How To Make Your Creativity Beat The Algorithm (Live Performance) - Dylan Gossett - #1155

Dylan Gossett is a country singer, songwriter, and music producer. Dylan's breakout hit 'Coal' took him from an aspiring musician in Austin, Texas, to a rising name in country music. But what did that seemingly overnight success actually take, how has it changed his life, and what has he learned about making a living doing what he loves? Expect to learn the creative process behind Dylan’s hit ‘Coal’ and the decisions he made to engineer it for max virality, what it was like being an overnight success, how Dylan’s writing process differs from the typical Nashville music machine, the impacts of AI on songwriting and the music industry as a whole, how to not be captured by your audience and let your creativity thrive, and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/deals⁠ Get up to $350 off the Eight Sleep Pod 6 at ⁠https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom⁠ Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at ⁠https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom⁠ Get the brand new Whoop 5.0 and your first month for free at ⁠https://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom⁠ Get 10% discount on all Gymshark products at ⁠https://gym.sh/modernwisdom⁠ (use code MODERNWISDOM10) Get ChatGPT to explore ideas, solve problems, and learn faster at ⁠⁠https://chatgpt.com⁠ (00:00) The Story Behind Dylan’s Breakout Song ‘Coal’ (09:56) How to Avoid Getting Lost in the Music Industry (18:11) Why Being Unpolished Feels More Authentic (20:50) Is Country Music Having a Renaissance? (22:47) Is the Song Actually Good or Just Viral? (28:07) Why Staying Successful Is Harder Than Getting There (32:29) Inside Dylan’s Songwriting Process (37:28) Do Artists Still Write Their Own Songs? (51:02) Why We Shouldn’t Always Take Shortcuts (01:01:16) Is Emotion the Secret to Dylan’s Music? (01:03:08) Why Sad Men Are Taking Over Country Music (01:09:24) The Hardest Emotions to Turn Into Music (01:14:52) Don’t Lose Yourself Chasing an Audience (01:22:59) A Snippet From Dylan’s New Album Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/books⁠ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: ⁠https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom⁠ Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins⁠ #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson⁠ #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Huberman⁠ - Get In Touch: Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast⁠ Email: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/contact⁠ - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  People of the UK and Ireland, I'm coming to you live. Imagine that, me on stage in your city. Dublin is completely sold out, but everywhere else has got limited tickets left and you can get yours now at chriswilliamson.live. This is a custom-built live show. I absolutely adore it. I've spent over a year working on it. So if you're a fan of everything modern wisdom, come and see me on stage this October around the UK and Ireland. Chris Williamson.live.

• 0:22Speaker 01

  Well, I'm headed back to Austin, trying to find me again. Something to keep me busy, keep these hands trembling. Ain't it something like the weather to try and mark my mind? Try to think of something clever to keep me satisfied. I'll take burning on the weekend, straight down 29. Pass the cedars and believers on a raindrop. When to get out of the city and pass the smell of the bar?

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Wash the plains, go on by bed in the sky, leaving scars.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  What do you believe in?

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Cause I've been having trouble sleeping.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  The only thing I'm needing is somewhere I can't find.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  So I'm headed back to Austin when I close my eyes.

• 1:48Speaker 01

  If you want me at my best, then I'll find the thing I do. Trying to focus what's ahead and I win the blues. Takes a simple kind of moment to put my mind at ease. It takes a girl who says she loves me to make me weak in the knees.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  What do you believe in?

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Cause I've been having trouble sleeping.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  The only thing I'm needing is somewhere I can't find.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  So I'm headed back to Austin when I close my eyes.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  What do you believe in?

• 3:23Speaker 01

  Cause I've been having trouble sleeping.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  The only thing I'm needing is somewhere I can't find.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  So I'm headed back to Austin when I close my eyes.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Let's fucking go. Woo hoo.

• 3:54Chris Williamson?

  Thank you. Dude.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:55Chris Williamson?

  Unbelievable. So good.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Thank you very much.

• 3:58Chris Williamson?

  Great to see you.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  That, uh, that one's about Austin, Texas, obviously.

• 4:03Chris Williamson?

  Very timely.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:05Chris Williamson?

  Did you write most of Cole in 25 minutes? Is that right?

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Cole, Cole was written, one, one of the fastest ones I've probably ever written. Yeah. It, uh, it started, I can kind of show you. So it started just with, uh,

• 4:22Speaker 02

  maybe not this exact chord progression, it was a little bit different. I might have an old video of it I could show you, but I think, I almost, I think it started with kind of that hook, the, they say pressure makes diamonds heavier. You know, I was like, that's, that's great. That's a song we gotta build around it. And, uh, then yeah, verse by verse. And it was just, I remember I was like, had my phone typing on top of our dog kennel in the apartment at the time. And it was like right before we went out with like some work friends and none of my friends knew I sang like at all. I didn't, I don't know, I just don't go around telling people. And, uh, wrote, wrote Cole went out and Julia, my wife was just stoked on it. She was like, this is so sick. Um, and she was just showing people like Snapchat videos of the song. She was like, you know, just, what do y'all think about this? And they're like, Dylan, you sing?

• 5:07Speaker 02

  And I was like, cat's out of the bag, I guess. Uh, and then didn't do anything with it for like a year or two.

• 5:13Chris Williamson?

  No way. You sat on that, you sat on a song that did like half a billion streams.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:18Chris Williamson?

  For a year or two.

• 5:18Speaker 02

  Well, I just, I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't on socials. Like I wasn't putting anything out. Uh, I, I, I didn't do anything until we were on a camping trip, um, with my buddy Kaden and his now wife, MK and my wife and I, Julia. And, uh, I brought my guitar and was just playing some songs and Kaden has like the best ear of anyone I know. He's like an A and R that's not, doesn't work in A and R. And he heard Cole and he's like, please sing it again. He like voice memored it and he's like, you gotta do something, you have to do something. And my wife was like, Dylan, you should just post on TikTok. And I was like, well, I'm not, you know, I'm not a TikToker. I was like, I honestly can't stand it. Like I don't, I just, it's not my, it's not my thing. Um, but yeah, I started doing it and then Cole became this thing, which is insane.

• 6:00Chris Williamson?

  One of my buddies, I was best man at his wedding, godfather to his kid. And he was playing, we were at a friend's house who has a karaoke machine and I don't even know why there was a guitar there. And he'd been doing exactly the same thing and I bullied him, bullied him. I was like, no, come on, come on. Cause the choice was between him playing acoustic guitar with a beautiful voice and one of our friends sad emo rapping. And I was like, hey, look, the, the decision is really easy for me to make in terms of oppression. The fucking floor, dude, is so low for you to get over here.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:34Chris Williamson?

  Uh, so I'm interested, where were you in life when you were doing those lyrics? And what, what is that song?

• 6:40Speaker 02

  So I was living in Austin. I, I, I worked in, are you talking about Cole? You're talking, yeah, Cole. So I was living in Austin. Uh, I was, I was working at the racetrack, the Circuit of the Americas down here. So I was, uh, at the time I was in event operations. I think I was, I was, I started as an intern. I used to live there in like a, a trailer in my parents' RV for months. Um, and I just lived at the job site. Um, but I, uh, yeah, I was working there and I might've just kind of been through like a, a tough season, like F1 season is just kind of brutal, especially for like the outside guys. Uh, you're just, I mean, it's just like 20 hour days that you're living out there when it's F1 time. And, um, I don't know, it was like that. It might've been some, you know, inter, interpersonal family thing, you know, whatever

• 7:25Speaker 02

  it might've been at the time. And, um, you know, I always try to say like, it's, it's a, it's a pretty deep, kind of dark song, but I try to tell people, I wasn't in like the worst spot of my life, you know? But I'll, you know, I was just going through everyday struggles, you know, just like everybody does. And, um, that's kind of what it was. It felt like I was in a pit. I was like, I'm not going anywhere.

• 7:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  It's not, I'm not really like, I don't know. I don't feel like I'm chasing anything right now. Like I'm having a great life, like me and my wife and our dog, like we're having great, like we're very happy. And, uh, I was like, but a lot of other stuff, we were just like, you know, whatever, you know? So.

• 8:00Chris Williamson?

  It's interesting. There's like a input, output equation, I think a lot of people feel. And if you're putting lots in, the goal, the hope is that something's going to come out on the other side of it. But you have this sort of latent leverage after a while, like you build up, you know, you pull back an elastic band and you pull it back and pull it back and pull it back and pull it back. And we hope that life is going to be a bit more linear, but a lot of the time you're kind of just accumulating reps or doing something, maybe not even doing what, and putting in more work than you will do in future and not seeing the rewards. I think that's why, you know, the top comment, Cole's got 22 million plays on YouTube. The top comment says, this song has the feeling when you're working on yourself and making progress, but you still feel lonely and like a failure.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. That honestly, that's a great way to put, like that, that's how it felt, I guess. It's like, it just felt like we were putting the hours in almost, you know? It was like, we're, we're doing it, but I don't know. It's like, we don't, nothing, we don't feel any different. But now I, I almost see now it's like without, like if Cole happened, let's say, let's say I, you know, I was writing about other stuff and Cole happened five years earlier. No way. There's no way that I, that I think we, I would be touring, doing the same thing that we're doing right now.

• 9:10Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 9:10Speaker 02

  Because without, I think without going through that job and understanding even personal relationships outside of college, like just kind of real world items, like I don't know. I feel like I can't even imagine being thrown into the music industry or trying to write songs or any of that without, I feel like having a real frame of reference to come back to. Does that make sense? Like I, dude, even music as an artist, I think people don't understand it is such a business. Like I, I think people imagine artists and myself just being like, look, I strum the guitar, I show up to shows, we collect our money and that's our lot. Like that's, I feel, there's at times where I feel a lot more like a business manager

• 9:54Speaker 02

  than, than an artist for sure.

• 9:56Chris Williamson?

  There's a book called The E-Myth Revisited by, uh, I think it's Michael Gerber. It's like just a business book, but it's quite, it's quite well done. And he tells this fictional story in there of a woman who runs a bakery and this woman loves making cakes, she loves to do. And she's made cakes for the family and she makes a cake for her friends and it's her passion and she's great at it and everyone's best cakes. I'm going to open a bakery. Wouldn't that be cool? Small, local bakery. So she opens a bakery and then it gets popular because she makes great cakes. She needs to hire some staff and some staff come in and the staff start to make some of the cakes and she's involved in the ingredients and the recipes and the releases, but then there's accounts to do. And she grows a little bit more and then she gets a factory and, you know, she's spending a little bit less time making cakes.

• 10:40Chris Williamson?

