And The Writer Is...with Ross Golan - Ep. 43: David Hodges

Episode Date: May 28, 2018

Our next guest is a multi-platinum, Golden Globe nominated, Grammy and BMI award winning songwriter and producer with over 65 million records sold to date. He began his career as one of the founding members of Evanescence, whose debut album ‘Fallen’ sold over 18 million copies and featured the hit tracks “My Immortal” and “Bring Me To Life.” Over the past decade, he has worked with some of the biggest artist’s in the world. Whether it be writing their hits or creating successful end titles for film, he is one of the most sought after multi-genre songwriters in the industry. His signature sound starts on the piano and can be heard across many of the song he’s written such as Christina Perri’s ‘Twilight’ end title, “A Thousand Years,” as well as hit singles such as Kelly Clarkson’s # 1 “Because of You,” Carrie Underwood’s “See You Again” and Daughtry’s “What About Now.” He continues to make waves within the music industry working with megastars such as Keith Urban, Maren Morris, Jason Mraz, Christina Aguilera, Enrique Iglesias, Tim McGraw, Lady Antebellum, and many others. And The Writer Is… David Hodges! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Season 3 of And The Writer is I am 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.m.com oh and if you enjoy this podcast please rate us on whatever your preferred podcast listening site is we really appreciate that effort Welcome to And The Writer is. I am your host Ross Golan. This week's writer is a multi-platinum Grammy-winning Golden Globe nominated multi-format champion who co-founded Evanescence which sold 18 million copies while he was penning Kelly Clarkson's defining masterpiece. He's topped billboard, pop radio, country radio, AC, Hot AC, and Rock Radio in addition to crafting the song behind one of the most successful movie franchises ever. from Little Rock, Arkansas.

This guy has no genre, but he does have cute kids and a wife. And the writer is, my favorite debater in music business, Dave Hodges. Oh, I like all of that. That's fantastic. Thank you.

That feels real good. My favorite debater, I like that. So we were just saying, you know, there's this thing about buying things as maybe that's a way you can acknowledge success, because in songwriting, we sell air for a living. So you end up with these chart positions. That's why something like a platinum record ends up meaning something.

Because somebody says, this is something to acknowledge this success. It's not like you build a car, you have a car. I don't know, it's building a car. But you build a house, you get a house. You know, you build a song and it's still just, it's air, or it's digital ones and zeros. And the idea of like buying a house, becomes like the way you define something or if you heard you know Joe was saying he wanted wants

this big leather ottoman that like that's the thing you know you just bought a place in Nashville does that feel like you've made it so this studio that I just finished building when I moved to LA the first when I moved to LA right after Evan essence had started working we started making money. I had this little room, little box of a room that I was using as my own studio. And then we moved about two years later and I had a little bit better space that I was working out of and then we moved about a year later after that, I moved into the house where you and I had worked before in Studio City. And that setup was pretty rad. I felt like I kind of could get the most out of the things that I wanted to when I was writing. But this place that we just finished in

Nashville is really like the thing that's been in my brain, I feel like from the very beginning, like this is the perfect studio set up for me. And I was David Ryan Harris and I were writing there just the other day. And I turned to him and I was like, man, if success in this business has afforded me any luxury, this is the luxury that I feel like I'm so glad I've had any success for. All the other stuff, having a nice car or a house with the pool or all that stuff, that's fine. But if I didn't have that stuff, I'd still be making music and I still would be, I think I still could be as happy as I could be today. But man, having like that environment to be able to create in and it feels limitless,

I can't wait. I love it. Yeah, I'm super stoked. Okay, so you were born. That is true. Okay, so you're born in Arkansas? I was born in Oklahoma. And I moved to Arkansas when I was five, but I grew up in Arkansas, yeah.

So, you know, the idea of thinking, to me, somebody grows up in Oklahoma and Arkansas is for sure going to end up in country music. That seems about right, yeah. You know, but then you end up in one of the most identifiable bands. But before you get to that, how do you develop in a musician? My parents are both pretty musical. My mom could sit down and play a piece on the piano. if she was reading it. My dad couldn't read music but played by ear.

And both were pretty good, but had skill sets that were really opposite of each other, which I think is kind of funny. Me and my brother and sister and I all had to take piano lessons as a kid, and I hated every minute of it, but it was something that we had to do. And then when I was 15 years old, I had stopped taking piano lessons for about six months or so.

And I was sitting in biology class one day, and a melody came to my head, and I was like, what song is that? And then somewhere in the middle that I realized, like, oh, that's not a song. Like, that's a song that needs to be written. And I went home from school. I didn't know anyone who was in bands.

I didn't know anyone who wrote music. I didn't really even aspire to it. But I sat down at the piano, and I knew the instrument well enough to kind of work my way through. And that afternoon, I wrote a song, and I was hooked. Do you know what the song was? I honestly think it was called,

Baby, I love you, or I love you, baby. It could be the most generic and worst song title of all time. Do you remember the melody? I don't, I don't. And I wish that I had recorded it. When I was in high school, I was really into, I had watched too many, like, John Hughes movies or something, and I was convinced that some big shot from New York was going to,

his car was going to break down in Little Rock, and he was going to somehow hear my song as I was sitting at my piano at my house, and he was going to steal it and take it for some big thing. So I copy wrote, or I, yeah, paid the, $20 and sent all these songs out to the Library of Congress when I was in high. So much money I spent in high school copywriting songs that are horrible. And I bet this song is probably one of them. I bet I could probably find it.

I have all the cassette tapes still from high school. I have cassette tapes from when I started going to a studio and recording. But these were like in my house. No, I mean like cassette tapes like yeah, yeah. I mean, boomboxer. Yeah. The whole, I sold the task scam and everything and like sending all those compilation because I couldn't afford each one, but you could send a compilation.

And that would work. Yeah, yeah. It would work. So you'd send it to the library of Congress. See, you were smart. You were planning ahead. It's weird because people now still send, if somebody sends to me like, here are all my songs, and at the bottom it's like they were copyrighted

at in, you know, 2014 or something like that, I for sure will not check those. Because that person is so scared someone's going to steal their stuff, that those are the people that freak

the hell out of me in the music business. Those of you are doing it, that's great. Protect your copyrights. But the minute it's fixed, it's copyrighted technically. The minute you record it, it's fixed. So you have some evidence of when you recorded it in email. You probably bring that up in court.

Especially, yeah, because with things like MP3 is in email, all that stuff is so locked in. There's so many ways to backtrack where it came from that it doesn't matter as much now. So you're sending out your music to the Library of Congress. So you recognize that there was some value in what you were doing, right? That afternoon, I remember sitting at the dinner table that night and I told my parents I wrote a song and my mom was like,

that's amazing, I want to hear it. And my dad was like, cool, whatever. Because I think he knew, he knew enough to know that my first song was not going to be any good. Was he a professional musician? No, he's a doctor. But he knew enough about just the process of building a craft. I'm putting words in his mouth now.

But I have the impression that he knew, A, this is probably going to be a hobby of his, and B, his first song is not going to be great. And I want to be able to praise his growth in this process. So he's like, yeah, whatever, that's cool. Every song I've ever written, my mom is loved. and over time my dad started to really like that stuff and to me the balance of that was really helpful

because it was like I needed a cheerleader but also to have another voice to go this song is better than the other one I liked it more because of X when did you write something that your dad liked I don't know probably probably a couple years later when I graduated from high school

I feel like I wrote a song for the graduation or something and I remember him coming up to me and saying man that was really really good like it was beyond the scope of him realizing that one of his kids could make a thing. And I see that now as a parent too. It's like every once in a while I see little glimpses

of my daughters doing something. And it's like, I couldn't do that. And I don't know how you did. Abigail, my oldest, is really good at drawing. And I have terrible penmanship. I can't draw it all. And every once in a while, she'll show me something. I'll be like, I don't know how you.

