Try That in a Small Town Podcast
In 2023, Jason Aldean's groundbreaking song and video "Try That In A Small Town" resonated with a resurgence of conservative values in America. The writers of the song, Kurt, Neil, Tully, and Kelley, took the opportunity to launch the Try That In A Small Town Podcast. This platform allows them to reveal the true inspiration behind the song and discuss the importance of common-sense values. With a lineup of influential guests, the hosts will entertain you with the stories behind their music, while also addressing challenging topics affecting our communities and country.
Try That in a Small Town Podcast
The Warren Brothers - Old Friends, Hard Truths & Basketball with Tim McGraw :: Ep 58 Try That in a Small Town Podcast
Step into the creative minds of Nashville's legendary songwriting troublemakers, the Warren Brothers. Brett and Brad Warren's unfiltered conversation reveals how two boys from Tampa, Florida—raised in a household so strict they couldn't walk down the beer aisle at Publix—transformed into the hitmaking duo behind some of country music's most iconic songs.
Their journey unfolds like a country song itself—packed with unexpected twists, poignant revelations, and belly laughs. The brothers recount how basketball skills, not musical talent, secured their friendship with Tim McGraw (leading to 37 song cuts), and how their early co-writes with Tom Douglas taught them the vulnerability required for great songwriting. From homemade Earth Shoes to spearfishing with McGraw, their stories paint an authentic picture of Nashville's creative community at its most raw and genuine.
The conversation takes a powerful turn when the brothers discuss getting sober and the transformative shift from being "collectors of everyone else's energy" to serving others through their music. This perspective change coincided with their greatest successes, including McGraw's emotional war tribute "If You're Reading This" and Toby Keith's party anthem "Red Solo Cup"—a song they wrote as a joke that became a cultural phenomenon.
As they reflect on thirty years in the business, the Warrens share priceless insights about creative partnerships, the evolution of Nashville's sound, and finding purpose in an industry constantly reinventing itself. Their candid discussion about cherishing longstanding friendships and focusing on quality over quantity resonates far beyond songwriting, touching on universal truths about authenticity and legacy.
Whether you're a songwriter, music lover, or someone navigating your own creative journey, this conversation will inspire you to embrace your unique path, cherish meaningful connections, and find the courage to put your truth into your work. Subscribe now and join the conversation with the songwriting duo behind some of country music's most unforgettable hits.
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Have you guys just getting to the age that we all are and how long we've all been doing it is? Don't you sort of feel like in the last couple years you've really been cherishing old friends? Yes like it's just. It's not like you call them up and write a card every week, but it's just like this bragg is hey, totally called. You want to. You want to go do the podcast and now I hate podcasts yeah and I was like I 100% I'm doing it.
Speaker 4:Plus, you had no choice. Famous people need to be validated, just like everybody else. The difference is they want to be validated by other famous people.
Speaker 1:Not by us.
Speaker 4:We told Tim McGraw that song was great for a month. But when Carole King said it was great, it was going on the radio for like a month. But when Harold King said it was great, it was going on the radio. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm a dad of four kids and two are girls and like the whole, you know, men using the girls' restroom and all that I just never got it political. I was just like as a dad, that's not happening in a store when my daughters are in there. I just didn't think about it too politically. I think everybody got one side or the other.
Speaker 3:The Try that in a Small Town podcast begins now.
Speaker 6:Welcome back to the Try that in a Small Town podcast. T-k-k low thrash. I'm Kurt Kurt Mann, kurt Mandu, kurt Mandu, kurt Mandu, the Kurt man. I like it.
Speaker 7:Mandu. Have you done Mandu before? Oh yeah, you've done that when they put the vest on and the oh Like the electrodes and stuff, and it's kind of a workout.
Speaker 8:I've seen it. I've heard about it.
Speaker 6:No, I'm unfamiliar with Mandu.
Speaker 7:I've never heard of that. No, I did it for a while. It actually works. They put a vest on you and they put you know they have these. They put a collar Very light bolted GPS through you.
Speaker 2:that stimulates your muscles while you're doing things Really and you can get a huge workout like in 15 minutes.
Speaker 7:It's pretty cool. Anyway, I hadn't heard of Mandu in a long time.
Speaker 6:I hadn't either, I had no idea.
Speaker 7:Sorry about that. I probably messed up the intro You're not putting a vest on me. You can put a hunting vest on you.
Speaker 8:Like a bicycle skateboard helmet and a vest. Then they would get it.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 6:It's already fun and it's going to be a lot of fun today. We've got the Warren brothers with us today. Brett and Brad Warren.
Speaker 8:Their story is unlike any other that's right, a lot of energy, oh I could sit and I could sit and listen to y'all stories for them that y'all have for the past 30 years I could sit here for hours and listen to that it's interesting.
Speaker 6:We write with them from time to time and we'll get in the room and it's usually just two hours of banter back and forth and then we finally write a song oh yeah that's what's fun about.
Speaker 5:Uh, you know these really long. You know 25, 30 year friendships. You know, and you get together and you give your reason to look back and kind of realize you shouldn't take anything for granted.
Speaker 8:You know, yeah, we miss half the stuff when the mics aren't on, because y'all you start reliving everything right off the bat and it's like, oh God, I wish the cameras were rolling.
Speaker 7:We can't deliver all that.
Speaker 8:We'll have them on again right Some of us go.
Speaker 7:but yeah, they're amazing, like you mentioned, their energy and they're going to talk about it but just their energy is infectious. I mean, they're a crazy productive, good guy. They're just good humans and incredibly talented and they're writing things from McGraw's Highway Don't Care to Toby Keith's Red Solo Cup. I mean it's pretty diverse, you know, and incredible performers and good buddies, so I'm excited.
Speaker 6:Absolutely. Let's get right to it. I have some fun guests. I didn't know how to introduce them so I went to chat gpt oh let's see what is this.
Speaker 7:That's a lot of preparation, it is.
Speaker 2:It's early so check this out.
Speaker 6:This is chat gpt today's guest, our country music's favorite troublemakers two guys who have written more hits than a vending machine. I don't know what that means, neither and there's more backstage antics than a rock tour in the 90s. They've written chart toppers for everyone, from McGraw to Jason Aldean. They are equal parts genius, chaos and smart ass. Commentary. These brothers bring the heart, humor and just enough chaos to keep Nashville on its toes. Buckle up. We've got the Warren Brothers. Why?
Speaker 7:would I ever try to do my own research? Now, which one of you two wrote that? That's great, that's fantastic.
Speaker 1:I mean it's a little scary. It actually is very scary.
Speaker 4:I mean it's pretty dead on the fact that we're still, kind of like, considered knuckleheads in our 50s. I'm 54.
Speaker 5:He.
Speaker 4:I'm 54, he's 56.
Speaker 1:We played an acoustic show like a fundraiser a week ago with Jelly Roll and he referred to us as a hoot. It was Jesse Alexander. She plays. You know I Drive your Truck, the crowd goes crazy. Jelly Roll sings. You know his song, crowd Goes Crazy. We play a song and he goes. You guys are a hoot.
Speaker 4:A real hoot. So 30 years of work and we're a hoot. Yeah, the guy that's doing a toot calls us a hoot.
Speaker 1:He doesn't know you If you're describing you guys as a hoot, he doesn't know you All my friends from Franklin were there and they're like oh, you're a hoot. It's been going on for about three weeks now.
Speaker 8:Is that what they call old people now?
Speaker 4:We're a hoot.
Speaker 8:We're a hoot.
Speaker 1:A real hoot I know you're a great singer and everything, but you're a hoot, have you guys?
Speaker 6:ever like chat. Gbt is pretty scary. Have you ever been in a room? And it's like I wonder how they would write this song just for fun, right in the style of Jason Aldean. It's not bad, it's not great, it's not great.
Speaker 7:Like lyrically it's not great, but it sounds real. The demo they produce is pretty amazing it's pretty unbelievable, are you?
Speaker 1:talking about, just straight up, ai and songwriters.
Speaker 2:I mean it's a tool. At this point, who?
Speaker 1:knows how good it'll get, but we've, we've typed it. Now you said the music's pretty good. There's Suno and a couple apps where the music you know not bad, You're right Track guys are freaking out right now Like oh my God, the right lyrics we're done.
Speaker 4:That's why we play a bunch of live shows, because this could all be going away. Right, yeah, exactly On some level.
Speaker 1:But I think it lacks nuance. I don't think ChatGPT's going to come up with the devil and down to Georgia.
Speaker 4:You know what I mean.
Speaker 8:I would have said at some point that AI can't sound like Neil Thrasher, but they're getting pretty close, man. We were going through all that stuff the other day and it's like okay. One of the guys I write with said no, everybody's going to be using it. We might as well use it too and run it through our filter. I think our filter might be a little tick better than some of the others.
Speaker 8:You know what I'm saying I'm like I'm not admitting that I'm using AI yet. I'm just saying I remember when the track thing came to town and it was like they were saying adapt or die, yeah, and we didn't believe it. I'm like I am not going to use track.
Speaker 2:And two years later we're like I'm not doing it track. And two years later I'm like I'm not doing it.
Speaker 8:And it's like you adapt or die. And they were right. Here's the scary part.
Speaker 1:I have these four nephews that live in Detroit and they're all like 8, 10, 12, and 13. And they were in Nashville a couple weeks ago and I was like, hey, would you care if you went to chat GPT or one of these apps, these ai apps? And you said, hey, make me a, a record that's like half rap, half rock about me and all my eighth grade buddies going on our first camping trip and you insert all of your names and things that you like and it created a record for you. Would you care that real humans didn't create that music? And would you listen to it? And they were like, oh, we'd listen to it, we wouldn't care, humans didn't do it sure.
Speaker 1:And I was like, uh-oh yeah, that's what it was like that's right, I can go in and make my own record just for that weekend. Hey, I'm going to the beach with my friends and make us a fun beat sounds like jimmy buffett meets blah, blah, blah and plug in all your info and they were like, yeah, we don't care.
Speaker 4:I feel a little bit like dwight shrewd on the office trying to beat the computer in sales. Well, I mean, we're like that far ahead of the computer right now.
Speaker 6:You do have to adapt, because for a while it was like oh, we're not going to grid our music, Everybody grids music. Oh, we're not going to use autotune, everybody uses autotune.
Speaker 4:We're not going to use stems. Live, we're going to sing everything, right.
Speaker 7:Neil and I. He actually was talking to me about it last week and just kind of checking out some of that and said hey, let's plug in this title and see what happens. And we're just throwing out random things. And, like I said, it was pretty good and that was the first time I'd messed with it, because Neil had already messed around with it a little bit and it threw out a decent country song. My first thought was man, if I was 16 and had no talent whatsoever and I was in love with my girlfriend, I would totally do that and play it for her on Friday night.
