#409 - Kix Brooks on Brooks & Dunn Playing Their Biggest Shows Ever Right Now + Why Merle Haggard Had an Issue with Them Splitting Up + Getting Discovered at the Bluebird + The Beauty of Not Getting Recognized At Their Own Shows

00:00:06
Speaker 1: I was fortunate that, you know, people believe emmy here or there, and I you know, had a couple of record deals that was on Capitol, you know, didn't pan out that him. Du Bois felt like, you know, it's a good enough singer that me and Ronnie Dunn might make some noise.

00:00:20
Speaker 2: We've been trying to get Kicks Brooks in here for a while and this is episode four oh nine, and there was no real promo except he was just on the road forever. Yeah, that's it. But he was super cool to come over because he didn't have anything to promote, so he finally just gave into our constant requests. My favorite ones are when they have nothing to promote and they just come over. I always feel like they're doing it because they feel sorry for us though, because we've been asking for like eight years. They're like, fine, I'll do it. I'll come over Brooks and done. You want to do the first five number ones? Yeah, all right, nineteen ninety one, brand New Man Lot, I've been nineteen ninety one. My next broken hearts were being on my necks broke and I don't ever play that one whenever I play, like all their hits that's a jam that one gets overlooked so much. Nineteen ninety two, Neon Moon, I've been most empriend nine Jam, nineteen ninety two, boot Scoot and Boogie. In nineteen ninety three, she used to be mine.

00:01:26
Speaker 1: I did har Breger.

00:01:30
Speaker 2: A couple quick notes here about Brooks and Done. They formed in nineteen ninety they're the best selling duo of all time, twenty number one songs. You know I love them, We all love them. About Kicks, Brooks specifically grew up in Sreeport, Louisiana. I mean he's lived everywhere. Lived obviously in Louisiana, but also in Alaska. We talk about that and Maine, his dad and how much of an influence his dad was. He had some record deals before Brooks had done. But I just really enjoyed Kicks. The reason I love Kicks. Then go, hey, Kicks, what's up? He takes it away because he does this too. Yeah, he knows what it's like to be a good guest because he likes it when he has good guests. I like it when you can get somebody on what they're passionate about. And whenever he starts talking about wine, he just like really gets into it, and I know nothing about wine, so it was like a teacher teaching like an infant, and I'm like, so you drink it? What hold?

00:02:20
Speaker 1: All?

00:02:20
Speaker 2: Right? Kicks Brooks. You can follow him at Kicksbrooks on Instagram here. He is one half of Brooks and Done Kick Kicksbrooks. We should start with what we were saying right before we started recording, where I was looking at some of you guys's crowds and Ronnie will send me a video occasionally if it's like an absurd crowd and he'll say, what you just said to me. I don't know how this is still happening thirty years later.

00:02:42
Speaker 1: So he didn't send you the one where nobody showed up.

00:02:44
Speaker 2: He doesn't, you know. He's like a gambler friend that I have who never tells me about his losses. Nobody lost ever ever. But it's like there's a popularity for you guys together now that I don't think. In my ticket buying life, i've been able to see because if you got started in ninety, right, I was ten, nineteen years old. I couldn't buy tickets then, so that I really didn't. But since i've been like an adult, uh, huh. I don't think you guys have ever been more popular in my opinion then right now? Do you feel that now?

00:03:20
Speaker 1: Certainly in terms of, you know, the tour that we've done. I mean, when in twenty ten, when we thought we were quitting, you know, we did we did kind of a last go round and we did good business then up until then, you know, short answer, it's been a long time since we blew out colosseums like this.

00:03:43
Speaker 2: It's like a passion crowd too, it is.

00:03:45
Speaker 1: It's really fun and I didn't for a while last year and then I just started looking at you know, these are not all people that were supporting us thirty years ago, you know, and I just asked, how many of you miss your first Brooks and Dune show? And it blew my mind. I started doing it every night because it looks like seventy percent of that crowd it's our first time. And that's what really makes me scratch my head and go, wow, what kind of into y'all? You know? I mean is that our reboot album? Is it just this nineties thing that people have just kind of latched onto a lot of nineties music? You know that whole formats obviously has really kind of had a resurgence as well. And for me, at the risk of even sounding like I would compare what we do to the music or the legacy. I mean when I first got into country music, William Whalen, you know, even before the Eagles, were the guys that really pulled on my strings. And I was in college, you know, and started going to Willie picnics and stuff like that, and it was just this whole It was like, you know, down country woodstock stuff going on all the time, and it was just so much fun and it was country, and it was good. Whaling and really just had this thing about him that was was really cool and yeah, and I just wanted to be a part of that. And then I started. But I was also young. I mean I was hooked on Almon Brothers and Charlie Daniels and all that. I mean, Charlie wasn't considered country back then, like Nashville country. You know, those guys were playing their guitars loud and rocking, and you know, I grew up with Hank Williams down the street. But but literally, you know, rolling Stones and all that stuff. When you started having bands, those were the songs you could play. You know, you could go turn you know, five of us playing guitars and our band were all doing that lick.

00:05:37
Speaker 2: You know, it's crazy to think. Again, you're talking about the crowds, and you're like, I don't know why. I really have spent some time thinking about this. I think it's a little bit of the reboot album. I think it's a I don't think it's as much of the nineties country comeback as maybe even if you really think, I don't, I think you guys would be here regardless. Again, I also think you're both still good. I think if you were just a not if you were still just playing because you were only successful in the nineties, some of the artists don't have it still physically, don't have the ability to You guys are also so funny on stage. I just think you still are good. And if you weren't good, I don't think that the crowds would still be as big because I've been lucky enough to watch you guys, or play alongside you guys. Or But again, I think you guys are still You're both so tall too, and that's that angers me, both of you. You're both so tall that it, guys, it's very upset and you're in cowboy boots at the same time when you're so tall and I consider myself a pretty tall guy. But nothing there. But yeah, I was thinking about that too, because you guys are selling out arenas still and it's not like, let's you mentioned the Eagles, the Eagles where it's like I went to watch the Eagles and I was like, this maybe the last time I ever get to see the Eagles. To let me go, I don't I feel like we got like six more rounds with you guys, like we see. I just don't feel like it's any of that. I just feel like it's a good show. We'd like the songs, and I think like the combs is and the cases vouching for you guys to even younger crowd. I think that probably helps too, Sure it does. That reboot album was pretty genius.

00:07:15
Speaker 1: That was a good pull and it was fun to do because we didn't I mean, for years we've just you know, you grind and you stress over songs and this and that and whatever, and it was so neat of our manager, Clarence really reached out to those people. So it wasn't like we had to get in the middle of the accordinates of basking Yeah exactly, and that you know, that was that was a real important part of it. That that really mattered. And they came back with all those acts that were like, all these guys are great, you know. And what I was really impressed with was, and I mean this in all sincerity, there was not one person that walked into that studio. Most of them we certainly never worked with before. Most of them we never met. And just out of the blue. I mean Ashley McBride literally was driving her car out. I was singing You're going to miss me to her over telephone in the car and we got a key before she got to the studio. That day she walked in, we said hey, hugged it out, went in the vocal booths and cut the song and it was just a lot of There was never any ego, There was never any even there wasn't any even any fan love or anything going on, you know. I mean, everybody was there was really nice and you know, this is really cool. You know, we're getting to do this, but everybody was real pro I mean, you just got the feeling these are young acts that really got their legs under them. They're really confident, they're not cocky, they're just we're all just kind of working here and having some fun. And it was a great experience. And with Dan Huff, it took no time to put that record together. That's the other thing. Just making the record. You're not grinding for weeks and weeks, you know, stressing over every and all.

00:09:00
Speaker 2: That was that a big part of you guys getting back together and then going on the road and like formalizing, hey, we're doing this again, that record or were you guys already working on Yeah, I mean.

00:09:10
Speaker 1: We get on one hundred and five shows with Reba.

00:09:13
Speaker 2: Before that you had was that that? But had you guys been out on your own tour like just YouTube with your own band.

