Prequel Special: Revisiting Keith Urban's Childhood + Relationship with Father + Marriage + Rehab and Overcoming Addiction

00:00:06
Speaker 1: We've kind of gotten out of the business of doing a lot of In case you missed it, but we had a great Bobby Cast with Keith Urban that I did just a few weeks ago. If you missed it, go back and listen to it, because Keith talked about where he lived when he moved to town from Australia, like where he put us clothes in some of the guy's drawer. It's a really good episode, but there were certain questions I did not ask him because I had asked him that the last time we were here. So it's been a few years, but this is like the ultimate Keith Urban bio podcast.

00:00:35
Speaker 2: What do you agree? I would definitely agree.

00:00:37
Speaker 1: So we talked about his love and music, him talking about his dad, which he almost never talks about, seeing Johnny Cash with his dad as a kid, and that story's wild, so rehab. We talked about that, which is why I didn't get into it last time. Not because I was scared to get into it, because I knew we had already talked about a lot of this, and then how him and his wife and Nicoll keep it normal at home. This is Keith Urban from twenty twenty one. It's kind of the prequel, the prequel. Oh yeah, it's the prequel to the one that came out last Tuesday. And by the way, if you missed that, you can go listen to it, but also the full video of it as well on the YouTube. Just go to at Bobby Bone's channel. At Bobby Bones's channel to watch that basically forty five fifty minute interview with Keith Urban. All right, here you go, all right in with Keith Urban, which it's Caitlin sends her best my wife. She just said, Keith's coming over. I said, yeah, she said, tell him, first of all, thank you for the the wedding gifty cent. It's the nicest sheets we've ever owned in our entire life.

00:01:38
Speaker 2: Nice. You should stay in more of them, you know.

00:01:40
Speaker 1: I she got on to me a little bit because you probably don't do this, but I still have two At times.

00:01:46
Speaker 2: I have spray tan yeah, okay, okay.

00:01:48
Speaker 1: And I got into the sheets and spraytan once and she reminded me how nice of sheets they were, and then I should never do that again.

00:01:56
Speaker 2: And then you reminded her how much expensive tanning was, and it didn't work.

00:02:02
Speaker 3: The tanning does not really hold a candle to.

00:02:04
Speaker 2: The destroyed sheet.

00:02:06
Speaker 1: Yes, but they weren't destroyed and they all came out wonderfully. But she said, tell him thank you, and she had even asked, and you tell me because we had written you and your lovely wife and thank you card, but we thought we would just mail it instead of handing it to you, which would have been more awkward to hand it to you in person, or just to get it like a normal in the mail.

00:02:24
Speaker 2: Either way, both are fine. Yeah, and you could have even not sent it, but told me that you did. In a sauthild accounts, I.

00:02:31
Speaker 1: Said that to to people, and I said, hey, what if I just send people a message for a wedding gift, like a video message?

00:02:35
Speaker 2: I heart felt sure, absolutely human?

00:02:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, and said that, and I said, but everybody just roasted me like it was the dumbest thing they had ever heard, because they just loved the tradition of the hand. If someone sends me a thank you card for something I expected thank you card for, I don't feel like it means as much. If I get a thank you card for something I don't expect to thank you. Absolutely, that's awesome, I hear you.

00:02:58
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, it's It's a complix hated etiquette, isn't it?

00:03:01
Speaker 1: Is this back home? Is it so etiquette back in like Australia.

00:03:06
Speaker 2: New Zealand. Yeah, etiquette.

00:03:09
Speaker 3: This is a dumb American thing where we have this, you know?

00:03:12
Speaker 2: Is this?

00:03:12
Speaker 1: Is this the thing there with after if someone gets married. Back in New Zealand, I.

00:03:16
Speaker 2: Had to learn the whole thing about thank you gods. And because I didn't grow up with any of that, I think my family was not that etiquette at all. Etiquette eternally just no, they were not at all. I had to learn the hardway here that you write thank you notes to people. That was that was completely foreign to me.

00:03:33
Speaker 3: I remember once you were kind enough to invite me over to your place.

00:03:36
Speaker 1: It was a Christmas and we were in Australia and you said, hey, you should come over, and I was talking to you about music in Australia and New Zealand and country music in particular.

00:03:48
Speaker 3: I was like, what is country music like here?

00:03:50
Speaker 1: And you you had kind of expressed to me that country music there is kind of am like, it's a different kind of home bred folksya country in Australia. Now some of the American version is getting over there, but it's hard to find country music on the radio in Australia.

00:04:09
Speaker 2: Well, the struggle for Australian country artists is there isn't the big mainstream infrastructure that there is here in America. You know, here we have FM country stations everywhere, satellite radio, you got multiple video platforms. This is even preceding YouTube with CMD and GAC. None of that existed in Australia. So there was a lot of country artists wanting to make more mainstream sounding country music, but there wasn't the platforms for it. And there's some degree that's still a struggle there.

00:04:39
Speaker 1: So how growing up there did you attach yourself to the thought of country music and that's the kind of music you wanted to make or were you naturally just making it and it was the most organic place for you to fit musically here?

00:04:56
Speaker 2: It well, I mean Nashville was just the destination.

00:04:59
Speaker 3: Because why why was it the destination?

00:05:01
Speaker 2: It was written on the back of all the records that my dad had, Don Williams mostly and Glenn Campbell, Charlie Pride, Merle Haggard, all of those records all sit on the back of them recorded in Nashville. Tennessee. So as a kid, I'm like, oh, that's where you go to make records. Period. I just thought that's where you go if you want to make a record.

00:05:19
Speaker 1: But how did your dad get so involved in music from Nashville because not all was from Nashville. You're talking about country music other than Bob Dylan Nashville Skyline, you know, there weren't a lot of I don't know if pap would be the word or Nashville wasn't big unless it was country Americana.

00:05:34
Speaker 3: So how did your dad get involved in that scene?

00:05:37
Speaker 2: Musically? So in the fifties he was playing in a band. In the fifties he was a drummer and he played and ban called the Ricochets in New Zealand and in the fifties. Rock and roll happened in the mid fifties, right, so it made its way down to New Zealand. My dad got obsessed with rock and roll and consequently American movies, American cars. We always had American cars growing up, which is crazy in Australia. He was just in love with America and he loved rock and roll in the fifties all through the sixties and then in the late sixties when rock and roll kind of went a in a bigger, kind of different direction than I mean, the origins of rock and roll is really rockabilly. You know, there was a country element in early rock and roll. So when rock then became more rock as we knew it through the sixties seventies, my dad went, that's kind of a little too hard for me. And here's the connection. There was a group called the pos O Seiko Singers, which was a folk group in the sixties, and one of the members of that group was a guy called Donald Williams, and then he broke away from that group, dropped the Donald became Dom Williams in went country, and my dad just followed him. That was really it.

00:06:47
Speaker 3: And so you growing up listening to that music, that was your music in the house.

00:06:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well, and my mom loved Neil Diamond Everly Brothers. My brother was into Elo and Supertramp and Eagles and Fleetwood Mac. So that was older fusion.

00:07:01
Speaker 3: How proficient was your dad with a guitar?

00:07:05
Speaker 2: Oh, terrible with guitar, great with drums, but terrible and guitar.

00:07:08
Speaker 1: So for you, was it drums at first or were other people playing a guitar around you, and you're like, think that that's.

00:07:15
Speaker 2: It for me? No, they said, Mom and dad brought me a ukulele when I was five, and I guess it is a toy I mean, and my dad said I could strum it in time with songs on the radio. I wasn't playing any cholds, but the rhythm was there.

00:07:28
Speaker 3: So rhythm, which I mean possibly from.

00:07:30
Speaker 2: Him, definitely. Yeah. And my grandfather played piano, so all of my dad's music brothers role musical, trumpet, piano, guitar, drums, four brothers. Uh so it was all musical, and I just took the guitar. I guess because of the ukulele.

00:07:44
Speaker 1: Was he the dad that wanted you to follow in his footsteps of Hey, if I'm musical, I think it's cool that you're musical, or like so many people in the creative worlds, I've seen what a beast this can be. Like I would like to push you away from it, unless you push so hard back that you want to get in it.

00:07:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that was it, definitely, because I I heighted, I wasn't very disciplined as a kid. I don't know if you can relate to that. Bobby but were you disciplined as a kid, because are you disciplined now?

