Niko Moon sits down with Bobby to talk about his love of learning, why he believes we’re living through one of the most interesting times in history and how artificial intelligence could reshape country music. He shares his experience experimenting with tools like ChatGPT and Suno, whether A.I.-generated songs can ever replace human creativity and why live performances will always matter. Niko also opens up about making his new album at home, removing traditional industry gatekeepers and returning to his musical roots. Plus, he gets candid about mental health, unhealthy ways he once dealt with anxiety and the “worry chair” technique that helps him quiet the fears inside his head.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
There's so many possibilities, and there's no sense in getting
all stressed out about it going super wrong. I think
so many people care so deeply about it going right
that I feel good about our chances.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Today we're hanging out with Nico Moon. I love this guy.
He has a song called good Time We're just trying
to have a good time. But there's a whole lot
more to him than just that song. Before he became
a solo star, he was behind some of the biggest
songs ever for Zach Brown Band just as a writer.
It's got a new record that we're going to talk
about called Roots that I think you will really like,
(00:43):
and it's personal project about his family growing up in
Georgia and the people who shaped him. But again, he
has written so many massive songs. He's had songs for
himself that have been really big, and we're going to
talk about all of that. And this guy is such
a ball of energy. Here's my conversation with Nico Moon. Nico,
(01:04):
good to see you.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Great to see you too.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Man. Do you ever write a song and then go
back once you've separated it from it and go I
don't know if I like if I love that as much.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
All the time. Really, yeah, a lot of times it'll
just be like a part of it, you know. In
the moment when we wrote it, I'm like, oh my god,
I love this verse that actually happened on one of
the songs, and I think it was on Lakeside summer,
And after like a week or two of listening listening
(01:36):
to it, I was like, I don't like this verse.
This is this melody is corny? What was I thinking?
You know? And it's so funny because in the moment
I thought it was so great, but then after living
with it, So it's funny how time or hindsight can
sometimes be twenty twenty for sure with songwriting. If you
don't figure, I like to tweet, go back and twet
oh you big time. I'm a tweaker man. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Do your other writer friends know you as that? Like
he likes it now, but he's probably gonna go back
into it like ten times.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Man, If you were probably to ask, like other people
that write with me a lot, they would say that
I have a tendency to kind of like to grind.
Like sometimes a writer may be like once an hour,
be like, hey, man, let's take five or ten and
just go outside get some coffee. And I'm always like
the one that's like, no, let's just like stick it
(02:24):
out till we get this, after this line, after this time,
we'll take a break, you know. And it turns into
like another hour and they're like, bro, let's get so much.
I'm hungry. And I kind of like never want to
like give up on like an idea and stuff. So
I just kind of try to like batter my way
through things. Sometimes everybody's kind of got their own way
of going about it, but I find my tendency to
(02:46):
kind of like try to push through things like that.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Because this record definitely has a perspective. Yeah, did you
find yourself writing to that perspective or did you write
a bunch of songs that kind of fit where you were?
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah, and then you just kind of like look back
and say, wow, this.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Body of work reflects Yeah, Like what about this?
Speaker 1 (03:05):
I captured a moment. It was a little bit and
I'm not trying to dodge it. I just felt like
it was a little bit of both. I felt like
I captured a moment because I made this album in
a way I never had before, which is that I
made it on the road. I've always like, when I'm home,
go over to somebody's studio at their house, or they'll
come over to my house and we'll write, you know.
But I did everything on the tour bus or in
(03:27):
green rooms, and so when I'm on the road, I'm
in like music mode. Like at home, I'm in fam time,
and then like I get on that bus and like
the flip switches and it's like music, music, music, music, music, right.
And so it was awesome because during the day, I'm like,
I'm there, I'm at the venue. I'm like, let's do this,
(03:49):
because I'm hanging out anyway, I'm just waiting for the
It's basically a bunch of hurry up and wait, we
sound check, and then we're just kind of like, oh,
let's go, let's go. So to be able to write
in that environment was really exciting for me. And I
wrote the whole album in two months, and so it
was this hyper concentrated, like capturing a moment in time.
While at the same time, I had a very clear
(04:09):
concept before the first song that I wanted to make
this an origin story album about all the things that
have kind of like made me who I am, the
roots of who I am, you know, so like who
I Love, you know, songs like rich Man, how I Live,
you know, Lakeside Summer and things like that, Where I
(04:32):
come from Georgia, just all the kind of things that
make me the person I am. But most importantly, I
would say what I believe, you know, like somewhere, somehow,
some way, the mental health songs, you know, the power
positivity threads on the album, you know, I really just
wanted to get to the root of myself with this album.
That's why I took off the Hawaiian and the hat,
(04:53):
you know, and a lot of the imagery is just me,
either with like a tank top or just like no
shirt and shorts and stuf, because I wanted to just
kind of like strip all that off and kind of
like visually say to everybody, I'm kind of taking it
down to the bare bones here so that I can
tell you all the story. It's just me, like where
I come from, what I'm about, you know, and the
(05:15):
whys behind this album, behind my music in journal, the
whole passion for positivity, you know. I think we talked
touched on that a little bit when we were hanging
out a few months ago. Why do I care so
much about this sort of message, you know, Why do
you care so much? I care so much about it
because so much of my life has been a walk
(05:38):
with mental health. It's occupied a lot of my time
trying to figure out how to do life well, you know,
and I haven't always known how to navigate that territory,
I think, in a healthy way, And so through throughout
my life, I've just kind of been picking it up
(05:58):
as I go, like we all do, right, But whenever
I would, you know, have moments of difficulty, moments of
tribulation that we all go through, you know, from time
to time, I would just kind of like really flounder
my way through it and picked up a lot of
scars along the way and a lot of bad habits,
(06:18):
and then I would medicate my way through it in
really unhealthy ways, you know, and eventually kind of come
into that self realization of the way I was going
about trying to trying to do life well and find
like the best version of myself and life and all
that good stuff. I was going about it in just
(06:39):
a really backwards way, and I needed to kind of
start all over and reevaluate things, and I really needed help.
I felt like I had like it had been so
much accumulation of bad decisions and wrong terms that I
had this not tangled up in my mind, and I
needed someone to help me untangle it, you know, and
because I didn't know to do it myself. And so
(07:01):
when I was able to sit down with somebody with
a therapist, they were able to help me do it myself.
I entangled it, not but they were kind of help
helping me along the way, giving me these tools, you know,
like visualization or like breathing techniques or all the you know,
this one thing called the worry chair, which you know,
(07:24):
I spent a lot of my time in tomorrow. I'm
a little bit of a warr work and I got
a lot of anxiety in me, and so I'm always
concerned about what's coming, Is everything going to be all right?
And stuff like that. And you know, little practices like that,
like when you feel that feeling of warring, it's because
well you immediately dwell on it and ruminate on it
because you're not good at compartmentalizing. And we've always kind
(07:48):
of took that as like a bad word, but it's
not a bad word. You know, sometimes you need to
be able to put things in their place, you know,
so that you can be at your best in a
situation where you don't need to be worrying about that stuff, like,
for instance, when you're with your daughter and you're playing
with her, you know, you don't want to be stressing
about is everything gonna go good with the album? Or
you know, how's this upcoming tour gonna do?
Speaker 3 (08:08):
You know?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Or people gonna still show up because us artists, we're
so insecure about nature. Or speaking for myself, I know
I am, you know, And so I would just whenever
I'd have that thought, I would push it out and
save it for the warry chair. And the warr chair
would just be a thirty minute moment in my day
where I'd sit in a chair, preferably a highly uncomfortable one,
because you say, if you get comfortable in the chair,
(08:32):
it's gonna help you with You're gonna want to start
ruminating suff cause you're gonna fel comftable, So sitting something
uncomfortable and make that your time to worry about things,
and then when you're done, you're done. Because most people
they kind of think about what is going on that's
difficult in life and what moves they need to make,
and then you've kind of thought about it, You've decided
(08:53):
what you need to do, and now it's time to
move on. But a lot of us don't, I know,
I don't, you know, even though I've kind of made
my plan, I said, still kind of like put it
on repeat, you know. And there's a million little tools
like that that I picked up along the way that
really helped me and through the process of kind of
finding myself again. I was doing some soul searching on
(09:17):
at the same time about really what I wanted my
music to be about. And because this was about the
time I wanted to start putting out my own music,
and I knew in a very very deep place that
I wanted to make music that was therapeutic, you might say,
you know. And I knew that I couldn't have the
(09:38):
kind of conversations that my therapist was able to have
with me because I got my own unique set of skills,
you know. But I was like, maybe I can take
what I do in music and it can still be
like therapy in its own way, you know, it can
be musical therapy, you know. And so that's what I've
set my whole life out to be, you know, making
therapeutic music, and then when someone needs a little bit
(10:00):
more than a positive song, they need a positive conversation.
That's what the foundation's for, you know, the Happy Cowboy
Foundation that helps people get therapy who can't afford it.
Because for so long I couldn't afford it, man, and
I really needed the conversation, and so when I got it,
I felt so much gratitude because as anyone who's listening
right now, you know what it's like when life feels
(10:21):
like super overwhelming, and when you're able to like lower
that pressure in the mind, it's like you just feel
so grateful that like you're back, you know, to living again,
and just wanting to give that to anybody who's feeling
that way, you know, bring that peace of mind back
to them. And so that's what it's about. Man.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
My therapist has a different chair for me. It's funny.
