00:00:09 Speaker 1: What's up, y'all. You're out in God's Country with Read and dan Is Boy, also known as the Brothers Hunt, where we take a weekly drive to the intersection of country music. I know right at two things that go together, like singing a TL tune and karaoke. 00:00:24 Speaker 2: Well, Golden Mullets and Golden nineties country music produced by Meat Eater in Our Heart. 00:00:30 Speaker 1: Podcast, Iconic Day for the Boys and the GCP God's Country Podcast. Man Legend on the Couch, Legendary TL songs are bulletproof, Tracy freaking Lawrence and He's. 00:00:43 Speaker 2: Still cool man. His little Earian was glistening, looking cool. 00:00:46 Speaker 1: He's cool man, Dude that he was cool. He's very cool. Thirty years in the game, still cranking out music. It's got a new EP out called out Here in it Too. Got him to sing a little bit. 00:00:55 Speaker 2: Yeah, I had to drop the quill a little bit, but he's still murdered it. Yeah. 00:00:58 Speaker 1: First time I've ever met in the nineties decade of country music was so influential in mind and Dan's life. It's the first time I've ever been able to sit down with an artist from that from that time period and really pick his brain. Man just a. He's a legend, dude, super cool, he still got it. He's a legend doing a lot with his charity for Nashville. Man, what a great day for the podcast and a lot of fun. 00:01:20 Speaker 2: Hey, be sure and smash that following white button. 00:01:22 Speaker 1: Smash the follow light button. We're on Instagram, We're on Facebook, We're on TikTok, we're on YouTube. What else? 00:01:29 Speaker 2: We're we on other things? 00:01:31 Speaker 1: Everything that y'all are on, we're probably on there. So smash the follow button, Smash the subscribe button. Be sure to ring that bell notification. Don't even know what that means. Hit the light button, and don't send us your lyrics. Don't send us lyrics or songs. 00:01:43 Speaker 2: We love y'all. 00:01:44 Speaker 1: Thanks for hanging out in God's Country. There's a long haired new guy behind the computer today. We're all good. He's saying we're all good. 00:01:58 Speaker 2: And we're not good. New guy Jordan's gonnahead. 00:02:04 Speaker 1: Dude, damn is geeking y'all. 00:02:09 Speaker 2: Geeking man, dude, I mean. 00:02:11 Speaker 3: Fangirling me on the way. 00:02:12 Speaker 2: I'm sorry. I haven't even drinking cup coff yet. I know. 00:02:17 Speaker 1: I'm surprised you we met everybody before you saw the Yeah. 00:02:22 Speaker 3: He's not coming this way every day. 00:02:24 Speaker 2: Well, I was cool guy. 00:02:25 Speaker 1: He was trying to cool. 00:02:26 Speaker 2: It was cool girl. I couldn't just a meet walking. I was a cool girl. But like trying to Mississippi. 00:02:33 Speaker 1: Coach, try to do I'm gonna try to do it now. Thirteen million. Album sold eighteen number one singles, including Time Marches on Alibi, Teamme of Birmingham, Texas, Tornado, to name a few. Decorated c M A winner, Grammy nominated. We got damn Tracy Lawrence on the Crawd Around a. 00:02:56 Speaker 3: Fall, Let's Go clap smiled, best intro. I've had a year. 00:03:02 Speaker 1: Somebody, and I already said this, but somebody asked me yesterday. They were like, man, how's the podcast going on? I right, and I was like it's great. And they're like, who's your favorite guest you've had on I was like, ask me tomorrow because it's gonna be Tracy Lawrence. Yeah, after after tomorrow. Already know we've had great guests. We've had best friends on here, We've had superstars. Yes, you're the man, for sure, the man. 00:03:21 Speaker 2: I'll tell you this. I've I've paid homage in little ways across the course of my career. I don't know if you know, being reader like munch best songwriters, what's all we've done for the past probably fifteen years and so one I'm just gonna I'm gonna kind of show some respect right here. Put some respect on his name is in uh one too Many, a song that I wrote with Luke Combs Me and Yeah and something down to a TL two. I put t L in this right and listen nobody in Nate, I mean Luke immediately he knew. 00:03:54 Speaker 3: I heard it the first time that I heard it on the radio. No, what I did? I heard it. 00:03:59 Speaker 2: I was like, hereayoke to now. 00:04:06 Speaker 3: Actually we use that as walk in music. We put it in our walk in playlist. 00:04:11 Speaker 2: What you're saying, dude, I gotta pay arm, which I was like, I said, I'm not sure if anybody like well understand what I'm saying. And it was like, I don't give a ship. That's what we're doing. We're putting TL right there. I was like, yes, we are. That's my dog. So I was listening today. I was brushing up, right, you we always brush up. You got a new art, you got a new artist, you got a brand new artist stone and uh you kind of want to sniff up on their music to make sure that you're you know, and I was an all idea was just I listened to the new stuff, which I kind of already know just from following you, and I was just rolling back through what I consider like cornerstone songs in my basically. 00:04:50 Speaker 3: Structure as a song what's your number one. 00:04:53 Speaker 2: Man's I was trying to decide if it was sticks and Stones or good Die Young, because that was so. 00:05:00 Speaker 3: So as a songwriter, what are the things that make you like those? 00:05:04 Speaker 2: Honestly? 00:05:05 Speaker 1: Podcast host on you? 00:05:06 Speaker 2: Well, honestly, I can put this is this is kind of reverse psychology here, but I can listen to those songs without being a songwriter. And the reason is because when I was knowing those songs, I wasn't necessarily a songwriter. Right, I'm ten eleven years old. So there were true elements of what you did. 00:05:26 Speaker 3: You just got a feeling from. So it wasn't you. You weren't Michael, you weren't picking them apart. I didn't even listening to the production. 00:05:32 Speaker 1: Drum unbiased opinion. 00:05:35 Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, there were the words in there that I didn't even know. I didn't even know the one. 00:05:40 Speaker 3: That's one of the things that I love about people that are passionate about lyrics. I remember listening to songs when I was, you know, six seven years old, because my earliest memories of country music were Glenn Campbell and Pride. Did Glenn Campbell variety show that was on? I was singing Charlie Pride songs and Kenny Rogers stuff, And I remember there was a song called She Believes in Me by Kenny Rodgers, and I would cry when I hear that song because the emotion of it, even as as a child you didn't understand what love and a relationship with a partner any of that stuff was. It's sober, just but you feel the emotion of this song, and it moved me. And so those are my early memories of what songwriting did music and moved me. 00:06:18 Speaker 2: Well, you were mine because I listened to a good Die Young this morning on my way in and I'm like, now, as a songwriter who's been in it for fifteen years, I can look at that and go, oh, I get win. I relate with that because the first verse of that song is about you playing in a mudhole as a kid, and I was literally doing that at the time. I hear this at the time the song came out. 00:06:39 Speaker 3: And you never know what kind of things like that are going to strike a court of kids. Texas Tornado was not. I wasn't blown away by that song when the demo was pitched to me, and it was kind of a thing that I worked out with a label. They they let me produce Renegade, Rebels and Roads. That gave me a bone. I agreed to cut the song. But that song hit the kids. I mean that it was I'm a chord with kids because I didn't think about Flap from the Black. What you think about it, Mama, You look Tornados hit your clean your room, I mean all the phones. So I mean, but but you never know what kind of chord of the song like that's going to strike with somebody. 00:07:15 Speaker 2: I'm telling you, man, all all of them. I mean, there are so many mega hits, and like I was even like, no, I'm a I'm an old school TL fan, like don't give me no pay me a Burningham, But then pay me a Burman came came home and when the key change came, I was literally trapping and I went pay me. 00:07:33 Speaker 3: It's like a rock anthem. Man, we added this great guitar electric guitar solo right before the mods, so it just powers right into that modulation and we've got on our screens and stuff of the back. It shows everybody holding up their phone lights and everything to see them freaking arenas live because that's my that's my closing number. I'm closed with a freaking ballot at the end of the night. And it just freaking brings the roof off the place. Man, that's awesome to see. I still get excited. 00:07:58 Speaker 2: Oh you should. 00:08:00 Speaker 1: I feel like as a songwriter and as an artist, you think about these like you know, these monumental songs that you're gonna sing for the rest of your life and time marks his own. 00:08:09 Speaker 2: Just the lick. 00:08:11 Speaker 1: Forever. In country music, people will know what that song is. But you have from the. 00:08:16 Speaker 2: Multiple of those no doubt, like okay, all right, hey bro, we don't there's no There were literally three minutes in and we're already a. 00:08:26 Speaker 1: Couple of minutes behind. We have a legend on the couch. There's no chill out there. 