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Transcript

Kip Moore = Radical Authenticity · The Stephan Hogan Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Two thousand fourteen, fifteen ish, I was in the darkest uh mental state I'd ever been in.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Just and it's hard to explain to someone um that's you know, people just oh you get to play music every night.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's there's just it's so much more than that.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you're you're never um you know, number one, it's the bus is nice, but it's still a moving trailer going down the road.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: So you're and I've always been a light sleeper.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm if if I'm lucky, I'm getting four or five hours.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: And back then I was going through this extreme insomnia where I just 48 hours would go by, I wouldn't even close my eyes.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like literally wouldn't close my eyes.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was like I couldn't settle down.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was seven days a week and never sleeping, and I was truly felt like I was on the verge of like a psychiatric, like, and I just suppressed all of it, you know.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't talk to anybody about it, you know.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And and uh yeah, come back 2016, I just called him in and I said, man, this is enough of this.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not doing this anymore.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm I'm I'm having some really, really dark thoughts.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I just said, you know, I love to surf.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: I want to get good at it, and um, I'm gonna start bouncing every winter, so don't book me.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, oh man, that's that's awesome.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, well, look, you know, let's we'll we'll talk about it.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: I said, we're talking about it now.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you book a show, I won't be there.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll never forget, and I've told this story before, but it it's maybe once or twice, but it's it's true.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: I I remember being in a cafe the first time that I was taking time off in Costa Rica since everything had taken off in 2011-12.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember sitting in this cafe and I'd been there for two or three days, and I'd already been I'd already surfed that morning, and it was rock around 10 o'clock, and I was having coffee and I got a call.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it was my manager saying, Do you want to headline the I know you said that you're not coming home for two months, but we've got an offer to do the the halftime show for the AFC Championship.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I had that moment because he also told me what the pay was, and it was the biggest payday that I'd ever seen, and it was a big six-figure payday.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And um I had that moment of what are you gonna do, Kip?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, the carrot's gonna it's gonna always be in front of you.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're gonna let money be your God, kind of thing.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd already made my mind up that I was because I felt like something like this was gonna happen.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I sp spent maybe three seconds pondering.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Yeah, I said, the problem is I'm having coffee right now.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you could feel the pause.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, what do you mean?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, I'm having coffee, so I won't I won't be there.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Two days later, same thing.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: I get a call.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, well, they've upped at 50.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, I said, that's nice, but the problem is I'm in that same coffee shop having coffee again.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he just he hung up and that was it.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: He never and we were super close, you know.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: We were we were good buddies, and and um he finally understood once we kind of had a talk about it after, I said, man, it's there's always gonna be something, you know, to and I said, if I don't take this time for myself, I'm no good for nobody.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Not mainly myself.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a that was a pivotal moment where I made my mind up of I'm not gonna keep chasing the dragon.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_03: Do you ever feel like because the manager is supposed to work for you?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but I feel like a lot of times you get into roles or artists get into roles with managers where it's almost like you're working for the manager instead of them working for you, if that makes sense, where they're like calling the shots and driving the ship, and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm curious, yeah, based on you, your personality, I know you like control over your music and your records and how they turn out and stuff like that.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_03: Uh do you feel that you um are like an alpha type that clashes with a manager because they're trying to tell you what to do?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like I have a problem with being told what to do.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I'm saying?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there definitely is that element in my personality for sure.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um Luckily, um, I think it's a there's a there's a navigation period in that first bit when it's taking off of, you know, you it's all like, okay, this is what I've been working for behind the scenes for 10 years, and then you finally get signed, and then it all kind of takes off.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And um me and my manager um are and were really close at that time, and I knew he loved and cared about me, but everybody likes money, you know, you know, and it's I think that it took a minute for, you know, there was a I've told a story one time, and I think this is when, and this was right before we had the conversation about me going surfing.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: This all happened like in like a two or three month period.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is when, you know, and we had had moments, you know, up to then, but we we always kind of navigated cordially, but um there was a moment where I was asked to go do this thing for a certain major brand.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um and once again, it was just that was the to this day I've never seen a brand deal that big again.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, even me, when I first, you know, heard what it was, you know, just the money alone, I was like, oh my gosh.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: All right, well, I'm listening, you know, and then it was you're gonna do some stuff, and then it was four other big pop stars.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: They were all gonna be the face of this rollout campaign for the summer.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And they wanted to use my song Wild Ones.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And Wild Ones is such a moment in my show, and it's got all the edge to it, and and I was like, oh, and it got pitched to me as you're gonna be in the studio.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm thinking like a music studio.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: We're riffing back and forth, and well, this could be cool, and it's gonna be like the brand is gonna be like a byproduct, almost like a corona commercial where you see the the beer bottle at the very end.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Yeah, I could, I could get down with this.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I fly to LA, and you know how the production sets are there.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I walk into this warehouse, this massive studio, and it's 20 to 25 man set.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a big production, and it's this massive LED wall that's I mean, 20, 20 feet high, 30 feet wide, and it but it's off at the time.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, wonder what that is, you know.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so they finally, you know, say, all right, Kip, we'll you know, hop up, we're gonna roll the wild ones track, and the head of universal marketing, the worldwide head of universal marketing is in there, and my manager, and um I get in front of the mic, get in front of the camera, and the screen's behind me, and the song kicks in.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: And right as the song kicked in, I could feel this yellow light beaming behind me.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like you could see it like it was massive, you know.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just like, what the fuck is behind me right now?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I turn around and I see just thousands of Pop-Tart boxes pulsing the screen.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea this was Pop-Tart stuff.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: I had no clue.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: And this is all in real time, where I'm, what am I gonna do?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's all going through my head in that split second, and I said, you know, I sang the first two lines of the song, and before it even got through the chorus, I just said, hey, you know, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I walk outside, and I'm having a smoke, and my manager comes out, and the universal guy comes out.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: What's I was what's the problem?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: And man, I just I blacked out and said some stuff I still feel bad about, but I just went nuts.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and it just felt like a pivotal moment.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I was already teetering on the edge at that time.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was that was during that madness time that I was going through.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I was just like, man, this is not what I signed up for.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I've always been very diligent about not um, it and it's it's not something that I have to like work hard to do, but I've just never wanted just to sell out on stuff that's not, you know.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'll do stuff with Indian motorcycles because it makes sense because I ride motorcycles, you know, I'll do stuff with you know different uh outdoor stuff, rock climbing and those kind of things and um different with different brand alignment with who you are, try to represent you.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I've never wanted to try to sell my fans on a life or things that I don't do just for the dollar, you know.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_03: And um Especially a healthy dude like you that works out and eats healthy and you got pop tarts behind it.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: It just felt silly to me.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: It felt really silly.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I get that.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I just lost it, you know, and I said, I'm not doing it.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And they were like, You you have to do it.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I ain't gotta do shit.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not we're this ain't happening.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a very heated moment, you know.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I walked back in there and um I just said, you know, I apologize, all you guys.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: This this is not on you, and I know that you guys have all, you know, but um you're gonna have to find somebody else.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And and I booked a booked a ticket back and flew back that night.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I'm not, you know.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and we were good after that.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, me and my manager were great.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and he he did understand, you know, but it was a it was a tough moment.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: But in that moment, I think it was a very like, okay, you know, I'm not gonna just roll over for, you know, for I'm gonna I'm gonna at the end of the day, I'm gonna do what I want to do.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: You know?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's good.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think many people would have the courage to do that in such a high pressure situation.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: I think that would be definitely.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was a lot of pressure.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's for sure.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Even as I was flying back, I was like, what did I just do?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Are they gonna drop me from the label now?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's kind of what I was thinking, because it was that intense of, you know, a ball drop, you know, of but I just uh, you know, I I was thinking, you know, from now on when I play this song, that's all people are gonna be thinking about is pop tart commercial.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, that's not what this is, you know.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: So so yeah, and I've had a few of those moments.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've had a lot of them, you know.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: I got asked to do the ACMs with a with a pop artist that, you know, I have no um, he's great.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's just not my bag, you know, and it just felt like it was just kind of um almost like uh you're just trying whatever you can, and you see it all the time.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um whatever people can get to get their, you know, whatever kind of success in mainstream looks, and it was just it made zero sense for us to do a collab.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you see that all the time.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: You see these forced collabs that are just ridiculous.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I'm just you know, I'll just pass on the awards.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just, you know, I'm not I'm not the guy for it.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And another act took the thing, and and you know, they ended up being having a massive mainstream career, you know.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_03: Alex Heike, the founder of Sound Royalties and a friend of mine gave me a piece of advice that I'm never gonna forget.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_03: He said, first decide what is the right move for your career and then figure out how to fund it.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: Sound Royalties helps artists, they help writers, they help producers, they help YouTubers and other people that earn royalties, figure out how to access capital without having to sell their catalogs, give up ownership, or their copyrights.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_03: Their funding is completely based on your royalty income, not your credit score.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_03: There's no personal guarantees.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_03: Go to stemroyalties.com slash Stefan Hogan Podcast, S-T-E-P-H-A-N Hogan Podcast for a complimentary royalty analysis and free income forecasting.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_03: Fill out the form, and a royalty specialist is gonna hit you up within one business day.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: Or you can also click the link in the description below.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_03: So first decide what the right move is for your career, then figure out how to fund it.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_03: I was curious in the early days of uh your career.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_03: Your first record came out out in what uh 2012?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_03: I think 12, yeah, up all night in 2012.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_03: And that really just like exploded in a major way.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, dude.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_03: I remember being in Sacramento, um, and uh your stuff was on the radio constantly.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_03: All those tunes.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and I I I think I saw, I think it was an Eric Church tour maybe.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we yeah, we played Sacramento on that one.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, me and was it Arco Arena?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Me, Church, and Justin Moore.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Justin Moore was on that too.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_03: I saw you opening as or your support for someone, and I think it was that show.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: Great show.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_03: And um it was a magical moment because I walked in as you were starting uh Hey Pretty Girl.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_03: And like the lights are like, I don't know, purple.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: And it was like, it was like, it was like, yeah, and there was an ambient guitar intro, and I was like, oh whoa, dude.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: Like, yeah, it was such a magical thing.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_03: It was like seeing a baseball stadium for the first time as a kid, like going to see the A's or something.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: Very cool, but um it's interesting because uh fast forwarding to now, there's been so much time, so much has happened in your life, inevitably, due to age and experience.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: But I I was listening uh to your to to high hopes, and there's a a really interesting line in here that says everyone's your friend when you're standing on a mountaintop.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but when you take a slide, it's like they forgot.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but yeah, and that was the follow-up.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and so what was the slide, man?
