#416 - Bobby + Eddie on their High School Bands and Best Concerts Ever + Jobs Before Making It: Stories from Lainey Wilson, Craig Morgan, Trisha Yearwood, Bailey Zimmerman, Nate Smith and more! - Bobbycast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We're all in a car right now talking music. So
I hit record on this. That's myself, Eddie and kick.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Off, Kevin and Eddie. You were a band in high school?

Speaker 3 (00:09):
Yeah, yeah, same band.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Rum Tie the whole time, dude.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
Even in Well, I was in a little band called
sprung Monkey.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
That's a good name. Yeah it was.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
And I just did a couple of shows with them.
I was I think I'd say that's a.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Good name for a band, sprung Monkey. That was high
school sprung Monkey, sung Monkey, sprung Monkey.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yeah, I hear you. What was that name for. I
don't know.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
It wouldn't even my band. They just needed a singer
for a second because they were just instrumental. Mean, I'll
come in, I'll sing a few songs, and I sang like.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
God cool.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Would you ever be in an instrumental band unless you
were like Beto?

Speaker 2 (00:38):
They were like jazz guys.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Oh okay, that's cool. Then you thinking push with the jazz.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Well, yeah, I changed them up. I was like, dude,
we gotta do songs that people want to hear.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Did you watch the Barbie movie? No, not yet. I
won to push you around.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
They played that I laou we laowu dude. Let me
tell you what's cool about movies right now is that
kids nowadays are learning songs that our songs, like nineties
songs because of movies The Guardians of the Galaxy.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah, it's always great soundtracks.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
And my kids are listening to like Space Hog because
of these movies.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
I'm like, dude, this is awesome. It's so cool.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
They listen spung Monkey, not sprung Monkey.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
It sprung Monkey ever get famous?

Speaker 4 (01:17):
Nah?

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Nah? They only played coffee shops and there, so it
was not another band named sprung Monkey.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Oh, sprung Monkey, Mike, where you go go Sprung Monkey,
Arctic Monkeys, No, I know, Artic Monkeys.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah, that's a product Sprung Monkey.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
We played a couple of coffee shops and then a
couple of guys went to A and M and a
couple of other dudes went to Texas.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
So you were sprung Monkey. Then rum Tide, then rum Tide.
That was my band and rum Tide.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Why was it called rum Tide?

Speaker 5 (01:42):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (01:42):
I don't know. We kind of have like a beach
very Jimmy Buffett meets Pearl jam kind of style. We
just loved the whole beach vibe. And then a friend
of mine was like, hey, why don't you do like
rum because RUMs like a beach drink and then tied
like the ocean tide and then tie. And at that
time I was like, dude, that is you got it.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
A band exactly. There was a sprung Monkey.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
I knew it.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
I thought you were in that band if we were active. Okay,
we were active, he said anything two songs on them
and they were covered.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Who we weren't sprong Monkey.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
I'm pretty sure we were sprong Monkey.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Like actually that was just my favorite Michael Better using
a sprong Monkey all turned out.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
It's like Jazz brought a guy named any Gercia in
for a little bit.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Can you imagine if you are on the Wikipedia? Yeah,
I remember sprong Monkey really yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Okay, obviously the Raging Idiots our band now, but I
wasn't a version of it in high school, and we
played it churches mostly even the original Raging Idiots.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah, just two people from school. Was this before Conky
Bite Kings.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Well, our original name was Conky Bite Kings and we
had to change that because we wanted to play churches.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
I could just hear the pastor like, hell's wrong with
you guys? So you know what a cockybine is, Kevin, No,
it just sounds.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
They're like prostitutes older days. But we call ourselves the
Kalaky mike Keys. Don't really know what it meant, basically pimps. Yeah,
So we were playing. We were playing at churches and
we'd play parodies, but to make them Jesus see, so
instead of bat of the Bone, we play gold up above,
Do do doo, doo doo.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
There's gold up above do do yeah? Yeah, And so
we got really that's funny.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
We had like four or five of those songs that
we do, and we were terrible, and but they would.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
We'd play the middle of service. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
And so then we broke up, and then I was
doing a little bit raging gadsup for myself, and then
Eddie's Rum Tide band, I went and did a couple
songs with them, much like he did Sprung Monkey. I
had a couple, you know, and then the real version
of the Raging Idiots, which is us now was formed.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
Took all that time, you know, I was.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Reading about these bands though, and their biggest shows ever.
What was the biggest show Rum Tide played ever?

Speaker 3 (03:51):
Eddie the biggest show rum Tide played. Probably was when
you sang with us at Silker Park. Really yeah, no,
not true, not true. We played a festival in South
Padre Island and there were probably about two hundred people there.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
They pay you guys. Yeah, yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Rum Tie, tell me the name again, rum Tied because
the tides come in.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
All right, let's talk about band names from history, the Beatles.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
What do you know about the name of the Beatles?

Speaker 3 (04:21):
Beat spelled like beat like. Guess they're like a beat,
not like a rhythm beat.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
Do you know what John Lennon and Paul McCartney's band
was called before the Beatles.

Speaker 6 (04:29):
Oh, they called.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
No Kevin the Coryman, like like a quarry, like a
rock Cory.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, I don't know, Hugh, Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (04:42):
Hey, Kevin music trivia. Ready, I'll give you the members
of the band. You tell me who's the band, because
Ed you'll know Edie'll know all these. Adam Clayton, Larry
Mullen Jr. The Edge, Bono you two?

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Was it Bono? It's so confused, said mine? Yes, Chris Novacelic,
various drummers, Kurt Cobain, Nirvana. Yeah, various drummer ended up drummer.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
No, they had six before him, Yeah, but he was
the drum yes when they busted, Yes, but it said
Varius drummers.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Uh, Tom York, Colin Greenwood.

Speaker 7 (05:20):
Tom York, Colin Greenwood.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
Only two dudes. I think there are a lot of
members in the band. Yahyeah, the main dudes. Tom York's
lead singer. It's got a wondering eye he does. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:30):
And when you go to their show, The The you
know how they have big screens. Yeah, one camera zoos
in on just the eye really Yeah, it's pretty funny.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Radiohead Okay, can you name Radiohead song?

Speaker 4 (05:42):
No?

Speaker 2 (05:42):
But I know if I heard one, I would know it.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
I mean the one that I go to immediately is
the one that they I guess they played occasionally.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
Now the biggest one? Is it their biggest though? Creep?

Speaker 6 (05:52):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (05:53):
Is it only because they wouldn't play it it became
their biggest I think it's their biggest.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
Sama, creep. I'm a weirdo.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
What the hell?

Speaker 2 (06:04):
I don't but love here? Go by, go ahead, I
don't ben go oh man?

Speaker 1 (06:15):
Yeah that hurt can't get there? Okay, Anthony Keatis.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
The name flee Oh Red Hot, Tilly Good, that's cool. Yeah,
Mike Dirt, Trey.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
Cool Billy, Joe Armstrong, Mighty Eagles, Mike's about the punch
in the face, Green Day, Keith Richards, I just know
Keith Richards.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
What band is he in? I'm about the punch in
the b make Jagger? But this is your band?

Speaker 3 (06:49):
No, No, you're bromsied from No, you're your band?

Speaker 2 (06:52):
A pearl damn right, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger. I see,
I didn't know bolder names. I don't know what mann.
That's crazy? The Rolling Stones? Ever heard of them?

Speaker 4 (07:05):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Yeah, okay, Stone Gossard, Eddie Vedder, there you go, Pearl
jam Did you like him because his name was Eddie?

Speaker 8 (07:15):
Me?

Speaker 4 (07:16):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (07:16):
No, I mean I never thought about that. It helped
a lot.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
How about Johnny Buckland, Chris Martin, Chris Tony Buck No
idea you don't know Chris Martin is mm hmm. Chris
Martin of Black Ye, my Place and my Place? Hello Yellow?

(07:42):
Oh cool boy. Yeah, I've seen the best I've ever been.
You've been to their show?

Speaker 4 (07:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (07:48):
Michael Stipe, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Bill Berry, never heard
of any of them?

Speaker 2 (07:52):
Are em coldplays? Best concert you've been to, best concert
you ever been to?

Speaker 3 (07:56):
Around the room, Eddie Easy, Pearl Jam opening up for
you in Hawaii.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
You picked the opener.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
What do you mean you said, Pearl Jam but opening up.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
No, it's just the whole show. Pearl Jam opening up
for you two in Hawaii. It was incredible.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
Got it? Kevin Coldplay in Barcelona? Wait wait Spain?

Speaker 3 (08:16):
Wait wait wait wait you didn't know Chris Martin was Yeah?
Concert ever, what's cold Play?

Speaker 9 (08:24):
I know who Coldplay is.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
I don't know who Chris Martin is. I'm just saying
the concert was unbolooving in Spain. In Spain, it was cool.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
Mike d best concert ever post Malone at Exitent in
Nashville before he was really famous. Of course, of course
he's got to do one of those awesome I'm so
cool bones post Malone at the Conico before he played. Yeah,
he was just singing as he was working in That's right.

(08:53):
Suck it, Mike, Yeah, Mike, you're gonna play that game.

Speaker 5 (08:56):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
Probably John Mayer and Minnie Applis was really cool.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
Garth and Little Rock, What do you mean the one
we opened up at?

Speaker 1 (09:05):
No, that's babe, that was really good. But yeah, I
think that's it. Read favorite concert ever.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
I'm gonna go a little Dickie in Memphis. Uh, this
was in like twenty fourteen. Just changed my life. Like,
go on the microphone and look at the road. We
grabbed the microphone. It turned his head completely around to
talk to the keys.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
Your favorite concert is a little hey, little Dicky's legit
lo legit.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
But that's all right.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
I'll takee myne jingle blank Sam Marcus Texas.

Speaker 10 (09:42):
Baby Bash. I'm going I'm going baby bash a little
Dicky minutes.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
Yeah, like everything's rolling with that. My brother got shot.
I so good. Jingo bling.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
Afghanistan's wait what what Afghanistan?

Speaker 2 (10:07):
Yeah, man should have been there.

Speaker 10 (10:08):
Yes, they're still talking about it today.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
You have another you have another second favorite, EDDI if
you were a listed oh man, let's see, let's see.
Let me think about why we had so much traffic.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
It's three I don't know, and what do we hear?
What he is?

Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah, we're at twenty three percent, but we were doing
this on a different show.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Eddie with it. That's just been natural. They'm concerned.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
Let's see, we're in an electric car right now and
Eddie's freaking out because we have fifty four miles.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Don't look at the percentage. Look at the miles you
have on it.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Oh at the percentage is like, that's what you do
on the phone. See you look at the little icon
on the top when it turns red.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
Oh dude, you're in trouble.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
We're not red, although they do turn red sometimes if
you get like lessan temper in the car.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah, oh I've done that before. How far are you
from the house?

Speaker 1 (10:59):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (10:59):
Pretty close?

Speaker 1 (11:00):
But it's like you it'll say you have the phone,
will go hey, you want to use lower power version?

Speaker 2 (11:06):
Yes, sick car will do what's lower power version?

Speaker 11 (11:08):
No?

Speaker 1 (11:08):
AC probably something like that. Yeah, I would think so,
and everything gets damn no. The floor comes out and
you do fret frond stone feet.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
You have to pedal.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
Oh okay, biggest concert you've ever been to?

Speaker 2 (11:23):
Most people stage coach for me the count? Yeah right,
well sure men? Multiple Okay, I don't know bones, what's yours?
I mean, I've been a stage coach, but he already
picked that one. Yeah. What about like Garth though? That
was really big?

Speaker 1 (11:43):
Oh yeah, one hundred thousand people, hundred thousand where we
played but we played it.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
That was crazy.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
How long if I haven't been bigger than that smallest
concert post Moloney Jurnal. Yeah, all right, there you go,
Thank you. Welcome to a special Bobbycast. On this episode,
it's artists talking about jobs they had before they made it.
We have such a library. We have almost four hundred

(12:12):
episodes here, and whether it's working in an oil field
or a medical field, or being a celebrity impersonator or
a server, most of the jobs that these artists or
creatives had had nothing to do with music. Most of
them knew they wanted to sing, but they had to
take jobs to pay the bills while still pushing for
their dream.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
So there you go.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
Maybe this motivates and inspires you to keep going, or
maybe you're just entertained by it. So here you go.
We'll hear from Craig Morgan, Matthew Ramsey from Old Dominion,
Landy Wilson, Bailey Zimmerman, Craig Campbell, John Michael Montgomery, Tricia Yearwood,
Nate Smith, and so many more. And this is a
really cool episode we put together.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
What about you?

Speaker 1 (12:49):
What odd jobs did you have growing up? Odd? I
worked obviously to hobby lobby, I did maintenance on a
golf course. Never actually got to play on that golf course,
but I weededed the crap out of it, mowed the greens,
wrecked the sand traps, drove a mini tractor. So I
did that. You never got to play on it? No, no, no, no,
they didn't let the scrubs play on the course. Is

(13:10):
maybe like an after hours thing. No, it was a
country club and so they wouldn't let us play. I've
played adult version and then I just like with like
kick holes in the dirt and you tear the green
up on purpose. No, I didn't do any of that, Mikey,
I did. Uh, worked at a marina for a while,
wait at tables obviously, but stuff like that same thing,

(13:30):
just buying school clothes, paying the bills. Okay, so let's
do this. It's the Bobbycast special with jobs that artists
had before they made it. Kicking it off with Craig
Morgan on how being in the military made them want
to pursue a career in music even more. You know
your story into country music, and I just touch on
this briefly. Is really cool because you were in the

(13:52):
military and like, weren't your superiors going, hey, man, you
got to go chase this music thing.

Speaker 5 (13:58):
Oh, that's the reason I'm here to do. I would
not have left, man. And I'm from Nashville, but I
was born in General Hospital down here. My mama used
to always say I was supposed to be born at Baptist,
but they didn't make it. They had to stop at General.
Grew up in and around the music business my whole life.
My dad was a musician. Kingston Springs was home. I

(14:18):
graduated in Cheatham County High School, went to Mtssue, you know,
so music was always part of it.

Speaker 12 (14:25):
Avoided it.

Speaker 5 (14:28):
Went in the military, and I think being in the
military really made me a really miss and appreciate not
just music but home in Nashville. So it was always
a big part of my life, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (14:44):
Was it not? You didn't realize it was that was
valuable to you until you got away from it.