Like, I know where you came from. I've been here the whole time. And I don't know how you made that. I think that was a kind of thing that happened probably after two or three years of writing that my dad was like, wow, you really made something that sounds like it could be on the radio.

Looking back, you and I both know, it was not that good, but it was definitely better than the things before it and kind of went from there. So how do you get from, you're naturally writing? I mean, no one's teaching you.

Yeah, it's just in my bones, I guess. Were you listening to certain people being like, oh, yeah, I want to write like blank? Yeah, I mean... Someone's teaching you incidentally. Right. You know? I, so I remember in high school I spent money on copywriting with the Library of Congress

and I spent money on songbooks. I would buy CDs kind of, but I really would spend more money buying the songbook of of Stings, Ten Summothers Tales and going through there and seeing the chords and seeing how he built and put stuff together. That record more than anything else, I think, really pushed me to say, wow, this is something that will take me a lifetime to master and also something that's inspiring

every step along the way. Did you ever meet Sting? I've not met Sting, no. Yeah, he probably would appreciate hearing that. Maybe, I don't know. Yeah. I guess we know some other stories, but we'll get there.

So then you go and you start playing, you start writing at that point, songs your dad's like, hey, that's pretty good. Yeah. What gets you to start being in bands? Were you in bands in high school? Not at all. No, it was always just me.

Were you always the singer? I was always the singer. And it wasn't necessarily out of this drive to perform, but especially in that time, performing was the only arena where people could hear my songs. So me sitting at the piano, writing and playing and singing, in that, I don't know, that Elton John kind of James Taylor's singer-songwriter form is I think what I was aspiring to,

I remember I went to Christian high school and they had chapel once a week and I would lead music at chapel. And I would every week try to convince the principal that I had written a song that was somehow connected to some spiritual thing that we would be talking about at chapel. But I was just writing cheesy love songs at the time. But I would try to convince her like, hey, could I play this song as like a special during the chapel? because my thing was like, I just wanted to get a reaction from an audience of original music that I was writing. So it wasn't about the buzz of me performing in front of people,

but I just wanted people to hear the songs and just to see how that played off with folks. Did you get to do that? I did it almost every week. And it was like... And people thought the songs were specifically religious because of the environment? No, I think...

Or they knew what was going on. I think they knew it was going on. I think the principal knew it was going on too, but she was like, yeah, whatever, David. This song's about your grandmother who passed away. That's lovely. Go ahead and sing the song. song yeah but so so i was performing but i don't think it was like the the goal never was like

madison square garden me on stage playing songs in front of people i think it was just me creating music that that that was getting out to people so there was a it was took a long time i think to get from those early days to realizing i wanted to be a songwriter and a producer not necessarily an artist but it went through this avenue of being an artist i think for a while to get to that place so it's interesting you mentioned james taylor because you actually have like a really tenor voice i mean you sing there there aren't a lot of writers where usually if i'm in the room i have the highest voice yeah and every time like you sing you have like a lot of soul in it and is you have like a really like high tone yeah you know um do you think that that's one of those things that that made you

you starting to write with females, maybe that's got to be something that's been really helpful for you. It's probably chicken in the egg because I do know in the last 10 years I've written more with female artists than I have with male artists and my voice is,

I'm more comfortable in higher registers now than I was 10 or 15 years ago. So I wonder if it's like just because I spend a lot of time with Christina Perry that I'm going to be singing up in that space as opposed to singing lower. Yeah, I think it's probably in my bones a little bit early on. I just didn't know. Again, I wasn't in an environment where I was around a lot of other songwriters or bands or whatever. Sure. So when do you start playing with bands?

So I went to college for a couple of years in Oklahoma. Where? Oklahoma Baptist University. And it was a pretty musical school. Big music program, but it was all classical music there. and I remember entering into talent contest there and doing pretty well I was always kind of always felt like a bigger fish in a smaller pond and then I went to this songwriting competition in Colorado for a couple of years running this Christian songwriting competition in Colorado and did pretty well there and met some publishers in Nashville Christian publishers in Nashville through that process and I was going to be going to school at belmont i was going to my junior year i transferred yeah so i went to nashville my junior year and i had had some business cards and met with some people and they said

when you get to town we'd love to hear some more music and get to know you and i've moved to town and i was 20 years old and i met with some publishers and played them some music and they said this is good you're not there yet but keep writing and i was like no i'm i'm 20 it has to happen now like I'm too old for not to start. And I feel like every 20-year-old musician I know has that thing in their brain. And once you get past it, once you're 24, 25, you realize like, oh, it wasn't that big of a deal.

But there's something about that age range where it's like, I'm not a kid anymore. I'm an adult. And it needs to happen for me right now. So I met with those people, and they said, you're not worth signing now or not ready to do the whatever, but keep going. And I got really...

So they were encouraging. Is that a now? Nashville thing or were they encouraging because they believed, you know? You'd have to ask them on that. I don't know. I think at the time, looking back on it, I think they were meaning to be encouraging, but to me it was just, it was a shot to the gut. And I had met Ben Moody probably a year prior, maybe two years earlier. And so Ben and Amy were both still in high school and they were making music and Little Rock together, kind of the early forms of what evanescence was

and ben was helping me record some of my singer-songwriter stuff and i would kind of be around as he was recording their stuff and after that semester at belmont ben and i were hanging out over the holidays uh and i said man i don't think i don't think i don't want to be in christian music or i don't think i can be in Nashville i don't i don't know what i'm doing anymore i'd spent the last five years of my life moving in a certain direction i was like i feel like i'm hitting

hitting a dead end here and Ben told me it's like yeah Amy and I have been making music for a couple years now and we've played a couple of shows and people kind of like it

but I just got this gig at a voiceover studio and they pay me $30,000 a year which for a guy who dropped out at high school like for any of us at that age is like

$30,000 a year that's like a proper job and in Little Rock and in Little Rock yeah exactly so he said yeah I think we're gonna I think I'm gonna quit doing the band

stuff and I'm just gonna focus on this and I was like no man I think you guys are on to something what you're doing it seems like you're moving in a direction that's really cool and he was like well you you shouldn't stop making music either why don't we try writing some songs together

so I dropped out of I dropped out of college and Ben and I lived in an apartment together and we spent probably I guess nine months or so working day jobs he'd go to his voiceover studio i worked at circuit city selling computers what did your dad a doctor say oh he dropping out of this was the hard this was definitely the hardest season of yeah with me and my dad because he he always thought my parents always thought

music as a as a hobby is really a life-giving wonderful thing but no one makes it in this business no one from little rock arkansas becomes a professional musician so so he definitely did not like the idea of it. And didn't love the music that we were making with Evanescence and didn't love the company I was keeping. And so it was tricky to figure out. I think it's one of those necessary, like this is the way that, especially the way that boys become men is this distancing themselves from their parents and defining their

own space. And some people do that more gracefully than others. But that was definitely that season for me. that it was like, I got to do what I'm going to do. And so we spent about nine months making what we thought was our magnum opus, and it turned out to be a demo CD that we ended up getting a record deal off of. How do you get a record deal from Little Rock? If I've learned anything about the music business,

I feel like everybody's story has some, at least one super weird moment to it. And ours is, We make this demo CD. We, all our favorite records, we look on the back and it says mastered by, and we didn't know what that meant. But we were like, this is our greatest work. We need to get it mastered. I mean, they're called master.

