Top 10 BobbyCast Episodes of 2025! (Part 2)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
We are experiencing technical difficulties.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the Bobby Cast.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
Welcome back to the Top ten Bobby Cast of twenty
twenty five. This is part two, so we'll go five, four, three,
two and one. Go back and hear the others if
you missed them. We'll kick it off now at number five.
It's Keith Urban from episode five sixteen. This is Keith
We were at his studio that he owns. It's a
really cool recording studio. We talked about his origin story

(00:34):
and going back and forth from Australia to Nashville early on,
and I can tell you I've done it.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
That's a heck of a flight. That is so long.
Here he is at number five, Keith Urban.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
When you're finally Keith Urban, what was the first piece
of material or song that you put out that actually
gains real traction or that sells tickets or got you
on a tour, like give us something out that somebody
noticed you enough that it changed your life. What song
was that?

Speaker 4 (01:06):
Well, I mean technically, the first one was a song
called It's a Love Thing, which was the first single
off the solo album that I did. That did okay,
and then we put out a song call where the
Blacktop Ends, and that did better. Sorry You're Everything. It
was a ballad called You're Everything that did better. And

(01:26):
then the third song was but for the Grace of God,
which became my first number one song. So it was
this very slow incremental movement. I'm like, Okay, we finally
get traction. And then we did Blacktop after that, and
then I got to make another record, which became Golden Road,
and first single off that was Somebody Like You.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
Was that song transcendent in how it landed as opposed
to your past stuff?

Speaker 4 (01:53):
Yeah, because I'm a live guy. I play live.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
That's what I do.

Speaker 4 (01:59):
The early years in Nash it was so hard for
me because there was I wasn't playing, I wasn't playing anywhere.
I found out very quick that if you play down
Lower Broadway, nobody wants to sign you because they go, well,
you're just one of those You're just a cover band,
You're not original artist, you know. So I'm like, ah,
so I can't even play anywhere. So after the first

(02:19):
solo record, I got to put a band together and
tour and get back into my place where I feel
so at home, and I think by the time we
made Golden Road, I was feeling that sense of who
I am musically, you know, it had I like to
say that record had more stubble than the first one.
It was a bit looser, and it was more raw,
and it was I took more. I had more confidence

(02:42):
in the studio of making the music that I wanted
to make, not what was on the radio or anything
like that, and it turned out to be the music
that was the right music.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
Did you ever have concerned of being pigeonholed as just.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
A guitar guy.

Speaker 4 (02:58):
No, I never had that, because I mean, I'm I
always see myself as a jewet. I mean my guitar
am I singing. They go together the same way with
Glenn Campbell or something like that. It's just or Vin
Skiel or anybody. It's for me, the the two go together,
but even more than those guys, cause they have these
these voices, and I think me and my guitar are

(03:20):
are are one.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
I pay a lot of attention to your tone and
not your voice tone, like your guitar tone, and even
the slightest change changes the sound of a song. How
much time do you spend focused on tone?

Speaker 4 (03:35):
It depends, you know. Sometimes it's every song's different, Every
song is different. I'm only seeking inspiration, that's all. That's
all I'm waiting for. I'm just waiting for a sound
or a tone or something where I'm inspired to play something.
And that could be through a cheap amp and you
could have dialed it up immediately and you go, that
sounds good. Let's go play solo and you get good.

(03:56):
That was great, moving on and then the next song
you like, you spend a day noodling and doing this
and whatever.

Speaker 5 (04:02):
So they're all different.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
What song that became a massive hit took the longest
to actually have fully done? Oh gosh ah, maybe maybe
rewrites recording.

Speaker 4 (04:18):
Weirdly enough, making Memories of Us took a long time
because I grew up with Don Williams records and they
were so simple. There was like nothing on them. They're
so simple. And when we cut making Memories, it had
a don vibe in its structure in the recording, and
I wanted to get that minimalism. And we recorded it

(04:39):
and it was sort of like this, and then we
spent a long time stripping it down, stripping it down,
stripping it down, replaying the guitar, re singing it, re
singing it, re singing it, trying to make it more
and more simple, less slick, you know, just more singer songwriter.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
Is there a moment where you go this is it?
Or is there never a moment where you go.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
This is it?

Speaker 6 (04:59):
Both?

Speaker 4 (05:02):
I mean, I've heard the songs on the radio where
I go, oh, I'm really happy with that. You know,
I hear somebody like you now, I still am really
happy with that. Daves go by things like that, and
then I'll hear the other things like, oh, I wish
we had have, I wish.

Speaker 5 (05:18):
We had of whatever.

Speaker 4 (05:19):
But more than anything, I'm happy with it. You's got
to get away from it for a while. I have
some perspective.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
You're still so creatively driven today as I guess the
first time I met you ten years ago, Like I
still feel like you're creatively chasing whatever.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
It is it inspires you.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
Do you still feel as creatively driven now as you
did ten twenty years ago.

Speaker 4 (05:42):
Exactly's thing as when I lived over there at Showny's,
I feel pretty much the same. I've got a better
group of people I can write with and work with,
and I have more capacity and facility to create the
things that I hear in my head, you know, from
years of doing it. But the adrenaline rush in the

(06:03):
excitement of writing and creating something like straight Line, which
is the single we have at now, when that comes
to the studio, it's like, it's an amazing feeling.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
The opposite of the question asked a minute ago, what
song fell out of you and was done the quickest
and you're like, wow, that's great and it took almost
no time.

Speaker 4 (06:22):
Somebody like you was a bit like that because it
was a great band. It's the very first song I'd
done with Dan Haff. I think the bones of the
song just happened to be really good. And we recorded
it at the sound kitchen. Everybody on the floor, so
Chris McHugh was here on drums, Jimi Leuslos is here

(06:43):
on bass, Tom Burgovack's and guitar. Tim Akers there on keyboards.
I'm in the booth over there with banjo and a
vocal and Dan Huff was sitting in the middle of
the floor with an electric guitar, and Justin Ee Bankers
in there and he hits record and away we go.
I've got a recording somewhere. I used to set up
a camera in the inuity in the control booth and

(07:04):
just capture a take, you know, And I have the
recording of us. You hear the song start, you hear
it finish, and you see Justin go whoa like this
in front of the console and it's the end of
the it's the take.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
It's just it's crazy. There are stories about ACDC and
Angus and he would play so hard for so long,
it sweat so much that he would lose five seven
pounds a night, right because he would go Like my
version of that that I tell people is you watching
you perform because you go so hard and you're so
active on stage, singing, playing, running into the crowd. Is

(07:39):
there a ramp up period for you getting in shape
before you have to go on the road, because these
are very active shows.

Speaker 5 (07:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (07:47):
I just, I mean I think we're the same. Were
like being in decent shape anyway, just to do the
things we want to do, you know, move the way
we want to move, and do the things we want
to do. And I live to play, I really do.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
Is that's still your favorite part of all of it?

Speaker 2 (08:01):
Live?

Speaker 5 (08:01):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (08:02):
Yeah, But I mean I love being in the studio,
so I bought the studio. I could spend months in here,
never leave. You know, I don't have any other hobbies
or interests. I love making music. It's pretty much it.
I don't play any sport, not really. I love writing, recording,
I love touring.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
So recently you did a project and you recorded, and
then you decided we're going to start over after putting
significant time in. Will you just kind of tell me
that story that's.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
Never happened before.

Speaker 4 (08:31):
So really, since the first record, the way I make
him is quite not It's not chaotic, but it's very spontaneous.
You know, the studios booked, we've got the players booked,
got a song chosen to do. I'll drive in that
day and maybe as i'm driving in, I'm like, I

(08:51):
don't really feel this song. Have this other song that
I'm sitting on or it's half written or something, and
I'll play it for Dan and I go, let's do
this one.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
Forget that.

Speaker 4 (09:00):
So I've always made records that way. So the spirit
of it is always what I want to do, you
know what I mean. Say it's good that it's now,
It's fine. I'm passionate about it. It's what I want
to do. And I thought, sometimes my records sort of
go off in weird musical directions, and maybe I need
more discipline and make a focused record. So I went

(09:22):
in with this idea that I was going to make
a much more focused record, call it six one five,
and it'll be very focused, and it'll be only this
and only that and blah blah blah blah blah blah,
you know, And I ended up with this record that
was pretty linear. It just sort of did this. It
didn't have all the stuff, the spontaneity. Just didn't have

(09:43):
the spontaneity and the spark and the spirit.

Speaker 5 (09:46):
So I scrapped it.

Speaker 4 (09:48):
And the first song we wrote was straight Line, which
bursts with all that rhythmic spirit and liberation. Because I
just come out of this attempt. It didn't work at all,
And I'm like, that's to your point earlier about writing songs.
You know, you learn what you don't want to do,
and I learned why I don't make records that way.

(10:09):
It's just much more fun for me to be spontaneous.

Speaker 3 (10:12):
In that process. And we'll call it the linear part
of this journey. Did you ever feel like, oh, this
isn't feeling right or were you done with it, and
you're like, man, this didn't capture really what I want
to capture. When did that happen where you had to evaluate, hey,
we may do this again.

Speaker 4 (10:26):
When I was sequencing it, and I get it, you know, sequencing,
what does it matter anymore? Who wo listens to albums
top to bottom, you know, but sometimes sequencing for me
is the way to decide what even makes it onto
an album. The sequencing kind of tells me, well, you
didn't need that one. This one over here that I
was leaving off would actually go good right there, So
that one does make sense. So when I started sequencing

(10:50):
these songs, that was when I realized, oh, there's a
lot of very similar sounding songs here.

Speaker 5 (10:55):
You know.

Speaker 4 (10:56):
Just I was touring at the time, was sort of
recording sporadically. I'd come off the road, we'd cut one song.
We'd be like, ah, fantastic, soundse great. You know, you
go into it for a few weeks, come back, cut
another song.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
That's great.

Speaker 4 (11:11):
Well, without thinking these together, you're not going to want it.
That's what happened.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
When we look at the ACMs, you're one of the
few to do it. The Triple Crown to hit one
two three. When you move here, the goals probably just
to eat.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
And pay the bills.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
Yeah, But now that you look back and you have,
you know, one of the few things that any country
music artist has, the triple crown, Like can you look
back at old Keith and be proud of them?

