Part 1 From Buffett to Backroads: A Life in Song with Will Kimbrough

On this episode of The Hook with Johni & Jess, we sit down with Grammy-nominated songwriter, producer, and guitarist Will Kimbrough—an artist whose influence runs deep through the fabric of American music.

From touring the world to collaborating with legends like Jimmy Buffett, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, and Todd Snider, Will has spent decades shaping songs that resonate far beyond the stage. You may know his work on Buffett’s final album—including the powerful “Bubbles Up”—or through his own deeply personal and masterfully crafted catalog.

In Part 1, we dive into where Will is right now—his current projects, creative evolution, and what success, freedom, and fulfillment look like at this stage of his life. We also explore his work with SongwritingWith:Soldiers, helping veterans turn their stories into music, and what it means to create with purpose.

This is more than a conversation about music—it’s about growth, legacy, and the moments that shape a life in song.

Don’t miss Part 2, where we go deeper into his journey, his work with Jimmy Buffett, and the stories behind the songs.

Will's Core Collaborations / Major Mentions:

Jimmy Buffett, Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Todd Snider, John Prine & Guy Clark

Legendary / Industry Icons, Additional Artists & Collaborators ,  Musicians / Nashville & Session Legends, Writers / Producers / Key Figures Mentioned & Bands / Cultural References Mentioned: 

Paul McCartney, Mark Knopfler, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix & Neil Young, Toby Keith, Roger Waters, Jerry Jeff Walker, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt & Dolly Parton, Jerry Douglas, Luther Dickinson Alison Krauss & Yo-Yo Ma, Mac McAnally, Gary Green  & Daniel Lanois, Little Feat, R.E.M., Allman Brothers Band & Pink Floyd

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

There'll never be another guy like that. Um, open-minded artist, popular performer. It's kind of like knowing Will Rogers or something, you know.

SPEAKER_08 0:11

Welcome to the hook, where music and art come together with the people that created it. I'm Johnny. I'm Jess. You're on the hook. Today's guest is one of those musicians where if you know, you know.

SPEAKER_07 0:28

A songwriter's songwriter, a guitarist that other guitarists study, but also someone who has toured the world, produced records, and written songs recorded by some of the biggest names in music.

SPEAKER_08 0:41

He's worked with legends, Emmilou Harris, Rodney Crowell, Todd Snyder, and has spent years as part of Jimmy Buffett's Coral Reefer band. He's one of those rare artists who can walk into any room, studio, or stage and elevate everything, quietly shaping the sound of American music for decades, whether you realized it or not.

SPEAKER_07 1:03

And let's not forget that he's a Grammy nominated singer and songwriter. This is gonna be a good one. Will Kimbro, you're on the hook. Will we got to see you play last night, and we are so excited to be back with you today. I know you're just starting work on a new album. What does that process look like for you right now, from where you are today to getting it all the way out into the world?

SPEAKER_00 1:28

So I'm gonna record a bunch of new songs, and then I'm gonna finish the recordings, and then I'm gonna mix the record, and then I'm gonna master the record, and then we're gonna do artwork for the record, and then we're gonna have to get a release date from the distributor, and it's gonna take a a year at least, because I live on the road. That's where my work is these days, and so everything's from the road, and that's good. Yeah, but that's what it is. I am here with my guitar, my little backpack, two suitcases in Dave's car. So it is just a portable life, and so it's gonna be a little while. But I've got these songs, I've got a lot of songs I write all the time, and it's gonna be a dizzying amount of information in this podcast because I've been doing this for over forty years, like putting music out into the world, released music, and I'm not famous, I'm a creative. I write, perform, produce. This is really my forty-first year of having records out in the world. I've just lived the dream. I wrote for thirty years with Todd Snyder, I've toured and sung harmony and played lead guitar for Emily Lou Harris and Rodney Crowell and Jimmy and Todd. It's just keeps going on, you know.

SPEAKER_07 2:42

I've been thinking about this since we started the podcast, and a lot of the people we're talking to, and you in particular, have contributed so much to the music that we all listen to, to artists that we all know really well.

SPEAKER_06 2:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:56

But I think there's something kind of beautiful being that well known in the industry and that big of a contributor, but without having to actually deal with the level of fame that can be debilitating.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Oh, it's fantastic. I remember I was working on Jimmy Buffett record, I think it was a record life on the flip side. So it was early 2020 before COVID. So January 2020, and we're in Key West, and we were gonna go get some lunch. And Jimmy Buffett would just ride his bike around Key West. He put a hat on and some sunglasses, and he didn't particularly try to hide the fact that he was who he was. You know, he didn't have like some weird hat on, but somebody spotted him, and all of a sudden there was a crowd outside the studio. Now his studio is and was right down by the docks. That's where he wanted it to be, right in the middle of everything. And so all of a sudden there had to be a plan B. Right. You know? And I remember thinking, wow, he's got to do that from time to time, even though he's really trying just to be out among the people and have a normal life. And uh yeah, there's a gratitude for not being famous. Actually, we were talking about our friend Fluffy, and uh who I think who's been a guest.

SPEAKER_06 4:04

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Yeah. Um, and kind of legendary behind the scenes guy in music of, you know, getting people out on the road and tour managing and for everybody, you know, like punk rock, jam bands, and everything. I believe the Rolling Stones, too. Yeah. And so Johnny Rotten, you know. Yeah. He was telling me last night about going to buy toothpaste and a toothbrush with Johnny Rotten, who, if you don't know, was the lead singer of the Sex Pistols. And if you don't know them, you should check it out because it's legendary for a good reason. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_07 4:32

And he probably needed a toothbrush.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Well, that's why he's called Johnny Rotten. But that's a story you can ask Fluffy the next time he's on. So Fluffy and I were talking about that. We said sometimes the only thing worse than not having a hit song is having a hit song. Especially if it's the only one you have. It might have bought your house and your boat or paid for your second divorce or whatever.

SPEAKER_07 4:54

A pina colada song. That's what I think are freaking.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Although that guy went on to be a massively successful Broadway writer, he wrote shows. Rupert Holmes. He had that song, which actually is one of the great guilty pleasures, right?

SPEAKER_07 5:07

Oh, it means I would listen to that pregnant and cry. I don't know why.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

Yeah, it's just it's fantastic. And it should be like showtune music. It's that borderline goofy and lame and at the same time genius. That's just part of music, right? Well, let me tell you about this new record that I'm gonna work on. I have to choose from all these songs, and and it could be one of really to me three records. One of three. I've got to pick. And I'm in the process of it. Because as soon as you make that list of what it's gonna be, then your brain goes, but what if it's the other thing? Or my brain, not your brain, because I'm I'm not using your brain.

SPEAKER_07 5:44

Our brain would probably do that too.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

I'm experiencing your brains right now, but I I only have mine. So what I wanna do, number one, some of these songs, like for instance, I wrote this song with Jimmy Buffett called Bubbles Up, that was like kind of it turned out to be this sort of swan song to his fans, that's sort of his message to them. That's how it's perceived. I don't know if that's what it was, even though I wrote it with him, because Jimmy Buffett wasn't a guy that was telling me why he was writing a song or why he had an idea for a song. I just dove in and and we wrote it together. Because that's the way that works. I you don't go, why? Why are you writing this song, Jimmy? You just go, okay, all right. And then you get the guitar out and and the notebook out and you just start hammering away and try to be as open as you can be w without fear, because he gave me the idea and let me run with it alone at home before I sent it to him, because he was still in the you know, as we all know, he died of a form of cancer, and so he was getting treated at that point. He he didn't know it necessarily, but he had less than a year to live, and so he had to go to these treatments and travel all the time. So what that did for me was and for the song, and there was five songs we wrote for that record, the last record that he made, was that he utterly trusted me. I got it. And after twenty years of writing with him, I finally understood that he trusted me to be me, and that's what he wanted. He didn't want me to sit around and make a margarita and sit by the pool and pretend I'm Jimmy Buffett. He wanted me to be me and then give him something, and then he could be himself and add himself to it, which was amazing because he's one of the best songwriters ever and one of the most beloved storytellers and sort of charismatic characters of a lifestyle. He's the legend. And he was a legend when he was alive. But I didn't let the weight of that stop me at that point. I just understood that he trusted me and I took joy in that and and it enabled me just to write a whole song for him and go, change whatever you want. You asked me to run with it. Here's four minutes of verses and choruses of this song bubbles up. When this world starts reeling from that pressure drop feeling, just treading water these days.

SPEAKER_03 8:09

When your compass is spinning and you're lost on the way, like a leaf in the wind, friend me when I stay bubbles up, they will point you towards home.

SPEAKER_02 8:25

No matter how deep, how far you roam, they will show you the surface, the plot and the purpose.

SPEAKER_03 8:37

So when the journey gets long, just know that you're loved. There is light up above, and joy, there is always enough. Bubbles up to my friends who are jolly when Mel and Collie knocked. Sometimes they let her in. And it ain't half as bad as the bend. Sometimes living is a struggle. Multiplied double, but they love it too much. For the party to end bubbles up, they will point you towards home. No matter how deep, how far you roam, they will show you the surface, the plot, and the purpose. So when the journey gets long, just know that you will love.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

Joy is always enough. Bubbles up.

SPEAKER_03 10:19

So let's pop cork to the rough and the right, to the bright blazing day, to the sweet starry night.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

Well bubbles up, they will point us towards home.

SPEAKER_03 10:49

No matter how deep, how far you roam They will show you the surface, the flight, and the purpose. So when the journey gets long, just know that you are loved. There is light up above, and the joy is always enough. Bubbles up. Bubbles up.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

And he wrote me the nicest note. You know, when you write with other songwriters like in Nashville or LA or Atlanta or wherever, New York, London, it's very businesslike, and people sort of have their brand and their thing and their swagger. And I don't really have that as much. I'm more like sort of, let's come in and have fun. I'm not, I don't have like a brand I'm bringing. I'm sort of like I try to meet people where they are. And there's a lot of reasons for that. Maybe we'll get into that. I just ran with it. You know what I'm saying? So I'm trying to put that in this new album so that I can sort of show what I've been doing. What happens to me is I've got a list of like 10 or 12 songs, and my brain immediately goes into competitive mode with myself, and I start writing new songs. There's gonna be a whole bunch of brand new songs written between now and the 5th of April, and I've already got a couple that I wrote like this weekend at the Crossmill in my little room up there.

SPEAKER_07 12:28

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

While I was drinking coffee and trying to warm up and wake up, and you can hear my voice. I've been singing all these shows, so I'm kind of like but I'm from Mobile, Alabama, and that's really like the original Mardi Gras in America. And I know people in New Orleans are always sick of hearing that, but it's just sort of a fact, and it doesn't mean it's better, it's way smaller, but it's a fun Mardi Gras. And I was the big chief of this Mardi Gras crew this year, which is like an honorary thing. They ask you if you want to be the big chief, and I said yes. And so it's a walking crew, and so I walked in this Mardi Gras parade in full regalia and like face paint, and it's like a six-mile Mardi Gras route and through my hometown, which is this old southern city, Mobile, Alabama. It's beautiful. There's like 200,000 people downtown lining the parade route, and you're walking, so you're head level, face to face with 200,000 people. When you get named the Big Chief, you make a little acceptance speech, and it's usually very self-deprecating and supposed to be funny, and I was totally intimidated by that. So I wrote a song called Big Chief, part two, because there's a famous New Orleans Mardi Gras song called Big Chief by Professor Longhair. So I've made it Big Chief part two. And so when I played, I said, I'm gonna thank you for making me Big Chief, and here's my song. And they said, you know, you of course spoiled it for everybody in the future because it's just gonna be like a guy who's in real estate and he's gonna have to make a speech. But so I'm and I'm gonna do my bubbles up song, which I have to say while I'm tootin' my horn or tooting the horn of the song and and Jimmy Buffett was that when Jimmy passed, the first thing that I saw was, of course, the outpouring of grief and love from his fans and people that I've met through Jimmy over the years. But Paul McCartney had become friends with Jimmy because they both had homes in the Hamptons and Sag Harbor. They're peers of rock stars and living in Sag Harbor. But McCartney went to Jimmy's bedside when he was in his last few days and sat up all night with him and played him songs. Can you imagine? Jimmy said, I'm making a new record. I've made a new record and it's gonna come out. And he played in Bubbles Up. And so McCartney posted, My friend passed, we had become friends, and I really liked him a lot. And even though I didn't know him very long, he was a really cool guy, and and he played me this song Bubbles Up, and it was just beautiful, and his voice sounded better than I'd ever heard it. And so I was like, you know, sitting there crying because my co-writer had passed, and that part of my life was gonna utterly change. You know, I didn't think something's over, although I certainly was not gonna get to write any more songs with Jimmy or make any more recordings with him or play any more shows with him. I have this song and belief that you can have more gratitude than grief. Because my friend Todd Snyder died as well, and he was a not as famous as Jimmy, but Todd was beloved, like cult artist that could play like a thousand seat theater in any city in the Western world and sell it out, even though he hadn't had a song on the radio since 1995. But he was that good of a writer and a performer that he could do that. You know, people would pay their hundred dollars at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and sell it out for and he'd come out on stage all by himself barefooted and just sing and tell stories. And that's kind of like Jimmy Buffett, but then it's just a different level. We're all at different levels.

