#324 - Tracy Lawrence on Why Radio Stations Didn’t Want to Play One of His Hits + The Story of When He Got Shot 4 Times + Celebrating 30 Years in Country Music

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Speaker 1: Welcome to episode. Pretty great episode with somebody that I love Tracy Lawrence. First of all, he talks about why radio stations did not want to play one of his biggest hits, which is interesting. Also the story of when he was shot four times, and he celebrates thirty years in country music. So Tracy Lawrence just in a few minutes. Top five releases This week, Hardy released a new song featuring Travis Denning and Josh Thompson. It's called Beer with My Buddies. And here's the clip of that and the drinking and the buddies. And put a Christmas song on the list here. At number four, Dan and Shape put out a new Christmas song called Officially Christmas. It's a Physic Christ. At number three, Taylor Swift released Red Taylor's version. Here's a new song with Chris Stapleton called I Bet You Think about Me? Done so that is hot beave that I'm harder forget was thinking that me. Combs has a new song out called Doing This, which he performed at the c m AS and released right after the show on Wednesday night. Here's the clip Coud saying a band singing the same damn songs like Now and at number one. Nirvana released he never Mind thirtieth Anniversary Edition. If you're a Nirvana fan like I am or was, the album itself has been remastered, which to me isn't always the coolest. That just means the move some levers up and down. But they've added some stuff to you know, some concerts from the never Mind World tour, I think for complete concerts. So that's pretty cool stuff you hadn't heard yet. Here's a never before released version of Lithium. That's awesome. It's cool. Yeah, I love that hearing that old school concert footage. That's awesome. That's cool. That's cool. Al Right, there you go. Those are my favorite releases this week as far as albums go. Eric Clapton has one rise against Silk Sonic an evening with so sonic Um. Other than that, that's your music, you guys, go check it out. Tracy Lawrence coming up in a second. It's funny. When I was walking over here, I was I was like, got Tracy's over, come over and talk to you. And I started in my head as I was walking to the front door, I just started going, pay me, burn me. It's like I can think about you and that's the song that comes to my mind when I think about you. It's iconic song, wouldn't it was? It was a massive record, you know. I've been blessed with a lot of number were ones in the business. That one only got top five, which we were talking about before you got here, because I'm always fascinated by songs that become an artist's, you know, one of your career songs. But and it doesn't matter if it was number one now because everybody knows it and an associated with you. But that wasn't a number one song. Do you remember what beat it out? I don't remember, you know it was. Uh. It was the first thing that we had released when I moved over to DreamWorks from Warner Brothers, So there was there was a political shuffle that had happened that whole time frame. That album was actually cut on Warner Brothers and uh uh, James Stroud was running DreamWorks at the time. Scott board Shadow was the head of promotion. So we had our own deal worked out and we couldn't get Warner Broths and Brothers to release us. They wouldn't get the paperwork done. We waited and waited, wait, and we're trying to be patient, getting all the tease cross and eyes dotted and all that stuff, and then low and behold, if Ken Melons didn't drop a single the same song and uh, then the lawyers got involved, then it's like, okay, we're done. We've been waiting to release a single. Here here's somebody else has got their hands on it. So we we came and got aggressive and it Uh. I think there was just some some things going on around DreamWorks at the time, and it was probably Toby that was ahead of us that kept us from going in. But they just felt like it was time to let it go and move on. But it but it was a massive hit man. That thing impacted hard. Yeah, I was gonna ask is it massive because it's lasted or was it massive then? And for some reason You're like, why can't we get this the number one? Because I'm feeling it when I'm playing shows. You know, Uh, it was massive because it was massive, it really, and you know all number ones aren't aren't that way. I've had a lot of them that you know, they they manipulated the numbers. They went in on a dying breath, some things fell out at the top. Whatever the reasons were, Uh, I don't think. I don't think the longevity of the song needs to be determined by how far it went up on the charts. And there's a there's a there's a you know, a marquee to all that stuff too. But I think the longevity of it speaks for itself. I mean, it's it's one of those songs that just connected with people. You know, Hank. I don't think Hank Jr. Had a number one song for years and years all that early stuff that was so massive for him. I mean most of those were just top tens, but they impacted, they left up, they left an indelible mark in people's mind. I remember, and I didn't know at the time. As a kid listening to that song, I didn't know what a key change was. It was only later in my life when I learned a bit about music to understand what a key chain watch was and how hard it was to do. But there's a key change in paying me at Birmingham that you do that. When listening back to it, I still get chill bumps because it's like it goes to the next level when you do stup and what we do live. I closed the show with it, have been closing the show with it for a long time, So we built this big power of pop guitar solo into it that just really elevates it. When you hit that mod, it just who'll, you know. I think one of the things that made that record so special too, is nobody really knew what a Birmingham was. They thought, you know, you had people that thought I was talking about the city that I left my love in Birmingham. You had people thought about, you know, it's a uh whatever the area was. But what I found out later on it maybe I didn't really even know what it was until later on, But the song is actually written about a house called a Birmingham. It's a style of house and we've talked about that in the past before. So I think the being able to interpret that song and be something that anybody wanted it to be made was one of the things that made it so special. It wasn't locked into just being what it was. You can interpret it many different ways, which a lot of great songs have. That absolutely, because what makes it great is so many people can relate and sometimes so many people find their own relationship with the song. And I think that's what this song does, Like everyone finds in a relationship with this song absolutely and they make it fit their own mental picture of what that is. Another song that that was locked that for me was Texas Tornado and all the things that I've had. I think Texas Tornado impacted the young kids more than anything else that I ever did. And and the only thing that I can correlate that too is how many times as a kid did your mother say your room looks like a tornado hit it? So I think that it had that perception to young kids, and they were they found a way to relate to it on a different level because I never saw that that that correlation when I cut that song either. I mean, I associate you with Arkansas, but you mentioned Texas. You were born in Texas. I was born in Atlanta, Texas, nineteen sixty eight. All my Lawrence family lives lived in Texas, lives there. I didn't My mother remarried when I was very young, so I didn't grow up there. But I spent all of my summers in Christmas holidays in Queen City, Atlanta, when I was a kid growing up. Because to me, you're in Arkansas, and when I was going back looking at You know, sometimes I feel like I know people so well that I need to go back and relook at them as as a researcher. And it was like, Tracy is born in Texas. I was like, he was, We'll see, I'm I could be a little bit of an oaky too, because where I grew up in