They use chairs like they find what we need and
use it as a chair. Mine is an appreciation chair,
and because I oftentimes don't really appreciate the things even
that I've accomplished, because I'm worried that it's going to
all fall apart. And so I got to focus on
(11:05):
the next thing. I can never appreciate the moment that
I'm in because I'm going if I don't use this
moment to capitalizing it to the next moment, I'm going
to lose it all.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
It's going to be over.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
And so anytime something good happens to me or I'm
in a moment where I'm like this is good, my
brain wants to run away from it and to go,
don't enjoy it because it's not gonna be here long.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
You got to make sure.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
So I have to have my appreciation share where I
go and just take a minute and go, this is
why this is awesome right now, and I just appreciate
the moment, yeah, and just acknowledge that it's okay to
feel good about it.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yeah, and so it's okay to celebrate. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
I remedially struggle with that.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
I do too. That's funny you bring it up, because
I was wondering, like, do you think it's cuz you
grew up.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
For sure broke it's all yeah, everybody, I think that's
why I do it.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Same.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Everybody has their own traumise, and mine just happens to
be that where I think, if I don't do everything
exactly right. And I don't continue pushing as hard as
I can, I'm gonna end up where I started.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, And that feeling of being broke is so miserable,
it's almost like sickening. I remember, like the feeling of
like not have enough money to like, you know, pay
for the utilities, or like how we gonna how are
we gonna keep the food rocking? I guess we're just
going to be figuring out what some romen, you know.
And that feeling and not having no money was just
like not almost nauseating, you know. And there's this like
(12:24):
deep fear inside of me that like, yeah, it could
somehow go back to that, but now I got a
wife and kids, and so it's just like, oh no,
you know, and just you know, it's illogical. It's that
fear part of the brain. I guess, you know, just
talking to you, you know that inner voice in the head,
you know that we just got a quiet. Now what
would we.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Talk about if we didn't talk about music?
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Like what do you love?
Speaker 2 (12:45):
That's not music? Because I feel like when we talk a.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Lot, no one ever asked me that has it. I
don't know if anyone's ever asked me, Like what am
I into?
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Like, that's not what you're known for.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Yeah, it might sound corny, but it is real. I
love to learn bro like big time. Like I'm constantly
listening to podcasts, watching documentaries. And it's funny because growing
up as a kid, I did not enjoy school. I
was always tired. I just remember like I could never
(13:17):
stay awake. Maybe it was just like, you know, the
cocoa pebbles or whatever that was in my system was
not giving me the nutrients and vitamins I needed to
learn what was happening at school, but I could just
not get interested in school very much at all. Every
once in a while I find a subject that I
found interesting, but for the most part I was kind
of checked out. And now I just am such a
(13:40):
curious person. I just love to learn it. Like right now,
I'm listening to this Lex Friedman podcast interview on the
Byzantine Empire. It's like I don't know why, Like I
don't know why I want to know about it, but
I was just scrolling through. I was like, I don't
know nothing about that. Let's learn he wears a suit, right, Yeah,
he's always wearing a suit. Yeah. Some people kind of
(14:03):
find it a little dry, but I like it, man,
But it's only only like his podcast when I'm like
really in the mood to learn, Like I can't be
like about to go to bed or like halfway interested
in wanting to learn something, like I got to be
like all right, like I almost borderline want to go
to class right now. Yeah, because he's so heady and
those podcasts are so heady. But man, I listened to
like a lot of health and wellness ones or I
(14:26):
love Diary of a CEO. I think that one's great,
just like nice and conversational, and then of course like
music ones like this, and theo's podcast is great. So man,
I'm I'm rarely like turning on the TV these days.
I'm more of like turning on the podcast.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor,
and we're back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
We don't even watch television. It's not on demand, meaning
if it's anything, and especially with a new baby, we'll watch.
We'll try to watch something together, at least the first
half of something once the baby goes to sleep. But
I me too, I'm just always searching for like podcasts
to learn from it sometimes I go to sleep listening
(15:18):
to them, but I listen to podcasts a lot.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
I love that, man. I listen to are you interested
in like AI? And oh Man, all of that stuff.
I'm super interested in it. And there's this one podcast
called Moonshots that that's the whole premise of the podcast
is kind of it's a once a week episode, kind
of like what happened in AI this past week, And
I love that one.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Man.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
I'll put that one on at night sometimes and just
listen to what's coming next year and the year after that,
because I feel like every time I listen to one
of those episodes i'm listen, I might as well just
be watching Star Trek. With what they're talking about.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
I'm really rooting for AI being net gain more positive
than negative, because I think it has the potential.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
As it could go so good or so bad. It could.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
It very much feels like what they were warning us
about the Internet way back in the day, because I
remember the conversations being man, if the Internet is everywhere,
people aren't even gonna read books, the Internet's gonna do everything.
The Internet's gonna have creeps and all. That's true, However,
but the Internet can also be used for really.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Great things good.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
And what I'm hoping, especially with AI, is that, yeah,
almost AI can right itself, like it understands because we
as humans are so flawed and we chase whatever selfishly
fulfills us. Hopefully, hopefully computers don't need that.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Or maybe it can help us with it, even in
twenty twenty six, and I've been able to have figured
out all the way from the Byzantine times and now
we still you know, are struggling with you know, our
selfish nature and all that kind of stuff. And maybe
it can give us some advice or something.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
And I don't know, she should kill all the bad ones.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Yeah, there's so many possibilities, and there's no sense in
getting all stressed out about it going super wrong. I
think so many people care so deeply about it going
right that I feel good about our chances. But you know,
we are projecting here into the future on what's going
to happen, and I think, because it is we are
about to go to Star Trek, We're living in like
(17:23):
the most interesting time man.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
I don't think there was ever a single part of
history where people didn't sit back and go we're living
in it. This is the craziest time ever.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Industrial Revolution. We got cars and railroads and all this stuff,
and I think the world's changing, you know, like you
said the Internet.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
When John Henry's banging it out that we're doing a podcast, going,
can you believe it railroad versus John Henry, This is
the craziest time ever.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, true, so true.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
When the printing press is, you know, invented, they're going,
I don't know, we're mask creating all these papers. We're
going to lose all these jobs. Whenever the Internet happens,
We're going to lose all Whenever the assembly line's created,
We're going to lose all these jobs. And I'm hoping
this is just another one of those dots.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Me too, that new jobs are are going to get
created from this new industry that's coming about, which I
definitely think is going to happen.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
I agree, And then I also hope, like the sam
Altman's of the world are actually decent people. Yeah, I
don't know, they seem like such super villains if you
just believe the Internet, like they're just chasing the billions
and billions of dollars and they're creating you know, open
AI was originally supposed to be something that was for
the people and they weren't going to profit off of it,
and now it isn't. I mean, it definitely is. So
(18:31):
I'm just going in, are these are these super hugo
so much?
Speaker 1 (18:34):
You know?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
And they're building bunkers in New Zealand and Hawaii. Sam
Alma moved to freaking Argentina. He moved his family from
America down to Argentina. I saw that why is he
doing that?
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Why you do it? What's what do you know that
that we don't know? Yeah, I think about that stuff too,
and I think about it a lot with music, you know, obviously,
and how it's going to impact our industry, and you know,
because now there's sooner, you know, and everybody's playing with it.
And sometimes, you know, you'll hear something on Suno that
sounds pretty good and it's like the music is getting good,
(19:07):
but I feel like the lyrics and the melody are
still kind of behind.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Explain Soono though to people that are wanting.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yeah, So for anybody that doesn't know Sono, it's basically
where you can put in maybe some a lyrical idea
that you came up with, or if you just kind
of like, have this idea in your head of a
song and you can kind of just sing into the
app and it will literally create you a full on
track that has a professional sound and singer on it.
(19:33):
I mean it sounds almost like a radio track. It's
still not there. There's still some things about it that
sound a little amateurist, I would say, you know, but man,
it's come a long way in the past few years,
and in a couple of years from now, I don't
know if it's if we're going to be able to
tell the difference. But the lyrics have always been the
(19:54):
thing that I've noticed that it struggles with. And then
when you ever like try to say, like, hey, give
me like the best lyrics you could possibly country lyrics
you could possibly do for a song into chatter Claude,
It's never at that level of like a pro songwriter.
But I've been noticing it getting better and better.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Because it's learning, right, Like the more you use it,
the more it learns. Yes, the better it gets the
more you use it, because it got better the more
it learns, right.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
And I know everybody's saying that, yeah, but you can't
have taste a I can't have taste so it'll ever
be as good. And I'm just like, I don't know, man,
I really don't like, I don't know, in a couple
of years, it's gonna be able to write a song
that is as good as like a professional songwriter could
have wrote it. Am I. I feel like a little
egotistical saying that we'll always be able to beat it,
(20:43):
you know. And so it's got me thinking a lot
about the music that I'm making and what makes us
specialist human beings, you know, in this sphere of music.
