#852: Tim McGraw — Starting Late with a $20 Guitar, Selling 100M+ Records, and 30+ Years of Creative Longevity

Tim McGraw (@thetimmcgraw https://www.instagram.com/thetimmcgraw) is a Grammy Award-winning entertainer, author, and actor who has sold more than 106 million records worldwide, with 49 number-one singles and 19 number-one albums. He is one of the most-played country artists since his debut in 1992, has four New York Times bestselling books, and has acted for both film and television, including the movies Friday Night Lights and The Blind Side and Paramount Network’s Yellowstone. He recently starred alongside his wife Faith Hill and Sam Elliott in Yellowstone’s prequel—the three-time-Emmy-nominated 1883. You can find tickets for his upcoming Pawn Shop Guitar Tour https://www.timmcgraw.com/pawn-shop-guitar-tour at TimMcGraw.com https://www.timmcgraw.com/pawn-shop-guitar-tour. This episode is brought to you by: Circle https://circle.so/tim complete community platform for your community, events, and courses — all under your own brand: Circle.so/Tim https://circle.so/tim Shopify https://shopify.com/tim global commerce platform, providing tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business: Shopify.com/tim https://shopify.com/timAG1 https://drinkag1.com/tim all-in-one nutritional supplement: DrinkAG1.com/Tim https://drinkag1.com/tim TIMESTAMPS [00:00:00] Who is Tim McGraw?[00:01:51] Two Tims walk into a podcast.[00:02:56] “The song always has to win.”[00:05:02] Recording “Live Like You Were Dying” at 2 a.m. with Uncle Hank in a puddle in the corner.[00:09:22] Sensing when the moment is right.[00:10:29] The song Nashville hated that Tim heard his first night off the Greyhound.[00:13:18] The one-two punch that saved Tim from novelty-act purgatory.[00:15:22] Turning down the CMAs because the song wouldn’t fit the time slot.[00:20:11] Why you can’t let the audience steer the ship when testing material live.[00:25:51] Coping with the physical toll of performing for three decades.[00:34:04] The Four Christmases wake-up call that changed everything.[00:37:42] What training smarter looks like for Tim.[00:41:22] When Tim found out his dad was a baseball legend whose picture was already on his wall.[00:54:53] Important advice for aspiring parents.[00:55:41] When Tim pawned his high school ring for a $20 guitar.[00:58:27] Learning guitar from CMT videos and fret diagrams.[00:59:37] The morning Tim tore up his Marines paperwork and bought a Greyhound ticket to Nashville.[01:07:20] Nashville as creative accelerant: Tracy Lawrence, Kenny Chesney, and $50 singing competitions.[01:12:45] Po’boy Don’s crawfish shack: The demo that launched Tim’s career.[01:15:39] How Faith Hill saved Tim’s life.[01:18:33] The 7 a.m. bottle of whiskey cry for help.[01:20:27] Parenthood as selfishness-removal surgery.[01:24:28] Tim’s “Glory Days” disaster with Bruce Springsteen.[01:28:30] When Tim’s first album “went wood” — the failure that taught him everything.[01:33:29] A rodeo monkey no longer: When Tim kicked his record company to the curb.[01:37:35] Tim’s most important advice for artists.[01:43:41] Announcing the summer 2026 Pawn Shop Guitar tour with The Chicks.[01:46:28] If it’s so grueling, why does Tim still tour?[01:49:50] Tim’s “Humble and Kind” billboard.[01:50:50] Parting thoughts and a parting gift: “Different” — the new song only on social media.* For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show https://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors https://tim.blog/podcast-sponsors Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts https://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books https://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferriss http://linkedin.com/in/timferriss See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it's my job to deconstruct world-class performers from all different disciplines, to tease out what you can use, what you can apply in your own lives. And we have a very tactical, very detail-rich interview ahead, and my guest is Tim McGraw. To say Tim McGraw is a Grammy Award-winning singer is an absurd understatement. He's had 49 number-one singles and 19 number-one albums, making him one of the most-played country artists of all time. But calling him a country artist is also too small of a category. He's been named Nielsen BDS Radio's Most Played Artist of the Decade for all music

• 0:44Tim Ferriss?

  genres, and also had the Most Played Song of the Decade for all music genres. He's written four New York Times bestselling books, and you've also seen him in Friday Night Lights, The Blind Side, and Yellowstone, not to mention his three-time Emmy-nominated 1883, in which he stars alongside his wife Faith Hill and Sam Elliott. You can find tickets for his upcoming Pawn Shop Guitar Tour at timmcgraw.com. That's T-I-M-M-C-G-R-A-W dot com. Check it out. I will certainly be aiming to attend. And without further ado, please enjoy a very, very wide-ranging, very, very detailed, very fun conversation with the one and only Tim McGraw.

• 1:26Speaker 01

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half-mile before my hands start to shake.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 1:34Speaker 01

  No, it would seem inappropriate, Tim.

• 1:37Speaker 03

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 1:51Tim Ferriss?

  Tim, it's so nice to finally meet in person.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  You as well, Tim.

• 1:54Tim Ferriss?

  Really fantastic.

• 1:55Speaker 02

  Absolutely. Big fan.

• 1:57Tim Ferriss?

  Likewise. And I've not been to Nashville in so long, and it's just lovely around here.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  It's incredible, and it changes every day. I mean, I get lost. Anytime I come downtown, I get lost, because everything looks so different.

• 2:11Tim Ferriss?

  Franklin looks like it's just had facelift after facelift after facelift.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  I know. And when I first moved here in 89... All of that Cool Springs, all that stuff was still all countryside. And I remember land being not very expensive out there. And I didn't have two nickels to rub your hand. Think, man, if I could just buy some land out here and build me a little cabin, find me a club gig, you know, it really would be great. And then cut to two years later and it's just, everything's through the roof. I mean, it's just going crazy. And then, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down at all.

• 2:46Tim Ferriss?

  You just offered me the perfect segue because

• 2:49Speaker 02

  Well, that's what I'm here for.

• 2:50Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you. You know, I appreciate this tango that we're, we're, we're getting started here. I was looking back, you were kind enough to answer some questions for Tribe of Mentors.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, your book.

• 3:02Tim Ferriss?

  My last book. And I was going back to reread it and I looked at your bio and at the time it read, Tim McGraw sold more than 50 million records, dot, dot, dot. And all of these amazing accolades. And then I looked at the more recent and it's more than 106 million records worldwide. Your longevity is mind boggling on a number of different levels.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  It's just Yeah, me too. It's mind boggling to me too. People are still putting up with me.

• 3:30Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm wondering, how have you thought about, or how has your creative process changed over the years? What is, what has remained the same? What has changed? Because there's so many ingredients that you have to get right for you to not just last, but succeed over the decades that you have.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Well, one thing that doesn't change is great songs. That's the first check, should be the first check on any artist's list. I mean, I write, I write for every project and I've been lucky enough to have some success with some of the things I write. But for me, the song always has to win. Wherever the song comes from, that's what it's gonna be. And I listen to songs constantly. I'm constantly writing, constantly listening. I'm hard on my own songs, that's probably why I haven't cut as many. But my process is pretty much the same. I think material wise, I look for different kinds of music than I used to. I still like fun songs, and if I find the right fun song, I'll do it.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  But it's tougher at a certain age to sing about, you know, daisy dukes and tailgates all the time. You know, it just doesn't, doesn't quite ring true to me. But you know, every now and then, something comes along that's funny. You just do it because you're an artist and you're telling a story and you do it. But I gravitate more towards songs now that not only have meaning to me, but I think have, people can find a deeper meaning in, in their own situation, in their own life.

• 5:02Tim Ferriss?

  I would love for you to, if you could, maybe unpack for us a song. Could be any song. And what I'm angling for is, of course, the Genesis, but also what do you do when the muse goes a little quiet? Cause you can't just, as a working musician, be like, well, I'm gonna wait a year for lightning to strike. There's probably some process behind it. And I am not a musician, but I'm deeply interested in it. One of my favorite albums of all time is Graceland by Paul Simon.

• 5:35Speaker 02

  Oh, God, yes.

• 5:36Tim Ferriss?

  And I was listening to his backstory as he explained how a number of those songs came together. And I was just mesmerized.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:45Tim Ferriss?

  So could you tell the story of any song that comes to mind in the Genesis?

• 5:50Speaker 02

  You know, probably Live Like You Were Dying would be a good place to start, because that song came to me, it was right after my dad was diagnosed with brain cancer, glioblastoma. And Tim Nichols and Craig Wiseman sent that song to me. They wrote it about my dad when they found out that that was happening and sent it to me.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  And I never played it for my dad. He was sick at the time. I just felt that it was not appropriate to play a song about dying to your dad who was dying. Although, I'm sure he would have loved the idea of having a song that was about him or inspired by him. I didn't play it for him. I had the song and in his last days, he was at our farm in the cabin at our farm. That's where he wanted to be for his last days and spent a lot of time with him. And I think it was right around two weeks, two to three weeks after he passed away that we went to the studio to record and we recorded in upstate New York at a place right outside of Woodstock at a place called O'Leary Studios.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  You know, it's beautiful. It's an old Dutch farmhouse and barn up on top of a mountain. Beautiful. We had like three foot of snow. We were there for three weeks. We sent two semi trucks full of Persian rugs and furniture and just decked the place out for the band and myself for three weeks while we were cutting. And my dad's older brother Hank, I invited him to come hang with us because, you know, Tug had just died and I know he wasn't doing very well. So I invited him to come hang with us while we were recording and it was probably six or seven days into the recording process and we would start late and we would go till three or four in the morning recording.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  And I remember it was about one in the morning and I had this glass booth built in the middle of the studio so I could see everybody. And there was fireplaces at each end and the fireplaces were roaring. I had my glass booth in the middle. We were cutting a song. My Uncle Hank was smoking a joint. If you know my Uncle Hank, he's passed away. He passed away last year now, but he was all American athlete, three sports, played pro baseball for 13 years. Greatest guy in the world, looked just like Sam Elliott, but was a pothead from, from day one. So I watched him and he was sitting over there and I just got to thinking, I thought, you know, this might be a good time. To live like you were dying. So we just finished a song. We were doing some overdubs.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  I gathered everybody around and I gathered Hank around and I asked everybody what their opinion was. They felt like tackling that song. So about two in the morning, we cranked it up. Before the sun came up, we had that song done and it was so tough because I'm sitting in the booth, in the glass booth, recording the song, you know, directing the band, you know, getting the parts right. And I can't help but watch my Uncle Hank the entire time that we're doing it. And he's just in a puddle over in the corner and then he's laughing. And then, then he starts telling stories about Tug after. So we recorded the song. We got finished probably about four, five in the morning. And then we just sat and listened Uncle Hank tell stories about Tug for the rest of the night.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  And I have to believe that all that magic of that night of Hank being there, Tug had only been gone for a couple of weeks and then Hank telling the stories afterwards. I have to believe that all of that went into that record.

• 9:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, there's, there's so many different aspects to that, each of which you could unpack. When you mentioned it seemed like a good time or it might be a good time. Why did it seem like a good time? Was it a feeling inside of you as you looked at your uncle?