Speaker 6:Lee Miller showed it to me, lee showed it to me.
Speaker 2:Then Neil said I threw in an idea and he goes.
Speaker 7:Hey, that's great, he goes. I've got to take this call, plug that in to AI or chat whatever and see what it spits out and he said I'll be right back. Then he's muted. I'm like and I'm nervous about everything. I worry about everything I said. There's no way I'm putting in this title into the unknown and letting somebody else grab it somewhere, or we don't use any of the AI stuff but later, 10 years down the road, or whatever.
Speaker 7:They come after you for content and they come after me and say oh, you plug this in this given date, then you use it, said no, no, we didn't we didn't you have?
Speaker 1:ptsd on that. Anyway, yeah, yeah, for sure, I'm the same way, so I was afraid to do it. You know, I'm afraid to give my email address to the guy at uh tractor supply. I'm off the grid.
Speaker 4:I don't like quoting sitcoms, but I'm getting more like Ron Swanson every day. It is a scary thing, though.
Speaker 8:First time Lee showed it to me.
Speaker 1:We were at a corporate gig playing and we were just sitting around before we went on in this little catering room and he typed in Brett, oh, brett, you broke my heart. And he gave it some content and he said make it a male vocal. Soulful 90s country.
Speaker 4:I think that's actually how Lee felt about you, Brett.
Speaker 8:Very sweet love song. The song's not bad. No, it's not. That's scary but it's not bad.
Speaker 7:The singer's good and in two minutes you have a demo. A singer maybe? Yeah, and I'm going. Oh, it's great, great for quota songs wow, I've never thought about that.
Speaker 6:This is the scared guys coming in with a plan.
Speaker 7:Now I turned in. I turned in eight full 100 percenters and they think I'm brilliant.
Speaker 4:Taylor, I thought about it, I didn't do it. Oh my God, light bulb, yeah, no, thank you. I was thinking the same thing when you got that. Oh, you need another. You took kind of a light year. You need to write a couple songs Like okay, here we go, yeah, here we go yeah.
Speaker 1:It out. You're out on the road right now. Don't you feel that the seeing you a real human being playing?
Speaker 6:live with his band in front of you. It's just. I mean, it's the numbers. Those numbers are going up. We're old, so we're gonna say yes. I mean, I don't know how the 16 year olds feel we're gonna make it out, yeah, we're close enough to the finish line we're gonna make it out.
Speaker 4:But yeah, the 16 year old rider, I'm like I'll do something else I tell you what.
Speaker 5:That's right. We are all a dying breed. You know we go out on the road and you know we'll use some loops and some stuff and half the sets just guitars and amps, like the old days, like you guys did. Yeah, you would be every year. I'm more surprised. The opening acts, you know, used to be like okay, here's your band, and if you need something like a loop or a shaker or something to enhance what you're doing, used to use that slowly, work it in. It's reversed now where the young acts, they're up there with three guys a singer and three guys and no bass player, which is my least.
Speaker 5:Everything you know, I didn't see it coming, man, I didn't see it.
Speaker 3:I didn't think it would be the first to go.
Speaker 4:I'm holding my bass. I hope this podcast does well, because you are screwed Me too.
Speaker 5:I'm holding. I told I think it was Kurt or Alvina, I was holding my bass and I said I said look, I said this is a relic.
Speaker 4:I look, I said this is a relic, this is. It's like I'm holding a relic, this no one. It's rare to see it. What is that machine?
Speaker 6:it plays low notes you're holding there one of the uh opening acts of just. You know, because it was our first weekend, he went up to rich. He's like, ah, it's gonna be so cool to see you guys.
Speaker 5:I mean, you're up there with you know the amps and stuff it's bizarre where we came from and how we did it and how we still do it wild to me.
Speaker 5:We're playing music and in the first night, you know, I think, or second night, kurt's guitar cut out in one of the songs and it feels like you, all of a sudden we're rush, you know, it's like down to three people, you know, and it's like that's the beauty of the live music. But man, they don't even. It's an afterthought, like the, now the stems, like you're mentioning stems and the and the tracks are all taking over and they're just a couple people up there kind of going through the motions.
Speaker 5:It's really it's bizarre how much it's flipped to like.
Speaker 1:We're like I mean, we're like dinosaurs up there, dude we're like relics, we're like there are some bands like whiskey myers and and and zach brian and people like that that are super organic, that are not doing that, yeah it's. And I think the young generation's kind of like oh wow, imperfection, that's cool. Wait, string noise. Wait, that's slightly out of tune. Wait, that it, that's not to a grid. They sped up in the chorus or whatever, which I think is refreshing. My kids are like, oh, this sounds really cool, because they've never they've heard of bob dylan and they've heard a bob dylan song. But now they're getting some of their own generations having their own version of that, which it's really to me I like.
Speaker 8:I like when those bands start to have success and stream and next time you do a demo session, go in there, because I did it last time. I went in there and said we're not going to use a click on anything. We did it the other day and everyone was like oh. They freaked out. How do we do this? How do we start?
Speaker 4:How do we start? Just start from the middle of the song, the drums were freaking out.
Speaker 8:One, two. Do you click them together? Do I hit the rim? He has nothing. I was like you want to freak them out.
Speaker 6:Do that, let's. Let's back up. Let's give some people some backstory. You guys are from florida, you're up there pretty uh strict christian family would that be the right way to say? That would be an understatement of the decade oh, no TV right. No TV, no alcohol.
Speaker 4:Couldn't walk down the beer aisle at Publix because my mom thought that beer would jump out of the bottles down our throats.
Speaker 1:She was right.
Speaker 5:She was a prophet. She was really smart.
Speaker 4:Actually it's crazy. No, really really strict Did you know, it was strict.
Speaker 6:Yeah, because everyone else had a TV, she also like made some of our clothes.
Speaker 4:Oh wow, yeah, not good either. Like this, the stripe on your on your sweatpants would go across your knee like men in the city.
Speaker 1:I just saw a picture of us. I was brad. You were nine when you ran gasparilla in tampa's a marathon called the gasparilla distance classic. It's a 15k, it's nine miles. He's nine years old. He got second place in the whole city. I'm thinking how many other kids at nine ran nine miles? Well, I'm seven. I ran the 5k, which is three miles, and in the picture I'm wearing earth shoes, like, like yeah, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 6:You know what? Swayed with a bot, they're like, they're like a like a bad church dress, shoe almost like a box like
Speaker 4:wall like a monster soul and mike, I remember, and this is double meaning like wall of the soul and my I remember and this is double meaning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did not know this about you guys. No, you could tell us. My dad said I will get you a pair of jogging tennis shoes when you run 10 miles without stopping.
Speaker 4:So he got on a 10 speed bicycle beside us as we ran 10 miles in earth shoes to get shoes to run in, so I ran 10 miles in earth shoes with my dad on a tsp all right two
Speaker 1:miles ago boy suck it up seven years old, and the hot form of heat we didn't know anything different, so he took me to sports unlimited and I got a pair of stride right super z's like tennis shoes.
Speaker 4:I thought he had bought me a porsche absolutely I think I'm bowlegged to this day because my knees used to knock together when I was running and I would separate them because we had to run like five miles before school every morning. Talk about embarrassing the only thing more embarrassing than running five miles with your dad past your friend's house before school is doing it with your sisters in homemade sweatpants.
Speaker 6:This explains a lot, doesn't it Wow?
Speaker 5:it's really locking some puzzle pieces in.
Speaker 1:For me, exactly 30 years, and this is the first time you're hearing about this.
Speaker 5:This is not okay, because you know, when we met, I would have never thought that you guys had homemade shoes ever wait.
Speaker 1:They were. We didn't make the homemade yeah my dad wasn't a cobbler, yeah he was an air traffic controller.
Speaker 3:He flew airplanes. We had some technology.
Speaker 4:You're not far off. You're not far off. So he was just yeah. He did have this stuff called shoe goo.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and when?
Speaker 1:our shoes ripped, he would put cement back together. He wasn't a cobbler, but he didn't make them. Even so, we kind of ripped. No, they were this is true, we're down in Florida it's hot all the time.
Speaker 4:You don't believe it do you, Kelly?
Speaker 7:I've never heard of Earth Shoes. That's the first time I've never heard of Earth Shoes either. I'm going to send you all pictures. They're special.
Speaker 1:But it's hotter than crap all the time in Florida.
Speaker 4:They're like top-siders with an inferiority complex. Sort of, sort of.
Speaker 1:But so all our friends they're, you know their dads had boats and they would ski on the lake. We skied when we were younger and when we so we said, dad, we want to start water skiing. And he had like this boat that looked like a boston whaler, which is like a small flat bottoms boat. It had a 25 horse engine on it, the kind that you use for your hand.
Speaker 4:It was a john boat.
Speaker 1:It was like a john boat a bigger john, and so my dad bought a pair of dick pope skis from a garage sale and we took them apart and sanded them down and varnished them. And then he made a ski rope out of a broom handle. He took a broom and cut it, drilled holes in it and made our own ski handle and he took us out to pull us on skis. Well, the 25 horse wouldn't pull us up, so he went and bought a 15 horse and two people had to drive at the same time.
Speaker 4:That's true, brett and my dad would drive to get me up on skis on the jumbo. I don't know if one of them rebelled and turned right while the other one was going left, what would have happened? I think we would have all just exploded. But I swear to God that's how we skied, he said.
Speaker 7:when y'all learn how to slalom, I'll get a boat with a steering wheel and we thought that was the coolest thing ever were like go, but you couldn't like if you're skiing slalom, you couldn't, he couldn't get you up with no, no, because it was too yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it takes a little more power to get you up oh my god, so how did the music start then?
Speaker 6:uh, you're older, so I assume you were playing first I started you know.
Speaker 4:So we they made us, our family's, very musical. My mom and dad were um, both musical. We have two older sisters that are actually better players and singers than we are if they had focused in on it. I played the trumpet in the third grade and fourth grade, but played the trombone in the second grade. We were in the band in the junior high band, pretty good at trumpet and then.
Speaker 5:I realized that girls did not like trumpet. You were in band, not a band.
Speaker 6:That word makes a big difference in band verse very important one letter that's a good teacher life
Speaker 4:it's very important to say exactly what you mean when you're praying. I don't want to be mad. No, no, I'll get up in. So when I was 11, I started playing guitar. Me and a friend of mine formed a band, but it was just two of us and we needed a drummer and a singer. So I just informed Brett that he was going to be both, because he could kind of do anything. You know, he's still kind of jack of all trades. So I'm like you're going to be the drummer and the singer in our band. And he was like alright, the girls tend to hang around some sort of band ever since, for the last 40 years. Wow, amazing more.