When ay I's going to be able to create so
much music that's so fantastic, I'm sure we're going to
be going on to our streaming platforms and there might
be two pasts we choose. We can click on human
(21:04):
artists or AI artists, you know, and far as what
we want to listen to. And maybe the next generation
that comes up, they're going to come up growing up
that being normal to have AI artists that they're a
fan of and human artists. It's just kind of like
both for them, you know, and maybe for us too
one day. And I think that the more more things
(21:27):
get digital and less human, you might say, the more
the human things of this world. Are we going to
become more valuable to us and more meaningful? You know,
knowing that a song came from a human being and
then maybe seeing a human being do it in person.
You know, that's something that I think is still probably
a ways away from a robot being able to sit
(21:48):
down and perform a live show and a human being
ever feeling deeply connected to that.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
The live show is interesting because in the end, like
song creation, I feel like a consumer just wants whatever
is best. They don't The consumer doesn't really care. They
just want to have what makes them feel the most meaning.
If they don't know, I'm music interesting and they get
I would say that most people don't understand how songs
(22:14):
are written and recorded because unless you're in the space,
you really don't know.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Yeah, I would agree with that because I remember before
I understood how it worked, before I knew how to
write a song, and I would just watch my dad
play the drums or play guitar and just felt like
I was watching magic happen. And when I would listen
to songs, I'm just feeling all of it at one time,
without understanding anything about how this was possibly constructed, it
made and now kind of like, you know, being a
(22:40):
recipe maker myself, you know, I can't help. But when
I listen to music. Whenever I turned on country radio,
the first thing I'm doing is my producer songwriter mine
comes on, and I'm thinking about the lyrics and how
it was written, and Oh, I like that trump, So
I wonder how they got that snare to sound like that.
I wonder what compressor they're using on it or something
like that, you know, and like just I am analyzing
(23:02):
it basically.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
You know.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
It's one of the reasons why when me and my
wife are at the house and we're just like cooking,
I'll throw on some like, oh, jazz from like the
thirties or the forties, because I don't understand jazz music,
you know, at all, and the way that they re
quarded back then was so different how we do it
now that when I listen to that music, my brain
shuts off the analyzing part and I'm listening back when
(23:25):
I was a kid and just hearing it like that,
you know. So I totally feel you that. I think
most people out there, they're just they're just going off
of the vibe of it.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Right That Puerto Rico song wasn't that AI.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Oh really wasn't the.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Puerto Rico song Full AI? And I don't think most
people know that, But I didn't know that. They're they're
not in the weeds of it, and they're not supposed
to know that, right. I think what we enjoy is
what makes us feel things, and AI are not. If
it makes us feel as a consumer, we want it,
we want it, we want to give it to us.
But I think about the live show. Oh, that's something
(24:01):
that really can't be replicated, because you can't really fake
a live performance of something. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Yeah, you could put some like some holograms up there,
you know, dancing Michael Jackson's time or whatever, and do
some sort of things like that maybe, but man, yeah,
there's something uniquely special about a live show that's going
to be really hard to replicate.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
I think, yeah, I mean it, eventually the little trick
is still scam us with a.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Well maybe even eventually, these like optimist robots and all
these things they'll have like chuck e cheese like rappers
for him, you know that look like so that they'll
look like real human beings, and then when they're performing
you won't be able to tell you know it looks
like a real human, But I don't know if like
that this next generation, maybe like the kids that are
five and ten years old now, if they'll even care,
(24:46):
you know, if it's a human or not. You just
talked about it. I want to think that they do,
because I know that I do. We're all I think
thinking about it where they're consciously or subconsciously and so
writing songs that maybe deal with the humanity of all
of it and how the human experience is kind of
shifting now and what does that mean for us as
(25:09):
human beings? Like, you know, I think we're all kind
We're like, am I going to have a job ten
years from now? You know? What is the world going
to look like? All of these kind of like little
existential crisises that we're having because of this, you know,
impending new sort of reality that we're coming into. And
as storytellers, I think, you know, it's important for us
to talk about what's going on, you know, not you know,
(25:34):
not just maybe in maybe our romantic life or something,
but on the large scale of things, you know. And
so I've been trying to think about, like, how do
I talk about this, you know, and make it a
conversation in a song that feels engaging and connective and stimulating,
you know, maybe gets the listener thinking, you know about
(25:54):
these sort of questions, you know, because I think they're
important ones for us to ask, because we're kind of
creating this super thing that we don't even know if
we're going to be able to control, and it's going
to change, change the whole way that we live, and
we just start talking about it, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
I feel like when they started to print books, everyone
that was great at spoken word worried that they wouldn't
be able to do their job anymore. Well, no one's
gonna care about people doing spoken word, and that's what
we're so good at. We're going to lose all of
our jobs. My hope, my hope is that this is
just another one of those and it's happened over and
(26:31):
over again where something's always come into replace because technology
is always getting better. We are moving faster, but we've
always been moving faster, and so yeah, the next generation
that comes along, I think we'll just look at AI
as a tool. Yeah, And I think that's where we thrust.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Till we've ever had in our toll and we can
pull up.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah, doctors are now using these humanoid robots for surgeries.
And the great thing about that is that these humanoid
ros bots that are doing surgeries as a tool for
the doctors, they don't have bad days, they don't shake,
they they're way more precise. You're still using it.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
May get good sleep the night before, and.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
They've didn't fight with their husband or wife before they
went into surgery, and now they're having a bad day
and thinking about something like robots don't. They don't have
that problem. So if they're used as a tool alongside
what we can do as humans, I think it can
make life so much better across the board and hopefully
fix poverty, hopefully fix all of these things that we
(27:32):
have not been able to fix for generations.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I've been able to figure out.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
So that's medicine.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Some of these AI labs are like starting to develop
pharmaceutical divisions because they're supposedly going to be creating some
large language models that they're not going to release to
the public that they're going to create specifically for developing
new medicines and finding out what bringing on, like yes,
(27:58):
bring us the cure for cans, and yeah, heure for
Alzheimer's and all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
But then I figure it, well, they probably kept the
cure from cancer for us from us anyway, big farming
and so now that.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
But man, everything's on the table these days. You know,
they take conspiracy theories used to be a bad word
now and it's like, if you don't at least believe
in one conspiracy theory, are you even paid attention anymore?
Speaker 2 (28:19):
You know? Yeah, I think a lot of it. AI
now also they have AI that can do voices like
my voice. They can replicate my voice right on ninety
eight percent with how I talk, what I say, I
just read, you know, thirty six sounds into a microphone,
and they can replicate me doing anything and not even replicay.
(28:41):
They can create me doing something I've never even done before.
We're done, and that's odd. But if we run from it,
it's going to be like folks that ran from streaming
and napster. You know, those bands that said we don't
want digital, we're out. This is not for us. We're
fighting it with technology. You can either embrace it and
not think that it's totally good. I think there's some
(29:03):
good here, or you can fight it and be left behind.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Right and it's to.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
That point now with AI. Yeah, as a creator.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
And I understand that conflicting feeling of it all that
you know a lot of people are feeling you know.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Fully, but you can either get on and use it
to make you better or you can get left behind.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
By it totally. You're absolutely right, you know. And I
was thinking about when you were saying how your voice
can be replicated now and I've been hearing that here
in town with songs that are being pitched to artists,
that one of the guys in the room will sing
the demo and then they'll transfer it over into Jelly
Roller Morgan's voice or something, so that when they hear
(29:47):
that song pitch to them, they're actually.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Hearing themselves singing it. Yes, that's happened, happening more and
more like it's really happening.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Yeah, And what a cool tool is. Yeah, but now
you can really hear yourself singing it. So if you're
an artist who's taking pit songs for you, you know,
now you're really able to hear like what you would
sound like singing it, you know, make probably make better
choices on what songs you want to cut.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Or the Bobby cast will be right back this is
the Bobby cast.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
It's almost we we're gonna have to trust each other
to commit to not cheating by using it, but it
can also make us way better. Meaning if you get
a song and you're gonna someone pitches you at your songwriter.
Let's just say someone pitches you this song that you're
in love with, and like Nico, we put your voice
on this, listen to how you would sound. We're gonna
have to trust it. You don't go, that's so good,
just put that out right?
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah, I mean, because it's so true, because you're right.
I mean, at a certain point, artists will be like,
if the AI can maybe even sing better than me,
And then I go into the studio and I record
for like three hours this vocal and it's ninety percent
as good as the AI one. What does that mean
(31:03):
for music?
Speaker 2 (31:04):
And I feel like this quote cheating is the same
thing in the same struggle that people had when like
auto tune happened.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Yeah going, oh, that's not real.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
You're making somebody sound like they don't even sound.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
They don't really can sing that one.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
It's an elevated version of that. It's just another tool,
and everybody use everybody. I just use that across the board,
even though not everybody does. But it's some sort of
pitch too. I mean, who doesn't fix the little quirks.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
It turned out it's just being this random thing that
a couple people were using, almost like as an effect,
like sharing t pain.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Share was the first one tell yeah, and now.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
It's like yeah, it's like it's so common, you know.
And it's just dialed back really far to where does
and give that like really aggressive sound. It's just dialed
back so like if you slightly kind of go out
of tune, it kind of pulls it back in. You know.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
I was gonna have like chat gpt write a country song.
I think that's a funny like experiment that yeah I can.