They're called masters. Yeah. Hello. So we didn't have any mixers. I mean, truly, the whole thing was made by me and Ben in our living room. And Amy, after school would come over and sing. And then he and I would stay up until 4 in the morning, working on it. Not knowing what we were doing at all.

just following our own muse with a piece together PC that we had like it was it was funny looking back then because all you want early on is like if i had some more money than i could get better gear and better gear gives me this thing better gear means better songs right i mean totally because everyone early on thinks that but for us because we had such limitations because we had no money we just kind of made do with what we had and from little rock arkansas the the close just like proper studio was this studio called Arden in Memphis that was two hours away and there was a guy mastering records there and there was a guy named Brad Blackwood that was mastering at that Ardent studios and so we drove one Saturday afternoon to Ardent and we had our computer and monitor and all of our gear in the back of our car because we didn't know what mastering a record was so we were like do we need we get to the place and we're like do we need to set everything up for you or like how do how does this work and he was like well do you have a CD of your record it's like yeah we have that it's like that's like that's like this is wizardry i don't know what's happening so we give him the CD and he said give me two or

three hours you guys go get lunch or whatever and then come back at two o'clock a minute should be done like sweet so we leave grammy yeah here we are so we leave and go to lunch all excited about what our record is going to sound like when we come back and we listen to it it sounds good and we leave and that's the end of it could you tell the difference it's louder I don't know we were kids we didn't know any better

can you tell now like I have not listened to the mixes of that record but I'm sure no I mean like can you tell when a song's mastered now um if I mix it yes if somebody else mixes it maybe not so crazy it is weird though

true masters I mean right yeah I can't I mean I can't maybe I don't know when I know You can only tell in theory in comparison to the other songs on the album. That's really the main purpose. You know, so if it's a one-off song that's mastered, you're like... I guess.

Because if somebody sends me like, look, man, it's only a rough mix that's not mastered yet. You're like, dude... Whatever. I don't even care if there's one other instrument. Right. Like, you can just send me an a cappella. I'll tell you if I like the melody and the lyrics. Do you know what I care about is that?

Words from a songwriter, yeah. I genuinely don't care about who masters it. No offense, master engineers. I'm sure you guys know a lot about songwriting, too. Maybe. But to me, the difference between, if I mix something, the difference between the finished mix and the master is like, if I turn it really loud,

there are frequencies that are obnoxious in my mixes. And when it's mastered well, I can turn it up really loud, and those frequencies are cool now. Sure. But truly that's it. Anyway. So you meet the master. He goes through, he gives you a CD.

He gives us a CD. of the newly mastered mixes. And this is the magic moment that Ben and Amy and I could have never planned on, could have never anticipated, is while we were gone, there was a band in Studio A called Dust for Life, and they were signed to Wind Up Records.

Wind up records started with Creed. Creed sold 30 million copies, and so they had a lot of money to spend a lot of bands, and one of the bands they signed as this band called Dust for Life. The lead singer, a guy named Chris Gavin, had two bottles of water that morning and had to pee.

And the bathroom was on the other side of the mastering room. And Brad happened to have the door open to the mastering room and happened to have music playing when Chris walked by. And in the second and a half that he walked by, he heard something that caught his ear. And he poked his head in the room and he said, hey, what's this? And Brad said, oh, these kids from Little Rock, it's a record, an independent record that I'm mastering.

He's like, oh, is it any good? It's like, yeah, it's kind of cool. And he asked for a copy of it. And three months later, we were signed to Wind up Records. Wow. Yeah. So to me, the moral of that story is, follow Chris Gavin wherever you go.

No, the moral of that story is, like, it doesn't, Gavin's bladder didn't change my career. It's that Ben and I spent the time making, that record and it was worth listening to when someone heard it. And that's the only thing I can control. And I think today, in 2017,

with how social media works, your moments of Gavin's bladder are probably hundreds of times more than they were in 2001 when that happened with us. So if you're chasing down whatever that thing is, that's fun.

you can but maybe just like write songs that are worth listening to and those I think those moments happen a lot more often than not because if we had made if the music we had made had been subpar then he would have walked by the thing and not even noticed the music that was playing and if a moment had happened that I would be sitting here then that moment would have been down the road and Gavin's bladder wouldn't have even I wouldn't have even noticed that thing so I'm pretty sure we know the name of your memoir right Gavin's Gavin's Blatter it just had it rolls off the tongue in the English language. It's really beautiful. It's like Celer Door.

Gavin's Blatter. Gavin's Gavin's Blatter. It's a great internal rhyme. If we don't use that a lyric or something in a session we're failing miserably. So were any of those songs? The hits? My Immortal, the

ballad, was made at ARCA studios at the voiceover studio that Ben worked at. So we would sneak in at like 10 o'clock at night. Do they know this by now? I don't know if they're still open, but maybe. No, I don't think they know this.

Anyway, so ARCA Studios on Markham in Little Rock, we would sneak in at 11 o'clock at night and we would work until 4 in the morning or whatever, and then Ben would wake up after three hours of sleep and then go and do his normal day of work. I remember we did it for like three or four months, and then I accidentally left my backpack in one of the rooms and the owner of the place found it

and asked Ben like, hey, what's this all about? And then they realized that we had been sneaking in there and then we... And I think Ben got fired or something. I don't know. But we recorded My Immortal. The version that's on the album that went around the world

and sold 18 million copies was recorded at that studio on Amy's... Elisa's keyboard. I played the piano. Yeah. And she sang the vocal in the vocal booth there. Like, yeah.

Somebody needs to go and tell... them only because there's like moments of that for sure where like we all get let go of our jobs because we're motivated to try to be songwriters and not try to be right perennially involved in that part of the music business and it's like for sure I the like there was one room that I wrote one of my biggest songs in some guy's house that I was renting that is it's the most nondescript house next to like a power implant like you're in L.A. Yeah. Yeah. And I just so bad want to tell that landlord, like, you were really nice to me and so random. But in that back room is one of the biggest songs I've ever written.

You know what I mean? That's pretty awesome. I kind of want to tell that guy, but it's also like pretty, like, you know, oddly pretentious for me to call some random dude and be like, this is a random call. If someone else does it on your behalf, it seems like... So somebody in Little Rock needs to go, knock on that door and be like, just so you know, one of the biggest songs ever... It is kind of crazy. And it was, I do remember that night laying on the floor in that studio listening back, Amy and Ben and I listened back. And it was the first time I felt like maybe, maybe I'm, I look back with rose-colored glasses.

But I do distinctly remember that time thinking, maybe this is better than just like something that my mom thinks is cool. Like maybe this is like for real good. And it wasn't until three years later that I heard it on the radio, maybe even longer than that. But I do remember distinctly that moment going, wow, I think if a person is on to something, this seems like we're actually on to something here. Did your dad get evanescence? No.

No. For sure my first record deal came off of the first thing that I wrote that my dad goes, I don't understand what you're saying. It was all kind of rapy lyrics. He was just like, I don't know what you sing to. I need something catchy, you know? He wanted Motown. He wanted Fleetwood Mac.

