#232 John Rich - Big & Rich Country Star Performs Unreleased Song LIVE

John Rich is an American country music singer-songwriter, record producer, and entrepreneur. He first gained prominence as a bassist and vocalist in the band Lonestar from 1992 to 1998, contributing to hits like "Amazed." In 1998, he co-founded the duo Big & Rich with Big Kenny Alphin, achieving multi-platinum success with albums like Horse of a Different Color (2004) and singles such as "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)," blending country with rock and rap influences. As a solo artist, Rich released tracks like "Shuttin' Detroit Down" (2009) and hosted CMT's Gone Country while winning Celebrity Apprentice in 2011, raising over $1.3 million for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. An entrepreneur, he launched Redneck Riviera whiskey and a Nashville bar, co-founded Old Glory Bank. Rich supports causes like veterans through the Return the Favor campaign with the VFW and online child safety, partnering with DHS for a 2025 livestream on protecting kids from predators. In 2025, he received the Bob Hope Award at the Patriot Gala for military advocacy. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://blackbuffalo.com https://prizepicks.onelink.me/lmeo/srs https://americanfinancing.net/srs NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org. APR for rates in the 5s start at 6.327% for well qualified borrowers. Call 866-781-8900, for details about credit costs and terms. https://tryarmra.com/srs https://betterhelp.com/srs This episode is sponsored. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. https://bunkr.life – USE CODE SRS Go to https://bunkr.life/SRS and use code “SRS” to get 25% off your family plan. https://shawnlikesgold.com https://hillsdale.edu/srs https://ketone.com/srs Visit https://ketone.com/srs for 30% OFF your subscription order. https://rocketmoney.com/srs https://ROKA.com – USE CODE SRS https://simplisafe.com/srs John Rich Links: Website - https://www.johnrich.com X - https://x.com/johnrich Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/johnrichofficial Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/JohnRichMusic TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@johnrichofficial Big & Rich - https://bigandrich.com Redneck Riviera - https://redneckriviera.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:05Shawn Ryan?

  John Rich, welcome to the show.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Thanks for the invite, man. We have been in the same room at the same time many times and never connected.

• 0:13Shawn Ryan?

  I know, man. I've been looking for him for a long time. Well, every time I see you, you're talking to somebody. I don't want to interrupt you.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  So are you. You're always surrounded.

• 0:25Shawn Ryan?

  But, man, we got so much to talk about. I want to do a life story on you. And then I've been... I really started paying attention to you probably around 2020. And I was like, oh, man, I really like what this guy's saying.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  What got your attention in 2020?

• 0:41Shawn Ryan?

  I don't remember exactly what it was, and I don't remember the exact timeframe, but I just remember you... You know, you started speaking out about a lot of the stuff that's going on, and I just have a ton of respect for any celebrity type, whether that's Hollywood, music industry, sports, whatever. There's just not that many people that go against the grain. And, and you are a man that I think, I don't think, I know you stand by your values and beliefs, and you do not waver on that for what appears to be anything. When I watch so many other people in the industry, you know, they just, they just, they go with the grain. They don't care about their values and beliefs.

• 1:23Shawn Ryan?

  And, you know, for lack of a better term, they seem to sell their soul. And, um, and you are the exact opposite of that, so I appreciate it. And I know, I know a lot of people appreciate you stepping it up.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  That's very kind. I appreciate you saying that.

• 1:40Shawn Ryan?

  My pleasure.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  You know, saying, uh, being, whether, whether it's with your music, or an interview, or social media, whatever, saying something that you know is going to upset your handlers, but you say it anyway. Will it affect your bank account? Yes, it will. It affect your opportunities? Yes. You know what else it affects? Good sleep. It affects your sleep. You sleep better at night, or at least I do, knowing that it... Somebody with a checkbook wasn't able to keep me from saying... I didn't look at that as leverage on me to keep me from saying what I needed to say. Because I'm an American, by God.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  That's what I am. I'm allowed to talk if I want to. And you're allowed to not pay me if you want to, by the way. You're allowed to take things away from me, but if I'm willing to give that up, let's go. And what kind of sacrifice is that compared to what people have given up for this country since day one? It's nothing.

• 2:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  I like good sleep. And I like to set an example for my two sons, who are teenagers now, that when you get out in this world, you don't back up. If you know it's the truth and you know that's what the boss wants you to do, you do it. Doesn't matter what they take away from you. Don't even give it a second thought. So, I look at it from all those various angles and that gives me the confidence and the soul fire to go out there and, and make those statements and say what needs to be said.

• 3:12Shawn Ryan?

  I love that, man. How, how fast did you start seeing that affect your, your business?

• 3:19Speaker 01

  So, it was prior to 2020 when, when I came on your radar. It was in the 20 teens, probably 20, mm, 10, around in that range. When, when Obama became president, you saw Music Row. A lot of the, a lot of the original guys that were running those labels from back in the day, which were actually country music fans and they were mostly all patriotic guys and really talented and they were country music to the core. They started replacing those people with people from LA, people from New York. They would bring in... You know, a New York guy to replace the Nashville guy at, for instance, RCA Records or something.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  And then when the new guy comes in, he would start changing the culture of that label, which bled all the way down into the artists and it bled all the way down into the publicity departments and what kind of songs you were allowed to cut and not cut, what interviews you were allowed to do, who you were allowed to interview with. Holy shit. I started getting in trouble with the label because I was doing interviews with Sean Hannity. Like I'd go on Fox News and Sean would want me to come on and talk about the Tea Party, for instance. I actually went down and played with Sean. I played a song at the first big Tea Party rally in Georgia. It was 20, 30,000 people. And my record label went absolutely insane that I did that. "You're gonna upset half your audience?"

• 4:47Speaker 01

  And of course, they've got their money invested in you to go sell records to everybody and from their perspective, I'm alienating people. I said, "Well, you've got liberal artists that are out here saying all kinds of stuff that I don't like. You're not worried about them?" They go, "That's not the point." It was the point. And so I realized- What do you mean "that's not the point"? That's what they would say. I guess what they mean by "that's not the point" is, "We own you. We own your voice, your likeness, your music, and if we say we don't want you to do it, that's the point." It's like, "Do as I say, not as I do." It's like when you ask your parents, "Well, why can't I do that?" And they said, "Because I said so." That's how they treat you. So it's like a indentured servitude type of existence.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  So when it started stepping in on what they were telling me I was allowed to say and not say, and what kind of lyrics I was allowed to put on a record, that's when I realized, "Okay, we're turning a corner here that I'm not okay with." But then at the same time, listen, I grew up my whole life wanting to be on country radio, play the Grand Ole Opry, write hit songs, country music, man. That's what I wanted to do. It's my American dream. And my vehicle to do that is this big record label. So if I lose that-

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Do I lose the American dream by losing that? And that's what artists are looking at. You wonder about the ones that don't say anything. That's, that's literally what they're looking at. So you really only see the bigger established artists that are too big to cancel, too big for the, they make too much money for the record label for the label to drop them. Jason Aldean's a great example. I remember when they attacked his wife on Instagram. They, the woke mob, attacked his wife. And I remember him texting me going, basically, you see what they're doing to my wife? Yeah. What do you think I ought to do? Something along those lines. I said, what would you do to anybody else that attacked your wife?

• 6:47Speaker 01

  He goes, you know, music girl ain't gonna like that. And I said, I'm telling you, man, if you come out swinging, you're selling 30,000 tickets today, you'll be selling 60,000 tickets this time next year. Cause the Patriot crowd will come to your back. And to his credit, man, he came out and just put his dukes up. And here he comes swinging and you saw the fallout, right? Everybody freaking out about Jason Aldean and he's hanging out with Trump. Or he put out this song, try that in a small town and all these, all these kinds of things. And he is doing stadium shows now. Because people appreciate authenticity in this country. Ameri- be an American. Yeah.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  And if you want to be a lefty American, be a lefty American. Okay, I mean, I have more respect for hardcore lefties that'll unapologetically come out and say the most insane, in my mind, the most insane things I've ever heard. But at least they're convicted enough to go say it. Yeah. So we need those people on the other side with enough conviction to counteract that. There just ain't a whole bunch of us. Have you, I mean, have you seen anybody else that starts to make the switch? I mean, you saw Carrie Underwood. All she did was show up and sing America the Beautiful at the inauguration. She crushed that. Of course she did. I don't know what was going on. With no music. Remember the music got messed up? I remember. They're like, where's the track? We can't get it to play. And Carrie just goes, I'll sing it a cappella.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, because she's a freak of nature talent. She doesn't need any help. That's a real, that's a real artist. And so she sings it, but then what happens the next day? Everybody in pop culture attacking Carrie Underwood that, that she's, you know, singing for a fascist or whatever they said and. And that's what happens. So you have to be prepared for that. If you even dip your pinky toe into that, they're gonna come at you.

• 8:40Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  So that's what artists are looking at, if you're wondering. Why some of them don't say anything.

• 8:47Shawn Ryan?

  It's sad. It's sad to see it, but we'll dive into this a little bit more later. Everybody starts off with a introduction here.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  All right. I know. I watch your show all the time. Can't wait to hear it.

• 8:59Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. John Rich. Son of a Baptist preacher. Your faith inspires your music, including your recent hit single, Revelation. Multi-platinum country music singer-songwriter, best known is one-half of the iconic duo Big and Rich. Former bassist and co-lead vocalist for the band Lone Star, where you contributed their early success in the 1990s. Successful solo artist with albums like Son of a Preacher Band. Entrepreneur who founded the redneck Riviera brand, including a popular whiskey line and bar in Nashville and in Las Vegas. Hosted the CMT reality show Gone Country and appeared on programs like The Celebrity Apprentice. Co-founded

• 9:44Shawn Ryan?

  Old Glory Bank, a financial institution focused on serving conservative values and protecting against de-banking. Supporter of veterans and first responders and a vocal advocate for American freedoms. You're a husband, father of two boys, and most importantly, a Christian.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  That's pretty, that's pretty good. I'll take it.

• 10:06Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man. So John, I figured, uh, I'd love to pray with you.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 10:11Shawn Ryan?

  You wanna lead it?

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Well, it's your house.

• 10:14Shawn Ryan?

  All right, let's do it.

• 10:19Shawn Ryan?

  Jesus, we just want, we just want to, we just want this story. You know, John came from nothing in childhood and, and my purpose of this interview is just to show that the American dream is still alive and well and to bring hope to all kinds of people, not just in this country, but throughout the world to know that there's, there's always a way out of poverty and there are no limitations. And I also just want to thank you for, for bringing me and John together today and I just hope this turns into a flourishing friendship. In Jesus' name, amen.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Amen.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Ain't starting better than that.

• 11:02Shawn Ryan?

  That's right, that's right. Everybody gets a gift.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Check in with the boss.

• 11:07Shawn Ryan?

  You got any guesses?

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Everybody does get a gift, yes. Well, I brought you a gift.

• 11:10Shawn Ryan?

  I love gifts.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  So, it's like, like, you could add anything else, but it's not big, it's small. But the only other person I've given this to is Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. And I figured he had probably been given everything, he had never been given this. And his eyes widened up and he goes, "This is going in my office in a very particular spot." So, I ran across a couple of these.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  A while back, saved them, they've been in my safe for specific people that I know love our country as much as I do and have sacrificed for the country. So, what this is... This is an original worn WWII victory mode.

• 11:55Shawn Ryan?

  No way.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  You've probably seen pictures of these.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  I doubt you have one.

• 12:00Shawn Ryan?

  I do not.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  So, oh, that's all right, you ain't gonna hurt it, that thing's been all over the world. So, what's interesting on that coin is when you flip it over, you'll see all the countries that were our allies during that war, and notice they didn't call it WWII, because how could there be WWII if you hadn't had WWII yet? Interesting thought. So, if you read what it says, it'll tell you what they called that war. And our allies were China, Japan, Russia, all these countries, which I got me to reading, like, wow, I never even considered that. But, that one says France, so that means that was worn by a US soldier that had fought in France.

• 12:40Shawn Ryan?

  Man, the Great War for Civilization.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  The Great War for Civilization, so that's about a hundred and...

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Hundred plus.

• 12:49Shawn Ryan?

  Man, China.

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:52Shawn Ryan?

  Back when China was an ally.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Back when China was an ally, yeah.

• 12:57Shawn Ryan?

  Man, thank you.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  You're welcome.

• 12:59Shawn Ryan?

  This is getting framed.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  I figured you'd have a good spot for that.

• 13:02Shawn Ryan?

  This is getting framed, and it'll be hanging in here.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  I love stuff like that, that's so ancient and over a century old, to know that... Some man had that on his chest. Some man was in France killing Nazis, actual Nazis. And, uh, he was part of us winning that war. And like I said, you have one and Pete Hexeth has one, so.

• 13:22Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you, John.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 13:24Shawn Ryan?

  That means.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Happy to give it to you.

• 13:25Shawn Ryan?

  Awesome. Thank you.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 13:28Shawn Ryan?

  Well, man, you've outdone me.

• 13:36Shawn Ryan?

  Vigilance League Gummy Bears.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Oh, awesome.

• 13:38Shawn Ryan?

  Made in the USA, made up of Michigan. No funny business, legal in all 50 states, not gonna feel weird. We actually had a guy email in, it's like, I've, I've gone through three bags of these, I still don't. Still don't feel anything. It's like, it's just fan, it's just candy, buddy, you'll feel it in the morning.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  I appreciate that.

• 13:57Shawn Ryan?

  But.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Can I let my kids eat it?

• 13:59Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, we'll give you a bunch more.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Alright, cool.

• 14:01Shawn Ryan?

  Give you a bunch more.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Thank you, I love that bag.

• 14:03Shawn Ryan?

  It's got all the bad shit in there, sugar, red dye, you know, all the stuff everybody hates, but.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  You haven't given one to RFK yet, I guess.

• 14:11Shawn Ryan?

  No, that, yeah, actually I did.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Did you?

• 14:13Shawn Ryan?

  I did give him one, but they'll probably be illegal in all 50 states here by the end of the year. And then, um.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  I appreciate that.

• 14:20Shawn Ryan?

  Got you another thing.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:22Shawn Ryan?

  I know you're a gun guy and a huge Second Amendment supporter, so I got a buddy over at Sig, his name's Jason.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 14:28Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, I told him you were coming on, he's a huge fan.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Oh, awesome.

• 14:32Shawn Ryan?

  He wanted me to.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Holy smokes, man, thank you. You got your FFL, can we sign this over today?

• 14:37Shawn Ryan?

  Well, we'll sign it over in a couple days, but.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Wow, okay.

• 14:41Shawn Ryan?

  This. Hopefully you don't have one already.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  I do not have, wow, look at the grip on that thing.

• 14:47Shawn Ryan?

  So that is the Sig Sauer P211 GTO.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Good lord.

• 14:52Shawn Ryan?

  It's Sig's first, uh, first go around of a 2011. That thing is smooth as butter.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Oh wow.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Is that a Holosun?

• 15:07Shawn Ryan?

  That is Sig's new optic as well.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  It looks like it, yeah.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  I don't know about you, but I like the circle around the dot. You know, some guys just like the dot.

• 15:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  I actually like being able to see the circle. I don't know why. That is beautiful, man. Yeah, my, my carry is a is just a, uh, uh, 43X.

• 15:32Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, 43X, but I've got a uh, Shield Arms makes a, uh, aftermarket mag for that. That's a, that's a uh, 15 plus one. So it'll actually hold 16 rounds in a very small

• 15:45Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, nice.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  So it's easy for me to conceal wherever I've got it.

• 15:49Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  But man, this is beautiful, man. Thank you.

• 15:51Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 15:53Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe we'll break that in on the break here.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:56Shawn Ryan?

  Cool.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 15:57Shawn Ryan?

  See what you got, John.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I got what you got. I've seen you standing there on your videos. You go, "We're about 80 yards away. Let's see if I can hit it." And you're just like bang, and then you hear ping. I'm like, "Oh, come on, man." Yeah, I can't do that.

• 16:12Shawn Ryan?

  Well, we'll get you dialed in.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Absolutely beautiful. Thank you.

• 16:15Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  And tell that gentleman I said thank you.

• 16:17Shawn Ryan?

  I will. Jason will be very happy that you like that.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Thank you, Jason. Incredible.

• 16:27Shawn Ryan?

  All right, John, so

• 16:28Speaker 01

  That when I interviewed with Piers Morgan. That's crazy.

• 16:31Shawn Ryan?

  Piers didn't give you a gun?

• 16:32Speaker 01

  I know.

• 16:32Shawn Ryan?

  How, how odd.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  It's so crazy.

• 16:36Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, so yeah, I want to start off with, uh, your life story and then we'll move into some I don't, various topics that are going on today. I know

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:46Shawn Ryan?

  Your latest, your latest debacle with the Tennessee, with the TVA. We'll get into that, but, but where did you grow up?

• 16:55Speaker 01

  So I was born in West Tennessee. Uh, my parents met at college in West Tennessee. My dad's a Texan from the Panhandle of Texas. So basically where Amarillo is, there's a little town 60 miles from here called Pampa, Texas, P-A-M-P-A. I was born in West Tennessee. When I was four years old, we moved to Texas. So I don't really remember living in Tennessee back then. So I grew up in Texas, up in the Panhandle. And um, it's flat, it's windy, um, it's tornado alley. I mean, that's where it's at. It is, it is a different part of Texas. It's not Dallas or Houston or Austin. It is, it's where their actual cowboys live up there. And my, my uh,

• 17:39Speaker 01

  great uncles and all the men that, that came back after World War II that, that lived up there, you know, they had those lines in their faces so deep you could plant tomatoes.

• 17:48Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  You know, from being in the sun.

• 17:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  So they worked oil rigs out there. They were farmers. Um, and my granny Rich is from Pampa, Texas. Uh, Dust Bowl days, she was born during the Great Depression while simultaneously experiencing the Dust Bowl days. So think about that. Great Depression's bad enough, but in that area of Texas, also the Dust Bowl days. So those are the types of people I was around growing up, which has a pretty dramatic impact.

• 18:19Shawn Ryan?

  Hard workers.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  On a kid. Yeah. Like a lot of, they liked to work. It wasn't like, man, I had to work hard today. It's like, we got a lot of good work done today. Like, we're gonna eat some dinner, go to sleep, and we'll get back up and do it tomorrow. Like it, it was energizing to them and, and gratifying to them to go out and work really hard.

• 18:37Shawn Ryan?

  Man, you don't hear that much anymore these days.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  You really don't.

• 18:41Shawn Ryan?

  Unfortunately.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  But there is a great sense of accomplishment when you've worked really hard. Let's say you're splitting wood. Something simple, but it's hard. It's hard to do. And you, you went from forty-five red oak stumps that are now no longer there and you look over there and there's this beautiful stack of red oak, ready for the winter, light up that fireplace at, at Christmas and you real, and you're sore all over and sweating and bug bites and all that and you go, that's a beautiful stack of wood. And you did something. I think it's something that a lot, especially young people miss these days is they don't understand the gratification you get from doing something hard.

• 19:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Manual labor.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  I, I really think it's not good for your head to not do manual labor on some level.

• 19:27Shawn Ryan?

  I don't think so either.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  I mean, go mow the grass, do something. Go run a weed eater for three or four hours and tell me how you're feeling.

• 19:36Shawn Ryan?

  Do you have your kids do manual labor?

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 19:38Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of stuff do you have them doing?

• 19:40Speaker 01

  They help me split wood, they run weed eaters, they'll go out and I'll say, um, oh, we don't hire people to put mulch down at our house. We go to the mulch yard with my truck and trailer. They'll load in nine, 10, 11 yards of mulch, which is quite a bit.

• 19:56Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  And get to the house and then we got pitchforks and wheelbarrows and I'll say, invite two of your buddies over. I'm hiring everybody to lay this mulch today. And I'll be right here doing it with you. And so it takes all day to do it. And when it's over, they all get paid and they're all just beat from pushing a wheelbarrow up a hill a hundred times, you know? But then they feel, they go, well, it looks good, doesn't it dad? I go, it looks perfect. It looks better than the guys I hired to do it a few years ago. That's why I don't hire them anymore. Looks better when we do it. Cause we own this land and someday you're gonna own this land and you need to know every square inch of this land. The land's alive and you own it. You need to know how to take care

• 20:39Speaker 01

  of it, what it is, where all its spots are, good and bad. You need to improve your land. Like you need to own it. It's part of who you are is the land. And they really latched on to that. And so they, they take a lot of pride in doing things that improve the surroundings of where we live.

• 20:55Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I love that. When'd you start that? How old were they?

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Probably, they're fifteen and thirteen. When they were about eight and 10, when they were, when they were big enough and had enough on them where they could pick something up.

• 21:09Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:10Shawn Ryan?

  Did you grow up doing hard work?

• 21:11Speaker 01

  Big time.

• 21:12Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of work?

• 21:14Speaker 01

  I mean, we were running, um,

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Always half acre, bigger garden in the panhandle, growing beans, jalapenos, tomatoes, watermelons, cantaloupes, corn. I mean, and so out there, it's so windy that you have to, you have to dig really deep rows when you plant those seeds. And you build it, because it's so flat, you can't get the water. If you lay a hose in a row, you can't get the water to move down the row. So you actually have to find a spot of land that's a little bit tilted, or even build your rows up a little bit. So when you lay that water hose at the top, it'll run all the way down the row, down to the end. And then you finish watering that row, you lay it in another row, right? And you're weeding it, and you're

• 22:01Speaker 01

  shooting jackrabbits that are out there trying to eat your cantaloupes and, and all that stuff. And, and, uh, yeah, I have a little garden in town right now. Nothing big, but I always like to have something I can go pick. I picked some cayenne's this morning at my house.

• 22:15Shawn Ryan?

  Nice, nice.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:17Shawn Ryan?

  What else were you into as a kid?

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Um, you know, guitar, the guitar for me was, was my, that was my thing. My dad taught me how to play guitar when I was about five years old. That was one of his extra jobs, would give guitar lessons. My dad's really great singer, really strong guitar player. And, um, one of his side jobs was giving those lessons. And one day he, he asked me, he said, John Daniel, which is what they all called me until I was, not that long ago. My grandmother called me John Daniel till the day she died. John Daniel, you want to go with, you want to go with me to guitar lessons? I said, yeah, Dad. So I jump in the car and go down there and he's got seven or eight adults sitting in a semicircle

• 23:02Speaker 01

  and he's got to give them a lesson. He kind of hands me a little cheapy guitar and says, just follow along with what we're doing. He gave me the, gave me the page that they were all looking at. And I'm following along and I'm picking it up. Well, after two or three of those lessons, I was picking it up real fast. And he realized, you're pretty good at that. You're like ahead of. A lot of the adults I'm teaching, so then he really started to teach me some stuff. And by the age of probably seven, seven and eight years old, the worst punishment you could give me would be to not let me have my guitar.

• 23:33Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  That's the worst.

• 23:35Shawn Ryan?

  It's seven or eight years old.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Like today would be take away the kid's video game or take away their iPad. For me, it was take that guitar away. So I would sit in my room. We had these, you probably remember these, um, like a jam box where you could play, you could play the radio, but it also had a cassette deck. So if you'd hit play and record at the same time, it would record whatever you're hearing on the radio.

• 23:58Shawn Ryan?

  Oh yeah, I used to do that all the time, man.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you'd be like timing it out.

• 24:02Shawn Ryan?

  You'd be waiting, waiting for the song to come on.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  Boom, hit both of them.

• 24:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  So I would do that and then I would spend the next week listening to that particular song over and over and over till I could play everything in that song. And that's how I got, that's how I got better at guitar.

• 24:18Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:20Shawn Ryan?

  You grew up, I mean, if I remember correctly, you grew up in a trailer. Did you grow up in a trailer?

• 24:25Speaker 01

  It was a, it was a double wide, so it, you know, your, your idea of, of what a trailer is, is not what I would say I lived in. It's manufactured housing is what, what I would call it, but yeah, it's a double wide. Um, but you know, my dad, there were weeks that my dad, my dad's a preacher, but my dad would work sometimes over a hundred hours a week, over a hundred. So some of the jobs he would do, um, especially getting started out there in Texas, he was a night watchman in Amarillo National Bank on the weekends, so he's walking all night long. Um, he, we slop talks, uh, guitar lessons. Um, he worked for several car dealerships.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Matter of fact, he got a big break after, he was, he's a really great salesman, got a big break and became general manager of the big Nissan dealership. Now, when that happened in Amarillo, we moved from where we were living into a brand new brick house with a concrete slab and 10 acres and a horse barn.

• 25:24Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Right? But there were times I watched my dad really have to dig deep and make sure he's got four kids, um, make sure that. Everybody had what they needed and everybody did have what they needed. But you watched your dad work that hard. I remember him coming in like on a, he would walk the bank on a Sunday night. And we're getting up at 6 a.m. to go to school on Monday morning. And there's my dad walking in with his uniform. Sits down in his chair and me and my two little sisters would grab his boots. Everything we had, try to get his boots off his feet because they were swelled up like balloons from walking the bank all night. He'd sleep three or four hours and he'd get up and he'd head to the car dealership or he'd had to go do whatever other job he was doing.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  But you know, to his credit, uh, no plates hit the floor. You know, you hear about spinning plates. Plates didn't hit the floor.

• 26:14Shawn Ryan?

  How did you, I mean, how did you and your brother, brothers and sisters, brothers?

• 26:20Speaker 01

  I got two younger sisters and a younger brother, so I'm the oldest of four.

• 26:23Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 26:25Shawn Ryan?

  How did you guys handle that? I mean, I, I, I work my ass off.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:29Shawn Ryan?

  I work my ass off and I, I always worry about, you know, I got enough time with the kids. I got enough time with the family. So I'm curious, you know. How did you guys feel about your dad working so much? Did you understand what he was doing?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  I did. I, I understood that he was hustling because. You got four kids and you gotta, you gotta keep everything going. Even at a young age, watching him work like that, I'm like, man, that dude is just. It was unreal how much he was working. But I'll give you like a story on him. Tell you, tell you, maybe give you some insight on me just knowing this about him. He didn't like any of the schools in Amarillo. He didn't like them. Even, even the, the little Christian school that he had me going to.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  He didn't, he didn't like it a hundred percent. He saw some issues with that. So he said, you know what? Um, I'm just gonna make my own school. And so he found, I think it was a couple of. World War II Army barracks sitting off somewhere outside of Amarillo. It used to be a big, uh, Air Force base out there. LBJ, I think, had a big base out there. I could have the details wrong, but anyway, it was some old barracks. They were gonna get rid of them and he brought two of them out. And got some other men together and they spent about a year or so connecting those buildings and completely remodeling these buildings. And this is when we were in the double wide and started a school. Called Tierra Grande Christian School. So the area of town we lived in was called Tierra Grande, Big Earth.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  And that's where I went to, uh, third and fourth grade.

• 28:02Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. And so, you know, in later years, I said, why did you go through all that? He goes, there wasn't a, there wasn't a school in Emerald I thought was good enough for you to go to, so I built my own school.

• 28:13Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  And hired teachers and got other people to enroll. And he, he ran a successful school there for a couple of years. And that, now that's some, that's some drive.

• 28:23Shawn Ryan?

  That is.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's a dad that cares about what's happening with this kid.

• 28:28Shawn Ryan?

  Is he still alive?

• 28:29Speaker 01

  He is. Yeah, he just had his birthday, seventy-three.

• 28:32Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Well.

• 28:33Shawn Ryan?

  Happy birthday.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Happy birthday, Dad.

• 28:35Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:40Shawn Ryan?

  So you six, so music became part of your life. You became really good at guitar.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:45Shawn Ryan?

  Seven, eight years old. Dad works his ass off. What kind of manual labor, what kind of, what kind of work were you doing as a kid?

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Well, so when he was slopping hogs, I would go slop hogs with him. So he would take me along on his jobs. I was the, uh, you ever slopped hogs?

• 28:59Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Okay. So they give the kid the job of, basically the hog farmer would go to the grocery stores when their bread and milk would expire. And so you would get these pallets of moldy bread and pallets of clabbered milk. Gallon jugs of milk, okay? And so my job had this, this concrete wall. My job was to take bags of bread and smack them against the wall and throw the plastic away and smack them and smack them. Smack, say, a hundred loaves of bread. And then take a snow shovel and dump them off into a bucket. And then you had a, you had a, a razor,

• 29:41Speaker 01

  like an, like an X-acto knife, and you pick up the clabbered milk and you cut, cut the top of the milk off and chomp, chomp, blah, blah, blah, into a bucket.

• 29:49Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  And then throw it away and then cut another one into a hundred gallons of milk. And then they would blend those two things and put vitamins in it. And then the men would go out and they would actually slop the hogs. So I'm standing in the back prepping the slop.