Speaker 4 (14:49):
Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 5 (14:51):
Again, it's what my dad did. But my dad also
had another job, and I thought, I don't want to
do something that. I got to do something else to
be able to do it. Of course, then I got
out of.

Speaker 4 (15:01):
The army and.

Speaker 5 (15:04):
Did everything else while I was trying to make it
in the business. But to get back to your question,
it was a you know, I didn't. I was always
nervous about it. I'm like my wife and I would talk.
I was writing songs and kind.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
Of writing at So while you were in the army, while.

Speaker 1 (15:17):
I was in the army and you're playing fun, you know,
were you playing around? I mean, were you playing around
the other guy?

Speaker 3 (15:23):
Dude?

Speaker 5 (15:23):
Like in Panama, I just did a I just did
a show, a TV show, And I brought in five
of my buddies that I served with in Panama in
nineteen eighty nine. It was my team. The guys worked
for me, and we set around and talked about it,
and they talked about how I used to play music,
and like, I don't even really remember that. You don't
remember we used to send her into barracks and drink
beer and you would play. And Tim, my buddy, was like, man, men,

(15:46):
you played all the time together, Like I vague memories
of that. I more remember all of the stuff that
we went through. And they're like, yeah, but when we
weren't doing all those things, this is what we did,
you know. Like so they were all very couraging, and
it came to a point in my career of was
ten and a half years of active duty. I had
to make a decision I was gonna re enlist again
or I was going to pursue the music. And I

(16:10):
was just nervous about it. I didn't have near the
confidence that a lot of people. You know, I talked
to Blake about it a lot, especially early on in
our career. You know, Blake left everything. Man comes here.
A lot of musicians that try this. Excuse me, they
come here with nothing or no one. And so in
my head, I'm going, well, at least it's where I'm from.

(16:31):
I got family. I can you know, I can work
with dad. I can at least have that. So and
then if it don't work, I can go.

Speaker 12 (16:39):
Back in the army.

Speaker 5 (16:40):
I'm gonna stay in the active reserves so I don't
lose any of my time in service, my rank, any
of those things. I never would have done it. I
gotta be honest. If I'd have been a guy from Arkansas,
from Missouri or Texas or Oklahoma, I would never be
I would not be a country singer today. It's only
because I was from Nashville and my family was here

(17:00):
and it was home to me. So I felt like
my worst case was at least I'm around my family
and if it don't work, I'll go back in the army.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
How long until you came back home? But also you're
kind of venturing into this new world of country music.
How long until you realize, Hey, I kind of do
deserve to be here, Like maybe I'm not as good
as I'm going to be, but like I can compete.
How long was it in the country music before you
started to feel that way?

Speaker 5 (17:26):
I'm working on it.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yeah, well, then who told you? Because we talked to
it before he came on the air here. Like people,
when people invest in you, that means they believe in you,
and I believe you're going to make them eventually down
the road some money, right, because business and friendship. There's
a lot of friendship in business. But you know, if
someone's gonna spend money on you that they believe in you,
what that means they believe that you're going to help

(17:48):
them make money.

Speaker 5 (17:50):
Yeah, that was who believed in you. You know, early
on it was a bunch of different people. Ironically enough,
it was one of the guys was a guy that
wasn't even in the business. He was a contractor and
he wanted to be in the business, and he had
done very well with his business, made a lot of money,
and he's like, you know, you got to do this.

(18:11):
You know, I'll if I will pay for your house.
If it doesn't work, give it a year. And he's
one of the guys that convinced me to get out
of the army because and that was the reason why.
He said, if you get out of the army and
you try it after a year, if it don't work,
I'll pay your house off and you can go back
in the army. I got nothing to lose here, you know.

(18:32):
And there was also a couple of guys that had
a small publishing company. West Mayor's was one of those guys,
and they said, we'll sign you to a publishing deal
and they paid me money. You know, it wasn't much,
but it was enough and they believed in me, which
led to a Maypop Publishing which was owned by Alabama,
which led to Sony Publishing. So it was a lot
of those little pieces. But back to the other the commander,

(18:56):
my colonel at Fort Poake, Louisiana, when I was at
the deciding point, I'll never forget sitting down with him
in the General and both of those gentlemen said, we
believe that if you stay in the army, you will
be the sergeant major of the Army someday. You're fast tracking.
You know you're good at what you do, but we

(19:18):
also think that you should at least try this. It
was that conversation that led to me pursuing, you know,
taking those forty weekends when I was off and coming
to Nashville, meeting with the West mayors, meeting with the
Brian Schweizers and all of these different people. And literally
within a year of me leaving the army, almost of

(19:40):
the day when I was ready to cash in on
my buddy's commitment and go back into the army, Brian
Schweizer called me from Atlantic Records and said, I want
to offer you a.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
Record deal, And how did that make you feel nervous?

Speaker 5 (19:53):
Because I was wanting the publishing. I had those small
publishing deals. At this point, I was writing for Maypop,
I was getting a little more money which allowed me
to not have to work in vinyl sighting, and I
was working as a sheriff's deputy as well, so I
was doing vinyl sighting on the side. Working as a
shriff's deputy and then doing security as off duty shriff's deputy,

(20:15):
you know what I mean, And for doing writers nights
every weekend, and you know what I mean. It was
a lot going on. So it gave me a little
bit more confidence, but it also made me very nervous
because I knew, based on everything everybody told me, as
an artist in the beginning, you make nothing man on
shows and stuff. In fact, everybody else will be making
money and you want. But I was also making a

(20:37):
little bit in the publishing, and I started getting a
lot of interest in a lot of the songs that
I was writing, so I thought, you know, I might
try it. This is at that point, so I'm gonna
ahead and try it. When I left the Army to
come here to pursue the music, it was not to
pursue it as an artist. It was to pursue it
as a songwriter because I had a wife and two kids,

(20:57):
and I knew that you could make money writing songs,
and I could still do other things to make more money,
you know. And then in the process of writing my
songs and doing that, I was doing my own demos,
and then I started doing other people's demos, and in
that one year's time it turned into that phone call.
But which was really where where that phone call came from?
Where he heard my music? It wasn't through an an

(21:19):
R team, It wasn't through a publicist or a publisher.
It came from a guy who boarded his horses, who
I knew who every time I would demo my music,
I would take it to him and Jeff would play it.
And this guy, Brian Switzer, happened to be boarding his
horses at Jeff's stables and heard it and ask him
who is that? And he told him and he called me.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
And he made a decision that he wanted to sign
you from just listening to a demo.

Speaker 5 (21:45):
Wow, call me and said, can you come in. I
was on my way home from a writing session. Had
had the third shift with the Sheriff's department at that time.
I said, John, He said where are you? And I said,
I'm on Interstate forty, but I can turn around. I
had a jeep wrangler and I'll never forget a cut
across the Interest State, right in the middle of the
Inner State, and turned around and came right back.

Speaker 7 (22:02):
Fifteen minutes.

Speaker 5 (22:03):
I was in the office, and they asked me to
sing something and I said, well, I mean, you know,
they heard one of the demo, I said, singing, I
want to hear you sing it live, Like, well, I
don't really play it's a penis, it's just and Al
Cooley was there. Al Cooley was one of the most
horrendous A and R guys, a brutally beastfully honest A.

Speaker 7 (22:22):
And R guy.

Speaker 5 (22:23):
Looking back, he was one of the best. But I'm
just when we had this reputation of being like mean, terrible, mean,
you know, but what it was, he was honest and
he probably saved a lot of people's lives. And they
had me sing a song called three h two South
Maple Avenue a cappella and so I sang it and
uh literally right sitting like this right here, three oh

(22:44):
two sound me well Avenue and I sing a little
bit and he says, we'd like to sign you to
a record. Jeez yeah, just like that strangest thing ever.
So I'm like, oh yeah, sure, he goes you ever
turned me. I'm like yeah, how about management? I'm like
yeah yeah. So I walked out of the office and
I called my wife. No, I did not call my wife.
I did not, cause I got home and I said,

(23:06):
I just got offered a record deal, and she said,
what did they say? I'm like, I said, they asked
me if I had managers and attorneys.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
What'd you say?

Speaker 5 (23:12):
I told him yeah, And she's like, well, you got
a manager, and I'm like, no, we got to find
a manager. I didn't have nothing.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
You know, that's wild that it all came from a horse.

Speaker 5 (23:24):
From a guy who boarded horses.

Speaker 4 (23:27):
Crazy.

Speaker 5 (23:27):
He owned Joe Goo Quick, the world champion quarter horse
at the time. And I would take in music and
if Jeff liked it, he would let me ride Joe.
And if you didn't like song, he put me.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
Here's Matthew Ramsey from Old Dominion on how he chose
music after getting his degree in art illustration. When you
were in Virginia making music, about what year was that
when you were when you were dedicated to music, but
you were not in Nashville.

Speaker 12 (23:53):
That was probably two thousand and.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
So you're eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old? Twenty three?

Speaker 13 (24:01):
I mean, yeah, yeah, probably twenty How old am I now?
I'm actually forty three?

Speaker 1 (24:04):
So if that's the case, then why not move to Nashville?

Speaker 14 (24:09):
Then?

Speaker 1 (24:09):
Did you have a different career path in mind where
you were going to do it from Virginia? Was it
slightly different than what you've expected.

Speaker 13 (24:15):
Yeah, well, I mean I went to art school, I
got a degree in illustration, and you know, those are
two I was passionate, I am still passionate about both things,
and I kind of got to the end of college
and thought, I can't half ass both of these things.

(24:37):
I need to focus on one. And music wound up
being the thing I chose. So then I sort of
did you know, I made like a self funded you know, CD,
and just got to the point where I felt like
I had exhausted everything in that area and played everywhere
I could and you know, made my money back on

(24:57):
my CD, and it was time to to take another step.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
The going into art school. What was that plan. Let's
say the music thing didn't work out, or you were
at the crossroads and you didn't choose music. I think
that's the better question, Like what was the plan with
the illustration what what was a career outlook?

Speaker 7 (25:13):
There?

Speaker 13 (25:14):
I mean, there are you know you start to realize
I started to realize on my senior year when you're
you're kind of just doing all these independent studies and things,
and you start to realize that all your professors are
starting to view you as as their competition. So you
start to see like, well, I'm going to be able
to maybe teach or you know, pick up some you know,
magazine illustrations or that drawing.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
I'm talking to me like a dumb guy, because what
I am.

Speaker 13 (25:38):
It's all of it painting, drawing, printmaking, stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (25:42):
So painting a picture on a canvas.

Speaker 12 (25:45):
Yeah you can do that.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
Yeah, you're a good artist like that.

Speaker 12 (25:48):
Yeah, pretty, I can hold my own.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
Yeah do you ever do you do that for fun
at all? I?

Speaker 13 (25:54):
Yes, I mean for I just painted recently a picture
for the first time in a while, which was very
therapeutic and and I want to do it more. I
posted a little thing on my own Instagram of it,
but it's gone now. But like if I was naked,
I took several years of figure drawing classes where someone

(26:16):
would come in and.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
We had those in college. Yeah, and they'd be like
fifty bucks if you go stand naked up. And I
was broke, but I wasn't that broke, right.

Speaker 13 (26:24):
I always thought about those people like, man, you must
need this money.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
I thought about it in the same way in two ways. Either,
I was envious of the fact that they had no
inhibition at all, right, that they would go, hey, whatever,
if people need to draw something, I'll show my wiener.

Speaker 15 (26:40):
Right.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
I was so embarrassed, and I'm still so embarrassed of
my wiener that I just would. We had a bit
on the show one and I'm I mean, I'm a
quarter joking. I guess, yeah, I mean you're laughing, so
I guess I gotta be like, I'm joking. But we
had a thing. This is when we were in Austin
and I was pretty early in my career. I just
started to build my syndication company. We were doing mostly

(27:00):
poping hip hop stations, and we were you know, at
the time, I was a wild and crazy guy. Now
I'm just got to get in trouble because I say
things sometimes that the industry doesn't want me to say.
But then I was just being an idiot for no
other reason than just being an idiot. And so we
did a bit where we had an artist come in
and the loser had to get naked and be drawn,
and I lost, and I had to sit in a
room like a closet and he in him. I remember

(27:23):
him for no other reason, just drawing it the right.
He had an eyeball, my dog. Yeah, so you did,
you didn't Wow what I avoided for years? I did
in a radio segment.

Speaker 12 (27:31):
Wow. Well, I mean you faced your fear though, So
that's good.

Speaker 16 (27:34):
Right.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
So would you do that to me if I if
I just like I would like to post nude and
have you draw a picture.

Speaker 12 (27:38):
I don't think I could do that.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
Heath Sanders talks about his crazy journey from working in
the oil fields to getting a record deal. I'm trying
to just kind of get a grasp on when you
started to go, even if it's not for a career.
I want to go out and sing and make a
little extra money, because that's what you were doing when
I met you. You were singing at a bar.

Speaker 5 (28:00):
Right.

Speaker 12 (28:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 17 (28:00):
So, so my first love was was drums.

Speaker 8 (28:03):
Got my first set of drums and I was ten,
and then I played I played the drums on up
through my teens in.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
Any sort of band in high school, like rock band
or no.

Speaker 18 (28:10):
No.

Speaker 17 (28:10):
My poor parents, man.

Speaker 8 (28:11):
We lived in about an eight hundred square foot two
bedroom house and I practiced five hours a day and
I don't know how they kept their sanity. But uh,
later on, I think around I was around nineteen or twenty,
I had a band called the Lost Greenos out of Conway, Arkansas,
hit me up and I went and drummed for them
in local bars. Then I played for a band out
of my hometown called Cabin Fever. I sang a few

(28:34):
while I played, though, Yeah, all drums.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
So did you graduate high school?

Speaker 5 (28:39):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (28:39):
Yeah, okay, So did you go to college at all?
So most people on my time, I go to college
either because nobody just want to college. Worked at the mill. Yeah,
you know where I'm from. So you finished high school?
And do you go start working in the oil fields
then and then playing music on the side.

