CODE RED - Cole Terry

[00:00:17] Speaker A: Hey pretty baby are you ready for me? It's a good rocking daddy down from Tennessee just out of Austin Bam for San Anton with a radio blasting and. [00:00:32] Speaker B: A bird dog on. [00:00:37] Speaker A: His feet Trap up ahead south of town no Rokioka's gonna shut me down Cause me and them boys got this rig unwound and we come a thousand miles from the. [00:00:58] Speaker C: Nothing ever happened from my hometown I ain't kind of just hang around. [00:01:07] Speaker A: But. [00:01:07] Speaker C: I heard someone calling my name one day and I followed that voice down a lost highway Everybody told me you can't get far off $37 and a. [00:01:20] Speaker B: Jack guitar. [00:01:23] Speaker C: I'm stealing into Texas with a hammer down and a rockin little combo from the guitar tail. [00:01:33] Speaker B: Hey pretty. [00:01:35] Speaker A: Bab don't you know it ain't my fault Love to hear the steel bells humming on the asphalt Wake up in the middle of the night in a truck stop Stumbling a restaurant wondering why don't stop gotta keep rockin while I still can Two pack habit and a motel tan when my boots hit the boards I'm a brand new man with my backs to the rise and I make my stomach stand hey pretty baby won't you hold me tight? We're loading up, rolling out of here tonight One of these days I'm on to settle down and I'll take you back with me to the guitar town One of these days I'm going to settle down and I'll take you back with me to the guitar town hey. [00:02:38] Speaker B: We ended at the same time. That's an accomplishment. Cole, Terry. [00:02:44] Speaker D: Zach. [00:02:44] Speaker B: Terry, welcome to Code Red. First time that we've sat down to do. Not so. Not the first time, actually. [00:02:51] Speaker D: Far from it. Yeah. [00:02:52] Speaker B: Had the technical difficulties on the first couple of takes and so first time, that seems to be. Everything's working. [00:02:59] Speaker D: I hope so. We'll see. [00:03:01] Speaker B: And we're doing this because we're. We're right on the brink of a kind of pivotal time in your life. Nearing graduation. [00:03:09] Speaker D: Yes, sir. [00:03:10] Speaker B: You're going to graduate. [00:03:11] Speaker D: Lord willing. Lord willing. We'll find out come August. [00:03:13] Speaker B: So University of Florida, getting close to your final semester there and going to make the move to the Mecca of country music. Nashville, Tennessee. [00:03:26] Speaker D: Yes, sir. Yeah, that's the plan. Assuming finances will allow. Then late August, early September is. Is the hopeful moving date. [00:03:35] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, as you know, I've been there and you know, growing up in our family, that was just something that you consider. It was our trade. [00:03:42] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:03:43] Speaker B: You know, for many generations, people in our family had written music, had been entertainers and so you Know, at probably around 17, 18 years old, I kind of felt that stirring, wanted to go chase that neon rainbow and all that sort of thing, you know. But when you were born as parents, thinking through all of the things that are, that are implied by a name, you know, naming your child is a big deal. And so Julie and I thought through it, and people may not know this if they're not from Alabama, but there are a lot of Terry's. And so dad, your granddad was the baby of 12 children and they all had a lot of kids. Very fertile people, the Terry's. And so names were hard to come by. Yeah, they'd all been picked over, you know, and. And so it was right around the time when, what was it, Days of Thunder. [00:04:48] Speaker E: Yep. [00:04:48] Speaker B: Tom Cruise movie came out. And it was love that movie. Love, love Duvall's character in that. And so kind of thought through maybe Cole Terry, like Cole Trickle in that movie, and thought to ourselves that, you know, that way if you wanted to be successful in either country music or nascar, you've got a name that could hopefully carry you into. [00:05:12] Speaker D: Makes sense. [00:05:13] Speaker B: Yeah. But had no idea that that would actually be kind of a self fulfilling prophecy. [00:05:19] Speaker D: Exactly. [00:05:20] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:05:21] Speaker B: And so kind of what brought us to this moment? [00:05:23] Speaker D: Yeah, well, I started playing music in the youth group when I was about 12 years old back in North Alabama. Was playing percussion because I was going through puberty at the time, as you know, and I couldn't sing worth a flip. And so when I was 14, we moved to Florida and I started picking up the guitar, taking it more seriously and started learning how to sing all this. Started writing songs at 15. And that's when I first started feeling that, you know, nagging. [00:05:50] Speaker B: Maybe you could do this. [00:05:51] Speaker D: Yeah, I got bit by the bug, the country music bug. And then you, you. [00:05:55] Speaker B: How old were you when you had your first gig at Salt Life? [00:05:58] Speaker D: First gig was. It was 16. So it was right towards the end of 16. It was in the middle of COVID which is wild looking back, but it was I think May or June. I think May of, of 2020. And so two months into Covid, they were, they weren't paying anything. I think they paid me $65 for four hours. [00:06:20] Speaker B: Well, if you remember the way it started, you had learned bits and pieces of different songs, but I had never really heard you play a song completely through all the verses from beginning to end. And you came and asked if you could audition for a gig at Salt Life playing on weekends. And I'm like, do you know a complete song and you're like, yeah, yeah, Dad, I know a song. And I said, well, son, you've got to know, like, you know, 12 or 15, if they're three minutes apiece, give or take. You've got to know 12 or 15 that you can, you know, play while people are eating and get through an hour, and then you can maybe repeat after that. But I said, if you're going to do this, I want to hear three complete songs that. That you know the words to, you know, you know the chords to. And if you remember, at first, you didn't want to make eye contact with us while you were playing. You. You turned around with your back to us while you were playing. Do you remember that? [00:07:31] Speaker D: When I was playing that. That time. I remember when I was. [00:07:33] Speaker B: It might have not. Might not have been that occasion, but. [00:07:36] Speaker D: When you remember learning when I was first. That probably happened a couple of times, because when I first wanted to audition for the Praise Team when I was 12, I came up and told you I wanted to audition as a singer. And you said, you're not going to audition as a singer. And I said, why? What are you talking about? That's, you know, of course I'm going to audition as a singer. [00:07:53] Speaker B: Well, I never heard you sing. [00:07:54] Speaker D: Yeah. And you said, I've never heard you sing. What are you talking about? And can you sing? I said, I think I can sing. And then you said, sing Amazing Grace. I was like, I don't know the words. And we kept on going back and forth about it, but then I started singing, and it just sounded awful. And then we came back two years later when I was auditioning for the. As a singer for the Praise Team in the Florida Youth Group. And at that point, I. You said the same thing, Cole. You've sung in front of us once in your life. You're gonna do it again. And I think you asked me to sing Amazing Grace. We were sitting in the dining room table, and I think that's when I. I turned around and I was just. [00:08:30] Speaker B: You were really frustrated, really mad. You wanted to do it, but you just weren't bold enough to even face us and sing it. And so you got through it. And that determination was impressive to me that you were so struggling to stand up in front of people and sing, but you were so determined to make it happen. And then when the salt life thing happened, you know, just as a dad, I really thought, hey, this is a good opportunity for him to experience rejection in a. You know, in a. In a situation where we can be there for him. [00:09:11] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:09:12] Speaker B: And school was out, so it wouldn't be too humiliating when they told you, no, we're not going to hire you. You don't know. Three songs, you know. [00:09:19] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:09:20] Speaker B: For whatever reason, maybe it was Covid, maybe it was God, I don't know. But the guy hired you. [00:09:27] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:09:28] Speaker D: And I went in, and I did all right. And my fingers were killing me after four hours of playing guitar, and I brought a buddy with me to play, and we were sitting there for four hours and just repeated the same 12, 15 songs. [00:09:41] Speaker B: What did it feel like to get paid to do that the first time? Do you remember that? [00:09:46] Speaker D: It felt good. It was exciting because most of the money was from tips, and so that's what was exciting. I think we probably made three or four hundred dollars that first night. And I, like I mentioned, I got like, 65 from the restaurant, which is nothing. And during COVID they could only pay, you know, a fraction of what they would normally pay because they had no customers. And so I got paid 65 to show up. And then you started putting it all over Facebook saying, you know, Cole's going to be playing his first restaurant bar. And so a bunch of the church came out, and they started tipping. And so when it was all said and done, me and this guy had made three or four hundred dollars. And I was like, if I can do this, you know, a couple times a month, I'll have. [00:10:27] Speaker B: You're making more than most kids your age at the time. [00:10:30] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:10:30] Speaker D: You know, and so you can't make that at the fudge shop downtown, you know, and so it was. It was exciting and. Yeah, it felt good. [00:10:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And then. And then, I guess that was your first time. You kind of had overhead, so you had to split that. Split those tips with somebody else, had. [00:10:46] Speaker D: To hire a guitar player and all that. [00:10:47] Speaker B: I remember. Yeah. In those early days, even little things like which sound system to get. Did the house have a sound system? What did we need to bring? And so I think you had a guitar and an amp, and we always had gear around just because of, you know, me playing and church events and all that. But so, yeah, kind of piecemealing it together, figuring it out as you went. And then I guess it seemed like to me maybe that that was a summer. [00:11:20] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:11:20] Speaker B: And then when that summer season came to a completion, you went back to school, you kind of focus more on developing as. As an artist, and you grew a lot. I think you were taking guitar lessons at the time a little bit. [00:11:34] Speaker D: A little bit. [00:11:35] Speaker B: And improving, you know, different aspects of your craft. And then there were just