and my my, my buddy,
Speaker 10: he's now firefighter to paramedic.
Speaker 2: He was always trying to be a firefighter paramedic. So
Speaker 2: he was like, all drive, We're going to hospital.
Speaker 10: So he's like he knew the back road. So we're
Speaker 10: like screaming down his back roads. Girls are screaming and crying,
Speaker 10: calling nurses and like. So the nurse through the phone
Speaker 10: was like, you know, compressing the wounds. Took my shirt off,
Speaker 10: blood everywhere you got stab what part of your belly's
Speaker 10: eleven inches across the center.
Speaker 4: Oh, he stuck it and then went across and I got.
Speaker 2: Two right on the left side.
Speaker 1: Wow, So you're bleeding pretty hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, we were bleeding, and we were bleeding.
Speaker 10: The first hospital we stopped at didn't have emergency room.
Speaker 4: It was like an animal hospital.
Speaker 2: At the time.
Speaker 10: They didn't have emergency room. So we had to drive
Speaker 10: I don't know, fifteen miles to UC Davis and we
Speaker 10: got there and they didn't even know what do me that, like,
Speaker 10: you there's not ever a feeling you want to go
Speaker 10: through when you're like going into like the sports er
Speaker 10: and like there's a guy in the football pads like
Speaker 10: busted arm and like, you know, hold. It was just
Speaker 10: kind of very calm injuries and where I busted to the.
Speaker 2: Door, like you know, like he's dad.
Speaker 4: It's just blood everywhere.
Speaker 10: Like I couldn't imagine being in the lobby and be like,
Speaker 10: oh my god, this guy comes in here, this blood everywhere.
Speaker 10: And so they kind of did some tests on me,
Speaker 10: like for visual and like asking me like you know,
Speaker 10: they wanted me to pee and try to see if
Speaker 10: there's blood in the her and to kind of see
Speaker 10: if they got any internal organs.
Speaker 2: And I couldn't pee. She was kind of cute nurse,
Speaker 2: and I was.
Speaker 10: Like she's just sitting there like pee and I'm like,
Speaker 10: I can't pee right now.
Speaker 2: Like stop it stop, I'll be fine.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 10: And so they sent me off Sacramento and ambulance and man,
Speaker 10: I was it's and then you know, going from that
Speaker 10: like kind of sports and you know, saying that they
Speaker 10: always get anybody will get bad things and you know
Speaker 10: are but when you got to a big city like Sacramento, man,
Speaker 10: there it was people were shot. One girl was to
Speaker 10: the side of me got chopped up by a bull propeller.
Speaker 10: One girls just grabs a curtain, says how Bay how man.
Speaker 10: It was like literally, like I said, I was in
Speaker 10: like this is where it goes down, like what you
Speaker 10: see on you know, durrama hospital movie or you know
Speaker 10: television shows. And and the doctor was like, oh no,
Speaker 10: there's stab victorm, you know. And he like put his
Speaker 10: glove on, put like put his fingers inside of my
Speaker 10: wounds and and just kind of felt muscle, you know,
Speaker 10: you couldn't like fill in my organs.
Speaker 7: And uh.
Speaker 10: They stitched me up and then the next day I
Speaker 10: was out and I had to have a nurse come
Speaker 10: to the house and pack my We stitched them an
Speaker 10: inch apart, so.
Speaker 2: We'd pack alcohol gauze.
Speaker 10: Down in the wound, so it grew from the bottom up,
Speaker 10: so you know, you didn't just have a big hole
Speaker 10: inside your stomach.
Speaker 2: So we had to pack wound for I don't know.
Speaker 2: It was a long time ago, but.
Speaker 4: Would you ever do to that dude or get whatever
Speaker 4: happened to that dude jump back?
Speaker 1: No, he still happening in town. They're still paid half
Speaker 1: in each other every month. You know.
Speaker 10: He uh, he got away with he has a phony
Speaker 10: and he got away with I saw with the dead weapon,
Speaker 10: a deadly weapon. And uh, two years later, you know,
Speaker 10: I was I needed some money and there.
Speaker 2: Was some he he had got a job, and he
Speaker 2: offered to pay the restitution.
Speaker 10: And uh, in all realness, like he looked at me
Speaker 10: like he messed up, Like that's I didn't talk to him,
Speaker 10: but you know, it was just kind of that moment because.
Speaker 2: I'm like, you know what, we're all young.
Speaker 10: You know, I'm just thankful to be a lie basically
Speaker 10: and not peeing out of a bag for the rest
Speaker 10: of my life, you know, because there was that option,
Speaker 10: and uh.
Speaker 2: I don't know, wait, what's that option? I don't know.
Speaker 10: Well, you got you get cut cut right, you know,
Speaker 10: and your your center and your all your organs. I
Speaker 10: don't know that that's that's that's what somebody told me.
Speaker 10: But that may not even be true. But regardless, I survived.
Speaker 10: I didn't die. Nothing really bad happened. I got big
Speaker 10: scars across my stomach and I was, you know, I
Speaker 10: was getting ready to move to Nashville. You know that
Speaker 10: that would help out with the whole move, you know.
Speaker 2: And uh, he paid me like.
Speaker 10: I don't know, eight or nine grand and and uh
Speaker 10: I got to keep it and he he got to
Speaker 10: live a life of a felony, which isn't easy.
Speaker 2: And but I did, you know it was no. I
Speaker 2: think we both moved on and he's looking for better things,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 4: And that guy's name is Dirks Bentley.
Speaker 2: And that's how I met Dirk's Bentley.
Speaker 4: And that's the rest of the story.
Speaker 8: The Bobby Cast will be right back. Welcome back to
Speaker 8: the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 1: Bred Eldridge got super vulnerable and talked about the terrible
Speaker 1: anxiety that he had early in his career.
Speaker 2: It's funny.
Speaker 1: We were talking about Kip with the phones and I've
Speaker 1: Kip and I have a friendship that has grown over
Speaker 1: first fighting lot and then like, hey, we're both weird
Speaker 1: introverted people. Let's probably be on the same team we had.
Speaker 1: We had the same team talk at a coffee shop
Speaker 1: one morning. Our relationship had gotten actually really good since then,
Speaker 1: so I say, this is a friend.
Speaker 4: But Kip and I were sitting and I think I
Speaker 4: do Kip does?
Speaker 12: I don't know?
Speaker 1: Probably you because you're an artist a heart. We have
Speaker 1: huge insecurity issues. Oh yeah, like we may be these
Speaker 1: larger than life characters on stage behind the microphone, but
Speaker 1: really it all comes down to we're searching for some
Speaker 1: kind of love. Oh yeah, we're in some place searching
Speaker 1: for some kind of love. And Kip and I were
Speaker 1: talking about watching a crowd and for me, if I'm
Speaker 1: doing a stand up, I can't look at faces because
Speaker 1: if I see someone's face and they're not laughing, I go, oh,
Speaker 1: I must be bombing.
Speaker 4: So I just look at foreheads.
Speaker 1: I can't look at face and kept we'll go oh,
Speaker 1: I'll see someone not having a good time, and it'll
Speaker 1: throw me. It'll completely throw me from doing a show.
Speaker 1: Do you will you look down and see people not
Speaker 1: feeling it? And or do you let that affect you? Oh?
Speaker 13: Yeah, I've had times where it really affected me that
Speaker 13: my my thing that I've you know, you have certain
Speaker 13: fans that are I almost always have fans that I
Speaker 13: know are going to be repeat fans, like for different shows,
Speaker 13: and if I know out they're there, and if I'm
Speaker 13: feeling like if I see some people that I don't
Speaker 13: know if they're really totally into it, it kind of messes
Speaker 13: me up. I I because I struggled with that for
Speaker 13: a while. Then I would start looking at my fans
Speaker 13: that are my diehard fans that are always there for me,
Speaker 13: and I see them singing the words, I'm like, oh man,
Speaker 13: they care, they care, and so I try to That's
Speaker 13: how I've tried to figure out how to shift it,
Speaker 13: and that's helped me. But yeah, that's that is That's
Speaker 13: a weird feeling because you're given everything of yourself and
Speaker 13: you know, and somebody you want every single person to
Speaker 13: feel as passionate about it as you are, and the
Speaker 13: truth is it's never gonna be. No, there's never been
Speaker 13: an artist that can do that.
Speaker 1: And I do feel it's a bit unfair for us
Speaker 1: as people, if on the stage performing to judge people
Speaker 1: based on just their outward reactions, because if I'm comparing
Speaker 1: myself or yourself. We're watching a movie. Unless they're watching
Speaker 1: the same movie, we may react absolutely different to watching
Speaker 1: old school.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: I may be laughing out loud. You may be enjoying
Speaker 1: it the same amount, but laughing in a different way.
Speaker 1: You keep it outside, but that doesn't mean somebody is
Speaker 1: not enjoying it as much as the other person. But
Speaker 1: when we step away, it's so easy for us. You
Speaker 1: can't disconnect from that in a show. But we just
Speaker 1: feel like, oh.
Speaker 13: I haven't thought about that, and that's that's really good
Speaker 13: to talk about that because it's a it's the hardest
Speaker 13: thing to explain to anybody, and there's so many people
Speaker 13: that get And I've never really talked about this, but
Speaker 13: I used to get nervous about I used to be.
Speaker 13: I'm I was born a warrior, like worry, anxiety, all that,
Speaker 13: and I so I used to I was never afraid
Speaker 13: to go on stage. I'm not like I'd love to perform.
Speaker 13: I'm actually the most comfortable doing that a lot of time.
Speaker 13: But before it, I was like if I was worn out,
Speaker 13: I'm a terrible sleep. I used to be a real
Speaker 13: bad at sleeping all this stuff, and so I had
Speaker 13: this little period where I was not sleeping much, and
Speaker 13: then I would I'll get to the point where I
Speaker 13: was about to go on stage and I would get
Speaker 13: short of breadth.
Speaker 4: I think I was going to pass out.
Speaker 13: I have because I thought, Okay, well I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 13: going to fail in front of all these people. I'm
Speaker 13: going to pass out or something, which you know, you're
Speaker 13: not going to dive from passing out in front everybody,
Speaker 13: and I'm probably not going to pass out. But I
Speaker 13: was telling myself that. So I was learning that. So
Speaker 13: I had all these these things and all these things
Speaker 13: because you're about to go give all yourself and you
Speaker 13: don't want to see yourself fail. And I don't have
Speaker 13: that anymore, really, I mean, you still have some days
Speaker 13: you're like, God, I'm so tired.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 13: Sometimes you're headlining at festival or show at eleven o'clock
Speaker 13: at night.
Speaker 2: I wake up at seven o'clock, so you have the whole.
Speaker 13: Day to think about a show, and I've had to
Speaker 13: try to forgure out ways keep your mind busy. You're
Speaker 13: here for a reason. You're you're playing this show because
Speaker 13: people are coming.
Speaker 4: Here to love you.
Speaker 13: But it is it's a complete mind game. As performer
Speaker 13: he gives. You know, it's a major sacrifice throughout that
Speaker 13: all day to you to be up there for an
Speaker 13: hour and a half and you and you have to
Speaker 13: get your mind right to that point of the show,
Speaker 13: athlete even.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's a lot of downtime. You got
Speaker 1: your ninety minutes to perform, and it all is inside
Speaker 1: that ninety minutes.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: And then if you don't, you got a lot of
Speaker 1: game tape to watch the next time.
Speaker 4: And you're going to think about it. You can't not
Speaker 4: think about it. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 2: So you talk about sleeping.
Speaker 1: I've had real bad issues with sleeping, and a lot
Speaker 1: of mind comes from a mile PTSD stuff. I got
Speaker 1: jumped and robbed a gun point, stuff like that. You know,
Speaker 1: anxiety issues from that. What's your issue with sleeping?
Speaker 2: What was it?
Speaker 4: Anxiety?
Speaker 2: Just right about? What do you know?
Speaker 4: Dumb stuff?
Speaker 13: I mean, you know, I thought, honestly, I so, I
Speaker 13: mean I tried everything. I mean I would try and medicase,
Speaker 13: I would try whatever it was to try to get sleep.
Speaker 4: Never like a problem with it. I would just you know,
Speaker 4: try to figure it out.
Speaker 2: Stay sick. I stayed sick. Oh yeah, constantly run down.
Speaker 1: I wasn't getting it.
Speaker 13: And if if you feel like you're never going to
Speaker 13: get out of it. And it's not like I still
Speaker 13: don't have bad nights to sleep, but i'd sleep great last night.
Speaker 13: But it doesn't mean like you know, if you tell
Speaker 13: yourself you're not going to you're not a good sleeper.
Speaker 4: You're not going to be a good sleeper, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like a lot of the time thing where you close
Speaker 1: your eyes and you go fall asleep. Right now, I
Speaker 1: get five hours twenty seven, oh yeah, thirty seconds.
Speaker 13: Yeah, then you then then another hour goes by, and
Speaker 13: then I got this.
Speaker 1: Four hours twenty seven and thirteen seconds.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so I tried the I tried antidepressants for a while.
Speaker 2: I tried.
Speaker 1: Xan x, the alpaslem for a while. I've tried I've
Speaker 1: tried everything but smoking weed. And I I was talking
Speaker 1: to front even today because I have I've never drank
Speaker 1: alcohol or smoke weed, but I want to do both.
Speaker 1: But I just know I would do all the both.
Speaker 1: Like if I started, I would do it, and I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I would be like a I'll take that and I'll
Speaker 1: have all of that and go ahead and give me
Speaker 1: the rest of all that that's just how I live
Speaker 1: my life or everything. But I went to the dentist
Speaker 1: today just to get a fix. They put a temporary
Speaker 1: on and they gave me the laughing gas.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I got so high.
Speaker 2: And then I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't relax have trouble relaxing this in general. I
Speaker 1: got so high. I became so relaxed. I started to
Speaker 1: have these really deep emotional sharing within my self thoughts,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, man, if this is what it's like
Speaker 1: to get high, I gotta do this.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I felt like I could go to sleep or
Speaker 1: I could stay awake. I just felt great. So I
Speaker 1: was talking to a friend and she was like, you
Speaker 1: should try the gummies. But I hear a snoopg talk
Speaker 1: about this stuff and he's like, don't eat it. He's like,
Speaker 1: you can't control it if you If you eat it,
Speaker 1: you can't control it.
