Josh Kear is a 4-time Grammy winning songwriter for Carrie Underwood “Before He Cheats” “Two Black Cadillacs” and Lady Antebellum “Need You Now”. He has written 14 No. 1 songs after taking some big risks as a songwriter which have lead to major wins in his career. He talks about how he wasn’t able to enjoy his first Grammy win but then got a 2nd chance just a few years later to do it all again.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Are about to talk in with Josh Kier and I
always record this part after the podcast, and really, this
is one of my favorite podcasts that I've done in
a long time. I think you're gonna really like this guy.
Just uh and I'll get into it. But he's got
four gram he's fourteen number ones, his first ever coach,
Darryl Singletary back in the day. He's got a Jimmy
Buffett song, Backstreet Boys, Charlie Pooth. We really dive into
(00:21):
some songs specifically, but you know, to get this guy
with a real treat and just just so nice. We
sat and talked after the interview too, and it's an
hour long, so I'm not going to spend a lot
of time talking ahead of time. But I thought it
was fantastic, right Yeah. When he left, you know, we
with some We always walked down together, Me and who
remember we walk downstairs because we're in my house. We
(00:42):
talked for a bit and we had another nice, thoughtful
conversation and he was like, man, whatever you need let
me know. I was like, well, let's try like twelve
songs together next weekend. Let me sit in the room
and let me get a little bit that so it's fantastic.
You're gonna hear about before he Cheats, which is a
great story. He talks about before it's a great story.
So let me give you a companion piece to this,
(01:05):
and that is when you finish this, if you scroll
back and hear the Dave Haywood Bobby cast is a
long time ago, probably a year and a half at least,
But Dave Haywood tells another story about need You Now
and how the song almost didn't make it. I referenced that.
But after you listen to this, if I can encourage
you to go back and check out the Dave Haywood
from Lady and Abellum and they we really get into
(01:25):
need You Now on a much deeper level. So I
think with this, if you haven't heard that, to go
back and check that one out. Oh nice, wellow hundred
episodes ago. Huh, here we go. This is a great
one Josh Kire and it's just his story. It's it's
pretty freaking cool. Check out Amy's podcast Four Things with
Amy Brown. Four Things usually very lifestyle, female, faith, food,
(01:51):
family fun. I don't know there's not always, but but
she's had some great guests on like Kristin Chenowith Bob
Goff speaking of Lady in a Bell I'm she doing
with Hillary Scott, Trishia Year would like it's really a
great podcast. Four Things with Amy Brown. There's also The
Velvet's Edge with Kelly Henderson Fashion. It's a that's a
(02:11):
liftole podcast for female or edge here. There is The
Guys Do a sports show called The Sore Losers. There's
Caroline Hobbies interview show where she talks to mostly the
wives of country stars. Fantastic check out on the podcast.
I want to get out of here and play episode
two eight. Josh Kire, thank you very much. Tell your
friends about it if you like it, like a Netflix show.
If you like it, you brag about them, like, oh
(02:33):
you gotta check the show out. If you don't mind,
tell them about an interview that you like or this podcast.
That's how we are and if you don't mind rating
us and writing a comment to that would be fantastic.
We appreciate that so much. I welcome to episode two
O eight with Josh Kire. So we hadn't met until today,
but I've heard a lot about you, Like a lot
of people come in and you get brought up a
(02:54):
lot good. It's almost like, yeah, yeah, it's great actually,
because we were what my d and I do as
we sit around and go who would we like to
talk to? And you'd come up so many times. And
I can tell you the first time I came up
was with Dave Heywood and Dave was talking well, and
we'll talk about it later. He was just talking about
you know, need you now and how that song almost
didn't happen and then it almost didn't make the record,
(03:16):
and that whole process of that song. And so I
was like, you know, I'd like to talk to Josh
care And then you walk into there's a big picture
your face on the walls, humongous, so it's really good
to meet you. Good to meet you as well. I was, Um,
I do this and you'll see what this comes around
to you. But I do this motivational speech where I
go and talk to places, and there's the whole thing
that I do where I talk about how you don't
(03:38):
always have to be working to be moving forward. You
can just be listening at times. Um, you can be
present in what's happening around you. And I tell a
story about how Axl rose from guns and Roses is
sitting around and listening to Slash play the opening this
this this guitar riff, and I don't want to do
it exactly because I'll run the story. And he's playing
(03:58):
this guitar riff and Actel like, Man's just like that's interesting.
It's like, what is that? Slashes just playing a scale? Basically,
I'm playing a scale and and this is not a song.
I'm just warming up because we're about to go into
the studio. And so act was like, well, that's that's interesting.
He said, I wrote this poem for my girlfriend. Keep
playing that. And so Slash is playing the song an
(04:21):
actual starts reading this poem and it's like, this is it?
This is this is the song, Like I'm just listen.
He was just sitting in the room and it was
sweech all to mine and that's how the that's how
the song gets started. That and so Slashes sitting here
just playing this on his guitar and then inside of
the bridge of this song, he doesn't know where to
(04:41):
go with the song. He doesn't have it written because
back then they would just get in a studio and
just get totally wasted and and record. And so if
you remember the bridge of this song, he starts going
where do we go? Now? Where do we go? So
he had nothing. He literally didn't know where to go
with the song. That's awesome, And so how how I
bring this up to start with you is you know,
(05:03):
that's an interesting way to kind of get into a song. Ever,
sit in a room and somebody's just dicking around with something,
and you go, well, I really wasn't planning to go here,
but I have something that could work. I have UM
this page after page after page after page of titles
and ideas UM that I have always kept. I started
(05:24):
keeping it in college, and so typically when I walk
into a room, if somebody starts doing that, I don't
say anything. I just kind of opened my file UM
and start. I call it my Book of Spells because
Carrie Underwood called it that once in a UM in
a group setting, and she's like, oh, he just goes
through his book of spells. So I actually titled on
(05:47):
on my desktop my little Book of Spells. So I'll
click on that start kind of going through stuff UM almost.
You know, most of it does doesn't work for every
piece of music, obviously, So you just kind of sit
you kind of go through and go through and go through,
and so you finally go, I don't know, maybe that, um,
and I just start throwing things into the room. There's
that point in the beginning of every writing appointment whereas
(06:09):
far as lyrical ideas, you're either going to be the
absolute hero or you're gonna look like a moron. Um.
I've kind of always prided myself on being fearless when
it comes to throwing ideas in the room and just
kind of going, well, I took all that time to
come up with them, Let's see if there are any good.
There's only one way to find out. Can you think
(06:29):
of a song where you're going through the Book of
Spells and you're like, this might actually be something with
what you're doing now, Um, you mean with mute where
the music was already going and you're flipping through, and
you you go, well, I could actually attach to this
and we could go somewhere with it, and it turned
out to be something, you know, pretty cool? Oh man, Sorry,
(06:52):
Like running through songs in my brain run through um.
Typically um, some that have been written to tracts and things. Um.
Most of the time I come in with like pieces
of music and stuff. Yeah, at least something somewhat realized
or at least enough of a concept um that trying
(07:15):
to match it to somebody that's something already going isn't perfect.
So even then, a lot of times the musical change
ever so slightly. It's not usually an exact match. I
don't have a slash story. Do you ever wish? I?
Did you ever find? Because what I find when you
get into a room you say you're going fearless. If
I'm writing something comedy wise and someone comes in, and
when you don't know people, it's a you're a little
(07:37):
timid at first, and not so much because of your ideas,
but because just you don't know everyone's sensibilities. Right, it's
like a first date, it's a dance. Yeah, you're kind
of alright, Well if they and I have found that
when someone comes in and they're totally fearless, it actually
relaxes the whole room, Like it's actually a nice start
to the whole because you're like, oh, okay, if they
are going to be an idiot, and an idiot maybe
(08:00):
isn't the word, but it works the best. Yeah, And
I feel at times if I do that, it actually
makes the room a more productive room. If I just
go out and do the most bone head things sometimes
on purpose, it makes the room better because then everybody goes, oh,
Bobby's an idiot. I won't be nearest big of an idiot.
Let me start suggesting my ideas. And that's actually the
whole point of the reason I do it. I don't
(08:20):
often assume that the ideas that I'm gonna start throwing
out are what we're gonna work on. Um, And I
don't really care. Part of it is just getting any
kind of momentum going and um and getting the comfort
zone opened up, because once somebody starts talking and starts saying, hey,
what about this, what about this? What about this? Everybody
(08:40):
else feels a little more open to going through their
own stuff, especially if you've never worked together that first time,
where like like we're saying, it's a dance and kind
of your everybody's trying to figure out their role, where
they fit in, what they're supposed to be doing. Um.
I just I don't I love the is it and
I love to hang and all that that comes beforehand.
(09:03):
It's it's great to catch up and all that, but
at some point something's got to happen. And there's no
reason for us all to be hanging out right other.
So that's my way of being, like, all right, let's
get some work done. Come on, I'm gonna resume you
just a little bit and we'll go into some stories here.
But fourteen number one's just a few of them, Luke Brian,
most people are good. I bring that up because I
(09:23):
was a three week number one, a rarity that almost
a do dough bird of country music songs. These days, yeah,
I would say the white tiger now do to birds extinct?
Maybe the white tiger of country music songs a three
week number one. They're getting more and more rare. It
seems like I was asked on the red carpet last
week at CMT they said, hey, what was your song
(09:45):
of nine? And not that I would listen to it
all the time alone, but like I said, well, my song,
I think that was the most important to the format,
and that people have really gravitated too because of the
message was most people are good, and that's what came
to my mind. That was my my visceral emotional reaction
(10:05):
to what was the song of So congratulations one on
three week number one, but also a lot of people went, man,
it's nice to just like I have that song. I
needed that song, Yeah, I did. I wrote most of
the time. When when um, you meet people socially and
they ask you, they find out your song right and say, so,
what do you write? You know obviously they mean rock, pop, country, whatever,
(10:28):
and I smile and say, I write fiction because that's
kind of what I do. I said around and just
generally make up stories and things UM put In that
particular case, that was written in two thousands sixteen during
the presidential election or the build up to the election.
(10:49):
Between that and some of the other things were also
going on in the world at the time, I was
really kind of depressed, I mean, just watching some things
and kind of went, you know what, UM, it's not
all bad. It's really not all bad. And I showed
up UM at my studio that day and I was
writing with Ed Hill and David Fraser, who I've written
(11:09):
with close to twenty years, and luckily we've again we
know each other so well that I kind of know
where they are in their lives as well, and it
just it was the right right idea for the right
group of people, and um, I desperately needed that song.
I still find that when I sat around and play
(11:30):
that song when I'm performing, um, it's it's still takes
me back to that place that I desperately need to
be these days. Talked me through the life of after
you wrote the song, because we know the end product.
We've seen the manufacturing of a three week number one
like it's been through. We've seen it. It's been great.
But you write it and that's a it's been a
(11:52):
couple of years now, a few years now actually, So
what happens right after you write this song? Do you
feel like it could be something? And where does it go?
And it just kind of talked me through that. So
we wrote the song, Um I was the only I
just sat and played guitar while we were writing it.
So I was the only one playing during the writing.
And then when the other guys left, I stayed right
(12:12):
there in my studio and built up the record from scratch.
And it sounds almost identical to what you ended up
hearing on the Luke record. Did they use any of
that of your track? Now, they didn't use any of
my track. I think they even might have changed the key.
And they cut with a live band and of course
playing individual bits and pieces and m Jeff didn't need
(12:33):
my tracks pretty obviously and finished it up. I think
I spent the rest of that day and part of
the next day finishing up the demo turned it into
the publisher, and that is usually for me where my
contact with the song essentially ends. You spent a lot
of time with it. Did you feel you just because
(12:55):
you spent almost two days, did you feel like it
was a two day worthy song? Or is that just
then almost process for anything that you've written. If I'm
the one doing the demo, it takes me that along.
I'm just not fast. Um, I'm I'm a slow builder
when it comes to building out a demo, and even
beyond that, typically, um, I'm not great at them. It's
(13:20):
not really my forte. I'll do them this when I'm
the one that ends up being the person in the
room that has that skill set. But I prefer having
a Jesse Fraser or Ross conferm real good, like somebody
that actually is that guy? Did you do the vocal
on it? Yeah? And so you send it off and
usually that's when you cut. You're like, all right, go
live your life, kid. I said you sent you to college. Yeah, yeah,
(13:41):
I don't really call I don't really think of them
as kids because I have a kid, and so I
have that emotional separation. It's like, Okay, it's another day,
it's another song. Um. I've been writing a hundred hundred
twenty songs a year professionally for the last twenty five years,
and wrote pretty much every day as an amateur for
the eight years before that. I'm at the point now
(14:04):
where I love all of them. Every single thing I write,
I pour myself into while I'm writing it, and then
I don't have any issues letting it go and just
waiting and see what seeing what happened. So I handed
off the publisher and it's very much there that that's
their gig, you know, go get the songs recorded. And
(14:24):
it's tough to get outside songs recorded these days that
aren't written with with an artist store. And in this
particular case, that song almost immediately went whole on hold
for a different artist. Not a bad taste to do
its rhyme No, no, I'm not going to do that. Okay,
(14:46):
go ahead, nah um, And unfortunately for me, my plugger
went ahead and and played it for Jeff for Luke,
letting Jeff know that technically it was already somewhere else
because somebody, somebody besides my publisher, had gotten had gotten
(15:06):
to pitch the song before I had actually turned it
into my publisher, because I sent the song to my
co writers and I was waiting to hear back from
them to see whether or not the demo was everybody
was happy, and it was on hold before I got
the thumbs up from both of them port to port Javine, Yeah, alright.
