Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Blake Shelton

Episode Date: June 24, 2018

Blake Shelton will be the first to tell you that being a coach on “The Voice” changed his life in more ways than one. In this week’s “Sunday Sitdown,” the country music superstar opens up to Willie Geist about how that show not only exposed him to millions of new fans, but also introduced him to his current girlfriend, Gwen Stefani, at a very difficult time in his life. The Oklahoma native also chats about the early days of hunting for record deals as a teenager in Nashville, and what it’s like returning to Music City to open up his new bar and music venue “Ole Red.” Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist back with you for another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Thanks so much for clicking on us again this week. My guest is the king of country music right now, Blake Shelton. Also coach, of course, on The Voice. People's Sexiest Man Alive. We get into that a little bit. And let's be honest, the headliner, the boyfriend of Gwen Stefani. We talk about that as well.

So Blake just opened a new bar in Nashville. A bar doesn't really tell you what it is. It's a five-story music venue. It's called Old Red, based on one of the first. of his songs. On the top, there's a bar in between. There are music venues. There's a place you can have a wedding or your prom or whatever. It's this massive structure on lower Broadway, right in Nashville, which is sort of the bustling center of town right now. And there are bars all around it. So he's just in the last year or so. Across the street, they're building Luke Bryan's version

of this bar. Next to Luke Bryan's is Jason Aldean. If you look north up west end, you get to Dirk's Bentley's place. Florida Georgia Line has one. John Rich has one. Alan Jackson has one. If you're anybody in Nashville, you got your own bar, and now Blake has his, and I think it's the biggest of them all. It's massive. So he's pumped about that.

We talked about his new bar. We mixed some cocktails behind the bar before we started. It was, I should point out, about 11 o'clock in the morning. So the bourbon, and I think he had Diet Coke, maybe. We didn't drink a ton of it. I just want to be upfront and honest with you about that. But we did talk an awful lot about

his career where he started coming from Ada, Oklahoma, rising up and being in Nashville for a decade before anything happened for him, before he got in the action, in the music business. And then, of course, going on the voice, which totally changed his life and a chance to show off some of his charm and his personality. And now he's on a streak of 17 consecutive number one country music songs, which is a all-time record when you think about that in country music. So a great conversation, really one of the most first. fun and charming guys you can ever sit down with. A Sunday sit down right now with Blake Shelton. How's the drink treating you with the diet? This is good. This is, wow.

Stiff? I'm ready to talk. A little stiff? I'm ready to do an interview now. I got stuff to say. That's the truth serum you're holding in your hand right there. Oh, I got a lot to confess. So congratulations on this place. Thank you. Is it crazy to see it all? It was a dream for a couple of years, now to walk up and down five stories and look out and see your own place? I think back to that very first meeting, like official meeting that we had about doing, you know, these old red bar and grills and, and it was like a lot of like inspiration type photos. And here's what we think, possibilities of these logos, you know, and, and to, to know that this all really did happen, you know, I can't tell any meetings I've set in, whether it's a video

or an album concept, you know, whatever, a television show pitch or something where you just you sit in these things and you see that stuff and you never hear about it again, you know. And now we're actually in this building, you know, it really came together, you know. Every step we took was forward and with determination, you know, and it's overwhelming. You know, when the Tishomingo O Red opened, which, by the way, isn't even as big as this, rooftop but it's a it's it's actually more of a bar like hole in the wall type bar and grill than the Nashville version of old red but they represent the same thing which is you know country music and and and for me personally my stake in it is is having a place for this new

developing young talent to have a place to call home and perform you know we already have i think nine of my past voice contestants booked to play this venue already. And when we can, we get them to the Oklahoma one too. But it's exciting to me because there wasn't a place like this in Nashville when I moved here. There was plenty of stages you could get on and play. But nothing that felt anything like this. This place is overwhelming. It's magical.

There's something going on right now, too, where you've got Dirk's has a place down the street. Jason Aldean's about to open. Florida Georgia line is across Broadway. John Rich. Alan Jackson. Luke Bryan is actually putting in a place. Just a good egg throwing distance from here also. But it is, man.