00:09:20
Speaker 1: Not what you would call a tour. But really it was about probably three years. It was probably I'm guessing probably twenty thirteen when we kind of stopped. In twenty ten, we started getting some offers to you know, play I think we played you know, super Bowl in New Orleans and not super Bowl but the super Domant you know, Daytona and just some special things that came up, and you know, we just realized this we don't. We don't have a beef with each other. This is kind of fun, and we definitely still remembered how to do it. You know, we still like a us at each other and go, I don't know, man, which we have since day one because we didn't know each other then. And you know, we still stay on separate buses just to have that kind of you know, good to see you again when we hit stage that night. It really is kind of that way. It's not like we hang out all day or anything.

00:10:19
Speaker 2: You know, people feel that my radio show, and we've been friends for twenty I mean we've been together forever and twenty years that we just go home and all eat dinner together. And yeah, if we didn't have some sort of again I used a formal separation, right, we would kill each other. Yeah, we would get but I love them, yeah, and there we've been at it for twenty years, right and so but yeah, they think, oh, you must go on vacation together. No, No, if we did that, we would not be able to do what we do at the level that we do it at. And I'm sure it's like a second marriage with anybody, if you're with anybody that long, especially like you and Ronnie and you travel that much together, like you have to invest in that right to keep it healthy.

00:11:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's you know, we've been told by our you know, our biggest Merle Haggard, you know, just kept reminding us that you guys got a thing. He goes, That's what he goes. It's just a thing, and you need to respect that. You know. I've told the story before, but I mean I remember on our last run, we were in Woodstock, New York, and Merle agreed to play with us if we would play with him every night, And but he got to pick the song, so he it was never working Man Blues or Silver Winds. It was always a really obscure thing that we'd have to learn, you know. He'd make us grinds. Jumped up on the bus one day to get our song and he's sitting there, you know, having a smoke and looking out this window. We had a sold out crowd at Woodstock, and he goes, sit down. He goes, I need to talk to you. I said, okay, because what the hell are y'all doing? I said, I don't know, Marle, what the hell are we doing? I said? Look out there? He said, why in the hell, all them people come out here and see you what you quit? Merle? You know Patcha on Left Eats probably one of my favorite songs ever, you know, and it's a great video. I mean, you and Willy are like great friends. Y'all made one album together. Okay, I've been, Ronnie and I done. And I met on a Tuesday and wrote our two first hits on Thursday and Friday. We didn't even know each other. You know. We managed to.

00:12:36
Speaker 3: Grind this out for twenty freaking years and we needed a break. Here said, and you made one album with Willie? And he goes, well, we only had one hit. I said, Okay, Marle, what's our song?

00:12:53
Speaker 1: Damn it? I love it? Manny.

00:12:56
Speaker 2: I spent a lot of time in Streeport from marketsas so we go down to the boats.

00:13:00
Speaker 1: Uh huh.

00:13:00
Speaker 2: We drive down first place you could gamble, So that's where we went. And so by doing they also played a lot of ball and Report being the markets all I played baseball. Tree Reports closest Louisiana big town both the city but big town and Treport like childhood home? What's what's home as a kid?

00:13:18
Speaker 1: For you?

00:13:18
Speaker 2: What town? Treeport is literally the Streetport, Well, what school?

00:13:22
Speaker 1: I went to Riverside Elementary and literally he might have heard me tell his story. But two blocks away over on Autubun, Billy Jean Horton lived and after she was the last wife of Hank Williams. They got married in Treeport and they got married down in Baton Ridge. I think got married twice in one day, was kind of unheard of at the time. After after Hank got divorced from Audrey, so he died, and then she married Johnny Horton and their daughter, Nina Horton, was my age and we were in grade schools together at Riverside. We still stay in touch, I mean, Billy gan and she was a number I mean for a kid in grade school. When she pulled up in that white convertible Cadillac and those leopard skin pants, it's just like, wow, hello, missus Horton. But Nina hired us Billy Jane actually five bucks. You know, we got a dollar a piece. There's five of us in the band, but we like saying five bucks at the playground. That was our first gig. In their driveway and their little white house is just like we had. I mean to think Johnny Horton and Hank Williams. This is I mean, this is a little white house, you know, it's probably a three bedroom on a just a plain old, you know, suburban Shreeport Street, just like us. It seems so average, you know, but going inside and seeing those gold records and those guitars and portraits of Johnny Horton and over the fireplace and all that stuff, it was real special and real cool and it really really it set something inside of me going, that's for sure?

00:15:03
Speaker 2: Did it you being able to see those did it actually let you know that it was possible to do that.

00:15:08
Speaker 1: That's what I mean. It seemed like something that it wasn't just some pie in the sky starring the sky, you know. It was it was something that people did, you know, regular people like my dad. You know, they just lived down the street. But they were playing music. And I mean, from the time I can remember, our family sang as much as we talked. You know, you get in the car, you start singing songs. It was just a thing, so that really you know it, and we always had bands, you know, and from grade school on.

00:15:35
Speaker 2: Who buy your first guitar?

00:15:37
Speaker 1: My dad did, but my grandmother bought me a ukulele when I was like six years old, because my mom died when I was like four, so I spent a lot of time with her, and they were She was real musical, and my cousins were too. And I remember that came from Sears and Roebuck. It was nine to ninety five. I'll never forget. It's white and had red stripes on it. Really cool, and I had a songbook and I just learned to play chords and sing songs with that ukulele. I learned how that worked. But I really wasn't strong enough to play a guitar. My dad got me a still string guitar when I was ten or eleven.

00:16:10
Speaker 2: And what was my grandma raised me too for a lot of my life. What was your grandma like?

00:16:13
Speaker 1: She was salt of the earth. Both my grandparents there was There was never anything like divorce or anything like that. Was never even something to be considered, you know. They were just country people. My great grandfather had been the town doctor there in Maryon, Louisiana, which is kind of northeast Louisiana. And yeah, they they still lived in that house was a big house right in the center of town, which is kind of the hospital at one point, you know, and they were just My grandfather had the Thompson General Store just maybe one hundred yards from the house, and you know, went with them to buy stuff for it all around in Monroe or wherever, you know, the big cities. You had to get jeans and shoes, and they sold everything, food and whatever. He was also the vice president at the bank and he was the mayor. So they were you know, but they were. It was funny and in town and I think they had about six hundred people there that they had friends, they played bridge with. You know, they had a little boat. My grandfather if he was at the bank that day, everybody that came in, we're the fish bite. And when he got home and him threw that little ten boat in the back of a pickup truck, old beat up pickup truck and took off to wherever we'd heard and we fished all the time. That was just a big deal for us.

00:17:32
Speaker 2: When you get a ukulele and your kid, what do you play it publicly?

00:17:37
Speaker 1: First, For my grandparents, we just put on shows all the time. You know, that's for them for sure.

00:17:43
Speaker 2: And so when you get a guitar, you're ten eleven years old. When do you play? When do you decide to go out and play for somebody that doesn't know you super close?

00:17:55
Speaker 1: Whenever your dad, who was real proud you could do that, you know, go to you know, just cousins' houses and stuff like that, and you know, bring your guitar, you know, and he you know, play.

00:18:08
Speaker 2: What do you make you do it? Like?

00:18:09
Speaker 1: Let's think the business? Oh yeah, you know, especially those hey good looking and I'll you know, Hank and Johnny Horton songs. Just because they were down the street. I learned a lot of that kind of stuff. And Johnny Cash was a big deal for me.

00:18:22
Speaker 2: And Johnny Cash a big deal for me because again being from Arkansas, my grandma would always be like, all right, he's like you. I'm like, well, except he's not. But yes, but Johnny Cash, you know, even Conway Twitty, who you know named it for Conway, Arkansas, but he also Louisian. I mean Conway Twitty, Mississippi, you know that area. There were all those artists that my grandmother really looked up to, who I guess I thought was just they were current until I got a little bit older and realized they were just her favorites from when she was younger. Uh, what about your grandparents or your dad, Like what music did they really like that you just naturally took on.

