#426 - Kimberly Perry on How She Decided When to Go Solo + How She Feels When People Ask Her About ‘The Band Perry’ + Adjusting to Life With a Newborn

00:00:06
Speaker 1: There are some sins of the TVP past that I don't want to pay for, but I'm happy to give some context to the roller coaster that became our career.

00:00:16
Speaker 2: Wow Episode four twenty six with Kimberly Perry from the band Perry. So, you know, I wanted to start this by going, hey, I want to know like your preferred boundaries and talking about your solo career versus the band. But also it's an interesting dynamic because the band is her family. Yeah, And like I wanted to know what she wanted because I no referenced that a lot of people will reference these really long interviews in their research, which just like we do with other people too, And so I kind of wanted to say it so they would know, because the last thing that I ever want to do with someone is make them so uncomfortable talking about something they don't want to talk about. I'll definitely go over there if I feel like it needs to be addressed, but I don't want to stay somewhere uncomfortable with So I was like, how much we're talking about the band? I think Kimberly Perry is awesome, He's great. I was trying to think about, like why I like her so much, and I think it's she just feels like she's not struggling to figure out what to say, because she's just saying how she feels. A lot of artists are a lot of people being interviewed. You're like, Okay, what would be a good answer to this. She doesn't really do that. She just says what she feels, and that feels pretty refreshing. I think that's why. And did we talk about in this her trainer that the beginning? Yeah? Yeah, so okay. So she just released a new EP called super Bloom on October twenty seventh, which is an extension of Bloom that came out in June. There's a song on there called Black Corvette, which I didn't know the story about till you hear it. It's a great story. Will you play a clip of the song? And we do talk about the band Perry, and she says couple things and I let it go by a little bit, but then I have to go back to it and you're like, what did you mean when you said this? Because my understanding is maybe she thinks everybody has this idea and feels a certain way because she's so involved. When I was just like, I don't think everybody feels this way, but I really enjoyed this talk the band Perry for example, if I Die Young, here's this one here, which was massive crossover. Then she did if I Die Young too on the super bloom YEP, which is this so check it out? All right, there you go. Kimberly Perry really enjoyed it. Episode four to twenty six. Follow her at the Kimberly Perry on Instagram and TikTok and enjoy lit Kimberly Perry. It's always weird to do a formal introduction. We've been talking for fifteen minutes. Hello, Kimbery Perry. You just were at the studio of my house, and I think what's funny is as you've arrived, you saw your trainer here.

00:03:01
Speaker 1: So I thought it was funny too. She did not think it was funny. I owe her a call. I just totally blew out workouts last week and I was like, you know, I'm just early morning.

00:03:11
Speaker 2: What a way to get caught? No, come me to do an interview. You're a good old friend, Bobby, and you run into your trainer that you've been avoiding is here with my wife. I did not know that I would have hid you, would to squeeze you in through like.

00:03:24
Speaker 3: I I thank you. I love her so much.

00:03:26
Speaker 1: But my heart immediately felt convicted and my body felt shamed.

00:03:31
Speaker 2: How has it been the last month or so for you? How holds a baby?

00:03:35
Speaker 3: So the baby is twelve weeks?

00:03:38
Speaker 2: It's well, I don't know if you posted the instagram, you know, whatever.

00:03:43
Speaker 3: The update it was just a few days after he was So.

00:03:47
Speaker 2: That that's crazy. Then that it's that long ago.

00:03:49
Speaker 3: It's amazing.

00:03:49
Speaker 1: I mean, it's been both the longest and quickest twelve weeks of my life. You know, I haven't really ever been around babies ever. I think they're so sweet and cute and cuddly, but I just had no experience. And I think Johnny and I were like, I know, our whole life is going to change. We just didn't know how. I know now I know.

00:04:06
Speaker 2: So can I ask you some questions about not selfishly?

00:04:09
Speaker 3: No?

00:04:09
Speaker 2: Please, these are all very selfish questions, because we are at the stage now where we're sort of talk about having kids. She's not pregnant, No, nobody prent article. She's not pregnant. I promise that she's not. No she's not pregnant in any way, but we definitely are having those conversations now. Yeah, the baby part, the baby baby part seems awful.

00:04:28
Speaker 1: Okay, so every I just want to be transparent. I need you know, you have people who go like the newborn phase was not my favorite.

00:04:34
Speaker 3: As a mother. I feel like, I just want to be honest.

00:04:38
Speaker 1: I love him more than anything, and I would give up any minute of sleep for him to be our baby. I'm so grateful for that. But it is a challenge. And we have had kids older, right. I always was like, it's got to be so hard to have kids in your early twenties, for sure. A lot of people are waiting longer. I think it's equally harder older because we were like so set in our adams and in our schedule. It's like I can grind all week and then sleep for hours on Saturday kind of catch up. Don't have that same option anymore, and I'm loving it. It's like a science experiment every day.

00:05:12
Speaker 2: That's so hilarious, because yeah, I bet it is.

00:05:13
Speaker 3: I mean, it's crazy. We're really figuring each other out.

00:05:16
Speaker 1: And for me the heart, I'm a communicator, so the hardest thing for me was like all give and no receive for the first I don't know, ten weeks, But then the last two weeks he's like smiling and he's laughing, and we're doing this thing where we can communicate this little gurgle sound, and he thinks it's hilarious that we're communicating.

00:05:33
Speaker 3: So for me, we're getting into that phase.

00:05:35
Speaker 1: Where it's like, Okay, you're giving me just a little bit of communication back, and so I'm loving that part of it, but it's a challenge.

00:05:43
Speaker 3: Definitely.

00:05:44
Speaker 2: Are you all the time exhausted?

00:05:47
Speaker 1: Yes, And so when we do that, thank god we've been able to bring in like a night nurse.

00:05:53
Speaker 2: I was going to ask if you had help, because my wife was like, we don't need help, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, I can actually help now.

00:05:57
Speaker 3: So no, dude, let me tell you.

00:05:58
Speaker 1: So the first night that we came home from the hospital, we were gonna have a night nurse, like three nights the first week, and then when we had him in the hospital, I was like, let's just cancel.

00:06:07
Speaker 3: We've got this.

00:06:10
Speaker 1: So we come home the first night and I just thought, like, you would put a baby down in a bassinette and he would sleep.

00:06:15
Speaker 2: And leave the room and leave the room.

00:06:16
Speaker 1: Yes, we got a bottle of wine, we ordered some sushi, and all of a sudden, it's like, you know, ten pm. I was like, we don't got this. And it was a really, really wild night. So I texted Am and Dean with Mama Moon. At like three o'clock in the morning. I was like, you have to have somebody here tomorrow, like I need somebody to teach me what I'm doing.

00:06:36
Speaker 3: And so we've had help.

00:06:38
Speaker 2: So it wasn't all just naturally maternal.

00:06:41
Speaker 1: No.

00:06:41
Speaker 3: I mean I think loving him is. I think like cuddling him is.

00:06:45
Speaker 2: No.

00:06:46
Speaker 1: But like understanding how sleep patterns work, I mean it is science right, Like he his naps are in a forty five minute rhythm, and then if you want him to sleep for two sets of forty five, I got to make sure that he like crosses that gap between the two. So I got a suit him he can't.

00:07:02
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So are you emotional? Are you intellectually tired as well? Because you're learning all of this stuff as well as emotionally and physically, all three hitting you at the same time.

00:07:14
Speaker 1: I think for me it's more physical. I don't feel emotionally tired. I do. It's it's definitely physical. Intellectually, I love to Google, so like I'm in the middle of the night, I was saying right before we got started, I'm doing the nine pm to two am shift right now, So from about like midnight to two am, I'm just like learning on Google and asking every question that can pop in my mind. I thrive on information, So that's been really cool. It's just the physical part of it. It's just unlike anything I've experienced so far.

00:07:43
Speaker 2: Meaning afterward you're just broken down your body or physical being awake.

00:07:47
Speaker 3: All the time, being awake all the time.

00:07:49
Speaker 2: By the way, this could not even be recorded. I'm asking selfishly, this is not I Yeah.

