Dumb Blonde - Throwback Thursday: Brantley Gilbert - Outlaw Sh*t

Episode Date: October 3, 2024

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 | InstagramWatch 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.

Hey guys, I need to ask you a question. I want to know why in the hell are you not on Patreon? I don't think you guys even realize how much content we have on Patreon. Let me break it down for you. We have the Bunny XO Show. We have Meet the D-Fords. We have Popaganda. We have more shows that we're adding.

And not to mention, we have the visuals of the podcast. Head over to www.patreon.com backslash dumb blonde podcast and sign up 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 good i like

to set up here this is gonna be good oh we gotta get you to sign the wall everybody that is on Brantley Gilbert. What's up? What's going on, fam? How you doing? 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, had some studio stuff to do. I actually got a studio put in my bus that'll work at home and kind of allow me to write with guys in Nashville and do studio work at home and my producer Brock can actually the program we're using he can use my screen and basically 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 son 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 yeah i love that though she's so cute you guys are adorable we're gonna 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. 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 this shit's like really fucking cool. Oh, thank you.

Well, 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. Yeah, 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 uh yeah he can be a little wild he he he's settled down though in the last few years he remarried and and we love his wife her name's crecia and she is just the sweetest sweetest woman ever he he married really well uh we love her to death. Shout out to him. 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 at – 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. And it was in the middle – it was between you follow 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 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 and say oh 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 now 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 it i don't 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 if if i 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.

If you're on your record, you've never been to rehab, prison, or war, I'm not going to trust you with nothing. No, I totally understand that. Except for women. We can't do prison and war, right? You don't want your bitches going to prison. No, no, no. Being old war whores.

I don't think my wife will fare well in prison. Well, I don't know. She's tough. Because, you 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 promise you i love that yeah she's tough but that 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 that wasn't strong and hard-headed and stubborn because absolutely i am too but i think both of are 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 how 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 in the gym, she's putting in work. I mean, it doesn't, it's, it's, it's hard work there. But when I, when I really think about my wife and what her strengths are, I've never seen a better mom. My mom is my other.

I've got three angels. I guess four with my son, but my mom and my wife and my two babies. My mom is 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 uh and sometimes i struggle to detach and kind of leave the road on the road and right and vice versa um because for so long it just wasn't ever really a job for me it was it was life from i mean it's all i know from from you know when i look back the only fluid memory i have of life is being on three four days a week minimum home three or four and uh you know having some brief breaks but

really just grinding it out that's 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 uh this little piece of property that that i bought but 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 i'm building a house i'm gonna 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 gun 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, let's rewind real quick. Cause you talk about your mom being your angel. Um, 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? Like, or how did you know that you wanted to like 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 and in her side of the family uh my grandfather was in a military band in the navy and um several of her

brothers pick and grin and uh i think that's that's probably the musical side of the family just in your blood but uh it was strange for me starting out i you know a lot of people when they start learning guitar 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. Being able to play somebody else's song was cool, and you could pull it out at parties,

and you had your girl getters and everything else. But for whatever reason, I always just felt like I wanted to write my own songs. And that was, from what I remember, from what my mom says, 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 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 drunk were you drunk driving? I probably would not. Allegedly. As far as the state of Georgia is concerned, absolutely not.

It was just a 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 and i was on my way he he tells the story a lot better than i do but i guess he uh 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 uh 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 i was headed where he went and um but i never made it but it was uh it's wild because it was on it was on the road you have to take in my hometown to get to the church i grew up in and it was like eight o'clock everybody and their brothers driving by and i had you know a case of beer in the truck i guess there's beer spread all over all over the road the one thing i do remember of it is it's so strange looking back is 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 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 it's uh but um damn i lost my train of thought i forgot what the hell 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 in church every time the doors were open uh for a long time um and that was that was kind of that was where a lot of my music started you know it was kind of in that lot of my music started, you know, 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 you know, 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. 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 the wall i got in a a fight. You know, I got caught. Yeah. I didn't do anything anybody else would do. I swear that's my luck, too. I was always the bad friend.