iterations to where you would kind of go at it. Things were, you know, much improved and kept getting better and better and better. And when you went to college, you had some opportunities through the fraternity and different things down in Gainesville. But recently out of the blue, somebody reaches out to you and offers you a record deal. So yeah, tell us about that. [00:12:09] Speaker D: Yeah, so I was sitting in Washington D.C. i was interning up there. And we'll talk more about that later, I'm sure. But I was sitting in D.C. and I got a text a little bit before I got there from a guy who said he was an A and R representative from label called Santa Ana Records. [00:12:26] Speaker B: And that in A and R means artist and repertoire. [00:12:28] Speaker D: Artist repertoire for Santa Ana Records. And he said, hey, we're a subsidiary of Sony. Just saw your song. It was a. Wouldn't change a thing. He saw the song on TikTok and went and checked out my Instagram and he said he was impressed with the production quality. And so would you be willing to hop on a phone call this week and chat? And so I thought this is probably a scam. I've gotten this message at least five times before from other people and it's always a scam. So I'll, you know, phone call can't hurt. But didn't get my hopes up. We started talking and I looked into Santa Ana and tried to figure out who these people were, if they were legit or not. And it was a hip hop label, so it kind of threw me off at first. And if you go look at them right now, it's mostly hip hop artists that it's not my kind of music. Didn't make sense to me why these people were reaching out. But they had one or two guys that they had posted, they're kind of. [00:13:17] Speaker B: Developing country or something, moving into that. [00:13:20] Speaker D: Yeah, very new country guys. But that had, you know, the. There were these tick tock sensations that really blown up all of a sudden and so kind of was like, okay, this could be something. So we started talking and then turns out they had taken this hip hop model which is much more. You find somebody who you think has potential to blow up and succeed and kind of take them in early and then try to shepherd them through that season. And then when something does take off, hope something does take off. And if and when it does, you're there to provide more momentum and staying power as that that goes. And so they offered me a distribution deal that would be just that. And so we're in the middle of that now. They flew me out to California back in December to record a first EP with them. And first song came out not too long ago, Us Again. And the rest of it'll be coming out hopefully on March 6th. [00:14:17] Speaker B: And I don't want to get too personal, but in your business about it. But it was. It was substantial investment on their part for them to say, we're gonna. We're gonna foot the bill for this. So you can. You can focus on writing, you can focus on performing. [00:14:32] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:14:33] Speaker B: And we'll get you in studio. And that's. That's a costly endeavor. And so, you know, we were kind of helping with that along the way. And then when they showed up and said, we'll make that investment, I think that was the first time where it was a green light, so to speak. [00:14:46] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:14:47] Speaker B: To say, okay, let's go down this road a little bit further. [00:14:51] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:14:52] Speaker B: At that point, at what point did you say, okay, this is going to be. I'm going to focus on this path until God takes me a different direction. [00:15:03] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:15:05] Speaker B: Meaning career in music and Nashville. [00:15:10] Speaker D: I think it was probably, honestly, sometime in late 2023. Sometime in that fall, I have this odd school schedule where I do spring summer classes, and then my summer is in the fall, so I don't have classes in the fall. And most semesters I come home for that, except for this last one. But fall of 22, fall of 23, I came home, and it's a good time to just kind of step back, evaluate which direction I'm going. And it was in one of those seasons that I really realized, okay, this is. No, it's been a fun thing to pursue up until this point, but I think it's time to get serious about it. And I toyed with the idea since I was 15, but I really, really made that decision when I was around that age. And so 23. 2023, I decided I was going to do that and started making trips to Nashville. That was my first one that I made to just go up there, meet with people, try to write with people, and went well. Made a lot of good connections and made some new friends and, you know, connected with family and all that, and then have been making trips periodically since then. And. And, yeah, so I would say probably late 23. [00:16:21] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. And the. For. For most people, I presume, you know, you. You don't know how other people view the world or. Or look at that sort of thing, but that's not typically on most people's radar. Like, they're not. They're not seriously considering going and becoming Tim McGraw, you know. But the reason it wasn't just a ludicrous idea for you was a couple of people in our family had made it. [00:16:51] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:16:51] Speaker B: And so family history, you know, the legend in our family probably goes back to Floyd, which is my granddad, your great granddad. And the. The family story was that he. He broke his arm and had, you know, house full of kids. They were farmers, he cut hair. He was a mechanic. He did everything he could do to just feed his family, but he broke his arm working on a car one day. Have I told you this story? [00:17:21] Speaker D: I think so. I wasn't sure if it was an accident or what. What had happened, but I knew he broke his arm. [00:17:25] Speaker B: He was. He was doing. He was working on the car, and it fell. Fail. Broke his arm. And so he had a cast. [00:17:31] Speaker D: His left arm. [00:17:32] Speaker B: It was his left arm. And so in that cast, he. One thing he could do was hold a fiddle. And so he played a little guitar, and so he got a fiddle, and he learned to play the fiddle and taught his kids. At that time, Harold was the oldest, and he was always this rhythm guitar player. Felton played mandolin, and then Gordon, he. [00:18:00] Speaker D: Played the spoons early on. [00:18:01] Speaker B: He played the spoons. Yeah. It was kind of percussion and. [00:18:04] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:18:05] Speaker B: And then picked up the fiddle. And he was. He was kind of a savant when it came to fiddle playing and picked it up naturally. I asked him one day to explain it to me how he could play, you know, so easily. And he said. He said, zach, it's like. For him, it was like typing. Like, for me, the way my mind works, I can type very fast. [00:18:27] Speaker D: Sure. [00:18:28] Speaker B: And my. My. My hands are trying to keep up with my brain, you know, and for him, he could do that with a fiddle. He could make it say what he wanted it to say. [00:18:40] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:18:41] Speaker B: And he had a unique playing style. It was. It wasn't purely bluegrass. It had a very distinct quality to it. Like, when I hear him now, I can recognize he's playing, you know, with a couple of notes. [00:18:54] Speaker D: Hard to fit him into a clear genre. [00:18:55] Speaker B: It is. And so as he developed, he. He. Floyd went up to Nashville and wanted to meet with the manager of WSM radio who oversaw the Grand Ole Opry, which, at the time, people. It was a nation, a national radio program. It was like American Idol. [00:19:18] Speaker D: Could you compare it with that? Or would it. Would it have been bigger? Was there anything competing with it for that kind of spot? Or was it. Was it the. [00:19:24] Speaker B: The show at that time, a syndicated program. This is, this is pre television 41, right? Yeah. And so Pre Television, it was, it was all across North America, so Canada, Mexico, you know, international in that sense. And it was a extremely popular program. But yeah, the competition to it would have been like late shows and who was it? Ed Sullivan. Ed Sullivan would have been competition to it, sure. But so he goes up and he wants to be a performer. And it was a variety show. They had, you know, 15, 20 acts a night. And, you know, getting a foot in the door was nearly impossible, but. But he basically camped out at the studio manager's office and said, I'll be here every morning until you give me an audition. And so eventually, to get him, you know, to go away. Yeah, he let him in, let him perform. They did a fantastic job, became regulars on the Grand Ole Opry. And so from there, Gordon really took off. He, he, he started playing with Bill Monroe. He. Yeah, he, he went into the army. When he went into the army, went through basic training, all the normal stuff, but when they, they found out he could play, they said, look, you don't worry about holding a gun. You hold that fiddle and entertain the troops. And so they did that all through the army. He and Farron Young were buddies. And when he got out, he went on the Louisiana Hayride and met Elvis and George Jones, Waylon Jennings, all those greats. And life, you know, kind of was, you know, 100 miles an hour for him. [00:21:24] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:21:24] Speaker B: And they would get in a Packard limousine, travel city to city, nonstop touring like crazy. And so drugs became, you know, part of the scene. But, but he made it. He had a. He was a solo artist on rca. He, he was on a Wheaties box. He was in movies. You know, one of the big things. [00:21:48] Speaker D: Almost Tarzan, right? [00:21:49] Speaker B: Yeah, he almost was the, was the Tarzan. The actor for Tarzan, he was just a kind of a built husky guy. But his manager, when television came out, his manager thought it would be a passing fad. So he said, yeah, you know, we're gonna focus on music. He really was a good actor and could have had a career in acting, but he said, we're gonna focus on the music and, and not. Not worry about this. This fad called television, you know, but had a few movies, was in some. In some big hits. And so that door has been open before in our family. [00:22:26] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:22:27] Speaker B: His grandson today is Kane Brown's fiddle player. [00:22:30] Speaker D: Yeah, utility player, plays everything. [00:22:32] Speaker B: Yeah, he's got that gift, you know, but. Yeah, he does. He plays steel. [00:22:37] Speaker D: Plays steel. Electric guitar, banjo Mandolin, fiddle, just about anything. One thing he's told me he can't hardly do, you know, proficiently is piano, but anything with strings. Bass guitar. He was a big bass guitar player when he was younger. [00:22:50] Speaker B: I remember when he was probably close to your age. Where did he go to school? [00:22:56] Speaker D: He went to Juilliard. Juilliard for his Masters, but he went to UC Berkeley. Or not UC Berkeley. Berkeley College of