  And before she knows it, she hasn't made a fucking cake in years. And this, no matter what industry you're in.

• 10:48Chris Williamson?

  You have to learn to be able to say no to things or to focus on stuff that previously you would have begged to have had the opportunity to say yes to. I want to be in the room with the A and R person. Or you're a writer and you have all of the opportunities to go and do speaking gigs. It's like, why were you great as a writer? What made you great as a blogger on Substack or as an author that writes books or whatever it is? It was because of the time that you spent stewing in your ideas, right? Like marinating in this stuff. It was the three hour walks that you took with the dog. And all of that time gets squeezed because we can't see, basically, like, obvious productivity is really easy to track. How many hours did you spend on Slack today? Or how many emails did you send? I've got a full back-to-back day of scheduled calls.

• 11:32Chris Williamson?

  This must make me really important. And we go, well, how useful is it for you to go fishing for an afternoon with nothing else happening? You go, well, I worked really hard today. I went fishing. The puritan work ethic, the guilt that comes up because it's like, I should be working harder. But that's not what necessarily got you here.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  No, and it's so strict. Cause yeah, cause like, expectations change from everyone involved too, right? Like it's, the fans have different expectations of the listeners. I have a different expectation as myself as I put up more and more albums. Back when I was writing Cole, I was not writing it for anything. I was just like, this is my outlet. This is my passion. I love playing guitar. I'm just gonna pick it up and write. I had no reason to do that, but I wanted to because that was just what I was so passionate about. Kind of like the baker, like she wants to bake.

• 12:19Chris Williamson?

  She wanna bake some fucking cakes.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  And now it's a dude, like, three years, three and a half years later, where I guess from Cole writing, it's like five years, but looking back, like if I wrote that exact same song today, and I, like, if I hear the version of Cole right now, I would be like, what is this demo? I would never put that out, you know? And it's like, I tried to remind myself, like, when I'm in the studio and, cause like, that was just, that song was just made on my laptop on the edge of my bed. Like, that's where Cole was recorded, engineered. The only thing I didn't do on that song was master it, which actually, I put it out, we had to retake it down to remaster it because it was so.

• 12:54Chris Williamson?

  The levels roll over.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  It was just off. It like, didn't blend in with other music. So yeah, it's so, it's so strange. Like you have to, yeah, you've got to find that passion, which I still have it. And like, I think, you know, obviously, I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk about the struggles of music, cause there are some, but the last thing I'm gonna be is ungrateful for what it is. Like, I'm living my dream. Like, whenever I have struggles in this industry, cause there are, um, kinda like you said, it's like, four years ago, I would have killed to be stressing out about putting my album out. You know, oh, I have to go sign vinyls in Nashville. I would have died for that, dude, you know? So I, I don't know, I just, I have to remind myself that. My wife reminds me that all the time. She's just like my, my number one supporter and just like, the greatest teammate in the

• 13:40Speaker 02

  world. So, um, yeah, it's such, just, it's the goalpost just changed.

• 13:46Chris Williamson?

  Isn't it crazy? So you know about habituation and hedonic treadmill, right? Like you get, you can't wait to get a new car. You spend all of your time thinking about this new car. You get the new car and then after six months, you're sort of bored of it. You're looking after the next one. What nobody really talks about is the same thing, but with goals and problems, right? That you wanted to have to do sound check. I just wish that I had a team of people who would maybe tune my fucking guitar.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:13Chris Williamson?

  Before I go out there. And then you've got to negotiate because one of the fucking guitar techs has had to leave, so we need to get a new guitar tech. Oh, hang on. So you're telling me that the person I pleaded, like begged, prayed to have, I now need to get a replacement for, and that feels like a burden to me?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:30Chris Williamson?

  And we get accustomed to a different quality of life, a different, you know, level of ease or something. And yeah, I've always thought it would be really cool if you could take photos of your own mind and go back and visit them like you can with a, with a photograph. What would it be like to go back to the texture of your mind from four years ago?

• 14:48Speaker 02

  Even just plug it in.

• 14:49Chris Williamson?

  What problems? Yeah. What problems were you thinking about? What, what concerned you as you fell asleep? Money worries? Am I gonna make, I'm the fucking circuit of the America, I'm boiling hot on the fucking golf cart, you know? Taking, can we do verse four, a little, a little Cole?

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 15:03Chris Williamson?

  Beautiful.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. This was like the, cause you know what's funny? I posted a video of Cole way early on and no one cared. Uh, it didn't do anything, but I was, I was fine with that. I was like, I already stuck to it. I was just gonna keep posting. I didn't post Cole again until after To Be Free happened, the first song ever put out. Cause I was like, I have a little traction now, I should try to, I really, really believe in the song. Like the writing on it's really good. And then it was like, yeah, over, like that video changed.

• 15:28Chris Williamson?

  Why did you do that in Cole? Why did you do that pre-chorus? Cause you don't drop like the line until the second time it comes around. Why did you make that creative decision?

• 15:37Speaker 02

  Two things. At the time on TikTok, I hated what music promotion was. Uh, I hated that it was like, okay, we're gonna hear this 15 second clip of, bad lyrics weren't even on the screen really at this time. Like people weren't like, I don't know, it was just like all about a 15 second clip that people can just repost and redo videos to dance or whatever it was. And what they would do is they would get all these pre-saves lined up, pre-save, pre-save, and they would just extend this thing for just months. And what I did with Cole was like, I think the strength of this song is in the writing. It's not necessarily, I think the hook is like this huge payoff at the very end, that the people who listen to it are going to get.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  And then at the moment, at the time, I wasn't thinking like, oh, I should probably shave that off because a 20 second video is gonna have a lot more views than a 45 second video, like you're saying. But I also just liked the, the writing of it. Like, I don't know, like the, I've seen heaven without dying, met the devil without trying. Like, I was super proud of that. And I was like, I think that's a good hook to bring, who knows? If there, if I started with the chorus, it might have never happened. Like, you know, if, if it was a dark sky instead of a sunny day when I was recording, it might have never happened. Like, I think about that stuff all the time. It's, I took, like, I did like five hundred videos that day and I just chose that one. I was like, there's a chance that that video didn't go. I never posted Cole again and I'm, we're not having this conversation, you know what I mean? So it's, uh, yeah, I don't know.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  I also like, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm very, I'm a big believer in that things happen for a reason. Um, so that also gives me peace of mind. I don't know.

• 17:14Chris Williamson?

  Unreal.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  But yeah, so. Well, I've seen heaven without dying, met the devil without trying, and they both seem to wanna talk to me. But I'm all out of luck now and my dreams aren't worth a buck. How it's tough trying to land on my feet. When this game of life plays heavy on my heart and love is tough, loneliness twice as hard. I'll carry that bad everywhere I go.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  They say pressure makes diamonds. How the hell am I still cold? Yeah, that was the clip.

• 18:10Chris Williamson?

  So good. So I mean, do you think deliberately looking unpolished is now its own kind of marketing? Cause as soon as you find, as soon as somebody does it on the deck and it's successful, like, everything becomes commercialized. Like authenticity is really difficult to survive once a team recognizes it's got commercial value. And then that kind of kills what authenticity is, cause people are now performing authenticity.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, so that was something, I mean, it's honestly, it's still something I obsess over of like, and I don't obsess over it in a way of like, how do we make this look and feel, you know? Cause people are smarter than they ever are. Like dude, you're not gonna fake it. And people do, and maybe I'm wrong, you know, maybe people do believe a lot of self is authentic when it's just absolutely not. But, um, I don't know, I just feel like, I try to stay true to what my mind was thinking when I first got into this thing of like, there's lines I won't cross.

• 19:08Chris Williamson?

  Uh, like.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  What like? I would never sacrifice, um, for a while, I wouldn't even run ads. I wouldn't do anything. I would not, and I, and I drove my team crazy. And I, and I guarantee, I probably took a hit on a lot of things for that. And maybe I was overthinking it, but I was just like, look, I just, I don't want to just all of a sudden, like you said, it's like, we know this thing works. I don't want to all of a sudden just dive in, everyone's telling me, well, wait.

• 19:40Chris Williamson?

  That's the formula.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, here's the formula, don't post, don't, don't put it out right now. Wait three months, get your pre-saves up, post it 30 more times. I posted Cole in total, even like today, I think it's been like seven to 10 times ever.

• 19:54Chris Williamson?

  You're kidding.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Ever. Now, when, when it came out, I think I posted it four times. And what people would tell you now is like, no, you gotta post, you gotta post this on 50 times. You know, and it's like.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  I don't know, it's just such this weird thing in the, in, in music right now where there's so many people doing it. So like, you've got to get out there somehow and you've got, you've got to separate yourself somehow. Like it's, it's even 10x of whenever I like Cole came out of like the amount of people kind of playing this type of music. And I, I don't know. I, I really don't have the answer to like how to separate, cause everyone's doing the authentic thing now and everything, everyone's doing the polished thing. Like there's just so many things and.

• 20:32Chris Williamson?

  I think in your world and in my world, um, the ends of the barbell are where people are succeeding. So

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:40Chris Williamson?

  very, very produced, right? Like super, super polished or very raw and stripped back. And I think the middle is where people seem to go to die.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:48Chris Williamson?

  At the moment.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:49Chris Williamson?

  But looking at, talking about the growth of the music industry, Billboard top 10 from 2020 to 2023, rap music 34%, country music 7%, 25 to 26, country music 27%, rap music 17%. So rap music's gone in half and country music's four Xed.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  That's incredible. That's pretty crazy. Yeah. I mean, I think it's the natural way of things. Like I think, uh, at some point, country will be back down and rap will be back up. Like, and that's, that's fine.

• 21:20Chris Williamson?

  They're the two ends of the.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. But also like it's, country is not what country was in 2020. Like, uh, I mean, I hear songs right now that are charting or whatever that I'm like, that's a great song. I love it. I wouldn't call it country, but sure, you know, uh, you know, it's got acoustic guitar in it. Let's do it. That's country. But yeah, it's cool. I think, I think at some point it'll go back. There'll, there'll be like a whole new wave of hip hop or something comes in, which is cool too.

• 21:50Chris Williamson?

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• 22:32Chris Williamson?

  Right now you can get up to $350 off the Pod 6 by going to the link in the description below or heading to eightsleep.com/ModernWisdom and using the code ModernWisdom at checkout. That's E I G H T sleep.com/ModernWisdom. A ModernWisdom at checkout. What's interesting is how virality can reward different behaviors because as soon as you find a way to make something become effective, everybody's going to start to play that. I guess, how do you tell the difference between a song that's good and a song that's just algorithm friendly?

