And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 32: Ashley Gorley

Episode Date: November 9, 2017

He's written 35 #1 singles and had more than 300 songs recorded by artists such as Luke Bryan, Carrie Underwood, Florida Georgia Line, Blake Shelton, Brad Paisley, Jason Aldean, and Darius Rucker. He was named the ASCAP Country Songwriter of the Year in 2009, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017, Billboard Country Songwriter of the Year 2013 and 2016, the NSAI Songwriter of the Year 2013 and 2016, and has received the CMA Triple Play Award nine times in his career (presented to a songwriter who has penned three #1 singles in 12 months). In 2011, he partnered with Combustion Music and Warner Chappell Music to begin his own publishing venture, Tape Room Music. And The Writer Is...This Year's ASCAP Country Songwriter of The Year Ashley Gorley!  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey guys, this is, and the writer is, and I'm your host, Ross Golan. I've written with hundreds of artists and writers over the years, and my favorite part of each session is the first hour when we catch up about life, the industry, politics, composition, whatever. So this is a journey of learning why people write songs, how people write songs, and most importantly, who the people are who write the songs. I'm producing this with the Great Joe London, big deal music publishing and mega house music management if you want to listen to the songs we

discuss in this podcast follow us on our socials find out about special events or buy some of our merchandise go to our website www. www.andthe writer is.com oh and if you enjoy this podcast please rate us on iTunes or whatever your preferred podcast listening site is we really appreciate that effort all week we've been celebrating the 55 annual CMA Awards, where the biggest stars came together on one stage. Hope you had a chance to see Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood host the 51st annual CMA Awards last night on ABC with collaborations by Kelsey Ballerini and Reba McIntyre. Brad Paisley and Kane Brown Marin Morris and Nile Horn and Don't forget Pink who got to sing

Barbies co-written by Yours Truly. It was country music's night to shine with unforgettable performances and the best of the best honored in several categories. You can check out winners and highlights at cMA awards.com or watch the show on on demand. Today's guest on CMA week is the one and only Ashley Goreley. He has been songwriter the year for ASCAP for many years running now, which is so impressive, 34 number one hits. I mean, he's really just one of the best in the industry, the whole industry.

I'm so excited for you to hear it. I hope you enjoyed the show last night. But without further ado, let's get straight into the interview. And The Writer is featuring Ashley Goreley. Welcome to And The Writer is. I'm your host, Ross Golan. This week's writer is Breaking Records. He's a four-time ASCAP songwriter of the year in 2009,

2014, 2015, and 2016. He's a two-time billboard number one country songwriter of the year in 2013 and 2016. He's a nine-time CMA Triple Play Award winner and has number one hits, 33 number one singles. And those numbers don't include the countless hits his publishing company,

Tape Room Publishes. So he's definitely an above-average songwriter and entrepreneur. But what he's best at is being a husband and a father. And the writer is, maybe the most prolific writer in country music history, Ashley Goreley Hey, thanks, I'll take that

I like that Yeah Hi What's up, buddy So I was gonna list I was gonna go through All the songs that you've done

Because rather than going Through each one And talking about how you wrote them I just want like the number 33 That's right, right That's 33 everyone's right Yeah, that's right You know

You say 33 and that That means one thing but if you were to even count to 33, it sounds like a long time. And so this is only going to take a minute, but I just want to name them. So it'll be like a quick, you know. Goodness, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, okay. Dirt on my boots.

A guy with a girl. American country love song. T-shirt. You should be here. Middle of a memory. Heartbeat. Good girl. All-American girl.

Don't forget to remember me. Dirty laundry. I see you. Kick the dust up. Play it again. That's my kind of night. Crash my party. Nothing like you. Young and crazy. Don't it. Hey girl. Rewind. Don't you? Just getting started. Tonight looks good on you. Ah, no. Yeah. Running out of moonlight. It's hard to do, right? Today, American Saturday Night, then, start a band. It won't be like this for long. And you're going to miss. this. That was nice.

I loved the inflection. How crazy? Yeah. It sounded great. How crazy is that? Do you still, do you, um, uh, have you ever read through all of them? I've never done that. No, I've never read them out loud.

It's like, it takes, it takes, it takes the whole, like, what would be the equivalent of, like, the intro through a whole song of just naming titles. Yes. We've been very fortunate to have, have some success there in those, so I don't take that for granted. So you're, you know, you're, you're born in Kentucky. Yep. You know, usually I, I like to ask how they got started, but in one of our new segments that we're going to call, um, what would Luke Laird ask? Oh my gosh. That's hilarious. He says, when you DJed your high school dances, what was more likely to get, when you DJed your high school dances, what was more likely to get those Kentucky kids grinding, our

Kelly's your body's calling or Adina Howard's freak like me. Oh gosh. R. Kelly is the one to go to. The two double time slow dance kind of vibe right there. But Adina would be good too. Atomic dog usually and Humpty

Dance would begin and end every dance every set. They would really begin Yeah. Yeah. Did you know every lyric? Oh yeah, definitely. We get on the mic and yell it out with the song or whatever. So you start off, okay, So let's even go further.

I just loved hip hop R&V. Me and Luke were real similar in that era. Yeah. He did say you did DJ with tapes. Yeah. I had a cassette deck that had the pitch control on it. I don't even know how I found one, but I thought it was like gold, you know.