Speaker 4: Man. I just don't like eating.
Speaker 12: I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't like hot this, smoking anything. It seems like
Speaker 1: it would just be pain on the lawn. A cigarettes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually never re smiled a cigarets. That that heat
Speaker 1: going into the I don't like I don't drink coffee. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean I've tasted coffee once. No way, I'm
Speaker 1: not against coffee. Yeah, I mean it's not a moral
Speaker 1: church of coffee. You have issues with sleeping. But also
Speaker 1: sounds like when you talk that have you been in therapy,
Speaker 1: because you sound like, Okay, I get it because again
Speaker 1: I'm just looking.
Speaker 13: At I'm like, I'm very and I've I've just recently
Speaker 13: started becoming very open with it because I mean, I
Speaker 13: feel like everybody should go to therapy. Honestly, me too.
Speaker 13: I mean it's it's for me too. And it's not
Speaker 13: like you're not crazy, you're not whatever. We all have anxieties,
Speaker 13: we all have worries, we all have I mean, it's human,
Speaker 13: the most human thing we were.
Speaker 4: This is how we're built.
Speaker 13: And for me, it got to a place where I
Speaker 13: was like, I'm not I'm really good at covering that up.
Speaker 13: And I wasn't like depressed or like major. I was
Speaker 13: just always worried about stuff and it totally throws your
Speaker 13: body out of a whack and so I was I
Speaker 13: was like, I'm tired of this. So I actually got
Speaker 13: into mindfulness. So meditating really helped me a lot.
Speaker 4: You able to do that, I have trouble. It's hard.
Speaker 2: I have trouble.
Speaker 4: It's hard. I mean I've been doing over like a
Speaker 4: year and.
Speaker 1: A half, likesidental, like what kind of meditation, just like
Speaker 1: mostly just sign like so I did the apps, So
Speaker 1: I did. I started with headspace. Tell me about that.
Speaker 1: I've done the sleep app. I haven't done any meditation.
Speaker 13: Head Space is great. It just kind of walks you through.
Speaker 13: It's not like one of those things where you're feeling
Speaker 13: very sleepy or you know whatever. It's very much like,
Speaker 13: all right, now, take your now. No, you might feel
Speaker 13: yourself your mind wandering and having all these thoughts throughout
Speaker 13: the day whatever, I'll take it back to the breath
Speaker 13: and so you you switch your focus back to the
Speaker 13: breath and you just focus on your breath. It's pretty
Speaker 13: much just training your brain to see thoughts is just thoughts,
Speaker 13: because we have thousands of thoughts every day, all of them,
Speaker 13: almost all of them are crap. They're just worthless, you know.
Speaker 13: I mean you can tell I've studied a lot of this,
Speaker 13: but it is the truth. I have so many thoughts.
Speaker 13: So I think the most that it's taught me is
Speaker 13: to not sweat that stuff as much, not that I
Speaker 13: don't still.
Speaker 4: I mean you still. You never get rid of anxiety.
Speaker 13: You just have a different relationship with and I think
Speaker 13: through a lot of different things, I've I've got a
Speaker 13: different relationship with it. And I used to not be
Speaker 13: able to enjoy tour and all that kind of stuff
Speaker 13: near as much because you'd always be worrying about worrying
Speaker 13: about feeling this way. Then you're feeling more that way,
Speaker 13: and it's like it doesn't have to be that way.
Speaker 13: And so I think now to more, I've got uh
Speaker 13: And I mean this is really one of the most
Speaker 13: open I've ever really talked about it, But I've got
Speaker 13: way more. I want to help other people realize that
Speaker 13: happens to everybody. It's not a big deal. It sucks,
Speaker 13: but it's real and you can you can get through that.
Speaker 1: So you know why it sucks? Is it not enough
Speaker 1: people talk about it? I know I grew up like
Speaker 1: you in a really small town. Therapy wasn't a thing.
Speaker 1: Oh no, it was more like you got to pay
Speaker 1: the bills, So therapy doesn't matter. You know, when you're
Speaker 1: trying to buy Manwich, there's not money for therapy or
Speaker 1: even to know that mental illness is like a real
Speaker 1: life thing. And I'm not even a mental I'm just
Speaker 1: talking about any sort of therapy like it. Just so
Speaker 1: I remember going and I was like, this is my insurance,
Speaker 1: so I can actually go talk to someone. And it
Speaker 1: was talking to someone who did not have a bias.
Speaker 1: Yes that would judge zone call you not only on
Speaker 1: your crap, but also tell you when things were good,
Speaker 1: so you could trust both. And we're both in a
Speaker 1: position too, where we're in a creative space where if
Speaker 1: we're doing well, there are a lot of people tell
Speaker 1: us how cool we are, and it's it gets harder
Speaker 1: and harder to separate. I wrote my new book that
Speaker 1: came out of this week. I have a whole thing
Speaker 1: about trusting a certain few people that will tell you suck.
Speaker 1: But everybody will tell you suck. But if you find
Speaker 1: the people that you trust to tell you suck, whenever
Speaker 1: they tell you that you do really good, you can
Speaker 1: believe them. And that's the hardest thing. It's not hard
Speaker 1: to find somebody to tell you suck. Trust me. All
Speaker 1: I got is go to Facebook right now, and I
Speaker 1: got a thousand people telling me and we naturally search
Speaker 1: for that stuff too. It falls right in our lap
Speaker 1: or just stare at it, and people are loving us
Speaker 1: all around us, but we're looking at this little angry
Speaker 1: monster and that we're like, what's up? But you can
Speaker 1: you came to see me. But if you find someone
Speaker 1: that can say, hey, I don't know about that. But
Speaker 1: then when they do say, oh, I do know about this,
Speaker 1: you trust that good because they're able to tell you
Speaker 1: whenever they feel it's not good. I found that with therapy.
Speaker 1: Then I've started to be able to find it with friends.
Speaker 1: But I had to find it with me first before
Speaker 1: it was anything else. I had to go in and
Speaker 1: trust the process a bit, a little, only a little,
Speaker 1: trust that it was the process.
Speaker 2: But therapy changed me.
Speaker 1: And listen, I'm still in my thirties, I'm single, I'm married,
Speaker 1: I got no kids. Like I struggle with relationships and
Speaker 1: trust I do. Yeah, bridges raise his hand too. But
Speaker 1: for me, it showed me that I'm struggling. Before I
Speaker 1: just didn't know, like what's the problem? Why am I?
Speaker 1: But now I see there's a struggle and the first
Speaker 1: and best way to talk about this. And as you
Speaker 1: were saying these words, the words that I hear all
Speaker 1: the time because I read about it, and I go
Speaker 1: to therapy, I'm like, oh, he's had some sort of
Speaker 1: self reflection in some way, and I like that, and
Speaker 1: I commend you that.
Speaker 13: Yeah, well the same here, And I think I think
Speaker 13: it's it's up to you know, each of us to
Speaker 13: try to get everybody to look at that and just
Speaker 13: say you're not crazy for going to get help from
Speaker 13: orders telling or even going through a friend or whatever.
Speaker 4: I mean, does it have to normal?
Speaker 1: You're normal, You have this stuff, totally normal, I mean,
Speaker 1: but nobody talks about it, so then you feel isolated
Speaker 1: and alone when you're feeling these well, I'm the.
Speaker 13: Only person that I just feel like, no, try hundreds
Speaker 13: of millions of people.
Speaker 1: Nobody's post on Instagram, so it can't be real.
Speaker 13: Yeah, that's a feeling of it because they know, yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Walker Hayes talks about trying to make ends meet early
Speaker 1: on and what helped him stay motivated when times are tough.
Speaker 1: So you you decide we're moving to Nashville just from
Speaker 1: one night of playing in front of people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was pretty wild.
Speaker 14: I mean, I played, had such a great time. I
Speaker 14: called Lanny said, I don't want to move to Nashville
Speaker 14: to sing that was it?
Speaker 4: So I want to go, what's her action? Uh? You know,
Speaker 4: I think she was pretty adventurous.
Speaker 14: You know, at the time we were kids excited about
Speaker 14: you know, getting out of town. She was with it.
Speaker 14: I mean, oddly enough, there was no second guessing on
Speaker 14: her part.
Speaker 4: She was ready to go.
Speaker 1: And so what was your style back then?
Speaker 4: So my style back then? I remember two songs that
Speaker 4: I played.
Speaker 14: One was sitting on the dock of the bay, and
Speaker 14: then didn't Adobie Gray drift Away? Yeah, drift I guess
Speaker 14: drift Away. And uh I only played like five songs.
Speaker 14: I just played them over and over and so yeah,
Speaker 14: I mean I was just gonna come up and sing,
Speaker 14: you know, move to Nashville, try to be a rock.
Speaker 4: Star, make it. Yeah I did.
Speaker 14: I was dumb enough to be like, yeah, I'm gonna go,
Speaker 14: you know, and figure this out.
Speaker 4: Be famous. I mean I knew nobody.
Speaker 14: We had a great time picking out our apartment and
Speaker 14: stuff like that. Honestly, meeting with her parents, they were
Speaker 14: really frightened and just thought I was nuts. You know,
Speaker 14: this was not This was on such a whim and
Speaker 14: the security that I had, you know, and mobile made
Speaker 14: a lot more sense. To them and so yeah, I mean, man,
Speaker 14: we just found an apartment, got married, and drove up here.
Speaker 1: So you move here? And what does one do when
Speaker 1: you don't know anybody into town like Nashville and you
Speaker 1: want to make music?
Speaker 2: Like, what's the first step? You go outside?
Speaker 14: And man, I mean, as cliche as it sounds, the
Speaker 14: absolute first thing I did was go sign up for
Speaker 14: an open mic night at the Bluebird. I was I
Speaker 14: don't remember exactly what number I chose, you know, to
Speaker 14: get selected that night, But so you played the first
Speaker 14: night you went. I came on a Monday night, stood
Speaker 14: in the line, got selected. They were about to call
Speaker 14: my name, but I realized that everybody in there was
Speaker 14: playing songs that they had written, and I showed up
Speaker 14: to play covers. So we left and then I came
Speaker 14: back the next Monday with a couple of songs that
Speaker 14: I wrote that week and then performed and it was.
Speaker 4: The same rush.
Speaker 1: Know, so the first time you went, you end up
Speaker 1: not playing.
Speaker 14: Well, I check it out, but you know, I wasn't
Speaker 14: about to get up and play that.
Speaker 4: I was gonna play drift.
Speaker 1: Away, give Me the Bee Boy Free? And what did
Speaker 1: you write that you something? I wrote so so you
Speaker 1: first time you don't do it. The second time you
Speaker 1: go and you do it. What did you play? What
Speaker 1: song you remember?
Speaker 2: I do?
Speaker 14: I remember I played a song about as short of
Speaker 14: a time period as we had been married. I learned
Speaker 14: very quickly that when you bring up the in loss
Speaker 14: that your significant other gets really pissed.
Speaker 4: And so I wrote a song about that.
Speaker 14: And it was kind of a joke, you know, a
Speaker 14: funny song, and uh, I don't remember the title of it.
Speaker 14: And I played too and I just remember the crowd reacting,
Speaker 14: you know, they laughed, they had a great time, and
Speaker 14: they went nuts.
Speaker 4: It's a real supportive crowd, and the Bluebergs.
Speaker 14: They're there to hear the writer performing their songs, so
Speaker 14: they went nuts. And it was not I didn't like
Speaker 14: get a deal or anything quick.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Did you feel like after that night, though, that you
Speaker 1: had submitted a little more in your head, like I
Speaker 1: can do this.
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 14: I didn't really think about whether I could or not.
Speaker 14: I just did, you know what I'm saying. And I
Speaker 14: also it was like a drug, I mean honestly, but
Speaker 14: since then, I haven't stopped writing songs. It's just I
Speaker 14: fell in love with that that conceiving the idea, putting
Speaker 14: it together, playing it for somebody, getting their reaction, moving
Speaker 14: on to the next one. You know, my favorite song
Speaker 14: is always the one I'm working on right now, and
Speaker 14: that's kind of how it been since then. It just
Speaker 14: it pretty much consumes my life and has since then.
Speaker 4: So how long.
Speaker 1: Until you get and I'm assuming you're getting into publishing
Speaker 1: deal first, which is what happened to they pay you
Speaker 1: to write songs. How long did it take from you
Speaker 1: playing that bluebird till you getting a publishing deal?
Speaker 2: So had I had a day job.
Speaker 14: I booked motivational speakers at Premiere Speakers Bureau in Franklin.
Speaker 1: Like what motivational speakers ran through in Franklin.
Speaker 4: A lot of right.
Speaker 14: Wing conservatives, old Steelers player Rocky Bleier, a couple of authors,
Speaker 14: Oliver North and the guy Sean Hennity. We booked them.
Speaker 14: Uh some of those were exclusive. Sorry again trying to
Speaker 14: get rid of that tic.
Speaker 4: Uh but yeah, just I booked them and uh lost.
Speaker 14: I actually lost my job in a year and then
Speaker 14: I got a pub deal. So it took me a
Speaker 14: year and a couple of months to secure a pub deal.
Speaker 1: So in that year, you're just writing and sending songs
Speaker 1: to people going, hey you check it out.
Speaker 4: No, in that year I was working, you know, that
Speaker 4: was No. Nine to five.
Speaker 14: My clientele was West Coast event planner, so I got
Speaker 14: to show up a little bit later and stay a
Speaker 14: little longer. But I was writing songs while I was working,
Speaker 14: you know, on my computer, just loading it up. And yeah,
Speaker 14: I mean playing open mic nights anybody I could ever
Speaker 14: get my songs in front of. Obviously I was trying
Speaker 14: to do that, playing all the local you know, songwriter
Speaker 14: nights that I could. And yeah, I wasn't really comparing
Speaker 14: myself to other people. I just love, like I said,
Speaker 14: I loved, loved, loved writing, I mean obsessed with writing.
Speaker 1: So you write and you start to get paid to write.
Speaker 1: And what did your first cut?
Speaker 4: Shoot? Man?
