November 12, 2020 • 46 mins
Wells gets country legend Clint Black and actress Lisa Hartman to “come out of their shell” and open up about their marriage.
They just appeared on The Masked Singer as the “snow owls” and are officially the first duo in the show’s history! Wells goes deep and finds out where they both got their start and how they work so well as musicians AND a married couple!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
I made a b lt It was delicious at the time.
Now I'm feeling you're not feeling of like m Maybe
too much bacon Greece in my body right now. Whatever,
We're gonna get through it. I'm a fatty rolling This
is a Wells cast with Wells atoms and I heart
radio podcast. What is everyone doing doing? Great man Master's son. Yes,
(00:32):
I like golf whatever, I'm an upper middle class white man.
What do you expect exciting? Though? Weird watching sports with
no fans, at least there's something to watch, thank god,
being watching stuff. Bachelorette is just a hot dumpster fire,
all right, but it's the best. Why do we love
seeing things just crumble around us? Watching the bats for
(00:56):
it every week? Watching Claire, watching people are saying on Twitter.
First of all, Twitter is just the worst, but the best,
but the worst. And everyone's mad at her for doing
the thing that she was supposed to go do, which
was fine a boyfriend, how dare you do the thing
that we wanted you to do? Too fast? You go
(01:18):
on that show and you drag us through two months.
Every Tuesday night you take us to Fantasy suitets. You
cry because you don't know who you love. How dare
you take that away from us and come station the
Savior by the way, Yeah, next week your boy is
gonna be on and it's me ridiculous and I'm not
gonna making drinks. I'm not slepping drinks this time. They've
(01:41):
got me doing other stuff. My resume has grown, baby.
I mean, first it was bitch boy, no kisser, then
it was bitch boy too much kissing kissy. Then it
was bartender, then it was puppet Master. Always been Chris
Harrison's bitch, that's true. But now I got something new
(02:02):
on the Rezus. Be a fun episode. I'm excited to
watch that. I hope you like it too. Speaking of resumes,
we don't got one, but we got to folks on
the Wells cast this week who have amazing resumes. They're married,
so it's gonna be cute. It's gonna be fun. It's
gonna be hard to get through both their origin stories,
but you know what, We're gonna do it. One of
our guests taught himself how to play the harmonica when
(02:23):
he was thirteen years old, and by fourteen he wrote
his first song. By fifteen, he dropped out of high
school to play in a band with his brothers before
deciding to become a solo act. His first two nationally
released country singles, a Better Man and Killing Time We're
number one and number two, respectively in the Country music charts.
His third single, Nobody's Home, was the Billboard number one
(02:44):
Song of the Year for nine nine. All three were
number one hits. Oh. He also acts, by the way,
known for Maverick Anger Management, Nowhere to Run Okay, and
he's been married to this lady since October of nine,
who starred in the short lived to Which spin off
as Tabitha. In the late seventies, she was in the
CBS remake of Jacqueline Susanne's Value of the Dolls as
(03:08):
Nili O'Hara. She's recorded four solo albums. She performed on
a bunch of different television shows like Solid Gold and
merv Griffin. You gotta be kidding me, and these two
love birds were on a little show called Mass Singer
as Birds. Actually, yeah, there were the snow Owls. Unfortunately
they were limited in the seventh round. But fortunately they
(03:31):
were eliminated in the seventh round because that means they
are now on our show on the Wells Cast today Oh,
it's Clint Black and his lovely wife Lisa Hartman. This
is the show, guys. Oh man, you do not want
to miss bro alright back on the Wells cast. Very
(04:00):
excited to have um, well, I guess the first ever
duo on the Mass Singer on the show. We have
Clint Black and Lisa Hartman. How are you guys? Good?
How are you? I mean, I'm excited. It's Masters weekend
so I get to watch golf and then I get
to talk to you guys, who are just amazing in
your own right. I'm very very sorry that you didn't
(04:21):
win Mass Singer. How was the experience for you? It
was great, you know um bitter suite. Of course. I
didn't mind getting back into my old routine from that,
but it would have been fun to go on and
sing some of the other songs that we were thinking
about doing and uh later episodes and breaking out of
the egg and moving around on the stage blindly of
(04:42):
course because you can't see anything in those masks. Our
eyes fogged up immediately, you know, because it's so hot
in there. But it was it was fun. It was kukie,
you know, and and we have to laugh at ourselves
for being in costumes. But the costumes were magnific ascent
as you know Marina Toibina as a master costumer. It
(05:05):
was fun. What was the most difficult part of the
whole situation, Oh, gosh, well, I think the song selection.
We've talked about that. It was really tricky to find
a song that both of us liked, that we could
set the key, that we could condense that would still
be dynamic, that um, you know, just so many elements,
and the publisher would approve its use on the show,
(05:27):
the producers and the TV executives, everybody. It was. It
was tough. We we had a really long list of songs. Yeah,
but I think once we got the list locked in,
we felt really good, very confident. We loved it, you know,
so we we eventually got there obviously, and then we
were off and running, so we thought. And then we
arrived and they put us in this egg and we
(05:47):
would out and you know, because we had operated ourselves,
and I said, you know, had a mind of its own,
and it was hard to walk in it, you know.
So I always said, you know, we're like Fred Flintstone's
little feet, you know, only taking when he's on his
toe was running, It's true, you know, and the left
tiny little steps it was hard to move around. And
of course you have stage hands that are in a
(06:08):
stage manager who's you know, get over here. We want
you over here, and we're going you know this in
a Nascar It was tricky, but we we I mean,
we never really mastered it. But you just you know,
you figure it out. And then you get to your
mark and your heart's racing and now go. Now you
gotta perform right, and then we sing and we're singing
(06:31):
and we've got to move the egg during the song.
It's oh my god. I think at one point we
finally said the choreagrays, do we have to move the
egg on that line? Can we just you know, can
we just say? They said, no, you have to move.
But but it was great. I mean, it was challenging,
it was hard, it was wonderful. It was you know,
so many things and never again will you ever do
(06:52):
any of us do that anything like that, you know
what I mean. It's such a special little egg because
next time we're going to be two people in a
horses count, I'll be who gets to play the front
and who gets to play the back In that situation.
I think, what did you guys think of the clues?
(07:16):
Very difficult if you know. Of course I knew it
was me right away, but other people how, you know,
how do they guess these clues? I think brilliant. Yeah,
I think they're brilliant. I I mean, imagine writing for
every one of those characters four seasons in now, and
they've got to come up with the most you know,
(07:37):
I mean, they're unbelievable. I don't know how they do it.
We would look at stuff and we go, what is that?
And oh yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, that movie tied into
you know, I just I was, you know, and they
were really tough clues for everybody. You know, they were
they were they were you know, just like uh, fainting
this way and that way. So, but they were never lying.
(08:02):
They were all, you know, actual clues. I think they
were deceptive. Yeah. The brilliance is that you were it
was so obvious the parthenon you know, oh no, there's
one and you know, and so there would be a
clue that could be this way or that way, or
could be for him or her, and you knew what
it was. And that to me was part of the brilliance,
you know, just a crossover. Me and my fiance, we
(08:24):
wanted to show and we felt like they were trying
to hint that you guys were siblings, and I don't
know if they were trying to throw people off with
like the Donnie and Marie idea. So when I found
out that it was you guys, I was a little shocked.
I was also pretty shocked that Nicole nailed it right
on the head. Well, I think his voice glints voices,
(08:44):
so you reckon, it's so recognized you, but you never
know who from. You know, other genres are gonna know
someone's voice from, you know, country music or you know,
wherever else. I'd recognize that banjo player anywhere. You know?
Who do you? How do you know? I mean, I
wouldn't have expected her necessarily to know a country singer's voice. Mask,
(09:09):
even if you know the voices, the mask just makes
it hard. It's like it puts up this block even
to your ears. Yeah, you're nice. She clearly has the
best ears of the four of that she's amazing, Ken
is horrible, and Nicole is a mazing. Jenny's really good too.
We're obsessed with the show. It's so fun to watch.
(09:29):
It's it's crazy that this kind of like weird Japanese
show has become so popular in America, but is like
really really fun to watch. You guys are fun. That
year run got cut short. What songs would you have
done if you had kept going and I got a
da vida? I think, yeah, no, we actually had we
(09:51):
had a list, and had we gone on, then we
would have honed in ound in and chose in the song.
I was thinking that maybe I would be if we
broke out of the egg, we do something where there's
lots of dancing involved. Yeah, I didn't even say that.
I lived with this and we were in the kids,
(10:12):
I danced for laughs. But you know, that's that's it.
How can I make this more difficult, Let's add some
choreography to the mix. Exactly would you guys do it again? Yeah? Yeah,
it's one of those things though you can't imagine I'm ever,
you know, asking you to do it again. Uh, we
did it as solo artists, but I think, you know,
(10:36):
unless there was a new panel of judges in an
entirely new audience. Yes, don did it before and they
said it could be Donnie and Marie. He could have
come back as a duo. That would have been allowed,
I guess, but I don't know that could come back
as Willie Why. I don't know. I'm where in this
costume it? Clint, you do know that there is a
(10:58):
show called Mask Answer Now and you wanted to be
doing the choreography. Maybe he used to go do that show. Yeah,
if they did the laughs, dancer laughs. You really don't
want to know. You really don't want to watch me
dancing for anything more than a couple of chuckles. I
(11:18):
may actually be able to dance, but I spent so
much time on stage playing in bars other people were dancing,
and I never really did. I may be able to,
but I can't do it without trying to make it funny.
