Americana Music Live with Drew Holcomb and Malcolm Gladwell

Wrapping up our summer music series, the Memphis-born, East Nashville-based singer songwriter Drew Holcomb talks with Malcolm in front of a live audience at the Cherry Lane Theater in Greenwich Village. Drew plays original songs and a few covers you might recognize on this exploration of his journey to Americana music. For more interviews like this, check out Pushkin’s Broken Record https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/broken-record podcast. For more Drew Holcomb visit his website, drewholcomb.com http://drewholcomb.com/. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:28Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 1:09Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 1:54Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 2:07Malcolm Gladwell?

  Back in the spring, I was part of a traveling variety show called No Small Endeavor. It's put on by a friend of mine, a theologian from Nashville named Lee Camp. A bunch of us got on a big tour bus, left Nashville for Louisville, then Indianapolis, then Grand Rapids. Lee and I told a story about the famous showdown between the suffragettes and the antislavery movement in the mid-19th century. And then, a bunch of musicians played music to help us tell the story. It was one of the most fun things I've ever done in my life. Anyway, when you're traveling on a tour bus, you spend a lot of time talking to everyone else on the tour bus. And along the way, I got to know the musical headliner on the show, the singer-songwriter Drew Holcomb.

• 2:48Malcolm Gladwell?

  And I found him so thoughtful, and fantastic, and full of life, that I invited him to come to New York and sit down with me at 824's newly reopened Cherry Lane Theater. And to my delight, and I hope your delight as well, he said yes. Drew is in his early 40s, beard, lives in Nashville, but he's from Memphis. He's maybe a country artist, although he would dispute that description. His band is called The Neighbors, and they've been together forever. And if you've never heard his music, you're going to hear more than a little bit on this episode, because I gave him only one rule before we had our conversation. You have to bring your guitar, and it can never leave your side. Here we go.

• 3:27Speaker 02

  All right, all right. Welcome, everybody, to the Cherry Lane Theater.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  It's gonna be a great evening. I want you guys to welcome Malcolm Gladwell and Drew Holcomb.

• 3:45Speaker 03

  Good evening. I'll get us started with a song.

• 4:04Speaker 04

  I am fare thee well now, I am strong. I am goodbye, I'm a long way from home. I am an orchard at the start of spring. I am a mockingbird, I love to sing. And I'm gonna fly.

• 4:33Speaker 04

  I'm gonna fly.

• 4:46Speaker 04

  I am an old road, walking on my feet. I am laughing at the weeping willow tree. I'm a dog barking, a honeybee sting. I ain't no angel, but I've got my wings. I'm gonna fly. I'm gonna fly.

• 5:26Speaker 04

  I'm gonna fly. I'm gonna fly. I'm gonna fly. I'm gonna fly.

• 5:57Speaker 03

  I am moving, I am flesh and bones. I am a gunshot with a microphone. I'm a boy at the window as the summer sun sets. An old man in winter, nothing more, nothing less. And I'm gonna fly. I'm gonna fly. I'm gonna fly.

• 6:55Malcolm Gladwell?

  Tell me why you chose that song to start with.

• 6:58Speaker 03

  Well, it's my favorite one I've ever written. I always figure when I get nervous, just play something you like, you know?

• 7:04Malcolm Gladwell?

  When, when did you write that song?

• 7:06Speaker 03

  I wrote that song probably January of 2022. I always tend to write a lot of songs right around mainly after New Year's.

• 7:21Speaker 03

  It's a good time to kind of get in your feelings and introspection about your life, about the world around you, and it tends to be a creative season for me.

• 7:31Malcolm Gladwell?

  How do you decide? You say that's the favorite, your favorite song you've ever written?

• 7:35Speaker 03

  Probably, yeah.

• 7:36Malcolm Gladwell?

  Why? What is it about that song that?

• 7:38Speaker 03

  Well, it was, it was, it was something about, the song kind of came out of this, I'd just turned 40 around that time, and I actually enjoyed all the things that I felt after turning 40. Everybody told me I should be afraid of them, but I actually really enjoyed them. I also was kind of born an old soul. My mom said I was born an old man. I felt comfortable in that transition already just because of sort of how, how I am. I started writing that song with the lyric, started. I'm a boy at the window as the summer sun sets. I have this keen memory from my childhood of being told to go to bed before the sun went down in the summertime, you know, and staring at the window and seeing my neighbor whose parents let him stay up.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  And, and being sort of full of jealousy, but also sort of full of wonder. And, and then also I, even though I'm not old, I feel certain, I feel old in certain ways. And I sort of, the song is kind of in the tension, is me just sort of embracing the tension of that. And that tension feels more and more what I see when I look in the mirror. And so when I play that song, I feel, I feel it's like a blanket for me, you know? And also finally let myself admit that I like my own music. You're not supposed to do that, but I, I do like my own music.

• 8:56Malcolm Gladwell?

  Why are you not supposed to do that?

• 8:59Speaker 03

  Oh, it's just a, you know, cultural thing. You shouldn't, you know, if you drive down the street and see an artist listening to their own music, you might think, man, what an arrogant guy. But, you know, which that happens in me with my kids sometimes because they want to hear my songs. I just look at people and, you know, hey, yep, it's me listening to my own song. Yeah.

• 9:18Malcolm Gladwell?

  How would you describe the genre that that song belongs to?

• 9:21Speaker 03

  You know, I, growing up, I was, the music that I listened to a lot sort of fit in either categories of folk or rock and roll, some country, soul. Folk rock was sort of how I framed it before this sort of ubiquitous word of Americana kind of came around. And it felt like they created a sort of a, an institutional home for artists like myself who are definitely not country in the sort of commercial sense and we're not rock in the sort of new radio sense. And we were a bit homeless. There's a lot of us. And so it kind of created this, so that's what I say now is Americana.

• 10:05Speaker 03

  But, um, one of the great things about being in a, you know, quote unquote Americana artist is there's not really a lot of rules about what you make, how you make, whether the song has five stanzas and no chorus or, you know, horns or whatever. You can kind of do whatever you want. It just has to be sort of made by real people in a, you know, in a real sense.

• 10:26Malcolm Gladwell?

  You're, you're from Tennessee and you live in Nashville, but you, you take great pains to distance yourself from country music.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  Well, it all started, I'm from Memphis, which is, you know, 200 miles west and a bit south of Nashville. And we were raised, Memphians are sort of, it's baked into your childhood and your upbringing to hate Nashville. Yeah. It's, it's part of how you're, you're raised. For instance, I, my parents, every fall, we would drive to Knoxville where they attended school, and we'd go to a Tennessee football game, and that's a 387 mile drive. So in 18 years, let's say we did it, I don't know, maybe 16 times in my childhood that I can, that I can recall. And so 32 times through Nashville, we stopped zero times.

• 11:20Speaker 03

  And I40 goes right through the middle of town, and my dad would just say, there's the state capital.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  Keep on moving. So we grew up admiring, you know, there, there was some country that, that sort of leaked into my, into my childhood. I think there's perceptions of folks outside the South that like, everybody in the South just listens to country music. We listened to Motown and Bob Dylan and Amy Grant, you know, like, it was this interesting mix of like, gospel music and, you know, black soul music and, and then all the, my dad loved all the sort of contemporary 70s songwriter stuff. And so, there was not a lot of country music in it. Yeah. Yeah, in my childhood. I want to talk a little more about Memphis and Nashville. In your mind, what is the difference between Memphis and Nashville?

• 12:11Speaker 03

  Well, practically speaking, I mean, Memphis is a very, it's a hometown city, meaning that most of the people that live there grew up there, had family from there, grew up in their surrounding, you know, 100 mile radius. Whereas Nashville attracts people from all over the country, especially in the last 15 to 20 years. And so, it's a much, sort of more, those, those two realities create different, very different cultures.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  In Memphis, everybody knows each other and, you know, where'd you go to school and who do you, you know, it's a bit of that, small town, big city experience. Whereas in Nashville, so many young people move there because of what the city can offer them, the opportunities that may springboard out of living there. And then it's a center for, I mean, the big employers in, in Nashville are the music business and healthcare, which are both sort of booming and transient. Jobs, whereas Memphis, it's, you know, these big, blue collar companies like FedEx and Autozone. And so it just creates very different cultures. And then, you know, racially, Memphis is majority African American town. Nashville's very lily white, you know. So they're just, they're, they're very different. My favorite story to tell about, about Nashville

• 13:21Speaker 03

  when I moved there was Memphis is a great food town, especially cheap food, you know, tamales and barbecue and great, unique pizza. And it's, it's just a very, you know, being a river town, a lot of transients over, over decades. So we get a lot of unique food. And Nashville hadn't basically nothing that I, that I wanted to eat. And I would just complain to my wife. I was like, that's nice here. And I know you're from here and that's why I moved here. But there's nothing to eat here that I want to eat. And then fast forward almost 20 years and it's one of the greatest food towns, you know, in the country. Everything's there now. So it's, it's changing. It's, it's a very sort of evolving and fluid place.