SPEAKER_07 15:35

Is there any part of you that wants this album to maybe be some sort of tribute to Well, it's definitely gonna be.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

I know I'm talking a lot because you're asking me that question, I'm actually working it out in my mind, as I said. And I think I'm deciding today that it's gonna be this. I want to put the Big Chief song on there because what else am I gonna do with it? But it's a Mardi Gras song with that New Orleans feel, it's gonna be horns on it, and one of those marching bands in a Mardi Gras parade kind of thing. And my version of Bubbles Up. Because I want to go play the shows and tell the story. And of course I want to sell the record, but I mean this record will tell this story. And I've got a song called Gratitude and Grief that I wrote after Todd Snyder passed. And it's been, well, I put it out there on like Bandcamp, just a recording I did like in a hotel room while I was on the road, like a couple of days after Todd passed. It just says, if I know one thing is true, I have more gratitude than grief, meaning I miss my friend, but gosh, I'm just more glad that I got to have 30 years of friendship and creativity and to be to witness somebody that good at what they do and be with them and get to perform all kind of we we did Conan O'Brien and David Letterman and Jay Leno and Austin City Limits and opened for Jimmy Buffett and played shows of our own all over the place. We got to go to Europe and play for people that already knew his songs when his first album had, you know. Not everybody gets to do that, even though I live in Nashville among a community of musicians, and you can be a little bit jaded, like, yeah, we were playing this festival the other day for 100,000 people, and my guitar's blah, blah, blah, you know. But who gets to do this? N hardly anybody gets to do what I've gotten to do. Practicing gratitude so that I treasure it more. So my new album will have these songs I wrote with Jimmy. I've got I found a song I wrote with Todd like 30 years ago that we never did anything with, and it was kind of a beloved crazy road story out in Santa Cruz.

SPEAKER_07 17:33

Coaster ride was in Santa Cruz, California.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

This song is really about a another kind of roller coaster ride, and a roller coaster ride of the mind. And the and the I'll just say this there's fun, and we read you know, we hear podcasts or interviews or read books and read magazine articles about particularly people that do music. That I mean the story story of the Santa Cruz song is we played Sacramento and and then we had to drive to Santa Cruz and we didn't have a bus, we had a van. And so we had to play to show gear, we got paid, we checked out of our hotel, and it's like one o'clock in the morning or two o'clock in the morning, and we have to drive to Santa Cruz. And it's not a way you want to live off. At some point, bad things will happen when you don't get to sleep at all. So we drove to Santa Cruz and we had to play at like 9 30, 10 o'clock in the morning. But you're I mean, you've been there, so it's a summer day, it's gorgeous, it's not hot, it's like 65 and there's like 5,000 people out there just happy. You know, it's correct to call it the central coast of California, but whatever. It's gorgeous. It's a perfect surfing USA, you know, and uh and we were made so welcome. And then we just play crashed out at that point at like noon or one in the afternoon, but instead we had a whole epic thing. So we'll have to hear the song. But I and I've got some other some other new songs, and I've so I've got this list going of like these like ten or eleven songs. I love that we make vinyl records again because it puts this limitation on you, it's supposed to gotta be like this 42-minute thing. And really that's the perfection of the album. And I'm an old guy, I'll be sixty-two hopefully when my record comes out. But I love the form of the album. And they keep saying, Oh, the album is dead, but it's not because I'm the person that's gonna make it. You know, it's like saying the novel is dead, and then there's eight thousand novels published every year. So somebody's gig is to tell you that some genre is dead. That's their gig. My gig is to say, I got a new group of songs that fit together for a reason. So I'm doing that.

SPEAKER_08 19:35

I loved when vinyl started coming back around and the young kids were buying record layers because that is amazing.

SPEAKER_00 19:43

Yeah, beautiful things about a record is two beginnings and two endings. You have the first song on side A and the last song on side A, and then what happens in the middle, and then you flip it over and there's a new beginning, side B, track one, and then the last song. So you have two opportunities to begin and end. And I love that because it's just another opportunity. Even though you hope people will listen to it a million times, that first time is beautiful. And even even the person that loves the record will play it for somebody and then flip it over and play it again. And it doesn't mean that everybody in the world, I'm it's not an ego thing, like I'm so great and everybody's gonna love it. It's more like I'm excited that they're gonna hear.

SPEAKER_07 20:21

Yeah. The way it starts and the way it's and well it fits into the the whole storytelling narrative to present it.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Yeah, so so this story is about where I'm from and what it means to be from Mobile, and that's where Jimmy was from down there too. He's from Pascagoula, Mississippi, which is on the Gulf Coast, in Mobile. He went to high school in Mobile and had that coastal life, and he pursued it his whole life, you know. So it started there for him and in his family. Uh his grandfather was like a boat captain, old-fashioned boat captain, and so it's a very romantic story. So I'm just tying it into that. I've got a song kind of about hurricanes, and I can you can even be kind of grateful for hurricane season too, you know, because I got a line in there that says, you know, when the power goes out, in Nashville we have more like tornadoes and ice storms. But like a hurricane season is kind of romantic. It's also terrible. I have a line that says, I kind of like it when the power's down, so I don't have to watch the news. And then I said, John Pryne, Jerry Jeff, and Jimmy Buffett. That's a lot to lose. Because at that time, those are the folks that had just recently sort of passed in my life. And that's a lot of thought, but it's also a way to make it rhyme. How do I rhyme, watch the news? And then I thought, well, we just lost John Pryne, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Jimmy Buffett, so that's a lot to lose. So I just put it in there, you know. That's one of my things I've learned over the years is just write down what you're intending to say in a song, just write that literally down, and you may change it and make it more flowery or poetic, or maybe not, because if you listen to your favorite songs that you've been listening to your whole life, sometimes they're a lot plainer than you think. It's just that when you hear it, it created this magic in your heart and your mind, and it's been that way your whole life. Like when I listened to After the Gold Rush by Neil Young, or I listened to The Son of a Sailor by Jimmy Buffett, or I listened to All along the Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix, which is him covering a Bob Dylan song. And then that'll make you go listen to the Bob Dylan version. You know what I mean? It's like just such a fun thing to have in your life. We all have it. Technology is weird and takes over our lives, but it also is this opportunity to go down these really cool rabbit holes. And I'm a I'm definitely a rabbit hole guy.

SPEAKER_07 22:19

I want to know what you do to actually shut your brain down.

SPEAKER_00 22:24

Unfortunately, I read like on a tablet with turned black at night, you know what I mean? Where you make it black so the words are white, so you're in like a dark space with just the white words. Because what I'm trying to do is turn my mind away from what I've been doing, which is almost always like creating or performing or recording. And it's way overstimulating, always. So yeah, I'm kind of a boring guy because I'm addicted to my quote unquote work, so-called work, which is really my work is the travel because the playing part is just it's called playing for a reason because you're playing.

SPEAKER_08 22:57

And you're a lot of fun to watch on stage. You are barefoot and playing that guitar, and it is amazing when you're on stage. Yeah, it's just telling me.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

Yeah, it's a labor of love. Yeah. You know, the clothes cliches are useful because they are they are what they are. And again, like practicing that gratitude. And I, you know, my nutshell is I grew up playing in bands from age twelve and like playing at like where could I play? We can play the skating rink. So we went and played the skating rinks around Mobile, Alabama, in our band when I was 12. We had a PA system and amps, and I had to get guys in the band that had driver's licenses, so I didn't have to ask my parents to take me to the skating rink. So I was playing with older people, so I learned how to play better because I was with people that were way better than me.

SPEAKER_08 23:40

You were already working it out.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

Well, I just wanted to get better. Yeah, I wasn't thinking about work or career. I was just thinking about how awesome it was. And then if I could get that guy to play with me, and they were like shy, nerdy, 16-year-old guys. They they didn't want to sing. I'm not singing. And I was like, I'll sing. So I'm up there like at 12 trying to sing Aerosmith and the Allman Brothers and the Rolling Stones and you know whatever. And I just took to it like a polar bear to ice or whatever, you know. So put out our own records in the 80s when like bands like REM were sort of showing up and being when they first started, they put out their own record and then they got big, you know, over the course of time. But my band got to open for them before they were big. So I got to see these guys come in and they had this chemistry that did eventually put them in stadiums and arenas. But they had it, so you saw it and you're like, wow, they're amazing. They didn't have the songs yet to be the, you know, they didn't have everybody hurts yet or anything like that. But you could just tell, and for me, it was like they have a beat-up old van, just like my band. Peter Buck, who was the guitar player, his amp was broken and he didn't have a backup, so he used my amp. And they dressed just like me in that 80s, like a flannel shirt over a t-shirt and some converse and some jeans. You know, it's like they looked like me and my friends. So that gave me permission. And they were also from the south. And if that in the 80s was like being from England and on MTV and wearing leopard skin pants or whatever, you know, and Southern Rock wasn't really a thing anymore. It was about to be again with like, for instance, REM, because they're rock and they're from the South, or widespread panic, or Warren Haynes. It came back, you know, it never went away, but it came back into the mainstream. But I saw that I could do it. And so a year later I had like a record out that we had made, and I just went from there. And then a couple of years after that, I was in Nashville, and then a year after that we had a record deal out of New York, like a pop deal. And then two years after that, they dropped us like a hot potato, and then a year after that I was signed to John Prime's label, and he's another hero. So I was back in Nashville with like the singer-songwriter world, no longer trying to be in like the pop world because I'd been put through the machine and sort of popped out the other end. There's two shoots or you know, come out the where you had a hit, the one where you didn't have a hit. But as it turns out, not having a hit left me free to continue to become who I am.

SPEAKER_07 25:54

It's so crazy how sometimes the things that happen that feel like the hardest end up being the absolute best thing that could have happened to you.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

Yeah, and so I got I had my band with John Prize label. I was like 30 years old at that point, and I'd been playing music pretty much full-time since I was twelve. So I was a little bit burned out of being in bands and having to have this democratic process of like the set list or what we're gonna do. And I just wanted to be like the solo artist and in charge of my own. And plus, I'd met and married my wife, and we're still together, you know, 33 years later, and we got two grown daughters. So then Todd Snyder came in my life. He was signed to Jimmy Buffett's label, Margaritaville Records. This is 1994, and I needed a job, and I didn't have any skills other than playing in bands. So Todd Snyder called me and said, I need a guitar player, and I said, Well, send me your album. So he sent me a Max L cassette of his album, and I listened to it and I thought it was brilliant. So drove over to Memphis, auditioned for Todd, spent the next five years playing in Todd's band, writing with Todd, making records with Todd, you know, playing Austin City Limits, playing Conan, going all over Europe. And then he got dropped by his record label. And I was back home and I started playing with Rodney Crowell, who's one of the most successful songwriters of all time. He's had like over 500 songs recorded by other artists, but he's also a great singer-songwriter and great storyteller. So then I got to work with Rodney. And Rodney let me open shows for him. So I was putting out solo records. This is in the early 2000s when people would still like slap down 15 bucks for a CD. And so I was selling like thousands of CDs on the road, opening for Rodney, and then playing with him. It was like going to graduate school for songwriting and storytelling. Both of those things. Todd, Rodney. Meanwhile, because I met Jimmy Buffett through Todd Snyder, Jimmy Buffett calls me and says, I want to hear some songs. And nobody was wanting to hear my songs except for just my little bit of fans that I had and like a little label deal in Europe that was very small. Nashville publishers didn't want me. And it was a lot like Jimmy Buffett. They didn't want him either back in 1969. So he called me and said, I want to hear songs. I said, Okay, I got songs. I FedExed him a big old package of stuff, and a year later, I'm in the studio with Jimmy Buffett and Key West and all his band and all these special guests, and he records a song of mine that's a duet with Toby Keith called Peace of Work. And the piano player on the session was Bill Payne from a band called Little Feet. And Jimmy had earmarked another song but not used it on the record. And Bill Payne was like, What about that other song, The Champion of the World? And he said, What if Little Feet records it? I said, Little Feet should definitely record it. So Little Feet recorded it as a duet with Jimmy Buffett, and I was more on the map as a songwriter than I had ever been. Even though I'd say mainstream country music is still not very interested in my songs. Jimmy Buffett was very interested. So we wrote and made records for 20 years. Like every record he made from 2003 to his passing, I had songs on there and I played on it as like a guest. And meanwhile, I started playing lead guitar and singing harmony for Emmy Lou Harris, who's another of my heroes from my childhood. Because for one thing, she was like a crush. You know, those album covers from the 70s, she's just like the ultimate, like Steve like Stevie Nick. She had like the flowing hippie clothes, and then she turns out to be one of my favorite people I've ever met. She's a sweetheart, she's a great artist. About to go to England with her and the Netherlands with her in May. And then meanwhile, I keep making records. So yeah, you're right. I'm a slave to creativity. It's just the truth. And it's it's a joyous way to be. And so I've been able to have a marriage and a family. Got it all. I'm lucky. It's just lucky. Because it does take hard work, but everybody's got to at some point do it. It's it's hard work to not work.