Speaker 6 (11:42):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (11:42):
Yeah, And especially the perseverance in tenacity to just keep
going even when it seemed. I'm glad it didn't seem
as weird and crazy to me as it did to
everybody else. It seems so crystal clear why I should
be here. But I realized at the time people must
have and I know they were a sort of going,

(12:04):
the hell.

Speaker 5 (12:04):
Is this boy doing here?

Speaker 4 (12:06):
It's just crazy? He's crazy, you know. I'm glad I
didn't know that at the time, because I felt really
comfortable here and like I should be. It just took
years and years and years of chipping away to finally
figure out how to fit in and not lose myself.

(12:26):
That was the balancing act that took the longest to
figure out.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
To walk through all three pretty quickly. The best new artist,
you're that guy? Does that change you? Does it change
how people treat you in town? After you get the trophy?

Speaker 2 (12:38):
Of the award.

Speaker 4 (12:41):
A little I mean just more an awareness that's all
in potential, like.

Speaker 5 (12:46):
Goo, a little potential.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
You know a male vocalist.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
Oh man, that was a shock.

Speaker 5 (12:52):
That was a shock.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
I believe you when you said that.

Speaker 4 (12:55):
Why Why Because I've never seen myself. I guess I'm
so singer guitar oriented that to think of my vocal
as being an independent, singular thing I've never given. I
just didn't see myself in that category.

Speaker 3 (13:14):
So when you're nominated, do you feel like you're just
not going to win, like this is cool to be nominated. Yeah,
And when they call your name, it was a genuine shock.

Speaker 4 (13:20):
Yeah, and especially because you historically you get nominated and
then you get nominated the next year, and if you're lucky,
the year after that, and then eventually eventually they give
it to you because you've been nominated so many times.
So to get nominated and win it is a big show.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
The big ones entertainer.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
I think if all the voters saw you perform every night,
I don't know who else would have won in the
last twenty years, like to watch or I guess your
show or why I think I told you the first
time I saw you do a real show. I was like, oh,
I'm blown away because I heard you play, and I've
seen you play intimately, and i've seen you play on
my show. But to watch a full like arena perform Mormans,

(14:00):
I was blown away and I'm jaded. And I remember
telling you that, like, I think this is a compliment,
but you're awesome. I had no idea, like how how
enthralled I would be the people around me would be
to watch you embrace the crowd, to get very personal,
to get within the crowd, all the energy. So I
feel like you'd be entertained of the year every year

(14:21):
if everybody had to go and watch you perform. But
to finally be acknowledged for that the big one. Tell
me about that, I.

Speaker 4 (14:29):
Mean that's you know, it's it's off of the mountain
an award recognition. Yeah, it's I mean, especially for me
because I love to do it more than anything in
the world. I love to play live and I love
to play with an audience. I love to entertain. You know,
I'm not a shoe gazer. I love to entertain.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
I'm a shoe gazer little bit in a different way.
I think we're both shoegazers, just in a different way
than you mean that, because you got I think maybe
one A, one B becomes the shoes. I think you
and I kind of in the whole town. I don't
ever see it, not in great shoes, well thank you, yeah,
thank you, or a great car likewise, yeah, I remember one.

Speaker 4 (15:07):
It's your fancy kicks.

Speaker 3 (15:08):
Look, and we'll end on a very music based story.
My one of my favorite Keith Urban stories is there's
this big truck behind me, big, like right on my butt,
and I'm like, I'm about to get beat up whoever
this is, I'm about to get beat up. And it
was you, and we were going to the opera. It
was during COVID whenever, no, yeah, and you were in
this big truck. I hadn't I don't know it was

(15:29):
you don't think you'd be in a truck like you're
being like a I don't know, helicopter or something. You know,
you're Keith Urban.

Speaker 4 (15:33):
I think it was an F three fifty.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
It was a monster. But I thought, I'm about to
get beat up by whomever's behind me because we're going
down that part of the opera that's like nobody else
can drive. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and then yeah, and you're
like hey, I was like, oh man, thank god, but
didn't your car guy?

Speaker 4 (15:49):
My dad loved cars, so I grew up with my
whole life we've had We're the odd Bowl couple, the
old Bowl family in Australia that always had American cars
in this tiny little town. We lived in an Australia
with like Chevyes and Pontiacs and Buicks, and you know, can.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
You effect a car like drink drink? Can you fixt it?

Speaker 4 (16:07):
No? I wish I could. It's just it's the driving aspect.
I mean, then my passion next to music is driving.
I drive all the time, and when I'm touring, I'll
rent a car if we're going to if we're going
to get from a hotel to the venue, I'd rather
rent a car and drive it myself. I hate being driven.

Speaker 3 (16:26):
Final question, because I know how much you value the
people that come to your live shows, and you put
so much work into the live shows. Talk to me
about a set list and the art of your set
list and how you put together a Nate.

Speaker 4 (16:40):
Probably obsess that way too much. A set list because
it's an experience. I mean, it's not a group of songs.
I'm shaping an experience that I want to create for
those two hours for the audience, and I'm trying to
guess will this have that effect? And if we go
from here and to here, we'll that will that do this?

(17:01):
Will this be about the time that the audience would
want that? That should be right, and then we would
be able to do this after that because that would
make sense. And you trying to create a playlist, you know,
trying to cre a great playlist for a two hour party.

Speaker 3 (17:16):
You were closing your eyes as you were even talking
to me through it? Is that an every night thing
where you're changing it or changing it based on how
you felt the night before.

Speaker 4 (17:25):
I've learned that it's a delicate balance of don't take
too much data from that night because that was that
night in that venue in that town, And if you
go tinkering too much because of that feedback, this audience
could be completely different. So just do it enough where
at some point the set list becomes pretty solid for me,

(17:49):
you know, I mean always going to make quarterback calls
because I can't do the exact same thing night after
night after night. I couldn't do it. But like an
episode of sevens or something.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
I just can't do it.

Speaker 7 (17:59):
Hey, Tate, the Bobby Cast will be right back. Wow,
and we're back on the Bobby Cast.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
At number four. It's Luke Bryan from episode four ninety nine.
Luke does it all from being a dad, husband, massive performer,
American Idol judge. He talks about how he balances that life.
We also talked about his most impactful songs and the
story of him getting the call to be on American Idol.
Here's Luke Bryan at number four.

Speaker 8 (18:30):
What's been fun through the years is every night before
a show, it's not the thing to do, but I
will do a little two or three song acoustic set
for like VIPs that have bought the tickets for this
little VIP experience, and I know better than to do it,

(18:51):
but every now and then I'll ask the crowd for
any request. Well, they always request some random damn song
from you know, one of my first albums, and then
we'll we'll go down the wormhole, which is fun because
it's it's not me just doing my standard little couple songs.

(19:13):
Get it and so once I see the lyric and
remember the melody, then then it'll start. It'll start popping back.
But like, uh, like, for instance, if I know that,
like we'll I'll go two months without doing like a
full band concert like the Houston Rodeos coming up, and
I'll go down there and I will go listen to

(19:34):
the songs. And and because I've had I've had some
moments where I didn't prepare and and I would blank
on a few words here or there. But I'm pretty
good about retaining you know, chords and lyrics and stuff
like that. But I would say, you know, you still
need to be a little more prepared as I get,
you know, but back when I was thirty five, you know,

(19:56):
I was doing two hundred something shows a year. I
mean it was so that was never a break to
get rusty.

Speaker 2 (20:03):
Do you use a click?

Speaker 8 (20:05):
There is a click in my ears?

Speaker 2 (20:07):
You sing to click?

Speaker 8 (20:08):
I can, really, I can sing to click.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
You do you need to sing to click?

Speaker 8 (20:12):
No? But what I can I listen. I'll tell you
what I'm good at and what I'm bad at. What
I'm really good at is pocket on the acoustic guitar.
Like like when we start drinking beer, I'm not on
the click. But when my band, when my drummer fires,

(20:32):
the click with me playing my tempo is on.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
The click, natural you will just stay on it and that.

Speaker 8 (20:39):
Band comes in.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
Yeah, now.

Speaker 8 (20:44):
We you know year after year we I prefer the click.
I've just now it's gotten to be a I prefer it.
If you don't have it as a weird no, I'm
I'm like I said, my ability like this foot.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
If you see that foot.

Speaker 8 (21:03):
Doing that, if I'm on pianos, you want a guitar,
I'm locked in. And I learned that by you. I
didn't have that on my first record deal. I didn't
have that. I learned that by going on radio tours
and playing playing two hundred people college bars with just
me and my guitar. And if you don't have that

(21:23):
pocket dialed in, then then you need a band.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
Do you need microphones on stage hear the crowd? Do
you need crowd mics?

Speaker 8 (21:31):
I have crowd mics, but I do that for I
more or less do that to pick up the ambient
room noise, to make the mix in my ears feel uh,
not isolated like right now you and I are isolated.
I want to feel all of the sounds, and I

(21:52):
want to I wanted to feel vibrant and and and
all that what.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
About because there's a bit of delay on those, right
when the crowd cheering into the mic, into the board,
into your ears, even if it's split. Like when we
would play click stuff briefly, when we did full band
stuff at festivals, I would be like, God, ain't this delayed?

Speaker 2 (22:12):
The hay Oh there they are, there they are. But
you're probably so used to that, right you know.

Speaker 8 (22:18):
Yes, so all my stadiums. You know, you could never
sound check a stadium properly. It's different with people and
it doesn't work. And you know you could go set
your levels, but the levels throw them out the window. Well, well,
so we sound checked for stadiums. I never really geeked

(22:41):
out on it because I knew everything would change. Well,
then I would come up in the middle of the
football field. Well, the only way I could get on
time was to watch my drummers. I mean I would
watch my I'd make a visual click yeah, oh that's
the only way.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
Wow. We would start with ru.

Speaker 8 (23:02):
Stone like I got that real good, and I'd have
to watch I'm fifty yards from him watching this is
he being over He's being overly dramatic. And once once
we got through most of like that's my kind of night.
Then my my ear mixed guy. He had the clicks

(23:24):
and all the snare hitting hard enough to override everything
I have.