Music in Boston for his undergrad. [00:23:06] Speaker B: When he was pursuing all of that, knowing that he had that background from Gordon and that natural skill set, but he really was honing his craft and that was impressive. That was something that I was. I was interested to see if that would. If that would work in country music, you know, can you be proficient as a technical, theoretical musician and still, you know, keep the sound, keep it, keep the soul of it. But he. And he's done that very, very well. [00:23:41] Speaker D: Yes. And he's played on about, I think, three of my songs that I've done. He's been. Been kind enough to lay a few tracks for me. And so if you listen for a fiddle on, I think it's. Wouldn't change a thing. Wild as Me and Lonesome, he's playing fiddle on all of that. [00:23:53] Speaker B: Lars Thorson. [00:23:54] Speaker D: Yeah, Lars Thorson. Great, great guy. [00:23:57] Speaker B: Yeah. So. So the. There were some. There were some reasons why we looked at that opportunity and said, okay, we're not going to discourage it. He's at least going to have somebody to show him around when he gets up there. And so the trips you've been making and then. And then this, this distribution contract came along and the music, Your. Your music has been kind of broadening its influence. [00:24:23] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:24:23] Speaker B: You recorded this last one where? [00:24:26] Speaker D: In Visalia, California. And so it's about an hour south of Fresno, hour north of Bakersfield. [00:24:32] Speaker B: And so that, that brought in some of that Bakersfield kind of. [00:24:36] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:24:37] Speaker B: Influence. [00:24:38] Speaker D: California, Bakersfield sound. Influence. And it's a really unique sound compared to most of the stuff I've been putting out. [00:24:44] Speaker B: And so that. That first song released this week and. [00:24:50] Speaker D: That one I've been telling people, it's either number three or four in my favorites list out of the four that we recorded. It's reason we put it out first is because it's the most pop, country, mainstream sound. But the rest of them, I'm excited for people to hear them. [00:25:04] Speaker B: Well, the intention was to release California. [00:25:06] Speaker D: Yeah, California Wildfire was going to be the first one. But given the situation in LA coming up to the release date, we decided to pull that and switch it for. For us again. But California Wildfire is going to be, I hope, a hit. It's gonna be good. [00:25:19] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's got a. The Luke Combs kind of production and. [00:25:25] Speaker D: That vibe to it, really heavy rocking kind of sound. [00:25:29] Speaker B: And I love what you say about the Beating him to the. Yeah, he had all the tragedy. [00:25:34] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:25:35] Speaker D: He had all of the natural disasters. He had hurricane. He had Ain't no Love in Oklahoma about tornadoes and somehow beat him to the wildfire. [00:25:42] Speaker B: So, yeah, you know, it's. But yeah, it was poor timing, so we said we're going to put that in the hopper and save it for a later time. But I'm excited about that one coming out. [00:25:51] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:25:51] Speaker B: It's been cool to see how you and Carly have worked together. She does a lot of your photography. [00:25:56] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:25:56] Speaker D: And she's taken on videography, too. And so she's got her own wedding photography business that she does great with. But she's been kind enough to take some time out of her day from time to time and come shoot some stuff for me and make me look pretty on camera. So it's been. It's been a big help. [00:26:12] Speaker B: That's been neat to watch just as a dad, because it's not, hey, she's helping you out. You're helping her out. That's there and that's cool. [00:26:21] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:26:22] Speaker B: But it's really some of the best photography I've seen for what you're doing. [00:26:27] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:26:27] Speaker B: You know, I can't imagine anybody in Nashville that does this for, you know, the greats doing any better. [00:26:34] Speaker D: Oh, it's excellent. [00:26:34] Speaker B: And so it gives you legitimacy and. [00:26:37] Speaker D: It gives you some bragging rights, since you're kind of the one that taught all of us how to take pictures. You started the business with mom and then she took it up and Carly passed it on. But you got some. Some bragging rights there back as a kid. [00:26:48] Speaker B: You know, as we're talking, there's three cameras on us right now, and that's just as normal to me as anything. I mean, as a little boy, I would. Dad. Dad got a camcorder. He was an early adopter of that sort of thing. So when they had the kind of camcorders that the average person could buy, dad grabbed one and he would let me play with it. So I would. I would make movies and, you know, figure out everything that camcorder could possibly do. [00:27:20] Speaker D: Didn't you make a movie one time, like a short film for your school or something? [00:27:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I did a. I did Indiana Jones. [00:27:26] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:27:27] Speaker B: Played every part and it was, it was. Took forever and. But I had to figure out the background music, all these things, but it was just. That's how I played. That's fun to me. But so, yeah, from that I would walk around with cameras all the time as a little kid. And then when you guys came along, it was so expensive to get pictures made of babies. And so I told Julie, I said, well, let me invest in a decent camera in. Maybe we can do it and then learn Photoshop, all that stuff. So, yeah, it's just been. It's always been fun to me to kind of become proficient in a skill. [00:28:11] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:28:12] Speaker B: And get, get your reps in, get good at it. And then it just thrilled me when you know somebody else, I could teach them how to do it. [00:28:19] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:28:20] Speaker B: So music for you? I probably. Did I teach you a few chords before anybody else? [00:28:25] Speaker D: Yeah, no, the, the first thing that I ever learned on guitar, you just taught me how to. We were sitting in Alabama and you gave me an old 1991 Mexican made fender Stratocaster and you just taught me how to go, go blues. And it got on my nerves so bad because I couldn't. I didn't care anything about that. And it just kept going. And that's all I ever learned at that point. And I was so sick of it that I never wanted to touch a guitar again. And then later on I started, you know, people in the worship team would teach me songs and then I started being, okay, you know, this is pretty fun. And then you started teaching me Folsom after that and you know, so on. [00:29:03] Speaker B: But so, so you were having the influence of church music. You were having influence of. At that time, not. I mean, you heard a lot of country. [00:29:12] Speaker D: Yeah, I was around country, but I just. Because of you. But I did not listen to it. I didn't enjoy it then. What were you enjoying at that point? I mean, what years are we talking? Before I. Before I really took to country? [00:29:24] Speaker B: Yeah, before you. [00:29:25] Speaker D: Up until then it was a lot of classic rock and so mostly stuff like Tom Petty, Aerosmith, acdc, Eagles, all that stuff. Anything from soft rock, hard rock, new stuff, old stuff. It was all, all good to me. Some of the indie stuff, local band Flip Turn, they were, you know, really taking off right as I was, was getting into them and so a lot of that kind of stuff, we would. [00:29:51] Speaker B: Always just kind of as background music in our house. If you saw me with a guitar, things like. [00:30:04] Speaker A: Well, I hear the train come, it's rolling around the bend and I ain't Seen the sunshine since I don't know When I'm stuck in Folsom Prison and time keeps dragging on. [00:30:21] Speaker B: And. [00:30:21] Speaker A: That train keeps rolling on down to San Antonio When I was just a baby My mama told me, son always be a good boy don't play around with guns But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die When I hear that trainer rolling I. [00:30:47] Speaker B: Hang my head and cry. [00:31:14] Speaker A: Well, I bet there's rich folks Eating in a fancy dining car probably drinking coffee and smoking Smoking big cigars But I know I had it coming I know I can't be free but those people keep moving and that's what tortures well, if they free me from this prison that railroad train were mine Bet I'd move. [00:31:43] Speaker B: It on a little farther down the. [00:31:45] Speaker A: Line Far from Folsom Prison that's where. [00:31:50] Speaker B: I want to stay. [00:31:54] Speaker A: And I'd let that lonesome whistle blow my blues away so it. [00:32:11] Speaker B: Cash was always a big influence in our family because of Gordon. Walk the Line, the movie Walk the Line, I probably mentioned this in several episodes. But when he met Cash, those long tours and at the time, the speed and all of these amphetamines, these uppers, would keep them going without sleep, you know, seven days in a row. [00:32:43] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:32:44] Speaker D: And it was necessary. You couldn't survive doing that. [00:32:46] Speaker B: No, it was. It was. It was an unsustainable way of doing life, period. And so, you know, Gordon got on speed and. And was touring and. And. And then introduced it to Cash and. [00:33:02] Speaker D: And was the first one, too, right. [00:33:04] Speaker B: The first one to offer him drugs, which. It was devastating for Johnny. And Gordon didn't know that until he read it in his autobiography years later, and it crushed him. [00:33:16] Speaker D: Could you, real quick, while we're on this, Rhonda, Gordon's daughter, now your cousin, she's the person that I stay with when I'm in Nashville. And she was telling me about how when Gordon was touring with Johnny, June Carter kicked him out of the band because she said that he was being a bad influence on Johnny. But then later on, when he eventually was invited back, June said, you can come back in, was after he had come to faith in Christ. So could you tell the story real quick of how Gordon came to faith? [00:33:50] Speaker B: The story that he told me, there was a guy in New Orleans called Bob Harrington, they called him the chaplain of Bourbon Street. And he was just an anointed gifted evangelist and, you know, very well known in the south. And he came to Nashville doing one of these multi night crusade events. And the story he told Me, he was on the radio on one of the morning shows talking about his event in Nashville, and he said that one of his goals. I think he had a hit list of three people that he wanted to win to Jesus while he was in Nashville, and Gordon was on that list. And Gordon was a good old boy, a great guy, worldly speaking, but he was wild. He did a lot of stuff he shouldn't have been doing. Never