So you could barely, you know, you could speed it up a little bit on the edge. And then CDs right out. It was like right at the era of cassettes turning into CDs, you know. So right there. Did your parents play music? No. They play like AMR.

radio like high school football games and stuff like that i mean there's a little bit of maybe a touch of country music or something around the house but i was um at that point i was the only child in the house i have a brother and sister that are several years older than me so they were already out you know out of the house so it was more of a watching mtv and then heading to the bedroom and trying to make make mix tapes and and i'd a buddy that you were always into music always in music yeah always messing around with little instrumental keyboards or my grandmother had a piano that i would mess around on or whatever just from you take piano lessons i did like for a few months one time when i was a little kid it didn't it didn't make good sense to me so i didn't do it for very long but it at least got a start

and then i tried to take piano in college and it was like the worst grade i ever got it was any class because by then everything was completely wrong that i was doing so it was too late to too late to make it correct you know yeah it's hard to fix those lifelong mistakes yes um so you go to high school and you're thinking, yeah, I'm going to start DJing parties. Yeah. Is that when you started that? Definitely. Me and a guy I played basketball with Derek, Derek Johnson, who was still, we're still good friends and keep in touch. He had an uncle that had like these huge speakers. I don't even know why. And like a little mixer, like with CrossFit on it and a tape deck. And then I had a tape deck. So we just hook him up to that mixer and he would let us

use his speakers for like 10 bucks or whatever. You know, we'd just put him in the back of a somebody, somebody have to drop us off. We weren't old enough to drive when we started doing it. So we'd just go to a house party or a school dance and set it up and rock it. So you were never the attendee at the school dances. You were just the DJ. No, no, I had to get out there on the floor too. But, you know, you can let that mixtape roll for a little while until it gets the end of the side or when it was CDs you could do that.

But it would be like other people's parties and stuff like that, you know what I mean? Or maybe another little function. We had a lot of, for whatever reason, dance, even birthday parties and stuff were like dance parties, you know. We'd just rent, somebody would rent a little floor like an athletic club or something like that, you know, where they do yoga, and we'd just rock out and turn it into a dance party. Did you get paid for that? Yeah.

I remember we charged like 50 bucks to 100 bucks somewhere in that range. That's awesome. That's good money at that point. And it was fun. It was great. So when do you start actually writing? Were you writing during all this? No, but I was like, you know, I'd buy the kisingles of stuff.

Like I remember I had like seven versions of... They're casingles, you know? Like they'd be in a little sleeve and they were... That's what it would say. It's a cussingling internet with like ten versions of a song. What was your first cissingle? Do you remember? I don't remember.

I'm pretty sure mine was Fush Nickens featuring Chiquel O'Neill. What's up, that's. That's an amazing song. Yeah, I had that one for sure. But there was... I mean, I like pop stuff too. So I had like, here I go again, White Snake.

Oh, right here waiting. Richard Marks was a cassingle. It was blue. Bright blue. the cassette was. Yeah, and that's a great slow dance. Oh, that's a jam. Oh, so good.

But I had like, you know, I remember I had one for Let's Chill by Guy, which is amazing. A little Teddy Riley jam. But it had like seven versions of it. It would be like the ultra chill mix, the bedroom mix. And there would be an acapella.

Somewhere, most of those would have an acapella and then I would like try to mix it with like an instrumental of another one. You know what I mean? So I wasn't, I didn't realize I was writing, but I was figuring out subconsciously what type of music would go with what type of melody you know what i mean like what could lay underneath it i guess why did you get into doing country then if your background was started you know getting into

all that i think lifestyle you know so like we had a tobacco farm and things like that your family did yeah yeah so it was small town it's like a factory and farm town and so um i was it's not like i was anti country at all it was just the culture of my school and all that stuff was more like they we just loved hip, I mean a bunch of country kids that loved hip-hop R&B, you know, which is actually really common if you talk to a lot of people from that area or down here or wherever. So, um, country, like, I remember my parents or my grandmother especially would have, like, some country cassettes around. So I was like a little hip to some of the names and I would see, like, they'd watch, like, an award show on TV, the CMAs or whatever back in the day when like Vince Gill was winning

everything. And so I like, there's an appreciation for it, but I never, I never considered that something I would be like writing or working on or anything, you know. So I really, when I moved to Nashville, I didn't know what I was, I didn't know I was like going to be a country songwriter. I just knew that I was going to work in music somehow. You know, I may be an engineer. I may be a producer. I thought I'd be maybe on the business side, you know, publishing or a label or something like that.

Were you singing? No, no, no, no. I mean, I was singing choir because it was fun in high school, but I was never like. You were never out. You never wanted to be a artist. No, no, no, no, not all. So why do you move to, why and when do you? you moved to Nashville?

Well, I mean, late 90s, when I got out of high school, then, you know, obviously picking colleges, there's only a handful that had this, you know, I was really passionate about music business, not music where I have to read it, because that made no sense to me. But I knew that I had heard of a couple programs that, like, teachers in high school, it's worthy of high school, they knew I was really into it. They gave me like a couple of independent studies where they'd give me a class to just, like, mess around with samplers and keyboards and stuff like that, which was awesome. But I knew that I wanted to do something in that industry.

And so it was like Belmont, MTSU, or I had to go to like Atlanta or L.A. or something like that. So I'd never been anywhere. So Nashville was like going to London, you know, even though it was like three or four hours away from my hometown. And so I picked that because it was closest. And I was like, hey, if this doesn't work out, I can drive home. You know? And so that one, you know, when I researched in Belmont was kind of, of the one target, you know, that I wanted to, that I wanted to chase. And so I ended up going there.

