Pipeman Interviews Austin Snell at Bourbon & Beyond 2025

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Bourbon & Beyond is the World’s Largest Bourbon, Food & Music Fest

Bourbon & Beyond Kicked Off America’s 8 Biggest Days In Music on September 11-14 In Louisville, Kentucky  

World’s Largest Bourbon, Food & Music Festival Featured Headliners The Lumineers, Benson Boone, Alabama Shakes (Thursday), Phish, Khruangbin, Joe Bonamassa (Friday), Sturgill “Johnny Blue Skies” Simpson, Jack White, Vance Joy (Saturday), Noah Kahan, Goo Goo Dolls, Megan Moroney (Sunday), Plus Dozens More Rock, Americana, Bluegrass And Alt Rock Artists Along With Elevated Bourbon & Culinary Experiences.  

The seventh Bourbon & Beyond welcomed fans from over 50 states and around the globe and over 120 music artists on five stages to Louisville, Kentucky over the weekend. The World’s Largest Bourbon, Food & Music Festival was held from September 11-14 at the at Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville, Kentucky and featured an incredible music lineup of music legends and rising stars with headliners The Lumineers, Benson Boone and Alabama Shakes on Thursday; Phish, Khruangbin and Joe Bonamassa on Friday; Sturgill “Johnny Blue Skies” Simpson, Jack White and Vance Joy on Saturday; and Noah Kahan, Goo Goo Dolls and Megan Moroney on Sunday. The lineup also included Cage The Elephant, Pat Benatar & Neil Giraldo, Collective Soul, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Iron & Wine, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, Switchfoot, Third Eye Blind, Ringo Starr & His All Star Band, Pixies, Lake Street Dive, Dashboard Confessional, Foreigner, Blues Traveler and many others.  

This year, Bourbon & Beyond’s newly expanded footprint doubled the square footage of past layouts, and made greater use of the Kentucky Exposition Center’s infrastructure, creating a more comfortable and resilient experience for fans. In addition, all festival passes included FREE access to amusement rides inside Kentucky Kingdom.

This year’s festival was packed with unforgettable performances, surprise collaborations, and historic moments that will be remembered for years to come.   Take some zany and serious journeys with The Pipeman aka Dean K. Piper, CST on The Adventures of Pipeman also known as Pipeman Radio syndicated globally “Where Who Knows And Anything Goes.”  

Check out our segment Positively Pipeman dedicated to Business, Motivation, Spiritual, and Health & Wellness.  

Check out our segment Pipeman in the Pit dedicated to Music, Artistry and Entertainment.  
 
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi, you love done too? Yes, that's true. Why for
you young?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
This is the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe
Man W four C Y Radio, and I'm here.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
With Austin Snow. What's up?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hey, Hey, fucking great that you're here at Bourbon and Beyond.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Looking great to be here.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
Man.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
The weather is phenomenal, I know, right yeah, And I
gotta tell you, I don't know if you've been here before.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
I am. I graduated high school here.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
So have you been to this festival?

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Okay, So they switched around the whole festival this year.
It is so much better. So it used to be
on the other side of the building where all the
gravel is and you know that festival dust crap.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Not this year.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
I was almost in one sense looking forward to coming.
I was like dreading. I'm like, oh man, I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Gonna get the festival flow again. And then I walked
out there, I'm like, oh my god, this is.

Speaker 4 (01:12):
As They got all of us inside, too, which is great.
Usually you don't get that a festivals.

Speaker 1 (01:16):
That's amazing.

Speaker 4 (01:16):
Usually you're sitting out in the sun all day waiting
to play. And right, I got a little ac going.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
So see, have you ever done that? Danny Wimmer festival before.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
I have no idea.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Okay, y see how he treats the artists.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
I mean, like, what is your experience been already as
being treated as an artist compared to other festivals.

Speaker 3 (01:36):
Yeah, the experience here has been great.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
I mean, like I said, just now, we got indoor
green rooms, we get snacks, we got catering, we got
all the good stuff, and they got golf course to
haul us around everywhere. So right, I've definitely been at
festivals where you get none of that. No, there's nothing
but floading a nightmare yep, and just porta potties.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
Right, it's all there is. But you know, it's been great.
It's been awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
So yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
And I think it's even the way it's till it's
better for you as an artist, because I always wonder
with artists, I'm.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Like, how the hell did they do this? And sing
with that? Festival? Does?

