This conversation with Bobby and The Warren Brothers will inspire you. Brett and Brad have written hit songs such as “If You’re Reading This”, “Highway Don’t Care” “Red Solo Cup” and many, many more. They got their start as a duo and after years of partying on the road and losing a record deal…they have now both been sober for 17 years. They talk about their struggles with addiction and how getting sober ignited their career as songwriters. Brad also shares how he is helping fathers who have lost children after recently losing his oldest son. Bobby also reveals the role they played in the process of him moving to Nashville to be the host of The Bobby Bones Show.
Check out Brad Warren's podcast about grief at GOODGRIEFGOODGODSHOW.COM
Also on Instagram: @goodgriefgoodgodshow
Follow the podcast: @TheBobbyCast
Watch this Episode on Youtube
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Episode three seventy three Brad and Brett Warren, the Warren Brothers.
I think I could have done to maybe three hours
with them. There's a lot of fun and then I
went from fun to just being, you know, super serious.
We had to trust each other a little bit. We
got into some areas that I think if we all
weren't comfortable with ourselves, we wouldn't have been comfortable going there.
(00:21):
Just a real good experience here with the Warren brothers.
They have nine number ones. We can roll through some
pretty quickly. If you're reading this, Tim McGraw, feel that fire.
Dirk s Bentley felt good on my lips. Tim McGraw,
a little bit of everything. Keith Urban Highway, don't care.
Tim McGraw. With Taylor and Urban, I could keep going.
I mean they have so many songs, they have many
(00:42):
top tens. I mean, they came to town, they were
trying to be artists. Some stuff happened. Now they're two
of the best songwriters in Nashville. And there's a new
podcast hosted by Brad. It's called The Good Grief Good
God Show hosted by Brad, where he talks about it's grief.
It's a grief podcast when it's a good grief. I
thought of Charlie Brown honestly first good Grief, but it
(01:04):
really is a grief podcast and he talks about it.
You can check out Good Grief, Good God show dot
com or find the link in the notes of this
podcast and go check it out. Here we are, it's me,
it's the Warren Brothers, and it's episode three seventy three,
Bred and Bred. The Warren Brothers are here. You know
you guys commented on your head shot it's up when
(01:26):
what when was that head shot taken? Do you think?
And it was long enough ago where I don't have
any gray streaks in my hair was now there for sure,
So I'm gonna say ten years ago. Oh, I didn't
think it was that. Maybe eight years ago, seven, eight
years ago? Yeah, ten was way off. Eight, I didn't
I think it was that dated. And I was like, well,
(01:46):
this that's quite quite a dated head shot. And I
was like, oh, you know what, it's not that bad.
I'm still using it from like ago. Oh absolutely stowed
up on the billboard. It's not that far off. So
I think I was thinking about getting another one. I
think we should just continue to run with this one,
well against against here, you had a certain point where
then it's just funny and fun again. There's that weird
like middle ground devo is awkward because they don't look
like that, but then you hit a point or it's
(02:08):
just hilarious again. It's the joy of being a songwriter,
breaking away from the artist, where you really don't care
they think it's funny. It's funny if they think you're
trying to look younger. You don't care when you want
to stop getting Somebody occasionally will say you need to
do a headshot. I'm like, why we're not looking younger?
Updated for something? Something who doesn't look as good. I
(02:29):
don't look as good anymore, not at the point where
I started lying about my age in the other directions.
So people are like, how old you and I say
sixty two, and they're like, no, way, you look amazing.
I just want the compliment. I don't care if they
think I'm sixty two. I just need to be emotionally
patted on the back. I was excited you guys were
coming over for a couple of reasons, because you guys
have been kind of in the orbit of my life forever.
(02:50):
I mean since I moved here, but I don't know
that we've ever all set down before. Never. I think
we did something with Tim McGraw. You were interviewing him
and we were part of the you for like five
minutes about six seven years ago, but never just really yeah,
I don't even remember that it was we were in
So who is this Tom McGraw guy. We're the Cato
(03:12):
Klin of the family. So if you met us, it
was with we're in the career guesthouse. We have so
many like parallels though with people with I mean, Jim
Beaver's is a close friend of mine and is super funny.
It was the first guy in town because I've been
writing funny stuff from my comedy act because I do
stand up and he was like, hey, all right with you?
(03:33):
And then we just had fun and written a bunch
stuff together, and he goes, you think I'm funny, you
should ride with the Warm Brothers. Nobody writes funnier than
Jim Beavers. Nobody. I mean, he's we think we're funny,
but he actually writes funny. I think the only crazy
funny song we've written was red Solo Cup happened to
me with Jim. Yeah, we wrote a few more that
were with Jim that we're funny but Pirates song? Has
he turned you on to that? EDG first? Well? And
(03:54):
mostly he was like, you guys are have the ability
to be very funny and probably right very funny if
you wanted to, like it was a it was a
huge compliment on how funny he thinks you are. And
that's that space that you could easily roll into if
you wanted to, really a compliment with someone that funny
that we do these writers around with him still, and
I mean half the time we're just sitting sideways facing
(04:15):
him crying. It's just, you know, it's like have you
ever you ever seen when Arbal, I mean when when
Barbal plays the Donkey song and makes the Donkey sound
the right you could play. Let it be. They don't
care anymore. The crowds is do you guys only work together?
Pretty since Brad bought a house in Florida and he
started working on this podcast right now, you don't live
(04:38):
here right now, I live here, but I just bought
a house in Florida, so we spend about a third
of our time in Florida. That's significant. This is the
first time we've written probably songs together and about the
last year four months ago a little bit, just because
just out of geography, is that weird? It was weird.
It was a little weird. I felt like I was
(04:58):
cheating on spouse, but like it just felt it felt
a little odd. But I don't think we're totally cool
with that. I mean, we write better together. When you
write that many songs together, there's a natural chemistry. It
just happens together. We make up one real songwriter, you
know what I mean. It's like, I'm not sure credit
is publishing is one song? Right? No, not that far?
(05:19):
So okay. You guys grow up where Tampa, Florida? Been
there many times? Really? Yeah, I've played the what's the
big theater down there? It's pretty new note though now
just a bunch of half the theater. There's um old
Tampa theater. But it's it's a new as a new
one. One One. It doesn't matter. It's a dumb question. It's
gonna get us nowhere. But got guys been in radio before.
(05:39):
But I've spent a lot of time in Tampa. Um
usually once or twice a year. You grow up in Tampa.
Was Tampa then like Tampa now? Where it's like there's Florida,
but then Tampa it's kind of a bit of an
outlier as far as the kind of people that are there.
Tampa was like when we were growing up, had a
rock and roll scene. There was rock and f and
rock and roll was still kind of big and had
(05:59):
local show and so our band would get on local
shows and they had a ton of bars where everybody
would play. It was the death metal capital of the world.
Deathital music was sort of recorded it Morris sound there
by Usff'll say this, Tampa has changed less from when
we were children, so that Nashville has since we've been
here years ago, whatever national has changed unbelievably. Tampa's still
kind of And the house I bought is in Madeira Beach,
(06:21):
which is right outside St. Petersburg, Um, and it's been
exactly when I was a little kid. We used to
go there like I'm never coming to this old people's beach,
and now I'm old and I love it. That's normal,
the people's normal folks. It's the quiet, but it hasn't
changed that much. Like compared to Nashville. It's it's very
similar to you talk about a band that you guys
are in Was it the metal band? Yeah, like it
(06:42):
was that a Christian metal band started started as that, Yeah,
how does it start? But is it? I think we
said the effort on stage and that they want excommunicated.
You're canceled before canceling was the thing we had been
canceled by. We went to a small Christian school and
we would do like like and Raisers was the first
of our band ever played. I was like fourteen, he
was sixteen, and we couldn't play rock songs, so we
(07:05):
would changed the lyrics to like Brian Adams songs like
I Can't wait to see you in Heaven instead of
find it hard to Believe in Heaven and things like that.
So we we had to sort of cater to be
able to play rock and roll. We didna no get
saved instead of cocaine. Do you know what's so funny
about that? As we used to play churches and instead
of uh, George still get bad at the bone, we'd
(07:27):
be like, there's gold up above. Do do do do
do same thing? Gold up above? I said a bad
at the bone? Were like, that's gold up above. So
we had to change something we wanted to do. We
had to do the same thing because they wanted to
play the songs. I like this gold up above. I
may write that, you know, I don't know that you
should because I don't want to tickle a bone. But
(07:47):
it's amazing how full of crap church stuff can be,
because it's just if it's in the name and it
falls into the into the lane, it's good. But as
soon as someone has a real problem, they seem to
like scatter like flies. Not not always, but says the
person canceled by the churches, I'll be honest, the church
invented canceling. I mean it really did. We We canceled
(08:08):
some people when I was a kid. I'm like, man,
if they stopped going to our church, we lost their numbers.
Did you learn or learn your love from music in church?
We did? Like was there a music or a choir
or there was a band in our church? Like when
we learned. I mean, maybe a different I don't love
the music in the church, but if you had the
option to play in church, yeah, we would play it. Yeah,
(08:28):
because it was more fun to play in church than
to stand there listening to it. So we had drums
and bass and guitar, so we did play in church.
And learned how to play. We have to play in church.
We have two older sisters, the oldest one. They're both
way better musicians than we are. The oldest one can
cite read Beethoven and tell you what not to car
horn is. She's just like freaking The other one sings amazing.
And Brad was a killer guitar player from age like ten.
(08:50):
He was just great a guitar And I just never
really practiced or did anything that my mom would be like,
You're never gonna be able to play an instrument when
you get older, like somehow that would be the the
musical black sheep of the family. And now he can
play every strument. But I just joined the band when
I was fourteen because he said, Hey, all the high
school girls are coming to watch our band practice. I
just literally got in the band to hang out with
the older kids, old older girls. Literally your parents musical, Yes,
(09:15):
in what way? Both play guitar? Both thing. Did they
ever try to do it professionally even when they were younger. No,
And they encouraged us not to do it and told
us it was not a job and it's a career,
and we would wind up playing in bars until we
were fifty and all that they could have been right.
It was really close, you know, but it takes someone
who's almost failed at trying to know that though. So yeah,
(09:36):
they probably played a little bit and put their toes.
My dad played in a few bands, but never like
so they have a passion for music. Was it just
around all the time or did you see that you
would get acceptance or favor from your parents because they
loved it if you loved it, they didn't actually like
it the way we did. We had to play a
(09:56):
musical instrument. It was like a that's thirty minutes a
day you had to practice on. I played trumpet, he
played trumbone. Not cool instruments when you're a kid. And
then um, I heard a guy. We went to a
friend's house in the church and he played um, Sweet
Home Alabama on his electric guitar through an amp, and
I was transformed in that moment. I was eleven years
old and I'm like, I'm playing electric guitar. Did they
(10:18):
make you guys do brass asteroids? Because they didn't want
us to play rock and roll? And we were literally
we grew up in a funny it's crazy because everybody
wanted to be at our house, but we did not
have a television. Everyone to be at our house. My
mom wasn't the greatest cook, but kids just came over.
We played basketball. It was like this. It was this
crazy house to grow up in. But literally my mom
and dad made us run three miles before school every day,
(10:41):
even when I was in the first grade. Physically, family
get up and we would run, and then my mom
made our own sweatpants, and like we wore earth shoes.
We just wanted to be cool. We weren't allowed to
go to Applebees because they sold beer, so we had
this more so to please. Then we just wanted to
be accepted. We wanted to be cool. That's sort of
false said, so being cool, I think that's what drove
us more than almost anything else. Early on, could you
(11:04):
listen to secular music? No, we were not allowed. It
snuck until what age were you finally allowed? So we
left their house And then when you started sneaking secular music?
Was it rock? Yeah? It was Van Halen and Tom
Petty and yeah we melon camp and everything that kind
of sounds like what we do. Still did ever get caught?
Oh yeah, yeah by My grandmother gave us a little
(11:26):
black and white TV and my dad put it in
the attic so we wouldn't watch it. This is when
we were teenagers. Why she gave you a TV, but
your dad said, you can't watch the TV you were
just given. He would let us watch it occasionally on
Friday nights if we watched raw Hide, but he would
go into the attic and get it, bring it down
and we can watch raw Hide, and then you put
it back in the attic. Now, by the way, this
isn't like this is raw Hide and that's what you
(11:47):
can watch. Eight five was like when they played it
at midnight on Friday night or something. Yeah, and so
we would They had Friday night videos from Friday night videos. Okay,
so if you didn't have him TV, which we certainly
didn't have, you could watch. So we would sneak into
the attic quietly, take that little TV down and put
it in my mom's sewing room and watch Friday night
videos with the volume barely up. I remember the handle
(12:08):
was broken, so you had to turn it with your
with your fingers. It was just hysterical. The links we
would go to more flyers we had broken. We always yeah,
and you had to go in and then that the
channel and if you're born in eighty two or below,
you know what that is. So you guys have two
(12:29):
older sisters. Now, were they also sneaking music in or
were they pretty much angels and did just the Christian
music angels? They were pretty much angels. Yeah, they made up.
They made us look we were We were pretty wild anyway,
but they really shined. It was made us look bad
and then eventually we made us look bad. Exactly. Were
you guys best friends as kids, even though because two
(12:52):
years is significant and it gets less significant as you
get older. Now, as he got older and maybe had
our own friends. He was in different grades and we
played on all the sports teams there at the school,
so we kind of had our own groups of people.
But I mean we were around each other a lot.
We fought every day for probably three or four years
from like ten to thirteen. We fist fought every single day,
(13:13):
like every day. So best friends would have been weird,
but we did everything together and we share We still
share friends that we made back then, Like someone between
our ages, you're younger than me and you're older than him,
still are you know? Our our best friends are still
friends that we made together. So it's interesting that we
weren't like what we would have been called best friends
that we were. Did you guys collaborate on anything musical
(13:33):
as teenagers like to write? Like, do you remember the
first time you guys actually wrote something original together, not
not words to a melody that already existed, or like
a Christian parody? Yeah, I mean, okay, So it's funny.
The reason we've written songs together is because we were
I wrote all the songs. I was older, so I
wrote all the songs for our little band, and Warren
(13:55):
Hill was the first one, and then there was St Wren.
There's a Warren theme here obviously, and uh so I
wrote all the songs. And then Brett started writing songs
and I was like, these are good. So we kind
of started arguing about whose songs we were going to
play at the one show we played every two months,
and we just decided to write together so we wouldn't
(14:17):
compete for the songwriting. And like thirty years and three
thousand songs and a fair number of hits later, we
realized that that was the moment we started writing songs
together and we just did it together. Did you guys
want to pursue a career in Christian music when you
were teenagers before you were excommunicated from that. The Christian
(14:40):
music death metal scenes. We kind of we just it
was all we knew, a career in music, and because
we were kind of in that world where anything that
wasn't Christian was bad. Yes, but we wanted to be
on a tour bus. We want to make videos, we
wanted to play on stage, so whatever that meant Christian,
non Christian. I grew up Southern Baptist, Yeah, what were you?
(15:00):
What were you getting? But it was charismatic Southern Baptist,
So our Southern Baptist church we spoken tongues and like
people were slain in the spirit. And my grandmother was
Pentecostal and so she spoke in tongues. So I guess
I did kind of both, but in different buildings, similar
in the same church, which was odd. I remember the
first time I saw her speaking tongues, and my grandmother
(15:23):
adopted me. For a long time in my life, I
was my mom too, and I was like, what is
happening right now? Like looking back, what are your thoughts
right now on that? Bizarre Yeah, but just wildly bizarre.