that form in Arkansas is right in the very last little corner of the state of Arkansas at borders Red River cross Oak Rever River. Going to Texas, Oklahoma's like seven minutes away because that's where the beer joint was. I know it well. Uh, And so that architects area is what we called it. So I got influences from Arkansas and Texas and Louisiana and Oklahoma and all that stuff r out there. So it had its kind of own unique vibe. As a kid. What were you listening to? Man, I listened to everything. I remember his early back three or four years old. You know, Glenn Campbell Variety Show was owned, So I remember, you know a lot of Glen Campbell stuff, a lot of early Charlie Pride stuff. But I also remember listening to some pop stuff when I was a kid growing up to just whatever things were on the radio, but country was always Country was a foundation for me. I was talking to somebody recently, and for me, you know, being my formidable years were the nineties and so I mean I turned ten and country music was the first music to me growing up in a rural town in Arkansas that talked about where I was from, because no nothing else talked about rural towns, what it was like growing up in the South, and so I had country music as my base. But alternative music in the nineties to me was talking about how I felt, and so it was those were the two types of music that you know, I listened to Kissing ninety six and let Rock Bob Robbins in the morning, and then I would wish, I want I'm not station now, so it's super cool to be on the stage now. But then I would listen to alternative music to go, okay, I have like angst and country music wasn't the angst music then. But what was great about country music back then was you could actually have adults sing adults songs, and so we're now you got you know, you'd be ten and listen to country music and relations you know, you were probably like me even even when I was a kid, when I would hear really sad heartbreak songs, they would they would move me. I'd get emotional about it love songs and about love going wrong and your woman cheated on you and all that stuff. I've never experienced any of it, but there was something about it that moved me inside. Now. The other really style of music that really grabbed a hold of me that I wish that I would have had the voice range to do that was a C d C and this easy top and the really early trashing guitar stuff. I really got into that stuff a lot in the mid eighties when I was in high school. I mean, I loved all that. That was the cruising around music that we listened to a whole lot, Uh, mixed in with a lot of the George Strait and Bo SFAs and all that kind of stuff too. Those were my two goats. What about in your house growing up? What was kind of put on to you that that that influenced you nothing? You know, Um, my mom had a record player and it had Jim Reeves stuff and a little bit of old Elvis. But I didn't grow up in a musical household. Uh, Daddy was just never into it there. I remember times riding in the car and never even listening to the radio. I mean there were times he had turned it off. He just didn't want to hear it was noise to him. So I was kind of on an island by myself as a kid growing up, just really hungry I for your music and soaking it in any place that I could get it, and really didn't grow up around very many musicians. There weren't a lot of people that played instruments around me. Got in the band and junior high school, played trumpet in the marching band for many years, but really just started gravitating more guitar, country music and that kind of stuff as I kind of grew. But you say gravitating, like for the gravity to pull you, there has to be some sort of influence that makes you think there's a chance even the two the two for that man, it was. It was a defining moment. Twelve years old. Uh uh. I was already getting into Merle Haggard. Uh and I was starting to learn to play guitar. I mean a lot of that early stuff, the Haggard stuff. I had a natural voice to sing Merrole Haggard when I was young, and and most of the songs were, you know, three or four chord things that were pretty easy to learn to play as you were learning to play guitar. And then and then George straight hit. So when George Strait came out that that Texas Hockey talk a little bit of Bob Will's influence with the twin fiddle sounds, man, I fell in love with it. I was done then. And really that was the time that you had the Fireman that came out. You had unwound those early records. Uh, and then then the Chair came out, you know, and and it was so cool. When I came to Nashville, I got to write with Dean Dillon, and I got to write with Hank Cocker, and I got to spend time with those guys. So that's those are pretty cool things for me as I as I evolved into this place and became successful in the business, to be able to meet some of those guys that that had such an impact on my life. Were you a decent horn player? You know? I was first year for a long time, awful sight reader. I didn't like to read the music. I had a guy named a Smith is sat next to me, so the first of every year. J J. Was a great reader of music, so he would he would learn how to play it, and I'd figured it out and I'd smoke him bore. And you learned of your love, not of listening to music, but playing music in the band. Uh. Yeah, really, but man, country music was always there. I mean I I my mother's told me the story. Obviously I don't remember it, but she would tell me when I was, when I was three and four years old, that I said, I look like Glenn Campbell and I sang like Charlie Bryant to them. Were you a performer in the house at six seven years old? I was. It was just it was just there. It was part of my identity, you know. When I was born, Uh, my mother had uh. I have an older brother and an older sister by by our biological parents, and they divorced, and then my mother remarried our father and UH had me. So she says that it was like the happiest time in her life, and she spent a lot of time listening to the radio. If I would have been born a girl, my name was gonna be little readily in So I was. I was indoctrinated before I even hit the ground. At what age did you move to Nashville? Uh? I moved to Nashville and nineteen ninety twenty three came in September of ninety. So what did you do from high school? When you finished high school? Up until twenty three years old? College for a couple of years, went to s A. U. Mual Writer's Baby, South Arkansas, went into Mascom study radio television production. Uh was there on a choir scholarship, saying in the coral ensemble with the blue tuch seedles and smoke gets in your eyes all that stuff. Hated it, but you know, I didn't really I didn't know anybody, and the smartest path to me was to at least go to college and check it out and see if the radio was the avenue to get in because I didn't know what to do. Uh, And and I knew that just sitting around playing vfws and stove was not the answer. So I was just searching for a path. Were you doing that where you're going around playing all the b fws? Yeah? Uh? I started off when I was fourteen. I had a sheriff's deputy that that I met. I was playing a talent show at a county fair and when I was about fourteen, and he kind of took me under his wing. He played Jerry Lee Louis style piano and his wife had seen the Patchy cline stuff. And we had a jamboree hall and Derek's Arkansas. There was a jamboree hall and ashdown where they had converted an old theater. There was one a guy named Buster Doss had one called Buster DOSses Frontier Jamboree and Mount Pleasant, Texas. So there were there were several of them around and they would bring it in kind of like the with a the Opery type situation where you would have a house band, you would have the young acts that would do a couple of songs, and then you would have a headliner that would come in and play the back half of the night. And so UH that my buddy would he would come in with him and his wife and play the show and that would go. And so that was my introduction to getting on stage playing with a band. Wound up with my first band, UH that was based out of the Light, Arkansas, which is