• 9:37Speaker 02

  As I looked at my uncle, it just felt like that I was being told to cut this song. Everything, the vibes coming off of him, what I was feeling at the time. And I think we had just cut something really up tempo and pretty rocking. And I don't know, it was the mood, the snow outside, the fireplaces, my uncle sitting there, being so late at night, maybe there was a melancholy that sort of struck at that time. I'm sure there were some other factors that might've been involved that struck about that time.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  When you're in the studio that late, it just felt like there was a magic in the air at that moment. And we wanted to capture it. And we always like to say, you know, you can have the greatest song in the world, greatest band in the world, greatest singer in the world, which I am not, but you can have all those factors. And it's still not work. We, and we always say, sometimes God just walks through the room.

• 10:28Tim Ferriss?

  All right. I want to pick up on that thread and then we're going to go back to some of your family history because I mean, millions, millions upon millions know your music, but I think fewer know the origin story. So we will get to that. But I also want to ask, when is the first time when you felt God walked through the door with one of your songs where you're like, oh, oh, okay. I think maybe we have some lightning in a bottle here.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  I would like to say it was Don't Take The Girl, but I didn't feel that way after we recorded it because I never felt like I captured exactly what I wanted on that record. Until we finally finished it, when we finally finished, I felt like we had it. But in the process of it, I felt like a struggle on that song. But Indian Outlaw, because I had that song for my first album and nobody liked it. The label didn't like it. James Stroud didn't like it. Byron liked it, but I couldn't talk James and it let me record it. And I couldn't talk to the label and to let me record it.

• 11:34Tim Ferriss?

  What were the reasons they gave you?

• 11:35Speaker 02

  They just said it was too controversial and it was a bad song. It wasn't country music. It won't work on radio. All, all the things that they were right about. I heard that song the first night I moved to Nashville. I got to Nashville at one or two in the morning on a Greyhound bus. Walked down to the Hall of Fame Lounge and hotel where I ended up staying for a couple of weeks. Walked into the bar and everybody was closing down. The band was packing up. And Tommy Barnes and Max D. Barnes were sitting at the bar. I think it's Max D. Barnes. He's sitting at the bar. The bar's closing down. So I walk in and Just ordered a beer. She said, we just had last call, but I'll give you a beer. I sat down, so I started talking to these two guys. So Tommy says, you got a room?

• 12:20Speaker 02

  I said, yeah. He said, let's go play some music. So me, Tommy and Max Barnes went up and started playing music.

• 12:26Tim Ferriss?

  Within stepping off the.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  With stepping off the bus and Tommy played Indian Outlaw and I don't want to be there in the morning when she wakes up and finds me gone, which ended up cutting both of those. Have three more songs of his that I heard that first night that I'm gonna cut eventually. But Indian Outlaw heard that first night and I started playing it immediately, learned it, started playing it in all the clubs around town, the honky tonks around town. When we would go travel and play clubs all over the country, I was playing that song and we'd end up having to play it two or three times a night, four times a night because people loved it so much. And I kept telling the label when I was going in to cut my first record. This was before I had a record.

• 13:00Tim Ferriss?

  So you knew it worked.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  I knew it worked and I didn't have any say so on the first album. So when I cut the second album, I just, that's what we're cutting, period. And when we cut it, I felt like this is either gonna work in a huge way or it's gonna ruin my career forever.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  Luckily it worked.

• 13:18Tim Ferriss?

  And it worked.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  And I think the fortunate thing, it worked. And I think that what kept me from being just sort of a novelty act that had this sort of funky weird song that made some noise, was being able to come right behind it with Don't Take The Girl. I'll forever believe that the combination of those two songs is what set my career in motion and gave me momentum that, that I probably couldn't have gotten any other way.

• 13:46Tim Ferriss?

  How would you describe both of those songs as a one-two punch? The first one, for people who don't know, why was it potentially controversial or?

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Well, because it was.

• 13:54Tim Ferriss?

  Or different?

• 13:54Speaker 02

  And I understood why it was controversial because it was stereotypical. It was sort of a, you know, a play on Native American stereotypes. And there was a lot of controversy around it and I understood the controversy and I wasn't upset about the controversy. In fact, I met with several Native American leaders. Some liked the song, some didn't like the song. And my answer was, look, I understand what your concerns are. The song's not meant to be that way. I understand your concerns. My opinion, if you need to go after me in order to raise attention and awareness to your calls, by all means, use my song for that. So if you like it or don't like it, if you can make something good happen from it, then by all means, I'm not gonna be offended.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  And now, when I play Native American casinos, I always, when I meet with the elders or the chiefs before the show, I always say, you know, I have Indian outlaw on my set, but I'm happy to take it out if it's offensive. And invariably, 99.9% of the time, that's why we hired you, is to sing that song. So they love it. So it's been really good to me.

• 14:57Tim Ferriss?

  And what about the follow-up straight, the one-two?

• 14:59Speaker 02

  Oh, the Don't Take The Girl.

• 15:00Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  That song was just so powerful and such a great story. It was the epitome of what country music is all about. A great story that gets right to the heart of the matter, that hits right to the emotion, leaves it a little open-ended, it makes you guess a little bit about what happened. But to this day, singing that song, there are times where it chokes me up still every time. And that song was one of my first stances as an artist, to where I wasn't sure if I was doing the right thing or not, but it was my first opportunity to perform on the CMAs after Don't Take The Girl came out. And Walter was the guy who used to run the CMAs. Remember Walter? They wanted me to do Don't Take The Girl, but they only gave me three minutes and the

• 15:46Speaker 02

  song's five minutes. And I was trying to explain to them that there's no way to sing this song without telling the complete story, or it wouldn't make sense. So I actually turned down my first opportunity to perform on the CMAs.

• 15:59Tim Ferriss?

  That's wild.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  Because I couldn't do the whole song.

• 16:01Tim Ferriss?

  Was that an obvious choice, or did you second guess that choice after you turned it down, you know, the next day or the next hour, where you're like, ah?

• 16:11Speaker 02

  I think it was an obvious choice. Yeah, and I wasn't too worried because the song was doing so well. And I just, I just thought, there's no upside here to doing part of the song. It's not going to do anything for me. It's not going to do anything for anybody else.

• 16:29Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. What many of you may not know is that I actually run two private invite-only communities for some of my projects. The notebook, which eventually will come out after God knows how long, and Coyote, the card game. And the feedback from those groups has been absolutely invaluable. Moreover, perhaps most important, the connections that members have made and the interactions have been just a joy to behold. It's been so much fun. And I generally view communities as headache after headache after headache. Way back in the day with like V Bulletin and whatever, not to slam those guys, but man oh man, running communities can be a pain in the ass. And in this case, it's been easy. Why? Well, both of them are built on Circle, this episode's sponsor.

• 17:14Tim Ferriss?

  And before committing to using Circle, I did so much homework. I asked you all on social media, talked to dozens of creators, pressure tested alternatives, talked to all sorts of people on the phone, and Circle is where I landed. Circle quietly backs some of the most popular communities online, run by folks like Kevin Rose, my buddy, Dr. Becky from Good Inside, Ali Abdaal, Jay Shetty, Pat Flynn, and many others, including some giants I can't mention here. But it doesn't need to be giant. My two communities are maybe 100, 150 people apiece. They're not gigantic. If you run an online community, a membership, or a course business, Circle makes it easy to build a professional home for your audience. Events, courses, payments, custom branded apps, all in one place.

• 17:56Tim Ferriss?

  And also, once I had my first one set up for the notebook, to spin up another one for Coyote, the card game, it took minutes. It was so, so fast. And as you might have noticed, things are getting pretty squirrely out there on the internet. We're moving from content businesses to connection businesses. People want connection. They want to know you're real. They want accountability, real progress, and communities are the most effective way that I have found to make that happen. So check it out. Go to circle.sotim to get $1,000 off Circle Plus exclusively for you guys, listeners, for a limited time. Check it out. You can also look at other options at circle.sotim.

• 18:35Tim Ferriss?

  Back in the day, this was 2004, maybe, I had someone approach me in a coffee shop and said, "G'day, mate," and introduce himself. Who was that? It turned out to be the founder of AG1, believe it or not, way back in the day. And people often ask me, "What has survived after 20-plus years of testing every supplement under the sun just about? What actually has stayed in the rotation, in the toolbox?" This episode's sponsor, AG1, is at the top of that very, very short list. I started using it close to 15 years ago, when it was still called Athletic Greens. I put it in the Four Hour Body, didn't get paid to put it in there, and it's outlasted almost everything else that I've tried. One scoop covers your nutritional bases, right? Fills the gaps. You want to eat good food, of course, but

• 19:18Tim Ferriss?

  75-plus ingredients, including probiotics, B vitamins, and whole-food nutrients, act as, in my opinion, pretty cheap nutritional insurance. I take it first thing every morning with cold water, and at this point, it's automatic, like brushing my teeth. If you're looking for one simple daily habit that supports gut health and fills common nutrient gaps, this is where I'd start. Right now, new subscribers to AG1 get a free welcome kit worth $87, including AG1 and AGZ travel packs, that's for sleep, it's actually great, and vitamin D3 plus K2. So, there's a whole bunch of free stuff worth 87 bucks. So, check it out. Take a look. Visit drinkag1.com/tim, and that's the number one. So, drinkagnumber1.com/tim

• 20:03Tim Ferriss?

  to check it out. One more time, that's drinkag1.com/tim.

• 20:11Tim Ferriss?

  A few things come to mind for me. The first is that, in a digital world, or we perceive to be virtual, folks try to do a lot virtually, and you can do a lot, in terms of testing, and this, that, and the other thing. But... Still, if you can get front of live audiences to test your material, whether you are a musician, a comedian, even in my case, as a writer, my first book was turned down 30 plus times by publishers. Not an exaggeration. But because I had taught the material in front of classes for years and years and years, I knew that it worked.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  You knew it worked.

• 20:50Tim Ferriss?

  I knew it worked. That is the only reason.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  You had a practical sense that it worked.

• 20:55Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:55Tim Ferriss?

  I could see it and I'd honed it and I'd taken out the equivalent of jokes that didn't work. Dumbled down on the ones that did. And that still is just so incredibly valuable, having that real time feedback, especially when you're playing multiple times a night.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  So in your process, when you're writing a book and you're talking about trying material out, people, do you have an idea or a nugget of what you want to do? And then you just start riffing on it around people just to sort of get feedback?

• 21:24Tim Ferriss?

  I do. I would say that these days I will often test on the podcast to see.

• 21:33Speaker 02

  Like segments or parts?

• 21:34Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly. See what resonates or doesn't resonate. So for instance, I'm considering doing a huge collection of case studies from the first book. Because of course, people hear the four hour work week and they're like, bullshit. That guy is a liar. And I get it, I get it. It's a controversial title and deliberately so. But there are hundreds and thousands of case studies. And so for every, every reason someone might have why they object to the title, I'm a single mom, I've got five kids, I have this, I have that, I'm 60 and not 20. I have an example that has walked the walk in their shoes. So that said, a book is a huge commitment.

• 22:17Tim Ferriss?