00:08:30 Speaker 2: Sure, what's up with you? Man? What's up you do anything? Deer hunting? What are you doing anything? 00:08:34 Speaker 1: Anything? Dear wish I was deer hunt for season. They're starting. I have been like I've been itching to get to get in the woods and get cameras up because they're starting to. They're starting to but and you're starting to see what they can be. 00:08:47 Speaker 3: I saw a little buck run across the road from me going to the house yesterday afternoon. That was in full villain Yep. Yeah, they're they're velvet up right, man. 00:08:54 Speaker 2: The ones in my backyard are still nobby and and I playing a clover like two years ago. Nothing for two years, I've had nothing. We get all this rain this year, Bro, all of that clover has bud it. It is me that's awesome, it's they're killing it. 00:09:10 Speaker 3: I don't really I used to hunt around my property. I've got quite a bit of land about thirty minutes outside of Nashville, to the east of town. But I've got the whole area like for I'd say it probably at least thirty forty miles around. There's a genetic deformity that really have so I mean, I've seen them where you'd have like two or three up on one side. I've seen them coming out from behind the ear like Darth Brooks, Mike. So it's totally unbalanced. And when I I mean just crazy stuff. And so when I when I bought that property out there in the early nineties, and I went for years that I would put food plots and mental blocks and stuff out there. You just can't get any mass on them about the base that's about that big. They're just genetically there and you can't you can't call them enough. So we've got a lot of pretty deer in the front yard. I'll leave it at that. Yeah, man, kids loved it. 00:09:57 Speaker 2: But it changes. It changes, man, when you when you're on in the the ground and you're you're I got a little four year old little girl and she uh, she loves seeing them in the afternoons. They see Dad south feet a little bit. 00:10:10 Speaker 1: But you can love all of those except that guy back there. He's there's always you know, there's a genetic for me. But you know they're late at night. I've seen there's a big one that'll come through every now hanging out. But he's they're they're so nocturnal. Man, man, sometimes things make us mad. 00:10:26 Speaker 2: Man good to get him out in the mornings. 00:10:28 Speaker 1: What you mad at? Just tell us what it is what you're mad at? Is it you in lost kids? Might be your boss, man of your neighbors. 00:10:36 Speaker 3: Cat, Just tes what mad. 00:10:41 Speaker 2: Dude? You know what I'm mad at? 00:10:42 Speaker 1: Tell me what you're mad at. 00:10:43 Speaker 2: The signs on the side of the two lane that tells you your speed when you're speeding, so it'll be like thirty five, but it'll be like you're going forty two. I'm like, well, what you gonna do about robot? Wait holding to pop out and give me a ticket. You're not going to do that, That's what I'm. 00:11:00 Speaker 1: Oh, you're not talking about the speed limit sign. 00:11:02 Speaker 2: No, brother, there's an electronic sign on Carter's Creek right now that says you're going forty four miles an hour. What do you do that? 00:11:09 Speaker 1: In like your wife's voice? 00:11:10 Speaker 2: You know what I do it because I feel like that's what those stupid machines talk like, Hey my. 00:11:15 Speaker 1: Wife, you're going forty five miles. Now you can slow your boy. 00:11:20 Speaker 3: So careful. Six months from now, it could be an AI car that just pulls right up. 00:11:26 Speaker 1: Is that gonna have or they're just gonna say. 00:11:28 Speaker 3: They'll just take a picture of your digital tickets? 00:11:31 Speaker 2: You mean what you mean? Tell what I do though, when it's like speed limit thirty, you're going forty two. I speed up is like the speed up flashing. It doesn't that one is. This one doesn't have that. But I'm right, and dude, I got mad respect for law off and the law, but I'm like, why just put like a fake cop that, like, just go ahead and get get me. You know what I'm saying, Like, is that supposed to slow me down? I don't know where are you mad at. 00:11:57 Speaker 1: I'm mad at dang Dodge coin. Dude, those coin. I'm mad at myself for thinking that it's ever going to go to a dollar. And I'm mad for crypto bro Tra and I'm mad for it. And I'm mad I bailed. I pulled out on it, and I had enough money in the account to go buy some brand new golf clubs already talk to my wife about it. And then I read a little thing where they were like, dude, if you pull up, you're pulling out the wrong time. Put all of it back in, drop checked it this morning, dude, falling out dog. I'm mad at it, dude, I'm mad at myself. 00:12:28 Speaker 3: Are you mad at your money? 00:12:32 Speaker 2: Loss of it? 00:12:33 Speaker 1: It's dwindling. That's why I'm mad at it. 00:12:35 Speaker 2: Tell you mad at anything. 00:12:37 Speaker 3: Dude, I'm mad at a lot of things. Where should I start an election interference? I'm mad at the political system we're in. I'm mad at our judicial system. I mean, can I just run down the hole? 00:12:48 Speaker 2: Yeah? 00:12:49 Speaker 3: Just sick of all of it. I'm sick of people. 00:12:53 Speaker 2: I'm just What I always think about is that saying. The more I get to know people, the more I love my dog. 00:13:00 Speaker 3: Love my dog. Man. I got a bunch of dogs and I just had We got a pair of Great Danes and had they were they were brothers, and about two weeks ago, the bigger one just had a massive heart attime, friend, they would be eight years old in a couple of weeks. Sorry, it's just a man, It's just really dogs got uh. Well, now we have one four we have four and my daughter has a golden doodle that goes back and forth with herd in college. And we have four cats. Nice all in the house. Cat. 00:13:32 Speaker 2: I mean, I think I'm out on cat. 00:13:33 Speaker 3: I love my cat. 00:13:35 Speaker 2: Cats. I know what I'm saying. This is my last runt, like when they kick out. 00:13:38 Speaker 3: I think you see the commercial where the guy is sitting up on the balcony throwing the little treats and the cats jumping up. Get some of those, get the ones with cat nipping them and give them to them at night. They're absolutely amazing. The skits all over the place irates my wife. I like to put a whole bunch of mount in the bathroom floor and then they get all jacked up and then they skits out all night. 00:13:56 Speaker 2: Do they live inside all the time? 00:13:57 Speaker 3: Yes? 00:13:58 Speaker 2: They never let them out. 00:13:59 Speaker 3: No, they never. They've been people hate this, my wife declawed them. 00:14:03 Speaker 2: Oh I got you got to keep him in. Yeah, yeah, we kick ours out. Uh they well they want to go out, honestly, so we let them. Just my dog, man, I take real, real, real, real crazy care of my dog and my cats. 00:14:16 Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, good. 00:14:19 Speaker 2: Now, I do. I do. 00:14:20 Speaker 3: I love my dogs, man, They'll be all right. 00:14:23 Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it. I got two dogs. 00:14:26 Speaker 1: I got a I've got a redbone coon hound names Maybell As she's six. And then we got Merle, who's a chocolate lab. He's four and uh, dudes, wild now man, I'm taking them to the beach next week. 00:14:39 Speaker 3: I don't know if that's a good that's awesome. 00:14:41 Speaker 2: You know how you have like favorites and kids, which kid is your favorite? 00:14:46 Speaker 1: I mean, I've got two kids and I don't have a favorite. 00:14:48 Speaker 2: Sure you don't. Well, it's kind of the same way with dogs for me, and like our family, where's at the bottom right now? I love him. I love him just because he barks. I think it's the shriek of the bark. 00:15:01 Speaker 3: Got raised still young Minie Australian shepherd and she's got that pitchy ye yeap. My favorites from my Pickanese and my ships. They were rescue as they came from a puppy mill and the kids picked them out. They went and donated their time and bathe and they like two hundred animals out of this thing through new leash on life up and eleven and so we got this little Pickanese and shit so and they had been living in chicken wire cages, stacked on top of each other. Their feet had never been on grass, and it broke my heart when I got them. They were awful and I just fell in love with them. They're my babies. They followed me everywhere I go. They travel on the bus with me. They're me with a little yap yap. Yeah. I've always been a big dog guy. But I fell in love with him, and it broke my heart. 00:15:41 Speaker 2: My wife called me and was like, hey, there's this dog where I want to rescue. I was like, Babe, we barely have enough money to feed our This is nine years ago. I was like, I don't know. I don't think it's a great time, you know. And I was like and she was like, oh, it's the mama was apparently like picking them up and killing some of them by picking them up their pit bulls. 00:16:02 Speaker 3: She knew the economy was really in bad shape. 