Your birthday is two days before mine, and I swear we're ruled by Saturn, and our life is just a fucking lesson. 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. 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 asked 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 yeah 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 to this day at 38 years old, there's a damn good chance I'm going to 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. At Ritual, we know what goes into a magical holiday season. The potluck planning, the gift giving, the spreadsheets. This new year, take a moment for yourself with simple daily rituals that help you put your foundational health at the top of your to-do list. Rituals Essential for Women 18 Plus Multivitamin is a clinically backed multivitamin featuring nine high-quality key essential ingredients to help you fill key nutrient gaps in your diet. Or maybe you're stressing your daily protein intake, or you want to double down on support

for your gut microbiome. From plant-based essential protein to three-in-one pre-, pro-, and postbiotic strains with Symbiotic Plus, Ritual helps you focus on supporting your body after a long season of juggling everybody else. And for a limited time, do it with 30% off a three-month supply at ritual.com slash podcast. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. 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 her family went to that church.

So I met her at church, but I was working off. The reason I was there was to work off community service hours. But I remember seeing her and just being like, who's – we grew up. So basically 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, Jefferson and Commerce was the most heated rivalry. If you ask anybody around our town,

that was the most heated rivalry in the state of Georgia. I mean, 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 rivalry. But there really wasn't anything between the two towns but the Oc river right and there was a bridge it 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 i remember like talking on the phone with her and stuff until she was 18 and then we we did the dating thing but it was always an off and on thing um that really revolved around what kind of trouble i was in and what kind of crowd i was with at the time and well you were growing up yeah and 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 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 mom. I hated me. Uh, her daddy and I, when he was alive, I remember like showing up there. And 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 yeah 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 look at the growth though it'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 songwriting 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-llabel, anti- management, all that stuff. He was making ends meet and actually around the same time period was

he quit teaching and went into music full time. I was like, man, if I could figure out a way to make ends meet playing my music, that would be amazing. 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 me now looking back so did you end up going to college at all i did i went i went for like a year um to I went for like a year to Georgia College of State University in Milledgeville. Yeah. And then I went like half of the, I was in college at, right there around the house at Gainesville College when I had my wreck. Right. Okay. Gotcha.

And then when the wreck happened, it was kind of around finals and 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 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 you know i think it may have been one of those things where it was kind of 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 you know 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 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 really gave me an opportunity to go, okay, I was trying the college thing, but life can really be over that quick. So I want to make sure I'm doing something that I love. I remember before my papa all 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 a credible means of making a living um 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 tiktok 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 too where we played the smallest rooms i mean vfw's motorcycle clubhouses like oh yeah

when i got with jay he was 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. Um, because we, we, we had a really good team from the beginning. I wasn't a guy that, um, said, all right, well, if I'm going to do this music thing, I need a manager. I need a label. I need this, that, and other.

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 maybe even doing a little dirt to kind of make ends meet because there were nights when i got paid 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 oh it's wild i have to listen to it yeah it's i literally sound like a baby on that. 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 and i think jay listens to him yeah he's and he's still got some great stuff coming out he he still lives at home in jefferson and it's just an incredible dude but cory is is one of those that um i think they you know there was some outside pressure to do the nashville thing at some point and 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 um it was just something i think in his space his creative space and where he works the best is is what he's doing now but he's he's starting to do some co-writes and stuff and yeah i'm excited about that for him because you know listening to that guy's songs he was the guy that showed me you know between him and skinner he showed me it was 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 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 it's like i feel like it's real 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 he's gonna make money that 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 I'm not a huge fan of. I can tell you a lot of the radio singles that we had were my least favorite songs on the project. Was that 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 like colt ford and all them And then you ended up getting, they re-released the second album from Big Machine. Yeah. Or Valor Music. Yeah, we had a distribution deal in place with Average Joe's and that was my brother Colt Ford. Yeah, we love Colt. He wants to come on the podcast. We're going to have him on.

He's the man. He's an OG, man. I'm telling you, 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 anybody I've seen in this business. I feel like he gives everybody a chance. Oh, 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 for him. 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. He needs it.

