The Bobby Bones Show - BONUS: BobbyCast - #98 - Dan from Dan + Shay

Episode Date: October 4, 2019

Dan + Shay stopped by today after releasing their new song with Justin Bieber. Dan Smyers stopped by The BobbyCast a year ago to talk about his life story.  He talked about his pop punk days, how we would get by being broke, how they decided on a name and more! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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APUS. Dot APUS. Dot E.DU slash military. Open doors to the future for you and your family with the help of American Military University. That's AMU. APUS. dot EDU slash military. Hey, so Dan and Shay put out a new song today.

And back in the day, about 100. episodes ago on the Bobbycast, Dan from Dan and Shea came out by himself. And I just kind of wanted to play it again. You know, they're back up, they're blowing up. They're just, have achieved new levels of success. And so this is Dan talking about even part of this when they were really, really struggling and having to steal pizza. So an old episode of the Bobbycast, I'm going to play for you now, and subscribe to the Bobbycast. It's an interview podcast. We talk to creatives and we also talk about music. So check out the Bobbycast. We do it from my house most of the time. And this is an episode with Dan Smyers from Dan and Shea from over a year ago, kind of his life story.

Check it out. All right, welcome to episode 98 of the Bobbycast with Dan Smyers of Dan and Shea. Do you feel like, I guess a question I've always wondered is, do you feel like you've lost some of your identity because you're always known as one of the two people? I do lose my last name a little bit. It's Dan of Dan and Shea, you know what I mean? Because I never say, is that even how you, I've never even talked to you as Dan Smyers. Is that even how you say it officially?

This is the first time. I like it. It's nice. it is how I say it officially. You nailed it. Usually it's like smears or Dan S. Myers or Dance Myers. I've had people be like, oh, dance, Myers, D-A-N-C-E Myers. Cool.

Because you were Dan when you moved down here. You weren't Dan and Jay. I was. I was like the really poor guy who couldn't afford to pay his rent, Dan. It was a rough times for a while. That's got to be frustrating to be one and awesome, because there are times too where you can lean on someone and it goes back and forth, but to be, because you're a real-life human.

Like when you prick you, you bleed. I exist. I'm here. I'm rocking. I was late. I was a few minutes late because traffic. Traffic gets me. Yeah, but it's ice.

It's traffic. It's... You just can't win. It's Tennessee where we're not used to this. I'm also not good at preparing either, so I'll, you know, see it says like traffic is light. 11 minutes is your time and I'll leave 11 minutes before I have to leave. Oh, that would drive me crazy. If it says 11 minutes, I'll leave 21 minutes.

Really? Yeah, and prepare it. That's why you're more successful than I am. That's not true. My hill, though, to get up here. is just treacherous and steep. I was wondering, was it bad the last few days? It's terrible.

I couldn't. Luckily, I have a Jeep, and I put the Jeep in four-wheel drive. I've never driven anything four-wheel drive in my life. Yeah. So I bought the Jeep because I have this humongous hill that I live on, and I knew one day it would ice. Yep. So I bought the Jeep all for the big build-up for this last weekend.

Dude. And I tried to get up in a two-well drive first, and I thought, this is the least interesting story ever, but in my heart it feels good to tell the story. No, I like it. I like it. I bought this Jeep for this one thing. And so I put it in two-year-old. two-well drive and I tried to get up the hill and it wouldn't go.

I was like, okay, good, good, good, good. Yep, were you spinning? Hard. Oh, that's brutal. And then I put it in four-well drive and just dominated the hill and my pecker got a little puffy. Oh, yeah, yeah. Straight to the sky.

It was good, man. I loved it. And then, but there are two sides of this hill where I live and this side over here, I don't know which side you came up on, but there are cars that park on the side of the road. And I've seen other cars fall and just do, do it, nail cars all the way down. Because you can't, once you start sliding, you're done. I almost saw it.

I was working on my computer in the front of the house, and we've got a window there. And there's people who are flying down on our street. It is completely covered. It's insane. I live in East Nashville. So Gallatin is like, it looks like there was never snow.

But at my house on my street, it's completely covered. I could ski down it. Some guy was cruising down. And I mean, literally it was like fish tailing, like going back. I thought he was going to just wreck every car on the street.

But he made it out alive. But I know that guy or girl, whoever was driving that car. And they pulled up, probably a guy. We're reckless drivers. Pull up to that stop sign. I was like, yeah, I got out of that one.

That was good. Have you ever been in a wreck? I have. I broke my wrist in a wreck here, actually. In town, you were in town? In town. You know the turnaround down by the convention center? Yes, that's the round, the circle?

Yeah, the round about. It was ridiculous. I was coming around the thing and a guy just pulls out right in front of me. It was inside. I'd still be driving my car. I had the same car for like, you know, 15 years, the same when I moved down here with. And a guy came out, teabone me. Of course, no insurance.

And I tried to turn the wheel and I broke my wrist. to his. You turned it on reaction? I turned it on reaction, yeah, when the guy was pulling out. And it was kind of like a blessing in disguise. I had never on stage dropped the guitar before. I was always like the guy who strums underwhelming guitar chords on stage. But we were on an acoustic tour.

We were opening up for Hunter Hayes. And I was like, oh, we can't miss these shows. We're getting like $100 a night. We don't want to miss out on that money. And we didn't cancel them. We hired a guitar player. Got insurance, actually, to cover for the guitar player to come out. Because otherwise, I mean, I wouldn't be able to work.

So I was running around with a big cast on. And we were like, this is kind of cool. Like, we can entertain twice the amount of people in the same amount of time if I don't have a guitar. So next is a headset, Mike. And by the way, that guitar player, also known is Eric Clapton. That's how I got to start.

It is, exactly. It was right before Cream, and then, you know, it all happened. It was insane. I have a tea here. So, I'll ask the rec question because, so when you came in downstairs, my assistant is down there,

she got into a wreck today. Oh, no. Someone pulled out in front of her, their side window was fully iced over and they couldn't see and she's driving down the road. Oh yeah. They pull out, there was no ice on the road, but because the cars are cold, pulled out and boom, nailed each other. That's brutal.

And so... She all right? I should go down and check on her. Yeah, yeah, go down and check on her. Yeah, I know we sit high and talk for a minute, but are you okay? Yeah, I just heard. They're still recording up there. Yeah.

But I just heard he had a wreck. Yeah. Now, her, she has a SUV. It's completely smushed. Dude, that's brutal. It's crazy when you see me. metal like that go and bend in ways that metal's not supposed to bend and then someone just walks out of there and both of them were okay that's good and it where was it i don't know yeah somewhere

there are some i'm about to throw throw our town under the bus here there are some bad drivers in Nashville there are bad drivers everywhere it's true but here is like especially worse i don't know what it is i think it's a combination of the the southern pace and then a lot of transplants like southern pace like crazy people like me who come in from pennsylvania and are like get out of the way get out of the way. Let's like, let's pass this guy. Let's turn before the light, you know, changes. That's funny, the southern pace. Maybe that's just the pace that I live, my driving life, because I've only ever,

I went Arkansas to Austin, which isn't really the south, but it's still in the southern part of the United States to Nashville. Maybe I only know the southern pace because I've only lived in the south. I am a slow driver, though. I'm, knock on wood, I'm going to get a ticket on the way home. I've never gotten a ticket in my entire life. I've gotten... You've never got a ticket?

My parents or somebody must be friends with this. the police or something because I've gotten pulled over like, I don't know, five or six times, sir, we're going to let you off with a warning. I'm always like super polite to him whenever they pull me over, but somebody out there listening is a police officer and they're like, we're going to get this guy's first ticket today. They're going to be looking for me. Yeah, I feel like calling one to an onion on the way out. Call me in.

I got a little to drink at the house. Maybe you want to check him out. This guy, Passion Fruit, LaCroy. He's just like, that's what he's drinking. I was like, hey, you want to water. You'll definitely want water. We're going to go talk for now. He's like, I got a Lecroy.

B-Y-O-W, dude. I'm good. Me, YOW, W. So I'm, I guess I'm interested in a lot of the stuff that was you before Dan and Shea. And I want to get to a lot of this, especially now, and people will listen to this for years, because with podcasts, you kind of look through and pick things you like. Totally. And I think people will like to see your name and listen to this. So I want to get to.

Are we going to list it as Dan of Dan and Shea or Dan Smyers? Dan of Dan of Dan and shit. Cool, it'll get more hits. I'll listen however you want. We can listen as Mr. Smires and that's it. I like that. Mr. Smires, though. A cameo from my dad.

Pennsylvania, yes. But when you moved to town, obviously, and people may not know the story, and you've told it on the air before, but I'll have you retell it again just briefly. But you met Che Wah here. I did. But you moved here to do what?

I moved here to be a songwriter and producer. I moved here from Pennsylvania, and I grew up listening to all kinds of music. I love country music, and I couldn't afford L.A. or New York, even if I wanted to move there. So I was like, in Nashville, when I moved here, was 2010, it was still affordable. now it's getting a little out of hand.

But for anybody from L.A. or New York listen, they're like, Nashville is, it's so cheap to live there. That's what everybody says. That's so cheap. Yeah. And everybody's so nice. But you moved here in 2010 to be a producer and a writer, huh? Yeah, I moved here with my buddy.

We had actually, like, never really hung out in person. This is kind of like this blind-dating, let's move to Nashville together thing. He's like, still one of my best friends was in my wedding. He has a couple cuts that are going to be on our upcoming album. And he's killing it now. But it wasn't like that for a while. while. Who is it? His name's Andy Albert. He would be an interesting guy to talk to as well. He's crushing it as a songwriter. He's written a few hits. She's got away with words for Blake

Shelton, which was one of my favorite songs Blake's put out. I think it ruffled a few feathers when he put that song in the way. It did. And not to sidetrack, but that was the only one of Blake songs to not go number one. It was the first one of like after 13 in a row because some people were irritated at the song. Yeah, he was bummed. There were a few lyrics in there that that were edgy, but it's cool. I mean, Blake Shelton's that guy. He can put out edgy lyrics like that. And I was so happy for him.

We had been like really struggling. So we moved here. We had a mutual friend who, his name is Rohan Coley. He's now, he's actually, his wife's in labor like right now. He's having this kid, first kid, yeah. And we're sitting like trying to pick what songs we're going to record next week. Yeah, he's crazy. But he put us together.

He was like, you guys are both trying to do the same thing. You and this dude in Pennsylvania. Are you in this dude? He was from Georgia. Yeah, he's from outside of Atlanta. You guys didn't move together. You just got here at the same time. Yeah, exactly.

I'll meet you in Nashville. Exactly. So we connected on, you know, AIM was still a thing, you know. We had our screen names. I don't know. Mine was like Brandon Boyd 2309 because I like. Oh, Pinky Miss. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a huge fan.

