Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Jamey Johnson

Transcript

Jamey Johnson · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: My guest today is the one and only Jamie Johnston. Jamie,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: you just put out a new album, Midnight Gasoline, your
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: first in fourteen years. But what's the break.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: About a lot of different things? I guess, Uh. One,
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: I'd just been on the road, uh, seemingly NonStop and
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: just didn't have time to write, didn't have time to record.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: But there's also writer's block, and writer's block came in,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: I guess from a head injury.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: So tell me about this head injury.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was walking out of the studio one night.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Tw and I were leaving, uh, my studio and stepped
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: out onto the asphalt and it had frozen over while
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: we were inside working, And as soon as I took
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: a step on the asphalt, both of my feet came
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: up and broke the fall with the corner of my
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: head and I hit so hard that blood shot out
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: both nostrils, and of course we got cleaned up and
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: went on to the bar.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, you went to went to the bar. Did you
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: ultimately go to the emergency room or see a doctor.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a couple of days later, and i'd
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: had a concussion.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, so the blood you were bleeding, but you didn't
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: have like a brain bleed, which could kill you.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: What it didn't?
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: So you know, I know, and I haven't had a
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: concussion myself, but I know people who have. So you're
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: after effects went on for a long time. How long
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: did the after effects the concussion last?
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Years? I think the first time I really addressed it,
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: I did this program out in Scottsdale, Arizona. Back then
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: it was called brain State Technology. A man named Lee
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Gertis came up with a technique of basically playing back
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: your brain activity in your ears real time, and it's
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: like your brain can detect itself and fix itself in
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: certain ways. I remember Lee telling me, he said, I
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: don't have to know exactly how the brain works. The
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: brain knows how it works, and it knows how it
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: doesn't work. And that seemed to really helped me for
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: a while. The company has since changed names. I think
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: they go by Sarah set Now start with a C.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, so when did this fall happen?
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: It's two thy ten?
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: And do you think you're fully recovered? Now?
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: I don't know what to think now, but it's a
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: lot better than it used to be, but it's still
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: not like it was before, if that makes any sense.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sure there's improvement. When it was bad, what was
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: it like?
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: Everything seemed to put me in fight or flight. It
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: was like I was walking around nine point nine out
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: of ten almost all the time, and you and I
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: could be having a conversation and you'd say one thing
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: that triggered me, and it would absolutely infuriate me to
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: the point I need to separate myself from you. Different
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: things like that. It was like parts of it were
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: uncharacteristically angry about things, and the other parts were there.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: You know. Songwriting used to be something that was an
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: ongoing process with me. I was always writing, even if
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: I was having a conversation with somebody, I was still
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: in the back of my mind etching out some sort
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: of a song detail or working on something that I'd
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: started earlier. But it was always running behind the scenes.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: And all of that seemed to come to a screeching
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: halt around that time, and songwriting turned into a more
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: of a chore. It was something I they had to
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: dig into and focus on in order to even complete
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: the exercise. There's so many songs that I would that
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: I started and just never never finished. You know that
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: I would start and just leave little parts of songs
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: or just little lines or lyrics or you know, certain things.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: It was almost like a junk yard of song parts
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: on legal pads laying around the house.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, in this period of years when you were having
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the after effects of the concussions, were you on your
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: own or was there continuing medical treatment or did you
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: have a significant other orho was helping you? What was
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: going on now?
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: I never really had any help with it. If I
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: ever did anything to treat it, it was, you know,
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: suggestions I would get from a friend here or there,
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: and things that I would try out well that didn't work,
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: and then just go back on the road. It's not
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: easy to get any kind of medical care when you're
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: constantly touring.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: So if this lead date, do you believe your ability
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: to write songs is fully re establish itself.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: I feel like I'm able to do it now, and
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: that's something that I haven't felt in a long time.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: And I never really did quit. You know, I tried
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: and I but my productivity level suffered as a result,
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: and it was more important to me over the past. Ever,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: how many years that I tour, you know, that's what
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: was paying the bills.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: So despite all these after effects, you could play and
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: you could go on the road. Yeah, how difficult was
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: that for you?
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't say it was difficult. It was you know,
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: touring is the road trades everybody the same, you know,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: it's it's the same level of stress and struggle that
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: everybody else has to go through. Those of us who
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: travel understand it doesn't It doesn't trade anybody any differently.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: So I can't say it wasn't some kind of work,
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: but I don't think the road was any more work
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: as a result of a concussion.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, Willie Nelson legendarily got home and still slept on
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: the bus. And there are different ways to travel. At
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: the other extreme, there are acts the play stadiums where
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: they are in one location and they take a jet
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: to each gig. So you know, although all roadwork is stressful,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: depending on the income, it can be more stressful. Would
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: you say that.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: There's all kinds of ways to do it, and I've
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: done it most of those ways. But yeah, there were
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: a lot of years there where I just lived on
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: the bus. I remember one year I went six or
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: eight months something like that and never even saw my house.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: And you know, some people that are on the road
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: because they have to make a living. Other people, I
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: know they're on the road because they just have to play.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: What's it for you, I'd say sort of both. I
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: could never come off of the road altogether and just
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: give it up. That's not in me. I'm more like
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Willy in that regard. But I am getting to a
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: point where I don't have to be on the road
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: three hundred days a year anymore.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: I've got a you know, Fyonce, and had to get married,
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: and so I'm looking for more of a lifestyle.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Well where'd you meet her?
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: We met at the governor's inauguration in Mississippi in twenty twenty.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Wait wait wait, wait, hey, what were you doing at
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: the inauguration? B how'd you meet her?
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: Well? All good questions. I got an invitation in the
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: mail to go to the inauguration from the governor's brother,
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: who is a friend of mine. He supports our annual
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: NICKI Mitchell golf tournament every year. And I remember when
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: when Todd and I first became friends, his brother was
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: the lieutenant governor. Well, I didn't even know he was
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: running for governor. We just don't talk about that sort
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: of thing. And I didn't get the invitation myself. My
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: assistant got the invitation in the mail and she said, oh,
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: I'm sure he'll want to go to this. So she
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: just put it on my calendar and it was about
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: a week and I remember looking at the calendar and
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: I said, Hannah, what is this inauguration thing? What am
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: I doing? And she said, You're going to the governor's
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: inauguration governor of what she said, governor of Mississippi. And
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: I went, I'll be damp. I guess he ran for
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: governor and won. So I had this idea that I
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: would go down there and be hanging out in the
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: back of a bunch of Mississippians and watching the inauguration
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: from the back of a crowd out in the open.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: When I got down there, it was raining, like Noah
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: was going to be flooding by any moment, you know.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: Animals were lining up too. By two and the Pearl
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: River had come up out of the banks. It was
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: an epic flood that year. So they moved the inauguration indoors. Well,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: I'm wearing jeans and a denim shirt. I looked like
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: I came to change the light bulbs. So I'm standing there,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: and they put me in a prominent seat at the
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: front of the room, sitting next to the treasurer and
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: his wife. Everybody in there is dressed to the nines,
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: and I look like the long guy that got ushered in.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: But so the governor and his security staff start walking by,
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: and I backed. I stood up out of my chairs
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: and backed myself up against the wall so they could
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: make the turn and get around the corner to get
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: to the stage. And I looked over next to me,
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: and she was backed up on the same wall, right
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: there next to me, And I remember I asked her,
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: I said, what are you hiding from?
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: So? Was it an instant romance? Oh?
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: I can't say instant, but on my behalf it sure was.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: So who pursued who?
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Oh? You kid? And I chased her all over the
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: place after that. If I wasn't on the road, I
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: was making my way back to Jackson, Mississippi.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: And how hard was she to catch?
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: She's nearly impossible. Took some doing.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: So what sealed the deal?
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: Well, you know it ain't over yet. This is that wedding,
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: ain't till May, so there's probably still some room. I
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: don't know. I think I must be that kind of
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: guy that she never thought she would meet. And she's
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: certainly the kind of woman I never thought I would meet.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: And what's her life about?
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Well, she's an attorney. When I met her, she was
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: working with the State Supreme Court. She left that job
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: and got a gig working for the Attorney General. And
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: when she left them, she went to work with Morgan
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: and Morgan oh so, but she is incredibly smart, incredibly beautiful,
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: and she comes from the coast and I believe the
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: term is coon ass, but she's just a gorgeous coon
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: ass Mississippi lawyer.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, you're a musician who lives his life on the road,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: So what's it gonna look like when you're married?
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: Well, I guess that's what we're trying to carve out
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: right now. I can't stay on the road as much
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: as I used to, and I don't want to, you know,
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: I want to come home and have a have a
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: better version of a life with her.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: And does she plan to continue to work? And where
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: do you plan to live?
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: She is definitely going to continue to work. We're probably
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: going to have house, a house in Nashville for my
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: music business, and probably a place down in Mississippi. And
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: her whole family's from m Kill.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: And so you're going to have children?
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know. We'll find out.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, you're forty nine. How old is she today?
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: She's thirty three.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, Well, the reason I asked is, you know, in
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: terms of having children, age can make a difference. Let
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: me go back a step. You talked about the governor's
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: brother going to your fundraiser golf tournament. Are you a golfer?
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: I wasn't until Willie, and golf ain't even the worst
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: thing he got me hooked on when I had quit
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: drinking in twenty eleven and I kind of needed something
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: to pour all my time into, and Willie invited me
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: to go to his He called it his first annual
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: Fourth of July golf tournament, what turned out to be
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: his only annual fourth at golf tournament. And I learned
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: how to swing a club and hit a golf ball
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: at Willy's course. It was a burden Aalics country club,
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: but it's now Willie's cutting put. It's a nine hole
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: executive out there in burden Alice, Texas Spicewood.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you got sober, Willy invited you, you went
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: to the event. How much have you played thereafter?
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: I guess for the first few years after that. I
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: took it on as an assignment. And I mean I
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: was out there on the course every time it rain
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: or shine. It didn't matter, man. I would turn around,
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: get out there and go spend hours out there, hitting
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: about a thousand balls a day, that sort of thing,
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: especially after Alice Cooper told me that that was really
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: what kept him off the bottle for a while. He
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: said he leaned on golf too.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: So how much do you play now? And how good
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: are you?
