Latest / The Other 22 Hours / Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (Jeff Hanna) on a 60-year touring career, records with hair on them, and the joy in folding laundry.

Transcript

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (Jeff Hanna) on a 60-year touring career, records with hair on them, and the joy in folding laundry. · The Other 22 Hours

0:00
[SPEAKER_00]: It's Cowboy Jack Climit's line.
0:03
[SPEAKER_00]: We're in the business that haven't signed, if we're not having fun, we're in the wrong business.
0:06
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not doing our job.
0:08
[SPEAKER_00]: That's super important.
0:09
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the most inspiring thing.
0:10
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fun.
0:11
[SPEAKER_00]: There are things we got to do.
0:12
[SPEAKER_00]: We all have chores.
0:14
[SPEAKER_00]: You got to do those chores.
0:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes you can find joy in the dishes or phone laundry.
0:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
0:24
[SPEAKER_01]: We often define artists by their output, their records, books, movies, and the times they're on stage.
0:30
[SPEAKER_03]: But the art is made in the quiet, the struggle, and the mundane, the hours that no one sees.
0:36
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm McKayla Ann.
0:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm Aaron Kray for Hayes.
0:39
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the other 22 hours.
0:41
[SPEAKER_01]: An exploration of the creative life lived in between.
0:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Today, we're on a defeat to our conversation with Jeff Hanna, the singer, guitar player, and founding member of the legendary nitty-critty dirt band, who, on top of being three-time Grammy winners, are currently in the midst of whiny-down a nearly 60-year touring career, which,
1:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Up until recently has continued to include hundreds of dates a year, in addition to his work with nitty-gritty-dirt-pan Jeff has worked with a veritable who's who of American songwriters, including Linda Ronsat, Emile Harris, Johnny Cash, Steve Martin, and last but not least, his wife, Matrice Burry, who's written little songs such as strawberry wine and hundreds of other hits.
1:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and this was really fun to get to dig into such a long career and life, we really dug into the love and all the different ways that we can approach the process of songwriting and recording, as well as the importance and value of community and having fun.
1:57
[SPEAKER_01]: With that, please enjoy our conversation with Jeff Hannah.
2:03
[SPEAKER_03]: So we like to start with just how are you today, and where are you physically and creatively?
2:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Physically, I'm a national tendency, and I'm sitting in our writer's room, which is, there's a lot on the trace of bird BMI Awards right over here on the wall.
2:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, some old posters and some just some stuff and a lot of instruments, a lot of old guitars and things that can maybe get you into the moment creatively.
2:30
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's also a great place.
2:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I love just sitting on this couch over here drinking coffee in the morning.
2:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It's probably the quietest spot in her house.
2:38
[SPEAKER_00]: The one that our dog doesn't come into too too much.
2:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love her dog even so much, but she bumps that her nose on the door like now.
2:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I won't say the WALK word, you know, yeah, you loudly.
2:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I've lived in Nashville now for just 1985.
2:55
[SPEAKER_00]: 41 years in April, which was I had never intended or thought that I would be here this long.
3:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very grateful, Olivia, as you pointed out earlier, we have quite a community.
3:06
[SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty amazing.
3:06
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a lot of amazing people here in high.
3:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Having come from Los Angeles, actually from Colorado, this move was from Colorado, but a Los Angeles is where our band guys started and we kind of came up in that kind of magic 1970s, true bit or the famous club, that was kind of our clubhouse.
3:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And those were all our, you know, the kids.
3:26
[SPEAKER_00]: We kind of went to music school with, and that was pretty special.
3:31
[SPEAKER_00]: But after people started getting record deals and hitting the road, we never saw each other, because Los Angeles was so spread out as part of it, I think, and people's lives change.
3:39
[SPEAKER_00]: When I moved here, I felt a lot of that really great.
3:44
[SPEAKER_00]: thing that I felt in my 20s when I lived in LA about that community of writers and like-minded folks, and there's no shortage of that in Nashville, and it does my heart good to see that and hear that.
3:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And whether they're folks that I've known for a long time like Rodney Crowler, I mean, I hear us.
4:01
[SPEAKER_00]: that are of the same generation or me or kids that are just starting out, they're so passionate and they have their scenes, there are so many great, as you know, scenes in this town, so many people sitting around talking about it, meaning they it usually is the song, which is to coin a phrase, you know, it's where all starts.
4:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah that's beautiful.
4:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah that's something that really resonates with us about this time is the community.
4:26
[SPEAKER_01]: We've been here for 12 years and Nashville's really exploded in that 12 year time, but it still feels like a small town all at the same time and you know no matter how often we go out I used to know everybody in the room and now I don't know anybody in the room when we walk in.
4:40
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's still, you know, the people that have been here for a long time, it still feels like a little community.
4:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I agree with that.
4:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love that about it.
4:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I do, uh, betray, say, co-wrote this great song with Gretchen Peters and Ben Glover.
4:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
4:55
[SPEAKER_00]: The three of them wrote this tune calls arguing with ghosts, but the opening line in the song is, I get lost in my hometown, which is a common theme for us.
5:05
[SPEAKER_00]: If we drive downtown now, it's like you're looking for, I can't see the bat building anymore.
5:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I can't see the rhyme in any more.
5:13
[SPEAKER_00]: You got to pay attention, but a lot of growth.
5:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure cranges in there were a couple of years ago.
5:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you used to call the construction crane, the city bird of Nashville.
5:22
[SPEAKER_01]: 100%.