And he's over here laughing and making fun of me. But, you know, we kind of connected on the internet. We were like, let's send some demos back and forth. And we were like, this could work. And we moved to Nashville. Found the South Long Craigslist. I mean, literally this place was a disaster. There was no heat, no AC.

If there was, we couldn't afford to pay for it, so we didn't even turn it on. And the summer, it'd be like, everybody's like, here, the lie, you're exaggerating. But anybody who had been to that house was like, no, this is, it was a pretty bad place. It's 90 degrees in the summer and 46 in the winter. So we were struggling to get by, and we were just doing anything we could. Like, we would go, I've got a few funny stories, but we would go and do, like, taste testings and, like, research groups. Do you know what those things are? Like, where, here's $20.

You try on, like, 10 Haines T-shirts and get up in front of the crowd and tell your thoughts. So we would do that. But you were doing that? Oh, yeah. That's how you guys would make money? Honestly, I'm still on those email lists. And I'm like, if it's like $30 to go try some pizza, I'm like, yeah, I'm going to

go do that. How would you get on the list? So you would go to the place. It was called Nashville 2020 research. And it was like off of Rosa Parks. So anybody out there like struggling to make some money, struggling to get by, that's where you go. And you get on these lists, you do one.

I'm trying to think, we did one when we taste tested hard cider, which was pretty cool. And they pay you because they want your feedback to either improve the product or improve how they're marketing the product. Yeah, exactly. So we would do pizzas. I mean, you know, we would know that it was Domino's pizza, but they would say, here's random pizza company, so-and-so, give your thoughts on this. And I would literally take boxes of pizza home. It was insane.

Another ridiculous. Would you that broke? Oh, dude, I can go on for hours. This is crazy. So there's a Hampton Inn across from Vanderbilt. You know that Hampton Inn like, I don't know what's, there's like a Kudoba off a 21st over there. regardless as a hotel and there's a back parking lot. I would go every single morning,

because I couldn't afford to eat anything. I would go in the back parking lot. I would intentionally wear sweatpants and like, dress like I was actually staying at this hotel, wait for somebody to walk out of the back door to the parking lot, sneak in, like hang in the bathroom for a second, then walk in and eat continental breakfast every single morning. Wow.

I had this whole plan in my head too. People were like, aren't you afraid you're going to get caught if like the maids or somebody, you know, is like, hey, we saw you the last six days. I was going to be like, you know what, I'm in from out of town. I'm a guitar tech for Zach Brown band, and our tour manager. Had the backstory. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And our tour manager is not here yet. He told us, you know, when we arrive off the flight, just to go and grab a little breakfast and he's going to come check us in. And luckily it never happened. Everybody was so sweet. They're like, hey, good to see you again, you know, the extended stay at the Hampton Inn. Wow.

And I would take, like, little boxes of Rice Krispy treats, you know, back to the house and survive all day off that. So it was rough. We also made fake coupons. I'm rambling right now. It's ridiculous. I'm interested in this, though. So you and him both moved to town.

Were you both broke? Oh, yeah. It was really bad. But what are you doing to make money or not even make money? What are you doing to make progress creatively? We both, you know, came here with probably like a couple hundred bucks in our pockets, like nothing crazy. But, you know, to pay whatever rent we could for the first month. I mean, literally our rent was like 100 or 150 bucks.

Nothing insane. And I was producing demos. I was doing logic then. I hadn't even like, I couldn't afford Pro Tools. I got a cracked version of logic, which is, you know, an illegal download. And I was just rocking on there. Didn't really know what I was doing, but, you know, writers and stuff would come to town or artists and I'd produce a demo for him, literally like $30 a song.

I was spending like, you know, the same amount of time I spend making our records now, like weeks at a time doing songs and walk away with $30. But hey, you do three or four of those and you're paying your rent that month. Did anyone back then, did you work? with anyone that has done anything as far as made a name for themselves in any capacity? I'm trying to think. I mean, I knew Cassidy Pope. Cassidy Pope and I kind of came from the same world. We had done like, you know, rock and pop kind of music in the past. And we had a lot of mutual friends. So we, like, wrote some songs

together and did demos. And Cass is still a good friend. You knew her before the voice. You knew her from when she was on Hey Monday? Yep. Warped Tour days. Yeah. We had a lot of mutual friends and wrote some songs. I got to dig back on the old hard drive and see what I can bring up. I mean, you know who else played Warped Tour was Brandon Ray. Did he really? Yeah, he has the energy for it. He has the greatest stories about going out and passing out flyers and just, and he would play at the 11 a.m. Dude, I, I've got Warped Tour stories, so I would go out. But who are you playing with then? I had a band in high school called Transition, and it was like a pop punk kind of, I don't know, just crazy. Were the lead singer? I was. I was. And I would, I had like long emo hair and did the whole

I had no idea. This is... Oh, dude, I'm going to send you some pictures tonight. Did you know this, Mike? You knew his pop-punk stuff? Have you heard? Oh, I have some here. How about this? Here you go.

This is from transition called... Oh, no. Oh, no. You got to pull it up. Oh, yeah, I got that one. Hear every word we've said. That's the voice. That's, that voice.

That's, I am so sad today. And then you got to end... My mama threw my magazine away. It's so urgent, too. It's like, right now. You got to end everything with it right now. Look at this. You guys were the real deal.

I was like 15 years old on the record. Have you ever heard of them, Mike? Come on, show that tattoo. You got the tattoo. You got my signature tattooed on your arm. That's so funny. How about this one? Were you in a band called Bonavit?

What's this one? Yeah, that Bonaventure was the band that my buddy Andy and I, who I moved here with at the same time started. And we were trying to like... Do you start it here? Yeah, we started at here at that house in Nashville. And we...

Let me hear this one. Are you singing in this one? I'm not. I'm singing harmonies. Okay. So he's singing this one? He is. This is Bonaventure.

I think you're a better singer. Thanks, dude. Yeah. I really enjoy your punk pop voice. That's a great pop punk voice. I've got some great pop punk ideas floating around. We've got like a lot of buddies who used to be in that scene. Like our buddy Paul D.Givani, he played guitar in a band called Boys Like Girls.

He wrote our last number one song. How not to you? Wait a minute. I mean, we're going there right now. I see Paul on Twitter all the time. Yeah, at Paul VLG. I did not know that he was the guitar player. for boys like girls.

Yeah, the tall handsome guy. That's him. Huh. Mine's blown a bit. He wrote How Not To, our latest number one song. Huh. Yeah. He wrote, did you write that with Adam?

Hammer? He did, yeah. That's crazy to me. He was in that band. He's, dude, he's like the sickest, they call him track guys, you know, and he's doing, he's producing Jordan Davis. He's got that singles you up song on the radio right now. And I don't know.

I mean, he's honestly getting calls from guys left and right, like Keith Urban or whoever is like, hey, we need you to come and make this awesome. And he's just crushing. Did you know Simple Plan? Heck yeah, dude. Dude, they were awesome to me. Their music holds up. They were ahead of their time.

They were Canadian, I believe. They were a Canadian pop. I used to play them. They used to play all of our radio shows back when I was, you know, in top 40s. They're still doing radio shows, I think. Maybe. Do you remember bowling for soup? Heck yeah.

Oh, we were talking about them the other day. I said, I pulled up on Spotify. I was bowling for soup. I was like, this is the coolest idea. And they recorded Stacey's mom. And the album cover for the single was, because everyone thought we sang this song, we actually sang this song.

So they did Stacey's mom. That's funny. I remember Jared, well, the lead singer of bowling pursuit. Yeah. Because he was from near Dallas. So I knew him, but 1985 was their big song.

Do you know who that song was written by? It was written by this guy, Mitch Allen, who also came from the pop punk world. He was in a band called SR-71. And he's written, like, he wrote One to Want Me for Jason DeRulo. He wrote like a bunch of hits for Demi Lovato.

crazy. Look at that. Yeah, here's 1985 from Bowling Pursuit. This was a for a pop

punk song, it became a pretty big pop song. Yeah. This was their biggest song. How about you?

How about you? You sound good as a punk singer. I've never heard you do straight ahead vocals. Yeah. When I hear you,

you're doing harmonies for Shea most of times. Yeah, I like being the background guy now. You do, though? Yeah, being the Dan of Dan and Shea.

It's a little less pressure. But your name's first, though, too. So people, that's another I want to talk about that I just like how do you decide who goes first Dan or Shea is it a coin flip is there a

order of importance yeah that's a right height you know there's a lot of other things you know but how did that really I don't know how that happened actually it was we were when Shea and I met that's like a lot later in the in the saga there the I guess the tragic tale of Dan Smyers in Nashville but uh whenever we would walk into publishing companies because we were just trying to get a publishing deal we were which mean just wanted to get paid to write songs yeah yeah we were like we just want to write songs for Rascal Flats or whoever, and we would walk in and they'd be like, Dan and Shay's here again,

Dan and then when we became a band, we were searching for band names, and we had some band names floating around for sure. Let me read this because I want to get back to that. Do this? LifeLock's an awesome sponsor of the show, researcher. Do you have, because I have a, I'm going to put it in.

I have a new VPN, like a modem. Yeah. Do you protect your internet and stuff? I need to. I see. That's a new. I don't. You should listen to this.

Okay, I'm listening. Mike and I just had a conversation before it down because I'm putting a new one in. Because people, I read a story, this is not part of the commercial. I read a story where people are going to hotels and they're sitting in parking lots and people on open networks. Because a lot of hotels have open networks. Yeah. So you pay the money or you're, you put them in the code, and all of a sudden you're on the open internet. And they can use this little hacking machine and everything that you see, they see.

So when you're typing stuff, they can still pass, all the stuff. Let me talk about LifeLock real quick. Yeah. So I have LiveLive. lock one or four people have experienced identity theft if you're only monitoring your credit your identity can still be stolen in ways that you can't detect thieves will sell your information too and then all of a sudden they have your info you can get on the dark web that's what i want to do like i want to go on the dark web someday and see what they have up there i mean i shouldn't the dark web seems

have you been on the dark web no i'm curious about it me too it seems like an old yahoo chat room but everything bad sold there that's what it seems like to me life lock detain't text a wide range of identity threats. I literally have LifeLock and have had it way before they became a partner in the show or the podcast. If there's a problem, a U.S.-based restoration specialist will work to fix it. Nobody can identify all identity theft or monitor

all transactions, but you can join now and get 10% off by using the promo code Bones, 1,800 LifeLock, or go to LifeLock.com, the promo code's Bones, to save 10%, and I use it, I love it. It's helped me. Once I had a guy, this is not the commercial, but somebody tried to open a

bank account my name. Really? Oh, I have my identity attempted to be stolen at least 10 times. Dude, we had a situation happen to us. This is back to a good transition, back to the house we were living in. Andy and I, we found this painting online. It was, I don't know, maybe like $20 or something like that. We were trying to make our decrepit old house look a little better. We found this painting.