Nobody's there for him yeah if he called 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 um it's 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 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 I can relate to that because that's kind of how we came to town. 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 another you know

some of these 360 deals that you see some of these kids signing now are un-fucking-believable. I mean, 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

have trying to like be very choosy with my words yeah you don't have to be but yeah we have a voice in the room yeah and whether it be market share or your brand or how many passes 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 ways 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 bring three home, I'll be honest with you, I don't really watch. I watched it back to watch him get where credit was due. But I think that was a victory to a lot of us, man.

I think it was a victory to Colt, to me, to a lot of the guys that came from another world. He's a street kid. Yeah, and I told him, I said, dude, you showed up uninvited. And that's been something that we've said. You guys 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 Amber? It was. And I put it out. Check this out. I put it out. You know, this was before she was my wife. Were you guys rekindled or were you broke up? Oh, we were not seeing or speaking to each other at all. Okay, gotcha.

And that was, I knew damn well, I'm not going to tell you that it wasn't intentional. I knew that song being on the radio. I know she was going to hear it. Yeah. You know, that was a. No, but how fucking sweet is that? Right. Like, how sweet is that?

It's sweet and spiteful. You know, it's sweet now that, you know, we kind of got back together and ended up getting married and having kids. Were you in 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.

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. Crown's fucking just syrupy. But for whatever reason,

I loved it so much it didn't matter. You know, if you eat food and you get food poisoning from something and you don't want to eat that for a while, it was not it didn't matter. You know, if you eat food and you get food poison from something and you don't want to eat that for a while, it was not like that for me. 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 from then until December 18th of 2011.

Wow. So alcohol was your... Alcohol, and 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 I was at my worst I had a laptop bag I mean I kept

not a handle and not a fifth but about 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'd have two bottles of Jaeger and my pistol sat right in between be two bottles of vodka. If it was, you know, yeah, I went through a Jaeger kick for the longest time. I'd have two bottles of Jaeger and my pistol set right in between the two bottles. And then the front pocket had my pills in it. I loved a good Lourderve myself.

Oh, my gosh. Norcos, Lourderves, all that shit. For whatever reason, the Lortab 10 was my pill of choice. I loved 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, 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 have Zanny Bars. blues that if i ever zannies dumping down a little bit i love a zanny too buddy i never so those i zanny bars i had a doctor that gave me 60 buses a month and i i hated them for whatever reason 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 that. He said, no, I didn't like that. Yeah, I didn't like losing. Sanny's is where I draw the line, right? And you have to remember, too, the dudes that I'm around, this is at a point in time when 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. Because behind the scenes, buddy, I'm telling you, I was running with them dudes. You know what I mean? 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. Yeah. You know what 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. 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 was i wanted to be an outlaw biker and that's you know i wanted to do my music and i wanted to do that and

uh which is even when i didn't really know what that whole world was about and you know that's that's a story for another day and and to this day i still have respect for dudes in that world i still rock with dudes in that world um i got all the respect in the world they run like a well-oiled machine oh yeah and i mean dude it takes a different it's a different kind of human being um that it takes to really be that dude yeah and one of the things that i learned with running in those circles was i wasn't that dude um 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 I was raised to value being a good husband and being a good father one day and 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, my life had turned into a giant party. It was every day, all day. We would go out on the road or be out on the road and be on the way home.

And 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 just had to have burned you out oh for years man i'm telling you for years it was it was all day all night every day um and i remember one night we got a number one it was number one party for uh country. 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 to accomplish this this this huge feat and we did it and i couldn't even celebrate it because it wasn't a celebration it's just another party right it's just another night just another you just it's kind of it's 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 then again this is during the time too where you know my mind was a little wild and and

i just remember sitting back there and for whatever reason i had a moment of clarity and i was 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 one there was some internal stuff the second time was like I woke up then 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 this is 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 slapped full of guns oh my god i had two harleys parked in the in the bedroom and shit the ultimate bachelor pad 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 my uh 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. I love that. If something happens to him, my right arm's gone. And a big piece of my heart. He's an amazing dude that's been an amazing asset to our 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 Houser, Lucas Nelson. And all of us were not sober. We were all in chapters of our life where we were all trying to do it. 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 where Jay's playing a show with him so I can't wait. Oh, no joke? 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 uh we went to this after 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's kind of messing with

