Vincent Mason stops by the studio with some of the craziest road stories Bobby’s heard in a while. He shares the wild story of his van losing a tire while going 70 mph, plus the time they hit a black bear and a hawk on back-to-back days out on the road. Vincent talks about what he actually spends his money on, the real difference between grinding it out in a van versus finally leveling up to a bus, and how all of that changes the way you see success. He also tells Bobby about all the times he spotted Bobby’s doppelganger at the gym, and why Bobby was convinced this interview would only go 30 minutes… before it turned into a full hour conversation.
Check Vincent out on tour: VincentMasonMusic.com
Check out his Debut Album: ‘There I Go’ which is OUT NOW!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
He's like, you see a hundred million streams and I
was like yeah, And I was like, I don't know
if you feel this way, but I still feel like
I don't know what it was that made it the
one that did that. And he was like me either.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Episode five fifty three with Vincent Mason. His debut album
is out now. It is called There I Go. This
song Hell is a dance Floor has got hundreds of
millions of streams. It is really a great song. I
don't know what else to say, except for he has
two first names, and at times that can be confusing.
And I would bet you people call him Mason, Vincent
and Vincent Mason, like if he's new to you, you
(00:41):
don't know which one it is, because I would think
Mason's more of a first name than Vincent. I feel
like it's a little more common now, Like Luke Brian's
a double first name. Me think about this, Luke and Brian. Yeah,
that's a good one. Dylan Scott, Oh, dang, Dylan yeah, Scott, Yeah, Okay,
you got me twice. Zach Brian, Yeah, Zach Brown. I
(01:03):
guess Brown's person. Yeah. So he's got a new song
I called dan if I do. It's got a million
streams in the first weekend. I really enjoyed this interview.
And he's on tour. He's out. The thing about his tour,
it's mostly already sold out. We talk about this like
it's sold out in pre sale. Basically great music. Love
spending time with him. Here he is, Episode five point
fifty three. Vincent Mason, Vincent, good to meet you boy.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Great to meet you too. How long have you lived here?
I've lived here for five years. I gotta I gotta confess.
I feel like I've seen you at the at the
gym a lot, but I never knew if it was
you or like your evil twin or something. I don't
think you ever. I don't think it was me. I
never said, what's up? It might not be you now
that I've met you in person.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
What gym? No, I don't say.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
You're not gonna say. I'm not going to say the gym.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Is it close to here? Yeah? I own it. I
have my own gym. Here is the jack that was
like so ripped.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
No meeting you in person now, might it might not
be him? I'm glad I've never said, hey, is it
a boxing gym? No, it's just a regular because.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I owned like three gems.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Well, seeing you now in person, it really doesn't look
like it looks like your evil twin.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Here's the problem, and I want to be as honest
as possible about this. Most of the time, people when
they tag me and things, they'll go, hey, I think
I see Bobby Bell on second Are are you in
Iowa City, Iowa? And they'll tag somebody or are you
in Sacramento? And it's always like the worst looking dude
that just wears glasses like mine?
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Right, so it really he's not bad looking. Yeah, I'm
glad I've never said hey, but I swear people stop
them and stuff and they say what's up?
Speaker 2 (02:32):
And I love the show? Yeah, if you've ever heard
I love the show. That's funny. But yeah, I don't
think it's I mean, is he bigger? Is he buffer
than I am? No? Okay, good that I like. No,
he's not.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
He's actually smaller.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah I like that. Well, yeah, I'm confused on what
I like at this point.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
But yeah, I'm really glad I've never said.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Hello, as am I Do you live near me?
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Not too far?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Nobody knows where I live.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Well, now that now that I'm here, I'm like, it's
really not that close.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah, but it's not too far away.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Everyone's going to be listening to this and learning nothing.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I was. I was going through your social media and
I've been watching your stuff for a while, but I
know kind of the pressures of your own first headlining tour. Yes,
how did you feel about that? Because they did really well,
which is fantastic, thank you, but going into it, did
you have nerves when you were doing your own because
a whole difference in being like great support because that's
(03:27):
not pressure on you, No, that's pressure this a lot.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yes, yeah, you feel like you know, I've always felt
like sometimes you're opening, you could drop dead on stage
and you feel like no one would care, Like they'd
be like, oh the opener.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Anyway, we're waiting for call them.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Yeah, yeah exactly, And I think there was that added
anxiety of like, there's nobody coming out there after you.
So like I think the first time I played a
headline show sold one thousand tickets in Columbia, which was awesome.
That was always kind of like my benchmark. I was like,
if I ever could sell a thousand tickets like that
was kind of like my goal, Like my dream, I
guess you could say, and so like you do it
and you're like, wow, there's a thousand people here and
there like wow, there's a lot of people there just
(04:01):
to watch me. And then you're like, oh, I hope
the show's not boring. Are my songs actually good? I've
had the vision. I don't know if you have this,
but like I just feel like everyone might like tap
each other on the shoulder and I'll walk out at
the same.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Time, you know, and be like I wasn't as good
as we thought. So it's a whole other added pressure
I felt, especially when I was touring stand up a lot,
when I put up multiple shows at once. Yeah, that
made me anxious yep, like a full tour yep, because
there will be some cities it would do great and
some not as great. And then so I'd be like
and then I would be nervous, like if nobody buys tickets,
(04:33):
like I never really was good, or like I did.
You have those.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Fears, absolutely, And I think it's like the last thing
you do, Like you put out a song, that's a step,
you know, you go open, that's a step. It was
kind of the last thing that I hadn't done yet.
It was the last thing, Like we had no idea
how it was going to go. Like putting tickets on
sale is different than asking someone to stream your song,
like buying something and going and showing up and obviously
you don't want to book the show and show up
(04:57):
and then thirty people are there, like wouldn't be a
great feeling. So a little bit scary. But I feel
like this time around, we're going on tour again, and
I think doing the fifteen twenty shows, whatever we did
this year, I think you're just kind of like hosting
a house parties. I think of it now, and I've
never really liked to do that, but I think the
people you kind of won the battle, like they like
you enough to spend the money.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
So I saw that a lot had sold out during
pre sale, Like that's such a relief.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yes, that was the best. Very nervous watching them and
when stuff when you can get stuff out of the
way in pre sale, that's a that's a great sign.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Do you do like the code?
Speaker 1 (05:29):
We do the code? We do a few different codes,
three of.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Them, yeah, yeah, like one for fan club, one for
local you know radio or whatever. Yeah, it's such a
relief when they I would just put heavy, heavy, heavy
pressure on myself totally to not be washed up. And
you can't be washed up yet because you're like twenty four.
But you can never be washed But you don't have that,
(05:53):
you don't have that fear. You have confidence on stage,
You feel it.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
You feel good once I get out there, Yeah, I do.
There's some nights where you feel like, uh, oh no,
it's funny. We've played like two hundred shows this year,
and really, yeah, wow, more more than not. If you
do the math with all the radio stuff involved too,
it's more than it's like two shows every three days,
you know, but it's just so funny. You do it
over and over and for whatever reason, there are nights
(06:17):
where you think you're gonna go out there and something's
just gonna go off, and you've done it two hundred
times and it's just like, but once I get out
there and you rip a couple of songs, I feel
like it's okay. But you know, like a flat crowd,
you just I think I know within one or two
songs if it's gonna be a good show, and you
just got to get through it. It's part of the
part of the deal.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Even when I'm doing my radio show now, aside from
even doing stage stuff, there are days where I just
feel flat and at first I'll blame it on the
audience yep, or maybe I didn't get enough sleep, or
maybe my blood sugar is weird totally, or my dog
is sick totally, and I'm like, man, what a flat crowd.
And I now, I've done so many bad shows, and
(06:55):
I mean this funny and seriously that I know a
lot of times it's me m m.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
That's that's a great point too, Like if you don't
enjoy the show, how is anybody going to?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
And I might be the one that's off right and
I'm blaming them and they might love it.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
I feel like ninety five percent of people will walk
away being like I didn't know anything was wrong, Like
you might think you did a terrible show, and they'd
be like felt like any other.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Time I've had that happen a decent amount where I
come off and I'm like or even like a TV
like a live television spot, and I'm like, that sucked, yes,
and like what do you mean? I'm like, I bombed,
that I flubbed, and nobody really notices it at the
level that we noticed when we're performing ourselves, because it's
our whole world.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
No nobody does. It is our whole world. Like you
notice every little thing. And it's funny, like like some
of the headliners you're with, they walk off stags like
that was a bad one. I was like, oh, I
never guess that. I went out front of the house
and watched the show. I'm like expecting them to be
in a great mood. They're like, God, I bombed, and
now but that's you.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Now that's me. So you got to commit yourself not
to feel that way because you saw it from the
other side. Absolutely, Yeah, that's funny. You still have fun
doing shows? Is it so much fun?
Speaker 1 (07:59):
I do?
Speaker 2 (07:59):
I do? It's more fun now that your songs, more
songs are blowing up and the crowds singing more back.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Way more fun now where it's like, you know, at first,
you have nothing and you're just like trying to make
it through. You're like, can I play a set? And like,
look like I know what I'm doing, and then you
have one song. We had one song that people knew
and then now it feels like there's a handful and
you know, we've been opening since May, so we went
from headlining to doing twenty five minutes. So it's like
we only play five six songs and people know like
(08:24):
four of them, so like it feels like you're kind
of crushing for twenty five minutes. So if we can
extend that into ninety that'd be awesome.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yeah, because you may have a bigger crowd, but if
you're going out and you're playing support, you do have
a literally smaller space on stage and a smaller set,
but you can also pop out the hits faster.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
But I bet it feels a bit incomplete a little
bit when you're support, because you've been doing your own thing, yes,
and now you're gonna go do support and it's bigger,
but it's got to feel incomplete because you probably are
just getting like wound up and then it's over.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
That's the thing. You don't want to wait around all
day because you don't want the twenty five minutes. It's
long enough before. You don't want to be flat. But
then if you get yourself amped up, you're just you're
on and off the stage. And I think that five
six songs is usually like in a longer set, where
you finally start to feel good. You're like, all right,
we can rip the rest of these songs, like we
all feel great on like the last chorus of the
last song, and then it's over and you just got
(09:16):
to try to wind down.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
What song do you think you've covered the most?
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Definitely American Kids by Kenny Chesney. That was the first song.
I got a guitar my sophomore year for Christmas, and uh,
I loved country radio at that time. I still do,
but like those were the only country songs I knew,
and that's why I wanted a guitar to play the
country radio songs and American Kids I just like started
going for the m so sounded terrible. Why did you
(09:41):
want a crazy song to start?
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Why did you think your guitar would be cool?
Speaker 1 (09:44):
I actually didn't want one. There was a my mom
got a ukulele as like a birthday present. I think
somebody my dad or my sisters got it for and
they were like mess around on that and she did
for like a week and then was like I don't
I'm not gonna do this, and I picked it up.
I was probably in eighth grade, learned a bunch of songs.
Like now or put it down. And it was my
sister that was like please, like, if you're gonna play
(10:04):
this off and get a guitar, I can't listen to
that anymore. And I was always just like, no, I'm good.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Was anybody want family drawn to music?
Speaker 1 (10:10):
My mom can play the piano a little bit pretty good,
but not I wouldn't say musical. Everyone's like I said,
my dad could be an R. Not my an R,
but somebody's a and R. Like he's very critical of
like why he likes a song or what song's good,
what song's bad. My mom's kind of the same way.
So I think we all love it, like we love
movies and entertainment and music and stuff like that. That's
(10:32):
always been a big deal. But nobody was like making music.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Nobody wanted to be in a band. No, nobody was
in a band when they were a kid. Now they're
living through you. What do your parents? What do your
parents think about the success? Now? They love it.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
I think they're my dad's checks in all the time.
He owns his own business, so like I think he
likes to check in on that side of things with
me too, Like he always like make sure I'm at
least keeping an eye on the numbers and stuff like
that and where things are acting. Yeah, so he he
checks in on that. He's got a lot of creative
ideas that I'll hear him out. But he's got the
(11:06):
right mix of like he's involved and like he's got
his ideas and like I'm glad that he cares, but
like no decisions are made by him. We never got
into that territory, which that's good. They're super proud and
my mom's just support number one supporter.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Just like did they get to come to many shows?
They do?
Speaker 1 (11:22):
For Like, like I said, we're playing a lot of shows,
so it's a small percentage, but like a good bit.
I'd say like ten to fifteen a year, like whatever's around,
or they'll travel a little bit too.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
When did you have to get a business manager?
Speaker 1 (11:34):
That was I think probably last year.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Weird year and a half.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, it is weird. It's awesome. I'm very fair. That's
probably the thing. I'm to be honest the most thankful.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
For having a business manager.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Yeah, Like why is it that just because I can
write songs and sing I get to have a business,
Like it's such a weight off the show, like my
friends are talking about doing their taxes and stuff, and I'm.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Just like, yeah, it was weird for me. I'm from
a rural town in Arkansas, so I don't even know
what a business manager was like. I didn't know what that.
But to pay somebody to like manage my money. I
never had any money, so to pay somebody that hit weird.
But then whenever I was like paying percentages to people, Yeah,
I just knew I was gonna end up in jail,
like for tax evasion accidentally. Not I wasn't even gonna
(12:16):
be evading on purpose. I just knew it was going
to end up bad.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Yeah, do you feel like you have to look it
over to make sure you're.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
I now look at I look at everything all the time.
I'm just very anal about money because I never had it.
