Ep. 17: Drew Holcomb on Ernie Johnson, Taxidermy, and Duck Hunting

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Yo, You're off in God's Country with Breath and Dan
is book also known as The Brothers Hunt, when we
take a weekly drive to the intersection of country music
and a great old outdoors dose things that go together,
like a size twenty four shoe and Shaquille O'Neill.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Or his foot technically or illegal Taxi Genny and birds
of prey. His foot is him though, That's what I'm saying.
Produced by Immediator and iHeart Podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
We're gonna sit down with Drew Holcom and I'm pumped
about this one.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Man.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
I'm a Drew Hope fan. Great songs, dude, loves sports,
he loves.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Golf, massive following, and not even really on the commercial
country scene. He's just makes great songs. People love his music,
and he's stucked into the Americana world and people love him.
And I'll get one. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Absolutely great songwriter, great dad, great dude, great hang podcast.
Y'all are gonna love this one. Be sure to check
it out and thanks for hanging out. And God, I'm
gonna have to also keep my legs closed for this
one because I just I thought I grabbed my blue

(01:16):
jeans that didn't have the holes.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Bro everywhere. That's the worst one of your favorite jeans
that I'd assume that if you're wearing them still there.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, I've got two pairs of jeans. They're the same,
exact pairs of jeans. These are the ones, yeah I
thought I had. These are the ones I've had longer
than the other ones.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
So, as an artist, how many pairs of jeans do
you have? Well, I mean in rotation, in rotation?

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yeah, yeah, Well there's this there's this guy in Tuplo, Mississippi,
who makes these jeans called Blue Delta.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Maybe the ones I have on Yeah, well.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
Which is hilarious. I'm not wearing them at the second.
So those are your favorite?

Speaker 2 (01:49):
Those?

Speaker 3 (01:49):
Well, I got them somewhere. I got some, gave me
a pair, and then I ran. We had a show
in Oxford and his shop is right across from the venue,
the Lyric Theater, and he came to show.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
He was like, Hey, you want some more jeans.

Speaker 3 (02:01):
I was like, yeah, sure, Like I'll give you whatever
she's giving me, probably fifteen pairs of them.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
And so that's pretty much all I wear, especially on stage.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
This is the only pair of jeans that I own,
and I wear them three four times a week.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
Yeah, I mean, do you wear nothing in the other
three to four days just jogging pants.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yes, there's many of days that you can roll up
to Dan's house and just like surprising and and he's
just happened.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
He just got way too big with drinking coffee.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
And uh he'll just be like in a T shirt
with and like everybody else in his house will be
clothed with Dan's just T shirt and uh.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Yeah, kids kind of ruined that for me, but I guess,
you know, they don't want to see their dad walking around.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
I feel that clothes mine don't have a choice. So
be glad that you're not one more kids.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
What happened to your Joe's love? I thought you loved Joe.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Joe did, but uh, they just tear so easy.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
Man.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Well that's why there's holes. All these feel just like
Joe's now, except they don't. I had cross blasted.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
You know. I'm definitely at that point in my life
where I have everything that I from socks all the
way to hats. I if I have something I like,
I just go buy like six pairs of it. And
You're like, I'm gonna wear the same shirt maybe in
a different color.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, for the next three years. Yeah, totally. I hate
mine clothes, man.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
And on the road now, I literally wore the same
jacket every night for the entire tour and it was
so great because I didn't think about it until two
minutes before I went on stage. Just grab it and go.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Yeah, what jacket is.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
It's like this old sort of seventies Camo print jacket.
And then I founded at a men's store in Austin, Texas,
and yeah, it's just like some random thing I found.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Camo goes with everything, dude and goes.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Does your wife is your wife? Like, we got to
get your more clothes? You always wear the same cline? No, no, no,
we we have. I have plenty of clothes. I just
don't wear them all.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
Yeah, that's I don't know if you know this is
my wife.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
She she hates. How do you feel by his WORDE?
I wear the same thing. But it's also like what
I mow the yard in I wear to work, yeah,
and I wear around town and you know that kind
of thing, Like I just like have clothes. I don't
have specific clothes for specific things. I just wear the
clothes I got for whatever I'm doing.

Speaker 3 (04:19):
Well, I feel like, you know, guys we have it's
pretty easy to be a guy because the style has
been the same for like two hundred years. It's like
pants shoes. Sure, absolutely, you know, except when it comes
to our hobbies. Yeah, Like my wife makes fun of
all the golf shirts yep. And then she's like, you
have six fishing shirts and you went fishing one time
last year. I'm like, but what if I went this

(04:39):
different kind of fishing? Absolutely?

Speaker 4 (04:41):
You know?

Speaker 3 (04:41):
Or are you wearing it? This is the orange shirt
for I thought you're going hunting. I was like, well,
I'm going duck hunting. She's like, so you don't wear
the orange one. I'm like, well no, because the ducks
can see the orange. She said, well, who doesn't see
the orange. I'm like, well, dear, well, actually I mainly
hunt quail with orange stuff. She's like, so the quail
can see orange. Like, well, that so the guys don't
shoot me, She's like, the duck guys don't shoot.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
Just stop talking. Stop.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
It all makes sense if you're wondering who uh who
another artist voice? Man, good, good, solid artist voice on
the couch you talking singing?

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Is uh?

Speaker 3 (05:18):
We got mister Drew hulkom with us this morning. Man,
everybody looking good, looking like an artist coming in. Yeah,
he's got his head's busted up.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
At up. I was.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
I was getting out of a sprinter van and you know,
they got that huge Mercedes logo on the back, huge
half the logo goes out about three inches past the doorframe.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
That's what.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
And and the physics. I was planning on the regular door,
not the extra three inches inches of clear and man,
it clocked me right in there, just absolutely took you
can see. Yeah, yeah, so that hurts. I've got a
little mild concussion this morning.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
Dude. I was getting out of the man where were we?
It was, I was the I was the guy that
on the end of the bench that had to get
out first, you know, and uh, it didn't have the
step down. It just had to go. And then I
was trying to get out and hurry because it was
I just called the top. Yeah, I got this furrow
brow thing so like it it's I mean it's almost

(06:16):
like a like a hook like it just so I
hit it, man, and it pushed my head back into
my neck and it was like and then someone was like,
what about the herd? I was like, no, I'm good
and really I heard like the rest of the night,
just all the way back. Dude, those vans are not
made for for humans. For humans.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
Yeah yeah, I did like that they extended the heighth.
I mean when we all were like young and touring
and riding around, there was the old school church van.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
See that's what this is.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
This was this was fifteen past. Yeah, those things are tiny.
Damn likes to say that his furrow brow is not
a genetic thing, it's from his football helmet in high school.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
What is he says he's got?

Speaker 2 (07:00):
I never said that. What I never say that. This
is a cave man that always said that your furrow
brown customer. I mean, there might be a chance to
have something to do with it, but it's just kind
of sad, you know. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
Yeah, I mean I have like this permanent intention in
between my eyebrows from sort of having a perpetual frown.
And uh, my mom's every time I have like promo
shoots or whatever, She's like, why don't you ever smile?
I'm like, well, this is just my face, Like this
is what I look like. I see it ninety percent
of the time. Like I do smile when something's funny.

(07:34):
But if it's not funny, it's got to be really funny.
You remember that scene in Marley and Me, the dog
movie that makes it. Saw that a long time ago. Yeah, okay,
So there's a scene. He's a writer and he gets
bumped from being a reporter to being a columnist and
he turns in his first column and it's Alan Aldo
is the editor, and he's like, it's supposed to be
a funny column. And he's sitting there watching him read it,

(07:55):
and he's got the editors furrowed brow, and Owen Wilson
starts apologizing, Yeah, never mind, it's not that funny. Just
get back to me. And he looks up to town
Wilson and he says, no, this is really funny. This
is some funny. But he never breaks.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
And my wife we're on an airplane.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
And she's punching.

Speaker 4 (08:11):
She goes, that's you.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
It's like, yeah, I mean that's funny, that's I'm laughing off.
But I have like a perpetual like frown dimple in
my eyebrows because I just kind of always, you know.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Had that just a perplexed look. I don't think it's frowny.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
I mean it's like most of someone tell them, why
are you frowning of me? I'm perplexed all the time.
When you were showing us your noggin, you also showed
us the scar. Yeah, got a huge scar. Tell us,
tell us about it goes.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Ear to ear.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
So when I was eight years old, I'm one of
twenty eight cousins.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
Oh no, no, no, no, that got me.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
That's pretty yeah, yeah, I mean basically similar, yeah, twenty eight.
So there were there were four boys, all born four
wheel cousins, all born the same year.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
So I was or two, and so we hung out
all summer long, all the time, and one day we
got his middle of June.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Eight years old.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
We get into my cousin's house and we find his
dad's golf clubs and a big box of those plastic
golf balls. Let's go to the front yard and get
after it.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
How old are you eight? Okay?

Speaker 3 (09:17):
And I didn't see my cousin taking a swing, and
I had hit my bottles running to go get it,
and I read right behind him, and that followed through
seven iron hit me right in the eyebrow and shattered
my my whatever, this part of my skull bone isbrow bone, Yeah,
eyebrow bone, and a piece of it was floating around
inside my.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
See, mine would never shattered because it's.

Speaker 3 (09:37):
Like you hadn't warn a helmet.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
At that time, so it would. It's pretty pretty cave
man dude.

Speaker 3 (09:47):
So anyways, I had to get a They didn't want
to like scarf my whole face to fix it, so
they cut they it's called a cranny out of me.
I think they cut you from ear to ear in
like an M shape, and they peel it down, screw
the bone back in there with the little tiny titanium
screws and put it back. And then the worst part
about it was I couldn't play the entire summer.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
And it was like June.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
Fifth, eight years old. All you wanted. All I wanted
to do is be outside. Instead of having place, you're watching.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
Your twenty seven other cousins out there playing games and
having fun.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
And and when I when I started going bald, I
got really nervous about it. I was like, man, I'm
gonna look like Frank.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
It's good look for but.

