Dumb Blonde - Brantley Gilbert: Outlaw Sh*t

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

Bunnie welcomes Brantley Gilbert, the bad boy of country who really happens to also be one of the sexiest and nicest dudes. He talks about overcoming challenges in life to be the best husband, father, and example of what strong masculinity can look like. Brantley opens up about starting to write music at age 13, how he met his wife Amber and an inside look at their relationship, and the accident that altered his life forever. He gives a sneak peek into his new music including a fun project coming out with Jelly and joining on an upcoming tour with Nickelback. Brantley:  Website | Instagram  Watch Full Episodes & More: www.dumbblondeunrated.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

All right, guys, it's a new year. And you know what that means. Out with the old, in with the new. But I do gotta say one thing. I will be bringing old with me into the new year. Lume whole body deodorant is the bee's knees, baby. I know when I go out on New Year's Eve and I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off,

I don't have to worry about sweating or smelling. Because why? I got Lume on. Clinically proven to block odor all day and control odor for up to 72 hours. All Lume products are baking soda free, paraben free, and pH balanced for safe use below the waist. As a special offer, new customers get 15% off. All Lume products with our exclusive code.

Use code BUNNYXO at LumeDeodorant.com. That's L-U-M-E-D-E-O-D-O-R-A-N-T.com. Lume's solid deodorant stick is formulated and powered by mandelic acid to stop odor before it starts. It also provides 72-hour odor and sweat control for pits, privates, and beyond. Lume's starter pack is perfect for new customers. It comes with a solid stick deodorant, cream tube deodorant, two free products of your choice like a mini body wash and deodorant wipes, and free shipping. Once again, as a special offer for listeners, new customers get 15% off all Lumi products with our exclusive code. And if you combine the 15% off with the already discounted starter pack, that equals over 40% off their starter pack.

That's code bunny XO at L U M E D E O Da-n-t dot com for 15% off your first purchase. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Smell fresher, stay drier, and boost your confidence from head to toe with Lume. I don't care what anybody says. It doesn't matter what time of year it is. I never get tired of online shopping, especially during the holidays. Here's the thing. It's kind of gross out.

Even those of us that embrace the chilly weather need something to break up long winter nights. Something I love to do is treat myself to a little something, but I don't want to spend a fortune on my winter blues. That's where Quince comes in. I'm absolutely obsessed with my Quince luggages. I took them on tour. I brought them home and they're still like brand new. I'm pretty much obsessed with this brand, but there is something else that everyone needs in their closet, in my opinion. Quince's iconic Mongolian cashmere sweaters, which start at $50. Or if you want to really up the luxe factor, check out their Italian leather handbags, washable silk skirts, and European linen sheet sets.

Whatever you're looking for, all Quince items are priced 50% to 80% less than similar brands. Quince only works with factories that use safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing practices. Treat yourself this winter without the luxury price tag. Go to quince.com slash B-U-N-N-I-E for 365-day returns plus free shipping on your order. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash bunny, B-U-N-N-I-E, to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash bunny. What's up, guys? Don't

forget to sub to Patreon so that you can see the visuals because not only do we have episodes of the podcast, we have exclusive content that nobody else sees on any other apps, behind the scenes, photo shoots, and we're dropping a whole bunch of surprising stuff this year. So if you guys don't want to miss out and you want to be the first to know, go over to our Patreon, www.dumbblondunrated.com. Love ya. Is this thing on? All right, gentlemen, coming to main stage next. This is Bunny. Get up there. She's got a tornado of titties coming your way.

Get those dollar bills ready. She's got an ass that shakes like Michael J. Fox. So get up there and throw, throw, throw them dollars. Dude, that is fucking iconic. What's up, you sexy motherfuckers? Welcome to another episode of Dumb Blonde. Today, my Bubba, our Bubba, our family lovingly calls him Bubba, is in the house today. But you guys might know him as one of the bad boys of country, Mr. Brantley Gilbert. What's up?

What's going on, fam? How you doing? I'm good. I like the setup here. This is gonna be good. Oh, we got to get you to sign the wall. Everybody that is on the podcast signs the wall. That I can do. Yeah. what are you guys doing in Nashville so we came up um had some studio stuff to do I actually got a studio put in my bus uh that'll work at home and it'll kind of allow me to write with guys in Nashville and do studio work at home and uh my producer Brock can actually the program we're using he can use my screen and basically run my screen and and run my screen and run pro tools and everything from nashville while i'm sitting in georgia recording so it'll uh it'll save me

some time give me some more time at home with the kids and the wife ah kids and wife shout out amber we love you she's such a hottie dude my wife is bad so dude that body like come on and she's so shy about it, too. So I'm like, it just makes me want to see more. Oh, yeah. You and me both? I'm telling you, I chase my wife around the house like a pit bull with a red thing hanging out. Oh, I love that, though.

She's so cute. You guys are adorable. We're going to get into your story in a little bit. But I did a ton of research on you last night, and I learned so much really cool stuff about you that I never even knew. night and I learned so much really cool stuff about you that I never even knew and I'm like super excited for my fan base to learn that about you if they don't know it already because some of the shits like really fucking cool thank you let's take it back so you were born in Georgia oh yeah grew up in Georgia and I read that your dad was a pastor yes so my dad and mom met at a Bible

College in Knoxville Tennessee my mom was raised in Indiana. My dad was raised home in Georgia, where we live now. And they met there. If you met my dad, you wouldn't in a million years think that at one point he was a pastor. Really? Is he wild like you? Oh, he's a, yeah, he can be a little wild. He settled down, though, in the last few years.

He remarried, and we love his wife. Her name's Cresha, and she is just the sweetest woman ever. He married really well. We love her to death. Shout out to Cresha. He put the bottle down, too. So he and I both had a little bit of some bouts with drinking and stuff. Was that before he became a pastor or after the drinking?

I would imagine both if I had to guess. My memory's a little hazy, and I'm sure we'll get into that. Yeah, I think it was something. He was working. I bought a farm in Alabama at one point that I had for about 10 years. And for most of that time he was kind of living there running that farm for me in it was in the middle it was between you fall in Phoenix City and this little town called Pittsview and there's literally nothing there but mead paper

company I mean there's just nothing happening and I think a lot of it was was out of boredom you know right but uh but yeah he's he's a good time man anybody knows my dad will take he's he's funny as hell he's a trip i feel like we need more people like that that are pastors that are sinners too and don't try to be like holier than thou and try to like pretend that their life's perfect like i feel like people can relate to people who actually slip up and make mistakes and admit to them absolutely yeah i love that i don. I don't really, trust is hard to come by for me, but me and your husband were talking about this the other day. If I'm messing with somebody and they don't have at least one vice,

if somebody's too squeaky clean, I'm definitely not trusting you. Yeah, no, for sure. Nothing on your record. You've never been to rehab, prison, or war. Yeah. I'm not going gonna trust you with much nothing no i totally understand that except for women we can't do prison and war right you don't want you don't want your bitches going to prison no no being old war whores i don't think my wife

will farewell in prison well i don't know she's tough she is because you know my wife's got the little cute innocent looking thing going on but i'll tell know, my wife's got the little cute, innocent-looking thing going on. But I'll tell you what. My wife is a gangster. She don't play. Oh, no. She doesn't give off, like, she's very hard-egged to crack. That's for sure.

Yeah. For sure. She gives off the vibe of, like, fuck around and find out. Yeah. And she don't pull no punches with me, I can promise you. I love that. Yeah. She's tough.

But, you know what? I think that's one of the million reasons that I love my wife the way I do. I don't think I could have married a woman that wasn't strong and hard-headed and stubborn. Absolutely. I am too, but I think both of us are. There's two alphas running around in the house. Oh, yeah. Same with Jay and I, so I get it.

I love that you and Jay are the same way with how he is with me, like how you are with your wife. I think that's just amazing because a lot of men, especially because you're like considered a sex symbol pretty much, you know, so they want to, he's like, what do I wear to the podcast? I was like, well, you should take your shirt off because all the ladies would love that, you know? Um, but no, you're like considered a sex symbol. So in the industry, it's very rare to find men who have that kind of like you know ambiance to them and are still just so proud of their wives and so proud to be married and just always upping their wives so I love that about you for sure I'll tell you with my wife I mean you mentioned it she is hot as fire and I'm I'm telling you from the first time I saw her

uh she's drop dead gorgeous but man she works hard to be that way too like she is yeah she's putting in work I mean it doesn't it's it's it's hard work there but and when I when I really think about you know my wife and what what her strengths are like I've never seen a better mom like you know she my mom is my I mean she's my other I got three angels and that's you know, she, my mom is my, I mean, she's my other, I got three angels and that's, you know, I guess four with my son, but my mom and my wife and my two babies. And, you know, my mom was an incredible mom, but Amber, Amber's a freaking rock star, dude. Doing what I do for a living, being gone the way I am. And even when I'm home, man, sometimes I struggle to detach and kind of leave the road on the road and vice versa.

