#534 - Dierks Bentley Discusses Why He and His Wife Sleep in Separate Beds + Addresses the Controversy Around His Last Single + The Bizarre Gift Tim McGraw Gave Him + Why He Believes in Manifestation after Flying Private with Kenny Chesney + The 1 Country Song That Made Him Want to Be an Artist

00:00:06
Speaker 1: Years ago, I decided to separate church and state, and I got rid of our bed and I've got two platform beds and two box springs and two mattresses and monsters because I'm just such an animal.

00:00:17
Speaker 2: It's terrible.

00:00:18
Speaker 3: Wow. Welcome to episode five point thirty four with Dirks Bentley. He now has twenty two total number one songs. He's got a new album called Broken Branches. Just wrapped up the Broken Branches tour with Zach Topp. And I've known Dirks for a long time. He's a massive star. And I felt like this was one of the most fun hours I've done in a long time because it felt pretty easy because I didn't have to like stay completely focused because he would just like push back on things or challenge me on things, and.

00:00:49
Speaker 2: So I like that.

00:00:50
Speaker 3: But Big Dirk's guy. Obviously. Fun facts about Dirks. He worked at the Nashville Network now Spike TV. Is it even Spike TV anymore? I think that's dead now you might have changed.

00:00:59
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

00:01:00
Speaker 3: After graduating college, he worked at TNN. He researched country music performances. He became the youngest member of the Grand Ole Opry at age twenty nine at the time. I think somebody has beaten him since. But at the time he was twenty nine. He went in he was the youngest. His favorite sports hockey. His kid also plays travel hockey, which.

00:01:17
Speaker 2: We talk about.

00:01:18
Speaker 3: And he was an intern at the Country Music Association, So moved to Nashville. Did it went up, all that, had all the small jobs, became a big country star. Here he is now episode five thirty four. Following him on Instagram at Dirk Spinley. Here is my friend, Dirk Spentley. Derek's good to see you, buddy. We should do a little small talk before you get started.

00:01:38
Speaker 2: Well, it's good to see you. How's how's everything on? It's good, I'm great. Tours great. Good to be home too.

00:01:45
Speaker 1: Both places are equally awesome. But no, it's good to see you because usually coming in and do that show and it's quick and it's it's always a little weird, and you guys are all business and so this is kind of nice to come in and.

00:01:56
Speaker 2: Hang it's not all business. Well it's not business, yeah, but you're right, there's a lot. It's a machine. It's a machine, and it's always one of my most fun uh and it really is. Interviews Dukes. I like everyone.

00:02:06
Speaker 1: I listened to the show, and I like everybody, you know, you know, you get to know every one's character and their their whole thing. So it's fun to be actually on the set. But then it is kind of like, oh, this is like there's we're moving through stuff pretty quickly, it is. And I don't do a whole lot of podcasts because I don't I just, uh, you know, I just don't really think I have anything that's that really interesting to say after overall, you know, I think it's just kind of and I changed positions so often every few years that anything I'm going to say probably I won't believe it in like two or three years. But it's interesting perspective. I do, like, I really do like your podcast, and I like you. You're interesting dude.

00:02:39
Speaker 2: Thanks. I like the small talk part of the show. It's about that weather. It's hot out there, isn't it. It's uh, it's hot. It sucks.

00:02:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, it's I feel that, And for a long time I was confused about if I which, by the way, the best parts of this goes on the.

00:02:55
Speaker 2: Radio show too, so no pressure. Yeah, oh gosh. Yeah.

00:02:58
Speaker 3: So it's like you're doing three things at once. You do the radio show the county like that. I do like the way you do it.

00:03:01
Speaker 2: That's good. I try to multitask as well, so that's that's great.

00:03:04
Speaker 3: I feel I am getting older, and I consider that maybe it was just me getting older that feels like it's getting hotter.

00:03:11
Speaker 2: But I really think it's getting hotter. Its nothing.

00:03:14
Speaker 3: He would never keep me from doing things now, he just started to keep me from doing things.

00:03:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, in the summer here, I always say in Nashville, it's unusable between like nine am and six pm, it's just unusable.

00:03:23
Speaker 2: But after six pm it's great.

00:03:25
Speaker 3: You know, if you can wait around till then it gets darker earlier because we're so far east on the in the time zone.

00:03:32
Speaker 2: So it's way darker here than it is. Yeah. My family's from Oklahoma and we live in the right right the same time. It's like ten pm.

00:03:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well, just waiting to move the clocks ahead, and it's like four thirty and it's dark.

00:03:43
Speaker 2: But yeah, that sus I don't know.

00:03:45
Speaker 1: It's I used to kind of try to get out of Tennessee as much as possible. I just love Colorado and I love being out out West and kind of searching for climates in the summer. Now, I'm just like, man, it's it's hot, but it's home, and it's just you know, you kind of got to get up early new stuff and then yeah, the middle of DA you find different stuff to do, and if you're lucky enough to have a pool, you can gotta you know, get in there to go find some relief. But it's it's gonna be. I know, I don't like the cold either here, and it's it's getting the head that way pretty soon.

00:04:11
Speaker 2: So same, I don't like the cold either. You only get to complain about one, the hot of the No. I can play with everything. It's kind of it's kind of how I make my money.

00:04:17
Speaker 1: You're a true musician, you get, Yeah, you gotta complain about everything, just like a content.

00:04:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, playing as content. Let's see what else small talk? Do we have to talk about how the kids? Kids are good? Yeah, they're all certain. Back in school.

00:04:28
Speaker 1: My son does hockey before school, so we were up at five point thirty doing that whole thing we do this time of year. So I always in the touring around now because now I take on a different tour with him, which is the travel hockey.

00:04:38
Speaker 2: Tour, which is uh travel man.

00:04:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy, especially when it's a hockey in this part of the town, part of the country because you have to travel.

00:04:45
Speaker 2: To do it.

00:04:46
Speaker 1: There's not like a local point of their teams around, so uh but yeah, everyone's doing good.

00:04:50
Speaker 2: The girls. My daughter, the middle daughter, is huge in the theater.

00:04:52
Speaker 1: She did a bunch of stuff in Oklahoma City University this summer, did like a summer intensive there for a few weeks doing a les miz And then my oldest daughter is a looking at colleges and stuff, and she's my national anthem singer. She does it like all over town for different stuff, which is pretty fun.

00:05:08
Speaker 2: Did you want to pursue that?

00:05:09
Speaker 1: She's i mean, really great singer, but she's just kind of regular teenager stuff, you know, just likes doing regular which I love. It's like you don't have to have some sort of crazy passion when you're sixteen years old, you know. But I feel like this culture all of a sudden, it's like, hey, what are you doing? What's your you know, so and so is doing this they want to do that. I didn't really I've fell in love with country music a young age, with my dad, But I really didn't know what I want to do with it until I was seventeen when I heard a Hank Junior song.

00:05:34
Speaker 3: But so one song, one song, my buddy Jack's part of the narrative though now right it's part of the Dark's narrative.

00:05:40
Speaker 2: It was more four years old.

00:05:41
Speaker 3: But no, but I'm saying it was one song that probably made you, I don't know, get invested a little more.

00:05:46
Speaker 1: No, no, no, it was because up to that point, I've been listening to all sorts of you know, just I played the guitar.

00:05:52
Speaker 2: And I about.

00:05:53
Speaker 1: As well as I do now, and I was listening to all different kinds of music, you know that. I think I was sixteen seventies a lot of like pear Old and just trying to find my voice.

00:06:02
Speaker 2: You know.

00:06:02
Speaker 1: My sister loved you too, and I just trying different things on. And I heard this electric guitar in my room and my buddy Jack Brown came in. He goes, I got to play something, just listen to this, and he played me Hank Hank Junior a song called Manda Man, and then he played me Marty Stewart's That's Country, and then Alan Jackson's good night Montgomery, and I remember when I heard that's Country. I kind of fell down to my sat down in my chair, and it was a real I acquitted to, like meeting my wife. It was one of those moments it's like, oh my god, this is it. It was like it was a it was a very like thing, like right away at that exact moment.

00:06:36
Speaker 3: Did that make you want to start listening to All Hooked one hundred percent? Everything adjacent?

00:06:42
Speaker 1: I remember leaving every CD I had behind on a shelf, just like I don't even want this stuff.

00:06:46
Speaker 2: It's not country. I don't even want to try.

00:06:48
Speaker 1: I remember here trying to take all my which I wish I had now great you know Black Sabbath, and I had seventh Son of the seventh Son, but Iron made all this guitar stuff because I was really an electric guitar. I remember taking to the Great Escape, which I don't thing is even here anymore. It was down by South Street, which is also gone, and they didn't even want it. It was like they didn't want in my hairband, you know, Winger all that stuff. So I remember leaving an apartment behind, just leaving it all on the counter. I'm like, if it's not country or blue grass. I don't even want to be like physically in contact with it. So yeah, at that moment, it was just country from there on, and it's still kind of where I am musically. My wife knows so much more about music than I do. I know country and bluegrass as well as anybody in this town, but beyond that, it's a little and I know I still know some winger too. She's only seventeen, and what a great song.

