The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 229: A Symphony of Balls with John Rich

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

Mike talks to John Rich about what led to their viral smash, Santa's Gotta Dirty Job, and a whole lot more, including an outrageous phone call to Donald Trump, that led to the title of this episode.

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It's filled with super useful information. And again, it's free at netsuite.com slash mic. That's net suite.com. Hello, friends. It's the way I heard it, episode number 229. And it's called a Symphony of Balls with John Rich. Maybe my favorite title so far, and one of my favorite conversations for sure.

My guest is a country legend named John Rich. Most famous for writing songs like this. Yep, Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy was a massive hit, but was it bigger than this one? Santa Falls Got a Dirty Job. Santa Claus Got Dirty Job. As of last week, John Rich's latest song, Santa's Got a Dirty Job, was the most downloaded song in the world. I know this to be true because I was there when he wrote it a few months ago. In fact, I recorded it with him a few weeks later in Nashville, and I have been watching it climb the charts ever since.

What a crazy week this has been. Kind of catchy, right? Full disclosure, I invited John onto the podcast because I want you guys to download Santa's got a dirty job. Why? Well, partly because I think we need another grandma got run over by a reindeer, and I think this could be it. But mostly, I want you to download it because 100% of the proceeds go to the MicroWorks Foundation and folds of honor, a terrific charity that John's been involved with for years. Both of these nonprofits have already benefited from the song's success, but we want more. And for a dollar and 29 cents, you can make that happen.

100% of the net proceeds come back to our foundation. So download it and update your holiday playlist with the number one. song in the world and an undeniably catchy little earworm guaranteed to make you smile. But never mind all that. After a brief discussion about the unlikely set of events that brought us together and led to this song, John and I get into a wide-ranging conversation that I didn't anticipate. And this is because John Rich is more than a singer of country songs. He's also a composer, a producer, a patriot, and a genuine entrepreneur. He's a guy. He's a guy. who in the final analysis simply does not take no for an answer.

Consequently, he's full of excellent advice on a variety of topics, including an ingenious workaround that you might want to try with your local zoning board and the power of a phone call, specifically a most audacious phone call that led Donald Trump to say, well, look at the balls on you, John Rich. Balls, balls, balls, balls, balls, balls, balls. Of course, John does a much better impersonation than I do. This conversation is a lot of different things,

including an honest look at what it takes to make a hit song in this day and age, but mostly it is a symphony of balls with my new buddy John Rich. Strapping folks, this is a good one. So here he is on my computer screen as we speak. John, I just played a copy of our song. I'm having one of the weirdest weeks of my life. How about you? It is a good kind of weird.

First of all, you and I being friends in the first place is totally strange how that happened. But we haven't been friends for very long. So to look up and see a song that we came up truly out of thin air and look up and see it be the number one most downloaded song in the world is, I would call it weird, but I'd call it some of the best kind of weird I've ever seen. Isn't it funny? And I know we've talked about this before, and you've done a lot of things in your crazy career, and I want to touch on a bunch of it. But it seems like the stuff that you sit down to do deliberately, the stuff that you focus group and talk to your friends about and agonize over, nine out of ten times it's a slog.

And the stuff that just kind of happens, the mud that winds up sticking, nine out of ten times, it's the last thing in the world you would have imagined. At least for me. It's been that way, and I'm guessing it's the same for you. Well, you know, human beings are very guttural things. We respond to stimuli, especially if it's just very basic and direct. Those seem to be the things that stick. In the world of songwriting, there's a million ways to write a song.

In country music, we're allowed to be very descriptive. I generally, when I'm writing a song, I write what I call in snapshots. So in my mind, I'll take a picture. of a scene of something that's going on. Maybe it's in a bar. Maybe it's at a concert. Maybe it's with a girl, whatever it is. And you snap that picture,

and the whole song exists inside of that picture. Meaning, I don't have to take you 20 years back and 10 years into the future. I can do that, certain songs you do that with. But a lot of the hits that I have stay right on topic. It's basically the opposite of writing a book, where a book is long form, you hundreds of pages. A song is three minutes. It gets to point across. And if you do it right,

it sticks in your head and people that hear it have an immediate response one way or the other to it. They hate it. They love it. Whatever. I found that songs that polarize the most generally become the biggest hits. Yeah. You want some people to go, God, I hate that. I've got a song called Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy. And when that thing showed up, country radio, the country music industry, they all hated it. They said, that might be the dumbest thing we've ever heard. Please God, do not record that song. I read that your label, it was like Warner, right? Warner Records was like, no, not this one, anything but that one. They said, if you put that on the record, nobody's going to take you seriously. And we went, yeah, but every time we sing it,

people jump up and down and scream bloody murder. I mean, what about that? And they're like, well, we just don't think it. We're like, man, at least let us stick it on the record. It doesn't have to be a single. And then what happens is the record comes out with a totally different single, but now people are buying the record and they start hearing that particular song. They start calling their local radio stations requesting track seven, which was Sable Orr's not a cowboy. Next thing you know, it's like Sweet Home Alabama for us. It's one of the biggest, most recurrent country hits in the past 20 years. Those first two chords, right?

And the whole crowd knows. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da. The song only has two chords. I mean, so to a song like ours, Mike, Santa's got a dirty job. Okay, you can say that line and people immediately go, he's got a dirty job. They connect the dots just like that. And then it sticks with them and they want to hear it over and over and over because it makes them feel good.

Well, the brilliant thing about that hook is that it taps into something that was unique to Dirty Jobs, the TV show, which was, look, that's a G-rated show. Sometimes PG-13, because, you know, I'm up to my neck in all sorts of stuff. But I spent a lot of time on that show trading in some very cheap, childlike innuendo. I always wanted mom and dad to be able to have a chuckle because they were hearing something that was just right adjacent to the naughty list. And I wanted it to go over kids' heads. So when you came out of the bathroom that day and said, Mike, I think I got it and played it back on your iPhone, I knew you had it. And it wasn't because it said Santa Claus got a dirty job. It was because it said, and he does it all night long. And that's when I thought, you dirty son of a gun. That is exactly. And look, I don't know if people get it right away, but the reptilian part of their brain does.

That kind of thing sinks in. And it makes them smile because it's just a little naughty. But it's okay to play for the kids at the same time. It was brilliant. It was a brilliant thing. And the fact that you were urinating while you did it is one of my favorite stories now of all time. Yeah. In case the listener hasn't heard it, why don't you tell the story, John, of exactly how it happened?

So I was sitting with cousin Mike here interviewing him for a show I have called The Pursuit, which is a show on Fox Business Network. every Wednesday night they air back-to-back episodes. And the premise of the show is that America doesn't guarantee you happiness. America guarantees you the right to pursue happiness. Well, in that one sentence, there's a whole gigantic conversation going on in our country. And so I wanted Mike to be on the show because Mike is all about people who work hard, people who are not afraid to get dirty.