Speaker 14: I mean, my my first pub deal actually got me
Speaker 14: a record deal first.
Speaker 4: I mean I didn't get a cut.
Speaker 1: So your pub deal got you a record deal first?
Speaker 1: Is this the Keith Urban Demo story? No, that's that's capital.
Speaker 1: That's the second deal.
Speaker 14: The first pub deal I ever got was from a
Speaker 14: neighbor heard me messing around on the porch. He said, man,
Speaker 14: I really like what you do. I'm gonna take you
Speaker 14: to introduce you to two or three people. He brought
Speaker 14: me into town. I met two big time producers Franklin.
Speaker 14: In Franklin, here's your porch, here's me on the porch.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 14: He's like, dude, I really love your voice. Did you
Speaker 14: write that? I'm like, yeah, you want to hear some more?
Speaker 14: And up I wrote a song about his kid, whose
Speaker 14: name is Hogan, which that was a business move right there.
Speaker 14: I was like, dude, if I write somebody's kid, really,
Speaker 14: you know, hooked me up. So he takes me into town,
Speaker 14: introduced me to introduces me to Scott Hendricks, David Malloy,
Speaker 14: and a guy named Christy DiNapoli. And Christy wanted to
Speaker 14: sign me to a pub deal. The other two wanted
Speaker 14: to maybe cut some sides and do the shoppy thingy
Speaker 14: and I wasn't really ready for that. I just wanted
Speaker 14: to write, you know, really bad. I wanted to get
Speaker 14: paid to write songs, and at that time I only
Speaker 14: had one kid, so I didn't have to make that
Speaker 14: much money. And so anyway, Christy signed me under a
Speaker 14: guy named Buddy Killing, who's gone now but great. First
Speaker 14: publisher to have learned a lot from that guy and
Speaker 14: Alison Jones. I know this is the industry, but signed
Speaker 14: me at Mercury.
Speaker 1: And so you get a publishing a deal and a
Speaker 1: record deal basically at the same time.
Speaker 14: Well, I got a pub deal and then we worked
Speaker 14: on it, you know, and he had cut some sides
Speaker 14: there and then they shot me and then got me
Speaker 14: my first record development deal.
Speaker 1: So when you get signed to a development deal, what
Speaker 1: do they start doing with you? Where do they develop?
Speaker 14: So the development deal basically got me James Stroud, great producer.
Speaker 4: He cut some sides on me.
Speaker 14: So what we did is just accumulate songs, kept writing
Speaker 14: for a little while, chose the best ones, went in
Speaker 14: the studio, cut them with an excellent band. So that
Speaker 14: was my first experience with that, you know, And of
Speaker 14: course we came home with five songs. I thought I
Speaker 14: was gonna be Garth Brooks, were you I sounded like him? Yeah,
Speaker 14: it sounded better than Now. I was not Garth Brooks.
Speaker 14: I had some great stuff, you know, looking back, I
Speaker 14: think some of those sides were good.
Speaker 4: But there was a.
Speaker 14: Falling out within the company and it wasn't long till
Speaker 14: I was off that that labeled me and that that
Speaker 14: deal expired pretty quick.
Speaker 4: So you're on. Did you put a record out? I didn't.
Speaker 14: I cut five sides, literally celebrated the cutting.
Speaker 4: My first five songs. You cut five songs. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 4: going We're beside myself and this stuff sounds so great.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: We finished those in a December.
Speaker 14: I got a call in January saying that James Stroud
Speaker 14: was gone from the label and that they he had
Speaker 14: parted with co you know, head People, and Alison Jones
Speaker 14: was leaving and I wasn't.
Speaker 4: I wasn't on the label anymore. But the label stayed.
Speaker 4: Label stayed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you never put out a single?
Speaker 4: No, never put out a single. Did you tell a
Speaker 4: publishing deal? I did? Okay, still writing.
Speaker 14: Still writing, and still still still trying to get outside cuts,
Speaker 14: but did not get outside cuts.
Speaker 1: So you have to go to another try to get
Speaker 1: how long until you get signed to a different label.
Speaker 14: So after that it took me two years to get
Speaker 14: another label.
Speaker 4: That is this when Urban here's your This is.
Speaker 14: When Autumn House, a friend of mine, pitched the song
Speaker 14: for Keith Urban. Keith Urban did not take the song,
Speaker 14: but the A and R rep at Capitol Autumn House said,
Speaker 14: I like this guy singing, I like this writing style.
Speaker 14: You know, who is this kid? And they said it's
Speaker 14: Walker Hayes, you know. And within a couple of months
Speaker 14: I had a deal in Capital. A lot of my
Speaker 14: deals came pretty quick, you know, deals are hard to get,
Speaker 14: but my first two just kind of fell into my lap.
Speaker 14: I mean they just kind of came out of nowhere
Speaker 14: for me.
Speaker 1: So you get a deal, you start to cut songs
Speaker 1: again or to use your old song.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 14: Man, when I got a deal at Capital, I was writing.
Speaker 4: You go through the producer search, you know.
Speaker 14: I was on Capital two years probably before we even decided,
Speaker 14: you know, to try a single.
Speaker 1: You had been signed for two years before you put
Speaker 1: a song out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I think I've been a Capital around that time.
Speaker 4: So frustrating. Yeah, it was, yeah, it was.
Speaker 14: I mean we were looking for the right producer. We
Speaker 14: tried some, we cut some. They just didn't didn't blow
Speaker 14: our minds.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: So then you have your first song. What's your first thingle.
Speaker 4: My first single was pants?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 4: I like that look you're giving you by write that
Speaker 4: I did. I wrote it for my wife my cringe.
Speaker 14: I don't know, man, you know, I just hear it,
Speaker 14: and uh, it just doesn't sound you know, it doesn't
Speaker 14: sound that great.
Speaker 4: I just don't.
Speaker 14: I don't hear it like I did then when when
Speaker 14: I heard it then, I just I just thought, this
Speaker 14: is gonna be amazing. And I don't know, I just
Speaker 14: hear it now and it just the Maybe I've gotten
Speaker 14: better at writing, you know, and I.
Speaker 4: Can just see the holes in there.
Speaker 14: But yeah, I cringe, just like hearing myself on a
Speaker 14: answering machine.
Speaker 4: How the single do? I have no idea?
Speaker 14: The song was added heavily, you know, right off the back,
Speaker 14: and uh, you know, I saw success coming my way
Speaker 14: quick and h then it just hit a wall and uh,
Speaker 14: some people were slow to pick it up, and it
Speaker 14: went to thirty eight, and eventually, you know, Mike Dungan
Speaker 14: and Capital pulled it and they decided to go with
Speaker 14: another one shortly after that.
Speaker 2: What song was?
Speaker 4: After that one?
Speaker 14: They went with a song called why Wait for Summer?
Speaker 14: And it did not do as well those pants.
Speaker 1: If you have two singles that didn't work, did they
Speaker 1: drop you or are they? We're gonna work on some
Speaker 1: other stuff.
Speaker 4: So we chilled out for a long time.
Speaker 14: You know, I got put on the back Burner and
Speaker 14: I sat for a long long time, and man, honestly,
Speaker 14: just to give Capital some credit, I mean they believed,
Speaker 14: I mean, they believed hardcore and they stuck their neck
Speaker 14: out for me. I didn't fully understand, you know, the
Speaker 14: need for the machine. I didn't know how the biz
Speaker 14: really worked, you know at that time. Uh, you know,
Speaker 14: there was a little bit of arrogance. I'm not the
Speaker 14: most coachable human being on the planet, and that kind
Speaker 14: of you know, shot me in the foot back then.
Speaker 14: But yeah, we sat for a long time. I continue
Speaker 14: to just write and write and try to give them
Speaker 14: that one, you know that they felt confident, you know,
Speaker 14: if you're gonna go three deep, that third one, I
Speaker 14: mean that's your hell Mary right there, you know, especially
Speaker 14: if the first two have flopped.
Speaker 4: So I fought and fought.
Speaker 14: You know, to write and to get that that song,
Speaker 14: the one, and man just couldn't find it, and.
Speaker 4: You know, eventually got dropped.
Speaker 14: And uh yeah, I mean that was that was the
Speaker 14: beginning of some dark some dark times right there.
Speaker 1: So you get dropped every second label. Yeah, what year
Speaker 1: was that, you.
Speaker 14: Know, let's see, it's twenty seventeen, sixty fifteen. For probably fourteen,
Speaker 14: beginning fourteen.
Speaker 1: So you get dropped in twenty fourteen, So what do you.
Speaker 4: Do well at that period?
Speaker 14: I think I have four kids, So I'm still not
Speaker 14: I'm still not, uh truly buried in finance, financial woes.
Speaker 14: But I had a pub deal. You know, I'm still
Speaker 14: my my publishers. That's one thing that's that I've always
Speaker 14: had as a pub deal, publishers that believe that I
Speaker 14: can get outside cuts.
Speaker 4: You know. So at that time, I didn't.
Speaker 14: I wouldn't say I just shut the artist thing down,
Speaker 14: but I wrote, man, I aimed and aimed to get
Speaker 14: outside cuts. You know, I wanted outside country cuts. I
Speaker 14: wanted these mainstream artists, uh to to you know, I
Speaker 14: just knew somebody who's gonna cut one of my songs,
Speaker 14: It's gonna be huge, kind of solidify me as spot
Speaker 14: in that writer community.
Speaker 4: And uh, I.
Speaker 14: Eventually did get a cut from Rodney Atkins. Uh he
Speaker 14: cut one of my songs called Touching Feet, and uh
Speaker 14: it was you know, it was a great motivation, you know,
Speaker 14: to keep on writing.
Speaker 4: Didn't end up being a single, But hey.
Speaker 1: What about this here a Cold Fort song, dirty.
Speaker 4: Side dude, I love this song.
Speaker 2: This is my jams.
Speaker 14: You write it, Yeah, you're on Coult. Yeah he featured me,
Speaker 14: so you wrote we wrote it together. Yeah, I'm super
Speaker 14: appreciative feature.
Speaker 4: I'm talking about the perfect girl. Man, I'm gonna tell
Speaker 4: you everywhere stopped looking at the magazine's head on out.
Speaker 4: So you're writing, you're out.
Speaker 1: You don't have artists he all right, which you probably
Speaker 1: still want even though you're you still want to be
Speaker 1: the artist, right, but you do you want to be
Speaker 1: the writer. You talk about having dark times like your mind,
Speaker 1: just like they.
Speaker 14: Tell you what the darkest period I ever experienced here
Speaker 14: in Nashville was past these cuts.
Speaker 4: You know, you get a couple of cuts.
Speaker 14: And I'm still I'm not able to I mean, I'm
Speaker 14: barely supporting this, you know what I'm saying. The money
Speaker 14: is not just rolling in from from these types of cuts.
Speaker 14: I'm I'm not having hit singles, which is kind of
Speaker 14: what you gotta have, you know nowadays to thrive as
Speaker 14: a writer, you gotta have one every now and then.
Speaker 4: I'm loving what I'm doing.
Speaker 14: I mean, i feel like I'm getting better and better
Speaker 14: and so much closer to dialing it in, you know,
Speaker 14: with with what artists need and what they want and
Speaker 14: getting those outside cuts. But I'm playing at Pucket's boat
Speaker 14: House and money gets real tight. I'm talking seriously tight,
Speaker 14: and uh, I don't really like to ask for help.
Speaker 4: And I had toyed with.
Speaker 14: You know, getting kind of a second gig, and I
Speaker 14: remember this this night I will never forget.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 4: I'm playing Puckets boat House.
Speaker 1: Which, by the ways, it's like a restaurant in a
Speaker 1: stage for people. I just so, it's like a very
Speaker 1: famous Nashville Southern food restaurant and there's a stage on
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 14: Right, And so what I what I was doing is,
Speaker 14: you know, I didn't have an artist deal, but I
Speaker 14: want to keep performing so that the Annie Marshall at
Speaker 14: Pucket's so always so gracious to me giving me a gig,
Speaker 14: and I'm playing for tips, and what I would do
Speaker 14: is play an hour and then host an open mic
Speaker 14: night just for the community.
Speaker 4: I wanted to meet new writers and.
Speaker 14: Stuff and kind of do what people did for me
Speaker 14: in my first couple of years here. So one night,
Speaker 14: this guy comes and his name is Nick Canjre and
Speaker 14: sweet sweet guy comes up wants to play at the
Speaker 14: open mic night, and he just thinks, you know, he's
Speaker 14: heard my songs on Rodney, my stuff on Colt. He
Speaker 14: thinks I I'm like Elvis, you know, and he's just treating
Speaker 14: me like it too. And he mentions at one point
Speaker 14: in the night that he worked at the tire center
Speaker 14: at Costco, and I was looking for a job at
Speaker 14: night so I could continue writing during the day. And
Speaker 14: so it was just a humbling moment to kind of
Speaker 14: be like, Hey, while you're getting my autograph, do you
Speaker 14: know any you know, is there any openings at Costco?
Speaker 14: You know, are they looking for people that stock stuff
Speaker 14: overnight and stuff? And he hooked me up and that's
Speaker 14: how I got a job at Costco. But it was
Speaker 14: just I mean, I don't know if embarrassing is the word,
Speaker 14: but you know, it was just it was an interesting
Speaker 14: moment that he saw me as kind of like an
Speaker 14: influence on him musically. I was so happy, you know,
Speaker 14: to meet me, and I was like, Hey, kind of
Speaker 14: need a job, you know, I need some help.
Speaker 4: Can you can you hook me up?
Speaker 14: And so that was that that was a low a
Speaker 14: low point for me, kind of having to ask for
Speaker 14: help from that guy.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like you learned from it and appreciate
Speaker 1: it even more afterward.
Speaker 14: Just through that experience with Costco experience, everything, everything that
Speaker 14: is connecting with people now is pretty much about that
Speaker 14: experience of my life. So yes, it's been truly beneficial.
Speaker 14: I got a great perspective. Uh, you know what matters,
Speaker 14: you know, what matter in life. That's kind of what
Speaker 14: Leela's Stars is about. You know, I did a lot
Speaker 14: of I did a lot of I don't know what
Speaker 14: you say, like not soul searching, but you know we
Speaker 14: uh yeah.
