Talking with Jeffrey Steele About His Amazing Career That Most Musicians Only Dream About

<v Speaker 1>Standing by three two one, let's go.
<v Speaker 2>Here's talking with Thompson Square. It's a podcast. I don't
<v Speaker 2>know my I actree, I do.
<v Speaker 1>Like I ain't got a single thing to lose. Sometimes
<v Speaker 1>I'm my over standing me.
<v Speaker 2>I guess that's just the.
<v Speaker 1>Child boy and me. I got alive the most would
<v Speaker 1>love to have. But sometimes I still wake up fighting me.
<v Speaker 1>You're this road I'm heading down, don't be. I guess
<v Speaker 1>that that's just the col bull. You'd best around, the restlessness,
<v Speaker 1>the hardest stone sometimes.
<v Speaker 2>Get the things out down, the foods.
<v Speaker 1>Crowd that's never said, that's fine, the fist that's in the.
<v Speaker 2>Doing everyone else. I guess that's just the cow bully me.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, Hey, this is Thompson Square talking with Thompson Square.
<v Speaker 2>It's the podcast. And that is the voice from our
<v Speaker 2>guest today, famous songwriter. Uh good buddy and just a
<v Speaker 2>just a great freaking American human being, Jeffrey Steele.
<v Speaker 1>How you doing, man, man? I am doing good, doing good.
<v Speaker 1>We we we all got through the stuffs, as it were,
<v Speaker 1>this this this holiday season. Yeah yeah, the whole the
<v Speaker 1>whole family came in for the holiday. We all got
<v Speaker 1>sick and oh god, and uh it was pretty it
<v Speaker 1>was pretty pretty, pretty rough, but we we all got
<v Speaker 1>through it. So we're on the back side now, feeling
<v Speaker 1>pretty good.
<v Speaker 3>So everybody got it, huh, everybody in the family, grandkids, kids, Well,
<v Speaker 3>we had all gotten together for my grandson's tenth birthday party,
<v Speaker 3>right and and one of the little ones was sick
<v Speaker 3>and and boom.
<v Speaker 2>So it's it's so crazy because we had all the
<v Speaker 2>family in as well, and my my niece's husband had
<v Speaker 2>it when he got here, evidently unbeknownst to us. Oh gosh,
<v Speaker 2>and uh yeah, so my niece got it, and I
<v Speaker 2>think their little boys okay, but Sean has got it
<v Speaker 2>now upstairs.
<v Speaker 1>So but she's just thinking about it.
<v Speaker 2>I appreciate it, man, she's uh, she's she's doing good.
<v Speaker 2>It's I mean, my my my bat about with it
<v Speaker 2>was very short lived and in uh you know, two
<v Speaker 2>or three days of dizzyness, and and that's kind of
<v Speaker 2>what she has right now. It's just it's very she's
<v Speaker 2>just like dizzy and kind of just kind of out.
<v Speaker 2>It's the weirdest thing, man, because it feels like nothing
<v Speaker 2>else I've ever had. It's like I had way worse.
<v Speaker 2>I've been way more sick, but it just you just
<v Speaker 2>feel just not there one hundred percent.
<v Speaker 1>It's just really really we we we all got pretty
<v Speaker 1>sick over here, but we uh, every Like for me,
<v Speaker 1>I had a different symptom every day.
<v Speaker 2>Really, it was the weirdest thing.
<v Speaker 1>It was the weirdest thing. Like one day, I, you know,
<v Speaker 1>had chills, one day I had a cough, one day
<v Speaker 1>I just my sinuses were completely backed up. One day
<v Speaker 1>I felt kind of good, and one day I had sweats,
<v Speaker 1>and one day you know what I mean. Like every
<v Speaker 1>day seemed to be like a different thing, and then
<v Speaker 1>at some point it just kind of got better. Yes, God,
<v Speaker 1>God only knows what they're doing to us.
<v Speaker 2>Hey, we're going to get into that. I promise you.
<v Speaker 1>Man.
<v Speaker 2>See I'm doing this. I'm hitting my new butt so
<v Speaker 2>I can cough. Yeah I'm not sure. Yeah, I supposedly
<v Speaker 2>you can't get it twice. That's what they say. So yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I'm not too uh, I'm not too worried about it. Again,
<v Speaker 2>but uh man, that first song I just played, there's
<v Speaker 2>there's so much that I want people to know about
<v Speaker 2>you and you and I actually don't know what you're
<v Speaker 2>that that well, we haven't been.
<v Speaker 1>Just we just known each other a long time. But
<v Speaker 1>we have known each other a few years, haven't we Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>but not intimately in the industry.
<v Speaker 2>We have not been intimate yet. No, I'm sure that's coming.
<v Speaker 2>Hey watch out. Uh that's all the time we have.
<v Speaker 2>But man, so this guy and I want to just
<v Speaker 2>really really briefly, like I love for you to just
<v Speaker 2>run us through like a synopsis of of how you
<v Speaker 2>got started. And I know everyone always asks you that question,
<v Speaker 2>but for me, I mean from from from from starting
<v Speaker 2>out in California to boy Howdy to move into Nashville
<v Speaker 2>and all the things in between. We can get through
<v Speaker 2>that pretty quick, you know. But you know, you know
<v Speaker 2>a lot of times, you know, people don't understand or
<v Speaker 2>they don't really realize who's behind the songs that they
<v Speaker 2>enjoyed the radio and they listen to the radio, and man,
<v Speaker 2>you've got a discography that I'm so pissed off about
<v Speaker 2>because it's I mean, you have more, You've written more
<v Speaker 2>hit songs, and I have friends in my contacts. It's
<v Speaker 2>it's kind of depressing when you think about it.
<v Speaker 1>But if I was a baseball player, though, you know,
<v Speaker 1>I'd have the batting average of a picture because you know,
<v Speaker 1>I've written like ten thousand songs and I have you know,
<v Speaker 1>had probably about one hundred of them have been singles.
<v Speaker 1>But but you know, that's a lot of a lot
<v Speaker 1>of strikeouts there too. But but that's the thing, like
<v Speaker 1>you're saying, back way before the boy Howdy days, I
<v Speaker 1>was back in the seventies, I was. I was a
<v Speaker 1>rock and roll kid that was grew up in Hollywood,
<v Speaker 1>you know it was, and was playing playing gigs on
<v Speaker 1>the Sunset Strip basically at all the rock clubs in
<v Speaker 1>a Zeppelin cover band. That was. That was my teenage
<v Speaker 1>years in Hollywood. And then you know, my dad keep
<v Speaker 1>being kept pounding over my head, you know, you need
<v Speaker 1>to listen to country music. And I said country music sucks, dad,
<v Speaker 1>and he no, man, it's it's the best man, Johnny Cash,
<v Speaker 1>Chris Christofferson, Merl Haggard, you got to listen to these
<v Speaker 1>songs you got, You've got to listen to it. And
<v Speaker 1>I just refuse. I'd be like, you know, I can't
<v Speaker 1>tell my friends I'm playing country music there. They're like
<v Speaker 1>to sell me. And then I got a gig. I
<v Speaker 1>got a gig playing in a cover band up in Bakersfield,
<v Speaker 1>you know about you know, one hundred and so miles
<v Speaker 1>from from La right, and uh, it was, it was
<v Speaker 1>I had to learn a bunch of Morole Haggard songs.
<v Speaker 1>I was playing bass, singing background vocals, and I fell
<v Speaker 1>in love. And then and then Honeysuckle Rose came out
<v Speaker 1>right Willie Nelson movie. And when I heard all those
<v Speaker 1>Christofferson songs in that movie, I just my dad was right,
<v Speaker 1>and I flipped out over the lyrics. But I had
<v Speaker 1>this thread of hardcore rock and roll in my background.
<v Speaker 1>You know, my brothers were in bands and I was
<v Speaker 1>chasing them, and you know, and and and like I said,
<v Speaker 1>playing playing the whiskey of Go Go and Gazari's on
<v Speaker 1>the strip and you know the Viper Room back in
<v Speaker 1>the day, you know, back back when, back when the police,
<v Speaker 1>before the police had a record deal. I have so
<v Speaker 1>many stories back in that day from going to see
<v Speaker 1>bands like the Pretenders, who were brand new at the time,
<v Speaker 1>and just that whole that whole era was insane musically.
<v Speaker 1>And so anyway, as I you know, figured out how
<v Speaker 1>much I loved country music, I kept going to Bakersfield more,
<v Speaker 1>you know, and then I was and then as you do.
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<v Speaker 1>You know, there's hockey talks all over LA. I mean
<v Speaker 1>it's like there's more Honckey Talks around La than there
<v Speaker 1>are in Tennessee, right, And I was playing all of
<v Speaker 1>them in all these pickup bands. And then it was
<v Speaker 1>it was in this time in Los Angeles when Dwight
<v Speaker 1>Yoakum was out there in the mid eighties and Dwight
<v Speaker 1>got hot man he and legitimately, as you know, everybody knows,
<v Speaker 1>he got hot in LA. And LA became a hotbed
<v Speaker 1>for roots music for bands like Los Lobo, you know,
<v Speaker 1>and and Dwight and and so and loosen to Williams
<v Speaker 1>and we were chasing everybody around. And so there was
<v Speaker 1>this really cool scene that developed out in La and
<v Speaker 1>I thought that was a part of At the Palomino
<v Speaker 1>Club in La, I was in the house band and
<v Speaker 1>we and it was guys like me and Buddy Miller
<v Speaker 1>and Billy Block and the guys from Boy Howdie and
<v Speaker 1>a bunch of other Jimmy Lauderdale, a bunch of musicians
<v Speaker 1>all trying to get seen. And then I played in
<v Speaker 1>the house band. And one night Tony Brown came in
<v Speaker 1>uh with doing a showcase for Patty Loveless, and I
<v Speaker 1>was in the house band. So we opened the show
<v Speaker 1>and I played I played this song of the guy.
<v Speaker 1>That band leader said, hey, play that song you wrote.
<v Speaker 1>So I played the song that I wrote, and Tony
<v Speaker 1>Brown cornered me backstage at the Palamino and said, what's
<v Speaker 1>the name of that song? And I told him. I
<v Speaker 1>said it's called Where Fools Are Kings? And he goes,
<v Speaker 1>I'm going to cut that song on Patty. I go,
<v Speaker 1>what do you mean you're gonna cut it? He goes,
<v Speaker 1>I'm gonna cut it on Patty. I didn't even know
<v Speaker 1>what he meant. Wow. And that's how dumb I was.
<v Speaker 1>And and then he handed up, he handed up cutting
<v Speaker 1>it on Steve Warner in nineteen eighty six. It was
<v Speaker 1>my first cut, and that kind of brought me back
<v Speaker 1>to Nashville. And then, of course when I came to Nashville,
<v Speaker 1>everybody was just throwing rocks at me, going, this guy's
<v Speaker 1>like a hardcore rocker. You know, he's got a C
<v Speaker 1>D c rips in his songs. And but that was
<v Speaker 1>my humble beginning of like you know, I played a
<v Speaker 1>zillion bars, and and everywhere I played back in those days,
<v Speaker 1>everybody loved the Rolling Stones, and everybody loved Charlie Daniels,
<v Speaker 1>and everybody loves led Zeppelin, Bob Seeger, and they love
<v Speaker 1>Merle Haggard. So that was my me. That was my
<v Speaker 1>stew that I was making my songs out. But that's
<v Speaker 1>when and when I came back to Nashville, you know,
<v Speaker 1>I did a few showcases here. But when I came
<v Speaker 1>back with Boy Howdie in the early nineties, I was
<v Speaker 1>writing songs for our album and I wrote the song
<v Speaker 1>sheet give Anything to Fall in Love, which became Boyouti's
<v Speaker 1>big hit, and I wrote it. I wrote it in Nashville,
<v Speaker 1>and that was my first song I wrote in Nashville.
<v Speaker 1>It was my last day here. It was the last
<v Speaker 1>thing I did. And then it ended up getting recorded
<v Speaker 1>by an R and B artist named Gerald Leavert who
<v Speaker 1>was the son of Eddie Lavert from the OJS. So
<v Speaker 1>it was a number one country and pop hit the
<v Speaker 1>same year. And I'm just kind of going what. I
<v Speaker 1>didn't know what was to think of anything. It just
<v Speaker 1>all came into my face. Wow, and so and so
<v Speaker 1>we kind of came back here and settled. So that's
<v Speaker 1>kind of how I got here. And and trust me, man,
<v Speaker 1>I was like a jingle singer, session singer, sometime part
<v Speaker 1>time bas session bass player of course, playing in all
<v Speaker 1>the clubs. I was making a really good living out
<v Speaker 1>in LA. I did not need a record deal and
<v Speaker 1>I didn't need any of that, but it just sounded
<v Speaker 1>fun and and so I, you know, I gave up
<v Speaker 1>a pretty good salary out in LA to get in
<v Speaker 1>the van with a pa, you know, the deal and
<v Speaker 1>start making five hundred a night, you know, yeah, and
<v Speaker 1>driving twenty hours to a gig, you know, and trying
<v Speaker 1>to break a hit single. So there you go. That's
<v Speaker 1>how I got to Nashville.
<v Speaker 2>Man, that's so crazy. And you know, I think that
<v Speaker 2>you were there in LA when all that stuff was
<v Speaker 2>going on.
<v Speaker 1>Man, I mean like it was amazing.
<v Speaker 2>You You've seen kind of the best of in my opinion,
<v Speaker 2>the best of LA and the best of Nashville.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, in your life. Yeah. And the crazy thing was,
<v Speaker 1>there was a decision that I kind of I don't
<v Speaker 1>know if I was consciously making it or not, but
<v Speaker 1>like back in the seventies when I was playing on
<v Speaker 1>the Sunset Strip, you know, Van Halen was just about
<v Speaker 1>to release their first rest Shut Up Dude. So that, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>we were all around that. We were all around that
<v Speaker 1>and going on back in LA at that time in
<v Speaker 1>the late seventies, you know, mid seventies. And then because
<v Speaker 1>I was I was like a young teenage kid, really
<v Speaker 1>too young to be in the clubs. I had to
<v Speaker 1>get a note to go into the club and sing,
<v Speaker 1>you know. Anyway, So when the eighties came the big
<v Speaker 1>hair band movements, you know, Poison and Guns N' Roses,
<v Speaker 1>and it was like a decision. I was playing in
<v Speaker 1>all these original bands and trying to get a record deal.
<v Speaker 1>I had really long here and I was wearing a
<v Speaker 1>kimono and platform shoes and spandex, you know. And I
<v Speaker 1>did this. I did this one showcase and they made me,
<v Speaker 1>they made me wear I make up and for the
<v Speaker 1>showcase it was like this rock band and that was it.
<v Speaker 1>I was like, you know what, I'm not doing this
<v Speaker 1>ship And then the next night I was. I was
<v Speaker 1>literally playing in a band with Buddy Miller, the late
<v Speaker 1>uh David Linley on drums and Derf Morlock's on guitar.
<v Speaker 1>We had this really cool little four piece band, and
<v Speaker 1>I just started getting to this whole root scene that
<v Speaker 1>was happening, that was just starting to break with Dwight
<v Speaker 1>and you know, everybody was chasing Dwhite around back then.
<v Speaker 1>So uh, that was just a conscious I think it
<v Speaker 1>was a conscious movement, you know what I mean, Like
<v Speaker 1>you're so young, You're just kind of going, I ain't
<v Speaker 1>doing that. I don't want to do that. I'm not
<v Speaker 1>wearing makeup on my face. I love Queen, but I'm
<v Speaker 1>not doing that. Uh and so, but I was in
<v Speaker 1>influenced so heavily by that music of the seventies, so heavily.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, the theory of it, the structure of it,
<v Speaker 1>the wide openness of the lyrics, you know, how how
<v Speaker 1>they weren't as literal as country music. I was, you know,
<v Speaker 1>rock and roll, right, I mean, I mean, and as
<v Speaker 1>you know, I'm not I'm not patenting myself on the
<v Speaker 1>back and taking any credit. But country music became the
<v Speaker 1>seventies in two thousand. Yeah, it became seventies rock and roll.
<v Speaker 1>It really did. Yeah, And there were a few guys,
<v Speaker 1>there were a few guys that just kind of grew
<v Speaker 1>up in it. And and we were just the thing
<v Speaker 1>I always say, we were just having fun. We didn't
<v Speaker 1>give a shit about getting a song cut. We were
<v Speaker 1>we were just having fun, you know, just trying to
<v Speaker 1>write whatever we can come up with.
<v Speaker 2>Man, I think that trying to hit something, you know. Yeah, well,
<v Speaker 2>I think that's where it comes from too, though. Man,
<v Speaker 2>when you're not really chasing something, you're not saying I
<v Speaker 2>want to be like that, I want to be that.
<v Speaker 2>You're just having fun in doing your thing, being yourself,
<v Speaker 2>your most authentic self. I think that's when sometimes that
<v Speaker 2>magic happens. Man, when you're you know, but to think
<v Speaker 2>that you were that young and made the decision not
<v Speaker 2>to do the hair to do the hair band thing,
<v Speaker 2>It's really interesting because you know that everyone at that
<v Speaker 2>age is like, oh, man, I can make I could
<v Speaker 2>be super rich. If I'm doing this, I'm gonna I'm
<v Speaker 2>gonna look like Axl Rose or I want to you know,
<v Speaker 2>try to be like David Lee Roth or whatever else,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and to look at that and go, noah, man,
<v Speaker 2>this is not for me. That's that's well. They were
<v Speaker 2>pretty mature.