the home of Glen Campbell. A lot of got guys that they were in their late thirties, early forties and stuff, and here I'm a sixteen year old kid and I'm starting to play at the v of WS and the Elks lodges and all that kind of stuff. So that was that was a big growth period for me where I really started going and playing, you know, four sets a night and really having to learn to grind things out and finding my voice, and uh, learning which things which artists I could emulate. You know, there was you HADJERICKI Van Shelton's and your Head your you know, you're Dwight Yoakum was and all those things were big, and Randy Travis was out. So a lot of those baritone singers were people that I really I would really try to emulate everything down to the way they breathed them between phrases and all that stuff. And and it took me getting to Nashville to really find out what my true voice was. So but but that was the foundation for all of that for me. When you're playing a band in your sixteen and there thirty to forty, what are you? Are you the lead singer? Are you playing rhythm guitar? I was the lead singer. I sang the whole night. It was all me. I was an awful guitar player, so I don't think they ever put me in the mix. But I would stand up there with my bangor hat on. It was about that, bigg around like a broom mantle and sing all the George Straight songs I could work up. You know, So you go to college, did you did you graduate college? Or later? So when you leave, did you, well, what did you pursue? Because there's still a gap between Before you moved to Nashville. I went back to Texakana for a little bit more construction for a while. Uh, still playing with the same little band that I played with through high school musician changes and stuff, and I played with them through the first two years of college, where I'd go play on the weekends and stuff. To come back I was. I had got a strange call from a band out of Louisiana. The band was called Phoenix and Uh. They invited me to come start singing with them, and they were playing a pretty a little bit better circuit with some bigger knoightclubs and things. So I wound up moving to a spring Hill, Louisiana. Lived there for a little bit from there. I lived in Rustin for a little bit. Uh, and was living in Ruston in nineteen ninety prior to when I moved to Nashville, and I had I had re enrolled in Louisiana. I had enrolled in Louisiana Tech. I was gonna go back and finish my degree. And uh, I was getting close to the time where I had to make some decisions. And I and it just dawned on me. If I if I start classes here, I'm gonna wind up getting married and had some kids. If I'm gonna go, I need to go down. And I packed up everything and and said, I sign arc inter Nashville. So when you get to Nashville, was it to be a singer? Be a songwriter? Like? What was up first in your your plan? Uh? You know what I did? First? I started hanging out at all the clubs that I could find, where the local uh, where the songwriters hung out and the road musicians played. Uh. And UH I started writing a ton of songs. That was really the very foundation for me. But it might have happened a really fast man. So from September of ninety I started. Uh. There were places back then were like Gabes. There was two clubs on Trinity Lane, Gabes in the Broken Spoke. The Broken Spoke was in the hotel right there. I think it was Remodi in back then Gabs was a little center block building that was right behind it. You had the Rose Room that was out on Stewart's Ferry Pike, and there was another one that changed name several times that was out on Murpha'sboro Road. But I would go hit all those places, any place that they would let me get on stage and sing, and I did that for a few months. That led me to getting me getting invited up to play at a jamboree style place called Live at Livy's that was all the weather and days We'll Kentucky and every Saturday night from in like the middle of December, and I started going up there and it was the same top opery situation that I started off doing, where they have you know, young kids opening up to a couple of songs and then they have a headlighter. So they had there. They had the George Jones impersonator and the Johnny cast impersonator and all that kind of stuff. So I started going up to to Day's Well singing it live at Libby's on Saturday night. We'll radio station called can I say? They called it w b VR broadcast back in the Nashville every Saturday night, So people started hearing me on the radio. Uh. There was a young lady that was performing on the show, and she was working with the management group, and they had brought some executives from Atlantic Records over to see her before Christmas and nineteen nine, and they liked me better than they liked her. The wheels started turning. In January of ninety one, I did a showcase of the Bluebird Cafe where Rick Blackburn from Atlantic Records agreed to sign me. In May of ninety one, the third week of May ninety one, I walked in the studio, I signed my contract and I cut sticks and Stones. That's quick. Seven months, that's way. I mean, that's one of the quicker. That's as fast as I've ever heard anybody, no management, no relations. I never knocked on the door and never did any of it. I walked in the studio and cut ten songs, your first number one, Sticks and Stones. And I want to get to that in a second. Um, when we start talking about music, but when you say you moved here in ninety and so many of my friends, we we kind of have like a class. Like when I moved to town, it was all its people like Dan and Shade, they had moved to town, and like We're all new at the same time, and so I'm in and I'm becoming friends with them, and none of I don't really have much going on. They don't have much going on. So you kind of have all these folks that are are getting their feet wet in Nashville at the same time when you moved to Nahville. Can you think of anyone back that was around, you know, new class. There was two of them, Uh, the two that I was friends with actually did pretty well for themselves. There were quite a few of them that running the bars that that kind of fell off the tracks there never but Tim mcgrawl and Kenny Chesney. They did all right. They did, Yeah, they did all right. And man, men, timor still close. You know. I hadn't talked to Kenny in a while, but we were all really good friends. We ran around together a lot. Tim was already already had a couple of songs out um, but they really didn't have any impact. And then I got my deal. Sticks and Stones, Pop and Tim came out with Indian Outlaw, and it was still a couple of years before before Kenny hit hard. Here is Sticks and Stones. So when this song starts to get some traction, you're a brand new artist. I mean, is the record label like we knew it? We knew you are a guy? Like are you treated differently? Rick Blackburn didn't believe in that song. Elroy Kahanak who found me up in Days will Kentucky, believe in that song. He literally got in his car. He was the head of promotions in Atlantic and he would drive all over the place and bring p d's out and stick him in the car in the parking lot and make him listen to it. El Rakhne made that a hit. He shived it down everybody's throat. But it was so different when it came on the radio. There was nothing else it was like it. And that was the thing that that change in musical style when I was trying to figure out and the summer of ninety when I was living in Louisiana, what do I need to do? Because you got to think about all the stuff that would happen had that happened in eighty nine, you had Alan Jackson that came out, Mark Chestnut, Vince gil Uh, Garth Brooks as all this new music, this new sound that was happening, and it was exciting back then, and I was like, I've got to go be a part of that. I've got to go be a part of it now. So when I got the shot to cut my record and James Stroud and I were put together and all the wheel started turning on that kind of stuff. I mean, James had cut that first record on Clinton Black, so I was with part of that new sound that was making that change in country music. That's when the young country slogan, that whole