I just thought, alright, alright, he's just gonna keep trying.
(15:28):
This is gonna be a fun game. Um. But that's
a good sign. Right. The song goes listen, And I've
talked to a lot of people who they they've written
great songs and they feel great, they felt great songs
and they're like, oh crap, I don't want that artist
to get ahold of that song because I feel like
it could really be special for somebody. And they don't
hit on the artist. They didn't say who was I,
of course, but they would go, oh, I would really
(15:50):
rather someone that really has a that's working in the
radio format right now to have this song, which that's
always awkward conversation. It is, and it's not even a conversation.
I'm usually a part of UM. In this particular case,
Jeff went ahead and send it to Luke. Okay, this
is my understanding of all this, keeping keeping in mind
that I'm not present for any of this, but my
(16:12):
understanding of the way that's all unfolded is Jeff then
sent the song to Luke. Luke loved it. Jeff let
us know and just said, hey, I gotta keep me posted,
let us know if the song becomes you know, free
and clear, and luckily UM for me, it did and
it never left Luke after that. In the minute I
(16:32):
heard that that Luke was into it, because I don't
write them with people in mind typically, but as soon
as I heard his name attached to it, I was like, oh, yeah,
that's home brand. That makes perfect sense across the board,
everything about the melody, um, the lyric, the sensibility, it
(16:53):
just seemed to match. It seemed a perfect match. And
it was so Luke gets the song and until it's
actually cut. I don't know, if you heard a lot
of times you don't hear it until it's actually like
available for consumption. Yeah, that's typically when I get to
hear it. Although in this particular case, Jeff's Jeff's places
(17:15):
right around the corner from my studio, and he brought
my publisher and I over and played it for us,
and you thought, I thought amazing. I was thrilled. Now
at this point, though, is it for sure on the
record or is it just as long with the cut? Well,
I don't think Jeff would have brought me over there,
(17:35):
in all honesty if it wasn't going to make the record. Now,
he wasn't telling me it was a single. Matter of fact,
I think they'd already picked the first single and it
wasn't even out yet, so I obviously didn't have any
idea whether or not they would they would send it
to you guys at radio. Fortunately for me, Um, I
(17:55):
think they already kind of knew that it was going
to be but they're professional enough not to make promises
they can't keep, and I totally get that. I never
expect out of anybody. And the first time you heard
it on the radio, gosh, I don't know have you
even heard it yet? Do you even have a radio?
Because I'm talking you're not in anything, No Facebook, no Twitter,
(18:16):
barely on Instagram, well and truthful, not even on Instagram.
I made a decision years ago not to be in
social media. I Big Yellow Dog, my publisher. I decided
that it was important for those things to actually exist,
and they took it upon themselves to have those things,
(18:37):
and they do exist. I don't even have the passwords
for them, so I'm not on them. Which do you
even have a radio? That was my next There is
a radio in my car and I do listen to it,
switching between that and different podcasts and books on audible
and things. Um, but it's it's a pretty limited It's
(19:02):
none of us have a whole lot of time, right
and for the most part, if I have, if I
have a little bit of free time, I either want
to give it to my wife. I don't want to
give it to my daughter. Or I can want to
give it to one of my friends, and I want
to give it to them in a very real way.
I want to I want to talk to somebody. I
want to speak. I want to hear their voice. Um.
(19:22):
I don't even like texting, truthfully, I wish people still
picked up the phone. I'm gonna go through your resume
a little more. Have a drink water, Oh yeah, I
take a little drink here. I'm gonna go because we're
gonna take a second here. He's got fourteen number one,
including Drunk on You from Luke Bryan. Here you go,
(19:44):
my speakers go, that's you all, God, your Mama and me.
Tim McGraw Highway, don't care. Like I would like to
go into choice from all these songs, I'm gonn to
stop here. This is an interesting one to me because
I this is about the time that I come to town.
(20:06):
And I'm not sure when this song actually came out,
but I came to town in two thousand and thirteen,
so around is when this song that sounds about right
it comes out. So when I hear it, it reminds
me of driving to Nashville. I think we all have
a song, a couple of songs that remind us at
the time when we moved to Nashville. Yeah, because you're
from Tennessee, but you're not from Nashville right now, from
about five hours from here, okay, but from Tennessee. Yeah.
(20:26):
Well yeah, I grew up in Tennessee from three to seventeen. Yeah, So,
and I'm coming back to that song. What song is
it for you when you think of moving to Nashville
that pops it. It It can be any format of song,
but for me, Highway Don't Care is that as that song.
It's Taylor and urban and tim right, I'm gonna put
(20:47):
you on crazy combination. What is your song? Before we
get into the story about this song. Um, when I
think of the song that I was listening, the Border
Run album springste just the Springstet's for Innstein record is
probably the one that when I think of hopping in
the car, um and heading to Middle Tennessee Because I
(21:08):
was good. I moved to Middle Tennessee and at seventeen
to go to Mt. S U. And I didn't even
have a car then, so I didn't really have the
coming to Nashville moment until the following year when I
finally got a car, and so UM, when I was
leaving my parents place and drive into Nashville the first
(21:29):
time with my own car, it was the Born to
Run record that I listened to over and over and
over and over, and thunder Road is probably my favorite
song of all time. So anytime I'm in a car,
even if the beautiful, even if the radio isn't playing,
that's often the song that is in my head. Isn't
it a wild and I write a psychology book that
(21:49):
often references called I'm Okay, You're Okay, and they talk
about music in the brain and the music that we're
listening to at a certain point in our life. For you,
you talk about thunder Road from I think about being
in college and listening to Count and Cross this Desert
life all the time, over and over again. But what
happens is when we hear it again, it triggers that
same part of our brain and just for a place
a second, it's the chemical release that makes us, just
(22:11):
for that brief moment, feel the exact same way we
felt whenever we were doing our first round with it.
And it's why we love that music so much, because
it reminds us of a time that was insert whatever
word do you want better, worse, more fulfilling, more exciting.
But and I wonder, when you hear thunder Road, just
for a second, get that feeling every time. It's it's
(22:34):
a weird I have. It's great to hear it, but
I actually have a hard time sometimes listening to that
album now because it's so emotionally charged for me from
that period of my life. No, no no, no, no, no
no no, It's all good. But it's a it's that
no I go to see a Mary Chance, I can um.
(22:56):
But it is this weird time travel moment back to
this moment in time where I was dying to do this,
dying to come to Nashville, dying to write songs, wanting
to take on the world, um, and wanting to get
out of my little town and just get on with
life and um. Yeah. And it takes me back there
(23:19):
emotionally every single time. And while I get I get
super excited about it, I'm also kind of glad I'm
not there anymore, you know. I'm kind of glad that
I'm at a different, very different stage in life now.
And I remember going to see Bruce play Downtown about
(23:40):
a week after my daughter was born, and they were
the band was playing the whole Born to Run records
start to finish, and they played it about halfway through
the set, and from the opening notes of thunder Road
right to the very last notes of jungle Land, I
was on my feet, like trying to lose my voice
(24:03):
for the next three years, And as soon as the
last note faded from jungle Land, he was getting ready
to rip into the next song because they were probably
still going to play for another forty five minutes, and
I went, Okay, that's what I needed, and I went
home because at that point that record had reminded me
(24:23):
so much of where I am now as opposed to
where I was when I first fell in love with it,
and I just wanted to be home with my wife
and my newborn. Even even though I paid a bunch
of money for that ticket to be there, I just
kind of went, oh, and this isn't where you're supposed
to be? Now? What was it about music? Like? Where?
Where did that come from? In you? That made you
want to do this? I had a crush on a
(24:45):
girl in my English class when I was thirteen, and
she had a crush on somebody else. And I went
home one night and for some completely inexplicable reason, I
said down, and I wrote a lyric and found a
(25:06):
melody for it, and sang it into a tape recorder
and felt better. And the next day I did it again,
and to this day I have never figured out how
to stop. It wasn't a like I couldn't play an
instrument other than trumpet. It's really hard to sing and
play trump at the same time, So I didn't have
(25:28):
musical outlet really other than my voice and words. So
for the next three years, I wrote songs almost every
single day, just sitting down with a blank sheeet of
paper and writing words and singing them into a tape recorder,
just melodies, no guitar, just melodies, no instrument at all,
no instrumentation. And then I kind of decided that, um,
(25:50):
maybe I'd learned to play piano. So I went and
I started to take some piano lessons, begged my parents
for piano lessons. We didn't known a piano or a
keyboard or anything. And I think it was on a
about my third piano lesson that I sat down my
piano teacher and said, you know, the classical stuff you're
trying to teach me is great, but I really just
want to play let it be. Could could you just
(26:11):
teach me? Hey, Jude? And she was kind, yeah, I
don't really do that because you can probably figure that
out on your own. I said, okay. I went to
my parents and said, all right, instead of paying for
piano lessons, can you just get me a little keyboard
that I can play at home and I'll just figure
it out. And I from that point on I started
(26:33):
writing songs with my really simple little piano chords, and
then my eighteenth birthday, my parents bought me my first
acoustic guitar. Were they musical? My dad played guitar, about
four or five chords and a lot of oldies, a
lot of like Elvis and that sort of thing, and
I would sit around with him and sing in the
(26:53):
living room. But I never thought, I mean, just playing
his guitar never really was my thing, and now that's
my primary instrument. That's what I do all the time,
said around play guitar. So it's really weird to me
how there was one in our house and I just
didn't go for it. Was it ever for you? I
want to be a singer? Like, did you come to
(27:13):
town with the ambition I'm gonna go be a performer? No?
I had. I toyed with it briefly, but not. There's
so many, so many people that come to town. That
is they're calling, that is their desire, that is their
goal in life, that is their be all and all
(27:33):
dream job. That was not mine. I truly wanted to
write songs, and then I got really frustrated after about
four years of my first publishing deal at b I
was with BMG for six years, not four years into it.
I'd had a few songs recorded, but not as many
as I would have liked. That's every single songwriter from
(27:56):
amateurs all the way to actually corny. Probably nobody gets
as many cuts as they one. But I was, I was,
I was having these moments, was going, well, maybe maybe
the reason these songs aren't getting recorded is because I'm
supposed to do them. Not It wasn't a I really
want to get out there and play them. It was
just a huh, okay, Well, I gotta figure out some
(28:19):
way to stay in the music business because this is
what I want to do. So I started writing more
and more thinking of myself as the target, and going
out and playing more live by myself, and then eventually
started playing with the band where I was um, my
only friends that were musicians were studio musicians, because we
were the only people I would hang out with. But
(28:41):
in order to get them to play a gig, they
gotta get paid, because otherwise they're passing up a paying gig.
So during that period of my life, I was literally
using my draw to pay my musicians to play here
in Nashville, and all my living expenses were going on
to a credit card, which I don't recommend anyone. It's
a really terrible life plan, but that's what I was doing.
(29:04):
And then a few years after that, I met my
the woman who became my wife, who was also she
came to Nashville to be a singer. That was that
was her pursuit, and we had this long, um serious
conversation about what would happen if for some reason it
worked for both of us, and we kind of looked
(29:26):
at each other and went, yeah, we'd be done. And
I went into my publisher, who at that point was
Big Yellow Dog, because I was on my second publishing
deal and they've been hanging in there with me, trying
to be patient let me figure my artist thing out
because I had gotten weird. I was writing really dark
folk songs and I was writing five minute songs and
(29:47):
six minute songs with no choruses. It was my My
music was getting stranger and stranger all the time. And
sat down with him and said, you know, that whole
artist thing that you signed me to do, I'm not
going to do that anymore. Into their credit they kind
of went, what are you gonna do? Well, I'm just
gonna go back to writing songs and hoping to get
(30:09):
them cut And they said great, and that was the
end of the discussion. No, but you told us, you
promised us. We've been invested in this, and a couple
of years later we wrote Before He Cheats and everything changed.
I wonder and I'm gonna come back the highway. Don't care, No,
(30:30):
I'm one. I love wandering with you. We're walking down
these these paths that that I like, that we're creating.