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: I'm not good at all. I do enjoy it, but
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: it's not one of those things that ever registered with me.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: I still can't go out there and you know, put
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: one right up the middle every time. I have to
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: go out there and figure out what am I doing
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: wrong today? But I enjoy it.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: But how much do you play now?
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: I probably four or five times a year. I just
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: don't have a whole lot of time for it anymore.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, how does Jamie Johnson from Alabama country musician meet
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: Alice Cooper?
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: It would have been at one of his shows, and
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: he was opening for Rob Zombie. And I remember that
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: night pretty well because we went back and forth. We
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: went and saw Alice's show first, and then we drove
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: from that venue to the Rhyme and caught Don Williams set,
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: and left Don Williams and got back over to Alice
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: This show right about the time Rob Zombie was on
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: his second or third song, so we got to see
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: all three of them in one night.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, you happened to look a little bit in terms
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: of you know your hero or whatever like Rob Zombie.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: But what were you doing there to begin with? You
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: were Rob Zombie fan?
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: Well, I had definitely heard of him because back then,
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: before my hair turned blonde and gray and everything else
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: when it had some color in it, I was constantly
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: getting confused for Rob Zombie. And when I met him,
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: I told him my name, he said, oh, you're Jamie Johnson.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: I now looked at him and I said, yeah, well,
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: I see it now too. But I wasn't very familiar
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: with his music until that night. But man, he is
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: absolutely wonderful. And I wanted to go meet Alice because
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: I knew he and Willie were good friends.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, how did you meet Willie.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: H through Pooty?
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, tell me that story.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: Well, Pooty Locke was one of Willie's old friends. They went,
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: they went back a long time. Pooty's business card with
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: Willie said he was the vibe coordinator. That's his role
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: on the Willie Nelson to her back then, Well, I
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: met Pooty at the exit in in Nashville, and all
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: I knew about him that night was everybody kept saying,
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: that's Pooty, he's with Willie. Well, I went and introduced myself.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: We shook hands, told a few jokes. I bought him
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: a beer, he turned around, We traded numbers and just
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: became instant friends, you know. And the next thing that
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: happened after that, Willie invited me to go play farm Maid,
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: and I believe every bit of that came through Foody
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: and some of the other guys in the band that
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: i'd met. So the first time I played farm Maid
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: was in two thousand and eight.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, you played farm Maid. How did you go one
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: on one with Willy? And were you instant friends? What
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: was going on?
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was pretty well immediate. I had met Willy,
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: but it was in nineteen ninety seven at a show
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: he did in Auburn, Alabama, and it was brief. I
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: just got in a line of folks that were hanging
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: out outside his bus, and of course I had my
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: guitar and just like everybody else, hey would you sign
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: my guitar? Well, over the years, that signature that he
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: put on the side of my guitar rubbed off off
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: and so when I saw him again at Farm Maide,
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: I grabbed my guitar and had him sign the front
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: and this time I had to wear it with all
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: the spray, a little lacquer over it when I got
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: done and keep it from rubbing off. It's it's still
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: on there today.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Are you know? You talked about introducing yourself to whody.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Is that your personality that you go up and introduce
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: and me connections?
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: I did back then, but I was also kind of
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: the new guy and the music business and was still
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: kind of in a mode of network and I guess
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: at the time. Now I don't hardly ever go out
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: the bars, but uh, but back then, it was it
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: was my It was normal.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, But you've been in the business for decades. Are
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: you the type of guy who knows everybody or just
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: the people. No.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: I know who I know, And every now and then
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: I might meet somebody that walks up and introduces themselves.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: And I meet people all the time that you know
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: I probably should.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: Know, so generally speak you know, some people I know,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: they're on the road or they're home. They're on their computers,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: they're sending messages to all these people they know. They
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: may not even see them for a while because they're
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: on the road. Are you the type of person who
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: keeps contact with your friends.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: I try to. I try to keep up with people
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: I love, and sometimes it's possible and sometimes it's just not.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: But I feel like I surround myself with the kind
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: of friends that it's all right if you go go
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: awhile and you're not able to catch up. But I
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: mean I have to these days. It seems like I
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: have to schedule time to think about something.
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: So are there one or two people that you can
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: really rely on?
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: I've got way more than one or two. I'm a
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: very fortunate man in that regard. I'm surrounded by people
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: who love me.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: And are those people from people you grew up with,
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: people you met in the music business, People you just
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: met in passing.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Some are everything, you know. I've got friends that I've
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: had since Man, there's a family of them down in
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: Montgomery I've known since I was three or four years old.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: You know, the Walley family. But I've got some other
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: friends from elementary school, go back to first grade. And
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: I've got brand new friends that that I love just
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: as dearly as if we have known each other for
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: twenty years.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: And I mean, I realize you're on the road so much,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: and after you're on the road, if you're home, you
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: don't want to leave. But generally speaking, are you the
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: kind of guy who if I say, hey, Jamie, you
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: know we're gonna go to this guy's house, there'd be
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: some good people there, you're gonna say no, or you're
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: gonna say yeah, that sounds good.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna say no, and I'm gonna be overruled by Britney.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: Who's gonna remind me you're supposed to be getting out
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: and mingling with people and getting to know people.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Let's go, Okay, that's good.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: I'm an introvert. I like to stay home and reach
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: charge the battery when I can.
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: So you're still sober, right, Yes, sir, So, how do
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: you fill your time when you're home or when you're
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: on the road not performing?
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: I would say I feel most of it writing songs
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: and recording in the studio, and I read a good bit.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: What do you read?
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: That depends?
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a big reader. There's magazines, there's newspapers,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: there's fiction, there's nonfiction.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've read all of it. Uh. I like the classics,
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: like a good Stein back Okay, I like JD. Sallenger.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: He didn't uh, he didn't write much, but man when
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: he did, it was easy to get locked into his
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: writer's voice.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: It just kind of puts you puts me in a
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: in a mode. I don't usually pick up a Sallenger
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: without reading every single one of them back to back.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Here. Lately, my my book of choice, oddly enough, has
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: been the the Bible. I started from Genesis and I
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: guess it's been about almost two months ago and right
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: now I'm finishing up Jeremiah.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: Did you study that stuff as a kid or is
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: this the first or second time around or what?
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: I can't say I studied it, but I did hear
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: all the stories. And you know, I like to say
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: I read it, but I read it with a young
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: mind and I haven't read it since. And the things
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: that I have read I probably read twenty five years
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: ago or so, and this is my first time reading
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: them at this age with a little bit more life seasoning,
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: and the stories kind of hit different.
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: So what inspired you to pick it up?
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: It's hard to say. There's probably a lot of different
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: factors playing into that.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, are you a religious man?
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: I think we all are to a degree, and I'd
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: say right now my degree has intensified over the past
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: several months.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Was there a reason it was intensified?
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: Probably a lot of life change is happening at one time.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: It's a first record I've put out in fourteen years.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: It's also getting engaged and having that wedding day coming.
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: But it's also some friends passing away and that sort
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: of thing.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: Friends died before their time.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's happened a lot. You know. I've had a
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: lot of friends asked away, way to you.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: From misadventure or illness or accidents.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: Well, some of both, some of everything, you know. Some
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: I had one of them that overdosed, one of them
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: that died from type one diabetes, one of them got
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: shot in the head.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Tell me about the guy being what were the circumstances
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: that he gets shot in the head?
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: Well, the best I understood it was he was smoking
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: inside a bar and the bar owner didn't want him
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: smoking in there. And uh, I don't know what was
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: said back and forth, but Wayne was the kind of
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: guy that had the innate ability to absolutely uh infuriate
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: somebody with his words. He could make you so mad
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: with just a pointed comment. And he wasn't the kind
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: of guy that went around looking for trouble. But it
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: definitely found him that night.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: The guy shot him in the bar.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Did the guy pay at the price for that, go
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: to jail or anything?
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he did. He was convicted and I think he
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: might still be in jail. And do you want a gun, Yes, sir,
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: oh quite a few.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: Are you type of person who has it purely for
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: defense or are you a hunter or target shooter?
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: Well? I grew up in the country, and you didn't
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: necessarily have a gun out in the country for people.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: You had it because if you were going to be
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: walking around anywhere, it might be a snake, it might
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: be a cootie, could be something dangerous that you needed protection.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: From it probably wasn't going to be a burglar breaking
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: in your house. So I grew up around guns, and uh,
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: when I was nineteen I joined the United States Marine Corps. Well,
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: I've also been trained in how to use guns, and
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: they're very much a part of who I am.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: So when was the last time you fired a gun?
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: It's it's probably been a couple of years now. No,
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: I can't say that I killed a I killed a nail.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Last year I went up to Saskatchewan, went hunting with
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: a buddy of mine up there, and left everything up there.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: I didn't bring a gun in there. We used one
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: his and I left all the meet up there with him.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: What inspired you to join the Marines? And you don't
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: seem to me the type of guy who wants to
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: color between the lines and take orders from other people.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: I knew from the time I was a young kid
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: that I was going to be a marine. And I
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: don't know where I got that from. I just always knew.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: And I had a free ride scholarship at Jacksonville State University,
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: and so I went up there and did a couple
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: of years learning music theory and all that kind of thing.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: And when I was done with that, and I may
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: not when I had gotten my degree. I don't mean
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: I got a degree. I was just done with it.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: I went and found a recruit we were in Montgomery, Alabama,
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: and told him I wanted to be a marine. It
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: was time for me to go do that.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: They offered me a spot in the Marine Corps band
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: and I remember laughing at the recruiter and I said,
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to be that kind of marine. He said,
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: all right, he said, well, you you scored pretty well
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: on the as fab test. We don't we make you
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: a mortarman. So I became a mortarman in the Marine Corps.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: And so what did that actually involve?
