And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 161: Ben Johnson (live from Austin, TX)

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

Today’s guest  is GRAMMY nominated songwriter, producer, and artist living in Nashville, TN. He is signed to a worldwide co-publishing deal with Tape Room Music (Nashville) and Artist Publishing Group (Los Angeles) as well as a record deal with BMG (Stoney Creek), and has written songs for artists such as Charlie Puth, Thomas Rhett, Kane Brown, Ava Max, Lee Brice, Meek Mill, Justin Timberlake, Lauren Alaina, Dierks Bentley, HARDY, Parmalee, Jake Owen, David Guetta, Bebe Rexha, and more. Originally from Meridian, Mississippi, he grew up surrounded by music. He is a classically trained pianist and cellist, and grew up performing everywhere from bluegrass festivals to orchestra concerts. From a young age, our guest has written and produced music with his two sisters in their country band Track45 (managed by Missi Gallimore and Gary Borman, and signed to BBR/Stoney Creek). His first major cut was “Patient” with multi-platinum pop artist Charlie Puth on the 2018 album “Voicenotes”. Since then, heʼs had many cuts in both the pop and country worlds, as well as success as a producer. Johnson had his first #1 in 2020 with Lee Brice’s “One of Them Girls”, which stayed at the top of the charts for 3 weeks. He has gone on to write many more #1 songs including “Gone” (Dierks Bentley), “Take My Name” (Parmalee), “Best Thing Since Backroads” (Jake Owen), “Beers On Me” (Dierks Bentley, HARDY, Breland), “New Truck” (Dylan Scott), a Canadian country #1 with “11 Beers” (The Recklaws), and a 4 week Alternative Airplay #1 with Weezer’s “All My Favorite Songs”. In 2021, our guest broke into the top 10 on Music Row Magazine’s Top Songwriter Chart and has been in the top 5 for the last 6 months. He won the 2021 AIMP Song of the Year award for “One of Them Girls” as well as the 2021 AIMP Publisher’s Pick Award for HARDY’s “Give Heaven Some Hell”. Additionally, he was nominated for the 2021 Music. He made history in 2021 with the first song to ever win Country Song of the Year at all three PROs (BMI, ASCAP, and SESAC) with “One of Them Girls”. In 2022, Johnson received his first GRAMMY nomination for “Rock Song of the Year” with Weezer’s “All My Favorite Songs”. And The Writer Is Live… with Ben Johnson! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to And The Writer Is with Ross Golan. There are millions of singers, thousands of artists, and only 40 songs per genre at a time. These are the stories of the hottest creatives, the most venerable legends, artists, songwriters, executives, and more. Come join our Discord, follow our socials, and share your music with the and The Writer is community. We'll see you all there and now. Here's this week's episode. Hey guys. Packed house here.

All right, so should we start? Because, like, I mean, let's just roll. Let's go. All right, let's do it. Welcome to Ann the writer is. I am your host, Ross Golan. Today's Grammy-nominated songwriter, producer, and artist is the hottest writer in country and in the country.

He currently has six songs on country radio, with five being in the top 20. He's worked with artists from Charlie Poo to Hardy, to Weezer, to Jake Owen, to Eva Max, to Lee Bryce, which makes sense from a kid who is a classically trained pianist and cellist, and grew up performing at Bluegrass Festivals. In 2021, this guy broke into the top 10 on Music Row magazine's top songwriter chart, but most impressive, this Mississippi native is a loyal husband and good human. We are live from Austin, Texas, and the writer is Ben Johnson.

Thank you. That was a dream come true moment to hear you introduce me for this podcast. It's been one of my favorites for a long time. I love it. You know, well, it's kind of funny how we ended up here because only a couple months ago, you know, Ben and I had written together over Zoom during quarantine, and Ben, and Ben, you know, rings the bell again, and maybe it was your however many number one songs this year, and you said something like, is it enough yet? I commented on your pose, you're like, is that enough

yet to be on the writer? As I said, I don't know, how many more do you need? And you said, two more. And in a matter of a month and a half, you had two more number one songs from that. So that's how fast this happened. I kind of gamed it a little bit. I knew I had two in the top ten, so I figured that was a pretty safe bet. You should work in radio. So I want to tell a little bit of your story because you hear somebody being raised in Mississippi to having hits.

It seems like that's an implausible path. It's just not a hot bed of music, but maybe not the epicenter of commercial music these days. Yeah, probably not these days, but it is interesting how many, game-changing musical acts have come out of Mississippi from Elvis to Jimmy Buffett, my town, hometown of Jimmy Rogers, father of country music. So I always say it's a lot of people trying to get out of the state, so we'll do anything it takes, you know, to get out.

But yeah, no, it's got its own musical scene, but you're right to try to dream of doing what I do today was pretty crazy. I'm very fortunate. What was your, you know, you were born. Let's start there. I was born. Yeah, I was born in a little town called Meridian, Mississippi. Where's that? It is kind of across the state line from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. So it's on the east side of the state. And I was born to a pretty musical family.

My granddad was like our church choir director. That wasn't his job, but, you know, like a tiny church. You know, that was what he did for the church. And then my grandma taught me how to play piano. But my parents, my dad was in the fencing business. So he built fences. And then my mom ran our local nonprofit theater group for teenagers. And so there was some musical background there.