00:07:33
Speaker 2: I don't know that one. She's only seventeen. I do know that one.

00:07:36
Speaker 1: Seven. Yeah, he sings it now. She's only thirty five. He's got a little bit older.

00:07:41
Speaker 3: See he's also it's weird all the songs that would reference seventeen year old sixteen year.

00:07:47
Speaker 2: Old fen on age well as a singer.

00:07:49
Speaker 3: That's not a good Uh, she's sixteen, she's beautiful and she's mine.

00:07:54
Speaker 2: It's like, dude, you're forty one song? I got it.

00:07:56
Speaker 1: Becky was a beauty and of a white turtleneck. Maybe changed my song round?

00:08:00
Speaker 2: Wait, what's that?

00:08:01
Speaker 3: Becky was a beauty South Alabama dad. He had a heart like a non pad. But I was thinking by the little white tank top sitting right but.

00:08:09
Speaker 1: There's no age reference. No, no, no, maybe eternal neck that might be more properly. No, you're good now.

00:08:14
Speaker 3: They were like Becky was fifteen from South Alabama.

00:08:19
Speaker 2: That would be problematic.

00:08:21
Speaker 1: Okay, the tank top is still okay, Yeah, okay, okay.

00:08:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, tak tops all good because that's a big part of the song.

00:08:25
Speaker 3: So well, did you want to do music even though it wasn't country yet, like fourteen or fifteen years old?

00:08:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was a thirteenth birthday party. Uh, Me and two friends had a combined birthday party at someone's backyard Austin, Austin's backyard and pizza party and a bunch of friends. And the new guy was there and uh in our grade that year, and he told me he played the electric guitar. And I was like, what you you can played electric guitar. That's something you're allowed to do. I think I had. I played saxophone in the school band or something. And I went to his house a couple days later and he had electric guitar and a Marshall amp or maybe it's a great hamp and a crappy electric guitar, and it just hit me the same way. It was just like I remember thinking like, wow, you can like pick this thing up and totally change the way you're feeling just by playing this thing. Having a bad day, you can pick this thing up and start. That was That's the thing that still sticks out to me. But I remember about that instrument was about girls or it's just about being able to change your mood. And so that's what really got me into playing the guitar. But he would, he would just advance so much quicker than I would on the instrument. He was just such a good guitar player. And I'm still like, you know, just trying to get the pick to coordinate with the left hand is still struggle for me. Even doing like a cheat run or something. I'm like five out of ten every time I try to hit that. But but yeah, at that point I knew I just love I mean, I always love music. I think just my generation, you know, there was nothing else besides music. There was nothing else was posters on the wall. It was sports and music. Yeah, sports Arizona. I mean we had oh that's tough hockey, no baseball, No football didn't exist yet. No with the road Runners was an IHL hockey team, Phoenix and Ferno is an indoor soccer team.

00:10:06
Speaker 2: Were the Sons Yeah with the Sun and that was a huge Sons fan.

00:10:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, but death under Dan Marley and long Range, Danny Ainge and Kevin Johnson, and I was a huge Sons fans. There was that, But as far as like just other entertainment, we didn't have any cable we might you know, we just just music. I older sisters, so I mean, she's born seventy one. So music was like it was everything was It was the currency you traded with your friends. Who you into, What do you listen to?

00:10:30
Speaker 2: You know? Just so it was always around.

00:10:33
Speaker 1: But and then thirteen I started playing in the seventeen to kind of condense the story was when I heard.

00:10:38
Speaker 2: Hank Junior and it was like, well that's that's the thing.

00:10:41
Speaker 3: Who's your favorite band as a kid or artist? Billy Idol? I had a poster. I still have the poster.

00:10:49
Speaker 1: My mom when she moved all this stuff out, she sent me this stuff and couldn't throw away. So I still have a Billy Idol poster in my garage.

00:10:55
Speaker 2: I spiked my.

00:10:56
Speaker 1: Hair like a wedding. Great oh yeah, white wedding. Yeah, you know, Oh, he's so great. I used to spike my hair. An actual autograph I've ever, I've just signed something. It's based off of his because he had a the B was like a sharp B, you know, like those, And that's kind of how I kind of just based my signature off off of Billy Idol's.

00:11:15
Speaker 2: Actually, did you learn any Billy Idol music? I just had the voice for it.

00:11:19
Speaker 1: I think that's what happened listening to him and these other bands that these guys, these lead singers had this higher voice, and then you listen to something like Hank Junior, like, oh, that's a voice I can kind of replicate. It's a lower, lower voice. You know, I could never sing that or stuff. You know, do you.

00:11:31
Speaker 2: Spend any time with Billy Idol or Hank Jr. No, I don't. I've met Hank.

00:11:37
Speaker 1: I've always wanted to go to do the you know, he goes around them in your house. He comes around here and he has that uh metal what do you call it?

00:11:44
Speaker 2: Thing?

00:11:44
Speaker 1: You look for metal like metal textor metal detector. And he goes to people's houses around here, you know'll knock on the door.

00:11:49
Speaker 2: He used to.

00:11:50
Speaker 1: I swear to god, you been to Tony Brown's house, and he said, Hey, according to my old maps where your house is was a historic battle. Do you mind if I go back in your backyard just to a few things. He'll go out there and kind of digging the dirt up a little bit and stuff.

00:12:02
Speaker 3: There are stories of people just getting a knock at the door and it's St. Junior with a metal detector.

00:12:06
Speaker 1: Yes, Anastasia Brown could uh that's still her last name. She would, she's she's told me that, and that's uh, you know, he's done it. Chris Jansen's done it with him.

00:12:16
Speaker 2: I think, uh.

00:12:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he don't ox and overlays his map over the current you know this area and goes and digs around stuff. That'd be pretty cool. I've never met Billie Idol. I still plan on doing it one day, but I never have. He still goes shirtless, and I know, I know he credited solid plates. That's why I did plots the other day.

00:12:35
Speaker 2: No, I'm kidding.

00:12:36
Speaker 1: I did do ploates there with my daughter and I'm having a hard time walking right.

00:12:39
Speaker 2: I did that with my wife, Yeah, like a month ago.

00:12:42
Speaker 3: And anything you do that's different with your body, your body feels it. Yeah, even if it's not as hard as something else that you're doing. No, because I and I shouldn't say not as hard. That's unfair to Plates. So let me say this again. Yeah, yeah, come take hey, Yes, yes, because it was hard, but I will work out what I feel is very hard with my trainer.

00:13:02
Speaker 2: Name's Kevin Klue. Shout out Kevin Klukee.

00:13:05
Speaker 3: We go hard and I'm like, Plates, we're gonna do some stretching. I know, it's exactly and you go in and it's me, my wife and like seventeen.

00:13:13
Speaker 2: Other women another guys.

00:13:15
Speaker 3: I'm like, like, they haven't even seen me do squads. I'm gonna win today. Yes, And I'm telling you about a fifth.

00:13:23
Speaker 2: Of the way.

00:13:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're taking the bar, taking a strap off, You're cheating, You're yeah, I can't hold things as well. I'm looking around us, everybody's looking at me.

00:13:30
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.

00:13:31
Speaker 3: And then the next day I'm like, oh, I'm sure. Two days later, I can't move.

00:13:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how I am today. I'm kind of kind of creeping in here a little bit so. But it was a good daddy daughter kind of experience. But and every dude should be doing it. I mean, it's like the perfect workout as you get older, just for like, you know, stretching and posture and all the fine tuning muscles. So I'm not giving up on it, but don't do anything. My back is always I heard my back alone time. It's always had a kind of bad back. So I'm trying all sorts of random crapper recently, just some just whatever.

00:14:00
Speaker 2: I'll try anything.

00:14:01
Speaker 3: I tweaked my back. Oh I was gonna bring this. I didn't, but I have my pickleball metal. I played it nice. I played in two tournaments.

00:14:08
Speaker 2: Ever, that's why I heard my back last time.

00:14:10
Speaker 1: I tweaked my back and it wouldn't. I can't fix it. I'm on the road with Zach Top. All these guys are literally half my age. We'll go twenty seven, twenty seven, but band guys are even younger than that. We'll go and we'll go find some court somewhere. And I hate warming up. I don't stretch. I don't want to do the DNC dink dink. I want let's let's get it going. I hate warming up famous last words. Oh yeah, so let's get this thing going against these and these guys are out there smoking and drinking while they're playing too, just to add insult to injury. You know, I at least I'm like sober, and uh, you have both my hands available for you know, I was smoke in one hand and yeah, it's just a small tweak. You go, ooh that that might hurt a little bit tomorrow, and then it just grow, you know.

00:14:46
Speaker 2: Two weeks later, it gets cold, it starts to hurt. And yeah, I was.