00:08:12
Speaker 1: Yes, because of the addiction that my mom had and my dad left, you know, because I was by myself with my dad bailing out when I was six, my mom being a drug addict her entire life. I was so disciplined that I couldn't go down that path or I was going to just go down the path and live in that path. So, you know, even today, I've never had a drink of alcohol because I feel the addict in me with other things I do.

00:08:39
Speaker 3: So I am extremely disciplined until i'm not, and then I'm off the end.

00:08:44
Speaker 1: And I have to find and I don't know if you have to do this at times. Well, I have to find my healthy addictions. And I don't know if that's a safe thing to say, sure, but I need to be addicted to something, So I have to find the healthiest thing for me to be addicted to. Because my now coatural gravity is to go to something and and and invest myself all the way in. It's so much so that it is unhealthy. So I gotta find the healthiest version of that, because it's just in me intrinsically, like I I yes, I am so disciplined to a fault, so because I know I had one instance where I really felt it and I do want to get back to, you know, talking about your parents. But I had one instance when now I was I got jumped and got a gun to my head and I had a bunch of like trauma in that way where I got a healthy gunpoint, I had had my house broken into. It was like a lot of things happening when my career was just starting to take off and I didn't take it seriously yet, and I was having some some threats from the outside and I couldn't sleep, and so my doctor was like, hey, you should if you can't sleep and you're sick, you should take sleeping pills. Took them, had trouble with them, couldn't get off of them, and I was like, oh my god, well are.

00:09:54
Speaker 2: You taking them and staying up side of them?

00:09:58
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I don't remember. I don't right, I don't remember.

00:10:03
Speaker 1: And so I would take these sleeping pills and I remember the day where I went, oh, I'm stuck.

00:10:08
Speaker 2: I'm stuck.

00:10:09
Speaker 3: And it was the only time because I remember my mom.

00:10:11
Speaker 4: Being because you couldn't sleep without them, couldn't sleep, but couldn't sleep without them, felt like they were tethered to me anywhere I went at any point, I had to have them with me because if I needed a sleep, that was the only way I could go.

00:10:23
Speaker 1: And I remember thinking, oh, I'm I can't. I can't beat this right now, like this has got a.

00:10:28
Speaker 2: Hold of me.

00:10:29
Speaker 1: And it was the only time that I ever related to my mom because she had been in rehabit and now and I'd always thought, why can't you just beat it? But I just had to mention of it.

00:10:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I was like, oh God, this is it.

00:10:41
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:10:42
Speaker 1: And so because of that and how I grew up, I am extremely disciplined. So did to answer your easy question about life and music? You know, I do have that discipline in me from I gotta be.

00:10:54
Speaker 2: Or I'm going to go off. Yeah that makes sense and not be completely Yeah.

00:10:59
Speaker 1: So I was disciplined as a child. You were not disciplined, No, I wasn't.

00:11:05
Speaker 2: I think just being an artist comes with a sense of being able to create, and so there's a sense of just freedom and liberation. Also as the youngest, you know, I had an older brother, and I think it's not uncommon for the younger sibling to potentially be a little more like, well, everyone else take care of everything. I'm fine. I'm just floating along.

00:11:26
Speaker 1: So your older brother played music, how come you didn't get stuck with the bass.

00:11:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, he didn't play. We started playing guitar at the exact same time. I was six, he was eight, and he started on a steel string acoustic and I started on with nylon strings and he just couldn't hack it and gave up pretty quick. And to your point about my dad, I went into my dad one time and said these strength these I hate playing guitar, and my dad goes, all right, well, then don't do it. And I was like, ah, that's not what I wanted. I wanted him to tell me I have to do it and get into a fight. So it was kind of reverse psychology that works really well.

00:12:01
Speaker 1: What was the relationship like with your dad and you as you became twelve, fourteen, sixteen years old?

00:12:08
Speaker 2: My dad's alcoholic was he's not here anymore, but he was alcoholic his whole life. I never just never dealt with it, you know. So my brother and I classic adult children of alcoholic raised and I got the same genetic disposition as my dad and my brother didn't have that. Really, it doesn't have it. No, it's wild because I feel it. I have it right, and luckily I saw it early. But it's crazy that you would have it and your brother doesn't. Yeah. Yeah, but then he has no hair and I have hair, so it's a fair trade.

00:12:43
Speaker 1: Did you feel like as you tried to achieve musically you were doing it for you or you were doing it somewhat to create a bond to your dad that maybe wasn't there because of other circumstances.

00:12:55
Speaker 2: Probably both, you know both, And you know, I think in the song we have wild Heart, so you know there's a song about it opens with Johnny Cash, you know, sort of man in Black, because when I was five, dad, mom and dad took us to see Johnny Cash, and I remember so much about that concert. But the thing I think that it's subconsciously in me was I was really taken by how my dad was staring at this guy on stage and probably thinking, how do I get my dad to look at me like that? Right? Isn't that wild? Yeah? Yeah, so I don't. I don't know if I saw it. It's hard to know, right, did I recognize in that person on stage with the guitar. Did I recognize something that I was going to do, or something that I wanted to do, or something that I should do? I don't know, it doesn't really matter in the end.

00:13:44
Speaker 1: When did it start to be And I'm not going to say the word easy, I don't think that's fair to you, But when did it start to be that you had an understanding that you could actually create and manipulate with that instrument?

00:13:55
Speaker 2: Tuesday? This week?

00:13:56
Speaker 3: This week?

00:13:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great moment.

00:13:58
Speaker 1: You've been missing, You've missing a lot, You've been doing pretty good up until Tuesday.

00:14:02
Speaker 2: You've had us all fulled. Yeah?

00:14:03
Speaker 3: Was it fourteen fifteen?

00:14:05
Speaker 1: Was it earlier than that where you're like, Okay, I can actually do this at a higher level than like my peers are doing this.

00:14:11
Speaker 2: Uh. I don't know if I've ever felt that way really, No, No, because you know in Australia, Yeah, because I've always been around people way better than me, always, And in Australia there's like the local guy playing in the cover band, because people go who your influences? I'm like, ah, the guy in the local cover band, Barry Kloff And then Dallas Southam and then Redge Grant and all these guys playing in cover bands. I'm twelve years old, thirteen years old watching them going, Oh, I wish I could play that good. And then at some point you'd play that good, and so you're already looking to the next guy. Oh, I wish could play as good as him, and you just your your influences, keep moving.

00:14:46
Speaker 1: Who was it for you that was your favorite, your first favorite artist where you really clicked and you're like, that's my favorite, your own.

00:14:54
Speaker 2: It's a good question. Gosh, I don't know.

00:14:58
Speaker 3: For me, I'll vamp of it as you think. He can have a good answer for me.

00:15:02
Speaker 1: You know, it was John Mayer whenever he was starting, because I felt someone writing the things that I was thinking, and I never had experienced that before. Wow, he's a couple of years older than I am, but I was like, wow, this guy one. I liked his tone, I liked his style, but he was saying things. It was like a really good comedian, you know how you go.

00:15:19
Speaker 2: Oh.

00:15:20
Speaker 3: I always thought that I just didn't know how to say it like that.

00:15:22
Speaker 1: It was the first time I'd ever heard that in song, and I thought, Wow, he's kind of speaking for me musically is the first time that it ever happened. So he became my first ever like, that's my favorite artist. There have been others that that since have done that. I'm a big Counting Crows guy to you know, but John Mayer was it for me?

00:15:42
Speaker 3: Now that I've given you a little time, who do you think it is for?

00:15:45
Speaker 2: Well, what I actually think about is Joe Mellencamp is the is the guy that's coming to mind. The reason is I grew up playing with list country music right, going to at least talent quests and different petitions playing country music. But then I got to be twelve, thirteen, fourteen. I left school at fifteen. I was playing in a cover band at fifteen, so we just do on Top forty and I'm playing in all the pubs in Australia. And the pubs are rough places, you know, just concrete floor, hose it out the end of the night, rough crowd, no holes barred. If you suck, they will let you know you suck. And I grew up playing in that very rock environment and so I loved country. I loved rock, I loved Top forty. I'm like, what the hell do I do who am I musically? And then John put out Loansome Jubilee, which was an album that had songs like paper and Fire check it out, Cherry Bomb, YadA yea Dayada, and it was rock, but it had like fiddle and it had accordion and everything. So we went to see him in concert on that tour. I was playing in a cover band. The band got tickets. We went to see him, and we're way up in the nosebleeds in this arena. Him and the band comes out and they and it was so insanely great and it was rock country something whatever the hell was going on. It was literally an epiphany. And I saw what Jill was doing and I went, oh, that's the answer. You don't think about labels. Just take all the things you love, figure it out how to put them together and make it be like this. And I was very lucky to meet John many many years later and tell him that story, and he said, it's so great that that's what you took away from that concert, because most people leave the concert and go, I'm going to do that. I'm gonna have fiddle in my bed, you know, and just rip off. Joe Mellencamp but what I took from it was just do your own thing.