So yes, I look at my accounts two or three
times a day, but I don't pay it. I don't
even get bills in my house. Yeah, like that's it's awesome.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
That's how my dad is. So when he's asking me
stuff and I.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Don't know, he's like, he wants you to know, he
wants me to do you try. I assume you trust
your people. Right. Do you have a close relationship with
your business manager? I have a very close relationships.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Do you ever call it? Like, can I buy this?
Do you ever? Have you done that?
Speaker 1 (12:52):
I haven't gotten there yet. I'm really not. I'm not
like that.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
What do you mean? I just don't.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
I don't buy a whole lot of stuff.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
I have to see it. Awesome guitar and it's like
a six thousand dollars guitar.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
I did buy a Gibson, but that I felt like
that was like I needed one.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Well you can write that off though too, though. So
I've learned this stuff too, All this stuff I've learned
through like trials and tribulations. But it's so, do you
do you like own a like a house or condo
or anything yet? Oh? Yeah, okay, if you were to
see me.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Next year, like, well, we'll figure out what to buy.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
If you were to see like a I was talking
to Parker McCollums this morning. I've known for a long time.
You're like Parker right, one of my favorites. Yeah, yeah,
I known him forever and I didn't know there was
this story about that hell cat that he's selling. Yeah,
except he already sold it, and the person now is
selling it from Parker saying this is Parker McCollum's car,
(13:42):
but Parker has already sold it. It's not his anymore.
And the guy's using hey, this used to be Parker
McCollum's car, oh as a tool to sell and he's like,
I've already sold it. People are like, what do you
want for your car? And he's like, no, no, no,
I sold it. And I think he's kind of annoyed
that that's happening. But if you were to see like
that car it was less than like ninety nine thousand
dollars and you wanted it, you probably call your business
(14:04):
manager and be like, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Think we're approaching that.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
That's a good time.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
I don't think I've had enough to like really. I
was like, all right, that's cool that I'm that I'm
making that money to write songs and play songs, But
it was never enough to like think about that kind
of stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Are you getting pretty clothes yet?
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Yeah, that's coming in. That's cool. It's cool, really cool.
I never liked to pick clothes, so that's awesome too.
Just where what gets sent?
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah? Or where? Or where? What is free?
Speaker 1 (14:32):
That's right, that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
A lot of free hoodies.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
It's a great feeling, it feels did you feel like that?
And like I feel like they made a mistake or
something or I'm just kind of like who did what
to make this happen? Like it's hard for me to
wrap my mind around a brand like wanting me to
wear something.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor. Wow,
and we're back on the Bobby cast.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I felt like two things. One, when I was poor,
nobody wanted to give me anything. So what was the opposite,
Like nobody wanted to give me a crap when I
needed it right and then when I didn't need it anymore,
butody wanted to give me everything. So I felt like
that was backwards. Yes, I felt like that was very backwards.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Where were these?
Speaker 2 (15:13):
And then I felt the need to like prove to
them I was worthy of their free stuff? I do that.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yeah, that's kind of what I'm getting at. Like I
feel like somebody twisted somebody's arm to like get the
Wrangler shirts.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
And I want to prove it, Like you sent me this,
so I want to tag you and let you know
how much I'm just grateful for and in reality, you know,
just wear it and they're happy with it. You don't
have to prove anything, right, That's super cool man. This
last year feels like I had to be a blur
then two hundred shows. That's a lot of not being home.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
It was a lot of not being home. But I
think last fall we were out with Gavin at Coock
the whole fall and we were in the van and
that was just like it was such a fun tour
to Beyond because we really did catch it when the
whole thing was just on the up. So it was
cool to see in the energy and those shows were crazy,
but we were runn around the van and I was
just tired all the time. And that's kind of what
(16:03):
the album's about, is like that year and year and
a half after we wrote that, he was an answer song,
where like everything just kind of became being on the
road and the album is working that out. But I
feel like this year, I'm just saying all that to
say this year, I feel like found a little bit
of a routine, found a little bit of a way
to make it feel as at home as.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
You can, yes, as normal. It changed, something's going to
change every time and you want it to be that way.
I'm not even saying that as a negative. Absolutely, and
you'll always look back at your And what's weird is
I used to not be the old guy, and now
I've been here long enough that I'm like, let me
tell you this, young whipper snapper. It's such a weird thing.
But you'll hopefully in two years you'll look back at
(16:41):
this stuff and cringe.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah, it's starting to happen a little bit.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah. Good.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
But the the early days, I'm looking back at him
and I'm like.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
God, what was I thinking? Why did I do that?
Speaker 1 (16:51):
And I know I was just doing my best and you.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Were and it was awesome. And what you're doing now
is awesome. But if you're not in two years looking
back at it going oh oh man, that that means
you haven't gotten much better. You haven't progressed, right, You're
not different, you haven't changed.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
And it's funny too, because back then I didn't even
know what. I didn't know, like, it didn't even It's
cool to have like a phase or like an era
to look back on because I felt like it was new.
I don't feel like I'm the old guy at all,
but I felt like the new young kid that just
got here for so long, and now it's been like
five years, so that's not really the case.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Oh you're still the young kid, right, you're the now
young kid at the big kid table.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
That's a good way to say it.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
So you might be the old kid amongst the kid
table at Thanksgiving, right, you're the oldest toddler. But no, no, no,
you're now the young kid at the big kid table.
I saw that hell on the dance floor. I was
just looking at some dad. It was like one hundred
million streams. Yes, that's significant. Yeah, I mean that pays
the bills. It does more than anything. It just it
pays the freaking bills. It does. That's exciting and it's
(17:47):
just fun.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Like I just put out that was like this probably
the fifteenth or sixteenth song we put out, and it's
just like really, like you said, as soon as stuff
starts to feel normal and you're like, oh, another song's
going out there, it's like it's that's the one that
catches everybody.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
But I didn't know that you had put out that
many songs. Was it might have been a little less.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Well the five that came after that, so that was
probably the tenth, the tenth or eleven song, I should say.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Was there anything about this song though? Was there any
more of a push with it than other songs that
make it this much? Makes this much bigger? Or did
it catch?
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Then?
Speaker 2 (18:18):
You guys decided.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Almost nothing made it different. And I was just talking
about this at the gym that you don't go to
with Chase McDaniel.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
The guy that I wrote the song.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
I wrote the song with Chase McDaniel and I saw
him and I saw your evil twin on the way down.
But yeah, me and him were just like, He's like,
you see a hundred million streams and I was like yeah,
and I was like, I don't know if you feel
this way, but I still feel like I don't know
what it was that made it the one that did that.
And he was like me either, And part.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Of it, I guess you just keep when you wrote it,
did you?
Speaker 1 (18:47):
I knew there's this line in there rock bottoms got
a brand new view that launches into the chorus. How
does it dance for? And like just that kind of
moment in the songwriting, I knew we did something. I
was like, that's a great line. And then when we
started clipping in on TikTok from that line. That's when
it started catching. So I was like, Okay, it's working,
but I don't know. You sort to see the numbers
(19:08):
come in, the pre saves come in, You're like, all right,
this one's going to be better than the others. But
I never thought it would do what it did. I
didn't think i'd get a gold record like to Hang
on the Wall that was wild, getting like a physical
I just never thought about that. I thought about getting
a bus, thought about playing shows, never thought about one
hundred million streams.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Did you think about people that you liked liking you?
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Always when I was writing songs, it was always like,
would John Mayer liked this song if you heard it.
Would Park McCollum like the song if you heard it.
I was always kind of like that was my benchmark
because I was writing alone when I first got to town.
I didn't start co writing till two years in. I
didn't really know anybody. For the first two years. I
could have been anywhere, but I just moved to Town
because I knew this is where stuff happened. So I
(19:54):
was writing songs alone. That was always my thing. It
was just like mental like I was like if they
heard this, like would I be on the right track
or do I need to change that line?
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Has Parker commented on even in person, on anything that
you've done? And then I do I really like that song? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (20:09):
He's he's, uh, he's a fan, which is awesome, Like
he's he's really liked it and like he actually listens
to it too. He wasn't just saying it like he
was like quoting lines and stuff like that, and he was.
When I was at ole Miss, I went to ole
Miss for a year, so I went graduate high school,
had a handful of friends going Ole Miss. Wasn't super
excited about anything.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
So I was like, why all Miss?
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Though, if you're from Georgia, cause UGA there's a scholarship
called the Hope Scholarship, and if you have a certain
GPA in state you can go for like a very
little amount of money. So it became like really hard
to get into UJ if you live in state. So
everybody just started going to Ole Miss or Auburn, like
South Carolina. If you didn't have the grades and you
wanted to go to SEC, you just go to one
of those, And like half my county went to Ole
(20:49):
Miss really like it was split between Auburn and Ole
Miss and Uga.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
What part of the state then, were you geographically closer
to Ole Miss?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Not really, We're pretty close to Auburn. It's like North Atlanta. Yeah,
pretty close to Auburn. A lot of some tennessee here
and there, but Auburn and Ole Miss were like the
ones to go to.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
You did a year at ole Miss. It's like prison.
He did a year.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
I did six months. I didn't hear at a Miss.
That'll be ep did a.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Year at olds served a year and and uhty Toddy,
that's right.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
I was there in person for six months and then
COVID sent us home like pretty much right when the
second semester started. I had just started writing songs saying
that all saying all that to say, uh, my friend
from Louisiana showed me Parker and that that sound like
I was saying, I love the country radio songs, and
I love John Mayer. I had never heard any of
that kind of like left of center, red dirt songwriter country.
(21:41):
I didn't know it was a thing. So I heard
the I can't breathe in hell of a year, and
it just clicked for me and that's kind of what
made me. I was like, Oh, if I write songs,
is gonna be something like this. And then I went
and listened to him for the next two three years.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
So you just wrote by yourself wrote, yeah, even here
for two years, that's a long time. It was.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
I was at Lipscomb here for a year, two so
I did. I did a year at ole Miss, did
a year at Lipscomb. It's like you served yeah, very
different prisons. Also, Lipscombe Church of Chigh School. Coming from
ole Miss to to that establishment was was a very
big change.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Whenever you're writing songs by yourself and most people come
here and they've only written by themselves. The co write
is very much a Nashville thing, absolutely, But if you're
at Lipscomb, I'm just surprised that culture wasn't already a
part of the songwriting. Were you avoiding it purposefully?
Speaker 1 (22:27):
There were a couple of people there that were into it.
I had a professor there that set me up with
my first write on music row because I was just
like dying for it. Like we would have these one
on one you had to do one on one lessons
and one of them was songwriting.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
So that's a weird thing to learn.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
It was really weird. So I'll just go in there
on like Tuesday mornings and play or whatever I was
working on. She'd be like, this is good, this is bad.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Did you this is an unfair question to answer. I'm
going to ask it to you anyway. Did you feel
like you're telling me my songwriting is good or bad?
Yet you haven't done it at a level that unless
you were my teacher, I probably wouldn't listen to you
critique something that is creative.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
I think there's a little bit of that. She played
session stuff though, so I respect her.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Kay.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
She she's been in town, she wrote songs. But like
I do think the general premise of music school that
is a thing in the back of your mind where
you're like.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Like, if you were good, you wouldn't be here as
a teacher, you'd be out there doing it. And it's
a terrible thing to say. It's a terrible thing to say,
but I remember having a in college. I was studying television,
and I remember that our professor would be like, and
this is how you and and he was like like
on the news for like a year in Little Rock, Arkansas,
(23:42):
which is like the big city to me from where
I grew up. But I was like, dude, if you
were good, why are you here.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
I know, I hear that. I think it's the way
they approach it to like you don't if there's a
little bit of cockiness to it and they're telling you
completely agree, they're just trying to help you.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
It's like, great, that's a great point. But there is a.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Little bit of I'm with you on that, and I
think a lot of people do. There's power trip is
a real thing all over the place.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
And I think too, in a job like this, to
succeed at it, to actually try at it, you got
to have some sort of screw loose. I agree, because
there's no stability in this No, there's it's it's so unpredictable,
it really is. You can work your freaking face off
and nothing happened, or you can stumble into it and
have a really good opportunity.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
And it's been cool to see, Like it's been cool
to get on tour and open for these people that
like Parker and Riley Green and you know, people that
I've like listened to their music for so long, like
just to see how they go about it. I think
everybody else deals with it. Everybody deals with it in
a different way, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Do you have any sort of imposter syndrome? I think so.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
I've always like hesitant to like put the labels on
stuff like that, But like every time I've heard that,
I'm like, ah, I'm not going to have that, and
then and then it sneaks up on you in a
way of like kind of I feel like with the
brand deals is kind of like I'm like, they're sending
that to me.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Yeah, And I wonder if now you're feeling it because
you're starting to have this success that's different. I call
it big kid at the table success. Yes, And I
would think now is about the time where if you're
going to have it right now. But I think everybody
has it a bit. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Well.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
I think you think about things happening, and you think
they're going to happen a certain way, and like I
think when you're daydreaming about it, you're always like, well,
this thing's going to happen first, and then it's going
to naturally lead me into that. But really it just
kind of happens and there's no ramp into it, and
I think that's why I'm always like I don't know
if it's imposter syndrome, if it's just playing out differently,
(25:29):
or like there was no like prep for it, but
like every one day you wake up and people just
treat you a little different, or like one day you
wake up and more people are buying tickets or more
people are listening to the songs, and it's just like
it's weird.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
It's weird. Yeah, it's weird. When you went from vandibus
that was great, life changing, right life.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I'm still I'm still like fired up about that.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Would you explain that a bit, Grant, I like granually,
because I think, again, it's one of those things unless
you've lived it, you really don't understand. And I don't
expect even people who listen to this podcast or radio
show to understand fully because they haven't had to live it. Right, No,
but would you explain what it's like on a van
versus what it's like in a bus.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
It is like it's actually live chat. I think back
to the van days and I'm like, I don't even
know how we did it. I'm like thinking about having
to go do that now and I'm like that sounds crazy,
but what you do? We would bus from bus, we
would pull the van. Tour manager would go get the van.