SPEAKER_08 29:22

Going back to your album that you're gonna be working on while you're on this long road trip, I did notice how you keep dropping some names about songs. It almost feels like it's a tribute album. You worked with Guy Clark.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

I didn't really tour with him, but we got to work together. And so there's lots of people that I've crossed the paths with. You know, you do that in Nashville, and some of the people are lesser known, like uh Jerry Douglas or Luther Dickinson, who are, you know, out there. Luther Dickinson's sort of in the jam world, and he can often be seen on stage with the Allman Brothers band or Derek Trucks. He's in the North Mississippi All-Stars, you know. So playing with him in the studio, and then the next day with Jerry Douglas, who's like sort of like the Jimi Hendricks of the Dobro, you know. So he's in Allison Krause and Union Station, and he's a Grammy-winning bluegrass artist, but also kind of a jazz fusion artist. And he's a musical genius, but you can call Jerry because it's Nashville. Everybody's just working. So you call Jerry and like, hey man, you want to play on this record? He doesn't even ask what it is. He goes, What what day? Let me look at my phone and my calendar. And I'm like, Where are you? He's like, you know, I'm in Idaho, you know, but I'll be home tomorrow for a day. Then I gotta go to, you know, Sweden. So it is, it sounds jet set, but it is only jet because you have to get on a jet and then set until it gets there. But the romance is still there with like you'll see Jerry Douglas at the airport, and he's getting his stuff and like carrying like four bags and a gig bag on his back, and he's the best Dobro player who ever lived, which is a weird, obscure thing. Nevertheless, Allison Krauss leans on him heavily, you know, and so has everybody else that needed a Dobro player. That's the first person they think of. He's like yo-yo ma for the cello, you know what I mean? And he's made records with yo-yo ma.

SPEAKER_08 30:58

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 30:58

So it's just when you're in the room with somebody like that, and then he's also like, well, now what do you want me to do on this? And you're like, Well, I want you to do whatever you want to do. But he but he wants you to tell him because he's respectful of that relationship. Nashville is an amazing, amazing place, and it's changed a lot and it's gotten too big for its britches just as a city and the development and the how much money it is. It's not made for musicians anymore. And I'm not trying to discourage anybody from moving there, any young people who might be listening to this. But of course, when I moved there in 1988, we had a giant old house in East Nashville, and East Nashville wasn't like hipster Brooklyn like it is now, which is all fine. But we had a giant house and had ten people splitting the rent for five hundred dollars total. So I had to pay fifty dollars a month rent. So of course I could start a band and pursue a record deal. And when they said, We want to see your band, you've got to drive to New York. We'd get in the van and drive to New York, play for them, and then play a couple of shows and drive home, and then we'd have fifty bucks apiece to pay our rent.

SPEAKER_07 31:56

You're gonna need a little more money to move there and get started. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

It's all about money, ain't a damn thing funny, because you gotta have a con in the land of milk and honey, as um public enemy might say, or whoever they were. Grandmaster Flash. Um I'm also a rapper, and I'm kidding.

SPEAKER_07 32:11

I would love to hear some rap today if uh is on the table.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Because I'm close to the edge. I'm old school. Old school beats and rhymes exclusively.

SPEAKER_07 32:20

Uh, one thing I don't want to miss is the Heartfelt Project. Songwriting with soldiers, at Ease was written with these soldiers, right?

SPEAKER_00 32:27

So I mean I've written a couple of hundred songs now with Combat Vets. I mean, it's been an ongoing thing. So that was a writing retreat for combat vets. And it was a group of people all across the board, you know, people that had been grunts and officers and women, men, but all combat veterans, the 21st century veteran life. Been in combat, women, men. It's a new world. It's been going on for a long time, but it's still being with those folks and their stories. So we did a whole writing retreat in Texas, and everybody wrote as individuals with individual songwriters and told their personal stories, and then at the end of the retreat, we had a big group songwriting. So we're sitting in a circle with these four songwriters: James House, Mark Nessler, Terry Radigan, and myself, four professional songwriters that and those other folks have actually written like big hits, and even James has like sung big hits and written big hits for other people. Not that that is the only qualification, but it's amazing. I was the lead songwriter of this retreat because I've done so many. So it means you just take the lead of like the writing to get it going. So I said, Okay, we've written like twelve songs this weekend already. You guys have told your stories in one way or another. As a group, put your heads together. What do you want to do today? What w what have we not done for this last song? And they said, We haven't specifically talked about all the people that didn't come back with us, or all the people that came back and didn't make it through because veteran suicide is this epidemic that's been going on for decades. So the people that came back home in one piece but didn't make it. And also people that haven't been able to, they said, do something like this where you're in a safe place to tell your story and not be judged and have it made into something creative. And so we said, that's a big group of people you're talking about. And they said, we just want to tell them that they can lay their burden down. And in the military, they say, at ease. You're not working anymore, you're not at attention. And they said, and then we were like, oh, at ease, my friends, at ease. Lay your burden down. Take a breath and rest in the new faith that you found. We came in as strangers, we're gathered here is for I'm gonna cry.

SPEAKER_08 34:26

I did. When I was listening to it, I literally teared up. I mean, it's such a beautiful song.

SPEAKER_03 34:40

At ease, my friends, at ease. Lay your burden down. Take a breath and rest in the new faith that you found. We came in as strangers, gathered here as friends, opened up and shared our hearts. Family to thee. Where stories are remembered. You can let it go. You'll never be forgotten. Now the thing that told me, take a break, take it. Take it down. That is my friends. They will burning down.

SPEAKER_00 38:17

The MO with songwriting with soldiers. Finish the song, use their words. Don't ever judge or interpret. Just write it down and finish the song and use their words and don't f it up. That's my training. A lifetime of songwriting, and then remember that. This is their thing. And it's to be treated with kid gloves, but you also have to charge in there and do it because you only have a couple hours to do it. We don't get to sit there for six weeks and decide what the line should be. It's like, write down what they said and then you have to make a song. And that's something freeing in that. Like at first, when I started doing it, it was intimidating. It's like, you mean I have to have a song finish in two hours every time? And the guy was like, Yeah, didn't I tell you that? That's what you gotta do. Because they're exhausted at the end of the day and they've never written a song before, and they've just told their story, maybe for the first time. So they're gonna have to go take a walk.

SPEAKER_08 39:06

Music does bring people together and it creates so much heavy or happy energy and feelings. I can't imagine being in a room, like you said, with these wonderful humans that have risked their lives and gave their lives to us to write their story down and then put the music to it. I mean, to be part of that. The one thing I couldn't find is is there ever been a compilation album?

SPEAKER_00 39:31

All the songs that have ever been written at the retreats, and there are some retreats where they don't share the songs because the people have been in something very sensitive, and so that's like a safe place they can go tell their stories, and then nobody ever hears the songs. But there's SongwritingwithSoldiers.org, and then there's a link to the band camp. They're the raw recordings of like the day they were written. There's like 700, 800, I don't know, there's hundreds of songs. We had a donation from somebody who's a philanthropist said, Why aren't you putting these songs out in an actual release? We mainly said because we're a nonprofit, and our job is to go and bear witness to these people's stories and write the songs. So our purpose is not to sell songs, our purpose is to tell stories and make that connection so people feel heard and seen, and there's a little healing that goes on, and it's just literally a connection. There's never been this record of song of people that have been in combat, and there's never been anything like it. So it's pretty amazing. So you can find the songs that way, but since we've got that budget given to us by this philanthropist, we've been releasing songs, but it takes a little while to do it in the right way. So we released at ease, we've released some other songs. So you can go to your streaming service, whatever it is, and look up songwriting with soldiers, and then those songs will come up. And I just produced three more songs for other songwriters, and those songs are coming out. So we're in the process of it. The next thing is to release a physical album. I was in Georgia last week and wrote a song with a group because we also work with an organization called Boulder Crest Foundation, and they're all combat vets that want to help veterans, and they've started doing this post-traumatic growth work, which is a really powerful kind of new way to treat trauma. It's more about underlining the strengths that what you've gone through has given you and learning to bring those things with you. It's really cool and teaching people things that they can do with things that happen with PTS, you know, post-traumatic stress, anxiety, panic, rage, you know, like teaching people literally to meditate and people to practice mindfulness and gratitude. And it sounds woo-woo to say that in a way, but it's powerful. They do equine therapy with horses. Like, I never knew this. I just thought it was cool to be with horses, and it must be awesome. But they put you with horses, and horses are so sensitive that if you're not chill, the horse will have nothing to do with you. So you have to chill yourself out so that the horse will hang out with you. And I've had veterans tell me, now I know what my wife is feeling when she's around me, and I think just because I'm not saying how I feel, that I'm keeping it from her and therefore protecting her from what's going on with me. And he goes, I know she feels it. She's like, Oh my God, he's stressed out over there in his chair.

SPEAKER_07 42:12

It's actually worse to just feel it and not understand because he's not expecting it.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

Yeah, and so and he's like, I've I just learned that maybe I can go home, chill myself out like I did with this big old horse that finally came over to me. And then there'll just be tears streaming down their face. Like, the horse came over to me. It'll be some big guy or a woman, you know, or whoever they are, like a big tatted up special forces guy that's just like so moved by the experience. And then we write a song. It's amazing. I mean, I can't I could talk about it forever.

SPEAKER_08 42:43

If someone is interested in supporting songwriters with soldiers or the warrior path, how can they do that?

SPEAKER_00 42:50

Songwriting with soldiers.org. It's a songwriting with soldiers.org. And they have ways to give, and they have uh big philanthropic donors that they go to every year and try to raise the big bucks because they have multiple retreat centers that they maintain. They have the only private property on the Coronado National Forest outside Tucson. Like it's on the Mesa outside of Tucson, right near the Mexican border. So it's this amazing place. You're on this endless two-lane road outside of Tucson, and then you take a right on this gravel road and drive five more miles. And so people get out there and they're in a literally a safe secret place where you go outside and it's just silence. There's horses in the fields, and so it's perfect for telling stories and just putting your pieces of your heart back together, you know. So, but there's there's one in Northern Virginia in Loudoun County, and there's one in uh Texas now, there's one in upstate New York, and then there's all these other retreat centers. So, okay, songwriting with soldiers.org, ways to give, and then Boulder Crest Foundation is who we partner with to do Warrior Path. So they do the heavy lifting of Warrior Path, all the post traumatic growth work. We show up and again gather up the pieces of everybody's hearts and write. The song with the folks that are in the program. And in Warrior Path, the last group I had, I believe they were like half first responder, half combat vets. And of course, half of the first responders are also combat vets. You know, they went from military career into law enforcement or firefighting or medical first responder or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_07 44:17

That's what my dad did. I think that's pretty typical.