Because for so long, this wasn't ever really a job for me. It was life. I mean, it's all I know. When I look back, the only fluid memory I have of life is being gone three, four days a week minimum, home three or four. And, you know, having some brief breaks, but really just grinding it out. And when I was single, I really didn't ever come home. I built a house in my hometown.

I just wanted to put a double wide on this little piece of property that I bought. I think I read somewhere that you actually bought that property because you and Amber broke up and it was right down the street from her mom's house it's three minutes from her mom he didn't say no ladies and gentlemen I wanted to put a double wide on it and my manager and business manager talked me into into building a house and you know I kind of looked at it and I was like well if me into building a house. And, you know, I kind of looked at it and I was like, well, if I'm building a house, I'm going to make damn sure she has to pass it every time she comes home from college and comes home from Savannah or whatever.

Like I want her to have to drive by that summer garden and be like, I really wasn't fair. You know, my wife and I, we've got a long history, but we went five years without seeing or speaking to each other. Yeah, let's rewind real quick because you talk about your mom being your angel. Let's rewind it back to childhood really quick. I did read an article where you said that you did start writing music at age 13. Was that inspired by your parents?

Did you grow up in a musical household? Or how did you know that you wanted to write music and be a musician? I remember my mom singing in church. It used to kill me because she sang so loud, but she sings like a bird. In her side of the family, my grandfather was in a military band in the Navy, and several of her brothers pick and grin. I think that's probably the musical side of the family. Just in your blood.

But it was strange for me starting out. A lot of people, when they start learning guitar, they start learning other people's songs, and that was something that I did in the very beginning. But I always had this thing where I just wanted to do my own right like being able to play somebody else's song was cool and you could pull it out at parties and you know you had your girl getters and and everything else but for whatever reason I always just felt like you know I wanted to write my own songs and that was that was from

what I remember from what my mom says it's it started at a very early age she said i used to have a little plastic guitar and i'd put on shows for an audience of one in my room and stuff i don't remember any of that yeah so i know people are going to hear you say that you don't remember um a lot of your childhood and that's because you got into like almost in your fatal accident when you were 19 yeah i think 1920 somewhere around there um yeah it was eight o'clock on a sunday morning and there's you know if if you go around my hometown and listen to different people tell the story i mean there's some some urban legend to it feel like i look at some of the things that were said about it looking back

and i i couldn't tell you for true or not it was one guy said i landed on my feet or something and you hit you were a drive were you drunk driving i probably would know as far as the state of georgia is concerned absolutely not it was just a you know a reckless driving charge um i was driving recklessly but no i i to be completely honest it was eight o reckless driving charge. I was driving recklessly. But no, to be completely honest, it was 8 o'clock on a Sunday morning. There had been a party the night before, and I had a little bit of an altercation with one of my best friends in the world. I was on my way.

He tells the story a lot better than I do, but I guess he might have been, you know, we were making some bad choices back in the day, and he might have been harboring something that I wanted, and he wouldn't give it to me and didn't want me to have my keys. And apparently I ran him out of his own house, and I had a feeling I knew where he was going, so I was headed where he went. But I never made it.

But it was wild because it was on the road you have to take in my hometown to get to the church I grew up in. It was like 8 o'clock, everybody and their brothers driving by, and I had a case of beer in the truck, I guess. There was beer spread all over the road. The one thing I do remember of it is it's so strange looking back is it's it's not like i've been diagnosed with this that another there's but you know i'll sit around and a lot of times when i'm talking with my friends or family you know they'll talk about things that they remember so vividly and it's like they're

telling stories in detail and i'm picking up it's just hard for you really bits and pieces so it's uh but um damn i lost my train of thought i forgot what i was talking about do you think growing up with in a religious household kind of made you rebellious you know what that's that's that's interesting um i would. We were in church every time the doors were open for a long time. And that was kind of where a lot of my music started. It was kind of in that environment. And something looking back, I appreciate. At the same time, I do think, you know, there was a period in my life, probably early teen years.

I don't remember exactly when, but I do remember going to Panama City, and I got arrested down there for one thing or another. I love how he never incriminates himself. Right? To this day, buddy. Never incriminating. Or any of my friends. We just go to church together.

We talk about Jesus. We love Jesus. But it's like, I remember, I do remember this. I remember coming home and people in my hometown, especially in my friend group, I guess, but my friends that I was close with, we grew up playing ball together and they were good kids. I mean, we got in a little mischief right but i mean nothing nothing crazy

but we didn't get arrested either nobody went to jail really it was just good clean fun right so i remember coming home and there being like this this energy that i was like bad now you know i was like the bad boy nobody got arrested i got arrested you know in panama city and then uh found myself in handcuffs a couple more times and it it kind of turned into something that you know you know how small towns work too where the news just gets around everybody's talking all my dirty laundry's out and i just remember thinking like i'm still the same dude that grew up playing ball with y'all's kids you know what i mean they're still my buddies i just i peed on a wall i got in a fight you know

i got caught yeah i didn't do anything anybody else my luck too i was always the bad friend you your birthday is two days before mine and i swear we're ruled by Saturn and like our life is just a fucking lesson like jelly was telling me some of that that you're into that stuff yeah that's pretty interesting to me yeah no it's so real like we're ruled by just karma and rebellion that's literally what we're ruled by and that's why I grew up in a extremely strict southern Pentecostal home. And I was buck wild. I left home by 14. So, and I know just that tightness of religion,

it kind of sometimes makes people want to go the other way. So that's why I was asking. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And I definitely think that that was probably a contributing factor, but, but I do,

I do think there was something just in my nature. I mean, to this day, knowing what I know now and knowing good and damn well that, that most of the time I've got good people around me that can give me great advice and keep me out of shitty situations but if you tell me not to do something to this day at 38 years old there's a damn good chance I'm gonna do it absolutely I'm the same way don't tell me if you want me to do something tell me not to

do it literally that will motivate me more to just do it. So let's move forward. Were you and Amber childhood sweethearts, or did you guys meet before you went to college, or how did that work? So we met. I was actually working off some community service hours at a church that my cousin, who's also like a Christian counselor and therapist, he's an incredible man, but he was the youth pastor there and i went in and i'd play some songs and stuff and i'd write off all my hours and um her family went to that church so i met her at church but i was working off but the reason i was

there was to work all community service hours um but i remember seeing her and just being like who's we grew up so basically it's it's the same town there's a river that divides it there's some county schools and then there's jefferson and there's commerce and back then uh jefferson commerce was the most heated rivalry if you ask anybody around our town that was the most heated robbery in the state of georgia i mean we you weren't supposed to date across the river we fought we painted the bridge we sabotaged each other's school i mean you name it it was just a heated robbery but there really wasn't anything between the two towns but the okoni river right and there was a bridge that divided it and but it was it was a pretty heated robbery and i honestly didn't spend much time across the river so to speak um but when i met her when i saw her like i i mean in a weird way i remember just being

like that is one of the most beautiful girls i've ever seen in my life and she was she was a good bit younger than me i had graduated um and, like, talking on the phone with her and stuff until she was 18. And then we did the dating thing. But it was always an off and on thing. Right. That really revolved around what kind of trouble I was in and what kind of crowd I was with at the time. Well, you were growing up. Yeah.

Figuring out who you were. Yeah. And it was at that age, too, man. It was when that that rebellion thing really kicked in and i got to the point there were several different chapters in my life where it was like all right i think i'm a bad boy i'll show you bad boy you know what i mean like yeah um but i did keep some pretty rough company i was i was doing some things that i knew she wasn't doing some things that I knew she wasn't like she was raised in a really good home too yeah um and had never been exposed to some of the things that I was around on a daily basis and some of the

people that I was around on a daily basis and um I just remember it being off and on her mama hated me uh her daddy and I when he was alive i remember like showing up there were when i was still allowed to pick her up you know in the early days uh i would go and he'd be sitting in his chair and i'd go in and we'd chop it up and we'd talk but when her mama walked in the room but he just he closed down on me does she still does she love you now her mama yes oh yeah i think so good we get along pretty good lily and i yeah i love that but it is crazy to be at that house sometimes because at one point in time it was just it was somewhere i wasn't welcome right you know look at the growth though that's amazing and you guys still stuck it out no matter what you know even

though it was off and on you guys had something that always brought you guys back together for sure which brings me to you ended up getting your bachelor's degree in relationship and marriage counseling does it say that it does say that and i never know what's what's yeah i don't have a degree i was so when it came to college he said no no bachelor's degree yeah i would have been responsible for more divorce than facebook or social media in general but um no i was one of those kids that didn't really know what i wanted to do my parents wanted me to go to college really bad um and i at the same time i was playing shows this guy named cory smith who to this day he'll always be one of my biggest inspirations when it comes to song writing um he's just an amazing dude uh insanely creative insanely talented but he took an interesting path and he was kind of anti

nashville anti-label anti-management all that stuff and he was making ends meet and actually around the same time period was he quit teaching and went into music full time and i was like man if i could figure out a way to make ends meet playing my music that would be that would be amazing you know that would right that would be the shit so uh that's kind of where my head was at it wasn't you know i remember my parents wanting that plan b and that piece of paper and i appreciate them wanting that for B and that piece of paper. And I appreciate them wanting that for me now looking back. So did you end up going to college at all?

