On this week's episode of the BobbyCast, Bobby sits down with country music superstar, Eric Church. Eric talks about being a part owner of the Charlotte Hornets after getting a call from Michael Jordan, why he always changes up his live shows, and how he and Morgan Wallen got into business together. Plus, Bobby asks Eric which hit he almost never recorded, and Eric tells the story of how that song almost got him dropped from his label, and much more!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
First of all, the label told me if I released
that they were going.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
To drop me because of what the song was.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Yeah, there was.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
No song like that in the year that it came
out like it was. First of all, we're all on
our own path anyway, and the labels like, listen, if
you do this, just might as well go do it
somewhere else.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome to episode five to ten with Eric Church on
Instagram at Eric Church Music. His single now is called
Hands of Time. We talk about the album, we talk
about the tour, we talk about the time he got
fired for working for basically home shopping Network, which does
a pretty funny story. It was awesome, Yeah, and it
was a good, pretty much hour with Eric. I think
(00:45):
what's cool And I've been lucky enough to spend a
little time with Eric outside of work, outside of anything professional.
It was just a really nice guy. He's definitely still
the chief. And he had a sunglasses on the whole interview.
See I should have done that way or like so
people can't see my eyes. I can't see my eyes.
He could have been checking out my shoes, looking inside
the house. I'd had no idea, That's all I was
wondering coming into it was he good at wear them, Yeah,
(01:06):
good to be the Chief, or they just could be
Eric Church. He was kind of like Chief Eric. I
feel like he's like so smart. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, Yeah,
you're right, because the image of Eric Church is like
this tough dude and he's you know, he gets up
and he does this thing and writes songs people love,
and he has that. But he's also, yeah, very smart,
which is why he's such a great songwriter. And he's
(01:28):
so cerebral. But if they called him cerebral and not
the Chief, if that was his nickname, Cerebral, probably wouldn't
have the same impact. So super cool to sit with Eric.
He came over to the house and yeah, we did
this for about an hour. He's got a new album,
Evangeline Versus the Machine, that is out now. He's playing
a ton of shows and Eric Church dot com get
(01:50):
tickets to the show. Here he is. I gotta say,
the Michael Jordan' story is pretty cool. It's coming up.
It's just so nonchalant mj Here he is, Episode five
to ten, Eric Church, Very good to see you, Bobby.
Do you have Carolina Blue one on purpose underneath?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Is it? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah, I mean most every well I don't. Oh, I
do too, but not on Yeah, this wasn't in your honor.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
That's funny because I was talking because most everything I
have has a hog on it or a razorback on it. Yeah,
like red or phone or a lot of my clothes.
Do you have North Carolina stuff everywhere? And like you're
and now and now which is weirder. But we're involved
with the Hornets too. So I have purple and teal,
so it's Carolina blue and purple and tea. What do
you mean involved with the Hornets here part of the ownership. Yeah, dang,
(02:36):
I bought a pick a ball team. I don't have
NBA team though ball teams are cool too, But what's
up with that? So what's Lamela gonna do?
Speaker 3 (02:44):
We'll see, well, we will see. It's a there's a
there's a there's a really important draft coming.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
I got to be friends with MJ a few years
back and when he sold the team, and it was
one of the weirder calls you ever get in your life.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
But MJ goes, hey, I.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Want you to be involved with the Hornets ownership group.
I was, what does that mean. He said, I want
North Carolina presence. I want people that are local. The
group that's buying it's out of New York private equity,
and he said, I want you to I want you
to do it. He said, I'll help you if you
need help, but he said, I want you to be involved,
so you don't say no to Michael Jordan's So I got.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
That's super cool in a couple of ways. One because
it is Michael Jordan, the greatest athlete or pop culture
sports figure in our lifetime, I think, right, it's like
bab Bruce, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods two that Michael Jordan
played for North Carolina, right, And for you that's such
a personal thing and that now, yeah, that you talk
(03:42):
to him on the phone that i'n't been like put
on speaker phone recording it. So so what do you
do is like part owner?
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Well, the great thing about the Hornets is the majority owners.
You have majority of the minority, but the majority guys
or you can different different groups in the NBA, but
sometimes you get a majority that you know owns the
ninety five percent of the team and you're just involved.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
But our group's really good about.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Keeping us involved and all the decisions we're making, So
you know, a lot of it rolls around draft picks,
a lot of We renovated the arena there in Charlotte.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
We've did a big renovation.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
So you kind of have a three to five year plan,
and Charlotte needs it because the Panthers aren't awesome and
the city needs it. So we're on a three to
five year plan. Really through draft picks. That's that's the
best way to build a team. And luckily or unluckily,
the past couple of years, we've got some good draft picks.
(04:41):
So that's the game we play right now.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Dan, I wasn't expecting that. That's awesome. I put a
bunch of money into the Nashville baseball team, so if
we get a baseball team here, nash.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Will be a great city for that.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, let's go. Then I'll call you. I'll be like,
what's up? Owner? Owner?
Speaker 1 (04:54):
So yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
When did you get your first guitar?
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Thirteen?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Why'd you get it?
Speaker 3 (05:00):
I was writing songs, poetry kind of song things, and
I was having to sing the melodies in my head
and got like a Christmas gift, and then it took
me a little bit to learn to play it, but
you know that was just an avenue.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
For me to get the songs out.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Did you take to it immediately?
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Were you good at it quickly?
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Do you have a brain that allows you to not
just write lyrics? But how do you compute music? Like?
How were you able to do key? I mean, like
how did you learn music?
Speaker 1 (05:31):
That's a great question. I I don't know. It was
the fastest thing that I was able just to kind
of get.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
And then.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
You learn a lot of that too in you know,
earning your salt Where I got in a band pretty quick.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
I mean I was in a band.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
It maybe seventeen, I was, I was on what and
eighteen years old, and I started just playing in bands
and some shady places, and I did the chicken wire
thing at that show. I've had a band member leave
the stage during a song and go fight a guy
in the parking lot and make it back before the
(06:08):
end of the song. And that guy was my brother.
So we've done that during Now. You know, when you
make it back for the end of the song, that's
doing quick work, you know. But it was a skinnered song,
so it was a little long. But I've done all
those I've donell those things, and you learn a lot
from those situations. I always talk about in the world
we live in now, and you know this, in the
world we live in, it's easier to get discovered and
(06:33):
to earn a following, but it's harder to earn that as.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
A musician where you can.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
I'll give you example, and I won't name a name,
but there was an act recently that I like a lot,
and we were gonna we're talking about our next tour,
and it's a person who has a presence social media whatever,
and I said, hey, you know, we'd love to have you.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
They don't have a.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Band yet, they've not toured yet, that's all just on
what they do on their channel. They've not played yet,
and it's like, you know, you've not taken anything on
the road.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
You don't, right, And that's.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
A problem because you learn so much from being in
those situations. And what I've found in my career, you're
gonna get in big moments, and if you don't feel
like you deserve the big moment.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
You might not meet the moment.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
And those early days allow you to know when you
get to that moment, you've put in the work to
earned that.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
I want to talk about being an advocate. I think
even in this record that there's songs where you're an
advocate as well, And so I don't think it's I
think a big part of it is what you're doing
for the communities and for people that maybe don't have
a voice, but also for people that maybe need a voice.
And I mean I could pull up a couple of
songs even like Johnny or Darkest Hour, like those feel
(07:59):
like advocate type songs, like you're speaking for somebody, for
yourself but also for others. Well.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
I think a lot of that also comes a little
bit with our We're a little bit of an anomaly
that we got here completely on the backs of our
fans early on because we didn't have a ton of
industry success.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
We were a little bit pushed to the fringes.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
And you know, I remember one year I played Grand Rapids,
Michigan like nine times because I could get a thousand
tickets in Grand Rappers mission.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
We just kept rolling back.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
You know, how many times can we go to the
whale because we had to have gas money to be
able to move that bus around.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
So a lot of that is the people that you
end up seeing every night and then something happens, or
you think about their lot in life. Yeah, I think
that comes out a little bit now when I think
about that, because I wouldn't be in the situation that
I'm in for for them.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Revisions history. As Eric Church moved to town, wrote a
bunch of songs, was it's a successful songwriter but didn't
hit and didn't even a massive star. That's revisions history.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah, that's false.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
What's the truth.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
I came to town. It was different with what music I
was writing, and early on it wasn't great. You know,
you come to town and you learn what real now.
I mean, I say this to all young artists is
you can't imagine. And a lot of people dog now
a lot of the songwriting things and say, oh, it's
Nashville songwriters, National songwriters, the best in the world. I mean,
(09:34):
they're the their greatest craftsmen in the world. And it
took me a minute to come to town. And I
was fortunate I came at a time when we still
sat across from each other and did that, you know
where Now there's a lot of stuff that technologies involved,
and that's fine, but I got to learn from a
lot of those guys.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
So I came here and.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
My perspective when I came it's gonna be hard to believe,
but was kind of a soccer mom type format.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
There were a lot of females.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
It was very driven that way, and I had a
more masculine approach, and it was not liked by most
were everybody, and I just had a different lane. But
eventually got a record deal and got in that lane.
But then that was a hard lane because we were
(10:25):
just we were a little different on the radio and
we had a hard time getting songs play because it
didn't fit the formula at the time, and touring was interesting,
so it was just along. The first couple albums were
a really a really challenging time. Everybody comes to town
and you know a lot of these young artists and
they get a record deal and they think I made it,
(10:48):
I've done it.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
But that is just the beginning of the hardest part.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
And for us, it was in that first two album
period before Chief that we were grinding on the road.
There was one year we did over two hundred actual
shows in a year, and a lot of that was
just to keep the money moving in at any level
to keep moving forward, you know, to keep gaining ground.
(11:16):
And at the time, a lot of people in the
industry would have said, this doesn't really fit what we do, you.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Know, and it's just a it's a grind. It was
a grind for us.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Why did you move to Nashville. Was it to write
songs or was it to be an artist? In writing songs?
Was going to get you to that place? To be
an artist?
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Right? Songs?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
It was you're a writer? Yeah, how did you know
that was a job?
Speaker 1 (11:39):
I found that out.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I was in college and I had a band and
I started, you know, just playing some of my original songs,
uh in our cover set, and you know, people the
next time I would go back and play there, they
would recrest those songs. And that just kind of where
I started thinking, Okay, you know, songwritings. I just never
(12:02):
thought it was viable for me to be able to
go and get a record deal and do that. It
never crossed my mind. It just wasn't something I thought
I could do. So I really wanted to come here
and write songs. And you know, I met a couple
songwriters when I moved here and kind of saw what
they did and how they did it. And you go
get a you know, you take a draw and you
go right for a big publishing house and try to
(12:24):
get songs cut.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
So what'd you pack up? And you what did you
move into when you got here?
Speaker 3 (12:30):
I was in a I came to town in a
two tone nineteen eighty six Chevy blazer, blue and gray,
that's the color back then, man and I had a guitar,
I had a Duffel bag, and I found an apartment.
But I didn't know where to be. You know, when
you moved to Nashville, it's like I didn't know what
was what?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Did you have anybody here that you could ask those
questions to? No, so you blindly moved to town.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yeah, I came. I went to Broadway first.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
I tell this story my Chief Chief Residency as I
came to Broadway because that's where the Rymen was, That's
where you know tutsis is, That's where you know all
these iconic things. And I tried to get gigs there
and I couldn't get a gig there because I came
with a you know, a sack of songs and my
guitar and they wanted cover songs, and so I couldn't.