00:18:58
Speaker 1: My dad liked he liked country, but he liked hits, you know, like I can remember and he'd stop and get a forty five and bring it home, you know, and like Harper Valley, Pta or you know something that was that was a hit like that, or you know King of the Road. You know, I can remember him bringing that home. Just as far as listening to Nashville country music, not so much. He probably gravitated to And his dad sharpened saws in a sawmill in Urine, you Louisiana, I mean, and his dad got struck by lightning fish and when he was eight years old and died. And his mother was a first grade school teacher. So he came from very humble background. But I think when he was in the Navy he really picked up on big band music. He loves Gene Crooper and stuff like that, so, you know, he had a sophisticated kind of side to him. He loved delta blues, real old school lead belly on up, you know, through old delta blues. And then whatever hits were on the radio that he'd heard about. He liked that stuff. He wasn't really a Nashville country music guy.

00:20:03
Speaker 2: Did you graduate high school in treport?

00:20:05
Speaker 1: I didn't. I went to boarding school where in Swanee here. Yeah, it was a military school when I went there for two years.

00:20:12
Speaker 2: And did you go to I don't understand? Helped me understand boarding school in general? Yeah, Were you bad kid?

00:20:17
Speaker 1: I was? You know, it was my first step mother was the one that really kind of got under my skin. We didn't get along very well, and it just caused a lot of problems, uh, in our family. And I was, you know, I wasn't necessarily a class clown with weapons, but I probably stirred up.

00:20:40
Speaker 2: I would think you would started up.

00:20:42
Speaker 1: So I mean that's why still I got in trouble all the time. But just you know, I was. I was partying at a pretty early age.

00:20:51
Speaker 2: And how do you feel about those two years? Now?

00:20:54
Speaker 1: Four years? And I wouldn't wouldn't give anything for it. It definitely made especially two years of military and that was during the Vietnam War and we kind of started a rebellion basically brought down one hundred and four years of tradition at Swanee Military Academy became a boarding school for my last two years, and it was pretty crazy that, you know, pulling all that off. It was sort of like Taps if you ever saw that movie.

00:21:22
Speaker 2: When you finished there, then what do you do?

00:21:25
Speaker 1: I went to my uncle was the dean of business at SMU, and so he encouraged me to come to SMU, and.

00:21:34
Speaker 2: I did for a year.

00:21:35
Speaker 1: My dad wouldn't buy me a Ferrari, so I couldn't really get a date at SMU. So I went back to Lisiana Tech where all my friends were and had a great, great time there.

00:21:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, did Terry Bradshaw get all be? Then? He did?

00:21:47
Speaker 1: He did? And Phil Robertson was, you know, played starting quarterback. I didn't know that, yeah, and Terry was his backup. Terry and I are still really good friends. And he said he'd have never thrown a passive. Phil hadn't gone down hunting, but he did. He quit and went duck hunting.

00:22:03
Speaker 2: Is that true?

00:22:04
Speaker 1: Absolutely the truth. And it's funny because he got approached by the pros after that because he was such a strong quarterback. And the story goes, I guess they came down from Oakland to see if he'd be interested in coming and trying out, and he said, don't you all play football at the same time. We're duck hunting at the same time. Them country boys there, He said, yeah. I said, then I'm not interested.

00:22:27
Speaker 2: You know I saw Terry at the Opry a few months ago. Yeah, yeah, I didn't really know Terry saying yeah, you.

00:22:34
Speaker 1: Know he had a I don't know it was the top ten record. I think, wasn't It wasn't for me so I could cry. Yeah, he had an album out.

00:22:42
Speaker 2: Did you know him back then? Or do you guys meet later on because you're from the same place we did?

00:22:46
Speaker 1: We actually we met because of Tech and his daughter, Rachel. You know, I'd met her and we started having a golf tournament at Tech to raise money and just had a lot of fun and got to be friends.

00:23:01
Speaker 2: He seems like a pretty funny guy.

00:23:02
Speaker 1: He's hysterical and he's always He's just that is so him.

00:23:06
Speaker 4: Hank Ty The Bobby Cast will be right back and we're back on the Bobby Cast.

00:23:21
Speaker 2: Did you have Louisiana people that you I mentioned? Johnny Cash, like Brooks, Robbins, I played third base for the Orioles way before me. But he was from Arkansas. Yeah, did you have a Louisiana people like that to you that you were like, they're from where we're from. Sure, I really like I admire what they're doing. Who would that be?

00:23:39
Speaker 1: Well, obviously the you know Hank Williams and Johnny Horton and Merle Kilgore. You're familiar with him. So Merle was Hank Junior's manager and also wrote Wolverton Mountain and I was just.

00:23:59
Speaker 2: Surely as a writer and he managed.

00:24:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, it managed Hank Junior, but famous. And I met him through this CMA board the first time and we got to be great friends. But yeah, he was famous for you know, he had big rings on all his fingers, you know, this jeweler diamond. Dan you know, made it really really outgoing, you know, over the top, really fun guy. But you say, Merle, you're doing good man, everything okay, and you go, are you shitting me? Just those rings?

00:24:33
Speaker 2: What was this? What was this? I mean when you mentioned a guy like that, I think about Nashville when it used to kind of be like that. Oh yeah, low and it's still its own way of loud, but like low you would just see somebody and know that they.

00:24:45
Speaker 1: Lost a lot of our carnate factor.

00:24:47
Speaker 2: Carnie, That's yeah, it's definitely. What was it like when you moved What was this talent like when you moved here?

00:24:52
Speaker 1: I'll tell you the For me, it was all I just wanted to be a songwriter in this town. That's really. I mean all most all songwriters have some dreams and you know, they play their songs. We've gotten some recognition. There's exceptions to that, but most songwriters like to think of themselves as artists. I mean I did, and I had a couple of record deals before Ronnie and I got together, but not because I was that great. I don't know. But I started singing a lot of demos, you know, for stuff like that. But the town the ability to My first publisher is a guy named Don Gant, and man, he would hold court every day, we'd write songs all day. But he had been at Tree Publishing and was responsible for some of the great careers from Roger Miller and Mickey Newberry, got Sonny Throckmorton, people you may not be familiar with, but people that Harlan Howard. Of course, they were all at Tree I mean they owned independent publishing, but there were still great publishing company companies like Combine where Christofferson and you know, Whalen and all those guys were too little, smaller company. But when we were done at the end of the day, people would start piling in that door, and Don would always send out for a few cases of beer. We just packing his office and start passing the guitar around. We really make you want to write something special, because if that guitar came your way, or Don said, did you write anything today? But at the same time, even if I written something that wasn't that good, he would find that one line in a song and go, man, wait a second second verse, what was it you said you? Because y'all hear that, it's like and all of a sudden he would make you feel like he might not tell you it was a great song because it wasn't, but he would also make sure you knew that's what you need to be. That's that's a great line. Give me a whole song full of that kind of stuff. You know, it's a great teacher. But also by the end of by the end of the night, we're all well oiled. Then then you know, Mackey Newberry or Ray van Hoy or some of those guys that Throckmorton who are just writing this brilliance. They get the guitar and then you got the opportunity. Man, it was it was all up and down the street and where's it happening kind of thing, and I just I don't, you know, there's so so much you know, I don't sound like an old guy, but there's so much concrete where there were little houses all the way down Music Row, and you just wander up and down. You could hear it a lot of times, up and down.

00:27:19
Speaker 2: People just doing the thing.

00:27:20
Speaker 1: Yeah that's going or and somebody come running down to your publishing company and go, man, come on down to Combine. You know, whaling's down there and there singing, you know, and dad, that kind of stuff is going on.

00:27:33
Speaker 2: Do you remember when you moved here, like and again you're in the majors now because you have all the great songwriters around you, which elevates at least hopefully you to to get to their level. Do you remember the first like song you wrote where you were like, man, this is special, Like I have now reached a new peak. I've learned it and I've written this song. Do you remember the first great song you feel like you wrote?