But yeah, music appreciators, but none of them obviously knew anything about doing music for a living. I mean, being in from the town that Jimmy Rogers is from, you assume that everybody grows up listening to country, but it doesn't sound like that's necessarily in like the familial pedigree of your music, or was it? Were you guys country fans? Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like nowadays especially, you talk to someone and everybody's like, what, you know, you say, what are your musical influences and everybody has such a smorgas board of, you know, influences? But I really think mine was all over the place. So yeah, definitely a lot of country influence from the Jimmy Rogers. But my granddad was a classical music nut. And so growing up, you know, he was always taking us to whatever symphonies he could get us to. You know, I learned how to play piano from my grandma. And then as I got older, I wanted to play different instruments.

And so I picked up the cello. And Mississippi, very rural, our closest cello teacher was almost two. hours away. So he would drive me every Friday for about six years, two hours each way down to Haddisfburg, Mississippi. So big shout up to my granddad. I got a lot of, every Friday, I got a lot of quality time with him. And the whole way, it was, it was Friday was request day on our local, or the Mississippi classical station. So he would always call in request of songs that he wanted me to hear. And I'd always pretend like I was asleep in the side, so I didn't have to listen to them. But I was exposed to a lot of music that way. So early on, a lot of classical

church music. But, you know, as I got older, I've discovered the Beatles. And I think that was a big turning point in my musical taste. Amazing that the Beatles can be when they're from and how they can still influence. Also, as a bassist cellist, like, you know, when you have bass lines that are hooks. You know, like, you're either learning them from Bach or you're learning them from, you know, Paul McCartney, but either way, the lines aren't just to keep a chord change. They're there for it to be a choice, you know? 100%. Yeah. And it's interesting how different instruments can kind of influence your melody choices and just your songwriting in general. But yeah, you're right. Paul McCartney,

probably the biggest, one of the biggest musical influences on me. I read a, I was 13, maybe 12, and I read a biography by Bob Spitz on the Beatles. Very comprehensive 2,000 page, something, like insane. But it just unlocked so much discovery and me of pop music, and that was kind of my first exposure to it. And as I would read the book, I would listen to the songs, and then I would learn the stories behind the songs. And that book absolutely blew my mind.

And, yeah, that's how I discovered the Beatles, which launched me into pop music. Being launched into listening to pop music is different than writing it. And same thing in the country. We'll get to your discography because it's so uniquely equal in both fields. But, you know, doing musical theater or doing classical things. There's still so many gaps from that to like, I'm going to write. songs and then even to start thinking about pursuing it. So give me a little bit of the journey

from, you know, you're doing these two-hour drives, you're playing cello, you're probably doing some musical theater from time to time, you're reading books about the Beatles. Who says, hey, you should write a song? Or when did you say, I kind of want to write my own stuff? Okay, that's a good question. So I can't go any further without mentioning my two sisters and I, we had a band, or we still have a band, but we all grew up, all. that I'm talking about was very interconnected with them, Jenna and KK. And so we would discover music together. And as we discovered it, we would just very naturally sing it together around the house. That's how we learned harmony. We were all just really good friends. And when I learned a guitar

chord, I'd show it to Jenna. And then she'd come back the next day, oh, actually, have you seen you can actually play a B minor? And I'm like, whoa, I never knew that chord. You know, so that was a a big part of my journey was playing music and discovering music with them. But we would play at, we got our start playing in nursing homes. So we learned one song and we knew John Belaya by Hank Williams. Jenna knew three chords. I knew two. I was playing the mandolin, I think. So I'd have to stop every third chord. But, and so we was, we would just kind of do it as a way of just like, oh, we've learned a song and, you know, we've got a great aunt in this, whatever, you know, nursing home, and we'd go play, and then another nursing home would hear us. So we'd like to say, we started on the

nursing home circuit, but by the time we were 14, 15, we were playing bluegrass festivals all around the southeast, you know, touring pretty much. Same band name? Or it was a different? It was a different name back then. It was called 45 South. Okay. Yeah. And so, yeah, that was a big part of it. And I remember discovering who Ryan Tedder was. Yeah, nice. Because I was listening to, I guess, maybe the Teenage Dream record. I can't remember one of those early pop records. Of course, he's not even on that record. But maybe One Republic then,

maybe secrets, whatever it was, I looked up the song because I was obsessed with it, and I saw, oh, wait, there's this guy who wrote this. And then I'd saw, oh, wait, he actually wrote this song, Bleeding Love. Leanne Lewis didn't write that song. This guy wrote it. And that's, I feel like every songwriter has that moment where you realize that, oh, the artist, might not have written the song. And that completely blew my mind. And from that moment on, I was like, okay, that's a cool avenue that I've never even explored. And so I had a, my dad in our basement had an old Mac computer, Mac Tower. And I would go down after, you know, everybody was asleep. And I would go down and try to record things. And I would try to recreate

records that I loved. Wow. So I would take secrets or whatever, or apologize. and I would go down and just try to recreate it as close as I could, because I was like, if I can learn how to recreate these things, it'll probably give me similar skill set as whoever made these to be able to do the same thing. It really does work that way, too. I mean, on some level, especially when you don't even have the resources that person has, so you're trying to emulate how do you make this synth

or how do you make this kick or how do you do this pattern, you can mimic close enough and you start to EQ things, to sound like, you become really proficient when you have fewer resources. 100%. Yeah, I think that limitation, and whether it's financial, whether it's plugins, whether it's, you know, access to other creatives, whatever it is, I feel like that is where you learn your strengths and kind of what gives you your own unique skill set. And so I've always, I've always viewed that as a plus and a positive that maybe I had a little more limited resources than some other people. So how old were you at that point?