intentionally hurt anybody, but he, you know. Yeah, he was. He was really living that rock star kind of Persona, and. And Harrington wanted to introduce him to Christ, and somehow or another, they got Gordon to go to the event. He gave his life to Jesus. He was radically saved. And that's when I think June said, hey, you want to come back? You know, oh, you're welcome back, but I didn't want you derailing my husband, you know. Yeah, but. But, yeah, I preached Gordon's funeral, you know, years later, and he was always. [00:35:24] Speaker D: A big, big supporter of your ministry. [00:35:26] Speaker B: Oh, he was such an encouragement, you know, when I was nothing. He would always introduce me as, you know, the next great evangelist. Zachary. Yeah, that just put some wind in my sails, you know, I'm sure, along the way. But he, you know, he had a sincere faith. He wasn't a perfect man, but he, you know, it's like people say, Christians aren't perfect. We're just forgiven. And he was always proud of the Lord and stood up for his faith. But I remember early on, he didn't know a lot of gospel music. Our family had Christian roots, but my grandfather was an alcoholic for most of his life. My grandmother had 12 kids. She never learned to drive. So if he's, you know, if Floyd was drunk, Stella couldn't go to church. There was. It wasn't possible, so with all these kids. And so Gordon didn't grow up with that kind of music as much. And so he would. He would come to church, and people would ask him to sing a song, and I remember. Or play one on his fiddle. I remember he was playing one at our church one night, and he would just take some bluegrass song and say, you know, this is boiling cabbage down, Lord, you know, make it a Christian, you know. [00:36:53] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:36:53] Speaker B: Little Christian song out of it. But. But, you know, that country music kind of comes out of those streams of church and the honky tonks, the. The square dances, and it creates something that's. That's natively American, you know, it's one of the most American forms of music. [00:37:14] Speaker D: Sure. [00:37:15] Speaker B: And so you personally, as an artist, you've had all those influences. [00:37:19] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:37:19] Speaker B: You know, in. In your world. [00:37:21] Speaker E: Yeah, yeah. [00:37:22] Speaker D: Everything from the. That traditional, you know, Christian music, traditional gospel music that I would hear more in Alabama. And then you've got the. When I came to Florida especially, you've got the contemporary Christian music and all that stuff influencing. But no. Yeah. So many different genres. So we were talking earlier about, you know, when I was 14 or so, 15, before I got into country music, it was worship music. It was Aerosmith, acdc, Tom Petty, a lot of Minecraft parodies. When I was 12, a lot of the just goofy songs I listened to as a kid. And then eventually I think I was into a girl or something and she was really into country music. And so I. I said, well, if I'm gonna. If I'm gonna talk to this girl, I should probably know some country music. So I put on some Brad Paisley and Florida Georgia Line and all that stuff. I think I could listen to it and just listen to it mowing the grass and then started listening to it more and found Zach Brown band and kind of grew from there. [00:38:20] Speaker B: Well, and you were always a fan of just killer guitar players and somebody like a Brad Paisley could. Could hold his own with anybody, you know. But even then when you would write, I remember you wrote one called Florida Rain and first one we went through. Did we just. Do we lay all those tracks at home on a. Yeah, I think. [00:38:42] Speaker D: I think we may have had. [00:38:44] Speaker B: I don't think we farmed any out. Like. I don't think we hired anybody. [00:38:47] Speaker D: I think Caleb may have played a bass. Oh, yeah. Bass part. My buddy in church. But it was local drum machine. And then everything else I. I laid, I think. And then Caleb played a bass track and then I played guitars and a little mandolin track and electric guitar and all this stuff and vocals and it came out. Sounded pretty good for something. I'm 15 wasn't bad at all, but not Spotify worthy nowadays. [00:39:11] Speaker B: It was. When did you write Sweet Maria? [00:39:15] Speaker D: Sweet Maria? I think I would have been 16 at the time. [00:39:17] Speaker B: And that was one of the first ones that you wrote that. I mean, even to this day. That's one that I want you to play occasionally. Why don't you do a little bit of it just to give an idea of. Of what you were. What you were writing at that age. [00:39:30] Speaker D: Yeah, it was. That's a. An odd song because it's. The lyrics have changed so much. There have been at least three iterations of that song, so I don't know that I could. Could pull the words out of my head right now just because they're all mixed up without me having them in front of me. But it started out as a. A love song about a night that I had with a girl at a fair, and it was something. You want me to play that version of it a little bit or just. [00:39:58] Speaker B: I want to. I want you to do it for the sake of the. The not production quality, but the composition of it. [00:40:05] Speaker D: Yeah. So the. The first. When I first wrote it, it sounded like this. [00:40:11] Speaker C: She was 16 years old, wore flowers in her hair. She said the night it's getting cold beneath the stars at the county fair. You know, the days seem to come and go but the nights cannot compare. And I never seem to know what's proven in her stare. When I fall, I fall back on sweet Maria and her voice calls out to me this is where I want to be. Then her choice starts. Memories growing sweeter we go dancing in the night Just me, a sweet Maria. [00:41:33] Speaker D: And none of that was sang with a country accent. I think that's when you first started telling me that would sound better if you sang it country. Yeah, but. But that was when I was trying to find what genre I was going to settle into. [00:41:43] Speaker B: But that, you know, for 16, that's not bad. [00:41:46] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:41:47] Speaker D: And you have influence on that one. I think you came up with that chorus mostly, but maybe that's why I. [00:41:51] Speaker B: Like it so much. [00:41:51] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:41:52] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:41:53] Speaker B: But, you know, in. In doing that and us. Us together. You know, how. How many people maybe have a talent for songwriting, but they don't have a older songwriter to coach them through it? [00:42:08] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:42:08] Speaker B: And I was. I'm not accomplished as a songwriter at all. It's always been a hobby to me. But. But I have written a lot of songs. [00:42:17] Speaker D: Yeah. And we were talking about this earlier that I. You and I would be arguing about how a song should go or something. I remember several times we've had that discussion where I think it should go one way and you think it should go another. And then I go, well, you're not Bob Dylan. You know, you can't. You don't know what you're talking about. And you'd say, I may not be a professional songwriter, but I'm a storyteller. That's what I do for a living. You know, your. Your sermons are always telling stories. And so whether you're an accomplished songwriter or not, you are a very accomplished storyteller as a writer, as a. As a speaker. And so there's a lot of overlap that you've. You've told me about. And that I've seen between those two. But just seeing also, like you said, having somebody who is. Who's not in it for the commercial success is a. Is a big blessing, whether they're seasoned or not, as long as they know what they're doing, know how to structure a song, which you do very well, then having someone like you who doesn't have that financial motivation to create something that the market will enjoy, that'll please the market, that was a big blessing because it's a little bit purer of a craft. [00:43:28] Speaker B: And, you know, there's a sense in which you can put an idea into, you know, AI and it can crank out a country song that rhymes and. [00:43:39] Speaker D: Fits the structure and the sound. [00:43:41] Speaker B: Yeah, but. And in so many ways, I think people who are fans of that genre of music, they have a hard time with modern country music for that reason, as it is so cookie cutter in its approach. And so I. You know, I don't have a dog in the race, so it's like I can. You know, I can just do what's in my mind, true to the song, what the song deserves. [00:44:09] Speaker D: And you're doing the story justice. [00:44:11] Speaker B: Yeah, the story and just the vibe, the emotion of the song. And it may come out sounding like the Grateful dead from the 70s, but if that's what that song needs to deliver the story, I'm fine with that. [00:44:30] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:44:31] Speaker B: So it can be, you know, a wide range. What was the one we wrote in California? [00:44:35] Speaker D: Saint Germain. [00:44:35] Speaker B: So Saint Germain is going to have a totally different vibe than I do. Lonesome. Right. Yeah, but. And, you know, you. You wrote most of that one. But. But Saint Germain. Yeah, it was. It was the vehicle that that story needed to be delivered. And I like that. [00:44:54] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:44:55] Speaker B: Like, no. No strings attached to it. Nobody's telling me how to do it. And I can. I can. Can write from the heart that way. Hopefully. Hopefully that's something you can maintain. [00:45:05] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:45:05] Speaker B: You know, that authenticity. [00:45:07] Speaker D: That's the hope as you. [00:45:08] Speaker B: As you progress. I know. As you get out of mainstream. Yeah, you do. You know that you have a mainstream sound, and you're able to do that extremely well. But there's. There's so many different genres. [00:45:25] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:45:26] Speaker B: That fall under the country label. I know back in maybe the 80s, you had the outlaw movement. You know, that was kind of outside of Nashville, and you had guys like Waylon and Willie and Kris Kristofferson and David Allen Coe and all these people Today, there's like 20 of those. [00:45:47] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:45:48] Speaker B: But it kind of falls is alt. Country, kind of the label that. [00:45:53] Speaker D: I don't know if that's. If that's what most people call it, I'm really not sure. But that's a good starting place to defining it because it's. It's the sound that's distinctly country, that it's got roots in country and you know that primarily. [00:46:10] Speaker B: But it's almost what like maybe grunge or alternative music was to rock and roll back in the 90s. [00:46:17] Speaker D: Yeah. It's just a branch off of it that's unique and it's kind of its own sound. And so you've got people like Tyler Childers, who took country and just gave it. Gave bluegrass more creative license in the sound and then that. Beyond that, he