(13:21):
I couldn't make it on Broadway, so I ended up
over at Printer's Alley back in the day, which is
there's a place called the Fiddle and Steel Guitar Bar.
And what I found there were all the people that
got kicked off Broadway. That's where they congregated, and I
kind of found my tribe and there were a lot
of hit songwriters in that group.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
There are a lot of musicians in that group.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
And just kind of found my people and started figuring
it out.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
But I took a job. I had a job at
the Shopping Home Network. I sold knives. That was my job.
Thanks for calling Shopping Home. My name's Eric, I may
I help you? Oh yeah. I was the phone guy,
had the little headset, good stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
What kind of knives?
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Like?
Speaker 2 (14:02):
What was your what was your what was your rap?
Speaker 1 (14:05):
My rap?
Speaker 3 (14:06):
At that time, I actually got fired because of my
lack of rap.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
But I would answer the phone. I had the I
had the shift.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
It was I think my shift was eleven PM to
like seven am.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
That was the overnight shift. So that's the shift where
the guy.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Comes in he's been at a bar and he turns
on Shop at Home and there's the guy. When we
were looking at the studio, so where the phone bank was.
It was like an amphitheater type seating and we all
have our little chairs and our headsets on, and we're
looking at them selling the knives out their television studio
in front of us. And this guy, you know, would
call in and go three o'clock in the morning, slurring, going, man,
(14:45):
I gotta I gotta have some of these knives. It's
like three hundred knives for fifteen ninety ninety nine, right.
And actually one night there was a guy that called
in and he I could tell he had had a
long night and I had a few of those two
and he was like, man, he's I asked some of
these knives, you know, and he's slurring. I was like, yeah, yeah,
you know, he said, you know. I said, hey, you know,
what what do you favor? I said, why don't you
(15:07):
want you go to bed? And first of all, when
somebody calls and says I need a knife at that
time of night, you think there's already a problem, right
they don't need yeah, not right now. You don't need
a knife right now. You need to go to bed.
So I said, want you go to bed? And once
you call me in the morning, I'll still be here.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
You know.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
He said, what says there's three left? I said, brother,
trust there's more than three left. Okay, You're gonna be okay.
And there's that thing where when you call into something
like that and they'll say, for whatever purposes, this call
may be recorded. They do that, and they happened to
record this call. That's how you got got so I
(15:42):
got cut.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
You're advocating for that, dude.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
I was advocating that due they didn't like that shopping
on those, so they they fired me.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Uh, what's up with that name of the record, Evangeline
versus the Machine.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Well, so I think a lot of some of this,
some of this somewhat started. There's a there's a line
in Johnny that's a very important song on this album
because of the Covenant shooting here in Nashville. But there's
a line in there says, machines control of people, and
the people shoot shoot at kids. And what I've found
having younger kids is there's so much of our life nowadays.
(16:21):
It's just so fast and disposable with how we consume anything.
And what I've seen is it really rounds the edges
off anything we try to do different or creative, that's
just not what the world is set up for today.
It's not set up for the patient part of that.
And so I think that line is when that title started.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
But the crux of this.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Is Evangeline on the album plays almost a creative muse
that song. So it's that creative muse and following that
versus the machine that makes it very hard to execute that.
And that's that's the that's the juxtaposition of love.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
What this is.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our
sponsor and we're back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
When you mentioned Johnny and the shooting, and that was
very personal to all of us here because it was
so close to us, and it's probably close to a
lot of people in a lot of places. Because it's
so close to a lot of people, it's happening everywhere
all the time. The Johnny Johnny versus the Devil Devil
went down to Georgia that the song was playing, because
that is that part of the like you were thinking
(17:40):
about when you wrote the song. Yeah, I was hear
the song Devil went down to Georgia as I was.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
My kids go nearby here and I was, which is
a couple of miles from Covenant Whatever. And the hardest
thing I've ever done in my life is dropped my
kids off the day after the shooting because they had decided,
you know, that kids needed to feel some normalcy and
go back to school. And I remember, I've never I've
(18:07):
never done anything harder than that when I when I
watched them walk in.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
That school and both boys go in together.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
There's a bunch of people out front, teachers are crying everything,
so everybody goes inside, and I didn't know what to do.
I felt helpless, scared all those things. So I just
parked in the parking lot there and I sat there,
and I don't know how long I was going to
sit there. I just felt like I needed to be there.
And as at some point in time, during probably an hour,
(18:35):
at some point in time, I looked to my right
and I looked to my left, and there were parents
that had done the same thing all the way down
the line, moms and dads, and they were just sitting there.
And I had the radio on and it was down low.
I wouldn't paying attention to it, but that one down
Georgia was on and there was a there was a
(18:57):
piece of that in that moment as I'm looking at
my left and looking to my right and thinking about
my kids, that you know, Johnny rawsing up your bow
and play your fiddle. Hard Hills broke loose in Georgia
and the Devil deals cards and if you win, you
get to shiny.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Fidel made of gold, and if you lose, the devil
gets yourself.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
And I remember thinking, if only Johnny was confined, or
only if the Devil was confined to Georgia. He's out
of Georgia, He's everywhere, and we need Johnny to come
back and help.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
And that was it. And I pulled out of.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
The parking lot finally, and I went home and I
did like and some of this may have went to
the Evangeline versus the machine, because there is that Johnny
versus the devil, you know, that started that thing, good evil.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
And I went home and I said, it would be
interesting if we if a song was written from that perspective,
where you bring back a character from a song we
all know from thirty forty years ago and he gets
to play a different role.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And so I wrote, Johnny, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
I don't know that. I I'm glad to hear that
version or like the actual story behind how you wrote
the song, because now it kind of all makes sense
with the record and even within the song, because you
may just see the name Johnny and not understand. But
do you believe things happen for a reason?
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Do you believe that you heard that song at that time? Yes,
so you could have that thought, yes, so you could
write this song.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Yes, Huon believed that.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
And so whenever you write Johnny, you call Luke Laird
and Brett Warren.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yeah. I couldn't get out of it. I got in it.
I just couldn't figure out how to quite get out
of it.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
So what do you tell them?
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Like, I just sent it to them. I record kind
of what I'm doing in that time. It was so
fresh with what was going on. They I mean, it
wouldn't once I I couldn't figure out how to land it.
Like I got in the air and got it where
it was supposed to go, and I was like, I don't.
And it was probably some of that was emotional where
I was so tiedy in I couldn't. I had a
couple of things that I thought were too They weren't
(20:55):
the right emotion, and so I was like, hey, check
me on this, and then within a day or so
we had it, and then I kind of knew it
was a different you know, different perspective and different thing.
And then that was before us I started the residency,
and so in the residency, one of the big moments
is I would play that song late in the show
(21:15):
and we would kind of do a flash mob choir
that would come out behind the people and sing those
choir parts ended up being a big, big part of
the show and also a big part of formulating what.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
The conception for this album was.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Where I had voices and then all of a sudden
started thinking about strings and horns. I did Stagecoach, which
was noisy but I loved, and all these things before
I ever went in the studio. We're taking us in
a different musical direction, and I was starting to feel
a different pool.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Was this the first song that you did for the album,
maybe not even knowing it was gonna be the album?
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
First of all, so did this song actually create the
rest of the album.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
I think it created the template for how we were
going to do the album. So, I mean, I've not
a lot of people look back in this well, your
last record is twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
That's not really true.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
We recorded the album in December of twenty nineteen, in
January of twenty twenty and COVID happened, and we sat
on it for over a year, like everybody else.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
In the industry.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
So I've not been in the studio in five six years,
five years, and I think that I've got a lot
of songs. There's a lot of different avenues we could
have went down for this album. There's and I've done
this song enough. I understand this song is going to
be a hit song. This I get it. And there
were different lanes we could do, but it was really
(22:36):
Johnny and then stagecoach. It started to develop a different
path that.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Was interesting to me.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I'm a big Tom Waits fan.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
It's passed down to me because I think as a kid,
you don't really move toward Tom Waits's tone. Sort of
listening was like twelve or thirteen years old. Love the rasp,
love the grittiness. You did a Tom Waite song on
this clap hands? Why that song?
Speaker 1 (23:02):
See this is you?
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Remember you just You've already asked me, You've already answered
this in a question you already asked me, and do
you believe things happen for a reason. So I was
searching for filling out the rest of this project. And
the challenge of this project is not every song fifth
the room with who was in the room, and not
every not the people in the room fifth song. So
(23:25):
let's say we had fifty songs for this project, and
what you're finding is those songs that made it are
really the only ones we cut. Other songs it worked,
just they this didn't match this. So I was sitting
in to my house and there was a man, I'm
Tom we on the Nickels on my favorite songs of
all time, And I was sitting in my house and
(23:47):
there was it was the end of and I got
to go back and figure out exactly what it was
because I've been asked this already, But it was either
the end of like a Netflix series I was watching
or a movie. And on the altra on the credits,
clap hands comes on and I remembered it.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Everybody. I was like, oh, yeah, remember, it's been a
hot while since I've heard this.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
And I was listening to the vibe of it, and
I was I had just left the studio that day
and I was thinking about the room and I paused
it. It was on like a DVR thing, so I paused
it and I grabbed my guitar. I rewound it to
when it started, and I sat there and just worked
up the progression and then I laid it down with
an acoustic guitar. I sent it to Jay, my producer,
(24:26):
and I said, Hey, call me crazy, but I feel
like this would really work with who we got in
the room, with the weapons we have there. And he
sent back almost immediately, i'll see in the morning, and
we went in the next day and cut it, so,
you know, within a twelve hour period. I heard it
on a TV show and it was cut the next day.
(24:46):
And there's a there's a freneticness to, you know, to
that with the voices and the breaths. There's a there's
a thing there that was really interested in me that
I hadn't heard on a cover of that song. And
Tom Waits is creatively just a name animal, and this
record is a lot about creativity.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
A few weeks ago, I was sitting just like this
with Ringo Star who come over to the house and
we were doing this and it's pretty legendary to have
a beatle. And he talked about how they would play
thirteen hours a day and they were playing clubs constantly,
and that now people aren't playing anywhere, Right's it's a
(25:24):
huge problem, and that it's actually taking the overall product
and it's not and he didn't say as good, but
as it's not as consistent as it was back when
they were going. I mean, you go all the way
up until the last seven or eight years or so,
probably whenever people are able to create without actually having
(25:44):
to go out and do it. And you know, I
think he was a little concerned for the future of
music as far as live music because these guys aren't
out playing in order to get good. That feels a
bit about what you're saying.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
I am one hundred percent the same, and you can
see it, like you can just see that it's just
a key part.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
It's a key part.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Of everyone's journey, is that you're going to learn a
lot about yourself. I mean, everybody should have those shows
where the band out numbers the audience, or those shows
when you've got feedback all night, or the guitar player's
guitar goes down.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
You still got to play, You still got to figure
those moments out.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
Those disasters that you manage in those places are what
allow you to get to a different place and grow.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
The growth is the biggest thing.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
It's hard to grow when you're putting out whatever it
is and all of a sudden it's massively popular. But
there's no journey from when you put that out to
the popularity. There is no arc there. It just goes
boom to boom when you go straight up vertical that way.