I was 14. Going from your high school then, you're starting to figure out how to produce in your basement. Did anybody else in your high school have any idea what you were doing? I would show my friend stuff and actually that was a, you know, I would always, I would make songs for girls. You know, I would write songs with girls' names and I'd show them the productions I'd done. That was a big move. But in a big motivation, you know, I feel like every, every creative or artist, if you're honest with yourself, you probably picked up a guitar and started writing songs because of a girl, you know, probably or a boy or whatever. But yeah,

so that was a big motivation in high school. But yeah, I would show it to others. But honestly, it wasn't even forced or anything, but my sister, KK., um, she was only 10 or 11 at the time, but she would come down and she would be like, hey, what are you doing? And then she got really good at production. So by the time she was 12, she was showing me things that I had no idea

of how she was doing it, and she was teaching me, you know, logic stuff. And so we kind of, I got really lucky that I had a little, you know, somebody else to bounce these ideas off. Bounce things off of, exactly. Did your parents, assuming that at that point,

you guys had been playing the nursing home circuit, this rager. Yeah. Did you, at that point, know, okay, this is what I'm going to do? Like, was there ever, it seems like you never questioned. No, I really thought I was going to be a professional baseball player until I was 15. What was your position? I was a pitcher.

What did you learn from being a pitcher that's applicable to being a musician? You know, I actually prepared for this question. I'm just kidding. I think you've got to have a short memory, right? I think when you finish writing a song, if it's the best song ever, or if it's the worst song ever, you got to have a short memory, move on to the next one, even after a release of a song, if a song goes number one, what's next? You know, if a song bombs and no one ever listens to it, what's next?

You've got to have a short memory, I think, if you want to keep improving and moving forward. I think that's going to be a quote I'll end up using a lot. Okay. Because it's really true. I think a lot of, you know, it's easy to find analogies in sports metaphors, not just for all the teamwork stuff, but, you know, there are a few, they're, we're so used to writing in a really focused place, but we all come with these skill sets from outside, and that's what makes the room exciting, you know? So that ability to say, that song yesterday, we can beat that, or that was great, but,

it's fine, let's move on. We've got other songs to write. Right. That stuff's really valuable. So that makes sense. Really, I would just say, going back to your initial question, we played a show, we played a week of shows in Dollywood, Tennessee. And that was like the biggest gig we'd ever had. We played the Bluegrass and Barbecue Festival. And when we finished that, we said, you know,

we might never do this and make a ton of money. We might never do this on a big scale, but this is what we want to do for as long. long as we can. And so that was a big turning point. That and I realized I wasn't as good as baseball as I thought I was. So those two things combined was, did you look at, you know, colleges and stuff for baseball, or did you ever think of, like, were you ever, or it was straight at that point you knew? By the time I got to college age, I knew. It was pretty obvious. It was, yeah. And also, I had a weird, so I actually started college when I was 16. So it was a little unorthodox kind of,

entry there. Is it, how does somebody graduate high school at 16 and start college at 16? Well, so I was homeschooled. Okay. Don't judge me. I see all y'all looking at me. So I was homeschooled and so I had already finished pretty much all my high school work. And I, and it was, and it definitely enabled us to kind of create our own schedules, be very independent, even as 13, 14, 14, 15 year olds. So I kind of was like, I was looking at and I said, man, the first two years of college is kind of the same classes as you take the last two years of high school. I might as well just go ahead and start. And so I started our little community college.

Did, having gone through homeschool and doing community college, would you, if you were a parent of that kid, would you want them to be in a public school? Or do you think you would also, did you find it beneficial to be homeschool? I have nothing. you know, I think it just depends on the parent and how much time you have and want to dedicate to your kids' education. My mom did have the time, especially early on, you know, to do that. But I have nothing but positive things to say, you know, I created my own schedule. I learned how to be very independent. And, you know, it's like, okay, if I don't do my work,

it's not going to get done, which I think is, it sounds dumb, but I feel like as you get older and as you get into, quote, real life, that's what it's all about. It's like, you can do anything you want to, but you have to put the work into it. And there was no one ever hanging over my head saying I had to do something. It's just like, hey, you're going to fail your test to get into blank if you don't do the work. Figure it out. You went to community college, I assume still in Mississippi. In my hometown, yep, Meridian, MCC.

Was the idea? Stay close, go far. Yeah. That was our. That's really funny. That was our motto. It was really funny. Did you go, was there a part of you at that point that already knew,

okay, well, I'm here at 16 through 18, were you still living in the house? And when you knew you were going to be 18 soon enough, was the goal to have that be the stepping stone to a university? I think it was generally, yeah. I was still living at home, and the school was only 15 minutes away. And I will tell you, I had that 15-minute drive. down. Like, if my class started at nine, I would literally wake up at 844. Like, I was so efficient. But, yeah, no, I was still living at home. And all my friends were still in high school. I had a great

high school experience. I mean, honestly, small town living, there's nothing like it. I love growing up in small town. I'm super proud of where I'm from. And a lot of my friends, I had back then, I'm still best friends with now. We've come up together. And so I still, you know, I'm glad I didn't go off to college at 16 because I think I would have missed a lot of the high school experience I had. But yeah, I think generally I knew I was just, you know, I didn't know how it was going to happen. I feel like I've always said the, you know, the big goal stays the same, but the small goals changed. And so I've always been very like, I write down my big goals all the time.

