WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 706 - Sturgill Simpson / John C. Reilly

Episode Date: May 12, 2016

Sturgill Simpson has all the makings of a classic country star, complete with an upbringing in coal country, a job on the railroad, and the stamp of approval by country music legends. But as Sturgill tells Marc, he's not interested in being country's savior. He just likes making music, especially for his son. Also, Marc plays a little teaser clip of his upcoming interview with John C. Reilly, in which they talk about John's crazy new futuristic movie The Lobster. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life.

When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney Plus. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing with cannabis legalization. It's a brand new challenging marketing category.

legalization. It's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Lock the gates! store and a cast creative all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters what the? It's Mark Maron. This is WTF. This is my podcast.

Welcome to it. Today on the show, the amazing Sturgill Simpson is here. Country music singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson. And I got a few minutes that I'm going to share with you from a talk I had with John C. Reilly, who dropped by. Not the full thing, but I want to give you a little taste because he's got a thing opening, and I had with John C. Reilly. Who dropped by. Not the full thing. But want to give you a little taste. Because he's got a thing opening.

I'm a good sport. You know what I'm saying? Quid pro quo you dig. That's right. Here's some upcoming dates I'm doing. Before I go on tour officially. The Spokane Comedy Club in Spokane, Washington. July 7th through 9th.

I'll be at Wise Guys again, a favorite club of mine in Salt Lake City, Utah, July 14th through 16th. And I'll be at the Comedy Club in Rochester, New York, September 9th and 10th. You can go to wtfpod.com slash tour for links to get tickets. Tickets will go on sale soon for my dates in Bloomington, Indiana and Phoenix, Arizona. Also, before I forget, some personal business here. We want to say thanks to Mike Moon. Mike Moon from Just Coffee. He's the guy who reached out to us way back in the day and started working with us when we were broadcasting out of an office kitchen with Sam Seder on a show called Break Room Live.

He's leaving Just Coffee for another company. So we just wanted to say thanks to Mike for the support and for all the beans over the years and good luck on your new venture there, Mike. Mikey boy, Mike Moon, roasting the coffee up there in Wisconsin. I'm actually honestly drinking a cup of JustCoffee.co. And this is for you, Mike. This is for you, Mike Moon from JustCoffee. Now moving on to other things.

This is the thing that we weren't so sure about. I was pretty sure about it, but you weren't so sure about it at the beginning, Mikey. But here, I'm doing this for you. This is a classic, classic. Pow! Look out. I just shit my pants. Justcoffee.coop.

Available at WTFpod.com. Yeah, that's for you. I don't know how long you've been listening or where you've come in on this thing but uh the story on that on just coffee specifically was that uh when sam cedar and myself hosted a streaming video show that very few people watched called break room live out of the actual break room at what was left of air america uh we could not get sponsors nobody nobody there was there was like maybe at at a peak you know a thousand people 1500 people watching the damn show we'd go live from the break room and uh and mike moon said just coffee

be willing to to sponsor it so if you go dig up videos of break room live with me and sam that what the agreement for the the the actual deal for the sponsorship was that they would send us boxes of coffee. They'd send us a shit ton of coffee, and we put all kinds of just coffee stickers and branding all over the break room, like up on a bulletin board behind us. They were the first guys, man, the first company to believe in us and me, and we've carried them all this time joyfully. And I made the ad up that I just shit my pants, pal, I just shit my pants, which was not the imaging they wanted, but sometimes you got to trust the guy.

You got to trust the guy in the mic. Yeah, pal, I just shit my pants is not something that makes you want to do necessarily buy coffee, but kind of does, right? Kind of does. A lot of people drink that first cup to get that thing going. I was told that I believe that Just Coffee, that the WTF Pod Blend, is still the best-selling coffee on their online sales. And we were happy to work with them.

It was really one of the first times to be honest with you that me me and myself and brendan my my business partner and producer where we actually saw that the show could have an impact on a business i mean we were they were with us at the beginning and we just started doing that thing it was the first time that we actually saw you know the power of believing in a product that I enjoyed, that I liked doing ads for, and that I liked getting for free. Who doesn't like that? And it was a big boost for their business, like tremendous. And it was one of those strange moments where you're like, I guess we're kind of entrepreneurs now.

We're doing a thing. Got a little business going here. Yeah, so that was kind of fun. Let's do this now, because John C. Reilly stopped by the garage a few days ago. You're going to hear the full conversation with him next month, but we usually like to line things up with projects that people are working on,

and we weren't able to do that with John's new movie, The Lobster, which opens in theaters tomorrow, May 13th. So here's a clip of me and John C. Reilly talking about The Lobster. And consider this a little teaser for the full conversation that is forthcoming and pretty great. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing.

With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly.

This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to kids night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com Actuate. Tell me about the movie you've come here to promote, because I'll be honest with you,

and I'm not always honest in this particular area. I tried to watch it, but the link wouldn't work. That's better than I fell asleep and I never got back to it. No, no, no. Sometimes when they send screeners online with a password, it's a fucking nightmare. I'll write, like, link does not work. Yeah, yeah, just send me something. Send me a fucking thing. Somebody sent me, someone was trying to convince me to go on a TV show the other day.

Yeah. And they sent me a link to say, like, yeah, the TV show's like this. You know, go on. It'll be fun. And here's a link to give you an idea of what it's like. So I hit the link. Immediately it says, you have to have an app for this. I know, right.

I was like, fuck you. Right. I don't have enough apps. Yeah. I don't want an app. Yeah. And so I just wrote back, it doesn't work. Right.

And then what'd they do? They give you a screener of some kind? I didn't just i didn't do it fuck that but is it it's a sci-fi movie right it's a movie called the lobster yeah and it's directed and written by this great greek director named yorgos lanthimos who did a really great movie called Dogtooth. Uh-huh. If you get a chance, see Dogtooth. I wonder if I saw it. It's one of the best movies of my lifetime, I think. Really? Yes.

Okay. And so this is his first English language movie. Yeah. It's called The Lobster. It stars Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, myself, Lea Seydoux, all kinds of great actors. I like her, Rachel Weiss. I like seeing her. Well, you should get that link working, buddy, because

she's in this movie. I'm going to try. Did you see that movie Youth? Is that what it was called? That one last year, Youth? I didn't see it. It's an Italian movie, right? It's pretty good, man. And I'm like, you know, I'm not the big foreign movie guy, but it's like, it's not a foreign movie, obviously, but it's definitely an art movie with a lot of poetry to it. But it works.

And it's like really compelling. And Michael Caine is great. I'll have to see that. But, okay, so what happens? Yeah. It takes place in a not so distant future where it is illegal to be single and the government there's this sort of authoritarian oppressive government and if you lose your partner or your wife they die or they leave you or you cheat on them yeah whatever then you're sent to this prison that

looks like a very fancy hotel it's like a four-star hotel yeah and you're sent to this hotel to find a new companion and you have 45 days in which to do it wow and if you don't find someone in 45 days yeah you are turned into an animal of your choice in this transformation room now that's the only science fiction part of the movie that's a pretty big one i know but just jump over it's like the frogs and magnolia just jump over it it happened whatever yeah so the so so everyone who at this prison is desperate to find so we all have to wear these same uniforms and like blue blazers and there's all these bizarre rituals where you're trying to meet these other single people and um and so you have these 45 days and then if you so the way you can buy more time to

find a partner at this prison is you go out on these hunts with guns tranquilizer guns yeah and in the forest are people that have run away from society called loners who who don't want to be in couples but they're allowed to live out in the woods or what no they're not allowed they're the government's hunting for them but but they're out there on their own right right they have their own whole own strict set of rules about only being single right no one can be romantic no dancing no looking at each other no kissing like yeah yeah and so the people from the prison go out every periodically on these surprise hunts and then if for every loner that you tranquilize and bring back to the prison you are given another day to find a partner at the prison so you could

it was an incentive program yeah so as long as you keep capturing loners you can indefinitely keep looking for a partner at this prison. But if you run out of time in 45 days, you get turned in. So Colin Farrell's character decides. You get turned into what if you run out of time? He wants to be a lobster. If he runs out of time, he says in the movie, I'm going to be a lobster. What a weird choice.

Yeah. I know. So anyway, but it's a really, really amazing movie. And a lot of younger people, especially people in their 20s and 30s, when it showed at Cannes, it was a big hit among those people because people struggling with relationships and should I get married? What is marriage? What is love?

I think we're in this moment in time where gender roles are getting more fluid. At the same time as people are doubling down on traditional roles like isis and whoever the fuck are doubling down on women's roles and men's roles and exerting this control to do things like like they were 2 000 years ago or something there's this other thing that's happening i think even all that orthodox kind of stuff and and um extremist stuff is happening in in reaction to what's actually going on in the world which is this slowly evolving gender fluidity thing that's happening and and he found those kids enjoyed the movie yeah so people who are who are dealing with all that stuff right now love this movie because it's all about, you know, what is this pressure to be with somebody?

Like, why can't I, you know, why can't I just, you know, be alone and figure it out? Yeah. And then also people who have been in relationships for a long time also really like it because like i don't know if you're married or with someone but you get to be around the age that we are and you start wondering like wait did i just randomly choose this person or you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah could i what am i doing could i've could i've just as easily picked someone else oh yeah and then i'd be married to them for 25 years just out of habit or whatever i'd find a way to love that person that i randomly picked right or is there really a thing called love and that's what i have with my partner and that's

right so you so for people that are struggling with like what is love why we say i love you i love you i love you say it so much but what does it really mean that's an interesting question so i just had that conversation today with a psychiatrist or a psychologist as you get older i think it starts to get more relative you just start to go like what what have i been saying what do i even mean yeah what does it mean is love commitment is love acceptance of another person's differences from you or what is it so the movie really traffics in all that stuff, and it's very funny. It's got this really dark, dark comedy.