It all I have. Well, now that you guys are out,
who do you think is gonna win? Thing? I know
who wins? You do? He doesn't see it? Sounds like
(11:43):
you do know, and then I'm trying to cover up
he does not know. That's the cause office truth. He's
a liar. I know who everyone is, what they had
for lunch, and who's going to win. But we think
Son has an amazing voice, and Seahorse has an amazing voice.
Who do you think I think it'll be son? You do?
Who do you think? I think? I like the sea
(12:03):
horse costume the best, and I, for whatever reason, that's
why I gravitate towards that. But I liked you guys
aside from time. I thought you guys were fantastic. I
like the idea of doing something different, which was the
first due I was like, Oh, this is a totally
different thing. This is fun. So I hope that they
continue kind of doing stuff like that with seasons going forward.
I think they should, and you know, they're gonna keep
(12:25):
evolving and trying to introduce new things. I'm sure, but
I would I would imagine that with so many fans
in our business of the show, that somebody's watching going, hey, honey,
that would be good for us. We should do that.
You know, they're probably the show is probably making their
list now and they'll have to come up with an
entirely new way of doing it. So you know, who knows.
(12:48):
It may be a two person horse. It's just you.
Let's see where that person in the back holds of
the microphone. That's gonna I absolutely love watching you guys
on this show. I wish your run had continued, but
I'm happy that it was cut short because then I
get to talk to you guys. The idea for this
(13:09):
show is that I like to find out people's origin stories,
how they became successful, what they did, what steps they took,
what the blueprint is to becoming well Clint Black and
Lisa Hartman. So we're gonna take a quick break and
when we come back, I want to hear how the
hell you two got right here on the Wells Cast.
(13:40):
All right, back on the Wells Cast. I have Clint
Black and Lisa Hartman on the show. Of course, they
were just on the Mass Singer on Fox, the first
duo in mass singer history, dressed up as the snow Owls.
Sad to see them go, but happy that they did
get kicked off because now you guys are on my show.
So now we're gonna do on the nuts and bolts
of the show, which is origin stories. Will do Uh, ladies, First, Lisa,
(14:05):
where the how did you come from? And how the
hell did you get here? My parents were all about
stay true to who you are. That's the most important thing,
and stay grounded and stay focused and work hard, and
you know, it's all that basic stuff that we all
know but we tend to forget because there's this or
a shortcut or a thing or do, and those things
can be applicable at times, you know. But um, but
(14:27):
I think keeping it real and and you know, don't
be swayed by the provocative seductive things out there, which
could be a lot of things. You know. So that's mine.
I'm done. You're not getting off that easy, by the way. UM.
I can tell you for for Lisa that you know,
(14:49):
she she wouldn't talk about is um that she was
a professional and everything she did she worked very hard
at it. At the singing, you know, she hasn't made
records except with for years since she was making them.
You know, their career started out in music right, making
albums with the best songwriters and producers and uh Los Angeles,
(15:11):
and she was just a pro. She knew her part
of the job. She still she still knows. She can
hear all the notes when anything's out, anything pitchy, So
she's got the talent. But she applied herself to it.
And then as her television career took off, she was
always a pro. You know, she showed up knowing her
(15:31):
lines and uh, and hitting her mark and and getting
her part of it done and uh, and you know,
every career demands that if you want to be successful,
you have to do those things. And she did it
from a very young age, you know, being a performer
and dreaming of doing all this stuff. So for her,
(15:53):
you know, the word as always professionalism. You know, show up,
do your job. And then it's the way you treat
people to you know, if you if you come on
a set, you know, or into a session, and everyone
is beneath you, then uh, you will end up beneath
them at some point. You know, everyone you step on
on the way up, you know you will be waving
(16:15):
too on your way down. Because no one likes to
support people they don't uh feel proud of supporting. So um,
the way she treats people, I think is a big,
big part of it. You know. It's we always say
in in my band, it's one part player and one
part person. So you can have the greatest player in
(16:36):
the world in the band and if they're a jerk,
they're out of the band. You know, we're not gonna
have anybody mistreating each other. So that's how we basically
assess people. So if you join the band. You know
you you you've got to be really good at what
you do, but you also have to be good to
everyone around you. Clint's always said, well, if if you're not,
(16:57):
we'll give you a hot dog and a roadmap. You know,
oil spot. You come out, there's an oil spot where
the bus was we left. At least. I want to
go back to when you were a kid. I was
reading up on you that like, uh is this I
don't even know if this is true. Did you do
a commercial with John Wayne? I did when I was
really Oh god, yes I did. It was for the
American Cancer something society Society. Yeah, I think it was
(17:20):
something something like that. They changed tweaked a little bit,
but yeah it was. It was a still photo and
it was him looking down at me. Got Lee. I
haven't talked about I forgot about it, honestly, thank you
for bringing it up. I know it's here, it's upstairs.
But yeah, I did that, but that you know, and
I just always had the bug. I knew as a
kid what I wanted to do, and I just went
(17:41):
after it. Um you know, I I really I had
a band when I was eighteen. We played all the
holiday inns and you know, and I started out as
the girls singer with the tambourine, and I sang a
little bit, and then it became you know, because I
always wanted as a kid, I was always doing it,
So it wasn't like I just decided to become a singer.
But I started out as a girls sort of singer
(18:02):
with the tambourine and ended up having my own band,
and I was writing the checks and you know, took
on more responsibility that side as well. And then uh,
I was lucky enough to meet Jeff Barry, who's you know, huge,
and Olivia John was on the charts at the time
with I Honestly Love You, which Jeff had written with
Peter Allen, and he signed me and produced me, and
(18:26):
we were on Donnie Kirshner's label, Kershner Records. It was
me in Kansas, Kansas had the hit and I didn't
carry on. Time went on and I released a few
albums and it just almost got there, didn't didn't quite
get there. Um and then the acting. I went out
in audition and got a few parts and then I
(18:46):
was Tabitha and I went to ABC to meet with
Fred Silverman, who was the president of the network at
the time, and it was me and Pam Dauber and
who was Mark and Mindy and so we were sitting
and remember it so well, and it was this huge
it was ABC, you know network. I mean, the point
really is is that my acting took off, and I
was glad because I loved it as well. I've done
(19:06):
both growing up, and I really want to be a record.
I want to be Olivia. I want to be Linda
Ron said, That's why I wanted to be. But I
also loved this and I was lucky. And I also
to pay the bills, so you know, you know, and
I did Tabitha and we did thirteen of those and
then it wasn't picked up, and then I was basically
without a job. So again, it just just sticking with it.
(19:28):
And it was hard at times, you know, um, but
I loved it and I believed that I would make
a good living. It was never to me about being
a star, about making a lot of it was never
about that. It was just working in the industry and
I did, and I'm to this day I'm grateful. Well,
it's a pretty nice fallback plan if you can't be
(19:50):
the next Linda ronstat to be a successful actress. I
was reading up that, like, you portrayed a character that
was so popular that and they killed her off. The
network had to bring you back in some respect. Yeah,
so this is funny. I was. I had my album
was coming out, nots Landing, was a big show, not
(20:12):
as big as Dallas. It was a spin off, and
they wanted to add a character. And the character was
CG Done and she was a singer. And my manager
called me and basically it was a short thing was singer.
They're gonna kill her. You'll do like seven episodes and
then you can go off. It'll be great for the album.
Then you go off on the road and it's all
a little work, right. So so I went and I
(20:35):
met with them and got the part and did this
show and sang many songs off of my album. Then
I was murdered. I was killed. I was on the beach.
I washed up and was shot the scene. I was
freezing and they're like, you know, used whatever, when I
was still you know, I was laying there dead. Anyway.
(20:56):
That was the end of c G. And then my
manager called and said, you know, they've had such a
response the fans and so on and so forth, and
they want you to come back on the show. And
I thought he was playing a joke on me and
I yeah, right yeah, and he said no seriously, and
so we need to sit down and figure out how
we can bring you back. So it was CG. So
they came up with a character Kathy Geary. See Kathy Geary?
(21:20):
But how are they going? They had the name? Okay,
so where do we go from there? So then they
decided that I was obviously going to be a look
alike and be discovered by Ted Chuckle for it. Anyway,
it's a long story, but they brought me back and
I was there for what three three and a half
season something like that, all total and singing again. She
was such a look alike. She was a sing alike
to so but it was so much fun because, like
(21:43):
you said, I got to do this show and I
was back with my TV family, you know, and I
was the new kid on the block and I was
the youngest there, and I had all these seasoned actors
around me, from William Devane to you know, all of
these people, and it was just such a great experience.
And um, you know, you up your game, you're playing
tennis with, you know, and so then it was time
(22:05):
to move on, and I did and and and just
kept doing movies for television, and the music sort of
kind of fell away. And when we met, I hadn't
seen her in any of these movies or TV shows
and uh. And you know, back then it wasn't as
easy to go find and and watch things as it
(22:26):
is today. And we were traveling through France and something
came on. You know, there was like one English speaking
channel and then a bunch of others, and I ended
up on clicking through and on a German channel. Uh,
and there she was and uh as she was crying
(22:48):
and talking in German. You know, Phil Niman had English
thoughts and and I thought, I had no idea you
spoke more than one language and uh. And so that
was the first time I had seen her in her
TV show and Uh. Anyway, we uh, we we were
(23:08):
married for years before I was doing an album and
I said, you have to sing the song with me,
and she resisted right up until the last minute, and
then finally relented and we had a hit song together.