People who, if we didn't have those people, we wouldn't have a country, you wouldn't have a life worth living because they're the ones that do the jobs. A lot of times other people aren't willing to do, but there's a lot of integrity and hard work, and you have to have those people. So I wanted Mike on the show. As I was thinking about how to interview Mike Rowe, I had my questions laid out, but I always have a couple of curveballs kind of thrown in there. And as Mike and I are having fun talking, I said, you know, Mike, somebody that's got a dirty job

you probably never considered. He goes, who's that? I said, Santa Claus. and he went, you know what? If you think about it, that is a pretty true. He said, think about the reindeer all night long. You know what's hitting him in the face. You know what it is.

You know, all right. I said, then the chimneys, and you got to get through the watchdogs and the security systems. I mean, that is a tough job. And there is no break. It's for 24 hours. And then I said, Mike, a lot of people don't know that you're a really great singer

and that you sang opera for all these years back in the 80s. Do you still have any notes? I go, come on, Mike, hit me something. He goes into this piece of Italian opera, you know, with this giant voice. And I'm like, dude, you're such a great singer. Someday we should probably record a Christmas record together. And that's what led into Santa Claus Got a Dirty Job, because when I got up to go to the restroom, that's what I'm thinking about.

Man, that'd be cool if we did a record on Mike, you know, like that. And I just popped in my head, Santa Claus Got a Dirty Job. Santa Claus Got a Dirty Job. It's so simple, but it needs to be, right? because Santa Claus is simple. Christmas is simple. Listen, the world is so complicated right now and not in a good way. Mike and I both thought to bring something simple to the table,

put something simple out there into pop culture that lets everybody disengage from this complicated junk that we see all day long. Man, what a break that is. What a great thing to offer people, and especially at Christmastime. So it all came together quick. Mike said, I'm going to be in Nashville. we should finish writing the song when I come to Nashville in a couple of weeks. I said, yeah, that's a good idea.

And I went, I might we just finish writing it right now. And when you come to Nashville, we'll record it. Let's record it, man. So we sat down and just knocked it out. And he came to Nashville, got in the studio. I called in the A-List players, some of the best players ever. Chuck, these guys, by the way, and just so people listening, when you make a record today, it's like putting together a jigsaw puzzle in different rooms.

Banjo player goes in there, a guitar player goes over there, your vocals go over here, engineer, God knows where he is. There's auto tune, there's final cut. It's not music. It's something else. In Nashville, it's old school. John gets on the phone. He's like Batman, makes a call,

and some of the best session players in the country show up. and within an hour, everybody had figured out their stuff. You know, people don't know this. John's got his hands on a lot of different stuff. It's not just singing his songwriting. He's produced, what, some like 30 albums over the years, and he's got an amazing ear. So a lot of things are happening really fast.

Like, we're out in the lobby, literally chunking out the lyrics on his guitar, figuring that out, while the rest of the gang's inside, doing all sorts of stuff with sleigh bells and slide guitars and everything else. They're all talking in code. I looked at the chart. There's no musical notes on it. It looks like a crazy bingo card full of jargon. But within an hour, we're done. And then John goes, you know what I'm going to do, Mike Roe? I'm going to go ahead and call the Oak Ridge Boys. You know, their buddy's my, I think they'd have a good time on this. And within like two days,

the Oak Ridge Boys recorded. So this is a long way of making my earlier point, John, but when the label told you, save a horse ride a cowboy, was a non-starter. There's something in your stubborn brain that said, no, no, I'm not so sure that I work for you. I think I might work for the listener. Every executive in Hollywood said no to dirty jobs. Everyone, right, until I finally got it over at the Discovery Channel, and we finally got it on the air. And it was the viewers who finally said, you know what? We are going to watch this, whether you want us to or not. So this week for me has been very humbling because it's reminded me that sometimes way leads on the way and you're running to a guy in a cowboy hat and the next thing you know you're recording a song in Nashville and now we're at the

top of the charts and two great charities are benefiting because of it and you can't script that kind of thing friend you can't do it you can't do it and I would add to your comment that the industry whether it's television or music they think that they dictate the future. Artists dictate the future. Art is the one that determines where this whole thing goes, whether it's television, books, music. And so I've always said in my business, there's a lot of singers, there's very few artists. I have described the music business as a sidewinder snake. If you've ever seen one crawl across the sand, they crawl back and forth and back and forth, right? I said the music industry is like a sidewinder snake and a singer is somebody chasing the tail of that snake. If

it goes left, they go left. It goes right. They go right. They just chase what's popular and what's hot. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's a lot of huge artists that have had bigger careers than I've ever thought about having that have done that. But artists, real ones, they don't do that. They just cut a straight line. They cut a straight line and that sidewinder, when it comes across that straight line, they're popular. They're having hits. But then it swings on out. nobody's calling them. And then it comes back across, oh, they're popular again. Oh, now they're not popular.

But they never veer off of what they know down in their heart and down in their guts, who they are. And they would rather be truthful about who they are as an artist than chase the tail of the snake. Johnny Cash is like that. Tom Petty. Right. Willie Nelson. I mean, you can go down a list of all the ones that we really respect them most.

That's how they did it. When did you most? feel like a singer versus an artist? Because I assume you felt like both at some point in time. Well, what's interesting with, like, say, big and rich, and we came with music that had never sounded like that before. I mean, people thought they didn't know what to think about it. They're like, this isn't country, it isn't rock, what is this?

It's big and rich music. Well, we got so big and so many people were getting turned on to what we were doing that it actually became the current trend in music. So guys like Jason Aldeen, Florida Georgia Line, some of the biggest acts we have have come up to Kenny and I and said, man, Florida Georgia Line came up to us an award show and said, we were in college when we heard the first Big and Rich record, and we thought, man, if those guys can sell millions of records doing that,

maybe we have a chance. Because in their minds, they knew what they wanted to sound like, but nobody sounded like that on the radio. And so we actually gave other artists confidence to come to Nashville and put their brand of country music out there. So then you kind of become part of a trend at that point, but you kind of started the trend, you know? So I guess at that point you're a singer, I guess, but you're still doing what you've always done. To me, Mike, that's the integrity at the end of the day that whether I win or lose, I did what I wanted to do. As Frank Sinatra would say, I did it my way, right?

It doesn't always work, but you did it yourself. And I think that goes to what you preach about, Mike, about people that say, hey, you need to go to college and get a degree and do X, Y, Z. And they go, I don't want to do that. I want to learn how to weld. I want to learn how to plumb. I want to learn how to be an electrician. And people go, okay, fine.

And they look down on that. But the person that wants to do the job doesn't look down on it. They go, well, hell, if I get good at doing that, I'm making six figures. year. And by the way, if I'm good enough at it and apply my mind to it, I might have three or four more welders working for me someday. Then I might be a millionaire at some point. And that's how I think. That's how you think. That's why you and I get along, Mike, because we see it the same way. Is it weird to love people but despise human resources? If so, well, color me weird. It's not to say I don't respect the millions of people who work in HR departments and companies all over the country.