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, I I think I I wrote that I I can be honest.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I I feel like I've truly let that go.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that was the cathartic process of getting that out, you know.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um Solitary Tracks was the first record I wrote outside of Universal.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I love those people over at Universal.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um they were great to me.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: I had a good run with them.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um and they were trying to get me to resign and they sent me maybe three different contracts, and it just it just um when you're starting out, and you know, I get it.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I'll never understand the magnitude of how lopsided the deal is, but I have to still live in that place of being grateful because you know, if I hadn't had that team, you know, mainly the promo staff, they were so they were such rock stars, man.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: They were they were killer and they worked so hard for me.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so I am grateful for them really pushing to get me out there.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, it's a it's a very lopsided deal, you know, when you've signed that rookie deal.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: And and um, and and you know, the way those labels work, it's they've got so many different artists on that label, but you've only got usually on those, even on the big ones, you've got maybe five to seven artists that are actually making the label money, and then they're taking that money and they spend it on all the baby acts and keep throwing putty at the wall and what's gonna stick, and and um, you know, I felt like everybody was kind of with me when we put the frame up of the house, and everybody just left the job site, you know, and um well, we got all these other new shiny toys that we're gonna focus on, but yet I was still bringing in crazy income from the records I was selling, from the touring they had, you know, just my merch alone, the check I'd write every year was insane.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a hard part for me to do, you know.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I felt like I built this rock solid house through the years just out there on the job site by myself every day.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Just kind of, but I still needed a roof and I still needed windows, you know, and had a little graffiti on the wall, you know.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like it'd gone through all these storms, but they were still building all these straw huts that were just getting blown over with the money that me and other guys were making, you know, that um so I just wanted the deal to be, you know, a little more in the middle, and it was just still an unwillingness to really play ball.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I I walked and I left.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just interesting.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think when I wrote that song, it was more of I I wrote that song sitting on the edge of my um porch on the East Coast, and I was looking out at the march, and I was just I was I was I was just, you know, I think I was in a pissed off state because I was just all right, what now, you know?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd also just been feeling that um people that you thought you actually had real relationships with, you thought there was maybe a little more substance.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: It kind of seemed like, well, you're not actually on the team anymore, and we're just kind of, you know, that was all.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: You could feel it, just everything felt different, you know.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that's where that came from, is like um Yeah, just from a state of uh, you know, there's still guys that I've met in radio that I actually made real friends with.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: I still call, I still go to eat with, and no longer no longer in radio.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I made a bond with you as a human.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still your friend.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can't do anything for me anymore, but I'm still your brother.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_03: It's not transactional.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's not a it's it's not a conditional relationship.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt like things have become conditional.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: And there was still like rock solid people that that wasn't the case with, but with a lot of it, it just you felt it, you know.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: You you felt a shift.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was like, oh, okay, all right, cool.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm a you know, I can admit it, I don't I don't uh I don't think I spend a lot of time caring what people think about me.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I'd be lying if I said when we leave this thing, you know, yeah, I hope this guy likes me.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, he probably hopes I like him too when we leave.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not like if you don't, cool.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_03: I like you.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but you know what I mean.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like um I totally get it.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm the same way.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I think that it was just kind of, oh, okay, we never really actually even had a you know a friendship.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: This wasn't even like a real thing.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's some grief there, kind of for sure, you know.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's where a lot of that that song particularly laid in, you know.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but you still had high hopes, which was the redemption of like, hey, you know what?
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: I can do this thing.
• 20:24
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• 20:29
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• 20:53
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• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: That's why a lot of my friends that are on the road bank with them, visit studiobank.com or call 615-338-9998.
• 21:37
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• 21:41
  SPEAKER_03: Studio Bank member FDIC Equal Housing Lender.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_03: From my research, you are with Virgin.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_03: Was that at a point where you were just no label at all?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, when I started out, the minute the word, you know, that I was gone, you know.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there were calls coming in, you know, and do you want to meet with this and that and yada yada?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: And and I was just kind of like, you know, yeah, maybe.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: But in the meantime, I'm just gonna go in and start tracking.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just funding it myself, you know, just going in and tracking, you know, it was a a cathartic process because I've been writing so much music and um and I was excited about it, like Solitary Tracks, a song.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was so jazzed to go figure out how to record that, you know.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so I probably cut the first half of the record without a label.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then I met with Virgin and really liked the team a lot.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: And with everything that's been happening on the massive scale overseas with me, it was that's what made sense because they had, you know, foot soldiers all over the place.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: So um their whole goal was to throw gas on the international fire that's already going.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Which and nobody really talked about much when I was at MCA.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was just all about American radio, and that was it.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Beyond that, it was just, well, what's the plan, you know?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: So um that was kind of why I went that route.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: And for people that don't know about that, it's from what I'm understanding, like Australia, South Africa, yeah, and all over Europe, all over England.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: Um Yeah, can you kind of expound upon that?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_03: Because I think in the music world, we think really compartmentally, like by markets, yeah, or even just stateside and uh or whatever it is, you know, United States.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_03: But then I'm like, there's a whole world of people and a whole bunch of radio stations and XYZ that have never heard the music.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_03: And so you've kind of had an interesting journey in that uh, you know, like you're having this crazy success overseas.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm interested in what that's like and that kind of how that happened.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_03: And was it your doing or just God's doing?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I I I'll say this.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I I've always been a book believer.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I don't I don't shy away from these kind of things.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I I feel like everything in my life has been a divine intervention, you know.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I put in the work, you know, and I do my thing, and and um, you know, I work tirelessly, but you know, I I think everything is, you know, a blessing from God.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, so for me it it does, and it even feels more like that when I really start to think about what's happening.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um what is happening?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean it's besides South Africa, we can just do Australia and like Europe and England, and um it's not like they have tons of major radio stations that are playing, you know, music and like in Europe.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not getting played anywhere.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's this has all been, even like with my agent Nigel, who's a massive international agent, he's like, this is the first, one of the first times I think I've ever seen such a grassroots build that's gone into this size, like where we're selling out arenas in Australia and massive rooms in Europe and in in England and um where it's just been we started out little clubs, and every time we go back, and most of these markets, I've I've never been played on any radio station.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the show is I know how good the show is.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like I believe we work really hard at our show and we work really hard as a band.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I think we just were lighting people on fire to where it was just a word of mouth.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, even when we played uh we recently played um Sweden for the first time, and um, you know, we sold out both nights, and the owner of the club ended up coming in on Saturday nights.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, I just want you to know that I ain't come in to watch a show in a long time.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, this is all everybody's anybody's talking about since I woke up this morning was the show last night.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so he came in after the show on Saturday and was just like, I don't even know what I just saw.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: That was I've never seen this room have that much energy because he said these people are normally really mild.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: But um, so he's already trying to get me back this year coming up to do the room that's three times as big as that one.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, but it's I think that's what was happening with us was just a word of mouth, and then we'd come back and it'd be a thousand more, then a thousand more, then a thousand more.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we went and we kept nurturing it, we kept going back.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um Was it just from like streaming or well I I think it was the show, but we would see a crazy uptick the minute the show was over.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we'd see for the next month that everyone in that area is just streaming the music like crazy.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_03: And telling their friends.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, exactly.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: So South Africa though was more of this is really wild.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um I told this to Tracy.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, South Africa was a was a thing where coming out of COVID, like 2021, late 2021, my manager calls me and says, We got something really wild happening in South Africa.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Your streaming numbers are nuts.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Really?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because I never played in South Africa, you know.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: So um so I just said, Well, that's that's cool, and just went on about my business, you know.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And he circles back months later, you know, now we're into 2022, and he says, Man, there's something really happening.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: You're almost streaming as much as you are in the States and South Africa right now.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, So we're I wonder what this could be.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Where the other one was just all organic.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Europe, England, Australia, you know, and New Zealand.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so late 2022 rolls around, he says, So this guy that supposedly owns one of the biggest pop and rock stations, you know, stretches through, you know, Pretoria, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, all these places.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he's also the promoter, and he wants to book you in Cape Town for a couple nights in the club, like a thousand-seat club.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I was so fried.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was towards the end of the year, and I was like, man, I'm not going last minute to South Africa to play a club.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and and, you know, people that don't know, it's like my first time doing a tour through Europe and England.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: We were set to, we played C to C, and we knew something had happened there because I was the opener of, you know, C to C is like five or six acts a day.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I was the opener like in 2014 or 15.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a couple different venues where we sold the most merch and CDs.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: And in London, we sold the most physical product of the record.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I said they connected with the music.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever we're doing, they connected with, you know.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we was this wild ones?