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: Doing a lot of yelling, a lot of go a
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: lot of going deaf, a lot of a lot of
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: shots fired out of a tube that sat right next
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: to my ear For about eight years. It was fun
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: and you had to love it and hated all in
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: the same breath. And I learned that love and hate
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: were the same emotion. They both come from the same place.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, so if you were doing it for eight years,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: you weumped.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Now when I signed up, they weren't offering any four
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: year contracts. They were only offering eight year contracts, and
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: so the one there were some guys that could do
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: four year active and four inactive, and then the one
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: that I did was called a six and two. I'm
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: also still kind of a control freak, and I was
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: back then too, and I didn't like the idea of
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: having to go to Okinawa and places like that, you know,
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: where I'd just be completely uprooted. So I signed up
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: as a reservist where I could pick the classes that
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: I wanted to go to, you know, where you'd go
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: do this for a couple of months, and then go
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: do that for a few months, and you know, at
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: least I had some kind of control over where I'd
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: be stationed and for how long and that sort of thing.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, was the reservist only the last two years of
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: the whole time.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: It was a whole time.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So when would they call you up and say, hey,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: you got a report?
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: Well, there was you know, your one weekend a month
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: that was always on the schedule. There was two weeks
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: over the summer. And in addition to that, if you
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: wanted to take different classes and courses and that sort
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: of thing, you could you could sign up and you know,
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: go to San Diego for a couple of months, train
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: at Camp Pendleton and be studying a specific kind of
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: thing for a couple of months, and leave that and
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: go go do something in Jacksonville, North Carolina, or wherever else.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: So if you had to do it all over again,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: would you have joined the Marines?
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: Oh? Hell yeah?
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: So what exactly did you get out of it?
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: I got a nice scar on the outside of my
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: right knee over here, got a bad case of arthritis.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: I got some really cool camouflages closed I keep in
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: a closet because they're all too small. I got a
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: bunch of loud, long lasting friendships with guys that are
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: so close I don't even think the word brother would
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: be accurate enough to describe them. I've got some friends
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: from that generation of my life right there that you
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: know you can count on when everything else goes to hell,
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: the Marines come in.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: So you never saw any action or anything, no, sir,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: And yeah there's a camaraderie. How about all the discipline
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: and you know, were you down with that?
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah? But that's been there all my life. That didn't
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: that didn't even start with the Marine Corps. Uh. That
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: started probably from my mother more than anything her. Her
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: mother was a marine, so I knew how to make
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: a bed by God.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: So you see group in the country exactly where, well, that's.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: Spout what I'm thinking of when I say that in
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: the country's way out in rural Montgomery, Alabama. It's uh
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: south of the city, and it's on the road that
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: uh uh Stay Young wrote that song about the seven
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: Bridges road, right, the one that the song that the
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: Eagles recorded, right, But he wrote it he grew up
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: out there in the same place that I did. And
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: he called it the seven Bridges Road because if you
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: left Montgomery going down that road right there, you crossed
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: over seven bridges before you got to his house. But
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: that uh, that old moss in the trees, there's some
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: of the most beautiful Spanish moss. And if you catch
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: it on them, on them one of those big old
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: full moon nights and you see that stuff glowing against
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: the sky, it's one of the most beautiful things I'll
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: ever see.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: So how far from downtown was where you grew up.
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: It was thirty minutes if you drive slow in fifteen
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: minutes if you drive normally.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, what'd your parents do for a living?
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: My mother was a paralegal, and my dad was always
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: in retail sales in one way or another. When I
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: was born, he was managing a super Rex drugs down
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: in Troy, Alabama, and he did everything over the years.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: He managed Wilson's and helped them trends what's the word
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: transfer into a service merchandise. He worked for Circuit City
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: for a while. He managed a warehouse for a furniture store,
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: all kinds of things.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: And what was your relationship with your parents then and now?
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: Were you the type of person who was testing the rules?
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Your type person who's dying to get out of the house.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't say I tested the rules. I'm not one
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: that kind of just pushes to see how much somebody
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: can take, you know. But I do appreciate a good
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: amount of freedom, and I felt like they gave it
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: to me when when I was young, I learned that
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: if I made good grades, that the answer to whatever
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: I wanted to do was yes. And so I studied
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: hard and I kept my grades up and made sure
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: that I had enough leniency when the time came.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: How many kids in the family.
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: I had three sisters, so there was four of us.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: And where are you in the hierarchy.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: Number two?
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: And did your parents treat you all equally? Or because
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: you were the boy, you were the fear heard son.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: Well, from my perspective, I thought we all got everything equal.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: But you listen to my sisters, you get a different
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: take on it. I thought it was I thought it
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: was fairly equal. All of us got some.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: And then you were good in school? Were you like
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: number one in the class?
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: I know, I wouldn't say that. It was always somebody
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: in there smarter and made better grades. But I was
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: an age student. I hated getting bees. I hated missing
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: one if I knew I could get them all.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: Right, Okay? And what about friends in sports and other activities? Yeah?
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: I played enough sports I did. I played soccer a lot,
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: I played some football, some baseball. I wrestled one year.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: I tried just about everything. Just I was good. I
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: was a good fast runner, and I was always strong
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: as far as my size and my body weight. You know,
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: I never was a real big guy. I was a
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: guy that could hit the pull up bar and real
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: quick knock out twenty wow.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: So you were still getting these in high school?
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah?
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: So what if I talked to high school Jamie Johnson,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: what would he have said his future path would be.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: I'd have probably said something along the lines of engineering
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: or architecture. I always saw myself as getting into building
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: science or something like that.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: You know. So how did it switch to music?
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: I'd say that switch happened in Nashville. I had a
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: construction company do an insurance restoration. I was a general contractor.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: We came in and rebuilt stuff that had been burned
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: in a fire, blown over in a tornado, and that
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: sort of thing. I wasn't a good business man, or
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: that company would have survived. But uh, I really didn't
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: do well in terms of business. I did did good work,
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: you know, but the business ended up bankrupt. I did
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: a reorganization bankrupt and paid off all the debt from it,
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: and I ended up paying off all that debt with
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: my music royalties.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's really buy a couple of steps. You got
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: this free ride to college, you're an e student. How'd
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: you decide to drop out?
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: It was about money. I was tired of working like
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: crazy to pay a rent and only these utilities and
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: everything else, just to live this subpar kind of lifestyle
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: where you never had money to do anything. I mean,
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: I never had money for gas putting the car, and
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: I was delivering pizzas at the time, so it just
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: got to be a little too much of a challenge.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: Even with the full ride scholarship, it was hard to
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: keep up with bills.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: But you were taking music courses there.
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah. I was taking all kinds of music courses,
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: including applied science on French horn, and I think I
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: had gotten to a point where I felt like I
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: wasn't learning much. I was just practicing all the time.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: So how did you end up in Nashville.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: Well, I always knew Nashville was in my future. I
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: just didn't know when. When I decided to leave Montgomery,
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: I had already had a job at a cable company
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: where I was making all kinds of money going door
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: to door and signing people up for this new cable
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: company down there, and I realized I really didn't want
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: to be in sales for the rest of my life.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: And I also realized that my writing, as far as songs,
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: was getting better and better. I had a little following
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: in a local bar down there called Pure Country, and
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: I had a lot of friends down there that really
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: supported me. I had a group of guys that were
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: in a band that I thought was really good. It
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: was called Southern Sons, and these guys had all come
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: to Nashville and were given the country music scene a
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: run for the money, and they were starting to have
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: some success. And one of them, in particular, had gotten
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: a job with CMT. He was a program director with CMT. Well,
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: Kurk Brewer is his name. Kirk told me about this
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: sign company that his wife was working for at the
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: time and said, man, they need a good outside sales
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: rep and this could be a way to get started
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: in Nashville for you. Well, I came up and interviewed
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: with that company and got the job, and so I
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: moved to town January the first two thousand.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, let me kind of get this street we're and
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: when did you have the construction company?
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: Well, the construction company was about my third job in Nashville.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: That fast science gig lasted me, I guess until about
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: October that year, and I had to resign my posts
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: when I went to help this guy figure out the
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: color scheme for his restaurant, only to find out that
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: I couldn't help him at all, and he couldn't help me.
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: At all. And he kept asking me what color do
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: you think this ought to be? And what color do
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: you think that ought to be? And I finally had
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: to tell him, right, I can't help you at all
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: with this. I'm colorblind. He said, hell, I'm colorblind too.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: So I had to go back to the office until
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: the owner of the company. I said, Man, I can't
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: thank you enough for the opportunity, but I can't do
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: this a fish out the out of the pond over here.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: I can't be out here talking to people about very
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: specific colors too. It's not just hey, we think this
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: ought to be yellow, you know, it had to be
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: a They called them Pantone colors, and there's got to
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: be fifteen thousand shades of yellow, and man, you mess
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: that up one time, buddy, it's a it's a mess.
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: So I left that company and went to work with
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: a different company where I didn't have to discern colors.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: I went to work with a company called Heartland Pump.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: And this company would rent out big industrial water pumps
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: to do like a creek bypass if you were going
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: to build a bridge over a creek.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: And they also dewatered rock quarries and mines and all
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: that sort of thing, so we're bypasses whatever anything had
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: to be bypassed. They had a pump and a plug system.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: And I loved that company. I loved everybody I got
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: to know there. That's where I was when nine to
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: eleven happened. By the way, I was sitting in their
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: conference room in Carbondale or Carterville, Illinois. That the owner
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: and I, well, he sold the companies since then, but
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: he and I we still talk and try to try
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: to keep current. And it would have been that company
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: right there that I left. When my then wife Amy
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: inherited her parents construction company, they decided they were going
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: out of business and that they'd been an insurance restoration
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: her whole life, and so they left her the assets
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: of the company. We started another construction company. But even
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: before that, back in Montgomery, I was framing houses all
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: the time in between jobs and that sort of thing.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: So I've always had had a background in construction and
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: a hunger for it. I still love it. I still
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: love it. If I'm not building or renovating something, I
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: feel like something's wrong.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: So do you think you were a bad businessman because
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: you were essentially an artist?
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: I think I was a bad business man because I
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: legitimately couldn't give a rat's ass about money. I don't
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: care about money. It's the least valuable thing on the planet,
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: and I just refused to ever learn anything about it.