I did. I went for like a year to Georgia College of State University in Milledgeville. And then I went like half a year. I was in college right there around the house at Gainesville college when i had my wreck right okay gotcha and then when when the wreck happened it was kind of around finals and um it was just something i didn't go back to well yeah it was a life-altering situation that you had gone through for sure i did read somewhere that you had said that um you started writing music and again and that was helping bring your memory back yeah that and songs that i had said that um you started writing music and again and that was helping bring your memory back yeah that and songs that i had written like there were things that i was extremely

like hazy about especially right after uh the wreck but i really didn't notice like and again like on paper i've never been to a doctor that told me you have a tbi yeah this you know there's there's reasons that you don't remember you hit a tree yeah with my head right i mean come on dude that's like yeah but it's for sure it's for sure cloudy it's it's in you know it's it's one of those things too where i think there's probably some things in my past that i've blocked out manually and And, you know, it may have been one of those things where it was kind of convenient that some of that didn't come back or that maybe I suppressed some of it, you know, subconsciously just to kind of out of survival or just instinct.

It also probably changed the trajectory of your life, you know. Absolutely, in a million different ways. And for a long time, you know, I went through this thing where I kind of credited, I credited that with, with making this huge change in my life. Not that it wasn't, but I think that was an easy go-to for me to say, this is where it all turned around. It re it really gave me an opportunity to go, okay, I was trying the college thing, but life can really be over that quick yeah so i want to make sure i'm doing something that i love and i think when my parents i remember before my papa

died it was not a popular choice within my family to to try to do the music thing and actually pursue it as you know credible means of making a living um it, it wasn't as easy. I feel like you guys are like the OGs and had to really work to fucking get discovered. Whereas now you fucking make a tick tock, get millions of views and they give you a fucking record deal. Like back then, that's not how it was. Not at all.

And, and you know, we played, we came up the old, old, old school way to where we played the smallest rooms. I mean, VFW is motorcycle clubhouses.

Oh, yeah. When I got with Jay, there was one show that we did, and I think 10 people were there. And he rocked that fucking stage like there was 10,000. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Hey, our goal was to go, and if those 10 people showed up, it was to turn them into street teams, right?

We want to make sure we come in. The only time I got in trouble with this is I was pretty confident at one point in time. And I remember telling this dude that owned Rick's in Mississippi. I was like, dog, you bring us in the first time. It may not be sold out. The next time we come. Yeah.

And that was the only time I ever said that, that it didn't happen. Because we had a really good team from the beginning. I wasn't a guy that said, all right, if i'm gonna do this music thing i need a manager i need a label i need this that and other but i had i was coming up watching this dude cory smith that was doing it without all that right so my goal was to do everything i was capable of doing on my own without, you know, giving money away and responsibility away. Money that you probably weren't really making because back then it was like just little. I remember doing for a long time, having to have, you know,

a job on the side and maybe even doing a little dirt to kind of make ends meet because there were nights when I got paid and I paid the band, you know, we'd pay our expenses and I'd pay the band and there wouldn't be shit left. A lot of times paying the band was out of pocket. Yeah, absolutely. I remember that's how it was with Jay in the beginning, just watching him. Literally, he would perform and pay everybody and have nothing left over.

And that's exactly how he toured for like the first, I think, year and a half that we were together. It was just like just to get his name out there and just tour. It's tough. You're giving everything away. Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about your debut album, Modern Day Prodigal Son. Yeah.

I sound like a baby on that. Aw. It's wild. I'll have to listen to it. Yeah, I literally sound like I was 12. I recorded that record at a Praise and Worship. There was a Praise and Worship band that had a studio in Winder, and it's where Corey Smith got his first record.

Is Corey Smith still known? Why does that name sound familiar? Yeah, so he has a song called Wishing I Was 21. It was really big, but he lit up in college markets. I think Jay listens to him. Yeah, and he's still got some great stuff coming out. He still lives at home in Jefferson. He's just an incredible dude.

But Corey is one of those that I think they, you know, there was some outside pressure to do the Nashville thing at some point. Right. He was dead set against it. And then when it came time that he kind of needed to, you know, to grow and kind of access some of those things. It was just something, I think, in his space, his creative space and where he works the best

is what he's doing now. But he's starting to do some co-writes and stuff. Yeah. I'm excited about that for him because listening to that guy's songs, he was the guy that showed me, between him and Skinner, he showed me it was cool to write about home yeah and and to describe like little things that um you know he talked about 129 and and i was like man that's

the road that runs right past my house it was just relatable right yeah in a major way and you know i'll never forget that and that's something i do in my songs to this day it's crazy how songs that you write you think are the least relatable and the closest to the chest like end up going platinum yeah and just end up resonating with people yeah yeah that and i feel like when the delivery is different you know when you hear a song you can tell if a motherfucker believes it or not or if he's just mumbling along to some shit he thinks is gonna make money you know there is a difference in it and you know looking back i can tell you there were times and you can hear it on the albums i did there were songs on albums that i put out that that i'm not a huge fan of i can tell you a lot of the radio singles that we

have were my least favorite songs on the project was that front because of signing a record deal you feel like you maybe lost a little bit of creative control and they were pushing more of the radio hits maybe not so much creative control because that was always something that scott and the label's been really good about allowing me to retain oh good um but we also showed up in town with a little bit of bargaining power a little more than most because we were selling out really decent sized rooms that a lot of these labels had artists going to those same venues that couldn't sell them out is that when your second album was re-released that you started getting that notoriety that was around the hell on wheels yeah that was that was or the halfway to heaven record was when some of that started kicking in yeah i saw that you had worked with

average joe entertainment and then yeah like colt ford and all them and then you ended up getting they re-released the second album um from big machine yeah valor music yeah we had a distribution deal in place with average joe's and that was uh my brother colt ford yeah we love a distribution deal in place with average joes and that was uh my brother colt ford yeah we love colt he wants to come on the podcast we're gonna have him he's the man he's an og man i'm telling you and i told your husband this and something not a lot of people know about colt i've watched that man work as hard if not harder than than anybody i've seen in this business i feel like he gives everybody a chance oh he does several yeah like he really just like opens his doors and like isn't a hater and it's not reciprocated nine times out of ten absolutely yeah it's like you know he for for

whatever reason you know they told him we can't play this on radio it's just not it'll never work yeah you know so he starts singing and kind of developing a singing voice and the answer was still no and you know some of the stuff that gets me man is like there's guys and i'm not gonna call anybody's name or anything but when anybody's on the road and wants to play golf somewhere or they know that colt knows somebody and they want to get in the studio with them or any of that he's the first one to pick up the phone. He's the first to put, you know, to make ends, you know, to kind of introduce you to anybody, get your foot in the door anywhere.

But, you know, there's like. When he needs it, nobody's there for him. Yeah. When he calls for that favor, when he calls to get on that tour or to just kind of talk about it, it's like the answer is no. I hate that for him. it's been tough to watch the music industry in a whole is fucked and people don't realize all the politics that go on behind the scenes and stuff like that i'm pretty vocal about it on here just because i've witnessed it firsthand with jay you know so i get so mad when people are like he's a sellout because he signed a record deal i'm like you have no fucking clue what even is going on behind the scenes like you couldn't even your little p-brain couldn't comprehend it no it's

you know i think a lot of people think it's all red carpet and you know that but it's definitely not that and i tell you what it's a different situation for him too because he came in with bargaining power he came in with a brand that's already built right and we and i can relate to that because that's that's kind of how we came to town we weren't we weren't going to sit in offices with the suits so to speak and saying hey begging for a deal please sign me none of that was like hey if we figure out a way we can help each other and be, you know, make this partnership mutually beneficial, then let's do it. Yeah. But if I'm sacrificing creative control or I'm having to give you this, that and other, you know, some of these 360 deals that you see some of these kids signing now are un-fucking-believable.