Were your parents supportive of you doing music? They were, yeah, that's what I tell people. They were really supportive even when they had no idea what was going. You know, it'd be like if my daughter wanted to get into fashion, which I have no clue about or something where I'd have nothing, you know, no knowledge of it, but you still don't tell them they're crazy or anything like that. So they were really good at knowing that I was passionate about it. And I remember my dad would always say he would encourage me to find something I loved and to try to figure out a way to make money at it instead of the opposite. Like start making money and then try to talk yourself into loving whatever good you've got. And I always thought that was great advice. You know,

I'm trying to instill that in my kids too. And so that's what I was thinking the whole time. I was like, I love this. I got to figure out a way to make money at this somehow, you know. Did you graduate? Yep. I did. Were you working throughout your, you know. Yeah, it was a very non-college experience for me. I was taking all eight o'clock classes. I mean, the campus is down the street, so it's not really like that, you didn't really go that far from school either.

Right, right, right, yeah. You're literally blocks from there, right? Exactly. But I would, you know, I didn't know what music girl was or anything. Like, it's not, I didn't come here as a kid and go tour it or anything. So I didn't, it took a while to even understand what was happening. You know, I understand that what those houses were and what songwriters were doing. And, you know, I was in college before I knew that songwriting was a gig you could do

without being a master class musician or singer. So once I figured that out, which was toward the end of my freshman year, then I started going for that, going for what they called a staff songwriting deal somewhere. But had you actually written a song at that point? Yeah, at the end of high school I wrote some songs. What's your first song called?

Some horrible songs. Oh, my first country song is called I've already made plans. Oh. And it had a, it wasn't good. Can you sing it? I can't. like can you can you can you can you can you not sing it because you won't sing it or you no i can't think of it right now it was not good enough to uh try to no it was super country and stock

everything about it but that was when i started dabbling like man i like this you know a little story vibe and it had a you know i like trying to write ballads and they they started having a little infusion of rm b and country and i'm kind of toward the end of high school and right when i got to college so when i was at college i was all early classes and i had a work study which means i had to work to make some of the money to go toward college and then I would intern too. So that took up all day, all night, and then I would try to write from like six whenever I got done with that until, you know, 10 or 11 o'clock at night. Did you have people cutting these demos? Yeah, so in that program, one of the things is like studio production or whatever. So I would

write a song and do a work tape. And then other is like a student would engineer it. So it might be horrible or it might depend on who you get. You know, you kind of get them drawn out of a hat. whoever's in the class. So somebody will help produce it. Somebody will play on it. So everybody's like a student. I know record labels right now that are very similar to that. Where it's like it's still a roll of a dice, but who the engineer is. And you might walk in and just say, oh, yeah. Oh man, this is going to be a long day. And I got really like, like, I remember one of my first sessions, there's a guy playing fiddle on the session who I was like, well, gosh, this guy, I think this guy is really good. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. And it was like,

he ended up being Brad Paisley's fiddle player the next year he left school and he still is his fiddle player like he's amazing and i had been phillips playing drums who still drums on like masters and engineers you know demos here in Nashville all the time so just i got lucky with the first session or two uh just with some random talent people that made stuff sound good so were there artists that were coming out of belmont yeah there were artists like like um i remember the first female demo i got hilly lindsay to sing the demo and uh she was there at college the first year with you know same year as me yeah um and then she got a deal immediately which i was nowhere near being able to get a deal but so that kind of all that stuff spoiled me

I was like man all girls sing like Hillary Lindsay this is going to be an awesome town and she's the best you know so it was crazy stuff like that happened you say she got a deal she got a deal as a publishing deal publishing deal yeah so were you like well hey let's write together let's write together let's write together no we didn't write to like 10 years after that probably right I didn't know we had like a couple common connections when I got her to sing that song so it wasn't like I was just hanging out with her and you're writing with her all the time

so the first five or ten songs I wrote by myself because I wasn't about to expose everything to whoever in a room. Then I got set up on a couple blind co-writes with people that I became really good friends with and I thought that was really fun. So I got really hooked on just trying to, I would walk around the piano rooms at Belmont

or hear people out playing their guitar or doing anything. If I heard something I thought was great, I would just be like, hey, we should write a song right now, let's go. That's still how you are. It's still kind of the same way. So be careful. Right.

this is going to turn into something very different if we're not careful. So did you go from, when did you know that you had like a real song? I mean, there's a difference between writing songs versus like, oh, you know what, I'm going to, you know, I want to get a staff writing job to...

To like, maybe I can do this. Yeah. It's funny. It was because I interned at a couple of places and I'd listen to the songs and be like, I think I can beat these songs. You know, like I don't know how, but these, I think I can,

I think I can do this and I remember going back and writing a couple of songs that where were you interning sorry places that don't exist now right at the beginning it was like kind of startup companies then I interned for a place called hamstein publishing who was like independent publisher of the year they had a number one party the first day I interned there so there's some really good places that I you know interned eventually and then got jobs you know working at but I wrote I wrote a couple songs that people you know they're also one-to-be artists at belmont right so I would just be like hey, I became friends with a couple of them, just hanging out some of the guys. And they would say, hey, man, I need a song.

I'm trying to try out for this thing where they'd let you play a song at like a charity basketball game, halftime or something like that at school. So I was like, oh, here's the song. It was like sucked. But for whatever reason, they picked it and they picked him. So then he sang it in front of like however many people were there at the thing, you know, thousands of people and had people like playing along. Artists were playing along with him on stage on it.

And I was like, whoa, this is awesome. Like, I'm in the crowd and everybody's kind of clapping along. this kind of sounds like, it didn't sound like a hit, but it sounded like it had something. How old were you at the time? Probably 19 or 20. Yeah. One of the producers of this podcast, Casey Robinson and I lived on the same hall freshman year college.

That's crazy. Which I mention all the time. It's like there's something about, you know, when you grow up with people in this industry, you start game planning much earlier than you need to. Yeah, yeah. You start dreaming big early. So, yeah, that was the thing. So I was really fortunate to do that.