• 23:03Speaker 02

  Ooh. I mean,

• 23:09Speaker 02

  I feel like I have a, I feel like I have a bad view on this because I'm in it. So like, I feel like I can pretty easily see when something has something pushing it. You know, like I, I, I kind of know what the markers are of like, when I hear a song that's trending. And like, I'll go look at the audio or whatever. And I'm like, okay, they got a team. Like they're, they're running this thing. Like they're.

• 23:33Chris Williamson?

  What, what are some of the indications?

• 23:36Speaker 02

  Like, okay, you'll see, you'll see a song come out and there's a thousand truck edits to it or something. And I'm like,

• 23:44Chris Williamson?

  What's a truck edit?

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Like, okay, for, uh, like you'll see, you'll see a new song come out and it'll be like a video of an account, but all they do is just truck videos with like cool moody lighting, lyrics on the top and they put a song to it.

• 23:59Chris Williamson?

  I didn't realize this was an ecosystem on.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  Oh, it's not just truck.

• 24:02Chris Williamson?

  The truck ecosystem, truck Instagram ecosystem.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  That's a big thing. Like, and again, it's, it's a smart thing because a lot of people follow those accounts for music. So like what teams will do is, you know, they'll, they'll pump someone's song on stuff like that. Now I'll say now more than ever, that doesn't mean that you're going to have a hit song. It, it might put more ears on it, but like if the song is not that great, and if it kind of sounds like something else, like it just won't, it still won't really catch.

• 24:29Chris Williamson?

  But you know, this is the kind of, uh, escalation of firepower when it comes to marketing, that how much harder is it to break through if every moderately good song has now got an army of clippers and truck edits and boat edits behind it.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  So yeah, that's, I mean, that's, and that's what I mean is all, it's almost like in my, in my case, right? Like I'm, I'm very blessed to be in the position that I am is like selling tickets. That's what we've always based this thing off of. Like we've never really, outside of Cole, we've never really had like viral moments. Like that was it. Like we haven't really had one since before and, but what matters to me is that our shows keep growing. Like that's all I've always cared about is like getting people to buy tickets in seats and, um, I mean, even that's getting harder. It's just how many, everyone and their mom is touring right now, but.

• 25:16Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  It's a.

• 25:18Chris Williamson?

  Blue Dot Fever is happening.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that's just like, that's a whole nother crazy thing. That's, uh, that's just like, that is a mixture of just everything going against people buying tickets. So like.

• 25:30Chris Williamson?

  But then, you know, the part of the, for the people that don't know, Blue Dot Fever is a wave of artists, many of whom are pretty big, doing some pretty large venues, some stadiums, some arenas, not selling out or often not selling enough to even maybe continue with the show or perhaps killing the tour entirely.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:50Chris Williamson?

  And

• 25:53Chris Williamson?

  part of it is, is this person as relevant as they thought? Have they overcooked it? But another huge part of it is what are the fucking ticket prices?

• 25:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:00Chris Williamson?

  Like what's happening with Ticketmaster and Live Nation and how much are people getting squeezed and dynamic pricing?

• 26:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:08Chris Williamson?

  It's all cohesive at the same time, but one of the most common things I'm hearing on the show is how much real life events are going to come back. Like everyone's bullish as fuck on live music. Everyone's so bullish on comedy, on real world events, on, you know, slow phone, tech-free Sabbaths, trying to touch grass and, you know, fucking see the sky again. And at the same time, you have this other force, which is cost of living. People don't have as much money as they want anymore. And Live Nation and Ticketmaster and every venue on the planet knows, okay, well I've got a squeeze, but I can't squeeze too much.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like, yeah, you want to go see a massive stadium act, right? It's like, cool. For me and my wife to go, that's going to be a four-figure day. Like it, and that's if I'm in the nosebleeds. That's if I'm in the worst seat in the stadium. I gotta go get a hotel. I gotta park for $50. I got, if I want to buy a shirt.

• 27:00Chris Williamson?

  Babysitter.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  Babysitter. I mean, you're talking about thousands of dollars to go see a show in a really bad seat.

• 27:06Chris Williamson?

  From row F.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  And then they go, well, hold on. This Tik, this TikTok artist that remember we have on our, on our playlist, he's playing down the road for a $15 ticket and there's 200 people going. And it's like, let's just do that. But there's a thousand people now. So to have it, it, it, I feel like agents' jobs are getting harder every day too. Cause it almost like you, you build touring off of like sellouts and coming back and revamping like your show that you did after an album. You come back to the city, you crushed. And it's like, all right, well now you can do 20% more tickets because your album's doing well and people are enjoying it. So let's do it. But now it's almost at the point where it's like, oh, you know, Dylan's coming to Chicago. We saw him last year. Great show. Loved it. But we saw him.

• 27:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  And what about this new artist that's coming? We should go see him because we can only choose one show this month or this year because everything's so expensive. So it's just, yeah, dude, it's such a, it's such an interesting landscape. Again, we're just, we're just very blessed. We get to keep doing it. So that's what we started.

• 28:07Chris Williamson?

  Overnight success used to be a bit of an insult and now it kind of feels like what everyone's chasing.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 28:13Chris Williamson?

  Strange.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Very strange. But I, I also think a lot of people aren't ready for it. Maybe like, I mean, I wasn't ready for it, but luckily like it didn't happen in such a way

• 28:26Speaker 02

  when I was too young or like it kind of happened like in the perfect moment. Like my wife and I just got married six months earlier, like fell settled down, moved into a house together. Um, and then it happened, you know, and I, uh, Yeah, it, you know, I, I think the hardest part is maintaining it. I feel like that's, that's what does not always happen is someone will have a really big moment. And you'll know the song, everyone, everyone in the world knows the song. And then in a year, it's like they can't sell shows because maybe they just had that one song that was getting pushed out. I don't know. It's, it's a weird world. I, I feel lost in it all the time. That's why I, dude, I, like I've deleted so much social media, any like a country account out there, I pretty much was unfollowed.

• 29:09Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 29:09Speaker 02

  I just, I just, it's just overwhelming. It's just too much.

• 29:14Chris Williamson?

  What's the sensation that you feel when you get exposed to that, when you were getting exposed to that stuff?

• 29:18Speaker 02

  Uh, I mean, my sensation, it's not like I'm like getting anxious or stressed about it. It's more of just like, dude, I gotta have a life outside of like everything, like Instagram used to be like, oh, what are my friends posting? And now it's just like, add, add promotion, promotion. Oh, there's my buddy, you know, let me scroll through that. And it's just, it just gets, or like when people are like reviewing other country artists and it's like, these people that hide behind us, it's just weird. And I'm like, like it, it obviously it's, it's good for the music industry. It gives a lot of eyes, but as someone that's in the industry, it's like, I'm trying to separate a little bit my life and my work, which I feel like I've done a really great job on. Like again, I'm not,

• 30:01Speaker 02

  I'm not like very social media forward, like there, I mean, I've, we have an album coming out, so I've kind of been trying to, I'm like trying to post more, but like, I'm like, I don't know. I don't, I don't know. I don't, you know, it, it gets lost out there a lot of times anyways. And it's just, it's just a lot.

• 30:16Chris Williamson?

  It's another element of what we were talking about before, that as you become successful, your ability to do the things that made you successful, become harder to access. Um, in order for art to imitate life, you have to live a life.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:29Chris Williamson?

  This is why comedians, as they get bigger and bigger, all of their acts are about airports and dinners and shows and hotels. Because that's all that they know, because they're now a big touring act. Every single weekend they're away playing two or three shows, maybe they're matinee and all of their friends are in the industry as well. And before you know it, you go, I, what is the wellspring that I'm drawing from? And this is the same for anybody. You're a marketer, right? You're, you're a branding person. You're trying to come up with really interesting insight for a new campaign for a client that you work for, or for your own company that you run or whatever. So where are you drawing that from? If all that you're consuming is just derivative work of other people talking about the same thing. Well, I'm big in the branding industry.

• 31:10Chris Williamson?

  It's very important that I spend time at the conference. Okay. So you, as a marketing guy, spend all of your time talking to marketing guys about marketing. Where is the new inspiration coming from?

• 31:20Speaker 02

  You used to be the person that you would market to. Like I, I used to be the guy that I would want to be like, I want, I would want Dylan to be a fan of Dylan, right? Like I'm trying to, I'm like, I think this guy would love this music.

• 31:30Chris Williamson?

  Same thing with the show.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. And now it's like, again, like even like, like you said earlier, how can you tell what's a good song and what's something that's been pushed? I'm like, I think I can tell, but.

• 31:41Chris Williamson?

  You might've been finessed as well.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe I had because I, you know, and then I start to believe certain things, right? Where, again, like you just kind of keep pushing the line back of like,

• 31:54Speaker 02

  oh, I hate, I, I don't like how they promoted that or whatever. And then your next record comes out and you're like, well, do, you know, do we need to?

• 32:01Chris Williamson?

  I need to play that again.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  I don't know. It's, it's a, it's, that's such a good way to put it. I've just, yeah, the, the farther, I guess you could say, quote unquote, the more successful, successful you get and the more away from where you started.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. You gotta find time to get back. I think Miley Cyrus might've said that one time in an interview was just like, she requires certain time off the road. So she can just, just live, like just off. She's like, I just have to live a little bit. So, yeah.

• 32:29Chris Williamson?

  Where does your process usually start? Is it like a line, a melody and emotion?

• 32:35Speaker 02

  It'll be, it'll be stuff, like, okay, like, I don't know. I'll be on the couch. Julia will be watching TV or something like that. We'll be watching something and I sing gibberish. Like I'll try to find a melody that I think is like,

• 32:56Speaker 02

  but I'm not saying anything. And eventually maybe like a word will come to me that it feels very thought provoking or something, you know? Like, okay, for like headed back to Austin, the one I played earlier, um, I think it was kind of that line, like I knew where I wanted to go, but I didn't have anything. And that just started with, again, me on the couch, probably 30 minutes, not because I'm trying to write a song, but it's because I'm just noodling. Like, I don't know. I just like doing it. So I started just,

• 33:28Speaker 02

  and I'll like enjoy, like, that sounds cool. She's like, yeah, I like that. And I'll like, uh, you know,

• 33:37Speaker 02

  and then you just kind of start gibberish, forming consonants and vowels until they become a word.

• 33:43Chris Williamson?

  Hang on. So the, the writer's room is you, whatever bullshit's on TV.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:49Chris Williamson?

  The white, presumably now the kid.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:51Chris Williamson?

  Who's just like flailing in the background.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:53Chris Williamson?