I think if I walked in now and so I'd
walk out. I okay. I was like a teenager, and
all the other older teenagers laid hands on me to
(15:46):
get my prayer language. So I was speaking tongues, and
I remember sitting there and they were, oh, I was
so hungry, and I was so tired, and they kept
praying for me to get my prayer language. And I
finally just started blubbering something so they would stop, you know.
And then and then when I when I started blubbering,
they just cheered like I was on stage at Madison
Square Garden, like they were so happy that I got
in my prayer lenks. I'm like, oh, no, I didn't.
I was just hungry. Yeah, And I would have my
(16:07):
assumption would be that you're because I would see I
didn't know it's called prayer language. But I remember the
first time that people would speak in tongue tongues some
of it's plural or not at the Pentecostal church, and
everyone would again maybe not cheering, sometimes it was cheering,
but it was always positive, extremely positive affirmations because of it.
(16:29):
So I would go, are we sure they're just not
doing that for positive affirmation and they just keep doing
it because they got rewarded the first time. And so
now that's I always thought that even as a kid.
I don't know if everybody was, but somebody was. Somebody
was doing that for it felt like luiji board, like
somebody is moving that thing and so but yeah, it was.
But I went to a Southern bat but we could
dance at our church. At the southernmost we danced too.
(16:51):
We did the Jeremiah dancer. Everybody held hands in line
and did the thing back and forth. I don't know
that they called it to Jeremiah, like a fun dance.
We always said, you know why a Baptist people don't
have sex standing up because they're afraid someone might think
they're dancing. You know. We were like, no, no dancing
(17:11):
if it was rock music. But you could flail about
the church while speaking in tongues and that was cool.
But you couldn't like slow dance too. You can't do
it slower to music. You can do the same thing
slower to music. You can only do it fast. And
my church is pretty I mean. I went to a
Southern Baptist church, Mountain Pine Baptist, and they were actually
not the typical what I hear from people who went
(17:33):
to other Southern Baptist churches, because some of my friends went.
I mean, they were just like, held, you can only
do this. We're regular. Everything's regulated. And I don't know
if it's because my town was so poor. They were
just like, hey man, whatever, we're just glad. Yeah, it's
just like thank you, and you gave us a buck.
We appreciate that. Maybe. So when do you guys decide
that to to do what you want to do, you
(17:55):
have to travel. I'm not even say go to Nashville,
but you know there there's a point in your music
career or where you go. We can't just do shows here.
We can't be in just Tampa. Maybe we go play
show it. We gotta go Tallahassee, you know, Atlanta. When
you guys started, we had done a lot of that.
We moved over to the Beach right after we had
the Christian rock band. We graduate from high school. He
was two years ahead of me, so he did two
years of college. I went to one day of college.
(18:17):
We started traveling around and ironically he's a ATUC professor
at Belmont now, so it's pretty funny. I went to
one day of college, I tell the kids at Belmont,
I actually say not to sidetrack. My advice is, if
you're in the songwriting school, you don't need to spend
fifty two dollars year. It's just quick school now. But
I love them. Do you know not to side track?
Your side track let's keep Yeah. But I went and
(18:40):
spoke at a college, Texas State University, and I went
and spoke to the radio television class and went to
the radio people, and I said, Hey, you don't don't
do radio in college, Like what are you doing? Why
are you doing? Don't do radio? Like either, if you're
trying to do what I'm doing, you're not in the
right place you need to go be doing it. Or
if you need to get a degree like I had
to get a agree, don't study this while you're here.
(19:03):
So something else. Yeah, And they they told me I
wasn't allowed back on camping for years. I was banned
from campus. What did you study? What was yours? Well,
let me I'll finish this. I got a letter from
them going, hey, thank you for coming, but don't you
can't come back. And then like four or five years later,
I finally got a note from the new president that
came in said hey, we would love to have you back,
and it's funny, I still haven't been back, but yeah,
(19:24):
they told me these kids are all on our class,
my class, their seniors, their songwriting majors. That's what their
major is. And I asked them, how many songs have
you written this year? One? I started? One, I've written
to you know, like very few, and I'm like, I'm
fifty one. I've had quite a few hits and I've
written thousands of songs and I've written six this week.
Like you're competing with Jim Bieber's. You're competing with you know,
(19:46):
you didn't write six songs? No, but I mean maybe
six songs in the month, two weeks whatever. I mean,
they're they're they're not doing what they want to do.
The only way to do that is to actually do it.
It's that simple. I wish I could. My whole class
is about sort of just the the psychology of just
doing it. And we have they graduate on May the five,
and I always have a class called May the six.
(20:07):
Were are you working? Is your dad cutting you off financially?
Where are you living? What are you gonna do to
be able to write four to five songs a week
to compete with Ernest and all these new writers that
are coming up there your age, and so it's just
real practical. And so I didn't learn that in my
one day of college. But what if some what if
a kid came and miss class. It's a bunch of
class and you're like, hey, yo, where are you been?
Like I literally got a call to do some writing,
(20:27):
and sorry, but I wrote these songs. What do you
do as the instructor? Um, it's it's his choice, he's
gonna have to make. I don't really monitor. I don't
even keep a tab of attendance. I'm they'll in my class.
They'll meet Troy Tomlinson one week and Seth England and
Ken Levitan and managers and producers and big writers and
(20:48):
we meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays and they meet someone
like yourself in the business on a Tuesday, and then
we'll talk about radio and what a radio promo tour
looks like and what that would look like for you.
Or we'll have a manager and say what do you
need a manager or a business manager? And so if
they don't want to meet, if their songwrinning majors and
they don't want to meet Ben Vaughan or Troy Tomlinson
or you know, Seth England. Yeah, I'm like your seniors.
(21:11):
This this is class as a gift for you. I
don't do test. I don't need a paper. You're telling
me what music means to you. I'm gonna introduce you
to real people that tell their story and they're all
very similar. Can they fail? Um, if they don't show
up for the class, they failed. But if they didn't
show U because they're writing songs, I'm gonna fail them. Yeah,
you write songs at another time. You've committed to this class.
That's what I was hired to do. So yeah, you
have to work around it. Write the songs that failed.
(21:32):
Don't worry about if they're great songs. Yeah, it's a
it's a choice you have to make. I went and
I've spoken. Where do you Belmont? I did lips come
for three years and that this semester I'm gonna teach it. Belma,
what do you mean this semester like January starting to
spring semester? Correct? You know when I'm coming up? I spoke.
I mean I've spoken to munch of schools. But one
of the last ones that I spoke at. I shouldn't
(21:52):
in a position it s I teach, but I get
my day to day manager. She was actually a college student.
Wrote my name here it is, emailed me for an internship.
She emailed me, brought her on as an intern assistant producer.
Couldn't really pair that much their hider is my assistant, um,
executive producer, head producer, and then took her she worked
(22:13):
in red Line Management now as my day to day
manager for me speaking at a class, we speaking because
I would go and be like, this is what's happening,
this is how you do it, this is what and
then that's made that connection there. It's oh yeah, Like
like I got out the door. She was like, hey,
I'd love to talk about an internship, and I was like,
that's what I'm talking about. That's exactly how there's always
one kid in the class. It's just like there's a
(22:33):
girl Peyton Porters and artist. She was one of my
classes and she was doing every music show and emailing
people in writing songs even when she was in my class.
And she's the one that's kind of moved forward and
really doing it. You can just sort of tell the
people that aren't letting grass grow to their feet, they're
moving and shaken. You guys started moving and shaking? When
(22:56):
when you when did you start going? We gotta make money,
we gotta travel. So we started. Okay, So we started
as this like original band, doing showcases and working day jobs.
And at some point we just got tired of working
at a job, so we started learning cover songs and
playing beach bars and happy hours. And we did that
for a couple of years. It was cool. And one
day I had just that day, we lived in this
little shock on the beach, which is pretty fun, and
(23:17):
we played for the tourists and and I had decided,
like we gotta get out. We had visited Nashville a
few times, um, and we didn't know if we were
a rock band or a country just we just knew
that this was a music town. And I had just decided, like,
we're gonna move to Nashville. I'm done with this. And
like that night Brett came home and he goes, dude,
if you heard that song I Can't make you Love
being a Bonnie radio? Yeah, of course, And he said,
(23:38):
I've heard that song on the way home and maybe
pull off the road and and just sit and listen
to the whole thing. And I'm just we we need
to move to Nashville. Expecting me to say, oh, let's see,
And I said, yeah, I'm ready to go. Let's go tomorrow.
So we didn't go tomorrow, but we went like a
month later, maybe two months later. We got in and
our we shared a Toyota Corolla. I don't know, some
girl gave it to him. Long story, Um, a girl
(24:00):
gave you a car. Christian rock pays off. Girls gave
the cars. Crazy. Yeah, just and I could speak in
tongues really good. I didn't mean that the way it
came out, but you guys all took a but literally
what happened was we came here and we didn't even
know what we do for a living now exist. What
(24:22):
was your expectation that when you tell him let's move
to Nashville, what do you think he would say? And
what did you want from him? I was just I
was just passionate about it. I was so you did
really want to go? I was really wanting to go.
I was probably gonna go no matter what. But I
knew he would do. You know, we could kind of
tell we were We're frustrated in the idea that there
was a low feeling, like you said, we've got to
get out of here. That was that was kind of
(24:43):
like understood. But we were we were so sheltered as
kids that those two or three years that our mid
twenties playing covers for a living, it was something we
needed to grow up. We were paying our rent and
figure out how to play music entertain crowds, and we
needed that. We're just kind of late bloomers and uh,
but we were coming here to be stars. We were
gonna here to be Keith Irvin, you know. So we
knew one guy here. He was a host at Bennegan's,
(25:05):
this guy named Johnny V. And he introduced the first personally.
So we rented an apartment, the one bedroom we shared
one bedroom apartment, and we went to see our buddy
that worked at Bennigan's as a host, was the only
person we knew in in Nashville, and he introduced us
to his friend that was also a host of Bennigan's,
Shane mcinneally. Wow, literally, and he was just like, I mean,
he was further behind that we were in the music business.
(25:25):
He had Shane was probably how old was probably and yeah,
I'm a songwriter too, are like cool? I mean, he
was like, I had no idea he would become the
one guy from Florida that had made a connection here
with a guy named Buzz Cason who has a studio
right next to Black But we didn't know forever and
Buzz introduced us to a new songwriter in town that
(25:48):
we started writing some songs, was named Tom Douglas. We
had no idea that we were gonna start getting mentored
and start writing songs with that guy that caliber. Have
you seen his documentary? Oh? Yeah, isn't it? It's the
greatest I've watched, even if I didn't know Tom and
didn't know his work, and the house that built me
for everybody listening would probably be the song that most
(26:09):
people associate with him. The documentary is so good. Every watch.
It's not even a Documentary's kind of like a monologue. Yeah,
it's like a moving monologue, like a moving docu log
I don't moving, But he said that's exactly what it is.
He was like, would you like to watch this? This
(26:29):
is a year and a half ago, maybe because we
don't know what to do with it. And I watched it,
and I was so moved by it that I was
as honest, like he said, I don't know what to
do with it either, but I do know what it
did to me, and and I actually felt all and
I just kind of listed the things that I felt.
And is it even out? Can you get Yeah? It's
on Paramount Plus. Okay, well then let me do a
(26:50):
little plug here. I should probably get Tom back on.
Then it's called Love Tom Tom. It's on Paramount Plus,
and um, Jason Owen kind of helped him move it there,
and he just moved from one stage and one song.
And every songwriter should have to watch that. He's telling
the story of his life and wraps in the songs
that he's written and kind of the psychology of songs
and life. And I don't even think it'd be a
(27:12):
songwriter to enjoy it, don't. Yeah, my kids don't really,
they're not paying much attention. And my son when came out,
he's seventeen. I was like he was fifteen. We sat
down and said watch this with me, and he got done.
He goes, I get it. I love it. It's awesome.
And you met Tom when you get first out here
close to which is crazy because everyone was like, you
guys don't even seem like you would know. Tom Douglass
he still like you. Yeah, Yeah, we're great. We're great friends.
(27:33):
A matter of fact, we were. We were we think
we were budding alcoholic drug addicts when we met Tom,
and he somehow dealt with us, and then we became sober.
We really became close. And he's like, gosh, I was
still worried about you guys for so long, but we Yeah,
we loved each other right away. We were really different.
Did you guys struggle together with alcoholism or addiction or
(27:53):
almost Yeah? And I said that from somebody that my
mom died of addiction. Yeah, and I talked about it
pretty freely and openly. So so the way, yeah, I
want to get to that too. That you you don't drink, right,
that's amazing, because um, I think that you probably need
a reason. But it's imagine what you could accomplish in
life if you just eliminated that time sucking, energy sucking
thing of alcohol and drugs. Even even people that don't
(28:17):
have a problem, it's a lot of time spent doing that.
I mean, you're kind of living proof. But I've always
been kind of amazed with someone who could see that
as a potential problem, especially someone who had a parent
or a sibling to struggle with it, and the tendency
is for that person to just delve in and do
it the same thing anyway. And I loved, I always
loved the story that you just didn't do it because
you saw that. I mean, you think that helps your career.
(28:38):
I first let me say for me, I don't really.
I'm sure we all have similar views. We've all experienced
different versions of it right through different parts of our family,
and so for me, I've been just scared of it.
I wish I could drink. I wish I don't have
the ability to relax ever, and I have to go
through I got to a therapist, and I have some
(29:01):
like severe PTSD stuff from being attacked and jumped. Had
nothing to do with it, but I can't ever just
go ever, So when I see my friends be able
to have a beer or two have a drink, I'm
very jealous. I envied the the ability to have something
that would make you just go okay, there's a slightly
lesson the only thing I've ever had that made me
(29:22):
feel like, oh, this is awesome, and I wish I
could have it all the time. It's laughing gas like,
so I had a lot of sugar on purpose. Alright, alright,
talcing back hit me. But I am I always knew though,
And it's not the same with other parts of my family.
Not everybody made the same decision I did. And I
look back now and I'm like, how how did I
even no? Because there was a lot of trouble and
(29:43):
I had to raise myself in many ways, But I
don't know how I was able to go I'm never
gonna do it, and I never did it, and I
am shocked by that. Let me put your mind at ease. Well,
I don't know. Everyone have a different opinion on this.
I think it's a gift. Sobriety is a gift because
the crutch that we used to relax does work for
about twenty minutes, maybe an hour if you don't have
(30:06):
a problem, but it doesn't really work in the long run.
Anything that gave me what I would call relief wound
up with bad behavior and a terrible hangover and something
that I regretted. And you don't have to wake up
in the morning and wonder who you texted or what
you said, and if you make a mistake, you can
kind of own it because it was you. And that's
the worst part. I don't want to for people that
(30:26):
don't have a problem, that don't have the addiction, they
can't have a beer or a glass of wine, and
it does sort of jealous. But for guys like us
that we have the disease, I mean, alcohol really wasn't
our problem, it was our solution. We were the same way.
I didn't really realize that growing up, but I was
insecure and I wanted people to like me, and I
felt uncomfortable and socially awkward. And then when I would
(30:47):
drink a couple of drinks, I just didn't care. And
I was the wild guy and the funny guy. So
if four drinks were good, twelve were amazing. And it
just with everything. It's really that way. You guys have
addictive personalities and more, yeah, or drug of choices more,
but caffeine. I overdo caffeine to this day. I think
I work a lot, and it's in keep your mind busy.
(31:11):
I absolutely and I understand why someone like we talked
about him earlier, Tom Tom McGraw, where he would work
out all the time. Because if you have an addictive personality,
and I do, God, I do with everything I do.