And I'm going to give this guy some praise that's going to sound like over the top, but I'll explain why. This director, Yorgos Lanthimos, I think is the closest thing I've seen to Stanley Kubrick. Uh-huh. Because he has a strict formality about the way that he shoots. Yeah.

He has a sick, sick, cruel sense of humor. Yeah. And at the same time, he has this kind of optimistic acceptance of the way human beings are with all their fucked up qualities. So this guy, he's not working on the scale that Kubrick worked on. Right. But if he got a little more money or he got a little more support, I bet he would start moving in that direction. So this was a great experience for you he's got a real interesting very unique style and the acting in his movies is also very unique

but i really recommend you see yeah i i was forced to work in a way that's different than i've worked before what is that um well you see there's like people give less. The actors give less in his movies, which makes you kind of fill in the blanks more as a viewer. There's kind of a deadpan affect. And that was the direction? Well, knowing his previous work, you know the way he works. All of us were trying to channel that kind of way. But anyway, it's a really, really interesting movie, and I think people are going to love it.

There you go. That's some junket talk right there. That's my job. Yeah, no, you did good with that. That's my job. Me and John C. Reilly, full conversation. Well, you know, we had a good talk. And he's not a guy that loves to talk about himself,

but we found a way to do it, and it's pretty amazing. Very surprising conversation about some of the things that John likes and some of his acting stuff and music. It was really good, and I'll be running that next month. Today, though, soon, moments away, Sturgill Simpson. Country music. I'd like to say I grew up with it, and, soon, moments away, Sturgill Simpson. Country music. I'd like to say I grew up with it, and I did, but just adjacent to it. I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

And they had the state fair, and every year the state fair, they'd have different country acts, Roy Clark and Buck Owens maybe, maybe a George Jones here and there, maybe a Willie, a Waylon. I remember when the Outlaws came through. I remember that record around. I remember pickup trucks. I remember cowboy hats. I went to a camp where we had to have a cowboy hat and cowboy boots in order to go to that

camp because we were going to be assigned a horse. And yeah, that's part of my life. We were assigned a horse. We had to bring a fly fishing rod where we'd fly fish in the stocked pond. We made our own flies. I've done that. I had a cowboy hat, Stetson, the straw kind. We learned how to bend it up so it was cool, where it bends in the back and bends in the front at a point.

Because there was a guy there, a counselor named Gil, who was a little weird, a little weird. Gil was a little weird, but he was a real cowboy so he taught us how to fold our hats and we wore our cowboy boots we had to have our pants and my horse was named mom mom was the name of my horse and mom would not let me saddle her turn you know kind of whipped around bit me in the side i cried like a fucking baby in my boots and hat and uh and have since that day been paralyzed with a fear of horses but that aside i do enjoy country music and i grew to appreciate it longer you know more as i got older so i'm very happy to have sturge on the show today but i would like to discuss if i could um the mystery blood on my porch i do i want to discuss the mystery blood on my porch. I do. I want to discuss the mystery blood.

Blood on the porch. Maybe that's my country song. Blood on the tracks. It's a Dylan record. Blood on the porch. That's my, okay. So maybe as I unfold this story to you, we'll find a country song in it.

Okay. So I went out on my porch the other morning, and there were drops of blood on the porch. And I followed them down the driveway, and they stopped. And then a little while later, I noticed that up on the wall on my porch, there's a brick wall, there was two little puddles of blood with some blood drips. Not a little blood, not so much blood where I thought I was going to find a dead animal or a dead person in my driveway, but there was blood. And I automatically assumed it was my guy, my wild guy,

scaredy cat, who I've been feeding for a decade, who I've seen through some shit, who has been bloodied before and has disappeared for months at a time. I thought this was it. This was the end of scaredy cat. This was the end of the monster, the beast that is that cat. That cat, who I have a love-hate relationship, though I enjoy seeing,

was actually the cat that pushed Boomer out. That pushed Boomer out beyond the parameter into the jaws of a coyote or into hopefully a nice Mexican home down the street. Don't know. We don't know. That mystery remains unsolved. But I know this fucker, who I assumed was dead, is one of the reasons that boomers split. So I got an issue with him, but I like seeing him.

You know, I can't get involved with cat politics. I don't know how their shit rolls. So I don't know what the fuck is happening. I don't know whose blood it is. And then I realized, hey, how about that security camera you installed for uh stalkers maybe that would help you with uh wounded animals so i'm going through the security footage and um gotta be honest with you no one looks good on security footage everybody looks like a fucking criminal but i saw no animals except for scaredy a couple of times and and a night shot of two

massive fucking raccoons who did look suspect okay here's the point here's what happens so i grieve as i do when one of these dumb shits disappears and uh two days later he shows up nothing wrong with him nothing not a goddamn thing wrong with that cat not that i was disappointed but i'm like i said to him i said what'd you do man what'd you do you know was it like kevin bacon said to sean penn at the end of mystic river what'd you do who'd you kill what did you do he just looked at me with his dumb face and i fed him some food so it's a mystery man i don't know why my camera did not pick up a bleeding animal that looked like spent some time on my fucking porch or maybe it was just a wandering person who had a bloody face and then rested his

bloody face on the wall of my porch for a moment and then wandered off we'll never know because the camera fucking failed me is there a country song in that is there something there man so sturgill simpson as i said there's something beautiful about his records his songwriting and the production he produced this record himself his first two records i believe were produced by dave cobb who's got a great sense of classic country production of what country music sounds supposed to sound like and used to sound like but with a little tweak and i think sturgill learned a lot from working with uh with dave i also would like to say that uh that sturgill and I talked a bit about the late Merle Haggard. He was not dead when we talked about him, and we miss Merle.

I do miss Merle. I love Merle. I love George. I love Waylon. I like Willie. I like Buck and Roy. I like Tammy. You know what I'm saying, man.

His new album, Sturgill's a sailor's guide to earth is available now and it's a beautiful record it's a very personal record and we talk about that record so enjoy me and sturgill simpson he picked up that j45 in my living room and and that was, you're a goddamn string wizard. No, man. I've lived in Nashville long enough to know that I am not a guitar player. Really? Yeah, trust me, bro.

But was there a moment there where you're like, goddammit, I thought I was pretty good? Yeah, oh, for sure. It's like, well, fuck, I'll never be able to do what that guy just did, so I guess I better focus on this whole writing thing. But you got it in it you got in there like is it to the point where like if you're doing a record and they go like come on sturgill why don't you just kick a lead on this one you're like no man just yeah because uh and i guess that's sad because for you know when i was a teenager that's all i cared about was playing guitar right and uh But then I just found, I guess what I'd say is my real voice. Right.

Where I can say more with this than just this giant expression of anger and ego. Right. That sounds great coming through a 50 watt plexi, but you know. Yeah. And there's guys in town that just floored me so, I was so impressed by. I was like, I got to find a way to play music with these guys. You know, just to. So what were you playing like in high school and stuff i mean what was it man across the gamut

were you like long hair you know what was it yeah i was a stringy greasy pothead yeah what car were you driving i well unfortunately i had a 1988 toyota corolla because i had to work at mcdonald's but uh oh man yeah but no i mean i had, I had an older cousin who showed me all the wrong records way too young. Like what, what were they? They were in all the Zeppelin box set and Jimi Hendrix. And I had the next door neighbor, like the choking bad kid with the Chevy Nova who was in high school when Nova, when appetite for destruction came out.

And I'll never forget this. I was standing in front of my house, like shooting basketball and Danny. And he was like, you know, just so bad ass. Right. You know, he's like, have you ever seen that show on netflix the f is for family he's the blonde neighbor guy right right right yeah yeah yeah but he pulls up one day and uh just blasting this primal sound and i was like what is that he just looked at me i'll never forget it because it crushed me he goes he's like where the fuck you been kid in the cave that's guns and roses man i just had to go out my mom ended up throwing away three copies because she kept finding it

and seeing the inner artwork right oh they stash it i've interviewed that guy robert williams the guy who did that artwork yeah yeah oh my god um she kept throwing it away it's probably worth some money now man sure i i don't know because i know i think they there was flack about it and i think they pulled pulled some of them back. She threw away my Steppenwolf. She heard the pusher one time. She threw away the pusher? She threw away the pusher, man.

Actually threw it out the window of the car, now that I remember it, because I played it, and the pusher came on. She's like, no. No, not my boy. Not my boy. He doesn't need to hear this. Oh, I'm poorly. Well, where did you grow up? In Kentucky. Which part? he doesn't need to hear this oh poorly well how'd you grow where where'd you grow up uh in kentucky which part originally i'm from a little town in southeast kentucky called jackson yeah which is

like appalachia coal mining area for real yes um i'm like the first male in my mom's side of family that wasn't a coal miner really yeah so and then i'm sorry i don't say i i why i you know it's like i you know i hear about this stuff but i think you might be the the first person i've talked to that you know it's something about life in that part of the country that you hear about but you i would never have experienced it and i always thought it would be a hard life and it'd be insane so i if i sound surprised and shocked it's no no it's fine it's it's only because i'm like that sounds fucking brutal oh well yeah I mean my

I saw my great grandfather when he was alive he definitely worked in deep mines his whole life and so you know I saw like the toll that that took on his body my mom's dad and her brother they worked on strip mines and like Pat Paul was actually a foreman so you're not in the hole

they weren't down in the hole they're just blowing shit up right um on the weekends he had this big giant ford bronco yeah there's a work truck through the coal company and he'd take us up me and my younger cousin up there on the strip mine on the weekends in this big monster truck yeah and it was like to me you know as a kid it's beautiful because you could see everything but now the devastation that that industry sort of left on the area yeah and everything that came along with that it's not the same place that i oh really it's that tangible like yeah well you know once they once the a lot of the environmental issues obviously that needed to be addressed put some pressure on the industry it's kind of it's it's pulled back a lot and so the the big coal left walmart and oxy

cotton came in and that pretty much yeah you know that just destroyed everybody that's where yeah that used to be a really jackson was a really great it still is a really great small town but the community in the sense that i remember being a child there you know main street and all the mom and pop businesses and everybody knew each other it just doesn't feel so much the same anymore. It's like a shell. I hate to say that, but I mean. It's happened in a lot of places. It's not just Jackson.