00:16:04 Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt. 00:16:10 Speaker 3: She could feed them. 00:16:11 Speaker 2: Yeah, she probably couldn't, right, gosh, So she. 00:16:14 Speaker 3: Dry, I'm dry. 00:16:20 Speaker 2: Left. She sends me a picture and this this little blue brindle pit bull, and I was like, all right, bring it home for a night. She j't missed the night in our bed nine years dude. 00:16:31 Speaker 1: That little joker when it was little, going turkey outing with us, and we literally took that pit bull everywhere. 00:16:36 Speaker 2: I had to. There was nothing, I mean, we couldn't afford to take it anywhere else. It just had to ride. It just had to eat dollar cheeseburgers in the back. Seat with the rest of us. You know what I mean. 00:16:46 Speaker 3: I like dollar to. 00:16:53 Speaker 2: Three dollars and forty nine cents now the dog. 00:16:56 Speaker 1: Yeah, where are you originally from? 00:16:57 Speaker 3: Where were you? 00:16:58 Speaker 1: Where'd you grow up? 00:16:58 Speaker 3: I was born and at Atlanta, Texas, and my mom remarried when I was four and I moved to southwest Arkansas. Grew up in a little town called Forman that was right in the very southernmost part corner of the state of Arkansas. Bordered Oklahoma to the west, and Red River was the border between US and Texas. It was right there. It's close to Interstate thirty. Yeah, about three and a half hours out of Dallas. Got you. 00:17:20 Speaker 1: He came in strutting us. Yeah, I Hadikansas. 00:17:23 Speaker 3: You know, I don't know if y'all do this, but I have to match my cap and my und saw more when I left. Yeah, so I had a aduption zone, you know, kind of. I see you got your shrimp boots on. 00:17:34 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, these are just boots. Yeah yeah. I think we may be sponsored by these. 00:17:40 Speaker 2: I think so you and Justin more y'all can act on some Arkansas stuff we. 00:17:44 Speaker 3: Do, and we've toured together a little bit. I like justin. I don't get to see him very much anymore. He's a good guy. Yeah, yeah, he's a little bit more obsessed than I am. Is my tour manager and I grew up together. He was Tommy McDonald will. He was the first person that I spent the night with that wasn't a family member when I was in the first grade. So I'm known in my whole life. 00:18:01 Speaker 2: So he's went. 00:18:02 Speaker 3: To work for me selling T shirts when this whole thing got it rolling in the early nineties, and now he's been doing my tour managering for the last several years. Don't pay roll and keeping books and all that stuff. So we've been together a long time. He can go back and tell you who won the national championship, not only when it comes to SEC stuff. I mean, he is very very He's one of those savant guys who knows plays from games from twenty years ago, and I mean he's it's like, I don't have the brain capacity to retain all that, nor do I care about it that much. 00:18:31 Speaker 1: He's still in your camp work. 00:18:32 Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah. 00:18:33 Speaker 1: I found being in town now and buddies with some artists. That man. You guys like to surround yourself with good buddies. 00:18:42 Speaker 3: Yeah, and I've had my heart broke by a couple of long way guys that I was real close to. That that kind of took advantage of the situation and destroyed some relationships. And it's happened with some family members too. But that's that's part of this whole journey. But you know, you have a few that survive, make it through. Yeah. I hope he stays to the end. We've been together a long time. 00:19:02 Speaker 2: That's awesome. You kind of had a quick I mean, according to the stat sheet, it was like a pretty quick time as far as getting here. Yeah, playing a little music and then boom, He's not scooped. 00:19:13 Speaker 3: Probably the quickest of any I've ever heard of. So when I've been living in Louisiana playing in a little circuit band, we had a little area of about five we always thought about called Phoenix. 00:19:24 Speaker 1: Yeah, decent name. 00:19:26 Speaker 3: The band was Phoenix. My drummer's wife. Her sister was Tray Sakins's wife that shot him in the chest. Who Yeah, so I knew Trace before I ever left. So the last gig that I played, I think I played hold. 00:19:41 Speaker 2: On break Down from the War Time who's wife. 00:19:43 Speaker 3: Tray Sakins shot that shot him is the sister of my drummer in Phoenix. 00:19:49 Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, okay, okay, way. 00:19:51 Speaker 3: Back think because the last of the place in one of the clubs that we played was called Bill's New Country in spring Hill, Louisiana. Traces from right up the road Sirepta. That whole area rut there. So the last place that I played was Bill's New Country. That took up a collection of seven hundred dollars for me. I had canceled all the rest of the dates. That was the last weekend of August. I came home and saw my family, and I remember because it was Rodeo weekend. So I came home for Rodeo weekend. I packed everything up in my car, and I came to Nashville. I've never been to Nashville before. So I got to Nashville the first part of September in nineteen ninety so September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April, May. 00:20:27 Speaker 2: So it was like, what was it ninety one? 00:20:30 Speaker 3: So I signed my record deal in May. The day I walked into the studio to cut sticks and stones. Wow, and so that's the timeframe. So I got in town in September and I went to any place that would let me get on stage in Singe, just any juke joint bar. They had a bunch of contests around, so I kind of lived off those for a little bit. I wound up over at a supper club called Live at Libby's in Daysville, Kentucky, and they broadcast on WBVR out of Kentucky. Back in Nashville. Every Saturday night was kind of an opera show. They had their their their their George Jones impersonator and their Johnny Cash impersonator and all that stuff, and they had a house band, so I'd go up and do my couple of songs. So I wound up on that show in December, like the second or third weekend that I was on that show, some executives from Atlantic came up to see somebody else that was on the show and liked me better. I did a showcase in January at the Bluebird Cafe for Rick Blackburn at Atlantic, and I walked in the studio in Man, Cut Sticks and Stones. 00:21:29 Speaker 2: That's three number one representative come on that song Man that that was ninety one. 00:21:36 Speaker 3: Ninety ninety one. Isn't that crazy crazy? I never knocked on a door, I never went to a label, and never did any of that. 00:21:43 Speaker 1: It was just once they heard you, man, I mean, you haven't iconic voices in the genre. 00:21:47 Speaker 3: I was real focused then, too, I was. I was very focused. To me. Of course I wouldn't. I wouldn't do anything because I couldn't afford to buy eve beer at halftime. You know, I was just struggling to survive, you know, Crystal Burders. 00:21:58 Speaker 2: I almost thought about, like, uh, getting on Amazon and finding like a gold mullet and you have the Christius mullet behind that. 00:22:07 Speaker 3: Cowboys called it akermullets. 00:22:15 Speaker 2: Neil McCoy one time. So this is getting way deep. But my my sister used to run a show for Daryl Worley. He's from our hometown, Savannah. We're from Savannah where Darryl's from. And and he came up. 00:22:26 Speaker 1: Played whiskey jam last night. 00:22:27 Speaker 2: He did. Yeah, I saw him in the airport the other day. 00:22:30 Speaker 1: He's back. 00:22:31 Speaker 2: Let me tell you something that's a singing right now. He is a killer. 00:22:38 Speaker 1: Yeah. So anyway, he's his arms as big as me. 00:22:41 Speaker 2: He's a giant. I was thinking when you were talking about trace Ackeints, that's the only guy I've ever seen that I thought, Man, he's actually legitimately bigger than Darryl. That dude's a. 00:22:50 Speaker 3: Huge is a huge man. 00:22:51 Speaker 1: This story you're telling him was on there. It's like there too. I don't know. It wasn't called this, but it was like two huge guy tour. It's like, you know, it was like the Mountain, there's something. Yeah, it was some giants and country. So my sister would hire us to set the stage up. We were we were still in high school. So we build the stage up. We just kind of standing around. 00:23:13 Speaker 3: We didn't. 00:23:13 Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody else built it. 00:23:15 Speaker 2: Were you still around? So uh, Nilcoy's out there, he's doing his thing and then he wants he has pink cross it's his practice or is uh rehearsal warm ups. We're out there washing. He has eat bright hot pink crocs. 00:23:29 Speaker 1: Now he don't care. 00:23:30 Speaker 2: He literally is singing like, oh she's gotta do it's just give me that away. And he looks over and yeah, I got pink crocs on and I don't give it. 00:23:40 Speaker 1: That's when he turned around there people, he goes, let me see somebody fritch, get somebody. 00:23:47 Speaker 2: Making out. 00:23:47 Speaker 3: He don't care, man, he don't care, don't care. You gotta love him. 00:23:51 Speaker 2: He's uh he had some gems too, man. 00:23:54 Speaker 1: Yeah, that whole era was is awesome. That What was that like when that you had a record deal eight months being into town Sticks of Stones takes all your. 00:24:03 Speaker 2: Top five You said top five record that's only go. 00:24:05 Speaker 3: On one Sticks and Stone one number one. 00:24:08 Speaker 1: Rocket that was a rocket ship. What did that feel like? Just moving from a kid from Arkansas and Texas like you moved to national boom. Your career is going. 