#672 - Trace Adkins

Trace Adkins is a country musician, songwriter and actor. You can see him live on his 30th anniversary tour now through the end of the year. Trace joins Theo to talk about his journey from blue collar to Broadway, finding success in multiple eras of country music, and what it really feels like to get shot. Trace Adkins: https://www.instagram.com/traceadkins/ ------------------------------------------------- Tour Dates! https://theovon.com/tour New Merch: https://www.theovonstore.com ------------------------------------------------- Sponsored By: Celsius: Go to the Celsius Amazon store to check out all of their flavors. #CELSIUSBrandPartner #CELSIUSLiveFit https://amzn.to/3HbAtPJ Chime: Join the millions who are already banking fee free and sign up now at http://Chime.com/THEO Quo: Go to http://quo.com/theo for 20% off your first 6 months. Valor Recovery: To learn more about Valor Recovery please visit them at https://valorrecoverycoaching.com/ or email them at [email protected] Perplexity AI: Ask anything at https://pplx.ai/theo Watch on Spotify. Spotify subscribers get fewer ads on our episodes. ------------------------------------------------- Music: “Shine” by Bishop Gunn Bishop Gunn - Shine ------------------------------------------------ Submit your funny videos, TikToks, questions and topics you'd like to hear on the podcast to: [email protected] Hit the Hotline: 985-664-9503 Video Hotline for Theo Upload here: https://www.theovon.com/fan-upload Mail stuff to: ATTN: TPW PO BOX 40137 Nashville TN 37204 ------------------------------------------------ Find Theo: Website: https://theovon.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/theovon Facebook: https://facebook.com/theovon Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/thispastweekend X: https://twitter.com/theovon YouTube: https://youtube.com/theovon Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheoVonClips Shorts Channel: https://bit.ly/3ClUj8z ------------------------------------------------ Producer: Zach https://www.instagram.com/zachdpowers Producer: Trevyn https://www.instagram.com/trevyn.s/ Producer: Nick https://www.instagram.com/realnickdavis/ Producer: Andrew https://www.instagram.com/bleachmediaofficial/ Producer: Halston https://www.instagram.com/halstonrays/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Today's guest is a country music legend. He's got six gold and platinum albums. He's a Louisiana boy. Uh, he's got so many hits. Every light in the house. Um, you're gonna miss this. Uh, that honky town, but don't get. Uh, he's on a special 30th anniversary tour right now. Um, I've been a fan for a long time, man. I had a blast with the one and only Mr. Trace Atkins.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  I was just looking at, uh, I was just, what was that? I was seeing a commercial that it was for. Was it pogo stickers or something? See if you can find something that's like a pogo, uh.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  I didn't have a pogo stick.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is it. Extreme pogo athletes. This was, what is it?

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Wow. That's insane.

• 1:10Speaker 00

  That's pogo stick. And did they have that? Y'all had pogo sticks when you were a kid? Any toy you remember?

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Not like that. That's crazy. No, I, ours had like an old shock absorber spring on it. I mean, I didn't have one, but I remember seeing them when I was a kid. That's like supercharged.

• 1:34Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, that's for somebody that's trying to probably make their own power at home or whatever. You know, you got your, you got four kids out there in the yard, just pogo sticking. You know, so you can watch an episode of As the World Turns.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, charging your batteries.

• 1:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, dude. So you can be sitting inside watching Unsolved Mysteries or something. That would have been something you maybe would have seen nowhere. Um, yeah, I'm trying to think of toys they have. Was there any toy you remember growing up? Trace, I'm just trying to think.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  I remember when I got a, a gas powered little car for Christmas one year. And it had a little gas powered motor on it where you had to mix the gas and everything. It was like a tiny little motor on it and they had a propeller on the back of it. Where it would propel the car, you know? But I mean, I guess my old man didn't know you really needed to have like a lot of concrete to have this car. Cause it wouldn't run in the yard. Uh, you know what I'm saying? And we had a gravel driveway, so it was, it didn't work at all. But I thought, man, yeah, nowadays, I mean, that thing was dangerous. It had a propeller on the back of it and there was no guard or anything.

• 2:42Speaker 00

  And it took real gasoline?

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, what, you had to mix it up.

• 2:46Speaker 00

  What?

• 2:46Speaker 01

  With something else, yeah. You crank that sucker up, man. You know, it cut your finger off.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  It looked like it was.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Like that, just like that, man. That was the car. It was that green. I remember that.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  It says high performance prop driven racer.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  Super action on free runs, roars around on tether. Not sure what that means.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  You had a string on it and you could just stand and it would just go in a circle. You'd stand still and it'd just go in a circle.

• 3:18Speaker 00

  Oh, hell yeah. Damn, I can't believe you had to mix your own gas for that thing.

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:22Speaker 00

  Just the fact that they entrusted kids. There was, uh, there was definitely some things that they were too entrusting. There was one that had lawn darts, I remember.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Oh, lawn darts, yeah.

• 3:32Speaker 00

  Them bitches got recalled.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Well, you don't want to give drunk rednecks lawn darts.

• 3:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think, what happened? Was there a lawn, uh, was there a lawn dart recall?

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Well, I think, I think the general public probably just at some point went, we're not buying our kids that anymore.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, we got one, yeah. You got a kid who's got.

• 3:57Speaker 01

  We got one kid left and we've lost two from lawn dart mishaps, so.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, you got a, you got a daughter with two new dimples all of a sudden. Metal tipped lawn darts were found to present an unreasonable risk of death or serious injury. And that's on perplexity right here. Uh, about 6,100 people were sent to the emergency room in the 1980s. Wow, that was it, man. I remember also they had something. Was it called Tugger? This was an animal thing. This was, and you're just going down memory road here a little bit. Uh, it was Tugger. Can you look it up? It was a dog. See if they have a, oh, that's a dog there.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Hmm. Oh, I see.

• 4:47Speaker 00

  Look at this. I mean, that's.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  That's weird.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  It's a bit much, cause. I mean, it's kind of crazy, man. Look at this shit. I mean, dude, look. You'd see some real creepers grabbing them, I think. You'd see a guy walking four of them and he doesn't have any children or whatever. That's when it's a bit much. Yeah, Tugger, that was it.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  No, I never saw that one.

• 5:15Speaker 00

  Tug my sock, that was his motto or whatever. Yeah, play that, that's crazy.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  I remember one year, the most ridiculous thing my mama did was bought us all three pair of boxing gloves. I had two younger brothers and so one Christmas, we all got a pair of boxing gloves and that was bad.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  That just, yeah, that didn't work out well.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  What, what, what, what was your record?

• 5:39Speaker 01

  I was undefeated until my old man, yeah. I remember my old man came home from work one day and I was on my knees and I had one glove on. And then my younger, my baby brother, he was 10 years younger than me. And he had on his little gloves. And so I'd let him hit me a few times and I'd knock him down, you know? And then my old man was like, he came to walking down the hall and he had my other brother's pair of boxing gloves on. He said, get up, boy, and put that other glove on. You know, I was like, oh yeah. And I was like 18 years old in good shape, you know? And I was like, I'm about to wear you out. And, uh, I just remember crawling down the hall to my bedroom. I couldn't stand up, you know?

• 6:24Speaker 01

  He just, he knocked me out so good.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  He had that man strength on him, huh?

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Oh man, he just, yeah. Cause I was gonna hit him in the gut, cause I knew he'd be soft. And so I went under and he just hit me right between the eyes, just. And I remember my mama screaming, Aaron Doyle, you killed him, you killed him. Yeah.

• 6:46Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  I think that was it for the boxing glove.

• 6:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm trying to think of a good toy. We had, oh, I remember we grew up by this guy. He was like an Elvis impersonator, but he didn't really want to be. But he, um, he had broke his hip like in like a, in some type of deal. He'd broken his hip or his leg and they'd set it in cement. You know, he'd had some locals set it. And so when they broke the cast off of him, they broke it with like a ball peen hammer or something. They broke his leg in another place when they broke the shit off. So his leg was bad, man.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Elvis impersonator, but he didn't really want to be.

• 7:21Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, and this is what happened. Sorry, I think I started the story in the middle, but, um, so he ended up having that. Like he had that.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Oh, he was an Elvis impersonator after he broke.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, cause he, he ended up getting this, that.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Cause he had that, he had that Forrest Gump thing.

• 7:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, he had that like, you know, the thing.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  He didn't want to show Elvis how to dance, but he did.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I hadn't thought about it like that. But you ever know, yeah, you ever see that thing like on a, like a rich guy's desk that moves back and forth and keeps time or whatever? He had that, just he ended up getting that tick tock in him a little bit. And so he ended up, everywhere he'd go, people started calling him Elvis. And so he started impersonating him. But, um, I can't even remember what that story was about. Uh.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, what was it? Where were we?

• 8:05Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Christmas stuff.

• 8:07Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  You want to talk about Christmas for some reason?

• 8:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, one night I went over to, I was walking by their house one night and he was making his son, um, he was trying to make his son like a shirt out of wood. And I remember thinking this, they, they've really gone off, you know?

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:23Speaker 00

  It was just like different times. People were always using wood for different stuff in our town. But, um, anyway, uh, yeah, sorry, I got a little bit lost there. But Trace Atkins, man, thanks for coming by, man.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  He's on my way.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  I didn't have to go far out of the way.

• 8:40Speaker 00

  It's good to see you, man. I know we've been talking about it for a little while, man. So, thank you very much.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  Dude, one thing that we talked about last time I saw you, I think it was two times ago, that your mom was a mayor, your mom's a mayor. We're both from Louisiana and your mom's a mayor in Sarepta?

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Sarepta, yeah.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  Sarepta.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  She's still the mayor.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  How's she faring as the mayor?

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Nobody else wants to do it and nobody else, I mean, it's one of those little towns.

• 9:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Uh, that, you know, it's just not a lot going on around there anymore. Once the mill shut down and everything, it's just, uh, just not a lot happening. So, the population decreases every year, you know? Uh, so she's trying to hold it together best she can, but nobody else wants the job. It's, you know, there's nothing, not that much to do.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  What kind of issues you feel like is she dealing with? Does she even relate any of that to you?

• 9:34Speaker 01

  She just writes a lot of letters to people to clean their yards up. You know, that's what she does. I swear, man. She's always writing people letters. Your yard looks bad. You need to clean it, you know? She wants everybody to clean their yards up.

• 9:49Speaker 00

  I mean, hey, it starts with that, kind of with making your bed or whatever. Dude, I got a fricking letter one day here from neighborhood watch. They're like, you haven't been doing your shift. I'm like, I didn't, I didn't even, I didn't know we had a neighborhood watch, you know? And I'm like, I haven't been doing my shift and my shift was from Saturdays from like one to four in the afternoon. I'm like, that's you, you know, I'm usually trying to enjoy, that's when I kind of will enjoy myself on the weekends. But I'm like, bitch, I don't even have, I didn't know we had a neighborhood watch. And I don't think y'all want me out there because I forget what team, what side I'm on. You know, I start going near people's houses or whatever. I forget what team I'm on, brother.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  And that's a volunteer thing too, right? So.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Or they just volunteered you.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  I think that's just the way it is now.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  I mean, if I'm, I, I, I don't recall volunteering to take a shift.

• 10:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  That's what I said. And I was like, well, I don't even know, you know, I didn't even know. And I was like, I wrote back, do we have a uniform or anything? And they, and they wrote back, ha, ha, like in caps. I'm like, bitch, don't, you know, I don't know. It just kind of like, I think.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  You're asking a serious question.

• 10:57Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, I don't want.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Don't I get like an orange vest or something?

• 11:02Speaker 00

  Don't I get a damn merit badge on a hat or something? Because what I don't want to be is wandering around somebody's yard saying I'm neighborhood watch. And they don't have any, you know what I'm saying? They've never heard about it.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Sure you are.

• 11:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. And you get popped off, so. Um, how's that, how's, uh, Sarepta changed since you were there? Before you answer that, actually, what does Sarepta mean? If you, can you look that up for me or do you know?

• 11:27Speaker 01

  It's a, it was an old, it's a town in the, um, uh,

• 11:34Speaker 01

  it's an old biblical, somewhere around Israel, way back in the day.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Sarepta, but they named it after an old woman named Sarepta Carter, back in the late 1800s.

• 11:47Speaker 00

  Sarepta, Louisiana, yes, has got its name for Sarepta Carter, an early benefactor who donated a large Bible to the community's first church around 1868.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  That's all it took to get the town named after you?

• 11:59Speaker 00

  That was it.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Just the Bible. Huh. I wonder what it cost to get it renamed?

• 12:04Speaker 00

  I could, I could see it being.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Two bibles, maybe.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  That reminds me, one thing my mom did. There was this girl got in trouble for something. I can't remember, something to do with drugs or. And so my mom was, she gets to play judge every now and then over these little, you know, misdemeanor type things, you know? And she sentenced the girl to go to Sunday school for six months. And she, my daughter called me and she was like, Dad, you're not gonna believe what my mom did. And I was like, what? And she said, she sentenced this girl to go to Sunday school for six months. And I called my mom and I was like, you can't do that. You know, I'm pretty sure that's illegal. You, you can't make somebody go to church. And she said, well, I did.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Okay. Oh, my God, that's her.

• 13:00Speaker 00

  This is my jurisdiction.

• 13:01Speaker 01

  I can't believe y'all. I have a picture of my mom.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  Oh, she's a beautiful lady. What's her first name?

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Peggy.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  Peggy?

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  Atkins, does she go by? Peggy Atkins.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's the mayor.

• 13:13Speaker 00

  Thank you for your service, Peggy, over there.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Keeping it together.

• 13:16Speaker 00

  Somebody's got to keep it together. And that town's changed. You said a lot had a mill. Did it have a mill when you were growing up?

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it had a mill about eight miles away. That's where everybody worked.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Oil field's still doing pretty well around there, but that's the only game in town. And, um, but then, you know, the school was what really made that town special, I thought. When I was growing up, it was K through 12, all on one campus. But then when they, you know, when they consolidated the schools, uh, now all the kids have to go to another town. And they just made that, took that campus and just made it a middle school.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  It's not the same anymore.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  I think that happened to a lot of places over the time.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  You know, I think that was kind of a popular thing.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  All the people moved away and there just weren't enough kids to justify having a K through 12. There just weren't enough kids. So.

• 14:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think when you start to lose little things like that, it takes away something, you know?

• 14:10Speaker 01

  It did.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  Takes away some tradition.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  It did. And that was, it had that little charm about it because all the kids in town went to that school.

• 14:20Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  You know, so it was just, so every, the whole community was always behind the school, supported the school at every ball game and all that, you know? But then that just, that went away and they're, you know, sad.

• 14:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, a lot of things started to kind of change like that. I wonder, do you think that was like a financial choice that they, that towns made? Or was it like?

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Well, there just weren't enough people, man. Once the mill shut down, people started leaving.

• 14:44Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  So, you know, it's, I mean, it's decreased. The population has decreased pretty much every year since that happened.

• 14:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  You know, decades ago, it's just.