It's really hard to do what you need to do
(26:50):
to be able to do this for a long time.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
It's funny you talk about disasters because I think some
of the biggest growth in my career doing stand up
or doing live television is screwing up and realizing the
world is an over. Just just keep going, right, Like,
just keep going.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Yeah, and your yours directly would be really like stand
up is exactly what I'm talking Just you just.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Have to keep you it.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
You're in and you'll get admitted, but you're committed, like
that's the thing, and and and that's what. If you
didn't have that, I would venture to guess you would
not be as good at what you're doing now.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I would agree.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
So that's that. That's the bones that I'm talking about.
You got to earn those bones. And yeah, no pun intended,
but it's the you got to have those things right.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
For me, it's like doing it terribly, like having a
disaster happening and getting through it. It gives me the confidence
to do it and get through it again when it
happens to go, oh, the world's not ending right now,
I can keep I got my bearings. I've done this
before and it's gone wrong and I've been just fine.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
And also, you got to chase some things. So there's
I'm since it's stand up, I haven't done it, but
I know what I've done on stage. Sometimes you chase
things that don't work. Oh yeah, but the chasing. But
the chasing is what allows you to kind of you
learn there, right, So and I've done that creative musically,
like we've chased some stuff like hey, you know what
we haven't played it for let's.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
We've done that.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
But there's a lot of the younger people and the
problem is there's just not a mechanism for them. It's
fast that they can go earn it on the road
because it's not instant gratification. Who wants to do that,
you know, so they end up going from here to
here and back to the artist I was talking about.
I was pretty surprised that. I was like, wow, so okay,
(28:24):
you got a pretty good following, but you don't have
a band yet. We've not even went to normally that's
step one, where you are step twelve. You've went to
step twelve, but one through eleven's not there at all,
So that's not good, you know. I would say if
someone is done it a long time.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
I'm a massive fan of Andy Kaufman because he was
just brave. And Andy Kaufman died. I was a year old,
didn't know him then, but he would go and just
try things what you're talking about, and sometimes they would
go terrible, yeah, and sometimes they would be amazing and
people still talk about them today. But I feel like
you're that artist to where you will go and try things. Yeah,
(29:01):
I've seen you try things, yeah, and that would be mixed.
Some people would be like, that's the greatest thing I've
ever seen, and someone go like, what even just happened?
But where does that bravery come from?
Speaker 3 (29:14):
I think looking at the people I think the fearlessness
of the of the moment is something that's really important.
And whether that's confidence or doing it or trying to.
I try to put myself in when I go to shows.
I would rather see a person try something and maybe
not get it than see the same show I've seen
a thousand times. And that's just me personally. So I
(29:38):
think a lot of times it's a safe spot with
me sometimes when there's a great relationship that we've built
with our crowd, back to what we're talking about over
a lot of shows in a lot of years, and
I feel safe to. Sometimes I'll go for something and
I feel comfortable with that, and it might not work.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
There have been nights it has not worked. It has
been a disaster.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Do you know it's not working when it's not working?
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Hunterson. But I think we did.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
We were in Pittsburgh one night and we were playing
golf the day we did the arena there, and the
guy we were playing golf with it was a Pittsburgh
Steelers fan and he said, hey, have you ever thought
about Renegade? So in the fourth quarter up there, they
play Renegade nearby Waves, The Terrible Tales or whatever, and I.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Was like, nah, you know that's cool.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
So in the van on the way back from the
golf course, and this is right before meet and greet,
we got back late showtime. I send the band the
Renegade thing, the song. I said, let's just try this tonight,
and they're sitting. That's a complex song to try to
come together in a hurry. And we started it and
it starts out acapella and I couldn't hear the a
(30:40):
cappella thing when we started because it's you know, hell mama,
that whole thing. And I looked at I looked at
the band.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
I was like, I need a notice. What keat? What
did I send?
Speaker 3 (30:53):
You know, I didn't know what I sent them, And
three different guys gave me three different notes like it
was d C minor and I'm so so I started
it as a disastrou and I didn't even make it
at the chorus. I was like, you know, I caught
it off, like I audibled, I punted, you know, but
it was one of those things that it's still he
called it off mid oh mid No. We had I
(31:13):
had a bass player and a key and I had
a guitar player. None of us were in the same key,
So I mean, jazz is cool, but it just didn't
really work. You know, it didn't work in that setting.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Have you ever tried again?
Speaker 1 (31:23):
I ain't tried it ever again.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
No, that is you know what I learned that I've
also cut losses. Yeah, like this was never gonna work
because nobody nobody cares, Like if you cut I've done
that too, where it's like, you know what, this is not.
This joke gan't work and I want to go and
move off of it. Nobody goes home and man, he
was the mele of a joke and quit and it sucked.
I'm never going back.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
They probably honestly went home and said they tried renegade
and it fell in the face. Like the rest of
the show could have been the great show of all time.
But that's what they're going to go home and talk
about it. And that's what I think is great about
live music. It's experiencing a moment that no one else
will ever get to experience and the rest of them.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Is that why your shows are so different, because you
want the moments to be different.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yes, and we try to change it.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
There should be something every night doesn't always have to
be a song this set list difference. Either it could
just be something that happens at the show that that
person knows. I had to be here and I had
to be present. I couldn't have saw this anywhere else.
I think that's what makes live music and the world
we live in with streaming and all the stuff we're
going to, it still makes it the most special thing
(32:25):
because you can't really simulcast that and feel that the
way you can if you're there.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
About four more questions for you. I want to ask
about another song though, Darkest Hour and based in concerting Carolina,
Like what happened there was it.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
A bit was written before this is back to the
things happened for a reason. I had written Darkest Hour
and I was listening to a guy at the time.
Darkest Hower is a little bit interesting that it's a
hopeful song. Wrote it by myself and I wrote it
about ten days before happened. I wrote it, I recorded it,
(33:04):
I went to Florida. I was in Florida for something.
I was on my way back when Hurricane Helene hit
and I got back home and I remember seeing the devastation,
which I couldn't fathom with being from that area. I
didn't recognize any of the areas that I knew intimately.
And there's a line in that song, in your darkest hour,
(33:24):
I'll come running, I'll light your way. And we were
way off schedule. We were nowhere near releasing a song
we were going to be We were eight months early,
and I called John Peakes, my manager, and I said, hey,
you're not going to like this, but I'm going to regret.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
If we wait till next year to put this out.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
When the I think this song could be an anthem
mainly for the moment, because what I realize is in
this world and we all know this, something happens and
everybody pays attention, and then it's a busy world news
cycle on this world's in the hours, it's not in
the days, and then something else happens. And I said,
(34:06):
we need something just to keep people focused on this problem,
and that it's going to take years, and I said,
I really want to put this song out and I said, no,
it's not a radio song. I know it's not what
we would have done, but I said, I think it's
a great anthem for the people there. And we it
(34:27):
ended up everybody thinks I wrote it after Helene.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
That's not true. I wrote it. I wrote it before.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
That's why I thought you wrote it yeah, after Helene.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Yeah, but it was sitting there ready to go. And
that's what you know.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Sometimes you give a song its moment, Sometimes a song
finds its moment. And that's one of those that it
just did. And I didn't feel it didn't feel right
to me to wait almost a year to then go
oh yeah, you know it Just it felt like I
was missing an opportunity there.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Did you and Morgan buy field and Stream as a hey,
it's open you text themod like, let's buy it? Because
we had every fielding stream in Arkansas? My step dad
had all of them. Like that was a brand. Oh,
it's still a brand like it was. It's it's an
old it's it's the o G. Yes, eighteen seventy one
o G as a brand, it still exists. But the magazine,
I didn't see the magazine after a while, like the
(35:14):
actual page.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
It's coming back. Yeah now yeah, so what was that?
Speaker 2 (35:16):
How did you guys decide to do that?
Speaker 3 (35:18):
We got I've got a partner who I did Chiefs with,
who called who actually just kind of stumbled across a deal.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
He Dix Dix owned it at the time.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
He was stumbled across a deal this sporting good store
and they he called and we were actually getting ready
to go on a golfing trip with with Morgan. It
was me Morgan Ben ben Weberns's name, and he called
and he said, hey, do we uh do we want
to look at Field and Stream And I went, we
mean He said, well, they're they're looking to maybe sell it.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
I said, the brand. He said, yeah, I said sold.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
Well that was it was a bible growing up for me,
and they had let it kind of uh fall in disarray.
And what happened it was such a big umbrella that
they had let all the pieces be sold to different entities.
And so what we were able to do was take
about a year and go and pull all those entities
back under that umbrella and buy each one of those
(36:14):
little pieces. So for the first time in almost one
hundred years, it's back under the same roof. All the
things are vertical. You've unified the belt right, all of it.
So and then Morgan's so we talked to Morgan and
we were like, hey, list we we should do this.
He had the same experience growing up that I did
with Field and Stream, and it's been it's been a
(36:35):
ton of fun and doing well.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
It's it's it's it's it's it's a it's a wagon,
so it's it's fun for me. It's fun.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
From a writer's side, some of my favorite writers and
articles were those articles by guys who wrote for Fielding Stream.
There was humor, there was satire, there was I mean
that that we were looking at. Have a wall in
my house where I went back and took all the
old iconic covers. And what's interesting is you look up
(37:03):
there and at the bottom there's the date and you're like,
it's nineteen seventeen, Like that's insane. You know that there's
hand hand drawn, just an American icon. And they were
telling me a story one of the guys that's been
at Fielding Stream a long time. When World War two happened,
they weren't sure how they were going to address that
(37:25):
such a big thing in the world. Well, the only
thing that's on the cover of Field and Stream is
outdoor scenes, and they couldn't figure out how they were
going to address World War two ending. And they took
a flock of geese in the v Formation the Victory
Formation and that's the cover of Field Stream and just
(37:46):
stuff like that that you think about a brand that
you're involved with. And I keep saying to Stewart, to
Ben and Morgan that you know, we are stewards of
the brand. It's we don't own the brand. It's our
job to get the brand to the next generation and
to make sure it's taken care of because it's a
(38:08):
piece of it's an American treasure.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
You have twenty two arena day, it's on the Free
the Machine Tour. All of them be different, a little bit,
little something different. Yeah, that's for now on your life
is you're going to present a different environment. Again.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
I usually I get bored if I do a show
on let's say Friday and Saturday. If I do a
show on Friday, I'm allergic to doing that same show Saturday.
I just can't do it, you know. So I'll come
there'll be something that happens, and a lot of that
I take myself where towards the end of the show.
A lot of times I'll just get an acoustic and
I'll just play for a while and I'll bring up
stuff I hadn't played, or maybe a song nobody's heard.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
I mean I do that at the end of the show.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
So how's your memory with songs and things you've written
forever ago? People that play this, like, I haven't thought
about that in ten years? Can you do it? Can
you pull it out?
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Yeah? I mean pretty deep. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Yeah, well I'm gonna try it back to your thing.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Oh that's right in three different keys many.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Uh, you're taking out Marcus King. I love that dude,
and he's so good.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
It's talented.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
Yeah. We sat over here and talk forever like that.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
He's South Carolina guy. So he's he's near he's Caro
kind of Carolina.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, yeah, kind of. Yeah, he's the other Carolina has
like a second cousin, not quite the same. Last last thing,
you're playing golf at all?