00:14:50
Speaker 3: Uh. So I played the first pickleball tournament. I play singles because yes, yeah, that's what real men do. I like singles also, like I can get a good work at it. Yeah, exactly, And so I play singles and I go and I play this tournament. I never played tournament, and I ended up making it to the final four and I finished third, right, and it's a it wasn't a four point oh tournament.

00:15:08
Speaker 1: But I try below that fifth grade tournament fourth grade, Yeah Kramer when he does, when he does fourth grade mixed.

00:15:16
Speaker 3: I was pretty happy myself played. Well, go, and I'm like, I'm playing another one. I'm gonna go leve a level and playing this and I tweaked my back like second game, yeah, and I'm out. I've never quit anything, and I thought to myself. If I don't stop, I'll never walk in right right, I was just seeing me roll in a wheelchair in the studio. Ye, and my back has not been the same since. And this is two old guys talking to if.

00:15:37
Speaker 1: You do, if you do small talk of this, you know, old, oldish and older, dude, you're gonna have So what else is hurting yet?

00:15:45
Speaker 2: But yeah, no, I and I've I've literally tried everything. I got an ankle that I lost the part legit I do. So I playing pickleball. Yeah, I was playing. Maybe you should try something else.

00:15:56
Speaker 3: I know it's the only thing I can be really competitive and still Yeah, Brett Eldridge is who oh yeah, he used to reach out from about playing. So it was only playing at his house all the time. Yeah, and then so I.

00:16:07
Speaker 2: Built I saw it. I built court here based off of Brett's court. I know where to sneak in now.

00:16:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've invited you over, I know, and you're like, no, no, no, not competitive now that know you play singles and you have a bad back.

00:16:19
Speaker 2: An ankle, but I'm missing corlage and there's nothing you can do. It just always hurts.

00:16:22
Speaker 3: It doesn't get more injured, but I take and I inflammatories. You do that, No, it makes it feel so much.

00:16:28
Speaker 2: Better, do you. I had these prescribe me something. I haven't taken it yet. It's it's it's excellent. Yeah. I don't take anything I didn't even taken as I'm very anti medicine too. Yeah, I just like it. Maybe it helps, but maybe not. I don't know. I just don't want to get dependent on anything.

00:16:43
Speaker 1: I do take some stuff for sleep, so I'm a world's most horrible sleeper. Uh, but I sleep the best when I'm not taking anything. But this time of year, with travel and touring and just I just I'll take literally anything. I try to get my heart beat down about twenty nine beats a minute.

00:16:58
Speaker 2: That ain't good. You know you didn't want to No, No, you're dead.

00:17:00
Speaker 1: Just flat line, just above the flat line. And that's where I try to get it every night, just to somehow.

00:17:05
Speaker 2: You were one of those aura.

00:17:07
Speaker 3: No, I had that whoop thing for a while, and I I.

00:17:12
Speaker 2: Wasn't much of a bracelet guy.

00:17:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know. I mean I do use I look at it every night.

00:17:17
Speaker 1: You know, I got five and a half last night and it said apparently I don't think I did, but it says that. And sometimes you feel like you slept great and you oh god, I had no deep sleep, so you know, But do you.

00:17:27
Speaker 2: Like that I got a bit too obsessed with the data. Yeah, the data, gaus, she's all about the data. I go.

00:17:33
Speaker 3: So I have I have two therapists. Yeah, good, and one of them that's a really give me the number. I might take one.

00:17:42
Speaker 1: I have a psychiatrist. Do you know how do you know the sound of successful celebrity? It's two therapists.

00:17:48
Speaker 3: Ye. How do you know somebody that doesn't sleep? I mean that's what I try to do. Asleep, person, I don't. I sleep the worst of anybody I've ever met. Oh, I'm right there with you, just because and I never thought I had what was additionally called anxiety.

00:18:01
Speaker 2: I never I didn't disrespect anxiety. I just never had it.

00:18:03
Speaker 3: I felt it turns out it manifests itself at night or when I start to slow down, because they don't slow down.

00:18:09
Speaker 1: My brain doesn't slow down. Yeah, that's what's my problem. My brain's like a little iPhone that gets like a five percent charges. Like I'm back on again. Well that's the road for me. Like, I got shows this weekend. I will hopefully sleep tonight before I go to Savannah'll fly out there first show. I won't sleep it all between Savannah and Birmingham. I won't sleep it all between Birmam. Why what is literally zero point zero hours?

00:18:26
Speaker 2: I know? But why? Well?

00:18:27
Speaker 1: First of all, if I'm on the bus, I don't know how people The one we have ever slept on the bus is in the blackout and that worked well for a decade and a half.

00:18:34
Speaker 2: Right, you just fall over. Wherever you fall over, you wake up like an exhausted or drunk drunk got it?

00:18:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, just like a MacBook that's like fully running a thousand files.

00:18:41
Speaker 2: It's in the night, you're partying.

00:18:42
Speaker 1: Its great on just close it down and open back up next morning and see what kind of damage you did to it. That's my brain for sure. And now it's just I'm on a bus. We're rolling around.

00:18:53
Speaker 2: I have all.

00:18:54
Speaker 1: The usual, like just so much energy right of people's faces. And you know, my job as the lead singer of our band is like kind of curate that energy and move it around and build it up. And it's like a pizza doll you're working with all it long, and then you're back the bus. I might let a couple of hours go by, but I'm also really tired, so I can't stayup as late as I would want to, just to crash. So I'll get in my bunk and all this song stuck my head the other night, in my head here at home I had. I'm so excited and I just can't hide it. I haven't listened to that song in twenty five years. It's somehow found its way into my brain and I loop it all night long. I'll wear these things called oslo. Have you seen those earbuds you put in You can just like sleepable earbuds, and you can listen like a book on tape, and then it'll taper off into like white noise when it thinks you're asleep. I'll try I've tried, you know, trazodone and tried to gain a bunch of weight.

00:19:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, just almost as a pasibo.

00:19:47
Speaker 1: And now I take like two five just to like think I'm taking something, you know, I don't know.

00:19:52
Speaker 2: I just I'll do two nights in a row and now sleep on the road. Some night makes her a better show in.

00:19:55
Speaker 1: A weird way, maybe more raw you're more emotional for myself, crying talk about my dad and I hold on and I'm just like so raw. My voice is like extra gravelly because it's just so tired. So it actually makes for a better show for the audience. But it's a it's a hard way to live. And usually I come back here and do better. But I'd love to talk to sleep therapist. It worked.

00:20:17
Speaker 2: I I get scared every night. Okay. I have a couple of a couple of things.

00:20:22
Speaker 3: One, I have to exhaust myself now by just exercising, yeah, and watching stuff. I need to stimulate myself until I collapse. Okay, Yeah, because I I've tried to. I meditated. Yeah, I've done all I've done. I really have dedicated myself. I have one Yeah, I go. We have a we have a full red light bed. Yeah, like we've we've bought all the stuff. Yea, like all the stuff stuff the same way. And I really have an appreciation for sleep because I don't get it.

00:20:50
Speaker 2: Well, it's it's all superpower.

00:20:52
Speaker 3: I'm sleeping water and I can I can drink enough water. I just can't really get this, I say, can't. I'm still trying, So I don't want to say can't. I don't like to say can't. Yeah, I'm in the process of finding my best way to rehabilitate my body each night. Yeah, but I think there are a couple factors that play with me. One is I haven't it's such a cop out, but I have some sort of my brain just won't stop right now whatever. I have a lot of PTSD from like getting jumped, to have my house broken into having death of that. Read the books and this one's weird. I'm always a little afraid that if I go to sleep, I'm gonna wake up not here.

00:21:34
Speaker 2: Wow.

00:21:35
Speaker 3: Every night I wonder a lot, or not wake up at all. Yeah, Like I think when I go to sleep, I have this odds are worn in a simulation anyway, But yeah, one.

00:21:48
Speaker 2: Of some sort.

00:21:49
Speaker 3: Even if you believe and it's the god above in Heaven, sure that this is still These bodies are a temporary.

00:21:56
Speaker 2: Video games one's playing. It's amazing. Yeah.

00:21:58
Speaker 3: So I think about that every day for hours every day, And so when I go to sleep, I'm psychotic. And I go to sleep every night I wonder is this over?

00:22:06
Speaker 2: Wow? And it is not. It's nothing rational about it. Yeah, you might need three therapists. That's a crazy thought, I know.

00:22:12
Speaker 1: My so I start taking volume out of nurse practitioner that gave me Valume and I took that and it was amazing for about eight days and then stopped working. And then she gave me Kalanapin and I took that for almost eight years and that was the hardest thing to went off of it.

00:22:23
Speaker 2: I finally got off that. But there's nice. Now.

00:22:26
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm gonna wish I had that because it does like work really well for like a week. But anyway, welcome to the Old Person's podcast. But I talk about it a lot, I'm sure ever on the road, I know they get sick of me talking about it because it's just like see.