He didn't want what I wanted, which was to do something that parents didn't like. Right, right. And especially Evan essence being in that lineage of rock music, like its design is to be what my dad doesn't like. So, yeah. So the fact that he didn't like it or didn't get it was fine. Yeah, it's totally fine.

Yeah. It was, yeah. And even they also look back with Rose Color Glass. They're probably like, I saw a potential of my son. Yeah. You know? So you go and wind up, it signs you. Major record company at the time, you know, in that genre, arguably the biggest, you know?

Yeah. You know, when you're talking about the creeds of the world and then this is a follow-up. Right. You know, I want to say they had like a number of artists that were doing pretty well. Drowning Pool was a band that had a really big song before our record. came out and then after us Finger 11 had a couple of big

songs and yeah there was there was an era where wind up had a handful of things that were really going yeah so the first song is bring me to life though right so and that has a feature on it yeah so that kind of happened before people were doing features I feel like or was that right in the prime of the beginning of that

well no I think it was in the prime of that existing on the like on the hip-hop pop side of things. Because I feel like that was probably in the same era of like Jarl and Ashanti and that stuff. But on the rock side, I don't think that it existed that much, no.

So how did that come about? We had been signed for 15 months living in L.A. The record label moved us out to L.A. We lived in the Oak Woods, writing songs every day, chasing down something that we didn't understand or know, really,

Because they were like right hits and you're like, yeah, I don't know what that means, but okay, we weren't collaborating with anyone. They weren't really pushing us to do it either. Because I think maybe four songs from that demo CD ended up being songs on the record. So it was all moving in that direction. And the demo CD sounds terrible. The engineering and the mixing and a lot of the stuff that Ben and I did sonically was really bad on it. But the concepts of where it was headed isn't that far off from Fallen. I don't. think. But we were writing songs and making music and kind of indefinitely. There was no end in sight to this.

In 15 months of the Oak Woods I think translates to an eternity in most lives. It's like an inception where they go like to the fourth level of the dream inside a dream where it's like I don't know how long I've been at the Oak Woods

but it feels like it's been way too long. There are all these actors who are playing bit roles and there's all these musicians who have record deals and everyone's sending to this what's basically the Airbnb before Airbnb in L.A. Right. You know, it's like it's at furnished apartments

and you're all next to, generally speaking, like young kind of actor of musicians. It's a weird vortex. Yeah, all people who are really big deals in their hometown that are probably not going to make it in L.A. It's just, yeah, it's a super weird vibe. But we were there for a long time. We got a call one day from,

our record label president and he says you need a rapper as the fourth member of your band because at the time corn and Limp Biscuit and Lincoln Park had just started up

like this was what active rock music was at the time even stuff like system of a down where it's like there wasn't a rapper in the band he's still kind of rapping and singing whatever else girl led rock band didn't exist at the time the closest thing connecting to that would have been maybe no doubt

which had been out by that point almost 10 years and was very different than what we were doing so I think the label was trying to connect a dot of like if you like this music then you'll like Evan essence and they couldn't figure out any connection point so they said you need a rapper in your band and we said thank you no and they said well

if you don't have a rapper as the fourth member of your band then we're going to drop you and we said okay and we hung up the phone and the three of us talked for a few hours trying to figure out okay what do we do with this like this is this the defining moment of our careers that we learned the value of playing ball or we learned the value of standing up

and so we decided we're not going to have a rapper in the band and so we packed up all of our stuff and we drove home to Arkansas to Littorock yeah and we called the rest of the band record label from my house in Litter Rock the next they had called us on a Friday and it was a Memorial Day weekend so on Tuesday we called them up and they said so what have you decided and we said we don't want to have a rapper in our band and and they said well you should probably pack your stuff up then because

you're going home we said well we packed all our stuff up and we're back home so you'd figure out what you need to do and we got off the phone and looked at each other like either we're totally awesome or this was the worst thing ever. Because my fear was, I mean, all of our fear was, every small town in America is replete with stories of the almost, like the also-rans, the, we were so close, but it didn't happen.

And in a weird sort of way, like I say to people who, you know, who have had record deals, that that's a little bit like, you know, having been president or having been a Heisman trophy winner where you're like forever, like, Yeah, you had a record deal. You could then get a job teaching guitar for the rest of your life

because you're like, yeah, I had a record deal. And people were like, wow, you're in Little Rock and having a record deal would have been a huge success, cosmically speaking. Had that ended there, I don't know if that would have been almost made it, you could argue that that would have been, yeah, we got a record deal. I mean, we didn't sell any records.

Didn't actually come out, but yeah. You know, but anyway, fortunately. Well, so that was our fear, though. so that was a Tuesday and then six weeks went by now mind you at this point we had written and you're not hearing anything over these six weeks crickets

nothing from the record label at all did you have a lawyer or a manager we did not have a manager because we were really smart and didn't get a manager when we signed a record deal so we'd save that extra 15% worst decision we ever made if you're getting a record deal get

a manager like we thought saving that extra cash was a good thing We didn't realize that a manager could really have navigated us through those waters a lot better because we had to play bad cop with our label every time because we didn't have someone stepping in for us. Was that your Belmont University training that made you feel like you could do it on your own? Oh, I don't think that I had the assumption that I had the business acumen to do it. I think it was more just, yeah, if extra 15% is more money in our pockets. And we didn't see that we didn't realize what a manager could do for us.

we just happened to go straight to a record label and they were really happy with us not having a manager. So six weeks go by and at that point we had already written the whole album. The whole album was written. We had sent MP3s off to the label. They had a whole records worth of material except for a song called Going Under

which was one of my favorite songs of the record but it was 11 of the 12 songs were already written and done and we wrote Going Under when we were in Little Rock. those six weeks. So six weeks go by and then the CEO of the company calls us up and he says, we love your band, we love your music, we think you guys are great, we think you have a great album already here, we just think the lead off single should be Bring Me to Life and we think it should have a rapper on it. What I learned in that process is, man, sweating us out for six

weeks was a long, long time, especially we had no prospect of anything else in the future. We were all back living with our parents again. But also, the president is the one who has to make the bad call, and the CEO is the one who gets to make the good call. It's like, we've loved you guys all along. It's like, oh, okay, I'm starting to see how business works a little bit. But he said, we think this one song should have a rap right on it. And we said, okay if it's Sonny from POD or Mike Shinoda from Lincoln Park

because we loved that first Lincoln Park record. We were kind of halfway friends with some of the guys in POD and they were really big at the time. We thought Sunny was really rad. So those in that era were kind of A-level guys and we said if one of those guys will do it then we'll have a wrapper on it. If not, no. The label said, sweet.

we can agree to that we'll send the song off to those guys it was sent off to their teams both of them said no I assume they probably never even heard it but so anyway both of those guys said no and the label came back to us and said what about uh chocoby shattacks from papa roach uh the guy from edema and then there was one other band at the time

i can't remember anyway like so not as big as these these A-tier guys, but what if one of these guys did? And we're like, we like these bands, that's cool. Sure, if one of those guys do it, then yes. But if not that, then no. We sent it to those three guys, all three of them passed. And then the label came back to us and said,

hey, we've got this band on our roster called 12 Stones. What if he does it? And we didn't know 12 Stones or Paul at all. We just said, like, no, we already gave you like the second chance. And if that doesn't work, we don't need a rapper in our band. We don't need a rapper to sell our music. and they're like, well, if you don't let this guy do it, then your record's not coming out.