Speaker 3 (23:28):
Like two other things I want to talk about, and
we talked about before you came in.

Speaker 2 (23:31):
We talked about idol and idol starts.

Speaker 8 (23:35):
Actually these go I don't know if I've been here,
ye about an hour? Yeah, I'm good on time. Now
we don't I mean, if we're snowed in, you know,
it's like.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
I never want to keep running you. But if you
want to talk idle for a second.

Speaker 7 (23:48):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor. Wow,
and we're back on the Bobby Cast.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
Are you seven? Is this your seventh.

Speaker 8 (24:07):
Eighth We're in the eighth year. God dang, Yeah, that's crazy.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
I want this story about the first time it was
even an option or a conversation.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
That you might be on American Idol, Like the first
call you get, who is it?

Speaker 9 (24:24):
Like?

Speaker 6 (24:24):
What?

Speaker 4 (24:25):
Like?

Speaker 2 (24:25):
I want to know about that.

Speaker 8 (24:26):
So I'm at my beach house and well, my manager, Carrie,
she calls me and says, we've been contacted about the
reboot of American Idol. And I had already we had
already seen some headlines at Katie Perry. You know, they
signed Katie and then they launched a big you know,

(24:47):
you knew the show was coming back, and so they
reached out to my manager. And I must say I
was seventy percent against it to start, because I really,

(25:13):
I mean, at that moment, I was at the height
of stadiums and and didn't want to get didn't want
to get what what's the word I'm looking for? Just
I didn't want to get my mental focus going down
like life was so good, just being you.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
Don't wanna let your focus on what you would killing.

Speaker 8 (25:38):
Right, And but I was at the beach house and
this is the truth, and I was like, man, I
cannot go to like La or New York, and I'm
not gonna go up there and do this meeting that

(25:58):
I don't want to do. Carrie calls me and she goes, hey,
they want to come. They would have come to thirty
A and they want to They'll fly to us.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
So they were gonna go pitch you basically right down
in Florida.

Speaker 8 (26:14):
So I said, all right, well I'm you know, and
back then, you know, anyway, Carrie goes all right, they'll
be here on Wednesday night, just right over to Alice
Beach and I drove over and help Carrie rode a
bicycle there and we sat down and we meet with
two of the you know, two of the people you

(26:37):
know at ABC person and a Fremantle person. I'll leave
their names out, but they know I love them, and
they they started pitching it, and I told them I'm
really probably not interested. I'm really And what's funny about
those the people that like, they have no idea, Luke Bryan.

(27:02):
They don't know that I'm like doing sold out stadiums
and double amphitheaters, and that I'm making enough money touring
that I don't need Like at the time, like if
I don't, I didn't need to give up money here
to go spend more time doing this. I just needed

(27:23):
to go throw shows up and go rocket. But and
maybe this is too much information, but either way, I
went back and I and I called I started calling
Blake and Keith Urban and I called Blake and we
had a great talk and and Blake went through. He

(27:44):
was like Luke, he was like, there the TV opens
up another domain and dynamic And I called Keith Urban
and Keith Urban said, man, he had loved it, and.

Speaker 2 (27:59):
After I when he did.

Speaker 8 (28:01):
Idle and so once I got I mean, those are
two guys that I love and trust, and and then
I then I then I said, you know, I mean
we kind of threw them out of crazy number and
damn it, they paid it here.

Speaker 3 (28:17):
That people knew how much money you made front of contract,
because athletes they have that.

Speaker 8 (28:21):
But you know, I think it's a little weird that
that info gets leaked out. I don't understand why. I
don't understand how that info leaks.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
Oh I think you said you don't know why people
are like I'm interested, But yeah, I know, I get it,
like somebody, right, somebody knows.

Speaker 8 (28:38):
Somebody is leaking that info because I know it ain't
I know it ain't anybody on our side, but but
somebody leaks it. And I don't know. I mean, you know,
I think here's the deal. I think the generation that
we grew up in, our parents, like nobody talked about

(28:59):
their finiences. And I think this day and age, everybody's
especially in the public eye, you know, from athletes to entertainers.
And I mean when you google net Worth and Forbes
and what you know, I mean I think and now
it's almost like a little bit of a braggadocious I

(29:21):
think you kind of need to People need to know
how They need to know a little bit of how
successful you are as a little bit of a like
this is how good his you know, there's a there's
a little healthy dose of that. But I've never been
a fan of it.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
I feel the need a bit, and I was again
I was with having the conversation yesterday that I was
talking about with Tracy Lawrence. I feel the need now,
if because he was just asking me my story and
we eventually took it on a microphone. I feel the
need now to talk about my success so it doesn't
feel like I'm pandering with all of my upbringing because

(30:01):
I grew up very poor. Food stamp kid trailer, right,
you know, Mom and died, Dad left all of that.
And by the end of it, I was like, I
don't want to come off as disingenuous.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
I'm rich now, right.

Speaker 3 (30:12):
And I used to feel like that would set people
in a like a wrong like not feel good, But
I feel now it's the most honest thing I can
do because I don't want people to think I'm a
dishonest by not saying that or that I'm feeding them
alive that I'm just like, oh, it's tough. You know,
I have the understanding of my whole life not being

(30:33):
like I'm as new money as it can possibly.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
Be me too. Yeah, but I think you're right.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
I think for me to be totally honest, I have
to somewhat share that that's my story. But if I'm
being totally honest, now I've had success and it's not
like that anymore, you know.

Speaker 8 (30:49):
And I think what's interesting. I don't think you want
to get around a group of people that are not successful.
If I'm talking about money, I won't pe people to understand,
Like if somebody's asking me money advice, like they're like,
I want them to be able to freely talk about
money with me because they know there's no that there's

(31:12):
they know there's no weird psychological stuff going on. It's
like like if I know, like I mean, there's some
people in my world that I can tell they're about
to get successful, And I'm like, hey, just so you know,
don't don't do this until you run a few things
by me. And and I love the ability to do that,

(31:34):
and I think, and then I love to get around
people that are in the same income bracket, and we
can talk the income bracket freely, and we can laugh
about the old days and how we didn't have these problems,
and we can laugh about you know this and that.
So I think there's a healthy dose of people I

(31:57):
never will forget, like I never will forget. I was
doing some land clearing and this old guy was on
a big old excavator on my property, and I pulled
up just to see what they were doing, and I
get out and he shuts some machine off and he
just runs down and he shakes my hand. He goes, man,

(32:18):
I've never shaken a millionaire's hand, and I just I
was like, you don't have to think of me like that.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
Right, because you don't think of you like that.

Speaker 8 (32:27):
No, I said, you just think of me, good old boy,
that I'm happier out here. He goes, well, I just
never shaken a millionaire's hand, and I knew I was
working for you, and I knew I wanted to shake.
So stuff like that is really endearing and cool.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
I also think it's important, though, with your story and
mine to go. It's not like either one of us
had an uncle that got us in or we don't
come from money, and.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
Then I had no in.

Speaker 3 (32:49):
It's like, if you or me can decide to do this,
commit ourselves to it, take some risks, strategize, fail, fail, fail,
get back up, if we can do it. The reason
I like to share it one, I think people just
want authenticity more than they want to be one hundred
percent relatable, because you're very relatable, but there's parts of
you that aren't because of your success. But I think

(33:10):
with me, it's important to go if I can do it,
really anybody can do it, that it's not unattainable.

Speaker 8 (33:17):
Right, And I think us talking about it props up
the American dream.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
Fully agree, even more fully agree.

Speaker 8 (33:25):
I think that, And I think the American dream is
on one hundred different levels, but even the hope of
it is really really special.

Speaker 3 (33:41):
I mean Leisburg, Georgia, Mountain Pine, Arkansas. If you can
come from there, you can come from literally.

Speaker 8 (33:47):
I think you can come from anywhere. And I think that,
I tell you, I mean I went to school with
kids listen that even were one hundred percent worse than me,
and knowing that some of those boys that I grew
up with went to become two of them are doctors.

(34:08):
And that's just a one girl. One girl she was
our valedictorian and her mother drove she drove a tractor
for the dairy and she became valedictorian and it was
so and so those are those were the success stories

(34:32):
far beyond me out of my little group of Leesburg, Georgia.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
But I also think the American dream he brought up,
I don't. I think it's not even about money. It's
about fulfillment, right, I think if you can do something
and be fulfilled by it.

Speaker 8 (34:44):
Yeah, if you grow up in a trailer park and
you become a pharmacist, yes, that's the American dream.

Speaker 2 (34:49):
And you're fulfilled by it, like if I can now.

Speaker 8 (34:50):
Or if you go you get out and you go
play college football, you blow your knee out, but then
you go coach three state championships just because you of
d one scholarship, because.

Speaker 3 (35:02):
You love doing it and you're able to pay the bills.
That's why we wanted to do that. We just wanted
to pay the bills doing something we loved.

Speaker 8 (35:08):
Well. And listen, I joke, I had this conversation with
a very famous athlete two days ago. There's only so
much I can do as a country music singer. I
did not go to Stanford and write an app that
will ever make me worth ten billion dollars Like that

(35:31):
wasn't my path. My job is to be as happy
as I can be having done as well as I
can do as a country music singer. Now, the guy
that wrote the app that sold it to Microsoft and
got ten billion dollars, I hope his job is to
have as much fun, and I hope the football coach
is having the same amount of fun. So it's just

(35:52):
funny how it's just about where you're at mentally through
the whole process, and man, you know, it's just been
a damn blast for me.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
At number three is Eric Church from episode five to ten.
Eric is a legend, doesn't do a lot of long
form stuff, so we're super pumped that he came over
to the house to do this, and we do talk
about him getting a call from Michael Jordan, and we
also talked about how a school shooting in Nashville impacted
him as a person and a dad.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
Our number three is Eric Church. Do you have Carolina
Blue one on purpose underneath?

Speaker 5 (36:26):
Is it?

Speaker 2 (36:27):
Uh?

Speaker 5 (36:27):
Yeah? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (36:28):
I mean most every well, I don't. Oh, I do too,
but not on purp. Yeah, this wasn't in your honor.
I appreciate That's funny because I was talking because most
everything I have has a hog on it or a
razorback on it. Yeah, like red or phone or a
lot of my clothes. Do you have North Carolina stuff everywhere?
And like you're and now and now, which is weirder.