00:24:19 Speaker 3: Yeah, dude, it's it's overwhelming. You know. You you can't imagine just how there's so much excitement because it's like everything that's happened is life changing. But you go from riding in a beat up old car that you know, I didn't have insurance or legal tags or anything yeup to all of a sudden, Uh, you got one hundred dollars bills in your pocket and people are giving you brand new pickup trucks for endorsements, and they're putting clothes on you and boots on you. And you know, when you when you don't have anything, nobody give you anything. When you all of a sudden you're making money, they want to give you everything, and then all of a sudden, it's just overwhelming. It's like you get the you kind of get stuck in this orbit. You get all these people around you that are protecting you. So you just kind of come invincible, you know, you can kind of just things start happening, and everybody looks at you as as the golden goose. They all got to protect you, so you just feel like you can get away with anything. 00:25:19 Speaker 2: As a golden bullet. 00:25:23 Speaker 3: It's it takes a while una mentally adjust to it. There's because it's there's nothing about it that's normal. And riding around on a tube and you know, back then, when the bus pulled up into the hotel parking lot, girls would start circling. It's like a spaceship chicken landed. It was that insane. Uh, It's just it was. It was a crazy time. Man. 00:25:47 Speaker 1: Everybody thinks from the outside looking in that like, oh he's got it made. You're you live in your dreams, you like, And I'm sure there was there was great times, but there was also a lot of a lot of struggle with that too. 00:25:58 Speaker 3: There's you go. It's all excited at first, then all of a sudden, the walls start closing in, and then you know, you're I mean there was times that I would have killed just to freaking be able to take a six pack and go drivel around on a gravel road, you know. But yeah, dot Coch yeah, well back yeah, back then. But you just get overwhelmed by everything. I mean, you can't go to the grocery store anymore. You know, you're limited to what you can do. I literally bought a lot of property so I could get my little jeep side by side and go ride around on my trails, and my buddies would come over and we'd ride around on the pastor on height through the trails that I'd cut through and everything that was my release that kept me from getting in trouble and getting out on the highway and stuff. I mean, you have to find ways to kind of compensate for it. So I see, you know, Morgan going through the stupid things that are that are happening, and you kind of my my career never got to the place that was as massive as what is is, but you still have to deal with all the same craziness. 00:26:58 Speaker 2: Man, the pressure is John to be I mean honestly kind of kind of exhausting. I mean just just in the sense movie Like I said, we're best buddies with you can see in that media work rise and and just him have to figure out how to live. It's like you said, he always talks about going to the grocery store. It's crazy that you said that right then, because he's like, Yeah. 00:27:21 Speaker 1: We asked him what the best and worst thing about being famously and he was like, the best thing, he said, I can go if there's if I want to go to super Bowl, I can go to super Bowl. I can do anything I want to do. 00:27:31 Speaker 2: Family. 00:27:31 Speaker 1: That was absolutely and he said he's the worst thing. He's like, I can't take my wife to dinner. 00:27:36 Speaker 3: Oh, can't go out to dinner and go to a movie. Yeah, I mean those are things that you just so you build these compounds with all the things that you need to suffice for all that. Now, what I found as at what I've realized, you know, I had. I've had basically a twenty year commercial career. My last big commercial hit was Finding Who Your Friends Are? And it was the late you know, two thousand and seven eight. So I had. I had a good, you know, almost a twenty year run commercially, and have released a lot of stuff since then. But I've I've gotten to the place that once the radio career is over and people don't see you as much, and it's kind of you know, I can go to my favorite places or Lows Tractors Supply. Those are the places that I frequent on depot gay Well Low's is closer, but and I do go to the dump on Monday, usually take care of the dogs of the vets. I'm gonna have my little things that I do on my day off on Monday. But for the most part, you know, I've I've found a way after the radio career to be able to turn it off when I when I want to be recognized and put the cowboy hat on a walk out, and I can turn that persona on. Other than that, I'm just a normal guy and I don't I don't care that baggage around me all the time. But but I you know, McGraw and I are still friends. McGraw is still in a situation where he's he's in it. Yeah, you know, he's still in it. And I'm glad that I've been able to find that ballance in life. It's just let me raise my kids, just let me have a normal family life. And my wife and we went the movies the other night, you know, which is. 00:29:00 Speaker 1: Almost like you get to fall in love again with norm normality a little bit after you've seen you've had the spotlight on you for twenty years. 00:29:07 Speaker 3: And I've and I appreciate all the things that came with that fame and success. But I like where I'm out a whole lot. Then, Yeah, I'm in a much better mental space and I'm not stressed out, and I'm not chasing anything. I don't feel like I have anything left to prove. I'm just kind of in a good spot and I'm being creative again, and I'm enjoying touring, and so I'm in a good place. 00:29:37 Speaker 1: You're still rocking, Man on the Roller And we just got off the road in Riley and played. 00:29:41 Speaker 3: What we no we did. We did twenty eight shows with Riley. But I think I've got ninety six dates on the books. I'm probably gonna gonna pull a few. It's just more than I want to do. But my, I mean, we we're looking at stuff for next year. My my schedule is slammed all the way through the end of the year. I'm completely packed, and it's you know, I'm turning down work that I've got more than I want to do. And we're looking at I mean, we've got several people that are courting us to go back out on big arenaturs and stuff. 00:30:07 Speaker 2: Now, I mean, with that atalogue of just absolute monsters, monsters, you can play forever. Honestly, you are always in the past. I mean, even guys like younger than us are Tracy Lawrence fans, and we're not. We're not in those Spring Chickens dud. But like, and I grew up with you. 00:30:25 Speaker 3: I see I see it out there, these young kids, and it's it's fascinating to me seeing twelve thirteen, fourteen year old kids actually singing the worst of sticks and stones because they're there and they're they're coming back around, and you know, you go through that generation where where it's the kids of the mothers and the dads that came and see me during my heyday, and now this is another generation behind that. Yeah, but you know, I'm still engaged in what's going on. The podcast has been very important and all that stuff reconnecting with younger artists and crossing those those bridges and reaching across the aisle and making new fans. My radio show has been a real big part of that thing. I just you know, the Internet has had so much to do with reaching that younger generation because once they find a Birmingham, then they go back through and they listen to the whole the whole catalog, they find stuff I make, and then you then you start having people come out and requesting songs that that you haven't thought about in twenty or thirty years. 00:31:17 Speaker 2: Okay, like what tell me? 00:31:18 Speaker 3: Oh like April's fool. Yeah, are the Cards? I would know the card The Cards was a song on Uh, what's it? I sait now? Maybe I think it was I see it now? It was on I See It Now it was. It was a pretty pretty stout song. And I like to go back and see record. Yeah, I see some of those things that are my favorites that kind of slid through the cracks that didn't make it the radio. There's a few of them that should have been really massive records. 00:31:47 Speaker 2: Nice talk to me about cutting outside songs. I saw that you've written some and then you cut them outside. How do you because you know some of these some of these artists have a new artist. I have like a little bit of like an issue with just cutting an outside song. How were they pitched to you? What? What? What made you think, Man, this is something that I want to record release. 