Speaker 3 (39:21):
I played this. I just got back this last night. Oh,
I was in I was in Pebble.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
We I played the Pebble pro am when you played
it a couple of years ago. Yeah, you probably played
it since Uh I played with this pecialar. Yeah, I
saw it. We have the same golf buddy coach. Yeah,
and so I saw a caddied for you. I was like,
I should have I should have taken you because I
took my buddy Eddy and he sucks.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Yeah, it was actually it was actually a good idea.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
And now that didn't really help when you're not playing
well and he's telling you you can never fix it
in the middle of the round, as you know, it's
either there or not. Don't when once you start moving
hands around on stuff, it's a disaster.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
I felt like he's like a good like golf, there's
a good therapy. Yeah, good there, that's what it is.
I got a simulator by here that you know, whenever
I am having a bad night or anxiety or just
want to get away, I'm going to crank out some balls.
You have one of those. I don't.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
I won't come up here.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
I'm only I'm only I'm only five houses from here.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
So this is really easy now that I know.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Lea gates open. Yeah, okay, last last thing eight Only
eight songs on the record.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
Yeah, there was six, and I was very happy with
the record with six songs. The two songs that weren't
on the record were Hands of Time and Rockets White Lincoln,
and it had the thing I like about this record,
Bobby is it's got a it's a ride and when
you put it in, it's meant to write it. And
(40:42):
if you start and then you go to the fen,
it's only thirty eight minutes, right, but it's meant to
be ritten.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
And the six songs were great. I loved it. It
was but it was a little thick, it was a little.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Heavy, and I was missing a smile. I was missing
a Rye moment. And I I've told Jay that. I said,
he said, what do you think? He said, We're doing
a sixth song album and I said, I don't. I
don't have a problem with that, but I said, I don't.
There's something I'm missing, a thing, and and I'll relate
this to this is important. So when Hurricane Eleen happened,
I called Radio, I called Rod, I called the captains
(41:18):
and I said, I need a favor.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
I need you to lean in on Darkest Hour.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Because I want to raise the awareness of what this
is and I'm raising money. And they were they did,
and then what was interesting is in one of the
conversations they said, you're still really important in this format
and when the time comes, we need something that we
can run with too. And I had hands in time,
(41:49):
and that resonated with me. Because I was asking for
help and I understood the position they were in. I
understand that, and when it came time to do that
that I that fit what could be the smile and
lighter part of the album along with Rockets White Lincoln,
And it just ended up being the last two songs
(42:10):
that filled out the puzzle.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Which leads me to this and then we're done. What
song almost didn't get recorded that ended up being a
massive consumption or a massive just hit for you that
you almost didn't record Smoke of Smoke? Why didn't you not?
Why did you almost not record it?
Speaker 1 (42:26):
I didn't get it at the time.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
I mean that was my wife and another my guitar
player I had that kept saying and we What really
changed it is we started playing it before I recorded it.
We started doing a janky version of it live and
they climbed the walls. But I didn't get it in
the moment. First of all, the label told me if
(42:48):
I released that they were going to drop.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Me because of what the song was.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
Yeah, at that time, no marijuana, So there was no
song like that in the year that it came out
like it was. First of all, we're all on our
own path, anyway, and the labels like, listen, if you
do this, you just might as well go do it
somewhere else. And so that was a big moment. But yeah,
I got close to going I don't they, I don't
know if it's gonna work.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
You know, this is not what I think.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
But once it did, did it give you more at
to use the word credibility within the label? But did
it get huge? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Yeah, because the next thing we did was made the
Chief album and we came out with Homeboy first, and
they were instead of fighting that, which they probably a
lot of labels would have, they just went, hey, I
don't I don't know that smokes songworks. Should just let
him run a minute. They get whatever rope you gave him,
let him, let him use it all.
Speaker 5 (43:37):
So the Bobby Cast will be right back. This is
the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Home obviously super important to you. I was talking I
just some friends about the news story that came out
where they're like Eric's in these houses in North Carolina.
Where did that version of you giving back because you've
done it in many ways you did the concert. Where
did that like building a neighborhood come from.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
From the concert?
Speaker 3 (44:11):
So when the concert was over with, we were able
to raise a substantial amount of money. And when it
was we had raised the money, immediately was like, what
are we going to do with it? And there were
four or five charities that were lined up there that
are great charities, they do great work, and they said,
you know why, why don't you give it to us?
And my next question was, Okay, what are you doing?
(44:34):
And a lot of them were doing immediate stuff, keeping
people alive, water, diapers, just temporary housing.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
But none of that did anything to change the.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
Trajectory of the lives that the people who had lost homes.
None of that was going on. So I asked about
housing and nobody had an answer for me on housing.
So is opposed to what the government does where they
come in and they provide temporary housing in a different
(45:07):
location to have a roof over their head. So basically,
and you know the area some so it's little, small
communities and there's not a lot of people in these communities.
Some of these communities are three four hundred people and
you're taking a majority of those people and you're moving them,
you're going to lose the community because you lost the people.
So we started trying to see can we do this ourselves?
(45:28):
And so I started working my Rolodex and my phone
and calling people, and I got to Kevin Clayton of
Clayton Holmes and I said, hey, can we do this?
And I called Buddy Miney round Cisco, and I said
can we do this? And they said, yeah, if you
want to do it, we'll do it. So we really
came up with a novel idea of building permanent housing,
(45:48):
not temporary, and not only allowing them to live there
for a period of time costs free. But the key
to this, the whole we call it Blueprint for the
Blue Ridge. The whole key is we want to give
them a path to ownership for that home.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
So a lot of these.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
People are people that maybe could have never owned a
home in their life because of their financial situation. But
now with our help and with the people who gave help,
you can change that entire family's generational life, not just theirs,
but their kids. And so for those forty five families,
the idea would be they'll end up owning those homes.
(46:27):
And we just closed on two other properties. We're doing
two additional properties. We'll end up doing about as of
right now, about two hundred homes. But the best thing
is like, as I looked around the country, nobody's done this,
which is shocking by the way that in the United
States of America this is not done. But it wasn't
done during Katrina, it wasn't done during any other disaster
we've had. And affordable housing is a major problem in
(46:49):
the US, and this is when a disaster happens, it
just shines a spotlight on that problem. And so we're
trying to solve that the best we can in something
that's blue printable for other states when it disaster happens.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
That was my question, is it's a template that what
areas can use. Yes, that's the whole purpose, and that's
all Usually again, I do a lot of food insecurity
where that's important to me back in Arkansas, right, right,
And it's a difference to help people right the second
and do it some temporary but also actually building them
something that they can have. It's like give a person
(47:27):
a fish or teach them to fish. Right, It's a
version of that. And the hardest thing is having something
that you can easily pass along a template, a formula
that somebody else can use. But it sounds like what
you guys are doing with that group that you're working
with is able to produce that, and there is so
much value in that for other people to just lay
it down and do the same.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
Right you probably affect from a government standpoint, like the
way they would look at it, you're probably not affecting
as many people in a minor way where you take
a big sum of money and you put more people
in something for a year, but you're not changing those
people's lives. Then you have problem number two, which is
year two, year three. So what we looked at was
(48:09):
if you can affect a smaller number and change their
entire life and their family's life, it provides a pillar
for the foundation of that community, which was a little
bit different than what's completely different than what's been done,
but it's what we're doing in so far, it's going well,
and we'll see where we're.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Go from here.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
It's interesting the seasons of your career. I feel like
this is very much the advocate season. I feel like
the last five seven to ten years, and I don't
know if you ever thought you would end here or
it'd be a part of your career where you're often
spending a lot of your time and energy advocating for
other people was that the plan was it purposeful at all?
Speaker 4 (48:48):
No.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
I think a lot of that is things happen.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
You know.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
I'm fortunate to have done what I've done in my
career to be in a position that I could influence,
specifically North Carolina. I could when Hurricane Heleen happened, I
was able to I was able to help there, and
then you know, all of a sudden, you start helping and.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Trying to help. It did intrigue me.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
I remember being on a call and I was talking
to some state legislators and a person from Washington involved
with FEMA, and I remember saying, like, how has this
not already been Why is this not what we do? Like?
Speaker 1 (49:29):
How has this not been thought of or tried? And
it just hadn't.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
And so the interesting thing for me was like, Okay,
you know, I like stuff like that. Let's try something here,
you know, let's try something that hadn't been done. It
may not work, but nobody else is trying it, you know,
and what's happening is not working, So let's try something here.
So I think a lot of that is just it's
it's the position to answer your question you're just in
a position in your life that you never thought you
(49:54):
would be in, and you have a chance to use
your voice and Rolodex to call people and move the needle.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
I found that bureaucracy shuts down a lot of change. Yeah,
and you need big, loud voices and you talk about
you rolodex, but yeah, you need people that can be
louder than the bureaucracy because if you have to like
go through nine and I've had to do this at times,
go through nine different people to get one thing checked off,
(50:26):
that just that was three months to get a small
thing maybe changed. But if you can take a sledgehammer
to it, which you usually can with louder voices and
bigger tools, they'll often listen.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
And that's the That's the with what we did the
federal government, I mean, that's what we were doing, you know,
I mean just as an aside, but like nine billion
dollars went to the state of North Carolina from the
federal government for Hurricane Helen relief. Right, you could give
me a billion dollars right now, and I can't weaponize
(50:59):
that billion, and nobody can. There's no down chain weaponization.
There's not the contractors there's not the land to purchase,
so take your billion dollars. And what we didn't really
think about that I've seen and been on a thousand
calls is as you go down the line from the
money to putting people under a roof, we don't have
(51:21):
that chain developed. So some of this is trying to
develop one very small arm of that chain that Okay,
we're into mid midtal long term housing forever, we want
them to own them. We'll take this lane and you
guys can figure out some other stuff. So it's not
trying to solve all the problems, but it is trying
to solve one of them.
Speaker 2 (51:39):
Okay, and we talked about fore you got here, But
just the records out the Evangeliic versus the Machine that
the Freedom Machine tours twenty two days with all King
and Marcus King and Charles Wesley at Godwin and yeah,
it's it's awesome again. What I'm talking about it, I'm
not talking about the record of the tour. I'm just
(51:59):
like about what what kind of you stand for? Now?
Like just generally, I think we talk about a brand
like Field and Stream. I think the part of the
cliche statement the Eric Church brand now has turned into
somebody who cares and like, I hope you like that.
You didn't really pick it, it's kind of been put
on you because you feel like helping. Well.
Speaker 1 (52:22):
There's a lot of parallels too.
Speaker 3 (52:24):
I mean, the longer you do something, like in music,
you think, you think more about the people that did
it before you. In music, you think about those artists.
But like with Field and Stream, those writers and those
stories and what that meant. I think the more you
do something in any lane you're in, the more you
have reverence and respect for the people that did it
(52:45):
before you, and that leads you to widen out in
a lot of different ways.
Speaker 2 (52:49):
I think the Eric Church brand cares now, which is
different than it was to me even ten years ago,
which was the Eric Church brand don't give.
Speaker 3 (52:56):
Up, you know, young and young and arrogant is the thing.
That's also it's very powerful. It's very powerful.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
I mean I see a lot of artists now that
are that way, and they should be that way. They
should be. That's a little bit of a superpower.
Speaker 3 (53:08):
But as you get older, you know, and you start
to there's other superpowers out there.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
I appreciate the time. Eric, good luck with everything. Yeah,
making a difference.
Speaker 3 (53:16):
Man.
Speaker 2 (53:16):
That's the coolest thing that I can say about somebody
making a difference.
Speaker 4 (53:19):
So thanks, thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production.