And this thing was massive. I mean, it was like six feet long, like eight feet high as big old canvas painting. And we're like, you know what? We should like lie about this on Craigslist and put it up. and be like this is like a famous like painting. It's worth, you know, $1,500 or something like that and see if anybody bites. We put it up on Craigslist. I kid you not.

Within like an hour, somebody hits back and is like, we want the painting. Like, can we email you? And we're like, oh my gosh, this is huge. This is massive. And they hit us back and they're like, but we want to pay you $1,600. We want to pay you more than what we asked for. But it was like one of those situations where they try to scam you. You've got to like send a check so they can cash it and do the whole thing.

So they were trying to scam the scammer. They were trying to scam the scammer. Dude, I've been scammer for years. Still am. Did you get any money out of it? So they sent us a check and it was for like, I don't know, 17. It was more than what we asked for. It was a lot like in the thousands.

And we took it to it. We didn't want to take it to our own bank because we were like, this could be like we should try to get the cash quick, even if we have to pay like a low commission. We took it to advance financial like one of those check cashing places on Nolan'sville road. And, you know, it's like a glass window and you slip it through like you're paying it the gas station and they look at a check and they looked at us and they're like, we're going to have to call the police.

This is a fraudulent check. And we're like, no, no, no, no. Like, seriously, we don't know what's happening. Like, we just try to sell painting on Craigslist and this guy. And they're like, okay, well, you need to get out of here immediately because this is a fraud. I guess this person had done it before and we sprinted out of there. So you lost a $20 painting?

No, we got the painting. We never sent the painting. Oh, you never sent the painting? No, the whole issue, I don't know how the scam was. worked. We figured it out one time, but it was, uh, yeah, it was, we didn't. Well, that's what you deserved. You were trying to cheat in, that's true. It was a good painting, though. It looks pretty good. You still have it? He still has it. Honestly, still has it. It's funny. So you and him move into this house. Moving to this house. You're both, what's he doing? You're out cutting demos for artists.

Yeah. What's he doing? Kind of the same thing. You know, he was writing and just like scraping by on what he could. Were you helping each other? Were you supportive of each other or were just two guys living together. No, we were working together. We were writing songs together and, you know, we started putting the Bonaventure band together while we were down there. And we were like, you know, we had a little bit of stuff going on. We had connections, I guess, from what we had done in the past and who we knew

before we moved to Nashville. And we like, we saved up our money here. I don't know how we did it or like borrowed my dad's airline points and flew to New York one time and showcased for Mercury Records. This guy, David Massey. You and him did? Yeah. As Bonaventure. So we were like, we didn't know whether we were obviously writing country songs, but we were just telling people whatever they wanted to hear.

So this pop label was like, yeah, come in and play for the president. I mean, this guy signed like massive acts. And we go up there, I have a banjo, five-string banjo, and he had an acoustic guitar. This was before like the resurgence of the banjo and pop music happened, like Mumford and Sons and Imagine Dragons put a mandolin in their pop track. This was like before that became cool. And I walk into this New York office, Mercury Records, and it's the two of us singing country songs and they're like, so you guys want to sign to this pop label, huh?

We're like, yeah, we'll do anything you want. Have you ever thought about being a country act? And we're like, no, no, absolutely. We just started telling them what they wanted to hear, what we thought they wanted to hear. And they're like, cool, yeah, we'll be in touch. And we went back to Nashville and nothing ever came of it. Did you guys break up the idea of Bonaventure

after that didn't work? It was kind of not immediately there. We were kind of just fizzling out, like, focusing a little more on the writing thing. I mean, we'd been here for like four, or five years before Shane I met. And, uh, what was the big, I wouldn't even say break, but what was the, the pop for you where you go, okay, I can at least relax a bit on rent.

So when I signed my publishing deal to Warner Chapel, I had $63 in my account, like cold, 63. That I know that number for a fact. And I mean, my rent that month was like 150. So I was, I hadn't figured it out yet what I was going to do. But it was pretty nice while we were like, you know, negotiating deals and with a record label and publishing company, we would. there's this guy Alex Heddle. He runs, he's at Big Machine Publishing.

He still, like, gives me a hard time because he was like, we wanted to sign you guys and you just like let us on. And we went out to SoulShine and spent like $1,500 at the bar. And like, I'm like, no, we did. We went out one time and got a pizza and a beer, but we always give each other a hard time about it. So whenever you're doing that, if you're an artist out there and like, you're being courted by labels, if they want to buy you a car,

if they want to buy you, you just take it. You know, it's funny. How I knew you guys first was not. as friends who were trying to be artists. I don't think we had a deal at that point. You didn't have a deal. No. No, but that's not, I was like, I have these friends.

We're doing karaoke. Yeah. And I was like, Dan and She was like, it's Dan and Shea. And I was like, okay. We had demos on cell phone. Yeah, I was like, okay, cool. The artist thing wasn't a thing. It was just not as friends.

Not as friends who like drank other people's beer and partied. And yeah, this is crazy. I knew Nata way back. I met her. she was working, I think she was working for a pop station or doing it. She was for the river. Yes, for the river. And boys like girls who I know, and I've go way back with those guys, they were still doing the band.

And they came and played a show, a Christmas show. And I met Nata there. She was like doing promo for the station. And they did an acoustic radio show. And I was hanging with Paul and Martin from Boys Like Girls. And I met Nata and we became friends. And she'd been to that terrible house. She knows all about it.

That's funny. I just think back because all these memories are hitting now. because that's right when I moved to town. Yep. It's right about the time you guys went on with Warner. Right. And became a thing. But again, you weren't Dan and Shea.

You were Dan and Shea. Yeah. Two dudes who were her friends. Still looking for a band name. Yeah, that's crazy. We were honestly under SoundCloud. I don't know. I hope it's private because somebody's going to go out there and find it.

We were on SoundCloud as Ragtop Red. That was our name. We were like Big Tim McGraw fans and we were like, whoa, he has red ragtop. What if we like flip it, ragtop red? There have been much dumber names. there is one we were in Austin Texas we did South by Southwest and we were down there

it was I don't remember exactly the timing of this no this was the first we done South by Southwest twice the second time Justin Bieber came out on stage with us it was a whole I remember that I remember the second time yeah that was crazy the first time we did it there's a picture of it there was only we played a showcase and like Shay's lawyer at the time

this guy Jim Zumwalt the man great guy he was like come down to do this showcase and we can hang out and we were like this is awesome you know We went down and there was literally three people in the crowd. My lawyer, Jonathan, he's the man, Jim Zumwalt, and Paul D. Giovanni. The guy, boys like girls, keeps coming up in this situation. I don't know why he was there.

I think he was just, I think the band was on a break or something at that point, and he was just hanging out. He was literally standing in the crowd. And we watched this the other night. We were cutting together videos for tequila and my buddy, P. Tracy, who does, like, all our content. He found a video that somebody had taken, and it was, showed us, like, rocking on stage. I'm wearing like a Boston Red Sox hat and we're dancing around like we got something going on and he zooms out literally

no one in the crowd is so embarrassing What was your name? So we go to P.F. Chang's after that little showcase and Zami's like You guys are poised to be the next big star is like whatever. We need to come up with a name so he's got his little iPad. We're sitting at his round table in the corner

P. F. Chang's in Austin and he's like I got it and we're sitting there like he might have it. This is awesome. Let's hear him out. He's like not showing us. He's like got a big surprise. and he's typing it out on this little iPad, and he flips it around. And his big pitch to us was that the name should be schools out. Oh, you told me this.

School's out. Schools out. Yeah, so like if we ever get big like Dirk's Bentley or something and can do the, you know, little secret show. The hot country nights. Schools out live at Third and Lindsay, you know. That's funny. I remember that, man, it's so funny because I think of you guys

as part of my memory when I first got to town. I love that. Because you guys were being a thing right when I, whatever I was being and whatever I am, I started to be a thing right when you guys were being a thing at the same time. And people hated all of us. All of us. Because we were ruining country music. And still are.

By the way, we're still ruining country music. It's a very vocal minority. It's insane. I've never seen anything like it. I was talking to someone that I do business with the other day. And we were talking about the people that listen to country music. Sure. And I said, you can't pay attention to the people that talk to about it.

Right. Because the people that are satisfied and love it, they're quiet. They just love it and they consume what they like of it. Sure. They don't complain about what they don't. They just go to what they like. Yep. The people that are the ones going, this sucks, that ain't country.

They're out there. Yeah. But they're the loudest and they're a very select minority group. They're aggressive too, man. They mean. Yeah, they're mean. Every once in a while when I want to like get into it on Twitter, I shouldn't do this. I'll like search Dan plus Shea, not country.

You know, and there's some like really vulgar stuff in there, like really aggressive. It's like, if you don't want to listen to our music, just don't listen to it. Nobody's forcing anyone to do anything with anything creative. Yeah. Period. It's crazy. And at this point in my career, I've always been hated because, again, by a vocal minority, because when I was doing pop, I was too country.

Sure. When I do country, I'm too pop. When I was doing alternative, I had too much of a southern accent. When I was doing sports, I'd never been a professional athlete. Right. You just can't win. I've never fit anywhere, but it's thick. my skin so much, but it's also made me more like the people that actually consume.

Totally. And that's been what was, to me, the hardest thing and the biggest obstacle was, oh, I'm never fitting. I actually fit exactly with the people that are consuming it. They just don't scream. Yeah, it's great. It's interesting you say that. Do you ever, like, are you impacted more by the haters than, like, there will be, I talk to

Thomas read about this all the time and his dad always was like, Thomas, he gets so bent out of shape about the people on Twitter. Thomas Wrett, and he'll hit people back. I see it on his, he has so many followers on Instagram. He's got millions and millions of people saying, Thomas, you're the greatest artist I've ever heard. I, like, have your lyrics tattooed on myself. And then one guy comes on there and is like,

why are you wearing those jeans? You look like, whatever, you know, and your music's not country. He'll reply to him and he'll hit them back. And like, but you just scroll past, I love your song, I love your song. You guys are amazing. The show is amazing tonight.