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: The first time I ever had to dive in and
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: learn something about the principles of money, it was when
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: I first got to Nashville. I started listening to a
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: program on the AM RADI the Dave Ramsey Show, right,
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: And I remember listening to Dave Ramsey and starting to
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: feel guilty about my own personal finances. But that was
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: a That was the first time I ever, uh, it
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: ever dawned on me that you know, you should stop
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: and learn how money operates. And it just took me
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: a while to kind of catch on.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: Well, the music business is femous and raife, with even
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: the most successful musicians being ripped off. Since you weren't
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: an expert in money, have you've been ripped off?
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: Well, if you're not an expert in money, you can't
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: say that you got ripped off.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: Excellent point. There's the A level student.
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: Okay, you have to pay attention. Money cannot wait to
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: get away from you. And if you're not aiming it
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: in a direction. It's gonna go whatever direction seems like
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: the least resistance.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, when did you first pick up an instrument and
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: when did you decide you wanted to write songs.
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: I'd say the first time I picked up an instrument
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: would have been a guitar. I mean picked it up
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: with the intent of learning how to play, not just
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: banging around and making a noise like you know sometimes
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: kids will do. And for me that probably would have
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: happened around five or six years old. I remember my
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: dad would play songs on his guitar and he would
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: strum some chords and the songs that he were playing
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: and I didn't know about you know, some people wrote
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: these songs and that sort of thing. I just knew
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: my dad sang all these songs. Well, a lot of
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: the Hank Williams songs that I learned from early childhood.
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: I thought those are my dad's songs. I remember first
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: time hearing Hank Williams on the radio and thinking that's
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: my dad's song. Who's this guy? I just kind of
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: I grew up with a passion for music, though, it's
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: what really drove me. And even if I didn't know
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: how to play. There was always this version of me
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: that was writing my own song, and it might have
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: just been taken the lyrics to somebody else's and replacing
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: them with whatever I was thinking about, but it was
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: always a hunger for me.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: Now, other than your father, were you listening to the
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: radio you were born in seventy five, MTV hits in
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: eighty one, What music were you listening to and where
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: did you find it?
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: We didn't have MTV. We had those rabbit ears on
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: the TV that picked up the three channels for free.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: Music for me would have been what we heard on
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: the radio. I remember I was a big Buddy Holly fan,
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: and it was like the first two or three tapes
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: that I ever bought were Buddy Holly, and I remember
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: when I found out that Whalon Jennings had played bass
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: and Buddy's band, and Whalen was also the guy on
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: the Dukes of Hazard, and that turned me into the
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: biggest Whalon Jennings fan ever. So it's all kind of interwoven.
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: But we didn't we didn't have no MTV in my
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: house growing up. We had vinyl records and my mother
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: was a big Alabama fan and she had every record
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: that they put out, and I'm talking about the day
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: it became available. She came home with that record. And
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: we also had a book that had the sheet music
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: of all these Alabama records. I think I had like
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: six different albums, including My Homes in Alabama. And that's
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: the first song I ever learned how to play on
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: a guitar and sing. I learned it right out of
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: that book.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: So you were listening mostly to country music. Did you
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: listen to any rock music?
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: Probably, but I didn't know there was a difference. To
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: me the Eagles. That wasn't really rock, you know, the
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: main heaven. It fit just as good with our country
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: music as it did anything else. But that would have
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: been the version of rock and roll I listened to.
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: My sister was down the hallway with her Madonna records
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: and Prince and she even had that Guns and Roses
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: record when it came out.
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: Did you like Appetite for Disruption?
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: Not? Probably? Not at first. I mean, down on my
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: end of the hall, it was still Vern Godzeden and
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: Merle Haggard.
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, So if you pick up a guitar at age
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: five or six, when you're in high school, are you
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: known as the guy who plays a guitar. Did you
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: play any gigs, form many bands anything like that.
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: No, most people didn't even know I did anything of musical,
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: I guess until about seventh grade. And that's but I
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: also kept to myself. You know, I didn't have a
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: whole lot of friends. Well, we lived so far out
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: in the country. Wasn't like I would get home from
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: school and hop on my bicycle and go visit friends.
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: We just didn't have neighbors like that. I kind of
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: grew up on my own, So even if I did
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: learn something on the guitar, it wasn't like I had
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: anybody I could call up and share it with. I
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: just played for my dad when he got home.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: So okay, that seventh grade people learned you played the guitar.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: How did they find out?
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: Well, it wasn't guitar at first. It would have been
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: that French orn that I was learning in the beginner band.
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: And I didn't stay in beginner band for very long.
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: I practiced so much, and I had already learned how
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: to read sheet music. My dad taught help me on
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: my hand growing up. You take your five fingers right there,
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: and they represent the five bars of a staff and
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: if it's a line, it's every good boy does fine.
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: And if it's a space, it's face face. So he
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: taught me how to reach sheep music just looking at
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: the palm of my hand. And the more I practiced
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: on that horn, the better I got. Within a few weeks,
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: the band director of that junior high school had me
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: sitting in with the advance band.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, then what happened?
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: I got into Drumming Bugle Corps. After that, this old
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: drum and Bugle Corps had well, they had a couple
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: of years back in eighty and eighty one, and then
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: they were just kind of coming back out. It's called
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: south Wind, and they had some auditions and I went
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: an auditioned for them and got into that where I
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: could travel during the summer. And I guess since it's
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: been since I was about twelve thirteen years old, I
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: started spending my summers out on the road traveling with
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: that Drumming Bugle Corps. So I've been a traveling musician
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: most of my life now.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, so what are you playing in the Drumming Bugle Corps.
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: Well, they called it a soprano, but it was a
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: soprano bugle, which is akin to a two valve trumpet.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay, you started with a French worn your father
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: helped you out. You would greet how'd you get into
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: the bugle?
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: That was it. I heard these guys were taking auditions
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: and trying to put this corps back together. I went
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: and auditioned, and uh, and became became one of them.
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: And uh, that's also kind of what started me down
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: that path of I guess you'd call it discipline, but
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: you had to have a good degree a discipline to
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: be successful in the drummer bugle corps.
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, are you the type of person that you can
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: pick up and play any instrument?
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't say that, but I can figure it out,
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: you know, I can. I can usually get some some
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: kind of tone out of anything.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: So you're in the drum and bugle cort and you're
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: traveling during the summer, where you're going.
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: All over. We would travel, Uh, you'd stay at high schools.
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: You know, most of us had a little sleeping bag
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: or a bedroll or whatever enough closed to get you
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: through the summer, and did our work out on football
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: fields and that sort of thing. In fact, that's where
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: our shows were were in some of these uh big
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: old high school and college football stadiums. So that was
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: the kind of places we'd travel. We didn't stay in hotels.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: I learned to sleep in a luggage rack on a bus.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you're in Alabama. How far from Alabama
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: would you go?
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: Oh? Hell? I remember seeing Niagara Falls for the first time.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, about thirteen years old. I mean we got out.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: We did some sure enough, travel up New York, Maine, Kansas, Tennessee.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: I mean just we went everywhere we toured.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, in the world of drumming google cores, was this
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: like a known good? I mean, is there a hierarchy
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: of drumming and bugle cores? Oh?
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Ours wasn't necessarily one of the best. It was
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: a smaller cores. Back then, they used to have this division.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: It was called Age sixty I think it was. And
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: all it meant was you didn't have as many members
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: as the bigger cores, and we didn't. We had a
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: very small drummer bugle corps. But for our size, we
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: were really good.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: And how many summers did you do that?
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: Oh? I did probably two summers traveling with those guys.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: But I probably did winter camps and that sort of
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: thing four years or so.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: So how did it end with the drum and bugle corps.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: Well, you age out at twenty one, but I didn't
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: get anywhere close to that. I did it up until
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: I got into high school, and by then I was
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: already working during the summers and didn't have didn't have
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: time to do it anymore.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: So when did you start playing guitar and writing songs
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: to the point where other people heard you perform?
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: I guess by the time I was in tenth grade
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: or so, I was already sharing songs that I wrote
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: with some some friends, you know, some guys and gals
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: I was hanging out with aside from school, but not
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: to the point where I was bothering people with it.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: Are you know, purposely pursuing Hey, check out this song
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: I wrote, just you know. But by the time I
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: was a junior in high school. I remember then there
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: was a group of kids from my church that really
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: thought it was a neat thing. But my dad had
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: me and my sister playing in church with him from
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: a young age. So for a lot of the people
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: in our church, they just that they knew since I
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: was about ten years old or so that you know
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: that I played guitar and sang harmony with my dad
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: when he would get up and sing in front of
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: the church.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: And did you ever play high school talent shows or
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: you know sweet sixteens bar Mitzvah's anything like that.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: No, I never got into that sort of thing. I
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: never saw music as a competition, and I just saw
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: it as a something I really wanted to do and
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: I wanted to do it well, but I didn't. I
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: didn't get into the competitive stuff with it so much.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: And I did some of that. You know, the drum
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: Corps thing was a competition, but I really didn't care
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: how we did. I was in it more for the
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: getting the summer away from the house and getting to
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: travel than I was and anything else. And now even
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: the stuff or like state band competitions and all that
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: where you get the ribbons and all that kind of thing,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: I didn't care about that. Junt.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, you grew up in Alabama. Even at this late date,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: the North in the South are very different, and you've
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: also traveled around the country. What do people who don't
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: live in the South, don't live in Alabama, what don't
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: they understand about Alabama.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a tough one. I guess it had a
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: perspective comes into play. Being from Alabama is the only
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: perspective that I have, So I'm not real sure what
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: somebody else's perspective of Alabama would be. I am aware
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: that there's a lot of things that we considered normal
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: down there that that other people would consider taboo, like
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 2: putting cheese in your grits. Uh. Some people you have
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: to explain to them what grits are. So I don't
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: know that there's there's probably a lot of things that
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: uh about Alabama that would be taboo even to today's Alabama.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: It's changed a lot, just like everywhere else in the world,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: especially over the past since the information age came in.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: We're in wind in this scenario, did you meet your
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: first wife?