Speaker 3 (10:25):
It's it's it's all right, You're good looking, bald dude. Well,
I appreciate that. Some we came here to get that value.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
And I said, for sure. You know you can go
either way. You can have the hot dog head or
like the weekly. It good.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
It doesn't work for some guys.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
That worked for you. Yeah, I got maybe next time
you hit the face of golf club you can ask
them to fix your perplexed that you might as well
two for one.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
Instead of mad. You see the other one right above that, Yeah,
that's from fireworks. Oh yeah, yeah, what age was that?

Speaker 2 (10:56):
That was eleven?

Speaker 3 (10:58):
That's big. That's huge bottle of rockets. Yep, like the
battle archets on steroids. Yeah, yep, so my cousin, Yeah,
the big red stick. So I like one and I
throw it and I'm waiting and waiting. I'm behind my
Mom's like big van and doesn't go off and in
like thirty seconds. So I just like, I'm gonna look
and see. I picked my head around the corner and
there it is, coming right on.

Speaker 4 (11:17):
It bounces off my head, it explodes up high.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
Bro.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
That part of your your taking.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Some shots, like recently four.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
Decisions to become a musician. So anyways, Uh, my grandfather
grew up seven doors down from my grandfather, and he
was a surgeon, and so whoever was watching us, mom
or babysitter was like, hey, you know Grand Chovy, come
down here. His name is Choby. It's a whole other story.
Grand Chevy.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah, that's awesome name.

Speaker 3 (11:47):
So we go to his office and he gives me
like two or three stitches, and then like a week later,
I go to he was retired. Basically he went in
like one day week at that point. So I go
see his partner, my uncle, and he's like, man, these
war Dockspha was at.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
War two dog.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
He's like, he should have given you eight stitches. He
gave you two. Yeah, So I had this huge scar
for all my childhood.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Where'd you grow.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
Up in Memphis? Oh?

Speaker 2 (12:13):
Wow, we're from Savannah.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
Oh really yeah so part of Memphis. I grew up
just right outside of well kind of. I grew up
near Overton Park when I was little, and then we
moved to German Town. Then we moved back into Memphis,
kind of right near Poplar two Fortyk where the random
tall round hotel is. Okay, you know no but no,
but anyways, it's like writing the kind of right in

(12:35):
the heart.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
We used to Uh, our dad's a pastor. If you
do that but of course you didn't know that. So
he we would do like Bible drills. Yeah, and the
state drill was always at Bellevue. Oh yeah, and we
used to think Bellvy.

Speaker 3 (12:50):
We called it Fort God, perfectname in Memphis had two nicknames,
Fort God and six Flags of Her Jesus.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
And I remember going. I would occasionally to be honest man,
like I lied a bunch and Bible drill, like I
could find the I cheated all the time. I call
you to read the thing, the verse, and you would
just be acts one eight go you therefore get no

(13:21):
step back, a step back, you know, because that was
the only one you really.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
There's like there's added pressure because you're the church kids,
like the preacher kids, like you're supposed to.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
If you don't know that stuff, bro, you feel like
you're going to hell.

Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
You feel like, well, I'm about to lose my salvation
if I don't if I don't get this verse right.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah, we're all talked into Memphis. We we used to
play oh gosh, man, the worst beat down in the
sporting event I've ever been a part of took place
at Memphis AAU basketball Oh yeah, oh, playing my gosh,
Orange man yeah, oh yeah, Ridge way we played. We

(13:59):
would have ocasionally beat Manassas at like football.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
Yeah there's a tiny school. Oh were they Yeah, they
only had about eighty kids.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
It's probably what did you say? Arch Man?

Speaker 1 (14:09):
Arge Man was the team that in high school. They
gave the kids who ran like a sub four or
five gold cleats and the whole offense had.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
Do you go to that game? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (14:20):
Weak, god, I'm rush well that they had like that.
I mean Cedric Wilson was superstar ap Tennessee, was a
quarterback for Melrose and they won a bunch of state
championships over over in my in my.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
Yeah. Yeah. The crazy thing is, so I remember we
were always intimidated going to Memphis. Right, we would like
beat all the people in our area. Yeah, we're awesome,
and then we go to Memphis and just get crushed. Right.
So we go play Melrose and I remember being in
a defensive end and like trying to swim move this
guy and he's just like I mean he was like
six eight three seventy five, just like hold me with

(14:57):
one yeah, And I was like kind of good, like
in my area, you know what I mean, like competitive,
and I was just moving like what are we supposed
to do? And their quarterback was just dropped back and
just launch, just launch, just throw as far as as
far as he could and then come right under it.
So but the one thing I remember them while we

(15:17):
were out there. First off, I didn't know at the time,
but it smelled like weed on the field. I could
smell people smoking weed.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
They were chiefing it out of the bleachers, and I
remember the band going.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
And I was like, we're getting killed in the line.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
It wasn't a ball game.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
You're sitting their first round of the playoffs. And they
were to dance on the field.

Speaker 3 (15:43):
That's why the I remember team called or remember them. Yeah,
so Mumford had this chant. I went to this little
Christian school called E. C. S. And they would go
meat potatoes E c S and corn bread, meat potatoes,
like they're gonna eat They're gonna eat you.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
Oh, you're a part of the dinner.

Speaker 4 (16:05):
Yeah yeah, we were, We were dinner.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
You were.

Speaker 4 (16:07):
Yeah. That was their pregame warm up and we were
all like.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
They're gonna mix you up with the corn bread.

Speaker 4 (16:12):
And well we're about to get wax.

Speaker 3 (16:15):
And I was probably the worst basketball player in Shelby
County history. Really yeah. Oh man, it was so bad,
but you love it, right, you love that? I love
watching basketball? Yeah yeah, I love the Grizz, love watching Jaw.
I mean yeah, you still love watching john until he
got hurt.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:30):
Uh dude, wile World Basketball. Tell us a little about
the Ernie Ernie Johnson thing. Man, man, it's a cool story.
So maybe I don't know how many. Couple of three
years ago, I get a direct message on Twitter, which
never happens, right, like, you don't check that kind of stuff.
But it's it's coming from a verified account, so it's like, oh,
it's Ernie Johnson.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
Ernie Johnny said, hey.

Speaker 3 (16:50):
Uh, you don't know me, but it was actually Ernie
was actually Ernie. He said, you don't know me, but
I have a story I'd like to tell you. Can
you can I call you? Of course a sports fan, absolutely, yeah,
So he calls me and this is all like public info.
But he he had lost a son about six months earlier.
Now this was a their son had severe cerebral palsy.

(17:12):
They adopted him when he was two from Romania. He
lived to be in his late twenties. And Ernie has
a bunch of other kids and grandkids, and so he says, hey,
I don't know if you know my name is Jernie
johnsone from town. Like yeah, already, no, yeah, I said,
by shack, Yeah, see on the TV a lot, you know,

(17:32):
And he says, long story short, we have Sunday family
dinners and then we always have a we had a
always had a Dishes clean up playlist, and your song
family has been our sort of favorite song. And so
when our son passed away, we decided we wanted to
end the service with a family dance party on stage,

(17:52):
dancing to family, and so I was just like crying
on the phone.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
Well, and it was.

Speaker 3 (17:57):
Cool for me because I actually grew up with a
special needs other who passed away when I was in
high school, who had spina bifida, and so I was
able to kind of like say, well, not only do
I appreciate that, but I'm also like, I'm in this club.
And we hit it off and he's going to see
us play a few times. And then most recently I
decided to go for it. My son, who's height, loves basketball,

(18:20):
and I said, Ernie, can can I bring Huck and
watch it taping? And He's like absolutely, come on. So
we go down there and I'm thinking, we're just gonna
get to like sort of meet the gas real quick.
And where's down there? We're Atlanta. They filmed the show
in Atlanta, Live with you know, with Shaq and Kenny
and and Charles Bark and they were all really sweet.
But the best part we walk in is like this

(18:41):
kind of green room area and Shaq walks in. He
and some of Ernie's grandkids are there too, and he's
like saying hello all to me. He sees my son
like he Shack does yeah, Shak points at him like this,
and then he he fingers.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
Like come over here.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
And he's a giant person. He's huge on TV. It
doesn't do it just no, I'm looking straight up at him,
you know, straight up straight up basical.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
I mean legit look like he wears a size like
twenty three, and if you've ever seen a size twenty three,
it's literally like that big.

Speaker 2 (19:12):
He's so big. And what we all got this is
a this is eleven.

Speaker 3 (19:16):
I'm a solid ten. I'm a fourteen.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
Yeah you are, yeah, so what if this is eleven?
It's two of those.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Basically basically, and you still don't know like, until you
have that shoe in here, you don't understand how big
that is.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
No, I would like to see that.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
It's while they say shot shooting free throws shooting a softball,
Like that's how big a that it?

Speaker 3 (19:36):
So he picks him up, picks up my son. He
hadn't even say, he's not set a word.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
How old is your son at this time? Eight? Okay
two or something?

Speaker 3 (19:44):
Yeah, yeah, you can still do. It's still good. So
he just picks him up, eye level and sets him
on the couch and he goes, what's your name? My
son said Huck, and he goes Puck and I said
no Huck like Huckleberry, goes Huckleberry and he gives him
as And then later on we go into the room
where they're where they film, and Huck is sitting in
his chair before the show starts and shot comes out.

(20:05):
He goes, Houck, get out of my chair, and I'm
just kidding. He goes, hey, you want to learn a handshake?
Come on? He teaches him a handshake. Yeah, memory, it
was like it was amazing. My my son is not
very he doesn't like get super excited. He's just a
very like mellow kid. And get in the car and

(20:26):
he's like, that was awesome. Can you imagine he knew
he could make it somebody's day and he did it. Yeah, man,
that was cool.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
That's real cool, man, it was really cool.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
There's a if you haven't watched, just go go on
google and uh and google Ernie Johnson inspirational speech to
the Alabama football team. Dude, that's and it explains Michael's life,
his his adopted son from Romania, and dude, he talks
about like the value of life and and how Michael
like his big thing was I love you too, And

(20:58):
he couldn't really speak very well, but like he hold
us up and like do like this, and that was
his whole. I think he's made a foundation now called
Love You Two Foundation. And Ernie's a legend.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
He's done such a good job.