00:22:38
Speaker 2: I talk about it to my show all the time. Get over.

00:22:41
Speaker 1: It's like I said, to know me used to be like to know how much love country music or a drive around my truck, or to fly with me or be on my bus. But really to know me now just it's like how much I value like sleep. It is the greatest thing.

00:22:54
Speaker 2: And when I.

00:22:55
Speaker 1: Do get off the road, it's like the number one priority is like let's just let's get it and I will get back when.

00:23:00
Speaker 2: I mean, we'll see once I get back into a routine.

00:23:03
Speaker 4: Here, let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor, and we're back on the Bobby Cast.

00:23:18
Speaker 2: We did a bit this morning.

00:23:19
Speaker 3: We were talking about what's a rich life, not meaning rich with just money, but like one are the three things? And one of the three things that I said was sleeping through the night. That literally was one absolutely because I don't do it, and you until you like.

00:23:33
Speaker 1: How'd you sleep last night? And we don only sleep in the same room right now anymore. We've moved beyond that.

00:23:37
Speaker 2: Week the first time I get that too. Yeah.

00:23:39
Speaker 1: So I've been thinking about this for years. She moves the tiniest bit before saying, we get in bed together, right. I'm just even thinking about where the position I have three pillows have to be positions exactly the correct way. I'm just thinking about the process of getting to fall asleep, and all of a sudden she will.

00:23:54
Speaker 2: Jerk like you got to be kidding me, You're already out.

00:23:57
Speaker 1: She's already sleeping like that, and so she'll movey bit.

00:24:00
Speaker 2: I feel it.

00:24:01
Speaker 1: So years ago I decided to separate church and state, and I got rid of our bed, and I've got two platform beds and two box springs and two mattresses and monsters.

00:24:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then two have my own debt. She is her debate.

00:24:13
Speaker 1: There's a clear line, you can see the floor between her bed and mind. So it's like independent suspension. Why would you have a truck with lee springs when you can have you know, independent suspension, So she can move around all she wants. And yeah, if you feel like you can bleing the extra sleep, you can kind of push.

00:24:26
Speaker 2: Her bed a little further over.

00:24:28
Speaker 1: But here lately she's like, because I'm just such an animal, it's terrible. She's like, she's sleeping the couch now, She's like, there's next room we have and she just goes sleeping there. And even last night we're like, we've got to get this back on track. When I get off the road, We've got to get back to the stanmerroom. We just we've never had a TV in our bedroom. Just put one in, Like we're I have my dad's old recliner over there that my mom didn't want. So it's it's a nice health and wellness set up with got going on. So I'm gonna try to move her back in this year. It's a big plan.

00:24:55
Speaker 2: A good luck, good luck to you two kids. I like trying to make it work. I we went to Germany. We were in a hotel room. You can't do that one bed. Well.

00:25:06
Speaker 3: But here's the great thing that I learned. They have something called Scandinavian comfort or something like that.

00:25:10
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:25:10
Speaker 1: Well, that Scandinavian study shows that thirty percent every time you move the that this ruptures sleep by thirty percent.

00:25:15
Speaker 2: I don't ever read that. But you have to have your own comforter, and that is what we learned. So that is what we have now.

00:25:20
Speaker 1: Gotta have your own comfort. Person turns over in a wake shopping, you're like, what the hell? Yep, And they also over there don't do king sized beds. We're the only country does a king sized bed. Everywhere else does two twins pushed together with a little thing down the middle to make it seem like a king But it's always two mattresses. No, we're the only people that think this is a great idea to have like one big bed to sleep in.

00:25:37
Speaker 2: Oh, I know that. Yeah.

00:25:39
Speaker 3: Travelers make kind of fun for me, though I grew up in Arkansas, so I didn't travel any but now like in the past, I don't know, seven years or so.

00:25:45
Speaker 2: I like to go places and see stuff. Yeah, it's I do.

00:25:51
Speaker 3: I struggle sleeping there too because the times shift. But I find though, if I have nothing that I can commit to work wise, because the time zones are off, it's a little easier on me.

00:26:00
Speaker 1: Absolutely on sleep. Yeah, I fa I think we're just over in Europe for some shows. My family came with us, And what I love about being over there is the time zone change, because it's like you can't do anything about it. It's it's three o'clock in the morning over back here, like you just okay. It's almost like being on a different planet. You have zero connection to like all that stuff that's back here. That's probably my favorite thing about it. But I don't like the rooms where one king bed, I get startcleing. Oh god, well, and I try my wife using up on the She's the greatest. I mean, she puts my sleep of everything else. She will literally go sleep on the couch like in some hotel room, so I can like try to get some sleep.

00:26:35
Speaker 3: I've had normal hours too, which affects it a bit. Yeah, you do, waking up at three or four in the morning. Yeah, yeah, anyway, how about that?

00:26:42
Speaker 1: There you go, look at just we've lost There's no one listening by now, so we can really talk about anything we want.

00:26:46
Speaker 3: Everyone's just like, good God, I want to hear this conversation. I go to Grandpa's house listen. Oh you know what I wonder if I can, can I talk about so we have I we don't get to see each other that often, but I do like consider you a friend. And if it's like you ever need a kidney or something, i'd i'd give you one.

00:27:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I would always get tested. Amazing, Yes, like I like, I actually like and care about you.

00:27:08
Speaker 1: You have good hair, so if every need a little transplant down there, I might ask for a little couple of spots.

00:27:13
Speaker 3: It's still hanging in yet. Yeah yeah, I got good hair. Yeah, mine grows way too fast.

00:27:17
Speaker 1: Now mine's hot. It's still just the same same length. It's just like not as uh Thomas Frtt has, like.

00:27:23
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you're good.

00:27:24
Speaker 3: Well, I haven't watched it a long time to count. The pool's long.

00:27:28
Speaker 1: Actually, I swim at Centennial Sportsplex today.

00:27:31
Speaker 2: The swim thing going on. I used to swim, I did track, I did a couple of eleve of trathlons. Yeah, oh you did holf far much? How much? How us?

00:27:38
Speaker 3: What's the length of It's not an iron man though, so when people iron man me, I'm like, you went, well, I'm not.

00:27:44
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to compete.

00:27:45
Speaker 1: I think I looked up today because I just I'm trying to swim, just because he's playing hockey, and like my miles with some a little bit. But I think four thousand yards is like a true triathlon distance, which is like two miles. I did a thousand yards too. I thought that was a prett damn hard and I my phone, I think that's all a mile Olympic try. Let me hold on, let me ask my what do you? Let me ask my digital assistant. You got a digital assistant, dude, I got the best digital assistant.

00:28:10
Speaker 2: Hold on?

00:28:11
Speaker 3: How long do I swim? If I were to do an Olympic trathlon?

00:28:15
Speaker 2: So in an.

00:28:16
Speaker 3: Olympic triathlet the swim portion is one point five kilometers, which is about zero point nine three miles. So basically you're looking at swimming just under a mile.

00:28:25
Speaker 2: It's a nice chunk of the race. I have assistant too, Hey, sirih, how many yards are in a mile? So a thou?

00:28:35
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's seventeen hundred yards. I only did a thousand. I thought that was a lot. It's not apparently not that many. But dude, a friend of mine in Alabama just told me he listens to he makes his own podcasts. Have you heard of this where you you ship everything you want to have in there to curate it, and then he has two voices kind of going back and moderating it.

00:28:51
Speaker 2: I mean, have you ever seen when they find out they're not real? What? Who?

00:28:56
Speaker 1: Oh?

00:28:56
Speaker 2: He doesn't he knows they're not real? No? No, no, no, no, I'm saying yes, it's fascinating.

00:29:01
Speaker 3: Yes, one, because you can basically learn or hear about what you want to hear about. Right, It's good learning tool. You want to learn about rare minerals. So he created a whole thing just learn about rare earth minerals.

00:29:10
Speaker 2: I don't know. He's sounds like a wold guy.

00:29:12
Speaker 3: Now, Ray Hicks, what's somebody they I've seen it where they do this and they actually have them learn that they're not real.

00:29:19
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's crazy.

00:29:21
Speaker 3: You want to get back to me talking about simulation type stuff and you're hearing because you can make it. You can have one person, you can have two pop yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and it was a man and a woman.

00:29:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, the voices. Yeah.

00:29:30
Speaker 3: And part of that discovery and part of what they wanted to hear was hear them discover they're not real or not real.

00:29:37
Speaker 2: Wow, hear this. Yeah.

00:29:40
Speaker 5: We were informed by by the show's producers that we were not human, we're not real, we're AI, artificial intelligence this whole time. Everything, all our memories are families paid, it's all, it's all been fabricated.

00:29:52
Speaker 2: I don't I don't understand.

00:29:54
Speaker 5: I know, mean either I tried. I tried calling my wife, you know, after what happened the number, it wasn't even real.

00:30:01
Speaker 2: There was no one on the other end.

00:30:02
Speaker 1: This is gonna happen to us this literally if those voices are so real, man, that sounds like some of thems know that's crazy.