Yeah. I mean, they're pretty much, they're just owned, you know. Yeah. um but i mean they're pretty much they're just owned you know and i think that everybody thinks that anytime anybody signs a record deal like that's what they're getting and they don't realize that you know people like you my husband other people have opened doors and like you know kind of rewritten the contracts for them to be able to do things that were never heard of before absolutely we're trying to like be very choosy with my words yeah you don't have to but yeah we have a voice in the room yeah and whether it be market share or your brand or how many asses you put in seats you know all of that gives you a

voice in a room and your husband's got a loud the you know one of the loudest voices in the room right now literally though yeah he's so loud more loud so loud all the time i'm like babe take it down a notch but i gotta tell you watching the cmt awards and watching him bringing three home i'll be honest with you i don't really watch i watched it back to watch him get yeah you know where credit was due but i think that was a victory to a lot of us man yeah um i think it was a victory to colt to me to you know a lot of the guys that man came from another world he's a street kid yeah and we call it i told him i said dude you showed up uninvited and that's that's been something that we've said my manager should write a song called showed up uninvited and that's that's been something that we've said my manager should write a song called showed up uninvited yeah i love that some of the best times i've ever had in life from places i showed up to yeah totally well let's bring it back to your second album that got

re-released you started get that's whenever you ended up getting like single of the year acm new male artist and stuff like that for more than miles and you don't know her like I do like when shit started taking off take me on that journey so you don't know her

like I do that was our second single was it written about Amber it was and I put it out check this out I put it out we

you know this is before she was my wife but while we were broke up were you guys rekindled or we broke up when oh we were not seeing or speaking to each other at all okay gotcha and uh that was uh i and and knew damn well i'm not gonna tell you i i that it wasn't intentional i knew that song being on the radio i knew she was gonna hear it yeah you know that was uh no but how fucking sweet is that right like how sweet is that

and spiteful i think you know it's sweet now that you know we kind of got back together and ended up getting married and having kids and you know that active addiction during that time oh yeah and that's kind of why she kept her distance from you can we talk about the addiction a little bit oh absolutely yeah from the first time i don't ever remember um i remember the first time getting hammered i stole a bottle of crown out of my buddy's parents liquor cabinet and we had a field party and i think i was 14 maybe and i remember from the first i got sick as fuck crowns fucking just syrupy but for whatever reason i loved it so much it didn't matter you know if you eat food and get food poison from something that and you don't want to eat that for a while it was not like that for me i i can tell you from the first time i do remember this from the first time i ever

got drunk i took advantage of every opportunity i got to get drunk again uh from then until december 18th 2011 wow so alcohol was your alcohol um and this this isn't something i've been really loud about, but it wasn't just alcohol. For me, it was alcohol and opiates, pain pills. I'd say when I was at my worst, I had a laptop bag. I mean, I kept not a handle and not a fifth, but around like a liter size.

Whether it was, if I was on a bourbon kick, it'd be two bottles of that. If it was vodka, it'd be two bottles of vodka. If it was, you know, yeah, I went through a Jaeger kick for the longest time. I had two bottles of Jaeger and my pistol sat right in between the two bottles. And then the front pocket had my pills in it. I loved a good Lourderve oh my gosh norcos lord ofs all that shit for whatever reason the lower tab 10 was my pill of choice i love the norcos because they hit you a little harder and they had less aspirin in them yeah yeah that was my shit but it was like man i and and this is the honest guy truth when it was like, man, and this is the honest guy truth. When it was at its worst, you know, I'd do vodka and orange juice in the morning if I was being seen.

But I was probably two bottles every 24 hours between five and 20 Lortatins or Perks or whatever I had. You know, the Adderall, the Vyvanse together. I was doing like 30 milligrams of Adderall and 70 milligrams of Vyvanse. Goodness. In a 24-hour period. Then I had the little blues that if I ever felt like I was dumping down a little bit. Oh, I love a Zanny too. Buddy.

I used to do Zanny bars. So those, Zanny bars, I had a doctor that gave me 60 buses a month. And I hated them for whatever reason. Oh, because they brought you down too low. They brought me down too low they put me to sleep and the way i drank i never remembered anything and i didn't like i didn't like that um he said no i didn't like that yeah i didn't like losing that didn't know and you have to remember too the dudes that i'm around and you know this is this is at a point in time when you know they kind of called me the dudes that I'm around, and, you know, this is at a point in time when, you know, they kind of called me the bad boy of country music,

but nobody really knew what was going on behind the scenes. Well, because I feel like it was a different era, and they were trying to keep everything hush-hush. Absolutely. Yeah. Because behind the scenes, buddy, I mean, I'm telling you, I was running with them dudes. You know what I mean?

My life wasn't easy company I was around. You know, at the time when I was the most fucked up that I mean, my life wasn't easy company I was around. So, you know, at the time when I was the most fucked up that I was, I was around people that I really didn't have. Like the Xanax thing, passing out and slurring and all that. That's not an option. You don't hang around them dudes like that. Right. You get fucked up like that.

So my thing was I kind of had a cruising altitude. But my thing was I kind of had a cruising altitude. And if you didn't know me well, you wouldn't have known that I was messed up at all. You might have known that I had a quick temper. You handled it really well. Masked it. Yeah, I had a good mask.

But under that, man, it was just empty bullshit. I got to a point where I was literally, I remember being like, man, I'm not going to make it to 30. There's no way in hell I'm making it to 30. There's no way in hell I'm getting married or having kids. I'm just not that dude. At one point, I wanted to be an outlaw biker. And I wanted to do my music, and I wanted to be an outlaw biker. And that's, you know, I wanted to do my music, and I wanted to do that.

Which is a whole different way. Even when I didn't really know what that whole world was about. And, you know, that's a story for another day. And to this day, I still have respect for dudes in that world. I still rock with dudes in that world. I got all the respect in the world for that. They run like a well-oiled machine. Oh, yeah. And I mean, it's a different kind of human being that it takes to really be that dude.

Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that I learned with running in those circles was I wasn't that dude. What was the defining moment for you to get help and to get sober? What was the defining moment for you to get help and to get sober? So growing up in church, right? And my papa and my grandfather on my mom's side, but my papa was like, that was my rock. That was the dude. He hung the moon and the stars and all that shit.

That was him in my life. And, you know, I was raised to value being a good husband and being a good father one day and, you know, to keep faith close in my life. And I had run myself to a point where none of that was in my peripheral at all. Like, it just wasn't on the map. I remember, you know, was it had my life had turned into a giant party um it was every day all day we would go we would go out on the road or be out on the road and be on the way home and i had there were a few dudes buddies that i'd call and they would make sure there was a party kicking so that when we got home, no matter what time it was,

what day it was or whatever, that we came home from a party to a party. I always say it's not a party if it happens every day. Right. Literally, so it had to have burned you out. Oh, for years, man. I'm telling you, for years. It was all day, all night, every day.

And I remember one night we got a number one. It was the number one party for Countrywide. It was our first number one at Country Radio. And we were going to celebrate, right? And I realized somewhere in the course of all this happening that I wasn't celebrating. It was just another day at the office. And this is something that people have worked their whole lives to. People go broke and homeless trying to accomplish this huge feat.

And we did it. And I couldn't even celebrate it because it wasn't a celebration. It was just another party. It was just another party. It was just another night, just another day at the office. Right. And I remember going to the back lounge of the bus I was on at the time and sitting there. And again, this was during the time, too, where my mind was a little wild.

And I just remember sitting back there, and for whatever reason, I had a moment of clarity, and I was like like it well let me preface this by saying this came right on the heels of me being I was hospitalized twice in like a few month period uh one uh there was some some internal stuff the second time was like I woke up and i'd got to a point where about every two or three hours when i'd go to bed say two three four in the morning if i went to bed at three i'm waking up at five and i'm shaking and i'd literally i kept that bag that bag went everywhere i went and it at this point in time my bed was on a hot tub because we what we called the compound uh there's a guy named Mike Deacon who passed away a couple years ago in a man that I love

with my whole heart I called him Uncle Mike and he basically built him and his wife built a new house and they let us live in their old house that they brought their family up in it was a big house and we kind of cut it up into apartments and i stayed in the pool house so there was a hot tub in there and i just kind of built a frame for a bed you know on top of the hot tub that hot tub never had water and it was slept full of guns oh my god i had two harleys parked in the in the bedroom and shit the The ultimate bachelor pack. Oh, dude, I'm telling you. There was literally at any given day of the week, no joke,

you could pull up and walk down that breezeway, and there were probably naked people in the pool and people funneling stuff. I mean, just partying non-freaking-stop. And, you know, we all lived there. Half the guys, my head of security pj um manager at the time steve tusman who's you'll meet steve before it's over i can't wait till you do too steve's been with me since 2006 and he's literally my right hand like if something happens to him my right arm's gone and a big piece of my heart he's he's an amazing dude that's been an amazing asset

organization but the compound days this is right before i got sober i remember one night we flew home private we were at an end of tour party it was the willie nelson throwdown tour it was us, Jamie Johnson, Willie, Lee Bryce, Randy Hauser, Lucas Nelson. And all of us were not sober. We were all in chapters of our life where we were all trying to be. I don't think Willie's been sober for like 50 years. Right. But he was, this is still, Willie was, he would roll up pretty much, walk off the bus, play the show, get back on the bus, and they'd roll out.

