#188 - Mike Dungan - Chairman/CEO of Universal Music Group Nashville: How Stapleton met Timberlake, Discovering Luke Bryan and Breaking Rick Springfield

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Speaker 1: Can. He sounds great. I would get a little closer. Yeah, right up there all right, Episode one a D eight with Mike Duncan. Who is And I say this in a loving way because forms of this article about me a while ago, and they were like, the most powerful guy in country music. I am not. And I've often said they were wrong about that, that I think you are the most powerful guy in country music. I think the reason they would say that about music because I'm just out there, like my faces out there, But you're the guy that's calling all the shots, making all the careers. Yeah, so here's your chairman CEO of Universal Music Group. And I kind of divided it up a bit. Uh m C A Mercury capital e M I show dog. Those are kind of the subs underneath the massive umbrella. Is that a show dog? No longer? It's no longer. No, I had. I had a little arrangement with Toby. Yeah, mainly just because I liked him A look closer right there and there there you go. Maybe mainly, but just because I liked him so so show dog no more. No, He's doing that on his own, and that's fine. I'm looking at the artist roster. I just have so much to talk about. I was talking to Rod Phillips, who is the head of my Heart Country today, and he's like, Duncan has the greatest stories. He's like, he's I have him tell you the Sinatra story. I can't. I can tell you that one. Most of my stories, I can't. I don't even know what the Sinatra story is. Okay, it's it's It's probably the proudest moment of my life, the funniest moment in my life. I am all of twenty. I have had the hair down to here you can't see down on my nipples. I have a big beard. I looked like I'm in the Grateful Dead. And I was going to college, and I was working in a record store, and I was a buyer for a couple of major lines. Uh and really just a kid. And all of my friends were into I don't know what roxy music, you know all of this, and I was too. But I loved Sinatra, and I especially loved the Sinatra count Basie combination and would talk about it and play it all the time. And my friends will just roll their eyes. So Sinatra comes out of retirement and goes on the road. So he's coming to my hometown since Sinati, Ohio. So I use whatever lever good I have as a twenty year old, you know, part time buyer, and I get the best tickets I can for Sinatra, and no one wants to go with me. So I dragged this guy. I dragged this guy that works with me, and he looks pretty much like I do. And we're sitting like in the fifth row and it's in the round. And to show you how good the seats were, like Johnny Bench was like fifteen rows behind me. Ken Griffy was fifteen rows behind me. Um, I was just primed. He comes out, you know, it's it's the Big Orchestra, Nelson Riddle, I think, and it's you know, he comes out, he rips through force. So right before the show starts, there's one empty seat next to me, and this little bald guy comes in. He says, he sits down, he looks at me, smile, says, how you doing. I said great. He goes it's gonna be a good show. I said, yeah, I can't wait. So Sinatra comes out, he goes right in to come fly with me. He rips through like three more songs and then he starts to talk, and then he says, ladies and gentlemen, I am so honored we have in the crowd tonight one of America's greatest tune smiths, a man who can take a word and change it into a lyric landscape that will melt your heart, Ladies and gentlemen, one of the all time great songwriters, Mr Sammy Khan, And spotlight hits the man next to me. That was the guy. Yeah, he's a little old man, he's he hits it, and Sammy stands up and he turns around and he takes about and Sinatra says, Sammy, I am so honored that you're here. I cannot believe that you're here. I don't know why you came to Cincinnati, Ohio, of all places, but I'm so honored that you're here. And I loved you so much that I wanted to make sure you've got a seat right next to Jesus. Which was you with your long hair. It was. And you have to be like, holy crap, I'm being kind of acknowledged by Frank Sinatra that the chairman of the board. So what does CEO of a record label? Like, what do you do? Because I just picture like Saturday and I have Lauren Michaels. You'll go and watch a comedian and sit back in the back before even an audition, and you you'll just know that he's there. Yeah, and he's like it's dark and you're like, oh crap, Lauren Michaels is here's like a big moment. But also you know he doesn't smile or laugh. He's watch what I picture you doing. I go into some of these places in the dark and just kind of watching these acts and they know you're there. Yeah, you know, I used to do that. That used to be how this business worked, and I loved it. I love that you could kind of come in anonymously and you could come to three times before. But I figured out that you were had any part in, you know, signing someone to a major label. But it's that the business has just gotten so crazy now, and these young it is that worked for these publishers in particular, they're on it and if anybody pulls out a guitar, they're like running around behind him. So there's no secrets. There's showcases, and you know, it's so much more formal now. But I used to, um, you know, I mean, I mean my story about signing Luke Bryan was a pretty good one because I went four times by myself and sat in the back before I pulled the trigger on that, you know, for a lot of reasons, you know. And Carrie Edwards was here and carry Edwards was my intern. Yeah, and she was and she is what led me to go. I just want to talk to Mike too, because car carry was He and Carrie and I worked into American Auto with Luke together, and she was like, man, have you had Mike on? I was like, I haven't, Like I see Mike sometimes, but she talked. And so you tell your version of the Luke story going to and seeing Luke four times, as you say, before you Carrie was students were going to Lipscomb and she interned for me and for us at Ariston Records. I came into town in to be the head of marketing. I was on the pop side working for Clive Davis, and I came down here because I completely fell in love with Tim Dubach and I loved what he was doing. I didn't consider myself a country guy, but I loved just the way Tim duba carried himself. And Carrie was an intern then she went away, I think. Then she came back was an intern in another department, and when she interned for me, I thought her name was Julie, and I called her Julie. Every morning she'd come in, she'd already be there and I'd smile and say morning, Julie, and she just looked at me and say good morning. And finally, six weeks later, she says, you know, my name is Carrie and I said, no, it's not. She said, yeah, it's Carry. I said, why would you not correct me? She said, I was terrified. Anyway, So she comes back. We give her a job as a coordinator in the A and ART department, and you know how that goes. You know, you're you're kind of doing everybody's expenses and you're taking care of the business in the A and R department. But before you know it, at kids also listening to songs, and