• 30:01Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:03Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was interesting. I mean, you got, hog operations are interesting. Some of those hogs are seven, eight hundred, they look like seven, eight hundred pounds, massive tusks. I saw, I saw them eat each other, attack each other, kill each other. Yeah. You know in The Wizard of Oz when they sell, tell Dorothy, don't climb up on that fence, cause you don't fall into pig pen? Well, there's a reason, cause they'll eat you.

• 30:25Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, damn.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  But I love that I got to do stuff like that. I mean, it's so vivid in my mind, you know? I was eight, nine, 10 years old doing that. It didn't seem bad to me at all. It seemed, I was working with my dad, so I thought it was cool. And again, it goes back to doing manual labor, doing hard work. There's a lot of gratification you get out of that and you learn things and, right? You get to take credit for something looking better or something getting done.

• 30:53Shawn Ryan?

  I did a lot of manual labor. I didn't, didn't slop hogs though. But, um, what about your mom? Who was your mom?

• 31:00Speaker 01

  So she's a tenessian. Um, my parents were married, uh, about 18 years. I got divorced when I was going in to my senior year of high school. Um, she was like a, you know, she could type real fast. So she was like a paralegal and, uh, you know, did her job on the side. It was, it was a lot of effort going on back in those days.

• 31:23Shawn Ryan?

  Are you guys close?

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Not really.

• 31:25Shawn Ryan?

  Why not?

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Well, are you close with both of your parents?

• 31:29Shawn Ryan?

  Yes, I am.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Well, you're a very lucky man.

• 31:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yes, I am.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Very fortunate man. Um, my mother figure in my life really was my granny Rich. So I'd be my dad's mother.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  You know, without impugning anyone or anything like that, it was, uh, just

• 31:47Speaker 01

  the way I was being raised by her was not the correct way to raise somebody. I'll put it to you that way. I'll put, I'll give you another example. I married someone who is the exact opposite of who my mother is. I mean, totally opposite. You know, you hear people say, well, You're gonna marry somebody like your mother, you're gonna marry somebody like your dad, and whatever was going on that wasn't right, that just perpetuates itself, generation to generation. And I said, "Yeah, not, not in my case, that's not gonna happen." So, I married somebody that was the opposite of that, that was the opposite of me in a lot of ways, a lot of balance, twenty-two of us, and now we're about to have our seventeenth anniversary, which is pretty good for anybody, much less a country music singer.

• 32:29Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  It's almost unheard of, man.

• 32:31Shawn Ryan?

  Congratulations.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. So, you know, it, it also becomes part of your life. I think the way she raised me and the way she was around me hardened me. It, uh, it angered me a lot, but it hardened me too. It made me, it made me go like that. Like, it made me understand what that is. And as you get older in your life, you gotta let a lot of that go. You gotta dump that, because you can't have that hanging on you the rest of your life. But you do pick up things from it that are useful. For instance, how to, how to exist, as you know, as a, as a combat guy. Now, I wouldn't in combat, but, but

• 33:15Speaker 01

  the mentality of, "I'm not afraid to walk into this uncomfortable, perilous situation, whatever it is, because I've been around them a lot." Now, on my end, again, that's, does not even compare to you and some of the men that have sat in this chair, but for me, that mentality was there, it's still there. And it's why I don't really back up. I don't, I don't mind engaging people when they need to be engaged. Does that make sense?

• 33:43Shawn Ryan?

  It does make sense. I mean, being a, a man of faith, and I know you have a very strong faith, and you know the Bible. Really well, I'm just curious, I mean, if, if, does it bother you that you're not close with her now? In these days, is she still alive?

• 34:05Speaker 01

  She's still alive, yeah.

• 34:07Shawn Ryan?

  Do you guys ever talk?

• 34:09Speaker 01

  I think if, I think if, uh, I think if somebody, if, let's say her, if she was ever willing to come forward and admit to all that stuff and apologize for it, we, we could, we could kick things back off again. But when somebody wants to keep it frozen in time and just leave it there, then the choice of the person who was on the receiving end of that, you have two choices at that point. One is let it continue to be part of what you think about and let it affect you in really bad ways, which I did for a very long time. Or two is to, you talk to the boss and you say, I want you to take that off of me. I want that off of my back. I want it out of my mind, I want it off of my back.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  It is what it is. It has, there has been no amends made for it and there won't be, so I'm asking you to take it off of me. The word would be deliver me from that. Get that out of my, what makes me me. And, uh, after asking that for several times and meaning it, one day he just did.

• 35:15Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then I'm able to look back at it and go, well, what are the positives that came out of that? Not a bunch, but it did turn me into the type of individual that now where I do have control over myself and I, you know, I don't, uh, do what I used to do, which we can get into all that, Google it, you'll find it. Um, I'm able to use that and be extremely effective when it comes to, when it comes to engaging something that needs to happen. I know we're going to talk about some of those stories coming up, but almost fearless of things.

• 35:50Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  We just go, yeah, that's not right, I'm coming straight at them.

• 35:55Shawn Ryan?

  You've always been like that.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  I've always been like that to a degree. Uh, I think though, you know, I got saved when I was eight years old, my dad having church at the house, little kid got baptized in a horse trough.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  So where the horse drank water in our backyard. Eight years old, way on down the road into my adult life as all kinds of things unrolled and I was living as, as the ultimate prodigal son for a very long time and reconnected back to him and apologized to him and rededicated myself to him and then all that stuff that I had, that I had done and learned throughout those years that I was using in the wrong way.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  But I had learned them and gotten good at certain things. Now that I'm straightened back out and plugged back in and listening, now I can take that skillset and apply it towards extremely big things and be effective with those things. It's interesting how he does that.

• 37:05Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh, uh huh.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Like the question of can a person that doesn't have insatiable ego ever succeed in the music industry? No, they can't. There's something about

• 37:20Speaker 01

  the listeners, the, the, any entertainer, whether it's a movie or singers or whatever, that the general public, they're attracted to people that have overpowering, they'll call it charisma, I would call it ego, I guess maybe it's a mixture of both, but that's there and it's extremely destructive, but can you even accomplish what it is you accomplished if you hadn't had that? I wouldn't have, but then it can eat you down the road. So the, the, the thing is, if you're lucky enough and he gives you enough, enough patience to let you go through all that without you dying or something terrible happening. You can then, you can turn the corner and then all that stuff you got to learn and now

• 38:05Speaker 01

  you can do it on his behalf, instead of on your own behalf, which is where I am today.

• 38:11Shawn Ryan?

  Love that. When you say he got saved at eight years old, you got baptized at eight years old, was that, was there anything specific that had happened that, that saved you? Did you have any experiences? What, what was it that, why eight years old?

• 38:25Speaker 01

  Listening to my dad preach, um, that he was, he was going through the passage where Jesus said, behold, I stand at the door and knock. I remember my dad was knocking on a table. He like went knock, knock, knock when he said that. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. And if any man hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in with him and sup with him, meaning have dinner with him and he with me. And I, I could see that picture in my head, like of Jesus knocking on the door and coming inside our house and sitting down. And he, Jesus standing outside the door and all I've got to do is go over to that door and turn the knob and open the door and he'll just walk in. I remember thinking

• 39:08Speaker 01

  that at eight years old, I go, well, if he's standing at the door of my heart, of course I want him to come in. It's Jesus. And I remember just being hit by that such a strong way, that when my dad had the invitation to come forward, if you'd like to give your life to Jesus, and I'm eight years old and I went like that and came down.

• 39:29Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:31Shawn Ryan?

  I bet he was proud of that.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Kids, kids can give their life to Jesus much easier than an adult, because they're not all fouled up with their, with their own issues and problems. They're kids. They're innocent still. You know, it's one of the, probably the most aggressive thing Jesus ever said, uh, and I wish I could have heard it in person in Hebrew, because I bet, I bet they would have considered it some cuss words coming out of his mouth, was if any man causes one of these little ones to stumble, he'd be better off to have a millstone tied around his neck and cast into the depths of the sea. Not if any man caught, if any man abuses one of these little ones, if any man kills one of these little ones, if anyone

• 40:16Speaker 01

  slaps one of these, if anyone causes them to stumble. Well, if you go look that up, what that means is mess with them at all, because they are in a state of innocence. It's the most innocent thing that lives on the earth are kids. Said you'd be better off dead than to do that. So when you're eight years old, you're standing wide open.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  Right. That's why kids need to hear the gospel. Kids need to be told about who Jesus is. Kids need to understand that because they, once you give your life to Jesus, yeah, your life could go off the rails. It probably will at some point or another and whatever. It's a, you know, life's a crazy thing, but he's in there. And you come back around to him, he's going, I've been waiting on you. That's kind of how I feel like it went with me.

• 41:05Shawn Ryan?

  Man, wow. If you stayed rooted in faith throughout the duration of your existence? Or have you fallen off at all?

• 41:16Speaker 01

  I stayed, well, I stayed rooted in it as so much as I knew it and I knew it to be true. And there were things I would do that were obedient, but for every obedient thing I would do, there were nine things that were disobedient.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  And he'll only let you do that for so long. And if you're really lucky, he'll only slap you hard enough to knock your teeth out and not knock your brains out.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  If you're really lucky.

• 41:47Shawn Ryan?

  Good way to put it.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, you know, when I became a dad, I started thinking about, I mean, we call him the father. He's our father. Well, now I'm somebody's father. And so, and then I thought, and we're created in the image of God. We are created in his image. Well, what that means to me is that means every emotion that I feel, he feels. I'm in his image. That also means he has a sense of humor, which I find to be a really interesting thing. I'd love to hear him laugh one time.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  But every emotion we have, he also has. So that means how I feel about my sons on the absolute perfect and most intense level is how he feels about his sons and daughters.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  So mine is an imperfect way and it is so intense for me, I would pile them up by the fence as deep as I could get them if they came after my kids. And so would you. And so would millions of people that are probably watching this right now. That's the level of love we have for our kids. Extrapolate that times infinity and that's how God feels about us. Man, once I had that realization, I went, wow, I'm like looking up going, that's how you think. So if you're gonna discipline your kid, your kid, well, it keeps going out in the street and playing football. And you have told him 10 times, do not go out in the street and play football. You get hit by a car, dummy. And he keeps going out there. Well, eventually you're gonna have to do something

• 43:19Speaker 01

  pretty drastic to punish this kid because you don't want him to get hit by a car, right? Now, you ain't gonna kill him. You're not gonna break a bone or something. You're gonna do something. You're gonna snatch him up and something significant is gonna happen for his own good. He looks down at us and goes, I'm looking at my son, John, down there. I'm gonna have to be drastic with this guy. He is too bullheaded. He's too fearless of things. He ain't listening.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to smack him around. That's why I said, if you're lucky, he'll only knock your teeth out instead of your brains. Cause he can just take you out.

• 43:57Shawn Ryan?

  Have you had your teeth knocked out?

• 43:58Speaker 01

  I've given you every chance in the world, you're out.

• 44:01Shawn Ryan?

  Have you had your teeth knocked out?

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Many times.

• 44:04Shawn Ryan?

  You got any examples?

• 44:08Speaker 01

  He knocked him out a few times and it didn't work. So like, public humiliation,

• 44:14Speaker 01

  losing record deals, being fired from very, very successful situations, and take me from riding high all the way down to nobody's calling and can't pay my rent. That was knocking my teeth out. Didn't matter. Wasn't understanding what that was, wasn't ready to, wasn't ready to yield yet. And so on and on and on it goes. And I used my success.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  As a hammer to beat the crap out of people with it. And that goes back to how I was treated as a kid. When you talked about me and my mother. I felt like I was having the crap beat out of me all the time. So when I finally got the upper hand, I took my own success and it was big success. Millions and millions and millions of records. Number one songwriter in Nashville, three years in a row at ASCAP. I was songwriter of the year, three years in a row. That's hard to do. Wow. That means my songs got played on country radio more than anybody else's songs in all of Nashville for three years in a row. Wow. Right. So I had that kind of success and instead of

• 45:25Speaker 01

  doing what I would do now with success, which is go out and try to help other people and do good things with it, I'd go right on. My hammer just got bigger. Now who can I hit? And I'd make sure they knew I had a hammer. Right? Wow. Walk around like a mob boss, like I'm, I'm the, I'm the, I'm the man. You know, and what that was, I was just dishing out what I'd taken. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. Yep. But it makes sense when you look at it like that. What was the turning point?

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Turning point for me was, uh,

• 46:03Speaker 01

  nothing, um, specific other than what I'm about to explain to you, meaning I didn't lose some big deal or almost have a car wreck or anything like that. It literally was this, I was sitting in a hotel room. And that's the way I'm conducting myself, like I've been explaining here. Sitting in a hotel room after a concert and I felt God vacate me.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Left. How so? He just left. What was the feeling? Like you had been abandoned in the Arctic Circle.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Gone. So until that point, I still, it was still in there. You know, when you give your life to Jesus, you ask the Holy Spirit to come in and he will. And you can feel it. I can feel it right now. You can too. So imagine that being taken away.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  He just leaves like. Bye. And the same door he walked in, he just walked out and slammed it and you're just sitting there. Now there, no more protection for you, no more patience for you, no more nothing for you. You're not gonna listen, I'm out.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  That doesn't mean I'd have gone to hell if I'd have died. But it means that he's done. He ain't gonna mess with me anymore. And if you go look back in Psalms, King David had that experience several times. Like you said, I'm crying out to you and you will not answer me. Where have you gone? Where are you? Please answer me. Cause David did some really bad stuff. You know, what he did to Uriah, what he did to Bash- what he, with Bathsheba and Uriah and, and other things. That were really, really bad. I mean, he had Bathsheba's husband killed. And about to put Uriah up on the front lines and make sure he died so he could take his wife. That's pretty bad. That's about as bad as it gets actually. And God, God abandoned him. That's the word abandoned. Abandonment.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Is what that felt like.

• 48:09Shawn Ryan?

  So you get done with the concert, you're sitting in what, the green room or something?

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Sitting in a hotel room, back in my room with my ears ringing like. Cymbals in my ears, yeah, sweating.

• 48:19Shawn Ryan?

  So what was it like? A bolt of lightning? I mean, was it instantaneous?

• 48:23Speaker 01

  No, it was not like a bolt of lightning. It was like.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  It was almost like you could, like you were looking at yourself from the outside of yourself. A little bit. Like. You're sitting there. But you feel like you can see the room and you can literally feel like the air just got sucked out of it. It just, it was a horrible feeling. I bet it's probably what it might feel like if you were drowning.

• 48:47Shawn Ryan?

  Did you know what it was?

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Yes. I knew what it was.

• 48:51Shawn Ryan?

  What was your next move?

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Uh, went over to the. Went over to the little. You know. End table in the hotel room where they always have a Bible. Pulled it out and started reading it and it didn't make any difference.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  It did not help me at all. Cause he was gone.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  It's interesting. It's like maybe if your kid says, "I'm gonna run away, I'm gonna run away, I'm gonna run away." And then you finally say, "Fine, run away. Here's your bag." And you shut the door behind him. What's the kid do at that point? "Oh, now it's real."

• 49:28Shawn Ryan?

  Did that happen to you?

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's how it felt. And then what's the kid want to do at that point? "Let me back in the house, let me back in the house, let me back in the house." It was like that.

• 49:40Shawn Ryan?

  How'd you get him to come back?

• 49:42Speaker 01

  I apologized and apologized and apologized for weeks and...

• 49:48Shawn Ryan?

  To him?

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Yes, to him. To him. To him. This is way past me being around my mother. This is way, way decades after that.

• 49:59Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  And I apologized to him. And, uh... And then I ran across who is now, without a doubt, my favorite preacher of all time. It's too bad that he's not alive here anymore. But Dr. Charles Stanley. If you don't know who that is, go look him up. But I was on YouTube and ran across Dr. Charles Stanley. And I'm watching him and he gets in, I forget what he was even talking about, and I went, "That is the best I have ever heard that explained. What else is on here?" And I find another one, and another one, and another one, and I think for a month, I bet I consumed three or four hundred sermons from him. Just on, just one after the next, after the next, after the next.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  Then I'd pull my Bible out and read along with him, and go through it, and go through it, and go through it, and started reconnecting. Everything that I had been taught growing up from my dad, I started understanding it again. And now as a grown man, I could feel it. And then one day you wake up and you just feel like, "Zzz, it's back."

• 51:04Speaker 01

  That's how it felt. Wow. It was like light switch, light switch off. Dark room, dark room, dark room, dark room. Lights just came back on. Power just came back on. I could feel him come back in. And then you felt really weird because when, when that happens to you, then you walk back out into the same world you were just walking back into, except now everything looks completely absurd and repulsive to you. Like I had a horrible gambling problem. Horrible. You had a gambling problem? Oh my, I was so good at it, Sean. So good at it. If you were that good at it, then it might not be a problem. I was so good at it. At blackjack.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  So I would go in, take over an entire blackjack table. I'd play all nine seats. Just me and a dealer. And I'd play all nine hands. And I would make sure that they didn't use more than two decks.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Cause I could count them if it was two decks. I couldn't count them. Those six deck shoes couldn't, you can't count those. I couldn't. But I count two. And so I was knocking their brains out, man. Left and right. And you go from a $10 bets like, oh, I hope I don't lose my $10 to that.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  Now it needs to be a hundred dollar bet. Now it needs to be a $500 bet. Now it needs to be a $5,000 bet. Jeez. I started getting up in those kinds of numbers. Where me and Kenny'd pull up at a show, for instance, like in Vegas. You get out of the car to check in the hotel and a guy would run up with a clip going, Mr. Rich, uh, welcome back to Harris. Uh, here's a $50,000 marker. It's already been approved. Just sign your name here. The chips are in your room. Wow. Wow. That's how much I gambled.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  And then one day I was in Tunica, Mississippi. Played a concert. Took $62,000 off of a blackjack table in about an hour.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  I'm telling you, man, I was good at it. Cause I, I could, I could read, I could, I knew what was happening.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  $62,000 in cash, fly back home, woke up the next morning, looking at that money, and I realized, that is the most disrespectful thing you could possibly ever do. Like, that's how he was making me feel about that. "You grew up in Amarillo, Texas, with your dad working 100 hours a week, keeping everything going. Can you imagine?" Like, this is him putting this into my head. "Son, can you imagine what your dad could have done with $62,000? Where did you get the $62,000 to even gamble? I gave you the 62. I gave you the talent that would allow you to go out here and earn money like that, and this is what you're gonna do with it? Stick it on a stupid blackjack table and risk it?

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Why don't you take $62,000 and go help a bunch of old people eat lunch every day? Or why don't you go help some kids get out of a bad situation? Or why don't you go help some military vets? Or why don't you go..." What is your problem? Is how he was talking to me. And I went, "That is so disrespectful to what he's given me? That is like the ultimate disrespect." And so I took the 62, and I went down to a Ford dealership, 'cause I needed a new pickup, and I bought a 2010 four-wheel-drive Ford King Ranch pickup, and paid cash for it. And you should have seen the looks on their faces when I said, "All right, here you go,

• 54:35Speaker 01

  I'm paying for it with this," and they open it up and it's just stacks of $100 bills. They called the police, and I said, "That's fine, I've got the receipt from Harris," you know? And they, these old ladies back there going, "One, two, three." They counted it two or three times, it was all there, had the receipt, got the truck. Guess what, Sean? I still own the truck, I refuse to sell the truck. No kidding. Because every time I see the truck, and I drove it yesterday, every time I get in it, I remember where I was and now where I am. The truck is a reminder of that to me. And I stopped cold turkey, I have not played one handed cards since 2010. No kidding. And I mean, I would take that tour bus, two or 300 miles out of the way, to go hit an Indian casino somewhere or something. I mean, it was like a drug addiction. No kidding.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%. Damn, I had no idea. Gambling addiction is real. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And you haven't gambled again since? Not one hand, on anything. And I've played a ton of places where I could have...

• 55:35Speaker 01

  Do whatever I want.

• 55:36Shawn Ryan?

  Did you start giving more after that?

• 55:39Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 55:40Shawn Ryan?

  Immediately?

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:42Shawn Ryan?

  What was the first thing you did?

• 55:44Speaker 01

  I don't remember the first thing I did, but I do remember I started looking around for situations that I thought needed help. Saint Jude was one, uh, that I need to start locking into, to like kids fighting cancer is like one of the worst things you've ever seen in your life. You've ever been to a hospital like that? You will never be the same. You will be so glad that your kid does not have cancer.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  Cause it's bad enough when you see the kid dealing, then you look over there to the corners, their parents, what that mom and dad are going through. So, you know, seeing that, experiencing that, I went, I, I went in hardcore with them. Started helping them raise tens of millions of dollars, donating to them myself. You can use my house for whatever you want. Let me know where you want me to go. So it wasn't just money, it was my time and effort. So yeah, I'm gambling money, but I'm spending a lot of time and effort gambling too. Why am I spending my time doing that?

• 56:40Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have kids at the time?

• 56:41Speaker 01

  What?

• 56:42Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have kids at the time?

• 56:44Speaker 01

  My first son had just been born.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  He was born in 2010.

• 56:52Shawn Ryan?

  Let's go back to childhood. So you get baptized today, hard worker.

• 57:00Shawn Ryan?

  Dad's a preacher, don't get along with mom, four brothers and sisters.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 57:06Shawn Ryan?

  Where do we go from here? How did you start? How did the music career take off?

• 57:12Speaker 01

  So I never thought in a million years you could make money playing music. I mean, Amarillo, Texas. The guys I knew that made money were driving combines or riding quarter horses at the Amarillo livestock auction or whatever. Like it was basically agricultural based. The guitar for me was just something I did for fun and loved to do.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  When I was.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  Fifteen. My mother wanted to move to Tennessee where she's from. So we uprooted out of Texas and moved to Tennessee. Started going to school in Tennessee and I remember meeting this kid at school and I said, "What's your dad do for a living?" He said, "Oh, my dad drives Ricky Skaggs' bus." And I was a huge Ricky Skaggs fan. I'm still a huge Bluegrass fan. I looked at this kid, I said, "Ricky Skaggs rides on a school bus?"

• 58:10Speaker 01

  He said, "No, a tour bus. My dad drives Ricky Skaggs' tour bus." I said, "Your dad personally knows Ricky Skaggs." He goes, "He drives his bus." Like, "Yeah, he's on the bus with him all the time I went." It was like this lightbulb moment of, "Holy cow, all the country music is out here." Now, we were living in Ashland City, Tennessee, out in Chatham County, but that's only like thirty minutes, forty minutes from downtown Nashville. And I had this epiphany that all the people I'd grown up listening to and recording off that jam box and learning their music are literally thirty miles down the road from here right now. And I'm fifteen, so I'm almost old enough to drive. So when I turned sixteen and could drive,

• 58:52Speaker 01

  I started entering talent contests in Nashville at Honky Tonks, where you gotta be twenty-one to get in. And I had to beg, steal, and borrow my way in. The lady that's running the thing, her name's Judy Martin, the Judy Martin Talent Showcase, at the Broken Spoke on Trinity Lane. I'll never forget it. I'm sixteen. And she goes, "Son, you're too young to come in here and compete in this. I'm sorry." I said, "You gotta let me in. You gotta let me get up there." She goes, "Okay, if you'll sit right next to me and I'm gonna bring you a can of Coca-Cola and that's all you're gonna drink and you're gonna sit right next to me, if you do that, I'll let you enter. I'll let you sing." I said, "Yes, ma'am. You got it."

• 59:34Speaker 01

  So I remember the first one I got into, Trace Atkins was in there, Tracy Lawrence was in there, like all these guys that went on to be multi-platinum. And I'm sixteen. And they're singing, trying to win this prize money or whatever. That's when I realized, "Holy cow, this is within my reach to possibly do this for a living."

• 59:54Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:55Shawn Ryan?

  That's pretty cool.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:57Shawn Ryan?

  You did that a lot.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  I did it every... If there was an open microphone, I was on it.

• 1:00:03Shawn Ryan?

  And how did that develop?

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  Well, that turned into me getting a lot better fast because you know, one piece of advice I give, not just entertainers, but I give it, give this advice to anybody. Is that if you want to be great at something, not just successful, but great. And considered to be great at something. Do not compare yourself to your, to the people you are currently competing against. Compare yourselves to the greatest of all time. So you could say. I'm a pretty good songwriter compared to who all is out here right now. And you might be right about that. Matter of fact, you may be the best one. Compared to who all is out here right now. But are you as good as Johnny Cash? No. You as good as Tom Petty?

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  No. Charlie Daniels? No. Let's go down the list. Uh-uh. Merle Haggard? I don't think so. So if you want to be great. It, there's no end to it. So what I do is I keep. Merle Haggard lyrics and Johnny Cash lyrics and stuff. You saw them.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  He stopped loving her today. Greatest country song ever written. I have those lyrics. By Bobby Braddock and Curly Putnam, written out by those writers and signed by George Jones when he was at my house one time.

• 1:01:21Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  On, at my front door. I see it every single day. And what that does for me as a songwriter. Is, yeah, you're pretty good. You can write a hit song, but you ain't written that song. So I give that advice to everybody, whether, whether you're a soldier, whether you're a teacher, whatever it is that you do in your life. Compare yourself to the greatest of all time and you will never stop improving.

• 1:01:41Shawn Ryan?

  Ben, I love that. I love that. I, I do that. I've just never articulated it. Choose your competition wisely.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, because you're, you're great at what you do. But in your line of work and what you've done in your history, I'm sure you're aware of other people.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  That you go, yeah, but I haven't done that. Right?

• 1:02:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah. I don't watch anybody.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  Yeah?

• 1:02:08Shawn Ryan?

  I don't do it because I don't want to.

• 1:02:12Shawn Ryan?

  I feel like that can, um. Inhibit your creativity. It could influence you to do things that you wouldn't normally do because somebody else is doing it. So I don't watch anything. I learn everything from this show. But.

• 1:02:27Shawn Ryan?

  I keep tabs on people, but I don't watch it because I don't, I don't want it to

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  Well, let's take something as simple as shooting a gun, right? So you handed me this incredible pistol. And you're a great shot. But you're bound to be aware of other guys that are better shot than you are.

• 1:02:41Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:02:42Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  That can do things with a, with a rifle or a pistol that you can't, you can't pull that one off. Right? So you go, I better keep practicing. That's what I'm saying.

• 1:02:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  But once you think you're the best that ever did it, well, what's there to shoot for?

• 1:02:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, that's, that's a damn good.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  Kind of how I look at it. Maybe it's different because I'm in the creative world. You know?

• 1:03:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  That, I mean, Tom Petty, Johnny Cash, those kind of guys, come on, man.

• 1:03:10Shawn Ryan?

  Did you meet them, any of them?

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:13Shawn Ryan?

  Who, did you meet Johnny Cash?

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  I did.

• 1:03:15Shawn Ryan?

  Dude, how was that?

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  I met Johnny Cash when I was 19 years old. And I was in the band Lone Star, uh, in the, about 94. And we got to open for Johnny Cash at a fair in Ohio.

• 1:03:29Shawn Ryan?

  That is cool.

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  And it was June, Carter was with him, the whole thing. And I'm just on the side of the stage, just, I just can't even believe it. Got one picture with him outside the back. That's the only time I ever met him. It's hanging up in the house.

• 1:03:43Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, my first son's name is Cash. Just because I, I think what Johnny Cash, Johnny Cash conveyed more information and more emotion with fewer words than anybody that ever wrote a song. The way Johnny Cash wrote music, I would say is similar to how David wrote Psalms or Solomon wrote, like in Proverbs and places like this, this mass amount of information in like four lines. That's how Johnny Cash wrote songs. I mean, that's just God given ability and just his depth was just unbelievable. So again, I will not, I will never be Johnny Cash, but I'm gonna try.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  I'm gonna get as close as I can.

• 1:04:31Shawn Ryan?

  Did you ever meet Waylon?

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  I never met Waylon.

• 1:04:34Shawn Ryan?

  Ah, damn, I'm a huge.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  I know, I know Willie, I knew Christopherson very well. Haggard, knew Haggard very well, but never got to be around Waylon. That was, that was the odd man out for me.

• 1:04:45Shawn Ryan?

  Who's your, who's your favorite icon that you got to know?

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  Favorite icon I got to know was Charlie Daniels.

• 1:04:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I got to meet him.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  Did you?

• 1:04:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yes, I did.

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  How did you feel when you looked him in the eye and talked to him?

• 1:05:00Shawn Ryan?

  Like he is just a awesome human being. I met him at this thing called, you might have been there actually, uh, the Journey Home Project. He had this thing going on for veterans. And, um, and that's where I met him. And, uh, he was just the nicest guy, man. Everybody loved that dude.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Nice and extremely intense.

• 1:05:23Shawn Ryan?