We'd run a different van every weekend, and on Thursday
(26:33):
or Wednesday night whatever, we would load up at my apartment.
Everyone would parking the spaces and we'd load up the
van and then we'd drive to upstate New York. We'd
drive to Kansas City. We've drived to Milwaukee, you know
however long it took. And then you're checking into hotels
at two three am, waking up at eight am, pulling
up for soundcheck, doing soundcheck two hours til you open.
(26:55):
A lot of times you can't stay for the whole headliner.
Back in the van, you're driving another four or five
hours that night.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
People we're not comfortable in the van. Not come from
multiple people. It's not like beds.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
It's we had We were rolling with seven seven and
like a sixteen passenger, but we didn't have a trailer.
So like the first four rows were just like the
drums and the guitars and like a lot of times
are falling on you. And we had a month long
stretch where like God was definitely like laughing and like
testing us for sure, but the we were where was
(27:24):
it McFarlane, Kansas. I remember we were driving to play
with Gavin uh Manhattan, Kansas, Kansas State and we're driving
seventy miles an hour. I'm half asleep in the middle
of the day and we just fall down in the
front tire. I just see it roll up a ramp
like it was a hill.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
See the tire, the tire, the whole tire.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
We didn't blow a tire, like the whole tire came
off the axis. The access is sparking on the highway.
I see the tire. It was a ranch with a
with a hill, and it went up the hill like
a ramp, and I just we all lost sight of
the tire. It was forty yards and there going seventy
miles an hour, just flying into somebody's ranch. And then
the axis is sparking down the road and we're just saying,
(28:07):
hit the brakes, hit the brakes, and our drummer was
driving and he's real low key and he's just like,
there's no brakes and we're like what He's like, the
brakes are out. So we just skidded one hundred yards
to the side of the road. In McFarlane, Kansas, and
everyone just watched us. Everyone was driving by and I
posted it on Instagram and some kid was like, I
just passed you and we were literally like, we were like,
(28:29):
come get us. So he turned around on his little
truck and he came and got us, and we took
like three four trips from the van and then everyone
told us, they're like, you know, this is the hottest
day of the year, and we were like, great, you
can't sit in the van on the shoulder because someone
might hit you. So we're all just standing in the
tall grass on the side of the road. It's one
hundred and like one degrees I think, and everyone's getting
like sumburn, like actually some burn and uh. That was
(28:53):
one of our stories. We hit a black bear on
the way to of Sit, New York where they had woodstock.
I forget the name of the venue, but we hit
a black bear. That was our drummer. It all happened
to our drummer.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
It was this first shift might be what the commons shift. Driving.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
We're sitting in the front. Our other tour manager just
went to sleep. He'd been driving all day. I remember
we're listening talking Tennessee by Morgan Wallen. And the trees
are like, you know, fifteen feet wide. It looked like
bugs are like this big. And I just remember being like,
let's watch out for deer, like we don't need to
hit a deer. And I said that I was looking
to the left expecting them to come out that way.
(29:28):
That's where my eyes were. And then from the right,
like the way you see a bear like in full
sprint on like National Geographic, just ran across the front.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Of the van. We just it wasn't sitting in the road,
was not sitting there, jumped like a deer.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Jumped out in front of the van and we caught
the back of it. And that was our drivers for
our drummer's first shift driving the van.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
But something else about the van is everybody has to drive,
or people have to drive, and then they have to
do their jobs right, which is the difference in the
bus where you have a dedicated driver.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Very different.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
But like your drummer is driving for however, mit three,
four to six, whatever your schedule is, then he's I
try to get some sleep, so the tour manager takes over, right,
But then everybody's exhausted and they have to do their
job like the show as well, right, and the bus
game changer because not talk about the bus.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Yes, that brings us to the bus. So a Hawk
also the next day flew right into the van. That's
the last part of the band story, into the driver,
into the driver's face a Hawk driver. No, it was
our other tour manager. So drummer got a break for him.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
He's not the one to blame.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
But so yeah, that brings us. We got on the
bus in April, and I think all of us were
just like the bus was like mythical by that point.
We were like, one day we'll be on the bus.
Like when you're sitting on the side of the road.
You're like, when we get on the bus, this won't
happen anymore. But the bus is basically like a house.
You have a driver, they have to have a CDL
their license to drive. Ten hours, you get another driver
(30:51):
to take over, so you're you're not driving at all.
No one on our crew drives anymore. Really, I sleep more,
and I've probably ever slept in my life because you're
we really don't have to get up till sound check.
On a lot of these later tours, it's not till
like four PM, So you know, you can go to
bed whenever you want. I can wake up kind of
whenever I want, unless I'm doing like a liner or something.
(31:12):
But every day I wake up, there's a kitchen. We
got stuff we bust from the Walmart. So we go
in the Walmart buy all our stuff for the weekend.
Every weekend. It's got all the stuff that we need
in there. And I literally just wake up and walk
into the front lounge every morning and like just take
a take a breath out. Because that's what I wanted,
you know, like being a fan of somebody like Parker.
He talks about being on the road all the time.
(31:33):
So I wanted to be on the road and I
wanted to play shows. But the van was like quite
literally starting to kill us. You know, we were getting
close bears hawks.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
I can't believe you saw the wheel.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
I saw the wheel. I lost sight of the wheel
in the air. That's probably the craziest thing that.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
I feel lucky you didn't die.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Truly, if we're in a city, that might have hit somebody,
you know, Like it was very it was close, and
the sparking on the road was like that fast, like
the fast that we didn't skid over and the band
being backloaded anyway.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Also, it's also you put in so many hours on
the road, you're gonna have those kind of stories just
based on being out there right so much. Same thing
with playing live shows. Did you have any shows last
year where thinks nothing was working and you're just having
to patch it together. Ears aren't working.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
That just happened to me in the Red West, Utah.
What happened went out first six minutes, my mic didn't work,
and we were like, it's a great crowd. That whole
festival was awesome, Like they were really good about drawing
crowds to every stage and it was twelve thousand people
and you go to sing your first song and like
we're talking about, you're getting yourself amped up. Like and
festival days are always weird too, because sound checks faster,
(32:39):
you don't have your normal routine. You're playing at probably
like three or four pm you're used to seven eight.
And I got myself hyped up, ran out there, saw
the crowd. Another festival kind of like putting tickets on sale,
you're always like, how many people are gonna come to
our set? It's a great crowd. Twelve thousand people at
the same time just started going, oh, not on, Mike's
not on, I can't hear you?
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Is the band playing around you?
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Bands playing around me? I got ears in. All you
see is people just going can't hear, can't hear, and
you just have like an internal I think, like anxiety attack.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Probably because you're wondering do I keep going? Do I
stop everything? Or were you playing to a click?
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Playing to a click?
Speaker 2 (33:16):
So you really can't And it's a.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Festival, so you have a set time, so you can't
start over unless you want to rearrange everything.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
And what happened? How did that turn out?
Speaker 1 (33:25):
We got it on. It was kind of became a
funny moment because the first time I went on, I
was like, can y'all hear this? And everyone was like, so,
it's good. But I think those moments when stuff don't work,
I mean, you you're thankful for the two hundred shows
that you've played because you're like, I guess this song's
a wash, Like no one heard that song. And then
we got into the rest of the set and it
was fine.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
The Bobby Cast will be right back. This is the
Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Found that I would doing comedy, especially if I would bomb.
Early on, I would just kill myself for it, and
I'd be like, I suck, I suck, I suck. But
then I would realize, Man, I'm bomb worse than this.
The more shows I did, yeah, and it turned out
fine and great, but it allowed me to have confidence
even when things didn't go right, that it was gonna
be okay. On the other side, you can be okay
and the career is not over. Yep.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Have you played like a lot? What's the percentage of
stand up shows to like the No, you play music.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Too just but comedy music right, so not fair, not
like you. I don't have talent. There's a difference. So
I don't want I don't want these two to be compared.
But probably the last few years has been mostly stand up.
I wanted to do a special, okay, and so I
just went and towar it. I did like thirty theaters.
I wrote this show and I toured it and CMPT
bought it and ran it and it was awesome, and
(34:49):
so I did a special and then I was like,
I think I'm good now nice. I still play the
operation sometimes, but I was doing comedy more than I
was music. Now I would have a guitar there because
the greatest thing for me was if I would like
or if the crowd was dead, which meant I sucked,
I would just grab my guitar because I can. I
can hide behind music when you just out there with
a microphone and people are no, that's yeah kind of what.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
I was asking because I could. I really couldn't imagine
going out there and just talking.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
You could because you're you're writing songs in a vulnerable
way too, Like the first time that you play like
a work tape for somebody with an emotion from you,
and you're like, listen to this, and they're listening maybe
for the melody, listen to the court You're also like, man,
those are my real thoughts, and like it feels kind
of naked. Yeah, I mean it's it's similar, yeah, okay
to writing songs. But yeah, I found when I would
(35:37):
grab that guitar, I can kind of hide mind it. It
was nice totally.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
I feel like I have that too.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Do you feel like you amplify yourself a version of
yourself on stage? Is it a superman is at a
cape a bit when you play music?
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Yeah, that's funny too, Like going back to the growth thing,
like there'll be times where I swear I'm out there
just like giving him my own ripping it, and then
I go watch the video and I like haven't moved,
im like just sin and still and you swear you
feel like you're given a show and you have to
realize like you really do kind of got to perform
and get into it.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
But do you watch videos? I watch what I get.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Tagged in on Instagram about it that I don't do
it every night, but if there's like if I just
see a lot of tags come in, you know, like
the story mentions thing at the top, you just click.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Through, Yeah, oh I know it. Well, oh yeah, I
know it. Explain that craft to me, man, I see
it and kill myself over it. Do you like challenge
your micro movements more so because people are recording everything.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Yes, I think so. But going back to that thing,
you just got to learn how to have there's a balance,
like you gotta have a good time yourself. You can't
be just thinking about that. But yeah, I do think
I try to. I try to exaggerate myself in my songwriting,
that's for sure. Like I I think I keep the
emotions as true to myself as possible, but then like
you're always leaning for like this is probably sounds a
(36:53):
little bit cooler than what actually happened, or how can
I make this a little bit more you know, aesthetic
maybe word but songwriting and like re making records. I
go into this mode where like I am, I've tried
to explain it. I tried to explain it to Jake
Gear who I produced the album with, and he was
just like, I didn't understand anything, but he was like,
you're doing great. I was like, all right, But I
(37:14):
just feel like I feel like there's this songwriter version
of me that like kind of walks through everything like
I go through life for real, and then there's like
this version of me that I tap into that I'm like,
it's almost like I'm watching my life happen, and it's like,
how can I make this a little bit more interesting?
Speaker 2 (37:28):
I have to amplify every single thing that I do
because I'm doing content all the time. So if it's
radio or podcast or social media, whatever, it is like
my content. If it were just the literal version of me,
I think it would be probably about a four. But
when I'm on I gotta I gotta put it up
or it's not compelling. Yeah, Like I don't feel like
me the everyday person is that compelling. I feel like
(37:50):
I have very compelling thoughts. I go through the same thing,
so I have to amplify them and I keep note.
Do you keep notes of like of thoughts? Yeah, yep, yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
I broke my phone that in Utah. I had this
case that fell apart, and I like, you never want
to go get a new phone, like it's just not
a fun thing to do. And I just dropped it
one too many times and the screen wouldn't open. And
that was the thing I was.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
The It wouldn't do face id, like, it wouldn't even
fly I could.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
It kept disabling itself because I would press one number
and it would just fill out the pass code itself.
And it was disabling for eight sixteen hours, twenty four hours,
so I had to take it to a screen repair
place to even get into it. I bought the new
phone then I didn't have any of my passwords to
even back it up. So, like I it was a
whole deal. But my notes app was the thing I
was the most worried about because I've written on so
much stuff in there, and like.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Were you able to get off the cloud.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
I was able to get it, well, not off the cloud.
I had to go to a screen repair place fix
the old phone, open it, and then I was able
to back it up. But I was for like six days.
I thought I lost all my notes, but I write,
I really do. I'm probably gonna write them down in
a notebook now, but I have a lot of thoughts
and like lyric.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
But a notebook's hard to travel with everywhere. Like for
me it is because I've got like six tabs on
like six different things that I do, and I'm constantly
writing notes in each tab. I'd be walking out with
a freaking spiral, RIGHTEOK.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
And you don't want to start. It's so much easier
to stop and just yeah, you don't want to get
the pen and pad out?
Speaker 2 (39:08):
What are you mostly writing? Song concepts? Ideas? Lyrics?
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Like I feel like in Nashville everyone's a title person,
Like it always starts with the title. Everyone's throwing out titles,
and I don't think of those as easily as I
write down something that might be a lyric, and then
I like look at it and then I'll write down
like I try not to write down like a vert
more than a verse or half a verse.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Will you do voice memos with melodies?
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Yes, that's the main thing. Really. I don't write too
much down. I write down enough to like remember it. Honestly,
I write it down to remember it because like kind
of just the act of writing it down else you remember.