  Right? So the difference between this, this and a Nashville engine, a little bit different.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, very. But that's why I like, and again, I have, I have nothing against those guys. They're very talented in their own right.

• 34:03Chris Williamson?

  Fucking animals.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  It's, it's incredible what they can do, but it just doesn't, I can't do it. That's like I said.

• 34:08Chris Williamson?

  Have you tried? Have you tried to be in the, like the engine like that?

• 34:12Speaker 02

  No, I've, I've, the closest I've come to that is like, I write with my brother, uh, or like multi instrumentalist Colton.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  And even then it's just different. It's a whole different way of writing. Um, I can't say if I like it more or less, like I, I, I still think, it's me on my couch in my living room, usually at night is like, that's where I get the stuff I like, like, but then like my brother has a song, uh, that he wrote called Ramblin' and it's on the album. And it's actually the title of the album, Ramblin'. Excuse me. Um, and it's like one of the best songs on the album. Like it's written so cool. And all I did was write like the chorus and a little like melody for the chorus.

• 34:51Chris Williamson?

  Can I hear it about?

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, he's way better at playing it on guitar. So I'm probably going to butcher it.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  Also, I haven't played it in so long.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Cheese. Listen to the wind, calls me by name.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  Same old dirt from where I was raised. Ain't no rambling man ought to cause all this pain. Listen to the wind, listen to the wind. No, listen to the wind that calls me by name. Like, I don't know. It's, it's a beautiful song. I butchered it. Sorry, Blake. He's probably listening. He's like, you messing up my song bad. But yeah, no, he, he does this like finger picking style that like I just can't even do. And, uh, he's, he's a way better guitar player than I am, but, um, this is so cool. Like that's the stuff that I love. Like I, I'm not,

• 35:55Speaker 02

  I, I was early on, but especially like now, like I'm very open to collaboration and, and I'm not as like sacred about every word's gotta be mine. Like I, you know, I, I'm very, writing is my passion almost more than singing. So like, uh, you know, I'm very particular of like what I want the songs to say and sound like. And I don't know. I just like, I like writing.

• 36:19Chris Williamson?

  Would you ever do it for someone else?

• 36:20Speaker 02

  I think so, but it's maybe. I don't think I could write, I don't think I could write a song for someone else that I think that I could sing. Because I just want to sing it.

• 36:30Chris Williamson?

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• 37:11Chris Williamson?

  Right now you can get up to 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below. By heading to livemomentous.com/modernd wisdom and using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's L I V E M O M E N T O U S dot com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. Well, I had, uh, Bellion on the show last year and he's just so fucking good. I mean, there was a guitar in the backside of the room and I'm thinking, okay, John motherfucking Bellion. Okay. Right. I, I, gestured to a guitar, yay, you know, explain how he did, he looked at it. He was like, I don't know, I play that thing.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  No way.

• 37:45Chris Williamson?

  Well, he's like, I fucking, it's not my, it's not my bag. Like I'm just here to do the thing.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:49Chris Williamson?

  But he was telling me about how he'd taken all of his time off, five years, maybe this big break away from producing any, uh, publishing any music himself. And he just wasn't fussed. He had this altercation, pretty public altercation, I think with his label, didn't want to, I'm not going to play the game. He's going to make music for other people and this would be great. And he's just creating banger after banger. And I said, well, how did you know that you wanted to get back into making music again? He said, well, when I had my stack of tracks to show whichever artist was coming in, like little demos and stuff that I'd cut together for them. I had a little listen to, I'd find myself, you know, going down, going down. And then I, I'd double tap over the top of a couple of them. And he was like, that one's for me.

• 38:34Chris Williamson?

  And he could hear in the back of his mind, this bit of almost kind of a selfishness, or maybe a bit more swagger or kind of, you know, ownership coming back in because he wanted to do that. But yeah, I, I think about, um, a lot of my friends that are writers, you know, they do, versions of ghostwriting for people and they'll shape ideas. And then sometimes they'll come up with the synthesis of an idea and.

• 38:56Chris Williamson?

  Every so often, they put out one, they feel a little bit aggrieved that they didn't get to put it under their own name. And the same goes for comedy writers, you know, all of the roasts that you see, every big roast that you see online, a lot of comedians now are opening up in the caption of their Instagram post, if they put one of these huge, big, like, you know, clips up that completely rips. They put the credits in that of all of the writers that have contributed. It's not them. I'm right here, right, Jared? Like, this is the-

• 39:23Speaker 02

  Cause I, I always thought it was like, I always thought it was like rap and comedy, like, like, country was like the, country and pop were like, they had writers. But I thought it was, yeah, I, I thought like, I thought like rap comedy was more like, you are what you write.

• 39:36Chris Williamson?

  No, I mean, what percentage of comedians now touring comedians do you think are using? Just off the top of your head, what percentage of touring comedians do you think are doing their entire sets? Less than 10%?

• 39:47Speaker 02

  No way. That is crazy.

• 39:51Chris Williamson?

  At the roasts, I would probably guess, probably less than, it's, it's fucking armies of people to put these together. I mean, I mean, you'll even hear them call it out now. Shane at, uh, the ESPYS just gave a line and he said, I, that wasn't mine. I didn't write that one. Like, he's calling out the meta of the whole engine process. And, um, yeah, I saw, I saw another roast that came out a couple of days ago, and the fucking Instagram captions, 10 lines long.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 40:24Chris Williamson?

  Uh, like writers and then other contributors, uh, you know, it's got the dog in there, like, everybody's, like, you could say, you could say the writers room. It's good, it's not Nashville credits, or else your kid would be like tapping you up saying, hey, I was in the room when you-

• 40:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, you were in the room. Yeah, it was my 33. Yeah, yeah. Dude, it's, wow. Yeah, I don't know. I, I, I think what you said earlier, I take ownership.

• 40:45Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  And I try, I don't think I'm a very egotistical person, but the one thing I think I do like take pride in the most is probably the words. And it's just, I don't know, it also just, if somebody, I'm trying to think, like, if someone came up to me with just an absolute amazing song, and was like, do you want to sing this? I've never had that. I've never had that, except for Blake, my brother, with Ramblin'. And I was like, that's a no brainer. Let's put that on the album.

• 41:15Chris Williamson?

  Maybe it feels a little different that it's come from so close to home.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I guess may, or even, or even if it's a person that's just like a really great songwriter, and like, I had this song, I want you to sing it. I'm like, cool, I can't, you know, let's do it, I'll do it. But-

• 41:25Chris Williamson?

  What about in reverse? What about you writing for someone else?

• 41:29Speaker 02

  Again, I, I think it's the ownership thing. Like, I think if I write a song, I think is just so good. I almost get to the point where like, if I have a chorus and like a verse, and all I need is like a little bridge, and I'm almost like, I, I'm so, I'm sorry, like, I really don't want help with this. Like, I-

• 41:44Chris Williamson?

  Because you want to own it.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  I want this to be like, yeah, I want, I want to complete my thought on this.

• 41:49Chris Williamson?

  So that's, that's a really interesting point. And I've found this with, with writing, that there is always, at least now in the world of writing, and maybe increasingly, it's going to start creeping in in the world of music, the contribution of AI. So I've got this idea that I'm, I'm playing with at the moment. I have a friend, and he bumped into an ex of his a little while ago. And he made the decision that he didn't want to be in a relationship anymore, a good while back. And he was certainly really done the work, spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not he wanted to, to leave, decided to leave, saw her, gets completely knocked sideways, just bumps into her randomly, and his head's in a whole spin. And he was saying, I can't work out how I was so certain at the time and so regretful now.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:34Chris Williamson?

  And there's an idea from psychology that's called the fading affect bias. And what it says is that bad memories fade with time, but good ones don't tend to. And that's great, because it means we have a psychological immune system. It protects us from being still at the mercy of some horrible thing that happened in our past. Your dog dies when you're 10, but when you're 15, it doesn't sting quite so much. Hurry for that, right? You have a psychological immune system, you distance yourself, you distract yourself, you have, uh, reframes, uh, tragedy plus time equals comedy.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:05Chris Williamson?

  Is about as close to an algorithm that psychology's got.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:08Chris Williamson?

  So bad things fade with time, good things tend not to so much. And in fact, sometimes, bad things can kind of become funny, right? You can have a tragic situation that becomes funny in future. But one of the weird side effects of this, as you get a little bit older, is that you assume wisdom compounds with age. As I get older, I know more.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:27Chris Williamson?

  But in matters of emotion, as you get older, you're just further from the evidence.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:32Chris Williamson?

  So what he had encountered was a situation where a future version of him had less information than a previous version of him. The person that was closer to the emotion understood what it felt like to not fully be in this relationship, to be uncertain, to be sat on the couch and not have anything to talk about, to always be going to bed worried about whether or not who's making the right decision. And the version of him now isn't more experienced, they're further from the evidence. And I was like, fuck, I love, like, I, I love the fading affect bias. I've got this story from a friend, sent him this like, series of texts. And I was like, trust that the previous version of you was stewarding the future version of you appropriately. Like, do you trust that you had your best interests in mind?

• 44:14Speaker 02

  That's incredible.

• 44:14Chris Williamson?

  At the time.

• 44:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:15Chris Williamson?

  And I've been fucking fighting with this idea for ages. And yesterday is my writing day, or Sunday's writing day. So I'm sitting down, and I've got, fucking a thousand, and it only needs to be 500 words. It needs to be a short little essay, snappy, that, basically what I've just said, a little bit more formed. And I've got a thousand, 2,000 words of just like bullshit. And I'm like, I can throw this into ChatGPT, put it on deep research, and it'll take my words, and it'll re, it'll put them together, put them into a flow, maybe it'll tell me a story about Charles Darwin, and it'll be done.

• 44:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:49Chris Williamson?

  And I knew that if I did that, I would get the essay out today. It didn't, but shock horror for the people that subscribe to the newsletter, it didn't go out today. Uh, I was something else, I put something else up that was easier for me to write. The reason that I didn't do it was that that idea will be concretized for the rest of time. That will be the reference that I use, but whatever the name is, I come up with it, or the story, the way that it's formed, the examples I use, and they stick in my mind. And I'll always know that it wasn't me that did it. I'll always know that it wasn't me that put the fucking finishing garnish on the dish. I did all of the hard work, and there was this bit at the end. And I wonder whether, that might be ego. I think it probably could be ego that I'm not-

• 45:25Speaker 02

  But I also, but I also think it's like this, it's this, you see where the world is going a little bit with, with it. I mean, you, like, you can't even open your phone without it just begging to be like, let me do it for you. You can't even, like, someone will email you, and I haven't even read-

• 45:38Chris Williamson?