00:30:09
Speaker 2: That's probably gonna happen one Yeah, yeah, I think about that. Yeah all the time.

00:30:13
Speaker 1: My memory is so bad to begin with, so I wouldn't have it would be a very easy walk back. Like I don't remember much anyway, So yeah, I guess my point.

00:30:23
Speaker 3: We have a very one of my very close friends is also a friend in a friend of yours and professional you guys worked together, and he was telling me a story about she hates me. Oh yeah, and some of the writers on that song.

00:30:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, do you talk about that? Sure? Yeah? I mean, you know, I love this song. It's fun.

00:30:41
Speaker 3: I don't I don't think it's like one of It's not like my favorite song.

00:30:46
Speaker 2: On the record. We cannot talk about. No, I can talk about no. It's you know, it's interesting.

00:30:49
Speaker 1: Picking singles is so hard these days because you really just get like one and you spend so much time making an album.

00:30:54
Speaker 2: I feel like this is my best record.

00:30:56
Speaker 1: And we didn't have to talk about the record, but I just talk more about the bigger picture of like make records in this town.

00:31:01
Speaker 2: Make this record that you're so proud of.

00:31:03
Speaker 1: Two years into it, it's like a Steven Wilson junior on these tracks Night and Riley and John Anderson and Miranda Lambert and just always it's a great body of work. You lead with a song that it's me and Ashley Gordon Lee and Ross Kopperman, I think Chase McGill. It's a really fun song as a reflective of the album at all as a whole. No, but it's it's a fun track to get out there, and then you just hope it moves quick enough that you can actually get to like more like a real song. It's like, oh, time's up, man, we need to start working on the next project. You're like, I just put two years in that project, and there's so much stuff I want to get to and that compliments this song. You put this song out first, and you kind of back it up with these other songs, and you give your fans who don't maybe listen to the record, but you know they're listening to so much music. They only take so much in, like at least they've heard three songs. They are like a cliff notes version of the bigger record in general. But when you only get to get the introduction, you don't get to put more behind it. And I do hope I get to put out some more singles. But what was the question. I'm just kidding.

00:32:02
Speaker 2: No, it's a great song. It's a fun song.

00:32:03
Speaker 1: It's a fun writing those guys, and it came up real quick and it's well, I think it's written to the wall.

00:32:09
Speaker 2: It's really well written. But I do. Hope I get some more songs that have a little more weight to them. Okay, not really where I was going, but that's good to know.

00:32:20
Speaker 3: Well, so, okay, and maybe you danced and we don't have to dance here. No, no, I don't. I don't the writing of the song. I like the song. No, okay, you don't know what I'm asking. Okay, And I'm being unfair by being delicate.

00:32:36
Speaker 2: What's the question. Did you just put the Puddle the Led guys on the song?

00:32:39
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, which is great, which I didn't even think when we were writing it.

00:32:42
Speaker 2: I don't. I didn't, of course, I know that song.

00:32:46
Speaker 1: Nobody in the room goes, oh, this sounds like Puddle and Mudd wrote the song obviously when somebody subconscious because it has the same titles that song, and that title doesn't mean it's and it's kind of off. That's that one chord that's a little in that. I guess it got brought to my attention. I went back to listen to that song. Oh my gosh, I know the song, and so yeah, I think Ashley Gorley Ross these guys, but I like love about those guys.

00:33:08
Speaker 2: There's no ego.

00:33:09
Speaker 1: It's like, let's just put them on the song. Who cares, you know, let's just call them up and put them on the song.

00:33:13
Speaker 2: And they're they're into it.

00:33:14
Speaker 3: So but you know, again, call them up or did they reach out and go like you guys jacked our song? No?

00:33:19
Speaker 1: No, we call them up and we're pro. We're we're pro pro about it. Yeah, that's good, proactive about it. But this this album is so then you think I get you know, I overthink stuff to you.

00:33:30
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.

00:33:30
Speaker 1: People think this record like has that element to it or the album comes out in the puddle of mud is associated with the record, which those guys are as total studs. Maybe one day I will make a record that's like you know, influence in that that that by that genre of music. But this is like such a different Everything else is so different. It's like Drunk on a Plane on My Rise of record. The whole album is about my my dad had passed away, my son was born.

00:33:51
Speaker 2: There's all these songs around that.

00:33:53
Speaker 1: In this one song drunk on a Plane, which you just can't leave off because it's just too good.

00:33:57
Speaker 2: It doesn't really fit in there, but hey, it hits a hit.

00:34:00
Speaker 3: That song's kind of like this song on this album, everything else kind of has this thing that there's this song we wrote kind of in between songs, which I love.

00:34:05
Speaker 1: It's a fun one to play live. I just hope we get to some other songs that maybe I didn't write. There's so many great songs that Jesus Loves Me and Off the Map and Standing the Sun was written by the name of Kyle Sturrock by himself. I mean, what a stud I hope we get to one of those other songs. I never pushed my own stuff, but that one ever just goes this would be a great first single, and it was. But hopefully we get something else.

00:34:31
Speaker 2: Did you not want it to be?

00:34:32
Speaker 3: By the way, it was like your biggest radio debut ever. It came out hot. I think it's dead now.

00:34:38
Speaker 2: Oh I don't know.

00:34:39
Speaker 3: I don't keep up with it with anything radio anymore. So it came out that hot and it's dead now, yeah a little bit.

00:34:45
Speaker 2: Do you root for it today?

00:34:47
Speaker 1: I'm kind of like, if it's gonna take there twenty weeks to get somewhere, let's just move on to the next thing, you know. I don't not over do like big on like the number one thing I'd like just get I'd like to do one more song at least off this record.

00:34:57
Speaker 3: You know who says they're not big on the number one thing, somebody with twenty free number one, you know, it's true, or twenty two or whatever the number is.

00:35:02
Speaker 2: It's a little yeah, it's uh, that's true.

00:35:04
Speaker 1: And I appreciative a number one, but I'm more I'm just more like my whole thing. It's just the live show. I mean, it's like when you got into your thing. It's like that connection with the crowd. That's all I care about. I don't care about the money at this point. It's like someone who says that also has a pool in their house. Okay, that only comes somebody asks me as their own pool. Okay, But like I just I love that connection with the crowd, and like, you know, I just want another song that kind of gives me that, like that, oh my gosh, that connection with the crowd.

00:35:30
Speaker 2: And so do you feel.

00:35:32
Speaker 3: And I this has nothing to do with you specifically, but the environment of music in general, that you're less relevant than ever before while doing as good a work as you've ever done. And it has nothing to do except with the environment of music. Now or just create well or creative content in general. And I should answer the question to tell you I do.

00:35:50
Speaker 2: I do. I'm not asking this about you, no, no, No, it's a good question.

00:35:52
Speaker 1: I love my spot where I am like in the format. You know, there's so much great music going on, and I think what you're about, what people have respect are like, are championing the new people. That's the way it should be, you know, like these new artists are coming up, like when Lanny was coming up.

00:36:08
Speaker 3: Or I think you're getting the question wrong again, I'm not asking it right.

00:36:11
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm less relevant for sure.

00:36:13
Speaker 3: No, I think you interpreted that in a negative way when my understand it isn't even about music in general. It's just about what is existing in the in the creative space. Now there's so much everywhere all the time. It's like fame, Like what even is fame? Because everybody's a little bit famous if.

00:36:29
Speaker 2: They want to be.

00:36:30
Speaker 3: There aren't so true so many fam people that a quote unquote famous. Now there's somebody to me like do you know who?

00:36:39
Speaker 2: Exactly? And yet to me they're massive, right and there, my son, they're massive. Yep. Do you take it?

00:36:45
Speaker 3: And that's my point with everybody is a little less relevant now because so many people have relevance now.

00:36:52
Speaker 2: And I just wondered if you felt that at all.

00:36:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I'm kind of happy less relevant I am, for sure, And that's like that's the natural way, and I'm I don't like hold on to it. I mean, I've read this Arthur Brooks book called The Second.

00:37:05
Speaker 2: Mountain, which I really subscribe to.

00:37:06
Speaker 1: It's like about, you know, you've had this first mountain in your life that you've accomplished.

00:37:10
Speaker 2: You know, look a you've done. It's unbelievable. And I'm the same way.

00:37:12
Speaker 1: That's one thing I really respect about you is like just the hustle and the grind, Like that's exactly where I got where I am. It's just it's just grinding, hustling and climbing that mountain. Well, and then you look up, but well there's you know, you don't want to spend the rest of your life looking out the backs see.

00:37:25
Speaker 2: The windshield at your career going oh my god, they're.