And I try to put them places where I can see them, you know. And so I would always go, you know, I want to do X, Y, and Z. Okay, how do I do that? What were they at that point? Yeah. A lot of similar things, you know, I wanted to. to have a career in music, which is just a big overarching goal. And then I wanted to sign a record deal with our band.

I wanted to have a publishing deal. You know, I wanted to have a hit, you know, those kind of things. And, yeah, I had no idea how I was going to do it. I just wrote them down and hoped for the best. Okay, so how did you do it? All those things came true. Oh, it's easy. No, I'm just kidding.

I mean, it's a weird thing because you can say I want to have a career in music. That's an attainable goal. for everybody. Everybody. It doesn't mean you might need another career, but you can... 100%. You know, career doesn't necessarily equate with money, but having a hit record deal, publishing deals, starts to get into the business of it.

Yeah. Well, let me back up a little bit. I would say the best way for me to do it was to fail as fast as possible as I could, as many things as I could. To me, I really... for some reason, I've always been keyed in on, let me try something and find out as fast as I can if it's not going to work. And so whether that was, you know, trying to go from meetings, should I pitch my song like this? Should I release a song on my own?

Should I try to co-write with this person? Should I just write all my songs myself? What is going to work? And then the other thing that I did was I moved to Nashville, which was very important. With your sisters? With my sisters. So my youngest sister, KK, was 14. and I was 18. My older sister was 19. So yeah, pretty wild. Were your parents with you?

No. What did they think of that? That's a good question. You know, the best way I can put it is they've always been supportive but not pushy. And so they were like, hey, we will totally encourage y'all. Y'all should chase your dreams, do this. But here's the realistic part of it. You know, we weren't wealthy or anything. So they said, you've got to figure out how you're going to pay for all this. you know, y'all need to figure out where you're going to live, you know, are you going to go to college? All the different things, you have a plan. And so we really didn't know, but we knew we needed to save up money. So I started teaching music lessons when I was 13, and then I started teaching tennis lessons when I was 15.

So I had those two jobs. I was making good money for a, you know, high school student. And we all had different jobs. Both my sisters worked on a farm or, you know, taught lessons or different things. So we were all, you know, making money. and we said we're going to save up money for a year and just then we'll reassess. And in that year, we were playing a show at a place called the Temple Theater. And a man came up to us afterwards after we played and said,

hey, I don't know y'all at all, but I just want to say, I think y'all have what it takes. Y'all should move to Nashville. And it was actually Alan Jackson's former manager and Glenn Campbell's publisher, Marty Gamblin, big shout up to Marty. And so we were like, okay, that's a huge sign of, you know, affirmation that we're on the right path. and it gave us a lot of confidence to make that big step. How did he hear you?

We played a show and he happened to be at the show. So crazy. Crazy. I mean, that's how it happens, though, right? Yeah. I mean, you just have to keep being out there. You never know. You have to keep being out there, 100%.

And so... So you get the vote of confidence, you save up the money, you go to Nashville. You guys all live in an apartment together. Tiny apartment, yeah. Which I'm sure was as tiny as it was, like, just to be out there must have been super exciting. It was the best, best times ever. Yeah, we were so excited to be in the city chasing our dream. And I'll tell you, we had no clue.

Even though we had Marty, you know, kind of give us some momentum and push us that way, we had no clue about the music industry. I mean, I knew vaguely that Ryan Tedder wrote songs for other people. That was about it. Like, that's basically the knowledge we had. We played a little pop-up show when we moved, and we had a writer come up to us afterwards. His name was Rivers Rutherford. to have him on the podcast. He's amazing. You know, CMA writer, song of the year, writer had many hits for

a lot of people. But he came up to his afterwards and said, hey, I think y'all really great. I'd love to write a song with you. And we said, no, we write our own songs, actually. Like, we didn't even understand. Like, we didn't understand what that collaboration yet. And so he said, no, no, no, that's not how it works. You know, we get together and we try to write a song together. And we were like, do you not think our songs are good? You know, we didn't. have any idea. So, and that was a really, you know, that was a big step when he did that. And he brought us in and explained to us how to co-write and the process of co-writing and how important it was. And that was a huge game changer. Yeah, we all have an ego in the beginning because we are the,

you know, I shouldn't say we. A lot of people feel like when they come from a small town, with a certain amount of talent, you know, that were good. Yeah. And then you go into a town like Nashville where you have the best, and everyone was the best in their hometown, and every year the best moves to Nashville. So it replenishes, nobody leaves Nashville. So it just becomes this bubble of legends,

and you're going to go in. And the only people of egos, are the people fresh off the boat. 100%, that's so true. The people who've been around, they all know how much work, luck, love has to go into it. 100%. Yeah, the more successful you are, the more the more you get the imposter syndrome, you know, like, what am I doing?

But yeah, I think you're right. And we were talking about this earlier. You know, it does, it'll humble you very quick. But there still has to be just this one little bit of narcissism that you hold on to that says, I have something in me that is worth saying that everyone needs to hear. Yeah. Isn't that weird? Yeah.

Yeah. It's very strange. And a good song is written with the understanding that nobody outside your ego wants to hear your song. Yeah, exactly. So then you go into it being like, I need to make these people listen. I bet I can come up with the song that they don't know they need. Yep. Absolutely.