5:23
[SPEAKER_01]: You'd see them all over, but yeah, that happens.
5:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you know, every time I go down to the station in, I have to be able to see the building, otherwise I'm like, where am I?
5:32
[SPEAKER_01]: What is this place?
5:33
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and we've only been here a third of the time that you've been here.
5:37
[SPEAKER_01]: The station and the still that just the same building, one story, and then there's just all these monstrous skyscrapers around it now.
5:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm always picturing, you know, that film up.
5:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's a little tiny house in the middle of the, yeah, and that's what the station is.
5:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love what that place represents.
5:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a number of levels, you know, it's great that they haven't knocked it down.
5:56
[SPEAKER_00]: That's great.
5:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
5:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's interesting, though, you were talking about coming up in the 70s in LA and at,
6:04
[SPEAKER_03]: the troubadour and that's an era that if you're a music fan, we romanticize that era and read books and watch documentaries and love all the records that came out of it.
6:14
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's so interesting to think about how that was like a short moment in time for you guys who actually lived it.
6:21
[SPEAKER_03]: and there's all these different scales of that, you know, like last night I played a vinyl tap over in East Nashville.
6:28
[SPEAKER_03]: I haven't played a show in Nashville.
6:30
[SPEAKER_03]: That isn't like at the Bluebird or Musicians Corner or something.
6:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I haven't played my own show in probably seven years, which is crazy.
6:38
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I just wanted to play a no-pressure, not selling tickets, just like a neighborhood, little local thing at the record shop and live right down the street.
6:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Back when it was the original family wash. Yeah.
6:49
[SPEAKER_03]: And friends that came out said, like, oh, this reminded me for us, we all like hung out at the five spot when we first moved to town 12 years ago.
6:56
[SPEAKER_03]: And everybody was there.
6:58
[SPEAKER_03]: That's how we made all of our friends.
7:00
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's the same thing.
7:01
[SPEAKER_03]: Everybody like grows up.
7:03
[SPEAKER_03]: goes on tour where you tour more than you play your town, even if you live in a music city.
7:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
7:09
[SPEAKER_03]: And like life just kind of takes you away.
7:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And for me, it's been this process of wanting to get back to basics.
7:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I started to kind of lose the love of the music because the business was just like getting me down.
7:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And
7:24
[SPEAKER_03]: grossing me out and I'm curious to hear from you what your experience has been of like having that really magical time where you guys all are just brought in together with dreams and the love of music and then also
7:41
[SPEAKER_03]: it going on to like crazy levels of start them and success and all of that stuff for varying degrees for different people and how that changes people and changes your relationships to each other and as well to the music.
7:57
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a big really big question.
7:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, as you said, and I'm glad to hear your point of view about how the Fiespot was your true door, you know, that's a beautiful thing.
8:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And you find your people, and as I noticed, and I'm sure you're aware of, and I'm sure you guys had the experience of like, you got to pick up the phone once in a while.
8:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's phone at to me is like, oh, you used to talk on these things, remember that?
8:24
[SPEAKER_00]: You know?
8:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
8:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that the real connection to people like in person is really great.
8:30
[SPEAKER_00]: We're trying to betrays and I've tried to get out there and get off the couch.
8:34
[SPEAKER_00]: There's so many great things to binge on TV.
8:36
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a little too easy.
8:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Our dog even likes watching TV.
8:41
[SPEAKER_00]: This is like, you know, just get out of it and go.
8:45
[SPEAKER_00]: But the, you're right, people's last change.
8:48
[SPEAKER_00]: She started out and you're all kind of like having a blast and supporting each other, your group of friends who oftentimes are musicians as well.
8:56
[SPEAKER_00]: or in some part of the music community.
9:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, like you said, people end up on the bus.
9:02
[SPEAKER_00]: They get on that bus and they're gone.
9:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a bittersweet way to put it, but the kind of family reunions for us a lot in the last few years has been one of our pals' passes away.
9:13
[SPEAKER_00]: It has been way too much of that.
9:15
[SPEAKER_00]: In the last little while, you know, there's a lot of how I'm going to cry in it, but you also remind each other, the comment has so great to see you.
9:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I hate that it's this circumstance.
9:24
[SPEAKER_00]: But in most cases, you honor the people you're there to honor, you know, in very big folks go, yeah, but it's great to see you.
9:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Call me up.
9:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go get a burger.
9:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go pick it up.
9:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, let maybe even write a song.
9:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go see a movie.
9:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's just talk about it.
9:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It's important.
9:42
[SPEAKER_00]: It's essential, especially in the world we live in right now.
9:45
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the person could actually and we don't get this time back as they all we say.
9:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
9:50
[SPEAKER_00]: My grandfathers.
9:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
9:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we are at an earlier phase in our life where we have young children, but the in the moment appreciation for the time that we are living in right now is very tangible to us.
10:05
[SPEAKER_01]: and it's what I hear you saying there.
10:07
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just like trying to hold that nugget, which kind of ties in what I heard Michaela asking about, you know, back when you were at the troupe door and all that, I grew up idolizing that scene that you guys had, that community and that what you guys had created, whether it was consciously or circumstantially just all being there and what was flowing through.
10:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you guys have an awareness then of what was going on and how special it was or was it just a Wednesday?
10:31
[SPEAKER_01]: at the club down the street.
10:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was a combination of both, you know, we all started in the case of our band.
10:36
[SPEAKER_00]: We started in a little club in a little music scene, Dan and Orange County, California, where our band started in the Long Beach.
10:42
[SPEAKER_00]: So there was a club down there called the Paradox that was tiny.