Speaker 8 (28:51):
Yeah? So I got a job in the oil fields, right.
Actually I worked at a pizza hut and out of
high school. Yeah, right out of high school, or I
was in high school at the time. As soon as
I've turned eighteen, I had a regular that came in
about once a week at pizza hut, and I guess
he took a liking to me and my work ethic,
and I you know, I just took good care of him,
him and his wife and everything, and So the day
I turned eighteen, he had me a job lined up

(29:13):
at a well head repair business out of Alma, Arkansas.
And I've done that for about I've done that for
about a year and ended up going in and doing
some other stuff triming trees and stuff for Arkstall Electric.
But yeah, I was doing I was doing music on
the side, but that only lasted a couple of years.
After the drum career was over, me and a buddy
we started a little duo.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
Also making drums for a local band. You're not making
much money, no, I mean honestly, playing drums for a
band for an artist with one or two hits, you're
not making that much money, right you know, you're still
trying to get your place, hopefully the art like for you.
For example, if you're hiring a drummer, you know you're
gonna pay him, you know, a couple hundred bucks a
show or whatever it is, if it's a good show
for you. But he's not in it for a couple

(29:54):
hundred bucks. He's in it because if you blow up,
he's going to the drummer. That's it. The same way,
you're not making a much of money right now, but
you're doing this because if you do blow up, then
you're set.

Speaker 17 (30:02):
It's a time investment. Yeah, that's what it is.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
Anyone to create a world have had to do it.

Speaker 17 (30:06):
I've had to do it.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
So Okay, so you're not making a bunch of money,
but you're working Monday through Friday. But are you playing
shows Friday and Saturday nights? Yeah, but it's.

Speaker 8 (30:14):
Man, it's not We're playing like the local VFW and
it's just all our buddies. And you know, after the
drum thing was done, you know, we started a little
duo and that we only played maybe six or seven
shows man, before I said, you know what this, I'm
getting up too early during the week and then we're
staying out all night partying.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
And it's crazy that they didn't let you sing. If
you just sing one song, you're like I'd sing occasionally
on the drums. How do you sing one song and
they not look at you and go, oh, you're the
one that should sing. Well, it like you were better
than the lead singer, to be honest, singing just singing, Yeah, yeah,
I would think so.

Speaker 7 (30:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (30:48):
Well, but then again, you know you sign up as
a drummer, man, I don't want to step on anybody's toes.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
If I was.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
A singer of that band and you started singing and
I knew you were better than I'd be like, no
more songs for that guy. You wouldn't have say another note.
You would have sing one and beat me and been like,
why we have the drummer singing? You need to focus
on your So okay, you're waking up too early in
the morning. You decide you don't want to wake up
and stay up all night and play it and then
do it again.

Speaker 17 (31:12):
Yeah, and then I drew dropped it completely. I just
I just walked away from it so hard. No, what
was it do called? Uh, it wouldn't. It was just
it was just me and them, but my buddy Daniel,
And what would you do?

Speaker 8 (31:24):
I would sing and play the bongos mm hmm. I
had a little set of bongos in the tambourine that
I would like tap around on.

Speaker 17 (31:31):
Oh it was so bad, dude, it was so bad.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
And he wouldn't do it.

Speaker 17 (31:35):
He'd played the guitar.

Speaker 8 (31:36):
He'd play the guitar and sing, and then and then
when I sing, he'd sing harmony for me.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
And you quit music. But how long did you stop
doing shows.

Speaker 8 (31:46):
Oh it had to be dude, had to be eleven
years twelve years.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
Insane, right, Dang, isn't that that's insane?

Speaker 4 (31:53):
It's nuts.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
So but is there this thirst inside of you to somehow,
at some point get back out three minutes for fun
or had you just been like you know that was
an old me.

Speaker 8 (32:04):
Yeah, there really was, man, They're always was that there.
But you just, man, you put making a living in
front of everything. You know, you can't be dragging in
Monday morning, you know when not when guys lives depend
on you, you know, and you being there in body and mind.
But I'll tell you what really regnited this. And I
haven't had the opportunity to tell this story very much,

(32:26):
so I don't. But uh, there's a girl named Charlotte
Lee here in town. She's from Markansas and back back
when they cut my hours in the ol field, I
was looking for sidework and you know, on top of
playing music on the side a little bit kind of
had that idea in the back of my mind, but
it just wasn't It didn't come to fruishing yet. But
I had a friend that knew I was looking for sidework.

(32:47):
If she called me up one day she was like, hey,
I got this girl. She needs her band, needs a
ride and needs a driver in a van to go
to Billy Bob's in Texas to open up for the
Eli Young band.

Speaker 17 (32:57):
And she's like, pays pretty good, So you want to
do it?

Speaker 8 (33:00):
And I said absolutely, So one weekend I spent driving
Charlotte down to Billy Bob's and just being around that
environment again, and spending the night at Billy Bob's and
watching Eli Jung and helping them load in and load out.
I caught the bug, man, I caught the bug. And
it was the next week that that I bought my
PA system and started play that right.

Speaker 1 (33:21):
Yeah, so you going to help somebody else, Yes, get
down there. Yes, it is what helps you get here.

Speaker 17 (33:26):
Absolutely yeah. I was ate up By the time I
got back. I was like, oh my god, I want
to do this again.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
So when you get home you think I just watched it.
It reminds me of how much I loved it. What's
your what's the first step?

Speaker 4 (33:41):
Then?

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Do you start going, let me write some songs. You
get an old.

Speaker 8 (33:45):
Guitar out, Yeah, you find something you can sell so
you can afford to buy to buy the stuff that it.

Speaker 17 (33:52):
You know that it takes to do that.

Speaker 8 (33:53):
And yet, man, I'll tell you My first gig out
Bobby was well.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
Did you still have a guitar though? Yeah?

Speaker 17 (34:00):
Yeah, I had an old guitar.

Speaker 4 (34:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
And how was it?

Speaker 17 (34:03):
It's awful? I still got it.

Speaker 2 (34:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
But it was a good enough to go and play
the bar.

Speaker 8 (34:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:07):
And is that what you did is good enough?

Speaker 17 (34:08):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (34:09):
So what was what was the first first per I
won't even say show. What was your first performance back
after sitting out for ten years?

Speaker 17 (34:17):
So, uh, we discussed the other day.

Speaker 8 (34:20):
I mean you discussed my buddy's restaurant, My buddy Ryan's
restaurant in Leslie, Arkansas, and uh he offered to let
me come play up there. And it was a little
sooner than I expected. So I had to cram learning
a two hour set list. You know, hadn't done this
in twelve thirteen years. And uh, I get up there
and I do pretty good my first set. Now the

(34:42):
town comes out, I mean, of course everybody knows. I
can say wow, So people came to watch. Yeah, So
people came out and the place was packed.

Speaker 1 (34:49):
And coming out of retirement, let's go Sander.

Speaker 17 (34:54):
Packing out Ryan's Main Street Grille.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
Baby.

Speaker 8 (34:58):
Anyways, I get up there and in my first set
goes it goes pretty good for you know, first polished
up as I am, which is not very uh. But
the second set, now, Ryan's got a mom and her
name's Vicky, and she's just she's this biggest sweetheart you
ever meet in your life. But she's got a little
lunder sit there, now, what does that mean? I mean,
she's just got a little she got a little metenes center,
you know. But she's just sweet as can be. And

(35:19):
she when I come off for a break after my
first set, she walked up and she handed me a
Scotch glass full of Patron with fault and line and
she said, there you and I turned it up, Bobby,
and that was that was the biggest mistake I made
the music industry to taint because I got back up
there and by the time I got about my fourth song,

(35:41):
that patron hit me, and I think about a third
of the people left.

Speaker 4 (35:46):
They got up waved.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
Now, I don't know if you're being you know, it's
just exaggerating a little bit. You do you think that
you were slurring your guitar playing?

Speaker 2 (35:56):
Wasn't it the game?

Speaker 12 (35:57):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (35:57):
I think I started probably missing chords and slurring a
little bit and uh yeah, and the hometown was pretty
disappointed in me. I'll come down off the stage and
I and I told Ryan, I was like, dude, that
I think this is I don't think this is for me, man,
I don't think this is from a period.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
Yeah, grand opening, grand clothes.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
I was drunk.

Speaker 8 (36:16):
Yeah, I was drunk, but I was humiliated something something fierce.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
What do you tell you?

Speaker 17 (36:20):
He's like, no, dude, no, you're meant to do So
what's next?

Speaker 1 (36:24):
What did you do after that? You get there again?

Speaker 17 (36:26):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (36:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 17 (36:27):
I ended up playing rhymes a few more times and
the local VFW. There's always the VFW.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
Man, what will they give you fifty bucks or anything?

Speaker 4 (36:35):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (36:35):
Yeah, you know tips and fifty bucks or they charge
a little cover and you know a couple of three
bucks and you make make gas money. Man, That's truly
what it was for me, dude. It was all about
by being able to buy my launch at work, you.

Speaker 1 (36:47):
Know, gas money, and also some sort of fulfillment, right
like you had the bug, you needed the bug to
be fair?

Speaker 4 (36:52):
Sure?

Speaker 17 (36:52):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
So at what point did you make that video? Did
you start to play bars and make us start making
a little more money. You started to get better. Was
there like a scene near where you were in Arkansas
where you could play a bar they'd give you a
hundred hundred fifty bucks or so. That's really it.

Speaker 7 (37:06):
Yeah, the crowds.

Speaker 8 (37:07):
Once I stuck with it, the crowd started kind of
turning out, and and local businesses. You know, words spreads
pretty fast in those little towns, and you know, on
Facebook and stuff. And I think I had about five
hundred followers on my Facebook. So word was getting out.
And I started playing some restaurants and bars and and
Conway and Clinton and stuff, and yeah, it was, uh, it.

Speaker 17 (37:27):
Was pretty wild man, to look back on.

Speaker 1 (37:29):
When I heard you playing that that what bar was
that you were playing in? When I heard that clip
the stable to.

Speaker 17 (37:34):
One, Oh, I was in my bedroom at my house.

Speaker 5 (37:35):
Oh that was it.

Speaker 1 (37:36):
I guess that's right.

Speaker 17 (37:38):
That's right, yep.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
I was thinking of another video of you playing in
a bar somewhere that someone had sent me. But that's right,
it wasn't your bedroom. What kind of places were you
playing at that point, say the same stuff?

Speaker 8 (37:47):
Yeah, just little restaurants and little bars, man, I mean
mostly it was like like if I played a bar
in Marshall, likes a place like Ryan's. You know, people
came to listen. If I played a bar in Conway,
a third of the people came to listen and the
other two thirds were just there to eat their meal.

Speaker 16 (38:03):
And yeah, I was background noise. So did you think
that you had a career at all? Or you the
day you recorded that in your room? Did you have
a just a sliver that you could do this for
a living?

Speaker 8 (38:13):
No, that's that's still being honest. Yeah, one hundred percent honest. No, sir,
not ever, not ever, one time that did it ever
cross my mind? Hey man, you might have a chance
in Nashville.

Speaker 17 (38:23):
You might have a chance. We might to live and
doing this.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
Have you ever been up here to Nashville.

Speaker 17 (38:27):
I've never seen the town.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
So one night I'm on Facebook and a friend said, Hey,
you see this guy hit Sanders. He's from you know,
around where we're from, obviously, And I was like, uh no,
let me watch it and I get videos. Good God,
I mean, I'm if somebody seen this period, I'm tagged
in it.

Speaker 8 (38:44):
Well, dude, any video, any video I comment on TikTok
or Instagram, Hey, dude, can you tag Bobby and let it.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
So? TikTok's but Facebook, you know, people leave music on
my car if they know, you know. But it's I mean,
that's the tree that I grew. Sure, so I ain't
hating a tree, but sometimes treo dropping out on your
head like that hurts you. Yeah, but it's it's a
great tree. But I was like, all right, let me
let me just because somebody from where I'm from is
gonna get a little more of a look than somebody not,

(39:14):
at least a first look. And I was like, let
me see this guy any good? And I heard you
and I was like, wow, guy's pretty good. Then I
remember I messaged you on Facebook and just said hey, heat,
it's Bybones, and you didn't message me back for a
little bit because I think maybe you thought it was
a spam account.

Speaker 7 (39:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (39:29):
I was on the phone with my tour manager because
he's the one that called me and told me you
wrote me because you wrote me on my music page.

Speaker 17 (39:34):
And he called me.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
To the music page or is he was he he
was part of it.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
Yeah, he was on it and he saw me message.

Speaker 17 (39:41):
Yeah, he saw he saw you.

Speaker 8 (39:42):
I actually saw the message pop up after he had called,
I got off and the banner was still up. But
I ended up calling him back and I was like, man,
I don't think that's I think that's a spam account.

Speaker 17 (39:53):
I think that's so.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
So then one of my producers, Morgan or Elena Morgan,
so Morgan now works with me and my management team.
But she messaged I was like, no, that's really him. Yeah,
And so you and I talked and I don't remember
if I said hey, was it like hey, get to
Nashville tomorrow or this week or.

Speaker 17 (40:13):
I don't remember. Man, that's such a blur. But what's crazy.
What's crazy is that.

Speaker 8 (40:18):
When Morgan answered the phone, or when I answered the phone,
it was Morgan, like, dude, I felt like I knew her.
I've been listening, dude, I've been listening to you guys
for five years. I'm talking religiously every morning from six
to ten.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
Dude.

Speaker 4 (40:28):
That was it.

Speaker 17 (40:29):
I mean, I worked by myself.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
I could have been a person pranking you as me too, right, Yeah, yeah,
now I get it.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
I get it.

Speaker 12 (40:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:35):
And I remember telling Morgan, hey, let's get him in Nashville,
and you drove overnight.

Speaker 5 (40:39):
If I'm remember, I don't think so.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
Here's the deal.

Speaker 17 (40:41):
Here's why I don't think so, and I don't remember
it very well.

Speaker 1 (40:43):
But the better story if you say that, but well,
I know.

Speaker 17 (40:45):
It kind of is. I know it.

Speaker 8 (40:46):
It kind of is, and I don't want to kill it.
But so here's the deal. Here's the truth.

Speaker 17 (40:50):
Man. When my phone went off and it was you,
I was sitting down.

Speaker 8 (40:55):
I was sitting there in my living room with my
pen in my hand and my guitar in my lap,
right in Bloodline.

Speaker 17 (41:01):
Writing Bloodline.

Speaker 8 (41:01):
I had a first version and a half of course
written when the funk. That's the first song I ever wrote, dude, Like,
oh ever.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
Yeah, well, I really considering yourself a real song.