00:32:09 Speaker 3: I had a really unique way of going through my whole song search process. So I would write a bunch and I had I still have my core group of people that I write with, UH, and then all those songs what we demoed would have to kind of hold up. I would make sure that so as I went through and found outside songs. Here here's my process. I had a I had a cassette player on the bus that would record cassette cassette UH, and it had very speeds on it, so I could speed it up and slow it down if I if I wanted to see how it felt a little bit quicker, I could get my tempo right. So I would go. I would get when when songs came in from Atlantic, they and our department would collect stuff in mailboxes. So I'd get a mailbox and I'd go to the house or I'd sit on the bus and I would go through everything in that particular box at one time. Anything that I wanted to hold, i'd put in the key pile. I'd market if it was on, I can set with ten songs whatever. Usually you know you're not going to find Merriamnie and I prefer people that just send one or two songs at a time to two the truth. 00:33:07 Speaker 2: But I would go through that. 00:33:09 Speaker 3: So when I would get through, I would go through that whole basket. When I was done, I would go through and I would sequence those things, and I would put them on a comp tape and I would adjust the speeds on it. As I would listen through that comp tape over and over and over and over again, i'd pull things out and i'd remove them. By the time I got to the end of that process, I would go through, sometimes a couple of thousand songs shit prepared for a record, and I would mix my things in. By the time I got to the studio, after I had condensed and condensed and condensed and gone through that burn process, I would go in with about fifteen songs, and by the time I got in the studio, I knew the sequence of the record. I knew the tempall one that the songs cut out and I had gone through the burn process, because in my mind, if I got tired of them pretty quick, then somebody else is gonna get tired of them too. So I really had that meticulous process of just beating it into the ground. So by the time they got out the people, I mean theoretically, in my mind, the way it worked, if I'd gone through that process and they held up well, and I think they have through all this time. 00:34:08 Speaker 2: For sure, that ain't no question to me. I mean, like I said, you have me raised my hands in traffic this morning. 00:34:17 Speaker 1: Now you're working on a brand new EP. 00:34:20 Speaker 3: EP drops here, and just I think it's dropped. 00:34:25 Speaker 2: By the time. 00:34:26 Speaker 3: I really I've never done an EP. I've always done full records. But I was trying to get some stuff done before the Riley tour, and I had just been on a writer's funk and I hadn't been writing. It's like, okay, I went for all outside songs and I called some people I got called my buddy Ernest dray Lewis, I mean, just people that I knew and found some songs and I and and kind of went through a similar process, just a much more condensed version. But I was really after This is the first project that I've done in over three years. The last project that I did was my thirtieth anniversary package, and it was a three disc compilation. Every new song on that basically I wrote, and I really kind of got to the place that I wrote myself into a hole and I got kind of fried, and it's like I got to stop for a while, and I really have had trouble digging back out of that writer's block. But I really felt like when I cut this new stuff, I needed to kind of be a little bit more contemporary, but not straight too far. So I wanted to kind of find some things that I haven't temple wise, things with a groove that I hadn't done before, things that were a little bit fresh for me. But I didn't want to stray too far away from my core. So I think I balanced. 00:35:32 Speaker 1: It and you didn't, because I mean, when I listened to the project, it felt like a Tracy Lawrence record, you know what I'm saying. 00:35:38 Speaker 2: And first one, I can't remember the name it gave me, the first one on the EP, it was a funky thing. 00:35:45 Speaker 3: It was almost like pretty dang good. 00:35:47 Speaker 2: Yeah, dude, Yeah, that's. 00:35:48 Speaker 3: Different than anything I've done, yeah. 00:35:50 Speaker 2: I know. But your stuff though, even in that, it's like you have a a like a bluesy way about you. Oh yeah, there is some R and B in your stuff. And even in that toune I remember hearing and being like, dude's there's some funk in this that that that's that says Tracy Ar. 00:36:12 Speaker 1: Yeah, you learned how to sing and that you cut your teeth in the church right a little bit. 00:36:16 Speaker 3: You know, I learned how to play guitar from a church camp handbook from Camp Tannaco. But you know, I grew up. I mean, my early influences are all traditional country music. We talked early on about Glenn Campbell and Jolie Pride and Kenny Rodgers and all that stuff, uh. 00:36:36 Speaker 2: Yesterday. 00:36:36 Speaker 3: But I go back. The first music product that I bought, which was an eight track and I'm trying to remember it was probably seventy seven, was Hank Weeam Junior Whiskey b Hill Down. So, I mean, and and Hank had a lot of blues to him. And if you go back and you listen to God like Charlie Rich, John Conney, John Colly's got a real soulful voice and So those people really influenced me heavily too, because they did have that soul this to them as well. So I'm still getting a lot of that stuff. But I freaking love Joe Cocker. I mean I grew up with all this. 00:37:13 Speaker 2: Yeah, man, Carmichael. Carmichael was talking about you the other day and he he played U blues Man. He played in the same blues Man and you just you can hear that influence on on a lot of junior stuff. Man. He was he is a He's a soul guy. 00:37:31 Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely, with out of doubt. 00:37:33 Speaker 2: I think that's my favorite genre of music. Yeah, I mean right outside of country is like. 00:37:39 Speaker 3: Steve Ravaughn, all that stuff. I grew up loving all that stuff. I mean, but I got into all the hair bands and stuff in high school too, the Van Halen's and big Zeppelin fan. But it's you know, as far as a singer and what I do, I was, I was more. I gravitated more towards the George Straight field than a lot of those. 00:37:59 Speaker 2: So when you when you get in your truck at home today, what do you pop on home to listen to on the way back? 00:38:05 Speaker 3: You know, I'm really into a lot of YouTube, podcast stuff, follow a lot of political stuff, so I'm kind of deeper into other things. Now. 00:38:12 Speaker 2: You ain't even listen to music. 00:38:13 Speaker 3: I don't listen to radio ver much. I don't either, and I and you know, when I start writing, I prefer that because I don't get pulled into getting on top of something else. I mean, I don't really listen to a lot outside music much anymore. 00:38:26 Speaker 1: Talk to us about the drive to continue to make music, because because I have conversations with with guys that man, once they once they're done, they want to be done, you know, and you have, you've had, you had a twenty year commercial career, and now you're still we're twenty twenty four, man, but you're still pumping out Tracy Lawrence tunes, Like what's where is that coming from? What's the what's the love? You know? Where is that based out of? 00:38:48 Speaker 3: I think it's just a love of the creativity and and and that's same with the podcasts and the other things that I do. I just think there's something inside you that that has to come out. And and I like it when I get into songwriting mode because it's better than a two hundred dollars an hour therapist, because you get in a room with a couple of guys that you trust and you're throwing out ideas and you're talking about life and you're just putting your cards out on the table. Man, there's something about that purging of whatever's going on in your life, even if you don't write about it that day. There's something about that collaboration with co writes that I find very special to me. I do, man, I feel like I purged all of it. And I've written some very deep songs. I mean, me and Carson and Martin Nesler have written some things that There's a song I wrote about my daughter called Struggle Struggle. You know. It's just things that just freaking move you, that you know, And I've learned as a songwriter too. I used to think when I came to town that if you have an idea from my personal experience, that you have to write it just it's got to be exactly the way that memory or that relationship or whatever that was. But I've learned over the years that the song deserves better than just what that situation was. You want to make it as colorful as us and as vivid the imagery and all of that stuff as you possibly can, and sometimes the story in your mind is not as vivid as you thought it was when you start diving down into it, and as a songwriter, you got a massage your way past that. So a lot of songs that come from a personal experience are not always one hundred percent accurate. 00:40:15 Speaker 2: Yeah to the detail, absolutely, and if they are, sometimes it's not as uh commercial. 