Speaker 10 (36:45):
But we're involved with the Hornets too, So I have
purple and teal, so it's Carolina blue and purple into
what do.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
You mean involved with the Hornets here part of the ownership.

Speaker 5 (36:53):
Yeah, dang, I.

Speaker 3 (36:55):
Bought a pick a ball team. I don't have NBA
team though ball teams are cool too. But what's up
with that? What's Lamella gonna do?

Speaker 5 (37:03):
We'll see, well, we will see. It's a there's a
there's a there's a really important draft coming. Okay.

Speaker 10 (37:08):
Now, I got to be friends with MJ a few
years back and when he sold the team, and it
was one of the weirder calls you ever get in
your life. But MJ goes, hey, I want you to
be involved with the Hornets ownership group. I said, what
does that mean? He said, I want North Carolina presence.
I want people that are local. The group that's buying

(37:29):
it's out of New York private equity, And he said,
I want you to I want you to do it.
He said, I'll help you if you need help, but
he said, I want you to be involved. So you
don't say no to Michael Jordan's.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
So that's super cool in a couple of ways.

Speaker 3 (37:42):
One because it is Michael Jordan, the greatest athlete or
pop culture sports figure in our lifetime. I think, right,
it's like Babe Bruce Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods two that
Michael Jordan played for North Carolina. And for you, that's
such a personal thing and that now, yeah, that you
talk to on the phone, that I'd have been like

(38:05):
put on speaker phone recording. Yeah, So what do you
do is like part owner?

Speaker 10 (38:11):
Well, the great thing about the Hornets is the majority owners.
So you have majority of minority, but the majority guys
are you can get different different groups in the NBA,
but sometimes you get a majority that you know owns
the ninety five percent of the team and you're just involved.
But our group's really good about keeping us involved and
all the decisions we're making. So you know, a lot

(38:34):
of it rives around draft picks. A lot of we
renovated the arena there in Charlotte. We've did a big renovation.
So you kind of have a three to five year plan.
And Charlotte needs it because the Panthers aren't awesome and
the city needs it. So we're on a three to
five year plan. Really through draft picks. That's that's the
best way to build a team. And luckily or unluckily,

(38:58):
the past couple of years, we've got some draft picks.
So that's the game we play right.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
Now, Dan, I wasn't expecting that. That's awesome.

Speaker 3 (39:04):
I put a bunch of money into the Nashville baseball team,
so if we get a baseball team.

Speaker 5 (39:08):
Here, nash will be a great city for that.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yeah, let's go. Then I'll call you. I'll be like,
what's up, owner, Owner?

Speaker 5 (39:13):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
When did you get your first guitar?

Speaker 5 (39:16):
Thirteen?

Speaker 2 (39:17):
Why'd you get it?

Speaker 10 (39:19):
I was writing songs, poetry kind of song things, and
I was having to sing the melodies in my head
and got a Christmas gift and then it took me
a little bit to learn to play it. But you know,
that was just an avenue for me to get the
songs out.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
Did you take to it immediately?

Speaker 5 (39:35):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (39:36):
Were you good at it quickly?

Speaker 5 (39:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (39:39):
Do you have a brain that allows you to not
just write lyrics? But how do you compute music?

Speaker 10 (39:45):
Like?

Speaker 3 (39:45):
How were you able to do key? I mean, like,
how did you learn music?

Speaker 5 (39:50):
That's a great question.

Speaker 10 (39:51):
I I don't know. It was the fastest thing that
I was able just to kind of get and then
you learn a lot of that too, and you know,
earning your salt where I got in a band pretty quick.

Speaker 5 (40:05):
I mean I was in a band that.

Speaker 10 (40:08):
Maybe seventeen I was I was what and eighteen years old,
and I started just playing in bands and uh, some
shady places, and I did the chicken wire thing.

Speaker 5 (40:18):
I've been at that show.

Speaker 10 (40:20):
I've had a band member leave the stage during a
song and go fight a guy in the parking lot
and make it back before the end of the song.

Speaker 5 (40:27):
And that guy was my brother.

Speaker 10 (40:29):
So we've done that during Now you know, when you
make it back for the end of the song, that's
doing quick work, you know. But it was a skinnered song,
so it was a little long. But I've done all
those I've done all those things. And you learn a
lot from those situations. I always talk about in the
world we live in now, and you know this, in
the world we live in, it's easier to get discovered

(40:51):
and to earn a following, but it's harder to earn
that as a musician where you can and I'll give
you example, and I won't name a name, but there
was an act recently that I like a lot, and
we were gonna we're talking about our next tour, and
it's a person who has a presence social media whatever,

(41:14):
and I said, hey, you know, we'd love to have you.
They don't have a band yet, they've not toured yet,
that's all just on what they do on their channel.
They've not played yet, and it's like, you know, you've
not you've not taken anything on the road.

Speaker 5 (41:30):
You don't, right, And that's.

Speaker 10 (41:32):
A problem because you learn so much from being in
those situations and what I found in my career, You're
gonna get in big moments, and if you don't feel
like you deserve the big moment.

Speaker 5 (41:46):
You might not meet the moment.

Speaker 10 (41:49):
And those early days allow you to know when you
get to that moment, you've put in the work to
earned that.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
I want to talk about being an advocate.

Speaker 3 (41:58):
I think even in this record that there's songs where
you're an advocate as well, And so I don't think
it's I think a big part of it is what
you're doing for the communities and for people that maybe
don't have a voice, but also for people that maybe
need a voice. And I mean I could pull up
a couple of songs even like Johnny or Darkest Hour,
like do those feel like advocate type songs, like you're

(42:20):
speaking for somebody, for yourself but also for others.

Speaker 10 (42:25):
Well, I think a lot of that also comes a
little bit with our We're a little bit of an
anomaly that we we got here completely on the backs
of our fans early on because we didn't have a
ton of industry success.

Speaker 5 (42:41):
We were a little bit pushed to the fringes.

Speaker 10 (42:45):
And you know, I remember one year I played Grand Rapids,
Michigan like nine times because I could get a thousand
tickets in Grand Rapperts mission.

Speaker 5 (42:53):
We just kept rolling back.

Speaker 10 (42:54):
You know, how many times can we go to the
wheel because we had to have gas money to be
able to move that bus around.

Speaker 6 (42:59):
Right.

Speaker 10 (43:00):
So a lot of that is the people that you
end up seeing every night and then something happens or
you think about their lot in life. Yeah, I think
that comes out a little bit now when I think
about that, because I wouldn't be in the situation that
I'm in for for.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
Them, revision is history.

Speaker 3 (43:16):
As Eric Church moved to town, wrote a bunch of songs,
was it's a successful songwriter but didn't hit and then
even a massive star.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
That's revision is history.

Speaker 5 (43:27):
Yeah, that's false.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
What's the truth.

Speaker 5 (43:30):
It came to town.

Speaker 10 (43:34):
I was different with what music I was writing, and
early on it wasn't great. You know, you come to town
and you learn what real Now. I mean, I say
this to all young artists is you can't imagine. And
a lot of people dog now a lot of the
songwriting things and say, oh, it's Nashville Songwritersnation songwriters, the
best in the world. I mean, they're their greatest craftsmen

(43:54):
in the world. And it took me a minute to
come to town. And I was fortunate I came at
a time when we still sat across from each other
and did that you know where Now there's a lot
of stuff that technology is involved, and that's fine, but
I got to learn from a lot of those guys.
So I came here and my perspective when I came

(44:17):
it's gonna be hard to believe. But there was a
kind of a soccer mom type format. There were a
lot of females. It was very driven that way, and
I had a more masculine approach and it was not
liked by most everybody, and I just had a different lane.

(44:37):
But eventually got a record deal and got in that lane.
But then that was a hard lane because we were
just we were a little different on the radio and
we had a hard time getting songs played because it
didn't fit the formula at the time, and touring was interesting.
So it was just along. The first couple albums were
a really a really challenging time. Everybody comes to town

(45:01):
and you know a lot of these young artists and
they get a record deal and they think I made it,
I've done it, But that is just the beginning of.

Speaker 5 (45:09):
The artist part.

Speaker 10 (45:11):
And for us, it was in that first two album
period before Chief that we were grinding on the road.
There was one year we did over two hundred actual
shows in a year, and a lot of that was
just to keep the money moving in at any level,
to keep moving forward.

Speaker 5 (45:32):
You know, to keep gaining ground.

Speaker 10 (45:34):
And at the time, a lot of people in the
industry would have said, this doesn't really fit what we do,
you know, and it's just a.

Speaker 5 (45:42):
It's a grind. It was a grind for us.

Speaker 3 (45:44):
Why did you move to Nashville? Was it to write
songs or was it to be an artist? In writing songs?
Was going to get you to that place? To be
an artist?

Speaker 5 (45:53):
Right?

Speaker 2 (45:53):
Songs? It was you're a writer? Yeah, how did you
know that was a job?

Speaker 5 (45:58):
I found that out.

Speaker 10 (46:00):
I was in college and I had a band and
I started, you know, just playing some of my original
songs in our cover set, and you know, people the
next time I would go back and play there, they
would recrest those songs. And that just kind of where
I started thinking, Okay, you know, songwritings. I just never

(46:21):
thought it was viable for me to be able to
go and get a record deal and do that. It
never crossed my mind. It just wasn't something I thought
I could do. So I really wanted to come here
and write songs. And you know, I met a couple
songwriters when I when I moved here and kind of
saw what they did and how they did it, and
you go get a you know, you take a draw
and you go right for a big publishing house and

(46:43):
try to get songs cut.

Speaker 3 (46:44):
So what'd you pack up and what did you what
did you move into when you got here?

Speaker 10 (46:49):
I was in a I came to town in a two
tone nineteen eighty six Chevy blazer, blue and gray, that's the.

Speaker 5 (46:58):
Color back then.

Speaker 10 (46:58):
Man and I had guitar, had a Duffel bag, and
I found an apartment. But I didn't know where to be.
You know, when you moved to Nashville, it's like I
didn't know what was what?

Speaker 3 (47:09):
Did you have anybody here that you could ask those
questions to? No, so you blindly moved to town.