SPEAKER_00 44:19

Yeah. The uh non-military people are often like kind of humble. They're like, I don't want to be I was hoping I'd be accepted by the military people, and then military people are like, oh, you're our heroes. You know, you guys go leave your house every day and go into basically a combat almost like situation and then come home every night and it's like, honey, how was your day? Fine. Just stuffing it down so they don't have to try to bother their families with and I say that not that it is a bother, but they you could feel like you don't want to trouble anybody with your story every day. So this does provide people a place to go tell their story. So anyway, I'm obsessed with it because it's so beautiful. I'm gonna I'll be in Maine in three days. So if anybody's listening and you're a combat veteran or a first responder, you can sign up for Warrior Path. And then if you've done Warrior Path, you can sign up for Songwriting with Soldiers Retreat and bring your significant other. And you can both sort of catch up with each other on what it feels like to tell your story and then have it turned into a song. And it's really powerful for the writers, like the people who've stuck with the Warrior Path writing, it's like you're going on this 36-hour trip and you kind of come out of it with like raccoon eyes because you you're so overstimulated that you can't sleep. You just met like 12 people and wrote the song, and then you woke up the next day and went over the notes of how you wrote the song because that's the part where they realize that you used their words. Because when people hear their words sung back to them if they've never written a song, they don't recognize it. They're like, How did you write that? And I'm like, I wrote down what you said, and then you'll show them you said that. And they're like, Oh, right. Become something else when you sing it. And that's the transformative experience. And it made me understand that what I've been doing for myself my whole life was telling my story.

SPEAKER_07 45:56

It's therapeutic.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

I've been having therapy my whole life. I didn't even know I needed it, but I guess I must have because I've written hundreds and hundreds of songs. Without it, I don't know what my life would have been. It doesn't matter now because I've been doing it forever. Yeah, I have a long, long story and it's almost like confusing to think about because it's not just I was in a band, we had a hit. That would be great. It's just been more like I've given the opportunity to be creative and perform and record. I'm into my fifth decade and I'm still kicking.

SPEAKER_07 46:23

I think you're you're not a cupcake, you're an entire bakery. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:29

Got to come up here to Virginia this weekend and do songs I wrote and then underline that, like telling that story of working with Jimmy Buffett and then working with Todd Snyder. Yeah, the record it is a tribute to my relationship with these brilliant people and a expression of gratitude. And there's some songs on there that I've just written in the moment on the road in the last couple of years. There's a song I wrote just walking down the street in Key West that I just love. And there's a song I wrote right before I went on stage down in Sarasota, Florida. I was playing this backyard show. They've been doing shows in this beautiful yard for years. It's called The Habitat. And they had this massive live oak tree that shaded the entire yard for a couple hundred years, I guess. I mean, even before there was a yard, there was the tree. And the hurricane had knocked it down. And so they had the tree chopped up in these huge, you know, the thing's like four feet wide, so the logs are piled up, and they were really mourning the loss of their tree. The venue was utterly changed. All of a sudden it's going to be in, I guess you don't call it South Florida, but Tampa Bay area with no shade. They're going to have to rethink how they do the shows. I had been talking to them about their tree and looking at it. And so I just wrote this song about there once was a great, magnificent live oak tree, you know, that shared its shade with you and me. And it's like a kid's song. But I wrote it, and I mean, people really respond to it. And I think that song relates to the loss of Jimmy and Todd because they were that. They just lived their life and it fed people. Because I saw how people were with Jimmy, like he was a celebrity, but also because he wrote songs and told stories, it's beyond that. Yeah, you could carry what he had to give around with you at all times in your phone, you know, or in your record collection. You know, you could go watch YouTube and watch him tell a story or listen to a live album. And Todd was the same way. And Todd even made these two storyteller albums that are his live albums that were curated for the story. And some of the stories are like 15 minutes long because if you have that gift of in the comic timing, I mean, I have the gift of gab. He was like a stand-up comedian who then could play a devastating song. Devastating, I mean like it could be devastatingly funny or devastatingly heartfelt or just tell you something about the world. But he would always say, I'm not here to teach you anything or tell you how to feel. I'm here to make myself feel better. With artists like Jimmy Buffett and Todd Snyder, you felt like they were singing your story. That's powerful. And I don't know whether I do that or not. You do. Okay, good. I do that too.

SPEAKER_07 48:52

Well, listen.

SPEAKER_00 48:53

Come see me at a stadium near you or a backyard.

SPEAKER_07 48:56

I told Dave this. This was one of the dumbest things I've ever said since I started this podcast. Is uh I told two singer-songwriters in the midst of an interview that I never listened to the words in songs. Oh, yeah, I remember that. But but the reason, the reason is really just because I am very ADD and I get so caught up in the feeling that I can't concentrate on the words. I'm just feeling the feeling. But like I told Dave the other night, I've been very intentional about trying to really listen. And it's amazing how much focus I need in order to do that. But I've been training since that comment was made six, eight weeks ago. And so we drove to Williamsburg yesterday, and we knew we were gonna be meeting you Friday night. So we started listening to some of your music, and I'm like taking my new, my new skills, and I'm listening to the words, and I realized that when you're listening to the words and you're feeling it, first of all, it's way more intense and it's so much better and more awesome. But I was just giggling and having the best time listening to your stories, and it really truly did give me the same feeling that I have with people like Buffett. For me, it's Bob Marley, I'm Stevie Nicks, those type of storytellers. You're right there for me, and and one of the best I've actually ever heard.

SPEAKER_00 50:17

And the music tells a story too. I mean, that's the thing with me. Like, I'm a music guy, but I also love words, and I didn't ever think they were separate, you know, but in a song, but I could play along with all the hit songs of the last 40 years because I've got a musical brain and I've been listening and I've got a good ear and I can catch up and play songs, but I don't know all the words to all those songs, even though I've written hundreds of songs with lyrics. One thing that my dad had dementia, and so I was trying to get back home. I live like 400 miles from my hometown, so I was just driving that route like several times a month and on the road. So that that was like a really intense road time in my life for my mom and my sister and me. You know, we got even closer and it was it was great. And when my dad passed, it was sad, but it was also it was his time. But I started writing in the car, just talking into my phone. And so when I got where I was going, I would have lyrics, and then I could just get the instrument and make music for the lyrics, and I started to really treasure the words on their own because they were like a gift to myself when I got where I was going. And I don't know if that's hard to understand, but I was you I use that with the veterans too. Like the first couple of times I did it, I'd get the guitar out and like, now we're gonna write a song. Tell me your story. It worked, but if you could started the music before you had some words, you could paint yourself into a corner because you fall in love with your first idea and you don't want to let it go. Now I I sit there and I say, There is an instrument in that case, and we're gonna get it out in a minute. First, I need to know who you are. And there's like 12 people, so tell me where are you at today since you've been in this place with these folks for like a week. And so they tell me a little bit, and I get around the circle from 12 people, try to manage the time, and then by that time I've written like three pages of notes, and there's phrases in there I know have to be in the song. But then I go back and look at them and start pulling them and go, okay, you said this, you said this, you said this. What if the verse said this? Maybe the chorus could be this. You said this phrase, and it seems to apply to everybody here, but I gotta ask you if you agree. And then you have to get the guitar and just make it up on the spot. So that's the thing when you get back to the room and you're making the notes you took neat enough to make sure that spell check didn't make things sound weird, typing real fast and just moving on, and you look back and you're like, oh my gosh, I gotta, I gotta correct this because spellcheck thinks I said my toes are green or whatever, and then make sure the lyrics are legible. I can send them in and they can be printed out and we can go over that process. Here's the notes I took from what y'all said, and here's what we took from that and put in the song. So they're literally your words. I didn't write these words, I just put them together and sort of helped make them rhyme. Because they'll always say, Thank you for writing a song for us. And I'm like, No, it's called songwriting with soldiers. We wrote this song together, and then we'll sign like a contract that basically says this is published, and we're all the writers on this song. So that also puts a cherry on top and says, We did this together. Like we're all songwriters, we did this, and it's true. So James House was there, and he is a great singer. I mean, I I'm a singer, but he's like one of those guys that's got that scratchy voice that's just like, I can't do it, but but he started singing it at first. He was like, It is my friends, it is.

SPEAKER_03 53:20

Lay your burden down, take a breath and rest in the new faith that you found.

SPEAKER_00 53:29

We came in as strangers, gathered here as friends, opened up and shared our hearts, family to the end, and just went on from there. And and they just said, you know, where stories are remembered, you can let it go. You'll never be forgotten now that they've been told. And it's just what they said, and it just made this beautiful, simple song, and it really does kind of sum up part of what we do as songwriting with soldiers. So anyway, I just get I'm lucky, the luckiest guy in the world to get to do it. And I got started in it by playing on an album. I was hired as a studio session musician for Mary Gaucher, who's been Songwriting with Soldiers writer since the beginning, and she has lived a life. She was an orphan and was raised in this Catholic orphanage that's almost like a gothic movie place. I've been, it's a motel, it's a hotel now in New Orleans, like this fancy boutique hotel with like the stone angels on the corners. It's a beautiful place. Mary has had some trauma in her life. She's a sober person now, and she's she's written a beautiful book called Saved by a Song. It's about becoming a writer and telling her story. And she made an album called Rifles and Rosary Beads, which is a song that documents her first few years of working with the combat vets. And so I played on the album and back to my dad's story. Like my dad had passed, my dog died, and then Mary brought me in there to play on that album. I didn't know anything about songwriting with soldiers. And so she would tell the story. And she's got a song that goes, Who's gonna care for the ones who care for the ones who went to war? So that was like about the spouses that have the veterans come home. Who's gonna care for the ones who care for the ones who went to war?

unknown 55:10

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 55:10

And there's a the war after the war. I mean, the song and the album is nominated for a Grammy in like the folk category, and John Prime won, so she was happy about that. But so the whole time she was telling me the story, and in the middle of the session, she said, Why aren't you doing songwriting with soldiers work? And I said, Well, nobody's asked me. So the next thing I know, the founder Darden Smith, who's this songwriter from Texas who started it, the visionary guy. He does all this stuff that's behind the scenes, takes songwriting into these other communities from corporate creativity work to traumatic, post-traumatic growth work and all kind of things. He's a genius behind the scenes kind of guy. He's also a great singer-songwriter, anyway. Darden called me. Turns out Radney Foster, Daryl Scott, Beth Nielsen Chapman, Gary Nicholson, all these people that I knew that are these songwriters. You look 'em up and they wrote, you know, twenty hits. You know, Beth Nielsen Chapman wrote This Kiss for Faith Hill. You know, I mean, there's all these It's an amazing community to be part of, and it's made me more part of the Nashville songwriting community because maybe all songwriters feel a little bit like an outsider, and that's how you're able to be an observer. You know what I mean? Because I know Todd was like a shy guy, extremely uncomfortable in a crowd. And yet he'd get out in front of a thousand people on his bare feet and tell a fifteen minute story, and time would stand still. I mean, think about that. The how long that is on a stage to talk and then play the song, and then nobody's let down because the story is so good, the punchline is so funny, and the song is so great.

SPEAKER_08 56:39

I mean, if you think about it, most songs are about four minutes long.

SPEAKER_00 56:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 56:42

You know, to give you an idea what 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_00 56:45

Yeah, so you're basically taking twenty minutes of your life while you sit in a chair. And I mean, I've been I've been on stage with him standing next. So that could be real awkward if it's not a good story. You're standing there waiting. But uh you'd just be like, you know, well, if for if if you're listening, I'm I have a look on my face like it's okay to wait through this because the story's so great. Anyway, but that but I've gotten to do that. So this record is all about gratitude and and just telling these these stories. I'm excited about it, and I'm excited about all the stuff I've gotten to do because one of the good things about being older and having written a bunch of songs and put out a bunch of music is that you you have like a a long set that you can do. The hard things to choose if you only have like uh 30 or 45 minutes to play. Dave McKinney's sitting in the room with he drove me over here today and he fronted the band last night and we did a great show, and I opened with some songs, mainly specifically that I did either wrote with Jimmy Buffett or that I wrote and Jimmy Buffett recorded. A couple of them that I had not done the night before at the Cross Mill, so I wanted to play some other songs, and it was a great night. The audience was so receptive. Sometimes it's just like that. You know, sometimes you have to kind of earn their trust, and other times they're just ready for you and welcoming you. And either way is cool, but certainly better if they're welcoming you. Like I have this newer song that'll be on my new album called The Margaret Truman Drop Off Launderette, and it's about a laundromat in Key West and it and kind of what I imagine that it is for people that move to Key West and sort of follow their dream of becoming like the cool poetic beach bum, like Jimmy Buffett or Ernest Hemingway or Jerry Jeff Walker.