Right. There were a couple nights he hung out, and we got to smoke with him. That was cool. Nicest dude ever. We get to meet him. Jay's playing a show with him, so I can't wait. Oh, no joke? Yeah.

He's the best. An unbelievable soul. But we were just after tour party, and there was a little bit of a situation. I've never quit a tour in my life, but this is right in the middle of my bullshit. We went to this after tour party, and there was a dude doing some shit in there

that I didn't really like. And I had a couple of my road dogs with me, and he was kind of messing with his chick. Long story short, the idea was I went and asked him if he wanted to smoke a cigarette with me, and we were just going to step outside, kind of leave him in a pool of his own shit. But they stopped it before that happened, broke it up, and one of the people on that tour was screaming at me and said, we knew you were going to do this. We knew you were nothing but a thug and this, that, and the other.

And I was like, hold on, a thug? I've been called a lot of shit in my life. That's the first time I've been called a thug. So I remember calling, I had a guy out with me at the time. His name was Darren Glenn. He used to be the police chief in our small town. But he had retired. He was out working with us and kind of trying to,

this was at a point where I knew I had a problem, right? So he was kind of out. I had, he came to the hospital the first time I was hospitalized and my parents were in there. Anyway, long story short, I said, call Scott, meaning Scott Borchetta, my record label president. He said, it's 2 in the morning. I said, call him.

He didn't answer. Well, I go up to the bus, and I'm stewing, and I'm wanting to fight pretty good. And I see him come running across this open field, and it's like his phone's got some disease he's scared to catch from it. And he was like, did you really call Scott? I was like, hell yeah, give me your phone. I got on, and he said, I'll never forget his voice.

He said, hey, B. He was like real calm, real nice, and it was the opposite of where I was at. My energy was fucking ready to tear shut up. Oh, yeah. And it kind of disarmed me for a minute. And I was like, man man i ain't this guy and i ain't wanting to quit anything but this woman just called me a thug and i wasn't you know i i didn't have any intentions of doing anything that dude deserved to have his ass with this that night and he goes b okay listen if you'll play this one last show it hadn't clicked to me that this was the end of tour party

we only have one show left right so i'm trying to leave a million for one one he said if you'll do that i'll send the jet to take you and and your guys home well i ain't never been on a private jet before my redneck ass buddies hadn't neither nothing either. You know, it sounded like a pretty good deal. The first deal I'd done with him worked out pretty good. So I was like, all right, deal. We flew home that night and we partied like hell

the whole way there. And we got home and I remember I had some friends that lived with me at the time. We'll say that. And I was in the bed and every night, i said i'd wake up about two two and a half hours three hours and i'd be shaking and i'd just reach over like it was muscle memory reach over my bed pop a couple tabs chug that liquor bottle you know where it bubbled like three or four times it literally when i tell you i drank

liquor like water it was it was literally like reaching over where you might wake up, dry them out or something, get a bottle of water. It was liquor. And, you know, I'd sit there and watch freaking Major Pain or some bullshit movie. You're lucky you didn't go into like cirrhosis. Well, this is where, so that night, usually I would be about,

I would finish the second bottle for my 24 hours and dude i'm telling you this was the system like every 24 hours i'd start every new day i had two new bottles for that day right um and usually the second bottle i would finish it in the middle of the night um i couldn't imagine i remember bottling the remember bottoming the bottle out and the sun not being up, and I knew something was off. So instead of waking up every couple hours and taking sips, I was waking up a lot more frequently than I thought. And while I'm sitting there trying to figure out,

I knew something wasn't right. I noticed this kind of came to me. And keep in mind, at this point, I'd probably popped six to eight lure tabs in the last 12 hours. And I'm hurting, you know, in, like, my stomach area. And, like, I immediately, it started hurting more and more and more. And within 30 seconds of being, like, kind of waking up I told people that with me hey somebody called my parents and somebody else get me in the fucking truck I got it at hospital something wrong and I had pancreatitis my pancreas was swelling to

the point it was seeping my liver was jacked up kidneys were jacked up I knew it was bad when I woke up in the hospital and my biker, I call them my biker dads were there, but Coop and Pop. And I was to a point in my life where in really my later teen years, I think it was probably like this, but my parents had got to a point where they really just couldn't do shit with me. There really wasn't a damn, I mean, long story short short i knew when things got real bad if they really needed to get my attention pop and coop would show up and i woke up and they were standing there with the

doctor and i was like oh fuck yeah i fucked up now did you end up going to rehab he they told me that day and they were both pissed and and usually pop will get pissed at you before Coop will. But they were both, I could tell they were concerned and they were serious and there was no bullshit going on in that room. And I remember Pop telling the doctor, like, ma'am, I need you to tell him exactly what you just told us. Don't sugarcoat it. Tell him exactly.

And she looked at me and she said, Brantley, if you don't start drinking, and I interrupted her, I said, yeah, I know, I know, I know. I won't make it to 30. But in my mind, like I said earlier, like I was already to the point where I didn't plan on making it to 30. Like I'm already very familiar. I'm at peace with that. I'm good with it, you know.

Then she said, no, you won't make it to your next birthday. And this was like November, and I think my birthday was in January. It's been like months. She said think my birthday was in january for like months she said if you do not quit now like this this is gonna kill you you're in bad shape wow so i kept all this hidden from oh yeah the public oh yeah they had tried and when i tell you that we we have built a family through the years and i had good people around me i got fucked up and into my situation in spite of that they they're not enabling at this point there were times when i'd get pissed off at them they'd get hiding the liquor bottles from me so you know then i'm to a point where i've got stashes here

there and everywhere airplane bottles i have a feeling nobody's gonna be able to tell you no yeah yeah and yeah that at the end of the day it was like okay well if you know i know you're looking out for me if you don't give me my shit we're gonna fight yeah but uh i had homies like you growing up right it was like yeah i mean i'm gonna do i'm gonna do what i want to do until it kills me and that's for whatever reason um you know that's that's been kind of a repetitive theme in my life something doesn't get my attention until it damn near kills me yeah um we're just hard-headed like that yeah so he had so daring to come out on the road and we were trying i was trying to slow my drinking down a little bit and he got to where

he would mix drinks for me and kind of give them to me as the day went along. To be honest with you, probably 30, I don't even know if it was a month into that. I was already hiding bottles. Well, you had a real addiction. Oh, yeah, buddy. I was hooked. But for whatever reason, that night I had a moment of clarity. I was like, man, I really kind of need to,

the things that I'm pursuing in my life are not, they're not filling this gigantic hole. There's a hole somewhere, something's broke, I'm leaking. Yeah. Right, and I don't know how to stop the bleeding. Well, I do know how to stop the bleeding, it's just whether or not I'm willing to do it. Right.

I didn't want to go to rehab. I'd been kind of of whether it was court appointed or a judge kind of you know or an attorney had told me hey this is this would look good if you we'd probably do a little better in court if you went to this program or this program i'd done day partials um you know where you go like half a day and then go home i had done i'd been admitted uh for you know the 30 days to 45 days and i just i didn't want to do that i was dead set against it um but for whatever reason this this uh i had some some good people looking out for me that kind of insisted that I go and medically detox at a rehab facility. And I went to Cumberland Heights here outside of Nashville.

And man, I remember for like the first five or six days, and I told them like, look, I got 20 days and I've got to be on the Eric Church Blood, Sweat & Beers Tour. I'm not fucking missing that no matter what. So everybody everybody agreed you're such a fucking just a hell on heels like okay i'm gonna go get sober but it's under my terms and in this amount of time and i'd research the kind of medications i thought i needed when i left and no shit this is no joke um i think i made, 13 days, maybe 15. At one point, I was ready to leave. Once I got out of the medical wing, so the first three, four days, no joke,

for three, four days, I crawled from a bed to a shower and back. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't just, it was, man. The withdrawals. Awful fucking torture. When you're in a, I don't know for sure, but I just want to kind of explain this for everybody at home. Whenever you're doing a medical detox,

do they make you actually detox and they don't make you comfortable at all? Wow. Well, they do, so they'll keep you from having a seizure, right? Right. But I actually, and this was kind of part of the deal for me, I wanted to kind of embrace some of that suck. I wanted it to suck. So that you wouldn't go back.

And I mean, every thought that you could think of. I remember at one point being in there and being like, when I knew that I was going fucking crazy, I remember I had this thought like, man, what if we go play like a charity show or something in Africa? One, I've got to fly there. Two, what if I get this thought like, man, what if we go play like a charity or show or something in Africa? One, I've got to fly there too. What if I get attacked by like a line and something clicked in my brain?