• 14:03Malcolm Gladwell?

  Maybe you can explain my favorite joke. It's my favorite joke because I, I feel it has many, many layers, many of which I don't understand.

• 14:12Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 14:14Malcolm Gladwell?

  It's a joke from the civil rights movement era. Black man in Detroit wakes up in the middle of the night. It's one of those people who come up from the South, you know, when the

• 14:24Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 14:24Malcolm Gladwell?

  Turns to his wife and said, I had a terrible dream. And she said, what happened? He said, I dreamt that Jesus came to me and told me to go to Birmingham. And she says, did Jesus say go with you? He says, Jesus said he'd go as far as Memphis.

• 14:43Speaker 03

  That's a great joke.

• 14:45Malcolm Gladwell?

  Isn't it?

• 14:45Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 14:46Malcolm Gladwell?

  It's my favorite joke of all time. It is, like I said, because it's a joke about Jesus.

• 14:52Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 14:53Malcolm Gladwell?

  Who said he would be with us always, but

• 14:55Speaker 03

  But not in Birmingham.

• 14:56Malcolm Gladwell?

  Not Birmingham. It's a joke about Birmingham, like

• 15:00Speaker 03

  It's definitely a joke at the expense of Birmingham.

• 15:02Malcolm Gladwell?

  Dark, dark joke. But like, why does Jesus stop at Memphis?

• 15:06Speaker 03

  Well, because, I mean, Jesus would love Memphis. There's, there's great food. There's great hospitality. There's great music. Like, Jesus would thrive there. Yeah. That was my experience. Jesus thrived in Memphis.

• 15:22Malcolm Gladwell?

  You listened, well, I want to go back to that mixture of things you were listening to as a kid. Motown, Amy Grant, what was the third one?

• 15:29Speaker 03

  Uh, Bob Dylan.

• 15:30Malcolm Gladwell?

  That's a fantastic and unusual mix of things to be exposed to. This is, is this your father or your mother's doing that's pushing?

• 15:37Speaker 03

  Both, both, yeah. So, my dad grew up in the, in the, you know, they, they, my parents met in the third grade. Um, and so they, they grew up seven or eight, like, blocks from each other. So, there's this very sort of, I have 28 grandkids. It's like a very, yeah, there's a lot going on there. Um, that's just on my mom's side. That doesn't include my dad's side, so.

• 16:00Malcolm Gladwell?

  Wait, there's 28 grandkids on your mom's side?

• 16:02Speaker 03

  That's right, yeah. And I'm number 14 or 15, I can't remember, but, yeah.

• 16:06Malcolm Gladwell?

  Wow.

• 16:07Speaker 03

  So, very, like, it'd be hard to overstate how sort of, like, central, uh, Christianity and religion was to my upbringing. Part of that was that, when I was, apparently, when I was like, um, I don't even know how old, three, four, or five years old, um, someone from the church came to my parents' house and they were, everybody in their, in their church was doing like a record clean out of, of things in their house that weren't honoring to God. And so, they would get rid of all these records that I, when I heard about this in high school, I wept. I was like, oh, Dad, you had all of these great records and original copies that they made you throw out because it's devil's music. That was really too bad, you know?

• 16:51Speaker 03

  A lot of Led Zeppelin got thrown out and things like that.

• 16:53Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah, oh, yeah, I mean, come on.

• 16:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, gotta get rid of it. Uh, which, we could, I'll come back to this, but my first record I ever bought was Pearl Jam's 10. I was 11, I actually got it for Christmas from Santa Claus. And my dad broke the record by 5:00 PM on Christmas Day. Because we had to go through the, the liner notes together and there's drug references and he's like, you're, you're too young for this, break. So, this was, you know, an intense, an intense scene. Um, but it's some of the things that made it through the, the gauntlet was Bob Dylan's evangelical records.

• 17:26Malcolm Gladwell?

  Of course.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  You know, Slow Train Come In, Saved, and there's another one.

• 17:29Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  Um, and then, because he still made it in there, somehow, his old records also got a pass.

• 17:36Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah, got grandfathered in.

• 17:37Speaker 03

  Got grandfathered in, yeah. And he was Jewish, so there's like a thing there, too. You know, you're allowed to have records made by Jewish artists, so. Um, and then... Motown was like, it was all, you could listen to Motown except for like, um, what's the, you know, the great, the Marvin Gaye record, I'm just blanking on.

• 17:57Malcolm Gladwell?

  Oh, Sexual Healing, of course.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, yeah, but the name of the record, What's Going On?

• 18:00Malcolm Gladwell?

  What's Going, oh, What's Going On?

• 18:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:02Malcolm Gladwell?

  Oh, Sexual Healing would have been.

• 18:04Speaker 03

  Was, was on that record, wasn't it?

• 18:06Malcolm Gladwell?

  No, What's Going On is earlier, I was saying Sexual Healing is so far beyond.

• 18:09Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah, you could only hear that, the only, the only way you could hear that in my childhood was at a wedding. By the, by the cover band, you know, and, and so, and it still felt awkward for everybody. But, uh, so, yeah, there was, so then any Christian music was okay, Bob Dylan was okay, and Motown was okay, because it was just a bunch of love songs and clean oldies stuff, you know, before the music business got, you know.

• 18:33Malcolm Gladwell?

  Amy.

• 18:33Speaker 03

  Messed up.

• 18:34Malcolm Gladwell?

  Can you explain to a heathen New York City audience, how, who Amy Grant is and why she's important?

• 18:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, Amy Grant was sort of, I mean, the, the, the whole genre of contemporary Christian music was, there was Southern gospel, which is a whole different thing. So it was basically, take the songwriter model, and people started applying it to their faith stories, which this all predates the whole, now the big thing is all this big ensemble worship stuff, which was basically like every, all these church bands trying to sound like Coldplay and U2. So Amy Grant was like this young songwriter, and she was, they created a whole radio sort of format around artists like her, and she became the, the most, most famous and successful. And then she had a crossover pop hit called Baby Baby, that sort of sent her into regular superstardom.

• 19:25Speaker 03

  And, um, yeah, she was just a very beloved woman, and she's, she's also, as a human, she's like, she's honestly one of the greatest ones I've ever met.

• 19:37Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah, you know her.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  I know her because my wife knew her, but I moved to Nashville again, sort of like, country and Christian music, this town sucks, you know? And then I got to know these people, and I was like, wow, these people are all really great.

• 19:50Speaker 03

  This is tough.

• 19:52Malcolm Gladwell?

  Wait, what's, so wait, what, what denomination were your parents?

• 19:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, they were, they were, they went to like an independent Bible church.

• 19:58Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah.

• 19:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, so it was non-denominational, it was very, they're very proud of that.

• 20:02Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah, I was asking you about, um, other music that, that, that made it in.

• 20:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I, I think.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  Basically, my parents were pretty okay with all the classics. So we would go see, you know, you could go see Paul Simon. They built the pyramid in Memphis when I was a kid, which was new arena where the Memphis Tigers played. And so I got a job there in high school as a part of the event staff. And so I got to see all these concerts for free by telling people to stop smoking, you know, and had my little yellow shirt on.

• 20:38Speaker 03

  And, you know, anything from Boyz II Men to ZZ Top to whatever could sell 15,000 tickets, I was, you know, exposed to. And at a certain point, the sort of, the rules weren't really that well enforced. It was a sort of a young, when we were young, it was very much that way. But our alarm clock every day growing up was my mom played piano and she would play hymns. Like that was get up and go to school was like, "Up from the grave he arose." You know, she was like a whole, her like whole play on get up and go to school, you know.