• 14:54Speaker 00

  It's a lot of towns like that in this country.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:56Speaker 00

  When a lot of business went away, man. We, when we go out touring, I'm sure you've seen it over the years. You go by places, some places, it's, you know, they're trying to redo the downtown, like Amarillo, I was surprised at downtown, like, you know, I'd always heard about it in country music. You know, and I went there and, and there's some things that are coming back in it, you know, and it's a night, there's, there's structure there, but it just doesn't have, you know, it's just missing like a, um, you can see like an energy that once was, you know, in a lot of places, you know? Shreveport's the same way.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, sure. I mean, I've never spent a lot of time in Amarillo, but yeah, uh, Shreveport, you know, the casinos have helped, you know, on the river. Bossier City has, has really prospered more than Shreveport has. I think in the very beginning, I think Bossier, Bossier Parish was a little more receptive to the casino stuff than Cattle Parish was.

• 15:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  So.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, dude, I remember learning about the parishes growing up in Louisiana and that was fun, man.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Louisiana's still the, it's the only state in the country that's still under Napoleonic law. I mean, they practice Napoleonic law as much as they can.

• 16:07Speaker 00

  I wonder, what are some wild things that happened under, under Napoleonic laws? See if you can bring that up.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  I don't know, man.

• 16:13Speaker 00

  Cause it used to be, I would hear a rumor, like if you lost a thumb or something, if, during employment, that was 25 grand. There wasn't any lawsuits and there wasn't any, you know what I'm saying?

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Really?

• 16:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, like you had a justifiable rate. If you lost a whole leg now, we're talking 80 grand. You know?

• 16:31Speaker 01

  I always thought it was like.

• 16:32Speaker 00

  If you were long-legged.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Per did, per joint, like a whole finger was like maybe that, but then if just this, then it was not as much. If you just cut it off here.

• 16:44Speaker 00

  Oh, I see.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 16:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, cause.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  It was per joint.

• 16:47Speaker 00

  But then you'd have some drunk guy who was late on his rent or something, just chopping one off just to catch it, you know?

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I could see that.

• 16:54Speaker 00

  But I guess that's fair. Louisiana's civil law system, uh, the most notable and practical highlights. Um, Louisiana's the only state that practices forced airship, a concept rooted in Napoleonic code. If a person dies with children aged 23 or younger, a specific portion of the estate must legally go to them.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Oh, so you can't even write your kids out of the will in Louisiana, I guess?

• 17:19Speaker 00

  Dang.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  I moved for that.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:24Speaker 00

  What, uh?

• 17:26Speaker 01

  No buyer beware. Oh, wow.

• 17:28Speaker 00

  What does that say? No buyer beware. In standard common law states, real estate sales operate under caveat emptor, which means buyer beware. Because Louisiana follows European civil law, the burden is strictly on the seller to disclose known defects and potential issues prior to the sale. I like that.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, that ain't bad. They should be, they should do that everywhere.

• 17:46Speaker 00

  Feels fair. Uh, what about if you lose a limb or something? If you get a rebate on it?

• 17:54Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 17:56Speaker 00

  Get into that.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  I got that, you know, but they put it back on.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  Oh, you're missing something?

• 18:01Speaker 01

  No, like I cut my little finger off, but they put it back on and just fused all the joints together because it didn't work anymore. So.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  Can you straighten it or not?

• 18:11Speaker 01

  No, no, it's fused like that. Cause he asked me how I wanted it. And he said, you want me to put it straight or? And I was like, no, man. I said, put it like in the sus position.

• 18:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  You know, and he's like sus position. I said, yeah, playing guitar, because at least I can, if you put it straight, you might as well just cut it off. It's gonna be useless. But put it like that and I can still play, you know, play a little guitar. I can't reach up the neck with it anymore.

• 18:38Speaker 00

  But a B sharp, it'll help, huh?

• 18:40Speaker 01

  I just, I can't reach with it, but you know?

• 18:43Speaker 00

  Dang.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  And piano playing, I mean, it's really bad.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. I mean, maybe you could rattle off some Christmas carols with that bad deal. But, uh, but is that true though? You had it set up like that?

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. He asked me how I wanted it before he, before he fused the joints.

• 18:58Speaker 00

  You're like, almost like a little, it's a little bit of Pinocchio, like a, that's wild, dude. Yeah, I wonder what I would get my hand, say if something, if they had to have it.

• 19:08Speaker 00

  I'd probably get these down and this one up, to be honest with you. You know what I'm saying? Just in case they ever come around asking me to do that neighborhood watch again.

• 19:18Speaker 00

  But that's wild. That's one of the wildest stories I think I've ever heard, brother. You thought about that in advance. You said, well, look.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  I had plenty of time to think about it because I cut it off. I was working offshore, so it took them six hours to come get me and fly me back to the beach to go to the hospital. So.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  That was before you were doing music?

• 19:37Speaker 01

  I was playing guitar, you know? That was the first thing I thought when I cut it. It was like, oh, man, I ain't gonna be able to play guitar anymore.

• 19:45Speaker 00

  You were wrong.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  Well.

• 19:47Speaker 00

  Thank God.

• 19:47Speaker 01

  I'm not very good, but at least I can still use it a little bit.

• 19:51Speaker 00

  Oh, you play, so you worked on oil rig? Was that like, because that's kind of a Louisiana job. That's something I forget about, dude. When I got out of school, you'd hear like some guy, if he was kind of lucky, he got a job out on the rigs. He was going to do two weeks on, two weeks off.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's kind of my, my first wife's uncle worked offshore. He was a superintendent for Texco.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  And he got me a job working on a drilling rig. For Global Marine.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  Was that a pretty good gig? Like, do you remember enjoying it when you went out there? Like, what was that like?

• 20:25Speaker 01

  I loved it. Yeah, I worked in oil field for 10 years. Six years I worked offshore on drilling rig.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  And I enjoyed it.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  And when y'all hit oil, would people lose it and just be like beating their hat against their knee and stuff like that? Like you see.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Man, that never happened. You know? It wasn't like that anymore.

• 20:46Speaker 00

  Were y'all having a good time out there? Like, were you guys, would you play music at night for the gang?

• 20:51Speaker 01

  I'd go up to the wheelhouse and, you know, try to write and neighbors start coming up and wanting me to do haggard tunes or whatever, you know, Hank Jr. and stuff like that. But, but by the time I was working out there, you know, those wildcat and things that you see from the movies back in the day when they'd hit oil and it'd just blow out, you know? It wasn't like that anymore.

• 21:16Speaker 00

  And people catching in their mouths and shit?

• 21:18Speaker 01

  They had it dialed in, you know? So very, very seldom did we take a kick.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  That sucks, man. It almost takes the fun out of it because some of the fun would be running under and letting that shit hit you. I remember I used, I used to work on, uh, I worked on a soybean farm up near like Farady, Louisiana. Up near like, uh, right across the river from Natchez. And sometimes a fertilizer rig, I'd be sitting there filling up like one of those big balls that's on it with fertilizer. And I'd forget the fertilizer was going in there. And so I'd be sitting there just daydreaming or whatever, just kicking dirt or just, I don't know, listening to country music. I used to, it would just be top 40 out there all the time and I'd listen to it. And that spray rig would just start, it would just right off the top, just geysering out. And it would be like bad chemicals fertilizer.

• 22:05Speaker 00

  And it, I mean, just flying pretty high voltage shit pouring all on you, getting in you. And, uh, and it was hot sun. So finally I'd get over there and turn it off. I'd be like, oh damn, because I was so absent minded. But then you're standing in the hot sun with this fertilizer on you, man. And that shit would just, God, I didn't, I couldn't get body hair to grow around my neck or anywhere near some of my glands for probably 18 months, I would bet. I would thought I was, I thought I was going to turn into a damn turnip, you know? They're going to put me in a little chair or something, a little baby seat.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  I used to have dry spots on my hands from sometimes when we would complete a well, which was very seldom. Usually we'd just drill one and then move on to the next location, drill another one. But sometimes they'd want us to stay and complete it and test the well. And so when you completed one, you'd have to displace all the mud and put calcium chloride or zinc bromide or something like that. And man, I worked derrick, so it was my job to make sure all that stuff was mixed up right. And if you got it on you, it was just, it was nasty, man. And it'd eat you up. All, all your skin would peel off.

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• 25:53Speaker 01

  What's up, Gary?

• 25:55Speaker 00

  Oh, that's a little dog, huh?

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's Victoria's dog.

• 26:00Speaker 00

  That's a beautiful dog.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  His name's Gary Busey.

• 26:02Speaker 00

  His name's what?

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Gary Busey.

• 26:04Speaker 00

  Is it?

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:05Speaker 00

  How'd y'all choose it?

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Because, um, I was pulling a float in a Christmas parade in our little town we live in. And she, it was for a pet shelter that she, that Victoria volunteers at. And she came running up to my truck, had this little bitty dog, and she held him up to the window. And at the time, he had like his baby teeth and his grown teeth at both, because he had like two full sets of teeth. And she brought him up to the truck and his teeth were sticking out and he had that blonde thing sticking up on top of his head. I said, that dog looks like Gary Busey.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  And so we took, we took him home that day and that's his name.

• 26:51Speaker 00

  They do have similar kind of hair structure or whatever.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. But he's lost all his teeth now, so he doesn't look the same.

• 26:58Speaker 00

  Oh, has he? I haven't seen Gary in a long time.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  If you put their pictures side by side, they look exactly alike.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  They should put a dog collar on Gary Busey, the man, just so people.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  A leash?

• 27:08Speaker 00

  Or yeah, just to, you know what I'm saying? I think that all of us at certain points in our lives should have a collar on with our, our mother's information on it.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, that's not a real picture of him, is it?

• 27:18Speaker 00

  Is that Gary? Someone said he was delivering pizza somewhere.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  That, is that real? Oh, my God.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  That could be him or that could just be any guy from Maine.

• 27:28Speaker 00

  So I think that could go either way, man.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  That's unfortunate.

• 27:32Speaker 00

  No, but I think he looked pretty good. How old is Gary Busey, though?

• 27:36Speaker 01

  He's gotta be late 70s, I'd say, probably.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  At least.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  82.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  82, wow, okay.

• 27:46Speaker 00

  I gotta go back and watch some of his work, man. He's a talent that I sometimes forget about.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  A lot of people have.

• 27:52Speaker 00

  He's a talented guy. Um, I know he was doing like a lot of, like TikTok. He was doing like a lot of like, uh, Christmas cards for some, like audio verbal Christmas cards.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Things.

• 28:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, I saw a couple of them. They were pretty cool. I thought one of them was kind of wild, though. What was it?

• 28:10Speaker 01

  I think he'll do anything. If you'll send him some money, he'll read anything for you.

• 28:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, oh, this might be it. Let's see, let's see that. Is that a video that we can see?

• 28:19Speaker 01

  I'll do that, too.

• 28:20Speaker 00

  Here we go.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  If people don't ever ask me to. Hey, it's Gary Busey, and I have got a great Christmas present for you. Listen to this.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  That's what a goose sounds like, where they're flying. They're letting you know they're up there.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  You gotta bunch your geese together.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  They're honking in the air.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Thanks, Gary.

• 28:54Speaker 00

  Awesome, dude, but I'll tell you this.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  He needs to be on, you know, National Geographic Channel, you know, with that kind of insight and to the wildlife. That shit, that shit we didn't know.

• 29:07Speaker 00

  That's more than I've.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Thanks, Gary.

• 29:09Speaker 00

  That's more than I've learned in a while, I think, though. But, uh, at least he still has a great sense of humor, man. I'll say that.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  I don't think he was trying to be funny.

• 29:20Speaker 00

  You don't think so?

• 29:22Speaker 01

  I don't know. I hope he was.

• 29:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, he might have been.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  I've been around Gary a good bit.

• 29:27Speaker 00

  Oh, you have?

• 29:28Speaker 01

  He's legit crazy, yeah.

• 29:30Speaker 00

  Oh, he is? I didn't even know that.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:34Speaker 00

  I just see stuff and you always think it's just him being him, you know?

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Oh, we had a traumatic ba- brain injury. I didn't even.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, he had motorcycle wreck.

• 29:42Speaker 00

  Oh, I didn't know this, or I didn't remember it.

• 29:46Speaker 00

  He had a malignant tumor from a sinus cavity as well, it said in ninety seven. In eighty eight, he had a motorcycle crash. So there was kind of a before him and after him type of energy. Oh, wow.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  He's always been a little crazy, though.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  But then after the motorcycle wreck, he went full blown.

• 30:02Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, that'll bake it in. That'll ba- it is.

• 30:08Speaker 00

  It's in the ingredients then.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  I love him, though. He's funny.

• 30:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, entertaining guy. Did you have, uh, did you have any other jobs, man, before you really got kind of like, before you took on music full time?

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Well, when I moved here, uh, I went out to, uh, DuPont and worked out there on Old Hickory Lake at that plant out there. I worked for B E and K Construction. I worked out there for a couple of years before I got a record deal. Yeah.

• 30:35Speaker 00

  And was that just like day to day? Like, like what kind of stuff they have you doing?

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Pipe fitters helper. Fitters helper.

• 30:42Speaker 00

  Oh, you worked with pipe fitting? Were you in the union?

• 30:45Speaker 01

  No.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  Oh, dude, my buddy fricking Corey was in the fricking union, dude.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Fitter, pipe fitters union?

• 30:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, he said he was. He was always over there just drinking. He'd bring a big thermos of milk and drink it all the time on the sidelines of work. And then he'd get sick if they were out in the sun and shit. He was a damn liability. But, uh, my brother ended up hiring him because they're friends, but, um, he's a gypsy, you know, those types, some of those guys can do whatever. They'll spray your house and, you know, they'll spray your driveway and sell it, tell you it's asphalt. You know what I'm talking about? If somebody show up with a truck full of nothing and be like, yeah, we got a truck full of, and you don't even go look in the truck to see if anything's in it. Nothing's in it. It's just a spray rig with a little bit of paint and they'll paint it on there.

• 31:27Speaker 00

  But anyway, yeah.

• 31:30Speaker 00

  I'm trying to think.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  What were we talking about?

• 31:31Speaker 00

  Just jobs. We had, oh, dude, I'll tell you one. I remember I sold, they had door to door Italian going on in our area for a while. They had this guy, Donnie Ferrari or whatever, and he was selling door to door Italian food. And I got lo- I got linked up with him somehow through my, some guy my mom was kind of dating or whatever, some guy she met at a damn, probably by a Xerox machine or something, because it was in the eighties or whatever. And, uh, and I ended up doing, working for him for a while. And it was just door to door. We would take Italian food and try to get people to buy it, dude. And that was probably.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  No, they weren't even calling you to bring it. You were trying, you were going to their house, trying to sell them.

• 32:04Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I was apprentice assistant or whatever.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Sorry, dude, but I'm not buying any food. You come up, knock on my door, you know? I'm gonna look at you. I was, no, man, I ain't buy no food from you.

• 32:16Speaker 00

  Bro, when I show up my little ravioli dance, bro, it would be popping out there.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Come on, man.

• 32:22Speaker 00

  But I will tell you this, it did help me, because I was kind of an apprentice at first, and so it did help me, I think, get a little bit of that, I'm gonna do something I don't want to do.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  You were an apprentice for what?

• 32:35Speaker 01

  No, man, you don't, you, everybody that sells door to door is a fucking apprentice. There's no professional door to door selling food.

• 32:45Speaker 00

  Oh, this guy was good, brother. Donnie was pretty good. I mean, he was the best in our area. And, uh, yeah, I worked with him for almost, probably almost eleven months, four months, probably about, almost seven months.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  But yeah, I was out there, dude. I think it did help me a little bit, because we get a new, you know, the big thing that all the ladies wanted at the time was, uh, garlic bread.