Speaker 3 (21:10):
And he's like very contentious times where people love to
score cheap points on each other without having like real conversations.
Every time there's something hard, I like look to Ernie,
like what does Ernie say about this?

Speaker 2 (21:22):
Wow?

Speaker 3 (21:22):
Because he does a good job of being human and
complex and honest without taking cheap shots, you know, And
I think that's really hard to do.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
Nowadays, and I love him for that too.

Speaker 3 (21:41):
So Memphis, So you grew up, did you do any
duck hunting? Oh, man, duck hunting was life.

Speaker 2 (21:47):
Really.

Speaker 3 (21:47):
My grandfather was a every day of the season hunter
and I lived five hours down from him, and duck
hunting was just deeply ingrained in the blood. He was
the sort of president of this duck up down in
Tunica called beaver Dam, which was pretty pretty. It was
like a historic place. His dad was best friends with
a very famous hunting author named Nash Buckingham. Nash had

(22:11):
a monthly column. Yeah, Nash had a monthly column and
sporting life through the twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and then
when my great grandfather passed away, which is years before
I was born, my grandfather became Nash's sort of hunting caretaker.
So you still tak him hunting in his seventies and eighties,
and so he was still a very relevant author at

(22:31):
the time. And so my grandfather had like just a
lot of sort of cachet and access around town, and
he inherited the presidency of this old historic duck club
called Beaverdam.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
Thanks.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
So I grew up going to this place I didn't
know any different. It was just where we went. I
didn't know that it was like had all this history
and all this stuff, and it was a good Memphis.
Oh okay, it's about ten miles south of the ten
miles south of casinos, five miles south of downtown.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
So you're getting into Delta there.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that that's Flyway right, six
miles from the Missippi River, gotcha. Yeah, you're in the
heart of the Flyway. Did y'all smash them?

Speaker 2 (23:08):
We did?

Speaker 3 (23:08):
I mean it was it was timber hunting where we
had these makeshift lines, you know. One of my favorite
memories our grandfathers. Every year we go find the new spot,
clear out some rush and build a little heat. And
he he was. He was like notoriously cheap, even though
he's a surgeon. We duck hunted out of his like
twenty year old Lincoln town car. Yeah, smelled smelled like dogs.

(23:31):
He always had dogs. I always died young here, like
I don't know, other doubt young. Well you feed them scraps, right,
he got bones lodged in there. Yeah yeah, yeah, but no,
I know that you really miss missy. But I.

Speaker 2 (23:43):
Want to know. I want to know some details on
this this linking town car. So that's a big body,
a heuge a boat. Yeah, it's the big body across the.

Speaker 3 (23:52):
Front, three across the back, so we could go six deep.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
So he no trucks, He's like, forget it. We got to.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
He did have a gmc Jimmy, but he didn't like it,
so he got rid of it.

Speaker 2 (24:02):
But he would put the dogs and y'all and guns and.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
Then and pull the tr John boat.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Yeah, I would for a picture, pictures.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
I gotta find the I'm sure there are.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
Two, and then so much did y'all put them on
the hood?

Speaker 3 (24:20):
Oh yeah, baby blue, that's awesome man. So we had this,
uh love Granddad's.

Speaker 2 (24:26):
They're the best.

Speaker 3 (24:26):
And he had this set of keys that had like
six hundred keys. Yeah, super heavy. No way they're going
on because there's every boat had a different lock and
every engine. Yeah, gate and this and that, and so
he would roll up at so the he said I'm
going to pick you up at four forty five, which
meant you better be outside of four forty because he's
shown it before forty and just one two and he

(24:49):
expects you to be in the car within like forty.
So he's out or he's just like he's not out,
but he's mad.

Speaker 2 (24:54):
Okay, yeah, not worth it, yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
And speaking of Bible drills. The whole way there he
would tell story about hunting, and the whole way home
he would tell like talk about the Bible because he
was like a he was like Bible teacher guy. And
but that was where you were allowed to do a
little sleeping on the way on the way home. Catch you, yeah,
But so you drive down, you drive high sixty one

(25:18):
right through the heart of South Memphis and then he
opens up into into North Misissippian and Tunica and you
stop at this little I can't remember the name of
the gas station, but they had little sausage biscuits. And
then you get out and it was all paddling this
little little little duck boat that he had or john Bow,
depending on how many of us there were, and you
paddle out and get in the blind.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
It was mainly.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
Mallard's and gadwall a lot of gadwall growing up.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
Is that a good eat duck? I can't remember. It's
a green duck.

Speaker 3 (25:44):
They're smaller than a than a mallard. But yeah, my
grandmother she cooked a ton of duck and a ton
of brim. He loved that you could also fish the fish,
the grand and crappie. I love catching fish, but I
don't really like fishing. I don't like all the work
and with it, I feel, but with him, it was
pretty easy, just put him in and pull them out.

Speaker 1 (26:05):
Granddad's like my dad's the same way, like with bar
nephews and our kids. Now, he's not gonna take my
nephews like my older enoughhe's he'll take bass fishing.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
But if it's like, go catch fish.

Speaker 1 (26:15):
He's gonna go throw an anchor on a brim hole
and sit there with crickets and you're gonna catch five
hundred of them things.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
Yeah, that's that's fish.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
Yeah, grandad fishing, Yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
But like figuring out how to catch bass was never
my I just don't have the patience for it. I
kind of feel the same about deer hunting. So yeah,
so duck hunting was I mean, I duck hunted thirty
forty days a year from the time I was probably
eleven or twelve until I moved to Nashville, and then
Nashville is just not a great duck hunting. I mean,
as part of the thing is in Memphis, your duck hunting.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
Is so dependent on the weather.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
It's you know, you're checking the weather the night before
and you go, okay, we got a north wind, blue sky, let's.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
Do it, you know.

Speaker 3 (26:50):
Yeah, And you get in the car at four forty
five and you in the blind at five forty five, six,
and you start shooting around six thirty. You're out of
there by nine thirty, and you're at work by ten thirty.
Year at school, I mean there were multiple times I
would just do it and go to school an hour
and a half late, and they would say, what's your
excuse them?

Speaker 2 (27:06):
Like, my grandfather took me duck.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
Hunt Yeah, that's always with them, Like my dad we
go deer hunting or fishing or something to show up
late and they'd be like, what's wrong. We're like, well,
we've been fishing. Yeah, you've been fishing this morning. I'm like,
I promise we've been fishing for two hours.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
And it was it was sort of understood thing that
if you're with your dad or your granddad duck hunting,
it's okay that you missed your first class.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
You know, do you pull your kids out to do
fun stuff.

Speaker 3 (27:29):
I have to because of the travel. Really, yeah, might
take them out. I take my kids out of school,
like if I've got a festival somewhere it's really cool
on a Friday, you know, I'll pull them out the
fight with me Friday morning.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
Do their teachers get weird? We haven't really gotten to
that yet. Our kids are still young.

Speaker 3 (27:46):
And I think it depends on the school, you know.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
Because we're late every day. And the thing that about
today is like I showed up today, it was like
seven fifty six plenty of it was not eight o'clock
and they already had the orange combes out, and I'm like, man,
I gotta come. I gotta going.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
That's not late, it's not late early.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
Yeah, And you know what I've got, I'm so annoyed
with it. When I'm going there, I'm like, I have
to have to feel the thing? Do you have to
feel the thing out They make us feel the thing
out here late? Yeah, yeah for sure. And I'm like,
first off, so today the thing we feel the thing,
it's a computer and it's already up like the name
of child person that brought them in reason for me ashamed? Yeah,

(28:28):
so a parent. You know what I did today on
the reason. You know what, I put not late.

Speaker 3 (28:36):
Unt not late?

Speaker 2 (28:38):
Yeah, not late? What am I supposed to do?

Speaker 3 (28:40):
We're not late.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
That's not late, bro, you just put the cones out early.
I should have put you put Yeah. I just wondered
how that works. Our dad pulled us out of school
for everything. Yeah. Everything. He was kind of living for
a reason, you know.

Speaker 3 (28:57):
I mean, I definitely have a mentality that.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
I mean.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
I loved school, honestly, I was. You loved school, Yeah,
I know it's weird. I didn't love high school. I
loved college. I loved learning. I love to read, Yeah,
I was. I was a bookish same. I didn't necessarily
love everything about school, but I enjoyed learning and about
math I was. I was good at math, but.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
I hated it. I hate math. Yeah, I just reads
good at math.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
I always got I always had this teacher and I
got in this fight all the time because she's like,
you gotta show your work. There's no way you got that.
And I was like, well, just give me another one
like it and then I'll show you. I'll show you,
and I'll not show you my work. And what teachers.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
What math teachers being been math holes, dude, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
I like the new math. The kids math now, they
like they don't just learn stuff. It's all in a story,
you know. They're like the way they teach math now
is different. Huh yeah, it's not like it's not like,
you know, nine times seven is is whatever? It's uh
yeah yeah almost forty three?

Speaker 2 (30:00):
Is that right? I don't know if it's right.

Speaker 3 (30:01):
Instead, now they'll be like, there, you know, there are
nine people at the whatever. Each of them eats six
hot dogs? How many hot dogs got eaten? So it's
like enough, a lot of hot dogs? Yeah, this is
how big Joey was there? Yeah, four hundred. But it's
more they do it. It's like narrative. They make math

(30:22):
makes sense to your brain, Like why do you need
to know what nine times six is?

Speaker 2 (30:26):
Well?

Speaker 3 (30:27):
What if you need to do this?