I decided earlier to to like fill that hunger with hopeful,
hopefully positive things. I'm gonna be addicted to something, Okay,
(31:33):
I got it, But what I'm gonna be addicted to
are things that are going to be the healthiest option
for me. Not always healthy. It's not healthy. How much
I work, it's not healthy. How much I'm obsessed with
it doesn't matter what it is for this three months
or year, or it's not healthy. But I think it's
healthier than where I want to go. If you deal
with your anxiousness and your anxieties by overworking, it's not
(31:55):
necessarily perfect, but it's a lot better than if you
dealt with them without. Because people ask me what you
missed about not drinking, and I say, the first thirty minutes,
you don't drink it all anymore. No, seventeen years, it's
neither one of us correct. We started together, we used together,
we quit together. Why did you quit at the bottom?
Whenever people alway asked, did you get a du y?
None of that, just we were done. I wanted to
(32:17):
quit and my wife was about to leave. She didn't.
She stopped crying. She sat me down lovingly and said, hey,
you know what, I really care about you and worried
about you. I'm gonna move home to Detroit. I had
two little kids at the time, and I was like, Wow,
this is really happening. And it kind of was this
clarity moment and then it was still about a year
and a half till I fully quit it. But I
really tried on my own. I'm only gonna drink on
(32:38):
the weekends. I'm only gonna drink wine. I'm not gonna
take pills. I mean, fill in the blank. I was
trying to do it myself and we kind of were
out and L's be honest, you didn't get a duy
because we lived on a bus. Because I'm not playing
like patting myself on the back. But there wasn't like
a big incident like that that it was just cocaine
and it was that's no good. It's really fun right
(32:59):
up until it stops. It looks a lot, and I'm
being honest, it looks like great fun, Like it looks
like the greatest fun ever. And I don't even say
that joking. Late's I all my friends they have, they
went to college, they have all these stories in college
of parties and oh what look what we did. You
know what I did? I went to work and yes
it's great now it is great, but you know there
(33:21):
is There's My point is I'm not I don't celebrate
the fact that I never had a drink. I look
at my trophy. I go. It's hard, and I wish
that I could not. But I know where I have deficiencies.
I think we all have them in different areas of
our life. It's just I also don't keep sugar in
the house because I know I eat it all right then,
right then, and there, all of it. I'll eat a
whole cake, so I can still do that. I'm as
(33:42):
healthy as my grocery store trip. That if you have
kale and almonds and blueberries a lot right now. And
I intermittent fast My kids are tired of hearing. They
want to hear it anymore. But I can deny myself
much better than I can moderate myself. Same and the
same reasons, because once I start, I literally eat for
eight hours straight. It's almost like I am addicted to
(34:04):
intermittent fasting. Once I start, or whatever it is, yeah,
it's like I'm gonna I'm gonna be there. I want
to be the best at everything too, so I know
that if I drank, I'll be the number one drinker.
I want to be the number one intermittent, faster. I
want to be So you know what you said that
resonated with me was your wife stopped crying, Because that's
a that's a stage in it for whomever you're with.
(34:25):
Even with my mom, it got to the point where
I wasn't upset anymore and I was just like, Okay,
well I've exhausted that part and it's not going to
get better because of the exhaustion and the emotion. So
now we're at this stage. And you know, there were
times checking her in and out of places that were
very difficult before she died, and but that is a stage.
(34:45):
That was a stage that I had. But you know,
her brother died also. The same reason my dad left
was when you're from a small town in a rural
area where there aren't a lot of options, Like I
understand the opioid epidemic in the way of I get it.
I hate it, it sucks, but I get it. When
you have no options, hopelessness and isolation. I would do
(35:06):
if I if I were hopeless and isolated and sad
and here's something that can make me not be for
a bit, I would. So it's a fun definitely. Well,
I want to know what age you were when you
just said, like, I don't remember it, always knew it,
just just do it, I would see, am I real
doubt left? Right? So I never he left five or six?
I vaguely remember then. How old were you when you
(35:28):
gave up with you? I mean, like, I don't mean
gave up, but you know what I mean when you said, Okay,
I can't not the emotion is not gonna fix this
for which part? Like when you stopped getting stressed about
her going to rehab or or over. Never I never
got stressed about her. I just always had this romantic
version in my head of her because I knew and you, guys,
(35:48):
maybe you can disagreet you like I knew. For her
to get better, she had to get to a place
where she wanted to do it holy herself. For a
long time, I felt like I can want it so
bad for her and if she kinds of kind of
wants it. And then I started to make money. I
was like, great, I'll wire some land, bought some land,
then bought her a place to live. But I was
actually doing what I shouldn't be doing, and I was
aiding her. Yeah, and so as I'm enabling her, it's tough.
(36:12):
People don't know. They don't know, so then it's okay. Well,
but I'm doing all this stuff I thought could help,
but actually enabled her to have more time and more
resources to do that. And so she I don't think
she ever really wanted it. I don't think she knew.
But again, she had me. She got pregnant fifteen. You know,
she never didn't know poverty. So I have a sister, yeah, younger, younger,
(36:34):
four years younger, and I had to do a lot
of that raising myself. Um, she's closer. My sister had
some struggles. She lived here, No, she lives in Arkansas,
where I'm from. So but she never really my mom.
I at one point, I don't make this about me,
but I just find it so fascinating that you guys
will openly talk about it because I know you guys
have gone through parallels or and I'll end on my
(36:56):
part of this story with this. I had been jumped
at work and had a gun held in my head.
I's had a radio event and death threat that. A
lot of stuff happened, and I've been to the doctor.
I don't like to take medicine even because I'm so
scared to be addicted to stuff, but there are times
where I have to take medicine because I'm also you know,
I'm not hippie. So I went to the doctor and
we started really light and tried all these things because
(37:19):
I wasn't sleeping. I'd i'd go maybe get an hour
sleep every two nights because I closed my eyes and
I was getting attacked constantly my dreams or my sleep,
and so we tried all this stuff. Finally he said, hey,
why don't we try this sleeping pill. We tried everything
because I'm scared to get addicted. Because great, then let's
not you cannot sleep. We go through all the process,
took sleeping pills, got to the point on them where
I was dependent. I'm not gonna say addictive, but I
(37:39):
was definitely dependent. And there's a there's a difference. There's
a difference. Yeah, And I stopped and I went through
some crazy withdrawal from the sleeping pills, and I vomited
for a few days, Blurry felt terrible, and I remember
thinking to myself, if this is withdrawal from sleeping pills,
if I'm my mom, I would never stop taking meth
and how violent and that going on. I feel so
(38:00):
ukey to have gone through that because it gave me
an understanding of the monster that she was constantly fighting,
that that addicted, not just the addiction part, but okay,
if she wanted to quit, and then she went through
something that was I don't even understand, and for me
it was awful. Am I was sleeping pills. It wasn't
even like the hard stuff that she had got addicted to,
(38:21):
and so that was I'm very grateful for that sleeping
pill instance an issue, just for that understanding. It's like
my wife, we we I mean, that's a different story,
but we might her or may not get to him
like we My son had. My oldest son had this
this issue and we lost him. But my wife would
take it personally and I was like, you don't, because
(38:42):
I'm an addict. I completely understood, I've been through. Everything
is not personal. He's not doing this to misbehave. It
is literally it's more of a miracle. The moment in
time that passes where he doesn't do this. It's way
more of a miracle that I don't drink today than
than crazy that I did. I am programmed to do that.
I was the best at drinking. Maybe he was the best,
but when we were first and second place often, UM,
(39:05):
and it that is the I mean your program that
way and having experienced it, which is why we're able
to help a lot of people, um and recover. We
do it because if you if you don't understand it,
I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, I know, I know that,
I recognize that. And then people can tell you the
worst things about them and you're like, yeah, I get it,
and they kind of are almost taken aback by the
fact that you're not jumping on them or gasping and
whatever it might be. And UM that that is the
(39:28):
gift and the transfer of it on. But if you
haven't had that experience what you had, it's hard to
understand you. It's like, that's why would you do that?
I understand. Empathy is such a tool and you only
get it through struggle, and nobody wants to struggle. So
it's something that old saying good judgment comes from experience
(39:50):
and experience comes from bad judgment. It's like kind of
like that, but are usage of alcohol and drugs. It
seems like this, oh yeah, we had to quit. We
party too hard. Literally, there's two I've found and being
Brad talking about all the time, there's two ways to
look at recovery. It's either like like this punishment where
you get locked in a cage, or it's a gift.
And the gift side of it is because of the
(40:12):
kind of strange way we grew up. It kind of
developed a real relationship with God with us and everything
that was bad. We kind of lost our record We
didn't know songwriting existed. We moved here to be big stars,
and we sort of wasted the way that decade and
drank away our major opportunities. Um And I was like, well, what, okay,
I've quit drinking, I'm sober now, but what good is
going to come out of this? Did you find God
(40:32):
going to use that great unviolated to my next thing? Right?
So you lose your you lost the deal. Nine eleven
happens we get kicked off our tour, because it's not
kicked off for doing something wrong, but the tour ends.
We lost our record deal, lost our publishing deal, and
then our dad died two days before Christmas two thousand one,
and are having fun. We're a party where the rock
(40:53):
and roll country guys led to serious medicating and it
went downhill from there. And so what is four we got?
That was one four years, four years of total deck,
four years of just interestingly when we when we got silber,
when it's time, I'm like, oh my god, I'm never
gonna be able to be creative again. When I was going,
here's the ironing and that no one's gonna like us,
(41:14):
we found out no one liked us. Okay, so worrying
about the creative process, I am not drinking any where.
I'm never gonna be able to be creative again. This
is it's over. We had zero hits. We had a
record deal, but we we had written a bunch of
songs that were not hits. We had no hits, and
I was protecting something that didn't even exist, which was
a successful songwriting career. Oh my god, I mean, I
(41:34):
can't quit drinking or I'm not gonna be able to write.
And the year we quit writing, we had two hits.
We had never had a hit. We we and actually
became songwriters because there was a little humility and becoming
the service guy that helped other artists get where they
wanted to go. And we realized that our talent wasn't
helping someone get where they wanted to go instead of
being the artist, and we started writing and trying to
help other people, and immediately we had hits and we've
(41:56):
had a great career since that moment. But I was
so afraid that we were gonna lose this edge of
creativity we had, and I had no success before. That's
how insane it is. Was there a clarity that was
surprising once you started to create non medicated? Oh yeah,
I mean there's that the pink cloud if you just
a feel better. I remember driving home going over got
(42:22):
nothing on me drinking. I wanted to to pull me.
I was like, pull me over, dude, so fast for
like a year. So it's like you just have this
freedom and then you know, just going going to the
meetings and staying clear in your mind just gets clear
with every day and you have it comes from a
place of humility and total honesty. That exhale you were
talking about earlier. You know, it's hard for me to
get that too, But I find it in moments like these,
(42:46):
or when we're just sitting with other people and we're
just being completely honest and no one's worried about what
you're gonna say, you're gonna judge you, or you made
a joke that went too far. It's just like this
moment when everybody's just sort of being compassionate, empathetic and honest,
and you can kind of those are the moments try go.
You know what those sobriety is is. I'm want to
say better sobriety is easier for us than it is
(43:07):
for you in a way because we've been through a
lot of that hell that your mom went through. The
little issue you have with sleeping pills, we had that
for ten years, and yes there was fun involved, but
towards the end it was total medication, total fun. So
it's really easier for us because we experienced so much
hell emotionally, spiritually, physically, just feeling horrible the whole time.
(43:28):
Makes it every day that I wake up and I
don't have to wonder what I did. I've never in
seventeen years woken up and saying, man, I wish I
got hammered last night. It's never happened. So if I
can delay the gratification until the next morning, it's it's
actually really a gift because it was so bad. What
were the two songs that you said, the Lucky One,
the Lucky Anyway and anyway from our talk bride, So
(43:52):
did you write them near each other, because they came
out a couple of years apart. We we really remember
the Lucky One got cut, Okay, the Lucky One we
wrote before I'm sorry. So the two we had at
the same time we're anyway and if you're reading this
and they were up at the same time. The Lucky
One we had written earlier. We actually wrote that before
we got sober, so it became a hit after we
got sober. But we wrote anyway, and if you're reading this,
(44:15):
like the first year we got silver, Now, they didn't
become hits immediately, but that was our first year of
sobriety is writing And to be honest, we we play
a corporate nights Songwriter City all the time, um and
and at five minutes set and we've written a lot
of songs, thousands, and had a lot of hits, and
we still to this day will play if you're reading
(44:37):
this in anyway, and that set because they were that
so that first year of sobriety produced something that we
still make a living off of. I saw Tim do
if you're reading this, when he put out the book
a year and a half orso ago. They did the
theater tour and he performed that. And to hear that
song acoustic and in person, it's a gut I mean
it's it's a gut punch. And I've heard the song
(45:00):
because it came out so like that's when I remember it.
But to hear it again in person acoustic, every word right,
because for me, I love slow acoustic, even sad songs.
I can hear the words. There's not a piece of fat.
It's it's so strong. We've had some cool just going
(45:21):
out in the road to write with him. He'll let
us come up on stage and play with him and
we'll play that song and we've had, you know, right
after we wrote it. It was kind of a hit
for him. While we're playing it, ladies come up and
set their husband's dog tags on the stage. I mean,
me and Brad are sobbing while we're playing. We've got
to play Walter Reid. It's every night. But we've we
(45:42):
do these corporate shows, and corporations just hires it. It's
the greatest job ever because they're there and they're listening
and we play that particular song and usually it's just
it's like the song of the night. It is. It's
just a I don't know why, it's just Dirk Smitley
told us we came about it, well, that's the best
song I never want to hear. Yes, you're right, it's
like a movie. You don't want to hear it every day, said,
(46:02):
and you got it and you felt it, but you're like, Okay,
I'm good. I don't need to go back and watch
that one. I'm not watching the Notebook. I mean, not
that I've ever seen it. Yeah, of course or read
the book. I did. But so Highway Don't Care speaking
of Tim transitions me there whenever you guys write that.
But then that turns into a whole event, And I
don't know if that was the assumption that Highway don't care.
(46:23):
It's Tim and Taylor and Keith Urban on it and
like that that's song kind of graduating to that level
you write it. Is it just a song for one person?
Was it for Tim and how did it slowly grow?
We wrote it as a duet actually, and we were
thinking Tim and Faith. Um. Yeah, but we wrote it
(46:44):
as a duet. It's funny. We wrote with Josh Kire
and on the work tape he did the girls part
because he could sing really high. It was funny. But
we did write it as a duet. And when Tim
said he was gonna get Taylor's to do it, we
had written with Taylor when she was younger, and oh,
that's great. Then it took a while because she has
a lot of you timing issues and she didn't want
it to come out too early when getting the way
of something she was doing, and we're kind of like, damn,
(47:05):
just just do somebody else. Just doing somebody else. Be goes.
We wanted to get it out there, and then when
finally with Taylor sang out, we're like, oh God, thank you.
I mean, it's it's never uncol to hear one of
your songs recorded by anybody. But I remember when we
always tell the story live, when we do our little thing,
it's like Tim said him cut another one of your songs.
Were like great. I went home and told my wife
and she's like, oh, congratulations. You know. And then I
told her Keith Urban's on it. Wow, he's hot. And
(47:27):
I was like, I don't think it's going to be
a single to radio. Well cool, then we'll get paid.