  I still find writing so difficult and I know you've had experience with this. So I will put together a few episodes on the podcast where I'm basically testing different sets of questions with case studies. And I'm going to see, all right, look, I enjoy doing this, but how does the audience respond? At the same time, I would say for me, I think it's very dangerous to ask your audience, or really anyone, if you have developed a creative muscle and you value it, what should I do? Because then you can get shaped by the masses in a way that really leads you down. I think a lost path. In my case, I might have two or three things I'm excited about.

• 23:01Tim Ferriss?

  Then it's a question, which of these three? And I will feel good about any of these three, then it's okay. So I test that. I still think to this day, and I've thought about potentially approaching UT Austin to do a class. It's because the feedback is so fast. They can't fake it. Even if they say they like it, if you look at their face and they are spacing out, checking their phone, you're like, uh-uh, it is not working.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Not working.

• 23:26Tim Ferriss?

  It is not working.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  Like you said, you try things out, musicians, comedians, writers. I do the same thing. If I run across a new song that I really like, I would have the band work it up. So let's play it a couple of times live and see what their reaction is. Now, there's a caveat to that because when, I've been doing this for 35 years now. So when you have songs people expect to hear, and then you throw a new one in on them, sometimes you get, the reaction's not exactly what you want it to be, but it's not necessarily the reaction that you're gonna get if they know the song. So, you know, there's a little bit of a curve that you have to put on it when you're doing it. Back again, also to not letting the audience determine what you do. That's really true because like you said, you can get lost.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  If you start chasing what you think people want to hear, then you're, I think you're in trouble then. I think you gotta chase what you want to hear and what you want to play. And look, my taste is not gonna match up with everybody's taste. And probably less and less people's taste as the days go forward. Who knows? It may grow more, I don't know. But I have to cut stuff that speaks to me. If it doesn't speak to me, especially if I didn't write it, if it doesn't speak to me and I can't interpret it in a way that speaks from my heart and speaks to someone else. If it doesn't speak to me first, there's no way I'm gonna make it speak to somebody else.

• 24:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it turns into a guessing game.

• 24:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. And people can spot that a mile away. Whether they realize it or not, they can.

• 24:53Tim Ferriss?

  It just strikes me how similar, if you're pursuing creative expression and longevity, by the way, in so many disciplines, it's the same thing. It is just the same thing, whether it's podcasts, whether it's music, whether it's writing. Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite writers, hilarious cat, Breakfast of Champions, et cetera. People can pick up any of his books. They're really fun to read. And he used to say, along the lines, I'm paraphrasing, but he's, if you open up the window and try to make love to the world, you're gonna catch the flu. Basically, if you're trying to, if you're trying to, if you're trying to appeal to everybody, you're lost.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  You're lost.

• 25:32Tim Ferriss?

  And at least you know you have an audience of one, if it's resonating with you. And the personal can be so universal.

• 25:39Speaker 02

  Well, and again, we're so lucky as artists, writers, musicians, whatever you are as an artist, because that's therapy. You have your own built in therapeutic machine.

• 25:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So there's the aspect of creative longevity, right? How many years you been doing this again?

• 25:57Speaker 02

  Thirty-five, I guess, somewhere around there.

• 25:59Tim Ferriss?

  Thirty-five, alright, so thirty-five years. So you have creative longevity. How do you continue to follow the right scent trail, which is very personal, and not get lost? Because there's gonna be a lot of temptation, a lot of external forces, expectations, right? So there's that, which we've spoken to a bit. Physically, I know a lot of people are gonna want me to talk about this. I want to talk about it. How do you think about physically being capable to do what you do? I mean, you are still performing. That is intensely physical. I have never performed as a musician on stage, but I know a few.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  Even when you're not running around, it's physical.

• 26:36Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  Because of the energy, the extent. And in my case, I can't sit still when I'm performing.

• 26:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  I'm all over the place. But yeah, focus is the biggest word, I think, in my vocabulary when it comes to what I do for a living. Because the times where I'm not focused are the times things aren't working. I tell you, the last three years have been tough to focus with what I've gone.

• 27:00Tim Ferriss?

  With surgeries.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  With the surgeries. I've had four back surgeries and double knee replacements. And. Tried to work through all of it and then did work through all of it. But there was a moment in time back in the spring this year, after my third back surgery. Or was it last year? All the years running together. Anyway, after my third back surgery, when it just didn't work, that I thought that I was gonna really be looking at not being able to do this anymore. Because I can't imagine not doing it the way that I do it. There's no way that I'm gonna go out there and sit on a stool and sing for an hour and a half. It's physically impossible for me to do.

• 27:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you're a kinetic creature.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Know that anybody wants to see that from me. So if I can't go do the shows the way I do shows and the way that I have fun doing shows, then I'm not gonna give everybody what they're paying for. And I'm not gonna get satisfaction out of it. So there was, there was a time where, until the last back surgery that actually worked, knock on wood, that I didn't think I was gonna be able to make it back. And not make it back the way I wanted to make it back. Now, my focus is back. My body's back. My brain fog's clearing up from all the anesthesia. So I'm, I'm feeling like I'm back on a good path. I'm actually feeling like I've got a second wind now and something to prove. Which is good for me because I need that. I wanna be the underdog.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  I wanna be the guy nobody expects for it to work. You know, I wanna be that guy.

• 28:35Tim Ferriss?

  Make yourself a little hungry.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 28:37Tim Ferriss?

  It's like a

• 28:38Speaker 02

  Metaphorically and, and literally when I work and I like to be hungry. I don't like to eat before I go on the stage because I like to be hungry for that reason. Because metaphorically it works for me.

• 28:46Tim Ferriss?

  I just had my first real experience with falconry and

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 28:51Tim Ferriss?

  The falconer was very clear. He's like, you need that bird to be hungry if you want it to hunt.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:57Tim Ferriss?

  It will not perform.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  If you're sated.

• 28:58Tim Ferriss?

  Otherwise.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  If you're sated, you're not gonna do much.

• 29:01Tim Ferriss?

  And actually fed up with someone is an expression taken from falconry. Because if the bird is fed up, it won't listen to you.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 29:08Tim Ferriss?

  Fed up with, it's from falconry.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  I hope you remember that. It's just a good little piece of knowledge.

• 29:13Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  I love those little details.

• 29:15Tim Ferriss?

  There are all these little words from falconry. Hoodwinked also, and they put the hood on it also from falconry. So focusing in travel mentors, you mentioned my gym is how I get refocused.

• 29:25Speaker 02

  That's my meditation.

• 29:27Tim Ferriss?

  And you, you talked about this five rounds of 12 exercise with the bar complex, kind of adding weight and then going back down.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:34Tim Ferriss?

  Do you still do that or has your training changed over time? You also mentioned a pool workout. I'm not sure if you still do that, but what is the training regimen? What has it looked like and what does it look like now?

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Well.

• 29:45Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe it's changed.

• 29:46Speaker 02

  It's changed a little bit. It's, I have to be a lot more deliberate and a lot more careful. I'm sure that my workout routine, my three workouts a day and.

• 29:57Tim Ferriss?

  Three workouts a day?

• 29:58Speaker 02

  That's what I did for a long time, especially on the road touring.

• 30:01Tim Ferriss?

  Was that just like before breakfast, before lunch, before dinner?

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:05Tim Ferriss?

  Really?

• 30:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they were distinctly different exercises. And in the afternoon, exercise was sort of a outdoor CrossFit thing, but the whole band. So that was like an hour and a half. Then I would do my two hour workout in the morning.

• 30:17Tim Ferriss?

  Which was mostly weights?

• 30:18Speaker 02

  Mostly weights and some cardio. And then before lunch would be, uh, running the arena or stadium stairs and doing a discipline at the top of each stairs. A push up or squat or ab or something. So you run all the stairs and then we take a break and eat, take a nap or whatever. And then at two, two 30, we go out for an hour and a half and do the outside stuff.

• 30:42Tim Ferriss?

  A border collie. You need, working dogs gotta run.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  That being said, I'm sure that I hastened all of my injuries. But I remember specifically when it happened, it was, you know, 1883, we shot 1883. That was pretty physically demanding and that wore us out pretty good. That was six months, six days a week, 16 hours a day, pretty much solid. And at the time I was doing shows while we were doing, cause I'd had shows booked. So I would work till filming till seven, run and jump on a plane. Go to a show, get back at three in the morning or two in the morning, get up at four, try to get a workout in and then be in the makeup trailer and go the next day.

• 31:23Tim Ferriss?

  Can't imagine why you wore yourself out.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  Not only was I tired though, I was strangely uncomfortable on stage during that because I had this big beard on and people didn't know what I was doing because we were filming a show that wasn't out yet. So people didn't know what I was doing and I'd put on about ten pounds.

• 31:40Tim Ferriss?

  So you didn't explain it?

• 31:41Speaker 02

  No, I tried to a couple of times, but you know, I'd put on about ten pounds of weight because there's just protein everywhere. So, I mean, it wasn't fat or anything, but I was working out, steady working, but they always had steak and stuff.

• 31:52Tim Ferriss?

  It wasn't fat. For people who haven't seen the series, I mean, that hotel scene with the, I guess, kind of like the pajamas or whatever it is.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  Oh, the bathtub.

• 32:00Tim Ferriss?

  You're like, fuck with anyone else, want to fuck with my family? You do not look fat.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  But I'm standing on stage and I got this big dyed black beard and I think these people are thinking that I'm dying my beard to look young because my beard's gray. I mean, my beard's snow white. And I had this big black beard on. So I was just so uncomfortable on stage and worn out and tired.

• 32:19Tim Ferriss?

  Were you uncomfortable because it didn't feel right to you or because you knew the audience was a little off kilter?

• 32:24Speaker 02

  It didn't feel right to me. And I could tell that they were trying to figure out what the hell was going on too. So it was just, it was uncomfortable. But we got through them and it wore us out. And I tweaked myself a little bit a few times with my knee and I'd had some knee trouble before. At 20, I had a meniscus done on my, scoped on my left knee. And at 30, I had a meniscus on my right knee. But they hadn't bothered me. I think my problem is I have a really high pain tolerance. So I remember specifically, we were in Montreal and I think it was three weeks into the tour, maybe four weeks into the tour. We were in Montreal and my knees were hurting, my back was hurting. Things

• 33:03Speaker 02

  were starting to fall apart. And I remember turning, just a normal turn and felt both my knees, just felt like they exploded. And I went to bed that night and I woke up the next morning and from my hips to my ankles, my legs were twice the size that they were before I went to sleep swollen.

• 33:23Tim Ferriss?

  It's terrifying.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so I got up and went to the gym. So I spent two years in the gym just on a treadmill, doing anything I could to try to stay in shape where I had to lean over the treadmill to walk because I couldn't stand up straight just to get walking in.

• 33:38Tim Ferriss?

  Brutal.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  And then doing the show, we finished out the tour where they literally had to carry me backstage. I'd get on stage, fake it through the show without acting like I was leaping too badly. And then they would carry me back to the bus after the show. And then right after that tour, I had to spend a month just sort of prepping myself for surgery. And then I went straight in and had the double knee replacements and then another back surgery after that.