<v Speaker 1>There was there was a classical thing. I always I
<v Speaker 1>always tell this to my songwriting you know, my publishing songwriters,
<v Speaker 1>and then my teach a lot of classes too, and
<v Speaker 1>I always say, man, there was this moment where I
<v Speaker 1>was playing the Palomino and out in North Hollywood in
<v Speaker 1>the house band, and Christofferson came in one night, and
<v Speaker 1>you know, of course, my dad had always told me
<v Speaker 1>that he was the guy, you know, and that was
<v Speaker 1>the guy. Yeah, And as the years went by, I
<v Speaker 1>just fell in love with everything he did. And you know,
<v Speaker 1>so I'm in my early twenties and I just remember
<v Speaker 1>him him really beating me over the head about that.
<v Speaker 1>And so anyway, he was there and he sang a
<v Speaker 1>couple of songs and then he left, you know, to
<v Speaker 1>get the hell out of there. Through the back alley,
<v Speaker 1>and so I went to try to get some advice,
<v Speaker 1>you know, and I was like, Chris, you know, my
<v Speaker 1>name is Jeff Steele. I want to be a songwriter,
<v Speaker 1>and so what do I need to do? Man? What
<v Speaker 1>I need to do? He was getting into a He's
<v Speaker 1>getting into a limo with two chicks and a bottle
<v Speaker 1>of whiskey. And he looks at me kind of half cocked,
<v Speaker 1>and he goes, son, never do it for the money.
<v Speaker 1>And you know, he's getting into a limo with two
<v Speaker 1>chicks and a bottle of whiskey, and dude, key For
<v Speaker 1>twenty five years later, I'm Songwriter of the Year and
<v Speaker 1>he's the Icon of the Year at BMI that year.
<v Speaker 1>So we're both kind of on stage together and I
<v Speaker 1>get to see him again and I said, I said, dude,
<v Speaker 1>I got this great picture of me and him, just
<v Speaker 1>like in this belly laugh and that. I yeah, just
<v Speaker 1>the greatest picture. And I'm so proud of it. My
<v Speaker 1>dad would just freak, you know, if he was alive.
<v Speaker 1>But uh, but I said to him, man, remember.
<v Speaker 5>That time in the alley, right, you were with those
<v Speaker 5>two girls. He's like, no, no, I don't which night
<v Speaker 5>which Lima, which girls, I said, you.
<v Speaker 1>You told me and this and this is twenty five
<v Speaker 1>years later. He goes, you told me to never do
<v Speaker 1>it for the money. And he looks at me and
<v Speaker 1>he goes, did you I go, no, speak of that,
<v Speaker 1>a boy.
<v Speaker 2>That's awesome.
<v Speaker 1>Man. So you know, like stupid things like that, that
<v Speaker 1>that and life is so full circle like that, you know, like,
<v Speaker 1>but to get to that moment, to get to see
<v Speaker 1>him again and share that, because that was my journey.
<v Speaker 1>You know, you you start looking for those markers that
<v Speaker 1>you can. You can because I had you know you,
<v Speaker 1>I'm sure you're the same as men. I had no plan.
<v Speaker 1>I was just a freaking bass player, right and a
<v Speaker 1>singer who loved to play, loved to I just was
<v Speaker 1>having a ball. I was just having a great time.
<v Speaker 1>I didn't have a plan. I didn't have a five year,
<v Speaker 1>ten year plan. Man. I just wanted to make music.
<v Speaker 1>And if I if I to this day was a
<v Speaker 1>bass player in a club, I would be making you know,
<v Speaker 1>making a hundred bucks a night. I'd be completely satisfied.
<v Speaker 2>I totally get that. I totally agree.
<v Speaker 1>I've always been that guy. And of course, you know,
<v Speaker 1>you go through the phases and changes as your shit changes.
<v Speaker 1>But but but I've always tried to be that guy.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I think that's me. I mean, you know,
<v Speaker 1>I've I've screwed up along the way, but but but
<v Speaker 1>pretty much maintained that principle of like, I'm just going
<v Speaker 1>to do what makes me happy. And it's really defined
<v Speaker 1>what I've done. Man. It's like, you know, a couple
<v Speaker 1>of years back, I, you know, had this song number
<v Speaker 1>one song for Eric Church that five years ago. When
<v Speaker 1>I wrote it, everybody said it would never get recorded
<v Speaker 1>because it was it was it was too mean, it
<v Speaker 1>was it was it was bad mouth and country music.
<v Speaker 1>And then five years later, the world's on fire and
<v Speaker 1>BLM and all this crap's going on, and he hears
<v Speaker 1>the song stick that in your country song and he
<v Speaker 1>records it. You know, but I I had written the
<v Speaker 1>song almost almost six years previous, during the Baltimore riots
<v Speaker 1>when Obama was the president, and and and you know,
<v Speaker 1>like my most recent I've had the Aaron Lewis am
<v Speaker 1>I the only one and have dude, I've never seen
<v Speaker 1>It's one of the biggest songs of the year this year,
<v Speaker 1>and it's not getting any promotion any press at all.
<v Speaker 1>And but but somehow it got through all the cancel
<v Speaker 1>culture and and you know, was a number one song.
<v Speaker 1>So but for me, and I hate saying that, chicks,
<v Speaker 1>I don't want to pack myself on the back, but
<v Speaker 1>just I'm trying to make a point that I kept
<v Speaker 1>doing it the way I heard it and the way
<v Speaker 1>I wanted to do it. I've always done that. I've
<v Speaker 1>never tried to write a song for anybody. I you know,
<v Speaker 1>when someone says, hey, Faith Hild needs a song, or
<v Speaker 1>Rascal Flats needs a song, I just try to write
<v Speaker 1>the song in the room that day, right, you know,
<v Speaker 1>I try my best. I mean, and you know, so
<v Speaker 1>that's what I've always tried to hold onto.
<v Speaker 2>Anyway, Well you can, yeah, you can pat yourself on
<v Speaker 2>the back then you deserve it. I mean I've been
<v Speaker 2>to your place. I've seen the plaques, and uh, you know,
<v Speaker 2>you don't. You don't get to where you are today
<v Speaker 2>without just being happy with what you're doing, because if
<v Speaker 2>that's a hell of a lot of work, man, that's
<v Speaker 2>a hell of a lot of work and the amount
<v Speaker 2>of success and even I mean I've known who you
<v Speaker 2>were ever since I moved here in nineteen ninety six,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and I was like, man, and you were
<v Speaker 2>on my list of Hey, I got to write with
<v Speaker 2>these dudes because I had I had some of the
<v Speaker 2>best advice I ever got from a songwriting standpoint with someone,
<v Speaker 2>and he said, write with people who are better than you.
<v Speaker 2>Always write with people who are better than you to
<v Speaker 2>elevate what you do. Because if you're writing with people,
<v Speaker 2>oh my gosh, if you're writing with people at your
<v Speaker 2>same level, a lot of times it might take you.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, you're gonna get better anyway as you do it,
<v Speaker 2>even by yourself. I mean, you keep writing songs by yourself,
<v Speaker 2>you're going to get better.
<v Speaker 1>Absolutely.
<v Speaker 2>But you get with the Jeffery Steele or or any
<v Speaker 2>of these other guys that have had tons of hits,
<v Speaker 2>they don't have hits. You guys don't have hits like
<v Speaker 2>you do. On accident. There's there's something there, there's a
<v Speaker 2>talent there.
<v Speaker 1>And and you got to remember you got to remember,
<v Speaker 1>I mean interrupt, but you got to remember too that
<v Speaker 1>that well for guys like me. There might be a
<v Speaker 1>few others. I don't know. I can't tell anybody else's story,
<v Speaker 1>but I had a good six year period where I
<v Speaker 1>would these songs were already written. Like I walk into
<v Speaker 1>a song meeting with an A and R guy Anthony Martin.
<v Speaker 1>I don't want to name names, but Anthony Martin was
<v Speaker 1>the guy, and and and I played them, played them Chrome,
<v Speaker 1>and I played them hell Yeah. And both of the
<v Speaker 1>songs have kind of talkie versus you know, rap, not rap,
<v Speaker 1>but kind of talking, you know. So he shuts them
<v Speaker 1>off like ten seconds in and he looks at me
<v Speaker 1>and he goes, man, I need my singer singing, not talking.
<v Speaker 1>You need to go listen to you need to go
<v Speaker 1>listen to the radio. And this is pre you know,
<v Speaker 1>this is a good four years out of the songs
<v Speaker 1>getting recorded. But I quickly learned, and I always tell
<v Speaker 1>the story, but I would go into the clubs that
<v Speaker 1>you know, I was playing all the bars, and I'd
<v Speaker 1>play the bars and chicks would freak out when they
<v Speaker 1>hear these songs. They would freak out because they had
<v Speaker 1>these rock riffs in them, you know, seventies rock rifts
<v Speaker 1>and stuff, and you know they're like throwback, but they
<v Speaker 1>were totally country lyrics, hardcore country lyrics. And I was like, man,
<v Speaker 1>the chicks love these songs. But the record companies freaking
<v Speaker 1>hate them, and the record companies keep telling me I'm way,
<v Speaker 1>and then Montgomery Gentry shows up.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and you know, there was no guys, there was
<v Speaker 2>no Rascal Flats.
<v Speaker 1>When I wrote These Days, they weren't they didn't have
<v Speaker 1>a record deal. So you know, I was I was
<v Speaker 1>turning into a song like these Days, which was kind
<v Speaker 1>of a you know, it was an ode to my
<v Speaker 1>growing up in LA and playing in the rock clubs
<v Speaker 1>and meeting my wife way back in the day, and
<v Speaker 1>and and it was just like this rambling you know,
<v Speaker 1>it wasn't it wasn't a traditional kind of verse chorse structure.
<v Speaker 1>So when I played it for people in the industry,
<v Speaker 1>they were just like, They're like, dude, this is like
<v Speaker 1>I don't know what this is. This is not country music.
<v Speaker 1>It sounds kind of country, but it's not. I said, no,
<v Speaker 1>it is. It is. It's gonna be It's gonna be
<v Speaker 1>the next wave.
<v Speaker 2>It is, I say, so, damn it.
<v Speaker 1>And they looked at me because they kept telling me
<v Speaker 1>that I needed to go listen to the radio more.
<v Speaker 1>And I would get to a point where I got
<v Speaker 1>so cocky. I said, man, I'm going to be the radio.
<v Speaker 1>You know, I would just get so pissed off and
<v Speaker 1>hearing that because because I knew when I played in
<v Speaker 1>the clubs that chicks would keep coming up and they'd
<v Speaker 1>want to hear them again. All the girls would go, Man,
<v Speaker 1>play that song again. And they didn't know the song.
<v Speaker 1>It was just they knew it for me, you know.
<v Speaker 1>So I just that was my research. I wasn't a
<v Speaker 1>business man, you know, I just was. I just I
<v Speaker 1>just did the research on the fly i could, and
<v Speaker 1>I'm a really good observer. I would always be one
<v Speaker 1>of these guys. That's why I'm a songwriter. I would
<v Speaker 1>step back and observe things and and just look at
<v Speaker 1>the situation and then I would write about it. So
<v Speaker 1>that was kind of my business sense. It's all I
<v Speaker 1>had was to step back and look at what I
<v Speaker 1>was doing versus what they were telling me. And what
<v Speaker 1>I was doing was not currently the thing, but it
<v Speaker 1>was working in those bars, it was working big time.
<v Speaker 1>So you know, I took that the heart and I
<v Speaker 1>just kept doing what I loved doing. Wow, And and
<v Speaker 1>that was my story, I guess.
<v Speaker 2>The business man. It's so funny that people at labels
<v Speaker 2>and publishing houses and stuff like that who'll give you
<v Speaker 2>advice on your songs and say, this is not country
<v Speaker 2>or whatever. Listen to the country or whatever. They've never
<v Speaker 2>created anything in their life, never created.
<v Speaker 1>It's like government. It's like government. The government's never run
<v Speaker 1>a business, you know, yet somehow they get to run
<v Speaker 1>everything everything. I love that line. I love that line
<v Speaker 1>that Elon Musk said about the government is able to
<v Speaker 1>do it has a monopoly on everything, and and it's
<v Speaker 1>and it's the only business that's able to kill people.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah legally, yeah, it's okay.
<v Speaker 1>And and and then that's the I kind of related
<v Speaker 1>to the government a little bit. That's why I brought
<v Speaker 1>that up.
<v Speaker 2>It always comes back together, especially right now. Man, oh god,
<v Speaker 2>but uh well, you know, so so after all that stuff,
<v Speaker 2>it seemed like this is the doors kind of flew open.
<v Speaker 2>And it's so funny to me, like, you know, when
<v Speaker 2>people say, you know, you're your songs aren't good enough,
<v Speaker 2>you're taking in these people who've never written their name,
<v Speaker 2>hardly know they're they're running publishing houses and pitching songs
<v Speaker 2>and the only songs that they know. And to the
<v Speaker 2>the the lay person out there, right now, you have
<v Speaker 2>publishing houses and they have just many of them have
<v Speaker 2>vast and vast amount of songs who've been written for
<v Speaker 2>years and years and sometimes even decades because they buy
<v Speaker 2>old catalogs. A catalog is a songwriter's body of work,
<v Speaker 2>and they buy these old catalogs, and you have a
<v Speaker 2>twenty five year old kid, twenty year old kid pitching
<v Speaker 2>the songs. And we found this out when we went
<v Speaker 2>in as Thompson Square to try to find songs for
<v Speaker 2>the first two albums, and I'm like, hey, man, can
<v Speaker 2>you you know, we're looking for something like, you know,
<v Speaker 2>like a skip you in kind of you know, this
<v Speaker 2>kind of thing, and they're like, they only know what
<v Speaker 2>was turned in the week before. They don't even know,
<v Speaker 2>you know. And we tried to get songs for Showing
<v Speaker 2>as a Super Country, a record that I produced on her,
<v Speaker 2>and that was just it was unnerving. So we just
<v Speaker 2>had to end up writing everything.
<v Speaker 1>But absolutely yeah, and you're better for it.
<v Speaker 2>Absolutely yeah. You know, it's like back, but it does.
<v Speaker 1>Speak to That's the big the big uh, the whole
<v Speaker 1>in that whole system is like there's there's so much
<v Speaker 1>catalog that there used to be publishers that would like, like,
<v Speaker 1>you know, one of my guys that worked for me,
<v Speaker 1>Steve Marklin over the years. He knew every song, Daryl Franklin,
<v Speaker 1>they knew every song right that that that whoever, whoever
<v Speaker 1>were the writers at their company, they knew that they
<v Speaker 1>knew the intimately every song in that.
<v Speaker 2>Catalog, just as it should be. Yeah, because I mean,
<v Speaker 2>that's what you're armed with. That's your ammos. I need
<v Speaker 2>a song that's about snow, and oh you would you?
<v Speaker 2>So and so wrote a song it's killer. He wrote
<v Speaker 2>it ten years ago, but it's ever been cut, you know,
<v Speaker 2>and you pull it out. Yeah, it's so crazy I
<v Speaker 2>find it.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I agree. I mean but but and of course
<v Speaker 1>now it's a whole different world now. Now it reminds
<v Speaker 1>me of being in Los Angeles now, just the whole process.
<v Speaker 1>You know, there's five six guys in a room. There's
<v Speaker 1>a there's a drum loop guy. There's a top a
<v Speaker 1>top line lyricist as they call him. That's what does
<v Speaker 1>that mean? What does that mean?
<v Speaker 2>What's the maximum writers you've ever written with?
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I've written in a room with five or
<v Speaker 1>six guys. But it was all my writers at my company.
<v Speaker 1>It was just having fun.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I want I don't.
<v Speaker 1>I won't go do those. I just yeah, I got
<v Speaker 1>you know, I'm not I'm not bad mounted and I'm
<v Speaker 1>not I'm not being a you know, crusty older guy.
<v Speaker 1>I just I'm tired of the algorithms though, Like you know,
<v Speaker 1>it's it's it's it's not just now, it's it's been
<v Speaker 1>in every era. But something hits a formula, hits man
<v Speaker 1>and then it just gets choked to death with everybody
<v Speaker 1>writing the same tempo, the same the same uh you know,
<v Speaker 1>drum beat, the same sort of lyric something about it
<v Speaker 1>drinking a shot of whiskey and taking a girl home basically.
<v Speaker 1>And I'm not putting that down. I mean, it's been
<v Speaker 1>in country music ever since country music began. But you
<v Speaker 1>know what I mean, there's it's it's in It's like,
<v Speaker 1>isn't anybody writing about the world right now like I
<v Speaker 1>was writing, you know, like like if you take the
<v Speaker 1>Aaron Lewis song, I'm writing about what's happening in the
<v Speaker 1>world right now, right or stick that in your country's honor.
<v Speaker 1>Even when I wrote my Town back in the day,
<v Speaker 1>I was writing about what was happening. It was right
<v Speaker 1>after nine to eleven, and I was writing about that,
<v Speaker 1>and not to say that you have to write about that,
<v Speaker 1>but I just missed that. There used to be a
<v Speaker 1>lot of current event and political writing in country music.