00:07:53
Speaker 1: I think it's a great conversation to have, especially for the line of work that that we're all in, right, Like we grind so many hours of the day.

00:07:59
Speaker 3: It's just a different kind of grind.

00:08:02
Speaker 1: I had just never really experienced like sleep deprivation in the same way, and so I'm an incredibly patient person.

00:08:10
Speaker 3: And then there are these.

00:08:10
Speaker 1: Moments on my husband it just has to go like, hey, this is you tapping out for a minute, right, And I'm like, you got to take him for the next couple of hours. We definitely had great teamwork, but the sleep deprivation I just I just.

00:08:22
Speaker 3: Wasn't prepped for at all.

00:08:23
Speaker 2: What was being pregnant like.

00:08:25
Speaker 3: I enjoyed it. I mean I wasn't like one of those women that was like, I love being pregnant. I can't wait to do it again.

00:08:31
Speaker 1: But it was so rewarding for me for a few reasons, because I think body consciousness in my career has always been something that was like, Okay, unless you are one hundred and twenty pounds, like you're not going to win this award, or you cannot put out a single if you're ten pounds overweight into a shoot. For like, that was so in my head that the success of music was directly proportionate to what the scale said for me. And I think that it was an interesting day to grow up an artistry too, because in one hand, on one hand, like social media and take everything that is so raw and let's see all behind the scenes of everything. Has been a benefit to not have to really like have everything hinge on perfection. I think it's it's better that we know our artists behind the scenes these days. But for me, growing up in the first half of our career, it felt very much like perfection. I remember having a somebody at our label called me one time the first time I showed up at like a radio show early in the morning. You guys can appreciate at like five am. I was like, I just can't do makeup this morning, you know, And then I got a call about it. It's like, don't ever show up. So for me, I think being pregnant was getting to be perfectly imperfect, if that makes sense, And it was sort of like just embracing this season of womanhood versus I don't know, just something that I had not gotten to embrace before, and that was incredibly special for me.

00:09:55
Speaker 2: So you kind of like kind of like being pregnant.

00:09:58
Speaker 3: I liked the freedom of it.

00:09:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why I would like to get pregnant. You should do that because because there's no choice, you're gonna produce, you have a kid, and it's not like you can't because there's a pressure. I put a pressure on myself. I think we all have depending on our career. But both of us do something that's very visual as well. Yes, and with the television shows that I do, and people can laugh, but I have to stay at a certain fitness level or and it's not to the same standard as women. I'm not saying that, but I know for a fact that if I don't look a certain way there are certain shows it just won't even totally won't even have the patience to even talk to me about it totally. And so that if I were to get pregnant, which can't happen obviously, but it'd be so cool that I could be like, I can't do anything about it, guys, I'm pregnant. Yeah, so I do understand that as I joke about it, yet you have no choice but to accept it.

00:10:51
Speaker 3: Almost, Yeah, for sure. And it was just a very freeing thing for me.

00:10:55
Speaker 1: And it was also cool to like see people respond to it with hey, you're building and music at the same time, and both felt very They're both from the ground up. Again for me, if people touch you like that, you didn't know good and I'm grateful for that.

00:11:08
Speaker 3: Like there were some people that would.

00:11:09
Speaker 1: Ask permission, and if I knew them, well, I was like, yeah, sure, Like would you say you believe he's here? But I have not said nobody has put me in an awkward position thank God.

00:11:18
Speaker 2: But that's hilarious.

00:11:20
Speaker 3: I don't love it. Yeah, when people come up and just do the hey, let me thanks uncomfortable.

00:11:24
Speaker 2: See, that's also why I wish I could be pregnant, because I'd like people to do that to me, touch me, just randomly, come up, just rub, rub the belly. Do you feel like I just want to go back to one of the things you said a second ago, where you said you went to a radio show in the morning and just the unfair pressure on artists or women. Yeah, both and separately at the same time. Do you feel like your brothers would get the same call?

00:11:51
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't.

00:11:52
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a funny way to ask that, because I think like we all felt different pressures in different ways, but theirs was not as much physical. I think the nature of our band though, because we all felt like perfectionism is something that we had to produce. I do think they put a lot of pressure on themselves in the same way that you know you're talking, like we got to stay fit, we had a trainer out on the road. I think everybody liked to look good, right, Like we all enjoyed that, But I don't feel like they would have gotten the call from outside the unit.

00:12:25
Speaker 4: Really well, hank Ty, the Bobby Cast will be right back, and we're back on the Bobby Cast.

00:12:40
Speaker 2: Where do you stand on the band talking about the band how it relates to your solo career now? Because I'm sure you don't want to happen into every interview and the whole time talk about the ban. I wouldn't want talk about the band pair the whole time, But like, what is your what what would your goal be if you walked into let's say, I guess I made you want some content, they're talking for twenty minutes, They're gonna want talk about the BAM Parry because that's how all of us were introduced to you. What would be your perfect situation when you walk in time wise, percentage wise?

00:13:14
Speaker 1: I mean, I think for me, it's about the first round of conversation, right, Like I think even when I got to do your show earlier in the year, I was like, we're definitely going to talk about TVP because there are a lot of unanswered questions, not only like why did we put the band on hiatus? But let's be honest, like the last handful of years, I mean, I saw this thing on TikTok that another outlet put out and they were like.

00:13:38
Speaker 3: Country bands that killed their career, you know.

00:13:40
Speaker 1: And it was like kind of a bummer on one hand because the facts were just wrong. But I noticed that, like every other hit on that TikTok page that was like fifteen hundred views and likes, this had like one point two million.

00:13:53
Speaker 3: And I'm just like, I know that people have.

00:13:56
Speaker 1: Unanswered questions, and so I want to be patient and answer those as much as I can. I also, though, I think it's really important that everybody understands I'm a new female artist, right. I was grateful to be a part of that, but I am an artist, amoun Right. There are some sins of the TVP pass that I don't want to pay for, and I won't pay for as a solo artist. But I'm happy to give some context to the roller coaster that became our career. Some things that we could control and other things, a lot of things that we couldn't.

00:14:26
Speaker 2: And I asked that question because, for example, we'll sit here for an hour and do whatever, and a lot of people will reference this interview because we'll spend a lot of time talking about a lot of different things, and in research for interviews that you'll do with other people, people will hear this interview. Yeah, And so I asked that because you're not talking to anyone specifically, but you can literally say, you know, I don't mind a couple questions about it, but I freaking don't want to talk about it for all twenty minutes if we're doing it twenty minute. So like, really right now in this season of you, people want to know, But how much until you get annoyed?

00:14:57
Speaker 1: Probably, like, because I understand where I'm at down for sixty forty sixty towards Kimberly, forty towards TVP.

00:15:04
Speaker 3: For this first round of.

00:15:05
Speaker 2: Better than I thought it would be me putting out mesic I want like ten percent. I'll give you like two questions and then you can hit one at the end. Yeah. And I was trying to be respectful of you, even when you came in the first time and I was like, hey, I don't know if you want to talk about the vanmpairry or not, because maybe you don't.

00:15:19
Speaker 1: I think context matters, though, I think even making this project that I made had a lot to do with bridging the gap between part one of my life part one of my creative and this part two, and so to me, I'm like, never want anybody to feel like there are things that I'm not willing to talk about, and I guess for that reason again on this first round of my solo artistry, I'm down for the sixty to forty if people want together.

00:15:44
Speaker 2: What was home like as an eight year old for me?

00:15:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, as an eight year old, well, Neil would have only been one year old at that point. He was a very serious baby, so it wasn't too loud around the house. I though, as the oldest I remember, would always want to still be performing then, Like I had the performance bug really really early, and so we have these home videos of you know, my mom like rocking Neil and Reed was a little toddler, and I was just in the background when somebody present me, like present me, present me, mama.

00:16:14
Speaker 2: You know.

00:16:15
Speaker 1: So, I think I always had to be entertained, but was always wanting to entertain, Like I was not just a I could not have been an easy kid, even at eight years old.

00:16:25
Speaker 3: I was just wanting everybody to pay attention to me.

