The Bobby Bones Show - BONUS EPISODE: Daves Highway Interview

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

Bobby sat down with Delaney, Zach and Erika a sibling trio known as Daves Highway to talk about their journey to Nashville! We did a deep dive on why they left Mississippi, being homeschooled, how they went viral, going on tour with Jake Owen, the grind of making it in this town, their dynamic as a sibling band and so much more!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me, Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits,

my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, the Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfilled conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated.

So let's get to it. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeard radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. On the Bobby Bone Show now. Dave's Highway. Good to see you guys again. And I think, yeah, with this, we're going to talk a lot about you guys' journey to Nashville and kind of your career journey now. But, you know, let's start with being in Mississippi.

Did you guys, when you came to Nashville, come all together? And Zach, I'll start with. do or did you come one at a time? What happened there? We all moved up together. So we had kind of planned from the beginning for us to all stick together in terms of like school. So I graduated on time because I'm normal. Erica graduated high school early a year. We were homeschooled in high school. And Delaney went to community college for a couple of years in order to keep us level. And we all moved here to quote, go to college. But that's not really what we moved here. We moved here. because college.

Oh, you're saying you really, like, the reason was that we're going to move to Nashville and go to school, but you really didn't. Well, we went to school, yeah. But that wasn't the reason that you moved here. It was just the, how it got you here. I don't know, because you're parents, I don't know what you're parents. It was our ticket. Our dad, got it. Our dad was an electrical engineer for 35 years and, you know, you have to go to college.

So we went to college. Who's the youngest of all? And how much, how much young? Are you the oldest that? I'm the middle. Okay. So with the, what's the, what's the, what? age gap between all you guys.

There's like hardly an age gap. It's kind of weird. If you all look the same. I mean, that's what I'm saying. He was like, well, she's going this time. So you guys are probably a lot closer than normal siblings because you are kind of living the same age at the same time. Yeah.

And so Erica, you're the youngest. You were the youngest? Yes, I am. And so they're like, all right, as soon as you're ready, we're going to Nashville. We're all going together. You felt good about that? Yeah. I was like totally ready in the moment.

And now whenever I look back and I'm like, wow, I was barely 18. whenever I moved to town, I'm like, that's pretty cool. Like, look at me. When you move here, Delaney, you all move and decide to stay in the same. You live together, I'm assuming. We lived in an 800-square-foot apartment, two-bedroom, one bath. The laundry room was Zachary's closet. It was, like, very close quarters.

Yeah. You know, that's on par, though, with people who, you know, there are two kinds of people that move to town. People that have a whole bunch of money and can move to town and focus on it because they got all mom and daddy's money. And there are people like, you guys, like me, they have to move and go, well we don't got a whole lot but we got nothing to lose and it's a dream so we're just going to move and hit it and living an 800 square foot apartment shack dwelling you know and I shared a room

and I'm surprised we didn't kill each other yeah and do you guys we did good we did good yeah you're not all living together now though we are we are still do really yeah have you have you have you up the square footage it's a little weird okay and so you moved here and Erica kind of What was the mindset of what you were going to do once you got here? We're just going to start playing all these shows. You're going to write. Like, you move here. Obviously, you're going to go to school.

But what did you start doing professionally? Mostly it was college. We came and we were studying music in school. So we were able to make a lot of connections through doing that. But we were just trying to grow our knowledge at music and, like, get really good. And figure out, like, what do we want to be? because we grew up doing a lot of like Christian gospel CCM kind of stuff. And then we were kind of at a weird transition point where we were like ready to shift,

but we didn't know how to. And so we just kind of honed in on our craft. And by the time we were out of college, we were like, all right, we're ready to go. Were you guys like practicing playing together while you were in college? Were you out doing any sort of round? Like how did you get better, Delany, how did you guys were together? Well, we were already a band when we moved here. But were you playing, though, when you're here in school?

Yeah. Okay. So this is a long story. Give it to me. No, let's go. We posted a video in 2009 when we were just kids and didn't think anything about it, but it went viral on YouTube and Facebook when Facebook was like the cool thing. Of what? What were you doing in the video?