  Appeared to everybody loved that guy, but, um.

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, and intense.

• 1:05:27Shawn Ryan?

  How was it meeting him for the first time?

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  Kind of like it was meeting Cash, just because he's just such a so much gravity around Charlie Daniels, but later on, as I then began to know him, um, I'll give you an interesting story. I had a show called The Pursuit. And that was a show on Fox Business Network. I did forty episodes where I would interview people kind of like this about their pursuit of happiness in America. And so it was like profile interviews. I got to interview Charlie Daniels. And went out to his farm, this is during COVID, so this is 2020. And, um, we finished the interview, he goes, hey, uh, follow me over here. I'm gonna show you this new big old stud horse I just bought. I said, alright.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  So he's chomping on his nicotine gum or whatever, you know? We go lean on this bench, really goes, look at that thing, man. That's something, ain't it? I go, God, is it? What a hell of a horse right there. He goes, I know, man. I can't wait to get that thing bred, man. It's gonna be, we're talking about horses. And he looks at me and he goes, you know, John, boy, I ain't gonna be around here forever.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  I said, well, how old are you now? He said, eighty-three.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  I said, how many shows you got booked this year? He said, well, before COVID canceled about 120.

• 1:06:46Shawn Ryan?

  Holy.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  I ain't gonna be around here forever. I said, oh, I think you're gonna be around here for a while. I mean, come on. He said, well, what I'm getting at is, man, he said, no, I won't be around here forever. And he said, we need ones like you to pick that baton up when guys like me are gone and run with it. About our country, about our vets, about God and the Bible and the truth and all those things. He said, I know that's who you are. Someday, God, I ain't gonna be around. We need guys like you to run with it. That was the last interview he ever did. He died 13 days later.

• 1:07:20Shawn Ryan?

  Holy cow, man.

• 1:07:22Speaker 01

  The last time he was on camera doing an interview was with me. And the last thing he ever told me was that.

• 1:07:30Shawn Ryan?

  What an honor. That's an honor, man.

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  I think about it often.

• 1:07:34Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:07:37Shawn Ryan?

  He took it in. He definitely took it in.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  Dead serious.

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  And I'm dead serious and you're dead serious. And there's a bunch of us that are. But for me, that that encounter was a big deal. It stuck with me. It's interesting to think about the timing of that, that he felt moved to tell me that right then. And 13 days later, he passed away.

• 1:08:02Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  Maybe he told 100 people that. I don't know. But I know he told me that.

• 1:08:06Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, you were one of them.

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  I appreciate it.

• 1:08:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, man. Yeah. What an honor. So what, let's go back to the music career. So you're 16 years old. You're playing in honky-tonks.

• 1:08:21Shawn Ryan?

  What is that? When do you start gaining a lot of attention?

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  Well, so

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  my parents got divorced when I was 17.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  My junior year of high school and um my mother took my two sisters and brother and moved them to Dixon, Tennessee, which is where she's from, her hometown. My dad and I were then stranded back in Ashland City, Tennessee, about sixty something miles away, sixty-five miles away. And my dad says, "Well, my two daughters and my son are now in Dixon, so I'm gonna take a job in Dixon, but still living in Chatham County." And I'm living in Chatham County. I'm like, "Well, I'm, okay, so now my dad's gonna be working in Dixon. My brothers and sisters are gonna be going to school at Dixon County High School. I've gotta go there. That's where

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  my family's at." But I hadn't lived there. So I'm driving my 1971 Dodge Dart swinger, which I still own, still own it, and it still looks good. Uh, I was driving that thing round trip every single day, going, doing my senior year of high school at this public school. Now, up to this point, my dad had us in a little, little Christian school. There was maybe twenty-five kids in my whole class. I walk into Dixon County High School the first day. There was over seven hundred kids in the senior class alone. So at this point, that county only had one high school, so everybody went there. I go walking in this building, about to throw up, that feeling of just nauseous, scared, like, just like,

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  "I've got this list of classes and I don't even know where I'm supposed to go." And this boy comes walking up to me. He looks at me and he goes, "Is this your first year?" I said, "Yeah." He goes, "What, what are you, junior, senior?" I said, "I'm a senior." He goes, "You're coming here your senior year?" I went, "Yeah." I said, "Listen, man, can you tell me where this class is?" He goes, "Oh, yeah, that's English class." He goes, "I'll walk you down there." He goes, "When's your, when's your lunch?" And he looks at lunch. He goes, "Oh, we had, we had the same lunch break." He goes, "I'll tell you what, I'll come find you at lunch, too, and uh, introduce you to some people. But I'll walk you down to your class." So he walks me down to my class. I go to lunch. This guy comes over and finds me and he

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  becomes my buddy and that's where I got to exist and with his friends my senior year. That guy's name is Jody Barrett. Jody is now the Tennessee, uh, Tennessee representative for District 69, which is Dixon County, Hickman County, and Lewis County, and is now running for District 7 US Congress, which is where Mark Green just vacated. Jody's running for that. No kidding. I know, right? This is the kid that walks up. I slept on Jody's couch probably eighty to a hundred times that year. Wow. So I didn't have to go all the way back home and try to do homework and drive all the way back. He said, "You can stay on my couch anytime you want." So it was during

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  that time that Jody and some of his friends realized I could sing and play the guitar. Cause how am I gonna get a girlfriend, man? Right? I don't care what anybody tells you, Sean. The only reason a guy learns how to play a guitar is to meet girls. I've always had an inclination. That was true. That is what, that's why. Not big enough to get on the football team, not tall enough to get on the basketball team. How else can I get a date? Oh, maybe I'll learn how to play some George Strait. That might do it. And it did. And so. And it did. And it did. I won't lie. And so I started bringing my guitar and at Jody's house, he'd call over a bunch of friends. I'd sit there and I'd play everything on the top forty.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  I'd play everything on the radio. I'd play it. At that point, yeah. And so Jody says, "Hey, man, uh, you ought to, you ought to go work at Opryland." You ever heard of Opryland? Yeah. So that was the big theme park that was in Nashville. Huge. Like. Oh, that was a theme park? Oh, roller coasters, log rides. I mean, it was massive. It's where Hundred Oaks Mall is now. That entire thing was Opryland. Opryland USA. And they had live music throughout the park. And he says, "You should go audition for one of those shows, man. You'd probably get it." And I said, "Oh, man, you gotta, you gotta be able to dance." And I said, "Have you seen the guys on some of those shows?" He's like, "Well, you know, there's probably gonna be a bunch of good looking girls at the audition." I said, "Well, that is true. Maybe I will."

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  So I took the Dodge Dart swinger to Opryland and auditioned for a show called Country Music USA where you go onstage and you emulate famous country singers. So like one guy's Vince Gill and one guy's George Jones and on and on and on. And I got the call back, which means I was good enough to get called back. Got the call back and they said, can you dance? I said, I can two-step. They go, can you do anything else? I went, nope. They said, okay, you're hired. He gave me my paper. So when I graduated high school, at Dixon County High School, I went to work at Opryland USA, which is where I met Dean Sams, who's the guy that put Lone Star

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  together. All the boys from Texas happened from that Opryland gig.

• 1:13:40Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  That I would not have taken had my friends not urged me to go do it because there would be good-looking girls down there.

• 1:13:46Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  Isn't that crazy?

• 1:13:48Shawn Ryan?

  That is wild.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  God moves you around in these crazy... That was a horrible year, man. Your parents get divorced. You gotta go to a brand-new school. You don't know anybody. It's like, couldn't get a job. All the jobs were taken.

• 1:14:01Shawn Ryan?

  How'd you deal with the divorce?

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  I was glad it happened.

• 1:14:06Shawn Ryan?

  You were glad.

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  I was glad. Cause I'd watched, I'd watched it my whole life and this is just, I couldn't wait to get out of there.

• 1:14:13Shawn Ryan?

  Now, why, why do you think that your sisters and brother went with your mom?

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  Well, my brother was too young to have a choice.

• 1:14:23Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  Um, and I think my sisters wanted to be with their mom. No, but me and my dad are like that.

• 1:14:32Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, I'm like, I'm with you. Wherever you're at, that's where I'm going.

• 1:14:38Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Let me tell you how I made money my senior year?

• 1:14:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  Cause this will be high entertainment for everybody watching right now, guys. All you guys watching. What do you do, Sean, when you go to a Tennessee town and you're a senior in high school and every single job in the town has been taken because there are thousands of, thousands of teenagers and all their parents own all the businesses and they're all working? What do you do?

• 1:15:03Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, you pick up a guitar and go to the honky tonk.

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  I grew up working at car dealerships when I was a teenager because my dad was in the car business. He was preaching all the time, but he made his money in the car business. So, one of my jobs on many different car dealerships where he was at was detailing cars. Manual labor again, and that's like, hey, John, here's a 1969, you know, Plymouth New Yorker, which is longer than this room, and it's red and it's oxidized paint, and we want you to, here's a box of turtle wax and some rags. We need this thing shining by this time tomorrow. Oh, by the way, there's a bunch of tar down in the carpet. You're gonna want to take some gasoline and scrub, get that tar to break up, get that out, like that kind of work.

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  So, I was doing that kind of work, but I got really good at detailing cars. Matter of fact, I can still detail a car better than anybody you know.

• 1:16:01Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  So, across the way from the high school, Dixon County High School, there was this little used, it wasn't really a car lot, it had Peterbilt sitting on it and Kenworth. So, it had like big rigs sitting on it, but they looked terrible. I mean, they were like old, worn out. But he was selling them, he had white shoe polish, you know, in the windshield. Thirty-five hundred dollars. So, I walk in that place, this old man comes out and he said, "Can I help you, son?" I go, I said, "Yes, sir," I said, "uh, how much money would you pay me if I can get that black Peterbilt that's all oxidized to shine?" He goes, "You can't make that shine." I go, "What if I could?" He goes,

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  "Twenty-five dollars?" I went, "All right." I said, "You got any rags, you got any turtle wax?" He goes, "Yeah." So, he hands me a box. Took me three afternoons after school to shine that black Peterbilt. But it was shiny, and he erased the thirty-five hundred dollars off and put forty-five hundred dollars on it. He goes, "You want to hit the rest of them?" I said, "Not for twenty-five dollars."

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  He goes, "How much you want for them?" I said, "Fifty dollars." He goes, "That's fair." So, I did the rest of them, but he was out of trucks, that was it. So, one of the kids I've met at school had this derelict older brother. He was about like twenty-one, twenty-two.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  And you know, pot smoking guy, always had a beer in his hand. And I told the derelict older brother, I said, hey,

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  how much beer can you buy with this $50 right here? He goes, depends on what kind of beer. I said, the cheapest beer you can get. He goes, that's probably natural light. I said, or Busch Light.

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  I said, well, whatever it is, buy as much beer as you can.

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  Bring it to me and you can keep a six pack for doing it for me. He goes, you're serious? I went, yeah. He goes, okay. So he goes down, he buys like several cases of beer. I give him his commission. I open up the trunk to my 1971 Dodge Dart swinger, baby blue with a white hardtop. I put that beer in the trunk. I find out where the bonfire party is going on that weekend where all the other kids my age are going to be hanging out. I put it on ice. I show up out there and I sell beers for $10 apiece.

• 1:18:21Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  Now I got money, I got money. And so I just keep going back to the derelict brother and, and recirculating the money. And basically I am bootlegging beer, but it's not really illegal because I'm also underage.

• 1:18:36Speaker 01

  So I, I thought it through, man. Like, you know, can you really throw me in jail? Like the derelict brother could have gotten in trouble. But can I really get in trouble for this? I, maybe I could have, I don't know, but I didn't.

• 1:18:47Shawn Ryan?

  You could have because I used to do this exact same thing, except I would drink it all. And you get a, turns out you get a minor in possession.

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  Well, I guess that's true.

• 1:18:56Shawn Ryan?

  So.

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  Where did you get this? I don't know.

• 1:18:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:59Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:18:59Shawn Ryan?

  Found it in a ditch.

• 1:19:00Speaker 01

  So I recycled that money and that's how I did it. And that's how I did it. So they knew if you wanted, if you wanted a cold beer, go find John.

• 1:19:07Shawn Ryan?

  Entrepreneurial mind at a very young age.

• 1:19:10Speaker 01

  That's what it was.

• 1:19:10Shawn Ryan?

  Love it. Love it.

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  Necessity.

• 1:19:13Shawn Ryan?

  Well, John, let's take a quick break and uh, when we come back, we'll pick up with Lone Star.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  Sounds good.

• 1:19:22Speaker 02

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• 1:20:02Shawn Ryan?

  Want more from The Sean Ryan Show? Join our Patreon today for more clips and exclusive content. You'll get an exclusive look behind the scenes where you can watch the guests interact with the team and explore the studio before every episode. Plus, unlock bonus content like our extra intel segments where we ask our guests additional questions, our new SRS onsite specials, and access to an entire tactical training library you will not find anywhere else. And the best part? Patreon members can ask our guests questions directly. Your insights can help shape the show. Join us on Patreon now, support the mission, and become part of The Sean Ryan Show's story.

• 1:20:46Shawn Ryan?

  All right, John, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to get into your come up and Lone Star.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  Yep. So the Lone Star Band started from my work at Opryland where I meet a guy who's also working at Opryland, about 10 years older than me. Been doing that job for a while. And he said, "Hey, you're from Texas, right?" I said, "Yeah, I grew up in Amarillo." He said, "Well, I've got some buddies." He said, "I'm from Garland, Texas, and a couple of my buddies are also from Texas. They're here in Nashville now. We want to put a band together since we're all from Texas." And he says, "Would you want to be in the band?" I said, "I'd love to be in the band." And he goes, "You play bass, right?" I said, "I mean, sorta. I mean, I can play one." He goes, "Great, learn these songs." And he hands me a cassette of the, like, top 20 songs in country music that week.

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  Tells me to learn these songs. We're having a rehearsal on Saturday. You're going to meet all the guys." "Okay." So I go call a friend of mine who is actually a bass player. And I said, "Hey, um..."

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  I don't have a bass amp. I don't have any, I don't have anything really. Nor do I really know how to play these songs. Can you show me some stuff on the bass? Cause I've got a rehearsal in like five days. I go get with this guy and he's showing me how to play this bass and how to follow it. So I practice and practice and practice. I go to the rehearsal. I walk in with a, with a pawn store level bass.

• 1:22:14Speaker 01

  Carrying my cable in my hand, no case, no nothing. And these are all like pro guys out of Texas. They've been playing the honky tonk circuits in Texas for a decade. So they're legit musicians down there. And they're looking at me like, looking at Dean going, who is this guy? Walking in here. Dean's like, just wait till you hear him sing. Just wait till you hear him sing. It's like, okay. And so I was terrible on the bass, but I was the only guy in the band that could sing higher than Richie McDonald, who's the lead singer of Lone Star. So songs like, "Baby, I'm amazed by you," songs like that, huge songs. That's Richie. Incredible singer and he's high. But I could go even higher than that. So I could sing harmony over the top of Richie and nobody else could.

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  So they came to me and they said, okay, well, let you be in the band, but you have got to get better on the bass. You have got to get better or you can't stay. I said, I'll practice. I'll practice my ass off, you know? So I did and I planned on going to college. At Belmont University, I had a four-year paid ride to Belmont on a vocal scholarship. I actually was first chair, first tenor in the all-south choir. So my Dixon County High School year, the one year I had, they had, they had a big choir and I went there again to meet girls.

• 1:23:34Speaker 01

  Right? But I was good at it and I'm singing in Latin. I'm singing operatic things in Latin. I don't even know what I'm saying. But I'm nailing it and I get first chair, which means number one, first tenor, which is the highest male voice all south, all south choir. So Belmont gives me a four-year ride. So my plan was, I'll goof around with these guys a little bit and then I'm going to go, go to college. To do what? I don't know, but I'm going to go. Dean comes to me and he says, hey, man, this booking agent saw us play and he said he can book us about 200 nights this next year. All over North America. I said, "What kind of places?" He goes, "Oh, man, like county rodeos,

• 1:24:18Speaker 01

  Holiday Inn Lounges, you know, just wherever, all over the place." I said, "Well, I'm going to college." I said, "How much money would I make doing something like that?" Dean says, "You'll probably make like five or six hundred dollars a week." I said, "Are you kidding?" I couldn't believe it. Remember, I'd been selling beer out of the back of my trunk. I said, and these guys were really good, too. So, I went back and told my dad, I said, "Instead of going to college on a four-year paid ride, I'm gonna climb in a van pulling a trailer with guys I barely know, and play off-brand casinos, county fairs, Holiday Inn Lounges, all over North America." I remember my dad saying, "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

• 1:25:03Speaker 01

  I said, "Well, what I want to do is, I want to be on the radio. I want to play the Grand Ole Opry." He goes, "Yes, I know that." I said, "I don't know how going to college is gonna make that happen, and these guys are really, really good." He said, "Okay." He said, "I guess you can always go back, if it doesn't work out, you can always go back to college." I said, "That's what I'm thinking." He goes, "Okay." I can only imagine how my dad must have felt with me telling him that at eighteen, barely nineteen years old, preaching his whole life. You know, my dad went to thirty Mardi Gras in thirty years, singing in the French Quarter with a guitar around his neck, as the parades would come by.

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  That's who my dad is. And so, here's his son telling him this. I have such empathy for my dad now, that I have my own two sons. Such empathy for what that man must have endured, just with the thought process of that. I'd never been anywhere, speak of, "And you're just gonna take off and go do this." But he said, "All right, well, give it your best, you know, go get 'em." And we went from playing those Holiday Inn Lounges and all that stuff to about, less than two years later, landed a major record deal.

• 1:26:17Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  Yep, with RCA slash BNA Records, which Kenny Chesney had just been signed to BNA. Got that record deal. That was my, that was my "I made it" moment. I got a record deal. Think about it, I was twenty when we signed that deal. With the record deal, you also get a publishing deal. So the publishing deal is the songwriting side, and that's how they did it back in the day. Where they'd have kind of both sides at the table. Which is not a great business model, but it did allow me to get in the room with the absolute best songwriters of that era of music. Because I have a record deal, they'll write with the kid songwriter because they think they might get a cut.

• 1:26:59Speaker 01

  So I get to sit in the room with these monster songwriters and learn how to write a hit song and just, just like a sponge, just everything I could get out of these guys I was writing with. And that is where I really learned how to write.

• 1:27:14Shawn Ryan?

  What goes into writing a hit song?

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a mystery as to what makes a song a hit, but ultimately, it's fairly simple. If you can say something in your song and create a feeling with that music that connects with enough people, it's a hit. So it's not like it has to be written this way, or it has to be written that way. There's millions of different versions of songs that have all been hits. Can you, can you say something that penetrates Sean Ryan's chest? Do he feels it? Either it makes him feel great every time he hears it, so he's cranking it up, I want to hear that song a hundred times. Or it makes him think, or it's the perfect song for however he's feeling that day, but

• 1:28:04Speaker 01

  it says it so perfectly, it's, it's a hit. And what you learn is, just because it rhymes doesn't mean it's right. I get sent songs all the time from up and coming songwriters, and they're convinced they've written a hit. This is a hit, everybody in my hometown says so.

• 1:28:22Speaker 01

  I'd say, "Okay, let me hear it." And they'll send it to me and it's... There's elements in there that could be a hit, but it's not top-down. It's not, it's not bulletproof.

• 1:28:32Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:28:33Speaker 01

  Right. So then I have to tear their song apart and critique them and hopefully they can... That's how it was done to me. I would bring songs in to, like, a record producer. And I was convinced this first song I'm gonna play him is a hit. I'm convinced of it. And he'd go, "All right, let's..." He'll hit "Play" and sit there and listen to the first verse and then just turn it off and go, "What else you got?" I go, "You didn't even hear the chorus." He goes, "Didn't need to hear the chorus, I heard the verse." I go, "What does that mean?" He goes, "It was a bunch of cliches that didn't mean anything." That was like some of the most boring, watered-down stuff I've ever... Like, they're brutal on Music Row. I go, "Well, what should I have done?"

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  He goes, "Well, I mean, what you're talking about is cool, but I mean, I've heard it said that way a million times. You have to say it in a way nobody's ever said it before."

• 1:29:23Shawn Ryan?

  So it's the, it's, it's the words?

• 1:29:26Speaker 01

  The lyrics are the... In country music, the lyrics are the thing. I'm what you would call a snapshot writer. So there's all different kinds of writers. I would say I'm a snapshot writer and I'm a voyeur writer. And I'll explain those two things. So, a snapshot songwriter is somebody, if I'm sitting right here and I pull out an old Polaroid camera and I go, "Tchank", and I catch whatever's in that frame. Everything I'm gonna write in this song does not exit that frame. It's that. So it is... He was wearing a black baseball cap and a big old leather chair. Military stuff behind him, guns hanging everywhere.

• 1:30:11Speaker 01

  American flag on the wall and a soldier up in the air.

• 1:30:16Shawn Ryan?

  Bad.

• 1:30:16Speaker 01

  "Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba", like he didn't have a care.

• 1:30:21Speaker 01

  That's how I start the song. So what that's doing is that's taking the listener and that is putting them in a place. It's like a, they can see it in their head because you're so descriptive with what you're saying. They can see, they have a mental image of what that is. So they, they, they actually go into that place and then you take them down the road and I start telling your story in the song. And by the time the song is over, it's stuck in their head and they feel like they just experienced what that snapshot was. That's snapshot songwriting. Wow. Interesting, right? That is. Boyer songwriting is when you step into someone else's shoes and write the song from their perspective. So, an example of that would be,

• 1:31:03Speaker 01

  there was a girl that was our bartender, me and Big Kenny. It was a blues bar. We liked to hang out back in the day. This girl was a bartender. And one night the lead singer of the, of the band goes, "All right, it's last call, last call for alcohol. We're gonna, we're gonna call the bartender down here, let her sing the last two songs tonight." I went, "Oh, of course the bartender sings. Every bartender sings in Nashville." Here comes this girl, hair up in a ponytail, tank top, got wine stains all over. She's coming down lighting a cigarette and spitting in a cup. And got a Miller Lite in her hand. She's walking, been working a double. I went, "Okay." Gets up on the mic, this chick hits the mic and I swear to you, it felt like somebody had burned the oxygen out of the room.

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  I mean, it was so intense. So over the top. I'm looking at Kenny going, "Did you just hear that? I mean, I know it's two o'clock in the morning, but my God." He goes, "I think she's gonna sing another one. Let's listen closer." And she sang another one. I said, "Okay, this is insane." Go up to her bar, introduce myself. She comes, does a couple of demos for me and I tell her, I say, "Hey, you should be on the radio, you should have a record deal. Are you a songwriter?" She goes, "Nah, I ain't a songwriter." I said, "You don't have anything you want to say?" She goes, "I got plenty I want to say."

• 1:32:26Speaker 01

  I ain't no songwriter.

• 1:32:29Speaker 01

  Like that. I said, I'll tell you what, how about you and me get together? And let's see if we can write something. She goes, alright, fine, but I'm not a songwriter. We get together and as I got to know her better in forty-five minutes, understanding her story, I was able to take her story, and of course, she's right in the middle of it, and we write a song called Redneck Woman. Which wound up being number one for four or five weeks, and she sold thirteen million records on that. Her name's Gretchen Wilson.

• 1:32:57Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:32:57Speaker 01

  Gretchen Wilson. That's how that started.

• 1:33:00Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 1:33:01Speaker 01

  I'm serious, man.

• 1:33:03Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:33:03Speaker 01

  Right. So Gretchen and I, now she's first-class songwriter now. But in the very beginning, she didn't consider herself that, but she had something to say, and so my job was step into her shoes. See it from her perspective and help her get that story on paper and make it rhyme and make it sound like a hit. And so we did it. So that's, that's the voyeur side of, of writing a song, where it's, you're, you're, it's almost like acting, where you become her for a minute. Try to see it from her perspective and turn that into a song.

• 1:33:37Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, how does that feel to take somebody that's working at, where was this, Broadway?

• 1:33:44Speaker 01

  Printer's Alley.

• 1:33:45Shawn Ryan?

  Printer's Alley. I mean, what is it like to take somebody-

• 1:33:48Speaker 01

  Off-Broadway, winning Broadway, yeah.

• 1:33:49Shawn Ryan?

  Working a double, spitting, drinking, smoking. Doesn't sound like she had a whole hell of a lot going for her at the time, and, and turning her into a mega, a mega star.

• 1:34:03Speaker 01

  Well, I didn't turn her into anything. She turned herself into that. But what I, what I got to do is be on the front end and sit with her and become friends with her and, and tell her, like, here, here's probably the best thing I ever told her. We were, before we wrote Redneck Woman, we're sitting in this little apartment that I could barely afford. And CMT is on, country music television. And Faith Hill's on there singing "I Can Feel You Breathe", which is this video where Faith Hill is rolling around and sat in sheets with her hair all done up. And it's this real slicked out video. And Gretchen's, again, smoking a cigarette, spitting in a cup. It's about 10 o'clock in the morning.

• 1:34:45Speaker 01

  She goes, "If I gotta do that kinda shit right there, I'm never gonna make it." "I ain't got a chance in hell if I gotta do that shit right there." Like that. I said, "If you gotta do what, you ain't never gonna make it?" She goes, "That." She goes, "I ain't never gonna be that pretty, that pop, or that slick." And this is when it was Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Martina McBride. Like, I mean, that was the, that was the girl power groups. She said, "If I gotta be that slick, I ain't never gonna make it, 'cause I ain't nothing but a redneck woman." And I said, "That's exactly what you are." I said, "Gretchen, who is it that you look up most to in country music?" And the, and the female side. She said, "Loretta Lynn."

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  And I said, "And what is it you like so much about Loretta Lynn?" She goes, "She's about gotta tell you, tell it like it is. You ain't woman enough to take my man. Like, I'll whip your ass if you come in here." Like, "That's Loretta Lynn?" I went, "Correct." I said, "So Gretchen, instead of sanding off your rough edges, what's rough about you? Put a magnifying glass on it. If you got enough guts to say it. If you got enough guts to tell everybody who you really are in a song, there are 30 or 40 million women out there that are gonna go, 'That's our girl.'" And she goes, "Well, I ain't thought about it like that." And less than an hour later, we had written "Redneck Woman."

• 1:36:04Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  So there's a psychology also that goes into songwriting to make a hit.

• 1:36:11Shawn Ryan?

  Do you know, do you know what's gonna be a hit? When you come out with an album, do you know what's gonna hit?

• 1:36:18Speaker 01

  Sometimes you do, uh, some, and sometimes they surprise you. The record label thinks they always know what's gonna be a hit and they never know. The artist is the, is the one to ask because they're the ones out playing all the time. Uh, an example of that would be Save A Horse Ride A Cowboy. So, record label said, "That's one of the dumbest songs we've ever heard in our lives." I said, "Oh, we know, trust us. We know." But when we play this song, people lose their minds. And when we said, "Play it like in a bar somewhere or whatever," people go crazy. "Yes, but guys, nobody's gonna take you seriously with a song that is that dumb." I mean, it's so stupid, the whole song.

• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  I'm just telling you, people love it. "Ake Break Your Heart" was pretty stupid. I mean, they go, "Okay, we'll let you put it on the record, but it's never gonna be a single. It's never gonna be on the radio." We said, "Okay." Well, you know the story. By the time it's all said and done, people are requesting the song and it's not even a single and it, it's our big, the biggest song we've ever had.

• 1:37:21Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 1:37:22Speaker 01

  So, the answer is no, you don't. We knew that song was a hit because we knew how people reacted to it. But they still gotta play it. You gotta get through the gatekeepers to get it on the radio to find out for sure.

• 1:37:35Shawn Ryan?

  Man, man. All right, so back to Lone Star. So you guys got your record deal. You get into songwriting, where does that take you?

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  That took us, um, all over the United States. We, we were winning Academy Country Music Awards. I wrote my first song in that, first number one song in that band called Come Cryin' To Me. That was in 96. And I remember my dad calling, I was still living in his basement at that time. Because why did I need any place to live? Because I'm on the road 200 days a year. My dad calls and he says, "Hey, uh, we got a, we got a check in the mail, or I got, I got a letter in the mail to you from BMI." Which, so it's ASCAP and BMI. At that point, I was at BMI. They rep, rep all the songwriters and track down the money on songs that get played. I said, "Oh, yeah? Would you want me to open it up?" And I went, "Yeah, open it up. I'm somewhere on the road."

• 1:38:27Speaker 01

  He goes, "This can't be right." I said, "What's it say?" And he tells me the number and it's a six-figure number on this check. He goes, "This can't be right." I said, "Well, does it have a song title next to it or anything?" And he said, "Yeah, it says 'Come Crying to Me.'" I said, "Well, that's the song I wrote that just went number one."