First of all, the label told me if I released
that they were going.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
To drop me because of what the song was.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Yeah, there was.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
No song like that in the year that it came
out like it was. First of all, we're all on
our own path anyway, and the labels like, listen, if
you do this, just might as well go do it
somewhere else.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome to episode five to ten with Eric Church on
Instagram at Eric Church Music. His single now is called
Hands of Time. We talk about the album, we talk
about the tour, we talk about the time he got
fired for working for basically home shopping Network, which does
a pretty funny story. It was awesome, Yeah, and it
was a good, pretty much hour with Eric. I think
(00:45):
what's cool And I've been lucky enough to spend a
little time with Eric outside of work, outside of anything professional.
It was just a really nice guy. He's definitely still
the chief. And he had a sunglasses on the whole interview.
See I should have done that way or like so
people can't see my eyes. I can't see my eyes.
He could have been checking out my shoes, looking inside
the house. I'd had no idea, That's all I was
wondering coming into it was he good at wear them, Yeah,
(01:06):
good to be the Chief, or they just could be
Eric Church. He was kind of like Chief Eric. I
feel like he's like so smart. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, Yeah,
you're right, because the image of Eric Church is like
this tough dude and he's you know, he gets up
and he does this thing and writes songs people love,
and he has that. But he's also, yeah, very smart,
which is why he's such a great songwriter. And he's
(01:28):
so cerebral. But if they called him cerebral and not
the Chief, if that was his nickname, Cerebral, probably wouldn't
have the same impact. So super cool to sit with Eric.
He came over to the house and yeah, we did
this for about an hour. He's got a new album,
Evangeline Versus the Machine, that is out now. He's playing
a ton of shows and Eric Church dot com get
(01:50):
tickets to the show. Here he is. I gotta say,
the Michael Jordan' story is pretty cool. It's coming up.
It's just so nonchalant mj Here he is, Episode five
to ten, Eric Church, Very good to see you, Bobby.
Do you have Carolina Blue one on purpose underneath?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Is it? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah, I mean most every well I don't. Oh, I
do too, but not on Yeah, this wasn't in your honor.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
That's funny because I was talking because most everything I
have has a hog on it or a razorback on it. Yeah,
like red or phone or a lot of my clothes.
Do you have North Carolina stuff everywhere? And like you're
and now and now which is weirder. But we're involved
with the Hornets too. So I have purple and teal,
so it's Carolina blue and purple and tea. What do
you mean involved with the Hornets here part of the ownership. Yeah, dang,
(02:36):
I bought a pick a ball team. I don't have
NBA team though ball teams are cool too, But what's
up with that? So what's Lamela gonna do?
Speaker 3 (02:44):
We'll see, well, we will see. It's a there's a
there's a there's a really important draft coming.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
I got to be friends with MJ a few years
back and when he sold the team, and it was
one of the weirder calls you ever get in your life.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
But MJ goes, hey, I.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Want you to be involved with the Hornets ownership group.
I was, what does that mean. He said, I want
North Carolina presence. I want people that are local. The
group that's buying it's out of New York private equity,
and he said, I want you to I want you
to do it. He said, I'll help you if you
need help, but he said, I want you to be involved,
so you don't say no to Michael Jordan's So I got.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
That's super cool in a couple of ways. One because
it is Michael Jordan, the greatest athlete or pop culture
sports figure in our lifetime, I think, right, it's like
bab Bruce, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods two that Michael Jordan
played for North Carolina, right, And for you that's such
a personal thing and that now, yeah, that you talk
(03:42):
to him on the phone that i'n't been like put
on speaker phone recording it. So so what do you
do is like part owner?
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Well, the great thing about the Hornets is the majority owners.
You have majority of the minority, but the majority guys
or you can different different groups in the NBA, but
sometimes you get a majority that you know owns the
ninety five percent of the team and you're just involved.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
But our group's really good about.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Keeping us involved and all the decisions we're making, So
you know, a lot of it rolls around draft picks,
a lot of We renovated the arena there in Charlotte.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
We've did a big renovation.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
So you kind of have a three to five year plan,
and Charlotte needs it because the Panthers aren't awesome and
the city needs it. So we're on a three to
five year plan. Really through draft picks. That's that's the
best way to build a team. And luckily or unluckily,
the past couple of years, we've got some good draft picks.
(04:41):
So that's the game we play right now.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Dan, I wasn't expecting that. That's awesome. I put a
bunch of money into the Nashville baseball team, so if
we get a baseball team here, nash.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Will be a great city for that.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, let's go. Then I'll call you. I'll be like,
what's up? Owner? Owner?
Speaker 1 (04:54):
So yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
When did you get your first guitar?
Speaker 1 (04:57):
Thirteen?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Why'd you get it?
Speaker 3 (05:00):
I was writing songs, poetry kind of song things, and
I was having to sing the melodies in my head
and got like a Christmas gift, and then it took
me a little bit to learn to play it, but
you know that was just an avenue.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
For me to get the songs out.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Did you take to it immediately?
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:17):
Were you good at it quickly?
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Do you have a brain that allows you to not
just write lyrics? But how do you compute music? Like?
How were you able to do key? I mean, like
how did you learn music?
Speaker 1 (05:31):
That's a great question. I I don't know. It was
the fastest thing that I was able just to kind
of get.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
And then.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
You learn a lot of that too in you know,
earning your salt Where I got in a band pretty quick.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
I mean I was in a band.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
It maybe seventeen, I was, I was on what and
eighteen years old, and I started just playing in bands
and some shady places, and I did the chicken wire
thing at that show. I've had a band member leave
the stage during a song and go fight a guy
in the parking lot and make it back before the
(06:08):
end of the song. And that guy was my brother.
So we've done that during Now. You know, when you
make it back for the end of the song, that's
doing quick work, you know. But it was a skinnered song,
so it was a little long. But I've done all
those I've donell those things, and you learn a lot
from those situations. I always talk about in the world
we live in now, and you know this, in the
world we live in, it's easier to get discovered and
(06:33):
to earn a following, but it's harder to earn that as.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
A musician where you can.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
I'll give you example, and I won't name a name,
but there was an act recently that I like a lot,
and we were gonna we're talking about our next tour,
and it's a person who has a presence social media whatever,
and I said, hey, you know, we'd love to have you.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
They don't have a.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Band yet, they've not toured yet, that's all just on
what they do on their channel. They've not played yet,
and it's like, you know, you've not taken anything on
the road.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
You don't, right, And that's.
Speaker 3 (07:13):
A problem because you learn so much from being in
those situations. And what I've found in my career, you're
gonna get in big moments, and if you don't feel
like you deserve the big moment.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
You might not meet the moment.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
And those early days allow you to know when you
get to that moment, you've put in the work to
earned that.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
I want to talk about being an advocate. I think
even in this record that there's songs where you're an
advocate as well, And so I don't think it's I
think a big part of it is what you're doing
for the communities and for people that maybe don't have
a voice, but also for people that maybe need a voice.
And I mean I could pull up a couple of
songs even like Johnny or Darkest Hour, like those feel
(07:59):
like advocate type songs, like you're speaking for somebody, for
yourself but also for others. Well.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
I think a lot of that also comes a little
bit with our We're a little bit of an anomaly
that we got here completely on the backs of our
fans early on because we didn't have a ton of
industry success.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
We were a little bit pushed to the fringes.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
And you know, I remember one year I played Grand Rapids,
Michigan like nine times because I could get a thousand
tickets in Grand Rappers mission.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
We just kept rolling back.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
You know, how many times can we go to the
whale because we had to have gas money to be
able to move that bus around.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
So a lot of that is the people that you
end up seeing every night and then something happens, or
you think about their lot in life. Yeah, I think
that comes out a little bit now when I think
about that, because I wouldn't be in the situation that
I'm in for for them.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Revisions history. As Eric Church moved to town, wrote a
bunch of songs, was it's a successful songwriter but didn't
hit and didn't even a massive star. That's revisions history.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah, that's false.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
What's the truth.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
I came to town. It was different with what music I
was writing, and early on it wasn't great. You know,
you come to town and you learn what real now.
I mean, I say this to all young artists is
you can't imagine. And a lot of people dog now
a lot of the songwriting things and say, oh, it's
Nashville songwriters, National songwriters, the best in the world. I mean,
(09:34):
they're the their greatest craftsmen in the world. And it
took me a minute to come to town. And I
was fortunate I came at a time when we still
sat across from each other and did that, you know
where Now there's a lot of stuff that technologies involved,
and that's fine, but I got to learn from a
lot of those guys.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
So I came here and.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
My perspective when I came it's gonna be hard to believe,
but was kind of a soccer mom type format.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
There were a lot of females.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
It was very driven that way, and I had a
more masculine approach, and it was not liked by most
were everybody, and I just had a different lane. But
eventually got a record deal and got in that lane.
But then that was a hard lane because we were
(10:25):
just we were a little different on the radio and
we had a hard time getting songs play because it
didn't fit the formula at the time, and touring was interesting,
so it was just along. The first couple albums were
a really a really challenging time. Everybody comes to town
and you know a lot of these young artists and
they get a record deal and they think I made it,
(10:48):
I've done it.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
But that is just the beginning of the hardest part.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
And for us, it was in that first two album
period before Chief that we were grinding on the road.
There was one year we did over two hundred actual
shows in a year, and a lot of that was
just to keep the money moving in at any level
to keep moving forward, you know, to keep gaining ground.
(11:16):
And at the time, a lot of people in the
industry would have said, this doesn't really fit what we do, you.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Know, and it's just a it's a grind. It was
a grind for us.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Why did you move to Nashville. Was it to write
songs or was it to be an artist? In writing songs?
Was going to get you to that place? To be
an artist?
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Right? Songs?
Speaker 2 (11:35):
It was you're a writer? Yeah, how did you know
that was a job?
Speaker 1 (11:39):
I found that out.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
I was in college and I had a band and
I started, you know, just playing some of my original songs,
uh in our cover set, and you know, people the
next time I would go back and play there, they
would recrest those songs. And that just kind of where
I started thinking, Okay, you know, songwritings. I just never
(12:02):
thought it was viable for me to be able to
go and get a record deal and do that. It
never crossed my mind. It just wasn't something I thought
I could do. So I really wanted to come here
and write songs. And you know, I met a couple
songwriters when I moved here and kind of saw what
they did and how they did it. And you go
get a you know, you take a draw and you
go right for a big publishing house and try to
(12:24):
get songs cut.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
So what'd you pack up? And you what did you
move into when you got here?
Speaker 3 (12:30):
I was in a I came to town in a
two tone nineteen eighty six Chevy blazer, blue and gray,
that's the color back then, man and I had a guitar,
I had a Duffel bag, and I found an apartment.
But I didn't know where to be. You know, when
you moved to Nashville, it's like I didn't know what
was what?
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Did you have anybody here that you could ask those
questions to? No, so you blindly moved to town.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yeah, I came. I went to Broadway first.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
I tell this story my Chief Chief Residency as I
came to Broadway because that's where the Rymen was, That's
where you know tutsis is, That's where you know all
these iconic things. And I tried to get gigs there
and I couldn't get a gig there because I came
with a you know, a sack of songs and my
guitar and they wanted cover songs, and so I couldn't.
(13:21):
I couldn't make it on Broadway, so I ended up
over at Printer's Alley back in the day, which is
there's a place called the Fiddle and Steel Guitar Bar.