And then from there it's I try to make it
all feel and Chris Ableton John Mayer. I've learned to
write songs on YouTube just how they did it, and
like they just say, to start singing.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
You put a work tape on the record. Yeah, that's
the last track on there? Yes, why that was that song?
Speaker 1 (39:58):
There was this kind of like two or three we
had the cut days for the studio, so we knew
when we were going in. There was this two or
three week stretch where we knew what we want the
album to be called. We knew what the general idea was,
and days are numbers. The last song, the last full
song on the album got written that week, and a
song called Painkiller got written that.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Week, which both made the record. Yes.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Yeah, So like I was in this like beat the
buzzer kind of like what else can we write that's
gonna make the record? And I wrote good run that
work tape pretty quick. It like fell out, like if
I get hot writing songs, I can do that. I
don't usually get like the one take like it just
fell out five minutes thing, but that one kind of
happened in like ten minutes. And I sent it to Jake,
(40:39):
the producer, and he was like, I was like, you
think this is worth finishing to try to like get
it on the record, and he was like, just leave
it the way it is. It was his idea to
kind of and he's like, maybe we'll master it and
see how it turns out. And I thought it was
cool to put a work tape on there for me personally,
because that's how everything starts, you know, like everything starts
with me texting Jacob work tape or texting you know,
(41:00):
manager or work tape or anybody. So for me as
a songwriter, that's what I sit there and listen with
and fall in love with the songs and think of
production ideas. So it was cool for me to put
that on the record and for one of those songs
to kind of live in that way where it's like
you always lose a little something when you go to
make it a full song.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Yeah, I was gonna ask how you do with like
demo ititis where you love the demo so much, but
you also understand what the produced product should be and
are there times where you're fighting against should we produce
it this much?
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Yes? All the time. Really didn't run into it too
much with the record, which was great, Like I think
the way that Jake and I directed the band like
it really did feel good. And I was sitting in
an isobooth playing so everyone was kind of playing to me,
so we had that work tape feel, which was awesome.
But yeah, anytime you go down that rabbit, it was
cool to just not have to worry about it. I
was like, let's just get a good one take and
(41:51):
it's kind of one of my favorite things. And I
feel like if I had finished it, people would kind
shrug and be like, it's a it's all right. But
the half song, like all these playbacks and stuff, people
like what about the rest of it? And I'm like,
you know, I just played fourteen full songs and you
kind of shrugged at him. But the half song, it's
just human nature, Like everyone wants the rest of it.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
You know, who do you feel will give you honest
feedback on the record. Here are fourteen tracks on the thing,
But who would you give it to? And you know
they're gonna have it's completed. You're not changing anything, but
you trust them to go. I really loved Painkiller, you know,
but my favorite wasn't so and so who do you
trust to do.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
That everything goes? I send everything to my dad. He's
just a straight shooter. And I just remember from the beginning,
like when I told him I was writing a few songs,
he was like, I'm gonna tell you if they're not good.
And he's always been that honest, so like I know
that he's somebody that will tell me when he doesn't
like it. So I send it to him. Like I said,
(42:47):
I take it with a grain sometimes.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Too, because like you have to.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
He will listen to something a month later he'll be like,
you know what, it is better this way, like it's
a good thing. You didn't go with my idea. So
but I trust his general opinion. It's just kind of
my part of the workflow now. Like Dad's got to
approve it, or at least I got to hear what
he's got to say. And then I would say, Sean
at our label he signed me. They had started their
(43:10):
own label, and he was the first person ever contact
me from the music industry. Signed me off at TikTok.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
Did he DM? Were you like, is this a scam?
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Yeah? Well kind of. When they first like said they
wanted to work with me and sent over the contract,
I was like, I'm good. I was eighteen or nineteen.
I just remember all the stories of it was technically
a development deal and that's like kind of a bad
word to a lot of people, like that's where they
sign everything forever with the young kid, and I didn't
want that to happen. So I was like no. And
then they helped me put songs out anyway. They were like,
(43:42):
all right, well, we just want to help you.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
And oh you said no.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
I said no the first to the first contract, and
they helped me put out songs anyway. They're like, we
want to help you get these songs out. So they
set me up with a producer. I didn't sign anything,
and they just helped me through the first couple of songs,
and I was kind of like, I don't think they
would do that if they were trying to steal all
my stuff. Yeah, And then I talked to my dad
about it, and we actually got a real lawyer to
look at it and we had more meetings about it.
(44:06):
And then Shawn's like Shawn m Max. Both of them
started that label ended up partnering with Innerscope, So that's
how that side of the deal got worked in. But
there Shawn's like creatively a really good friend of mine.
So I always send everything to Sean.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Any of these songs on this record about anybody super specific.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
You know, I've kind of stepped away from that. I
think in the beginning you're writing about somebody in mind,
But now I feel like I write more about the
feelings and you use the story to get the feeling across.
I don't like it to be this is about this person.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Well that's a great answer if you did, and you
don't want them to know. Like you're winning in multiple
ways by giving that answer for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
Also, I'm like, I'm older now, so it's not just
there's not just one. It's like there's a there's more
people to write about than just one. So I think
I try to write about the feelings that came out
of that and like where I was at and life
and like, but I don't I don't know. I don't
really sit down think like I'm gonna write about you,
I'm gonna get you.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
I guess you could write a nice song about somebody,
like a love song. I've heard of those.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
I've never no, I don't write. I don't write those.
That's the Parker mccollumn.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
Then what's the last song you wrote that made the record?
Speaker 1 (45:26):
Dayser Numbered was the last full song, and then Good
Run was the last thing we like tacked on. But
Dayser Number was cool because I had There I Go
the title track. I wrote that verse chorus by myself
and finish it with my friend Jack, and we knew
we wanted to call it There I Go. And I
like to say, if There I Go is us setting
out in the van and wheels flying off the van
(45:46):
and hitting black bears and stuff. I feel like Dayser
Numbered is waking up on the bus one day thinking
about all of it and think about that, you know,
twelve to twelve months to a year and a half
of I never stop and think about stuff. I think
I could. I'll just charged through six months, like just
doing whatever I gotta do, and I don't stop and
think about it. And I think days are numbered, is
like stopping and thinking about, Oh, all this stuff has
(46:09):
happened since I moved to town, Like you wake up
on a bus one day, it's like all that stuff
I wanted to happen is happening, and here's the ups
and downs with it. So I like that one, and
I'm glad it makes sense. It was the last one.
It was kind of like it was the book end
of like, Okay, we have a record now, you know.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Does it feel like you've been here forever? And just
hear it yesterday? At the same time, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
When I like when someone asked me, I hadn't been
asked how long I've been in town for a while,
and saying five years is crazy because I feel like
I was always just saying I just got here. I
just got here.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
When you moved, what'd you pack up a car? Truck?
Speaker 1 (46:41):
Do Vand I was driving a Pasade at the time,
driving Chevy now, but I had a there's my one
flex's the business managers. Yeah, I had a pasade, loaded
it down with my guitar and like one suitcase full
of clothes.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
I think that's it.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
A room xbox dorm apartment. Yeah, I had a roommate,
one of my one of my friends I've met at Lipscomb.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
And then now I live with one of my best
friends from home. Well, my really good friends from home
got a job in Nashville.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
So we live together. But you say live, I mean
you're not even here.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
I don't live. Yeah, he basically lives alone. I went
out for fifty three days out of fifty six days
of fifty six days stretch. And I got home and
he was like, man, I think I needed I needed
to get like a dog. And then like a couple
of hours later, he was like, I think I'm gonna
try to find a girlfriend. I was like, damn, you
got you got lonely my room. My roommate's trying to
cure his loneliness.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Year. I well, congratulations on everything. Man, It's it's super
cool to see. And like I said, it's it's cool
to see like your version of what's happening, because to me,
I'm seeing because I really only see the big kid
table at this point, right, But now like you're you're here,
it's cool.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
And I was watching when I was sitting there writing
songs by myself, I was watching Bobby Bobby Casting.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Oh thanks, man. I appreciate all.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
The clips, all the interviews. My favorite artist was going on,
I'm like, I gotta watch bub.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
And I'm going to share something with you that I
probably wasn't gonna share with you.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor, Wow,
and we're back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
Usually we have like a mark anybody below twenty seven
has nothing to say. This is just me through the
history of me doing this show and doing long long
form projects with people. Anybody below twenty seven usually it's
not specific to the person has nothing to say because
they haven't really been here long enough. They don't have
good stories, they haven't developed the art of storytelling, which
is a whole different part of songwriting and performing. And
(48:39):
we put the over under at thirty two minutes on
how long this would be. Because if I'm sitting with
you and I'm like, he didn't have much to say,
I want him to look good. It's my job to
make you look good. It's also my job to pull
some interesting stuff out of you. Right, And that was
about the mark. We debated. You're twenty four, I bet
the under nice. I was like, there's no, we get
(49:00):
to thirty two minutes, but we did fifty minutes. And
so when I say, like, it's been super cool hanging
out with you, that's the way I can show you
thank you is that I feel like we could do
another half hour and I'd have a good time. So dude,
I'm like, I'm rooting for you.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
Thank you. Yeah, I'm glad I've never said, alonde you
at the gym meet too, nice to meet you.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
Nice to meet you too. I'm glad the person is
smaller than me.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
He is smaller. Yeah, sizing you up now, it's definitely
not you.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
Let me ask you what one final quest two final questions.
When you get a sponsor like Monster, how much does
that help when you do a tour, very much.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
Very much.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
So makes a lot of shout out to Monster.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Yeah, that's when you can actually walk away with money too,
because most of the time it's like people think your
son a lot of tickets, make a lot of money,
and you're not, like, at the end of the day,
you don't take that home that it's expensive to have
the bus, it's expensive to have a band and a crew.
So that's when you can really actually start to make
some profit.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
They're also wanted to shout them out.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Shout out monster buy go buy one.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
And then as far as playing sports, you're athlete, played
for basketball. Yeah, do you work at music like you
worked as an athlete?
Speaker 1 (50:07):
Yes, that's a yeah. Good questions, got good questions.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
I've been doing this for a minute, Like I said,
I'm old, now I'm well.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
I guess, like it's just like it's stuff that I
never tell people that you're asking me about, Like I
never feel like I have the chance to tell people.
But yeah, I think that was probably the thing that
I was the best at. And I liked the best
about playing football basketball, Like I liked doing the work
and seeing being able to get better at it and
like seeing yourself get better. And I think I do
try to apply the same thing Nick Sabe. I'm not
(50:34):
an Alabama fan. I like great coaches though Nick Saban not
in Alabama, not an Alabama fan, but I'm a Nick
Saban fan.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
You know. I would listen to myself in both of
those as well.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
I listened to what he has to say. And it's
just like there's so much stuff with sports that are
applicable to everything. Like Nick Saban talks about like falling
in love with the process, like process oriented thinking.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
I wrote about Nick Saban specifically talking about the process
in my last book Damn. Because I'm just such a
believer in the process.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
It makes it so much easier to tune out of
the stuff that might get weird and the stuff that
might like steal the joy from it. Like if you're
just like, all right, I made this record with these songs, Now,
how can I make a better record with better songs?
You know?
Speaker 2 (51:10):
I found that work ethic in sports has translated well
for people who do music, definitely. And some people are like, well,
how are all these athletes musicians? It must be No, No,
it's a lot of the skills that you develop while
playing sports, even the adversity for sure, which I think
is a massive part.
Speaker 1 (51:29):
Of it, biggest one too. Yeah, And I think also,
like I played on a football team. We won four
or five games in four years out of high school.
So it's like not a good situation. But like I
think just even being able to be around stuff that's
like not successful and still like be able to keep
keep going, Like, yeah, there's adversity everywhere. So yeah, I
think everyone thinks it's like Oh, they're so talented like
(51:50):
they've been. They've got all the talent. They were a
high school quarterback, college quarterback and they get to sing.
It's like, no, it's just you learn how to develop
stuff and you learn how.
Speaker 2 (51:59):
To keep Yeah, because I used to have just that
jealousy of man, look at sam On he can do
it all. But I think there's a difference in causation
of correlation and also the skills you develop it one
thing can actually translate into another, not that just you're
blessed it both definitely. And so yeah, debut album, it's out.
Congratulations man, thank you. I know you've had music, but
to put out a whole project that is another's and
(52:20):
I hope, my hope for you is that in eighteen
months you look back and go, oh, some of those
songs that cringe at because that's growth, that is real growth.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
That's the goal.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
That's always the goal, to look back and be a
little Yeah. I was talking because you like John Mayer,
my favorite artist of all time, and I was talking
with John Mayer. We had a brief season where we
were friends. We're not not friends now, but we had
a brief season where if we were in the same town.
We would like see each other, right, and if he
came to Nashville, he would come and hop in the show,
and he would talk about how he would listen back
(52:51):
to some of his stuff and be like, oh, and
it's the stuff that people like still relate to the most.
And he's like, man, it's so like milk toast, like
on the middle, and like, I'm just not drawn to
it at all, But it's what people like still love
the most, and he still plays it even though it
doesn't always drive him, like it doesn't like spark him,
(53:12):
but he knows is what the people want. So as
I say, look back and cringe, also just keep playing
the hits. It's yeah, I have the mix. Good to
see you man. You guys Vincent Mason music dot com
and go to his socials and he doesn't really need
you to buy tickets, but if you're there, cheer extra
loud and check out the record. It is out now.