Jesus Messiah, Chris Tomlin. And Chris Tomlin saw it and posted it on his story. Twitter and something else. YouTube maybe. And that was also back when viral meant something. Like now everything, everything's viral. And viral was like 100,000. It wasn't.

No, it was a lot more than that. We had a lot on that one. But now viral's like $5 billion or the rest. So what happens to you guys when your kids and that blows up? And does anything happen then? We started playing churches every single weekend. Wow. We were traveling from, what, 2009 to 2015 when we moved here.

And then when we got here, we just kind of like focused on school. So we played shows on campus. And we were like the presidential band at Lipscomb or whatever. What does that mean presidential band? We got a scholarship. Really? To be like kind of the face of the music program at Lipscomb. So hopefully we're representing well.

So like whenever they had new student dinners and stuff, a lot of times they did it at the country music Hall of Fame, which at the time for us, which is still very cool. It was like, we're playing at the country music Hall of Fame. And so we would go and play a couple of songs for all of the new incoming freshman students that they had. And that was just, that's what we did. Most of the shows that we played from 2015 to 2000, I'd say 17 really, was Lipscomb. Which we did get to meet a lot of cool people doing that. We got to play with Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith and all the people that are, I guess, donors at Lipscomb. I don't know.

But, yeah. So that's how I was wondering how you stayed sharp if you were just focused on school, but school made you stay sharp because they gave you a scholarship to represent and play. Was it always to be a trio and only a trio? Pretty much, yes. We've all, like, got our thing that we do. Like, I love to write and sing my, like, singer-songwriter, sad songs by myself. And Zachary's an amazing guitar player.

And Delaney, like, could be Shania Twain if she wanted to be. And she plays bass whenever we play like a full band. Really? Yeah. But like, why wouldn't we? You know what I mean? Like, we're siblings and we sound good together and we love each other. May as well.

We get along most of the time. Yeah. What do you guys do for percussion if that happens? The only person we hire whenever we do a full band thing is a drummer. So you got all the instruments covered as far as power acoustic even. I mean, you guys could just play and dang. So how did you feel about the bass? Was that?

Well, you know, I really don't. didn't pick it. No one ever does. Yeah, no one ever does. No one ever picks the base. I grew up playing mandolin actually because we were doing the Southern Gospel kind of thing and we needed a bass player. So in college I decided to take bass lessons and then I actually liked it and stuck with it. I tried to play bass a little bit in high school when we had the first kind of iteration of our terrible band and we had a good guy that can play guitar pretty well and so I was like I guess I'll just learn to play the bass and it was tough for me because there are a lot of places that you have to play notes that notes don't normally go whenever you feel like you're listening to the song yeah that's not what the

song sounds like so i did not take to it and i was terrible but i'm not near as musical as you are did you feel like you moved over to the base pretty pretty easily uh yeah i mean i don't know did i don't know yeah i mean well delaney delany played guitar before i did true so that kind of helped too. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me, Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand-new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your

favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast, it's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So, if you've ever supported me, or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford Show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford.

and a TikTok podcast network on TikTok. Well, it's an interesting journey for you guys because now you're still with Jake Owen's good company entertainment. And how did that happen to where you end up over on Jake's roster where he's basically A&R? We, it's really funny. A lot of our connections really go together. It's like, this is the connection made this connection,

and this connection made this one. And so we met Ron Fair, who we've talked to you about before, in college. So he was our professor and he decided that he wanted to give us a shot basically and his list of credits is so

long. And so we had a bunch of meetings at his studio to workshop and see if anybody, if there was, gauge the interest really in the town of what we do.

So he had Keith Gale come over, who is a manager at Good Company. And he said, I love this. We should get Jake over here. So Jake came over and graciously listened to our music and

they decided that they wanted to have us on the team. Did you play for them yourselves or do you play him music? Both. Oh cool. Both. Ron had like a whole thing that he liked to do. What did he call it? Like the experiment or something. It was something,

Some weird, like, crazy mastermind term that he used, and he would, like, play a snippet of the record, and then he would be like, okay, now do it live. To, like, it was so funny. To show that you guys could sound like the record? Was that the point of it? Yeah. Talk about your name for a second. Dave's Highway, because it actually means something. People probably don't.