thing just exploded out of Nashville. It was it was awesome time. Did you get any pushback? Since your sound was different and every kind of different generation gets a pushback, was there any there? You know? I never felt it personally towards me, and I know a lot of the older guys. I heard the Whalens and the Haggard grumbling underneath the surface, you know that they weren't getting their played on the radio anymore. And there was there was not It was not a there's not a love A lot of love toward us from those guys early on. I think it kind of eased up as time went on. But the one person that I never felt that from was George Jones. Never uh. And you know, George and Nancy they found a way to embrace that change, and so they just they gathered us all up and made us part of I don't need no rocking chair and all that stuff. And me I went on tour with Jones, so it was it was. It was a great time. But George, they just approached it from a different perspective. But yeah, there was there was some pushback. But you know, these guys have been getting there and played for thirty plus years, and then all of a sudden, all these young kids are coming in town. The music change and taking over, and they're not getting air played anymore. They're they're a little bit better at times. It's funny you bring up I don't need your rocking ship. I mean that to me. I can remember singing that, and I George Jones was a bit before me. As I got older, I started to listen to more George Jones because I love the format. I want to learn as much about country music as I could. But when that song came out. I remember all you guys being on that song. I mean it was every country superstar I could have ever imagined on that song with him and and the ones of us that weren't on it. I didn't get to sing on the record, but I got to do it every now at the conference, there were so many I was looking at the c m as are recording this and they're actually tonight, But that song was nominated for a c M A and it was just like seventeen people on that song. It was I thought it was so cool because every all those people love George Jones, respected George Jones. They did, But do you know what, how could you not respect George Look at look at what he had been through. He lived alive. I mean he survived himself and uh and and lived to a place where he was able to still be relevant in a time where the music business was changing all around. And you gotta have a lot of respect for that. That first number one was Now were their singles that happened after that that did not hit his heart? Six and Stones hit hard, Uh, the couple of big ones off that record, So Sticks and Stones, the four off that album were Sticks and Stones, Today's Lonely Fool running behind that were number ones, and then Somebody Paints the Wall was a top five, so we had three number ones on the top five. And now as we progressed into Alibis, which was my second release, we had four number ones off of it. But there was some friction there because I was wanting to grow. By this time, Indian Outlaw had popped and I was wanting to do a heavier guitar sound, and James and I were on board that. James Stroud who produced the album, so we were we were pushing things. Alibis was a massive hit. When I remember being in the studio, we cut Can't Break It to My Heart, which was a single, and uh, that track was originally cut with a screaming rock and roll guitar on it, and I thought the head of the label was gonna blow us top and he lost his mind, made us go back in and put a fiddle solo on it. There's too much rock and roll guitar that couldn't stand it. Another song that was the number two air placed song of the year called Can't Break It to My Heart, that I was a co writer on. I thought he's gonna drop me off the label because he told me not to cut it, not cut it anyway. It's wild to hear those stories about songs that I just associate being so freaking country. I mean, now I look at those and I'll play some allibies. Here's alibis and here is Can't Break It to My Heart. Where this is as country as I could as the country of a song can be. Absolutely, he hated this song, hated it, hated everything about it. Why I have no idea because he told me not to do it, and I did it, and that's why didn't really like it. But you know, there's you know, I always say, people ask how you know when you're get in the music business, when can you push? How do you know when to push? When you get momentum, you better push because if you don't, you'll never get it. When you get an opportunity to take advantage of a situation, or you will never have any creative control your whole life. And I took advantage of the opportunity and I pushed back a little bit, and I don't think they knew quite what to do with that. And I had managers that stood behind me to I wasn't out there by myself. My manager faultify it for me. What was your reputation after that? Those first two albums with College Wow? Where yeah? You so you yeah, you're hitting it yeah. I mean it's not like you came from from much so I mean what what what does everybody back home? Think? You know, I never thought about the impact that it would have on my whole family, but it changed everybody. You know. Uh, I'm a kid that grew up in a town of eleven people. I graduated in the largest class that ever came out of the school. I think there was fifty two of us and forty nine graduated. I mean that's almost exactly my town people. And then and then to come to Nashville and and do all the things when nobody knew anybody here, I mean, to be able to do all that it affected my family, and and some of it was you know, there's a lot of jealousy, you know, all that stuff that goes on. It's it affected their lives. It affected my brothers and sisters in a lot of ways. But we survived it all. You know, did they treat you differently? Did you become I guess, celebrity? To them. It's kind of hard not to. We grew past it, but I think there's a lot of excitement around it early on um. But you do have to adapt to it, and you do have to find a new normal, you know what I'm talking about. You have to make it as normal as you possibly can and push all the background noise out of the way, because if you don't, you can't deal with your stuff, stuff in your own mind. And you've got you've got to get back to just being normal you and doing your work and doing your thing and let people say what they want to say. It's easier for you to do it when you're getting on the stage and you're getting that release and stuff at now than it is for the people that are still living there in the same house and the same things. To that one. I gave a lot of cars away, I'll say. I'll say that I bought a lot of cars for family members. You know, anything that I could do to to to there's guilt attached to it, you know. I struggle with that so much. There's so much guilt, and you feel bad about being successful and and but you you have to you have to make it as normal as possible. Yeah, that's that's been a constant struggle for me. Again. I grew up in poverty, and so you know, I go back home and my talent is still impoverished, absolutely, and I try to do as much as I can. No matter how I do, I feel like I think I should be doing more. I have more, why don't I keep doing? And so I can never meet that. You know. What I did is is there came a point, uh, And I did it for fifteen years while I would go back home and I did a charity concert there and uh, in doubt, two different scholarship funds. One was for s A U and one one of H Junior College in Texas County. But we put money back. We gave money to the police department, the fire department, the town beautification committee. We we've put stuff back in the town, you know, waits in the locker room, and all the stuff for the football team. We did all that stuff until the point that it just got, you know where people didn't want to buy tickets anymore, you know, and I had used up all the freebees and swapouts with every friend I had the music business. After fifteen years, and nobody everybody wanted a free ticket. Nobody wanted to come and contribute back into their town anymore. It's like, you know, I'm