#394 - Kevin Griffin of Better Than Ezra on Writing “Stuck Like Glue” for Sugarland and Why Radio Stations Refused to Play It + Why Peyton Manning Would Bring His Colts Teammates to His Concerts + Writing His First Book After Failing The 1st Time

00:00:06
Speaker 1: Our old drummer was playing with Sugarland, Travis McNab, and I called up Travis. I was like, hey, man, give me Christian's phone number. And I called Christian. I was like, are you guys still working on your sugar Land now? He goes, yet, dude, we're recording Tuesday and we need a single, and I was like, I have your single.

00:00:21
Speaker 2: Welcome to episode three four. I like this one a lot. It's Kevin Griffin, the lead singer of Better Than Ezra. He's so much more than that now, but that's what I knew him for. That's what I fell in love with him for back in the day because it was one of my favorite bands and I used to watch a lot of their shows. But they had a massive hit with the song here Good.

00:00:42
Speaker 3: It's good.

00:00:45
Speaker 2: Loved desperately wanting Extraordinary with a jam the mom. But he's also like he had that version of his career, and then he's written a bunch of massive songs like Stuck like Glue, Sugarland. You know this is like the eleventh most downloaded country song of all time. Yeah, crazy man, they made a little bit off that, dang. He also, I don't know if he knew this, but he wrote, Howie Day Colyde, you not Clyde. I don't sing I look that good, but he wrote that too. I got it. Like he's done his thing, he wrote for other people. He's got a new book out called The Greatest Song Spark Creativity, Ignite your career, and transform your life. And it's out now. So it's not about songwriting. It's about just his story and music ish but how you can kind of incorporate that into your life. He has an audiobook but I hope you check it out. And he's doing book tour date. It's in La Chicago. He's touring with Train. He actually wrote a song for Trained. I think more than one, but that I Got You song is one he wrote. He's the Pilgrimage music and cultural festival guy. Everything's linked in the episode, but we get into all that, but really it's about better than Nazar for me, yeah, honest, And we talked about the book for sure, but it's about it's about better than Zazare you know? That's really what it's about. Kevin Griffin. He's got a new book. I hope you check it out. All the links again, just hit that little deal or tells you all that info, and let's get going. We're almost four hundred, so close, almost four hundred doing them one a week. Basically, Yeah, it's easy to get to four hundred. It's not even easy. It's easier to get four hundred if you're doing three, four or five episodes a week, if that's like your deal. But we've been doing this for thirty eight years. I just looked.

00:02:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, we started twenty seventeen in a closet.

00:02:40
Speaker 2: We started nineteen eighty six. All right, thank you, and follow Kevin at Kevin M. Griffin. Let's go. It's always weird interviewing people that one that you're a fan of and then two that you're trying to encapsulate a bit of their whole career to fifty minutes, right, So just follow me.

00:03:03
Speaker 1: I'm with you, and let's see where we go. I'm with you, pad On because it's.

00:03:07
Speaker 2: You wrote a book, and first of all, I know the struggle of writing a book, and I didn't know what I was doing. I mean, I had no idea what I was doing when I wrote my first book, Need to I, And it's kind of how I've done everything is I wasn't really scared to do it, But once I got it, I was like, I wish I'd been scared to do this because only crap.

00:03:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's a whole new kind of it's a whole new world and the discipline and what I've kind of did. I wrote. I wrote a book in two thousand and one. I finished a book and I started having it edited. It was pure fiction, and then The Hangover came out and it was so much better than my book, So I got kind of discouraged.

00:03:44
Speaker 2: Was it similar.

00:03:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was about guys and a bachelor party gone wrong, but this went in Tampa. This was in Tampa, but there's was Vegas. It was much it was and it was no Zach Allifanaka's character, no baby, no sunglasses. So I was like, damn it, and I shelved it. But what I did with that book is I kind of I have I read a lot, so I have books on my I'm just gonna I'm just going to use this shape, this form, and I kind of did it with this book too. I was like, you know, there's just just with songwriting, a lot of times you're like I love that song, I love how they build it, that construction. I'm just going to emulate that structure. And I did that writing the book. It helped me so fiction. Jake Stark not a real person, not a real person, but I mean it's he's all of us, but it's you. He can't help it.

00:04:28
Speaker 2: Be Let me walk through some stuff and you just tell me how it how what the analogy is with you, the parallel with you. Yeah, because some of it really just screamed Kevin to me.

00:04:38
Speaker 1: It does, doesn't it?

00:04:38
Speaker 2: Number one hit songwriter Jake Stark, who'd had a respectable career as a recording artist in the early nineteen nineties. Hmmm, Okay, So I mean this is right on the nose.

00:04:48
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay, purposely, purposely, okay.

00:04:50
Speaker 2: Just make sure. So let's just take that point. You kind of dive into it a little bit better than Ezra your band. Obviously that I was a massive fan of. I went to so many shows in high school and even into college because you guys were not only big nationally but from Arkansas so regionally.

00:05:08
Speaker 1: Dude, we're sec brothers. Yes, So that you're a hog, I'm a Tiger.

00:05:13
Speaker 2: I'd see in Fayetteville, I'd see it in Little.

00:05:15
Speaker 1: Rock Jr's lot. Did you ever see us in Jarr's light bulb clubs? Yes?

00:05:18
Speaker 2: Oh my, I'd see it in Shreveport. And so to me, when you guys were just the biggest, coolest thing, I was already like, I don't know, I've been a fan of them already since I was like nine.

00:05:29
Speaker 1: It's amazing.

00:05:30
Speaker 2: And when that because you didn't better than Ezra, wasn't your move to La was it?

00:05:37
Speaker 1: Well? Ezra was already you know, a band. We got together my junior year at LSU and we were playing like frat parties and all the SEC schools. And then after a year, after I graduated in nineteen ninety, we kind of took a hiatus. We were a four piece and one of the members died in the band, a good friend, and it was I was like, wow, I need a break. And I lived in Aspen for a year. I was an Aprey ski guy, no music. I was playing music, but I was playing covers. Yeahs were we took a hiatus and then I moved out to LA and I was living in West Hollywood and somebody the old bar in Baton Rouge said, Hey, would you guys want to come back and play show, and six months had gone by since you know, the death of our band member. And after six months, I was like, let's try it, and we suddenly became a three piece and but yeah, so that's so LA. And then I was like, guys, I'm living in LA. And they all moved out to LA and we were ballets and bartenders and we made that first album for five thousand dollars in an apartment on South Flora Street in West Hollywood.

00:06:39
Speaker 2: Did you guys all move back Southeast?

00:06:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we made the record, did everything ourselves, and we're like, Okay, we don't want to be another LA band. We have this great fan base and following in the Southeast, and we moved back. We moved to Baton Rouge for about six months, and then we moved to the Garden District in New Orleans. And then we were putting our albums and every record store in the Southeast and going by like you know, wums at Oxford, Mississippi, and in Tuscaloosa and Athens, Georgia, really just like hawking it. And that's when it kind of changed for us.

00:07:12
Speaker 2: Did you guys have a first single when you were or what was the first single that really wasn't a record company putting out a single.