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Like I lose my voice after a day of interviews
from that. I can't imagine singing doing that.

Speaker 4 (02:14):
Yeah, I've had to learn the hard way that you
got to take care of your voice for sure in
this business. Yeah, it's actually it's harder to go sing
up in the mountains than it is in.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
The dust because of the elevation.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Yeah, like in Colorado up there, it's like it's rough.

Speaker 4 (02:26):
Yeah, I bet, And I'm tired before I get on stage,
I know, right.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
And I love what you said because I think a
lot of singers or a lot of people don't realize
that singers like they develop and they evolve because of
these experiences. And it's like finding your voice. That doesn't
ruin your voice. It's hard work, isn't.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
It absolutely is?

Speaker 4 (02:49):
Yeah, And I feel like most of us that sing
grew up the same way, just singing around, right, Nobody
ever'd ever took a music singing class in school or
high school or any of that. And so like when
I started, that's all I knew was how I'd been
singing my whole life. And then when you add that
on top of playing one hundred and fifty shows a year,
it stacks up.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
So you don't have the longevity if you do that.
Like absolutely, I had that issue.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Like, well, I was a teenager. I was singing thrash metal,
but it was so new that they didn't have any
techniques or anything, So I just fried my throat yep.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Because it's easy to do.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
You think that's how you're supposed to sing it. Yeah,
like you know, you just sounds good from your gut.
But when you're doing those gut oral sounds, you think
you ask coming from your throat and then you fry
it and yep, you can't even get past one song.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
I think I like focus on that because I don't
think people realize how hard it is sometimes to be
an artist as singer.

Speaker 4 (03:40):
Yeah, it's tough work, but there's also absolute worse things
I could be doing.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
It could be harder.

Speaker 4 (03:45):
So I worked construction for a couple of years and
then worked on airplanes for about four before that, and
so I would much rather be warming up my vocal
cords than there you go to the sun.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
So what was that moment in time in your life
that you knew this is what you need to do.

Speaker 4 (03:59):
I don't think that there was ever any really a
point that kind of changed my perspective on it.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
I joined the Air Force.

Speaker 4 (04:06):
Right after high school and it never your service the way,
thank you so much. And I joined the Air Force
r after high school, and then it was pretty much
just bored. Man, I've really just got bored after basic training,
and I was in my second phase of training, so
we'd go to class at six am and get off
at four and that was the first time we have
any free time. So I had to figure out how
to feel this free time that I had for the
first time, and I bought a guitar. I started singing

(04:27):
songs and kind of around them. Was when TikTok and
all that kind of came along. So I just started
doing covers and posting them, and I got bored with covers,
so I started writing my own songs. And I did
the same thing and kind of built the following that way,
and then moved to Nashville after my enlistment. So I've
never had a plan at all that.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
That's the way things work out, the way you really
wanted to. Because when you have a plan and if
the plan goes awry, then you're like, oh my god.
But when you don't really have that plan, you could
just be whoever.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
You want to be.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
That's my viewpoint, absolutely, And it's interesting because I don't
know if you know this.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
There's a band playing here. Okay.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
My son's been in the army for almost twenty years,
and I said to him what's wrong with you?

Speaker 1 (05:08):
Man? You should have gotten this job.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
There's a band that plays at all the Danny Wimmer
festivals as you were.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
They're an army band.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
It's their job in the army to play music and
play music festivals. I'm like, my son's psyops. Yeah, he
jumps out airplanes into Somalia and stuff like that. I'm like,
you couldn't have traded into torture training for maybe guitar lessons.

Speaker 3 (05:30):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (05:33):
I didn't know enough about music theory to do that
when I joined the Air Force, so I still don't
know anything about music.

Speaker 3 (05:38):
I just do what sounds good, didn't.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
You know what, though, think about some of the greatest artists,
it's not about knowing everything, about having that passion.