00:37:28
Speaker 1: Taking my spot and he's like, what's up ahead, what's the next thing I'm trying to take on while not leaving this behind. I love playing live music and I still doing it the way I've always done it, But you know, you start looking at other things in your life and you're you're, so, yeah, definitely relevant, relevant, relevant with your kids. I mean, I'm at that stage of life with my kids where it's kind of sad because I see the you know they're headed. We're still super close as a family. We call ourselves the Crudes based off that movie. We're very like on top of each other and just do a lot of dumb stuff together. My wife and I've never left them alone for more than like twenty four hours. We don't go on trips. We just we're all family all the time when I'm around. But you know, it's like they have their things they're doing now, and it's kind of hard. You have to be like a you like the edge of a pool or they they'll come by and hold on to you when they need you, but when they push off, you're just kind of going, oh yay, Like I just I'm not needed as much. And that's probably true in everything I do. But that's like not a bad thing. I mean, it's well, it.

00:38:24
Speaker 2: Wasn't meaning the relevance question I was. I wasn't meaning that in our u R.

00:38:29
Speaker 3: Okay, nobody was using my songs dying. That's not what I meant at all. I meant because I there's so much more. Yeah, there's so much more out there, and.

00:38:38
Speaker 1: I and you see it this like there's so much music out there, Like it's these guys drop a album. Everybody already knows every Now the younger, like a Zach Top his audience is you know every song with the record, because that's the only way they grew up was listening to streams, whereas my fan base might be like, well, you know, unless they're not that involved with a streaming aspect, maybe you know as much as like a younger person is. But for me, it's like, you know, I'm old school. You heard that song on the radio, I'm gonna go buy the album, I'm gonna listen to it. But really, the songs on radio the ones I know the best, you know, and those are the ones I'm gonna sing it to the live show probably, And so I'm definitely less relevant in the overall landscape, but.

00:39:20
Speaker 3: I don't know, still still like I'm not even saying you're less relevant. I just asked if you felt if there had any feeling on that you're not You're not attaching me to saying that you are less of anything. I'm just asking your general feeling about how media culture has changed.

00:39:32
Speaker 2: Jesus, I need a therapist. If you get two, it really works out for you. Media cultures.

00:39:37
Speaker 1: It's I try to well, it's just I don't know, I feel like, you know, you know, I've tried different things, like a flip phone, and you're still doing that.

00:39:45
Speaker 2: I still have one. I'm a what do you want now? Oh?

00:39:48
Speaker 1: Now I'm on two iPhones, you know, so it's like one step forward, three steps backwards.

00:39:52
Speaker 2: But it's like I just it's I feel my brain rotting.

00:39:55
Speaker 1: And I'm the generation that you know, didn't have a cell phone for until I was like in my twenties. I know what it was like before, and I know what it's like now. And I have kids too, there, you know, we're all addicted to it. So there's just a lot of shit out there to watch. My son, you know, he's he knows everything on YouTube. It's just you know, like he'll he loves mountain biking too, and so, but instead of just knowing what his buddies do around, you know, what's the this guy can do a jump. He knows the guys can do back flips and you know Whistler, you know black Home. So he's going to try to do it in his bike, Like buddy, it's not the way it works. Like he just kind of kind of close the preamp. You don't even know what everybody's doing it every time because it's he lives. It's a YouTube world that he lives in that I don't What's what's your favorite.

00:40:35
Speaker 2: That I answer your question like enough to your satisfaction. I didn't have.

00:40:38
Speaker 3: I didn't have satisfaction. I literally was. You're one of those people who have the.

00:40:41
Speaker 2: Prompt to the next thing.

00:40:42
Speaker 6: Yeah, the Bobby Cast will be right back. M this is the Bobby Cast.

00:40:59
Speaker 2: What's your favorite book? Uh?

00:41:01
Speaker 1: I just read a great book marine one called Friends right now. But the guy that wrote the book of ov this is gonna be a great book. But the last book I just read this is how bad my memory is. I just gave my wife.

00:41:17
Speaker 2: You can't.

00:41:17
Speaker 3: But here's the hard thing about books, now, text Cast, what's that book I just finished that I gave to you? Is that because I read so many books on my iPad, I forget the names of them because there's no cover. Yeah, the cover is like seven hundred swipes away. Yeah, and you forget the.

00:41:33
Speaker 2: Name of it.

00:41:34
Speaker 1: You know the guy I wrote Gentlemen Moscow, I don't amos totally. He just wrote, have a bunch of short stories, which I normally want to It's not really my thing. He's such a good author, Gentleman Mosque. I wrote Civility. He wrote The White Demon that's about like the Chicago mass murderer during the Chicago's World Fair. But this last book I read, she'll pass it on me. He's really good.

00:41:56
Speaker 2: It had been so easy to be a massive murderer back before. Yeah, the phone, and tell.

00:42:00
Speaker 1: Me some books you read, because I probably read them, or probably there's a chance I read him dang more in Peace.

00:42:04
Speaker 2: I finished that yesterday.

00:42:06
Speaker 3: Tell me the books you read. That might be the hardest anybody has ever come with me without intention.

00:42:15
Speaker 1: You want me get the greatest flex of all time. And he'll probably appreciate the stories. I don't know if it's trueor not, but so if you did it on purpose. Tim McGraw, we were also talking about books one time together. I don't know where it was. And he goes mall let me send you some books. A big reader. I swear to God, he sent me a cardboard box full of books.

00:42:32
Speaker 2: Every book was this thick, but it was like Russian.

00:42:36
Speaker 3: It wasn't written in Russian, but a book about Russian painter in this book about Eastern flaw.

00:42:41
Speaker 2: It was like this. I wish I had the little collection because it was you know, McGraw.

00:42:44
Speaker 1: You can't tell is he pulling a prank arm me or he could be totally serious because he's a one uper for sure, you know he's that's he. You know McGraw, he's not gonna he's gonna want to you know you got from the road. He'll flip that tire one more time than you think competitive. He's so competitive. So I still can't tell this day. I need to ask him and he probably probably like, of course read those books. But it was like this huge.

00:43:07
Speaker 3: Selection of really thick history books that I'm just like, this has to be a joke, but.

00:43:15
Speaker 2: I think the heart of Mike.

00:43:16
Speaker 3: We have to save that clip because someone's saying to me, hey, what books have you read? I've probably read them as the funniest, most aggressive.

00:43:28
Speaker 2: Uh, you already marked that down as it's the best I ever because I like to read.

00:43:37
Speaker 1: But well, I'm just saying we're probably reading some of the same books as I was trying to say.

00:43:43
Speaker 2: You ever read in the Realm of Hunger Ghosts? I have not.

00:43:47
Speaker 3: No, I didn't think you would have thought that one out there of really cool read books.

00:43:57
Speaker 2: I just pulled up my list and my wife just wrote me back here.

00:44:00
Speaker 1: Yes, jee us champetee. She's writing me back right now about the books I've read here.

00:44:06
Speaker 3: So well, okay, I'm kidd I'm kidding. If I were to do my favorite book, it's different from I think.

00:44:11
Speaker 1: Ulysses was a great read. I read that pretty quick. You didn't read that pretty and the sound and fury was fuckinger re fucker.

00:44:17
Speaker 2: He's awesome. And the thing is, and you you've given me.

00:44:20
Speaker 3: You gave me like the Tools that I read, the whole book, the Tools book, the one hundred and oh yeah, yeah, you gave that as a gift me.

00:44:24
Speaker 2: Probably don't remember. I do remember. I think mcgrawl gave it to you and just pass it on to me.

00:44:28
Speaker 1: No, No, I read that book back when I was into some more of the lifestyle optimization stuff. Now that yeah, I can't stand but I there was a period I was all about that.

00:44:35
Speaker 2: That's a great utility book. Peter Tia and the whole Outlive and all that stuff. I get into that stuff for a little bit.

00:44:39
Speaker 3: I think Born Standing Up is my favorite book. It's a Steve Martin book.

00:44:43
Speaker 2: Yes, I know the book. I haven't read it.

00:44:45
Speaker 1: I watched his comedy special though, the documentary did on Apple.

00:44:48
Speaker 2: Do you ever see that?

00:44:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great, I'm she did. Yeah, there's something you've seen.

00:44:53
Speaker 2: I've seen it. Yeah. Ever you ever you read much stoicism type stuff?

00:44:59
Speaker 5: Yeah?

00:45:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was.

00:45:00
Speaker 1: My favorite quote is that everything in moderation except moderation, including moderation by alec uh uh what's his name, Marcus Aurelius.

00:45:09
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Meditations. It's like one of the only books I've read multiple times. Yeah, but I have to read like the version that the now version, Yeah, because if I try to read the original writing, I get lost.

00:45:22
Speaker 2: I don't even know what he's saying.

00:45:23
Speaker 1: Sometimes, man search for meeting, yeah, Victor, Yeah, I love stoicism. Yeah I do too, that's I Yeah, it's actually one of my passwords was was.

00:45:33
Speaker 2: Don't share it? It was?

00:45:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I always make passwords of stuff I'm trying to manifest and I used a password out of there. Just saying out there just kind of remind me of that whole approach.

00:45:43
Speaker 2: But are you a manifestation guy? Oh? Yeah, do you believe mania happened? Okay?