Speaker 3 (53:30):
Thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production.
He's like, you see a hundred million streams and I
was like yeah, And I was like, I don't know
if you feel this way, but I still feel like
I don't know what it was that made it the
one that did that. And he was like me either.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Episode five fifty three with Vincent Mason. His debut album
is out now. It is called There I Go. This
song Hell is a dance Floor has got hundreds of
millions of streams. It is really a great song. I
don't know what else to say, except for he has
two first names, and at times that can be confusing.
And I would bet you people call him Mason, Vincent
and Vincent Mason, like if he's new to you, you
(00:41):
don't know which one it is, because I would think
Mason's more of a first name than Vincent. I feel
like it's a little more common now, Like Luke Brian's
a double first name. Me think about this, Luke and Brian. Yeah,
that's a good one. Dylan Scott, Oh, dang, Dylan yeah, Scott, Yeah, Okay,
you got me twice. Zach Brian, Yeah, Zach Brown. I
(01:03):
guess Brown's person. Yeah. So he's got a new song
I called dan if I do. It's got a million
streams in the first weekend. I really enjoyed this interview.
And he's on tour. He's out. The thing about his tour,
it's mostly already sold out. We talk about this like
it's sold out in pre sale. Basically great music. Love
spending time with him. Here he is, Episode five point
fifty three. Vincent Mason, Vincent, good to meet you boy.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Great to meet you too. How long have you lived here?
I've lived here for five years. I gotta I gotta confess.
I feel like I've seen you at the at the
gym a lot, but I never knew if it was
you or like your evil twin or something. I don't
think you ever. I don't think it was me. I
never said, what's up? It might not be you now
that I've met you in person.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
What gym? No, I don't say.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
You're not gonna say. I'm not going to say the gym.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Is it close to here? Yeah? I own it. I
have my own gym. Here is the jack that was
like so ripped.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
No meeting you in person now, might it might not
be him? I'm glad I've never said, hey, is it
a boxing gym? No, it's just a regular because.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I owned like three gems.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Well, seeing you now in person, it really doesn't look
like it looks like your evil twin.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Here's the problem, and I want to be as honest
as possible about this. Most of the time, people when
they tag me and things, they'll go, hey, I think
I see Bobby Bell on second Are are you in
Iowa City, Iowa? And they'll tag somebody or are you
in Sacramento? And it's always like the worst looking dude
that just wears glasses like mine?
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Right, so it really he's not bad looking. Yeah, I'm
glad I've never said hey, but I swear people stop
them and stuff and they say what's up?
Speaker 2 (02:32):
And I love the show? Yeah, if you've ever heard
I love the show. That's funny. But yeah, I don't
think it's I mean, is he bigger? Is he buffer
than I am? No? Okay, good that I like. No,
he's not.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
He's actually smaller.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Yeah I like that. Well, yeah, I'm confused on what
I like at this point.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
But yeah, I'm really glad I've never said.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Hello, as am I Do you live near me?
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Not too far?
Speaker 2 (02:55):
Nobody knows where I live.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Well, now that now that I'm here, I'm like, it's
really not that close.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah, but it's not too far away.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Everyone's going to be listening to this and learning nothing.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I was. I was going through your social media and
I've been watching your stuff for a while, but I
know kind of the pressures of your own first headlining tour. Yes,
how did you feel about that? Because they did really well,
which is fantastic, thank you, but going into it, did
you have nerves when you were doing your own because
a whole difference in being like great support because that's
(03:27):
not pressure on you, No, that's pressure this a lot.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yes, yeah, you feel like you know, I've always felt
like sometimes you're opening, you could drop dead on stage
and you feel like no one would care, Like they'd
be like, oh the opener.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Anyway, we're waiting for call them.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Yeah, yeah exactly, And I think there was that added
anxiety of like, there's nobody coming out there after you.
So like I think the first time I played a
headline show sold one thousand tickets in Columbia, which was awesome.
That was always kind of like my benchmark. I was like,
if I ever could sell a thousand tickets like that
was kind of like my goal, Like my dream, I
guess you could say, and so like you do it
and you're like, wow, there's a thousand people here and
there like wow, there's a lot of people there just
(04:01):
to watch me. And then you're like, oh, I hope
the show's not boring. Are my songs actually good? I've
had the vision. I don't know if you have this,
but like I just feel like everyone might like tap
each other on the shoulder and I'll walk out at
the same.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Time, you know, and be like I wasn't as good
as we thought. So it's a whole other added pressure
I felt, especially when I was touring stand up a lot,
when I put up multiple shows at once. Yeah, that
made me anxious yep, like a full tour yep, because
there will be some cities it would do great and
some not as great. And then so I'd be like
and then I would be nervous, like if nobody buys tickets,
(04:33):
like I never really was good, or like I did.
You have those.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Fears, absolutely, And I think it's like the last thing
you do, Like you put out a song, that's a step,
you know, you go open, that's a step. It was
kind of the last thing that I hadn't done yet.
It was the last thing, Like we had no idea
how it was going to go. Like putting tickets on
sale is different than asking someone to stream your song,
like buying something and going and showing up and obviously
you don't want to book the show and show up
(04:57):
and then thirty people are there, like wouldn't be a
great feeling. So a little bit scary. But I feel
like this time around, we're going on tour again, and
I think doing the fifteen twenty shows, whatever we did
this year, I think you're just kind of like hosting
a house parties. I think of it now, and I've
never really liked to do that, but I think the
people you kind of won the battle, like they like
you enough to spend the money.
Speaker 2 (05:17):
So I saw that a lot had sold out during
pre sale, Like that's such a relief.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
Yes, that was the best. Very nervous watching them and
when stuff when you can get stuff out of the
way in pre sale, that's a that's a great sign.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Do you do like the code?
Speaker 1 (05:29):
We do the code? We do a few different codes,
three of.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Them, yeah, yeah, like one for fan club, one for
local you know radio or whatever. Yeah, it's such a
relief when they I would just put heavy, heavy, heavy
pressure on myself totally to not be washed up. And
you can't be washed up yet because you're like twenty four.
But you can never be washed But you don't have that,
(05:53):
you don't have that fear. You have confidence on stage,
You feel it.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
You feel good once I get out there, Yeah, I do.
There's some nights where you feel like, uh, oh no,
it's funny. We've played like two hundred shows this year,
and really, yeah, wow, more more than not. If you
do the math with all the radio stuff involved too,
it's more than it's like two shows every three days,
you know, but it's just so funny. You do it
over and over and for whatever reason, there are nights
(06:17):
where you think you're gonna go out there and something's
just gonna go off, and you've done it two hundred
times and it's just like, but once I get out
there and you rip a couple of songs, I feel
like it's okay. But you know, like a flat crowd,
you just I think I know within one or two
songs if it's gonna be a good show, and you
just got to get through it. It's part of the
part of the deal.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Even when I'm doing my radio show now, aside from
even doing stage stuff, there are days where I just
feel flat and at first I'll blame it on the
audience yep, or maybe I didn't get enough sleep, or
maybe my blood sugar is weird totally, or my dog
is sick totally, and I'm like, man, what a flat crowd.
And I now, I've done so many bad shows, and
(06:55):
I mean this funny and seriously that I know a
lot of times it's me m m.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
That's that's a great point too, Like if you don't
enjoy the show, how is anybody going to?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
And I might be the one that's off right and
I'm blaming them and they might love it.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
I feel like ninety five percent of people will walk
away being like I didn't know anything was wrong, Like
you might think you did a terrible show, and they'd
be like felt like any other.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Time I've had that happen a decent amount where I
come off and I'm like or even like a TV
like a live television spot, and I'm like, that sucked, yes,
and like what do you mean? I'm like, I bombed,
that I flubbed, and nobody really notices it at the
level that we noticed when we're performing ourselves, because it's
our whole world.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
No nobody does. It is our whole world. Like you
notice every little thing. And it's funny, like like some
of the headliners you're with, they walk off stags like
that was a bad one. I was like, oh, I
never guess that. I went out front of the house
and watched the show. I'm like expecting them to be
in a great mood. They're like, God, I bombed, and
now but that's you.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Now that's me. So you got to commit yourself not
to feel that way because you saw it from the
other side. Absolutely, Yeah, that's funny. You still have fun
doing shows? Is it so much fun?
Speaker 1 (07:59):
I do?
Speaker 2 (07:59):
I do? It's more fun now that your songs, more
songs are blowing up and the crowds singing more back.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Way more fun now where it's like, you know, at first,
you have nothing and you're just like trying to make
it through. You're like, can I play a set? And like,
look like I know what I'm doing, and then you
have one song. We had one song that people knew
and then now it feels like there's a handful and
you know, we've been opening since May, so we went
from headlining to doing twenty five minutes. So it's like
we only play five six songs and people know like
(08:24):
four of them, so like it feels like you're kind
of crushing for twenty five minutes. So if we can
extend that into ninety that'd be awesome.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Yeah, because you may have a bigger crowd, but if
you're going out and you're playing support, you do have
a literally smaller space on stage and a smaller set,
but you can also pop out the hits faster.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
But I bet it feels a bit incomplete a little
bit when you're support, because you've been doing your own thing, yes,
and now you're gonna go do support and it's bigger,
but it's got to feel incomplete because you probably are
just getting like wound up and then it's over.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
That's the thing. You don't want to wait around all
day because you don't want the twenty five minutes. It's
long enough before. You don't want to be flat. But
then if you get yourself amped up, you're just you're
on and off the stage. And I think that five
six songs is usually like in a longer set, where
you finally start to feel good. You're like, all right,
we can rip the rest of these songs, like we
all feel great on like the last chorus of the
last song, and then it's over and you just got
(09:16):
to try to wind down.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
What song do you think you've covered the most?
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Definitely American Kids by Kenny Chesney. That was the first song.
I got a guitar my sophomore year for Christmas, and uh,
I loved country radio at that time. I still do,
but like those were the only country songs I knew,
and that's why I wanted a guitar to play the
country radio songs and American Kids I just like started
going for the m so sounded terrible. Why did you
(09:41):
want a crazy song to start?
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Why did you think your guitar would be cool?
Speaker 1 (09:44):
I actually didn't want one. There was a my mom
got a ukulele as like a birthday present. I think
somebody my dad or my sisters got it for and
they were like mess around on that and she did
for like a week and then was like I don't
I'm not gonna do this, and I picked it up.
I was probably in eighth grade, learned a bunch of songs.
Like now or put it down. And it was my
sister that was like please, like, if you're gonna play
(10:04):
this off and get a guitar, I can't listen to
that anymore. And I was always just like, no, I'm good.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Was anybody want family drawn to music?
Speaker 1 (10:10):
My mom can play the piano a little bit pretty good,
but not I wouldn't say musical. Everyone's like I said,
my dad could be an R. Not my an R,
but somebody's a and R. Like he's very critical of
like why he likes a song or what song's good,
what song's bad. My mom's kind of the same way.
So I think we all love it, like we love
movies and entertainment and music and stuff like that. That's
(10:32):
always been a big deal. But nobody was like making music.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Nobody wanted to be in a band. No, nobody was
in a band when they were a kid. Now they're
living through you. What do your parents? What do your
parents think about the success? Now? They love it.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
I think they're my dad's checks in all the time.
He owns his own business, so like I think he
likes to check in on that side of things with
me too, Like he always like make sure I'm at
least keeping an eye on the numbers and stuff like
that and where things are acting. Yeah, so he he
checks in on that. He's got a lot of creative
ideas that I'll hear him out. But he's got the
(11:06):
right mix of like he's involved and like he's got
his ideas and like I'm glad that he cares, but
like no decisions are made by him. We never got
into that territory, which that's good. They're super proud and
my mom's just support number one supporter.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Just like did they get to come to many shows?
They do?
Speaker 1 (11:22):
For Like, like I said, we're playing a lot of shows,
so it's a small percentage, but like a good bit.
I'd say like ten to fifteen a year, like whatever's around,
or they'll travel a little bit too.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
When did you have to get a business manager?
Speaker 1 (11:34):
That was I think probably last year.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Weird year and a half.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, it is weird. It's awesome. I'm very fair. That's
probably the thing. I'm to be honest the most thankful.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
For having a business manager.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Yeah, Like why is it that just because I can
write songs and sing I get to have a business,
Like it's such a weight off the show, like my
friends are talking about doing their taxes and stuff, and I'm.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Just like, yeah, it was weird for me. I'm from
a rural town in Arkansas, so I don't even know
what a business manager was like. I didn't know what that.
But to pay somebody to like manage my money. I
never had any money, so to pay somebody that hit weird.
But then whenever I was like paying percentages to people, Yeah,
I just knew I was gonna end up in jail,
like for tax evasion accidentally. Not I wasn't even gonna
(12:16):
be evading on purpose. I just knew it was going
to end up bad.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Yeah, do you feel like you have to look it
over to make sure you're.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
I now look at I look at everything all the time.
I'm just very anal about money because I never had it.
So yes, I look at my accounts two or three
times a day, but I don't pay it. I don't
even get bills in my house. Yeah, like that's it's awesome.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
That's how my dad is. So when he's asking me
stuff and I.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Don't know, he's like, he wants you to know, he
wants me to do you try. I assume you trust
your people. Right. Do you have a close relationship with
your business manager? I have a very close relationships.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Do you ever call it? Like, can I buy this?
Do you ever? Have you done that?