his chick and long story short the the idea was i went and asked him if he wanted to smoke a cigarette with me and we're just gonna step outside you know kind of leave him in a pool of his own shit but uh they stopped it before that happened broke it up and one of the the people on that tour was screaming at me and said we knew you were gonna do this we knew you were nothing but a thug and this that and other and i was like well hold on a thug they called a lot of shit my life that's the first time i've been called a thug so i remember calling uh i had a guy out with me at the time his name was darren glenn he used to be the police chief for our small town uh 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-level 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 a phone i got on and uh he said i'll never forget his voice he said hey b he's like real calm real nice and it was the opposite of where i was at my energy was fucking ready to right like i'm ready oh yeah and it kind of disarmed me for a minute and i was like 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 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 man 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 you know it sounded like a pretty good deal the first deal i'd done with him was worked out pretty good so i was like all right deal so 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, like 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.

It was muscle memory. I'd be shaking, and I'd just reach over. It was muscle memory. I'd reach over to my bed, pop a couple tabs, chug that liquor bottle where it bubbled like three or four times. When I tell you I drank liquor like water, it was literally like reaching over where you might wake up, dry them out or something, get a bottle of water.

It was liquor. 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 hour 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. And usually the second bottle, I would finish it in the middle of the night. I couldn't imagine. I 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 in my stomach area. And I immediately start 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 out of the 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 i was to a point in my life where in 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 right there really wasn't a damn i mean so long story 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 and i remember pops 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 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 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, yeah. They had tried. And when I tell you that 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're not enabling at this point. There were times when I'd get pissed off at them. They'd get to hide my liquor bottles from me. 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 but uh to be honest we uh probably 30 i don't even know if it was a month into that like i was already hiding bottles and we had a real addiction oh yeah buddy i was hooked and in but for whatever reason that that night i had a moment of clarity and i was like man you know i i really kind of

need to the the things that i'm pursuing in my life or not they're not filling this gigantic hole there's 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 um i didn't want to go to rehab i'd been kind of whether it was court appointed or a judge had 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 the 30 days to 45 days. And I just, I didn't want to do that. I was dead set against it. Um, but whatever reason this, this, uh, I just didn't want to do that. I was dead set against it. But for whatever reason, I had 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 him like look i got 20 days and i've got to be on the eric church blood sweat and beers tour i'm not fucking missing that no matter what so 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 12 13 days maybe 15 um 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 or four days i crawled from a bed to a shower and back couldn't sleep couldn't just it was man the with jaws fucking torture like they don't when you're in a med 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 they it's 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 the deal for me i wanted to kind of embrace some of that suck i wanted it to suck so that you it had to get my attention go back yeah and i mean every thought that you could think 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 attacked by like a lion? And something clicked in my brain and went, okay, we're fucked up.

That was like self-realization. You were like, holy shit. A couple french fries short of a Happy Meal over here. Need to figure this out. But yeah, I went in. And once I got out of the medical wing, in my mind, I was like, I'm good. As long as I had it lined up where a buddy of mine it was a paramat was gonna come on the road with us in case i had a seizure and all that and uh when i called to tell

him i was ready to go everybody disagreed with me to the point where they sent pop pop and his wife came down on a motorcycle is pop still around oh yeah oh that's awesome yeah that's my dude shout out pop yeah pops the man but But my mom came up there. My dad came up there. And, you know, I was telling them 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 day 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 mama yeah that's mama. But they came up,

talked me into staying a couple days, but the day, I finally told them, I 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 Borshetta 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 their church blood sweat and beers tour in Sweating Beers Tour in 2012. Did you stay sober? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. I went about a year, a year or two with nothing at all. 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 and absolutely

in different ways so i don't encourage anybody that especially if you're an addict and i i am an addict i'm a full i'm an addict absolutely like if i find anything i like i'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 fucking life insurance, but I'm a liability. That is crazy.