Then there's one hater out there. It's like nice haircuts, whatever. and it's like, oh, I'm going to get that guy. I'm going to get that guy. You know, I was talking to Kip Moore about this, and Kitmore and I had the same management. Yep. And we were sitting in a room,

and he was talking about how at times he can be upset by people not enjoying the show. He could say, let's say 99% of people are just rocking out. And Kipp's intense, and you talk about something loves his art. Yep. That's kid. And Kip's like, man, I have everybody going,

but the one person I'm focused on is the guy who's just looking at the good. ground and I'm like, how do I win him over? And I can't win him over. He'll call him out too. And he says, what do you do? I said, well, when I do stand up, well, I also, I like to read about really good famous people. Sure. I'm a B-minus comic. I'm funny if you want to come to a show, but I'm nothing like this. I'm nothing like the people that are really good. Like, it's their profession. I'm a really good radio host. Yeah. I'm an okay comic. But Steve Martin is one of my heroes. And before, I was born in the 80s, so I didn't really get to experience Steve Martin as when he was

new and was groundbreaking. Sure, yep. But he would say, watch the top of their heads, don't watch their faces, because everybody experiences joy differently. Totally. It's interesting. You're projecting how you experience joy on them. Yeah. And if they're not experiencing joy, how you experience joy, you think, oh,

they're not enjoying it. Yeah. So we had that conversation, and then we talked about why we get affected so much by when someone says something bad about us. Right. And I try to go, you know what, I'm better than that, and I don't let it get to me. Yep. But it's so hard. I keep myself, the same reason. I don't keep sweets in my refrigerator.

I don't go to Facebook. Yeah. The show Facebook, because it's people that, a lot of people that are just angry, and I can't, it drives me so crazy, I just know that's my weakness.

Yeah. And it hurts my feelings, and I'm a sensitive artist. It's tough, dude. We all are. We all are. Honestly, we played a show with Kip Moore. I hope Kip doesn't hear us

because he'll kill me. You know, he wants to put off the tough guy. He's a sensitive guy. He's, like, in touch with his feelings and his emotions. I mean, you could hear it in his music. He's an incredible songwriter. Play this thing called the Pepsi Golf Coast Jam, I believe. And whoever hears this is not going to ever book us there again.

But it was an interesting show. It was like, I blame the fact that it was insanely hot. It was like 110 degrees outside. It was in Florida. And Kip had just gotten off stage and we were on the bus. He's like pounding on our bus door. He's like, boys, let me come up there and hang out. And he's like, he was so bummed about there.

There was like, the crowd was, we saw his show. People were throwing beach balls around. And like, they were, for the most part, having a good time. But it was hot. And it was late in the day, you know. It was probably 7, 30 or 8 at night. And there were, like, a couple guys down in the front row or in the pit who were probably drunk or hungover. And they were giving him a hard time.

And he was like, I've had it. I'm done with this. Like, I'm never playing out. We're like, it's all right. We talked it out. But he was emotional about it. Yeah, he's a passionate guy. That's awesome, though.

His true fans, like, can feel that. He bleeds for his art. And it's like, that's why he die hard. He has diehard fans. And he's diehard. And I, Kep and I got into a huge blow up one time because I, go, well, I'm commentating on what's happening. Good or bad.

I've at one point made friends and enemies at the same time of every single artist just about. Because where I've said I've really enjoyed them, I've also said things I don't like about them. Yeah, yeah. Just because if I say enough things, eventually they're all not going to be great. Of course. And I can't worry about that. And at times it makes it awkward in town. But then again, it comes back around and we're cool and then we're not cool again.

But with Kip one time, I said, Kip, you've got to relax on the cell phones. This is me talking over the air. Stop yelling at people with their cell phones. Everybody uses their phones now. Do you hear the selfie song or whatever was? Yes. Yeah, yeah. But he got so pissed at me.

And we ended up three months later after we just wouldn't refuse to talk to each other, going to breakfast for like three hours. We just talked it out. Yeah, that's awesome. And there was an understanding that we're both super sensitive in different ways. Totally. And we're not on the same exact wavelength, but we're absolutely on the same highway. For sure.

And since then, it's been fantastic. That's awesome. He is, he'll shoot you straight. And I'll still make fun of them if I need to. He sent me a video. I went to Hawaii. I don't know how to, you know. And I told you this.

I don't know how to serve. I don't know how to do any of the water stuff. Never grew up around wavy water. I only grew up around lake water. So I could have my supposed to be a paddle, stand up paddle boarding. And you take that strap and you put it on your ankle. But I put it on my wrist because I'm an idiot. And I thought you supposed to put on your wrist.

Yeah. And so I talked about the story. I actually talked about with you guys when you came on the show and Kip heard that segment. and he sends me a video of just him over and over strapping thing to his leg. That's all the video was, with him strapping himself to a board over and... That's incredible. Yeah, Kip's a passionate, dude, and I like Kip. Yeah, I like him too.

He is a good guy. Okay, well, let's get back to this. Oh, wow, Warby Parker, back on? Look at that. I have so many pair of Parker glasses. I want to just do this spot then real quick. I might need to get a pair. Oh, dude, you can go in.

I don't even know what the spot says because I haven't looked at it. The Warby Parker store is like a candy store. They have so many different kinds of frames. Is that the one in Edchill? Like my coffee shop, Etchio Cafe over there. And they don't have brick and mortar stores everywhere. They do in Austin. They do in Nashville.

Which, by the way, I live right near that P.F. Chang's where it schools out. Oh, yeah. And Austin. Yeah, I live right there by that P.F. Chang's. Yep. So, Warbur Parker has all these glasses for like $100. And it's like a shopping spree. Okay.

It's unreal. There's a free home trial program from Warby Parker. I haven't pre-read this. So I'm just going to read it. But I think I know most of this guy bought them so many times. Order five pair of glasses and try them on for five days. There is no obligation to buy. It ships for free, and it includes a prepaid return shipping label.

Basically what happens is they send you these five pair of glasses and you can try them all on and see which frames you like. And the ones you don't, you can send them back. Go to Warbyparker.com slash Bobby to order your free home try-ons today. Glasses start at $95, including prescription lenses. Lenses include anti-gallair and anti-scratch coatings for every pair you buy to. A pair is distributed to somebody in need. So there's also Warby Parker iTunes app.

the try-home kit thing really is fantastic though because it comes right to your house and you put them on in the ones you don't like you go ah these don't fit my face you just send them back and so there is there any part of this that I don't know about yet because all that I just know from my heart

if you have an iPhone X you can download the Word Parker app and use their brand new feature find your fit well that's interesting it uses the iPhone X's true depth camera to map and measure key facial features man I need that to see if I'm ugly

I can use that even front out the glasses Warbyparker.com slash Bobby. If you're glasses wear, just go to Warbyparker.com slash Bobby. It's a pleasant treat having Warby Parker back. This podcast has gotten so big and we never expected it.

It's amazing, dude. It's killing it. I guess, but look at this equipment. This is the equipment that I just bought and might put it together. This is not even a real studio. And now we have 2 million subscribers and the thing.

That's unreal. It's absolutely insane. It's cool. Okay, so here we are. And by the way, I've tried to get you in for months. And either you could do it and I couldn't or I could do it and you couldn't

And finally we got it We're here, we're hanging I like it. Thanks for having me man. Sorry, my story is so ridiculous It's all over the place I didn't know some of this And a lot of times I know everything

I'm gonna keep giving lessons to all the struggling artists out there We're trying to get by So we had like Microsoft paint On our computers or like some iteration of it And we would make, we're scammers We made like fake coupons Or we would find a coupon that it was expired

And we would change the date And then we would go to CC's pizza You know CC's amazing So good. Oh, CCs were like $2.99 buffet. Oh, it was $4.99, which was out of our price range. So what we did is we made it like buy one, get one free CCs. Because when you're in like the 250 range, it's like, it's okay.

Not only did we do that. We would go, the CCs by our house would close at 9 p.m. We'd go at 8.40 and we would order two pizzas like custom. We'd like a mac and cheese and buffalo chicken or something like that. Pizas right off the front. And they'd be like, cool. And they'd make them up. And then we'd be sitting in there.

And then they'd be like, gentlemen, we're about to close the store. and we'd be like, what are all those pizzas up on the thing? Are you guys throwing those away? And they'd be like, yeah, we have to take them to the dumpster. And we're like, if we meet you out back, could we take the leftover pizzas? And I mean, the people working in Ceces were like, sure, we don't care. Sure enough, we'd walk around the back of the place with the two custom pizzas that we had just had made. And then we would get the, like, the pizzas they were throwing away.

And we would literally eat off this pizza for like six weeks at a time. And as it became not really edible anymore, we would put it on the grill out back. It was dark times. That's fun. So what did your parents do? My dad's a chemical engineer. He was. He's retired now.

He coaches middle school soccer now. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Was he a soccer player? He was. He played in college. Were you an athlete?

I was. You're built like an athlete. Yeah. I don't mind me noticing. You're built like an athlete. Thanks, man. Yeah. Maybe that speedo I wore in here was a bad choice.

Yeah. So I played football for a year in college. That's like the weird thing about what I'm doing because I graduated. from college from a great school. I graduated from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, which is... I'm playing that theater. Carnegie Theater? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. It's beautiful. That's crazy. I've never... I saw Colby Calais play there one time. And Jimmy E. World in the Pop-Bong days. It was killer.

I love Colby Calais. So good. She came through... We went to lunch one time. I don't think it was a date. It could have been a date, though. But she played... And Amy would know the real story because she's... That doesn't matter. It's for a different day. Yeah. Yeah. I need to hear the story. Yeah, I need to make sure it's right, though, before I say it. I need to get, you know how it's been so long you want to talk to the people that were also experiencing it with you to make sure it didn't turn into some fantasy in my head. Yeah, yeah.

So all these stories are, now that we're talking, all these, like, crazy stories I have when I'm of here coming back. I got another good one on deck here in a few minutes. Whenever you play football in high school, what would you play, what position you play? I played running back. So I actually was touring through high school. So I, and then I played all growing up. And then like the band, the transition band started sort of happening a little bit. We were touring on weekends, and then my parents, like, they hated me.

We had kind of a weird falling out when I was in high school because they were like, you're so good at sports, you should play sports. And I was like, screw you, mom and dad, I'm playing music. Like, I want to, like, drop out of high school and go on the warp tour, which I wasn't even invited on the warp tour. We would show up and we would build the stages. There was, like, the Kevin Says stage, Kevin Lyman, who ran the warp tour, had this thing called Kevin Says stage, and it would just be new and upcoming artists.

Get up at six in the morning every day, you know, we put in, like, truck. and pipes and all that stuff together and build the stage and like two of the acts would get to play. So there would be days we'd build the whole stage, break the stage down and not even get to play. We were... Wow, it's like an open mic here in Nashville. Yeah. Maybe you get on, maybe you don't. But you had to drive the van from city to city.

So I bet a lot of people did that, you know, and like... You're also young at the time. And I was like, this is awesome. Yes. That's how I feel when I was 17, 18, 19, did radio, going to school full time, taking 20 hours, broke as a joke. Yeah. It was, I think, the happiest time of my life.

Totally. Much happier than I am now because I've now put all these problems into my head that really don't matter. And money is like a thing now. Absolutely. Unfortunately, it's the reality of what we do. I mean, I wish I could just like write a million songs and just chill. But like we have to go out and play shows and, you know, travel through the night or take red-eye flights to play shows. Like, because we have bills to pay and we have to pay our band and we have to, you know what I mean?