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: I met Amy. When I first got to Nashville. It
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: snowed fores well for me, being from South Alabama, I've
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: never seen that much snow in my life. And I
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: had a couple of dogs I had rescued from this
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: shelter down there. They were Japanese akitas, and I took
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: them over to the side of priests dam where they
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: got a nice steep hill and I just let them
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: drag everybody around in the snow that day, where her
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: friends thought it was a lot of fun to grab
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: a hold of these two akitas and ride them down
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: this hill, let these dogs pull their sled around.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: So, hi'd you meet her? And how did it become
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: a romance in marriage?
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: So they invited me to do to go to church,
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: and I started going to that church. It was it
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: was Two Rivers Baptist, and it was the biggest church
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: I'd ever seen in my life. It was a big, old,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: massive building and it kind of helped me, you know,
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: meet some people and get rooted and get established in Nashville. So, oh,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: I guess for me, Amy goes back to the very
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: beginning of my time in Nashville, which has been twenty
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: five years now. She wouldn't appreciate me mentioning the number
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: of years for that. For that, I apologize.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: How did it end with Amy?
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: Willie says, you never have an ex wife, there's only
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: additional ones, So there is no end. Amy and I
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: are still wonderful friends today and we have a twenty
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: one year old daughter, and there's no end to that. Relationship.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: It's just it's morphed into a beautiful friendship over the years.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: Well, who wanted the divorce?
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: You know, some scabs are better left unpicked at up.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, Well, let's just put it this way. You're great
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: friends now you were married before? Were you always great friends?
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: Or where there were some bumps in the road before
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: you became great friends?
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: I like any good friendship. We've had some bumps in
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: the road. We just chose not to dwell on them
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: longer than it took to put them away and move
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: on and forgive and forget.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: And what is your twenty one year old daughter up to?
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: Whatever she decides is the correct answer. She's a very
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: smart young lady. And I mean she's got a brilliant mind.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: She's got a wonderful discipline and a great disposition. She's
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: smart enough to do anything she puts her mind to,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: and she knows that, and she's very selective about what
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: she will apply herself to, and when she does, there's
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: nothing stopping her. She goes to Sanford University. She's studying
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: physical therapy, and I'm sure that may change a couple
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: of more times before she graduates, but she's in her
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: third year right now?
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: And did Aby ever find somebody new?
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, she got married probably four or five years ago.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: I want to say it was during the lockdown with COVID.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: And he's a good he's good to our daughter, and
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: he's great for Amy. So I like him a lot.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: His name is Keith.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, So you move to Nashville because there's a job
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: with the sign company. You ultimately get into construction. We're
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: in this narrative. Do you say I want to make
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: music my career.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: I think the whole point of me coming to Nashville
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: was about making music my career. I guess I got
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: really serious in it, and it took me a while.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: I had to I had to grow a business in
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: singing demos, and that started just about from the beginning too.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: When I got to Nashville, I guess it was within
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: a couple of weeks. I had met a guy in
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: one of the bars down on Lower Broad UH named
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: Greg Perkins. And Greg was a fiddle and steel player. Uh.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: He played with Tammy Wyett and some other ones. But
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: he he had asked me to come down to his studio,
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: which is in the old r c A building on
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: Music Row, and uh, and sing some demos. And so
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: the first thing, the thing I ever sang, uh, that
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: was recorded, was in that building. And that's that's where
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: my studio is today. His his studio was on the
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: first floor. Mine's mine's on the third floor. Oh but
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: I in one way or another, I've been making music
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: in that building ever since I got to town.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you meet Perkins and he says, come sing
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: on the demos. What happens after that.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: Well, I met some other folks, and you know, once
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: they start passing around these songs trying to get somebody
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: to cut these songs, your voice is going around with them.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: One of the first things he had me do was
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: a duet and with a singer I didn't know at
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: the time. Again, I'm new to town. Everybody's new to me. Well,
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: this gal comes in and she's about twelve months pregnant
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: and she, I mean, you know, that turkey button was
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: just looked like it had popped three weeks ago. She
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 2: was very pregnant, about to give birth to this baby.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: And walked in there, and I mean, within twenty minutes
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: had just delivered one of the best vocals I've ever heard.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: I knew people could sing like that. And she walked
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: out and he explained to me, he said, that's Gretchen Wilson.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: You're gonna be hearing that name, and boy did everybody
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: hear that name. After that, she was something else.
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: So that was before her redneck woman hit.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, sir, and she she pretty much taught me what
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: it was like to walk in a studio and deliver
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: a vocal performance. You know, you could lollygag around in
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: there for three hours and get something that sounds like crap,
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: or you can you can walk in there and just
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: pour the coals to it and be done in ten
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: minutes and you make a make a good sized check.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: So, so what is the trick?
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: Open up? Don't don't be so reserved with it. Don't
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: be in there humming around trying to figure out you know,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: you got to go in there with everything you got,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: let that personality come open, and then try to reel
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: that back in if it's too much. But uh, that's
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: what that's what I learned from watching her do it.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, you're selling point for these demos, Perkins or somebody else.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: Immediately realized you had a signature, very unique and great voices.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: That what made it happen.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: I would say, it's what God it started, you know,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: But once people start hearing your voice, after that, it's
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: like that, it's how many times do they hear your voice?
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: If every time they hear a song and they go,
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: who in the hell is that singing? And it's your
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: name that comes out, they go, man, that guy, and
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 2: they start marking your name. And so I guess over
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: the course of a few years, I must have sang
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: a couple of thousand demos, and I became that guy
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: that everybody recognized my voice even if we'd never met.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: And at the time, will you pling out it all?
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: Or its all like recording?
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: I was always playing out in the bars if I could,
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: and I was also doing writer shows. Anytime I could
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: get out in front of a crowd, I was, I
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: was going to I played a writer's round one night.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: A buddy of mine that was he actually produced a
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: record on me, Dave Brainer invited me to do this
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: writer's round around two thousand and one, and I remember
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: that because it was about a week after nine eleven,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: and uh, I went and played this writer's round and
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: on the other end of the round from me was
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: Randy Hardison. Randy was a studio drummer and a hell
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: of a songwriter. And I learned that that night, when
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: when every song that I did followed one that you
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: know that Randy sang, I learned that my songs suck
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: that you know, he had these these top level songs
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: down there and and and perfect delivery, and uh, I
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: realized all I was doing was singing down here. When
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: we got done with that round, he and I traded
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: numbers and he's He's the one that got me to
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: Buddy Cannon. He's the one that introduced me to Buddy
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: and Noroh and Buddy and I have been friends ever since.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you know you ultimately had a couple of
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: huge hits like Hockey Talk Badonka Donk. When did you
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: start writing songs that were circulated and how did that
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: happen as supposed to just singing on demos.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: I was already working on an album in two thousand
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: and one and with with Dave, which we released it
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: on my own and uh May of two thousand and two,
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: so that that would have been the first stuff that
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: I put out there. I put it out. It was
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: a record called They Called Me Country and even at
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: the same time then I'm still singing demos and singing
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: singing songs for everybody else as a songwriter. That that
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: would have been the first stuff. Uh, but donka don't
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 2: came later. And this this was after meeting a bunch
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: of studio musicians. You know, Randy Hardison, he got killed
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: probably with I don't know man, six months after I
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: met him. We were talking about doing a record together
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: and and you know, writing together and all this kind
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: of thing, but we didn't even have enough time to
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: get anything on the calendar. Really yeah, and uh, and
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: he was well, I say, murdered, even though them guys
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: got off from from it, but they still killed my friend.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: But through him, I got to meet a bunch of
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: other studio musicians and I kind of learned by that
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: time the ropes of the demo business. So I started
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: hanging out with other writers that had publishing deals and
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: was starting to kind of I had booked my first
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: session that em I was helping me with, and at
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: the time I wasn't even signed to em I, but
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 2: they were willing to pay for a session or two
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: on good faith. And I had written this great song
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: the night before and I couldn't wait to get into
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: the studio the next day because it was my first
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: tracking session on these new demos. Well, I was gonna
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: bump the donk a donk off of that session, but
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: I'd been out drinking the night before. I think I
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 2: was playing that new song for Luke Bryan hanging out
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: in the car of the parking lot in front of
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: tin roof, and uh whatever whatever happened next. I remember
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 2: I was late to the session by about ten minutes
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: or so, and when I walked in, the band was
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 2: already playing Badonka dont I thought, was it too late
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: for that? I guess.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: So you were hanging with Luke Bryant before he had
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: a deal.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we were. We were all kind of yeah,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: just good friends back then. You know, there was a
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: there was a group of us that hung out and
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: the bars together, and we all knew each other from
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: the writers rounds and from the from the various things
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 2: that we were all getting into. Yeah, Randy uh Howser
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: is a good friend of mine. Jared Nehman, Dallas Davidson,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: Rob Hatch, we were all friends back then and supported
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: each other. It was wasn't a competitive thing, you know,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: like you're trying to get somebody else's gig or nothing
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: like that. If I find out these guys are playing somewhere,
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna go hang out and support, just be there
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: for them, you know. Plus it's good music.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: The people who had success of a grander scale, like
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: Luke Bryan. Did you see that in advance? Were you surprised?
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: Oh? I wasn't surprised, but nobody. You couldn't predict that
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: stuff back then. You know, I couldn't look over that
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: group of friends and decided in advance who was gonna
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: hit one over the wall. And you know, I knew
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: every one of them was capable, and still are. You
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: never know what to expect out of those guys.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: Okay, so the first album, m I paid for it.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: No, I paid for the first one. Actually, I'd have
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: to correct myself on that. Mister Garner paid for the
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: first one, John Garner. I paid him back though, if
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: that counts.
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: Do you remember how much it was?
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: If I had to guess, I'd say it was probably
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: about thirty thousand dollars something like that.
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, you cut the album, what happens after you put
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: it out?
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: You can almost hear yourself going broke. It's a it's
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: the sound of going broke. You play in your own album,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: in your own truck, going up and down the road.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: It's not like any kind of there's an immediate change,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: and suddenly I'm, you know, hearing the sounds of registers
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 2: ring in the background. I think I printed two thousand
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: copies of that album, and we probably sold half of them,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: and I gave a bunch of them away to the
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 2: USO at one point. And I still get a lot
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: of those guys and gals and bring me their copy
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: to sign that they got when they were overseas. Of
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: course I see them still. They people put them on
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: eBay and sell them.