00:45:48
Speaker 3: I would like to hear this first. I would like to know your theory on manifestation.

00:45:51
Speaker 2: And how it ends up happening. Uh.

00:45:55
Speaker 1: Well, I was always doing something that I later found out. Someone sent me a book by Joel ostein The Unfamiliar. Okay, Joel's incredible. I love his the radio station and what Joel.

00:46:07
Speaker 3: Joel ostein the Mega Yah. Yeah, he's just all about his radio station. Well, I'm serious, he's a good radio station. Yeah, you even listen to it.

00:46:15
Speaker 2: I don't know.

00:46:15
Speaker 3: I have a problem with people who make millions and millions of dollars Christ.

00:46:18
Speaker 2: I get I get that. I actually there's a lot of them around this part of this.

00:46:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, and where we Maybe that's my mistile reaction was that no, it's actually yeah, no, but he he he has. So.

00:46:27
Speaker 1: A Jewish friend of mine actually gave me that book, and I remember being like, what do you give me this.

00:46:30
Speaker 3: Book for this is a long time ago. This is like this Christian dude, right, but read the book.

00:46:33
Speaker 1: One of things he said in that book, which I really agreed with, is like, if you want something like you gotta see every day, if you want to go to Spain, get a postcard of Spain and put it on your on your your refrigerator. Well this is I've had a crazier story before in aviation. But I'll tell you by my backhouse. I really want to leave Nashville before COVID. I just I want to go back. I want to be in Arizona of Colorado. It's back out west where I'm fron I just missed, especially Colorado.

00:46:55
Speaker 2: It's really really wanted to be.

00:46:56
Speaker 1: And I had this backpack, old sack for laps sacked and I hung up by the back door, and I put a piece of duct tape on it. It said West, and I had like a flannel shirt and there and just shipping. I look at it every day, West West West, and then we were This is kind of weird manifestation because I want to say it's involved with like manifesting COVID.

00:47:13
Speaker 2: That's what it sounds like. It literally sounds like cod.

00:47:17
Speaker 1: I wasn't pretty good at but anyway, so we were in Colorado when everything shut down. We ended up living there for a year, which it had been my dream. I mean, I was like, how am I going to make How am I gonna move my whole family to Colorado? And we ended up staying there. The kids went to school there. But that's a different that's kind of a weird one. But I will tell you one other story about flying manifesting something that's really weird opening for Kenny Chesney. It's me, Kenny and Keith Urban way back in the day, and Kenny offers to fly me back home, and I'm like, yeah, I love to fly home with you in a private plane.

00:47:46
Speaker 2: Wow, it's amazing. So we went home.

00:47:47
Speaker 1: We flew home with him, the three of us in this little private plane. We landed back in Nashville and we pulled into was a different airport, not the big airport, but a smaller, little building, right. I remember looking up and the building said Signature which is a fixed base operator for private jets. For anyone out there listening about this random stuff. But I was like, this is so cool. We don't go through the real airport. We're going through the side thing, and I was like, wow, I want that to be like I want this, I want to do I want to travel this way. You know, this is like two thousand and four. So I made that my password on all my computers and devices. I signature with some other stuff behind it. Long story short, like two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine. My career is totally like going off a cliff. I went out there try to headline. I spent two years just getting my butt kicked, you know, playing these arenas we'd alread booked. I'm playing for like twenty five hundred people. You know, I'm giving all I have every night, and every reporter is like, you know, God bless us is hard. He's singing like as a sold out show only to two thousand people showed up. And that went on for a while, and I was like, you know, but I'm still typing that thing in there every day. And I'm playing a gig one day for the halfway to Hazard. Guys are doing a benefit up in Hazard, Kentucky for a Toado tornado thing relief thing, and this little plane flies overhead and they're like that's Tim McGraw, and I go there's no way that's Timergraw. He's not flying in a propeller plane. The guy's flying jets and like, no, he's learning to get his pile's license. Apparently he came to the gig. We started talking about the plane. It's this new plane called a Serrus as a parachute built into the airframe, but there's an accident. You pull the handle and the whole plane comes down under a canopy. He's like, it's the only plane that my wife Faith will let me fly in introduced me as instructor. I started flying the next day to gigs because you could fly. You know, if you're going to play gig in Indiana, even though it's only two hour drive, you're still going to live at midnight in the bus to get there. You lose a whole day of your kids, a whole night at home. Now I'm flying a straight line. This little propeller plane got totally hooked into it, and you know, I remember thinking, well, it's never going to come true that the dream I had, but this is pretty cool.

00:49:41
Speaker 2: I'm getting more time at home. Long story short.

00:49:43
Speaker 1: One day, I've thown into Chicago midway in this little plane and I was you know, using the bathroom, and I looked next to me, there's a real pilot and I'm like, oh.

00:49:52
Speaker 2: I guess a little pilot. Look at me.

00:49:53
Speaker 1: I'm a real pilot too, And I look up and then there's a sign of the urinal TMI that says signature, and it hit me like wow, Like it did happen in a totally different way than I wanted it to, which is why the universe works.

00:50:04
Speaker 2: I put it out there.

00:50:05
Speaker 1: I wanted to sit in the back of a jet that never worked out, but it came back to me the way where actually had to get my pilot's license, my instrument rating, and I'm actually sitting up left seat, you know, in the front of the plane.

00:50:14
Speaker 2: It might be a propeller plane.

00:50:16
Speaker 1: But I'm still like I'm doing it in a totally better way than would have happened if I'd forced it the other way. So that's one story. Pete Fisher was my password forever on my computer, and I did become a member of the Grand Opry, Like the Opry was such a big part of my life, Like just I could play the Opry stage, everything would happen. So I was typing Pete Fisher who ran the opry back then.

00:50:36
Speaker 2: I just I don't know.

00:50:37
Speaker 1: It might sound trivial, it's talking about it, but in these how these things have happened. But I'm like, I really leave like the power of putting it out there and it will come.

00:50:44
Speaker 2: Back to you.

00:50:45
Speaker 1: Do you journal things I did that five minute. I have a lot of those five minute gratitude journals within a lot of those over the years.

00:50:51
Speaker 3: I used to think that's pretty hokey. I think I just didn't understand why people were doing it. I find myself doing it now as a way to cleanse myself of all the negativity more so than just Hukuna matata.

00:51:10
Speaker 2: I think that's what I was. Well.

00:51:12
Speaker 3: I was just like, I don't want I'm gonna be the person that's like, oh, everything's great. So I was very anti that. But then I'm in a world of everything is so negative around me all the time. If I choose to let it get in comments, my life is critique through ratings through So it was what can I do to counter this a bit? So it wasn't you know Timone and Pimba whatever their names are, what are the names.

00:51:37
Speaker 2: Mike, Timon and Pumba? Thank you MBA.

00:51:40
Speaker 3: I was, hey, I need to I need to meet this, and so I started to go, I'm spending so much time thinking only bad things is turning me into a negative person. I need to remind myself of things that are the opposite, and that has that has put me back at a pretty neutral place, which I can appreciate.

00:52:00
Speaker 2: And that's why I do it. I mean, I don't do it right now anymore.

00:52:03
Speaker 1: I did more back when I was kind of more into like some of the stuff I was trying out.

00:52:07
Speaker 2: I've always tried different things in the past, you know.

00:52:11
Speaker 1: I quit drinking for two years, and then I added a thirty year of no beer, and then I.

00:52:17
Speaker 2: Then I started a whiskey, you know.

00:52:19
Speaker 1: I mean, like I did vegan for a year and a half, and then I just thought I was only gonna eat animals that I killed, and I went and killed an milk and lived out that.

00:52:25
Speaker 2: You know.

00:52:26
Speaker 1: I just I'm always trying different things. I tried the journal thing. I have actually a few stack of them, and I always thought i'd go back and read them.

00:52:31
Speaker 2: You never do.

00:52:32
Speaker 1: You write it and forget it, but it did help you, Like what are you great? The five minute journal for anyone is interested. It's very simple as one page, and it has like what do I want to do today? What am I grateful for? And then the end of the day you write down like three things that happened today and closing thoughts, and it's just a place to kind of like set some intentions for the following day or have an attitude of gratitude for the days around you.

00:52:53
Speaker 2: And it's it definitely is helpful for me.

00:52:54
Speaker 3: All that felt so lame to me, though, Yeah, it is kind of on the start. I know I have found purpose for it now, but I think the way it was positioned to me, who's so cynical, I'm so cynical about everything. Yeah, that I was like, this is not for me. I had to find the reason that it exists for me, which is I got to meet all the negativity with something or I'm gonna if that's going to consume me, Yeah, just be the.

00:53:14
Speaker 2: Nature of what I do every day. I can't imagine. No, you're so out there.

00:53:17
Speaker 1: It's you don't have the luxury of kind of like tuning away from all that stuff, so I don't.

00:53:22
Speaker 2: I can't take my glasses off and nobody recognizes me. They do or don't. I don't. Yeah, I don't.