Speaker 2 (30:28):
I could have learned that, right, I could have learned
that story for him, Like you can see it.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
Yeah, I think I think it's cool. That's great, Yeah,
that's great.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
All right, let's have a math let's have a math
quiz right now. I don't see who's the best between you?
All that mounts ready say the answer is fast? You
can't Okay, wait, I don't know if it's going to
be right. I'm not the one that needs to give
this quiz. All right, let me think about it. It's
not gonna be like blank Tom's tens. All right, I

(30:56):
got one. This is one I remember for some reason.
Eight times eight four he won three best three nine
times nine? Ay? One? Oh that's a tie. Tie.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
You only know try two different numbers.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Okay, shut up, I hate both of you.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
Twelve oh shoot one eleven?

Speaker 1 (31:19):
Yeah, dang, I was going ten times twelve minus nine. No, wait,
ten times twelve is one nine times twelve? I won thirteen.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
Age.

Speaker 3 (31:29):
Yeah, I want twenty minus twelve. I was minus twelve.
I was going. I didn't want twenty minus nine. See
we're not that good either, guess not.

Speaker 1 (31:37):
Okay, wait, let's go back to your duckhuting. Let's go
back to your granddad for a second. Is this the
same granddad that made his garage?

Speaker 3 (31:45):
M hm, he's at taxed germis get into that. Okay,
so my grandfather. I grew up in this world where
I thought that people's houses were decorated with dead animals,
like lots of them, because my parents had a bunch,
because my grandfather's attackist. My cousin's houses all had a
bunch because my grandfather was a tax nurmoust. So again,
he was a surgeon and he didn't have enough time

(32:06):
doing surgery on people. He decided he wanted to do
surgery on all this stuff. He killed.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
Love it.

Speaker 3 (32:10):
So the coolest part was when my when he was
in nineteen sixty nine, when my mom was in the
eighth grade, he decided to take all of his kids
and go live in Kenya for a year. And he
was a surgeon.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
I love this guy.

Speaker 3 (32:24):
Yeah, he was amazing. So he's a surgeon. So he's like,
I got this mission. Hospital was like we would love
for you. He'd been supporting it as like a donor
and decided I want to take a year off and
go that's cool. And he got all of his surgeon
friends to cover his like his patients for that year,
and so my mom spent her entire eighth grade year

(32:45):
in Kenya. And so what he would do is he
would do the surgeries like four days a week, and
then he would hunt a bunch and Kenya. So this
was back before when Kenya still allowed the back door way.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
Maybe I go get my surgeon license.

Speaker 3 (32:59):
Yeah, I don't think you're going past.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
I don't think you got can do it.

Speaker 3 (33:03):
I mean we don't even know it. Nine.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
Yes, I knew it was one of I was like,
so he.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
Had two rooms in his house. There was like he
basically bought this house that had a three car garage
because he wanted to make a space for all his stuff,
and so he converted a three car garage and really
he did the taxidermy on birds and fish. Hid an
entire North American game bird collection in that three car garage,
talking about like that sixteen hundred species, sixteen one hundred species.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yeah, there's sixteen hundred game birds in America.

Speaker 3 (33:37):
Well he had also he didn't just have game birds,
but it did have all the game birds.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
No, he did.

Speaker 3 (33:41):
He had had an entire North American game bird collection.
Then he also had lots of other.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Species like blue jays.

Speaker 3 (33:46):
Yeah, yeah, whatever he could find shoot those. Yeah, he
found a robin, he'd be like, oh about that. But
then he had walking in he had this side room
where he actually did the work that he added on
that was probably like eight by fifteen, and in there
he had all the heads of the big game from Africa.

(34:07):
So the will Debeest, he had Kudu, the Eons, the Elon,
and then he had a.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
Big k buffalo that he had shot. That's so cool.

Speaker 3 (34:16):
And so he hunted all that. He wrote a book
about all his travels around the world hunting. He did
all sorts of crazy stuff. But he just you know,
if I wanted to hang out with him pretty much,
I knew he was in there from five o'clock to dinner.
And you were just down the road now, I mean
I was five doors six doors down. So I just
hopped my bike or walk down there and sit back

(34:36):
there and watch him, you know, mounted duck. And so
I had, you know, my first duck. He mounted, the
first bandited bird I killed.

Speaker 2 (34:43):
He could wait. Yeah, he loved it.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
And so it was just a very unique childhood because
he he's kind of like that. You always had the
movie Big Fish. Yeah, yeah, he was kind of like that.
Like he just had all these stories that you are like, Okay,
I mean the mythology is pretty strong.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
Here in the self mythology.

Speaker 3 (34:59):
But then this one story he had one of his
best friends raised these really high end labs out of
Memphis and trained him and was in all these shows
and got invited to take his labs to the Queen's
estate in England's place called Sandrham, and so they do
a big, you know, ten stop dog trial thing. And
the story he told what he got back is that

(35:20):
he had he got a ride from the queen and
a land rover. And we were like, what you didn't know,
that's not true, you know. And then he died about
seven years later, and sure enough we got a letter
from the Queen's the guy that runs the estate. The
Queen sends her regards to your family and she remembers

(35:41):
finally the time that she drove your grandfather around and around.
That's a great story, man.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
I bet he was heave, now, you know. I told y'all.

Speaker 3 (35:52):
Yeah, he was very larger than life. And yeah, we
just I did a lot of stuff with him. Played
golf with him and fishing with him, hunted with him.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
You know.

Speaker 3 (36:02):
One of the favorite stories is I was my first girlfriend.
I was in the seventh grade, I think, and it
was around Christmas time and my parents were out of town.
So he's going to drive me to her house and
pick me up. So he drops me off like six
o'clock and I've got two Christmas presents and for her,
and he's I'll pick up at nines.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
Are great. So I go in there and.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
Do you remember what the presents were?

Speaker 2 (36:23):
No, no, no memory. But it's probably a brighton bracelet
and a picture frame.

Speaker 3 (36:27):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah for sure, absolutely little silver frame.
I got you this picture of us. Yeah, you took
on your camera and you sent me.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (36:42):
So he comes back at nine and I come out
of get in the car and he's backing out of
her driveway and he goes, you give her those presents.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
He said, yes, sir.

Speaker 3 (36:49):
He goes, you get you some kisses.

Speaker 4 (36:51):
And I said no, sir. He slammed on the brakes.

Speaker 3 (36:53):
He goes, get back in there and get your present,
get some presents back.

Speaker 2 (36:59):
Back.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
Know he was kidding, he said, he put it back
in gears started laughing at himself.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
You know, that's awesome, man, and granddads are the best. Yeah,
that's awesome.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
So that's kind of that's that's where your love with
the outdoors and.

Speaker 3 (37:11):
Yeah, for sure definitely came from him. And then as
I got into high school, I had a bunch of
friends that were hunting and my brother who's five years
younger got really into it and he made a different
like college choice based on hunting. He went to Ole
Miss instead of I went to ut because he wanted
to keep hunting all the all year long.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
Hell State, Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
Well he all took us to the woods show the
other day of the basketball term.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
Sorry about that.

Speaker 3 (37:34):
Yeah, so anyway, yeah, so a hundred you know, all
the way through high school. And but I wasn't other
stuff too. I was in Scouts and was really into
like backpacking and rock climbing.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
And yeah, I don't even know your brother. But my
favorite thing about him already I only know one fact
about your well too, now that I know he does
with the other factors that he introduced you as his dad.

Speaker 4 (37:55):
That's true.

Speaker 3 (37:56):
I mean we look about the same age, you know,
like this my dad and we got. What he does
is we'll go to we'll go get food somewhere, get dinner,
breakfast whatever, like a duck hunt. We'll go out to
eat lunch after and uh, waitress will bring me check.
So who do I give this to it? He'll go,
my dad will pick it up.

Speaker 2 (38:14):
Such a brother thing.

Speaker 3 (38:15):
That's a brother thing. Yeah, We've got a lot of fun.
We've we've been been all over the country doing doing hunting,
and I mean he goes to Canada like every year.
He actually works for Field and Stream. Now he's like
deep deep into it and he's he I call my
guide because moving to Nashville and starting music, I honestly
lost a lot of the time for hunting, sure, and

(38:36):
and everything else and everything else. Yeah, and part of
the sacrifice for sure, it is it is, And there
was this there's honestly like a sadness to that. And
growing up in Memphis, you guys are West Tennessee, like
there is a chip on our shoulder about this town.
Like oh about in Nashville, Like no doubt I was
considered a bit of a trader for moving here.

Speaker 2 (38:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:53):
Interesting, you know, but naturalized all these great things. But
one think it does not have is good access to
great duck hunting, agree, you know. And there's some the
dirt bagging kind of stuff you can find around. Yeah
you gotta go west, Yeah good, yeah, good Iysburg. Yeah
you gotta go Dyersburg or Paris, and yeah, like get
up northwest. And I mean, I know Jackson has some
decent stuff, you know, but but nothing like what we

(39:15):
had in Arkansas and in Mississippi. So so he's my guide,
you know, I just I just show up a couple
of times of years, say.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
Where are we going?

Speaker 3 (39:23):
Right for you know, He's like, get involved on more
of the sort of product and marketing side. Yeah, so
you still get to you still get to hunt a
little bit.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
Ye, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 3 (39:32):
And then I got into more of these like kick
and shoot quale hunts because they're fun and easy to
put on the schedule and yeah, you know, it's just
a fun way to go. I love watching the doll
I mean watching the pointers work. That's the greatest thing
in the world. I have one, but I when I
do that kind of hunting. But now I prefer my
my duck at the Bedelli I've had for fifteen years.

(39:54):
So the grand fire first gone was the eighth was
an old a Brownie A five.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Yeah, yep. Did you get some of those guns some
of those taxis? Did you? Is your wall like litter
was like blue jays and stuff?

Speaker 3 (40:04):
No, I have, Well, my wife was not keen on that.
So I have one room where they're all sort of quarantine.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
Same.

Speaker 3 (40:11):
Yeah, but I've got a band of campus back and
that you shot that that I shot.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
Campus backs are beauty. We're not a couple.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
We go a couple of years.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
I mean a couple of times a year, but we
shot some campus backs this year on the Mississippi and Northwest.