It's something going on downtown right now in Nashville. Actually, in Nashville in general. I mean, this community is, it's literally exploding. And everybody wants to be here, including the artists. you know, we want to have a stake in this and be sure that it doesn't ever get away from the music part of this community because that's the heart and soul of Nashville, if you ask me. And I think the artist's kind of staking their claim down here downtown is our way of saying, hey, you know, we're all about the city blowing up and getting big and popular,

but it still needs to be about country music. And I think that's why you're seeing all these places pop up down. here and I'm glad I mean we all you know pitch in and and we all feed off of each other and you know if there's if there's even more country stars put in a place I just think that just helps the overall picture of what's going on downtown right here it does feel like you guys root for each other in a way I'm not sure other music genres do there's a family if you watch you all at the awards tonight you'd be giving each other crap and yeah you seem like your

buddies and that you actually root for each other we do is that really really It is real. Everything about the country music family is real. I mean, we're close. We fight. We don't fight. We don't have feuds on, you know, on social media. If we have a problem, we talk about it and we get over it and we stay at each other's houses. I mean, it's actually a lot like what I envision that your today's show family is is what the country music family is like. It literally has a kid. Send me a picture, you know. Did you catch any fish? You know, it's like it's, it really is that way with us. You know, so through in catch any fish because we all fish in country. That's right. You got to get that in there. So pick up truck reference, which is good to it for the next answer.

Can you believe you and I came to Nashville around within a year of each other, I think, how much down here you started to talk about it has changed? Oh, my God. I mean, even year to year when I come back, there are entire new neighborhoods I haven't seen before. When I first moved to Nashville in 1994, you didn't come downtown unless you had a buddy with you. That's right. That's right. Watch your back.

You know, you watch each other's back down here. I remember seeing some pretty rough things happened down here back in the day. I mean, a lot of Broadway up and down this way was like a building, and then there'd be a old parking lot next to it where nothing good was happening, you know. And it's completely changed. And I'm not sure who to credit that to. I don't follow the politics of who's in charge, but I can tell you that in 20 or more years that this place has done of 180.

And it is, this is the place to be in the United States of America. Nashville is the place to be right now. And when you come here, you can feel it. You can feel the excitement. And I don't care if you're downtown or if you're across I-40 over there on the other side, closer to Music Row, there's energy over there. There's businesses popping up.

It's insane. I don't know how it can continue to grow like it's growing. It's going to implode. It's crazy. I mean, just the Bachelorette parties alone. I don't know if you watch Broadway, they've got the beer trucks where they pedal and they're riding in the back of tractors and all that.

It's crazy down here. It's unbelievable. Do you take a moment, like, like this where you have your own five story bar, that's your place, and think about the 17 year old who came to Nashville and say, my God, I could never even have dreamed of this. Yeah, you know, I can remember a time

where it just felt like such an outsider when I first moved to Nashville, like how am I gonna break into this community? Why about me can compete with every other singer in this town and coming down to Broadway and seeing these bands that are so good, these singers that are so good and just thinking, I wish I could, man, I wish I could have got that gig, you know, Tutsis or Roberts or wherever, you know, I wish, man, I wonder who I got to meet to get to perform on that stage or I wonder

if they would even think I'm good enough, you know, to go from that 17-year-old to, we're sitting on the, whatever you call, what do you call this? The roof, the lookout. rooftop, the sky bar, the lookout. They should have briefed you on your bar. We're so high up in the air right now, the air is thin. And I don't even, I can't even complete a sentence. But we're actually sitting on the rooftop of a place where I have a stage where there's,