00:17:38
Speaker 1: Take all the things you love and the original John Mellencamp, obviously a Middle America guy who had country and rock roots at the same time, incorporated them all.

00:17:46
Speaker 3: How do you see that affecting your show that you do now?

00:17:49
Speaker 1: Like, what are the surroundings that you've taken from your life because you have a different kind of show?

00:17:54
Speaker 3: Yeah, of really anyone?

00:17:55
Speaker 1: I mean, and I say that in the most complimentary way. And I've told you this off a microphone too, Like, you do the best live show I've ever seen.

00:18:03
Speaker 2: You need to get out more, Bubby.

00:18:04
Speaker 1: I've seen a lot of live shows. I'm jaded at this point too. I'm extremely jaded.

00:18:08
Speaker 2: That's a higher compliment than it is. Yeah, it is.

00:18:11
Speaker 1: I've seen it all and I don't care to see anymore because it's just part of the life we live right until.

00:18:15
Speaker 3: But when your move, your move so hard.

00:18:16
Speaker 1: When you're jaded, and to watch you perform, I leave and I'm like, god, dang, I just I thought i'd seen it all. So because of that, you're it is so So what do you take? What are your influences that have created what is your project in the same way that he had taken fiddle and he had taken you know, a different kind of percussion.

00:18:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the different self is for me as I play guitar, So that becomes a strong point of the of what I do. I love guitar riffs. I love catchy songs, you know, unapologetically energy too, and energy yeah, and fiercely in the moment presence, absolutely and really giving a shit, like really really like this is the last gig I'll ever play. Every is the last gig ever play.

00:19:01
Speaker 1: That's what I think I want to talk about your shows is not only is it musically wonderful and sonically just the greatest, but there's so much energy there that doesn't feel forced energy.

00:19:11
Speaker 3: It feels like pure energy. And there's a difference.

00:19:15
Speaker 1: Sometimes you go out and you really do I'm like, I'm gonna really work for this show, but it doesn't feel like work. It feels like that's who you are as an artist, Like that's the most genuine version of you. And again, if you if you haven't seen Keith's show, and honestly this wasn't leading up to the promo of your tour. Yeah, your tickets are on until today, which works in great into this and it's the it's the greatest live show I think I've seen because and I don't know why you keep going into the audience.

00:19:38
Speaker 3: You may not not do that with COVID.

00:19:39
Speaker 1: Now I've just seen you do it so many times.

00:19:45
Speaker 3: Like stop, like I'm worried for your own hell.

00:19:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, like people we were talking to Jerry Flower, Yeah, Jerry Klower. Jerry Clower is one of my favorites too, by the way, hear me Jerry.

00:20:01
Speaker 2: Clowers only one time and he is just a pistol. Yeah yeah.

00:20:05
Speaker 1: So but the other Jerry who you were in the ranch with, and who is your musical leader, band director?

00:20:11
Speaker 2: I don't know, yea bas player, yep.

00:20:13
Speaker 1: He said that you guys were doing a private function and you ran into the crowd and they were so high they started biting you. Oh yeah, I like wait what, Like I knew that was going to happen, but it's already happened. Like they pulled your shirt off and they were biting you. Yeah, and you kind of give off that or like you accept that. So we try and feed people before the show. Now, they're very passionate, is very passionate.

00:20:40
Speaker 2: Let me say this.

00:20:41
Speaker 1: The new American tour, The Speed of Now World Tour twenty twenty two fifty three shows between June seventeenth and November fifth of twenty twenty two. There is a full list of dates and tickets right now at Keith Urban dot com. Let's go back whenever you're playing in these cover bands, what was the ceiling for you as far as as for your career when you're fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old?

00:21:04
Speaker 2: What's the ceiling in your mind? Yeah? How far you can get in your career. I never thought of it. I don't know, it's so weird. I was never one of these kids with a plan at all, none, just try and get better. I was playing in this cover band that I talked about in nineteen eighty eight when it saw Mellencamp. Yah, yeah, yeah, And I wasn't the lead singer. I was guitar playing and we were playing. It was for a cover band. We were doing a couple of thousand people on a Sunday afternoon, which was a lot of people to come and see this cover band. But it was a really good band.

00:21:35
Speaker 3: What was your role in the cover band guitar and lead singer?

00:21:38
Speaker 2: Well, we had a lead singer that wasn't you, It wasn't me. And the only reason I joined this band was I had a manager who was also managing this band. It's a long story, but I had been in I'd done duo's, I'd done bands. I'd always had my own thing, right. It was always me was whatever. I was always doing my thing. My manager thought, I really need some frontman experience, how to handle a crowd, how to put a set list together, how to put on a show, how to just lead. And so he said, I've got this band. I think you should join the band and watch this front man because he's amazing and you'll learn so much. So I was with that band for about a year and he was right. I learned so much from that lead singer. But one of the things was I wanted to do some original songs. We're doing all these covers, and so I started writing a song and he loved it, and the band learned it, and he was going to even sing it and it would be on the set list and I'd be looking at the guys in the band, I'm like, here comes that song. He comes a song. We were going to get to do our song and he would bail on it. Every time. He'd be like, n I skip that one. Let's do money money, and I'm like yeah, And after a while of that, I just went I'm not this is going nowhere. What are you going to do with covers? I want to want to play original music. So I left the band and the drummer and bass player quit at the same time and came and joined me.

00:23:02
Speaker 3: And so then what do you do? Is it a new name band?

00:23:05
Speaker 2: Is it are you? It was just me, it was just solo. But then of course I couldn't get any work playing original songs, and so we resorted to be in another cover band, but slipping in my own songs in between the covers at least. Yeah.

00:23:19
Speaker 1: And so as you're doing your own music, are you in Australia at this point?

00:23:22
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, it's all in Australia.

00:23:24
Speaker 3: Was the plan to get to the States.

00:23:26
Speaker 2: At some point? Yeah, But I didn't know how when nothing knew nothing about that? Then how did you? So in nineteen eighty nine, my manager got some tickets for us to come over to America and we came to Nashville and spent lips played down at the Shoonees which was on Demonbrian and pitched my crappy demo to all the labels, met with complete silence?

00:23:51
Speaker 3: Is it now?

00:23:52
Speaker 1: It was met with complete silence because it's your big, famous and successful or was it really met with complete silence?

00:23:58
Speaker 2: Oh? No, it was terrible. First of all, was a terrible demo, which, of course when you come from if you're not from here, you think it's pretty pretty good because it's pretty good from where you come from, but it's pretty crap when you get here compared to everything else. And I was just out of out of step, out of place, out of step. My music didn't fit at all. So what made you think that you could stay and thrive? Because Nashville was like sixteenth and seventeenth have And I got here and I went, this is it? Is this it This is the legendary iconic music row like that's it. I'm like, ah, this is this is fantastic. It's not New York City. It's like this is I'm at home. I love it here, it's great, and I didn't want to leave. And I also foolishly thought we'll get I'll get here and I'll start writing songs and I'll record and boom, We'll be off and running in no time. And man, the years just went by and by, and.

00:24:50
Speaker 1: What were you doing? And could you make money though at the time, Like if you're coming from Australia and you're just visiting, were you able to make money?

00:24:56
Speaker 2: So I signed a publishing deal with a company in Australia that had an office in Nashville. It's very small, little wage to where it's not even a wage. What is it like money that you're gonna have to pay them back? Right? So I'd come over for a couple of weeks on my own, stay with crashes somebody at their house, go and write songs every day with whoever they put me with. You know that thing that we do here in Nashville professional songwriters. Whenever the new kid in town is, they throw them in with the pro songwriters and see if something happens.

00:25:27
Speaker 1: Was that weird for you, by the way, because that was the culture and you've been writing probably by yourself.

00:25:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, it was really difficult. I also was nowhere near good enough yet, and so I'm getting with really great pro writers and I just I sucked. I just had so much to learn that was excruciating.

00:25:43
Speaker 3: And are you learning or are you overwhelmed?

00:25:45
Speaker 2: I think and also frustrated the way in which I would write with my drum machine and my bass or a banjo or something, and always with a groove. Always. I would never sit with a guitar and a legal pad in a windowless room.