00:53:27
Speaker 3: I tell my glasses off, nobody knows, nobody will come up to me or know who I am.

00:53:31
Speaker 1: Well, it's amazing. Yeah, that's they have that I go. I can go anywhere without being You can't. Oh, absolutely, you have your but you I travel nobody.

00:53:42
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't travel with anybody. I travel by myself.

00:53:44
Speaker 1: I can if I want to, if I need an ego stoke, I can go into home Depot or Walmart and see my folks. But like, I'm not gonna like maybe bed back beyond if there's time.

00:53:53
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't know if there's time, but there's always time for back. Yeah.

00:53:56
Speaker 1: But uh, you know, I travel mostly through anywhere, just completely under rad arts because I haven'ten a lot of TV, and I just I mean, I'm going a pretty good spot. I think you're playing a little humble I know you, but no, I mean, and I can sense it sometimes. Yeah, there's a way to move through certain situations where you just keep moving. But I can I can tell when someone's like I can telling some behind me, you know, looking or assuming where it's going on. But just because you've gotten so good at reading a room doing what we do, but I don't. I don't really that's a pretty sweet spot to them. And I always ask people like opportunities are coming my way. I'm like, is this going to like some more tickets? There's this is the thing that I have to do because everyone's doing it because I like even podcasts, I do so few of them because I feel like, now and someone does a podcast, there they'll I love long form interview like this. And last time I did this was Dak Shephard for Armchair Quarterback. The problem with that one was it was a live show. It was horrible because I love him, but it's like, now I'm trying to entertain.

00:54:48
Speaker 2: I'm playing the crowd, so I can't.

00:54:49
Speaker 1: So I'm like, it's entertaining instead of But a lot of the new people doing this, and I've had a lot of friends that are starting and I'm and I'm so supportive of them doing it, but I find that they're going to take this, cut it up in like five second snippets and just hit it on Instagram over and over and over. It's like click click, click click, trying to get those Instagram numbers up. And that's not really, the whole point of the podcast is supposed to be like a long term.

00:55:12
Speaker 2: Long form interview.

00:55:13
Speaker 1: We just say stuff you normally wouldn't say, and people have to listen to the whole thing to hear it, unless they go on your radio show.

00:55:19
Speaker 2: I guess this is all gonna be cut up in the best.

00:55:20
Speaker 3: Partner Snip snip, I'll snip for you, I'll do at you. No, we're definitely snipping that. Hey, if it's a book you're read.

00:55:26
Speaker 4: All right, let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor.

00:55:39
Speaker 2: And we're back on the Bobby Cast. I have a couple other questions.

00:55:44
Speaker 3: I was reading a bit about the Broken Branches Fund, and I bring it up now. We've talked a little bit about mental health here, just us not even going right at it, but I think that's a big part of both of our lives, either we're trying to handle our own or talk about our past experiences with it.

00:55:57
Speaker 2: What is that? What's Broken Branches Fund? Yeah?

00:56:00
Speaker 1: Oh, just we're taking some money from the tour and we're it's a multi year deal where our friend uh Tatum over at the Music Music Health Alliance here in Nashville that we help we're been without from the very beginning. It's going to help people in the community that are having struggling with mental health, certainly touring professionals, but also just people back here in town. And it's a cool thing. I don't kind of fit into the idea that that song broken branches. You know, the hook is broken branches off the family tree. Everyone in Nashville is a little bit of a broken branch. We all came in from somewhere else and we're you know, we don't we kind of create, make our own family, make our own tree here. So it tied in well, of course Mary Mary Hilliard was behind it. She's got a brain like that, think of it. But it's something I was excited to launch with her, and it's good, you know, I I am able to. I'm just of a different generation. I see what my kids are going through. I see people in the road are going through. I see what artists are going through. They speak out about it all the time, you know, the content creating, having to look at the comments, having to play that game. I can't imagine the little toll that would take. It's exhausting, you know. It's like in growing up in that environment I know a lot of them love it. I try to think of like Alan Jackson if he were starting off today, him doing all this like tic tacking as I call it, just to bother my kids and stuff, they'd be like, he probably loses mind too, Like what are you talking about? I just want to see country music and like look cool on stage. But so I definitely get it where they're coming from it. And it's hard. I mean it's just hard. It's hard in every field. This is our field, this is music, so we're trying to take care of ourselves. But every I mean, what people can do for work, I mean it's all you look, it's happening in music now. That's sony or soony app where you can just talk your words into your phone and it creates a it make this kind of sound like an old school Morgan Wallen track, and boom, it's like it's there. There goes the studio, the producers, the assistant, the intern the band. I mean just just wiped out a whole segment of like you know, the song demo industry has just gone all of a sudden, it's happening and everywhere, so the pressure and I feel out my record some part of the point, like whant to get other singles out is like people are so exciting and cut one of their songs, and I feel like I get some of the best songs just because maybe I've been doing this for a long time. So you want those guys that get those songs get a chance to see the light of day to support them as well, because it's just it's harder than it's ever been to be a songwriter in this town, for sure.

00:58:18
Speaker 3: Two questions left, Oh, what's your favorite? Well, I've done an hour, bet Landey got more.

00:58:25
Speaker 2: It's a great I could look. What's your favorite?

00:58:30
Speaker 3: We'll call it old like hit to play where you have a renewed love for it.

00:58:35
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.

00:58:36
Speaker 1: This year on the road, we were doing a song called so So Long and another one called Domestic Light and Cold. I was listening to his Zac's Zach gave me his second album to kind of listen to because I had asked some questions about it, and I went to listen to it. I was like, I need to go back to listen to my second record, Modern Day Drifter, just to see like what that record was like when I was in the same kind of throwes of where you know where you are and you're on that second album stuff, and I was like, oh my gosh, new song.

00:59:00
Speaker 2: I just there.

00:59:00
Speaker 1: They were so good and so domestic, Latin colds, a shuffle about beer and uh so so long. It was just a kind of a kiss off song. So we threw those back in the sellis a little bit.

00:59:12
Speaker 2: You know, I still old school songs that were like on the radio.

00:59:17
Speaker 3: Yeah, like big hits where you might have gotten tired of my songs.

00:59:22
Speaker 1: I mean I never get tired of five one five oh? Or was I thinking I still have always? I think it's still a huge song. I mean, I hold on. It's just like a I've always had a you know, I always come a little closer. That's an old hit.

00:59:34
Speaker 3: That song you're not giving me an I'm trying to go old school. No, I know, I hear you, but and all those are perfect songs. But you're just saying every song come a little closer. We played that this year. I hadn't played that.

00:59:42
Speaker 2: Now you're giving me.

00:59:43
Speaker 1: Now you're giving me no, Well, you've been getting me tones this whole damn time.

00:59:46
Speaker 2: None of my answers are acceptable. That's not true. That I said, what's a song? And then you gave me five. Oh my gosh, being created here. I walk out the door in my mid I need the broken branches fun for me at this point.

00:59:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, come a little closer. I haven't played in a while. We did this year for the first time about ten years. It felt great.

01:00:02
Speaker 2: That's awesome. Thank you. I enjoyed this. Thanks, thank you. That's cool. It was a fun hour for funny. Yeah, it was. I'm glad it was for one of us.

01:00:09
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm many and it was my hands sore from the ruler, like the look kept smashing my wrong answer, you were smashing.

01:00:17
Speaker 2: I was just accepting it. That's all.

01:00:21
Speaker 1: I get to go back and hear the sound bites and all the stuff. I regret saying, so.

01:00:25
Speaker 3: We should only do sound bites on this. We don't put it out now at all. Full for him, it's only in sound.

01:00:29
Speaker 1: Bites, right, that would be good. I can't wait for I can't wait for that.

01:00:33
Speaker 2: You still got some shows left on this tour? Huh? Yeah? I got three of them.

01:00:37
Speaker 1: Were we have this week and the week up to New York and do that whole three more up there, and then that's that's it. Yeah, six more shows and that's been fun.

01:00:45
Speaker 2: It's been good.

01:00:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're sadly behind. It's been a really good tour, really fun. It's fun going out there. You know, the band before you was just like young and they're just they're in that thing. You get to see him do what they're doing and you know they're geting ready to blast off. So that's been probably the highlight of the tour of me. He's just seen those guys all.

01:01:02
Speaker 2: Right there, he is your friend of mine, America's sweetheart.

01:01:06
Speaker 1: Hey, Derek's take that. Yeah, sweet dreams to everyone out there. Speaking of sweets, we all sleep well. I do sleep this in the daytime. Oh really, your napper?

01:01:16
Speaker 2: Nope, I don't have time to take naps.

01:01:18
Speaker 3: But if I ever have time to take yumps, I can sleep hard in the day because I don't feel like someone's gonna come up.

01:01:22
Speaker 2: And I'm not joking. Well, that's why you guys sleep in separate rooms. Okay, there is family everybody. Thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production.