Speaker 4 (05:47):
Absolutely, And I think you lose a lot of creativity
that way too. If you know too much about what
you're doing, you lose a lot of creativity.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
Because then you're too focused on the tractor goal yeah,
instead of just the heart. I I can tell you
some of the best concerts I've ever went to weren't
necessarily the best sounding singers or the best musicians. It
was the energy, the vibe, what you feel going on.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
Yep, absolutely right. You gotta catch a vibe, man, that's
the biggest thing there, it is. That's all people want
to experience, is just a vibe.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
That's what it's about, especially nowadays with everything going on
in the world. We just want to come here to escape.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
In your art.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
That is absolutely right man.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
You know speaking of that tell us about Home Sweet Hell.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
Yeah, the song or the projects, all of.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
It, because I just love that name altogether, because I
feel like that when I go and do festivals in
Europe and UK and i'd come back home, I'm like, oh,
home sweet Hell.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
It's the way I feel.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:46):
So the EP kind of came last minute. I would say,
a couple friends of mine and I wrote a song
at I think it was three AM and.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
A Motel six.

Speaker 4 (06:55):
I love that late last year and I kind of
wanted my project this year to be more towards the
mental health side of things, just because that's where I
found music is in that aspect and it got me
through a lot of hard times in my life and
that's kind of what I wanted to do for my
own music. And I've had to grow a lot over
the last three years doing this whole music thing, and
I had, I would say, an unorthodox way of breaking

(07:16):
into the industry because I feel like most people when
they move to Nashville and do the whole music thing,
they're there for a few years. They're there for upwards
of ten years doing it with nothing going on, and
so they have time to figure out themselves and learn
about what they want to talk about and this and that.
And just shot into the whole thing and signed my
record deal five months into moving to town.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (07:34):
And so when that ball starts rolling, you're still learning
a lot about yourself and what you want to talk
about in your story. And I feel like just this
project is a result of me just growing into what
I want to talk about.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
See, I love that.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
And yes, music is the best therapy for you, the artists,
and for us the listeners. So there's a lot of
people out there, especially nowadays, we're saying artists should just
stick to the music.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
And not use it as a pulpit. I'm like, do
you know what music is? That's the whole reasons It's
always been that.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
Yeah, come on, And I think absolutely, especially if you
have the audience, you should be speaking up about things
that are important to Marie because there's other people out
there that can relate exactly you get and get help
from them.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
Yep, exactly.

Speaker 4 (08:19):
And also there's just such an influx of people doing
it at the same time. Now you have to be
more of a personality than you ever have been. People
have to know you, people have to want to.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
Be around you.

Speaker 4 (08:28):
And that's why social media is eighty percent of our
job now. It's not really the music anymore as much
as it is just being in front of people's faces
because so many people are doing it. Yeah, you have
to pick aside and what you stand for, and you
have to stand up for something because that's what people want.
They want to dide with somebody exactly, kind of feel
like they're close to them.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
So no doubt, And like it's funny you should say
that because like I've managed certain artists and I have
like associations with Sony and other record labels, and the
first thing they want is the social media the music, right, Like, first,
let's see their social media, following then you could send.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
Us some music, yeah seeing it out? Yeahah, So to
your point, yeah, and I'll tell you what I was like.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
So you were the second ever in that artist program
that Serious XM puts on. Oh my god, what did
that feel like for that to happen? Because that I'm thinking,
holy shit, that's pretty freaking cool.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (09:26):
Yeah, it's even cooler because going back on what I
said earlier that I never had a plan. I never
saw myself doing any of this, So it's like so
much just out of thin air, and it's just kind
of just been one of those things where like I
wasn't expecting any of that. I wasn't expecting to even
be here today or any of that. I just have
been doing what I love, and it's just it's I
feel like it's a testament of just doing what you

(09:47):
love and it'll figure itself out.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Soul that irons and I could tell you have the
total passion for music and what they do and the
love for it. There's sometimes ours are just going through motions.
I'm like, you're in the wrong business if you're not
loving this business. Yeah, you're in the wrong business. Arrest
It's not fun, right, you know, So you gotta at
least love doing the music for sure. Well, I'm so

(10:09):
happy you're here at Bourbon Beyond your badass and thanks
for being on the adventures pipe Man

Speaker 4 (10:14):
Absolutely man, thank you, thank you for listening to the
Adventures of Pipemin on w for c u I Radio.