00:07:20
Speaker 1: The first song that ever got interests other than our RAM covers was a song called CDU, and CDU back in the day stood for Chemical Dependency Unit and it was just it was this really great rock song and it was the first song, real rock song we did that didn't again, didn't sound like RAM. And that was the first song as a songwriter that people were like, hey, man, could you what was that song? Blah blah blah ced. I was like, well, that's one of ours, and that was like the aha moment. I was like, I need to write more like that. And that was a cassette. It was our first cassette, culed surprise and local, and we would go to, you know, college stations and they would play that cassette. And then in nineteen ninety one was when I wrote Good and we started playing Good and in the whole wahaw thing was supposed to be a lyric, but we played Did you ever go to W. C. Don's in Jackson, Mississippi.

00:08:08
Speaker 3: No.

00:08:09
Speaker 1: It was a double wide trailer that was a club and it was run by the There was a mental institution and some of the people who worked there or were maybe patience. They ran the door. It was a very interesting place and that was the first place we ever played good and that kind of was the DNA became the DNA for the band.

00:08:29
Speaker 2: So when you said it was supposed to be a lyric, was that just a melody place holder?

00:08:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I was. I wrote the song that morning. We had a show that night in Jackson and we showed the song to the band. It was four court. It's four chords, you know, and the idea. I was listening to a lot of Pixies at the time, and you know, and it's it's no coincidence that the Pixies their documentary is called Loud, Quiet Loud, and it's all just about hitting a distortion pedal, you know, the same chords and that's how you do the dynamics. And so I played it was like, we need to play this tonight. So the wah ah was supposed to. I didn't know what it was going to be lyric. And then people came up like, hey man, I like that want aw song and I was like, huh, And here I am.

00:09:07
Speaker 2: Thirty years later, what do you think in your mind? Waha was supposed to? You know, obviously don't know what the what was the intention of whatever that lyric was supposed to be.

00:09:17
Speaker 1: When I've had to write it, it's I write it out aha, kind of like remembering, like ah, it was good living in with you. Aha, you know, like a positive memory. Yeah, like like just kind of remembers. But you know, a lot of my songs that have done well have that because of that song, have a lot of you know, the kind of something that's not a lyric, you know. And I found early on when I've played later songs, when I've played songs that don't have lyrics, that Toddler's Like if I can play a song for a Toddler and they and they bounce their head up and down, I'm like, I'm cooking with gas. Yes, find me a Toddler.

00:09:52
Speaker 2: Play the track when you guys had Good and you that feel different than Sorry?

00:09:57
Speaker 1: We just I just touched your foot underneath the table.

00:09:59
Speaker 2: I apologies, I got news for you. That wasn't my flight. WHOA did did it feel different with Good?

00:10:07
Speaker 1: It did? Man, I did. There was just something about that song. I think most songwriters have that. That the first one that connects where you finally okay, what's my voice? Because at first I was we were are songs. The songs I was writing sounded like the Smiths and ra Em and we're a lot softer. Then I got into Huskerdo and I had a summer as a camp counselor in North Carolina, and I discovered the Replacements and it was just that hard edged rock thing, and I started writing songs like that. A song called Circle of Friends, which is on that first cassette. It was later on the Empire record soundtrack if people remember that movie, that Lived Tyler movie. But so that was the so good though, was the kind of distillation of of like what was working live and that kind of just but interesting about that song is that it was pasted. We played so many showcases, you know, in these sterile rehearsal rooms in LA and New Orleans and stuff for label heads, and we'd be flown out to New York and people listen to and they go, hmmm, I don't hear it, you know, and they would they would went and sign us. You know. Five years later, those same label heads that passed on that song were telling their new artists, you need to write a song like good and we have friends in different bands. They're like, man, you won't believe this.

00:11:22
Speaker 2: But you know, you mentioned like five times when I think of Rim. Obviously Michael Slide was a very it was just extremely dynamic anyway, but also regionally, like I think Athens, Georgia, Rim like that, that's kind of where that started for them, right.

00:11:38
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, there's such a I'm really feel fortunate and grateful that I was able to be in the band that toured that southeastern circuit of all the college towns which had all these great college bars. And it goes back to Rim and the B fifty two's and Driving and Crying and the Conelles, but even before that, it goes to Sam and Dave and the Alman brothers and Sam Cook. You know, it was this circuit of of of towns you played and you had to be you learn very very quickly if you're going to be successful and asked back, you had to entertain people. And there were bands like Ram and the Connells and a band called dash Rip Rock.

00:12:14
Speaker 2: Do you remember dash Rip Rock? Now?

00:12:16
Speaker 1: They were a cowpunk band from New Orleans that just were so great live. And I was like, that's what I got to do. I can't sit up and be cool. I've got to entertain and it has to be a hyperbole, you know, you got to put it out there. You know that, you know. And so it was a real great training ground. And there's not as many bands do that because a lot of bands, I'll work with our work with the right, with a lot of young bands, and they they're very confident, which is you got to be. But there's no replacing getting out there and grinding it, rising and grinding. That's yeah, that's there. I'm to you if there's no there's no replacing you know, those things that happen on stage that you're not ready for. The rapport you get with your band members, how to write a set list, the EBB and flow, you know, here's the hit and how do we string that together? And I was able to do that.

00:13:02
Speaker 2: What about the dynamic within the group because you took some time off and now you're back, And I guess when you took some time off you never planned to be back. It feels like when you guys split up, it wasn't we're gone forever. But it doesn't seem like there was a let's be sure to get back together.

00:13:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think we just needed time then, just to kind of process when you go through a tragedy and something draumatic like that for everybody, you know, gosh, our band. We're going to keep doing it until people are really like, man, they really need to stop.

00:13:34
Speaker 2: Did you guys decide you were going to do that though? Like all right, we're back, Like because again you can get back in and put your toe in the water and see when were you Like, we're gonna recommit. We got to move back. We're going to make this record. You guys are coming out to LA.

00:13:44
Speaker 1: I think that when we played our first show and I went from playing a telecaster and a twin reverb vamp, I went and got a Less Paul and a four by twelve cabinet with you know, twenty five what greenback senate and a JCMA one hundred Marshall head. And I was like, I've got to be the guitarist. And I was able to do it. I had to step up my game and become a better guitarist. But when people reacted, we played Murphy's Bar and Grill this this Seminal Place and Murphy's and Baton Rous rather, but every band from the nineties and eighties would play college bands and in the crowd reacted and there was so much love, and we're like, man, we got to do this as a tribute to Joel who had passed away, and so we knew that moment, you know, and then we're just being friends. You know, we needed the connection.

00:14:28
Speaker 2: Jake Stark also was twenty one years old when he was signed to his first record deal. Who had a debut album that went platinum and another that went gold. I mean, how close is that?

00:14:37
Speaker 1: Well, Jake, but Jake, I was twenty eight see see and Jake Stark was number forty seven and People's Most Beautiful, fifty most Beautiful People. I was never in People magazine.

00:14:49
Speaker 2: You weren't.

00:14:50
Speaker 1: I was never.

00:14:51
Speaker 2: I Here's what I thought when I read that, I thought, would that be great? I thought he was in People magazines fifty most Beautiful People. I never knew that about you.