And it's not even hard compared to what normal people like my stepdad, I worked at a sawmill. Yeah. Every day. Hated it. That was hard work. Absolutely. What we do is not hard work. No, it's not.

We spent a lot of time creatively competing against other people. It's exhausting sometimes. We can still be mentally exhausted and physically without sleep. Sure. But when I was grinding it and actually doing the work, when I was getting paid, I was so happy. Because I didn't know any better. That's true. And money wasn't a problem because I never had.

There was an option of any. Yeah. There was no option of money. so I just enjoyed the art. I agree with you. That's so true. But yeah, we were grinding. We had nothing.

We were not getting paid. We were doing these shows. And like we would have a CD or a demo. We'd be selling them to the line. You know, I had the whole pitch down. I had like a little headphone set. And it's like, you guys like fallout boy? And they're like, no.

We like hard stuff. Like no effects or something. We'd like, you're going to love our stuff. And otherwise, you know, we'd be like, no effects. You're like, no, we like pop music. Like, fall out boy. We'd be like, you're going to love our stuff. Perfect.

I have just the band for you. And we would like sell CDs for five bucks to get to the next city. And that's just... Would people buy them? They would. Yeah, they would. I mean, people were generous. I don't know if that still is a thing.

But, I mean, that hustle, like, all of the guys in our band and our touring crew came from that world. So we all kind of have that mentality. And I, you know, we have an amazing team around us now. We've got amazing connections at country radio and we have amazing fans. But I try to still keep that mentality with what I do. You know, here in Nashville, it's like, people are like, why are you doing so many things or writing all these songs or...

replying to fans on social media and stuff, but it's just what I'm used to, what I came up on, and it's, I mean, now we've got more of a platform. There are more fans that will come to the shows, you know,

without me begging them to come to the shows. But I try to keep that same mentality. If I work as hard as I did when I was building stages at Warped Tour, we're going to have a lot of success, you know? You know, there's a parallel that I see between, we were talking about Kip,

between Kip and you and Shea, in that you have very passionate fans. Oh, yeah. and you guys grind the road hard harder than people give you credit for but you know what you're not looking for credit no so it's a weird thing to say that people don't give you credit for it because you're not looking for the credit sure but you guys just from knowing what it's like to tour because i do a little myself combined and seeing you guys all out you're on the road a lot more than the normal country act yeah we are we did i think 173 shows last year which and just to compare

Most people just do weekends. Yeah. Most, like the bigger acts will do 85 shows a year. And that's a big touring year. And we try to, you know, we're with CAA, our agency. And when we met for the first time, I was like, I come from the world of Warped Tour where you're playing five, six nights a week. Like, now I like the country thing.

I like doing three nights and then coming back to Nashville and resetting the gears. But we were like, let's just tour like a rock band. Let's go out and do, we don't need to just play Friday and Saturday night. We can play a Tuesday night or Wednesday night. playing clubs or House of Blues or whatever it is. Like we were grinding, playing every night. We're still doing that. I mean, we would go, even when we're on tour, we're on tour with the flats this summer.

But we're booking our own headlining dates in between because our fans are passionate, man. They're dying. And they want to see the full set. And, you know, there's opportunity, obviously business-wise to go do those shows. But it's good for us, too, to be in those cities playing for those fans, not just, okay, we're going to play the major cities. You need to, I mean, that's the thing about country.

They're country music fans everywhere. So you're not just playing New York and Boston or, you know, big major cities. You're playing all over the place. And sometimes those shows are even crazier because the fans, you know, in the middle of nowhere, like, no one ever comes here. This is the best thing in a year. I enjoy going to places where they're not huge circles on the map with a big city because people are so much more appreciative. And I may not sell many tickets. Exactly.

But the great thing about what I do. So most radio people don't do things outside of the radio show. Right. I do, and I think one of the greatest things I get from it is getting to have a dose of reality. Sure. And actually seeing and meeting people, because I do it every, unless I'm sick. I've only ever not done it two or three shows ever. Right.

Unless I'm sick or something has went wrong. Yep. I always go and the theaters get mad at me for doing it. But I go on and talk to people, meet people, because that is important to me to stay grounded. I can be in a room and just talk to my friends and it goes over the airwaves. but I will lose what's really happening in the world. Me being able to go out

and see people as much as I do resets me back to normal sea. Yeah, I like that. It gets me out of the bubble. And for you guys too, you get out of Nashville, you see what's really happening. Now what's in this stupid bubble

of, well, what's the coolest thing that's happening? Right, right. It is a bubble. And I mean, where I grew up was a bubble too. It wasn't until I moved out and started touring. It was like, I thought everything was perfect.

It was awesome, but it's not always like that. And you see the way like certain people live. And that's why we try to, when we're on stage, even if there's like technical difficulties, if the venue sucks or whatever it is, like give 110%. Because even like if there's five people there, those five people don't care that there's not six people there.

That was a hard thing for me to do. Yeah, absolutely right. You have to give your all to those people because like, and it's even more impactful than when you play for 20,000 people in an arena. Because those people, they feel special. And like, I remember being a kid going to shows. And if an artist got up there and phoned it in because the show wasn't sold out, it's like, you know what?

I don't know if I love that. artist. But if we go out there and play like, you know, in front of five people like we're playing in front of a big festival crowd, it's going to go a long way. We've always had that mentality. So it's, it took me a while and I, somebody wrote a book, Charlie Daniels wrote a book said, don't look at the empty seats. The empty seats. And that's something over the past couple years that I've really appreciated is putting forth the effort when it feels like you should be down. Like, oh, man, this didn't sell out. But again, nobody knows. I went to watch Adam Crolla.

Here's an example. Mike D. I went to watch Adam Crolla. And. In Nashville? Yeah, at T-BAC. And the place was half full. And I was looking around.

Like, wow, this place is half full. I kind of feel. But nobody there was looking behind them at any single seat. No. And again, going to shows, reset me on how to do shows. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because you also, you know, on the flip side of that, you'll go to shows and see artists who do notice those empty seats and are complaining.

You could tell they're just cutting the set short and doing whatever. And you're like, that's, you're like, that's, you're. the guy I don't want to be. And I was early that guy, but now I'm the exact opposite. That's awesome. And I appreciate it because, and I went to a John Mayer's show

in Minneapolis, and I went through the meet and greet line. Yep. Not as later, later, I hung out. I was cool later, but at the beginning, I was listening.

I wanted to go through a meet and greet line to see what it's like to go through a meeting greet line because where I am now, I get a lot of things. Right. Because of my position, people say,

hey, don't worry about it. Totally. I've known John Mayor for a bit. We've probably had 10 instances together. Yep. So I don't know him, know them, know them, but professionally, we know each other. And now we actually follow each other on social media and stuff. So maybe we'd recognize, he'd recognize me.

I'd recognize him. I'd be like, what up. So, but I went through the meeting great line, and it was 45 minutes or so, and I sat, and I just talked to people, and it just gave me a new respect for even people that come through the meeting. Totally, man. It was just, it's really good for me to do stuff like that. It blows my mind.

We were just in Europe. We were in Europe in December, and it's like, we came a long way. We're like really far from where I grew up in Arkansas, where I grew up in Pennsylvania, where we live now in Nashville. We're an ocean away. And there are people who like canceled their plans, booked flights, whatever it is to come see us play. That, it kind of blows my mind. It doesn't it make you feel a little guilty? It does.

To me it does. I feel like I cheated the system. I wouldn't go see me. I wouldn't go see me either. Exactly. And I'm so grateful to people that do, but I almost want to apologize before the show. Yep. And say, oh, you just spent maybe, you don't know, 30 bucks.

$35. I hope I do good. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I feel like we're so lucky. Our fans are probably all listening right now, but we've got fans, our friend Kayla. She's like our biggest fan. She's so good to us, so loyal.

We played the halftime show at the Steelers game the other day. And she, her and her friend, like, took a flight or drove and came all the way to the game to see us play two and a half songs, like die hard. But last night, her and a bunch of other fans of ours started gifting, like, people, not just buying our song on iTunes. They were like, the guys are in the, top 10 on all genres. We should see if we can get them to number one.

Literally, we're just with their credit card and the thing, gifting our song to, like, anybody who would DM them on Twitter, probably spending $100, like, gifting the same song over and over and that's amazing. And I felt, I had a message. I was like, look, so nice of you. You can stop. Like, I want to go to number one too, too, but like, you're just like too kind and I feel guilty. That's, yeah, you feel like, I do anyway. I feel like, man, I'm just not worthy of this. I feel the same way. And I hope I never don't feel that way. if that makes sense. For sure.

Because I don't ever want to take it for granted. Neither do I. It's a good thing about being in a duo. If one of us ever is like starting to get a little bit, taking it for granted, it's like, you need to shape up. Like get, you know, punch the other guy in the arms. So when you guys finally decided on Dan and Shay? The name?

The name. Like we're really just going to, it probably had to be like, well, we couldn't come up with the name, so we're just going to be Dan and Shea. Yeah, yeah. What was that conversation? And who was the one that said, okay, we think it just should be Dan and Shea? Was it Espo? I don't remember exactly how it happened,

but we, our managers, we work with Scooter Braun. Which, by the way, it's funny because I was with Scooter two weeks ago. Yeah, yeah. And Scooter goes, hold on,

and FaceTime's you. He's the king of FaceTiming. While I'm sitting with Scooter in Los Angeles. I don't know where you guys were. You were driving, though. Oh, we were on the bus, I think. Or was I at home? I don't know.

Well, whatever. I remember it. Yeah. So Scooter's part of the, hey, we're going to name you guys, Dan and Shea? Yeah, he was part of that. He was like, you guys are like, recognizable by your names

because we had met with Scooter, we'd flown out. We've had like insane experiences at Scooter's place. Scooter, by the way, is Justin Bieber, Kanye, Carly Claus. Usher. All right. Yeah. Ariana Grande, yeah, everybody. And we would like go out and jam with Justin Bieber and Selena.

We'd be playing guitar and singing and doing all this stuff. And like crazy, like these nights that you see in, you know, at HBO series, like crazy stuff. And he was always just like, everybody knows you guys. is Dan and Shea, it's cool, like, for the branding. And instead of having some band name that you have to reinvent some new moniker, it's like, why not just go by your names? Then people will know you guys and do whatever.

And we're like, we don't have any other ideas. Sure, let's go with it. And then I got with my buddy Pete Tracy, who Pete Tracy also moved to Nashville with me. When I moved here, he's from Pittsburgh. And, like, he was on the dark time, the dark train with us for a long time. But he's, he's crushing it now. He's, he did. Did you see Jillian's new video, Jillian Jacqueline?

I did. Yeah, for reasons. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. I took her out for three months. She opened for, she's fantastic. I put her in my class of 2017.