• 21:14Malcolm Gladwell?

  By the way, that's fantastic.

• 21:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was great. Yeah.

• 21:16Malcolm Gladwell?

  A daily resurrection.

• 21:17Speaker 03

  She's got a great sense of humor.

• 21:18Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah.

• 21:20Malcolm Gladwell?

  I have a theory, which I very grandiosely call Gladwell's theory of asymmetrical parenting, which is that at any given moment, when we account for our parental influence on our lives, we only talk about one parent. It can change over time, but you try to set on somebody, you ask somebody, "Yeah, so what are your parents?" People will never talk about their parents. They will, the minute you dig into it, they only talk about one for a while.

• 21:52Malcolm Gladwell?

  So I would like you to give me an asymmetrical parental theory of the Drew Holcomb childhood.

• 22:01Malcolm Gladwell?

  Who matters?

• 22:02Speaker 03

  I completely disagree with that theory.

• 22:06Malcolm Gladwell?

  I'm not saying that you only, only one mattered. I'm saying that at any given moment, only one matters.

• 22:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, in a particular story.

• 22:14Malcolm Gladwell?

  You're toggling, right? So it may be from, you know, in high school, it's only your mom. And then in college, it's only your...

• 22:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's a, I...

• 22:26Speaker 03

  My parents are gonna listen to this probably.

• 22:29Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah, yeah, that's the whole point.

• 22:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, I think, we were actually talking earlier backstage about how as dads, you sometimes get this free pass that it's almost like, and I've seen this, I have three children, that especially with my daughter, she sort of defaults to, Dad, you're doing great, you're awesome. Even if my wife, Ellie, has done all of the hard work that day in the parenting space. So with that said, I think that that's probably true in a lot of ways that my dad had sort of an outsized influence.

• 23:03Malcolm Gladwell?

  What did your dad do?

• 23:04Speaker 03

  Well, he was a dentist, and then he hated it. So he quit and became a financial advisor. Seriously, true story.

• 23:15Malcolm Gladwell?

  This reminds me of one of my favorite stories about a friend of mine whose dad was an investment banker, and he once had a long, heart-to-heart with his daughter, my friend, about how he felt his career had been misspent, and he'd made a series of terrible choices, and he had squandered his life in a profession with no meaning. And she was very moved by this because she didn't realize her father had this other side. And she said, Dad, so what do you think you should have been? And he says, I think I should have been a tax attorney.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  That's kinda like. Kind of what you're hearing here.

• 23:54Malcolm Gladwell?

  It's kinda like what your dad did.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, he said that he was just very, he was very sort of bored by the monotony of dentistry and how he's very extroverted, and he was trying to have conversations with people and they couldn't because, yeah.

• 24:14Malcolm Gladwell?

  Oh, he was one of those annoying dentists who's like asking you questions and you're like 17 things in your mouth?

• 24:18Speaker 03

  Totally. Well, and I think, honestly, I think it was a, it was a serious crossroads for him because he'd spent, he put himself through dental school, selling jewelry out of a tackle box. This is like, he, he worked his way really hard to get himself this, you know, job and this career, but then a decade in, he realized how much he really did not enjoy it. And. Found a way out of it. It took him, it wasn't like an immediate transition. He went to one day a week to doing the other thing, to two days a week doing the other thing, to half and half. And then eventually, when I was in high school, sold his practice and went full time the other direction. He loved music and he had wanted to pursue music in high school. He wanted to be in a garage band.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  And his dad, who was even more strict than my parents' generation, basically was a "cut your hair and don't you..." You know, he has this story, he says, he tells a story about my grandfather, they're driving in a car and my grandfather smoked cigarettes nonstop. And Bill Withers Lean on Me was on the radio and dad was like 14 years old in the passenger seat. And it's that part of the song where it's "if you need a friend, call me. You just call me." And my grandfather was a jazz guy. He hated popular music. He said, finally takes a drag on a cigarette after about the seventh or eighth, "call me." And he goes, "Well, just call him, damn it."

• 25:42Speaker 03

  So he had this like weird relationship where his father squashed his creative

• 25:47Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  dreams. And so I think when I sort of showed interest in this, he, he sort of just launched fully in with me.

• 25:59Malcolm Gladwell?

  Oh, really?

• 25:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. The first thing I told him, I wanted to pursue music. I had like an okay guitar. And he's like, "Well, let's go to the guitar shop. Let's get you, let's get you something nice. You know, if you're really gonna work hard at it, I'm in your corner." That was his two rules, where if you're gonna work hard at it. And then he said, "And promise me that if it's not working, you'll know when to walk away and move on with your life." And he could say that from experience because he walked away from something. You know, he didn't just stick with the career that he chose as a 19-year-old, really, because he started dental school. Back then, you didn't have to get a college degree to go to dental school. You just had to get the prereqs, which he did in three semesters and then started dental school as a 19-year-old. So.

• 26:38Malcolm Gladwell?

  Can you play another song?

• 26:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure.

• 26:45Speaker 03

  All right, I'll, since we're on, this is sort of symmetrical, asymmetrical. I'm gonna go down the street to my grandparents' house. I grew up five doors down the street from my grandfather, who was this sort of a lion of a man, he was a bit of a big fish personality. He would, he would tell these stories that you didn't know how much of it was true and how much of it was fiction. Lived a very interesting life, was a surgeon, was the chief of surgery in Tokyo immediately following World War II, operated on Admiral Lagano, two weeks before he was executed, like he just has these like wild stories in his life.

• 27:30Speaker 03

  And one of them was that he told this story about how he went to England with his friend who raised Labrador Retrievers, who got invited to this dog trial at the Queen's estate. And so he went, and he was very old and couldn't walk around very well, and he came back with this wild story about how he got to ride around the Queen's estate in the Queen's Land Rover with her driving it. And we were all like, sure, you know, sure he did. And he passed away about six years later, and we got a letter from the Queen's secretary sending her regrets of his passing and sharing how much the Queen enjoyed the day she spent with him driving around.

• 28:15Speaker 03

  Her estate and her Land Rover, so. There you go. I wrote this song about him many years after he died. He just had a huge influence on me and songs called Dragons.

• 28:37Speaker 04

  Asleep in the moonlight, The ghost of my grandpa Came to me in a dream. As the stars hung above us, He started singing this chorus. He laughed loud as heaven And said this to me:

• 28:57Speaker 04

  "Take a few chances, A few worthy romances. Go swimming in the ocean On New Year's Day. Don't listen to the critics. Stand up and bear witness. Go slay all the dragons That stand in your way."

• 29:24Speaker 04

  He stayed up and talked Until the sunrise Of war and love and sorrow. He said, "Stop spending all your money On forgiveness of sins. Today's all you promised. Don't trouble with tomorrow." He faded into the forest, Proudly singing this hymn: "Take a few chances, A few worthy romances. Go swimming in the ocean On New Year's Day. Don't listen to the critics. Stand up and bear witness. Go slay all the dragons That stand in your way."

• 30:34Speaker 04

  I woke up with a fever, Surrounded by lightning. All my windows were open And I let the rain flood in. The past felt like the present, With a future uncertain. I sang like a sparrow Lost in the wind.

• 30:58Speaker 04

  Take a few chances, few worthy romances. Go swimming in the ocean on New Year's Day. Don't listen to the critics. Stand up and bear witness. Go slay all the dragons that stand in your way. Go slay all the dragons that stand in your way.

• 31:45Malcolm Gladwell?

  Thank you. Incredibly beautiful tribute. Thank you. Yeah, he's a beautiful man. We'll be right back.

• 31:56Speaker 00

  This is Jacob Goldstein. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. When you're running a business and looking to expand, you need a clear view of the landscape before making any decisions. ChatGPT can help you prepare. Connect your Google Drive, point to relevant files and reports, and ask it to research competitors, industry forecasts, and market signals. It can turn the findings into a strategic deck in your team's template that you can review before presenting to your leadership team. Growing a business is ambitious, and ChatGPT can help you do it with confidence. Get started today at chatgpt.com.

• 32:34Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 33:16Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 34:00Malcolm Gladwell?