00:14:59
Speaker 1: But you know that I wasn't playgirl. That playgirl in nineteen ninety six had an interview.

00:15:05
Speaker 2: It was just no, it was like, Wien are in there?

00:15:07
Speaker 3: I was not.

00:15:08
Speaker 2: It was not so That's girl, you know, sure it was.

00:15:11
Speaker 1: It was It was not Wiener. No, it was the thing like the hot bands, Hot band Alert and I was there and the Wieners.

00:15:18
Speaker 2: Did you ever open for RM? We did not, but Jake Stark did.

00:15:23
Speaker 1: Jake Stark did. Jake Stark opened for Lannel Ritchie Here's Oasis, yes, and he opened for R. E. M at Royal Albert Hall. And that's where Sir Daniel Smith Daniels did you? Did you know? I haven't listened to your audiobook? You you read your audio? Your book? Right?

00:15:37
Speaker 2: Yes? So I've got two like adult books, not pornography books, kid books, kid book yeah, no Wiener no play girls.

00:15:45
Speaker 1: Yeah you went you look, you went there. Let's just say you went for Wiers.

00:15:48
Speaker 2: I did. I did, And I was like, where is it? But I heard you did accents in yours?

00:15:52
Speaker 3: I do.

00:15:54
Speaker 1: There are different uh musicians one iss from Barbados. There's a guy named Shane Sawyer and he dogs like Sam Elliott brother. My ego was not.

00:16:08
Speaker 2: That was pretty good.

00:16:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's pretty good. See. So I do that and I had a blast doing it. I'm doing a girl named Darren Delaney from Montana. I'm doing a girl. I do girls. Yeah, no, you have to.

00:16:22
Speaker 2: It's not that it's that you know anyone that has just raised my voice.

00:16:26
Speaker 1: I just raised my voice. Now you put me on the spot. Brilliant, brilliant, Bobby. Perhaps we should get some tea late.

00:16:37
Speaker 2: That's the better I thought it would be. Yes, Yeah, Jack can raise it. If you touch my leg, it gets higher. I'm gonna let it happen. You get back to Sam Elliott Boye. Jake Stark, who his own recording career began to Falter, started writing for Garth Brooks, The Chicks and Madonna.

00:16:53
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:16:54
Speaker 2: Now this makes a lot of sense to me, not the Falter part because I didn't see that. But Mike and I talked to it before you got here about the songs that you've written in the country space. So was he do you write some big Garth Brooks hits or what Jake Stark?

00:17:10
Speaker 1: Jake did?

00:17:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, I never did. Yeah, I know you did it.

00:17:12
Speaker 1: Jake wrote some Garth Brooks songs, some Madonna's songs.

00:17:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, for in the country world here stuck like glue.

00:17:20
Speaker 1: Stuck like glue.

00:17:21
Speaker 2: Do you know the song that which has uh well, which is wah? Yeah, And I was going to get to that. There's a Toddler Toddler sound there.

00:17:29
Speaker 1: Oh, my god. Look, most songwris like, if you have an idea that a toddler laughs utter dances to, you're gonna have a hit.

00:17:35
Speaker 2: I did that song with them at a festival once and they were like, hey, come do the rap part, and I was like, uh, it was like six hours notice, maybe less than that, right, And I was like, you know, I know the song, I don't really know know the song. Yeah, And I said, I don't know that I know all the rap part, right, because most of time, when you're just singing along with it, you just kind of do it and it sounds fun and you move on. I said, but I'm gonna be critiqu this is gonna be recorded for it like it was a television asterity. Yeah, so I'm trying to remember every word everywhere of that rap part.

00:18:05
Speaker 1: And which you didn't really need to your your your freestyle probably would have been better.

00:18:09
Speaker 2: I forgot most of it once I got up there, and so that's what I did. And then I sound like I was just trying to be creole. It just wasn't good in any way whatsoever. But I remember doing that song going, I did not know this when you guys wrote that song and you wrote that rap part. Did you write it as part of the song then did it come about later?

00:18:30
Speaker 1: So the interesting thing is h and just to the rap to your point, when that rap that was like controversial, there were stations that were cutting it out, doing their own edits. And then of course you know five years later, you know you're you're hearing you know, Nelly with fgl and stuff. So it's not you know, I guess they had to break the mold. But also Jennifer was rap, was the one rapping, and she did get kind of a creole. He had to come to the a d very shaggy. So I'm the one of it.

00:19:00
Speaker 2: You call my number, I make cleo, I am here and we do it.

00:19:03
Speaker 1: One time. That was a fuge so little one time he wrote that in the same spot there, So that the way the song was written is it was twenty ten and I was writing with this guy named Shy Carter who's had a lot of hits and you may have worked with him. He's an artist as well, and we we we really didn't know what to write. And at the time, Hay Soul's sister was big for training and I'm yours. Jason Moras so I started playing this guitar part, which is the song, and two hours later we had nothing. Then we went to get some coffee, went down to Intelligencia and Silver Lake, and we came back and I started playing it again, and as Shi went, Yo, Kevin, I'm gonna go out and get some herbal inspiration. So Shy went out and got stoned, and he came back in. He's like, man, put some auto tune on my track. So I put autotune and everybody knows what autotune. As you put it was the key of g put it in and he started humming thirty seconds. If you've ever written or worked with someone who smokes a lot of weed, you have a very small window to capture the juice. And it's brother, it's amazing. It's like Heaven sent genius. But if you don't hit record, you're gonna lose it. But I hit record and he went and I was like, oh my god, and I had to record it. We looped it, and that's us doing the that's us doing that. So we we wrote a verse and a chorus, and it never happens this way in the music business. It was a Thursday. Our old drummer was playing with sugar Land Travis McNab and I called Travis. I was like, hey, man, give me Christian's phone number. And I called Christian. I was like, are you guys still working on your sugar Land al And he goes, yet, dude, we're recording Tuesday and we need a single. And I was like, I have your single and I sent him, Shy, I've got the demo version I sent Shy. We sent him like a forty five second verse chorus of the song. Sent it to them and like, we're going to record this on Tuesday, not completed though yet not completed. Yes, So they wrote the second verse God and the rap and we were off to the races.

00:20:57
Speaker 2: And what did you think of the rap when you heard it? And what'd you think of why they put it in, how they put it in.

00:21:02
Speaker 1: I totally dug it, man. You know, I always believe that, you know, those doing things that aren't expector maybe considered the norm, ultimately you know history, You're on the right side of history. And it was a thing. You know, people talked about it, and now it seems tame by comparison, right when you hear production and stuff these days.

00:21:21
Speaker 3: But it was.

00:21:22
Speaker 1: I was. Look, I was super grateful, you know, to have them cut it.

00:21:27
Speaker 3: The Bobby Cast will be right back. Wow, and we're back on the Bobby Cast.

00:21:43
Speaker 2: Why write a book and why write it with a fictional character saying nonfiction things?