Speaker 1 (12:52):
I haven't gotten there yet. I'm really not. I'm not
like that.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
What do you mean? I just don't.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
I don't buy a whole lot of stuff.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
I have to see it. Awesome guitar and it's like
a six thousand dollars guitar.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
I did buy a Gibson, but that I felt like
that was like I needed one.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Well you can write that off though too, though. So
I've learned this stuff too, All this stuff I've learned
through like trials and tribulations. But it's so, do you
do you like own a like a house or condo
or anything yet? Oh? Yeah, okay, if you were to
see me.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Next year, like, well, we'll figure out what to buy.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
If you were to see like a I was talking
to Parker McCollums this morning. I've known for a long time.
You're like Parker right, one of my favorites. Yeah, yeah,
I known him forever and I didn't know there was
this story about that hell cat that he's selling. Yeah,
except he already sold it, and the person now is
selling it from Parker saying this is Parker McCollum's car,
(13:42):
but Parker has already sold it. It's not his anymore.
And the guy's using hey, this used to be Parker
McCollum's car, oh as a tool to sell and he's like,
I've already sold it. People are like, what do you
want for your car? And he's like, no, no, no,
I sold it. And I think he's kind of annoyed
that that's happening. But if you were to see like
that car it was less than like ninety nine thousand
dollars and you wanted it, you probably call your business
(14:04):
manager and be like, yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Think we're approaching that.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
That's a good time.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
I don't think I've had enough to like really. I
was like, all right, that's cool that I'm that I'm
making that money to write songs and play songs, But
it was never enough to like think about that kind
of stuff.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Are you getting pretty clothes yet?
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Yeah, that's coming in. That's cool. It's cool, really cool.
I never liked to pick clothes, so that's awesome too.
Just where what gets sent?
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Yeah? Or where? Or where? What is free?
Speaker 1 (14:32):
That's right, that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
A lot of free hoodies.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
It's a great feeling, it feels did you feel like that?
And like I feel like they made a mistake or
something or I'm just kind of like who did what
to make this happen? Like it's hard for me to
wrap my mind around a brand like wanting me to
wear something.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor. Wow,
and we're back on the Bobby cast.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
I felt like two things. One, when I was poor,
nobody wanted to give me anything. So what was the opposite,
Like nobody wanted to give me a crap when I
needed it right and then when I didn't need it anymore,
butody wanted to give me everything. So I felt like
that was backwards. Yes, I felt like that was very backwards.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Where were these?
Speaker 2 (15:13):
And then I felt the need to like prove to
them I was worthy of their free stuff? I do that.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
Yeah, that's kind of what I'm getting at. Like I
feel like somebody twisted somebody's arm to like get the
Wrangler shirts.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
And I want to prove it, Like you sent me this,
so I want to tag you and let you know
how much I'm just grateful for and in reality, you know,
just wear it and they're happy with it. You don't
have to prove anything, right, That's super cool man. This
last year feels like I had to be a blur
then two hundred shows. That's a lot of not being home.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
It was a lot of not being home. But I
think last fall we were out with Gavin at Coock
the whole fall and we were in the van and
that was just like it was such a fun tour
to Beyond because we really did catch it when the
whole thing was just on the up. So it was
cool to see in the energy and those shows were crazy,
but we were runn around the van and I was
just tired all the time. And that's kind of what
(16:03):
the album's about, is like that year and year and
a half after we wrote that, he was an answer song,
where like everything just kind of became being on the
road and the album is working that out. But I
feel like this year, I'm just saying all that to
say this year, I feel like found a little bit
of a routine, found a little bit of a way
to make it feel as at home as.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
You can, yes, as normal. It changed, something's going to
change every time and you want it to be that way.
I'm not even saying that as a negative. Absolutely, and
you'll always look back at your And what's weird is
I used to not be the old guy, and now
I've been here long enough that I'm like, let me
tell you this, young whipper snapper. It's such a weird thing.
But you'll hopefully in two years you'll look back at
(16:41):
this stuff and cringe.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Yeah, it's starting to happen a little bit.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah. Good.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
But the the early days, I'm looking back at him
and I'm like.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
God, what was I thinking? Why did I do that?
Speaker 1 (16:51):
And I know I was just doing my best and you.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Were and it was awesome. And what you're doing now
is awesome. But if you're not in two years looking
back at it going oh oh man, that that means
you haven't gotten much better. You haven't progressed, right, You're
not different, you haven't changed.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
And it's funny too, because back then I didn't even
know what. I didn't know, like, it didn't even It's
cool to have like a phase or like an era
to look back on because I felt like it was new.
I don't feel like I'm the old guy at all,
but I felt like the new young kid that just
got here for so long, and now it's been like
five years, so that's not really the case.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Oh you're still the young kid, right, you're the now
young kid at the big kid table.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
That's a good way to say it.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
So you might be the old kid amongst the kid
table at Thanksgiving, right, you're the oldest toddler. But no, no, no,
you're now the young kid at the big kid table.
I saw that hell on the dance floor. I was
just looking at some dad. It was like one hundred
million streams. Yes, that's significant. Yeah, I mean that pays
the bills. It does more than anything. It just it
pays the freaking bills. It does. That's exciting and it's
(17:47):
just fun.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
Like I just put out that was like this probably
the fifteenth or sixteenth song we put out, and it's
just like really, like you said, as soon as stuff
starts to feel normal and you're like, oh, another song's
going out there, it's like it's that's the one that
catches everybody.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
But I didn't know that you had put out that
many songs. Was it might have been a little less.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Well the five that came after that, so that was
probably the tenth, the tenth or eleven song, I should say.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Was there anything about this song though? Was there any
more of a push with it than other songs that
make it this much? Makes this much bigger? Or did
it catch?
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Then?
Speaker 2 (18:18):
You guys decided.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Almost nothing made it different. And I was just talking
about this at the gym that you don't go to
with Chase McDaniel.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
The guy that I wrote the song.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
I wrote the song with Chase McDaniel and I saw
him and I saw your evil twin on the way down.
But yeah, me and him were just like, He's like,
you see a hundred million streams and I was like yeah,
and I was like, I don't know if you feel
this way, but I still feel like I don't know
what it was that made it the one that did that.
And he was like me either, And part.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Of it, I guess you just keep when you wrote it,
did you?
Speaker 1 (18:47):
I knew there's this line in there rock bottoms got
a brand new view that launches into the chorus. How
does it dance for? And like just that kind of
moment in the songwriting, I knew we did something. I
was like, that's a great line. And then when we
started clipping in on TikTok from that line. That's when
it started catching. So I was like, Okay, it's working,
but I don't know. You sort to see the numbers
(19:08):
come in, the pre saves come in, You're like, all right,
this one's going to be better than the others. But
I never thought it would do what it did. I
didn't think i'd get a gold record like to Hang
on the Wall that was wild, getting like a physical
I just never thought about that. I thought about getting
a bus, thought about playing shows, never thought about one
hundred million streams.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Did you think about people that you liked liking you?
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Always when I was writing songs, it was always like,
would John Mayer liked this song if you heard it.
Would Park McCollum like the song if you heard it.
I was always kind of like that was my benchmark
because I was writing alone when I first got to town.
I didn't start co writing till two years in. I
didn't really know anybody. For the first two years. I
could have been anywhere, but I just moved to Town
because I knew this is where stuff happened. So I
(19:54):
was writing songs alone. That was always my thing. It
was just like mental like I was like if they
heard this, like would I be on the right track
or do I need to change that line?
Speaker 2 (20:02):
Has Parker commented on even in person, on anything that
you've done? And then I do I really like that song? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (20:09):
He's he's, uh, he's a fan, which is awesome, Like
he's he's really liked it and like he actually listens
to it too. He wasn't just saying it like he
was like quoting lines and stuff like that, and he was.
When I was at ole Miss, I went to ole
Miss for a year, so I went graduate high school,
had a handful of friends going Ole Miss. Wasn't super
excited about anything.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
So I was like, why all Miss?
Speaker 1 (20:26):
Though, if you're from Georgia, cause UGA there's a scholarship
called the Hope Scholarship, and if you have a certain
GPA in state you can go for like a very
little amount of money. So it became like really hard
to get into UJ if you live in state. So
everybody just started going to Ole Miss or Auburn, like
South Carolina. If you didn't have the grades and you
wanted to go to SEC, you just go to one
of those, And like half my county went to Ole
(20:49):
Miss really like it was split between Auburn and Ole
Miss and Uga.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
What part of the state then, were you geographically closer
to Ole Miss?
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Not really, We're pretty close to Auburn. It's like North Atlanta. Yeah,
pretty close to Auburn. A lot of some tennessee here
and there, but Auburn and Ole Miss were like the
ones to go to.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
You did a year at ole Miss. It's like prison.
He did a year.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
I did six months. I didn't hear at a Miss.
That'll be ep did a.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Year at olds served a year and and uhty Toddy,
that's right.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
I was there in person for six months and then
COVID sent us home like pretty much right when the
second semester started. I had just started writing songs saying
that all saying all that to say, uh, my friend
from Louisiana showed me Parker and that that sound like
I was saying, I love the country radio songs, and
I love John Mayer. I had never heard any of
that kind of like left of center, red dirt songwriter country.
(21:41):
I didn't know it was a thing. So I heard
the I can't breathe in hell of a year, and
it just clicked for me and that's kind of what
made me. I was like, Oh, if I write songs,
is gonna be something like this. And then I went
and listened to him for the next two three years.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
So you just wrote by yourself wrote, yeah, even here
for two years, that's a long time. It was.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
I was at Lipscomb here for a year, two so
I did. I did a year at ole Miss, did
a year at Lipscomb. It's like you served yeah, very
different prisons. Also, Lipscombe Church of Chigh School. Coming from
ole Miss to to that establishment was was a very
big change.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Whenever you're writing songs by yourself and most people come
here and they've only written by themselves. The co write
is very much a Nashville thing, absolutely, But if you're
at Lipscomb, I'm just surprised that culture wasn't already a
part of the songwriting. Were you avoiding it purposefully?
Speaker 1 (22:27):
There were a couple of people there that were into it.
I had a professor there that set me up with
my first write on music row because I was just
like dying for it. Like we would have these one
on one you had to do one on one lessons
and one of them was songwriting.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
So that's a weird thing to learn.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
It was really weird. So I'll just go in there
on like Tuesday mornings and play or whatever I was
working on. She'd be like, this is good, this is bad.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Did you this is an unfair question to answer. I'm
going to ask it to you anyway. Did you feel
like you're telling me my songwriting is good or bad?
Yet you haven't done it at a level that unless
you were my teacher, I probably wouldn't listen to you
critique something that is creative.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
I think there's a little bit of that. She played
session stuff though, so I respect her.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Kay.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
She she's been in town, she wrote songs. But like
I do think the general premise of music school that
is a thing in the back of your mind where
you're like.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Like, if you were good, you wouldn't be here as
a teacher, you'd be out there doing it. And it's
a terrible thing to say. It's a terrible thing to say,
but I remember having a in college. I was studying television,
and I remember that our professor would be like, and
this is how you and and he was like like
on the news for like a year in Little Rock, Arkansas,
(23:42):
which is like the big city to me from where
I grew up. But I was like, dude, if you
were good, why are you here.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
I know, I hear that. I think it's the way
they approach it to like you don't if there's a
little bit of cockiness to it and they're telling you
completely agree, they're just trying to help you.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
It's like, great, that's a great point. But there is a.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Little bit of I'm with you on that, and I
think a lot of people do. There's power trip is
a real thing all over the place.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
And I think too, in a job like this, to
succeed at it, to actually try at it, you got
to have some sort of screw loose. I agree, because
there's no stability in this No, there's it's it's so unpredictable,
it really is. You can work your freaking face off
and nothing happened, or you can stumble into it and
have a really good opportunity.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
And it's been cool to see, Like it's been cool
to get on tour and open for these people that
like Parker and Riley Green and you know, people that
I've like listened to their music for so long, like
just to see how they go about it. I think
everybody else deals with it. Everybody deals with it in
a different way, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Do you have any sort of imposter syndrome? I think so.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
I've always like hesitant to like put the labels on
stuff like that, But like every time I've heard that,
I'm like, ah, I'm not going to have that, and
then and then it sneaks up on you in a
way of like kind of I feel like with the
brand deals is kind of like I'm like, they're sending
that to me.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
Yeah, And I wonder if now you're feeling it because
you're starting to have this success that's different. I call
it big kid at the table success. Yes, And I
would think now is about the time where if you're
going to have it right now. But I think everybody
has it a bit. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Well.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
I think you think about things happening, and you think
they're going to happen a certain way, and like I
think when you're daydreaming about it, you're always like, well,
this thing's going to happen first, and then it's going
to naturally lead me into that. But really it just
kind of happens and there's no ramp into it, and
I think that's why I'm always like I don't know
if it's imposter syndrome, if it's just playing out differently,
(25:29):
or like there was no like prep for it, but
like every one day you wake up and people just
treat you a little different, or like one day you
wake up and more people are buying tickets or more
people are listening to the songs, and it's just like
it's weird.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
It's weird. Yeah, it's weird. When you went from vandibus
that was great, life changing, right life.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
I'm still I'm still like fired up about that.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Would you explain that a bit, Grant, I like granually,
because I think, again, it's one of those things unless
you've lived it, you really don't understand. And I don't
expect even people who listen to this podcast or radio
show to understand fully because they haven't had to live it. Right, No,
but would you explain what it's like on a van
versus what it's like in a bus.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
It is like it's actually live chat. I think back
to the van days and I'm like, I don't even
know how we did it. I'm like thinking about having
to go do that now and I'm like that sounds crazy,
but what you do? We would bus from bus, we
would pull the van. Tour manager would go get the van.