Speaker 8 (41:11):
I tried to write a couple songs in my early twenties,
back when I was doing the show thing, and they
were so bad, dude, they were so bad that I
didn't ever try again.

Speaker 17 (41:18):
I just thought it wasn't for me, and I woke up.
I think it was Sunday.

Speaker 8 (41:21):
I think it was a Sunday, you reach yet, because
I woke up that day like, man, I ain't got
nothing to do. Let's start, let's try to write a song.
Because the video just went viral and it kind of
inspired me a little bit. And so that was crazy.
The first time I'd ever picked up a pen in thirteen,
fourteen years. Phone goes off and it's the DJ that
I listened to every morning, the Morning Show.

Speaker 17 (41:39):
I listened to there every morning for five years. You know.
It's like, I don't know what kind of timing anyways.

Speaker 1 (41:45):
No, listen, that's crazy, dude, that's crazy. It could be
some sort of divine something. I just don't like to
throw myself in the mix with Yep, me and God.
We worked that out a little talk.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
I knew it.

Speaker 8 (41:56):
I'll be making phone calls, man, but but no. I
ended up calling my buddy Jamie Jones as soon as
I got the phone with you the next day because
you invited me down to sing one of my songs. Well, dude,
they didn't have a song. I had half a song,
so I freaked out. Dude, I agreed, but I was
freaking out. And see, dude, I didn't And I called
my buddy Jamie Jones, which lives in Dardanelle, and I
think we spent a day on it, because I think

(42:18):
it was only like two days you gave me to
get to Nashville. But that's why I say I don't
think it was overnight, because me and Jamie finished the
song like the next day, and then I was sitting
in the motel room the night before the show learning
how to play the dang thing and trying to remember
the words.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
So you come in, you perform, and did it you
leave with one of them or like go somewhere with
one of them?

Speaker 17 (42:41):
Yeah? I first I went and walked around Sonny with
with LT and so they liked you.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
They didn't have to do that.

Speaker 17 (42:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (42:47):
No, they introduced me all the staff then, and then
Brian said to call him after we left there. So
we went hung with Brian at Universal and went up
to his office and sit and listened to a bunch
of uncut Chris Stapleton stuff and a bunch of uncut
Eric Church stuff.

Speaker 17 (43:00):
And it was awesome.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
That's that's gotta be cool, dude.

Speaker 17 (43:02):
It was crazy. I left there with a stack of vinyls.
I could barely get out the door.

Speaker 8 (43:06):
Man, it was so killer that my first trip to
Nashville and I get to go do that.

Speaker 17 (43:10):
Really, that was crazy.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
So how did because I've known George for a long time,
how did you guys get into contact.

Speaker 8 (43:19):
So I met my management pretty early on, which is
Pete Hartung and L three and he managed he manages
Justin more right. Justin is on George's label, and Pete
had told George about me early on. They didn't get
too excited, man, really, but George did come out when
we went out to cut five sides, which Bloodline was

(43:41):
was one of them, and then Proud and Down in
the South, which we ended up releasing independently. When we
went out to cut those at the Castle, George ended
up just popping up and I was like, well, here's
that and He's like, oh, that's that's the head of Valerie,
and that's that's that's you know, that's that's Justin's guy.

Speaker 17 (43:57):
And I was like, awesome, man.

Speaker 8 (43:58):
And uh so Georgia ended up painting out with us
the whole day. And George has just kind of kept
tabs on this thing the whole time, you know, this
whole time, he's just always kind of been, you know,
in the background. And then he got me a meeting
with Borshetdow one day, and I had four songs total
in my catalog. Man, I played Borshetta three songs and
he was like, well you got any more? And I

(44:19):
was like, well I got one more and he's like,
well play us your full catalog, you know, but uh yeah,
George has just always kind of been there.

Speaker 4 (44:26):
Man.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
Did you get a publishing deal first?

Speaker 17 (44:28):
Yeah, yeah, that's Sony. I think they changed it.

Speaker 8 (44:31):
They changed the name the other day to Sony Sony
Music Publishing or something.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
So that's gonna be pretty cool that the Pinion'd write songs. Heck,
you didn't get to run a song until.

Speaker 17 (44:38):
Oh no, dude, that's what's crazy.

Speaker 8 (44:41):
And I told Pete, you know, man, I had, you know,
being established and having a life there in Arkansas and
having bills to pay and all that, and not being.

Speaker 17 (44:49):
Able to just jerk up and move, you know.

Speaker 8 (44:52):
I told Pete, you know, man, I'm not some spring chicken.
You know, I need a paycheck before I make that leap.
And sure, man, we get the We got the pub
deal before I even had an address in Tennessee, which
is which is something something to be said for Sony there.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
How crazy was it to quit your job, like a
work to come and do music.

Speaker 8 (45:13):
It was terrifying, dude, Yeah, it was terrifying. Yeah, that
took a lot of soul searching. Man, it really did,
because that's you don't walk away from a job like
that in Arkansas because once you once you leave it,
you never get it back. You've got one hundred guys
behind you that are that are just as dedicated and
just to hard working that that are waiting to take
your position. So I knew that there was there was
no return if I if I jumped in, it was

(45:35):
it was.

Speaker 17 (45:35):
Both feet first, but also how exciting it was amazing?

Speaker 4 (45:38):
Right?

Speaker 17 (45:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (45:39):
So but did you write songs? Drive back and forth
for a while? Did you come to Nashville?

Speaker 8 (45:44):
Yeah?

Speaker 17 (45:45):
In Arkansas, Yeah, a year and a half. A year
and a half.

Speaker 8 (45:47):
I would get up this is my schedule. I'd get
up on Sunday and I drive. It was about six
and a half hours drive six and a half hours
to Nashville, and I'd rape Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and typically
Thursday morning, and then I would drive on Thursday night
and then we'd play show for Outing, shows for Outing Saturday,
and then I'd drive back to nash On on Sunday.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
Here's Landy Wilson on how she was a Handah Montana
impersonator for years before she made it big. Were you
just grinding on the road all those years? Is that
how you were making your money to pay Brandon mortgage
or bills?

Speaker 17 (46:19):
It was just all yep.

Speaker 11 (46:21):
And high school I taught guitar lessons and I impersonated
Hannah Montana.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
Well, let's both of these or something we got to
dive into. So first of all, let's start with the easy.
When you taught guitar lessons, are you a profession guitar player?

Speaker 11 (46:34):
I mean, like I know enough to get by. I
mean they weren't paying me the big bucks. I know
enough to like teach somebody the basics.

Speaker 1 (46:43):
Okay, Yeah, and you were making money doing that?

Speaker 17 (46:46):
Yeah, I mean I was.

Speaker 14 (46:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
You ever grab an electric and play any of your leads.

Speaker 14 (46:52):
On one string?

Speaker 1 (46:54):
Okay? The Hannah Montana things crazy community, Yes, so you were.
And you do look a little bit like Hannah Montana
invest of both worlds. Yeah she doesn't.

Speaker 12 (47:04):
Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
So you were performing in high school as a hand
On Montana impersonator.

Speaker 12 (47:08):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
And I did you do the thing where you had
Laney open up for Handah Montana? Yes, Oh you did.

Speaker 14 (47:14):
I did.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
I gotta be a funny.

Speaker 11 (47:16):
I was like, we're not leaving here without them knowing
my name too, Bobby, come.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
On, so you would open yes, and then you would
put on Hannah Montana as costume. Okay.

Speaker 11 (47:26):
So I had a little portable sound system and a
little piece of junk karaoke machine style thing, and I
had the wig, I had the outfits. I would go
to a lot of these birthday but it was like
birthday parties, fairs, festivals. The last one I did was
at Saint Jude, and a lot of the time they

(47:46):
didn't want Laney Wilson there. They just wanted Hannah Montana
to come to the party or whatever. So but I
wouldn't be sure to ask them. I'd be like, can
can Lane make an appearance too? So yeah, I would
I get up there, sing a few songs, play my
guitar and uh and I'd be like, and up.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
Next and you would know the songs? Oh yeah, did
you ever do the climb? I?

Speaker 14 (48:06):
Did you?

Speaker 1 (48:06):
Did you sing that?

Speaker 2 (48:07):
You know?

Speaker 11 (48:07):
And it's a funny story. This is probably one of
my most like defining moments of like you gotta do this,
you gotta move to Nashville. I was at Saint Jude
and this little girl had had brain surgery like two
days prior to the Hannah Montana concert, and they had
told me before. They were like, you know, you can't
touch the kids unless they come up to you, and

(48:28):
you know, then you can touch them, you know, if
they make the first move first. And yeah, I get it,
trust me, don't make the first move. But anyway, I
was just about to sing the climb and her dad
he wheeled her up to the front and she was
singing every word to the climb and I mean, I'm

(48:50):
Hannah Montana's crying. My wig is on sideways. I'm like
everybody in the in the whole entire building is just squalling.
And anyway, I around and then she's like, looks at
me again, and I hand her the microphone and she
sings the entire song Wow, like by herself, just kills it.
Everybody's crying, and she hands me the microphone back and
she meant to say, Hannah Montana, you're my star, but

(49:14):
she said, Hannah Montana, I'm your star. And I was like,
you know what you are, and I have got to
do this the rest of my life.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
And how long did you do Hannah Montana impersonating five years?

Speaker 4 (49:25):
Wow?

Speaker 1 (49:25):
Is that was that your best paying gig.

Speaker 11 (49:27):
Absolutely, I made way more money then than I do now.
I'm going to tell you right now.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
I think there's often a misconception too with how much
artists make until they're really making it, we ain't making
It's almost like, uh, you know, lower class and then
there's no middle class, very rare middle class. It's low
and then boom and not just music but anything creative.

(49:53):
Even in my industry, I was broke, broke, broke, broke,
not broke anymore, and it went because it so when
someone sees value in you, they start investing in you
because they know that if they invest in you, you're
going to make them way more money. And it's always
with any amount of money that you make, it's how
much money are you making the person paying you? And
that's why artists who it may not seem like they're

(50:14):
doing a lot of actual work, especially like where I
come from, it was a sawmill town that does real
work that was like hard labor work. But it's how
much money can someone make off of you? Like, what
is your skill that we can I use the word exploit,
what's the skill that we can exploit and we can

(50:35):
make money and then you make no, no, no, no
money that someone goes, oh, you're actually really valuable and
now we're going to pay you. It's crazy. It's like
a whole crazy world that we.

Speaker 11 (50:42):
Live in is crazy.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
Here's Craig Campbell talking about going from a maintenance worker
at an apartment complex to play piano for a major
country artist before becoming an artist himself. So back to you.
You're playing thirteen weeks in a row, and you gotta
be like, this is it?

Speaker 7 (51:01):
This is awesome?

Speaker 1 (51:02):
Like I'm playing music and I pay my bills, Like
what greater thrill to do something that you love and
to support yourself by doing so. Because most people were lucky, dude.
Most people hate their jobs. Most people in life hate
their games. I believe that my saidad hated job work
and saw me I hated his job every day came home.
It was always like I hate this job, but he
did it so he could eat And he hated a job,

(51:23):
but he did it for us. I never hated my
job like I had jobs when I was younger and
when I golf horse maintenance or you know, when I
worked at the marina. But I loved my job even
when I was out. Now, you loving your job and
you're playing music every night, and so when do you go?

Speaker 17 (51:38):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (51:39):
I think I'm ready to try something a little bigger
than this.

Speaker 7 (51:43):
We had a guitar player. He quit once and then
he went to another regional band and then he he
came back to us and we did that and then
he he quit again. And when a band mean quits
in this situation, wherever you're you're doing a regional stuff
and you're playing six nights a week, it's very it's

(52:06):
very rehearsed. Like the sets you play five sets a night,
forty minute sets. Each set has its transitions and this
and that. And I said, you know what, I don't
want to have to learn. I don't want to have
to teach you new guitar player of the set. I
just don't want to do it. So I called my
buddy and he said he was going through a hard time.

(52:27):
He was already living in Nashville. I said, hey, uh,
do you have any room? He says, man, I'm sorry,
I can't nothing right now. He said, but if I
can get you a job, will you will you move?
And I said, like, shoot, chest job?

Speaker 4 (52:43):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (52:44):
Like he was working maintenance at an apartment complex. He says,
I think I know somebody across the way that that
is looking for maintenance slash grounds keeper. I said, do
hook me.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
Up for an apartment complex.

Speaker 17 (52:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (52:58):
So I came to town on a Thursday. My interview
was on Friday.

Speaker 1 (53:01):
How old were you?

Speaker 7 (53:02):
Twenty three?

Speaker 1 (53:04):
You come to town to Nashville with music in your head,
but you know you have steps to before you can get.

Speaker 4 (53:08):
To the music.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
Okay, so you're gonna work for lack of every time,
just maintenance, like I said, So you gotta work mains
and a department complex. You go, you interview, I interview.

Speaker 7 (53:17):
She calls me back that that afternoon and says, we
want to hire you. She said, I know you don't
know much about maintenance. Because I was honest, I said,
I've never done this, she said, but I can tell
that you want this job, she said, So I want
you to. I want you to have this job like
eight twenty five an hour. But I did get, you know,
thirty percent off my rent, which was a big deal. Yeah.

(53:42):
So I did that probably fifteen months.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
Really, And so at that time, are you playing the
Broadway gig?

Speaker 7 (53:48):
No, I haven't started Broadway.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
So you were in Nashville for a year and you
hadn't started playing music yet. Was it driving me crazy?

Speaker 7 (53:53):
It was just because I didn't know anybody.

Speaker 1 (53:55):
I was.

Speaker 7 (53:55):
I was very secluded. But I would go downtown to
Lower Broadway and Printer's Alley and I would watch bands
and just think, man, I want to do this, and
there another level of making it, you know.

Speaker 1 (54:08):
So they're intimidating for you, because when people come to
this town, they always think I'm good. And then you
look intimid You look around and you go, holy crap.
These are people playing bars and they're fantastic.

Speaker 7 (54:17):
Because this is the melting this is the concentration of amazingness.
So this as as luck would have it. I was
at a showcase one night at Douglas Corner and there
was a guy he was he had the Saturday night
ten to two spot at the stage, which was the.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
Big place to go down.

Speaker 7 (54:39):
And the ten to two spot on Saturday night was
the spot you wanted. Was packed, pa I mean shoulder
and shoulder. So I met him and he's like, what
do you do. I said, I'm a piano player.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
He said really, So that's what you were at the time.
You were the keys play.