She was back on the chart, was finally higher, much
(23:28):
higher on the charts. That's for sure, and that was
so glad I did it, and then we did it
live and they were like twenty thousand people out there,
and I was like, oh my god. And then I
walked out and the response was so amazing that it
had a calming effect on me, and I was in
I was like, I'm hooked. They let her know they've
(23:49):
been asking for her to sing with me, and I
would tell her, you know, the fans asked about you everywhere.
I go, Oh, you're so sweet, and I said, oh,
they really do. So they let her know in person
and concert, and she finally believed me and felt the welcome. Yeah,
it was lovely. I guess the question is do you
know when I say I do in German or only
(24:11):
in English? Four languages, I've got it. You guys met
on New Year's Eve. Yeah, he'd been out touring, he
was doing It was my first big show back home,
playing New Year's Eve at the Summit where the Rockets played.
And we had mutual friends who were kind of when
introducing her to my music. Unbeknownst to us, and and
(24:33):
she and her mom were in Houston for the holidays,
and UH decided to come to the show and we
met briefly backstage, and ten months and twenty days later
we were married, almost thirty years ago. What made me
go to that concert? I'm seriously, I mean you were
a stalker. Yes, I mean seriously, I think about it.
I mean, it's just it's amazing. Yeah, what was happening
(24:56):
you know with our mutual friends that there were two
different people. We both knew we're thinking we were right
for each other, and they didn't know they weren't helping
each other. It was it was completely independent. Fred Rappaport,
who has head of Specials at CBS. That's how I
knew him, and he was married to Michelle Lee, her
(25:17):
co star. We shared the same no no. I was
touring with Katie Oslin and her manager was part of
a management company where his partner managed Lisa. They were
they were pushing us together, but that wasn't the intent. Though.
I didn't come to the show to you know, it
just was sure you didn't, did you? Guys? Kiss at midnight?
(25:40):
Was that the first kiss on New Year's There were
a hundred people backstage. I was meeting contest winners, etcetera.
And and we just met briefly, and then Fred, we
were taping some c M A special and he came
up backstage and said, I have Lisa Hartman's phone number
and I would give it to you, but you have
to promise to Haller. Well, I don't know, but I
(26:05):
did and went out on a date and we fell
in love over the next few months. And yeah, that's
incredibly cute and super romantic. I want to go back
Clint to your beginning. You're a Texas guy, but you
weren't born there, right, No, but my dad's from there,
my mom's from Alabama, and they would just my mom
would go up to be with her mom, who was
(26:26):
in New Jersey because of her husband, and she would
go up there during her last trimester of three of
her four pregnancies, right, I was the last three of
us were born in New Jersey, and then she would
go back to Houston. And so I grew up in Houston,
but I kept the Jersey accident and nobody can understand that,
you know how that happens. And when I go back
(26:50):
to New Jersey, I'm a homeboy. You that claimed me there,
you know it's Mr By Welcome Home. You know I
was reading up on you that started playing music when
you were like twelve or thirteen, Like you learned the harmonica,
and then you learned the guitar, and then you wrote
a song, and then by like fifteen, you had decided
to drop out of school. No, not quite. I had
(27:14):
kept failing, going to summer school to get into the
next grade and so on, and I was I had
failed a year, repeated a year in high school, and
then went through summer school to get through another grade.
Terrible student. And uh and then finally it was clear
I wasn't going to make it out of the eleventh
grade without some more summer school. And uh, I was eighteen,
(27:38):
and I thought, I'm going to work and I got
a construction job and dropped out or just you know,
didn't go back to school after the end of the year.
And uh, that's what we call that dropping out, I guess.
And so uh so I went to work in construction
and playing some bars here and there, and uh regretted
dropping out within a year. What do your parents say
(27:59):
at that point, I think they really kind of understood
what kind of a student I had become. Maybe they thought, yeah,
going out there and find out how hard life is
going to be. You know, it was clear to me
within a year's time. And I tried as a student.
But when I got to a point where I was
failing at it so much, I had not developed the skills,
(28:23):
the study skills um and and at that point it
had become too difficult and I was not going to
catch up on my own, and uh, and I really
couldn't see my way out of it. I'm a much
better student now. A year later. It was all nonfiction
books from there on out, and uh, trying to fill
(28:43):
in all the gaps. Literally go on to a site
about English language and punctuation and just sit there and
read that, because I'm not gonna I'm not going to
be ignorant. I may be stupid, but I'm not going
to be ignorant. You know, I've worked at self improvement
to make up for it. Obviously worth you. You're incredibly successful.
Did you know that this was the path that you
(29:05):
want to do down? Like Lisa, like I know that
you You started playing some bars and then did you
you joined a band with your brothers, right, yeah, that
was earlier on and then the band broke up and
I started playing solo in the bars. I did that
for about ten years before I found a manager. I
had a couple of different managers who really didn't do anything.
(29:27):
And then I finally found a manager who was a
successful rock manager, and then I put a band together
to showcase for our c A. So I had spent
about ten years playing solo in the bars before that.
What was the goal during that time, that ten years
span of playing hockey, tonks and stuff before you had
a manager, It was the goal for you career wise.
(29:49):
When I was still a teen, I I hadn't decided
it was music. It was either going to be music
or I was going to go into the Air Force
and try to work my way into the astronaut pro
grim go ahead and insert candle laughter. Now I had
singers grades, they wouldn't have let me near the dumpsters,
and uh, and so I chose the right path, and
(30:10):
I started uh playing in the bars, like you said.
And then when I realized that the construction job, you know,
it really wasn't gonna be able to make it as
a musician working that hard during the day, I was
an iron worker, and so I quit that and started
working the bars full time and reading books on the
music business, trying to understand what I needed to do.
And it became really clear at that point that I
(30:32):
needed a manager, and I went through a couple of
different managers. I never questioned my goals, but I questioned
my methods constantly. And I found a book called Time Management,
Work Smarter, not Harder, And this is the book that
was the key, It was the key to my initial success.
There was an exercise of creating different sheets for your
(30:56):
short term and long term goals, and under each heading
you would list all of the activities you could dream
of to to reach that goal. And so every day
I was checking off an activity. The main objective was
get a manager. That was a short term goal to
reach the long term goals. So to do that I
had to have some demos. So I found it was
really difficult on my salary, which was, you know, four
(31:21):
thousand dollars a year probably to afford a demo, or
even afford to take the time out to go make
the demo. But I was determined to get some demos made.
I was writing songs and at one point I had
this one offer to do a gig at a country club,
a solo gig, and it was really good pay. It
was a hundred dollars a night to play, like four
(31:43):
nights a week. So I was gonna be bumped up
to four hundred dollars a week if I could land
this gig. But the guy wouldn't give me that gig
unless I played a banquet for him with a full band.
And I didn't have a full band. You know, my
brother and my buddies, you know, they were out of it.
So I found a band that was playing in town
that knew a lot of the songs I knew and
(32:05):
hired them for this one gig. And on the rehearsal
we had their their guitar player had already left, and
that guy leading that band had called a guy to
fill in for him for this other guitar player for her.
That was Hayden Nicholas, and he was really impressive, and
he and I talked about what we were doing. He
had just returned to Houston because his dad was ill.
(32:26):
I told him I was trying to get some demos
made and I couldn't really afford it. And when he said, well,
I have a track recorder, I'll make you a deal.
And so we made a deal a hundred and fifty
dollars a song. But if I got a record deal
as a result of those demos, then I would pay
him retroactively another hundred and fifties, so three hundred dollars
a demo, which was a pretty good rate now looking back.
(32:49):
And the first song we finished was Nobody's Home. I
took it to this guy who was my manager who
I had dropped, and I remained friendly, and I told
him I really needed to manage or somebody was offering
me exactly what I needed for the publishing on that song,
exactly what I needed to pay my late car and payments.
So it was really, I can't, I can't let go
(33:10):
of this song, and uh, I need a manager. So
he introduced me to a rock bands manager whose name
I won't say. We ended up in conflict and uh
suing each other for a couple of years and uh,
but he did get me up to Nashville, got the
record deal going, and launched my career. That song, Nobody's Home,
ended up being one of the number one singles on
(33:33):
that first album. When did you realize that you had
made it? When I met that manager, I knew I
got my break, and I believed in my songs and myself,
and I knew that I was about to have the opportunity,
and when I signed with our Cia Records, I knew.