  Terms and more at applecard.com. A business gift is never just a gift. It's a thank you, a milestone, a moment of appreciation. It's a message about how much someone matters and what your brand stands for. At 4imprint, you'll find thousands of customizable options like premium apparel, branded drinkware, tech totes, and more, each chosen not just for function, but for meaning. You can tailor every detail, your logo, your message, your presentation, so your gift feels personal and on-brand. And with expert support, dependable service, and thousands without a setup fee, creating something thoughtful doesn't mean making it complicated.

• 34:44Malcolm Gladwell?

  Every order is backed by 4imprint's 360-degree guarantee, so you can be 4imprint certain it'll arrive exactly as expected, on time, and with the care your brand deserves. Because when the moment matters, the right gift speaks volumes, and the right partner makes it easy. Explore gifting with purpose and certainty at 4imprint.com. 4imprint, for certain.

• 35:14Malcolm Gladwell?

  And we're back. Let's talk a little bit about

• 35:19Malcolm Gladwell?

  the role of faith in your life and work.

• 35:23Speaker 03

  Okay, yeah.

• 35:24Malcolm Gladwell?

  You, uh, so you grew up in a very religious family. You went to seminary in Scotland. Tell me about that decision.

• 35:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, uh,

• 35:36Speaker 03

  I think I've always sort of grown up. I think a lot of people that grew up in a world that I grew up in sort of either chose to just join into that space as adults. Or they sort of run the other direction and go through a deconstruction phase where they, you know, on a spectrum of sort of kindness to full vitriol, they depart from that space. And instead, I tried to navigate sort of a third way, which is I didn't have a personal experience with faith that sort of mirrored what I was told it was going to be like and that it would bring all this meaning and stuff to my life. And when I was 17, my brother passed away.

• 36:18Speaker 03

  He was born with spina bifida and had all sorts of health issues, but still suddenly, out of nowhere, I was out of the country when it happened. I'm doing like a summer of Spanish immersion in the Dominican Republic. And it passed away and got home. All the sacraments and words and instruments and communities of faith were sort of

• 36:37Speaker 03

  bubbled up in me and it wasn't making sense for me. So I had sort of a crisis of faith. And instead of turning away from it, I was still sort of trying to figure it out. But music was really the thing that kind of helped me make sense of my life. I'll never forget, there were two records in particular in that era. One was Van Morrison's Moon Dance. The other one was David Graves' White Ladder. And I would just, I would just drive in my car and just listen to these records and sob. And those records weren't even necessarily about grief, but they were grief records for me. And so, but I also didn't, my experience with faith and the faith community was that while I was struggling to believe what they told me was the right thing to believe,

• 37:21Speaker 03

  I also was experiencing a lot of love and affection from them and had from a young age. And so, a lot of people's hurt and deconstruction is fed off of abuse or mistreatment or, you know, and that was not my experience. And so, I couldn't have that same sort of departure because I was loved well. And so, it's created this really interesting tension in me because I was also expanding the way that my worldview is expanding in ways that didn't line up with a lot of what I grew up around. But also, we're talking about, you know, it's easy to lump people into these categories. And really, the spectrum of people who helped raise me, they all have different, different sort of spectrum of beliefs about different things, whether cultural, cosmic, theological, cultural, political,

• 38:04Speaker 03

  et cetera. So, I don't want to sort of speak about that community as one monolith. But, but at the same time, what I was finding and who I was becoming was getting farther from that. And part of the way I, part of that was going to seminary. I went to Scotland. They had a program at St. Andrews University where I could go for two weeks a semester, twice a year, and then write my papers. And so, you know, I was just, I was searching, but I was enjoying the search. You know, it was like, it was less of a like frantic looking for the lost keys when you're trying to get out of the house and more of a like, I just want to keep looking. I'm finding a lot of interesting things. I'm reading

• 38:46Speaker 03

  a lot of interesting people. It just allowed myself to engage in reading and in music and in ways that was sort of open to it instead of looking for a fight. And that's sort of the way I would say that I was raised, is that the church in that era, the school that I went to was a wall, is more of a wall and less of a bridge. It was more about protecting the flock instead of building a bridge to the world. And I would say my faith now is much more of like, I just want to be a bridge builder. But I haven't necessarily, I haven't rejected some of the sort of central teachings of Christian orthodoxy, but I have certainly rejected sort of American evangelical culture. And that's cost me a lot of fans, but that's okay.

• 39:32Malcolm Gladwell?

  Memphis to Scotland is a long way.

• 39:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, my senior high school English teacher took a trip every year to the UK. And the first place we went was Scotland and that immediately within three days on that trip, I said, I'm going to study abroad here. This place is Edinburgh is just this wonderland. And, you know, I loved English literature. I loved English history, you know, and honestly, like the South was settled by Scots, so a lot of it, you know, so there was like, when Braveheart came out, every Southerner in the world was like, yeah.

• 40:11Malcolm Gladwell?

  Was there anything about the music of Scotland that appealed to you?

• 40:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, there's a, there was this, there was a pub down the street from my flat, Sandy Bell was the name of it. And every night they had traditional Scottish music, you know, people playing instruments that I didn't even know what they were, but they're, they play these traditional Scottish folk songs and they'd always end with Loch Lomond. You take the high road and I'll take the low road and I'll be in Scotland before you, where me and my true love are there to meet again on the bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond.

• 40:48Speaker 03

  I was like, I'd sit in the corner crying about me and this mythical woman I'm going to meet at the bonny banks of Loch Lomond.

• 40:55Malcolm Gladwell?

  Your Scottish accent's pretty good.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  I did a lot of practice. My kids, my kids are always asking for it. But there's something about the Scottish weather and the story that sort of, that's where I started writing songs. I was still sort of in the throes of my grief and I was trying to process that grief. And so as a student, I decided my senior thesis at, in my program was going to be a, an oral history about my brother's life and death.

• 41:32Speaker 03

  From everybody that knew him and sort of the question was, why does a severely handicapped child have such like, so, because when he passed away, there were like 2,000 people at the funeral.

• 41:44Malcolm Gladwell?

  Two thousand?

• 41:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, there were like 100 nurses from the hospital that had met him over the last 15 years came and the school, the entire elementary school he went to had a day out of school and they all came.

• 41:54Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah.

• 41:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was this incredible celebration of a very short but very sort of thorough life. And so my sort of analytical side of my brain with the creative side of my brain was like, what if I just wrote an oral history of his life and interviewed his doctors, his teachers, his neighbors, his cousins, and why did, why did Jay matter so much to you? So I was working on that in Scotland and that's when I started writing songs because I didn't really know anybody. I always say that that time I was alone, I wasn't necessarily lonely, but I was alone and I had taken my guitar and I just started writing. And when I got back home from that semester, I started playing these songs for some friends

• 42:35Speaker 03

  and I think they were all expecting something completely different for my life. Like I got laughed at a couple of times before the songs, like, wait, you, you wrote songs? I mean, I know you play music, but like, aren't you going to be like history lawyer guy or something?

• 42:52Speaker 03

  And I played on these songs, they're like, oh, these are.

• 42:54Malcolm Gladwell?

  What's the first song you wrote that you were proud of?

• 42:57Speaker 03

  A song called Nightingale that I don't remember, but I do remember it being about my then friend and much later became my wife, Ellie. But it was a, it was a heartbreak song because she, she had, she had sort of ripped the heart from my chest in that era of my life, so.

• 43:19Malcolm Gladwell?

  Is that why you don't remember it? Is this a?

• 43:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. I got to move on from that song. Yeah.

• 43:25Malcolm Gladwell?

  You can't have forgotten all of it.

• 43:27Speaker 03

  No, I mean, that was something like, well, okay.

• 43:35Speaker 03

  This is embarrassing. I do remember the first line.

• 43:44Speaker 03

  Cinderella was a fairy tale. One that's true. I don't remember where it went after that, but there was something about. She sang like a nightingale. Something, something that rhymes with truth.

• 44:05Malcolm Gladwell?

  Wait, did you play this for her after she broke up with you?

• 44:08Speaker 03

  Well, you made an assumption there that we dated in the first place.

• 44:12Malcolm Gladwell?

  Oh, I see. At what point in the trajectory of you and Ellie did she hear that song?

• 44:19Speaker 03

  I mean, pretty soon after I wrote it, but I didn't tell her it was about her, you know?

• 44:23Malcolm Gladwell?

  She didn't figure it out?

• 44:24Speaker 03

  No, she did not.