I didn't know. I was like, who's Dave? Why is his road so cool, basically? Yeah. So Dave's is our last name, and we're siblings, and we talk about that. It's Dave's? Dave's. Yes, sir.

So I still get called Dave all the time. So hey, I'm Zach. Nice to meet you, Dave. You weren't listening to me. So Dave's is our last name. We decided that we, from a very young age, that we always wanted to have our family name involved in whatever the, we didn't ever really, we didn't ever really decide that Dave's Highway was going to be the name that we stuck with for long term. It was kind of something that we need to have a name, so let's put a name together. Yeah, we were kids when we came up with the name.

when we came up with it. I think I was 12 when we came up with that. So you had this name even before you moved to Nashville. Yeah. Were you touring the churches under Dave's Highway? Yeah. Oh, so you've had it for a long time. Long time.

Got it. Since like 2008, I think. Yeah. So we also decided, we're Christians and we, we, that's a big part of our lives. And so we, when I was 12, we decided that we wanted to incorporate God in our message as well. and we chose highway because we always want to stay on the high road we want to not we never want to be people that sell out for fame or money or and if that stuff comes then great we're you know we're welcoming of that but you know we we want to stay on the highway and we think that that's that's

what we're trying to do how would you describe your journey in the last couple years uh it's been the best years so yeah but but but the hardest too probably we're seeing all kind of opportunities come up for us in the near future that we're so thankful for and we it's unexplainable really that we we're touring kind of right now some some smaller venues we have 10 dates at like 10 roof around the United States and some of them are I think in cities where you're where you're broadcasting but and then in the fall in September Jake has invited us to come and join his fall tour. That's great.

Openers. Yeah, that's really cool. By the way, Indy, Detroit, Columbia, Raleigh, Marl Beach, Orlando, Delray Beach, Florida, Florida. If you want to get tickets to go watch them at the Tin Roof, Dave's Highway.com. So you're right, we're in a lot of these cities. And then J-Cash has you guys coming out, which will be super cool. Yeah, yeah.

We're very excited. That's exciting. A win is a win. A win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me. Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits. the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined.

And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So, if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to The Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. And so you say it's been awesome, but it's also been really hard. Why has it been so hard, Delaney? mostly to do with our full-time jobs and managing like a 40-hour week at work and then also doing music too it's it's exhausting but we have this system Mondays are our music days and we all take off of our jobs you can do that you none of your school teachers then no absolutely not we worked that into our contract at work but um yeah Mondays are our music days we have co-rides we record music we you know do whatever we need to do and then

also, you know, things like this. It is Monday. So you guys are not skipping work. It doesn't must be Monday. Yeah, but we would have. We would have skipped work. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that.

And so the goal always is, and I mean, most of my friends that moved here, I was with Jordan Davis yesterday, just a similar story. Jordan and I are very close, one of my really good friends. And he's killing the right young. He just got none in for best new,

our best male at the ACMs, just won a CMA. But he was living here five years, bartending. Five years, which now you look back and you're like, okay, but when you say five years, that is such, when you're in it, that feels like forever.

And that's what he did. He had to go and work just so he could pay the bills just so he could keep on scratching and clawing away at the dream. You know, not six months, not a month and a half, five years. Yeah. He had to, you know, Haley Witters. Yep. She did everything.

She's been for 10 years and it's finally cracked. And so, yeah, that's got to be a role. difficult part of it because you have to pay the bills. So you work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday? If you're not on the road, what if you're like, we got to go, we have a show, we're doing the tin roof, are they going to let you off? Yeah, my boss is very lenient. Are you hiding the tour dates from them? No. I don't feel good. No. I haven't told my job about Jake Torre yet. I haven't either. Well, I told them, but wait.