I just knew. You don't really know, but you think
you know that it's gonna happen. And I didn't know
(33:55):
what it's meant at the time, but for me, I
didn't have any rose colored glasses. I really felt like, um,
this is going to be my break, and you know,
whatever it is. I basically resigned myself to a life
of music and whatever that meant. And so I knew
that that was and then you know, we start recording
the album. I'm still playing bars for two years to come,
(34:19):
after all those breaks happened, still two years of you know,
fifty dollars a night, mostly just subsisting, and uh so,
then one morning Ups delivers a box early early in
the morning. I wake up, I take the box and
and I opened it up and it's the It's the album,
It's Killing Time and some cassettes. It was the product,
(34:42):
and it was real. At that point, it all, it
all really hit me. All that work and all that
I had done had paid off, and I was holding
the proof of that, and I sobbed. I had gone
through many a night of questioning how I'm going about
this and why I wanted so badly that all my
friends are going on and succeeding and taking vacations and
(35:05):
buying homes and and and I'm barely getting by. And
that album was the proof that, uh, that I had
made the right choice, and it really all came crashing
down on me at that point, and uh, and it
became real. It was tangible. So that album had killing
time on it. Obviously. That was the title track and
(35:26):
A Better Man, both of which were number one number
two singles right on Billboard. How long from you getting
that ups package with some cassette tapes and eight tracks
to that charting that high on the Billboard charts? Probably
eight months? Yeah, So the first single came out and
about late January February of nine, and that Better Man
(35:49):
the first single peak on one of the two charts
there was Radio Records and Billboard, and I think it
was June seventeen for Radio and Records, So that was
the first, you know, peak position and number one. I
think both singles had been number one, and and my
life had changed. It's hard to get one song from
an album to get to number one, let alone two
(36:09):
of them from the same album. So congratulations. When you
look back, Is there anything that you would have changed there,
done differently? Of course, lots of things. I would have
gotten a second opinion from a lawyer on the initial
contracts that were offered to me by that first manager.
I would have had a more of a one on
one relationship with my record company that he kept me
partitioned off from. You don't live by those you learned
(36:32):
by them. You just keep trying to not repeat mistakes.
When we started talking about your guys success and how
it started, you, Clint, you were talking about Lisa's thing,
which is showing up to work, being prepared, being a good,
you know, employee, but also being a pleasure to work with,
which is something that we've talked about a lot, and
(36:52):
that is a common denominator of a lot of successful people.
What's your kind of like one piece of advice for
people to be successful? It's really tough, you know. What
I said of Lisa really says it all in in
long form. You've got to be professional and you have
to treat everyone how you would want to be treated.
(37:14):
You know, tried to lecture this into our daughter, our daughter.
I think with great success. Success doesn't make you better
than anyone. Success is the result of your hard work.
You really have to work hard at how you look
at yourself. If you see yourself as being better than anyone,
then you've got a problem, not just in your career,
(37:34):
but in your heart. You may be able to point
to all sorts of things that you might have done
better or worked harder at things like that, but you know,
when you start looking at yourself as being better than anyone,
and and and we had somebody on the road with
us who who had that attitude, and there were people
who were beneath him, and it was very unattractive. You know,
(37:54):
it just didn't work for for any of us. I
think that's the best lesson. No matter what you do
in life, you you can't place yourself above anyone. Maybe
your efforts can be better than someone else's, but you
know that's as far as you. Better go with it.
I love that. I want to be respectful of your
guys this time, so I'm gonna let you go. But first,
(38:15):
can we do a quick rapid fire questions? Yeah, we
we want to just talk about I don't think we
talked about our new due at our new single, and
we're gonna be streaming a live show from the Rheymans.
So um, after after we did the Mask Singer, we
thought about recording one of those songs and for about
five minutes and I thought, well, we're gonna put a
(38:36):
lot of work into that. I rather just write something new.
And then, of course I've banged my head against the
wall for three days getting nowhere. And then I thought
of the opening line, and uh, and that's set that
set it off. And the opening line is I can
tell you how the story never ends, and that's our story.
So the song just poured out. We got it ordered.
(39:00):
It'll be available December three. We're gonna perform it live
at the Rheman on December two, and at Clint Black
dot com you can buy a nine dollar ticket to
watch it from your own home. There will be some
in person audience, but it's very limited. Tickets are going fast.
But uh, we'll be live from the Rhyman December two.
(39:20):
We'll do our hit when I said I do in
the new duet. Our daughter Lily, who's a second year
music student at Belmont, she's uh, I'm gonna perform with
us that A couple of very special songs she's gonna do,
so it's gonna be a family affair. It's going to
be the first concert since the lockdowns, it will be
(39:41):
the first time of live streaming a concert for me,
and it will launch a new duet, which our fans
have been calling for for for some time. I put
out a new album recently out of saying, you know,
we got a lot of nice comments from from the fans,
but uh, they were missing the duet. And I think
(40:03):
if we hadn't done the masked Singer probably wouldn't have
been compelled to do another duet. We really enjoyed singing together.
Is there a better place in the world to play
than the Mother Church? Well, I would say there are
worst places to play. I mean, a theater where you're
(40:23):
close up to the audience is always wonderful. And there's
so many great theaters. I spent years in the early
part of this century. That's funny to say, just playing
the small, wonderful theaters, some of them a hundred years old.
And I love that because of the proximity to the audience.
I feel so close to the audience, and the rhyman
(40:45):
gives you that. And it's also got a kind of
an auditorium feel, you know, it feels like it can
get big and loud. It is a hallowed stage, and
it's got a history there. The friendly ghosts feel present.
So you bring all that with it, and you've got
a pretty special place to play. Everyone that doesn't know
(41:07):
we're talking about. There's this theater in downtown Nashville called
the Ryman Auditorium and it's been around forever. It's my
favorite place to see live music. You haven't lived until
you've heard the sound of people slapping the back of
the church pews waiting for an encore. It's one of
the most haunting and beautiful noises for whatever reason, and
(41:28):
then the band comes back on and it's such a
cool experience. So that's really really cool. The Grand Old
Opry moved there probably, I don't know, seventy five years ago.
So the Grand Old Opry was was live from the
Roman Auditorium for for years, sixty or seventy years before
it moved out to opper Land. And it still comes
(41:48):
back in the winter months to the Rheman. So you've
got everything that you described, and you've got the history
pictures up all over the walls, or you can see
and and remind you of of how many performers, legends
have come through there to play, and how many audiences.
You know, the audience is really the character of the
(42:10):
Grand Old Opry and the Rheman. One of the warmest
crowd you'll ever play for is the Grand Old Opry audience. Anyway,
we're gonna be there and and it's gonna be exciting
to be doing a first show back after lockdown at
the Rhyme, and you know you can find your way
Clint Black dot com get to watch the show live
(42:32):
from your home, and you get a free set of
gain Sue Knives and pocket Fisherman. Don't look at those
in the mail. Hold you to those probably not coming.
I can see it on Twitter now. You were my
knives before I let you go. You guys ready for
the rabid fire questions. No, that question came to quickly
(42:55):
go alright, uh Rabbi Fire questions with Clint and Lisa.
Favorite pizza topping pepperoni basil, basil. Yeah, margarita pizza. See
that's a terrible answer. You're not hungry enough. Favorite book
Emily and Einstein, Oh God. April eighteen sixty five, a
(43:16):
year that saved America? Was the first concert you ever
went to? John Merl Haggard? Was the first car you
ever owned? Toyota with no shocks? Sixty sixty four Plymouth
Fury three. I was older. It was a heap. Who's
your first kiss? Lisa? Wow? That is a lie if
(43:39):
I've ever heard one. What's the weirdest superstition that you have?
I only have one that's kind of like, if I
think something's gonna happen, I don't want to say it
because I think it will Jinks. That's kind of common.
I don't really have anything, you know I do. I'm
not go on wood. I'm a bit of a druid.
That's not weird. We don't have weird ones. Who is
your childhood hero? Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne? Probably my dad.
How would you describe yourself in high school? Stupid idiot,
(44:05):
kind of nerdy, nerdy but fashionable, fashionable. Well, yeah, I
wore these we were supposed to answer, But I wore
these really were like a fringe vest long and they
sent me home from you know, and I wore a
shirt that was made out of the American flag and
it was caught and they sent me home and I
was like, you know, cool, but I really was, who's
your celebrity crush? Oh my god, Lisa today? Back then? Whatever,
(44:29):
we'd have to go back. Okay, I had a big
crush on al Pacino and Jack Wild. Do you remember
Jack Wild? The artful Dodger? Go ahead, you can tell
that's Susan Pluschette. Yeah, I've told you that we ran
into her in a button store. Once store, into someone
(44:50):
in a button store. That last of one? Do you
believe in? Soulmates? Oh? Yeah? Till the End of Time?
Clinton Leasa, Thank you guys so much for being on
the Wells cast. Has been an absolute pleasure and enjoy
your guys. Story is crazy, bonkers, inspiring and actually extremely romantic.
So thank you again. And before I let you leave
(45:11):
one more time, where can people get tickets for this show?
They'll be streaming by the music a lot stuff. We'll
start streaming it. It'll be live December two, and you
can go to Clint Black dot com now to get
your ticket to watch from home. And then the new
single Till the End of Time available for streaming December three.
Thank you, Wells. We appreciate it all right, can't wait
(45:33):
to see Clint on The Mass Dancer coming this summer
on ABC. And alright, see you guys, well, aren't they
just the freaking cutest thing you've ever heard in your
entire life. Clint Black's funny, by the way. I mean,
we all know he's extremely talented, amazing singer and musician,
(45:55):
and obviously Lisa've been around for ever just killing it.
But they're funny, hute, and like it's like one of
those things when you meet those people, you're like, I
really hope that that's Sarah and I are like that.
Hope you guys enjoyed it. This was fun. If you
do like the show, go give us a five star
rating on the Apple or play stores. That always helps.
Leave leave a review if you like, uh, or if
you don't like either way, and yeah, tweet me or
(46:18):
instagram me at wells Adams if you like the show.