  Do you want me to respond to it on your behalf?

• 45:39Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I had to turn it off on my phone. It was like summarizing my messages. And I'm like, what? I'm just gonna read it. Like, hey, I got an email reply. How about this reply? And it's this whole reply. And I think, I think we're in a, a state, at least I am. I am, it's like this yearning to be like, it's so great to work your mind. You have to try to work your mind. Cause dude, I feel like, there's days that go by when I'm on tour, I'm on autopilot, I'm, I'm, I'm not doing anything beneficial. I get tired, I'm just on my phone, I'm doom scrolling, and like, I'm like, I'm getting dumber by the day. Like, I just, like, I'm not-

• 46:15Chris Williamson?

  Getting cognitively fast.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I'm, I'm not, yeah, I'm not, uh, exercising my mind. Like, I'm not, and I'm, I'm not trying to make it this big thing where I'm like, you know, God, exercise my, whatever. But, yeah, I, I think I just yearn for having this, having that stamp. And like, it's, it's such an accomplishment. Like, growing up as a kid, like, that's why so many people are against participation trophies, right? Like, I, I'm in there myself, is like, against it. I'm just, there's not a better feeling than when you do get it.

• 46:47Chris Williamson?

  Earn the win.

• 46:48Speaker 02

  Earn, earn the win. Instead of being like, we're all winners. It's like, no, you wrote a bad song, it's bad. But I promise, in two years, when you write that song, and you know you did it, and you crushed it, and you put it online, and people resonate with it, and you think that they're just resonated with it because it's a different note, it's because you failed and failed and failed, you made the right song. And that is like, that's the whole, I don't, I feel like that's almost just the point of everything. Like, it's, it's, it's the payoff. Like, if you just write AI the rest of your life, like, there's, there's, I don't know, there's no, there's no like highs and lows in that. You're just very, yeah, I don't know. Does that make sense?

• 47:23Chris Williamson?

  Like, it's, there's a line from Mark Manson that I've been fucking obsessed with this year, and it speaks to this AI thing. Do hard shit, not because it's fun, but because the win actually means something. You bled for it, you broke for it, you earned it. Easy wins are forgettable, hard ones change you. That's the point.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:41Chris Williamson?

  It's like, that's, that's everything. And the more that I think about that line, easy wins are forgettable, hard ones change you. That's the point.

• 47:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:49Chris Williamson?

  I'm like, oh, that's the choice that everybody's gonna make when it comes to AI. And it's gonna be in small ways as well. I've got to write a letter, a thank you letter to somebody saying, I really appreciate you taking care of the kids this weekend, or the, the, the dog walker on her birthday or whatever. Like, do people care about receiving a card? Or do they care about the fact that you went to the effort of having to write it by hand? It's one of the strange things about, I don't know whether you guys have got Moon Pig or Magpie, they're like card sending services, but you, you sort of type in what you want. And I'd, it's very nice to receive a card, like it's kind of rare to receive a card.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, very.

• 48:29Chris Williamson?

  It's at least twice as nice when it's been written by hand.

• 48:32Speaker 02

  Oh, well.

• 48:32Chris Williamson?

  As opposed to something that's got printed off on the internet, somebody typed it in and it got shipped to your door. It's like, no, go to the fucking post office.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  Cause yeah, it's, it's, it's not like, it's not like I receive a note, like yeah, a letter in the mail. And I'm like, this, this two ninety-nine piece of paper is what I've been looking for. No, it's like, okay, they put in, like, they're just showing you love from afar because they can. They're showing you ever from afar. So yeah, it's like, and again, I'm not saying that like AI doesn't have its place in certain parts of the world. Like obviously, I mean, it's just technological advance. Like for example, I don't, I don't go hand wash my clothes and hang them up on the clothesline.

• 49:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, we're not churning our own butter.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  I'm like, yeah, I'm like, I gotta live hard, you know? Cause like obviously we advance, but there comes a line where it's like, all right. Yeah, I can, I can, especially I, I think where I, the line crosses for me is when it's like artistic or sentimental, right? Or I'm sure there's other stuff, but artistic, it's like, the whole point of art is that it's not perfect. And it feels like something only humans can do, right? So it, it feels very natural. And then with the sentimental stuff, that's the whole point of, like you said, writing a letter. I'm not writing you a letter just so you can have the piece of paper. I'm writing you a letter and putting something in here that I think is gonna have an emotional effect on you. Just like I'm having an emotional effect writing it.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  And I'm doing it, and I'm not like saying that writing a letter is hard, but I don't know. I think we're saying the same thing.

• 49:54Chris Williamson?

  It's harder than putting the prompt into ChatGPT and getting it to do it.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  It's better than just checking the box.

• 49:59Chris Williamson?

  This episode is brought to you by Whoop. Most people treat recovery like it's optional, but unlike politicians, data doesn't lie. How you recover is literally going to determine how good your next day is going to be. And Whoop tracks all of it, sleep, strain, heart rate, recovery. It's like Dog the Bounty Hunter, but instead of criminals, it's tracking down your bad habits. All of this data gets pulled into a dashboard that actually tells you what to do with the information. And now the brand new Whoop five point O, seven percent smaller. It's got two weeks of battery life, shows you how fast you're actually aging. It comes with hormonal insights for women managing their cycle or pregnancy or men hiding from it. Once you see the patterns, you start making better decisions. It's that simple. Best of all, you can join for free, pay nothing for your Whoop five point O strap. Plus you get your first month for free and there's a thirty day money back guarantee.

• 50:44Chris Williamson?

  So you can buy it for free, try it for free. If you don't like it after twenty-nine days, they just give you your money back. Right now you can get the brand new Whoop five point O and that thirty day free trial by going to the link in the description below or heading to join dot whoop dot com slash modern wisdom. That's join dot whoop dot com slash modern wisdom. The decision that everybody's gonna make is, okay, do I want to do the harder thing? And it's weird because do hard things is kind of this tagline that everybody likes to lean into. The four thirty AM cold plunge and the runs and the weightlifting and the, you stick into your diet. But the decision of do I want to do the harder thing or the easier thing is going to encroach into every area of life.

• 51:26Chris Williamson?

  It's going to encroach into whether or not you want to, or if you one click order flowers that goes to your missus's door because she's having a hard day. Or if you drive to the fucking florist and pick them up and hand deliver them to her. There is just a, there is a, a explicit real world difference, a tangible difference between those two things. But as things, convenience begins to encroach on the rest of life, everybody's gonna have to make that decision for more and more and more stuff.

• 51:54Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, like, yeah, I hear you're saying it's, it's not, I saw this one picture where it was like, it started as sit down restaurant, it turned into drive through and now it's Uber Eats. You know, it was movies and then it's YouTube and now it's YouTube Shorts. Like it just, it just keeps going, yeah, and it just keeps expanding.

• 52:13Chris Williamson?

  Derivative, it becomes distilled down.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's like, even, I mean, I, I find myself, I used to never do this, but I found myself literally this week. And I, I was watching Instagram reel and I was, I was watching it and I was like, let me hold down, let me go times two speed here. You know, and I'm like, what am I doing? Like I just.

• 52:32Chris Williamson?

  I need to, I need to speed fuck myself with the algorithm harder.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  And it's like, and it's like you're saying, it's not just that. That might not be the bad thing. I don't know, maybe you're, you're, you're on, you're on a bathroom break and you're like, I don't know, get, get to the point, you know? You know, I get that, but it starts creeping into everything. Cause yeah, twenty years down the road, you know, with, with, with a musician. And they're like, oh, I gotta pay the bills, we need a new song. I just don't have it in me. What, write a song, it's pretty good. It's gonna sell. Like what's, what's stopping people from doing that? If it's just every, every year, it's just one extra thing, you know?

• 53:06Chris Williamson?

  Well, so you know, think about how songs are recorded now. You go into a studio, you can play a song like pluck by pluck and just chop that together. And then you've got the perfect take, the perfect take. Whereas it would have been what fifty years ago, a single fucking room?

• 53:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, cause they were also on tape. So they, I mean, they, they, they legitimately had to make a decision right there in the moment and say, hey, either we're running out of tape or hey, it's literally not worth our time to go. They had like Xhado knives, they would have to cut these things together, splice it physically, tape it up, run it through the machine. Like it's, and now it's just, yeah, just hit it again, you're fine.

• 53:48Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 53:49Speaker 02

  So that's why you hear on so many of these old records, like an Elton John record or something like that. You'll hear like in the background, some like a hat fell on the keys, but it was a great take. And they're like, we can't.

• 54:00Chris Williamson?

  Keep the hat in.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  Keep it, like you'll hear like the little key hit, like, you know, and they just keep it in there. And it kind of gives records life a little bit, like there's, there's certain things, like I think in, in the records that I make, I think like my, I think the imperfections almost make it perfect sometimes.

• 54:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 54:16Speaker 02

  And it's just.

• 54:17Chris Williamson?

  You know, as soon as you say imperfections give something a degree of life, the imperfections then begin to be engineered.

• 54:25Speaker 02

  Oh, so.

• 54:25Chris Williamson?

  Everything becomes marketable, right? The authenticity, the stripped backness. Well, oh, this great story about Elton John, we must have a hat. Has anyone got a hat in the room? We can make the hat fall at the right time.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  It's very, so, okay, and look, whoever's listening to this, I don't know if any Nashville producers are listening to this. I'm probably not talking about you. I've had a lot of great experiences in the whole Nashville production thing.

• 54:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  But there are a lot of that, a lot, a lot in that setting that it's very performative. Like you said, it's very.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  It's like they want it to be natural so bad that they're gonna make it natural. Does that make sense? Like you said, it's going to be artificially natural, like you're saying.

• 55:10Chris Williamson?

  Artificially.

• 55:11Speaker 02

  And it's like, what's the craziest thing? Get your car keys and you know, that's how they did it. You know, and that, that's how they did it on whatever it's called. And no, we need to be living in the, and I'm like.

• 55:22Chris Williamson?

  I think it's, it's just this sort of commodification of everything. And as, if it's less gate kept by technology or by expertise, it means that more people are gonna be tempted to do it. The problem is going to be, can we remove drudgery from people's lives without taking away the stuff that actually matters to them? Without taking away, not just like you want to be involved in this thing, but it is genuinely better for you to take a longer route round, to take a higher friction route from where you are to the outcome of this thing. Because it's going to be better for you. Maybe the work will be worse.

• 55:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:00Chris Williamson?