Speaker 1:And back in those days did y'all just we like. Of course we didn't have anywhere to go and brad could drive. He was 16. Every saturday morning we got up in tampa, florida, and drove all the way down hillsborough boulevard to thoroughbred music. Wow, we just hung out in the music store all day, made friends with those guys, played amps, play guitar I mean, it was like our Saturday.
Speaker 4:You know those no jamming signs.
Speaker 1:I think there's for us One more time. Here we go. I tell you this when I first saw you guys.
Speaker 5:I met you guys. What was it? 99, 2000. You were playing at our cafe. Yeah, it was a good day Back in those days and I knew the drummer, I walked in Angelo, so I walked in. To this day I tell you, I mean you guys are the coolest and you guys are playing One Headlight by the Wallflowers, oh, wow. Killing it and I'm like these guys are badass.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, no seriously that continued.
Speaker 5:I still think about that, like those days in Nashville then and how cool it was. But you guys were killing it up there and you guys, I think I just got signed to RCA, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 98. Bna, RCA Records, whatever that is. So how'd that happen?
Speaker 6:You guys moved to Nashville and how'd the record deal happen?
Speaker 7:Yeah, and what was the draw to Nashville? Like what said, hey, we're moving.
Speaker 4:Honestly, it was closer than New York, like we didn't have a car that would make it all the way there. We weren't really sure what we were.
Speaker 6:Because you probably didn't know.
Speaker 4:Hey, we're a country band.
Speaker 1:Country rock whatever, we were in this 80s rock band forever. And then, like somewhere around 93, 94, we started just playing beach bars for money, because the rock scene kind of went down in Tampa. So driving over to the beach bars and it's, you know, it's hard to play sound garden on acoustic guitar.
Speaker 3:so we started learning eagle songs we hated that stuff crosby stills and ash and all that and van morrison and john mellon camp tom petty and we played everything kind of wrong like we did.
Speaker 1:We didn't sometimes, we didn't know the passing chords at the time, we were just muscling through them and that sort of developed? Yes, it taught us how to write songs, just playing those songs that we loved. And then we're. Nashville seemed like it was more acoustic driven and we had been playing beach bars and we met a guy that knew buzz casen oh yeah just passed away, but buzz casen, uh, was friends with tom douglas.
Speaker 1:So we moved here, met buzz casen and he signed a little three song deal with us. He gave us like five grand a piece and we wrote three songs for him and recorded them and the first co-write that we did in nashville was with tom douglas. Talk about dumb luck, oh my god wow okay and tom had just had weirdly humbling. We were like oh, we're terrible, like in tampa.
Speaker 1:You're like, oh, we got this figured out, we're gonna be huge. And then we come to town. The first co-write we do is tom douglas, and we're like, oh, we're terrible, this guy's a genius.
Speaker 6:We wrote how many songs 50 with tom douglas and with Tom Douglas, and it was like he took to you guys, he was our mentor which people go.
Speaker 4:You guys don't seem like you would even know Tom Douglas, but we were very close, very close, loved that dude and that's dumb luck, yeah it's like hey, this guy named Tom Brady is going to show you how to throw the football.
Speaker 1:You know?
Speaker 4:opposites do attract you know, and he was honestly he'd had his first number one. He was a real estate salesman and had had his first number one with little rock and he was in his 40s, with a nice house and a button-up shirt and we were literally like smoking cigarettes in his, you know, in his yard and homemade sweatpants tom have you ever heard of earth shoes check
Speaker 7:these out play the piano in these bad boys and you guys might have also thought that all songwriters in Nashville are as talented as Tom Douglas.
Speaker 4:It was scary because we did it.
Speaker 7:That's at level which it's really not.
Speaker 4:You can still be fairly wealthy and not be Tom Douglas. You've all probably written with Tom Douglas. He also is not all on every day. He's crazy, so there's a lot of information passing and he really did teach us to put it out there.
Speaker 4:Put it out there and that was the story come back and edit we always had musical and melody things going, but he just just put it out there and don't this is it's not about, like I don't want to be right, I want to get it right and tom would he got. He said some crazy shit in the middle of the song. Yeah, that turns out being brilliant, or sometimes it turns out being horrendous.
Speaker 1:He doesn't care no, he doesn't love it.
Speaker 4:He's a poet and he just throws it out there, and we learned a lot of lessons with that way, because we would really only say the thing that we thought was going to be right and you keep yourself in a lyrical box.
Speaker 1:So we learned a lot from him that two years that we were here without if I looked, I was just now thinking about like what was your first five co-writes? It was like tom douglas, don schlitz, james house, harlan howard like Howard. It was like craziness.
Speaker 3:They plugged us right into this.
Speaker 1:We were, like everybody here's a genius, we're screwed, not knowing we were getting the ultimate crash course.
Speaker 8:Yeah, but you paid attention.
Speaker 1:We listened. Yeah, believe it or not.
Speaker 8:The two of us actually were quiet, but we were like mm-hmm, if you're fortunate enough to write with big writers when you get to town you're intimidated as hell. But I paid attention.
Speaker 4:Yes, well, and another thing is the way you sing is always like a tool that that great writer wants to use. So you probably had the advantage of walking in and going oh, let me drive this Maserati around and you can learn from them.
Speaker 2:So you're saying the way I, I say you're more like a toy hold on, let's back up right here, like if they said hey brad, come to our podcast.
Speaker 1:You can go into. Neil. You had an advantage with your brother.
Speaker 4:You were like driving a duster it's gonna get you there, but it's gonna sputter a little bit every topic takes a turn.
Speaker 8:Every topic takes a turn. With these two, I will have to challenge that.
Speaker 5:I tell Kurt all the time, every time that we get together to write or something I said Brett and Warren is one of my favorite singers in this town. So cool, oh yeah, so cool, oh yeah, badass, like you're one of the coolest singers in town, oh, thanks, and the record you guys made killer. I will say this about.
Speaker 4:Brett's voice he only has about 20 fans. Yeah, but they're really important ones Tim.
Speaker 8:McGraw loves his voice.
Speaker 1:He only has 20 fans.
Speaker 7:That's a great point.
Speaker 4:The singers love to sing what he's saying. Tom Douglas has the same thing. By the way, they have very similar singers. But all joking aside, tim McGraw loves hearing Brett Frazier's song so he can go back and do his version. That doesn't wind up sounding like it, but he loves that feel. So I said you don't have the biggest amount of fans, but they are rich.
Speaker 5:There's a style there too. There's a style there too. Yeah, you know, brett style, neil style. You get other great singers that come in and add their flavor and sell a song. It's so much, you know. We all know a lot of great singers that sing great, but you don't really have that, that different style or that different selling point right. So you get even like a rodney, claus or neil and they're all different.
Speaker 1:They're the greatest singers in this town, but I hate to tell people that, but it's it's.
Speaker 5:It's. It's not about who the greatest singer is, it's like how you the selling point of the song and you've got that you always have.
Speaker 1:Oh thanks, dude.
Speaker 7:Yeah, sorry, bro, you're important too, but a couple things on that like and you're right, and we've talked about this before being artists and songwriters is a huge advantage. You know, like say so, tim mcgraw loves brett's voice. Huge advantage right off the top, as opposed to just a singer he's heard, and sometimes an artist. I'm sure you probably heard tim say this. Though you'll play a song and said so this is great, this you're gonna love it and say who's singing that?
Speaker 2:and you're like you missed the opening line.
Speaker 6:I don don't know who's here, don't worry about it.
Speaker 7:But it's a huge advantage. But, to y'all's credit and to Tully's point and you guys mentioned corporate shows of which, like you said, with our mechanicals down and things like that, it's hard to get on the radio- that's making up for a lot. That's making up for a lot of our income.
Speaker 7:But anyway, seeing you guys at a writer's round, it's really unfair because there's. So you're so good, you've got that, the harmony which is god-given in your dna. You can't get the family harmony. You can't beat it and uh, and just so talented, so tight, you know. So anybody out there listening wants to hire the warren brothers.
Speaker 4:You're gonna be you'll be one of the best one of the best shows you've ever seen
Speaker 1:I like the fact that he's worried about everything you need to manage us. It takes two of us to make up one really good song.
Speaker 5:Well, you know, I will say I have and I love you guys so much and we, we all we go back so far. So I love it. But I remember being on the road with other acts in the 90s and you guys were had made your record and we were opening. We'd open some shows for you guys or whatever. Back in the day we'd be on the same festival, right, you mean way back like Rush, low, way back, yeah, yeah, like 90s.
Speaker 5:I remember when I was like Min McCready back in those days, yeah, 98, 99.
Speaker 1:We kind of crossed paths how?
Speaker 7:did you find a way to work? Rush Low into this conversation.
Speaker 5:Well always the live show was always so good. It was like you guys should have. Musically as an act should have been way more successful because it was always right there, so good. I remember we'd be sitting back there saying damn, god knows what he's doing.
Speaker 1:This is pretty good, well. Well, to take it back full circle, we had our when we had our first hit. It was a faith hill song called the lucky one that we actually wrote with j joyce, which is so bizarre that the warren brothers and j joyce and it was his first country radio it was. It was a faith hill song. We got our first bmi. Check of bragg is. We make way more money when anybody but you sings ourselves. I was like what?
Speaker 8:no, he was right. I was like you're right dude.
Speaker 1:He's like let's go, let's try to do that again. I'll tell you this, and this is serious for like 30 seconds.
Speaker 4:I'll be serious and I won't again. We got sober right around that time and our attitudes in life changed from one of deliver to me instead of deliver through me, and we we became servers instead of, instead of collectors of everyone else's energy, and we started helping people try to get where they were going. And absolutely life has been, and I don't. This is beyond money and career and accolades, which honestly don't really care about any of those. I love sitting here with you guys four guys I love for so long, you two for so so long and and and close good friends. And I love the locker room of this business now, but the accolades don't mean shit to me. But when we started being of service and trying to serve and we got our shit together, are we allowed to cuss on here? Yeah, sorry.
Speaker 4:And when we got our crap, when we got our poop together, language everything turned around and we started becoming successful, because we were no longer trying to be the star, we were trying to serve a little bit. And it sounds corny, but literally that is exactly what happened, and I don't think it's an accident or timing or whatever. You can be good at something. I do think we had a really good live show, but when it came to creation of music, we're always self-serving, and when we stopped that, we found what our group was supposed to be and we, and and we became what we were supposed to be anyway.
Speaker 6:Well, okay, so you mentioned it. Uh, you know, and we when we met you guys, you guys were obviously a little bit uh, wild, whatever crazy drunk we yeah, but we all kind of were um, I wasn't until I met them.