00:27:52
Speaker 1: Honestly, I had quite a few number ones at that point, but I think I think Red Dirt Road was was a time when I really put the period on that song and went, it's a freaking hit and it's it's really saying it's you know. Ronnie and I did that together, and he actually we had it was just a place where we talked about, really got real with each other, talked about where we came from. Like, you know, he was telling me about Elderad. I was telling me about where my grandparents was. That's where it was, and somehow I was telling about driving those roads with my grandfather looking you know, looking at at timber. You know what he was going to cut, and I said, man, that dirt was just so he goes, I know it was up and said that'd be a good name for an album. So now we got to write a song, and we kind of puttered around at it three or four times and never really got more than a line or two. And he got off the plane we were we had a gig and Sacramento and we flew to San Francisco and got off the plane, and he handed me a cocktail napkin and it had those lines about you know, drank my first beer and you know, wrecked my first car toward it all the pieces, something about Jesus and you know, life ain't just for high achievers. And he said, what do you think. I think it's freaking great, man, This is exactly what we were talking about. And I jumped on a bus and you know, wrote the pretty much the music and the verses. He had already told me about Rule route three. You know, that's kind of when we kicked around where he came from, and he came and knocked on my bus, had Terry McBride and said, man, let's go get a steak. And I said, you got to hear this song though, and we both just kind of slapped it up in here and and I couldn't wait to record it. It was it was It was really fun to put it down too.

00:29:40
Speaker 2: Did you ever to write a song and go this one's special? Then you recorded it and you're like, I think it's lost what we were trying to do, so let's do it again, or I think.

00:29:49
Speaker 1: More just sometimes when you write songs for a living and songs get recorded you know, Don Gant had a plaque on his desk that said, it's not as good as.

00:30:00
Speaker 2: The demo, you know, you ever hear Yeah, it would just be tough if like you feel it. And then you even like comedy songs, like if I play them live and we try to record them, I'm always like, it doesn't sound as good when I recorded it, like, and it probably does probably sounds better, yeah, but because it's like live or like if I'm creating something on the spot, it just feels newer and fresher.

00:30:25
Speaker 1: You're married to the thing. And I would never would never mention what song or that was, you know, or whatever, because it's I mean, it's the greatest honor of all for somebody to risk their career on something you made up, you know, as a songwriter. You know, but it is demolias. You just get here. It used to hearing it one way so many times. I remember, like Modern Day Romance, I wrote that with a Dan Tyler, only song we ever wrote together, and we had both had he wrote Bobby Sue on the Oak Rich Boys album, and I had a cut that I'd written on there and called that was actually my first cut called Old Kentucky song ever ever, Yeah, which was pretty lucky to be on a million selling album because you get your songwriter role teach you. All of a sudden, Don started paying me one hundred bucks a week, and I'm a professional songwriter. You know. It's really really where it went from. But man, I really believed in modern day romance. I said, Man, this song is cool. It's got a good vibe to it, and everybody seemed to like it, but nobody would cut it, you know, and finally Can't said look, I'll cut it on you. He said, and he produced above Ittt's first five records. You know. He did come Monday, did all the backgrounds. He was a great producer, and I said, wow, that'd be cool. He said, we'll get you a record deal. So let's do it. He said, you sing it great and die. So we did. We cut it. Actually got a film company interested, cut a demo on it, I mean a video on it, and was about to put it out is it is an independent thing. And Warley called and said, hey, man, dirt Man, just cut this song. He said, it's a freaking hit. Okay, I'll put no mine in the trash because I'm a huge dirt band fan and Jeff Hannah sang the heck out of it. Anyway, it was you know, sometimes things, sometimes things won't just work out with songs. But you never know.

00:32:24
Speaker 2: Where did kicks come from?

00:32:27
Speaker 1: There's a couple of weeks before I was born, was what I was heard. I was trying to bust out of there. You know, I don't know about you, but nine months.

00:32:33
Speaker 2: Was trying to Mary. I knew a good place when I had it, I was the officite.

00:32:40
Speaker 1: I don't know. Fetal position wasn't really my thing. I wanted to stretch.

00:32:43
Speaker 2: Out with Mike because I you know, Bones is not my real name is not Bones. It's est So kicks nickname is a kid or nickname later? No, it was I was always kicks, always from a young.

00:32:55
Speaker 1: Young kid, from the time I was born.

00:32:57
Speaker 2: Really, but not your birth certificate.

00:32:59
Speaker 1: No, it's on Eric. I'm the third. My son's the fourth.

00:33:03
Speaker 2: Is he kicks that you call him kicks as well?

00:33:05
Speaker 5: Though?

00:33:05
Speaker 2: Has he kicked Junior?

00:33:06
Speaker 1: No? Call him quatro?

00:33:07
Speaker 2: What do they call it? But they really call you kicks that you kicked.

00:33:09
Speaker 1: Not really call him rick. Yes, they've always gone me kicks.

00:33:12
Speaker 2: Because you kicked in the womb because you came out of baby. It's because you mess so much. I don't know if you're kidding or not. No, that's the truth, but you do understand. You mess so much that sometimes it's hard for like douse, I'm looking at you, like, okay, so kicks came from you were always.

00:33:26
Speaker 1: Kicks, that's correct. Okay, So if you can, if you can find any defiance of that, Bobby, you have no full credit on here.

00:33:34
Speaker 2: I have no defiance I just.

00:33:36
Speaker 1: Because I've removed all of that, so you won't well find it.

00:33:39
Speaker 2: You just a couple of my early stories here. The first person that the first one played the opry. You won't remember that you've done this ten thousand times with ten thousand people. I was doing stand up and I was about to play the opry for the first time ever, and you were there, and you came in the room, my first room and said hey, and we're like congratulate, and I was like, that's freaking awesome, and I thought it so kind of you to do because you exactly that's right. It was me and the time before that. You don't get your name right, you billy billy bones. Yeah, you call them billy bones. Yeah, it was nice. I peed next to you to urinal In, Texas once.

00:34:14
Speaker 1: Remember that next to me, man, I remember everybody that pays yes stand me Austin, Texas and outside each other and I.

00:34:23
Speaker 2: Did. You were at case one on one of the radio station down there, and I was working a kiss and I was in and I was like, I didn't even know that you were in town. I think you may have me.

00:34:32
Speaker 1: You didn't try to shake hands or anything.

00:34:34
Speaker 2: I did not not right then I left you. But it was like, were you doing a solo project? Twelve ten, two thousand? Did you do?

00:34:46
Speaker 1: So?

00:34:46
Speaker 2: When did you do a solo your solo thing, like when you put out your record.

00:34:51
Speaker 1: After Brooks and done?

00:34:52
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:34:53
Speaker 1: Or that would have been yeah, probably, Well we'd last toured and ten, so it would have been eleven or twelve.

00:34:58
Speaker 2: Because that's when it was. That's when we were probably eleven before I moved here.

00:35:02
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:35:02
Speaker 2: I think you remember, now, don't you. I did that? Yeah? Yeah, you were peaking over the corner. That's how I get there.

00:35:07
Speaker 5: The Bobby Cast. We'll be right back. This is the Bobby Cast. I've never been to Alaska. It's the one state I haven't been to now. Just went to Maine for the first time. Really, it's awesome Maine.

00:35:27
Speaker 2: I do know that in New Hampshire did that, Never been there, but I've not been to Alaska. But you lived in Alaska, you worked in Alaska.

00:35:34
Speaker 1: I did spend You're on the pipeline up there.

00:35:36
Speaker 2: That's crazy.

00:35:37
Speaker 1: Took a break from college. And my dad was a pipeline contractor, built pipelines all over the world. It's actually a part of the team that designed the Alaska pipeline and his his background wasn't testing, and so is mine. But basically, when you test a pipeline, except for just a couple of suspended pipelines in Japan and here and there, pipelines are all in the ground. So when you test a pipeline, you fill it up with water and you put a lot of pressure on that water. So if it blows up, it just blows out, you know, a hole in the ground, and the pressure dissipates immediately. There's really no not much damage involved. When you've got a pipeline. The biggest pipeline in the state's forty eight inch diameter. Alaska Pipeline's fifty six inch diameter, and it's on stilts, so when you fill that up with water and something bad happens. You know, we did millions of dollars worth of damage test in that pipeline. Was really really exciting and some real dangerous work.