00:40:24 Speaker 3: And that's another reason that you got to separate it too. As a songwriter. How many times you get your feelings hurt because somebody shot it down a song that you really wrote from a personal place. This is so special, they've got to hear, and then you just get your heart cut out of You got to separate yourself from that. 00:40:38 Speaker 2: For sure, you do. You got to you honestly, I feel like you only learn that over time, absolutely and doing it because I'm with you. There was a time where I felt like if it wasn't what was going on in my life to a t, then I didn't know how to do it, you know. But it through co writing and through like you're talking about trusting your co writers in the room. I think that was important thing that you said. It's like you get to a place where you realize you can put that story out there and trust those people to enhance or maybe even put their personal input on it. And before you know it, you've built this strong, you know story. 00:41:15 Speaker 3: That you can close your eyes and you know you can you can see the tapes tree on the wall, you can smell the smells that you're projecting, you can see the colors. I mean, and that's what you want to do. You want to be able to visualize it. It's a pretty special to be able to have that skill set to create that thing. I think it's an amazing thing. So back to the original question, and why do you continue to create music because of that? 00:41:37 Speaker 2: Right there? 00:41:38 Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what it's about. It. 00:41:39 Speaker 1: That's beautiful, it really is. 00:41:40 Speaker 2: I agree. You know, I read a quote that says the only the only proof I need that God exists is music because it's pulled out of nowhere. And I mean, you just create this thing from nothing, has to be given from God, right absolutely. 00:41:55 Speaker 3: And it's and it's been in me since I was just a little kid. Man, I've known it always been there. 00:42:01 Speaker 2: Same, same of us, same I mean read was singing specials in our church and making old ladies pass out when he was like six. 00:42:07 Speaker 1: Things right and see it again and again another one fall on the Florida Hey telling him, tell him telling me t L story. 00:42:14 Speaker 2: Oh no, completely forgot. So what I mean I've said before, You've been an influenceive of mine since the jump. But I my my best buddy Jamie Davis, who now plays guitar for Luke, and we had a band for ten years that toured all of Southeast sold gravy. We just so g We were a funk country band man and covered some of your stuff. And anyway, so we were playing this place one time. It was this, Uh, I probably shouldn't say the place, okay. We were playing Studio fifty five in Grenade of Mississippi one night and it was a relatively rough joint at times, not all the time, this particular night it might have been. And uh, you know, playing shows occasionally you get a guy that is amen come out to the parking lot with me. Men, Oh guy, he's gonna he's gonna rob us. So I was like, Jamie, dude, I'm not going by myself like you if I'm going here going He's like, all right, let's go, man, let's see it. He wouldn't leave us alone, you know. So he's like music, Oh guy, he's gonna rob us, gonna kill us, thro us in the back of this truck and take us into the swamp, you know. And he said, I got two things for you, all right. First one is this, and he held out his hand and I was like, oh gosh, I put my hand out. He dropped like eight pills in my hand. Right. I didn't know what any of them were. It was just a bunch of random. 00:43:41 Speaker 3: Well you can't tell him to you take one. 00:43:50 Speaker 2: So I'm like, oh, man, thanks for these pills. Man. Yeah, we had like a four hour drive. 00:43:56 Speaker 3: Take this one before this one. You have to take this one after this one. So this put these together, but not till after midnight. 00:44:04 Speaker 2: So not to disrespect the guy, I just like I didn't throw him over my shoulder. I just like put him in my parking, you know. And he was like the next thing is this, And he reads back in the strut and I was like, oh, this is where it rots, you know. And so he turns around and he has a burnt c D in a plastic vinyl case and it and on the top it said, you know when people used to burn cit and they ride on with the shower topas said Tracy, the r a c y at the bottom it said Lawrence, but it said spelled Lance with an R. He's like, they can pales pop out and you'll have a hell of a ride Homey Tracy l Tracy Larynce just Lance with an R. 00:44:47 Speaker 3: What is what is the old guy YouTube? What's his name? Uh? God? He does? He dances to all these songs. He danced to Tom marches On. What is his name? Joey Uh, Joey Broke, Joey bro Okay, Joey bro bro like Louisiana b r e A U. Check out Joey bro and see his rendition of time marches On. It's kind of creepy. There's some weird ship on there now. But I can in my mind I visualized that guy looking like, oh, I. 00:45:22 Speaker 2: Can tell you you've seen this guy before. So we go home. We obviously don't take the pills. We did jam the CD, even though we already know all the songs. We get back. We were staying at my brother in law's house in Jackson because we had another show in Memphis the next night. We drove up to Jackson to see. My brother in law was a doctor and I and I woke up the next morning, put my jeans on. I reached my pocket and I felt all those pills, you know, And I was like, hey man, I said, by the way, some I'm redneck gave us. Give me a handful of pills. I said, tell me what these are. He was like, that's two extra strengths tiling on. That's a vica and he was like that's a muscle relaxer, and that's half of a what's the viagra? He said, that's half a viagra. I was like, God, this guy did want us to have a good's headache. Wow. 00:46:09 Speaker 3: Well that's definitely a skill set your friend has. I was like, okay, man, there's usually one of those guys on every bus. If you have questions, what's this? They know what it is, they know what it is. 00:46:21 Speaker 4: Well, he's a doctor, so I guess he. 00:46:33 Speaker 1: Hey man, I've seen some videos of you elk coming. 00:46:36 Speaker 2: Yeah, dang, I didn't know this. 00:46:38 Speaker 3: You know that? 00:46:38 Speaker 1: Were you on the Outdoor Channel? 00:46:39 Speaker 3: You on the TV show did the Outdoor Channel, Biggest Biggest Man, biggest time, I'm alive ever? Hearsted man. I got this massive elk. We were in a uh cascade, Wyoming, and uh, it was really cool. We did like a three day hunt and we'd go out in the mornings and get up in the morning and we'd go with our guide and we'd go set up the base of the mountains and we'd glass and kind of watch where the herd was, and then we'd wait there until we'd see which direction they were going up. The year is this, Uh, this would be October, September, October or something like that. 00:47:11 Speaker 2: Pretty good. 00:47:12 Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean you could see them, I mean massive herds of hundreds of the amount of time. So so we'd see which way they were going up. Then we'd come back and have breakfast, kind of peel around, go the shooting range and stuff. So the first day I went out, I mean, you're you're coming back about two o'clock in the afternoon. You're putting on a pack, and you're you're all your gear and everything, and you're going and uh, it'll kick your butt. I'm talking about I'm following my guide around. He's like a freaking mountain goat, and I'm just trying to keep up hyperventilating. And I've been had really tried to get prepared for it, but it kicked my tail. So uh, we went up on a grassy plane the first day and he popped out this less whole steam cow thing. So we're crawling around the grass. I missed a shot that day at about two hundred and fifty yards. I missed a shot. So we come back down. Nobody else got a shot that day. Next day we went back up, didn't get a shot, went to the same thing. So the third day, it's the last day we're there, so we did went and glass that morning, came back, I had breakfast, went up that afternoon, so we hike for a good two hours and we came upon this place. There's this huge ravine and I'm telling you, there was like a rock shelf. And we came upon this bluff and we're we're in the remote part of nowhere, man. So there's Indian era heads everywhere. I mean, you could tell that they've been hunting from this spot for years and years and years and years. I mean this that's I mean, few people have ever seen it. And so we crawl up and we look over this little shelf and down below there's hundreds, hundreds of elks. I mean and there, but there is about a three hundred yard shot, so he glasses it. I pick out the one on one. I mean, it's this massive freaking bull and I can't hit him right in the hearty like three hundred and fifty y longest shot I've ever made. It took nine of us. It's about six and a half hours to keepe him and quarter him and get him back down. We had to pack it out, so everybody kind of got back to you. I was the only one. Then the whole hunt for three days, it got a got a harvest. 