So you're in Nashville. you guys are hustling. How do you get from that to, you know, how long is it from that to the stage of, okay, people are like, I'm going to give those kids a publishing deal. Man, it was a long time. Like what? So between when we moved there and I got my first, or my publishing deal, was probably six years. So what did you do in the six years to survive? So I continued teaching instrument lessons, and then I played hundreds of weddings. Hundreds of weddings. Every weekend I would play two or three weddings. Nashville is like one of the

wedding capitals of the world. And so it's funny. Now I've played, you know, I'd play a lot of industry people who are now know, but I'd play their weddings, you know, and artists and stuff. Jordan Reynolds played at mine. Jordan did? Oh my gosh. That's amazing. Yeah. Is he playing violin? What? Is he playing violin? No, it was him and Daniela Mason and her husband who plays with Russell

Dickinson. It was like all these guys, but they were those are, they played music at her. That's awesome. Anyway, you get married in Nashville, you find the best musicians in the world like literally.

Yeah. So you play these weddings, you know, it's sustaining life. Are you ever discouraged during that or is that encouraging? you're like, oh, this is a blast? No, I definitely got discouraged. Like I said, I really feel like, you know, there's a story I've read of Harrison Ford, and it was like, you know, he said,

when he moved to, somebody said, how are you successful? I don't know if you're familiar with this story. But in essence, he said, you know, when I moved to Hollywood, I moved with 50 friends, and we were all chasing it. And he said, you know, after two years, there's about 25 of us. He said after three years, there was about 10 of us. He said, 10 years later, I was the only one left out of those 50 people still doing it. And he said, I think I was successful because I was the last one left. And so our mentality was very much that of persistence and of constantly trying to improve and also figure out what we were doing right and what we were doing wrong.

But, yeah, definitely had a lot of moments where I would, you know, the doubt creep. in and what am I doing here? Is this even the right thing to do? But I think that's why I always tell people you can't tie the success to the process. You know, you have to love the process. And if you don't love the process, you'll just get burnt out. And another thing I always say is you have to be happy for other people's success. I think that's one of the things that people, you know, you say, oh, were you down when you weren't having success? But the other side of that is I'm not having success, but all my friends and so many people that I'm coming up with are having these wins, and I'm sitting there going, why am I not having wins?

But I think one of the best things I could ever, that I did and that I continue to do and that I think everyone should do is really celebrate other people's wins. You know, I feel like if you're not happy for others, you never will be, you know? Yeah, it's a rising tide for sure. Rising tide. You know, it's easy to think of you as an overnight success from my perspective. perspective, you get your first real, like, big publishing deal in 2018. It's a pretty short span from then until now,

because that means you had to write the songs. They had to come out. There are songs I've written from before 2018. They're just now coming out. So, you know, you did this deal in 2018 with tape room and with APG in L.A. You're writing with some huge artists at this point. Charlie Puth cuts a record, you know. things are happening even outside a country.

Was that the moment you made it? Okay. I do feel like in a sense, when I signed my publishing deal, it was a big check off of one of those big goals that I had. But I don't know. No, I still don't feel like I've made it. You know, I don't know if you ever feel like.

Do you feel like you've made it? I think that it always changes, right? Sure. Sure. So, I mean, if you look at that first list of I always wanted a record deal, I hit that long time ago. And then I've had a few record deals, and I don't even know if that's what I really wanted. Yeah, exactly. You know? Yeah. But, yeah, from... I didn't, you know, having the opportunities that I have to talk to the best songwriters in the world, like, come on.

Yeah, I mean, that's pretty cool. That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, so you do this deal with Ashley Goreley, the greatest songwriter. of a generation. Yeah, I would agree with that. How did he hear you? Okay, yeah, so let me back up. This is a little bit of a story.

So Ashley was speaking at a keynote at Belmont University while my sister KK was there. And she saw him, and at the time, I think he had 30 number ones. Still a lot of number ones. He has 65 now. But she said, hey, I just heard this guy who has written 30 number ones. you know, I think, and, you know, I ask if we could meet up with him and, you know, send him a CD or whatever, and he agreed. So I said, okay, awesome. So we went and played some songs for him. And after we finished

playing, he said, you know, this is good. I think y'all, first thing he said, you all should sign three separate publishing deals instead of one together because you'll get better deals. And we said, okay, that's a great idea. And I was like, hey, do you want to sign me? He's like, no. You know, But what actually ended up happening was I had really randomly been playing cello for this artist. And I was playing these live shows with her. And she was kind of into EDM music. And she, after playing one of these shows, she said, I just got this track from this DJ in Europe. Would you want to write it with me?

I said, sure. And so we wrote this song in 15 minutes and sent it off. And they ended up releasing it. And it was my first major label cut. And it didn't do anything. wasn't successful, but I had that to say I could do, you know? And so we finished playing for him, and I said, well, hey, I actually have this other stuff I've done too. That's like some pop stuff. And it's this DJ song, would you listen to it? He said, oh, well, that's really cool that you

do more than just this one thing. And so that's kind of what sparked the interest. And I said, hey, would you let me, I literally said, would you let me come out wherever you are to your house, wherever, and I'll play you songs and you tell me why they suck. I said, if you would do that every few months, I would literally, I would, I would die for that opportunity. And I think because I said, tell me how they suck, he said, okay. And so I did. I would go out every two or three months, and I would play songs for him, and he'd say, you know, he'd give me feedback for just 20, 20 minutes, not very long. And I'll never forget one day, he said, I finished playing them all the songs. I thought were great. And he said, these are good, because you're getting better, you know. He said,

play me something you would never have thought of playing me. And I said, oh, there's this little piano vocal thing I did yesterday. I haven't even produced it. I mean, it's probably not very good. And I played it for him. He said, this is pretty good. Can you text it to me? I text it to him. And midnight that night, maybe after midnight, maybe one in the morning. He's calling me. And I pick up the phone. He said, hey, what are you doing? I said, asleep. I mean, what do you think I'm doing? I'll never forget that. And he said, well, hey, I sent that song to Charlie Puth. and he just finished recording it in the studio. And I had gone from no deal, nothing, no interest to having attention had just come out.