I haven't requested off yet. That's like a real life situation. And the goal is to hopefully not have to deal with that part of real life. Yeah. You move to a different part of real life. Do you guys feel like you're getting closer? Yes. Yeah.

Every day, though, that's a grind. Can you see like a light at the end of the tunnel? Yeah. I mean, it's always there. It's not right in front of us right now, but we see it and we're running towards it as fast as we can, and trying to do everything that we can to get there. I mean, we've been in this town for eight years. Yep.

And so it's opportunities like this, though, that help us see the end of this time. Yeah. Yeah, a little splatter here. Mm-hmm. A little splatter there. All the sudden. Little splatter here, a little spatter here,

it gets a little quicker, like less in between. Yep. What do you think you guys would have done had you not moved to Nashville? Well, before you were studying. I was studying accounting, and I hated. it. It was terrible. I didn't get far enough to declare a major. Honestly, there was no other thing for me because, like, you went to school, like, up until high school, so you had, like,

you were a cheerleader. We homeschooled in high school. That's what she means for that. You had the, like, school experience. I was, like, nine years old. Well, actually, no, I was, like, five years old, and we started doing music, and, like, I never did anything else. Is that why you homeschooled because you were just gone? much. Yeah, we got tired of having to tell our parents having to tell teachers like, hey, they're going to be gone on Friday and Monday. Because Monday's music day, Miss Johnson. Yeah. Well, kids are mean, too. Like, whenever kids found out that I could sing, they would like make fun of me on the playground. I'm like, ugh, I don't have time for this. So I'm

glad we didn't go to real school. The song, the single, or one of the songs is, why do we need them? You have that out now. I want everybody to check out. Dave's Highway. And so what do you do today for the rest of the day since we're recording this on a Monday? We're probably going to get in our car and make TikToks for a song that we have called First Rodeo. Yeah. We're also picking our album title. We are. We're going to go sit down and figure it out. So First Rodeo is about what? It's a funny story. We all three have this thing where we date our exes again. It's like we knew it didn't work the first time, but we'd have to go back.

We just want to make sure. It worked out for that. I'm out of the game. I'm out of the game completely. I just want everybody to know I'm clean. What game? The dating exes game. Oh, got it. That's a good game to be out. Except... I'm also out of the dating game just for the time being. You're just taking a break. You're just taking a break. Yeah, Zach, worked out pretty good for you. It did. It did. I dated this girl in college for not a long period of time. I just got not of a bad relationship. And I thought I was ready to jump back into it. I wasn't. And I, you know, was a dumb 22-year-old kid. that didn't know anything. And, you know, by the grace of God, it came back around to me. And we're, you know, talking about getting married. We've bought rings.

Oh, you bought rings? Yeah. She knows. So this, you know, I can talk about it. And we both approve, so that's good to. Yes, we do. And she sings too, right? Yeah, yeah.

She does Christian music. You guys are her name. I don't care. Her name's Britney Wood. She's amazing. She really is. Follow her. Yeah.

You guys like her too, obviously, if you like follow her. Me and her have matching tattoos. We're like besties. You guys can never break up, Danny. No. Because they have matching tattoos. I know.

Well, that was before. That was before they started dating again. Yeah, because we were all three of us best. Wait a minute. You got a tattoo with her while they were, she was the ex of your brother? Yeah. Trader. You're a traitor.

It was his fault. It wasn't her fault. It was my fault. Okay, look, guys, here we go. At Dave's Highway. Go follow them, Instagram. What's your TikTok name? Same, hopefully?

At Dave's Highway. It's all the same. Cool. At Dave's Highway. the new song is called First Rodeo, boom, and go watch them. They're doing all those 10 roof dates all through May and June from those cities, and then out with Jake Owen when he tours in the fall. I love it.

You guys feel good? I feel good too. I appreciate you guys sitting with me, and again, go follow at Dave's Highway. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Bobby. The Bobby Ball Show. A win is a win. A win is a win.

I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me, Cliford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Cliford Show. This is a place for raw, unfills of conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it.

Listen to The Cliford Show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford. and at TikTok podcast network on TikTok. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.