SPEAKER_08 58:18

I believe you sang that the other day. And I love it.

SPEAKER_00 58:20

It's one of my favorite, and it's not a heavy song. It's just I made these characters out of my imagination of walking past this place over and over again over the years. I had this fun idea of what I imagined it would be. And I'm I guess once I get the song out, I'll go in there and maybe make a little video or something. But I just wanted it to be this like place you open up and it's like way bigger than you thought, and it's full of all these cool people. I mean, I know it's just a laundromat, but that's just how it works. Like the thing that sparks your imagination, you never know what it's gonna be. So I want to record my live oak tree song, and I want to record my Margaret Truman launderette song, and I want to record Bubbles Up. And then I've also got a song that's actually Jimmy Buffett's sort of autobiographical story of the living in New Orleans in the 60s, the late 60s, and playing in his first kind of rock and roll band. It was just a cover band on Bourbon Street, and they failed and went broke, and they weren't that good, but he fell in love with the idea of being in a band, so he went from being this kind of like guy that wanted to be a folk singer. Can you imagine Jimmy Buffett being like a serious folk singer? I mean, he was he had songs that were serious and heartfelt, but he wanted to be like these folk singer guys that were like, you know, I went on down to the railroad track. You know, he wanted to be that, but he but he failed at it, and that's what led him to be who he became. And even Emmy Lou Harris has a story. She has one of the best albums ever made, Wrecking Ball, legendary Hall of Fame singer who's also crossed paths to rock and roll, like Neil Young and Bob Dylan and Littlefeet, Bonnie Wright, Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton. She told me that Wrecking Ball, which is her album that gave her a second career from like an old country singer to like a modern. She was working with YouTube's producer Daniel Lamois and made this atmospheric record and kind of invented a new style of music that's like kind of country, but also could be anybody could listen to it. You could be like a Metallica fan and listen to it and get this like deep atmospheric like thing. She told me the only reason she made that album is it was the 90s and in Nashville, and everybody wanted her to make her. Shania Twain, Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood kind of successful 10 million selling album. And the label said, Well, it was Warner Brothers. They said, We've put your records out for like 35 years. Time for you to have a hit single. And she said, Okay, okay. So she worked with this producer in Nashville that at the time was the hot producer making the hit singles for everybody. And she's friends with him. She liked him. She's like, Okay, help me make a hit record. So he's like, All right, we'll put the team together, the A-list players, and then we'll pick you the songs. And they made the album and then she delivered it to the label and they called her in and said, We can't release this album, Emmy Lou. And she said, Why? And they said, There's no hit singles on it. And she said, You're not even gonna release it at all? And they said, No. And she said, Well, what do I do? And she saw it, they said, Well, we're gonna let you go. Instead, they said, What do you want to do? Which never happens, right? She reached in her purse and she had a cassette of Daniel Lamois' solo album. And he's the producer of U2 and Bob Dylan and the Neville Brothers, Yellow Moon, like famous producer of rock music. And they said, Well, do you want to go talk to him? So that she was on the next plane to New Orleans and she made Wrecking Ball, which transformed her career and gave her like this 21st century career anyway. So Jimmy Buffett and Emmy Lou both had to do this fail at what they had been doing in order to succeed. And I think everybody has to do that.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:29

Everybody.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:30

But when you're in in music, you do it publicly, and people know, oh Warner Brothers refused to put her album out. That's an important thing to remember. And it's hard to do. Like when you are failing, then you just feel like a failure. You can tell like your kid, you know, oh, don't worry, you'll you'll learn from this, and they're like, Yeah, whatever. This is I'm depressed, you know. But then later they can come back and say, You were right. You know, they you could it's always right to say you'll grow from that. So I'm certainly an example of that. I've I never had a hit, but I've had a career, and I don't know if that's the right story to inspire people, but I've just been in love with what I do for like 40 years, and and it keeps coming back. And the older I get, the more I'm able to understand how fun it is. Uh, one thing I'll do is say, you know, with Jimmy Buffett, I can give you a little overview of some. The first song he recorded of mine was called Piece of Work, and it's kind of one of these long-winded stories. This is amazing. Call me out of the blue and ask me for songs. And so all I could do is just send him all the songs, you know, sort of I had. I was sending him like CDs. This is like 2003. So I sent him two CDs I had released, and then I sent him a C D R. Remember those you could burn a CD back in the day, back in the Dizzly Day. Back in the Dizzle. And so I sent him some other songs, and then he responded with, I want to record these two songs. It's kind of got that O'Diddley beat or that New Orleans second line beat, you know. And I'll sing it in my scratchy. I've been on the road voice, you know. I'm a piece of work. I'm ironing lace, shy right up there in your face. I'm all dumbfounded, stubborn as an ass, sharp as an arrow in a pile of glass. Sweetheart, genius, reckless jerk, and Lord have mercy, what a piece of work. So Lord have mercy, what a piece of work. I didn't even remember or realize that like Jimmy had like Good God Almighty and Lord Have Mercy and like his song Cheeseburger in Paradise or something like that. And I think he recognized, he thought that I was sort of name-checking stuff from his songs, and I think I was unconsciously. But what an amazing thing that I didn't even know that. So then there was song The Champion of the World. There was the song that he didn't record, but then Little Feet recorded, because the piano player from Little Feet from 1970 to today was there, and he's one of my heroes, so he was like, What if Little Feet recorded it? And I sort of was like this, well, I'm weak and I'm worthless, and I can't make up my mind.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:04

When they handed out ambition, I was next to last in line. I was a lost little lamb until I found that girl.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:19

When she holds me in her arms, I'm the champion of the world.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:25

So that got cut by little feet. And then Jimmy agreed to write with me. I bugged him for a year, just very tastefully, once a month. Email, how you doing, Jimmy? You want to write songs? Piece of work sold a million, so come on, let's write some songs. He finally said, Let's write. Next thing I know, I'm flying down to St. Bart, French West Indies. We had lunch with Roger Waters from Pink Floyd and the keyboard player from Bon Jovi. And then we had dinner with Roger Waters, who's Jimmy's friend. So there is like the guy from Pink Floyd that wrote The Wall is hanging out and asking me, What are you doing here? And I'm like, I'm a songwriter. He goes, Oh, I'm a songwriter too. I'm like, no shit. He wrote The Wall, then we wrote Wings. I've been up around the stratosphere, 31,000 feet.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:07

I'm gonna fly on out of here on wings that you can't see. And if you're ever gonna fly without fear, you're gonna have to learn to love the atmosphere.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:16

You gotta learn to use those wings that you can't see. I've got wings that you can't see.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:26

I have wheels on my feet. Well, hi.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:33

I feel free on these wings that you can't see. And then we just kept going from there, like we wrote. I I went I went bodysurfing in a lightning storm in a wild night when in my twenties, right before I moved to Nashville. It was like my last big night in my hometown with my old friends, and we did things that young people do in the middle of the night and went bodysurfing in a lightning storm. Don't try this at home, don't do it. But it was amazing. So I wrote this little ditty that was kind of like a Johnny Cash, you know. I like body surfing in a hurricane. I like making love in the pouring rain. I ain't afraid of dying. There ain't no fear in my brain. I like body surfing in a hurricane. And so Buffett was a surfer, so he was like.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:28

I feel like going surfing in a hurricane. And I'll surf guitars.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:42

I ain't afraid of dying.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:45

There's a no fear in my brain. I feel like going surfing in a hurricane.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:54

So we wrote that. Love it. You know, it just goes on and on. And then on into when Jimmy was struggling with Merkel cell carcinoma, which eventually took his life. He was getting treated for that for like three or four years. So we made two albums during that time. One was at the beginning of 2020, and that was when I really felt like embraced by the Coral Reefer band and Jimmy Buffett as like a member of the family. Like, and I think it was more about me. It wasn't how they were treating me. It was that I kind of grew up into like, oh, they like me fine.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:23

Well, you're described online as an honorary person.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:27

So it's official. That made me feel better by myself, too. I'm good enough. I'm smart enough and dog on it. People like me. So yeah, I felt at home. And then I didn't really understand. Jimmy was in his 70s, he was having some kind of cancer thing, and that happens a lot. And I don't mean to downplay it, but he was so positive and upbeat and looked so good and sounded so good, and it just seemed like well, he's just dealing with it.

SPEAKER_07 1:07:50

Something to get through.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:51

Yeah, and I didn't know the diagnosis was such a hard one. You know, the Merkel cell carcinoma, they just tell you, take that trip to Paris, get your affairs in order. When you were working on Bubbles, did you know it did occur to me, okay? So 2019, we wrote a record, we wrote a third of the songs of a record called Life on the Flip Side. Jimmy, he was in the moment. He was a mindful, momentary, like, what's happening today? If he needed to make a record in January, he was gonna write all the songs in December. You know, it wasn't like he'd been working like me. I'm like writing songs over years and thinking about it. He was like, Oh, it's time to make a record. Let's write. Hey Will, you ready to write? And he would call me and say, You're ready for some homework. And I'd say, sure. Except it's Christmas time and I'm gonna be busy, but I didn't say that. In my mind, I'm like, how am I gonna work this out? And I tell my wife, and she'd go, Well, just make the time because you need to write with Jimmy. Do it. He would say, I gotta go get barbecued in Boston or so. He'd say some funny, like dark humor thing about it. And I'd be like, Oh, you must be getting radiation or something. But he didn't tell me. So we wrote a bunch of songs. That record came out during 2020. But then he called me in 2022 and said, Are you ready for some homework? And I said, Oh, you're making a record. And I said, like in three weeks? He goes, Yeah, exactly. So let's hunk her down. And so he sent me three ideas. One was he's written several songs about his brushes with death. Like he got shot down or by the Jamaican army one time because he was flying a plane and they thought he was a smuggler. And so he said, I want to write another song about my close brushes with death. So he wrote this song called Close Calls. He'd send me this, like a storyboard for a song, and say, Are you comfortable with just running with the idea? And I was like, sure, because at that point I sort of like, he trusts me, so I'm just gonna do it. And I'm um we've already written for 19 years, so I guess he must like what I do. It took me that long to kind of be comfortable with it. Like, does he want me to try to be like him and like try to make it sound like Beachy or something? You know what I mean? But he just wanted, he wanted another creative option. So I made up close calls, close calls, I will survive. Brick walls, big balls, lucky just to be alive. And remember the, I don't know if you guys are old enough to remember Walking Tall, but it was a big movie about this guy, Buford Pusser, who had this run-in with like organized crime, and I fought Buford Pusser in a honky tonk joint.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:03

He whipped my ass. That's beside the point. Close calls, close calls, lucky just to be alive.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:13

So we wrote that song, which is just goofy, but it's true. And then we wrote the University of Bourbon Street. But this is me sitting in my living room by myself with Jimmy's notes. I wrote a version of that song, sent it to him on my phone, like a phone recording. I started writing this song called The University of Bourbon Street, which is I played it the other night, but you know, it's like this jazz, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:31

We got high class, low rent voodoo information, Pat O'Brien's hurricane accreditation, old school sex education, and I learned how to eat.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:45