As you talk about doing the artist thing. For a second,
I was reading about the the a lot of the
writers from the Office, the television of the Office, which
is my favorite show. But what they did when that
show first started after I got picked up from pilot,
they took a lot of the writers and made them
bit players actors so they could understand what it was
(30:53):
like as an actor, because they felt like they could
write better for the actors if they had also had
a little bit of acting experience. Now, I wonder with you,
do you think it affected your songwriting at all? Actually
going to be an artist, performer, singer. Now that you're
pulled back a bit, you're writing again for that That
question makes sense. It makes total sense. Um. And I
(31:14):
don't know if it's strictly the the opening my mind
to the artist thing at one point, but certainly I
know for a fact all of those weird roads that
I took my music down during that period of my
life had a huge impact on everything that I wrote
after For no other reason than um, my idea of
(31:39):
what counts as commercial I think became much broader than
what a lot of other people around me thought of
as being commercial music. Um. I didn't see any reason
why a five minutes song with no chorus shouldn't be
played on the radio. I really couldn't wrap my mind
around it. I was like, but if it's really good, cares,
(32:01):
if it is compelling and emotional and you don't notice
that there's no chorus, then why would it matter. I
understand now the reasoning behind it. I get it, to
totally get it. But but all of those things that
I tried, then, by the time I got around to
coming back to writing and thinking in terms of trying
to get on the radio strictly and having to get
(32:23):
somebody else to record it, um, yeah, I think my
target was just a lot wider, which I think has
incredibly served me well over the years. Well, you got
three humongous commercial artists this Highway don't care. I'm back
to it. Yeah, yeah, I keep coming back back to
it because this song reminds me of being here and
it's it's a McGraw song. Now, when you write that,
(32:48):
who'd you write the song with? I wrote it with
Marker when in the Warren Brothers. So when you write
the song, is it written as just one person? Two people?
Eight people? Like? What? What when you write the song?
What's the feeling in the room? And who's it for? Okay? Well,
we weren't really thinking in terms of who it was for. Okay,
So there was no idea then we're gonna get two
(33:08):
or three people on here. We I had that title. Um,
this idea that the Highway could actually be a character. Um.
I love personifying things. I like the idea of of
an in an object being a character. I've done it
multiple times. Well I'm sure I'll continue to do it
(33:28):
just because I find it fascinating. So I kicked the
idea of the room. Um Brett jumped over the piano
real fast and he goes, what about something like this
and kind of started playing those opening lines to the song,
and we didn't write the chorus right away. We just
kind of started chasing that and the last line that
we got to write before we kind of went we
(33:50):
need to write a pre it was about the radio,
and so it made sense to write the Beasts that
little b section as the song that was on the radio.
And I think I said to him, well, what if
we intentionally make it a female part and we'll just
hire somebody to come in and sing that part on
(34:12):
the demo. And all of them are, fortunately for me,
also have strange enough sensibilities in their songwriting to go, yeah,
that's just weird enough to work. It's also weird enough
to keep a song from getting cut. Yeah, every time
I do something like that, you kind of know you
(34:34):
probably either really hitting a home run or you just
created a roadblock. That's the game, that's my game. I like.
I like those kinds of songs. So we left it in.
When we came back around the second time the premates,
we made sure it made sense again so that you
were listening to the radio for a second time, and
(34:56):
it just became a bit It became part of what
made the set the on his side that made it special.
We put it on the demo that way. I sang
lead on the demo, and then we hired a female
singer to come in and sing that part, and we
filtered it and everything to try to make it sound
like pop radio at the time. They took all that
stuff back off when they brought Taylor in, which was
the right move. Taylor already sounded enough like pop radio.
(35:19):
You certainly didn't need to do anything special to to
her voice to change that. Um, she was the dream,
you know, she's She's like beyond what I was, what
I was even hoping for. So do you first get
the message? Hey mcgrals put it on hold? M Grass
cutting it, same deal. We're gonna walk down the same
the same path here, same path, and it's just gonna
(35:41):
be a McGraw song. Or what point did they go
and not only the girl cutting it? I think we're
gonna get Taylor swept on the song. You know, immediately
they said they were going to get someone, but they
never said who. And again, that makes sense not to
tell us because we're not part of the process us.
(36:02):
In my head, I think I probably was like, well,
maybe Faith. It seems kind of obvious they know each other.
Pretty well. Um, what I didn't know was from the
earliest part of Taylor's career, supposedly because of the song
Tim McGraw, they had always talked about maybe doing something together.
(36:24):
I couldn't have known that. I couldn't have planned for that,
couldn't have Certainly, you can't walk into a writing room thinking, oh,
we'll write the thing that finally will give them something
to do together. We kind of got lucky, right song,
right moment, right set of circumstances, and then they added
urban playing guitar, which just made this song bigger because
(36:46):
you got to go it's Tim McGraw big with Taylor
Swept Holy Crap and Keith or It's just it makes
it like this whole event. It was a true event. Yeah,
but again not an event you could plan for. I
can't make that happen. There is no way in any
writing room ever that I can sit down and write
a song and be like, yeah, now we'll go get
(37:08):
those three artists on a song. That's impossible. It was
just one of those amazing phone calls that you get.
Then you're like, wait a minute, you're telling me that
Taylor's gonna sing on it. He's gonna come play all
the lead stuff on it and and be a feature
on it. They're all three going to show up for
the video shoot. That makes no sense, but how freaking cool.
(37:34):
That's awesome. Yeah, it's a great story. H Derek Spentley.
Woman Amen wrote that one Derek Spentley drunk on a plane,
Blake Shell Neon lights. The next one hit is a
real familiar one for me. Gloriana kissed you Goodnight. Yeah,
so it's been a while for this one. Rachel and
(37:54):
I were together for a bit when this song was
was hit, so I would go out on the road
of them a little bit. I just remember she was
so good. Yeah, one of the best pure singers I've
ever heard. She's fabulous. Tom too. I mean they're both
they're great. So who did you write that one with?
Because okay, so you and Tom wrote this just the
two of us, and so this is it's been a while.
This has had what two thousand twelve, Yeah, that sounds
(38:17):
about right. Some of the dates kind of blew a
little bit. I don't know what today is um on
this song was this This is the number one actually
number two that never hit number one. It hit number
one and didn't stay at number one. It was I
actually have two songs that on the chart got to
(38:40):
number one at the beginning of the week. Oh you
actually didn't finish as a number one and hit and
held for like five or six days, and then at
the very last minute got bumped and that was the end.
And that was one of That was one of the two.
This is what I remember by this song barely, not
because you were here, just from my mind. Remember dumb stuff?
(39:00):
Is it? This song and a Loven Theft song? Maybe Angelis?
We're battling it out all week and they kept trading
places and at the last minute on the last night,
Angelis jumped over it. That's crazy. I haven't thought about
that since since I've happened. I actually couldn't have told
you what song it was, but right I think it
(39:21):
was Angelized. It was yeah, and I'm pretty sure that
was love and that's first number one. And so it
was also one of those weird I really liked those guys,
so it was kind of one of those will you
want everybody to win? You can't really like be mad
at I don't know. I wasn't upset with them, you know,
you just kind of just sit around and go Okay, well, okay,
that is what it is. Next song? Had you had
(39:42):
number one at that point? Okay, so it wasn't. You're
not missing out on your first number one? No, I
did not. I was not. Just to run down the
list real quick. Tyler Farr read Neck Crazy, Lee Bryce
Drinking Class, which, by the way, was the most played
country song of Yeah, that's I think that's right. That's
probably you didn't. I know you don't have a radio,
but this song was played all over the radio. If
(40:03):
you were turned on, you would have heard it. If
it isn't crazy, Yeah, it was played a lot that year.
It was. It was pretty wild. Frankie Ballard hell of alife.
Now I want to go up and talk about because
you have four Grammys. So the first the question is
where in your house are they. Um there's a shelf
in a hallway in my house that they sit on.
(40:24):
Um there there. Unfortunate I forgot anyway, So there's a
couple of little trophy things in there, and then the
rest of the shelves is all pictures of the family
and stuff. It's just it's it's in a spot in
the house where I get to see if my wife
gets to see it and stuff, But if anybody came
over the house, it wouldn't be like the first thing
you see because all, yeah, I'm not really gonna commable
(40:46):
with that. Well, my mirror ball when you walk in
the house from Dancing with the Stars and one that
you have to kiss it till we've become in the house.
I actually have a mirrorball as well hanging in my
living room from a dance party that we threw. We
put it up and I had a I needed a
ladder to flip the switch to turn it back off
because I didn't have a remote for it. So for
(41:06):
the next two days after that dance party, we we
did the dance when we first moved into the house,
and it's it's pretty vaulted ceiling and everything, and so
that that thing was continuing to spin and spin and
spin it. I would bust out laughing every single time
I would walk back into the living room, and I
thought it was so damn funny. It just kept It
just was a reminder not to take life so seriously
(41:28):
that I went, oh, no, that's staying. That is a
permanent fixture in our home and it will always be there.
It does not belong there at all. It looks really weird,
and yet it's the thing that gets most common, Like,
we really worked hard. We spent a lot of time
designing our home and I love it dearly, and strangely enough,
(41:49):
the thing everybody talks about is that stupid mirror ball,
and I don't care. I think it's awesome. Four Grammys
from three different songs. Was before he Cheats the pop
for you? Was that? Was that the one that kind
of You've obviously been doing your thing, but the one
that was like boom train is now here? Yeah, ten
years into publishing deals, um, that was my first hit.
(42:14):
It's a five week number one. It was a five
week number one, and I was at the time doing
pop and hip hop. We were playing it, yeah, I
mean it was a multi genre monster country pop, a
c like it. It kind of ran the gamut and
blew up strangely enough, and it wasn't even one of
(42:35):
those where they cut a pop version of it too. Literally,
was just that record. And I don't think I realized
at the time how surreal it was because I had
never had a hit at all. I didn't know what
I was supposed to make of it, but it sent us, Yes,
send us the Grammys. We were nominated for not just
(42:56):
country song, we were nominated for overall Song. We lost
out me wine House for rehab while she was in
rehab for a song swearing she would never go to rehab.
Only Carrie was cheating or getting cheated on Take one
for the team. Um, yeah, no, it was. It was
(43:19):
crazier I think than I realized. Let's let's go to
the beginning of it. Then. Yeah, you're you're in a room.
Who's in the room with you? Um? I got a
call on a Saturday from my buddy Chris Thompkins. Um.
I wasn't married, I didn't have kids, so I still
wrote on Saturdays. I wrote twenty four hours a day,
any day of the week. Back then, I just that's
(43:42):
all I had to do. I didn't have much of
a life. And Chris called me on Saturday and said, Dude,
my publisher is bugging the crap out of me to
try to write something for Christian Wilson. Red Neck Woman
had already popped. They put out something else after that,
but they were already starting to really look for the
next record. He said, I got I got a couple
(44:03):
of lines on a song that I think might be
good for her. Can you come over? So I dropped
whatever I was doing to go to a Gretchen Wilson
aimed writing today, writing at the point for this thing
that he already had going. She wasn't even something I
was thinking about, but he had something wanted to do it.
So I drove her to his house. We sat on
his back porch. He played me the opening lines of
(44:24):
what We came before he cheats. We spent a couple
of hours writing that song. I think we got everything
done but the little bridge and I think we got
back together one afternoon and finished out the song when
the studio demno, okay, so wait a second backtrack. Before that,
we turned in the work tape to both of our publishers.
(44:49):
Chris's publisher told him they didn't want him to demo
the song because they thought it was way too scary
and crazy for country radio. Chris calls me up, tells me, Hey,
then I want that one. I said, dude, we're demo
on it, which means you're gonna pay for it yourself. Man, Yeah,
if I have to, this is coming out of my pocket. Um,
(45:11):
it's just not not that I had any idea of
what it was capable of. It was mostly just another
song for me, but I thought it was a good one.
And then, to her credit, Lisa Johnson, who was the
one that originally told him that, called him back the
next day and said, you know what, I don't care
if it's too crazy for your country. Um, it's really
(45:33):
really good. You need a demo it And so we did.
Do you had him demo? A dude saying the original demo? No, no, no.
We we hired somebody um to sing the demo and
she was great, and um, it sounded quite a bit different.
It was much darker and kind of angrier, had much
(45:54):
heavier rock, gutars on it. Somebody they played it for folks. Um,
I don't think Gretchen never heard it. At least the
best of my knowledge, she never got to hear it.
They passed on it immediately. A little time goes by,
Chris calls me up on the phone says, dude, you're
not gonna believe this. Carrie under What's going to record
(46:15):
our song. And dude, that's great. I don't know who
Carrie under What is, but that's awesome because I don't
watch much television. Obviously I am and I certainly not
a reality TV guy, so I had no clue. I didn't.
(46:35):
He's like, no, no no, no, you don't understand. She just
won American Idol. This is she's going to be the
first country artist coming off of American Idol. This is
gonna be huge, great, Okay, I didn't get it. I
had no idea what was coming. And again I hadn't
had any hits, so I was kind of used to
(46:59):
be in disappointed a little bit. You know. It had
cuts along the way and things that happened other people
that always told me, hey, braise yourself, this is the one.
This is going to be big, and it hadn't happened.
So yeah, I took it with a grain of salt
(47:19):
and went, okay, that'd be awesome. But I wasn't holding
my breath. And then when they finally really did put
it out and it blew up the way it did. Yeah,
I I did not know what was going on, and
I didn't know how to handle it all as a
fun ride, but I wish I would have had more
(47:39):
perspective while it was going on. What do you wish
one thing you wish you had done differently. Um, I
wish I would have enjoyed it more like I can
remember standing next to Joe Galani at the after party
of the Grammys, and he looked at me, all these
tons of stars around and everything, and um, I'm kind
(48:03):
of uncomfortable. I don't I love large social settings. I
really like small settings, like writing rooms, where I can
really have pointed conversations with a couple of people without
a lot of distraction. And so we're in this big
space Beverly Hills Hotel and he looks at me and
he said, um, is having fun? I think so, And
(48:31):
he kind of gave me this weird look and he said, well,
if you can't enjoy this, you might be in the
wrong business. And of course I take it. I took
these things so too hard at the time that I
was like going, oh, ship, maybe I'm in the wrong business.