Yeah, I saw that. And took her out for three months and she opened for it. And Brandon Ray's opened it for me. I just like, I'll just love the new artists, man. I'm fascinated with talent. You're such a big part of their careers though and breaking them.

I mean, they get to a certain level, I mean, because of the exposure that you give them. So I was stoked on Gillian whenever you did that because I've known Gillian since Andy and I have moved together. Oh, we talked about this at the Hall of Fame because you guys came up to my Radio Hall of Fame. You did. She didn't.

We were both there. She just checked out. Yeah, he was physically there. Okay. Yeah, he was rocking. So you and I were talking at a bar in Chicago. Yeah. And it was, if I'm stepping out of turn, tell me.

But you took Devin and Gillian both to a label. Yeah. Right? Yeah, it's Warner Brothers. You took them, like. Yeah, I played Devin's music for our buddy who's now, he's not at Warner Brothers anymore. Wait, Devin's not at Warner Brothers anymore? No, Devin's at Warner Brothers.

He's been our buddy who was, uh, had a promo over there and played it for him and a bunch of people on the label. And, you know, I have a great relationship with John Esposita. I'm trying, man.

I'm trying. Because they're both fantastic. Yeah. They're awesome. Are you closer to Devin, though, than you and another artist? Like, what's that relationship? Devin's saying the first dance in my wedding.

He's great. Like, I believe in Devin's so much. That's another talk about a guy who's passionate about his art. Devin's awesome, by the way. Yeah. His record's coming out this week.

So, I mean, he is just, He's an amazing songwriter. We met first. We were writing songs together, and I was just like, this guy's prolific. Like, his words are insane. His voice, his voice to me when I first heard him.

He was playing at the basement, not the basement east, but the small basement, you know, like. The basement in your house? Yeah, the basement. I don't even have a basement, but he was playing at the basement. And we had written that day, and I told my wife Abby, I was like, yo, she's a huge music fan, too. She's like R&R. She knows all the good artists before I do and Pixar singles and the whole deal. But I was like, you got to go see this guy I wrote with today.

Like, he's insane. We saw him at the basement. I was like, this guy's a star. Incredible. I mean, his voice has like a soulful. I mean, it's like a Gavin deGraw kind of sound in his voice. He's got like a raspy kind of thing. I don't know.

I just think that guy. And he's got his whole branding and the monochromatic vibe. And everyone told he he's spit on people? Yeah. Yeah, when he was playing that, you know, the punk, the rock. Yeah. He was in that scene too. He was like, well, we just spit on people.

Yeah. From stage. I loved Evan. He's absolutely incredible. We share a love of tequila. He brings nice tequila bottles over to my house and we enjoy him. But Gillian is one of my, you know, oldest friends here in Nashville. We've been writing songs together since that.

She'd been in that bad house that I was living in. Yeah. Ask her about that place. Yeah, she's awesome, man. And she's so cool. She's amazing. She's an amazing songwriter, amazing singer. She's beautiful.

Has a great attitude. she's been in this town. I like find that happens. Like the people who have the most success have been here like cutting their teeth for a long time. Like everybody thinks... And just stay at it.

People probably think whenever you announced her into that class that she was like, oh, this girl just like got it made. Like Bobby's gonna blow her up, whatever. She'd been here for a...

She'd been here longer than me. So she's been here for probably 10, at least 10 years. And she's a new artist at the same time. Exactly. Right. I mean, we get nominated for new artists

at these award shows. I'm like, dude, I've been at this thing, but I'll take it. It takes forever to be overnight success. It does. So, okay, so you're Dan plus Shea. And that had to be a thing at first, because I bet everyone was calling you Dan Plus Shea.

Oh, my. They still do. Oh, do they? This is Dan Plus Shee with their first single 19 U plus me. It's like, come on, dude. But you know what, to be fair? Yeah, it's all good. It is a plus sign.

It is. And we had this, like, I always am like thinking too many steps in advance. I probably should enjoy the moment a little more. But Pat and I, Pete Tracy, has like, been referring to him. Like, we had this whole vision. for the brand and you know we could see like Taylor Swift does the heart things at her shows with their hands I was like I want to make our fans you know if we ever have we didn't have any fans at this point it's like what if they like put their hands up made it's going to be hard for them

to make an ampersand with their hands so like let's use the hand sign yes uh so they're gonna do plus signs of their fingers they do yeah yeah we don't really do it as much anymore our shows like so full throttle and you know did you used to do that other plus signs every show if you dig back on our Instagram I should probably bring that back it's kind of a cool thing It is a cool thing, yeah. You know, I'd take a picture of the crowd, which I stole that from Ed Shearin. He would take pictures of the crowd every single night, you know, like even from when he was playing clubs, and it's cool to watch his progress. Now he's doing five nights at Wembley Stadium.

But he would always take a picture of the crowd. So we would do that, and then we would try to do the plus sign thing, and we'd be like, put your hands up and you'd have to explain it at first. Kids are like, why am I doing it? Okay, I see it now. But we'd make them put the plus sign up with their fingers. That's a cool thing. And nobody does that, that exact thing. I haven't seen anyone do the plus sign.

thing. I haven't seen anybody. I think you should bring it back. I might bring it back. It's hard to have a thing nowadays. Because everybody's got a thing. Totally. So it's hard to have a thing when everybody's got a thing. Yep. That's the thing. If you don't do it, I'm going to do it. It did like at first. It confused a lot of people and are like some folks at our record label. We should just change it to the end. I'm like, people will eventually get it. And if they're talking about us and they're playing our song, so what? It's fine. It's fine. You know, it's just one more thing to talk about. So, yeah, we had to grind away. for a few years with the plus sign thing. But there are still a few people. Dan Blesche, you know, it's like, all right, we're done here. You bring up Abby, your wife.

So, let's tell me about my story's wrong again. You can just always say, hey, stop talking. So she was working at your label. She was. And you were dating, so she stopped working at the label because she couldn't date you while working at the label. Is that true? Kind of, yeah.

She was working at the label. She was a regional, a promo rep of ours, which is like the toughest job in the entire world. I mean, I... Not the entire world, but it's a tough job. Yeah, it is. Not the world. Let's ease up to hyperbole for a second on it. I'm a dramatic guy.

Go ahead. But in the music industry, I think that is the most difficult job. As much as we tour, they're working five or six artists simultaneously. And they're out knocking on radio stations doors at 6 a.m. saying, hey, our Dan and Shea record is looking a little weak. You know, right now, like we need to get some spins. And it's just, it's like a sales job. It's so tough.

And then when a new artist like us comes out, they go on a radio tour. And that's like so grueling. We'd be doing four stations a day, and then you're going out to dinner, and you're hanging with program directors, and it all pays off in the end. It's great. You need to make those relationships, and country radio is very, you know, close-knit, and it's a family. Relationship-driven, good and bad in many ways.

For sure. We've had great luck. You know, people have been so kind to us, but it's... Well, you guys are nice, though. Yeah, there's nothing super pretentious about you two when you show up in a room. And you have Shay who's just like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. You know? Totally. He's a good one to...

For sure. She is my... Amy. Yep. Because I am, when I'm not working, I got nothing to say. Same. I'm quiet. I prefer to be creative in my own head. Yeah. Write it on a computer. Right on a computer. Same here. And I'm just not that outward. But I can take Amy and people will like me. Oh yeah. Because Amy's awesome and she's so gregarious in a room. So, but you guys are nice to be around. Thank you for saying that. Likewise. I never disliked you. I don't know if you you guys ever got mad at me when I was calling you the Savage Garden of Country Radio.

I'll take that, man. Again, somebody's talking about us. You got a big audience and people were talking about it. And you guys came in and sang Savage Garden and crushed it. And I thought, that's when I was like, oh, these guys are better than other people. Because to be on a certain level, I mean, to have a deal, you have to be so good. For sure. Because it's the talent of elite and the elite of the elite gets a record deal.

And then there's luck involved, too, because there are a lot of talented people in this town who don't have record deals. Yeah, but I think you can make decisions to change your luck. I'm not a big luck guy, generally. I'm just not a big luck guy. But that being said, I knew you guys would have to be good to have a deal. But when you came in after I would say, oh, these guys sound like the Savage Garden of Country Radio. And you guys sang, I just remember going,

oh, they're different. They're better than everybody. That's awesome. Thank you, man. But you guys weren't around a lot because you were touring all the time too. But I remember thinking, oh, they're better than everybody. They're way better than people. And they're not asking for credit,

but they're way better than people give them credit for. Thank you for you. And you guys did boys to men, which is how Scooter and I got to know each other. Do you know the story? I don't know the story. Okay. Through boys to men?

Yes. So you guys came in and, you know, me, I love all formats of music. Of course. I think formats are garbage, by the way. We all do. Honestly, and the people who say they don't, all the people out there who say, I only listen to a certain thing, they're in their truck or their car bumping every kind of music. Anything that makes them feel something, they're listening to it. Even the most, I will not mention the name, but even the most country of artists that I know.

Yep. Loves all kinds of music. 100%. The artists that people yell about, like, that. That's real country. That person is probably listening to 21 Savage right now. Like, I hate to burst your bubble, but they got, yeah. Yeah, and if you restrict yourself to a certain thing because of its genre lines and say, I can only listen,

or you deny yourself from liking a certain thing that you actually like, you're just cheating yourself. I was doing a YouTube, and I'm doing a lot of projects with Scooter and now on the television side. So working on multiple ones, but the reason is because of you guys, well, what happened was, so he manages you guys. him and Jason Owen at Sandbox in town. You guys came in and we were going back and forth and you guys were playing all these songs out of format and I'm like, oh, do this one. And I was singing along doing this.

And he was like, wait, you're not the normal country guy. He said, so I started going down the rabbit hole of YouTube videos and saw that you do all kinds of music and you have a different look about you. And it was like, so I thought, I'm going to keep that guy's name and when something comes up. And then he calls. That's awesome.

Then that's how we started their business. I forgot about this. It was you freaking guys. He saw a YouTube video of us, Singing together. I knew we were good for something. Yeah. I knew we were good for something.

That's cool. Let's fast forward because I don't know how long we're talking. I could do five of these. How long are you? Okay. Let's go to right now. You and Shea, you plus each other, you met, had a baby. I don't know what happened.

Yeah, we got all the comments. Dan Bles Shea, what does that equal? All that happened. I want to tell you about what's happening right now. And again, people will hear this, who knows when, but they just put out, Dan and Jay put out tequila. What's playing over here, Mike? Hold on.

I turned it off. I got it. Hot punk. I got it. So you put out this song, Tequila. It's doing, it has cut through more than any other song. I feel you guys have put out initially. Oh yeah, big time.

You guys have had some monster hits that have had slow grinds. Yeah. That it's taken people a while to get to, either radio people or the fans. Yep. This has been the biggest song for you guys from the initial pop. It's been incredible. I've, yeah, I've not been shy about sharing the numbers or whatever on the internet, It is incredible.