And then there was a period where I had no deal for about a year. And I was just doing everything I could. You know, like temp jobs and, you know, trucking. Was it frustrating? It wasn't super frustrating because I wasn't sure I deserved one in the first place, you know? And it just made me, I knew I was going to get another one.

I was always been really determined, but it wasn't like a total shock that I went several months without one, you know? But then I had a couple of things. options at the end of that. We're we living? I mean, if you have, if you're in Nashville, which I guess it was cheaper at that point than it is now, but, you know.

Really a lot cheaper. Right. Yeah, I was paying 200 bucks for every, utilities included, you know, with two roommates a month, so it was okay. Right. Yeah. And I was, like I said, I was working, I would get up at five in the morning and go, like, drive, I still remember where.

And like, log in trucking stuff for Averid Express. I would work FedEx, you know, on the line. Or I would do, like a different job every week. You know, putting boxes together or something horrible, something mundane. And the whole time I was like, I got to get this going. So then as soon as I got out of there, I would work on music and was super motivated to get another deal. And the next deal I signed was with combustion music in 2001,

and I'm still affiliated with them 16 years later. That's crazy. So you sign in 2001, and how soon after that until an actual name artist, or signed artists, even, was like, you know what, I like this? I like this song. Yeah, you know, I always have like holds, I feel like I could make stuff sound good.

You know what I mean? Like in the demo world, but the songs just weren't great enough for somebody to grab and take off with. So it was a minute. It was funny when I got that first deal, it was 99, and my first co-write was with a guy that had a couple hits.

And he told me, in that right, I remember he said, it takes, hope you're not to hurry, it takes seven years to have a hit in Nashville. And I was like, that sounds horrible. you know but yeah and you're and of course every writer thinks yeah I'm for sure

yeah like I'm gonna do this next year so that was 99 in 2006 I had my first hit so seven years later yeah I had a first and my first top 40 was my first number one it went you know I had a few things that dwindled it you know that fizzled out at the bottom of the chart before that

that I was super hype about that you know made like 100 bucks but first number one was carry underwood after she won idle and it sold a bunch and it was a great kind of first step how were you able to leverage that? I mean, was it, did you leverage that, or was that just giving you confidence?

Yeah, it was just like, oh, you can get one hit, it can still be a fluke. At least here I feel like that, you know? So it's like, it's not like everybody goes, oh, you got this one hit, it's like, you're great. You know, it's like, oh, you got, of course that worked, it's on Cair Enderwood, you just won American Idol.

And then you almost need a run of a few in a row to get taken seriously in Nashville, I think. Interesting. So, you know, I had that one in 06, and then I had two or three. In 2008, it started rocking, you know, a little more where there was a steady and different artists, different types of songs to where I was getting better co-writes and everything started going up. Were you ever nervous that it would go backwards?

Oh, I still am today. I mean, I am all the time. I always think to the last thing you get cut is, at some point it is, you know, the last hit you have. You don't know it for like three years after it happens, you know, that it's your last one. But I'm like an odd combination of very confident. and very insecure like I think most writers are, you know, so I'm like, I can go from I'm unstoppable to like I need to retire immediately in a breath, you know.

Do you go home with that? Yeah, yes. Yeah. I mean, I try not to. I can turn it off pretty well at home. The great thing about when I go home is it doesn't matter that I'm a songwriter. It doesn't come up. I don't play songs for people when I get there.

And it's, you know, everybody there loves me for who I am, not for if I happen to get placement or whatever that day. You know, so that's a saving grace for me. So I don't necessarily, but it can definitely, it's a struggle for it not to affect my mood if I'm not winning. Yeah. Yeah. Sure.

Do you feel like you're winning right now? Yeah, right now I do. But it's also, yeah, I'm a little insatiable. You know, my first thought, usually when I get a few songs recorded, like if I had some good luck yesterday, and it's like, all right, that's good. but now what about these other things? You know, there's so many, so many irons in the fire that it's not like I'm not satisfied.

I'm just also expect a lot out of myself. So it's not like one song on an album and I'm good. If you have 10 singles out and nine of them are on the top 10, you're wondering why. What happened to that other one? What happened to the other one? It's always the focus. But I'm also very thankful. So it's not like I'm like irritated about that.

No, of course. I'm just driven by that. So, yeah, it doesn't, you know, I'll work really hard at it. And again, like I'm confident I can get on everybody's album. So when it doesn't happen, I'm like, man, what's going on? I've got to fix something, you know. Right. Well, going back, when did you start your personal life?

Like, how did you have a personal life when you've been so determined to be a songwriter? When does that start? Well, I mean, I got married in 2000. Okay, so before all of it. Right when I had got a deal. My wife, um. most likely thought all right he's going to dabble in this music for a minute

like everybody else does for like a year and then we'll like move back to our hometown or whatever you know like then oh is she from she's from about 25 minutes from where I'm from so like not the same school or anything but we met right at the end the perfect thing is that I feel like God orchestrated was that we met right at the end of high school

so not necessarily high school sweethearts from all that you know we didn't we were different schools which worked out perfect and and we were you know, it's like that thing where everybody's, we're going off to college, we're both going off to college, same age. And I remember we were supposed to break up probably, you know, right then, but I did not want to. And I was like, yeah, we can always, like, if this doesn't work out, then we'll break up, you know, long distance, whatever, just be like, forget it. But let's just see if we can do this thing. And we never did break up, you know, still married. And we, she went to University of Kentucky like a bunch of my friends did,

which is like, you know, a big deal. And we're big UK fans and everything. And it enabled me, at school instead of like going to like hang out in my girlfriend's dorm and watch TV like most people are doing or whatever going out then I would be writing every night you know what I mean I'd be working the whole time and writing every night so that was really a good uh a good way for you know we kept we kept in touch and did you know had a great relationship long distance that's not for everybody but it helped me have a lot of time to like really chase um you know really go after what I wanted to do yeah well how did you find a balance Was it just because of the evolution of being with somebody from that young?