• 44:26Malcolm Gladwell?

  Oh, come on.

• 44:27Speaker 03

  Well, that's according to her. You've talked to her about that. But yeah, so that was the first song I sang and I was playing it for my buddies in college and they were like, "That's pretty good." But that was before Scotland. That was the first song I wrote. And Scotland started writing songs that I... I don't know, just something started to click. But really, I didn't... It took me... I moved quickly into sort of what I would call my 20 to 23-year-old Steve Earle, Bruce Springsteen, Ryan Adams imitation phase. Where I was really trying to write the rugged, third-person, minor chord songs.

• 45:09Speaker 03

  And it wasn't me, but I needed to do that to find my path. But none of those songs are available on the internet.

• 45:17Malcolm Gladwell?

  Which Bruce Springsteen? There are many Bruce Springsteens. Which is your favorite Bruce Springsteen?

• 45:23Speaker 03

  Well, my favorite Bruce Springsteen is Greetings from Asbury Park, Bruce Springsteen. But I like them all. But the one I was imitating was like the Nebraska Tom Jones.

• 45:32Malcolm Gladwell?

  I was gonna say Nebraska. I want to talk about Nebraska for a moment. Because I was obsessed with that record.

• 45:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:39Malcolm Gladwell?

  And you know, it's funny because music like that doesn't just influence musicians, it influences writers.

• 45:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:48Malcolm Gladwell?

  And the song that I always came back to was... I don't know what it's called, but it's the one about the guy who's a police officer?

• 45:56Speaker 03

  Highway patrolman.

• 45:57Malcolm Gladwell?

  Highway patrolman.

• 45:58Speaker 03

  I've played that song 100 times.

• 46:00Malcolm Gladwell?

  Man turns his back on his family.

• 46:01Speaker 03

  He just ain't no good.

• 46:02Malcolm Gladwell?

  He just ain't no good. And that was like...

• 46:07Malcolm Gladwell?

  As a kind of template for writing an emotionally powerful story. It's just stuck in my head. It's so, that song is so beautifully constructed. Wait, can you, do you, can you, can you remember any of it?

• 46:20Speaker 03

  I can play, I can play the chorus probably.

• 46:22Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah, play the chorus. For those who don't know the song, this is, it's, I think it's one of his finest songs.

• 46:31Speaker 03

  I can do a part of it, let's see. My name is Joe Roberts. I work for the state. Sergeant out of Burtonville. Bears number eight.

• 46:49Malcolm Gladwell?

  I've always been an honest man.

• 46:50Speaker 03

  Been an honest man, honest as I could. My little brother named Frankie, and Frankie ain't no good.

• 47:00Malcolm Gladwell?

  Is it bad that I sing along?

• 47:03Speaker 03

  Ask the audience, I don't know. But then, you know, goes on. Yeah, we're laughing and drinking. Nothing feels better than blood on blood. Taking turns dancing with Maria. The band plays Night of the Johnstown Flood.

• 47:23Malcolm Gladwell?

  Catch him when he's straying.

• 47:25Speaker 03

  Yep. Like any brother would.

• 47:28Malcolm Gladwell?

  No, teach him how to walk that line.

• 47:30Speaker 03

  Two different choruses.

• 47:31Malcolm Gladwell?

  Oh, all right, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

• 47:34Speaker 03

  Because, because my favorite is, like any, like any brother would. Man turns his back on his family, but he just ain't no good. And then there's this, that line to me that, that song, I love that song for a lot of different reasons. If you don't, I'll just, the song's been out for 40 years, so I'll spoiler alert. Basically, you know, this, this, the narrator is a state trooper, highway patrolman, and his brother's a mess, and he ends up. Injuring, possibly killing somebody in a bar fight. And he gets called into the scene and realizes it's his own brother. And his brother, he's chasing him out of the state, Michigan.

• 48:17Speaker 03

  And he lets him go into Canada, you know, and lets him escape. And then he ends with that chorus and turns it back on his family. He just say, no good. And my brother, who's now been eight years sober. There was a lot of years where that was like, that was our dynamic. You know, it was always the good, rule following, successful big brother. And he was the, you know, he didn't mind me saying that we were very close. But and he's turned his life around. But I thought that was going to be my life was like, I'm gonna lose him to his vice. And so I'd play that song on nights when I hadn't heard from him. And I love that song.

• 48:58Malcolm Gladwell?

  There's a lot of emotion in here.

• 49:00Speaker 03

  A lot of emotion in here?

• 49:01Malcolm Gladwell?

  In, no, in you.

• 49:03Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 49:08Speaker 03

  I'll take that as a compliment.

• 49:10Malcolm Gladwell?

  I did not just, folks may not know this, but we, Drew and I met a couple of months back. Yeah, April. Doing this thing which can't be described. And

• 49:21Speaker 03

  It's a form of a variety show.

• 49:22Malcolm Gladwell?

  A variety show. We hung out together. I was on the bus with Drew, among other things. And you said something, there's a series of things. I didn't know anything about you. And you said something to me that just so surprised me. And I, you said that you just talked about how you have a, you have, you get angry.

• 49:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 49:52Malcolm Gladwell?

  And I didn't see that. I didn't see that in you. And I was so surprised to hear that.

• 49:59Speaker 03

  I was sort of taught growing up that anger is bad. You know, that what I've since learned is that anger is not bad. It's rage that's bad, which is like sort of the, this is going to get all counseley on you guys, but it's been a big part of my journey as a, as a person and as a musician. It's not the anger that's bad. Anger is like the red light, you know, it's what you do with it. And so I've learned instead of getting sort of physically upset is to go, wow, I'm so angry. What is it? It's usually some sort of injustice either against me or the world or my neighbor or my family, or is it's, it's your yellow light that's flashing that you're lonely or sad or hurt. And so I've learned that it's like my superpower. Like when I'm angry, I know that, I know that I gotta figure out what's going on instead

• 50:44Speaker 03

  of trying to tamp it down, you know?

• 50:48Malcolm Gladwell?

  Have you ever written, what is your, what is the angriest song? I have an idea that you've ever written.

• 50:53Speaker 03

  Oh, that's great. Um, it's a song called Ring the Bells.

• 50:57Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yes.

• 50:57Speaker 03

  Okay, you want to hear it?

• 50:58Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah. Wait, you had to give the context.

• 51:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I wrote this song with my,

• 51:07Speaker 03

  I wrote this song with my friends, Avner and Amanda Ramirez. Avner's a Cuban, I'm American, Amanda's African American. We wrote this song together, I think, three days after Charlottesville,

• 51:23Speaker 03

  white supremacy rally,

• 51:26Speaker 03

  when some very famous sort of American Christians were both sidesing the situation. And we got real pissed and wrote this song together.

• 51:44Speaker 03

  Ring the bells, this time I mean it. Bid the hatred fairly well. Give back the pieces of my Jesus. Take your counterfeit to hell. Bang the drums, this means war, not the kind you waiting for. We say mercy won't be rationed here. It's what we're fighting for. And if all is fair in love and war, then what the hell is love even for?

• 52:14Speaker 03

  If we can't sing it loud enough, we'll keep on adding voices. Oh, ring the bells. Ring the bells. Ring the bells. Ring the bells.

• 52:32Speaker 03

  Just a little bit of it.

• 52:37Malcolm Gladwell?

  That's, that's what I.

• 52:41Malcolm Gladwell?

  That's the one I had in mind.

• 52:43Speaker 03

  We were, I was very angry when I wrote that song. Felt good.

• 52:47Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah. It's funny, it's, it. You're, you, you, you play it like a man possessed.

• 52:57Speaker 03

  Well, I was watching Daniel Tiger one time with my daughter. And there was this.

• 53:01Malcolm Gladwell?

  But I just love to segue from possessed to someone who, there's a lot of Daniel Tiger in my life as well.

• 53:06Speaker 03

  It's very, it's very related to what we're talking about. So there's this scene where Daniel gets upset. And the mom says, okay, Daniel, we're gonna learn a song. If you feel so mad that you wanna roar, take a deep breath, then count to four. And I was like, I'm sorry. Emmy Lou, she's four years old. I'm like, that's not always true.

• 53:29Speaker 03

  Sometimes what you need to do, when you feel so mad that you wanna roar, take a deep breath, then roar.