00:21:47
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I started doing this. They say that, you know, nothing good happens in a bar after two am, especially new Orn Steer and MANI gras This one time though, I was, I had written in the Hermi Parade and I was having a jambalaya fn M Patio Bar uptown New One. Have you ever been there? Now? It's a crazy place. It gets going around three am. But I ran into this buddy who is an entrepreneur guy in Dallas, and he was with a group of friends. They were YPO guys, and YPO is Young Presidents Organization. It's kind of like a fraternity for for very successful men and women. And so he goes, hey, man, Malcolm Gladwell just spoke for us here in New Orleans. You want to speak for us in Dallas in three and three years? And I was three years three months and I was like, yeah, I finished my jambalaya. I forgot about it. Two months later it's like, hey, so here's the day in Dallas. I had to think of something to speak about. And around about the same time, I was just working with younger artists and getting asked like, hey, how have you stayed successful in this business that's notoriously fickle? And I was and I realized, you know, so there was that going on. But also I had to do a speech and I was and I thought of, like these things that I've had to do, like wow, there actually are tools, these practices I've kind of put into my life that have allowed me to be successful. So I kind of codified them in a speech that took off from doing ypos to Live Nation, which witch to Google, Nike, Disney, and about four years ago I was like, I want to put it into a book, but I didn't want it to be something just really kind of boring. And I've always I love, like I said earlier, I love reading, and I love stories, and I've always liked business parables, things like who moved my cheese, rich Dad, poor Dad, the Celestine Prophecy, you know, the go giver, things like that, And I was like, you know, what would excite me to write would be to write a story about a songwriter. And of course there's liberal parts of my life, but look, I've never met a twenty eight year old British billionaire Sir Daniel Smith Daniels and all the different songwriters and all the different crazy things that happened to him, you know, it ever happened to me. And that's really And I wanted it to be something that you know, so many books when I you know, like often like you'll be like growing online and it says do these five things to live to one hundred and you click on it, but then you start scrolling and after about ten minutes you're looking at the ginners. You know, it's clickbait. I like things that are actually every once in a while, though you click and it actually to do those five things. And I wanted the book to be that I wanted to people. I wanted to be short. I wanted people to read it and actually have like, oh these are the five things. I can actually put handles on those ideas and take them home with me, and.

00:24:28
Speaker 2: Targeting, like who's your target audience.

00:24:30
Speaker 1: I'm targeting people in business, people in careers, people who have been not just music, not just music. And what I found the reason The speech took off for people as they as that, oh wow, what I realized before I did that first speech and why it's kind of it continues like I was I was just in speaking to I was speaking to six hundred people for a GM conference last week in San Antonio. The week before that, I was in San Juan, Puerto Rico talking to a ship Bob, which is a bit omnifulfillment company. What I realized is that, oh, the same things I do in music to stay inspired and competitive and successful in connecting those dots from having a hit song and taking it to the right person is is the same in every business. And the things I do to stay successful in business also have helped me in my relationships with my family and my wife and stuff. And so, but I realized that people love music. It's sexy, you know that, we know being in music, there's nothing sexy at all about it, Like Jesus Christ, let's let the facade remain. And so music was like this great catalyst to get these ideas across that everybody can use. And that was really what like. And then being a songwriter, I realized, as you know, like when you have an idea to write a book, Getting yourself up every day to write those two hundred and fifty words or five hundred words and committing to it was so hard. But because I'd been a songwriter and seeing that something as silly as a song idea like want aw it was good could turn into a song, an album, hit, a life changing thing, I knew that you just got to continue. I knew this. I knew the idea for the book was good because of the speech was successful. So I just knew I needed to write it. And then then I got, you know, the developmental editor helping me and learning, you know, and and being open to like, hey, this is I'm a I'm a baby in the woods. I don't know what I'm doing. It was really cool and it's been a really great endeavor.

00:26:22
Speaker 2: Are you killing it on the speaking circuit because you're you're mentioning a lot of places and there's a big.

00:26:27
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool. Yeah, Yeah, it's been great. It's it's been like that.

00:26:33
Speaker 2: I'm doing a car. I just in a couple of months, I'm doing a car. We sorry, how you can move?

00:26:38
Speaker 1: That's fine?

00:26:39
Speaker 2: And it's a six figure speaking deal and it's just those are just normally that much. But you're listening to all these are you? Is that how you're making most of your money now? Speaking bro?

00:26:47
Speaker 1: I am a uh no, you know I do well on the speaking things. I don't have six figures, but I'm not you know, I don't have your reach and.

00:26:54
Speaker 2: Your Yeah, but you have the stop pay No no, no, that's not true at all. You have your star, but you're mentioning all these massive It's been really cool. Yeah.

00:27:04
Speaker 1: So I do about seven a year, and and it's all word of mouth. Like I'm I'm represented by William Morris and CA with two different music projects. Ezra's with William Morse, but this is fun. C AA does Ezra ray Hart the band I have with mar McGrath and Emerson Hart, and that's been turned into its own thing. But what I found is part of the speaking agency of W and Me. William Morris is Harry Walker, and I'm a speaker there with Malcolm Gladwell and all those other illuminatis. You're probably are you one of those guys? No, not in that grip, But they don't give me anything. They've got me one gig. What it's really been about is word of mouth playing shows, somebody reaching out and DM and me and stuff like that are just people who were have kind of segued into that business of booking, you know, conferences and stuff. But it's so much fun. What I do is I go that the speech is like I play, It's the story of my life and the story arc of being signed, being dropped, reinventing myself, and the songs I played the hit songs throughout zo one man show. It's a one man show, and at the end of it, we write a song together. The last thing in the book and also in the speech, is dare to be stupid and the ideas that you'll never come up with anything truly groundbreaking unless you're prepared to fall in your face. So let's be stupid together. And I use the example of like J. T. Harding, who's one of the greatest best songwriters in Nashville. He has no filter, you know. The people who come up with crazy ideas and aren't afraid of looking silly are the ones that succeed. So then we write a song together, and a week later everyone gets a fully produced demo with me and thirty people or three thousand people.

00:28:42
Speaker 2: What do you mean you write a song together. You're doing a spit. Yeah, they're just shouting things.

00:28:47
Speaker 1: So like, for example, going to San Antonio, I flew in from Salt Lake City and I had an idea for a song. I was like, okay, the desert. Let's write a song called Desert Stars. So I come up with the verse and a course, and I kind of know the verse lyrics okay, and I get up there. I'm like, hey, guys, I know it's ten am in the morning, but we're gonna write a song. Here's the idea. It's called Desert Stars. We're in the hill country or San Antonio, and here's a here's a first verse. Of course, I think it's kind of dope. Let me know what you think. And I already have a beat on my pro tools and I hit play, and the beats playing, I sing a long. I go, what do y'all think? Pretty pretty good? And somebody might say say tequila. I'm like, that's yes, dare to be stupid, and you know, we say tequila, and then we write the second verse together. And it's usually just four lines and people and everybody on their table has a sharpiees and pencils and papers, and there's always somebody without fail who comes up with this great line, you know. And then we're off to the races and someone's my secretary or a man or a woman. They write out the lyrics. Then I sing the song and then everybody gets up. I have a microphone in front of the stage. All the guys get up. I'm like, give me a I'm gonna go hey. Oh they do hazen' HOAt and I'm like, what about like desert stars? Was I like all the guys under the desert, under the desert stars. And They'll start doing louder louder, dare to be stupid louder. And then I'm like, yes, I've got you. Now give me some hazing hoes. And the girls come up, they go whoo, and then you know, and then the guys will say hey, Sanya, Rita, and then we just then I just a few days after I come back home, I put it in the song. You know, pro tools, cut and pace and they have a song. It's really fun.