00:16:27
Speaker 2: Where do you think that came from? As in where your parents' performers, or did you have two brothers and now you needed to fight for attention because you had babies. Where do you think it came from.

00:16:35
Speaker 1: I think there's always some of that with the older kid, for sure. I think I definitely was used to all the attention. My grandparents were extremely involved in my earliest years. My aunt and uncle kind of took a village to raise me in the beginning, and so I feel like I was just used to a lot of attention. And then I think, also it's my nature, Like I do think that people have a destiny, and I think we are. I think you're born to do exactly what you're doing. I think I'm born to do exactly what I'm doing. And I think those things show themselves very early. In fact, we even talk with Win, I'm like, I just can't wait to see, like, what are his earliest signs of, like the thing that he loves, that he's naturally so gifted at.

00:17:15
Speaker 2: Gurgling to be a professional.

00:17:17
Speaker 1: Gurgl an Olympic yes, gurgler. And for me, I think those were just early signs of what I was meant to do.

00:17:26
Speaker 2: So forgive me for not knowing your parents situation were your parents there, were they alive? Yes, Okay, you said aunt uncle, because my grandma raised my mom was out for a lot of my life. I didn't know my dad, So everybody's situation is different. So I don't want to be insensitive. So you say a village, everybody lived close to each other.

00:17:40
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I grew up in Jackson, Mississippi.

00:17:43
Speaker 1: We were in Madison, Mississippi's and my grandparents actually moved from Texas to.

00:17:47
Speaker 3: Be closer to all of us.

00:17:50
Speaker 1: My dad's parents lived on the Gulf Coast, so they were just a couple hours away. But it was really the maternal side that was really involved. I think my mom and her sister want to kids to grow up together and have cousins, and we were just incredibly incredibly close.

00:18:05
Speaker 2: Were they musical at all? Your parents aunts Grandma's Like, hell.

00:18:09
Speaker 3: No, I mean everybody asked this.

00:18:11
Speaker 1: My mom was really good at piano, and I think my dad loved music, but neither one of them like to the level that we pursued. I think it was something they were really excited that I got into really young. I tested, I think when I was in fifth grade, tested in like the top percent and the music aptitude test, and that was the moment that they were like, I'm sorry, we have a musician in our house. And they really started to do everything to facilitate that for me from that age, and I think Red and Neil as they got older, that looked like a really like a blast to be able to play music.

00:18:48
Speaker 2: Do you think they would have wanted to do music if you hadn't.

00:18:52
Speaker 3: It's a great question. I think. I don't know.

00:18:55
Speaker 2: We were following in life generally. Yeah, we're following some sort of lead in someplace, their older sister who they think is cool at least at some point, right, and she's singing, and you know, would they have wanted to follow that up if you weren't, if you just were like, I hate music. You know what I'm gonna go. I'm going to go with the engineer.

00:19:11
Speaker 3: I don't know.

00:19:12
Speaker 1: I think being the oldest, I definitely think that that had a lot of influence on the path that the family took.

00:19:18
Speaker 3: I do. I think my brothers are also really gifted it so.

00:19:22
Speaker 1: Much so I'm curious to see what happens from this point. You know, Neil is an incredible photographer. He loves music, but he's kind of like an artist three sixty artists, if you will. So I'm wondering how all that will coincide. And then the same thing for Reid, Like Reid has a brain that works like a scientist. He is a food scientist. So I'm like, when can I come to your Michelin three star restaurant?

00:19:45
Speaker 3: I can't wait? And he, I would say, brought a lot of the taste and.

00:19:49
Speaker 1: The aesthetic to the band meeting, both like the sounds of the records, but also a lot of the visual.

00:19:55
Speaker 3: He was kind of like our bar when it came to that.

00:19:57
Speaker 1: So they're so gifted in a lot of similar ways to me, but also vastly different. So as their sister, I'm just curious to see, like how all of that will play out.

00:20:08
Speaker 2: For all of us when you turn twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old? Are you the musical kid in seventh eighth grade?

00:20:14
Speaker 3: Are you the the clarinet player?

00:20:16
Speaker 2: So they know you? Your classmates know you love music? Yes? And do you have class Were you homeschool or did you.

00:20:22
Speaker 3: Guys know I was. I was in Poe's school.

00:20:24
Speaker 2: Okay, so your classmates you're the music person, But what did you think was like at the ceiling for music. Because I'm from a small town in Arkansas. There was no doing this where I come from. It wasn't that I dreamed of. Because I saw it, I thought I could do it. Yeah. So but what was the ceiling in Jackson, Mississippi to you musically or was it just not music? It was just like you're doing for a fun.

00:20:42
Speaker 3: At the time.

00:20:43
Speaker 1: No, I think the ceiling was very, very tall because I was like obsessed with going to shows, even at nine years old. The first gift that I was ever given with music was tickets to the New Kids on the Black Show, and it was at this stadium, and I was the kid that thought, you know, they were going to pick out one girl in the audience to come on stage so Jordan Knight could like sing to her with his shirt blowing, you know, with the fan, and I was just I knew it was going to be me. It never dawned on me that it wouldn't be on the stage, and so he didn't choose me. So I left early, like even before Hanging Tough, I was out of there. And so I think I always had this sense of like my parents exposed me to big stages as a fan really early on, and I think while maybe not like in sixth grade when I started playing clarinet in band, I don't know at that point that the dream was as big as that new kid's on the block stage. But I also never probably questioned whether or not I could be on a big stage, if that makes sense.

00:21:42
Speaker 2: How did you have confidence? Where did that come from? Because you feel like a confident kid at least in that capacity, like who gave you?

00:21:50
Speaker 3: I just didn't know better?

00:21:51
Speaker 1: Probably, like I mean, I went, I was bullied considerably in eighth grade four I don't know it was other girls at the school, and my parents actually had to take me out halfway in the middle of my eighth grade year because these girls, like they just proper tried to jump me after class one day, and I think some guy had said that I had said something really bad about this girl that I didn't say, and I just like was very confused by the whole thing. So I would say pre eighth grade I didn't struggle with confidence at all. I think after my eighth grade year that was my first taste of like somebody doesn't like me, you know, or this whole place is kind of against me.

00:22:33
Speaker 3: In this way.

00:22:33
Speaker 1: I had never felt that before, And looking back now, I remember when they took me out for the second half of the year, like I couldn't stay awake during the day, and now I was like, oh, I was like depressed. You know, I didn't know that then, but I kind of had to regain confidence at certain pivotal moments in my life. And that was the first one in my adult life. It would have been post divorce, and so what sometimes had come naturally to me confidence hope, I had to regain those pieces at certain moments in life.

00:23:05
Speaker 2: I'm sorry that happened to you in eighth grade. That's TRUEY, that sucks. Yeah, I'm gonna sorry that happen to you. So here you are, You're I just with me. These cycles of the same things have happened over and over in my life to where you say, you know, these these girls in eighth grade affected you, and it affected you later in different ways. It I mean it has for me too, write like did it get hard again when you guys achieved a certain amount of success and you could actually start to see the feedback that wasn't good? Did it feel the same at the like almost like that, like at its core, like because sometimes people will talk bad about me, don't feel like I'm being beat up again in fifth grade. Yeah, just first, it just feels like the same. Did it feel like that at all?

00:23:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like, especially when social media really became a thing. I would always tell my brothers Neil was just like thick skin could read anything about us, positive or negative and be fine any negative comment if there were two hundred positives and one bad. I just really struggled with it, and I think it was I think it was triggering back to that earliest feeling of almost doom. Like it felt like a very like doom mom, like everything's going to fall apart, everything's going to end based on this one comment.

00:24:17
Speaker 3: I think I have a lot.

00:24:20
Speaker 1: More of a thick skin now, but only because I've arrived back to a place of confidence in the last couple of years, to be honest.

00:24:30
Speaker 3: But yeah, I would feel those ways about it.

00:24:31
Speaker 1: I was like, you just can't tell me about it, because if I know it exists, it will not get out of my head for the days.

00:24:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would. I would have a spiral at times.