• 33:14Speaker 00

  And it's still what they want. It's still what they want. But, uh, but I remember that was kind of probably one of the wildest jobs that I had. But when I first started listening to country music, was when I was working on that farm and I would put on Top Forty, they'd have like Casey Kasem or something at the time. But, and I think that was a little more like pop, but on, on, on one day, they would do, I guess it was country top, I think it was probably top forty. It might even be a day where they would do a hundred songs or something, you know? And, uh, I'd cut the tractor off and I'd stand out there and just, just sing the songs that I loved, man.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  I remember every Sunday morning, it was always a countdown.

• 33:50Speaker 00

  That's what it was then.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  But it wasn't Casey Kasem. Oh, my God.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  Who was it? You're right.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Believe that I don't remember his name. I did a bunch of interviews with him and I can't think of his name. I'm getting to be that way, though, man, forgetting names and stuff.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, mixing them up. I do it. It's hard.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Leo, it's terrible, dude. I can't remember.

• 34:12Speaker 00

  Well, dude, I can barely remember Donnie Ferrari, who I fricking apprenticed with.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  No, why can you remember something, some insignificant Italian dude from back then and can't remember stuff from just a few days ago?

• 34:27Speaker 00

  I think it's just because you go through so many neighbors with the man. You're pulling the wagon. He's pulling the wagon. You're pissed, he's pissed, y'all are right there, but when you get to the door, you gotta work together.

• 34:37Speaker 00

  So I think.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  But you know what I'm gonna remember, though? Next time I'm trying to woo a lady, it's garlic bread.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Gotta remember that.

• 34:45Speaker 00

  Oh, fucking, I'd warm peace up in the microwave and just fricking dab it on the sides of my neck, brother. They know it's up.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  They know it's up.

• 34:53Speaker 00

  But that's when I fell in love with country music, man. That's when I fell, because I would just be out there all day, and I think that's what a lot of the radio stations would play.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  I used to put a cassette in and record the Top Forty countdown. That's the way we always got our tunes, like, because, you know, back in the mid eighties, I was playing in a cover band and, you know, you needed to know a certain number of songs from, you know, the current Top Forty. You know, it was a big deal. You needed to know a bunch of those songs, because that's what everybody wanted to hear, was what they were hearing on the radio, so. We'd cover all those tunes and, and that's how we learned them. We'd just record them on a cassette off the, off the countdown, and that's how we learned them.

• 35:34Speaker 00

  When did you put together, uh, I mean, your first album, Dreaming Out Loud, was your first album? How did it get to the place where you're, you know, you're working on an oil rig, you're playing some, and then you're playing covers? And then how do you get to that next step? Is that of your own volition fully, or did somebody come along and kind of give you an inspiration or let you? Like, take me through a little bit of that if you don't mind.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Oh, God, it's just such a long story. I mean, I.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  Oh, is it?

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would, but it did start when I was working on a drilling rig. I'd take my guitar out there and I'd try to write. And then I met this guy out there that knew these other guys in a band in Lafayette, Louisiana. And he said, man, this time when we're off for two weeks, come down, I'll introduce you to these guys. So I went down there and, uh, you know, sang with them a little bit. And then they wanted me to go to Dallas. They had already won a local competition in Battle of the Country Bands. And they wanted me to go to Dallas with, with them for the regionals. And it was gonna fall on a time when I was off for two weeks, so I went.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  And we won the thing in Dallas, and then we came here for the finals and, you know, we, we lost here, but that was my first taste, you know? I came off a drilling rig and then I'm on stage at, you know, T-Pak, you know, in front of all these industry people and freaked us all out.

• 36:56Speaker 00

  You must've been nervous, huh? That's nerves.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Oh, we choked, yeah. So we didn't win. But anyway, that kind of, that kind of gave me the, you know, the fever, you know, so. Uh, and then a few years later, I moved up here, you know, and that's kind of how it started and met the right people and, you know, songwriters and some other music executives and.

• 37:23Speaker 00

  And that's been it?

• 37:24Speaker 01

  And that was it.

• 37:25Speaker 00

  Man, I saw you at the Ryman a few weeks ago, dude. You have, and I hate to say this, but I just was reminded of so many songs, you know, you just kind of like, when you go watch, you just, it kind of takes you through little parts of your life. You'll, you'll, you'll hear a song, you're like, oh, I used to kind of, that, that song is almost becomes a champagne, and this, and then bubbles of like memories during that time start to come up through it, you know? There was a lot of.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  First single, Ju- uh, June twenty six, ninety six, thirty years ago.

• 37:54Speaker 00

  And you wrote it?

• 37:55Speaker 01

  I wrote it with Vip Vipperman, Carl Vipperman. Everybody calls him Vip.

• 38:00Speaker 00

  And was there any story behind some of that?

• 38:01Speaker 01

  No, he was just, we were just sitting down, getting to know each other, because I'd never met Vip before, but, you know, a guy I was working with, producer at the time, just hooked us up and said, I think you ought to write with Vip. He's a good dude, you know? I think y'all get along. And we sat down together and we were just kind of getting to know each other, and he was asking me questions and, asked me where I'd come to Nashville from. I told him I'd been living in Texas and playing honky tonks out there for a while. And, uh, he asked me, he said, well, is there a girl in Texas? And I was like, yeah, a bunch of them. And, uh, and he said, well, let's write that. I was like, what? That's how y'all do this? So that's what happened. And then we just wrote it.

• 38:47Speaker 00

  One of my favorites is uh Every Light in the House, man. That song, dude, I frickin'.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  That was my fir- that was my first hit. I mean, Girl in Texas, I think, got to seventeen or eighteen or something like that.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  On the charts?

• 39:01Speaker 01

  But then Every Light in the House is on got to number five.

• 39:04Speaker 00

  Wow, man. Dude, that song, bro.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  Single went to number one, and the next single went to number one. I was like, here we go.

• 39:13Speaker 00

  That song. Cause I was all broken hearted because I'd separated my girlfriend and I went separate ways. Because we were boyfriend and girlfriend, and then I was going to school in Arizona. She was staying in Louisiana. Not to make your song about me, but um but that's what was going on. And I think I think I I think I ate a bunch of mushrooms or something. I was and I was saying goodbye to her at this gas station, and I didn't know these mushrooms were really gonna start hitting. And they had a lot of oil spots on the ground. And uh just from course.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  The gas station.

• 39:45Speaker 00

  What's that?

• 39:46Speaker 01

  It's a gas station.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a yeah, so it's a gas.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  In Louisiana.

• 39:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, so, yeah. So a lot of oil spots. But the mushrooms was kinda getting my brain. It started massaging my brain a little bit and really touching my brain stem. And then I saw those, all those oil spots started moving. I thought they were roaches, because Louisiana, we also have a lot of roaches. And uh you'll see somebody, you know, that's high, just stamp the hell out of a damn oil spot.

• 40:11Speaker 00

  But yeah, I started freaking out, and she got kinda scared and was like this weird, like, anyway. Anyway, that relationship ended, but I remember just just being heartbroken. I'd be out there in Arizona just listening to that song, dude, and it was just. Anyway, I'm sure a lot of.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  You wanna see oil spots, pull up in front of an O'Reilly's or an Autozone.

• 40:30Speaker 00

  Oh, God.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. It's like just oil slicks out in front of those doors.

• 40:35Speaker 00

  Pull up in front of my sister's house when she was married to her ex-husband, too.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Pull up in front of my house until until I started making some money and got a car or got a truck that didn't just pour oil out the bottom of it. I used to put as much oil in my trucks as I put gas in them.

• 40:55Speaker 00

  Well, hell, yeah, you did. You did it with your first toy as a kid. No wonder that shit made sense, bro. That was just a predecessor to what was gonna go on. Dude, you remind me, I had this eighty-six Jimmy or something it was called, right? I think they call, it was a Chevrolet. It was eighty-six, maybe Chevy, something like that.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  GMC Jimmy?

• 41:11Speaker 00

  Yes, GMC Jimmy, man. I would always fuck up. I would tell people it was Chevy, and I'd get Chevy parts for it, and they wouldn't fit it or whatever. But something was broken on it, and about every eighty miles, I had to pull over, and I headed out to Arizona, driving out west for my first semester of college. Dude, I must have stopped, I can't even tell you, ninety times I had to stop, let it cool down, and then keep it cruising. Uh it was kinda like that brown one. It no, it wasn't that nice. It was something different. Oh, it was a Blazer. It was a Chevy Blazer.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Blazer, yeah, not the GMC Jimmy.

• 41:44Speaker 00

  No, and the seats were uh flammable.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  But you could use Chevy parts on GMC.

• 41:51Speaker 00

  That was it right there, dude. And you had to hold the.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Chick magnet.

• 41:57Speaker 00

  Oh, dude. It was some chick.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  And that your your girlfriend left you, and you were driving that sweet ride?

• 42:07Speaker 01

  What's wrong with that bitch?

• 42:09Speaker 00

  You're right, dude.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  You know what? She's probably with some low-rent dude now, man, driving around in a Corolla or something.

• 42:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  She could have had that.

• 42:21Speaker 00

  I know. Well, look, every now and then I'll send her a mother, her an email and say she missed out.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  Toyota ain't one of y'all's sponsors, are they?

• 42:29Speaker 00

  No.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 42:30Speaker 00

  No, no big company like that would sponsor us. Uh but yeah, dude, that vehicle right there at the pullover. And dude, the whole back of the vehicle, even for a while, was was antifreeze, because that's what I needed the whole time. So I couldn't even have guests come in the car, because it was full. I'd probably have, I'd be sitting there, sometimes I'd have twenty bottles of antifreeze in there. And I'd have to use them all, pull over and use antifreeze and water, but if you just use water, it would burn off too quick. But man, sometimes the car got so hot, I'd have to step away from it for a while. You know, and I'd go walk or go go sit, sit in the distance and write a poem or something.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Sit in the distance.

• 43:03Speaker 00

  But uh that bitch was, that bitch was hot, dude. I don't know if they allow cars to get that hot anymore, but um but yeah, dude, that was unrequited love. I I found out it's called.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Where'd you go to college?

• 43:14Speaker 00

  I went to University of Arizona at first.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah? And. How'd you do that? I mean, why?

• 43:19Speaker 00

  I just wanted to.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Way off and out in the desert.

• 43:22Speaker 00

  I wanna do something different.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Well, you went, desert's different from Louisiana.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, just like, I'm gonna do something different, but I came back after one semester, went to LSU. And then uh.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  I don't like the desert.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  Yeah?

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Do you? I don't like the desert.

• 43:37Speaker 00

  You know what? There's a moment in the day I really like it, you know, right around that. I, you know what?

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Daylight?

• 43:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. Daylight, yeah, or even just right at dusk.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Dawn.

• 43:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. I like that. There's something nice about it. There's something that uh, but there's something about it that it doesn't really have much of a memory, but it's but it has like a wisdom or something. I don't know, there's something about it that I think is pretty interesting.

• 43:59Speaker 00

  But I didn't like it then, man. That was a tough time, but uh but it was a good time, man. But that was when, you know, love was just, your whole body was just damn made out of damn uh hormones or whatever. And you, you know, you'd take, you know, you'd touch, you'd pet a dog and it'd give birth, you know? It was just like, you were just that agile, just that virile or whatever. You know, you'd spit on a tree and it'd fucking grow fruit or whatever out of it.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  How many puppies you had?

• 44:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's true. I don't know what I'm talking about.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  That's nasty, bro.

• 44:33Speaker 00

  And Gary Busey just left the room, I will say that.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  What about uh, is there a, is there a um story behind that song? Is there a story behind that song?

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Which one?

• 44:42Speaker 00

  Every Light in the House?

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Oh, dude, that's just when I heard it, I was like, that's sound like a hit to me, you know? And Scott Hendrix, who was producing that first record, I mean, we just, there's some songs you hear and you just go, that's a hit.

• 44:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Just, there's no doubt, you know, so that was one of those no doubters.

• 45:00Speaker 00

  Was there a song you wrote that you felt like had a story to it more like that uh?

• 45:07Speaker 01

  More like what?

• 45:08Speaker 00

  That's a great question, actually. I don't know what the end of my question was.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Oh, all's, all of them have a story.

• 45:13Speaker 00

  Was there one uh, who was, there was one, or somebody said Arlington has a sentiment.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course, man. That was a very personal, I didn't write that, but it was just such a personal thing that

• 45:29Speaker 01

  I knew who who wrote it and and I knew the story behind it, and I knew who it was written about. And so before we released that song, I asked the family to come in, you know, and we played the song for them. And I said, look, this song's written about your son, so we want your blessing before we put this out. Yeah, it was a very personal thing. Everybody listened to it and cried, and we got their blessing, and so that was cool.

• 45:57Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  But.

• 45:58Speaker 00

  And has that family come to some of your shows and stuff?

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Uh I haven't seen the Nixons in a while.

• 46:05Speaker 00

  Was it about their son?

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it was about Patrick Nixon, uh Corp- Lance Corporal Patrick Nixon. He was a Marine. And his dad was a Marine, and his grandfather was a Marine, and so that's where that song came from.

• 46:21Speaker 00

  Amen.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. But I've, you know, I've written some personal ones. They're all, they all come from that kinda place, you know?

• 46:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was just wondering. I just didn't know, cause I think, you know, as a person who just like, you know, I've written a lot of, you know, love letters and all of that and.

• 46:42Speaker 01

  Really?

• 46:43Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Love letters.

• 46:46Speaker 00

  Apologies?

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Well, I can imagine that, but.

• 46:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  I don't know about the love poems.

• 46:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've written a lot of apologies, I think.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  More apologies than love letters, probably.

• 46:59Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  If you'd have written more love letters, you wouldn't have to write so many apologies.

• 47:02Speaker 00

  That's probably the truth.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  You were better at the other one.

• 47:08Speaker 00

  I think there might be a song in that, in that little idea right there. That's something.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  I think probably one of the most personal songs I ever wrote to me was a song called Welcome to Hell. And I was really, really pissed off when I wrote that, you know, so, I mean, of course, I wrote it in two thousand and one, you know? Sometime after the World Trade Center thing, after nine eleven. No, it was personal. It was very personal to me, you know?

• 47:38Speaker 00

  Where did that angst come from? Was it just from that sort of thing, just from like America, like just the the devastation in our country and what it felt like it did to us?

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wrote, I wrote it because I thought, you know, these guys, they think that they're gonna do this kinda stuff, and then they're gonna end up in heaven with seventy-two virgins and all this. And I said, how surprised are they gonna be? You know, when they end up, you know, and the guy says, welcome to hell, you know, this is, you, oh, you thought you were going there? Well, no, dude, you know, this is where you're gonna be. And so that's how I wrote that.

• 48:16Speaker 00

  As your career's going on, has it been tougher to have um inspiration for songs? Or do you feel like certain songs kinda check a certain box as an artist moves through time, and then that has kinda been filled?

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Man, I don't write as much anymore, but it's because I don't.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  That inspiration that you're talking about every now and then it'll you'll hear something, you know, I'll hear a phrase or just a line that somebody said and then I and then it rings the bell and I'm like, oh God, that's a song. I'm gonna have to write that, you know? And it's almost like it's a gift that's just given to you and you have to deal with it, you know?