So then we moved to a town called, incorrectly pronounced, Versailles. Yeah. If you're a local. Did they pronounce it like that? They sure do. Oh, really? They've committed to that. They've committed.

No Versailles. No Versailles. No Versailles. Doesn't add up. No, we're not playing that. So we moved up there towards some grade school. My dad got transferred. What was he doing? He was a state trooper.

Oh, really? Yeah. So you grew up with a cop in the house? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. How many siblings you got? None. Just you and the cop and the mom who

throws away steppenwolf records yeah wow it must have been hard to rebel i found a way but i mean was there when you were a young kid i mean there must have been some excitement about riding in the car and oh yeah i had a weird childhood like all my babysitters were state troopers and oh really he uh he had a really interesting career, actually. He kind of ran the gamut. I think he's the only state trooper in the history of Kentucky that went in as a highway patrolman and retired as commissioner. Oh, really?

He went all the way up the chain? Yeah, he worked homicide for a while. He worked narcotics for a while. He was a bodyguard for two or three Kentucky governors. Oh, really? So he was sort of a lifer, but he had a goal in mind, huh? Yeah, yeah. He's very good at his job.

Is he still around? Yeah. Yeah, and is he still? Probably my biggest supporter, man. Is he? Yeah, totally. He could never hardly turn on a radio, so the fact that when I was a kid

and showed interest in music, his father was a big bluegrass guy. A player or a fan? Both. Oh, yeah, what did he play? Mandolin. Bluegrass or a fan? Both. Oh, yeah? What did he play? Mandolin. Bluegrass mandolin's the best. It's one of those things that every time you hear it when it's done well, you're like,

how is he doing that? Yeah. I'm not full-on country. I mean, I grew up with a little bit. Not either. Yeah. But you are now. You kind of have to be.

You know how you have to be. Well, I'm not so sure. But not in a bad way. Let me try to qualify that. I think that the three records you've done, and this new record is definitely different. Would you call it a country record? I would.

The new record? Yeah. Definitely. Okay, good. But the first two, it's sort of like, I'm not even a country music person in terms of whatever country music means now, but my sources for country were Waylon and Willie and George and Merle and, you know, some other, even Buck Owens.

I mean, I grew up with these guys in my head. So just the production and the sound and the cleanness of the whole thing and the presentation was really what country music was built on and should be. Because you listen to country now, which I don't, but I can't tell what it is. So I think you're doing some of the most authentic country around. Thanks, man. And I thought this new record, the thing that was amazing about it

is right from the beginning, I'm like, oh, we got strings. We got orchestration. This is like a big country presentation. It never once crossed my mind that this was any other form of music it was almost like those elvis records in a way that's kind of where my head was at oh really yeah because well not in terms of sonics right right um because he you know he was like he's a huge hero man like in the ghetto totally right right all that yeah especially the stack stuff right when james burton and those guys

were playing they had the horns. But it was like a hybrid. It was just a hillbilly singing blues and rock and roll. Right. Country and gospel. Yeah. And just throwing it all together. And I really, I mean, I'm a country singer.

I'll never deny that. As soon as I open my mouth, it's what's going to come out. Mm-hmm. But musically, man, I've just, my whole life I've been in love with so many different types of music that I finally wanted to... Honor it? Honor it. Right. And get it out.

Right. Well, I thought that the R&B element of it throughout the record was really, was perfectly done. You know, because there is sort of a groove to it that is definitely R&B, right? A lot of funk. Old R&B. Old R&B, funk. I mean, Marvin Gaye's probably my favorite musician of all time. Oh, yeah?

I've probably listened to more Marvin Gaye than anybody. But, you know, I'm not going to be able to sing. Nobody can sing like Marvin Gaye. Well, you mean like, because some of it is reminiscent of old Marvin Gaye a little bit. Old Marvin Gaye, especially the 70s, like the darker period. Oh, yeah. But just in terms of his fearlessness as an artist, and it was so cathartic coming from such an unfiltered place. Right.

It was just kind of like, yeah, they might not buy this, but this is where my head and my heart is. Finally. Guys like Bowie, I got a little more inspiration from guys like that than I ever did a lot of the country songwriters that I love. Sure, because these guys, someone like Marvin Gaye was a made guy, a made R&B star, and then he's like,

well, I gotta go deeper. Yeah. And I gotta do what's going on. I gotta use this for something bigger than myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And you were aware of that? I think so. Is it more of a songwriter? Because, like, I would think that when you were a guitar player that, you know,

what it meant to sort of push the envelope guitar-wise was pretty specific, but I think when you're talking about vulnerability and showing your feelings and stuff,'s a different thing it is a different thing well i mean i'm not you say that but like you know roy buchanan the guy with the telecaster can say a lot more than a lot of singers could ever i can barely listen to him it's it's you

can feel it's heartbreaking you feel the torture that that guy was i mean i was kind of bored with guitar for a few years yeah and then i discovered him yeah it's yeah totally fell in love with it all over again even his cover hey joe like you know there's a stiffness to what he did but like because of that the way he fucking pushed the envelope you're like oh my god he's gonna lose it he's gonna lose it you always felt that jimmy hendrix could just fly into any territory mentally or emotionally that was out there but roy looked like he was like wrestling with that man i i love jimmy hendrix of course but i gotta say i think and i and i'll probably catch heat on this but roy played that song in a way that captured man what that song was really about the meanness and the yeah this underlying

tension yeah you know you feel you feel the menace i guess in his sure sure where are you going joe it's not good i go oh shit let's rethink this a minute yeah well those kind of themes like i'm i'm not usually a word guy you know and i've listened to you you know, the first, you know, couple of, your first couple of records, not as intensely as maybe I should have word wise, because I was sort of caught up with it. If you could even understand what I'm saying, I'd be impressed. Well, what country affords you that?

Yeah. You know, I get that more from, like, Joe Cocker and Van Morrison, all these guys were a lot of my favorite singers. Yeah. Or Kurt Cobain, you know, I was a huge Nirvana fan, but like, you can, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, guys actually speak in english right and i'm and a lot of people can't understand what i'm saying really it's uh it's just how i sing man no but i think you're i think you can hear yeah i like i have to pay attention to words because i'm a mood guy right in general you like to feel the pain yeah sure i like to feel like even like i like to be moved by the the music you know if there's a word or two in there that i can latch on to in a chorus, I'm good. You know what I mean? The music, I think, should enhance

and accentuate and prop up what's there lyrically. I think that's the job. So this is something you've come to? Yeah, I've come to this. It's like, I'm a songwriter, maybe they should hear one. I'm a songwriter, but

more than that, I think I just want to make records. So a group of songs that serve a greater sum. And then musically, songs that serve a greater sum. And then musically, for lack of a better term, the sonics have to sort of, there's no way around it, but it's manipulation. Right. You're lifting up what you're trying to say in a motive way. Yeah, yeah. And you're completely aware of that.

Well, yeah. Yeah. That's good because like you know to be that uh like i don't know what the relationship between an artist and a producer is all the time but it seems to me a lot of times that you know if the artist is um not irresponsible but either completely trusting or or or not as in tuned that a producer can have a great deal of input on a record they can't yeah they certainly can't because they're going to have ideas, and anybody that's worth their salt as a producer certainly should have ideas

or you wouldn't want to be in the room with them. Right, but you can go because you're aware of this relationship. You can be like, how do we get it to do that? Well, yeah. The first two records I worked with Dave Cobb, and I learned more from him than I'm probably than I'm even aware of at this point I think but in terms of he he does a great job of not imposing I mean he has ideas and and 80% of the time they're they're right if he's he'll be like well that's good yeah but what if

you did this and you know any artist gets tied to something you're gonna initially be like ah it's like well actually that sounds pretty cool. Right. You know, and then, but I think more than Dave knows how to stay out of the way, but looking back on it, I realized he, the first record we did was us kind of getting to know each other. Right. And I can be pretty volatile in the studio if I'm set on something.

Oh, really? Like he, you know, to navigate that. And then I realized some days he was actually manipulating me to get me angry to get a certain emotion or energy out of it he's a real good producer pt barnum man where'd he come from though because the one thing i noticed about those first two records and and just putting on

the first record was right away you know this guy you you know knows exactly where country music comes from you know especially you know that era in the 60s and 70s where they had a little more control over the production. There was a balance between the steel and the drums. Everything sounded not nostalgic, but well-referenced. You dig? Well, everything has its place. Right, and he knows what the place is.

He does. Honestly, we listened to the same records as kids. It was weird how much musically we had in common. Well, like Zeppelin and stuff? All that. Yeah, Zeppelin, The Meters. Well, I think you guys were gifted in the region you were in. But for me, country music, I've always...