Speaker 5:and then they get straight and they let me in the dust. You caught up pretty quickly, you were quick Thanks guys.
Speaker 4:Reflect on this. Leave me here stranded with this drug problem, Sorry.
Speaker 6:Kirk no, no, no. So that's around 20 years ago. You guys probably got sober. I don't know if I know this. Did you get sober at the same time? You probably had to, or was there?
Speaker 1:it was very close, because we started eliminating people from our band and crew that were drinking, thinking that they were our problem oh, yeah, and then all of a sudden, we had a bus full of sober people. We were the only class two drinking and the crown bottle was still empty at the end of the night classic artist move yeah we were like I looked at that. I said, hey, dude I hate to tell you this. I think it's us, I think I'm the problem.
Speaker 4:It's me throw me over the boat. You know, we did try to quit separately a few times and it just wouldn't work. I'd be like, oh, that looks so fun, you know. So we were like two days apart getting sober was it in la on a trip?
Speaker 6:was it a defining moment moment? A lot of people that you know stopped. I don't know why it was done. Yeah, the drive, that's what I was wanting to know.
Speaker 4:But man, we were, it was well me, it was with my wife. She had caught on to me and was just like, calmly, without any sort of emotion or fighting, she said I'm done, I love you, my children, but I'm done, I just can't, I'm just so. She was really done, calmly, miraculously. 20 years later we're still married, but I had a spiritual awakening in that moment. But brett was going to the same thing, not necessarily his wife. It's just that week and we were in la shooting a cameo for the movie uh flicka.
Speaker 4:It's literally the dumbest movie that tim mcgraw's ever had anything to do with it was really about a girl who owned a horse, and I don't know if there's any other plot I feel bad because I love that movie, like last week but we sat in a closet on my face there I am no, you have to do that come in here, look at this. Someone's like I was watching flick the other night. Your brother's in it.
Speaker 1:I'm like no to answer your question, like once, the day I actually quit drinking. I had been trying to quit drinking for like two years. So, like a buddy of ours took us to an aa meeting two years prior to that, and then I was like, then I started the trail of, as, as we all do, I'm only going to drink beer, I'm only going to drink wine, I'm only going to drink on the weekends, I'm just going to have one shot of whiskey, I, I'm just gonna take one pill and one. You know it's like you're always just you either completely surrender or not. And so that at two years I was sort of trying to quit drinking and brad was on different levels and for whatever reason I don't know, they see you hit your bottom.
Speaker 1:I woke up one morning, walked outside it was beautiful sunny day in la and I just said, okay, god, you win. I wife, I said I'm going to quit, I'll quit the music business, I'll work at Walmart. I don't care what I got to do, I want to be, you know, the kind of husband, the kind of father that I know I'm supposed to be, and none of that other stuff matters to me. And that's when it started and I wasn't trying to get out.
Speaker 1:I didn't get a DUI, I didn't punch anybody, there was no incident I had, just that's it. I'm either going to die or I'm going to get sober. And I got sober and that's the miracle in it. You know, that was sort of my story for the bottom.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I don't know exactly how to describe it, but it was just over. It was over, I was just done.
Speaker 5:And and it's two days apart I was done, but I hung in there a little longer than that and you guys, you know you guys, after that happened, you guys were top of your game. Remember, we were out and we weren't sober.
Speaker 4:This is not fair. Did you not like us anymore?
Speaker 5:This is not fair, because we go out with McGraw at open shows. You guys were out there with McGraw and McGraw had just gotten sober that year. This is very fair, because we go out with McGraw at open shows, you guys were out there with McGraw and McGraw had just gotten sober that year. This is very unfair for the listeners out there. So we are not sober, you are sober and working out. You guys look incredible. By the way, I'm actually pissed. I'm very strong looking. So this is what, 08?
Speaker 1:08, 09 is the first time. Couldn't wait to see these guys you know we go so far back.
Speaker 5:We're opening for mcgraw. They're out there, they look great and you know, again we're not sober and we're forced to play basketball against you guys and tim every day. I knew it was gonna come up.
Speaker 4:We're playing in tim's band at that point. Yeah, we're playing his band and you know tim's very okay, I can you know Tim's very adamant.
Speaker 5:I can't wait to hear this Very adamant about us playing basketball every day around noon, even though we went to bed about nine Again we're in a different. We're trying to break and we got responsibilities to party like we're supposed to. You guys are getting 12 hours of sleep at night and working out and then playing basketball Anyway we got our asses kicked every day at noon.
Speaker 6:It's three on three, by the way, it's Tim and these guys. Every day, you don't switch teams. It's Tim and these two.
Speaker 4:And he's keeping score of the records. Oh, yeah, yeah yeah. He's keeping a win-loss record the whole time.
Speaker 6:The most competitive predictions, and all of you are uber competitive, which I love, by the way but, like Tully said, we're at a slight disadvantage.
Speaker 8:Who was y'all's third?
Speaker 6:Jason Aldine Aldine. Oh, okay, and now keep in mind.
Speaker 5:These guys are tall too. I'm 5'8". Struggling to get there. These guys are tall. They're athletic McGraw's out there with his prickly chest hair and his sweat.
Speaker 4:And somehow I'm on his bra every day. I'm guarding him. Well, you were a bruiser. To be fair to you guys, of all of us, Kurt was probably the best actual basketball player.
Speaker 1:He's easily the best, but he had a brace on his leg the whole time. I guess he had an ACL surgery. He just had surgery, so I said, let me cover the guy that just had surgery.
Speaker 5:Honestly, he probably was the best actual basketball player.
Speaker 4:For sure, but he's wearing basically a cast, tully's a bruiser. Not a bruiser, and Aldean's a baseball guy, Not a bruiser. At that point you were definitely thicker than we were. We were very thin.
Speaker 8:I thought you were a bruiser.
Speaker 4:He just fouled a lot that doesn't mean he's a bruiser, he, he didn't know the rules.
Speaker 7:He didn't know the rules, right, right.
Speaker 8:Didn't know the rules. I was going to ask how physical it got.
Speaker 6:Well, it's funny, you should ask Funny, you should bring that up.
Speaker 5:I wasn't going to mention it, but I'll.
Speaker 6:It's not hockey.
Speaker 5:It's basketball, we take an ass kicking every day on this tour at noon.
Speaker 3:Every day, every day, we get out there Totally.
Speaker 5:I remember playing in Phoenix, Arizona. It's 500 degrees outside. We're hungover. Tim looks at me and goes, not feeling good, huh. I'm like no, as a matter of fact, we're in catering one day 1145. Me and Kurt in there we're trying to drink water because we know freaking McGraw's hunting for us. Kurt makes a sandwich and we can barely eat. Tim comes in when you guys at. I like tim, we're gonna be right there. Man, we're not ready yet and kurt's sitting there with a sandwich and she goes, yeah tim I'm shaking we'll be right out man, we're not ready yet.
Speaker 5:And tim takes his finger and sticks it through kurt's sandwich. He goes you ready now. I'm like so we grab our shit the sweetest bully you've ever had.
Speaker 4:We grab our shit. He is the sweetest bully you've ever heard of.
Speaker 5:We grab our shit. We go out Me, Brett and Brad. Okay, here comes Aldine. Aldine takes a puff of cigarette. We're out. We take our beating again Every day in the heat of the summer.
Speaker 8:Did you ever win?
Speaker 5:Oh, I don't think so no, I don't think so. Well, we get to houston. This is like day 10 of a beating, you know. We get out there and this is a really rough day. We are really hungover and they're like it's time to play ball. We get out there and I'm running around. All of a sudden, I'm running around and I get knocked on my ass, fall backwards, head off the pavement. I look up and and there's Brett standing over me, set the most illegal pick in the history of basketball.
Speaker 1:Show me the film that thing was legal.
Speaker 4:I stood straight up and pulled my arms in.
Speaker 1:I might have leaned a little. I think there was a lean.
Speaker 4:You put that shoulder in there. You leaned like a linebacker. I mean I was on your team.
Speaker 1:Sometimes I wake up at night and my sternum is like oh, there's Brett. I was telling my wife about this story. She was crying. I said you're going to hear Tully tell it.
Speaker 4:I remember the concept of this because you had kind of fouled Brett on a shot, but it wasn't one of the fouls that you would call because it was kind of light but he was a little frustrated because he had missed and he's like like under his breath and you were coming by covering him and he set a pick on you where he might have been jogging towards you.
Speaker 1:It was a moving pick, bro. Still to this day you say I was moving. I feel like I was stationary and leaned. Well, again you guys were again.
Speaker 5:You're in very good shape.
Speaker 3:You were in very good shape.
Speaker 5:You were getting rest. I remember tim being like man you stink. I'm like yeah well, yeah, two handles of crown and, you know, two hours of sleep.
Speaker 1:If, you fast forward that little basketball world, though to the it was like a couple tours later he had love and theft open it up and they're all like six, four and 25 years old and their drummer was uh and lady and lady a.
Speaker 4:So you got charles talley 6 10. Drummer who's married to Hillary now is a really good basketball player.
Speaker 1:I mean amazing and we played like three games and they stomped the crud out of us. Three games and Tim's like I'm retired we retired two years later, 2010.
Speaker 5:Yeah, well, keep in mind that Tim also keeps the rim. What at?
Speaker 1:eight foot.
Speaker 5:Eight and a half Fun for you, because you guys can, because you guys, at that rate, these guys, the Warren brothers, are really athletic, and when these guys drive to the hoop it is intimidating. And then they at an eight foot rim, they are skying over us.
Speaker 1:They're throwing alley-oops, throwing alley-oops backwards. And every time I try to dunk it the rim stuffs me, so it's not the same so I'm 54 now and four years ago I played basketball in the ymca three on three half court with a 60 year old, one guy was 70 and one guy was my age and I tore my achilles running to get him buddy, that's the old man and grabbed it.
Speaker 1:You can't do it picked it up and I thought someone hit me with a baseball bat in the calf and I turned around and nobody was there and I said that's it, that's why, we went to pickleball.
Speaker 6:That's even worse.
Speaker 4:I bought a pickleball. Yeah, they paid us back in pickleball the next day.
Speaker 1:I didn't tell y'all ball and we're like over trying to like. Somehow our, our athletic ability is going to be us and they were destroying us the next day. I couldn't get out of bed.
Speaker 5:I walked like a deer. That was just we figured out.
Speaker 1:We have to do something on like not athletic to have a chance with you guys and it was so fun. I love it so much. I went and bought a racket and I never played again.
Speaker 3:I still need to do. I'm waiting for the call well you know what?