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Like having some kind of disease or something, you know, God, I might have to deal with this now, you know?

• 49:04Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  So.

• 49:06Speaker 00

  That's a good point, actually. Yeah, like having a disease. Cause creativity is kind of a disease. I feel like if you want to tend to it.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, you got to, you know, you have to deal with it. It comes knocking and you just gotta deal with it, you know?

• 49:18Speaker 00

  Dude, it's so funny. I forgot about that. I forgot that that's like how creativity happens a lot of times.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  It's like herpes, it's just, you know?

• 49:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  I don't, I mean, you know?

• 49:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, neither one of us have it.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  No, but I've heard that it's like, you know? It just comes, you gotta deal with it.

• 49:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I've heard it shows up like a damn.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  Cousins.

• 49:38Speaker 00

  Well, it shows up like.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Like family.

• 49:40Speaker 00

  It shows up like door to door Italian food.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:43Speaker 00

  That's how it shows up.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  I gotta deal with this guy now.

• 49:46Speaker 00

  Oh, Donny.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Trying to sell me food that is grandma cooked, you know? In her rochi kitchen.

• 49:53Speaker 00

  Hey, I'll say this, I will say this. I remember we had a manicotti in May special and that shit was popping, dude.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  What was it?

• 50:01Speaker 00

  Manicotti in May. Cause a lot of women, they get.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  It was in May.

• 50:05Speaker 00

  Well, they get so hot in the summer. They're like, I ain't cooking, you know, well, you know, in our town, you give your damn kid a piece of ice or something, put a little sugar on the back of it, you know, give that to him or whatever. You know, or just sometimes a woman just spit cold water in your mouth or something and that's, that counts as a side item. But, uh, yeah. It was just a different time. We had a beautiful manicotti. Bring manicotti up.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  It was a different time.

• 50:35Speaker 00

  Now, look at that, Trace. You telling me.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Well, yeah.

• 50:37Speaker 00

  You telling me.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  It's like Italian burritos.

• 50:39Speaker 00

  You telling me a, a man named Donnie Ferrari with an 11 or 12 year old kid he doesn't know shows up at your door trying to sell you that you ain't gonna get you a couple for your lady?

• 50:49Speaker 01

  I don't think so, man. Not today. Not today, man. Not now. Not in this time. Maybe in that time, but not now.

• 50:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're right.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  You know, not now. That's some desperate shit. No, I'm not buying food from you, kid. Go away before I call social services to come get your ass.

• 51:09Speaker 00

  We kept some of that, some of it we kept in the warmer and some of you had to warm yourself. But, uh, that was a good job. It was how I learned to just be approach, to go on ahead and approach people.

• 51:22Speaker 00

  What, what's the love life been like over the years, Trace? I know you got some stories from it and I hate to lead you in like that, but sometimes, you know, a creative person, they feel love kind of deep, I feel like, you know? If, if your brain is kind of deep, I feel like your heart can be kind of deep as well.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  I reckon I gave as good as I got.

• 51:43Speaker 00

  That's fair.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 51:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  I love you as good as you love me, I guess.

• 51:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  It's kind of, gotta be that kind of deal though. I ain't gonna just love you if I ain't getting any back. I'll quit.

• 51:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  I'll quit loving you if you quit loving me.

• 52:00Speaker 00

  Hey, dude, that sounds like a deal.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, but I'll love you as hard as you want to love me. I'll get down, I'll come on. I'll match you. Heartbeat for heartbeat.

• 52:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. Dude.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  Whatever.

• 52:16Speaker 00

  I'm not joking though. I swear to God, one of my past relationships, if we'd have just met one day in the kitchen and said, look, I'll quit loving you if you quit loving me, we would have both. And if we would have, cause we both, that's what we both wanted to do. We just didn't do it, you know?

• 52:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's happened, of course. I mean, I'm on my fourth marriage now, so.

• 52:37Speaker 00

  Oh, you really?

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, really.

• 52:40Speaker 00

  Dang. What'd you learn about him? What was?

• 52:43Speaker 01

  I think really because Blake married us, so we're not a hundred percent sure if we're actually really married, but I think we are.

• 52:52Speaker 00

  Who Shelton did?

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 52:54Speaker 00

  Wow. Dude, somebody said he has like a sandal collection. I heard a rumor he has like a male footwear collection or something.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Sandals?

• 53:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, men's sandals. Is that true? Have you heard anything like that?

• 53:04Speaker 01

  I hope not. I'm gonna stop being friends with him if it's true.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  Cause Blake's always said you can't trust a guy wearing flip flops or sandals.

• 53:14Speaker 00

  Oh, well, maybe he's doing it on the side. Or, you know, or I don't mean, I, I, I just mean, maybe he, you know, maybe he keeps a pair under his bed. I don't have any idea. That's just something that I heard. Bring that up.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  Wow, that's, uh.

• 53:26Speaker 00

  Bring that up. Bring a Blake Shelton sandal rumor.

• 53:31Speaker 00

  That we just started.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Oh my God. See, he's anti.

• 53:35Speaker 00

  Oh, is he really?

• 53:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I was like, no, man. He, he said you can't ever trust a guy wearing flip flops or sandals because if you get stuck, he can't, he ain't gonna help push you out.

• 53:45Speaker 00

  It's true.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  He won't help push you out. He won't help do it. A guy wearing sandals is not hardly gonna help you do anything. You know what I'm saying? Because he's gonna get his toes banged up and so he's not gonna help you do anything, you know? He's not even wearing shoes.

• 54:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  So he can't help anybody. He's not gonna run in a house and save children when the house is on fire. He ain't got no shoes on.

• 54:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, there you go.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  He's worthless. He's a worthless, he's a worthless male, you know? He ain't got no shoes on. He's absolutely worthless.

• 54:19Speaker 00

  There go half of the Sigma towels out there.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  Give a shit.

• 54:25Speaker 00

  Oh, I don't care either. I'm just saying.

• 54:27Speaker 01

  Give a shit.

• 54:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, if somebody has sandals on.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  I mean, it's like soccer, you know? Come on, stop with that crap.

• 54:33Speaker 00

  Well, if, if somebody has sandals on, it's just like, well, the worst is you, you, you, you will see someone, and I'll say this out loud right now, Trace, you'll see somebody with sandals on who have sunburn on their top of their feet.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  They wear sandals a lot.

• 54:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. And they can't do nothing now, like my buddy, uh, Bryce.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Can't put shoes on cause you got sunburn on your feet.

• 54:54Speaker 00

  If you can't put shoes on and go to work.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Cause your feet are sunburned.

• 54:58Speaker 00

  Cause your tops of your feet are sunburned, then you are not, then you definitely.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  You're not helping somebody at all.

• 55:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, then you're definitely, you should be selling damn door to door Italian.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  That's from Johnny Ferrago or whatever, what his name was.

• 55:14Speaker 00

  Donnie Ferrari.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  Donnie Ferrari, okay.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  That's some made up shit. Anyway, his name, his name wasn't really Ferrari.

• 55:24Speaker 00

  You know, I didn't ever saw any of his paperwork. I know he, I mean, I know he lived in city limits.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 55:31Speaker 00

  Um.

• 55:32Speaker 01

  Well, then he's legit.

• 55:38Speaker 00

  Bro, thank you so much for hanging out with me today, man. I know we've been trying to catch up for a while and I've been a fan for a long time and.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  I didn't know if I was gonna be able to make it. I've got the explosive diarrhea. You hear about that going around? Yeah.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  Bring that up. What are they doing?

• 55:52Speaker 01

  That's some funny shit, isn't it? You ever had explosive diarrhea?

• 55:56Speaker 00

  I have not. I've had like semi-explosive or, uh, you know, something that you, you know, the DOT would pull you over if you didn't have the right tags on your truck, you know what I'm saying? That if you didn't have the right placards showing?

• 56:07Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 56:07Speaker 00

  I've had that. Cyclospora.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the new one. Yeah.

• 56:12Speaker 00

  Oh, damn.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Explosive diarrhea. I've had it.

• 56:16Speaker 00

  Have you really?

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Have you, have you had a colonoscopy?

• 56:20Speaker 00

  I haven't had one. I mean, I've felt around the outside.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  You're gonna have explosive diarrhea when you get that.

• 56:25Speaker 00

  Really?

• 56:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:26Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  It's fun.

• 56:27Speaker 00

  I don't want that.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  I shit my pants twice that day.

• 56:30Speaker 00

  Nah, uh, same day?

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Same day.

• 56:32Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Twice. And it wasn't like, you know? It was involun, totally involuntary. Of course it was involuntary. I just don't voluntarily shit myself.

• 56:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  You know, very rarely do I do that.

• 56:46Speaker 00

  Oh, that's, that's when the Italian comes.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  I probably have, but I can't remember the last time.

• 56:52Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Oh, voluntarily shitting yourself. That's just a way to get out of a fight usually. Uh.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Or church.

• 56:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Even the Lord don't want you around at that point.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  Offering plates coming. I gotta shit myself.

• 57:08Speaker 00

  So you got this, you got this disease that happened? Or what is this? Cyclospora?

• 57:12Speaker 01

  No, I didn't have that. I just took all that stuff the doctor gave me the day before I had a colonoscopy.

• 57:17Speaker 00

  And so you're saying you didn't have a choice if you wanted to go to the bathroom or not? It just went for you?

• 57:21Speaker 01

  Well, no, it was kind of a weird thing. I thought, I kind of, I thought I felt fine. I was taking all the stuff, drinking the stuff, taking the pills, the whole thing. And I was at the farm and I was just like, well, I think I can go do some stuff. I don't feel bad, you know, at all. So I went and, uh, I had a little 10 foot john boat in the pond and I was gonna pull it up on the bank and I just reached down and grabbed it, it didn't weigh very much, you know, just a little old aluminum boat. I reached down there and grabbed it and pulled it and just, you know, it was like.

• 57:55Speaker 00

  Damn.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  But I mean, really, in my boots bad.

• 57:58Speaker 00

  Ooh.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying?

• 58:00Speaker 00

  To the top of your hat.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  And, uh, so of course I, you know, just went on in the pond.

• 58:05Speaker 00

  Would you, oh, you just got in the water?

• 58:07Speaker 01

  Cleaned that up, yeah.

• 58:08Speaker 00

  That's a way to do it. And I'll leave your clothes in there.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  And I thought, well, okay, that's not gonna happen again, you know? So that's gotta be it, you know?

• 58:17Speaker 00

  What do you mean? You don't think?

• 58:18Speaker 01

  I went and changed clothes and then I went to try to do something else.

• 58:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  And I had a flat tire on one of my side by sides and I had it on jack and I was gonna take the jack out from under it, cause I'd already changed the wheel. So got up in there, took the jack out and then I was gonna get up off the ground and I grabbed the tailgate on that thing and pulled myself up. And when I strained just that little bit.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  I call that explosive diarrhea. I mean, you, if you make the least little, you know, exertion, it just come, you know?

• 58:53Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  That's explosive.

• 58:55Speaker 00

  Oh, I've had some shit where you try to blow your nose.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  And my wife thought it was the funniest. That woman laughed at me all day long.

• 59:03Speaker 00

  She's laughing right?

• 59:04Speaker 01

  She laughed right now cause she loved it. She thought it was the funniest thing in life, man. Seeing me soiled like that, you know?

• 59:12Speaker 00

  God.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  And just.

• 59:14Speaker 00

  That bugs me out.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  She's professed a deeper love for me than ever before because I was, I guess I was at my most vulnerable, you know?

• 59:26Speaker 00

  That's what they say.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  She thought.

• 59:28Speaker 00

  They say a vulnerable man attracts a woman.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  I was attractive that day. Super attractive, man. I was drawing them like flies and flies.

• 59:43Speaker 00

  Dude, I remember.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Greenfly.

• 59:45Speaker 00

  I remember one time I was on something, I think I was on antibiotics and I'd also been using a lot of Tabasco or Frank's Red Hot. And, uh.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  Had to clap.

• 59:56Speaker 00

  Oh, no, I don't know. No, no, nothing. I was using it on food. And I took a, uh, dude, I put, I've tried to blow my nose, just blew my ass. I just shit my ass. I didn't even want to.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  I know. Well, of course you did. Well, maybe you did.

• 1:00:13Speaker 00

  I didn't.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  I didn't want to either.

• 1:00:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  And then that was it. I didn't go back outside for the rest of the day.

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, you didn't go back outside.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  I didn't put clothes on again.

• 1:00:24Speaker 00

  Oh, that's when you're really bad off.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  My wife put like four towels down on the couch and I just laid there for the rest of the day naked.

• 1:00:33Speaker 00

  Oh God, that's when the devil's got your ass.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:36Speaker 00

  God.

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  So I've, so I'm sympathizing with the explosive diarrhea people that have had the misfortune of being.

• 1:00:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  I think it's the lettuce. And so last night my wife made me this big old salad and I was like, uh huh, I know what you're doing.

• 1:00:53Speaker 00

  Trying to make some vulnerability.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  I know what, yeah. And some more, she wants to love me hard again. So she wants me vulnerable, man. You know?

• 1:01:02Speaker 00

  God, I think we put women through so much pain, they just need to, they, sometimes they just have to poison us. That's what I think.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:01:11Speaker 00

  So, but I don't know. I'm alone. Anyway.

• 1:01:17Speaker 03

  How about a latte?

• 1:01:18Speaker 04

  Maybe dark roast?

• 1:01:19Speaker 03

  Vanilla?

• 1:01:19Speaker 04

  Caramel?

• 1:01:20Speaker 03

  Blueberry?

• 1:01:21Speaker 04

  You could get them to agree on one flavor or give everyone what they want. With Keurig, there's over 500 K cup pie varieties of fresh, flavorful coffee. No effort, no grind, no settling. Great coffee without the grind. Keurig.

• 1:01:43Speaker 00

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• 1:02:27Speaker 00

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• 1:03:08Speaker 00

  dot com or email them at admin at Valor Recovery Coaching dot com. Thank you. Dude, I'll tell you this story. So I had, I got invited to a Randy Moss fishing tournament once. And it was up in Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota. And the night before they took you out, everybody went out. And I got, I was out and this was when Jägermeister was popping. Remember that? It was basically German motor oil or something that they'd fermented and they were selling here. Allegedly, that's what it was.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  Tastes like Robitussin.

• 1:03:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. Tastes like Robitussin too, dude. Tasted fucking horrible. Tasted like you, you know, it just made you so angry at everything when you ate it. You just, you just didn't even want to have anymore. And some people would put it on their skirt steak. They put it as a damn demi glaze. And that would blow my mind. But anyway, so I go out to this fishing tournament. I'd stayed up all night, dude. I'd slept maybe 40 minutes and I was like, I'm not missing this fishing tournament. Roy Jones Jr. was there. It was like, this is the first time I've been around any celebrities in my life. So I got out there.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  Why'd they invite you?

• 1:04:17Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  Were you a celebrity then? When was that?

• 1:04:20Speaker 00

  No, I don't remember.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  That was a long time ago.

• 1:04:22Speaker 00

  It was a long time ago.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  Oh, you probably went to their house selling that Ferrari stuff.

• 1:04:28Speaker 00

  Oh yeah. You mean the Manicotti?

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  Won them over with that and they invited you to the fishing tournament.