• 53:39Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yes.

• 53:39Speaker 03

  Get it out. Don't, don't stuff that stuff inside of you.

• 53:43Malcolm Gladwell?

  We'll be right back with Drew's answers to the homework assignment I gave him. I asked him to come up with his five favorite country songs of all time, so he could compare his list to mine.

• 53:57Speaker 00

  This is Jacob Goldstein. With ChatGPT, you can do more than get answers. You can get things done. When you're running a business and looking to expand, you need a clear view of the landscape before making any decisions. ChatGPT can help you prepare. Connect your Google Drive, point to relevant files and reports, and ask it to research competitors, industry forecasts, and market signals. It can turn the findings into a strategic deck in your team's template that you can review before presenting to your leadership team. Growing a business is ambitious, and ChatGPT can help you do it with confidence. Get started today at chatgpt.com.

• 54:34Malcolm Gladwell?

  A business gift is never just a gift. It's a thank you, a milestone, a moment of appreciation. It's a message about how much someone matters and what your brand stands for. At 4imprint, you'll find thousands of customizable options, like premium apparel, branded drinkware, tech totes, and more, each chosen not just for function, but for meaning. You can tailor every detail, your logo, your message, your presentation, so your gift feels personal and on-brand. And with expert support, dependable service, and thousands without a setup fee, creating something thoughtful doesn't mean making it complicated.

• 55:16Malcolm Gladwell?

  Every order is backed by 4imprint's 360-degree guarantee, so you can be 4imprint certain it'll arrive exactly as expected, on time, and with the care your brand deserves. Because when the moment matters, the right gift speaks volumes, and the right partner makes it easy. Explore gifting with purpose and certainty at 4imprint.com. 4imprint, for certain. These days, there are more people than ever telling you how to manage your health. And we've all gone down an internet rabbit hole exploring the latest health trends. Your social media feed is packed with wellness advice telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep.

• 56:00Malcolm Gladwell?

  But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to health influencers, real people, and most importantly, doctors, to separate fact from fiction. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 56:43Malcolm Gladwell?

  And we're back. Can we talk, let's talk about musical influences for a moment. Let's start with Amy Lou Harris. I would love to. When we were thinking about this evening about our list of iconic country songs, and one of my, one of, on my list is "Boulder to Birmingham." Do you know that? No. That's the, that is, it is the, one of the few songwriting credits she has on her first, I think she only has one songwriting credit on her first nine albums, and that's "Boulder to Birmingham," which she writes about Graham Parsons. Oh, yeah. And it is, actually, we're gonna play a little bit of it.

• 57:26Malcolm Gladwell?

  It is the most, just play the first little, like, 30 seconds of it. I've never heard this song. I'm very excited to. It's so heart-wrenchingly beautiful. And the, I mention it only because we were talking about grief and about emotion. It's a song, it's a song about grief. And it's a, the articulation of her sense of loss and longing is just perfect. Anyway, here it is, I think.

• 58:27Malcolm Gladwell?

  I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham if I thought I could see, I could see your face. That's her, the way she articulates her sense of loss.

• 58:40Speaker 03

  She sings with so much ache, too.

• 58:42Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah. Did you do your homework?

• 58:45Speaker 03

  I did my homework, yeah. Your one assignment, I respect. I, yeah, I had some arguments with my wife when I picked this first one because she's like, I don't think of that as a country song. And I was like, well, it was like a number three on the country charts. And, but I think my favorite country song, or what I think is the best country song is Wichita Lineman by Glen Campbell.

• 59:07Malcolm Gladwell?

  Uh huh.

• 59:08Speaker 03

  I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time. There's a song about a, Jimmy Webb wrote the song and he talks about how his, I think it was his uncle was a lineman. He always remembered seeing him up on the poles, working on the electrical lines. And so the song came easy to him because he could imagine him, you know, being away from home for a long time, wishing for, to be home with the one he loves. And it stood the test of time, too. It's a very simple song about a working man missing his, his love. But that's my number one.

• 59:44Malcolm Gladwell?

  Your wife said that was not a country song.

• 59:46Speaker 03

  She said she doesn't think of it as a country song.

• 59:50Malcolm Gladwell?

  What does she think of it as?

• 59:53Speaker 03

  She, that was not clear to me. We agreed on my, my second one, though.

• 1:00:00Malcolm Gladwell?

  Which is what?

• 1:00:00Speaker 03

  Which is Crazy by Patsy Cline.

• 1:00:02Malcolm Gladwell?

  Oh, yes, okay.

• 1:00:03Speaker 03

  I mean, it's such a standard, but it is so good. And I love that Willie Nelson wrote it. And then a couple of years later, he kind of quit the industry, moves to Austin, Texas, and writes the most non-commercial country record ever, that's, you know, Redhead and Stranger. As a 43-year-old, his career blows up. Just love the story. And we've played a lot, we've gotten to play a lot of shows with Willie over the years. I've sang with him a dozen times.

• 1:00:30Malcolm Gladwell?

  Well, you know Willie Nelson. I didn't know that.

• 1:00:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, we're not, we don't like call each other because he's, you know, he's, he's an older guy and, but I have, yeah, we've shared the stage and sung, he does this really neat thing every night where he does a medley of, I saw the light, will the circle be unbroken? One other, I'm blanking on.

• 1:00:51Speaker 03

  And he invites, you know, the opener to come out and sing it with him. And so I've got to do that, I don't know, 12 or 15 times. So he and Dolly, to me, are the two living legends left, you know, in that space. And then my third one would be Jolene. As a Tennessean, if I didn't mention a Dolly Parton song, I probably couldn't go home. What's your other one or two?

• 1:01:17Malcolm Gladwell?

  George Jones, The Grand Tour.

• 1:01:19Speaker 03

  That's a sad song.

• 1:01:21Malcolm Gladwell?

  It's, you know, I have, I'm, I might be more attracted to, you are attracted to pure emotion, it seems like, and I'm attracted in country music to over the top grandiosity. And The Grand Tour, George Jones is like,

• 1:01:41Malcolm Gladwell?

  he's like the, he is in the best possible sense of the word, a caricature of a country singer. That voice, but we're gonna, I'm gonna make them play just the beginning of, and play, play The Grand Tour until the line chills me to the bone.

• 1:02:00Speaker 05

  Step right in, come on in.

• 1:02:06Speaker 05

  If you'd like to take the grand tour of the lonely house.

• 1:02:13Malcolm Gladwell?

  So fantastic.

• 1:02:17Malcolm Gladwell?

  Sweet home.

• 1:02:22Speaker 05

  I have nothing here to sell you.

• 1:02:27Malcolm Gladwell?

  Here comes.

• 1:02:33Speaker 05

  Some things I know will chill you to the bone.

• 1:02:42Malcolm Gladwell?

  I mean, the notion that you would write a song that with a straight face has the phrase chill you to the bone. And you know, he's, he's got nothing. He doesn't have anything that's chilling you to the bone.

• 1:02:54Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:02:55Malcolm Gladwell?

  Some woman dumped him.

• 1:02:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, she, that's it. An empty house. That's, this'll chill you to the bone. My empty house.

• 1:03:01Malcolm Gladwell?

  My empty house. He's so, I just can't get over the fact. He's so genius.

• 1:03:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, you love the melodrama.

• 1:03:08Malcolm Gladwell?

  I love the melodrama.

• 1:03:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:09Malcolm Gladwell?

  I once, back in the day of mixtapes, I used to make these mixtapes constantly. And they were always named after, for reasons I forget now. They were always named after popes. So on the front of the CD case, I'd have a image of one of the popes, like, you know, Pope Pius the 12th, or Emmanuel the 16th. And then the song, I had, I made like 10 of them because there were a lot of popes. And I was once driving with some person who didn't know me very well. And I was playing one of these mixtapes, the long drive. One of these mixtapes after another. And after like the third one, this guy Mike turned to me and said, what is the matter with you?

• 1:03:52Malcolm Gladwell?

  Every single song was some kind of melancholy, over the top weeper. I'm happy if the tempo is never picked up.

• 1:04:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. Songwriting, you're always pulling from your library, you know? And you, hopefully your library just keeps growing and growing. And the trick is when I, when I was young, you're imitating. And then you get better at finding, when you find your own voice. And then you're just sort of taking cues from your library. You're not copying anybody, but you're, you're going, oh, that's interesting. That's kind of reminds me of this. Let's, you know, make it our own and.