I'll just give it a premise. So I'm gonna say,
write me a country song with the premise of what's
the prims? How about let's do so cliche. A guy
(32:11):
is sad because his girl left him and the only
thing he has is the shirt on his back and
the truck that he's driving.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Let's call it the song cliche or so cliche.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
And okay, and make it as cliche as possible.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Now, which one are you asking? Well?
Speaker 2 (32:34):
I'm asking chat GiB chat. First, let's see, all right,
here is she left, so I left too. She took
the dog, the truck, the coffee pot, left half a
note that just said I guess I'm not. She left
her picture, but she took my heart. Now, this little
town's got me falling apart. My buddies say, boysh'll come around,
(32:57):
but that's what everybody says in this town. So I'm
sitting on tailgate, staring at the sky, counting every tear
that's in this whiskey dried eye. Now every country song
ever made fun of It's true, it's corny, but it's corny.
But also put this out with a good melody, and
people go like, I felt that.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Yeah, there's definitely some corn in there for sure, But
it's like, what is it She left the half written
note but took my heart or something like. There's moments
of like something there, you know what I mean. And
compared to one year ago, that's way better. It was
so bad a year ago. So it's fun to always
like check in and see how it's going because you
(33:38):
can see, man, it's it's on its way. You know
it's not there, but it's on its way.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
When you do a record, this record has fifteen songs
on it, How many, though did you write? How many
did you record?
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Fifteen songs? I've done basically that with every album I've
ever made.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
But you didn't record nineteen and only put fifteen on
the record.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
I recorded, I wrote fifteen songs, and we put all
fifteen on the record, And on last album it was
the same way and the album before. I don't know
if I've written a song since I've started putting out
my own music, like with Good Time as an artist
myself now as a songwriter, yes, I've written so many songs.
As a songwriter, I've never seen a lot day. But
for myself as an artist, I don't know. I really
(34:20):
have to think here, if I've ever written a song
and not released it, I know that's why. But the
reason why is because when I get started on one
and we're writing a song and I'm feeling like this
just just is not hidden. I'm not getting the I'm
not getting the body chills, you know, then I have
no problem a quarter of the way in saying let's
(34:41):
just scrap it, y'all, and let's just let's let's let's
go to another idea, you know, because everyone's throwing out
ideas before we start, and there's always a few mulling around.
It's like, what about that other idea yet had, Let's
let's let's try that one, because this don't seem to
be working, or I love this idea, but the direction
we're taking it like lyrically and melodically and musically, it's
just I don't know. I'm just not getting that that
(35:02):
that feeling, that gut feeling of like whoa, you know.
So that's why, you know, I'll kind of like see
the writing on the wall and just stop it.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
You know. Are you still writing songs for other people?
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Rarely? Rarely? When I first came out as an artist,
I was still doing it. But as time's gone on,
the family's grown, and time has just gotten a little smaller,
and I'm also wanting to really focus on the balance
in my life. I can sometimes overload myself, and I
(35:36):
think in the first few years of my career, I
put a lot on my plate, and now I'm kind
of in this process of simplifying my life a little
more and making sure that the things that I most
most most care about, which is my family and my
music career. You know that that those things are well
(35:56):
nurtured and taken care of.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
It's out. Now do you do the thing where you
do you do you stay up?
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Do you know? You know? It's like you were talking
about celebrating the moments and everything. For the first time
in my whole career, I had to see an album
release party, and I've never done it because I just
didn't want to make such a thing out of like
myself in that way. Is funny because people, I think
would think of me as I being on stage and
be like, oh, you probably just love being on stage
with the lights and stuff. It's like, man, I love
(36:23):
connecting to everybody with music, you know, and I love
live music and all that, and I love entertaining and performing.
But I don't know, like as a little kid, I
didn't want everyone's singing happy birthday to me just kind
of sitting there like I'm not the kind of person
that's like, please shine the light on me. So I've
just never had an album release party. But I've been
(36:44):
thinking more recently, like what you were saying, I need
to celebrate like the moments in my life, you know
that are important to me. How to go it? Was awesome. Yeah,
we had it at Maggie's here in town. It's like
this new spot and it was so much. It's fun.
We had like a music industry release party and then
(37:04):
a couple of hours later a fan release party, so
all the all the good timers were able to come
and celebrate with them too, and it was great. And
like all the producers and the songwriters that were a
part of the album, and everybody from Empire Records, my label,
and Range Management and CIA and just everybody on my team,
they all came out and it was fun. It was
(37:25):
like I was like, I should have been doing this
the whole time. I've been taking life too serious, you know,
and I got to make sure to take my own
medicine and enjoy life more, you know.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Because people take that from you, so you want to
make sure you're doing I'm.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Doing the very thing I'm like encouraging everybody else to do.
It's funny, man, people think I'm just like Perma happy man.
It's you know, I get it. A lot of people
are like will come up to me at shows and
be like, you give me so much encouragement, and I
just feel so happy with when I listen to your
music and just thank you for just always bean in
(38:04):
a good mood. And I feel a little bit like
imposter syndrome, and I always feel this urge to tell
them I'm not always happy all the time. Please don't
think that, you know, because I don't want them putting
me on some like unrealistic pedestal, because then I'm afraid
that they're gonna want to try to like aim for
(38:25):
that or like achieve that in life, and like it's
just not it's just not real, you know what I mean.
And that's not me.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
You know.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
The reason I'm so passionate about it is because I
struggle with it myself. You know. I wake up every
day and it's proactive, like concentrated effort to wake up
and be like, all right, I'm going to find the
beauty in life today. I'm going to work on my gratitude.
You know, I'm going to make sure that today's a
great day. You know, if I just kind of like
(38:54):
blah bla blah blah blah blah through through my days,
It'll be a couple of weeks and I'm like waking
up and I'm just like, alright, man, just grab my
phone checked whatever. To my emails and I'm just like
but with a bup and through life, you know, if
I let myself get that way, you know. So yeah,
I always want to keep it real with everybody.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Are Do you have any ballads on this record?
Speaker 1 (39:16):
I do. I got a couple of ballads somewhere, somehow,
some way. It is probably the most tender song on
the album. And you know, I've gotten so much encouragement
from positive music in my life, you know, by Marley Man.
He's He's someone I've always leaned on, you know. His
(39:36):
music is always been there to remind me that every
little thing was gonna be all right, you know. And
there's been so many times I've needed that word, and
it's inspired me to take up that, you know, that
path myself and following those footsteps like so many other
people do, you know, and become a part of that
(39:56):
community of folks that really like speak up for that message,
you know. And on this album, I really wanted a
song of encouragement myself, you know, and so somewhere, somehow,
someway is that song. And it's really tender. It's just
me an acoustic guitar and a little pedal still in
the background. It's real broken down, it's real intimate, because
(40:16):
I wanted to make sure, like the words really come
through that if someone out there is going through something,
some difficulty in that moment in their life and they
hear that, it gives them encouragement that somewhere, somehow, some way,
I'm gonna get through this. I got this.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
The record is out now, it's called Roots, And I
was looking at toward dates. You got you're doing a
lot of shows to the rest of the year.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Yeah, I play on average one hundred shows a year,
so counting travel days, it's about one hundred and eighty days,
so right at half the year, I'm on the road
and now family with you No, and so one of
my biggest goals right now because even though like we've
gotten the amazing blessing and gift of checking off so
(41:01):
many cold boxes, we still got these. That's what makes
life fun. Getting up the chase dreams. My big dream
right now. One of them is to get our second
tour bus on the road so that that can be
the family bus. It will make such a difference in
my reality. I will go from seeing my wife and
kids half of the year to every day. That's a
(41:25):
dramatic shift in my reality, you know. And I can't
bring them on the bus now because there's twelve guys
on one bus. We're literally a rolling locker room going
down the road, you know. And you know, when we
finally get all packed up and we get head into
the next city, it's usually around one am, and that's
when we're all kind of like we'll hang out for
like an hour or so, and then we'll crash and
(41:47):
you know, you know how the baby is. You know,
it's like they're crying in the middle of the night,
and I don't want to do that to the boys.
They need their rest. They been working their ass off
all day long, all night long, you know, and so
it's just unfortunately, like not the most ideal environment to
have the fam out on. So that's what my goal is.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Man. I never got to bed times until now. If
they don't get their sleep at the right time, it's
it's miserable for everybody.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Me and Anna. I'm just gonna put on for this
book because I have no relation to it or anything.
It's only that I just it's worked so good for us.
But it's called Mom's on Call, and it's this book
that these two ladies wrote that is like a scheduling
book on like when to feed and when you sleep.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
Yeah, we use it too.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Oh yeah, you use it too. Awesome, all right, So.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
It's how our baby sleeps for eleven hours right now
and she's four months old. Yeah, it's how. It's that
we stuck to it.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Yeah, we stick to it too. Man, We're like, we're
really strict about it. And so that's why we don't
mess with her sleep time, you know, because even if
it's just a couple of hours, it's gonna mess her
up for the whole next day and then she's gonna
be in a bad mood, you know, and it's just
gonna be a whole thing. You know. It's different for kids, right, So.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
I appreciate the time. I hope you get everything out
of this record that you know you set out to do,
and plus thank you. And then for those that are
listening or watching, you can go to Nico Moon dot
com and he's all over the place all the way
up to the end of the year. So I always
appreciate spending time with you. You too, good luck with
the record, and there he is, the great Nico Moon.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Great to be here, y'all love you Peace.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production.