done here, and it comes a point in time when you gotta walk away. Alabama did it from June jam to that comes the point this time I'm done. I don't feel guilt anymore. It's okay. If a new artist called you today, we'll just call him Mike Smith. He's like, I got my first number one hit. Yeah, it's like you've been through this, Tracy, Like, what would you tell a new artist who's just starting to get some of that heat they got the first number one hit. Everyone's like, oh, you're the guy now, Like, what what are the the pitfalls? Did you see? Given too much money away, you never know what tomorrow is gonna hold it. It's not just in the music business and in the sporting warning everything else. The best advice is get a really good, licensed, bonded financial planner and business manager that will take care of your money. Don't trust your managers, don't trust nobody else. I agree in the world of separation, this person does this job, this does it. You have somebody that takes care of your money. Everybody gets paid accordingly. Everybody agrees to what they're getting, but don't leave anything out there to be taken advantage of because they will. It's it's too easy to do. Um and and somebody that's gonna be the voice of reason to you, that will make you understand it's okay to do nice things for people, but you create figure out what you're disposable income is and secure the rest of it because there's no guarantees you're gonna have a tent to your career. There's no guarantees to that for anybody. My second home I'll ever died now the second has become. I mean this one put a smile on my face. You know, this is one of those songs that was not an impact record. So my my manager, Wayne Edwards at the time, Uh, Wayne was a salty old dog. Now Wayne had he had been a fighter pilot. Supposedly, I had heard a lot of stories. Who knows Wayne, Uh, I do know that Wayne was a pretty heavy hitter promotion guy for r c A. He was one of the holy people that Elvis trusted, so he was very knowledgeable. He knew everybody in radio. Uh. When I when he came on board with my management team, he was working an independent promotion account. He had an independent promotion company, so he was doing stuff on the side. Wayne knew how to make magic happen on the charts. I saw him take that record from seven to one on a dying breath. It was gonna die and he up. He didn't jump everything, he killed everything in front of it, because you could manipulate things a little bit different back then than you do nowadays. It's not it's not easy to do that anymore. But he knew how to make that stuff happen. You talked about how that song wasn't one of your impact records, but if the good die young, that's got to be one. Absolutely. I mean a year later, I want to roll through a couple of these here, but Texas Tornado, what your referenced a second ago and then pays my favorite and what I think of with you most. But I think, and I could be wrong, but I would think time marches on, you know, Time to me artistically is the best lyric that I ever recorded. Uh, And Bobby Braddock is an absolute genius, and I gotta do some clarifications. So Bobby, Bobby text me the other day and I had said something you know, over the years, there's I have a few blank spots along the way. So sometimes my memory is not a accurate there's things that maybe have evolved a little bit through the course of time. And and I swear to God in my mind, I remember sitting at the at the desk with Don Cook and uh I I, for the life of me, I really believe that Ronnie Dunne got his hands on this right after I didn't try to put it on hold. Well, Bobby sent me a text and he was pretty upset about it, and he said, no, it wasn't Brooks and Dunn. Brooks and Dunne kicks didn't like the song at all, and Ronnie never heard it and it didn't get try to put on hold by them. He said it was it was uh Tim du Bois over at Arista that had put it on for Diamond Rio and for Alan Jackson. This is who it was put on hold for. So my memory wasn't a So apologize to Bobby Braddick. This is the first time I've had a chance to do that. So I hope it goes everywhere and you hear this, Bobby, I love you, brother, So you cut time. March or as you call it, time time marches on. Well that's what's on the scene, right. Um. Was that a for sure single? You know it was for me? Um, So that there were some things that happened through that progression rout there. James Stroud had done the first three albums that I had done, and that was Uh, Sticks and Stones, Alibis and I sit now uh and James and I sat down and had a conversation. I said, James, I'm here in the same musicians on everybody that you're working with. He's doing mcgrawl, now, he's doing John Anderson, he's doing you know, Clint Black and and it's like, I gotta make a change. So we had a little bit of an issue there, and I went with Don Cook. Really like the sound and what he was cutting on Brooks and done at the time. Uh, huge completely different section of players, just really a really dug the groove he had. And so that song came to me just because of that new relationship with Don, and it was really fresh from me. I remember the thing that drove me. See at that time, as as we had evolve passed Alibis and a little friction with the label and all these things that I really had had some strong legs underneath me where I had control of my career. The thing that made me cut that song specifically, the one thing that did was Smokes a Lot of Dope because I knew it would shock people. I knew it had shock factor to it, and and everybody it was terrified of it. I knew it would either be the biggest record that I've ever had or kill my career. But there was no in between. Were people saying, don't cut that line, change the word? There was no. It was like we I swung for the fence. Absolutely, And and the weird thing about it, so if the world had a front porch was on the album previous to that, and there's a song a line in there. Uh, Granddaddy taught me how to cussom how to pray. I had a couple of radio stations that wouldn't play it because it said the word cuss in it, not even you're not cussing. Yeah, absolutely so were there stations that wouldn't play Smokes a lot of Dope? Did anyone come to you and go, we can't do it? It was so big that couldn't stop it. That song was That's great problem to have, and you bet on you. Yeah, like you said, I believe in this. We're gonna take it. We're gonna just kill swing for the fans. Man, that's awesome. Where do you put that in your set list? Uh? It is right before paint. I would think it's got to be. It's that escalation where you're just speaking out at the end of the night. Man, you brought hold the mic at the whole crowd. Time marches on, Yeah, marches ten years later. And I get to this because you mentioned my girl and Chesney around the same time that you got here. You do find out who your friends are two thousand six. Now was this kind of a hey I'm back boys, bad baby. The three of us had talked about doing something together for a long time. Um, we were just waiting for the right song to come along. And when I when I got this song from Casey Bethard, I really hadn't thought about this being a duel or a trio and we had to finished the song. I had a finished vocal on it. I was done, and I'm like, you know what, this lyric screams to me that this is what we've been looking for as friends, old friends, that have been talking about doing something like this for a long time. So I just picked up the phone, called them and send him a copy of it, and they were both like, let's do it, man, and we got in the studio knocked it out. There was no labels involved, there was no conversation. They they really wanted us too, But by the time anybody found out about it was done. That's awesome. You know. As we talked about impact songs, I pulled a few of these that if you just would have quizzed me, I would have said, oh, yeah, these are the biggest songs ever because these are the songs that I love the most. Stars over Texas as one of those that I'm assuming when you sing this people sing it top of their lungs. You know. Um, this song is kind of an anomaly in my set list because it's