If you don't, and uh, some people that you'd like
to see on the show or here on the show. Right, Okay,
I'm gonna go edit this and then go back to
watching The Masters because mc dorkey dude. Later subscribe to
wealthcast on I Heart Radio, Apple podcasts, or anywhere you
get your podcasts. It's the Internet.
I made a b lt It was delicious at the time.
Now I'm feeling you're not feeling of like m Maybe
too much bacon Greece in my body right now. Whatever,
We're gonna get through it. I'm a fatty rolling This
is a Wells cast with Wells atoms and I heart
radio podcast. What is everyone doing doing? Great man Master's son. Yes,
(00:32):
I like golf whatever, I'm an upper middle class white man.
What do you expect exciting? Though? Weird watching sports with
no fans, at least there's something to watch, thank god,
being watching stuff. Bachelorette is just a hot dumpster fire,
all right, but it's the best. Why do we love
seeing things just crumble around us? Watching the bats for
(00:56):
it every week? Watching Claire, watching people are saying on Twitter.
First of all, Twitter is just the worst, but the best,
but the worst. And everyone's mad at her for doing
the thing that she was supposed to go do, which
was fine a boyfriend, how dare you do the thing
that we wanted you to do? Too fast? You go
(01:18):
on that show and you drag us through two months.
Every Tuesday night you take us to Fantasy suitets. You
cry because you don't know who you love. How dare
you take that away from us and come station the
Savior by the way, Yeah, next week your boy is
gonna be on and it's me ridiculous and I'm not
gonna making drinks. I'm not slepping drinks this time. They've
(01:41):
got me doing other stuff. My resume has grown, baby.
I mean, first it was bitch boy, no kisser, then
it was bitch boy too much kissing kissy. Then it
was bartender, then it was puppet Master. Always been Chris
Harrison's bitch, that's true. But now I got something new
(02:02):
on the Rezus. Be a fun episode. I'm excited to
watch that. I hope you like it too. Speaking of resumes,
we don't got one, but we got to folks on
the Wells cast this week who have amazing resumes. They're married,
so it's gonna be cute. It's gonna be fun. It's
gonna be hard to get through both their origin stories,
but you know what, We're gonna do it. One of
our guests taught himself how to play the harmonica when
(02:23):
he was thirteen years old, and by fourteen he wrote
his first song. By fifteen, he dropped out of high
school to play in a band with his brothers before
deciding to become a solo act. His first two nationally
released country singles, a Better Man and Killing Time We're
number one and number two, respectively in the Country music charts.
His third single, Nobody's Home, was the Billboard number one
(02:44):
Song of the Year for nine nine. All three were
number one hits. Oh. He also acts, by the way,
known for Maverick Anger Management, Nowhere to Run Okay, and
he's been married to this lady since October of nine,
who starred in the short lived to Which spin off
as Tabitha. In the late seventies, she was in the
CBS remake of Jacqueline Susanne's Value of the Dolls as
(03:08):
Nili O'Hara. She's recorded four solo albums. She performed on
a bunch of different television shows like Solid Gold and
merv Griffin. You gotta be kidding me, and these two
love birds were on a little show called Mass Singer
as Birds. Actually, yeah, there were the snow Owls. Unfortunately
they were limited in the seventh round. But fortunately they
(03:31):
were eliminated in the seventh round because that means they
are now on our show on the Wells Cast today Oh,
it's Clint Black and his lovely wife Lisa Hartman. This
is the show, guys. Oh man, you do not want
to miss bro alright back on the Wells cast. Very
(04:00):
excited to have um, well, I guess the first ever
duo on the Mass Singer on the show. We have
Clint Black and Lisa Hartman. How are you guys? Good?
How are you? I mean, I'm excited. It's Masters weekend
so I get to watch golf and then I get
to talk to you guys, who are just amazing in
your own right. I'm very very sorry that you didn't
(04:21):
win Mass Singer. How was the experience for you? It
was great, you know um bitter suite. Of course. I
didn't mind getting back into my old routine from that,
but it would have been fun to go on and
sing some of the other songs that we were thinking
about doing and uh later episodes and breaking out of
the egg and moving around on the stage blindly of
(04:42):
course because you can't see anything in those masks. Our
eyes fogged up immediately, you know, because it's so hot
in there. But it was it was fun. It was kukie,
you know, and and we have to laugh at ourselves
for being in costumes. But the costumes were magnific ascent
as you know Marina Toibina as a master costumer. It
(05:05):
was fun. What was the most difficult part of the
whole situation, Oh, gosh, well, I think the song selection.
We've talked about that. It was really tricky to find
a song that both of us liked, that we could
set the key, that we could condense that would still
be dynamic, that um, you know, just so many elements,
and the publisher would approve its use on the show,
(05:27):
the producers and the TV executives, everybody. It was. It
was tough. We we had a really long list of songs. Yeah,
but I think once we got the list locked in,
we felt really good, very confident. We loved it, you know,
so we we eventually got there obviously, and then we
were off and running, so we thought. And then we
arrived and they put us in this egg and we
(05:47):
would out and you know, because we had operated ourselves,
and I said, you know, had a mind of its own,
and it was hard to walk in it, you know.
So I always said, you know, we're like Fred Flintstone's
little feet, you know, only taking when he's on his
toe was running, It's true, you know, and the left
tiny little steps it was hard to move around. And
of course you have stage hands that are in a
(06:08):
stage manager who's you know, get over here. We want
you over here, and we're going you know this in
a Nascar It was tricky, but we we I mean,
we never really mastered it. But you just you know,
you figure it out. And then you get to your
mark and your heart's racing and now go. Now you
gotta perform right, and then we sing and we're singing
(06:31):
and we've got to move the egg during the song.
It's oh my god. I think at one point we
finally said the choreagrays, do we have to move the
egg on that line? Can we just you know, can
we just say? They said, no, you have to move.
But but it was great. I mean, it was challenging,
it was hard, it was wonderful. It was you know,
so many things and never again will you ever do
(06:52):
any of us do that anything like that, you know
what I mean. It's such a special little egg because
next time we're going to be two people in a
horses count, I'll be who gets to play the front
and who gets to play the back In that situation.
I think, what did you guys think of the clues?
(07:16):
Very difficult if you know. Of course I knew it
was me right away, but other people how, you know,
how do they guess these clues? I think brilliant. Yeah,
I think they're brilliant. I I mean, imagine writing for
every one of those characters four seasons in now, and
they've got to come up with the most you know,
(07:37):
I mean, they're unbelievable. I don't know how they do it.
We would look at stuff and we go, what is that?
And oh yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, that movie tied into
you know, I just I was, you know, and they
were really tough clues for everybody. You know, they were
they were they were you know, just like uh, fainting
this way and that way. So, but they were never lying.
(08:02):
They were all, you know, actual clues. I think they
were deceptive. Yeah. The brilliance is that you were it
was so obvious the parthenon you know, oh no, there's
one and you know, and so there would be a
clue that could be this way or that way, or
could be for him or her, and you knew what
it was. And that to me was part of the brilliance,
you know, just a crossover. Me and my fiance, we
(08:24):
wanted to show and we felt like they were trying
to hint that you guys were siblings, and I don't
know if they were trying to throw people off with
like the Donnie and Marie idea. So when I found
out that it was you guys, I was a little shocked.
I was also pretty shocked that Nicole nailed it right
on the head. Well, I think his voice glints voices,
(08:44):
so you reckon, it's so recognized you, but you never
know who from. You know, other genres are gonna know
someone's voice from, you know, country music or you know,
wherever else. I'd recognize that banjo player anywhere. You know?
Who do you? How do you know? I mean, I
wouldn't have expected her necessarily to know a country singer's voice. Mask,
(09:09):
even if you know the voices, the mask just makes
it hard. It's like it puts up this block even
to your ears. Yeah, you're nice. She clearly has the
best ears of the four of that she's amazing, Ken
is horrible, and Nicole is a mazing. Jenny's really good too.
We're obsessed with the show. It's so fun to watch.
(09:29):
It's it's crazy that this kind of like weird Japanese
show has become so popular in America, but is like
really really fun to watch. You guys are fun. That
year run got cut short. What songs would you have
done if you had kept going and I got a
da vida? I think, yeah, no, we actually had we
(09:51):
had a list, and had we gone on, then we
would have honed in ound in and chose in the song.
I was thinking that maybe I would be if we
broke out of the egg, we do something where there's
lots of dancing involved. Yeah, I didn't even say that.
I lived with this and we were in the kids,
(10:12):
I danced for laughs. But you know, that's that's it.
How can I make this more difficult, Let's add some
choreography to the mix. Exactly would you guys do it again? Yeah? Yeah,
it's one of those things though you can't imagine I'm ever,
you know, asking you to do it again. Uh, we
did it as solo artists, but I think, you know,
(10:36):
unless there was a new panel of judges in an
entirely new audience. Yes, don did it before and they
said it could be Donnie and Marie. He could have
come back as a duo. That would have been allowed,
I guess, but I don't know that could come back
as Willie Why. I don't know. I'm where in this
costume it? Clint, you do know that there is a
(10:58):
show called Mask Answer Now and you wanted to be
doing the choreography. Maybe he used to go do that show. Yeah,
if they did the laughs, dancer laughs. You really don't
want to know. You really don't want to watch me
dancing for anything more than a couple of chuckles. I
(11:18):
may actually be able to dance, but I spent so
much time on stage playing in bars other people were dancing,
and I never really did. I may be able to,
but I can't do it without trying to make it funny.
