The Bobby Bones Show - BONUS EPISODE: George Birge Interview

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

Bobby had George Birge in studio to discuss his journey on becoming a country singer. They talked about George’s first passion, golf, and working toward that goal. Then moving on to his love for music, starting a band in high school, down to the moment he decided to begin writing, and going solo as an artist. George also shares the moment he met country music icons Clay Walker and Gary Allan.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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You got here the next morning? Yes, sir. But how? That's a... Did you play it like noon? We played pretty early last night. I think we were done by like 7.30. Hit the bed and then I'm on those morning show hours like you now, I guess, man.

We took the first flight out and rolled straight in here. You took the flight out this morning? Yes, sir. Wasn't going to miss this, man. Dang. Coolest part. I'm not. I'm going to come in to you for a second from waking up, making the plane on time and getting here.

Okay, go ahead. I was just going to say, like, this ride is pretty new for me, like people showing up to shows and stuff like that. And we had, I get there and, like, every table in the venue is full. And it's just a little acoustic show for the bull, the radio station out there. And probably half of my meet and greet line said they heard me on the Bobby Bone show. So thank you, man. Thank you for getting folks out to the shows for me. pretty cool.

So what's my cut then? Hey, we'll talk on the side, but I owe you for sure. So let me tell you about George Burge, or I can let you walk through this with me. So you're born and raised. Austin, Texas, yep. And you went to high school? I went to high school, McCallum High School. It was kind of like central Austin.

Really never lived anywhere besides Austin until, like, I moved to Nashville. So you're a good golfer. You played golf in college? I did. You tried? Or what was that? I did. So I took to golf pretty late.

I was always a baseball player. And then my sophomore year of high school, a couple buddies took me out to play during the summer. And it was just like something that I was pretty natural at. And I got obsessed with it. And my thing is like if once I decide that I love something, I kind of obsess over it. And golf was that thing for me.

And so I played 36 holes like every day after school until the sun went down. And then every day during the summer. And I became obsessed with it. started on the JV my senior year, then got to varsity my senior year, and then by the end of my senior year, I was number one player on the team. And I always knew I wanted to go to UT, but that's like a super competitive school for golf. So I got into UT, and they had a thing called like the walk-on program where they host a tournament for all of the players that think they can play collegiately.

And if anybody stands out, you can get a spot on the team. It doesn't happen very often, but there's a chance. And so I went and played in the walk-on tournament, and I won that, which I was a lot. I thought was going to get me a spot on the team. Wow. And they go, uh, congratulations. That gives you a chance to play in front of coach for a chance on the team. So, um, I get to do that.

And like, when I tell you, like, my hands were shaking when I was putting the tea in the ground to go play in front of coach. Because, I mean, that was my dream. I was like, at that time, I thought I was going to be a PGA tour golfer, which I quickly realized was not the case. Um, but I got to play 18 holes in front of coach fields. And he offered me a spot on the team afterwards. So, I worked on.

Disney movie. Right there. I think you heard it right there. Hey, you can turn Eddie on too. Yeah, Eddie, Eddie can hop on on this. So you're grinding it out. You're playing golf. You go to UT.

Do you end up finishing school? I did. I finished school. I was writing songs, going to school, playing golf, and I had also joined a fraternity. So it was a lot. And I quickly realized that even though I had ambitions of being a professional golfer, once I saw how good the guys that were starting on the team were,

that that was going to be more of a high. for me. So I made really good friends with a lot of those guys and still keep in touch today and ended up bringing them out to like country shows and getting them to cut loose a little bit too. So that was kind of like my overlap in the country music and golf world. Were you playing music in college? I was writing song. So I had, I started my first band in ninth grade in Austin. By 10th grade, we were playing downtown on 6th Street, like X's on our hands. We all our little high school friends would come out to the shows. It was pretty cool. And then in college, we kind of all went our separate ways so we didn't have a band anymore.

But I would still write songs and send them my friends, and we would kind of pass the guitar around in the dorm room. But the idea of having a band had kind of gone by the wayside, and I really didn't start playing live music again until a year or two after college. So you're playing live music, and when we first met you, you were with another dude and you guys were a duo. So was that initially a band band, and it just was you two, or were you guys just two guys that thought we'll just try to do it together? What happened there? So Cody Cooper, one of my best friends in the world. We met in middle school, and he was carrying around a guitar. That was kind of his thing.

And I always love singing country music, but I didn't know how to play any instruments. And so I kind of, like, followed him around and made friends of them. And he ended up teaching me how to play guitar. And we started a band in high school. That was, it wasn't a duo. It was just a band. So it was a full band at the time. Yeah, it was a full band.

And the cool part about Austin, that I kind of took for granted when I was there, but then when I got to see the rest of the world, I realized that that was pretty special, was all the bands in Austin, all of us high school bands, they weren't cover bands. Like you write your own songs, and they were terrible. But that was kind of unique.