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I was playing wild ones.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: They'd come out, they just come out.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: And um So to them that was the first record.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: So and that's another interesting thing is that the European audiences, I they don't even know the first record.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they're not thinking beer money.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: No, they discovered me at Guitar Man own.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: So they wanted they like Guitar Man and the Bull were massive.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's interesting because even when I went into the song Solitary Tracks, all through Europe, it was like that was the moment.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Which is a that's a that's not a that's a cerebral song that's a different kind of animal.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so special song, to you.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was my favorite.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it was that was what felt so good is like, okay, this is the kind of music they're connecting with, you know.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I mean, if I play truck, they don't even know it.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's like we we I I took it out of the set a couple times.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is this is pointless, you know.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I like I still love playing it.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a fun blues tune to play.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, but with South Africa, 2023 rolls around.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so the end of 2022.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um now we're I said no, and then January 2023, like January 3rd ish, I'm in Maui at this time.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: And my manager calls again and says, That guy called again from South Africa.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he says he wants to put you in the arena in Cape Town.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Man, am I am I getting set up for some kind of ransom deal?
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is this what's happening here, you know?
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we kind of, you know, laughed and he said, you know, he swears there's there's such a fever that, you know, it's gonna work.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: I said, this is silly, man.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, when does he want to do it?
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: He said, March.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I said, you know, it's it's January, you know.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: When you're when you're booking arena gigs, you're booking nine months out to give time to sell tickets, you know.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: I said, March.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: I said, that gives us two months.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: And we there's been no prep.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's been no, he says, he swears that they're they're ready.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I'll tell you what, and this was on a Tuesday.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: I said, when does he want to go on sale?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Friday.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: So this guy just wants to out of nowhere announce on a Friday.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: In three days.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I said, I'll tell you what.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do it.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: By Monday morning, when we've sold 10 tickets, we'll just cancel the show.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: So Friday rolls around, and I'll be honest, I I didn't think one more thing about it.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: I went surfing and uh come back from surfing that morning, and I've got like 10 missed calls from my manager.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: I said, uh, so I called him and I've forgotten all about it.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: He said, You ain't gonna believe this.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: You you sold out in seven minutes.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the fastest sellout in Cape Town history.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: I still didn't believe it.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, something, this is really fishy, man.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so he said they want to put the second night on sale, so then that sold clean.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: So then they put me in the football stadium in Pretoria, Johannesburg area.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, that was, you know, slam full too.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um so when I got there, you know, I'm sitting down with him, you know, and this guy's awesome.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: He's so awesome, and he loves music.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's a hell of a concept when a radio guy loves music because there's not a lot of those left.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was like that when I first was doing my radio tour.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like I met a lot of program directors that genuinely love music.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's just so corporate, and they don't really have, to their defense, a lot of these program directors want to play music like solitary tracks.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: They want to play these songs, but their hands are tied because everything's coming from these corporate guys that own all the stations.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the same, same uh the same exact playlist in Dallas as it is in Paducah, Kentucky.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, those are completely different people.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's why this isn't working, you know.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'm sitting down with this guy and he's just talking about music and we're having this great conversation.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I gotta, like, I still don't know how this happened.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, Well, um, South Africana artist brought your Wild Ones record to my house in 2021.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I just I fell in love with it.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, you know, I've tried to spin a few different American country acts on this station, and it just hasn't, it just hasn't caught.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he says, I fell in love with Heart's Desire, which I always thought was a hit off of that record.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: And um he just said, I just fell in love with it.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I that's all I listened to for weeks.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I finally just threw it on primetime hours and it just exploded.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, it just was my phone lines were ringing.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, That was the weirdest thing.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, you usually just get emails and stuff.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he said it just it was a wildfire with that song.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then he just started spinning all the stuff, um, was spinning the bull, if I was your lover.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and before I knew it, it was just I had all these hits in South Africa that I didn't even know I had.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so, I mean, there were two or three that I'd never even played live that were hits over there.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hail Lover, which was also a song that was talked about being a single here in the States, because I remember being in the room and one of the head, you know, promotion people was like, this is a hit record.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought it was too.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: But there was somebody else in the room that said, No woman wants to be called old.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I just remember being like, wow, we're gonna get this, we're gonna break this down this month.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: I said, first off, it's not old, it's hey old lover, like hey past lover.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not literally calling something, it's a term of endearment.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: But it was so analytical that I was like, you know, you know, whatever.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: But it ended up being a massive hit over there.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: It just had a chance to be heard, you know.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so by the time we got there, we're working up songs live in soundcheck that night before the stadium show that we never even played live because he's like, Oh yeah, Hale Lover was a massive hit here.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we literally worked that up in soundcheck before we played.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: We never ran it.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it was just like, because, you know, so that was how that all happened.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_03: That's crazy.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_03: So playing for the first time there were people singing your songs.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Dude, it was it was insanity, man.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was, you know, it was all the homemade merch.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the whole place was just rocking.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was the Cape Town show.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: Petrolia, too.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, but sometimes with a football stadium, it's really hard to know what's really you can see, you know, the first hundred yards and it was pumping, but you can't really feel what's but um man, that uh that arena, you know, it was it was it was jumping.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, I mean, I would hit the opening bar of like even like if I was your lover, that's all it was.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: First bar, and it was like the whole place just went bananas, and I was like, this is awesome.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've always loved that song, you know.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's wild because we saw even how much that song streamed, and and it still didn't get a chance for, and I'm watching these songs that are going number one that aren't streaming even close, you know, and it's it's just a weird thing to wrap your head around, you know.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: But um it got a chance to get played over there, and it was what I thought it was, you know.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think there's something to be said for the uh I think you use the word cerebral tendency of people maybe that live in other places that are dissecting songs and actually really appreciating the lyric?
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure, especially in Europe.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: Especially in Europe.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: South South Africa fans are really in the melody, super into melody.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I love that because I'm always so hyper-focused on melody.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um there um but like in bars in Europe, you know, I go into the st a bar in the States after a show, and people are great.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it's just different when I'm in Europe, England, and these pubs, they want to start breaking down the lyrics with me in songs, you know.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: What were you thinking with this line and this line?
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um and they're very much uh man, I've seen it.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen it like at C to C where they they they there's some of the massive artists that they do love, but they make up their mind.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like in the States a lot of times, sometimes it feels like government psyops.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like we're just gonna force this guy down your throat for the next two years, and then everybody's gonna, okay, cool, this is cool.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: But is it?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's where I've seen it over there, like I've seen some of these big dogs.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've seen a whole arena during C to C file out during a massive act and then just come back for the next.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen, I've seen it, you know, like um they they make up their own mind.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're not just because you tell them that something's this is the popular act here, they might like it, but it's they it's very clear that they're not, they're gonna make up their own mind.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: Where I feel like a lot of times in the States, we just kind of jump on board with whatever's kind of well, this is the hot thing right now, so we all gotta kind of like it.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's uh and sometimes it's cool, you know.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes those acts are doing cool stuff, you know?
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but sometimes it's not, you know, and and and music is subjective.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's another thing, you know.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not here to, you know, but um sometimes I I guess I just get a little frustrated when I say that.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like sometimes it just feels like this this homogenized factory line of of you know stuff that feels so inorganic, and I I I can't quite wrap my head around it sometimes.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, but at the same time, it's to each its own.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I know that, but um I do love that about that, those fans over there is that they they're the ultimate AR.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: They make up their own, they they make their own judgments on on the music they want to listen to.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_03: Because those those wouldn't be spun here because they're probably left of center or whatever data, because everything's so, as you said, homogenized.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_03: And I see it all the time, as do you, I'm sure.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_03: Uh living in that for me, you know, being here in Nashville, it's like very interesting how everybody kind of goes a direction when something's working, and then a direction flips and they go with that, and they sound a bunch of people like that.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's always been that way.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: I don't maybe it was that way in the 90s, maybe it was that way.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_03: I I but the people we remember are the more unique ones.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_03: Or like Kip Moore, you have a voice like nobody else.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_03: That's the voice I want to hear.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_03: It's not the voice that sounds like every other dude singing country music.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_03: I want to hear the voice that has a distinct tone about it, you know, like uh it's like an instrument.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know?
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so um that's something that I've always appreciated appreciated about you and your music because you can hear two words of your voice and know, oh, that's that's a get more tune.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_03: You know what I'm saying?
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_03: So I think there's that factor that you have going for you as well.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_03: But I but I but I think everyone's gunshot on taking risks because there's risk aversion to the max when it comes to the corporate corporations.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I and and and and with that being said, I I get it, you know, I get succumbing to that pressure when you're trying to, you know, you're throwing whatever you can at the wall, just trying to figure out a way to play music for a living and trying to make it the the train keep moving, you know.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: But it just it feels like now more than ever, and I know we've we've always had copycat movements in things, but I I I don't feel like in the 90s, take the 90s um when Tom Petty was king, all right?
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: He was just all over the radio and it was rad music, you know.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: But if there would have been somebody to come along that sounded identical to Tom Petty, it wouldn't have worked.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like there was people maybe kind of copying a little bit of a sound, but we we're having people that's that if you aren't looking at the dial on the name, you think it's this guy over here.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: And there's four of them doing the exact and so you're listening to radio an hour and you thought you just heard five songs by the same guy.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like we're in the first time ever for that.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like we've had copycat sonic movements, but not where the voice is and the phrasing and the cadence is all the same, and the lyric and the approach of what they're singing about, it's all the same song.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um that part's really wild to me.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: Super wild to me, you know.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: It is, and it is fascinating.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that that's yeah, I can't ever remember a time when that was um.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: I remember when when when Pearl Jam was massive and Eddie Vert Eddie Vetter's voice was so distinct, and then Kree came along, and then there was the but that was one band, one guy that was kind of close, and it was like that was talked about so much, you know.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um Yeah, but all those 90s bands, like imagine smashing pumpkins trying to sound break right now.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's yeah.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's interesting.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_03: It's just such an interesting uh way that the market has changed musically because it has turned into the I mean, it's always been a business.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's been about money generating revenue.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_03: Labels are in the business of revenue generation.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, ultimately people move to Nashville because they want to make music, you know, uh and and m make a living doing it.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_03: But I feel like it's it's an interesting kind of juxtaposition to art when you look back at the people we remember, or you know, like you said, Petty, or like a Bob Dylan and They had voices that would never fly on the voice or American Idol.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_03: You know, their lyrics were abstract and poetic a lot of the time.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: Dylan, more so.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and I mean the bands we remember are the ones that all sounded so unique.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_03: So and I think that I think they're like Evergreen.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: Are there evergreen artists now?