And so having like basically the biggest artist in the world just recorded my song. Yeah, that was the moment my life changed. Well, in this next segment of what would Ashley Goreley ask Ben Johnson on, and the writer is, here's a few questions for you. He says, is it harder to write a number one song or guard Ashley Goreley in basketball? I knew he was going to ask that. So, yeah, we have a little basketball league we play in. And definitely harder to write a number one song.

Sorry, Ashley, I can lock you down on D any day. He says, he also asks, who do you think spends more time in Ashley's studio? You or him? Definitely me. Definitely me. I'm a studio rat. I live in the studio.

And I think this one is important because it can transition us to the next thing, which is tell me, You said, make sure you hear the story about the time that you turn the car around on your way to Mississippi on a Sunday to come to a 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. session that turned out to be the song of the year. Wow. Yeah. So I assume that's really, that's the next song that really changes everything. So I assume that's one of them girls. Yeah, one of them girls by Libreis was my first number one I ever had. And yeah, it was Father's Day in 2020, maybe, no, 2019. And I was driving. And I was driving. driving home to see my dad and I got a call and it was like hey Lee is basically finished his album but

he wants to go in and write one more song uh tonight in like two hours can you be there and I went I turned around literally in the median drove back and yeah we started at 10 p.m. wrote till 2 a.m. I finished the demo that night until 4 a.m. and then he went into the studio cut it on top of the demo the next morning and then yeah song of the year whatever a year later. I was listening to the song this morning. It's like that it's such a smart lyric at the end. It's such a good twist. It's like the cool thing about country is just when you think the chorus is done,

then the chorus happens, you know? Yeah, yeah. So crazy. At that point, when you have a number one song, Nashville is a system where it all works together. Most songs ring the bell for a week. Then the next artist goes up, rings the bell. Then the next artist, you know, it's whatever.

But most songs don't last. number one for three weeks. At that point, is that when you made it? Oh, definitely not. No. Yeah, no, I definitely didn't feel like I made it then. I think they always say as soon as you get one number one, the first thought is how do I get my next one? And so that thought definitely across my mind and I panicked a little bit. I was like, oh, I don't know how to do this. How do I do that again? But yeah, no, I mean, that was a great moment. But even then, you know what's crazy is, I'll back up a little bit. What's nuts is, all right, so summer of 2019, I had written, I didn't know it, but I had written three number one songs. But I was in the Planet Fitness parking lot, and I called my

mom, and I said, hey, I don't know if I can do this. I felt like I was failing and failing, and I felt like I was getting so close in so many things. You know, I had the Charlie Puth cut, but it, you know, it was supposed to be a single, it wasn't a single, the first of many of those. You know how that goes. But, you know, and then I don't have another cut for almost two years. I'm writing. I'm getting great opportunities, but I feel like I'm just this close. I'm always so close, but never quite there. And I really got, I really had a really low moment.

And I called my mom and I said, I don't know how I'm going to do this. Like, I just feel like maybe I'm not meant to this. I had a lot of doubt. And she said, well, you know, when one door's closing, another, another door's opening, you know, you never know what's going on behind the scenes. you might have, and she literally said, you might have already done what you think you haven't. I was like, I don't know. I didn't wait a, and the next morning, I got a call. I had written a song in L.A. so randomly, and I can go further into this story.

But, and this call said, hey, Justin Timberlake just recorded your song. And Meek Mill, and they're putting it out in two months. I was like, oh my gosh, I literally almost gave up last night. The next day, I get a call, hey, that song you wrote with Lee Bryce is going to be his next single, like that close to giving up and then that close to success. So that was the day that I realized you can't correlate how you feel like your career is going or even how you, how good you think a song is. You know, I would finish sessions and I would go, oh, that song sucked or that song was amazing. But a lot of those songs I thought sucked ended up being the ones that changed my life

and the ones I thought were amazing did nothing. So I think there's a lot of value in getting distance from your art and getting distance from the songs and not judging yourself day to day, but having a little larger view of kind of what you're working on. I wish using the sports analogy is I wish music ran in seasons, so you had an off season, so you could actually look at your career, do contracts during that time, have an opportunity to do nothing to look at what's happening because it is this cyclical thing. And if you work every day and you don't have weekends, you do all those things, it's impossible to gain perspective until you're old enough to look back and say,

this is, you know, and that might take, you might be old enough the next day. But it's really hard. And just the way this industry works is so long to see, you know, what, for things to pay off or things to come to fruition. So, yeah. It's cool there are generations of writers. I mean, one of the other writers that you've come up with in a similar, trajectory but different is Hardy.

You know, who's been on this podcast, I mean, how... Great episode. How does, you know, well, I guess then, you know, I guess in this next segment of what would Hardy ask Ben Johnson, I was going to wait, but he did say, would you rather

write with an A-level pop artist that is insufferable or a C-level country artist that is the best hang ever? Oh, man. This is an... I would go. It's a trap.

Either way. Yeah, it's not a good answer either way. I think I'd rather do both. How about that? There's, you know, I'll probably, I'll definitely enjoy the sea level hang, but you've got to take advantage of the opportunities and everybody's going through different things. I really haven't come across too many insufferable people, I will say. I know everybody has one or two stories.