Mom's dad, my grandfather, was a big Marty Robbins, Merle Haggard guy. Like, I didn't know anybody else even made records until I was about seven years old because that's all he listened to and this is early 80s so uh country was kind of having a heyday back then right like he hall and i mean merle was playing stadiums yeah so it was it was everywhere and we go to gatlinburg and all this stuff and uh so those images those impressions were kind of burned in well it's well that's the the benefit of growing up where you grew up like you know that's where country music lives and like alongside of just the regular rock that we all got i mean country was integrated into the fabric of of life you know like i didn't really have that i mean i was around it was new mexico but it wasn't texas and it

certainly wasn't kentucky so i imagine there was two or three generations of people listening to bluegrass and country records and that was everywhere yeah yeah literally and merle hager did that record with george jones that's a good record those guys had a lot of fun oh man didn't they that's been the most fortunate aspect of everything that's happened for me is getting to meet the heroes of mine that are still around. Merle? Merle, and we've played shows with Chris Christopherson and Willie Nelson now. My grandparents lived long enough to see me play the opera in person.

They did? You know, like that's stuff that I'll always cherish. And, like, for me, the trophies and accolades and fame and money, like that's all fine and dandy. But to know that I finally got to let them see me do something that wasn't a disappointment was, you know, it means a lot to me. And they understood. They understood.

Oh, my God. They grew up in coal camps in eastern Kentucky listening to it on a radio. Right. So it's heavier than – I'm just grateful. That's all. And they came down and they saw you play at the opera my mom brought them down in nashville both of them both of them they're in their mid-80s and they came down you know from my grandfather that was it he's like no matter what happens or what you

think you're chasing like you you've done it right you're at the opera you're at the opera what did they what did he say after not much yeah a whole lot yeah yeah it's been really cool man because he was a big merle fan so What did he say after? Not much. Not a whole lot. Yeah? Yeah, it's been really cool, man, because he was a big Merle fan, so, you know. That's a beautiful moment that, you know, where... There's been a lot of beautiful moments, man, in the last couple years. I bet.

You're getting the respect from the old-timers that you respect. The ones that matter, yeah. And like Chris Christopherson, he's heavy. Dude, we played Willie's Picnic last July in Texas and I'll never,

ever forget this as long as I live. In the middle of our set, I look over and on the side of the stage behind one of the side monitors, Chris Christopherson's back. They're literally

with his hands in the air like just fucking... Cheering you on? Just on just booting down i was like what is happening and we come off the stage and we're in the dressing room and he walks in literally like was like i mean it looked like he had i mean i'm not shitting you man the guy had a tear in his eye just like i feel like i'm you know he's like you made me a really happy guy today and like that dude to stay in there say i'm just it was all i could do not to choke up like a little bitch yeah right there in front of probably the coolest guy in history right you know yeah and just things like that i'm glad

that all this is happening at 36 37 38 years old as opposed to 25 yeah when i would have just i would have been lost in the haze of it and not appreciated all of it you know well let's go back i mean what the journey was what did you grow up with your mom was it like a heavy christian thing with her no no no it was just a protective thing thrown away uh they my parents married really young had me really young did they grow up in coal camps yeah dad was from uh eastern kentucky further down the road mom was from eastern kent Did they grow up in coal camps? Yeah, dad was from eastern Kentucky, further down the road. Mom was from eastern Kentucky. Not in coal camps, no.

That's another generation back. That's your grandparents. Grandparents. But in coal communities? Absolutely. Uh-huh. So that was just the way life went, that eventually you'd be a coal miner and it was a legacy thing. Or a state cop.

Right. Whatever. But the fact is that like early on when did you start the finding uh guitar my grandfather had an old gibson that sat on a stand that was off limits for a long time acoustic acoustic and real old no it's like a 71 72 j55 my grandmother bought but uh by the time i was around is old enough but he played it he had a really pretty boy he has has i say he's like he's gone he's still here he's still here yeah in his 80s 80s that's great um cole didn't get him no he he had a really beautiful singing voice and would

play in strum you know just like magic now i even see my son reacting the same way and he's obsessed with drums but uh it's a different story uh-huh so then he haul we'd watch he haul every weekend and papaw would tell me you know which guys were actually playing and which ones were just holding the guitar like a prop and roy could play roy could play roy clark was a huge inspiration too as a kid yeah um my uncle yeah he always played uh he was played oregon and harmonica and stuff he had a bunch of friends when i was a kid that they'd all go. He had these two friends that were twin brothers. Neither one of them never married and they lived together.

So they turned the living room in their house into a stage. They had a PA set up and like a light show. And on the weekends, they lived down on the river in Jackson. The whole friend posse would come over and these guys would just play every night. So my uncle would take me there once I started showing a little proficiency on guitar. And before I really learned how to play guitar or music i think as a result of that i learned how to play in a band right and listen uh-huh because i was so afraid i might fuck up that i was just trying to stay out of the way yeah and listen to what all these older guys were doing and it was really influential so you'd get on stage when you were like what? What are we talking, 11 or 12?

Eight, nine. Yeah, nine. They'd throw you up on the stage and you'd play? Yeah, that was my first gig. It was at a family reunion, actually, man. And my cousin was up there singing with me, and he wasn't taking it serious. I remember getting so pissed off.

So it was like, you know, if you're not going to do it. How old were you? Oh, God, we were young at that point. He was just fucking off. He was just like, doot, doot. You know, like eating the mic. I was like, fuck off He was just like, doot, doot. Eating the mic. I was like, fuck off. This is my...

What song? Do you remember the song? Swinging by Johnny Anderson. Oh, yeah? Yeah. And you're already sort of like, come on, man. Dude. You're not appreciating the sonics.

Yeah, exactly. Pretty much. Don't ruin the song. This is my Dewey Cox moment. fuck off so all right so that's real young when you're starting to at least get the sense of what it's like to play with people yeah and your dad i think it's it seems kind of sweet to on that, on music. Well, now. I wasn't always focused on it.

No, but he was always sort of into it or no? Yeah, when I showed interest, he got me my first guitar. It was a little electric silver tone. A silver tone? Where'd he find that? Used? It was actually his when he was a kid. Okay.

I think he got it out of a Sears catalog. with the built-in amp with the amp in the case little red sparkle deal oh really yeah i still got it it's a in my in my mom's house in storage um so that was the first one and then man just the rabbit hole i i got real heavy into zeppelin on the silver tone on the silver tone nice cream and stevie ray vaughan so you cranked that little amp in the case way up well actually the case was long gone but it's the guitar you're talking about oh right yeah i never ended the case you never used it i never had the case i never saw the case but it was one of those ones that came with the amp in the case yeah red sparkle yeah yeah ugly ass white pickguard right right so you put it you got an amp too then yeah i had a

little crate practice amp for a while. Crate, yeah. By high school, I'd save some money and I had a Fender amp and I started buying Telecasters and had a Strat for a while.

That was my first too, Telecaster. I never could afford a Les Paul. I was too young, but I got really heavy into that Clapton Bino record that he did with John Mayle

and the Blues Breakers. Oh yeah. Just obsessed, man. Like 15, 16 years old and I went way down this deep, dark blues hole for about three years. Did you ever do the Peter Green blues?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. He's the best, dude. Dude, that guy. I talk about Peter Green constantly. He made B.B. King cry with his guitar playing, and that says a lot to me. But I think the pressure just got him, and I think the drugs, I think he might have been a little bipolar to begin with, and I think it just sent him over the edge, and he just never...

I think it was a confidence problem, too. Well well it's a pretty common theme you know no no doubt but this this is the true like marvin same thing oh yeah guy was scared to death to walk out on stage yeah greatest singer ever and he was afraid to perform in front of people it's it's horrible the possibility for rejection that you've already created in your mind. Yeah. Like, oh, they're going to hate me. It's not going to. Do you have that? Oh, yeah. Really? Oh, man.

That's why people think I'm like pissed off all the time on stage. It's not. I'm just scared shitless and I'm trying to fight through it. Pretend like you got it together. The entertaining aspect is something I've really personally kind of had to come to grips with. Because, you know, back then, like Marvin could put out Let's Get It On and sell five million copies, and he didn't tour because he didn't have to tour.

Right. He sold records. But now you have to tour. The only way I'm going to support my family is to tour, and the touring is to... I love playing. Yeah. Don't get me wrong.

I mean, that 90 minutes or two hours every night, that's free. We get paid to travel. Right. But every night i have to sort of get locked in locked in and go out there and like okay you know there's thousands of people that really don't want to be disappointed because they have a lot of expectations no crying yeah dance monkey you know um but what what's going through your mind in that like what what is the exact fear is it is it that

they're not going to respond or that you're going to fuck up or all of it oh really you're just going to get out there and freeze and not know how to play get tangled up well i don't know man i don't know if i knew it probably wouldn't be an issue you know let's figure it out it's got to be something tangible it's like uh ladies and gentlemen coming to the stage right now what's going through your mind wow you waited to see him he's here like oh fuck i'm gonna well if one it's just so surreal yeah that's even happening right right it's like you know and you can see you write a song or put a record out yeah well you know even if it's in character they have these ideas or preconceived notions and expectations of who you are and you have to live up to that you what but they just knew that i was just like

this dork yeah uh you know i'm like a well-read kenny powers right at the end of the day it's not even you're afraid they're gonna like you're gonna be found out well i mean not necessarily found out but just like oh yeah right right he's not country he's not hard the fuck is he talking about right yeah there is something that you you do it you think that songs are written specifically about the songwriter's life you know like you're living that like like nicolo sat sat right where you're sitting and played The Beast in Me, which he wrote for Johnny Cash. But I'd always assumed, like, Nick's been through it.