There's so many possibilities, and there's no sense in getting
all stressed out about it going super wrong. I think
so many people care so deeply about it going right
that I feel good about our chances.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Today we're hanging out with Nico Moon. I love this guy.
He has a song called good Time We're just trying
to have a good time. But there's a whole lot
more to him than just that song. Before he became
a solo star, he was behind some of the biggest
songs ever for Zach Brown Band just as a writer.
It's got a new record that we're going to talk
about called Roots that I think you will really like,
(00:43):
and it's personal project about his family growing up in
Georgia and the people who shaped him. But again, he
has written so many massive songs. He's had songs for
himself that have been really big, and we're going to
talk about all of that. And this guy is such
a ball of energy. Here's my conversation with Nico Moon. Nico,
(01:04):
good to see you.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Great to see you too.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Man. Do you ever write a song and then go
back once you've separated it from it and go I
don't know if I like if I love that as much.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
All the time. Really, yeah, a lot of times it'll
just be like a part of it, you know. In
the moment when we wrote it, I'm like, oh my god,
I love this verse that actually happened on one of
the songs, and I think it was on Lakeside summer,
And after like a week or two of listening listening
(01:36):
to it, I was like, I don't like this verse.
This is this melody is corny? What was I thinking?
You know? And it's so funny because in the moment
I thought it was so great, but then after living
with it, So it's funny how time or hindsight can
sometimes be twenty twenty for sure with songwriting. If you
don't figure, I like to tweet, go back and twet
oh you big time. I'm a tweaker man. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Do your other writer friends know you as that? Like
he likes it now, but he's probably gonna go back
into it like ten times.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Man, If you were probably to ask, like other people
that write with me a lot, they would say that
I have a tendency to kind of like to grind.
Like sometimes a writer may be like once an hour,
be like, hey, man, let's take five or ten and
just go outside get some coffee. And I'm always like
the one that's like, no, let's just like stick it
(02:24):
out till we get this, after this line, after this time,
we'll take a break, you know. And it turns into
like another hour and they're like, bro, let's get so much.
I'm hungry. And I kind of like never want to
like give up on like an idea and stuff. So
I just kind of try to like batter my way
through things. Sometimes everybody's kind of got their own way
of going about it, but I find my tendency to
(02:46):
kind of like try to push through things like that.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Because this record definitely has a perspective. Yeah, did you
find yourself writing to that perspective or did you write
a bunch of songs that kind of fit where you were?
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Yeah, and then you just kind of like look back
and say, wow, this.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Body of work reflects Yeah, Like what about this?
Speaker 1 (03:05):
I captured a moment. It was a little bit and
I'm not trying to dodge it. I just felt like
it was a little bit of both. I felt like
I captured a moment because I made this album in
a way I never had before, which is that I
made it on the road. I've always like, when I'm home,
go over to somebody's studio at their house, or they'll
come over to my house and we'll write, you know.
But I did everything on the tour bus or in
(03:27):
green rooms, and so when I'm on the road, I'm
in like music mode. Like at home, I'm in fam time,
and then like I get on that bus and like
the flip switches and it's like music, music, music, music, music, right.
And so it was awesome because during the day, I'm like,
I'm there, I'm at the venue. I'm like, let's do this,
(03:49):
because I'm hanging out anyway, I'm just waiting for the
It's basically a bunch of hurry up and wait, we
sound check, and then we're just kind of like, oh,
let's go, let's go. So to be able to write
in that environment was really exciting for me. And I
wrote the whole album in two months, and so it
was this hyper concentrated, like capturing a moment in time.
While at the same time, I had a very clear
(04:09):
concept before the first song that I wanted to make
this an origin story album about all the things that
have kind of like made me who I am, the
roots of who I am, you know, so like who
I Love, you know, songs like rich Man, how I Live,
you know, Lakeside Summer and things like that, Where I
(04:32):
come from Georgia, just all the kind of things that
make me the person I am. But most importantly, I
would say what I believe, you know, like somewhere, somehow,
some way, the mental health songs, you know, the power
positivity threads on the album, you know, I really just
wanted to get to the root of myself with this album.
That's why I took off the Hawaiian and the hat,
(04:53):
you know, and a lot of the imagery is just me,
either with like a tank top or just like no
shirt and shorts and stuf, because I wanted to just
kind of like strip all that off and kind of
like visually say to everybody, I'm kind of taking it
down to the bare bones here so that I can
tell you all the story. It's just me, like where
I come from, what I'm about, you know, and the
(05:15):
whys behind this album, behind my music in journal, the
whole passion for positivity, you know. I think we talked
touched on that a little bit when we were hanging
out a few months ago. Why do I care so
much about this sort of message, you know, Why do
you care so much? I care so much about it
because so much of my life has been a walk
(05:38):
with mental health. It's occupied a lot of my time
trying to figure out how to do life well, you know,
and I haven't always known how to navigate that territory,
I think, in a healthy way, And so through throughout
my life, I've just kind of been picking it up
(05:58):
as I go, like we all do, right, But whenever
I would, you know, have moments of difficulty, moments of
tribulation that we all go through, you know, from time
to time, I would just kind of like really flounder
my way through it and picked up a lot of
scars along the way and a lot of bad habits,
(06:18):
and then I would medicate my way through it in
really unhealthy ways, you know, and eventually kind of come
into that self realization of the way I was going
about trying to trying to do life well and find
like the best version of myself and life and all
that good stuff. I was going about it in just
(06:39):
a really backwards way, and I needed to kind of
start all over and reevaluate things, and I really needed help.
I felt like I had like it had been so
much accumulation of bad decisions and wrong terms that I
had this not tangled up in my mind, and I
needed someone to help me untangle it, you know, and
because I didn't know to do it myself. And so
(07:01):
when I was able to sit down with somebody with
a therapist, they were able to help me do it myself.
I entangled it, not but they were kind of help
helping me along the way, giving me these tools, you know,
like visualization or like breathing techniques or all the you know,
this one thing called the worry chair, which you know,
(07:24):
I spent a lot of my time in tomorrow. I'm
a little bit of a warr work and I got
a lot of anxiety in me, and so I'm always
concerned about what's coming, Is everything going to be all right?
And stuff like that. And you know, little practices like that,
like when you feel that feeling of warring, it's because
well you immediately dwell on it and ruminate on it
because you're not good at compartmentalizing. And we've always kind
(07:48):
of took that as like a bad word, but it's
not a bad word. You know, sometimes you need to
be able to put things in their place, you know,
so that you can be at your best in a
situation where you don't need to be worrying about that stuff, like,
for instance, when you're with your daughter and you're playing
with her, you know, you don't want to be stressing
about is everything gonna go good with the album? Or
you know, how's this upcoming tour gonna do?
Speaker 3 (08:08):
You know?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Or people gonna still show up because us artists, we're
so insecure about nature. Or speaking for myself, I know
I am, you know, And so I would just whenever
I'd have that thought, I would push it out and
save it for the warry chair. And the warr chair
would just be a thirty minute moment in my day
where I'd sit in a chair, preferably a highly uncomfortable one,
because you say, if you get comfortable in the chair,
(08:32):
it's gonna help you with You're gonna want to start
ruminating suff cause you're gonna fel comftable, So sitting something
uncomfortable and make that your time to worry about things,
and then when you're done, you're done. Because most people
they kind of think about what is going on that's
difficult in life and what moves they need to make,
and then you've kind of thought about it, You've decided
(08:53):
what you need to do, and now it's time to
move on. But a lot of us don't, I know,
I don't, you know, even though I've kind of made
my plan, I said, still kind of like put it
on repeat, you know. And there's a million little tools
like that that I picked up along the way that
really helped me and through the process of kind of
finding myself again. I was doing some soul searching on
(09:17):
at the same time about really what I wanted my
music to be about. And because this was about the
time I wanted to start putting out my own music,
and I knew in a very very deep place that
I wanted to make music that was therapeutic, you might say,
you know. And I knew that I couldn't have the
(09:38):
kind of conversations that my therapist was able to have
with me because I got my own unique set of skills,
you know. But I was like, maybe I can take
what I do in music and it can still be
like therapy in its own way, you know, it can
be musical therapy, you know. And so that's what I've
set my whole life out to be, you know, making
therapeutic music, and then when someone needs a little bit
(10:00):
more than a positive song, they need a positive conversation.
That's what the foundation's for, you know, the Happy Cowboy
Foundation that helps people get therapy who can't afford it.
Because for so long I couldn't afford it, man, and
I really needed the conversation, and so when I got it,
I felt so much gratitude because as anyone who's listening
right now, you know what it's like when life feels
(10:21):
like super overwhelming, and when you're able to like lower
that pressure in the mind, it's like you just feel
so grateful that like you're back, you know, to living again,
and just wanting to give that to anybody who's feeling
that way, you know, bring that peace of mind back
to them. And so that's what it's about. Man.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
My therapist has a different chair for me. It's funny.