Speaker 7 (54:53):
Well, it's just easier for me to say that than
to say a singer, because I mean, were.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
Even a guitar player, because everybody does both.

Speaker 7 (54:59):
So he said, is what are you doing Saturday? I said, man,
you have nothing to do? He said, come down Saturday
night and set up.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
That's interesting because you were a singer and you did
play guitar, but you knew that there was to.

Speaker 7 (55:12):
Get my foot in the door.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
That yeah, that your piece was to play the.

Speaker 7 (55:16):
Keys because there were no piano players downtown.

Speaker 1 (55:18):
Wow, so okay, there are no piano players. You go
and he says, come play. So what happened?

Speaker 7 (55:23):
So halfway through the night he his name is Josh Brister,
he said, He said, the gig is yours if you
want it every Saturday night.

Speaker 1 (55:31):
So you you played halfway. You played half a set
and he comes to you and says, hey, yeah, you're in,
And is it it thrilled for you to be playing Nashville.

Speaker 7 (55:38):
My goodness, man, to be able to play music and
make one hundred dollars or however much you make on
a Saturday night, tend to two spots singing harmony with
with a with a rock and crowd.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
It's it was.

Speaker 7 (55:50):
It was the best thing ever.

Speaker 1 (55:52):
Were you still doing the main it's in the daytime, Yeah,
he's probably maybe.

Speaker 7 (55:55):
I was, And I was on the on call every
other weekend, so sometimes I would be on broad with
my pager on sweating, thinking if I get a yeah,
I would have to go make sure. And normally most
times I could talk people out of it.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
You could give them instructions on how to save them, or.

Speaker 7 (56:15):
I could just say, hey, can it wait till tomorrow.
The only thing I couldn't say wait is if it
was like a one bedroom and there was a clog toilet.
I had That was Did you ever have to leave
a gig? Nope, No, you did never have to leave
a gig. I did have to make a few phone calls,
but never had to leave a gig.

Speaker 1 (56:32):
So you do that that gig that you playing keys
on the stage for at the stage for how long?

Speaker 7 (56:38):
I did that for three or four years? Three or
four years I played. I played piano. That was It
was like a domino effect. I played for him and
then the Friday, the Saturday night six to ten, guy
said Hey, I need a piano player. So I would
come in on Saturday set up at six o'clock and
play both shifts and wouldn't even have to tear my
stuff down. I just play both ships. And then that

(57:01):
went that Friday night.

Speaker 2 (57:02):
And then.

Speaker 7 (57:04):
At one time I was playing six nights uh and
two shifts on Saturdy Friday, Saturday. So I was making
I was honestly making about a grand week cash.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
Okay, so you're making good money. Were you able to
quit your maintenance job at that point? You said, so
you quit and you were just playing piano, keys, key whatever. Right,
See that's what you're doing. You're the keys. Now do
you feel like, okay, now I can really sing?

Speaker 7 (57:31):
No?

Speaker 8 (57:31):
No?

Speaker 7 (57:32):
Yeah. That that was my whole goal of the whole time,
my or my plan. I became, you know, buddy buddy
with the with the owner at the stage, and I
kept every time i'd see him, I'd say, when you're
gonna give me a shift? When you're gonna give me
a shift, because during sound check I would sing to
check make sure everything's working. And then they knew, they
I mean, they recognized, and so one night overheard him saying, man,

(57:58):
I don't have it. I don't have a ten to
two for Sunday. And I'm like here, I'm here. He's
like you sure, I said yes. So he gave me
ten to two on a Sunday, which is very no,
it's it's not the most, it's not the most. It's
not the best right on a Sunday. But I showed

(58:21):
up with a seven piece band. I was so excited.
I had in symphony, even though I was a piano player.
I hired a piano player, bass fiddle, steel drums, guitar.
I had the whole thing. And it was just another
one of those I've made it situations. But I never
got my shift. I never got my own shift to

(58:44):
a good bit after that. That was just a one off.
But I just kept on and on, and finally he said,
he said he had he needed somebody for Tuesday night
six to ten at the stage. It's not a permanent thing,
but I want you to you know, whenever they're out,
I'm going to get you the call. First, I said,
thank you. It eventually turned into those guys and they
would kept canceling. So he gave the shift to me

(59:07):
and I did that for another three or four years.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
A year. So, as you're working at stage, were there
people that came through and you saw come through and
then go up, meaning can you think back to anyone
and you were like, Okay, this guy's really good and
they ended up being something that came through.

Speaker 7 (59:23):
Dirk's was down there.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
He would Dirks become play the stage.

Speaker 7 (59:26):
He played the stage for a little bit.

Speaker 1 (59:27):
Was he at that point special or did he become
special later? Do you think I never really got to
see him play.

Speaker 4 (59:34):
I do know.

Speaker 7 (59:35):
I just would hear stories about this Dirks Bentley guy.
And he wasn't there long. He was in and out,
like they gave him a shift. And then I think
he signed his record deal.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
So you played keys and at one point you started
playing keys for Luke. Now before we had looked did
you play key? Did you go on the road and
travel with anybody before Luke Bryan or was Luke still
so young and knew that he was just a guy.
It was before he had his record deal. Yeah, so okay,
so you were playing with Luke before a record deal. Lubrian,
So how did you guys even meet to set you
guys up?

Speaker 7 (01:00:02):
We had a mutual songwriting friend and he his name
was Gaalen Griffin and and uh he had told or
he had overheard Luke saying they needed a piano player
for some weekend stuff, and he threw my name in
the hat. I met, you know, I met Michael Carter,
who was Luke's guitar player is also now he's coach
Windell's producer and songwriter. And we talked on the phone

(01:00:26):
and he says, hey, let's do this, and they were like, hey,
you guys will hit it off. They're from Georgia, y'all
gonna love each other. So so they hired me without
even ever hearing me play. Went down and it was,
you know, a couple of college towns, but that was
that was one of those When I got to do
the shows with Luke, I knew immediately that he was

(01:00:50):
he was he was on his way.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
So you could tell with Luke even early that he
was special.

Speaker 4 (01:00:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:00:54):
No, why because I mean we first of all, his
his stage presence is the same as it's always been.
He is that guy. And we would do these shows
in these college towns and I was blown away, like
I'm I mean, I'm they give me a CD to
learn these songs and I've never heard these songs before.
But we'd go down and play Millageville and we'd go
down and play Statesboro, Georgia, and we play Athens, Georgia,

(01:01:17):
and it would be completely sold out. Everybody's singing every
single word to every song he sing. I'm talking about
all of his all of his original songs. I'm like,
how's he doing this? How did he do this?

Speaker 4 (01:01:29):
But he was.

Speaker 7 (01:01:30):
It was a big deal back then.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
The thing about Luke too, and I like Luke, and
I just to prefaces that he's a good dude. And
you expect someone that big, maybe not to be that,
you know, to kind of lose it a bit. Looks
a good dude. He's always I mean, he's a good dude,
and so you just wouldn't expect Luke to and I've
seen him do it before alone, sit down at a piano.

(01:01:52):
He's great and just. And people will give Luke crazy
times because he gets up of dances and he helped
help dance and they'll do some maclamore. But set that
guy down at a piano and have him play. Yeah,
it's beautiful.

Speaker 7 (01:02:05):
Next time you have you have him on a piano,
tell him to render you some gospel songs.

Speaker 1 (01:02:10):
And he's played gospel son, He'll get it. It's and
it's everything that you want him to be, but don't
expect him to be, And then he is and you're like, wow,
So you play with Luke. Now were you with him
when he got a deal or are you gone by
that point?

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
No?

Speaker 7 (01:02:25):
I had he we had already. He had already decided
I didn't need to be a side man.

Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
So he decided. Did he fire you in a way
and in a good way or a bat good way?

Speaker 7 (01:02:37):
No, it was great, he said. He says, man, I
want to help you.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
Did you believe him?

Speaker 7 (01:02:44):
I mean, I had no other reason. I had no
reason not to.

Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Because someone has to me, Hey, I'm gonna fire you,
but in no other way, and be like I'll come on.

Speaker 7 (01:02:49):
Is that it was all I mean immediately, I mean
one of them is like, hey, I want to help you.
I want to introduce you to my publisher. Okay, so
he really like led to you in a direction. Yeah,
that's he of me to town. Me and Michael, his
guitar player at the time. We started writing together, and
those were some of my first co writes. He introduced
me to a guy named John Maybe who was married

(01:03:13):
to Connie Harrington. She wrote a bunch of big songs.
Terry clark YadA, and then I drive your truck. And
before I met Connic. Before I met Connie, he introduced
me to John and John said, well, it's funny, you know,
meeting you today. He said, my wife Connie needs a
demo singer for a song.

Speaker 4 (01:03:33):
This is.

Speaker 17 (01:03:36):
Years ago.

Speaker 7 (01:03:37):
And he said, are you available? I said yeah, So
he hooked me up with Connie. Con It my very
first paid demo.

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
What was your What was the song? Remember Somebody's Somebody,
Somebody somebody? What was that song? It never got okay?
And I'm thinking, and I don't want to be dominant
to be I just don't want to be honest, I
just don't know it.

Speaker 7 (01:03:58):
Honestly, there's no songs I've ever done gotten cut except
for one that you demoed that I sing. It was
a song called Braid My Hair that Randy o and
did for Saint Jude Radio from Alabama.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
Yeah. I even know the song. He sings it whenever
I go to Saint Jude.

Speaker 7 (01:04:11):
And he said, yeah, I demoed that song.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
Wow. Okay, so you're a demo singer. So here you are?
You moving up the ladder. When do you start to
get sniff from labels?

Speaker 7 (01:04:20):
Oh, that wasn't. That wasn't until after the whole Tracy
Bird thing. Okay, so you played Keiths for Tracy Bird? Yeah,
so how did that end up happening? His tour manager's
house sitter was good friends with my wife, and once
again it was one of those she overheard Tracy needing

(01:04:43):
a piano player and they hired me, gave me a CDs,
some CDs to learn, and never never auditioned or anything.
Just got on the bus one night, went to did
three shows and on the way home, they says, you
want the gig.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
It's yours. What was the highlight of your first Tracy
Bird show?

Speaker 4 (01:05:01):
Oh?

Speaker 7 (01:05:01):
The highlight was when I messed up big time, like
they did this Ricky Skag song and there's a it stops,
but I let it sustain over the entire It was
just you held it. Yeah, I held out and everybody
else stopped and then they all looked at me. That
was That's my one memory from the very first Tracy

(01:05:23):
Bird show.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
So from Tracy Bird, when do you go? Okay, I
want to grab a guitar and I want to be
an art. I want to be a artist.

Speaker 7 (01:05:30):
I'm doing this all on Lower Broadway. At the same time.

Speaker 1 (01:05:32):
And this is when you're grinded because you can play
the thing with Craig two. By the way, is that
we did but in the show thing for years is
that I would just throw a song out. I mean,
Craig knows every song because you kind of had to
when you would play for hours at a time, right right, So,
and if you didn't have to figure it out really quick, Yeah,
you do.

Speaker 7 (01:05:45):
Four songs, four hours of music, and then you know,
the occasional twenty dollars tip comes in for a song
you never heard, you go home and learn it just
in case it gets caught again, you know, or requested.
But I'm playing Lower Broadway all the while doing the
Tracy Bird thing too. So there was a bartender at

(01:06:06):
the stage where I played. She was dating a guy
that was in the radio promo business, and she invited
him down. She said, you need to come see this guy,
and he came down, and he would come down every
Tuesday night from I mean probably two years, always tell me, Hey,

(01:06:26):
we're gonna do something. You great, YadA, YadA, all that,
And I had gotten to the point where I'm like, Okay,
put your money where your mouth is.

Speaker 17 (01:06:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:06:35):
So one night he was. He came to He's like, look,
we're ready to do this. We want you to be
our guy. I'm gonna bring Keith stig All down to
see you. He's a producer. He produced all the Alan
Jackson stuff, all the Zach Brown stuff, and honestly, he
was number one on my list if I could handpick
producers when I first moved to town. He was my guy,

(01:06:57):
and so I couldn't believe it. I said, well, give
me at least give me twenty four hours notice so
I can prepare. So sure enough, he says, hey, we'll
be done this date. We're going to be there from
seven to eight. I said, all right, I'll be ready.
So I hit him with forty five minutes of everything
I had, and Keith said, come buy of the office tomorrow.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
What's everything you have? Is that your originals? He throw
a couple of covers.

Speaker 7 (01:07:22):
Yeah, no, I didn't do any coaches.

Speaker 1 (01:07:24):
Did originals?

Speaker 7 (01:07:24):
Originals?

Speaker 1 (01:07:25):
Could you tell by his face? Because you know you auditions.
I have an audition for acting jobs and hosting jobs.
And he watched the faces. Are you watching his mannerisms?
And how are you feeling? As it was happening?

Speaker 7 (01:07:37):
He was, and now that I've known him for a
little while, he was as excited as he would have
ever gotten, which at the moment was kind of not
the best facial expressions you would expect, you know, for
somebody that was excited about seeing some music that they
were wanting to do something with. So I didn't know
how to take it. But when he invited me to

(01:07:59):
the office the next day, that that was a good sign.
And that was in August of.

Speaker 4 (01:08:04):
Eight.

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
She signed a record deal.

Speaker 7 (01:08:06):
Signed a deal in September eleventh, two thousand and nine.
So it took a year to negotiate and then started
the record, making the record, and then started my radio
tour July twenty ten, and then family Man came out.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
Here is Tricia Yearwood talking about her nine to five
desk job at a label in Nashville, and no one
even knew she sang. She talked about how she landed
the job as a demo singer.

Speaker 19 (01:08:43):
I had a nine to five job when I first
moved to town. I was a receptionist at a record
label and I had to be at work at nine
and I worked at a label where there was a
guy at the desk. So if I got there at
nine oh one. He'd had to sit there an extra hour,
so he was really ticked to me if I was
ever late. So I was always on time because I
didn't want to be mad at me and leave your
desk to even use the restroom without somebody sitting in
your chair, because you're dance on the phone, you're at

(01:09:04):
the cover, you're the gateway, you know, the whole place.
And it was really depressing for me. Not because first
of all, I'm watching people come in every day and
do what I want to be doing, so that was hard,
but secondly, just that structure of this is when you
clock in, this is when you clock out. I think
some people are made for it, and I think some
people aren't. And I don't think I am. I like

(01:09:26):
people say, oh, it must be so crazy. You just
normally ever know what your schedule is going to be.
I'm like, it's kind of different every day, but I
kind of love that for me.