00:30:23
Speaker 2: Now if one of those goes viral and then that exists, what's the split on the publish? Check this out?

00:30:28
Speaker 1: So we had a Jake Owen's hold on a YPO song I can't remember the name of it. It was me and about forty two people songwriters.

00:30:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, is that what I was listed at?

00:30:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, it really is.

00:30:40
Speaker 2: That's funny, I know, right.

00:30:41
Speaker 3: Wow, we interrupt this interview to bring you a message from our sponsor. Welcome back to the Bobby Cast.

00:30:58
Speaker 2: So the book has a lot of your successful, famous people on it that are also a standing and going, hey, this guy's good. We trust him, we would I look at it. Peyton Manning's on the car. Yeah, I mean I'm not really, I'm on this.

00:31:14
Speaker 1: Well you're no, you're You're in the biggest spot. You're in sixteen point front and everybody else.

00:31:18
Speaker 2: I knew, I knew you were going to do it. You should have made me a fake should have made me a fake version. So you do you know Peyton Manning?

00:31:27
Speaker 1: I do know Peyton?

00:31:28
Speaker 2: How do you know?

00:31:29
Speaker 1: Obviously he's New Orleans, New Orleans guys. So since you know there's three brothers, there's everybody knows Cooper now, right. Cooper was always the funniest one, and he apparently was like, it's a great athlete. But then he got this kind of stenosis of the spine that kind of messed his arm up. Cooper was a big Ezra fan and I think he turned Peyton and Eli onto the band, and man they would come to They would come to aller Tipotina shows in New Orleans, but more fun when we played Indianapolis, Peyton would come bring his whole offensive line, you know. And every time we did this time of year, will there's a football in the air, he would throw the football out in New York City at Irving Plaza. Eli would get up. There was one awesome time where Peyton and Eli got on State at Irving Closet in New York and throw the football out. And we've just been tight with those guys, you know, Like we did Red Rocks with bare naked ladies last year and Peyton got out through the ball.

00:32:22
Speaker 2: You know, it's awesome.

00:32:23
Speaker 1: There's such and they're like organic fans. They're so there's so they know all the songs, they can sing along and they're so good. But they're also you know those guys, I mean, they also will screw with you. Like last time, right before I'm fired up, it's my first time to play Red Rocks and Peyton's like, yo, Kevin, you sure you want to wear that shirt out on state giving me shit, Give me shit.

00:32:46
Speaker 2: That was nice of them to take the front page of the book though, you know it was really good. Guy doesn't have enough.

00:32:50
Speaker 1: They paid me really well, yeah, to put because he's like, listen, we need a little boost to a sagging career. Could you could he be the guy on the front you.

00:32:58
Speaker 2: Mentioned do you have allergies at all? I'm gonna take an allergy pill?

00:33:01
Speaker 1: No, do it?

00:33:02
Speaker 2: But that's what's up.

00:33:02
Speaker 1: No do it? Adderall is a slippery slope.

00:33:06
Speaker 2: You know, I have to take I have to take allergy medicine probably from now until August every day. Oh really yeah? But then I don't.

00:33:17
Speaker 1: I sometimes I'll take like a claton or something.

00:33:22
Speaker 2: They give me an EpiPen too, and it's never been so so you've got a bad It's never been. I've never had it to the point of having to use it. But for some reason, every time they're like, do you have your EpiPen just in case?

00:33:32
Speaker 1: I'm like, for what, well, are you like allergic to hornets and yellow jackets?

00:33:36
Speaker 2: Not that I know of.

00:33:37
Speaker 1: They did. We could try to. We could just do a test.

00:33:40
Speaker 2: What's that I want to do with that crap? We just get a whole bunch of hornets and yellow jacket.

00:33:43
Speaker 1: Walk there, we can find a yellow jacket's nest.

00:33:46
Speaker 2: I did that test where they put like a scratcher back with all this stuff.

00:33:49
Speaker 1: They still do that. Yeah.

00:33:50
Speaker 2: I walked out and they did like twenty seven things on me, and I walked out and they were like, okay, you're you're allergic to I don't remember I should. It's like rag times three, Chinese maple sauce, all these things. I don't even know if they're hearing sauce. And they're like, and you need an EpiPen.

00:34:06
Speaker 1: Justine party with some Chinese maple sauce at Yeah. Yeah, it was up for three days in Vegas.

00:34:11
Speaker 2: Well, pardon my my allergy pill. They're partly taking that.

00:34:14
Speaker 1: Oh good brother.

00:34:14
Speaker 2: You mentioned bear naked ladies.

00:34:15
Speaker 1: Yeah?

00:34:16
Speaker 2: Why does Ed hate me?

00:34:18
Speaker 1: Wait?

00:34:18
Speaker 2: What you know?

00:34:20
Speaker 1: I've written like all the singles on their past four or five records with with D We had the best time. Ed Robertson would love Bobby.

00:34:28
Speaker 2: Ed Robertson wouldn't acknowledge anything that I would send him on social media. I would message him. I would write in his comments everything.

00:34:35
Speaker 1: Should we just should we just text him right now.

00:34:37
Speaker 2: And I was like, because I am the biggest BNL fan.

00:34:40
Speaker 1: They are such an amazing band, and I get to write the songs with Ed that I could never write with any other artist. You know, we we we a song called duct Tape Heart, you know, writing about duct tape, our love of Dug say. But you know, we just get to you know, we get to write this. It's just we have so much fun. He's one of the smartest, most He's actually maddeningly talented. He'll kick your ass in cornhole. He's a pilot. He wrote this is interesting. This is a cool kind of peek behind the curtain. The song that's been most successful for him is the big bang Thing. And he said, I'm not going to let him repeat this because he's going to do the Bobby Casks. He's going to be myth dude, he is. He is a fan, trusts me. He doesn't know yet, but he Okay, no, he doesn't know. But he was, like, he told me about writing the song. He goes, Kevin, it's a hit song every quarter. This song is a world worldwide. You know, it's in syndication all over the world in eighty different languages. You know, and that song. It's nuts that people who make the most in the songwriting business are the television writers, television composers. I was hit this thing right before the pandemic. It was the b ANDI Songwriters Fest and kawhi, you've done done that. And I was there. I mean, Chris kus Starffin was there, was there, Willie Neilson. I had to sing wah ah, I did good a private show right in front of Chris Kustofferson and Willie Nelson. But it was all these like Miranda Lambert was there, Maren Morris. But the guy Mike O'Neil from BMI said, he said, you know, the most successful guy in this room, and I was like, no, he goes right over there. I flew. I flew over here from LA on his G five. Mike Post who wrote the theme from Taxi, Hill Street Blues, all Rockford Files to this day, he writes, you know, hits theme songs and stuff. That's where the really stupid money is. That's like the biggest BMI and ASCAT writers really every year are always going to be Trent Resner or you know, all these big television and film writers.