00:24:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's it's hard and it again, I don't know if you fall this way, it didn't matter how many positives were there, and they were overwhelming, and.

00:24:46
Speaker 2: You would find the onegative, the one.

00:24:48
Speaker 1: And I just I couldn't and I had one. I put out this song embarrassingly god hotlia, I'm wearing the merch today. But I put it out last week and there was so many wonderful comments on my Instagram, and there was this one woman who just like it clearly was not about my version of Holly, you know, like the hatred, and I was just like, you know what, I don't even feel this bless her. I was like, what's going on in her life? She's having a bad day. And I was like, Okay, this feels nice to be at this, like very arrived moment. I don't want to welcome nobody tests me in this, like, don't fill up the comments, you know, with a million things, just all pay attention to it.

00:25:24
Speaker 3: But it felt nice to go like this just doesn't hurt. I don't feel this. This is not about me.

00:25:30
Speaker 2: And probably because you have through an education, which is hard to do. If it's hard to get an education, and perspective is only gained because you've had to go through crap to get it. Yeah, it is that you can at times filter out what matters and what doesn't, and sometimes the stuff that doesn't still gets me. Right, But for the most part, same yeah, right, Like I've focused enough on stuff that doesn't matter that now I can kind of see it coming and I can sometimes stop the spiral. Right, I still get there at times, or if I'm just in a weird place or a bad place and it hits me just right, You're right, I wish we value we. I won't insert you in me. I wish I valued because I do value them, but I wish I valued at the same level the positive things.

00:26:13
Speaker 1: It's hard for me to let that in sometimes, and I don't know why that is either.

00:26:18
Speaker 3: It's almost like.

00:26:20
Speaker 1: I never yet, I never let that impact me in the same way as negativity, and I don't love that about myself.

00:26:28
Speaker 3: I want to let it.

00:26:28
Speaker 2: We just treated it the same. Well, yeah, we're not even you and I both aren't saying here. We wish that we valued the positive comments more one to one. If you just valued it the same total, we would still come out of winner. Because I feel like, for the most part, people like me, right, some people don't. But I also don't like everybody, so I shouldn't expect everybody to like me, right exactly. Now, this is adult perspective that's kind of creeping in on the unhealthy thoughts that I've always had. But if we just valued it the same, like says some nice masa's some negative. Okay, well those two are the same. Let's just remove those all together. We're even I would just be in the positives. But I still still struggle with that sometimes too, especially when it's something that's not true. And for me, getting married has been a great help because my wife is not in this industry in any way whatsoever. Does not like it. She doesn't hate it, but she's not drawn to it at all. Actually, she's been drawn less to it being in it because she's like, oh, I don't like being public. People are mean to her for no reason, so it makes her go. It's not for me because I haven't done anything to expose myself to get the sort of criticism. Like she'll say, I'm not you. I'm not trying to create a career where you do have this happen to you. People will have opinions. I just exist in People come to me, and so it's made her not enjoy it more than she already wasn't enjoying it. Sure, but it's also been great for me because I can be with someone who is sitting in this this tornado of entertainment. If it's TV radio.

00:27:57
Speaker 3: Means whatever it is to be really grounding year I know it is for me.

00:28:01
Speaker 2: That's what I was going to lead to. So now when you go home is you are very involved, for you have been for a long time in Nashville and music as big as it gets. Can you go home and since you have someone that's not fully in it, not be in it for a bit?

00:28:20
Speaker 3: Yes.

00:28:20
Speaker 1: And when I met Johnny, we met down in Dallas during COVID because it did not exist in Texas. And so the first day that we all hung out, it was with a group of people and we all wound up at this thrift shop and it just so happened that there was a TVP shirt at the thrift shop, which I was super offended by. I was like, who's getting.

00:28:40
Speaker 3: Rid of this gold?

00:28:41
Speaker 2: That's hilarious, it's really good.

00:28:43
Speaker 3: And so he got the shirt and he had no context for anything that I had ever done in music, like if I Die young, it's not a song that was on his radar. His taste in music live very.

00:28:55
Speaker 1: Very esoteric like, and it was nice to kind of just have I don't know, the first person to accept me just like one hundred percent for me, and to know that there was so much purity in that and like he thought I was hilarious just based on my sense of humor.

00:29:11
Speaker 4: You know.

00:29:11
Speaker 1: It wasn't like I'm gonna live at your jokes so I can try to like score another day.

00:29:15
Speaker 2: You know.

00:29:15
Speaker 3: It just felt wholly accepted.

00:29:18
Speaker 1: And so he still just he understands our world more now just because he's gotten a up close, you know, view of it.

00:29:25
Speaker 3: But he doesn't care. He just doesn't care.

00:29:28
Speaker 1: And that helps me also not care about certain things that I would typically obsess over and spin out over. And it's just been nice to be like, hey, I'm building from the ground up again, you know, grateful for the TVP foundation. I would say, there aren't a million favors that are coming towards my artistry because of that, which I'm totally down for. So we're in some respects our family is grinding all over again. But it's been nice to have his stability to sort of separate from the way the grind felt the f time it was full on twenty four to seven four years, you know, it's consumed.

00:30:04
Speaker 2: Consumed, So the parallel is hilarious. So my wife I would same, right. She usually she had went back to get her graduate degree. She was living in California. She didn't listen to the show. She didn't any think about and her friend, we had a mutual friend that's from Oklahoma, where she's from. It's like, hey, you two should be you know whatever. It was also an organic meat. Everything about it was what it shouldn't have been, which was organic because now just a lot of stuff's not organic now or maybe that is organic now. But to how you know, I grew up, how we grew up, And so I would balance unhealthily balanced myself because I'd be like, how does she not know I've done this stuff? She should like be like in awe that I But then I was so happy she it was like I would never let myself be fully happy because I was. I loved it. She couldn't give a crap about it. But then I was kind of like but like no, a little bit, like gass me up a little bit because of like my achievements.

00:31:00
Speaker 3: Totally.

00:31:00
Speaker 2: I feel that. And so it's been a high wire that I've my ego has had to walk a little bit because there are time and she'll tell me, she'll go, hey, would you please let me know when something's a big deal right right? Because I won't sometimes and I'll get my feelings hurt when she doesn't acknowledge it, and she's like, I don't live in this space. And she's very mature, way more mature than I am emotionally. Yeah, she's like, I need you to let me know when something's a big deal because I don't. I don't know. And so that's what that's our communication in this world of entertainment. Love that Like if I get a show, a TV show and it's like I don't really care, not that I don't care, but it's not the big deal. I'll be like, not the big deal. But sometimes they like you need to throw me at dinner right like this is like this is made. But that is a mature part of our relationship. Now, how did that go with you? Guys? Again, she's learned a lot about it, but she didn't at first. Was there like an elementary class you had to teach him on things that are entertainment.

00:31:56
Speaker 1: For me, where it comes up or came up earlier. You know, our relationship would be like if he was always surprised if I was recognized somewhere, He's like, I'm sorry, wait, how does that person know you?

00:32:08
Speaker 3: And I was just like, you should just do a deep dive.

00:32:11
Speaker 1: You know, like I, I'm not really a person that ever felt like a star or like a celebrity. Really, we were so inside our bubble of just grinding that I don't know that there were many times that we just sort of sat and enjoyed that side of it.

00:32:29
Speaker 2: Do you regret not enjoying that side of it? Or do you think that actually allowed you to succeed more because you didn't.

00:32:36
Speaker 1: Yes, and no, I wish that I had felt the fruit of the labor a little bit better, Like I think that would have felt nice. I do think it helped us grind, But I also think it made us not compromise in certain moments that we should have to keep our career trajectory a little more stable. Like I feel like if I understand stood from the outside looking in or looking at us, how much there were parts of CVP that were so revered despite what was happening like behind the Curtain, which was really complex at that time professionally with the people we were working with, I would have gone, let's protect this and figure out how to navigate what's happening the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain. Let's figure that out to really protect and guard what we have here. So for that reason, I wish I had understood it a little bit better.

00:33:32
Speaker 4: The Bobby Cast will be right back. This is the Bobby Cast.