• 34:04Tim Ferriss?

  You know, I don't want to turn this into a Tim Ferriss confessional, but the pain tolerance, you mentioned having high pain tolerance, like blessing and a curse.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  It's a curse for sure.

• 34:13Tim Ferriss?

  Because I've had multiple, just had elbow surgery a few months ago, which I should have had probably 15 years ago.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  I've had one of those.

• 34:19Tim Ferriss?

  I just kept, I just kept like, I walk it off. It's fine. And you know, shoulder reconstruction, and I won't turn this into like my litany of complaints about things, but.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  I just did.

• 34:31Tim Ferriss?

  But the ball, the back in particular, you know, I've had crippling back issues for the last three to five years, which were precipitated by this crazy accident long ago where I basically caught a huge dresser falling off the loading bay of a shipping.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 34:46Tim Ferriss?

  Truck because I want to prevent it from shattering on the ground and it twisted my body around and basically like tore my lat off of my body. It was a horrifying accident. But I suppose looking back, because I've wondered this, I have a friend, his name is Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired Magazine, great guy. I would say for his entire life has basically done, no offense, Kevin, no exercise, except for lots of walking. That's it. Lots of walking. He has, as far as I can tell, no aches in pants.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  Well, walking is the best exercise you can do.

• 35:19Tim Ferriss?

  He's in his, gotta be early to mid seventies now. And so I look back and I'm like, I wonder what I would have done because I had a lot of intense training back in the day. I used to compete in judo and all these various things, took quite a few lumps from all that. And I look back and I'm like, all right, what would I have done differently? I think there are certain things I would have toned down. Probably would have given a slightly different prescription, would have still been pretty aggressive, because I don't know if I would be where I am now otherwise, without that. So, looking back during the, just, I mean, over the decades, right? What would you have changed about your training in retrospect? If anything?

• 35:59Speaker 02

  I would have been smarter about it, probably.

• 36:01Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, in what way?

• 36:03Speaker 02

  Well, I would have trained less, for sure, and paid more attention to small aches and pains, instead of waiting until they were debilitating.

• 36:11Tim Ferriss?

  Big aches and pains.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, big aches and pains, I would have waited for that. Although, as you said, I honestly believe that if I hadn't decided that I was just gonna get myself back in shape, because I'd always stayed in shape, but I'd, you know, after having kids and stuff, you know, you're eating chicken nuggets all the time, and, you know, so I sort of let myself go for a little while. And then, I did a movie called Four Christmases, which I'd never seen, still haven't seen to this day.

• 36:41Tim Ferriss?

  Why is that?

• 36:42Speaker 02

  Because I was, I think I weighed 215 when we shot that movie.

• 36:44Tim Ferriss?

  How is she weighed now?

• 36:46Speaker 02

  Right now, I'm 170. We went to see another movie, and I'd taken my kids, and they were small, and completely not even thinking about my movie. And of course, the very first trailer that pops up is Four Christmases, the movie that I'd just done, and my face pops on the screen, and my daughter looked at the screen and looked at me, and she said, geez dad, you need to do something, because it looked like you could stick a pin in me, and I would have just flew across the room. And that's when I decided to get back in shape. But I do think that, and people will argue with me about this, but I believe it to my

• 37:25Speaker 02

  core, that had I not done that, and decided to change my lifestyle, to change my workout routine, the way I looked and took care of myself, that I don't think my career would have lasted this long.

• 37:36Tim Ferriss?

  And when was that?

• 37:38Speaker 02

  Uh, early 40s, like 42, 43.

• 37:42Tim Ferriss?

  And how old are you now?

• 37:43Speaker 02

  I'm 58 now.

• 37:44Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I mean, that's insane, man. You hear this, I'm sure, from lots of people, but you are in great, I mean, you look like you're in great shape. And, not hitting on you, but...

• 37:53Speaker 02

  That's okay.

• 37:54Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 37:56Tim Ferriss?

  But what has your workout looked like? And I won't belabor this too much longer, but it's, I feel like mind, body, brain, these are all the same thing. They're all a suborganism.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 38:07Tim Ferriss?

  And the exercise is a fundamental pillar of all of it for me and for you, I suspect. So what has your exercise regimen looked like for the last, let's call it year?

• 38:18Speaker 02

  Year. Well, there was about six weeks where I didn't do anything at all, which was almost impossible for me to do. And that's probably why some of my back surgeries didn't work as well as they should have because I tried to go back too soon.

• 38:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 38:31Speaker 02

  And get back in shape.

• 38:32Tim Ferriss?

  That's a story of my right meniscus too.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  I've tried to cut it down to two hours a day, but that includes, I usually walk an hour or 30 minutes to warm up for my knees to get going, my back. So walking's always my start out, whether it's 30 minutes or an hour, just to walk. Loosen everything up and do a lot of body weight stuff and a lot of stretching. I'd never lift heavy weights. I don't do heavy weights at all. I try not to do deadlifts anymore because of my back, although the doc says I can do them light, but I'm still scared of them. So I do a lot of body weight stuff and a lot of circuit training and then just try to do everything I do with intent and purpose and discipline and make sure everything's lined up properly. When before I never would do that. I knew what I was doing. I've had some good trainers in my life. I knew what I was doing, but you know, you get in a hurry and you fall back and start

• 39:19Speaker 02

  doing the same old stuff and you don't think, you don't put your head into what you're doing. I just had to be a lot more conscious about how I'm moving what I do.

• 39:26Tim Ferriss?

  And are those two hours all in the morning typically?

• 39:28Speaker 02

  In the morning, yeah. If I don't do it in the morning, it's tough for me to do it. And then that also includes, the older you're getting, especially with injuries, you've got to really try to every advantage you can get. So I do a lot of red light therapy, red light, hot therapy, steam, cold plunges. So I do a lot of that. So that's, you know, that's a good 30 minutes at the end of the workout to get all that stuff in because I do, you know, multiple circuits of that.

• 39:51Tim Ferriss?

  That's here, we have a similar recipe and two or three of the smartest athletes and trainers I know who used to be absolute monsters in the gym. I mean, they are power cleaning 300, 400 pounds. I mean, just monsters. Front squatting, four hundred, five hundred pounds. And now they do lighter weights. These are guys now, I would say, kind of late forties, early fifties. They do lighter weights. They use blood flow restriction cuffs. And they are in fantastic shape. They've lost a little bit of muscle mass because they're not eating like twelve chickens a day.

• 40:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:27Tim Ferriss?

  But that's fine. Probably good for your longevity, too.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  For sure. And my goal in work is I never want to be big. I don't want to be.

• 40:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. Muscle cube on stage.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  No, I don't want to be. I want to be athletic. You know what I mean? Yeah, the whole big muscle thing, I don't want to. I'm not gonna fall into that. I'm too skinny for that anyway.

• 40:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I think there's a point where probably as a musician, it just raises more eyebrows and more distracting than helpful.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:54Tim Ferriss?

  Let's go way, way back, as promised. My delayed gratification for the audience. Sorry it took me this long, guys. But the exercise for me is so present every single day.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 41:05Tim Ferriss?

  And would love to talk, maybe after our recording, we can talk more. But for the deadlift, for instance, like the zercher deadlifts or zercher squats, where you're you're holding the barbell in front, really has protected my back.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:17Tim Ferriss?

  In an interesting way, for a lot of good reasons. But we'll see if we come back to that.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 41:22Tim Ferriss?

  If we go way, way back.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Uh oh.

• 41:24Tim Ferriss?

  I would, I mean, not to, like, when.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  But back far enough that I can remember.

• 41:29Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, back, back. Oh, you'll remember. You'll remember. So could you tell the story of finding your birth certificate?

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Oh, God, yeah. Wow. I'd gotten home from school. And mom.

• 41:43Tim Ferriss?

  How old were you at that time?

• 41:44Speaker 02

  I was eleven. And mom had kept in her closet like a Crown Royal bag that was full of coins. But she always put it in different places. Because when I was going, you know, you had the concession stand at school. For a quarter, you could get a candy bar back then, or like ten cents, you could get a Coke.

• 42:01Tim Ferriss?

  And just so people can put you in space, where were you at the time?

• 42:04Speaker 02

  In Louisiana, a little town, Stark, Louisiana, where I grew up, a little farming community. I mean, it's just a caution light, a cotton gin. That's where I grew up. So I was in her, looking for the little bag, trying to find some quarters or something to go buy a candy bar at the store or something. I found the bag and there was a box right next to it. Opened the box and right on top was my birth certificate. And I didn't think much of it and I started looking at it and and I saw McGraw where he had a line had been drawn through it. And right above it, written by hand and pencil was Smith, which was my stepdad's name. And then it said dad's occupation, professional baseball player. And of course, of being 11 years old and growing up, we were like low, low

• 42:50Speaker 02

  middle class and you know, didn't have any money and seeing something like that, it was just so hard to register. It didn't seem real and oddly enough, I had three baseball cards on my wall in my room and his was one of them. Cause he was one of my favorite players. So I instantly called my mom and I could tell that it hit her like a ton of bricks and she was at work. And I'm like, Mom, what is this? What does this mean? And then she was like, oh my God. That's all she said. And she said, I'll be right home. And then she came home and we went for a ride and she told me the whole story. What was the story? Her junior summer in high school, her mom had just left her dad, my grandpa. And they were staying

• 43:36Speaker 02

  in a motel that had a pool with the outdoor, you know, like a motor court motel they were staying in. And it just so happened that my grandmother and my mom were staying there, but it just so happened that the minor league team Jacksonville Suns, minor league team for the Mets, all the ballplayers were staying in that hotel as well. So Tug and my mom met at the pool and sort of dated over the summer. And when he left and got called up or whatever, left, she found out she was pregnant. My mom was a dancer and she had just gotten invited to try out for where the action is by Dick Clark, which was like his first show, the precursor to American Bandstand and all that stuff. So my mom had just gotten a letter inviting her to audition for it.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  And she had just found out she was pregnant with me. And then I have her senior portrait that she took, that they always take at the beginning of the senior year. And she had just found out two days before the senior portrait, she was pregnant with me. And every time I look at that portrait, I can see it in her eyes. I can see that her whole future had just disappeared in front of her. She told me the whole story and said that she hadn't talked to him since. And hasn't heard from him. And I said, but I'd like to meet him, you know? So she got in touch with his lawyer somehow, his agent somehow. He was still playing at the time. And they arranged somehow. Mom borrowed a car from her boss and some money from her

• 45:07Speaker 02

  boss. He said he would leave tickets for us and have lunch with us. We drove there. He met us for lunch. We talked for a little while and he just said, you know, I'm not your dad. I don't think I'm your dad, but we can be friends kind of deal. Went to the game. I had a Pete Rose magazine where Pete Rose was about to break the hitting record that I brought with me and he took me in the clubhouse and Pete Rose signed that. I got to meet Pete Rose. Got to throw the ball a little bit with some of the guys for batting practice and my mom had got me a McGraw shirt made and a Phillies hat and all that stuff. So she had me all decked out. So the next year, so we met, never saw him after the game

• 45:51Speaker 02

  or anything, never heard from him again. So of course I was obsessed. As an 11 year old kid would be about something like that.