00:25:58
Speaker 3: So were you an early track guy?

00:26:00
Speaker 2: Because if yeah, definitely, because I like I like them well, because I write from the music out. The music is trying to tell a story, and then I extrapolate the story from the music.

00:26:10
Speaker 5: Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor and we're back on the Bobby Cast.

00:26:24
Speaker 3: Will you write songs with melody?

00:26:26
Speaker 4: First?

00:26:28
Speaker 2: Uh?

00:26:29
Speaker 3: Just straight melody? Will you write a melody?

00:26:31
Speaker 2: Do? Do? Do?

00:26:33
Speaker 3: And that's what you have? Then you create around the melody.

00:26:35
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:26:36
Speaker 1: Are you more prone to do that when writing if you're starting from scratch or an idea, a lyric like where.

00:26:43
Speaker 2: Do you like to start? If you get to choose, If I get to choose, I like a groove. A beat doesn't have to be fast, just any kind of beat that I can then play along with, whether it's bass, guitar, guitar, piano, something, banjo, whatever, It doesn't matter, just something that you pick up and just respond to and then a melody comes, a melody comes of some sort, and then you I think the music has an emotion about it. It's trying to say something I make somebody like you. You know. That song started from flying out to La meeting this guy John Shanks. I didn't know. I was so nervous to meet with some LA guy, you know, and I'm like, what do I know. I've showed up with my banjo and everything. And before I went to the session, I went to this Irish pub and I had a pint of guinness and it was like ten in the morning and it was really good. So I had another one and that was a really good. So I had like a third one. I get in my car, drive over to the studio where he is and by and by then I walked in and I felt pretty pretty just not bulletproof, but I felt very relaxed, very confident, you know. And he had this little drum machine and it was going, that's all it was doing. And I pulled my banjo out of the case and go, Dan, no idea, why just it just came out and We're like, oh, it feels good. What do we do with that? You know? And then nothing something and so does something. Gotta find some words and that's that's it, and then you just the rest comes.

00:28:18
Speaker 1: You're creating that vocal melody to without putting the words on it. Yeah, so blah blah blah. So that that that and then you'll go would you record that?

00:28:26
Speaker 2: Yeah?

00:28:26
Speaker 3: Go back over and go, okay, you know what's down here?

00:28:28
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well a lot of times it's gibberish. Is actually trying to say something like you listen to the tape, which we had a tape then, and it would be and you're like, oh, there's a there was that a new wind? Something write there now never never known, sounds like it's like scared. It's all in there. I think Mick Jagger calls it making vowel movements. Great.

00:28:52
Speaker 3: So as you're here and you're learning to write, when does the ranch.

00:28:55
Speaker 2: Start to be a thing? Uh? Well, this three piece band that I mentioned, I had drummer, bass player that I took from this cover band. I thought, well, let's head over to Nashville and do some shows. You know, all I can bring is bass player and drums. I got no money. I can't afford anything by Right around that time, I actually had built out a five piece band. I sign a record deal in Australia, did an album, put two more guys in my band, keyboard and guitar, so I had drums, bass, keyboard, guitar, and me and we were touring around playing these songs off my album. So it was starting to happen in Australia, was popping, had a song on the radio and I was like, here we go. It's great, you know, but all I wanted to do is come to Nashville. I couldn't bring the whole band, so I could bring bass and drums. At least I could bring and make a sound out of it. My bass play and drummer were the two guys that didn't sing, so I had no harmony, no nothing. So my bass player went back to Australia and I found a singing bass player from Florida and we played for a year or so, and then he went back to Florida and we found Jerry who came in and took over. So we were free piece. Because of no money. It was not my preference. It just couldn't afford anymore players, and that eventually became the Ranch.

00:30:11
Speaker 1: What's interesting about that if we were playing back some of the Ranch stuff with Jerry, and it feels like it was just ahead of a time like that, that music, and we were listening to some demos and some old some old you know Ranch cuts. Right, it feels like seven years later, right, that probably hits.

00:30:28
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:30:29
Speaker 1: Do you feel like it was a bit advanced musically and that's why it didn't work at the time.

00:30:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, it certainly didn't sound like anything on radio. And that's always the thing, you know, with the record we made in nineteen ninety seven just didn't sound like anything on the radio. When it was hell making that record because we were signed to Warner Brothers in nineteen ninety five and we went in with every quarter pointed producer in town. Every one of those situations didn't work because what happens is we would either sound like us, which didn't sound like the radio, or we would sound like something that could go on the radio. It didn't sound like us, and we were just in hell and just no matter what we did, we just couldn't make it, couldn't make it work.

00:31:14
Speaker 3: Was there someone that was betting on you?

00:31:16
Speaker 1: Though? As Keith Urban, Like, Okay, the ranch didn't work, but we still have faith in you. And so many times in this town, once you don't make it, people are like, well, you're just not gonna make it. I see it all the time, like, wow, you didn't make it, Probably.

00:31:27
Speaker 2: Not for you. Yeah.

00:31:28
Speaker 1: Was there anyone that was like, hey, I know that didn't work and maybe it was just you, right? Was there anyone that was like, hey, you have that star, like, let's keep going and try to figure out who Keith Urban is instead of this three piece?

00:31:41
Speaker 2: I think that was me. I mean I just had that burning belief. I know why is because I was I'd grown up on all this music. I knew how to make the music, but I didn't know how to make it with this band. This band had a unique sound about it, and the band wasn't I wasn't trying to get the band signed, you know, the band wasn't in the plan. Originally. It morphed into that. So it was originally you, It was me. It was me and my base player drummer. We didn't have a name. It was just my name. But we got messed around with so much by the record company and the tipping point was over at that label. At Warner Brothers at the time. They just signed me, not the other two guys. And we made the record and they said, oh, we're going to send you guys out, maybe to play some of these songs. But actually we're not sending you guys out. We're just going to put a house band together, and we're going to send out you, Keith, and about four other artists on our label, and you guys will all share the same band. And I went, no, I won't, Like, what do you mean. I go, I'm not I'm not playing with just I got a band, right, take my band with me. And they're like, yeah, but we didn't sign your band, and I go, no, I know, but I mean they're my band. It doesn't make sense when I play with someone else. And when we got dropped from that label and went over to Capitol, I said, you have to sign everybody, and I'm going to get rid of my name too. The hell with it getting read of my name. We're doing it, you know. And I had so many people around me saying, don't do that, don't drop your name and just lose yourself in the band. But that's what I did. When you became Keith Urber.

00:33:09
Speaker 1: I want to roll through some number ones here two thousand and one, your first number one.

00:33:13
Speaker 3: But for the grace of God, let's hear a little bit of this.

00:33:19
Speaker 2: I must.

00:33:24
Speaker 3: After the years of struggle on a.

00:33:26
Speaker 1: Label to have a hit, did it feel like a relief or did it feel like this is amazing? Because there's a difference. Was that like, oh my god, thank you? It was it like whoa, That's what I'm talking about?

00:33:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, only above. It was surreal to have a number one song in America was just crazy. I remember that day like it was yesterday. Really, oh my god.

00:33:54
Speaker 3: Twenty years ago, you still remember it like that your first Wanly?

00:33:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I remember exactly the house I was at, what I was doing, Who told me everything? Like detail? Because it was too surreal. I was like number one, like the number one most played song in country radio in America? Truly?

00:34:09
Speaker 1: Really did your life change after that? After you had a number one? Since you could say it.

00:34:16
Speaker 2: I felt like, Okay, now we got a chance to get some more music going. And the next single after that I think was Where the Blacktop Ends, which.

00:34:26
Speaker 1: Is weird because it peaked it. I was looking at numbers. It wasn't a number one No, but that, to me is one of the songs I think of when I think of you and your catalog is where the Blacktop ends. Wasn't even number one, no, which shows you not all number ones or career songs, and not all career songs are.

00:34:42
Speaker 2: Number one song.

00:34:43
Speaker 1: So true, even in two thousand and one, two thousand and two, did that song feel big like a number one song where the Black Top ends.