Because I know your general schedule, you're very focused. Yeah. But I don't know very many people who work as hard as you do. Right. You know? I've just always been that way. So it wasn't, you know, the thing is I work hard, but I don't necessarily work more than everybody else. You know what I mean?

So I've figured out ways over the years to make sure that they don't come second. I say no to a lot of stuff. as much stuff as I feel like I can and I feel like that's just a mutual respect. So, I mean, it's all about her, right? So, I mean, she knows how to deal with me, what you expect out of me, and then how I'm wired

and she's the perfect compliment to that. So, again, since we've been married, you know, when you're with somebody and they never say maybe you should get a real job, even though you're like, you know, doing crap or losing your deal or making whatever. And she was a kindergarten teacher, so it's like literally the worst two jobs

you can have when you get married. money money wise you know what i mean but we didn't matter whenever we would just do whatever we could do you know what i mean um eat soup and do whatever you know like we're on the street but it definitely we're definitely weren't taking crazy vacations or anything so and that was several years and there's never i always tell people that man like a lot of it has to do with who you're who you're with in that in that period of your life and if they tell you if they take you seriously or not you know and she did and she just knew i would work it out you know after a after a time and she saw a driven I was, then she was never like, hey, you know, you should. I've got friends where I feel like

their significant others don't ever take it seriously. They still think it's a hobby, you know, and they never can see the big picture what could be. Even now? You know what I mean? Like younger people when they start out, I had a lot of people that were my age, got married young, and then ended up letting the writing go after two years because it just wasn't making the amount of money they want to make. They couldn't buy a house or they couldn't buy in this neighborhood or whatever, so they went to work at a bank or whatever the deal was, you know? So I'm just thankful for her that I never and still never felt any pressure, you know, throughout anything, you know, to like ditch that gig. You know, I mean, now it's no problem, you know, but at the beginning when you're not making anything, it's a big deal for somebody to continue to believe in you.

Sure. You know, at first it being my parents and then it being her where nobody says you're crazy, nobody says you should consider having a plan B, you know. My only friend that quit being an artist of any sort went, it was 2008. and left he was on Broadway as an actor and he just didn't want to go to auditions

anymore he starts working at Bear Stearns for like a stable job at a bank and that's the first bank that folded in the crisis

and I remember thinking like well I'm just as broke today as I was yesterday you're now broke and weren't yesterday and I was like you know what

I'm going to be at least if I'm broke I'm broke all the time Right, right, right. Versus like if I lose everything now, then it's my own fault. But it's not going to be because I decided to go something more stable like the banking industry. That's funny. He's my financial advisor now.

There you go. He's very successful now, but that's pretty funny. Anyway. Relationally, it's a big deal. Even now, there's a mutual respect there. So I'm not going to go out on the road every weekend or I'm not going to work nights hardly ever or weekends or anything like that.

And so she knows that, you know, that I say yes to what I feel like I need to say yes to. Sometimes she just keep me in check because I love, I actually love work and love the process. But not very often is there like a whole like, oh, I can't believe you have to go out with so-and-so and can't believe you're working. She's super respectful of that and knows that, you know, knows I'm trying to provide and do what I feel like I need to do,

but not overdo it either. Do you ever run it by her when you have, when you're like, well, this person wants me to work and she's like, that artist is done? No, no, no, no, no, no. That doesn't happen. Not in, like, you're not allowed to go out, but it's like, you're welcome to go out, but nothing's going to happen there. There's a couple maybe that she's like, oh, what are you, what are you going to do with them, you know? Like, or she'll be more like, do something different than whatever they have out right now. Right.

But, no, see, they're the perfect, you know, my daughter is my A&R girl and my, my, my wife does some of that. But we don't have the relationship where I come home, run songs by her. It's very, it's separated in a good way. Now, when I have something I think is great, hey, I want you to hear this and she'll love it. It's a cool thing, but it's not like I come home just going crazy about whatever we wrote that day and talk about.

Some guys do that, and that's great. They have their relationship. But ours is like, that's work, we leave that alone, and then we talk about our relationship or the kids or what kind of, you know, something else we can do. Yeah, for sure. So there's definitely been times where a song will come on the radio and I've told her I wrote it.

know, when we're in the car. That's crazy. Yeah, it's a little crazy. But hopefully she didn't say, wow, this song sucks. Yeah, I'm trying to think if there's a couple of funny times like that, yeah, where she's rolled her eyes at something.

Usually she thinks it's okay. Usually she likes it. It's funny. There's definitely one song that, you know, my wife's not a huge fan of, and she's always like, you know, not that was a big, yeah, it wasn't like a...

What is it? Yeah, not yours, mine. What is it? I'm not going to say. Okay, okay. But it's definitely one where she's always like, yeah, I don't ever have to hear that song again. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's enough stuff out that it's like, it's okay. She's like, yeah, you know, I just think you can beat this one. Yeah, no, I got it. My kids told me she was in the car one time and it came on. And, you know, it never gets old. It's still like a supernatural thing when you hear your own song on the radio. And so they were in the car. They told me this.

And she, like, it comes on and she's just like, changes the station. They're like, mom, like she had done something. Like she'd like thrown out ashes of someone or something. Mom, you can't do that. And she's like, dude, I've heard that enough. I'm over that, you know. This is really funny.

Does your daughter want to play music? When you say she's your A&R girl, I mean, is there... She could be that right now. I swear somebody could hire her. She doesn't miss. She knows hits. She understands them. We're very similar.