00:36:45
Speaker 2: Like Resnor for like the Facebook movie.

00:36:51
Speaker 1: What did I just I just saw.

00:36:54
Speaker 2: What was it?

00:36:55
Speaker 1: The Blinding Light? It was a new Sam Mendes film that they did Atticus and and Trent did.

00:37:00
Speaker 2: Were you a nine inch Nell's guy? It wasn't my thing me either. I was now that I'm past it and it's not as scary to me and as dark, and I kind of understand it for what it was now better in my rear view. Then I appreciated it then because it was too much for.

00:37:17
Speaker 1: It was too much, it was too relentless. This was interesting. So when I when they were having their biggest success, like Closer and all those songs, they lived in New Orleans. Trent lived like five blocks for me. We both lived in the Garden District and he had this converted funeral home on Magazine Street was called Hot Snake Studio that was converted into a studio used.

00:37:37
Speaker 2: To be a funeral home. Mortuary music that has.

00:37:39
Speaker 1: Been all and like I went in there one night. I kind of invited. I met this friend and we was like, let's go to Trent Rezors party?

00:37:46
Speaker 2: Was that partially for effect I did?

00:37:47
Speaker 1: It was so dark and may Marilyn Manson was there, and I was like, you know, what man to work this hard, to be this dark and scary. It just seems exhausting to me. And I'm just not that guy.

00:37:58
Speaker 2: But do you think that the whole by the funeral home for us? Dude, like you could have buy any building, right, But do you think because that was his thing or was it so much as real thing that that was his thing?

00:38:07
Speaker 1: I think he was. I think when you hear interviews, he was in a really dark place. You know, I don't think he was living the healthiest life. I'll let him elaborate on that. But I did go to his house. I went to his house. I was gonna move and I went and looked at his house when I was on the market. In the gardener John Goodman from Roseanne Fame ended up buying that house. Who's I think they repainted New Orleans guy.

00:38:31
Speaker 2: My suggests he's the part of his brand.

00:38:33
Speaker 1: He is married to Annabeth Goodman, who is a good friend and she and she owns Pippin Lane, which is the coolest little children's store. Magazine Street.

00:38:42
Speaker 2: You mentioned some of your songs a minute ago Peytonny would come out, so that same song, Yeah, I'm here. I've told the story like five times, but you'd let people come out.

00:38:53
Speaker 1: And play it. Oh yeah, yeah.

00:38:54
Speaker 2: And I was like, oh, want to come up. I was as a kid teenager. He said come up. So I got on stage and I took the guitar. I played left handed. I don't play right handed, and I don't know how to play it. And you say get off stage.

00:39:07
Speaker 1: I said, I love you, but you have to go off the stage now with love with love you scary? Was this the moment?

00:39:15
Speaker 2: I remember? It was my moment to get up with my favorite band and I was like, I know the song and I get up there handed and there was no left handed guitar. Yeah. I felt like somebody who didn't have But clearly.

00:39:27
Speaker 1: It didn't stop you. Maybe maybe that was the moment, Maybe that more public shaming was the thing that you needed every day. It was like, I'll show Kevin Griffin.

00:39:36
Speaker 2: I really was going to get is best version you ever heard?

00:39:38
Speaker 1: When your books came out and they were New York Times best sellers, like I Show Kevin Griffin The Son of a Bitch.

00:39:44
Speaker 2: So good is a big hit for you guys? How big did it get during that first single for Better than Azra? Did you get lost in it at all.

00:39:53
Speaker 1: Uh, you know what, I think if I would have gotten lost if it had happened. When I wrote it, it was five years old, like was you know, twenty two when it came out, but we had been kind of I was twenty seven, I think, maybe about to turn twenty eight. That we lied about our age. Like if you go on Facebook, it says I'm two years younger than I actually am. It says I'm fifty four, but I'm fifty six. I can say that now it sounds pathetic, but at the time I was like, I'm taking it now, leave it. Leave it. Yeah, But so you wanted to be younger. You felt like, well, it's actually comical to think. But we weren't signed. We were twenty seven and Ban's younger than this. We're getting signed. We're like, we gotta lie about our Hey, what is your age? And we said, but two years younger. It sounds silly. But now my buddies when it's my birthday and you know, I have friends from college or whatever live all over the country, maybe in Des Moines, it'll be a slow news day and it says today, you know, people born new Jimmy Carter's at October first, Kevin Griffin from Better Than Nazara fifty four years old. My friends will just text me a screenshet. They're like like, you're pathetic. I'm like, ah, fifty four years old.

00:40:54
Speaker 2: After good but good, I didn't lose it. Go after it runs its course as a single and you're going to the next What was the second single?

00:41:01
Speaker 1: In the Blood? Okay, in the Blood and it was shot by uh By Frank Cockinfell's who's done some of the most iconic covers of Rolling Stone magazine. He's a photographer first that did videos and that was his first, one of his first videos. The third single was Rosalia. This is how crazy how in the nineties how much money the labels were making. Most most videos cost about two fifty three hundred k. You know back then now you get a great video for like five K, but they were two fifty three hundred k with huge production. We shot the first video by a guy named Joseph Coltice who did a lot of nine inch nails covers. The label didn't like it, so they were like, no, we need we want another one, so we flew to La Frank. They paid for yeah, two hundred and fifty thousand, and they were just like, naw, yeah, we don't like it, but we paid for half of that. Yeah, so we were yeah, was recoupable. I mean we were naive. So we fly to La and the producer of the Rosalia the second version, version two, was like, so we want someone. Frank wants this young actress to be This was a girl named Rebecca. She was from New Zealand as a new actress. She's in a new Robert Rodriguez film called Desperado. Her name is Selma Hyak. I think you'll find it quite suitable to be Rosalia and I was like, great, so Rosalie. If you go online, Rosalia is played by Selma Hyak. But the best part about shooting the video, all the b roll with a Selma was shot Apart from us. We did our live show, but we had the rap party at the Ivy on Robertson. It's a little you know, it's a restaurant, kind of snooty, but they have amazing chop salads. So we were all there was a rap party. Everybody was drinking the Ivy gimlets, which were super strong, and at the end of the dinner's like fourteen of us. Everyone's having a great time getting their drink on. Sama goes like, does anybody, Uh yeah, does anybody want to go salsa dancing? And nobody said anything, and I was like, I do so Selmahayak and I got in her car and we went to East La and she taught me how to Susa dance and we kind of had fun and hung out for a couple of weeks and she was super cool. That's awesome. Yeah, what happened in the first video though? Oh so the first video I have no idea, and so we were five hundred and fifty thousand dollars in and the Selma Hyak video I think got played thirteen times on MTV. Well when you half a million.

00:43:31
Speaker 2: Dollars and where is the first like could you? I mean, if you had, I don't even would it have been like an archive at the label? You know?

00:43:38
Speaker 1: Maybe probably is the Joseph Colties. It was super dark.

00:43:42
Speaker 2: That would be really cool, be cool to release.