He's like, no, dude, it's a song. It's a song. You write through characters. You write through, you know, different voices. You know, it's not my life, necessarily. Some of it's your life. Of course. And, you know, also a lot of it is other people

that you've knew or encountered whose lives were maybe more interesting than yours and you try to incorporate right observation i guess right you know like isbel's like that too when i talked to him dude yeah you guys don't even get me started oh yeah yeah i guess he's a hero for me oh yeah he probably, in a lot of ways, he's just a good human being. Oh, he's a sweet guy. He doesn't believe me. Oh, actually, I don't know if he does or not. He never said, but I could tell he was skeptical.

I've never actually heard Southeastern in its entirety, and I haven't heard the new one at all. I remember Dave and I had finished High Top, and Jason had made the record, and Dave was like, man, you want to hear some of this? I was like, absolutely, because I'm hear some of this? I was like, absolutely because I'm a Truckers fan. I think we got about four songs in.

I was just like, man, you got to turn it off. I can't listen to this. It's too heavy. It's too good. Too good. It's too stylistically realized. I'm like,

if I get into something like this now at a point in my life, everything I write for six months is going to sound like that. Well, that's better than saying like, I'm fucking quitting quitting but i know what you mean i i have that same issue yeah at some point i think you have to if you want to make um you know a statement you kind of have to shut off everything yeah and you gotta stop trying to stop comparing yourself to other people or letting other people do it for you right well i mean because uh, because even when I asked you if you'd listened to that,

when was the last time you listened to that George Jones record? That one from, I guess, was the late 70s. I had to stop. I think about around the time my first country record came out, I pretty much had stopped listening to country, all the old country, because I felt like I'd absorbed. Right. And traditional bluegrass, like World War II all the way up to the mid-70s.

I had a big year-long OCD obsession with all the old. Before High Top Mountain? Before High Top. In the country, from like 27 up until 32, that was all I listened to. Because you were enjoying it? Because you were studying? Studying it without realizing it. For me, it's always been more about I'll just obsess about things

and draw everything i can from it and then at a certain point i just get bored yeah and put it down and find something else to obsess about and you got a little flack right for uh for the sound of the like it like i don't know maybe i'm making it up did that people thought you were too reminiscent of whalen maybe or too reminiscent of the time you know i waylon i've talked about this so fucking much it's it's not to talk about no i mean actually i didn't even hear it i like i was into it i'm like it all sounds good to me that's the thing like um like who the fuck is who the like what like here's what i don't get you make this amazing country record that the sound of which has not

been heard in decades and what kind of nerdy motherfucker is gonna be like i don't know it's a little too much like way when i'm like you one guy who's not even a country guy it's not really one guy but no look everybody's heard waylon jennings you know and but and i'm 100 not bullshitting he's probably the guy that i listened to the least and discovered the latest but you know what man as a country singer there are much fucking I listened to the least and discovered the latest but you know what man as a country singer there are much worse things to be told and you sound kind of like Waylon Jennings sure it's always a compliment right but yeah as an artist especially on that first record and a lot of that I think was Dave really wanted to make a Waylon Jennings record oh

he did and because I kind of reminded him oflon. Right. He's an excitable guy. How old's Dave? He's a couple years older than me. So he's a young guy. Young guy. He's like, he's a fan like you. Actually I think he just turned 40. Okay.

Yeah he's a fan. Yeah. Him and Shooter were great buddies and had worked together. Yeah. And uh, because of Shooter is the only reason that first record got made. He's the one that told Dave about me. We were all down at 3 and lindsley one night my manager and i'd gone to a billy joe shaver concert and shooter and dave and jamie johnson

were there sitting upstairs at a table and mark my manager used to manage manage shooters we have to say hi i was so shy you know there's like and jamie's a hero and he's sitting i just got really nervous but i have like resting bitch face most of the time. Yeah. Because I'm usually internalized and thinking heavy about something and, you know, hang dog. But people just think I'm an asshole. And Dave even said, like, I was scared to death of you, man. I thought you were a fucking asshole.

But Shooter, we ended up leaving, and Shooter, I think, so he says, told Dave that guy's the best country singer in Nashville. And Dave apparently looked up some videos that night online and emailed my manager yeah so the next morning and we went had lunch and made a record and we made another record what were the videos online what was existing before the first i don't know what he saw that made him want to work well you know you do look like kind of a badass sometimes like like because and you make associations dude like on the second album on the metamodern Sounds and Country Music, the fucking picture on the cover, you look like a Civil War veteran.

That was me being a smartass. Okay, so that's sort of a joke? You look like General Custer, for Christ's sake. But Jason Siller, it's actually a painting. Wow. It's not a photograph. He's an amazing artist. Wow.

I wanted to do something, just make the tackiest album cover of all time. Really? wow I wanted to do something just make the tackiest album cover of all time really and kind of juxtapose it with like there was a very hip trend with like the tin type photo going on at the moment

so I wanted to do something like the Civil War photos yeah but an even more ancient version of something that they're already trying to capture

nostalgia with like a painting of a black and white photo on a space so that was a joke to you here I'm like that's a great

the title's meta modern sounds in country music right but I So that was a joke to you? It's all a joke. The title's Metamodern Sounds in Country Music. Right, but I thought that was like, I mean, I get it's a joke. I'm paying homage to Ray, but it was also like, maybe we should, I needed to take myself a little less seriously at the time, I think, more than anything.

After High Top? After High Top. Because it was such a heavy record. Earnest. Earnest. Yeah. Yeah. And then I wasn't, I've said it before, high top because it was such a heavy record earnest earnest yeah yeah you know so and then

i wasn't you know i've said it before but i didn't want to write a bunch of drinking songs i mean that shit's like let ben hoffman do that god let's hope so did you like that record i'd i'd introduced ben to dave because i was like this kind of has to happen but i told him i was like if you're gonna do this you can't turn puss cake halfway through, man. You can't tiptoe up there. It's got to be full fucking Kaufman or I don't want

to ever see you again. You know what I mean? But yeah, him and Dave went and used Chris Powell and Leroy and Freedom Eagle Bear and some other great players.

It charted. Wheeler Walker charted. Dude, he's like, it was on the Billboard Country chart. It's fucking hilarious. Which I think is fucking brilliant. I loved his argument.

It's like, who's going to tell me I'm not real country? Well, it needs to be made fun of. hilarious. Which I think is fucking brilliant. I loved his argument. It's like, who's going to tell me I'm not real country? Well, it needs to be made fun of. Right. And I don't mean like it as in the mainstream or all of it.

I mean, it all needs to be made fun of. People get so hung up on this ain't real country or this is real country and it's like, fuck who cares, man? Yeah.

If it's making you happy or if it's making somebody you think's a dipshit happy, at the end of the day, it's putting a lot of food on a lot of tables. It's making a lot of jobs. Yeah. You you know and nobody's forcing people to go buy this so there's obviously this huge demographic that of that really love all the stuff that people make

fun of but it doesn't i don't think a lot of journalists last year wanted me to like get sucked into that conversation just talk shit and bash it all day long about a mainstream country mainstream country and i don't have anything to offer there because i just don't i don't even think about it you know what i mean i don't uh well there was a time where guys like um there was a fight to be had i guess so i don't know who started it but you know back when alt country you know steve earl maybe lucinda a little bit uh they weren't fighting but some people were drawing lines you know like when guitar town and stuff came out that there was this movement of younger country artists like wilco and uncle tuple are you going to steve earl how

far are we going back yeah steve earl yeah well uncle tuple i mean you know some sort of standard was set by uh by the flying burrito Brothers and Emmylou and those people. Riders of the Purple Sage. Right, right. Well, yeah, but then there was that country rock when I was a kid. I mean, shit, I saw new Riders of the Purple Sage. I don't even know why I saw them. But I remember they had a giant stagecoach up behind them when they were playing.

At the end of the day, it all led to the Eagles. Yeah. What do you think of that? I think that it's inevitable. It happens. You know, it's like you want to hate them, but Jesus Christ, I know all those fucking songs. Well, there's a reason. They're good songs.

They're good songs. You know what I mean? Take it to the limit. Earworms. They're beautiful, but I still can't. It's sort of like the Beatles. I love the Beatles, but am I going to throw on lady madonna again anytime soon i don't think so i mean when i hear it i i'm like okay now i have a two-year-old son so i've gotten back into the beatles got it

got you got to program him he's all about man it's crazy that's why the strings made the record honestly because it was but the whole record was based on revolver no well wouldn't that be something yeah um well the first year and a half of his life i was on the road pretty much the entirety because the record came out a month before he was born um which one metamodern so that my career sort of took off around the same time that my family formed um but my wife you she's very supportive and understands. She's like, we spent five years to get right here, and you have to do this. Yeah. Because if you're going to do this, this is it.

Here's your window. So I was like, okay, so we're going to bump down and get through this. And I was on the road a lot, probably slept in my bed maybe 50 times in that year and a half. So I was watching him grow up in pictures really and then so when i was home with him it was you know every moment seemed hyper aware yeah like i just wanted to be so there right and a lot of that was me observing his reactions to a lot of the music that i listened to which kind of influenced the album in a way and i'd come i'd come home with the roughs and the masters this album this album i produced this one because it was so personal yeah um i just

wanted to be uh more than anything i think the idea of it came from the fact that all right well after metamodern there's all these unnecessary and unfounded expectations and they put all these titles and things on you and i knew it was never going to pan out. As an outsider in self-release, I knew there was no hope of me changing anything. In terms of what? Well, people were fed up and frustrated. They wanted to see recognition from the mainstream for what they called authentic music.

Right. That world is... They're not going to let a self-release independent record on stage at award shows. I mean, it wasn't even in the country category at the grammys for which one metamodern sounds right um you self-released that yeah i self-released it that's why and that's insane because that's politics well yeah but it's all necessary i mean uh and so like yeah when metamodern came out there's all this press and people just oh you

know i got this savior country music title which to me was always like a curse because i knew they were going to be let down right there's no way to live up there's no way to live up to that they're just waterboarding themselves with kool-aid right thinking that that that the industry propagates things that it stands to profit profit and benefit from and i knew the change always had to come from the inside. Like a guy like me or a guy like Jason, we can kick down doors all day long, but we're not going to walk through them.