It all I have. Well, now that you guys are out,
who do you think is gonna win? Thing? I know
who wins? You do? He doesn't see it? Sounds like
(11:43):
you do know, and then I'm trying to cover up
he does not know. That's the cause office truth. He's
a liar. I know who everyone is, what they had
for lunch, and who's going to win. But we think
Son has an amazing voice, and Seahorse has an amazing voice.
Who do you think I think it'll be son? You do?
Who do you think? I think? I like the sea
(12:03):
horse costume the best, and I, for whatever reason, that's
why I gravitate towards that. But I liked you guys
aside from time. I thought you guys were fantastic. I
like the idea of doing something different, which was the
first due I was like, Oh, this is a totally
different thing. This is fun. So I hope that they
continue kind of doing stuff like that with seasons going forward.
I think they should, and you know, they're gonna keep
(12:25):
evolving and trying to introduce new things. I'm sure, but
I would I would imagine that with so many fans
in our business of the show, that somebody's watching going, hey, honey,
that would be good for us. We should do that.
You know, they're probably the show is probably making their
list now and they'll have to come up with an
entirely new way of doing it. So you know, who knows.
(12:48):
It may be a two person horse. It's just you.
Let's see where that person in the back holds of
the microphone. That's gonna I absolutely love watching you guys
on this show. I wish your run had continued, but
I'm happy that it was cut short because then I
get to talk to you guys. The idea for this
(13:09):
show is that I like to find out people's origin stories,
how they became successful, what they did, what steps they took,
what the blueprint is to becoming well Clint Black and
Lisa Hartman. So we're gonna take a quick break and
when we come back, I want to hear how the
hell you two got right here on the Wells Cast.
(13:40):
All right, back on the Wells Cast. I have Clint
Black and Lisa Hartman on the show. Of course, they
were just on the Mass Singer on Fox, the first
duo in mass singer history, dressed up as the snow Owls.
Sad to see them go, but happy that they did
get kicked off because now you guys are on my show.
So now we're gonna do on the nuts and bolts
of the show, which is origin stories. Will do Uh, ladies, First, Lisa,
(14:05):
where the how did you come from? And how the
hell did you get here? My parents were all about
stay true to who you are. That's the most important thing,
and stay grounded and stay focused and work hard, and
you know, it's all that basic stuff that we all
know but we tend to forget because there's this or
a shortcut or a thing or do, and those things
can be applicable at times, you know. But um, but
(14:27):
I think keeping it real and and you know, don't
be swayed by the provocative seductive things out there, which
could be a lot of things. You know. So that's mine.
I'm done. You're not getting off that easy, by the way. UM.
I can tell you for for Lisa that you know,
(14:49):
she she wouldn't talk about is um that she was
a professional and everything she did she worked very hard
at it. At the singing, you know, she hasn't made
records except with for years since she was making them.
You know, their career started out in music right, making
albums with the best songwriters and producers and uh Los Angeles,
(15:11):
and she was just a pro. She knew her part
of the job. She still she still knows. She can
hear all the notes when anything's out, anything pitchy, So
she's got the talent. But she applied herself to it.
And then as her television career took off, she was
always a pro. You know, she showed up knowing her
(15:31):
lines and uh, and hitting her mark and and getting
her part of it done and uh, and you know,
every career demands that if you want to be successful,
you have to do those things. And she did it
from a very young age, you know, being a performer
and dreaming of doing all this stuff. So for her,
(15:53):
you know, the word as always professionalism. You know, show up,
do your job. And then it's the way you treat
people to you know, if you if you come on
a set, you know, or into a session, and everyone
is beneath you, then uh, you will end up beneath
them at some point. You know, everyone you step on
on the way up, you know you will be waving
(16:15):
too on your way down. Because no one likes to
support people they don't uh feel proud of supporting. So um,
the way she treats people, I think is a big,
big part of it. You know. It's we always say
in in my band, it's one part player and one
part person. So you can have the greatest player in
(16:36):
the world in the band and if they're a jerk,
they're out of the band. You know, we're not gonna
have anybody mistreating each other. So that's how we basically
assess people. So if you join the band. You know
you you you've got to be really good at what
you do, but you also have to be good to
everyone around you. Clint's always said, well, if if you're not,
(16:57):
we'll give you a hot dog and a roadmap. You know,
oil spot. You come out, there's an oil spot where
the bus was we left. At least. I want to
go back to when you were a kid. I was
reading up on you that like, uh is this I
don't even know if this is true. Did you do
a commercial with John Wayne? I did when I was
really Oh god, yes I did. It was for the
American Cancer something society Society. Yeah, I think it was
(17:20):
something something like that. They changed tweaked a little bit,
but yeah it was. It was a still photo and
it was him looking down at me. Got Lee. I
haven't talked about I forgot about it, honestly, thank you
for bringing it up. I know it's here, it's upstairs.
But yeah, I did that, but that you know, and
I just always had the bug. I knew as a
kid what I wanted to do, and I just went
(17:41):
after it. Um you know, I I really I had
a band when I was eighteen. We played all the
holiday inns and you know, and I started out as
the girls singer with the tambourine, and I sang a
little bit, and then it became you know, because I
always wanted as a kid, I was always doing it,
So it wasn't like I just decided to become a singer.
But I started out as a girls sort of singer
(18:02):
with the tambourine and ended up having my own band,
and I was writing the checks and you know, took
on more responsibility that side as well. And then uh,
I was lucky enough to meet Jeff Barry, who's you know, huge,
and Olivia John was on the charts at the time
with I Honestly Love You, which Jeff had written with
Peter Allen, and he signed me and produced me, and
(18:26):
we were on Donnie Kirshner's label, Kershner Records. It was
me in Kansas, Kansas had the hit and I didn't
carry on. Time went on and I released a few
albums and it just almost got there, didn't didn't quite
get there. Um and then the acting. I went out
in audition and got a few parts and then I
(18:46):
was Tabitha and I went to ABC to meet with
Fred Silverman, who was the president of the network at
the time, and it was me and Pam Dauber and
who was Mark and Mindy and so we were sitting
and remember it so well, and it was this huge
it was ABC, you know network. I mean, the point
really is is that my acting took off, and I
was glad because I loved it as well. I've done
(19:06):
both growing up, and I really want to be a record.
I want to be Olivia. I want to be Linda
Ron said, That's why I wanted to be. But I
also loved this and I was lucky. And I also
to pay the bills, so you know, you know, and
I did Tabitha and we did thirteen of those and
then it wasn't picked up, and then I was basically
without a job. So again, it just just sticking with it.
(19:28):
And it was hard at times, you know, um, but
I loved it and I believed that I would make
a good living. It was never to me about being
a star, about making a lot of it was never
about that. It was just working in the industry and
I did, and I'm to this day I'm grateful. Well,
it's a pretty nice fallback plan if you can't be
(19:50):
the next Linda ronstat to be a successful actress. I
was reading up that, like, you portrayed a character that
was so popular that and they killed her off. The
network had to bring you back in some respect. Yeah,
so this is funny. I was. I had my album
was coming out, nots Landing, was a big show, not
(20:12):
as big as Dallas. It was a spin off, and
they wanted to add a character. And the character was
CG Done and she was a singer. And my manager
called me and basically it was a short thing was singer.
They're gonna kill her. You'll do like seven episodes and
then you can go off. It'll be great for the album.
Then you go off on the road and it's all
a little work, right. So so I went and I
(20:35):
met with them and got the part and did this
show and sang many songs off of my album. Then
I was murdered. I was killed. I was on the beach.
I washed up and was shot the scene. I was
freezing and they're like, you know, used whatever, when I
was still you know, I was laying there dead. Anyway.
(20:56):
That was the end of c G. And then my
manager called and said, you know, they've had such a
response the fans and so on and so forth, and
they want you to come back on the show. And
I thought he was playing a joke on me and
I yeah, right yeah, and he said no seriously, and
so we need to sit down and figure out how
we can bring you back. So it was CG. So
they came up with a character Kathy Geary. See Kathy Geary?
(21:20):
But how are they going? They had the name? Okay,
so where do we go from there? So then they
decided that I was obviously going to be a look
alike and be discovered by Ted Chuckle for it. Anyway,
it's a long story, but they brought me back and
I was there for what three three and a half
season something like that, all total and singing again. She
was such a look alike. She was a sing alike
to so but it was so much fun because, like
(21:43):
you said, I got to do this show and I
was back with my TV family, you know, and I
was the new kid on the block and I was
the youngest there, and I had all these seasoned actors
around me, from William Devane to you know, all of
these people, and it was just such a great experience.
And um, you know, you up your game, you're playing
tennis with, you know, and so then it was time
(22:05):
to move on, and I did and and and just
kept doing movies for television, and the music sort of
kind of fell away. And when we met, I hadn't
seen her in any of these movies or TV shows
and uh. And you know, back then it wasn't as
easy to go find and and watch things as it
(22:26):
is today. And we were traveling through France and something
came on. You know, there was like one English speaking
channel and then a bunch of others, and I ended
up on clicking through and on a German channel. Uh,
and there she was and uh as she was crying
(22:48):
and talking in German. You know, Phil Niman had English
thoughts and and I thought, I had no idea you
spoke more than one language and uh. And so that
was the first time I had seen her in her
TV show and Uh. Anyway, we uh, we we were
(23:08):
married for years before I was doing an album and
I said, you have to sing the song with me,
and she resisted right up until the last minute, and
then finally relented and we had a hit song together.