Speaker 5:what I mean? It's coming. The pickleball thing for me took a turn on my eye issue, but I'm getting back into it and I'm like we will play. We will definitely play, but those were really like we talk about this every time. Every time we write, we end up talking for two hours and then writing some great song. It always happens. That's the fun part about what we do.
Speaker 1:is this right here?
Speaker 3:happens, but that's the fun part about what we do, is this right here.
Speaker 1:I love this just kidding it's the 10 minutes before we go on that, we talk and laugh and catch up and tell stories. That makes it all worth it.
Speaker 6:You're right. It's like the locker room environment. People always ask are you going to miss it? That's, what I'll miss is hanging with the guys before the show my name is glenn story.
Speaker 2:I'm the founder and CEO of Patriot Mobile. And then we have four principles First Amendment, second Amendment, right to Life, military and First Responders. If you have a place to go put your money, you always want to put it with somebody that's like mine, of course. I think that's the beauty of Patriot Mobile we're a conservative alternative, somebody that's like mine, of course.
Speaker 3:I think that's the beauty of Patriot Mobile. We're a conservative alternative. Don't get fooled by other providers pretending to share your values or have the same coverage. Go to patriotmobilecom forward. Slash smalltown to get a free month of service when you use the offer code smalltown or call 972-PATRIOT.
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Speaker 8:You know I've been drinking this every songwriting session today.
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Speaker 6:Join our original glory family and help ignite that original glory spirit. All right, welcome back to the. Try that in a Small Town podcast coming to you from the Patriot Mobile. We have the warm brothers here today, pretty uh so fun unhinged.
Speaker 4:Uh, hey, so we were talking about you need to you need to tell people about how you met tim and how that relationship got formed so it kind of goes back to our little childhood, when we were um I tell this story live because it's it's funny um, when we were kids, we played a lot of basketball because, as you have learned already, we didn't have anything else to do played a little guitar and played a lot of basketball, and our mother would always tell us you know, you're never going to make any money playing basketball you realize that right and and we would retort.
Speaker 4:I know, mom, but we're 10 and we don't have a tv, so what are we supposed to do? So we played lots of hoops in the street and we played at our little, our little cult-like Christian high school. Both of us were point guards in our in our years and um, and then after high school we just that was our fun thing we played basketball. So we get it. We moved to town, we spent a couple years dicking around, uh, finding our way. We signed a publishing deal record. Then we get a tour opening for Faith Hill.
Speaker 4:So we're in second week of the tour with Faith Hill. We've met Tim once in passing hey, how are you? Took a picture and it's the only time we've ever met Tim McGraw. We're sitting and catering on the Faith Hill tour, the second week of ever touring in our life, and Tim McGraw walks in with that do-rag that he always wore and gym clothes, and he's scouring, looking for victims. We must have looked just that, much more athletic than the other motel 10 guitar players in the catering tent because he came over and said, hey, do you guys play basketball?
Speaker 4:and we're like, yes, we do, we do and um.
Speaker 1:If he'd asked us, do you guys play golf?
Speaker 4:we would not be sitting here if he had said do you play, play golf? A whole different line. But we went that day and played four hours of basketball with Tim at a YMCA in Omaha, Nebraska, and have been friends ever since and we played. He came out every single day that he was on that tour. We went somewhere and played basketball and he would come watch our sound checks and listen to our sound check every day.
Speaker 4:And we started because he wanted to leave to go play basketball right afterwards and because you know how patient he is and, by the way it was, was it all of us? It's just the two of us. No, no, that was the whole band. Yeah, but we would play songs that we had just written, that we thought he would like. So we started pitching him songs, kind of at sound checks, that far back, and he would go we'd be on the way to the basketball game and he'd go hey, who wrote that song you guys were playing we wrote it At sound check.
Speaker 6:That's brilliant.
Speaker 4:Not even on our record, but we had just written it and he started like hey, I really like, so it's funny.
Speaker 3:We were hungry. True story.
Speaker 4:At the end of the tour he sat us down and he said he said, guys, I got a great idea with this band called the Dixie Chicks.
Speaker 3:Why don't you come out and open for us?
Speaker 4:and we can play basketball every day, and so literally nothing to do with our music, nothing to do with how many records we didn't sell, but literally we got our first big tour because we knew how to pick and roll, especially pick.
Speaker 7:Ah, the banjo.
Speaker 4:It's that shoulder that got us in totally we had to stick with it. So at the end of the, at the end of the day, we you know, after, after spending 20 years with tim, we've had 37 tim mcgraw cuts. We toured his band, we we got nominated for a grammy together. I called my mom. I said, mom, you are so wrong.
Speaker 5:We made an ass load of money playing basketball, you guys, I mean, and I love tim to death, like for all the things like tim. Tim's awesome, like always been awesome to us, you know we all the beatings aside, you know.
Speaker 4:So that's part of his charm, that's the part you know well, I mean, I remember in florida.
Speaker 5:One day I mean we got lucky. Remember one day we got lucky and we beat you guys. We were playing, well, for some reason, and our shows and those days was that 720, yeah, whatever it. Yeah, whatever it's 6.50. And we were playing basketball. He won't let us stop, like bro, we got to play Because he came in on a loss Went and
Speaker 3:sunburned, sunburned.
Speaker 5:But for all those things he needed, you guys, when you were out there because Danny had it at that point you guys were adding all the cool factor and you guys were standing right behind him and it was like a trifecta.
Speaker 1:We went out there to write and hang out with him and everybody thinks, oh, he cut your songs because he was your friend. I said no, he cut a lot of our songs because he heard a lot of them.
Speaker 8:Right.
Speaker 1:And when you become, you guys know Jason, jason can walk in the room and you could say, now's not the time for us to play him a song. Exactly, we would know I'd see people just forcing themselves to have tim listen to a song. I'm thinking, dude, you could play him, let it be right now. He's not gonna like it. He just had a fight with curb records, you know. So we, we just learned. When he liked to listen to music and when he was ready, we had a, I remember we had the cd. We went down, he had an island, we would go down and spearfish his island and we went down to play him some songs for his new record.
Speaker 5:Can you tell us the story real quick about the spearfishing thing you guys did a lot with him right?
Speaker 1:well, it'll be after my story.
Speaker 7:You can't interrupt because this is really good, tony. Thanks Brett.
Speaker 1:Brett, go on, please try that please podcast please and so we had this cd of songs that played for him and he said I want to play this song, I'm thinking about cutting. We were like we know, we have something on. This cd is going to be his first single. We could, we could just feel it. And he says man, check this song out. And he puts on the cd and it's laurie mckenna singing humble and kind. And I just took my cd and went yep, we're not beating that one. All right, enjoy spearfishing. Put songs on a different day which spearfishing story
Speaker 3:I don't know before I broke my leg.
Speaker 4:I literally every broken boat I've ever had has something to do with jim mcgraw and he would he would have a spearfish down there, like he just took us out. No lessons, no, whatever. They just stick you in the water. There's sharks everywhere and you just get the crappy fins until you get better at it and he just puts you in the water and you're like it's a Hawaiian sling. You have to get like two inches from the fish to shoot it, but I'm trying to shoot it from five feet away.
Speaker 4:The first day we ever went you were spearing lobster. There's a certain season you can go down, but you have to free dive spearing lobster. It's like nine, ten feet of water. My pool's deeper than this. This water was, but the current's moving and there's a lot. I was, I was about to drown. There's a lobster. I could see him nine feet of water down. I'm holding this sling and I keep going down in the current. I'm swimming back across the city pool and they can barely swim and I finally at one point I just said, okay, one of us is dying down here this time. I'm not coming up without that lobster. And I got down like two inches from it and speared a lot and the first time you put that spear through something under the water in the wild.
Speaker 4:It's amazing, it's pretty cool but he would leave us out there so long that our eyes would literally bugging out from the blood vessels would bust in our eyes. He can't quit something until you're done, as you know yeah, so he was still fishing until dark at night and there's sharks coming and I like go get in the boat. Oh, I saw you get in the boat when you saw the shark. I'm like is that cowardly?
Speaker 5:I just thought that was kind of smart what's that thing he was doing, not with us? He was pushing this giant tire around the parking lot.
Speaker 7:That's called exercise. You guys got to have him on the podcast. That's called working out.
Speaker 6:He ends up telling the stories of the A's.
Speaker 5:We're worried about having him on the podcast. He asked me and Kurt, one day you want to come out and push it? I said what?
Speaker 4:Have you come out, push it. I said what? No, no, no, 10, 10, 1 is before you go on. I mean, oh, he had a thing too on that tour where he would run. We would all get and run four miles right before the show. No showers, run four miles. It's 10 minutes till you start and just put your clothes on. I want to be sweaty when I go up there. I'm like gross. But yeah, like to run four miles and then walk on the stage.
Speaker 5:He had that really cool trailer. Oh, that workout trailer he always let us use it, which was really awesome of him, like it's really really cool, like it was very nice of him to let us you hear war stories about artists that are cruel to the opening bands and all that.
Speaker 1:He doesn't have an ounce of that. He gives you full sound lights. If he's got a workout trailer out there and you're the guitar tech that's 20 years old. For the third opener, you have full access.
Speaker 4:Yeah, hey, I wouldn't agree with anyone at this table politically about anything and I fought with him like a brother over the years.
Speaker 3:But man, he's a good man, he's a good dude, he has absolute goodness in his heart.
Speaker 4:Um oh yeah, he's really really been good to this day.
Speaker 5:Yeah, he sees this, and he's always been good to my family to this day. He always talks about basketball, of course, but he's a great guy he didn't really affirm try that in small town, in an interview I think it's on a playlist
Speaker 7:for him deflected it, but I wanted to go back just for one second on the sober thing, because you had mentioned McGraw and everything, and when you guys got sober, how did that affect artist relationships? And going out on the sober thing, because you had mentioned McGraw and everything and when you guys got sober, how did that affect artist relationships? And going out on the road how did that affect things? Was it weird for a minute?
Speaker 1:yeah, for a minute you think we're never going to be funny again.
Speaker 4:No one's going to like us well because Tim McGraw said you guys aren't funny anymore and your songs suck. I swear to god.
Speaker 1:I remember saying that but uh you're kind of freaked out about it, just being sober in general. You know, it's like you feel better physically and it's like you're having a spiritual experience and you're actually getting your what really matters in life, in order. But we're thinking, okay, now, now our career's over musically, and it's at that point where got our first cut and it just started happening because we're I mean I, I don't. I mean because I have no problem if somebody drinks or whatever it's, it's not an issue for me. But it not drinking is a superpower and I'm so grateful for it, not just the not drinking physical side of it, but just learning, because alcohol wasn't my problem, it was my solution. So I had to go deal with why did I think I needed to be drunk and I had to go deal with that side of me and that just it just helped it. Just the aa program, the 12 step program, it just it. I think everybody should go through it.