Right. I mean, he's too nice. We've got to say this, so I'll say it for him. He had a number one country record last year. And I know they submitted for recognition from the ACMs and got rejected, and Dave wrote him a letter. So, I mean, to me, I'm a little skeptical still. That's fucking crazy.

I don't know how much things have really moved forward. But the weird thing is, it's like, it's what we were talking about earlier. This weird paradigm is that what are they protecting? They're protecting, like, you know, these known quantities who make them millions of dollars. And they're not welcoming in, you know, creative new artists. Oh, they are. No, creative new artists oh they are no no no they are i mean chris tapleton's friend of mine that guy's a phenomenal yeah oh good phenomenal talent so why'd they ice jason i don't know honestly i mean chris has written songs for

a lot of people in that world but i don't the dude's just such an incredible artist yeah but because he's on the inside i think he's in a better position to really orchestrate change more so than anybody like Jason or myself or a lot of others could, and I think that's a great thing because it has to move forward. And I don't know if Metamodern had anything to do with that.

I know Chris has said he heard the record and wanted to work with Dave. That's the biggest compliment anybody could pay me if I in any way influenced that guy to go against the grain and make a record that he wanted to make in the world. Well, that's pretty selfless. Look at the results,

man. Yeah. So, uh, and I think also as a result of that, both fortunately and maybe unfortunately for the next two or three years, you're going to see music row pumping out versions one through 37 of their authentic country singers right because

they know right now they kind of look like assholes right you know right um and so they're going to go back to and i'm an asshole for so for me to say somebody looks like an asshole that's like right so now they're just going to read you reconfigure the face of country music a little bit it's all cyclical every 25 30 years it rolls over and it's time to roll over well let's get back to you know you having this uh you know this profound time with your son and moving into this new record what was you know how did you come up with how does it work for you as a songwriter that you know you kind of move through this metaphor for a good chunk of the record you know the ocean sailor business there's two or three songs at least on

there where'd the concept come from? Yeah, I mean, like you said, you had this experience with your kid. Yeah, just being away from him. And even though, I mean, I have the greatest job on the planet, man. Yeah. There's no question about it.

Even though it brings me a lot of emotional turmoil and insecurities I have to fight to go out and do it, it's still the greatest job on the planet. Right. So it's like my whole life, whether I knew it or not, even when I wasn't ambitiously moving towards it, was all i ever cared about music music and and i and people might think i'm pretentious or whatever but i take it very seriously you know if i go to clearly you know

it's something it's the only thing i've ever taken seriously so and i feel like you have this responsibility these records are going to be around forever so anything i leave behind has to be These records are going to be around forever. So anything I leave behind has to be solid. Solid. But I wanted also realizing sort of my place in it all and the road I would have ahead of me. I came to peace with that and realized that no matter what happens going forward, it's a very fickle business and it could all be over tomorrow for me. So I wanted to do something as a thank you to my wife and my, and my family, just as like, you know, this, their support and believing in me got me to right here. So I'm going to be very self-absorbed and selfish for a moment and produce this bombastic

orchestratable journey for my kid that someday if I grow up and i'm dead and gone he can listen back and know exactly who his dad was and have all those things that like that meant so much to me in this sonic capsule so so the difference is like in the first record you were saying i'm going to write an earnest country record yeah in the second record you were going to turn country in on itself a little bit well i want to incorporate elements of psychedelia and rock and roll right always listen to. And then really make a social consciousness album about the human experience. And like coming to terms with the little dark corners we all don't want to go around in our heads, you know.

Which is not common for country, really. Not anymore. It used to be what it was all about. It used to be about the celebration of the struggle of life. Like the blues. And the blues. And now it's like, it is what it is. Let dance but people like it so what do you what can you say who are you gonna be mad at people want happy music people want to be happy bro

yeah there were some like even like well yeah i mean if you look at even hank williams and you know and his progeny like that the the legacy of of being as dark and out there as he was and writing those songs like it all feeds all that stuff and when even when you hear the personal mythology of of george jones you're like holy shit genius but so okay so that was the exploration record but this record but they were taking heavy overwhelmingly depressing sad themes and putting them to uplifting sonic backgrounds that was that's that's the that's the that's what makes it good you're taking happy music and expressing these these thoughtful emotive ideas as opposed to now where any kind of modern music seems to be

rapid and over top of these bombastic like a cheesy version of 80s hair metal yeah and really shallow empty lyrical content there's a really interesting piece in the washington post last week about how a lot of modern country singers are coming out and expressing uh not apologies but just like yeah we know there's not much in what we're doing and to me that tells me that somewhere right now around eight thousand dollar oak tables meetings are taking place and they're saying we look like assholes. And we need to come up with a better alternative because people are fed up. Well, they let the money kill it.

The artists are fed up is what you're saying. The artists are also fed up. Right. A lot of people from that world reached out to me, man. Keith Urban wrote me one of the nicest notes of encouragement I'll probably ever get in my entire life. Zach Brown extended, took us out and put us in front of bigger audiences than we ever would have thought to play for last year. So, I mean, yeah, the artists are fed up. And the people that work in the industry are fed up. That's beautiful because that's one of those stories where, you know, it's like one of those sort of almost like a star is born.

Where, you know, you get these dudes that have made fortunes and have really figured out how to make fortunes doing what they do. By making certain compromises to maybe what they originally set out to do. And then a guy comes along that just rings true and they're gracious enough. That's got to be worth everything. And again, returning back to this time capsule for your kid. So to me, it sounds like this was a grown-up record where where like you know you you like big boy pants yeah right because like you know in metamodern you know you had an agenda to to explore certain things that you grew up with and psychedelic things in the first record you

wanted to to sort of like you know you know have your ground like you know to be reckoned with or finding it right and then this record it seems like, I'm going to draw from what I love and use, like, there's something that you just said about the sonic landscape, you know, having the power to elevate pain enough to where that pain is manageable within the person listening. Do you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, no, absolutely. You know, and that, like, I've never really heard it put that way, and I think that's right on because a lot of times with the blues, you know, that's pretty standard shit. But, you know, in terms of 1-4-5 and, you know, and then the chorus is usually good. And somebody, you know, there's a, you know, I'm fucked, but I'm okay. Right.

But, like, to do something like Golden Ring, which is a cyclical, you know, sort of heartbreaking story. And to have it be like something you can listen to over and over again just means that that pain you're experiencing with that sad story, it's manageable. And it's human. And it's something everybody can relate to. We all have the same basic emotions. And so is that what you found yourself entering this record? What was the thing you said, well, I don't give a fuck.

I'm not going to honor which voice. Do you know what I'm saying? Or honor all of them. Okay. Really, it was like, okay, well, I'm on a major label now this is my first album i've got this this metaphor i like to use as a toolbox yeah you know you have all these uh means available now that i didn't have a metamodern we made that literally me and three other guys my road band that i'd spent a year on the road a lot of the songs were tested, arranged, carved out of wood.

Yeah. And we came in and hit record with four microphones and we didn't touch anything after day one. Uh, and, and it was a very short conversation. Dave knew exactly what I wanted. Yeah.

And it went very fast and very, I didn't think I was ready to make a record. Um, whereas opposed with this album, all of those learning experiences stack up into more confidence. Right. In terms of what you, and if you spend a year or a year and a half on the road inevitably you become a better musician inevitably you hear things you didn't hear a year and a half ago um and after some reflection and i and i i knew that i'd learned a lot about the process yeah and. So I guess I had some confidence.

So I told Dave, I'm going to do this one by myself just because it's so personal. What'd he say? He understood. Yeah. I mean, and then the label, they were kind of like,

okay. So I just told her, I'm going to go make some demos and see where my head's at. But I knew I had the record. We came out about four or five days later and everybody's concerns were alleviated hopefully but it was a lot of fun there's a lot of uh again it was a learning experience because i already heard it in my head and all the guys in the room had to deal with that right that fact that you had it fully realized so patience was a something that i came to understand is very important in a process where, you know, let's try that.

But we can't try it right now because to set up certain equipment, especially in the analog world, it takes time. And then you've got to place the mics right. And the engineer, David Ferguson, who's a genius, worked with Cowboy Jack and Rick Rubin and did all the Johnny Cash records. I learned probably even more from him in that week. It's really interesting. I don't know. The records for me is the reward. That's what I love more than anything.

Well, it's sort of kind of cool that one of the more country-ish sounding songs is the Nirvana cover, right? Like, you know, like you had to, you know, like I understand doing a cover and i understand you know loving nirvana but you know what was it about was which one in bloom is that what was it about that song that you were like well this this i can you know we can make this thing in a different way well i mean if you're going to cover anything you should probably try to make it in a different way no of course but i mean like you know i can't take credit for is my wife's idea oh yeah i did this other 80s new wave song on the last record that was her idea because she um anyway so the record conceptually as a letter to your son right or as a new parent to their child whatever from far away i wanted i knew i had this hole in the narrative the record was sort of

arranged before a lot of the songs were finished even being written because i knew i had this hole in the narrative the record was sort of arranged before a lot of the songs were finished even being written because i knew it had to form a right a narrative and yeah i came to that point was like okay well he's going to hit this this stage in his life where he's like this post-pubescent adolescent angsty awkward little kid that we all go through and i'm not in that headspace anymore so i didn't know how to and a lot of to be honest a lot of my life during that time i just kind of blocked out and went and just learned to play guitar and smoke pot and try to be numb through it all um so my wife said well you know what were you listening to at that point in your life

nirvana you know shit hitting like eighth grade seventh or eighth grade and uh my parents had had divorced. So I was like the latchkey kid from a broken home, you know. And that record just sort of exploded. How old were you when they divorced? 13. Was that rough? Or were you just too out of it?