She was back on the chart, was finally higher, much
(23:28):
higher on the charts. That's for sure, and that was
so glad I did it, and then we did it
live and they were like twenty thousand people out there,
and I was like, oh my god. And then I
walked out and the response was so amazing that it
had a calming effect on me, and I was in
I was like, I'm hooked. They let her know they've
(23:49):
been asking for her to sing with me, and I
would tell her, you know, the fans asked about you everywhere.
I go, Oh, you're so sweet, and I said, oh,
they really do. So they let her know in person
and concert, and she finally believed me and felt the welcome. Yeah,
it was lovely. I guess the question is do you
know when I say I do in German or only
(24:11):
in English? Four languages, I've got it. You guys met
on New Year's Eve. Yeah, he'd been out touring, he
was doing It was my first big show back home,
playing New Year's Eve at the Summit where the Rockets played.
And we had mutual friends who were kind of when
introducing her to my music. Unbeknownst to us, and and
(24:33):
she and her mom were in Houston for the holidays,
and UH decided to come to the show and we
met briefly backstage, and ten months and twenty days later
we were married, almost thirty years ago. What made me
go to that concert? I'm seriously, I mean you were
a stalker. Yes, I mean seriously, I think about it.
I mean, it's just it's amazing. Yeah, what was happening
(24:56):
you know with our mutual friends that there were two
different people. We both knew we're thinking we were right
for each other, and they didn't know they weren't helping
each other. It was it was completely independent. Fred Rappaport,
who has head of Specials at CBS. That's how I
knew him, and he was married to Michelle Lee, her
(25:17):
co star. We shared the same no no. I was
touring with Katie Oslin and her manager was part of
a management company where his partner managed Lisa. They were
they were pushing us together, but that wasn't the intent. Though.
I didn't come to the show to you know, it
just was sure you didn't, did you? Guys? Kiss at midnight?
(25:40):
Was that the first kiss on New Year's There were
a hundred people backstage. I was meeting contest winners, etcetera.
And and we just met briefly, and then Fred, we
were taping some c M A special and he came
up backstage and said, I have Lisa Hartman's phone number
and I would give it to you, but you have
to promise to Haller. Well, I don't know, but I
(26:05):
did and went out on a date and we fell
in love over the next few months. And yeah, that's
incredibly cute and super romantic. I want to go back
Clint to your beginning. You're a Texas guy, but you
weren't born there, right, No, but my dad's from there,
my mom's from Alabama, and they would just my mom
would go up to be with her mom, who was
(26:26):
in New Jersey because of her husband, and she would
go up there during her last trimester of three of
her four pregnancies, right, I was the last three of
us were born in New Jersey, and then she would
go back to Houston. And so I grew up in Houston,
but I kept the Jersey accident and nobody can understand that,
you know how that happens. And when I go back
(26:50):
to New Jersey, I'm a homeboy. You that claimed me there,
you know it's Mr By Welcome Home. You know I
was reading up on you that started playing music when
you were like twelve or thirteen, Like you learned the harmonica,
and then you learned the guitar, and then you wrote
a song, and then by like fifteen, you had decided
to drop out of school. No, not quite. I had
(27:14):
kept failing, going to summer school to get into the
next grade and so on, and I was I had
failed a year, repeated a year in high school, and
then went through summer school to get through another grade.
Terrible student. And uh and then finally it was clear
I wasn't going to make it out of the eleventh
grade without some more summer school. And uh, I was eighteen,
(27:38):
and I thought, I'm going to work and I got
a construction job and dropped out or just you know,
didn't go back to school after the end of the year.
And uh, that's what we call that dropping out, I guess.
And so uh so I went to work in construction
and playing some bars here and there, and uh regretted
dropping out within a year. What do your parents say
(27:59):
at that point, I think they really kind of understood
what kind of a student I had become. Maybe they thought, yeah,
going out there and find out how hard life is
going to be. You know, it was clear to me
within a year's time. And I tried as a student.
But when I got to a point where I was
failing at it so much, I had not developed the skills,
(28:23):
the study skills um and and at that point it
had become too difficult and I was not going to
catch up on my own, and uh, and I really
couldn't see my way out of it. I'm a much
better student now. A year later. It was all nonfiction
books from there on out, and uh, trying to fill
(28:43):
in all the gaps. Literally go on to a site
about English language and punctuation and just sit there and
read that, because I'm not gonna I'm not going to
be ignorant. I may be stupid, but I'm not going
to be ignorant. You know, I've worked at self improvement
to make up for it. Obviously worth you. You're incredibly successful.
Did you know that this was the path that you
(29:05):
want to do down? Like Lisa, like I know that
you You started playing some bars and then did you
you joined a band with your brothers, right, yeah, that
was earlier on and then the band broke up and
I started playing solo in the bars. I did that
for about ten years before I found a manager. I
had a couple of different managers who really didn't do anything.
(29:27):
And then I finally found a manager who was a
successful rock manager, and then I put a band together
to showcase for our c A. So I had spent
about ten years playing solo in the bars before that.
What was the goal during that time, that ten years
span of playing hockey, tonks and stuff before you had
a manager, It was the goal for you career wise.
(29:49):
When I was still a teen, I I hadn't decided
it was music. It was either going to be music
or I was going to go into the Air Force
and try to work my way into the astronaut pro
grim go ahead and insert candle laughter. Now I had
singers grades, they wouldn't have let me near the dumpsters,
and uh, and so I chose the right path, and
(30:10):
I started uh playing in the bars, like you said.
And then when I realized that the construction job, you know,
it really wasn't gonna be able to make it as
a musician working that hard during the day, I was
an iron worker, and so I quit that and started
working the bars full time and reading books on the
music business, trying to understand what I needed to do.
And it became really clear at that point that I
(30:32):
needed a manager, and I went through a couple of
different managers. I never questioned my goals, but I questioned
my methods constantly. And I found a book called Time Management,
Work Smarter, not Harder, And this is the book that
was the key, It was the key to my initial success.
There was an exercise of creating different sheets for your
(30:56):
short term and long term goals, and under each heading
you would list all of the activities you could dream
of to to reach that goal. And so every day
I was checking off an activity. The main objective was
get a manager. That was a short term goal to
reach the long term goals. So to do that I
had to have some demos. So I found it was
really difficult on my salary, which was, you know, four
(31:21):
thousand dollars a year probably to afford a demo, or
even afford to take the time out to go make
the demo. But I was determined to get some demos made.
I was writing songs and at one point I had
this one offer to do a gig at a country club,
a solo gig, and it was really good pay. It
was a hundred dollars a night to play, like four
(31:43):
nights a week. So I was gonna be bumped up
to four hundred dollars a week if I could land
this gig. But the guy wouldn't give me that gig
unless I played a banquet for him with a full band.
And I didn't have a full band. You know, my
brother and my buddies, you know, they were out of it.
So I found a band that was playing in town
that knew a lot of the songs I knew and
(32:05):
hired them for this one gig. And on the rehearsal
we had their their guitar player had already left, and
that guy leading that band had called a guy to
fill in for him for this other guitar player for her.
That was Hayden Nicholas, and he was really impressive, and
he and I talked about what we were doing. He
had just returned to Houston because his dad was ill.
(32:26):
I told him I was trying to get some demos
made and I couldn't really afford it. And when he said, well,
I have a track recorder, I'll make you a deal.
And so we made a deal a hundred and fifty
dollars a song. But if I got a record deal
as a result of those demos, then I would pay
him retroactively another hundred and fifties, so three hundred dollars
a demo, which was a pretty good rate now looking back.
(32:49):
And the first song we finished was Nobody's Home. I
took it to this guy who was my manager who
I had dropped, and I remained friendly, and I told
him I really needed to manage or somebody was offering
me exactly what I needed for the publishing on that song,
exactly what I needed to pay my late car and payments.
So it was really, I can't, I can't let go
(33:10):
of this song, and uh, I need a manager. So
he introduced me to a rock bands manager whose name
I won't say. We ended up in conflict and uh
suing each other for a couple of years and uh,
but he did get me up to Nashville, got the
record deal going, and launched my career. That song, Nobody's Home,
ended up being one of the number one singles on
(33:33):
that first album. When did you realize that you had
made it? When I met that manager, I knew I
got my break, and I believed in my songs and myself,
and I knew that I was about to have the opportunity,
and when I signed with our Cia Records, I knew.