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: So did the first album? Did it lead to something?
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: Did it cause a certain success?
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: I guess you have to look at it like it
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: was a business card, and it made its way around
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: to a lot of offices, and later on a lot
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: of good opportunity came from that. People who wouldn't have
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: taken a meeting with me otherwise, but because they had
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: this CD sitting on their desk, you know, they had
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: something that was at least somewhat representative of what I
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: can do. I wrote just about every song on there
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: with the exception of a couple of cover songs, and yeah,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: it definitely opened a lot of doors. E AM. I
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: paid for the first demo sessions that I did after that,
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: and they helped me a lot kind of getting my
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: feed in the door of the labels. Back back in
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: that day before it was before social media, and so
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: the only kind of attention you would ever get would
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: have been word of mouth in town. And it helped
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: me tremendously to have the biggest publisher in town open
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: all these doors and start pitching my songs to A
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: and R representatives at labels. That's how I met Brian Wright.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: Brian was an an R rep for Universal of Mercury
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: and MCA, and he's ultimately the guy that after a
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: my attempt with BNA Records failed, I wrote in Color
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: and a bunch of other songs, went and recorded an
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: album called That Lonesome Song. And it was Brian Wright
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: that brought me into Mercury Records in two thousand and eight.
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, but you did make a record for BNA.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: Yep, it's called The Dollar And how did.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: That come to happen? What happened in the week of
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: that coming out?
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: Well, I guess the record would be an A. At
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: the time, I kind of had a buzz going around
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: town and there were some opportunity at some labels, but
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: Joe Gilani was the first one to make me an
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: offer and and put a record deal together, and I
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 2: took the opportunity. It seemed like a It seemed like
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: a great deal to me at the time. And you know,
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: if I had it to do over again, I'd still
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: do it. I probably would have done some things different,
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: but I got to put out a a Buddy Cannon record,
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 2: so I know it's a good record. It sounds great.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: Some of the songs on there I probably would not
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: cut if I had it to do over. But it
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: ain't a bad record.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: So how is it in with BNA such as you
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: get on Mercury.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: Oh, I was kind of a problem child for Joe,
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: and I've apologized to him since, so I could. I
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: think it's all right to tell the story, But uh,
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Like like you said about the Marine Corps,
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: that discipline only goes so far with me. And I
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: guess when I got my opportunity with bn A, I
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: was done with people telling me what to do and
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: what time to do it, and uh, it just kind
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: of it didn't set well with me, So I stayed
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: drunk a lot of the time. Plus I was dealing
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: with a divorce and my life was changing in all
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: kinds of ways, and a lot of it wasn't real good.
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: And so that that deal lasted as long as it
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: took to to try and push a single or two
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 2: at country radio and country radio where that didn't embrace
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: me at all. They I must have repelled them in
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 2: a lot of different ways.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, we're in this scenario. Do you give up your
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: d job.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: That would have been before that BNA record?
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: So what happens first Mercury is interested or BNA says
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: we don't want to work with you anymore.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 2: Well, Mercury didn't come until after BNA. But even when
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: I did that BNA deal, after Joe had made me
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 2: the offer, I still call Brian right and told him, man,
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: just bring me an offer.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: The reason I couldn't get an offer from Mercury at
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: the time was because James Stroud had joined Lewis at
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: Mercury and he had had a policy that he was
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: going to be producing any new artists that were signed
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: under the umbrella for that duration of his tenure there. Well,
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: I already had a relationship with Buddy Cannon, and I
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: was determined he was going to be the guy producing
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: my record and I didn't Uh, I didn't see the
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: need and it would have felt like a betrayal to
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: me and I couldn't do that.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: Okay, So how did you get involved in writing give
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: it Away? And Ladies Love Country Boys?
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: Well, ladies love country boys? It was uh, kind of
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: a nod to Ladies love Outlaws. That's been so long ago,
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: I can't hardly remember.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: I remember.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: Very little. I can't e I can't even remember writing
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 2: that song though, that's been a quite a while back. Now,
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: what other one did you ask me about?
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: Give it Away?
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 2: I would give it away? Well, give it Away was
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: kind of was written after the BNA deal, and that
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 2: was my first time to write. I think it was
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: my first time to write with Whispering Bill Anderson. Buddy
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: had called me in and said, hey, you need to
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: meet Bill. So we came in to write, and I
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 2: had written that idea, but I didn't expand on it
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: even in my notes. And so when I told them
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: the idea, they asked me to explain it, and I said, well,
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 2: you know, sort of like she was storming through the
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: house that day and I could tell she was leaving,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: but I thought, all she'll be back. And she turned
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: around and turn her pointing at the walls and all
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: this stuff, and said, you see that, just give it away.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: Well I spit it out and something just like that,
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: and Bill said, I love everything you just said. How
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 2: do we incorporate that? That might be your whole first verse?
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: Had?
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: I had to back up the tape and play it
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: just to find out what all I had said, and
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: I wrote it down the way that it came out.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 2: She was storming through the house that day and I
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 2: could tell she was leaving, but I thought, all hell,
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: she'll be back. So that I remember we were sitting
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: there talking about putting the mellow to all those words,
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: and Buddy said, why don't you just let it be
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: a recitation? And I remember hearing Bill Anderson go a
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: recitation that's brilliant. The I learned a lot right with
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 2: those two guys. You know, Bill Anderson, he is the
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: consummate Nashville songwriter. He's had a hit in every generation,
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: in every decade since well before I was born and
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 2: just one of the greatest people you could meet, one
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: of the greatest songwriters ever.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: So how long after you've that afternoon did he get
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: to George Street and it came out?
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: It didn't happen the afternoon wrote it. We put together
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 2: a work tape and and I mean, I don't know
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 2: how many times I even had that song demos over
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 2: the years. I'd say within a couple of months. Though.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: My manager at the time was IRV Woolsey, and IRV
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 2: was also George Strait's manager. And I remember I was
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: in Myrtle Beach. I was working on one of the
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: shows that I had booked, and I got a call
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: from IRV and he said, George just cut your song.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: They were down in the shrimp boat in Key West,
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 2: Jimmy Buffett Shrimp Boat Studio, and IRV told me, he said,
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 2: you know, George just cut your song. Of course I'm
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 2: doing double backflips on the other end of the line
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 2: and I had to ask you, but I said, what
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: what song are you talking about? They said, give it away?
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: And I thought, man, I would have never thought George
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 2: Strait would cut that, but I'm glad he did.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, what about what it became a huge hit. He
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: went to number one.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: It felt in a lot of ways like redemption. It
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: felt like I think I described it in a song.
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: It felt like I'd been forgiven for all my wrongs.
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 2: And it really put me back in the gear of
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: writing songs and looking to record again. It's like George
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 2: decided country music wasn't done with me just yet.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, you make a deal with Mercury and Luke Lewis
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: and you make an album and Dave Cobb is the producer.
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: Dave Cobb is one of the hottest guys in Nashville
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: today and has been for like a decade at this point.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: But when you were working with him, it was at
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: the very beginning. How'd you get involved with Deve Cobb?
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 2: Well before Dave, I had already finished that album. I
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 2: had already written everything I was gonna put on it
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: and recorded everything I was gonna put on it. We
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: were in the studio working on the mixes, and Shooter
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: had introduced me to Dave before that, and Shooter Jennings
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: and Shooter keeps telling me, and I mean now he's
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 2: calling me every other day going, hey, you got to
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: come work with Dave and I said, well, Shooter, I've
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 2: already I'm already done with this record. You got to
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 2: give me some time to get this thing. But he said,
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 2: you don't need to release that record until you come
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: out here and meet Dave. I said, all right, Well,
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 2: I had this promotional thing I had to go to
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 2: LA for for this show called Nashville and not the
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 2: one that everybody got crazy about later on, but this
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 2: was the preliminary version of Nashville. When they first told
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 2: me about it, they said it was a documentary. Later
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: on I heard the word docu soap, and it turns
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: out this was what is it they call it when
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 2: reality TV. This was before they ever had coined the
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 2: phrase reality TV. This would have been one of the
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 2: first kind of kind of things like that. And I
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: had to go out there to promote that show. So
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 2: I told Dave. I said, while I'm out there, let's
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 2: take a few days and get in the studio. I'll
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 2: bring all the songs that I've got. We could even
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 2: write some out there, and if it doesn't work, you're
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 2: eating the cost of this. And I really got to
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 2: love Dave Cobb getting in the studio working with the
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 2: band he had out there those guys were just starving
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 2: for some good country music, and I happened to have
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: a bucket full of it. We sat down and had
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 2: the probably one of the best three day sessions I've
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 2: ever been through in my life. It was just one
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 2: song after another, and when I got done, I realized
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: I now had a perfect conundrum. I've got to figure
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: out what to do with all these songs. And so
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 2: I got back to Nashville and t W and I
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 2: sat there in the control room. We realized, Man, we're
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 2: gonna we need to take a couple of these songs
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: and put them on this record before we put it out. So, yeah,
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: Dave Cobb helped me help me produce some of the
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 2: that Lonesome Song, and then after that we put out
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 2: that double album, The Guitar Song, which was a lot
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: of those Dave Cobb produced songs on there. And yeah,
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 2: he was a fine producer, but not in this way
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 2: where like he's dominating the sessions and that sort of thing.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: David just has this finely tuned ear for guitar sounds.
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: If I told him I really want to sound on
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: this like Leonyard Skinnard in the seventies, he's going to
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: know exactly what amp, exactly what guitar, and not just
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 2: know what they are. He's got them hanging on his
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: wall and go over there and pick up a nineteen
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 2: fifty whatever, Les Paul, and here's a Princeton amp that
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 2: you play that through. And a brilliant idea guy and
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 2: a strategist in the studio. He doesn't waste time and
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: he doesn't let it all slip away. He can really
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: get to the heart of something really quick. He's a
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 2: truly talented human band. So I stole Dave's band and
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 2: took him on the road.