• 1:38:50Speaker 01

  He goes, "Well, you better take thirty percent of this out for taxes. You don't even have a business manager or anything." And I'm like, "Yeah, that's probably a good idea." So I couldn't believe it.

• 1:39:02Shawn Ryan?

  That's his response? You better take thirty percent off for taxes?

• 1:39:05Speaker 01

  Or the IRS will come get you. Because I was like twenty-two. And I wouldn't have thought of that. I would have just spent it all probably, but,

• 1:39:15Speaker 01

  that's where

• 1:39:18Speaker 01

  I was able to take that money and I did think about spending it all. And I did spend it all. But what I wound up spending it all on was a house for my granny Rich and my pap Paul Rich. My pap Paul Rich, a World War II vet,

• 1:39:35Speaker 01

  was what they now refer to as tunnel rats. So he was a small-framed, American nutcase with a rifle. He was so mad at the Japanese, he hated them till the day he died. He would not eat rice. He wouldn't do anything that was anything Asian at all. And I'm sure you've met those old men like that fought that war. But he's on social security, granny's on social security, and they're both still working full-time trying to, and paying rent on a house. Didn't own their house or anything. And I got that first check. And I went and bought this house and moved out of my dad's house. We remodeled the basement to this house I just bought. They lived in the top and I lived in the bottom, and that went on for about seven years.

• 1:40:19Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding.

• 1:40:19Speaker 01

  And that's where I really got to understand the World War II generation, was during that Lone Star period that allowed me to afford to purchase something for them to basically retire them if they wanted to.

• 1:40:33Shawn Ryan?

  How did they, how did, I mean, that has to feel amazing to be able to do that for your family. How did they receive it?

• 1:40:40Speaker 01

  They couldn't believe it. And I remember my pap was like, "I can't let you do that. I can't let you do that." I said, "Well, I've already done it. I've already bought it." I said, How many Japanese you think you killed, Pat? He goes, "Hundreds." "In the caves, I mean, you go down there and you're killing them all." "Hundreds." I said, "I think you earned a break at some point." I said, "Why don't you just..." I said, "I'll tell you what, you keep the yard mode, keep the place looking good, we'll call it even." He goes, "All right, I can do that." I said, "All right," shook his hand.

• 1:41:24Speaker 01

  Him and my granny moved into that house and he lived there till he died. And when he died, we moved her to another spot. But we used to shoot skeet off that back porch, thousands of clay pigeons off that back porch with my pap. Got video of it. He was still hitting them in his, you know, late seventies. He died at eighty of colon cancer. But, you know, country music has given me those opportunities to do things like that.

• 1:41:52Speaker 01

  Going into those meetings where they tell me, "Your song sucks." Well, they were right. It did suck. And that pushed me to go forward and write something that didn't suck. Write something that would be great, that could be a hit. Thank God for it. And then it was a hit and then I got to do something like that, which is, I mean, that's just a, that's a lifelong memory. I mean, I got to live basically seven years with both of those grandparents alive.

• 1:42:18Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. That's amazing.

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:23Shawn Ryan?

  How's your dad handling your come up with the, with the, with the rise in fame and the money and the girls?

• 1:42:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. It wasn't the Lone Star phase that got him. It was the big and rich phase that really got my dad.

• 1:42:37Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 1:42:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's, that's when it went... So let me, let me, I'll finish up on Lone Star. So Lone Star, I am in my early twenties, they're all in their early thirties. They're all married with kids. I've got nobody. I'm writing number one songs and getting six-figure checks and they're not. I can barely play a bass guitar. They're much more talented than me, worked a lot longer and harder than me, but I'm making the money and I, so...

• 1:43:06Speaker 01

  There was, started to be some of this, this tension going on. And of course, I just exacerbated that by being an absolute ass, a lot of times, to these guys. And not respecting them like I should. And it actually wound up with me throwing a punch at the lead singer on the tour bus one night. And it landed, and it wasn't pretty at all. And two weeks later, they fired me from the band.

• 1:43:31Speaker 01

  So my name went from John Rich of Lone Star to just back to John Rich. Not of Lone Star, so there was no more notoriety to my name. Phone stopped ringing. Whereas before, you want to write, you want to produce, you want to do all this stuff. It was constantly going forward. The second they fired me, it was over. You lose your record deal, you lose your publishing deal, you lose all your deals. Everything's over. Lose your road income, it's just over, like that. And there's nothing else to fall back on.

• 1:44:00Shawn Ryan?

  How'd you deal with that?

• 1:44:03Speaker 01

  Not well for a little while, because the very next round of music those boys put out had a song called "Amazed", which we talked about, which still is one of the biggest songs that's ever been in country music. And I remember watching the CMA Awards, thinking, this, last year at this time, I was on the stage with those guys, and now I'm in an apartment that I'm about to lose because I can't afford it, and they're singing "Amazed" on the CMA Awards, up for Song of the Year.

• 1:44:32Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:44:32Speaker 01

  And I'm dog meat.

• 1:44:35Speaker 01

  Just dog meat.

• 1:44:38Speaker 01

  So, didn't handle that well for a while. But a, a good friend of mine in the industry said, "Listen, when things are out of your control, find something that you can still control, and control it well, and start over." He said, "That could be as simple as, how many pushups am I gonna do today?

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  How many phone calls am I gonna make today, trying to get a job, or whatever it is? Find something you can still control, and control it well." That, that is a life credo of mine.

• 1:45:13Speaker 01

  So what I could control, Sean, was a pencil and a piece of paper. I could still control that.

• 1:45:21Speaker 01

  And so I pulled that guitar off the wall every day and I started writing songs, writing songs that nobody cared about because I didn't have a publishing deal. And in the course of about four or five years, I wrote six hundred and thirty-four songs.

• 1:45:34Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:45:36Speaker 01

  That nobody cared about.

• 1:45:39Speaker 01

  But then one day they did. Because me and this long-haired country boy from Virginia hooked up, called it Big and Rich, and our music hit, and now everybody wants songs that sound like that. Oh, I have six hundred and thirty-four of those. And that's what led to being songwriter of the year for three years in a row and all that. So in the downtime, that's when you make your bones in the downtime. When you've had, when you've had the snot kicked out of you and everything's done, you give up or figure out what you can control and still control it well, some of the best advice I ever got.

• 1:46:11Shawn Ryan?

  So you, you, did you say six or seven years?

• 1:46:16Speaker 01

  Uh, of, without a record deal?

• 1:46:18Shawn Ryan?

  Without a record deal.

• 1:46:19Speaker 01

  It was ninety-eight to the end of two thousand and three. It was beginning of ninety-eight to the end of two thousand and three, so it was a full five years. Yeah.

• 1:46:31Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:46:31Speaker 01

  With really nothing going on. They offered me a little solo deal, that same solo, and I said, I'll show Lone Star, I'll put out some hits on my own. Neither one of them cracked the top sixty, and I was dropped from that deal within six months. So failed in the band, failed as a solo artist, I thought, well, what, there's nothing left, that's it. I mean, what else are you gonna do? So I thought, I guess I'll just be a full-time songwriter, I can still control that. But I hadn't thought about duo.

• 1:46:59Speaker 01

  Duo never crossed my mind. Till I meet the universal minister of love, Big Kenny.

• 1:47:06Shawn Ryan?

  How'd you guys meet?

• 1:47:08Speaker 01

  We met in a bar, can you believe that? Shocking.

• 1:47:14Speaker 01

  Uh, there was a girl, is a girl, named Cindy Simmons and she was a rep for Fender guitars here in Nashville. And her job was to go out and find up and coming talent singers and offer them a Fender guitar to have a Fender endorsement, hoping that maybe like venture cap with, with giving stuff away. And maybe one of these turns into Garth Brooks or something and there, there'll be a Fender guy. So her job was to go listen to live music and the ones that she really liked, she could offer him a, a Fender guitar. Well, I knew her and this guy, Big Kenny also knew Cindy. And Cindy had been telling both of us that we needed to meet each other. I remember her coming to me and she said, "You gotta meet this guy, Big Kenny."

• 1:47:58Speaker 01

  I said, "What is his name?" "Big Kenny?" I said, "Big and fat, big and tall, big and loud? I mean, what kind of name is that?" She goes, "Trust me, it would make sense if you saw him." "If you saw him perform, it'd make sense." I go, "Okay, whatever." She goes, "You need to come down with me and watch him sing one night." I go, "I'm not interested." Did not care. He also did not want to meet me. But eventually she got me to come see one of his shows at a place called Douglas Corner here in Nashville, which is no longer called that. It's right across from Zany's on 8th Avenue. And Big Kenny was playing a show. I only went down because Cindy was gonna be there and I was like, "Okay, I'll check this guy out." Well, here he comes, walking out on stage with hair like a lion, coming down his back

• 1:48:43Speaker 01

  and like, you know, walking all crazy and, I mean, I'm like, "What is this psychedelic crap I'm looking at here?" I mean, that's what it looked like. Hippie psychedelic, what is this? And the music was extremely creative. And I went, "Well, the guy's got talent." I mean, I mean, I've never heard music like that before, but that, that takes talent to do what I just heard. I went, "Huh, that's interesting." At the end of Kenny's show, he goes, "Before everybody goes home, I just want everybody to make sure they go home with a little something." And he reaches down into a big plastic bag full of those hard individually wrapped pieces of bubble gum that are like pieces of gravel. And he starts slinging them out in the audience.

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  And the first tranche of that that comes out, I see one coming and it goes, "Whop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop." Bang! Hit me right up underneath my head, right in the face. I said, "This guy's an idiot. I'm outta here." So he goes, "No, you can't leave. You gotta meet him. You gotta meet him." I went, "He's hitting people in the face with bubblegum, Cindy. Come on."

• 1:49:48Speaker 01

  This is ridiculous. "Please, please." I said, "Okay, fine." So I stayed. Kenny goes, "Yes." And he says, "We, you know, she'd want us to meet." And I said, "Yeah." He goes, "She says we ought to write a song together." I go, "Yeah." I mean, it's... He goes, "What are you doing tomorrow?"

• 1:50:04Speaker 01

  I said, "I'm not doing anything tomorrow." He goes, "You wanna meet up like 11 o'clock? We'll try something." I went, "Sure, I guess." It was like that. Like two hu... like two hunting dogs sniffing each other. So I went over to his house, wrote, wrote a song with him. The next day, we wrote another one, and then the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and on and on and on. And that became what is now a 20, 21-year career so far with Big and Rich.

• 1:50:29Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. So you started liking him right off the bat, otherwise you wouldn't have went back.

• 1:50:33Speaker 01

  Once I sat in a room with him.

• 1:50:34Shawn Ryan?

  What'd you like about him?

• 1:50:36Speaker 01

  Uh, he was very opposite of me. We've been described as Kenny likes to smell the roses and John likes to mow them down.

• 1:50:47Speaker 01

  And that's very true. But that was interesting to me because he would say things in a writing session that I'll go, "Say that one more time." And he would, he would throw a line out.

• 1:50:58Speaker 01

  I would go,

• 1:51:00Speaker 01

  "I think that actually might work." He goes, "I'm telling you, man, it'll work." And then you put it in the song and it works. And it's something I never would have thought of. But then my, my ability to construct and my, my, my discipline on... remember I'd gone through Lone Star, so I'd learned how to do this. I had this side put together. He had this crazy X-Factor stuff going on. You combine those two things and you wind up with structured craziness. Which is what Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy is. It's completely insane, but somehow makes sense.

• 1:51:34Speaker 01

  Isn't that wild?

• 1:51:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:36Speaker 01

  So, we recognized that in each other, that I had a skill set and he had a skill set and you put them together, it's not addition, it's multiplication. It's a force multiplier, when you put us together creatively.

• 1:51:47Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:51:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:49Shawn Ryan?

  What was, uh, what was the turning point? Was it, save a horse, ride a cowboy?

• 1:51:54Speaker 01

  Nope, the turning point was, um, a thing that Kenny and I put together called the Music Mafia. Have you ever heard of the Music Mafia?

• 1:52:01Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 1:52:02Speaker 01

  Oh, this is gonna, you're gonna love this. So, this is in that span of time where Gretchen Wilson is the bartender and, you know, we're making these interesting friends that are all kinda oddball, outcast kinda people.

• 1:52:15Shawn Ryan?

  Underdogs.

• 1:52:16Speaker 01

  Underdogs, rough, didn't, too crazy, too rough, two-time loser, like, all kinds of people. But there were rappers, there were spoken word artists, there were blues singers, there were bluegrass guys. All this incredible talent in Nashville around that period of time. Then we all knew each other and so we would go, if you wanna hear the bluegrass guy, our buddy, you know, Shannon Lawson, you gotta go to the place where they play bluegrass. If you wanna hear the rock band that we're friends with, or the blues guy, you gotta go to that bar. You wanna hear John, you gotta go to that bar. It was all segregated out.

• 1:52:52Speaker 01

  And we thought, well, this sucks, cuz we all wanna sing together. I mean, when we're writing songs together, we're singing together. But no place, you can't book all those various things on one stage. So, we decided, well, we'll just start our own thing. We'll call it the Music Mafia. Musically Artistic Friends and Alliance Mafia. That's what we called it. And so, we found the smallest place in Nashville called the Pub of Love, which no longer exists. It held about forty-five to fifty people if you packed it. We picked the worst night of the week, Tuesday night, went to the owner of the place and said, "We think we can bring thirty or forty people in here on a Tuesday night." He goes, "Well, you can just have it if you can do that." I mean, okay, come on.

• 1:53:34Speaker 01

  So, for seventy-two Tuesdays in a row, we did Music Mafia on Tuesday nights.

• 1:53:41Speaker 01

  By the time it was over, everybody from Sheryl Crow to Bon Jovi to Saliva, which was a massive rock band at the time, Click Click Boom, that band, all those artists had been in, and we're looking out in this crowd, and there are record labeled executives sitting next to homeless people watching us sing. You serious? I'm serious. And then we started getting record deals. So what we did with Music Mafia is, we showed Nashville that there was a change happening in country music, that you could take all different disciplines of music, blend them together, and they actually worked, they were cohesive. It's not, "The rappers are against the country guys, and the country guys are against the blues guys, and bluegrass is over here."

• 1:54:26Speaker 01

  It was over, because we proved it. And it was so entertaining to everybody that they couldn't get enough of it. And so, we had to go to bigger venues and bigger venues, and then Kid Rock found out about it. And he said, "I want to come to Music Mafia." We're like, "Come on, Bob, Bob comes to one, and Bob has us come to Detroit and do a Music Mafia in Detroit, pack this place out, and everybody gets record deals and everybody gets their shot." And I would argue that country music has not been the same since Music Mafia showed up. Because if you'll notice, all your award shows now in country music are what? Mashups. Mashups of all kinds of artists. Mashups, Post Malone is singing with Jason Aldean, or whatever's going on. That was considered heresy back in the day. Wow.

• 1:55:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was like taboo, like, "You guys are a bunch of idiots." But again, the artists knew where it was going, not the industry. Wow. Pretty good story, huh? That's amazing. Yeah. You engineered that with these people? Well, Big Kenny and myself, and, and a couple of other musicians that were just great talents, and we said, "This is stupid, we can't all play together."

• 1:55:33Speaker 01

  Simple as that.

• 1:55:35Shawn Ryan?

  That is pretty damn cool.

• 1:55:36Speaker 01

  We didn't think we'd wind up anywhere. I mean, who's gonna sign that? Gretchen can get off of work from bartending for eight hours. You know, smoking her cigarettes and spitting in a cup and going, "Give me the microphone. Here's one me and John wrote last week. Probably ain't no good, but anyway, I'm a redneck woman. The place goes nuts."

• 1:55:56Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. That had to feel amazing.

• 1:55:59Speaker 01

  How unlikely is all that? Yeah.

• 1:56:02Shawn Ryan?

  So you got your record deal out of that?

• 1:56:05Speaker 01

  We did. We got signed to Warner Brothers Records. A guy named Paul Worley signed us. Paul is still in my mind, one of the best record producers that there ever was in Nashville. Big old lefty, you know, big old liberal guy, but a monster talent. And he just loved Big and Rich. And he got, got the job where he could sign artists at Warner Brothers Records and he told me and Kenny, "I want to sign you guys." And we thought he was kidding. He said, "I'm serious. I want to do this right now." And we went, "Okay." He goes, "I'm serious. I want to sign you guys." We said, "You're for real?" He goes, "Yes. I'll give you a hundred and fifty thousand dollar record budget." "What?" Kenny goes, "Can you put a bar tab in that record budget?"

• 1:56:48Speaker 01

  He goes, "I bet we could probably work that out." We had a guy at the time named Mark Oswald, who actually still manages us. And Mark told me and Big Kenny, a couple of months prior to that, he said, "I know you guys think Big and Rich is a joke. Like, that's what people call y'all when you walk into a bar. Oh, look, ha ha, it's Big Kenny and John Rich. It's Big and Rich. It's a joke. I know you guys think that's ha ha." He said, "I actually think that's a real thing. I think you guys as a duo is actually a country, piece of business in country music." And we both told him he was out of his mind. I said, "I said, 'Big Kenny, what is that?'" And I said, "And I've already, I've been fired from a band, had a flop solo deal. Are you, this is, that's crazy, Mark." He goes, "I'm telling you, man, there's something to it.

• 1:57:33Speaker 01

  Big and Rich is a thing." We were like, "Okay, well, we appreciate it, but no, thanks." And then Paul Worley said, "I want to sign you guys."

• 1:57:41Speaker 01

  And so we called Mark and go, Paul really just said he wants to sign us as Big and Rich. He said, I told you.

• 1:57:46Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:57:47Speaker 01

  So Mark became our manager, Warner Brothers signed us, and that's when we made that first record. It was called Horse of a Different Color, and it sold many, many millions of records, and that put us on the map.

• 1:57:58Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that is cool.

• 1:58:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:01Shawn Ryan?

  And it was a hockey stick from there.

• 1:58:03Speaker 01

  It was a hockey stick from there.

• 1:58:05Shawn Ryan?

  So again, I'll ask you, how did your dad, you know, how, how was your dad handling your, your, all the fame that you'd amassed?

• 1:58:15Speaker 01

  Well, that's when it went into rock star mode, when Big and Rich hit. That, that's when I went into, that's when I started gambling, that's when I started fighting people and staying up all night and doing crazy stuff and, uh, getting thrown off of airplanes and I mean, just, you know, all that stuff. And, uh, I'm, I'm sure it disappointed him dramatically. I know it did. And I have apologized to him.

• 1:58:40Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 1:58:41Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. Yes. Yeah. Once I, once I turned myself around, got things straightened back out with the boss, um, I went back to him and apologized for all that. He deserved an apology for all that. He deserved more than that, but I apologized big time. Wrote him a letter and apologized so we could read it anytime we wanted to.

• 1:59:04Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:59:05Speaker 01

  Yep. That's what needed to happen.

• 1:59:09Shawn Ryan?

  How bad did it get? Do you want to go into that?

• 1:59:12Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm rattling them off right now. I mean, listen, you're talking early Big and Rich, we're pulling 200 dates a year. The first tour that we got literally out of the gate was Tim McGraw called us and said, I want you guys to be the opening act for the middle act on my 85 city tour. We went, what? He goes, I think your music is going to explode. This is before Save a Horse had come out. And so we're like, let's go. I call up Cowboy Troy, the big black rapping cowboy from Dallas, Texas, six foot five, 260 pound, world's only black rapping cowboy. Call up Troy, he's working at a foot locker down in Dallas, yet he's got a master's degree at University of Texas, but at this point, he's struggling a little bit. I said, hey,

• 1:59:55Speaker 01

  man, you want to come on the bus with Big and Rich and rap? Oh, by the way, we want to put you on the record. He goes, are you serious? I went, yeah. Put him on the record, we all go out on the road. So here's a black rapping cowboy, Big Kenny, John Rich, and a guy who's about this tall, that we call Two Foot Fred. He's actually three feet tall, but we call him Two Foot Fred to keep his ego under control.

• 2:00:18Speaker 01

  And I'd run into him years before and had kept up with this guy, and he's just this crazy little guy, that's like a rock star. So we took him on the road, too. And so we're rolling down the road with Tim McGraw with this circus of people going on, and you can just imagine the atmosphere. I mean, it was bananas. It was bonkers. And it wasn't because, you know, you were malicious with it, you're just, we can't believe what's going on right now. We're gonna have as much fun as we possibly can before this ends. Damn. Right? Damn. It would be hard to think anybody wouldn't have that angle at it, because it did seem absolutely impossible. Wow. Did you beat your wife during the come up?

• 2:01:04Speaker 01

  I met my wife in the Lone Star days. Oh, really? Yes, I did. 1996. How'd you guys meet? So my wife has her master's degree from Texas A&M in kinesiology, exercise physiology. She grew up living in places like fish camps. You ever been to a fish camp, South Texas? No. Well, whatever the picture you have in your mind is probably what it is. And I mean, put herself through college, worked at donut shops, I mean, whatever. And when I met her in Lone Star, we were playing a little rodeo, and she was a Budweiser girl. She was a promotional model and that was part of what she'd do to put herself through cause so smoking hot cowboy hat, black leather chaps, bikini top, walking around in a

• 2:01:48Speaker 01

  in a rodeo. I'm like, I'm trying to play the bass going, what is that? I mean, what in the world just walked in front of the stage like, and the whole band was doing that like, oh my, long dark hair, like, like Pocahontas, you know what I mean? Like, oh my, like, I don't know what to do. So, the show is over, show's over. Uh, the Budweiser girls want to get a picture with the band, you know, cause it's after the show. So we get a picture and I tried to get her phone number and she wouldn't give it to me, which was very smart on her part. But this is back when we all had pagers. Remember, on your belt, oh, still had rolls of quarters in your car in case you need

• 2:02:30Speaker 01

  to make a phone call. So I said, okay, you won't give me your phone number. I said, let me put my pager number on the inside of your belt. She goes, you want me to take my belt off? I go, well, do you have anything else to write on? She goes, no. I said, if, if you don't mind. She goes, okay, fine. So she takes her belt off and I take a Sharpie out or a marker and I put my pager number on the side of her belt. She put it back on. Two weeks later, I get a page from Houston, Texas, and it was her. So we didn't get married till 2008. So I knew her for a long time through all that, all that span and, um, I've, I've known her a long time and she has, uh, you know, been the counterbalance to

• 2:03:11Speaker 01

  my posture, uh, towards the world and has probably kept me out of federal prison, to be honest with you.

• 2:03:20Shawn Ryan?

  What was it that, uh, I mean, if you, if you knew her for that long before, you know, you popped the question, what, what was it?

• 2:03:28Speaker 01

  Because I knew too many guys in country music who got married when they shouldn't have, and they were all divorced. And if they had kids, their kids hated them because they never saw them. And it wrecked their lives and it was a big mistake. And I thought about it and I said, when, if I can ever get the music industry's hand off of my throat and put my hand on their throat, meaning have enough success where I can start telling them what to do. If I can ever get to that point, I'm gonna ask that girl to marry me. And I don't really know what that moment would be. But the moment came when that 634 songs I told you about that I wrote in the downtime and I had 218 songs recorded.

• 2:04:09Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:04:11Speaker 01

  Everybody was calling me for songs. I had seven songs on Jason Aldean's first record.

• 2:04:18Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding.

• 2:04:19Speaker 01

  Hicktown, Amarillo Sky, Johnny Cash, Y, I had all these massive hits. And Big Kenny had written on some of those too. Several of them. And then all the Gretchen Wilson hits and then all the Big and Rich hits and then Faith, writing songs for Faith Hill and having Mississippi Girl was a huge hit. Like all these songs I wrote, that catalog became very valuable. And so I decided to sell that catalog of songs and I sold my catalog. And at that point I knew I can now say no if I want to. I can say no. I can take the leash off. And that's when I picked up the phone and flew out of Texas and we got married and 17 years in coming up here in December.

• 2:05:01Shawn Ryan?

  Congratulations.

• 2:05:02Speaker 01

  I'd rather be an older dad than to have done it younger and exploded everything.

• 2:05:10Speaker 01

  You know? Like I was always very analytical about those types of things. Watching guys that I respected a great deal look like they were miserable because they were, even though they had a lot of hit songs and all that stuff, they were divorced and their kids didn't like them and who are you going home to? Like why are you out here beating yourself up to go home to what? Your dog or your Ferrari or whatever it is you're going home to? I don't want to live like that.

• 2:05:37Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:05:37Speaker 01

  And I knew I'd mess it up.

• 2:05:39Shawn Ryan?

  How'd you pop the question? How'd you propose?

• 2:05:42Speaker 01

  My wife will be real happy to hear that I'll tell this story because I don't think it's ever, nobody's ever asked me that question in interviews, so congratulations.

• 2:05:51Speaker 01

  Got to that point where I got that catalog sold and at that point she was doing a lot of car shows, so she was doing, she was like, the Infiniti XQ3 is a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She's staying in Chicago and Houston and Vegas and New York. She's like way up the ranks with that company. And every year I would call September 29th. I just picked the day out of thin air one day. I was, I was with her and I said, what's the date today? And she goes, September 29th. I go, well, today's your day. Today's your day. She goes, what does that mean? I said, whatever you want to do today, we're going to go do that. Whatever. She goes, what do you mean, whatever? So she don't like to shop. She's like very frugal.

• 2:06:33Speaker 01

  And I go, buy some clothes, take wherever you want to go eat, whatever. Call your girlfriends. I don't care. I'll, I'll pay for everything. We started, it was kind of became a, a thing. So I flew down on September 29th, when she was at a car show in Dallas. I had called her boss two weeks prior to that and told her boss, she won't be working for you in two weeks. So you need to find somebody else. She goes, why won't she be working for me? I said, because I'm going to ask her to marry me and I'm going to retire her. She goes, okay. I said, I'm serious. Find somebody else. She goes, okay, I'll find somebody else. Flew down there, got a key to her hotel room, packed up all of her bags, had everything sitting by the door, was wearing a suit.

• 2:07:16Speaker 01

  I had, uh, two bottles of champagne. One was for us and one was for me. Because I was so, I was so freaked out, nervous. I mean, just like, oh, I'm gonna die. And I had, I had written a song for her and I had it on my laptop, ready for her to hit play, had the ring, had the whole thing. She walked in the room. She goes, hey, what's going on? She goes, why is all my stuff packed? I go, just sit down, drink this and hit play. Sit down, drink this and hit play. She goes, what is happening? I go, just please do it. So she sat down, took a sip and hit play and the song was the story. The song was what I was there to do. And then I gave her the ring and she said, yes.

• 2:08:01Speaker 01

  And then we hopped on a plane, flew down to Houston where she's from and all her friends and everybody was loaded up in a steakhouse. And we went down there and celebrated it. And a year later, my first son was born.

• 2:08:12Shawn Ryan?

  A year later?

• 2:08:13Speaker 01

  A year later. You've got to think, man, we had waited, you know, we'd waited a long time. She'd been, I'd been seeing her at that point for seven years.

• 2:08:22Shawn Ryan?

  How old were you?

• 2:08:23Speaker 01

  Thirty-six.

• 2:08:24Shawn Ryan?

  Thirty-six?

• 2:08:27Shawn Ryan?

  So seventeen years, you got people throwing themselves at you. You're a insanely famous musician. What's the secret to a successful marriage? With all that going on, you've kept it together. A lot of people don't.

• 2:08:45Speaker 01

  Uh, it has to be, uh, your job, your profession has to become, uh, just totally secondary and like for real, you mean it. Like it actually is secondary. It's like, well, if that went away, I'll just figure out something else to do. To get to the point I was at though, required everything I had every single day, twenty-four seven. You don't write six hundred and thirty-four songs in five years. If it's not what you were thinking about literally every waking minute of your day. There's no room for anything else. But once I had accomplished that and got over that hurdle, I was, like I said, you're never free until you can say no.

• 2:09:27Speaker 01

  Larry Gatlin told me that of the Gatlin Brothers. Larry Gatlin said, John, boy, you ain't ever free until you can say no. And no is a complete sentence. You need to start saying no to people, John. Just say no. I'm not gonna do that show. No, I'm not gonna take that writing appointment. No, I'm not gonna produce that record. Start saying no. I said, well, Larry, I can't say no. I said, there's all kinds of people depend on me saying yes to shows and all that stuff. He goes, well, don't you hire talented people? I go, yes, sir. He goes, well, if you start saying no, you say no too many times and they leave you. Don't you think they'll find somewhere else to work? I said, yeah, yeah, they would. They're the best. He goes, start saying no. You're not free until you say no.