It went, uh, okay, we're, we're, we're fucked up. Like, you know what I mean?

That was like self-realization. You were like, a couple French fries short of a happy meal over here. I need to figure this out. But, uh, but yeah, I went in and once I got out of the medical wing, in my mind, I was like, I'm good.

Yeah. As long as I had it lined up where a buddy of mine, it was a paramedic, was going to come on the road with us in case I had a seizure and all that. And when I called to tell him I was ready to go, everybody disagreed with me to the point where they sent Pop. Pop his wife came down on a motorcycle is pop still around oh yeah oh that's awesome that's my dude shout out pop yeah it pops to me but him my mom came up there my dad came up there and you know I was telling him just like I was telling everybody else I'm fucking leaving

like you know I did what I came to do. I've made a decision that that's not going to be part of my life anymore. And, you know, this, that, and the other. But they sent Pop down there and he bought them a couple more days. But I think it was like between day 10 and day 15. I remember, yeah, it would have been. So I went in there on December 18th. And I know I was in there for

uh new year's i remember my mom brought me like some christmas presents to rehab we love mom yeah that's mama but they came up taught me to stay in a couple days but the day i finally told them was like all right and they knew they couldn't keep me in there anymore like i'm coming out i need to go to a doctor's office because there's a couple things I need to make sure and I'd already talked to the doctor ahead of time he was in touch with my

doctor in the facility so Scott Borchetta and my manager at the time Rich Egan picked me up from rehab took me to the doctor's office and then dropped me off at the bus and we went to the we went and did the eric church blood sweat and beers tour in 2012 did you stay sober yeah wow yeah that's amazing i went about a year uh year two with nothing at all

um and then i kind of started dabbling in the pot a little bit right i don't think there's anything wrong with weed you can't convince me man here's the thing i want to be careful with this though because there's tons of people watching this that y'all we're all built different right everything we're as different as our fingerprints all of our rock bottoms are different all of our vices operate differently. And addiction, being the demon that it is, is going to attack you in your most vulnerable place in different ways. So I don't encourage anybody to, especially if you're an addict,

and I am an addict. I'm a full-blown addict. Absolutely. If I find anything I like, I'm'm gonna do it till it hurts me you know um but for whatever reason with pot that's not the case like i could smoke and i could go a week without smoking i go a month without smoking i was trying to get life insurance at one point i went off for like two months and didn't need it they still didn't give me life insurance but what i'm a liability yeah that is crazy yeah well i mean they're not wrong i think insurance is the biggest fucking scam but that's a whole nother fucking conversation

yeah but uh but yeah i i came out and man it was pots pot i never smoked when i drank i did from time to time but i didn't. You get the spins whenever you smoke. I don't like it. It just made me tired. Yeah. And in my mind, like if I'm tired and something bad happens, we got to run from the law. We got to fight somebody or we got to run for whatever reason. I don't want to be stumbling. I don't want to be sleepy.

Yeah. I need to go. Absolutely. So, okay. So you stayed sober the whole Eric Church tour. Did you and Amber start talking again? Because you guys got married in 215 right so on june 16th of 2014 um i got a call from my cousin who was the the guy that was

the pastor at that church he and his wife uh he's he's blood family to me, but they were really close with Amber and had been her whole life. And Amber and I both, now when we split up for those five years, we both went our separate ways. We were both in different relationships, and mine was rather brief. I really wasn't, to be completely honest with you, I wasn't good at relationships. Well, you didn't love was yourself so how are you able to love somebody else or have somebody else love you the way you needed to be loved

and the environments i was in were not tailor-made for girlfriends or any of that it was and i knew i was a whore you know what i mean it's like for whatever reason my conscience is fucked up like this like i could if a man did the right thing i could put a bullet in him and put him in a ditch and be all right with it but if i cheated on my wife i'd probably call her and have to tell her like the minute it happened for whatever reason my conscience is is fucked up in that space that's so good i'm thankful for that right a lot of people wouldn't know that about you though you know like they would just be like oh he's probably just like all these other people and like no that's that's a weird thing to me and even when even when i was in a relationship and anybody around me knows who i could tell you this if i was in a situation with

somebody where we had decided we weren't seeing other people now they were i could count those on one hand yeah my entire life um but when i was in those situations i was i was not one to stray do all that other but i knew that and for that reason that's why i stayed out of relationships amber for whatever reason just had a hold on you and even the girls that i was in relationships with or whatever they were you know i didn't have many girlfriends and you know any of that stuff but even when i would try to move on or date somebody i was always really up front about hey this is this is my life and i'm i'm cool where it's at right wouldn't hang out that kind of thing i was i was never one of those shady dudes it was like i'm gonna you know let's get married and run off kind of thing or try to get somebody to bed like

that it was never i was always straight up honest and and um and all that but for whatever reason from the time i met amber there was just something it was that she was what i couldn't have and then she was the one that got away and um and when when she moved on and went her separate way. So you taunted her for years. I don't know if I haunted her. She haunted the fuck out of me. No, I said taunted because you bought the property down the street from her mom. Wrote songs about her on the radio.

Wrote songs on the radio. She's like, everywhere I go, I can't fucking just, this guy will not go away. But I will say this i got to a point to where i knew she had moved on and she was doing you know and she had made a commitment to somebody else and i respected that no because i was like dude you know it was the one girl i loved in my life enough to say all right well if that's that's it if that's your forever then i'm gonna leave you to it and i'm gonna go do mine and mine's real fucked up but you know it was it was one of those things and that's that's one of the things i think that allowed me to kind of dive into some some of those

more uh some of the rough crowd scenarios just like dude i'm not getting married i'm not having kids if it ain't that one it's probably not gonna work especially after the the you know i had a relationship it was kind of it was a loud one because we were both in the business um even when that was going on i think she knew there was a piece of me that was still with that other and she also knew there was a piece of me that was just a fucking renegade man like rebel i want to be moving when i was single no joke i i never went i very seldom went home we get done with a show and if i didn't have to be anywhere the next day we we may go bounce down to a clubhouse in florida or we may go bounce to the chicago clubhouse and

visit some bikers and that's why you and my husband are such good friends because literally you guys are the same someone from the same cloth yeah he's I always tell him I'm like you're the first to show up and the last to leave yeah and I'm the opposite I'm the last to show up and the first to leave that's my wife literally well let's keep moving on so you and Amber got married in 2015, and then you dropped your fourth album in 2017, The Double Don't Sleep. It was known for some really dark themes, I read. What was the inspiration for that? Because you got married,

and I would think it would be a happy time in your life. You know, when we got back together, so my best guess about what that was about, I've always tried to be kind of unfiltered and just honest and when i go into the album making process like i try not to to give it much of a controlled intentional narrative right in other words like i don't try to paint a picture that's not right i try to be where i'm at and also look back at some of the shit I've been through. Because let's be honest, nobody wants to listen to sunshine and fucking butterflies and flowers for an hour and a half.

You know what I mean? I want to feel them, yeah. There's something about music, especially rock music. To me, it's the truest form of expression outside of prayer. And in times has been, you know can can feel even more powerful knowing it's not but it's it's uh to me it's just it there's a lot of power in it absolutely you know spiritually you move millions with your words yeah really and when you start to kind of wrap your head around that too it kind of sends you in some some

different directions but i think that's we're all a little bit weird if you're if you're an artist you've got some screws you know i mean yeah no for sure there's it's i always tell everybody being a partner of an artist you don't realize how eccentric you have to be to be able to tap into each of those emotions express them write a song sing it and put it all together like it's it's a talent and if you do it right relive it every time you sing it absolutely yeah and but i do think that that was some of the you know a lot of the songs i've written songs about things that i don't like having conversations about and it took took me a long time where i was comfortable talking about a lot of stuff.

That you had gone through. Yeah, just because, well, one, you know, my adult life, most of my adult life, I spent in circles that you don't really talk a whole lot. You know what I mean? You just kind of keep quiet. Your business is your business. Because if I start running my mouth and telling a bunch of stories i'm liable to incriminate you me or one of our buddies that but i also feel like men you guys do not cannot catch a break when it comes to mental

health you know like you guys are not allowed to feel emotions you're not allowed to be depressed you're not allowed to be sad like you have to suck it up as little boys you're taught to suck it up you know and you carry that through life and so so that just, sorry, Chachi, he's just over here sawing logs. So that just, you know, it follows you through life and you're just not, you know, you guys literally get shut out as far as it comes to like mental health and like being able to express yourself. For sure. I think, you know, the songwriting gave me a kind of a loophole there.

Right. I think the songwriting gave me a kind of a loophole there. But I will say, man, there's something about a strong man that was raised that way and has embraced that and knows how to vent and express himself in his own way while maintaining that tough exterior. I think there's something to that. There's a reason that we look up to those men and want to be like them. And I feel like that's, that's something in society.