then they're going to showcases, and then it's like him in the morning, you on radio. You know, it just keeps building and building a building. Well that's what happened with Kerry. Then we had an unpleasant end to all that Arista Records thing when the corporation decided that Clive Davis was too old and was going to push him out, so we all got pushed out and it was folded up into our ce a. So Carrie goes away. She has a couple of kids. She came back and she was working part time at a publishing company that didn't really work out too well, and then she had another kid, and then she came back and she called me one day and she said, I think I got one. And I said, what do you What do you mean? She said, when I was at the publishing company and there was a guy there and I watched him develop, and I think he's an artist, and would you come see him? And I said, anything for you. So I went to this place called the Trap, which is which was owned by HERV Woolsey, who's still George Streit's manager, and as Winners Losers, as Winners Losers, and a whole bunch of other places. Um, and I watched the guy who was incredibly undisciplined, whose songs were okay, the band was sloppy, he was turning his back to the audience. He was having fun with the band more than with the audience. Uh, but you know, and it was nothing professional, but there was something there. There was something I couldn't take my eyes off of, and it was that it was that star thing that you can't define, and you know, it was like you were seeing Elvis in the early stages. So I kept going back and I went. He played every Thursday, and I went every Thursday night. And did he know you were there? Yeah? Yeah, because Carrie. Uh And in typical Luke style, I think he was unaffected by It didn't cost him to get his game together anything. He was just as sloppy and just as unpolished and unprofessional as as he was, you know, the first time. And uh. Then the fourth time, I took A and R back and I explained to them what I saw and they said, yeah, I feel the same way. And then it wasn't we once went by and I was really depressed. We at this point, you know, I'm running Capitol Records and we hadn't found anyone worthy of signing for a long long time, and I was just depressed. And I was laying on the floor in the A and our department, throwing a tennis ball up in the air, bitching about life in general. And I sat up and I said, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna find that guy, Luke Brian. We're gonna bring him in here. We're gonna tell him we want to sign him. We're gonna give him the money right now. But he's got to understand that, you know, we're he's not ready and this, he's gonna have to work on this. And he came in. He started crying and everyone started crying and tears of joy and um. You know, of course he made a record too fast and it wasn't I still say we kind of survived that first record had a couple of hits on it. But did you tell him that you didn't think he had a single? Yeah, so you hear the batch of music and you go, I don't know that the song is here. Oh, had a couple of those conversations, and probably if carry told you this, it was probably the infamous second album when that came up, because we had accomplished just enough on the first album, which was driven by his personality. You know, everywhere he went people loved him, and radio people were saying, oh my god, I love this guy. He's so awesome. I just wish you had a song. You don't. But you know, we we pieced it together here and there and we and we you know, we sold just enough to keep going. Then we hit the second one. At this point, Luke had a lot more confidence and under him, and he came to me with six songs and said, I've got it and let's just figure out what the first one is and we'll put it out and then we'll finish the album later. Well, I listened to it, and he didn't have it. That's the worst conversation you can have. And I've had it with pretty much every star artist I have, um, you know, legendary stories where they've hated me and for weeks and weeks at the time, and then something happens and it all gets it back together. But uh, in this case, uh, Carrie was upset with me, Luke was upset with me. Jeff Stevens, who was producing, was upset. They called me back about two or three weeks later and said, can we meet and talk about this again? But we don't want to come in your office, that's how bad it was. So we go to Jeff Stevens office and they had remixed these six songs and I said, guys, it's not it's not the mixes, it's it's the songs. They're just they're not great, and I'm sorry, you know. So Luke's getting angry or by the minute, Carrie's won't look at me. And I said, what else do you have? And so they started pulling out disks and there'd be two songs on each disc and there was really nothing there. And at one point we must have listened to thirty different songs and there was just nothing there. And I kept I was thinking, oh gosh, this is going away. You know, I had such great hopes for this young man, and this is going away. The first what we accomplished on the first go round was was it We peaked? And I said, and then I said, at the what else you got? And Luke, really angry, says and I got nothing. I just got some scratch vocals on on my laptop. I got nothing. I said, bring it out. Let's listen. So we listened and they were like three or four that were nothing. And then and then he plays a song called and this is a scratch vocal. It's just him and a guitar. It's called Brain is a Good Thing. And I looked at him, and at this point everyone was staring at the ground they didn't want to deal with this conversation at all. And I said, guys, what's wrong with this? And Luke turns to me surprised and kind of angry, and he says, you like this? And I said, well, I wouldn't want to make a career out of this, but I'm telling you this can make big dent in things for you. This could really get you in a good space. Trust me. I don't know. I don't know. And Carrie started to do the yeah, well I always liked it, but Luke didn't bit so so I just said, look, just let's just cut it and if you hate it, we won't put it out. But he's just cut it. I think there's something here. Well, a great thing happened and that was that. A couple of weeks later he hooked up with uh Dave and Charles from Lady Annabellum and they wrote do I, which was one of the great great songs. So we put out do I. It was a massive song, and then we came back with Rain Is a Good Thing, which I believe was a four week number one, by the way, and uh, you know, to this day, when I see him, when he when he opens with that guitar part that they aren't being here anything. I kind of rolled my eyes because it's so cheesy, and you know, I had a hand and I had a hand in this cheese. But it made a big difference for him and it made for all of us. I want a great story. And you went through that many songs? Yeah, probably thirty that day. That's hard. That's hard when you're feeling nothing. I've been through that with several You ever ever wrong and go this isn't one and they go I'm going yeah. I'm like and they go, no, we really, and you get like, okay, you can hang yourself like you can die on this hill if you want, and then they end up