So again, it was that second moment of like, do we stand up for ourselves or do we? So we said, sure, why not? So Paul came in and we wrote some parts and figured out how to put all the stuff in. And even now, I mean, and I know Amy feels the same way, and I think Ben as well, bring me to life, especially when I played at Riders' Rounds,

Like the rapping parts of it are fine, I guess, but that's, the song doesn't, to me, the song doesn't need it. Everyone else who heard the song for the first time with the rap in it are like, no, man, that's like part of the magic of the song. And I don't know if I'm right or they're right, but it is interesting looking back on the thing going, maybe wind-up records were geniuses for that, or maybe that locks that song in that new metal genre forever, as opposed to what it would have been without it. But either way, we're on the other side of it. So hard to argue that. It's tough.

Yeah. I'm really glad that we held our guns about a rapper being in the band for the whole thing. I think it made sense on Bring Me to Life more than it would have on other songs on the record, but I just feel like it would have lost some of what we were as a band if they all had features. If they all had that thing on it.

I got hit up by Brad Delson. from Lincoln Park yesterday because they were driving from Vienna to Budapest for a show and they were listening to the podcast. Oh yeah? Yeah, yeah, because I love those guys. That's right.

And so for sure Mike Shinoda's going to hear this. So if he didn't hear it now, you're going to get a response real soon. I feel like I bumped into the... I've met Mike a couple of times because we made the Evanescence record at NRG Studios where they made definitely hybrid theory and meteor,

and I think it worked on a lot of other stuff since then. And we bumped into it into... to each other a couple of times since. And I think it's come up in conversation at some point. And again, I'm sure it probably never even made it to Sunny or Mike, but it is funny how those... Arguably the nicest

band in the world. Oh, super nice. Shockingly nice. Yeah, really, really cool. There's like an inverse relationship with how hard the music is versus how nice people tend to be. So this is like the reason why I asked about that is just because that song becomes

I mean, I imagine that was number one for, at least in my head, it was long before I ever checked charts. So I feel like that song was number one for seven years. It may not have been, but it feels like it. I do know, two things that are interesting about that album in particular to me is that it came out of the gate swinging. Like I think the first week, and numbers are confusing now because how we consume music now is so different.

But the first week that that album came out, it sold something like 170,000 units. And it stayed in the top 10 for I think like a year and a half or maybe even longer than that, which is insane. Because like, so the Maroon 5 record songs about Jane came out really similar, like within a month or so

of when our record came out. But theirs, like a lot of, successful bands. It took like a year before people heard harder to breathe and then that band really blew up. That's a normal path for a really successful band to go on. We just had a weird thing where it's like right out of the gate. It was really, really big and then kind of went from there. You leave Evanescence pretty much right after the album comes out, right? We, so that... And how does that happen? You've gone through standing up, standing up, going to the label, fighting together, living.

in apartments what happens so it's been amy and i that we got signed February of 2001 and until

December of 2002 so yeah almost two solid years we had been living in the same place together all three of us and again the oak woods is just weird i i bumped into the

a and r guy for our record a year and a half or so after the album had come out and it had been successful and things were going well and he admitted to me he was like yeah when we met you guys you were three really young kids from Arkansas and when you left that first meeting

I was talking to the head of the label and we said I think we should sign these kids but I think we should make the next we should make the A&R process of this record as miserable as hard as possible on them because we think we'll get better art from it. These are words out of his mouth that he said to me. Wow.

And I was like, well, and he had mentioned, I think he referenced like Fiona Apple's first record or something where that was something that they had done. He was a part of that one, but the story he had heard or something. I said, well, maybe it worked, but you made sure that we would never make a second album again. And he was like, well, that is what it is. So in those two years or so, the three of us were living together all the time. Ben and I had spent the previous year living in an apartment together.

We spent all of our time together. When I lived in L.A. in that season, I truly met two other humans. And then the rest of my time was 100% me and Ben around each other or me and Ben and Amy around each other. So everything about our lives was totally locked in with each other and totally locked in with the music that we were making. And that's just exhausting. I mean, have you met Ben and Amy along the way?

I haven't. Okay, so our personalities are just different. And the idea that the three of us were kind of forced to be around each other all the time, that's just, it was just hard. So we start making the record the fall of 2002. One interesting fact about making the album is that we had strings on, I think, 10 or 11 songs on the record, like full 28-piece strings with Dave Campbell. We spent so much money on strings on that record.

And looking back, I have no idea how the label approved all of that. But to me, it was the magic of the whole thing. Because that was the stuff that I loved about. Yeah, it felt very orchestrated. That's what makes the album amazing. I mean, I really think it's, yeah, there was just something so beautiful about it. Amy and I butted heads a lot. And when we were doing strings making that record,

I remember she and I sat in the live room when they were going over passes of, I think, imaginary or one of the songs. and we were both like weeping. It was like a great bonding moment because that was the shit that she and I both really loved. And so it was just cool seeing that part of the process. But I look back and it's like, how do you spend $100,000 on strings

for a debut album for an independent label band? It's crazy. Different era. Totally was. So that's the whole budget. Yeah, right? And when they say now, you know, like when that A&R guy just interrupt,

when your A&R guy saying, I'm going to make it hell, I wonder if the whole idea, of saying like we're going to drop you we're going to drop you that this is like they're on the other side being like yeah let's do the dropping game and they're going to be sitting there

and they're going to be crying and fighting and trying like that I like the weird twist in this if you're watching that side of the conversation I wonder how if all that was orchestrated I wouldn't be surprised I mean yeah I don't I bet that is probably

that probably played a part in how how everything set up along the way And at first it really, I think, made us stronger as a band. We really bonded together, and then it ended up just kind of busting us up toward the end. What was it like to just... Well, I guess you're about to say that, but I was going to ask, what's it like to just say,

guys, I can't do this anymore? So we finished mixing the record, and we go up to New York to master it, and we have meetings with the label about promo and how everything was going to go out from there. So this is like two weeks before Christmas, three weeks before Christmas. And then in January, the whole thing was going to roll out.

And we have a day's worth of meetings with the whole label just talking about picture. I think we were going to take pictures the next day and the record was going to get mastered the next day. This was December 11th, and we were lining all that stuff up. And then at like 4.30, one of the guys in the PR department, the label says,

David, will you come down here? I just need to get some like background info for each of you as we're setting up stuff with magazines or whatever else. So I go downstairs with him and he asks me like, how did I start making music and just kind of questions that felt really random and weird at the time. I was like, well, I guess he's already done this with Ben and Amy, but whatever. And in the middle of me answering one of the questions to him after about 30 minutes,

he gets a call and he picks up the phone. He goes, yeah, okay. And he sets the phone down. He's like, all right. I got all I need. You can go back upstairs. It's like, all right, it's weird. So I walk back upstairs at the conference room. Conference room's cleared out. Ben and Amy are sitting there at a table. And I walk in, I'm like, what's up? And they said, we're kicking you out of the band. It's like, okay, that's great, whatever. We're taking pictures tomorrow. What's going on? No, we just met with a label and we're kicking

you out of the band. It's like, well, I just spent three years of my life making this record. We all just spent all of our lives making this record. Let me release my own record. Let me tour my own record. I get that we're not like best buds anymore, but at least let me see the process through. And then at the end of that, we can walk away from it. I said, yeah, we're not, we're not going to do that. So you're done. It's like, okay. I remember walking out of a friend of mine lived in New York at the time, and he was there because he and I were going to go to dinner that night to kind of celebrate the record being done. and I walked out of the conference room and the elevators for the office were right there

and there wasn't like an entryway. It was like all just kind of right there. And so conference room is all glass and they're still sitting in there and I'm waiting for the elevator. The elevator's not coming. It's like a bad sitcom or something like, they're back there and I'm...