00:49:12 Speaker 2: Oh wow, I was the only one. 00:49:13 Speaker 3: So he's hanging in my poolhouse. Massive, every bit of that. 00:49:18 Speaker 2: They're good. 00:49:18 Speaker 3: Free love helped me absolutely amazing. But that was the most physical hunt that I've ever done, and probably I had just had ankle surgery last year in December. I'm just still struggling to get over it. But I don't think I'll physically ever be able to do that kind of hunt again. I think I think that was my one and done for that because it was just it. It kicked. What happened to the ankle, torn ligaments, ripped the tendon, just but stuff pro part of it was prolonged, and then I put it off too long. Then the tendon tore on me. 00:49:48 Speaker 1: Just kicking one of them dogs. 00:49:50 Speaker 3: Now racing my wife. I rolled my ankle several times. We used to love no cut that so when I roll it bad. The last time, we had gone to Memphis with several couple of friends. Were hanging out on Bell Street. So we're staying at a hotel in downtown. So when we get up on the elevator, the elevators opened like this. In our room was like dead center back here. So every time the elevator's door opened, we race for like two days. The last yeah, we'd race to our room and I kicked her butt every time. And then that last time, we were playing in Tunica the next day, so we were we've been down on Bell Street. You know, you go all the way then the pad O's and you start off with a hurricane, then you work your way back, you know, the deal. 00:50:30 Speaker 1: Feeling pretty good, pretty good. 00:50:32 Speaker 3: So so I came out of the elevator and I rounded that corner and my ankle rolled and I crashed into the wall. I mean it swelled up like a freaking candilo. So I know that's when I tore the ligaments. 00:50:42 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:50:42 Speaker 3: So, I mean it's in and I've rolled it many times. Yeah, she said she won, but I said, there's an asterisk by that you did not win. I mean I went down. I mean it's it was bad. I had to go to the emergency room the next morning because I really thought I'd broke it. I mean it swelled up. It was huge. 00:50:57 Speaker 2: So that those self injuries ankle rolls they like when you. 00:51:01 Speaker 3: Were Nothing's like no, you know, I used to jump off the top of the house, but I used to bounce when I hit back down. I don't bounce anymore. It's like break yeah with a thud. Now over. 00:51:14 Speaker 1: Yeah, you said, uh, you said earlier that if you know, you back in your heyday, you were torn and going crazy. If you just had a day to to to decompress you, you wanted to hop in the jeep or the truck and ride some back rows with some dyck coke? 00:51:29 Speaker 2: Is that? 00:51:30 Speaker 1: What is that? What hunt and fishing does for you? And being being in the outdoors does it? Does it give you a mental break that you don't get anywhere else. 00:51:37 Speaker 3: It does? And uh, like I said, I don't hunt around the house anymore. But I've got a I've got a place in West Texas with some friends that I bird hunt with in September October every year, and then another high fence place down in the same area, uh, with several thousand acres that we go to and hunt usually in December every year. There's lots of white tail and breeding stuff, and a lot of exotics like black buck and axis and fallow and all that kind of stuff. So it's it's pretty awesome. Birds q quail and peesn't I mean quail and dove tons dove. So the place we hunt down there, there's tons of sunflower fields, so it's dove When when they come off the roost in the morning, when you're sitting in that dove field, it's like a wave. It's just unbelievable how many thousands of freaking birds are coming in. I mean, it's unbelievable. You can't even fathom. It's crazy. 00:52:22 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been a long time, so I've been on a real good dove hunt. I wanted a good one. They're fun. 00:52:28 Speaker 3: I want to do that. Y'all heard about the Argentine stuff. Whether you have a guy just they have to swap guns out of your mouth. The Barrett gun barrel down. They load, you give you a gun. Yeah, they load, you give you a gun, and you just shoot till you can't shoot no more. 00:52:40 Speaker 1: Dang right. They take our buddy from West Tennessee went and he they gave him when he left. It was a booklet of like and it was pictures of him shooting and you know, you get the steak dinner in the can and stuff. They had his statistics, so like they're sitting there counting how many shots you shot and if you hit the burden, he's got percentage of on how many he shot fourteen hundred times and he hit eleven hundred times, so it gives you your percentages of school. Yeah, it's pretty cool for awesome, but I mean literally you you can shoot. I mean you take breaks because you do. 00:53:13 Speaker 2: It's a plane now here. Let's hop it real quick. Go shoot Argentina, write a few songs. Come back tonight. Dude, wife's happy. 00:53:22 Speaker 3: Everybody's could get to like a plan. 00:53:24 Speaker 1: Get your jet dow Hey, let's talk about mission possible. 00:53:27 Speaker 2: Man. 00:53:27 Speaker 1: You're doing some great work for for on your charity, have been for a while, just hosted a golf tournament over at Old Hickory, right and raised a bunch of money. Tell us a little bit about that and show us your heart and for that, for that charity. 00:53:43 Speaker 3: So mission possible. We just finished our eighteenth year frying turkeys. 00:53:47 Speaker 2: Uh. 00:53:47 Speaker 3: So we started eighteen years ago with just the vision of wanting to get back. It was me and a handful of friends, and all we really wanted to do was drive awareness to the Nastionville Rescue Mission. I had made some relationships there because of a family member that was struggling with some addiction and homelessness and all that stuff. So there was a whole thing that kind of led us into that. So, you know, just wanted to put the National Rescue Mission in a better light. So the first year we went down there, I think we bought one hundred turkeys or whatever and just Bard brought our on personal fryers. And so after that first year it grew into this thing where we would take donations. We started cooking between five and six hundred turkeys and we. 00:54:24 Speaker 2: Got sponsors six hundred turtle. 00:54:27 Speaker 3: Yeah, so we we did that, but most of that was just going to the National Rescue Mission. So we were doing in the parking lot of the rescue mission. Three years ago, we felt like we had the opportunity to grow. And as I've gone through this journey, I've realized that there's so many things outside of the rescue Mission. They have their their rules about people that they let in, and there's a lot of people that don't want to adhere to that, but that don't mean they don't need compassion and they've got to eat and things. So we started finding all these other little peripheral organizations. People that are you know, street preachers, and people that are feeding at different days of the week, and people that provide temporary housing or people that provide showers or launder clothes or whatever it is that they need. So we started reaching out to other organizations like that. So we moved to the fair grounds three years ago, and that first year we got hooked up with the Cardial company in the National Turkey Federation. They gave us twelve hundred turkeys, So we went from five hundred or so to do in twelve hundred, and then last year we did fourteen hundred. I know we did twelve hundred. 00:55:29 Speaker 2: The first year there got to be some fires. 00:55:32 Speaker 3: No never had a fire we'd do one hundred and twenty fryars and you have. 00:55:35 Speaker 2: Fried fourteen hundred turkeys and there were in one year and there were no fires, no grease. 00:55:41 Speaker 3: But everything was structured. We set everything up in pits of pits like with ten or twelve friars. Every pit has a pit boss that knows how to watch over everything. Fire extinguishers, we have. The fire Marshal comes signs off on it every morning. Everything goes through its system. It goes to the drying rack. When it's done, my wife and lady's package stuff up. A lot of it's going to surrounding counties all around Tennessee with say for trucks out the next day with box mills with the turkey and sides and everything that are going to pick up locations for families with kids to pick up. So it's just grown. The golf tournament was added three years ago and it's it's become the cash driver for pretty much everything. That's where we make the bulk of the money. But we've been doing this thing going on and beat our nineteenth year this year. Over all, good you pretty cool work man. 00:56:24 Speaker 2: I appreciate your heart of that. 00:56:25 Speaker 3: Man. 00:56:26 Speaker 2: It's it's that's. 00:56:27 Speaker 3: Especially a lot of suffering out there there. 00:56:29 Speaker 2: Is and if we can, if we can help in any way of that, absolutely, you know, let us let us know. I would love to come and beat everybody. 00:56:36 Speaker 3: It's pretty fascinating to see to pull up in that pavilion and see just rows of friars and all. I mean, we have two hundred and fifty volunteers, man, people that have been coming back every year, and so you know, it's it's pretty it's pretty cool to see. 00:56:48 Speaker 1: I'm sure it makes them feel good man to see to see your heart and your passion for helping people out in those situations. You know, that's that's probably a pretty addicting feeling to to want to be a part of and help drive that thing. 