being they were right. Has that happened to you? Not? Not, not that directly. Um. There have been songs that you know you'll get into, like your third single choice and I want something and the band wants something else. I want to talk about Stableton for a second because with Chris I was getting into some trouble back in the early days, because before Traveler came out, I would have Chris on and he'd come on and play, and he mostly would come on and play the songs he'd written for other people and some of the high ups at the company at the time who aren't there anymore. There was I don't know, I don't know what this guy's is not researching? Is that testing? And I would say yeah, but like I can tell, like I think I have probably not as good as you, but I have a talent of knowing what people like sometimes before they like it, and I miss some, but for the most part, I do pretty good at that game. And I'm like, man, there's just something about this guy. And they're like, you know, maybe you shouldn't have the mom on that fourth time, and thank god this CMA has happened. Oh we're justin Timberlake everything. I've never seen something change in a night before like that did with the stable, like the whole stable to project and brand and artist. What was that like for you? Well, I I saw it in in in dollars because digital downloads of tracks were still kind of a big thing. They're less of a thing now. But um, I had my phone and I had the app for the iTunes store and I'm watching click click, click click, one purchase after another, and then they're rolling just out of control, and we went from I'd say, nine thousand dollars in the hole two in the Black before he finished the song that quick, that quick. Unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable. And so when that was did did Robertin pitch that idea of Stable to timber Lake? Did you guys go after? Like, well, what was that? How had that come together? Um? You know, do you know about this Timberlake thing? This is so such an odd story. I don't I don't know if this is interesting or not. I think it is okay. Right. First of all, I had tried to sign stapletonant Capital in two thousand and seven something like that, and I ended up chasing him really hard and I couldn't figure out why, and then he was sending all the signals that you know, he was a problem child. So I walked away and didn't do it. And it turns out that he told me later that he didn't want to be an artist. When we offered him the gig, he panicked. He first as ego went off the chart, and then he panicked he didn't want to be an artist, so he was doing everything he could to sink the deal. So right before I came to Universal, Brian Wright signed him at universal. So I sit down with Chris and he said, uh, listen, I'm worried that you don't like me because I put you through a lot. And I said, you know, you know, I'd like an explanation for what you did. And he told me, said I didn't want to be an artist. And I said, we did a pretty good job thinking that one. I said, but I like it. I liked you before. I wouldn't make the offer before, so let's just get to business and do it well. He had a whole bunch of songs that he had put together that he brought to play for me, and again I didn't I didn't hear anything. Now, it wasn't that they weren't good, it was that they were in the best way, I could describe it as three chord rock and roll songs from the Mitch Rider era. They didn't have the lyric integrity that I was used to from Chris. They didn't have the structure that I was used to from Chris. And I said, what are you doing here? Where all the great songs that you've written for everybody else? And he said, I write those for everybody else. That's not for me. This is what I am. I said, I'm not telling you this is good or bad. I tried never to use the words good or bad. It's what works in the market or it doesn't work in the market. And I said, but I don't know what to do with this, and I don't want to hurt your feelings. Well, he's thinking that I'm flashing back to when he burned me years ago, and so I'm getting even I wasn't. I just didn't know what to do with it. So we went round and around a little bit, and then he wrote three things that were much more in the groove than um anything we've ever heard from him. And it didn't really work. And I think it was because radio looked at him and said, well, he doesn't look like Luke Bryant. He doesn't look like a male model, he doesn't look like a star whatever that is. And you know, we had twenty five radio people that said this is awesome, and that said, uh, he really he looks like an Almond brother. We don't you know. It's not country music, at least not at the time. So he comes in my office and he says, uh, look, it's painfully obvious. Radio isn't going to deal with me. So just let me make the record I want to make. But I promise you I'm not gonna give you what I gave you the first time. I want to make a real country record. And I said, okay, just do it. So he went away and did it. I would say the record is not really a country record. It's more like a Memphis blues record than anything else. But but it was great. At this point, he was still a little stun see how this pattern of pissing off my artists at some point and he with this path, you know, he was like, no, he was looking at me as someone that he could never trust. So he delivers the record and he was dancing around me, dealing with people around me instead. And we had like not quite finished copies of The Traveler. Uh, you know, they weren't polished up all the way, but it was really close. And a guy named Joe Fisher worked for US and A and R. And Joe Fisher had befriended a guy named Trace Ayala who has been justin Timberlake's best friend from Memphis since the third grade. And so they're hanging out on the weekend and they're in Joe's car, and uh, this changer changes from one disc to another, and on comes the staple to music and Tray Syala flips out and he says, oh my god, what is this? And Joe Fisher explains it to him and he said, you know who I love? This is Timberlake. He said, can I can I send this to him? And Joe calls me from the car and says, is you know would you be mad if I gave him this copy so he could send it to Justin Timberlake? And I said, well, the worst that can happen if we make a fan of Justin Timberlake. No, we'll give it to him. So and Timberlake went crazy. So about a month later, phone rings in the office, Joe Fishers office, and this woman says, you don't know me, but my name is Jessica Beale and I'm married to Justin timber Lake and his birthday is coming up and in a month, and he has everything, so I try to give him experiences. And I wonder, we're gonna have a party for like forty of our closest friends at our place in Montana, And I wonder if this guy, Chris Staple when would consider coming and singing at the party. So Stapleton calls me and says, what do you think about this? And I said, you know, jeez, it's nothing else. You can tell your kids and your grandkids that you were at this party one time and Harrison Ford was there and who knows else who was there, and you know they're gonna fly you on their jet. So he goes out there, and the story is that Justin was so enamored by him that