I just knew. You don't really know, but you think
you know that it's gonna happen. And I didn't know
(33:55):
what it's meant at the time, but for me, I
didn't have any rose colored glasses. I really felt like, um,
this is going to be my break, and you know,
whatever it is. I basically resigned myself to a life
of music and whatever that meant. And so I knew
that that was and then you know, we start recording
the album. I'm still playing bars for two years to come,
(34:19):
after all those breaks happened, still two years of you know,
fifty dollars a night, mostly just subsisting, and uh so,
then one morning Ups delivers a box early early in
the morning. I wake up, I take the box and
and I opened it up and it's the It's the album,
It's Killing Time and some cassettes. It was the product,
(34:42):
and it was real. At that point, it all, it
all really hit me. All that work and all that
I had done had paid off, and I was holding
the proof of that, and I sobbed. I had gone
through many a night of questioning how I'm going about
this and why I wanted so badly that all my
friends are going on and succeeding and taking vacations and
(35:05):
buying homes and and and I'm barely getting by. And
that album was the proof that, uh, that I had
made the right choice, and it really all came crashing
down on me at that point, and uh, and it
became real. It was tangible. So that album had killing
time on it. Obviously. That was the title track and
(35:26):
A Better Man, both of which were number one number
two singles right on Billboard. How long from you getting
that ups package with some cassette tapes and eight tracks
to that charting that high on the Billboard charts? Probably
eight months? Yeah, So the first single came out and
about late January February of nine, and that Better Man
(35:49):
the first single peak on one of the two charts
there was Radio Records and Billboard, and I think it
was June seventeen for Radio and Records, So that was
the first, you know, peak position and number one. I
think both singles had been number one, and and my
life had changed. It's hard to get one song from
an album to get to number one, let alone two
(36:09):
of them from the same album. So congratulations. When you
look back, Is there anything that you would have changed there,
done differently? Of course, lots of things. I would have
gotten a second opinion from a lawyer on the initial
contracts that were offered to me by that first manager.
I would have had a more of a one on
one relationship with my record company that he kept me
partitioned off from. You don't live by those you learned
(36:32):
by them. You just keep trying to not repeat mistakes.
When we started talking about your guys success and how
it started, you, Clint, you were talking about Lisa's thing,
which is showing up to work, being prepared, being a good,
you know, employee, but also being a pleasure to work with,
which is something that we've talked about a lot, and
(36:52):
that is a common denominator of a lot of successful people.
What's your kind of like one piece of advice for
people to be successful? It's really tough, you know. What
I said of Lisa really says it all in in
long form. You've got to be professional and you have
to treat everyone how you would want to be treated.
(37:14):
You know, tried to lecture this into our daughter, our daughter.
I think with great success. Success doesn't make you better
than anyone. Success is the result of your hard work.
You really have to work hard at how you look
at yourself. If you see yourself as being better than anyone,
then you've got a problem, not just in your career,
(37:34):
but in your heart. You may be able to point
to all sorts of things that you might have done
better or worked harder at things like that, but you know,
when you start looking at yourself as being better than anyone,
and and and we had somebody on the road with
us who who had that attitude, and there were people
who were beneath him, and it was very unattractive. You know,
(37:54):
it just didn't work for for any of us. I
think that's the best lesson. No matter what you do
in life, you you can't place yourself above anyone. Maybe
your efforts can be better than someone else's, but you
know that's as far as you. Better go with it.
I love that. I want to be respectful of your
guys this time, so I'm gonna let you go. But first,
(38:15):
can we do a quick rapid fire questions? Yeah, we
we want to just talk about I don't think we
talked about our new due at our new single, and
we're gonna be streaming a live show from the Rheymans.
So um, after after we did the Mask Singer, we
thought about recording one of those songs and for about
five minutes and I thought, well, we're gonna put a
(38:36):
lot of work into that. I rather just write something new.
And then, of course I've banged my head against the
wall for three days getting nowhere. And then I thought
of the opening line, and uh, and that's set that
set it off. And the opening line is I can
tell you how the story never ends, and that's our story.
So the song just poured out. We got it ordered.
(39:00):
It'll be available December three. We're gonna perform it live
at the Rheman on December two, and at Clint Black
dot com you can buy a nine dollar ticket to
watch it from your own home. There will be some
in person audience, but it's very limited. Tickets are going fast.
But uh, we'll be live from the Rhyman December two.
(39:20):
We'll do our hit when I said I do in
the new duet. Our daughter Lily, who's a second year
music student at Belmont, she's uh, I'm gonna perform with
us that A couple of very special songs she's gonna do,
so it's gonna be a family affair. It's going to
be the first concert since the lockdowns, it will be
(39:41):
the first time of live streaming a concert for me,
and it will launch a new duet, which our fans
have been calling for for for some time. I put
out a new album recently out of saying, you know,
we got a lot of nice comments from from the fans,
but uh, they were missing the duet. And I think
(40:03):
if we hadn't done the masked Singer probably wouldn't have
been compelled to do another duet. We really enjoyed singing together.
Is there a better place in the world to play
than the Mother Church? Well, I would say there are
worst places to play. I mean, a theater where you're
(40:23):
close up to the audience is always wonderful. And there's
so many great theaters. I spent years in the early
part of this century. That's funny to say, just playing
the small, wonderful theaters, some of them a hundred years old.
And I love that because of the proximity to the audience.
I feel so close to the audience, and the rhyman
(40:45):
gives you that. And it's also got a kind of
an auditorium feel, you know, it feels like it can
get big and loud. It is a hallowed stage, and
it's got a history there. The friendly ghosts feel present.
So you bring all that with it, and you've got
a pretty special place to play. Everyone that doesn't know
(41:07):
we're talking about. There's this theater in downtown Nashville called
the Ryman Auditorium and it's been around forever. It's my
favorite place to see live music. You haven't lived until
you've heard the sound of people slapping the back of
the church pews waiting for an encore. It's one of
the most haunting and beautiful noises for whatever reason, and
(41:28):
then the band comes back on and it's such a
cool experience. So that's really really cool. The Grand Old
Opry moved there probably, I don't know, seventy five years ago.
So the Grand Old Opry was was live from the
Roman Auditorium for for years, sixty or seventy years before
it moved out to opper Land. And it still comes
(41:48):
back in the winter months to the Rheman. So you've
got everything that you described, and you've got the history
pictures up all over the walls, or you can see
and and remind you of of how many performers, legends
have come through there to play, and how many audiences.
You know, the audience is really the character of the
(42:10):
Grand Old Opry and the Rheman. One of the warmest
crowd you'll ever play for is the Grand Old Opry audience. Anyway,
we're gonna be there and and it's gonna be exciting
to be doing a first show back after lockdown at
the Rhyme, and you know you can find your way
Clint Black dot com get to watch the show live
(42:32):
from your home, and you get a free set of
gain Sue Knives and pocket Fisherman. Don't look at those
in the mail. Hold you to those probably not coming.
I can see it on Twitter now. You were my
knives before I let you go. You guys ready for
the rabid fire questions. No, that question came to quickly
(42:55):
go alright, uh Rabbi Fire questions with Clint and Lisa.
Favorite pizza topping pepperoni basil, basil. Yeah, margarita pizza. See
that's a terrible answer. You're not hungry enough. Favorite book
Emily and Einstein, Oh God. April eighteen sixty five, a
(43:16):
year that saved America? Was the first concert you ever
went to? John Merl Haggard? Was the first car you
ever owned? Toyota with no shocks? Sixty sixty four Plymouth
Fury three. I was older. It was a heap. Who's
your first kiss? Lisa? Wow? That is a lie if
(43:39):
I've ever heard one. What's the weirdest superstition that you have?
I only have one that's kind of like, if I
think something's gonna happen, I don't want to say it
because I think it will Jinks. That's kind of common.
I don't really have anything, you know I do. I'm
not go on wood. I'm a bit of a druid.
That's not weird. We don't have weird ones. Who is
your childhood hero? Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne? Probably my dad.
How would you describe yourself in high school? Stupid idiot,
(44:05):
kind of nerdy, nerdy but fashionable, fashionable. Well, yeah, I
wore these we were supposed to answer, But I wore
these really were like a fringe vest long and they
sent me home from you know, and I wore a
shirt that was made out of the American flag and
it was caught and they sent me home and I
was like, you know, cool, but I really was, who's
your celebrity crush? Oh my god, Lisa today? Back then? Whatever,
(44:29):
we'd have to go back. Okay, I had a big
crush on al Pacino and Jack Wild. Do you remember
Jack Wild? The artful Dodger? Go ahead, you can tell
that's Susan Pluschette. Yeah, I've told you that we ran
into her in a button store. Once store, into someone
(44:50):
in a button store. That last of one? Do you
believe in? Soulmates? Oh? Yeah? Till the End of Time?
Clinton Leasa, Thank you guys so much for being on
the Wells cast. Has been an absolute pleasure and enjoy
your guys. Story is crazy, bonkers, inspiring and actually extremely romantic.
So thank you again. And before I let you leave
(45:11):
one more time, where can people get tickets for this show?
They'll be streaming by the music a lot stuff. We'll
start streaming it. It'll be live December two, and you
can go to Clint Black dot com now to get
your ticket to watch from home. And then the new
single Till the End of Time available for streaming December three.
Thank you, Wells. We appreciate it all right, can't wait
(45:33):
to see Clint on The Mass Dancer coming this summer
on ABC. And alright, see you guys, well, aren't they
just the freaking cutest thing you've ever heard in your
entire life. Clint Black's funny, by the way. I mean,
we all know he's extremely talented, amazing singer and musician,
(45:55):
and obviously Lisa've been around for ever just killing it.
But they're funny, hute, and like it's like one of
those things when you meet those people, you're like, I
really hope that that's Sarah and I are like that.
Hope you guys enjoyed it. This was fun. If you
do like the show, go give us a five star
rating on the Apple or play stores. That always helps.
Leave leave a review if you like, uh, or if
you don't like either way, and yeah, tweet me or
(46:18):
instagram me at wells Adams if you like the show.
If you don't, and uh, some people that you'd like
to see on the show or here on the show. Right, Okay,
I'm gonna go edit this and then go back to
watching The Masters because mc dorkey dude. Later subscribe to
wealthcast on I Heart Radio, Apple podcasts, or anywhere you
get your podcasts. It's the Internet.
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