How old is she? She? About to be 13. Great market study there or whatever. But she plays, like, she's taking guitar lessons and piano lessons, and she can make up stuff, you know, on her voice memo. and kind of do it. She's not all in.

We talked about this summer trying to kind of get a little more, progress a little bit. But she definitely, you know, if she feels out a thing at school that says, I want to be a whatever when I grow up, it'll be like songwriter or a teacher like me or maybe, you know,

which totally makes sense. So she knows that it's cool. I know that she thinks the, you know, she gets a lot of benefits from it, gets to meet a lot of artists and hang with people or friends don't. So she loves all that. I don't know that she's going to do that.

I actually don't push, maybe to a fault, don't push music on. any of my kids at all. I probably need to do it a little bit more. But I just want them to, I'm always all about them finding their passion, you know. When you say a songwriter or teacher,

in a weird sort of way, that's what a publisher is. Yeah. You know, and you took on a role at some point saying, you know, I'm going to start signing people. I assume Taeproom was your first. Yes. You know, that's your first real joint venture. Why at that point were you thinking

it's time to, when I'm already like, as busy as I am, I'm going to now start bringing in other writers. My story on that is a little bit different because I think a lot of writers, once they get success, are like, dude, I should sign some people and get a little extra income on something. But even in college, I thought I was going to be a publisher, maybe more than a writer.

You know, like I even actually went back and taught three semesters of publishing adjunct, just like on the side, because I love doing it right before the kids got a little older and everybody, it was madness. But I'll end up going back and doing that again probably because I love teaching creative people how the business works just so they know all angles.

And so I really, from the beginning, knew I was going to be a publisher at some point and wanted to do both. And I was just waiting on the right time to kind of hit the gas on that. So once I'd had what I thought was enough success to be able to spend the other plate in the air, then I kind of had a deal that included that joint venture.

So that's been a while too. It's been six or seven years ago. Yeah. and signed, I signed three people in that first kind of volume one of tape room, and now I've got three more, so there's six of us total, you know, over the last few years, like kind of three newer ones, and the three, the first three I signed are all, like, having huge success, you know, in their own right.

Zach Crowell, Matt Jenkins, and Jerry Flowers have all had multiple number ones and are killing it. And so that's been really fulfilling to try to help mentor, influence them however I can, you know, to get where they are now. So I really, I love anything to do with mentoring, coaching. I've always coached basketball and helps run anything, any kind of like teaching, you know, that angle has always turned me on, you know. Do you have, speaking of teaching, do you have sort of a method as a writer that is,

I mean, obviously you have some sort of, in pop we sort of call it song math sort, you know? and you and I've written in L.A. and we've written, last time we wrote, it was in Las Vegas. So obviously you get, when you're in that environment, you write a certain way. Do you write differently for different genres? And when you're writing in, you know,

these massive amount of hits in country, is there a through line in that composition? Yeah, I do use a different corner of my brain in those, but I think it's more of a lyrical, phrasing approach. You know what I mean? If I'm working on something pop, then it's the, it doesn't make perfect sense purposefully. You know what I mean? Like in country, it's very pedestrian in a good way. Like it's always something that someone has gone through or could picture themselves actually doing. You know, a lot of my favorite pop songs, lyrics are things that aren't going to happen.

You know what I mean? More like fantasy versus reality a little bit. You know what I mean? It just has a different shine to it. So I still use, because I grew up on pop and R&B, I still use a lot of, of like cadences and like some of the math you know a little bit of the Swedish math kind of interpolated into the into the country you know the lifestyle the phrasing the melodies and the lyrics of the country song so I do I do borrow from that into the country genre a little bit more than I borrow country stuff when I'm working on pop you know oh that's interesting is that is that more so now than usual or is that just that's just how you write I mean now country music's changed since the first you know 10 years ago when I

I had my first hit. That song has varying melodies. It's all about the lyric, and it used to be like that, and it's still all about the lyric a little bit, but it's, and now the more people that listen to multiple genres, I feel like they are not going to settle for, like, a mediocre melody or music or whatever here, because they can go get that,

they can go get a better melody somewhere else. So to kind of fill that void, the rhythms and the tracks, and the different sounds and the different things going on in country, just suit me really well over the last several years. So I can be a little more free melodically or voicing-wise with the chords or whatever to kind of use a lot of that. So I'm known as a little more of a stickler

for the melody in this market than a lot of people are. Now there's a lot more melodic people, but definitely at the beginning of when I was having big runs, I was concentrating a lot more on melody than I think a lot of other people were. Yeah. I like that you say like when you were on a big run. you know what I mean

just when it kind of took off a few years ago I mean it is pretty crazy the last three years to be songwriter of the year for anything is nuts even if it was like you're the best songwriter at home or something that's an accomplishment

on this side of town this side of the Walgreens yeah yeah yeah I mean it's that's pretty crazy that's really crazy to me yeah that stuff doesn't sink in very well right it will when you're 80 yeah the

rather than going through individual songs we're going to jump to the next segment which is, I'm going to name five people and just tell me what it comes off the top of your head. That's not really the name of it. I like what would Luke Laird. Yeah, what would Lerderd has? I want a segment. That's the goal now.

My new goal is I want a segment name after me. Okay, well, we can probably... I'll think of something. I'm going to hit you up about some other interviews that we got coming up. I'll keep you busy. I definitely feel like we can punch some earlier interviews that we've done.

Okay, so let's go with five people that... Okay. Okay, well, let's start with Luke Laird. I asked him on his episode, you were one of the five. So go ahead. Give me Luke Laird. Oh, gosh, a Luke Lairdism? I mean, we're like kindred spirits.