00:33:45
Speaker 2: Want to jump way ahead, but I do want to come back, and I'm going to plead ignorance to a couple of things a second, But I do want to talk about now because it was it Did you give it a certain amount of time or was it just a feeling where it's like, I'm going, I'm giving it a run again and by myself, and I know what's going to happen when I go back. Everybody's gonna want to be like, oh, I love you, or why are you back? Or I didn't love you, you know, because it's not like you're just a new artist. You're a new artist. You're a new artist that people already have some sort of relationship with. Right, So was it strategic to come back after a certain amount of time or was it just a feeling inside and you're like, let's just go.

00:34:21
Speaker 1: I think it was a feeling that I had more to say, you know, it was really it's a difficult path to feel like irrelevant and then you're irrelevant And that's not even the ego side of it, Like, that's the artistic side of it. For me, for my songs to be heard and be being sung and irrelevant and then to not have the art respected in that way or even heard right even given the shot, that was what really drove me to go, like, no, I'm not trying to book a year of TVP shows at this amount and just fade off into the sunset, like I want to be part of the future, not just the past. And I understood what that meant, but like start from the bottom again, and there's a grind that comes with that. But for me, it was about the relevance of the songs and the art being modern and being future oriented and not just past oriented.

00:35:12
Speaker 2: Did you have a certain piece of creative content that could be a song, that could be a poem or whatever that made you go, oh god, I don't want to just be that person that everybody knows me for like I want to be my own. Was it based on anything that was kind of a trigger point for you or did you just always know when you were just kind of at one point, I'm gonna get back in.

00:35:32
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time during COVID writing songs by myself, with my acoustic guitar and by nature. I'm a folk writer, like If I Die Young is a folk song, right. Obviously a country has its American roots music, there's folk, we got rock and roll.

00:35:48
Speaker 3: There's a lot that goes into the body of country music.

00:35:51
Speaker 1: And so I've always felt like my songwriting fit best in this genre. But during COVID, I had not reconnected with just myself as a songwriter without anybody else in the room in a while.

00:36:01
Speaker 2: Why did you do that, though? Why did you reconnect? Like what led tod that, what triggered that to go? I need to reconnect with myself.

00:36:07
Speaker 3: Just the stillness of COVID, like the stillness of twenty twenty.

00:36:10
Speaker 1: And we had come back home from the West Coast because read Me and I lived out there for several years and came back to our farm in East Tennessee, and it was just like, I have nothing to do every day but write songs during the day and drink margarite.

00:36:23
Speaker 3: Isn't watch The Bachelor at night like that with my COVID.

00:36:27
Speaker 1: And I was also in a really kind of lonely place there, like I had not met my husband yet and really wanted love and my own family.

00:36:35
Speaker 3: I wanted that to develop in my life.

00:36:37
Speaker 1: And so that body of work and those songs that I wrote, I would never release now because it doesn't feel like where my spirit is I'm in a much happier and healthier place. But then that's some bolt of writing in that way, and the transparency of the lyrics that I was like, whoa, I've arrived at this new place of just song craft for me myself and I that inspired me to like, let's get back home, let's get back to Nashville, let's get back to country music, and let's see if I can bring what I love about this vulnerable writing forward with me and maybe that's the future of my voice.

00:37:12
Speaker 2: Did you have to build the confidence back up?

00:37:15
Speaker 3: I had to build confidence back up on the heels of a divorce.

00:37:18
Speaker 1: I went through a divorce personally, personally, Yeah, hope, was always super easy for me to find.

00:37:23
Speaker 3: I didn't like lose it that much.

00:37:26
Speaker 1: But coming back and getting back on my feet after that and everything that that just does to your self confidence.

00:37:32
Speaker 3: It doesn't to anybody who's walked through it. You know that took a minute to rebuild.

00:37:37
Speaker 2: What do you mean, I've been through a divorce. Hopefully I didn't get back to I was forty, So yeah, I waited a long time, never thought I was gonna get married. Yeah. I never really wanted to get married until I met my wife. Yeah, and so I'm gonna again. I'm asking these questions not because I want anyone to be like, Oh, look at the I'm generally curious, and I feel like you and I can talk openly and for sure what happens? What do you you just do you feel like you didn't?

00:37:58
Speaker 1: I think the exposure feels right because you just, whether it's to their friends or their family or the public at large, like you're sharing every moment with this person who knows you for better, for worse, and then all of a sudden, it's like the person you're the most terrified of because they have all the AMMO of your life. You know it wasn't even about like public exposure. It was just like, Okay, now I'm sort of in opposition to this. That felt very disorienting to me because in my family when I grew up, you know, it felt like a really safe environment and even if like you know, it all hit the fan or somebody was going through a moment, like you protect that information, You protect that person until they get on the other side of it, and all of a sudden, I was just that was just a really like a dittle crazy thing to my minds.

00:38:49
Speaker 2: You talking about that. I was with my therapist, was in therapy a couple days ago. You go to therapy at all, you have definitely, so I was. For me, it's been an adjustment being to be someone safe. Yeah, my whole life didn't have family, didn't have safety. My wife is extremely safe. Yeah, but it's so foreign that it doesn't feel safe because it's it's so new. And I was my therapist was like what he asked me, He said, where do you feel safe? Just generally, where have you ever felt safe in your life? Where do you feel safe now? Period thought about it for a long time, and I said, you know, I feel like now I don't have to worry about paying bills anymore. I feel safe there, and he was like, but what about your wife? I said, you know that that's the safest I know with my mind, that's the safest thing. But when we get in a fight, I'm still like, is she gonna leave? And his whole thing to me was, you know, you've developed differently and slower and in some ways much faster. But when you talk about safety, I can see how that would be such a difference for you, because both of us have had safety and it's been unsafe at the same different places. So it's a shock other happens, it's a.

00:40:01
Speaker 1: Shock to your system. And for me too, it was not only you know, just like the exposure of somebody who knows you and can almost like just reject everything that that was. I was like, but why what did I do wrong?

00:40:16
Speaker 2: Like?

00:40:16
Speaker 3: What was I not enough?

00:40:17
Speaker 1: It just really almost I think every other bit of criticism had come from the outside towards me at that point, you know, it's like career criticism, whatever. But that was the first time that the critique was like in my heart and I just hadn't felt that way before. And I don't know, maybe he had certain feelings of that as well in the end, but that was just it was a moment in time that I had to sort of like start to do things on purpose. Let's figure out what to put hope in and how to like muster hope on purpose.

00:40:50
Speaker 3: Let's do that with our confidence.

00:40:51
Speaker 1: Let's do the work, Let's go to therapy, Let's work ourselves from the inside out again and rebuild. And ultimately I'm grateful that it all happened because now I don't do anything on accident, Like I'm not standing on my own two feet because I've never been sort of blown by a strong winds. You know, they were just like planted here because I've done the work to know that they're firm.

00:41:13
Speaker 3: Now.

00:41:13
Speaker 2: Is there an appreciation for safety now because you had it before and then didn't have it, but now you understand how valuable it is?

00:41:22
Speaker 3: Absolutely? And I found that in my marriage as well.

00:41:26
Speaker 1: We were raised very much believing and that marriage is forever, and that when we said I do and we elope to Vegas at midnight after eight months, you know, it was like this is us deep diving forever. And I think we both approach our marriage like that every single day. And you have to write because a lot of crazy stuff has even happened the last couple of years that we've already walked through as a couple. And it's the security, though of walking through with somebody who's not just gonna like leave or it's gonna feel.

00:41:57
Speaker 3: Too much for He'll never get to that point. He has really strong emotional shoulders, you know, really yeah, and he helps me shoulder all the things and vice versa. He's had a lot of the inception of his life, had some really crazy experiences. And the first weekend we hung out, we just shared all that with each other and I was like, this is my person, this is the safe spot.

00:42:17
Speaker 2: He is one of the writers on Black Corvette. He is, Yeah, how what when?

00:42:23
Speaker 1: So we started Black Corvette actually had our honeymoon. We honeymooned in Palm Springs for a month and we did it a month.

00:42:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was really really fun.