I know there's that 17 year old walking up and down the street right now on Broadway going, man, I hope I can play in old red one of these days, you know, it's just crazy how it comes full circle. Does it feel insane to you now that a kid two weeks out of high school? two weeks out of high school at age 17, left Oklahoma and just rolled into Nashville. Yeah. Did you have a plan? What were you doing in those early years? No, I still haven't really put together a good answer to that question after all this time

because all I knew is I wanted to be, I wanted to be one of those guys that I heard on the radio. I wanted to be one of them. And I knew the only way to do that was to be here. And that was the plan. I don't, you know. And luckily, I had. the support of my family, you know, and to help me out with rent or whatever and loan me some money when I needed to, you know, put a deposit down for an apartment or whatever. But outside of that,

it was pretty much on my own. And it was just left up to me to meet people. And that was always the one thing I felt like I must have been pretty good at was meeting people and, and, you know, just playing the game down here, you know, which is, uh, you know, which is, uh, uh, you know, just playing the game. you know, getting a chance to meet a songwriter and trying to, you know, do something or say something or be funny so that they would remember you. You know, that was always kind of what I felt like I had maybe my only gift to try to get to where I wanted to be, which is to be a country singer. And I did that. I started singing demos for songwriters. And I remember I would stress out if I was going to sing a demo for a popular songwriter in town and I'd be like, you know, rehearsing my jokes and,

you know, whatever I was going to say to try to get the opportunity to then write with that person after I sang their demo for them. And that's how it ended up working for me, you know, to get my foot in the door. So we were talking about your parents supporting you while you were in Nashville, but that support for your career goes back a lot farther than that. I'm thinking about eight-year-old Blake Shelton in the beauty pageants. What was that like? What kind of a show is this? Why don't he bring up a pey pageant?

It launched her career, Blake, the pageants. It sure did. You know, look, in Aide, Oklahoma, if you want to be a singer in 1984, there's not a lot of options. And so I was in my bedroom singing every night, and mom thought it was cute. And she asked me, you know, you want to sing on stage? You want to be a singer? Yeah.

So really the only option was the whatever pageants, you know, for kids was going on. There was a talent portion where you got to perform. And so I had to do these pageants in order to be able to get up and sing my, you know, Bob Seeger song or whatever it was. Night moves. Do a little night moves. Old time rock and roll. Sure. Yeah.

And Cat Scratch Fever by Ted Nugent. Of course. Which is a great song for kids. for an eight-year-old. There is footage of me singing that. But anyway, yeah, because none of us knew what it meant. So obviously, you know, once any of my buddies saw me in a pageant and that got around, it's like, okay, Mom, I don't think I want to be a singer anymore because all that other stuff

you got to do. I don't want to do that. I just want to sing, and so just forget it. And then now all these years later, I find out that it's still like being in a pageant. Because in order to sing, there's all these other things that you got to do, you know. Do you have to do the other stuff or could you just go sing? This. Yeah?

This is the other stuff. This is like doing evening wear. This is it. This is the swimsuit part of my day. And then there's the interview. No, there is. There's always the other stuff, you know. And the good thing for me and where I've been lucky,

I'm lucky, oh my God, I've been lucky in every part of it actually, but where I'm really lucky today is, look, it is what it is. And I've gotten to a point in my career that I'm not afraid to say no to stuff, you know, big things that people probably walk away scratching their head like, why? Why would you not do that? And because I know the time restraints that come with big opportunities. opportunities and and I'm at a point in my life where time time is as valuable as anything and and having it with my family and with Gwen and her kids and just what's what's important to you you know at this age it starts to change you know and let's face it you know I've done well and there's no reason that I should

that I should chase it that hard anymore beat my head against the wall it's I'm not going to do it and as long as my career is here for me and and they're playing my songs on the radio, I'll still work at it. But the second it starts to slip, you're not going to see me chase it, you know, because I've had my time and I've been so lucky and I'm so grateful for it. You're too young to be talking this way. It's like, yeah, but you know what? I know what the entertainment industry is like, and it's cutthroat and it's here today,

gone tomorrow, and because there's always that next hot thing coming up, you know. Even this week, the CMT Awards, I'm up for a video of the year, and I'm up against, you know, people that are 22, 24 years old, you know. And here I am a 41-year-old guy going, oh, I don't vote for me, you know, but it's so exciting to still be in that group. And I don't want to sound ungrateful for it because I've worked so hard to get here. And now that I've worked so hard to get here, I just want to enjoy it, the way. that I want to and approach this the way that I want to, which is take my time and and if I have to pass on some concerts or not tour as much as I used to, then that's what I'm going to do because I got a life that I want to live.