And then I said, and I think it's a duet
with Taylor Swift. And my wife looks up and she goes,
we are painting the house like it is one of
those that's that's a massive song with three huge legendary
people on it was those don't come around for a
moment there were It was pretty cool looking at you guys,
(47:48):
this just collection of songs and going through the catalog.
Uh we mentioned Red sol look up earlier and when
it comes to Toby weird that wasn't a number one.
And it also shows you that not all number one's
last and not all songs and need to be number
one to also last forever and be defining songs. Because
when I think of Toby Key, I think of a
couple of different American songs and Red Solo cup like
(48:09):
that's a because his personality, right, his personality lends to
he's funny and that's his funniest song. Did you that
he didn't write to the b M. I I avoid everything.
We don't go to the c M as. Everybody said
you go c as. We like, if we're ever nominated
for something, we might go. My friend Jake was there
and he said that Toby Toby thing was really special.
(48:29):
It was really special. But Toby's an amazing songwriter and
I think has written every one of his own songs
except two or three, and that has to be one
of them. So they're honoring him at b AM, I
Frey songwriter and there's red solo cups on every table
and they had the whole thing were red sol cup
blows up in the video and I'm like, this is funny,
me and be and Jim Beavers and Brett here. I
was like, yeah, just joking around like this whole nights
(48:51):
about that stupid song. It is something. I don't know
why it's that big. It's funny. But the number ones
you mentioned, because anyway that we still play wasn't a
number one, and if you're reading this was not a
number one. L Red's old cups and three of our
and we have we have some number one songs that
we never played live or I think people have forgotten.
They just kind of go by. That song was also
a cultural song, meaning we had we knew, we knew
(49:12):
the cups, but no one had really identified that that
was a part of what people And I'll just say
because we're I'm from what people in the South used
when going on when they just hung out and did
stuff with other people. That was it. When song's going on,
there's red cup and on that the track you hear,
(49:32):
I hear Jim even make a noise and are you
guys it's the four of us around one mic Jim's
brother Brett. Yes, the four of us. So Jim and
Brett Beavers bred Brett Warren where we did a demo
session and uh, we didn't record that song. And so
the engineer, Luke Lutin, we know him big for this. Uh,
he said, hey, do the cup song. We're like, now,
(49:53):
we're not doing We had already broken the drums at
everything down. He said, do the cup song and we said,
we're not doing that. It was just a joke. It
was just funny. It'll be for us and he's, no,
I want you to do it because I want to
play it for my wife. And we said, well, we've
already broken on the drums down and the amps are
packed away and he said, here, here's a mic in
the little room. You four sit around and just do it.
So Jim Beavers saying it all the funny stuff, and
(50:13):
we recorded it and anyway, so we wound up getting
Toby Keith, our friend Butter played it for Toby Heath
and he said, I just want the music to that
without the vocals on it, because that's exactly what the
record is gonna be. And we're like, we don't, we
don't have a version, didn't record it, and tracks, we
didn't do it. So he said, all right, we'll put
that in your ears and then go back and do
all the crazy ship that you didn't that you did same,
(50:35):
just don't sing it and just leave the you know,
just leave out the lead vocal. And so literally our
chairs are squeaking. Jim Beevers is making funny noises. Bread
schooling here. It's some part of it. I was trying
to imitate Axl Rose and you're here, and I was doing,
like hear me, clearing my throat as the as it
counts off. Brett Beavers is playing a band show and
he that's the record. It's amazing. That's sloppy. One take
or on the mic is the record. Don't make a
(50:57):
lot of money off that one. No, there's only a No.
Or eight and you don't really get anything extra for
it being a cultural act. I wasn't used in places
and did they. We've had quite a few songs that
have made more money than that. Now, when we get
hired and and people call us to do a corporate show,
they call the company's songwriter city that hires us. Usually
(51:17):
that company wants to hear that song. Ye, that's the
one that sticks out, And I mean we'll play big
hits and Grammy nominated songs and song of the Year
nomination from the c M as people, Oh it's great,
thank you very much. And then when you play that,
everybody's up, every phone's out. It's crazy. So that's how
it's translating into it's actually we've been more funny playing
that song called performance. But that's just also a gift
(51:38):
to what's good, grief good okay. So I UM it's
a podcast. I started um SO two and a half
years ago. My oldest son UH died from a fentanyl overdose. UM.
He struggled with with drugs and alcohol. UM He had
been sober for about a year and then COVID happened
and he just you know, it just kind of fell
(51:59):
off and he had a couple of weeks where he
was out and he took some drugs of fetting on
them and um, and he died. So there's a new journey, UM,
and I have. I started meeting with other men that
had had I had a couple of friends that had
lost children. And I realized that because I'm in recovery,
I had people to talk to, Like I had a
circle of friends where you you know, men don't just
(52:21):
sit around and get raw and honest with each other
that often that's just something that women do. And we
were raising a culture and and you know, you just
don't talk about your feelings. And UM, I realized that
these men that I knew didn't have, that weren't in recovery,
didn't have anyone. Some of these guys four years, five
years their child had been gone and they had never
talked about it. And like, well, that's ridiculous. We should
change that. So I started a meeting at my house, um,
(52:42):
with dad's that lost kids. And so there's you know, UM,
some people that you would probably like Casey Bethard and
and Jeffrey Steel and some people that. UM. But there's
just a group of guys and we just start a
dialogue and just talk about the loss and really honest
about things. And it's amazing. It's never in my life
except for that hour once a month or that two
(53:03):
hours am I in a room full of people where
everyone knows exactly how I feel. UM. And that conversation
kind of spurred something in me. Um. I wasn't really
actually thinking if I ran into a guy. We were
in Austin playing a corporate a charity event and Uh,
this guy, Matt Piveto that produces Jack Ingram's podcast, UM
(53:24):
saw me and catering. He said, hey, I want to
talk to you. Um. I've been waiting to meet you
for like a year. But he said, I saw something
that you wrote on Facebook about your son, and I
think you should do it. And he said, I I
produced podcasts only. I think you should do a podcast
on grief. I'm glad it's that's a nice idea. I'm
definitely not doing. That doesn't sound like any fun at all.
And we exchanged numbers and we talked about it a
(53:46):
few times, and it's kind of good. That sounds like,
it's a lot of work and it sounds like a
really emotional thing. I'm just definitely not doing that. In
one morning, my wife said, you're doing this, and um,
and I knew I was supposed to. And so we
have started doing it and it's actually been a really
powerful thing. Um. It's something that's missing because I think
people that are really ingrained in church and whatever that
(54:07):
may look like maybe have somewhere to go with this.
But this show is kind of for people that maybe
are a little bit outside the traditional religious thing. They
still believe in God, they believe their child is in
heaven or whatever it is. But we talked about it
raw honestly. There's there's profanity and Jesus and whatever, and
it's just a really honest, um conversation with somebody who's
(54:28):
experienced grief and uh, you know, because you have experienced it. Um,
And I feel like everyone if they live long I mean,
if you live long enough, you're gonna experience loss and grief,
and UM, we just kind of started a conversation. First
episodes came out two weeks ago, and it's just the
response has been more than we thought it would. My
friend Lisa over here is one of the producers on it,
and it's just been it's really emotional and but it's
(54:50):
been really powerful. Just it's just a conversation about loss
and grief and there's humor and thus far there's a
lot of music people in it. But um, it's not
like we sit around and cry the whole time. It's
funny and we it's humor, but it's actually things that
you don't I don't know, I've never heard people talking about,
at least in the way that we're talking about it.
And um, we'll see it's this tomorrow a new episode
(55:14):
will come out, but it's really early. But the response
has been a lot more than I have no social
media presence done anything, and somehow people are finding it
and listening and calling and wanting to be on it.
And that's really cool. Blessing, Good Grief, Good God show
dot com or you just search for it. We'll put
it up in the notes too, Mike, so you guys
can see it over there. So we've already done an hour.
(55:39):
I mean I could do another hour easily, So I
have a couple more things to say, but before I
have to go, my trainer is here. Okay, we can't
get it. You know, we're addicted to working out. Well,
we do an hour and now and usually honestly about
pick two minutes in for everybody. I'm like, all right,
let's move. But I could do another hour easily because
I feel like we could have any rests. So how
(55:59):
about this in six months, let's just do it again.
Little you're back. I don't ever do that with you.
I don't just like people that much. But six months,
let's do it again. If you're back in town, great,
But something that I still live here. By the way,
I just killed that said. If you're back in town,
you've got not big time now, Mr Florida over on
the beach guy. So when I'm first moved to town,
(56:23):
and I was living in Austin, Texas, and I had
kind of built my own little syndication deal in Texas,
and I was on you know one and two the
twenty five pop stations, and I was bringing in you know,
pop artists, but also would have Dirks and Willie Nelson
and Eli Young band, and I was getting a lot
of heat for being too country to be pop, which
is ironic because now I get heat for being too
(56:44):
pop to be country. Everybody. So my contract is up
and they say, what do you want to do? And
they said, we're gonna move me to New York or
l A for Ryan or for Elvis Duran and they
both resigned deals. And I was like, I don't know.
I said, well, there's never been a nationally syndicated country
morning show, and they said, okay, so we do this
(57:05):
whole thing. And so I come here and meet with
the company and I'm still a little like, I don't know,
but they're really trying to convince me. I knew I
wanted to do it, but I had to leave everything
that I built and sent my own money on, like
I built it all. And I was like, but if
the minute I leave this, it's gone forever. I can't
in a year ago back and go I'd like to
have that. Yeah, I'd like to have all that, right, right.
(57:27):
And so we come and I go, okay, boom. Well
I find out they're like, hey, look there are these
two guys. And the head executive of our company was
like we the one person was like, we don't want
you here. We want the warm Brothers to do the show.
I didn't know if that information ever got to you,
but we were going to bring that up. Oh yeah,
I know, I know it. Immediately they asked us to
(57:48):
do it, and we did a couple of Thursday nights
on races. I'm sure there are two versions of the
story too. And and he told me straight up because
I don't it was the head in the format, but
he wasn't the big national boss, and he was like,
I don't think this is right for you. I've already
got the Warm Brothers picked out to do this show
in Nashville. And I'm like, who the Warm Brothers. Oh,
those those Christian death metal guys and big Christen death
(58:10):
metal life metal. So I was like, listen, I don't
know what you only want me to say, and he goes, well,
I just know it's gonna be tough here. And you're
also not my first pick to do this. I don't
think I was just pick at all to do it.
It's just fine. And so I was a little weirded
out by that. But then again the did not like
I didn't know who you were. And let me just
(58:32):
say for the record, we would never have been even
a smidget as successful as you have. You don't know
you might have been in Nashville nationally, it would have
been all inside humor, good self awareness, being a radio
for four hours until King takes a lot of work
and we were like, anyway, yeah, we can't do it.
It's five hours piscounting anyway exactly exactly. I remember just going, well,
(58:56):
that's weird. I guess they're good. I don't. I didn't
know you were even a songwriter. I thought you were
just too like comedy Brothers at first. I've never done radio,
by the way, and so I came here and I
was like, yeah, I'll do it, let's do it, and
a couple of times during it because it didn't go
well for me for a long for two years here,
it was very difficult. It felt like it was immediately
a huge hit. But and you, I felt like, you
(59:18):
guys just wrote a bunch of songs. Don't nowhere right?
And so what I remember is being told through the
grape vine like, hey, he's really looking to get the
warm Brothers in here if you go backward at all,
And all I was doing was going backwards the whole time,
because it was he was rattling a saber that didn't exist.
And I just always had this feel like these two
dudes are like plotting against me the whole time. I
(59:40):
always felt it the whole time. Well, then the show
took off a little bit, and then I really and
that dude was relieved, and I brought in my guy
who now runs the format, but I'm also his guy.
And then I then got later into it and understood
that he found quit finger quotes found you for whatever
job that was. If he did or not, I don't know.
(01:00:00):
So that's why I was so important to him, and
he didn't quote find me like you were his guys anyway.
I hate I hated you, all right, that's I mean,
I really loved that because I never even know if
that information got to you. And we didn't really we
did a few weekend nights or week nights. We never
really took it that seriously because I said, Brett, we're
funny for about five minutes. There's four hours. So we
(01:00:21):
would do an hour on Thursday night and I would
be I mean like we would prep a bunch of stuff,
like maybe thirty minutes worth of stuff and it would
be gone in seven minutes. Oh so no, we we knew,
and we did a few nights were like, no, we can't.
We are not equipped to do this. I'm not sure
we'd get up this early. And the way we already
kind of had a job that was working like he
was going well, he was like, oh, you could do it.
At the same time, we're like nah. I remember he asked,
(01:00:41):
he goes, how much money do you want? We had
never done it. We asked for like a half million
dollars a piece and like eight weeks paid vacation. I mean,
we were not on the list you have done with this.
We would never I mean, I'm not being humble. I'm
telling you we would have never done even a fraction
of it because our humor is kind of Nashville base,
so it would have been funny here, like Jerry House
(01:01:02):
was our hero, and we had never done radio. We
had realized that the bits that you do have to
lengthen out and the funny little clips only last for
a second. Oh no, they whoever didn't hire us, made
the best move ever for everyone. I mean, ever score
information got to you. I think that's terble. Yeah, I
know immediately. That's why I held some of our songs
(01:01:22):
hostage and they weren't number one for that. But that
being said, I haven't I mean, I haven't really thought
about that in years, and I've just been a big
fans of you. Get a big fan of you guys,
mostly because people I'm a fan of and no and
like personally have an affinity for have an affinity for
you guys because we hadn't spent time together. But that's
how you know if a show, it's like somebody with
(01:01:42):
sensibilities like yours loves a certain show and it's like
this is it just it's good nine. So some of
my dearest friends Lee miller Um just several of our
first like you don't know, Bobby Bones, you guys may
be the best of You don't know. You've never said
I don't think we've ever said high in passing with Tim,
but we've never really talked. I had no ideas, but
because we definitely almost didn't get this show, the fact
(01:02:03):
that they were dangling us over your head is the
funniest thing. That was a rotten over a couple of years,
like it was on and on. But I do I
just youna have to bleep out Michael Brian's name when
I say it. Michael Brian and I are stale friends
so great. We love him because he actually had faith
that we I'm like, I really think we can do
this weekend. But Brian was at the Dangler though, he
(01:02:24):
was really okay, wow, I can tell you out because
we never talked to anyone else. But I love that
he had the confidence. I'm like, I think you're crazy
that you think we can do this. I think we
could be funny on someone else's show, but I'm not
sure this isn't we could be funny for two minutes
between songs on stage. Five hours and doing a show.
It takes. And when I listened to your travel, when
you say, oh, I'm going every weekend, I'm going here
(01:02:46):
and doing that, I'm like, Okay, you got up at
three o'clock and more than five days straight and you're
gonna fly out of town as soon as you get
off work and come back the next day. I think
I'm too old for that. I'm serious, I am. Yeah,
happen for a long time. Yeah, I've always Yes, that sucks,
but it's lovely and I wouldn't get to meet guys
like you if it weren't for it to bed at night.
There's not an answer. I mean, if I'm on the
road or shoot a TV show, or we're living in
(01:03:07):
a foreign country, which we had to do for a
month and a half. I do in the radio. It's
it's tough. But my final point is I've you know,
a lot of people that I'm close to and value
friendships with and have again just a massive affinity for
and they have the same thing towards you. So I've
always like I felt extremely pure about you guys, and
have big fans of who you are without meeting you,
and obviously a big fan of your work. So well,
(01:03:30):
thank you for having us this same and thanks for
having us in six months. Six months, I'm in because
I got so I got so much more and even more.