So I'm like, whatever. So I walked down the stairs, I walked down like six flights of stairs, walk out on to Madison Avenue. And I remember the first thing I did as I looked down at my hands I have tattoos on my hands and I was like

damn it my dad was right this was not a good move I don't know what I'm going to do with my life now and I spent probably the rest of that night like walking up and down Manhattan just trying to figure out

like what in the world am I got to do now this really was the only thing that I thought I was going to do and then then I went back home and then my band became the biggest band in the world for about a year or so,

and the songs that we had written that I really wanted to be able to be performing or celebrate, had this kind of weird cloud over them of like, oh yeah, Ben and Amy are in Europe touring the record now, or they're on the Tonight Show at Jay Leno now or whatever, and I'm sitting back at home. In Arkansas? In Arkansas, yeah. It was real weird. Wow. Did you, for a couple questions? One is you have literal reminders every day

because your arms have sleeves that you got tattooed because of the band. Yeah. Yeah. So do you feel like there's a cloud all the time still? Oh, no, not at all. Okay. And then the other thing, because we'll get to, like there's obviously tons of positive things that happen.

You know, you're sitting at home, when they're touring for the album, you still have your percentage of everything, don't you? Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm the richest unemployed musician in Arkansas history at that point yeah like the record's doing really really well and I'm sitting in an apartment with my buddy

about a little Pro Tools rig and just kind of started making music again because that's all I knew to do fast forward nine months later the record has already is already two or three times platinum and bring me to life is I think probably still in the top five on the

charts at the time is doing really really well and Ben calls me out And he said, hey, man, maybe we had talked once before this, or maybe this was the first time we had talked. But he's like, I'm in Germany right now. We just got done opening up for Metallica in front of 60,000 people at a festival. I was like, man, that sounds awesome. And he was like, it's terrible.

All I want to do is come home. I just am so tired of this because he and Ben, or he and Amy were not getting along very well at that time either. and he's like, man, I just, you know, it's like you think it's supposed to be this thing and it just didn't turn out to be the thing that I want it to be and I just want to come home. And he apologizes to me over the phone and we kind of make up and he said,

hey, I just found out we were nominated for an MTV Video Music Award in September. It's going to be at Radio City Music Hall. Would you want to come up to New York and come to the event with me? And again, like, these are the things that we as kids were we would watch every year and at the time the vmAs really

were like besides the gramies like a really really big moment um it's like yeah man that'd be awesome so this story sounds really sad and i don't mean it to sound this sad but uh i get to new york and i meet ben i see ben for the first time since that boardroom and uh and we kind of have this awkward. Again, he was like my closest friend for three years. We were around each other all the time. And so we have this awkward shorthand, but then also like, and we had talked on the phone a few times enough to where it's like, you know, some of the, some of the elephant in the room was cleared out. But it was, it was just weird. We get, we go downstairs at the hotel. And the hotel we're saying it is like a block away from Radio C and Music Hall. And this limo pulls up when I see our old manager

and shake hands with him and he's i guess like a little surprised to see me or whatever so me and the manager and ben get in the limo like i think i'm sitting yeah so i'm sitting in the right seat in the back and the manager sitting next to me and the ben sitting at the end of the bench and the door opens and amy gets in and she looks at me she goes oh hi and she walks as far away as she can at the other side of the limo i get we're all kids like none of us know how to process like the emotions of this experience. It's the first time they've been at a big award show and just all sorts of weirdness. So we pull a block around the corner

and I remember the announcer is like, you hear over the loudspeakers like, and pulling up is Beyonce and there's like a thousand kids outside and they're all cheering and the door opens as she gets out and does a red carpet. And then we pull up behind them and

and now she says, and coming up next Evanescence and people are cheering and going crazy and I've had no version of this before then because they've had it from playing shows and whatever else but none of it for me so I'm really foreign to the whole thing and the door next to me opens up

and I go to step out and the manager puts his hand like across my chest and he's like hey just wait just a second it's like oh oh okay I see what this is so Amy gets out and then Ben gets out and people cheer and they walk for a second and the manager goes okay we can get out now so then he and I get out and they do the red carpet

and are chatting it up with other celebrities and whatever else doing that thing. And the manager and I walk around the side, like the press side of the red carpet. And I remember in that moment thinking, like, this is the most, like, demoralizing, even in the moment thinking, the most demoralizing, like, humiliating moment. But it solidified in me that the fame part, it's not that I'm afraid of the fame part of it. But that stuff can become so enticing and so enveloping that you forget the reason why you're doing whatever it is you're doing. Whether it's making music that you really love,

or even just having normal relationships with people. Like the things that matter in my life, that red carpet has nothing to do with. And I think it was just so stark, it was like the book of Ecclesiastes was played out in front of me as I'm like watching the thing unfold. And then we walked into the venue, went on from there. So truly that story isn't like to make anyone look bad.

It really was like, I feel like the universe was telling me like, hey. You made the right choice. Well, and some choices weren't even made from me. But it's like make the music that you love, remember the things that are important to you. And the other stuff may come and it may not. So during all this you're getting Grammy nominations. You're winning, you know, maybe winning a bunch of these things. Are you going on stage when everybody's winning?

We did go on stage. The three of us did go on stage together when we won the Grammys. And that was completely surreal, yeah. I remember a lot of people at the time, there was no social media then, but I remember a lot of people at the time being like, so that's the guitar player and that's the singer, that's Amy, the singer.

And I think. And that's the guy. Their manager, who's that guy? Which should be like, I don't give a shit. But I thought it was really funny. That's crazy. It was really weird. I think the only people I don't talk to in Los Angeles

out of the 19 years I've been here are people who are former members of bands I've been. Right. You know, or the people I probably avoid most and who probably avoid me most. You know, I mean, it's hard. You're in a... Sometimes you're in a van for 10 hours,

you know, let alone a bus or whatever, and you're in a small place. And if you guys don't see eye-to-eye, the 45 minutes you're on stage, at the most at that point, you know? Yeah. Is that really worth the struggle of being with people you... It's tough.

My career did much better once I left bands. Right, right. The other part is weird to me is the early, probably three or four, two or three years after Evanescence, early success I had as a writer was with Ben. So Ben and I started working together. That's what I was going to ask. You know, you go...

So here's a story behind your back about you. So when I remember people saying the legend of you, one of the things, is that you walk to, the first time you got a BMI check was like you walk to your, you know, to the end of your driveway and there's a mailbox and you open it up and you open this check and it's just astronomical number. And it was like this moment of like, you know, this epiphany or it's like almost like this. divine moment of holy shit, I'm rich. I don't know if you said that to somebody or somebody once just made up a story but I have this vision of you

going to the end of a driveway, opening up a mailbox and being like oh this is very valuable. That's funny. You know, like you obviously realize the success you have with Ben. Right. So then you guys, you must have

had this in common. He apologizes enough that you guys are like, let's start writing together. I mean, he's, so I never had written with anyone else except Ben, you know, for those, I don't know, eight years that I had been writing songs at all. And Amy and I actually never sat in a room together to write. So it was always Ben and I would spend a long time,

I mean, spend a month working on tracks and developing stuff, putting melodies and stuff together. And then we'd give that to Amy. And then she would spend a couple of weeks listening to the song, listening to the kind of the layout of the melodies and stuff and then she would come back to us with lyrics. So I don't think I wrote,

I don't think Ben and I wrote just about any lyrics on the record, maybe tweaking some pieces along the way, but so much, and I think this is a big part of the success of that record. You believe Amy when she sings that stuff, and you should because it's just, she's an amazing singer, she's an incredibly talented songwriter, and it's all her journal.