And instead what I should have should have been doing
was just laughing and going and taking tequila shots with
(48:52):
some big star that would have done it with me
because we were everybody was there and celebrating having a
good time. And instead I was just kind of looking
around and going, Um, why am I here? What happened?
What's going on, um, I'd be better at it now.
I got better at it well, and that rolls me
to the next one, because you know, you can talk
(49:14):
to a few people who have one of these songs
that crosses over, and they have they have they're one
big song they write and it crosses over, and they're like,
I couldn't believe it first of all, to get a
big country hits one thing, but it goes to pop
and the whole world different country, not even just pop.
It goes international and people are and that happens with
Carrie and you had your one song and you're just
gonna write country songs and but then, Josh, but then
(49:35):
you do it freaking again with Lady Annabellum and need
you now. So with all of this from the before
you cheeth and you wish you had enjoyed it, you
get a chance to now experience it again. Did you
do better at enjoyment the second time? Yes? So imber
At backtracking back to the to the before he cheats
(49:56):
Grammy Night, We're sitting there in the audience and I
have Simon who created all those American aisle shows and everything,
Simon Fuller. Simon Fuller, He's sitting next to me, and
the award is given for best Overall Song, which we know,
(50:17):
we discussed it was nominated for, and we lost, and
he looks at me, he goes, it was always next year,
And of course I'm thinking, are you kidding? Next year?
Do you know how rare it is for any songwriter
to ever get to this point one time in their life?
(50:38):
I I just so I didn't even I don't even
know if I responded to him. I think I just
kind of sat there, not fuming. I'll get upset very easily,
but kind of just confused and going, are you really
that out of touch with what I do for a living.
And then when it happened a second time, I wish
(51:01):
I could have backtracked to that moment and been like
able to turn around to him and go, well, not
next year, with the year after, give me two year,
give me two years. Um, because you want not just
country song of year, you want to you want Foresaw
overall song of the year. Yeah. I have been picked
up by Charles Kelly on live television and spun around
in front of a very large audience. Um, do you
(51:23):
remember who you beat? Because you remember who beat? I
remember the song that I thought was going to win.
I thought Love the Way You Lie, UM, the Rihanna
Eminem song, I really thought that was gonna win. Um,
a rap song had never won the award before. It
seemed overdue. They were both massive at the time. The
(51:47):
song had been huge. It seemed like it was gonna
be Eminem's year. I had kind of resolved myself to
the idea that maybe we had a shot again at UM.
And the other thing is the House That Built Me
was also nominated for Overall Song that year. There were
two country songs. There were two countries. Worried about then
(52:07):
it being split by the that was That's the other thing.
I kind of assumed there was good possibility because that
sounds amazing, you know, I love that was My favorite
song that year was House to Built Me. So I
said there, going okay, well, we might not win either
of these. You know, it wouldn't have been shocking to
me it for House to Built Me to have one
(52:30):
country song I Love the Way You Lie to win
overall and you kind of go home going wow, that
was fun, but it certainly wouldn't have been weird. And
the thing about splitting the vote is for for if
you're listening now, what happens is, especially the Nashville block
of voters, Like I'm a Grammy voter, a lot of
us because we're familiar with the songwriters, of the producers,
(52:51):
even the artists. We just vote for our people. I
get it. And so then you go, well, there's two
songs getting voted by people, and they gotta pick one
some of that vote. Even if it's six thirty three
are it's still gonna be split. So the fact that, wow,
I didn't there are two country songs in that category.
There were? Yeah. I think in the end what really
helped us was was all the different genres that played in. Um,
(53:15):
it was a hitting country, so we got some of
those votes. It was a hit and pop, it was
a hit and acy. It was a hit worldwide. Um
I think it went number one and at thirty something countries,
and all of that I think just kind of ended
up culminating in a bizarre, crazy, crazy, like an unexplainably
(53:38):
crazy night. Okay, so that night, are you a little happier? Yeah?
And you're like I I was, I was euphoric. Did
you do any tequila shots with any big stars? I
did not, but I did some whiskey shots with some people. Yeah.
As a matter of fact, as soon as we won,
we went backstage and they put us in this tiny
little room, um in the backstage of the Staples Center.
(54:02):
And I don't know where they got it, but I
guess somebody from Lady A's crew was already back there,
and they already had a bunch of whiskey shots ready
to go on the chance that we won. So they
like the World Series and they have all the bottles
exactly exactly, so they ushered us back to that room,
and I'm assuming they probably I think those shots were
(54:23):
probably lined up for record or something else that they
might have thought they had a better shot at. But
that was the first war of the night. Of course,
they ended up, I'm sure, going back there and drinking
a lot more whiskey before the night was over. And
I was only there for one of them, but it
was still fun. So they passed around a bunch of
shots and we we um get a bunch of hugs,
and my mind was melting. I mean, um, like I said,
(54:48):
I was kind of resolved. I'd already lost the thing
once UM assumed I was gonna lose a second time.
And and but this time, that time, yeah, I was happy.
Do you were remember when they have the card out
and they're about to read it. Do you remember who
was presenting? Um? Yeah, John Mayer? Okay, And do you
(55:08):
remember that brief space before they say the winner, Like
can you look back and go, oh god, and remember
your heart or anything like, because it's one of two things.
It's either blackout or it's every second is vividly remembered. Now,
I kind of have this, yeah, kind of missing moment
(55:28):
where I think I probably close my eyes or something,
and I kind of remember my wife's screaming more than
I remember anything being called out on stage. And then
us like we're hugging and jumping and like we were
losing our minds, which is why we got to the
stage and Charles just picks me up and start spinning
(55:49):
me around. I had this picture of Dave and Hillary
at the microphone like doing the responsible thing, and Charles
like holding like practically throwing me over his shoulder like
a sack of ages, and it was pure joy. I mean,
we're looking at it here and there you four are,
and you what did you write that with? When I
(56:11):
wrote it with them? All three of them, Yeah, the
day I met them. Well, how special is that that
you wrote with all three? You all got to experience
that together. Yeah, it was pretty wild. It was a
that was a weird right. You're looking so happy in
this part. Yeah, you are very happy, right. But he
was also I was also shocked at what was happening.
He's a well both, he's a very large man as
(56:35):
far as height, and so when he picks you up
and starts swinging you, I don't care if you're on
a stage or not, it's shocking. Um, that's a that's
a great picture. Do you have that picture? That's A
that's a great picture. Yeah. Well, listen, I'll ask you
some of these generic questions and we'll finish up with
something point yet. I'm sure it's our style, all right, However,
you want to roll what country artists would you most
(56:57):
likely get invited into their house for Thanksgiving? M hmm,
that's a great question. Um, maybe Dirk's maybe I don't know,
But even then I don't I don't expect that not
but any means, although he's man, he's a great guy.
(57:18):
He's the best dude. Yeah, he's the best. He's the
best dude. Yeah. Last week, Lizzo had to give songwriting
credit to someone for a tweet that inspired lyrics. Do
you know, Lizzo? Truth hurts. I just took a DNA test.
Turns out I'm a hundred percent that you know that
song at all. So it's the number one pop song
rights for weeks. But what happened was somebody tweeted out
the biggest lyric of the song, she used it in
(57:40):
a song, and had to give him songwriting credit. Oh
my goodness, this is Oh no, I do know this. Yeah, yeah,
it sounds different when she does. You don't think I was.
You just gotta said no. Anyone we've done with our
lives so as anything ever played a pivotal part in
(58:01):
the song with You where you're like, oh, I got
that from something elis now that I think about it,
sort of. There's a line before he cheats Um where
it talks about in the chorus, m carving a name
in leather seats. There's an outtake from the Barn to
(58:24):
Run album called Linda let Me Be the One. Um.
It's almost impossible to understand the lyric and the outtake,
but he talks about it's this guy who goes to
his teenage kid goes to his girlfriend's house and he's
standing on the hood of the car and he's trying
to get her to open the window and talk to him,
(58:45):
and she won't come to the window. Linda just won't
show up, and so he breaks into the car I'm
assuming it's like her dad's car or something, and he
carves Linda's name in the seats of the car. Um
That image was such a bizarrely viole and romantic image
that I didn't even realize I had done it until
(59:07):
years later, and I went because I was like, where
did some of this come from? Is my head really
that strange? And I was listening to the box set
and got to that song, and I was listening to
it and I was like, oh, ship, that's where it
came from. I bet that's where it came from, because
otherwise I don't I don't have any reason to think
(59:28):
that any woman should be showing up at a bar
not only with a bat but also with a knife. Um. Yeah,
so I think that, But I mean, that's kind of
that's kind of what most art is, right. It's it's
every book you've ever read, it's every piece of music.
You've ever heard. It's it's every movie you've ever seen,
(59:48):
every TV show you've ever watched, every conversation you've ever
had with anybody. That's literally who you are. So at
some level it has to become okay. Well, if it's
part of me, then it's somewhat fair game, unless it's
literally just regurgitating an exact copy of something that came before,
(01:00:10):
because it's impossible not to be influenced. So I don't
have any problem with that. Um. Even even my biggest heroes,
some of them have songs with the exact same titles
of some of their heroes. It's that stuff's been done before,
long before I ever wrote my first song I'm I'm okay,
and at piece with some of that. UM, I try
(01:00:32):
not to intentionally do it when your songs get put
into movies Pitch Perfect to Zero Dark thirty, Uh, Country Strong?
Do you ever watch the movie? Yeah? I actually suck.
I saw Zero Dark thirty without knowing our song was
in it. Oh you just went to watch I just
wand of possibly that movie. Yeah, I thought the movie
(01:00:54):
looked great. We went and were sitting there in the
seats and when needs you now started to play in
the background, it's like reaching over. We're still trying to
both watch and it's just like grabbing my arm and squeezing,
and I'm like, yeah, I know, but um yeah, I
guess they just that it was said at a certain
time period and they just wanted something that had been
(01:01:18):
played a lot during that time period. It was nothing
more than that. I mean, it wasn't like they went
that fits the scene perfectly or anything. It was just again,
right time. One final question, and we're gonna wrap this up.
What piece of advice from another songwriter or an artist
has stayed with you the longest. It could be early,
it could have been today. Yeah, Um, gosh, there's a
(01:01:49):
lot of them. So I had I had a lot
of mental roadblocks to overcome to be successful in life,
not the least of which was my idea of selling out,
(01:02:14):
you know, being willing to be commercials at all. Um.
And then I had a friend of mine, Ed Hill,
one day. He didn't even realize he was doing it,
because I talked to him at many years later about it,
(01:02:34):
and he didn't know he was saying it to me.
We were talking about art and art and commerce and
and music and money and how it all comes together,
and in my head I had these these ideas that
if it was if it was commercials, that probably wasn't
(01:02:55):
that great. And he said, you know, there's an art
to getting on the radio too, and there's no shame
in wanting to get to make a living and something
you love for the rest of your life. And that
conversation with him was one of those moments where I
(01:03:18):
I kind of, oh, okay, it's not not truly selling out,
You're just creating something that a lot of people get
to hear. Anohing a moment with that. I mean, if
I had wanted my songs to just sit in a
shoe box in the closet, I could have done that
(01:03:39):
without getting a publishing deal. I could have done that
without coming and spending twenty five years of my life
working my butt off in Nashville. Um, more of those
six minute non core songs could have had his. I know,
I could have just stuck to my creative artsy guns
and and not been interested whatsoever in ever making a
(01:04:03):
dime in the music business. And every now and then
I meet somebody that isn't a similar place where I
was at the time, and um, it's a fun conversation
for me to have because I've very much been on
both sides of that. Well, listen, I have thoroughly enjoyed
this conversation. Yes, great, and I hope that I hope
(01:04:23):
you did too. Yeah. Thanks, it's been a lot of fun. Um. Well,
this is everything that I hoped it would be. It's
the opposite of prom in New Year's where you really
hope it's going to be something and then you're like,
I mean it was okay, but it really wasn't. I
saw you. This is much better. This is like a
Thursday night when her friend calls and goes, hey, you
want to wat some dinner, and you're like, I kind
of tired, but all right, then you want It's like
(01:04:44):
the greatest night and you can't actually predict it. This
was Josh. Yes, so you had very low expectations of
me and I exceeded them. Yes, that is always my goal,
really good expectations, and you still need was great? Good? Um,
well there we go. That wraps it up, um as
we walk out the door. Which financially does more fourteen
(01:05:05):
number ones or two together massive international songs across the
pop If you which one is the bigger, the Bigger House.
All fourteen number ones are the two songs that cross genre.
I can truly tell you I have no idea, and
I believe you. In my house, my wife takes care
(01:05:25):
of it. Deals with money, I am not a numbers guy.