Even though we were the rotten carrot that got dangled,
you still had a song only took you ten years,
so big that he could smash it. Now I'll wait,
it will crash. Probably should have talked the first week.
(01:03:53):
We could have made your life so much cheesy. You guys,
check out a good Grief, Good God show and go
to at the Warren Brothers and we'll see you guys soon. Everybody,
Thanks Bobby, appreciate h m hm
Episode three seventy three Brad and Brett Warren, the Warren Brothers.
I think I could have done to maybe three hours
with them. There's a lot of fun and then I
went from fun to just being, you know, super serious.
We had to trust each other a little bit. We
got into some areas that I think if we all
weren't comfortable with ourselves, we wouldn't have been comfortable going there.
(00:21):
Just a real good experience here with the Warren brothers.
They have nine number ones. We can roll through some
pretty quickly. If you're reading this, Tim McGraw, feel that fire.
Dirk s Bentley felt good on my lips. Tim McGraw,
a little bit of everything. Keith Urban Highway, don't care.
Tim McGraw. With Taylor and Urban, I could keep going.
I mean they have so many songs, they have many
(00:42):
top tens. I mean, they came to town, they were
trying to be artists. Some stuff happened. Now they're two
of the best songwriters in Nashville. And there's a new
podcast hosted by Brad. It's called The Good Grief Good
God Show hosted by Brad, where he talks about it's grief.
It's a grief podcast when it's a good grief. I
thought of Charlie Brown honestly first good Grief, but it
(01:04):
really is a grief podcast and he talks about it.
You can check out Good Grief, Good God show dot
com or find the link in the notes of this
podcast and go check it out. Here we are, it's me,
it's the Warren Brothers, and it's episode three seventy three,
Bred and Bred. The Warren Brothers are here. You know
you guys commented on your head shot it's up when
(01:26):
what when was that head shot taken? Do you think?
And it was long enough ago where I don't have
any gray streaks in my hair was now there for sure,
So I'm gonna say ten years ago. Oh, I didn't
think it was that. Maybe eight years ago, seven, eight
years ago? Yeah, ten was way off. Eight, I didn't
I think it was that dated. And I was like, well,
(01:46):
this that's quite quite a dated head shot. And I
was like, oh, you know what, it's not that bad.
I'm still using it from like ago. Oh absolutely stowed
up on the billboard. It's not that far off. So
I think I was thinking about getting another one. I
think we should just continue to run with this one,
well against against here, you had a certain point where
then it's just funny and fun again. There's that weird
like middle ground devo is awkward because they don't look
like that, but then you hit a point or it's
(02:08):
just hilarious again. It's the joy of being a songwriter,
breaking away from the artist, where you really don't care
they think it's funny. It's funny if they think you're
trying to look younger. You don't care when you want
to stop getting Somebody occasionally will say you need to
do a headshot. I'm like, why we're not looking younger?
Updated for something? Something who doesn't look as good. I
(02:29):
don't look as good anymore, not at the point where
I started lying about my age in the other directions.
So people are like, how old you and I say
sixty two, and they're like, no, way, you look amazing.
I just want the compliment. I don't care if they
think I'm sixty two. I just need to be emotionally
patted on the back. I was excited you guys were
coming over for a couple of reasons, because you guys
have been kind of in the orbit of my life forever.
(02:50):
I mean since I moved here, but I don't know
that we've ever all set down before. Never. I think
we did something with Tim McGraw. You were interviewing him
and we were part of the you for like five
minutes about six seven years ago, but never just really yeah,
I don't even remember that it was we were in
So who is this Tom McGraw guy. We're the Cato
(03:12):
Klin of the family. So if you met us, it
was with we're in the career guesthouse. We have so
many like parallels though with people with I mean, Jim
Beaver's is a close friend of mine and is super funny.
It was the first guy in town because I've been
writing funny stuff from my comedy act because I do
stand up and he was like, hey, all right with you?
(03:33):
And then we just had fun and written a bunch
stuff together, and he goes, you think I'm funny, you
should ride with the Warm Brothers. Nobody writes funnier than
Jim Beavers. Nobody. I mean, he's we think we're funny,
but he actually writes funny. I think the only crazy
funny song we've written was red Solo Cup happened to
me with Jim. Yeah, we wrote a few more that
were with Jim that we're funny but Pirates song? Has
he turned you on to that? EDG first? Well? And
(03:54):
mostly he was like, you guys are have the ability
to be very funny and probably right very funny if
you wanted to, like it was a it was a
huge compliment on how funny he thinks you are. And
that's that space that you could easily roll into if
you wanted to, really a compliment with someone that funny
that we do these writers around with him still, and
I mean half the time we're just sitting sideways facing
(04:15):
him crying. It's just, you know, it's like have you
ever you ever seen when Arbal, I mean when when
Barbal plays the Donkey song and makes the Donkey sound
the right you could play. Let it be. They don't
care anymore. The crowds is do you guys only work together?
Pretty since Brad bought a house in Florida and he
started working on this podcast right now, you don't live
(04:38):
here right now, I live here, but I just bought
a house in Florida, so we spend about a third
of our time in Florida. That's significant. This is the
first time we've written probably songs together and about the
last year four months ago a little bit, just because
just out of geography, is that weird? It was weird.
It was a little weird. I felt like I was
(04:58):
cheating on spouse, but like it just felt it felt
a little odd. But I don't think we're totally cool
with that. I mean, we write better together. When you
write that many songs together, there's a natural chemistry. It
just happens together. We make up one real songwriter, you
know what I mean. It's like, I'm not sure credit
is publishing is one song? Right? No, not that far?
(05:19):
So okay. You guys grow up where Tampa, Florida? Been
there many times? Really? Yeah, I've played the what's the
big theater down there? It's pretty new note though now
just a bunch of half the theater. There's um old
Tampa theater. But it's it's a new as a new
one. One One. It doesn't matter. It's a dumb question. It's
gonna get us nowhere. But got guys been in radio before.
(05:39):
But I've spent a lot of time in Tampa. Um
usually once or twice a year. You grow up in Tampa.
Was Tampa then like Tampa now? Where it's like there's Florida,
but then Tampa it's kind of a bit of an
outlier as far as the kind of people that are there.
Tampa was like when we were growing up, had a
rock and roll scene. There was rock and f and
rock and roll was still kind of big and had
(05:59):
local show and so our band would get on local
shows and they had a ton of bars where everybody
would play. It was the death metal capital of the world.
Deathital music was sort of recorded it Morris sound there
by Usff'll say this, Tampa has changed less from when
we were children, so that Nashville has since we've been
here years ago, whatever national has changed unbelievably. Tampa's still
kind of And the house I bought is in Madeira Beach,
(06:21):
which is right outside St. Petersburg, Um, and it's been
exactly when I was a little kid. We used to
go there like I'm never coming to this old people's beach,
and now I'm old and I love it. That's normal,
the people's normal folks. It's the quiet, but it hasn't
changed that much. Like compared to Nashville. It's it's very
similar to you talk about a band that you guys
are in Was it the metal band? Yeah, like it
(06:42):
was that a Christian metal band started started as that, Yeah,
how does it start? But is it? I think we
said the effort on stage and that they want excommunicated.
You're canceled before canceling was the thing we had been
canceled by. We went to a small Christian school and
we would do like like and Raisers was the first
of our band ever played. I was like fourteen, he
was sixteen, and we couldn't play rock songs, so we
(07:05):
would changed the lyrics to like Brian Adams songs like
I Can't wait to see you in Heaven instead of
find it hard to Believe in Heaven and things like that.
So we we had to sort of cater to be
able to play rock and roll. We didna no get
saved instead of cocaine. Do you know what's so funny
about that? As we used to play churches and instead
of uh, George still get bad at the bone, we'd
(07:27):
be like, there's gold up above. Do do do do
do same thing? Gold up above? I said a bad
at the bone? Were like, that's gold up above. So
we had to change something we wanted to do. We
had to do the same thing because they wanted to
play the songs. I like this gold up above. I
may write that, you know, I don't know that you
should because I don't want to tickle a bone. But
(07:47):
it's amazing how full of crap church stuff can be,
because it's just if it's in the name and it
falls into the into the lane, it's good. But as
soon as someone has a real problem, they seem to
like scatter like flies. Not not always, but says the
person canceled by the churches, I'll be honest, the church
invented canceling. I mean it really did. We We canceled
(08:08):
some people when I was a kid. I'm like, man,
if they stopped going to our church, we lost their numbers.
Did you learn or learn your love from music in church?
We did? Like was there a music or a choir
or there was a band in our church? Like when
we learned. I mean, maybe a different I don't love
the music in the church, but if you had the
option to play in church, yeah, we would play it. Yeah,
(08:28):
because it was more fun to play in church than
to stand there listening to it. So we had drums
and bass and guitar, so we did play in church.
And learned how to play. We have to play in church.
We have two older sisters, the oldest one. They're both
way better musicians than we are. The oldest one can
cite read Beethoven and tell you what not to car
horn is. She's just like freaking The other one sings amazing.
And Brad was a killer guitar player from age like ten.
(08:50):
He was just great a guitar And I just never
really practiced or did anything that my mom would be like,
You're never gonna be able to play an instrument when
you get older, like somehow that would be the the
musical black sheep of the family. And now he can
play every strument. But I just joined the band when
I was fourteen because he said, Hey, all the high
school girls are coming to watch our band practice. I
just literally got in the band to hang out with
the older kids, old older girls. Literally your parents musical, Yes,
(09:15):
in what way? Both play guitar? Both thing. Did they
ever try to do it professionally even when they were younger. No,
And they encouraged us not to do it and told
us it was not a job and it's a career,
and we would wind up playing in bars until we
were fifty and all that they could have been right.
It was really close, you know, but it takes someone
who's almost failed at trying to know that though. So yeah,
(09:36):
they probably played a little bit and put their toes.
My dad played in a few bands, but never like
so they have a passion for music. Was it just
around all the time or did you see that you
would get acceptance or favor from your parents because they
loved it if you loved it, they didn't actually like
it the way we did. We had to play a
(09:56):
musical instrument. It was like a that's thirty minutes a
day you had to practice on. I played trumpet, he
played trumbone. Not cool instruments when you're a kid. And
then um, I heard a guy. We went to a
friend's house in the church and he played um, Sweet
Home Alabama on his electric guitar through an amp, and
I was transformed in that moment. I was eleven years
old and I'm like, I'm playing electric guitar. Did they
(10:18):
make you guys do brass asteroids? Because they didn't want
us to play rock and roll? And we were literally
we grew up in a funny it's crazy because everybody
wanted to be at our house, but we did not
have a television. Everyone to be at our house. My
mom wasn't the greatest cook, but kids just came over.
We played basketball. It was like this. It was this
crazy house to grow up in. But literally my mom
and dad made us run three miles before school every day,
(10:41):
even when I was in the first grade. Physically, family
get up and we would run, and then my mom
made our own sweatpants, and like we wore earth shoes.
We just wanted to be cool. We weren't allowed to
go to Applebees because they sold beer, so we had
this more so to please. Then we just wanted to
be accepted. We wanted to be cool. That's sort of
false said, so being cool, I think that's what drove
us more than almost anything else. Early on, could you
(11:04):
listen to secular music? No, we were not allowed. It
snuck until what age were you finally allowed? So we
left their house And then when you started sneaking secular music?
Was it rock? Yeah? It was Van Halen and Tom
Petty and yeah we melon camp and everything that kind
of sounds like what we do. Still did ever get caught?
Oh yeah, yeah by My grandmother gave us a little
(11:26):
black and white TV and my dad put it in
the attic so we wouldn't watch it. This is when
we were teenagers. Why she gave you a TV, but
your dad said, you can't watch the TV you were
just given. He would let us watch it occasionally on
Friday nights if we watched raw Hide, but he would
go into the attic and get it, bring it down
and we can watch raw Hide, and then you put
it back in the attic. Now, by the way, this
isn't like this is raw Hide and that's what you
(11:47):
can watch. Eight five was like when they played it
at midnight on Friday night or something. Yeah, and so
we would They had Friday night videos from Friday night videos. Okay,
so if you didn't have him TV, which we certainly
didn't have, you could watch. So we would sneak into
the attic quietly, take that little TV down and put
it in my mom's sewing room and watch Friday night
videos with the volume barely up. I remember the handle
(12:08):
was broken, so you had to turn it with your
with your fingers. It was just hysterical. The links we
would go to more flyers we had broken. We always yeah,
and you had to go in and then that the
channel and if you're born in eighty two or below,
you know what that is. So you guys have two
(12:29):
older sisters. Now, were they also sneaking music in or
were they pretty much angels and did just the Christian
music angels? They were pretty much angels. Yeah, they made up.
They made us look we were We were pretty wild anyway,
but they really shined. It was made us look bad
and then eventually we made us look bad. Exactly. Were
you guys best friends as kids, even though because two
(12:52):
years is significant and it gets less significant as you
get older. Now, as he got older and maybe had
our own friends. He was in different grades and we
played on all the sports teams there at the school,
so we kind of had our own groups of people.
But I mean we were around each other a lot.
We fought every day for probably three or four years
from like ten to thirteen. We fist fought every single day,
(13:13):
like every day. So best friends would have been weird,
but we did everything together and we share We still
share friends that we made back then, Like someone between
our ages, you're younger than me and you're older than him,
still are you know? Our our best friends are still
friends that we made together. So it's interesting that we
weren't like what we would have been called best friends
that we were. Did you guys collaborate on anything musical
(13:33):
as teenagers like to write? Like, do you remember the
first time you guys actually wrote something original together, not
not words to a melody that already existed, or like
a Christian parody? Yeah, I mean, okay, So it's funny.
The reason we've written songs together is because we were
I wrote all the songs. I was older, so I
wrote all the songs for our little band, and Warren
(13:55):
Hill was the first one, and then there was St Wren.
There's a Warren theme here obviously, and uh so I
wrote all the songs. And then Brett started writing songs
and I was like, these are good. So we kind
of started arguing about whose songs we were going to
play at the one show we played every two months,
and we just decided to write together so we wouldn't
(14:17):
compete for the songwriting. And like thirty years and three
thousand songs and a fair number of hits later, we
realized that that was the moment we started writing songs
together and we just did it together. Did you guys
want to pursue a career in Christian music when you
were teenagers before you were excommunicated from that. The Christian
(14:40):
music death metal scenes. We kind of we just it
was all we knew, a career in music, and because
we were kind of in that world where anything that
wasn't Christian was bad. Yes, but we wanted to be
on a tour bus. We want to make videos, we
wanted to play on stage, so whatever that meant Christian,
non Christian. I grew up Southern Baptist, Yeah, what were you?
(15:00):
What were you getting? But it was charismatic Southern Baptist,
So our Southern Baptist church we spoken tongues and like
people were slain in the spirit. And my grandmother was
Pentecostal and so she spoke in tongues. So I guess
I did kind of both, but in different buildings, similar
in the same church, which was odd. I remember the
first time I saw her speaking tongues, and my grandmother
(15:23):
adopted me. For a long time in my life, I
was my mom too, and I was like, what is
happening right now? Like looking back, what are your thoughts
right now on that? Bizarre Yeah, but just wildly bizarre.
I think if I walked in now and so I'd
walk out. I okay. I was like a teenager, and
all the other older teenagers laid hands on me to
(15:46):
get my prayer language. So I was speaking tongues, and
I remember sitting there and they were, oh, I was
so hungry, and I was so tired, and they kept
praying for me to get my prayer language. And I
finally just started blubbering something so they would stop, you know.