We'd run a different van every weekend, and on Thursday
(26:33):
or Wednesday night whatever, we would load up at my apartment.
Everyone would parking the spaces and we'd load up the
van and then we'd drive to upstate New York. We'd
drive to Kansas City. We've drived to Milwaukee, you know
however long it took. And then you're checking into hotels
at two three am, waking up at eight am, pulling
up for soundcheck, doing soundcheck two hours til you open.
(26:55):
A lot of times you can't stay for the whole headliner.
Back in the van, you're driving another four or five
hours that night.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
People we're not comfortable in the van. Not come from
multiple people. It's not like beds.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
It's we had We were rolling with seven seven and
like a sixteen passenger, but we didn't have a trailer.
So like the first four rows were just like the
drums and the guitars and like a lot of times
are falling on you. And we had a month long
stretch where like God was definitely like laughing and like
testing us for sure, but the we were where was
(27:24):
it McFarlane, Kansas. I remember we were driving to play
with Gavin uh Manhattan, Kansas, Kansas State and we're driving
seventy miles an hour. I'm half asleep in the middle
of the day and we just fall down in the
front tire. I just see it roll up a ramp
like it was a hill.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
See the tire, the tire, the whole tire.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
We didn't blow a tire, like the whole tire came
off the axis. The access is sparking on the highway.
I see the tire. It was a ranch with a
with a hill, and it went up the hill like
a ramp, and I just we all lost sight of
the tire. It was forty yards and there going seventy
miles an hour, just flying into somebody's ranch. And then
the axis is sparking down the road and we're just saying,
(28:07):
hit the brakes, hit the brakes, and our drummer was
driving and he's real low key and he's just like,
there's no brakes and we're like what He's like, the
brakes are out. So we just skidded one hundred yards
to the side of the road. In McFarlane, Kansas, and
everyone just watched us. Everyone was driving by and I
posted it on Instagram and some kid was like, I
just passed you and we were literally like, we were like,
(28:29):
come get us. So he turned around on his little
truck and he came and got us, and we took
like three four trips from the van and then everyone
told us, they're like, you know, this is the hottest
day of the year, and we were like, great, you
can't sit in the van on the shoulder because someone
might hit you. So we're all just standing in the
tall grass on the side of the road. It's one
hundred and like one degrees I think, and everyone's getting
like sumburn, like actually some burn and uh. That was
(28:53):
one of our stories. We hit a black bear on
the way to of Sit, New York where they had woodstock.
I forget the name of the venue, but we hit
a black bear. That was our drummer. It all happened
to our drummer.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
It was this first shift might be what the commons shift. Driving.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
We're sitting in the front. Our other tour manager just
went to sleep. He'd been driving all day. I remember
we're listening talking Tennessee by Morgan Wallen. And the trees
are like, you know, fifteen feet wide. It looked like
bugs are like this big. And I just remember being like,
let's watch out for deer, like we don't need to
hit a deer. And I said that I was looking
to the left expecting them to come out that way.
(29:28):
That's where my eyes were. And then from the right,
like the way you see a bear like in full
sprint on like National Geographic, just ran across the front.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Of the van. We just it wasn't sitting in the road,
was not sitting there, jumped like a deer.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Jumped out in front of the van and we caught
the back of it. And that was our drivers for
our drummer's first shift driving the van.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
But something else about the van is everybody has to drive,
or people have to drive, and then they have to
do their jobs right, which is the difference in the
bus where you have a dedicated driver.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Very different.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
But like your drummer is driving for however, mit three,
four to six, whatever your schedule is, then he's I
try to get some sleep, so the tour manager takes over, right,
But then everybody's exhausted and they have to do their
job like the show as well, right, and the bus
game changer because not talk about the bus.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Yes, that brings us to the bus. So a Hawk
also the next day flew right into the van. That's
the last part of the band story, into the driver,
into the driver's face a Hawk driver. No, it was
our other tour manager. So drummer got a break for him.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
He's not the one to blame.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
But so yeah, that brings us. We got on the
bus in April, and I think all of us were
just like the bus was like mythical by that point.
We were like, one day we'll be on the bus.
Like when you're sitting on the side of the road.
You're like, when we get on the bus, this won't
happen anymore. But the bus is basically like a house.
You have a driver, they have to have a CDL
their license to drive. Ten hours, you get another driver
(30:51):
to take over, so you're you're not driving at all.
No one on our crew drives anymore. Really, I sleep more,
and I've probably ever slept in my life because you're
we really don't have to get up till sound check.
On a lot of these later tours, it's not till
like four PM, So you know, you can go to
bed whenever you want. I can wake up kind of
whenever I want, unless I'm doing like a liner or something.
(31:12):
But every day I wake up, there's a kitchen. We
got stuff we bust from the Walmart. So we go
in the Walmart buy all our stuff for the weekend.
Every weekend. It's got all the stuff that we need
in there. And I literally just wake up and walk
into the front lounge every morning and like just take
a take a breath out. Because that's what I wanted,
you know, like being a fan of somebody like Parker.
He talks about being on the road all the time.
(31:33):
So I wanted to be on the road and I
wanted to play shows. But the van was like quite
literally starting to kill us. You know, we were getting
close bears hawks.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
I can't believe you saw the wheel.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
I saw the wheel. I lost sight of the wheel
in the air. That's probably the craziest thing that.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
I feel lucky you didn't die.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
Truly, if we're in a city, that might have hit somebody,
you know, Like it was very it was close, and
the sparking on the road was like that fast, like
the fast that we didn't skid over and the band
being backloaded anyway.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Also, it's also you put in so many hours on
the road, you're gonna have those kind of stories just
based on being out there right so much. Same thing
with playing live shows. Did you have any shows last
year where thinks nothing was working and you're just having
to patch it together. Ears aren't working.
Speaker 1 (32:17):
That just happened to me in the Red West, Utah.
What happened went out first six minutes, my mic didn't work,
and we were like, it's a great crowd. That whole
festival was awesome, Like they were really good about drawing
crowds to every stage and it was twelve thousand people
and you go to sing your first song and like
we're talking about, you're getting yourself amped up. Like and
festival days are always weird too, because sound checks faster,
(32:39):
you don't have your normal routine. You're playing at probably
like three or four pm you're used to seven eight.
And I got myself hyped up, ran out there, saw
the crowd. Another festival kind of like putting tickets on sale,
you're always like, how many people are gonna come to
our set? It's a great crowd. Twelve thousand people at
the same time just started going, oh, not on, Mike's
not on, I can't hear you?
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Is the band playing around you?
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Bands playing around me? I got ears in. All you
see is people just going can't hear, can't hear, and
you just have like an internal I think, like anxiety attack.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Probably because you're wondering do I keep going? Do I
stop everything? Or were you playing to a click?
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Playing to a click?
Speaker 2 (33:16):
So you really can't And it's a.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Festival, so you have a set time, so you can't
start over unless you want to rearrange everything.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
And what happened? How did that turn out?
Speaker 1 (33:25):
We got it on. It was kind of became a
funny moment because the first time I went on, I
was like, can y'all hear this? And everyone was like, so,
it's good. But I think those moments when stuff don't work,
I mean, you you're thankful for the two hundred shows
that you've played because you're like, I guess this song's
a wash, Like no one heard that song. And then
we got into the rest of the set and it
was fine.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
The Bobby Cast will be right back. This is the
Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Found that I would doing comedy, especially if I would bomb.
Early on, I would just kill myself for it, and
I'd be like, I suck, I suck, I suck. But
then I would realize, Man, I'm bomb worse than this.
The more shows I did, yeah, and it turned out
fine and great, but it allowed me to have confidence
even when things didn't go right, that it was gonna
be okay. On the other side, you can be okay
and the career is not over. Yep.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Have you played like a lot? What's the percentage of
stand up shows to like the No, you play music.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Too just but comedy music right, so not fair, not
like you. I don't have talent. There's a difference. So
I don't want I don't want these two to be compared.
But probably the last few years has been mostly stand up.
I wanted to do a special, okay, and so I
just went and towar it. I did like thirty theaters.
I wrote this show and I toured it and CMPT
bought it and ran it and it was awesome, and
(34:49):
so I did a special and then I was like,
I think I'm good now nice. I still play the
operation sometimes, but I was doing comedy more than I
was music. Now I would have a guitar there because
the greatest thing for me was if I would like
or if the crowd was dead, which meant I sucked,
I would just grab my guitar because I can. I
can hide behind music when you just out there with
a microphone and people are no, that's yeah kind of what.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
I was asking because I could. I really couldn't imagine
going out there and just talking.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
You could because you're you're writing songs in a vulnerable
way too, Like the first time that you play like
a work tape for somebody with an emotion from you,
and you're like, listen to this, and they're listening maybe
for the melody, listen to the court You're also like, man,
those are my real thoughts, and like it feels kind
of naked. Yeah, I mean it's it's similar, yeah, okay
to writing songs. But yeah, I found when I would
(35:37):
grab that guitar, I can kind of hide mind it. It
was nice totally.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
I feel like I have that too.
Speaker 2 (35:42):
Do you feel like you amplify yourself a version of
yourself on stage? Is it a superman is at a
cape a bit when you play music?
Speaker 1 (35:49):
Yeah, that's funny too, Like going back to the growth thing,
like there'll be times where I swear I'm out there
just like giving him my own ripping it, and then
I go watch the video and I like haven't moved,
im like just sin and still and you swear you
feel like you're given a show and you have to
realize like you really do kind of got to perform
and get into it.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
But do you watch videos? I watch what I get.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Tagged in on Instagram about it that I don't do
it every night, but if there's like if I just
see a lot of tags come in, you know, like
the story mentions thing at the top, you just click.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Through, Yeah, oh I know it. Well, oh yeah, I
know it. Explain that craft to me, man, I see
it and kill myself over it. Do you like challenge
your micro movements more so because people are recording everything.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Yes, I think so. But going back to that thing,
you just got to learn how to have there's a balance,
like you gotta have a good time yourself. You can't
be just thinking about that. But yeah, I do think
I try to. I try to exaggerate myself in my songwriting,
that's for sure. Like I I think I keep the
emotions as true to myself as possible, but then like
you're always leaning for like this is probably sounds a
(36:53):
little bit cooler than what actually happened, or how can
I make this a little bit more you know, aesthetic
maybe word but songwriting and like re making records. I
go into this mode where like I am, I've tried
to explain it. I tried to explain it to Jake
Gear who I produced the album with, and he was
just like, I didn't understand anything, but he was like,
you're doing great. I was like, all right, But I
(37:14):
just feel like I feel like there's this songwriter version
of me that like kind of walks through everything like
I go through life for real, and then there's like
this version of me that I tap into that I'm like,
it's almost like I'm watching my life happen, and it's like,
how can I make this a little bit more interesting?
Speaker 2 (37:28):
I have to amplify every single thing that I do
because I'm doing content all the time. So if it's
radio or podcast or social media, whatever, it is like
my content. If it were just the literal version of me,
I think it would be probably about a four. But
when I'm on I gotta I gotta put it up
or it's not compelling. Yeah, Like I don't feel like
me the everyday person is that compelling. I feel like
(37:50):
I have very compelling thoughts. I go through the same thing,
so I have to amplify them and I keep note.
Do you keep notes of like of thoughts? Yeah, yep, yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
I broke my phone that in Utah. I had this
case that fell apart, and I like, you never want
to go get a new phone, like it's just not
a fun thing to do. And I just dropped it
one too many times and the screen wouldn't open. And
that was the thing I was.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
The It wouldn't do face id, like, it wouldn't even
fly I could.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
It kept disabling itself because I would press one number
and it would just fill out the pass code itself.
And it was disabling for eight sixteen hours, twenty four hours,
so I had to take it to a screen repair
place to even get into it. I bought the new
phone then I didn't have any of my passwords to
even back it up. So, like I it was a
whole deal. But my notes app was the thing I
was the most worried about because I've written on so
much stuff in there, and like.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Were you able to get off the cloud.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
I was able to get it, well, not off the cloud.
I had to go to a screen repair place fix
the old phone, open it, and then I was able
to back it up. But I was for like six days.
I thought I lost all my notes, but I write,
I really do. I'm probably gonna write them down in
a notebook now, but I have a lot of thoughts
and like lyric.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
But a notebook's hard to travel with everywhere. Like for
me it is because I've got like six tabs on
like six different things that I do, and I'm constantly
writing notes in each tab. I'd be walking out with
a freaking spiral, RIGHTEOK.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
And you don't want to start. It's so much easier
to stop and just yeah, you don't want to get
the pen and pad out?
Speaker 2 (39:08):
What are you mostly writing? Song concepts? Ideas? Lyrics?
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Like I feel like in Nashville everyone's a title person,
Like it always starts with the title. Everyone's throwing out titles,
and I don't think of those as easily as I
write down something that might be a lyric, and then
I like look at it and then I'll write down
like I try not to write down like a vert
more than a verse or half a verse.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Will you do voice memos with melodies?
Speaker 1 (39:29):
Yes, that's the main thing. Really. I don't write too
much down. I write down enough to like remember it. Honestly,
I write it down to remember it because like kind
of just the act of writing it down else you remember.
And then from there it's I try to make it
all feel and Chris Ableton John Mayer. I've learned to
write songs on YouTube just how they did it, and
like they just say, to start singing.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
You put a work tape on the record. Yeah, that's
the last track on there? Yes, why that was that song?