00:36:39
Speaker 2: But what was it like to live up there and do that for a year? It was.

00:36:43
Speaker 1: It's crazy. I worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week for almost a year without coming home.

00:36:47
Speaker 2: Was it to save money?

00:36:48
Speaker 1: And yeah, absolutely so you didn't have to pay Alaska taxes. I sent all my money home and yeah, I got home and bought a hot Camaro and a new guitar and I could get a date again.

00:37:01
Speaker 2: Are you a guitar guy as in a nerd? Do you really love old guitars?

00:37:07
Speaker 1: I do love old guitars, but I'm really I'm not. I'm not a collector. You know, I've got a couple of I've probably got, you know, four or five guitars that are like from fifty one and earlier. They sound really cool, they still play, They still play great, and I love the way they sound, but they don't really amplify very well. You know, most of the guitars that I play on stage J two hundreds are kind of There was a couple of days that I got guys that play guitar in the band that had a bunch of acoustics, just stood out front with the man playing playing with play by yourself, you know. And J two hundreds is that for strumming? And right now a lot of songs, I'm the only guy playing acoustic guitars, so, you know, for a good even big, big strum sound when I'm playing rhythm, I love J two hundreds and I had I was playing a goal Les Paul at the Gold top less Paul at the time. And for this stuff I played electrically. I mean in college, I was the only guitar player in some of my bands.

00:38:09
Speaker 2: You know.

00:38:09
Speaker 1: Now I got two great guitar players that run circles around me, and so I play acoustic and sing and you know.

00:38:15
Speaker 2: Do what I do.

00:38:16
Speaker 1: But it's fun. I'm not People ask me all the time how many guitars you got, and it's not tons. You know, I probably have twenty or thirty guitars.

00:38:25
Speaker 2: Maybe, well that's a lot of guitars. It is you have a music part of the house.

00:38:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got a couple of music parts, but I have guitars everywhere I mean, I do not. There's not a day in my life that I don't pick up a guitar.

00:38:40
Speaker 2: I was gonna ask if you still play around the house. Ever, Yeah, I do, and you still enjoy music.

00:38:45
Speaker 1: I still love music, and God love my wife because I just I give myself concerts somedays, or I just play a lot of songs that just remind myself. Especially you know, you're just getting situations, whether it's on stage with your friends or whatever, and you go, oh, I love that song. I need to remember how to play that, and you know that kind of stuff.

00:39:06
Speaker 2: You're still driven to pick up a guitar and just play for fun.

00:39:09
Speaker 1: Absolutely, absolutely, that's.

00:39:11
Speaker 2: Not always the case.

00:39:12
Speaker 1: It's just, man, what do you do to shake out your yayas in the morning? I mean, just what do you do to you swim laps in that.

00:39:20
Speaker 2: Pool or what Sometimes?

00:39:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did this morning too, But it's not the same as just singing my heart out for two or three songs, to really put my heart into some music all by myself and just sing and just really give it to the air.

00:39:36
Speaker 2: Do you still keep notes if you get an idea like a songwriting adia, Oh gosh, yeah, so yeah, I keep yeah, I come off and you right all write.

00:39:43
Speaker 1: Something all the time? Really yeah, I mean, but it's finishing songs is that's the work, and that's what takes the time that I'm like you, I've surrounded myself with money spenders, and I the work that I have, you know, even you know, just getting ready for a tour. You know, I do a radio show too, as you know, and got the wineries rocking pretty hard, and that's something that I have given quite a bit of attention to. So I just kind of in the morning, I start going through all the stuff, and you know, I call it checking the traps, and just you know, it gets in the way of really spending a lot of time. If I get focused on a song, I need two or three days to really get from top to bottom to feel like it's any good.

00:40:30
Speaker 2: Explain this winery to me, because I've never take a wine, uh huh, but it seems to be a pretty popular thing. Wine and coffee two things I think are catching on nowadays. It's pretty popular, too, too popular. But I drive by your place if I go play golf, yeah, over a troubador, and I see people out there sometimes not even drinking wine is hanging out, sitting out there on blankets and stuff. Yeah, so, what the heck's happening over there. I've never actually been there except driving by.

00:40:54
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, it was never a goal of mine to have a bar. That's a lie, that's a lot, because that's how I got to Nashville. Honestly, when I graduated from college, a good friend of mine the most popular bar in Sreeport where I played all the time. It's a really cool club, about a three hundred seater and on the weekends it was blowing up. But he was losing money on the weekdays because he was trying to hire acts. People you know, don't go out to bars, not in a lot of towns during the you know, keeping a bar, going a big entertainment bar, it's hard. But he wanted to sell it five thousand dollars. So my dad and I were like best friends, and I called a meeting with him though, because I wanted to borrow this money. Didn't have any money, but I had this idea. I was going to be the house band. You know, we could sell it wouldn't cost anything during the week weekends were blowing it out. Can make a lot of money. This is kind of working. So I went in there and said, hey, Dad, here's my plan. He said, I die. I gave him the whole rundown and whatever like that. And he's sitting there behind his desk, smoking his cigar, nodding his head and said, you know what I need five thousand dollars. I I was hoping maybe you could go sign for it. Okay, So well that first that that's not going to happen. He said, Really, two things here it goes. The first one is I think you got a lot of talent, he goes, I believe in you, he said, But you don't want to be a big fish in a small pond here in Nashville. I mean in Shreeport, there's not a handful of bands doing any good. And really, if you if you want to prove to yourself and everybody that you really got what it takes, you need to go to Nashville or New York or Los Angeles and see if you can really make it in the music business. Okay, Oh see, I mean it makes sense.

00:42:41
Speaker 2: Okay.

00:42:42
Speaker 1: And the second thing, you don't know a damn thing about the bar business. So yeah, that that got me out and going.

00:42:52
Speaker 2: When you move here to Nashville. How soon after that, after he has that talk with you, like we ain't doing a bar, but you got to You got to go because you're good enough to go. You just got to go. You chose Nashville, obviously, But how long until you get here and actually feel like this is home or that you can actually thrive.

00:43:11
Speaker 1: Well, it took a minute, because not like it did for a lot of people. I was fortunate. Jody Williams and I were roommates in military school, and Jody was running Charlie Daniels publishing company. His sister was married to Charlie's guitar player, so he kind of got it in there me and I could. It was the first place I'd ever been, because I've worked in New Orleans for seventy two nights before I came here, that I couldn't take my guitar and a handful of you know, newspaper articles that i'd gotten at least let somebody I could play for somebody and get a gig making some kind of money, like in the airport kind of thing here now. But when I got to town, this was the first place I'd ever been where I couldn't make a living playing my guitar.

00:43:52
Speaker 2: I mean it was everybody. Everybody was trying to do it.

00:43:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was just there weren't any.

00:43:56
Speaker 2: And there's not enough places.

00:43:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, if there's a cover band or something, but everybody he played for free. Everybody's trying to get noticed, you know. I mean I auditioned and played at the Bluebird all the time. It's actually where you know, like in the movies, I got discovered. Bob Dole, who wound up managing Garth Brooks, was working at ass Cap, saw me playing at the Bluebird, invited me to his office the next day, introduced me to Don Ghenton. Don got me, you know, my first couple of cuts and gave me a publishing deal.

00:44:22
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the Nashville story here the Bluebird. I know somebody sees you. Did you were you like a picture who was being scouted or you knew the scouts were in the stands that night?

00:44:31
Speaker 1: No, no, I really I didn't have really didn't have anything going. And what I learned was my songs weren't that good. I'd written a lot of songs, but and me and David Lee Murphy were sweeping floors for Charlie Daniels. We got thirty bucks at night for sweep sweeping the War Memorial where the hall for the Musicians Hall of Fame is right now, I'm not kidding. And we worked security. We worked the barricade behind the barricade to keep people from jumping on the stage, and then we'd work the room, you know, when after the show was over, making sure nobody got in there or anything, and then we sweep the floors.