They use chairs like they find what we need and
use it as a chair. Mine is an appreciation chair,
and because I oftentimes don't really appreciate the things even
that I've accomplished, because I'm worried that it's going to
all fall apart. And so I got to focus on
(11:05):
the next thing. I can never appreciate the moment that
I'm in because I'm going if I don't use this
moment to capitalizing it to the next moment, I'm going
to lose it all.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
It's going to be over.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
And so anytime something good happens to me or I'm
in a moment where I'm like this is good, my
brain wants to run away from it and to go,
don't enjoy it because it's not gonna be here long.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
You got to make sure.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
So I have to have my appreciation share where I
go and just take a minute and go, this is
why this is awesome right now, and I just appreciate
the moment, yeah, and just acknowledge that it's okay to
feel good about it.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Yeah, and so it's okay to celebrate. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
I remedially struggle with that.
Speaker 1 (11:43):
I do too. That's funny you bring it up, because
I was wondering, like, do you think it's cuz you
grew up.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
For sure broke it's all yeah, everybody, I think that's
why I do it.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Same.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Everybody has their own traumise, and mine just happens to
be that where I think, if I don't do everything
exactly right. And I don't continue pushing as hard as
I can, I'm gonna end up where I started.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Yeah, And that feeling of being broke is so miserable,
it's almost like sickening. I remember, like the feeling of
like not have enough money to like, you know, pay
for the utilities, or like how we gonna how are
we gonna keep the food rocking? I guess we're just
going to be figuring out what some romen, you know.
And that feeling and not having no money was just
like not almost nauseating, you know. And there's this like
(12:24):
deep fear inside of me that like, yeah, it could
somehow go back to that, but now I got a
wife and kids, and so it's just like, oh no,
you know, and just you know, it's illogical. It's that
fear part of the brain. I guess, you know, just
talking to you, you know that inner voice in the head,
you know that we just got a quiet. Now what
would we.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Talk about if we didn't talk about music?
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Like what do you love?
Speaker 2 (12:45):
That's not music? Because I feel like when we talk a.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
Lot, no one ever asked me that has it. I
don't know if anyone's ever asked me, Like what am
I into?
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Like, that's not what you're known for.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Yeah, it might sound corny, but it is real. I
love to learn bro like big time. Like I'm constantly
listening to podcasts, watching documentaries. And it's funny because growing
up as a kid, I did not enjoy school. I
was always tired. I just remember like I could never
(13:17):
stay awake. Maybe it was just like, you know, the
cocoa pebbles or whatever that was in my system was
not giving me the nutrients and vitamins I needed to
learn what was happening at school, but I could just
not get interested in school very much at all. Every
once in a while I find a subject that I
found interesting, but for the most part I was kind
of checked out. And now I just am such a
(13:40):
curious person. I just love to learn it. Like right now,
I'm listening to this Lex Friedman podcast interview on the
Byzantine Empire. It's like I don't know why, Like I
don't know why I want to know about it, but
I was just scrolling through. I was like, I don't
know nothing about that. Let's learn he wears a suit, right, Yeah,
he's always wearing a suit. Yeah. Some people kind of
(14:03):
find it a little dry, but I like it, man,
But it's only only like his podcast when I'm like
really in the mood to learn, Like I can't be
like about to go to bed or like halfway interested
in wanting to learn something, like I got to be
like all right, like I almost borderline want to go
to class right now. Yeah, because he's so heady and
those podcasts are so heady. But man, I listened to
like a lot of health and wellness ones or I
(14:26):
love Diary of a CEO. I think that one's great,
just like nice and conversational, and then of course like
music ones like this, and theo's podcast is great. So man,
I'm I'm rarely like turning on the TV these days.
I'm more of like turning on the podcast.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor,
and we're back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
We don't even watch television. It's not on demand, meaning
if it's anything, and especially with a new baby, we'll watch.
We'll try to watch something together, at least the first
half of something once the baby goes to sleep. But
I me too, I'm just always searching for like podcasts
to learn from it sometimes I go to sleep listening
(15:18):
to them, but I listen to podcasts a lot.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
I love that, man. I listen to are you interested
in like AI? And oh Man, all of that stuff.
I'm super interested in it. And there's this one podcast
called Moonshots that that's the whole premise of the podcast
is kind of it's a once a week episode, kind
of like what happened in AI this past week, And
I love that one.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Man.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
I'll put that one on at night sometimes and just
listen to what's coming next year and the year after that,
because I feel like every time I listen to one
of those episodes i'm listen, I might as well just
be watching Star Trek. With what they're talking about.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
I'm really rooting for AI being net gain more positive
than negative, because I think it has the potential.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
As it could go so good or so bad. It could.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
It very much feels like what they were warning us
about the Internet way back in the day, because I
remember the conversations being man, if the Internet is everywhere,
people aren't even gonna read books, the Internet's gonna do everything.
The Internet's gonna have creeps and all. That's true, However,
but the Internet can also be used for really.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
Great things good.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
And what I'm hoping, especially with AI, is that, yeah,
almost AI can right itself, like it understands because we
as humans are so flawed and we chase whatever selfishly
fulfills us. Hopefully, hopefully computers don't need that.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Or maybe it can help us with it, even in
twenty twenty six, and I've been able to have figured
out all the way from the Byzantine times and now
we still you know, are struggling with you know, our
selfish nature and all that kind of stuff. And maybe
it can give us some advice or something.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
And I don't know, she should kill all the bad ones.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Yeah, there's so many possibilities, and there's no sense in
getting all stressed out about it going super wrong. I
think so many people care so deeply about it going
right that I feel good about our chances. But you know,
we are projecting here into the future on what's going
to happen, and I think, because it is we are
about to go to Star Trek, We're living in like
(17:23):
the most interesting time man.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
I don't think there was ever a single part of
history where people didn't sit back and go we're living
in it. This is the craziest time ever.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Industrial Revolution. We got cars and railroads and all this stuff,
and I think the world's changing, you know, like you
said the Internet.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
When John Henry's banging it out that we're doing a podcast, going,
can you believe it railroad versus John Henry, This is
the craziest time ever.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Yeah, true, so true.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
When the printing press is, you know, invented, they're going,
I don't know, we're mask creating all these papers. We're
going to lose all these jobs. Whenever the Internet happens,
We're going to lose all Whenever the assembly line's created,
We're going to lose all these jobs. And I'm hoping
this is just another one of those dots.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Me too, that new jobs are are going to get
created from this new industry that's coming about, which I
definitely think is going to happen.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
I agree, And then I also hope, like the sam
Altman's of the world are actually decent people. Yeah, I
don't know, they seem like such super villains if you
just believe the Internet, like they're just chasing the billions
and billions of dollars and they're creating you know, open
AI was originally supposed to be something that was for
the people and they weren't going to profit off of it,
and now it isn't. I mean, it definitely is. So
(18:31):
I'm just going in, are these are these super hugo
so much?
Speaker 1 (18:34):
You know?
Speaker 2 (18:35):
And they're building bunkers in New Zealand and Hawaii. Sam
Alma moved to freaking Argentina. He moved his family from
America down to Argentina. I saw that why is he
doing that?
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Why you do it? What's what do you know that
that we don't know? Yeah, I think about that stuff too,
and I think about it a lot with music, you know, obviously,
and how it's going to impact our industry, and you know,
because now there's sooner, you know, and everybody's playing with it.
And sometimes, you know, you'll hear something on Suno that
sounds pretty good and it's like the music is getting good,
(19:07):
but I feel like the lyrics and the melody are
still kind of behind.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Explain Soono though to people that are wanting.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Yeah, So for anybody that doesn't know Sono, it's basically
where you can put in maybe some a lyrical idea
that you came up with, or if you just kind
of like, have this idea in your head of a
song and you can kind of just sing into the
app and it will literally create you a full on
track that has a professional sound and singer on it.
(19:33):
I mean it sounds almost like a radio track. It's
still not there. There's still some things about it that
sound a little amateurist, I would say, you know, but man,
it's come a long way in the past few years,
and in a couple of years from now, I don't
know if it's if we're going to be able to
tell the difference. But the lyrics have always been the
(19:54):
thing that I've noticed that it struggles with. And then
when you ever like try to say, like, hey, give
me like the best lyrics you could possibly country lyrics
you could possibly do for a song into chatter Claude,
It's never at that level of like a pro songwriter.
But I've been noticing it getting better and better.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Because it's learning, right, Like the more you use it,
the more it learns. Yes, the better it gets the
more you use it, because it got better the more
it learns, right.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
And I know everybody's saying that, yeah, but you can't
have taste a I can't have taste so it'll ever
be as good. And I'm just like, I don't know, man,
I really don't like, I don't know, in a couple
of years, it's gonna be able to write a song
that is as good as like a professional songwriter could
have wrote it. Am I. I feel like a little
egotistical saying that we'll always be able to beat it,
(20:43):
you know. And so it's got me thinking a lot
about the music that I'm making and what makes us
specialist human beings, you know, in this sphere of music.
When ay I's going to be able to create so
much music that's so fantastic, I'm sure we're going to
be going on to our streaming platforms and there might
be two pasts we choose. We can click on human
(21:04):
artists or AI artists, you know, and far as what
we want to listen to. And maybe the next generation
that comes up, they're going to come up growing up
that being normal to have AI artists that they're a
fan of and human artists. It's just kind of like
both for them, you know, and maybe for us too
one day. And I think that the more more things
(21:27):
get digital and less human, you might say, the more
the human things of this world. Are we going to
become more valuable to us and more meaningful? You know,
knowing that a song came from a human being and
then maybe seeing a human being do it in person.