Speaker 5 (47:13):
Yeah, I came. I went to Broadway first.

Speaker 10 (47:16):
I tell this story my Chief Chief Residency as I
came to Broadway because that's where Ryemen was, That's where
you know tutsis is, That's where you know all these
iconic things. And I tried to get gigs there and
I couldn't get a gig there because I came with
a you know, a sack of songs and my guitar
and they wanted cover songs and so I couldn't I

(47:40):
couldn't make it and broad on Broadway. So I ended
up over at Printer's Alley back in the day, which
is there's a place called the Fiddle and Steel Guitar Bar.
And what I found there were all the people that
got kicked off Broadway. That's where they congregated, and I
kind of found my tribe and there were a lot
of hit songwriters in that group.

Speaker 5 (47:58):
There are a lot of musicians in that group.

Speaker 10 (48:00):
And just kind of found my people and started figuring
it out. But I took a job. I had a
job at the Shopping Home Network. I sold knives.

Speaker 6 (48:10):
That was my job.

Speaker 5 (48:11):
Thanks for calling Shopping Home. My name's Eric ilet Me.

Speaker 2 (48:13):
Hope you the phones?

Speaker 5 (48:14):
Oh yeah, I was. I was the phone guy, had
the little headset, good stuff.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
What kind of knives?

Speaker 6 (48:21):
Like?

Speaker 2 (48:21):
What was your what was your what was your rap?

Speaker 6 (48:24):
My rap?

Speaker 10 (48:25):
At that time, I actually got fired because of my
lack of rap.

Speaker 5 (48:28):
But I would answer the phone.

Speaker 10 (48:31):
I had the I had the shift it was I
think my shift was eleven pm to like seven am.

Speaker 5 (48:38):
I was the overnight shift.

Speaker 10 (48:39):
So that's the shift where the guy comes in he's
been at a bar and he turns on Shopping Home
and there's the guy when we were looking at the studio,
so where the phone bank was. It was like an
amphitheater type seating and we all have our little chairs
and our headsets on, and we're looking at them selling
the knives out their television studio in front of us.
And this guy, you know, would call in and go

(49:01):
three o'clock in the morning, slurring, going, man, I gotta
I gotta have some of these knives. It's like three
hundred knives for fifteen ninety ninety nine, right. And actually
one night there was a guy that called in and
he I could tell it had a long night and
I had a few of those two and he was like, man,
this guy has some of these knives, you know, and
he's slurring. I was like, yeah, yeah, you know, he said,

(49:22):
you know. I said, hey, you know, what what do
you favor? I said, why don't you want you go
to bed? And first of all, when somebody calls and
says I need a knife at that time of night,
you think there's already a problem. Right they don't need yeah,
not right now. You don't need a knife right now.

Speaker 5 (49:36):
You need to go to bed.

Speaker 10 (49:36):
So I said, want you go to bed? And want
you call me in the morning, I'll still be here.

Speaker 5 (49:40):
You know.

Speaker 10 (49:41):
He said, what says there's three left? I said, brother,
trust there's more than three left. Okay, you're gonna be okay.
And there's that thing where when you call into something
like that and they'll say, for whatever purposes, this call
may be recorded.

Speaker 5 (49:57):
They do that, and they happened to record this call.

Speaker 2 (50:00):
That's how you got gots.

Speaker 5 (50:01):
I got cut. How's it.

Speaker 2 (50:05):
You're advocating for that, dude.

Speaker 10 (50:06):
I was advocating for that, dude. They didn't like that
shoving on those they they fired me.

Speaker 3 (50:11):
Uh, what's up with that name of the record Evangeline
versus the Machine.

Speaker 10 (50:16):
Well, so I think a lot of some of this,
some of this somewhat started. There's a there's a line
in Johnny that's a very important song on this album
because of the Covenant shooting here in Nashville. But there's
a line in there says, machines control.

Speaker 5 (50:31):
Of people, and the people shoot shoot at kids.

Speaker 10 (50:34):
And what I've found having younger kids is there's so
much of our life nowadays. It's just so fast and
disposable with how we consume anything. And what I've seen
is it really rounds the edges off anything we try
to do different or creative, that's just not what the

(50:54):
world is set up for today. It's not set up
for the patient part of that. And so I think
that that that line is when that title started.

Speaker 5 (51:04):
But the crux of this.

Speaker 10 (51:06):
Is Evangeline on the album plays almost a creative muse
that song. So it's that creative muse and following that
versus the machine that makes it very hard to execute that.
And that's that's the that's the juxtaposition of love what
this is.

Speaker 3 (51:22):
When you mentioned Johnny and the shooting, and that was
very personal to all of us here because it was
so close to us, and it's probably close to a
lot of people in a lot of places. Because it's
so close to a lot of people, it's happening everywhere
all the time. The Johnny Johnny versus the Devil Devil
went down to Georgia that the song was playing, because
that is that part of the like you were thinking

(51:44):
about when you wrote the song. Yeah, I was hear
the song Devil went down to Georgia as I was.

Speaker 10 (51:48):
My kids go nearby here and I was, which is
a couple of miles from Covenant whatever, and the hardest
thing I've ever done in my life is dropped my
kids off the day after the shooting because they had
decided that, you know, that kids needed to feel some
normalcy and go back to school. And I remember, I've

(52:10):
never I've never done anything harder than that when I
when I watched them walk in.

Speaker 5 (52:14):
That school and both boys go in together.

Speaker 10 (52:17):
There's a bunch of people out front, teachers are crying everything,
so everybody goes inside, and I didn't know what to do.
I felt helpless, scared all those things. So I just
parked in the parking lot there and I sat there,
and I don't know how long I was going to
sit there. I just felt like I needed to be there.
And as at some point in time, during probably an hour,

(52:39):
at some point in time, I looked at my right
and I looked to my left, and there were parents
that had done the same thing all the way down
the line, moms and dads, and they were just sitting
there and I had the radio on and it was
down low. I wouldn't paying attention to it, but that
went down Georgia was on, and there was a piece

(53:01):
of that in that moment. As I'm looking to my
left and looking to my right and thinking about my kids.
That you know, Johnny rawsing up your bow and play
your fiddle. Hard Hills broke loose in Georgia and the
Devil deals cards and if you win, you get to
shiny fidel and made of gold, and if you lose,
the devil gets yourself. And I remember thinking, if only
Johnny was confined, or only if the devil was confined

(53:21):
to Georgia. He's out of Georgia, He's everywhere, and we
need Johnny to come back and help. And that was it,
and I pulled out of the parking lot finally, and
I went home and I did like and some of
this may have went to the Evangeline versus the machine,
because there is that Johnny versus the devil, you know,

(53:42):
that started that thing, good evil.

Speaker 5 (53:44):
Kind of thing.

Speaker 10 (53:45):
And I went home and I said, it would be
interesting if we if a song was written from that perspective,
where you bring back a character from a song we
all know from thirty forty years ago and he gets
to play a different role.

Speaker 5 (53:58):
And so I wrote, Johnny.

Speaker 7 (54:01):
The Bobby Cast will be right back. Welcome back to
the Bobby Cast.

Speaker 3 (54:10):
At number two is John Fogerty, the lead singer of
Creden's clear Water Revival. He is in the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame. He is a legend. I was
very excited about this because I'm a massive fan of CCR,
and we talk about the origin story of the band,
how the name came about, songs that he wrote, like
Proud Mary, like fortunate Son. This episode for me one
of the real highlights. Obviously from episode five thirty eight,

(54:33):
here's John Fogerty at number two.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
How did you get discovered?

Speaker 3 (54:38):
How did a band get discovered back then when there
wasn't social media, you know, you couldn't just text your
buddy and be like, hey, come check this person out.
Like what was the process?

Speaker 6 (54:48):
Like, well, it depends on what you mean discovery.

Speaker 9 (54:51):
To get a record deal even, Okay, Well, around the
age of fourteen, when the Little Blue Velvet were playing around,
we ended up representing the els Rito It's my town
else Rito boys Club, and so we played various different
venues including boys clubs from other towns around the Bay Area.

(55:15):
And one of those things, there was this singer named
James Powell about He's about twenty four to twenty five
years old, and he tapped me on his shoulder after
we'd played, would you guys be interested in making a record?
I'll try and cut that to Chase, I said sure.
We ended up learning the songs with James. He had,

(55:39):
you know, kind of a pocket full of songs and
they were all girls' names, but his style was pretty
much do wop, and we ended up learning or recording
a song called Beverly Angel, and the other side was
called Lydia, which was sort of a calypso thing, but

(56:00):
Beverly Angel was a do wop classic. I mean it
was done D D D, you know, one of those things.
And we went over to Coast Recorders in San Francisco.

Speaker 6 (56:13):
I think it was called something else then.

Speaker 9 (56:15):
Anyway, the trio piano, drums, and guitar, and then James
sang his part and harmonized with himself and I overdubbed.
It's a whole nother story I won't get into, but
from one of the guys on my paper.

Speaker 6 (56:33):
Route who was a.

Speaker 9 (56:35):
Bass player in a country Western band. He was a dad.
He could have been my dad, he was that age.
He loaned me his stand up doghouse bass to play
on this record, and so I played that on the record.
And it's actually pretty cool even now. That didn't get discovered,

(56:56):
but it did get played on the R and B station,
and Stu Cook tells me that in electronics. I guess
it was that, you know, I wasn't going to elswet
O high at that point, but anyway, he was in electronics.
The project was to make a radio and he's got
the thing working, tuned it in and out popped Beverly Angel.

Speaker 6 (57:20):
It's a great story. I hope it's true, you know.

Speaker 9 (57:24):
So they probably played that song, that record for about
a week, and then a little later my brother Tom
got us on a label called Orchestra Records.

Speaker 6 (57:36):
The fella had his you know own label.

Speaker 9 (57:38):
We made I don't know, four or five records there,
one of them a song I wrote called have You
Ever Been Lonely? It was a new song, not the
old country standard, and that got picked by one of
the DJs as a pick of the week and was
played all week.

Speaker 6 (57:55):
So and again we.

Speaker 9 (57:57):
Got played, but it it didn't go much further after that,
and finally took me knocking on the door at Fantasy,
which was a little bit bigger label.