You know, I've missed out on 20 years worth of having a life to get here and now I'm ready to have that part. Well, you had to work very hard to get to the point where you could sit here and even consider slowing down. Those early years in Nashville from like 94 to your first record that went platinum, 2001, what were those years like and were there times or you said, maybe I'm not going to make it in Nashville? Maybe I'm going to go home.

Or did you always know this is what I'm doing? You know, I'm, it's weird because I felt like I got close a few times in those early days to getting, you know, back then all you cared about. was getting a record deal. That's all that mattered. A record deal or nothing. That's how it was. There wasn't the internet. You couldn't make it on YouTube or Facebook or MySpace or whatever, you know, avenue people have made it over the years. It was, you had to be on a radio. If you want to get on radio, you needed a record deal. I was really close. I felt like a couple of times to getting that record deal. And one time was with Epic Records and with Doug Johnson and Debbie Zabbison. And

And I thought they were going to sign me and they didn't. You know, it turns out I just wasn't ready. I was too young. Whatever. They just didn't think it was right. And I remember how devastating that was to me whenever they officially passed on, you know, me as an artist. And then it felt like every opportunity after that wasn't as big of a deal as that one was that I missed out on.

and eventually a couple of years went by, and I was about to just give up and move back home. You know, it was seven years later, and my friends had already graduated college, and not only had good jobs, they had gotten promotions, and they were making a lot of money, and I was still singing demos for $40 a piece,

hoping that I would get a few a week, you know, to live off of. And about that time I met Bobby Braddock, who decided that, you know, as a songwriter, he wanted to kind of expand and go into being a producer and producing a record on an artist and try that, try his hand at that, and we met. And then we agreed, man, I'll be your guy, you know, if you want that. And he said, man, I'll be your guy, you know. And so we went in and cut three songs together. And he took them to giant records where Doug Johnson and Debbie Zabbitson from Epis,

records had just taken over the label. And they said, you know, we remember Blake from a few years ago. We almost signed him. What did you cut on him? And they played and they said, man, he's ready. And they signed me. And it was weird how that relationship that was so devastating years before, they ended up being the same people who gave me my first break. And they waited until I was ready and thank God I didn't give up and move home, you know. And then a decade later, I think it's fair to say, when you joined the Voice, your career went to a completely different level. I've heard everybody on that show from Usher to you to Adam say, it exposed me to a completely different audience,

got to see your personality, people who weren't in the country world, got to see that you were funny. And what did it mean to you? Well, my career had had so many ups and downs before even got to the Voice. You know, there was times where, you know, I put out some music and a couple of singles would get to 40 and be like, oh, God, here we go. And then luckily it would have a little comeback and have something that got played. And then the voice came along.

And suddenly, you know, I went from being a guy that CMA Fest week, I felt like a big deal that one week of the year because every country music fan in the world came here and I was here. And we were all big stars that week. You know, I didn't realize that, you know, most people in this country had, never, ever had even heard of me at all or heard my music. And it wasn't until I got on the voice as a coach that I realized, man, I am nobody. I am absolutely nobody. And the way I felt that was I remember the first time or two that they introduced us onto the stage, ladies and gentlemen, you know, before the cameras roll, Adam Levine and the place just erupts, you know,

and Christina Aguilera and just deafening, Seelow, Blake Shelton, and just, you know, a couple of, like, who the hell is Blake Shelton? What? Who is that? I don't know. Is he the host? Carson Daly and the place he erupts again, you know?

So it's like, okay, I'm nothing. And so that, I really credit that show with exposing me to just, you know, the world. I mean, if you were a country music fan before the voice came along, you probably heard a few of my songs, and it doesn't necessarily mean you even knew my name, but the voice changed everything for me. I mean everything. Is it something you see yourself continuing to do?