We work so hard on these songs and making the tracks. People, I think a lot of times don't appreciate what goes into a song. Even if somebody's out there criticizing a song and doing whatever, that song had to like start with somebody writing it, right? Maybe on an acoustic guitar, you know, and then be demoed. And somebody had a label had to be like, yeah, I like that. We should go in the studio and pay for that to be recorded. We should cut that.

Then it gets mixed and mastered. And then there's a lot of steps that a song goes through from when it's written to when somebody hears it. And to see this song doing so well, I start tracing those steps back. And it's like, I spent a lot of time working on that track, you know, producing the, you know, the drum loops or whatever and editing vocals. We do it all at my house. So it's like a lot of time went into that. And I was so nervous before we put it out because it starts with a piano and a vocal, which, you know, for the people out there who don't know is like a little bit risky at country radio or radio in general because it's like ballads are tougher to fit into a playlist because they slow down the page.

of your radio station. But we're just in this place now where, you know, luckily ballots have worked for Dan and Shay. We've had success on, from the ground up was our biggest song previously and that's... Look at that.

You're a pro. And this one had probably the second biggest from the beginning where I felt it. This was a big one from the beginning. It was big for us, yeah. Yeah. And we've been, it's funny because this song is, our biggest hit

changed our lives, changed our career. We've been on a whole other level since this song came out. but since tequila came out that's the stat comparison so I'll get emails from ESPO or you know whoever from the label and it says tequila has sold in the first four days

it was out 32,000 downloads on iTunes versus 15,000 of from the ground up so almost double an additional stat is that the market in general on track sales is down 50%. Like you're going up while the market's going down. So you can hypothetically say it's almost double what it is. So it's if you do that in your head

it's like this is so impactful and just to see how far that song went for us is insane. And this one is, I mean, it's been number one on the country chart, which is incredible. But then there's some heavy hitters in the all genres chart. There's Bruno Mars has filthy out right now, or Justin Timberlake and Bruno has finesse, Imagine Dragons Thunder. All these songs are in the top 10 on the radio at pop, which is an insanely big audience. And Tequila, for some reason, is like the little engine that could and is just camped out in the top five or top 10, you know, the last couple weeks.

and is, I don't know, it's surreal to me to see that happen because it's still so early in the radio, you know, country radio climb. It's a long climb for a new artist. It is, and this song could cross over a bit. I don't know, you probably thought about that, never said it out loud, but this song could cross over a bit. Yeah, I think on this round, we, you know, we did face a lot of the haters. I think that was kind of our evolution when we first put out our, you know, the Where It All Began album. We didn't know what we were doing on that album. That was just demos that we were doing in my living room or whatever on logic.

And we were just kind of like two guys figuring it out. And the second record, we kind of were reactive a little bit of those people on Twitter or at festivals saying, like, you guys are ruining country music with that Myrtle Beach song, the 19 U and me song, you know, that you guys are, so we were like, we should do a little bit more of a country thing. Yeah, this was the one that ruined country music, I guess. Oh, yeah, totally ruined the point. Yeah, except everybody sang it every time I came on the radio. You hear this now?

and this is like down the middle of country. But at the time it was very left to center. But all the artists that break through Sam Hunt, whenever his stuff came out was like so pushing boundaries or even Kelsey or anybody who's doing their thing. But now you listen back to that and you're like, that sounds like a normal country song, more traditional than some stuff on the radio.

And what you just talked about has been done a thousand times. Just my conversation with Garth about this specifically. And I talked about... Garth is the pioneer of that. He said they want to run him out of town because what he was doing was so different than everybody else. that he was running country music. And not to compare Kelsey or you or Sam to Garth

because everybody's in their own space, but it's just the same story, even from the biggest people where you think, oh, that's what country is. Like he always was just, no, I sat with Garth and he said, they told me that this is not country music. Yeah. I should stop making it.

For sure. I mean, on this record, we were just like, you know what? We love what we love. We take all our influences. Obviously, we moved here because we want to write country songs. We love country music.

But we were just like, we should just record. what we know how to record and record great songs, no matter who writes them. Figure that on our last record. We came here as songwriters, but to have a successful artist career, you need to always record the best song,

whether you write it or you don't. Adam Hambrick wrote How Not To. We heard that demo come in. That's a funny story too, but that song came in and we didn't write it, and we were like, you know what? This is what you heard right here. No, this isn't even the version I heard.

Oh, this is. He re-recorded it, I think. This sounds amazing. Here's the demo. You got it. Look at that. Here's the work tape I've never heard this

It still sounds like a hit though You know So we took Adam out with us And he played with Raging Idiots For four months And so he would play this song And every night I played I had a little bit of you guys in my heart

I love it I love it But the thing is you talk about artists writing for you You also write for other artists Yeah we've had a little bit of luck with that We're still always It's a little bit difficult now that we're doing our own projects because you write, you know, I think I wrote like 94 songs last

year or something insane. But you always want to like keep the best songs for yourself. You know, our artist's career is obviously the most important thing. And then when somebody hears something, like that tequila song, I wrote it with Nicole Galleon, who I think you've talked to her. Yeah, we talk today as a matter of fact. She's brilliant. She's like one step ahead of everybody else. Right now she's got female from Keith Urban out there. She's, and boy for Lee Bryce, which are like some of the best, most. well-written songs on country radio. And my friend Jordan Reynolds.

And what was I talking about? Writing that song. Oh, yeah. We wrote that song, and it was one of the ones, from the ground out was the same thing where we sat on the demo for a little while. We sat on it for like a year before we recorded it. And it had circulated to other artists, you know, publishers. Even tequila circulated?

Tequila, yeah. And it's circulated. I would get texts from artists and be like, dude, if you guys aren't cutting that song, I'm cutting that. Like, I'm going to put it on my record. Then you're like, should I get that song away? because you never know what's going to end up making it. That song may never have made our record.

You know, we may have beat it or written something else. Like, I should have gave that away. But, you know, it always finds the right home somehow. I don't know. Or the home that it has is just what you know. It's true. Because there could have been songs. Listen, I'm just not a destiny guy.

Yeah. I'm, but. You make your own. I do enjoy tequila, the song. I've never actually tasted tequila to drink, but I do enjoy tequila the song. Thank you, man. I appreciate it.

I'll solo the vocals. I'll put them on the internet. This is them. My wife sings background vocals on this. I saw you post that. I didn't know that, but yeah. She killed the first time ever on the track. We just do all this in my house.

Yeah, right there. And that little Justin Bieber thing in the back, I should have pulled up my, I saw Zach Ryle was on here, like soloing out tracks. We'll do that next time. So I just took the tequila thing and pitched it up to,

of sense and it made that little crazy tequila sound. And the thing is, you're such a pretty, like this is you doing this stuff. People don't know that you're, that, Shea is excellent, it's such a great team. Yeah. Because for the most part, you're the brains that's putting these sounds together in a lab. And Shay's one's singing his freaking brains out on stage. But you're both doing the other things too. For sure.

It's literally the best singer I've ever heard. It's, like, insane. It's amazing to watch somebody who's, like, never heard him sing in person, watch their reaction. Oh, that's what happened to me when you guys came in the front. I was like, oh, yeah, they're the best. Yeah, the game over. Yep. It's insane.

I still get blown away by it. I'm like, when he's in the studio, especially, live, is, there's a lot of great live singers, but in the studio is, like, very vulnerable place. And, I mean, just the timing and the tone and, like, I look at, you know, I'll pull up a, you know, a pitch thing and look at where he is. I mean, he's, like, spot on. It's a gift. It really is. I mean, it's,

and he can wake up in the morning and sing, too. It's like, you know, come in on the radio show and sing boys to men, which is like, that's a hard song to sing. Yeah, I didn't ask you guys to sing the last time

because I was like, you want to sing? I was like, no, I think they need, let's let me have a little time. Thanks, man. You guys have just crushed it so many times.

So, man, I'm happy for you guys. Thank you, man. You've been there since the beginning, so it's been, uh, kind of, not really,

but kind of. I mean, I didn't know what I was doing when you started. I wish I could have been the guy that was like, Dan, she had the best ever, you should trust me. I don't even know what I was talking about. You know what? I think now we've settled into our places.

We're like kind of on the same timeline, and we've settled in and we just do us. You know, like, you're doing your thing. If there's a few haters out there, so what? They don't have to listen. You do your thing, and we're making the music we want to make. And that's what we did on Tequila. Like, we could have went more country,

could have went more pop, but we just did what we know how to do, and we're like, you know what? Country music is just about great songs and great stories. That's what we did. And yeah, it's maybe about it. It may be slower than some of the other stuff we've recorded. You have stopped explaining yourself.

Everybody, and I feel like you've been built defensive because people have been saying, oh, you're not. I'm just being honest, man. Hey, yeah. Screw it. Don't be defensive. We just did our thing. Don't explain it. That's right.

We just did our thing. You did it. It's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. That's it. Likewise. No, no, I don't care about me.

I do this. It's true, though. You're doing your thing. I'm definitely doing my thing. Kelsey Bellarini's album title. Yes. But it's true. I mean, you're doing your thing and you have a huge following

and it's massively successful because you're doing your thing. I want to talk about me, but you got to shake that explanation. You don't have to explain. Cool. How many number ones you have? Three. As an artist. Three.

Okay. And how many of you written on? Two. It's funny, though, 19 you and me was one of our biggest songs. Went to number 11 on the chart. That's all that song went to? 11. You know, Keith Urban said to me, it doesn't matter.

I was hanging with Keith Urban. I started name, drop it to him. much even I annoy myself. So I'm hanging with Keith Urban, we're talking about songs. And he's like, man, he's like, I don't, if it was a stupid boy or whatever. It was like, it wasn't the number one song. It's what people, it wasn't. I don't remember which one it was specifically. It's probably like our favorite song, you know. Yes, and he was like, it wasn't the number one song, but it's the one that people want me to play the most. The fans don't know. They don't care. If they love a song and it hits them like,

it makes them feel something, they don't care where it ends up. We, in this town, we care. And I, everybody out there, I care. I want our songs to go to number one. obviously. Of course, because you want to eat. Yeah. When you have kids. It is rewarding. I mean, it doesn't get any higher than going number one.

So that's a great place. Except number one for two weeks. Listen, there's all in the place. You're right. I'm in a spiral of, that's why I go to therapy. But the fans, if it connects, like we've had stuff die at 35 on the chart that pop off at our shows. I talk to Thomas Red about this.

Here I go name. Oh, vacation. Vacation. That to him, get crushed him to the song, didn't do that well at all. Yeah. And he's like, I play it live and people freak out. We were in the back of the bus. and he was about to go to radio with that song,

and he said there was like 11 guys that had hit him up and said, I will never play this song. And he was like, you know what? It's so good at my show. If we can get any visibility on this song, it's going to be even better in the show, so screw it.