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: You made him a full time producer.
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 2: No, I literally stole his band. I took his drummer
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: and the guitar player Raddy Cope, and I put him
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 2: in my traveling band and took him on the road.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: And they've had to move to Nashville to steal them back.
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: So you know, on that record and on the new record,
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: another producer credited is the Kent Hardly Plea Boys, And
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: obviously that's a joke. Knt Hardley Plea Boys, is that
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: just basically.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: You No, No, that's my old demo band. Those are
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 2: the guys I used to make a living with We
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: were kind of we were just a squad of hooligans
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: that figured out a niche where we could make a living,
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 2: get the bills paid. All we were doing were cutting
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 2: demos that for songs that other songwriters had written. You know,
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 2: we'd get in there and chart them up, get a lyric,
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 2: put them all together, tw do all the mixes, and
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: we ran pretty much. It was like a cycle. You know,
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 2: we could we could have all that that stuff done,
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 2: probably knock out an album in four days, you know,
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 2: track it one day to a couple of days, vocals
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: and mixes, and have it turned in after that, you know,
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 2: better than some people's albums.
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: And you're still working with those guys today on your
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: new album.
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 2: Well, work is a strong word for it.
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: But yeah, it's a strong word because you don't consider
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: playing music work or there is something about the guys.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: What do you mean.
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: It ain't work. We get together and hang around and
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 2: somebody will play a work tape and next thing you know,
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 2: we got the headphones on and we're laying it down.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: That ain't work. That's just loving what you do.
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: Okay? On that album in color is on that did
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: you realize that would have as much of an impact
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: as it did.
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 2: No and color came around after a BMI award show.
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 2: So let me back up completely and tell you I'm color.
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: Blind, right, Well you said that. Yeah.
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 2: So they were playing some photos on the back wall
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 2: of the BMI that night, and I really didn't gather
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: until I saw Lee Thomas Miller. I ran into him
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 2: on a sidewalk out in front of B of My
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 2: a few days after that, and he was telling me
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 2: about those pictures. He said, did you see at the
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 2: b of MY Awards the other night those old black
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: and white pictures they were playing on the wall? And
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 2: I did. I was sitting there looking at him, but
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 2: it didn't occur to me that they were black and white.
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 2: And he said, I know what I see when I
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 2: look at those pictures. I see Bill Anderson and a
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 2: couple of random people. But I wonder what Bill Anderson
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 2: sees when he looks at those pictures. Well, as soon
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: as he started talking about black and white, my brain's
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: over here on autopilot. And I remember growing up hearing
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 2: about the Wizard of Oz when they had corrected the
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 2: color and put it in code of color. And the
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 2: big deal at the time was that It was an
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 2: irreversible procedure that they did on the original tape, and
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: so there was no going back and reverting back to
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 2: the original black and white version of it. Once they
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: did this, and I remember the big slogan was where's
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 2: the diva? I see it in color? So that's hanging
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: around in the back of my mind. And when he
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 2: got done telling me, you know, what does Bill Anderson see?
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: I said, yeah, you should have seen it in color. Huh. Well,
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 2: we laughed and had that Dewey Cox moment where we're
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 2: gazing off into the wilderness trying to see if some
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 2: ideas come. But we wrote down a writing day to
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: get together and write that idea. In the morning we
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 2: got together, we were still poor in the coffee, and
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 2: James Otto called me and said his co writers had
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: canceled on him that day. I said, well, me and
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: Lee are about to sit down and write this song
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: and it ought to be a pretty easy rite. Why
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 2: don't you come over here and join us. So when
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: we got done with the song, we realized we had
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 2: put a little bit of each of our grandfathers in
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 2: that song. And I didn't really realize even then that
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 2: we had written a song that was based on an
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 2: entire generation. It was really based on our personal experiences,
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 2: and the experience is just sitting there looking through an
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 2: old photo album where everything's in black and white. Ours
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 2: is the first generation that saw those old black and
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: white pictures turn into color and saw color pictures turn
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: into digital. So I guess that's where the idea impacts.
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, stopping for a second, did you do a lot
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: of those writing sessions still do? Okay? And the record
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: was a huge critical success in commercial success, how did
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: that feel?
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 2: Everything got busy, I mean busier than you can ever imagine,
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 2: Like you can't keep a calendar. You have to have
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 2: somebody nearby who has the calendar, You have to have
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 2: somebody else do the drive, and you got to have
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 2: somebody else that can get us past security in these
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: places because you're in a hurry. You know, you got
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 2: a lot of things to do and very little time
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 2: in the day to get them all done. So that
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 2: was the first impact that I remember it having. I
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 2: remember it was the first time I had to have
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 2: somebody whose whole job it was to buy clothes for
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 2: me because of all the different events we were doing
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 2: that year.
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: So after that cycle ends. To what degree did you
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: have pressure from Mercury to have another hit.
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know that there was ever any real pressure.
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 2: I know that they had a high cost of living
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 2: that they sent out the country radio and it was
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 2: immediately rejected, And there was probably some other songs that
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 2: we sent out there, and if there was a pressure,
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 2: it was one that they didn't pass on to me.
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: But over time I kind of recognized that country radio
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 2: was never going to play my songs and it seemed
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 2: like a big waste of financial resources to keep going
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 2: around the country and asking them to. You know, every
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 2: time you go out there and work a song at
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 2: these radio stations, you're spending a lot of money to
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: get around there to visit them. Well, I had already
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 2: done by this time several times over and running up
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 2: huge bills with these record labels wasn't what I intended
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 2: to keep doing, especially if it was never going to
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 2: pay off. So I kind of retired from from pitching
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: songs to country radio. And that would have been around
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 2: eight or nine.
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: Really, So how did it end with Mercury.
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 2: Well, it ended when Luke Lewis retired, That's what I figured,
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 2: and I just really didn't want to make another record
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: after that. You know, I was by twenty ten, I'd
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 2: already had that concussion, and Luke retired. They brought in
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 2: Mike Dungan, who was nice enough to let me out
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 2: of my deal. But when when Mike and I first met,
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 2: I I told him my heart just wasn't in it anymore,
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 2: and uh, it was it was time for me to
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 2: step aside. And uh, he was nice enough he let
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 2: me out of my deal. And I think it was
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 2: maybe two weeks later they had already signed Chris Stapleton,
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 2: and hey, man, I couldn't be more proud. I was like,
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 2: they nailed it. They nailed it. They got the best
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 2: damson singer in town.
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: Had you known Chris before?
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 2: I didn't know him. I knew his wife, Morgan. Uh.
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 2: We were both demo singers together, and she was also
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 2: on B and A the same time that I was,
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 2: and uh, she and I did some demos together back
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 2: in the day. I knew of Chris because he was
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 2: one of those voices that every time I got stunned
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 2: listening to a song and asked, who is that? My God,
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 2: that's Chris Stapleton. Jesus. He was one of those guys.
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 2: It was just every time I heard his voice, it
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 2: was distinct, it was as real and just as man.
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 2: It was so good still is he's great.
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: So it ends with Mercury. You've had the concussion. Do
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: you think you're never going to make another record? Are
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: you depressed? I mean, what's your state of mind? Then?
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 2: No. I was absolutely convinced I had made my last record.
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 2: I just knew it. I didn't have it in my
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 2: I wasn't inspired anymore. You know. I'd made all of
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 2: these records or recorded all of these songs, and I
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 2: had yet to have any kind of financial success in
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: the and the record business. In fact, somebody else owned
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 2: my publishing and somebody else owned my masters, and it
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 2: was one of those things. It was like I didn't
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 2: get anything out of it. You know, radio never even
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 2: played my songs. I got some trophies, but hell, who
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: wants that, you know? So it just didn't do me
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 2: any good. And I was really done with it all,
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 2: to be honest, and I just didn't have a reason
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 2: to make another to record another session. I didn't want
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 2: to do it. And I still had friends that would
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 2: hate come sing on the song with me. And you know,
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 2: do stuff like that here and there, and I guess
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 2: I had enough of that. Where I was still appearing
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 2: on fifteen albums a year, there were just everybody else's records,
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 2: and you know, I was content with that for the
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 2: longest time. It wasn't really until Toby Keith passed away
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 2: that I kind of woke up and recognized that's the
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 2: end of his contribution to country music. That's it. Whatever
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 2: he's recorded up to this date is all we're getting.
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 2: So I started paying attention to my own and realizing
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 2: I'm nowhere near done. I got a lot of work
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 2: to do. I got a lot of music I got
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 2: to put out just to even get caught up. So
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 2: that's what kind of got me back in the studio.
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, but in that interim, you were continuing to work live. Yeah,
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: But were your numbers going down because you had no
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: record in the marketplace.
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 2: I don't think so. I think it was quite the opposite.
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 2: Brian Wright tells me all the time that those records
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 2: are still type performing records at their label. The thing
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 2: that happens is after you, when you're not on a
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 2: major label, there's no more of the parties where they
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 2: celebrate you now have a gold record, or your gold
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 2: record's gone platinum, or now you've gone double platinum. And
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 2: it wasn't until I put out another record where they
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 2: are I aa uh, I think that's what it's called.
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: And they've certified. They refreshed all their numbers one day
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 2: and I got to see what some of these albums
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 2: had actually done. And it's kind of nice.
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: And you know, you rent up a lot of costs
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: going to radio whatever. Do you make any money off
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: the records?
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 2: I suppose I've made a nickel or two. Now I
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 2: don't know what all's recouped and what happened recouped. I
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 2: think that's that's something for the lawyers and the CPAs
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: to sort out.
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: So how did you end up making a new record
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: with Warner.
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 2: It started with Brian Wright again when he and Stephanie
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 2: left Mercury. His wife Stephanie that they left Mercury and
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 2: I told him, I said, well, I guess we're making
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: another record. He didn't have anything, He didn't have anything
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 2: else to do, and I really didn't either. But at
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 2: the same time, Chris Lacy, Chris and I pretty much
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 2: started our careers running the same time, and We've been
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 2: friends for an awful long time. Well over the years,
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 2: she moved up through the ranks of a publishing and
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 2: got into the record business and ended up with Warner
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 2: and handed up in the in the driver's seat over there,
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 2: And she came to me one day and just says,
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 2: we're not done by a long shot. She says, I
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 2: don't want a record from you in hopes that we're
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 2: going to make a bunch of money off of you.