• 2:10:10Speaker 01

  It was those hurdles that I got over that I knew it was time I could get married. Because I could, I could say no. And I'm like, I felt like if I never did anything else in the music industry, I hit every mark I ever wanted to hit, plus a bunch of other marks I didn't think were even possible. I'd smoked all the marks. If it ended the day, I'm cool with it. I can, this now becomes my professional hobby. Now, we're gonna move into things. We're gonna go from success to significance. How do we make that transition? Cause they're not one in the same.

• 2:10:46Speaker 01

  Success to significance. Where I live today and what I spend my time doing, what I am, what I am focused on is significance, not success. That's when you become a dangerous animal.

• 2:10:59Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. How long did it take you to implement the saying no factor?

• 2:11:08Shawn Ryan?

  When did you develop the confidence to say, I'm not doing that?

• 2:11:12Speaker 01

  About a year, because I knew it was going to impact a lot of people financially to do that. You know, these days, me and Big Kenny, we pull around forty, fifty cities a year. And back then, we were pulling a hundred and fifty.

• 2:11:26Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:11:26Speaker 01

  So think about cutting your income stream by two thirds.

• 2:11:32Speaker 01

  And you've got bus drivers and tour managers and band and crew and your singing partner. And that's a lot of people.

• 2:11:42Shawn Ryan?

  That was a big decision.

• 2:11:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:11:44Shawn Ryan?

  You guys made that together?

• 2:11:46Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 2:11:47Shawn Ryan?

  No, you made it.

• 2:11:49Speaker 01

  Unilateral decision. She would never ask me to do that.

• 2:11:53Shawn Ryan?

  I didn't mean you and your wife. I meant you and Kenny.

• 2:11:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:11:57Shawn Ryan?

  That was you?

• 2:11:58Speaker 01

  That was me.

• 2:11:59Shawn Ryan?

  How'd he take it?

• 2:12:01Speaker 01

  It worried him, you know, um, and I told Kenny, well, maybe if there's fewer Big and Rich shows, the price will go up.

• 2:12:11Shawn Ryan?

  Did it?

• 2:12:11Speaker 01

  He goes, let's hope to God.

• 2:12:15Speaker 01

  It did. Currently, Big and Rich in 2025 is booking for, I, I, I'm not going to go into numbers, but it is significantly more than what it was when Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy was the biggest song in the United States of America.

• 2:12:29Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding?

• 2:12:30Speaker 01

  Yep. We have moved into that realm of nostalgic Big and Rich rock and roll country music that people remember and love and they want to hear it and you can only get it there. We're still the only act that does that. There's not another version of us. I, I kind of tell people, we're like the country version of Parliament Funkadelic. Like George Clinton, we want to funk, gotta have that funk. Well, if you want to hear that song and feel that energy, you gotta go see P-Funk. Well, if you want to feel the energy that Big and Rich and Cowboy Troy do, you gotta come to our show. And so when we limited the amount of shows.

• 2:13:07Speaker 01

  Everything went up and nobody got hurt. And that was just him taking care of all that. Because I knew he, he was telling me, you cannot work that hard and, and be a successful husband and fa- and daddy. Can't do it. You just can't. And I let you accomplish all that and you hit your marks. So now go over here.

• 2:13:31Speaker 01

  Right? So that's what I did.

• 2:13:34Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. I'm learning from you right now.

• 2:13:37Speaker 01

  Are you?

• 2:13:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm learning. And I'm new at this whole damn thing. Real new. But I just started this five years ago and it's-

• 2:13:45Speaker 01

  It's five years ago when you got down on your knees?

• 2:13:48Shawn Ryan?

  It's five years ago that I started the podcast. It's about two years that I got down.

• 2:13:52Speaker 01

  Two years. Two years. Yeah. It takes, it takes years to, you'll never, you'll never fully understand how this is supposed to work. Ever.

• 2:14:06Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:14:06Speaker 01

  But it takes, as, as each year clicks by, if you're serious about figuring it out and hanging around people that have done it longer than you, which is what I continue to do, you'll start learning more and more about it. Man, life starts making a lot more sense. A lot more. And it's interesting too, when things happen out of, out of nowhere, out of left field, that used to just absolutely send you into a tailspin. You're able to go, why'd you just let that happen? Like, what was the point of that? Not what the is going on. It's like, really? What was that about?

• 2:14:43Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:14:44Speaker 01

  Cause I know there's a reason why you let that happen. And then you go on here a little bit down the road and you go, oh, that's why that happened. Because this couldn't happen if that was still in place. He has to tear a piece off to be able to add the new piece on. Nobody likes to get their arm ripped off. Unless he's gonna replace it with a bionic arm that can pick up 10 times the weight, then I might take that arm. That might be kinda cool, but it hurts to get your arm ripped off.

• 2:15:09Shawn Ryan?

  Yes, it does.

• 2:15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:12Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I always keep him at the forefront. You know, I always do. Even before I came, I came to. I mean, my intentions were always- Were always to help and to to make it about the person sitting across from me, not about me and and um and it's you know, because of him, you know, it's served me well and

• 2:15:38Shawn Ryan?

  yeah.

• 2:15:38Speaker 01

  Well, that's actually in the spirit of who Jesus was. Jesus was not about him. He was about us. He was about everybody else. He allowed his own creation to torture him to death.

• 2:15:51Speaker 01

  He allowed he allowed human beings that he created to torture him to death. He could have went, it's over and just erased the entire thing and started over. He didn't. He didn't do that. He said, if I don't do this, it's all it's all lost. They're all they're all lost. I have to do it. I have to let my own creation murder me. You know, Jesus wasn't murdered for something that he did. He was murdered for things that he said.

• 2:16:20Speaker 01

  He never hurt anybody.

• 2:16:23Speaker 01

  Isn't that wild?

• 2:16:24Shawn Ryan?

  It is.

• 2:16:24Speaker 01

  I mean, that's how you know he was God, because any human that had the ability to stop something like that would have.

• 2:16:34Shawn Ryan?

  It's a damn good point.

• 2:16:37Shawn Ryan?

  A damn good point.

• 2:16:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:40Shawn Ryan?

  When did you start? You know, we we kind of touched on this at the very beginning, but you know, I think

• 2:16:49Shawn Ryan?

  everybody

• 2:16:51Shawn Ryan?

  noticed how the country music scene kind of started to change. When did you start to see the change?

• 2:16:58Speaker 01

  When they brought out the drag queens.

• 2:17:01Shawn Ryan?

  When was that?

• 2:17:04Speaker 01

  Hmm, late 20 teens, they started dragging out, you know, you turn on an award show and you go, why are there drag queens on the CMT Awards? What is going on right now? I mean, like, what? Because country music is is family oriented. It's like mom and dad and the kids and everybody gets around and they go, hey, the CMA Awards are on or ACM Awards are on and go, what's? And then they started dragging in all this cultural stuff that you're going, what is happening right now? What about the country music and who was who was the best singer this year? And they got away from that and went straight into woke culture. And that came from the top down. And that came from those record execs that were coming in from other places.

• 2:17:47Speaker 01

  And part of the war that they were waging on culture through the woke side of it was to use music. As part of the war.

• 2:17:56Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:17:56Speaker 01

  Because what will penetrate a human being faster than a really good song? Nothing. I mean, music just goes right through you. It's just way better than a book, way better than a podcast, way better than a singer, way better than a movie. Music is like, we know what music is, it's powerful. And so they used the music industry, all genres, including country music, to try to press that down on people and shut everybody up that wouldn't go along with it. And they shut up a whole bunch of them.

• 2:18:26Shawn Ryan?

  They did.

• 2:18:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:27Shawn Ryan?

  Did. It's sad to see.

• 2:18:28Speaker 01

  It backfired on them in country music.

• 2:18:30Shawn Ryan?

  It did?

• 2:18:31Speaker 01

  Yes, big time. So there is no such thing as the CMT Awards anymore. That used to be a huge deal. Country music television was like MTV Awards, CMT Awards. And when they drug out, when the drag queens came out on the CMT Awards at the end of the show. I think the next year they had to have it as a streaming show. And now there's not even a CMT Awards.

• 2:18:55Shawn Ryan?

  It affected it within one year.

• 2:18:57Speaker 01

  Nobody watched it again. They got Dixie chicked. They got Bud Lighted.

• 2:19:03Speaker 01

  People had enough of it. It's went, well, last time we're watching that, click.

• 2:19:09Shawn Ryan?

  What was the, I mean, what was the conversation behind the scenes with fellow artists? There had to be a lot of talk about what the hell is going on here?

• 2:19:21Speaker 01

  Dude, I don't know how much longer I can keep, I mean, have you seen what they're doing? I mean, like, everybody's hush, hush, talking about it in green rooms and tour buses and just horrified at the stuff that is being pushed on them and how the image of country music was being pushed hard in that direction like that. And they're like, what are you gonna do about it? I mean, if you say anything about it, they're gonna drop you.

• 2:19:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I was in the position at that point that I had already stepped away from record labels and he can't drop me because I don't have a contract. Like I told you early on, I don't have any contracts. So I was kind of an outlier that I could actually come and say things and nobody can really hurt me with it because I don't work with you people anymore. That's really where Al Dean, I think, is head and shoulders up because he does still have a record deal. He is still part of that music industry complex that's out there, but he just still does it like he wants to do it. I mean, mad respect for Jason Aldean.

• 2:20:21Shawn Ryan?

  Have you seen a, have you seen a shift back to the core of what it was? You have? When did that start?

• 2:20:29Speaker 01

  About a year ago.

• 2:20:30Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think you started that? I mean, you, you, that's another thing. When I, when I noticed, and I can't remember what the first solo, I'm not a country, I'm not a music guy, so excuse the verbiage here, but when you started to go solo and you started speaking out and writing stuff like Revelation, I mean, did you, do you think you had a major impact in that shift?

• 2:20:59Speaker 01

  Um, I don't think so. I do know that the industry was watching what I was doing and that my songs like, yes, Revelation was one. There was one called Progress where the line of the song said, "Stick your progress where the sun don't shine," ode to Joe Biden. I had another one called Earth to God. That was during the pandemic. I mean, I had songs like that that were, that were becoming the number one most downloaded songs, not in country, but all genres.

• 2:21:30Shawn Ryan?

  In all genres?

• 2:21:31Speaker 01

  All genres. So like if you go to iTunes, you go to Apple Music, there's John Rich, Rich Records, which is a P O. box, and Earth to God, or Progress, or Revelation. And it wasn't in the country chart, it was the all genre chart. So I remember Progress, for instance, sat there for two weeks. Number two was Beyonce and number three was Lizzo. And I'm at one.

• 2:21:58Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 2:21:59Speaker 01

  Right, so.

• 2:22:01Shawn Ryan?

  You don't think you had a.

• 2:22:02Speaker 01

  Well, they may have seen that and went, there's an appetite for this. We didn't realize the appetite was that big. Maybe they looked at it. I don't know. I don't talk to these people, but I know they saw it. Everybody's, everybody looks at those charts. So maybe they went, oh, the appetite, probably a combination of knowing their audience was starved for that type of content. And that people were changing the channel and changing the radio station en masse. They were getting Bud Lighted. The fans were responding. There's a difference in being canceled and what capitalism is. Being canceled means that a small group of people tell Sean Ryan, you're done, click, and they just cancel you and your audience never had a say. When the audience decides they're going to turn you off, that's capitalism.

• 2:22:48Speaker 01

  We don't want to drink Bud Light anymore because they stuck a dude on the can. So we're going to start drinking something else. I'm a, now I'm a Coors guy and I'm a Miller guy and I'm whatever. That's not cancellation. That's capitalism. That's you guys made a marketing move. It didn't work and here's your backlash.

• 2:23:07Speaker 01

  That's how music works. A lot of the times that the audience, I think the audiences revolt against country music and maybe them seeing some, some of what I was doing and how that was hitting as big as it was. Maybe it was a combination of several of those things. Can't really be sure.

• 2:23:21Shawn Ryan?

  Did you start getting calls from other artists other than Jason Albin?

• 2:23:25Speaker 01

  Other artists?

• 2:23:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. A bunch of them.

• 2:23:27Shawn Ryan?

  You started doing that?

• 2:23:28Speaker 01

  Dude, you're sitting at number one on the all genre chart right now. I said, I know it's crazy, right? They go, how did you do that?

• 2:23:33Shawn Ryan?

  What did you say?

• 2:23:35Speaker 01

  I said, I call friends of mine who have podcasts and, you know, people that, you know, social media people that I'm friends with, you know, there's everybody from Benny Johnson, the cat turd. I mean, I got friends and so if I, if I record a really good song and I, and it's compelling and I call up all my friends and they're, they'd be a good friend back and say, yeah, man, we'll hit, we'll hit the repost on that. Then it's up to the music if the music will go because they can watch it on social media, but downloading it, that's on them. And so when enough people download that thing and it becomes the number one most downloaded song in progress case for two weeks, that was substantial. That was a big, that was actually a really big win.

• 2:24:16Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 2:24:16Speaker 01

  It was shocking to me. I was astonished by that, to be honest with you. But it, but it, it, it told me, oh yeah, there's a lot of people feel exactly like I feel out there. And country music is not delivering them the music they want to hear. Cause if you put progress on country radio nationwide, God only knows how big that song gets. But it was never played on any terrestrial radio stations.

• 2:24:41Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's wild.

• 2:24:42Speaker 01

  They wouldn't touch it, but it's number one.

• 2:24:44Shawn Ryan?

  That is wild.

• 2:24:45Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:24:46Shawn Ryan?

  And none of the, uh, none of, none of the, the record labels reached out about any of them?

• 2:24:51Speaker 01

  Oh God, no. You kidding me? What would they say? Congratulations, you're sitting at number one without us?

• 2:25:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:25:02Shawn Ryan?

  I would think their greedy minds don't, I, I, I just, I think that people like that don't have a soul.

• 2:25:09Speaker 01

  Some of them don't. There's definitely some that don't, for real. Um, and then the rest of them are, are just, uh, trying to, trying to play the game within the industry. It's kinda like, look at what Hollywood's doing. They're starting to change their, their programming. They're starting to move towards content that Americans actually wanna see. Instead of, you know, the Snow White remake that nobody cares about, or the, the, the crazy new version of Star Wars that you're going, I don't want my kids watching that. You know what I mean? People are just, once they flop enough times in a row, business, capitalism kicks back in and they go, you know what? This is not working.

• 2:25:49Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I hope Hollywood doesn't revive itself. I think, I think, I think they are so lost, they don't know what the hell to do anymore. And people boycotted it. They've quit, they've, they've let go of their streaming services. And they all come.

• 2:26:04Speaker 01

  Dropping like flies.

• 2:26:05Shawn Ryan?

  They all come.

• 2:26:06Speaker 01

  I bet Kimmel's next.

• 2:26:08Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:09Speaker 01

  I mean, Kimmel ain't any different than Colbert. That's same, that's same deal. I think that's why Fallon had Greg Gutfeld come on.

• 2:26:17Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, really?

• 2:26:18Speaker 01

  I know Fallon. I've known Fallon for a long time. Long time. And. Fallon has never struck me as whack job like Colbert was, dance around with the needle on his head and all that. Fallon would never do that. I still think Fallon's a lefty, yeah, but he ain't that. And so for him to bring Gutfeld on to his show, kind of broke the wall. It like ripped the veil for a minute. And it was the biggest ratings he had had in years, just by having Greg Gutfeld on the show. Yeah, yeah. They're starting to bend.

• 2:26:54Shawn Ryan?

  I just wish they'd just keep going down the same damn road they're going on.

• 2:26:57Speaker 01

  Most of them are going to.

• 2:26:58Shawn Ryan?

  It's disgusting. It's disgusting.

• 2:27:00Speaker 01

  And as artists, you don't need them. Do you need Hollywood Sean Ryan?

• 2:27:05Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I thought I did. When I started this, I couldn't get anybody to pay attention. The first podcast I ever did, we hit the top 100 on the Apple charts, released at Christmas of 2019. Still couldn't get any, I guess, of course, still, because it just, it was brand new. But it's been a hockey stick ever since. And I couldn't get an agent, I couldn't get a manager, I couldn't get an advertiser, nothing would happen. And then about the time everybody started paying attention, it was too late. I didn't realize it was too late. It took me about six months to realize this entertainment industry is a fucking joke. People just, they just talk to you. They call you, they waste your fucking time, they talk about all this shit.

• 2:27:50Speaker 01

  They want to piece your action for doing nothing.

• 2:27:51Shawn Ryan?

  And nothing happens. So I fired everybody. Fired all the managers, fired all the agents. Get the fuck out of here. Don't want to work with you. I'll make contact with whoever I want to make contact with on my show. And we've been doing that, I guess. Came to that realization last year. And I guess never say never, right?

• 2:28:14Shawn Ryan?

  I don't think I'm ever going back.

• 2:28:16Speaker 01

  Why would you give up anything that you've got right now? Do you like the way things are today?

• 2:28:20Shawn Ryan?

  I didn't fucking bring anything to the table.

• 2:28:22Speaker 01

  That's what I'm saying. Otherwise, I wouldn't be sitting here.

• 2:28:25Shawn Ryan?

  But.

• 2:28:25Speaker 01

  You get to invite guys like me and I.

• 2:28:26Shawn Ryan?

  They all call up.

• 2:28:27Speaker 01

  You get to come in.

• 2:28:28Shawn Ryan?

  They all call up and like, we're the best. We're the best.

• 2:28:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:31Shawn Ryan?

  We're the best at what we do. This is the best agency. And it just got to the point where I was like, cool. You know what? All of you guys say, every single one of you, all the top, you know, what does WME, CNA, UTA, all those is, it just got to the point where I was like, cool. All you motherfuckers say the exact same damn thing. How about you put something in my lap and say, this is why we're the best, rather than this fucking USAR salesman shit? If you don't have anything, get out.

• 2:29:00Speaker 01

  What'd they say to that?

• 2:29:02Shawn Ryan?

  Well, then it was talk to this person, talk to this person, we'll get the CEO. I'm like, I don't give a shit about the CEO. I don't fucking care about any of you. Present me with something or get the fuck out of here.

• 2:29:13Speaker 01

  They weren't used to talking to a military man.

• 2:29:17Shawn Ryan?

  So.

• 2:29:18Speaker 01

  Telling you.

• 2:29:19Shawn Ryan?

  And, uh, and then, you know, back, I mean, just going back to, you know, you're talking about being, being a father and a husband and being a good husband and a good father and I have to say no to stuff. I, I learned that fairly early on and, uh, I don't do, I'll do a speaking event here and there, but all these people want me to do the speaking circuit. I'm like, I'm not doing it, man. That's just more time. You are, you are gonna starve me of my time with my wife and my kids. By with, with, with dangling money in front of me that I won't even have fucking time to spend because you've got me so damn busy. So I'm not doing it.

• 2:30:00Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 2:30:01Shawn Ryan?

  You, you bring it here to, to the Nashville, middle Tennessee area and I'll think about doing it, but I'm not, I am not fucking going on the road. Not doing it.

• 2:30:09Speaker 01

  You are, yeah. You're so far ahead of the game to understand that. A lot of people can't ever get to that point.

• 2:30:15Shawn Ryan?

  You got one shot to raise good kids, be a good husband. And, uh, I did not want to fuck that one up. And uh, and so when I, when, you know, and it was me, I mean, when I first started it, it was just me and my wife in the attic in my house. And then along came uh, three guys that I call my, the, the, the OG crowd. And it was just us three for years, just fucking grinding, grinding, grinding. And, and I started to feel like I was starving my wife and my kids. And I, I still feel like that a little bit to this day. But, so I started building it out and started, I'm still learning how to relinquish a little bit of control, but

• 2:31:01Shawn Ryan?

  when I put my team together, I, I said, no entertainment people. I don't need bookers for my podcast. I don't need agents. I don't need any of this shit. Uh, hired a COO that's been fucking amazing, producer Jeremy, you know, we went to your house and, and uh, and you know, those two are both academy grads and, and, and uh, every, all my friends like, you need, you need the right manager. You need this. I was like, no, if you've touched entertainment, don't even fucking apply. So I don't want the, I don't want the typical podcast roadmap. I don't want any of that stuff. I want a total,

• 2:31:41Shawn Ryan?

  I, I just want a unique business. We, we make our own, whatever. You get what I'm saying.

• 2:31:47Speaker 01

  If I, if I had a record deal, Sean, the last five songs I put out would have never been heard. And they all were at number one. They would have never been heard. They would be turned in to the label and they would go, that's nice and stick it on the show. And that's it. You'd never hear it. And, and for me, music is my weapon of choice. That's my weapon of choice. Music. What I can say in a song, how many millions of people I can get to understand something or think about something. That, that's mine. That guitar is like how, how you handle a pistol and a rifle. That's mine. That guitar. That pencil on that paper. You know, it's crazy how powerful a pencil and a piece of paper is. It's the most limitless thing probably God ever created.

• 2:32:33Speaker 01

  If you think about the Constitution of the United States started out as blank paper until someone picked up a pen and began to write. Now we have a country. You think about the Bible. Men and women inspired by God picked up something to write with and began to write down what they were being told to write down, and now we have the Bible. You come to me as like just a songwriter guy, but I'm looking at a blank piece of paper and I can put whatever I want to put on that or wherever I feel moved to put on that. And then we'll see what happens, but it is the most wide open thing ever. And to ever allow the industry to tell, to take that freedom and that limitlessness away from you is a crime.

• 2:33:17Speaker 01

  If you can afford to say no, you gotta say no. Even if you can't afford to say no, if they go too far with it, you have to say no anyway. Cause you can't live to your full potential if the things that you're coming up with are never gonna be heard.

• 2:33:30Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 2:33:31Speaker 01

  Right?

• 2:33:32Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:33:33Speaker 01

  Like all the great thoughts you may have, all the things you have to offer, if somebody's over your head going, "I'm not gonna let you go past this mark." Well, then what's the point? What's the point in even being here? I love, I love how you've done it.

• 2:33:45Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 2:33:46Speaker 01

  That's why I was pumped to come on here, cause I'm like, "I'm proud of you. I've been watching it and you've done it your way. It's about as American as it gets. That's why people like to watch you."

• 2:33:55Shawn Ryan?

  That means a hell of a lot, man.

• 2:33:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's just the truth.

• 2:33:58Shawn Ryan?

  Especially coming from you. Thank you.

• 2:34:00Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:34:01Shawn Ryan?

  So what was the first, what do you call it? Solo? Am I saying it? When you, what's the first? What you, the solo stuff that you're doing?

• 2:34:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:13Shawn Ryan?

  It's passionate topics that you're writing and singing about.

• 2:34:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not really writing party songs.

• 2:34:21Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 2:34:22Speaker 01

  I've got a bunch of those. You can hear them at the Big and Rich Show.

• 2:34:25Shawn Ryan?

  So how do these come to you?

• 2:34:29Speaker 01

  Um, Earth to God came to me because it was 2020. Um, this is when the riots are all happening. They've got everybody locked down. All the concerts got stopped. My kids are trying to learn virtually. They're telling us to get, keep your mask on to go. All that crap's going on. The world's on fire. It looks apocalyptic. And one morning I woke up, like the fifth day in a row, I hadn't taken my pajamas off because why? Because no, you can't go anywhere anyway. I'm like, this is, this is not right at all. And I had this image that popped into my head of like an old man, like a World War II guy, sitting in front of one of them old CB radios where the microphone comes up

• 2:35:14Speaker 01

  like this, like, like, uh, like on MASH. Remember that show? And that old CB and they're, they're pressing the button? Like a guy hailing God through a CB radio. That's what was in my head. Going, press the button. Earth to God. Come in, God. Boop. Earth to God. Come in, God. That's what was in my head when I woke up. And I went, Earth to God. Come in, God. And I thought, well, he's right there. I'm like, I talk to you all the time. I know you're right there. Like, he's literally right there. You just have to, you have to reach out to him. SOS him. And he will respond. He'll go, this is God. Come back, Earth. And I thought,

• 2:35:59Speaker 01

  wow, what a thing. And I just went, okay, I gotta grab a guitar. And that one felt like I had been hit on the back of the head with a hammer. Like, bang, right this. And so I just went, grabbed a guitar. I told my wife, I'm gonna be upstairs for a minute. And about an hour later, I had Earth to God. And I put that one out. And the whole place just went, yes, that's the, that's the lyric we needed to hear. And I'm not putting them out to get another plaque on the wall. I got, that just, doesn't really mean anything to me at this point. It's how many millions of people can I get to hear something that I think they should hear? Earth to God was the first strike on that one. Like bam, it hit. And then, the second one was progress. And that's when Biden's in the White House

• 2:36:43Speaker 01

  and gasoline's going through the roof. And I don't remember lumber, like a two by four costs $24 or whatever it was. And I went, man.

• 2:36:52Speaker 01

  This is progress. Things stick their progress where the sun don't shine as I'm walking around the Home Depot talking and mumbling to myself and went sat in my truck and I went, "Oh, that's a song. Stick your progress where the sun don't shine. Keep your big mess away from me and mine. If you leave us alone, well, we'd all be just fine. So stick your progress where the sun don't shine." I wrote that down on piece of paper in my truck and went home, called a couple of songwriting buddies still during COVID, got on the computer and we wrote the verses and I put it out and it was number one for two weeks and knocked Lizzo and Beyonce out. Then came Revelation, which is,

• 2:37:29Speaker 01

  I think, maybe when you really probably saw what I was swinging at. And this song is not even a song. Yes, it has music and yes, I'm singing it. But what the lyrics of that song are, are taken directly from the pages of the Bible itself. I just figured out how to make them rhyme. That's all it is. It is, this is what it says. Make that into a song where people can absorb what this is saying through music. And as I, as you watch very wicked people, extremely vile,

• 2:38:14Speaker 01

  wicked human beings that carry out the devil's mission on this planet, because that's their daddy.

• 2:38:25Speaker 01

  That's their father, the father of lies is what he's called. But they believe that he's going to win in the end. That's why they serve him. And they are more devout than almost any Christian you will ever meet. The real, the real McCoy Satan worshippers are so devout.

• 2:38:45Speaker 01

  I mean, it put a Christian to shame, their level of devoutness. Most Christians. They are dead serious about it and they believe they're gonna win. And so, the battle of good and evil, when you start talking about, is that real? It ain't like the battle of good and evil like in Star Wars. It's legit. Good and evil, and evil believes it will win. And so, that spiritual warfare that the Bible talks about in many, many, many places, is as serious as a heart attack. We are only separated, it says, from the Spirit by what's referred to as the veil. There's a thin veil between you and I, sitting here right now, physically looking and speaking

• 2:39:27Speaker 01

  to each other, and literally whatever else is standing in this room that has been assigned to you and I to make sure we accomplish what it is we're supposed to accomplish. There's some big old muscled up whatevers, angels standing around us, because we belong to Him, and we're doing what He tells us to do. So, we got a security team. Right? We can't see them, but you can see the results of what happens. So, things that happen in the Spirit then manifest into the flesh. Like wars in heaven, wars in the Spirit. Struggles that are going on that are just on the other side of that veil, manifest themselves in culture, and, and, and in war, and in all kinds of things that happen on the earth. Well, I had never heard that talked about in a song.

• 2:40:12Speaker 01

  How do you even make a song about that? Where do you begin? Right. But I thought, I've got a, I've got a chorus rolling in my head, and I know where that came from. So, I'm gonna sit down and see what happens. And again, it was less than two hours, and I had this song, Revelation, written.

• 2:40:32Shawn Ryan?

  You wrote that in less than two hours?

• 2:40:35Speaker 01

  I mean, you talk about bolt of lightning.

• 2:40:40Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. And then I pulled out my iPhone and sang it into my voice notes. And then put my earbuds in and walked around the house for over an hour with it on repeat, just listening to it over and over and over. And chill bumps are coming up on my arms. And that's my voice. I don't give myself chill bumps. So it wasn't about me singing it. It was like, that's it. Like, it was like, it was him putting it through me onto that page and go, I want people to hear this. I want you to say that. I can read you the lyrics. You want to hear the lyrics? Absolutely. For people that haven't heard it. And if anybody wants to go, just go on YouTube and look up John Rich Revelation. Says, "Dancing in the flames, the people cursed his name, bowed at the altar of the

• 2:41:25Speaker 01

  father of lies. But there's a number to their days and all their evil ways. The Lord's gonna turn away from all their cries. Oh, Revelation, I can feel it coming like a dark train running. Oh, get ready, because the King is coming. The King is coming back again. Brimstone upon their heads, millstones around their necks. They'll feel the shaking when the trumpet sounds. And no matter where they hide, there'll be nowhere to run when Jesus puts his mighty foot on the ground. Oh, Revelation, I can feel it coming like a dark train running. Oh, get ready, because the King is coming. The King is coming back again." And then it tags the song with, "So wrote the prophet John, who wrote Revelation.