That's like, the worst idea ever is to hand me
a checkbook and expect me to balance it. So, yeah,
I wouldn't have a clue how to answer that. I'll
accept that answer. There is, Josh, good to see, but
thank you very much. It's really been enjoyed. All right,
So two oh eight of the Bobby Cast with Josh
Kre tell your friends about this if you don't mind,
(01:05:47):
tell him about this one specifically. I'm gonna listen to
this one like five times. Even though I did, I'm
gonna go back listen like five times. Yeah, all right,
thanks
Are about to talk in with Josh Kier and I
always record this part after the podcast, and really, this
is one of my favorite podcasts that I've done in
a long time. I think you're gonna really like this guy.
Just uh and I'll get into it. But he's got
four gram he's fourteen number ones, his first ever coach,
Darryl Singletary back in the day. He's got a Jimmy
Buffett song, Backstreet Boys, Charlie Pooth. We really dive into
(00:21):
some songs specifically, but you know, to get this guy
with a real treat and just just so nice. We
sat and talked after the interview too, and it's an
hour long, so I'm not going to spend a lot
of time talking ahead of time. But I thought it
was fantastic, right Yeah. When he left, you know, we
with some We always walked down together, Me and who
remember we walk downstairs because we're in my house. We
(00:42):
talked for a bit and we had another nice, thoughtful
conversation and he was like, man, whatever you need let
me know. I was like, well, let's try like twelve
songs together next weekend. Let me sit in the room
and let me get a little bit that so it's fantastic.
You're gonna hear about before he Cheats, which is a
great story. He talks about before it's a great story.
So let me give you a companion piece to this,
(01:05):
and that is when you finish this, if you scroll
back and hear the Dave Haywood Bobby cast is a
long time ago, probably a year and a half at least,
But Dave Haywood tells another story about need You Now
and how the song almost didn't make it. I referenced that.
But after you listen to this, if I can encourage
you to go back and check out the Dave Haywood
from Lady and Abellum and they we really get into
(01:25):
need You Now on a much deeper level. So I
think with this, if you haven't heard that, to go
back and check that one out. Oh nice, wellow hundred
episodes ago. Huh, here we go. This is a great
one Josh Kire and it's just his story. It's it's
pretty freaking cool. Check out Amy's podcast Four Things with
Amy Brown. Four Things usually very lifestyle, female, faith, food,
(01:51):
family fun. I don't know there's not always, but but
she's had some great guests on like Kristin Chenowith Bob
Goff speaking of Lady in a Bell I'm she doing
with Hillary Scott, Trishia Year would like it's really a
great podcast. Four Things with Amy Brown. There's also The
Velvet's Edge with Kelly Henderson Fashion. It's a that's a
(02:11):
liftole podcast for female or edge here. There is The
Guys Do a sports show called The Sore Losers. There's
Caroline Hobbies interview show where she talks to mostly the
wives of country stars. Fantastic check out on the podcast.
I want to get out of here and play episode
two eight. Josh Kire, thank you very much. Tell your
friends about it if you like it, like a Netflix show.
If you like it, you brag about them, like, oh
(02:33):
you gotta check the show out. If you don't mind,
tell them about an interview that you like or this podcast.
That's how we are and if you don't mind rating
us and writing a comment to that would be fantastic.
We appreciate that so much. I welcome to episode two
O eight with Josh Kire. So we hadn't met until today,
but I've heard a lot about you, Like a lot
of people come in and you get brought up a
(02:54):
lot good. It's almost like, yeah, yeah, it's great actually,
because we were what my d and I do as
we sit around and go who would we like to
talk to? And you'd come up so many times. And
I can tell you the first time I came up
was with Dave Heywood and Dave was talking well, and
we'll talk about it later. He was just talking about
you know, need you now and how that song almost
didn't happen and then it almost didn't make the record,
(03:16):
and that whole process of that song. And so I
was like, you know, I'd like to talk to Josh
care And then you walk into there's a big picture
your face on the walls, humongous, so it's really good
to meet you. Good to meet you as well. I was, Um,
I do this and you'll see what this comes around
to you. But I do this motivational speech where I
go and talk to places, and there's the whole thing
that I do where I talk about how you don't
(03:38):
always have to be working to be moving forward. You
can just be listening at times. Um, you can be
present in what's happening around you. And I tell a
story about how Axl rose from guns and Roses is
sitting around and listening to Slash play the opening this
this this guitar riff, and I don't want to do
it exactly because I'll run the story. And he's playing
(03:58):
this guitar riff and Actel like, Man's just like that's interesting.
It's like, what is that? Slashes just playing a scale? Basically,
I'm playing a scale and and this is not a song.
I'm just warming up because we're about to go into
the studio. And so act was like, well, that's that's interesting.
He said, I wrote this poem for my girlfriend. Keep
playing that. And so Slash is playing the song an
(04:21):
actual starts reading this poem and it's like, this is it?
This is this is the song, Like I'm just listen.
He was just sitting in the room and it was
sweech all to mine and that's how the that's how
the song gets started. That and so Slashes sitting here
just playing this on his guitar and then inside of
the bridge of this song, he doesn't know where to
(04:41):
go with the song. He doesn't have it written because
back then they would just get in a studio and
just get totally wasted and and record. And so if
you remember the bridge of this song, he starts going
where do we go? Now? Where do we go? So
he had nothing. He literally didn't know where to go
with the song. That's awesome, And so how how I
bring this up to start with you is you know,
(05:03):
that's an interesting way to kind of get into a song. Ever,
sit in a room and somebody's just dicking around with something,
and you go, well, I really wasn't planning to go here,
but I have something that could work. I have UM
this page after page after page after page of titles
and ideas UM that I have always kept. I started
(05:24):
keeping it in college, and so typically when I walk
into a room, if somebody starts doing that, I don't
say anything. I just kind of opened my file UM
and start. I call it my Book of Spells because
Carrie Underwood called it that once in a UM in
a group setting, and she's like, oh, he just goes
through his book of spells. So I actually titled on
(05:47):
on my desktop my little Book of Spells. So I'll
click on that start kind of going through stuff UM almost.
You know, most of it does doesn't work for every
piece of music, obviously, So you just kind of sit
you kind of go through and go through and go through,
and so you finally go, I don't know, maybe that, um,
and I just start throwing things into the room. There's
that point in the beginning of every writing appointment whereas
(06:09):
far as lyrical ideas, you're either going to be the
absolute hero or you're gonna look like a moron. Um.
I've kind of always prided myself on being fearless when
it comes to throwing ideas in the room and just
kind of going, well, I took all that time to
come up with them, Let's see if there are any good.
There's only one way to find out. Can you think
(06:29):
of a song where you're going through the Book of
Spells and you're like, this might actually be something with
what you're doing now, Um, you mean with mute where
the music was already going and you're flipping through, and
you you go, well, I could actually attach to this
and we could go somewhere with it, and it turned
out to be something, you know, pretty cool? Oh man, Sorry,
(06:52):
Like running through songs in my brain run through um.
Typically um, some that have been written to tracts and things. Um.
Most of the time I come in with like pieces
of music and stuff. Yeah, at least something somewhat realized
or at least enough of a concept um that trying
(07:15):
to match it to somebody that's something already going isn't perfect.
So even then, a lot of times the musical change
ever so slightly. It's not usually an exact match. I
don't have a slash story. Do you ever wish? I?
Did you ever find? Because what I find when you
get into a room you say you're going fearless. If
I'm writing something comedy wise and someone comes in, and
when you don't know people, it's a you're a little
(07:37):
timid at first, and not so much because of your ideas,
but because just you don't know everyone's sensibilities. Right, it's
like a first date, it's a dance. Yeah, you're kind
of alright, Well if they and I have found that
when someone comes in and they're totally fearless, it actually
relaxes the whole room, Like it's actually a nice start
to the whole because you're like, oh, okay, if they
are going to be an idiot, and an idiot maybe
(08:00):
isn't the word, but it works the best. Yeah, And
I feel at times if I do that, it actually
makes the room a more productive room. If I just
go out and do the most bone head things sometimes
on purpose, it makes the room better because then everybody goes, oh,
Bobby's an idiot. I won't be nearest big of an idiot.
Let me start suggesting my ideas. And that's actually the
whole point of the reason I do it. I don't
(08:20):
often assume that the ideas that I'm gonna start throwing
out are what we're gonna work on. Um, And I
don't really care. Part of it is just getting any
kind of momentum going and um and getting the comfort
zone opened up, because once somebody starts talking and starts saying, hey,
what about this, what about this? What about this? Everybody
(08:40):
else feels a little more open to going through their
own stuff, especially if you've never worked together that first time,
where like like we're saying, it's a dance and kind
of your everybody's trying to figure out their role, where
they fit in, what they're supposed to be doing. Um.
I just I don't I love the is it and
I love to hang and all that that comes beforehand.
(09:03):
It's it's great to catch up and all that, but
at some point something's got to happen. And there's no
reason for us all to be hanging out right other.
So that's my way of being, like, all right, let's
get some work done. Come on, I'm gonna resume you
just a little bit and we'll go into some stories here.
But fourteen number one's just a few of them, Luke Brian,
most people are good. I bring that up because I
(09:23):
was a three week number one, a rarity that almost
a do dough bird of country music songs. These days, yeah,
I would say the white tiger now do to birds extinct?
Maybe the white tiger of country music songs a three
week number one. They're getting more and more rare. It
seems like I was asked on the red carpet last
week at CMT they said, hey, what was your song
(09:45):
of nine? And not that I would listen to it
all the time alone, but like I said, well, my song,
I think that was the most important to the format,
and that people have really gravitated too because of the
message was most people are good, and that's what came
to my mind. That was my my visceral emotional reaction
(10:05):
to what was the song of So congratulations one on
three week number one, but also a lot of people went, man,
it's nice to just like I have that song. I
needed that song, Yeah, I did. I wrote most of
the time. When when um, you meet people socially and
they ask you, they find out your song right and say, so,
what do you write? You know obviously they mean rock, pop, country, whatever,
(10:28):
and I smile and say, I write fiction because that's
kind of what I do. I said around and just
generally make up stories and things UM put In that
particular case, that was written in two thousands sixteen during
the presidential election or the build up to the election.
(10:49):
Between that and some of the other things were also
going on in the world at the time, I was
really kind of depressed, I mean, just watching some things
and kind of went, you know what, UM, it's not
all bad. It's really not all bad. And I showed
up UM at my studio that day and I was
writing with Ed Hill and David Fraser, who I've written
(11:09):
with close to twenty years, and luckily we've again we
know each other so well that I kind of know
where they are in their lives as well, and it
just it was the right right idea for the right
group of people, and um, I desperately needed that song.
I still find that when I sat around and play
(11:30):
that song when I'm performing, um, it's it's still takes
me back to that place that I desperately need to
be these days. Talked me through the life of after
you wrote the song, because we know the end product.
We've seen the manufacturing of a three week number one
like it's been through. We've seen it. It's been great.
But you write it and that's a it's been a
(11:52):
couple of years now, a few years now actually, So
what happens right after you write this song? Do you
feel like it could be something? And where does it go?
And it just kind of talked me through that. So
we wrote the song, Um I was the only I
just sat and played guitar while we were writing it.
So I was the only one playing during the writing.
And then when the other guys left, I stayed right
(12:12):
there in my studio and built up the record from scratch.
And it sounds almost identical to what you ended up
hearing on the Luke record. Did they use any of
that of your track? Now, they didn't use any of
my track. I think they even might have changed the key.
And they cut with a live band and of course
playing individual bits and pieces and m Jeff didn't need
(12:33):
my tracks pretty obviously and finished it up. I think
I spent the rest of that day and part of
the next day finishing up the demo turned it into
the publisher, and that is usually for me where my
contact with the song essentially ends. You spent a lot
of time with it. Did you feel you just because
(12:55):
you spent almost two days, did you feel like it
was a two day worthy song? Or is that just
then almost process for anything that you've written. If I'm
the one doing the demo, it takes me that along.
I'm just not fast. Um, I'm I'm a slow builder
when it comes to building out a demo, and even
beyond that, typically, um, I'm not great at them. It's
(13:20):
not really my forte. I'll do them this when I'm
the one that ends up being the person in the
room that has that skill set. But I prefer having
a Jesse Fraser or Ross conferm real good, like somebody
that actually is that guy? Did you do the vocal
on it? Yeah? And so you send it off and
usually that's when you cut. You're like, all right, go
live your life, kid. I said you sent you to college. Yeah, yeah,
(13:41):
I don't really call I don't really think of them
as kids because I have a kid, and so I
have that emotional separation. It's like, Okay, it's another day,
it's another song. Um. I've been writing a hundred hundred
twenty songs a year professionally for the last twenty five years,
and wrote pretty much every day as an amateur for
the eight years before that. I'm at the point now
(14:04):
where I love all of them. Every single thing I write,
I pour myself into while I'm writing it, and then
I don't have any issues letting it go and just
waiting and see what seeing what happened. So I handed
off the publisher and it's very much there that that's
their gig, you know, go get the songs recorded. And
(14:24):
it's tough to get outside songs recorded these days that
aren't written with with an artist store. And in this
particular case, that song almost immediately went whole on hold
for a different artist. Not a bad taste to do
its rhyme No, no, I'm not going to do that. Okay,
(14:46):
go ahead, nah um, And unfortunately for me, my plugger
went ahead and and played it for Jeff for Luke,
letting Jeff know that technically it was already somewhere else
because somebody, somebody besides my publisher, had gotten had gotten
(15:06):
to pitch the song before I had actually turned it
into my publisher, because I sent the song to my
co writers and I was waiting to hear back from
them to see whether or not the demo was everybody
was happy, and it was on hold before I got
the thumbs up from both of them port to port Javine, Yeah, alright.