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 came out and man it was pots pot i never smoked when i drank i did from time to time but i didn't like you get the spins whenever you smoke i don't 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 guy that was the youth pastor at that church. He and his wife, 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. Mine was rather brief i really wasn't to be completely honest we uh i wasn't good at relationships i i was yourself so how are you able to love somebody else yeah 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 i'm that's that's a weird thing to me and even when even

when i was in a relationship and anybody around me that knows the way 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 my entire life um but when i was in those situations i was i was not one to to do all that other but i knew that and for that reason that's why i stayed out of relationships amber for whatever reason it's how to hold on 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,

didn't have many girlfriends and any of that stuff, but even when I would try to move on or date somebody, I was always really upfront about, hey, 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 she

she moved on and went her separate way so you taunted her for years i don't know if i wanted her she haunted the fuck out of me and you know no i said taunted because you bought the property down the street from her mom wrote songs about her on the radio put 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. Oh. Because I was like, dude, you know, the one girl I loved in my life enough to say, all right, well, if that's it, if that's your forever, then I'm going to leave you to it,

and I'm going to go do mine, and mine's real fucked up. You know, it was one of those things. And that's one of the things I think that allowed me to kind of dive into some of those more – some of the rough crowd scenarios. It's like, dude, I'm not getting married. I'm not having kids. If it ain't that one, it's probably not going to work. Especially after the – you know, I had a relationship.

It was kind of – it was a loud one because we were both in the business. Even when that was kind of, it was a loud one because we were both in the business. Even when that was going on, I think she knew that 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 never went, I very seldom went home. We'd get done with a show, and if I didn't have to be anywhere the next day,

we may go bounce down to a clubhouse in Florida, or we may go bounce to the Chicago clubhouse and visit some bikers. That's why you and my husband are such good friends, because literally you guys are the same, sewn from the same cloth. Yeah. I always tell him, I'm like, you're the first to show up and the last to leave. Yep. And I'm the opposite.

I'm the last to show up and the first to leave. And I'm the opposite. I'm the last to show up and the first to leave. That's my wife. Literally. That's my wife. 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 what 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 like there's there's something about music especially right music to me it's the truest form of expression outside of prayer and in 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, really. When you start to kind of wrap your head around that too, it kind of sends you in some different directions. But I think that's, we're all a little bit weird. If you're an artist, you've got some screws loose. Yeah, no, for sure. I always tell everybody, being a partner of an artist, you've got some screws loose. Yeah, no, for sure. 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. It's a talent. And if you do it right, relive it every time you sing it. Absolutely. 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 spend 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 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 mental health and being able to express yourself. For sure. I think the songwriting gave me kind of a loophole there. Right. 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 yes while maintaining that 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 kind soul 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 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.

I understand the talking points about toxic masculinity and this, that, and the other, but there is healthy masculinity. Yes, absolutely. And we have to promote that in these kids. I'm not raising a little boy. I'm raising a man. And if I had my preference, I'd raise a king. So I want my son to be a leader. I want him to have the fucking moral fortitude and the faith.

I want him to be equipped with all the things he needs to lead people in good directions, which he will. Cause he has you. Oh, so 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. So 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 one and i know this can 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 it like dude you are a fucking soldier like 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. I feel like it's necessary for some men, me in particular.

There's a guy named John Lovell that has a platform called the Warrior Poets Society, and a lot of that's about unapologetic masculinity, 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 part you know and there's a thing on there called the order of man and this guy talks about there being three responsibilities that we we have 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. 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. 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 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 than they there are a couple things you know a couple uh topics or situations that that put them hard on one side of the aisle

and for me i lean right mainly because of guns right um in 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 i'm going to 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 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 and it doesn't matter what kind of asset you think you are. No, for sure. It's going to cost you years of your life 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. 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 because i grew up an extremely violent human too but i've softened a lot in my years but i'm the same way yeah pop out 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 hey 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 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 no

and and it's not coming out right unless uh unless there's a situation that presents itself where there's no other option 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 rub dirt on it 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 an uncomfortable word for me to use, but that may be the word. 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. That's being a real man, being able to show your emotions to the people that you love. They need to see that. Your family has to be able to see that. For sure. 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 that hung the moon and stars and everything like i said and him and in but my 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 the way he lived said i love you every time you looked at him even if he was whipping your ass you know it was out of love yeah that was my dude man well moving on from 2017 what you know like what is going on now like 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 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 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?