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like I want I think about this.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think that there's a lot of people doing really cool stuff to this day.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I just think that the word country politan comes from a real era in country music.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_03: When Nashville took country music and made it elegant, strings, background vocals, orchestra.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_03: It was country music with polished.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_03: I think Patsy Klein, Glenn Campbell, Tammy Wynette, George Jones, Charlie Pryde, songs that still had the ache and honesty of country were dressed up with style.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_03: And that is exactly what this hotel feels like.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_03: The kind of place where every detail's been thought through.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_03: So you feel the history immediately, but unlike staying right in the middle of Broadway, it feels tucked away, it feels calm, it feels like you found something.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_03: And that's honestly why I love it.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_03: It's where I go when I'm gonna get away.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks, slow down, have a restful time without technology.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_03: And when you're ready, the rhyme and Broadway are about a four-minute walk.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_03: The Country Politan Hotel, stay in the story.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean shit, I haven't been played on radio in six, seven years, I would say.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: In the States.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, I I think that uh a large part of that problem right now is that when we're talking about the times of, you know, you're Springsteen, your petty, your Dylan, your um, you know, your George Strait, your even though radio was still a business, they still had freedom.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you had Miles over here.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he owned the station in Nashville and he did what he wanted to do.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't answering to some guy that lived in Dallas.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: He he did what and most of those guys that were running those stations, they did love music.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: So it was still a business, but they actually love music.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a big part of what's happened is that they love to sit around and listen to music, and DJs had some freedom.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was like they had the freedom to know their market and be like, hey, Queen's new record came out.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna play y'all five tracks off of that record today.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can't do that now.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, Eric Church, you know, if I was running a station, you know, and the new record came out, I'd be like, you know, we get do we, you know, I'm gonna play five tracks from the new church thing today.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and it I think that's their hands are so tied now.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that because I talked to a lot of these people, you know, and it's you know, it's everybody's kind of playing defense instead of offense, you know.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_03: 100%, man.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_03: I heard there's like, I don't know if this is true, but like around like seven like top dogs that control the majority of the very true country radio in the United States.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why it's homogenized.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's that's a very true statement.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_03: This is all Bill Clinton's fault.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_03: The Telecommunications Act.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_03: Uh it's uh it was signed, and then it let people monopol or conglomerates buy up radio stations, so all the indies got bought, and then that's how we that's where we land today.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: I can remember driving down the road maybe a year ago.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: I was on the East Coast around Charleston, and I heard the Tyler Children's song In Your Love.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: It came on the radio station.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, Oh my gosh, and I had yet to hear the song.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: And man, I was just I remember I was I was moved as I was driving.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: It got me kind of emotional.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was like, man, this is a beautiful song.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think it got past 50.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't matter, he just sold out the soccer stadium the other night, but at the same time, it's like I still love radio.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: I discovered all my favorite artists listening to the radio, and there's still something really special about turning on a radio station and hearing your song that's still special.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a part of me that's still really pulling for radio to win because I think it's I think it matters.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um and streaming's amazing.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's a that's a really cool thing that we can all just but it's radio.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's something where you can just be as a DJ, hey, I love this song, and I'm gonna turn you all on to something you've never heard before.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember right after that song, there was another song that came on that was just like next.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_00: It was a re it was a remake of an incredible classic song.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the the the the original is awesome.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: And they just, you know, that's the new, that's another new copycat game.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: We're just like, all right, well, are we getting this lazy where we're just taking the exact melody of an old hit and just throwing that out there and rewriting the lyrics and then giving that person credit?
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it just feels lazy.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I heard this thing, and I was like, man, this is blasphemy because the lyrics in this thing that you've changed it to and that song went number one.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: And then yet this Tyler Children song that's so incredible and so the arrangement's so beautiful, and then he's singing with that voice that he's got doesn't get past 50, you know, and it's just like, what is going on?
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think that you would have the success that you have now if it wasn't for the early success that you had with MG?
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_03: Hard to know because all like the record overseas or South Africa is a great example, like that was completely organic.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_03: Had that been your first record, do you think it would have been like without ever being kit more?
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but being like a dude releasing music on your own.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think for back then, because streaming wasn't what it was, I think your chances were a lot.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I I'm I'm so grateful for MCA because I think that they they catapulted me.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um I because I th when you think about that record, that record has Crazy One More Time on it, which is still to this day one of my favorite songs ever written.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that that song, people came in the door because they heard Hey Pretty Girl, they heard Truck, and then they got in there and they were like, oh, this record is really this.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they discovered Faith When I Fall, Crazy More Time, Reckless.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: And Crazy More Time was the song.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: Every night, every single night, when that record came out, it was the moment every night.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, man, you could, you could, it the the the pulse in the room was tangible.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so that for that I'm like, who knows?
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I think back then it's it was a lot harder without that major label kind of getting you on the on the radio.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_00: And um now with streaming and social media, it's a different game and you can get found easier.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: The keyhole used to be so small.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like the keyhole was so small to get through.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_00: Most everybody that, even the acts didn't work, were pretty talented from top to bottom.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_00: You had your rare occasions of some kind of thing that someone threw together is some weird thing.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: But for the most part, when I think about when I signed, it was church, it was Keith Urban, it was Lady A, it was George Strait, it was Gary Allen on the label, it was um uh a couple other big names.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you put any of those guys around a fire, give them a guitar, and they're gonna wow you, regardless of whether you like their music or not.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_03: That was my favorite time in music, man.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_03: So uh for country music was that era that you were writing that sweet spot on with her.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so the keyhole was so small, and now it's just anybody can just step through it.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why it's so hard to sit through the trash, so to say, you know, and then there's a lot of cool stuff, but there's just so much coming at you now.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, what would you tell the independent artist that's like, hey, I'm gonna, I got these songs, I wrote them, I'm gonna record them and put them out on social or not on social media, sorry, on streaming, uh DSPs, and then see what happens.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_03: Is it just like who knows what's gonna happen now?
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_03: Kind of a thing.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: I have no clue.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've had I I I I don't know anything.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's no rhyme or something.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's no like I I don't know, you know, and I and and and go back to what you said, that's why I mean I'm I'm thankful I came through when I did, you know, because without that promo team really getting those songs in front of people, and they the promo team gave people a chance to discover the depth of that record.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then that catapulted me into Wild Ones, and then Wild Ones was a whole nother departure from up all night.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: I went a whole nother route.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I never wanted to make the same record twice.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_00: Even when I played that record for the label would you could feel the tension in the room because they were like, What is this?
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is not up all night, you know.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_03: So, but that's what happened with Frankie Ballard and uh Al Rio.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_03: I feel like uh Frankie's super talented.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so talented, and that's I seen him live and I was like, man, this guy rips, dude.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_03: Songwriter, great songwriter, player, like you had you had to have the goods.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: When I was he had the goods, you had yeah, you had to have it to get signed.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_03: But but that record came out and then it was like no more airplay for Frankie and that bums me out.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's uh it's a bummer.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_03: Because that was a killer record, but also a killer album, but just interesting.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_03: By the way, for people listening, when we talk about it uh umg and mca, umg Universal Music Group recently changed names back to MCA under the leadership of co-head leadership of Dave Cobb.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, just so everyone knows.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_03: We're talking about the same thing.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_03: Because that's so confusing.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_03: Now getting these emails from MCA, but they're the email addresses are still at like Universal Music Group because I get like the PR people, you know.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_03: Have you ever heard of a men's clothier?
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_03: I hadn't until recently.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_03: And it's basically a cool way to say a men's clothing shop.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_03: My friend Stephanie opened a store called Simon Says Nashville.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_03: If you go to Simon Says Nashville.com or you look up Simon Says Nashville, it's a men's clothing store.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_03: It's not one of these like 25% men's stuff, 75% women's stuff thing.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_03: This is all for the dudes, and they supply the wardrobes for the uh podcast, and they have the coolest denim collection.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of their stuff's made in the United States.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_03: They have 11 brands that you can't get in any other place in Nashville, and it's just stacked.
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_03: They're constantly getting in a crazy amount of inventory.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_03: They also have a cool dude in there named Jacob who makes uh hats out of not wool, but like rabbit fur and stuff, and they cost around the same as other competition like wrestler hat co.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_03: So go check them out.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_03: Tell them Stefan Sencha and uh get yourself a cool denim shirt and a cool hat because their hats are badass.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_03: All right, now back to Kip.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know something you asked me 30 seconds ago.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: I just kind of and you were like, what would you tell?
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_00: I have no advice, but I will say this, and I think this is we see a lot of people chasing the the biggest seller in our format right now.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_03: I'll just name name it Morgan Warren.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: And by the time you catch him, yeah, you might have a couple little things happen because that that sound is still going.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: But Morgan's gonna always be able to sell tickets because he started that thing.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: So he can walk away for 10 years and he does it really well.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's great.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you're you're not gonna do it as well as him.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be a knockoff version and it's gonna be a fleeting I I from my history watching this thing happen.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I watched it with Florida Georgia Line.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was everyone was trying to be Florida Georgia Line for a minute.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: By the time you catch it, number one, that train is leaving the track, and there's gonna be a new thing coming through soon.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: But but the guy that started it, he'll still get to do that.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_00: But by the time you catch it, the train left the tracks, and you're getting a little, you know, you're you're getting to pick up a few little nibbles here and there, but then it's gonna fizzle out.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I would say that you know, listen to records that inspire you, but it it has to be honest for you because I feel like, yes, you can fool fans, yes, but eventually they sniff you out.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're if you're giving them something that's you know, I'm the first time I heard I I'll go back to Childress, the first time I heard him, I was just like, nobody sounds like this guy.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it made me want to go look at his music and hear what he's doing.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: And to this day, man, I just I love what that guy does.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: I really, really love what he does.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so, but if you try to copy him, you ain't gonna do it as good.