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. So they invited me. And now this is a true story now, Trace. And so I get over there and dude, I definitely had adult diarrhea, right? Or you, or young adult diarrhea is what I had. And so I get there and we got to start catching fish. It's a fishing tournament. And I'd never been in a fishing tournament. I don't know what it was. I thought you go around, you see the fish or whatever, you go back and you wrote down how many you spotted or whatever. It was almost like a scavenger hunt. So anyway, the second I get a bite, man, the second I get a bite, I, I just, uh, I get a tug on the front, brother, I got a tug on the back.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Uh, and there it went.

• 1:05:14Speaker 00

  You know what I'm saying? It had, I don't care what I was getting on my line. I had a bunch in the live well, you feel me? And it was, uh, yeah, they ended up having to just troll me hanging off the ladder on the back and with no shorts on and stuff, just to wash my body. I, I just couldn't fish anymore. But like, you got to fish, man. And I didn't want to tell them like I'm, you know?

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  So you didn't tell them?

• 1:05:35Speaker 00

  I didn't tell them.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  You just bailed off into the water?

• 1:05:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. I said, I gotta hang off the back for a little bit. I gotta go to the toilet.

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  Oh, you still, yeah.

• 1:05:41Speaker 00

  But there was just.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  I don't think young adult explosive diarrhea is as bad as old man explosive diarrhea. That's worse probably.

• 1:05:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  You know, it's just the fermentation.

• 1:05:55Speaker 00

  Oh yeah. The recipe.

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:57Speaker 00

  Oh, that recipe. Yeah.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  Probably much worse.

• 1:06:00Speaker 00

  Cause yeah, is that older?

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Young adults still kind of fresh.

• 1:06:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, shit's still, yeah.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  You know, your, your guts aren't rotten yet.

• 1:06:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. But adult, you got that damn crock pot on you.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Ooh, it's, yeah. The stuff is aged in there.

• 1:06:13Speaker 00

  Oh yeah. That's a bouillabaisse, baby. That's a French on your own right there. I know, I, I heard a story that I think, well, you told me this. I, I'm saying I heard a story, but you told me this. How did things fare like with some of your first marriages? How did things like, when you look back on your love life, what do you think maybe could have been a little bit different? I know you said you, that, I know you said that you kind of gave more maybe than you got it felt like at times or like you gotta have both people loving just as much to make it work. But, uh, do you have any thoughts on it looking back on love? Cause having four marriages, that's a lot of experience, you know?

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  Well, just it, but it certainly doesn't make me, um, very good at it. You know, I've got a pretty bad track record. You know, so don't take any advice from me, man. I'm no authority on what makes everything great, but, um.

• 1:07:11Speaker 00

  Did you learn anything along the way though? Like really?

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  Sure. I mean, you learn what not to do, you know? Well, that didn't work. That was bad.

• 1:07:22Speaker 00

  Did you take any of it to heart, you think? Cause I mean, I, you know?

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of the bad stuff that I used to do, I don't do anymore.

• 1:07:29Speaker 00

  Amen. Yeah. And I heard that one of your wives, uh, I don't even know how to say this, shot, that they shot you. Is that true?

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I took it a little far, I thought. It was just, that was uncalled for. That was totally uncalled for. Just leave.

• 1:07:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:07:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. Is that, that's a true story?

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  Let's just call it quits. We don't have to go that far. Yeah.

• 1:07:59Speaker 00

  Do you think she shot you with the intent to take?

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  I don't think so, man. I don't think she even had any idea what that gun was gonna do. I'd never seen her hold a gun. I'd never seen her shoot a gun. I, I knew she had one, but I'd never seen her use it. I mean.

• 1:08:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  I've, I had a bunch of guns, still have a bunch of guns and I shoot them here, you know, pretty, pretty often, but I'd never seen her do that. And I just, I don't think she knew what was about to happen when she pulled that trigger. She thought it was a toy, you know?

• 1:08:34Speaker 00

  Was she saying anything as she was pulling it? Was she, was it like, was she pulling it like in a fit of anger or was she just kind of?

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  She was mad, yeah.

• 1:08:41Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  Wanted me to leave and I wasn't gonna leave, so. And that's, that's how it went down.

• 1:08:49Speaker 00

  How did it hit you?

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  She put it under my left arm and the bullet came out under my right arm. So it went straight through.

• 1:08:56Speaker 00

  Did you have your hands up or something like that?

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  I had this hand out like that, reaching for, I told her to give me the gun. She just shot me. But, um.

• 1:09:05Speaker 00

  What did it feel like? Like a bee, like a bee biting you?

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  Man, I think when one is that serious, your body protects you. You're just going to shock. You don't really feel anything. I, I just remember getting up off the floor and then taking a few steps and then going back down. And that's all I remember.

• 1:09:26Speaker 00

  You blacked out?

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:28Speaker 00

  No way.

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, yeah. So, uh, yeah, I didn't really feel like it, it really hurt me, you know?

• 1:09:38Speaker 00

  And where did it go through your body?

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  It went under this arm, came out this arm. So it went straight through. It went, went straight through my heart and both my lungs.

• 1:09:47Speaker 00

  Uh-uh.

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:50Speaker 00

  Oh my God.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  And the only reason that I survived was because the doctor said the only reason I survived was because the bullet went through at point blank velocity, at muzzle velocity. So it didn't have time to mushroom. It was just, you know, muzzle velocity. So it just went straight through.

• 1:10:08Speaker 00

  Oh, I see. So it, and after that it would have mushroomed?

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:10:13Speaker 00

  Thank God she shot you so close then.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:17Speaker 00

  In a way, I mean, that's crazy to say, sorry. God, I'm not, I have to, I'm just not good at supporting people.

• 1:10:24Speaker 00

  Like verbally, you know?

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  No, I don't need any support anymore. That was a long time ago.

• 1:10:30Speaker 00

  Was the healing, what's that like when you get shot right through the heart?

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  Well, that was the hard part. That's the part that hurt, you know? The healing up and stuff. I mean, cause when I went to Vanderbilt, they lifelighted me to Vanderbilt and so when they do the trauma surgery, they just cut you and just crack you open, you know?

• 1:10:47Speaker 00

  Could you feel any of it?

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  No, of course not. I was out. But so the recovery from something like that though, man, that hurts, you know, cause they don't care. They just, they stretch everything and break stuff and they're just trying to get you open to get to your heart to save your life, you know?

• 1:11:03Speaker 00

  Oh, I see.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  So, uh, and thank God, you know?

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  Hadn't been for that lifeline Vanderbilt Medical Center, I wouldn't be here, but so it took a, took a long time to recover from that. And then six months later, I had to have another open heart surgery because they had to put a dacron patch over that hole in my septum because it didn't heal up. Because when they went in in the beginning, they they sealed the hole on this side of my heart and sealed the hole on the other side of my heart where the bullet went through, but they didn't seal the hole in my septum.

• 1:11:37Speaker 00

  Damn.

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  So, six months later, I had to go back and that one was a lot easier though, because they took their time and very careful.

• 1:11:45Speaker 00

  Right, they're not, they're not, yeah, it's not, time isn't of the essence as much.

• 1:11:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I actually walked, walked out of the hospital the next day.

• 1:11:52Speaker 00

  Did you?

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  That one. That one wasn't so bad.

• 1:11:55Speaker 00

  And did your, uh, did, did she ever apologize to you?

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:01Speaker 00

  Did you forgive her, you think?

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  I think so. I, you know, I've just always felt like, I don't think she meant to do it, man. I don't think, I just don't think that, that she thought it was gonna hurt me. She, she thought I was indestructible, you know?

• 1:12:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. Dang.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:20Speaker 00

  That's wild, man.

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 1:12:23Speaker 00

  Um, did anything like that ever happen again or not?

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  No, no, never got shot again.

• 1:12:31Speaker 00

  That's a blessing then. You gotta see the blessings.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Nobody shot at me in a while. That's good.

• 1:12:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying, man. That's the kind, yeah. That's the kind of stuff we need, man. And your third-

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  You can always say that, you know? How you doing? Well, ain't nobody shot at me today.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  That's good.

• 1:12:51Speaker 00

  And your third wife's Canadian, right?

• 1:12:54Speaker 01

  Fourth wife, yeah, Canadian.

• 1:12:55Speaker 00

  And your fourth wife's Canadian, yeah. Which is, maybe you got her because-

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  So my first wife was from Louisiana, my second wife's from Arkansas, my third wife's from Illinois, my fourth wife's from Canada. So I'm just like, my fifth wife's gonna be an Eskimo.

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  You know, I just keep working on up, you know? Gonna be a hot Eskimo chick.

• 1:13:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:13:18Speaker 00

  Bro, you're moving up to the, yeah, you're moving up to the Arctic, man. Well, I guess, and at least you got a Canadian because they can't even own guns, you know? Cause they don't have any guns. That's probably a good.

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  I didn't even think about that. That's a plus.

• 1:13:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. Canadians are good and they have great posture. Have you ever noticed that about Canadians?

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  And most of them are pretty polite. Not so much with my wife, but a lot of them are, you know?

• 1:13:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, I've heard that all.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  Very, very polite and they always saying, I'm sorry and.

• 1:13:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. Worry. Oh, I, I've had a Canadian come across the street. They didn't do anything. They just said, hey, sorry. And then went back across the street. Came over just to apologize, in case they ever did anything, I guess. That's pretty cool of them.

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:13:58Speaker 00

  Which apologize, they'll leave.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  No, I think they were coming over and just, and they looked at you and went, sorry.

• 1:14:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's probably right.

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's what, you must took that for maybe you had wronged them in some way. I think they just felt sorry for you.

• 1:14:14Speaker 00

  They probably could have, man. And that's what I get for buying some of those sandals from the damn, from the damn Blake Shelton sandal collection.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:22Speaker 00

  That's what did me in.

• 1:14:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Were you wearing them at the time?

• 1:14:25Speaker 00

  Yes, I was.

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  That's why they came over.

• 1:14:29Speaker 00

  Oh, man.

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  Knew you weren't ever gonna get laid.

• 1:14:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:33Speaker 01

  So he said, sorry.

• 1:14:34Speaker 00

  There's nothing sadder than some woman invites you over and you, it's gotta be sad. She opens it and don't see those sandals on.

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  Hmm. Just bam.

• 1:14:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  Unless he's carrying the cannolis from Ferrari and then she let him on in.

• 1:14:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. Now, every now and then, we did have a dessert.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  A little cannoli action.

• 1:14:54Speaker 00

  Oh, it'll show up. They, if the women weren't interested, but they were semi-interested, we'd leave half a cannoli in a little box there on the welcome mat. You know?

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  A little eleven year old gigolo going around with a bunch of Italian food.

• 1:15:08Speaker 00

  If they didn't have a pet. Cause otherwise pets would get into them.

• 1:15:12Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:15:13Speaker 00

  You'd see Gary Busey with his damn, busting damn cannoli all over his chin.

• 1:15:18Speaker 00

  Um. Country music, uh, it's, it's big right now. Have you felt through your career that it's went through a lull, that it's been like different? Like, how have you seen it kind of?

• 1:15:31Speaker 01

  Man, I don't think there's ever been really a lull, you know? I mean, it started blowing up, you know, right before I got signed. I think it really started blowing up in the nineties and and it's just continued to dominate as far as genres go, I think, ever since and still going stronger than ever, you know? But, I mean, of course,

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  you know, my career's stagnant, but the rest of it's doing great.

• 1:16:01Speaker 00

  You've had a great career.

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  I have had a great career. Don't get me wrong. I'm totally content. I mean, I'm very happy and I'm, you know, I've had a great run. It was a great ride, but things pass you by, you know, people move on to different things, you know, and I'm cool with that.

• 1:16:18Speaker 00

  Um, when, when you say that, like, like, do you mean like that, like, certain opportunities kind of come and go? Cause, um, like, yeah, what does that mean kind of a little bit?

• 1:16:28Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:16:29Speaker 00

  Like when you say that, like, you know, that people come and they kind of go and?

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Well, I'm not competing really competitively anymore in the game, you know what I'm saying? I'm not releasing singles to radio and trying to get them to play my stuff, you know, whatever, that game that we used to play. I don't play that anymore. I'm, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm not playing it, I'm not playing the game competitively anymore. I'm just doing it for just the joy of doing it and because I still like to do it.

• 1:16:57Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  But I'm not in there crossing swords with the young guys anymore. I don't need to do that. Let, you know?

• 1:17:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, I don't think that you need to. Do you feel like, was there a part in your career where you felt like established enough? Cause I think this is just interesting to talk about. It's like, you know, in my own career, even with comedy, it's like, you know, I've had some success and it's been my, like, for, for, like, the gods of this career have been good to me, right? They've been good to me. Um, and I've been treated better really than I probably ever should have been, maybe, you know, and, uh, and then I guess I wonder like, yeah, I guess it's like,

• 1:17:37Speaker 00

  I, I don't know. It's interesting because you can, you can try to still like be on the gas. You can look at like, well, where am I and what's going on? What do I need? Um, like, I guess, are you happy with your career? Cause you've had a great career.

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  Very, yes. Like I said, man, super happy with it. I mean, I, I've, I've been able to do what I wanted to do. I recorded what I wanted to record, sang what I wanted to sing, said what I wanted to say. I've had an opportunity to do some acting stuff and had a lot of fun doing that. Um, so yeah, man, it's great. And to answer your question about was I ever, when did I felt like I was established enough? I think about probably a year or so after Badonkadonk came out, I realized I really probably don't have to put my saddle on another horse.

• 1:18:27Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  You know, I can just ride that one on off into the sunset, you know what I mean? You, I just kind of knew that that one was gonna be around for a while.

• 1:18:38Speaker 00

  Did you know it from the beginning after you wrote it or was it just people's reaction?

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  I didn't write that, man.

• 1:18:41Speaker 00

  Okay, got it.

• 1:18:42Speaker 01

  But, uh, Jamie Johnson and Dallas Davidson and Randy Hauser wrote that and, and, uh,

• 1:18:50Speaker 00

  Jamie Johnson's birthday's coming up.

• 1:18:52Speaker 01

  And Jamie was singing the demo. And, and when I heard it, I was in Scott Henry's office. I'll never forget. And he played that song for me. And as soon as I heard Jamie's old cornbread mouth at the beginning of that, Hustler, she ain't ate, oh, I just started laughing, you know? And it got worse from there, you know, with him singing it. It was so funny. I about pissed myself and, and just to hear him do that, you know? And, and I just, and I told Scott, I said, oh my God, I gotta cut that. I was like, you know, probably, I, I don't care. It won't have to ever get, it probably won't ever get played on the radio, but I'm gonna cut it because that's hilarious, you know?

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  And it's cleverly written. It's funny as hell. And so we cut it, you know, and didn't think anymore about it.

• 1:19:40Speaker 00

  That's crazy. And it's crazy how much that really, uh, that made it into like EDM places and everything. That made it into like a, there was a lot of, like a lot of remixes that I've heard over the years. There's been a lot of stuff. I was at a, um, I was at Jack Pine, this summer camp. He, uh, yeah, he played at the, he played it last year. We were at this, uh, summer camp together. Uh, Jimmy John has his summer camp. We'd go up there and he played that. And I had no idea that he had anything to do with writing that.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, man.

• 1:20:07Speaker 00

  But it was awesome, dude.

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's funny.

• 1:20:10Speaker 00

  God, he's a great artist, man. He's fun to be around, him and his wife.