00:34:52
Speaker 2: I can't remember that now, one you can't remember now? I can't remember that. I mean I I remember making that a whole album with Matt Rawlings and it it was the first time where I was in a studio and having gone through all of the famous producers and realizing none of it works for me. I don't know what I'm going to do. It was a guy running Capitol Records at the time called Pat Quiggley, and he was the president. And I used every proper famous producer and none of it was working. And I went in to Pat and I said, can I just I had just done a session with Matt Rowlings for somebody else. The two of us were playing on it, and I clicked with him and I really liked him a lot, and I said, could I just go and record some songs with this guy, because I think he can put a good band together and we can just make a record that sounds good. And he went, yeah, whatever. It was very much that case of like, go do whatever you want to do. We're not that interest. You could tell whatever it's going. So we went and cut up the Grace Guard and like four or five songs, and I took him in and played for him and he goes, that sounds good to finish the record out. It was no big deal. And we handed in the record and it had It's a Love Thing and want to Be or everything all the singles that came out, Grace God, Blacktop, all that stuff, and they put out Love It's a love Thing. I think I went to number eighteen or something like It's okay, pretty good. They put out another song, I want to Be Everything, and I think got to top five or close to it, and it wasn't it was okay. Everything was okay. And then the label really focused on me and they put out Grace of God and it did that and I could feel everything change after that.

00:36:27
Speaker 1: Whenever somebody like you comes out two thousand and two, here's a little clip, Yeah, do you remember this one? Is Vivid your second number one? Yeah?

00:36:43
Speaker 2: You do? Okay, everything about it, recording it first time, I'd work with Dan Hulf working out at sound Kitchen at Franklin and the putting, the putting the band together and thee the whole session. I remember it's vividaly because it got magical.

00:36:57
Speaker 3: Does a guy like Dan Huff challenge you?

00:37:00
Speaker 2: So I was going to do the next record on my own Golden Road, and I had already done six sides of that record, including who wanted me. I put the band together, I chose the studio, I chose the engineer, I put it all together. And then someone said, you know, you should try and work with Dan half and I went, no, I don't want to work with him because and they went, well, he's a guitar player. I mean, I'm so not going to work with the guitar player who's going to tell me what to play, you know. I don't want that. I've been down this road before. And they're like, we'll just give it a shot, you know. And I met with Dan, and this is a true story, and there was really a compliment to Dan. I met with Dan. I said, Okay, I've got this one song. It's called Somebody Like You. That'd be a good one for us to start on. And I'd already been in the studio for two weeks with this band. We'd cut half the record, it's already done. And Dan says, Okay, this song feels great. I think we should use this drummer. And I got already got the drummer. Well, I think we should use this base. But I I got the whole band, Dan, I got the whole band. All right, Well, I like to work at this studio, I said, I'm already at the studio. We're gonna be at sound kitchen. Okay, Well, the engineer I like to use head when I already got the engineer's name's Justin Ebank, And he goes, what do I do? When I go, you just show up. That's all you're going to do. Show up, because I want to see what you do. I'm sick of these producers that say they're a producer, but really they have great engineer, great players, they don't do anything. I saw it again and again and again. I'm like, just show up. What the hell can you possibly bring to this session? I want to see? And he walked into that session. I'd been with this band for two weeks. He walks in and I literally could feel all the musicianship go up a whole other level just with him being in the room. He sat in the room, the band's playing a bit of Somebody Like You, and he goes, hey, Chris, just change that snare a little bit there. Okay, ye leave that bass pot out right there, and you play that bit of it there. And I watched him arrange this thing and the whole track is Elevator, and I'm like, well, damn, this guy's the real deal. He's so good.

00:39:04
Speaker 3: When did the town start to treat you differently?

00:39:08
Speaker 2: Tuesday? As I was already getting support from the town very early on. I think because of all those writing sessions, you know, and when you write with people where it gets out whether you can really thing, really play, whether you know about country music if you're legit or just some posa really so, I think those sort of guitar pool sessions of people's houses going to the Bluebird, people knew I was. I was, for real.

00:39:38
Speaker 1: I was watching some of your performance with her. I guess all of it. Befotina Turner for the Rock.

00:39:42
Speaker 2: And Roll Hall of Fame.

00:39:43
Speaker 3: Oh well, how do you do? How did you get called in to do that?

00:39:47
Speaker 2: I haven't seen any of that? You haven't?

00:39:49
Speaker 1: No, what do you mean you haven't seen it? You don't watch it? Do you watch your stuff?

00:39:53
Speaker 2: No? Well I haven't seen that. No.

00:39:56
Speaker 3: Generally, will you go and watch your stuff?

00:39:58
Speaker 2: It depends.

00:39:58
Speaker 3: Are you one of the guys that after live show you want to go on critique it?

00:40:02
Speaker 2: I probably should do it more than I do.

00:40:04
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:40:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's always better when I get in there and care.

00:40:09
Speaker 1: How does a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame invite come with tin for Tina Turner?

00:40:15
Speaker 2: Uh? Because Brian Adams couldn't make it, And they just caught me up and they go, would you come and fill in for Brian's day before the cod Yeah? Yeah it was. It was Thursday and Nick and I were going to the Bahamas and my manager calls me and he goes, hey, can you come fill in for Brian? And I'm like if we're going to the Bahamas on Friday? He's like, you didn't hear what I said? And I was like, no, I heard you. We're heading off to the Bahamas and Nick's in the car and Nick's like, oh, I think we should do that. That sounds fun, But in my think, in my head, I'm like, this sounds overwhelming. I've got to learn a song in record time, a song I've never played. It's not really my kind of song. It's not my vocal range, it's not in my key. I'm sew in over my head. You know, I was terrified.

00:41:01
Speaker 1: You still get terrified, yeah, wild dear, Yeah, you well that anything musically would intimidate you.

00:41:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, to be thrown into something that's not really my zone, especially in that place. I'm like, maybe standing up on stage in front of McCartney and the food Fighters and they're all you know, I pictured them all like arms crossing, Okay, what do you do? What's your thing? And I'm like, well, it's not this, this is not it.

00:41:29
Speaker 1: That's so I could picture in my head when it comes to collaborations, as far as your career is concerned, what do you look back at and go, Man, that one right there, we nailed it.

00:41:39
Speaker 3: You and who collaboration marks, Yeah, you and who?

00:41:43
Speaker 2: So many? I mean John doing Crossroads with John Mayer to this day, I just loved that whole experience with him playing. I learned a lot from him. Really you learned from him?

00:41:54
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, yeah, yeah, what do you learn from John Mayer to.

00:41:58
Speaker 2: Make the song your own? You know? You gotta remember I still came from cover band land, which John did not, And so John approaches it as a pure artist and makes a song his own. Because I remember saying to him the rest didn't go like that. He's like, yeah, but that's how I'm gonna sing it right on.

00:42:15
Speaker 6: Of course the Bobby cast will be right back. This is the Bobby Cast.

00:42:30
Speaker 1: Is there a gamesmanship when you have two people that are so again, I'll just talk about the instrument for a second, So two people that are so proficient at their instrument, or you, guys, do you feel each other out at first?

00:42:41
Speaker 3: Are you like, is he really as good as I've heard?

00:42:43
Speaker 1: Or is it you know, because you've you've heard for yourself, like on a record or on YouTube. I'm not John specifically, but anyone. You know when you kind of cross path.

00:42:55
Speaker 2: Because I had a room for squares and we played that record to death on that two of us. So I was right from the beginning. I love the conversation, the musical conversation that happens, and the most important thing for me is spontaneity. It's just you know, you can rehearse, yeah, yeah, yeah. But being in the moment and having that musical conversation with each other is everything.

00:43:14
Speaker 1: You ever meet someone, you're like, man, it's gonna be awesome, and then you're like, that's not really right, really as good as that's hot or as you know, I don't want.

00:43:21
Speaker 2: You to say. Some people don't have a collaborative hert. That's what it is. They don't have a collaborative herd. For whatever reason, they just don't collaborate. They kind of they have that thing of well, this is what I do, so you do your thing, I'll do my thing, and I'm like, well, let's do how thing. That's what I'm here for.

00:43:38
Speaker 1: On the opposite side of that, who have you collaborated with it? You were like, oh, I didn't expect it to be as warm and as a just a friendly collaboration, but holy crap, we're in it and it's rocking pink.

00:43:50
Speaker 2: I think was that when we did one too many? Why Why do you think you guys hit it off? I think our voices go together really well, and I hope they would, but you never know until you hear it. But she was just unbelievably giving with that whole project, you know, for a song that she didn't write, to be giving so much of her time and her effort too. You know, we shot a video as well, and then we shot footage which we can use in concerts, so we have her projected on the screen and concert. That's all time consuming, and she was just amazing.