he was borderline rude to the rest of the guests. He didn't even talk to them. He just wanted to hang with Chris. So they started this close relationship, and Justin said, I want to produce you. Me and Tim tim ber Lake are gonna take you to New York City and produce something that, you know, more blues oriented. Well, that never came together, but you know, we put together a pretty good campaign to get Chris nominated for CMA, especially for Album of the Year, because we knew Nashville loved this record to love this guy, and I think Robert Deaton is looking at It's like, Okay, I don't really know what to do with this because you don't have a hit, you know, But the guy's got four nominations. So it's almost guaranteed he's gonna get on the show. What are we gonna do? And Cindy May, who's our president, went to Chris and said, do you think you could call Timberlake and see if you do this? Chris said, well, I'll try. So he called him and he said give me the date and he said, I'll be there, and the rest of his history. I mean it was just you know, from huge financial loss too, a massive, massive um examination of overnight success. I have never seen anything changed like that in a single night than than that performance and which really he was and he is who he is, but after that it was he was freaking Chris Stapleton. Yeah, Like that was the moment. I think the biggest moment I've seen since living in Nashville. Like a Saint, if had to pick a singular moment, I think that's the biggest one I've seen. Yeah, And you know what, it was culturally a huge moment because we don't do things like this in Nashville. You know it prior to this, at the risk of now everyone's gonna get mad at me, But prior to this, everything was more calculated and it was you know, it was put together it was marketed pretty well, and this was just something that happened totally organically, and I'm sure someone's gonna, you know, listen to this and call you and say, oh, I was part of one in nine seven and it was just as big, probably right, But to my eyes and ears, it was like, Okay, this change is a game, This changes everything for everyone. And you know, the funny thing was, starting the next week and pretty much every day for the next three months, we were auditioning mountain men in my office. I mean massive guys that came out of the hills of somewhere with long hair and scraggly beards, and they all sang like monsters. I mean, they were so good, you know, but you know, you can't push that too hard. How do you feel about that? Because you know an artist will come and break through and then there are four or five similar sounding and looking artists. Like, where is the line for you when you're running a label of who is going to be someone that has some long term to them or who's just like the viral thing or the you know, the kind of today thing. Well, if if it was just four or five, it could be tolerable. But honestly, it's like more like fifty five. I mean, I have always made my way in this business by looking for talent that is talent that sounds really like a product, looking for artists that are you know, they're they're square pegs, and you know, there's square pegs that are close enough that now we do our job and we cram that square peg into a round hole. That's the most gratifying part of the job. But the problem is, and everyone after that as a copy And Keith Urban was the classic example because I didn't sign Keith Urban. He was in a band called The Ranch and they were originally at Warner Brothers. Warner was not doing anything with it. There was a head of business affairs at Capital that was a big fan convinced Scott Hendricks, who was then the head of Capital, to take over the project for like next to no money, uh, in exchange for points. And it didn't work. But then another guy came in to run the company and Keith announced that he wanted to leave the band and have a solo career, and this guy said, okay, go make a record. So they made up their first record and it wasn't happening. Uh. I didn't have any real success at radio. The album was put out prematurely, it wasn't selling anything. It did not look good for this guy, Keith Urban. And I came in and I went to two shows that he was doing, and just I had seen the ranch, but I was not ready for what I saw with Keith Urban. And it was like, Holy cow, this is the gift from God. This is this is the one that I'm just gonna roll the dice on this guy and everything we do after this point it's gonna be built around Keith Urban. And we did it. And I mean it was a lot of work from a lot of people. We had to sell so much money had been spent without any financial reward that we sold about eight hundred thousand before we even broke even that's crazy, um. But the minute he did break, everyone who came through the door was Keith Urban. They had the same little you know, he had that rhythmic tick to and that just made him so unique, and all of a sudden, every kid in the world was cutting his hair that way and was playing everything, came in and went anything anything, you know, it was like, oh please, you know, sometimes the market can handle one copy, maybe two, but not twenty. And you know that's why, that's how we get into trouble as music people. Was we allowed this? You know, same old, same old. You know, we're just copies out there, and you know, I'm not real wild about what the music sounds like right now and in general. Yeah, And I think it's because there's there's a lot of sameness out there, do you feel like Because I feel the same way, and you talk about sameness, I feel like everything is so everybody's looking at short term lines, like how do we hit our quarter? So therefore, if you grab a copy, it's gonna make you money today, it may not make you money in a year. And people are chasing tomorrow more than their seeing three years of of of a substantial project. And I think what happens is the music all starts to become of the same sounding because all the acts feel like they've got to be the same, and they're chasing other acts so they can get on the radio. Well, I will tell you it's probably the hardest thing to resist is signing these people to come in and are really good, but they're derivative of something right before them. If it was derivative of something from twenty thirty years earlier. That kind of turns me on. But the you know, the copy thing does not. But you know, I don't know why other labels or companies do that. I do know why, but I'm not gonna say it here. But I've always tried not to because you know, it's uh a much rather reload with something that's exciting and try to cram that square peg into another round hole. You know, we talked about moment, it's I think another big moment was Casey wanted the Grammy for for Album of the Year. Yeah, with Golden Hour, Like that's up there with one of the bigger moments in the past five or six years. Massive, just just huge and one of the most, um one of the most difficult to figure out scenarios that I've ever been involved with, because she consistently makes unbelievable music that doesn't really fit in anybody's box. It's just great that it touches a lot of boxes, and it's so great that if you play Casey music for anyone anywhere, they respond