• 2:42:10Speaker 01

  So wrote the prophet John, before his days were done, the King is coming, and it won't be long." I loved it. That's the lyrics of Revelation. So, all of that is what it says, what the Bible says. It says that they will be utterly and completely destroyed in the end. But up until that point, they're running ravenous and loose all over this earth. Says that, says, "The devil roams around as a ravenous beast, seeking who he may destroy, who he may devour," is what it says. He roams around like a ravenous lion, seeking who he may devour.

• 2:42:53Speaker 01

  That's what you're seeing in culture, Sean. That's what you're seeing when you turn on the TV. That's what you're seeing when you see these maniacs out in the street and people doing things that seem impossible that a human could even conceptualize what that is. What they're doing to kids.

• 2:43:10Speaker 01

  What they're doing to fellow human beings. It seems impossible and it is impossible because a human being was not meant to do that. They're only doing that because they are possessed by the spirit of their father. Just like I am possessed by the spirit of mine.

• 2:43:25Speaker 01

  So, I am capable of doing things that a human being is not capable of doing because it's not me doing it. It's his power and authority. If I'm willing to let him exert himself through me, that big things can happen. On the flip side, the ones that are devoted to their daddy, Satan, the devil himself, Lucifer, the dragon.

• 2:43:47Speaker 01

  When they devote their lives to him, he's able to accomplish things through them. He can dwell within them. He can make things happen outside of their own ability too.

• 2:43:54Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:43:55Speaker 01

  Yes. That's what I mean, like things that happen in the spirit manifest in the flesh.

• 2:44:00Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:44:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:02Speaker 01

  God and the devil are fighting and they possess their own people and the people are us. And so our spirits are now working at the behest of whoever it is you're with. And that plays out out here in the street.

• 2:44:14Shawn Ryan?

  Now, when you're talking about

• 2:44:18Shawn Ryan?

  the Satan worshippers that you had mentioned earlier that are so devout, it would... more devout than the everyday Christian.

• 2:44:30Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:44:30Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, have you... I've heard about this. I've talked about it.

• 2:44:39Shawn Ryan?

  I know that there are people that...

• 2:44:44Shawn Ryan?

  Trade things for power, sacrifices, child sacrifices, all that kinda stuff. But I've never really, I've never really seen it. Yeah, I've heard about Bohemian Grove.

• 2:44:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:44:56Shawn Ryan?

  I know this runs rampant in Hollywood, the P. Diddy shit, music industry. Have you seen it?

• 2:45:02Speaker 01

  No, not with my physical eyes, I have not.

• 2:45:04Shawn Ryan?

  Have you ever been approached?

• 2:45:06Speaker 01

  I've been approached and invited to everything you can think of.

• 2:45:09Shawn Ryan?

  How do, how does the approach happen? Do you know what it's gonna be?

• 2:45:13Speaker 01

  Most people don't.

• 2:45:16Speaker 01

  And that's why they go the first time, cuz they, it's pitched to you like this. Hey, man, congratulations on the career, you're doing great. Your song of the year, three years in a row. You guys just sold seven million records. Um, hey, I'd like, I'd like for you to be my guest, my personal guest. And this is like a head of a record label, or the head of some big company, or another really famous, famous person. Like some big time guy.

• 2:45:43Speaker 01

  And they will come to you with that and go, you be my guest, I'm gonna take you there. I'm gonna introduce you to everybody, it's gonna be the greatest networking you've ever done in your life. It's gonna, your career's gonna explode. You're gonna have opportunities you never even thought were possible. Because the people you're gonna meet, and I'm gonna make sure that they know how great you are. So what are you doing? You know, the second weekend of October?

• 2:46:08Speaker 01

  That's the pitch. So how in the hell is anybody supposed to know there's a problem with that?

• 2:46:12Shawn Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 2:46:13Speaker 01

  Doesn't sound like there's a problem with that at all, it sounds like, wow, what an opportunity. And then they'll get them into those places. And from, from what I've heard from people who have been in those places, they say, all manner of horrible things start breaking out in there, and you're going, what am I, what is going on? But now you're in it, now you're standing there, now it's happening. And I think it's a, I think it's a control mechanism.

• 2:46:36Shawn Ryan?

  Now you're on video.

• 2:46:38Speaker 01

  They got you on video. Control mechanism, it's a way to co-opt people that they think, um, you know, have sway and have swing and, you know, have popularity or whatever. Um, and then I guess ultimately, it can be a, a, a way to blackmail people. Get them to do things they want them to do. And when I was teenager, I remember my dad preaching about the importance of discernment.

• 2:47:06Speaker 01

  That discernment is a very serious thing to ask for, to pray for, to discern things. Because the devil is so slick, he is literally one degree off of perfection with the way he presents things. Like he's the greatest counterfeit of all time. He's the greatest. It's like almost indistinguishable from the real thing. And so the question is, how do I know what I'm looking at? The answer is, you don't know what you're looking at. You don't have the capacity as a human being to understand what you're looking at. You don't possess that. But the Holy Spirit does. And so if you've given your life to Jesus Christ,

• 2:47:50Speaker 01

  and the Holy Spirit enters your life, the Holy Spirit is repulsed by those things. Whereas your physical being may not even know there's anything to be repulsed about. The Holy Spirit is absolutely not only repulsed, but enraged. Like, that's the enemy. So I have asked for that, I have prayed for that since I was a late teen. Even in my crazy years and all that, I would still, when I would pray, I would pray for that, discernment. And I pray for it all the time now. But you tell me this, and let me ask you a question. Have you ever walked into a room of people, and these are all upstanding, upstanding people, and everybody in the room is supposed to be there, and you shake maybe thirty or forty hands that night, and out of the thirty or forty hands,

• 2:48:33Speaker 01

  two or three of them just make your skin crawl. When you shook their hand and looked in their eyes, you ever had that happen?

• 2:48:39Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:48:40Speaker 01

  And you don't know why. Because they look just like everybody else you just shook hands with, but there's something about that one. I just went, ugh. You can feel it. Well, I bet especially in the last two years, since you got saved, gave your life to Jesus, and He's in you now, I bet it's just to the max. But especially if you ask for discernment, He will grant you that. And then you'll be able to stay away from those landmines. Oh, I mean, you will, but you gotta ask for it.

• 2:49:13Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, I do. I've turned a lot of things down.

• 2:49:15Speaker 01

  I can't imagine who comes up to you looking like they're perfect.

• 2:49:22Speaker 01

  The perfect handshake and you're going, ah, something ain't right about that.

• 2:49:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yep. Happens a lot.

• 2:49:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:49:28Shawn Ryan?

  And, and also the, the, I've learned to look out for the favors. I want to help you.

• 2:49:34Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 2:49:35Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you want to help me?

• 2:49:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:49:38Shawn Ryan?

  What do I owe you after you do this? I mean, I don't ask that anymore. I just, I don't need any favors.

• 2:49:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:49:46Shawn Ryan?

  So, and I think that's how, I think that's, I think that's how it works. I think you get introduced, you get some favors, and then those favors need to be repaid later on. And then you're fucking trapped.

• 2:50:02Speaker 01

  Sometimes even the association with someone, whether they did you a favor or not, the fact that they're able to say, "He came and did this for me," or "He came and did that for me," or whatever, and then people that know that that's a bad guy now associate you with a bad person, even though you have no idea that's a bad person. You see what I mean?

• 2:50:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 2:50:24Speaker 01

  And so, if you get that feeling, your skin starts to crawl around somebody, you're correct. You may never know the reason why your skin crawled, but you can trust that it's real.

• 2:50:35Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I see it in politics. I see it in politics.

• 2:50:38Speaker 01

  Oh, it's the worst.

• 2:50:38Shawn Ryan?

  You know, the favor brokering that goes on behind the scenes.

• 2:50:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50:42Shawn Ryan?

  Through, through, through the, I mean, just, just to come up

• 2:50:47Shawn Ryan?

  before the election, interviewed a lot of people that wound up in the administration or close to the administration or whatever, a lot of them, and

• 2:51:00Shawn Ryan?

  I could see some of the favors that are going on behind the scenes now, things that they want me to do for them.

• 2:51:05Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:51:05Shawn Ryan?

  And I'm like, I'm the one that did you a fucking favor.

• 2:51:11Shawn Ryan?

  I put you in front of millions of people. I don't need to give you any more fucking favors.

• 2:51:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:51:17Shawn Ryan?

  And, and I could see like, see some of the favors, man, that, that it's, it's like...

• 2:51:25Shawn Ryan?

  Because somebody voted for you? Somebody got you confirmed? Somebody got you in the administration? Now, they should just be doing that shit anyways.

• 2:51:35Speaker 01

  Now, I got my leash on ya.

• 2:51:37Shawn Ryan?

  Yup.

• 2:51:37Speaker 01

  Yeah?

• 2:51:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yup. And that's miniscule shit. I can't even imagine how big the favors get. Look at the Epstein stuff.

• 2:51:48Speaker 01

  Oh, there's no telling. There's no telling. I mean, it's rampant. Is, and, you know, Epstein's one of them, and there's thousands of Epstein types out there. They're everywhere. And that's, that's the thing about, thing about God, how he thinks. You know, if you go, you're reading it, I love the verse that says, "I am the same yesterday, today, and forever. My will, my word does not change." He's the, so meaning however, he dealt with stuff at the very beginning of what we know to be the beginning until today. He does not care that we all now have iPads. He doesn't care now that we all have AI, or that we all have whatever. He is gonna deal with you the same way he dealt with

• 2:52:33Speaker 01

  Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Pharaoh, Daniel, all the way down through, all the way up to John and Sean. He will not treat it any differently than he ever has, so ask yourself this question. Then how has he treated countries, or let's call them empires back in the day, who mass abused children? What's the one thing Jesus said that I said earlier in this interview that's the most aggressive thing, at least written down, that the man ever said? You'd be better off to die than to mess with one of these kids. You'd be better off dead. Well, that's what the Son of God said. And what are we doing in this country? And what's been going on for a very, very long time concerning kids?

• 2:53:15Speaker 01

  Unborn kids and kids that are born, and what do they do to those kids? And we know it's, it's at, at levels that nobody can even comprehend, and that's just what we know about. That's, that's, Lord knows what we don't know about. And so I wonder, you know, everybody's got their plans on we're gonna beat the Democrats, and we're gonna change this, and we're gonna fix this, and we're gonna stop, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna right the ship and all that. Okay?

• 2:53:43Speaker 01

  If he lets you, you will. Because he can flip this table upside down anytime he wants to. Ask Noah. He can flip it upside down.

• 2:53:56Speaker 01

  Without, with a thought. He can flip it upside down. The whole thing. And he has a propensity to do things like that. When you go back in the Old Testament and look at Moses and Pharaoh. Moses goes to Pharaoh and he says, "Let my people go." We all know the story. And Pharaoh, and Pharaoh says, "No." And then a plague hits, something bad happens. Noah goes back, uh, Noah, Moses goes back and says, "Let my people go." And then it says, "But God hardened Pharaoh's heart." Which tells me Pharaoh might have been of the mind, "You know what? I've had enough. Fine, you guys go on and get out." No, it says, "God hardened his heart." Hardened Pharaoh's heart, so he wouldn't let him go. Why?

• 2:54:41Speaker 01

  So God could bring the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and the next one, to show his people and the Egyptians that I am real, I am God, only I can make these things happen. Not you. You're not gonna go in here and work out a deal in the back room and, and your people get let go. No, I'm gonna make Pharaoh say, "No." So then I can show you guys who I am again, because you forgot who I am. I'm gonna remind you who I am. So where my head goes with all this is when is God gonna remind America who he is? When is that gonna happen?

• 2:55:18Shawn Ryan?

  I feel like it's coming.

• 2:55:19Speaker 01

  I feel like it's coming too. And I feel like we've earned it.

• 2:55:24Speaker 01

  When is God gonna remind America who he is? Woo, the most blessed nation in the history of nations. The freest nation, the richest nation. And look what we've done with it? And allowed to go on in this country? I mean, it, uh, back in the old, back in the old books, Old Testament, they didn't do anything near what we're pulling off.

• 2:55:49Speaker 01

  So if he's the same yesterday, today, and forever, and his word does not change, it's coming, my man. It's coming at some point. You better make sure you're hooked up with him when it does. That's where my head's at these days. I watch all the stuff on TV like everybody else. I'm like, well.

• 2:56:06Speaker 01

  Maybe they can, maybe they can figure something out. We don't have mushroom clouds, you know, over our heads here, but I'm going, it's really just gonna depend on what he allows to happen.

• 2:56:15Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:56:16Speaker 01

  Right?

• 2:56:16Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm. I mean, the stuff with the kids, I know that's

• 2:56:22Shawn Ryan?

  very important to you and me as well. I've covered it several times on the show. You said Tim Tebow on not too long.

• 2:56:28Speaker 01

  Oh, I love Tim.

• 2:56:29Shawn Ryan?

  Amazing.

• 2:56:30Speaker 01

  Tim and I are, some of the conversations I've had with him.

• 2:56:34Shawn Ryan?

  The stuff that that guy.

• 2:56:35Speaker 01

  Make you ball your eyes out what that man knows about.

• 2:56:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yup, yup.

• 2:56:40Speaker 01

  He's a saint.

• 2:56:41Shawn Ryan?

  Yes, he is. My friend, Ryan Montgomery, Jared, Victor Marks, had a lot of guys on to discuss child, child abuse, sexual exploitation, rape.

• 2:56:54Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:56:54Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, child sacrifice, all that kinda stuff. And this is one of your next things, right? One of your next solos?

• 2:57:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I, well, I've got a song that's been written now for about six months called "The Righteous Hunter." And this happened because I saw a video clip of Sean Combs

• 2:57:17Speaker 01

  on camera on an award show somewhere, and he looked right into the camera with all the spotlights going on, and he said, "I own your kids. I own their souls." And he's looking into the, "I own their souls. I determine what they listen to. I determine what clothes they wear. I own their souls."

• 2:57:35Shawn Ryan?

  He said that?

• 2:57:36Speaker 01

  Yes, he did. "I'll send you the clip." And you're looking right at the devil. I mean, his eyes are just like... And I saw that and went, "Oh, is that right? Is that right, Diddy? You own my kids' souls, huh?"

• 2:57:52Speaker 01

  And I thought to myself, "Is anybody gonna say something about that? Anybody in the news? Any, any preachers? Hello, any, any of the big preachers? Joel Osteen, where you at? Anybody gonna stand up and say, 'Hey, you're a child of the devil and you don't own, you don't own any of our kids' souls? And I hope God takes you to hell sooner than later.'" Is anybody gonna say that? No? No? Just gonna roll on down the road? Well... Buy my book. Buy my book, put more money in the plate. No, no preachers, no preachers calling that out. And it made me so furious to hear him say that. I go, so music is his weapon of choice? Well, me too, big boy. And I ain't, I ain't near as well-known as Sean Combs, not by a long stretch.

• 2:58:36Speaker 01

  But my daddy can beat up his daddy. And it ain't even a fair fight. It ain't even a fight. And so that led to a song called "The Righteous Hunter." And I started thinking about, and I would ask you to think about this, and every dad or mother watching this right now. Is there anything you would not do to keep another adult from putting their hands on your kids? Anything, anything out of bounds? Nothing. Right. But their, their arrogance and their level of wickedness and devoutness to their father has got them to a point where they'll just stand right out there in broad daylight and tell you,

• 2:59:20Speaker 01

  "I own your souls, I own your kids' souls." And there's nothing you can do about it. So that led to the writing of, of a song that has a lyric that is, uh, it's... It hits so hard, I haven't put it out, put it to you that way. Haven't put it out yet. I gotta figure out what the video is to this song. And matter of fact, when I wrote it, I was thinking about, it's talking from a dad's perspective. I thought, who would be a good dad in the video "The Righteous Hunter"? And you know who came to mind? You. You came to mind. You came to mind. You popped in my head. I went,

• 3:00:01Speaker 01

  "He's a dad, he's a Christian, and he's a lethal individual if you mess with his family." I went, "Hmm." But I haven't released it, so we can talk about that at some other time. But I think you would be absolutely colossal as the dad. Uh... In a video like that.

• 3:00:19Shawn Ryan?

  Well, that's an honor to hear you say that. Thank you.

• 3:00:21Speaker 01

  See that look on your face right now? That's the look. They don't, then I don't think they understand. I don't think the people that talk about our kids like that and that do horrible things to kids. I don't think they have any touchstone whatsoever to what an actual mom or dad that loves their kids will do to them. And you know why I don't think they have a touchstone to that reality? Because they hate kids. They try to kill them all before they're born. That's number one. If they are born, they try to co-op them, twist them, break them, move them, abuse them, sexualize them, whatever they do, they, that is their way of hurting God. When Jesus Christ said, "This is what I love the most, these, these children."

• 3:01:06Speaker 01

  How, then how can they hurt Jesus the most? How can the devil inflict the most pain possible? How can he make Jesus cry the most? Hurt the kids.

• 3:01:20Speaker 01

  That's why they're doing it.

• 3:01:24Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 3:01:26Speaker 01

  That's why they're doing it.

• 3:01:30Speaker 01

  And so here we are in our little short lifespans, watching this go down, and we know one from the other. What are we supposed to do about it? Well, I can't go out and round up 3.2 million pedophiles in the United States. But I can write a song that hopefully get, hopefully parents hear that and go, "You know what? That's exactly how I feel." And they start to bow up and stiffen their backs up a little bit and go, "Yeah, come on and try it one time." Like, parents need to be coming out in full force against this stuff and go, "You try that on my kids and I'll kill you in the front yard."

• 3:02:09Speaker 01

  Now, I've seen Trump say,

• 3:02:12Speaker 01

  "Anybody that sexually abuses a child should receive the death penalty." And he said that in the campaign. That he was gonna make that a federal statute that they receive the death penalty. It hadn't happened yet.

• 3:02:24Speaker 01

  But it should.

• 3:02:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yes, it should have happened a long time ago.

• 3:02:30Shawn Ryan?

  Should have always been though.

• 3:02:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:02:35Speaker 01

  I know that's a heavy subject, but we're surrounded with it.

• 3:02:38Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:02:38Speaker 01

  It is everywhere. And a lot of times it's people you never suspect. It might be that preacher that didn't seem quite right. It might be that schoolteacher that's, uh... That sheriff, that judge, that whoever. I mean, a lot of times it's people in places of authority that are running these things. That have this cover of a life that seemed like, well, that person would never do that. It's not the scuz bucket guy you see sitting on the sidewalk most of the time.

• 3:03:04Shawn Ryan?

  The US is the top country that uses... We have the most

• 3:03:13Shawn Ryan?

  sexual exploitation cases, kiddie porn, all of that stuff. We are the world leader in it.

• 3:03:20Speaker 01

  And you think he ain't gonna smack us over that? You think he's just gonna let us?

• 3:03:24Shawn Ryan?

  I think he's already smacking us over that. I think that's some of what this is all about. Our country's crumbling. It's divided in just about every subject that you can bring up.

• 3:03:40Shawn Ryan?

  Politics, race, gender, everything.

• 3:03:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:03:43Shawn Ryan?

  Religion.

• 3:03:46Shawn Ryan?

  Divide it, divide that.

• 3:03:48Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:03:48Shawn Ryan?

  That.

• 3:03:51Shawn Ryan?

  We're in a bad spot.

• 3:03:52Speaker 01

  Subsets of subsets of subsets.

• 3:03:56Speaker 01

  Has anybody ever sang a song on your show before?

• 3:04:00Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 3:04:00Speaker 01

  I brought a guitar. If I could be so bold.

• 3:04:04Shawn Ryan?

  I would love it.

• 3:04:04Speaker 01

  To make... Because I've never sang "The Righteous Hunter" to anybody. Other than family members and people that are around me that I know well, but I've never, like, sat on a camera and ever sang the song. It's not out. You can't download it. There's no... Nothing. But I would be really curious what your audience especially would think of this song. And now, you know, I ain't got no band or nothing, but if I... You mind if I play it? I would like to play it.

• 3:04:26Shawn Ryan?

  I'd be honored.

• 3:04:27Speaker 01

  Okay, cool.

• 3:04:29Shawn Ryan?

  Let's do it.

• 3:04:30Speaker 01

  You wanna hear it?

• 3:04:31Shawn Ryan?

  Yes.

• 3:04:33Speaker 01

  It's called "The Righteous Hunter."

• 3:04:46Speaker 03

  Evil runs around this town undercover Looking for a soul to take But they better stay away from the righteous hunter Or hell is all they'll pay Cause I can see you around the corner And I know you're coming If you had any sense you'd run

• 3:05:12Speaker 03

  But you ain't got a clue What a daddy will do Better give your soul to Jesus while I get my gun

• 3:05:23Speaker 03

  You better give your soul to Jesus while I get my gun

• 3:05:31Speaker 03

  They try to steal away our sons and daughters Shrouded in the shadow of night But we fight with protection of the heavenly Father And we ain't scared to die And I can see you around the corner And I know you're coming If you had any sense you'd run But you ain't got a clue What a daddy will do Better give your soul to Jesus while I get my gun

• 3:06:09Speaker 03

  Better give your soul to Jesus while I get my gun

• 3:06:17Speaker 03

  Recall the words that Jesus said Better off with millstones around their necks and we pray

• 3:06:30Speaker 03

  And not our will but thine be done Bringing in to the reign of the wicked one This we claim In your name

• 3:06:45Speaker 03

  And I can see you around the corner And I know you're coming If you had any sense you'd run But you ain't got a clue What a daddy will do Better give your soul to Jesus while I get my gun

• 3:07:07Speaker 03

  You better give your soul to Jesus while I get my gun.

• 3:07:19Speaker 03

  Evil runs around this town undercover, looking for a soul to take. But they better stay away from the righteous honor, for hell is all they'll pay.

• 3:07:43Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 3:07:43Shawn Ryan?

  That is amazing. You know what I think?

• 3:07:47Speaker 01

  What do you think?

• 3:07:48Shawn Ryan?

  I think that's gonna be the biggest thing you've ever done. That's awesome. Congratulations.

• 3:07:54Speaker 01

  Well, it's unreleased, it's just in my head, and now on your show, but I would like to hear what people think about that because just hearing what you have to say about it means something, you know, when you sit on a song like that, banging around in your own head going, do I need to put that out or not? And if so, when and how? And all of that, you don't write that song twice. You know, that's a, that's a one shot. I've never heard a song written about what's happening to our kids, or what parents would actually do to somebody that tried to, an actual real mom or dad. But I, I think it needs to be said. I think the bad guys need to, need to know where we stand with them.

• 3:08:37Speaker 01

  That's really what my problem is, is that nobody has clearly enough stated to them, "You come for my kids, and you're gonna die." And that's it. They shouldn't be able to walk out on stage and say, "I own your kids' souls," and we just walk on by. Right? Forget about even being an American for a minute, what about just being a dad or a mom? We let people talk like that about our kids? With no rebuttal? No. I don't, and you don't. And I bet there's millions of, I know there's tens of millions of us that won't. So, yeah, that's what that song is. If you wanna be the dad in the video, man, can you imagine that song and you're in your

• 3:09:22Speaker 01

  house, and they're trying to find your kid, and you're praying all night long?

• 3:09:28Speaker 01

  Man. That's, that's, that's, those are the kind of things, Shawn. I am grateful that God took away my record deals, my publishing deals, that he cut my arms and legs and almost cut my head off. So he could rebuild me without my former attachments and problems and habits and alliances and loyalties and all of that and rebuild me without those things, but with the same skill set intact, which is what I just did for you right there. And be able to go out here with however many years I got left in my life to cause as much utter damage as I possibly can to the wicked people in this world.

• 3:10:12Speaker 01

  It's, it tells us in the Bible, God says, "I will use you as a battle axe to tear down the strongholds of hell itself." Meaning, he views some of us as weaponry. The axe cannot swing itself. It could cut that tree down, but somebody's gonna have to pick it up and swing it. Well, if I'm an axe, my job is to make sure I'm the sharpest, fastest axe on the block. I'm as sharp as fast as I can possibly be, so I am prepared. So when the boss decides I'm ready to, I'm ready to pick that axe up and, and I'm gonna tear that thing down and I'm going, "I'm here." He picks it up and here we go. Like that is, that is my mindset as a Christian these days.

• 3:10:56Speaker 01

  It's not, it's not to, uh, say pretty nice things that make other Christians happy and feel good all over and feel good inside. That's not my job. Now, everybody's job is not my job. That's a really interesting thing, too. Paul talks about Christians as the body, as the church. He says, "What good is the eye if it doesn't have a foot?" What good is the hand if it doesn't have an eye? Like, somebody's an eye, somebody's a foot, somebody's a hand, somebody's a pinky, somebody's an eyelash, somebody's fine tuning and somebody's blunt force trauma. Like, it's a toolbox of humanity that belonged to him, that he uses as a unit and as a team. That's why we're supposed to know each other.

• 3:11:41Speaker 01

  And supposed to identify in each other. What are you built for? What am I built for? What is she built for? And who's the enemy? Them. And so, how do we all put our armaments together and our talents together? And move as a unit against these people?

• 3:11:55Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I never really thought of it like that, to be honest with you.

• 3:11:58Speaker 01

  Paul laid the whole thing out in New Testament. Yeah, go read that. He refers to the body of Christ as literally a body. Eye, hand, foot. And think about it. What good is an eye if the eye goes, "I want to walk through that door, but I don't have a foot. I can't walk. I can see it, but..." And the foot goes, "Well, I can walk there, but I'm black. I can't see where I'm going." It all has to work together. So, Christians, real Christians, all have different skillsets. We're all different. We're in categories. Mine is songs like that, where I get to swing a gigantic sledgehammer. I hope people cry. I hope other people get...

• 3:12:41Speaker 01

  I hope their back stiffens up and they go, "You know what? Enough." And I don't know if that song will do that or not. I know it makes me feel that way.

• 3:12:55Shawn Ryan?

  But you feel that you're being utilized to do this?

• 3:12:59Speaker 01

  I feel that he took all those years of my life, allowing me to get really good at what it is I'm good at. And back then, it was used to make money and get famous and do a bunch of things like that. That is no longer the point of why I have that skillset. Now, I have that skillset to do what it is I feel like he wants me to do and say. And you go back to how I was raised, you know, growing up in an environment where it was... You know, we talked about how I was raised around my mother and stuff, and it made me, it was like dukes up all the time. And I don't mean physically. She wasn't slapping me around, but it was just, it was a very, very tenuous environment.

• 3:13:40Speaker 01

  But it gave me that posture, I think, just in my spirit as a person. And so, now, as a grown man, and I've got a wife and kids... And I hear some jackass demoniac like Sean Combs saying he owns my kid's soul.

• 3:13:56Speaker 01

  And I know who that is speaking. That ain't even Sean. That's whatever demon lives inside of Sean Combs. Speaking through his eyes and through that camera and right to me and I'm going, "Oh, I know who you are. You're the one that's already been defeated. You work for the loser. That's who you work for. We work for the one that created all you monsters and will ultimately destroy you all." But God's interesting because he likes to see his people put themselves in harm's way for him, or be willing to be put in harm's way, be willing to be put in positions that they are not comfortable being put in. Why? Because it shows that they have faith.

• 3:14:35Speaker 01

  I walk up to this chair before I sat down in it. I looked at the chair and I went, "That's a really nice leather chair." I'm 100% sure that chair will hold me up when I sit down in it. That means I believe the chair will hold me up. I believe it. 100% I believe that. Until I sit down in the leather chair in your studio, I don't have faith that the chair will hold me up.

• 3:14:58Speaker 01

  When I sit down in the chair and no longer am I holding up my own weight, everything I have is resting on this and guess what? It hasn't dumped me out on the floor yet. So I was correct. I have faith the chair will hold me up. Believing and having faith are two completely different things.

• 3:15:15Shawn Ryan?

  If you think that you were chosen to do this, why do you think you're the one?

• 3:15:22Speaker 01

  I don't think I'm the one. I think I'm one of many probably out there right now that are from their own angles are coming. But I do think it's very important that we find each other, have conversations like this.

• 3:15:37Speaker 01

  No more messing around. Let's call it what it is. What do you get at? Well, you're a military guy. Is everybody in the unit all good at just one job? No, you've got all different kinds of guys doing different kinds of things. I mean, I know for a fact and some of the special forces units guys I know, some of them are chemists.

• 3:15:56Speaker 01

  Chemists? I meet the one guy, he goes, "Yeah, I'm a chemist." I go, "A chemist? Can I ask what the reason is behind that?" He goes, "Yeah." "So if I walk into a building, uh, I can scan the room very rapidly, and even if it's household items, I can see that if there are components around a certain room, that they could have made a gas bomb, or explosive, or something out of what I see in the room. I'll know how to tell the guys, 'Put on your mask,' or 'Step out of the building,' or all kinds of things." "If I don't see it, then I don't see it," he said, "but I know that fast what I'm looking at. That's on top of I do this, I'm also a chemist." I went, "That's really interesting." So, if it's spiritual warfare, that's the words we use, and it calls it that.