Speaker 4: Interesting songs. This guy's just from the Car about your daughter.
Speaker 14: Yeah yeah, that song is about the thumb tacks that
Speaker 14: she gave me to hold up the roof of my
Speaker 14: Honda that I had at the time, and when my
Speaker 14: roof was coming down, I lost it and I was
Speaker 14: just cuzy. At that point in my life, I was
Speaker 14: drinking a ton just to kind of cut the edge
Speaker 14: off the heaviness and the burdens and stuff that I
Speaker 14: was kind of up against with one to still chase
Speaker 14: my dream, kind of thinking I was nuts. Pretty much.
Speaker 14: Let everybody looking at us from the outside, I probably
Speaker 14: thought I was nuts too. You know, I had all
Speaker 14: the kids and I was still trying to do that
Speaker 14: to take care of them when I could have, you know,
Speaker 14: done a lot of other things that made a whole
Speaker 14: lot of sense, you know, to take care of them.
Speaker 14: But yeah, Leadless Stars is about those thumbtacks that she
Speaker 14: let me borrow. And I was really bombed and frustrated
Speaker 14: at the time. The roof coming out in my car
Speaker 14: was one of those moments in your life where you're
Speaker 14: looking up and you're like, you gotta be kidding me,
Speaker 14: you know, like I need one fricking more thing, you know,
Speaker 14: to carry right now. And one morning, when I was
Speaker 14: about to clock in at Costco, I looked up and
Speaker 14: I saw those thumbtacks and it just reminded me. Well,
Speaker 14: first I thought of her face and just her smile
Speaker 14: and how much fun she had putting those up, and
Speaker 14: she just thought they were awesome, you know, they made
Speaker 14: the car look incredible, and it was just an interesting
Speaker 14: perspective at that time to remember, Hey, I got healthy kids,
Speaker 14: I do have a job, I have two you know
Speaker 14: what I mean, and I'm still able to write. My
Speaker 14: wife never was unhappy, you know, I was really the
Speaker 14: only one, uh that was unhappy, And so that was
Speaker 14: a that was a great moment and got a cool
Speaker 14: song out of it.
Speaker 1: So you were drinking a lot. You don't drink it
Speaker 1: all now, no sober, so you must have been drinking
Speaker 1: a lot.
Speaker 2: Tend to go.
Speaker 14: I have to stop, man, I was, I mean, we want,
Speaker 14: we want to talk about numbers. I mean I was, like,
Speaker 14: I mean, I was drinking from I was drunk at Costco.
Speaker 14: You know, obviously I was doing my work, working hard,
Speaker 14: but I mean I was, I was drinking on on
Speaker 14: breaks at Costco. You know, I go to the parking lot,
Speaker 14: you know, and do that leave, go do a show
Speaker 14: with Bluebird. You know, they were hiring me for shows.
Speaker 14: I was still able to get some work out of them.
Speaker 14: I drink before them, drink after them, drink while I wrote,
Speaker 14: drive home, drink.
Speaker 4: Drink because you're sad man.
Speaker 14: Uh yeah, I think, you know, I think I was
Speaker 14: just uh, I just didn't want to face.
Speaker 4: Not making it, you know, not not.
Speaker 14: Being able to to take care of everybody. You know,
Speaker 14: It's almost like when you're drunk, Uh, those things aren't
Speaker 14: as heavy, you know, they don't matter, I guess, and
Speaker 14: drinking a little bit out of just insecurity and fear,
Speaker 14: you know, I guess, uh, you know, just scared what.
Speaker 1: Was the point where you were like, Okay, I gotta
Speaker 1: I gotta chill, dude.
Speaker 4: Me quitting is the weirdest story, I don't. You know.
Speaker 14: Hopefully at some point it will make sense where I
Speaker 14: could kind of help other people and and and and
Speaker 14: and explain it. But honestly, I mean.
Speaker 4: I think I was.
Speaker 14: I think my body just said to my brain, you
Speaker 14: have to you have to quit. You know, we're working
Speaker 14: and drinking that much. I woke up on a Saturday.
Speaker 4: I remember that.
Speaker 14: It was in October, football game day, me and football.
Speaker 14: Not drinking just didn't ever happen. That hadn't happened since
Speaker 14: I was probably like fifteen, I don't know, something crazy
Speaker 14: like that.
Speaker 4: And I just didn't drink one Saturday. And I don't
Speaker 4: even know why.
Speaker 14: I didn't like wake up and say, man, I gotta stop.
Speaker 14: I just woke up, didn't drink that day, didn't drink
Speaker 14: on Sunday. A couple of days turn into a week,
Speaker 14: you know, and then it became this like challenge where
Speaker 14: it was like I've gone this far, I want to
Speaker 14: go backwards, you know. And I also kind of had
Speaker 14: a little sobriety high. You know, when you quit drinking.
Speaker 14: You've been drinking that much, your body feels really really
Speaker 14: good once it gets over, you know, not craving just
Speaker 14: to drink with all your might. But so yeah, now
Speaker 14: I'm like, that was two octobers ago, so I'm a
Speaker 14: year and almost a half.
Speaker 1: The funny thing is I don't drink. A guy there,
Speaker 1: Walker doesn't drink. And when we go on tour this
Speaker 1: beer like the writers like full of beer, and Walker
Speaker 1: he just sits there. Yeah, it's like, Walker, I know
Speaker 1: you don't drink, but if you know anybody that wants beer,
Speaker 1: they can have it.
Speaker 12: Hang tight.
Speaker 8: The Bobby Cast will be right back. Wow, and we're
Speaker 8: back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 1: Cole Swindell talks about making the move in Nashville back
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven with the plans on being
Speaker 1: a songwriter, but became a successful artist too. When you
Speaker 1: first moved to town, though, you had to be pretty
Speaker 1: intimidated to walk into some of these big rooms. Oh yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: Like what was the first ride that you can think
Speaker 1: about in your head? You walked into and there was
Speaker 1: like a rider that you're like, man, I should be
Speaker 1: right with this person, Like actually I'm writing with a
Speaker 1: legend or somebody that I look up to.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I mean I remember one of the stories for me,
Speaker 15: and it goes back to being a kid.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 15: I always say I fell in love with nineties country music,
Speaker 15: and that's one of the guys, you know, Thomas Rhetz
Speaker 15: that Rhett Akins was one of the artists I loved
Speaker 15: as a kid. And I remember being in a room
Speaker 15: the first time we ever read, the first wrote, the
Speaker 15: first song we ever wrote was a song Thomas Rhett
Speaker 15: to get me some of that, And that was just
Speaker 15: that memory was my first like only in Nashville, Like
Speaker 15: you grew up listening to a guy and the first
Speaker 15: song you end up writing his son takes to the
Speaker 15: top of the charts, and it's just that's a Nashville
Speaker 15: story if I've ever heard one. But yeah, there's so many.
Speaker 15: You know, you go from playing college bars and so
Speaker 15: let me stop you.
Speaker 1: So you go on to write it. How long you've
Speaker 1: been to Nasville when you wrote the song?
Speaker 2: Probably for four years or so.
Speaker 15: I had just gotten off the road from you know,
Speaker 15: doing the T shirt thing. I had a publishing and
Speaker 15: this was one of my this is the first time
Speaker 15: in read everybody, we've been buddies. But that was a
Speaker 15: man I was. That was a crazy story to go
Speaker 15: from being a fan of his to write with him.
Speaker 15: And it was just a straight car, right, me and
Speaker 15: Rahet and Michael Carter, my producer.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so you walk in, you write this song,
Speaker 1: and when you write a song, did you think maybe
Speaker 1: it would be for you?
Speaker 13: Now?
Speaker 15: You know at this point like this is this all happened?
Speaker 15: Before I got my record deal. I was writing songs
Speaker 15: every single day, just wishing somebody would record them. And
Speaker 15: this one, I don't know what.
Speaker 2: I loved it.
Speaker 15: I thought it was a great song, but I just
Speaker 15: didn't have enough going for me. I didn't have the
Speaker 15: artist thing going and I was willing for anybody when
Speaker 15: I heard that Thomas Rhett loved it. You know, I've
Speaker 15: always been the Thomas Repp fan and a Buddy hiss,
Speaker 15: so I was just hoping to get a cut, you
Speaker 15: know that those things that's what got me.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 15: I think my chance that ultimately had a record deal
Speaker 15: was getting other big time artists to record my songs.
Speaker 15: And that was That's one memory of you know, you
Speaker 15: go from playing songs written by people on the board
Speaker 15: of sitting in a room with them and writing a song,
Speaker 15: and that's just that's when you know you're you're living
Speaker 15: the dream man, when you're getting to do do that.
Speaker 1: Is that the first song for you that was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can make a little money, I can relax a
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 2: Is that the first one of those?
Speaker 15: I mean, yeah, because I had I had, you know,
Speaker 15: a couple of early cuts, like Scotty McCreery right after
Speaker 15: he had won American Idol he want he recorded one
Speaker 15: of my songs, water Tower Town, I wrote about my.
Speaker 2: Tea goes come with it.
Speaker 12: How do you have on this? But that's like we
Speaker 12: do our research on this.
Speaker 4: This is water Tower down.
Speaker 15: Yeah, this is you know that's I wrote that about
Speaker 15: my hometown. And I remember, you know, thinking that it
Speaker 15: didn't end up doing you know, what we thought was
Speaker 15: still that that let me know that, hey, I got
Speaker 15: a chance in this town. And Scotty what a great
Speaker 15: guy he is, and speaking to him that his new
Speaker 15: song that you, Oh my god, that's that's one of
Speaker 15: the best songs I've heard. I texted him as soon
Speaker 15: as I heard it when when y'all were talking about it, and.
Speaker 12: It's just it's he's a great dude.
Speaker 15: So to have somebody like that to record one of
Speaker 15: your songs about your town and and you know, some
Speaker 15: of the same beliefs, it's just a cool moment for me.
Speaker 15: But Thomas Rhad that was a different level.
Speaker 1: You know, Paula, let me stop you. So this is
Speaker 1: Scotty McCurry song. This was the first one by an
Speaker 1: artist that was somewhat successful that you're like, Okay, this
Speaker 1: literally has a chance, and it was kind of really
Speaker 1: a cool moment for you.
Speaker 15: It's huge, huge moment because I remember it was one
Speaker 15: of those I learned a lesson because you know, when
Speaker 15: I wrote this song, ultimately, you know, me and Luke
Speaker 15: were close, and I was like, man, Luke's gonna love this.
Speaker 15: I can just see him loving it. And I remember
Speaker 15: I sent it to him and all he sent back
Speaker 15: was yeah, man, I love that everybody knows your mom
Speaker 15: and them lying, and that's all he said. And I
Speaker 15: was like crushed. I was like, man, I was like oh,
Speaker 15: I was like, that is not what I was wanted
Speaker 15: to hear. And literally, you know, a month or two later,
Speaker 15: Scotty wins American Idol and that song gets recorded and
Speaker 15: it's on a platinum album, and it just I learned
Speaker 15: that day that you know, you may think you got
Speaker 15: it all planned out what but it's it's going to
Speaker 15: work out how it's supposed to. And that one that
Speaker 15: was my really first example of you know, I'm just
Speaker 15: going to try to do the right thing, write songs
Speaker 15: and they'll end up where they're supposed to.
Speaker 1: So water Tower Town, Scotty mccury cuts that and then
Speaker 1: you just realized, Okay, I I can write these songs.
Speaker 4: Did you have the confidence before that?
Speaker 1: Was it like it's a matter of time or did
Speaker 1: it take songs to hit before you started to realize
Speaker 1: you could play in the league.
Speaker 15: You know, I would like to say I moved up
Speaker 15: here thinking I was gonna be but you know, I
Speaker 15: think you have to, you know, have something like that happen.
Speaker 15: Have you know, you know, publishing companies, record label doing that.
Speaker 15: That that means they believe in what you're writing. And yeah,
Speaker 15: you do get confidence. I mean it's hard to have
Speaker 15: confidence when you're writing all these songs and you know
Speaker 15: they're not really getting any traction. But you just learned.
Speaker 15: You know, that's why they say, you know, write every day,
Speaker 15: because the more you do it, the better you get,
Speaker 15: and it's just the chances are better you're going to
Speaker 15: have a great song the more you write. And that
Speaker 15: was I remember Dallas and some of my other writer
Speaker 15: friends calling me and just saying that when that song
Speaker 15: got recorded, like hey, congratulations, but don't stop like this
Speaker 15: is this is where you got to show up with a
Speaker 15: lot of people just say I've made it. And you
Speaker 15: know that's I think that's what you got to do.
Speaker 15: You got to keep going.
Speaker 4: Was that Do you think that'd be a big single?
Speaker 1: When you when you cut it, were you hoping, like man,
Speaker 1: that this could be a number one hit? Is that
Speaker 1: what you Is that what every every time you cut wanted?
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, I.
Speaker 15: Think you're you're hoping that that's what? Uh you know,
Speaker 15: but I think being around the business, you know how
Speaker 15: hard it is to to to do that, to write.
Speaker 15: There's so many great writers in this town. But yeah,
Speaker 15: I think you're always wanting like and that that song
Speaker 15: when it there's one thing for it to be.
Speaker 2: On the album.
Speaker 15: I mean, that's a huge album coming straight up. I
Speaker 15: mean selling over a million copies these days, it's it's
Speaker 15: hard unheard of and uh, pretty much but and uh
Speaker 15: to have that. But then when it announced as a single,
Speaker 15: I remember thinking that was my first single to country radio,
Speaker 15: and I thought I didn't even know what to think. Man,
Speaker 15: I mean that song here I wrote about you know
Speaker 15: where I grew up, and and uh, you know, it
Speaker 15: was hitting country radio and that just like I said,
Speaker 15: either way, I mean that that was my first taste
Speaker 15: of seeing how a song was doing and wondering what
Speaker 15: was gonna happen with.
Speaker 2: It, and watching a charge watching it, yeah, watching the chart.
Speaker 15: And it's it's, uh, you know, that's that's just how
Speaker 15: how you learn the business, I guess. And I'm just
Speaker 15: glad that, you know, that song helped me, you know,
Speaker 15: no matter how it did, it got me. Uh, it
Speaker 15: gave me the confidence to keep writing and know that
Speaker 15: how my songs are, you know, hopefully worthy of radio someday.