I think I have one story. But honestly, we're so lucky to get to work with so many creative people who have a very similar background, you know, as we do. We all are here for the same thing. We're here to write great music and to enjoy music. And I think that gives us so much common ground that I really haven't had really any insufferable experiences. Having songs with, you know, all these names that the Dirk's, you know, the fact that you have Justin Timberlake or any of these things on the same resume, do you feel a pull to a certain genre? Or is it? Is it kind of nice because of your background that you do get to dabble in all of it?

I'm a seven on the anyogram, if that means anything to anybody. But I definitely find a lot of inspiration and just energy from not doing the same thing too much. And so for me, I think mixing it up has been very beneficial. You know, sometimes I'm toplining, sometimes I'm just producing sessions, sometimes it's pop, sometimes it's country. I really, that's kind of what's for me been the thing that worked, but I know some people don't enjoy bouncing around as much. Well, it's weird in your intro, the idea of having, you know,

a handful of songs in the top 20 at the same time in country music. You would think when I said Grammy nominated that I'd be referring to your country work, but you were Grammy nominated for a Weezer song this year, you know, number one U.S. rock airplay. Do they throw number one parties in Nashville for rock songs? No, I don't think so. We haven't had a number one party for that one. But yeah, that's a good question.

Maybe we should. You should. Yeah, you heard it here. You got to work with Rivers, right? Or no? So not in person. That was a pretty wild connection for that song. I had written with Ilse, Juber, unbelievably talented, and Ashley Gourley, as we've said,

unbelievably talented. And we were trying to write a song from Miley Cyrus. So we had spent seven hours, literally, banging our heads against the wall, and then we listened back to our song at the end, and we were all like, this sucks. And so I'll never forget, we said, hey, we have 15 minutes. Let's write a song as fast as we can. Don't even think about it. Just write a song. Let it flow out. And we wrote that song in 15 minutes. And Ilse, shout out to Evan, Taubenfeld. Her manager heard it and sent it to Rivers. And Rivers, I mean, I don't even know if Weezer has ever taken outside songs.

It's such a weird scenario. Yeah, it's really unusual. Yeah, I think because of the panic, maybe, panic of the disco, high hopes had helped maybe create the opportunity there for that precedent. But he heard it, fell in love with it, and recorded it. I mean, it was absolutely insane. Yeah, he's a legend. My first, like, big single was a C-Lo song that I wrote with him,

where he came in and rewrote the chorus. And it's, like, my idol was Weezer. and to have a day with Rivers meeting Seelow in a studio. You're in the same place. I just want to. I need cuts. I got to survive here. And you're like these.

And then you find one minute, you're like, I can't afford my place. And the other minute you're in a studio with these guys, you're like, I'm not sure how to gauge this. You know? Yeah. It's wild. I know we don't have like a ton of time. So I'm just going to list some of these songs. You know, again, what's so shocking is we're all.

only in year four of your publishing deal. And we're talking about David Getta featuring BB, which it's a big record, doing a lot of things right now. The Parmali song, the number one song, beer on me, number one song. Best Things Since Backroads, Rings a Bell. Another Life by Surf Mesa is not what I would put again on this list. You end up with these songs that end up being in the EDM world, you know, get a famously taking outside songs and whatnot. But the process of having a song that somehow crosses over and gets played on a bunch of, probably hits one and on all these things,

how does a song like that, how did that happen? Which one in specific? Surf Mesa. Surf Mesa. Okay, so I was set up on a right with Josh, Golden and Sean Meyer and Johnny Simpson. So the four of us, just, you know, another day at the office, I think we're resuming the initial session for that. And we had written another song. And I think this is a good advice for any songwriters out there. When you finish a song, even if you don't get

anything great, try to write a second one just as fast as you can at the end of the session. Because I've had so many songs come out of that really quick where you're not overthinking, you're not over-editing. It's just you have a time limit go. And so we had, again, you know, we had 15 minutes left. And I had started this idea of, wouldn't it be nice by the Beach Boys, flipping it into a pop song. And so I played them kind of the initial chorus structure I had where I was like, you know, we'll probably never get this cleared, but wouldn't it be fun to write a song called, wouldn't it be nice? And so we wrote that and then miraculously got clearance from Brian Wilson for I don't know if I can say the amount but it wasn't very much it was

pretty good deal and then when surf got a hold of it and I think Fletcher had come on at that point and Fletcher had the idea of saying hey what if we actually changed the lyrics so it's not exactly wouldn't it be nice it was called wouldn't it be nice at that point and so we all got together and wrote in another in another life crazy I think that was a Mike Karen definitely helped A&R that record too so shut up yeah I mean Mike's the greatest in the world at that. That's the thing. It's like, you have to be so not precious. That song with Rivers, we did, and I have all the versions of it, I think we did eight or nine choruses before Rivers came in and had, I had an idea, and he came in and rewrote a chorus. You can't be precious. You can't be,

like, this is my art, especially as a songwriter where you're serving the artist. Yeah, you get over that pretty quick, once you're writing enough. You know, John Kay, shout out, John Kay. That Alat song was another one of those songs. So chill, but, you know, reacted really well. Do you think you, you know, I don't, in a world where a lot of people are trying to copy each other, it feels like a lot of your songs sit in a unique way. Why do your songs stream so well? Hmm. Well, the first thing I would say is I'm working with incredibly talented people. I mean, all these songs that you're mentioning, I did not write by myself. I don't think. I don't think I have any out there that I've written by myself, maybe one, but yeah, I would just give a lot of

credit to my co-writers and the other creative people. I think a big turning point in my writing career was when I stopped trying to prove myself in sessions and started just trying to write the best song. And I think so often young writers get in a room and they go, let me show everybody how good I am, let me show them how many lines I write and they keep a mental track. Oh, I've written half of this song. Oh, this is a good day. And then I stopped doing that. and I started saying, hey, these are all incredibly talented people I'm in here with. I should probably listen to what they're saying and figure out, you know, how we can capture what the, you know, the, whatever the word is, synergistic, you know, room we have here.