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_03: And he's so authentic.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he's so himself.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you see it with with the whole Zach Bryan movement.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: Man, if I if I hear another song start with a minor chord and feel super, you know, you know, it is a very emo movement with that, but he does what he does great.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: He's great at it.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you see this trend happening where everyone's trying to be Zach Bryan.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's great to be inspired by somebody, but you have to find your own voice because by the time you catch that train, you're just gonna get the pebbles from it.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it I just don't think it's you might have a short, I just don't think it's ever sustainable that way, unless you've he's he can be, because he, even though he's not the creator of that sound, that sound's been going around for a minute, but he did it in a very cool way.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: And uh with that and it's children's ass.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and and that sound hadn't really become mainstream in a sense, and he kind of put it on the map.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's cool that you know, a young generation is into cool lyrics and in the songs that make you feel and mean something.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um but you know, if if everyone starts to kind of go a little bit of a you know emo route, you know, it it will that will kind of fizzle out, you know, and he'll get to keep riding that train.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_03: No, you're you're 100% right.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_00: Be the first you.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_00: Nirvana and Pearl Jam, they were the first on the scene with that sound.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now Kurt's gone, but you think about the grunge era, the first three that hit the scene were Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: Pearl Jam and Soundgarden are the only ones that can still really go off of that thing.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: Every then everyone did that sound for five years and then it fizzled out.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_00: But the innovators of that sound were able to keep going.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they're just a prime example of that.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, man.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um I have a question.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_03: You say uh there's some things out here, but you seem to have a significant curiosity about you, and one of the things that um it's something I I think is cool and that I respect, and I know it because uh of listening to some stuff about you, but you studying surfers, just watching them.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you watching you playing a show and going out and watching the opening, or going out and watching the headliner, or watching the opener and studying like uh you're a reader.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_03: Are you Rick Rubin fan?
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't say a f like a fan, but I mean philosophically on some of this stuff.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, just curious.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but like you read.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_03: So how's that impacted you?
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_03: Do you feel like as a like a human being in this space, in this world, in this business, in terms of just being a curious person that I feel like has uh you direct it in a certain way towards certain things.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_03: But do you feel like that's part of what's helped with your success is just by sitting back and being the observer and the listener?
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um Yeah, I mean, I I feel like I was always a very curious kid.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I I never want to lose that.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm to this day, man.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I I just started watching Anthony Bourdain a year ago, and I just finished, I just finally finished the last episode, and I'm just gonna run it back.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what I loved about him, is how curious he was.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I I see a lot of myself a lot in the the the way he is on the show.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_00: And um, but yeah, I'm I'm always trying to engage my mind and break down what I'm seeing and what I'm feeling.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I I spend a lot of time in solitude, which I think is important for any kind of learning and growth.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um But yeah, I mean I've I was, I was a I studied shows like crazy, you know, coming up.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um I mean you studied lyrics too.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's what drew you to music.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_00: I would I would sit down, I can remember I went through a phase with Bob Dylan from you know, I knew the hits, but I did a deep dive from like 24 to 27-ish, where he was almost all listened to for two or three years.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I would, at that time, I didn't have a computer, I would sit down and I would write out full lyrics of everything he had, and I would try to understand his playoff words, and oh, he's doing this right here, and um he was all about hard rhymes, he wasn't about soft rhymes, you know, stuff like that, and it mattered, and his cadence was incredible.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um so but I think for sure that all like fine-tuned me, and even watching shows, uh, you take a guy like McGraw, and you take a guy like Church, and then you take, you know, Sammy Hagar, you know, and I've watched all those, you know, people, and they're all so polarizingly different, but they all do these unique things.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_00: And um I would I when I remember when I went on the McGraw tour, I learned how he was a master at milking these moments and making them so grand.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it was all subtle things that he did.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm not as rehearsed as McGraw.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like he had movements he did every night at a spots where my show is a much more organic, kind of free-flowing show, and we're we're all live.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like we're live the whole time.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't even know what's gonna happen sometimes.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we're not um sometimes we'll play something a whole section long, and then I'll just, you know, look at the guys and you know, we'll keep going, or we'll pivot and drop on the four on another song and be like, we're gonna.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I learned the importance of Milky Moments.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, with Church's show, it was more of I watched Church's show every night when I was out opening with him, and and the lighting was so special with the church show, and that's so crucial.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I've seen some shows like this is awful, you know, with the lighting.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not enhancing the song, it's taking away from it actually.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and just his grooves, man, they were they were great.
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_00: The band was great.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then there's been people I've been out with that I thought the show was, you know, rough.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I've learned, you know, watching that, like what not to do sometimes, you know, and and and so, but I've I have always been that way.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_00: I've always been curious, but but I'm always trying to figure out ways to get better in things that I love to do.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like even rock climbing, you know, I'll ask my buddy Jeremy, who's just incredible, I'll ask him a million questions, you know, why are you doing this here?
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, uh going back to Albi with surfing, and I'll send him videos and be like, break it down for me.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_00: Where did I go wrong right here?
• 1:05:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and um but yeah, I've always been a student with anything that I love.
• 1:05:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um I want to figure it out to the to the best of my ability.
• 1:05:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um production with records has been like my and I've always really listened to production, but in the last few years it's like um, you know, borderline, you know.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: About breaking down.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_00: I've got heavy in the Genesis and understanding arrangements and why certain passing chords and certain chords, even that, you know, the bass is doing something completely different than the guitar over here.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_00: Pet sounds will just blow your mind when you're listening to that.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so it's arrangement-wise, you know, when to put tension on a track and when you're, you know, when, you know, sometimes these minor chords you open up into the major over here, and then you drop it back back into the minor for a certain tension that you want to put on it.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, all those things matter when you're trying to make a record and then sonically trying to figure out how to make things work.
• 1:06:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I used to, when I would make records, be like, well, I love this, you know, I'm playing this heavy baritone thing here, and then I would have another standard tune guitar that I would also play a heavy rift with.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_00: So now I got two ref two heavy riffs that are competing with each other.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time I didn't know why I was muddy in the waters.
• 1:06:59
  SPEAKER_00: But then you learn by listening to records, you know, and you know, it sounds huge and it's like less is more a lot of times.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, there's actually this guy's playing the chimey high thing over here, and this guy's doing the deep thing.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay, give space.
• 1:07:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, you just learn those little tricks along the way.
• 1:07:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:07:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like some of that petty stuff.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_03: So good.
• 1:07:21
  SPEAKER_03: Masterclass.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_03: So, so good.
• 1:07:23
  SPEAKER_03: And less is more.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 1:07:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like everything has its space, its place, and each part helps every other part.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_03: It's just crazy.
• 1:07:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:07:36
  SPEAKER_00: The the the record I just got done making, I'm getting all the mixes back now, and I've never had a record sound this big.
• 1:07:42
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds huge.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_00: And we did way less than we've ever done.
• 1:07:45
  SPEAKER_00: I we did, we did not stack one time.
• 1:07:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you've got a part, and you don't come in until the eighth bar of the second verse.
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you're only going to play for two seconds right here.
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_00: Then you're out, and then you're gonna come in here and you're gonna drive the train over here, and there's all this space that's created.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_00: Are you producing your records or co-producing?
• 1:08:09
  SPEAKER_00: Co-producing with Andrew Roberts, and he's been amazing, but I've always been heavily involved in that.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_00: But he's he's been such a joy to work with, such a smart guy.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but he's he he wanted to go that same route with me.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it was like we're gonna create all this space and we're not gonna, it's we're gonna feel like when we're listening back on the playback, ah, it's not big enough.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna we need to stack here.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, just wait, let it get in the mixing process and let this thing come to life, you know.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_03: And um Yeah, the mix is so huge compared to what you track.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_03: Because when you track, you want to keep doing more.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_03: You want to keep adding empty, man.
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_00: You want to keep adding, and it was like, you know, we had to really be Charlie Warsham was the only um on the first round, Charlie Warsham plays, it was just me and my band all tracking together.
• 1:08:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then Charlie Warsom was the only guy that's not in the band that was tracking with us, and he's for people watching, he's just a brilliant studio cat in town.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's he plays for Dirk Spent.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_03: He's so great.
• 1:09:08
  SPEAKER_00: And he's an amazing artist.
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_00: He's the he's the best.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's gonna be another head scratcher.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_00: His first record, um, Mrs.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_00: uh, what was it?
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh Rubber Band.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_00: If anybody's watching this, pull up Charlie Warsham.
• 1:09:22
  SPEAKER_00: The the record is called Rubber Band and go listen to Mississippi in July.
• 1:09:27
  SPEAKER_00: He's he's just a freak talent.
• 1:09:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um He really is.
• 1:09:30
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna have him.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_03: I just texting him, he's gonna be on the podcast.
• 1:09:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, he's so great.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_00: He's just the best human.
• 1:09:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I really love that guy.
• 1:09:37
  SPEAKER_00: But even he told me after that first session, he's like, it's uh it's been a long, long time since I've been a part of a session that had so much restraint, and it was such a joy to be a part of, you know.
• 1:09:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um I love that.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_00: And Charlie loves the, you know, you have to, and he's a trip, you know, because he just loves to play.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_00: So he's like, let me try this.
• 1:09:56
  SPEAKER_00: Charlie, but the fucking guitar down.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_00: You're not putting, you put one thing on there, we're not doing anything else, you know.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we had uh Nathan Duggar in the second um session, and he's he's killer.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um but and were you doing these live, like recording the sections live?