Speaker 1: All right, So after water Tower Town, what's the next
Speaker 1: song you wrote? That you were like, Okay, this one
Speaker 1: has a shot. Now, okay, like this one has a
Speaker 1: shot like WaterTower Town had a little higher hopes, but
Speaker 1: you're still happy about it. It made you feel confident
Speaker 1: you could walk into a room. Then what'd you write? So?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 15: I know, I wrote a song that that Chris Young
Speaker 15: recorded after that, but then after I wrote wrote a
Speaker 15: song for Luke Bryan called roller Coaster that I've heard of,
Speaker 15: that one this is the one. I mean, yeah, this,
Speaker 15: this was this didn't get me some of that, Like
Speaker 15: those were almost around the same time, I feel like,
Speaker 15: and you know, but this one was the one that
Speaker 15: you know, just our history from you know, knowing Luke
Speaker 15: and working for him to writing songs. And I mean
Speaker 15: when we played him this, me and Michael Carter wrote
Speaker 15: this one, we played it for him. It wasn't even
Speaker 15: to pitch it to him. It wasn't to see if
Speaker 15: he would record it with me and Michael. It was
Speaker 15: the first song we'd kind of written together and we
Speaker 15: had he had produced it how he wanted, and we
Speaker 15: just want him to hear my voice on it to
Speaker 15: see what he thought. And he freaked out, drove us
Speaker 15: straight over to his producer's house and me and Michael
Speaker 15: are sitting there like what is going on?
Speaker 2: Where that feeling is?
Speaker 15: That's one of a kind feeling when somebody you've looked
Speaker 15: up to is about to I mean, it's freaking out
Speaker 15: literally over a song like you've never seen them, you know,
Speaker 15: you used to freak out over their songs like that,
Speaker 15: and now here's something we wrote and to see him
Speaker 15: and Jeff Stevens just you know, go crazy over this song.
Speaker 15: I mean, it was one of the best, you know,
Speaker 15: moments of my life, just knowing that man, this song, right,
Speaker 15: that's it's one of those things. That's why we love songwriting,
Speaker 15: is because to make somebody feel like that, and that's
Speaker 15: you know, that's why I moved to Nashville because that's
Speaker 15: how music, you know, it makes me feel.
Speaker 2: And that's crazy.
Speaker 1: But after no on that Astrard, let me hear.
Speaker 12: This, and now I'm wondering word going.
Speaker 4: I need to recut this too.
Speaker 15: I wish yeah, yeah, yeah, and you put your vocal
Speaker 15: on in the jemo I got to see.
Speaker 2: I still have.
Speaker 15: I thought about that someday, you know, like maybe putting
Speaker 15: out my own little uh like just the you know,
Speaker 15: the the versions of my versions of the songs, because
Speaker 15: I mean, that's what pretty much got me my you know,
Speaker 15: when labels we were pitching my songs and they're like, what,
Speaker 15: you know, why aren't you why can't you sing this song?
Speaker 15: Or why wouldn't you sing this? And it just kind
Speaker 15: of that gave me confidence too. It's like, man, maybe
Speaker 15: I need to book a show, because you know, when
Speaker 15: I moved here, I'd just been singing cover songs, playing
Speaker 15: in bars, me and a buddy of mine. Acoustic no uh,
Speaker 15: no big band or anything, but we just played country
Speaker 15: covers and I'd gotten into the songwriting things. So I
Speaker 15: moved here and fell in love with the.
Speaker 2: With the writing. Did you move here to be an artist?
Speaker 15: I mean, ultimately yes, but I knew that I was,
Speaker 15: you know, I wanted to have my own songs, and
Speaker 15: I you know, I had friends in the business that
Speaker 15: was that said, you know, you need to if you
Speaker 15: like songwriting and you're interested like you are.
Speaker 2: I mean I was looking up.
Speaker 15: I was more starstruck by the songwriters when I got
Speaker 15: here because I you know, I had been on stage.
Speaker 15: I loved entertaining, but I knew I didn't have the song.
Speaker 15: I didn't I couldn't write a song like I wanted to.
Speaker 15: And you know that's why I'm lived here and to
Speaker 15: take three solid year and just focus on songwriting. I
Speaker 15: mean that if that wouldn't have happened that way, I
Speaker 15: wouldn't have had those songs for you know, when I
Speaker 15: finally got my chance at a record deal. So that's
Speaker 15: another situation where I thought I was gonna come up here.
Speaker 15: I was ready to get a record deal, and I
Speaker 15: would have had have screwed it up so fast. I mean,
Speaker 15: it just happened that at the right time. But that
Speaker 15: songwriting was definitely my my avenue.
Speaker 1: I think, so, you know, in this town and then
Speaker 1: luckily during the show, I get to bring up all
Speaker 1: the great songwriters. Yeah, you know, there becomes the coolest
Speaker 1: songwriters of the moment. Did aren't artists yet, it may
Speaker 1: never be, but it's like, you know, who's the coolest?
Speaker 1: Were you for a while? That the coolest songwriter for
Speaker 1: a minute?
Speaker 2: I don't think so. I don't.
Speaker 15: You know, I wouldn't think that. I would think that
Speaker 15: I was a guy that people hopefully wanted to write
Speaker 15: with a second time and.
Speaker 2: The third time.
Speaker 15: I think that's you know something my publisher, the people
Speaker 15: that you know brought me up through the business. It
Speaker 15: was like, you know, you got to have this town,
Speaker 15: you know behind you wanting to write with you again.
Speaker 15: I mean, you gotta you know, you gotta write the
Speaker 15: best songs you can. And I think, uh, I never
Speaker 15: felt like that I just felt like I started getting
Speaker 15: some songs recorded and people heard my versions and it
Speaker 15: was like a lot of artists now it's like, well man,
Speaker 15: that's uh, you know, that's and that was about the
Speaker 15: time that that you came along.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 15: It's it's crazy to think like it's all that happened. Uh,
Speaker 15: and then I finally got my chance.
Speaker 1: So I it is crazy to think that you've really
Speaker 1: only been an artist for about four and a half.
Speaker 15: Years, and that's what's something I think.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a ton of hits.
Speaker 15: Well thank you man, I'm on my It's crazy to
Speaker 15: me from I mean, I met you during chilling It
Speaker 15: and now I'm on my seventh single that is in
Speaker 15: that amount of time. I mean, you know, we talked
Speaker 15: a little bit of you. I don't know how you
Speaker 15: measure success really. I think it's happiness. But I think
Speaker 15: that if you look at what I've done, and I
Speaker 15: can't I don't have anything to complain about it if
Speaker 15: something doesn't go my way, I mean, look at look
Speaker 15: at what's happened for me. And it takes some somebody
Speaker 15: like your mama or whatever, you know, pointing that out.
Speaker 15: It's like, you know, we all always in this. We
Speaker 15: always want what's next, what's next? But man, you're right.
Speaker 15: Four and a half years I couldn't have couldn't have
Speaker 15: drawn it up any any better.
Speaker 1: And you hid from the internet at the same time.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's amazing. Here I'm gonna play chilling It.
Speaker 2: I think I'm a story about this when I yeah,
Speaker 2: I got my shame.
Speaker 4: So this song comes out by this dude. I don't
Speaker 4: even know what this dude.
Speaker 1: He says, up a cooler to the studio, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: let me see what this is. He set up a cooler,
Speaker 1: Let me see what this is.
Speaker 4: Chilling it.
Speaker 1: And I remember listening to it my ears saying, I
Speaker 1: was like, let me hear, let me hear this, set
Speaker 1: up a cooler. I was like, I like the sound
Speaker 1: of that times a little progressive but still country. And
Speaker 1: I was like, I liked it.
Speaker 2: And I remember playing it and I know you. I
Speaker 2: would never met, I know, but I had heard.
Speaker 15: I remember my mom telling me that you were playing
Speaker 15: it like and that.
Speaker 1: Was and you texted me you said, my mom heard
Speaker 1: the song in the radio for the first I.
Speaker 15: Had to get you know, of course, you know, I
Speaker 15: just I was like, hey, some my label was like,
Speaker 15: can you get me Bobby Bones, and my mom's freaking
Speaker 15: out he played my song.
Speaker 2: I just want to thank you because at.
Speaker 15: That point, you know how to. I mean, somebody's got
Speaker 15: to give you a chance, and that you know, when
Speaker 15: you're a new artist and an artist, and I mean
Speaker 15: putting out a new song anything, you got to have
Speaker 15: people that believe in you. And I will never I
Speaker 15: will never forget that the people that you know, you
Speaker 15: met at the beginning that kind of gave you that shot.
Speaker 15: I mean, from from you to my label to the.
Speaker 1: Cooler cool big cooler, like CD is a cooler of
Speaker 1: the CD. I even listening to CD, I was like,
Speaker 1: he said, a big old cooler up here.
Speaker 15: What am I gonna do with it? Well, at least
Speaker 15: you like the song maybe better than the cooler sends cool.
Speaker 1: But I was like, well, let me let me listen
Speaker 1: to the download it and then yeah.
Speaker 11: I got my shame.
Speaker 4: Long time as a jam.
Speaker 12: That crowd's what started.
Speaker 2: And I watched you at Stage Coach this year.
Speaker 1: Oh well yeah, we played the same day I played
Speaker 1: we played before you.
Speaker 2: We don't worry.
Speaker 1: We're playing a peon times like we're playing like four
Speaker 1: you were playing at dark whatever, and I was watching
Speaker 1: you play the song and the whole crowd was still
Speaker 1: just they were singing their brains out to the song.
Speaker 15: And that was my first single. I think that is
Speaker 15: you know, people ask me buddies that are trying to
Speaker 15: get record deals or whatever, it's like, you know, what
Speaker 15: song should I you know, what's the first sing?
Speaker 2: And I don't.
Speaker 15: I don't know that as to that, but I just
Speaker 15: think that if any other song I've had since then
Speaker 15: would have been my first, it might not have broken
Speaker 15: me through there like that one did. And that's that's
Speaker 15: scary to think about. But that's, like I said, and
Speaker 15: that's why I love writing songs. I've always listened to music,
Speaker 15: and I think I'm a fan. I grew up a
Speaker 15: fan of music and I still am. And I think
Speaker 15: that's why I, you know, try to put myself on
Speaker 15: their shoes and what would I want to hear? What
Speaker 15: would you know? It's not always like that, but sometimes
Speaker 15: you got to think about you know, hey, I'm just
Speaker 15: like them too, So let's let's try to say some
Speaker 15: of it's fun, some of us sad.
Speaker 1: But I wonder let me wonder out loud for a second.
Speaker 1: I wonder because you put that song out and I
Speaker 1: was like, I like the song and it sounds a
Speaker 1: little different. I bet you you got some pushback for
Speaker 1: that song. Yeah, I bet you did. Yeah, And now
Speaker 1: it's just a song that there was a hit that
Speaker 1: gets played as what they call a recurrent and nobody
Speaker 1: thinks a thing about it. Oh yeah, in just four years,
Speaker 1: you've seen it change from WHOA, this is crazy. I
Speaker 1: bet you got some dad in't countries for that song.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, which is crazy to think right now, right
Speaker 1: oh yeah, now yeah.
Speaker 15: But like I said, that's I guess that's always you know,
Speaker 15: it's always gonna be a whole thing. And and you,
Speaker 15: like you said, man I, that's the one thing about
Speaker 15: being in positions like we're in.
Speaker 2: It's like you're opening stuff.
Speaker 15: You're opening yourself up to just get you know, people
Speaker 15: that have you know, nothing other to do than just
Speaker 15: you know, talk trash or whatever it is. But that's
Speaker 15: you're gonna get pushed back about things. But I think
Speaker 15: those are always the things that mean you're you're breaking
Speaker 15: through and getting getting something done. And you know, not
Speaker 15: everybody's gonna like that's the toughest thing for me is
Speaker 15: I you know, I try to treat everybody how I
Speaker 15: want to be treated. But everybody's not gonna like your music.
Speaker 15: They're not gonna like every song. You're not gonna like me. Yeah,
Speaker 15: it's like what they don't even know us, you know,
Speaker 15: but it's.
Speaker 2: They don't know me.
Speaker 15: But you know, I uh, you got to understand that
Speaker 15: you're putting yourself in that position. And I tell you what,
Speaker 15: I think. We we got a lot more people that
Speaker 15: do like us than do and that's to me, the fans,
Speaker 15: I mean people that that's what you.
Speaker 2: Gotta focus on.
Speaker 1: And that let me wonder a lot again.
Speaker 15: I wonder.
Speaker 1: I wonder because something I've had to do in my life,
Speaker 1: especially in the last six months to a year, is
Speaker 1: if I get one hundred tweets, right, I'll zero in
Speaker 1: on that negative one, yeah.
Speaker 4: And I'll be like, everybody hates me and this person
Speaker 4: just rip me.
Speaker 1: But there are ninety nine positive tweets, and I would
Speaker 1: always focus in and it would make me go, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm so angry or I'm sad, or but what why
Speaker 1: do we do that We should really make an effort
Speaker 1: to appreciate those ninety nine.
Speaker 15: I'm not kidding. That is a great point, because you know,
Speaker 15: that's that's being honest. If somebody says that they don't,
Speaker 15: then I don't know. I guess they've got it figured out.
Speaker 15: But it's just it's tough to see that something that
Speaker 15: you know you love to do and you're doing you're
Speaker 15: you're not out there, you know, doing what. I don't know,
Speaker 15: you're doing the right that you're doing great things and
Speaker 15: trying to do the right thing, and people just no
Speaker 15: matter what.
Speaker 2: You just trying to do, just trying to do things.
Speaker 15: And they they're gonna, you know, they're not gonna like it.
Speaker 1: And we gotta focus on We gotta focus on the
Speaker 1: ninety nine I got yeah, gotta focus They play this song,
Speaker 1: talk about this one here. This is by Craig Campbell. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Craig singing here.
Speaker 15: This is the one that was my second thing. Yeah,
Speaker 15: that was my second single the country readio out there.
Speaker 15: Craig Campbell, great friend of mine, great friend of yours.