<v Speaker 1>It's always been in rock and roll, obviously with Dylan
<v Speaker 1>and Springsteen and all the others. But but you know,
<v Speaker 1>like Johnny Cash, if he didn't write it, he would
<v Speaker 1>always find stuff to say. And of course Merle Haggard
<v Speaker 1>was the the you know, the top of the mountain
<v Speaker 1>in terms of, you know, writing about current events back
<v Speaker 1>in the sixties and seventies. That to me, that's what
<v Speaker 1>music is supposed to be. It's supposed to reflect the times.
<v Speaker 1>And maybe that's what it is right now. People don't
<v Speaker 1>want to hear any of the bullshit that's going on
<v Speaker 1>right now. They just want they just want a song
<v Speaker 1>about getting a drink and taking a girl off. Well,
<v Speaker 1>they don't want to deal with it, man, So maybe
<v Speaker 1>that's it.
<v Speaker 2>Maybe see I disagree with you do, man, it's I think,
<v Speaker 2>am I The only one is the contrary to that
<v Speaker 2>statement you just made, because if not, the only one
<v Speaker 2>is about what the hell is going on right now?
<v Speaker 2>And it explodes no matter how much they try to
<v Speaker 2>squash it and the first time I heard it, I
<v Speaker 2>was like, dang, why didn't I write that? Because that's
<v Speaker 2>how we all feel, you know, That's how a lot
<v Speaker 2>always feel. And I think again that I think people
<v Speaker 2>feel like that even if they don't want to admit it,
<v Speaker 2>just in the landscape of what's going on, you know.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, everybody, everybody's afraid to talk. But I I
<v Speaker 1>I've always been pretty outspoken to a fault, I guess.
<v Speaker 1>And you know, in terms of me trying to be
<v Speaker 1>an artist too, I'm notorious for I have shot myself
<v Speaker 1>in the foot about five times because I just wouldn't
<v Speaker 1>do what they told me to do. Yeah, I wouldn't
<v Speaker 1>put the wouldn't put the cowboy hat on, you know.
<v Speaker 1>I just I was like, I'm from Hollywood, dude, I'm
<v Speaker 1>not going to go out there in a cowboy hat.
<v Speaker 1>I'm not going to be I'm not going to do
<v Speaker 1>something that I'm not you know. So so you know,
<v Speaker 1>for me, I had to go down the weird road
<v Speaker 1>that I went down because I never would have found
<v Speaker 1>out what this music was, you know, I never would
<v Speaker 1>have found out what these songs were. I I I
<v Speaker 1>would have got caught up in the ego of trying
<v Speaker 1>to be that guy, you know, singing those hits on stage.
<v Speaker 1>And I know that would have I know I would
<v Speaker 1>have went that way. That's because I know that's in
<v Speaker 1>my nature to go that way. And I knew that
<v Speaker 1>I had my mom always told me to stay humble
<v Speaker 1>and and and I knew I had to go down
<v Speaker 1>a road that made me think more about what I
<v Speaker 1>was trying to say, because it was more important to
<v Speaker 1>me to get the song right than as much as
<v Speaker 1>I love to sing, and you know, I love to
<v Speaker 1>sing as much. As much as it I love to
<v Speaker 1>get out there and do that, it was more important
<v Speaker 1>to get the thing right, absolutely right, and and and
<v Speaker 1>for all time, you know, I wanted it to get it,
<v Speaker 1>you know, and you look at you know, you played
<v Speaker 1>that song Cowboy and Me just came out on that
<v Speaker 1>Yellowstone Show, a brand new version of tim recording. It's
<v Speaker 1>like just twenty years to the day that it was released,
<v Speaker 1>you know, so number one again, the number one again.
<v Speaker 1>And it's a testament to uh doing what you do,
<v Speaker 1>I mean, is the testament to that like real ship man,
<v Speaker 1>Like it's it's real, you know. And and yeah, and
<v Speaker 1>it was it was a real song. And it was
<v Speaker 1>a great day with Craig Wiseman and big Al Anderson.
<v Speaker 1>We had a big fight that day and over over
<v Speaker 1>the form of the song, the structure of the song.
<v Speaker 1>It was a big battle that I won and a
<v Speaker 1>confidence thing for me with Craig because Craig was really
<v Speaker 1>hot at the time in the nineties. Yeah, and I was.
<v Speaker 1>Craig would always give me shit because I had, like
<v Speaker 1>I had like eleven number two songs, never had a
<v Speaker 1>number one, and he would always call me number two.
<v Speaker 1>It would give me shit. And and and we got
<v Speaker 1>together that day and I had the idea and and
<v Speaker 1>of course Craig you know, just brought the you know
<v Speaker 1>genius to it once he heard it. And as we
<v Speaker 1>finished it, I kept saying, I kept saying, it needs
<v Speaker 1>to go to the bridge and then come back to
<v Speaker 1>the bridge. No, because we keep saying the title Cowboy.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, we need to we need to do a
<v Speaker 1>form that goes like this, right, So it gets to
<v Speaker 1>a peak in the solo, and then it hits the
<v Speaker 1>next bridge and then it comes back down for the end,
<v Speaker 1>as opposed to you know, a song doing this, it's
<v Speaker 1>doing this right, and it ends down here I was
<v Speaker 1>really fighting for that and more of an artistic approach
<v Speaker 1>obviously in terms of a commercial form, but I was
<v Speaker 1>fighting and fighting he goes. He goes, Man, you're gonna
<v Speaker 1>suck it up, You're gonna fuck it up. And we
<v Speaker 1>were just weird, bad And then when we recorded the
<v Speaker 1>work tape, it was like, wow, yeah, sound pretty cool.
<v Speaker 1>It was, and it was my first number one It
<v Speaker 1>was the number one party. Craig gave me a plaque
<v Speaker 1>that said follow Craig to the money.
<v Speaker 2>Of course, good man.
<v Speaker 1>Well, we would always. We would always, you know, mess
<v Speaker 1>with each other like that. So that was that was
<v Speaker 1>really and that's the thing I'm getting way off. That's
<v Speaker 1>the thing too, I miss from back in the day,
<v Speaker 1>Like when I was writing with guys like Craig or
<v Speaker 1>Chris Wallen or Anthony Smith or a big al whoever
<v Speaker 1>it was Tony Mullens. We we weren't we weren't trying
<v Speaker 1>to look at our phones and go, hey, look at
<v Speaker 1>this idea. You know, let's let's write this, you know,
<v Speaker 1>and and and encapsulate this. We were just like the
<v Speaker 1>method was so crazy because we were throwing darts at
<v Speaker 1>each other. We were literally throwing darts at each other's foreheads,
<v Speaker 1>trying to beat each other's lines. I think half the
<v Speaker 1>time we don't even know what we don't even know
<v Speaker 1>what the song was we were writing. We were just
<v Speaker 1>trying to outdo each other's lines. Does that make any sense?
<v Speaker 1>And like, like when I wrote Speed, I wrote a
<v Speaker 1>song called Speed with Chris Wallen and and and I
<v Speaker 1>don't even remember if I knew it was hit song
<v Speaker 1>idea or not. I just I remember that he had
<v Speaker 1>this line that was so fricking good. So I was
<v Speaker 1>trying to beat him, and so I beat him, and
<v Speaker 1>then he crushed me with another one, and I'm like,
<v Speaker 1>so I throw it. You know, we're just throwing darts
<v Speaker 1>back and forth. And two hours later we got this
<v Speaker 1>song and we don't even know what we got, and
<v Speaker 1>it's like, wow, this is pretty good, man.
<v Speaker 2>So it's so crazy, dude, It's that's so that's so
<v Speaker 2>incredibly different.
<v Speaker 1>And and and I think that's how it's how you
<v Speaker 1>chase it, you know, like in rock and roll, you
<v Speaker 1>don't you don't you know what I mean rock and roll?
<v Speaker 1>You just you wait for that weird little thing to
<v Speaker 1>come out of you, right, that becomes the becomes the
<v Speaker 1>hook of the song. It becomes the you know, it
<v Speaker 1>becomes I.
<v Speaker 2>Can't get no hey hey, And that's more important. That's more.
<v Speaker 2>That's that's to me, Like melody and hooks are way
<v Speaker 2>more important the lyrics many times when it comes to
<v Speaker 2>like songs and remember them and and stuff. But it's
<v Speaker 2>like you get into a room now and it is that.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, you started, you started beat at one twenty,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and you right about. I mean, every freaking
<v Speaker 2>song was about drinking. Every single girl I made her.
<v Speaker 1>In a bar and with something that drinking and we
<v Speaker 1>went real ball. It's got this algorithm thing that's really weird.
<v Speaker 1>It It freaks me out and I don't I don't,
<v Speaker 1>I don't hear melodies. But it's working and people love
<v Speaker 1>it and you know, and what am I doing?
<v Speaker 2>What are you going to do?
<v Speaker 1>God bless them. A quick story, A really really quick ancher.
<v Speaker 1>A buddy of mine, Read Nielsen, who's passed away now
<v Speaker 1>a great songwriter, singer, guy who struggled with cancer near
<v Speaker 1>the end of his life and lost his voice. Became
<v Speaker 1>a songwriter. You know, he used to sing with Vince Gill.
<v Speaker 1>He ended up writing songs for Vince like Eliza Jane
<v Speaker 1>and what cowgirls do. Great songwriter, great great thinker, and
<v Speaker 1>getting back to the what we're talking about a second
<v Speaker 1>ago about the rock and roll lyric we we. I
<v Speaker 1>came to him one day in Durango of Colorado, and
<v Speaker 1>I and and I was telling him about my telling
<v Speaker 1>him about my rental card trip from Albuquerque to Durango
<v Speaker 1>to get to this festival that we were both at.
<v Speaker 1>And I kept telling him, you know, every town I went,
<v Speaker 1>I drove through, I saw a pale blue water tower
<v Speaker 1>and a red rusty tractor for sale, and a and
<v Speaker 1>a white church every town I went to. And he's like, well, yeah, man,
<v Speaker 1>you're in America. I said, no, but it was just
<v Speaker 1>it was incredible. How I just it, like clockwork. I
<v Speaker 1>saw one. And then I started playing this riff and
<v Speaker 1>and we started writing my town, and we started writing
<v Speaker 1>about my rental car drive, and it became this, Uh,
<v Speaker 1>there's so much I can go into about how where
<v Speaker 1>the lyric came from. But at the end of the day,
<v Speaker 1>when we finished the chorus and we went into that
<v Speaker 1>non on no thing we did, we did the work tape,
<v Speaker 1>and I said, Okay, don't don't sing the don't sing
<v Speaker 1>the noan on our crap because that was just a
<v Speaker 1>that was just a filler to get it.
<v Speaker 2>He goes, no, no, no, no, no, it's great.
<v Speaker 1>You don't take that out. I'm like, what do you
<v Speaker 1>mean it sucks? You're not gonna put that's gonna it's
<v Speaker 1>going to cheapen the song. He goes, it's not going
<v Speaker 1>to cheapen the song. It's it's going to drive people
<v Speaker 1>to listen to the verse. He goes, he goes, the
<v Speaker 1>noan on Noah, it's going to be the catchy little
<v Speaker 1>thing that takes them back to the lyric. Yeah, that's
<v Speaker 1>all non on as all they're going to sing for
<v Speaker 1>about six months, right, and then they're going to go
<v Speaker 1>back and listen to the lyric and go whoa, because
<v Speaker 1>because it was a pretty heavy lyric. It was a
<v Speaker 1>really heavy lyric about life at the time, about the economy,
<v Speaker 1>about all things and and and so let you know
<v Speaker 1>what I mean. But Lesson learned about that that I
<v Speaker 1>always tell people too, Like the greatest, one of the
<v Speaker 1>greatest country songs ever written is Mama Tried. We all
<v Speaker 1>know that, right, but but what makes what makes Mama
<v Speaker 1>Tried such a great song. And you know everybody will
<v Speaker 1>have their answer. I go, no, here's what makes Mama
<v Speaker 1>Tried such a great song. You know, I spent twenty
<v Speaker 1>one in prison doing live about role. Right, h Mama tried,
<v Speaker 1>Mama tried, Mama tried. It's the third Mama tried that
<v Speaker 1>he makes the second half of the chorus. That makes
<v Speaker 1>that song a fifty year copyright. It's that, it's that
<v Speaker 1>little tiny piece. He didn't have to sing that again.
<v Speaker 1>He could have, he could have made up another half.
<v Speaker 2>Of verse right right.
<v Speaker 1>You know how it is when we're in the room
<v Speaker 1>like no, you're trying to balance out the chorus and
<v Speaker 1>make it, make it good, and you don't think to
<v Speaker 1>put in like this quirky little thing that But that's
<v Speaker 1>that's the thing, that's where, that's where it lives. And
<v Speaker 1>I always tell people men, that's what made that song
<v Speaker 1>still on the radio fifty sixty years later.
<v Speaker 2>When I heard Haggard the first time, I was at
<v Speaker 2>a party at a friend's house. His name was Dave
<v Speaker 2>Barnes and and him and Chris Bone were living together,
<v Speaker 2>and uh, I heard I heard Haggard basically for the
<v Speaker 2>first time. My dad liked country. He loved country music,
<v Speaker 2>you know, he listened to all the country. He didn't
<v Speaker 2>like anything else. Elvis. Elvis was number one, and then
<v Speaker 2>country music was everything else. And I heard the first
<v Speaker 2>time and I was just like, what in the hell
<v Speaker 2>is this? And uh, I think it was the album
<v Speaker 2>Big City, you know, and I was like, oh, dude,
<v Speaker 2>I just I went back into that catalog, that man's catalog,
<v Speaker 2>and just consumed myself. And this is one of my
<v Speaker 2>most prized possessions. Right here. This this, this poster right
<v Speaker 2>here is signed by Haggard. We did a tribute, a
<v Speaker 2>tribute record for him, and we sang two songs on it,
<v Speaker 2>and uh, I got to meet him before he passed away,
<v Speaker 2>and it was just so freaking cool man.
<v Speaker 1>To me.
<v Speaker 2>I got on the back of the bus with him,
<v Speaker 2>and you know, and he's such a little man, I
<v Speaker 2>mean he was. He was this tall. And we walked
<v Speaker 2>back in there and I and I I kind of
<v Speaker 2>slowly walked back in the back of the bus, you know,
<v Speaker 2>and he's sitting there with his Ostrich boots on and
<v Speaker 2>he had his hat on, and I looked at him.
<v Speaker 2>I'm just like, man, he's got this piercing blue eyes
<v Speaker 2>and a million wrinkles in his face, and I'm just like, man,
<v Speaker 2>those wrinkles have a story, you know, every one of those,
<v Speaker 2>you know. And I never I'll never forget this. I said, uh,
<v Speaker 2>because they were trying to get us to set up
<v Speaker 2>to write. And I said, if you don't mind me asking,
<v Speaker 2>what is your process?
<v Speaker 1>You know?
<v Speaker 2>And he said he looked at me just without even hesitation,
<v Speaker 2>and goes, I look at the grand condition and try
<v Speaker 2>to say something to surprise myself. Okay, all right, you know,
<v Speaker 2>and to digress a little bit with you on how
<v Speaker 2>you got started in music. You know, a lot of times,
<v Speaker 2>you know, songwriters and artists come from a musical background,
<v Speaker 2>musical families. My grandmother was a poet, she was a
<v Speaker 2>cookbook writer and all the things so she she had.
<v Speaker 2>That's the only the only thread that I can put
<v Speaker 2>together in my family tree where any of my talent
<v Speaker 2>came from, as far as my dad's tone death, my
<v Speaker 2>mom's singing in the church choir, you know. But but
<v Speaker 2>growing up, I mean, obviously you can't write songs like
<v Speaker 2>this unless you're a pretty smart guy. As far as
<v Speaker 2>that goes.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, what was.
<v Speaker 2>The antithesis of like when you were growing up. Were
<v Speaker 2>you around certain things in the home that made you
<v Speaker 2>gravitate towards music in the way that you did.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, my my parents were very musical. My mom just
<v Speaker 1>passed away a couple of weeks right around Thanksgiving ninety
<v Speaker 1>nine and a half. And she was an amazing, amazing singer.
<v Speaker 1>She would never sing, but she was an amazing like
<v Speaker 1>you have to catch her singing, you know what I mean.
<v Speaker 1>She was very shy and she would never sing out
<v Speaker 1>lad but the boy, she had a voice. And my
<v Speaker 1>dad was a wannabe songwriter. Three chord guitar player. He
<v Speaker 1>he used to have you know where the a chord goes? Keeper,
<v Speaker 1>you know, he had he had he had two literally
<v Speaker 1>had two holes dug out from playing at a chord
<v Speaker 1>so hard and and he's still in that guitar. And
<v Speaker 1>he used to paint his song titles on his guitar
<v Speaker 1>with enameled model you know, Tester's model paint. And when
<v Speaker 1>he when we get from work, he'd point to one
<v Speaker 1>of his songs and he'd ask me which one I
<v Speaker 1>wanted to hear. As a man, I don't want to
<v Speaker 1>hear ane of him. I don't want to hear none
<v Speaker 1>of the dad Damn songs. Daddy he goes, come on, somebody,
<v Speaker 1>you want to hear it? He'd point to one to
<v Speaker 1>start playing. And he just loved to make up music.