And then and then when I when I started blubbering,
they just cheered like I was on stage at Madison
Square Garden, like they were so happy that I got
in my prayer lenks. I'm like, oh, no, I didn't.
I was just hungry. Yeah, And I would have my
(16:07):
assumption would be that you're because I would see I
didn't know it's called prayer language. But I remember the
first time that people would speak in tongue tongues some
of it's plural or not at the Pentecostal church, and
everyone would again maybe not cheering, sometimes it was cheering,
but it was always positive, extremely positive affirmations because of it.
(16:29):
So I would go, are we sure they're just not
doing that for positive affirmation and they just keep doing
it because they got rewarded the first time. And so
now that's I always thought that even as a kid.
I don't know if everybody was, but somebody was. Somebody
was doing that for it felt like luiji board, like
somebody is moving that thing and so but yeah, it was.
But I went to a Southern bat but we could
dance at our church. At the southernmost we danced too.
(16:51):
We did the Jeremiah dancer. Everybody held hands in line
and did the thing back and forth. I don't know
that they called it to Jeremiah, like a fun dance.
We always said, you know why a Baptist people don't
have sex standing up because they're afraid someone might think
they're dancing. You know. We were like, no, no dancing
(17:11):
if it was rock music. But you could flail about
the church while speaking in tongues and that was cool.
But you couldn't like slow dance too. You can't do
it slower to music. You can do the same thing
slower to music. You can only do it fast. And
my church is pretty I mean. I went to a
Southern Baptist church, Mountain Pine Baptist, and they were actually
not the typical what I hear from people who went
(17:33):
to other Southern Baptist churches, because some of my friends went.
I mean, they were just like, held, you can only
do this. We're regular. Everything's regulated. And I don't know
if it's because my town was so poor. They were
just like, hey man, whatever, we're just glad. Yeah, it's
just like thank you, and you gave us a buck.
We appreciate that. Maybe. So when do you guys decide
that to to do what you want to do, you
(17:55):
have to travel. I'm not even say go to Nashville,
but you know there there's a point in your music
career or where you go. We can't just do shows here.
We can't be in just Tampa. Maybe we go play
show it. We gotta go Tallahassee, you know, Atlanta. When
you guys started, we had done a lot of that.
We moved over to the Beach right after we had
the Christian rock band. We graduate from high school. He
was two years ahead of me, so he did two
years of college. I went to one day of college.
(18:17):
We started traveling around and ironically he's a ATUC professor
at Belmont now, so it's pretty funny. I went to
one day of college, I tell the kids at Belmont,
I actually say not to sidetrack. My advice is, if
you're in the songwriting school, you don't need to spend
fifty two dollars year. It's just quick school now. But
I love them. Do you know not to side track?
Your side track let's keep Yeah. But I went and
(18:40):
spoke at a college, Texas State University, and I went
and spoke to the radio television class and went to
the radio people, and I said, Hey, you don't don't
do radio in college, Like what are you doing? Why
are you doing? Don't do radio? Like either, if you're
trying to do what I'm doing, you're not in the
right place you need to go be doing it. Or
if you need to get a degree like I had
to get a agree, don't study this while you're here.
(19:03):
So something else. Yeah, And they they told me I
wasn't allowed back on camping for years. I was banned
from campus. What did you study? What was yours? Well,
let me I'll finish this. I got a letter from
them going, hey, thank you for coming, but don't you
can't come back. And then like four or five years later,
I finally got a note from the new president that
came in said hey, we would love to have you back,
and it's funny, I still haven't been back, but yeah,
(19:24):
they told me these kids are all on our class,
my class, their seniors, their songwriting majors. That's what their
major is. And I asked them, how many songs have
you written this year? One? I started? One, I've written
to you know, like very few, and I'm like, I'm
fifty one. I've had quite a few hits and I've
written thousands of songs and I've written six this week.
Like you're competing with Jim Bieber's. You're competing with you know,
(19:46):
you didn't write six songs? No, but I mean maybe
six songs in the month, two weeks whatever. I mean,
they're they're they're not doing what they want to do.
The only way to do that is to actually do it.
It's that simple. I wish I could. My whole class
is about sort of just the the psychology of just
doing it. And we have they graduate on May the five,
and I always have a class called May the six.
(20:07):
Were are you working? Is your dad cutting you off financially?
Where are you living? What are you gonna do to
be able to write four to five songs a week
to compete with Ernest and all these new writers that
are coming up there your age, and so it's just
real practical. And so I didn't learn that in my
one day of college. But what if some what if
a kid came and miss class. It's a bunch of
class and you're like, hey, yo, where are you been?
Like I literally got a call to do some writing,
(20:27):
and sorry, but I wrote these songs. What do you
do as the instructor? Um, it's it's his choice, he's
gonna have to make. I don't really monitor. I don't
even keep a tab of attendance. I'm they'll in my class.
They'll meet Troy Tomlinson one week and Seth England and
Ken Levitan and managers and producers and big writers and
(20:48):
we meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays and they meet someone
like yourself in the business on a Tuesday, and then
we'll talk about radio and what a radio promo tour
looks like and what that would look like for you.
Or we'll have a manager and say what do you
need a manager or a business manager? And so if
they don't want to meet, if their songwrinning majors and
they don't want to meet Ben Vaughan or Troy Tomlinson
or you know, Seth England. Yeah, I'm like your seniors.
(21:11):
This this is class as a gift for you. I
don't do test. I don't need a paper. You're telling
me what music means to you. I'm gonna introduce you
to real people that tell their story and they're all
very similar. Can they fail? Um, if they don't show
up for the class, they failed. But if they didn't
show U because they're writing songs, I'm gonna fail them. Yeah,
you write songs at another time. You've committed to this class.
That's what I was hired to do. So yeah, you
have to work around it. Write the songs that failed.
(21:32):
Don't worry about if they're great songs. Yeah, it's a
it's a choice you have to make. I went and
I've spoken. Where do you Belmont? I did lips come
for three years and that this semester I'm gonna teach it. Belma,
what do you mean this semester like January starting to
spring semester? Correct? You know when I'm coming up? I spoke.
I mean I've spoken to munch of schools. But one
of the last ones that I spoke at. I shouldn't
(21:52):
in a position it s I teach, but I get
my day to day manager. She was actually a college student.
Wrote my name here it is, emailed me for an internship.
She emailed me, brought her on as an intern assistant producer.
Couldn't really pair that much their hider is my assistant, um,
executive producer, head producer, and then took her she worked
(22:13):
in red Line Management now as my day to day
manager for me speaking at a class, we speaking because
I would go and be like, this is what's happening,
this is how you do it, this is what and
then that's made that connection there. It's oh yeah, Like
like I got out the door. She was like, hey,
I'd love to talk about an internship, and I was like,
that's what I'm talking about. That's exactly how there's always
one kid in the class. It's just like there's a
(22:33):
girl Peyton Porters and artist. She was one of my
classes and she was doing every music show and emailing
people in writing songs even when she was in my class.
And she's the one that's kind of moved forward and
really doing it. You can just sort of tell the
people that aren't letting grass grow to their feet, they're
moving and shaken. You guys started moving and shaking? When
(22:56):
when you when did you start going? We gotta make money,
we gotta travel. So we started. Okay, So we started
as this like original band, doing showcases and working day jobs.
And at some point we just got tired of working
at a job, so we started learning cover songs and
playing beach bars and happy hours. And we did that
for a couple of years. It was cool. And one
day I had just that day, we lived in this
little shock on the beach, which is pretty fun, and
(23:17):
we played for the tourists and and I had decided,
like we gotta get out. We had visited Nashville a
few times, um, and we didn't know if we were
a rock band or a country just we just knew
that this was a music town. And I had just decided, like,
we're gonna move to Nashville. I'm done with this. And
like that night Brett came home and he goes, dude,
if you heard that song I Can't make you Love
being a Bonnie radio? Yeah, of course, And he said,
(23:38):
I've heard that song on the way home and maybe
pull off the road and and just sit and listen
to the whole thing. And I'm just we we need
to move to Nashville. Expecting me to say, oh, let's see,
And I said, yeah, I'm ready to go. Let's go tomorrow.
So we didn't go tomorrow, but we went like a
month later, maybe two months later. We got in and
our we shared a Toyota Corolla. I don't know, some
girl gave it to him. Long story, Um, a girl
(24:00):
gave you a car. Christian rock pays off. Girls gave
the cars. Crazy. Yeah, just and I could speak in
tongues really good. I didn't mean that the way it
came out, but you guys all took a but literally
what happened was we came here and we didn't even
know what we do for a living now exist. What
(24:22):
was your expectation that when you tell him let's move
to Nashville, what do you think he would say? And
what did you want from him? I was just I
was just passionate about it. I was so you did
really want to go? I was really wanting to go.
I was probably gonna go no matter what. But I
knew he would do. You know, we could kind of
tell we were We're frustrated in the idea that there
was a low feeling, like you said, we've got to
get out of here. That was that was kind of
(24:43):
like understood. But we were we were so sheltered as
kids that those two or three years that our mid
twenties playing covers for a living, it was something we
needed to grow up. We were paying our rent and
figure out how to play music entertain crowds, and we
needed that. We're just kind of late bloomers and uh,
but we were coming here to be stars. We were
gonna here to be Keith Irvin, you know. So we
knew one guy here. He was a host at Bennegan's,
(25:05):
this guy named Johnny V. And he introduced the first personally.
So we rented an apartment, the one bedroom we shared
one bedroom apartment, and we went to see our buddy
that worked at Bennigan's as a host, was the only
person we knew in in Nashville, and he introduced us
to his friend that was also a host of Bennigan's,
Shane mcinneally. Wow, literally, and he was just like, I mean,
he was further behind that we were in the music business.
(25:25):
He had Shane was probably how old was probably and yeah,
I'm a songwriter too, are like cool? I mean, he
was like, I had no idea he would become the
one guy from Florida that had made a connection here
with a guy named Buzz Cason who has a studio
right next to Black But we didn't know forever and
Buzz introduced us to a new songwriter in town that
(25:48):
we started writing some songs, was named Tom Douglas. We
had no idea that we were gonna start getting mentored
and start writing songs with that guy that caliber. Have
you seen his documentary? Oh? Yeah, isn't it? It's the
greatest I've watched, even if I didn't know Tom and
didn't know his work, and the house that built me
for everybody listening would probably be the song that most
(26:09):
people associate with him. The documentary is so good. Every watch.
It's not even a Documentary's kind of like a monologue. Yeah,
it's like a moving monologue, like a moving docu log
I don't moving, But he said that's exactly what it is.
He was like, would you like to watch this? This
(26:29):
is a year and a half ago, maybe because we
don't know what to do with it. And I watched it,
and I was so moved by it that I was
as honest, like he said, I don't know what to
do with it either, but I do know what it
did to me, and and I actually felt all and
I just kind of listed the things that I felt.
And is it even out? Can you get Yeah? It's
on Paramount Plus. Okay, well then let me do a
(26:50):
little plug here. I should probably get Tom back on.
Then it's called Love Tom Tom. It's on Paramount Plus,
and um, Jason Owen kind of helped him move it there,
and he just moved from one stage and one song.
And every songwriter should have to watch that. He's telling
the story of his life and wraps in the songs
that he's written and kind of the psychology of songs
and life. And I don't even think it'd be a
(27:12):
songwriter to enjoy it, don't. Yeah, my kids don't really,
they're not paying much attention. And my son when came out,
he's seventeen. I was like he was fifteen. We sat
down and said watch this with me, and he got done.
He goes, I get it. I love it. It's awesome.
And you met Tom when you get first out here
close to which is crazy because everyone was like, you
guys don't even seem like you would know. Tom Douglass
he still like you. Yeah, Yeah, we're great. We're great friends.
(27:33):
A matter of fact, we were. We were we think
we were budding alcoholic drug addicts when we met Tom,
and he somehow dealt with us, and then we became sober.
We really became close. And he's like, gosh, I was
still worried about you guys for so long, but we Yeah,
we loved each other right away. We were really different.
Did you guys struggle together with alcoholism or addiction or
(27:53):
almost Yeah? And I said that from somebody that my
mom died of addiction. Yeah, and I talked about it
pretty freely and openly. So so the way, yeah, I
want to get to that too. That you you don't drink, right,
that's amazing, because um, I think that you probably need
a reason. But it's imagine what you could accomplish in
life if you just eliminated that time sucking, energy sucking
thing of alcohol and drugs. Even even people that don't
(28:17):
have a problem, it's a lot of time spent doing that.
I mean, you're kind of living proof. But I've always
been kind of amazed with someone who could see that
as a potential problem, especially someone who had a parent
or a sibling to struggle with it, and the tendency
is for that person to just delve in and do
it the same thing anyway. And I loved, I always
loved the story that you just didn't do it because
you saw that. I mean, you think that helps your career.
(28:38):
I first let me say for me, I don't really.
I'm sure we all have similar views. We've all experienced
different versions of it right through different parts of our family,
and so for me, I've been just scared of it.
I wish I could drink. I wish I don't have
the ability to relax ever, and I have to go
through I got to a therapist, and I have some
(29:01):
like severe PTSD stuff from being attacked and jumped. Had
nothing to do with it, but I can't ever just
go ever, So when I see my friends be able
to have a beer or two have a drink, I'm
very jealous. I envied the the ability to have something
that would make you just go okay, there's a slightly
lesson the only thing I've ever had that made me
(29:22):
feel like, oh, this is awesome, and I wish I
could have it all the time. It's laughing gas like,
so I had a lot of sugar on purpose. Alright, alright,
talcing back hit me. But I am I always knew though,
And it's not the same with other parts of my family.
Not everybody made the same decision I did. And I
look back now and I'm like, how how did I
even no? Because there was a lot of trouble and
(29:43):
I had to raise myself in many ways, But I
don't know how I was able to go I'm never
gonna do it, and I never did it, and I
am shocked by that. Let me put your mind at ease. Well,
I don't know. Everyone have a different opinion on this.
I think it's a gift. Sobriety is a gift because
the crutch that we used to relax does work for
about twenty minutes, maybe an hour if you don't have
(30:06):
a problem, but it doesn't really work in the long run.
Anything that gave me what I would call relief wound
up with bad behavior and a terrible hangover and something
that I regretted. And you don't have to wake up
in the morning and wonder who you texted or what
you said, and if you make a mistake, you can
kind of own it because it was you. And that's
the worst part. I don't want to for people that
(30:26):
don't have a problem, that don't have the addiction, they
can't have a beer or a glass of wine, and
it does sort of jealous. But for guys like us
that we have the disease, I mean, alcohol really wasn't
our problem, it was our solution. We were the same way.
I didn't really realize that growing up, but I was
insecure and I wanted people to like me, and I
felt uncomfortable and socially awkward. And then when I would
(30:47):
drink a couple of drinks, I just didn't care. And
I was the wild guy and the funny guy. So
if four drinks were good, twelve were amazing. And it
just with everything. It's really that way. You guys have
addictive personalities and more, yeah, or drug of choices more,
but caffeine. I overdo caffeine to this day. I think
I work a lot, and it's in keep your mind busy.
(31:11):
I absolutely and I understand why someone like we talked
about him earlier, Tom Tom McGraw, where he would work
out all the time. Because if you have an addictive personality,
and I do, God, I do with everything I do.