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

  He's funny.

• 1:20:14Speaker 00

  He, uh,

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  He's a good dude.

• 1:20:16Speaker 00

  He is a good dude. I lost a-

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  Good old Marine.

• 1:20:18Speaker 00

  Bet to him on the Super Bowl, I think, or UFC fight something. And we had to donate to a charity. I don't remember what his charity was or something. I think it was, might've been helping Blake Shelton with that recover from that sandal thing he went through.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:20:32Speaker 00

  Um, but that's rumors. I don't know about all that. Uh.

• 1:20:37Speaker 00

  Oh, Jamie Johnson and his wife Brittany run the Give It Away Foundation, named after his hit George Strait song.

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:43Speaker 00

  The foundation supports veteran family and crisis charities and is funded by merch sales and a $1 donation from every concert ticket sold.

• 1:20:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, he just, did you play at Gary Sinise's fundraiser?

• 1:20:57Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:20:58Speaker 00

  I know he just had a fundraiser.

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wished I could have been there, but I was out.

• 1:21:02Speaker 00

  Me too.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  I was on the road.

• 1:21:05Speaker 00

  I'd just gone through some plant medicine and I couldn't make it over there. Has there been a song that was, was Badonkadonk probably the most, uh, was that the biggest surprise for one that you cut and you were like, wow?

• 1:21:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I was surprised that it succeeded the way that it did, you know? But then I was equally shocked whenever I thought, okay, if that one worked, then this one will work. And that's when I put out, that was the horrible Brown Chicken Brown Cow Incident.

• 1:21:39Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:21:41Speaker 01

  When I put that out. And I thought it was gonna blow up like Badonkadonk did and the radio was like, no, that's, you've gone too far here.

• 1:21:50Speaker 00

  It just ended up like a porn meme, didn't it?

• 1:21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  Brown chicken, brown cow, you know?

• 1:21:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's, dude, I didn't even know you started that.

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  Well, I sang the song, you know, and then, you know, and so the radio people were like, no, he playing that shit? That's porn, you know, whatever.

• 1:22:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  And it was a nasty song, but I thought it was in the right spirit, you know? It was meant with love, so, I mean, it was, they were married, these two people I was singing about, they were married.

• 1:22:25Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:22:26Speaker 01

  You know, doing it in the barn, that's not like illegal or anything.

• 1:22:30Speaker 00

  No, I don't think it is.

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  Good, clean fun there.

• 1:22:33Speaker 00

  I mean, it's fine with me, I don't know them, you know? But now I will say this, if I'm a neighborhood watch guy and I pull up and you're doing something.

• 1:22:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's why we need you to wear the best so we can see you coming. I mean, if you come up, you ain't got on your official, you know, neighborhood watch uniform, you know, you can't watch, you can't come walking up on me and Betty Lou in the barn, doing our thing, man.

• 1:22:58Speaker 00

  I agree, I'm just saying, if I pull up in your yard and you were doing something that goes against our charter.

• 1:23:04Speaker 01

  We're doing something that goes with Brown Chicken Brown Cow, you know, then that's probably against your charter.

• 1:23:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's just, I don't know, it's so hard to keep.

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  Can't be doing that out in the yard.

• 1:23:16Speaker 00

  Well, it's so hard to keep a neighborhood safe. That's what I'm trying to say out loud.

• 1:23:23Speaker 00

  Was there a tour that you almost went on over the years and that you didn't? What is that like, like, how is it over the years how you choose to tour and when not to tour? Because I'm at a point where it's like, you know, touring is great and stuff, but it takes up a lot of your time and I feel like you'll get off of a tour and you realize, wow, you know, my life has been sort of just like little pictures, little moments here and there, and it hasn't been a real, like a streamlined thing. Did that happen to you at times and you had to kind of slow it down to make things happen in your life that you wanted, uh, outside of work?

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I've had to take some time off, you know, to maybe do a movie project or something like that, but as far as tours go, I never, I, I, I went on the tours that people wanted me to go on and, and if I, if somebody offered me a tour and I didn't like them, I didn't go, you know? So, yeah, I did the tours I wanted to do. And was there any that I regretted? I probably should have done that Madonna tour when she asked way back when. Cause I, she heard me do, my go-to karaoke song is Like a Virgin, and she heard me do it once and wanted me to tour with her.

• 1:24:35Speaker 00

  Did she really?

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  That's all a lie, I just made, but I do, I will sing that song though, at karaoke.

• 1:24:41Speaker 00

  I'll tell you a story.

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  You don't expect to hear that coming from me when I get up and bust out Like a Virgin, it takes the audience.

• 1:24:48Speaker 00

  Touch for the very first time?

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. They like that.

• 1:24:52Speaker 00

  I bet that's probably the best part of it. Well, I'll tell you this, man, I'll tell you this. So, my grandparents would let us come up there, sometimes in the summer, but I was probably, after about five, they wouldn't let me come up there, but one time, I went across the street to the park, they live in a small town, probably, maybe 800 people in this town, I went across the street, they had a nice park there. And I went across the street and some girl was over there and she had a radio, she plugged it into the little outlet under the, uh, they had a couple picnic tables under a little, like, just a steel shed kind of top. And, uh, she plugged in that radio and she played Like a Virgin and, uh,

• 1:25:34Speaker 00

  danced on this picnic table, some little kind of native looking girl, I'd never seen her before and I didn't even know, I didn't say anything and she.

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  Native to the town or native?

• 1:25:45Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  Native looking, what does that even mean?

• 1:25:48Speaker 00

  I don't know, I could draw a picture of her, but I don't know that much about her, but she plugged in the radio and she played, um.

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  Like a Virgin.

• 1:25:55Speaker 00

  Like a Virgin and just danced to it. And it was just bizarre, I just remember being like, I don't know, I think it was the first time I felt anything towards a woman or whatever, I just didn't know what was going on, you know?

• 1:26:05Speaker 01

  Little cocktail, Wayne, he stood up on you? Yeah. Were you five? You were five?

• 1:26:11Speaker 00

  I mean, I had, you know?

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  Wow, I can't remember that.

• 1:26:14Speaker 00

  I had that wiener in me.

• 1:26:16Speaker 01

  I can remember.

• 1:26:18Speaker 00

  You know?

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  I was a lot older than five, though.

• 1:26:20Speaker 00

  I think I did, I don't know, some of that could be in my imagination, Trace.

• 1:26:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:25Speaker 00

  But now I did plug it in and she sang that song, it was the first time I'd ever seen a woman kind of perform something like that, you know?

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  And how many times, now you pay for it.

• 1:26:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  Now you pay to see it. That was the first freebie you got.

• 1:26:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, they were baiting me, man.

• 1:26:44Speaker 01

  You gotta put money in their drawers.

• 1:26:46Speaker 00

  That whole thing.

• 1:26:49Speaker 00

  That whole thing was a big bait and switch, man, that's what it was, man. You've gotten to play with a lot of legends over the years, uh, as a legend like yourself does, man.

• 1:27:01Speaker 00

  And are there some, did you ever get to, did you ever get to play with like, or see Jerry Lee Lewis play?

• 1:27:06Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:27:07Speaker 00

  Before your time?

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:27:09Speaker 00

  He still plays some, does he still play, he passed away, he finally passed away.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, but man, he lived a lot longer and he lived longer than Keith Richards.

• 1:27:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:27:19Speaker 00

  He kept on living, dude.

• 1:27:21Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, I didn't see him, I, I never got to see Johnny Cash. I did a show with Waylon and, and I actually got to sing with Haggard and Ronnie Millsap and Buck Owens and some of those guys that I just revered and, you know, just put on that pedestal, you know, and I actually got to sing with them. And so, man, that, that was unbelievable, just the surreal moments that I'll never forget, performing with those guys. Uh, so, yeah, I've, I've got to be a fan, um, and that's what I am, I've always been, I've been a country music fan, I still am, you know?

• 1:28:06Speaker 01

  And those opportunities as it came along were just priceless.

• 1:28:11Speaker 00

  Who's that photo right there?

• 1:28:13Speaker 01

  George Jones, gosh, I love George, yeah.

• 1:28:17Speaker 00

  Was he a pretty neat guy to be around?

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  George was, uh, George usually didn't have a whole lot to say, man. I'd go over to his house and watch TV and we'd sit and watch TV.

• 1:28:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  We weren't talking, no, we just watched TV.

• 1:28:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  George would want to watch a ballgame or a movie or something, that's what we'd do, we didn't talk.

• 1:28:38Speaker 00

  You remember doing some of those early mornings, like, I remember, I used to work as a tour manager for an artist, for, uh, this guy Josh Kelly and his brother Charles, um, is a musician as well, Charles Kelly, and I worked with Josh for a while, he would go play at all the radio stations in the morning to push his single. So, I was just working as just a tour support, you know, for him, so it was just me and him traveling around the country, he was pushing this single that he had that did well. And, uh, and I just remember those mornings at those radio stations, you'd be like, we're bringing in lobster, and they'd have like lobster at like 5:55 in the morning, dude, which is like not a good time to put lobster in your system. And also they'd have donuts, we got, it's like donuts and lobster on the, on the Waz

• 1:29:19Speaker 00

  or something that has like some crazy radio shit, you know, like, we're giving away a free bass boat or whatever, you know, and it's like, who can eat the most lobster, you know? Remember that kind of shit?

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  Those morning shows, oh my God, when you're trying to, it always, it never ceased to amaze me and I would bring it up every now and then and they would just blow it off because I'd be like, let me tell y'all something, okay? Let me, let me say this on behalf of everybody that sings, we can't do it well at 6 o'clock in the morning. It's just, it's an, it's an impossible thing to do. And you expect us to come in here and do it and be good, and it's not gonna be good. I'm just telling you, it's not gonna be good. And nobody's gonna do it well at 6 o'clock in the morning, I mean, you know, that's why we do shows at 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock at night.

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  That's, you know, you got, man, gotta wake up, you know, have a few cups of coffee.

• 1:30:19Speaker 00

  Trace Atkins goes good with lobster.

• 1:30:22Speaker 01

  I never went and had lobster at a morning show, you must have been in Maine or somewhere.

• 1:30:27Speaker 00

  No, dude, this was some place where like, we got 40, it was like, we got 40 pounds of lobster coming in and they would have like car washes and lobster, but it was always some, you know what I'm saying, it was always some rigmarole, like, we got hot air balloons and lobster or whatever, and it would always be some kind of shit and you're like, what in the fuck am I getting involved in, like, cause comedians, we had to go there too, like, so it would be crazy that, I, I went on this tour with Josh, we probably went to 100 radio stations around the country, like, it was a couple months of him going, he played this single, I'd bring in some coffee, we'd sit there, you know? And then we'd drive to the next place. And it was great, man, I felt lucky to have the job, I was getting to travel around the country, but then 10 years later, I'd be there doing it with comedy, you know? Yeah, doing it as a comedian, going in to the radio stations, you'd have to go in early,

• 1:31:12Speaker 00

  you know, you'd have to be in there and like, you know, you have to be funny on the radio at, you know, at 6:40 a.m.

• 1:31:17Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:31:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:19Speaker 01

  And you know, it's like.

• 1:31:20Speaker 00

  And we'd see y'all in the lobby.

• 1:31:21Speaker 01

  I've always thought too. Like actors, like big movie stars.

• 1:31:27Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:31:28Speaker 01

  You know, I always thought if I, okay, I wanna go in, I wanna talk to these people. And, and, you know, tell them about my new project and, and how good it is and what the inspiration was and blah, blah, blah, and all that kinda stuff. But then, then just play the song.

• 1:31:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  Play the song, play the song on the radio, the way that I recorded it in the studio. That's what we wanna hear. You don't wanna hear me try to sing it at six o'clock in the morning. And it's like actors where they go do talk shows promoting a new movie or something. You know, the guy's sitting there interviewing him, you know, at some point he doesn't go, okay, well, how about doing a scene for us from the movie? And, and you know what I mean? Can you imagine Adelio DiCaprio be going, excuse me?

• 1:32:09Speaker 00

  They should have to.

• 1:32:10Speaker 01

  Do a scene from the movie.

• 1:32:12Speaker 00

  Then they should have to.

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  No, show the clip. No, we want you to do a scene. You do it here, right now. Do it and action. You know, and I mean, it's like, come on, man. But we have to go in at six o'clock in the morning and sing.

• 1:32:25Speaker 00

  And we have to go in there and be funny.

• 1:32:26Speaker 01

  And tell jokes.

• 1:32:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. It is kinda unfair, isn't it?

• 1:32:30Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 1:32:30Speaker 00

  That's why they bring in the lobster. That's why they add in the bullshit every time. It was always something, every time. Whatever, with comedians, I'd be up there like, we're giving away a free Christmas treat and, you know, eight thirty, be, you know, be on the jingle dial or whatever, and we'd be sitting in there and it'd be somebody calling in, asking if it's a damn Douglas fir or whatever. It's like, bitch, I don't give a shit what it is. Like, I'm trying to get in here, you know, be funny if I can and help sell some tickets, you know, and get people to know I'm in town. But I just always remember those morning radios, man. That stuff was a, that.

• 1:33:00Speaker 01

  I do too.

• 1:33:01Speaker 00

  That stuff was a haul. And it was also great.

• 1:33:03Speaker 01

  Bunch of times.

• 1:33:04Speaker 00

  Same, man.

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:06Speaker 00

  I did it so much. I did it so much, dude. But sometimes you did get to know a place a little bit better. Sometimes it would get me out of bed in the morning. I think there was blessings to it.

• 1:33:17Speaker 00

  Um, what do you, do you think you've achieved all your goals with, with entertainment?

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  Way, man. I, I, I did way more than I ever thought I would do, you know? I mean, this whole thing was like, I would never have allowed myself to dream that big, you know? I'm, I think I'm a, I'm a realist in that respect. I, I wouldn't have allowed myself to dream that, that I would have this kinda career and get to do this for as long as I've done it. No way. So everything's gravy now.

• 1:33:51Speaker 00

  Did that change any of your perspective about certain things or give you like, did it adjust like kinda how you think about life or even how you like, how you like, things you talk with your kids about? Cause that's pretty interesting to think that, shit, life gave me more even than my dreams, you know?

• 1:34:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:07Speaker 00

  Or that God gave it, you know, what, you know, what, I'm not sure what your beliefs are, but, or that's, you know, the entities of, of the universe gave me more than even my dreams. That's pretty wild.

• 1:34:16Speaker 01

  More than a, you know, I, I, I think I took a, just a very little bit of talent and just went way farther than I should have, you know? So, uh, I mean, Buck Owens told me one time I went to Buck's place and, uh, went to his radio station there in Bakersfield. And it was raining that day. And so Buck wasn't playing golf and he was actually in the radio station. So he, we, he, he wanted me to go in his office. So he and I went in his big office there and he locked the door and wouldn't let nobody else come in. And I was sitting there with a guitar and he'd tell me to sing this, sing that. And he said, sing that new single you got. And so I did it.

• 1:35:00Speaker 01

  And he was like, son, let me tell you something. He said, that low note that you can sing, you need to do that on every song because that's all you got going for you.

• 1:35:10Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:35:11Speaker 01

  That's what he told me.

• 1:35:12Speaker 00

  He was just some, just some.

• 1:35:15Speaker 01

  That's all you got going for you.