• 1:04:27Malcolm Gladwell?

  The people that you've mentioned, who are important influences for you. We just mentioned, we talked to them before about, oh, about Paul Simon. I'm curious, what's the thread that links? And also, Tom, I know that Tom Petty is someone that has had an influence. What, what's the thread that links these influences?

• 1:04:48Speaker 03

  I think all those songwriters, I don't know if there's, if there's actually a, a, a perfect common thread between them, but something about all those song, all those artists, they made records that really connected with me and helped me sort of see the world, if you will, and helped me feel the world. And that's the, that's the beauty of music is there's a bit of magic to it. And I'm sure there's um, scientific and sociological ways to explain them. I'm not really interested necessarily in hearing them because I like the magic of it. I like the myth that, I don't know why this record speaks to me so much, but when I hear um, you know, Tom Petty's Wildflowers, and I, I hear, all I have to

• 1:05:32Speaker 03

  hear is a, "You belong among the wildflowers, you belong in a boat out at sea." That, that in and of itself is just a beautiful sentiment, you know, executed with this, you know, the, the arrangement, the sonic sort of landscape of it. Uh, none of the artists that I love seem to sort of play by a certain formula. Maybe they do sometimes on certain songs or certain records, but Tom Petty's a great example. If you look at his sort of, the arc of his career and listen to the different records, they don't all sound the same. There's, you know, the different producers have sort of different eras and fingerprints on his, on his work. Jeff Lynne's stuff is different than the Jimmy Irvine's stuff and, uh, and I like that, that they're always looking for something else to say, something else

• 1:06:18Speaker 03

  to sing, some new way to express human experience via music and instruments and electricity and all this stuff that makes this, is, makes it work. Um.

• 1:06:30Malcolm Gladwell?

  I asked you to sing one cover.

• 1:06:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:34Malcolm Gladwell?

  Tell me what you chose and why.

• 1:06:35Speaker 03

  I um, well, I did, I chose this song because you, you and I connected over the song um, back when we met in April. And I just saw this artist play at the Ryman, which is a

• 1:06:49Speaker 03

  My favorite venue in the world and in serious underplay for him. The last time I saw him in Nashville was at the Bridgestone Arena. Then he retired and now he's come out of retirement to do these intimate acoustic shows. I know that you have interacted with him a ton and I've heard nothing but great things about him personally and I think this is one of the great songs. I also think it has what I consider the best first line of a song that I've ever heard. So this is Paul Simon's "America."

• 1:07:30Speaker 04

  Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together.

• 1:07:39Speaker 04

  I've got some real estate here in my bag.

• 1:07:47Speaker 04

  So I bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner's pies and walked off to look for America.

• 1:08:07Speaker 04

  Kathy I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh.

• 1:08:16Speaker 04

  Michigan seems like a dream to me now.

• 1:08:23Speaker 04

  It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw. I've gone to look for America.

• 1:08:40Speaker 04

  Laughing on a bus, playing games with their faces.

• 1:08:49Speaker 04

  She says the man in the gabardine suit is a spy.

• 1:08:58Speaker 04

  I said be careful, his bowtie is really a camera.

• 1:09:11Speaker 04

  Well toss me a cigarette, I've got one here in my raincoat.

• 1:09:20Speaker 04

  Know we smoked the last one an hour ago.

• 1:09:28Speaker 04

  Well I looked at the scenery.

• 1:09:32Speaker 04

  She read her magazine. As the moon rose over an open field.

• 1:09:48Speaker 04

  Well Kathy, I'm lost, I said though I knew she was sleeping.

• 1:09:57Speaker 04

  I'm empty and aching and I don't know why.

• 1:10:04Speaker 04

  Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike. They've all gone to look for America.

• 1:10:17Speaker 04

  All gone to look for America. We've all gone to look for America.

• 1:10:38Speaker 04

  Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together.

• 1:10:47Malcolm Gladwell?

  That was beautiful.

• 1:10:52Malcolm Gladwell?

  Thank you.

• 1:10:55Malcolm Gladwell?

  You said his concert at the Ryman that you saw. Earlier this year.

• 1:11:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was, um, and it was actually, this was, um, really sweet for me personally, but we played two nights at the Ryman on May 2nd and 3rd, and then he played three nights at the Ryman, May, like 12th, 13th, and 14th. And I got to sit, um, and watch a show right after I'd played there and to see one of my heroes in the same spot that I was in eight days earlier. And he had the same reverence for the room that I always have. And it was, um, it was a bit of an emotional and joyous and overwhelming experience. And he did two sets. He did the seven hymns record from front to back.

• 1:11:42Speaker 03

  And then he came out and did sort of all the songs that you would want, expect to hear in the second set. And it was just a, yeah, it was wonderful.

• 1:11:50Malcolm Gladwell?

  So you were in the middle, you, you, you were in the middle of writing a song about Cormac McCarthy?

• 1:11:55Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, I was.

• 1:11:58Malcolm Gladwell?

  Tell me how that came about and where you are in that song.

• 1:12:01Speaker 03

  Cormac McCarthy is one of my favorite authors, you know, Southern Gothic, dark, violent, end of the world, apocalypse, human, sort of morality play author, right? Very sparse and no country for old men, all the pretty horses, the road, so many great books that turned into great films, et cetera. So he actually grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, which is where I went to school. But he had, he, he left there and lived all over, but it sort of landed in the desert in, um, Santa Fe, El Paso, somewhere in there.

• 1:12:36Speaker 03

  Unrelated to that, seemingly, was I love old cars. And so I get this email from a company that auctions old cars just because I love to look at them. And I get this email in April, early April, it says Cormac McCarthy's Ferrari. It's being auctioned off. And so it kind of like blew a fuse in me because I'm like Cormac McCarthy didn't drive a Ferrari.

• 1:13:01Malcolm Gladwell?

  That's like nuts.

• 1:13:02Speaker 03

  And it's like, sure, he, he actually did. He drove this black Ferrari.

• 1:13:06Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:06Speaker 03

  In the last years of his life. And so I had this idea of like writing a song, Cormac McCarthy's Black Ferrari. But I couldn't quite find my, the end, you know? Couldn't find the end. I thought, no, I wanna, I wanna drive Cormac McCarthy's black Ferrari through the desert and like, and have a complete existential crisis.

• 1:13:29Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:30Speaker 03

  And I feel like everybody right now is sort of, we sort of live inside of existential crisis. That's, that's like gonna be the era that we live in, we look back on, we're like, that's the, that's the era of the existential crisis. There's just so much happening at, at such a speed that it's hard to keep up and it's hard to know how to, where to put your anger and where to put your, your joy and how to, how to live. And I thought, one of the ways it would help me is if I had Cormac McCarthy's black Ferrari for a day. So I wrote this song and um, first person I sent it to was you because we had talked about that interview.

• 1:14:08Malcolm Gladwell?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:14:09Speaker 03

  And-

• 1:14:09Malcolm Gladwell?

  I love old cars too.

• 1:14:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, and we also, we, we, yeah, we connect over old cars. And I was like, I, I um, yeah, so I've never played this song before, except for during soundcheck. So this is um, this is a debut. And I, I really like this song. And if you don't like it, I don't really care that much because I like it a lot, so. Um, let's see if I can remember how to-

• 1:14:46Speaker 03

  Walking on the sidewalk through my neighborhood, my neighbor's black cat is up to no good. There's something in the air, something in the streets, like a red-tailed hawk waiting up in the trees. There's levees and tolls and roadblocks and speed bumps. Has it been a day, a week, or just a month? Unwanted packages by the front door screen and empty pages in my diary. Cormac McCarthy's got a black Ferrari that he drives across the desert on a Sunday morning. And I'm dreaming bout the wind in my face, nothing but my worn-out suitcase driving that Ferrari like Cormac McCarthy in my mind.

• 1:15:39Speaker 04

  In my mind.

• 1:15:45Speaker 04

  A fiasco falls like rain on our faces. A Mickey Mantle rookie card ruined in the basement. Nothing turns out like you thought it would. It's a little more barefoot than Hollywood. It's confusing, the losing, the boozing, excusing, the stage fright and all the troubleshooting. Where do I fit in amongst all the matter? And this party always feels like a lost soul's gathering.