From the music and the people to the cooking and the joy. It really ain't a mystery. I just followed my dancing feet. To the University of Bourbon Street. Song about his experience in New Orleans in the 60s and how much he loved all the stuff. So it's got voodoo, Pat O'Brien's, Sex, Food, Music, People, Bourbon Street. We get in Tennessee Williams and Streetcar Named Desire and The Neville Brothers and Smoking a Joint with the Beautiful Hippie and the Pirate Jean Lafitte, Gris, which is like voodoo things, and his parents. This is in one day I'm sitting around like trying to come up with these ideas for Jimmy. So I sent him those two, and then he had Bubbles Up. I played it the other day, and this friend of mine, Claire, this great songwriter from Mississippi, played the song. She goes, Well, what does the reference bubbles up mean? And everybody kind of laughed because they had all heard the song before. And I said, Well, he took the Navy diving course, and so that's a big thing with like diving and scuba and just anything underwater is like you're in a situation where you don't know which way the surface is. And so you then you have this limited amount of time before you drown, follow the bubbles up. They will always go up. You can count on it. The opposite of gravity, the bubbles go up to the surface. It's a mantra they teach you. And if you're learning how to be a military diver, okay, if you get in trouble, don't forget, bubbles up. And he said, I want to write a song that comforts someone who's struggling. And then I happen to have a record player in that room and a stack of old records, and the top record was a Jimmy Buffett record, an old worn-out copy I'd had since 1974 called Living and Dying in Three Quarter Time. And of course, three-quarter time is a walt. One, two, three, one, two, three. So I just started playing in that time. It was just a prompt that I took. You know what I mean? Like a self-chosen prompt. Three-quarter time. When this world starts reeling from that pressure drop feeling. Just treading water each day. He wants to write a song to comfort people. I had just come back from one of those Songwriting with Soldiers trips, too. So I just used his notes. I used his words. I finished the song and I tried not to F it up, you know. I used my Songwriting with Soldiers mantra and used it with Jimmy. And when I sent it to him, he said, Oh, that's so great. I can't wait to tweak the words. And the other songs I'm saving, like pralines on my pillow for dessert. And I've never gotten such a sweet note about songwriting because songwriters are very analytical too and very critical. And so, I mean, but this is from Jimmy Buffett, who also wrote, you know, as a son, son of a son of a sailor, I went out on the beach for out on the sea for adventure. You know, these great songs like for the ages that people have been listening to for 50 years. But he likes my song, you know, bubbles up, they will point you toward home.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:27

No matter how deep or how far you roam, they will show you the surface, the plot, and the purpose. So when the journey gets long, just know that you are loved.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:46

There is light up above, and the joy is always enough.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:54

Bubbles up to my friends who were jolly.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:00

When melancholy knocks, sometimes they let her in, they sit and share stories of flops and glories. It ain't half as bad as the bins. Sometimes living is a struggle. It's multiplied double, but they love it too much for the parte to end.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:29

And that was Jimmy wanted to say partay. Bubbles, because he wanted it to have humor too. Bubbles up, they will sh point you toward home, you know. And then it's got the uh, well, let's pop a cork to the rough and the right, to the bright blazing day and the sweet starry night, you know. It's a beautiful song, and that was the one that Paul McCartney name-checked, like the day Jimmy died. And so then the song wasn't out yet. And I remember like emailing the label saying, Are you guys gonna go ahead and release this now? Because Paul McCartney's talking about it. And I know that sounds crass, but I thought also Jimmy would have been thrilled. Yeah, do it beyond belief.

SPEAKER_07 1:15:08

Carbadam.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:09

The Beatles like your song. Let's release it. So I I did reach out and say, Are you guys gonna do something with this? Because I mean, it's finished. And so they they got it out there, and it's been really great. So Mac McInally was like one of Jimmy's, really his right-hand man, but also Mike Utley, that worked with him for like 40, 50 years. I think Mac worked with him for 40 years, roughly. Let's just say 40. And Jimmy had been Mac's hero, and then he got to be his producer and co-writer. And Mac is one of the most talented people that have ever played music or just been in the world. He's a brilliant, brilliant person, but he's also Mac Magnally from Belmont, Mississippi. You know, he's a small town guy, but he's been all over the world and met all kinds of people. All I can say is he's brilliant, truly brilliant. And Mac got Jimmy to sing the song. Jimmy had sung like a demo of it, and then he sang a really beautiful vocal in the studio. And then not that long before he passed, Mac went up to his house in the Hamptons, you know, and said, I think you should you could sing this better. Because he was the producer, and so he pushed Jimmy, and even though he was sick, and he said, You could sing this a little bit better. And Jimmy was like, What do you mean? I've already sung it, because Jimmy was kind of like me, like not the prettiest singer in the world, but like a conversational singer. You know, not like you know, the voice or whatever. And Jimmy said, Okay, okay, Mac, I'll do it. You know, and that was one of the things that McCartney said. He said, Well, the vocal on the song was really cool. I didn't know Jimmy was that kind of a singer, but it it knocked me out. And so anyway, we were out on tour last summer with the Coral Reefer band because Jimmy told Mac and Mike Utley, keep the party going if you want to. If you want to go play and call it the Coral Reefer Band, you have my permission. And so then afterwards, you know, you had to go through to the estate and the family and say, Well, he said we could play, and and and they gave us permission very graciously. But Mac said the other day, and I'm not trying to speak out of school, but he did say, It's been unreal that I got to work with Jimmy all those years. And he's also worked with, he was like Toby Keith's favorite songwriter and all these people, very successful, and he's just done this new amazing Amy Grant record, which is another, you know, coming from like the sort of Christian music and 80s pop. Mac McInally has had this amazing career, and he's a brilliant, brilliant producer, writer, performer, storyteller, piano player, guitar player, mandolin player, whatever. Like a magic music person and storyteller. He said, It's been unreal to have this beautiful responsibility to like bridge the time after Jimmy passes and go out on his own and tell all his stories, play all the songs so he can play his hit songs he wrote for all these people, these number one hits through the ages. But also songs that he wrote like It's My Job, which is this brilliant song that only Mac could write, The Coast of Carolina, they're these beloved kind of Jimmy Buffett songs, but Mac really wrote them, you know. He goes, I know there'll be a day when I'm just back at home and I'm being Mac McInally again, and I'm writing songs for me and I'm making a record, and I look forward to that day. He said, but also this journey I'm on is like you, you have your version of it, and you're out there doing it, and I have my version of it, and we're out here doing it, and people need it, and I need it, meaning him and me too. Like, I mean, he worked with Jimmy for four decades, so the grief and the loss, it's like your whole life, 40 years. For most people, that would be a long career, and then you retire. But in music, you just keep going, right? If you can. That made me think about it too. It's like, you know, you just ride it out and then meanwhile, create new songs and tell new stories. And it's good enough for me just to go right with the veterans, even if nobody ever hears them. Because it's the life that you've lived, and your life is short and beautiful. And I just always tell the veterans and the first responders, because the guy that started Warrior Path is like a visionary veteran who wanted to help his people. He saw how people were struggling. He did a songwriting with soldiers song with writers, and he realized how much he was struggling through that. He thought, I'm a successful guy, I'm raising money and doing things for veterans and building these retreat centers. But when he wrote his song, he was like, Oh, I needed that. I never told that story before. And so that's why songwriting with soldiers is part of Warrior Path, part of the post-traumatic growth thing. He wrote a brilliant book about post-traumatic growth called Struggle Well, and that's the mantra. It's like, you're gonna struggle, but the key is to learn to struggle well. We're not erasing your past. Your past is part of your strength. And I take that to heart with what I do. I've just got the life of Riley of traveling around playing the guitar. I'm not a combat veteran or a first responder. I've had zero responsibility except to my family and my friends. I'm the luckiest guy in the world. Ken Falk would say, don't let the military or being a first responder be the last great thing you do. And I always say, don't let the military or being a first responder be the last creative thing you do. Like tell your story. If you tell your story, then somebody else feels less alone. Todd Snyder and Jimmy Buffett both made people feel like they were talking directly to you. Even if it was an outlandish story that you would never live, you're like, oh, he knows me. They know me, even though they don't. But it makes you feel that, and that's exactly directly related to feeling less alone because you made a connection. It could be a song or it could be a conversation. And I get it too, not everybody can just sit down and make up songs with prompts from Jimmy Buffett. But I was able to do it and I didn't know I could do it until I did it.

SPEAKER_08 1:20:18

Going back to Bubbles, what lines in there did he change? Apple, just curious to see.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:24

So the original line was When this world starts reeling, from that sinking feeling. So we had all these like sinking, boat sinking, you know. So we changed it to When This World Starts Reeling from that pressure drop feeling. So a pressure drop is like a drop in atmospheric pressure, and that's when it's really low, you have a hurricane or a tornadoes. And also there's a famous reggae song.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:45

It's like Yeah. It is you, you, you, and it goes, you know, pressure drop, oh, pressure drop, oh, pressure gonna drop on you you.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:04

And when it drop, oh, you're gonna feel it. Toots and the May Tals. We both love Marley and Toots and the May Tals, Peter Tosh, all the Jamaican music is so amazing. It's such a small place where all this music's come from. So it's a m a miracle, you know. Like Jamaica, so much music came out of this tiny island with not many people on it. Poverty, but yet it's all feel good.

SPEAKER_08 1:21:26

You know, like the music's feel good.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:28

Even if you make a song like I Shall Be Released by Bob Dylan, you know, it's like they say everything can be replaced. They say every distance is not real, but if you do it reggae, and there are versions of it's like they say everything can be replaced. They say every distance is not real. It feels good, but it's this heavy message, and there's a lot of that. You know, like Bob Marley, Small Acts or 400 Years, those are songs about slavery. Everything's and it makes you feel good at the same time. So it's like, man, a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. You can deliver a heavy message and make people still dance.

SPEAKER_08 1:22:09

Which is all songwriting with soldiers.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:11

Yeah, you're right. It's like lay your burden down and we'll take it. And one thing I've learned is that when you're writing a song, nobody's transferring their trauma to you. People are like, Do you ever go home and you feel that weight? And I'm like, No, I feel like I have no weight. I just can't sleep because I'm so overstimulated and happy.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:27

Because we got to do this thing and we did finish the song and we did use their words. Sometimes I wonder if it's corny because you know, so many the singer-songwriter, it's, you know, you also have the opportunity to express like sadness and things like that. That because a lot of people are really good at that, especially singer-songwriters. And it's important and it's powerful. And I've certainly got songs like that. When you practice gratitude, you also have to be grateful for the hard things. It saves my life every day. If I'm tired, I'm like, well, I'm tired, but I'll sleep when I get to the bed or when I sit in the airplane. It's gonna be okay. Warren's Yvonne has a great song. I'll sleep when I'm dead.

SPEAKER_07 1:23:02

I think about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:03

He was right. Yeah. But he was great. You know, he's also got a song called Keep Me in Your Heart for a While. So if nobody's ever heard that song, go listen to it. He's got a line in it that says, I'll be close to you like the buttons on your blouse, or something like that. It's like, keep me in your heart when you're doing things around the house. I'll be close to you like the buttons on your blouse. Keep me in your heart for a while. And I don't know, that just destroys me every time. Like with the good kind of feel. It makes me think about my wife, my mom, my sister, my daughters. Because they wear blouses. I just wear shirts. I wear the shirts around here.

SPEAKER_08 1:23:38

And I love your shirt. His shirt says Fillmore East. We'll get a picture. Yeah, it's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:44

Folks, Fillmore East. If you're a music fan, then certainly you have a copy of the Allman Brothers band at the Fillmore East. And of course, everybody played there. There's the bootleg of Dwayne Allman playing with the Grateful Dead at the Fillmore East. Everybody played there. So I found like a reproduction shirt of the old shirts they used to have for like the staff. It's great. I mean, that was the first record that I got that really taught me like about what the guitar could do. You know, the Allman Brothers at Fillmore East. It's not just a guitar record, because the whole man have two drummers, amazing bass player, Greg Allman, amazing singer, and just one of the most beautiful people ever lived in his organ playing. And then Dwayne Allman and Dickie Betts, and they're all like 22 years old.

SPEAKER_07 1:24:25

We talked to someone recently, Willie, who is in a Verband of the Allmans, yeah. Oh, cool. I forgot to tell him we talked about the Allman Brothers so much during that interview, and I forgot to say that my song growing up was Jessica.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:41

They changed the world. And they could play for like twenty or thirty minutes and nobody would ever get tired of it, you know. I remember getting that record and I got a slide, which I don't have today, but a slide guitar, I can do it with a bottle or something, but or a pen, you know, like this sliding.

SPEAKER_08 1:24:56

It's one of my favorite things.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:58

I'm just a pen, so that sounds terrible. But I went to the music store and I said, What is that sound? And they were like, What do you mean? And like the the Allman brothers, and they're like, electric guitar? And I'm like, No, no, but the sound, they're like, Oh, a slide. You need to, you mean like slide. I was like 12. I was like, I guess, you know. And so they sold me a little tube, a little metal tube, and I started playing slide when I was 12. Because I'm a guitar player. I've played on like hundreds of records for other people, like a couple of hundred, and I produced a bunch of records for people. But when you're a singer-songwriter, the world wants to put you in a little box. I don't have a problem with that because I just go on and do whatever I'm gonna do. But I never get asked about like slide guitar playing, even though I've played slide guitar on about a hundred records because I haven't made that like my brand. But even though the slide's always on my finger, and it doesn't really matter because now I understand that my wheelhouse is the songs and the stories and then the music that goes with it. And like you said earlier, I feel the music just as much as the words. But there's so many songs I don't know the words to, but just the sound of it is such a universe you can lose yourself in. And it's important to lose yourself sometimes. You can always find yourself because you're always there. It's a journey. The road goes on forever. I used to joke and say the road goes on forever and the party never starts. Of course, that's a joke because it's so not true. The party does never end. And this weekend I stayed up too late because I was so interested in talking to everybody.