And what I found there were all the people that
got kicked off Broadway. That's where they congregated, and I
kind of found my tribe and there were a lot
of hit songwriters in that group.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
There are a lot of musicians in that group.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
And just kind of found my people and started figuring
it out.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
But I took a job. I had a job at
the Shopping Home Network. I sold knives. That was my job.
Thanks for calling Shopping Home. My name's Eric, I may
I help you? Oh yeah. I was the phone guy,
had the little headset, good stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
What kind of knives?
Speaker 3 (14:02):
Like?
Speaker 2 (14:02):
What was your what was your what was your rap?
Speaker 1 (14:05):
My rap?
Speaker 3 (14:06):
At that time, I actually got fired because of my
lack of rap.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
But I would answer the phone. I had the I
had the shift.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
It was I think my shift was eleven PM to
like seven am.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
That was the overnight shift. So that's the shift where
the guy.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Comes in he's been at a bar and he turns
on Shop at Home and there's the guy. When we
were looking at the studio, so where the phone bank was.
It was like an amphitheater type seating and we all
have our little chairs and our headsets on, and we're
looking at them selling the knives out their television studio
in front of us. And this guy, you know, would
call in and go three o'clock in the morning, slurring, going, man,
(14:45):
I gotta I gotta have some of these knives. It's
like three hundred knives for fifteen ninety ninety nine, right.
And actually one night there was a guy that called
in and he I could tell he had had a
long night and I had a few of those two
and he was like, man, he's I asked some of
these knives, you know, and he's slurring. I was like, yeah, yeah,
you know, he said, you know. I said, hey, you know,
what what do you favor? I said, why don't you
(15:07):
want you go to bed? And first of all, when
somebody calls and says I need a knife at that
time of night, you think there's already a problem, right
they don't need yeah, not right now. You don't need
a knife right now. You need to go to bed.
So I said, want you go to bed? And once
you call me in the morning, I'll still be here.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
You know.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
He said, what says there's three left? I said, brother,
trust there's more than three left. Okay, You're gonna be okay.
And there's that thing where when you call into something
like that and they'll say, for whatever purposes, this call
may be recorded. They do that, and they happened to
record this call. That's how you got got so I
(15:42):
got cut.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
You're advocating for that, dude.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
I was advocating that due they didn't like that shopping
on those, so they they fired me.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
Uh, what's up with that name of the record, Evangeline
versus the Machine.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Well, so I think a lot of some of this,
some of this somewhat started. There's a there's a line
in Johnny that's a very important song on this album
because of the Covenant shooting here in Nashville. But there's
a line in there says, machines control of people, and
the people shoot shoot at kids. And what I've found
having younger kids is there's so much of our life nowadays.
(16:21):
It's just so fast and disposable with how we consume anything.
And what I've seen is it really rounds the edges
off anything we try to do different or creative, that's
just not what the world is set up for today.
It's not set up for the patient part of that.
And so I think that line is when that title started.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
But the crux of this.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Is Evangeline on the album plays almost a creative muse
that song. So it's that creative muse and following that
versus the machine that makes it very hard to execute that.
And that's that's the that's the juxtaposition of love.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
What this is.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our
sponsor and we're back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
When you mentioned Johnny and the shooting, and that was
very personal to all of us here because it was
so close to us, and it's probably close to a
lot of people in a lot of places. Because it's
so close to a lot of people, it's happening everywhere
all the time. The Johnny Johnny versus the Devil Devil
went down to Georgia that the song was playing, because
that is that part of the like you were thinking
(17:40):
about when you wrote the song. Yeah, I was hear
the song Devil went down to Georgia as I was.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
My kids go nearby here and I was, which is
a couple of miles from Covenant Whatever. And the hardest
thing I've ever done in my life is dropped my
kids off the day after the shooting because they had decided,
you know, that kids needed to feel some normalcy and
go back to school. And I remember, I've never I've
(18:07):
never done anything harder than that when I when I
watched them walk in.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
That school and both boys go in together.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
There's a bunch of people out front, teachers are crying everything,
so everybody goes inside, and I didn't know what to do.
I felt helpless, scared all those things. So I just
parked in the parking lot there and I sat there,
and I don't know how long I was going to
sit there. I just felt like I needed to be there.
And as at some point in time, during probably an hour,
(18:35):
at some point in time, I looked to my right
and I looked to my left, and there were parents
that had done the same thing all the way down
the line, moms and dads, and they were just sitting there.
And I had the radio on and it was down low.
I wouldn't paying attention to it, but that one down
Georgia was on and there was a there was a
(18:57):
piece of that in that moment as I'm looking at
my left and looking to my right and thinking about
my kids, that you know, Johnny rawsing up your bow
and play your fiddle. Hard Hills broke loose in Georgia
and the Devil deals cards and if you win, you
get to shiny.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Fidel made of gold, and if you lose, the devil
gets yourself.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
And I remember thinking, if only Johnny was confined, or
only if the Devil was confined to Georgia. He's out
of Georgia, He's everywhere, and we need Johnny to come
back and help.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
And that was it. And I pulled out of.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
The parking lot finally, and I went home and I
did like and some of this may have went to
the Evangeline versus the machine, because there is that Johnny
versus the devil, you know, that started that thing, good evil.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
And I went home and I said, it would be
interesting if we if a song was written from that perspective,
where you bring back a character from a song we
all know from thirty forty years ago and he gets
to play a different role.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And so I wrote, Johnny, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
I don't know that. I I'm glad to hear that
version or like the actual story behind how you wrote
the song, because now it kind of all makes sense
with the record and even within the song, because you
may just see the name Johnny and not understand. But
do you believe things happen for a reason?
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Do you believe that you heard that song at that time? Yes,
so you could have that thought, yes, so you could
write this song.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Yes, Huon believed that.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
And so whenever you write Johnny, you call Luke Laird
and Brett Warren.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Yeah. I couldn't get out of it. I got in it.
I just couldn't figure out how to quite get out
of it.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
So what do you tell them?
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Like, I just sent it to them. I record kind
of what I'm doing in that time. It was so
fresh with what was going on. They I mean, it
wouldn't once I I couldn't figure out how to land it.
Like I got in the air and got it where
it was supposed to go, and I was like, I don't.
And it was probably some of that was emotional where
I was so tiedy in I couldn't. I had a
couple of things that I thought were too They weren't
(20:55):
the right emotion, and so I was like, hey, check
me on this, and then within a day or so
we had it, and then I kind of knew it
was a different you know, different perspective and different thing.
And then that was before us I started the residency,
and so in the residency, one of the big moments
is I would play that song late in the show
(21:15):
and we would kind of do a flash mob choir
that would come out behind the people and sing those
choir parts ended up being a big, big part of
the show and also a big part of formulating what.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
The conception for this album was.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Where I had voices and then all of a sudden
started thinking about strings and horns. I did Stagecoach, which
was noisy but I loved, and all these things before
I ever went in the studio. We're taking us in
a different musical direction, and I was starting to feel
a different pool.
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Was this the first song that you did for the album,
maybe not even knowing it was gonna be the album?
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
First of all, so did this song actually create the
rest of the album.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
I think it created the template for how we were
going to do the album. So, I mean, I've not
a lot of people look back in this well, your
last record is twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
That's not really true.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
We recorded the album in December of twenty nineteen, in
January of twenty twenty and COVID happened, and we sat
on it for over a year, like everybody else.
Speaker 1 (22:14):
In the industry.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
So I've not been in the studio in five six years,
five years, and I think that I've got a lot
of songs. There's a lot of different avenues we could
have went down for this album. There's and I've done
this song enough. I understand this song is going to
be a hit song. This I get it. And there
were different lanes we could do, but it was really
(22:36):
Johnny and then stagecoach. It started to develop a different
path that.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
Was interesting to me.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
I'm a big Tom Waits fan.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
It's passed down to me because I think as a kid,
you don't really move toward Tom Waits's tone. Sort of
listening was like twelve or thirteen years old. Love the rasp,
love the grittiness. You did a Tom Waite song on
this clap hands? Why that song?
Speaker 1 (23:02):
See this is you?
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Remember you just You've already asked me, You've already answered
this in a question you already asked me, and do
you believe things happen for a reason. So I was
searching for filling out the rest of this project. And
the challenge of this project is not every song fifth
the room with who was in the room, and not
every not the people in the room fifth song. So
(23:25):
let's say we had fifty songs for this project, and
what you're finding is those songs that made it are
really the only ones we cut. Other songs it worked,
just they this didn't match this. So I was sitting
in to my house and there was a man, I'm
Tom we on the Nickels on my favorite songs of
all time, And I was sitting in my house and
(23:47):
there was it was the end of and I got
to go back and figure out exactly what it was
because I've been asked this already, But it was either
the end of like a Netflix series I was watching
or a movie. And on the altra on the credits,
clap hands comes on and I remembered it.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Everybody. I was like, oh, yeah, remember, it's been a
hot while since I've heard this.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
And I was listening to the vibe of it, and
I was I had just left the studio that day
and I was thinking about the room and I paused
it. It was on like a DVR thing, so I paused
it and I grabbed my guitar. I rewound it to
when it started, and I sat there and just worked
up the progression and then I laid it down with
an acoustic guitar. I sent it to Jay, my producer,
(24:26):
and I said, Hey, call me crazy, but I feel
like this would really work with who we got in
the room, with the weapons we have there. And he
sent back almost immediately, i'll see in the morning, and
we went in the next day and cut it, so,
you know, within a twelve hour period. I heard it
on a TV show and it was cut the next day.
(24:46):
And there's a there's a freneticness to, you know, to
that with the voices and the breaths. There's a there's
a thing there that was really interested in me that
I hadn't heard on a cover of that song. And
Tom Waits is creatively just a name animal, and this
record is a lot about creativity.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
A few weeks ago, I was sitting just like this
with Ringo Star who come over to the house and
we were doing this and it's pretty legendary to have
a beatle. And he talked about how they would play
thirteen hours a day and they were playing clubs constantly,
and that now people aren't playing anywhere, Right's it's a
(25:24):
huge problem, and that it's actually taking the overall product
and it's not and he didn't say as good, but
as it's not as consistent as it was back when
they were going. I mean, you go all the way
up until the last seven or eight years or so,
probably whenever people are able to create without actually having
(25:44):
to go out and do it. And you know, I
think he was a little concerned for the future of
music as far as live music because these guys aren't
out playing in order to get good. That feels a
bit about what you're saying.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
I am one hundred percent the same, and you can
see it, like you can just see that it's just
a key part.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
It's a key part.
Speaker 3 (26:04):
Of everyone's journey, is that you're going to learn a
lot about yourself. I mean, everybody should have those shows
where the band out numbers the audience, or those shows
when you've got feedback all night, or the guitar player's
guitar goes down.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
You still got to play, You still got to figure
those moments out.
Speaker 3 (26:21):
Those disasters that you manage in those places are what
allow you to get to a different place and grow.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
The growth is the biggest thing.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
It's hard to grow when you're putting out whatever it
is and all of a sudden it's massively popular. But
there's no journey from when you put that out to
the popularity. There is no arc there. It just goes
boom to boom when you go straight up vertical that way.
It's really hard to do what you need to do
(26:50):
to be able to do this for a long time.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
It's funny you talk about disasters because I think some
of the biggest growth in my career doing stand up
or doing live television is screwing up and realizing the
world is an over. Just just keep going, right, Like,
just keep going.