And that was awesome. That was risky. That was a bold move of him. And it's, I mean, we toured with him. It goes off at his show. Yeah. He even played at New Year's Eve, and I texted him afterward.

And I was like, dude, it was great. I don't care. What stupid radio says. Yeah. And I love radio and I hate radio. And I can be both. Now radio is in country music is the driving force behind what we do It's like you want to have hits but I mean

It would be a lot tougher for Thomas threat to put out vacation Had he not a die happy man you know So you know and we'll end on this What's frustrating for me is I wish there were a way Because people aren't buying music as much Right They're streaming it more Yep

Not totally but a large market share is streaming music I wish there was a legitimate way to see how many people are playing the song Because we're not knowing people's algorithms Sure. I've said this before. Spotify, for example, I have friends that have 13 million plays on a song. Right.

And they can't sell 50 people at a bar. That's true. And then I have some friends that have 300,000 and they can sell hard tickets. It's interesting. It's so weird. What's the metric? You know, how do you just do...

They don't tell us. Apple also doesn't reveal theirs. No one reveals theirs. But I wish there was some kind of real... This is how I would do it in a perfect world. First of all, there'd be legislation. There should be anyway for songwriters. Sure, sure.

But in order to say a song played this much because it's used for data, it has to actually be played singularly for a certain amount of time. Sure. We don't know if a song is just on a playlist. If one song gets played on the playlist, everybody gets a count of a spin. Yeah, I don't know. Nobody knows, and it probably doesn't, but we don't know. And I wish there was a way to quantify that. But since it's all private, they don't have to.

I just wish there were a way because it would make my life easier to go, oh, that's what people are really listening to. too. Sure. Because with Apple music, with Spotify, with title, that you can't look at those numbers. Because again, they're artists I've never even heard of. And I have no problem with people gaming the system, buying YouTube views, buying,

that's just part of the game. It's always going to happen. Always. And I've been guilty of it too. Yeah. You can't fake heaven tickets in any place. Absolutely. That's the metric.

What I've ever used it for when I game the system is to, like, to get, guests when I was starting off in Austin. Right, right. I would do all this stuff to make the show look bigger because people who didn't know the show would see the number and go, oh, they must be bigger than they are. Absolutely.

Let them book. It was always for a later purpose. But we'll get a hit up for an interview. It's like this blog gets this many million views or whatever and we're like, seems like a great opportunity. Let's do it. And it's like, is that real? No.

Nothing is real. Yeah. And as long as you know nothing is real. Are we simulation? Right now we might have goggles on as Shay would say. Stay tuned for part two. Yes. So my point is I wish there was some sort of thing

to look at where they used to actually be record sales, but even then people would buy bulk records themselves. It was maybe even easier then for just a common artist to do it. Nothing is real. The only thing's real are people's faces that come to shows and buy tickets. That's the only real thing. Now is a great time to be a new artist, though, because there's so many platforms to get your music out there.

And you can make music in your bedroom. You can blow up a laptop. We made our first record on my laptop. With technology, I agree. Here's where I disagree. Counterpoint. There's so many new artists. artists because it makes your job harder it makes radio it makes even the artist job harder yeah but

it makes the quality better because that many more people are competing so as the consumer it makes it better for us exactly because what we're getting is the best of the best of the best it's really good yeah I mean there are some really good songs on country radio they're all fighting for that same spot it is hard to get a song up the chart and and the chart is stupid don't even we start about the charts either on radio I will go on so many songs and they're all great because they're not all great there's something they're a big turks And I'm like, how does it happen? Yes, there are a lot of great songs.

Or if you look on YouTube, you look up so-and-so's cover of certain song. It's like so many, these kids should all have record deals. They're all great because, or, you know, most of them are great because, I don't know, there's other people that are doing it. There's just like a lot, I don't know, the access is there's so much access. And yeah, it's a little oversaturated when you're an artist and you're like, crap, he's really good too. But for the consumer, you're right, there is so much good stuff.

And it's the access for it. You can listen anywhere. Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon. I mean. I didn't even mention Amazon. Like there's a huge infrastructure. There's a lot. Well,

Tequila's out. What are we looking at timeframe for a full record? I'm working on it tonight. I was working on it today. So we're in the process right now. We've recorded maybe like 10. Second quarter of the year.

Yeah, sometime this year. Yeah. So middle of the year. Yeah. We'll probably sprinkle out a few songs in the meantime. But I'm pumped. When we hang up here, I'll play you a few things. Are we on the phone right now?

We are. I don't listen. I don't listen to songs. You just don't like songs? No, no, no. I don't listen to songs early. Okay. Even from my friends.

Yeah. The only people I'll listen to us... I was with you when Keith Urban sent you a song once. Yeah. You probably had to listen to it. I just... Keith sends you a song. Come on on.

You literally blew up and it said Keith on it. And I was like, Keith Who? And you're like, you try to play it off. And it was Keith Urban sent a new song or a demo. For some reason, he does send me new... Every time he sends me new songs like two or three weeks early. He's in a league of his own though. He's the coolest guy ever.

Yeah, he is. When he was on your show, when he was playing the mashup of all this hits, I was like, he just wins. He is, I don't want to gush about him too much, but he is,

he's awesome. Yeah. And as a person, even better as an artist. Insane. Just like elevates the game every single time. And anybody that he works with goes,

oh yeah, I used to think somebody was good until Keith got in. It's kind of like humiliating sometimes, you know. So I don't listen to music, because here's why. I hate having to do the,

oh, yeah, oh, yeah, mm. It's awkward. And if I do listen to music, I do it, and it's so rare. I wouldn't even listen to Stapleton's record. He sent it to me early. He said, Chris, I'm not going to listen to it because I want to experience it with my people. That's cool.

I like that. So, yeah, I probably listen to Keith. If it was a single over a text. But you and I, as I'm thinking about listening to music, we had an early bond over Walker Hayes, too. Yes. Because when I first heard it, I was like, oh, and you were like, oh, you text me. You're like, oh, yeah, it's off the wall. Listen to Halloween.

Yeah, we took them on tour. And so did I. You. Yeah. He's prolific too. Have you? WordSmith, man. Have you written a song with him before?

Yes. We wrote Namaste together. Oh, sick. Yeah. He's brilliant. He's another guy who's like one step ahead of everybody in the room. You just can't catch up so you just go along for the ride when he starts using words. He's a poet.

It's insane. And his flow, his jaw line. Go on and on. Shoulders? Shoulders of a lion. Have you seen him do pull-ups? Oh, dude. He is 30 plus.

He is pretty beef. It's insane. And he's got, he had all his kids. So we were over to Amy's. I get, Mike, give me three more minutes and I'll be done. I'm here all night. We could literally do this three hours and just talk about music. I'm good with it.

We went over to, when Amy's kids came in from Haiti. Yep. So some friends came over to Amy's, and it was all just people in our circle. Yeah. Because it was a very personal thing for her. Totally. But in our circle, there are some artists. Yeah.

It was Walker. It was Eric Passley. It was Steve Mochler. I grew up with Steve Mochler. Really? My guy, yeah. Nice is the guy. The best.

I mean, him and grace, they're so nice. The nicest people. So. Another brilliant songwriter in Wordsmith. Walker had his kids and all six of them were there. And it was the first time I'd ever seen them all together at one point. And it was really, dun dun da, da, da, da, here's the story. But they're all like.

And they're all so well behaved. He's so fertile. He's so fertile. He is. He is. He's so buff and fertile. Man. He was out.

We were out on tour with Thomas Red and Walker was on the tour as well. And he brought them all out. and they were like, they would all sit down. It was like, they were so well-being. They're well-mannered. Yeah. He showed up and we, if we played a show where we didn't fly, because he opened for me doing stand-up,

which was the perfect opener because he had so much energy, even by himself. With the loop pedal? Yes. So he shows up and I said, oh, you got a new bus, like a small, like sprinter van. Yeah. He goes, no, no, no, that's just our family car. He said, I just drove it.

Oh, man. Because when you have six kids, you have to have a big automobile. Yep. They rented like a church van or something when we were out. and he had to drive the kids. Really? His wife, and he's awesome too.

He's a guy that I really root for, man. He obviously loved the music when I heard it online. First, that's, hit you about it. You know, we talked about Halloween, but getting to know him out on the road,

like hearing his story. And when I heard that Craig's, I honestly cried when I heard the Craig song. I texted him immediately because I wouldn't listen to it early. I'm crying, thinking about it right now. We were working on my stuff and Walker was producing it

because we wrote that song together and then I said, Walker, were you produced? I never produced anything. I was like, it doesn't matter. If you have that instinct, You have that instinct. So we go on and he's producing it.

He's like, I want you to hear Craig. Did you do it at the shack? I said, we wrote it at the shack. Oh, yeah, yeah. We produced it at a different place. Cool. But we did write it in the shack. And so then I said, I'm not going to listen to any song with you,

but then I had it when it came out. I bought the record. Yep. And I listened to Craig, and I cried. And I don't cry. And I text them. I said, dude, I just cried during the song. I was so in.

We were in Europe and I was like on the treadmill. And I literally heard him start. And I had to get off the treadmill and like listen to the words. and I broke, it was insane. I played it on the show and I played it twice. And I think I went to number seven. It wasn't even the top 200. That's how, that's how, not a me thing.

That's my listeners. Yeah. It cut through to them so hard, so quick. Yeah. You're listening, they're smart. And they've picked songs like, I mean, that's kind of what we're trying to do with this next record is pick songs that make people feel something, make people react.

Don't just pick it because it's uptempo and sounds like, you know, quote unquote, what a hit would sound like. If somebody, if we had a song like, Craig and played it for people and they reacted like that. I don't know. I hope a guy like Walker Hayes will take chances and put songs like that out as his singles because like he can change the game with that. Yeah, he can.

Well, we're going to wrap. This is one of the longer ones in the history because time had no measurement as we were talking. That's right. It was like one of those first dates. We've known each other a while, one of those first dates where time just goes by and all of a sudden you look up at 6 a.m. and the sun's coming up. I still need to hear the Colby-Calais story.

Yeah, yeah, next time. Yep, we got it. Next time. Okay, Dan Smires. from Dan and Shea. We learned, which I wanted to know a lot of pre-Dane and Shea. You can find all the Dan and Shay stuff online. Just Google it. Yep. I didn't know a lot.

I didn't know you played running back in high school. I didn't know you played college football. I didn't know a lot of stuff I didn't know. I didn't know you were stealing from the man. I apologize for that. I'll get him back. All right. Thank you very much.

What episode is this? 98 with Dan Smires. Thank you very much for listening to the Bobbycast. And Daniel Bradbury should be in a couple days, right? A few days. Yeah, yeah. We had to postpone that. one because of the ice. So that'll be the next one out. Thank you very much. We'll see you next time.

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