positively. But as a real challenge for people who market music to you know, take that we've we haven't gotten Casey to where she deserves to be. You know, there's there's a lot more work that needs to be done, and you know, you could argue that, with the exception of some of the instrumentation on the Golden Hour record, it's not that country, you know, it's it's it's a much more pleasant, pop, universal sounding piece of music, but not really doesn't really fit anywhere. It just fits everywhere. That makes sense. No, yes, it fits nowhere and everywhere at the same time. I mean, you know, to some degree, Norah Jones was doing that. When she first popped, it was like, Okay, what is this? Oh, I know this is great. You know, Nora Jones came from inside em I I was running capital. A kid that ran sales for Blue Note had been somebody that worked for me years ago, sent me a CD with roths of Nora Jones and I just he said, I think you're gonna like it because it's kind of country, and I just was all over it. And the guy that ran Blue Note, Bruce Lundball, who's one of my idols, he like, had a famous staff meeting where he said, I want to know why the Nashville people are more excited it about this then we are you know, and it was because everyone in my office was seeing it as you know, the second coming of something special. Boy when don't know why, I hit yeah and it. It kind of existed for a second until it was a monster. Because and that's what happens with things and with Casey too, I would say, you know, she had created her own lane and then her own and then everybody else's kind of fell into her lane. Once people start falling into your lane. I mean I was on pop radio at the time and we were slamming this every hour. Yeah, you know, our pop labels didn't really want to work the record because it didn't fit anywhere. Our company created a promotion department just to work Nora Jones. That's the truth. Well what a financial gamble and what a payoff. Oh yeah, massive. I benefited from it too, because they created this promotion department and they were all pros and uh I had really good almost pop country stuff over here. So you know, while those guys weren't working on Nora Jones, they worked on Keith Urban and that developed a whole different career for him too. And that probably wouldn't have happened if I had to jam it through La or New York, you know. You know, we talked about some of the artists that are are special and are hard to at times market and Kip, who's yours, kind of falls in that like so good, so passionate, such a devoted base. But I feel like that would be at times you just want to bang your head against the wall, like, look, how comes some of the stuff works so quickly and then how comes some of it just won't take at radio specifically? Like what what do you feel like the struggle is with Kip at times? Well? I think honestly, the first album was loaded with hit songs and the second album was things that resonated kIPS audience specifically, but they weren't across the board universal hit songs. And I think he's back to I think the new stuff that we have that you'll hear very soon. Um, I think he'll be You'll be surprised. Uh. You know, he's got such a unique thing and a lot of artists you know have this. Uh, it's got such a unique one on one relationship with his audience. He can sell out anywhere he goes and they love every word of every song he's done. But to get past that point, to get those people that are more passive. That's where success comes in, you know, I kind of you know, my brother's Osborne not terribly different, completely different kind of artists, but not you know, you go to their shows, their fans are like tearing the place down. It's one of the best live shows I've ever seen, by the way, and both those guys are fantastic live. And I've spent time with Kid personally where you know, I do stand up and so we'll talk about because Kip like really cares about his audience. Yeah, and he's like, man, if I see one sad face, it's like, puts me out and I'm like, man, you gotta stare at foreheads. Yeah, that's what I tell Like, they could be sad and then not be because something you've done, right, I think it has something sad in their family, or they could want to feel sad, right like, and you're allowing them to fill that. But that guy's past. I say what I say, I love Kip because he's so At times I want I want to, you know, smack him to the head and you want to smack me upside the head. But most of that's from love, Like I just you know, I really respect that guy. This uh A e G Company put together massive concert in England called Country to Country, See to See, And when I first heard about this, I rolled my eyes and thought, Okay, this isn't gonna work, because you know, I never used the C word when I went to Europe, because their idea of country is like box Scar Willie. And if you say Keith Urban's country or Casey's country or Kip country, you're gonna get those kind of people. And they're like, well this doesn't sound like boxcar Willie, you know, and and all the regular people go, well, I thought country was box car really, So I didn't come so anyway, so they have the first show. I didn't go, but it was pretty successful. So the next year I came back and Kip was on the bill and he was a nervous wreck and he was wrecked because he thought these English people are not going to relate to me at all. They're just not and I'm scared to death. I said, just do your thing, Just do your thing. I said, I I don't know that any of these people know who the artists are. That's my take on this, And I was right. They Kip went out and he was as big a star as the Dixie Chicks because they didn't really know any of them, and because he worked so hard and because he was so desperate to get their love and attention. He killed it. And he's got a really nice career going on in England, particularly because of that first show, and he's continued to go back and you know that. I go over there now, people say what's going on with Kip Worn It's like, really, okay, al right, great, it's fun to hear a lot of the artists that you've helped break. And I'm gonna go back in time a little bit to Rick Sprainfield. Yeah, who you know? Jesse's Girl was the song that women we still play on the on on my show now. I mean, this is the song that lives forever, you know. So how did you get involved with Race Springfield? Well? I got fired for that for one day. You got fired. You got fired. Yes, I was a pop promotion guy in since my hometown of Cincinnatiohio for our Cia Records, And um, I was a kid and I didn't get a lot of great direction in that job. And I can say that now because the guy who hired me, who didn't direct me really well. Passed away last year, so God bless Eddie mask All. But he was not really given me the kind of direction I needed. But so in that day, singles and albums would just show up at my front door and there was no there was there was no conference call, there was nothing. You know. It was like, no, we don't really know anything about this artist, but somebody signed them, so here it is, go see what you can do with it. And I get this. I get Rick Springfield album and single the same day. I didn't know anything about him. I just put it on