Speaker 1: The thing about Craig is that and the weird thing
Speaker 1: about this song, I believe it was a song as
Speaker 1: it was climbing. He gets dropped from his record label.
Speaker 1: Now dropped the record of folds.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you think the song was.
Speaker 1: Climbing hard es? Yes, And I remember sitting in a
Speaker 1: meeting with my boss's boss. We were in New York
Speaker 1: and Craig Campbell was our radio on the Bird artist YEP,
Speaker 1: and so loved the song and the song was just
Speaker 1: top ten and boom, his record label goes out, and
Speaker 1: we're like, what what do we do? So it's like, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna keep charging with the song even though there's
Speaker 1: no record label and no promotion. And I think it
Speaker 1: ended up getting to like six or something.
Speaker 12: Yeah, that's huge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that doesn't even happen. Then we were all flowering.
Speaker 1: Guess like, he's got a top ten song and now
Speaker 1: the record label folds and goes away.
Speaker 2: But just because that's never had, why can't it have?
Speaker 15: And that's what I love about, Like people that believe
Speaker 15: in a song, believe in music, and you, like I said, man,
Speaker 15: you can't really you don't know how to say thanks
Speaker 15: for this? And I know Craig appreciates that's probably is
Speaker 15: that when you is that when y'all met kind of yeah,
Speaker 15: then was it? But I know you've had Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 15: it's wed that. So you wrote this, Yeah, I wrote
Speaker 15: this one. So this is the one that as a
Speaker 15: writer on that scene that happened. And a good friend,
Speaker 15: I mean me and Craig and he used to play
Speaker 15: Broadway every Tuesday night at the stage. Me and himould
Speaker 15: go get sushi right onto Mumbery and right there. Every Tuesday.
Speaker 15: I'd be off the road from selling merch and he'd
Speaker 15: be playing the stage and would go down and I'd
Speaker 15: watch him sing all these songs that.
Speaker 4: He's crazy to do it, knowing every song.
Speaker 15: Every song, and I mean i'd sit there that wouldn't
Speaker 15: be you know that many people in there at the start.
Speaker 15: I mean they have like four hour sets down there.
Speaker 15: By the end it was full. But I'd be there
Speaker 15: from the beginning. I was his buddy and I always
Speaker 15: supported him. So to see you know, him record a
Speaker 15: song like that, knowing that he used to get me up.
Speaker 15: That was my only chance to really ever sing in
Speaker 15: town was during his sets. He'd get me up to sing,
Speaker 15: just some nineties country song or something, and you know,
Speaker 15: that's that was my moment of the week, you know,
Speaker 15: before I went back on the road to sell T shirts.
Speaker 2: So Craig has always been.
Speaker 15: Good to me and I look for hopefully one day,
Speaker 15: you know, we can do some shows together. I know
Speaker 15: he's out there, I think with Luke doing some stuff now,
Speaker 15: and like you said, you've you're a fan of his
Speaker 15: and I you know, I just I like to pull
Speaker 15: for good people and he's He's one of those.
Speaker 1: If you if your friend is an artist, so back
Speaker 1: when you before you were trying to be an artist,
Speaker 1: and you wrote something you use that was fantastic, would
Speaker 1: you go to your friends with it first and say,
Speaker 1: here's a song I think is really good. And is
Speaker 1: it awkward when they don't think it's really good?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 15: I mean that is so so true. I mean yes,
Speaker 15: it's like, you know, I've had, you know, a couple
Speaker 15: of close friends. I mean, Luke obviously is one of them,
Speaker 15: but you know Thomas redd Or but he's a songwriter himself.
Speaker 15: So I'm trying to think, you know, me and fg
Speaker 15: O or boys, but it's hard to it's hard to
Speaker 15: think Dirk's now. But uh, I had to. You know,
Speaker 15: when you send the artist a song, you want them
Speaker 15: to love it, but it is awkward, like you if
Speaker 15: if they don't say anything back. Because now I'm on
Speaker 15: the other side of it, and I don't know what
Speaker 15: to do when I don't, like, you don't want to
Speaker 15: your body say you're sending you know what do you say?
Speaker 15: It's so it's like you don't I just if you
Speaker 15: made a song.
Speaker 1: Lets say I write a song. I'm like by my sitting.
Speaker 15: About to ask myself songwriters that are pitching me songs.
Speaker 1: This is something that gets talked about a lot here
Speaker 1: that and a lot of people say I believe someone
Speaker 1: like in the last week or so said they would
Speaker 1: get songs and they just don't reply. And that's kind
Speaker 1: of these Hey, I wasn't really feeling it without saying
Speaker 1: I wasn't really feeling it.
Speaker 15: That's so I'm laughing because I know I've done that before.
Speaker 15: But I know anybody listening, they just didn't reply.
Speaker 2: Do you remember who it was, Well.
Speaker 15: It was Nicole Guy, and that's somebody I'm looking forward
Speaker 15: to write. She's so I know I'm looking Nicole. I
Speaker 15: want to write with you, but we're gonna I know,
Speaker 15: we'll we'll try to work that out. But that is
Speaker 15: very true. I've done that before too, and you know,
Speaker 15: you try.
Speaker 1: To get to hers what it was. It's not Blake,
Speaker 1: that's what it was because her and Blake are friend.
Speaker 1: She was like, she'll send Blake songs and if Blake
Speaker 1: doesn't reply, that just means he wasn't feeling it.
Speaker 2: That's their universal language. I used to do that.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I've done that, and you're kind of like, well
Speaker 15: he hadn't replied by now, she hadn't replied by now.
Speaker 15: They don't like it, So.
Speaker 1: Didn't you send it to someone else if they haven't
Speaker 1: replied in how much time do you give them?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 15: These days, I don't think there is any I think
Speaker 15: they just send it and if you answer first, then
Speaker 15: it's good some people. But to me, I mean there
Speaker 15: were some times when you know, I remember like Roller
Speaker 15: Coaster when when Luke he had that on whole for
Speaker 15: a long time, and there were other artists that I
Speaker 15: remember a couple of artists you know, wanted it or
Speaker 15: their A and R people wanted it for them maybe,
Speaker 15: and Luke was like, you know, I want this song.
Speaker 15: He ended up recording it, you know, like after you know,
Speaker 15: you never know. I mean when you're holding a song,
Speaker 15: and especially now me knowing as an artist, I mean,
Speaker 15: you're taking a chance on if you don't record it.
Speaker 15: These writers are missing out on you know, other big
Speaker 15: artists recording the songs.
Speaker 12: So food.
Speaker 15: I mean, that's what and that's why I'm so glad
Speaker 15: I got to do the writing thing, and I still do.
Speaker 15: But come up that way because I want to write
Speaker 15: all my stuff, but I don't have have to. I know,
Speaker 15: I can't write every song because there's too many great
Speaker 15: songwriters here. And if they're gonna send me their best stuff,
Speaker 15: I mean, you know, I think that's how you support
Speaker 15: the indust I'm not going to record that just because
Speaker 15: of that reason. But I think there's so many great
Speaker 15: songs that, you know, we're lucky enough to build a
Speaker 15: record outside. I mean, I'd like to write them all,
Speaker 15: but I don't. I'm fortunate to have people sending me
Speaker 15: theirs now, and that's uh, I'm uh, that's a compliment.
Speaker 2: So let me ask you something about your boy Luke.
Speaker 1: Why is he falling down all the time we're talking
Speaker 1: about this today, like he jump on a beer cooler.
Speaker 15: It's just he's dangerous. I don't know, man, he's worth
Speaker 15: too much money to be jumping around. I know he's
Speaker 15: getting a lot of people depending on him out there
Speaker 15: to that's but he's got too many people to pay.
Speaker 15: I know he's I don't know, man, he's an entertainer,
Speaker 15: and that's that's something that I don't know. I literally
Speaker 15: though I think from being around it, I'm careful, but
Speaker 15: I have like anxiety about falling off this about your
Speaker 15: throat ill all of it, man.
Speaker 1: Because again, if you're not making money, the people that
Speaker 1: you have you're peging aren't making money.
Speaker 15: And that's that's and that's something that I never you know,
Speaker 15: you never think about those things when you're chasing a
Speaker 15: dream that you may get to.
Speaker 2: A level where you got a lot of.
Speaker 15: People behind you that are helping you on your team,
Speaker 15: and every little thing you do, every decision you make,
Speaker 15: every song you release, every whatever, it matters. But those
Speaker 15: people and there's people depending on you. And it's a
Speaker 15: good thing to have responsibility like that. But I don't
Speaker 15: think some people understand the pressure that we're, you know,
Speaker 15: put in in these situations. Anybody in the entertainment business
Speaker 15: I'm speaking of. So it's it's a different thing that
Speaker 15: I don't think some things they really realize that, hey,
Speaker 15: everything we're doing is affecting all of the people on
Speaker 15: our team.
Speaker 1: So let's go back to you moving to Nashalle.
Speaker 2: So what's it?
Speaker 1: How old are you? What's the thought? Did you always?
Speaker 1: I think just put me where you are? How old
Speaker 1: you were?
Speaker 15: See a lot of people I was leaving college. I
Speaker 15: left college. I mean I had like eighteen nineteen hours
Speaker 15: or a lot of people don't even don't know that,
Speaker 15: but you know, it was just something that I had
Speaker 15: to do. I was, I was playing shows and I
Speaker 15: had already just go. When I got to college, I didn't.
Speaker 15: I was undeclared major. I finally settled in on marketing
Speaker 15: and did got so close.
Speaker 12: But it was just it was.
Speaker 15: Time and I knew that I loved music, I knew
Speaker 15: what I wanted to do, and you know, I knew
Speaker 15: I had to get to Nashville. So I moved. I was,
Speaker 15: I think twenty three. It was August twenty thirds, my
Speaker 15: dad's birthday, two thousand and seven. So yeah, August twenty third,
Speaker 15: two thousand and seven, moved to Nashville. I remember broking
Speaker 15: my mom. She was clutely, I mean, just couldn't understand.
Speaker 15: She had never really even seen me play in bars
Speaker 15: or anything. Didn't really understand. She knew I loved music
Speaker 15: growing up, but it wasn't She had never really seen
Speaker 15: you know, me play and didn't get it, like some
Speaker 15: of my friends didn't. There was a lot of people
Speaker 15: that didn't get it thought I was crazy, and those
Speaker 15: are the people I think that ended up motivating you.
Speaker 15: But so I moved to Nashville and I just that was,
Speaker 15: you know, to write a song. I didn't know what
Speaker 15: I was going to do. I was in contact with Luke.
Speaker 15: I had his manager, Carrie, which ended up she's my
Speaker 15: manager now we you know that he needed a merchandise guy.
Speaker 12: That did you know Luke like what we met?
Speaker 9: Uh?
Speaker 4: He?
Speaker 15: You know, in college, I was in fraternity fraternity singing
Speaker 15: with Kay and he was there a few years earlier
Speaker 15: than me, same fraternity. He was in a band there
Speaker 15: while he was in college. And they had come back
Speaker 15: to do like a do a show that weekend and
Speaker 15: he just stops by and I knew his name and
Speaker 15: knew that he was pretty popular in the local, you know,
Speaker 15: coming through Statesboro. So he stopped to change his strings
Speaker 15: guitar strings for that night, and met him, and he
Speaker 15: sat down and said, can I care if I play
Speaker 15: on some stuff I wrote up in Nashville, and I
Speaker 15: was like, stuff you wrote, you know, I was at
Speaker 15: that time, I was singing cover songs and on I
Speaker 15: remember he played a song that he had written and
Speaker 15: it just blew my mind that he made that up
Speaker 15: and made me feel like that, you know, and I
Speaker 15: was like, wow, and that's really that was a big moment.
Speaker 15: And knowing that, man, some people are behind there's people
Speaker 15: that aren't singing this that are behind these songs right
Speaker 15: to men. I learned about who the songwriters were. And
Speaker 15: from then on, when i'd buy an album, I was
Speaker 15: looking at every single cut on the album that I
Speaker 15: loved that I thought maybe he should be on the
Speaker 15: radio and looking at the right and that, uh, that
Speaker 15: changed my whole view on song right. And then you know,
Speaker 15: it was always his demos he'd send me. But you know,
Speaker 15: then Eric Church's first album, Dirks Bentley's first album came out,
Speaker 15: and that was just those are the guys that were
Speaker 15: writing their own songs, and I just I don't know
Speaker 15: that changed me. I said, I wanted to you know,
Speaker 15: I knew I wasn't writing the songs I was singing,
Speaker 15: and I just wanted to be one one of the
Speaker 15: guys that made people feel the way I did.
Speaker 1: So, So two thousand and seven, you packed up? Where'd
Speaker 1: you pack up?
Speaker 15: I mean not a bed, nothing, my clothes. I had
Speaker 15: a guard you have. I had a ninety six Chevrolet
Speaker 15: trucks seventy one. That's that's truck. Eyed Well that was
Speaker 15: what I had when I was sixteen. So I had
Speaker 15: a just a black Chevrolet truck. So you loaded down,
Speaker 15: loaded down the trailer behind it, or just put all
Speaker 15: it was just all in the in the bed. Because
Speaker 15: I had a guy here that was from close to
Speaker 15: my town, Cliff Corps, that that had a house here
Speaker 15: that he was living in and they had a small
Speaker 15: extra room and he's like, man, there's a there's a bed,
Speaker 15: but you know you're not even have any room for
Speaker 15: any furniture anything. There's you have to put your computer
Speaker 15: in the closet. And I had to get a flat
Speaker 15: screen TV at that time, I mean they were common,
Speaker 15: but still that I had to hang it on the
Speaker 15: wall because it wouldn't even fit in front of the
Speaker 15: TV where you walked through. So I was never there,
Speaker 15: you know, I was on the road a lot. I
Speaker 15: got the merchant Nized job, so that was I didn't
Speaker 15: have to pack a whole lot.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 15: I never when I moved up there, I didn't bring
Speaker 15: a bed or anything. It just I lived there for
Speaker 15: a while until I moved, you know, probably where I
Speaker 15: moved after a year, and then I lived there for
Speaker 15: about six years.
Speaker 4: So would you do?