Speaker 3 (27:02):
Yeah, and your yours directly would be really like stand
up is exactly what I'm talking Just you just.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Have to keep you it.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
You're in and you'll get admitted, but you're committed, like
that's the thing, and and and that's what. If you
didn't have that, I would venture to guess you would
not be as good at what you're doing now.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I would agree.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
So that's that. That's the bones that I'm talking about.
You got to earn those bones. And yeah, no pun intended,
but it's the you got to have those things right.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
For me, it's like doing it terribly, like having a
disaster happening and getting through it. It gives me the confidence
to do it and get through it again when it
happens to go, oh, the world's not ending right now,
I can keep I got my bearings. I've done this
before and it's gone wrong and I've been just fine.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
And also, you got to chase some things. So there's
I'm since it's stand up, I haven't done it, but
I know what I've done on stage. Sometimes you chase
things that don't work. Oh yeah, but the chasing. But
the chasing is what allows you to kind of you
learn there, right, So and I've done that creative musically,
like we've chased some stuff like hey, you know what
we haven't played it for let's.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
We've done that.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
But there's a lot of the younger people and the
problem is there's just not a mechanism for them. It's
fast that they can go earn it on the road
because it's not instant gratification. Who wants to do that,
you know, so they end up going from here to
here and back to the artist I was talking about.
I was pretty surprised that. I was like, wow, so okay,
(28:24):
you got a pretty good following, but you don't have
a band yet. We've not even went to normally that's
step one, where you are step twelve. You've went to
step twelve, but one through eleven's not there at all,
So that's not good, you know. I would say if
someone is done it a long time.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
I'm a massive fan of Andy Kaufman because he was
just brave. And Andy Kaufman died. I was a year old,
didn't know him then, but he would go and just
try things what you're talking about, and sometimes they would
go terrible, yeah, and sometimes they would be amazing and
people still talk about them today. But I feel like
you're that artist to where you will go and try things. Yeah,
(29:01):
I've seen you try things, yeah, and that would be mixed.
Some people would be like, that's the greatest thing I've
ever seen, and someone go like, what even just happened?
But where does that bravery come from?
Speaker 3 (29:14):
I think looking at the people I think the fearlessness
of the of the moment is something that's really important.
And whether that's confidence or doing it or trying to.
I try to put myself in when I go to shows.
I would rather see a person try something and maybe
not get it than see the same show I've seen
a thousand times. And that's just me personally. So I
(29:38):
think a lot of times it's a safe spot with
me sometimes when there's a great relationship that we've built
with our crowd, back to what we're talking about over
a lot of shows in a lot of years, and
I feel safe to. Sometimes I'll go for something and
I feel comfortable with that, and it might not work.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
There have been nights it has not worked. It has
been a disaster.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Do you know it's not working when it's not working?
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Hunterson. But I think we did.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
We were in Pittsburgh one night and we were playing
golf the day we did the arena there, and the
guy we were playing golf with it was a Pittsburgh
Steelers fan and he said, hey, have you ever thought
about Renegade? So in the fourth quarter up there, they
play Renegade nearby Waves, The Terrible Tales or whatever, and I.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Was like, nah, you know that's cool.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
So in the van on the way back from the
golf course, and this is right before meet and greet,
we got back late showtime. I send the band the
Renegade thing, the song. I said, let's just try this tonight,
and they're sitting. That's a complex song to try to
come together in a hurry. And we started it and
it starts out acapella and I couldn't hear the a
(30:40):
cappella thing when we started because it's you know, hell mama,
that whole thing. And I looked at I looked at
the band.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
I was like, I need a notice. What keat? What
did I send?
Speaker 3 (30:53):
You know, I didn't know what I sent them, And
three different guys gave me three different notes like it
was d C minor and I'm so so I started
it as a disastrou and I didn't even make it
at the chorus. I was like, you know, I caught
it off, like I audibled, I punted, you know, but
it was one of those things that it's still he
called it off mid oh mid No. We had I
(31:13):
had a bass player and a key and I had
a guitar player. None of us were in the same key,
So I mean, jazz is cool, but it just didn't
really work. You know, it didn't work in that setting.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Have you ever tried again?
Speaker 1 (31:23):
I ain't tried it ever again.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
No, that is you know what I learned that I've
also cut losses. Yeah, like this was never gonna work
because nobody nobody cares, Like if you cut I've done
that too, where it's like, you know what, this is not.
This joke gan't work and I want to go and
move off of it. Nobody goes home and man, he
was the mele of a joke and quit and it sucked.
I'm never going back.
Speaker 3 (31:43):
They probably honestly went home and said they tried renegade
and it fell in the face. Like the rest of
the show could have been the great show of all time.
But that's what they're going to go home and talk
about it. And that's what I think is great about
live music. It's experiencing a moment that no one else
will ever get to experience and the rest of them.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Is that why your shows are so different, because you
want the moments to be different.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yes, and we try to change it.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
There should be something every night doesn't always have to
be a song this set list difference. Either it could
just be something that happens at the show that that
person knows. I had to be here and I had
to be present. I couldn't have saw this anywhere else.
I think that's what makes live music and the world
we live in with streaming and all the stuff we're
going to, it still makes it the most special thing
(32:25):
because you can't really simulcast that and feel that the
way you can if you're there.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
About four more questions for you. I want to ask
about another song though, Darkest Hour and based in concerting Carolina,
Like what happened there was it.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
A bit was written before this is back to the
things happened for a reason. I had written Darkest Hour
and I was listening to a guy at the time.
Darkest Hower is a little bit interesting that it's a
hopeful song. Wrote it by myself and I wrote it
about ten days before happened. I wrote it, I recorded it,
(33:04):
I went to Florida. I was in Florida for something.
I was on my way back when Hurricane Helene hit
and I got back home and I remember seeing the devastation,
which I couldn't fathom with being from that area. I
didn't recognize any of the areas that I knew intimately.
And there's a line in that song, in your darkest hour,
(33:24):
I'll come running, I'll light your way. And we were
way off schedule. We were nowhere near releasing a song
we were going to be We were eight months early,
and I called John Peakes, my manager, and I said, hey,
you're not going to like this, but I'm going to regret.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
If we wait till next year to put this out.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
When the I think this song could be an anthem
mainly for the moment, because what I realize is in
this world and we all know this, something happens and
everybody pays attention, and then it's a busy world news
cycle on this world's in the hours, it's not in
the days, and then something else happens. And I said,
(34:06):
we need something just to keep people focused on this problem,
and that it's going to take years, and I said,
I really want to put this song out and I said, no,
it's not a radio song. I know it's not what
we would have done, but I said, I think it's
a great anthem for the people there. And we it
(34:27):
ended up everybody thinks I wrote it after Helene.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
That's not true. I wrote it. I wrote it before.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
That's why I thought you wrote it yeah, after Helene.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
Yeah, but it was sitting there ready to go. And
that's what you know.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Sometimes you give a song its moment, Sometimes a song
finds its moment. And that's one of those that it
just did. And I didn't feel it didn't feel right
to me to wait almost a year to then go
oh yeah, you know it Just it felt like I
was missing an opportunity there.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Did you and Morgan buy field and Stream as a hey,
it's open you text themod like, let's buy it? Because
we had every fielding stream in Arkansas? My step dad
had all of them. Like that was a brand. Oh,
it's still a brand like it was. It's it's an
old it's it's the o G. Yes, eighteen seventy one
o G as a brand, it still exists. But the magazine,
I didn't see the magazine after a while, like the
(35:14):
actual page.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
It's coming back. Yeah now yeah, so what was that?
Speaker 2 (35:16):
How did you guys decide to do that?
Speaker 3 (35:18):
We got I've got a partner who I did Chiefs with,
who called who actually just kind of stumbled across a deal.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
He Dix Dix owned it at the time.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
He was stumbled across a deal this sporting good store
and they he called and we were actually getting ready
to go on a golfing trip with with Morgan. It
was me Morgan Ben ben Weberns's name, and he called
and he said, hey, do we uh do we want
to look at Field and Stream And I went, we
mean He said, well, they're they're looking to maybe sell it.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
I said, the brand. He said, yeah, I said sold.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
Well that was it was a bible growing up for me,
and they had let it kind of uh fall in disarray.
And what happened it was such a big umbrella that
they had let all the pieces be sold to different entities.
And so what we were able to do was take
about a year and go and pull all those entities
back under that umbrella and buy each one of those
(36:14):
little pieces. So for the first time in almost one
hundred years, it's back under the same roof. All the
things are vertical. You've unified the belt right, all of it.
So and then Morgan's so we talked to Morgan and
we were like, hey, list we we should do this.
He had the same experience growing up that I did
with Field and Stream, and it's been it's been a
(36:35):
ton of fun and doing well.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
It's it's it's it's it's it's a it's a wagon,
so it's it's fun for me. It's fun.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
From a writer's side, some of my favorite writers and
articles were those articles by guys who wrote for Fielding Stream.
There was humor, there was satire, there was I mean
that that we were looking at. Have a wall in
my house where I went back and took all the
old iconic covers. And what's interesting is you look up
(37:03):
there and at the bottom there's the date and you're like,
it's nineteen seventeen, Like that's insane. You know that there's
hand hand drawn, just an American icon. And they were
telling me a story one of the guys that's been
at Fielding Stream a long time. When World War two happened,
they weren't sure how they were going to address that
(37:25):
such a big thing in the world. Well, the only
thing that's on the cover of Field and Stream is
outdoor scenes, and they couldn't figure out how they were
going to address World War two ending. And they took
a flock of geese in the v Formation the Victory
Formation and that's the cover of Field Stream and just
(37:46):
stuff like that that you think about a brand that
you're involved with. And I keep saying to Stewart, to
Ben and Morgan that you know, we are stewards of
the brand. It's we don't own the brand. It's our
job to get the brand to the next generation and
to make sure it's taken care of because it's a
(38:08):
piece of it's an American treasure.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
You have twenty two arena day, it's on the Free
the Machine Tour. All of them be different, a little bit,
little something different. Yeah, that's for now on your life
is you're going to present a different environment. Again.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
I usually I get bored if I do a show
on let's say Friday and Saturday. If I do a
show on Friday, I'm allergic to doing that same show Saturday.
I just can't do it, you know. So I'll come
there'll be something that happens, and a lot of that
I take myself where towards the end of the show.
A lot of times I'll just get an acoustic and
I'll just play for a while and I'll bring up
stuff I hadn't played, or maybe a song nobody's heard.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
I mean I do that at the end of the show.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
So how's your memory with songs and things you've written
forever ago? People that play this, like, I haven't thought
about that in ten years? Can you do it? Can
you pull it out?
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Yeah? I mean pretty deep. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
Yeah, well I'm gonna try it back to your thing.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Oh that's right in three different keys many.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Uh, you're taking out Marcus King. I love that dude,
and he's so good.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
It's talented.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
Yeah. We sat over here and talk forever like that.
Speaker 1 (39:10):
He's South Carolina guy. So he's he's near he's Caro
kind of Carolina.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, yeah, kind of. Yeah, he's the other Carolina has
like a second cousin, not quite the same. Last last thing,
you're playing golf at all?
Speaker 3 (39:21):
I played this. I just got back this last night. Oh,
I was in I was in Pebble.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
We I played the Pebble pro am when you played
it a couple of years ago. Yeah, you probably played
it since Uh I played with this pecialar. Yeah, I
saw it. We have the same golf buddy coach. Yeah,
and so I saw a caddied for you. I was like,
I should have I should have taken you because I
took my buddy Eddy and he sucks.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Yeah, it was actually it was actually a good idea.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
And now that didn't really help when you're not playing
well and he's telling you you can never fix it
in the middle of the round, as you know, it's
either there or not. Don't when once you start moving
hands around on stuff, it's a disaster.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
I felt like he's like a good like golf, there's
a good therapy. Yeah, good there, that's what it is.