• 3:16:41Speaker 01

  Spiritual warfare, that means that the devil has his ranks. He's got generals, and he's got, he's all the way down to privates. He's got the whole thing. He's got specialists. They're really good at this. They're really good at that. He's got his ranks, and then God has his ranks. He has his too. And then there's us, and we're in the middle. And so, God's army and the devil's army, what are they fighting over? Us. The devil wants us. The devil wants us. He wants to get every last one of us, so there's no reason for Jesus to come back. He's trying to get every last one of us.

• 3:17:19Shawn Ryan?

  I feel like there are opportunities that are presented, but there's only so many people that are paying attention. And you're paying attention. But I think the opportunities are everywhere, and you just have to be paying attention, know when the door is open, and have the courage to walk in. I don't, I don't necessarily think that people are chosen for specific tasks. I think the tasks are always there, and it just takes that person that is really paying attention, that's, that's, that's...

• 3:17:57Shawn Ryan?

  Operating slow enough to pay attention to the details and what's going on around them, not just people and everything. And, you know, I'm sure I've missed more of them than I've ever captured, but I think that's how it happens.

• 3:18:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's a, until he comes back, it's an, it's not, it's not gonna stop. It's gonna ramp and ramp and ramp and ramp. And so, I mean, back in scripture, it says, as it were in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the end times, and the coming of the son of man, meaning Jesus. They go look back in the days of Noah, what was going on? And I know you've covered this on your show, I've seen it, but people talking about how fallen angels came to the earth and they bred, basically made babies with human women. And, and the point of that was that they, that if the devil could pollute the entire human race, Jesus could never be born. So he wins. Devil gets to win.

• 3:18:56Speaker 01

  He got to pollute them all, where they're not fully human anymore. That was the point of Genesis six, was to try to knock them all out. And God says, "It grieves me that I made mankind in the first place." Like, you know what? I'm sorry I even made you rascals down there. I'm gonna wipe the whole thing out. This is horrible. Grieved him. That's back to created in the image of God. God experiences grief? Yes. He does. He was grieved, and it says, "But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord." There's one guy left in his family that had stayed intact. And so he told Noah, "Build the boat. I'm gonna destroy this whole place." He goes, "Build a what?"

• 3:19:40Speaker 01

  And they mocked Noah incessantly for a hundred plus years, whatever, he's building this boat, and they're going, "What an idiot, look at Noah." But it also says, "They were, they were eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage during the days of Noah." So it was not apocalyptic before the flood. Everything was rolling on pretty normal, other than the whole place was just completely devoured with wickedness. But daily life was going on, which is very interesting, because when you think about the end times, you think apocalypse. You think, you know, some Hollywood movie, it's, it's, you know, the zombies and it's like, everybody's living in a cave or whatever. That's not what it's gonna be. If it, as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be at the sign of the coming of the Son of Man.

• 3:20:22Speaker 01

  So that means, right before he comes back, people are gonna be eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage and going on about life, they're just gonna be completely wicked. The vast majority, other than what he refers to as the remnant, which is the Christians that have managed to stay alive, that haven't been killed in this period of time, in the Great Tribulation. And then he comes back.

• 3:20:45Speaker 01

  That's a lot to think about, because if you don't read it and read exactly what it says, if you only lean on the preacher to tell you what it means, you're gonna have to assume that he's just got it down and cross your fingers that he didn't miss anything. But if you go read it yourself and think logically for a minute, you'll come to the conclusion I just came to. As it was in the days of Noah. Well, how was it in the days of Noah? Let's go read it. Oh, all these... Well, I always figured that before Jesus came back, it'd be an apocalypse. Wasn't that apocalypse before the flood?

• 3:21:23Speaker 01

  Is that not a wild thought?

• 3:21:24Shawn Ryan?

  That is.

• 3:21:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. I remember realizing that one day and went, huh. Well, that's interesting, because you think, well, I'll know Jesus is about to come back, because that's when all the mushroom clouds will be floating around and we're all barely getting by and living like, you know, the walking dead out here. That's not what it says. There's so many things in the Bible like that, that have just been skewed, tilted a little bit, not just read clearly and put together, that even a lot of Christians have a lot of cloudiness about what they're really looking at.

• 3:21:57Shawn Ryan?

  Do you feel there is a resurgence of Christianity happening right now?

• 3:22:02Speaker 01

  I do feel like that.

• 3:22:03Shawn Ryan?

  I do too.

• 3:22:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. I've seen it. My son went to a Wednesday night get together with kids his age at a Christian parents' house. They have this thing on Wednesday nights, and eight teenage girls got baptized in the swimming pool that night.

• 3:22:20Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 3:22:21Speaker 01

  Eight, 10th grade girls.

• 3:22:26Speaker 01

  Eight of them, one night.

• 3:22:28Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:22:28Speaker 01

  Yes. And then I've seen, I've seen videos of these college campuses where they're pulling in pickup trucks and putting tarps on them, filling them up full of water, and they're out there baptizing each other.

• 3:22:38Shawn Ryan?

  Thousands.

• 3:22:39Speaker 01

  Thousands of them. So, yeah. I think there's no doubt about it, you're seeing it happen. And you know, what brings that on, Sean, is the more pain and the more wickedness comes into the world, the more people start to become aware that it's there, and if wickedness is real, then so is righteousness. If the devil is real, and we see him for real, there he is, this is what he does, this is the devil, then Jesus is real. He's also real. And I think that, that realization is hitting people that this is not a game, this is not a fairy tale, this is actually real, I can see it, I can feel it. And then they got a choice to make at that point. And you're right, a lot of people are, a lot of people are giving life to God right now.

• 3:23:22Shawn Ryan?

  They are, man. I see it more and more every day, all the time.

• 3:23:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:23:30Shawn Ryan?

  And I also see the other side growing too, I mean, you know, one of them, two Easters ago, I got baptized, and, um...

• 3:23:40Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:23:44Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that was awesome. That was awesome.

• 3:23:47Speaker 01

  The old man passes away. The old Sean is dead.

• 3:23:52Speaker 01

  The new Sean comes out of the water.

• 3:23:56Speaker 01

  What if, right, I mean, what's, what is more epic than that?

• 3:24:02Shawn Ryan?

  Nothing.

• 3:24:03Speaker 01

  Nothing.

• 3:24:04Shawn Ryan?

  Nothing.

• 3:24:08Shawn Ryan?

  I love that song, man.

• 3:24:10Speaker 01

  I appreciate it. The Righteous Hunter.

• 3:24:14Speaker 01

  Maybe Mel Gibson will do a movie called The Righteous Hunter.

• 3:24:16Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe he will.

• 3:24:17Speaker 01

  I would like to see a movie about that, actually.

• 3:24:21Shawn Ryan?

  Me too.

• 3:24:23Shawn Ryan?

  You know, the biggest interview I've ever done was about that. Not about that, but it was about child exploitation and sex trafficking. And it was this kid, Brian Montgomery, really good friend of mine now. But nobody had ever heard of this guy. I just, I was scrolling, doom scrolling Instagram one day and I saw this guy and he was talking about how he had cracked into this pedophile website to download the user base to get it to authorities.

• 3:24:59Shawn Ryan?

  When he's doing it, there was a guy holding up a phone with his 12 year old daughter in a bathtub that said, what do you see what me and my friends will do to her? And he got that to, he, he, he took that, got it to the FBI. And the FBI said, we ought to arrest you for cracking into that. He said, great. Come arrest me, but maybe go save that 12 year old first.

• 3:25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:25:24Shawn Ryan?

  Never heard it from him again. Two years later, the same guy gets arrested in Denver airport with another 12 year old.

• 3:25:30Speaker 01

  Are you saying never went and got him?

• 3:25:33Shawn Ryan?

  And it was on some very small MMA podcast because he had a sidekick with him, this guy. That he would corner people, he would bait people into coming, uh, thinking they were gonna meet up with a 11 year old girl or something and he would video them at Walmart. And he would be the guy, you know, and then he'd have his MMA buddy there to whip it, whip their ass if they, if they did anything. And I was just like, how the fuck is nobody giving this kid any attention? And so I got in touch with him and I was like, hey, come on here. It'll probably get shut down and I might ruin my entire career over this because, you know, at the time I knew, you know,

• 3:26:15Shawn Ryan?

  YouTube, Facebook, any social media outlet that you don't talk about. It's like the forbidden topic.

• 3:26:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:26:22Shawn Ryan?

  And I was like, I don't care. I'm gonna put it on the line and if it all gets taken away from me, I know I did it, you know, that it happened for a good cause. And he came, he came out. We did the interview.

• 3:26:37Shawn Ryan?

  Demonetized it. Didn't wanna. I was like, anything that we can do to get big tech off of this.

• 3:26:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:26:45Shawn Ryan?

  Not dive in and look at it, but we'll do so demonetized it, no money, nothing. Biggest interview I ever did. It's got like 10 million views. When you look at all the clips and everything else, hundreds of millions of views and.

• 3:27:03Shawn Ryan?

  You know what I love about Ryan is he didn't come here to get. Exposure. He didn't come here to sell anything. He just came here to talk about what was going on. And, you know, and at the time I was, uh, very naive about. How prevalent this was in the world, but not just the world in the United States. And so I said. All right, I want to see how long this takes. So I said, you got your laptop here. You're a hacker.

• 3:27:34Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 3:27:35Shawn Ryan?

  Get in any, any, any website, social media forum. I don't care. I want to see how long this shit takes.

• 3:27:41Speaker 01

  It's like a live hacking.

• 3:27:43Shawn Ryan?

  It wasn't even hacking. He just made a screen name. Ash, he is a hacker.

• 3:27:47Speaker 01

  How fast he could get into the mix.

• 3:27:50Shawn Ryan?

  He goes, all right, I'm making the screen name Ashley 13 New Jersey.

• 3:27:55Shawn Ryan?

  Five seconds. He had a 40 something year old dude wanting to fuck a. 13 year old girl at a Walmart in New Jersey. And we, we, I had him screen recorded and we played it live on the show and.

• 3:28:08Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 3:28:09Shawn Ryan?

  So in that interview, I mean. We had exposed how this was happening. We had scared the shit out of pedophiles. We had. Got the FBI's attention. They started stalking him afterwards and. And educated parents, you know, and how this and kids on how this was like the perfect storm of all these things that had converged. And the interest was, I mean, he's still like, it's still just going. And. That's what I think that song's gonna do, man.

• 3:28:45Shawn Ryan?

  Good for you for right.

• 3:28:46Speaker 01

  Well, we should make it, you know.

• 3:28:50Speaker 01

  We should make every penny of every download that comes in go to somebody like Tebow, somebody that's actually busting these animals. I don't want to make nothing on it. Like do something huge with that thing. I did a livestream with Homeland Security earlier this year about their education program they have for parents and teens about being online because my wife and son had been to like a mother-son meeting and they had a DHS agent come into the school and he's showing them, "Here's how predators get you guys on Instagram and Facebook and Roblox and all these video games, all this stuff."

• 3:29:35Speaker 01

  And my wife was so rattled by that and my son came home and started changing settings on his phone. I mean, it like had immediate impact. I said, "My God, what did he tell you?" And so she starts walking me through it and I said, "You get a phone number on this guy?" I can find it. So she did. I called him. I said, "Hey, it's John Rich. I'm the country singer guy." And I said, "What you told my wife and son needs to be heard by millions of people." He said, "I agree. We just don't know how to do that. We go to schools, churches, you know, nickel and dime." He said, "But Mr. Rich, here's the thing. Last year, we had 36 million reports of kids being targeted online. That's three million a month and that's just who had

• 3:30:19Speaker 01

  enough sense to report it." He said, "So, yes, we'll take you up on that." So I had the DHS come to my house and we set up a livestream and President Trump retweeted it, reposted it. And it wound up racking up many millions of views, but I basically had the DHS agent just sit there and had parents and teenagers all looking at their laptops, going through this one-hour thing. But when you start hearing numbers like 36 million...

• 3:30:47Speaker 01

  That's what I'm telling him, man. I mean, you better make sure you're fighting tooth and nail against these bastards. I mean, every single day, there better not be a shy bone in your body. If you're a Christian, you, I don't care if you play the piano at church. I don't care if you're the nicest lady in town that brings cookies to the kids. That's fine. But on this subject, you better be as vicious as a Wolverine. You better come at them with everything you've got and make sure everybody knows that's how you feel about it. Because it really sickens my stomach to know that there's tens of millions of Christians in this country who are not screaming about it.

• 3:31:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I think that, I think that this stuff has been so in the shadows for so long that people just didn't realize how prevalent it is.

• 3:31:35Speaker 01

  But it's not now. It's not now. Everybody's not paying attention to that. Oh, you know it's, you know it's real now.

• 3:31:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 3:31:40Speaker 01

  It's uncomfortable for people to look at it. They want to act like, I don't want to, I don't want to think about that. The police will handle that. The FBI will handle that. There's too many of them. Thirty-six million approaches on social media in one year?

• 3:31:55Speaker 01

  I mean, there ain't enough cops in the world. It's gonna take the general public deciding that they're gonna make moves, like Ryan, like the guy you're talking about. I'm sick of it. I'm gonna do what I can do. Right?

• 3:32:07Shawn Ryan?

  Yep. Yep.

• 3:32:08Speaker 01

  Sorry to get wound up about that.

• 3:32:10Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 3:32:10Speaker 01

  Again, music is my weapon of choice. And we'll see what that thing does. Your, your reaction to it helps me to understand maybe what I should do with it.

• 3:32:22Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I think you're gonna get a bigger reaction when this releases. But, nice work, man.

• 3:32:28Speaker 01

  Give your soul to Jesus while I get my gun.

• 3:32:31Shawn Ryan?

  Love it.

• 3:32:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:32:35Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a break.

• 3:32:36Speaker 01

  All right. Sounds good.

• 3:32:46Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 3:33:20Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for listening to the Sean Ryan Show. If you haven't already, please take a minute, head over to iTunes, and leave the Sean Ryan Show a review. We read every review that comes through, and we really appreciate the support. Thank you. Let's get back to the show.

• 3:33:41Shawn Ryan?

  All right, John, we're back from the break. Got heavy there. But I want to talk-

• 3:33:47Speaker 01

  That was heavy stuff.

• 3:33:48Shawn Ryan?

  I want to talk about TVA, and what's going on with that. So I know you got involved in that. We had a discussion at your place a couple of weeks ago about it. And what is going on there?

• 3:34:01Speaker 01

  The Tennessee Valley Authority. So a lot of people may not know what that is, but TVA is basically controls the power grid in all of Tennessee, but in big sections of seven different states. It was started in 1933 by FDR, the famous socialist president of the United States. And FDR set up the TVA in such a way that they only answer to the president of the United States. So they're a federal entity that answers to the president, and they're able to take private money from, like, when you pay your electric bill here in Tennessee, part of

• 3:34:43Speaker 01

  that money is going to the TVA, even though they're a federal entity. So it's this hybrid monster of a-

• 3:34:54Speaker 01

  I guess you could call it a company, but it's federal. I mean, that's the problem. And it's the same way today that it has been since 1933, and they are absolutely vicious when it comes to dealing with American citizens. So when they want to do a project, they will show up in force. And when I say force, I mean bulletproof vests, loaded weapons, the whole nine yards, and show up in somebody's yard and say, "We're coming on your property to do destructive testing."

• 3:35:31Speaker 01

  And the landowner's going, "No, you're not," and they go, "Yeah, we are." And if you say no again, here's a lawsuit, and we're gonna basically bankrupt you in court, and we're gonna come on your land anyway. So it's like eminent domain, but done in a brutal, brutal manner. And so I knew those kinds of stories, but I'd never dealt with them, never had anything come close enough to me where I'd actually seen it myself. There's a little county in middle Tennessee called Cheatham County, C-H-E-A-T-H-A-M. Cheatham. It's like Cheatham.

• 3:36:09Speaker 01

  And it's a rural county, lower to middle income. My dad lives there. My brother has a farm there. My granny Rich ran her business there, died in Cheatham County. I went to high school out in Cheatham County for three years, ninth, tenth, and eleventh, so I know those people. And my brother, the farmer, says, "Have you heard what TBA's doing around here in Cheatham County?" I said, "No, what are they doing?" He said, "They're wanting to drop a 900-megawatt methane gas plant with 10 acres of lithium batteries storage." And he told me the address. I said, "Do what? They're putting it there?" He goes, "Yeah." I said, "How many houses are over there?" He said, "About 500."

• 3:36:50Speaker 01

  He said, "Also, five schools are within five miles of this place, and also it's right on top of the main water supply for Aston City in Pleasant View, Tennessee." I said, "How can they do that?" He goes, "I don't know, but they're doing it." Like, they're taking people's land, they're showing up, like, they're showing up full force. I said, "Okay, let me dig into this." So I start digging around, and I find one of the locals there who was dealing with them, and sure enough, man, uh, this lady was next, is next-door neighbors to this really old lady, um, named Mrs. Nicholson. She's about eighty-eight years old and has dementia, and she lives on a family farm that's been in their family for more than a century.

• 3:37:33Speaker 01

  So they refer to that as a century farm. And the lady that ran over there when TVA showed up grabbed her GoPro, her camera, and filmed the TVA marching across this woman's field, walking up into her yard. I counted at least ten vehicles. It looked like an ATF raid. And here's these guys standing out there all tough with their bulletproof vests and their loaded guns standing there, and this guy's going, "Now, we're gonna have to come on your property now, dah dah dah dah dah." And the old lady looks into the camera and says, "You think you own something? You don't own nothing." She snapped out of her dementia for about ten seconds and said that into the camera.

• 3:38:16Speaker 01

  Well, this lady I found and was talking to showed me that footage, and I'm telling you, my blood ran cold. It ran like ice. I got so mad that, "In America, this can happen?" And when I saw that old lady, I thought about my granny Rich, 'cause she kinda had that look, that country-worn, hard-working old lady look. And I said, "Hmm, well, I wonder if we could shove them out of this county?" They go, "You don't shove TVA out of nothing." And they were right. The attorneys that I talked to said TVA's never lost a battle against citizens in court, ever.

• 3:38:56Shawn Ryan?

  We'll roll that clip right now.

• 3:38:58Speaker 04

  They're talking about putting those up. Oh, I know what they are up here. Yes.

• 3:39:05Speaker 04

  You think you own something, you don't own nothing. I'm the only child, and I forget how many acres I got. I go to Spring Creek. Do you have somebody who takes care of it for you? He farms it. Okay. Has it tobacco and things like that?

• 3:39:21Speaker 03

  Because obviously they've been up and made themselves at home.

• 3:39:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, they don't, they don't lose. I said, "Well, let's see how they deal with public shame and humiliation." And scrooped me. She goes, "What are you gonna do?" I said, "Can you introduce me to some of these other neighbors that have experienced this?" She goes, "Yeah. George Wade's right down the road." I said, "Great, I'll go grab my iPhone and my selfie stick." And so I did. Went out and met Mr. Wade and his wife. He's close to 80 years old. And he looks like Wilford Brimley but with red hair. Remember Wilford Brimley? No. Big old mu- he looks like a walrus, like just gruff looking guy. I sat down with Mr. Wade, turned that thing on, and let him tell the story. And then I started commenting, and I posted that on X, just on my X

• 3:40:10Speaker 01

  channel there, and in three days it had like four million views just on that. I went, "Oh, okay." And I'm tagging TVA and, and everything. I'm like, "I'm gonna do another interview." So I went out and interviewed another person, then I interviewed another one, and then another one, and then I interviewed the mayor of the county. And then I interviewed the mayor of Pleasant View, Tennessee, and I start posting these videos. Local news starts picking up on it.

• 3:40:33Speaker 01

  Next thing you know, I get a unknown caller coming in on my phone, and I answer it, and it is Secretary Rollins, head of the USDA, Department of Agriculture. I'm like, "Well, hello." She goes, "I hope you don't mind, I got your number from somebody else." I said, "That, that's fine." She said, "Let me ask you something, I'm watching this TVA fight, how much farmland is involved with this? Is there one in pipelines, transmission lines?" I said, "Yes, ma'am." "How much farmland?" I said, "It's a little over 6,000 acres." 6,000 acres? That it was gonna tear up.

• 3:41:04Speaker 01

  She goes, "Yeah, that's not, that's not okay."

• 3:41:09Speaker 01

  She said, "Uh, I'll tell you what, let me, let me dig into this further." Well, the next day, you see her commenting on one of my X-posts. On it, she just puts all caps, "ON IT", @SecRollins. I said, "Okay, well, that got everybody." That got local news, local radio, everybody's talking about it. And then, I get a visit from the, um, head of, the Senior Vice President of Government Relations for the TVA. So, he's the mouthpiece for the TVA. "He's a good old country boy, talks like this, Sean. Now, you know, we're, we're all good around here." Like that's how he talks. Came to my house. I knew he was coming, I said, "Bring him, let's go. I can't wait to talk to this guy."

• 3:41:54Speaker 01

  So, I sat him down there at my house, right where you were not long ago, when we first met. And I looked at him and I said, "Explain to me, why in America, you can bring bulletproof vests and guns and 10 to 12 vehicles on an old lady's property and demand access to her century-old farm, when you don't have a warrant or probable cause? That's my first question for you." "Now, John, I mean, we, we do have a force out there, because sometimes, as you can imagine, we run into resistance." So, I said, "Oh, I bet you do run into resistance. I bet you do." And, you know, you just never know. So, we gotta make sure we're protected."

• 3:42:34Speaker 01

  I said, "Well, I'll tell you what, you've got two weeks to get out of Chedum County." From an 88-year-old woman. Yeah. I said, "You got two weeks." With dementia. "You got two weeks to get out of Chedum County." I said, "Or I'm going to rebrand the TVA to the United States of America." "I'm gonna rebrand you to what you actually are." And I said, "Every time your name is Googled for the next 20 years, TVA horrible press is gonna come up on the TVA, page after page after page. You will never get out from under it."

• 3:43:10Speaker 01

  You got two weeks. And I said, and at the end of the day, if, if we can't push you out on our own, I'll have to call this number. And then I showed him President Trump's number. Cause that's who you answer to. I said, what do you think President Trump would say to you or anybody else at the TVA? If I showed him the video of you on that old lady's property with guns and bulletproof vests demanding access with no warrant, no probable cause? What do you think President would say? You think he'd fire every last one of you, starting with you? I think he probably would. Maybe we should call him right now. Let's just call him right now. Huh? He went, no, no, no, no, no. I said, oh, I bet. I said, you got two weeks. And then he left. They left? He let, he let, no, he left my house. He left my house.

• 3:43:55Speaker 01

  Two weeks tricked by lawsuits coming in left and right on all these farmers, all these old people, all these, just 70, 80 lawsuits. Half the people being sued didn't even have enough income to, to provide counsel for themselves. So they were walking into the courtroom with no attorney against a $500,000 a year retained attorney for the TVA, trying to argue their case, just slaughtering these people. I said, okay, well, that's it. I'm gonna have to write a song about it. And I told him I would. I said, if you don't get out of Chatham County in two weeks, his name's Justin Meyerhofer. I said, Justin, if you're not out of Chatham County in two weeks, I'm gonna write a song

• 3:44:40Speaker 01

  and I'm gonna put it out and I'm gonna have millions of Americans singing TVA next to the word devil. I'm gonna have millions of people comparing you to the devil in a song and video. I don't think he believed I'd do it. I think he thought, oh, John will be on tour, he'll get busy, he'll forget, whatever. Two weeks clicked by, they didn't get out, lawsuits keep piling up, they're charging forward. So I wrote the song, went in the studio and recorded it, shot the video to it, went out in that neighborhood of those farms, shot it on those farms where that dirt was, and it's so beautiful out there. Where it was all gonna take place?

• 3:45:21Speaker 01

  And as I'm working on all that, I get a text from the President of the United States. And he says, basically, "We're killing the project. The project's not gonna happen." Then Secretary Rollins, "The project's not gonna happen." So I'm seeing these texts, and I went, "Okay, when's TVA gonna say the project's not happening?" And the very next day, they put out a post on X and says, "Due to the, due to listening to our, uh, customers in Chatham County, uh, we've heard you and we're abandoning the project in Chatham County and looking for a more suitable place to put it." And what really happened is the President of the United States and Brooke Rollins kicked their ass, is what happened. And so, this week, that song hits. It's called "The Devil and the TVA."

• 3:46:05Speaker 01

  And the song was inspired by Mrs. Nicholson's statement of, "You think you own something, but you don't own nothing." I took what she said, and that's the first line of the chorus.

• 3:46:15Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 3:46:16Speaker 01

  "You think you own something, but you don't own nothing. When the government man comes around, puts his dirty old boots on your ground and laughs at your protest with a gun and a bulletproof vest. He don't care what you have to say, he's just gonna do it anyway. And he'll smile and grin and then take your farm away. He'll tear it all to hell right in your face. Now the devil ain't got nothing on the TVA." That's the chorus. So anybody watching that wants to go check that one out, go get it. Go get it. It's, it's, it is a populist song that unfortunately, too many Americans have had to survive and, and some of them didn't, this onslaught of the TVA. I find them to be unconstitutional.

• 3:47:01Speaker 01

  Uh, I wish something would happen.

• 3:47:03Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, there's more to this, too. Cause if I remember correctly, you reached out to a mayor in another part of Tennessee that had a abandoned power plant or something, right?

• 3:47:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so in West Tennessee, as I start this-

• 3:47:18Shawn Ryan?

  With, with the lines already-

• 3:47:20Speaker 01

  Right, so, as I start popping TVA in the nose over and over, and everybody's seeing this, I start getting phone calls from people I've never met. And one guy goes, "Hey..." About ninety minutes from here, in Humphreys County, there is over a square mile of land that's already owned by the TVA that already has pipelines running under it, transmission lines running over it. It used to be a giant coal plant there that Obama tore down. Obama tore it down, and they never put anything there. And they don't have to touch Cheatham County. Please come back to our county. We lost so many jobs when that thing went away. We lost our grocery stores. We had to consolidate our schools.

• 3:48:01Speaker 01

  We, gas stations, like, just gutted our county. You tell TVA we'd welcome them back with open arms, and I did tell them that, and they didn't care. And so I told Brooke Rollins about that, and she said, "You know what? You need to speak to the Energy Department." So put me on an interview with the Energy Department, with the mayors of those two rural counties, and now they're talking, and I think they're probably gonna develop, get TVA to develop something out there. Trump wants power, you got places to put it. But TVA has stood in the way. They'd rather tear up brand-new ground than use ground they've already got, which begs the question, "Why?" And they won't answer that question. But, again, it's one

• 3:48:42Speaker 01

  of those things that if, I guess if I ain't gonna stand up and do it, it ain't gonna happen. I mean, the neighbors are screaming bloody murder, but they don't have a platform where anybody can hear them screaming. You know? You've run across lots of situations like that. You've got a big platform, you can, you got them to stop spending money on the Taliban.

• 3:49:02Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm. We're close. Still sitting on the Senate floor.

• 3:49:06Speaker 01

  I mean, so, I think you and I have that in common. We see something, and we're like, "I can't believe I'm the guy that's, I can't believe I'm the guy that's gonna swing at them, but here we go." And you swing. So they have now abandoned the project. We beat them. The song is out, the devil and the TVA. And in the video, I use the actual neighbors and farmers and everybody that lives in that area, they're in the video with me. So it's really cool.

• 3:49:32Shawn Ryan?

  I love that. Why do you think that they didn't just utilize the old plant? Because there's more to it. I remember you were telling me that all the power lines were already running out of there. They didn't have to do any of that. They just needed to re-outfit the abandoned project.

• 3:49:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, all the infrastructure was there. Probably why anybody does anything, Sean, money. I mean, you know, you're gonna build billion dollar project. There's, and my brother-in-law owns a concrete company. Oh, yeah. Well, my sister works for a pipeline company and oh, yeah, my, like that. It's that, it's that good old boy behind the scenes. Everybody's sitting around figuring out how we can all make a bunch of money on the government. It's really on the customers, because that's how weird that thing is. But when it got to Trump, he was like, mm-mm. That's not good. So I've actually petitioned the president um, to give me a, an appointment of a citizen advocate.

• 3:50:33Speaker 01

  Where I don't work for any, I would answer to him. And so when these situations come up, I can be eyes and ears and go report to him. Hey, here's what's really going on down here that you're not hearing about. And make sure he understands what's happening and try to, try to put a shield up in front of your basic American citizen out there. No money, no nothing. I just think that, that's something that invigorates me to be able to go out there and, and help people. You gotta remember, I'm, you know, panhandle of Texas.