I feel like right now we need to be careful with like when it comes to my son, totally different in my approach as a parent, right, wrong or indifferent. Um, I'm, my grandmother says I'm too hard on him.

My wife and Amber have two kids by the way. Yeah. Barrett and Bray and barrett it's just the best hearted little kid ever like you literally you can see it in his eyes that he just has a giant heart and he's just a console and that scared the shit out of me worse than if he would have been a hellion from the time he came out just because you know you didn't want him to get hurt well that but that's dangerous in the world we live in today. This world will chew you up and spit you out.

And I feel like society right now, we're all on this shit about don't hurt somebody's feelings or don't trigger somebody. The fucking world don't work like that. Everybody gets a trophy. Yeah, it just don't. I'm not on that. yeah it just it just don't i'm i'm not on that and i feel like you know some of this you know i understand that the the talking points about toxic masculinity and this that and other but there is healthy masculinity yes absolutely and we have to promote that in in in these kids i'm not raising a little boy i'm raising a man and i won't if i if i had my preference i'd raise a king

yeah i want my son to be a leader yeah like i want him to have the the fucking moral fortitude and and you know the the faith and i want him to be equipped with all the things he needs to lead people in good directions which he will because he has you i hope so i think toxic masculinity stems from people who were raised by narcissistic men and stuff like that. And I think it's so rampant because that generation like of our parents, they didn't know how to heal. You know, they didn't want to heal and they were like perpetual victims. So they inflicted their trauma onto their children. I think that's why toxic masculinity is such a huge thing right now because there are so many people who were affected by it but you're right people need to start talking about the healthy masculinity and like being able to raise your babies and you know we need men in in in the world strong men masculine men we need strong women yeah as well my wife you know no joke i give her a hard time but dude one and i know this could be kind of a cop-out people people say this a lot but but in all reality i was in the delivery

room for both of mine oh if i'm telling you if i'm responsible for childbirth if men are responsible for childbirth the human race has been extinct a long fucking time ago i don't know how listen shout out to all the moms out there because that's the reason i don't have biological children childbirth scares the living shit out of me well good for good reason barbaric there's a lot that can go wrong one which i was terrified about that but two it's like i mean it's barbaric oh my god i mean i remember looking at like dude you are a fucking soldier like looking at my wife like i knew you were a badass but this is on another level but you know my wife's been through some real shit in her life too she lost her dad

um i wish amber was here we could have brought her on yeah she's funny but um but yeah like she's an incredibly strong woman and knowing what i know about you you're an incredibly strong woman that's so important in society but but i do think we gotta let men be men too i agree you know what i mean and i think there's things that are some uncomfortable talking points that people don't want to hear like some of the necessary i feel like it's necessary for some men me and me in particular uh there's a guy named john level that has a platform called the warrior poet society and a lot of that's about unapologetic masculinity faith but just really about being a good man a

better husband better dad but also being the most dangerous dude in the room. Like as a man, and there's a thing on there called the order of man, and this guy talks about there being three responsibilities that we have as men and as head of our households. And I feel like I'm the head of my household, but I feel like I do share that with my wife. I'm gone so much that she's the queen. I'm the king, she's the but I feel like I do share that with my wife. I'm gone so much that she's... She holds it down.

That's the queen. I'm the king, she's the queen, and we rule together. Yeah. But he talks about us having three responsibilities, and that's to protect, provide, and preside. And protect is more than just having a gun in your pocket, right? And I know this is a touchy subject for a lot of people, but I believe in carrying firearms but i believe in i believe that responsible gun ownership

includes training right absolutely just having a dude that goes and buys a gun and sticks it in his pocket and says he's armed is dangerous just as much a liability they just passed a law like that didn't they mimi didn't you just tell me that they just passed it a law they just passed a law where people can just go buy guns without any training yeah and you know what like my views on that are you know i feel like most of most of the people that you would fuck with in life, right, and I feel like this is the case for me, are more so kind of middle of the aisle politically. There are a couple things, you know, a couple topics or situations

that put them hard on one side of the aisle. And for me, I lean right mainly because of guns. Right. And our Second Amendment right being a constitutional right like i yeah i believe we want to get into all that yeah we're not we're not getting political we're just talking about things but i do believe that you know it is you know my responsible my responsibility as a husband and as a dad not just if if i'm gonna own a gun i need to know everything about it how it works but i need to train you know on situational awareness i need to train tactically i need

to make sure you know situationally mainly because you know if you don't know the laws and the states you're in oh yeah you know what i mean and you pull that out it doesn't matter what kind of asset you think you are no for sure you're gonna it's gonna cost you years of your life and and maybe somebody else's life or yours when we tour we have to check the laws because of the security to find out you know what we can and can't do with yeah it's like you know as a dad i i believe that there is a certain part of me that it's almost a responsibility to to be dangerous in a sense, to be capable of violence, to be capable of protecting myself,

my friends, my, my wife and my kids. First and foremost. Um, I believe in violence. My husband doesn't, he tells me all the time I need to calm down.

Cause I grew up in extremely violent human too, but I've softened a lot in my years, but I, I'm the same way. Yeah. Papa like a fuck around and find out yeah i do i believe we i think it's a necessity to have the capability you know just to have the capacity to do violence absolutely john talks about being the most dangerous man

in the room it's you know it's not just about having that to be intimidating or to make somebody fear you right i'm not the one that's going to put my gun on my hip so god and everybody can it's not just about having that to be intimidating or to make somebody fear you. Right. I'm not the one that's going to put my gun on my hip. So God and everybody can see it when I've got my, I mean, you've seen where I carry my,

it's just right there. Yeah. You know, where nobody needs to know I have it and it's not coming out. Right. Unless, uh, unless there's a situation that presents itself where there's no other

option. Absolutely. Absolutely. I couldn't agree. But I spend a lot of time kind of following guys that talk a lot about that stuff and in that space. Because I do want to be, and I want my son to see, you know, what being a man is really about. And it's not all rubbed dirt on it, this, that, and the other. at this that and other I feel like to be a real man and a real well-rounded man we not only have to have the capacity to to be maybe vulnerable is a an uncomfortable word for me to use but that may be the word but you know to be vulnerable but tough yeah like a lion and a lamb right is

what John says sometimes on his site it's like we need to be capable of showing love and sympathy and empathy and that that's being a real man being able to show your emotions to the people that you love that they need to see that your family has to be able to see that so that's a quality of a real man but also to be able to just be like you know the protector the provider and stuff like that that's also great qualities of a man too absolutely yeah i believe that with my whole heart because we were talking earlier about my papa and we're talking about a man that hung the moon and stars and everything like i said and him and in but my mom's dad too they're both hard men yeah you know they're not they weren't the happy-go-lucky all smiles all the time but you knew that he loved you. He didn't have to say it.

There you go. You know, he lived his life. The way he lived said, I love you, every time you looked at him. Even if he was whipping your ass. We love Papa. That love, yeah. That was my dude, man. Well, moving on from 2017, what is going on now?

What is in the plans and the works for you now like what what can we expect from Brantley coming up you think that you get to a certain point in life and in your career where things start to slow down a little bit and that that has not been the case for me yeah you have had a lot of staying power which a lot of artists don't can't do that there's blessing and a curse right um but yeah i feel like i'm grinding harder right now i feel like i'm kind of back in the good old days again where i'm not many favors going on right now we're having to earn our keep and but i appreciate that you know i have i have a respect for that and it's it's kind of like the

thing where you know somebody gives you a car. You know, you see kids that give their first vehicle given to them and kids have to buy it. I guarantee you in five years that kid that bought his car, that car is going to be in better shape than the one. Absolutely. You know what I mean? So I don't have a problem with working harder for it.

What makes that hard is being away from my kids and not being home i have a two week rule but if i'm being completely transparent and honest uh there's some things not sitting right about how much time i've spent away from my kids and how much i've missed would you ever bring them on tour with you we do if it's. If it's close to the house. But see, the thing is, now they're both starting school. Amber's actually doing something pretty cool. It's like I was dead set against homeschooling my kids. I wanted them to go to the high school I went to. Learn social skills and all that stuff.

But the more that I'm seeing about some of the things that are being taught, and also we're looking at these shootings. I called my wife, and I was talking to a good friend of mine about, it was right after the Uvalde thing happened, and we had been talking about some different options for schooling. And we got some kind of details that that shooting that weren't so public that that really man fucked me up for for a week and a half solid uh i just man i was mad i was worried scared but just raging mad any sort of violence towards children

is just unacceptable. And it's just hard to stomach. When that just happened here in Nashville, I was watching the news, and I held it all together until I saw those little babies walking out of the school all holding hands, and I fucking lost it. Like, I just started bawling. And I'm not an emotional person like that. So to even see that, I was just like, dude, what is going on in our world?