<v Speaker 1>And me and my brothers had two older brothers and
<v Speaker 1>we had a band together as kids, and that was
<v Speaker 1>kind of my formative training, you know, and and that
<v Speaker 1>and again it was as a little kid. Uh, my
<v Speaker 1>parents had all these Elvis records in the house. I
<v Speaker 1>was born in sixty one, so like, you know, five
<v Speaker 1>six years old, the whole family would come over for
<v Speaker 1>Thanksgiving or whatever, and I'd be on a I'd be
<v Speaker 1>out in the living room and they put on an
<v Speaker 1>Elvis record and I'd be, you know, a lip syncing
<v Speaker 1>or so I'd be singing it, but I'd be kind
<v Speaker 1>of like dancing and doing the Elvis thing on on
<v Speaker 1>a you know, on the living room rug and entertaining everybody.
<v Speaker 1>And then that became, you know, singing in my brother's
<v Speaker 1>rock band when I was nine years old at the
<v Speaker 1>church dance right. And then as I peak and then
<v Speaker 1>became a young teenager, you know, I started meeting these
<v Speaker 1>musicians that were into some crazy music at the time,
<v Speaker 1>like Yes and Kansas and uh Emerson Lake and Palmer
<v Speaker 1>and and and they're into these odd time signatures. So
<v Speaker 1>I was one of these guys that never read music.
<v Speaker 1>But but by by by way of getting myself in
<v Speaker 1>these situations, I started learning the theory of how uh
<v Speaker 1>time signatures and chords went together, and how you could
<v Speaker 1>modulate and get back to the original key. I started
<v Speaker 1>learning this math without really knowing how to read music.
<v Speaker 1>I just I would teach myself on the piano or
<v Speaker 1>we had a piano in our garage, and uh, that
<v Speaker 1>was my thing too. I would come home from school
<v Speaker 1>and I would I would pound on the piano in
<v Speaker 1>the garage all day long. My brother, my brother had lessons.
<v Speaker 1>We couldn't afford lessons for everybody, so my brother got
<v Speaker 1>the lessons. So I would peek in and watch and
<v Speaker 1>see where he put his fingers.
<v Speaker 2>So yourself, then I would Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Then I'd go in there and start making a sea chord.
<v Speaker 1>I didn't know it was a sea chord, but I
<v Speaker 1>started making stuff, and then I'd figure out the math.
<v Speaker 1>You know, C to FG whatever you know A minor,
<v Speaker 1>oh my god, you know six you know? And and
<v Speaker 1>and my mom, my mom would my mom would always say, man,
<v Speaker 1>don't you have anybody to go play with. I would
<v Speaker 1>sit in there all day and just pound on the
<v Speaker 1>piano and make stuff up, try to write my own
<v Speaker 1>Kansas Yes songs, you know, as a as a young
<v Speaker 1>you know, twelve thirteen, fourteen year old kid, I was
<v Speaker 1>like doing all this stuff on the piano and that
<v Speaker 1>was like my formative music around the house. And then
<v Speaker 1>at some point, you know, we had this family band
<v Speaker 1>and I just wanted to break free. And I told
<v Speaker 1>my dad masked, I don't want to be in this.
<v Speaker 1>I don't want my brother to get mad at me,
<v Speaker 1>but I just don't want to do this anymore. I
<v Speaker 1>want to I want to play in this band with
<v Speaker 1>my other friends in school, right, And my dad totally
<v Speaker 1>got it, and and uh and boy, it was it
<v Speaker 1>was kind of a rub. It was a rub my
<v Speaker 1>wife man with my with my brother, yeah, because he
<v Speaker 1>kind of he kind of went his way and I
<v Speaker 1>went mine and and then my brother had a rub
<v Speaker 1>with my dad. So so, uh, you know, I always
<v Speaker 1>tell the story. My dad was a you know, World
<v Speaker 1>War two paratrooper, my brother was a hippie in the sixties.
<v Speaker 2>It was, yeah, that's all the water man, and one
<v Speaker 2>day my dad.
<v Speaker 1>Threw him out of the house. He threw him through
<v Speaker 1>the fence to split real fence, and my brother left
<v Speaker 1>and he never came back, and so there was a
<v Speaker 1>lot of tension over the years from that era. It
<v Speaker 1>was the early seventies and I was starting to become
<v Speaker 1>a young teenager and I wanted to write my own
<v Speaker 1>I wanted to do my thing. I just knew I
<v Speaker 1>wanted to do my thing, and I wasn't being able
<v Speaker 1>to chase that, and so I just started doing it
<v Speaker 1>with my buddies, all my you know, my school buddies.
<v Speaker 1>I found a couple of guys to play with, and
<v Speaker 1>you know, that's kind of how my musical training got started.
<v Speaker 1>But my mom claimed My mom always claimed there was
<v Speaker 1>an Irish. My mom was part Irish. Her middle maiden
<v Speaker 1>name was Titchener, and she she had an uncle, a
<v Speaker 1>great great great uncle that was an Irish tenor was
<v Speaker 1>known all over Europe, one of the greatest singers in Europe.
<v Speaker 1>And I never saw any press clippings, but my mom
<v Speaker 1>could sing her ass off wow, And when every time
<v Speaker 1>she sang, I was like, oh my god, Mom, And
<v Speaker 1>she didn't want anybody here. It was the weirdest thing,
<v Speaker 1>but anyway, so that was kind of how I got going.
<v Speaker 1>And then of course I ended up in a three
<v Speaker 1>piece band in a van with a pa, driving all
<v Speaker 1>over the country and playing every night club in the
<v Speaker 1>nation twice, you know the deal, and started figuring out
<v Speaker 1>somehow what I.
<v Speaker 2>Was doing making memories.
<v Speaker 1>Man, I wish people would be doing that now. It
<v Speaker 1>just doesn't seem like it's the way to get there anymore.
<v Speaker 2>It's like TikTok and dude all the It's like Dave
<v Speaker 2>Grohl said in the documentary, it's like, man is getting
<v Speaker 2>the garage, getting the van, sucked for a long time,
<v Speaker 2>and get good, learn your instruments, learn how to write songs,
<v Speaker 2>do the thing, you know, and I just find it.
<v Speaker 2>It seems like everyone just there's many people like falling
<v Speaker 2>into this trap of you know, I'm gonna try to
<v Speaker 2>get TikTok famous, and isn't it I mean, it's it's
<v Speaker 2>a legit thing. I mean, I've be this approaching the
<v Speaker 2>day to write with this guy one absolutely and we
<v Speaker 2>wrote a song and you know, I don't get any
<v Speaker 2>of it, that part of it, but.
<v Speaker 1>It's, you know, it is what it's kind of like, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it's kind of like insta fame, you know. It's like
<v Speaker 1>it's more about the fame part of it. It's more
<v Speaker 1>about people like you know, uh, seeing that little thirty
<v Speaker 1>second bit and and they're paying attention to it and
<v Speaker 1>they're liking it or they're doing whatever, and they're done
<v Speaker 1>and and yeah, but but it becomes like a trendy
<v Speaker 1>little thing somebody does, somebody does something funny clever or
<v Speaker 1>or has a message in a song, you know, you
<v Speaker 1>know what I mean, and it translates to fifty million
<v Speaker 1>people the next thing, you know, you're the biggest star.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I'm generalizing here, and I'm not saying it's bad.
<v Speaker 1>I mean that's just where we are. That's where it is.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, that's where it's gotten to.
<v Speaker 2>I think it all always come back to real stuff, though, man.
<v Speaker 1>I just I think always means the most. It always
<v Speaker 1>means the most. You know, when people hear something real,
<v Speaker 1>they know it.
<v Speaker 2>The timeless stuff is not hit and missed. The timeless
<v Speaker 2>stuff is real, you know, And so forgive me if
<v Speaker 2>I missed misheard you whatever. But you said you lost
<v Speaker 2>your mom a few weeks ago.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, right, right, around Thanksgiving she passed away. She was
<v Speaker 1>ninety nine and a half.
<v Speaker 2>But you know, it's awesome.
<v Speaker 1>I know, I had a lot more smiles because my
<v Speaker 1>mom lived a pretty long life and she was active,
<v Speaker 1>and she's pretty much active till the end. The last
<v Speaker 1>couple of years. She fell. You know, you always hear
<v Speaker 1>a story like that. But she fell and was in
<v Speaker 1>a wheelchair and I'd kind of slowed her down a lot.
<v Speaker 1>And it's the funniest story. She would she would tell
<v Speaker 1>me when I talked to her, you'd call her up
<v Speaker 1>from here, and especially during COVID, I didn't get to
<v Speaker 1>see her much, you know, and all that stuff going on,
<v Speaker 1>and I would say, hey, Mom, how's it going. She goes, well,
<v Speaker 1>I went to the doctor today. I said, what do
<v Speaker 1>you say. Well, he said, I'm probably gonna live into
<v Speaker 1>my hundreds. And I'm like, mom, that's fantastic, and she
<v Speaker 1>goes I fired his ass. My mom had a great
<v Speaker 1>sense of humor like that. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>So I lost my mom three years ago, man, and it's, uh,
<v Speaker 2>that's the most devastating thing. Man. It's just, you know,
<v Speaker 2>it was weird.
<v Speaker 1>It was you.
<v Speaker 2>I remember that. I don't remember a whole lot of
<v Speaker 2>things like specific time, but I know where I was
<v Speaker 2>at what time it was my dad called, you know,
<v Speaker 2>and as you know, I and that and that kind
<v Speaker 2>of goes into songwriting as well, man, because it's because
<v Speaker 2>you know, we've all lost people that we've loved. You've
<v Speaker 2>had some terrible tragedy in your family, and uh, as
<v Speaker 2>a father, I can't imagine what that was like with
<v Speaker 2>your son, and how do you you know, with so
<v Speaker 2>I started writing the only way I could deal with it.
<v Speaker 2>And I still haven't a dealt with my mom. I
<v Speaker 2>keep writing about it, right, It's good after song after song,
<v Speaker 2>And how do you think that from a writing stand
<v Speaker 2>From a songwriter standpoint, how do you channel your personal
<v Speaker 2>tragedies in dealing with that stuff? It's almost like self
<v Speaker 2>medication with with writing about it. I mean, how do
<v Speaker 2>how do you how have you done that with with music?
<v Speaker 2>How has music played a role in your healing?
<v Speaker 1>It's been huge And I consider myself, you know, so
<v Speaker 1>blessed and grateful that I have a gift to do it,
<v Speaker 1>because I really don't know what. You know, we lost
<v Speaker 1>our son and it's been fifteen years this year, and
<v Speaker 1>it'll be actually January twenty eighth is the day, so
<v Speaker 1>it's coming up.
<v Speaker 2>Oh my god.
<v Speaker 1>So sorry, Well, I mean without without having that gift
<v Speaker 1>of music, you know that we get bestowed with. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know what I would have done. I was so
<v Speaker 1>I like I I think about other people in my family,
<v Speaker 1>like my wife or my kids, you know, and a
<v Speaker 1>couple of them are into music, but you know how
<v Speaker 1>they've had to deal with it. It's huge and it's
<v Speaker 1>and it's not it's not, it's not. Don't worry. And
<v Speaker 1>you know a few years are going to be better
<v Speaker 1>and you're going to be better. You never get better.
<v Speaker 1>You never get better, and you and you become a
<v Speaker 1>different person and you have to learn how to walk
<v Speaker 1>with it. That's that's the trick. You know, you're I believe,
<v Speaker 1>and I believe somehow, somehow, in some strange way, it's
<v Speaker 1>a blessing that that it's happened for a reason and
<v Speaker 1>you're now you're now given this thing where you can
<v Speaker 1>either you can either bow your brains out right from
<v Speaker 1>from grief or or or you can take the blessing
<v Speaker 1>from God and just go, Hey, man, my job now
<v Speaker 1>to do whatever I can do with what I've got
<v Speaker 1>to help people have gone through this, going through this,
<v Speaker 1>to write about it, to sing about it, not to
<v Speaker 1>be not to be like a billboard for it, but
<v Speaker 1>but not to be afraid to embrace it and bring
<v Speaker 1>it into my life. And you know, we started this
<v Speaker 1>amazing charity that's helped so many people. Now and then
<v Speaker 1>you know, you start to see this curve. Uh you know,
<v Speaker 1>you don't you get a smile back every now and then,
<v Speaker 1>but you always have a every day, I have a
<v Speaker 1>At some point we'll have some kind of flashback, some
<v Speaker 1>kind of memory. It could be a great one, it
<v Speaker 1>could be a scary one, it could be a bad one.
<v Speaker 1>But the smiles do come. But they're broken, you know,
<v Speaker 1>they're all broken, and they're they're glued together with glue,
<v Speaker 1>but their smiles, right, So you try, you try to
<v Speaker 1>bring that to the world. Man, You just try to
<v Speaker 1>bring that to everybody else, because man, you know as
<v Speaker 1>good as I do. Man, there is a lot of
<v Speaker 1>miserable lost souls out there in the world like I was,
<v Speaker 1>that just need somebody to smile at them. There there's
<v Speaker 1>a great there's a great cartoon, animated cartoon by Steve,
<v Speaker 1>a guy named Steve Kutz. Out there I'm spacing on
<v Speaker 1>the title of it right now. I'll look it up
<v Speaker 1>in a second, but but for your listeners, look up
<v Speaker 1>a guy named Steve Kutz. He's a British guy. He's
<v Speaker 1>got these cartoons he does that are kind of like,
<v Speaker 1>you know, just like snippets of what we've become and
<v Speaker 1>as a people, and it's just really eye opening. But
<v Speaker 1>any anyway, I'm getting off track. I've tried to use
<v Speaker 1>I've tried to use the tragedy in the most positive
<v Speaker 1>way that I can to help other people and to
<v Speaker 1>try to redefine me who I am, try to make
<v Speaker 1>me better. And then, you know, a couple of years ago,
<v Speaker 1>Casey Bether, you know, Casey's fellow songwriter, His son was
<v Speaker 1>murdered in this crazy barroom incident his home on Christmas
<v Speaker 1>making it was last year, actually was he was home
<v Speaker 1>on Christmas vacation and he got stabbed and murdered. And
<v Speaker 1>my first there's a crazy thing about life and faith
<v Speaker 1>and stuff. And uh, my first thought was, I, you know,
<v Speaker 1>I prayed to God about you know, how can I
<v Speaker 1>help Casey. I've I've been through this and here's a
<v Speaker 1>crazy backstory. My son died right across the street from
<v Speaker 1>Casey's property on an ATV. So the full circle of
<v Speaker 1>it was just blowing my mind. So I was like, man,
<v Speaker 1>I got to get in touch with Casey. I got
<v Speaker 1>to get in touch with Casey. And I prayed about
<v Speaker 1>it and prayed about it and and and the uh,
<v Speaker 1>the message I got back was walk back. I'm like,
<v Speaker 1>walk back? What does that mean? You know? Like, what
<v Speaker 1>is walk back mean? Walk back through my grief?
<v Speaker 2>No way, I'm not necessarily I'm not walking back.
<v Speaker 1>But truly I never did really grieve all the way
<v Speaker 1>from my son because I had so many things that
<v Speaker 1>were going on around it, that happened with my family,
<v Speaker 1>and all this crazy dynamic was going on. And I
<v Speaker 1>kept hearing his voice saying walk back. So I called Casey.
<v Speaker 1>You know, I got in touch with Casey and and
<v Speaker 1>I told him what I when I heard from God.
<v Speaker 1>You know, in case he's a very religious guy. And uh,
<v Speaker 1>I told him when I'd heard God told me to
<v Speaker 1>walk back and told me to get in touch with
<v Speaker 1>you and and and to heal, to heal, to start
<v Speaker 1>the healing process, I think. And and then Casey's first
<v Speaker 1>thing Casey said to me was, hey, man, when I
<v Speaker 1>saw you at my son's funeral and you had that
<v Speaker 1>big old smile on your face like you always do,
<v Speaker 1>he goes, I knew I was going to be better,
<v Speaker 1>he goes. I knew that day in that in that
<v Speaker 1>in that church that I was going to and I
<v Speaker 1>just started balling, you know, I just started balling. And
<v Speaker 1>and and he said, hey, man, and and and I
<v Speaker 1>carry that with me every day, and and and I
<v Speaker 1>carry that with me every day. And all of a sudden,
<v Speaker 1>Keith Man, all of this weight and shit and MoMA
<v Speaker 1>and fucked up shit in the world came off my shoulders.
<v Speaker 2>That's amazing.
<v Speaker 1>And God was saying, walk back, because case he's gonna
<v Speaker 1>heal you. Wow, he's just gone through this crazy ass
<v Speaker 1>thing that he's gonna He's gonna help heal you. And
<v Speaker 1>so everything I do now is I think there's a
<v Speaker 1>bigger picture to all of it. And there really is.
<v Speaker 1>There is. You know. I've started this text prayer group.
<v Speaker 1>We've got like ninety five guys from Nashville, all around
<v Speaker 1>the country really and we and we pray every night.
<v Speaker 1>We just pray for other people. We pray for our families,
<v Speaker 1>for our friends, for people that we know, are sick
<v Speaker 1>and it's just a little thing. It's just a little thing,
<v Speaker 1>and it's like, like, what's the big deal? But when
<v Speaker 1>you think about all the bad that goes on in
<v Speaker 1>the world and how easy it is for bad to
<v Speaker 1>manifest into awful, why not try to do a good
<v Speaker 1>thing and see if that good manifests into a little
<v Speaker 1>good thing too, you know, a bigger good thing. And
<v Speaker 1>so it's changed my whole perceptive of a perception of
<v Speaker 1>how I look at everything now. Just everything now. So
<v Speaker 1>so somehow there's a blessing in it. Man, that's all
<v Speaker 1>I can figure, you know.