brought in Sturgill Simpson, who himself is a little bit of an odd musical character. He did an album that was. Did a bluegrass album, did a straight old school country album, did a, you know, heavy metal fuzz rock album, and then did one that was all nautical themed and bizarre stuff, then a psychedelic album. And so he came in with Tyler Childers and kind of blended country, bluegrass and psychedelic rock in a really unique way and created some cool sounds with. [00:47:06] Speaker B: With Sturgill. Also, the. The rules for production were just obliterated. [00:47:14] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:47:14] Speaker B: And. But in a good way. You know, in the, in the. What would it be? Maybe the. The seventies into the eighties. A Nash. The Nashville sound had developed, and you had guys who were phenomenal producers like Chet Atkins, who followed a algorithm to produce a song that was predictably going to sell. [00:47:39] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:47:39] Speaker B: And so you've got the. The business, the. The guys in suits up in New York that owned the label. You've got their kind of the redheaded stepchild people down in Nashville, the country artists and producers. And country was always trying to validate itself and, and, and say it deserves a seat at the table. It never got the marketing numbers that, you know, pop music got and rock music got. [00:48:09] Speaker D: Sure. [00:48:09] Speaker B: But. But yeah, so guys like Chad Atkins produced this. This predictable routine of producing a song. [00:48:17] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:48:18] Speaker B: And so when people Factory. Yeah, yeah. What was it called? [00:48:21] Speaker E: Or. [00:48:21] Speaker D: No, I said it's like a hit factory. It's just a machine that would crank them out. [00:48:24] Speaker B: And you have guys like Glenn Campbell playing guitar on every song, and, you know, he's a phenomenal musician, but it was becoming kind of predictable. [00:48:33] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:48:34] Speaker D: Monotonous. [00:48:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And. And then you had guys like Waylon who came to town, had a huge following in touring, but he wanted to try some new things with his sound, and it required him to get out of Nashville in order to do that. And so I think the alt country movement's trying to do the same thing. [00:48:58] Speaker E: Yeah, we. [00:48:59] Speaker B: I know we discovered during COVID an opportunity to. To network with a lot of musicians that weren't able to go into the studio anymore. So what was air gigs? [00:49:09] Speaker D: Yeah, air gigs. And so if you listen to my songs up until us again, everything up until that point was self produced from my bedroom. And so that's not to say I was playing on all of them. Most of them I'm not playing hardly anything on. If anything might be playing a guitar. [00:49:24] Speaker B: Lay a scratch track down. [00:49:26] Speaker D: Yeah, but I would, I would take a. I'd play a guitar track to a click, sing over it. And so it's, you know, just the absolute bare bones of the song. Then I'd take that and I would send it off to a drummer who was, I think in Nashville. He'd lay a drum track. I'd send it to a bass player in Louisiana. He'd lay a bass track and then it'd be a guitar player in Louisiana or Kentucky or somewhere different. And then I'm just sending the song all over the country. Having people in their own home, studios or bedrooms, just plugging into a computer, laying, you know, it's the best guitar player in Lexington or something would crank out a track for me and then best guitar player in New Orleans would lay out. Lay out a bass track or whatever. And so then that's how all those songs came together. Then I'd send it to a guy who was in Ohio to produce or to mix it, master it, and then put out the song. But everything through I Do Lonesome right. Was done that way. [00:50:26] Speaker B: And so, yeah, just building out a song, but it, but it sound pretty amazing when it was all said and done. That was one of the. The things about COVID that was kind of a blessing in disguise. And so it, it put you with some extremely accomplished musicians and puts them. [00:50:46] Speaker D: At arm's length because it was not attainable before. [00:50:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And these are like Grammy award winning people, you know, people that play with. [00:50:52] Speaker D: Dolly and legit players. [00:50:54] Speaker B: Right. And so you know that, that validated some of your, some of your music and made people take you a little more seriously. But still, even, even through all that, the, the sound, the freedom of production was in the artist's hands instead of the label Sands. [00:51:13] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:51:13] Speaker B: And so you mentioned, you mentioned Tyler Childers. Give us an example. Play a little bit of one of his songs. That kind of shows maybe how that, how that alt country genre, how it might sound. [00:51:28] Speaker D: Yeah, a lot of it is a little bit darker of a sound. So this is one of his. [00:51:38] Speaker B: Daddy. [00:51:39] Speaker C: Work like a mule mind in Pike County. Cole messed up his back couldn't work anymore. He said, one of these days you'll get out of these hills Keep your nose on the grindstone and out of the pills Daddy, I been trying I just can't catch a break there's too much in the. In this world I can't seem to shake But I remember your words Lord, they bring me to chills Keep your nose on the grindstone and out of the pills. [00:52:36] Speaker D: So a lot of those that are more gritty sound, darker sound, heavier sound usually. I really like the. The grunge to rock analogy is kind of what some of it's been. So if you listen to Warren Zeider's today, Pretty Little Poison was a big hit not too long ago. And it's. That kind of sounds like the grunge of country music almost. [00:52:55] Speaker B: And so the, the, the way that a person makes it today with all of these different lanes that people are following and subgenres, it's morphed, you know, back, back when I was in, in your position. You go to Nashville, you make your way up and down Music Row. You, you meet with representatives of the labels, you meet with publishing houses, you do gigs. You hope that the right person walks in at the right time. And then, you know, you have all of these overnight successes, so to speak, where, you know, you're playing tootsies and the right guy happens to be there and trade numbers. Next thing you know, you're. You're platinum, you know, but today that path, I don't know that there is a clear path, but it involves social media following. And what does it look like? [00:53:53] Speaker D: Yeah, it's, it's. The lines are a lot more blurred than they used to be as far as, you know, what path is going to get you there. And there's a sense in which it's always been that way because I've always heard people say that there's never been a step by step manual to making it in country music. But there's definitely, you know, any concept of a manual has been thrown out now. And so right now, the, the best chance you've got seems to be built around social media. [00:54:23] Speaker B: So the label, the label is looking to see kind of how you've developed your following. [00:54:29] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:54:30] Speaker D: And see if you are doing things that are conducive to going viral basically, rather than. Is this going to be something that the radio stations around the country are going to be pleased with and that their audiences are going to like. It's. Does TikTok like you? Does the algorithm like you? And so that's something that is a very tough nut to crack for me. [00:54:54] Speaker B: For most people who are some artists that. That kind of got their record deal after they built their following. [00:55:00] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, Luke Combs was probably the first person to do it that way. One of the. The first. [00:55:07] Speaker B: Luke was just sitting back on Vine. [00:55:09] Speaker D: He was on vine and that's not even around anymore. Tick Tock might be the next vine going away, but. But no, he was on vine and he talks about how, you know, you had to do. I think it was seven second clips at that point. So we had to take his songs or cover songs and do the best seven seconds of that song and put. [00:55:27] Speaker B: It out on vine playing guitar. [00:55:29] Speaker D: And I think so I think at that point, or it may have been recorded stuff. I wasn't around then, wasn't on vine, but he. He started doing stuff that way and then stuff went crazy viral and then he started getting some success there not soon after that. Ken Brown that Lars plays with, he saw the same thing on YouTube. I'm pretty sure that's how he really got to be successful today. The more up and coming names, there's a guy named Baker Blankenship who is doing really well. He's the latest TikTok sensation as far as I know, as of the last year or so. But he is one of these guys that is, I think 18 from Livingston, Tennessee, I want to say. And he's just. He's from Livingston, Tennessee and he started posting these videos. Santa Ana, the same label that I'm signed to came along and got a hold of him and signed into a deal, put out some songs with him. And his first song that he put out, I think it was the first single, went crazy viral and it's got. I think it may be closer to 100 million streams now just on Spotify. And so that all happened on Tick Tock. Everything's going viral on Tick Tock. [00:56:46] Speaker B: Was. It was Zach Brian. [00:56:48] Speaker D: Zach Brian was that way. Yeah. I forget if he was on. He may have been on Tick Tock. He may have been more YouTube. But I. I think it was Tick Tock. It was sometime when those two were kind of competing for power, I think, or competing for dominance. And that. [00:57:00] Speaker B: That's Zach Top. [00:57:02] Speaker D: Zach Topp more recently seems to be that way. [00:57:04] Speaker B: Yeah, he's one that probably. I remember seeing him, you Know, doing, you know, little videos in his garage or something. [00:57:11] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:57:12] Speaker D: Playing bar gigs and all that. [00:57:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And so. But yeah, this thinking that a guy can go, which is very empowering, you know, but it also brings a lot, a lot of artists to the table and gives everybody a shot and standing out from the crowd, it's got to be a challenge. [00:57:31] Speaker E: Yeah, no, it is. [00:57:32] Speaker D: And it's. It's something that is hard to know exactly how to do. And so for most of the time, for me, it's just been, you know, be yourself and try to find the right, the best way to communicate through a camera who you really are. Because it's hard to do that in a way that's true to you. [00:57:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Not copy and paste everyone. [00:57:55] Speaker D: Yeah. Not copy and paste everyone else. And also not misrepresent you because you can go be yourself in front of a camera, but the camera distorts you in a certain way. So there's certain things you