and Jesse's Girl just killed me. I thought, my god, this is a huge pop song. And I was going on the road to Columbus, Ohio the next day, and you know, like I said, no one was talking about it. I was supposed to get another record play by another artist who I won't mention here, but it was not a very good record. And I went up to Columbus O High and I started playing this song and three of the four stations I visited hit the record added it. And you know, in the Midwest, they don't add records early. So I came back so proud of myself that I was breaking a record, only to find out that I was being fired by my boss, who was really angry because I did not get anything on the priority record. And he just called me and said, you know, once again, you a and our everything. You can't take direction, you're not a team player. You're out of here. You're out of here, You're done. And I had, you know, like a one year old kid, and I'm terrified that I'm out of work. And the next morning, his assistant calls me and says, uh, John wants to know what you've got on this or that. And I said, John fired me yesterday and she said, oh, stop it. She said, you know he fires people every day. I said what she said, he does and I said I've never been fired and she said, well now you have. And uh, you know. That record went on to sell I don't know how many millions, but it was. It was a great thing for my ego and my self worth. And you know, Rick and I were talking my kitchen to his kitchen. I didn't have an office, so I worked in my basement, my kitchen to his kitchen every night, big plans and I did some cool things I did. I did a had a radio station, in Columbus where we broke the thing that the Erald manager was on the boarder director for the Columbus Ohio Zoo and it was like their second or third year in existence, and he came to me and said, we've had so much rain on weekends that our gate sales are awful and we have no money. There's no there's no uh, you know, nothing in reserve here, and we're worried that our zoo is gonna go bankrupt. And he said, you got this kid, Rick Springfield, right, And I said yeah. And he said and he's on general hospital right and I said yeah. He said do you think you can get him to do anything for this? And I said, like what? And we went for some drinks and we concocted this event and I knew he wouldn't. I couldn't afford to put him up there and have him perform, and it just wasn't ready, you know. But we brought him to the Columbus oh Zoo and we put up a big stage and charged ninety eight cents to get in. It was w n c I Cent day had the biggest grossing day they've ever had. It was miles and miles of thirteen and fourteen year old girls. I've never seen anything like it in my life. I had been around for the Beatles, it probably would have been like that. Rick goes up on the stage and he's trying to talk and it just got The screaming was so loud I couldn't hear him, and I was twenty ft from him, and all of a sudden, the barriers, the security barriers went down, and then the stage started rock and I just remember the cops going, that's it, we're shutting it down. And they grabbed him and they're dragging him off the stage and they're saying run, and I'm running, and Rick's five steps ahead of me, and we're all running for this little administrative building, concrete, you know, nothing building, and there's a wall of kids running after us, and you know, this is not particularly proud moment, but um, out of nowhere, this tiny, little twelve year old girl is a speedster and she breaks through the crowd. She's going to catch Rick. I mean, she's and if she slows him down, we're all dead. We're dead. So I just I'm running and I just cold cocked with an elbow right in the side of the head. Knocked her down into the mud and we made it into the building. Well, the interesting the zoo director was a guy named Jack Hannah. Wow, Jack Hanna. He was just Jack Hannah director. So we're all stuck in this building while these kids are like trying to get at us. It was like a zombie movie or something. And I got to know Jack and his wife, and there's a million pictures from that and to this stage, Jack and I have a bit of a relationship and if iver I need anything from Jungle Jack Hannah, I just pick up the phone and say Jack, would you do something for me? He says, anything for you. So I've put Jack in the little videos and he's been in Luke Brian campaigns, and you know, I run into him every once in a while. Steve Hodges was working for me. We were in the airport and all Cuddy walks past and he because, Hey, there's that guy from TV. I said, that's my friend Jack Hannah. He said, your friend. I said, hey, Jack, and he came over and we had breakfast together. You know that's awesome, Yeah, greats all that. There's like four layers of good story in that story. Yeah. So Rick and I, uh we fell out over the next two or three years. Um, I didn't. Let's just say we just fell out. I didn't like the way he was handling his business and it didn't end well. And I've always felt bad. And I've been to see him live a couple of times, and my friends always go, are you going to go backstage and say hi? And I'd always say NOA I not, No, I don't. I don't so uh. Mark Niederhauser and it works for Warner used to work with me at our c A he was in Denver, I think when when all this was coming down. And last year at the country radio seminar, Mark and I went to lunch and Marks the kind of guy that like stays in touch with everybody birthday. Every birthday, you get a car to a call every birthday. Oh yeah. And every artist that we ever worked with, he talks to him on a regular basis. I just I don't do that, you know. And I said, so what about Rick Springfield? You talked to him and he goes, yeah, every once in a while, I said, how's he doing? He goes, he seemed okay. I said, well, I read his book. You know, it's kind of sad and uh. And I told Mark what happened between us and he said, well, that's that's really that's that's not fair. It's really not fair to you. And I said, yeah, I know. I said to me a favorite, if you have information, give it to me. So I reached out to him the next day, send him along email and he bam came right back to me, said, oh man, it's so good to hear from you. You know everything you said here just you know, I think about this all the time. And we really did it, didn't we And it's so great to hear from you. And you know we we haven't talked since then, but it was one big email exchange and it was about a year ago. Wow. Yeah, I had a great story. Yeah, Darius and Hoody. I'm a huge Hoodie fan. Yeah, I'm a huge Darius. Darius is my first interview every when I was seventeen. Really I got Hoodie and I got Darius. That was a die hard fan. And you know, Darius and I've done a lot together since then. Kind of because I wrote about in my first book, I was like, this is the first guy ever talked and I was so nervous talking to him. I was shaking. He grabbed my hand. I was like, I got you. I was seventeen, and he led me through this interview. And so Darius hit me up about a month ago, was like, Hey, my wife's writing a book, Um, would you write a chapter for me? So I wrote wrote a thing for him, and I was like in exchange, I would like to hear some new