<v Speaker 2>You know, I think the biggest thing I'll probably take
<v Speaker 2>away from today is just well, at two things. It
<v Speaker 2>never gets better. You become a different person. You learn
<v Speaker 2>how to walk with it. I think that's so true
<v Speaker 2>because when Seanna lost her dad, which was her heart
<v Speaker 2>and soul, she's never been the same, but she's had
<v Speaker 2>to learn how to walk with it. It hits her probably,
<v Speaker 2>I don't know, monthly, every few weeks, should just start
<v Speaker 2>crying in the car, or I'll do something, or I'll
<v Speaker 2>say something and it just hits her again. Or our
<v Speaker 2>son Cooper will say something about you know, Grandpa Mickey,
<v Speaker 2>or or he'll do something that kind of reminds her
<v Speaker 2>of him, and it's all it's all back again, you know.
<v Speaker 2>But the thing that that Casey said, you know, I
<v Speaker 2>looked at you and knew I would be better. So
<v Speaker 2>you were the future to what his press it was.
<v Speaker 2>And I think that's just freaking beautiful, man.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's amazing. And and I never, I never,
<v Speaker 1>it was a last thing I expected to hear, you know.
<v Speaker 1>I just expected to get a hug and go, hey, man,
<v Speaker 1>do you ever need me? You know, you know what
<v Speaker 1>I mean, just a typical response that you usually get
<v Speaker 1>when people are just don't know what to say, and
<v Speaker 1>you're and you know, you're going through hell. And and
<v Speaker 1>when he said that, man, it just and and and
<v Speaker 1>and going back to Shauna. When I lost I lost
<v Speaker 1>my dad in like eighty seven. He was pretty young,
<v Speaker 1>you know, he was in his sixties. He's my a
<v Speaker 1>a little bit older than I am now. And he
<v Speaker 1>was such a force. Like you know, I've told the
<v Speaker 1>story he fired me from. He had a machine shop.
<v Speaker 1>My real name is not Steel, It's a fabricated name. Uh,
<v Speaker 1>but my dad was in the steel business. My dad
<v Speaker 1>was a metal cutter. He cut on a brave of saws.
<v Speaker 1>He cut did cut off work for automotive and aircraft,
<v Speaker 1>like the basic grunt work before the parts got machine
<v Speaker 1>he would he would cut the basic stock. So he
<v Speaker 1>had this archaic machine shop in North Hollywood. We were
<v Speaker 1>very blue collar, you know, and my dad was a
<v Speaker 1>hard working son of a bitch, and and uh, I
<v Speaker 1>grew up in that shop. But at some point he
<v Speaker 1>fired me. I was like, you can't fire me, you
<v Speaker 1>know shit, And he goes, you need He's like, you
<v Speaker 1>need to go play the guitar. You're gonna cut your
<v Speaker 1>fingers off. But he knew he wanted to do it. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you know what I mean.
<v Speaker 2>That's awesome.
<v Speaker 1>So when when he passed away, boy talk about a
<v Speaker 1>defining moment. It took a while. It took a while,
<v Speaker 1>Like it was the same thing like you talk about Chaunta,
<v Speaker 1>like she'll just break down right, like I would do
<v Speaker 1>the same thing. I was just like, man, what am
<v Speaker 1>I gonna do? You know? My dad blah blah lahn.
<v Speaker 1>And then and then that thing happened. Where As I
<v Speaker 1>was figuring out my music and my thing, you know,
<v Speaker 1>I don't even know what that means because I wasn't
<v Speaker 1>consciously doing that, but that that was evolving. He started
<v Speaker 1>becoming the cunt tree music lyric thread in all of
<v Speaker 1>my ac DC ribs and all of my you know,
<v Speaker 1>all I was doing all these ribs and ship you know,
<v Speaker 1>and twin guitar Leonard skinnerd things and all these songs,
<v Speaker 1>and but he would become the thread of the lyric
<v Speaker 1>in everything I did. Like if you look at songs
<v Speaker 1>like my Town or something to be proud of, it's
<v Speaker 1>it's all about my dad. It's like everything I ever
<v Speaker 1>wrote was really about my dad, you know.
<v Speaker 2>Like that's what I was going to ask you too,
<v Speaker 2>is growing up in HOLLI would you wouldn't think you
<v Speaker 2>would have a live in a country style of life,
<v Speaker 2>a lifestyle to be able to write those things. And
<v Speaker 2>I was going to ask you that very thing. So
<v Speaker 2>I'm glad you mentioned then, because so your dad became
<v Speaker 2>we I.
<v Speaker 1>Mean, you know, you know the year we grew up
<v Speaker 1>in the San Fernanoa valley, which is just a big
<v Speaker 1>grid and and it was back in the sixties when
<v Speaker 1>it was brand new, you know, and and everybody was
<v Speaker 1>moving to the suburbs. But my dad. You know, he
<v Speaker 1>grew up in Duluth, Minnesota. He was he was one
<v Speaker 1>of like eight, you know, seven kids, and and uh
<v Speaker 1>grew up in the dust bowl. You know, my mys
<v Speaker 1>were born in the twenties, so they grew up in
<v Speaker 1>the dust bowl and the Depression, and my dad got
<v Speaker 1>drafted in the World War Two. You wonder why they
<v Speaker 1>call him the Greatest Generations. I mean, they went through
<v Speaker 1>three decades are the worst times in America, and then
<v Speaker 1>you know, I had to go had to give up
<v Speaker 1>their dreams and go fight and give up their life basically.
<v Speaker 1>So he when I started to realize that, and as
<v Speaker 1>I got as he passed away, I didn't know it
<v Speaker 1>when he was alive, but when he passed away, I
<v Speaker 1>realized what he had gone through, what he had given up.
<v Speaker 1>And I think that was a real, super defining moment
<v Speaker 1>for me. And I remember one night he fired me.
<v Speaker 1>I got so pissed at him. Man. I remember one
<v Speaker 1>night I think I might have been with I was
<v Speaker 1>like Rascal Flats or somebody. I was doing like one
<v Speaker 1>of those opening act things for him, you know, and
<v Speaker 1>there's like fifteen twenty thousand people out in the crowd,
<v Speaker 1>and I'm standing out there with just my guitar, and
<v Speaker 1>I'm just like look it up and going, wow, thank
<v Speaker 1>you dad, that's amazing. Like he knew it, knew like,
<v Speaker 1>go do it. I didn't get to do it, man,
<v Speaker 1>I had to give mine away. But that's a love
<v Speaker 1>to do it.
<v Speaker 2>That's the love of a father and a son, a
<v Speaker 2>father to his son, you know. And and you know
<v Speaker 2>that's how I look at Cooper. I mean, Cooper came
<v Speaker 2>down today, he sat down on the piano and I
<v Speaker 2>was trying to get prepared for this, and he started
<v Speaker 2>making noise on the piano. For an instant. I was like, hey.
<v Speaker 2>My inclination was, Hey, I'm trying to work right now
<v Speaker 2>because you need to go away. And I said hey,
<v Speaker 2>and he looked at me and stopped playing to go
<v Speaker 2>just keep playing. That sounds great, you know, just keep
<v Speaker 2>so he's wearing his fingers. And I didn't have that
<v Speaker 2>growing up. I mean, we had a piano in the
<v Speaker 2>house and my mom would play one day at a time,
<v Speaker 2>Sweet Jesus, you know, and she would play, you know, so,
<v Speaker 2>but it wasn't I don't know, it was kind of
<v Speaker 2>just a piece of furniture in the house, you know.
<v Speaker 2>So you know, with Cooper, he's he's grabbing on the
<v Speaker 2>harm and he's singing, and he's he's got this, he's
<v Speaker 2>got this musical gift. He's actually me and him are
<v Speaker 2>writing the songs of the day, you know, and he's like, Dad,
<v Speaker 2>can we write a song? Was like, hell, yeah, man,
<v Speaker 2>let's do it.
<v Speaker 1>You know.
<v Speaker 2>So I think from your father looking at you, going, man,
<v Speaker 2>I didn't get to do this, but I love my
<v Speaker 2>kid enough to say, don't chop your freaking hens off.
<v Speaker 2>You need to go play guitar. Because a lot of
<v Speaker 2>parents who have a dream and their kid has the
<v Speaker 2>same dream discourage it from a jealousy standpoint, or you're
<v Speaker 2>just gonna get hurt, or it's going to consume you.
<v Speaker 2>You're never gonna make it because it almost makes you
<v Speaker 2>feel better. Yeah, you're gonna fail. That happens. I think
<v Speaker 2>more than what you're.
<v Speaker 1>Dead, You're bound to fail. You're gonna hurt you, You're
<v Speaker 1>gonna you're gonna you need you need security, and you know,
<v Speaker 1>and then like you know, I like, losing my son
<v Speaker 1>taught me anything. There's no security in this world for anything.
<v Speaker 1>There's no security at all. And the best thing I
<v Speaker 1>like to tell people that I ever did was to
<v Speaker 1>go out and hang on a rope and and a
<v Speaker 1>million times. I mean I tell everybody you know, like
<v Speaker 1>that's where it lives, and and and and my for
<v Speaker 1>lack of a better metaphor, my Mount Everest whatever, my
<v Speaker 1>mount ever is the everst that I got to the
<v Speaker 1>top of. And my you know, it was built. It's
<v Speaker 1>built on a big pile of failure. It just says
<v Speaker 1>failure on it, and I'm standing up on top of
<v Speaker 1>it because that's what it is. It's all failure. It's
<v Speaker 1>all failure that gets us where we want to go.
<v Speaker 1>That's the only way we learn is failing. You know,
<v Speaker 1>you got to fail. And you know you can read
<v Speaker 1>books and you can how to it, and a lot
<v Speaker 1>of people do, like they even have. You know, you
<v Speaker 1>can graduate as a songwriter. Now, Belmont I went, I
<v Speaker 1>went and spoke of Belmont one time, and they said, Jeff,
<v Speaker 1>what advice would you give all these songwriters you know
<v Speaker 1>that blah blah blah. And I said, I said, quit
<v Speaker 1>school and get a gig at the bar.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, start.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and start writing songs and have the time of
<v Speaker 1>your life, and and and and have the worst time
<v Speaker 1>in the life right, the experience times and the worst time.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he met those worst time. You know, there's a
<v Speaker 2>there's a haggard lyric that reminds me of that I've
<v Speaker 2>always loved man and uh, he says, uh, no amount
<v Speaker 2>of money could buy from me the memories that I
<v Speaker 2>had of then, But no amount of money could pay
<v Speaker 2>me to go back and live through it again. And
<v Speaker 2>I'm just like, it's I'm trying to think of the
<v Speaker 2>title of the song. I remember the lyric, but no
<v Speaker 2>amount of money you could buy from me the memories
<v Speaker 2>that I haven't then. It's so good. It's just so good.
<v Speaker 2>And that's and that's why he did so well.
<v Speaker 1>Man.
<v Speaker 2>He just think he took he took the world and
<v Speaker 2>just simplified it.
<v Speaker 1>You know, is he is he the greatest of all time? Yeah?
<v Speaker 1>I think he's the greatest of all time in any genre.
<v Speaker 1>I Mean, you could say there's so much more stuff
<v Speaker 1>that happened than other genres, but I will think that
<v Speaker 1>of reaching to the common man, I think he was
<v Speaker 1>the best that's ever been.
<v Speaker 2>No. I know, Dylan's is revered as the great American poet. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>I think he is. I think he's a great American Poe.
<v Speaker 2>But I think Haggard for some reason I've got his
<v Speaker 2>just his entire discography.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, I know, Haggard simplified more. He simplified the
<v Speaker 1>story more to where you you felt like you were
<v Speaker 1>the guy in the story. Like with Dylan's stuff, it's
<v Speaker 1>more like a commonality of a people. I always got
<v Speaker 1>from Hagard that it was you, you were the guy
<v Speaker 1>he was talking about, you know what I mean, Like
<v Speaker 1>it was so much more personal to me.
<v Speaker 2>Well, Dylan had the thing where it was like the folk,
<v Speaker 2>the ambiguity of things.
<v Speaker 1>The little more esoteric, absolutely, and you just had that rock.
<v Speaker 2>And roll folk things where you could just kind of
<v Speaker 2>say whatever you wanted to say as long as it's
<v Speaker 2>tanning cool. It was right because people are still to
<v Speaker 2>this day trying to understand what the hell is he
<v Speaker 2>talking about, But they sing the songs because they're great,
<v Speaker 2>because they have something in there. Haggard, do you see
<v Speaker 2>the red, white and blue? I mean, yeah, just red,
<v Speaker 2>white and blue right down the middle. He's a train track.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. And the cool thing about the cool thing about
<v Speaker 1>Dylan too, I think is that more than anybody else,
<v Speaker 1>whatever side of the fence, politically that he was on
<v Speaker 1>and more to the left obviously, but doesn't matter. Those
<v Speaker 1>songs were written in a way that they will reflect
<v Speaker 1>any future sort of flip in the politic, if conservatism
<v Speaker 1>becomes the next big thing, those songs will still apply
<v Speaker 1>to the message of the day, the times they are changing.
<v Speaker 1>They're still so universal they can apply to any kind
<v Speaker 1>of politic and that that's kind of the genius of him,
<v Speaker 1>is that. And that's the funny thing about songwriting. As
<v Speaker 1>a writer. You can say, hey, I'm writing it this way,
<v Speaker 1>but it might get interpreted that way. No, it is,
<v Speaker 1>it could go either way.
<v Speaker 2>And those are my favorite kind of songs man.
<v Speaker 1>That it did. Yeah, you know.
<v Speaker 2>Like we wrote If I Didn't Have You about her
<v Speaker 2>dad and it became a big love song, big number
<v Speaker 2>one for us. You know, when you look at we've
<v Speaker 2>been on here for a while, but I don't want
<v Speaker 2>to take up your.
<v Speaker 1>Home guy, fun that's great when you look at.
<v Speaker 2>You know, your dad sacrifice that he made moving from
<v Speaker 2>Duluthe and the steel and very American, and I look
<v Speaker 2>at my dad was in the army and he sold
<v Speaker 2>insurance and he did all every crappy job that he
<v Speaker 2>provided for us, He served the country and everything else.
<v Speaker 2>When you look at these this older generation and what
<v Speaker 2>they sacrifice and gave up to be so we could
<v Speaker 2>do what we wanted to do, and then you look
<v Speaker 2>at what's going on right now. I don't want to
<v Speaker 2>get too political today, but I know you're a very
<v Speaker 2>political man and and and I highly respect your opinion
<v Speaker 2>on matters. A lot of common sense and I think
<v Speaker 2>me and your beliefs and what's what's right and wrong.
<v Speaker 2>But in the state of where we're at right now,
<v Speaker 2>it's just this this songwriter guy from Bakersfield. Uh, where
<v Speaker 2>where do we go from here?
<v Speaker 1>Where do you?
<v Speaker 2>Where do you think? This is a really neat question.
<v Speaker 2>It's gonna take another hour to talk about it, but
<v Speaker 2>I just briefly want to just we've had conversations like
<v Speaker 2>this in private, in our songwriting sessions and stuff. You're
<v Speaker 2>writing the songs that are reflecting current day situations. I
<v Speaker 2>know you you you work with Candice, and you're around
<v Speaker 2>work a conservative entity, very outspoken. You're not shy about it,
<v Speaker 2>which highly respect because I think a lot of times
<v Speaker 2>I want to ask your opinion on this. You know,
<v Speaker 2>it's like Dolly Parton said that she never gets involved
<v Speaker 2>in politics because she's going to piss off half a crowd,
<v Speaker 2>so she just stays out of it. And I think
<v Speaker 2>that artists, you know, are discouraged to get into politics
<v Speaker 2>when it comes to tweeting and all these things, because
<v Speaker 2>I've tweeted a few things and just been completely lashed
<v Speaker 2>out at. But it seems like it's a different set
<v Speaker 2>of rules for both sides of the fence. And if
<v Speaker 2>you're kind of, you know, more on the right, you
<v Speaker 2>can kind of say what you want and no one
<v Speaker 2>really says anything from a social media standpoint, or no
<v Speaker 2>one tries to shut you down. But if you're leaning
<v Speaker 2>more to the left and you say anything at all,
<v Speaker 2>it just seems like it just gets shut down completely,
<v Speaker 2>just like a different set of rules. But you know,
<v Speaker 2>it's a I stay kind of pissed off all the
<v Speaker 2>time and I try to just not watch TV and
<v Speaker 2>I want to be involved, but you're like, you know,
<v Speaker 2>how old you get without trying to sacrifice your career
<v Speaker 2>and you're trying to you got a new record deal
<v Speaker 2>and new singles coming out and everything else. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>what's the balance of that for an artist these days?