SPEAKER_08 1:26:14

Well, since we're talking about the crossmill arts in Ashland, Joey Davis was there. So we had Joey Davis on podcasts. Yeah, one of our first ones. It was Joey Davis and TJ Peterson. And I think Joey Davis is an incredible, energetic writer, musician. And I hear is a writer too, right? Yes, TJ's a writer too.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:34

Joey Davis played us some songs last night that he's written with TJ and all.

SPEAKER_08 1:26:39

And I believe they wrote them at the cross movie.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:41

Yeah, and he was just playing his phone last night, and I was mind blown. And of course, everybody knows Oliver Anthony, you know, his amazing story, and it is an amazing story. I mean, beyond, especially to get it with from Joey, who's like right there with it all. Yeah, Joey is unreal. Like I've been looking him up and watching some of the stuff. There's no re uh replacement for seeing something in the flesh live and feeling that energy directly.

SPEAKER_08 1:27:03

But I understand maybe you'll write something with Joey. I mean, that's gotta be interesting. You take somebody that's so seasoned like you, and we're we've been listening to your story forever and ever and ever, and you have this singer-songwriter, upcoming performer doing great, but to bring you two together would be amazing.

SPEAKER_07 1:27:23

Well, I love the idea of your role has been such a supportive one. Yes. For it's uh almost turn where you're maybe that's the next chapter for you is doing what Buffett did with you for young writers.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:36

Well, that would be fun. I mean, that would be cool. I mean, I don't have that clout, but I do have the creative clout. I don't have the financial fame clout of it. So that yeah, I would love to do that more. It is an interesting time in music because it's all about going out and playing live, because like the whole world of like what your song is worth, like monetarily, is like way down. But from a live perspective, it's way up. Like I can work all the time. And then I can do do my songwriting with soldiers work. And I'm going to England and the Netherlands with Emmy Lou in a few weeks. And we're going to sing my favorite Graham Parsons song as a duet at the Royal Albert Hall in London for like 7,000 people with like chandeliers and red velvet. I mean, that's a place where the Beatles played, Jimi Hendrix played, Bob Dylan played, Miles Davis. I mean, everybody, you know, all the opera singers and the classical music. It's like kind of overwhelming. I keep thinking about that. And then I just put it off because I've got to go to Maine on Thursday and write a song with the veterans and then play these gigs in Massachusetts.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:33

And then you're just going to be there all day.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:35

All of a sudden I'll be in London and I'll be sound checking at the Royal Albert Hall with Emmy Lou Harris. But that's the way it works. And I've been with her so many times and learned from her that you can actually do things on the fly off the cuff because that's the necessity, and you can do it with grace, is the way she does it.

SPEAKER_08 1:28:52

And I bet sometimes it comes out even better than it could have possibly been and it was planned.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:58

And it's not up to you as the performer to decide whether it was a good show or not. I mean, you can criticize yourself and go, I should have hit that note or whatever, but it's for you to just do it and walk away. And I've learned that from her because she's so good at that. And I mean, she's saying with everybody, everywhere, literally, on the level of at the Grammys, at the CMAs, in the Hall of Fame, with Bob Dylan, with Joni Mitchell. She said, I didn't even know the words. They forgot to give me the lyrics, and then we're up there, and I'm just like on the mic watching someone's mouth. And then you watch the thing on YouTube, you don't know that at all. And even me, I'm a pro, you know, and I'm like, it's fine. She just did it. And so she'll call songs sometimes because she's been doing this for 50 something years. She'll call these songs because she just assumes you know all her songs because you've been in her band off and on for like 15 years. She'll call a song and I'll be like thinking, I've never done that song with you before. She'll be like, Yeah, let's do you sing the duet part on that one tonight. And it's like an hour before showtime. And so I'll get on my phone and look look it up and get myself the lyrics and write the chords down, and then I'll knock on her dressing room door and be like, Can I come in for a second? You know? And I'll go, Can we run that? I never say, we've never done that one before because I don't want to make it a thing. And not that she would care anyway. She'd go, Well, we're gonna do it anyway. Being with fearless people, particularly Jimmy Buffett and Emmy Lou Harris, they're just fearless people, and they don't wear it like a fierce thing, like, I'm gonna get you, you know, or I'll show you. It's more like, maybe we're just gonna do something. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_07 1:30:22

It's just an eight to them.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:24

Yeah, and like while I was with one of the first shows I ever played with Jimmy, I was subbing for the guitar player, Peter Mayer, who's this brilliant musician who's been with Jimmy forever. And Peter wasn't gonna be able to be there, so they brought me in. Nobody gave me a set list. And so we're walking down the hall to the stage, and Mac Mac and Allie starts telling me what songs we're playing. It was, oh, oh, we'll we're gonna start with blah blah blah, we're gonna do blah blah blah, and we're gonna do five o'clock somewhere. And you you start it right on the guitar, so it's all right. And then we're just walking to and then we're and I'm just going like vertigo, like, and then we went out and played. But because Jimmy was there singing the songs, I mean, I do sweat the details, but the fact is everybody had a great time. The audience was thrilled and cheered, and everybody said it was great. So I believe it. I'm not gonna be like, well, you know, let me tell you why it wasn't great, because I've heard that a lot before. So sometimes it's good just to see what the audience is doing and go, okay, I accept that. We did that. I am gonna go home and make sure I know these songs better if they call me again for this. But enjoy the moment because life is just a bunch of moments.

SPEAKER_08 1:31:23

I do love how music is coming almost full circle to like a retro and it's all about the guitar. And even the younger kids are going back to the whole 70s, raw sounds.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:36

It is hard work to travel all the time. I don't mind it. If I minded it, I would I would just do something else because it would be terrible if you didn't like to travel and do what I do. But the idea that people want to come hear you play and sing, like Emmy Lou's shows, she's legendary. Her shows in like the Netherlands or Amsterdam, Utrecht, they're all sold out already. They've been sold out for like a year. Her Albert Hall show. But I get to go do it too, and people want to hear it. And she wants me to be there with her. So again, who gets to do that? I mean, it I don't think of myself as the best at anything at all. I I'm totally self-critical, but I'm excited. The older I get, I realize how special it is. Less about like, oh my god, how am I gonna pull that off? It's more like, I get to do this, let's just go do it. It's gonna be awesome. And I'm gonna be with my friends, the drummer in Emmy Lou's band and I've been playing together for 40 years. Who gets to do that?

SPEAKER_07 1:32:28

I love how humble you are. Yes. But I do need to bring up that you won Instrumentalist of the Year at the American Music Association in 2004, and that was after receiving, I believe, multiple nominations. So a huge deal in that world.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:45

Well, I'll put it this way Jerry Douglas had won three years in a row. So he is truly an instrumentalist. Like that's what he does. And so for me to win, it was kind of like I think they recognize somebody who's like works in the world of song rather than like instrumental virtuosity, if that makes any sense.

SPEAKER_07 1:33:02

Might make sense if I hadn't seen you play. But I think you're underrating yourself.

SPEAKER_08 1:33:08

Well, I mean, we all do that. Um, your guitar sang. I'm kept. Well, don't think we get the big head.

SPEAKER_07 1:33:13

Well, listen, no, but here's the th, and I'm not a musician, my husband is, and I leaned over to him Friday night and I said, I don't I don't know how to describe this. It's so clean. It's just so clean and and effortless, and it's like it's coming from God. Yeah, I like that. So I don't know what that is, but you don't want to hire me for your festival.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:35

I mean, you're good, what you're gonna miss out on is this so clean and wonderful, it's like it's coming from God. But if you don't want that at your festival, then that's fine. I'll just tell God to knock it off. No, I hear you. But that's the way music is to me. It's like you don't know where it comes from. Keith Richards said something like, the songs are just there, and you just every once in a while you get to get it. I do know how we wrote bubbles up, but we weren't in the same room. But Jimmy had given me these. He would literally send me handwriting, a photograph of his date book with some scrawl on it, and then he'd send me like an old newspaper article and then a picture he drew or something. Then he'd be like, Can you work with this? And I'd of course say, Yeah. And I just ran with it, and it is a song where we'll go play it this summer for like 10,000 people, and they'll all have their phones up and singing along. And it's not really like a hit single that was on, but it's almost better because people actually just like it. Not because it was crammed down their throat by a radio programmer. In fact, radio really won't touch it. Who cares? Because we're gonna go play the concert and we will play this song every night, Bubbles Up. Jimmy Buffett's biggest fans, the parrot heads, just the most loyal, beautiful, and kind of open-minded in their own weird, crazy way about music. I'm lucky too, because I wrote songs with Jimmy Buffett, so they accept me in. But when I play Bubbles Up, sometimes there's like this groan like they're gonna have to live their grief and cry. Bubbles Up is a happy, grateful, beautiful, positive message disguised as a sad song because of the circumstances under which it was released. Sometimes I play these shows that are so intimate, like like the other night at Cross Mill. Sometimes I'm like down face to face with people. I was in Washington outside Seattle on the water there. Said, I'm gonna play Bubbles Up, and the lady sitting right where you are, was like just went, oh God. She knew she was gonna cry.

SPEAKER_08 1:35:14

You know, I cried when I heard it that night because it was so beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:19

But I said to her later, I went up to her because it was a situation where I saw everybody that was there and people were just milling around this little small festival. It was awesome. So anyway, I walked up to her and I said, Hey, I just wanted to tell you that don't forget that that song, that's what Jimmy wanted to write. He wanted to say that, and it just says, it's gonna be okay. Let your people who love you take you back to the surface and be in the sunshine. And he that's what he wanted to say, and it made him so happy to write that song. So I'm gonna play it every time I play, probably for the rest of my life. But that's also there's a reason why it's called a good cry.

SPEAKER_07 1:35:50

It's so fitting to have that be a final goodbye, I think. Yeah, and then and it like Johnny, her dad's funeral. I think that's gonna be a common theme. It'd be and it is the balance. Okay, so I want to go back to mobile Alabama. Yeah. It's 1964. When you picked up the first guitar, because you talked a lot about being 11, 12. When was the very first one?

SPEAKER_00 1:36:12

So I wanted a guitar as a child. I wanted an electric guitar and an amplifier. I didn't want an acoustic guitar. And so my parents were like, well, you've got to take piano lessons first. So I took piano lessons for a couple years, and it was great. Then when on my 12th birthday, they bought me the coolest looking but hardest to play cheapo electric guitar and little amp. And I went to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band in a 1,000-seat theater for $4.50. They were willing to also buy me a ticket for $4.50. May 1st, 1976. So I got the guitar, I didn't know how to play it, and the amp and a little chord, and I plugged him in and kind of went, you know. And then it's time to take you to the Bruce Springsteen concert, little Will. And so I went to see Springsteen, and this is 1976, so it says Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen. He's a skinny guy with a little beard and a leather jacket. That Spring, not the muck. He's young. He was, yeah, he was like 23. And so he did like a three and a half hour show. That was his third album. I had all three of his albums. And he played all the songs from all three albums, and it was just like wow. And I said to myself, that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go home and learn how to play a chord on that guitar. So I remember going home and it was almost like that, you know, King Arthur and Excalibur. I opened up the little case, and there was the guitar like with the spotlight on it. And uh, and I formed a band like the next week with my friends, and like you gotta get a bass and you gotta get a set of drums. And then like six months later, literally, we were playing at Skate World in Mobile, Alabama, playing for like girls with like Farah Faucet hair, like skating around with those Jordash, those and those yeah, Jordash jeans and those and those big combs in their back pockets.