You know what I mean? It's the first thing. I really think we're so similar, you know, with our musical tastes and all that stuff. We're always texting each other about basketball stuff or old hip-hop stuff. Or he, you know, he'll text me about just a funny, whatever. you know like some kind of old video from new edition or something like that like we just grew up on the same stuff so and and i always it's a generic word but nice he everybody thinks he's the nicest dude ever he smiles constantly um he's so funky i love how just i love that he goes hunting in

pennsylvania and then can do a session with snoop dog it's like the perfect you know what i mean the perfect uh gamut that he runs there so yeah yeah yeah kindred spirits are twins a little bit luke brian oh man life change he the king he's a king of country right now he's a king of country right now He was in the studio yesterday, and he, nobody can move a crowd, you know, with the way that he does. So, I mean, I've seen him in huge stadium, football stadium settings, and it's amazing. Another thing, one word that I thought I brought out of the bat is, like, unfazed, you know what I mean, or unchanged. So I remember writing with him when he very first moved to town, and he's just a hilarious, you know, country boy, and he's still that way. So if you need something, he's just like he always was.

You know, he's right. He's like, hey, you need a spot to go fishing or he needed to know whatever. Then he's that guy. So I think unchanged is cool. Carrie Underwood. Life changer, for me, for sure. And just perfect, man, what a perfect vocalist and great role model for my daughters and all that stuff, my daughter and everything.

So she was the first, you know what I mean? As far as me having success like that, having a hit, that was such a cool. thing because I was watching. We watched American Idol like routinely like we were in on it then, you know, whatever season that was. And so I remember literally saying like, I got to get a song on this girl right here, you know, when she was like barely in the top 10. So to kind of see that all the way through and for that to happen was, was insane. So she, I mean, she's sweetheart. She's great. Yeah, we just recorded her a couple days ago and I was telling Joe that it's almost in the nicest way. It's almost like a party trick because it's so good and so consistent

And she can go to She starts at 10 So you know it's not like 10 am Like she starts at level 10 So she goes and she cuts a vocal and you're like I guess that's Guess that was it Because you can only do so many takes of it

Before you're like I think we didn't We can't blow your voice because you just nailed it Right and you're so used to saying Okay now let's take the energy up a notch Or let's now let's try to nail the melody but every time, as soon as I finish a song, if I do a vocal with it right then, she sings it like she's been living with it for a month.

You know what I mean? So she is like perfect, almost to where you have to be careful that the song is as good as whatever's just randomly coming out of her mouth. You know what I mean? So that's my first thing I'm thinking while she's singing is like, all right, this obviously sounds amazing. Is it this a hit if like I was singing it?

You know? So I'll have to like sing it to myself. Like, if I'm doing this, does this still sound like a hit? Because she makes everything sound amazing. So she's so great. She's been so sweet. Brad Paisley Oh man

I mean you've had a lot of hits with him Yeah early believer though Like Brad was one of the first artists I work with With nothing To show you know what I mean It's not like I had a run of hits And then he said hey come on Come on in so

Brad's been a really good friend From the beginning So he In that kind of 2007 You know 06-0708 era I wrote a couple of songs There were outside songs that he recorded And then he invited

me kind of into that circle of writers it's really hard to get in and always respectful always like you know the hardest working dude i know we that's the only time i've written a song and finished at nine a m wrote all night until nine so he's all about the late night hours and and torturing uh writers a little bit but that's funny yeah he's a hard worker but yeah that was one of the early early friends he's amazing um let's go with thomas rett and rat aiken's Because you have totally different relationships to both of them. Yes. Opposite ends of the spectrum there.

Different. It's the same and different. There's such an interesting dynamic in relationship. You know, like if we're writing with Rhett right now, we pack a red man and it would be a free hunting t-shirt and jeans and boots. And Thomas Rett would have the Adidas on and like a cooler outfit than I can ever rock, you know. But he's still a country. But, you know, they share a farm.

and they're both like amazing in their own right, and I've written a few things with them together, and it's such an interesting dynamic the way they operate, you know, the way they kind of separate that relationship, but then it's still a father's son. I've never seen anybody prouder than Red. Red will get carried away, even in a right, kind of looking at some new Thomas Rett statistics.

So as separated as they are, and as much as Thomas is a star in his own right, that daddy pride is just sweet every time. You know, every time he kind of, they'll have some shows where they'll invite Red out, to do like a song with them and it's like the most amazing thing you know they make you cry it's crazy so yeah those guys are awesome i love those guys we did zach crowell's podcast which will either be out before this or after this but let's go with zach and i think then you should probably mention

you know jerry and matt and like sort of the the tape room now six i was going to say the first three because i don't i don't know the next day maybe i do but let's go with those those first three successful, like massively successful producer writers. Right. You know, but yeah, let's go with those three. Oh, Zach, I immediately think Jelly Roll or Lishy.

Which is random words because Jelly Roll is just a rapper, like an in-town rapper. When I signed Zach, he was selling hip-hop beats for cash, which this is not where you come to do that. We're in Nashville. So that has always been hilarious to me, and I love that about him. And he was just straight, I mean, just rap beats like crazy,

not a drop of anything else. And I always thought that was great. Unless he's the house where he lived. He's moved now into Forest Hills, but it was just an awesome spot like this house where he just kept believing in himself. He was recording Sam Hunt vocals in there on like a cheap mic with no booth or anything.

You know, so just seeing him grow from that place, you know, that street and hasn't changed at all except he's changed, you know, locations and stuff like that. Now he's got a couple kids and everything. But yeah, that street will always be, and that house will always be like a special thing. We've made a lot of hits in there, and he's recorded lots of people in there. It's like amazing when he's telling people to come to his house.