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
So it's consistently different, like there's a consistency to it
always being.

Speaker 19 (01:09:36):
Different exactly exactly, and I like that. I think I
thrive on that. I don't think I would do well.
I know I don't do well, did not do well
on the nine to five.

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
Did you feel when you were working at the front
desk and people would come into work and have profession
that you wanted to do, that you were as good
as they were already, And because I know it's frustrating
when people are doing what you want to do, but
did you feel like, oh, I'm I'm their talent. Wise,
it's just I gotta put in my time.

Speaker 19 (01:10:00):
My thing was I believed in my voice. I believed
that I had a voice and that I could sing.
But I'm basically an introvert. I mean, I'm not like
I grew up watching Barbara Mandrel on television and she
played every instrument and she danced and she did all
this stuff. And I'm not that kind of an entertainer.

(01:10:21):
And so I really thought, you know, I can sing.
I'm a little bit overweight. I don't play an instrument.

Speaker 5 (01:10:28):
Really.

Speaker 19 (01:10:28):
I can play a little bit of guitar, but I don't.
So I didn't think I had enough. I thought, I've
got this one skill that I believe in, but I
don't have all these other ones. So I think for me,
it was that I did have a strong belief in
myself and I don't I think if I didn't, I
wouldn't be sitting here. But at the same time, I
had all these doubts about the things that I thought
I needed to be able to do before I could

(01:10:50):
be successful at it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:52):
So you felt you had to develop Even then you
felt like you need to develop a bit more. Yeah,
you weren't so strong.

Speaker 19 (01:10:57):
No, no, I mean And I went to Belmont where
where there were so many music majors, and you couldn't
you throw a stick without somebody telling me what a
great singer they were, you know, And I was not
that girl. And even actually at at MTM Records after
I got my record deal, there were people at that
building who said, we didn't even know, we didn't know
you sang.

Speaker 1 (01:11:16):
Really yeah, so you weren't. You aren't one of the
ones that were like, hey, I sing I sing I
was not.

Speaker 7 (01:11:21):
I was not.

Speaker 1 (01:11:22):
How did you change that?

Speaker 4 (01:11:23):
Then?

Speaker 1 (01:11:23):
How did you start telling people I sing I sing?

Speaker 19 (01:11:25):
I think it was because I was shy and I
wasn't bold about telling people I was a singer. But
after working at that label for about six months and
answering the phones and ordering liquid paper and not and
watching people do what I wanted to do. I realized,
if I don't tell somebody this is what I do,
if I don't really get off my butt and try
to make this happen, then I'm going to get to

(01:11:46):
do this for the rest of my life. And I reconnected.
I had I had a couple of songwriters, one was
Kemp Blazy that I had done demos for, and I
just found those guys again and said, hey, I'm trying
to find I'm trying to get some demo work. And
demo work was my way out. Once I started to
get enough work that I could actually quit my job.

Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
John Michael Montgomery talks about the many jobs that he
had growing up in rural Kentucky, and John also tells
a funny story about why he quit his job as
a server, Like what kind of rural jobs did you have?
Because I grew up in Arkansas and I had a
lot of them.

Speaker 4 (01:12:19):
Oh yeah, a lot of similarities with Kentucky and Arkansas.
You know, I did everything from of course, I bagged groceries.
I worked in my mom and dad even though they
were musicians, they were butchers. They cut meat and stuff,
so I would, you know, did some of that. I
helped build the swimming pools like digging. Yeah, you talking

(01:12:42):
about a tough job.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
Yeah, it sounds like it.

Speaker 4 (01:12:44):
You know, you got to get down there in the
bottom and you got to take a little paddle that
forms the bottom smoothed out so you know, when you
put the the vinyl on it, you know, it's nice
and smooth and everything like that. And I remember we
had and it's always in the middle of the summer,
you know, people wanted to put nobody. Yeah, and it's like, uh,

(01:13:08):
you know, the they got these stainless steel type walls
that you put up. They're in sections, and so we're
down in there and it's one hundred degrees outside and
the sun shining and reflecting all that heat down on
us while we're down in there. Now, you know, I
was like, I don't know, it's probably eighteen seventeen, eighteen

(01:13:29):
years old. Lot, let me tell you something. I mean,
we all pretty much stripped down to our underwear almost
to do this job, you know, And a lot of
times we did it in the middle of the night
when it was cooler, of course, really yeah, because I
mean it was just so hot and your knuckles would
get all war out, you know from the paddles trying
to and then I remember one time we uh, we

(01:13:53):
didn't do a good enough job for the guy that
owned the company. He pulled in there and shined as
it was. It was so it was almost midnight. He
comes in there, suns his life down in there, walks
down in there, starts taking his foot and just tearing
the crap out everything. He's like, this is not good enough.
We ended up staying till about four am in the morning.

(01:14:15):
You know, I was getting paid three dollars and thirty
five cents an hour or something like that. Seems like,
you know, I mean, but I wasn't afraid if somebody
wanted to pay me to, you know, give me a job.
I never did a job like I waited tables at
Chee Cheese, which I enjoyed, but I sucked at it.
I mean, I was, you know, I wouldn't afraid to

(01:14:38):
tackle anything. And I put in one hundred and ten percent.
I knew. I was like, I'm not going to do
this for the rest of my life, but I you know,
I'm gonna put a give the best I got. But
I remember turning twenty in a day in Kentucky. You
can serve alcohol and be a server in restaurant at
twenty in a day. But I loved the place because
they had great chips, and of course the bartender I

(01:14:59):
knew pretty well, he'd sneak me a jumbo margarita.

Speaker 1 (01:15:04):
You know, hard to sneak at jumbo, like sneaking a
small margarita, but sneaking a jumbo didn't fel very sneaky.

Speaker 4 (01:15:10):
Yeah. Well, you know, it's you got to know sometimes,
you know, when it was slow, you know, I was
a terrible server. So they My shift was from eleven
am until like two or three, and in the middle
of the week. It wasn't a whole lot of people
coming in on the weekends.

Speaker 1 (01:15:31):
Yeah, they don't put the A plus servers that yeah,
eleven to two or three on a Wednesday, yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:15:35):
They And so the evenings obviously the servers were I
mean they would make five six hundred dollars in tips,
you know, and I was like, wow, you know, I'd
make maybe thirty dollars. But I was singing, you know,
making music, playing music at night. So it worked perfectly
for me, you know, because I went on stage at
nine o'clock. I finished up about one am, and and

(01:15:58):
gave me just a little extra money to put a
little gas in my car and you know, and buy
some you know, I didn't have to buy any food
because we got food for picture percent off there. So
but I ended up, Uh, I had to end up
quitting because, like I said, I was not very good
at at this job. So I had this couple and uh,

(01:16:20):
their seven year old daughter came in. They sat down
and they all ordered dacries, and of course the little girl,
they ordered a not a dakri.

Speaker 1 (01:16:29):
For her, like a like a virgin dakrie.

Speaker 4 (01:16:32):
Yeah, I'd say, yeah, it's they call them nod.

Speaker 1 (01:16:35):
Yeah, got it.

Speaker 4 (01:16:36):
And I forgot to write nadda down on.

Speaker 1 (01:16:38):
You gotta be kidding.

Speaker 4 (01:16:41):
And so I go to the bartender who sneaks me Margarita's,
you know, and I told him, I said, hey, see
that that I'm a dad and the little girl over
there at that table there, I said, I ordered three doakeries,
one of them supposed to be nodded. Did I write
nod on that ticket? He looks like it goes No,
that's a real diacri, he went. I went, oh, this

(01:17:01):
is not good. I said, that little girl's drinking a
real Dakri so here comes we called him Taco, he
was the floor manager. Comes out there and we tell
him the situation.

Speaker 8 (01:17:14):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:17:15):
He goes over there and talks to him. He comes
back and he's like, they're all cool. It's like we
you know, they were wondering why she was drinking it
so fast, so funny.

Speaker 12 (01:17:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:17:28):
So I was like, I probably need to find another gig,
you know, another job this is right here. Probably I
don't need to be serving seven year olds. Yeah, I
just I'm not. I can't. I got a one track mine. Basically,
I mean, I can't shuffle other jobs. I'm terrible at
what do they call it?

Speaker 1 (01:17:47):
Like multitasking?

Speaker 4 (01:17:48):
Multitasking awful added.

Speaker 1 (01:17:49):
What would you be thinking? Would you be thinking about
your music career all day? Is that what was really
happening in your mind at the time when you're waiting
tables or were you just like I don't like doing this.

Speaker 4 (01:17:58):
No, I mean I enjoyed doing it. I enjoyed meeting
the people. I just you know, the way my brain operates,
I just it wasn't you got to be able to multitask?
Could be a good server?

Speaker 1 (01:18:10):
Listen, I was the best. Yeah, I was the best
server in the land, so you you know.

Speaker 4 (01:18:13):
You got three or four tables going on, and you
gotta you know, I just wouldn't able to do it.
I just I couldn't. It was like, I can sit
down with a guitar, or I can sit down with
a video game, and I will master the guitar or
the video game because I can spend hours at that
one thing and never leave, you know. Or I can
sit and watch a bobber for fishing for iris on

(01:18:35):
a day and wait for that thing to go under,
and you know, and I'm you know, I got the
patience of job with that. But I can't. I can't
do multitasking. I mean, basically, it's easy to distract me
from one thing.

Speaker 1 (01:18:50):
You know, when you talk about how you play guitar
when you were younger, what what's the age difference between
you and your.

Speaker 4 (01:18:54):
Brother year and a half.

Speaker 1 (01:18:56):
Wow, that's so close.

Speaker 2 (01:18:57):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:18:57):
Did he have the same dreams to be a country star?

Speaker 4 (01:19:01):
I think we both actually, you know, wouldn't like we
wanted to be famous right off the bat. We just
loved to get on stage and perform, and then we
got better at it, and then we started our own
band a little three piece band with a guy, a
bass player, guy good friend of our, Tim Williams, and
and we did that around Frankfurt and different places on

(01:19:22):
the weekends. And then then a job full time five
nights we gig opened up in Lexington and that was
our dream, was sort of like, are we good enough
to do that?

Speaker 2 (01:19:33):
But what was it?

Speaker 1 (01:19:34):
Five nights a week was at a restaurant, was it?

Speaker 5 (01:19:36):
No?

Speaker 4 (01:19:36):
It was a club, a club called Austin City.

Speaker 1 (01:19:38):
Saloon, and you were like the house band.

Speaker 4 (01:19:40):
Yeah, and a guy named Greg Austin played there. No relation,
I mean the Austin City Saloon and Greg Austin. I
don't think they named it after him, but we used
to go in there and watch him play. And that's
where I met Troy Gentry At believe it or not,
We me and him first met there.

Speaker 1 (01:19:58):
So you met Troy before your brother didn't. And what
was true was Troy did he live up there?

Speaker 4 (01:20:02):
Yeah? He was from Lexington, Yeah, and he was doing
like I was. He was just going around to different places,
getting up on stage, trying to make a name for himself.
And we kind of got to be pretty good buddies actually.
And then when Austin Gregg left Austin City, had got
sold and another guy bought it out. He was having
a hard time drawing a crowd in there, and my

(01:20:25):
brother Eddie told him said, we can draw a croute
in there, so could you?

Speaker 1 (01:20:29):
Or was he just saying that to get the gig?

Speaker 4 (01:20:31):
Well I think Eddie was just saying that to get
the gig, but he was. Eddie was Eddie can He's
the best. Let me tell you them. Eddie is he
can be as he's just full of it. I mean
I love it because he can literally talk. I mean
he'll talk you know, fish out of water, I mean
fishing or whatever whatever the saying is. I mean, Adie

(01:20:53):
always had really cool cars because he just had that knack.
I had pieces of junk that had constantly work work
on all the time, and I was like, man, he
got a good, cool, cool car and then he traded
off for another cool car. But Eddie was really good
with that salesman. He could call people up and talk
to them and talk them into stuff. And so the

(01:21:14):
guy gave us an opportunity. Eddie says, hey, it's guys,
we got to put a band together because at the
time we were disbanded and I was like, okay, I said,
we'll get Tim Williams. Eddie's gonna play drums for me.
That's what Eddie did for me, played drums, and uh, Troy,
I said. I asked Troy if he'd be part of
the band and he said yeah. So it was me, Eddie,

(01:21:36):
Tim Williams, and Troy Gentry and we called it John
Michael Montgomery and Young Country. And then we had a
keyboard player.

Speaker 1 (01:21:43):
It is John Michael Montgomery and Montgomery Gentry basically exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:21:47):
And so I mean the guy gave us, he said,
I'll give you, guys two weeks if you show you
start bringing the crowd in here. We started packing the place.

Speaker 1 (01:21:57):
I mean, why do you think that?

Speaker 4 (01:21:58):
Because I knew what kind of music that place. Texas
two stepping was getting really popular at the time. Greg
Austin played a lot of songs and I would watch
these people do these two step Texas two step in
the line dancing this is, you know, nineteen eighty six
eighty seven, and I was like, what kind of dance
is that? You know, there's like Texas two step and
it was that it was beginning, begin beginning to sweep

(01:22:21):
the country. And so I went in there, and of
course I played a lot of George Straight stuff, and
I mean I played, you know, we all sang everything
from Bob Seger to George stra We covered it all
and U I mean, and plus we were a bunch
of young single guys that'd like to have a lot
of fun. So it was UK, you know, college town.

(01:22:45):
I mean, we packed the place. I mean, we started
packing the place and then you know, so it became
a good gig for us for a while. And then
I till on Sundays, me and Troy was trying to
make a little extra money, so we would actually get
together and his dad onto a little restaurant and we
talked his dad and letting me and Troy go in

(01:23:06):
there on a week on a Sunday because they weren't
doing any business. He was thinking about closing it up.
It's called the Grapevine, and we asked him if he'd
let us come in here on Sunday and me and
Troy would just do a little duo.

Speaker 1 (01:23:22):
And he was the original Montgomery Tree.

Speaker 4 (01:23:24):
And I absolutely and every time i'd see Troy, I'd go,
you know that we and you were the first compry
entry and he just my real big.