I just thought, alright, alright, he's just gonna keep trying.
(15:28):
This is gonna be a fun game. Um. But that's
a good sign. Right. The song goes listen, And I've
talked to a lot of people who they they've written
great songs and they feel great, they felt great songs
and they're like, oh crap, I don't want that artist
to get ahold of that song because I feel like
it could really be special for somebody. And they don't
hit on the artist. They didn't say who was I,
of course, but they would go, oh, I would really
(15:50):
rather someone that really has a that's working in the
radio format right now to have this song, which that's
always awkward conversation. It is, and it's not even a conversation.
I'm usually a part of UM. In this particular case,
Jeff went ahead and send it to Luke. Okay, this
is my understanding of all this, keeping keeping in mind
that I'm not present for any of this, but my
(16:12):
understanding of the way that's all unfolded is Jeff then
sent the song to Luke. Luke loved it. Jeff let
us know and just said, hey, I gotta keep me posted,
let us know if the song becomes you know, free
and clear, and luckily UM for me, it did and
it never left Luke after that. In the minute I
(16:32):
heard that that Luke was into it, because I don't
write them with people in mind typically, but as soon
as I heard his name attached to it, I was like, oh, yeah,
that's home brand. That makes perfect sense across the board,
everything about the melody, um, the lyric, the sensibility, it
(16:53):
just seemed to match. It seemed a perfect match. And
it was so Luke gets the song and until it's
actually cut. I don't know, if you heard a lot
of times you don't hear it until it's actually like
available for consumption. Yeah, that's typically when I get to
hear it. Although in this particular case, Jeff's Jeff's places
(17:15):
right around the corner from my studio, and he brought
my publisher and I over and played it for us,
and you thought, I thought amazing. I was thrilled. Now
at this point, though, is it for sure on the
record or is it just as long with the cut? Well,
I don't think Jeff would have brought me over there,
(17:35):
in all honesty if it wasn't going to make the record. Now,
he wasn't telling me it was a single. Matter of fact,
I think they'd already picked the first single and it
wasn't even out yet, so I obviously didn't have any
idea whether or not they would they would send it
to you guys at radio. Fortunately for me, Um, I
(17:55):
think they already kind of knew that it was going
to be but they're professional enough not to make promises
they can't keep, and I totally get that. I never
expect out of anybody. And the first time you heard
it on the radio, gosh, I don't know have you
even heard it yet? Do you even have a radio?
Because I'm talking you're not in anything, No Facebook, no Twitter,
(18:16):
barely on Instagram, well and truthful, not even on Instagram.
I made a decision years ago not to be in
social media. I Big Yellow Dog, my publisher. I decided
that it was important for those things to actually exist,
and they took it upon themselves to have those things,
(18:37):
and they do exist. I don't even have the passwords
for them, so I'm not on them. Which do you
even have a radio? That was my next There is
a radio in my car and I do listen to it,
switching between that and different podcasts and books on audible
and things. Um, but it's it's a pretty limited It's
(19:02):
none of us have a whole lot of time, right
and for the most part, if I have, if I
have a little bit of free time, I either want
to give it to my wife. I don't want to
give it to my daughter. Or I can want to
give it to one of my friends, and I want
to give it to them in a very real way.
I want to I want to talk to somebody. I
want to speak. I want to hear their voice. Um.
(19:22):
I don't even like texting, truthfully, I wish people still
picked up the phone. I'm gonna go through your resume
a little more. Have a drink water, Oh yeah, I
take a little drink here. I'm gonna go because we're
gonna take a second here. He's got fourteen number one,
including Drunk on You from Luke Bryan. Here you go,
(19:44):
my speakers go, that's you all, God, your Mama and me.
Tim McGraw Highway, don't care. Like I would like to
go into choice from all these songs, I'm gonn to
stop here. This is an interesting one to me because
I this is about the time that I come to town.
(20:06):
And I'm not sure when this song actually came out,
but I came to town in two thousand and thirteen,
so around is when this song that sounds about right
it comes out. So when I hear it, it reminds
me of driving to Nashville. I think we all have
a song, a couple of songs that remind us at
the time when we moved to Nashville. Yeah, because you're
from Tennessee, but you're not from Nashville right now, from
about five hours from here, okay, but from Tennessee. Yeah.
(20:26):
Well yeah, I grew up in Tennessee from three to seventeen. Yeah, So,
and I'm coming back to that song. What song is
it for you when you think of moving to Nashville
that pops it. It It can be any format of song,
but for me, Highway Don't Care is that as that song.
It's Taylor and urban and tim right, I'm gonna put
(20:47):
you on crazy combination. What is your song? Before we
get into the story about this song. Um, when I
think of the song that I was listening, the Border
Run album springste just the Springstet's for Innstein record is
probably the one that when I think of hopping in
the car, um and heading to Middle Tennessee Because I
(21:08):
was good. I moved to Middle Tennessee and at seventeen
to go to Mt. S U. And I didn't even
have a car then, so I didn't really have the
coming to Nashville moment until the following year when I
finally got a car, and so UM, when I was
leaving my parents place and drive into Nashville the first
(21:29):
time with my own car, it was the Born to
Run record that I listened to over and over and
over and over, and thunder Road is probably my favorite
song of all time. So anytime I'm in a car,
even if the beautiful, even if the radio isn't playing,
that's often the song that is in my head. Isn't
it a wild and I write a psychology book that
(21:49):
often references called I'm Okay, You're Okay, and they talk
about music in the brain and the music that we're
listening to at a certain point in our life. For you,
you talk about thunder Road from I think about being
in college and listening to Count and Cross this Desert
life all the time, over and over again. But what
happens is when we hear it again, it triggers that
same part of our brain and just for a place
a second, it's the chemical release that makes us, just
(22:11):
for that brief moment, feel the exact same way we
felt whenever we were doing our first round with it.
And it's why we love that music so much, because
it reminds us of a time that was insert whatever
word do you want better, worse, more fulfilling, more exciting.
But and I wonder, when you hear thunder Road, just
for a second, get that feeling every time. It's it's
(22:34):
a weird I have. It's great to hear it, but
I actually have a hard time sometimes listening to that
album now because it's so emotionally charged for me from
that period of my life. No, no no, no, no, no
no no, It's all good. But it's a it's that
no I go to see a Mary Chance, I can um.
(22:56):
But it is this weird time travel moment back to
this moment in time where I was dying to do this,
dying to come to Nashville, dying to write songs, wanting
to take on the world, um, and wanting to get
out of my little town and just get on with
life and um. Yeah. And it takes me back there
(23:19):
emotionally every single time. And while I get I get
super excited about it, I'm also kind of glad I'm
not there anymore, you know. I'm kind of glad that
I'm at a different, very different stage in life now.
And I remember going to see Bruce play Downtown about
(23:40):
a week after my daughter was born, and they were
the band was playing the whole Born to Run records
start to finish, and they played it about halfway through
the set, and from the opening notes of thunder Road
right to the very last notes of jungle Land, I
was on my feet, like trying to lose my voice
(24:03):
for the next three years, And as soon as the
last note faded from jungle Land, he was getting ready
to rip into the next song because they were probably
still going to play for another forty five minutes, and
I went, Okay, that's what I needed, and I went
home because at that point that record had reminded me
(24:23):
so much of where I am now as opposed to
where I was when I first fell in love with it,
and I just wanted to be home with my wife
and my newborn. Even even though I paid a bunch
of money for that ticket to be there, I just
kind of went, oh, and this isn't where you're supposed
to be? Now? What was it about music? Like? Where?
Where did that come from? In you? That made you
want to do this? I had a crush on a
(24:45):
girl in my English class when I was thirteen, and
she had a crush on somebody else. And I went
home one night and for some completely inexplicable reason, I
said down, and I wrote a lyric and found a
(25:06):
melody for it, and sang it into a tape recorder
and felt better. And the next day I did it again,
and to this day I have never figured out how
to stop. It wasn't a like I couldn't play an
instrument other than trumpet. It's really hard to sing and
play trump at the same time, So I didn't have
(25:28):
musical outlet really other than my voice and words. So
for the next three years, I wrote songs almost every
single day, just sitting down with a blank sheeet of
paper and writing words and singing them into a tape recorder,
just melodies, no guitar, just melodies, no instrument at all,
no instrumentation. And then I kind of decided that, um,
(25:50):
maybe I'd learned to play piano. So I went and
I started to take some piano lessons, begged my parents
for piano lessons. We didn't known a piano or a
keyboard or anything. And I think it was on a
about my third piano lesson that I sat down my
piano teacher and said, you know, the classical stuff you're
trying to teach me is great, but I really just
want to play let it be. Could could you just
(26:11):
teach me? Hey, Jude? And she was kind, yeah, I
don't really do that because you can probably figure that
out on your own. I said, okay. I went to
my parents and said, all right, instead of paying for
piano lessons, can you just get me a little keyboard
that I can play at home and I'll just figure
it out. And I from that point on I started
(26:33):
writing songs with my really simple little piano chords, and
then my eighteenth birthday, my parents bought me my first
acoustic guitar. Were they musical? My dad played guitar, about
four or five chords and a lot of oldies, a
lot of like Elvis and that sort of thing, and
I would sit around with him and sing in the
(26:53):
living room. But I never thought, I mean, just playing
his guitar never really was my thing, and now that's
my primary instrument. That's what I do all the time,
said around play guitar. So it's really weird to me
how there was one in our house and I just
didn't go for it. Was it ever for you? I
want to be a singer? Like, did you come to
(27:13):
town with the ambition I'm gonna go be a performer? No?
I had. I toyed with it briefly, but not. There's
so many, so many people that come to town. That
is they're calling, that is their desire, that is their
goal in life, that is their be all and all
(27:33):
dream job. That was not mine. I truly wanted to
write songs, and then I got really frustrated after about
four years of my first publishing deal at b I
was with BMG for six years, not four years into it.
I'd had a few songs recorded, but not as many
as I would have liked. That's every single songwriter from
(27:56):
amateurs all the way to actually corny. Probably nobody gets
as many cuts as they one. But I was, I was,
I was having these moments, was going, well, maybe maybe
the reason these songs aren't getting recorded is because I'm
supposed to do them. Not It wasn't a I really
want to get out there and play them. It was
just a huh, okay, Well, I gotta figure out some
(28:19):
way to stay in the music business because this is
what I want to do. So I started writing more
and more thinking of myself as the target, and going
out and playing more live by myself, and then eventually
started playing with the band where I was um, my
only friends that were musicians were studio musicians, because we
were the only people I would hang out with. But
(28:41):
in order to get them to play a gig, they
gotta get paid, because otherwise they're passing up a paying gig.
So during that period of my life, I was literally
using my draw to pay my musicians to play here
in Nashville, and all my living expenses were going on
to a credit card, which I don't recommend anyone. It's
a really terrible life plan, but that's what I was doing.
(29:04):
And then a few years after that, I met my
the woman who became my wife, who was also she
came to Nashville to be a singer. That was that
was her pursuit, and we had this long, um serious
conversation about what would happen if for some reason it
worked for both of us, and we kind of looked
(29:26):
at each other and went, yeah, we'd be done. And
I went into my publisher, who at that point was
Big Yellow Dog, because I was on my second publishing
deal and they've been hanging in there with me, trying
to be patient let me figure my artist thing out
because I had gotten weird. I was writing really dark
folk songs and I was writing five minute songs and
(29:47):
six minute songs with no choruses. It was my My
music was getting stranger and stranger all the time. And
sat down with him and said, you know, that whole
artist thing that you signed me to do, I'm not
going to do that anymore. Into their credit they kind
of went, what are you gonna do? Well, I'm just
gonna go back to writing songs and hoping to get
(30:09):
them cut And they said great, and that was the
end of the discussion. No, but you told us, you
promised us. We've been invested in this, and a couple
of years later we wrote Before He Cheats and everything changed.
I wonder and I'm gonna come back the highway. Don't care, No,
(30:30):
I'm one. I love wandering with you. We're walking down
these these paths that that I like, that we're creating.
As you talk about doing the artist thing. For a second,
I was reading about the the a lot of the
writers from the Office, the television of the Office, which
is my favorite show. But what they did when that
show first started after I got picked up from pilot,
they took a lot of the writers and made them
bit players actors so they could understand what it was
(30:53):
like as an actor, because they felt like they could
write better for the actors if they had also had
a little bit of acting experience. Now, I wonder with you,
do you think it affected your songwriting at all? Actually
going to be an artist, performer, singer. Now that you're
pulled back a bit, you're writing again for that That
question makes sense. It makes total sense. Um. And I
(31:14):
don't know if it's strictly the the opening my mind
to the artist thing at one point, but certainly I
know for a fact all of those weird roads that
I took my music down during that period of my
life had a huge impact on everything that I wrote
after For no other reason than um, my idea of
(31:39):
what counts as commercial I think became much broader than
what a lot of other people around me thought of
as being commercial music. Um. I didn't see any reason
why a five minutes song with no chorus shouldn't be
played on the radio. I really couldn't wrap my mind
around it. I was like, but if it's really good, cares,
(32:01):
if it is compelling and emotional and you don't notice
that there's no chorus, then why would it matter. I
understand now the reasoning behind it. I get it, to
totally get it. But but all of those things that
I tried, then, by the time I got around to
coming back to writing and thinking in terms of trying
to get on the radio strictly and having to get
(32:23):
somebody else to record it, um, yeah, I think my
target was just a lot wider, which I think has
incredibly served me well over the years. Well, you got
three humongous commercial artists this Highway don't care. I'm back
to it. Yeah, yeah, I keep coming back back to
it because this song reminds me of being here and
it's it's a McGraw song. Now, when you write that,
(32:48):
who'd you write the song with? I wrote it with
Marker when in the Warren Brothers. So when you write
the song, is it written as just one person? Two people?