Speaker 1 (39:58):
There was this kind of like two or three we
had the cut days for the studio, so we knew
when we were going in. There was this two or
three week stretch where we knew what we want the
album to be called. We knew what the general idea was,
and days are numbers. The last song, the last full
song on the album got written that week, and a
song called Painkiller got written that.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Week, which both made the record. Yes.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Yeah, So like I was in this like beat the
buzzer kind of like what else can we write that's
gonna make the record? And I wrote good run that
work tape pretty quick. It like fell out, like if
I get hot writing songs, I can do that. I
don't usually get like the one take like it just
fell out five minutes thing, but that one kind of
happened in like ten minutes. And I sent it to Jake,
(40:39):
the producer, and he was like, I was like, you
think this is worth finishing to try to like get
it on the record, and he was like, just leave
it the way it is. It was his idea to
kind of and he's like, maybe we'll master it and
see how it turns out. And I thought it was
cool to put a work tape on there for me personally,
because that's how everything starts, you know, like everything starts
with me texting Jacob work tape or texting you know,
(41:00):
manager or work tape or anybody. So for me as
a songwriter, that's what I sit there and listen with
and fall in love with the songs and think of
production ideas. So it was cool for me to put
that on the record and for one of those songs
to kind of live in that way where it's like
you always lose a little something when you go to
make it a full song.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
Yeah, I was gonna ask how you do with like
demo ititis where you love the demo so much, but
you also understand what the produced product should be and
are there times where you're fighting against should we produce
it this much?
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Yes? All the time. Really didn't run into it too
much with the record, which was great, Like I think
the way that Jake and I directed the band like
it really did feel good. And I was sitting in
an isobooth playing so everyone was kind of playing to me,
so we had that work tape feel, which was awesome.
But yeah, anytime you go down that rabbit, it was
cool to just not have to worry about it. I
was like, let's just get a good one take and
(41:51):
it's kind of one of my favorite things. And I
feel like if I had finished it, people would kind
shrug and be like, it's a it's all right. But
the half song, like all these playbacks and stuff, people
like what about the rest of it? And I'm like,
you know, I just played fourteen full songs and you
kind of shrugged at him. But the half song, it's
just human nature, Like everyone wants the rest of it.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
You know, who do you feel will give you honest
feedback on the record. Here are fourteen tracks on the thing,
But who would you give it to? And you know
they're gonna have it's completed. You're not changing anything, but
you trust them to go. I really loved Painkiller, you know,
but my favorite wasn't so and so who do you
trust to do.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
That everything goes? I send everything to my dad. He's
just a straight shooter. And I just remember from the beginning,
like when I told him I was writing a few songs,
he was like, I'm gonna tell you if they're not good.
And he's always been that honest, so like I know
that he's somebody that will tell me when he doesn't
like it. So I send it to him. Like I said,
(42:47):
I take it with a grain sometimes.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
Too, because like you have to.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
He will listen to something a month later he'll be like,
you know what, it is better this way, like it's
a good thing. You didn't go with my idea. So
but I trust his general opinion. It's just kind of
my part of the workflow now. Like Dad's got to
approve it, or at least I got to hear what
he's got to say. And then I would say, Sean
at our label he signed me. They had started their
(43:10):
own label, and he was the first person ever contact
me from the music industry. Signed me off at TikTok.
Speaker 2 (43:16):
Did he DM? Were you like, is this a scam?
Speaker 1 (43:20):
Yeah? Well kind of. When they first like said they
wanted to work with me and sent over the contract,
I was like, I'm good. I was eighteen or nineteen.
I just remember all the stories of it was technically
a development deal and that's like kind of a bad
word to a lot of people, like that's where they
sign everything forever with the young kid, and I didn't
want that to happen. So I was like no. And
then they helped me put songs out anyway. They were like,
(43:42):
all right, well, we just want to help you.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
And oh you said no.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
I said no the first to the first contract, and
they helped me put out songs anyway. They're like, we
want to help you get these songs out. So they
set me up with a producer. I didn't sign anything,
and they just helped me through the first couple of songs,
and I was kind of like, I don't think they
would do that if they were trying to steal all
my stuff. Yeah, And then I talked to my dad
about it, and we actually got a real lawyer to
look at it and we had more meetings about it.
(44:06):
And then Shawn's like Shawn m Max. Both of them
started that label ended up partnering with Innerscope, So that's
how that side of the deal got worked in. But
there Shawn's like creatively a really good friend of mine.
So I always send everything to Sean.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
Any of these songs on this record about anybody super specific.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
You know, I've kind of stepped away from that. I
think in the beginning you're writing about somebody in mind,
But now I feel like I write more about the
feelings and you use the story to get the feeling across.
I don't like it to be this is about this person.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Well that's a great answer if you did, and you
don't want them to know. Like you're winning in multiple
ways by giving that answer for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
Also, I'm like, I'm older now, so it's not just
there's not just one. It's like there's a there's more
people to write about than just one. So I think
I try to write about the feelings that came out
of that and like where I was at and life
and like, but I don't I don't know. I don't
really sit down think like I'm gonna write about you,
I'm gonna get you.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
I guess you could write a nice song about somebody,
like a love song. I've heard of those.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
I've never no, I don't write. I don't write those.
That's the Parker mccollumn.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
Then what's the last song you wrote that made the record?
Speaker 1 (45:26):
Dayser Numbered was the last full song, and then Good
Run was the last thing we like tacked on. But
Dayser Number was cool because I had There I Go
the title track. I wrote that verse chorus by myself
and finish it with my friend Jack, and we knew
we wanted to call it There I Go. And I
like to say, if There I Go is us setting
out in the van and wheels flying off the van
(45:46):
and hitting black bears and stuff. I feel like Dayser
Numbered is waking up on the bus one day thinking
about all of it and think about that, you know,
twelve to twelve months to a year and a half
of I never stop and think about stuff. I think
I could. I'll just charged through six months, like just
doing whatever I gotta do, and I don't stop and
think about it. And I think days are numbered, is
like stopping and thinking about, Oh, all this stuff has
(46:09):
happened since I moved to town, Like you wake up
on a bus one day, it's like all that stuff
I wanted to happen is happening, and here's the ups
and downs with it. So I like that one, and
I'm glad it makes sense. It was the last one.
It was kind of like it was the book end
of like, Okay, we have a record now, you know.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Does it feel like you've been here forever? And just
hear it yesterday? At the same time, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
When I like when someone asked me, I hadn't been
asked how long I've been in town for a while,
and saying five years is crazy because I feel like
I was always just saying I just got here. I
just got here.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
When you moved, what'd you pack up a car? Truck?
Speaker 1 (46:41):
Do Vand I was driving a Pasade at the time,
driving Chevy now, but I had a there's my one
flex's the business managers. Yeah, I had a pasade, loaded
it down with my guitar and like one suitcase full
of clothes.
Speaker 2 (46:57):
I think that's it.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
A room xbox dorm apartment. Yeah, I had a roommate,
one of my one of my friends I've met at Lipscomb.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
And then now I live with one of my best
friends from home. Well, my really good friends from home
got a job in Nashville.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
So we live together. But you say live, I mean
you're not even here.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
I don't live. Yeah, he basically lives alone. I went
out for fifty three days out of fifty six days
of fifty six days stretch. And I got home and
he was like, man, I think I needed I needed
to get like a dog. And then like a couple
of hours later, he was like, I think I'm gonna
try to find a girlfriend. I was like, damn, you
got you got lonely my room. My roommate's trying to
cure his loneliness.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
Year. I well, congratulations on everything. Man, It's it's super
cool to see. And like I said, it's it's cool
to see like your version of what's happening, because to me,
I'm seeing because I really only see the big kid
table at this point, right, But now like you're you're here,
it's cool.
Speaker 1 (47:49):
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:50):
And I was watching when I was sitting there writing
songs by myself, I was watching Bobby Bobby Casting.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Oh thanks, man. I appreciate all.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
The clips, all the interviews. My favorite artist was going on,
I'm like, I gotta watch bub.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
And I'm going to share something with you that I
probably wasn't gonna share with you.
Speaker 3 (48:03):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor, Wow,
and we're back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
Usually we have like a mark anybody below twenty seven
has nothing to say. This is just me through the
history of me doing this show and doing long long
form projects with people. Anybody below twenty seven usually it's
not specific to the person has nothing to say because
they haven't really been here long enough. They don't have
good stories, they haven't developed the art of storytelling, which
is a whole different part of songwriting and performing. And
(48:39):
we put the over under at thirty two minutes on
how long this would be. Because if I'm sitting with
you and I'm like, he didn't have much to say,
I want him to look good. It's my job to
make you look good. It's also my job to pull
some interesting stuff out of you. Right, And that was
about the mark. We debated. You're twenty four, I bet
the under nice. I was like, there's no, we get
(49:00):
to thirty two minutes, but we did fifty minutes. And
so when I say, like, it's been super cool hanging
out with you, that's the way I can show you
thank you is that I feel like we could do
another half hour and I'd have a good time. So dude,
I'm like, I'm rooting for you.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
Thank you. Yeah, I'm glad I've never said, alonde you
at the gym meet too, nice to meet you.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
Nice to meet you too. I'm glad the person is
smaller than me.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
He is smaller. Yeah, sizing you up now, it's definitely
not you.
Speaker 2 (49:22):
Let me ask you what one final quest two final questions.
When you get a sponsor like Monster, how much does
that help when you do a tour, very much.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
Very much.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
So makes a lot of shout out to Monster.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Yeah, that's when you can actually walk away with money too,
because most of the time it's like people think your
son a lot of tickets, make a lot of money,
and you're not, like, at the end of the day,
you don't take that home that it's expensive to have
the bus, it's expensive to have a band and a crew.
So that's when you can really actually start to make
some profit.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
They're also wanted to shout them out.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Shout out monster buy go buy one.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
And then as far as playing sports, you're athlete, played
for basketball. Yeah, do you work at music like you
worked as an athlete?
Speaker 1 (50:07):
Yes, that's a yeah. Good questions, got good questions.
Speaker 2 (50:11):
I've been doing this for a minute, Like I said,
I'm old, now I'm well.
Speaker 1 (50:14):
I guess, like it's just like it's stuff that I
never tell people that you're asking me about, Like I
never feel like I have the chance to tell people.
But yeah, I think that was probably the thing that
I was the best at. And I liked the best
about playing football basketball, Like I liked doing the work
and seeing being able to get better at it and
like seeing yourself get better. And I think I do
try to apply the same thing Nick Sabe. I'm not
(50:34):
an Alabama fan. I like great coaches though Nick Saban not
in Alabama, not an Alabama fan, but I'm a Nick
Saban fan.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
You know. I would listen to myself in both of
those as well.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
I listened to what he has to say. And it's
just like there's so much stuff with sports that are
applicable to everything. Like Nick Saban talks about like falling
in love with the process, like process oriented thinking.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
I wrote about Nick Saban specifically talking about the process
in my last book Damn. Because I'm just such a
believer in the process.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
It makes it so much easier to tune out of
the stuff that might get weird and the stuff that
might like steal the joy from it. Like if you're
just like, all right, I made this record with these songs, Now,
how can I make a better record with better songs?
You know?
Speaker 2 (51:10):
I found that work ethic in sports has translated well
for people who do music, definitely. And some people are like, well,
how are all these athletes musicians? It must be No, No,
it's a lot of the skills that you develop while
playing sports, even the adversity for sure, which I think
is a massive part.
Speaker 1 (51:29):
Of it, biggest one too. Yeah, And I think also,
like I played on a football team. We won four
or five games in four years out of high school.
So it's like not a good situation. But like I
think just even being able to be around stuff that's
like not successful and still like be able to keep
keep going, Like, yeah, there's adversity everywhere. So yeah, I
think everyone thinks it's like Oh, they're so talented like
(51:50):
they've been. They've got all the talent. They were a
high school quarterback, college quarterback and they get to sing.
It's like, no, it's just you learn how to develop
stuff and you learn how.
Speaker 2 (51:59):
To keep Yeah, because I used to have just that
jealousy of man, look at sam On he can do
it all. But I think there's a difference in causation
of correlation and also the skills you develop it one
thing can actually translate into another, not that just you're
blessed it both definitely. And so yeah, debut album, it's out.
Congratulations man, thank you. I know you've had music, but
to put out a whole project that is another's and
(52:20):
I hope, my hope for you is that in eighteen
months you look back and go, oh, some of those
songs that cringe at because that's growth, that is real growth.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
That's the goal.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
That's always the goal, to look back and be a
little Yeah. I was talking because you like John Mayer,
my favorite artist of all time, and I was talking
with John Mayer. We had a brief season where we
were friends. We're not not friends now, but we had
a brief season where if we were in the same town.
We would like see each other, right, and if he
came to Nashville, he would come and hop in the show,
and he would talk about how he would listen back
(52:51):
to some of his stuff and be like, oh, and
it's the stuff that people like still relate to the most.
And he's like, man, it's so like milk toast, like
on the middle, and like, I'm just not drawn to
it at all, But it's what people like still love
the most, and he still plays it even though it
doesn't always drive him, like it doesn't like spark him,
(53:12):
but he knows is what the people want. So as
I say, look back and cringe, also just keep playing
the hits. It's yeah, I have the mix. Good to
see you man. You guys Vincent Mason music dot com
and go to his socials and he doesn't really need
you to buy tickets, but if you're there, cheer extra
loud and check out the record. It is out now.
Speaker 3 (53:30):
Thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production.
Host
Bobby Bones
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