Speaker 1 (01:23:33):
So what's that dynamic? Because did you move to Nashville first,
And if you and your brother are already playing together,
why did you not duo up?

Speaker 4 (01:23:40):
Like well, I mean, I here's where my head was.
When I was about twenty four years old playing five
nights a week. I was like, I saw a lot
of other musicians around town. They're thirty five, forty years
old still, you know, and playing four and five nights
a week, and I just didn't want to be that.

(01:24:01):
I was like, by the time I'm thirty, I want
to know where I'm going to, what I'm going to choose.
Am I going to continue trying to I don't want
to continue playing clubs. I either need to go to
Nashville and try to make a living, send demos, writing songs,
doing something. But I don't want to be a nightclub
or the rest of my life. And either that or

(01:24:22):
I just need to go get a real job, you know,
and have some kids and family and just enjoy music
on the weekend.

Speaker 1 (01:24:28):
Like Bulls down one hundred degrees underneath the ground with
the paddles, You're already good at it.

Speaker 4 (01:24:34):
Yeah, And so literally, I I had made up my
mind once I turned twenty five, I was going to
make a decision to move down here. Well, just so happened.
Nashville started looking for talent outside of Nashville, and and

(01:24:55):
there was a guy up in Lexington that was doing
a showcase for Atlantic Records, and the manager that guy
stopped by the bar to listen to this song that
that his artist that he got on Atlantic loved. So

(01:25:15):
I sang it for him, called a few cents short.
I wrote it and I got done and I said, well,
how you like it? He went, I like you. He's like,
if you'll let me manage, I'll get you on the
Lamp Records.

Speaker 12 (01:25:26):
I'd like that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:26):
Wow, he said that.

Speaker 4 (01:25:27):
Yeah, did you believe them? No? I mean, I just
I was like, this guy's just telling me what I
want to hear, you know, I mean. And I said, well,
I said, it's a deal if you if you get
me on Atlantic record, Yeah, sure, I'll let you manage me.
You know. Estel Sowertz was the name of either old
coal mine or Eastern Kentucky guye silk shirt and a

(01:25:48):
gold nugget, you know. And I was like, there's no
way this guy's even going to come through for me. Dang,
if he didn't, you know. And I remember riding down
in his Cadillac for the first time we run out
of fuel because he bleed it had that little extra
fuel thing. He believed that, and right before we run

(01:26:10):
out of fuel, he looks at me. He said, those
dimples are going to be worth a million dollars each.
And I was like, I said, Estell, come home. I said,
that's just silly. You know, God dreamed big. I loved
it about him. You know, he had a little stutter
and stuff, had real devoys. So we I said, I said,
you can't ever trust that extra fuel thing on there, Estel.

(01:26:32):
I had to walk half a mile up a hill
to a little white home, knock on the door. Didn't
have no cell phones back then. This was nineteen ninety one,
and you know, a little old lady is like, we
run out of fuel.

Speaker 17 (01:26:44):
WEREWN sixty five, you know, so, but did she have fuel?

Speaker 4 (01:26:50):
She called the fuel station that had whatever they called
the Triple A. You know, they came down, brought us
some fuel and everything like that.

Speaker 1 (01:27:00):
Was that your first time going to Nashville.

Speaker 4 (01:27:02):
No, I went to Nashville a long time ago, back
in around eighty I'm thinking it was eighty four eighty five.
I remember coming into town. We had this I had
this guitar players, me and Eddie and Tim and and
he was a long haired rock and roller guitar player,
you know. And we come rolling into Nashville, and that's

(01:27:25):
when Alabama had a huge Alabama sign there on Division
Street or Music Road, whatever it was. They had a
huge store there and they through the name Alabama was
on top of it, and it was just flickering, and
I was like, wow, that is so cool. I've got
to go into there. Of course, you know, dour straight
linel Ritchie, Alabama. That's where I got all my chops

(01:27:48):
from me. You know. It was just like love songs
and stuff like that. I mean, but no, I mean,
I just was fortunate enough. So getting back to the story,
that guy. They came up to see that guy sing
and showcase and it is right down the road from

(01:28:08):
me and this they weren't impressed, I guess, and yeah
by him. And so this guy comes into the bar
and it's on a weeknight, so it's like we could
tell this guy from out of town. There ain't nobody
in the bar, right he didn't. He didn't look like
he'd ever been there, hadn't seen him before. So I

(01:28:30):
get done with the set and I walk over to
him and he's like, yeah, he said, I'm from Atlantic Records.
He's like, I was over there listening to this guy
and he didn't impress me. And he's so I asked
the waitress, I said, is there any other place anybody's
singing around there? And she said, well, the best singer
in town is right down the road here, John Michael Montgomery.

Speaker 1 (01:28:50):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (01:28:51):
And he went really, and I said, so, whoever that
waitress is, you still don't know who is? Thank you
very much.

Speaker 1 (01:28:58):
We have her on the phone right now there.

Speaker 4 (01:29:02):
And but I was like, well, I appreciate it, and
he said, you know what, I just after that said
she she's right, she says, I got the rest of
them coming over. It's a visual and uh you know,
and that's uh.

Speaker 1 (01:29:12):
What does your brother think about that?

Speaker 8 (01:29:13):
That?

Speaker 1 (01:29:13):
Okay, you're gonna go sign to Atlantic? Does he follow
you down?

Speaker 4 (01:29:17):
Yeah? I mean he's been my or did he come
with you? He come with me? I mean we went
to Nashville together. We did everything together. You know. He
had of course, he had a life. I mean he
had kids and married and all that stuff. But anytime
we did music anything like that, I mean we did
it together. I mean, he played drums for me. But
once I started coming to Nashville, I was playing at

(01:29:38):
Austin City five nights a week. He had to kind
of hold the roosts down there because I now was
recording Life to Dance from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then
I would drive back and Thursday, Friday and Saturday I
would sing at Austin City and so you know, he

(01:29:59):
was him and Tim and Troy and all what Troy.
I think Troy might actually had to did it on
gig at that point. But you know, then I would
come in, you know, because I still had to make
a living. I mean, you know, yeah, I was making
one hundred and fifty bucks a week, you know, and
I wouldn't getting paid anything to record at that point,
the bills. Yeah, And so anyway, I did that for

(01:30:21):
you know, I mean a year. I did that for
a year because they had a big change over at
Atlantic Records, and Rick Blackburn ended up taking over the
whole thing and the other guy left and this and that,
and we changed producers. You know, Doug Johnson came into
the picture, and I think basically was the reason that
I have a career today. I mean he brought life

(01:30:43):
to dance. I love the way he loved me beer
and bones. I mean he he was very instrumental.

Speaker 1 (01:31:00):
Else and tells us about her first acting gig she
got when she was just sixteen. Rita also talked about
her first job as a ticket taker and how that
made her want to be a singer even more. When
you graduate in high school, good student? You know you
say you college for a couple years. What kind of
student were you?

Speaker 14 (01:31:15):
Uh? Not very present because I was always.

Speaker 1 (01:31:19):
Working, working, doing what acting?

Speaker 14 (01:31:22):
So by then at sixteen, you know I did the
Brady Bunch.

Speaker 1 (01:31:25):
Oh I didn't know that.

Speaker 14 (01:31:26):
Oh yes, I got my screen actor's card.

Speaker 4 (01:31:28):
I did not know that.

Speaker 14 (01:31:30):
Yes, Bobby, would you like me to do the cheer
for you?

Speaker 2 (01:31:32):
Because cheerleader?

Speaker 4 (01:31:34):
I didn't know.

Speaker 1 (01:31:34):
Okay, So what role.

Speaker 14 (01:31:36):
Pat Conway with?

Speaker 1 (01:31:37):
Who?

Speaker 14 (01:31:38):
With Greg and Marsha? Okay, so this was the episode.
Greg had a girlfriend. She was running for cheerleader. Marsha
was also running for a cheerleader, but the girlfriend was
kind of using Greg because he was a judge of
the cheerleading competition, and so when the time came, it

(01:31:59):
was a tie vote and he was supposed to be
the tiebreaker and it was going to get him into
deep hot water with his girlfriend. So instead he chose
me the cheerleader, who really was a cheerleader in real life.

Speaker 1 (01:32:11):
I've seen every episode of Pretty Much and I can
vaguely remember that I did not know. Yeah, that was
your first role.

Speaker 14 (01:32:19):
Yeah, that's how I got my screen Actor's Guild card?

Speaker 1 (01:32:21):
Was that show big? Though? When you went like were huge?
Were you starstruck by everyone?

Speaker 14 (01:32:27):
Like Maureen McCormick drove a chocolate brown Mercedes onto the
Paramount Studios a lot, you know, like, oh my god,
you know she's driving a brand new Chad. She was
only fifteen and a half. She had her permit, but
she could drive, you know, with an adults in the car.
So she had a Mercedes, which was like, oh, this
is crazy, a fifteen year old with the Mercedes. And
the producers were the same ones that produced Gilligan's Island

(01:32:50):
and all the shows that I loved. And during the filming,
Elizabeth Montgomery, who played Samantha un Bewitched, came to the
set and said hi, So she was all so one
of my heroes.

Speaker 2 (01:33:01):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:33:05):
So you're sixteen and you're working, are you like, Okay,
this is what I'm supposed to do. I know I
have school, but this is what I really want to
focus on. Or was it just it was so much fun?
Like what is it for a sixteen year old?

Speaker 14 (01:33:16):
It was so much fun? And also it was consistent
at that point, I also had an agent now, so
I got my screen actors guilled, I get an agent.
I'm now doing a ton of commercials. And I just
kept working and working and I never stopped. And there
was a point where I realized, oh my goodness, I
think this is my job. I was going to college

(01:33:36):
to become a communications major.

Speaker 1 (01:33:39):
Like how did you graduate high school?

Speaker 4 (01:33:40):
Though?

Speaker 1 (01:33:40):
Honestly, like if.

Speaker 14 (01:33:41):
Oh no, because I worked. Oh well, we had a
program at high school called four four, so you could
go to school for four hours and then work part
time for four hours. And so I got them to
agree that modeling after school for four hours and doing
auditions for commercials was a job. And it was because
I was constantly going on auditions.

Speaker 1 (01:34:03):
I guess there are so many kids there that act
or in the arts where those programs are probably at
a lot of the different schools because they have to
be yes here that would you know that would happen
because there's not a lot of kids doing that. But
that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 14 (01:34:16):
But it's much more prevalent, YEA when you go to
universities now too, and they all have theater departments, film
departments because it's just you know, there's a need for
more contact con content and people who make the content.
So I think that's not going anywhere.

Speaker 1 (01:34:31):
Was there ever a place in your career early on
where you thought, you know, I.

Speaker 14 (01:34:34):
Want to sing, oh yeah, but but to.

Speaker 1 (01:34:36):
Do that, I may have to take two steps back,
Like did that ever cross your mind?

Speaker 14 (01:34:40):
I really wanted to? And I remember having a very
specific moment that, you know, I had a job as
a ticket taker at this concert venue called the Universal
Amphitheater and it was an outdoor venue and everybody came
through there in the seventies, so it was you know,
Joni Mitchell, Carrol King, James Taylor, Jackson Brown, Elton John,

(01:35:02):
the Eagles, you know, you name it. They came through
and I remember sitting on the steps. I would take
the tickets. Then they would allow us to watch the
show and I remember sitting down on the steps and
having this pit in my stomach, like, how how do
you get up there and be a singer? How do

(01:35:23):
you get to do that? You know, how is Linda
Ronstad up there? How do you find a band? Do
I have to play instrument? Like it was? It was
like a palpable pit in your stomach, like a longing
and aching, a yearning and not knowing how to make
that happen. And back then, if by the time I

(01:35:43):
started really being becoming established, if you were an actor,
you stayed in the acting lane, If you were a singer,
you stayed in the singing lane. And there really wasn't
crossover or any overlapping that happened.

Speaker 12 (01:35:56):
Back then.

Speaker 14 (01:35:56):
It was just that that's what you do. If you
were on Broadway, that was different. But Broadway people didn't
do film. It was so weird. Now everybody can do everything.

Speaker 1 (01:36:07):
The mid nineties was kind of the first, yes, the
first layer of even then it was kind of weird,
like when Jennifer Lopez would do it early two thousand.
But now everybody does everything exactly.

Speaker 14 (01:36:15):
I think that's good. I don't think that we should
be limited. Everybody's creative creative people do more than one thing.

Speaker 1 (01:36:20):
Did your friends know you could sing back, Like, let's
say you're back in the trailer. Did they know you
as Rita who could sing really well but it's also
a great actress. I'm just trying, I'm just finding where.

Speaker 14 (01:36:32):
Probably no. But when I went to drama school I had.
I had done this small play called Vanities, and the
director of that play said, you seem to be like
to be on the stage. Have you ever had any
formal training? And I'm like, not formal training. No. He said, well,
you should probably go to get some like Shakespeare stage training.
I was like, where do you do that? Like stage?

(01:36:55):
You mean like a sound stage at Paramount? Like I
literally I don't think i'd ever even a play. And
he said, oh, there's these schools that you can go to,
and he put me in touch with a woman that
had come from this program in London at the London
Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. So I applied and
I got in. While I was there, they would have

(01:37:15):
us do different things to kind of get us out
of our comfort zone, and one of them was they
assigned me to sing this opera thing English English. It
was actually a Rosini opera, but I had to sing
it as a duet with another woman, and this woman
was an amazing singer, and I thought, I'm not ever

(01:37:37):
going to be pulling this off. But anyways, I did it,
and I remember one of my teachers came up to
me and said, I didn't know you could sing. I
was like am I Like, am I what you call
that singing? I don't know, but it was nice to
hear that, you know, in a way.

Speaker 1 (01:37:55):
Bailey Zimmerman was just working a gas pipeline a few
years ago and now he's blowing up. Here is his story.
What I read though, was you didn't start off doing
music on any sort of social media, like even TikTok.
You were just showing off truck trucks. Yeah, so let's
go back then, before music. You said I'm gonna get
on and did you plan to just do it for
like your small circle or did you go I got

(01:38:17):
some real I think truck people will follow me. I'm
going to create a brand here.

Speaker 6 (01:38:21):
So I started.