• 3:51:05Speaker 01

  Grew up, you know, out there in the dirt. Those are my people. I have a high school diploma. That's the extent of my education. Well, that's, that's the kind of people you're talking about. They're getting steamrolled by these trillion dollar companies. T- uh, TVA last year profited over thirteen billion dollars in one year.

• 3:51:23Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:51:24Speaker 01

  But they're gonna tell the old lady to get the hell off her farm.

• 3:51:28Speaker 01

  How about you pay the old lady two or three hundred percent of what her farm's worth if you have to have it?

• 3:51:34Speaker 01

  Instead of taking it.

• 3:51:37Shawn Ryan?

  That would be the right thing to do.

• 3:51:38Speaker 01

  Wouldn't it? That's what I would.

• 3:51:41Shawn Ryan?

  So they can just take your, they don't have to pay for it?

• 3:51:44Speaker 01

  So here's, here's the TVA charter. Okay, they have a charter that was written in nineteen thirty-three.

• 3:51:51Speaker 01

  TBA can come to your land and they can say, "Sean, look at my bulletproof vest, look at my pistol. We're gonna come on your land, tear your land up." And you're gonna go, "No, you're not." "Well, we'll see you in court." "Fine, I'll see you in court." You go into court, then you lose. Then, they get a court order to enter your land, they tear your land up, and then they condemn your land. And then TBA determines what the value of the land is now worth as it's condemned and had destructive testing done. Then they make you an offer on what they think the land is now worth as condemned land. Holy shit. And it winds up being around 10 cents on the dollar of what market value is for your land.

• 3:52:34Speaker 01

  So you've got old people whose whole life is tied up in this land.

• 3:52:39Speaker 01

  Literally everything.

• 3:52:42Speaker 01

  And so they take it on 10 cents. Now, they're gonna go live in a gonna live in a low-rent rest home the rest of their life? They're gonna move in the basement of their kid's house? Yeah, something.

• 3:52:54Speaker 01

  People don't even know about this. That's, I'm glad you brought it up, cuz it's, that should not exist in America like that.

• 3:53:03Speaker 01

  I asked him if Xi Jinping was a secret board member. That's what I asked the the

• 3:53:11Speaker 01

  the, uh, the, uh, uh, foghorn, leghorn of the TBA sitting at my house. "Let me ask you a question, Justin. Is Xi Jinping a silent member of the TBA board?"

• 3:53:24Speaker 01

  I go, "'Cuz this is the most communistic stuff I've ever seen in my life. That's straight up communist." Take somebody's land? As Americans, being a landowner is what makes you that's why people came here. Cuz they were promised they could homestead land, and that's why they came, cuz they weren't allowed to own land where they came from.

• 3:53:40Speaker 01

  That's a basic tenet of being an American, is land ownership.

• 3:53:46Shawn Ryan?

  I hate the government, Ben.

• 3:53:48Speaker 01

  It's so twisted.

• 3:53:49Shawn Ryan?

  I fucking hate the government.

• 3:53:53Shawn Ryan?

  But you got a long history of standing up for the underdog, man. What's the bank that you opened?

• 3:53:59Speaker 01

  There's a bank called Old Glory Bank. And this started, it was Dr. Ben Carson, Larry Elder, me, Governor Mary Fallon of Oklahoma, and a bunch of other, bunch of other patriots out there. And a lot of them from the banking world. So we all know how woke the bank system is now, but we all know about de-banking. Even President Trump was de-banked. Melania Trump, de-banked. They, they, they will either cancel all your accounts, or they won't let you open one in the first place. Or they'll shut your credit cards down like Dinesh D'Souza. They killed, Chase killed all his credit cards while he was overseas because they didn't like what he was talking about.

• 3:54:39Speaker 01

  So we knew all that was going on and something needed to be done, but what, what sent it all the way over the edge was, do you remember when the trucker protest was going on in Canada? All the trucks pulled up into town and wouldn't leave? Well, the way Justin Trudeau finally broke that was he called the banks and he said, "Find out who that trucker drives for

• 3:55:05Speaker 01

  and freeze all of their bank accounts." And if the trucker's an independent trucker, freeze all his personal bank accounts. And if the tow trucks refuse to pull them out, freeze the bank accounts of the tow truck companies. So they started mass freezing bank accounts. And that's what broke it. They couldn't access their money. And it broke it up, and that was it. And we looked at that and went, "There are people in high places in America right now that fantasize about that, about being able to freeze Sean Ryan's bank account, or John Rich's bank account. Oh, they can't, they can't wait to do that." And so we realized

• 3:55:48Speaker 01

  at some point that could happen in our country. We need, we need to start a new bank, to think, parallel economy kind of thing. We need to start our own thing, run by patriots, where decisions are made by patriots, and the whole credo of the bank is you will never be canceled for exercising your constitutional rights. That's the whole premise. of the bank. Well, it's, we've been up and running about two and a half, three years now, and it's in all 50 states. Now there's people everywhere, small business loans, mortgages, and I'm not a banker. So it gets off out in the weeds with me a little bit on, on all of that. But the premise of the bank, being that it won't cancel you for exercising your constitutional

• 3:56:29Speaker 01

  rights. I'm like, we have to have this. Cause it doesn't currently exist. And God forbid Kamala Harris would have won. Can you imagine?

• 3:56:39Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 3:56:39Speaker 01

  Right now, you'd be seeing probably the whole entire center machine would go into overdrive and you would probably see things like bank accounts being frozen en masse and all that. So that's Old Glory Bank. It's oldglorybank.com. And what's cool about it is when people open up an account, there's a 1-800 number and an actual American answers the phone that speaks legible English.

• 3:57:02Shawn Ryan?

  That's like

• 3:57:03Speaker 01

  Can you believe it? Hello, how may I help you? Oh, yeah. Oh, hey, Sean. Yeah. So what are you having trouble with? Oh, yeah. All you gotta do is click this and do this. And is that, did that fix it for you? Well, great. Well, call me right back. My extension is 110. If you need any more help. Thank you. Appreciate your business.

• 3:57:19Speaker 01

  Tell me another, it's all AI now. Everything's AI, AI, or they're talking to you from India or somewhere else. We've actually got American people sitting behind the phones. What a concept.

• 3:57:30Shawn Ryan?

  Damn, I love that. I love, how fast does that take off?

• 3:57:33Speaker 01

  It's up 2000% right now. It's just screaming. A lot of people are like, well, all my business is at Bank of America, but I'm gonna take a big piece of that as a firewall and set it into Old Glory. And so that's happening a lot. There was one company, a gun company, a big one,

• 3:57:54Speaker 01

  that a shooter, a mass shooter in Texas, was using one of their rifles to carry out that shooting. And so the bank that they were at froze all their transactions overnight, all over the United States, all over the world. So all their transactions were just frozen. And so they had to go find another bank. And it took them almost three months to get everything moved over to another bank. And they lost untold amounts of, of income. I mean, it's horrible on their company. And they came to me and said, Old Glory Bank's up and running. Can we move to Old Glory Bank? And I said, uh, what kind of money are you rolling?

• 3:58:38Speaker 01

  You know, like what's your forward rolling money? And they told me the number. I said, we ain't that big yet. If we were, we'd take it. We ain't that big yet. We're getting close to being that big now. So I think you'll see bigger companies coming on board. And it really bothers the Moynihan's of the world. The Bank of America president types, they really don't like Old Glory Bank. Which is how you know it's good.

• 3:59:00Shawn Ryan?

  I bet they don't.

• 3:59:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:59:02Shawn Ryan?

  You've done some awesome stuff, man.

• 3:59:05Speaker 01

  Well, I'm an American. I got X amount of heartbeats. Let's go. What do we got? Exhaust your potential. Let's go. Again, there's, it's like you said earlier, you never think you'd have this gigantic podcast. You never thought that. I never thought I'd be doing half the stuff I'm doing either, but God opens that door. And if you've got enough nerve to run through it, he'll probably open the second door.

• 3:59:31Shawn Ryan?

  You got a lot of courage, man.

• 3:59:34Speaker 01

  Well, I appreciate it. You too, we're half crazy. You gotta enjoy the taste of your own blood in your mouth. A little bit.

• 3:59:42Shawn Ryan?

  I just don't know any other way to live.

• 3:59:44Speaker 01

  It's like, did you just bust my lip? Oh, okay. Let's go.

• 3:59:49Shawn Ryan?

  That's right.

• 3:59:50Speaker 01

  That's how I looked at the TVA deal.

• 3:59:52Shawn Ryan?

  I love it, man. I mean, do you, I, I just. Do you feel like you have a tremendous amount of courage? Or does it just come naturally to you?

• 4:00:06Speaker 01

  Um.

• 4:00:09Speaker 01

  I don't know how a person knows if they have a tremendous amount of courage or not. I don't know how you'd know that. I know that.

• 4:00:15Shawn Ryan?

  You know that from looking in, from looking at the outs, looking at it from the outside.

• 4:00:20Speaker 01

  I know that if I see people being harmed and they can't defend themselves, I have no fear of taking on the aggressor. Even if I know there's very likely I'm gonna lose. I have no fear of the loss. If, if, if it's an old lady on a farm, if it's a kid being abused, whatever it may be, a defenseless person being, being hurt by a superior entity that's way bigger than I am, but I know at least I can take a couple of chunks out of them. At least I can, you, you gotta try. And so, here we go.

• 4:01:03Speaker 01

  And here you go cutting and slicing and you try to, and you know, if you're, if it's like the song, "The Righteous Hunter," it's called "The Righteous Hunter" because he's on the right side of the fight. Well, you're on, if you're, if it's the fight you're waging is a righteous fight, even if you don't win it, you're doing what you're supposed to do because that's what you're supposed to do. And then I've got two sons growing up, watching everything I do and say. And I, when they become young men and move out of my house, I want them to be able to look back and go, "Well, how did Dad do it? What did Dad do when, when something big and bowed up like that? But you're on the right side of that fight. Did Dad roll over? Could you buy Dad out? Could you leverage Dad around? Could you offer Dad something and get him to back up or whatever?

• 4:01:48Speaker 01

  Nah, I never saw him do that." I go, "Good, I hope that's how my boys are." We need people like that in the world. We need young people coming up. When, when me and you were old guys, we need young men and women who have seen that and know what it means. In case our country ever really comes under serious threat, we need young Americans that understand that.

• 4:02:10Shawn Ryan?

  Set the example.

• 4:02:11Speaker 01

  You gotta set the example, yeah. It's why I'm not in the music industry anymore. Cause I could've shut up and kept having hit songs on the radio.

• 4:02:21Speaker 01

  Might have been songwriter of the year again, you know? But just, I thought, my boys.

• 4:02:31Speaker 01

  Yeah daddy, daddy will yell at the TV and he'll scream and holler about those degenerates in the music industry, but then when it was time to go, he'll suit back up and walk that red carpet with them, get up there and pat them on the back and accept his award. Gross.

• 4:02:46Shawn Ryan?

  Man, good for you for saying that. Good for you for saying that. We all see it, man. We all see it on the sidelines, what's happening.

• 4:02:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:02:56Shawn Ryan?

  It's fucking pathetic.

• 4:02:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's just, it's gross.

• 4:03:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. I value good sleep. We talked about that.

• 4:03:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:03:05Speaker 01

  You sleep, you know, another check ain't gonna make you sleep better, but even if you lost and you come home beat up, but you took a good swing at them, that counts. At least it does to me. I feel better about it.

• 4:03:18Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I remember talking to Jim Caviezel about this, a couple of years ago, he, you know, he did that movie and I can't remember the name of the movie. What the, what was the name of that movie? It was about trafficking.

• 4:03:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, they went out to the island and the whole thing.

• 4:03:33Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. And we had got into a similar conversation. I just asked him how he did it and he said, man, he goes, I got a lot of, basically he said, I got a lot of cool stuff, cool cars, living a beautiful house, lots of possessions, whatever. But he said, on a moment's notice, I'm ready to give it all back, because none of it really means anything.

• 4:03:57Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:03:57Shawn Ryan?

  And I took that and I, you know, I thought about it and I was like, that's the fucking way to live, man.

• 4:04:05Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:04:05Shawn Ryan?

  Just know there may come a point in time where you gotta give it all back and you gotta be okay with it. And at the end of the day, it's all just shit. The watches, cars, this studio.

• 4:04:18Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:04:20Shawn Ryan?

  Ready to give it all back. And that's just how I live, man, and.

• 4:04:24Speaker 01

  And the fact that you're willing and ready to give it all back is probably why he allows you to keep it.

• 4:04:30Shawn Ryan?

  I think so.

• 4:04:31Speaker 01

  I mean, that, that verse that says, "The love of money is the root of all evil." A lot of people skip the word "love," they just say, "Money is the root of all evil." The love of money is the root of all evil. People that love possessions and love money, they worship it, that's what their, their, their life's mission is, to rack as much of it up as I can. He does, he does not like that. And they may die with it all intact, but what good is that to them? The second they step right in front of him, they're gonna go, "But, but Lord, I had three billion dollars in the bank, down there." He'll go, "And?

• 4:05:16Speaker 01

  What'd you do for me? Did you do what I told you to do, when I told you to do that with that three billion dollars? Well, I had it invested in..." He's not gonna even have that conversation with you. This is how it went with Jordan Peterson and I, when we had our conversation. Was Jordan selling all these books about things in, you know, Moses and Jesus and all these volumes of books, speaking about biblical characters and, and stories, passages from the Bible, spoken about in a psychologically analyzed way? Where the, the tenets of Jesus Christ, the laws of Jesus Christ, if you live by those laws, you will have a better life. And that's the basis of Western civilization.

• 4:06:01Speaker 01

  Okay? So when I had a chance to talk to him, I said, "Do you think Jesus Christ is the Son of God? Do you think he is who he said he was? Because I've got a video of you, and I quoted it to him, where you said, "If he was actually who he said he would be, it would be the most terrifying thing you'd ever heard in your life." I said, "And you were crying when you said that, so I know you meant it." And he goes, "Well, well, and he kinda..." And honestly, to this day, I still don't know exactly where he stands with it, but the fact that I don't know where he stands with it kinda tells me something. There's another passage, which I told him. I said, "Jesus said, 'If you deny me before men, I will deny you before my Father.'"

• 4:06:46Speaker 01

  You don't recognize me, I will not recognize you either. And that's the Pharisees, the Sadducees, all the people in the temple, the holy people, the educated holy people. And they were, you know, they would go, "Look at all the tithe money I'm giving. Look at all these gold coins. I am so generous. Look at me, look at me." And then the poor widow lady comes up and drops in a half a shekel, that's all she had. And Jesus pointed her and said, "That's what I'm talking about." That's like all she had to give, and she gave it. "You guys are out here throwing your gold coins around." He said, "You're a bunch of vipers, a brood of vipers." And then he pulled out a whip, flipped over tables, and ran them out. I mean, Jesus did that. People think Jesus was like some weak, you know, this, he was a carpenter.

• 4:07:32Speaker 01

  He was a Hebrew carpenter who said, "You'd be better off dead than to hurt kids." And you, a bunch of preachers in this temple are a bunch of snakes. Get out. And flipped the tables over on them and said, "The poor ladies who I'm here to talk to."

• 4:07:49Speaker 01

  Isn't that incredible?

• 4:07:50Shawn Ryan?

  It is, it is.

• 4:07:52Speaker 01

  Just to know who he was, I mean, that's him.

• 4:07:57Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about the Schofield Bible. This is the last thing I wanted to bring up with you. I don't know much about it. We had a little bit of a conversation.

• 4:08:03Speaker 01

  I'd defuse because you're gonna make a lot of preachers mad with this one.

• 4:08:07Shawn Ryan?

  I don't care.

• 4:08:07Speaker 01

  I know.

• 4:08:12Speaker 01

  I don't either. What do you want to, what do you, what do you want to know about it? Have you dug into it at all?

• 4:08:17Shawn Ryan?

  No, I've been waiting for this conversation to dive into it.

• 4:08:21Speaker 01

  Okay, so there's a, um, a term called dispensationalism. Dispensationalists believe in dispensationalism. Um, it's basically dealing with, uh, the end times. So it's dealing with Jesus coming back, what's going to be happening before he comes back, after he comes back. Um, and before I get into this, I would like to say that any, any Christian listening to this, it doesn't matter if you think I'm right about what I'm about to say, or you think you're right about what you say.

• 4:09:00Speaker 01

  As far as your salvation is concerned, you're not going to go to heaven or hell based on if you are right or wrong on this subject. Let's start with that.

• 4:09:12Speaker 01

  There was a preacher named John Darby, a few hundred years ago. And he came with the angle at the end times that the rapture would happen. The rapture meaning when whoever's left here on earth that are still actually real Christians will be pulled up off this earth before God completely destroys it with fire, with wrath. He said, "I destroyed it the first time with water. The last time, I'll destroy it with fire." So before he brings his wrath down to that level, he will pull whoever's left, the remnant, as they're referred to, out of here.

• 4:09:51Speaker 01

  Dispensationalism comes in and says that that rapture that we refer to will happen prior to all the really, really traumatic things that are going to happen in the earth during the Great Tribulation. That has been laid out in Daniel and Matthew 24 and 2 Thessalonians 2 and a lot of other places it's been talked about. They say, John Darby, and then Schofield wrote the Bible that backed it up, backed up Darby's angle at this. The rapture could happen at any second. The rapture, they would go to the churches and they would say, "The rapture could happen before this church service is over. So you better get right, right now. Because it could happen like that. In the blink of an eye," which is what it says.

• 4:10:36Speaker 01

  It does say, "In the blink of an eye." Boom, just like that. So what that led to was mass revival. I mean, people were like, "I don't want to get left behind." Remember the Left Behind books? And so a lot of people got saved and a lot of things happened that were actually positive things. A lot of people got saved. But when you start reading about, Matthew 24, to me, is the one I've told most people to read.

• 4:11:03Speaker 01

  Matthew 24 is where Jesus is sitting with his disciples. And the disciples ask him, "Lord, what will be the sign of your coming?" Meaning, what's gonna be going on on the earth before you are about ready to come back? And then Jesus takes the next about 27 verses of Matthew 24. And he says, "Okay. This will happen. And then this will happen. And then that, and then that, and then this, and then this, and it's in order, just like this, all the way down through." And the further it goes into Matthew 24, the harder it gets. It gets to one point where it talks about the Son of Perdition will arrive.

• 4:11:48Speaker 01

  The Son of Perdition is who we would refer to as who's gonna be the Antichrist. The Son of Perdition will show up. And it says, "When he stands in the holy place, when he stands in the holy place, basically pronounces himself to be God. I am Jesus, I am God, I am..." whatever he's gonna say. It tells the Christians that are still alive at that point to run. Run. Don't fight him, run. Get out. It says, "Run to the mountains." It says, "Woe to the women who are with child or in labor.

• 4:12:26Speaker 01

  To the farmer in the field, do not return to your house to grab your cloak." Run. Get out. Well, that ain't the end. And then it continues, and it goes on and on and on. And after it gets way deep into that chapter, it says, "And then you will see the sign of the coming of the Son of Man." Meaning, that's when you'll see me coming back. After all this has happened, then you will see me. The reason they stopped preaching that is because it's very uncomfortable for Christians to have to think about that. You mean, I'm gonna have to go through that? If I'm still here? Based on what that says, yeah, that's what it says.

• 4:13:05Speaker 01

  And then I've heard some Christians say, and even some preachers that have attacked me online, have said, "God wouldn't make us go through something like that. God wouldn't do that to us." And to them, I say, "Really? Why don't you go tell that to the underground Christians in Communist China right now, who are being killed by the thousands? Why don't you go tell that to the Christians in Syria right now, who are being chopped up into pieces in the streets?

• 4:13:35Speaker 01

  Do you think fat, lazy, American Christians are better than them?

• 4:13:41Speaker 01

  No. They are superior to us. They are willing to worship God and be a Christian when it means they could die for doing it. And we don't have that problem in the United States. So to say that God would never make His people go through something like that is one of the most ignorant, spiritually ignorant things a person could say. That's number one.

• 4:14:11Speaker 01

  Number two is, in modern churches even today, they still don't want, there's a few, but not many, they don't want to preach that. Joel Osteen is never going to preach that. Joel Osteen is never going to say anything that's going to make anybody uncomfortable, ever, on any level, ever.

• 4:14:31Speaker 01

  He's never going to say anything that would prick the heart or conscience of his congregation, and then offer an altar call like Billy Graham did. When he speaks the truth about what Jesus said, and what happens if you decide to go the other way, and lays out what hell is, and lays out what heaven is, and lays out what this is, and then offers an altar call in those stadiums of people that would come out to see Billy Graham, thousands of people coming down there to pray and give their life to Jesus. You're not going to see Joel Osteen do that. And there's a bunch of other preachers like that. Here's the risk. The risk in dispensationalism and what I am saying, the difference in the two, and again, this is not a,

• 4:15:15Speaker 01

  you're not going to go to heaven or hell based on which one you think is right. The risk is...

• 4:15:22Speaker 01

  When the Antichrist shows up, and I'm still here, and I go, "That's the Antichrist." When the mark of the beast shows up, and they're telling everybody, "You gotta put this chip in your wrist, or you can't buy or sell," when those things happen, and Christians are still here, they're not gonna believe that's the Antichrist, and they're not gonna believe that's the mark of the beast, and they're not gonna believe any of this stuff, because we're still here. Because if that's really what that was, he would've already pulled me out of here. That's the risk. That was part of the point of Revelation, was to bring on that conversation. And I had it with Tucker Carlson to begin with. And that is a real

• 4:16:03Speaker 01

  risk. So I ask Christians to go read Matthew 24, go read 2 Thessalonians 2 for yourself. Read it slowly, and read it a few times, by yourself. Just read it, and word by word, and see what I am saying in these... And then you're gonna hear preachers go, "He was talking about 70 AD, when bliss happened and that," and they try to twist this thing all the way back to Darby and Schofield and all that. But just read it for yourself. Because everything that needs to be in place for the tribulation to happen is now here. My dad's been preaching since the late 1970s, and he said, "John, myself, other preachers, ministers that I

• 4:16:48Speaker 01

  knew, none of us could understand how a lot of the things in Daniel and Revelation and 2 Thessalonians 2 could even take place. Like, it was like science fiction." He said, "Like, for instance, it says you can't buy or sell anywhere on the earth unless you bear the mark of the beast." He goes, "Well, how in the world, we're thinking, would you be able to monitor every single person on the face of the earth? That's impossible."

• 4:17:16Speaker 01

  That sounds funny to us now, right? Because of course you can monitor every single human being on the face of the earth. Of course you can. They're doing it right now. They just haven't weaponized it to that point, yet. He said, this is my dad, he goes,

• 4:17:31Speaker 01

  "We didn't have satellites all the way around the earth back then." I mean, you can get a cell signal in Uganda in the middle of nowhere now. Right? I mean, you can talk to anybody, anywhere. It talks about how the Antichrist can project his message onto the entire earth at the same time. He can basically communicate to the whole planet. And I was like, well, how in the world? He's going, "How in the..." Maybe he's telepathic. My dad said that. We all thought, "Maybe the Antichrist is telepathic." Maybe he can like get in your head and put thoughts in your head and communicate that way. We just couldn't figure it out. He goes, "Now we've all got these."

• 4:18:08Speaker 01

  We talked earlier about the days of Noah, and that's the way it's gonna be in the end. And we talked about in the days of Noah, where fallen angels, thrown down to the earth, polluted the human race. Everybody except Noah and his family, God flooded the earth. And the point of the devil doing that was to try to derail the birth of Christ. That was the point. If we can pollute the entire human race, we messed up the bloodline that'll eventually have Jesus Christ being born. That was the plan. God saved Noah, they failed. Noah starts it over, here we go again. You go to the beginning of the New Testament, it shows the entire bloodline of Noah, all the way through Jesus Christ. All the way through the end. Beginning of Matthew. Shows the whole thing.

• 4:18:51Speaker 01

  So the question is, if in the day, if it's gonna be like it was in the days of Noah, and the devil tried to pollute the whole human race, how's he gonna try to do it this time? What's he gonna try to do to keep Jesus from coming back, where he ultimately loses? What's he gonna do?

• 4:19:07Speaker 01

  Is he gonna try to pollute the human race again? Maybe. How would you do that? I don't know. Tech?

• 4:19:17Speaker 01

  Maybe. Again, nobody really knows. These are question marks. But you can read it for yourself and start to put things together. My whole goal is not to convince anybody of anything. My whole goal is to make you think for a minute, go read it for yourself, because if you're alive on this earth, when this starts happening and you're a Christian, you need to be able to identify what it is you are seeing. You need to know that's what that is.

• 4:19:45Shawn Ryan?

  So are you saying if you don't know what it is?

• 4:19:48Speaker 01

  You will step in the hole. Everybody line up and get your chip. Well, this can't be the mark of the beast. We're all still here. Okay, I'll take my chip. And what does it say about people that take the mark of the beast? If you take, anyone who takes the, the mark of the beast, their name is not written in the Lamb's book of life. That's the book. That's everybody that belongs to Jesus that's going to heaven is in the book, the Lamb's book of life. If you take that, you are not written in the Lamb's book of life. I'd say that's a pretty final move. So can you imagine?

• 4:20:28Speaker 01

  If you didn't recognize that for what it was, because you didn't have the discernment in you, and where does discernment come from? Does it come from you? Where's it come from? The Holy Spirit, right? So if he's not in you, and you're not able to discern that, and you walk right into that wood chipper, well, there you go. People need to think about that, because I mean, I'm telling you, with AI coming on board like it is right now, we're not that old. Very good chance. We live out our years like we're supposed to. I, I think we see it.

• 4:21:02Shawn Ryan?

  I think about it all the time.

• 4:21:03Speaker 01

  I think we're gonna see it. And I think that's why you're seeing a revival happen amongst people. I think that's why on my little tiny scale, I get hit with particular songs which allow to have certain conversations to happen. I get to sit with guys like you and talk about it in front of millions of people, get them to think about it. That's my little role.

• 4:21:26Speaker 01

  Because I think it's, I think it's upon us. I think it's coming.

• 4:21:30Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, there is, I think about it a lot with a lot of things with social media, Neuralink. I thought about it with the vaccine.

• 4:21:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. How about that? What do you think that was?

• 4:21:45Shawn Ryan?

  I took it. I took it.

• 4:21:48Speaker 01

  That was, I think that was, see how far you can push people.

• 4:21:55Shawn Ryan?

  I didn't want to take it.

• 4:21:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:21:58Shawn Ryan?

  But my, my, uh, my firstborn was coming right at that time and I was like, man, I can't fucking miss this vaccine.

• 4:22:07Speaker 01

  There was no way you could know.

• 4:22:09Shawn Ryan?

  But wish I would have never done it.

• 4:22:14Shawn Ryan?

  Well, thank you. Thank you for the education. I got one, one more question for you.

• 4:22:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 4:22:22Shawn Ryan?

  I know your sons are, you're very close with them. You care for them a lot.

• 4:22:28Shawn Ryan?

  What do you have to say to them? What advice do you have for your sons?

• 4:22:32Speaker 01

  My main thing for them is

• 4:22:36Speaker 01

  there is only one true answer and it is not, it does not come from yourself and it does not come from any other human being. It comes from the one that created you and what words have been written in that book, in the Bible. As you're going through your life, I would tell my sons, you're gonna hear all kinds of opinions. You're gonna have your own opinions. You're gonna, the Bible tells us to test the spirits. Meaning you may really think that's the real McCoy giving you that idea, but before you move on that, you pray about that and go, am I hearing that correctly? Is that correct? Cause it may not be.

• 4:23:13Speaker 01

  If you lean on the word and you stay connected to him and, and I mean really connected, you're, you will live your life out as he wanted you to live it out, which will be above and beyond anything you could ever put together yourself. And then when you die, I get to see you again.

• 4:23:32Shawn Ryan?

  I love that.

• 4:23:33Speaker 01

  I look forward to seeing you again. Yeah.

• 4:23:37Shawn Ryan?

  Well, John, it's been an honor to interview you and get to know you and get your story and opinions and the things that you've done and...

• 4:23:47Speaker 01

  It's an honor to sit in this chair where I've seen so many incredible people sit and thanks for giving me that honor, just to even sit here. I watch your show. I know the kind of incredible men and women that have been in this room, so thank you for that.

• 4:24:01Shawn Ryan?

  You're wonderful.

• 4:24:02Speaker 01

  Yes, I appreciate it. Thank you.

• 4:24:04Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 4:24:05Speaker 04

  Appreciate it, sir. Thank you.