• 1:16:13Speaker 04

  Cormac McCarthy's got a black Ferrari that he drives across the desert on a Sunday morning. And I'm dreaming bout the wind in my face. Nothing but my worn-out suitcase driving that Ferrari like Cormac McCarthy in my mind.

• 1:16:42Speaker 04

  In my mind.

• 1:16:49Speaker 04

  Engine and fuel and pain and chrome.

• 1:16:55Speaker 04

  Muscle and blood and skin and bone.

• 1:17:00Speaker 04

  Engine and fuel and pain and chrome.

• 1:17:06Speaker 04

  Muscle and blood and skin and bones.

• 1:17:14Speaker 04

  Cormac McCarthy's got a black Ferrari that he drives across the desert on a Sunday morning. And I'm dreaming bout the wind in my face. Nothing but my worn-out suitcase driving that Ferrari like Cormac McCarthy in my mind. In my mind. In my mind. I'm driving Cormac McCarthy's black Ferrari in my mind.

• 1:17:59Malcolm Gladwell?

  I love that.

• 1:18:02Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:18:04Malcolm Gladwell?

  Why, you said you couldn't figure out how to, couldn't figure out your way in. What did you mean by that?

• 1:18:11Speaker 03

  Well, I had this, this like, the, the, obviously the phrase and the rhyme, Corey McCarthy's Black Ferrari.

• 1:18:21Speaker 03

  It was like, this song gonna be like a funny song about how could this maudlin writer have such a, you know,

• 1:18:32Speaker 03

  cultural toy like this? This doesn't make sense to me.

• 1:18:36Malcolm Gladwell?

  Should be a piece of old Chevy pickup.

• 1:18:38Speaker 03

  Right, yeah, that's, that's like, that's the imagination, right? It's not, not that he had this car, so it's like a Magnum P I car, you know? So, then I was like, no, that's not the right frame, because what I felt when I saw that that existed, as a fan of his work, and as also as someone who would like to have a 1989 Testa Rosa, just for a day even, was that, no, even the saddest, most sort of Gothic, you know, chronicler of American violence, needed an escape. And so he had this black Ferrari, and he would just go, I'd imagine him smiling, driving

• 1:19:20Speaker 03

  120 miles an hour across the desert in Santa Fe, and there's not a picture in the world that exists of Corey McCarthy smiling.

• 1:19:26Malcolm Gladwell?

  No.

• 1:19:28Speaker 03

  And so, I relate to that. I relate, I relate to feeling the weight of, of, you know, life and all of its like joys and tragedies, and that sometimes the simple pleasure might make it go away for a minute.

• 1:19:48Malcolm Gladwell?

  Has that, that song, as it stands now, have you worked on that with the band, or is that all you go at this point?

• 1:19:54Speaker 03

  Well, they've heard it, but we haven't, no, we wait till we all get in the room together before we sort of dive into it, but...

• 1:20:00Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah. What will happen to it when, when you all dive in?

• 1:20:04Speaker 03

  I don't know. I mean, we'll, we'll go through several iterations. First thing we'll do is we'll make sure we're in the right key, we'll do some practical things, make sure in the right key, figure out the tempo. And then we'll sort of jump into the approach, you know, like, what are the drums gonna be doing? Are we, are we, is this acoustic sort of, is that the main engine driver of the song? Or are we gonna do like a piano, bass, drums thing? And then, you know, just kind of like try a bunch of different things? And then inevitably, one of them, all five of us will go, that's it. That's the, that's the approach.

• 1:20:36Malcolm Gladwell?

  Yeah, it's a really beautiful song.

• 1:20:38Speaker 03

  Thank you, thank you.

• 1:20:40Malcolm Gladwell?

  Do I think we're, I think our time is...

• 1:20:45Speaker 03

  I have no idea how much time, we've been up here a while, though.

• 1:20:47Malcolm Gladwell?

  We've been up here a while.

• 1:20:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:49Malcolm Gladwell?

  I feel like people lurking.

• 1:20:52Malcolm Gladwell?

  How should we end this?

• 1:20:54Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 1:20:56Malcolm Gladwell?

  Am I, am I being presumptuous if I ask you to play one more song?

• 1:20:59Speaker 03

  Sure, sure.

• 1:21:02Speaker 03

  I'll play a song I wrote.

• 1:21:06Speaker 03

  There's a wonderful band in Nashville that has toured for many years called Old Crow Medicine Show. My kids go to school with some of Ketch's kids, who's the lead singer and writer. And this is a great Nashville story. We're dropping our kids off at school. And he's like, what are you up to this week? And I said, I'm just gonna be in my office doing some writing and, and, you know, working. He said, we should write a song this week. We'd never written a song together before. And so I said, well, how about tomorrow morning? So the next morning, we drop our kids off, we get coffee. By 8:30, we're writing songs. And we wrote this song about 10:30 that morning. We both had just gotten back into doing normal shows again with a real, with live audiences. And we had really missed that.

• 1:21:46Malcolm Gladwell?

  So this is such a fantastic, only in Nashville story.

• 1:21:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is, it is. And then it was a great, it was a great song for me. It ended up being, the song's called Dance With Everybody. And then ended up getting picked up by the NCAA for two years straight as a theme song for March Madness, which, A, the song's not about basketball.

• 1:22:06Speaker 03

  And B, I am like one of the world's worst basketball players. And a big family of athletes. And so it brought me a lot of satisfaction that my song, I was in, I got to participate in March Madness. And none of my, none of my athletic six, three cousins did, so.

• 1:22:33Speaker 04

  You walked into this room, you hardly knew anyone. A sea full of strangers, just crashing on the rungs. When the band strikes by the end of the night, strangers no more. I wanna dance with everybody who came through that door. Whether you came here to party, or you came here to cry. Whether to meet somebody, cheat somebody, get low or get high. So come on all you people with two feet on your floor. I wanna dance with everybody who came through that door. Whoa, let it all go. Whoa, shake up your soul. Throw your hands in the air, throw your hat in the rain.

• 1:23:18Speaker 04

  Throw your hips and your heart into everything. Get lost in the crowd, get down on the floor. I wanna dance with everybody who came through that door.

• 1:23:34Speaker 04

  Well, come all you saints and sinners, poets, prophets and fools. All you cowboys, tricksters, hipsters, trying so hard to be cool. All you dreamers and schemers, thirsty for more. I wanna dance with everybody who came through that door. Whoa, let it all go. Whoa, shake up your soul. Throw your hands in the air, throw your hat in the rain. Throw your hips and your heart into everything. Get lost in the crowd, get down on the floor. I wanna dance with everybody who came through that door.

• 1:24:16Speaker 04

  Oh, hey!

• 1:24:20Speaker 04

  Oh, hey!

• 1:24:24Speaker 04

  Oh, hey!

• 1:24:30Speaker 04

  Well, let's put aside our differences. We'll lace up our shoes. Let's narrow the distance between me and you. Meet me in the middle. Let's quit keeping score. I wanna dance with everybody who came through that door. Whoa, let it all go. Whoa, shake up your soul. Throw your hands in the air. Throw your hat in the rain. Throw your hips and your heart into everything. Turn the world on a string. Turn the winds on a dime. Turn the wheel to the west and the water to wind. Get lost in the crowd. Get down on the floor.

• 1:25:14Speaker 04

  I wanna dance with everybody who came through that door. I wanna dance with everybody who came through that door.

• 1:25:24Speaker 04

  Whoa.

• 1:25:30Malcolm Gladwell?

  Thank you so much, Drew. Thank you all.

• 1:25:38Malcolm Gladwell?

  This episode of Broken Record is produced by Leah Rose and Nina Bird Lawrence with Ben Nadaff-Hafray and Lucy Sullivan. Our engineers are Nina Bird Lawrence, Sarah Brugger, and Ben Tolliday. Marketing by Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our executive producers are Jacob Smith and Justin Richmond. Special thanks to A24, to Eloise Linton, and to the whole crew over at the Cherry Lane Theater. My name is Malcolm Gabo. A business gift should do more than check a box. It should reflect your brand and show someone they're appreciated, recognized, and truly seen. That's why teams trust 4 Imprint.

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• 1:27:19Speaker 00

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• 1:27:20Malcolm Gladwell?

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