<v Speaker 1>Well, I'm seeing it, uh all around me, so my buddies,
<v Speaker 1>and it's so sad. You know. I got one friend
<v Speaker 1>who they're not going to work his records if he
<v Speaker 1>doesn't get a vaccination. And I asked. The first thing
<v Speaker 1>that came to my head was, well, what are you
<v Speaker 1>going to do if you get the vaccination and they
<v Speaker 1>work the record but the song's not a hit. You
<v Speaker 1>can't you can't go back. And I'm not saying I
<v Speaker 1>don't care about the vacts. Whether who gets it or what,
<v Speaker 1>I don't know. But I'm just saying as a point,
<v Speaker 1>as an American, as a believer in freedom and free
<v Speaker 1>speech and all that, once you make that decision for
<v Speaker 1>your employer, if they fail on their end, you can't
<v Speaker 1>go unvaccinate yourself. So so so start so so step
<v Speaker 1>back and look at the big picture of that, you know.
<v Speaker 1>So there's a lot of that going around and and
<v Speaker 1>and and uh, I don't care, cut me off, shoot
<v Speaker 1>me down. I don't care. I think I wish that
<v Speaker 1>there's a lot of people out there I know that
<v Speaker 1>feel the way that we do. And we talk in
<v Speaker 1>the room sometimes and like you said, they're scared death.
<v Speaker 1>They're scared to death, to lose? What what do you
<v Speaker 1>What do you get though? What do you get though?
<v Speaker 1>If you get that success by playing it the way
<v Speaker 1>that it goes against all your principles? What do you
<v Speaker 1>get in your heart and soul for trading that off
<v Speaker 1>to get that success and selling out your values of
<v Speaker 1>what you truly believe in because you're worried about somebody
<v Speaker 1>canceling you out. Wouldn't you raither? Like I told my
<v Speaker 1>friend I'm name names, but I just told my buddies
<v Speaker 1>and said, hey, man, why don't you write a song
<v Speaker 1>in protest about it? Why don't you why don't you
<v Speaker 1>try to put something out? Oh, we can't do that.
<v Speaker 1>You know we can't. We can't get the juice behind
<v Speaker 1>it that the record company can put behind it. I said, well,
<v Speaker 1>then you've got to start. I mean, I really feel
<v Speaker 1>we're at a place where we've got to start figuring
<v Speaker 1>out what's more important and what this battle really is about.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, what is it really about? There's an old saying.
<v Speaker 1>I'll get to the dolly part and thing in a
<v Speaker 1>minute too, but there's an old saying. I wrote a
<v Speaker 1>song about it. You know, strong men make good times.
<v Speaker 1>Good times make weak men weak men make bad times.
<v Speaker 1>That's where we are now. And then the last part
<v Speaker 1>of that is, in bad times, take strong and it
<v Speaker 1>goes and it's a and it's a circle. And we're
<v Speaker 1>in that circle. We truly are in that circle right now.
<v Speaker 1>And we're in a place where the last couple of
<v Speaker 1>generations of kids is and has been brought up through
<v Speaker 1>a school system that has taught them other things. And
<v Speaker 1>and and we're being taught not to you know, discipline
<v Speaker 1>as well as love our kids. But our kids need
<v Speaker 1>to be disciplined and loved. They need both. And and
<v Speaker 1>we're being taught to let the kids have the main
<v Speaker 1>opinion in the house right and and drive and drive
<v Speaker 1>the drive the influence of the household decision. And we
<v Speaker 1>have a couple of generations of this now and we're
<v Speaker 1>seeing it. I mean, we're seeing we're seeing so much
<v Speaker 1>fear out there, so much fear out there. Yeah, and
<v Speaker 1>we're seeing a lot of people that we know. And
<v Speaker 1>here's the thing, there's only there's only a small percentage
<v Speaker 1>of these radical people that believe this stuff. I think
<v Speaker 1>the media is the media is you know, put an
<v Speaker 1>err into it. They're pumping the erranto it and they're
<v Speaker 1>maximizing it, and they're you know, they're making.
<v Speaker 2>All this and they're geniuses out of it, by the way,
<v Speaker 2>and they're.
<v Speaker 1>Geniuses, and they're geniuses. But we got it. We gotta
<v Speaker 1>we gotta just look at some and I hope you
<v Speaker 1>don't mind me. I don't mind saying this, but you know,
<v Speaker 1>we gotta look at like, here's what I tell you know.
<v Speaker 1>I had somebody bad mouth of me for the Aaron
<v Speaker 1>Lewis song. A lot of I don't believe that, yeah, yeah, right,
<v Speaker 1>But it was one of those times he posted something
<v Speaker 1>and I don't I don't participate in the whole deal
<v Speaker 1>social media. My daughter runs it. I don't really participate,
<v Speaker 1>but i'll you know, I'll read it and I'll look
<v Speaker 1>at it, and you know, she'll send me stuff, see
<v Speaker 1>if I like it and all that. So there was
<v Speaker 1>a comment you know from a marine about you know,
<v Speaker 1>Afghanistan vet about how you know it was it was
<v Speaker 1>a country built on the backs of slavery and you know,
<v Speaker 1>the whole sixteen nineteen whatever that thing is, that whole
<v Speaker 1>theory that that was the beginning of the country, and
<v Speaker 1>he used you you can't you can't sing songs like
<v Speaker 1>this and forget that we were built on the backs
<v Speaker 1>of And I was like, I was like, like you
<v Speaker 1>just like this, don't do it. And I called a buddy.
<v Speaker 1>I have a buddy that works at Brightbart News and
<v Speaker 1>he goes, d don't do it. Don't answer. But I
<v Speaker 1>had to answer because I had to answer the basic,
<v Speaker 1>that basic question. And here's the thing. Here's the thing. America,
<v Speaker 1>whatever flaws, whatever flaws, and there's a lot of them them.
<v Speaker 1>America is the only nation in the history of civilization
<v Speaker 1>that ever fought a war to free its slaves. In
<v Speaker 1>any other nation ruled by a kingdom, a czar, you
<v Speaker 1>know whatever, if you lose the war, you're the slave
<v Speaker 1>forever until you until you can find a way to
<v Speaker 1>beat them, you are the slave forever. And America is
<v Speaker 1>the only nation for all of it's wrongs. And then
<v Speaker 1>you know, yeah, but America moved west and they killed
<v Speaker 1>all the Indians and they and they dead. No, no, no,
<v Speaker 1>no no. A lot of people in with a lot
<v Speaker 1>of money back in the day built those wanted to
<v Speaker 1>build those railroads and expand out west. So they told
<v Speaker 1>Americans to go out there. You know what I mean.
<v Speaker 1>It always gets blamed on the the simple folks that
<v Speaker 1>just want to live their lives. Yeah, and you know
<v Speaker 1>there were tribes, there were tribes of Native Americans that
<v Speaker 1>were killing other tribes of Native Americans and taking them
<v Speaker 1>as as slaves long before. And if we if we
<v Speaker 1>didn't move west, Mexico would have moved north. The French
<v Speaker 1>would have taken Louisiana purchase territory and they would have
<v Speaker 1>moved or or if England, if we never fought the
<v Speaker 1>Revolutionary War, England would have moved east. Somebody. There's always
<v Speaker 1>going to be a power structure and and and the
<v Speaker 1>strongest nation has the responsibility of deciding if they're going
<v Speaker 1>to be if they're going to be you know, they're
<v Speaker 1>going to be main to people, or they're going to
<v Speaker 1>try to make something fair. And America tried to build
<v Speaker 1>something that allowed every man and woman with all of
<v Speaker 1>the flaws. I'm not saying there's no flaws, but allowed
<v Speaker 1>every man and woman to chase and be their own king,
<v Speaker 1>right to live their own life. It's never happened anywhere
<v Speaker 1>in the world. It's the most admired system in the world.
<v Speaker 1>It's flawed. Capitalism is so flawed, but there's nothing better
<v Speaker 1>than it. Look at any other system. Look at Venezuela.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, we watched Sean Penn talk up and down
<v Speaker 1>about how great you know, Venezuela was going to be
<v Speaker 1>with their new government. Look what happened. You know, they're broke.
<v Speaker 1>They're eating dogs and cats and rabbits. It's inevitable.
<v Speaker 2>And I think where we're at in the country, in
<v Speaker 2>a lot of ways, it's the best. It's the best,
<v Speaker 2>the most advanced socially than we've ever been. You know,
<v Speaker 2>the opportunities are there, but they're all all that stuff
<v Speaker 2>is being that's under a cloud of all this, you know,
<v Speaker 2>all being this, this group is all bad, and this
<v Speaker 2>group is all good, and this all this this, these
<v Speaker 2>people deserve this, and this person did this to that,
<v Speaker 2>And I'm like, man, you know it's like I look,
<v Speaker 2>I watched the TV. I see opportunity all over the
<v Speaker 2>place for all races.
<v Speaker 1>I mean I don't.
<v Speaker 2>I mean I see all I see all colors represented
<v Speaker 2>in a big, big, huge financially socially away. And I
<v Speaker 2>I've you know, we've we've done. We've traveled this country
<v Speaker 2>like you have, man, and every there's oppression in every
<v Speaker 2>single race and I see it every day. We see
<v Speaker 2>it all the time.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and racism is everywhere on all sides of the fence.
<v Speaker 1>You know, it's funny, it's it's it's a concoction.
<v Speaker 2>Well what's what's funny to me too, is like you know,
<v Speaker 2>someone asked me, you know, and we have to end racism,
<v Speaker 2>we have to end racism, And I was like, okay,
<v Speaker 2>well there's racism on both you know, obviously everyone there's
<v Speaker 2>there's no you can't point in the culture go they're
<v Speaker 2>not racist at all about anybody. Yeah, but you're never
<v Speaker 2>gonna you're never gonna end race. In my opinion, if
<v Speaker 2>you're a racist, you're a bad person and you're not
<v Speaker 2>going to change because someone goes, we're going to change
<v Speaker 2>this or we're going to kill this.
<v Speaker 1>You know.
<v Speaker 2>I think evolution softens that to a point.
<v Speaker 1>Uh.
<v Speaker 2>It changes people through generations and hopefully the parents aren't
<v Speaker 2>because I know parents are both sides man that that
<v Speaker 2>teach their kids. You don't like that white person, you
<v Speaker 2>don't like the black person that they teaching that. So
<v Speaker 2>that's that's the generational thing, and those things are taught.
<v Speaker 1>You know, it's there. But there's a great there's a
<v Speaker 1>great piece that Victor Davis Hansen did on Silicon Valley
<v Speaker 1>a couple of weeks ago. It's absolutely fantastic. He he
<v Speaker 1>talks about how the class structure of all that tech
<v Speaker 1>power has developed around the Silicon Valley area, and it's
<v Speaker 1>very much like the South was pre Civil War. And
<v Speaker 1>that's what we need to start looking at. We need
<v Speaker 1>start looking at the structure development of what like all
<v Speaker 1>these things are happening right now. There's more going on
<v Speaker 1>than just a virus in a vaccine or racism. There
<v Speaker 1>is a plan to you know, and I'm not warring
<v Speaker 1>a tinfoil hack. All you gotta do is step back.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, all you gotta do is step back and
<v Speaker 1>start really reading some stuff and looking at some really
<v Speaker 1>common sense, critical thinking stuff. What is going on out
<v Speaker 1>there right now? And but Victor David Hanson, if you
<v Speaker 1>look it up, it's probably on Instagram or something, but
<v Speaker 1>or YouTube or whatever. But he he compared the Silicon
<v Speaker 1>Valley structure of what's happening in the last you know,
<v Speaker 1>ten fifteen years with all the homeless people that are
<v Speaker 1>around Silicon Valley, the homeless people that are living at Google,
<v Speaker 1>while you know, there's all these millionaire, billionaire people inside
<v Speaker 1>the building. It's it's very akin to what was happening
<v Speaker 1>in the South with the really rich Dixiecrats who owned
<v Speaker 1>all the plantations right that were that were definitly lea
<v Speaker 1>pro slavery. But here's the thing, here's the thing since
<v Speaker 1>since that, even if you look at since the sixties,
<v Speaker 1>when when when President Johnson introduced a Great Society Act
<v Speaker 1>and ruined the Black family, sent them into the inner
<v Speaker 1>cities with abortion, drugs and welfare, and and that's that's
<v Speaker 1>without goes without saying it was the new plantation, but
<v Speaker 1>that that whole era was till now if you go
<v Speaker 1>and my point, my point being in this Victor Davis
<v Speaker 1>Canton bit, he's kind of expressing how the Silicon Valley
<v Speaker 1>and and the media is always putting down the South,
<v Speaker 1>as you know, the white trash, the real we got
<v Speaker 1>to fix this area. This is where it all happened.
<v Speaker 1>This is where Martin Luther King, this is where all
<v Speaker 1>the crap went down. It's like, you know what, dude,
<v Speaker 1>and he said it, he said it best. But he
<v Speaker 1>made the point. The people in the South, since all
<v Speaker 1>of that happened in the fifties and sixties have been
<v Speaker 1>integrated now for almost sixty years. Yeah, and people and
<v Speaker 1>you know, you know, like we know, we are in
<v Speaker 1>the South. Nobody gets along better than people do in
<v Speaker 1>the South of all colors. And they've had sixty years
<v Speaker 1>to get better at it. And now we're seeing the
<v Speaker 1>Silicon Valley thing where there's that same sort of class
<v Speaker 1>structure developing that pre Civil war, and it's like, wow,
<v Speaker 1>so what are we doing? What are we doing? There's
<v Speaker 1>a bigger picture to this. I'm not putting a tinfoil
<v Speaker 1>hat on it, but I'm just telling people you got
<v Speaker 1>to wake up. You got to wake up, and you
<v Speaker 1>got to start looking at the real truth that's out there,
<v Speaker 1>just simple truth. We're all going to die. First of all,
<v Speaker 1>we're all going to die. Global warming is the planet
<v Speaker 1>is not going to stop ever spinning. It's been spinning
<v Speaker 1>for billions of years. Unless something happens with the sun.
<v Speaker 1>Nothing's going to happen to this planet. We are leaving
<v Speaker 1>the planet. The planet's going nowhere. George Carlin said it
<v Speaker 1>a comedy bit years ago. But we have got to
<v Speaker 1>and I'm not telling everybody that they have to they
<v Speaker 1>have to change down Jesus, but you better figure out
<v Speaker 1>what your life is about, because whatever you believe in,
<v Speaker 1>you're leaving here. You came here to leave here, and
<v Speaker 1>whatever whatever that means, whatever that means to teach into
<v Speaker 1>a book, individual person, because I'm not gonna I'm not
<v Speaker 1>going to put my love of Jesus Christ on anybody
<v Speaker 1>and say hey, you have to I'm not gonna thump
<v Speaker 1>on anybody, but but I am going to say, you
<v Speaker 1>better have something figured.
<v Speaker 2>Out with what you whatever you do figure out, you
<v Speaker 2>need to be a peace with it.
<v Speaker 1>You know.
<v Speaker 2>It's funny that you say that because my dad, I
<v Speaker 2>was raised in this southern battist family and uh, he
<v Speaker 2>was a he's still I mean he's eighty six years old,
<v Speaker 2>still a missionary. I mean he's he talks to people
<v Speaker 2>and still I mean everywhere he goes, I mean he's
<v Speaker 2>passing out cars and he just a believer in Christ
<v Speaker 2>and and he's always spreading the word, you know. And
<v Speaker 2>he had this friend that they didn't believe in God,
<v Speaker 2>didn't believe in the afterlife, didn't believe in anything, I
<v Speaker 2>mean nothing, and he goes, mah, he goes, I don't
<v Speaker 2>know how you can believe in in this mysterious figure
<v Speaker 2>that's up in space, and you know, and then when
<v Speaker 2>you die, you're going to go to this place with
<v Speaker 2>streets of gold and this how do you do it?
<v Speaker 1>Is that? You know?
<v Speaker 2>And my dad he combatd that with this, and I
<v Speaker 2>always thought it was really cool. He's like, you know,
<v Speaker 2>if you're right, then we're all good. You know, we're
<v Speaker 2>all going to go into the ground, and that's going
<v Speaker 2>to be the end of it. If I'm right, you're
<v Speaker 2>not going to be so good. And I just thought
<v Speaker 2>that was brilliant. And uh, I think that atheist man
<v Speaker 2>turned to God a few years after that, you know.
<v Speaker 1>Oh my god. So anyone to hear you? Go ahead? Yes,
<v Speaker 1>I was going to say, you want to hear my
<v Speaker 1>weird You know, I'm very very into astronomy. I'm out
<v Speaker 1>and i'm out if it's a clear night, I've got
<v Speaker 1>my telescope out and I'm looking at the stars. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and it's one of my favorite things to do. And
<v Speaker 1>and you know, you sit there and you contemplate a
<v Speaker 1>lot and you think about a lot of things, you know,
<v Speaker 1>and that used to be the TV set up there.
<v Speaker 1>You know, everybody looked at the stars and they navigated
<v Speaker 1>with the stars, and the stars were everything, the heavens
<v Speaker 1>were everything, and we thought the world was flat until
<v Speaker 1>Galileo saw Jupiter in the sky and saw those four
<v Speaker 1>moons and they were going around. They kept they kept
<v Speaker 1>showing up in a different spot every night. He started thinking, man,
<v Speaker 1>maybe the world is round. And of course, you know,
<v Speaker 1>they threw him in jail for it. So we've always
<v Speaker 1>had these political sounds, right sounds. It's always and that
<v Speaker 1>was back in the fifteen it's not round. But if
<v Speaker 1>you think about it, whatever, whatever you believe in, and God,
<v Speaker 1>I wrote a song about this called what do you Believe?