10:46
[SPEAKER_00]: The blue bird looked like an arena.
10:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was all acoustic stuff.
10:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And there were guys like Jackson Brown and there's a guy named Steve Newton and then the late great Tim Buckley, who is?
10:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep, Buckley's dad, guys.
11:00
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I always had to make that reference.
11:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Those guys were getting a lot of attention, Jackson, and Steven, Tim.
11:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And we all ended up moving North to Hollywood, basically, where the troubadour and the Astro of two legendary clubs.
11:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And so again, we're just still hanging out.
11:20
[SPEAKER_00]: but the vibe remained the same.
11:23
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a little less small town, you know, up there when I say Hollywood, it's just a place, you know.
11:29
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't.
11:30
[SPEAKER_00]: To Hollywood Hills, there's so many parts of Tennessee that have that sort of vista in common, you know, where you're up amongst the trees.
11:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And even though you're in the city, it feels like you're,
11:41
[SPEAKER_00]: 40 miles from downtown when it's really only a couple miles made.
11:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, I'm sure these conversations happen here as well.
11:48
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, somebody will walk into the Schubert or Barraga.
11:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a sign.
11:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a deal.
11:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm leaving a town or I'm going to go out and open for session.
11:57
[SPEAKER_00]: and everybody's written for everybody.
11:59
[SPEAKER_00]: As people got more family and we just happen to have been around folks that it sounds like a drop something, you know, but people like Jackson Brownle then Iran's stat and the future Eagles, you know, I knew Bernie Leiden and I knew all those guys Bernie, Len Fry, Randy Meizner, I didn't know Don Hanley before they started, but I sure paid attention once I heard the music those guys were making.
12:21
[SPEAKER_00]: But when that all exploded in the early 70s, we weren't in touch as much.
12:25
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we're all off doing our own thing.
12:27
[SPEAKER_00]: We ended up leaving our bandits moved from Los Angeles to Colorado.
12:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Part of it was we wanted to change a scene and we had played some shows in Denver and Boulder in Evergreen, Colorado and Aspen, Colorado, which was a sleepy little ski town back then, and we just loved it.
12:43
[SPEAKER_00]: But then a bunch of pizza.
12:45
[SPEAKER_00]: from Ellen, he started moving to Colorado.
12:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Joe Walsh moved there that guys in the Eagles all had homes up there.
12:51
[SPEAKER_00]: The band Poco, Great Band.
12:54
[SPEAKER_00]: So another, here's another music scene.
12:57
[SPEAKER_00]: And it started not there or two.
12:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Certain of one of the things that dictates how the old gang breaks up a little bit is having families and you guys know quite well, you know.
13:07
[SPEAKER_00]: People's lives change, you know, five o'clock, 70 calls, hey, come on, man.
13:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
13:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know.
13:14
[SPEAKER_03]: We're like, no, we're starting our dinner bath and bedtime routine that is going to hold us captive for the next three, four hours.
13:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And there is okay.
13:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, just a quick pause from this conversation.
13:26
[SPEAKER_01]: The other 22 hours is an independent production built entirely on the idea that he's quiet on his conversations matter.
13:32
[SPEAKER_01]: The best way to support our work is simply to share it.
13:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you can think of one person who would appreciate this show, please pass it along.
13:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you haven't yet, please follow our show on your listening platform of choice or subscribe to our channel on YouTube.
13:44
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a small action that we say massive difference for us.
13:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for being here.
13:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's get back to our conversation.
13:52
[SPEAKER_03]: When we last saw you, we were on Kayamo and we have two children now, but we had just one at the time and she was two and a half, I think.
14:02
[SPEAKER_03]: And it was interesting even like, on that experience on the boat of like, we chose to bring her with us, but we had a different experience than if we had been childless, so like all of our friends.
14:13
[SPEAKER_03]: They came away from Kiyomo feeling like bonded like they all went to summer camp together and they were up late drinking and jamming and we were like up late with a crying toddler like just thinking of a whole life
14:28
[SPEAKER_03]: we have such different phases of life that then feeds our creativity in a different way.
14:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm curious about that because it's like sometimes the energy of being amongst a lot of musicians who are all striving and starting out like that's the energy that feeds your creative drive.
14:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes
14:49
[SPEAKER_03]: going and living in the woods and like being away from that is what your creative drive needs.
14:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Parenthood I found is a wealth of creative inspiration.
14:59
[SPEAKER_03]: The challenge is having the time and energy and brain capacity to channel that creative energy, but it's just like to me, motherhood has been like, it's like the world is technicaler now.
15:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Everything through our daughter's eyes is like,
15:15
[SPEAKER_03]: amazing.
15:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's been such a wealth of songs, but they're so different from the songs that I used to write.
15:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I always make a joke that I used to write about prostitutes and getting drunk.
15:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And like, now I'm writing about my little girl.
15:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, so...
15:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Can you kind of expand on that for your experience of just like honoring those different phases of life and, you know, if there have ever been times that you've noticed that you had to really work for your creative inspiration or when it was as it's shifted throughout the time also like as pressure has come from gaining success and needing to sustain and employing people it's kind of a big grand question.
16:01
[SPEAKER_00]: creatively, I am the laziness guy ever.
16:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I love it when someone can come up with an idea, you know, the simplest form of that is go writing.
16:10
[SPEAKER_00]: If you walk in the room with an idea or a title, it sure is a lot of help or someone understands.
16:15
[SPEAKER_00]: The job of being a touring musician, which is really, you know, we're all tributers, as they say, that's been my focus for most of my life.
16:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And when it comes to writing, I always feel like writing is a bonus time.
16:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't work at it as much as I should, but I love getting in a room with people and throwing down.
16:34
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, sometimes it's a long walk.
16:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I find that going to hear somebody that's really good is among the most inspiring.
16:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Creatively.
16:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Creatively.
16:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Creatively.
16:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Creatively.
16:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Creatively.
16:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Creatively.
16:49
[SPEAKER_00]: That's easy for me to say.
16:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, make up a new word to creativity.
16:53
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the bumper sticker.
16:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
16:57
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that sometimes it's just a visual.
16:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it's a guitar riff you might hear.
17:02
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of times it's a lyric.
17:05
[SPEAKER_00]: or a film.
17:06
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of stuff that can really get those juices flowing.
17:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I think and I we went on a little writing campus in Friends of ours, which wasn't intended to be a writing campus just supposed to go hang out.
17:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's been some time together because they hadn't moved out of state.
17:21
[SPEAKER_00]: We ended up writing a bunch of songs.
17:23
[SPEAKER_00]: But that was just like, what if maybe we'll write a bunch of songs.
17:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So.
17:27
[SPEAKER_00]: That was really cool.
17:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And the intention was there was never a quota, there was never a end game to it.
17:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's in my accidental situation.
17:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Got me kind of more excited about writing than I've been in a very long time.
17:44
[SPEAKER_00]: The hardest place for me to come up with anything substantial is the road.
17:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have friends that just feed off and they love it.
17:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just like, and I get a decent meal and enough for us.
17:55
[SPEAKER_00]: which is I don't want to win a bite or I love my job and I've been really, really lucky.
18:00
[SPEAKER_00]: But paying attention again, I've got a lot of my friends that have written great songs either inspired by situations on the road or literally sitting in the back of the bus, you know, chatting it down or talking into your phone.
18:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we just had Susie bogus on, so she was telling us about, I think actually I had emailed Gretchen when you guys were all at Gretchen's place, right?
18:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, that, that can't, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
18:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Asking of, she would connect me with Susie.
18:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I love her.
18:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I love both of them.
18:31
[SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, I feel like Jim Lauderdale is someone who talks about how he's like writing constantly, like sitting at the bar after playing a show and we're all wired so differently.
18:41
[SPEAKER_03]: I remember when we first moved to town, I was kind of, I never really thought I wanted to do the music row, like songwriter thing, but I was kind of dipping my toes in and just getting the like, you know, you have to write every single day, like you wake up and you write and it took me a long time to understand that that's not how I worked and I didn't want.
19:00
[SPEAKER_03]: to and that was okay.
19:03
[SPEAKER_03]: So it was like if I was trying to be a pop country commercial writer then okay maybe I need to adhere to those parameters but I didn't want to but there's also that difference between what are the like commercial capitalist driven dictations were told how you need to operate creatively and like how do we just naturally operate creatively.
19:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I always love reading about people's other folks' processes.
19:33
[SPEAKER_00]: That Stephen King book on writing is fabulous.
19:36
[SPEAKER_00]: You guys are probably read it.
19:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It's funny because Stephen King really the reason that I read is Stephen King.
19:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I hated reading when I got out of high school.
19:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I'm done with this.
19:45
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always on assignment.
19:46
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, one of the guys that I was playing music with said, man, do you ever read on the road?
19:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, yeah, I don't know.
19:52
[SPEAKER_00]: magazines.
19:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And he handed me the Stephen King book and I was often running in a high and a fairly voracious reader now because of that.
19:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So he wrote this book called On Writing, which is basically his story and how he gets inspired.
20:05
[SPEAKER_00]: His process is really pretty great, but have I learned anything from him not sure, but I think it's, it's not still to learn something every day.
20:14
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a great example.
20:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Under there are several,
20:17
[SPEAKER_00]: about the process, whether it's creative writing or writing songs, writing songs that are really complicated, because you kind of make a three-minute movie.
20:26
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have two hours to tell the story, and then even at that, there's so many brilliant writers that their hook is.
20:35
[SPEAKER_00]: economy.
20:36
[SPEAKER_00]: When I can hear a tune that they could have said something in 20 words and they said it with five.
20:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, oh, you just took that didn't you?
20:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just killing me.
20:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
20:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Gretchen and Metracean and Seizeer.
20:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Good examples of that.
20:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
20:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Harlan Howard of course.
20:53
[SPEAKER_01]: For sure, you know, whole paradox of the simpler the line, the harder it is to find is a tough one for me to wrap my head around, you know, like, it's so simple.
21:03
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so plain.
21:04
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so resonant, but it's so hard to actually land in that spot.
21:09
[SPEAKER_01]: and land on that.
21:10
[SPEAKER_03]: It's so exciting to me.
21:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, I, my body is like buzzing with excitement thinking about it because I, I do a lot of songwriting coaching and when I'm working with students and like, I always say like, you need to be economical.
21:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, you don't have much real estate cut words.
21:26
[SPEAKER_03]: And how do you paint a picture with four words?
21:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And one of my favorite songs is an example is
21:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Charlie Rich, I can't even drink it away.
21:37
[SPEAKER_03]: To me, that song is so simple.
21:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And paints like the most heartbreaking movie in my mind.
21:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And like that, and you know, Lucinda Williams is always my go-to.
21:48
[SPEAKER_03]: She paints a picture and like a vast emotional landscape in a handful of words.
21:55
[SPEAKER_03]: But that's the brutal challenge of writing that I think is so exciting.