have to exaggerate or, you know, certain things you have to do differently for the camera, for the lights to, you know, personality wise, I'm saying. [00:58:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And your personality, you know, you've got a goofy side for sure. You know, and you let that come through in your social media. And at first, you know, the old school kind of approach to me was like, man, don't do that. [00:58:22] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:58:23] Speaker B: Just, you know, always look like a superstar and all that. And it's like, well, that's not, that's not you. [00:58:28] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:58:29] Speaker B: And there's so much out there that people can, can smell when someone's inauthentic. [00:58:36] Speaker E: Yeah. [00:58:36] Speaker B: And so, you know, I appreciate that you do let that kind of, you. [00:58:41] Speaker D: Know, and there's obviously times when, you know, I'm 21 and I'm gonna say stupid stuff that, you know, I'm. I, you know, probably shouldn't have said because it's just not as funny as I think it is. But all of that is in an effort to just be honestly who I am, just, you know, say what I'm gonna say, do what I'm gonna do. And if the market is pleased with it, then they're pleased with it and things go well. And if they're not, then, you know, find another way or do something else. [00:59:10] Speaker B: Well, and I think your work ethic is, has been impressive to just see that you're consistent. You're posting. I mean, how many times in a week do you post? [00:59:19] Speaker D: I'm trying to post at least once a day. Lately it's been two or three times a day and so weekly you're looking at 14 to 21 times a week. [00:59:27] Speaker B: Well, and content is king. You know, if you think about, if you think about all of these different platforms, you know, who knows where TikTok's going to be in a year. But if you think TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, all these different platforms, they are content distribution machines and they live, they survive by content. Like what we're doing right now is we're producing content. Yeah, this is going to be on YouTube and all the different platforms, we'll chop it up and make shorts and reels and all this stuff out of it. But when you're creating, you're covering a song, you're writing songs, you're, you're, you know, responding to things that are happening in the world consistently. I think that's something that people in my generation can look at your generation and feel like, man, they're playing on their phone all the time. But there is a sense in which there's work ethic involved to just consistently be in front of your audience, produce new content. [01:00:34] Speaker D: And it's tough because it's got to be new content. It can't be something that you've already done if you do the same thing. Learn this the hard way. Even right now I'm trying to promote this song and you've got to be creative and just do a lot of critical thinking because if you're posting the same song, TikTok picks up that you're using the same song, same sound over and over and over. And so you've gotta, you know, mix it in with other things and you can't do the same. You know, it can't all be stuff shot on a professional camera because if you look too professional, then you're not authentic. But if you are all in your phone, then you look cheap. And it's, it's a tough balance to strike that you kind of just build as you go. And so all of that, I've not mastered it by any measure, but all that stuff I'm, I'm trying to figure out as we go and, but it is a full time job to learn social media. [01:01:30] Speaker B: One of the things I remember when we started kind of exploring you going in, into this world. From my time, my major was entertainment industry management, University of North Alabama. And one of the things that I really loved about that world is that there's, there's competition, but it's not cutthroat in the sense that people will help you figure it out. And I know there's been a lot of people who've been good to you and kind of brought absolutely behind the curtain and let you see how the machine works. I'm thinking about people like Tammy king. [01:02:03] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:02:03] Speaker D: Now, Ms. Tammy's been a wonderful help. She brought me in to just to. [01:02:10] Speaker B: See some people who don't know. [01:02:11] Speaker D: Ms. Tammy is the fiddle player for a band called the Steel Drivers. They're a bluegrass band. Chris Stapleton's kind of first big success was with them. And so a lot of their early records are with him. And then today they've got their own lineup and a lot of great musicians, they're great writers. But she's brought me behind the scenes just to see some of the shows and stuff. She's let me come backstage and hang out with the band a time or two and it's been fun. And then I've told you multiple times, I won't shut up about it. The best weekend of my life was at the Front Indiana Beach Songwriters Festival last year. Best weekend. And she just gave me the opportunity to go sit in and just hang out. Not work, not have an agenda, but just hang out with other songwriters and people that have, you know, there's some people that are barely older than me and then some people that are in their 70s that wrote Hank Jr. [01:03:06] Speaker B: Hits. [01:03:06] Speaker D: There was a guy there that I think wrote if a Country Boy Can Survive. And so there's, you know, incredible writers there. And she gave me the opportunity to just go sit in and hang out with them, get to know them, learn how to behave around these people, how they interact with each other. And then that led to me writing a lot of songs with these people and so made a lot of good friends, made a lot of connections, a lot of, you know, just business connections there. And now let me think, one or, I think two or three of those. The songs that I cut in California all came out of rights that I had with. With this people. And so she's been a huge help. And then you've got. Lars has been a big help. He's been been very encouraging and has given me a lot of input and advice. Devin Dawson. A lot of people have given me. [01:03:56] Speaker B: Local Brad, a friend of mine. Brad, Brad and Vicki Sykes son in law. Devin Dawson is just one of the great writers, great artists, but he's one of the great writers in Nashville. And just to get FaceTime with somebody like that, sit down and have coffee and pick his brain, that extremely was rare in my day. Those guys kind of hit off by themselves and you didn't get in their orbit. So I think those kind of things really are. [01:04:28] Speaker D: God's just placed some very generous people around. [01:04:31] Speaker B: Yeah. And also just affirmation from the Lord to say, hey, you can get a seat at this table. Yeah. [01:04:40] Speaker D: And if nothing else, it was encouraging to hear from them that, you know, you're not a rock star yet, but you're for where you are, you're on the right track, you're not behind, you're doing well. And so that's been a big encouragement from a lot of generous people. [01:04:57] Speaker B: Well, what does the next stage look like? And like, I know, I know probably there's people watching this, that they know somebody, they've got a friend who, you know, tour manager for this guy or whatever. And those kind of things help introductions, always friends. Introduce friends to friends, you know, and those kind of things always help when people can just get you connected and in the right room. [01:05:19] Speaker D: Nashville is built off of friends of friends of friends. Right. Everything happens that way. [01:05:24] Speaker B: But. But like, how do you. How do you plan to survive in the meantime? So let's say if you knew. If you knew the good Lord's gonna give you a record contract, a record deal in five years and, you know, 26 years old, you're gonna be killing it. But in. In the meantime. [01:05:48] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:05:48] Speaker B: How does an artist at your stage survive? [01:05:52] Speaker D: Yeah, I mean, and don't say live at dad's house. Yeah, exactly. No, live in a trailer if you have to. No, get. Find some cheap housing. [01:06:01] Speaker B: There are people that do that. There are people that just open up a room in their house for artists. [01:06:05] Speaker D: Yeah, no, there's people that do that or that, you know, own real estate around town and they'll. They set that up just to serve people. So there's. There's some good people around that I've heard we'll do that. So hopefully following with some of them. But. [01:06:21] Speaker B: But going up there, you're going to be. You're going to be writing, you're going to be cutting songs, you're going to be hopefully touring, hopefully. [01:06:30] Speaker D: Yeah. So right now it's. Writing is one of those skills that I think I've probably. I've got my greatest strength there. It's not sharp enough to make a living yet on that, but I think that's probably where I've got my best shot short term. And so getting up there, riding with people consistently writing more songs, writing better songs, getting more. More sharper with that probably if. If things, you know, unless I get some kind of huge hit between now and August or September, then probably getting a day job, just, you know, working a bar, working a restaurant. Just make ends meet, and then work hard, put your nose to the grindstone and get to work and keep on chipping away until something happens and keep on praying, keep on being faithful to what God's called me to, and just let him. You know, let him worry about the scoreboard, as Saban said. [01:07:32] Speaker B: Yeah. You're one of the things we love about country and Nashville is. At least for now, our faith is not anathema, you know, it's. You can be a patriot, you can be a believer, and you don't have to hide that and play some kind of game, you know? So that's something that we hope for you is that. One, that that is your core convictions, and two, that that's something that you never compromise on, that you never. You make that part of your brand, and absolutely, you are. And I know even now, some of your. Some of your biggest gigs, you'll. You'll throw a gospel song in. [01:08:17] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:08:18] Speaker B: And the crowd seems to love it. [01:08:20] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:08:20] Speaker D: No, there's nothing like a crowd of people that are probably pretty drunk. But then you pull out Old Rugged Cross, and they are fired up about it, and, you know, who knows if the Lord's working through that, But I hope he is. [01:08:34] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:08:34] Speaker D: And all you can do is be. Be faithful to. What's the verse? Acknowledge him in all of your ways. [01:08:40] Speaker B: And he'll make your path straight. Yeah, you're. And when it comes to kind of conservative principles and political realm, you've. You've had a little experience there. I know your major is political science, and our local congressman gave you an opportunity to intern up there. [01:08:58] Speaker D: Yes. So that was back In February of 20, when we all got