I decided earlier to to like fill that hunger with hopeful,
hopefully positive things. I'm gonna be addicted to something, Okay,
(31:33):
I got it, But what I'm gonna be addicted to
are things that are going to be the healthiest option
for me. Not always healthy. It's not healthy. How much
I work, it's not healthy. How much I'm obsessed with
it doesn't matter what it is for this three months
or year, or it's not healthy. But I think it's
healthier than where I want to go. If you deal
with your anxiousness and your anxieties by overworking, it's not
(31:55):
necessarily perfect, but it's a lot better than if you
dealt with them without. Because people ask me what you
missed about not drinking, and I say, the first thirty minutes,
you don't drink it all anymore. No, seventeen years, it's
neither one of us correct. We started together, we used together,
we quit together. Why did you quit at the bottom?
Whenever people alway asked, did you get a du y?
None of that, just we were done. I wanted to
(32:17):
quit and my wife was about to leave. She didn't.
She stopped crying. She sat me down lovingly and said, hey,
you know what, I really care about you and worried
about you. I'm gonna move home to Detroit. I had
two little kids at the time, and I was like, Wow,
this is really happening. And it kind of was this
clarity moment and then it was still about a year
and a half till I fully quit it. But I
really tried on my own. I'm only gonna drink on
(32:38):
the weekends. I'm only gonna drink wine. I'm not gonna
take pills. I mean, fill in the blank. I was
trying to do it myself and we kind of were
out and L's be honest, you didn't get a duy
because we lived on a bus. Because I'm not playing
like patting myself on the back. But there wasn't like
a big incident like that that it was just cocaine
and it was that's no good. It's really fun right
(32:59):
up until it stops. It looks a lot, and I'm
being honest, it looks like great fun, Like it looks
like the greatest fun ever. And I don't even say
that joking. Late's I all my friends they have, they
went to college, they have all these stories in college
of parties and oh what look what we did. You
know what I did? I went to work and yes
it's great now it is great, but you know there
(33:21):
is There's My point is I'm not I don't celebrate
the fact that I never had a drink. I look
at my trophy. I go. It's hard, and I wish
that I could not. But I know where I have deficiencies.
I think we all have them in different areas of
our life. It's just I also don't keep sugar in
the house because I know I eat it all right then,
right then, and there, all of it. I'll eat a
whole cake, so I can still do that. I'm as
(33:42):
healthy as my grocery store trip. That if you have
kale and almonds and blueberries a lot right now. And
I intermittent fast My kids are tired of hearing. They
want to hear it anymore. But I can deny myself
much better than I can moderate myself. Same and the
same reasons, because once I start, I literally eat for
eight hours straight. It's almost like I am addicted to
(34:04):
intermittent fasting. Once I start, or whatever it is, yeah,
it's like I'm gonna I'm gonna be there. I want
to be the best at everything too, so I know
that if I drank, I'll be the number one drinker.
I want to be the number one intermittent, faster. I
want to be So you know what you said that
resonated with me was your wife stopped crying, Because that's
a that's a stage in it for whomever you're with.
(34:25):
Even with my mom, it got to the point where
I wasn't upset anymore and I was just like, Okay,
well I've exhausted that part and it's not going to
get better because of the exhaustion and the emotion. So
now we're at this stage. And you know, there were
times checking her in and out of places that were
very difficult before she died, and but that is a stage.
(34:45):
That was a stage that I had. But you know,
her brother died also. The same reason my dad left
was when you're from a small town in a rural
area where there aren't a lot of options, Like I
understand the opioid epidemic in the way of I get it.
I hate it, it sucks, but I get it. When
you have no options, hopelessness and isolation. I would do
(35:06):
if I if I were hopeless and isolated and sad
and here's something that can make me not be for
a bit, I would. So it's a fun definitely. Well,
I want to know what age you were when you
just said, like, I don't remember it, always knew it,
just just do it, I would see, am I real
doubt left? Right? So I never he left five or six?
I vaguely remember then. How old were you when you
(35:28):
gave up with you? I mean, like, I don't mean
gave up, but you know what I mean when you said, Okay,
I can't not the emotion is not gonna fix this
for which part? Like when you stopped getting stressed about
her going to rehab or or over. Never I never
got stressed about her. I just always had this romantic
version in my head of her because I knew and you, guys,
(35:48):
maybe you can disagreet you like I knew. For her
to get better, she had to get to a place
where she wanted to do it holy herself. For a
long time, I felt like I can want it so
bad for her and if she kinds of kind of
wants it. And then I started to make money. I
was like, great, I'll wire some land, bought some land,
then bought her a place to live. But I was
actually doing what I shouldn't be doing, and I was
aiding her. Yeah, and so as I'm enabling her, it's tough.
(36:12):
People don't know. They don't know, so then it's okay. Well,
but I'm doing all this stuff I thought could help,
but actually enabled her to have more time and more
resources to do that. And so she I don't think
she ever really wanted it. I don't think she knew.
But again, she had me. She got pregnant fifteen. You know,
she never didn't know poverty. So I have a sister, yeah, younger, younger,
(36:34):
four years younger, and I had to do a lot
of that raising myself. Um, she's closer. My sister had
some struggles. She lived here, No, she lives in Arkansas,
where I'm from. So but she never really my mom.
I at one point, I don't make this about me,
but I just find it so fascinating that you guys
will openly talk about it because I know you guys
have gone through parallels or and I'll end on my
(36:56):
part of this story with this. I had been jumped
at work and had a gun held in my head.
I's had a radio event and death threat that. A
lot of stuff happened, and I've been to the doctor.
I don't like to take medicine even because I'm so
scared to be addicted to stuff, but there are times
where I have to take medicine because I'm also you know,
I'm not hippie. So I went to the doctor and
we started really light and tried all these things because
(37:19):
I wasn't sleeping. I'd i'd go maybe get an hour
sleep every two nights because I closed my eyes and
I was getting attacked constantly my dreams or my sleep,
and so we tried all this stuff. Finally he said, hey,
why don't we try this sleeping pill. We tried everything
because I'm scared to get addicted. Because great, then let's
not you cannot sleep. We go through all the process,
took sleeping pills, got to the point on them where
I was dependent. I'm not gonna say addictive, but I
(37:39):
was definitely dependent. And there's a there's a difference. There's
a difference. Yeah, And I stopped and I went through
some crazy withdrawal from the sleeping pills, and I vomited
for a few days, Blurry felt terrible, and I remember
thinking to myself, if this is withdrawal from sleeping pills,
if I'm my mom, I would never stop taking meth
and how violent and that going on. I feel so
(38:00):
ukey to have gone through that because it gave me
an understanding of the monster that she was constantly fighting,
that that addicted, not just the addiction part, but okay,
if she wanted to quit, and then she went through
something that was I don't even understand, and for me
it was awful. Am I was sleeping pills. It wasn't
even like the hard stuff that she had got addicted to,
(38:21):
and so that was I'm very grateful for that sleeping
pill instance an issue, just for that understanding. It's like
my wife, we we I mean, that's a different story,
but we might her or may not get to him
like we My son had. My oldest son had this
this issue and we lost him. But my wife would
take it personally and I was like, you don't, because
(38:42):
I'm an addict. I completely understood, I've been through. Everything
is not personal. He's not doing this to misbehave. It
is literally it's more of a miracle. The moment in
time that passes where he doesn't do this. It's way
more of a miracle that I don't drink today than
than crazy that I did. I am programmed to do that.
I was the best at drinking. Maybe he was the best,
but when we were first and second place often, UM,
(39:05):
and it that is the I mean your program that
way and having experienced it, which is why we're able
to help a lot of people, um and recover. We
do it because if you if you don't understand it,
I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, I know, I know that,
I recognize that. And then people can tell you the
worst things about them and you're like, yeah, I get it,
and they kind of are almost taken aback by the
fact that you're not jumping on them or gasping and
whatever it might be. And UM that that is the
(39:28):
gift and the transfer of it on. But if you
haven't had that experience what you had, it's hard to
understand you. It's like, that's why would you do that?
I understand. Empathy is such a tool and you only
get it through struggle, and nobody wants to struggle. So
it's something that old saying good judgment comes from experience
(39:50):
and experience comes from bad judgment. It's like kind of
like that, but are usage of alcohol and drugs. It
seems like this, oh yeah, we had to quit. We
party too hard. Literally, there's two I've found and being
Brad talking about all the time, there's two ways to
look at recovery. It's either like like this punishment where
you get locked in a cage, or it's a gift.
And the gift side of it is because of the
(40:12):
kind of strange way we grew up. It kind of
developed a real relationship with God with us and everything
that was bad. We kind of lost our record We
didn't know songwriting existed. We moved here to be big stars,
and we sort of wasted the way that decade and
drank away our major opportunities. Um And I was like, well, what, okay,
I've quit drinking, I'm sober now, but what good is
going to come out of this? Did you find God
(40:32):
going to use that great unviolated to my next thing? Right?
So you lose your you lost the deal. Nine eleven
happens we get kicked off our tour, because it's not
kicked off for doing something wrong, but the tour ends.
We lost our record deal, lost our publishing deal, and
then our dad died two days before Christmas two thousand one,
and are having fun. We're a party where the rock
(40:53):
and roll country guys led to serious medicating and it
went downhill from there. And so what is four we got?
That was one four years, four years of total deck,
four years of just interestingly when we when we got silber,
when it's time, I'm like, oh my god, I'm never
gonna be able to be creative again. When I was going,
here's the ironing and that no one's gonna like us,
(41:14):
we found out no one liked us. Okay, so worrying
about the creative process, I am not drinking any where.
I'm never gonna be able to be creative again. This
is it's over. We had zero hits. We had a
record deal, but we we had written a bunch of
songs that were not hits. We had no hits, and
I was protecting something that didn't even exist, which was
a successful songwriting career. Oh my god, I mean, I
(41:34):
can't quit drinking or I'm not gonna be able to write.
And the year we quit writing, we had two hits.
We had never had a hit. We we and actually
became songwriters because there was a little humility and becoming
the service guy that helped other artists get where they
wanted to go. And we realized that our talent wasn't
helping someone get where they wanted to go instead of
being the artist, and we started writing and trying to
help other people, and immediately we had hits and we've
(41:56):
had a great career since that moment. But I was
so afraid that we were gonna lose this edge of
creativity we had, and I had no success before. That's
how insane it is. Was there a clarity that was
surprising once you started to create non medicated? Oh yeah,
I mean there's that the pink cloud if you just
a feel better. I remember driving home going over got
(42:22):
nothing on me drinking. I wanted to to pull me.
I was like, pull me over, dude, so fast for
like a year. So it's like you just have this
freedom and then you know, just going going to the
meetings and staying clear in your mind just gets clear
with every day and you have it comes from a
place of humility and total honesty. That exhale you were
talking about earlier. You know, it's hard for me to
get that too, But I find it in moments like these,
(42:46):
or when we're just sitting with other people and we're
just being completely honest and no one's worried about what
you're gonna say, you're gonna judge you, or you made
a joke that went too far. It's just like this
moment when everybody's just sort of being compassionate, empathetic and honest,
and you can kind of those are the moments try go.
You know what those sobriety is is. I'm want to
say better sobriety is easier for us than it is
(43:07):
for you in a way because we've been through a
lot of that hell that your mom went through. The
little issue you have with sleeping pills, we had that
for ten years, and yes there was fun involved, but
towards the end it was total medication, total fun. So
it's really easier for us because we experienced so much
hell emotionally, spiritually, physically, just feeling horrible the whole time.
(43:28):
Makes it every day that I wake up and I
don't have to wonder what I did. I've never in
seventeen years woken up and saying, man, I wish I
got hammered last night. It's never happened. So if I
can delay the gratification until the next morning, it's it's
actually really a gift because it was so bad. What
were the two songs that you said, the Lucky One,
the Lucky Anyway and anyway from our talk bride, So
(43:52):
did you write them near each other, because they came
out a couple of years apart. We we really remember
the Lucky One got cut, Okay, the Lucky One we
wrote before I'm sorry. So the two we had at
the same time we're anyway and if you're reading this
and they were up at the same time. The Lucky
One we had written earlier. We actually wrote that before
we got sober, so it became a hit after we
got sober. But we wrote anyway, and if you're reading this,
(44:15):
like the first year we got silver, Now, they didn't
become hits immediately, but that was our first year of
sobriety is writing And to be honest, we we play
a corporate nights Songwriter City all the time, um and
and at five minutes set and we've written a lot
of songs, thousands, and had a lot of hits, and
we still to this day will play if you're reading
(44:37):
this in anyway, and that set because they were that
so that first year of sobriety produced something that we
still make a living off of. I saw Tim do
if you're reading this, when he put out the book
a year and a half orso ago. They did the
theater tour and he performed that. And to hear that
song acoustic and in person, it's a gut I mean
it's it's a gut punch. And I've heard the song
(45:00):
because it came out so like that's when I remember it.
But to hear it again in person acoustic, every word right,
because for me, I love slow acoustic, even sad songs.
I can hear the words. There's not a piece of fat.
It's it's so strong. We've had some cool just going
(45:21):
out in the road to write with him. He'll let
us come up on stage and play with him and
we'll play that song and we've had, you know, right
after we wrote it. It was kind of a hit
for him. While we're playing it, ladies come up and
set their husband's dog tags on the stage. I mean,
me and Brad are sobbing while we're playing. We've got
to play Walter Reid. It's every night. But we've we
(45:42):
do these corporate shows, and corporations just hires it. It's
the greatest job ever because they're there and they're listening
and we play that particular song and usually it's just
it's like the song of the night. It is. It's
just a I don't know why, it's just Dirk Smitley
told us we came about it, well, that's the best
song I never want to hear. Yes, you're right, it's
like a movie. You don't want to hear it every day, said,
(46:02):
and you got it and you felt it, but you're like, Okay,
I'm good. I don't need to go back and watch
that one. I'm not watching the Notebook. I mean, not
that I've ever seen it. Yeah, of course or read
the book. I did. But so Highway Don't Care speaking
of Tim transitions me there whenever you guys write that.
But then that turns into a whole event, And I
don't know if that was the assumption that Highway don't care.
(46:23):
It's Tim and Taylor and Keith Urban on it and
like that that's song kind of graduating to that level
you write it. Is it just a song for one person?
Was it for Tim and how did it slowly grow?
We wrote it as a duet actually, and we were
thinking Tim and Faith. Um. Yeah, but we wrote it
(46:44):
as a duet. It's funny. We wrote with Josh Kire
and on the work tape he did the girls part
because he could sing really high. It was funny. But
we did write it as a duet. And when Tim
said he was gonna get Taylor's to do it, we
had written with Taylor when she was younger, and oh,
that's great. Then it took a while because she has
a lot of you timing issues and she didn't want
it to come out too early when getting the way
of something she was doing, and we're kind of like, damn,
(47:05):
just just do somebody else. Just doing somebody else. Be goes.
We wanted to get it out there, and then when
finally with Taylor sang out, we're like, oh God, thank you.
I mean, it's it's never uncol to hear one of
your songs recorded by anybody. But I remember when we
always tell the story live, when we do our little thing,
it's like Tim said him cut another one of your songs.
Were like great. I went home and told my wife
and she's like, oh, congratulations. You know. And then I
told her Keith Urban's on it. Wow, he's hot. And
(47:27):
I was like, I don't think it's going to be
a single to radio. Well cool, then we'll get paid.
And then I said, and I think it's a duet
with Taylor Swift. And my wife looks up and she goes,
we are painting the house like it is one of
those that's that's a massive song with three huge legendary
people on it was those don't come around for a
moment there were It was pretty cool looking at you guys,
(47:48):
this just collection of songs and going through the catalog.
Uh we mentioned Red sol look up earlier and when
it comes to Toby weird that wasn't a number one.