00:44:24
Speaker 1: Is it an issue whenever you're with an artist like that, because they also have their own music and their own singles and calendars, and when they want to put out their own to get Pink on a song, do you go, Okay, well, maybe we can release it as single, maybe not, depending on what your schedule is, right, I mean.

00:44:38
Speaker 3: Is that something? Is that an issue that you deal with other artists.

00:44:42
Speaker 2: It's something you have to consider, Yeah, for sure, because sometimes it's just the time's not going to work. You know. Yeah, it's great, the single sounds really great, but we're not going to be able to release it at the right time.

00:44:59
Speaker 1: I was reading on the internet that you bowl. Are you some of the stuff I didn't know and could be crap.

00:45:03
Speaker 2: Are you a bowler? Yeah?

00:45:04
Speaker 3: Are you a good bowler?

00:45:06
Speaker 2: I'm Okay, how do I not know that? I don't. We've never talked about it exactly been bowling? True?

00:45:12
Speaker 3: But where did?

00:45:12
Speaker 2: Where do you? Where do you bowl? I haven't bowled in a long time. It's just one of those things that I happened to be not bad at, sort of out of the gate. It's that I hand coordination that guitar players have.

00:45:24
Speaker 3: You know, your highest game is what you call it a game?

00:45:26
Speaker 4: Yeah?

00:45:27
Speaker 2: No, I don't know. Uh, you know, to have an average hundred and something? Really yeah, it's not grabbed me at three hundreds? Perfect game, right that definitely could crack No, but definitely could crack two hundred. Do you play pool? Yeah? You go to that. I think this mandatory when you're from Australia you go to play pool? Is that a thing? Yeah? Very much like all the pub up and they all had pool tables. Great sign of a misspent youth.

00:45:51
Speaker 1: Well think about that. Though you're you're good at bowling, you're good at pool. I mean is that you're obviously good at guitar. Which one made you good at which because you do have the hand eye coordination there. It's right, it's a coincidence. All those are very hand eye coordinated. Do you think being a good guitar player helped you be a good bowler?

00:46:10
Speaker 2: I suck at bass at basketball. I cannot get that thing in the hoop. So they guessed that theory.

00:46:15
Speaker 1: You true or false? You were once the road guitars for a bit for Brooks and Done. No, never one of the many things on Wikipedia.

00:46:22
Speaker 2: It's not true.

00:46:23
Speaker 1: I didn't think the bawling was true. I'll be honest with the eye got to be false, right, Okay, Yeah, so where does that story come from?

00:46:28
Speaker 2: Do you know? Yeah, we toured with Brooks and Done in two thousand and one and I came out and played one song with them as a guitarist, and I think that then from then on people were a backup. Yeah. I was like the guy in the band. Well, what happened was we were going to pull a prank on them, and they had a guitar player in the band, Charlieff got in his last name Charlie, and he had his hat down. Really, he had wore a hat wore down. Super Low had this like leopid print shirt and everything. And during the tour, I was thinking I could probably masquerade us. I could probably pretend to be him and the boys wouldn't even know. And so during one of the shows, Charlie slipped out the back while he was playing. I already had the same clothes on, slipped right out and reclaimed his spot on the stage and played an entire song, and then in the middle of the when the solo happened, kicks goes, Charlie and I ran down the front and was shredding right in between kicks and running, and it took a beat for them to realize I wasn't, but they did realize. So I think that was where this rumor got started.

00:47:36
Speaker 3: What's like a Tuesday at your house?

00:47:38
Speaker 2: Like?

00:47:39
Speaker 1: And I asked that because you and your wife exclusively are superstars. When you're together, I feel like you're kind of normal. Rights it's a weird situation. Yeah, Like when I see you two if were an event or something, I feel.

00:47:55
Speaker 3: Like as a couple you're quite approachable.

00:47:57
Speaker 1: Individually, it's different because I feel like I know you and I could just come up to you, but individually I would say you're superstar Keith Urban and she is superstar Nicole Kidman. But together it's almost like a normal husband and wife. And I've not seen that vibe with any other couple. Usually it's different. It's like they're much more they're much less approachable together because there's so much more power there.

00:48:23
Speaker 3: But it feels like you're a normal, normal married couple at home.

00:48:27
Speaker 2: Is that true? You'd be doing a house, it's like super normal.

00:48:31
Speaker 1: I saw her tell you once that she was gonna stop and get some milk, and I was like, you do that?

00:48:37
Speaker 2: What do you mean you're gonna get milk? Shouldn't someone be flying that in and like flying the cow in rock and roll?

00:48:46
Speaker 1: How how do you guys maintain what do you focus on to try to have normalcy in a life that is abnormal?

00:48:55
Speaker 2: I mean, look love, genuine love and genuine gratitude for what we get to do. Nick has it. I have it, and I think it's we were both raised in a similar thing to Australia's. Really, Australia has a thing called a tall poppy syndrome. Every Ozzie knows about this, and it's if you get too big in the in the South, they say when you get above you raisin right, they cut you down. You get cut down.

00:49:19
Speaker 3: The poppy seed plan is another one. The tall poppy gets got.

00:49:21
Speaker 2: There, you go, So that's it. So it's the it's the tall poppy syndrome where you don't last very long. If you're strutting around with this crazy ego in Australia, you could cut down so fast, so you just are always down to earth. You read it down to earth, you're out of work. It's one of the two, and it's it's put us in a really good place to have a good life because of it.

00:49:42
Speaker 1: What are you grateful for with her as a person? How does she make you better? And I asked this from a personal personal place because I've never been married. I've never even told anyone I hadn't either, right like I never there was no I didn't know how to love until now. No, because I think you know when you talk about the trauma for I struggle with a lot of that trauma until now and still am. But have found someone. But what is it about her as a human that you appreciate so much that brings a different side of you out that hadn't been exposed yet?

00:50:13
Speaker 2: She really loves, like genuinely loves and has real empathy, compassion, caring and love like I've never never experienced before.

00:50:27
Speaker 1: Do you ever watch her act and go, holy crap, that's so good or do you see it all the time where you just expect it to be great.

00:50:32
Speaker 2: No, she's so good.

00:50:35
Speaker 1: And I don't know anything about acting. Sometimes people say so says a bad actor. I'm like, I all looks the same to me. However, I was watching on Hulu nine Strangers.

00:50:45
Speaker 3: That's the whole thing. She's so good.

00:50:47
Speaker 1: In that that you then go, okay, that's good acting, Like, and she is nailing these serieses.

00:50:56
Speaker 3: If she's in a series, I'll watch it.

00:50:57
Speaker 1: It's just to that point now where if you're wife is in a series, even if I don't know what it's about, the history of poop.

00:51:04
Speaker 2: Right now, I'm going toward her next series, I'm going to watch.

00:51:07
Speaker 1: It because she has showed that she's awesome in these things.

00:51:10
Speaker 3: Do you do you talk about projects with her? Does she talk about projects with you.

00:51:12
Speaker 2: And you know them together and like should we do this? Yeah, yeah, souse. We have to talk about scheduling and where it is and how's this going to work? And then of course a lot of the times reading scripts with her, you know, this is the being the Ricado's, which is the Lacille Ball film that's coming out. Aaron Sulkin wrote most amazing scripts, and just getting to read these scripts is something that is God, it's surreal. You read with her sometimes, Yeah, do you ever want to do that? No? I have zero interest in acting, like none, zero. Does she ever hear a.

00:51:43
Speaker 3: Song of yours and go eh, it's okay, she.

00:51:47
Speaker 2: Doesn't have to. I can tell you here's the thing that's more important, and you may be able to relate to this. I realized that whoever I play a song for and I've had you at the house and I've played you things before, or how you react that song tells me a lot about the song, But what tells me more is how I feel playing it for you. I've learned so much about how I feel about playing somebody a song, whether it's you, whether it's Nick. Because you know, she may go I love that, and inside I'm thinking I did until I played it, and I'm not feeling so good about it now. So I want to figure out what's going on.

00:52:22
Speaker 1: What is your relationship with singles, EPs, albums, Because it's a new land out there.

00:52:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's tension, spans are different. Sorry what exactly?

00:52:33
Speaker 1: But it is getting that way, right, Yeah, So how are you feeling these days about twelve thirteen, fourteen track albums? Why do you see you changing how you're you know, doing Keith Urban distribution of music.