You know, that's something that I think is still probably
a ways away from a robot being able to sit
(21:48):
down and perform a live show and a human being
ever feeling deeply connected to that.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
The live show is interesting because in the end, like
song creation, I feel like a consumer just wants whatever
is best. They don't The consumer doesn't really care. They
just want to have what makes them feel the most meaning.
If they don't know, I'm music interesting and they get
I would say that most people don't understand how songs
(22:14):
are written and recorded because unless you're in the space,
you really don't know.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Yeah, I would agree with that because I remember before
I understood how it worked, before I knew how to
write a song, and I would just watch my dad
play the drums or play guitar and just felt like
I was watching magic happen. And when I would listen
to songs, I'm just feeling all of it at one time,
without understanding anything about how this was possibly constructed, it
made and now kind of like, you know, being a
(22:40):
recipe maker myself, you know, I can't help. But when
I listen to music. Whenever I turned on country radio,
the first thing I'm doing is my producer songwriter mine
comes on, and I'm thinking about the lyrics and how
it was written, and Oh, I like that trump, So
I wonder how they got that snare to sound like that.
I wonder what compressor they're using on it or something
like that, you know, and like just I am analyzing
(23:02):
it basically.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
You know.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
It's one of the reasons why when me and my
wife are at the house and we're just like cooking,
I'll throw on some like, oh, jazz from like the
thirties or the forties, because I don't understand jazz music,
you know, at all, and the way that they re
quarded back then was so different how we do it
now that when I listen to that music, my brain
shuts off the analyzing part and I'm listening back when
(23:25):
I was a kid and just hearing it like that,
you know. So I totally feel you that. I think
most people out there, they're just they're just going off
of the vibe of it.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Right That Puerto Rico song wasn't that AI.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Oh really wasn't the.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Puerto Rico song Full AI? And I don't think most
people know that, But I didn't know that. They're they're
not in the weeds of it, and they're not supposed
to know that, right. I think what we enjoy is
what makes us feel things, and AI are not. If
it makes us feel as a consumer, we want it,
we want it, we want to give it to us.
But I think about the live show. Oh, that's something
(24:01):
that really can't be replicated, because you can't really fake
a live performance of something. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Yeah, you could put some like some holograms up there,
you know, dancing Michael Jackson's time or whatever, and do
some sort of things like that maybe, but man, yeah,
there's something uniquely special about a live show that's going
to be really hard to replicate.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
I think, yeah, I mean it, eventually the little trick
is still scam us with a.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Well maybe even eventually, these like optimist robots and all
these things they'll have like chuck e cheese like rappers
for him, you know that look like so that they'll
look like real human beings, and then when they're performing
you won't be able to tell you know it looks
like a real human, But I don't know if like
that this next generation, maybe like the kids that are
five and ten years old now, if they'll even care,
(24:46):
you know, if it's a human or not. You just
talked about it. I want to think that they do,
because I know that I do. We're all I think
thinking about it where they're consciously or subconsciously and so
writing songs that maybe deal with the humanity of all
of it and how the human experience is kind of
shifting now and what does that mean for us as
(25:09):
human beings? Like, you know, I think we're all kind
We're like, am I going to have a job ten
years from now? You know? What is the world going
to look like? All of these kind of like little
existential crisises that we're having because of this, you know,
impending new sort of reality that we're coming into. And
as storytellers, I think, you know, it's important for us
to talk about what's going on, you know, not you know,
(25:34):
not just maybe in maybe our romantic life or something,
but on the large scale of things, you know. And
so I've been trying to think about, like, how do
I talk about this, you know, and make it a
conversation in a song that feels engaging and connective and stimulating,
you know, maybe gets the listener thinking, you know about
(25:54):
these sort of questions, you know, because I think they're
important ones for us to ask, because we're kind of
creating this super thing that we don't even know if
we're going to be able to control, and it's going
to change, change the whole way that we live, and
we just start talking about it, you know.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
I feel like when they started to print books, everyone
that was great at spoken word worried that they wouldn't
be able to do their job anymore. Well, no one's
gonna care about people doing spoken word, and that's what
we're so good at. We're going to lose all of
our jobs. My hope, my hope is that this is
just another one of those and it's happened over and
(26:31):
over again where something's always come into replace because technology
is always getting better. We are moving faster, but we've
always been moving faster, and so yeah, the next generation
that comes along, I think we'll just look at AI
as a tool. Yeah, And I think that's where we thrust.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Till we've ever had in our toll and we can
pull up.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah, doctors are now using these humanoid robots for surgeries.
And the great thing about that is that these humanoid
ros bots that are doing surgeries as a tool for
the doctors, they don't have bad days, they don't shake,
they they're way more precise. You're still using it.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
May get good sleep the night before, and.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
They've didn't fight with their husband or wife before they
went into surgery, and now they're having a bad day
and thinking about something like robots don't. They don't have
that problem. So if they're used as a tool alongside
what we can do as humans, I think it can
make life so much better across the board and hopefully
fix poverty, hopefully fix all of these things that we
(27:32):
have not been able to fix for generations.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
I've been able to figure out.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
So that's medicine.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Some of these AI labs are like starting to develop
pharmaceutical divisions because they're supposedly going to be creating some
large language models that they're not going to release to
the public that they're going to create specifically for developing
new medicines and finding out what bringing on, like yes,
(27:58):
bring us the cure for cans, and yeah, heure for
Alzheimer's and all this stuff.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
But then I figure it, well, they probably kept the
cure from cancer for us from us anyway, big farming
and so now that.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
But man, everything's on the table these days. You know,
they take conspiracy theories used to be a bad word
now and it's like, if you don't at least believe
in one conspiracy theory, are you even paid attention anymore?
Speaker 2 (28:19):
You know? Yeah, I think a lot of it. AI
now also they have AI that can do voices like
my voice. They can replicate my voice right on ninety
eight percent with how I talk, what I say, I
just read, you know, thirty six sounds into a microphone,
and they can replicate me doing anything and not even replicay.
(28:41):
They can create me doing something I've never even done before.
We're done, and that's odd. But if we run from it,
it's going to be like folks that ran from streaming
and napster. You know, those bands that said we don't
want digital, we're out. This is not for us. We're
fighting it with technology. You can either embrace it and
not think that it's totally good. I think there's some
(29:03):
good here, or you can fight it and be left behind.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Right and it's to.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
That point now with AI. Yeah, as a creator.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
And I understand that conflicting feeling of it all that
you know a lot of people are feeling you know.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Fully, but you can either get on and use it
to make you better or you can get left behind.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
By it totally. You're absolutely right, you know. And I
was thinking about when you were saying how your voice
can be replicated now and I've been hearing that here
in town with songs that are being pitched to artists,
that one of the guys in the room will sing
the demo and then they'll transfer it over into Jelly
Roller Morgan's voice or something, so that when they hear
(29:47):
that song pitch to them, they're actually.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Hearing themselves singing it. Yes, that's happened, happening more and
more like it's really happening.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Yeah, And what a cool tool is. Yeah, but now
you can really hear yourself singing it. So if you're
an artist who's taking pit songs for you, you know,
now you're really able to hear like what you would
sound like singing it, you know, make probably make better
choices on what songs you want to cut.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Or the Bobby cast will be right back this is
the Bobby cast.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
It's almost we we're gonna have to trust each other
to commit to not cheating by using it, but it
can also make us way better. Meaning if you get
a song and you're gonna someone pitches you at your songwriter.
Let's just say someone pitches you this song that you're
in love with, and like Nico, we put your voice
on this, listen to how you would sound. We're gonna
have to trust it. You don't go, that's so good,
just put that out right?
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah, I mean, because it's so true, because you're right.
I mean, at a certain point, artists will be like,
if the AI can maybe even sing better than me,
And then I go into the studio and I record
for like three hours this vocal and it's ninety percent
as good as the AI one. What does that mean
(31:03):
for music?
Speaker 2 (31:04):
And I feel like this quote cheating is the same
thing in the same struggle that people had when like
auto tune happened.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Yeah going, oh, that's not real.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
You're making somebody sound like they don't even sound.
Speaker 1 (31:15):
They don't really can sing that one.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
It's an elevated version of that. It's just another tool,
and everybody use everybody. I just use that across the board,
even though not everybody does. But it's some sort of
pitch too. I mean, who doesn't fix the little quirks.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
It turned out it's just being this random thing that
a couple people were using, almost like as an effect,
like sharing t pain.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Share was the first one tell yeah, and now.
Speaker 1 (31:38):
It's like yeah, it's like it's so common, you know.
And it's just dialed back really far to where does
and give that like really aggressive sound. It's just dialed
back so like if you slightly kind of go out
of tune, it kind of pulls it back in. You know.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
I was gonna have like chat gpt write a country song.
I think that's a funny like experiment that yeah I can.
I'll just give it a premise. So I'm gonna say,
write me a country song with the premise of what's
the prims? How about let's do so cliche. A guy
(32:11):
is sad because his girl left him and the only
thing he has is the shirt on his back and
the truck that he's driving.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Let's call it the song cliche or so cliche.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
And okay, and make it as cliche as possible.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Now, which one are you asking? Well?