And it also shows you that not all number one's
last and not all songs and need to be number
one to also last forever and be defining songs. Because
when I think of Toby Key, I think of a
couple of different American songs and Red Solo cup like
(48:09):
that's a because his personality, right, his personality lends to
he's funny and that's his funniest song. Did you that
he didn't write to the b M. I I avoid everything.
We don't go to the c M as. Everybody said
you go c as. We like, if we're ever nominated
for something, we might go. My friend Jake was there
and he said that Toby Toby thing was really special.
(48:29):
It was really special. But Toby's an amazing songwriter and
I think has written every one of his own songs
except two or three, and that has to be one
of them. So they're honoring him at b AM, I
Frey songwriter and there's red solo cups on every table
and they had the whole thing were red sol cup
blows up in the video and I'm like, this is funny,
me and be and Jim Beavers and Brett here. I
was like, yeah, just joking around like this whole nights
(48:51):
about that stupid song. It is something. I don't know
why it's that big. It's funny. But the number ones
you mentioned, because anyway that we still play wasn't a
number one, and if you're reading this was not a
number one. L Red's old cups and three of our
and we have we have some number one songs that
we never played live or I think people have forgotten.
They just kind of go by. That song was also
a cultural song, meaning we had we knew, we knew
(49:12):
the cups, but no one had really identified that that
was a part of what people And I'll just say
because we're I'm from what people in the South used
when going on when they just hung out and did
stuff with other people. That was it. When song's going on,
there's red cup and on that the track you hear,
(49:32):
I hear Jim even make a noise and are you
guys it's the four of us around one mic Jim's
brother Brett. Yes, the four of us. So Jim and
Brett Beavers bred Brett Warren where we did a demo
session and uh, we didn't record that song. And so
the engineer, Luke Lutin, we know him big for this. Uh,
he said, hey, do the cup song. We're like, now,
(49:53):
we're not doing We had already broken the drums at
everything down. He said, do the cup song and we said,
we're not doing that. It was just a joke. It
was just funny. It'll be for us and he's, no,
I want you to do it because I want to
play it for my wife. And we said, well, we've
already broken on the drums down and the amps are
packed away and he said, here, here's a mic in
the little room. You four sit around and just do it.
So Jim Beavers saying it all the funny stuff, and
(50:13):
we recorded it and anyway, so we wound up getting
Toby Keith, our friend Butter played it for Toby Heath
and he said, I just want the music to that
without the vocals on it, because that's exactly what the
record is gonna be. And we're like, we don't, we
don't have a version, didn't record it, and tracks, we
didn't do it. So he said, all right, we'll put
that in your ears and then go back and do
all the crazy ship that you didn't that you did same,
(50:35):
just don't sing it and just leave the you know,
just leave out the lead vocal. And so literally our
chairs are squeaking. Jim Beevers is making funny noises. Bread
schooling here. It's some part of it. I was trying
to imitate Axl Rose and you're here, and I was doing,
like hear me, clearing my throat as the as it
counts off. Brett Beavers is playing a band show and
he that's the record. It's amazing. That's sloppy. One take
or on the mic is the record. Don't make a
(50:57):
lot of money off that one. No, there's only a No.
Or eight and you don't really get anything extra for
it being a cultural act. I wasn't used in places
and did they. We've had quite a few songs that
have made more money than that. Now, when we get
hired and and people call us to do a corporate show,
they call the company's songwriter city that hires us. Usually
(51:17):
that company wants to hear that song. Ye, that's the
one that sticks out, And I mean we'll play big
hits and Grammy nominated songs and song of the Year
nomination from the c M as people, Oh it's great,
thank you very much. And then when you play that,
everybody's up, every phone's out. It's crazy. So that's how
it's translating into it's actually we've been more funny playing
that song called performance. But that's just also a gift
(51:38):
to what's good, grief good okay. So I UM it's
a podcast. I started um SO two and a half
years ago. My oldest son UH died from a fentanyl overdose. UM.
He struggled with with drugs and alcohol. UM He had
been sober for about a year and then COVID happened
and he just you know, it just kind of fell
(51:59):
off and he had a couple of weeks where he
was out and he took some drugs of fetting on
them and um, and he died. So there's a new journey, UM,
and I have. I started meeting with other men that
had had I had a couple of friends that had
lost children. And I realized that because I'm in recovery,
I had people to talk to, Like I had a
circle of friends where you you know, men don't just
(52:21):
sit around and get raw and honest with each other
that often that's just something that women do. And we
were raising a culture and and you know, you just
don't talk about your feelings. And UM, I realized that
these men that I knew didn't have, that weren't in recovery,
didn't have anyone. Some of these guys four years, five
years their child had been gone and they had never
talked about it. And like, well, that's ridiculous. We should
change that. So I started a meeting at my house, um,
(52:42):
with dad's that lost kids. And so there's you know, UM,
some people that you would probably like Casey Bethard and
and Jeffrey Steel and some people that. UM. But there's
just a group of guys and we just start a
dialogue and just talk about the loss and really honest
about things. And it's amazing. It's never in my life
except for that hour once a month or that two
(53:03):
hours am I in a room full of people where
everyone knows exactly how I feel. UM. And that conversation
kind of spurred something in me. Um. I wasn't really
actually thinking if I ran into a guy. We were
in Austin playing a corporate a charity event and Uh,
this guy, Matt Piveto that produces Jack Ingram's podcast, UM
(53:24):
saw me and catering. He said, hey, I want to
talk to you. Um. I've been waiting to meet you
for like a year. But he said, I saw something
that you wrote on Facebook about your son, and I
think you should do it. And he said, I I
produced podcasts only. I think you should do a podcast
on grief. I'm glad it's that's a nice idea. I'm
definitely not doing. That doesn't sound like any fun at all.
And we exchanged numbers and we talked about it a
(53:46):
few times, and it's kind of good. That sounds like,
it's a lot of work and it sounds like a
really emotional thing. I'm just definitely not doing that. In
one morning, my wife said, you're doing this, and um,
and I knew I was supposed to. And so we
have started doing it and it's actually been a really
powerful thing. Um. It's something that's missing because I think
people that are really ingrained in church and whatever that
(54:07):
may look like maybe have somewhere to go with this.
But this show is kind of for people that maybe
are a little bit outside the traditional religious thing. They
still believe in God, they believe their child is in
heaven or whatever it is. But we talked about it
raw honestly. There's there's profanity and Jesus and whatever, and
it's just a really honest, um conversation with somebody who's
(54:28):
experienced grief and uh, you know, because you have experienced it. Um,
And I feel like everyone if they live long I mean,
if you live long enough, you're gonna experience loss and grief,
and UM, we just kind of started a conversation. First
episodes came out two weeks ago, and it's just the
response has been more than we thought it would. My
friend Lisa over here is one of the producers on it,
and it's just been it's really emotional and but it's
(54:50):
been really powerful. Just it's just a conversation about loss
and grief and there's humor and thus far there's a
lot of music people in it. But um, it's not
like we sit around and cry the whole time. It's
funny and we it's humor, but it's actually things that
you don't I don't know, I've never heard people talking about,
at least in the way that we're talking about it.
And um, we'll see it's this tomorrow a new episode
(55:14):
will come out, but it's really early. But the response
has been a lot more than I have no social
media presence done anything, and somehow people are finding it
and listening and calling and wanting to be on it.
And that's really cool. Blessing, Good Grief, Good God show
dot com or you just search for it. We'll put
it up in the notes too, Mike, so you guys
can see it over there. So we've already done an hour.
(55:39):
I mean I could do another hour easily, So I
have a couple more things to say, but before I
have to go, my trainer is here. Okay, we can't
get it. You know, we're addicted to working out. Well,
we do an hour and now and usually honestly about
pick two minutes in for everybody. I'm like, all right,
let's move. But I could do another hour easily because
I feel like we could have any rests. So how
(55:59):
about this in six months, let's just do it again.
Little you're back. I don't ever do that with you.
I don't just like people that much. But six months,
let's do it again. If you're back in town, great,
But something that I still live here. By the way,
I just killed that said. If you're back in town,
you've got not big time now, Mr Florida over on
the beach guy. So when I'm first moved to town,
(56:23):
and I was living in Austin, Texas, and I had
kind of built my own little syndication deal in Texas,
and I was on you know one and two the
twenty five pop stations, and I was bringing in you know,
pop artists, but also would have Dirks and Willie Nelson
and Eli Young band, and I was getting a lot
of heat for being too country to be pop, which
is ironic because now I get heat for being too
(56:44):
pop to be country. Everybody. So my contract is up
and they say, what do you want to do? And
they said, we're gonna move me to New York or
l A for Ryan or for Elvis Duran and they
both resigned deals. And I was like, I don't know.
I said, well, there's never been a nationally syndicated country
morning show, and they said, okay, so we do this
(57:05):
whole thing. And so I come here and meet with
the company and I'm still a little like, I don't know,
but they're really trying to convince me. I knew I
wanted to do it, but I had to leave everything
that I built and sent my own money on, like
I built it all. And I was like, but if
the minute I leave this, it's gone forever. I can't
in a year ago back and go I'd like to
have that. Yeah, I'd like to have all that, right, right.
(57:27):
And so we come and I go, okay, boom. Well
I find out they're like, hey, look there are these
two guys. And the head executive of our company was
like we the one person was like, we don't want
you here. We want the warm Brothers to do the show.
I didn't know if that information ever got to you,
but we were going to bring that up. Oh yeah,
I know, I know it. Immediately they asked us to
(57:48):
do it, and we did a couple of Thursday nights
on races. I'm sure there are two versions of the
story too. And and he told me straight up because
I don't it was the head in the format, but
he wasn't the big national boss, and he was like,
I don't think this is right for you. I've already
got the Warm Brothers picked out to do this show
in Nashville. And I'm like, who the Warm Brothers. Oh,
those those Christian death metal guys and big Christen death
(58:10):
metal life metal. So I was like, listen, I don't
know what you only want me to say, and he goes, well,
I just know it's gonna be tough here. And you're
also not my first pick to do this. I don't
think I was just pick at all to do it.
It's just fine. And so I was a little weirded
out by that. But then again the did not like
I didn't know who you were. And let me just
(58:32):
say for the record, we would never have been even
a smidget as successful as you have. You don't know
you might have been in Nashville nationally, it would have
been all inside humor, good self awareness, being a radio
for four hours until King takes a lot of work
and we were like, anyway, yeah, we can't do it.
It's five hours piscounting anyway exactly exactly. I remember just going, well,
(58:56):
that's weird. I guess they're good. I don't. I didn't
know you were even a songwriter. I thought you were
just too like comedy Brothers at first. I've never done radio,
by the way, and so I came here and I
was like, yeah, I'll do it, let's do it, and
a couple of times during it because it didn't go
well for me for a long for two years here,
it was very difficult. It felt like it was immediately
a huge hit. But and you, I felt like, you
(59:18):
guys just wrote a bunch of songs. Don't nowhere right?
And so what I remember is being told through the
grape vine like, hey, he's really looking to get the
warm Brothers in here if you go backward at all,
And all I was doing was going backwards the whole time,
because it was he was rattling a saber that didn't exist.
And I just always had this feel like these two
dudes are like plotting against me the whole time. I
(59:40):
always felt it the whole time. Well, then the show
took off a little bit, and then I really and
that dude was relieved, and I brought in my guy
who now runs the format, but I'm also his guy.
And then I then got later into it and understood
that he found quit finger quotes found you for whatever
job that was. If he did or not, I don't know.
(01:00:00):
So that's why I was so important to him, and
he didn't quote find me like you were his guys anyway.
I hate I hated you, all right, that's I mean,
I really loved that because I never even know if
that information got to you. And we didn't really we
did a few weekend nights or week nights. We never
really took it that seriously because I said, Brett, we're
funny for about five minutes. There's four hours. So we
(01:00:21):
would do an hour on Thursday night and I would
be I mean like we would prep a bunch of stuff,
like maybe thirty minutes worth of stuff and it would
be gone in seven minutes. Oh so no, we we knew,
and we did a few nights were like, no, we can't.
We are not equipped to do this. I'm not sure
we'd get up this early. And the way we already
kind of had a job that was working like he
was going well, he was like, oh, you could do it.
At the same time, we're like nah. I remember he asked,
(01:00:41):
he goes, how much money do you want? We had
never done it. We asked for like a half million
dollars a piece and like eight weeks paid vacation. I mean,
we were not on the list you have done with this.
We would never I mean, I'm not being humble. I'm
telling you we would have never done even a fraction
of it because our humor is kind of Nashville base,
so it would have been funny here, like Jerry House
(01:01:02):
was our hero, and we had never done radio. We
had realized that the bits that you do have to
lengthen out and the funny little clips only last for
a second. Oh no, they whoever didn't hire us, made
the best move ever for everyone. I mean, ever score
information got to you. I think that's terble. Yeah, I
know immediately. That's why I held some of our songs
(01:01:22):
hostage and they weren't number one for that. But that
being said, I haven't I mean, I haven't really thought
about that in years, and I've just been a big
fans of you. Get a big fan of you guys,
mostly because people I'm a fan of and no and
like personally have an affinity for have an affinity for
you guys because we hadn't spent time together. But that's
how you know if a show, it's like somebody with
(01:01:42):
sensibilities like yours loves a certain show and it's like
this is it just it's good nine. So some of
my dearest friends Lee miller Um just several of our
first like you don't know, Bobby Bones, you guys may
be the best of You don't know. You've never said
I don't think we've ever said high in passing with Tim,
but we've never really talked. I had no ideas, but
because we definitely almost didn't get this show, the fact
(01:02:03):
that they were dangling us over your head is the
funniest thing. That was a rotten over a couple of years,
like it was on and on. But I do I
just youna have to bleep out Michael Brian's name when
I say it. Michael Brian and I are stale friends
so great. We love him because he actually had faith
that we I'm like, I really think we can do
this weekend. But Brian was at the Dangler though, he
(01:02:24):
was really okay, wow, I can tell you out because
we never talked to anyone else. But I love that
he had the confidence. I'm like, I think you're crazy
that you think we can do this. I think we
could be funny on someone else's show, but I'm not
sure this isn't we could be funny for two minutes
between songs on stage. Five hours and doing a show.
It takes. And when I listened to your travel, when
you say, oh, I'm going every weekend, I'm going here
(01:02:46):
and doing that, I'm like, Okay, you got up at
three o'clock and more than five days straight and you're
gonna fly out of town as soon as you get
off work and come back the next day. I think
I'm too old for that. I'm serious, I am. Yeah,
happen for a long time. Yeah, I've always Yes, that sucks,
but it's lovely and I wouldn't get to meet guys
like you if it weren't for it to bed at night.
There's not an answer. I mean, if I'm on the
road or shoot a TV show, or we're living in
(01:03:07):
a foreign country, which we had to do for a
month and a half. I do in the radio. It's
it's tough. But my final point is I've you know,
a lot of people that I'm close to and value
friendships with and have again just a massive affinity for
and they have the same thing towards you. So I've
always like I felt extremely pure about you guys, and
have big fans of who you are without meeting you,
and obviously a big fan of your work. So well,
(01:03:30):
thank you for having us this same and thanks for
having us in six months. Six months, I'm in because
I got so I got so much more and even more.
Even though we were the rotten carrot that got dangled,
you still had a song only took you ten years,
so big that he could smash it. Now I'll wait,
it will crash. Probably should have talked the first week.
(01:03:53):
We could have made your life so much cheesy. You guys,
check out a good Grief, Good God show and go
to at the Warren Brothers and we'll see you guys soon. Everybody,
Thanks Bobby, appreciate h m hm
Host
Bobby Bones
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