• 46:01Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. Back in the day, 2001, I started my first e-commerce business and it was a mess. You had to cobble together all these different tools that didn't want to talk to one another. It was a giant headache. And since then, over the years, and sometimes very quietly, I've started e-commerce websites. And guess what I've used? I've used Shopify. Now, how did I first bump into Shopify though? That was in 2008, when I asked you guys, my dear readers, how I should revise the four hour work week for the expanded edition, which came out in 2009. And people said Shopify, Shopify, Shopify, you have to check it out. It was just an elegant all

• 46:43Tim Ferriss?

  in one solution. And man, oh, man, have they grown and improved things even further. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses now around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the US, which is nuts. From household names like Mattel and Jim Sharkey. To brands just getting started and little, little ecommerce sites like the ones that I have started after the large one. It's packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, improve your photography, and they can take it from that where you're creating the website all the way to finding customers with email and social media campaigns. And if you ever get stuck at any point, their award-winning 24/7 customer support is always there to help.

• 47:24Tim Ferriss?

  Shopify is the world-class commerce expert and platform I wish I had in the beginning. From managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond, they make it as easy as is humanly possible. You can handle it all in one place, and it's getting easier every day. So check it out. Go to Shopify.com/Tim and sign up for your $1 per month trial today. That's Shopify.com/Tim. One more time, Shopify.com/Tim. What were the emotions that you felt at the time? Was there anger? Was there confusion? Was there admiration? What was the mixture of emotions that you felt?

• 48:05Speaker 02

  I think at the time, I don't think there was anger. I think there was some affirmation in it. We grew up in a very dysfunctional life. The guy who I thought was my dad growing up was an alcoholic and very abusive to my mom and to me. And then the second stepdad was worse than the first one. So we grew up in really, you know, the commercial you see now when footsteps are coming home, kids are scared. That's the way our house was when you'd hear the truck drive up. So for me, there was an affirmation of why I felt like I didn't belong with that guy. So it wasn't a confusion. I don't think I was young enough to register confusion.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  I think I was more, certainly it was more about the excitement of finding out that your dad's a professional baseball player. It's certainly in the circumstances that I grew, was growing up in. So for me, it was sort of a ray of light in a lot of ways. So the next year they were playing in Houston again and I asked mom if I could go see the game again. She got in touch with the agent again and said he would leave two tickets, but he's not gonna see us. So he left two tickets. It was in Houston, which was the only time I'd seen him play. Cut to the first time I saw him play, he came in and gave up a grand slam. The first time I saw him play. But the bullpen is right along, right by the stands. I mean, the stands are to that desk where the bullpen is.

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Ten, twelve feet away. Yeah, you're right there. He wouldn't see us before the game or anything. So he was warming up in the bullpen and my mom says, why don't you go down and say hi to him? He's warming up in the bullpen. So I walked down to where he was warming up and I was as close to me and you as you are to him and he's warming up. Something's yelling at him, tug, it's Tim, tug. And he wouldn't look at me. He wouldn't look at me or acknowledge me. And so I just sort of dropped it for that. Went back home. I didn't use McGraw, I used Smith. Just sort of forgot about it. Didn't forget about it, but not even, only a handful of my friends even knew about it. I didn't tell very many people about it. Sort of, then I got embarrassed, I think, after, after that. That I was just like, sort of thrown away. What happened? What changed?

• 50:17Speaker 02

  Well, when I was eighteen, graduating high school, we didn't have any money for college. I was counting on sports scholarships and I had a few. But I was small, I graduated high school, I was five-ten barely and a hundred and forty pounds, getting football scholarships and basketball scholarships thinking, mm, this probably gonna work out when I get to the next level at my size. So she was gonna call about paying for college, if she could see if he would pay for college. This is a long story. She was gonna see if he'd pay for college. So.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  I was staying out of it. I, you know, I was too busy with my life. And then I remember the last high school football game. I'm getting ready. I'm down on the field, getting ready for the game to start. We'd already ran through the banner and done all that stuff. And somebody taps me on the shoulder. And it was my mom. I'm on the sidelines getting ready to go out and play. I'm like, Mom, what are you doing here? You know, we're about to play a game. You can't be down here on the sidelines. She goes, well, I heard from Tug's lawyer today. And I said, okay, Mom, can we wait till after the game? We get home to talk about this. So played the game, got home, and we talked a little bit about it. And then we could talk about the next morning. And the deal was they'd sent a contract.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  And they said that he would pay $300 a year towards my college. And that I wouldn't never be able to contact him again. And if I did, the money would, anyway, $300 a year for college. And you can't contact me anymore. And that, to me, was enough to say, you know what? Fine. My only request is I don't even need the money. $300 a month is not going to do anything. I don't need the money. Don't need anything. My only request is that he has to meet me with me one last time. And then if he wants me to sign a contract to leave him alone, I'll do whatever. So we flew to Houston or drove to Houston, drove to Houston. He had retired at this point.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  And I'd just graduated high school, so I was as tall as him. And we walked into the hotel and mom said, well, there's Tug standing checking in over there. And he had somebody with him who was his lawyer slash agent. So I walked over to him and tapped him on the shoulder. And he turned around and looked at me and said, I Tug, I'm Tim. Because he hadn't seen me since I was 11. And I introduced myself to the guy standing next to him. And the guy standing next to him turned completely white. Because I looked just like him. So he knew that the gig was up.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  So we sort of spent the day together hanging out a little bit and then we went to dinner that night, he, mom and I. There was a point during dinner, small talk, where I asked mom if she could leave us alone and let us talk for a minute. And of course, mom didn't want to do that. And I assured her that I had this, this was fine. And as soon as she left, I just looked at Tug and says, look, I'll sign your contract. I'll never talk to you again. I won't bother you. I just have one question for you. And I asked him, do you think you're my dad? And he says, yes, I believe I am. And he said, we'll tear the contract up. And then I didn't hear from him for a year after that. But after that, we ended up starting to see more of

• 53:37Speaker 02

  each other. And me going while I was in college, I would drive up to Philly and visit and got to know my little brother Mark and my little sister Carrie, which was great to come out of. But I always, this is what I'll get back to. At the end of the day, I get asked a lot, and you said it right, a lot of people now don't know the story. They knew it at the beginning of my career, but a lot of people that know my career now that know who my dad was, they think that I grew up in that world. And I didn't. So I'm glad we're talking about this because a lot of people can understand now that I didn't grow up in that world. But the long and short of it is when people ask, how could you have anything to do with your dad? How could you have not hated him? How could you have just not turned your back on

• 54:15Speaker 02

  him? My answer always is he gave me something that was so precious. And that was hope. Whether he meant to, and he didn't, or knew it, or any of those things. He gave me a reason to think that I can get out of the situation that I was in, that if he can do that, then I have it in me to do something. And so for that reason alone, I couldn't hate him. Hope, man, that is just, it's a bedrock of.

• 54:47Tim Ferriss?

  Everything else.

• 54:49Speaker 02

  If everything else is gone, if you got hope, you still got a chance.

• 54:52Tim Ferriss?

  We were talking to a friend of mine. He's got a couple of kids now, now mostly grown. I think Bag is all grown. Think about it. I mean, the older I get, the younger people seem.

• 55:01Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 55:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, they're adults.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  Tell me about it.

• 55:05Tim Ferriss?

  And he said, and we went for a hike at one point, and he's just a really sweet, very smart guy. And I asked him, like, all right, what would your advice be to an aspiring parent? Me, I don't yet have any kids, but really am looking forward to that, building a family. And he said, it's really simple. Your job is to love your kids. They don't owe you anything. It's not their job to love you. Number two, you have to teach them to be optimistic.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 55:30Tim Ferriss?

  That's it.

• 55:31Speaker 02

  Those two things make perfect sense.

• 55:33Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 55:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. Your vision of their life and your expectations of their life, don't let it cloud your love and guidance for them.

• 55:40Tim Ferriss?

  I have lots of questions about family because it's top of mind for me. But I want to ask you about guitars. Here's why. Because I was looking up on the way here, Yo-Yo Ma, famous cello player. Picked up cello, probably got handed a cello at age four.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 56:00Tim Ferriss?

  All right. My understanding is you did not do that.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  No.

• 56:04Tim Ferriss?

  With guitars.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  No.

• 56:05Tim Ferriss?

  So how did this music thing come about?

• 56:08Speaker 02

  Well.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  Well, the music thing came about because of my mom's love for music. Because from my earliest memory, the time I could remember, my mom was always singing and playing records around the house. It always had the radio wide open. So I knew every song on the radio and she would encourage me to sing. She always wanted me to sing along with her on the radio. So I knew every song on the radio would sing with my mom all the time. We'd walk around the house singing, singing in church. I mean, my friends used to give me shit all the time playing baseball. As I played shortstop and the whole time I'm out there, I'm singing songs and playing around. So I was always singing to the point to where my, my sisters are always like, shut up, just shut up. Just stop singing. And I still do it to this day. Somebody can say a word and I'll sing a song that's got that word in it.

• 56:55Speaker 02

  It just, it's just in me. I can't get it out. So it was always something, but I was in the same category that you were thinking that, you know, the guys you hear on the radio are guys that have been doing this since they were three or four years old. They're trained musicians. They're guys that.

• 57:08Tim Ferriss?

  Jackson 5.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. This is just, this is something you can't just do unless you're trained to do it since you were a little kid. So I got into college. That's when I realized when I got into college and I went out for the first football sort of roundup and see everybody. When I looked around and thought, all right.

• 57:29Tim Ferriss?

  I'm gonna get killed.

• 57:30Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm gonna be meat on the practice squad, never see the field and get the hell beat out of me and spend all of my time here. So I ended up not playing ball, joined a fraternity, pawned my high school ring and bought a guitar for 20 bucks.

• 57:48Tim Ferriss?

  Why did you decide to get the guitar?

• 57:51Speaker 02

  Because I thought I love music. I love singing. Chicks might dig it if I got a guitar and learn to play a few songs.

• 57:57Tim Ferriss?

  Okay, so it wasn't so far ahead as to like.

• 58:00Speaker 02

  No, I wasn't, I wasn't thinking about moving to Nat. It wasn't a career move. This was, this was, it was a move, but it wasn't a career move. And you know, and I thought, you know, I could play some clubs around town. It'd be fun to do. I even thought, look, my biggest dream I could have here is get a house gig somewhere where I'm making money every week and playing music.

• 58:18Tim Ferriss?

  And remind me, where were you at the time?

• 58:19Speaker 02

  I was in Louisiana Monroe.

• 58:21Tim Ferriss?

  In Louisiana.

• 58:21Speaker 02

  At Northeast Louisiana, which is U L M now, but back then it was Northeast Louisiana University. So I bought the guitar and all of my friends had moved away for the summers. My freshman summer in college, I had a job where I worked four hours a day to plant nursery in the mornings, just moving stuff. And I'd come home and just, I'd watch CMT and watch where their fingers were on the guitars.

• 58:45Tim Ferriss?

  Early YouTube.