I do. It's just that I don't envy him. That's why MicroWorks doesn't have an HR department for better or worse. And it's also why I use ZipRecruiter whenever we need to expand. ZipRecruiter has proven themselves a million times over by helping countless employers get through the hiring process faster and more effectively than ever before. And now they have a new feature that instantly shows you the most interested, the most passionate, and the most qualified candidates first. This is a huge time saver, hours and hours of save time. And it helps people like me find the people who can function in a non-traditional work environment like MicroWorks. In other words, ZipRecruiter works for me, and they'll probably work for you too. Post a job for free at ZipRecruiter.com

slash row. And watch what happens. Odds are, you'll find a huge, human resource that just happens to be a great fit for your company in 24 hours or less. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. The smartest way to hide. Well, you're talking about taking the reverse commute. You're talking about finding a different way to do the same thing. Like your music, when I listen to Save a Horse, ride a Cowboy, or Country Dunn come to

down, or all the shutting Detroit down. Right? These songs, they're very solid in and of themselves, but what makes them great is I hear ACDC in there. I hear Arrowsmith in there. But I also hear a little Hank. I also hear a little Johnny. I also don't think there are very many new ideas ever. I think we fool ourselves sometimes into thinking we created something new.

But what we really did was take some ingredients that have been out there and we baked a cake that nobody is eaten for a while. That's right. I say this about dirty jobs a lot. I got a lot of credit for doing something that people hadn't seen done before. But the truth is, George Plimpton was doing the same thing. Studs Terkel was doing it. You can go down the list of, you know, Paul Harvey was doing it. Right.

Taste change. And the wheel spins. And all of a sudden it lands on something that feels fresh and new. I don't know if Santa Claus got a dirty job if there's anything relevant to that at all, except for the fact. And I said this to Chuck, first time you sent me the cut, I thought, this song is interesting because I'm listening to it for the first time and it feels like I've heard it before, but not in a way that was stolen in a way that that weird sort of nostalgia and vert schmaltz

can sometimes make a thing feel familiar. I don't know how you did that. I don't know how anyone does it, but you do. We are all products of everything that's come before us. So I'll tell you what my dad said when I sent it to him. So my dad's a preacher, prison preacher, his whole life. You know, wouldn't let me listen to Rock and Row, but he would let me listen to Folsom Prison,

which says shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. That was okay. You ain't listening to the Rock and Roll. That stuff will rot your brain. Right. So I sent the track to my dad. I said, hey, dad, check out this new song. I emailed it to him. His reply was, sounds very Roger, great work. Well, I knew what he meant by that. He

means sounds very Roger Miller is what he meant by that. So Roger Miller, I would say that guy was the Robin Williams of country singer songwriters. I mean, you talk about a mind that moves so fast. Nobody could keep up with Roger Miller. His songs were funny. They were hooky. They got right to the point. They were not very long. There were two to three minutes long. and you just wanted to hear him a million times in a row, and it puts you in a good mood. He said, it's very Roger. And I said, man, that's like the best compliment you could give me.

Well, guess what? One of the records I grew up listening to was Roger Miller's Dang Me album that came out in the late 1960s. That was one of my dad's records, and I can sing you every song on that record. So all that's down in here, along with some of my favorite rock and roll, back in black, go to Aerosmith and listen to Pomp. I mean, you're talking all that's in here. Ricky Skag.

I'm a huge bluegrass guy, Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys, Bill Monroe. I love Pavarotti. I love the Rat Pack, Frank and Dean, Sammy, all that, all of those things. Tom Petty, one of the most brilliant, simplistic songwriters that ever existed is Tom Petty, in my opinion. So all that comes together is this amalgam inside of here. And so when I put a pencil to the paper, the music that's going on in my head is going to be some kind of combination of all things so I think to your point yeah it's not like it's a new thing it's just a new way to put the ingredients together and then you have that familiarity and still has this fresh edge on it it's

interesting dang me dang me they ought to take a rope and hang me high from the highest tree what you wait for me do do do do do right yeah was that also a trailer for sale or let trailers for sale the rent rooms to let 50 cents yeah i mean roger miller was genius genius to me like the most daunting thing i could ever look at is a blank sheet of paper a blank sheet of paper and a pencil in my opinion are the two most powerful things and most limitless things god ever created the The Declaration of Independence started out with blank paper and somebody had a pen. The pages of the Bible, blank paper, and somebody had a pencil or a pen or whatever they were using back then. Every great song you've ever heard, every great book you've ever read, every great movie script, every great anything that happened.

Started off with blankness, with blank paper, a blank slate, and you are not limited by what you can put on that page. it goes to the heart of this country that we are supposed to be limitless in America. We're not supposed to be limited by anything or anybody. And so for me as a songwriter, if you're going to call me one thing

in a list of things you might say, songwriter would be the one I'd want you to call me first because that is the ultimate pulling the rabbit out of the hat. I mean, anything you want to put on that page, you are totally responsible for what goes on that page, whether it works or does not work.

It's the ultimate satisfaction when it works, and it's the ultimate humbling thing when it doesn't. But think about what you had to endure before you came to that conclusion. From what I know of your career, you didn't start with a pen or a piece of paper. You kind of ended there. You were a singer. You had a solo career.

You were in a band. Hell, Lone Star, I think they threw you out. From what I know of your resume, a lot of things got taken from you before you looked around and saw what was left. And it wasn't much left except for a pencil and a paper, right? It's exactly right. So in Lone Star, you know, I decided to not go to college. I had two or three big universities that were going to let me in on a full ride on a vocal scholarship. And so my parents were pretty excited about that.

You know, I come from no money, grew up in a double wide trailer in Texas, high school to first. Amarillo, Texas. So they were excited. I'm going to go to college and see what John's going to do. And then I run into these guys who want to start a band. I said, I don't know how going to college is going to get me on the Grand Ole Opry. Because at that point in my life, if I could get on the Grand Ole Opry, that's the top of the mountain man. That's it.

So I said, you know what? I'm going to go out for a year and play music with these guys. And we traveled all over the United States in a van and a trailer, the story you've heard a million times. And we went on and sold like five million records. We sold a lot of records. It got to be a really big deal. And then about five or six years into that, they fired me, which they should have, because I was very hard to deal with back then.

So they fired me. Then I got a solo deal. And I said, well, I'll show them. I'll get a solo deal and I'll beat them on the chart. Well, guess what? I put out two singles and neither one of them cracked the top 40. And I lost the solo deal. So what do you do when you've been fired from the band?

Your solo deal cratered, nothing happened. Now what? now what at that point is when I realized the only thing I still have any control over is a pencil and a piece of paper that's it I tell people all the time Mike because you know as well as I do millions of Americans most Americans are dealing with things that are out of their control multiple things that are out of their control that constantly grind them into dust every single day. And so when I'm speaking to a group of people about this exact subject, I say, listen, find the one thing you can still control and control it well and build up from there.