00:52:46
Speaker 2: I still like to think it comes down to quality, the quality of something, because people go, oh, people want shorter this, short of that, and I'm like, only because a lot of what's out there's just not great. It's okay, it's not great, and it's not great because it's having to be churned out at such a fast right now, because it's content content, content content quick. You have it with your show, and you're trying to maintain a level of excellence with this often unrealistic demand for the amount of it.

00:53:12
Speaker 1: You're trying to walk a line. How can I give you the best most exactly? That's exactly it? And I miss a lot because sometimes I do most and sometimes I do best, but I often don't get it right at the same time.

00:53:24
Speaker 2: And I think we're in this a lot in our society right now. The speed of everything and the demand for more and more and more and more quality takes time. Not always, but most of the time it takes. It takes a beat.

00:53:43
Speaker 1: Do you feel pressure from at the stage of your career, label as managers like hey, let's go, we need another something from you, or are you now like guys, you'll get it when you get it.

00:53:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never felt that. I've never felt I will say my record company, Capital Records, so I've been with a long time. I've never ever felt anything but support for what I do. They've never given me like dragging the record out of my hand, demanding this song with that song. Ever, they've been amazingly supportive.

00:54:11
Speaker 3: Do you need a teleprompter?

00:54:13
Speaker 2: Ever?

00:54:13
Speaker 1: For lyrics? You've got so many number one songs? Do you ever need a reminder of words? Do you have to refresh or are.

00:54:21
Speaker 2: You just there? Yeah, refresh it if it's gonna be an old song. But it's I have a sick memory for lyrics of songs. It's crazy you bring up I brought it up.

00:54:30
Speaker 1: But we talked about it with Ronnie Dunn, who I've oddly become friends with and we're opposite in many ways. But I mean we were texting last night like that's he's there's a big picture. When you walked into this guest house he sent over to the house of like a bull or something that was laying on the counter. But Ronnie has and I don't think he would care if I shared this. He has someone in his ear the whole time, right on a microphone side stage, telling him every lyrics to every song. He's had it for a long time. He's just like, I don't want to forget, and I don't have I don't have a good memory. So they're like out in the country, out in the count I mean they're right in there.

00:55:02
Speaker 2: That's excellent.

00:55:03
Speaker 3: I mean voice of an angel, but holy crap, we can't remember word.

00:55:06
Speaker 2: High pressure gig for the guy in the ear.

00:55:08
Speaker 1: It's and it's a yeah, very much though, but you have it all there for.

00:55:13
Speaker 2: The most part. Boy, he'd want to be on good terms with that guy, wouldn't he. It's like ron Ron Ronnie, you could get Burgundy san Diego real quick.

00:55:24
Speaker 1: Prompted there, let's talk about the new single. Then I do want to get back to the tour. But the current single is Wild Hearts. Let me play a little bit of this for you. I kind of have a relationship with every songwriter on this song, which is pretty cool.

00:55:53
Speaker 2: Eric is a dear friend of.

00:55:54
Speaker 1: Mine, Jen Wayne same she's in now she's in a group herself.

00:56:02
Speaker 2: Away June.

00:56:02
Speaker 1: There it is brad Tercy from Old Dominion. How does this room come together? Or was it a room that came together?

00:56:09
Speaker 2: It didn't come together. I got sent this song as a finished song, two verses, chorus done, and I got pitched the song from Roxy King and I heard it and I was like, hm, it's just I like, the chorus aren't really the rest of us not pulling me in? And so I passed on the song. And then about two weeks later, I woke up one morning singing this chorus in my head and I'm like, what is that? That's that wild Heart song. It's really special chorus. I listened to the song again and I went, man, that chorus is so freaking good. But the verses don't say anything to me. And so I called the writers and I said would I said it, would you mind if I rewrote the verses just to make it more personal because it's such a personal song. It's, you know, following your dreams. I'm like, well, what about what? You know? What was my dream journey from Australia to hear And they sent me the track without anything in the verses, and I just rewrote the verses.

00:57:11
Speaker 3: That's pretty cool one that they would go yes.

00:57:14
Speaker 2: And I said to them, I said, I'm a writer, so I get this. First of all, I'm I'm not one of these guys that's going to be like I added the word the right, give me fifty percent right. I've never been that guy. And I said, you guys have written the top song. It's top to bottom, it's finished, right. If you can pitch it and someone wants to cut it as is, please do that. I'm not asking to dismantle your song if someone else wants to record it, but if you are okay and I can rewrite these verses and they come up the way I think they will, I'm definitely recording this song. And God bless them they let me do that.

00:57:45
Speaker 1: The North American Tour the Speed of Now World Tour twenty twenty two.

00:57:49
Speaker 3: The tickets are on so now Keith Urban dot com.

00:57:52
Speaker 1: How long do you think you have another ten years of doing these really high energy shows in you?

00:57:57
Speaker 2: I don't even think about that. I mean, just the next, it's just the next show, good next.

00:58:01
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm injured. My whole body's still injured from my.

00:58:05
Speaker 2: That geo show, right, Sha, how beat?

00:58:07
Speaker 1: So now I think about it things in terms like could I do another three seasons of that show?

00:58:11
Speaker 2: And I can't.

00:58:11
Speaker 3: I now understand I can't. Yeahs her wrist, her shoulder hurt.

00:58:15
Speaker 2: Everything. Tour is not that show, but your tour.

00:58:17
Speaker 3: I'm telling you.

00:58:18
Speaker 2: The thing is that you're mad man.

00:58:21
Speaker 3: Your tour is it again?

00:58:23
Speaker 1: Is the most energetic show I have ever seen from a superstar who doesn't have to be that energetic because he's already a superstar.

00:58:30
Speaker 3: And I mean that in the most complimentary way.

00:58:31
Speaker 1: Right, you could go out and just put on a solid show and be Keith Urban and people will be blown away, But you don't. Your hair is on fire for no other reason than you live that Your art is your hair being on fire during a show.

00:58:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well I only know one volume to get out there and play at there is I mean, if it's real passion and the audience knows it, They're like, that's legit, that's a guy surfing on the wave not thinking about it, but it's really happening and I can feel it. It's it's true, it's in the moment.

00:58:58
Speaker 3: Do you lose yourself in show?

00:59:00
Speaker 2: Definitely? Yeah, It's a perfect balance of being completely present and completely lost in the moment all simultaneously.

00:59:08
Speaker 1: Do you ever Sometimes I'll drive and I'll get somewhere and I'll be like, holy crap, I don't know how I got here, right, Like subconscious has completely taken over, and then I feel unsafe, and I'm like, you're telling you people driving And then I start thinking about other idiots who are.

00:59:19
Speaker 3: Doing what I did, not thinking and driving places.

00:59:21
Speaker 1: But does that ever happen in the show where you're three songs later and you're like, dear god, how did I even get here?

00:59:25
Speaker 2: No? No, I mean maybe, no, not really, not even a moment I was thinking about a moment in a song. No, because I don't know. I'm just super present, But I'm also thinking. I'm taking a multi multiprocessing right, which I think you do extremely well on your show. You're listening to me, you're checking that out, you're thinking about other things, You're probably thinking about some other things you gotta do, and it's all multi processing all at once, and you totally hear as well.

00:59:57
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm completely present, but I think I'm good at being present while while also.

01:00:03
Speaker 3: Delegating my mind to do other things the same.

01:00:06
Speaker 2: It's a good way to put it.

01:00:07
Speaker 5: Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor, and we're back on the Bobby Cast.

01:00:21
Speaker 1: What do you say on that microphone when you walk over that nobody hears you? Know the microphone? We're talking to it, all right? Yeah, you have one of those?

01:00:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you? What do you when you walk back?

01:00:29
Speaker 1: That's four songs in and only here guys on stage can hear you. Because for those that don't know, some of my friends that have them call them, uh, we'll call it a b mic. Right, So the word rich, like, we're talking to the rich mic. Right, if you're going to that microphone, what are you saying in the middle of a show, Why would it, Mike?

01:00:45
Speaker 2: Be cool that.

01:00:45
Speaker 3: I don't have no idea, but that's what that's the only thing I know it as.

01:00:48
Speaker 7: Right.

01:00:49
Speaker 2: Oh, that's weird. I've never heard that expression. Oh you haven't. No, Oh, okay, I never heard that. Well I don't say it, but that's crazy. So we stole it from Kenny Chesney when I was on two with him and I saw he had one. I'm like, well, that's perfect because everyone's got in ears and you can actually talk to everyone.

01:01:04
Speaker 3: At you we're needing to get out over the top. No, you're not at all, not that, Mike.