Speaker 1: Did you write Monday through Thursday and then go out
Speaker 1: and sell merch for Luke on the weekend?
Speaker 15: And you know, I'd like to say I had it
Speaker 15: set up like that, but you know, at first, who
Speaker 15: do you write with? I mean, how I'm a merchandise?
Speaker 15: Nobody took me serious, and I think that had a
Speaker 15: lot to do with when I was first coming out,
Speaker 15: people weren't really sure if I you know, was like,
Speaker 15: who's this guy that just got off and got off
Speaker 15: the road? Still in teachers? But I think, uh, you know,
Speaker 15: I don't know how it happened like that. But to write,
Speaker 15: you know, every day, you can't do that without appointments,
Speaker 15: And to me, I had to meet people. So I
Speaker 15: had a couple buddies that i'd write with, and I
Speaker 15: might write twice a week if I could. But it's
Speaker 15: the more I did it, you know, I'd rite on
Speaker 15: the road when I could with Michael, but just thinking
Speaker 15: about and just knowing that, Man, I'm not there yet.
Speaker 15: I'm not there yet. I mean, I can't wait till
Speaker 15: one day get in the room with some of these
Speaker 15: guys and I can learn. And but I'm glad I didn't.
Speaker 15: I'm glad I had to learn by myself with the
Speaker 15: guys that were on my level. And I think that's
Speaker 15: how you that's how you grow, and it's you know,
Speaker 15: I wrote when I could, but the more I did,
Speaker 15: the more I you know, I think you got the
Speaker 15: feel of it. And it was just a dignity that
Speaker 15: feeling I used to have on stage of entertaining and
Speaker 15: watching people have fun.
Speaker 2: Now it was.
Speaker 15: Coming up with that line or what I thought was
Speaker 15: good and that feeling. It just took over. And so
Speaker 15: songwriting was my new love at that point.
Speaker 1: So when you were selling for Luke, did he know
Speaker 1: you wanted to be an artist? And is that a
Speaker 1: weird dynamic because of that?
Speaker 15: Yeah, I mean I don't think, you know, he knew
Speaker 15: that I was interesting, use he knew I loved music
Speaker 15: and I wanted to be a songwriter. And I think
Speaker 15: he you know, that was his way of saying, hey, well,
Speaker 15: you know, come out here and see what goes on
Speaker 15: and kind. It wasn't a really long term plan, but
Speaker 15: it was something I went out one weekend and ended
Speaker 15: up being at for like three years. But you know,
Speaker 15: that's not what I moved to do. But it gave
Speaker 15: me an opportunity to just be around the business and
Speaker 15: be around radio and see how a new artist. I
Speaker 15: mean see, I'd always thought Luke was the big star
Speaker 15: back that he is now, but it just, you know,
Speaker 15: it took a little bit for everything to catch on,
Speaker 15: but for me to see how he did things, how
Speaker 15: he treated people, you know, his team, It just think
Speaker 15: it helped me when I finally got my chance. I
Speaker 15: felt like I had been around it. I'd seen the
Speaker 15: good and the bad of the business. I'd seen singles taught,
Speaker 15: the charts i'd seen. I saw me and him both
Speaker 15: loved you know, Die thirty seven, and it just, you know,
Speaker 15: things like that I had going through that with a
Speaker 15: friend and then finally getting your chance like I do now.
Speaker 15: I mean, I obviously can't thank him enough, but I think,
Speaker 15: you know, things like that make you want to get
Speaker 15: to a point where you can give back and help people,
Speaker 15: because he certainly you know, put his name out there,
Speaker 15: and I've tried to.
Speaker 2: Do the best.
Speaker 12: I can write the best.
Speaker 15: And you know, make a name for myself.
Speaker 1: Talking about the hat because everybody thinks it means Cole
Speaker 1: Swindell and it doesn't. But tell me about the hat
Speaker 1: and why you wear that hat all the time. Could
Speaker 1: you not make any money off the hat?
Speaker 4: Are you?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 15: No, I don't, I don't know. I'm just obviously a
Speaker 15: hat guy is kind of kind of my thing. And
Speaker 15: the Georgia Southern thing, it just I remember when I
Speaker 15: went out and did some of my first shows when
Speaker 15: I got my band and I was gonna try to
Speaker 15: start getting a record deal. You know, I had a
Speaker 15: Georgia Southern baseball hat, one of the new ones, and
Speaker 15: I was like, I'm just gonna rock this, and we
Speaker 15: ended up out on a big tour and the just
Speaker 15: pictures on the internet, you know, like coming out there,
Speaker 15: like who's this guy wearing the Georgia Southern people, you know,
Speaker 15: we're noticing that. I saw a lot of alumni that
Speaker 15: were like, this guy's repping our college, you know. And
Speaker 15: I went to school there for six years and our
Speaker 15: five five years something, and you know it's where I
Speaker 15: got my start, and it just kind of I don't know.
Speaker 15: I like to to be loyal to where I come from,
Speaker 15: and it just kind of stuck with me. And then
Speaker 15: people think it means I know, I don't know house
Speaker 15: because it looks like a C. I understand that. But
Speaker 15: if you look it is a it's obviously, but I
Speaker 15: can understand it. So maybe, look, you've got all kind
Speaker 15: of cool hats, so maybe we can just design me
Speaker 15: a new And I don't know, I don't do you
Speaker 15: even want that? No, I mean a lot of people
Speaker 15: think it's my initials.
Speaker 2: But what if you don't make any money off that
Speaker 2: Georgia Southern hat.
Speaker 15: No, I just I just think it's something that nobody
Speaker 15: knows to Georgia southing. And I get a chance to
Speaker 15: represent my college where my family we all, I mean everybody.
Speaker 15: I think everybody graduated with me from there, but everybody
Speaker 15: went there, and it's just I don't know.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: Schooling and commendable look out the state of Arkansas attitude
Speaker 1: to my body. I love representing home. I don't always wondered.
Speaker 15: I got you. Yeah, well you know I appreciate do
Speaker 15: you sell Georgia's other hats at your shows. No, they
Speaker 15: have them in the bookstore like at the college. So
Speaker 15: it's like, I mean, they had a graph of the
Speaker 15: sales of baseball hats before I started wearing it now
Speaker 15: and it's pretty it's pretty funny.
Speaker 4: But to me, it's the col merch booth of the college.
Speaker 15: I mean, I know, but I make I mean, you know,
Speaker 15: I have my own line of merch down there at
Speaker 15: Georgia Southern now, so it's I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 15: they don't do anything like the baseball hats, but it's
Speaker 15: still I mean, just to be tied in when I
Speaker 15: used to be a kid in that bookstore. Now I
Speaker 15: have stuff in there. But it's it's pretty wild to
Speaker 15: think about that. But there, I know they're proud of me,
Speaker 15: and I'm proud to represent them. So I'm glad, glad
Speaker 15: you uh know, proud of where you come from.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know this story. I just wanted you
Speaker 1: to say any because a lot of people don't know.
Speaker 15: I well, thank you, and this is a lot of
Speaker 15: people listening and this is my only way. And that's
Speaker 15: funny about people tweeting and stuff like when I get
Speaker 15: you know, a couple of TV moments here and there.
Speaker 15: But when I do, that's like the meanest thing. It's like,
Speaker 15: why does this guy think he can just wear his
Speaker 15: initial And it's like, well, okay, I mean that's not
Speaker 15: that worst thing. I guess I can. I can deal
Speaker 15: with that, but uh yeah, well who knows, Maybe I'll
Speaker 15: change it someday.
Speaker 1: Here's Thomas Rhett talking about what it was like growing
Speaker 1: up with a famous dad and talking about writing songs
Speaker 1: for other artists and how he felt like he had
Speaker 1: to prove to people that he was country. It's kind
Speaker 1: of wild too, Like your kids are going to grow
Speaker 1: up in an environment of knowing terrifies me all the
Speaker 1: like all the Country Star La New York yep, Like
Speaker 1: they're gonna have I say different. But I mean you
Speaker 1: grew up knowing some of these guys, Like yeah, when
Speaker 1: you grew up in Nashville. Ye, Like did you know McGraw?
Speaker 1: I did from an early age.
Speaker 16: Yeah, I mean not so much McGraw. I mean I
Speaker 16: met MacGraw when I was nine. I met Garth when
Speaker 16: I was like eight or nine years old. We spent
Speaker 16: like a couple of halloweens over at Reba's house, mostly
Speaker 16: people that dad toured with. I knew pretty well Blake
Speaker 16: Shelton when he is back in his younger in his
Speaker 16: younger days, not saying that you're old, Blake, you're younger.
Speaker 12: Then he's a big fan. He'll for sure he this, Yeah,
Speaker 12: for sure.
Speaker 16: But uh yeah, man, I definitely grew up in that environment.
Speaker 12: But it was so different.
Speaker 16: Social media didn't exist then, you know what I mean,
Speaker 16: Like if if there was an artist that did something
Speaker 16: that was worth talking about, it was in the newspaper.
Speaker 16: Just so different now, like if something happens this immediately
Speaker 16: for anyone in the world to see.
Speaker 1: Do you and Lauren have the talks about the kids
Speaker 1: on Instagram and the kids on Twitter and like give rules?
Speaker 16: We talk about it daily, man, And we get asked
Speaker 16: that question quite a bit, like what is the balance?
Speaker 16: And I think we're still trying to figure it out.
Speaker 16: But I think through it all, me and Laurena are
Speaker 16: still trying to be super real to how we like
Speaker 16: to live life. And ever since we got married. We're
Speaker 16: both twenty two and we got married, and my fans
Speaker 16: have known that I was married. Since I was married,
Speaker 16: there was no ever trying to be like, hey, I'm
Speaker 16: still the single dude, you know what I'm saying, Because
Speaker 16: I think in a lot of formats it's like, well,
Speaker 16: you want to be accessible and you want to be
Speaker 16: the single guy because they think that it drives more
Speaker 16: fans your way. But that's never something that I really
Speaker 16: believed in. And so Lauren has been such a huge
Speaker 16: part of my social media platform that like, when our
Speaker 16: kids got here, it was like, yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 16: of things that are too personal that we're definitely going
Speaker 16: to save for our own family group text and our
Speaker 16: private Instagram pages and stuff. But like, I mean, you know,
Speaker 16: we're a family of two kids, and we're gonna project that,
Speaker 16: you know what I'm saying, And so there's a lot
Speaker 16: of people that are like, well, maybe that's not protective
Speaker 16: of your kids, and it's just like, well, the part
Speaker 16: of our lives and we've always been super transparent and
Speaker 16: we've always kind of told whatever's on our sleeve is
Speaker 16: going to be kind of on Instagram, and we're pretty
Speaker 16: real about the stuff that we deal with and the
Speaker 16: stuff that we struggle with. I just think it's I
Speaker 16: just think more so than anything, it's more of a,
Speaker 16: like you said, a positive influence to other families that
Speaker 16: have kids and just realize that every day is not
Speaker 16: rainbows and butterflies.
Speaker 1: And also, nobody's wrong, right, I mean, I think that's
Speaker 1: a thing to understand too. Is that because somebody disagrees
Speaker 1: that you put your kids on Instagram? Yeah, and because
Speaker 1: maybe they don't, they're not right or wrong exactly right
Speaker 1: or wrong. There are much like music, there are just
Speaker 1: different ways to do yeah.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and it doesn't make you right or wrong.
Speaker 1: You can be different, yes, and you don't have to
Speaker 1: hate somebody that's different exactly. But we're in that climate
Speaker 1: where it's like so it be a climate, political climate,
Speaker 1: it's all all the time.
Speaker 12: It is so frustrating to me.
Speaker 16: Probably one of the biggest frustrating factors in my life
Speaker 16: of the last five years have been Instagram or Twitter
Speaker 16: or whatever.
Speaker 1: And it's funny because Instagram is a big part of
Speaker 1: your successful career too, yet it's still one of the
Speaker 1: most frustrating parts of it as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 16: It's such a blessing and a curse, you know, because
Speaker 16: all you want to do is use your Instagram for
Speaker 16: a platform and use it to just promote positivity and
Speaker 16: love and peace and all these things. But it's just like,
Speaker 16: it doesn't matter what you or I post, there's going
Speaker 16: to be something ridiculous on there.
Speaker 2: I posted a.
Speaker 16: Picture yesterday or video yesterday just of saying, like what
Speaker 16: my new single is going to be? The first comment
Speaker 16: was shave your beard? You know what I'm saying. I'm like,
Speaker 16: first of all, what do you?
Speaker 12: What are you doing in your life?
Speaker 16: You have time to just say that to me. You
Speaker 16: know what I'm saying, like or like, hey, bend the
Speaker 16: bill of your hat.
Speaker 1: But okay, let me play Devil's advocate because I agree,
Speaker 1: what a dumb thing.
Speaker 12: But you remember that, like, right, That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 12: I'm giving that person they got noticed.
Speaker 1: On your next Instagram, I'm gonna write, hey, been the
Speaker 1: bill of your hat?
Speaker 12: Right, and I'll remember that some likes I know.
Speaker 1: It on that what's frustrating for me And I don't know,
Speaker 1: and I'm not speaking for you, but I know watching
Speaker 1: you and I'm a big fan of how you.
Speaker 12: Do your music.
Speaker 1: Thanks You're you're pretty unapologetic about this is my style?
Speaker 12: Sure, like this is me and okay, you can get
Speaker 12: a feeling as mutual man, so you can get all
Speaker 12: you can get off the ride. But I'm just gonna
Speaker 12: do what I do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I know that for me to watch at
Speaker 1: times some of what to call it the old guard
Speaker 1: or to go that's.
Speaker 12: That guy is not country. Yeah, that frustrates me.
Speaker 1: For you, I don't know how you feel about that,
Speaker 1: but that for me, I'm like, God, if you guys
Speaker 1: even just knew like that, dude, as a country.
Speaker 16: As can be, right, Yeah, man, yeah, I mean that that.