Speaker 4:Recovery is the superpower to me, not not drinking, necessarily. That's good physically, but recovery is a superpower because, for me especially, not everyone is as sick. You know, some of us are sicker than others. But I needed to right-size my ego, I needed to change my attitude. Like I said, I needed to be in service of something, and that was when I was most productive, and all of the things that have happened good in my life and career have been kind of as a result of recovery. I do find it a superpower, not just like oh, I made more money because I was in recovery, but I learned how to live life on life's terms. I don't live panicked about being something else. I've learned to care about the right things and then not care about the things that don't need to be cared about as much, and I don't think I would have gotten there without being so. I'm happy to be an alcoholic, by the way, because to me the solution is worth the ailment.
Speaker 7:Amen, that's awesome yeah. You guys have written.
Speaker 6:Obviously a ton of hits, a ton of hits for McGraw, like you said, but one of the best songs from my point of view is If You're Reading this Talk about how that song came about.
Speaker 1:Well, it was funny because I thought we had a lot of hits until I went in Neal's bathroom and he puts them all in the bathroom because know where you're gonna spend time.
Speaker 6:You're everything.
Speaker 1:You got a few minutes to look around. I was like, wow, talk about going from feeling good about yourself to feeling like a loser. So uh, no, it's just amazing. I love hearing other songwriters. When you hear a hit that's been on the radio and then you go to their house and say, hey, play me the demo, play me the work tape. It's just so cool to meet the dudes that wrote it. It's still cool to me.
Speaker 2:I still think it's awesome. I still think it's fascinating.
Speaker 1:But if you're reading this it was like 9 11 happened. You know we go to war and it's been a couple years and you know kids are coming home in caskets, soldiers, young. And uh, tim was taking a flight one night and we had written a bunch of songs sort of for him at that point, but never anything with him. And he called me up one morning, said hey, I just read this time magazine article which you know you're flying private when he says I was on a late flight because they don't have time magazines on southwest.
Speaker 4:They don't know, so he's definitely in a private plane.
Speaker 1:He read the time magazine. In the middle of it was all these letters that soldiers write home to their families when they're going to go out on a dangerous mission. And it was. He said, if you're reading this, and it was just all these letters. And he said I'd love to write a song where the whole song's a letter.
Speaker 1:So that day me and brad got together, started working on it and that night we went to tim's house and we finished and wrote the song and and it was at the moment this is when people were still putting records in stores, so there was no like, hey, maybe we can slide this out or put it up on one of the dsps. It was, his current record had just come out. It's in all the walmart's best buys, wherever they sold records at that point and he already had a song in the top five on billboard. So we were like driving home that night when we wrote it and brad said man, that might be one of the best songs we've ever written that nobody ever hears, because people don't realize if you write a song at the wrong time. An artist is going to go do two world tours and hear 100 songs and write 50 songs and it can get lost in the shuffle.
Speaker 1:But you know, as fate would have it, he, two weeks after two couple weeks after we wrote it, he played it at a private event in washington dc. And uh, carol king was in the audience and she came up to him afterwards and said hey, that new song you played. I love that song. That's one of the best songs I've ever heard. So we've never met Carol King, but if anybody out there knows her, please tell her. We said something.
Speaker 4:I learned a really valuable piece of information too, about famous people that night. Famous people need to be validated, just like everybody else. The difference is they want to be validated by other famous people yeah, that song was great for like a month, but carol king said it was great it was going on the radio yeah.
Speaker 1:So he decided to play it on the acm awards and it's just not on his record, it's yeah it's not out.
Speaker 1:There's no to this day. The only recording of that song is the live performance. He and he shut down the ACM so no one would hear the sound check. It was a sort of surprise. And so Tim's singing it with two acoustic guitars, a couple string pieces, really low lit, and he just sings it. And then when it's done because Memorial Day was two days ago, so he showed he posted a piece of that on Instagram and I hadn't seen it in about 10 years. It was really cool.
Speaker 4:He a piece of that on instagram and it was just I hadn't seen it in about 10 years.
Speaker 1:It was really cool. He's kind of fat, kind of choked me up again and so it's like he was a little bit fat. So basically, it's like he soon as he's done, the lights come on and it says families of fallen soldiers are uh, are standing behind him. And it was just one of those moments and people started requesting it at radio but there was no. So they started playing the live recording and that's how it happened. Wow, that's all there is of it.
Speaker 6:Wow, and then let's jump to the other end of the spectrum. You got it if you're reading this, and then tell people the Toby Keith Red Solo Cup. Oh, wow, yeah.
Speaker 7:Equally as impactful. Equally as impactful yeah.
Speaker 6:Just in impactful. Equally as impactful, yeah, just in a different way.
Speaker 4:More so the depth I mean you guys can write this and then you can just go write that. You know, it's interesting too, because I look at you guys who I know really well for a long time, but you guys who I've known for a long time and like just songwriters, I'm like we could do the warren beavers thing that we did with any conglomeration of four of us and at this we just formed a fake college band with Jim and Brett Beavers two other songwriters very much like this hang and we're like we're going to write songs that are so ridiculous that we're daring the town to cut them. And we went in and for the first, like we did a summer, we wrote every Wednesday or every.
Speaker 4:Tuesday or every Wednesday, and we just wrote a bunch of stuff that was we thought was really offbeat, just to just to be different, just to do different we had to do it as a picture.
Speaker 4:We're the band dual record. So we do what we. We write like eight songs. We I think we recorded five of them. Brett was the drummer, jim beavers played bass, I played electric guitar and brett beavers played acoustic. And that was the band and it sounds very very whatever. And on that, that first little CD of five songs, there's a song called hey. Now that Tim put on one of his records it was Felt Good on my Lips which was a three-week number one, and there was Red Solo Cup, wow.
Speaker 4:We tried to repeat that several times after. But you know what, it's too late. We'd already had success. We were trying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now we started trying to restart is a little better Yep, a little more commercial it happens.
Speaker 4:So Red Solo Cup was literally just in a mix of. We have a song called the Pirate Song that we debated on putting that one instead of Red Solo Cup, and it's funny, Never would have been a hit.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 4:But it was just in a mix of a bunch of ridiculous songs and Toby Keith's manager took us along for a night.
Speaker 6:He said hey, man, I heard at uh, you know butter butter boy. Oh yeah, he was on tour with toby and played him red solo cup, so we owe him so much.
Speaker 1:I guess toby writes all of his songs almost amazing songwriter.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, he is but so butter played him that song and they were. You know, they had just enough alcohol and toby's like that is the dumbest song I've ever heard. Play that again and he his, you know, tk kimbrough took brett night at lunch. Well, he's the biggest practical joker of all time as you know, yeah, so he took us to lunch and he's like wearing sunglasses, like boys at solo club song you got. Can we hold on to it for like a year and we're looking for we think we're on kushar yeah yeah you can have it for 10 years
Speaker 4:okay and we don't hear anything else from him. And like a year later, maybe 10 months later, he said hey, we're gonna shoot a video to that song. Why don't y'all drive up there with us? And there's no address, but it's on this top of this mountain. I'm like man, this is an elaborate prank, but they're, it's just serious. So we all four rode together because we were sure that they were pranking us you know, we pulled up to the top of the hills the first time we knew they were serious.
Speaker 4:There's 10 trucks and lights everywhere and I'm like, oh my God, they're shooting a video for that song and it was literally just you actually still thought it was a prank.
Speaker 6:We still did, we rode together.
Speaker 1:So, we would all be embarrassed equally.
Speaker 4:So we wouldn't have to do the lonely. I'm still kind of surprised.
Speaker 7:But that song was not thrown together. I mean, there's so much lyric in there and line for line it's perfectly written. I mean writing two Red Solo Cup. You couldn't have done any better.
Speaker 4:I don't know, anybody could.
Speaker 7:It didn't seem like there had to be ridiculous. There's some really good lines in there. There are some funny lines.
Speaker 1:But it's funny that you say Toby was an amazing songwriter. So the year before he passed away they honor him at the BMI Awards. Yeah, and I mean he wrote I don't know 95, 98% of all of his material as a phenomenal songwriter. And they're honoring him at the BMI Awards for his songwriting? Yeah, and we get to the BMI Awards. You know how big it is and massive building. There's 500 tables with eight chairs per table and there's a ceramic red solo cup in front of every chair.
Speaker 5:I got that in mind and it says proceed to party.
Speaker 1:So they honor Toby that night. And on the way out the door I wanted to say hey to him but as soon as he got done accepting his award, his manager and all the people around him they're taking pictures. So I'm just walking by and on the way out I just reach my foot between the crowd and tap him on the foot and he looks up and I just hold up the red solo cup and I go like just kind of going funny that you get the one.
Speaker 6:Just kind of going.
Speaker 1:And the last thing Toby Keith ever said to me. He looked at me. That's the last year and he was so cool to us. How many times did he? If he ever played that show in a tv show, he would call me and brad and jim and brett beavers if we happen to be at a festival writing or something, we were on stage singing, we had to sing.
Speaker 4:He was so cool about it he loved it.
Speaker 1:He just thought it was so fun. Well, I mean, he was.
Speaker 4:He was a great guy. That was kind of quietly. He was really good to the military.
Speaker 1:I'm sure you guys know people don't know like toby was a really good guy, really funny guy, didn't take himself too seriously I mean, I think he had missile shot at him when he was flying in a helicopter to play for the troops, like he flew into enemy territory more than 30 times amazing you know, he came out oklahoma.
Speaker 5:God, was this just a couple months before, before he passed he came out and did.
Speaker 5:Uh, we were playing in okc and he came out and did should have been a cowboy with us, oh, wow. And so after we played it that night he hung out backstage with us and jason for two hours, um, telling us the best stories, van halen stories and all these greats and you knew he was sick, but he was. He was like you know, when I get better I'm gonna head right back on tour. And it was like, but he was an amazing person, he was. He really is. We were on tour with him too back in the day and still learned a lot, did you?
Speaker 1:so, aldi and you guys opened up for him back early on.
Speaker 5:Yeah, that's awesome. They probably what 15 shows yeah, it wasn't much.
Speaker 6:Oh, seven or eight around the same time we were.
Speaker 5:That's so great meeting.
Speaker 4:There's a bonding thing that happens when you've toured with someone, you just literally like summer camp with liquor.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean, but you do, you definitely bond. You can't wait for it to be over when everybody cries on the last night.
Speaker 5:Yeah, kit, we talk about touring now and it's so Sign my yearbook. It's so different because it's so like literally.