Speaker 3 (58:09):
Not much and did they want to hear a body
of work. Are they playing your songs?

Speaker 9 (58:13):
Like?

Speaker 3 (58:13):
How do you go to a bigger label and go, hey,
we have this thing going, we want you to invest
in us.

Speaker 6 (58:20):
I wish it was.

Speaker 9 (58:21):
I wish it was that together, and maybe it's more
so nowadays.

Speaker 6 (58:26):
I don't know.

Speaker 9 (58:27):
There had been this special on TV called Anatomy of
a Hit as a local jazz writer in the paper
had kind of narrated and produced it. It was about
Vince Giraldi's song. It was instrumental called cast Your Fate
to the Wind, a jazz record that became a top
forty hit that was fantasy. It was basically their first

(58:48):
hit record in forty years of something of being a
record label. And so I watched that. My brother Tom
watched that. So I decided to go over and just
knock on their door and went in. You know, I
think I had phoned ahead, but anyway, they were expecting me.
And I met this fella that was the guy, the
same one we saw on TV. I had a kind

(59:11):
of a box full of tapes of instrumentals and he's,
you know, listened to my spiel and all that, and
he said, well, do you have any songs with words?
That's kind of normally what Tom and I did together.
So I said, well sure, He said, well come back
and play us.

Speaker 6 (59:29):
Oh. At first, what he did was he walked us over.

Speaker 9 (59:31):
Walked me over to the desk there and opened a
Billboard magazine. He said, well, songs with words do a
lot better than instrumentals. And then it happened to be
that week he opens Billboard and there's the top ten
and the first six are Beatles songs. And of course

(59:51):
I knew about that, but he was trying to say that,
you see, songs with words will turn you into the
Beatles or something like that.

Speaker 6 (01:00:00):
Okay, sir hm.

Speaker 9 (01:00:03):
We then made a whole bunch of recordings for that label,
kind of in this shed they had at the back
of their warehouse, a kind of a makeshift recording studio,
and they renamed us the Gollywalgs.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
Of course we hated that without your consent.

Speaker 9 (01:00:25):
Yeah, the first recording we had made came back, you know,
they phoned us, the records are in, come over, and
you know, we opened the box and it says gollywalgs.
I just figured it was a typele. There's something wrong here, Max.

Speaker 6 (01:00:37):
Look at this. It says gollywalgs.

Speaker 9 (01:00:39):
And then he let us know the the evil plot
that was afoot here.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
So they've changed your name without telling you. That's wild.

Speaker 9 (01:00:52):
Yeah, it's obscene, don't I don't know why I didn't
just walk out the door.

Speaker 6 (01:00:56):
But that's how desperate things are.

Speaker 9 (01:00:58):
Of course, you okay, sir, whatever you want. You're just
desperate to try and make a record that might get
on the radio.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
How long were you the Golliwogs.

Speaker 9 (01:01:11):
Until nineteen sixty seven? That was sixty four, when, of course,
because of the Beatle Week in nineteen sixty seven, the
guy who had been formerly the sales rep for the
Fantasy the Jazz label, his name was Saul's Ants. He
summoned us to his house and told us that he

(01:01:34):
had purchased Fantasy Records. I didn't know then that he
had other investors too, but I just thought he bought
the label. And he said, and we'd like to sign
the band, meaning we meaning he'd like to sign the band.
And the first thing out of our mouths was, Saul,
we got to change our name. We hate being golliwogs.

(01:01:55):
And he said sure, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
And did he say what do he wanted to be?

Speaker 6 (01:02:01):
No?

Speaker 9 (01:02:02):
No, but years later this is the you know how
Victory has a thousand bothers. What really happened was within
the band we said, okay, we got to come up
with a new name. You know, we're scrapping everything and
we're going to come up with a good new name.

(01:02:22):
Years later, I read some quote from Saul saying, and
then I told those boys, golly Wald stinks, you have
to go out and get something more earthy, in other words,
taking ownership of the whope it's like and when you're
young and dumb, that's kind of what happens to you.
But clearly we went off because we've been what's the word,

(01:02:48):
just chafing under that yoke of a name. And it
took a couple of months. Basically, I was growing up
pretty fast. I was evolving is the word I use
in a lot of different ways because after that experience
and having freshly just gotten off active duty with the army.

(01:03:11):
It was, and I was twenty two years old. I
was starting to feel like, man, it's make or break time.
My dream might go away if I don't really manifest something.
And so we came up with different names, meaning the
guys would call me and there'd be one kind of
wacky or lame thing man.

Speaker 6 (01:03:31):
Finally, on.

Speaker 9 (01:03:33):
Christmas Eve of nineteen sixty seven, I came up with
Creden's Clearwater Revival and I knew it was it. I mean,
I knew in my heart that wow, this is better
than us. Actually, this name is up here in the
cloud somewhere.

Speaker 6 (01:03:48):
We got to get up there.

Speaker 3 (01:03:50):
So what about those words and those three terms together
made you go, this is it? What drew you to
Creden's Clearwater Revival?

Speaker 9 (01:03:57):
Okay, well I was watching television Christmas Eve, so you're
sort of in that you know mood, it's a wonderful
time of year and of your life. And on comes
this beer commercial for Olympia Beer, and their slogan is
It's the Water. So they're showing this really lush, magical

(01:04:20):
forest with the green trees and it might have been
a little deer, you know. Band becomes over and nudges
against a little borsch or something, and then there's this
little babbling brook. You know, water is just coming and
it's just enchanted looking, and their slogan it's the water
and immediate you know, which I liked is oh, and

(01:04:41):
I think the beach Boys literally are in the background,
singing with their beautiful harmonies and all that. It's just
a pretty serene place to be. Immediately after that commercial, ooh,
next thing. It's black and white and it's an anti
pollution commercial and it's shows styrofoam cups and cigarette butts

(01:05:02):
in a creek.

Speaker 6 (01:05:03):
It's all polluted.

Speaker 9 (01:05:05):
And at the end of the little commercial, black and white,
very shocking looking, it says, if you want to change
this right to clean water, Washington, that's all you got
to you know, it'll get there. And I the juxtaposition
of those two waters, you know, it really stuck.

Speaker 6 (01:05:23):
It just shocked me. And I looked at that. I said,
clean water, Yeah, I like that.

Speaker 9 (01:05:27):
It touched my soul, and in an instant I realized
I was actually, what do you call it, internalizing? I
was making it part of me because I had an
urgent need and I like clean water, but not clean
clear water. Wow, clear that's it, And I mean that
seemed to be the soul of the idea here, and

(01:05:50):
I quickly started thinking of what the goal with it.

Speaker 6 (01:05:54):
A few months before, actually we had.

Speaker 9 (01:05:59):
Had the new Credens spin around in our little orbit
because we knew a fella named Credence new Ball, such
an unusual name, and so you know in all the
different you know, clear Water, fruit Jar, clear Water Cloud,

(01:06:19):
clear Water Warehouse, what are you you know, you're just
associating and suddenly clear Water Credence, Oh no, Creden's clear Water.

Speaker 6 (01:06:30):
Okay, I mean your brain just does this. That was killer.

Speaker 9 (01:06:33):
That was a winner to me, and it just felt
not quite complete. And so then to the kind of
mood I was in was that our band was having
a resurgence or a renewal, and I was trying to
state that it was in my head and find anyone
that came across my mental windshield. It's Creten's Clearwater revivle wow.

(01:07:01):
I mean, remember this is in the B area right
during the time of Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Airplane
and Grateful Dead and all that sort of thing. Creten's
Clearwater Revival seemed to be. It was so perfect and
so above our station at the moment. I really loved it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:21):
What was the first song you wrote as Creden's Clearwater
Revival that actually had some traction and not the first
song that came out Because a lot of times you write
a song that it comes out, you know, it may
take a bit.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
You have it, you've written it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:31):
What's the first song you write as this new entity
of Creden's Clearwater Revival that had traction?

Speaker 9 (01:07:37):
Yeah, because there were the first Credence album had SUSIQ
and I Put a Spell on You.

Speaker 6 (01:07:44):
Which I didn't write. Both of those I didn't write.

Speaker 9 (01:07:46):
There were some other songs I did write, but there's
sort of you know, they're work in progress, they're on
their way.

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
Can I hear that in your writing?

Speaker 3 (01:07:57):
You can tell when you're getting better by listening to
your songs through the years.

Speaker 9 (01:08:01):
Oh sure, yeah, Oh sure, that's Oh sure, I'll come
back to that if you let me in a minute.
But anyway, but right as the first album's coming out,
which we had, we had kind of earned the right
to do that because susi Q was already being played
on the local underground stations. It was getting some traction,

(01:08:25):
and right in that time, I was already trying to
prepare for.

Speaker 6 (01:08:30):
My next album. I mean I would.

Speaker 9 (01:08:32):
I had my hand on the tiller and I wasn't
going to let go. I got my honorable discharge from
the army and it's sitting on the steps to my
little apartment and I picked that up. You know, I
didn't realize it was for me for a couple of days.

Speaker 6 (01:08:50):
I finally, oh, it's my dischart.

Speaker 2 (01:08:52):
Wow.

Speaker 9 (01:08:53):
Well, anyhow, I ran in the house and I'm out.
I mean I was, I was clear. I was free
as the word to a twenty two year old. I
ran in the house, picked up my guitar and started strumming.
And what came out of me was left a good
job in the city, working for the man every night

(01:09:16):
and day. And that's exactly what that refers to. I
stayed on that thought I strumming the guitar. I mean,
these things are just I can't even say I created them.
It really felt more like if I cleared my mind,
it'll come through, you know, like a radio station.

Speaker 6 (01:09:34):
And it did. I got to.

Speaker 9 (01:09:36):
Where I was singing, rolling, rolling, rolling on the river,
and I was pretty excited. This is starting to seem
pretty cool. What is this thing all about? Well, I
had started to keep a song book. If you want
me to go back and tell that story, I will,
but I would.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):
Love to hear it when we go back. I'm gonna
put a pin in it and we'll go back to
it all right.