an opportunity to go up to Washington, D.C. when you were going to open a session of Congress in prayer. And Congressman Bean had brought us up to do that, and we were hanging out, and one of our friends in the church had a home there, a townhouse. And so we were hanging out with them, having dinner one night, and Congressman Bean was there, and he said, you know, hey, what are you studying? And I told him political science. He'd just didn't know me at the time, I don't think. And so he said, oh, are you looking for an internship anytime soon? I said, there's a good chance I will be. And I told him about my spring summer schedule and how, you know, it'll probably be sometime in the fall if I do. And he said, well, hey, if you. If you do reach out to me and I'll, I'll see if I can do something for you. So I said, oh, that'd be, be awesome. And so sure enough, come July or so, I reach out to his office and they interviewed me and got me in. And so from late August, I think the last week of August into the second week or so of December, I was in Washington D.C. and so I got to see the whole election firsthand. Last, last day I was there, I actually got this little American flag cup from a bunch, I think it was 70 or 80 of the Republican congressman's wives all gave me this stuff at a little Christmas event that I sang for them and so had a lot of, a lot of fun, met a lot of cool people, learned a lot about the federal government, how things work up there, how the game of politics works with them, and met a lot of cool people. [01:10:39] Speaker B: I think you, I think you learned as well that, that people are people and you have some great leaders. I mean, you, you don't, you don't get any better than, you know, Congressman being. No, you don't, you know, but at the same time, it's a, it's a local guy, it's a real people, normal people that make the world go around up there, you know, and so, and. [01:11:02] Speaker D: A lot of 20 year olds, a. [01:11:03] Speaker B: Lot of 20 year olds writing, writing bills and that sort of thing while you were there. There was just a moment that it was like a scene out of a movie. We're sitting there and the, there was an old guitar that one of the senators had given to him. Signed. And like most props, it's out of tune. And you got it, you tuned it up and just did a song real quick that it became one of your big viral. [01:11:31] Speaker D: Yeah, the one video that I've had that's gotten, you know, has gone truly viral. It's got, I think around 209 views today, probably more by the time this video goes out. [01:11:39] Speaker B: Like, how many total did it get? [01:11:41] Speaker D: 2090-002090-00209,000. And so that's where it's sitting right now. [01:11:48] Speaker B: And you, you did a Toby Keith cover. Do us a little bit of that one. [01:11:54] Speaker C: American girls and American guys will always stand up and salute we'll always recognize when we see Old Glory flying There's a lot of men dead so we can sleep in peace at night when we lay down our head My daddy served in the army where he lost his right eye but he flew a flag out in our yard Till the day that he died. He wanted my mother, my brother, my sister and me to grow up and live happy in the land of the now this nation that I love is falling under attack A mighty sucker punch came flying in from somewhere in the back soon as we could see clearly through our big black eye man, we lit up your world like the 4th. [01:12:49] Speaker D: Of July. [01:12:52] Speaker C: Hey, Uncle Sam put your name at the top of his list and the Statue of Liberty station Started shaking her fist and the eagle will fly and it's gonna be hell when you hear Mother Freedom start a ringing her bell and it'll feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you all brought to you courtesy of the red, white and blue. [01:13:24] Speaker B: Yeah, man. So your. Your audience are patriots. There's just. That's. That may be true of most. Most country artists, but I know there's. [01:13:36] Speaker D: A couple you wonder about nowadays, but there are, by and large. [01:13:39] Speaker B: Well, yeah. Winners of award shows. You just never know. But. [01:13:44] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:13:45] Speaker B: But nevertheless, no names. Our. Our. That's who we are. Yeah, That's. That's our people. We're. You know, you. You come to our church on the 4th of July, and it looks like, you know, red, white and blues everywhere. [01:14:02] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:14:02] Speaker B: You know, and it's just a value that we have as a family. It's a value that we have as a. As a church, family, and a community. And so when you hit those chords that. That Standing up for our nation and. And standing up for the people who protect our freedom, it resonates deeply with your audience, and that's been interesting to observe. [01:14:27] Speaker D: Yeah, and it's. There's always that pressure to. You know how they always said that the. The media and the Hollywood, they're all lean left, and, you know, if you lean right, then it's. You're in trouble. And so there's always that pressure to just be quiet about it sometimes. But I think as I'm trying to figure out where. I haven't really made it yet. I don't have anything to lose yet. I think it's important for me to decide what I'm gonna stick up for now and know what I believe and know what I'm gonna be vocal about. And those are things where I am a follower of Christ. Like it or not, that's who I am, and that's who I'm gonna be. And I'm conservative, and I'm someone who cares deeply about this country and loves my country and so well. [01:15:17] Speaker B: And I think the older you get, the more those things will increase in value to you. You Know, I noticed when you guys were little kids, we always believed those things, but when you were little kids that you hit an age, you were homeschooled up, you know, for a while, but you hit an age where we started noticing that the system, like when you would go to school, mom and I, we were taught, you know, we said the pledge every day. We. We were taught patriotic songs. We were taught that people are fighting for our liberty and our freedom and that those things are value, valuable. They're worth, you know, fighting for and paying the ultimate price for. [01:16:03] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:16:04] Speaker B: And those things were just drilled into us as kids, but we noticed that, like, whether it was school or whether it was just culture was not championing those things like they once had. [01:16:14] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:16:15] Speaker B: So as you guys came up, we took it upon ourselves. We said, well, we want to champion that. [01:16:20] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:16:21] Speaker B: So that, you know, you. You grew up with the same values that we had. And so as you get older and you have kids of your own, you'll. That will. That will grow in importance. [01:16:31] Speaker D: Sure. [01:16:32] Speaker B: And I know. I'm thankful that it's important to you now. [01:16:35] Speaker D: I'm thankful for how you guys. How you guys did do that, because that's, you know, homeschooling. There's always the stereotype of homeschoolers being weird. And unfortunately, I lived up to the stereotype, but I tell people I'm, I think, eight years sober now from homeschooling. [01:16:51] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:16:52] Speaker D: And so I've been socialized since. But. But no, that. That was immensely valuable early on, having that those values and convictions just constantly. Constantly taught to me, and they were always in front of me. So that when I went out into the real world and they're challenged, I knew what I believed, and I knew why I believed it. And it wasn't just, oh, mom and dad say I should believe this. What do you believe? You know, and there's not this. It's not like I'm just gonna go throw it away as soon as I'm out. It's something that I adopted for myself because you guys kept it in front of me. [01:17:30] Speaker B: And that was something we always wanted to do, was give you the freedom to object and to think through it. Good ideas can stand on their own two feet. So if it's theological in nature or philosophical in nature, great thoughts, great ideas can defend themselves. [01:17:51] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:17:51] Speaker B: So, you know, we tried to give freedom to. For you. For you guys to push back or to argue a different perspective or whatever it was. And I think that that served us well. [01:18:02] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:18:02] Speaker D: No, and some of the Most valuable conversations that I've ever had have been you and I sitting out in the backyard or on the back porch just talking about some crazy ethical dilemma that college has presented me with, or some ethics to philosophy class. And I'm sitting going, I don't know how Scripture would have me to think about this. I don't know what God thinks about this. And it's just not clear. And there's these bizarre questions that you're presented with later on in life. And you and I just sit down and we think about it, and we. You know, it's not some dogma that is just, this is the way it is. And it's because I say it, we reason through it. And that's been very valuable to me. [01:18:45] Speaker B: Good. And when it comes to. When it comes to writing and music, I think that's one of the. One of the things as a believer who's mate, who's made it there, who's chosen the path of going into country music. And if it's Christian music, theologically aligning with scripture, your songs is very easy to do. Should be. [01:19:12] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:19:13] Speaker B: In country music, the approach is different. It's kind of like making a movie, let's say. If you're gonna make a movie about any. Any part of history, if you tell the truth, there's gonna be sin in that movie. [01:19:29] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:19:29] Speaker B: You know, unless. Unless the movie is about just before the fall. [01:19:33] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:19:34] Speaker B: Every other movie is gonna have sinful people making sinful decisions at some point in the movie. [01:19:40] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:19:41] Speaker B: So in the same way, as a Christian singing and writing country music, I think that's always been one of the things that has been a valued value to me, is telling the truth in the song. [01:19:56] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:19:56] Speaker D: And that's how you've always presented it to me. It's not, you know, it's not that you can't write songs about people that drink or you can't write songs about people doing drugs or, you know, whatever. Not that I. Not that I do that People are going to be unfaithful, People are going to do wrong. But the key is not to not write about it, not sing about it. The key is to tell the truth, to tell honest stories and to tell true stories. Not in the sense of, you know, is it fiction or nonfiction, but is it honest, and is it truly presenting the nature of sin and the nature of right and wrong and how