<v Speaker 1>It's kind of based on this thought process that I have.
<v Speaker 1>Whatever you believe in, here's the thing. We're we're spinning
<v Speaker 1>around the Sun at sixty seven thousand miles an hour.
<v Speaker 1>We're spinning so fast we can't even feel it. We're
<v Speaker 1>spinning around on ourself eleven hundred miles an hour. And
<v Speaker 1>then we got a moon spinning around us. So we're
<v Speaker 1>spinning so fast we can't even feel it. We can
<v Speaker 1>see the trees blown, we can see the waves crashing.
<v Speaker 1>There's movement, you know. We're spinning around the fricking sun
<v Speaker 1>and all the planets are spinning around. They have their
<v Speaker 1>satellite spinning around, which creates the gravity. Right, So we're held,
<v Speaker 1>we're bound by this amazingly powerful gravity on this Earth
<v Speaker 1>in these bodies that we're basically renting. We don't get
<v Speaker 1>to keep these when we go. We're giving them up
<v Speaker 1>at the door, right right a second. We get a body,
<v Speaker 1>and we give it up when we go. And you know,
<v Speaker 1>and we and and and as as people, and especially
<v Speaker 1>in the Western world, we've made such a big thing
<v Speaker 1>about you know, getting botox injections and boobs and butts
<v Speaker 1>and making our bodies look great, you know, and they're
<v Speaker 1>going to be you know, there's gonna be some plastic
<v Speaker 1>in the ground when these people die. But but my
<v Speaker 1>point is, and then it's getting a little weird. But
<v Speaker 1>it's just like when I'm out there sitting out there
<v Speaker 1>contemplating all this stuff, and you think about its spinning around,
<v Speaker 1>and there's and there's universes everywhere, and there's galaxies everywhere.
<v Speaker 1>We know now from all these telescopes, this gravity is
<v Speaker 1>holding down our bodies, which contain our souls. Right, our
<v Speaker 1>souls are in these bodies. Without that gravity, we just float.
<v Speaker 1>There's something to that. There's something to that gravity and
<v Speaker 1>something about the only way to unleash our souls is
<v Speaker 1>when we die, our souls go and and we we know, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>and and and and with these brains that we have,
<v Speaker 1>our brains are as big as the universe ever expanding. Also,
<v Speaker 1>except they're going inward you know what I mean, They're
<v Speaker 1>going inwardly and as you know what I mean, Like
<v Speaker 1>our brains are like the universe. It's all like one thing.
<v Speaker 1>Like we're as human beings in these bodies. We have
<v Speaker 1>these souls that have these brains that are capable of
<v Speaker 1>I mean, our imagination. You say, imagination is not real,
<v Speaker 1>but our imagination has developed, the airplane has developed, the bonds.
<v Speaker 2>Imagination is unbelievable.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, and and and it's it's everything, it's it's it's
<v Speaker 1>it's infinite, just like the universe. And and nobody ever
<v Speaker 1>talks about stuff like that. But you gotta, you gotta,
<v Speaker 1>you get to realize that that gravity is holding us
<v Speaker 1>down on this Earth, and at some point we expire,
<v Speaker 1>and that's the only way we get out of it,
<v Speaker 1>you know. And and and what what whether it's whether
<v Speaker 1>it's pearly gates or Golden Streets. I mean, obviously, those
<v Speaker 1>those metaphoric terms were back in the day when we
<v Speaker 1>thought the world was flat and bell was underneath us,
<v Speaker 1>and you know what I mean, So you got to
<v Speaker 1>you gotta take a little bit of that into consideration.
<v Speaker 1>And you know, and and they and and and they
<v Speaker 1>thought the North star, the north star was probably Jupiter
<v Speaker 1>up in the sky. It was a planet, you know,
<v Speaker 1>it wasn't even a star. But they couldn't have known
<v Speaker 1>that back then.
<v Speaker 2>But but.
<v Speaker 1>My point being is that we're going somewhere and however
<v Speaker 1>we tend, however we want to look at that somewhere,
<v Speaker 1>however that however that shapes our our our views, our beliefs,
<v Speaker 1>our politics. We got to stop with uh uh, well,
<v Speaker 1>I'm not sound like I'm Bible something, but we we
<v Speaker 1>got to stop chasing the humanism and and go after
<v Speaker 1>something more godly, whatever we believe that to be, but
<v Speaker 1>something bigger than we are. And that's why you can
<v Speaker 1>believe in something you can't see. I always tell people
<v Speaker 1>you have to believe it to see it, not see
<v Speaker 1>it to believe it. Right, you have to believe it
<v Speaker 1>to see it. And and and people make fun of
<v Speaker 1>it now it's like and that's but that's the politic
<v Speaker 1>right now, the idea and and and I'm going on
<v Speaker 1>and on here, but man, the idea, the idea right now, Keifer,
<v Speaker 1>And you know this as good as me. We we
<v Speaker 1>are country. This this amazing nation built on uh individuality
<v Speaker 1>and freedom and free speech and right to bear arms
<v Speaker 1>all that stuff. We're built on all these things. And
<v Speaker 1>we're hanging with like this dangling thread of a piece
<v Speaker 1>of paper built on on a on a This is
<v Speaker 1>what this is how I always describe it. It's like
<v Speaker 1>a like an upside down barstool. There's three there's three,
<v Speaker 1>you know, pieces of wood, and you've got morality on one,
<v Speaker 1>family on the other. And and you know what I mean, right,
<v Speaker 1>and and and and and and of course I'm talking
<v Speaker 1>about the Constitution. You've got God, family and morality on
<v Speaker 1>each one. So what has happened in the last sixty years,
<v Speaker 1>basically everybody that I truly believe it's at some point
<v Speaker 1>it's just it's good and evil. You can you can
<v Speaker 1>call it left and right, you can call it black
<v Speaker 1>and white racism, you can call it. At that point,
<v Speaker 1>it's good and evil and and and and and and
<v Speaker 1>and those was on the left for lack of a
<v Speaker 1>better way to describe it. And I'm not gonna blaming everybody,
<v Speaker 1>but but you know what I'm saying, this is not
<v Speaker 1>all that is left, is not all no, No, it's
<v Speaker 1>definitely a faction, and it's good and evil. It's patriots
<v Speaker 1>and traders, those three pieces of wood holding on, you know,
<v Speaker 1>that are balancing those three things. God, family and morality
<v Speaker 1>have been crushed. There's only one left now, and that's God.
<v Speaker 1>They've already got morality. They got it out all through
<v Speaker 1>the sixties and seventies, with with with the ever changing
<v Speaker 1>TV shows and music, and you know, we didn't know
<v Speaker 1>the difference. And you know, next thing, you know, all
<v Speaker 1>the things that are we considered bad are all good.
<v Speaker 1>They're all normal now, right, you know, it's it's normal
<v Speaker 1>to have eighty five different genders right now. Come on, right,
<v Speaker 1>you're a man or you're a woman, and that's it.
<v Speaker 1>And yeah, you got what are you doing? But it's true,
<v Speaker 1>But but but and and of course we've seen them
<v Speaker 1>through through. I wrote a song about this too, because
<v Speaker 1>it's all I'm really right about. But the morality's gone.
<v Speaker 1>The family was broken up in the sixties as much
<v Speaker 1>racism as there was in the thirties forties, you know,
<v Speaker 1>in that era, you know, in the Jim Crow era,
<v Speaker 1>it was very southern hierarchy KKK inspired democratic inspired racism,
<v Speaker 1>I might add, again pointing back to Victor Davis's bid.
<v Speaker 1>But when all that stuff was going on and we
<v Speaker 1>had all that segregation going on, there was a black
<v Speaker 1>middle class. There were black people going to college and
<v Speaker 1>getting degrees, becoming dennis and doctors and professional people, lawyers,
<v Speaker 1>and there was a lot of them. And there was
<v Speaker 1>a black family, and there was a black dad in
<v Speaker 1>the house, and there was there there was a structure.
<v Speaker 1>And when that Great Society Act came out after Kennedy's
<v Speaker 1>assassination with Lynda Johnson, moved all those people into the
<v Speaker 1>inner cities. Welfare, abortion, drugs, the culture.
<v Speaker 2>The disintegration of the family unit and the family's gone.
<v Speaker 1>And that's the morality part of it. And we are
<v Speaker 1>the family part of it. And we've seen the morality
<v Speaker 1>through Hollywood and movies and TV. And when we were
<v Speaker 1>all guilty, we all, we all we grew up in
<v Speaker 1>part of it, but we didn't know any better. But
<v Speaker 1>now what are we seeing now? We're seeing now. The
<v Speaker 1>last one is religion. And once they wipe God out
<v Speaker 1>of there, the Constitution's gone, because John Adams said the
<v Speaker 1>constitution only works if you have family, morality, and God. Well,
<v Speaker 1>don't work any other way, you know.
<v Speaker 2>And I looked at you know, I try. I don't
<v Speaker 2>claim to be extreme. I'm not extreme anything. I don't
<v Speaker 2>like politics. I don't like politicians. But I think over
<v Speaker 2>the last you know, ten years, I've become more educated
<v Speaker 2>in it. Not nearly to the level of what you
<v Speaker 2>are or some of my other friends, which I've learned
<v Speaker 2>a lot today. By the way, I appreciate that. I
<v Speaker 2>appreciate that, but you know, you zee them out. You
<v Speaker 2>take you know, you talk about the world and the
<v Speaker 2>Earth and the stars and stuff, and you take just
<v Speaker 2>to you know, I looked at a picture of the
<v Speaker 2>globe of the day and I was like, so we
<v Speaker 2>have this, this, this vast planet that when you zoom
<v Speaker 2>out you don't see anything except for this blue planet.
<v Speaker 2>And how can we assume, how can anyone assume that
<v Speaker 2>they know better than anybody else on this giant freaking
<v Speaker 2>planet spinning around the Earth. How can I tell you
<v Speaker 2>or you telling me what I should or shouldn't do.
<v Speaker 2>And I don't care if anything, because you still have
<v Speaker 2>slavery in many cultures right now. It's it's very very present,
<v Speaker 2>still going on, and and you have all this hate
<v Speaker 2>and everything else, but just the terry toiletism and just
<v Speaker 2>the you know, my way is better than your way
<v Speaker 2>on this big, huge planet spinning around. Who who can
<v Speaker 2>say that they have that figured out? And then you
<v Speaker 2>have our forefathers that put all this stuff together, geniuses,
<v Speaker 2>you know, and whether with flaws like you said, but
<v Speaker 2>they had all this figured out.
<v Speaker 1>And now you have.
<v Speaker 2>Some people, I'll just say, some people who think that
<v Speaker 2>they know better than our forefathers who put the whole
<v Speaker 2>thing together, that's with its flaws, has worked pretty damn
<v Speaker 2>good up to this point and continues to improve. And
<v Speaker 2>I think with just common sense and education and everything else,
<v Speaker 2>we as that people have evolved out of the archaic
<v Speaker 2>Stone Age kind of way of thinking of it's black
<v Speaker 2>against white or whatever else, because I you know, I
<v Speaker 2>grew up in an all white town. I mean there's
<v Speaker 2>no black people there, there's no Mesican people there, there's
<v Speaker 2>no color at all except for Caucasian. And it was
<v Speaker 2>it was like a Sea of Brookshields. Man, it was
<v Speaker 2>just like there was no one else there. But I
<v Speaker 2>was taught not to think that I was better than
<v Speaker 2>anybody else. I was taught that you're you're. You shouldn't
<v Speaker 2>base someone's worth on the color of their skin, even
<v Speaker 2>though I wasn't around anybody else except for people who
<v Speaker 2>look like me. So it's just really crazy to think
<v Speaker 2>that you know that someone knows, someone can really think
<v Speaker 2>that they know better than someone else. And then the
<v Speaker 2>contradictions that go along with it, and it's just the
<v Speaker 2>hypocrisy is what just really drives me crazy.
<v Speaker 1>But can I make a couple of points to that,
<v Speaker 1>like please, and especially when you talk about the ever
<v Speaker 1>expanding universes out there, and and and and the humanism
<v Speaker 1>of believe what we tell you. We know because we
<v Speaker 1>know science, we studied, we know, we know what's happening
<v Speaker 1>with the universe right now. It's just it's phenomenal to
<v Speaker 1>me when I when I hear people talk like that,
<v Speaker 1>and you think, like, yeah, you can tell me, you
<v Speaker 1>can tell me how all of this stuff is happening.
<v Speaker 1>You can tell me how all of it's expanding, and
<v Speaker 1>you can you can explain, and the black holes, and
<v Speaker 1>you talking about all this stuff that's out there and
<v Speaker 1>all this crazy stuff going on with the world, but
<v Speaker 1>you can't tell me why. Nobody's ever been able to
<v Speaker 1>tell me. Why, why why? Why are we even doing it?
<v Speaker 1>Why are we even here? Why are we Why are
<v Speaker 1>you and me? What? You know? What the hell are
<v Speaker 1>we even here for? Like, what the hell is there
<v Speaker 1>a thing like? Nobody can explain that. Nobody can explain that.
<v Speaker 1>And going back to the founding fathers, Man, the original
<v Speaker 1>rock stars, Man, the original you know, they were here,
<v Speaker 1>their families were here for more than five generations, you know,
<v Speaker 1>as as as caretakers of the land for England, and
<v Speaker 1>that particular generation of rock stars who were wearing wearing
<v Speaker 1>wigs by the way, tight tight stockings and buckle suit.
<v Speaker 1>They yeah, they were like, these guys were going, you
<v Speaker 1>know what, Yeah, we're gonna We're gonna have our own
<v Speaker 1>freaking country where every man can live, live and have
<v Speaker 1>and be his own king. Yeah he can. He can
<v Speaker 1>succeed or fail based on his own merits. And every
<v Speaker 1>man is equal. We're not all equally gifted in certain ways,
<v Speaker 1>but we're all equal as people, right right, and and
<v Speaker 1>and of course the left has turned all that thinking
<v Speaker 1>into like, you know, here, here's here's a here. Let
<v Speaker 1>me just put a couple of things out there. I
<v Speaker 1>just got to say this, with all of the stuff
<v Speaker 1>we're hearing about black lives matter and racism and that's
<v Speaker 1>on the right side, and conservatives are these complete we
<v Speaker 1>got racist KKK and the closet people. Can you believe
<v Speaker 1>that that that the organization that that most takes care
<v Speaker 1>of the uh races of color is still called the NAACP.
<v Speaker 1>It's still called the National Association for the Advancement of
<v Speaker 1>Colored People, which is what they call black people back
<v Speaker 1>in the thirties and forties when it started. It's so rare,
<v Speaker 1>it's so blatantly in your face, it's so blatantly in
<v Speaker 1>your face racist, and they know it, and they know it,
<v Speaker 1>and that's what I wish. I'm not trying to convert
<v Speaker 1>anybody into Christianity or into taking a red pill. I
<v Speaker 1>don't care what you do, but I just want you
<v Speaker 1>to step back and go, what is what is the
<v Speaker 1>end game here? There is an end game going on
<v Speaker 1>right now. There is an end game going on right now.
<v Speaker 1>I don't care what people say to me. There's an
<v Speaker 1>end game going on with this virus, with this racism,
<v Speaker 1>with this it's with the election, all of it, with
<v Speaker 1>January sixth, They're building this narrative and and trying to
<v Speaker 1>get us to a place where they can turn the
<v Speaker 1>corner and take take we take our freedoms away and
<v Speaker 1>globalize the country. And if you global not the country,
<v Speaker 1>the world, but if you globalize this, if you globalize
<v Speaker 1>this world, you will have no freedom. You just look
<v Speaker 1>at China, what China's done. You will have no freedoms.
<v Speaker 1>And that's where we end up.
<v Speaker 2>And well, and I'm not thinking the masses. Well, I mean,
<v Speaker 2>like you said, there's a small faction of people who
<v Speaker 2>really believe this stuff, like in their heart and soul.
<v Speaker 2>The rest of us don't. The rest of us don't.
<v Speaker 2>We don't care about that.
<v Speaker 1>You know.
<v Speaker 2>We just want to live our lives and be free
<v Speaker 2>and be able to make the decisions that we want
<v Speaker 2>to make. And you know, whatever we think is right
<v Speaker 2>for us, that's what we want to do. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>that's most people.
<v Speaker 1>And I think it's a genius. It's genius the way
<v Speaker 1>they I think they looked at what Hitler did. Who's
<v Speaker 1>ever behind all of this? I think they looked at
<v Speaker 1>what Hitler did and what meant he almost pulled this off.