Eight people? Like? What? What when you write the song?
What's the feeling in the room? And who's it for? Okay? Well,
we weren't really thinking in terms of who it was for. Okay,
So there was no idea then we're gonna get two
(33:08):
or three people on here. We I had that title. Um,
this idea that the Highway could actually be a character. Um.
I love personifying things. I like the idea of of
an in an object being a character. I've done it
multiple times. Well I'm sure I'll continue to do it
(33:28):
just because I find it fascinating. So I kicked the
idea of the room. Um Brett jumped over the piano
real fast and he goes, what about something like this
and kind of started playing those opening lines to the song,
and we didn't write the chorus right away. We just
kind of started chasing that and the last line that
we got to write before we kind of went we
(33:50):
need to write a pre it was about the radio,
and so it made sense to write the Beasts that
little b section as the song that was on the radio.
And I think I said to him, well, what if
we intentionally make it a female part and we'll just
hire somebody to come in and sing that part on
(34:12):
the demo. And all of them are, fortunately for me,
also have strange enough sensibilities in their songwriting to go, yeah,
that's just weird enough to work. It's also weird enough
to keep a song from getting cut. Yeah, every time
I do something like that, you kind of know you
(34:34):
probably either really hitting a home run or you just
created a roadblock. That's the game, that's my game. I like.
I like those kinds of songs. So we left it in.
When we came back around the second time the premates,
we made sure it made sense again so that you
were listening to the radio for a second time, and
(34:56):
it just became a bit It became part of what
made the set the on his side that made it special.
We put it on the demo that way. I sang
lead on the demo, and then we hired a female
singer to come in and sing that part, and we
filtered it and everything to try to make it sound
like pop radio at the time. They took all that
stuff back off when they brought Taylor in, which was
the right move. Taylor already sounded enough like pop radio.
(35:19):
You certainly didn't need to do anything special to to
her voice to change that. Um, she was the dream,
you know, she's She's like beyond what I was, what
I was even hoping for. So do you first get
the message? Hey mcgrals put it on hold? M Grass
cutting it, same deal. We're gonna walk down the same
the same path here, same path, and it's just gonna
(35:41):
be a McGraw song. Or what point did they go
and not only the girl cutting it? I think we're
gonna get Taylor swept on the song. You know, immediately
they said they were going to get someone, but they
never said who. And again, that makes sense not to
tell us because we're not part of the process us.
(36:02):
In my head, I think I probably was like, well,
maybe Faith. It seems kind of obvious they know each other.
Pretty well. Um, what I didn't know was from the
earliest part of Taylor's career, supposedly because of the song
Tim McGraw, they had always talked about maybe doing something together.
(36:24):
I couldn't have known that. I couldn't have planned for that,
couldn't have Certainly, you can't walk into a writing room thinking, oh,
we'll write the thing that finally will give them something
to do together. We kind of got lucky, right song,
right moment, right set of circumstances, and then they added
urban playing guitar, which just made this song bigger because
(36:46):
you got to go it's Tim McGraw big with Taylor
Swept Holy Crap and Keith or It's just it makes
it like this whole event. It was a true event. Yeah,
but again not an event you could plan for. I
can't make that happen. There is no way in any
writing room ever that I can sit down and write
a song and be like, yeah, now we'll go get
(37:08):
those three artists on a song. That's impossible. It was
just one of those amazing phone calls that you get.
Then you're like, wait a minute, you're telling me that
Taylor's gonna sing on it. He's gonna come play all
the lead stuff on it and and be a feature
on it. They're all three going to show up for
the video shoot. That makes no sense, but how freaking cool.
(37:34):
That's awesome. Yeah, it's a great story. H Derek Spentley.
Woman Amen wrote that one Derek Spentley drunk on a plane,
Blake Shell Neon lights. The next one hit is a
real familiar one for me. Gloriana kissed you Goodnight. Yeah,
so it's been a while for this one. Rachel and
(37:54):
I were together for a bit when this song was
was hit, so I would go out on the road
of them a little bit. I just remember she was
so good. Yeah, one of the best pure singers I've
ever heard. She's fabulous. Tom too. I mean they're both
they're great. So who did you write that one with?
Because okay, so you and Tom wrote this just the
two of us, and so this is it's been a while.
This has had what two thousand twelve, Yeah, that sounds
(38:17):
about right. Some of the dates kind of blew a
little bit. I don't know what today is um on
this song was this This is the number one actually
number two that never hit number one. It hit number
one and didn't stay at number one. It was I
actually have two songs that on the chart got to
(38:40):
number one at the beginning of the week. Oh you
actually didn't finish as a number one and hit and
held for like five or six days, and then at
the very last minute got bumped and that was the end.
And that was one of That was one of the two.
This is what I remember by this song barely, not
because you were here, just from my mind. Remember dumb stuff?
(39:00):
Is it? This song and a Loven Theft song? Maybe Angelis?
We're battling it out all week and they kept trading
places and at the last minute on the last night,
Angelis jumped over it. That's crazy. I haven't thought about
that since since I've happened. I actually couldn't have told
you what song it was, but right I think it
(39:21):
was Angelized. It was yeah, and I'm pretty sure that
was love and that's first number one. And so it
was also one of those weird I really liked those guys,
so it was kind of one of those will you
want everybody to win? You can't really like be mad
at I don't know. I wasn't upset with them, you know,
you just kind of just sit around and go Okay, well, okay,
that is what it is. Next song? Had you had
(39:42):
number one at that point? Okay, so it wasn't. You're
not missing out on your first number one? No, I
did not. I was not. Just to run down the
list real quick. Tyler Farr read Neck Crazy, Lee Bryce
Drinking Class, which, by the way, was the most played
country song of Yeah, that's I think that's right. That's
probably you didn't. I know you don't have a radio,
but this song was played all over the radio. If
(40:03):
you were turned on, you would have heard it. If
it isn't crazy, Yeah, it was played a lot that year.
It was. It was pretty wild. Frankie Ballard hell of alife.
Now I want to go up and talk about because
you have four Grammys. So the first the question is
where in your house are they. Um there's a shelf
in a hallway in my house that they sit on.
(40:24):
Um there there. Unfortunate I forgot anyway, So there's a
couple of little trophy things in there, and then the
rest of the shelves is all pictures of the family
and stuff. It's just it's it's in a spot in
the house where I get to see if my wife
gets to see it and stuff, But if anybody came
over the house, it wouldn't be like the first thing
you see because all, yeah, I'm not really gonna commable
(40:46):
with that. Well, my mirror ball when you walk in
the house from Dancing with the Stars and one that
you have to kiss it till we've become in the house.
I actually have a mirrorball as well hanging in my
living room from a dance party that we threw. We
put it up and I had a I needed a
ladder to flip the switch to turn it back off
because I didn't have a remote for it. So for
(41:06):
the next two days after that dance party, we we
did the dance when we first moved into the house,
and it's it's pretty vaulted ceiling and everything, and so
that that thing was continuing to spin and spin and
spin it. I would bust out laughing every single time
I would walk back into the living room, and I
thought it was so damn funny. It just kept It
just was a reminder not to take life so seriously
(41:28):
that I went, oh, no, that's staying. That is a
permanent fixture in our home and it will always be there.
It does not belong there at all. It looks really weird,
and yet it's the thing that gets most common, Like,
we really worked hard. We spent a lot of time
designing our home and I love it dearly, and strangely enough,
(41:49):
the thing everybody talks about is that stupid mirror ball,
and I don't care. I think it's awesome. Four Grammys
from three different songs. Was before he Cheats the pop
for you? Was that? Was that the one that kind
of You've obviously been doing your thing, but the one
that was like boom train is now here? Yeah, ten
years into publishing deals, um, that was my first hit.
(42:14):
It's a five week number one. It was a five
week number one, and I was at the time doing
pop and hip hop. We were playing it, yeah, I
mean it was a multi genre monster country pop, a
c like it. It kind of ran the gamut and
blew up strangely enough, and it wasn't even one of
(42:35):
those where they cut a pop version of it too. Literally,
was just that record. And I don't think I realized
at the time how surreal it was because I had
never had a hit at all. I didn't know what
I was supposed to make of it, but it sent us, Yes,
send us the Grammys. We were nominated for not just
(42:56):
country song, we were nominated for overall Song. We lost
out me wine House for rehab while she was in
rehab for a song swearing she would never go to rehab.
Only Carrie was cheating or getting cheated on Take one
for the team. Um, yeah, no, it was. It was
(43:19):
crazier I think than I realized. Let's let's go to
the beginning of it. Then. Yeah, you're you're in a room.
Who's in the room with you? Um? I got a
call on a Saturday from my buddy Chris Thompkins. Um.
I wasn't married, I didn't have kids, so I still
wrote on Saturdays. I wrote twenty four hours a day,
any day of the week. Back then, I just that's
(43:42):
all I had to do. I didn't have much of
a life. And Chris called me on Saturday and said, Dude,
my publisher is bugging the crap out of me to
try to write something for Christian Wilson. Red Neck Woman
had already popped. They put out something else after that,
but they were already starting to really look for the
next record. He said, I got I got a couple
(44:03):
of lines on a song that I think might be
good for her. Can you come over? So I dropped
whatever I was doing to go to a Gretchen Wilson
aimed writing today, writing at the point for this thing
that he already had going. She wasn't even something I
was thinking about, but he had something wanted to do it.
So I drove her to his house. We sat on
his back porch. He played me the opening lines of
(44:24):
what We came before he cheats. We spent a couple
of hours writing that song. I think we got everything
done but the little bridge and I think we got
back together one afternoon and finished out the song when
the studio demno, okay, so wait a second backtrack. Before that,
we turned in the work tape to both of our publishers.
(44:49):
Chris's publisher told him they didn't want him to demo
the song because they thought it was way too scary
and crazy for country radio. Chris calls me up, tells me, Hey,
then I want that one. I said, dude, we're demo
on it, which means you're gonna pay for it yourself. Man, Yeah,
if I have to, this is coming out of my pocket. Um,
(45:11):
it's just not not that I had any idea of
what it was capable of. It was mostly just another
song for me, but I thought it was a good one.
And then, to her credit, Lisa Johnson, who was the
one that originally told him that, called him back the
next day and said, you know what, I don't care
if it's too crazy for your country. Um, it's really
(45:33):
really good. You need a demo it And so we did.
Do you had him demo? A dude saying the original demo? No, no, no.
We we hired somebody um to sing the demo and
she was great, and um, it sounded quite a bit different.
It was much darker and kind of angrier, had much
(45:54):
heavier rock, gutars on it. Somebody they played it for folks. Um,
I don't think Gretchen never heard it. At least the
best of my knowledge, she never got to hear it.
They passed on it immediately. A little time goes by,
Chris calls me up on the phone says, dude, you're
not gonna believe this. Carrie under What's going to record
(46:15):
our song. And dude, that's great. I don't know who
Carrie under What is, but that's awesome because I don't
watch much television. Obviously I am and I certainly not
a reality TV guy, so I had no clue. I didn't.
(46:35):
He's like, no, no no, no, you don't understand. She just
won American Idol. This is she's going to be the
first country artist coming off of American Idol. This is
gonna be huge, great, Okay, I didn't get it. I
had no idea what was coming. And again I hadn't
had any hits, so I was kind of used to
(46:59):
be in disappointed a little bit. You know. It had
cuts along the way and things that happened other people
that always told me, hey, braise yourself, this is the one.
This is going to be big, and it hadn't happened.
So yeah, I took it with a grain of salt
(47:19):
and went, okay, that'd be awesome. But I wasn't holding
my breath. And then when they finally really did put
it out and it blew up the way it did. Yeah,
I I did not know what was going on, and
I didn't know how to handle it all as a
fun ride, but I wish I would have had more
(47:39):
perspective while it was going on. What do you wish
one thing you wish you had done differently. Um, I
wish I would have enjoyed it more like I can
remember standing next to Joe Galani at the after party
of the Grammys, and he looked at me, all these
tons of stars around and everything, and um, I'm kind
(48:03):
of uncomfortable. I don't I love large social settings. I
really like small settings, like writing rooms, where I can
really have pointed conversations with a couple of people without
a lot of distraction. And so we're in this big
space Beverly Hills Hotel and he looks at me and
he said, um, is having fun? I think so, And
(48:31):
he kind of gave me this weird look and he said, well,
if you can't enjoy this, you might be in the
wrong business. And of course I take it. I took
these things so too hard at the time that I
was like going, oh, ship, maybe I'm in the wrong business.