00:42:33
Speaker 1: But we did it in like August of twenty twenty one and heat wave, like I mean, I think the heat index was like one hundred and fifteen. It was so hot the ac went out at our airbnb. It was just like amazing. We just stayed the poll all day, drank Palomas all day. It was so much fun. But we had some guitars out there, and I really wanted to tell the story of kind of like the black Corvette is our spirit animal, because when we decided to a lobe, it was a very spur of the moment. We were in LA and we wanted to drive to Vegas. But I was like, we got to put some white tests in here. If this is the right thing to do, Like if somebody will let us rent a black Corvette and drive it from LA to Vegas and we can do it today, then this is meant to be today.

00:43:15
Speaker 3: If not, we cannot go.

00:43:16
Speaker 2: Get that That's what happened.

00:43:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so like the first guy that we called my name dropped and he was a fan of the band. He's like, I trust you to take my car, and so they let us ticket on a road trip to Vegas in back.

00:43:30
Speaker 2: So you found a black Corvette we did first call.

00:43:32
Speaker 1: We made and I was like okay, and then everything like we didn't have an efficient and the Little White Wedding Chapel was closed early. They closed like eight PM. We weren't going to make it till ten. So I was like, man, I don't know I guess we just like start taking off from this corvette and the pieces will fall in place. And so I just googled like twenty four hour efficient and there was this woman who went to Vanderbilt got her divinity degree. There worked Glenn Campbell's Gennell on my mind when it was a radio single, which is like the song that we got our Grammy for for re recording, and she and her husband who looked just like Chris Christopherson showed up and married us at midnight where we were.

00:44:12
Speaker 3: At the wind We just got a hotel room.

00:44:14
Speaker 2: And the black thing blows my mind. That that you guys like if we can find and you found a black court.

00:44:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, so every time we see one now it's like pay attention. We're either on the wave or something is coming to us, like we need to pay attention.

00:44:25
Speaker 2: Do you guys own one? Not yet?

00:44:27
Speaker 3: And now we have a baby.

00:44:28
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, I guess we can use this for date night with the whole two seats, but we don't yet.

00:44:34
Speaker 2: You're only three months into having a baby, and so again your life has shifted and you've had to modify in ways that you don't even understand. You're going to always have to do it. I'm told what do I know about?

00:44:45
Speaker 3: I'm told too, I don't know yet, but I believe them.

00:44:47
Speaker 2: And what I like about having this conversation with you is how you let it. You're like, oh, I was never around babies me either, So do you guys it's only three months. It's an almost unfair question. Are you guys trying to prioritize still trying to have an identity as a couple not just a couple of parents. Oh?

00:45:06
Speaker 1: Yes, we talked a lot about that even before we got pregnant, because it was like, and I think that's also an important thing for a kid to observe, you know, as we grow in our couple. I want our kids to always see us, says yes, mom and dad. But also like, hey, look at this marriage. I want that for myself, Like I want to set a great example for what he eventually will look for in his life. And I already even now like pray, like, you know, God, let his wife, whoever she may be today, just let her have a happy morning. You know. I believe in partnership, the security of it, like we've talked about, but also like I think great, great things are born from that, and I want our kids to have every bit of confidence in his home so that he can inject that confidence into his heart and let that flow from there. So yeah, we definitely have like found the right folks to come in who are so sweet and love with as much as we do.

00:45:59
Speaker 3: For the five hours that mom and Dad made like a.

00:46:01
Speaker 2: Night, was it hard on the first time?

00:46:04
Speaker 1: It was, although the night nurse was the first and we were so sleep deprived. I was like, thank you, thank you, and he was crying. I was like, I'm so sorry to hand him to you like this, but thank you for being here. So it just felt like a blessing. I think we would get a little bit of sleep that night.

00:46:20
Speaker 2: Did you think you would cut Black Corvette when you wrote it?

00:46:23
Speaker 1: So the funny thing, I mean yes and no, Like I loved it, and then the Bloom Project and Super Bloom happened in two sessions, and so we cut Black Corvette in the first session but did not put it out until Super Bloom.

00:46:37
Speaker 3: So it's not that I didn't even love it.

00:46:39
Speaker 1: It didn't feel like it fit into the first five and I think it was just like the part of.

00:46:44
Speaker 3: The narrative was kind of like not there for me yet, but it felt like it had to be a part of this super Bloom moment.

00:46:50
Speaker 1: Like before we move on and before I tell any more of the story, whenever I'm going to say next, it had to We had to tell that part of our nror.

00:46:57
Speaker 2: We mentioned before you and I started we were recording, we were talking about Bloom the summer it came out. Super Bloom came out into of October was a couple of weeks ago, and it was five and now it's nine. It's like it's a deluxeype that it mean.

00:47:09
Speaker 1: It's basically all the kids are putting out the DELX right, it's as super deluxe.

00:47:13
Speaker 2: They can't get an more deluxe to this. But again, with your music and you returning, did you feel like, Okay, the songs they need to be good, but also the message of the story has Would you have just put out great songs that meant nothing.

00:47:30
Speaker 1: I don't think I can do it. I don't think I could even do that with TVP And that became some of the struggle, to be honest, like, I feel like in some respects our whole career hinged on.

00:47:40
Speaker 3: There's like BC and AD was that song Chainsaw.

00:47:44
Speaker 1: You know, like both with our relationships behind the scenes but also the public.

00:47:47
Speaker 3: I was just like I could not wrap my head. I love the writers.

00:47:50
Speaker 1: I think it's a great song, I did not think it was our song, and I really really struggled with having to make that like the single that was growing our because it just didn't feel authentic to me.

00:48:03
Speaker 3: And I feel that.

00:48:03
Speaker 1: Way about my music, like I have to be able to emotionally connect with it or feel like it's something I would have said, like better dig too, not an authentic part of my story. At that time, I was being a storyteller, but it was a story that I loved to tell. So that's kind of how I feel about my own music. I needed Bloom and Super Bloom to be probably the most highly narrative of what I will put out in my career as a solo artist. I think I put so much pressure on that was like a bar for me. I have to have lived every word in these nine songs. I think that can loose them up in the future, Like if I want to do a breakup song and I'm not actually breaking out my husband, I'm down to do that because that's a story that I and a character that I love to tell.

00:48:45
Speaker 3: But this project had to be every word a truth.

00:48:49
Speaker 2: I thought that might be the case because again, you only have a first time to have a first time, Yeah, except you get it second first time, which is even more rare. Yeah, so you kind of to be very direct and deliberate about what your narrative is.

00:49:03
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:49:04
Speaker 2: Even looking at some of the writers that you wrote with, like we're friends with Sasha, Sloan and Henry, like there, I love them. There's awesome. Now, I've never done anything creative. We hang we hang out, or Henry and I will play golf or whatever. So I don't know them in that capacity. I just know as people. I can enjoy their work if I'm just consuming it. But when you're writing with Sasha and Jimmy's been here before, I know Jimmy Robins. You know you guys. What song did you guys do together? There's one burn that's the one you guys you three wrote together. Okay, to work? What is it like to work with her? Because she like you, You kind of know what you get pretty quick, and you also will decide do I like it? Right? You two are very similar in that way.

00:49:48
Speaker 1: What what's it like to write with Sa We've written several times now. The first write was burn the House Down, and I just loved her because like, what you see is what you get, and I'm not like a highly emotional I'm highly emotional. I don't think I'm like like, for instance, on Christmas morning, I could get everything that I wanted as a kid, and I wouldn't get like over the top excited about it, you know. I was just like, cool, this was really nice. I feel like Sasha is very much wired in the same way, like our temperaments are very compatible.

00:50:22
Speaker 3: In the writing room.

00:50:24
Speaker 1: The day that we wrote burn the House Down, I'd had some stuff going down that day, and so I just kind of started the session with like, here was my morning, you know, And then I think she was like, here was my morning. And Jimmy was like, how about we say it like this, you know, to Rish and the ashes, you got to burn the house down? And it was just this perfect blend of like feeling safe in a space to be vulnerable with what was actually happening, and also her sense of melody and the way that she has her little dark tinge and the way that she likes to write things I totally resonate with. It just really felt very meant to be and it was really quick. Right, we work well together.