And so I would give just a lot of credit to my co-writers. I don't know if I'm doing anything in specific. So when you're on a song with five people, if you contribute 20%, 20% of the song, that's maybe the pre-chorus melody and lyric. Right. If you compartmentalize it like that, that would be enough to be worthy of it. If you do 21%, which it guarantee you do more of in most sessions, you have now overdone the amount of work that you need to do for your equal share.

And it's true that so many people walk away from a session where maybe they didn't contribute 50% and they're used to doing that, and they feel like they failed in that session. And in reality, no, no, all you had to do is that there were six people, you need 16.6%. Yeah. You do 16.7%. Or don't get in the way of somebody else. Yeah. If you ruined the song by trying to force whatever your thing is in that day, you know,

I really just have a lot of respect for the creative community and the writers that I work with. So I feel fortunate to be in these rooms. And my thing is I just want to bring something to the table that lets me, you know, let these other incredible creatives want to work with me. So that's the kind of way I look at it. All right, we're going to the next segment, which is a five for five. And all those five things, and you just tell me who comes off the top of your head. We're going to start with Ashley Goreley. I owe in my career. I'd been in Nashville, like I said, for six years. I had been to every single publisher. I had been rejected by every single publisher. In fact, one time, somebody threw a showcase

together for me where all the publishers were there and they got to reject me together after they reject me separately. You know, I had like, rejected, reject, rejected. And Ashley was the one who said yes, and it changed my life. All right, well, I'll sign you, and if he ever drops you. Let's go with Jenna. Jenna, your sister. Jenna, my older sister, Jenna, she is like the glue of our family.

I can't tell you how many times I've been in a situation where I needed help or, you know, I couldn't get out of. And she showed up and she made everything better. her. She's an incredible writer as well. Always has insane ideas. I love her. Let's do KK. KK. KK. My little sister. She's like my little brother. I never had a little brother, so I kind of made her my little brother. And unbelievably talented. A producer, I wish I was as good of a producer as she is. She is always always just the charismatic is understatement. I love her. I love both of them so much. The band, the three of you have together. Track 45.

Yes, it's when I'm the happiest, I think, in music is when we're performing shows. Even if it's for 20 people, we have so much fun together. That's what I'm happiest. And finally, Lauren. Lauren, my wife, Lauren, sitting here in the front row. I just, I had a number one party recently, and I said, number ones are great, better than any number one I've ever, anything I've ever accomplished record deal, whatever. Lauren's my greatest accomplishment. And if I don't accomplish anything else, I'll be happy with that.

Well, dude, thank you for doing this. This is, like, it's only part one because we're only four years into the publishing deal. Like, we'll have the same conversation in four years and four years and four years. Maybe. I might have peaked and I might be done. Well, that'll be the conversation. We could talk about, the next one, part two. What went wrong with your career? It seemed like it was going so well.

I always ask people what, you know, during those. downtimes in their career. To me, the most interesting stuff is what happens between the highs. Yeah. Like, it's easy to talk about all the hits. Real hard to talk about those times where it's like, I don't know, couldn't do it. It's way more interesting to hear about being like, I'm going to quit and your mom saying, when a door closes another one opens and Justin Timberlake, it calls you the next day, and then Lee Bryce calls you the next day. You're like, oh, that's right. That's more interesting than right now is, like, I mean, this is awesome. Like, you're in. You're a killing it right now. But this is the labor of 30 years of driving two hours to do cello.

And honestly, like, we got to write over quarantine. And already after that, we started texting. We were like, oh, I felt like we were friends. But what's so interesting is how many people I meet, because they meet so many pop people, country people, who talk about their friend Ben. It's probably a different guy, actually. Yeah, yeah, totally. There are a lot of bends. But if you can find success right now in anything, you should, the most successful thing that you've done so far

is the way you've curated a fan base amongst your peers. People support you and are rooting for you so much so that the minute that you're like, many more what I need. I didn't question it. We have this event. It's like, I didn't question it. Like, you have an ability to appreciate your peers and they see that they're doing, they're giving it back to you. You're earning it. It's really fun to watch and congratulations. Well, that means a lot. And I will say, you know, I had so many times along the way when I was struggling trying to figure it out, I would listen to your podcast. I'd be in the car. We'd be in a road trip and we'd be like, okay, wait, that's how, you know, J-Cash did it, or that's how, okay, none of these people really

are any different than we are. They're all figuring it out, and they all stuck with it and had different stories, different lines. And so to be on this podcast means so much to me. I've never stopped being a fan. I never will. I really appreciate you having me. There you go. Thank you guys so much for coming out to Ann the writer is Ben Johnson, ladies and gentlemen, The legend. This episode is produced by Joe London, Hypnosis, Mega House Management, and myself. Shout out Paige McDonald, Kelly Fox,

Casey Robinson, David Silberstein, Tim Kirch, and Zach Weinstein. See you all next week. I'm Ross Golan, signing off.