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 2: I just want you to get back to doing what
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: you were put on this earth to do, and get
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 2: you back to making country music records. And I don't
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 2: care what it takes. I'm here to help. And so
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 2: I didn't have a reason not to anymore. And I
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 2: just kind of I gave up on the whole idea
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 2: that I would never make another record. I abandoned that
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 2: whatsoever and just started from scratch and started back in
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 2: the writing rooms. And man, it took me forever to
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 2: figure out how to write songs again. You ought to
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 2: hear them first ones I wrote. They're absolute garbage. It's
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 2: like any kind of craft, the more you do it,
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 2: the better you get. Really had to get back in it,
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 2: and I mean with a lot of time invested in
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 2: writing with some of the greatest writers that I can
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 2: get in the room with, and Chris Stapleton was one
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 2: of those. He really helped light my pilot light again
• 1:54:21
  Speaker 2: and get me back to going.
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 1: So how long to go did this process begin?
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to figure it's twenty twenty five now. I
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 2: guess this would have been uh as far as the
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 2: record goes, probably two or three years now. As far
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 2: as the writing, Chris and I really started writing together,
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 2: I guess around twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen. We'd written some
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 2: songs together back back around nine twenty ten, but I
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 2: mean we really got to, you know, working together, around
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 2: eighteen or so.
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: So the album's been out for a while, you can reflect,
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: what do you think about the experience having done it?
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 2: I thank God every day that he put friends around
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 2: me that loved me enough to remind me what my
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 2: purpose is. It would have been easy for everybody just
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 2: to leave me alone and that would have been the
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 2: end of it. But I have all these people who
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 2: love me in my life enough to make me get
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: up and do it again. That wouldn't leave me just
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 2: sitting there.
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: And now that the project has finished is Warner, and
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: everybody's still excited as excited about moving forward.
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 2: I hope so I have an answer. I haven't checked
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 2: the numbers lately, but I don't I doubt that even
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 2: if it didn't perform well that they would give up
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 2: on me. They seemed like such a great team of
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 2: people over there, and you know, I really enjoy making
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 2: records with them, and I really never thought i'd enjoy
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 2: that aspect of working with a label. I always kind
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 2: of looked at the at the labels and thought, man,
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 2: I can't do nothing to make them happy. Every song
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 2: I wrote was to this or to that, or too
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 2: long or too short, or too country and not country enough.
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: So how did you get sober?
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 2: Well, that's a long story too. I got tired of
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 2: waking up surprised I would. I was a heavy drinker
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 2: and I wasn't a social drinker. It wasn't like I
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 2: was gonna have two or three after work and then
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 2: go home if I If I had one, I had
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 2: just decided how the rest of the evening was gonna go.
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: So drinking wasn't one of those things that I It's
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 2: not like I didn't have the ability to stop. I
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 2: didn't ever, just said that I didn't have a reason
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 2: to see if I had the ability. I just really
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 2: liked a drink, and I found out from years of
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 2: therapy later that it was probably masking some other kind
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 2: of pain or hiding something else behind it. I quit
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 2: drinking in twenty eleven. I still taste it when I
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 2: burt all these years later, seems like it's still fresh
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 2: on my mind. I don't think I'll live long enough
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 2: to forget what Jack Daniels tastes like. I quit smoking
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 2: pot probably around twenty fifteen, and I didn't smoke for
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 2: the longest time, And I also didn't write anything for
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 2: the longest time, and didn't record anything that didn't have
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 2: any passion for most of it for the longest time.
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 2: And for the most part, I still don't smoke. But
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 2: every now and then I may have one when I'm
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 2: writing a song or something like that, if I felt
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 2: like I needed to lift an inhibition or something. And
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 2: what it is it is like you sit down to
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 2: write and you get this washing negativity over you. It's
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 2: it's the analytical part of my brain that I can't
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 2: seem to get past. It's it's a bunch of cluttered
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 2: up noise, and it stops you from being as creative
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 2: as you should be.
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: What were the triggers to stop drinking and to stop
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: smoking pot?
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 2: The main trigger to stop drinking drinking would have been
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 2: my daughter. She was at the time seven years old,
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 2: and was you know, you're being an example one way
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 2: or the other, and up until that point in her life,
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 2: I'd been a bad example and I was adamant about
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 2: correcting that. So she she was a driving factor and
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 2: quitting drinking. Pott was not really something I felt like
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 2: I ever had any kind of issue with. I was
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 2: always kind of, you know, take it or leave it.
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 2: As far as POT was, I never saw the harm
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 2: in it.
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: Going back to drinking, when you stop drinking, you have
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: to change your lifestyle because you're not going to the
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: bar and your friends always say, oh, let's go out
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: for a drink. What's wrong with you? How did you
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: actually stop drinking? And how hard was the transition?
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 2: Well, you're gonna have to change a lot of things,
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 2: and that is one of the things I had to
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 2: change was my entire social life was happening in these bars,
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 2: and it wasn't much of a life to begin with.
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 2: If I'm being one hundred percent honest. People tell you
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 2: had a good time, but if you don't remember having
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 2: a good time, did you really have a good time?
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 2: So it wasn't doing me much good to begin with,
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 2: and it was starting to damage my relationships beyond repair.
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 2: And it was not something that I had to have
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 2: a whole lot of coersion to make a decision that
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 2: this wasn't doing me a lot of good. You know,
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 2: I don't. If you know, there's people out there who
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 2: can drink and it doesn't do anything at all. There's
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 2: other people who when they drink, their life starts falling apart.
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 2: And those people know what I'm talking about. When you
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 2: drink and it starts impacting your relationships with people you
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 2: love and people who love you, it's time to examine,
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 2: and it's probably time to pull up and give it
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 2: a break.
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: So did you go to rehib did you go to AA?
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: Did you just cool turkey?
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 2: I'm a very stubborn man, and all I had to
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 2: do was rewire the drinking into that part of my
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 2: mind that makes me upset. And once I had it
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 2: wired in there correctly, it was one of those things
• 2:02:16
  Speaker 2: that I knew I didn't need any more help to
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 2: deal with I'd already dealt with it. I realized that
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 2: that sort of thing doesn't work for a lot of people,
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 2: and so I don't advocate for that style. But if
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 2: I tell you I'm going to do something, you can
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 2: take it to the bank. And if I tell you
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 2: I'm not gonna do something, there's nothing you can do
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 2: that'll make me even reconsider my position on it.
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 1: Okay, something you said at the top was you're an
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: angry guy. Now, needless to say your regular demeanor in
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: talking that doesn't come cross. But tell me more about
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 1: your anger.
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 2: I wish I knew more about it. It's it's not
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 2: there always, And I don't know that I would describe
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 2: myself overall as angry. I think I would describe myself
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 2: as it was more like high blood pressure. It was
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 2: like being being always at the at the brink of stress.
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 2: You know, when your stress is at a perfect ten
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 2: and any little thing can tip you over the edge.
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 2: And I think that's what the concussion had done to me.
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 2: It it had raised my stress level to a permanent level.
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 2: Drinking didn't bring it back down anymore like it used to.
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 2: Nothing did, and that that's the part that that sent
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 2: me to the brain state technology and leke artists and
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 2: all those guys to start getting I guess it's called
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 2: brain balancing.
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure. But the anger do you feel separate
• 2:04:24
  Speaker 1: from other people in society and do things frustrate you?
• 2:04:31
  Speaker 1: Is it that kind of anger? Or you're out with
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: some people and somebody is just talking and you're saying, men,
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: they just can't handle this anymore.
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 2: No, it's not a It was more personal things, you know.
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 2: It was more things that I had to deal with.
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 2: I guess over time. I think the root word that
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 2: I've been learning in the Bible here lately is forgiveness,
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 2: And what does that really mean? To receive forgiveness means
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 2: you have to admit having wronged somebody and you received
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 2: the forgiveness as a gift, but you first have to
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 2: repent and you have to do your best to make
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 2: the thing right. And it's not a skill that a
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 2: whole lot of people possess today. People don't like to
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 2: admit they've been wrong. They don't like to admit they've
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 2: done wrong or said something wrong, or you know, maybe
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 2: betrayed a friendship, behaved in some way that wasn't appropriate
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 2: or very friendly, and we don't like to be called
• 2:05:52
  Speaker 2: out on our bullshit, and I guess that's coming and going.
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 2: So what I'm learning is we're supposed to forgive as
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 2: we're forgiven, and it's hard. It's hard to forgive, just outright,
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 2: especially to forgive somebody who's never issued an apology for
• 2:06:20
  Speaker 2: what they did. It's hard, but it's not impossible. And
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 2: it was a lot of that kind of pin up
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 2: frustration that I just carried with me for so many
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 2: years and allowed it to eat me up from the inside.
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 2: You know that holding a grudge poisons the vessel in
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 2: which it's kept. That's what I was. I was a
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 2: poisoned vessel for a while. It gets better every day.
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 1: Well, that's good to hear, and I think, on that
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 1: note of insight, we're going to leave it at that. Jamie,
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: been fascinating speaking with you. I want to thank you
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: for taking this time with my audience.
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 2: You wrote such a wonderful column about my show out
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 2: in Los Angeles one year, and I want you to
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 2: know you put a smile on my face and made
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 2: my heart beat a little bit prouder. And I appreciate
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 2: all of the words of encouragement I've gotten from you,
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 2: Bob over the years. Thank you.
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, I remember it was at the Wilter,
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 1: and I remember exactly where I was standing. I was
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: a big fan and it was a great show, and
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 1: it's great to finally pluck your feast to face.
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much that it was the biggest pat
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 2: on the back for me. It meant so much to
• 2:07:52
  Speaker 2: me and I still wear that like a badge of honor.
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: While you're leaving me speechless with a smile, my thieves
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: and I think we're going to leave it at that
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 1: till next time. This is Bob leftstis