I got a simulator by here that you know, whenever
I am having a bad night or anxiety or just
want to get away, I'm going to crank out some balls.
You have one of those. I don't.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
I won't come up here.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
I'm only I'm only I'm only five houses from here.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
So this is really easy now that I know.
Speaker 2 (40:17):
Lea gates open. Yeah, okay, last last thing eight Only
eight songs on the record.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
Yeah, there was six, and I was very happy with
the record with six songs. The two songs that weren't
on the record were Hands of Time and Rockets White Lincoln,
and it had the thing I like about this record,
Bobby is it's got a it's a ride and when
you put it in, it's meant to write it. And
(40:42):
if you start and then you go to the fen,
it's only thirty eight minutes, right, but it's meant to
be ritten.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
And the six songs were great. I loved it. It
was but it was a little thick, it was a little.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
Heavy, and I was missing a smile. I was missing
a Rye moment. And I I've told Jay that. I said,
he said, what do you think? He said, We're doing
a sixth song album and I said, I don't. I
don't have a problem with that, but I said, I don't.
There's something I'm missing, a thing, and and I'll relate
this to this is important. So when Hurricane Eleen happened,
I called Radio, I called Rod, I called the captains
(41:18):
and I said, I need a favor.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
I need you to lean in on Darkest Hour.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Because I want to raise the awareness of what this
is and I'm raising money. And they were they did,
and then what was interesting is in one of the
conversations they said, you're still really important in this format
and when the time comes, we need something that we
can run with too. And I had hands in time,
(41:49):
and that resonated with me. Because I was asking for
help and I understood the position they were in. I
understand that, and when it came time to do that
that I that fit what could be the smile and
lighter part of the album along with Rockets White Lincoln,
And it just ended up being the last two songs
(42:10):
that filled out the puzzle.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Which leads me to this and then we're done. What
song almost didn't get recorded that ended up being a
massive consumption or a massive just hit for you that
you almost didn't record Smoke of Smoke? Why didn't you not?
Why did you almost not record it?
Speaker 1 (42:26):
I didn't get it at the time.
Speaker 3 (42:28):
I mean that was my wife and another my guitar
player I had that kept saying and we What really
changed it is we started playing it before I recorded it.
We started doing a janky version of it live and
they climbed the walls. But I didn't get it in
the moment. First of all, the label told me if
(42:48):
I released that they were going to drop.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Me because of what the song was.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
Yeah, at that time, no marijuana, So there was no
song like that in the year that it came out
like it was. First of all, we're all on our
own path, anyway, and the labels like, listen, if you
do this, you just might as well go do it
somewhere else. And so that was a big moment. But yeah,
I got close to going I don't they, I don't
know if it's gonna work.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
You know, this is not what I think.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
But once it did, did it give you more at
to use the word credibility within the label? But did
it get huge? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (43:19):
Yeah, because the next thing we did was made the
Chief album and we came out with Homeboy first, and
they were instead of fighting that, which they probably a
lot of labels would have, they just went, hey, I
don't I don't know that smokes songworks. Should just let
him run a minute. They get whatever rope you gave him,
let him, let him use it all.
Speaker 5 (43:37):
So the Bobby Cast will be right back. This is
the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Home obviously super important to you. I was talking I
just some friends about the news story that came out
where they're like Eric's in these houses in North Carolina.
Where did that version of you giving back because you've
done it in many ways you did the concert. Where
did that like building a neighborhood come from.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
From the concert?
Speaker 3 (44:11):
So when the concert was over with, we were able
to raise a substantial amount of money. And when it
was we had raised the money, immediately was like, what
are we going to do with it? And there were
four or five charities that were lined up there that
are great charities, they do great work, and they said,
you know why, why don't you give it to us?
And my next question was, Okay, what are you doing?
(44:34):
And a lot of them were doing immediate stuff, keeping
people alive, water, diapers, just temporary housing.
Speaker 1 (44:43):
But none of that did anything to change the.
Speaker 3 (44:46):
Trajectory of the lives that the people who had lost homes.
None of that was going on. So I asked about
housing and nobody had an answer for me on housing.
So is opposed to what the government does where they
come in and they provide temporary housing in a different
(45:07):
location to have a roof over their head. So basically,
and you know the area some so it's little, small
communities and there's not a lot of people in these communities.
Some of these communities are three four hundred people and
you're taking a majority of those people and you're moving them,
you're going to lose the community because you lost the people.
So we started trying to see can we do this ourselves?
(45:28):
And so I started working my Rolodex and my phone
and calling people, and I got to Kevin Clayton of
Clayton Holmes and I said, hey, can we do this?
And I called Buddy Miney round Cisco, and I said
can we do this? And they said, yeah, if you
want to do it, we'll do it. So we really
came up with a novel idea of building permanent housing,
(45:48):
not temporary, and not only allowing them to live there
for a period of time costs free. But the key
to this, the whole we call it Blueprint for the
Blue Ridge. The whole key is we want to give
them a path to ownership for that home.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
So a lot of these.
Speaker 3 (46:04):
People are people that maybe could have never owned a
home in their life because of their financial situation. But
now with our help and with the people who gave help,
you can change that entire family's generational life, not just theirs,
but their kids. And so for those forty five families,
the idea would be they'll end up owning those homes.
(46:27):
And we just closed on two other properties. We're doing
two additional properties. We'll end up doing about as of
right now, about two hundred homes. But the best thing
is like, as I looked around the country, nobody's done this,
which is shocking by the way that in the United
States of America this is not done. But it wasn't
done during Katrina, it wasn't done during any other disaster
we've had. And affordable housing is a major problem in
(46:49):
the US, and this is when a disaster happens, it
just shines a spotlight on that problem. And so we're
trying to solve that the best we can in something
that's blue printable for other states when it disaster happens.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
That was my question, is it's a template that what
areas can use. Yes, that's the whole purpose, and that's
all Usually again, I do a lot of food insecurity
where that's important to me back in Arkansas, right, right,
And it's a difference to help people right the second
and do it some temporary but also actually building them
something that they can have. It's like give a person
(47:27):
a fish or teach them to fish. Right, It's a
version of that. And the hardest thing is having something
that you can easily pass along a template, a formula
that somebody else can use. But it sounds like what
you guys are doing with that group that you're working
with is able to produce that, and there is so
much value in that for other people to just lay
it down and do the same.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
Right you probably affect from a government standpoint, like the
way they would look at it, you're probably not affecting
as many people in a minor way where you take
a big sum of money and you put more people
in something for a year, but you're not changing those
people's lives. Then you have problem number two, which is
year two, year three. So what we looked at was
(48:09):
if you can affect a smaller number and change their
entire life and their family's life, it provides a pillar
for the foundation of that community, which was a little
bit different than what's completely different than what's been done,
but it's what we're doing in so far, it's going well,
and we'll see where we're.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Go from here.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
It's interesting the seasons of your career. I feel like
this is very much the advocate season. I feel like
the last five seven to ten years, and I don't
know if you ever thought you would end here or
it'd be a part of your career where you're often
spending a lot of your time and energy advocating for
other people was that the plan was it purposeful at all?
Speaker 4 (48:48):
No.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
I think a lot of that is things happen.
Speaker 2 (48:51):
You know.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
I'm fortunate to have done what I've done in my
career to be in a position that I could influence,
specifically North Carolina. I could when Hurricane Heleen happened, I
was able to I was able to help there, and
then you know, all of a sudden, you start helping and.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Trying to help. It did intrigue me.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
I remember being on a call and I was talking
to some state legislators and a person from Washington involved
with FEMA, and I remember saying, like, how has this
not already been Why is this not what we do? Like?
Speaker 1 (49:29):
How has this not been thought of or tried? And
it just hadn't.
Speaker 3 (49:33):
And so the interesting thing for me was like, Okay,
you know, I like stuff like that. Let's try something here,
you know, let's try something that hadn't been done. It
may not work, but nobody else is trying it, you know,
and what's happening is not working, So let's try something here.
So I think a lot of that is just it's
it's the position to answer your question you're just in
a position in your life that you never thought you
(49:54):
would be in, and you have a chance to use
your voice and Rolodex to call people and move the needle.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
I found that bureaucracy shuts down a lot of change. Yeah,
and you need big, loud voices and you talk about
you rolodex, but yeah, you need people that can be
louder than the bureaucracy because if you have to like
go through nine and I've had to do this at times,
go through nine different people to get one thing checked off,
(50:26):
that just that was three months to get a small
thing maybe changed. But if you can take a sledgehammer
to it, which you usually can with louder voices and
bigger tools, they'll often listen.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
And that's the That's the with what we did the
federal government, I mean, that's what we were doing, you know,
I mean just as an aside, but like nine billion
dollars went to the state of North Carolina from the
federal government for Hurricane Helen relief. Right, you could give
me a billion dollars right now, and I can't weaponize
(50:59):
that billion, and nobody can. There's no down chain weaponization.
There's not the contractors there's not the land to purchase,
so take your billion dollars. And what we didn't really
think about that I've seen and been on a thousand
calls is as you go down the line from the
money to putting people under a roof, we don't have
(51:21):
that chain developed. So some of this is trying to
develop one very small arm of that chain that Okay,
we're into mid midtal long term housing forever, we want
them to own them. We'll take this lane and you
guys can figure out some other stuff. So it's not
trying to solve all the problems, but it is trying
to solve one of them.
Speaker 2 (51:39):
Okay, and we talked about fore you got here, But
just the records out the Evangeliic versus the Machine that
the Freedom Machine tours twenty two days with all King
and Marcus King and Charles Wesley at Godwin and yeah,
it's it's awesome again. What I'm talking about it, I'm
not talking about the record of the tour. I'm just
(51:59):
like about what what kind of you stand for? Now?
Like just generally, I think we talk about a brand
like Field and Stream. I think the part of the
cliche statement the Eric Church brand now has turned into
somebody who cares and like, I hope you like that.
You didn't really pick it, it's kind of been put
on you because you feel like helping. Well.
Speaker 1 (52:22):
There's a lot of parallels too.
Speaker 3 (52:24):
I mean, the longer you do something, like in music,
you think, you think more about the people that did
it before you. In music, you think about those artists.
But like with Field and Stream, those writers and those
stories and what that meant. I think the more you
do something in any lane you're in, the more you
have reverence and respect for the people that did it
(52:45):
before you, and that leads you to widen out in
a lot of different ways.
Speaker 2 (52:49):
I think the Eric Church brand cares now, which is
different than it was to me even ten years ago,
which was the Eric Church brand don't give.
Speaker 3 (52:56):
Up, you know, young and young and arrogant is the thing.
That's also it's very powerful. It's very powerful.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
I mean I see a lot of artists now that
are that way, and they should be that way. They
should be. That's a little bit of a superpower.
Speaker 3 (53:08):
But as you get older, you know, and you start
to there's other superpowers out there.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
I appreciate the time. Eric, good luck with everything. Yeah,
making a difference.
Speaker 3 (53:16):
Man.
Speaker 2 (53:16):
That's the coolest thing that I can say about somebody
making a difference.
Speaker 4 (53:19):
So thanks, thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production.
Host
Bobby Bones
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