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's all like we it was it's old school way recording.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm into.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Where we rehearsed these songs so much on the road and soundcheck.
• 1:10:23
  SPEAKER_00: So many of them I wrote on the road.
• 1:10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And like a lot of the songs I wrote with different players in the band, which you know in Nashville doesn't happen.
• 1:10:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'd be like, they know I've encouraged them through the years to be like, you guys are all crazy talented.
• 1:10:38
  SPEAKER_00: You might not have a lot of time in a writer's room, and and you that part of your craft, you spend all your time working on your instrument, you know, where but I want to hear, and I said this years ago to him, like, I want to hear y'all come to Soundcheck every day with a new riff.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Just come in.
• 1:10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let's all jam.
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we're in soundcheck for four hours, just jamming like a band, you know, and that's what you get into it.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_03: It's like some prints stuff.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:11:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we would jam and jam, and we would work through, you know, the songs that we we're writing the next day.
• 1:11:12
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're we're building this, and sometimes it's just Hank's riff, and then I'll go write the lyric, and then sometimes it's Dave's riff, and I'll go write the lyric and we'll work on the arrangement.
• 1:11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and then sometimes it's a whole band song.
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but there's a lot of that on this record, but we rehearsed and rehearsed, and then by the time we got in that studio, it was just like boom, you know, two or three takes and it's over.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_00: But it's all just one take.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:11:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so it's all the but there's that glue.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_03: And that's how all those records that we listened back to that we were referencing, the petty stuff or whoever, insert artist, they were alive.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's a human emotive experience that happens in that where now, you know, you're just kind of building instrument by instrument in a room with just a computer, and you can make great sounding stuff.
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's something a little more sterile.
• 1:12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's something that almost feels AI-ish about it.
• 1:12:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 1:12:05
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't feel like a living and breathing live band.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're even still, even in live shows, I mean, we're we're still using amps, which is a we're like a dinosaur.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's all frackles now and digital, where we still imagine having the amps on stage.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so other bands and other artists will will come, you know, where we're a festival where they're like, damn, y'all got amps.
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_00: You can hear, like, there's actually volume on the stage where you can watch side stage and feel like you're still a part of the show.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Where you know what I mean?
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_00: You go to a show now, if it's all digital, all you hear is the symbols, and there's no amps on stage.
• 1:12:44
  SPEAKER_00: So the only thing you hear if you're standing side stage watching most artists now is all you hear is the symbols, and that's it.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of pointless to be side stage and watch some of these bands you love because it's there's no actual air being pushed on the stage.
• 1:12:59
  SPEAKER_03: Are you uh I'm getting the vibe that you're kind of track free.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_00: We've got I would say, I would say um click yes, I would imagine.
• 1:13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Click 50% of the time.
• 1:13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_00: So there's there's 50% of the time we're just free-flowing.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's cool.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Where, you know, we'll jump into a song where I've got this on the set, and I'm like, scratch that, just another girl on the one, you know, and then we'll just slam into it.
• 1:13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then sometimes it's quick, sometimes it's mid, sometimes it's, you know.
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um I would say that there's during our set, there's maybe two or three songs that you might hear a keys pad, and then Will's just gonna do the piano on that one or something.
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_00: But it's ever so subtle.
• 1:13:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's never more than one thing running through a uh a track, and and that's I can think of two to three songs max that you're gonna have that with.
• 1:13:55
  SPEAKER_03: And well, there's nine sounds you just can't make live, too, yeah, depending on the production.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_00: But we never use a uh a drum pad or anything.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's all live drums.
• 1:14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Every song's live drums.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um I mean, 98% of our show was 100% live, where it's I feel like I see like uh the authentic side of like music growing on that on in that a little bit, and a lot more people like abandoning the Ableton sessions.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_00: I knew it would go away from that at some point.
• 1:14:27
  SPEAKER_00: It got so um where I'd go out front and be like, this whole show is just track.
• 1:14:31
  SPEAKER_00: The entire show is a track.
• 1:14:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's a space bar, and then this concert starts and ends.
• 1:14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would say that 50% is we've got a click running.
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, 50% is no click, and then I would say, yeah, there's there's two songs that I can think of that that we've got a pad going.
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_03: I have a question about Solitary Tracks, the actual song.
• 1:14:54
  SPEAKER_03: So Solitary Tracks, is I'm assuming because you're you're a great songwriter, it's a double entendre.
• 1:15:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:15:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean when you wrote it, did you think of it as that?
• 1:15:06
  SPEAKER_03: Or was it just like the wolf thing?
• 1:15:10
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, I'm curious.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_00: When I wrote it, umce again was at the time that I left the label.
• 1:15:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I was set to write the next day with Brett James, who recently passed, he was one of my closest friends ever.
• 1:15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and Dan Couch.
• 1:15:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I hadn't written with either one of those guys in a while.
• 1:15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been writing so much by myself for the last two years, and and then I wrote a little bit with Luke Preston, and then I was writing some with Andrew De Roberts, but I'd kind of just been writing on my own for the last couple of years, and and you know, I'd at least get a song halfway done, and I'd call Luke or call Andrew or, you know, and dry my bread again, who I hadn't written with in years.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the night before I came home, and I just was like, uh, with different things going on in my life and the world and how mad I felt like the world was.
• 1:16:11
  SPEAKER_00: And um I just remember being like, I I think I was born on a different planet, and someone dropped me off here at one point.
• 1:16:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not supposed to be here.
• 1:16:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I've felt that way a lot of times through my life.
• 1:16:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when everybody sees red, I see green, and I'm like, man, I don't understand why, you know, what's, you know, and I I spent a lot of time trying to evaluate why I feel the way I do about the things I do.
• 1:16:36
  SPEAKER_00: And and, you know, I've taken all these trips through my life when the tour's over, and I just leave by myself and I'll go do these things, and I love being alone.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so that particular night, um I was at my kitchen counter like around midnight-ish.
• 1:16:58
  SPEAKER_00: And um and that's just what was going through my head of just being like, I don't belong here.
• 1:17:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is I don't I don't feel like I think like anybody around me, and I don't see the world the same.
• 1:17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and I'm just I'm I guess I just I'm coming to terms where I'm okay with it.
• 1:17:18
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's where my headspace was.
• 1:17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I initially um was just writing it for myself.
• 1:17:26
  SPEAKER_00: There was not a another person in the song at the time.
• 1:17:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was writing, I had the whole melody to the song, and I had a lot of different fragmented verses, and I had a pretty good bit of the course, but it was all about me.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_00: That song was solely about me.
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Can I read a lyric for a minute?
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, go ahead.
• 1:17:43
  SPEAKER_03: Uh on the fringe, on the edge, never sleeping in the den, forever on the outside, always looking in.
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've felt that way.
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Forever on the outside, always looking in is how I have felt my whole adult life.
• 1:17:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that's when I've said forever on the outside.
• 1:18:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's a I say forever for a reason.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I'm coming to I've come to grips with this is just the way it's always gonna be.
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm okay with that now.
• 1:18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Where for a long time it's kind of like, well, what's wrong with me?
• 1:18:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like what do I need to change something about myself or do I need to the people that know me really, really well know this about me, you know.
• 1:18:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm fine in any room, and I can walk in any room and and for the most part, you know, I I can be comfortable, but I can really make you think I'm comfortable.
• 1:18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's whatever walk of life I'm walking in with.
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um but and there's certain groups of people that I do feel at home with and I feel really comfortable.
• 1:18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um but man, I've just there's so many crowds and and scenes where where well you're told this is supposed to be the fun thing, but you're in right now.
• 1:19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like this is the thing, this is the happening thing, and those are always the moments where I feel the most uncomfortable.
• 1:19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Where I'm like the whole time I'm in that scene, I'm like, I gotta get the fuck out.
• 1:19:24
  SPEAKER_03: Was that the 2012?
• 1:19:27
  SPEAKER_03: What what do you mean the 2012?
• 1:19:28
  SPEAKER_03: Or sorry, when when you kind of like lost it over the uh the commercial situation when you thought you were gonna be in a studio and all that.
• 1:19:36
  SPEAKER_03: No, I no, I just mean hard time.
• 1:19:38
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I just mean in the sense of uh Did you feel at that time in your career though that you were like out of place?
• 1:19:46
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 1:19:47
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:19:48
  SPEAKER_03: I guess that's what I'm asking.
• 1:19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 1:19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um tie it to and I would even go to the big uh, you know, the big functions and the big scene things and the parties where everybody just seems to be having the best time.
• 1:19:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm those are the the moments where I feel the most uncomfortable and I gotta get out of here.
• 1:20:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't You're an introvert.
• 1:20:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:20:06
  SPEAKER_00: So um even as a kid, um I've always felt it here.
• 1:20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I drift in and out.
• 1:20:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's always at the core of me, and I'm I'm a very uh, you know, I've got imperfections all over me.
• 1:20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um reality, man.
• 1:20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:20:30
  SPEAKER_00: And but it's always at the core of me, and I know that I I do believe wholeheartedly, but I I've definitely in the last few years, you know, I feel it heavier and heavier on me.
• 1:20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm I'm I'm I'm a lot more aware in recent years when I'm when I'm wallering in uh the pig fields.
• 1:21:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm more aware of it.
• 1:21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've always known it when I was, but it's like I'm yeah, um it's it's it's a more intense feeling than it's ever been when I'm when I'm eating rotten fruit, you know?
• 1:21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I'm like, I'm working through yeah, I'm I'm working through all that.
• 1:21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean it's it's it you know, I think that's a lifelong process.
• 1:21:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but um, yeah, I just think, yeah, I think my spirit's now more than ever, you know, aware of of yeah.
• 1:21:54
  SPEAKER_03: When my soul's bad.