SPEAKER_06 1:37:53

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:54

And like skating around, and and I'm playing, you know, like cat scratch fever or something. You know, nice free bird. So that was it. I mean, I was just I was absolutely dyed in the wool. My dad didn't sit around and play a guitar. My parents were just southern professionals. We had a piano that nobody ever played unless I was practicing for my lessons. I mean, it turns out they everybody has music in their life. They had all kinds of music back in the 50s and stuff, but we didn't sit around and play the old guitar and sing together, but all of a sudden I was a musician and my parents were really cool about it. They kind of hoped I'd go to college and do something else. And then after a while, they were like, Well, this is what you do, so cool. Where are you playing this week, Will? You know?

SPEAKER_08 1:38:33

At this moment, the guitar that you are holding is a Gibson 1948. Am I getting that right? 1948 Gibson Acoustic Electric Guitar.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:43

Yeah, yeah. So this guitar was built in Kalamazoo, Michigan by people who had just lived through the depression and World War II. They rationed wood and everything in World War II because spruce, the top of a guitar, they made airplane frames out of spruce, you know, before they had just lightweight metal. So this top of this guitar would have been rationed so that they could build warplanes. Wow. And mahogany and rosewood would have been used as veneers for like officers' quarters on ships. These guitars were made when the guitar industry got their wood back. And the people got to have the good wood again and build guitars. So to me, there's like in these Gibsons and Martins of this era, there's like this story and this joy. If you could see this listener, we'll take a picture of it. It's kind of like got the Willie Nelson vibe, like there's some places where there will be a hole in the top at some point because it's been worn so much, but it's just a beautiful sounding thing, and it just feels good in my hands.

SPEAKER_08 1:39:34

Sounds like a brand new guitar, and it's in perfect condition.

SPEAKER_07 1:39:38

Just a little worn with happy music. I think there was a song written from the perspective of the guitar.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:45

My boy and his guitar.

SPEAKER_07 1:39:47

That's right. That was a great Yes. What a I've never heard anything from that perspective. It made me so happy.

SPEAKER_08 1:39:54

Do you remember the first moment something in your life turned into a song in your head?

SPEAKER_00 1:40:00

I do. Okay. The first band I had, we didn't know how to play other people's songs. So instead of like getting lessons, we just wrote some songs. And I guess that was when I realized I was a songwriter. But I was 12, so I didn't realize that, I just did it. And then we'd play it for our parents and stuff. But what we really wanted to do was be able to play like Aerosmith and Leonard Skinner, you know, and the Rolling Stones and The Who or whatever. So then we learned how to play other people's songs. So then I had my sort of formative years of like playing all the songs I thought were awesome. And then I started writing again when I was about 16. It seems like such a short time now because I'm 61. And at 16, I met this guy from Atlanta who had just moved to Mobile for a job. He was 23, so he seemed like an old man to me. He had put up a three by five card in the music store with a thumbtack that said wanted to form band to play original music. And I had just heard like the Pretenders and Elvis Costello, and it was just kind of new music that was coming out with the songs that were speaking to me. I heard Brass and Pocket, you know. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:06

I'm special. You know, yeah. I love that song. I got to have some of your attention. Give it to me.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:15

You know, and I was like, that is a good song, man. That is like my music. Because I've been learning all the 60s and 70s stuff, and then all of a sudden you feel like you're in your generation with some awesome bands, and Chrissy Hind was so hot and cool in their leather pants. And so my friend Richard Gallo was a bass player. We got together and he said, Yeah, in Atlanta, all the bands just play their own songs, and there's clubs, and people pack them out to hear, and they make their own records and stuff. And then that band opened for REM, that story I told earlier, where it's like, oh, they're just like guys like us, and they have a crummy van and his amp is broken. They're just human. It made it human, made it possible. It made it possible for me to see that I could do it. Like instead of they're not like coming in and like a limousine and like wearing like silver pants or something, you know, like space aliens. It was more like they're just dudes who do it. And then when they got on stage, the chemistry and the energy was like, wow, they had it, you know, you can tell. But offstage, it was like they're just guys with like a flannel shirt on and like a crummy pair of converse that are dirty. So it felt very endearing. And so then, you know, like I said, we went and made a record and formed a band and went on the road and haven't been home since.

SPEAKER_07 1:42:20

Was there ever a period where you worked at like a grocery store?

SPEAKER_00 1:42:25

I made pizzas when I was a teenager, but then I started playing in the clubs when I was about 16, and they'd like sneak me in and like ABC board came in, they'd hide me in the cooler, you know, in Nashville, because I moved there in a working band. So we could go make a living, and we got signed. And I got a publishing deal and I got a record deal. So like I bought a Toyota pickup truck and I made a down payment on a house in 1989. And then that all kind of went wonky at some point. But, you know, so I got my first like sort of like attempt at being a grown-up. And that was rough. I was like, oh, this is not what I thought it would be. I got to pay my mortgage. Our first daughter was born. After Todd Snyder kind of got dropped from his label and the band went home. We went home from the road, and I didn't have a gig. And so I was trying to start my solo career with a baby at home and a young wife at home. So I was like, I need a job. So I've got a job delivering bread for this bakery because I didn't have any ski job skills. I was like, I worked at a pizza place when I was 16 and I've been in a band ever since. What do you got for me? They're like, nothing. And so I delivered bread for like six weeks. I could go to work at 5 a.m. and get off at like 1 30 p.m. And then I could, if someone was going to hire me for a recording session, I could say, I'll be there in the afternoon. And so it actually worked. Like I got recording session work and sort of started my career, which has been, I mean, that's been part of my life, has been going to play on people's records. And that's been very valuable. I have a good ear for it and all that. And you listen to the song once, write down the chords, and just start recording it. Nashville's full of people like that. They can just hear a song once and go, okay, I'm ready. And then sometimes the first take is like bubbles up. The record is really like the first take of the band playing the song, the record that's out there of Jimmy Buffett's. So I worked at the bakery for like seven, six, seven weeks, and then my music career took off again. Like I got hired for this tour going out and opening for this band called Golden Smog, which was like a side project of the Jayhawks and Wilco and Soul Asylum. So this was like night the late 90s. So those guys were, you know, so I I went out with this friend of mine and we opened for them, and I got to be around those guys, and it just felt like I was back. Because being out of music for like six weeks, even though I wasn't, I had been on tour my whole life, and then I was delivering bread and doing recording sessions. I felt like I'd left my career behind, but it was only six weeks. But you know how time is such a weird thing.

SPEAKER_07 1:44:39

Well, and that whole point that keeps coming up of when you're doing what you love, time flies. That was probably a really long six week. Because it was in fact the opposite.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:48

Yeah, well, I was waiting to see what was going to happen, and then I found out. Like all of a sudden it's like, oh, now you're on the road again. And then I made my first solo record, which wasn't some kind of big seller, but it was just a milestone. And it was a record that this artist Shelby Lynn, who had a record out that won a Grammy that year. She won Best New Artist, even though she had been making records for 10 years. She won a Grammy. I am Shelby Lynn. It's a great record. And she got asked by Rolling Stone to list her top five records of the year 2000.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:13

The year 2000.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:16

And she listed my record. Nice. Like it was like, you know, this, this, this, this, this, and Will Kimbrough. And the record is actually called This. Wow. But so stuff like that would happen and just carry you along. And they'd be little things, and they wouldn't get paid for it or anything, but it would be you'd get paid for it in many, many ways. Right. But just kind of moved you along. And so everything's just keep moving along.

SPEAKER_07 1:45:37

It's like that fine wine.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:38

Todd Snyder has that song, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:40

He goes, uh old timer, old timer, too late to die young now.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:50

Old timer, five and dimer. Trying to find a way to age like wine somehow. Love that. That's a brilliant. Yeah, that is too late to die young now.

SPEAKER_07 1:46:07

Nice. A song that feels like home.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:11

Bubbles up. Artist you're still in awe of. Jimi Hendrix.

SPEAKER_07 1:46:15

First concert.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:17

Aerosmith. 1976.

SPEAKER_08 1:46:19

I thought you were going to say Bruce Springsteen.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:21

Wasn't my first. That was the first best concert.

SPEAKER_08 1:46:24

Oh, okay. Got it. Nice. Go to Midnight Snack.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:28

Anything, and I shouldn't be eating it. Probably like some trail mix that's in my backpack that's been in there for three months.

SPEAKER_07 1:46:35

It's disgusting. All right. If you go down in a hotel room what late one night, we'll know why. How many Hawaiian shirts do you think you own?

SPEAKER_00 1:46:45

17. A moment that changed you. Jimmy Buffett asked me for some songs.

SPEAKER_07 1:46:50

Studio or stage?

SPEAKER_00 1:46:52

Stage.

SPEAKER_08 1:46:53

Riding alone or with someone else?

SPEAKER_00 1:46:57

I'd say with someone else.

SPEAKER_07 1:46:59

The most you song you've ever written.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:04

Piece of work.

SPEAKER_07 1:47:05

Go-to cocktail.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:07

Coffee. Too much coffee.

SPEAKER_07 1:47:11

One word that the people that love you and are around you the most, one word that they might use to describe you.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:18

Busy.

SPEAKER_07 1:47:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:47:20

Best series you've watched lately.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:22

Ooh, okay. It's called Woman of the Dead, and it's an Austrian series set in the Alps, and she's a mortician who inherited her family's funeral parlor in the Alps, but she gets involved in all this crime stuff. And then all the chase scenes are like on these switchback roads in the Alps. She also rides a motorcycle, like a crotch rocket. Is she hot? She's just a badass.

SPEAKER_07 1:47:44

Okay, I'm all nice. I know.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:47

She's a mom and an undertaker. But then she gets on her motorcycle and like chases down the bad guy and gets in all kinds of trouble. I think it's on Netflix.

SPEAKER_07 1:47:55

I'm gonna find out. Last one. If your life had a soundtrack, what's the closing track?

SPEAKER_01 1:48:04

Bubbles up.

SPEAKER_08 1:48:05

Aww. When you were playing at the Beacon last night, I already heard you guys just rocked it out and had a wonderful show. But you also played with Gary Green, who's a harmonica player right here in Charlottesville.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:17

And you know what? Gary runs sound every year at this thing called Shed Song, which is run by these folks, Van Holton and Polly King, who are a married couple who are from Charlottesville, but they've moved to Lynchburg. And so they have this big old house in old, you know, 1800s house in Lynchburg, and they do it in Lynchburg now. So I'm gonna go play there in early June. And Gary comes and runs sound. And when I first met him, they're like, Oh, by the way, Gary plays harmonica too. So if you want him to sit in, and you know, you're thinking, like, who's the sound guy that plays harmonica? And then so of course I was like, come play. And he's like, Oh, I don't want to, I don't want to impose. And I went, please sit in. And uh, and then I was like, Whoa! You know, so yeah, he's amazing, he's amazing, he's this most like humble, quiet, like self-effacing guy, if that's the right way to say it. And then he's he's a rock star, you know, he's great. That's cool. So I want to do a song called I Like It Down Here. So this would be the other song that would most describe me. So there's bubbles up that's like the guy who who's learned that music can heal and be comforting and and be this solace. But then there's the other side that's like songs can just be playing with words and words you love and you just want to put in there and just the joy of language and playing like a a kind of music that's just super fun to play. So for me, like one is like a minor blues, but that that that's not sad at all. And I've made this record called I Like It Down Here, which is all about the South, because I'm from Mobile, Alabama, which is other than Florida. You if you walk south from Mobile, you're in the water. It's the deep south and it's messed up and crazy and awesome. Like it's the most wonderful, horrible, perfect, imperfect place. Okay, like every other place, right? So anyway, I like it down here. I do. And you're always South of somewhere. Unless you're at the North Pole. Exactly. If you take one step away from the North Pole, then you're south of it. And people are obsessed with south, north, east, west, all over the world. I've got a friend from Edinburgh, Scotland. And he talks about it all the time. There's like this thing about being from the south of Scotland. Even though you're at the far north of England, but don't tell somebody from Scotland that they're from England. But they'll punch you. The rivalries are all over the world. It's part of what makes the world interesting. It's also part of the world. Well, we still have wars. Okay. I like it down here. Well does the bad look stop? What we do. Allow me to do all this talking and playing saying it. What's that? Is that all the reasons all that?

SPEAKER_07 1:54:25

Number one actually was a heart hunter. So I would go up there in my twenties and obviously with a heart hunter. It was a hot and up in Washington DC on top of the house. And the lap song, I always play the same laugh song.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:40

You don't have to go home, but you can't get it.

SPEAKER_07 1:55:50

You are on the run.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:55

I'm running with podcasters. A new program. No podcasters with their trauma.