Speaker 1:We talk about it like we don't have a ton in common with the opening acts anymore. It's not like the old days where it's just different and it's hard to really describe. I just don't understand, as tight as you guys are tied in with jason, how you don't have me and brad open acoustically so we can play basketball every day. I mean it is 80.
Speaker 5:I mean it is hard to add to 80.
Speaker 1:I mean, you can see?
Speaker 5:No good try. You're baiting us in. You guys look incredible. You guys are in particular shape.
Speaker 1:We'll just sit there and read the promises while you guys are drinking. Do you guys have those? I feel like McGraw bought you some of those chambers at night, you're sleeping in.
Speaker 4:You're sleeping in some sort of chamber or something. The acrobaric chamber yeah, I didn't rent one for a month. Something's going on. It's for my son, but they're pretty good.
Speaker 8:If I was LeBron?
Speaker 4:James, I would have one too. Something's going on.
Speaker 8:It sounds like you need to start a new band. I think so and then write a bunch of songs just off the cuff it is, so I can play tambourine.
Speaker 1:Quit the band, start another band. We two people they're both publishers and we handed in a song. It was me and Brad and Rhett Akins wrote this song and everybody loves this song because we were playing a corporate event with Rhett Akins and Rhett goes hey, san Angelo, texas, we're in San Angelo. Everybody's trying too hard to write songs. Let's write a song in 15 minutes. He goes, I think I second verse, I go, I'll get the first verse. We're like spitting out lines. We wrote a song in 15 minutes and it's just like. It's almost like the traveling country traveling wheelbarrows. So I said to this publisher I said I kind of want to start a country traveling wheelbarrows band where it's just all of us guys, we put together about six or seven of us and we go in the studio with j joyce, just cut a record. We don't tour nothing, just put a record out. I talked about that this morning. What are you doing in July? What are you doing in July? We need a singer.
Speaker 8:What are you doing in July? There's nothing more fun than that.
Speaker 1:I think it would be a hoot. Every writer, just bring in your two favorite songs. We're cutting them. There's no A and.
Speaker 8:R in it.
Speaker 1:You bring in the two songs you love and let's just go cut 10 songs or 12 songs or whatever. So you're hearing it. We call the band hoot you are?
Speaker 5:you are such a hoot that's the name of the band.
Speaker 1:What animal can we blowfish? Well, we always like to ask the.
Speaker 7:I'm sorry, I was gonna ask you guys. Um, I know that mcgraw wasn't a a huge fan of the song. Try that small town. But for you guys, as as writers, and then knowing, knowing us and knowing aldine, what did you think like the first time you heard it? Did you have it? Be careful, you heard it.
Speaker 4:Be careful. You know what's interesting to me. No, don't be careful. I did not find anything, even controversial. If I didn't, if I had completely different political leanings, I wouldn't have found it controversial. And I saw the video and I went. Oh so Sean Silva did this, but I honestly think it was a little place where everyone was looking to be offended. I couldn't understand why someone was offended. I didn't understand it. I still don't really, because the truth is don't watch it, just block it everything and listen to that. And the truth is it's everything we've been singing about in this town and in this format for the last 40 years, which we are different here, a little stronger, a little more family oriented, a little bit try less of that. I just don't understand. I never understood the um offensive part of it. That didn't never click with me.
Speaker 6:Well, you're right people are looking to be offended.
Speaker 4:Yeah and it was already. People were already offended and told me about it before I ever listened, so I never had a naked listen. Yeah, I heard all of you heard that jason aldean song and I listen, I think, at the same time, nikki minaj had a song out wap.
Speaker 7:Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I was just like what's that stand for?
Speaker 1:I just I'm I guess I'm different because I think you just I'm a dad of four kids and two are girls and, like the whole, you know men using the girls restroom and all that. I just never got it political. I was just like as a dad, right, that's not happening in in a store when my daughters are there? Just I just didn't think about it too politically. I think everybody got so one side or the other I mean, you know your face.
Speaker 8:You guys think this racial thing, oh, you got you guys.
Speaker 5:They always use you guys I remember you guys texting when all that stuff was going on and really good friends, and I think it's one of those situations we talked about earlier where maybe something negative happens with some of the backlash, whatever. But then it's positive too, because we did a lot of healthy weeding out of people that are really your friends and then people who you realize are your friends when it's convenient. So that actually was a was a positive thing. I mean, it's not not being negative, it's just it's true. It's like really makes you get even tighter with the people that you know have your back.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know every bad thing has that effect if we handle it the right way. You're, I, you and I talked about that. Yeah, on my part. When I lost my son, I learned there was some weeding out not a lot, but there's a few people that literally just kind of disappeared from you. I'm like, oh, they're so uncomfortable with this that they can't. But everything that bad, negative that happens. You will find yourself stronger at the other side of that, unless you just dive into a bottle purposely, or even if you do dive into a bottle, because that's how I came out of that one. But there is a thing about pain and growth and on the other side of that. And look, we wouldn't be sitting here if that song wasn't so controversial to them. I don't think it's controversial at all.
Speaker 1:Right, well, just thinking about it, artistically mentioned, we mentioned tom douglas. He says don't tell the best story you know. Tell the story you know best, and I think each person just there. That's what art does, that's it. That's that's what you're doing, is telling the story of the people that you represent and who you are, and that's if you get any further down the road than that. It just seems to be counterintuitive to like suss out every line and see if somebody meant I didn't know, I don't even still know to the full extent. I know you guys got really attacked, for that is, I mean, on the level just sort of hearing it from you through text, but I didn't, I didn't really know all the stuff that happened, but apparently it was a lot oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:I mean, I was just mad I didn't come up with that I know those guys, nope, that's not true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know no. So what was what?
Speaker 4:was the the worst thing. I mean I remember, but I don't, I don't pay a lot of attention.
Speaker 8:There wasn't a bad thing, nothing nothing in my, according to me, I had family calling going man, you okay with all this criticism, people calling you racist and all this stuff and I go. What are you talking about?
Speaker 7:this is, but I didn't like this is like fuel.
Speaker 8:This is awesome because everybody everybody knows me knows the truth.
Speaker 7:Right, yeah, but it's people that form opinions based on what they hear, and I didn't like being called a racist. I didn't like that. That wasn't fun.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's an easy unfair thing for people. That's become the easiest thing. You're Hitler, you're racist. It requires no thought at all.
Speaker 1:I heard the greatest sentence. I forget who told it. You might remember who told us this. I said man, quit worrying about everybody that's not going to be on the front row of your funeral, Tim O'Neill.
Speaker 4:You just started worrying about the people on the front row of your funeral instead of the people on the back row.
Speaker 1:Wow, what somebody says from what they hear and think about you. They don't really know you. I just don't think about it. I'm not really on social media. I don't think about it, it doesn't matter to me. They don't know me, I don't know them, I don't even it doesn't bother me.
Speaker 5:Of course, I've never been really attacked, I guess, like that I know what's interesting, that we talk about this on your great podcast. It's amazing, but when you, you know, I remember thinking, talking to lost a child. What we're going through is absolutely nothing, yeah, and so that's. You know, being so close to you guys and knowing what you went through, it was really I, I would, I'm like what is that? Yeah, what you went through, now, that's, that's something and we need to tell people about the podcast we're not going through anything compared to that, and I know you mentioned this.
Speaker 4:And the truth is, when you delve into any situation because I work with a lot of that Well, we have a dad's group at my house, whatever, and my story is easy. I got some guys. There's one guy that lost three kids in one year oh my God, two kids. And then the third one was so upset about his siblings he committed suicide. I mean there's, oh gosh, you want to feel good about your situation. You know the old thing if you put your problems in a bowl with whoever, you take your own problems back. I will take my own problems back and they're designed for me to handle. But I mean having the Well first of all, having the heart and having the balls to do what you guys have done instead of running from that.
Speaker 4:We're gonna make a podcast about it, I think, honestly at the other end of it, because you the truth is, the people that are critical are tend to be cowards on that thing. And where are they now? I don't hear them. Yeah, I hear you still, but I don't hear them. So they really did you a favor by calling attention to something that was pretty obvious and common sense. I think they did you a favor and I'm glad they did because we get to be here today. Amen.
Speaker 7:And what's the name of your podcast and what's the? What's the subject matter for people?
Speaker 4:that are listening. Good grief, good God, survive, what is it?
Speaker 4:We're all honest conversation about things that are about surviving, things that suck but, it's faith, recovery and grief and it's just, you know, and a lot, a lot of music people. But yeah, just just really honest, talk about the truth is about about grief, or any of our problems, and what we're, you guys, are doing here all the time is that if you conversate about it, a lot of that power of that thing dissipates just in the conversation. Just bringing it up, bringing it to light, and I think we all find a lot of common ground and a lot of grace and gratitude for each other, with just the guts to say, hey, I'm feeling like this or whatever it is.
Speaker 6:That's what I love about it and you know, tully and I talk about being in the Las Vegas shootings and that was kind of our grief, which doesn't compare to anything like what you're doing and what you got with your podcast, but what I did notice with it I couldn't talk about it with people that couldn't understand or have gone through anything similar or grief like that. But you know, we can talk about it in any kind of way. We might have any type of conversation, but the power was having the conversation with somebody that's been through something.
Speaker 4:It's interesting. As we get older and we've all been through something, I know that we have you tend to only be able to really connect with people who have been through something. It's really hard to be there with and have a real conversation with. Oh yeah, everything's cool, man. It's like what are you worried about? That just doesn't really exist anymore and I enjoy the. My friends that have their puppies have been run over more than once because we can connect and there doesn't have to be any BS.
Speaker 5:And so I, yeah, god works in amazing ways Cause you know, and I think we talked about this a little bit but after the biggest thing, I'm the type of person I just bottle it up, push it way down and then, without realizing it, you know, it comes out in the wrong ways to my family or whatever. So I never talked about it, it was just we never talked about it ever. And so I was telling my wife I'm like you know, god is great in the way he works things. Because you know, you go through this horrendous tragedy and you start your podcast and it almost because it was you and it was just me and you talking back and forth for the first time, it almost gave me like a reason and a platform to talk about it, where you know, and it's almost like I forgot we were even doing a podcast that day. But that's how bad I need.
Speaker 4:But you know, you, you took your negative thing and you and you done a lot of good and the, the Kurt, was supposed to come, but he was out of town. It's like almost like you didn't. By the way, I still want you to do that, so I'm going to ask you right here in front of everyone.
Speaker 4:But it was just you and I talking and it was like all of a sudden it was a cathartic thing and like we talked the next week. You're like man, I never talked about that chest and that is I mean I. I mean I'm a, not a big therapy or whatever guy, but man, when we, when we openly conversate about, about something, it the power of the negativity there dissipates a lot just by breaking it out into the open and if we sit?