So in that window, when I had been canned twice, had nothing going on, no money. I wrote in the period of five years, Mike, I wrote a little over a thousand songs. And because I wrote those songs. Other artists started hearing the songs I was writing and started recording those songs, which means, guess what? I get a new publishing deal. Wow, I just got some money. And then they start hearing more and more and they go, hey, maybe you and Big Kenny should do a record deal. You guys are writing a bunch of these songs. And so had I not stayed in the game up here and kept grinding through those notebooks with those pencils and digging deep into my mind and heart, I would have not made it. Absolutely would have not made it. What you said before,

I thought was great. The idea that your song takes place in the borders of a snapshot. I impersonate a writer a little bit. I wrote a book a couple years ago. It was tough. I'm trying to do it again now because, like you say, the blank page is a hell of a thing. I don't have any problem on Facebook, which is interesting. I write a lot on Facebook. And what I realized a couple years ago was the things that come easiest to me, and sometimes this is two, three thousand, word chunks of stuff I write. But there's always a picture that accompanies it. And so in a way, I write captions, involved captions. And I think you do too. I think in that two and a half, three-minute world, this idea of approaching a song like a story, that's not new, all great

singer-songwriters or storytellers. But to think of it in terms of a caption, That is new and interesting to me. Yeah, I could take a picture of what we're doing right now. What is this room? Is it cold in this room? Is it hot in this room? What does it smell like in this room? What shoes are on my feet?

What's on the TV? What's the weather doing outside? What is this immediate thing that's going on while I'm talking to Mike Roe? So if I wanted to put somebody in my place right now, I could do it. I could make them feel exactly like what I feel. right now. The other side of writing for me that has been a huge deal is what I would call, I call it sniper writing, like a sniper rifle, right? So that's the voyeuristic end of writing as a songwriter. So I've had people come to me. Faith Hill came to me one time. And she said,

we were out on tour at Tim McGraw. She came to me in a parking lot outside the bus and she said, I wish you'd write me a song. I said, I'd love to write you a song. What do you want to sing about? She goes, I don't know, just write a song that it would only make sense if I sang it. Nobody else could sing it. Only me. I went, wow, okay. That's an interesting homework assignment. You know what? Let me think on it. So I start watching Faith and paying more attention backstage. And then she comes on stage and she's singing, It's Your Love with Tim McGraw. There's 30,000 people. And she's wearing an evening gown and diamond earrings. And she's, you know, the country, Whitney Houston. And then when she comes off stage, she throws on flip-flops, a ball cap, sits down in a lawn chair,

and her kids are out running around in a kiddie pool behind the stage while Tim's finishing the concert. And I went, that's what the fans don't know about faith. They only know the faith they see on the stage. So I knew where she came from, her hometown, is Star Mississippi. And there's no other country singer from Star Mississippi. So the first line of this song, it's called Mississippi Girl. it went number one for two weeks. The first line of the song says,

it's a long way from Star Mississippi to the big stage I'm singing on tonight. And that's the opening line. I knew right then and there, well, nobody else can sing that because nobody else is from Star Mississippi. You did it. I'm not Faith,

but I feel like I understand her better than most people from just being around her. So I write the song, Mike, and about a week later, we're at another concert. Faith is out there. I said, Faith, and I held up, it was a cassette at this point.

point. I said, Faith, I think I wrote a song that only you can sing. Here it is. She goes, can I hear it right now? I went, sure. So we went and played it for a big old tear, rose out her eye. She wipes it back. She goes, I'm cutting that next week. And she recorded it, and it was one of her biggest hits. And so another side of songwriting is that, for me, anyway, is to be able to step into somebody else's shoes. Same thing happens when I produce a record. Listen, Mike, I'm in there producing our track. Santa's got a dirty job. You don't sing like me.

You're not me. You're you. Right? So I wanted that track to sound like it fit Mike Rowe. It's not like it fit you. So you notice it wouldn't steal guitar on it. It wasn't all countryed up like I would necessarily do it. It's kind of in the middle of where you and I probably land.

You love big band. You love rap pack. You love that kind of stuff. And it's kind of got that feel to it. So as a producer, I take the same. same thing. I try to step into a room and customize what we're doing based on the talent that's present. Here's my question. I love the sniper analogy, but I also like the shotgun approach. Now, you use a shotgun, you usually don't kill anything, but you hit more. You use a sniper.

You don't hit much, but the thing you hit, you kill, right? That's kind of how the metaphor plays out. but there's crossover. When the chips were down and you were given a, what you call it, a fun homework assignment, you put on your sniper hat. You ever take the cowboy hat off, by the way? Is that ever happened? Sure, absolutely. So you take the hat off, you sit down and you write a song that only Faith Hill can sing.

When you wrote Santa's got a dirty job, again, not to overthink this, but what comes to people's mind is a fat man in a white beard getting mud kicked in his face from the reindeer and going down the chimneys. But of course, Santa, and cover your kids' ears if they're listening, spoiler alert. But Santa is hundreds of millions of moms and dads. Santa right now had a really rough year. A lot of them were locked down. A lot of them were deemed non-essential.

A lot of them are wondering where their next paycheck's coming from. On the one hand, you made it a little naughty in the chorus, but on the other hand, you wrote a verse, a couple of verses, actually, that goes straight to the heart, I think, of an awful lot of people who are looking at themselves in the mirror, never mind the red outfit, never mind the beard. They got a dirty job. We're all living through a hell of a time. I think you said it in the pursuit when we were talking. America's not having a great time, Mike Ro. Let's give them something to smile about, but let's give them something they can relate to. And so in a lot of ways, this goofy little novelty tune is the opposite of a Faith Hill song, and yet we're hitting a lot of targets. That's a great point because if you're a mom and dad, you've got kids, and you don't make a lot of money. And Christmas time rolls around, it is one of the most stressful times of the year for the mom and dad. They don't want the kids going without presents. They don't want their kid to go to school

and some other kid got something cool and their kid didn't. They feel like they failed. I feel like they failed their kids, failed their family, failed themselves. There's all this pressure on them, especially around Christmas, probably the most pressure,

any lower-to-middle-income set of parents is going to feel every single year. I remember my own dad going out and slopping hogs and being a night watchman at Amarland National Bank and giving guitar lessons and selling used cars and mowing people's yards and you name it, all at the same time, 100 hours a week sometimes, especially around Christmas time, starting about September. He would start taking all these extra jobs.

There's four kids. Start taking all these extra jobs to try to accumulate enough money to then go out and get good stuff for the four kids. So we would go, wow, it's a great Christmas, right? And he went, boom. Now he's beat to hell over it, beat to hell. But he made it happen. So our silly little song, while it is silly, you're exactly right.

It's a great way to say that, Mike, that analogy of Santa Claus's tens of millions of parents every single year. He's everybody. They're willing to do damn near whatever it takes to make sure their kids have a good Christmas. And he does it all night long. All night long. So good, dude.

Do you remember meeting me in New York very, very briefly in maybe 2008, 2009? I do not. where did I meet you at? I want to say it was either down at Gramercy Park in the bar or maybe the Mandarin Hotel in that bar. I used to stay at the Gramercy Park Hotel quite a bit. I met you and Kenny. You had just done a show. And I think your manager introduced us real quick.