hoodie music and so and I don't listen to music earlier ever from anyone, even my friends. It's get slippery slope for me, So I just stay away from it. But I'm such a Darius friend and fan and hoodie fan, and so he sent it. And what I wonder is is the hoodie is it country? Is that you guys gonna try country? I don't think so. I think if you based on the fact that if you go back, if you took those hoodie records that were big and you put them in the market, now they would be country wreck absolutely, And so you know, that's kind of how we started Darius a solo thing. It took a while to get there. And there's a somewhat of an interesting story on that too, if you want to hear that. Yeah, So it makes it sound like I'm a genius again. But you know, it's a true, absolutely true story. How did the Darius solo stuff start? Well, I never liked the Hoodie and Blowfish records. No. I moved to Nashville had been on the pop side, and I moved here in and immediately fell in love with the art of the song and the craft and the way people would lay out a lyrical landscape. And it was just like, Wow, this is the way it's supposed to be. And I was like a song snob. I became a song snob real fast. And um. So I didn't care for those Hoodie records because I thought, lyrically they were just pop records, you know. So um. But years later I'm a capital and I had you know, I've always had really bad work habits. I'm not the earliest guy in the office. I don't come in too late, but i'm you know, I'm not there at eight o'clock and I'm morning, but I'm usually there at nine ten o'clock at night. And when I was a capital, I had a very prominent spot on the corner of West End and Murphy Road, and people would go by and go, god, I can see your fat your fat ass rolling around in your chair up there. You just go home, you know. So the what what it comes down to is I would get home and I still pretty much do this. I get home and my wife has either gone to bed or going to bed. She's eaten by herself. Again, I'm sorry, and I haven't eaten anything, and I'm gonna go to bed though, because I'm going to get up in the morning and go back to work. So I would sit in front of the TV with a bowl of cheerios and I did I did it last night, and you know, bowl of cheerios, and then I turned on the TV. But I can't commit to anything because I'm only gonna spend fifteen or twenty minutes in front of it. So I would just slip through the channel. So I don't know what here. This was, so five two thousand five something like that. I would slip through the channel and there was a high definition concert it on one of the channels, and it was all the same ones all the time. It was Dave Thomas, it was Peter Frampton, it was Mickey Thomas, uh and it was Hoodie and a Blowfish and there were others, but those are the ones that I remember seeing all the time Dave Matthews band, and every time I see the hoodie and the Blowfish things, I would think, oh, I'd never liked this band, But you know what, that guy, this is inappropriate. But I think to myself, that black guy. He phrases like a country singer. And so, you know, two weeks later I'd be flipping through again, there would be same show, it's different song. I think, oh, man, he phrases like a country singer. So I had this weird idea that I was gonna, you know, nobody had heard from these guys forever as far as I knew. I was gonna try to find Darius Rucker and see what he was all about. But I never did it because I was busy and it was you know, it was a pipe dream. It didn't really make sense. End up going to dinner with Doc McGee, the famous manager who managed one of my artists at the time, and when he sit down, Doc starts bragging about in a Blowfish tour tickets and I said, what do you have to do with him? He said, I manage them. And I said, I didn't know this, And I tell the story about the cheerios about and he says he says, you should make a country record with him, and I said, no, that's why I'm telling you this. And Doc's looking at me. He was like, yeah, yeah, he'd love that. But I could tell his eyes that Doc dot no, he's just kidding me. So we get our cars out of l A and I said, Doc, don't forget about Darius. He goes, no, I'll call him. Well months go by, nothing and every I talked to Doc every every week and I'd say, Doc, what about Darius. He goes, oh, I just got off the phone them. I forgot. It's like you forgot. So weeks later, I get a call from Doc and he says, hey, you got somebody wants to talk to you. And it's Darius and he goes, hey, man, I hear you're trying to get ahold of me. And I said, yeah, I'd very much like to meet with you. I'll come to you. Just tell me. When he said no, I'll come to you tomorrow tomorrow, Okay, can we go to dinner tomorrow? So he flies to Nashville from Charleston and we go to dinner at Risk Chriss and I loved him. I just fell in love with him. I had no idea what his song, what his sensibilities were. But we started talking about country music and he started telling me about his experience with it. And Darius didn't know his father, uh and you know, he has a single mom and some brothers and sisters. And there was an older gentleman across the street that kind of you know, took a special role in darius life and in his heart. He called him Uncle Charlie, I think. And he would listen to the country and he'd listen to the opery on the radio on the front porch. Darius would go over there as a little kid and he'd get up on Uncle Charlie's lap and they listened to the opery. So Darius had a sense of this that surprised me to death. Let me talk about more and more and more, and he said, oh man, my brothers and sisters they used to make fun of me because I would go around the house singing, you know, Web Pierce songs, and my friends would make fun of me because you know, I knew mel Tillis songs. And I said, that is wild. And so we started talking about making this record, and he came in. He had been thinking about this for so long. He had a paper bag full of cassettes and on there were scratch demos of these country songs that he had been writing inspired by the experience with Uncle Charlie and the opry, and he planned for me and they were they were one of two things. They were either cochonk chonka Chong Texas two Steps songs yea, or they were tearing my beer vern gosd in ballads. And I just kept saying there that this this won't work, and he went, what do you mean, man, it's country music. I said, it's not really. If I mean, it's not what's on the radio, and if that's what we're trying to do, it's really So we went round around we you know, it was I didn't have any answers. I was just in love with this guy, and you know, I will admit that the fact that he was an African American was more than a little bit interesting to me. But as I got to know him, I pushed back on that really hard because the press when when we broke him, the press we're saying, how does it feel to be the first guy to break an African American in country I say, you know what I mean, the fact that he's an African American is pretty self evident, but it really diminishes his talent. And I hate to even talk about this now. I was aware of it when I started this, but it's not about that for me anymore. It's about this guy with the most unique voice