Speaker 9 (01:09:57):
Anyhow, I opened that book that I've been sitting there
for a few months now, and I've been putting things
into it. And I opened the book and the first
entry in the book, it's a little vinyl binder, that's
all it is, and the first entry is Proud Mary.
And I look at that and went, oh, this song's

(01:10:21):
about a boat. Why it's about a boat, And the
name of the boat is the Proud Mary. Oh my goodness,
that's it. I'm rolling on the river with Proud Mary.
I finished the song, so you right, within about an
hour it was done. And you asked me about the
first song I wrote as credence that had traction. It

(01:10:41):
was actually more than that. I'm holding the piece of
paper in my hands and I'm looking at it, and
I had self awareness. This had never happened to me.
I'd written dozens of songs in my life, starting when
i was eight years old. But I'm sitting here with
this piece of paper and proud Marry John, You've written

(01:11:02):
a classic. This is a classic. It's what every songwriter
is dreaming about. You know, my mom had told me
about Stephen Foster Irving Berlin Hogy Carmichael, and I had
discovered my own people I loved, like Libre and Stoler,
you know, the Coasters, certainly, Lennon and McCartney, people like that,

(01:11:24):
Harold King, you know, people that were real songwriters, and
you just know that they're up there in the clouds somewhere,
and you're doing.

Speaker 6 (01:11:33):
Your little ditties.

Speaker 9 (01:11:34):
Every once in a while, you're writing your little songs
and hoping some somehow you're fantasizing about being up there
with those people. I'm holding that piece of paper. You've
written a classic John Wow. And I realized at the
time that it was that good. And then then the

(01:11:54):
next thing, I realized, I'm sitting there looking at it.
I'm the only person in the whole world that knows this.
I mean, it was a bizarre thought that came to
my mind of understanding. I guess in some primitive way,
it's going to go everywhere, but you're the only one
that knows.

Speaker 6 (01:12:13):
It right now. It's just a weird personal thought.

Speaker 3 (01:12:17):
And you had that feeling. I guess my question did
you ever have that feeling before?

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
Or was this the lightning bolt?

Speaker 6 (01:12:23):
This was the lightning bolt? Never had that feeling before?

Speaker 9 (01:12:27):
I mean, if you'd walked up to me and I'm,
you know, working on one of the recordings we had done.
You know, yeah, that's good. You know, that's kind of
the way we are, or it could happen. You know,
let me play you three other songs that are worse
than this, you know from the radio.

Speaker 6 (01:12:43):
I mean everyone does that.

Speaker 9 (01:12:44):
It's a foolish sort of following yourself to the bottom.

Speaker 6 (01:12:48):
You know.

Speaker 9 (01:12:50):
The other way is the way it should happen. You
should create something that's so great that you're grinning, you're smiling,
it's so good, and everyone around you here's nosey too.
I mean, that's that's the way to know that you're
on your way.

Speaker 7 (01:13:06):
Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor.

Speaker 1 (01:13:13):
This is the Bobby Cast.

Speaker 2 (01:13:16):
And now here we are the number one Bobby Cast
of twenty twenty five. They were all great.

Speaker 3 (01:13:20):
Sorry to classify him, but I think when Ringo Star
from the Beatles came over to my house man, that's
got to be number one. It was episode four ninety five.
Why well, because it's Ringo Star from the Beatles. We
talked about his new country album and his name because
it's not his real name, and he shared stories from
way back in the day. Loved it surreal A plus

(01:13:42):
conversation and interview. Our number one is Ringo Star from
the Beatles.

Speaker 2 (01:13:47):
Did you guys ever open for anyone early on?

Speaker 11 (01:13:51):
Oh yeah, we opened for Roy Olbison were open for
a lot of people. And in fact, the first tour
we did with a co I can't even think of
a name now because you've asked me about it. She
was like a big hit. She was like fourteen fifteen
in England. This is all in England, and we had

(01:14:11):
three numbers at the beginning the curtains opened, we did
three numbers and that's how we to us.

Speaker 5 (01:14:18):
Was a step up from clubs to theaters.

Speaker 11 (01:14:21):
And then we kept doing that and we'd have tweeny
low pairs and Roy was great. Roy was the hardest
act we ever had to follow.

Speaker 2 (01:14:30):
Why is that?

Speaker 5 (01:14:31):
Because he is great? He would just.

Speaker 11 (01:14:34):
Stand there with those shades on and not a lot
of movement, but all coming out and so we would
be behind the curtain.

Speaker 5 (01:14:41):
Were next on she Don't Don't Don't Don't.

Speaker 11 (01:14:45):
We beat playing on the guitar little hints of our
songs while he was on.

Speaker 5 (01:14:51):
But then we we.

Speaker 11 (01:14:53):
Closed the first half we'd moved up, and then we
closed the show and we had a few problems with
some American acts who came over, and you know, we
were just rising in England really fast, and you know,
they'd come in expecting to be top of the bill.
And Tommy row was great because he realized right away.

(01:15:17):
But we had another actor came over who I'm American.

Speaker 5 (01:15:21):
I on top of the bill and.

Speaker 11 (01:15:22):
Said, okay, So we played to the halfway through, we
played the break and and we left and everybody else
left left it.

Speaker 5 (01:15:34):
He was on his own.

Speaker 2 (01:15:36):
When was music introduced to you as a kid.

Speaker 11 (01:15:39):
As far as the big news, my stepdad loved. He
had his little room with a little record player, but
he was a big band and you know, Billy Daniels
and a lot of old people, and he would play that.
I think because of that, this influence of him playing

(01:16:02):
all this music the big bands, even.

Speaker 5 (01:16:05):
If it's straight rock, I sort of shuffle it. I
swing it a bit.

Speaker 11 (01:16:10):
And I think that all came because you know, even
when Little Richard came up rock and roll days, everything
was swing like big band and so I you know,
I've always loved him for that. I loved him anyway
but the music was great. And the last thing he said,
I'd be playing my stuff and well have you heard this?

(01:16:31):
And it was like, it's like one of my biggest
memory and he says, well have you heard this?

Speaker 5 (01:16:36):
And it was Sarah Bonn. You know, that's pretty far out.

Speaker 11 (01:16:40):
For you my dad, stepdad to play and give you
a hint about people out there. But the other good
side of the story, my son Zach was like eight
and he came running down from school and he's got
a record under his own.

Speaker 5 (01:16:56):
He said, oh god, we got to play this. I
gotta play this to you. I've said, well, who is it? Son?
He said, Rachels.

Speaker 11 (01:17:05):
So I followed my stepdad's attitude with my own kids.

Speaker 5 (01:17:11):
Oh well, let's play it and see what it's like.

Speaker 2 (01:17:14):
You know, my grandma. It was a lot of Johnny Cash.

Speaker 3 (01:17:18):
It was a lot of modern sounds of country music
from Ray Charles, and that was what I was kind
of introduced to his music. And then I kind of
found my own music, right, and so that was my
like your stepdad and that music, like, that's what I
remember first. But then when I found my own music,
it was a bit different. What was your own music first?

Speaker 11 (01:17:35):
Well, you know, I liked the blues and I love country,
and they were the first two and then pop records
of the time. And the Lightning Hopkins the blues player
out of all of the blues players. I just loved him.
I looked at because he didn't really finish the lines

(01:17:57):
of it, I'm going down to bother sing, but it
just got to me. He was like, So, you know,
it's a well known story now, but my friend, one
of my friends in Liverpool and I decided we wanted
to go to Houston, Texas to be where Lightning lived.
And we went down to the embassy and we asked

(01:18:19):
for the American embassy in Liverpool, and we asked for
the papers that we could fill in to you know,
emigrate to Houston, Texas, and they gave us these papers.
But we both worked in the factory, and they gave
us a list of factories we could apply to to
get a job, and so we filled those forms in

(01:18:42):
and then we took him back like we're ready, and
they gave.

Speaker 5 (01:18:46):
Us a lot more forms, and we're teenagers. We ripped them.
The bogger's up.

Speaker 2 (01:18:53):
Did you ever go?

Speaker 8 (01:18:54):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:18:54):
Ever?

Speaker 5 (01:18:55):
Even later, no, No, I played there.

Speaker 2 (01:18:57):
Yeah, but you never went to the house like, well, no.

Speaker 5 (01:18:59):
No, I never did any that. Yeah, you know, things
have changed.

Speaker 3 (01:19:03):
I feel like when this record, I feel like it's
so naturally you and I think that speaks to both
T bone.

Speaker 5 (01:19:11):
And you know, it's absolutely speaks to T bone.

Speaker 11 (01:19:15):
But but but he.

Speaker 5 (01:19:18):
Put me together in a great space.

Speaker 3 (01:19:20):
So and I think my point is it didn't feel
like you were doing anything unnatural at all.

Speaker 11 (01:19:27):
Well that's what he figured out. He pointed that out
to me, and I love. They say, well, you know
what about the song?

Speaker 2 (01:19:33):
You said?

Speaker 5 (01:19:34):
Every song was in my key.

Speaker 11 (01:19:38):
You know, sometimes people send you songs and the key
of f demented and they say, why haven't never heard me?

Speaker 5 (01:19:45):
But he and since we got to.

Speaker 11 (01:19:47):
Know each other a bit better and we actually spoke
to each other, he always felt he thought about me
many times, but he felt and when I listened back
to like on the Beatle tracks, out did the Carl
Perkins record. From there it started. Mine always had sort
of a country ish feel, and then.

Speaker 5 (01:20:11):
The ones I wrote it.

Speaker 11 (01:20:12):
The first songs I wrote were sort of country songs,
and so he put all that together, and then he
put the tracks together. He wrote the songs as I
said he had nine and put everybody on them.

Speaker 5 (01:20:27):
And I did the drums.

Speaker 11 (01:20:30):
In La, in my little studio because the sound is
so great there out of the blue. We didn't do
anything to it, just was a bedroom. But now we
just put the drums in and for some reason, the
drums sound great there and and the vocals, and I'd
send them back to him or then he'd come into

(01:20:52):
LA and that's how that's how we did it. And yeah,
I love to listen to it, you know, I'm really
thankful to you.

Speaker 2 (01:21:06):
I love as far as the sounds of the record,
I love the keys, the keys in my key, I
love the whistle.

Speaker 1 (01:21:19):
Oh yeah, there's just.

Speaker 3 (01:21:23):
The sound of the record sounds so organically you while
still sounding like a country record, but not like you're
trying to do a country record.