Dirty Jobs was a pretty big deal back then. We all kind of knew of each other. And we just smiled and said hello. And honestly, I put it out of my mind until somebody mentioned it when I was in national. recording this thing with you last month. That happened way, way back when. The reason we're on this call right now is because you made a phone call. You saw a Facebook post. You knew I was in Nashville. I was sucking rock off of a roof for an episode of Dirty Jobs, which, by the way, turned into a song too. I can't wait for you to hear that. The rock sucking song. You're going to love it. And Chuck, his true story. He calls the office or sends an email. Office calls me and says, John Rich is in Nashville. He says, you guys should have. have a drink. I'm like, I know who John Rich is. I see him on Fox and Friends. I saw him shut up about politics. I'm like, wait a man, John Rich, of course. The point I'm trying to get at is the power of a phone call. A few hours later, I'm in your house sitting at your bar, looking at Granny

Rich's whiskey, and then drinking it. An hour later, I'm in a room off the bar you have in your amazing house filled with guitars, and you're telling me stories about the guitars. And then We're singing songs to each other. Sad songs, Chuck. Saddest songs there are, you know, a few of them. Suffice to say we had a big night, and everything else John told you happened after that. And as a result of that.

Again, I guess I'm just coming back to the point that sometimes the craziest thing start with a phone call. When were you on The Apprentice? Was that like 2011? 2011, yep. So John won Celebrity Apprentice now, like 10 years. years ago. And it came down to just, I think it was you and Marley Matlin, and you made a phone call

to Donald Trump during, this is such a crazy thing. Like they're each charged with raising money for their different charities. And John Rich calls from Trump Tower, calls Donald Trump, gets him on the line, and asks him to donate like a hundred grand to the charity. I'll let you tell the rest of the story, but the point I'm getting at is you're a balzy son of a gun who will just pick up the telephone. So, Mike, had I not been proactive and aggressive in finding you while you were in Nashville, we would not have the number one most download of song in the world this very second. That's a fact, man. That is a fact. People listening to this podcast, watching this podcast, you need to understand if you want to succeed in this world,

You have to go make it happen. You have to make the phone call. You have to go knock on that door. You have to go do it. Nobody else, you. I wanted to hang out with you, Mike. I wanted to tell you I appreciated what you do, what you stand for. You were in my town.

I said, hell, if I can get him over to the house, I bet we'll become friends pretty quick because I bet we have a lot in common. That attitude, Mike, that has been my attitude since a young age. It will continue to be my attitude. If I want to know George Jones, which I did want to know George Jones, but I don't know him, I don't know anything who has him, I just start calling people that I think might know somebody that knows George Jones. And within a week, guess who's sitting in my house?

The greatest country singer of all time, George Jones, is sitting in my house. And I got to be friends with George. My guest today, Tom, Albanyce, is an American giant. And I'll tell you why. Tom understands on a fundamental level that the business of mining is a non-negotiable prerequisite of our civilization and our economic independence, just like the business of making things. American Giant knows this, which is why they committed themselves 16 years ago to make all their excellent clothing right here in this country. It wasn't easy, but they did it. They sourced locally grown cotton.

And they built factories in towns across the nation where they could hire hardworking locals who cared about making a quality product. And then they went about the business of gently reminding people that when you buy a piece of clothing from American giant, you're not just buying a high quality sweatshirt or t-shirt or another pair of jeans. You're investing in a local supply chain. You're supporting communities from the Carolinas to California. And you're getting a piece of clothing that won't just survive. the wash, you're getting a garment that'll get better with age. Check out their high-quality staples, hoodies, teas, denim, built to be worn year after year at American-giant.com slash mike.

It's quality you can feel and a true American success story that you can be proud to support. Use code Mike. Get 20% off your order at American-giant.com slash mike. American Giant, American Made. American Giant American Made. That's the way everything in my life has come to fruition is I felt something prodding me going, you need to know that guy, or you need to go do this, you need to go do that. And then you have to be the one to do it.

So when it came to Trump, I'm on that show I'm playing for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, the greatest children's hospital in the world. Towards the end of the show, every person that I knew that could make a job, donation to St. Jude because that's part of the show, was raising all this money. I had tapped everybody from the next door neighbor to John Bon Jovi to Rush Limbaugh, literally, everybody you can think of that I knew. There was no money left. So I'm sitting there in this room and there's yet another fundraiser and I'm going out of everybody I know. And so I'm sitting here with rapper, little John. Everybody knows who Lil John is. So me and little John are sitting there, the cowboy and

the rapper. He goes, man, what are you going to do? Man, you've already called everybody. I said, well, I haven't called everybody. He goes, well, who's left? I said, the richest guy, either one of us know. He goes, who's that? I said, Donald, by God, Trump. He said, you're going to call him? I said, well, we're sitting in his building. I don't know where this phone goes, but let's just try. So I picked the phone up and I hit zero. Trump Tower, how may I direct your call? I said, yes, this is John Rich for Donald Trump. She goes, one moment, please. Then it goes to another line. This girl answers the phone. She says, the office of Donald Trump. I said, yes, ma'am. It's John Rich.

I'm on Celebrity Apprentice. I would like to speak to Mr. Trump if he's available. One moment, please. 10 seconds later, I hear, John Rich, it's Donald Trump. Fantastic. You're doing fantastic on the show. Congratulations. Good people.

Good people. I said, he goes, what can I do for you, John? What can I do? I said, Mr. Trump, I'm out of donors, and I'm trying to win your show, and I'm playing for St. Jude. So I'm calling to ask you for a $100,000 donation to the kids of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. And here's the answer.

Look at the balls on you. The balls, ball, balls. Look at the balls on you. John Rich, wow, that's fantastic. Honestly, that's serious balls. Balls, balls. I said, is that a yes?

Is that a yes? What does that mean? You know, he says, unfortunately, I can't do that because if I did that for you, it's not fair to everyone else, blah, blah, blah. He goes, but I am totally knocked. out that you would call me, he said, that sounds like something I would have done. I would have called me. I would have called, probably wrong and asked me that question.

No, even though he said no, is it conceivable that you won because of that call? Possible, because he knew I wanted to win so bad that I was willing to do that. He was absolutely floored that I was that serious about winning the show that I would put myself out there. Because guess what? It could have gone the other way. He just said, John, this is totally inappropriate, and I really think you need to hang up the phone. He could have said that. It could have worked against me. I didn't know what he's going to say. But when he said balls for the ninth time, I went, I think he respected the move. I don't know. Lil John's sitting there with that grill. He's got them gold teeth. He's going, yeah, okay. Yeah, right. He's like, he said, man, you're the boss, man. You're the boss. That's a boss call.

Little John love it. Yeah, I think it might have weighed in to me winning the show. that he just knew I wanted to win that bad. There was literally nothing that I was too prideful to ask for because I was playing for St. Jude. If I were to extract a lesson from this, I would say that obviously I agree with you, but I'd say you're half right, because in terms of success,

you've got to be willing to make that call. You've got to be willing to call the host of the game show that you're on. Who happens to be a billionaire and ask him for money? but he had to be willing to answer that call. And like you say, he could have blown you off, which probably would have been a typical thing, but instead you had a symphony of balls. There's our title, Chuck, a symphony of balls.