00:45:06
Speaker 2: Did you ever almost give up?

00:45:08
Speaker 1: No, I shouldn't say that. I mean there were probably times, you know, if you're a songwriter, and I had, you know, like four number ones and quite a few cuts and had some you know, good years. But it was ten years before I met Ronnie, and there's there was valleys in there where I went, I'm not making that much money. I got a couple of kids. Now, hm, is this? You know? Where does this go from here? You know, I'm not really hot right now. I've got a publishing deal. But you know, three or four hundred bucks a week whatever I was making, you start looking around going, you know, that's what people do, a lot of people throwing the towel. I never did. Fortunately, you know, every time I just start to get a little discouraged, something good would happen and just enough to enough to keep you in the game, you know. It always I was fortunate that, you know, people believed them here there even people that were doing advertising jingles and that kind of stuff. I always had some singing going on to and and I you know, I had a couple of record deals. It was on Capitol, you know, didn't pan out, but people were aware. And I guess that's how eventually, you know, Tim Dubois felt like, you know, it's a good enough singer that me and Ronnie Dunn might make some noise.

00:46:22
Speaker 2: Okay, back to the wine, Like, what do you sell there? Other than why what if people pay money for when they go there? One is our big deal. I would think it would be one of the major.

00:46:31
Speaker 1: One different kinds of wine. So we bring hundreds of thousands of pounds of fruit in from from all over California.

00:46:39
Speaker 2: Not all grapes grapes, but all grapes, we say fruit. I don't know if you may like wine, we don't, but we do make some a couple. I know nothing about wine kicks, so I've never had drink of alcohol. So I'm gonna talk to you like a.

00:46:50
Speaker 1: Kindergarten ferment oranges. You know people in prison do that all in the toilet.

00:46:55
Speaker 2: I know. I mean I've seen those present shows. Yeah, you've ever.

00:46:58
Speaker 1: Left fruit in your refrigerator? Anything will ferment like that. Okay.

00:47:02
Speaker 2: So when you say fruit, though, you mean grapes, I mean grape.

00:47:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's they have a sixteen acres of fruit of grapes, and we use every grape we grow, but we can't grow a lot of these grapes they grow in California. You probably heard of cabernet, are low or chardonnay. Those are actually types of grapes and they need that climate like in northern California. They like it hot in the daytime, but at night they need to shut down and rest, And our nights here are warm enough that the flavors of those kind of grapes just kind of blow off at night. So we grow certain kinds of grapes that do well here, that are hardy. But it depends on the variety.

00:47:41
Speaker 2: You're telling me, those are different greatly. Cabernet, chardonnay, what was the other one you said, are low? So those are just different grape.

00:47:48
Speaker 1: There are different kinds of grapes.

00:47:50
Speaker 2: Green, purple. This is the two kind I know.

00:47:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's white that makes white wine and red wine.

00:47:55
Speaker 2: Did you know, Mike, That's that's what it was. There are different grapes. We're idiots, I mean we're Idiot's just something you're not into. So can you do the way when people the taste of mind, they spit it out and they're like, hmm, there's some tree bark from a pine tree? Can you do? Are you that your palette that distinguished?

00:48:15
Speaker 1: It's it's not. I'm not a somalier by any means, but I can tell. I can tell Cabernet from Sanchio Vesi grapes that I can tell, certainly, Bordeaux ones from California ones. You know, certain big areas that have real distinct tastes to them. I can tell the difference.

00:48:37
Speaker 2: You can taste an area.

00:48:39
Speaker 1: I can some areas, wow, you know, because some areas are real. You know some Italian ones, you know, spend a lot of time in Italy one they have exactly you know the difference in New York and you know pizza and Chicago. What's fair?

00:48:54
Speaker 2: I definitely can't. Okay, if you were to give me a piece of New York or Chicago deep dish. I could tell you the difference. I definitely could.

00:49:01
Speaker 1: That's what it's like. It's like you start there and then if you're really into pizza, you go, well, okay, this is Papa John's is not the same. Well what's the difference? You know, That's how some people would go. You can't tell the difference? Yeah you can?

00:49:14
Speaker 2: You know, right, how did wine?

00:49:16
Speaker 1: Yeah?

00:49:17
Speaker 2: Oh no, for her, I can. How did wine? Did it be in your thing? Though?

00:49:21
Speaker 1: Well from Louisiana, So I started drinking at a very early age. I like wine. It's great, you know, it's great with food. That's a big deal with wine is pairing. If you, you know, start doing that. There's certain because of the acidity and red wines and white ones, and you know, a great cabernet if you really like steak, it pairs great. One thing that wine does, like good wines, nice ones. You know what makes a great wine? Well, one thing is what's called a long finish. And if a wine has a you know, especially a Cabernet or more lower great steak ones, if they have a long finish, you like the taste of that wine. You take a big sip of that and you cut your steak. You taste that wine with that steak, and it's just a great pairing of food and drink. And that's that's all part of it. You know, you really learn to pair. You know, some like Senjia Vassi, a wine we may call red Fox. Red is a great what I call a table wine. And there's a lot of great Italian table wines which are just great with cheese and crackers. You know, it's just it's a great pairing that you know, just drink a little wine, and it's also something fun with your friends. You know, you cap cop a little buzz, you start talking about some stuff you might not have been talking about before, and just you know, it's it's nonsense, but it's it's fun.

00:50:37
Speaker 2: That is, you do wine sell wine, but people go either just to hang out too, right, the just sit in the build.

00:50:43
Speaker 1: Most people are drinking. They are, yeah, most of their children are, you know.

00:50:46
Speaker 2: At least five and six year olds. You don't sell wine to the kids.

00:50:50
Speaker 1: That's we don't sell wine to the kids. And it's it's hysterical online. You know, the rare complaints that we get are because you know, there's not enough things for their children to do.

00:51:00
Speaker 2: At the winery.

00:51:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, we're trying to drink here, you know, could you please set up a bouncy you know, house or something for the kids so you know, we can drink in peace.

00:51:11
Speaker 2: Do you have one of those lives where you can go places? Because if you have the cowboy hat on, it's over. We know it's you immediately. When you were on the ball cout, I would know what's you, obviously, but I would think that because your cowboy hat is such a large part of your persona that sometimes people don't go, hey, Kicks Brooks.

00:51:30
Speaker 1: They don't. It's rare. You know. We did, like I said, we did four years, one hundred and four or five shows with Rieba in Las Vegas. So Ronnie and reeb we're both very recognizable. They would always take a car from their rooms around to the back of the coliseum and go in, and I would come out of my room just for enjoyment, would walk through all the slot machines and whatever by the crap table where I would play every night after the show, you know, walk through the crowd that's in line for our show. Literally, excuse me, pardon me through them, and sometimes even walk in and check out the merchandise room, which is they're all right next to the coliseum. Not one time in four years, one hundred and four shows, not one time to one person, no matter how many times they've been to that show, and we keep a record of that. You know, some of them have been to those shows thirty times or something. Recognize me.

00:52:21
Speaker 2: I don't think it's because you're not recognizable. I think it's because what we recognize you for is so big with the cowboy hat and the boots, and now you're just hanging out. You know, if I saw you at Starbucks, I'd be like, yeah, that's kick. But again, but because you are always in the cowboy how people see you publicly, it looks just like him, only older. It's the perfect life of celebrity. You get to be famous when you want to, and if you don't want to, you just put on a ball cap. I would imagine George stra can do that.

00:52:52
Speaker 1: Sometimes he does do that, and I wasn't going to mention him, but since you did, I can. I remember somebody came up to me and said, we're on the sideline at an NFL playoff, game in Dallas, and then somebody goes that straight over there and they're arguing, no, it's not I swear it's it's not him.

00:53:09
Speaker 2: You know.

00:53:10
Speaker 1: And I finally walked over and said, hey, George, you know it, he's gonna ball calf on, you know.

00:53:14
Speaker 4: But yeah, let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor.