00:43:43
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, like, are like the Desperately Wanting video off of the Friction Baby album that was done by Nigel Dick who did Uh What's the Story Morning Glory and Uh Wonderwall I mean it's a really cool I mean, we did some cool videos. I mean we always aspired to be Radiohead or something like that, who always did cool videos, you know, but we weren't that lucky. Some of our videos were silly.

00:44:04
Speaker 2: When you're when good crushes and that's on pop radio. And then even Rosalie I would hear that more on rock radio or atern because it was more alt. I'd hear that alter like the Edge in Dallas. And it wasn't until probably Desperately Wanting that I feel like again I started to hear it back on the pop radio again.

00:44:25
Speaker 1: You know who was big for us was nine in nine X in Atlanta, Leslie Fram you know, she was on the morning show there. Yeah, they really broke Jimmy Jimmy Yeah, yeah, it was.

00:44:36
Speaker 2: A born Dave jim Burn. They were like morning show forever. They're back doing it now.

00:44:41
Speaker 1: They're back doing I'm thinking I'm doing it next week. Really think I'm to do eight am Desperately Wanting. You know, looking back, the first single from the Friction Baby album was King of New Orleans. In hindsight, it should have been Desperately Wanting. That was the song that reacted and I think that album, I think the Friction Baby album would have done, you know, done as many copies as deluxe, you know, but as it was, it went platinum barely. But uh yeah, it was desperately just kind of just resonated with people.

00:45:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was like that one felt to me like a fun dark if that's possible.

00:45:18
Speaker 1: You know. Da it was the nineties. In the nineties, you know, you had a lot of times I'll be playing now you know, we play, We'll do like a corporate event or now you know what. The band's been around long enough to where we will do privates and it's first somebody's fiftieth birthday party, right, and we're playing songs and it gets desperately the warning and it's like when they pumped out you guts field, you full of those pills, everybody.

00:45:43
Speaker 2: Party by it was still such a strong build up. I remember running through the wet grass fall and so yeah, it was like fun dark.

00:45:50
Speaker 1: It was fun dark. Yeah. And in the nineties though, you were it was you, it was you were encouraged. You just wrote heavy lyrics. It needed to have meat and it had to be something, and so many of those early songs for me were really. Uh, we're heavy. But some of my favorite songs, like when you pull back the layers, like some of some big pop songs, they kind of have dark lyrics.

00:46:12
Speaker 2: M yeah, uh extraordinary, A bit different though, Yes, that one felt completely completely different. I played that. I was just doing pop radio at the time, Like on the radio, I played that one that out. That was the Orange I'm just that was the closer record. Yeah, and that was what was that like? Orange? It was kind of yellow than cold severely really yeah, but it was orangeist right, show me about here?

00:46:35
Speaker 1: Okay, good Orange?

00:46:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you? But that song was was up.

00:46:38
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna make fun of your color blindness and the fact that you were left handed and I sent you back into the audience. I've got to make that up to you.

00:46:46
Speaker 2: Well you kind of did. You played our big charity I know, right? Yeah?

00:46:48
Speaker 1: Would you see you let me perform for the first time on the rhyme stage. I've never performed there before really or after? Well, you walk up, see what to do for you on stage? Do what you did for me on a stage? You know, exactly the opposite. This is gonna be some color crap. Why don't at Pilgrimage festival. You on the stage with the left handed see my wife gifts and now we're going to get you great. No, no, this is it.

00:47:07
Speaker 2: I'm not going to run a great song. No, no, no, this is about you unless you were Unless you turn me off and you just let me fake it.

00:47:17
Speaker 1: You're good.

00:47:18
Speaker 2: No, I'm okay. But there are so many people there that want to want to see you guys do that song because that is a cult that's a cult song. It's not my favorite songs from you guys, and it was never a bag song.

00:47:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, people love that song. I wish it would have been a single. I wish we'd recorded it better that That whole album was as Azer's biggest, you know album it always will be. It was recorded on a half inch analog tape, not even like professional grade, and when you when you a be it next to some other music, it's sound you can tell sonically it's not there. But I wish that song this time of year would have been a single. But this time of year, you're on stage, if you're in town.

00:47:53
Speaker 2: What I was just talk about pilrimage because we can use this also for what we always do every year with pilgrimage. We can talk about it, and I can take it and place it on the radio. Gives well, so what do we got here about? We got about seven eight minutes. So let's first of all to conclude about the book. It is not just a songwriter's book. It is a book generally about I'm not even going to say success, because my second book, Fail Until You Don't, is not about success. It's about hopefully the end product is some sort of success, but it's about what it takes and a lot of the things that you have to take in order to get there. And it feels like this book is kind of that too, where you kind of give freedom to experiment, to fall, be foolish because it takes that. It takes you trying things to be able to actually find them exactly just and trying them sometimes can result and things that are embarrassing.

00:48:45
Speaker 1: Or what I found is that is that everything I always thought the way I was in business and success and the way I wasn't my family and we're different, and I realized at some point it is all connected. And if I conduct myself the way the way I should and creatively in songwriting and business and do use those tools like listening and contrary action and checking my ego in my personal life. Everything got gets amazing and I'm so much more successful. And that's what this book is about. That is all connected and that was the big AHA moment for me.

00:49:22
Speaker 2: Okay, so everybody get the book. It's called The Greatest Song. Spark creativity, ignite your career, and transform your life. We talked about it before Kevin got here, but there it is again. Now from that we got a few minutes Pilgrimage Festival. You guys hit a home run with Zach Bryan booking.

00:49:37
Speaker 1: Dude, is that one of.

00:49:38
Speaker 2: Those where you're like, we knew he was going to be awesome, but we didn't know he was.

00:49:40
Speaker 1: Going to be this boy. We had no idea. I mean, I mean, the Zach Bryan phenomenon is gray and as a producer you're always hoping you get that booking before they get big. Look the first year Pilgrimage twenty fifteen, the third the third act on the stage on our second st age was Chris Stapleton, you know, and then fast forward six years later we're paying him a lot more money to headline. You always want to do that. Last year we had John Batisse before all the Grammy nominations, but that but Zach is a whole his whole, next level and it's a phenomenon. And when we were able to lock him down, we were very excited.

00:50:20
Speaker 2: The Lumineers, oh.

00:50:21
Speaker 1: Who are so great live, They're insane live.

00:50:26
Speaker 2: So when you booked that far out, Zach Brian feels like, because I assume you have booked this a year in advance, right, yeah close? Yeah, yeah, I mean Zach Bryan feels like a little riskier than the Lumineers because the Zach Bryan monster that it is now, although it was growing and it was eating, it wasn't as big. So I felt like that was a little bit of a gamble.

00:50:43
Speaker 1: Zach kind of happened. We're one of the Now every festival is getting them, it's getting him to headline. But US and Railbird were the first festivals were like, you know, this guy is a headline it's a headline artist. And we could already, you know, we already had a ear to the ground and we were already already starting to see the phenomenon and what he was doing on his own shows at Red Rock and stuff. But still it was a leap, but you know, we have it's a great group of people, and we had a few people like, trust me, this is a great this is a great get for this festival. It's going to be huge. And he's such a cool dude as well.