Speaker 3 (40:27):
Yes, man, that's that's where the habitat for those Northwest
Tennessee gorge at the river.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
They're beautiful. I bet we played some of the same
places because I had a band out of start Hole
and we played all over that like that side of man.
I remember, I was telling the story the other day.
We played is it Greenfield? Is there a Greenfield, Mississippi?

(40:55):
Or green Greenwood? Green Wood? Yeah? I played in Greenville.
There's two which one Delta Greenwood? Okay. We played green
one one time and literally full four hour set dude
covers and mixed it with the originals three people in
that bar ooh the entire time. And then we used
played Grenada State Studio fifty five. Did you ever played Grenada?

(41:18):
That seemed to be kind of your in your area
right there?

Speaker 3 (41:20):
But only I played Starveorlle and Oxford.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
We played the lyric, played blue Rooster, played our blue Canoe. Yeah.
There was a place called the Levee played the Levee.

Speaker 3 (41:28):
Did you play ricks and all that in Starvillo?

Speaker 2 (41:30):
Yep, played Rigs State Theater. I be we played some
in the same place.

Speaker 1 (41:34):
Is it true that before you and the band started,
you moved into a neighborhood and started hanging out with
other dads in the neighborhood and you made a band
called Drew HIKELM in the neighbors.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
That's partially true. It was pre any kids. Okay, I
just made that up.

Speaker 4 (41:50):
I was helping that.

Speaker 3 (41:50):
Yeah, the story now, we moved East Nasville. I mean again,
when Ellie and I got married, we were living she
was in we were both in Knoxville, and we got
married and moved to Nashville that same week.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
And the reason we moved to.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
Nashville is because she got a teaching job at Eastlip
Magnet School in East Nashville, and we loved that neighborhood.
It was it was kind of different then, you know.
It was still kind of a little bit sketchy place
to live, but we were was kind of committed to it.
There was a church there that we were part of
as well, and a lot of our friends lived over there.
So that's when I started meeting these different folks that

(42:24):
there was one guy who I had met in Memphis.
It was my guitar player, Nate Duggar, and he was
like a senior in Belmont by that point, and still
he would play with me on the weekends. And he
moved to East Nashville. And then we met this drummer.
We had done it one of those third and Monsday
Sunday night shows opening forgot him David Meade, and this
guy came to me after He's like, y'all need a drummer,

(42:45):
kind of be your drummer, and he give me a
card and we need a drummer. Two weeks later, first
show actually at the Grove in Oxford, we got asked
to open for Tone. Look, we needed a band, So
I got this car out called this drummer and turns
out he moved East Nashville as well.

Speaker 2 (43:01):
So yeah, you know who we opened for in Oxford
was the shop Boys, the Something Shop shop Pet shop Boys.
It's the weirdest combinations of people with those Oxford things.

Speaker 3 (43:14):
I mean we opened at that Ever, like course of
like six years, we got asked to do that show
three times. It was there like rumbling the Groves. What
it was called was their back to School Concert, and
one year was Tone Look, the next year was Digital Underground,
and then two years later it was a Gym Blossom,
No not Goo Goo Dolls and there were probably ten
thousand people. I bet that was the biggest show we'd

(43:34):
ever played.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
That.

Speaker 3 (43:35):
I was like, all right, yeah, that's the same thing
we did.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
We did. We opened for the Gym Bossoms, we opened
for them, We opened for Edward McCain. He would play
Bulldog Bash. We would always we would be like one
of you know whatever on that show. But what was
the Jordan? Can I get a reference on the trap
on the Pet shop Boys? What their song? They kept
playing it like multiple times.

Speaker 3 (43:57):
Well, they would like play the only song that they knew,
so it was only they.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
Had and so they would be like play one song
and everybody was like standing there and then then they'd
play a clip of Oh that's it. You were always
on my mind.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. Yeah, I'm sure it's really well.

Speaker 4 (44:13):
They did a great cover of that.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
Sure it's really dirty. I maybe messing this up. It
was some shop boys, some shop boys. It was a
rap group. Is the Patch shop Boys a rap group.

Speaker 3 (44:22):
No, they're like a duo an English boys.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
It's like trap Shop Boys or something. I don't know.
It was awesome, but yeah, they had the most weird
array of of artists at those Yeah those big Did
you Bulldog Bash?

Speaker 3 (44:42):
We never did Bulldog Bash. We did something else there
called the Island Jam or something like that. It was
on the out in the oh Man.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
I never forget.

Speaker 3 (44:49):
We did a fraternity party one time at Misispi state.
You all gonna be offended by this, but I think
you'll appreciate it. So this Fraterney was like upset about
our writer because they were like, why do you need owls?
And I'm like, because we need to take a shower.
So so they go get towels and it was like

(45:09):
a bunch of like their beach towels. And so we
apparently like accidentally took a couple of them with us
in our bus because it was whatever towels. And so
a couple of weeks later, this is when Twitter was at
Zenith and I made this comment on Twitter about how
Chili's is the worst restaurant in America. Second, then, okay,

(45:31):
I just think it's a DISCUSSI I just don't like
chili Applebee's is from me, but the worst, the worst.
They at least they have a chicken and broccoli like,
don't kill you things Applebee's, don't kill you like all
the food of chilies is like you're gonna have a
heart at their their meat caso as far. Yeah, well anyway,
so I said, I mean, it's just it was a

(45:51):
hot take. I was trying to get some and this, uh,
this guy Missippi State rights back. Your concert in Mississippi
State was the worst concert ever and and you stole
our towels, and so I just wrote back to him, Well,

(46:12):
to be fair, ChIL He's probably is the best restaurant
in Starkville.

Speaker 4 (46:15):
Nice man him.

Speaker 3 (46:20):
Those college kids get after you, absolutely not, because they'll try.

Speaker 2 (46:24):
They'll try.

Speaker 3 (46:25):
I mean, they're going to take a cheap shot at
the you know, the guy that stole their beach towel.
I love that y'all stole them, mean to just threw
them the like whatever.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
Yeah, well I have to tell one then on Old
miss So we played the same venue with the Wood
and Patcho Boys, maybe just like the Shop Boys. I
can't remember what it was. They had one hit.

Speaker 3 (46:46):
It was a rap song, was it? The Beastie Boys and.

Speaker 2 (46:50):
Beach Boys, and uh so we start looking forward. We
start putting party like a rock star. Remember Party on
the Rockstar, Party like a jam, not a jam. It
feels like it is a jam now because but it
was honestly like totally dude, remember they do that. So

(47:11):
they'd play intro of a song, thank you, appreciate you
finding that.

Speaker 3 (47:14):
And then they go, do you feel validated right now?
Because I was like, I think he's making something up.

Speaker 4 (47:19):
I don't know about this man.

Speaker 3 (47:22):
Get in front of it.

Speaker 2 (47:23):
Having one hit, right, because I'm pretty sure that was it. Yeah,
one hit, and then you had to play like nine
other songs. So they would play a song, their DJ
would hit the thing, they rap a little bit, nobody cared,
and then they go party like everybody. They go to
another song like, oh my gosh, we didn't get it,
and so they finally, of course saved it. From the

(47:43):
very end, played party like rock story. Anyway. It was
a crawfish bull We eat all these crawlfish because they're like,
don't take anything off the stage. We want to because
they didn't have anything, so it would have looked empty
if we had taken all our equipment off. We start looking.
It was a nineteen like eighties Stevie ray Vaughn strapped gone,

(48:04):
dude gone. We can't find it anywhere. We're looking, like
my butt. It was Jamie's guitar. He just tore up.
Like he's life savings on this guitar. Yeah, some value
of thing. So we go back to start. Well, we
get a call from a guy that knew or that
liked our band. The next day he found it under
a van in the parking lot of the fraternity.

Speaker 3 (48:27):
It's like in the neck of guitar under the next somebody.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
Had grabbed it, taken it, slid it under the van,
was gonna like come back and get it or whatever.
He finds it, and I mean there's like some nicks
and scratches, like you got it back, but he got
it back, so that even makes it cooler. But yeah,
I want to talk trash about almost fraternities, but I
can't because we made so much money off that I played.
They paid good.

Speaker 3 (48:46):
They had some dollars.

Speaker 2 (48:47):
They had some dollars over there for sure, and the
grows fun. I can't deny. That's pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (48:51):
Yeah, my siblings both went there, so I like to
give my hard time. But it's a cool town.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
Yeah it's cool too.

Speaker 3 (48:56):
But there's my favorite sort of story from that era
touring was we were playing somewhere and there's we were
just a four piece at the time and no keys,
and so this drunk guy keeps yelling play piano man,
like there's no piano. This was like a drake. This
was like a ticketed show. It wasn't like a cover song.

(49:17):
I was like, ah, that's cool, man, We're not gonna
play that's like we did.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Like three or four times.

Speaker 3 (49:22):
He's like, play piano man. Finally, I just look at
the band. I was like, let's just tell him were
gonna play piano man, and then we'll play our next song.

Speaker 2 (49:29):
So I did.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
I was like, all right, this next song is called
piano man. He's like hell yeah, and he goes back
to the bar and we just played the next song.
I set that's a great way to do that.

Speaker 4 (49:38):
That's a great way to.

Speaker 3 (49:39):
Do like and they never said it was it he
got he thought he got piano man. You know he was.
I mean he was like, eyes closed, hammered.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
You know, did you guys as play weddings by sure
a million? Okay, so we hated doing them. Yeah, we
were like so much pressure pegadgad. Well we out price them, right,
We'll be like, we ain't doing this for lesson and.

Speaker 3 (50:02):
Then sometimes they come back and they will pay it
and you're like, all right, well, yeah, for that money,
it's worth.

Speaker 2 (50:06):
That's where we were at this point in my career.
So we're driving. We're driving to Jacksonmissippi. They have sent
us the CD the lyric sheet of the song that
we're supposed to play for the Daddy Daughter Dance. Right,
So we're like, okay, the song.

Speaker 3 (50:21):
Is that part of the story.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
Oh, I have no idea. I have no idea, but
we didn't know.

Speaker 3 (50:24):
It Butterfly I Kiss. Yeah, something mildly obscure.