01:01:09
Speaker 1: What do you say, is it like, hey guys, we're gonna switch songs or we're gonna play in a different or on my throat hurt or like what?

01:01:15
Speaker 2: It could be something to my guitar tech, could be something to the monitor guy, could be something to the band. It could be something to security.

01:01:22
Speaker 3: It could just be really like you see something out there. For sure, security has ears in and they can hear that.

01:01:27
Speaker 2: I know that it's going to get to where it's going to get to. If maybe not directly, someone will relay the message. But yeah, if I feel like there's just heavy handed security at a place, not letting people have fun or anything like that, I'll make sure it gets taken care of. Definitely.

01:01:42
Speaker 3: Of all the things that you do.

01:01:43
Speaker 1: As we wrap this up, one of my favorites is when you and I haven't seen it in a while because you haven't been on the road as normal. No one has right when you do those videos with the police escort behind you and you're like, thank you guys. Not great, Like I love the blue light video at the end of the show.

01:02:01
Speaker 5: Right.

01:02:02
Speaker 1: That's funny so much so that there have been a couple of times where you know, we did We've done a couple of shows. We did a festival, and I threw a festival in Texas and we had like four or five thousand people and we had to get out and I was like, Hey, I'm want to get that blue light like Keith e because I gotta get that shot.

01:02:17
Speaker 2: Right.

01:02:17
Speaker 3: So you're inspiring me in ways you had no idea.

01:02:19
Speaker 2: Its great. It's much better having in front of you than behind you. Let me tell you, I would agree with you. I've spent way more years with the opposite. So this is nice, Mike.

01:02:26
Speaker 3: Anything that I have missed that we need to address with Keith before he leaves, I think that's everything.

01:02:31
Speaker 1: It's the daylight savings time just about so it's getting darker now and so it feels like it's midnight. So I'm I'm a little tired, kind of run through it here. Anything you'd like to say, Read, you're a massive Keith fan.

01:02:40
Speaker 3: Read is my video guy. He's been looking for he been looking forward to this whole life.

01:02:44
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, So Read, this is your one shot with Keith. Is there anything take a deep breath that you'd like to ask Keith?

01:02:50
Speaker 2: All right, Keith, I don't know.

01:02:54
Speaker 7: All I'm thinking about is when I first started learning guitar, my dad got me your Golden Road DVD that had all the music videos on it, and I would stand in front of the TV and I would try to mimic and try to learn learn.

01:03:09
Speaker 2: The songs, and it was got awful.

01:03:11
Speaker 7: But I remember that moment. And then I got the pleasure of going to your show. I think it was in Dallas like three no, maybe like two years ago, and my girlfriend got me the tickets and and of course you're out in the crowd running around and you came up to us, and I can just remember my uh, my girlfriend just going Keith, Keith. But that was probably me actually, But yeah, so those are just the moments that came up to me.

01:03:39
Speaker 2: But wow, I was a huge fan. Man, Thank you so much. How's the plane coming along? Oh it's it's good. Yeah, yeah, you're still playing? Yeah, yes, sir, I heye. I love songwriting.

01:03:50
Speaker 7: I don't do a lot of playing shows or anything, but I love to produce my music as well and write songs so yes, sir.

01:03:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have emotion an emotional moment here. I'll mention this before you go to I. As we were walking out of our wedding, we played God Whispered.

01:04:07
Speaker 2: Your Name Wow. Man.

01:04:09
Speaker 3: The writers or one of the writers saw me out.

01:04:13
Speaker 1: I was getting some ice cream with Kaitlin and he was like, you guys played got when God whispered your Name is your wedding and I was like, first time I keep singing that song.

01:04:19
Speaker 3: I was like, that's it.

01:04:21
Speaker 1: Like I felt that that's one of those rare songs in my life where I was like, because when I heard it the first time, I thought, if I can ever have this in my life, that's it. And then when I met my wife now, I went, this is that song like it was the songwriting, it was the delivery, it was the texture all of those things together in that song. I remember thinking, man, if I ever find this because I heard song before I knew her, But when I met her and I was like, oh, this is when God whispered.

01:04:50
Speaker 2: Your name wow.

01:04:52
Speaker 3: And it's one of those few moments where a song is you're punches you in the gut, are okay?

01:05:01
Speaker 2: Maybe you got you got married and you love that kind of song and yeah, yeah, Danni should played You're Winning. Yes. Cool.

01:05:09
Speaker 1: And the funny part about that was my wife and Abby Smiers are really close friends. Dan and I have been buddies for a long time, and.

01:05:19
Speaker 2: I was like, hey, look you.

01:05:21
Speaker 1: Get because they're like, whatever you want, we'll play. Like Dan was like, well you didn't even ask us, like, we'll play whatever you want. And I think they expected us to pick one of their songs because they have a hundred love songs, they have the best lie but I didn't.

01:05:31
Speaker 2: I picked the Beach Boys song, Oh what song did you pick? Forever? I don't know this and everyone I say will make you laugh at talk Forever.

01:05:41
Speaker 1: Dennis Wilson wrote it, I didn't know that song. Jesse and the Rippers later did it on Full House.

01:05:45
Speaker 2: Dennis Wilson wrote it and the drummer.

01:05:48
Speaker 1: Wow, and they crushed it in for it and they did checked that song. Yeah, they put it on a they give us a file. They recorded it as well as wedding gift to us and gave it to us.

01:05:56
Speaker 2: It was awesome, amazing, And.

01:05:57
Speaker 1: What was cool was even Ronnie was like, Hey, you don't want anything for your wedding, like, I can't get you anything?

01:06:02
Speaker 2: What do you mean to sing?

01:06:03
Speaker 3: I was like, that's the greatest gift ever. So he's saying, neon Moon.

01:06:06
Speaker 2: It was awesome. Oh my goodness, it was awesome. Wow. How did he remember all the words?

01:06:11
Speaker 3: I worried too, I said, do we need to get that mic for you over on the side.

01:06:15
Speaker 2: We didn't.

01:06:16
Speaker 4: He knew the.

01:06:16
Speaker 2: Words though, at the cell phone up his ear the whole time.

01:06:19
Speaker 1: All right, get tickets throw on sale today. Keith Urban The Speed of Now World Tour twenty twenty two.

01:06:24
Speaker 2: They're up.

01:06:25
Speaker 3: Go see him this podcast.

01:06:26
Speaker 1: This show is heard in all kinds of countries, so all obviously North America, but all over the world.

01:06:31
Speaker 3: I don't know how you do it. I don't know how you do it it maintain them as you.

01:06:34
Speaker 2: I love what I do. I love what I get to do. And truly it's a you know, people go, oh, it's a gift everyday, just it really is. And I'll finish with this because I think it's what is what it's all about is I went. I was born with the addictive gene. I went to three rehabs in the span of three in the span of eight years. The first rehab is nineteen ninety eight, my second one was two thousand and three, almost two thousand and six, and it took what it took for me to finally get sober, and that journey brought the deepest, deepest level of gratitude for what I get to do. Then. I don't know if I ever would have gotten that gratitude level without that journey. I think when you come close to losing all of that and then it gets given back to you through grace. In my case, getting back to me, I was like, I'm never going to take this for granted ever again.

01:07:30
Speaker 1: Does it make you a more giving person going through because for me, I have found that growing up a poverty kid and someone who's been through those struggles with addiction secondary that affects me and how I treat other people. Do you think you were two different people before and after your final run, your final time and rehab?

01:07:52
Speaker 2: Very much? Yeah, and yes, I separate the person from the addiction you own.

01:08:00
Speaker 1: Is one of the nicer guys in town, just generally by people like Keith urban is the nicest guy.

01:08:06
Speaker 3: Were you known early in your career as that guy?

01:08:08
Speaker 1: Were you always just completely dialed into the human aspect of people, because now you are and you're known for that.

01:08:14
Speaker 2: I like people, and I like collaborating. I love Yeah, I love people. I've always loved people. You've always been a nice guy. I've always I think I've always been bridge builder. I'm a bridge builder. I'm an entertaina. I you know, I think I was the I was the I was the peace person. You know, if you have an identity in your home. I was the bridge builder between my brother and my father, always trying to kill each other. I was like, interesting, I'm gonna I'm gonna be the one that keeps the peace here. And I think I've carried that into my life.

01:08:46
Speaker 1: All right, Go to a show, listen to the music. Keith Urban, thank you always good to talk you great to talk to you too, there is.

01:08:53
Speaker 2: Keith, thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production.

01:09:00
Speaker 4: Uh