At that point, everything that had led up to it, I think I was already just kind of out of it. Were they fighting? Yeah, it was pretty tumultuous. But they loved each other, man. They were young, trying to do the best they could. Right. But yeah, that broke, and then I was just sort of... Wayward.

Wild. Yeah, yeah. For the lack of it. But speaking about the life and about these drifting years before you sort of landed in whatever got you to the first record, I mean, how fucked up did it get for you? I mean, were you just a guitar player and just a weed smoker? What kind of jobs were you doing?

What kind of trouble were you getting into? High school. Was there a moment where you're like, I got to change course? Oh, for sure. And a few of those, really. I worked for the railroad for a while out west. Why? sure and and you know a few of those really i worked for the railroad for a while out west why um well i'd moved to nashville the first time in 2000 in 2004 2005 and i was there for a while trying to be a singer songwriter well i didn't know what i was trying to do i just went down there very naively and uninformed and thought well but you know everything that's going on in

that city now yeah wasn't really happening yet right you know there wasn't uh jack white wasn't there back white east nashville wasn't east nashville then it was uh just a different world and i didn't know anyone or where to start and i've never been a very ambitious person so uh rather than well i guess i'll go down to the open mic at the Music Row Best Western and slog it out, I figured, well, I'll just probably sit home and drink and listen to Bluegrass instead. So I did that for about nine months. Yeah.

And then realized, well, this isn't going anywhere, so I should probably get a job. And a buddy of mine with some connections got me on a gig at a railroad switching terminal out in Salt Lake City. Wow. Yeah. It's abstract. abstract yeah it happened yeah sold all my guitars except for martin just went out there and threw myself into the job for a while and then i took a management position at the railroad at the railroad my now my wife moved out she was with me there and then uh was that dark time no it was a good job man it really

uh you're i mean it's a good job, man. It really is. It's a lot of hours, but. What was the job? I started out as a conductor. I was switching trains on the yard that would pull in. We'd break them apart. So you weren't on the train. Well, I was on the train.

We'd operate them. We'd engineer the locomotives within the yard. Yeah. Driving mile and a half long trains. Yeah. It's a very outdoor physical job. Old school old schools as it gets man it's like it's appropriate you know to the point where i'm like did you plan that and to be honest with you man if i hadn't taken that management job i'd probably still be there yeah i screwed up and got in an office and on the conference calls getting screamed

at i wasn't out there on the yard anymore and i just got really depressed were you writing music up until that point no but once it got to that point yeah the guitar came out of the closet for the first time when you were getting yelled at by upper management what am i doing with my life man this is not this is not me and my wife has always been very encouraging about my music. She went and bought me a little 12-track recorder so I could start putting ideas down at home. And then I started writing more. And then finally she just kind of told me, you know, you don't suck at this.

And it's obviously what you enjoy. So maybe you ought to try to do that before you wake up. And I'm stuck with your miserable ass forever. So that's what happened. We quit quit our jobs we sold everything and drove back to nashville for bronco to nashville and that was about six years ago and then you just sort of you figured out how to to what how did you begin to get recognized for what you were doing how did you make how did you get to the first record from Salt Lake City and quitting a railroad job? The first year, I dicked off back and forth

with a local band I used to play in and realized that that was kind of over before we started it again. And I didn't have much musically or personally to offer there anymore. And I realized I was kind of using it as a hiding place in a crutch. What kind of music was it?

It was like punked out bluegrass. It was a lot of fun until it wasn't. Right. It wasn't gratifying. So I made a break from those guys. And then just decided I'm going to write country songs because that's ultimately, even in playing in that band, that's what I was doing was writing country songs.

Right. And so, yeah, Shooter, hooked up with Dave. This was all like a year later. My manager was Blind Chance. Again, knowing what I knew from living there the first time, I was like, well, obviously you need help or at least somebody to point you in the right direction. Yeah. to point you in the right direction yeah so I just blind copied in about 375 email addresses and wrote this very short try to make it as humble as possible basically just saying I need somebody to go sit down with have a cup of coffee and just tell me like where to start uh-huh and the guy is

my manager now he doesn't believe me but out of all of those he was the only person that wrote me back really and he he said he heard something on the thing on my voice and he was like there's something here so for the first two years more as a friend than a manager he just kind of gave me advice on what not to do and would put up walls whenever things would present themselves that what were some of those things you know just the token stories where guys like me get chewed up and spit out by that town right you know running interference and say you don't want to do that you think you want to do that right and you think that what they're telling you is great but you know that's not worth what you're giving away so don't do that yeah and so it's a lot of times kind of scary um and then he basically said like i'll

help you i'll get you in the right direction if it turns in something i want the gig and we shook hands on it and oh yeah two years later it turned into a gig and there you go he's my little sicilian jewish pitbull you know it's sicilian jew yeah and he's been there a long time he's been there a long time and he's worked in just about every facet of the industry over the and seeing what it does sure so he knows all the tricks and he knows you know i don't think uh for lack of you know there might be bigger more connected guys but there's nobody that's got my best interest in mind in that town. Right. Like he does.

That's good, man. It's good to have loyalty and a good relationship like that. And it's good that you. Above all else. Yeah. And it's good that you didn't get all fucked up. I mean, there's still time, but. No, I got all that out of my system.

I'm good. Yeah. When you were hitting the bottle was it bad well no no it wasn't like handshaking it was just kind of like self-medicating depression and uh not knowing anybody that was easier to find than all the other things that might have been you know but your wife seems to have sort of been there the whole time did she say like god bless her me what are you doing it really man all of this is happening because of her. That's the truth. I wouldn't have done any of this. What did she do?

She used to work in marketing, and now she's taking care of the kid. I finally got to the point where she can stay home, which was very important to me for her to be able to raise our child, our children, hopefully. Yeah. She's very independent, very supportive, calls me on all my bullshit. And you take it. when I can try. I have to.

I got to take it from somebody. But no, this is all literally, if not for her, I really don't think any of this thing would be going down. So, like, the actual arc of the record is Welcome to Earth is Birth. Birth. Yeah, Breaker's Roar is sort of a warning. Just more of a full disclosure yeah this is what you're in for uh-huh it ain't all flowers right keep it between the lines is you know that was a collection of metaphorical sayings my grandfather used to say that even to this day half of them i'm still not certain i know what they mean but it's more like

worldly advice that i tried to put in the song yeah and also in the form of a quasi dare commercial so that my kid doesn't feel the need to go down some of the roads i did even though as as idealistically and romantically rimbaugh-esque i might have been in my exploration like there wasn't much learned from that right then had a good time had a good time and even didn't have a good time oh yeah you know what i mean so like yeah yeah rimbo didn't end well no uh and then uh sea stories is sea stories is more of a collection both autobiographical and some fantasial and made up kind of like my life in the navy and some of the characters and weirdos that i met. How long were you in the Navy? About three years. Was that before the trains? Way before, yeah. I got in trouble selling drugs in senior year of high school,

like three months in. What were you selling? Just pot. I had a job at McDonald's. When I turned 16, my mom, I got a job at McDonald's, which was literally like two miles from our house. And she's like, whatever you save up the first first six months i'll match you on buying a car uh-huh so and then like you know you're back there frying nuggets and people from school are coming in and just ridiculing

the shit out of you and it's absolutely humiliating this is fucking bullshit wearing the hat cds and strings man yeah so my buddy um a good a good friend of mine had an older sister dating this dude who had a had a line on the commercial a-grade crew man i was like all the kids in school were getting the dirty brown press yeah i can kill this yeah it was like um and there was nobody there to say maybe you shouldn't do that so uh that was a that was a wake-up call and then i realized where was your dad your dad was out of the house yeah he was gone he moved out at that point but you did you talk to him still or yeah i went i went to stay with him it wasn't like honestly looking back it wasn't rebellion it was business opportunism and business you know yeah yeah um there was there was demand yeah right and nobody else had the supply uh so but that was you know it was really stupid foolish thing and so i was about three months into

my senior year and just sort of had this epiphany like I'm going nowhere you know my grades weren't good again this is the first epiphany so I was like well I know if I join the military I know no matter what I'll get out of this town and nothing was scarier to me than two years later

still being in that town so I enlisted and I thought the Navy would take me farther away than anything else you didn't get busted though? no the guy that I was getting it from i don't remember how he he came home late and his old lady called the cops on him so he freaked out in the middle of night and me

being the closest person to his house he calls me this 16 17 year old kid in the middle of night and and my mother had picked the phone up before i did so she heard this fucktard just like going on the whole gamut and the gig was up and i was that my man god bless her she did what it was one of those calls right dude the cops are coming and like i don't know how much shit you have but i you know i got you gotta get me out of here man i was like oh yeah yeah who is this yeah yeah wrong number um but she she scared her to death she was the best mother anybody could hope for and i put her through hell i'll always regret that but she couldn't have done any better so you know it's like merle said yeah mama tried yeah

um and the grateful dead and the grateful dead yeah So you go into the Navy and you have a life. For how long? Long enough to know it wasn't for me. Were you at sea? Oh, yeah. I was on a little frigate. I was stationed over in Japan. Yeah. The biggest part of that.

All over Asia. And we would escort the battle group. The main thing was patrolling international waters and checking cargo and freighter ships and containers and manifests. And we have these little VBSS teams that would board. And we'd just fucking dick off. And it was peacetime.