• 1:21:55
  SPEAKER_03: I get I got you.
• 1:21:56
  SPEAKER_03: One of the things that I think that uh we're terrible at is uh feeling like we have to be perfect or not sin or something in order to get like God's favor, you know.
• 1:22:20
  SPEAKER_03: And um I was just listening to this message where it was broken down, but basically like Simon Peter in the Bible denied Jesus three times, right as Jesus was going to get crucified, and um at when he rose from the dead and came back, it says that Simon Peter saw him from the boat.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_03: He was out fishing, and Jesus was on the shore, and he came back and he jumped out of the boat, swam, and sat down with Jesus, and Jesus asked him, He's like, Do you love me?
• 1:22:53
  SPEAKER_03: And he's like, I love you.
• 1:22:55
  SPEAKER_03: But it turns out the original Greek for what Simon Peter was saying, his love meant like, and Jesus was saying love.
• 1:23:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so he asked him three times because he denied him three times, but he said, I like you three times.
• 1:23:09
  SPEAKER_03: But then he told him, I want you to go out and make disciples.
• 1:23:14
  SPEAKER_03: So it was like, you might like me, and that's enough for God to work with.
• 1:23:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's not perfection.
• 1:23:23
  SPEAKER_03: He's like, All right, Peter, you like me, you don't love me.
• 1:23:27
  SPEAKER_03: That's enough.
• 1:23:28
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought that was really cool, man.
• 1:23:30
  SPEAKER_03: Because I I mean, we can all like be our own worst enemy and critic and all that, you know.
• 1:23:35
  SPEAKER_03: But one of the things I I it's your tattoo is Psalm 40, 1 and 2, right?
• 1:23:42
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I was gonna read it because I don't know if I've ever read it, and I read it today, and I think it's really great and encouraging.
• 1:23:54
  SPEAKER_03: I waited patiently for the Lord, and he reached down to me and heard my cry.
• 1:24:02
  SPEAKER_03: He brought me out of the pit of destruction, out of the mud, and he set my feet on a rock, making my footsteps firm.
• 1:24:13
  SPEAKER_03: In order to get that tattooed on your arm, what inspired you to do that?
• 1:24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Man, it was when I first moved the town, and um dealing with all of the doubt that this town especially back then, because back then music row had a thousand staff writers.
• 1:24:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, now you might have a hundred, maybe max.
• 1:24:48
  SPEAKER_00: The amount of talent with the writers in town, I mean, it was intimidating.
• 1:24:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I can just remember going out to writers round and being like, oh, oh, I thought I was a writer.
• 1:25:00
  SPEAKER_00: Man, oh my gosh, you know, and I'm listening to Don Schlitz and those guys, you know, and it was Tony Lane and so the doubt that creeps in about I need to pack this thing on up, head on back to Georgia, you know.
• 1:25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you're dealing with that first off, and then you're dealing with the the boldness of stepping out onto this plank, you know.
• 1:25:24
  SPEAKER_00: I had made different moves in my life, but this was like I'm trying to actually do something with my life, and this is a bold move.
• 1:25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I was living in a place that was uh, yeah, man, it was a it was uh it was a darkness in that place that was heavy.
• 1:25:45
  SPEAKER_00: And um here?
• 1:25:47
  SPEAKER_00: In Nashville, yeah.
• 1:25:48
  SPEAKER_00: And and I would I'd work two different jobs and then I'd go listen to songwriters' rounds, and I'd come back and I'd try to play a little guitar, listen to records, and I think the main thing is I was just a lot in my head, and there was a lot of doubt happening.
• 1:26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a time in my life where the only time in my life, I've had moments where I read a little bit of scripture here and there, but that was a time where every single night, I would say for a good half a year, where it was every night I came home, I read.
• 1:26:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the only, and I was itching to come home and read it.
• 1:26:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was a really a lot of times you're having to make yourself do that where it was that was the only comfort I could find was I would open that book and it gave me comfort.
• 1:26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like you developed a hunger for it.
• 1:26:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:26:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going through that right now.
• 1:26:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like because my spirit was that way, it was speaking to me differently.
• 1:26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:26:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and I think that during that time when I was like that, um, that was the only comfort that I found.
• 1:26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I would always, because when I discovered that verse, I loved it so much.
• 1:26:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then at the end of the night, I would always end the night with reading that verse.
• 1:27:00
  SPEAKER_00: So when I got a record deal, that's when I got that tattoo.
• 1:27:06
  SPEAKER_03: Last couple things as we kind of wrap up.
• 1:27:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um I struggle with the pressure to be on social media.
• 1:27:20
  SPEAKER_03: But it's all it also makes me like physically not feel good.
• 1:27:28
  SPEAKER_03: And when I don't have my phone with me, I feel liberated.
• 1:27:33
  SPEAKER_03: And I know that you've spoken about how absurd it has gotten that a lot of things music have come down to TikTok.
• 1:27:50
  SPEAKER_03: And um I'm curious if you think it's a necessary evil or you think that for the person That wants to pave their own path, they can do it without having to play the game.
• 1:28:06
  SPEAKER_03: And instead of making videos of themselves, they're working on their craft.
• 1:28:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's one of those things where I don't know if I have an answer to that.
• 1:28:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I know that I don't have an answer to that.
• 1:28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm glad that I'm not coming through right now.
• 1:28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Would you make it if you were coming through?
• 1:28:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, because I just don't think I could I don't think that's in me.
• 1:28:38
  SPEAKER_00: To play the that game.
• 1:28:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I just don't think that, you know, I think that some people are really natural at it, you know, and um I could I could make videos just playing songs, but I couldn't do the the the the the aspect of doing whatever it takes to uh you know get people to click on your page.
• 1:29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um I can sit and play a guitar in front of a camera.
• 1:29:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um Cannon Smith's like this also.
• 1:29:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:29:12
  SPEAKER_03: He kind of said the same thing.
• 1:29:13
  SPEAKER_00: I just really um yeah, I mean I I would really, really struggle coming through now.
• 1:29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um with with labels constantly breathing down your neck to make content.
• 1:29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um because they really don't want to do a lot of lifting, you know?
• 1:29:37
  SPEAKER_03: Um Yeah, all my friends that have gotten signed, it's been like the labels telling them, yo, you need to post more.
• 1:29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's just if it doesn't feel like there's a lot of creativity happening when I think about that end of things.
• 1:29:52
  SPEAKER_00: And um I think about, you know, songs of mine that that ended up being really big.
• 1:29:59
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you think about I I I don't know, you know?
• 1:30:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um had someone not taken a chance with with Hey Pretty Girl, um would it have just blown up with me playing a version of that on TikTok and it would it have gone viral, me just sitting and playing it?
• 1:30:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, you know, and that and that that is the beauty.
• 1:30:28
  SPEAKER_00: And when I I go back to the power of radio, getting it in front of a lot of people.
• 1:30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I think there's everybody just looking for a viral moment.
• 1:30:40
  SPEAKER_00: It I think I think the thing that bums me out the most, and this is why I I I would have such a hard time with it, I've is that everything now feels so desperate.
• 1:30:52
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like I'm so desperate for you to like me and like what I'm doing, and there's no mystery in anything.
• 1:31:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um when I think about I go back to a petty, man.
• 1:31:05
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know anything about Petty besides an MTV music video and going to a concert and then hearing him on a record.
• 1:31:14
  SPEAKER_00: I you didn't know anything about him.
• 1:31:15
  SPEAKER_00: There was a myth, there was a mystique to that person.
• 1:31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's a good thing.
• 1:31:20
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, and now it just feels stuff feels really desperate, you know, and um so I don't know.
• 1:31:30
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't know what the answer to that would be as far as um, you know, I don't sit around making TikTok videos, but I don't I don't I don't blame anybody that does, and I don't I g I understand people are just trying to figure out a way to to make something happen.
• 1:31:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um I just I just wish that it it that um things felt a little more about it's it's for the love of music and it doesn't feel that way.
• 1:32:04
  SPEAKER_00: It just feels like a how do I get famous?
• 1:32:09
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like that more than ever.
• 1:32:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it feels like that with everything.
• 1:32:13
  SPEAKER_00: How do I do develop a brand to be famous?
• 1:32:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I just feel like that's a dangerous slope for even you, you know, speaking on your two-year-old outside, you know, like what are they aspiring to be?
• 1:32:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you're just aspiring to be a a famous influencer.
• 1:32:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what does that mean?
• 1:32:34
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want to do?
• 1:32:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what does that entail?
• 1:32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um where there's a lot of great things with, you know, phones and I guess TikTok, I guess there is.
• 1:32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it just feels like a uh uh a slippery slope of self-worth that a lot of people are gonna run into the wall with.
• 1:32:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um well, and we see the the data, the receipts, you know, with teens and mental health.
• 1:33:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:33:09
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, yeah.
• 1:33:10
  SPEAKER_03: And it's gonna get worse with AI.
• 1:33:12
  SPEAKER_03: There's a podcast diary of a CEO, and this guy had on a couple like really smart uh psychiatrists and um that have done a lot of research, and they were showing some like AI, like the sexy AI girl that I guess Elon Musk had developed for some AI thing he put out.
• 1:33:35
  SPEAKER_03: And it was like you give a like young boy this, like it's gonna screw, it's gonna like your dopaminergic system's gonna get really jacked up really fast.
• 1:33:48
  SPEAKER_03: And uh yeah, it trips me out about that having a two and a half year old.
• 1:33:55
  SPEAKER_03: But we also like are non-screen people, we don't give him an iPad or do anything like that, you know, which is harder, but uh it's not something I I wanted him to grow up to aspire to be an influencer.
• 1:34:11
  SPEAKER_03: I want to raise him how I was raised outside, riding a bike, yeah, you know, hearing my mom call me, dinner's ready, yeah, you know, uh skin in my knee, he's he's got little scabs all over him from wrecking on his bike.