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, 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 close to the house but see the thing is now they're both starting school amber's uh amber's actually doing something pretty cool it's like uh i was dead set against homeschooling my kids i just i wanted them to go to the high school I went to.

Learn social skills and all that stuff. 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 details on that shooting that weren't so public that really, man, fucked me up for a week and a half solid.

I just, man, I was mad. I was worried, scared scared but just raging mad any sort of violence towards children is just unacceptable and it's just hard to stomach when i 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 justicism isn't able to hand justice out that those motherfuckers deserve, in my opinion. So is Amber going to homeschool them now? 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 for a teacher i would have 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 homeschool 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 faith is extremely important to me and kids too not so much i'm not as big on church as some are. 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 show up, 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.

And we've got a new farm that's 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, these kids are going to be safe. Yeah, awesome. That's what I say. There's going to be security there. I don't mean we're going to have a little man with a pea shooter absolutely so you just got off tour with five finger death punch and you're about to go on tour with nickelback

daddy chatty daddy we all love daddy chatty here motherfucker's a trip dude i love him we 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. There's a fucking trip.

He'll get me on FaceTime and it's just fucking wild. That tour is going to be interesting. I can't wait. We got to come see a show. Like if our tours cross, because when do you guys leave? 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 that uh y'all are family to me man and and i told anytime we cross paths on the road y'all, 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'm not saying I'm going to retire from touring after this year, but the three-month thing away from a three-year-old and a five-year-old,

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 on that side of things maybe um on the career side of things i think i i feel like there's in some ways i'm just getting started this 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. 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'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, there's dudes standing out there. And I look at these dudes and I ain't going to say anybody's name or nothing, but when you spend some time around the right kind of company, you know eyes. it out there and i look at these dudes and i ain't gonna 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 so 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 i 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 means 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's 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 you know the country music first of all i married a fucking rapper okay my husband pulled the biggest okie doke 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. Yeah, let them be confused. Yeah.

Do you have an album coming out? Oh, yeah, yeah. Anything like that you want to plug before we get out of here? April the 21st, we've got the Deluxe coming out of... He's looking at his manager right now. So help me God. The Deluxe edition is coming out April 21st. I'm actually going home today, but I'm coming back in three days.

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 is going to be a motherfucker. Son of the Dirty South did great. And it's still doing. Yeah.

We're still making it where i play that fucker till the day i die i love it so yeah love it um to i'm looking forward to that project i know he's he's got some stuff coming out too and you know i've another thing about getting into y'all's world that's been interesting is i've i've actually been introduced to some folks in struggle and and adam calhoun and i love a cow oh dude man he's the best i'm telling you him and him and struggle both i i have a deep i'm just kidding but y'all are good now right yeah we're good uh but yeah i think the world of both of them dudes and and i know they got some stuff going on and uh man that's exciting to me man i feel like everything

that's going on in our little camp right now in our little family you guys are like building a kind of like your own i don't want to say genre but 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 guys outlaw shit you know the last time that happened and worked was when shooters pops yeah and his buddies yeah 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 whaling and willy 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've got to have those of us that live outside the box are what gives you your fucking box. Yeah. You know what I mean? Absolutely. I feel like we can own that space and have a lot of fun doing it. So, man, I'm stoked about that.

I'm stoked about being a dad and hubby and getting on the road. The Nickelback Tour is going to 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. Manili's in here somewhere. The fuck's up, my dude?

Well, Brantley, thank you so much for coming by, babe. I appreciate you so much. Thank you for having me, darling. 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 show them on 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 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. 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. 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. you you