And they're like, this house? He's like, yeah, that's the one. Come on in. But he's been amazing. He's definitely, I wrote the first song with him that he ever wrote. And so, you know, getting in on the ground floor, like the real ground floor with somebody like that is special. And he's got an amazing, amazing song instincts and track instincts and production instincts. so I'm just glad to be a part of his career. What about the other two?

Matt or Jerry, I mean, Prodigy. Like Jerry Flyers, people don't know. He plays everything ridiculously and sings like a maniac, you know, and he doesn't get a lot of a chance to do that as much as he could. He's the MD's music director for Keith Urban, so he'll play, you know, he plays bass in the band

or he'll play guitar or whatever. You know, they all switch around. They're all brilliant in that band. But he can do some pop stuff, some R&B stuff. He knows all that stuff. inside out. So he's just really, really, really amazing. And he's had some bad luck on stuff where he's almost, I mean, for years and years, he would get big cuts and then not get the single or something

the bottom would drop out. And I think a lot of other people would have quit. And he, you know, when we signed him, that was why I signed him because I knew he was, he was relentless and he was ready to, ready to, like, get some new energy and get it all going. He's met an awesome girl and gotten married, and his whole life's changed around. So he's completely, completely transformed. I've gotten to see that and he's been rewarded with some success from that so he's just a, you know, a great guy who's in a great spot now

so I've gotten to see that transition. Even when I came out here when we first wrote like I didn't, it's not like I don't think I had had any cuts out here and I had some pop albums but you've always been willing to write with whoever is next

and you're always... And you don't, but you don't ever know that you take that risk and it's hard. It's hard when you're busy. and at the time you're having so many hits to go and say, you know, I'm going to spend a day with this unknown writer, whoever that may be, is a certain risk.

And I'm always impressed by that. And it's one of those things that reminds probably a lot of other writers that, well, Ashley is probably writing with that person because he doesn't care. Right. So I'm going to go and take that risk. Right. And without people like you in it, it becomes harder for the people who are next to move in.

And you keep opening doors for all these people. And it's really impressive. But there's that and the fact that maybe you got a new car since the last time I saw you. Oh, no, it's out there. I am getting one soon. But that's the whole thing. I mean, you just don't care. Right.

You just don't, you know, we've had a lot of conversations on a personal note. I know that, you know, we've had some health issues in my life, and you've always been, you text me, you take care of other writers, you take care of other, I imagine other publishers, other artists, and you're just, you're leading by example, and I hope people in all genres recognize that it's, it is really a community, but it's a community if we make it a community. Right, all right, yeah, it's up to us. It's not, yeah, it's up to us. You know, so thank you for being you and thank you for doing this.

I appreciate that, yeah. It's a special business, man, and people like you guys that are in different genres, just, I mean, you can tell. You can tell if somebody's a great guy that you can get along with, that's the first thing before you know how great of a singer or anything else they are in the room or their skill level. So, yeah, I think we're blessed. We're all blessed with a good instinct of if the people are somebody we want to be around,

then we can do something, you know, great. together. So that's always been the way I look at it and it's fun to try new stuff, meet new people. I always love doing that. You know, get to know them on all levels, blur all the lines, you know. Yeah. All right, man. Well, let's go write a song. Let's try. Let's do it. Thanks.

If you missed the 51st annual CMA Awards last night on ABC, you can check out the winners and highlights of your favorite artists, including Garth Brooks, Carrie Underwood, Luke Brian, and many more by visiting CMAWords.com Or watch on On Demand

Thanks for listening to this episode of And The Writer Is. If you want to hear music from this songwriter I just interviewed, be sure to check out our Spotify playlist or visit our website at and thewriteris.com. If you like what we're doing, please subscribe to us on iTunes. You can also like us on Facebook and Twitter. And The Writer Is is is produced by Joe London, edited by Miles Bergsmah, and published by Big Deal music.

A special thanks to David Silberstein from, from Mega House Music and Michael White. On next episode, we sit down with Zach Crowell. It was awesome. So it was like in a month, I was going to go out to L.A. and do a week out there. And in that time, he heard Copcar. I'm pretty sure my publisher, Chris Ferran at Combustion Music, I'm 99% sure he sent it to him. But Keith didn't know that I wrote it.

He didn't know that the guy whose tracks he was liking, the guy who was hiring to come out there, he didn't realize that it was the same guy. He just loved this song, Cop Car, and he also loved these other guy sounds. Somewhere in that month of us coming out there, he put it together. I don't know, Jerry told him or whatever, but the first day at rehearsals, I'm in L.A. at SIR or whatever room, and I'm, you know, just sitting there with my laptop, and I'm just trying to be one of the cool kids because I've never been, still not, but still never been in the room with super talented people.

and Keith walks in and he comes up to me and introduces himself and gives me a big hug and gives me this look and says he says me and you need to get in the studio sometime my friend and like I had heard that he had heard cop car but I can't be the it took everything in my power not to go like Keith you know do you like my song man you know I'm just trying to be cool I'm like consciously saying play it cool in my head. Very professional yeah but I'm like freaking out and uh the first day he doesn't say anything that night my publishers are calling me they're like did he say anything about the song? He said anything? I'm like, no, he didn't say anything. I'm just going to play it cool, keep playing it cool. And the next day, Keith, I swear he did it to me on purpose. He knew he was going to give me a memory. Like, I swear he, like, so I'm sitting there the next day with my laptop, my drum machine program, whatever I'm doing. And that guy, and I'm so glad he did, he walks over to me with a guitar. We've never talked about the song before. Sits down next to me and starts singing me the song. He goes, We drove right pet, the no, and I'm sitting there like, like, that's, I'm like, that's,

This dude's singing my song to me, you know. And he knows what he's doing. He totally knows what he's doing. Until next time, this is Ross Golan.