<v Speaker 1>All he had to do is a virus is something
<v Speaker 1>to scare the crap out of people, to make them
<v Speaker 1>conform to anything that they wanted them to do. And
<v Speaker 1>that's that's basically where we are. I don't care what
<v Speaker 1>anybody says to me, and speaking to your last point
<v Speaker 1>of about about Dolly and saying, you know, like you
<v Speaker 1>don't want to upset you know, once, once you still
<v Speaker 1>your politics on your music, you kind of taint your music,
<v Speaker 1>right you were bringing that up in a way earlier,
<v Speaker 1>and you know, yeah, and and you look at people
<v Speaker 1>that have spoken politically in their music and maybe it
<v Speaker 1>doesn't affect them as much. But when you're just trying to,
<v Speaker 1>you know, put your you know, you're just trying to
<v Speaker 1>be the personality you are and make your living and
<v Speaker 1>and be out there. I just resign and I'm obviously
<v Speaker 1>nowhere you're the statue or somebody like that. I'm just
<v Speaker 1>a guy that writes songs and uh and and goes
<v Speaker 1>out and sings and does some shows around the country
<v Speaker 1>and the world and whenever I can, and I'm you know,
<v Speaker 1>I'm you know, you know, you know me and but
<v Speaker 1>at some point, I think our lives you get to
<v Speaker 1>this place where you have to make these conscious decisions
<v Speaker 1>about what you believe in and uh, and that may affect,
<v Speaker 1>that may taint the public perception of who you are
<v Speaker 1>and what you've done. And you know, I had people
<v Speaker 1>when I when I had the Eric Church song a
<v Speaker 1>couple of years ago to stick that new country song,
<v Speaker 1>people were saying, God, what is Steal so angry about?
<v Speaker 1>What is he? What is he? What is he putting
<v Speaker 1>down the industry for? Why is why is he talking
<v Speaker 1>about all this riots and all this stuff going on?
<v Speaker 1>And It's like, I'm just writing something that reflects what
<v Speaker 1>I'm seeing about beer?
<v Speaker 2>Why why is.
<v Speaker 1>He just talking about beer and whiskey like everybody? But
<v Speaker 1>but that's my point. That's where we We've come to
<v Speaker 1>this very unique, strange place, man, where everybody's afraid and
<v Speaker 1>and and one last thing, you know, you talk about
<v Speaker 1>the Second Amendment and everybody's going, you know what, do
<v Speaker 1>we need four hundred million guns for it? Because of
<v Speaker 1>what's happening right now? The founding fathers put that in there,
<v Speaker 1>not to protect your house, not to protect it's there
<v Speaker 1>for that reason, not to go out and hunt deer.
<v Speaker 1>It's to protect yourself from ranical government. We're the only
<v Speaker 1>nation that ever did that.
<v Speaker 2>Yep, we had to do it everything they.
<v Speaker 1>Can to get that amendment out of their red the
<v Speaker 1>they can just get that gun. I mean, look at
<v Speaker 1>Hong Kong. Hong Kong's fighting back against China with yellow
<v Speaker 1>umbrellas because they don't have any guns, and they're doing
<v Speaker 1>better than we are.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's crazy, man, all.
<v Speaker 1>Right, I shut my mouth on it, but uh well.
<v Speaker 2>Listen now, I thoroughly enjoyed this and and man, so
<v Speaker 2>have I. Man, thank you, I really I really appreciate
<v Speaker 2>your education. And you're you know, it seems like you know,
<v Speaker 2>there's there's there's people who have opinions that are uninformed,
<v Speaker 2>and there's people who have opinions that are informed. You
<v Speaker 2>are the latter for sure. And uh I love talking.
<v Speaker 1>I don't and I don't claim to be right or
<v Speaker 1>or I just again, like the songwriting. I feel it.
<v Speaker 1>I didn't mean to cut you off. That's what I
<v Speaker 1>feel in my heart.
<v Speaker 2>It's what you feel.
<v Speaker 1>I see, it's what I observe like I do as
<v Speaker 1>a songwriter, right, And.
<v Speaker 2>That's your job, you know, and uh so I definitely
<v Speaker 2>appreciate that. And you know, we've written some songs here
<v Speaker 2>lately lately, and I really really have enjoyed. We wrote
<v Speaker 2>this a long time ago, came over to your house,
<v Speaker 2>wrote us on a long time ago, and then we
<v Speaker 2>never saw each other for like ten years, and then
<v Speaker 2>you know, we reconnected. And man, I've really been enjoying
<v Speaker 2>what we've been writing and getting the same room with you.
<v Speaker 2>And I really appreciate you.
<v Speaker 1>It's been so good to reconnect, buddy, with both you
<v Speaker 1>and and and uh and especially you know, there's always
<v Speaker 1>a reason for it, Like at this time in the world,
<v Speaker 1>people like minded, we got to start thinking a little
<v Speaker 1>bit more critically and importantly. I think it's I mean,
<v Speaker 1>I think this is the greatest time in the history
<v Speaker 1>of the world right now. I mean, I'm not I
<v Speaker 1>can't understated that enough. Like there has never been a
<v Speaker 1>time like this that that I've read about. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>and I've ever seen in my sixty years, I've never
<v Speaker 1>seen anything like this. I've never seen anything like this.
<v Speaker 2>That's all my dad said. He's eighty six, you know.
<v Speaker 2>And but I think I do think I love my country.
<v Speaker 2>I love what it stands for, and I hate to
<v Speaker 2>see it, the threads of it trying to be undone
<v Speaker 2>right now. And and no matter if you're on the
<v Speaker 2>left or right, I don't care. And like you said,
<v Speaker 2>I don't care if you get a vaccine, if you
<v Speaker 2>don't get a vaccine. But I don't want you to
<v Speaker 2>care if I care if I get it or not,
<v Speaker 2>or if I do this or not. I don't want
<v Speaker 2>you to care about me either. Don't tell me what
<v Speaker 2>I want to do or what I should do. That's
<v Speaker 2>what this country is about. But man, you know, I
<v Speaker 2>don't want to go. We could, we could go if
<v Speaker 2>I'm a tangent for hours and hours an hour, just
<v Speaker 2>tell me just one more thing, just one more thing.
<v Speaker 1>Well, because we talk about you know, trust the science,
<v Speaker 1>the science, the science, the science and science, and of
<v Speaker 1>course it keeps changing every day. We have never in
<v Speaker 1>the history again of our country, had a one guy
<v Speaker 1>who wasn't elected, he was appointed, right, one guy who's
<v Speaker 1>telling us what to do scientifically and medically. We've always
<v Speaker 1>had group of the best doctors and scientists who analyze,
<v Speaker 1>take the hypothesis. That's what science is. It's the study
<v Speaker 1>of all things that happen in the world that God created.
<v Speaker 1>That's what science is. That's what freaks me out. And nobody,
<v Speaker 1>nobody's thinking about that perspective. And we got one guy
<v Speaker 1>who's not even elected, he's been appointed. He's more powerful
<v Speaker 1>than the president right now, and he's telling us changing
<v Speaker 1>every day. And there's hole there as you know, there's
<v Speaker 1>whole showing up and all this stuff. And that's why
<v Speaker 1>I keep telling people, keep reading, turn turn networks off.
<v Speaker 1>It turned the obvious networks off, even Fox if you're
<v Speaker 1>a conservative, turn it off for a while, and start
<v Speaker 1>looking deeper, because the real journalists right now are normal people.
<v Speaker 1>They're there. You gotta you gotta rationally look at what
<v Speaker 1>is true.
<v Speaker 2>Man, Searching for the truth is hard to find right now.
<v Speaker 1>Well it up and it's the only truth. Because truth
<v Speaker 1>now and in the world is whatever side of the
<v Speaker 1>fence you're standing on, whatever you see, whatever I see,
<v Speaker 1>is the truth. We have to go high, we have
<v Speaker 1>to go higher for for one real truth in order
<v Speaker 1>because once we start believing in the human thing and
<v Speaker 1>the human the human way of like like like making
<v Speaker 1>that the god and the government the God, we are screwed.
<v Speaker 2>Screwed man, I hardly agree with you, man.
<v Speaker 1>And but China, China, North Korea, look at look at China,
<v Speaker 1>North Korea.
<v Speaker 2>It's it if you get to if you let it
<v Speaker 2>get to your head, I mean, it could drive you crazy.
<v Speaker 1>Man.
<v Speaker 2>I just I still believe that it's all going to
<v Speaker 2>work out in the end.
<v Speaker 1>I do too. I do think. It's just my thought
<v Speaker 1>to everybody is read as much as you can, you know,
<v Speaker 1>reasonably as you can. And and and look at we've
<v Speaker 1>never lived in a culture where where people are now
<v Speaker 1>getting canceled and taken off social media. And there was
<v Speaker 1>a law passed in twenty twelve that made that happen,
<v Speaker 1>to regulate the internet. And now they always they said
<v Speaker 1>it was going to be about other.
<v Speaker 2>Things, right, you know, bad things they always do.
<v Speaker 1>And yeah, but it's ended up being us that are
<v Speaker 1>getting canceled well and taken off.
<v Speaker 2>And I'll say this too, man, it's like you might
<v Speaker 2>not agree with my team or your team. It's almost like,
<v Speaker 2>right now, we're on two teams, and so your team.
<v Speaker 2>You have to root for your team, whether they're wrong
<v Speaker 2>or right on both sides. And it's like, but if
<v Speaker 2>you look at the grand scheme of things and go, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>why is one side being censored that always puts up
<v Speaker 2>a red flag to me, like because there's either a
<v Speaker 2>truth there or some common sense or that's what's really
<v Speaker 2>going on, and there's some other group that doesn't want
<v Speaker 2>anybody else to know about that exactly. And so when
<v Speaker 2>I see that, if I'm if I'm a leftist or
<v Speaker 2>a rightist or whatever as I am, you have to
<v Speaker 2>look at that and go there might be some validity
<v Speaker 2>to that side, because this side don't want me to
<v Speaker 2>see what's going on over there. They don't want to
<v Speaker 2>see behind door number two, you know. So you know,
<v Speaker 2>and I think I think we're seeing some of I
<v Speaker 2>think we're seeing some that we're on that team, that
<v Speaker 2>we're rooting for the team, whether they're right or wrong
<v Speaker 2>or not. Start to see a little bit of like, okay, man,
<v Speaker 2>we can't really that's not that's too.
<v Speaker 1>Far, you know. I hope, So, I hope, I hope
<v Speaker 1>we see more. Yeah, I hope we see more, because
<v Speaker 1>that that is the the truth of it is that
<v Speaker 1>once you start doing that, there's something wrong. There's some somebody,
<v Speaker 1>somebody is telling a really bad lie. Right, you know,
<v Speaker 1>the whole country, the whole country has always been prided
<v Speaker 1>and built on being able to say whatever. And and
<v Speaker 1>you know, if you're wrong about what you're saying, you're
<v Speaker 1>gonna get knocked down for it. But you can say
<v Speaker 1>whatever you want. That's that's the whole idea of the country.
<v Speaker 1>And man, it's not that it's not you know, they
<v Speaker 1>try to say, oh, you're nationalists, you're a racist. It
<v Speaker 1>doesn't have to be. It could be any color flag.
<v Speaker 2>It's when it doesn't matter.
<v Speaker 1>It's when it's when it's freedom and freedom of speech
<v Speaker 1>and all the things that are in that constitution. It
<v Speaker 1>doesn't matter what the flag is. The flag just represents
<v Speaker 1>what that means. And you know there's going to be
<v Speaker 1>a turn that this can't They're either going to pull
<v Speaker 1>this off or something's going to break here because you
<v Speaker 1>can't you can't just keep you can't just keep up
<v Speaker 1>like this. There's no way to keep this going without
<v Speaker 1>the cracks are going to start appearing in the armor
<v Speaker 1>because these lies, lies, It's it's like it's just unraveling.
<v Speaker 1>It's like the lies at some point they start to crack.
<v Speaker 1>You can't hold truth together with lies, and you can't
<v Speaker 1>just keep.
<v Speaker 2>Saying there's nothing to see here. There's nothing to see here. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>we're all seeing it.
<v Speaker 1>But but they're definitely they they they they put a
<v Speaker 1>bunch of duct tape full of lies around this ball
<v Speaker 1>of truth. It's like, you can't do that, man, truth,
<v Speaker 1>the ugly truth. And this is the cool thing too
<v Speaker 1>that may will shut my mouth here. The truth is
<v Speaker 1>a very very ugly thing. When it's coming down on
<v Speaker 1>my lives, it's a dark it's like a big black cloud.
<v Speaker 1>God's going here. It comes, man, and it is ugly.
<v Speaker 1>But but once it splashes down, it's the cliche. It
<v Speaker 1>sets you free and it's beautiful and and and you
<v Speaker 1>can you can begin again, you know. And and uh,
<v Speaker 1>I think right now it's at that ugly stage where
<v Speaker 1>it's coming down and it looks like a bad storm.
<v Speaker 1>I think it's coming. I think it's coming. I think
<v Speaker 1>I think we're going to see. Uh. A lot of
<v Speaker 1>turn on how a lot of people feel, because a
<v Speaker 1>lot of people feel they're just like you said, they're
<v Speaker 1>afraid to speak up because they don't want to be canceled.
<v Speaker 1>They have a daye. They have a daye like you
<v Speaker 1>and me are you know, we get to make up music,
<v Speaker 1>and it's a whole different gig we have, but we
<v Speaker 1>still but we still live in that world. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>we got to go out and get our gigs and
<v Speaker 1>make our money too. And you know, I've just I've
<v Speaker 1>just gotten to a point where i am I'm I'm uh,
<v Speaker 1>I'm grateful for everything I got and I'm blessed, and
<v Speaker 1>I've been through hell and back and I'm still grateful
<v Speaker 1>and filled with joy that the world is a great
<v Speaker 1>place and we will be free again and well and
<v Speaker 1>all this stuff is going to end. I pray for
<v Speaker 1>it every day and I'm still grateful for it. As
<v Speaker 1>as as a pessimistic because I might sound I am
<v Speaker 1>I'm one of the most optimistic guys out there because
<v Speaker 1>I have certainly, as you know, and we all have.
<v Speaker 1>But we go through stuff that kind of defines us
<v Speaker 1>as what we're going to be with the rest of
<v Speaker 1>our lives. And that's what I'm just trying to do
<v Speaker 1>every day well the best I can, the best I can.
<v Speaker 2>And I think that those struggles and those strategies are
<v Speaker 2>good that it makes you, uh, not not calous in
<v Speaker 2>a bad way, but calous in a good way. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>I think you just go, I'm not. Life's too short
<v Speaker 2>for me to take this crap or believe this crap.
<v Speaker 2>Or I've got to speak out. And and you you, uh,
<v Speaker 2>you know, if you do speak out, you have to
<v Speaker 2>be sure and be okay with the with the repercussions.
<v Speaker 1>If you repercussions, and tell you as long as you
<v Speaker 1>have the facts, if you're putting the facts out there,
<v Speaker 1>it's the best you can do. And you got to
<v Speaker 1>know that it's all temporary, believe it or not. There
<v Speaker 1>was another time in history during Prohibition when the right
<v Speaker 1>was so pro religion and God that they were influencing
<v Speaker 1>the political system on the right. You couldn't get elected
<v Speaker 1>if you weren't behind them. So it's it's it's part
<v Speaker 1>of it is just the pendulum doing what the pendulum does.
<v Speaker 1>As Roger Miller said, you know, and and and it's
<v Speaker 1>gonna it's gonna swing back and forth. But but we're
<v Speaker 1>definitely seeing more manipulation of what that what the government
<v Speaker 1>is doing with that power. Now it's a different thing,
<v Speaker 1>but still this going back and forth. You know.
<v Speaker 2>Anyway, thank you man, Let's get back together write some
<v Speaker 2>more songs. And I really thoroughly enjoyed your time today
<v Speaker 2>and we're all snowed in. It was funny, like you're
<v Speaker 2>riding a bicycle in the snow podcast. But and I
<v Speaker 2>was like, yeah, let's do it tomorrow. So it was
<v Speaker 2>it was I don't know why you're riding two in
<v Speaker 2>the snow A you know, I had.
<v Speaker 1>To get out of the you know, we were cooped up.
<v Speaker 1>I told you at the beginning. We all got six
<v Speaker 1>so we were like, you know, you were fifteen days
<v Speaker 1>just here, you know. And so the second I started
<v Speaker 1>feeling better, I was like, man, I got to get
<v Speaker 1>out out of my bike. Of course. Of course it
<v Speaker 1>snows about eight inches.
<v Speaker 2>That's so funny. Man, Well, thank you brother so much. Man,
<v Speaker 2>it's good to see you.
<v Speaker 1>Man.
<v Speaker 2>We will talk to you soon. Brother.
<v Speaker 1>Thank you God blessing.
<v Speaker 2>Well that was not terrible.
<v Speaker 1>Man.
<v Speaker 2>I can't think Jeffrey Steel enough for being on the
<v Speaker 2>show today. And man, I hope you guys learned something.
<v Speaker 2>I know I did a lot of stuff to unpack
<v Speaker 2>the That guy is super super smart. He's very educated,
<v Speaker 2>very formed, very passionate about his country and about songwriting
<v Speaker 2>and family. And and now I look at people like
<v Speaker 2>that and just you have to have some admiration. You
<v Speaker 2>don't have to agree with him, but you have to
<v Speaker 2>have an admiration for him, because man, it's it's backed
<v Speaker 2>up by truth behind it, you know. They feel like
<v Speaker 2>it is their reality, you know, and it's just really
<v Speaker 2>really good to see. And uh, the guy's just he's
<v Speaker 2>in a great American dude, And I just really appreciate
<v Speaker 2>this time today. So you guys check out the Jeffrey
<v Speaker 2>Steele on all the social media outlets, on Spotify, et cetera,
<v Speaker 2>et cetera. One of the greatest songwriters this town has
<v Speaker 2>ever seen. And thank you so much for listening to
<v Speaker 2>another episode of Talking with Thompson Square. We'll see you
<v Speaker 2>next time. Everybody is that it's just the care