It's all her story. pouring out on that that record and so um so still at that point ben was the only person i'd ever really written with and so people would come to ben and say hey we love the evanescence record uh can we write with you for our stuff and a lot of that stuff ben was gracious enough to pull me in on and so then we would kind of work on a lot of those projects early on together well then because of you which might be you know you here's you left to go to the bathroom in the middle of this which we were editing out. But while you're gone, this is important.

It's like, I turned to Joe and I'm like, you've got, you've got, you know, one big song, like, where you can say, ah, I wrote, you know, you can say, bring me to life because of you, a thousand years. You don't need to, you just don't need to, I don't need to listen to them to be like, wait, what is that again? You know what I mean? and you have like a handful of these

you have them in multi-genres but to have like you know to be coming off of you know bring me to life and my immortal and then and having because of you as like kind of the next big hit you must have felt like this might be easy it

it had to be somewhat easy I mean like every song you release becomes a household song it definitely early on it was really weird to go from that we agonized over that Evanescence record, but we wrote 15 songs in the course of two years. We spent everyday writing,

but we wrote 15 songs, and 12 of them made it on a record that broke all sorts of charts. Like, that's crazy. And then right after that, truly the first writing session that I ever had outside of Evanescence was Kelly Clarkson called up, or her people called up and wanted to write with Ben and I. And so because of you was the first day of us writing together.

So it was super weird Did you have the concept And you just came in with like Oh no that's all Kelly No so much of that song was Kelly So much of those lyrics Definitely the whole story A lot of those melodies were her

And Ben And I Helped shape it into What it was But man She's a I mean obviously she's an amazing singer But she's such a fantastic writer

And had such a strong sense Of what that song was When she came in But yeah Yeah, I remember we wrote that song and we wrote two others. One of the other two ended up on her record as well. And we were talking to the A&R guy. And he said, so who do you think should produce these songs?

And Ben was like, oh, we'll produce him. And he goes, oh, cool. What's your fee? And Ben goes, oh, 30 grand. Just making up numbers just out of the blue. We had never produced anything before. we were really involved the guy who produced

the evanescence record a guy named Dave Fortman who's an incredibly talented a really lovely guy he is such a especially when we were working with him such a meat and potatoes just get the

drums and the kick drum pattern and the bass and the rhythm guitars get those pieces right he went on to make slip knot and mudvane records and that's like his thing and all the candy on top on our record the pianos and the strings and the program

Emmy synth stuff was really a lot of Ben and I just kind of either taking stuff from our demos and putting it over or us kind of playing around in that world. So Dave really did give the form of the Evanescence record with the bones of what it was, but gave us a lot of room to kind of play around. So we had definitely been in the studio a lot and played a lot around, but we had never been the ones like in charge. And I just love how Ben was like, yeah, we'll produce it. Yeah, this is our fee. And we called up a lot of the guys who did stuff on Evan's. essence we called up Dave Campbell and said hey can you do strings on this song and and it was what it was man it's crazy so crazy how like that song and a thousand years similarly I don't think are like masterful productions I think they did what this song they they stayed out of the way of letting the song be what it was and to me that's that's the stuff I love the most where it's like I don't have the production isn't the thing that's selling this at all it's hopefully the lyric and the melody and then the vocal performance.

Yeah, nothing screws up a good song faster than production. Right, yeah, exactly. And when you hear Kelly sing because of you, you're in. I mean, it's like, yeah, when she sings that song, it's show bumps. So jumping now a few years after that, you're writing a lot between,

I know you have some moderate hits, but it seems it's the next one a thousand years? I'm a little out of order. I mean, when do you start writing with Carrie Underwood? Is that in between there? It is in between there. Yeah, so to go from Evan essence and then because of you is that

I mean that breakaway record sold something like 12 million copies. It was a huge album. So just even to have a cut on that album was crazy, but to have a single as well. And then I think it was it was a few years later that I wrote a song called

What About Now that was on a dotry record. Oh, right. That was a big record. And that did pretty well. And then E-Man and Jess Kates and I wrote Crush that David Archie led a song. So there was enough, like, every two or three years something would happen that would, I think, keep me in that pop radio space. I mean, that's what we were saying, that earlier, where the, you know, having, if you have a hit every year, you're the biggest songwriter in history.

Right. You know? Totally. And just having those, like, what's the, you know, having those, like, what's, you know, seem like moderate hits to somebody who's just had, you know, so what you were selling, you know, to everyone else, that's like a world class, you know, you, right. Some people could just claim any of those songs, be like, that's the biggest song in my life. You'd be like, cool, you're a professional, you know, impressive writer.

I was telling somebody the other day, I think, yeah, I was at a writing camp with a lot of young writers recently that are just, they were all unbelievable. I mean, obviously a lot of energy, but like, all. also their sense of craft and ability for songwriting was really remarkable. But there's also this like anxiety that they all have because most of them are riding up that first wave or going down that first wave. And going up the first wave is real exciting, but also real scary of like, when does this thing end? And then when it starts to come down, it's like, okay, this thing's ending now. And I missed my moment or I had my moment and

it's gone and it'll never happen again because we all feel like we're cons in this business anyway it's like how did how did i get let in the door anyway and then you hit that second wave and then you go man whatever i've messed up the first time around i want to make sure i do it right this time because i want to make sure that i can stay ride this wave longer and you get to the top of that wave and then you start to go down again and you go well it's definitely over now because no one gets three chances at this thing and it was good while it lasted And then for some of us that that third wave comes up again, I think that's when you clue in to like,

oh yeah, that's what this business is. Like, yeah. And the first wave could be, I mean, you've had the most insane, I feel like last two years. Every song, I feel like every song that I love on the radio is a song that you're writing on. And that's awesome. And maybe you will stay up there forever,

but it's like the waves do, they do what they do. And it's not until I feel like coming up on the third one, that there's a sense of peace of like, oh yeah, I make music for a living. You know, the waves can change what they mean because one way of sustaining this wave could be like, ah, you can start a publishing company, you can start a podcast.

You can have your musical, you could do all these things where you're like, your job is to entertain and as long as you're moving forward and doing things that you create your wave. Yeah. So the more you create your wave, you can kind of what it is. I mean, I don't know if I can, I know I can't control how successful a song is,

but I feel like I can control how successful my own career is if I keep defining it the way I want to define it. Yeah. You know, I mean, for you, there's got to be, you know, I don't want to skip past a thousand years, which is obviously a massive song. But you have right now a top 10 song as a publisher. and that has to mean something totally different, doesn't it? Yeah, totally does, yeah.

But as a career, you could argue that, oh, well, here's another wave. It's not even while you could be right. You know, you ended up, you're winning a BMI award over here and doing all these other things as a writer in Nashville and while you're publishing a hit pop record. Right. You know, worldwide. Yeah.