God has ordered things? And that's something that's been really valuable to me as I write songs. Every once in a while, I'll come Out of a session that I've written a new song with a guy, and I'll listen back to it, and I'm like, man, that's a great song. And then I'll think about it and I'll go, that is not. There's something in there that it doesn't point Glory in the right direction. It doesn't reflect what you believe, and it doesn't reflect the truth. And so I, I, you know, I can't do anything with that song at that point. And so then I learn and I. I sharpen my craft and I start gearing things towards writing the truth. [01:21:12] Speaker B: Well, and music's powerful. [01:21:13] Speaker E: It is. [01:21:14] Speaker B: You know, when it. When it's all said and done, I'll work. Gosh, somebody asked me, how long did it take you to write a sermon? And I'll say, 30 years. You know, as long as I've been preaching, all of that experience and study and prayer goes into every sermon. But when it's all said and done, by Thursday of that week, they'll be humming the song from the worship set more than they're reflecting on the sermon. [01:21:41] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:21:42] Speaker B: That's the power of music. And if you have something that's that powerful, you're. You're a steward of that. And you're accountable for how you use that power. And what you put. So if the train, the locomotive is. This is the sound. What you put on that train, you're responsible for. [01:22:03] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:22:04] Speaker B: And so put true things on the train. [01:22:06] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:22:07] Speaker D: So because the power of life and death is in the tongue. [01:22:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:22:09] Speaker D: And it doesn't matter what, you know, what the scenario is that those words are being said. You. You have a responsibility as a follower of Christ to speak life and to, you know, speak about sin, to speak about things that don't give life, but to speak in a way that brings life out of that. And, you know, you remember when we were doing homeschooling, most of the stuff that I learned was to the tune of a song. And so I remember to this day. [01:22:42] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Every. [01:22:43] Speaker D: Every single preposition in the English dictionary. I can tell you in alphabetical order because I learned it to a song to this day. And so it's like you said, you may not remember every word of a sermon, but you'll remember every lyric of a song that you hear in Sunday service. [01:22:58] Speaker B: Well, the first words that humanity spoke, they were poetic in nature. So when, like, Adam saw Eve for the first time and he said, behold, this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, that was in the Hebrew language, that was a poem. And so after the fall, the poetry was gone. So some theologians have speculated that our native tongue is beauty and poetry and songs. And part of the effect of sin is losing that. So when you can use that medium of music, it draws people in because there's an ancient memory. [01:23:54] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:23:54] Speaker D: There's a yearning for it. [01:23:56] Speaker B: Something's there that's familiar to them, that they're drawn to, and that's a powerful, powerful tool. But, yeah, if you're going to sing a song that has sin. Sinful things in it, present them in a truthful, honest way so that you're. You're not telling teenagers, hey, this is the way to make a great life. You know, do all of these horrible things and. No. Sing about the horrible things. If. If the song requires that, but let them know where it leads. [01:24:31] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:24:32] Speaker B: And I listen to your songs. I'm real interested in the. The lyrics of it. Thinking us again. What are the lyrics? You said something about, I thought I'd take the whiskey, but whiskey doesn't do jack. [01:24:45] Speaker D: Whiskey doesn't do jack. Yeah, no, it's right there. It's. You know, not that I was in the situation, but the person in the song is saying, I. I thought after, you know, this girl. Girl leaves him and he goes, I thought that I would turn to whiskey. I thought I would turn to whiskey. I thought that would be my crutch. But it turns out it doesn't do what I thought it would do. And that's the truth. [01:25:08] Speaker B: It makes me miss you. [01:25:09] Speaker D: And it makes things worse. It doesn't help. It doesn't serve me the way I thought it would. And it's not where I thought I would find satisfaction in it, Some temporal fulfillment, but it never does. [01:25:20] Speaker B: So those are the kind of things that people need to hear, that truth. And it may not be the truth the way I would tell it in. [01:25:28] Speaker D: A sermon, but it's true truth in the common tongue. [01:25:32] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's a powerful thing. When we were talking earlier about our values when it comes to patriotism, part of the reason for that is because we've had people in our own family that have paid the ultimate price. [01:25:53] Speaker D: Yes. [01:25:54] Speaker B: And you know the story. My great uncle Pete. Pete. Noah Reeves. Noah Pete Reeves was. For years, we thought he was missing in action. Mia was in a battle in Germany, never came home. And my great grandmother, who was part of. Who raised me, was always talking about him. She had his picture hanging up in her living room and just kind of always had this fantasy that Maybe he met a woman, settled down and, you know, lived his life out in Germany. But recently, here, in the last couple of years, through DNA evidence, they found his remains and they identified him. And our government was very proud of what they did here. They flew his remains back, gave him full military honors. And all over Alabama, where he was buried, you had people standing out in their yard waving flags and honoring this soldier who's finally come home special. Yeah. Yeah. And so the story of those that didn't make it, those that didn't come home, is one that was worth telling to me. And so in the midst of all that, I wrote a song called Virginia. And I've always loved to hear you sing it. Could you do that one for us? [01:27:16] Speaker D: Sure. [01:27:23] Speaker C: He walked with Virginia On a rainy night in Georgia Just before he went to fight for Uncle Sam maybe in the morning he'd wake up better, soldier but tonight you just don't give a damn he reached into his pocket Placed a ring upon her finger and said, Virginia, don't forget to write as the moon rose over Georgia they walked down the street together he sang to her has he held her tight? He say walk with me, Virginia in the morning Let me hear you whisper once again about how you've been dreaming Of a life we build together and forget about the one we're living in she'd hum that little tune about the two of them together as she planted flowers on her daddy's farm as she worked her mind would drift back to the night they walked together as she longed to be held between his arms she walked every evening on the street where he had held her on that rainy night before he sailed away and when she closed her eyes she saw the two of them together now she cried she could almost hear him sing he sang Walk with me, Virginia and the morning Let me hear you whisper once again about how you've been dreaming Of a life we build together and forget about the one we're living in Every night she prayed to God this day would never happen as two soldiers stood knocking at the door. They didn't have to tell her that her man had died in battle they just held her as she fell onto the floor. He said it happened quickly and he never saw it coming as gunfire opened up on his platoon. But in a fit of desperation he called out pursuit Virginia. And as he died we heard him sing this little tune he say walk with me, Virginia in the morning Let me hear you whisper once again about how you've been dreaming Of a life we build together and forget about the one we're living in. [01:31:06] Speaker B: And families who've. Who've paid that ultimate price. Hopefully they feel that, you know, I know every time you've played it, it seemed like somebody in the crowd has come up to you and really let you know that that one. That one hit them in the heart, you know. Yeah. It's interesting to me as you've. And I hope you continue to be as, you know, your career unfolds. But you've always been faithful to represent Christ, you know, in some dark places sometimes, and I know even in moments. And, you know, when you. When your career takes you into situations where people are maybe there for the wrong reasons, maybe they're up to some things they shouldn't be up to. And. And you've got a crowd around you, and you've been singing country music that, you know from time to time you'll drop in an old gospel song, and you found that pretty well received. It seems like it's hard to explain. [01:32:12] Speaker D: Why, but if it's just part of the culture of country music that that's appreciated or. Or if God's just working through it, I don't know. But. But no, something about playing the Old rugged cross in a dive bar. God seems to speak through it somehow. [01:32:27] Speaker B: Well, you never know. It could be that's the sermon that my sermons may never hear, but it might be the gospel through song comes to them in that situation, if you're faithful to deliver it. Why don't we end right there? Why don't we just end with that song, the Old Rugged Cross, the way you would do it in one of these. One of these settings. [01:32:51] Speaker D: Gotcha. [01:33:00] Speaker C: On a hill far away Stood an old rugged cross the emblem of suffering and. And I love that old cross where the dearest and best For a world of lost sinners was slain so I'll cherish the old rugged cross Till my trophies at last I lay down I will cling to the old rugged cross and exchange it Sunday for a crown to the old rugged cross I will ever be true it's shame and reproach gladly bear and it'll call me someday to my home far away where is glory Forever I'll share so I'll cherish the old rugged cross Till my trophies at last I lay down I will cling to the old rugged cross. [01:35:03] Speaker D: And. [01:35:04] Speaker C: Exchange it someday for a crown. [01:35:12] Speaker D: I. [01:35:12] Speaker C: Will cling to the orgate cross. [01:35:21] Speaker D: And. [01:35:21] Speaker C: Exchange it someday for a crown. [01:35:36] Speaker B: Amen. Well, maybe we could do this again sometime and kind of keep us in the loop. Of what's going on in Nashville. And I'll certainly. And your mother will be praying for you. And I trust that our audience will as well. Thank you. Thank you for joining me today. [01:35:50] Speaker D: I appreciate it. [01:35:51] Speaker B: All right, man. Yeah. [01:36:00] Speaker D: Sorry, I didn't realize you were signaling me to stop. Although you're telling me to back off the mic. That sounded great. I don't know how you kept kept singing after all that too, cuz I'm used to doing that for four hours. [01:36:12] Speaker B: Well, true. [01:36:15] Speaker D: What? [01:36:15] Speaker B: M. Bum brain fog.