Speaker 15 (01:38:22):
There's this girl in my hometown is Walmart, and she
was a cashier and she was like I was flirting
with her, and I was like, I'm going to catch
you on TikTok because I posted one video and it
did just, you know, a couple of thousand, and she
was like, you'll never hit ten thousand followers on TikTok.
So I just kind of got it in me. I
was like, well, I'm going to do that. So I started.
I built this truck. I started just filming it and

(01:38:43):
stuff and putting sounds behind it, and then.

Speaker 6 (01:38:45):
Ended up getting a lot of traction.

Speaker 15 (01:38:47):
And then I got hooked on truck shows, so then
I started taking going. Yeah, I took it from just
like building tracks and posting. It's like, oh, I think
I'm going to start going to these shows and maybe
get some, you know, try to win trophies. And I
got hooked on that in twenty nineteen and then just
kept doing my truck stuff. And then one day I

(01:39:07):
had never sang before, and I was wanting to get
out of the pipeline industry just because of not seeing
family and being gone so much. And so I was like, Okay,
I'm gonna start building trucks. That's a profession. And not
only am I gonna post them, but I'm gonna build
other people's trucks. So me and my brother John started
doing that, and like three days into business, I tried

(01:39:29):
singing just in the shop and this dude named Gavin
Lucas from the same town I'm in. I was like, hey, man,
I think you've got a cool voice, and I write songs.
I can play guitar. Would you ever just want to
hang sometime? And I was like, yeah, man, I'll hang sometime.
I've never really watched anybody play guitar and sing at
the same time.

Speaker 1 (01:39:46):
That's how it started.

Speaker 6 (01:39:47):
That's how the whole thing started.

Speaker 1 (01:39:49):
Yeah, dear God, I've never heard of a more random,
cooler oops but awesome story.

Speaker 15 (01:39:56):
It was very random. We like jammed like three times.
I was just so in awe of him playing guitar
and sing at the same time. He's like writing, this
guy can write songs. So one night we were hanging
and he said, hey, man, tonight we should try to
like really write a song and see if we can
write songs. So that was my first single, Never Coming Home.
That night we wrote the first verse and my just

(01:40:18):
like a week ind of hanging with Gavin and we
wrote the first verse and then posted it on TikTok
that night at like two am and I woke up
and I like, kid, you know, I woke up had
almost two million views, a crazy amount of comments.

Speaker 6 (01:40:32):
I called my union that I was in, that I pipelined.

Speaker 1 (01:40:34):
With quit after one video in the next morning. Yeah,
and you were already looking to get out, but listen
when there's not a paycheck coming.

Speaker 6 (01:40:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:40:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:40:43):
We were laid off at the time and got it.

Speaker 15 (01:40:45):
I just felt like, man, if I'm going to chase something,
this is definitely something to chase.

Speaker 6 (01:40:49):
You know, you might as well try it.

Speaker 1 (01:40:50):
But what's funny is You're like, if I'm going to
chase something, I guess it is this thing that just
randomly popped up a couple days ago. That's awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:40:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 14 (01:40:56):
Yeah, Well, man, did.

Speaker 2 (01:40:58):
You never sing as a kid?

Speaker 15 (01:41:00):
My mom would always like tell me in the truck, like, oh,
you should sing. I used to be able to sing
before I started smoking cigarettes. I used to be able
to sing and stuff, and I just always blew it
off because that's my mom, you know, So I always
just blew it off. And then over my life, I've
had like three people tell me, man, I think you
could sing, But.

Speaker 1 (01:41:18):
But did you ever sing where people could actually hear you?

Speaker 6 (01:41:21):
No?

Speaker 15 (01:41:22):
It all started like two years from now or two
years back from now. I like sang one day and
then after that I had like three people tell me
and there.

Speaker 6 (01:41:33):
Just random like a random place.

Speaker 15 (01:41:34):
I think it was up at the courts in Flora, Illinois,
like the basketball court.

Speaker 17 (01:41:39):
Yeah, so what do you mean?

Speaker 1 (01:41:40):
You're just like just right here me and you and
you're like you are my sunshine.

Speaker 6 (01:41:43):
Yeah yeah, Luke Combs Hurricane.

Speaker 15 (01:41:47):
This kid named Trey ZOOTI was just jamming on the
guitar and I was real bored and you always just
went up to the basketball courts to hang out. And
he was like jamming on the guitar and I was like,
I'll try to sing. And then I tried, and then
I tried again, and then that video. I was like,
you know what, I'm just going to try it. Like
what can it hurt if I tried singing?

Speaker 12 (01:42:06):
That's crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:42:06):
You're like a kid who's walking by a ball field
and you're like, oh man, there's a ball land down there.
Let me just credit it. Oh you have a glove
one over there. Am I supposed to throw it to you?

Speaker 12 (01:42:14):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:42:14):
Pow one hundred and two mile an hour fast off.
And you're like Wow. Nate Smith talks about the odd
jobs that he had while he was trying to make
it any music, and Nate shares how working in the
medical field and writing songs are actually very similar.

Speaker 18 (01:42:29):
So I read you went back home right and almost
gave up on singing?

Speaker 9 (01:42:32):
Oh for sure?

Speaker 18 (01:42:33):
Yeah, So what made you just want to give up?

Speaker 7 (01:42:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 20 (01:42:36):
Just to be honest, I was crazy in love with
this Southern bell and we got married my first time
moving here. She was my next door neighbor, and we
just had just a lot of passion for each other.

Speaker 9 (01:42:47):
We eloped, we did.

Speaker 20 (01:42:49):
And I'm a really open book, by the way, Like
I don't there's nothing to hide in.

Speaker 18 (01:42:53):
Wait, okay, good.

Speaker 2 (01:42:53):
I was wondering.

Speaker 18 (01:42:54):
I was like, if you don't feel comfortable talking about something.

Speaker 20 (01:42:56):
No, I mean, I've told this to a lot of people,
own stuff, and I honestly wish it really well. We
haven't talked in a long time, but we ended up
divorcing it. It didn't work as really painful for both
of us, but that's what ultimately led me back to California.
So like, I just was like at the bottom of
the barrel, just upset, you know. In my publishing company

(01:43:17):
was like, we're not going to keep you signed if
you're not going to stay in Nashville. I'm like, well,
I got to go home and be with my family.
So I went home, and luckily, I've been a nurse
assistant since I was eighteen, so I had a job
everywhere I went in a hospital or an elderly home
or anything like that. So I went back and started
working right away at a hospital and started taking care
of patients.

Speaker 18 (01:43:35):
And didn't you have other odd jobs too? Your Uber driver?

Speaker 1 (01:43:38):
Is that right?

Speaker 3 (01:43:39):
Yep?

Speaker 20 (01:43:39):
Uber, I was a courier for a dental lab, just
worked at hotels and just whatever I could get.

Speaker 7 (01:43:47):
You know.

Speaker 18 (01:43:49):
But I'm assuming since you go back there, you're like, Okay,
something is still missing, you know, Like I know this
is in my heart, this is what I want to do,
So now what you know?

Speaker 20 (01:43:57):
I was always it was always a there's always a
lot of like confliction with it, because like I would
ask my friends and they'd be like, you know, deep
down and you want to do music. I'm like, yeah,
but nursing is really great and I love taking care
of people. So I was really split between these two worlds.
And I feel like for the first time in my life.
Now those two worlds have collided in a good way.
Like I feel like I am helping people and I'm
making music. So it's kind of like this cool thing

(01:44:18):
where I'm like I feel like nurse singing Nate or
something like, I don't know.

Speaker 18 (01:44:23):
No, it's so true, like the therapeutic part of music.
That's what it is, is that feeling and you get
to do But that's awesome. Yeah, so you did come
back after or what was the turning point that made
you move back.

Speaker 9 (01:44:36):
To Nashville for the second time.

Speaker 18 (01:44:37):
Yes, for the second time.

Speaker 9 (01:44:38):
So, so I was working as a nurse assistant.

Speaker 20 (01:44:41):
I was working in ICU and trauma taking care of
patients really crazy stuff, you know, like doing compressions CPR
on people in front of their family, like crazy stuff
like just oh my god.

Speaker 9 (01:44:50):
And yeah, it was just one of those things. I
was helping out my brother at his church. He was
a youth pastor.

Speaker 20 (01:44:55):
I was helping out the youth band and like getting
them together and like, hey, you play the you play this,
and then this is your part and.

Speaker 9 (01:45:02):
Like kind of kind of raised them up a little bit.
It was really cool.

Speaker 20 (01:45:06):
And then I'm sure it's not every blog that I've
talked on and stuff. But my town caught on fire
kind of out of nowhere, which is I did not know.

Speaker 18 (01:45:16):
This, honestly, I know this part about you no, oh gosh, okay, yeah,
and so this is a huge thing that a lot
of people may not even know.

Speaker 9 (01:45:22):
Also oh man, okay.

Speaker 7 (01:45:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 20 (01:45:23):
So Paradise, California. So it's called the campfire. It a
couple of years ago, just randomly caught. It was twenty eighteen,
November eleventh and twenty eighteen and yeah, or November eighth.

Speaker 12 (01:45:35):
Yeah, it get it.

Speaker 20 (01:45:36):
Kind of mixed up, but it happened. And then like
we lost everything I've ever owned in my entire life.

Speaker 9 (01:45:42):
My brother lost his house, they just had a baby.

Speaker 20 (01:45:45):
I lost my apartment with all my stuff, like really
really really traumatic. And then about ninety people passed away
in that fire because it was like they're all trying
to leave at the same time and it just wasn't working.
So yeah, it was a really scary day because like
my brother called me, was like I'm having a hard
time getting out of here, and and it was really
really hard.

Speaker 9 (01:46:05):
It's really hard.

Speaker 20 (01:46:06):
And then once once he came, my dad had a
house in the town right next door to us, called Chico.
So we all met up at my dad's and then
my brother's like, hey, I'm good, And when he came
into the door, we're just like weeping, like I hugged him.

Speaker 9 (01:46:16):
I'm like, I'm so thankful you're okay. Like it was,
it was nuts.

Speaker 20 (01:46:20):
And then you'd go to like there was just chaos
in that whole city, like people were sleeping in tents
and the Walmart parking.

Speaker 1 (01:46:26):
Lots, all the stuff.

Speaker 20 (01:46:27):
So I was lucky enough to have a place a
house to go do because everything rented up to within
the first day or two, so you couldn't even get
a rental anywhere.

Speaker 9 (01:46:34):
Like, it was pretty nuts.

Speaker 18 (01:46:37):
I can't even I can't imagine that.

Speaker 7 (01:46:38):
Yeah, it's terrible.

Speaker 20 (01:46:39):
Yeah, there's a documentary on Netflix too, really, yeah, I'm
about it on there, so I think Ron Howard produced it.

Speaker 18 (01:46:45):
Wow, Okay, I'll have to check that out because I
mean that's crazy and that's a huge moment also like
for your career too, as far as inspiring you, you know,
to want to do more with music.

Speaker 20 (01:46:57):
Right, Yeah, I mean that's kind of what started in
a sense. Because I'm gonna tell this part really quick,
but when I first moved to Nashville, my supervisor at
Starbucks because I got a regular shop when I was
out here.

Speaker 4 (01:47:08):
The first time.

Speaker 20 (01:47:09):
His name was Tom Boprey, and Tom was looking for
gigs and stuff. So Tom actually was my I was
his first gig as a bass player. And after I
left Nashville, he went on to be part of Florida
Georgia Line for the last like whatever ten years that
they ran their main bass player.

Speaker 9 (01:47:25):
Yeah, so we reconnected.

Speaker 20 (01:47:27):
Kind of right before the fire and stuff, and we're
talking and stuff. And so when the fire happened, I
moved in with my dad. He ended up calling up
a company that gave his band guitars, so they sent
me an acoustic guitar.

Speaker 9 (01:47:40):
I lost my other one, nice.

Speaker 20 (01:47:41):
Skipson and stuff in the fire, and yeah, so I
have this guitar sent on my front doorstep. And I
ended up writing a song about paradise called one of
These Days with one of my friends and just put
up on Facebook just to like help out the community
and stuff like that, and it ended up like locally
like touching a lot of people and it was just
really really rad to see that. And I started doing

(01:48:03):
benefit concerts and stuff and then we got this idea
where like, what if we record it and then give
all the money away to somebody who's in need or
a charity in the area or Red Cross or whatever
we can do.

Speaker 9 (01:48:12):
So we did.

Speaker 20 (01:48:12):
So we flew to Nashville recorded this song. I met
up with Tombo Pray to thank him, like forgiving me
the guitar, and he said, hey, you should have my
friend Joel Brier mix mix the song for you.

Speaker 9 (01:48:23):
I'm like, who's Joel. He's just a good friend of mine.

Speaker 20 (01:48:26):
Now Joel, long story short, has become one of my
best friends, and he's he. I have a few songs,
the first songs I put out Sleeve under my Skin, Wildfire,
I Don't Want to Go to Heaven, We're all produced
by Joel. So, like it's just from literally met up
with tom at lunch. He called Joel. That's how he
met that whole thing. So then I come back to California,

(01:48:46):
raised some money on the song, and everything I had
I ended up giving it to this really cool single
mom who like was moving out of Paradise, who lost everything.
And I looked at her and I was like, the
reason I got the guitar, the reason that I wrote
this song. The reason that I met this person, that
person was all because of you, Like this was meant
to be your moment, Like it was like the coolest
thing to see that happen, and like like that's how
loved you are, Like you know, it was just really

(01:49:08):
cool to see that. So that's what started. And then
I started writing songs again. I started working with Joel
and flying in and out of Nashville, and then eventually
my friends were like, you should go back, and they
raised a GoFundMe to get me to go to Nashville.

Speaker 9 (01:49:21):
But my lease didn't start until July.

Speaker 20 (01:49:23):
This was like in April or something or May somewhere
around there, and so I had to live out of
my car for about a month and a half and
stayed in rest stops, camped, met random people on the road,
stayed in their living rooms, like whatever I could do
until I got to Nashville.

Speaker 1 (01:49:40):
So thanks for listening to the special edition of the Bobbycast,
all about artists that had to work hard doing something
else in order to get where they wanted to get.
Hopefully that inspired you or at least entertained you. Thank
you for listening, and be sure to subscribe to The
Bobbycast wherever you are listening to this, and please rate
at five stars. We're back next week the brand new

(01:50:00):
episode

Speaker 5 (01:50:03):
MHM

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Bobby Bones

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