Speaker 16: That's been my life as a country artists, not necessarily
Speaker 16: in the beginning, but I'll say on my second record,
Speaker 16: when I started to like lean way more just progressive
Speaker 16: as far as production goes, and started to take my
Speaker 16: singing a whole lot more seriously and doing vocal lessons
Speaker 16: and all this stuff, trying to just make my record
Speaker 16: sound like something that wasn't happening in our genre. Dude,
Speaker 16: I have gotten more comments of you are not country
Speaker 16: or you are ruining the face of our genre. Might
Speaker 16: as well quit now, Like I mean, if I could mean,
Speaker 16: there's I mean, I'm sure that you've had some of
Speaker 16: those similar comments, but it's just like it in the
Speaker 16: beginning of the of those days, it was just like,
Speaker 16: you know what, maybe they're right, you know, what I mean, like,
Speaker 16: and I think that's the poor four in my enneagram going,
Speaker 16: They're right, I suck. I'm defeated. It's better for me
Speaker 16: to quit for the whole world than they.
Speaker 1: You're gonna take one for the world the team, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna take one for the world.
Speaker 16: Yeah, but really I'm taking one for like sixty people. Yeah,
Speaker 16: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 12: A small vocal.
Speaker 16: My very small vocal minority. And the more I thought
Speaker 16: about it, I was like, you're not country. You're not country? Okay,
Speaker 16: Why why am I not country? Well, you don't wear
Speaker 16: cowboy boots on stage? Okay, let me mentally go through that.
Speaker 16: The reason I don't wear cowboy boots on stage is
Speaker 16: because I jump up and down like a crazy person.
Speaker 16: And on the Aldean tour in twenty thirteen, his thrust
Speaker 16: was this metal grating material and I was wearing snip
Speaker 16: toed cowboy boots and got stuck in them every night.
Speaker 16: That's the reason I don't work cawboy boots on stage.
Speaker 16: Does that make me not country? I think, no, you're
Speaker 16: not country because your music doesn't a fiddle in it.
Speaker 16: I would say ninety eight percent of songs on country radio,
Speaker 16: don't have a fiddle in it. There's another one, you
Speaker 16: know what I'm saying, And so you just have to
Speaker 16: like do this self check. I think through therapy and
Speaker 16: you know, through talking with my wife and talking to
Speaker 16: people that I trust about it. It's just like, dude,
Speaker 16: at the end of the day, is country music not
Speaker 16: about being yourself? And his country music not about telling
Speaker 16: the truth in a story? Do I do both those things?
Speaker 12: Yes? Do I dress a little different? Yes? Are some
Speaker 12: of my songs more progressive than some things on country radio. Yes,
Speaker 12: I'm allowed to.
Speaker 16: Explore my outlets, you know what I'm saying. Like you
Speaker 16: look back at any and we I think we've had
Speaker 16: this conversation before. But when Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson,
Speaker 16: all these dudes came out, they were called outlaws.
Speaker 12: For a reason.
Speaker 16: An outlaw is not just a term that you used
Speaker 16: to describe country music today. It is every twenty years
Speaker 16: we look back at the artists twenty years ago and
Speaker 16: say that was real country music. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 16: We say Shanaia Twain is real country music. At the time,
Speaker 16: she was a pop singer. They told her on Instagram
Speaker 16: shave or beard she was.
Speaker 1: I was talking to Garth and he said to say,
Speaker 1: you know, that's my favorite one to share with people
Speaker 1: who go, uh, it's Garth thrial country. Garth was like, dude,
Speaker 1: country music did not embrace me. No, he was like,
Speaker 1: they were antis. I came to town and they were like,
Speaker 1: you're not country. Get out of here, like what are you?
Speaker 1: And you can go through and you can go back.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned some of those guys, but everyone that
Speaker 1: has changed the music for the better, because they're the
Speaker 1: ones who we remember as being successful, has been not
Speaker 1: country exactly.
Speaker 16: And in any genre people hated and people hated the
Speaker 16: land because they weren't the Beatles in any art, in
Speaker 16: any not even just music, in any art whatsoever.
Speaker 1: You can look at comedy or visual art, just whatever.
Speaker 1: People that break the mold and are not get the
Speaker 1: finger like you're not this are the ones that create
Speaker 1: the new this exactly. And so that's always what's frustrated
Speaker 1: me for you, and partially too, I think selfishly, when
Speaker 1: I came to town, it was hey, you're not country,
Speaker 1: and I'm going m I grew up a mountain pine
Speaker 1: arch and like, I live in a trailer, Like what
Speaker 1: animal do you want me to clean because I can
Speaker 1: any of them. And I started to think, what makes
Speaker 1: me not have an accent? What makes me not a country?
Speaker 1: Was it because I was doing it popping hip hop
Speaker 1: for a while, because that was where I got my
Speaker 1: first job? I said, because I come on and I
Speaker 1: just tell my truth all the time. I'm very authentic
Speaker 1: about my message. Absolutely, And CBS did a story like
Speaker 1: he doesn't wear cowboy boots or a cowboy hat.
Speaker 12: He's he's the renegade, Like, isn't country? Just tell him
Speaker 12: the truth? Yeah, you don't have to be from the South.
Speaker 1: I am you are, so we kind of get that
Speaker 1: little nickel that we can defend.
Speaker 12: Yeah, but there's more seen more country folks in New York,
Speaker 12: upstate New York. I was about to say, I was
Speaker 12: just up there and it was country as crap, or
Speaker 12: like right outside of DC, like northern Virginia.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 12: So like, I feel your pain.
Speaker 1: And sometimes when I see people write stuff, I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know what, First of all, who cares? But second
Speaker 1: of all, I go I know, as a creator, after
Speaker 1: a while, it starts to go, oh, it just gets
Speaker 1: to be a weight that you almost don't like to
Speaker 1: acknowledge because you're giving them power for sure, but it's real.
Speaker 1: But it also makes me better to Yeah.
Speaker 16: Absolutely, it's honestly that that's the one area in my
Speaker 16: life that's has taken a lot of growing. But like
Speaker 16: you said, like when I do get those comments, it
Speaker 16: fuels my fire. It used to suck my life away,
Speaker 16: and now now it fuels my fire.
Speaker 12: Your dad's country, he was here. My dad is country.
Speaker 12: Your dad is No one's gonna see your dad and
Speaker 12: go that game country.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 16: Oh and that's that's my face. That's my favorite comment
Speaker 16: I've ever gotten. Your daddy must be so ashamed. Oh
Speaker 16: people say that. Oh yeah, for about a year there.
Speaker 4: That that was.
Speaker 16: That was the special comment. Your daddy is ashamed of you?
Speaker 16: And I was like, I don't think I don't think
Speaker 16: he is. Well, what, like, what a rotten thing, that's
Speaker 16: what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: That that's a rotten thing to write, right, even for
Speaker 1: trolls exactly, Like I lost a little faith in all
Speaker 1: trolls that they actually write that, and I know it
Speaker 1: already didn't have a good opinion of them.
Speaker 12: So what is it? What's the relationship between and your dad? Now,
Speaker 12: it's amazing dude.
Speaker 16: Yeah, me and me and dad have gone through a
Speaker 16: bunch of seasons in our life, uh, from high school
Speaker 16: playing football into you know, signing a record deal and
Speaker 16: kind of starting the career to kind of getting into
Speaker 16: my career and kind of finding my own voice to
Speaker 16: my own sound, and then's now going through a lot
Speaker 16: of different phases in life and all good.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 16: I think every father and son has their definitely ups
Speaker 16: and downs. But I would say that me and my
Speaker 16: dad today at twenty nine and almost fifty, are in
Speaker 16: the best place I've ever been in our father son
Speaker 16: relationship because like, he's so young, and.
Speaker 12: He had me when he was nineteen.
Speaker 16: My mom had me when she was nineteen, and so
Speaker 16: to have a young parent that is I think, because
Speaker 16: I feel like I'm kind of a young parent, and
Speaker 16: I feel like when I'm fifty, I'm going to be
Speaker 16: a lot different than my kids then than I am now,
Speaker 16: because I think parents just go through continuous learning phases.
Speaker 16: But my dad is obviously my dad, but he's also
Speaker 16: like one of my best friends in the world, you know.
Speaker 12: So he's on tour with us.
Speaker 16: This year, brings his wife out on the road, and
Speaker 16: when my kids come out. They just they flock to
Speaker 16: my dad like they're obsessed with my dad. They call
Speaker 16: M Popeye. And I think for the longest time, I
Speaker 16: was like, what does my dad going to be like
Speaker 16: as a grandfather? And he's like the best grandfather in
Speaker 16: the world. And we get right during the day, we
Speaker 16: get to play shows at night, and I just feel
Speaker 16: like he's just become kind of a person that doesn't
Speaker 16: have so I mean, he obviously he is very focused
Speaker 16: and very driven and wants to be an amazing songwriter,
Speaker 16: but I think a lot of the pressure of going,
Speaker 16: how do I keep keep doing this is kind of
Speaker 16: left him.
Speaker 12: As he's turned forty eight to fifty. I just felt
Speaker 12: he's got a lot less.
Speaker 16: Pressure on his shoulders, and I think it's kind of
Speaker 16: made our relationship a lot better. And he's given me
Speaker 16: a lot more you know, older man wisdom. I think,
Speaker 16: did he encourage you early early on to start music?
Speaker 16: Not really, man, My dad never pressured me to do
Speaker 16: a lot, but his big things don't quit anything, you
Speaker 16: know what I mean. Like we battled that for a while,
Speaker 16: like in high school, like going to football camp. No
Speaker 16: one likes football camp. I don't care if you're the
Speaker 16: best football player in the world. You hate football camp,
Speaker 16: and like I was like, I just I just want
Speaker 16: to quit and play baseball. I want to quit and
Speaker 16: go do this or that. And he'd be like, well,
Speaker 16: you signed up, you're not quitting, and and so when
Speaker 16: it came to music, he was just he was very
Speaker 16: weird about it because I think he did it, you know,
Speaker 16: for ten to twelve years, and he knows the highs
Speaker 16: and he knows the lows, and he knows what failure
Speaker 16: feels like and what success feels like. And I think
Speaker 16: any dubt would want to kind of give their kid
Speaker 16: whatever they can expect and then be like, hey, now
Speaker 16: you can make the decision, but I want you to
Speaker 16: know that it's not going to easy road. And so him
Speaker 16: and my mom both were like, are you sure that
Speaker 16: you want to get into music? And when I turned
Speaker 16: about nineteen years old, it was really the only thing
Speaker 16: in life that I wanted to do. All I want
Speaker 16: to do is write songs. All I want to do
Speaker 16: is play shows. Anything about creating anything, That's what I
Speaker 16: wanted to do.
Speaker 1: So do you look back now and see that you're
Speaker 1: your father's son. Yes, maybe you didn't see it then,
Speaker 1: but now you look back and go, I'm I didn't.
Speaker 16: Yeah, I didn't see it a lot then, but now
Speaker 16: I'm looking at the way that I parent the way
Speaker 16: that he parented, and we are we are a lot
Speaker 16: alike in a lot of ways, and we are still
Speaker 16: very different in a lot of ways, but more so alike.
Speaker 1: What's your first cut ever?
Speaker 16: A song called I Ain't Ready to Quit by Jason
Speaker 16: Eldan twenty ten.
Speaker 4: You were still in school at the time.
Speaker 12: I was at Lipscomb University down the street. Yeah, and
Speaker 12: you get a cut? Yeah, what's that like?
Speaker 16: I thought that I was a gajillionaire and I probably
Speaker 16: made a hundred bucks that cut. But I remember when
Speaker 16: that when that came out, Dude, it was like all
Speaker 16: my buddies in college. I remember we went to Walmart
Speaker 16: that night and we all bought two copies of the record,
Speaker 16: and uh, we parked my truck in the front yard
Speaker 16: of this little house next Lipscom and we just we
Speaker 16: had a party to one song. We literally just played
Speaker 16: this song on repeat for like six hours. It was just,
Speaker 16: I mean, it was just the coolest thing that ever
Speaker 16: happened to me in my entire life.
Speaker 12: You signed a record deal like a year.
Speaker 1: Later, A year later, Yeah, did you do the let
Speaker 1: me talk to some record labels?
Speaker 12: Did you do the showcases for people?
Speaker 2: Did?
Speaker 12: Was it a uh?
Speaker 1: They all offering you deals like what was the Thomas
Speaker 1: Rhett record label?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 12: Kind of pursuit like they did.
Speaker 16: Man, I think I played for I played for six
Speaker 16: or seven record labels, and uh, the only song that
Speaker 16: I had that I thought was even remotely good was
Speaker 16: a song called if I Could Have a Beer with
Speaker 16: Jesus that was on my first record, and every every
Speaker 16: label that I played for a day later had offered
Speaker 16: me a record deal, and I couldn't believe it because
Speaker 16: all all, all I thought I wanted to be was
Speaker 16: a songwriter. I just wanted to follow in dad's footsteps,
Speaker 16: like I didn't. I don't think I wanted to go
Speaker 16: on the road. I wanted to play shows, but I
Speaker 16: didn't think I wanted to do the whole do the thing,
Speaker 16: go on radio tour, sign a.
Speaker 12: Record, to do all that stuff. But as I got.
Speaker 16: Into it, started to get some cuts, it gave me
Speaker 16: the bug because when I wrote the songs instead of
Speaker 16: other people singing, I really wondered what it would be
Speaker 16: like if I recorded them and put them on the radio,
Speaker 16: and so once I signed a record of a Big Machine.
Speaker 16: I think it was twenty eleven. It's just kind of
Speaker 16: been a roller coaster since then, but it was definitely
Speaker 16: the right thing for sure.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this special episode of the Bobbycast.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed hearing stories from the early days
Speaker 1: of artists who had massive careers and they're still topping
Speaker 1: the charts, they're winning major awards, but they always weren't
Speaker 1: chart toppers and award winners at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: normal folks, dads, brothers, sons, who started somewhere. We'll probably
Speaker 1: have another episode like this with some really awesome female artists,
Speaker 1: Gabby Barrett, Martine McBride. We have that coming up to
Speaker 1: in the near future. Be sure to subscribe to the
Speaker 1: Bobbycast wherever you're listening to this, it would be awesome.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing that, And if you
Speaker 1: have a couple of minutes, please go and rate us
Speaker 1: five stars.
Speaker 12: That helps us so much.
Speaker 1: We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.
Speaker 12: Thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production