really one of the very few positive lyrics that I've ever recorded. I don't do these very much. Most of my stuff is crowning your beer, it's cheat and love gone wrong, all that kind of stuff. That's the stuff I think my teeth into. So this is a very rare thing. You know. I never did that I swear things or any of that stuff. This is the only one that I've ever done like this. I'd imagine this was a big wedding song for a long time, probably still is, but I would imagine like this was just such a love wedding because it was so lift of center for me. This is not this is not my bread and butter. Well, why did you cut it? Because I wrote it? Okay, yeah, and I and it was one of those things that it was just so good you could not cut it. It was just a really man Paul Nelson and Larry Boone wrote that song I'll be a better man Better I mean, also another one, not a number one, but if you go, let's Tracy's top ten. And I'm like, oh, for sure, this is an OnCore song. This this was a big one, um, you know. And this is a continued part of the musical growth through that period of time. This is this is my free bird man, This is the guitar playoff of the m this is this is what that was for me, And I thought sonically it was really one of the best sounding records I ever cut. Are you now feeling an appreciation for you, your music, your style unlike any other time in your life? Because people, And I'll just use me as an example. Now I'm starting to in this industry get some prominence, and I look at what was the best, what affected me the most to get me here, and it's people like you and music from you. Are you feeling this more than ever before? You know? What really brought that into focus for me is when we did an album three or three years ago called Good Old Days, and I took a lot of those hits and when the studio and Chris Young sang on it, the good guy Young, Dustin Lynch did Time March his own, uh, Justin Moore did Alibis with me, So there was there was a lot of people that were on that record, and I, you know, I never had really sit down and realized what an impact I'd had on a lot of the younger artists that were coming into town, but across the board, all of them when they came in the studio and sat down, and it was pretty overwhelming for me to realize that I'd had that kind of impact on those kids. And since that moment, I really felt an embraced from the younger generation that's coming in. I feel it when I walk in the room and I can't say that I felt that for a long time. Do you feel it out your shows too, because not only do you have your fans, but like the kids of your fans who now have an appreciation not because of their parents, but because that sound from the nineties early two thousands is like the sound again. I feel like it is. I feel like people are they're rediscovering it again, and it's it's I've said this for a long time that I felt like the bulk of the music from the nineties and from that era that was gonna be our classic rock that gets replayed for a long, long, long, long, long long time. Uh. And a lot of it is because the sonic sonically, the way that it sounds when it's played on the radio. But I do, I do feel that from a lot of younger people, and they have access to so much stuff, you know, because if they if if they grew up love and haint me of Birmingham and they really didn't hear any other stuff from me through that period of time, they all they got just go on Spotify or Pandora or whatever, and that's all right there and go to YouTube and you can find at all. And I think being able to have that instant access to not only know what the hits were, but be able to go through and find the stuff that you like that maybe you never found its way to radio. And I mean I get requests for things that I've never even worked up with the band before. So there's stuff that people are funding and and I think that's pretty cool. Spotify had put out some data showing what people listen to most when they listen to country. In nineties, country was their biggest absolutely, I believe you know. The other thing that I've noticed from our production standpoint too, and you you probably know this too being in radio, because you can hear how things line up. It's like sonically things things work contin your groupings. So you'd go through the early eighties all the way through about eighty eight, and then you had your Garth Brooks era that kind of changed everything, and that went through about right in through there. And what happened as the recording techniques changed. The first album that I recorded was recorded on a twenty four track analog machine, the next one was on forty eight did and then we started moving into pro tools and hard drives and all that kind of stuff. So as we phase tape out. You're able to sonically push those sounds up if you listen to how much verb and how much looser things are miked with the recording recording process. Every ten years, it gets a little tighter, it gets a little more compressed, it gets shoved up in your face a little bit. That's why the stuff from right now, if you're all contemporary music on a format right now, it's really hard to go back and play an oldmoral song because sonically it doesn't fit. Even if you love the song and it's got its time and place, you just can't get it loud enough to sit in the pocket in the right place. You know what. I do know what you're talking about, because there are times and don't even playing because I have pretty much freedom to do what I want at this point, and I'll play some old Johnny Cash stuff on the air, even like get rhythm right, good rhythm. And as much as I love the song, if I'm playing it up against other songs every it doesn't. It lacks the it does like the sound, then it almost diminishes the record. And then if you overcompress it then it loses something too, because it's it's not it's not the way that it was meant to be played. But that's why, that's why I really have pondered on how music evolves and the stages that it takes, as as some artists get phased out, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just a natural, natural part of the evolution of music getting phased out the gold things that sonically stay in play. Sometimes a gold song stays there because it just sounds better though the cat rest the catalog. We all we understand that. But it's it's a fascinating thing to ponder on watching the musical evolution of the industry. Who did you see come in after you? Because you know when you and you you mentioned the young guns of country come in and the older guys went, oh, man, this is not what we're doing. It's it's a bit different. Who did you see come in as an artist after you? And you went, Wow, that's not what we're doing. It's a bit different, and they just they really killed it. Freaking Urban man. Keith Urban was the bomb. And still like him a lot man, but he was I remember that first record on the Ranch that came out. I just I thought he was bad at the bottle man and I really dug his sound, and I really enjoyed watching his evolution and uh Alden too. All Dan has got a great sound. I really like Michael Knox's productions and what he's done with them, but there's been a handful of them. Uh. It's but I tend to lean into the wind a little bit. I like the more aggressive stuff, not the sappy pop stuff, the more heavy rock and real guitar stuff that's just in your face hindsight. Volume to Price of Fame out now, it's been out since August. What month we I don't know a month right now, we're in November. So I want to play a couple of clips here. So let's do from Volume to a Price of Fame with Eddie Montgomery. Expensive. You're gonna play this game everything? How do you and Eddie get together for this song? You know? I I co wrote that song and about uh two thousand thirteen something like that. It was before I changed management companies. So I wrote that with Rick Huckaby, who I've been working with off and over years, and Brad Arnold from Three Doors Down. I love Brad, He's my buddy mane uh and uh we had had that same setting in the can for a while. And and uh uh. When we got done with the Volume one, which was all new stuff, and we were