Like, everybody was writing their own songs, and that was kind of like how we fell in love with the songwriting process and, like, creating, and connecting with people. And I realized when I left Austin that that's not the case for most cities. you know and cover bands are awesome too but it was pretty special to kind of like dig into that and figure out who we are and what we wanted to say and so that was kind of when I first fell in love

with like creating and making music so when you decided to go solo did you decide to go and do it solo or did you decide I'm just going to try to be a songwriter and we'll just write songs for people yeah so um we had formed a duo Waterloo Revival um in Austin that had started to get some pretty good success and we had gotten some record label attention and we ended up signing a record deal moving to Nashville and we chased a dream for a long time. I mean probably six years. We gave it everything we had and we had some moderate success. You know, some top 40s and our streams were really strong and, you know, we were drawn some crowds, but we just couldn't quite like break through to the level where it's like where it's really all clicking. And so after grinding it out, I had gotten

married. I had two little kids and I just wasn't seeing it happening. And so we sat down and we had a talk and I said that I was going to just try to write songs for a living because, you know, we'd given it everything we had and through nobody's fault it just wasn't happening. He had two kids. He looks 12. I mean, George looks so young to have two kids. The Bobby Bone Show is proud to be supported by Grand Canyon University, an affordable, private, nonprofit Christian University based in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona. They say higher education is outdated, irrelevant. Well, GCU doesn't settle for the status quo. They shatter it. At GCU, academically rigorous, industry-driven programs are built to move at the speed of relevance,

with practical skills, career readiness, and opportunity for every learner. GCU believes education shouldn't be a privilege, but an affordable path forward for all, grounded in Christian truth, GCU works to empower the next generation to lead with integrity, serve with purpose, and help transform their communities, building a future that matters. GCU is purpose-driven education. Take action. Find your purpose at GCU, private, Christian, affordable, nonprofit. Visit gCU.edu to learn more. So you're just writing songs and eventually, Whenever you were with Clay Walker, as the legend goes, and did you record a song or just write a song?

And he said to put it on TikTok. What happened there? So when I first started deciding that I was just going to be a songwriter, Clay was one of the first guys to take me under his wing and let me kind of try to write for his record. And we wrote our first song over Zoom. It was called Nita Bar sometimes. It ended up being a single for him and got him a new record deal

and was my first big cut. And so we got to be a pretty good friend. then he invited me down to Galveston, Texas, his house down in Texas, and we were writing for the rest of the record. And I kind of told him the same thing. I was like, man, I'm not sure that I'm going to do the artist thing anymore, not because I don't want to, just because I can't quite figure out how to make it work. And his advice was to put my songs on TikTok, which I really rolled my eyes at at first.

I mean, I had never done anything. I really thought that app was like for twerking and pranks. I didn't know. And also, Clay's older than 55. You wouldn't expect Clay would be. But he is. He's very dialed into tech. He is. He's great at it. And so literally that night, I had seen this beer, beer, beer,

truck video where this girl is kind of poking fun at country music saying that that's all it is. And so I literally, I propped my camera up, just me and a guitar. And I wrote a verse and a chorus using her lyrics. And, you know, the world works in crazy ways. And it completely changed my life when it blew up. I mean, that's an interesting journey. We're talking about journeys and, you know, looking back at your career. journey, but I think one of the roads that you didn't really plan to go down was starting over, being a writer, and then TikTok. And it's a funny song. It's a funny idea that you took it in, you took that concept where she was like,

all in country music, beer, beer, truck, truck. But you turn that into something that wasn't funny at all, like a really good, heartfelt country song. It was really cool. It was scary for me just because, you know, like, I'd worked my whole life to become a songwriter and an artist, and it's something I take really seriously and something that I really love. And all of a sudden it's like, bang, I'm the beer, beer, beer, truck guy. This thing's blown up. Everybody knows me for beer, beer, beer, truck, because I took this song and turned it around. And my first instinct is, like, is to run the other

direction. Like, I hope y'all hear my other music and see what I'm working on and coming to life. But then I kind of realized that people were falling in love with it because it was defending country music and because I had used my art and my songwriting to kind of defend country music. And then as I got to know this girl, she actually was a country music fan and had some nostalgia about it and she actually leaned into it with me. So it ended up being a really cool story and putting me on the path to getting to do what I do today. So I'm very, very thankful for it. Never in a million years could have seen it like rolling out like that. But you know what? It's a, my theory has always been like you just have to be ready when the door opens up for

you and that ended up being what it was for me. I guess what's funny about it. it is had I not seen the clip but I'm also eight steps away from it from where you are and what you're doing your version of it it sounds like a love like serious real catchy song you know because you turn into it's not always beer be right I know you had that thought and it was inspired by her doing that and so you associate that but I think people hadn't seen the video Eddie don't you think it's just a really good song oh yeah I don't think is a novel song I wouldn't have thought it would come from a TikTok video I mean I thought it was something that just you would hear on the radio, normal.