  But the win will mean something and it won't be as forgettable. Uh, you know, yeah, it, it's strange. I guess it's, it's weird in music because for such a long time, there's been teams of writers and you know, bands even. It's like, okay, so you said the lyric and maybe the fucking guy that wrote the lyrics left. It's like a ten year old song, right? And the guy, maybe he's dead.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:19Chris Williamson?

  You know, it's, oh, well, he's not even a part of the band anymore, but we're still singing it and it's ours, we get to own it. So it's, there's been more fluidity, but that also I think means it could be a slippery slope.

• 56:29Speaker 02

  Oh yeah.

• 56:30Chris Williamson?

  Mastering, what do we, fucking, you must be able to one click master track. Not as well as a elite audio engineer now I'm guessing, but you must be able to one click master tracks now with.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  For sure. I, I mean, and again, like, some of it is good. So I, I wanna say like, I wanna be, it's important I say that some of it is good because there's also a lot less gatekeepers nowadays in music. It is so sick that I can write a song called like Cole that I believe in and I can record it on my laptop. I put it out and it does better than ninety-nine percent of all the money pushed multi songwriter songs. I love it. That's awesome. I love it. That's, that's great. I think that is a great side of like entry access.

• 57:17Chris Williamson?

  Yes, yes. But like you said. Democratized it so that you can compete.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  Exactly, but you're right, like it, it's a slippery, cause as soon as people go, that works, hold on. And it's like, hold on, we're the millionaires.

• 57:28Chris Williamson?

  Where's fucking, where's, where's gossip AI? How do I make?

• 57:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, dude, but it's like, that works. It's only a matter of time. That, that's the thing, maybe that's what I'm trying to get. I'm not trying to sound like bleak, like everything that's good, it's all, you know, it's all a matter of. Yeah, but it kind of feels like that, like in, in the industry, there are thousands of people working every single day to find the next new thing.

• 57:48Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 57:48Speaker 02

  So when you have something like Cole or something like, I don't know, anyone else in this industry that has a song, people are going to be like, what did they do? Why did it work? How can we replicate it?

• 57:59Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 58:00Speaker 02

  And how do we just dump a truckload of money behind it and just make it happen?

• 58:05Chris Williamson?

  Did you see that, uh, was it a variety piece about Geese? You know, that band?

• 58:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 58:09Speaker 02

  I didn't see, I didn't see the piece written about it.

• 58:11Chris Williamson?

  It was like a big article about how the engine, the clipping engine and stuff was behind that band. I think the band were pretty successful beforehand and then it's just, you know, you really put the fucking fuel nitrous booster button on.

• 58:25Chris Williamson?

  Between where was this song originated? Who wrote the lyrics? Because is it an AI song? If AI helped you to craft the lyrics and then you sang them? What about if?

• 58:35Speaker 02

  I think so.

• 58:36Chris Williamson?

  But my point is like, at what point? How far back do you go? Okay, so I'm really struggling with Rhymers Block. It's an app for iPhone. I'm really struggling with a word that rhymes with small but fits this. Oh, I'll just go in. It's like, at what point? Where do you draw the line?

• 58:53Speaker 02

  I do, that's a great question.

• 58:54Chris Williamson?

  And as technology begins to democratize it? The only place that you have this, that you can make this decision is my own kind of moral gauge?

• 59:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:03Chris Williamson?

  For what I want on the other side of it?

• 59:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I do, I mean, there's a great area, but I think it's one of those things where it's like, you know? You know what I'm saying? It's one of the, like, I feel like.

• 59:13Chris Williamson?

  The ick radar.

• 59:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's, it's, I mean, I, I even, it's, I'm not trying to get like too deep, but I think this goes with a lot of things. I think there are people that are just going to always push the envelope of be like, well, what am I, what am I allowed to do? Like, always trying to be like, how much wrong can I do before I get in trouble? And I try not to look at it that way. I try to be like.

• 59:41Chris Williamson?

  Because you don't moralize it.

• 59:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I also just, I just like, I don't have, I don't, I don't think I have that thing in me where I'm like, how, how, how much can I squeeze out of this with AI to help me write this song without people thinking that it's AI? And it's like, I think if you're doing that, like, you know what you're doing. But I think if you're, if you're, if you're a kid at home and you're trying to like, you wrote this song, and you're like, dang, what's that word? Open up the dictionary, open up like a rhyming website or something and you find like, oh, cool. That kid has no intention of being like, you know?

• 1:00:15Chris Williamson?

  This, this fucking word was written by AI.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, like that, that's his song, you know, I, because he's, I don't think that that, that someone like that's pushing the envelope. Like, I don't know. I don't, I don't know how to like word this correctly, but I just think, I think, you know, you know, like, i- if, or do, I mean, like, there's also the debate about, you know, producers and mixers and engineers and stuff. Like you said, like, what if they use AI to kind of like help them with?

• 1:00:45Chris Williamson?

  The side chains really hard, yeah.

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's like, yeah, okay, I, you know, as long as the meat and potato.

• 1:00:52Chris Williamson?

  Hey, there's an argument to be made that as soon as you've got doors and you're like, hey, back in the day, dude, we had to take a fucking lead, take it out of that synth, put it into that. So you want to chain those things together? Go and get your, go and, go and get your quarter jack.

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like, is losing an electric piano, you know? So, yeah, again, I, I think it comes down to like, you just know in your gut, like, you're, you're either making music or something else is making the music for you. And it's like, I don't know.

• 1:01:16Chris Williamson?

  It seems like you take a very sort of emotionally informed approach to music. It's quite self-deprecating, sort of stark sometimes, I think. Is that fair?

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, I think, I think it kind of depends. Like, and I also think it really changes the mood of the song itself. Like, uh, I don't know, I, I find those songs can be easier to write. I feel like when I write my happy songs, they come off cheesier. When I, when I feel like it's the same level of lyrical writing.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  Dude, and it's also, yeah, it also, if I put, if I put Cole on like an EDM track, I guarantee people would be like, they wouldn't really care about what the lyrics are. I get it, it's like, doesn't feel sad. It's like, have you seen, have you seen people that play like ballad piano, like the Drake and Josh theme song? And it's, it sounds like a beautifully written song and you're like, it's kind of deep. Like, it's kind of a sad, you know, whatever, but it's like, it's all how it's framed. I, I, I think, I mean, I think of like Jason Isbell when it comes to this, but if you put his type of lyricism into his type of guitar playing and his voice and the raspiness, like, it's gonna come off that way. Whether it's intention to be or not. Or then you, you can go listen to like a Turnpike song, who I think is some of the best writers in the world,

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  but maybe they're four on the floor and it's kind of a more upbeat groove. But he's talking about how like, my dad's gonna whoop my ass. I'll remember back in this county, like, it's, it's, might be a sad feeling song, or whatever it is. I'm not trying to say that song specifically, but, um, and it feels upbeat. You're like, oh, I can get down and this is party, you know, it's a good time, so.

• 1:02:50Chris Williamson?

  Forget the lyrics or remember.

• 1:02:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I think it's, yeah, I think it's sometimes the way that it's played on the guitar, you're playing differently, minor chords and stuff like that. But I like to lean into that. Like, I feel like I love listening to music like that, even when I'm like happy, I'll be, I'll be the happiest guy in the world. And I'm like, let me put on a sad one, let me put on a slow one.

• 1:03:08Chris Williamson?

  Why do you think male sadness is dominating modern country?

• 1:03:12Speaker 02

  I think, I think two things. I think for one, um, I think it's the only place where I feel like a lot of guys, a lot of males, feel like they're allowed to talk about it, like, without being, without, like, for example, if I went up to like my buddies or in our group chat and said how I felt in Cole, it would come off of like, like, brother, get it together, what are you talking about? But you put country music behind it and it's like, dang, that's a beautiful song. I actually connect with that, but I'm not gonna like say I do, you know? It, it feels like it's guys, uh, almost like a dude therapy session. And I think that's why so many people write about it, is that it connects really deeply.

• 1:03:54Speaker 02

  It almost like, it says the feelings that a lot of these dudes, I think, feel, but they're like, blue collar fellas. They're like, I'm not telling, I'm not telling nobody how I feel, but like you do, when, at our shows, the, the people who are like heart and soul singing it out there in the crowd are the, are the dudes. Arms around each other, I promised they would leave that show and they would never tell each other about their feelings. But they come to the show and they're looking at each other screaming these lyrics. And it's like, yeah, it's like cathartic, it's like, it's their, it's like a thing. So I think, I don't know, I think it just comes off well. It's like the way to, way to do it as a dude, without it still being cool.

• 1:04:30Chris Williamson?

  I wonder if it's a weird comment on masculinity that men feel comfortable seeing their emotions reflected in lyrics, but uncomfortable exposing them in daily life. It's like this guy has said this thing that I feel he's put words to, I'm happy to sing it.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:45Chris Williamson?

  I'm happy, I'm happy to sing it at his show.

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48Chris Williamson?

  And I'm still, it, it feels like there is room for that. It's a, it's a really interesting sort of balance between those two things.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it almost, it almost feels like sometimes the opposite for women. Like, it almost feels like.

• 1:05:04Chris Williamson?

  Female songs are empowering and male songs are about vulnerability.

• 1:05:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, but, but, and it's, and it's the opposite too, where it's like, when women sing about vulnerability, it's almost like the male crowd is like, here we go. Another, you know, another female country artist talking about a breakup. But it's like, when guys do it, it's like, brother, I'm, you know, I got you. So it is, it kind of feels like that's, that's the male outlet sometimes, is like through music. And then I feel like the girl outlet, again, I'm, I'm not trying to be the guy speaking on behalf of all the women out there. I would never do that, but, um, yeah, it kind of feels like it's the opposite where it's, you know? I don't know, maybe I'm wrong.

• 1:05:42Chris Williamson?

  I thought, uh, I Sit in Parks by Kelsea Ballerini was such a fascinating fucking concept for a song.

• 1:05:47Speaker 02

  I haven't heard that.

• 1:05:48Chris Williamson?

  Oh, dude, so it's her talking about, um, a relationship that she used to be in and she didn't go through with it because her partner wanted to have kids and she wanted to focus on her career. And then a few years later, she's sitting in the park on a weekend, looking at this family playing with the kid. And she's asking, have I made a mistake? Have I made a choice that I can't reverse?

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:13Chris Williamson?

  So I take my Lexapro and I puff on my vape and the album's due in March and my next tour is coming up and my friend's about to have a kid and I'm worried, I'm worried I'd miss this thing. And that was really like fucking raw, like very, very complex.

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe, I might, I might have missed the mark, because also, Pinhouse by Kelsea Ballerini, like, that's also a great song. And it's like, kind of about a relationship. So, yeah, maybe I'm wrong, but.