Speaker 2 (01:21:30):
It is. It's the perfect balance.

Speaker 8 (01:21:33):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:21:33):
I'm the whistler.

Speaker 2 (01:21:34):
No, I didn't know that. Are you a good whistler?

Speaker 5 (01:21:37):
Well, I'm on the record.

Speaker 2 (01:21:38):
Well, but you got to put yourself on the record though.
I mean it sounds great, but can are you a
good whistler? In general?

Speaker 5 (01:21:43):
I was?

Speaker 11 (01:21:44):
And then I had some dental work and the mouse's moves.

Speaker 5 (01:21:51):
I've got to train myself.

Speaker 2 (01:21:52):
That's pretty good though. That's still good.

Speaker 5 (01:21:54):
No, no, no, that's me the record. Oh no, I
can happy radio.

Speaker 11 (01:22:06):
See that's still a plus.

Speaker 5 (01:22:09):
Well yeah, but for me it was it was just a.

Speaker 11 (01:22:15):
Bigger than an a my whistling that's on the record
because I could get a little deeper. But as I said,
I had gentle work done and the so that the
flow is changed. It's mad, but that's how it is.

Speaker 3 (01:22:32):
I want to ask you one more question about your
grandparents because that resonates with me so much.

Speaker 2 (01:22:35):
Did they get to see your success?

Speaker 5 (01:22:38):
No, I was in the band then, and sort of
I was in.

Speaker 11 (01:22:48):
And we were playing in Germany. I was with Rory
by then Rory's the Hurricanes, and I was there when
my granddad went, and I was doing the gig in
Germany when my grandma went, so I couldn't come home
because everyone would have to play. But no, they didn't

(01:23:10):
see it like unfolding. I mean, they knew I played,
but they never came to a gig and we went
big time.

Speaker 5 (01:23:17):
We were local bands.

Speaker 3 (01:23:19):
What was your in your mind, your ceiling when you
were starting out and you're playing clubs and traveling around, like,
how big did you think how far did you think
you could go in music?

Speaker 11 (01:23:32):
I don't remember like thinking that. One of my mom's
best friends, Annie Maguire, she would say, you know, I'd
be hitting them in the house. I can see you
on the London Palladium one day, son, and she gave spirits,
so a lot of people in Liverpool gave your spirit.

Speaker 5 (01:23:51):
Anyway, I played.

Speaker 11 (01:23:52):
I only could take the snare because we were a
skiffle group. And Eddie Clayton, the guy next door, and
he was in the factory.

Speaker 5 (01:24:01):
I was in the factory and Roy the you know,
it was just a.

Speaker 11 (01:24:06):
Wooden box with a pole and that was the base
and I had a surle and that's how we started.
And we had no sense of timing. I remember that
once we placed some sort of dancing.

Speaker 5 (01:24:21):
Oh, Maggie, Maggie May. They are taking out the wagon
each other dancing. They're dancing because you saw it down.

Speaker 11 (01:24:31):
So I'm amazed because I have really great time, you
know time, and I'm good at that. I mean, it's
just God given gift that I can keep time.

Speaker 2 (01:24:40):
What was your job in the factory.

Speaker 11 (01:24:42):
My job was to be an apprentice engineer. At first
I worked on the railways as a delivery kid boy.
I was sixteen, and then I was on the coastal
boats like party boats, like or five hundred people would
go from Liverpool to Wales and all they did was

(01:25:04):
drink all the way and drink all the way back.
And I lasted five weeks on the railway, five weeks
on the boats, and then my mom I, you know, oh,
I've been fired, and by Monday she dub me in
a new job and she got me this job in
the factory. But while in that factory, that's when it

(01:25:25):
came I want to play.

Speaker 5 (01:25:26):
I want to play.

Speaker 11 (01:25:28):
And then I joined this other group, Rory Storm and
the Hurricanes, and we got this three month gig in
a holiday camp in England. So I decided I'm leaving
the factory. I was just twenty ish and all of
my family came to our house to tell me it's

(01:25:51):
all right as a hobby son. But they wanted me
to keep that job, you know, and I said, no, no,
I'm going, And you know that's why I changed my name.

Speaker 5 (01:26:01):
Also, we went to this gig three months. We were
going to be there in the Rock and Calypso ballroom.

Speaker 11 (01:26:08):
And h I changed my name fully to Ringo then,
because in Liverpool, if you do something, you know, if
you're limping, that you'd probably be called limpy. But I
I started wearing rings that sort of a take on
my mom.

Speaker 5 (01:26:26):
She loved flashy stuff.

Speaker 11 (01:26:29):
And so some people were starting to say, hey rings,
what's going on?

Speaker 5 (01:26:34):
You know, like gang members, we would be hey rings.

Speaker 11 (01:26:38):
And and we got to Buttland's holiday camp and we
all changed our name. Of the guitars called himself Tyle Brian.
Johnny guitar was great and.

Speaker 2 (01:26:52):
The name was Johnny Guitar. His name I assume he
played guitar.

Speaker 11 (01:26:55):
Called him Johnny Guitar because he changed his name of that.
Really his name was Johnny, but it's you know, it
was another name, family name. And uh, I put like
Ringo Stocky. I thought that Stocky doesn't look you know,
didn't look right, so I put Ringo star.

Speaker 2 (01:27:16):
Did you two rs the first time?

Speaker 5 (01:27:18):
Yeah?

Speaker 11 (01:27:18):
Two rs to make it star? And uh and it's
been that ever since. Off of the family who called
me dad or granddad.

Speaker 2 (01:27:28):
I've got two final questions for you.

Speaker 3 (01:27:30):
Yeah, when you made the record and it was complete
and you're able to hear it all back, did you
like and do you like to listen to your own projects?
And what did you think about this one when it
was all the way done? Your own thoughts of your own.

Speaker 11 (01:27:42):
Project when it was finished. Yeah, I thought it was great. No,
I really loved it myself, and it was very to me.

Speaker 5 (01:27:50):
I like to be. The vocal was great, as I said,
it was it.

Speaker 11 (01:27:55):
They were all in my key and it's like in
away though you know, we did never live together.

Speaker 5 (01:28:03):
It was put together by a man who knew me.

Speaker 11 (01:28:07):
And and I'm tired of thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:28:14):
My final question something again we alluded to earlier was
playing in the clubs and a lot of artists miss
out on that now and they kind of get famous
before they're ready.

Speaker 5 (01:28:23):
Oh yeah, I think they.

Speaker 11 (01:28:24):
You know, they have a hit in January, like those
TV shows for the singing the singer who wins has
a number one in January, and you don't hear from
him after May.

Speaker 10 (01:28:35):
It's all over and they're not really able to they
don't know how to deal.

Speaker 3 (01:28:39):
Yeah, and they're not able to develop even as a performer,
right because they don't do the clubs.

Speaker 2 (01:28:42):
They're on clubs.

Speaker 3 (01:28:43):
They got so famous so fast, you know, the kind
of the legendary story about you guys is you'd be
in a club in Germany and play for like six
hours a night.

Speaker 5 (01:28:49):
Is that accurate to two bands?

Speaker 2 (01:28:51):
Okay?

Speaker 11 (01:28:52):
When I was there with Rory and the Beatles were there,
when we were the two bands, we're on sept for
clubs at the beginning. Then cushed me to go on
the clubs for us both on one club and we
would battle each other for the audience, you know what
I mean. It would stomp in and stuff. But at

(01:29:12):
weekends we did twelve hours between us. And you know,
I love it because we're in our book ten thousand hours,
and they actually mentioned we actually put in our ten
thousand Now.

Speaker 3 (01:29:23):
I think that's where I first knew of the story
reading that book. You'd put in that whole time play.

Speaker 11 (01:29:29):
We'd play anywhere and Saturday night in Liverpool whatever the
gig was one of the clubs that have an all
night and they were so cheap they do only ever
hire a trio. The custom less and or all of
us would go to these clubs and just play all night.
Any chance we had to play, we would play.

Speaker 2 (01:29:52):
Well.

Speaker 3 (01:29:52):
Now you can put your iPhone on a little stand
and read the lyrics you didn't have iPhones back then,
you had to remember or guests.

Speaker 11 (01:29:58):
Well, yeah, now I can't work without my little lyrics sheets.

Speaker 5 (01:30:04):
It's like, oh it is, well, I love the album.
Oh great, Well it's great being good talk, can't you?

Speaker 2 (01:30:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:30:11):
Yeah, really easy for thanks, really easy to talk to
you too.

Speaker 5 (01:30:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:30:14):
You never know whenever Ringo star is coming over? Yeah
you know, well, and did sit on that star? And
now I know they.

Speaker 5 (01:30:22):
Are more Yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:30:23):
Well maybe because I've told these same stories since I've
been here nineteen times?

Speaker 2 (01:30:29):
What story did what story of what story did you
tell here?

Speaker 5 (01:30:33):
That?

Speaker 2 (01:30:34):
Sorry?

Speaker 5 (01:30:34):
I told that story.

Speaker 2 (01:30:36):
Well, no, it's a good one.

Speaker 6 (01:30:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:30:37):
Anybody ask you about your grandparents the whole time? No,
only you, That's all I want.

Speaker 5 (01:30:41):
This has been the best.

Speaker 2 (01:30:42):
You're saying that ever? No, I mean look best ever.

Speaker 3 (01:30:47):
Don't say ever, because then I know you're lying.

Speaker 6 (01:30:49):
If you were.

Speaker 2 (01:30:50):
Safe and nearly the best, I'll take it. Ringo, It's
been a pleasure. Thank you very much. The records awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:31:02):
There you have a top ten Bobbycast of twenty twenty five.
If there's anyone you'd like us to have on an
upcoming episode of the Bobbycast, send us a DM on
Instagram at the Bobbycast and you can follow us on
TikTok at the Bobby Cast. And you know, we're all up.
We hope you guys enjoyed this. We have some really
great ones coming.

Speaker 2 (01:31:18):
Up and have a happy new year.

Speaker 8 (01:31:20):
There you go.

Speaker 2 (01:31:20):
Thank you, See you guys at twenty twenty six.

Speaker 1 (01:31:28):
Thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production.

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