00:57:00 Speaker 2: I know, if I don't, I know, if I don't ask this, I'm gonna regret not asking this. Can you just give me one or two of your favorite road stories that just live at up of like of being in a band or or whatever it is. Just just give me some insight on something. Oh so far, the funniest thing you said is the Garth Brooks mic Oh dear, that is hysterical and it's logged into my brain to repeat. But I'll always cite you, and I'll give you the credit for that. 00:57:31 Speaker 3: Oh funny road stories, man. I remember a couple of iconic moments to me, and one of them was Alibias was speaking all of charge my first big tour, you know, after that first year of my when things kicked off in ninety one. I went through that first year and doing a lot of clubs and stuff around, and then I wound up out on the George Jones Tour, the Red Man Crown Roll Tour in ninety two and ninety three. So I spent a lot of time with Jones out on the road. 00:57:55 Speaker 2: Greatest country voice of all time. 00:57:57 Speaker 3: Oh Haggard's, Haggard's Haggard me too, Haggard's my guy. Now, I love George. I spent a lot more time with George than I did with Haggard. Uh, And I love George. George and I got real close he was. He was very cool to me and I learned a lot from him. But I remember we were in Greenville, South Carolina, playing at the Arena there and Alibi's was peeking out. So this would have been ninety three. This was been after we'd had sticks and Stones Momentum. Alibis was the first single off of that off of that album, and so it was peeking out. And I remember when I finished singing Alibis in that arena that was back before cell phones. Everybody had their freaking cigarette lighters up in there, and I literally they wouldn't stop yell. And I remember standing in front of the state of freaking just boo hood wow, just freaking crying man, just so overwhelmed by all of it. I mean, it was it was that powerful back then, you know, crazy stuff. I mean, I remember one night, I ain't gonna mention who al was with me, but we back back before the NKED people were at the roundabout down here, you know that used to be there was just a fountain there, right, and so we were all rolling when music Row was still just a small town in the middle of a big city. We put dawn in that thing about two o'clock in the morning and it foamed up everything. I mean, I feel there was. There was dishwashing foam going all over music Row. Was running up the streets. It was a beautiful thing back when you could do fun stuff like I didn't throw a cheer. 00:59:29 Speaker 2: Respect the world has changed. Nashville has changed a lot, even even in even in the thirty years. 00:59:37 Speaker 3: Yeah, everything's changed. Man. The whole world is different now. It's just it's a different time we live in. 00:59:42 Speaker 1: If you had if you had any advice for for a young pup, up and coming artist or a songwriter moving to Nashville wanted to chase the dream, what would uh? What would the legendary T L tell him? 00:59:54 Speaker 3: You know, I think, more than anything else, don't give your soul away. That's a very important thing that you kind of need, whether you realize it or not. I think you have to learn to bend a little bit when you first. You know, I told you earlier that that that Texas Tornado was a bartering tool for me to get to other things where I can start producing my own things. Sometimes you got to bend, and sometimes even after you you have success, you got to crawl again after you walk. You've got to realize that you need good people around you that have your best interests at herd, because a label does not. You need people that you can trust, that are going to tell you the truth and and and you know, just try to be a decent person as much as you can it's it's a tough world to survive in without being a little bit cutthroat, but you have to. You have to kind of find ballance, keep your soul intact. 01:00:46 Speaker 2: I like that a lot. 01:00:47 Speaker 1: Great stuff. 01:00:48 Speaker 2: I like that a lot is the term. 01:00:51 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that was very important what you just said. But I'm sorry I have to I'm sure that was important that we're trying to say, but it's that part of show. For the One that got we do a thing on the whole thing. 01:01:16 Speaker 2: I didn't put the one. 01:01:18 Speaker 1: It's all good, guy, josh Us, not far. 01:01:22 Speaker 2: I'm supposed to do that. Guy. 01:01:23 Speaker 1: If this podcast is not, We're killing you, go you are fired. We do a thing called the One that Got Away on God's Country Podcast. And it could be a deer, it could be a fish, it could be a song. You're married, so probably not a girl. It could be a hamburger. Dan likes to say, does does anything come to mind when you ask you? Tracy Lawrence? 01:01:44 Speaker 3: So I'm trying to remember it was. It was probably about I think it was eight or nine. I bought a raush Ford Mustang Cobra convertible black on red interior four hundred and fifty four horse power double turbo charge. 01:02:04 Speaker 1: I can hear it. 01:02:07 Speaker 3: And we decided that it wasn't practical, and I sold that car in about a year after I had it, and I wish that I had not let that car go. 01:02:16 Speaker 2: Would you be alive? Would you be here to do the made it? 01:02:21 Speaker 3: Made it back from Knoxville in an hour and a half. Yeah, I'm telling you. I came down that mountain with the ears laid back on it, and the fast you went, the harder it sucked down on the ground. I mean that's a jail over that one. Yeah, that sucker would fly. 01:02:35 Speaker 1: I bet that was fun. Yeah, I bet that was fun. 01:02:37 Speaker 2: Well, i'mnna have a sheriff weight on me and cars creak anyways, for talking smack about the they're going for me. That's all right. I like them dudes. 01:02:46 Speaker 1: We also do favorite country song, which is the greatest slash favorite. So I don't have to be country, you can. I guess it could be anything you wanted to be, but. 01:02:55 Speaker 2: Just just cornerstone song in your life. Yeah, just of course something. 01:03:00 Speaker 1: And it could be the first time, but it could be one of yours. 01:03:03 Speaker 3: Brof you know, you know, it's really hard for me to narrow it down to one. But I'll kind of tell you this. When when I got to Nashville, you know, I'd been just consumed with George Straight. I mean it was George Straight. I mean, so when I cut Sticks and Stones, if you will listen to that and you think about the songs are on that, like running behind sticks and Stones, somebody paints the wall. There's several mid tempos. There's a couple of waltzes. I tried to go through, and I tried to put an album together that, in my mind, if I closed my eyes, was a collection of my favorite George Strait songs. So that was my theme when I was searching for songs. When I put that first record together, I didn't know any other way to go about it. So it's really hard for me to narrow it down. I can't say it's Amarilla by Morning. Maybe it's you know, the chair. But you know, all those things kind of fit into that time and place for me because they were so important for them musical development of who I became as an artist. I remember when un Wound came out. I was so born out when I became a George Straight fan from that very first single man give me a bottle. I think it's a text to name you give me a bottle too. Yeah, that's too early in the morning. We save me a bottle, your very best. I got a problem. I want to drink off my cheese. 01:04:31 Speaker 1: It goab be a top five moment for me in that you want to. 01:04:33 Speaker 3: Spell the night getting down I had on the night I had wrapped around my finger, just come on round. 01:04:46 Speaker 5: And I am wrapped around my feet just to come on wound. She get me out of the house, and tonight I'm a whiskey around. 01:04:58 Speaker 6: I'm gonna be the drunkest fool in town. Lad on the night I had her after around my thing and just come home. 01:05:09 Speaker 3: Wow, that's hard to beat that one. 01:05:17 Speaker 2: Hard to beat that one one. 01:05:19 Speaker 3: I told George Strait I was at the a c MS man. It's probably my first time meeting wound up in an elevator with him, and I'm like, you know, my favorite song was Unwound. That song. 01:05:31 Speaker 2: Why that's a gam man, I mean eternal that's on the lift forever. 01:05:36 Speaker 1: Absolutely well, I tell you what, man, it's gonna be hard to beat this podcast. Man, this was a blast. 01:05:41 Speaker 2: Brother. 01:05:41 Speaker 1: Thank you for coming on and hang out with us. 01:05:43 Speaker 2: Man, Dude, we appreciate your voice, we appreciate your music, we appreciate your heart for the town that we live in. 01:05:49 Speaker 1: Everything you've done for this, for this community. 01:05:51 Speaker 3: Thank you. 01:05:51 Speaker 2: Proud to know you now. 01:05:52 Speaker 3: It's a pleasure. 01:05:53 Speaker 2: Absolutely come hang out with us. 01:05:55 Speaker 1: New EP's out out here, in it, go spend it, and go stream it. Yeah. Man, this was This was iconic for me. 01:06:02 Speaker 2: Dude, I'm thinking that all day. 01:06:06 Speaker 1: Dude, Tracy Lawns everybody God's Country. Thanks for hanging out with us. Uh, We'll see you next time. 01:06:13 Speaker 2: Also, thanks

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