00:53:27
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Bobby Cast. I was playing golf at a program with a professional golfer from San Antonio and he plays with George some Obviously George loves down there, and he said that they were in Ireland playing golf together once and they had played and they went to a pub, but there was a guy doing some covers and he was playing George straight songs and George was there. He didn't and the whole time he never knew that two tables down when there were like eleven people in the whole bar or pub, that George Strait was sitting right there, and he was because George was a baseball cap and nobody recognizes them.

00:54:04
Speaker 1: That's funny.

00:54:04
Speaker 2: I went to think of the name. There's an island, a small island that my CFO has a house, and I went and stayed on this island, and George had a house that was right next to it, and so you have to take a boat to get to that. I'm sure you've been there, if you don't, order if you have a house there. Do you have a house there?

00:54:23
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're talking about.

00:54:24
Speaker 2: There's an island. It's like in the Bahamas.

00:54:26
Speaker 1: In the Bahamas, yeaheah, probably Bakers but that's just for Georgia's Yeah, that's it.

00:54:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, you ever go over there?

00:54:31
Speaker 1: Yeah? I fish in the Bahamas a lot, really, but I haven't been to Baker's Bay.

00:54:35
Speaker 2: It feels like a real very close to there.

00:54:37
Speaker 1: Andros and Exama down there.

00:54:39
Speaker 2: Do you still fish a lot all the time. What's your favorite kind of fishing?

00:54:43
Speaker 1: Bone fishing? Probably? Yeah?

00:54:45
Speaker 2: I like blue It feels like a mobster thing, like you kill somebody. Yeah, like bone fishing. What what what? I don't know? I know, lake fish, I like blue, bluewater fishing, fly fishing, you know, got it?

00:54:54
Speaker 1: Long casting not? I mean I fish in Alaska every year with my son, you know, I after twelve years ag and that's I love fly fishing for when the salmon are running, you know, I mean those are those are big fish and they're like they put a whack on it. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. But bone fishing, you know, you might. You can walk for five miles and a foot and a half deep of water and those flats out there, and it's just really fun because it's slight fishing. You can see them and they're traveling across and then you're kind of stalking. You've got to get in the right position where you can make a fifty or sixty foot cast in the.

00:55:27
Speaker 2: Right spot and fifty or sixty foot in the right spot.

00:55:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the wind's always blowing down.

00:55:31
Speaker 2: What's the bone part of it?

00:55:33
Speaker 1: They're just called bonefish. They're not fishy eat.

00:55:36
Speaker 2: So literally it's like like bonefish, girl, I'm familiar with that. Yeah, right there we go. I went. I grew up fishing a lot, but lakes never, never ocean never, never went to a beach never, but so but also didn't fly fish a lot. But we went. And I know Johnny Morris a little bit who owns Batspro, and he was like, hey, you should come up, you should stay up here. Let me know when you're gonna be in town. I'm gonna come see you guys, And so like Johnny Will coming up and he's like, okay, cool. And so first of all he's super nice and sets us all up with fishing and golf, and he goes, I'm gonna send you guys to the honey hole. I don't know what that means right right then, and I was like, okay, great. I'd figure if Johnny Morris is sending this over it's fishing, it's gonna be legit. So somebody comes and gets us in a van. He goes, you know, Johnny doesn't let many people go to the honey hole. We don't know the honey hole list. We don't know. It's got to be where it and we get in, so they give us a ride. We're fly fishing, and it's probably as big as this room here, the whole pond, the whole hole, massive trout, every inch of you throw you it's the only time of my life. It's cheating because he's it was so stocked that as soon as as soon as the flight would hit what we're just jerking them out of there?

00:56:58
Speaker 1: He says, Are they lake trout? You're saying? Or is there?

00:57:01
Speaker 2: But they're massive lake trout? I mean I'm talking we have a trout truck go by and drop trout off Mountain Pine. Now, uh huh. These trout were small, and the trout truck would open, they'd all pile out, and you catch those, you just pull them over. You gotta have trout stamps, game boardings, watching, it's the whole thing. But this the honey Hole with Johnny Morris, it was like sharks. They were. That's what I think about when you say Alaska, like Alaska fishing, the fishers.

00:57:25
Speaker 1: There's more room and the trout get huge up there. When we go, you know, end of August first to September. You know, the socc I have all kind of died out. They're the ones you see jumping up the bears or catching in their mouth and whatever. But they're all dying out, and they've all spawned. And those trout have been eating those eggs, you know, the whole season. And they're eight and nine pounds rainbow trout or not uncounting.

00:57:48
Speaker 2: That's that's a big fish. So okay, I just have a couple more questions for you. What every once in a while whenever. The last night, for example, I was sitting back are on the back porch back area and I was like, dang, look at that. That's pretty cool. Like I got a nice how Like I've done some pretty good stuff in my career, and I don't slow down enough, probably to acknowledge that. Now I have a wife, she slows me down sometimes. Do you ever just go dang, I'm famous and rich and I've got lots of songs and it's cool.

00:58:18
Speaker 1: I quit doing that a while ago.

00:58:21
Speaker 2: You wake up a month like, oh, good morning, fas this pretty cool. I feel like I would if that was awesome. Yeah.

00:58:28
Speaker 1: No, I mean, you know, you'd expect me to say all the humble things that you would expect me to say. And that's really the only answers that I have because I'm really not that impressed with myself. Honestly. One thing you learn in Nashville, whatever whatever your dream was here, whatever you hope to accomplish, which for me has been, has really exceeded any reality dreams that I had. You know, I mean, you got a dream in your heart, you know, to but that's kind of keeps you going. But to think that, you know, all that stuff would really kind of come true. What I realized that all the things that I do play guitar sing you know, there's people that are so much better at it than me in this town. And if you there's not many people I think that are real with themselves that don't feel that way unless they are really the best singers here, the very best singers here, which I don't think that's necessarily my talent. I am. Really I do feel real fortunate that my singing was so bad in the first five years of our career, just because I had just been playing and screaming and bars, you know, and you get on a big stage and I just had no control over my air basically. And I really think talking on the radio for the last seventeen years has really helped me, especially when you're doing a four hour show and you know this forever, you can't just be huffing and puffing the whole time. You've got to find your air somewhere else in order to have any quality of voice. And that started translating into my singing, and it's really made being on stage a lot more fun because I can kind of go through a whole show and feel like, you know, I was saying pretty good tonight, you know, which I wasn't feeling that way early in our career. Fortunately, I had a great singer standing next to me, so you know, he pulled most of the weight, and in the studio I could do it. But getting on stage bouncing around and start huffing and puffing, it just wasn't very good. So I guess a long answer to a short question is I feel blessed, but I'm very humbled by the success that I've had with I guess what actual ability I do have. I think probably, if anything, I like to think that I've got a good ability to communicate and I'm not intimidated by the stage at all. I'm not that great at it, but I got a lot of confidence. So by the end of the night, I do feel like, you know, that crowd's really on their feet clapping because they had a good time, and I had something to do with it. Why radio, Because I was basically ask again, I'm a communications major, and I always was always a fan of radio, like a lot of people, was always a fan of countdown shows, and I kind of played around with it a little bit over the years. When I say played around, was asked to host an overnight show or something here and there, and it was just kind of fun to talk and you know, ABC approached me when Bob Kingsley, you know, and then got sideways, and Bob was one of my dearest friends. Was the first person I called and said, hey, you know, I said that, you know, you're maybe sideways on your deal and you're going to do your own thing. I said, I would never even try stepping into your shoes without your blessing. And he said, man, I think you can do this. I think it'll be great at it. And it was such an opener, you know. I mean, I'm used to listening to myself singing going that sucks and trying to make it better. But when I started air checking myself on the radio, I was so bad. Just everything I thought I was doing good sucked. And I guess, I guess part of just being able to notice that and not thinking you're doing great when you're not kind of helped me get to a level I couldn't believe they didn't fire me. For the first couple of years.

01:02:40
Speaker 2: It was just really.

01:02:41
Speaker 1: Awful, but you know, a lot of affiliates hung in there and whatever and whatever reason. I mean, at least I can listen to myself now and I really enjoy doing it. It doesn't wear me. It used to take me hours and hours to do that countdown show, and now you know, just you know, getting through the copy. I really kind of enjoy it and love my team, and I would imagine you feel the same way.