Speaker 2 (32:34):
I'm asking chat GiB chat. First, let's see, all right,
here is she left, so I left too. She took
the dog, the truck, the coffee pot, left half a
note that just said I guess I'm not. She left
her picture, but she took my heart. Now, this little
town's got me falling apart. My buddies say, boysh'll come around,
(32:57):
but that's what everybody says in this town. So I'm
sitting on tailgate, staring at the sky, counting every tear
that's in this whiskey dried eye. Now every country song
ever made fun of It's true, it's corny, but it's corny.
But also put this out with a good melody, and
people go like, I felt that.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Yeah, there's definitely some corn in there for sure, But
it's like, what is it She left the half written
note but took my heart or something like. There's moments
of like something there, you know what I mean. And
compared to one year ago, that's way better. It was
so bad a year ago. So it's fun to always
like check in and see how it's going because you
(33:38):
can see, man, it's it's on its way. You know
it's not there, but it's on its way.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
When you do a record, this record has fifteen songs
on it, How many, though did you write? How many
did you record?
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Fifteen songs? I've done basically that with every album I've
ever made.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
But you didn't record nineteen and only put fifteen on
the record.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
I recorded, I wrote fifteen songs, and we put all
fifteen on the record, And on last album it was
the same way and the album before. I don't know
if I've written a song since I've started putting out
my own music, like with Good Time as an artist
myself now as a songwriter, yes, I've written so many songs.
As a songwriter, I've never seen a lot day. But
for myself as an artist, I don't know. I really
(34:20):
have to think here, if I've ever written a song
and not released it, I know that's why. But the
reason why is because when I get started on one
and we're writing a song and I'm feeling like this
just just is not hidden. I'm not getting the I'm
not getting the body chills, you know, then I have
no problem a quarter of the way in saying let's
(34:41):
just scrap it, y'all, and let's just let's let's let's
go to another idea, you know, because everyone's throwing out
ideas before we start, and there's always a few mulling around.
It's like, what about that other idea yet had, Let's
let's let's try that one, because this don't seem to
be working, or I love this idea, but the direction
we're taking it like lyrically and melodically and musically, it's
just I don't know. I'm just not getting that that
(35:02):
that feeling, that gut feeling of like whoa, you know.
So that's why, you know, I'll kind of like see
the writing on the wall and just stop it.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
You know. Are you still writing songs for other people?
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Rarely? Rarely? When I first came out as an artist,
I was still doing it. But as time's gone on,
the family's grown, and time has just gotten a little smaller,
and I'm also wanting to really focus on the balance
in my life. I can sometimes overload myself, and I
(35:36):
think in the first few years of my career, I
put a lot on my plate, and now I'm kind
of in this process of simplifying my life a little
more and making sure that the things that I most
most most care about, which is my family and my
music career. You know that that those things are well
(35:56):
nurtured and taken care of.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
It's out. Now do you do the thing where you
do you do you stay up?
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Do you know? You know? It's like you were talking
about celebrating the moments and everything. For the first time
in my whole career, I had to see an album
release party, and I've never done it because I just
didn't want to make such a thing out of like
myself in that way. Is funny because people, I think
would think of me as I being on stage and
be like, oh, you probably just love being on stage
with the lights and stuff. It's like, man, I love
(36:23):
connecting to everybody with music, you know, and I love
live music and all that, and I love entertaining and performing.
But I don't know, like as a little kid, I
didn't want everyone's singing happy birthday to me just kind
of sitting there like I'm not the kind of person
that's like, please shine the light on me. So I've
just never had an album release party. But I've been
(36:44):
thinking more recently, like what you were saying, I need
to celebrate like the moments in my life, you know
that are important to me. How to go it? Was awesome. Yeah,
we had it at Maggie's here in town. It's like
this new spot and it was so much. It's fun.
We had like a music industry release party and then
(37:04):
a couple of hours later a fan release party, so
all the all the good timers were able to come
and celebrate with them too, and it was great. And
like all the producers and the songwriters that were a
part of the album, and everybody from Empire Records, my label,
and Range Management and CIA and just everybody on my team,
they all came out and it was fun. It was
(37:25):
like I was like, I should have been doing this
the whole time. I've been taking life too serious, you know,
and I got to make sure to take my own
medicine and enjoy life more, you know.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Because people take that from you, so you want to
make sure you're doing I'm.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Doing the very thing I'm like encouraging everybody else to do.
It's funny, man, people think I'm just like Perma happy man.
It's you know, I get it. A lot of people
are like will come up to me at shows and
be like, you give me so much encouragement, and I
just feel so happy with when I listen to your
music and just thank you for just always bean in
(38:04):
a good mood. And I feel a little bit like
imposter syndrome, and I always feel this urge to tell
them I'm not always happy all the time. Please don't
think that, you know, because I don't want them putting
me on some like unrealistic pedestal, because then I'm afraid
that they're gonna want to try to like aim for
(38:25):
that or like achieve that in life, and like it's
just not it's just not real, you know what I mean.
And that's not me.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
You know.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
The reason I'm so passionate about it is because I
struggle with it myself. You know. I wake up every
day and it's proactive, like concentrated effort to wake up
and be like, all right, I'm going to find the
beauty in life today. I'm going to work on my gratitude.
You know, I'm going to make sure that today's a
great day. You know, if I just kind of like
(38:54):
blah bla blah blah blah blah through through my days,
It'll be a couple of weeks and I'm like waking
up and I'm just like, alright, man, just grab my
phone checked whatever. To my emails and I'm just like
but with a bup and through life, you know, if
I let myself get that way, you know. So yeah,
I always want to keep it real with everybody.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Are Do you have any ballads on this record?
Speaker 1 (39:16):
I do. I got a couple of ballads somewhere, somehow,
some way. It is probably the most tender song on
the album. And you know, I've gotten so much encouragement
from positive music in my life, you know, by Marley Man.
He's He's someone I've always leaned on, you know. His
(39:36):
music is always been there to remind me that every
little thing was gonna be all right, you know. And
there's been so many times I've needed that word, and
it's inspired me to take up that, you know, that
path myself and following those footsteps like so many other
people do, you know, and become a part of that
(39:56):
community of folks that really like speak up for that message,
you know. And on this album, I really wanted a
song of encouragement myself, you know, and so somewhere, somehow,
someway is that song. And it's really tender. It's just
me an acoustic guitar and a little pedal still in
the background. It's real broken down, it's real intimate, because
(40:16):
I wanted to make sure, like the words really come
through that if someone out there is going through something,
some difficulty in that moment in their life and they
hear that, it gives them encouragement that somewhere, somehow, some way,
I'm gonna get through this. I got this.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
The record is out now, it's called Roots, And I
was looking at toward dates. You got you're doing a
lot of shows to the rest of the year.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
Yeah, I play on average one hundred shows a year,
so counting travel days, it's about one hundred and eighty days,
so right at half the year, I'm on the road
and now family with you No, and so one of
my biggest goals right now because even though like we've
gotten the amazing blessing and gift of checking off so
(41:01):
many cold boxes, we still got these. That's what makes
life fun. Getting up the chase dreams. My big dream
right now. One of them is to get our second
tour bus on the road so that that can be
the family bus. It will make such a difference in
my reality. I will go from seeing my wife and
kids half of the year to every day. That's a
(41:25):
dramatic shift in my reality, you know. And I can't
bring them on the bus now because there's twelve guys
on one bus. We're literally a rolling locker room going
down the road, you know. And you know, when we
finally get all packed up and we get head into
the next city, it's usually around one am, and that's
when we're all kind of like we'll hang out for
like an hour or so, and then we'll crash and
(41:47):
you know, you know how the baby is. You know,
it's like they're crying in the middle of the night,
and I don't want to do that to the boys.
They need their rest. They been working their ass off
all day long, all night long, you know, and so
it's just unfortunately, like not the most ideal environment to
have the fam out on. So that's what my goal is.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Man. I never got to bed times until now. If
they don't get their sleep at the right time, it's
it's miserable for everybody.
Speaker 1 (42:14):
Me and Anna. I'm just gonna put on for this
book because I have no relation to it or anything.
It's only that I just it's worked so good for us.
But it's called Mom's on Call, and it's this book
that these two ladies wrote that is like a scheduling
book on like when to feed and when you sleep.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
Yeah, we use it too.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Oh yeah, you use it too. Awesome, all right, So.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
It's how our baby sleeps for eleven hours right now
and she's four months old. Yeah, it's how. It's that
we stuck to it.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Yeah, we stick to it too. Man, We're like, we're
really strict about it. And so that's why we don't
mess with her sleep time, you know, because even if
it's just a couple of hours, it's gonna mess her
up for the whole next day and then she's gonna
be in a bad mood, you know, and it's just
gonna be a whole thing. You know. It's different for kids, right, So.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
I appreciate the time. I hope you get everything out
of this record that you know you set out to do,
and plus thank you. And then for those that are
listening or watching, you can go to Nico Moon dot
com and he's all over the place all the way
up to the end of the year. So I always
appreciate spending time with you. You too, good luck with
the record, and there he is, the great Nico Moon.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Great to be here, y'all love you Peace.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
Thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production.
Hosts And Creators
Bobby Bones
Amy Brown
Lunchbox
Eddie Garcia
Raymundo
Mike D
Abby Anderson
Scuba Steve
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