• 1:06:42Chris Williamson?

  I just, I, I think that you're right. I think that the, especially a lot of the country music tropes, maybe that's the reason. Maybe that's one of the reasons why, that if you hear a guy talking about vulnerability, it feels rarer.

• 1:06:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:55Chris Williamson?

  And it's now being done through this vehicle, which is music. And it's, uh, almost like the tortured hero, the only way that he can even open his heart is to do it to a chord. You know, it's like, that's the, the excuse that's being given. But it's also a defense mechanism. It's a defense mechanism, because if guys aren't comfortable about talking about it normally, this frames it in an artistic and romantic way that just created a little bit of distance. I don't actually need to show myself in the same way, as you said yourself.

• 1:07:26Speaker 02

  And it's accepted.

• 1:07:27Chris Williamson?

  If I open up in the, in the group chat, it's different to what's gonna happen if I open up in a song. What, the kind of thing that blows my mind is how many guys would love to have that outlet but aren't singer songwriters? And how difficult it is to find something else? Because I think, yeah, writing songs, maybe poetry, but that's perhaps even more inaccessible than, than some singer songwriter. Essaying, microblogging stuff on Substack and you can write in the third person and that feels, that's probably a little bit more accessible. But fuck me, beyond that, it's like, you're into the world of YouTube and conversations with a therapist. So it's, I don't know, it's a.

• 1:08:08Speaker 02

  And I guess like, that, that might be like the dudes that come to those shows, you know, that's like.

• 1:08:13Chris Williamson?

  It's group therapy.

• 1:08:14Speaker 02

  It's like, man, I can't sing it, but I'm gonna, like, I'm gonna try and not, you know, or get in the car or do it or, um, yeah. Drink and then talk to the buddies, like, you know?

• 1:08:24Chris Williamson?

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• 1:09:06Chris Williamson?

  You get 30 days of free returns globally with global shipping and a 10% discount site-wide. So get that 10% discount by going to the link in the description below or heading to gym.sh/moderndwism and using the code MODERNWISDOM10 at checkout. That's gym.sh/moderndwism and MODERNWISDOM10 at checkout. What, uh, what emotions have you found to be the hardest to write about?

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  Ooh, probably.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  Like happy, I think, and not, not in a way it's like, oh man, I can't write about being happy because I can, but I feel like it, it doesn't come off the tongue as easy as like, as like a sadder, more heartfelt song. I feel like I can really paint that picture versus like when I'm singing a song and, and maybe like, I mean, like happy. I don't mean like love. I feel like I can write really well about love. I, I feel like I can write about my wife like a lot. I have, I've written a ton of songs about her and I feel like those are some of my favorites I've ever written. Um, but I'm talking about just straight up. This one's going to come in, come, come on in the bar. I struggle with that. Um, I don't know why.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  I, I think some people nail it and I've just, I, I, I can't. It's not always there.

• 1:10:26Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Yeah. I mean, I spoke to Dan and Shay about this. Luke Combs, fucking unbelievable. Like got as much swagger as it's possible for a white guy to have. Like he's the blackest white guy that you can think of. And, um, but when you think about the, that sort of arc over the last, what decade or so of his, of his songwriting, you go from very sort of tortured, uncertain, tumultuous crises. And now there's a bit of me that wants him to smoke some crack. There's a bit of me that wants him to like have that friction again in life because things are going well and my son misses me when I go away, but I do come back and like my dad's getting older and that's going to be hard when it doesn't happen.

• 1:11:10Chris Williamson?

  And he's still fucking ripping it.

• 1:11:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:13Chris Williamson?

  But how much harder you have to work to make a banging song when you don't have that friction in your life.

• 1:11:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:21Chris Williamson?

  And you're almost beginning to concoct stories or you're hearing things that have happened to other people. Or, you know, confabulating ideas and, and tales of an imagined world, a different world that you could have lived in.

• 1:11:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:34Chris Williamson?

  Right. This is what I could have been. It's like, your life's so good that you have to imagine one you don't have in order to be able to create. Because for some reason, people seem to resonate a lot with that pain and that vulnerability. And again, if art is imitating life and your life's going really fucking well,

• 1:11:52Chris Williamson?

  what are you going to be singing about?

• 1:11:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. What's, what, yeah. What's, what's your sad song?

• 1:11:54Chris Williamson?

  Show me your pain.

• 1:11:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and again, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world too. And people like, cause I, I also love being a storyteller. I love writing songs about, I have a song called Leno Cowboy, which is about, you know, a guy going and getting cheated on, killing the guy and on the run. And I'm like, I didn't ever did that, but I think I, I love the storytelling aspect. And that comes from, I think, kind of more like that Western kind of swing old music, like Marty Robbins, like about like the gunfighter ballad and everything. Just like a whole album of just like ballads written about like gunfighters and stuff like that.

• 1:12:27Chris Williamson?

  It's almost like fables in a way, mythology.

• 1:12:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. But then, but then there also gets to like, yeah, you start getting into what feels like it could be a real story. Like obviously no one thinks that I went and shot this guy and ran away. But you know, when I, when I sing a song about maybe so, a stranger that I see, that I'm like, I'm just going to make up what I think his life is like and tell that story. Um, I think that's also sick. I think that's really cool.

• 1:12:51Chris Williamson?

  Do you know where Jolene came from? The Dolly Parton song?

• 1:12:54Speaker 02

  I don't know. Maybe I, I don't think so.

• 1:12:56Chris Williamson?

  I'm pretty sure it's written about a bank teller, bank assistant that flirted with her husband. And she didn't use the name of the bank teller, but found a lady at a party who had the name Jolene and placed the name of the lady. Story came from a beautiful bank teller who flirted with Dolly's husband, Carl Dean. Shortly after they got married, Dolly said the woman was tall, red haired and paid Carl love attention. Carl enjoyed the attention. Dolly joked that he seemed to spend an awful lot of time at the bank for someone with so little money, became the scene for the song. It was more of a playful thing. The name Jolene came from a totally different person, an eight-year-old redheaded fan who asked Dolly for an autograph.

• 1:13:36Chris Williamson?

  She thought Jolene was such a beautiful name that she told the girl she was going to use. She wrote Jolene and I will always love you. That's not right. She didn't write, I will always love you. It was working nine to five. Um, she didn't write, I will always love you, did she?

• 1:13:48Speaker 02

  That's, yeah.

• 1:13:49Chris Williamson?

  Did she?

• 1:13:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was, that's her song. That's her song. And then Whitney Houston sang it on, what was, what was the movie? And then, and then I think Dolly was, I think Dolly publicly said like, that's your song now. Like it's, no, that was, yeah, that's, that's, that's Dolly's song.

• 1:14:03Chris Williamson?

  Jolene and I will always love you in the same day.

• 1:14:05Speaker 02

  Talk about crazy.

• 1:14:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Fuck you with your fucking 25 minute goal. Yeah. Get on her level.

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. She's like, let me just write some of the two, two absolute bangers. But yeah. Um,

• 1:14:16Chris Williamson?

  again, you've concocted this story. You've taken, you know, one element from the other.

• 1:14:20Speaker 02

  Oh, and then I guess it was in, so Linda Ronstadt sang it. Every song that ever she sings is just better. Um, that's so cool.

• 1:14:28Chris Williamson?

  Whitney's record became the best, one of the best-selling singles of all time, 14 consecutive weeks at number one. Pretty sure that, uh, this has just been knocked off the top by, uh, Ella.

• 1:14:39Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:14:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Uh, because it's Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, who both had the 14 and I'm pretty sure that 15 is now.

• 1:14:48Speaker 02

  Ella.

• 1:14:48Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:49Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 1:14:50Chris Williamson?

  Fucking wild.

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  Good for her. That's, that's so sick.

• 1:14:52Chris Williamson?

  I wonder whether there's any emotions that you want to sing about, but you don't think that the market has an appetite for.

• 1:14:59Speaker 02

  Hmm. I mean, okay, here, here's a great example. And I know a lot of artists struggle with this. I'll play an acoustic song on my back porch and I'll play it a certain way, but I know the studio is different. Studio version's different. It's got some drums, has a little, you know, slide and I'd be in it. It's just kind of more upbeat. And then you'll put out that version and everyone's like, just, just don't change it.

• 1:15:20Chris Williamson?

  Give me the porch version.

• 1:15:21Speaker 02

  Give me the porch, you know, and it's like,

• 1:15:24Speaker 02

  I think you have to try to expand your sound. Like I'm, I was watching that Billy Joel documentary. It's so cool. By the way, if you haven't seen it, it's like five hours long. It's incredible. His life is just, it's what the heck. But he always made it a point to change the way his sound was. Bob Dylan did the same thing where he went to the Newport Folk Festival and everyone was like, you know, get your harmonica out. And he's like, I want to play an electric guitar. And it's, it's, uh,

• 1:15:50Speaker 02

  you feel like you don't want to get trapped in like your own trope. Like I'm not trying to get trapped in this like, I'm an acoustic guy. I'm going to sing about how hard my life is and, but you also want to service the people who listen to your music the most. Like you know, that's what they want. And that's, and it's like, yeah, it's this, it's, it's like this push and pull thing. So I, I feel like, I feel like I've done the best job that I can. Like I don't really put too much pressure on, I'm still making music that I love. I really not, I don't try to overthink it. Um, but yeah, I know a lot of artists that fall into that thing where it's like,

• 1:16:23Speaker 02

  I want to put out different music, but I just know it's probably not going to do well. And if I do it, if I put out this song, I'll probably do a lot better. Because that's what I'm known for. That's what people want to hear.

• 1:16:31Chris Williamson?

  You know, the idea of audience capture? Have you heard of that? Okay. So it's from my world's, uh, content creation, YouTube. Um, you test the ground with a bunch of different content. Maybe you start to pick up a little bit of speed and then you find something that hooks a bit. You start talking about, uh, politics, but you talk about it from a libertarian lens and you're, you're sort of, you're maybe a bit more bombastic than you used to be.

• 1:16:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:16:56Chris Williamson?

  Oh, wow. They like that. Oh, well, I've been rewarded for that. I'll, I'll go again. And you get a bit more bombastic. You get a bit more bombastic. And before you know it, you're like peak Alex Jones, you know, sort of shouting and screaming and, and, and doing the thing. And you begin to throw red meat to your audience. And instead of creating what you want to create, you give them what you think they want.

• 1:17:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:16Chris Williamson?