Speaker 2 (50:29):
Otherwise we would have known it even into it. That's
all I know of that song. Do you know any
more of that song? Oh?

Speaker 3 (50:40):
Yeah, uh, something about because it says to walk me
down the aisle daddy.

Speaker 4 (50:44):
You know there's something like cheesy.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
That guy's probably still making bank whoever wrote that song.
All right, anyway, so they give us this record, we
put it in the CD player. We're like, man, we
gotta listen, because you never listen to the songs until
the day of the gig. Right, So we're driving down
there as.

Speaker 3 (51:01):
Which is what we did with your song on the moon.

Speaker 2 (51:03):
As we're going down forty five, dude his something pops
in this truck and we look back and there's like
a black box and some parts coming out of his
Ford Explorer, right on the Ford Escape sorright on the
way to the gig that we're already laid for. So
his granddad comes and picks us up. We jump out
of the car. We're like, our band is already like

(51:26):
playing some stuff. We're not even there yet at the
at the and this is like super nice place in
jacksonbthe city. This person's probably going to eventually hear this
story and be like, yeah, it was my way, I
knew it. So we come running in. Well, he's like
before we get there, he's like, man, we gotta listen
to that song. And I was like, we left it
in the broke car, you know. So now we have

(51:47):
never heard this song, and you don't have the reference,
and we don't have the reference, but we have the
lyrics sheet. Oh my gosh, so and there's no like
I'm so nervous internetty, you know, what's going on internetty
stuff at that. I mean, you can't just like googles,
you know what I mean? You have anyway, So we
put this gig and we run in and it's like

(52:08):
daddy daughter coming in. So we have the lyrics sheets.
So my buddy just sets the sheet and then just
plays like one four five and sings the lyrics, and
as they're dancing, Like as the daughter and the dad
are dancing, she's going like, this is the right song.
And he's like what. She's like listen, and I'm seeing

(52:29):
you know, we're just kind of making up melodies and
getting through this thing.

Speaker 3 (52:33):
So it turns interpretive.

Speaker 2 (52:35):
Somewhere there's a video of this, you know, because you
know it was filmed right, so that every time hot
he's mad, right, So he's like he comes up everything.
He's like, hey, we sent that cded three months ago.
That was the wrong song in my at the time.
One of our buddies acting like our manager. We have

(52:56):
a manager. He ran like, hey, hey, what's the problem here.
He's like, well, they played the wrong song and he
was like he picks up the lyrics. She He's like,
are these not the words? And then I was like whoa, yeah,
those are the words. He was like, this hardist interpretation.
You got a one of one artist interpretation on your song,
and like just completely He goes, I guess I wasn't

(53:19):
thinking of it like that, and he's like, what kind
of music do you like? Man? He's like, well, I'm
a Boston fan. He's like, you want to get up
there and sing more than a feeling? He was like, yeah, yeah,
I do. We played more than a feeling. They paid
the bill and everything was part of that's awesome, completely
wrong song.

Speaker 3 (53:35):
You wants some karaoke like, He's like, yeah, man, it was.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
Those weddings are tough, tough. I want to know if
you had to play a wedding right now. And little
rock and they said, hey, man, we want you to
come to one song during the service. We want you
to do Daddy Daughter Dance, and then whatever the other
one is, and then the first dance, first dance, Daddy

(54:07):
Daughter dance, and then three or four to get out
of there. What are you charging right now?

Speaker 3 (54:12):
Because I know with kids at this stage of the game,
that's just me by myself or with the yourself. Yeah,
it's fifty kick, yeah worth it At that point I
got a funny story about this. So I just I
don't really love singing the anthem, but I'll do it
because she's like nothing to gain, everything to lose. Absolutely,

(54:34):
And I have flubbed it once in my life, thankfully.
It was when I was young and nobody knew who
I was. But so to read high school basketball game. Yeah,
mym was high scho basketball. After I went to in
the Rockets regular and the Rockets REDLA.

Speaker 4 (54:54):
Just keep running, where does it go?

Speaker 3 (54:56):
And my mom, who's like a nervous laugher, I can
hear her in the in the stands. It's like five
hundred people. She's like like awesome. So I had like
this scar tissue about the anthem. But if I decided
to uh get back in the saddle when the Preds
asked us to do for a playoff and I was like,
all right, that's it. And then we've done for the

(55:18):
Gris like a couple of times. And so this this
year we did the Titans last game the season and
they were like, we can give you, you know, box seats
for your kids. I was like, all right, that's worth.
It'll be fun Christmas Eve game. So my friend Nate Bargatzi,
the comedian is so funny. He does the the sword
and the Stone moment where they bring out like the
twelfth Man thing, and so we're sitting in the box

(55:40):
and I was like, I was like, you kind of
had the easier gig for the free tickets tonight, you know,
And he's like, yeah, I mean just pull the sword out,
you know. I was like, so, what what does it
cost me to? Like, what's going to cost the world
to get you to do the anthem at the Titans game?
I was a million bucks and he goes ten.

Speaker 4 (55:57):
He's like, I'm not thinking he's taking a joke.

Speaker 3 (55:59):
Yeah, I'm not singing the anthem.

Speaker 1 (56:11):
Listening to your music, there's just an overall well like sense.

Speaker 3 (56:14):
Of like a zest for life in it. Sure when
you listen to it, what well do you draw from
from that? Like? Where where does that inspiration come from?
For you? I mean a lot of it comes from family,
Like my dad had this mentality grown up again because
I think I told you all earlier about my brother
had the special needs and we knew that we didn't
we're going to have him for a full lifetime. So

(56:37):
there was this sort of conviction that came from the
top down in our family that life is short and
it's hard, and the way to beat it is to
is to go after it hard. So I went to
forty six states by the time I graduated high school
with my family. We had an old conversion band that
had a lift in it. And for spring break and

(56:57):
summer break and Thanksgiving break we hit the road.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
We went.

Speaker 3 (57:02):
He made it a point to take your brother. So
we like we go out and we're like on the
way to Colorado and we stopped at this horse ranch
and Amillo to do like a trail ride. And they're like,
we don't. We can't take the handicap kid. And he's like,
yeah he can. He throws him in the backpack and
he rides the horse with him in the backpack.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
Yes, you know, we go skiing.

Speaker 3 (57:19):
He like gets finds the what mountain has the place
where the guides can take the kid in the seat
with the armed skis right? And uh, living living like
just life is hard, so get after it, you know,
don't sit and wait around on it. So that that
sort of spirit came from really from my dad and
talked early about my grandfathers, like came from the hymn

(57:40):
as well. And then I just had like an insatiable
curiosity within myself to I was kind of an explorer,
you know, I wanted to go see stuff I wanted
to go, like in the woods behind the neighborhood and
your snake, well, don't don't run away from it, try
to pick it up. You know, like just little little
mentalities that kind of were ingrained in me at a
young age through family, through scouts, through sports, through you know,

(58:05):
chasing the girl you're interested in. It's like all the
little things that kind of take it risk. I was
a risk taker from from the beginning, and even choosing
to do this job is very like absolutely, it's a risk.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (58:16):
You got everybody in school and college you're like, you're
gonna do what?

Speaker 2 (58:21):
Yeah, we dealt with that.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
You know, very few people believed in me early on. Thankfully,
the two that really did were my parents. My mom
had some questions because she was like major, Like, I
don't think my mom had ever been in a bar
in her life. She's like, You're in a bar three
nights a week now, playing music. This is hard for me,
but I trust you, and so I'm like, I'm going
to be in your corner, but I need to know
what's up here and promise me you're always She's like,

(58:44):
I need to always know that I can understand the lyrics.
She's like, I hate it when singers like hell yeah
in the rock. So there was just the spirit of
And then when my brother passed away, music was the

(59:04):
thing that got me through that. You know, I was
sitting in my jeep and just listen to Van Morrison
Records and David Gray and George Strait and just feel,
you know, and it just made life kind of makes sense.
And so when I started writing, yeah, I think it
just kind of comes out of me. I I've always
wanted to be able to carry the tension of like
joy and sorrow and music, and I think all my

(59:25):
favorite artists do that. I think the magic feeling in
any great song is ache and not necessarily like like
he said, aye, but like there's ake in Katy Perry's
firework in the way she sings it. You know, it's
not just like interesting. I'm not talking about sadness. I'm
talking about like passion and feelings. You believe it, you

(59:49):
sing it because you mean it. And so that's sort
of been a driving force in my music, and I
think it comes out. You can come out in a
quiet song like American Beauty, or can come out in
the song dance to everybody. It's like a big anthem
or family. So I just, yeah, I don't know. It's
the fact that music has worked for me is very
much gravy, because my goal when I started was I

(01:00:10):
want to sell out Third the Old Third Lesslie right,
and I want to sell out the High Tone in Memphis,
both of which are and fifty cap venues. And so
the fact that dais, yeah, it's like, if I could
play these venues that I grew up going and see shows,
I've made it, then I've made it. And the fact
that it's gone way beyond that is just gravy. Now
it's still hard. I still have doubts about it all

(01:00:32):
the time, like all of us do. And still sometimes
I sit down and write a song, I go, I
don't know if I'm if I'm really actually good at
this right. But then but then when I'm finishing, I
do write a good and I'm like, oh, no, hobbies,
I don't need.

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
Practice practice in American You compare her eyes to canyons?
Was that an inspired thing, or are you just like
I'm gonna put the coolest thing I can think of
it here to make my wife love me.

Speaker 3 (01:00:58):
Well, that song is not about my wife out Yeah,
that's about the one that got away. That's like the
high school love. Sorry, it's all right. She's got plenty
of songs about her. She can she can just embrace
the fact that one of my best songs is not
about her.

Speaker 2 (01:01:12):
Yeah, you know, shying. My wife loves like I don't
tell her anymore which ones are and or not about her.
She's like, hey, man, as long as the check keeps going,
don't care who they're about.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
Yeah, that's right past the point of being right.

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
Yeah, I just laughing. It's all good. Yeah, totally.

Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
So that song was It's a cool story. It's kind
of really shows my writing process. That little riff i'd
had been one of those riffs I just every time
I pick up a guitar. It was like just there
for like a year, and I stole a writing habit
from It's kind of a mixture of John Prine and
Jeff Tweety from Willcoch. John Prian used to say he
would go get a newspaper and he would try to

(01:01:50):
find like thirty words in the paper. It wasn't even
really reading the newspaper. It's just like looking for words.
So you know, so for me like canyon huh or
compare onion and then whatever. Then when you're done with
the thirty words, then you go find three words at
rhyme with all thirty. So you've got one hundred and
twenty little tools, right key bank thing.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
Yeah, when you put them in a.

Speaker 3 (01:02:12):
In a journal on the keep all that stuff on
the left side, and the right side is for putting
it all together, like puzzle pieces on the left, puzzle
on the right.

Speaker 2 (01:02:20):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:02:21):
So one day I was just sitting there and had
that riff and I was like, let me finally sing
something to this. And I pulled the journal out and
this his companion Canyon something else. She was a good companion. Originally,
I said, with thighs like the Grand Canyon. And I
played it for the band and my drummer said, like,
they all loved it, except for my drummer Marcus.

Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
At the time.

Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
He goes, oh, what do you mean with thighs like
the Grand Canyon? And I was like, no, man with
eyes like the Grand Canyon. He's like, I think you
need to get rid of the whiff. So she was
a good companion eyes like the grand canon because other
words was she was a good companion thighs like the
grand kid with thighs, So what do you mean with thighs.

(01:03:09):
So that's kind of like that's sort of how that
one came about. And it was very quickly like, oh,
this is a song about like the one that got away,
that the unattainable one, like your first love that absolutely
broke your heart, which taught you how to sure like
how to feel hard. Which is interesting because like my
mom heard the song because there's this metaphor about shots fired,
you know, and my mom was like, she's like, yeah,

(01:03:31):
that's a sad song, that song about suicide.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
And I was like, what, mom's got a chill due, Yeah,
all moms chill, dude, we're not talking about it.

Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
But then then the song got you.

Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
We're not playing in bars and grills, we don't drink. Yeah,
this food there's Apple's pretty much nobody gets drunk there.

Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
But then when writing the song came out, Dick Sporting
Goods picked it up for their big Christmas commercial and
it was a song about a dad like giving his
daughter this basketball goal, and then she grows up over
forty five seconds she was up and drives away to
the line. I wish I'd held her. I wish I'd
held her longer.

Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
Get out here.

Speaker 3 (01:04:04):
And so, and my daughter was one that year. She's
now eleven. And so I'm watching this commercial going my song.
I didn't know it was about this, but now I'm sobbing.

Speaker 4 (01:04:14):
I do I need a basketball?

Speaker 3 (01:04:17):
You got one?

Speaker 4 (01:04:17):
Now I got one.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
I'm already like trying to manipulate my daughter and to
never leaving my son.

Speaker 3 (01:04:24):
You love your daddy, right, I would love nothing more
that my daughter's very, very smart. I would love nothing
more that for somehow, when she's like in her twenties,
we're in business together.

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
Oh yeah, you know somehow. I don't know she was
likestant or something.

Speaker 3 (01:04:38):
Yeah, hey, I'll fund your dream if I'm I'm your partner.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
Yeah yeah, in a daddy way. Yeah. Man, those those
little girls. Dude like my son, he's he's wild. I
tell there's such a difference between the two of them. Right,
I'm not gonna dad you to death, but the most
recent one is that I try to get him outsie
as much as I can if I told this, I
don't know. Anyway. We're walking through this field the other

(01:05:04):
day and I'm picking up big rocks like as we're
walking and I'm slinging them down the hill because I
don't want to hit him with a bush hag like
with the grass is real low right down, so I'm
picking him up throwing them. My daughter never even gives
a second thought to what I'm doing, or she's chasing
butterflies and skipping through the field, you know whatever. Finally
my wife is like, where where's boon At. I was like,

(01:05:26):
I don't know. We can look back and he's like
thirty yards behind us and he is in full like
world's strongest man squat mode. He's got this rock it's
about like this, it's probably gonna go six seven eight pounds.
He's this tall dude like yeah, but and a half. Yeah,
he's one and a half years old, almost two. So

(01:05:47):
he's going.

Speaker 3 (01:05:49):
Like I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:05:56):
A good job buddy, and Shine was like, we're gonna
have the first like one and a half year old
was like a blown disc in his back. Lift this
stuff up. But it's just a total like extremely different
as far as having both and see him come up,
But dudes want to pick rocks up and throw them, man,
they do. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
I have two boys, and it's interesting because one of
them is very much like that. Our baby boy is
an absolute we call him Hulk. I mean, he's just
like wild. And then our middle one is way more
like cerebral and I mean he's It's interesting because he like,
from one to five, I could not get him to
pick up a ball really, and all of a sudden

(01:06:36):
he turns five, and all of a sudden he is
like sports. It's like something something clicked. But then he's
also like in you know, reading Harry Potter and he's like,
don't talk to me while I'm reading, Dad, I'm reading
Oh my daughter, I'm a pilot.

Speaker 2 (01:06:51):
I love to fly. You're a pot and sick.

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
My daughter is the best co pilot. What is that?
What does that mean? Can I do this? Can I can?
I ask the radio guy like she's like your.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
Kids and stuff. I feel good about it and nervous.

Speaker 3 (01:07:07):
I mean I get like appropriately nervous.

Speaker 2 (01:07:09):
Oh okay, you know, like yeah, I do know.

Speaker 3 (01:07:11):
Yeah, But it's interesting because they're all so different. Whereas
the third one, he's not allowed to file with me
because he's gonna touch he's going to crash the plane, he's.

Speaker 4 (01:07:18):
Gonna start it off.

Speaker 3 (01:07:18):
Yeah, he's like, yeah, what's this figure out? The only
way he's allowing me is Ellie's with him and there
in the back seat and he's got a seat belt on, like,
don't let him touch anything. So yeah, yeah, get the iPad. Yeah,
I need him to be distracted.

Speaker 2 (01:07:32):
I was burning a big burn pile out in our
past the other day. And on the tractor there's a
gearshift that you maneuver the bucket with and there's a
little button on it and it ramps the RPMs up
if you need to. Dude, he found that button. He's
he's looking at my wife. He's like, just I mean

(01:07:53):
hammering that RPM. But man, they're different, dude.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
They I'm taking my boys this summer on a u
TV trip in the desert, sick where are you going?

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (01:08:02):
Kind of a round Zion and Bryce Canyon. It's a
bunch of dads. There's like a there's a company that
does these trips and it's it's a four day camping.
You have to put your cell phone in a lock box,
so you have four straight days in the summertime with
your kids, going to swimming holes driving these utv s.
I want to get that, Yeah, because that's called Wilderness

(01:08:25):
Collective as the company. I've done two or three of
the trips they have motorcycle trips to dirt bike trips.
The last time I did that, I broke my wrists,
So I'm not doing that one any time soon. Yeah,
but they're like for a kid, just trying to find
like that thing, like talking about my dad. I want to,
especially because I'm gone a lot with touring, I have
to be super intentional about absolutely where do I really

(01:08:47):
dig in to create sort of core memories and experiences
with my kids because this is such a weird life.

Speaker 2 (01:08:55):
Music is a weird life. Agreed?

Speaker 3 (01:08:57):
How was how was taking them on the road with y'all?

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
Oh, it's awesome. They love it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:01):
I mean we One of the reasons my wife quit
the band, you know, eleven years ago, was because we
were still in a sprinter and we had a baby. Yeah,
and you know tough. Our daughter was in a sprinter
van one hundred and eighty days of our first year. God,
you know, it was brutal, right. Thankfully, since then we've
graduated into the buses and they love being on the bus.

(01:09:25):
They sleep great. They wake up in a new town.
We've got eight hours to kill before adventure. We got adventure. Yeah,
so we wake up, we find a children's museum or
a park or whatever. We'll find something to do and
they're there. They love it. And you know, I think
it's getting tricky with school, you know, taken them out.

(01:09:45):
But we're trying to dream up this big year long
RV trip where we take them out of school for
a year and homeschool and see everything. And I don't
know if it'll work or not. We want to test
it first for like three weeks because if it's hell,
then we're not definitely not going to do it right.
But yeah, I mean I think even even you know, hunting,
like my son. My daughter isn't really that interested in it.

(01:10:06):
She's kind of like anti touching animals and all that stuff.
But my son's like, all right, dad, when do I
get to go? So this year I taught him. I
got him shoot at four ten a couple of times,
and he didn't mind. He didn't love it. That was
a little fourteenth the great gun howl.

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
He's eight. Yeah, I'm wondering yeah, I wonder what the ages.
I don't remember.

Speaker 3 (01:10:23):
I think it was I was like ten or even
when I got my first shotgun.

Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
I was at least I almost say ten or eleven.

Speaker 3 (01:10:28):
Shoot the four ten? Do you think I was shooting?
I got twenty when I was probably twelve, and the
first duck kind of went on. I was, I dropped
it in the water. My grandfather was not super happy.

Speaker 4 (01:10:37):
A love that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:37):
Yeah, it's like you just dropped your new shotgun in
the water. I was like, it's fifteen degrees and I
would rather an So.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
Yeah, I'm thinking rabbit hunting was probably the first shotgun
that we were.

Speaker 3 (01:10:51):
Like, yeah, four hunt when I was probably a ten.

Speaker 1 (01:10:54):
Yeah, as the first four ten is the gun, that's
the that's the gun to introduce a kid too.

Speaker 2 (01:10:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:10:58):
There's this duck hole in Arkansas that I I've been
privileged to go to a couple times, very well managed,
high end place that crushes the mallards. They have this
hole called the four ten hole and they you can
only shoot a four ten. That's awesome in this hole
because they could the mallards come in your face. And
it's likely I've only done it once, but it was

(01:11:18):
one of my favorite hunts.