and this great phrasing and a big laugh and a big smile and a warm heart and you know. Uh. Anyway, so we got to the point, and along the way we talked to a bunch of producers and then he fell in with Frank Rogers and he kind of fell in love with Frank. In between Frank and Darius and I, we just sort of talked this through and what we came to was the music shouldn't be that different than Hoodie and the Blowfish, but it needs to say something. You can't just hold my hand, hold my hand, hold my hand. You gotta lay out some kind of a lyrical landscape, at least in the verses. And you know it. It took a while for Darius to get that, but with Frank's guidance, and Frank was you know, also a successful songwriter, pretty quickly came together and uh, you know, we had four number ones off that first record. That's pretty big. Yeah. When he I did this little thing with my staff every year where the artists come and they just play for us, and it's very inside. There's no plus ones. My wife's never been. It really bothers her that she's never seen this special thing. But Darius came for the first time. He was new to us, and he got up and did this song called Don't Think, I Don't Think about It, and the room was in tears. It was just in tears, and it was like, holy cow, this is gonna be massive. And then you know, I did the I don't think it's strong enough. I love that song, but I don't think it's strong enough for for a new guy who forget the fact that you're African American. The biggest thing we're gonna have problems with is you were the lead singer band that was so big that you're a joke, and we've got to overcome the joke part of it. And I don't know that this song is going to be strong enough to do that. And he went, okay, man, and then we cut a whole bunch more and then we came back six months later and I said, don't kill me, but I think we should leave with don't don't think. And he said, you know what, I'm not mad at all because because of that extra effort and that extra pressure, we made this record so much better. We wouldn't have had these other four songs if you didn't make me go back. So I feel less guilty about it. We have about five minutes left on a run through. Its something because I mean we could do this for three hours. I feel like, Um, Eric Church, how does he not get nominated for Entertainer of the Year? You know, I don't know. I mean he doesn't does not win it. I mean, it's all it's the same thing back. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you know, the Entertainer of the Year at least the TMA so Nashville centric and a c M is becoming that way too. Um. And Eric has never been one to play the game. He doesn't really go out and uh show his face and hang out at events. And you know, he does the t J. Martell Wine dinner because he's in the wine and he has a golf tournament on his own, but he doesn't you know, Eric, Eric is Eric, He's He's an artist, and he he only does what he wants to do and what he wants to respect. He and Case you're very similar in that there's no there's no pretense whatsoever. There's no compromise between either one of them. And I think that hurts him in that sense, and he knows it. We've talked about it, and you know, he looks at me like, yeah, well, you need to market me, you need to market me around me. So but you're right, it's unbelievable, four hours of just killer stuff, night after night after night. Sam Hunt. Yeah, you know, he he's threatening to deliver new music in two weeks. Threatening. Well, I said this because I've been through this so many times. And you know, the truth is, Sam had turned out to be much more of an artist than I ever anticipated when we signed him based on what he was doing, which was very pop and contemporary pop music influence. I thought, all right, you know, he's he's one of those guys. He's really good at it, but he's one of those guys. And but the truth is, once he had that big success with that first record, he said several times quietly, I don't want to repeat myself. I don't want to do the same thing again. And if I think that if he could make a really really country record, he would do it. But I think he's afraid to do that too, And so we'll see. I don't know he heard he loves. I've heard a little bit of two songs just and they're really not finished. They're just like choruses that he's written. Um, but you know, this is a guy who loves Diamond Rio. There's a guy who loves John Michael Montgomery. He knows this stuff inside. Now. He's not a pop music carpet bagger. He's the real deal. He just like a lot of young people, he grew up with a lot of influences and they they're coming through And that isn't that wonderful? Isn't that what makes this go around? And you know, I have a bunch of friends I've been writing with him over the past few months. Well that's good to hear alone, you know that's good to hear. I kind of a plane. I went to the Grammys and I came back and I got on his plane and he and his wife got on there sitting right across from me. I'm thinking, oh my gosh, this is perfect. Would be a chance for me to talk to him. Immediately he falls asleep, and then we get off the plane and we are legitimately standing trying to talk to each other right off in the gate, and I got overrun by people, people that you know, I just didn't seen a long time. And he said, you know, I'll see you downstairs by baggage, and we just never know. I'll end on this one. I'm I'm doing um celebrity family food. And I took Lauren and John party with me, so it's me. Hear a little bit about that both dear friends of mine, aren't they awesome? And we go, but John's about to have new music finally, Yeah, and it's it's awesome. Yeah, And you talk about a guy that you know. He he didn't want to repeat himself either, and he kept saying all along, it's gonna be real country. I hope you still like me. It's gonna be real country. And it is. And you know, when when when we signed him, a lot of people in town and a lot of people on my own staff rolled their eyes and said, I don't know what you're doing here. He's so country, it's so traditional. I don't know what you're doing and I would just smile and say that's why I did it. And you know, I had one major radio consultants say to me when I played him in the demos. He said, I don't know what you're doing here in that guy's voice is annoying and I he said, you know it sounds it sounds terrible, and I said, his voice is bictreason why I said, you do because you know you'll hear him. You'll know bright away who he is. Stink. Yeah, I listen. We're out of time. I want to say thanks. I know you got a lot of things. I tried to google you net worth to see if I pop up, just see how rich. If you're the richest person to come in here, it doesn't show up. That's because I have no money, but the most influential person we've had in here. So hey, thanks for I really appreciate you making time to come over and do this. And we've threatened to get together and we still need to do that. But you know, you're just you're too big time now. It's hard to you get overrun anytime we go anywhere. I'm a guy from Ohio, that is all I am. Episode one eight eight when Mike Dungan. Thanks Mike, you have a D. Seven people more important than me, less important,