  The problem with it is that you can achieve success with it because you're basically taking audience feedback, which in some ways is, is important and good. Like movies screen test the versions, right? And they check how, what were people's reviews? Should we change this? But this felt a bit slow. People didn't understand that. So, you know, audience feedback's important, but if you're not careful, especially if you're doing something that's very iterative, over time, your audience doesn't fall in love with you. They fall in love with your projection of what you think they want you to be.

• 1:17:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:47Chris Williamson?

  And you're like this weird reverse puppet thing.

• 1:17:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:17:49Chris Williamson?

  Where the audience has got their hand inside of you doing this. And reliably, every single person that I've seen do it. And there's a bunch of people that have done it in, in my world and probably tons in yours as well. Every single person eventually has ended up resenting the audience.

• 1:18:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:03Chris Williamson?

  Because what happens is you contort yourself into this weird shape that you think the audience has rewarded you for. And then if they don't like what you're doing anymore, you feel so aggrieved because you betrayed yourself.

• 1:18:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:20Chris Williamson?

  For an audience that doesn't even want the act that you're playing.

• 1:18:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:23Chris Williamson?

  And it is so, it's so fucking reliable. So that's one side. That's audience capture. And then Ethan Strauss has got this fucking unbelievable post where he talks about criticism capture, which is the opposite side of it. So audience capture was this big term for a long time. People do what they think the audience wants. It's the musician who denies himself the move from acoustic to electronic or a total pivot in terms of singing style, because he doesn't think that the audience is going to want it.

• 1:18:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:52Chris Williamson?

  That's your audience capture. Criticism capture is behaving in a way to avoid criticism or front run it from your audience instead. So instead of acting out of encouraging desire, it's acting out of defending against hate.

• 1:19:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:06Chris Williamson?

  So what are people going to criticize me for doing most likely?

• 1:19:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:10Chris Williamson?

  And how do I front run that so that it doesn't happen? So you see this in the same way in, in my world. People start to caveat a lot. They'll, before they say anything, well, we must remember that this, they'll do this sort of land acknowledge and this throat clearing thing beforehand. Or in a different way, people sort of steam out of the gates really aggressively and they're, they're super ardent and militant and they, they have no quarter given, no, no.

• 1:19:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:35Chris Williamson?

  And that's another way to do it. They're sort of pushing people out. They're front running the complaint. They're either, um, making themselves so inoffensive that they don't say anything so that they don't get criticized. Or they kind of shadow box this imaginary opponent who doesn't really exist in an attempt to scare off critics. So, and you see, it's so fucking warping. It's just audience dynamics.

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:57Chris Williamson?

  Reward and pain. And people are playing with these two levers in an attempt to try and get as much pleasure and as little discomfort as possible. And

• 1:20:05Speaker 02

  And it kind of, it kind of leaves me on eggshells where you're just like, ah, like, I don't know what to do. Yeah. And it's dude, especially like nowadays with social media, everything's so instant that like, I think that messes with artists quite a bit. Of just the most instant feedback you can have. You'll, you'll walk off a stage, uh, you know, sit in the green room and you're getting tweets or, you know, or you're getting your stories up and it's, yeah, it, it, you know, in with the phones. Yeah. I used to, I don't know.

• 1:20:35Chris Williamson?

  But have you seen, Jerry, can you pull up that video? I want you to show you that there's two videos going back to back that I think are pretty interesting. There's this Morgan Wallen video that's floating around at the moment, which is him in a fucking huge stadium. And someone's saying, uh, the performance standard for male versus female artists is so different, is all I will say.

• 1:21:17Chris Williamson?

  That's closer to a military reenactment. It's so much better. So anyway, and then look at this. Pull that other video up, Jared.

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  Is it the Tate McRae one?

• 1:21:25Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I mean, it is just.

• 1:21:28Speaker 02

  An insane level of.

• 1:21:29Chris Williamson?

  It's the most polished, like, look at this.

• 1:21:39Chris Williamson?

  Oh, I'm gonna dip myself in literal liquid gold.

• 1:21:44Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 1:21:47Chris Williamson?

  Like, actual.

• 1:21:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's like the whole, like, the Coachella, like, Justin Bieber, the.

• 1:21:57Chris Williamson?

  I'm waiting for you to do.

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that's.

• 1:21:59Chris Williamson?

  Dipped in liquid gold.

• 1:22:00Speaker 02

  That's in the next set. We're doing that.

• 1:22:02Chris Williamson?

  That's the next album?

• 1:22:03Speaker 02

  Well, it's just, I mean, it's different. Like, I've been, I've been to a Morgan show. It also, like, the production is still crazy. Him himself might not be.

• 1:22:12Chris Williamson?

  He needs a dance number.

• 1:22:13Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? But.

• 1:22:14Chris Williamson?

  He needs a dance number.

• 1:22:15Speaker 02

  I guess, like, it's also, it's also this recency bias thing where people just, they just have to keep doing the next big thing and make it bigger, which, like, in entertainment, that's a good thing. Like, obviously, you should be challenged, but, I mean, you go look at the female acts from, like, I don't know, 1950, or even the male acts, like, everyone's just on a microphone and just doing the same thing. Like, I don't know, but yeah, I guess, when did that separation happen? Because, I mean, we used to have, like, N'Sync, Backstreet Boys, and they were doing full production. Like, when did it become?

• 1:22:44Chris Williamson?

  I mean, MGK's bringing it back. He's got full dance numbers on stage. She's got choreography.

• 1:22:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:51Chris Williamson?

  But, like, everything that's, everything that's new is now old, you know?

• 1:22:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's like, oh, they used to do that. Yeah.

• 1:22:57Chris Williamson?

  That's cool. Let's bring that back. All right, dude, let round us out. What's your, give us a little something from the, the new album, whatever you like the sound of.

• 1:23:05Speaker 02

  I'll play, I'll play a song called Clothesline.

• 1:23:10Speaker 02

  Should I sing this one? Yeah, this one's good. I think, I think this is gonna be a single, maybe. I don't know.

• 1:23:16Chris Williamson?

  That's something you could do this afternoon.

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  But, no, but I do it on purpose. I, I, but this, I guess, this is what I'm talking about. Like, when I, I,

• 1:23:26Speaker 02

  yes, I could choose the singles and have it all on the calendar and rock it and just go, but I, I don't, again, I, I think this is something that I probably, I struggle with, is kind of the system formula thing. I don't know. Like, I, I would rather go, like, week by week, or, like, feel it out. I don't know. Yeah, I, I don't know. I, I, I, I think it's gonna be a single.

• 1:23:51Chris Williamson?

  Unravel.

• 1:23:52Speaker 02

  But again, I, I also, actually, this, and I will, I'll sing it right after this, but this brings me back to a point that we were talking about earlier, about, like, teasing music and crowdsourcing and being like, what song does better? Like, there's a part of me that misses the way of, like, when an artist puts out an album, you don't know what the songs are.

• 1:24:13Chris Williamson?

  They've not, Waterfall released five in advance.

• 1:24:16Speaker 02

  You don't know what the songs are, and you are stoked to dive in.

• 1:24:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:19Speaker 02

  And I'm trying to play this middle ground of, like, okay, business-wise, yes, we should be teasing songs and, you know, getting people excited, and I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but there's a side of me that's like, man, wouldn't it be great just to give fans just 12 new songs that everyone can be excited for? And you have no idea what it sounds like. It might be a whole new sound. Like, that's kind of what used to happen. Or, like, I don't know, like, I just think that side of it's cool. Like, my favorite thing, I know I brought them up a lot, but Turnpike, when they dropped Price of Admission, they did no singles. All they did was put up a billboard in the middle of the desert, and it was like, album's out in two weeks. I think that is so cool. Now, I'm not saying everyone can do that.

• 1:24:58Chris Williamson?

  Algorithmically, might not be the most effective way to do it, but it's sick.

• 1:25:02Speaker 02

  But, yeah, and that, but that's where, like, as an artist, you have to kind of weigh your options between, you know, like we said earlier, like, what's authentic? And at the end of the day, like, what is going to get people this music? Like, what's going to pay the bills and do, you know, there's a fine line, so.

• 1:25:17Chris Williamson?

  Unravel.

• 1:25:17Speaker 02

  But anyways, uh, this one's called Clothesline. I haven't played this one in a while. I'll, I should, I'll remember. That's another thing. I'm bad with lyrics, but.

• 1:25:31Speaker 02

  Oh, wait, am I plugged in?

• 1:25:32Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:32Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 1:25:35Speaker 02

  Uh, this one's called Clothesline.

• 1:25:41Speaker 02

  Baking soda on a pitchy make it smell brand new. I'm sleeping in and I'm going out trying not to think too much about you.

• 1:25:56Speaker 02

  Call me later when my lights are I notice how you do. You call me once, but you hit my door later in the morning. You'll be gone too soon. Cause I know

• 1:26:12Speaker 02

  you're just gonna hang me out to dry so close to being left on that clothesline. Oh, second guessing's always left in this old heart of mine. Baby, I know you're just gonna hang me out, hang me out to dry.

• 1:26:44Speaker 02

  Out to dry.

• 1:26:52Speaker 02

  So stop it early at yellow lights. Say it ain't worth the risk. You used to tell me that I'm moving too fast with your hand tied around my wrist. So treat me like it was years ago before you changed your mind. Said I was nothing but a hopeless old lover and baby, maybe you'd be right. I know

• 1:27:23Speaker 02

  you're just gonna hang me out to dry so close

• 1:27:30Speaker 02

  to being left on that clothesline. Oh, second guessing's always left in this old heart of mine. Baby, I know

• 1:27:44Speaker 02

  you're just gonna hang me out, hang me out to dry.

• 1:28:01Speaker 02

  Now I know

• 1:28:05Speaker 02

  you're just gonna hang me out to dry so close

• 1:28:12Speaker 02

  to being left on that clothesline. Second guessing's always left in this old heart of mine. Baby, I know

• 1:28:26Speaker 02

  you're just gonna hang me out, hang me out to dry.

• 1:28:36Speaker 02

  Out to dry.

• 1:28:45Chris Williamson?

  Let's fucking go. Dylan Gossett, ladies and gentlemen.

• 1:28:48Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:28:48Chris Williamson?

  Dude, you rule. Congratulations. New album's out, won.

• 1:28:51Speaker 02

  September 25th.

• 1:28:52Chris Williamson?

  Fuck, yeah.

• 1:28:53Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:28:54Chris Williamson?

  Appreciate the heck out of you, man.

• 1:28:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for having me.

• 1:28:56Chris Williamson?

  All right. Goodbye, my beauties. Dude.

• 1:28:58Speaker 02

  That was a great time, brother. Thanks so much for having me.

• 1:29:05Speaker 03

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