Speaker 2 (01:11:19):
But you gotta you gotta be shooting good.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
Yeah, you there was a post Jordan sent it to me.
Is a long like post you made about you're gonna
take some time to slow down a little bit. Can
you let us into that mindset a little bit?

Speaker 2 (01:11:34):
Yeah? Sure.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
I mean I feel like I'm forty one, forty two
may I have gone as hard as I can for
almost twenty years. Yeah, you know, I'm independent. You know
I'm not. I'm sort of like genre homeless. You know,
I'm a country adjacent, but I'm not a country artist.
I'm not a rock artist. I'm like this Americana folk

(01:11:56):
songwriter thing. So that's required a lot of extra effort
on the marketing style because there's not really like a
there's not an obvious home for me. And I've been
thankful to be sort of like associated with all these
different sort of genres and stuff. But but we independent,
So I've had to go hard both as an artist,

(01:12:16):
as a songwriter and as kind of a business owner.
You know, that's one thing people want to tell you
to start a music career, that you're wrestle starting a
business also enough to get a booked for this first
real festival and they're like, send me your general liability
policy and I'm like, send me my what and they're
like a go get one of the Yeah, it's a
two thousand dollars a year. And I was like, wow, okay,
this is this is different.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
Yeah, I didn't know what I was getting.

Speaker 3 (01:12:36):
So anyways, that gone hard for a long time, and
I feel like I've reached a nice point where I
could probably draw back thirty forty percent of my touring
and still be plenty busy enough, but be homewre and
I like, I want to go camping.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
With my kids.

Speaker 3 (01:12:52):
I want to go duck hunting with my kids. And
so much of our work is on the weekends, you know,
festivals and private events. Everybody's are work is other people's play,
you know, no doubt, And so that's a tricky dynamic
with a family. And so just learning to say, like,
I don't necessarily need to play Des Moines on a
Tuesday anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
I mean, I loved Moin out there.

Speaker 3 (01:13:13):
If you're out there in Des Moines, if if y'all
bring more people to show, I'd be it'd be a
Friday night show. Nobody listen, Yeah, I mean many if
you could, if you could bring out the number of
people at Minneapolis brings the boy, I'll come out on
it together.

Speaker 2 (01:13:28):
I'll get it.

Speaker 4 (01:13:29):
I'll give you a weekend night. That's great.

Speaker 3 (01:13:32):
But yeah, it's just a matter of like pulling back some.
The metaphor I used in the post was I've been
going nine in the left lane for twenty years. It's
time to go like seventy one, seventy two in the
right lane. Yeah, I'm sure that that thing.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
Yeah, just sae it was. It's part of the show.

Speaker 3 (01:13:54):
It's time for part of the show. Yeah, whatever, God.

Speaker 2 (01:14:04):
For the show. I love. It's the one that got away.
Do it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:08):
Last time I duck home my grandfather, we had nineteen ducks,
four or something, limit was five. He's like, all right, Drew,
you get to kill.

Speaker 2 (01:14:16):
The last duck. Brick brick, whift brick.

Speaker 3 (01:14:25):
Never happened. Happened, we left, We left all with nineteen ducks.

Speaker 4 (01:14:35):
That's so great that I will say.

Speaker 3 (01:14:39):
Earlier in the hunt, I a solo shot a black duck,
the only one shot. So there was some redemptive major
to it. But I was like, okay, last duck.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
Dang, shoot, dang.

Speaker 3 (01:14:49):
Everybody's watched Yea, we were hunting with this guy, this
guy named Joe Christian from Arkansas, and he had a
dog named wing Chester. Wing Winchester was his name, wing
chester Chester and it was it was a chestbeake lab
and uh, that dog was so ready to get that
twentieth bird and he was just looking at me disappointed.

Speaker 4 (01:15:11):
Bro get it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:15):
I'm gonna find it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:17):
That's good. That's awesome. There's a lot to unpack on that,
but that's really good. All right.

Speaker 3 (01:15:24):
Now we're gonna do gravorite favorite song for you, Drew
hopel Man. I like a lot of songs. It's just
to you, just to me, to you, man.

Speaker 2 (01:15:33):
It doesn't have to be the great song of all time.

Speaker 3 (01:15:35):
I mean, this is sort of embarrassing. But the song
that absolutely kills me every time I hear it is
nothing compares to you, Snead O'Connor.

Speaker 2 (01:15:42):
Okay, that's how the genre with you.

Speaker 3 (01:15:45):
We're gonna give you another one. I didn't know that
Prince wrote that song until I was like ten years ago,
years old. Alright, I know and Prince and all right,
so that's probably the one that always makes me cry.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
That's not what you asked by the way, when you
were talking about the three artists that you listened to,
it was Van Morrison. Who's the other one? Dave was Gray.
You don't have to do that because we're a country podcast,
you know.

Speaker 3 (01:16:12):
Listen, Hey, I love George Strait. If you put on
like how about them girls? Or I could still make Cheyenne.

Speaker 4 (01:16:20):
I never forget.

Speaker 3 (01:16:21):
I was on a dove hunt with my grandfather and
my cousins, and I didn't like country music in middle school.
I was like, where is Why are we not playing Nirvana?

Speaker 2 (01:16:30):
Yeah? Same, you know what's going on? You know?

Speaker 3 (01:16:34):
But then they're like, what's the who's thing? They ever
lie in the house?

Speaker 2 (01:16:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:16:38):
And I was like, man, that songs hits, you know.
So I was sitt in the back seat and it
was twelve, maybe thirteen, and this girl no I was
in the back of my cousins is Bronco. Yeah, different
car than my grandfather. And his name is Chuck. He played,
He played. He was an offensive tackle for Germantown High School,
and I thought he was the king of the world.

Speaker 2 (01:16:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:16:59):
I never forgot.

Speaker 3 (01:17:00):
I went to a rival middle school like Houston Middle,
Houston High, Germantown Middle geramtwn High and they won the
Then they both made it to the regional championship and
Houston beat Germantown. My cousin so Sunday Sunday church dinner
at my grandparents he pulls up and I go, who
are we Houston? Who do we beat Germantown? And he goes,
who are you five years old?

Speaker 4 (01:17:20):
What did you do?

Speaker 3 (01:17:21):
Nothing? And I was like, I didn't think about it.

Speaker 4 (01:17:30):
On the back seat.

Speaker 3 (01:17:31):
I'm in the back seat of his car. And I
had had this girl that I really liked that somebody
got word to me that she was she didn't like me.

Speaker 2 (01:17:38):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:17:38):
It was heartbreak break, yes, And all of a sudden,
he's playing his country music in the car and I
hear telephone rang about a quarter nine. I heard her
voice on the other end of I heard his voice
and I can still make shyne. And for whatever reason,
even though I wasn't a rodeo person.

Speaker 4 (01:17:54):
Or whatever, but that heartbreak song. I'm in the back seat.

Speaker 3 (01:17:57):
The first time I cried to a country song was
on the way back from a dove hunt.

Speaker 4 (01:18:01):
I'm just like.

Speaker 3 (01:18:04):
My story and I'm like, I guess. The next day,
I rode my bike to Cat's music and bought a
George Straight record and Al Jackson, No way, absolutely, that's
the coolest.

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):
That that cool.

Speaker 3 (01:18:16):
Yeah, so I can still make Cheyenne is one that
always gets me.

Speaker 2 (01:18:21):
We'll go with that one. Yeah, yeah, I'm just kidding.
I'm just kidding. They're both great, dude, thanks for coming on.
That's fun. Are good?

Speaker 3 (01:18:28):
Are we going to do the grand granddad ghost thing?

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):
I mean sure? Is it?

Speaker 3 (01:18:33):
Is it a good story or is it like, well,
it's not a true story, but it's a good it
doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (01:18:37):
It make for a good song. Yeah, it has to
be true.

Speaker 3 (01:18:40):
I mean, we all carry the people with us, right.
So I was writing a song with my buddy Zach Williams.
He's in a band called The Lounge Below, and we
just got to talking about our granddad's for whatever reason, and.

Speaker 2 (01:18:52):
Probably because yours was awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:18:54):
Yeah, apparently his was too. I didn't know his grandfather.
Granddads are awesome, they are always. Yeah, So we started
talking about and I had sort of God, this course,
you know, take a few chances, a few worthy romances,
go swimming in the ocean.

Speaker 2 (01:19:08):
On New Year's Day.

Speaker 3 (01:19:09):
I saw all these life things and it ended with
go slay all the dragons and stand in your way,
and it was like, I'm like, who have said that
to me? And he's like our grandfathers because we've been
talking about it earlier. So I wrote this whole song
about basically being on a camping trip and having like
this crazy interaction with your own grandfather, a song called
Dragons I'll never forget. The first time I played it

(01:19:32):
was we do a Christmas show at the skimmer Horn
here in town every year, and it's not all Christmas
songs because I would never go to that show. So
I said, we got to have fifty percent non Christmas
or else I'm not doing this tradition because my wife
is like.

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):
This Christmas tradition.

Speaker 3 (01:19:45):
Yeah, my wife is like the female version of Elf.
So she's like, we do all Christmas. Yeah, I'm like, no,
it's too much Christmas.

Speaker 4 (01:19:53):
So we play the song.

Speaker 3 (01:19:54):
It's the first time ever in my life we got
a standing ovation after the first course. And there's something
about that reality that, you know, the ghost of the
people that loved us that everybody carries, you know, and
so that's like that song kind of came out of
that whole history of him in my childhood and larger
than life. And you know, in some ways I'm a

(01:20:15):
little bit like that too, And I hope that. I
hope my grandkids wonder for the stories I'm telling her true,
because they'll.

Speaker 2 (01:20:21):
Probably be almost true. Almost. Yeah, never let the truth
get the way. Have a good story, man, Drew Hope.

Speaker 3 (01:20:28):
Dude, you're awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:20:30):
This is fun, like we were better friends than we
actually are. I think you took it very well well.
I feel right home with you guys. Yeah, come back, man,
thanks for hanging out in God's country.

Speaker 3 (01:20:43):
We'll see all next time.

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