• 1:35:16Speaker 00

  That's what Buck Owens said to you?

• 1:35:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he was serious.

• 1:35:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:35:20Speaker 01

  And I appreciated him for it, you know? It's like he was, you know, he's just go with that, do that all the time. Do that, cause that's kinda the one thing you got that nobody else has. So do that, you know, and.

• 1:35:34Speaker 00

  Was it good advice?

• 1:35:35Speaker 01

  I've done it in just about every song.

• 1:35:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:35:38Speaker 01

  You know, hit that low note and rattled them subs and, you know, chicks kinda get a little wiggly.

• 1:35:45Speaker 00

  But don't go down. Yeah.

• 1:35:47Speaker 01

  Can't sit still.

• 1:35:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, look, I mean, you got a deep voice, you know? Look, I'm not even a woman and it makes me, you know, wanna at least make sure I have deodorant on, so.

• 1:35:58Speaker 01

  Chicks dig the bass singers, man.

• 1:36:00Speaker 00

  They do?

• 1:36:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:02Speaker 00

  God, I should've done it.

• 1:36:04Speaker 01

  Been a bass singer?

• 1:36:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, I couldn't have done it. I'd had to get more balls added to my bag, I think. I'd need six balls, I think, to hit the notes you hit, man.

• 1:36:14Speaker 00

  I'd need probably eight balls or something. Dude, you might, you must have some, yeah, I can't even imagine hitting those low. You must have some damn balls on you. You gotta have to, it would take probably two hours to neuter you.

• 1:36:25Speaker 01

  You shave your balls or you get somebody else to do it?

• 1:36:31Speaker 01

  You don't know?

• 1:36:33Speaker 00

  Not sure.

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  Oh, you're not sure? They just end up shaving you on how the hell it happened?

• 1:36:38Speaker 00

  I mean.

• 1:36:39Speaker 01

  Remember Nair? A lot of people would rub that stuff on there. Man.

• 1:36:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, I fricking put it in my, I put it.

• 1:36:45Speaker 01

  That stuff was painful.

• 1:36:47Speaker 00

  Oh, that shit. When especially you put it all your, I put it, remember doing my legs one year, I was trying to get ready for Christmas or whatever. And I was like, I thought it was.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  Getting ready for Christmas? You didn't wanna have hair on your legs for Christmas?

• 1:36:57Speaker 00

  Well, I knew that, I, I knew that I'd gotten these cool Velcro pants. My grandfather had died.

• 1:37:00Speaker 01

  And sandals.

• 1:37:01Speaker 00

  Or, yeah.

• 1:37:02Speaker 01

  I'm gonna get that hair off your feet before you put sandals on.

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  You know, I mean, toenail fungus is okay, but hair, you can't have that.

• 1:37:12Speaker 00

  No, dude, I remember what happened was I got this pair of Velour, not Velcro pants. My grandfather had died in them and I inherited them. And so I was so excited about it. And I said, but the hair on my legs.

• 1:37:24Speaker 01

  Died in them?

• 1:37:25Speaker 00

  He died in them. He died in them. He had smoker's foot or whatever. And they cut both of his toes off, two of his ten toes.

• 1:37:31Speaker 01

  Smoker's foot is not a thing.

• 1:37:34Speaker 00

  Yes, it is. Smoker's foot?

• 1:37:35Speaker 01

  No, it's not.

• 1:37:37Speaker 00

  Yes, it is crazy.

• 1:37:38Speaker 01

  Smoker's foot.

• 1:37:39Speaker 00

  Bring up smoker's foot.

• 1:37:43Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. That's just straight up diabetes, man. That ain't smoker's foot.

• 1:37:49Speaker 00

  Well, I know, he got it from watching, uh, he, from smoking cigarettes and watching the damn St. Louis Cardinals play. Smoker's feet refers to various foot conditions.

• 1:37:59Speaker 01

  Oh, well, that's, that dude shouldn't wear sandals, that guy.

• 1:38:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:38:07Speaker 01

  And don't even, don't even come close to a pair of sandals.

• 1:38:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I agree. But yeah, granddad lost those toes and, uh.

• 1:38:16Speaker 01

  And he was wearing a pair of Velour pants.

• 1:38:18Speaker 00

  He wore a pair of Velour pants when he passed, and so I got them. But I did, my, but my, my leg hair would gather in them and it would come out the pants kinda, you know, when your leg hair will come out like through.

• 1:38:27Speaker 01

  No, I don't know how that is at all.

• 1:38:30Speaker 00

  It would shift through the fabric. It would kinda come, come out through the textile or the tapestry of it.

• 1:38:36Speaker 01

  No, no, I've had that happen, you know, putting on a pair of them tight insulated underwear, but not just regular pants.

• 1:38:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, I, I think at the time.

• 1:38:46Speaker 01

  Oh, they were skin tight pants?

• 1:38:48Speaker 00

  No, they were right. They were pretty, no, they were, they were a little bit tight. At the time, I'll be honest with you, I think I was using steroids or something. So my hair was growing fast. So I had, my body was damn, I mean, I'd give dang little Gary Busey a run for his money over there, you know, I was full, I had a lot of hair. And, uh, and that's a true story. And I, but anyway, I used to narrow my legs. But also, uh, yeah, that shit was painful though. My legs got all kinds of like, uh, pimples and stuff on them and just, it was horrible for them. That stuff was toxic.

• 1:39:20Speaker 01

  So we got there talking about Nair or something.

• 1:39:22Speaker 00

  That was toxic, man. Um, what's one of the most humbling moments? Cause you know, in your career was, or in your life kinda, has there been a moment that's kinda like, I, I guess maybe more in your career, like what's been a part of your life or your career? I guess it's, that you've kinda felt humbled by.

• 1:39:39Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Hmm. That's a, that's an interesting que-. The first time I really remember being humbled was when I, my first year of college, when, you know, I'd, I'd had a, a good dominant senior year playing football. And then I went to college and I got out on the field with those guys. And I was like, whoa, this is a, this is a different game right here, you know? Yeah. That, that step up in talent right there, that was humbling, you know?

• 1:40:12Speaker 00

  And you gotta pretend that it's not, I guess, out there. You can't.

• 1:40:15Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, but I mean, you know, going from a year in high school when you kinda felt like the stud pretty much every Friday night, you know? And then didn't really run into anybody that I couldn't handle, you know, my senior year. And then, uh, the toughest guy, I always tell people, like that toughest guy that I faced across the line of scrimmage my entire senior year, you get to college and the whole field's full of those guys. You know what I mean?

• 1:40:44Speaker 00

  Especially on there, you played at Louisiana Tech?

• 1:40:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:46Speaker 00

  That's where Terry Bradshaw played, yeah?

• 1:40:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:49Speaker 00

  And, uh, Antonio Brown's dad played there.

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, and then you go into the field house at Louisiana Tech and, and that, it was just a big mural of Terry Bradshaw at the end of the building. You know, he was, he's a god there, you know? So, yeah, I, I, that was really humbling.

• 1:41:05Speaker 00

  Did he ever come to one of your games?

• 1:41:07Speaker 01

  I don't remember him coming.

• 1:41:09Speaker 00

  He should. Y'all look alike a little.

• 1:41:12Speaker 00

  I could see that.

• 1:41:12Speaker 01

  And, uh, of course I've been humbled since. I mean, you know, you get into this business, you gotta eat a little humble pie every now and then, or you're not gonna stick around.

• 1:41:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it's the same probably in most things. I think it's like, I don't know. It, I think in most parts are like entertainment probably. Comedy, there's always like somebody better and, or younger and different that comes along, you know? And I think, yeah, just make sure, making sure I stay on the side of like, oh, I think that's cool or that's awesome, instead of getting on any begrudging side of it.

• 1:41:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, you get humbled. I mean, it's, you know, I had my, you have to wake up and realize, you know, like I said earlier, you know, I had my turn, somebody else's turn, you know? And, uh, you just gotta accept that and it, it can be a little humbling, but you just deal with it and move on.

• 1:42:08Speaker 00

  You said that Buck Owens probably gave you a decent piece of advice there. Was that probably the best advice you ever got, you think? Or what's a decent piece of advice that you've gotten in your life that's kind of, uh, stuck with you, even in, if you didn't follow it at the time, in hindsight, you look back and be like, hmm?

• 1:42:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, my old man. Yeah, keep your knife sharp and your guns loaded.

• 1:42:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:42:32Speaker 01

  Ain't the two thing, two useless things in this world, a dull knife and an empty gun. Yeah, my old man told me that. And he also said, this Christmas, I'm gonna get you an anvil and a rubber hammer and see how long it takes you to tear it up. Cause I tore up everything a poor man had, trucks, tractors.

• 1:42:54Speaker 00

  Did you do it for fun? You did it on purpose, you think?

• 1:42:57Speaker 01

  No, I didn't do it on purpose. No, but I tore them all up.

• 1:43:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to think if I tore a lot of shit up. My buddy Jeffrey, he had some sort of issue, but he would. Um, and we survived the gas leak at his house also, but I've talked about that. Um, he would get upset and beat all the drywall out of the wall in his room at his house. And for Christmas, his parents would get the room redone every year and get a fresh drywall in there.

• 1:43:26Speaker 01

  Probably because you're just sitting around smelling gas all the time.

• 1:43:30Speaker 00

  I never thought about that. They thought he had a damn.

• 1:43:33Speaker 01

  It'll make you go crazy eventually. You just sit there and just keep smelling it and don't fix the leak.

• 1:43:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, they thought he had.

• 1:43:40Speaker 01

  Survive the gas leak while you just sit there in it and, you know, okay, well, you get a, you get, you get a new merit patch on your neighborhood watch vest for surviving a gas leak.

• 1:43:54Speaker 00

  For reporting him.

• 1:43:56Speaker 01

  Doing an experiment, see how long a man could survive in a gas leak. You sat there, you and your buddy, what was his name?

• 1:44:05Speaker 00

  Jeffrey.

• 1:44:06Speaker 01

  Jeffrey. Guy's name Jeffrey sound just a little, that's just, you know.

• 1:44:12Speaker 00

  He was, he was doing some things.

• 1:44:14Speaker 01

  I apologize to all the cool Jeffreys. You know what? There ain't no cool Jeffreys out there.

• 1:44:18Speaker 00

  I mean, first of all, yeah, Jeffrey, I think Jeffrey, your name is Jeffrey, you don't ever go by Jeffrey.

• 1:44:25Speaker 01

  You shouldn't.

• 1:44:26Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:44:26Speaker 01

  No, I mean, once, you, once you get hair on your nuts, you go Jeff, right?

• 1:44:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, you go Jeff.

• 1:44:34Speaker 01

  Dr. J, I'd go Dr. J. I wouldn't.

• 1:44:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'd go Dr. J, boy. I'd go Big Jeff with them nuts. That's what I'd call myself. What else, Trace? What's new, uh, in your world right now? What's something that you're looking forward to, you know?

• 1:44:51Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm gonna do another record, another country record.

• 1:44:55Speaker 00

  Cause you're on your 30th, this is your 30th anniversary tour right now, right? I came and saw, man, it was a great show, man.

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 1:45:01Speaker 00

  It was really great. We sat there and I just didn't, you know, you just like, yeah, you just kind of lose track of all the songs that are attached to certain people and then you lose track of ones that, um, just that you, just that you don't remember, you know? And, uh, it's nice to sit there, just go through the anthology, man. It was awesome, dude.

• 1:45:19Speaker 01

  Well, thank you. Um, so, yeah, I'm gonna do another record. I, I didn't know if I was going to or not after I did that last one. Um, we did that, um, the way I wanna go album and had 25 songs on it. Cause that was, we did that during COVID when we didn't have anything else to do. So we just stayed in the studio all the time, you know? And ended up with 25 songs and I thought, okay, that's it, you know? I don't have to do another record. And then when 30 years came along and, um, and my voice is still the way it is, I thought, uh, you know, I guess I will do another record and, and I've always been like that, you know?

• 1:46:01Speaker 01

  Um, I was going, I'm gonna let this determine how long I keep doing this. As long as I can still sing those songs in the same key that I recorded them in and I can still hit the licks and hit the notes and do all the things that I need to do. Um, and I'm just, I guess I'll just keep doing it, you know? But, uh, it's kind of like, it's just the old jock in me, I guess, you know? I had to walk away from football when I just couldn't do it anymore. My, I was too tore up and couldn't perform at the level that I was satisfied with. But as long as I'm satisfied with my performance and, and, and I think that I'm doing it okay and, you know, then I guess I'll just keep doing it.

• 1:46:45Speaker 01

  So I might as well make another record.

• 1:46:48Speaker 00

  Do you feel like a calling, almost a responsibility to do that? Or is it just sort of a personal thing? Like, hey, if I can do this and I, and I do love doing it, I'm gonna keep at it.

• 1:46:56Speaker 01

  That's kind of it, you know? Um, just gonna keep, I'm just gonna do it because I, I feel like I'm still, I'm still good at this. Uh, you know, I feel like I've.

• 1:47:06Speaker 00

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:47:07Speaker 01

  I've gotten better at my craft. I'm, I think I'm better at it now than I ever have been. I don't know. It's, my voice is still, you know, quit smoking and the range got better. The bottom's gotten better over the years. I mean, I can go deeper than I ever could and that's just gonna get better with age. Your voice just gets lower and lower. But I haven't lost anything on the top either. I can still hit everything, you know, on the top end that I always could. So hell, why not just keep doing it?

• 1:47:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, shit was popping when we came, man. We didn't feel like, you know, sometimes you're there and you feel like the artist is kind of, it's not like what you've heard, you know?

• 1:47:47Speaker 01

  I know. And I don't wanna be one of those guys. I've seen those guys. I've been to those shows where they're still out doing it and it's like, dude, just quit.

• 1:47:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:47:56Speaker 01

  And just please stop. We don't wanna remember you like this. You know, I don't, I don't want anybody to say that about me ever, you know?

• 1:48:05Speaker 00

  What was one of the, uh, has there been, what was like one of the toughest points in your career, do you feel like? I mean, obviously you got shot.

• 1:48:11Speaker 01

  Well, that wasn't, that was way before I got a record due on it, you know? Uh, toughest points in my career? I don't know. There was a period, you know, thereafter that sophomore album came out, you know, that sophomore jinx kind of thing. And, uh, it rared its ugly head and started biting me pretty hard and things got, you know, got, they just slowed way down. And I thought, I mean, when I first came out, you know, the first album, you know, two number ones and platinum and, you know? Yeah. This is gonna be easy.

• 1:48:46Speaker 00

  You're the hot cake in town, yeah.

• 1:48:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then, and then reality sits in.

• 1:48:50Speaker 00

  Dang.

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  When you put that sophomore record out, but, yeah, I wouldn't say that it was hard times, just, you know, disappointing. I just thought that graph was gonna keep going that way, you know?

• 1:49:06Speaker 00

  When you look back on that, do you think like it's like, uh, that you, that you stuck to all your laurels, even though you were like a young artist at that time? Or do you feel like, cause a lot of times with artists, you get it, like after that first album, sometimes they'll try to attach a lot of other producers and things like that can happen. And no blame or anything. I'm just thinking like, what would you, would there be any suggestions you would offer from your experience to an artist that had, has had some early success as to what like, you know, if there's any like, um, thing you could share about that next experience that maybe you would have done different?