kind of figuring out what the next stage of the whole trilogy was that we were working on, we decided we were gonna do five old remakes and then five new songs. Uh And as I was looking at what I had, stuff that I had written, and where we wanted to take it, Eddie and I've been friends a long time and and this song is about sacrifice and things that we lose in the business. Not whining about that kind of stuff, but we all do make some sacrifices. You give, you give a PC stuff along the way. With some of this you have to make sacrifices, um and some of them are pretty painful, you know. And and knowing that you just the personal loss that he's been through. I mean, when Troy died, it it jerked the rug guy from under him. And you know, I know a lot of his personal issues too, And I just didn't think there was anybody that could sink his teeth into that song with Eddie. Could Another song I liked from from this project was Tracy Bird Holes in the Wall. I pulled this one. Yeah, they're all gone. There have only been a couple of songs that you've like, like, smiled right when I when I mentioned this is one of them, lit up a little bit. I'm doing this in the show Man. I love the hockey talk stuff. Man, It's uh, I've always liked it since I was a kid. It just it makes me happy, even if even and that's what people don't understand about country people that really don't get into it. Just because it's a sad lyric and it's talking about bad things that go into your life doesn't doesn't mean it's not supposed to make you happy. Because it does. That song brings a smile to my face. I was reading too that in January you have more music coming out Volume three. So the whole premise of this thing, with the headlines Hindsight Collection, this is my This year is my thirtieth anniversary. In May of this year, it would have been thirty years since I cut Sticks and Stones. So we decided that to commemorate that, we wanted to do three albums, ten songs a piece, three volumes to commemorate the whole thing. Volume three would have been out the first of this month. But we had some COVID issues back in September and I could get in the studio to finish vocals, and then we got kicked out of the distribution release cycle. So now I think the official release date is now the twenty eighth of January for the third album. Whenever, I was just kind of looking at some of the stuff that we had done on uh, like my National Countdown back from Volume one. We had Lonely one on one, right, we played this, so yeah, we did yeah, yeah, But I was thinking, I was like, I know, I played something from Volume one on like the National Countdown show. Let me shut up and play a little bit of this for for people that slow. I mean, you still got it. It's a good record, but you still got that voice like that, that same Tracy Lawrence like like texture, like you haven't still I feel like you haven't lost it. I still love it. How is how is your like physical voice these right now? My physical voice is struggling. And we we went from doing nothing last year to doing you know, instead of going back and doing a couple of days, normal normal work days, normal work weeks, I went to doing three and full. I had thirteen shows in October two golf tournaments that I had to sing at, a UH television special with Lee Greenwood and Huntsville, and a political rally for a senator here in the state. At seventeen events, and I was cried and I'm saying it every one of them, and uh, I saw him. I'm kind of the place where I feel like I'm just going to hold you know, I'm just trying to get through the end of the year. Right now, I'm pretty burnt. You get a little breakdown, thanks you hav Christmas or now. Uh, the week I'm taking after I'd get done with my charity event at the Nastural Rescue Mission the week of Thanksgiving, I'm taking the weekend off and do some stuff with the family. And uh then I only had like five days in jail. Taking the weekend off. He's like, I have no voice, but I'm gonna take two whole days. A couple of you mentioned with the Nashville Rescue, which is something that people just beloved drown here because of of what you do with the you know, with with feed and folks. How did how did that start with you? That started with me and a few buddies frying turkeys in the parking lot of the house. Uh and UH and offering that service up to old people of the church or people that were scared of frying and everything. Sometimes we get up Thanksgiving, we might cook twenty turkeys and wrap them up and and go deliver them and do that kind of thing, and it's like, you know, this would be a great thing to do with the Mission. I've always wanted to do something for them. I've always felt a connection. And after that year, I think, I think this is our sixteenth year. So I reached out to the people at the Rescue Mission. I said, I've got this idea. We'd like to try this, and they said, sure, come on. So I the first year that we did it, we buried propane tanks from the folks at church I was going to at the time, and everybody brought their own friars, and we we got people to donate as many turkeys as we could not I think we cooked a hundred turkeys or something like that. And then the next year we started picking up sponsorship, and then we got friars donated, and then all this stuff kind of ballooned into this thing that we do now. It is UH and Uh, So it's uh. We we cook all that they can store, and so we could cook a lot more, but usually we get to about five hundreds or so, and they don't have the refrigeration capacity to keep more than that, so they'll deemon everything and feed it throughout the week. But we've we've got got some plans to grow a little bit more locally next year. I want to do more stuff with more outreach programs locally and be able to affect more people. I was talking with a friend. I said, Hey, Tracy Lawrence coming over, and he was like, ask him about the time he was shot. Now, some people in my life that have been shot don't like talking about when they were shot. It's uh, it was a tough time in my life that happened. The uh may have not even one. I just finished the background vocals on the last track on the album, and I had a friend of mine that came in town that I'd grown up with a young lady that I graduated high school with a completely platonic relationship, and she was excited she was coming through to go see some other folks who graduated with that lived in Indiana, and so she stayed a couple of Nights came to the studio. We went out. I took her some of the bars and stuff that I liked a frequent when we had a couple of beers and I was taking her back to drop her off her a hotel opened the door and had a pistol stuck in my face and uh, they were trying to force us up to her room. They were going to do and imagine what And I was able to fight him off, and she ran to the front of the hotel and an empty two pistols on me. I've had a gun into my head. I wasn't literal you were shot. I thank god I wasn't shot. I remember that I got pistol with I didn't feel it. You know, they had a gun to my head and they're like I couldn't rember pen number, like I blanked out where I was like, I don't know my pen number to get in the A T M. And so they pistol at me, and I was like, I don't feel that, and I was just praying, like please don't pull the trigger. But because I don't remember it or didn't feel it, did you feel when you got shot. I didn't feel the initial impact but what I do remember is that they shot the worst of it. I got. I grabbed the pistol with my left hand. The guy was right behind me, and I grabbed the gun and it went off and shot my finger and then uh so I hit him in the mouth. The other people came back on me. She took off run to the front, and they got hit in the hip, which I still carry a bullet there. I got hit in the upper right arm and they shot me right through the left knee, right through the joint went from the outside of the leg all the way through. So I had three three surgeries and wound up having to have a totally replacement in two thousand sixteen. So this is one though this was May of ninety one. This happened before you. I mean it was it was a random thing. But I