00:51:03
Speaker 2: I'm such a fan of her work. I like her as a person, But I can definitely separate the two, yeah, because I don't ever work with her. I'm such a fan of her, her work and her writing and her amazing And it's just like, you know what you're getting. Even musically, you just know who you're getting. You listen to a song and a half, it don't matter if it's and most of them are not up tempo, but you did you know who that is. But I feel the same way with you a bit with even with this project, and the first track on it is you Bulls Gold, which is basically tell me if I'm wrong here, referencing you guys trying something else that maybe you shouldn't have, Like when you guys are in the Vamp Perry, I.

00:51:40
Speaker 1: Wist initially trying something we shouldn't have. I'm always down for people to the.

00:51:44
Speaker 2: Word that's what that was the result got it okay, right.

00:51:48
Speaker 1: So I'm like, I'm always down for the the expiration. I'm a type of person like if I have a question I have to have an answer to it. I can't really take somebody else's word for it always. Maybe I wish I could, And I think it was incredibly important in some respects that we took the steps that we did, but I definitely thought the outcome would be different, and so for me it ended up like, oh, I was chasing this thing.

00:52:12
Speaker 2: Was because somebody told you it would be different? Did you find Fool's goal? To me is like you're chasing something because somebody says there's goldennmbdar hills and you get there. There are no hills or goal.

00:52:19
Speaker 1: I think it was more everybody saying, hey, you've been successful in this space, You're going to be successful in this space. There is a plan that has to be executed to go from this space to this space, and I don't think that we had at that time the team to really help us make that real. But I also think that by nature, I'll speak for myself, I'm more built to be a country singer songwriter than a pop artist. That's what I resonate with, That's how I communicate. But I think there was this part of me it's like, well, we can do this, we can do this. We love everything so we can do everything, like I'm a fan of if You Crossed Over accidentally with If I Die Young, Yes, And I think that getting that early taste is honestly all we wanted to do over and over again. For a lot of reasons, that path on other songs was cut short for us, and I just really wanted to get back to the full run, like let the song go to number one at country radio and then if the world wants to hear it, then let's go do that run.

00:53:22
Speaker 3: And then that's going to take us internationally.

00:53:24
Speaker 1: We love to tour over in Europe, you know, so that's for the career arc. I just wanted to keep seeing that up always starting in country music and rooted here. But I don't know, I just felt like when the business, I hate it when the business gets in the way of like the creative, you know, But that definitely in that moment got in the way of what was happening creatively, and so I guess it was like sort of found ourselves in no man's plans and that was really really like a challenge. But ultimately I'm baked as a country artist. It's what I do, it's what I love, it's what I'm good at.

00:54:00
Speaker 2: I don't even think anybody questions I don't know how you feel, because you see what remarks from everybody all the time, right yeah, anybody that I know, even not super in the business. No one has ever come to me and said, Kimber's full of craps back in country because she had to be backing country. Nobody says that. I don't feel like you have to like prove yourself as a country art. Do you feel like the country?

00:54:21
Speaker 1: No. I think it's more like I have to answer why we ever stepped forward out of that in the first place, and our intention.

00:54:29
Speaker 3: That story has gotten so I don't even know this wor over the well. I think there were a lot of.

00:54:33
Speaker 1: Voices that were like they just left country in the dust, they didn't care, and that was not that was not true. Well, like the article I was saying earlier on the TikTok, it was like they just decided to do this thing and they just had telled it out here. It's like, well, first of all, it's not what happens. I know that that's the story that got told on our behalf in a season where like, for a million reasons, we just couldn't really tell the real story of what was happening, and that sad to me because that was never our intention. So I think I feel the needs sometimes to defend why we stepped forward in the first place, but also to own that at the same time. Is like defend it and own it, you know. Yeah, And that was what fools Gold was for me. Like, let me say this, it was not everything that I was hoping it would be, but it's also nice to come back and like feel rooted again. And I think people give me the benefit of the doubt, and my intentions are pure, and I have felt the warm welcome.

00:55:35
Speaker 2: I agree with country music. I think they do, even without you around, give you the benefit of the doubt.

00:55:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that means a lot to me because that's not something that I just assume somebody should offer.

00:55:44
Speaker 2: I agree, and I don't think everybody does. I think most people do, and the people that don't probably because they have a relationship that with you or your people or And I don't know this firsthand because I don't know that I was here, but I don't I just never got round. I don't know the story. Yeah, all I know is I was I'll get that second, I have one more song. I want to ask in your project one more thing monsters, which is the parentheses wits Lala my song. I got like four more questions. But so is that a song that you'll play him? Or was it just kind of inspired by what like what tell me witsla? Why?

00:56:19
Speaker 1: So I found out I was pregnant, and for whatever reason, I was just like, I kind of have to write lyrics and melody at the same time, Like I can't just go like, oh, this is a really lovely melody.

00:56:30
Speaker 3: What's it saying to me? Like the words? I just will just jam and have my like the voice notes on my phone.

00:56:37
Speaker 1: And for whatever reason, I started to sing that thing about ain't no monsters under the bed, no history hanging over my head. It's something that I felt for myself in that moment, both from just like the entire history of my life. I feel like I was at this place. I was like, I'm not scared anymore. I'm not scared to be me. I'm not scared for people to know exactly what that is. I do feel a regained sense of confidence and maybe even a confidence I have never experienced before. And then I found out I was pregnant around the same time, and it was like, I loved the idea of getting the pieces in your life organized and cleaning out the clutter in your closet to be able to make space for like another person to come in, whether that's a relationship, whether in my story that was for our son to get to come in and go like, hey, you've got a clean slate here to make this planet anything that you want it to be. As much as I can and as much therapy as I've done, I want to give him like the opportunity for it it to not have a mountain to climb before he's even started to crawl, you know what I mean.

00:57:39
Speaker 3: So that's what monsters meant to me.

00:57:42
Speaker 1: And it also felt like this point of arrival, I felt like I was singing that to myself as well, like it's my truth and my lullaby, and I wanted to offer that to our son.

00:57:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty cool. Kind of wondered, Wow, I would record it, or if you recorded it for the reason of I'm always going to play it for him. But now that you say that, I understood that the context is great.

00:58:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like there was a moment I was like, do it is this the offering, Hey, lay your head here on my shoulder, or is it there ain't no monsters under my bed? I lay here on my pillow, Like is it the self confidence statement or is that offering?

00:58:19
Speaker 3: And it kind of feels like both.

00:58:21
Speaker 2: You know, Okay, I got like three questions left, and I'm gonna get plead ignorance. This is what I know, because I don't when you're like people hold us accountable, I don't know what you're talking about. And I just kind of nodded along, like yeah, of course, yeah, because that whatever that is, I don't know it. The only thing that I remember is and I don't know who who your management is now, but I'm at Red Light and I know you guys were there and they were like, yeah, the vampire is leaving Red Light. I was like okay, and that was it. That's all I ever knew. And then I saw on Instagram at like wait, maybe yellow black or yellow again. I don't even.

00:58:56
Speaker 3: Remember, but in the color of the moment, like the live forever moment.

00:58:59
Speaker 2: Maybe don't remember, but that's all I remember. But to me, I never felt any sort of they you're terrible, they suck. They left, But I'm not in the space that you're in. What do you think was the unfair narrative and why do you think that was it?

00:59:17
Speaker 3: Well, let me say it this way.

00:59:20
Speaker 1: I'm just con I feel like sometimes when and I feel like I see this sometimes from other artists who have stepped out of the space, you feel like you're fighting with everybody when there's a challenge going on, like behind the scenes.

00:59:33
Speaker 2: Like a record label.

00:59:34
Speaker 1: Yeah got it, okay, you feel like you're fighting a genre for your identity and like to grow and to be rooted here, but also like explore and get to expand. Now, in hindsight, I go I was only fighting like a couple of people for that identity and for that control. It was not country music. And the part of the story that's gotten very lost is that.

01:00:01
Speaker 3: We were not trying to leave the format.