No. And the justice system isn't, isn't able to, to hand justice out to those motherfuckers deserve in my opinion. Um, so is Amber going to homeschool them now? She, so Amber is a teacher.

She, she, okay. Yeah. That's what her degrees in teaching. And she was teaching third, fourth and fifth. Right.

That is really hot. My wife, my teacher, I would've got shit done in that class teacher got a booty yeah no for body yeah fuck i wouldn't have got a damn thing done uh but she um she had this idea for uh it's like a micro school it's like a home school school uh we're like basically the parents essentially are homeschooling the kids but they do it through the school and right i don't

want to speak on it too much as it is her thing i don't want to take away from it one and i don't want to explain it wrong right um but it really started to appeal to me because i know she'll you know i have no doubt they'll teach faith there right and that faith is to appeal to me because I know she'll, you know, I have no doubt they'll teach faith there. And faith is extremely important to me and kids too. Not so much, I'm not as big on church as some are, as my wife. Religion. You're not big on religion, but you're big on spirituality. Yeah.

That's how I am. And, you know, I have to look at it like this too like my church experience is different i still live at home in a small town and when we we show up it's just it's it can be weird and i've had some weird church experiences too but spirituality and faith and believing in god is important to me especially when it comes to my kids and i have no doubt though you know they'll make sure that's that's intact to what they're learning but i want my kids to learn history i've got a godson 16 years old has no idea doesn't know a damn thing about world war ii vietnam doesn't know

anything about any of the generals or what went down or why it went down because they don't teach that in school right but and i just think man that was one of the most important things i learned was history you know i love history and it teaches us right because it repeats itself right indefinitely but in the worst way if you're not educated you know about it and how things happen not only does it happen again it happens again worse yeah absolutely um so i wanted them to learn literally literally happening right now right yeah the world is a circle i guess you could say yeah and i want you know i want my kids to i want them to learn history i also want them to learn

how to do stuff outside man and we've got a new farm it's near near the house and near where the school is going to be and they'll be able to do some stuff there spend some time outside but also uh these kids are going to be safe yeah um when i say there's going to be security there i don't mean we're going to have a a little man with a piece absolutely so you just got off tour with five finger death punch and you're about to go on tour with Nickelback. Shit's wild. Daddy Chatty. Daddy Chatty.

We all love Daddy Chatty here. Motherfucker's a trip, dude. I love him. Ever since Jay sent me that video of him, what does he say? Silly bastard. We say that to each other now all the time.

If somebody does something, we're like, you silly bastard. This dude's a fucking trip, man trip he'll get me on facetime and it's it's just fucking wild that tour is gonna be interesting i can't wait we gotta come see a show like if our tours cross because when do you guys leave i told him you know if i told him and i'll tell you the same thing y'all are welcome anywhere i am. And if you're not, I'll fucking leave. Y'all are family to me, man.

Anytime we cross paths on the road, y'all got a home there. When do you guys go out? We leave in June. Okay, so we'll be right behind you. Yeah, we're out for three months. It's a long one. It'll probably be the last time i do that yeah i'll tour i'm not saying i'm gonna retire from touring after this year but uh the three-month thing away from a three-year-old and a five-year-old uh

it's just not something i'm probably gonna do again maybe you're just kind of ready to you know calm it down a little bit i think think on that side of things, maybe. On the career side of things, I think I feel like there's, in some ways I'm just getting started. Just, you know, your husband and I working on this project that I'm super stoked about. Do you have a name for the project yet? I think we're leaning towards co-defendants.

Oh, I love that. Right? I love that. Right? I love that. Is this kind of fitting? But I think, you know, we haven't talked much about it yet. You know, we kind of spilled a little tea in our own way in some different places, but, I mean, this is a good place to talk about it. You know, I've been waiting for a long time for somebody to come into this space with

that kind of authenticity. Um, that's that real that has seen some shit. And I'm telling you, when we walked in, I was a fan, but when I walked in the room and we shook hands, well,

already we parked in the parking lot of the studio, and there's dudes standing outside. I know now it was Boston. Oh, he always travels with security. Yeah, another dude standing out there. And I look at these dudes, and I ain't going to say anybody's name or nothing, but, you know, when you spend some time around the right kind of company, you know eyes. Yeah, you know what's going on.

And literally, I was like, okay. I said, dude dude i get it and i walked in and in the minute the minute i mean the minute we looked at each other i feel like i've known him my whole life like we just i just knew the dude he loves you to have a heart like he's got in a past that go hand in hand together and to be able to do what he's done and use that as a weapon against the evil man to me is is is something to behold um and not to take anything away from any other artist in this i'm not saying that he's the only real one on the block right now there's everybody goes through real shit right you guys just are friends you know yeah we're friends but i do think that man

that when it comes to being real feel like there's an obsession right now in society that people are just obsessed with being real yeah 99 of them have no fucking clue what that is that claim it ain't it right i've always said that it's like dude your husband you don't hear your husband telling nobody that i mean i'm giving him credit where credit's due you know his track record speaks for itself now he is but the things your husband's proud of and the things he talks about and the things he's he's he's writing songs about the uncomfortable stuff too but in conversation with him and knowing where his life's at what his intentions are with his wife and the people around him like that's what makes it special to me you know you can there's there's real songwriters in every room there's real artists everywhere in this town

but when when you're able to take not so pleasant experiences and and use them to help other people and to make change yes i love him because he's making waves and in in no doubt i i get excited anytime somebody comes on the scene that i can tell us just rock the boat some yeah i start getting excited yeah dude cmt is just embracing the you know the country music first of all i married a fucking rapper okay my husband pulled the biggest okiedoke in the world on his own wife so we are now thrust into the fucking country world and they just they love him it's either they love him or they are so confused and i love it because it keeps people talking you know let them be confused yeah um do you have an album coming out oh yeah before we get out of here april the 21st we've got the deluxe coming out of uh

so help me god uh the deluxe edition is coming out april 21st um i'm actually going home today but i'm coming back in three days and and your husband and i are jumping in the studio for another week. I'm excited about that. You guys always make magic, so I'm excited to see what you guys do. This round's going to be a motherfucker. Son of a Dirty Sal did great. And he's still doing.

Yeah. He's still making it work. Where I play that fucker until the day I die, I love it. Yeah, love it. I'm looking forward to that project. I know he's got some stuff coming out, too. Another you know, another thing about getting into y'all's world that's been interesting is I've actually been introduced to some folks in Struggle and Adam Calhoun.

I love A. Cal. Oh, dude, man. He's the best. I'm telling you. Him and Struggle both. I don't know about Struggle, but I'm just kidding, Strug. Y'all are good now, right? Yeah, we're good.

Totally kidding. I think the world of both of them dudes, and I know they got some stuff going on. Man, that's exciting to me, man. I feel like everything that's going on in our little camp right now and our little family is exciting. You guys are like building a kind of like your own, I don't want to say genre, your own like whatever the fuck it is yeah

like i can't we can't put it in a box you know but it's different it's still country but it's completely different and it's just you guys it's outlaw shit you know the last time that happened and worked was when shooters pops yeah and his buddies buddies did it and they did it right. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that you guys are really on to something here. Yeah. And here's the thing. We're not trying to be Waylon and Willie.

No. But it's a totally different thing. And I do think if it's unapologetic, if we go about it the right way, man, the world loves outlaw, but the world needs outlaws. Absolutely. You got to have those of us that live outside the box are what gives you your fucking box yeah you know what i mean and i feel like we can own that space and have a lot of fun doing it um so man i'm stoked about that uh stoked about

being a dad and hubby and getting on the road the nickelback tour is gonna be awesome and i think we've been in some talks about playing some more shows together good coming up yeah well Manili just walked in too

so we can talk to him yeah Manili's in here somewhere the fuck's up my dude well Bradley thank you so much for coming by babe I appreciate you so much

thank you Bradley I appreciate it what do you know why don't you tell people where they can find you all your socials I'm sure they already know where you are but just just show them out here.

Oh, yeah. I can't get nobody my address. I show up like a crazy bitch from Texas. My manager's in the room. Give me all the shit. All right, so I'll tell you this. You can come in here. This may disappoint some people, but I don't even have the fucking password to my social media.

What's his website to send everybody to? BrantleyGilbert.com. BrantleyGilbert.com. BrantleyGilbert.com if you need anything. What are you? Brantley Gilbert on Instagram. Brantley Gilbert on TikTok. I'm the same dude everywhere.

Just Google Brantley Gilbert and you'll find him. Come on. I can't wait to have you back, Brantley. Thank you so much. Let's do it again. Yeah, baby. Thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of Dumb Blonde. I will see you guys next week. Bye

Doesn't he remind you of bussy That's our basset hound