Write that down. I'm writing that down right now, Symphony of Balls. He gives a whole new meaning to let's go to the ball. No kidding, man. Put yourself in my place. I come to Nashville. I'm on the end of a long run. I spend the day on a roof holding a giant hose

with a third-generation Mexican family, wonderful people, the aviolos, who've got this rock-sucking business. I'm tired. I got a third-degree burn on my leg, my back hurts, I'm older than I've ever been. I get back to the hotel and my office calls to say,

John Rich thinks you guys should go have a drink tonight. I called back and you're like, well, actually, I got to be. my boys, I got a baseball game, Mike Roe. I got to take care of the baseball game, but why don't you come over to the house later? A big chunk of me was like, no, no, I'm not going over to this guy's house to drink with. I'm exhausted. I got to get home. But then I was like, hell with it. Why not? And so it was one of the weirdest, funnest nights that I've had. Chuck will tell you, I've had a lot of nights like that because by and large, I don't make the call.

I take the call. You make the call. When those people come together. That's the pursuit. That's the pursuit. That your show is about. That's exactly right. And Chuck, the other thing is, you might recall, I think it's tenant number four on the sweat pledge.

I believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I understand that happiness and the pursuit of happiness. are two different things. Everybody that applies for scholarship from my foundation has to sign that, John. When the producers of the pursuit reached out, I'm like, yeah, of course I'll come on there. Anyway, that's just a long way of saying,

yeah, you got to make the call. If we're going to write a book on success, there needs to be a chapter also called, you better take the call. I've said it in this way, that I believe God only opens doors for people who have enough nerve to run through the door. I don't believe he opens doors for everybody.

I really don't believe that. I don't think he's going to waste his time to open a special door when he knows they're not going to run through the door. So I think if you live your life in such a way that you're quasi-fearless of failure, which is number one, not that you enjoy failing, but you understand a failure is not the end of you, that it's part of the process. And you go, well, I might have to fail a bunch of times to have a win. so let's get on with the failure. A door flies open, you go, I don't know how to do that, but here I go, wham, and you go running through it.

Well, you're going to hit some stuff in that dark room as you're flipping on the lights. But if you figure that dark room out, guess what? You just add new room to your house. I didn't know anything about making whiskey, but I knew what I liked and didn't like about whiskey. And I know I've got millions of people out there that know my music. I know I love our country. I know I like giving back to the military.

and I'm looking at this going, okay, there's all these things that I know I love and care about, and I can make that bottle of whiskey stand for all those things. And all these millions of people, if I can do this correctly, could really be a big thing. But I don't know how to make whiskey. So what do you do? You get on the phone, call and master distillers. And he says, if you find a whiskey I like to make, how do I do that? I mean, you have to be willing to tell people, I'm an idiot when it comes to this subject, but I'm willing to learn.

That's part of it. You cannot be prideful and succeed on the front end. Chuck, this guy picked up the phone and called Walmart. Called Walmart. Not as people. John Rich picks up the phone and does it. Yeah. I want to talk to you about Redneck Riviera.

I want to talk about branding. In fact, that's really what I want to do with the rest of our time. I assume you got another 10, 15 minutes in you? Absolutely. All right, great. But before we do that, I also want to talk about your house. Because your house, your house is not like the other houses in the neighborhood. And the moment I real, any neighborhood.

It's not. It's part Enchanted Kingdom. It's part y'all come back saloon. It's got everything but a moat. I live in a similar kind of neighborhood now where. I actually do have a moat. Would you like to see it? Hang on.

You have a moat? A computer up here. Let's see if I can do this. Hold on. All right. I'm going to show you guys what a. redneck moat looks like here we go all right see if we can get this over the shoulder shot here how does that look what son of a bitch you got a moat does that look like a redneck moat to you guys

huh there's that a giant guitar shaped pool that's a guitar shaped pool yes it is that's it so yeah i got a moat there's a couple alligators in there so don't jump in without my permission the thing i love most about your house is that you were told you couldn't build it. And you were told you couldn't build it because there were some constraints, something about two stories. But when you walk into John's house, you're not struck by a man who's been constrained by constraints. There's a lot of room in this house. I think the moment I realized you really were a jagged little pill was when you said, yeah, Mike, they told me. Two stories. That's it. it. Didn't tell me how tall the stories could be.

Exactly right. So I had this idea to build a house looking at downtown Nashville. There's this little hill. It's the closest hill to downtown. It's actually in the battle of Nashville in the Civil War, it's where the south, when they got cannonballed out of downtown, the north came down the Kremlin River, cannonballed them out. They ran straight through where Vanderbilt University is down in the valley and ran straight up onto this little hill where my house now sits. So I got up on that hill one day and I looked through the break in the trees and went, holy cow, you can see downtown. It's right there.

Man, somebody ought to build something real tall upon this hill someday. Well, a year or two later, Big and Rich comes out. We start blowing up. I said, I think I'm going to build something tall on that hill. And I wanted to be able to get a couple hundred people above the tree line to be able to see downtown Nashville. So I sit with an architect, I tell him what I'm wanting to do. He says, well, you're not going to be able to build it because it says you can only build a three-story house.

And that's when I said, does it say how tall a story can be? And he said, no. I said, so a story could be 100 feet. He said, well, theoretically it could. I said, no, literally it can. I said, you ever been to Europe? You ever been to Rome and walked into a one-story cathedral and you look up and it's 200 feet in the air? he says well I guess if you build it out of steel and concrete you could stretch it out and do that I said then let's build it out of steel and concrete right so we lay out the plans for the house these cranes and earth movers start coming in well the neighbors get wind of what I'm doing take up a petition and they go down to the zoning board and the zoning board puts a stop work order on me and for six weeks I had all these machines just sitting there that I'm paying for it can't do anything so I go

down to the zoning board meeting and they're hell bent. We're going to cut John's throat on this deal. We can't let him do it. And this guy walks out, his name was Sonny. And he talked like this, son, okay? Now, I want you to listen to me, son. Now, Mr. Rich, Mr. Rich, you know you can't build this house in this neighborhood. I said, well, no, sir, I don't know that.

Now, keep in mind, there's a hundred pissed off neighbors sitting right behind me. I mean, just for human. Well, no, sir, I don't know that. He goes, well, son, let me explain it to you now. It says right here, cannot build a house that exceeds three stories. I said, I'm aware of that, but you never said how tall a story can be. And he said, well, within reason, I said, well, my reason and your reason is probably two different reasons. I said, let me tell you what the zoning says.

Zoning says that a garage is not considered a floor as long as a third of it's under the ground. It says that a mezzanine isn't considered a story as long as it's less than 33% of the square feet below it, and a roof is not considered. a story. I said, now go look at my plans and tell me that ain't a three-story house. So they took a recess. They went and reviewed. They came out five minutes later and said, you can resume building your house. Amendment to the rule. Three-story exceed 45 feet, all in favor. I, wham, the gavel comes down. I stood up. Look at all the neighbors. I said, great. Now, nobody else can build one. And I walked out the door. He said, turn the machines back on and we built it.