• 58:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, early YouTube. And then on music sheets, it had these little guitar fret things where it would show you where your fingers were. So I spent a lot of years where my fingers were in the wrong position, but I would still make the chord. And my buddy, my roommates would hide my guitar for the longest time because I was so bad. But then when I started getting pretty good at it, they would hide it. I couldn't find it. But when chicks would come over to the house, they would, they would grab my guitar and bring it to me and want me to start playing songs.

• 59:11Tim Ferriss?

  Dance, monkey dance.

• 59:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So, um, over that summer, I learned about 50 songs and I just started playing, just me and a guitar at this little catfish house called Cock of the Walk. And that was my first gig. And that's how I paid my rent for a while.

• 59:26Tim Ferriss?

  What was the first?

• 59:27Speaker 02

  By the way, I am still a terrible guitar player. I can play well enough to write my songs in a safe place.

• 59:35Tim Ferriss?

  It worked for you. When was the first inkling or the first sign feeling, maybe, where you're like, okay, I think this could be a thing?

• 59:45Speaker 02

  First off, the encouragement I got from my friends in college, my fraternity buddies, which that could go either way. When you're trying to play guitar and sing songs from your buddies in a fraternity, that could go the wrong way. But when it didn't, when they were encouraging me and they were giving me credit and telling me how good I was, to me, that was, that was a big deal for a bunch of guys to tell your friends to say that when you're just trying to figure it out and you don't even know anything about it, really. For them to tell you that you're good and they, they want to hear you do it and they ask you to sing all the time. So when I started playing clubs and stuff, I would get good reaction from the crowds and then the owners would come over and say, hey, would you want to come back? And, you know, you guys are the best band we've had, you know, stuff like that. And then I took a military science class.

• 1:00:30Tim Ferriss?

  Military science, like strategy?

• 1:00:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:32Tim Ferriss?

  Studying past generals?

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I got to know the instructor, Captain Whitehead was his name. He was an army guy and head of the ROTC and everything there. And all the guys in the class were ROTC guys, ROTC. Anyway, we took the class and it was tactics and we were in the field doing stuff. We'd spend a weekend tracking, even doing all the stuff with repelling and, you know, all kinds of stuff. It was a great course. And at the end of the course, everybody was asked to vote who was our platoon leader. Well, I got voted by all the ROTC guys as the platoon leader for the class, for the year. So I was the top student in the class. And so Captain Whitehead took a big interest in me, but he thought I should be a Marine. So he kept taking me to the Marine recruiting office.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  So I visited the Marine recruiting office quite a bit, filled out all my paperwork. And one night I decided I had everything packed. I sold everything I had, sold my car, water skis, shotguns, sold everything I had. I think I ended up with about $3,000. I had my guitar, one suitcase and my Marine paperwork sitting on my dresser. And I said, when I wake up in the morning, I'll decide whether I'm going to move to Nashville or join the Marines. And I fell asleep, woke up the next morning, looked over, got up, picked up the marine paper, tore it up, put it in the garbage and went and bought a Greyhound bus ticket.

• 1:01:58Speaker 02

  And ended up in Nashville.

• 1:02:01Tim Ferriss?

  So many questions. So why did Captain Whitehead think you should be a Marine?

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  I don't know. I guess because I did well in the class and he liked, we got along well. He, he, he kept coming to our fraternity house and hanging out with us. We just got along well and he liked me. As a matter of fact, we played, it had to have been 15 years later after I was, had a lot of success. We played the base in San Diego, military base in San Diego. And it was huge. It was packed and I'm singing and playing. I'm standing in front of the stage and I looked down and Captain Whitehead's right at the front of the stage. And I got to say hi to him and talk to him a little bit afterwards. He just always, he just says, you would have been a good Marine.

• 1:02:43Tim Ferriss?

  You missed the boat, son.

• 1:02:46Speaker 02

  No, I didn't.

• 1:02:48Tim Ferriss?

  Kidding. The platoon leader piece is interesting to me. What do you think, even if you had to speculate, why did that happen? Why did they vote you platoon leader?

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, I just enjoyed it.

• 1:03:05Tim Ferriss?

  What do you think? Right? Because presumably a bunch of guys in the class or a bunch of people in the class.

• 1:03:10Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think there were a few obstacles that I figured, was able to figure out and like moving stuff and how to build a bridge across, you know, just little things that I was able to figure out or, or if I wasn't able to figure out, just acted like I did and took charge of it and got it done. But, um, I don't know. It was just, it was one of those things that was really interesting to me. It made sense to me. And when you step into something you don't know anything about and all of a sudden it clicks and makes sense, it just made sense. And it really sparked my interest into being in the military because I thought, wow, if I can be around all these guys who want to do this and it works out, maybe this is a career path for me.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  Thank God I did.

• 1:03:50Tim Ferriss?

  So what was it?

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  But I have so much respect.

• 1:03:52Tim Ferriss?

  I mean, who knows?

• 1:03:53Speaker 02

  My sister, my sister was in the army. She was army intelligence cousins, uncles. So I've got a long history of military family.

• 1:04:00Tim Ferriss?

  What was it that morning? As a long time ago, of course, but it seems like such a sliding door moment, such an important fork in the road. What was it that led you to tear up the paperwork?

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  I thought that I could always go back to that. And I can't always go back to the, to the music because there had come a point where that's passed. But the hardest part was having to call my mom because my mom was really intent on me making something out of myself because of, you know, how hard our life was growing up and how hard her life was. And she worked three jobs and going to work with black eyes and busted lips and, you know, just all the struggles that a single abused mom, well, not single, but abused mom has to deal with. She was pretty single for all intent and purpose. But I had to call her. I was in pre-law. My joke now is that I have paid more lawyers in my life than I would have ever made as well.

• 1:04:58Tim Ferriss?

  I believe that that is probably true.

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I had to call my mom and I was scared to death because I knew how badly she wanted me to complete school and go to law school. And I know how badly she wanted that for me and for her because of the sacrifices that she had made. Because, you know, people wanted her to give me up for adoption, all sorts of stuff. And she, she was a 17 year old girl that hung on to a kid. But I called her and told her what my plan was, embrace myself, fully expecting my little Italian mom to give me a good wearing out because she can do that. And, and what she said, it's going to make me cry what she said, but she said, "Son, I'm surprised you haven't done it already. And if you don't, you'll never know. So you should go."

• 1:05:40Speaker 02

  And it was so shocking and unexpected that it gave me all the confidence in the world I needed. And then when I first moved here, back to where you think everybody grows up since they were a little kid with a guitar in their hands and singing. And that's how they become famous. When I first moved here and started going to clubs and sitting in, I was thinking, wait a minute, I can hang with these guys. I can hang with these guys. I can find my niche here.

• 1:06:05Tim Ferriss?

  How many shows do you think, how many gigs had you played up to the point that you got on that Greyhound bus?

• 1:06:11Speaker 02

  A year or two gigs, I don't know, a hundred maybe at clubs, mostly just me and a guitar, some with a band. I actually went to Jacksonville for about six months because my mom had moved to Jacksonville after I started college. Because she just went through another divorce and it was a terrible divorce. But she moved to Jacksonville, which is where she grew up. So Jacksonville Junior College had just won the Junior College World Series. Coach heard about me a couple of years ago back in high school. He knew my mom somehow. Anyway, invited me to come to play baseball at Florida Junior College. So I thought, all right, this is getting old here. I'm playing music. I'm not really going to class like I should.

• 1:06:57Speaker 02

  Maybe I should go out there and try to play baseball, see what happens. So I moved to Florida, same thing, showed up. Was going to play baseball, hung around for a little while, realized that I really didn't want to do that. Because I was playing clubs at night there too, and just decided to go full time, start playing clubs in Florida. And did that, then I moved back to Monroe, played for about three months and then moved to Nashville.

• 1:07:19Tim Ferriss?

  I'm curious what Nashville did for you because it makes me think of Bob Dylan. Before he was Bob Dylan, but like moving from Minnesota to, I think it was Greenwich Village, like moves to the epicenter. It's like, I'm going to find Guthrie and. I don't know how I'm gonna make it work, but I'm gonna figure it out. And I'm going to the center of the action. And that story was really laid out for me in detail by this very, very impressive investor and fascinating human, Bill Gurley, who is in Austin. But he has a book coming out soon called Running Down a Dream, which is about pursuing passion and then finding that lightning in a bottle for yourself.

• 1:08:02Tim Ferriss?

  But one of his sections is on going to the epicenter, like going to where the action is. And I would love for you to describe what effect Nashville had. I mean, in a sense, you already showed some of what can happen by the fact that you get off the bus, you go have a beer after last call, and then bada bing bada boom.

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  And you hear a great song.

• 1:08:26Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:08:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, and songs that end up making my career.

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  I think instantly, it just lit a fire under me. When you jump into a pool of people who are like-minded and who are all chasing the same thing, there's just such an energy that you get from everybody that's doing it. Like, you know, Tracy Lawrence, Kenny Chesney and I were best friends, and we ran around together everywhere. None of us had record deals, and we would compete. You know, all these clubs, like you could get up and sing, and you could win 50 bucks. Who got the most hand applause? So we were always competing to get rent money.

• 1:09:03Tim Ferriss?

  That's cool.

• 1:09:03Speaker 02

  Try to outdo it. Tracy usually always won, because he was the best singer out of all of them at the time. But just running around, being involved every night, being at somebody's apartment, playing music, writing songs every day, out every night, singing in all these clubs. It was just an immersion experience of art, where you learn so much. You learn from different singers. You hear somebody sing, and you think, wow, how do they do that? How can I? You imitate people, you figure things out, you see what somebody's doing on stage, you see how somebody's singing, you see how somebody's songwriting. It just becomes this sort of gumbo of all this magic that you find. And it starts to get, just comes into every pore of your body, and you just open yourself up to it and just try to learn as much as you can. And it can be heartbreaking, too, at the same time, you know.

• 1:09:48Speaker 02

  And then also recognizing.

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  Where you're getting held back, where you start realizing you need to put more aspirational people around you as opposed to people are just being happy doing what they're doing. And I try to tell it to my daughters all the time.

• 1:10:04Tim Ferriss?

  That sounds like it could be very difficult.

• 1:10:06Speaker 02

  It can be difficult because it's not about dropping friends, but it's about gathering friends that people that you want to be liked or they have traits that you want to, that you want to emulate.

• 1:10:16Tim Ferriss?

  Could you describe an instance of when that happened and how you navigated it?

• 1:10:21Speaker 02

  I don't know if I can describe an instance.

• 1:10:23Tim Ferriss?

  Or just why that even occurred to you, I guess, and how you went about finding those?

• 1:10:28Speaker 02

  Well, because I needed to learn for one thing, because I knew nothing about the music business, how to make a record. I knew nothing about anything except for how to sing along to the radio and then, you know, play some songs I learned on the guitar. I was an amateur, period, at everything. So I just wanted to be around people who knew what they were doing and people who could teach me things and people that were willing to teach me stuff and people that if I wanted to compete, if I can't compete with this guy who's playing in a club in downtown Nashville, then I'm not going to compete with the guys who have record labels and are selling millions of records.

• 1:11:05Tim Ferriss?