• 1:49:38Speaker 01

  I don't think you should ever try to change your game to fit into what's going on now, you know?

• 1:49:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:49:45Speaker 01

  You just, you don't do that, you know? Just be who you are and, and dance with the one that brung you, you know? Keep doing that and, you know, it's been my experience anyway, that those fans that you had, that those people that became fans of yours for what you did, if you keep doing that, they'll stay. You know? Don't run them off.

• 1:50:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, you have a farm. What y'all growing over there?

• 1:50:17Speaker 01

  Weeds and trees.

• 1:50:19Speaker 00

  Weeds, uh?

• 1:50:20Speaker 01

  Weeds and trees.

• 1:50:22Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:50:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, not weed, uh.

• 1:50:26Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  Just regular weeds.

• 1:50:27Speaker 00

  I didn't know. I don't care if you smoke it, you smoke pot or no?

• 1:50:30Speaker 01

  Nah, I haven't in a long time.

• 1:50:32Speaker 00

  It's making me kind of nervous. Turn me into a damn haunted.

• 1:50:35Speaker 01

  Made me so paranoid. The, the older I got, the older I got, the worse the paranoia was that came with it. And it just finally got to the point where I can't do this anymore.

• 1:50:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:50:44Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:50:44Speaker 00

  That's how I am, dude.

• 1:50:45Speaker 01

  And I mean, now that stuff they're growing now, I mean, that's just like acid or something.

• 1:50:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:50:49Speaker 01

  People having hallucinations and stuff.

• 1:50:52Speaker 00

  That shit's like having a fucking gas leak in your head.

• 1:50:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. Sitting in a gas leak all day long.

• 1:50:58Speaker 00

  Oh, that new shit'll just turn me into a damn haunted house. I'll be doing neighborhood watch inside of my own head, brother. It gets bad, you know?

• 1:51:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:51:06Speaker 00

  This shit gets a little bit dark.

• 1:51:07Speaker 01

  No, I hadn't done it in a while.

• 1:51:09Speaker 00

  What's in the news? Anything we wanna look at, fellas?

• 1:51:13Speaker 00

  Semi truck spills nearly forty thousand pounds of Frank's Red Hot.

• 1:51:17Speaker 01

  Boy, I'd pull my pickup truck air. Start loading it.

• 1:51:22Speaker 00

  Oh, God. I'd fill my pockets with that. Dude, I'd put up two handfuls in my little sister's mouth, make her bring it home, dude. We'd be, we would be storing that in our cheeks like damn, just like damn recipe squirrels. Amid a brutal near nationwide heat wave, it seems strangely appropriate, the spill seen on an Ohio highway. Now, I will say this, they could use a little bit of seasoning up there, has been labeled red hot. A semi truck leaked a strange reddish liquid on a highway near Columbus. Frank's Red Hot, near a forty thousand pound shipment.

• 1:51:58Speaker 01

  Now, what I'm looking at here, though, is the Jeremy Roth, there, the guy that wrote the story for CNN. News source, you know, I mean, what do you think Jeremy's gig is there at the news station, right? It's like, okay, we got this shit spilled out here on the road. We need somebody to go write about it. Jeremy.

• 1:52:22Speaker 01

  You ain't doing nothing. Go write about this shit spilled out on the road out here. The poor old Jeremy. Jeremy, Jeremy's this far from getting fired. You know what I mean? So, we're gonna find something for him to do until it comes into the month and we get rid of him. So, we're gonna send Jeremy out there and he's gonna write a thousand words about this red shit spilled on the highway.

• 1:52:46Speaker 00

  He's probably drinking a morning coffee out of damn baby bottle or something over there because he's been through some stuff. He is, yeah, maybe he has PTSD from like, he got a computer with bad spell check on it or something in college. And he had, he never really processed it, but dude, I can't even.

• 1:53:01Speaker 01

  Bought a bad Italian burrito from an eleven year old.

• 1:53:06Speaker 00

  Hey, man. We worked hard, okay? I'll say this, some of those driveways were uphill, Trace.

• 1:53:14Speaker 01

  Okay, Louisiana, they weren't that far uphill.

• 1:53:17Speaker 00

  Okay, you're right. Okay, that part I am, that part I'm slightly made up. But there was some mild elevation in some of the sidewalks and you know that.

• 1:53:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:53:25Speaker 00

  I, I know that you have a new single, American Made, that I haven't gotten to hear yet. I'm gonna check it out.

• 1:53:30Speaker 01

  Good. Appreciate you for preparing for this interview. You unprofessional son of a bitch.

• 1:53:38Speaker 00

  Dude, please put that.

• 1:53:39Speaker 01

  You ain't worth a shit, you know?

• 1:53:43Speaker 01

  I've had better interviews on a small market radio station in the middle of Nebraska.

• 1:53:48Speaker 00

  Hey, we got some lobster coming in right after this, guys.

• 1:53:54Speaker 00

  You have shows coming up. Are you, oh, a lot of these festivals, I love that, man. Do you, do you like being at the festivals? It seems like it's a good time because you get to be around other artists.

• 1:54:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, every now and then, you know.

• 1:54:08Speaker 00

  And you got a short Riley Green coming up. I know that's happening.

• 1:54:10Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:54:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:54:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I heard he's doing pretty good.

• 1:54:13Speaker 00

  He's doing all right. We just had him in here, man. It was fun chatting with him. This was actually really great too, though, man. I had a nice time.

• 1:54:20Speaker 01

  Well, thanks. I did too.

• 1:54:22Speaker 00

  Hey, look at that, huh? Dude, that's awesome, man. That makes me feel good.

• 1:54:28Speaker 01

  Me excited.

• 1:54:32Speaker 01

  This is what I look like. This is orgasmic face.

• 1:54:36Speaker 00

  Hey, look.

• 1:54:37Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:54:38Speaker 00

  Now I know why some of them ladies said, I can't, I ain't sticking around through anymore of this.

• 1:54:44Speaker 01

  I'm obviously not doing any good.

• 1:54:46Speaker 00

  Man, uh, Hastings, New England, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Dude, I'm so excited to go up to Wisconsin this, uh, I'm gonna go take a, we're gonna rent some campers.

• 1:54:55Speaker 01

  Cheese curds.

• 1:54:56Speaker 00

  Oh, God, yeah.

• 1:54:57Speaker 01

  I love cheese curds.

• 1:55:00Speaker 00

  Is there a part of the country that surprised you? There's a few for me that have surprised me over the years of just places I've gone, like La Crosse, Wisconsin, uh, Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I'm, I'm, I wanna go to Charlevoix, Michigan now, Grand Rapids, Michigan, I thought. Just little places that I've thought, that I've gone to and have been like, oh, wow, this place is really unique and I never would've got to go. Is there a surprise or two? Clear Lake, Iowa, that's another place.

• 1:55:25Speaker 01

  Why are you just coming up with these random places, man? That's like, wow, I've been to all those places, by the way. Played all those festivals in Wisconsin.

• 1:55:35Speaker 00

  So cool.

• 1:55:35Speaker 01

  And Michigan, yeah. I mean, they throw down in the summer because, you know, it only lasts for like a week. So, they get it all in when they can, you know?

• 1:55:44Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, your husband's thawed out. You find, you gotta get him out in the yard and do shit.

• 1:55:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 1:55:49Speaker 00

  Well, he's thawed out or whatever.

• 1:55:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've done all those festivals up there. I think that the craziest

• 1:55:56Speaker 01

  and most surprising place, I would have to say it's, it's, it's a place that I just played a couple of weeks ago. But it's like the third or fourth time I played there because I love to play there. Because it's, it's the most unique county fair in America, and that's, uh, Neshoba County, Mississippi.

• 1:56:16Speaker 00

  Dang.

• 1:56:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:19Speaker 00

  Hardy talks about that. People talk about that place. Bring it up because they got the beautiful homes that are all painted up over there and people rent them out.

• 1:56:26Speaker 01

  Well, they're not homes, they're shacks, but yeah, they're.

• 1:56:29Speaker 00

  Oh, they are?

• 1:56:29Speaker 01

  They're nice. I mean, yeah, you know, but they're very small because they're built on these little lease pieces of land that basically were meant to be where you would set up your vending tent, you know, to sell stuff at the fair like they usually do. You, you rent this little place and you come there and you set up your tent and sell, you know, turquoise or, you know, funnel cakes or whatever the hell it is you're selling.

• 1:56:57Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:56:57Speaker 01

  But then these people started doing these long-term leases on these places and just keeping them in the family for years and years. And so, they bought these narrow, built these narrow little houses that just go straight up for three stories.

• 1:57:10Speaker 00

  So, it's supposed to be wide enough just to sell a funnel cake out of, but then they end up making it so, uh, stacking it up and making the lease.

• 1:57:16Speaker 01

  They started doing that years ago, a hundred years ago, you know, and, and so that's what they do. And I mean, this, this picture right here just doesn't do it justice. I mean, because this fairground is, you know, hundreds of acres. And these things are all over the place, man. It's huge.

• 1:57:32Speaker 00

  I didn't know it. Well, this thing must be calling me because we were just talking about this last week, you know?

• 1:57:38Speaker 01

  With Hardy? Yeah, he's, he's from there.

• 1:57:40Speaker 00

  No, with Riley Green, we're just talking about it.

• 1:57:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah?

• 1:57:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was bringing it up.

• 1:57:44Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:57:45Speaker 00

  I was just at that UFC event a few weeks ago. Did you watch any of that? You watch any of that? UFC fighting?

• 1:57:51Speaker 01

  The one, uh, where Conor McGregor just.

• 1:57:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:57:55Speaker 01

  Just, uh, whatever he did. Uh, I don't know what that was.

• 1:57:59Speaker 00

  I felt like he really did get hurt.

• 1:58:01Speaker 01

  I felt, no, he was hurt before he got in the ring.

• 1:58:04Speaker 00

  Well, I don't know if he was or not. Some things did, his energy going to the ring did feel suspect. It felt different. And it made you be just because he's, he's been five years removed. Sometimes it's hard to like, show up and fit into an older, fit into a diff, different you or you from a different time.

• 1:58:19Speaker 01

  I think he was hurt.

• 1:58:20Speaker 00

  You do? He might've been, dude. But God, it just would've been all the people in Ireland were fucking cheering for him and you're like, God.

• 1:58:30Speaker 00

  But you have to show up in the ring because you have to get paid.

• 1:58:33Speaker 01

  But I don't know, man. I think he should've backed out. I think he was hurt.

• 1:58:37Speaker 00

  Damn. I wonder if they'll do a lie detector test on him. You think they will?

• 1:58:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. I just think that's funny. A lie detector test on Conor McGregor.

• 1:58:49Speaker 00

  That'd be crazy, huh?

• 1:58:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:51Speaker 00

  If they did it. Because you can't press charge. Like, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I don't know. I've never known.

• 1:58:59Speaker 01

  I know, man. That's the thing everybody loves about you. You hardly ever know what the fuck you're talking about.

• 1:59:05Speaker 01

  Charming.

• 1:59:06Speaker 00

  Thanks, man.

• 1:59:08Speaker 00

  Thanks.

• 1:59:10Speaker 00

  All right, man. Well.

• 1:59:14Speaker 01

  Okay, bye.

• 1:59:15Speaker 00

  Appreciate your time, man. I appreciate, oh, Bob Kingsley, is that him?

• 1:59:19Speaker 01

  That's him, Bob Kingsley. Thanks for bringing that up. Oh, man, and I knew him good too. Bob was a great guy, man. He did that American Country Countdown show for decades, man. And he was the one I'd, I'd listen to. If you hurried out of churches, if the preacher quit right before noon, you could get out there and hear the number one song, you know? I always tried to get to the truck before Bob, you know, got to number one.

• 1:59:49Speaker 00

  Can you play him? Just play his intro. I wanna hear it for a minute, just the beginning of his show. If you're on YouTube, yeah.

• 1:59:55Speaker 01

  Classic.

• 1:59:57Speaker 00

  You know what I just bought?

• 2:00:00Speaker 00

  Jerry Clower's suit from when he performed.

• 2:00:02Speaker 01

  Oh, no way.

• 2:00:04Speaker 00

  Just got it. They knew I was a fan of his and so they sent me.

• 2:00:06Speaker 01

  I loved Jerry Clower, man. Oh, my God, man. We had his albums and Justin Wilson. You remember Justin Wilson?

• 2:00:14Speaker 00

  Yes, dude. I just got on to Justin Wilson, not even too long ago, man.

• 2:00:17Speaker 01

  He was funny too. He was like the Louisiana Jerry Clower. He was Louisiana's Jerry Clower, you know?

• 2:00:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I got that red suit right there.

• 2:00:25Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 2:00:27Speaker 00

  I can't even believe it, man. I got it.

• 2:00:29Speaker 01

  I love Jerry Clower, man.

• 2:00:30Speaker 00

  I got inside, oh dude, he was the best, still one of the best storytellers ever, I believe. I don't think they make them like him anymore.

• 2:00:36Speaker 01

  He talks about playing college football.

• 2:00:39Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, he does. Yeezus City, Mississippi. Marcel Ledbetter.

• 2:00:44Speaker 01

  Marcel.

• 2:00:45Speaker 00

  Oh, dude, I love, I love listening to Jerry. And, uh, there's a lot of great artists like that that kinda disappeared just because they didn't have as much of.

• 2:00:53Speaker 01

  I wear my overalls the way Marcel wore his.

• 2:00:56Speaker 00

  Do you?

• 2:00:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, with nothing under them, just, and the buttons not done together. My wife gets a kick out of it when I wear my overalls. No drawers and nothing under it.

• 2:01:06Speaker 00

  Well, look, I'm, I'm just glad you got a, I'm glad you got a wife that gets a kick out of you, man, you know?

• 2:01:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, well.

• 2:01:13Speaker 00

  I'm glad you do.

• 2:01:16Speaker 00

  Yes, right here it says, yes, under Napoleonic law, you can be compensated if you lose a limb. However, there is no fixed price, huh?

• 2:01:25Speaker 00

  Instead of a flat fee, courts and insurance adjusters calculate damages using individualized categories known as heads of loss.

• 2:01:34Speaker 00

  I thought it was different. I thought a thumb was fourteen K or I, I thought each, I thought each body part had a little price tax to it.

• 2:01:44Speaker 01

  They have back in the day.

• 2:01:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, things change, huh? You just gotta roll with it.

• 2:01:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, buddy.

• 2:01:50Speaker 00

  That's the only thing you can do. Trace Atkins, man, thanks so much for your time, dude. Thanks for your music. It was nice to get to, uh, meet your daughters in the past year or two. I've gotten to see them at a couple of shows. Uh, thanks for always letting me feel welcome at your shows, man.

• 2:02:03Speaker 00

  And yeah, thanks for your music, dude. Just, your stuff got me through some tough times in my life and it's just been a, it's been a blessing to witness. The new tour is great. If you guys get to go see him, uh, the thirtieth anniversary tour, uh, go check it out and I'll be back out at one.

• 2:02:17Speaker 01

  I'm a fan, man. Thanks still.

• 2:02:19Speaker 00

  Thank you, brother.

• 2:02:19Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:02:20Speaker 00

  And your mom too. What's up? Peggy. Vote for, vote for Peggy.

• 2:02:25Speaker 01

  Nobody runs against her anymore.

• 2:02:29Speaker 01

  She's run unopposed, I think, in the last two or three elections.