And instead what I should have should have been doing
was just laughing and going and taking tequila shots with
(48:52):
some big star that would have done it with me
because we were everybody was there and celebrating having a
good time. And instead I was just kind of looking
around and going, Um, why am I here? What happened?
What's going on, um, I'd be better at it now.
I got better at it well, and that rolls me
to the next one, because you know, you can talk
(49:14):
to a few people who have one of these songs
that crosses over, and they have they have they're one
big song they write and it crosses over, and they're like,
I couldn't believe it first of all, to get a
big country hits one thing, but it goes to pop
and the whole world different country, not even just pop.
It goes international and people are and that happens with
Carrie and you had your one song and you're just
gonna write country songs and but then, Josh, but then
(49:35):
you do it freaking again with Lady Annabellum and need
you now. So with all of this from the before
you cheeth and you wish you had enjoyed it, you
get a chance to now experience it again. Did you
do better at enjoyment the second time? Yes? So imber
At backtracking back to the to the before he cheats
(49:56):
Grammy Night, We're sitting there in the audience and I
have Simon who created all those American aisle shows and everything,
Simon Fuller. Simon Fuller, He's sitting next to me, and
the award is given for best Overall Song, which we know,
(50:17):
we discussed it was nominated for, and we lost, and
he looks at me, he goes, it was always next year,
And of course I'm thinking, are you kidding? Next year?
Do you know how rare it is for any songwriter
to ever get to this point one time in their life?
(50:38):
I I just so I didn't even I don't even
know if I responded to him. I think I just
kind of sat there, not fuming. I'll get upset very easily,
but kind of just confused and going, are you really
that out of touch with what I do for a living.
And then when it happened a second time, I wish
(51:01):
I could have backtracked to that moment and been like
able to turn around to him and go, well, not
next year, with the year after, give me two year,
give me two years. Um, because you want not just
country song of year, you want to you want Foresaw
overall song of the year. Yeah. I have been picked
up by Charles Kelly on live television and spun around
in front of a very large audience. Um, do you
(51:23):
remember who you beat? Because you remember who beat? I
remember the song that I thought was going to win.
I thought Love the Way You Lie, UM, the Rihanna
Eminem song, I really thought that was gonna win. Um,
a rap song had never won the award before. It
seemed overdue. They were both massive at the time. The
(51:47):
song had been huge. It seemed like it was gonna
be Eminem's year. I had kind of resolved myself to
the idea that maybe we had a shot again at UM.
And the other thing is the House That Built Me
was also nominated for Overall Song that year. There were
two country songs. There were two countries. Worried about then
(52:07):
it being split by the that was That's the other thing.
I kind of assumed there was good possibility because that
sounds amazing, you know, I love that was My favorite
song that year was House to Built Me. So I
said there, going okay, well, we might not win either
of these. You know, it wouldn't have been shocking to
me it for House to Built Me to have one
(52:30):
country song I Love the Way You Lie to win
overall and you kind of go home going wow, that
was fun, but it certainly wouldn't have been weird. And
the thing about splitting the vote is for for if
you're listening now, what happens is, especially the Nashville block
of voters, Like I'm a Grammy voter, a lot of
us because we're familiar with the songwriters, of the producers,
(52:51):
even the artists. We just vote for our people. I
get it. And so then you go, well, there's two
songs getting voted by people, and they gotta pick one
some of that vote. Even if it's six thirty three
are it's still gonna be split. So the fact that, wow,
I didn't there are two country songs in that category.
There were? Yeah. I think in the end what really
helped us was was all the different genres that played in. Um,
(53:15):
it was a hitting country, so we got some of
those votes. It was a hit and pop, it was
a hit and acy. It was a hit worldwide. Um
I think it went number one and at thirty something countries,
and all of that I think just kind of ended
up culminating in a bizarre, crazy, crazy, like an unexplainably
(53:38):
crazy night. Okay, so that night, are you a little happier? Yeah?
And you're like I I was, I was euphoric. Did
you do any tequila shots with any big stars? I
did not, but I did some whiskey shots with some people. Yeah.
As a matter of fact, as soon as we won,
we went backstage and they put us in this tiny
little room, um in the backstage of the Staples Center.
(54:02):
And I don't know where they got it, but I
guess somebody from Lady A's crew was already back there,
and they already had a bunch of whiskey shots ready
to go on the chance that we won. So they
like the World Series and they have all the bottles
exactly exactly, so they ushered us back to that room,
and I'm assuming they probably I think those shots were
(54:23):
probably lined up for record or something else that they
might have thought they had a better shot at. But
that was the first war of the night. Of course,
they ended up, I'm sure, going back there and drinking
a lot more whiskey before the night was over. And
I was only there for one of them, but it
was still fun. So they passed around a bunch of
shots and we we um get a bunch of hugs,
and my mind was melting. I mean, um, like I said,
(54:48):
I was kind of resolved. I'd already lost the thing
once UM assumed I was gonna lose a second time.
And and but this time, that time, yeah, I was happy.
Do you were remember when they have the card out
and they're about to read it. Do you remember who
was presenting? Um? Yeah, John Mayer? Okay, And do you
(55:08):
remember that brief space before they say the winner, Like
can you look back and go, oh god, and remember
your heart or anything like, because it's one of two things.
It's either blackout or it's every second is vividly remembered. Now,
I kind of have this, yeah, kind of missing moment
(55:28):
where I think I probably close my eyes or something,
and I kind of remember my wife's screaming more than
I remember anything being called out on stage. And then
us like we're hugging and jumping and like we were
losing our minds, which is why we got to the
stage and Charles just picks me up and start spinning
(55:49):
me around. I had this picture of Dave and Hillary
at the microphone like doing the responsible thing, and Charles
like holding like practically throwing me over his shoulder like
a sack of ages, and it was pure joy. I mean,
we're looking at it here and there you four are,
and you what did you write that with? When I
(56:11):
wrote it with them? All three of them, Yeah, the
day I met them. Well, how special is that that
you wrote with all three? You all got to experience
that together. Yeah, it was pretty wild. It was a
that was a weird right. You're looking so happy in
this part. Yeah, you are very happy, right. But he
was also I was also shocked at what was happening.
He's a well both, he's a very large man as
(56:35):
far as height, and so when he picks you up
and starts swinging you, I don't care if you're on
a stage or not, it's shocking. Um, that's a that's
a great picture. Do you have that picture? That's A
that's a great picture. Yeah. Well, listen, I'll ask you
some of these generic questions and we'll finish up with
something point yet. I'm sure it's our style, all right, However,
you want to roll what country artists would you most
(56:57):
likely get invited into their house for Thanksgiving? M hmm,
that's a great question. Um, maybe Dirk's maybe I don't know,
But even then I don't I don't expect that not
but any means, although he's man, he's a great guy.
(57:18):
He's the best dude. Yeah, he's the best. He's the
best dude. Yeah. Last week, Lizzo had to give songwriting
credit to someone for a tweet that inspired lyrics. Do
you know, Lizzo? Truth hurts. I just took a DNA test.
Turns out I'm a hundred percent that you know that
song at all. So it's the number one pop song
rights for weeks. But what happened was somebody tweeted out
the biggest lyric of the song, she used it in
(57:40):
a song, and had to give him songwriting credit. Oh
my goodness, this is Oh no, I do know this. Yeah, yeah,
it sounds different when she does. You don't think I was.
You just gotta said no. Anyone we've done with our
lives so as anything ever played a pivotal part in
(58:01):
the song with You where you're like, oh, I got
that from something elis now that I think about it,
sort of. There's a line before he cheats Um where
it talks about in the chorus, m carving a name
in leather seats. There's an outtake from the Barn to
(58:24):
Run album called Linda let Me Be the One. Um.
It's almost impossible to understand the lyric and the outtake,
but he talks about it's this guy who goes to
his teenage kid goes to his girlfriend's house and he's
standing on the hood of the car and he's trying
to get her to open the window and talk to him,
(58:45):
and she won't come to the window. Linda just won't
show up, and so he breaks into the car I'm
assuming it's like her dad's car or something, and he
carves Linda's name in the seats of the car. Um
That image was such a bizarrely viole and romantic image
that I didn't even realize I had done it until
(59:07):
years later, and I went because I was like, where
did some of this come from? Is my head really
that strange? And I was listening to the box set
and got to that song, and I was listening to
it and I was like, oh, ship, that's where it
came from. I bet that's where it came from, because
otherwise I don't I don't have any reason to think
(59:28):
that any woman should be showing up at a bar
not only with a bat but also with a knife. Um. Yeah,
so I think that, But I mean, that's kind of
that's kind of what most art is, right. It's it's
every book you've ever read, it's every piece of music.
You've ever heard. It's it's every movie you've ever seen,
(59:48):
every TV show you've ever watched, every conversation you've ever
had with anybody. That's literally who you are. So at
some level it has to become okay. Well, if it's
part of me, then it's somewhat fair game, unless it's
literally just regurgitating an exact copy of something that came before,
(01:00:10):
because it's impossible not to be influenced. So I don't
have any problem with that. Um. Even even my biggest heroes,
some of them have songs with the exact same titles
of some of their heroes. It's that stuff's been done before,
long before I ever wrote my first song I'm I'm okay,
and at piece with some of that. UM, I try
(01:00:32):
not to intentionally do it when your songs get put
into movies Pitch Perfect to Zero Dark thirty, Uh, Country Strong?
Do you ever watch the movie? Yeah? I actually suck.
I saw Zero Dark thirty without knowing our song was
in it. Oh you just went to watch I just
wand of possibly that movie. Yeah, I thought the movie
(01:00:54):
looked great. We went and were sitting there in the
seats and when needs you now started to play in
the background, it's like reaching over. We're still trying to
both watch and it's just like grabbing my arm and squeezing,
and I'm like, yeah, I know, but um yeah, I
guess they just that it was said at a certain
time period and they just wanted something that had been
(01:01:18):
played a lot during that time period. It was nothing
more than that. I mean, it wasn't like they went
that fits the scene perfectly or anything. It was just again,
right time. One final question, and we're gonna wrap this up.
What piece of advice from another songwriter or an artist
has stayed with you the longest. It could be early,
it could have been today. Yeah, Um, gosh, there's a
(01:01:49):
lot of them. So I had I had a lot
of mental roadblocks to overcome to be successful in life,
not the least of which was my idea of selling out,
(01:02:14):
you know, being willing to be commercials at all. Um.
And then I had a friend of mine, Ed Hill,
one day. He didn't even realize he was doing it,
because I talked to him at many years later about it,
(01:02:34):
and he didn't know he was saying it to me.
We were talking about art and art and commerce and
and music and money and how it all comes together,
and in my head I had these these ideas that
if it was if it was commercials, that probably wasn't
(01:02:55):
that great. And he said, you know, there's an art
to getting on the radio too, and there's no shame
in wanting to get to make a living and something
you love for the rest of your life. And that
conversation with him was one of those moments where I
(01:03:18):
I kind of, oh, okay, it's not not truly selling out,
You're just creating something that a lot of people get
to hear. Anohing a moment with that. I mean, if
I had wanted my songs to just sit in a
shoe box in the closet, I could have done that
(01:03:39):
without getting a publishing deal. I could have done that
without coming and spending twenty five years of my life
working my butt off in Nashville. Um, more of those
six minute non core songs could have had his. I know,
I could have just stuck to my creative artsy guns
and and not been interested whatsoever in ever making a
(01:04:03):
dime in the music business. And every now and then
I meet somebody that isn't a similar place where I
was at the time, and um, it's a fun conversation
for me to have because I've very much been on
both sides of that. Well, listen, I have thoroughly enjoyed
this conversation. Yes, great, and I hope that I hope
(01:04:23):
you did too. Yeah. Thanks, it's been a lot of fun. Um. Well,
this is everything that I hoped it would be. It's
the opposite of prom in New Year's where you really
hope it's going to be something and then you're like,
I mean it was okay, but it really wasn't. I
saw you. This is much better. This is like a
Thursday night when her friend calls and goes, hey, you
want to wat some dinner, and you're like, I kind
of tired, but all right, then you want It's like
(01:04:44):
the greatest night and you can't actually predict it. This
was Josh. Yes, so you had very low expectations of
me and I exceeded them. Yes, that is always my goal,
really good expectations, and you still need was great? Good? Um,
well there we go. That wraps it up, um as
we walk out the door. Which financially does more fourteen
(01:05:05):
number ones or two together massive international songs across the
pop If you which one is the bigger, the Bigger House.
All fourteen number ones are the two songs that cross genre.
I can truly tell you I have no idea, and
I believe you. In my house, my wife takes care
(01:05:25):
of it. Deals with money, I am not a numbers guy.
That's like, the worst idea ever is to hand me
a checkbook and expect me to balance it. So, yeah,
I wouldn't have a clue how to answer that. I'll
accept that answer. There is, Josh, good to see, but
thank you very much. It's really been enjoyed. All right,
So two oh eight of the Bobby Cast with Josh
Kre tell your friends about this if you don't mind,
(01:05:47):
tell him about this one specifically. I'm gonna listen to
this one like five times. Even though I did, I'm
gonna go back listen like five times. Yeah, all right,
thanks
Host
Bobby Bones
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