  So how did you find those people to learn from?

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  I think it's just a matter of just being out and being around people and just learning who, who the people are, who are going to be aspirational to you and inspirational to you and who the people are going to hold you in place.

• 1:11:21Tim Ferriss?

  Do any people stand out in those, I don't know, first like five years, let's just say?

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  Well, Mike Borsheta stands out. Mike Borsheta is who signed me to my rec, first record deal at Curb Records. And he was somebody who I walked off the street, had a demo of a few songs. He tried to kick me out of his office and I made him listen to the songs.

• 1:11:43Tim Ferriss?

  How did you get into his office in the first place?

• 1:11:45Speaker 02

  The way I got into his office is because oddly enough, it was because of Tug. Because a guy named Bruce Windell was a friend of Mike Borchetta's and he happened to be a friend of Tug's. So Tug was talking to Bruce Windell one day and Bruce says, I know a guy named Mike Borchetta down in Nashville, maybe I can get him a meeting with him. And that was it. So I got his phone number and that's all he gave me. So I kept trying and trying and trying to get a meeting with him. I couldn't get a meeting with him. So it was during Fan Fair one year. What is Fan Fair? Now it's what the big thing they have at the stadium every year where everybody plays, but back then Fan Fair was when you would just sit and stand in a booth for three

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  days and sign autographs for thousands and thousands of people that would come through. So this was going on one year, of course, I wasn't signing autographs, I didn't have a record label. So I decided I'm gonna go buy Curb Records and see if Mike Borchetta's in his office. And I'd had a demo of these- After him not returning any of your calls. After him not returning my calls. And I have to back up just a little bit because there was this little place called Po'boy Don's in Tallulah, Louisiana, that was in the middle of a cotton field and it was just a little wood frame shack, but it was like a convenience store slash deer butcher shop slash crawfish bowl kind of place. And in the back of the store, they had a bunch of stumps and an old wood stove and there

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  were a bunch of guys all in their seventies and sixties that were all playing country music. And I happened to go walk, be out that area one day and it was in the middle of nowhere. And so I stopped in and sat down and started playing guitar with these guys. So they kept inviting me to come back. So it ended up being, it was about 30 miles from school. So every Thursday night, it'd end up being like five or six cars of my fraternity brothers. We'd all go to this little hole in the wall place with all these 70-year-old guys and they would give us free beer and crawfish as long as I would sit back there and sing with them. And it ended up, that place becoming packed and packed and packed where there were just people there every Thursday night. And it just became a really fun thing. So when I moved to Nashville, Po'boy Don, who owned that and it was a farmer too and

• 1:13:53Speaker 02

  he owned all the farmland around and just, he played the bass and the thing in his store and he just really loved me and loved to hear me sing. So I needed a demo. I didn't have a demo. Didn't have any money for a demo. So I called him and he sent me $3,000 to record a demo. So I recorded a demo and that's the demo I played for Mike Borchetto when I walked into his office. Anyway, I sit down. He said, well, leave the CD with me.

• 1:14:20Tim Ferriss?

  So you're just knock, knock. Anybody home?

• 1:14:22Speaker 02

  Well, I walked past the secretary because I saw he was in his office and I walked past the secretary. She goes, excuse me. And I said, I'm just supposed to say hi to Mike. I walked in. I said, hi, Mike. How you doing? He said, who are you? Then I told him my name. He goes, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He says, um, call me next week and we'll meet. And I said, well, I have my demo here. I'd like for you to listen to it. And he goes, well, leave it on the desk and I'll listen to it. I says, well, can you listen to it now? And he goes, no, I'm headed out to Fanfare. I gotta go. I says, well, can you just listen to part of a song? He goes, all right, I'll listen to the song. So he put the song in and halfway through the first one, he goes, you got a record deal, kid.

• 1:14:53Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 1:14:54Speaker 02

  And that's how I got a record deal.

• 1:14:56Tim Ferriss?

  Halfway through the first song?

• 1:14:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:14:58Tim Ferriss?

  Was it the first song on the demo?

• 1:15:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, first song on the demo. Yeah. And then it was convoluted after that, but I got a record deal. So I got my foot in the door. So, you know, it started from there. But he was somebody that, when a guy who runs a record label, and you know nothing about how that works, and it's the first record label I went to, sits down and listens to half of your demo, which you're not even sure is any good, and says you have a record deal. Well, I think you get exponentially better in that instant.

• 1:15:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah. So you're giving wings in a way.

• 1:15:33Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:15:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:36Speaker 02

  The lustered seed.

• 1:15:37Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So we're gonna hop around a little bit because we could go a million different directions. I mean, we could spend 20 hours talking about your career and still not run out of material. I believe it might have been in parade. It could have been in a different interview. But correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you've said that your wife saved your life.

• 1:15:57Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 1:15:57Tim Ferriss?

  Along those lines.

• 1:15:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:59Tim Ferriss?

  Why is that?

• 1:16:00Speaker 02

  Because I was running pretty hard. I was running hard back in the day.

• 1:16:07Tim Ferriss?

  What does that mean?

• 1:16:08Speaker 02

  Well, I was drinking a lot, which that didn't stop after we got married, but she beat it out of me after a while. But, um, you know, I was, I was just doing everything. I was, I was a kid in a candy store, you know, especially after I got successful and never had any money before, never been around any of that stuff before. And then all of a sudden. It became a tool that was useful till it wasn't. When Faith came along, I was burning it wide open when we met. And she started tapping the brakes for me.

• 1:16:42Tim Ferriss?

  How did she do that in a way that didn't repel you?

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  Well, look at her.

• 1:16:47Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I mean, right. Yeah, I mean, yeah, she's, she's got a lot on offer. This is, this is for sure. But like, I would imagine, we don't know each other well, but that strong willed guy, high gear, high intensity, high velocity, kid in a candy store. Like Faith is incredible on a million different levels. And you also have a lot of options around.

• 1:17:10Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:17:10Tim Ferriss?

  So what allowed her to dial some of those things back, which ended up being really important long term for you and for both of you without scaring you off in a sense?

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  Well, A, I knew that I was at a point where I needed to slow down.

• 1:17:26Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. So you had the, the self-awareness.

• 1:17:28Speaker 02

  I had the self-awareness that, that I needed to slow down at the time. B, when we met, we were 28 years old. So we were a little older. We both had success. And then C, once I met her, I didn't want to lose her. I just didn't want to lose her.

• 1:17:46Tim Ferriss?

  What was it about her?

• 1:17:48Speaker 02

  She's just magic. She's magic. She's not just her singing and her looks and all that's in. Of course, that's all a bonus. But as a person, she's just magic. She just lights up a room and she lit me up and still does. And I wouldn't be the same artist had I not met her. I certainly wouldn't have the career that I've had had I not met her. Certainly wouldn't have lasted as long. I wouldn't have lasted as long. I would have burned out really quickly, I think, especially if I had lost her after I found her, if I had lost her because of not sort of bringing myself around a little bit, then I definitely would have.

• 1:18:31Speaker 02

  Been in a downward spiral.

• 1:18:33Tim Ferriss?

  So you guys met at twenty eight. When did you change the drinking?

• 1:18:38Speaker 02

  It took a while. I certainly calmed it down quite a bit. And it fluctuated, you know, it would be times where it was not bad, then times where it was bad. And then it just got to where it was just got out of control. That's when she set me down. Well, actually, she set me down a few times, but actually, there was one morning in particular where I woke up and realized that it was seven in the morning. I was gonna have to take the kids to school soon. And I realized I had a bottle of whiskey in my hand at seven in the morning. And I had the bottle in my hand. I walked straight back to the bedroom and told her that I need help. She goes, all right, let's do it. I'm with you.

• 1:19:21Speaker 02

  And she's stuck by me the whole time. And look, it's not been a linear path, as anybody knows, it's ever gone through that kind of thing. It's not a linear path. There's always pitfalls and steps backwards and steps forward. But um, she's a rock. She's a rock.

• 1:19:37Tim Ferriss?

  You know, this is just a random thought, but at some point, if you haven't met Laird Hamilton and his wife Gabby, Laird Hamilton's

• 1:19:44Speaker 02

  I know Laird is, yeah.

• 1:19:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. In any case, a lot of parallels

• 1:19:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:19:48Tim Ferriss?

  in your lives. And I think also Gabby, Gabby Reese, who used to be a professional volleyball player. In any case, just a lot of parallels. I mean, intensity, right? High gear and it's very common, at least among my friends, certainly, and even in my case, way back in the day. It's like that type of intensity can also get misapplied or reapplied to something like alcohol.

• 1:20:17Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:20:18Tim Ferriss?

  And it's not always a selective intensity.

• 1:20:21Speaker 02

  No, it's not selective intensity. And then when it becomes a physical dependency, then you're in trouble.

• 1:20:26Tim Ferriss?

  Then you're in trouble.

• 1:20:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:27Tim Ferriss?

  How has fatherhood changed you?

• 1:20:29Speaker 02

  Hmm. Wow. Well, you certainly see with different eyes. And it changes what your definition of love is, more so than even getting married, I think, when you have children. Because it's, there's such a responsibility and a weight that comes with all the brightness and the light and the love that causes you to realize that that's your true eternal life.

• 1:20:59Speaker 02

  Is your children and how they carry their perception of you forward. And it's a scary proposition because you're not going to do it right. Nobody does it right. You just hope you do thirty percent of it right and you just show up. I think the thing that it changed more than anything, and I think anybody would tell you this, and it's pretty simple. It takes a lot of selfishness out of you. And, you know, part of you has to have that, I guess, in order to to succeed and to push forward. But, um, boy, it takes a lot of selfishness out of you and puts a lot of drive and passion and responsibility and thinking of the future in your path, which

• 1:21:45Speaker 02

  provides more structure for you. And what I've also found out too is, is as the kids grow up, and Faith and I both have found out that structure was so good because you had to be on the ball. You had to get up every morning at six. You had to break breakfast. You had to take your kids to school. You had to help with homework, had to go to practices, you coached softball. All those things that keep you in a good balanced routine. So when the kids start leaving the house, all of a sudden you start, what am I going to do with the rest of my day? Now I've got, I don't have to get up at six. It can take away some of your focus and it can take away some of your routine and it can take away a little bit of drive once the kids are out of the house.

• 1:22:25Speaker 02

  It comes back, but at first you're sort of lost and sort of figuring out what, what do I do with my time here?

• 1:22:33Tim Ferriss?

  I've got a few chapters to get through before I get there, but.

• 1:22:36Speaker 02

  And then after about six or eight months a year, then you realize you're, you and your wife, you realize you're home alone. Then the fun begins.

• 1:22:47Tim Ferriss?

  How did you decide to be a father in the sense like, how did you set rules for yourself or goals? Hopes without necessarily a model for it? So part of the reason I think that I've delayed building a family for as long as I have is that, God bless my dad in certain ways, but I want to do things differently, if I did it at all, very differently. And since I felt like I had no role model, I felt like I had no confidence that I would be a good father. And so I was like, well, fundamentally, if I'm bringing, helping bring some life into the world. They didn't ask for it necessarily. I mean, we could debate.

• 1:23:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:30Tim Ferriss?