Tell me you're writing a song about this. Look at the balls on you. Look at the balls, balls, balls, balls, balls, symphony of balls. That's all I hear is balls clanging. Are you writing a song about it? Hey, I think I owe a lot of that style of thinking, Mike, to the fact that I am not overeducated. I'm not saying that I'm not a smart person. I'm saying I'm not overeducated, meaning I think when people get overeducated,

they work within all these confines because they learn how to do it and how you don't do it, and they just know that. Well, man, if you've never been told, that's not possible, then in your mind, you don't know that it's not possible and you just go after it like that. Yeah. You're also the only guy I know in a cowboy hat that uses the word amalgam. So you can do that all shucks routine to the cows come home, but you are a jagged little pill. You should write a song, something about my three-story nightmare from the point of view of that guy. By the way, it sounds a lot like foghorn leghorn. A boy, a boy, I said, well, you know, son, are you

Belvedil come here, boy. I mean, Mike, I kid you not. This guy is wearing a sear-sucker suit. I kid you not. I mean, I'm like, all this guy needs is a bucket of fried chicken, and I'm ready for life. Boss Hog. Oh, big time. Shameless plug.

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Pick up a bottle at noblespirits.com. K-N-O-B-E-L-Spirits.com. Soon may the nobleman come to bring a bottle for everyone. One day when the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go. So now we have a sense of what you'll do. We know you'll pick up the phone. We know you'll take the reverse commute. We know you won't take no for an answer.

And so given all of that, I really need to understand how you trademarked Redneck Riviera. Because I don't know a lot about trademark law, but I know some. And there is no way the Patent Office said okay to that the first time. By the way, John's brand is Redneck Riviera. He's got a whiskey dedicated to his grandma, Granny Rich. Who, incidentally, Chuck, made the outfit that we wore for Santa's got a dirty job. Redneck Riviera is also a restaurant. It's a bar. Hell, it's a state of mind, but it's his. So you want to explain how that happened?

Yeah, so Redneck Riviera's a phrase has been around since the early 60s. It's a tongue-in-cheek way of saying, we can't afford to go to the French Riviera. So where are we going to go? We're going to go to the Redneck Riviera, right? So people would drive down to the Gulf Coast, Destin, Florida, Panama City Beach, Gulf Shore's. Alabama down through there. I always called it that growing up and everybody I knew called it that. Back in 2008, we had a big and rich concert in Gulf Shores and I'm hanging out with this buddy of mine by the wharf. We're having a cigar and I see this little kid trot by and he's wearing a tank top and it says, my parents went to the Redneck Riviera and all I got was this tank top. I went, ah, that's funny. I ordered a beer. The girl brings it out. It's in a beer coozy. It says Gulf Shores, Alabama, in the heart of the Redneck Riviera. And I'm like, yep.

And I went, I wonder who owns a trademark to that phrase. Right. So I called my attorney and I said, hey, find out who owns a trademark to Redneck Riviera. He goes, okay, he calls me back 10 minutes later. I'm still sitting there. He goes, you're not going to believe it. It's never been trademarked. And I said, in any capacity, what about barbecue sauce?

That was the first thing to hit my mind. He said, I'm telling you there are no trademarks on it at all. I said, well, how do you trademark something? Because I know how to publish music, but a trademark. How does that work? He goes, well, what category do you want to use it in? I said, ball caps and t-shirts. He goes, okay, that's category 17.

That's apparel. What you need to do is build a logo and put it on ball caps and t-shirts. You've got to sell it across state lines. Turn in the receipts, and then we'll see if the trademark office will give you the trademark. So I spent three or four months doing that, turned it all in. My attorney calls back and he goes, well, now I know why nobody's ever trademarked it. They say you can't trademark a geographical location. So there you go.

I said, well, no, not there you go. And he goes, well, that's the answer. And I said, what's wrong damn answer? Wrong answer. Balls, balls, balls, balls, balls, balls, balls. Balls, balls, balls. What do you want me to say? I said, is this an attorney in Washington, D.C.

telling you where the redneck Riviera is? He goes, yes. I said, okay. Then I want you to ask him a three-word question. where is it? Where is it? I said, because last time I checked,

you can't mail a letter to the Redneck Riviera. It has no zip code and nobody pays taxes to the Redneck Riviera. So where is it? So my attorney hits this guy back. Where is it?

John wants to know where it is. This attorney, Mike, copies and paste the Wikipedia answer to where is the Redneck Riviera. I actually have it framed hanging upstairs, hanging on a wall,

and I have it memorized. Here's the Wikipedia answer they sent back. Redneck Revere is the colloquial term used to describe the beachfront between Dustin, Florida and Gulf Shores, Alabama, otherwise known as the Emerald Coast. And I went, got you, sucker, because you forgot about Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and South Padre Island, Texas, and on and on and on. So I start combing through the internet, combing through Facebook and everywhere else, finding,

looking for that phrase. The one that finally broke them, I found this lady on her Facebook page. She's got a corona, got her feet propped up. the sun's going down into the ocean. She says, another beautiful sunset here in the Redneck Riviera. Would you like to know

what state she was in? Delaware. Delaware. So I collect hundreds, hundreds of examples of people using that phrase outside of where this attorney said it was, and I sent it back into him.

And so at the end of 2008, after that arm wrestling match, bam, I beat him in stamp. They gave me apparel. So from apparel, I went into boots, and from boots, I went into working on building a bar, and as I'm building the bar, I went into Redneck Riviera whiskey and so on and so forth. And now we're looking at a brand. My whiskey is now in 11,000 stores around the United States.

Next year is going to explode by another 50%. I have to think back over all those decades. I wonder how many people tried the trademark the phrase, Redneck Riviera, and got the same answer I got. You can't trademark a geographical location. They went, oh, crap, I didn't think about that. Okay, thank you. Click.

And that was the end of the conversation. The lesson is, if you know that's where you're supposed to go and you know you can get it done, whether it's building a house or trademarking a phrase or whatever it is in your life, it's easy to say no. No is the easiest thing somebody can tell you. You say, well, I understand, sir, that you don't have the authority to tell me yes. So can you pass me off to somebody? that's got the authority to actually say yes to me.

You keep pushing, you dig down the next layer and the next and the next until you get to a point where they can't say no anymore, and then you go after it. I've approached everything, everything like that. It's an exciting way to go. It's like you said, it's the pursuit of happiness. Being told no is not fun, riding on an edge of a cliff for a long time going, oh, I make one wrong move, I'm going over the edge. Yeah, you are.

But it's exciting, right? And how many people in the world are willing to stand in line and cross continents to come to this country, not to be famous, not to be rich, just to have that opportunity to exhaust their potential. But we're born here. We live here. Our grandparents died fighting for this country. It's incumbent on us as citizens of this country to exhaust our potential and build new things and hire people and make something great out of our lives. or find a way to build a thing that feels new. I mean, this is probably a good place to start to land the plane because you just did it again. You didn't wake up one morning and go, I've got it.

Redneck Riviera. What a clever turn of phrase. I'm going to build an empire upon it. You didn't do that at all. You just paid attention. You saw a t-shirt, then you saw a beer cozy. And then you went, huh, I wonder, if anybody ever did that.

Right. And then you put on your cowboy hat and you made a phone call. Because I like to imagine you put on the cowboy hat before you make the call, right? Oh, that's the first thing I do. Yeah. Absolutely. And then you just went about the time honored routine of refusing to take no for an answer. It's an interesting life that you're living. And I guess I just don't know how to introduce you anymore to my friends.

Because if you have a business card, what the hell would it say other than your name? name. Songwriter. I know what it's say. Balls, balls, balls, balls, balls. Balls, balls, balls. Look at the balls on you. The balls, balls, balls, oh yeah, I mean, I'm telling you.