01:03:05
Speaker 2: Not at all. Do you do it from home?

01:03:07
Speaker 1: No, I have done it from home during COVID, you know I did it. We all worked remotely like a lot of other people. But I built a studio down in the old RCA building and you know, the original RCAA building and right across from Chad Atkins office. And it's cool. It's all like turn of the century, I mean, mid century furniture and everything. It's real quirky, and I like going down there. I like hanging out. We talk about the business, what's going on whatever, even not stuff that's on the air. But it also gets me in the mood to do the show. And when bits come up, you know, I think about, well, you know, that's cool. But you know, when we did that, I try not to do that very much. You know, I did learn of Yeah, I got sent to interviews school back when you know, Disney owned ESPN. So I don't know if you've ever done that.

01:03:52
Speaker 2: But interview school. Yeah, no, I need to go.

01:03:55
Speaker 1: One of the most amazing things that I've ever done.

01:03:57
Speaker 2: But what do you do? What do you do in interview school for two weeks?

01:04:00
Speaker 1: This guy from Canada who is really good at it. We listen to all the great interviews of all time and where even the people that are considered the greats, you know, like Larry King and Barbara Walters in particular, here's the mistakes they made. Here's where this could have been world changing. But here's you know a lot of things, simple things like double barrel questions if you know, and you see a lot of local newspeople ask five questions to somebody. You know, when the tornado came through, what'd that sound like? I mean, did everybody run for cover? It's like, was it did it tear the top off the house? You know? So which in that kind of question, You know, it doesn't really matter that much, but when you're really trying to get to the bottom of something, And of course with sports guys, they don't want to talk anyway. They just want to do that. They want to compete, you know, it's what they're doing. And our business, you know, we love talking about ourselves. I mean, that's just that's where we come from. So you don't have to ask much of a question to pull my string. And you know, you got to shut me down at some point and ask another question. But in that world, it was really interesting just to get some basic tools. If you'd like to get an answer to something, ask that one question at a time, and the people that were really good at it, or people would ask a question and wait, because that's where Barbara Walter is one of the things as good as she was, like she asked. She asked Teddy Kennedy. She got the interview after he was accused of cheating on his wife, and her first question, did you cheat on your wife? How will the Kennedy survive this bang? He's a smart guy, guyes well, you know, Kennedy's have made it through thick and thin and da da da dad. She asked him, you know, ten questions, but never never stuck with did you cheat on your wife? Just there was it's almost kind of like a you know, and I can't. You know, Barbara Walters is a legend, did tons of great interviews and whatever, but he just gave us examples of you know, if you if you want an answer, to something wait for the answer.

01:06:09
Speaker 2: You know, my favorite thing to do is to sit in silence because and I can't do this to you because you know all you know the tricks. But if I'm with someone, I don't mind awkward. So if I'm with someone and let's say you're John Smith, I'm interviewing, I'll just if I ask a question and then I'll just sit and then you'll feel the need to fill time because you'll feel awkward. And so what happens is people will just start giving the greatest answers because I've sat in silence for a few seconds. But you're so comfortable with yourself. I can't use those tricks on you because you're just staring back at me, like, all right, what you got next? What you got next? But that's that's pretty cool that you went and you just got to watch all the greats I had to go to like the library, watch the old those old movie I forget what I've watched, like old Jack Parr Tonight Show episode, What was that thing called that you talk about the black and white machine? But I would do that and then I would watch. Then YouTube changed everything, so now you just watch it. I just watched all my old interviews and go, that's what I want to do, just like that guy. I'm my own hero. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. Well, look, I'm super pumped. He came over. I was talking to Mike and I was like, Hey, what what can we promote of Kises? And what he literally said was we'd been working on getting you for a while that there was really nothing to promote. We were just happy you were coming over. So thank you for coming over. You bet, We'm glad we got to visit aal Yeah, me too. Are you guys gonna do that? Are you guy gonna go out again? You're gonna do a whole tour Brooks and Dune massive tour.

01:07:33
Speaker 1: Let's go. I mean, I don't see why we wouldn't.

01:07:36
Speaker 2: Really when you finished, were like I can't wait to go out again in a few months. Or you're like, oh my god, I need a break. We'll figure that out the rest of it late.

01:07:44
Speaker 1: Really, you know, we did nineteen shows with Scotty and Megan Marony and that's you know, people go, gosh, it must be crueling, you know. I mean, like, you never worked on a pipeline, you never stood Wyte deep in mud with his shovel from candle Cane and my dad he would always find the hardest, roughest job that that was on the pipeline, and there's some really dangerous, really bad jobs out there. He had me. I mean, I had a chainsaw cutting sixteen hundred railroad ties a day at one point. I mean, I'm pretty good at sharpening the chainsaw. I'm keeping that.

01:08:26
Speaker 2: Sucker gave you the gift of perspective. Yeah, Absence, you didn't know what the kind of invaluable the gift was going to be at the time. That's like me, I roof houses forever, and I didn't mean it's on golf courses and I was like this sucks. But now it's like I just appreciate everything. You roofed houses.

01:08:39
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, pred dude.

01:08:41
Speaker 2: So I built some stuff, folks. Oh Man started off his tearoff crew. First of all, clean up crew, then tear off crew. Then after a while, I figured how to fix a nail gun. So they let me actually use it because I was all, way, you can't use it. You know, there's a compression guns like oh, and so I figured how to fix it. And so once I fixed it, they knew I could use it. So then I started actually roofing houses. All right, Bobby, you got crid, no cry no, no crid.

01:09:05
Speaker 1: If you were on a freaking roof, roof and houses, you got my respect, dude. Roofs and draw wall. Anybody that's done either one of those for any length of time.

01:09:15
Speaker 2: And see we had sea walls too, got credit. Seawalls sucks to seawalls? Which fine? Are you on the lake in river in Arkansas? We would go and we would do bids. We'd drive the flat bottom down what lake Lake Hamilton? Okay, so we'd go down Lake Hamilton and we'd look people seawalls. They had a crack, we'd go knock on the door and be like, there's a cracker in a seawall. We'd make a bit and if they were like, okay, cool, we'd go there's heavy buckets. It was just but again that perspective. Yeah, here we are sit a nice air condition room with your big faith right here behind me, go celebrating the day.

01:09:44
Speaker 1: And I went to Ozark Boys Camp for like five years.

01:09:47
Speaker 2: What'd you do there? Mount not Arkansas mount that is like twenty minutes from Mountain Pine. They were our main rival yeah, oh high school. Yeah, I'll be yea very close, very close one from what'd I do?

01:09:56
Speaker 4: Yeah?

01:09:57
Speaker 2: What do you do there? At that camp?

01:09:58
Speaker 1: Everything? You know? They had a one of those things you had a skis that were bolted together with roller skates on it. One of those lines that went down until you smashed into the water down there, rope swings. They had a little golf course. There had a baseball golf field and do our golf.

01:10:13
Speaker 2: Heck, yeah, I don't know you golf.

01:10:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm a member at a troubadoor and golf, Yeah, golf club at Tennessee.

01:10:18
Speaker 2: Let those who are nowhere near each other. You're driving all across the state to get both of those.

01:10:22
Speaker 1: You know. That's well. You know, I've got a winery that backs up to tribute door.

01:10:26
Speaker 2: That's true.

01:10:27
Speaker 1: See, well, that's my ambition is to be able to play golf in the evening, drink all night, play golf in the morning, and ever leave the campus.

01:10:35
Speaker 2: See. But I feel like you're almost there anyway, almost there if you're a tributor and you have the winery inns when I'm talking, Yeah, but do you live over there?

01:10:43
Speaker 1: No? I live in Forest Hills. That's what my wife said, do you really need another house? And absolutely.

01:10:51
Speaker 2: All right, Kicks. Thanks, I really appreciate the time there is Kicksbrooks, go get some wine. Everybody get get on kickspit on a tab. Thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production