Speaker 6:on it, it will become cancer I encourage everybody to check out that podcast. It is so good. Good grief, good god, right, yep, uh, talk about you too. Uh, you obviously have a ton of similarities. Sometimes people think toli and our brothers, oh, you got a lot of similarities.
Speaker 2:We obviously have differences too, but they're kind of yin and yang they work together what's the biggest difference between you guys?
Speaker 1:oh, we're different people. I was just being funny. You one laughed. That was for crazy.
Speaker 3:I was like gee I thought that was gonna be a lot funnier when I dropped it.
Speaker 7:You guys continue now. We'll put it a lot. We'll put in a lot of laughter.
Speaker 1:We always used to joke and say that if, if I wasn't there, we wouldn't start a song, and if brad wasn't there, we wouldn't finish one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, I think there's just. You know, there's because you guys know, because you work together, we all co-write in this town and one can slay 1,000, two can slay 10,000.
Speaker 6:And it's I don't know why you guys by the way, exclusively or did exclusively write together.
Speaker 1:I mean, we've written close to 3,000 songs together over 30 years, so it songs together over 30 years. So it's like there's a, there's an organism. That kind of happens love it or hate it, and uh, and it's. What's interesting is we were we were talking not too long ago about how I think we're writing the best songs we've ever written, yet we just for the first time in like four years, had us had a song on the charts right now. So it's like you can't equate your paycheck for the quality of work that you're doing in this. You just got to do it because you love it and you have great songs and I think Brad and I, because we're brothers and because we're duo, I know you guys have it too.
Speaker 1:You'll look at Kurt and go no, not that I don't think that's the right sound, or I don't think that's the good title. It's not that you're rude. You have to form boundaries and have respect for each other, but at the same time, if he doesn't like something he's not gonna go. Gosh, I really don't like that. How do I tell him?
Speaker 3:he just says hey, dude, I don't like that. And I say well, I think you're wrong.
Speaker 1:He goes why do you think that? And so we did talk about it's not, we don't want to be right, we want to get it right. Right, and when we both kind of got on that same track it helped a lot, but that's. I mean that those are the difference.
Speaker 1:I mean, he's a great guitar player and I can play a little bit of which means I can't sing no he actually can sing and but uh, the I, you know just just being brothers and having the same sort of we're pointed at the same target but coming from two different, you know, avenues, just the beauty, too, of the partnership that we have, that you guys have.
Speaker 4:but why didn't? Why didn't you do this podcast by yourself? Why didn't you do it, kelly? Because it's more fun with a team, absolutely. Who would you celebrate with? I never wanted to play.
Speaker 1:I do come up here when they all leave by yourself. We do that a second he says I can do this.
Speaker 7:Some hidden gems and just see if you can fill all the dead air. Hello America, this is Neil Thrasher.
Speaker 4:But I never wanted to play tennis. You know what I mean. I wanted to be on the basketball team. If you're a solo sport guy, I guess that's something. But the gratification we talk about the locker room is in the creating together, and having a team member and a partner just makes the whole thing more fun. I love the co-writing we get to do, because we wind up with friendships that last forever, whereas that person is too cool to get in a room with anybody. They might have a little bit at first, but it dies off. They just repeat themselves.
Speaker 1:Have you guys just getting to the age that we all are and how long we've all been doing it, don't you sort of feel like in the last couple of years you've really been cherishing old friends? Yes, it's not like you call them up and write a card every week, but it's just like this Brad goes hey, totally called you want to go do a podcast Now. I hate podcasts.
Speaker 3:Not listening to them.
Speaker 4:Why does?
Speaker 3:I want to do them. I'm like yeah, why.
Speaker 1:And I was like 100%, I'm doing it.
Speaker 4:Plus, you had no choice. We've been friends for 30 years, you're coming 30 years, but I for 30 years.
Speaker 1:you're coming 30 years but I was sitting there. We were doing a writers round the other day with Caitlin Smith and she wrote that song with Don Schlitz you can't make old friends it's like 8 in the morning, we're doing it for some corporation. We're just sitting there. She starts playing it and I'm like I don't put this salty stuff in my eyes.
Speaker 8:I was like, I feel like, oh my gosh, I'm not taking enough testosterone. I need to double up on that, but I feel like we're in that phase where we're just going oh, it's not like.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, the end is near, my career is over, but I just cherish dudes that you've known over 25 years.
Speaker 4:It's a great thing. I love this. I love this age. I love being this age. You know it's funny.
Speaker 2:I you go wow, this is really. Yeah, I love this, I love this age, I love being this age.
Speaker 4:You know, it's funny. I couldn't wait to turn 50 because I'm like for a guy in his 40s I look okay, but for guys 50s I'm gonna look pretty good I've been lying about my age for like a day.
Speaker 1:How old are you? I'm like 61 really. Wow, good job I just want to compliment.
Speaker 3:I don't care if you think I'm old I compliment my love language is words of adoration.
Speaker 6:I used to say how young I was. You know 10 years younger. That's a good idea. Now lie up and see how great it is I
Speaker 2:mean I didn't see, I didn't see us go, still going.
Speaker 8:At this age, you know what's interesting either I what?
Speaker 4:what do you like? What do you? I love to hear what you. What is your? What is your take on it now? Because I might change this, by the way, daily, but it's like I want to walk down the hill and instead of running down the hill, whatever. Less, less quality, less quantity, but more quality, what? What are you? What are you doing?
Speaker 8:on the creative process. There's not as much writing. Yeah, but it's. But it's what you said. Yeah, it's. You want it to count and it's more about. It's not about I'm not rushing to turn in a bunch of songs, it's all about when something hits me now.
Speaker 4:And I don't care about missing anything. I do not have FOMO, no.
Speaker 8:I have.
Speaker 4:JOMO.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 4:I'm cool with it. The world can go on without me. It didn't need me to start with.
Speaker 8:I'm still blown away. If you'd have told me 30 years ago you'll still be doing this at 60. Yeah, You're crazy.
Speaker 7:I would definitely write less if we mentioned the word quota earlier, which is minimum delivery commitment. So we all have that in your contract. So for me it's 12 songs, but it's 12 100% songs which used to be easy to get when it was two ways or three ways, but now there's fours and fives.
Speaker 7:that's I mean for me, that's getting into into the 40s of complete songs, and that that is not me I don't like having to do that, right, but you, I have to to get those, to get the numbers in, but I generally and you go and you're not not going through the motions. You're trying to write as good as you can, but that's a lot of songs for me. I would rather focus just on on the quality, because I've never been a quantity. Yeah, you know that's the thing I like to do the most. Just think of ideas. Think, okay, if I get this to the right writers, this can be a hit yeah, yeah, yeah, the quantity game is tough.
Speaker 4:You guys have always been so smart about it, like totally. Like, yeah, I do. We're writing like almost never and we're just yeah, going out of it.
Speaker 5:If it's not something and we're, I know you guys the same way like we're brutally honest, like we're writing and we're not on something, great it's over. Yeah, we just bail, go to the next thing. You know, I mean that is such.
Speaker 4:That is such a great thing. I've never been in part of a right that did that, and there's been times I'm like man, if we were all honest right now, we would just leave and get beat the traffic.
Speaker 5:This sucks and that's okay and I love it. I mean and honestly, like talk about getting older and I've never felt more creative than I do now. I just want to point it in the right direction. So that's that's where we're at like, I just you know it's it's a, you know very proud and happy of everything we've accomplished. But there's more to do, but doing it smarter oh, you don't feel like you're in a hurry, though.
Speaker 8:No, there's. No, there's no pressure anymore. Yeah, but a lot of that zero though we're all very blessed to.
Speaker 5:You know we've all.
Speaker 8:If you saved your money, there's no pressure.
Speaker 5:Yeah yeah, yeah, just figure out.
Speaker 7:I mean, I just think I think we figured out what we do. I've got got some pressure.
Speaker 1:You've got a new one.
Speaker 7:I'm starting over at 57. You are one of my.
Speaker 4:I have five friends in their 50s with young small children under two. God love you. That's awesome. So much respect I love it.
Speaker 7:I didn't know I needed baby Lucy, but God knew I needed baby Lucy, so it's really fun. It's just a whole new. You guys have already experienced it and for me it's all brand new. And so I don't think, yeah, you're tired and everything, but I don't think about it, I'm just thank God. Do I wish I would have more based on having Lucy? Yes, now, physically, could I handle that? The staying up, having Lucy? Yes, now, physically, could I handle that? You know, the staying up, I don't know, but just I mean, thank God I got the chance to experience the miracle of having a kid. That's so cool.
Speaker 4:It's awesome and you look great, so I think you probably should have more.
Speaker 7:Yeah, well, I think hopefully Rachel's not listening to this episode.
Speaker 1:Hey, rachel you can handle more. Men don't mature until like 45 or 50.
Speaker 3:anyway she's getting the best Kelly for sure.
Speaker 4:Thank you, she's getting the best.
Speaker 7:Kelly, she did say to tell both you guys.
Speaker 2:She's awesome. What about us? She loves you guys.
Speaker 7:She loves you guys too, I'm sure she did. It's somewhere in here.
Speaker 6:All right, we know these guys have things to do. By the way, this is the first morning. I guess that's what sober people do, they do morning podcasts.
Speaker 4:This is our first one. We're going to go shoot some hoops after this, yeah.
Speaker 6:We can't thank you guys enough. I mean, you're incredible friends to us. We love you guys. We're going to have to do this again. Yeah, right.
Speaker 4:Absolutely Anytime. I yeah Right, absolutely Anytime. I wouldn't know any way. I'd rather stay in the morning Country traveling Wilburys.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 5:Neil July, you meant to travel. If that doesn't happen, I'll be very upset.
Speaker 1:Untraveling Wilburys yeah.
Speaker 4:Untraveling, not traveling. Do a world tour of Franklin.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Congrats on your podcast.
Speaker 7:Thank you very much, really appreciate it. Thank you, thanks so much for coming, is that?
Speaker 1:OG beer. Do they make that in an O'Doul's? Is that your own beer Non-alcoholic it's not our own beer.
Speaker 6:I don't know if they make a non-alcoholic one.
Speaker 7:You know, you're not, I'm not sure that's a great question.
Speaker 1:Well, if it's non-alcoholic, it ain't.
Speaker 6:American for not going Love you guys From the Patriot Mobile Studios. This is the Drive at the Small Town Podcast. Thanks for watching.
Speaker 3:Yay, Make sure to follow along, subscribe, share, rate the show and check out our merch at trythatinasmalltowncom.