I think the lesson is, listen, like I said, I've got a high school diploma. I grew up in a trailer in Texas. There's nothing fancy about me whatsoever. I have no pedigree to lean on, but I've got a mind, I've got a heart, I've got a soul, I got guts and I live in America. And that's the recipe for anybody that ever lives in this country to go out and do what it is or attempt to do what it is that they've always dreamed about doing. It can happen for everybody and anybody in some variation of what their dream is.

They should never, ever stop pushing towards it because it's possible. Let me just say the difference between what's possible and what's real. Here's what's real. My friend John Rich walked into a bathroom and came out two minutes later with the number one downloaded song in the world. That happened. And if that can happen, far be it for me to suggest that anything is impossible in this crazy mixed up world. Even a pink windscreen on Chuck's microphone. It's all possible, John. It's all weird, but it's possible. be impossible, but I'm looking at it right now. It's fabulous. Chuck, good people.

Chuck, I always like the name Chuck, right? Chuck's a good guy. That's a pretty good Trump, man. You spent a lot of time with him, I take it. Talk like Trump is when the hands go in, the face goes back. Yeah, when the hands come out, the face comes in. It's like a squeeze box. Like in a former life, Donald Trump was probably a Zidico player playing in a Cajun ban on a

squeeze box. You know, you can just imagine, right? Daddy's got a squeeze box. Mama never sleeps at night. Exactly. What am I supposed to do with this? I mean, Santa's got a dirty job.

My show's coming back. And this will be my final question, really. But how am I supposed to think about this? How weird is it to have a number one song on the top songs, not just country? What should I do next, if anything? Well, I think people thought they knew everything about you, but they didn't. There's a page in the book of Mike Rowe they hadn't read before, and that's called your voice,

and they're hearing it now going, wow, I always knew he had a great speaking voice. The guy can sing, and what a totally different look that is for Mike, and I want to hear more of that. I think it's a cool thing for you, Mike, to be recognized for your singing ability. Honestly, that opens up a whole new playbook, man, of things that you could do. I hope we get to do more recording together and find projects that make sense that people will love it. You got a buddy in Nashville who will help you anytime you need it. I am the kind of guy that answers the phone, as you may know. I am the kind of guy that will show up, especially if I have to navigate a moat just to flop around at a guitar-shaped pool.

Isn't it weird that you got a guitar-shaped pool, and the last time I saw you, we were in a guitar-shaped hotel down in Hollywood? Florida, the Patriot Awards. You know another thing, I think people onlookers think it's interesting to see me and you making music together. It's like they go, how did that even happen? It's such an interesting story. Like even when people interview us, like the other night, Kennedy interviewed us. And you could just tell she's going, how did this even happen, you know?

She was so excited that it did happen because she's like, I like both of you guys individually and you put you together. It's like, what am I looking at here? Duos are cool. It's like me and Big Kenning. He's totally different than me, does different things in me. You put us together on stage, and then you get this whole other thing. It's multiplication instead of addition.

And I think that's kind of what people are seeing. And like you said, America needs to get a grin on their face, even if it's for two and a half minutes on this song that we think we're helping him out and that's why they like it so much. That's the point of this whole conversation to answer Kennedy's question, right? How did that happen? I'll tell you how it happened. a guy made a phone call and another guy answered.

So, Mike, you're from Baltimore, right? So is Chuck, actually, born and raised. Both of you guys. Okay, so I wrote this silly song with a guy named Larry Gatlin from the Gatlin brothers who had a huge song called All the Golden California. You'd probably know that song. Yeah. Yeah.

He emailed me two days ago. Oh, no kidding. Awesome. I met Larry at a Dave Ramsey event a couple years ago. There you go. You should have him on your podcast, dude. He's a trip. So I was sitting with Larry a few years ago.

I said, I've got this song title, Larry, and he goes, what is it, cousin? I said, Baltimore, Balta Les. Come again? I said, you know, like Baltimore, Balta less. He goes, no, I get it, but how is that a song? And so we started working on it. I want to dedicate this to you two guys who are Baltimore guys. It feels like this.

They don't call it Kansas Town. They call it Kansas City. I don't think you're kind of cute. cute. I think you're awful pretty. And I don't probably love you. I love you for sure. And they don't call it Baltimore. They call it Baltimore. I don't mean to state the obvious, but my dog just kissed your cat. And love is running wild and loose. And I think we both know that. And the more I try to hide it, the more that it shows, and everybody knows. They don't call it Kansas Town.

They call it Kansas City. I don't think you're kind of cute. I think you're awful pretty. And I don't probably love you. I love you for sure. They don't call it Baltimore. They call it Baltimore. What do you think?

Who owns the publishing on that? Is that you or you and Larry together? Me and Larry. That's got to go on the album. With his permission, you better believe that's on the album somewhere. We give that a shot. That is awesome. We can cut that one in two seconds.

That's a good one. They don't call it Baltimore. They call it Baltimore. That's really good, Matt. Yeah, hell of a songwriter. I appreciate it, man. John, why don't you tell us where people can get all of your stuff, where they can follow you, what they can do?

Yeah, so Redneck Revere Products now. whiskey, it's boots, it's barbecue sauce with red gold, my friends in Indiana, all over the United States, you go to redneck riviera.com and there's a store locator. You just click on that and put in your zip code. You'll find all the stores around you. 10% of the profits, a full 10% goes to the folds of honor, which puts kids through college who lost a parent in combat. And as of the end of this year, we will have gone past the million dollar mark for the kids two folds of honor. So go out and find the stuff. I think you'll like it. It's reasonably priced and extremely high quality. I was going to say the same thing about you.

Thank you. If I won't get one. No, man. You're one of a kind. I'm afraid. They broke the mold. Thank you, boys. I'll see you in the city next week. Fall goes his plan. Are you flat with Oh Holy Night? You feel good about it? I can do it. It's a tough song. You got to get up on that. I mean, That was my mom's favorite. But no, I've got it. I can do it. Yeah. Holy night to start, the stars are bright and shining is a night of our dear saviour.

It's like the Star-Spangled banner, start low. You'll be okay. Yeah, right. Yeah, man. Story of my life, dude. When in doubt, start low. Start low. Every time I've sung that song, that's the last thing I tell myself before I go out.

Oh, night, divine. Yeah. Oh, night. Oh, yeah. That's real solid. Oh, say, can you? If it's, as long as you're solid on say, you'll be okay, home of the free. Exactly.

But if say feels high, get out why you can. Start over. Bingo. John, thanks in advance for coming back on the podcast a few months from now to talk about whatever else we're going to talk about. The more I talk to you, the more I like you. Thank you really on a personal level. I've been really lucky, and there's not a lot in this business that I have. haven't had a chance to at least try. But never, never did I imagine I'd walk into a recording

studio with a bona fide country music legend and come out with a number one hit. That was a Christmas present from you to me and I appreciate it. Hey, my honor man, nice to be singing with you and Merry Christmas to you, brother. Back to you. See you next time. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, They matter even more. Granger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Granger offers millions of products in fast-dependable delivery

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