22:01
[SPEAKER_03]: When you finally do it, like just switch it, like cutting three words and all of a sudden, it's like magic.
22:06
[SPEAKER_03]: It's amazing.
22:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Really well put, listen to the thing where she can just, you know, car wheels on a gravel road, you're in a movie.
22:15
[SPEAKER_00]: The thing is so lovely I think about her writing and one of the things so compelling that I know a lot of folks that are borrowed heavily from,
22:24
[SPEAKER_00]: She's breaking convention, breaking from convention.
22:28
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just about rhyming.
22:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I forget that a lot.
22:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Not when I'm enjoying someone else's writing or being brought in and compelled.
22:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, how they do that?
22:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
22:41
[SPEAKER_00]: How they do it and how can I do that?
22:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Or if not let them do it.
22:45
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, well, I think the other thing that is sometimes hard to remember is that with songwriting, you have other elements to tell a story.
22:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Not just being economical with our words, because then we also have melody and harmony and rhythm.
22:59
[SPEAKER_03]: That conveys so much, which I think a writer like Lucinda is so genius at because
23:05
[SPEAKER_03]: her songs are so catchy or a song like Fish in the Dark that song or a lot of loose in the songs I'll question myself or tell students when you write something we might underestimate the power of the simplicity and I'm like go look at a loose in the song like too cool to be forgotten.
23:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Like if you had written that, would you have trusted yourself?
23:26
[SPEAKER_03]: That was good, or would you have thought, like, oh, this is too simple or like fishing in the dark's chorus?
23:32
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, would you have thought that was too simplified or too like sentimental?
23:37
[SPEAKER_03]: And I feel like that's where the genius lies, where it's all of the parts are married together so seamlessly and tells the whole story or Tom Petty.
23:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, if I wrote a song that was like a Tom Petty song, I'd probably be like, I don't know.
23:52
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if I would trust it.
23:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and when you have, like you said, when you have that motor, when you have that engine, propelling it, when you have that series of notes that Jerry Jeff Walker song Mr. Gojangles, which we were lucky enough to get our hands on early on, and it still continues to kind of put gas in the bus, you know, it's been really great.
24:14
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's a wonderful song, but I remember the first time I heard it, it was the combination of chords that just killed me, just like us.
24:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, we were watching a Paul McCartney thing, was that Beatles anthology that's been running the last few weeks, you know, the whole story.
24:35
[SPEAKER_00]: They did let it be and had our horrible time, making that record all of them.
24:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they did Abbey Road and Golden slumbers is like, I'm getting like, shows thinking about that tune right now, but there's, it's just the melody just.
24:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm running up a little bit.
24:50
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so gorgeous.
24:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Part of it is the lyric, which is beautiful.
24:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, what a simple, phenomenal lyrics.
24:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Malawake you and your eyes.
24:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, man.
25:00
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just beautiful all by with all that power.
25:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
25:05
[SPEAKER_00]: hit them town town drink.
25:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
25:08
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so much power.
25:08
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so much movement in that song and motion.
25:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Those big long sustained notes and then the walk down that comes after that, you know, you feel like suspended feeling and then it's like back to this motion.
25:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like it's a whole journey.
25:21
[SPEAKER_01]: It is a whole journey in Lyric and music and all of it.
25:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure, especially knowing what we know as far as like what the record sounds like, if Paul McCarty were to say to piano and play that for us, read being equally moved.
25:35
[SPEAKER_00]: But you have the reference point now.
25:36
[SPEAKER_00]: There's something about that.
25:38
[SPEAKER_00]: What was it like, Tim just playing it for the guys, you know?
25:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
25:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
25:42
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of tunes that are not going to start naming them, but there are a lot of tunes that on the page did not look genius to me, but then when you start feeling in the blanks and sometimes literally it's the grooves, right?
25:53
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where you get into that gray area between a song and a record.
25:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there are writers like Joni Mitchell that you want to just read them.
26:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Those lyrics are pretty beautiful.
26:04
[SPEAKER_00]: It's poetry just laid out for it.
26:06
[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, I'm staring at a matrices legal panel.
26:09
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a good song.
26:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
26:13
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a good idea.
26:14
[SPEAKER_03]: I wanted to ask being married to a writer and a writer of matrices caliber, matrice a bird for any listener who doesn't know what have you learned from her writing but also being in partnership with her.
26:29
[SPEAKER_00]: As far as the right, that's literally how we got together.
26:32
[SPEAKER_00]: This was to write and that became something else.
26:35
[SPEAKER_00]: The second part was an immediate.
26:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I learned a lot being in a house with that force.
26:41
[SPEAKER_00]: She's been writing since she had been sitting seven years all the way, so making up tunes, banging away a little upright piano.
26:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And she was lucky.
26:50
[SPEAKER_00]: She wrote her, I think her first number one, as she was 18, and she had her first number one,
26:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, but she wrote a Bobby Braddock and she said that was such a gift right in this tune with Bobby.
27:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a duet Karen Brooks and T.G.
27:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Shepherd called fake and love and it's kind of like faking and no do do do do do do is that you're a country which is kind of great.
27:12
[SPEAKER_00]: um she lives and dies by the songwriting she loves to play and sing and she's a huge music fan but writing is like the thing so that was different from me i'm like hey we got an album coming up maybe i'll try to write a tune or two for it
27:27
[SPEAKER_00]: But we immediately, I mean, we recorded the first two songs in the Detroit Center, I wrote the Drip and did, and she recorded one of them as well.