You know, like there are multiple waves sometimes. I think that that's very true. And maybe that's the smart. we get in this business, we realize that it doesn't all have to live and die on me co-writing or producing a song in a specific genre. So that's true. I think it can start to spread out. I guess the real trick to me is I'm just not worried about it anymore. I just know that, A, I'm not special, so I just have to show up every day and do my job, and I have to be nice to the people that I work with. Maybe the special ones don't have to show up every day and don't have to be

nice but I have to show up every day and be nice and then I don't know then it happens then it happens in times that I never thought it with this Ben rector song brand new I love Ben so much I love his artistry so much and when we wrote that day my manager was he said why are you doing this writing session with this independent artist I was like because I love his music and because he's a friend of mine it's like well we've got other signs stuff that you should be doing with your time it's like I don't know. No, I'm just going to I'm going to do the things that I that feel right to me to do and that song ended up

winning a BMI award and it was a top 20 song and I Ben and I would have never have guessed that but if you show up I feel like that's like a manager's worst nightmare because now from now on you can be like yeah but he's been well more right than me on most things

but that one I do have and I'll hold on to it right exactly. We're going to go to the next segment which is going to be called five people. Something like that. We still don't have a name. I refuse to name it because it's fun to talk about how we still don't have a name. I like that. I'm just name some stuff and you're just going to tell me one word.

Okay. Or it can use multiple words. I really don't care. But let's start with Carrie Underwood. Pro. She is all pro. Christina Perry. I wish heart on your sleeve was one word.

But she is, you can tell exactly what she is, every session that she and I have ever had, she's always been completely emotionally available, which is hard. But that's the good stuff. And you've had, you know, huge songs with her. We've had a handful of stuff that we, I feel more comfortable. Like, you know how hopefully I can be adaptable. Hopefully I can be a good enough human and read a room well enough. that people like writing with me.

But there's only a handful of people in your life that I feel like you go, okay, that's the person, that's the hill I'm going to die on. That's the person that I'm going to connect with and be writing with forever. And Christina is one of those where it's like, oh, she and I have a thing that's different

than just writing in a room with someone and trying to come up with good music. So that's special, yeah. Your manager, Lucas Keller. I had I had three or four different managers before Lucas and I had pretty low expectations on what a manager could be I don't know

Lucas is my he's my partner I feel like anything that I'm going to be doing I wrote a novel over the last couple of years and he doesn't have any like authors in his management company but he's like I'll figure it out. Well, you want to do that thing? We'll chase that thing down together.

He didn't have any clients that lived in Nashville. I moved to Nashville and he's like, all right, we're going to figure that thing out together. And I totally trust that he is, that he's going to, we're going to figure it out. So, yeah, he's my partner. Yeah. I love that. Steve Solomon, your, your writer, producer, friend, guitarist, guy who now has the James Arthur worldwide smash. Steve is the guy that I felt like if I knew this business at all

then I knew that Steve then I knew that Steve and I could make some success together because he works harder than anyone I know and he just continues to show up and do the thing and this James Arthur song is great and he's got I don't know 25 songs that are better than that

I mean that's kind of how it is for a lot of us but it's like it wasn't like that song was written and it's like oh man he got lucky to be in that session steve makes such amazing music and as such a great producer that it almost seemed like well yeah eventually that thing is is going to happen and then when it does man i steve next year i'm going to walk on the bMI stage with steve as his publisher and i am well more excited and proud of that than i would be of me writing a song it's an unbelievable feeling that

because I'm just glad that I get to shine a light on the thing that he was already doing. That was not one or three words. I can't think of one or three words. That's cool. Evanescence. Proud. I'm proud of that record. I'm proud of what we made.

And I realized it was such a zeitgeist that I may not be a part of a piece of art that was so specific to a moment in time. And so I'm proud that I was a part of what that was. So one of my last questions is going to be Nashville or Los Angeles. So L.A. Like where you didn't get into your book, we didn't get into your politics, we didn't get into a lot of things.

But, you know, I think that this is something that's really interesting because you're one of the people who almost quite literally lives in both cities. Yeah. People I know, New York talk,

often talk a lot of trash about L.A. People in Nashville continually ask me why Nashville is better than L.A. Or try to convince me why Nashville is better

in L.A. Almost everyone I know in L.A. is like, New York is awesome. Nashville's awesome. So there is a strange competition that exists outside of L.A. where I feel like most people in L.A. are like, yeah, I love both of those cities.

What I do know is at 30, the type of music that I want to be making, especially in the next 20 years of my life, maybe not today, but moving forward. Nashville makes a lot more sense to that. I think the best of country music is some of the best music out there.

I think the worst of country music makes me want to blow my brains out. But that's probably true with almost any genre. But the best of country music tells stories I think that connect to my life in ways that I have a hard time finding in other genres. I think when I decided

that I had to move to Nashville, there's a writer in Nashville, a guy named Tom Douglas, who is in the Nashville songwriting Hall of Fame, but more than that, just a great father and husband and human and a good friend.

and I think when I started writing songs with him, I realized that's what I want to do. I want to do that thing. And his resume is not as sexy as maybe most of the people on this podcast or a lot of people that are really succeeding in Los Angeles. But every two or three years at least, you hear a great song on the radio and you go, oh, of course Tom Douglas wrote that,

because it really means something. It has some weight to it. And I like that Nashville gives me the opportunity for that. I can do that in L.A. And I feel like I tried to do it. I feel like songs like a thousand years resonate closer to who I am or the songs that I want my kids to be listening to or whatever else. But I felt like I was always kind of going upstream doing that in L.A.

where in Nashville it feels more natural to do that. It's funny you say that because as a fan, of yours, you have found a way to do the songs that you're describing Tom Douglas has. Oh, man, that's awesome. You know, every few years here's this song where you're like, man, how do you write that? How do you write another one of those?

That's awesome. And like, to be honest, here's another thing that happened behind your back long before I knew who you were. But I had just graduated college and there was this guy that I had done, he's a film composer and his Brian Langsbart and he wanted to do this album that was basically like

an evanescence kind of record and I had written a lot of songs for a lot of artists in college and right afterwards because I was just trying to write for anybody. I knew that publishing mattered so I just wrote for anything anyone all the time we tried all kinds of different singers

we were trying to write for all kinds of projects but this was his pet project and I started studied that Evanescence album because I needed to know how to write that song and how

to do that. And so it was really interesting when you're learning about process and who's teaching you what and learning about different genres and that's pretty foreign for me to write that. And I modeled that entire project

off of what you were doing naturally. And to try to balance out and learn from your process without even at the time I didn't know who you were we'd never written together I had no cuts I was in bands I was trying to figure out other stuff I was just trying to survive

and here was like a struggling musician in L.A. who's modeling part of like his career of a writer off of something you were doing not trying to be the mentor for me that's right you know I wasn't your writer I wasn't your producer but I was still learning from you And so, you know, you've affected more people than you recognize.

And your name in the industry is that you are warm and funny and that you're easy to write with. And you have such a positive brand. Oh, man, that's awesome. Yeah. And you've earned all the respect that you get. I love that my first BMI award was sitting one seat away from you in Nashville. Oh, yeah. Like, that's my first thing.

And it'd be like, oh, that's really cool. I bet someday I'll tell him that I actually know his music more than he realizes so this is me telling you right now Well man that's awesome I love that Yeah but thank you for doing this Oh I love this is great And I am excited to see

How Nashville Embraces your talent Thank you brother That's gonna be good We gotta come back and visit us more Absolutely I'm in 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 and the writer is.com. If you like what we're doing, please subscribe to us. You can also like us on Facebook and Twitter.

And The Writer Is is produced by Joe London, edited by Miles Bergsmouth, and published by Big Deal Music. A special thanks to David Silberstein from Mega House Music and Michael White. On next episode, we sit down with Joe London. Until next time, this is Ross Bowling.