There's been some talk that maybe you might not come back next season. Is that true? I mean, if it's not going to come back next season, they haven't told me. You may not come back next season. Oh. No, you know what? to keep doing the voice, at least for a little while longer, you know. It's not going to last forever. My run, even if the voice lasts, if it's the next will of fortune, you know, my run

is going to be limited there. But I think that's fair to say of Adam and me and anybody, you know, they can't continue to have, you know, Adam and I forever on the show. I mean, sure they may want to, though. Well, they may want to, but they're not going to. Pat and that's not going to. Pat and Vanna are still there. That's true. That's true. Wow. I'd like to keep, you know, I'll tell you that I definitely will be back next season.

Beyond that, I don't know. I mean, as if I'm sitting here right now talking to you, I would love to do it beyond that. But, you know, things change. And obviously on a personal level, the voice was huge for you. Having met Gwen there, you've said many times that she saved your life. Yeah. What did you mean by that? Well, because, you know, when I was going through, you know, my divorce and just, you know, hit rock bottom,

just like anybody does when they go through something that devastating. It's, it was, it's a miracle that I met somebody that was going through the same exact thing that I was at the exact same moment and time. And I think if you, if Gwen and I were being honest, you know, right now talking about this, I think in the back of our, our mind we both kind of thought this is a rebound deal I mean because we're both coming out of a you know pretty low spot in our lives and we're kind of clinging to each other to get through this and and but now here we are you know going on three years later and and every day that goes by it just feels like a stronger bond between the two of us and it and it's constantly feels like it's going to the next level

That's the only way we, I think either one of us could probably describe it if she was sitting here. Did you have any hesitation, Blake, coming out of a high profile relationship, entering one arguably more high profile, knowing the attention that would be on the two of you? Trust me. Did that worry you? Yeah. In fact, she and I talked about it a few times because she was coming out of a high profile relationship too. And it's like, man, are we really going to step right back into this landmine again of this explosive. Oh my gosh, you know, it's just a, it's a tabloids dream to have these two worlds collide and in the situation that they collided in, you know.

But at the end of the day, all you got to do is ignore it and it's not even there. If you ignore it, those stories and the blogs and the tabloids and the rumors, they don't exist because it's not real. It's not real life. You know, it took me a long time to figure out Twitter's not real. not real life. It's just, it's nothing. If you don't have it on your phone, it doesn't exist at all. You don't have to have it in your life. And, man, once you get over that hump, and I don't know that this generation coming up will ever get over that hump. I mean,

they're growing up in the social media world, you know, and it's so easy to get wrapped up in it. I did. But man, if you can ever break away from it, you may save your own life. And I'm I'm serious. It's, for me, social media is just, it's the devil. It is. Well, it's the most extreme negativity you can find, too. There's no balance in it. You know, it's funny, somebody will send me an article and be like, hey, have you read

this piece they wrote about you in the Tennessean? No, I haven't seen it, you know, and of course you read it. And then the worst thing you can ever do, there's always that section at the bottom that says comments. Oh my God. Never read the comments. They hope my dog dies. They hate me so much.

Like, can you hate me so much that you hope my dog dies? But that's what's on there. Yeah, they can be a-h-ha-ha-ha. Would you, Blake, would you get married again? Of course I would. I mean, my gosh. Look, you got to keep taking a stab at life, you know. And I don't know if I will, but of course I would.

I'm not afraid. Bring it on. Thanks, man. Thank you, buddy. That's great. My thanks to Blake Shelton, such a good guy for that conversation and for hosting us at Old Red. If you're ever in Nashville, I'll swing by there on Lower Broadway. And thanks to all of you for tuning in to the Sunday Sit Down podcast again this week.

If you like what you hear, don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Be sure to tune in, of course, to Sunday today as well every weekend on NBC. I'm Willie Geist. Thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit Down. podcast.