know, but I'm saying you went through. You then got to have major success after you were shot multiple times, like you toured after you had to go through all of this. And the bad thing about it, you know what, uh you know how how fragile a launch is, and and if you've got the priority of anybody at a record label or the powers that be, you better capitalize on your opportunity while you have that moment, because they're gonna move on to the next flavor of the month pretty quick if you don't hit or get something rolling. So I'm I'm I'm getting ready and dropped my first record. I got all this momentum, all this belief around me, and here I am. I can't even freaking walk. That's my point. And I'm and I'm like, I'm mad. I'm mad that that I'm about to lose my slot and if I don't come back quick. So I never took care of my mental health. I didn't rehab properly. I had a lot of physical issues with it that have that have plagued me for years and years and years that I still struggle with this day. But I knew that if I didn't get out of that hospital bed and get back on the bus as fast as I couldn't start working that first album, that I'd lose my shot and I probably wouldn't get another shot. And that was my point with you toward like you had success, you probably went back too early. If you pull up the Sticks and Stones album cover, I don't know if y'all have, but if you look at the back shot. I'm in a pair of red acid wash jeans, and you can tell how skinny I am. I lost so much weight through that because I was in hospital bit for a while. Uh. And they literally we we did a photo shoot for that album, part of what was done out at Percy Priests, and I'm I'm actually bent down on a rock and they had to carry me out there because I couldn't walk on that left legs, so they literally I literally got on the guy's back and he carried me out there and set me on that rock. And I can't bend my knees. So you can tell by the way I'm sitting that that that knee is. I mean, it's it's probably as big as a candle opened that photo too. But I had lost so much weight through that period. I really I really needed to take six months before I got out there and started doing what I did. And how much you take? Oh so uh that would have happened in May. I think I was probably on the road July August, wild stupid, but but I didn't have a choice, you know here, I mean I had to just wild it too much because it's not like you can go half throttle either. No, that single dropped in August six and Stones dropped in August, so I had to was that a big story? Then they used it, the label used it for everything that could squeeze out of it because it it just gave us something to talk about. I didn't want to do it, but I didn't have any control over it. Uh. But you know, who who's to say? Would would they have been able to launch my career without that nugget? I would have preferred not to get shot. But I got to take advantage of the opportunities you've given thirty there's volume one, two and three ten tracks per volume. What is the key to longevity and country music? For me? Uh? It continues to be passion because if I didn't still care about it, I don't. I don't think I could deal with the grind of it because it older, you get the herders and and uh and somewhere in the very near feature, I'm gonna have to start slowing down to some degree because I've been grinding it out for a long time. Back in the day when you were doing interviews, did you have to pull over to a pay phone to do an interview with the radio station? You know? Back then we went to the stations. When we did showcases back then, they weren't like what they are now. We would actually before Elliott Spitzer stuck his nose in it, we we would actually build I did four showcases that launched my career. I did one in Atlanta, I did one in Marina del Rey, I didn't want in Dallas, and I did one in New York City. And so you would do those regional things where each person, each each reasonal promotion person would set that up and you would deal banquet hall or whatever. The in the New York was at Radio City Music Hall, so they would fly all the radio people in, put them up at a hotel, feed them, drink them. You do a showcase, they're usually at least two acts from the label on the bill, and they would come out and they would work those folks to get them to the p ds and and all these So you worked a region at a time instead of having to go to every individual station like we do now. So radio tour back then was you go to the hubs and the station's come to you because they made it appealing to the stations because it's like, hey, we're gonna be a vacation basically absolutely, and then you would do follow ups. You would go do some station visits and stuff. But you were able to get everybody together and create that festive atmosphere and and you do your show and they you liked here or they didn't. You ever go back to the Blue Burning play. Uh. You know, it's been a while, but the last thing I did there, Uh, I've done some acoustic shows there. We were talking about doing um uh the Price of Fame, a video for the Price of Fame there with me and Eddie doing it, and we just couldn't get the time frame worked out. We just couldn't get it all squeezed in. But I thought it would have been real cool to do part of this, this this memory collection of all that in that place. How hard has it been to start your own label and manage that? You know? Friends was on my own label. That was after after DreamWorks merged with Universal. I had a couple of records there and then I got off of that. So when I got Friends to number one, that was that was on my own label. That was the first single on my own imprint. Uh. And it was what I thought was very expensive at that time. Uh. Now it's about three times the cost to work a single radio and it's almost impossible as an independent label without an in house promotion staff. And I know that's hard to explain to people, but just trying to hire a staff to do it and outside promotion staff it's very expensive. Uh. Radio stations really want you to have an in house promotion staff, but to do that, you gotta have three or four acts because you gotta spread that recruitment around a little bit or financially absolutely impossible to make it work. And I never did the resources to put that whole kind of thing together. So you know, but we have tools out there now. We've got a lot of great streaming platforms and get a lot of love from YouTube and all the all the things that we're able to do without working mainstream ready or have been very useful tools for me. You know. I said, hey, we should say his voice and I keep it for an hour. We notice how this man I just can't. I just have so much. Okay, here's what I'm gonna say. Volume one and two are out now. Volume three is that January, we know for sure, Jane, and the title of it is called Angelina and why uh it was one of the coolest things I found. It's a the The opening line is our mama was a Mississippi roller Debbie Queen and her daddy learned to hustle down in New Orleans. So it's a it's just a straight ahead hockey talk song. Pretty cool track. Volume one, Volume two are out, Volume three out January. You can follow the real Tracy Lawrence. I was following the fake Tased Lawrence for a while, just not the same. Guy's a real tool, you know, man, I get it seems like every week somebody that I know send to me this is this. Really you gotta stop these people, man. They're they're they're cutting thirty heads a week trying to get these people. But you can't stop him. Man, It's just constant. The real Tracy Lawrence. Uh, he's busy. He's only got a weekend off. Basically, he's got a hit completely hill on a weekend. But he's done. He's done bigger than he's done bigger. He got shot and he was on the road a day later. Tracy, good to talk to you, man. Just keep killing it. You know, so much respect from me to you. And if it wasn't for guys like you guys like me wouldn't be in this business. Now I appreciate. So yeah, just a massive fan there is. You guys go follow at the real Tracy Lawrence. Volume one and two are out now, Volume three comes out January. All right, there we go,