00:51:17
Speaker 2: We had a deal when I was in Austin and we had to book this show. We were doing something called a second Chance prom which back in the day was cool but now everybody's done it one hundred times. But they had We had ten thousand bucks to book an artists, right, and so we booked this this new artist who had a single, who had just come out, and we spent all ten thousand dollars on her. And she was a little centric, but I was I felt pretty good that she would at least have some success. Six months later, whenever the show happened, it was Lady Gaga. And by the time she came to play this venue that we had reserved for eight hundred people, she was so freaking big that there were more people outside trying to get into the more inside the place.

00:51:54
Speaker 1: That's amazing as lighting in a bottle. And remember that I was in this weekend. I was with my wife in Mexico City, it was her birthday. Went for the first time and we heard the first Lady Gaga single. Remember that song? You remember what it was?

00:52:09
Speaker 2: Just answer? Yeah, that was the one.

00:52:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, it's such a good song.

00:52:13
Speaker 2: I hadn't heard.

00:52:14
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god. I remember I was living in La at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. When I heard the song of the first time, I was like, this is a good song.

00:52:21
Speaker 2: Another act that you have that I love just a there are so many acts. This is like f for me, Like I love the Black Crows. Adam can play my show.

00:52:27
Speaker 1: I've never seen them live.

00:52:28
Speaker 2: They're great, They're still great, and they have so many songs, right, that's what it's about, the songs. But the Head and the Heart, like, that's where it is for me. That's what I listened to when it's like, what do you listen to for fun? The Head and the Heart.

00:52:40
Speaker 1: Head in the Heart is a band. I love that first record. You know, they've gotten better and better every album and this new album and now they're kind of writing with the writing with Justin Tranter and I think Ashley Gorley may have written one of the big songs on this new album. They're just getting smarter and better. They're selling out big replaced. They did a send Empathy to last year, sold it out. I've kind of gotten to be friends with their manager, a guy named Matt Shay who also manages Charlie Worsham. A great guy and so just kind of starting to know the dynamics of that band. I'm so fired up to have them on.

00:53:14
Speaker 2: Haley Witters, who I love, is playing the festival.

00:53:16
Speaker 1: That was one of the artists. I was like, we have to get Hailey Witterers, you know, I think she feels just kind of a country or Casey Musgraves to me. You know, authentic isn't the right word, because Casey's super authentic. She's a badass. But there's something about Haley that she's got a little bit of Casey bet her own thing too.

00:53:36
Speaker 2: This festival has really grown and I feel like now it has a cleat in the ground. Yeah, where anytime you launch any sort of festival, any sort of series of shows, it's just like you're one, it's a risk. We're gonna lose money too, you know. It's that. But I feel like now you guys have something where people expect it and they expect it to be good. Yeah, do you feel the same.

00:53:56
Speaker 1: I do feel the same.

00:53:56
Speaker 2: You know.

00:53:57
Speaker 1: It's man, everything we thought, well, isn't going to be true that more experienced people told us turned out to be true. They're like, you're gonna you're gonna lose your ass. Year one. You're gonna lose your ass. Year two, we're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're gonna do fine, and then you lose your ass. Or one guy from from uh who does acl and and Laala in Chicago, he said, he was like, what is the minimum amount of tickets? You think you'll sell them the first year and we're like twelve thousand. He said, you'll sell six thousand tickets.

00:54:25
Speaker 2: And he was right, you know.

00:54:26
Speaker 1: But we made it through, and you know, year three we had justin Timberlake and that was a big game changer. And then the next year we get rained out, you know, and then we didn't realize that when you rain out, people might love your vessel, but they're the next year they're gonna be like, I'm gonna take a break. You know. We had food fighters and the killers that year, you know, but a lot of people didn't come because they'd been told to go home. When the sky was blue. Of course an hour later it was you know, de lugeon sixty nine lightning strikes owned the property. But uh, now, though it does feel like we're kind of just hit our stride, we know we're doing We've got it so tweaked and so dialed in, you know, from just the GA experience to the VIP it's just a blast to do. And it's just turned into a thing, you know, and when I go like, man, I never knew doing this that I was going to be on a first name basis with the Mayor of Franklin and all the aldermen and having mint tea and cucumber sandwiches with aldermen and stuff. But it's really been cool. And I have to do all that stuff. It's kind of being the face of the festival, but I kind of really get into it. And it also has it also has a purpose. You know, there's we support like five or six different charities in Franklin. Fifty cents of every ticket goes to music heres Actually now it's gets and gifts, but uh yeah, so's it's cool.

00:55:43
Speaker 2: Pilgrimage Music and Cultural Festival back in Franklin, September twenty third and twenty fourth. Get your tickets at Pilgrimage Festival dot com. You got the book, You're still on the road, you're speaking, you got Pilgrimage Festival.

00:55:55
Speaker 1: I mean, you know what I'm trying to do?

00:55:57
Speaker 2: What what are you trying to do?

00:55:58
Speaker 1: Be Bobby Bemp.

00:55:59
Speaker 2: You don't want to do that.

00:56:00
Speaker 1: I want to be an older, more haggard Bobby.

00:56:01
Speaker 2: You don't want to be that.

00:56:02
Speaker 1: I want to be a more world weary, shaded Bobby Bones.

00:56:05
Speaker 2: And you're gonna let Ed know that he doesn't hate me.

00:56:08
Speaker 1: Dude's video here, This is gonna this is gonna be recorded me.

00:56:11
Speaker 2: I'm making a video for Fred. All right ready here Ed, Hello, it's Bobby Bones. You probably have no idea. I am sitting here with Kevin, longtime friends. I mean, he admires me so much, you probably he mean, it's just weird how much he admires me.

00:56:25
Speaker 1: I yes, thank Heed, listen to this man.

00:56:27
Speaker 2: And so I've been trying to get a hold of you for like basically years. I'd write comments on your Instagram, I'd send you DMS, I tweet, and I just felt very ignored. And I was doing an interview about songwriting a wildly popular podcast. It's millions. You have millions and millions a month. And I was like, why does ED hate me? And Kevin gave me five reasons why you hated me, But I just wanted to say, please, don't anymore. Would love to meet you in person. And I love bn L for life. That's what I am, all right, see, buddy, Yeah, let me know what he Let me know what he says. We're having up do go to all that stuff. The book which we talked about at the beginning. Will put in the notes to tell you M much best. We'll put in the notes to And I just admire you for dude.

00:57:03
Speaker 1: Let me let me say, and all honestly you've been You've been so kind always from the from the get go and watching your career and all the hustle you do, it's just badass man. And you're you're a homeboy. You're you're you're an Arkansas guy. I'm a Monro guy. You know we still listen to k TV Channel ten peckin Bluff, Arkansas. Did you ever do that?

00:57:25
Speaker 3: No?

00:57:25
Speaker 2: No, no, I knew it, but yes, okay, you need get my point. Yes I do say we had the same we were experiencing the same things exame. We were looking at the same star, having the same dream stars. That's right, all right there he is Kevin Graff and Kevin. Thanks, Boddy Brother, thank you. Thanks for listening to the Bobby Cast.

00:57:40
Speaker 3: Share this episode with a friend because they don't pay to advertise us.