01:00:02
Speaker 1: When we left our first label Home, our intention was not to just go sign above You in LA, right. We wanted to stay rooted in country, which is why we did the deal at Yung Here. And we also had a parent company, which was Innerscope in LA And that's the same situation that we had been in from the beginning. When If I die young crossed over to pop radio, and so I think all of a sudden what happened was country radio, which was so incredibly you know, you lived and died by it. At that moment, that rug got really poled out from under a feet. Like I remember going to do some radio shows promoting our next country single, a song called combat Kid that we put out at YUMNG, and I would have these pds kind of come up the heads of these stations and they would just say, thank you so much for being here, I cannot play this song because because they had been told that it was an act of aggression if they played it, and that they were not to support us anymore.

01:01:02
Speaker 2: Okay, so this is a situation where don't fill in any blanks through this situation where it's somebody or some unit is powerful force there, you're not aligned, and because you're not aligned, their alignment.

01:01:14
Speaker 1: Wins correct which makes sense to me, because you know, at that point, gatekeepers were such a such a powerful force, and that was a really heartbreaking thing, and it just kept happening. And so the head of our new label at that point they called us on like a Saturday and they just said, Hey, these waters are really turbulent, and so we don't know.

01:01:40
Speaker 3: How to protect you here and help you keep.

01:01:42
Speaker 1: Growing, keep going, I guess, and like, see if this can break over in the other side it pop And so it was really scary. And it was also like, man, this is such a bummer because I feel like we just gave all of this time to build this this foundation, and now it feels like rug has been pulled underneath our feet.

01:02:02
Speaker 3: All that to say that's nerdy music business stuff, but.

01:02:05
Speaker 2: I need that context because I don't know what you're talking about.

01:02:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so it's really it's incredibly hard sometimes to see. It's less hard now because there's so much time in the rear view, but when somebody brings the story back up, like the band that killed their own career, it's just like.

01:02:23
Speaker 3: Well, you know, there's a lot.

01:02:25
Speaker 1: That you couldn't see that we were we were dealing with and struggling through and we love country music as the band period. Was never our intention to have that in the rear view. We just wanted to continue to grow and be ourselves at home here and also as if I die young, did have it expand as large as it could in the world, right, Like that's the dream for everybody. So I think in my solo artistry, it's just important for me to be a defender when I can and fill in some of the blanks that people are curious about, and to really like protect our legacy as much as we can. I'm incredibly proud of what I balanced.

01:03:03
Speaker 2: All three of those things are what a balance. Yeah, adding to protect your legacy is quite the balance with how we started this. Like how much like if I were me, I would't wan to talk about it that much because I'd want people to be like, this is the new. But at the same time, it is very important to you, and you want to make sure that it hasn't been confused over time totally.

01:03:23
Speaker 3: And I think sometimes silence just allows things absolutely.

01:03:27
Speaker 2: For sure, Silence gets filled in and it ain't ever good for the person that's being silent.

01:03:32
Speaker 4: Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor. Welcome back to the Bobby Cast.

01:03:46
Speaker 2: I'll say this just you know, because I there's just so many parallels I feel between us and how we communicate with folks and even our careers in a way. But I will go places and I will and you may not feel as much as I do, but I'll go places and I'm like, I don't like, I don't want to go on there because everybody hates me. And my wife will go, why do you think.

01:04:09
Speaker 3: It was?

01:04:09
Speaker 2: Like, because I know I have big opinions and I know I'm probably in there all like, we hate this guy, we don't want me. She's like, you know them, No, but I know how people are. Yeah, right, And she's like, but you're basing all this off of a couple of instances. She goes, if you're just going to a random city, let's say you go to somewhere in Iowa, she goes, don't put some theater tickets on sale? Do stand up and you'll sell three thousand tickets? Do you think everybody hates you? Like no, because she goes, why would you randomly feel that walking into a room and why would you let that change how you're feeling or acting out? And she has a great point. But emotionally, you know, I'm stunted, and I don't know if you feel like you're when you first came back to Nashville, Like, I don't know people don't like me or people think the bampit. I've never once heard that about you.

01:04:55
Speaker 3: Thank you. That means a lot to me.

01:04:57
Speaker 1: I think coming back in I just didn't know how people were going to respond. I will say it has been overwhelming how warm everybody has been and honestly, how many people both champions the music of my past but also are like we have been wanting to hear the solo voice forever, and that has just been such a warm welcome both in our town in Nashville, but also in country music at large and like the fans. That's been a really really special thing, and I'm incredibly proud of it, you know, because you just don't know, You don't.

01:05:33
Speaker 3: Know how people are going to respond.

01:05:35
Speaker 1: And that's back to the thing sometimes, and I think this happens in life too, right, it's not just our business, but it's like, really only have a challenge with one or two people, and it feels bigger than that it's really not. And so that's the perspective that I have now that I wish I had had back in those days.

01:05:53
Speaker 3: Was a lot younger though, right, sometimes you only you learn.

01:05:55
Speaker 2: By living, yeah, perspective, Like we said, you don't earn it for free. That education costs me more money than sometimes paying for a freaking college education one hundred percent.

01:06:02
Speaker 1: But it's also wisdom that I love imparting to younger artists as well, because I think that there are some land mines that I can help artists navigate around at this point.

01:06:15
Speaker 2: So well, I think people are rooting for you. I know I'm rooting for you. I like you, I genuinely like to be around you. Even when we would just do show stuff, I would be like mak like we wouldn't hang out or anything, but like Kimberly is cool because I just like say this, and she'd say that, and there was just kind of an respect and understanding and we're just gonna say what we say and that's just who we are and be that mad or we're not gonna be that just that's that was just it. So I'm rooting for you like I like you and I and I just want you to know that because if I were you, i'd feel everybody hates me because I feel that way. Yeah, and you may not, but it's not That's not how it is, thank you, Not with me, not with like the normal people. I'm not normal, right, but not with like people that aren't so so so in the weeds.

01:06:57
Speaker 3: Right, no, one hundred percent.

01:06:58
Speaker 1: I think any who is also just approaching it with completely pure intentions, right, Like, just do I like this artist music?

01:07:07
Speaker 2: Yes?

01:07:07
Speaker 1: So do I like her as like a lady. That's and that feels nice and I do feel that love. And I think as time goes on, too, I think the truth always finds its way, and I think I'm really really proud of the music that the vand Perry put out, and I believe time is going to be good to the band Perry, And.

01:07:28
Speaker 2: I don't think you even again, You're so in it forced from the trees. I'm ten thousand feet up totally. I'm not searching for truths. To me, it's just good memories, that's it.

01:07:39
Speaker 3: Thank you.

01:07:40
Speaker 1: I think somebody said, yeah, we just we missed their their cheeky lyrics, and I was like.

01:07:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got more cheek coming from Yeah. Yeah, I'm super happy for you. I can't wait to see what this turns into.

01:07:53
Speaker 3: Thank you.

01:07:54
Speaker 2: And it's never nothing ever turns into anything, but it's always turning at the same time, and that that's what's exciting. So I'm rooting for you. You guys, which we mentioned earlier, Bloom turned into super Bloom, So now you really only get super Bloom. Why would you get Bloom exactly? Just stream home and then I don't know what's like next year?

01:08:12
Speaker 3: Are you touring bus Baby? I can't wait it?

01:08:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's my favorite part of all of this, honestly. And I was just I've been telling everybody like, if you put one hundred and eighty shows on the book, so I'll play one hundred and ninety, you know, like I can't wait.

01:08:26
Speaker 2: No, the mentality, it's me in trouble.

01:08:29
Speaker 3: I know, I know, I can't wait.

01:08:30
Speaker 1: But we'll bring a Johnny'll tour with me, and we'll bring baby and just take the family on the road.

01:08:35
Speaker 3: I'm really used to that.

01:08:36
Speaker 2: So good to see. Do your friends call you Kim or Kimberly or what KP KP got it? Yeah, Well when I walked in, they said please report it missus Perry. I was like, all right, my bad, stop it. It didn't happen, all right, Well, good to see you.

01:08:52
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production.