There wasn't anything going on. Yeah. So the hardest part of it was remembering you were in the Navy a lot of the time. Right. You hit these ports and I have buddies that went to college

and they talk about frat parties. I'm just like, you guys have no idea what Navy parties are like. Yeah. It was a lot of fun. Some of the best friends went to college and they talk about frat parties i'm just like you guys have no idea what navy parties are like yeah it was a lot of fun some of the best friends i'll ever have in my life still have them still a few of the really tight guys that come to shows stay in touch uh one one of my close friends lives out on the west coast he's got a kid about the same age as me and we'll probably talk the rest of our lives and then there's the guys that you were as good of friends as you'll ever have in the world.

There's one dude, Joe, was one of those, you know Bob Acosta, the attorney from the Hunter Thompson novels? He said it wasn't meant for mass production. Well, this was that guy. And to this day, nobody knows what happened to him. He could be dead. He could be in prison. You don't know. Yes, the guy's known.

But man, he was like, you couldn't have asked for a more colorful human being was he the guide was he the guy no no no no he was he was uh sort of the the example oh yeah you know like what not to do yeah maybe not get that far out yeah well that's nice so you survived that and you didn't get too fucked up and you had a good time i had a real good time and you came back with i got fucked up after i got out i was out in everett washington really yeah we got out of station everett when i got out that's cobain country yeah uh well it was long after all that was sure it was like 99 yeah um so i was uh yeah i just kind of stuck out there working at this ihop oh away from my family and everything i ever knew and understood i was living with this 18 year old french girl and so you just that's what you did when you got discharged you just stayed there i just stayed there and and got fucked up and played guitar and

went to shows and and experienced this whole other side of america that i probably never would have seen before pretty up there it's gorgeous it's also immensely depressing yeah dark but I liked it it's a cool town man had too much fun got to a point where I realized I was having too much fun missed again missed my grandfather's funeral Oh because of that your father's father my father's father because I wasn't in a state to come home and see anybody what were you doing just booze uh yeah a lot of a lot of i don't yeah i read all the wrong books and i don't ever want to talk about that because a lot of kids they hear shit like this and they get all you know impressionable and stupid well you didn't lose your life and you didn't stay in it yeah yeah just kind of this and that sure Had a good time until it didn't.

Now I have to carry the shame of not being able to come home and see that man go. Was he dying? No, he had Alzheimer's and he fell down and broke his hip. And there was, I guess, bacterial infections. I'm not sure exactly. But other than that, physically, he was fine. He'd probably still be here that hadn't happened and was that the sort of the the thing that shook you that was great that was a wake-up

call yeah and your dad probably was like what the fuck are you doing yeah yeah we and but i couldn't i couldn't talk to him about it you know sure so it was you'd have to arrest you a distance there for a while um but yeah i came home and got back in my element and around friends that I hadn't seen in a while. And eventually I was okay. You know, getting out of the military is always something that a lot of people don't talk about. Because even peace or wartime, there's some pretty serious behavioral modification. Right. And so I had to kind of come to grips with that on my own.

I wasn't this laid back kid that my friends all knew in high school. It was just like one on tighter than a banjo string and nothing was efficient enough anymore. Yeah. So I had to throttle back. Right. You had to learn how to be in real life again. Right. And were you a fighter?

What do you mean? Did you kick any ass? Was you getting fights? In the Navy yeah sure yeah yeah I'm not if I don't I've seen some pretty authentic since severe violence so it's something that I try to avoid it all probably at all costs where do you see that just written you know fights and things like out on town and then but no I'm not i'm not a violent

guy if that's what you but you'll throw it down if you have to i'm i'm mercurial uh-huh i'll put it that way i'm just i'm trying i'm trying to lift up your country cred that's all i understand no no i mean i you know honestly fighting something that i've come to really hate as i've gotten older and uh i'm one of those guys i'm not afraid to stop a show if i see it happening just because one it well the most annoying thing is it never happens it's always just a couple cockheads like puffing up like roosters right but you know nothing ever happened all they do is consume and redirect all of the energy in the room to them. And nobody's in the show. My band's not in the show anymore. And that pisses me off in a way I could never fully articulate.

So that's one reason. Two is usually it's always people around the jackasses that end up getting hurt. Yeah. And I would rather stop than to see that happen at a show that we're responsible for, people being there in the first place. Yeah. But you've got to be careful because if I do that now, show that people that we're responsible for people being there in the first place you know yeah so but you got to be careful because if i do that now it's like it's on youtube in five minutes and

you're a tough guy yeah you know yeah but uh i think it's interesting though because like you know there's a you know this talk about authenticity and about country and about you know what your interests are and how you've lived your life and what you've done with your mind and and the things you've accomplished. But, but I think what we're learning is that, um, you know, despite,

uh, you know, whatever, uh, you're telling me about, um, intellectually who you are, there,

there's definitely a country bad-ass in there. Uh, you know, get in, get in where you fit in, man. Are you, does that, is that insulting or are you? No, not at where you fit in, man. Is that insulting?

No, not at all. I mean, I don't consider myself a badass, but, you know. But if necessary. I think there's certain things I'm kind of badass at. Yeah. You know, and I've learned to focus on just doing those things. So, in bloom, as we was you know showing him what you liked and interpreting it for him yeah and plus and paying homage to kurt and i got a lot of slack

from that one that really yeah you know the nirvana fans oh fuck it yeah fuck them um the thing is like as a huge nirvana fan one of my favorite things about kurt that i always liked when i was a kid i saw in some interviews he talked about how much he loved country music and merle haggard and yeah he covered a stanley brother song on the unplugged you know like and that was the stuff that i knew as i was like this guy's awesome yeah so i wanted to do something from my you know what i do best as to kind of pay homage and make it i tried to make it as beautiful as i could um it might be weird but no it's great um you can fucking paul anka covered nirvana yeah i think he it might be weird but no it's great um you can fucking paul anka covered nirvana yeah i think he would have liked it just because it pissed off nirvana fans

sure yeah any if you pissed off anybody i think he would have liked it and they can all suck my duck so yeah embrace for impact that's the single are you thinking well if that exists if that exists they the label let me pick the first single so so I said, let's go with the six-minute deep cut. Mm-hmm. Because I want people to hear this album from start to finish, so the whole idea of singles to me seems... Well, I love that. It's like it's a reasonably length record.

It's like a real record. There's nine songs on it. 40 minutes. 20 aside, bro. Yeah, it's a real record. None of this sort of loading up. We were talking about antiquated business models before you turned the tape on and i think now any any there's a lot of music fans yourself included or anybody

hopefully that's that's that knows my first two records they know that they're getting an album and like you know even adele said she doesn't want her album snacked on you know like people are gonna just give them the record, man. Let them dissect it and tell me what it means, as opposed to let's roll out three tunes, sit down with 8,000 journalists, answer the same seven questions. Just give them the record. That's all they want.

Right. And then let them live with it, and then three months later, show up and play the thing in front of them, and everybody has a great time. Right, and let them take it in as a record. Right. As opposed, I mean, you spend all this money setting things up that are just going to inevitably happen or not. Right.

But still, the songs live on their own. My first record took off because of organic word of mouth. Right, but that's the only thing that, that's all that can happen. That's it. And everything else is out of your control. And also, nothing else really works. No you do people got to be like this shit is the shit and then they get they turn it on to the other guy and yeah and people connect with it and they hopefully it eases their pain or whatever they're dealing with that's right trophies or not

trophies my life is dope it's great so brace for impact was sort of like you know don't be too scared and you know live live life a little. Yeah, right. Facing mortality or someday, yeah, you're gonna die. Are you asking me to explain my art? No, I'm just I'm just going through. I'm just trying to sort of encapsulate the dialogue with your kid. No, no. Yeah. This is great. Let's do it here and then I don't have to do any interviews. Yeah, we'll do it all here. Because like I like the idea that it is a conversation that you want the kid to have. And all around you is... Just knowing no matter what, love and finding strength within yourself.

We're mortal, but you can carry memories of positive, encouraging, influential people the rest of your life. And that your parents love you. Yeah, and that there's love all around you, no matter how sometimes in your life you might feel like there isn't any. It's literally always there. I just wanted him to know that. I need to know that. Thank you.

I have to go listen to that song again. Oh, Sarah is for Sarah. I wanted something for his mother. Yeah, and call to arms. Just a concerned parent facing the world we live in. What is your concerns? How old is he, two? He's two. What are you afraid of? old is he? Two? It's two.

He's two. What are you afraid of? Fuck, man. Do you watch the news? Sure. I try not to. Try to keep it around the house. I don't know.

Just things you can't control. Almost everything. Almost everything. Well, I'm proud of you, buddy. Thanks, bro. Congratulations. You do great work, and you're a solid dude and i get to make art for a living man and he also sang the fuck out of this record i mean like i think you

really took some chances as a singer and it's like and you can hear it thank you did you feel that yeah i wanted to i mean hopefully i'm getting better come on you're doing great You're doing great. You're doing great. But don't let the fear go away. No. I like the angst. Yeah, me too. My buddy Bobby says I have a rocky heart, whatever that means. Yeah. Well, that's all right.

As long as you stay nice to your wife and you do a good job with your kid, fine. Have a rocky heart. Keeps the assholes away. Seems to be working so far thanks for talking to me man that was me and sturgill simpson i enjoyed that conversation immensely and i love the record go to wtfpod.com for all that stuff look at the new site. Look at my tour dates. Get some merch. Read old updates. Look at pictures.

All kinds of shit to do over there. Right? Right. What else? A lot of good episodes of WTF coming up. I'm going to go turn my amp on. Hold on. I'm out. Boomer lives! I know you would have rather heard Sturgill.

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