That's about as big a compliment as I could get. So thank you all. And it would be hard for you to understand that because, again, you were in the whole process. And you're like, man, I don't want to be known for just the dopey stuff. But it wasn't dopey to people who didn't know the dopeiness that it came from. And I think that, like, as artists and writers were always, like, so self-conscious and want to be, you know, looked at in the light of what we're trying to do. But it really has been pretty special to me.

And I go out to shows now and people are. are singing it back and it's given me the opportunity to share more music with more people. So that's really all I could have asked for. And the fact that y'all are saying that, that you hear it as a normal song now. That means a world to me. There's always a normal song. And then it was like, oh, this is where it was rooted. I was like, oh, yeah, no, it's a, I would just say, don't be, like, embarrassed that

came, the people are like, oh, he's a joke writer. Yeah. Because that's not, that's not what that is unless you know exactly what that is. Yep. So, take it from us, two experts. We're two joke writers. We know everything. We know joke songs.

I saw an interview with Dean Dillon, who's a huge songwriter, obviously wrote a bunch of the George Strait stuff, and he was talking about the Ocean Front Property Song, which I grew up thinking was like one of my favorite George Strait songs of all time, incredibly well-written. And he said, Dean Dillon said that he's still embarrassed to play it today because he felt like it was a joke song. And that made me think, okay, like if I think that song's a hit song

and an incredibly well-written song, and he thinks it's a joke song, maybe I need to not take myself so seriously and lean into that, too. Another incredibly well-written song that sometimes gets classified as a joke song, Fanny Pack by The Raging Idiots. Oh, yeah. Sometimes we're like,

man, people are going to laugh at this, but it was a serious deal that day. My pockets weren't big enough. Fanny packs are a real thing. Yes. And now we're like, do we even play this? Because we want to be serious.

My wife's got one. She's leaning into it. They're all the rage now. Exactly. Hey, so the new single, I got my mind on you. Feel good about it? I'm feeling really good.

First of all, thank you so much for getting it out there. the amount of people that have reached out to me hearing it on the show is truly blowing my mind. But it's connecting, you know, we're going out to shows. I'm seeing people singing it back for the first time, which is really cool. It's cool to see people. You know how you can use songs on social media or sounds to kind of put over videos? I'm seeing more and more people using the sound and tagging it over videos and making it their own.

And when you write a song, like that's the biggest thing that you can ask for is it to like land and connect with people and then put it in their own light. So we're out touring. We've had some really big artists give us some opportunities to come out and open for them. I'm out with Gary Allen this weekend, and then we're going out with Jake Owen, and then we're going out with Brantley Gilbert. So I had some really big folks giving me chances and believing in this song and us. And, you know, it doesn't happen without the opportunity to get out in front of these crowds. And so we're going out and really trying to dial in this live show and bring the energy.

And it's feeling good. I mean, you know, music is a long shot always. but for the first time it feels like I got a real chance, man. So it's feeling good. What a journey. Yeah. What a freaking journey, you know? It's awesome to see it.

Well, George Burge, you're our hero in many ways. I don't know how you look 12. I don't know. He's my... He's a good golf. Hey, he's my golf hero, for sure. I mean, he wears rings. That's not a wet...

I can never do that. I can never pull that off and look normal. This ring, actually, cool story behind it. This ring, the skull and the little diamond in it. So when I signed my... booking agent deal here in Nashville, which are the folks that get you on tours and go out and go to bat for you and try to get you on shows.

We sat down, and the first thing they said, who are your biggest influences? I told him, George Strait, Gary Allen, and Jason Aldeen. And two weeks later, I get a call, and they're like, hey, we're putting you out on tour with Gary Allen. So, like, to me, that's unreal. I'm losing my mind. First night, we go play with Gary.

I don't meet him. Happens a lot. You know, the headliners are, they've got radio, they're on buses, they've got soundcheck, they've got a million things. no sweat. Second night, I opened the show, and Gary's steel guitar player

grasping by the arm, and he's like, hey man, stick around. Gary wants to meet you tonight. So already I'm like, heart pounding, like, let's go. Like, I'm meeting Gary Allen tonight. And so I stand side stage. I watch his show, and they're all walking off stage, and the steel guitar player is like waving him. He's like, come on, follow us. So I go to the back, and they bring me onto Gary's bus, and Gary's

in the back lounge, and he's got, like, guitars hanging on the wall and nice bottles of wine, And he's, you know, just like looking like a stupor star back there. He's leaning back against the couch with his arm spread. And he's like, he's like, hey, man, great to meet you. Thanks for coming out and hanging out with us. And I'm, you know, so thankful. And I kind of lean in and shake his hand and say hi.

And he sees my necklace and my necklace had a skull on it. And he goes, well, buddy, I actually make jewelry. And I think you should have this. And he takes this skull ring off of his hand and gives it to me. And now they're engaged. And now they're engaged. Hey, congratulations, man. rooting for you.

I think you're awesome. Congrats on your upcoming nuptials. And there he is. George Burge. Eddie and I are the only two here for one time for you. Let's go. Get your Bobby Bones on. Bobby Bones, y'all.

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