• 1:34:27
  SPEAKER_03: It's how I like it, man.
• 1:34:28
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:34:29
  SPEAKER_03: But I do feel you that it's interesting, there's a desperation.
• 1:34:32
  SPEAKER_03: I've never heard it put that way, and that's the best way you could put it is it's desperate.
• 1:34:37
  SPEAKER_03: Everyone's trying to get attention, and that's the commodity.
• 1:34:42
  SPEAKER_03: And when attention becomes a commodity just off of social media, it gets really weird because it takes musicians and it turns them into music isn't good enough anymore.
• 1:34:52
  SPEAKER_03: Now I need to be a musician and I need to show my ass.
• 1:34:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:34:56
  SPEAKER_03: Or like I need to be a musician and I also need to be able to like do something else to entertain people while my music is being performed in order to have listener retention or viewer retention on the platform.
• 1:35:11
  SPEAKER_03: So the algorithm pushes it out.
• 1:35:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:35:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's a weird way to think, man.
• 1:35:16
  SPEAKER_03: But I I I kind of appreciate your candor about it, I guess.
• 1:35:22
  SPEAKER_03: Because I think it's important to have the conversation, you know.
• 1:35:27
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and maybe it even say, hey, not everybody has to do this.
• 1:35:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's not the only way.
• 1:35:35
  SPEAKER_00: I've been able to get by so far without doing it.
• 1:35:37
  SPEAKER_00: So you know, hopefully Number ones in South Africa.
• 1:35:41
  SPEAKER_03: Hopefully I can continue that.
• 1:35:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:35:43
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, dude.
• 1:35:44
  SPEAKER_03: Does it real quick question?
• 1:35:46
  SPEAKER_03: How does royalties transfer?
• 1:35:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um super confusing.
• 1:35:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's a whole nother confusing topic.
• 1:35:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, that's a whole nother uh hour worth of yeah, yeah.
• 1:35:58
  SPEAKER_03: I was gonna say I was gonna say, yeah, I was just curious because like uh I have a guy coming on that has a number one in China.
• 1:36:06
  SPEAKER_03: Oh wow.
• 1:36:06
  SPEAKER_03: And he was telling me that it pays way better than the US, but in order to figure out how to get paid, yeah, he like had to do so much research.
• 1:36:15
  SPEAKER_03: So we're gonna like totally dive into it, but I was just curious if South Africa was kind of on or those other countries are the songwriters are the ones that are really, you know, those are the ones I really feel bad for right now, as far as that goes.
• 1:36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um songwriters used to, you know, be able to make a living off of album cuts.
• 1:36:35
  SPEAKER_00: You can't anymore.
• 1:36:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like they they have to have a hit record.
• 1:36:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's causing people to these talented guys to go into a room and and dumb it down just because they're only thinking about the single, which is also a weird thing, is I need to dumb it down to get a radio single.
• 1:36:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's a strange concept to think about.
• 1:36:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I know because I talk to all these guys and they they tell you, you know, it's like, well, I need to sing another song about, you know, going to a bar and getting whiskey and being mad that we're running into each other and we can't get over each other, and let's do this song for the 30,000th time here.
• 1:37:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um so um I've got an idea though.
• 1:37:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um I tried it once.
• 1:37:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna try it in a different way.
• 1:37:21
  SPEAKER_00: The last time I tried it, I was hoping other artists would get on board.
• 1:37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and maybe they will this time, but I've I've got something up my sleeve that I'm planning for this record to I'm gonna try my best to subsidize these writers.
• 1:37:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think about when I was making when I was just a staff writer um for four years, um and I remember my first salary was I think 26,500, 26,000 a year.
• 1:37:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it was changed.
• 1:37:57
  SPEAKER_00: But I was, yeah, and a lot of guys are still getting that same deal.
• 1:38:01
  SPEAKER_00: But I was so happy that I got to just go in and write music and I slept at the publishing house.
• 1:38:05
  SPEAKER_00: I slept on the couch, and I just wake up the next morning and do it all over.
• 1:38:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I was stoked.
• 1:38:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I think about if at the end of that year I saw a$5,000 check, it would have meant everything to me.
• 1:38:18
  SPEAKER_00: It changed would change the whole, my whole disposition, first of all, it would number one, you'd feel appreciated for your time with artists, and number two, it'd help you pay some bills.
• 1:38:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm I have an idea, and and I will be rolling that out next year, like um, of something that hasn't been done.
• 1:38:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um and because the the splits, it's such a sad thing.
• 1:38:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's such a sad, sad, sad thing.
• 1:38:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how greedy people in power can be, and that's never gonna change.
• 1:38:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like by me saying this, I'm gonna touch their heart.
• 1:39:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um because they do not care.
• 1:39:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the the powers to be are are trying to squeeze as much as they can to get in their pockets, you know, and you think about the creators of the last people that are making anything.
• 1:39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think about guys like Luke Preston that came in with me and worked tirelessly on songs.
• 1:39:24
  SPEAKER_00: And if he doesn't have a radio single on this record, you know, even if it's streaming like crazy, he's still making peanuts.
• 1:39:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a sad thing.
• 1:39:36
  SPEAKER_00: And what's in turn gonna happen is your creators are gonna die on the vine.
• 1:39:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you're the very people that are providing that living for all these wealthy people that are making all the cash that aren't a part of any part of the process of that song, you're gonna choke them all out, and you're not gonna have, you know, the the talented guys doing that.
• 1:39:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because who's gonna want to go be a songwriter if there can't be a living to be made for it?
• 1:40:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna try to figure out a way to uh start cutting these guys in on a pay that will, it's not a one-time payment, you know, on these songs where they can, if they were a part of that song for the rest of the day, the rest of the days where that song is getting streamed, I'm gonna be the payout, you know.
• 1:40:23
  SPEAKER_03: I like that.
• 1:40:24
  SPEAKER_03: So one of the things Vince Gill told me was uh at Breakfast Once was every time I did good, my band did good.
• 1:40:35
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and all his stuff was all handshake deals.
• 1:40:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:40:40
  SPEAKER_03: I always uh thought that was really cool that when he was doing good as an artist, he wanted to do things to help out those around him.
• 1:40:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:40:50
  SPEAKER_03: And uh so I think that's a really cool I'm excited to hear about that idea.
• 1:40:55
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:40:55
  SPEAKER_03: And you mentioned the album coming up, so if you want to like give me the the download on that, I'd love to.
• 1:41:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, it's it's uh I don't know what I just finished and it's it's coming.
• 1:41:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's it's not coming this year, but it's it's finished.
• 1:41:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um this is the first time that I've ever made a record where I feel whole when it's done.
• 1:41:22
  SPEAKER_00: I've never felt whole ever making a record.
• 1:41:25
  SPEAKER_00: I've always felt like I missed some spots.
• 1:41:28
  SPEAKER_00: I've always been hard on myself, but I've always felt like I could have done this better.
• 1:41:32
  SPEAKER_00: I could have sonically done this better.
• 1:41:33
  SPEAKER_00: That song's not as strong as I thought it was.
• 1:41:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's not I've never made a record that felt so stacked in every element.
• 1:41:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't miss it.
• 1:41:47
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't go in the room and miss it in the recording process, I didn't miss it in the writing process.
• 1:41:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like I it was as good as I had at that particular time in my life, and this is the first time I felt that way.
• 1:41:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um Like if you died right now.
• 1:42:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's the best I could do at this time in my life.
• 1:42:03
  SPEAKER_03: You'd be like this this could have no regrets of no.
• 1:42:06
  SPEAKER_00: No regrets.
• 1:42:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I have regrets on every record as far as I don't know if regrets is the right word, but I I know that I could have done better.
• 1:42:14
  SPEAKER_00: And this is uh It's the curse of the creative.
• 1:42:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and this is the first time that I've felt whole with something.
• 1:42:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a that's a different feeling for me.
• 1:42:24
  SPEAKER_00: Almost like I'm like, do I should I feel this way?
• 1:42:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like I've never I've never had a feeling like I have right now of knowing what I'm sitting on that nobody knows about yet, you know?
• 1:42:40
  SPEAKER_03: That's exciting.
• 1:42:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:42:41
  SPEAKER_03: I was just sent over a track right before this, so I'm gonna listen to it later.
• 1:42:46
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 1:42:46
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know what they sent you.
• 1:42:48
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know either.
• 1:42:51
  SPEAKER_03: But I'm excited to listen to it.
• 1:42:53
  SPEAKER_03: I'll jam it.
• 1:42:54
  SPEAKER_03: Dude, Kipmore, man, you've been awesome.
• 1:42:57
  SPEAKER_03: Uh thank you so much for coming all this way.
• 1:43:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is where I'm hiding out, man.
• 1:43:04
  SPEAKER_00: If it ever goes down, I'm coming out here.
• 1:43:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, come out here.
• 1:43:07
  SPEAKER_03: Hey, we have like six acres.
• 1:43:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:43:09
  SPEAKER_03: We'll get some cows and a lot of a lot more firearms and baby goats.
• 1:43:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, whatever you want.
• 1:43:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:43:17
  SPEAKER_03: We can have a compound.
• 1:43:19
  SPEAKER_03: The world goes down.
• 1:43:21
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, but man, appreciate it.
• 1:43:24
  SPEAKER_03: And you bet um for people that that are not fans of Kip Moore, you will instantly become a fan when you hear his voice.
• 1:43:33
  SPEAKER_03: And um he's everywhere online.
• 1:43:36
  SPEAKER_03: If you look up K I P M O O R E.
• 1:43:40
  SPEAKER_03: And uh, man, appreciate it.
• 1:43:43
  SPEAKER_03: You bet, man.
• 1:43:43
  SPEAKER_03: Cheers.