27:35
[SPEAKER_00]: She's got the gift, and I know, you know, as far as the partnership goes, I know it to just get out of the way and let her, if she wonders off, don't bother because she's like working on something.
27:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Or a show come home from a writing session.
27:48
[SPEAKER_00]: I say, how to go and she's like, is such a great start, but this song is kicking my butt, you know?
27:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you said, you're often running, you get that first line and then you're chasing it and you're chasing it and you're chasing it.
28:01
[SPEAKER_00]: But you want to honor it.
28:02
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't want to just give up on the tune.
28:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes, these things will sit around for weeks and months and sometimes they're all done in a matter of hours.
28:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this firing for me?
28:13
[SPEAKER_00]: My son Jamie has been playing our band for quite a while and who has actually been a pro in this business for a couple of decades.
28:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Played with some great folks like the Mavericks and Gary Allen had a record deal on his own.
28:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Metrice and I and Jamie have been writing together and she's really great and when he first moved to Nashville he came here to go to school and went to Belmont.
28:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Mainly he was a shredder guitar player.
28:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But he would like really started paying attention to the other presence in the house, which was matrace and that part of things.
28:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I started the same way, I didn't care about singing, I didn't care about really writing, I just wanted to play my guitar, words were just things that came between guitar solos.
28:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
28:57
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
28:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
28:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But Jamie's really, he's turned into a really fine writer, but it took a minute, you know, took some inspiration, he had a great bit of encouragement from his dearly departed friend, Raul Mala, Raul really mentored him and took him under his wing and they wrote a bunch of really cool songs together and kind of encouraged Jamie to like, and put that guitar down now for a minute, right?
29:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Mm-hmm.
29:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
29:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I will say that that one of the traces things when she and I get together, right, is quit noodling on the guitar.
29:28
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can't help myself.
29:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Part of it is, you need quiet, you know?
29:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a good lesson.
29:34
[SPEAKER_00]: It goes as hard lesson for guitar players.
29:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I love that, though.
29:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's endlessly fascinating to me hearing everybody's different process and also all the different ways our brains work and relate to music.
29:49
[SPEAKER_03]: When Aaron and I were dating, we met at Jazz Conservatory.
29:53
[SPEAKER_03]: And he was a drummer.
29:54
[SPEAKER_03]: I was a singer.
29:57
[SPEAKER_03]: discovering like, oh, we listen to music very differently.
30:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Very different.
30:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I listen to a song and I am listening to the singer and not even the words that much.
30:08
[SPEAKER_03]: It's really hard for me to process lyrics without reading them.
30:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I can't hear a song and then sing it back often.
30:14
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm really tuned into the voice and that's what I care about.
30:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And Aaron's like, but didn't hear the bass and the drums and I'm like,
30:23
[SPEAKER_03]: That's progressed for me as I've intentionally trained myself to listen differently as it's become my job, but it's interesting.
30:33
[SPEAKER_03]: We all kind of have different things we're drawn to and we hear things so differently.
30:38
[SPEAKER_00]: That's great to hear that, by the way, because I think we all share that in the studio when everybody comes in from their room to listen to the playback,
30:47
[SPEAKER_00]: First thing you're listening to for is what you did.
30:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, and you know, you often stand around and get somebody to raise their hand.
30:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I got a punch in the bridge and on a record, when it's your record, being able to stand back and see the entire picture is really important.
31:04
[SPEAKER_00]: We're moving out a little bit from writing, but just the recording process made a records.
31:09
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so great to just hear the, you know, instead of get that microscope and
31:15
[SPEAKER_00]: We all want to kind of sand it down so much that it's really shiny and there's really that's a hard one too seems like more often than not now I'm in rooms work folks are going don't change that it's not a clam it's you know Jerry Douglas says it's got a little hair on it leave it
31:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep, when I'm working on records with artists, I try, you know, and this has happens usually a little bit later in the process.
31:39
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, cool, I hear that.
31:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's move on to something.
31:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's focus on this and we'll come back to that.
31:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And the point being that like, let's not get too deep in the microscope.
31:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's look at other things.
31:48
[SPEAKER_01]: If it doesn't catch our year again, it's not a problem.
31:51
[SPEAKER_01]: If it continues to be like a little crack in the sidewalk that catches our toe, obviously, let's address that and fix that because, you know, we want to be able to float down the stream without hitting any rocks when we're listening to it.
32:01
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, like you said, yeah, getting that sandpaper out and shining it down when you zoom out all of a sudden is just like, there's nothing there anymore.
32:08
[SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing there's nothing to grab onto anymore.
32:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, also like one of our favorite things is finding the clams on like Beatles records, for instance, of like someone hitting a wrong note, it brings so much.
32:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, rock sand by the police.
32:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I've heard that song a thousand times.
32:25
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't until a month, I played it for you.
32:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
32:27
[SPEAKER_01]: A month ago, we're seeing just sits on the piano in the first five seconds of the song.
32:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It's sitting there.
32:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It's got, you know, it's got the bass and the drum groove, and you're crying.
32:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And then a little laugh and read it in a article.
32:39
[SPEAKER_01]: it's just sting just kind of was in the room and sat down on the piano and they left it in.
32:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It's in the first five seconds of the song.
32:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I got to check that out.
32:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
32:50
[SPEAKER_01]: As you can hear, you're the right one here.
32:51
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's like, oh yeah, wow, that's weird.
32:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I never noticed.
32:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Massive hit.
32:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Never noticed.
32:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love that so much and you know sometimes there's intent for it to be weird, you know, trying to find the one where the downbeat was in you can go your own way that took me a while.
33:17
[SPEAKER_00]: less into the chorus that you know, but it feels good.
33:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It does left-footed to me.
33:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm always like, okay, that's cool.
33:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Ringo playing that, get back instead of doing t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-
33:38
[SPEAKER_01]: it does.
33:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and with both of those guys that you mentioned make Fleetwood and Ringo, it's like, you know, I've had drummers be like, nah, I'm Ringo and they kind of shake their heads and I'm like, no, but do you listen, like, what he's able to play, that doesn't get in the way of the song, and it makes the song.
33:52
[SPEAKER_01]: What it is, it's like, think of get back, which is a straight ahead groove on there.
33:55
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like, feel the same.
33:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not going to be the same song as so cool.
33:59
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I mean, I'm sure being a drummer, you've seen that guy's Instagram feed where he says, here's the way you think you heard it.
34:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's your wringo did.
34:09
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm talking about exactly.
34:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
34:11
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so cool because his stuff is so incredibly inventors.
34:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, he's back there being wringo.
34:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And so cool.
34:19
[SPEAKER_00]: But man,
34:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Leave on Hellman Ringo, Stan Lynch.
34:25
[SPEAKER_00]: There are three guys that, and I know Stan's a huge fan of Ringo, Stan, leave on as well.
34:31
[SPEAKER_00]: But they're in our town, right, altering him, you know.
34:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Reds got that thing.
34:36
[SPEAKER_00]: It's that shoulder, but I don't know.
34:38
[SPEAKER_00]: It's part of it's a visual.
34:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's just, yeah.
34:40
[SPEAKER_00]: He's got a great pocket.
34:41
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a great drummer.
34:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Incredible.
34:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Good guy, too.
34:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I love watching Fred play because if I could turn my ears off and just watch I'm like, what is this neanderthal guy doing behind the drums and then if I close my eyes and listen I'm like this sounds and feels incredible.
34:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I love Cheryl, and she's incredibly magnetic, but the band is like always just.
35:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah, her band is insane.
35:08
[SPEAKER_01]: That was right, South.
35:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, when we first, was it like the first couple months we were in town?
35:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Was it first year?
35:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Rolling Stone Country had just got started.
35:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember they were having their first birthday party down at Acme Fiedency, like on the second floor there.
35:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And Cheryl's band was playing.
35:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like,
35:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, wow, because it's a little tiny room up there and it's a private thing.
35:30
[SPEAKER_01]: So getting to just like, you know, hear that band like it was a band in the room and not, you know, on the stages that Cheryl normally plays, there's just like, yeah, everyone of these people are really special.
35:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm super curious though, because I know we're nearing the end of our hour together, but for someone who like you've said that being on the road is your, you know, your main thing and what you really love and you have been touring under the farewell tour,
35:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Are you really retiring from the road?
36:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
36:00
[SPEAKER_00]: What we are is we're pulling the bus over to the side of the road.
36:03
[SPEAKER_00]: If you read the very first stress release, we put out a couple of years ago.
36:07
[SPEAKER_00]: It was essentially we're not going to tour the way we tour.
36:11
[SPEAKER_00]: meaning gone for 120 days on the road.
36:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Pretty much most of the last coming up on 60 years.
36:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, right at an incredible ride, we're not going to stop playing nor are we going to stop recording.
36:24
[SPEAKER_00]: But we need a hard reset right now.
36:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody's great.
36:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Even the keyzers in the band are at the top of their game right now.
36:31
[SPEAKER_00]: But that can't kind of start, you know, a Clint Eastwood line about don't let the old man in, you know, Toby Keith wrote a great song with that title based on that, by the way.
36:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I'm grateful that everybody's healthy and happy, and we want to kind of go out on that note.
36:48
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not going to disappear.
36:50
[SPEAKER_00]: There are festivals and there might be a residency here somewhere, but Dan's your question, yes.
36:56
[SPEAKER_00]: We are getting off the road.
36:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Retirement is a hard word.
36:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to retire.
37:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
37:01
[SPEAKER_00]: But the idea that we're coming to your town, that's pretty much over.
37:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're
37:10
[SPEAKER_00]: The response has been really lovely.
37:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Folks have been so cool.
37:13
[SPEAKER_00]: As a music fan, I have all those triggers, all those important signposts in my life, the songs that mattered when I was 10 or when I was 15 or when I was 25 or last year.
37:28
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, for two weeks ago, the way it feeds our souls is you can't calculate that.
37:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty amazing.
37:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And hearing people say that about our music is really humbling because again, I got people I love, I could write pages about it, about how inspiring and how much better my life is as a result.
37:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And hearing folks say that about some experience they might have had, maybe, you know,
37:54
[SPEAKER_00]: that we recorded or wrote might have had a huge impact and might have brought them some comfort or might have made them just enough to get out on the dance floor, maybe.
38:03
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, yeah, that's been really moving for us.
38:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're so grateful.
38:07
[SPEAKER_00]: We're really lucky.
38:08
[SPEAKER_00]: There's not a lot of us that have been doing this long that can still do it and have fun with it.
38:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's been great.
38:15
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we'll have to make sure we haven't seen you play since Chiama.
38:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, what's this?
38:19
[SPEAKER_03]: So we'll have to make sure we make a one, sometimes soon.
38:23
[SPEAKER_00]: That would be great.
38:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's just see you guys.
38:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Well Jeff, we like to wrap all these conversations up with the same thing and you can kind of choose your own adventure.
38:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll give you two options for questions.
38:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And the first being something that someone has told you along the way or something that you've read that continues to resonate with you and keep your cup full or conversely something that you wish you knew when you were first stepping into this as a career.
38:49
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the one where I'll really come up with a real answer.
38:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Next time I hop in the car and go to the grocery store.
38:55
[SPEAKER_00]: That happens frequently, I'm shocked, I know.
38:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Was far as before, you know, my advice?
39:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, copy the people that you're inspired by.
39:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And then go off to the side and make up your own version of that.
39:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And eventually, that'll be an inspiration, but you'll be doing your own thing.
39:13
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of that is coming from the singing and guitar playing side of things.
39:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the same goes as writer.
39:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there's a trend right now with young artists, some of them at least, did get signed on the strength of their performing skills, somebody who's seen them play a gig, get a record deal, and they'd never written a song.
39:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Start that before.
39:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Try to work that skill alongside of the plan and the singing part.
39:40
[SPEAKER_00]: They're writing super important, I think.
39:42
[SPEAKER_00]: That's my key sense of that.
39:44
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, this is really like no-to-self, right?
39:46
[SPEAKER_00]: It's on jazz.
39:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And then as far as like something is resonated for me.
39:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the Cowboy Jack Climit's line about wearing the business that haven't signed or if we're not having fun we're in the wrong business.
40:02
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not doing our job.
40:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe paraphrasing there a little bit, Cowboy.
40:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
40:06
[SPEAKER_00]: That fun part is real.
40:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And I see people I haven't run into in a while and we're talking for a bit and usually it's like, he's still having fun.
40:16
[SPEAKER_00]: It's time waiting for that, you know, that kind of
40:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Or were you strove and forward?
40:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
40:24
[SPEAKER_00]: That's important.
40:25
[SPEAKER_00]: That's super important.
40:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the most inspiring thing.
40:27
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fun.
40:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
40:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
40:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
40:31
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's like one of the pillars of motivations behind this podcast.
40:35
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like we were just seen in our peer group.
40:37
[SPEAKER_03]: So many people behind the scenes not having fun.
40:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And already, you know, in our 30s because the music industry is there's so many challenging things to deal with in today's world of you have to do all the business yourself and that's been kind of my motto in the past couple years of like I want it to be fun again even the like promoting and the releasing and like trying to stay rooted and have fun how do we have fun with this.
41:03
[SPEAKER_00]: what's the point otherwise that is a good point it not to you know make light of and just go that's just fun there are things we got to do we all have chores and you got to do those chores you know but i think again what we touched on a little while ago being in the moment it says is such a cliche but think about when you're hanging out with people you love and enjoy their company invariably now especially somebody will say how lucky are we right now
41:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Just don't forget what this feels like.
41:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
41:35
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, find us some joy.
41:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes you can find joy in life during the dishes or phone laundry.
41:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
41:40
[SPEAKER_03]: And definitely.
41:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
41:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I really are walking your dog.
41:44
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, putting your kid to bed, getting out the bumper sticker material.
41:48
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
41:49
[SPEAKER_00]: The Cowboy Jack quote to me, you know, we're in the fun business.
41:53
[SPEAKER_00]: That's so good.
41:54
[SPEAKER_00]: We can all get bogged down.
41:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And to be fair, when I started doing what I'm doing, the word content wasn't a thing.
42:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, Gretchen Peter said, I don't know.
42:03
[SPEAKER_00]: She came up with that.
42:05
[SPEAKER_00]: She posted something a while back about, you know, the pressure of filling up the space, jury, especially in the virtual space.
42:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Possibly.
42:15
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you do the part that feeds your soul when it's like we need more content need more stuff and attention spans or yada yada yada.
42:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a lot harder.
42:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I am very grateful that a lot of that stuff didn't exist when we started.
42:30
[SPEAKER_00]: We had big giant telephones and they weren't portable.
42:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but it's part of the game and you guys have done a good job of navigating those waters and I commend you applaud you for that.
42:43
[SPEAKER_00]: It's part of the gig now.
42:44
[SPEAKER_00]: People used to be mysterious from the map.
42:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's no waters.
42:49
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no mystery in fact, it's like, oh no, I don't show me that.
42:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you know.
42:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, man, well, thank you so much for spending this time with us and we're so happy to get to talk to you It's great talking to you guys.
43:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I used to see you again.
43:08
[SPEAKER_00]: You too.
43:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Please give our love to Matrice as well.
43:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I will.
43:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Jeff.
43:12
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, Jeff.
43:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Take care.
43:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I do nice to see you guys.
43:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you.
43:19
[SPEAKER_01]: We know your time is valuable and we're grateful you chose to spend this hour with us.
43:22
[SPEAKER_03]: If this conversation resonated with you, know that it is just one of many.
43:26
[SPEAKER_03]: We have an archive of over 140 conversations, so if you're looking for a where to go to next, you can find curated playlists by topic on our YouTube channel or simply scroll back in the speed to find our conversations with Rosenkash, New York Times by selling author Maddie Smith, Lucius, J.D.
43:42
[SPEAKER_03]: McCurson, and many others.
43:44
[SPEAKER_01]: This shows produced by me, Mary Chaffer-based, with help from the Kayla Anne.
43:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And all the music he hears written, performed and produced by me as well.
43:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Our show is edited and mixed by Leland Holden at Pod Punch and we are proud numbers of the Bluegrass situation podcast network.
43:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for being here.
43:59
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll see you next time.