  Gets into some deep philosophical territory and religious territory quickly, but I wouldn't want to do a bad job or more harm than good. And so I've waited and waited and waited and.

• 1:23:41Speaker 02

  Well, you're gonna do a bad job.

• 1:23:42Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:44Speaker 02

  It's just, I mean, everybody does a bad job.

• 1:23:47Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:48Speaker 02

  There's no training manager, but I'm, I was in the same boat. I didn't know if I was gonna be a good dad or bad. I didn't know what kind of dad I would be. I, I knew that I wanted to be a dad and I wanted to be a good dad and I knew that I didn't want my children's life to be like mine was. So I think in a lot of ways, maybe that the life that I had growing up prepared me to be a better dad because of what I knew I didn't want to do. And I found this business has really made me find out that learning what you don't want to do and what doesn't work for you is better than knowing what does.

• 1:24:23Tim Ferriss?

  All right. So I'm gonna grab that and run with it. Not because there's an expression in Japanese. I, I went to Japan as an exchange student called Hamen Kyoshi. Hamen Kyoshi is like opposite teacher. It's basically like an anti role model and they show you what not to do. So I'm wondering if there professionally have been any experiences, a tour, how you made a song or even chose a song in the first place that really taught you what not to do. Like an event, a song, a performance, a commitment, a partnership, anything where you're like, mm, okay.

• 1:25:00Speaker 02

  Oh, I've put myself in plenty of positions that I wish I hadn't. I don't know if I could specifically say what not to do. I can say be prepared all the time is always a good thing, but I can tell you my most embarrassing moment in the music business. It might be the best way to go. Bruce Springsteen, who I'm a huge fan of, and he's a friend and I've known him for a long time. One of the greatest guys in the world, sweetheart. Music Cares, you know what Music Cares is? It's where they do a big concert the night before the Grammys to raise money, and it honors a specific artist. And other artists come in and do their songs. So Bruce was being honored, so he called and asked if Faith and I would do Tougher Than the Rest together as part of the thing.

• 1:25:45Speaker 02

  And of course, we said, yes, we would love to do it. So everybody's doing their songs and their singing, you know, there's all the big guys playing Bruce's songs. So we do Tougher Than Rest, and we do a great job on it. Everything turned out good, and we're sitting at Bruce's table, we're talking, and Bruce is like, hey, man, you know, at the end of this, you know, we're gonna do Glory Days. He says, everybody's gonna come on stage and just sing along with the choruses. So do you think you and Faith are gonna come up and do that? And I'm gonna say, sure, we'll come up and do the chorus, sing along the chorus of Glory Days. So we're up there, we're on stage, and we're all singing along. So Bruce is in the second chorus, and he looks over at one artist. Yeah. He's like, hey, come sing the second verse. And the artist's like, mm-mm, no. So he looks at another artist, like, come sing the second verse.

• 1:26:30Speaker 02

  And that artist is like, mm-mm, no, no, no. So on the microphone, he goes, hey, cowboy hat, come sing the second verse. And in my mind, I'm thinking, all right, it's Glory Days, I know it, but I don't think I've ever sung. And Bruce's phrasing is some of the hardest phrasing in the world, the way he writes. And I'm thought, all right, I can get through the second verse of this, I can figure it out. The words are up there. So I step up, and I have no idea where to come in, I don't know the phrasing, I don't know anything. And everybody who is anybody in the music business is out there. And I'm standing there with that, when your mom has caught you doing something, or your wife has caught you doing something really bad. Yeah.

• 1:27:12Speaker 02

  And where all the blood rushes out of your body, and your gut punch. So I couldn't sing the song, I'm just like, and Bruce comes up beside me, he's like, I like that. Then he starts singing the song. So then I step back beside Faith, I'm gonna, can I stand up? Yeah. I step back beside Faith, embarrassed, and I step back beside her, and this is what Faith does.

• 1:27:35Speaker 02

  He stepped away from me.

• 1:27:39Speaker 02

  Luckily, they shot it in a way, because it's always recorded and released and everything. They shot it in a way that I could go back and fix the vocal where it didn't look like I screwed it all up. But boy, that was, I didn't have fun that night at the hotel after the Grammy Car thing.

• 1:27:56Tim Ferriss?

  Do you get a lot of ball busting after that?

• 1:27:57Speaker 02

  I did, I did. But none worse than mine, what I did to myself, because it was really the most embarrassing moment. There are a few moments where you feel like you're over your head sometimes. And it usually works out well, but boy, I tell you, performing on the Oscars was one of those moments where everything just seems to, your body defies you. You know, you think you got it under control and when you start, like, everything goes, it worked out, everything was fine, I did a good job. But in the moment, you're feeling like it's falling apart on me right here in front of everybody.

• 1:28:30Tim Ferriss?

  So I would love to flesh out the humanizing of Tim McGraw a little bit, right? Because for people who may not know your career, they might be like, man, this guy just gets off the Greyhound bus. And then it's like, he's in a double and a triple and a homerun. And it's just endless homeruns, right? Green lights the whole way. And I'm curious if there are any favorite failures, things that didn't work, that ended up teaching you something important, or laying the seeds for something later? Or if there was ever a period of feeling plateau or stuckness, and how you dealt with it?

• 1:29:07Speaker 02

  Both of those. I think failure that I learned a lot from was my first album, which we always say went wood. I think we had one song that made it to 38 off of that album. Yeah, went wood. So no hits on it. So the label just sort of forgot about me after that. And so I was slowly gathering songs. But I learned a lot. I learned what I didn't want to do, the way to make music. I learned what I didn't want it to sound like. So I slowly started gathering songs from songwriter friends of mine, not really big songwriters, just friends of mine who were songwriters. Slowly started collecting songs. Label never even called me after the album came out because they didn't do anything.

• 1:29:51Speaker 02

  Didn't talk to them at all. So I collected these songs. And I went to Byron. I said, all right, I'm ready to go record these songs.

• 1:29:59Tim Ferriss?

  Who's Byron again?

• 1:30:00Speaker 02

  My producer Byron Gallimore that we produced together. I said, I'm ready to cut these songs. And he goes, well, has Curb heard them or they proved us? I says, nope, we're just going to book a session and go cut the album. And so we booked a session.

• 1:30:12Tim Ferriss?

  So it was like an album on spec.

• 1:30:13Speaker 02

  Yes, we, we billed Curb.

• 1:30:17Speaker 02

  We billed Curb for the whole thing, cut the album, did all the artwork, had the CD ready with the artwork done and turned it into them. And of course they hit the roof. Cause we'd spent a bunch of money making an album that we weren't approved of. And then they listened and it was the Not a Moment Too Soon album. Then they listened to the album and then they were all on board. And the good thing about that is the first one didn't work. Second one, I said, I want to do this my way and to do this and had Indian outlaw. I'm going to do the songs I want to do. I'm picking all the songs and the songs I want to do. I'm going to cut them the way I want to cut them. And if it fails, it fails on my terms this time. And luckily it worked.

• 1:30:55Tim Ferriss?

  So that's why you didn't reach out for approvals. You're like, I don't want some album by committee.

• 1:31:02Speaker 02

  No, I don't. It never works. Not for me. I'm sure it works for other artists, but anytime I've done that. Anytime that I've let somebody else talk me into a song, whether it be a record label head or somebody else. Taught me into a song that I knew wasn't right for me. It's never worked. It's never worked. And there's been tons of times where people didn't like the song at all and it worked. So.

• 1:31:25Tim Ferriss?

  How did you decide? Or when you say you knew what you didn't want it to sound like, do you say more about that?

• 1:31:34Speaker 02

  Well, you can go out and listen to my first album and you can figure it out. I just knew that there were three songs on the first album that they sort of let me run loose with.

• 1:31:42Tim Ferriss?

  Well, they're also like what other people hear and then there's what you hear and what it means to you.

• 1:31:46Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And you also realize quickly in this business that, you know, you think when you move to town, you find your producer, you find your, you get a record label. You get all those things and everybody knows what they're doing. That's not necessarily the case. Sounds a lot like book publishing. Yeah, most of the time, the artist knows what they're doing and then everybody sort of follows what the artist that gets successful and starts doing what they're doing. But there are great people like, boy, without Byron Gallimore, I wouldn't know my right hand from my left. He's my partner in the studio and I would can't imagine making a record without him. But you find out very quickly, if you don't have an idea about what you want and how you want to make your music and how you want it to sound and how you want your career to go, and if you don't get in control of that and you don't do it the way you want

• 1:32:29Speaker 02

  to do it, it might work, but it's not gonna work for long. And there have been times in my career where I've set back and decided, all right, I'm gonna let this float and let other people make the decisions. Everything's fine for now. And sure enough, if I don't get involved, it doesn't go the way I want it to go. Now, I've got people around me now that's been around me for 20, 30 years that I trust. But even still, if they don't get regular input from me, nobody knows what's in your head. Nobody knows exactly what you picture, even though you might think they do. They don't. I mean, they can get close, but you have to stay involved. I'm learning that more and, you know, these last few years have been tough for me to

• 1:33:13Speaker 02

  be involved as much as I want to be because I've been battling just trying to get my health back. And I'm fortunate that I have the right people around me that helps me through those periods. When your focus is on and you're paying attention to what you're doing and you know what the path is, it makes it easier for everybody around you. What about the periods of stuckness outside of the most recent injury period? Obviously, the multiple surgeries? Well, the biggest period of stuckness and the biggest period where I thought, besides this period where I thought it was might be over is when I went through a whole legal battle with Curb Records. That was a very dark period in my career. They kept extending my contract by putting greatest hits albums out. So every time I would turn in an album, that would be the final album for my contract,

• 1:33:57Speaker 02

  they would drop a greatest hits, which didn't count against the contract. So I think they ended up putting like 10 greatest hits out to keep me from dropping my album. So finally, I decided I either had to bite the bullet and try to go to court with them and get out or be stuck with them. Either way, I'm taking a chance on my career. We battled for a couple of years and I had to pretty much rebuild my career after that. And that was a scary time because momentum's a tough thing. And I heard a quote the other day, it was, it's actually a landman, I was watching it.

• 1:34:30Tim Ferriss?

  It's a great show.

• 1:34:31Speaker 02

  Great show. And Sam Elliott was talking to Billy Bob, he says, you know that monkey at rodeos that rides on the back of the border collie? And the border collie just runs around and runs around and the monkey's just hanging on for dear life. And he can't let it go because he'll die. So he's gotta hold on. He looked at Billy and said, you're that monkey. And I looked at faith, he goes, Jesus Christ, I'm that monkey. So I feel like I'm that monkey. But I don't know that if it's intentional, if it's innately in you, but there's something about even when you know you need to take a break, or even when you know that you need to slow down, when things are rolling, there's this sixth sense in your body that knows you

• 1:35:15Speaker 02

  can't let the momentum stop because it's so hard to restart. Even if consciously you're not thinking that, there's something in you that keeps it driving because you don't want the ball to stop rolling. Because you're scared. Because you're scared if the ball stops rolling, you'll never get it rolling again.

• 1:35:28Tim Ferriss?

  For sure.

• 1:35:29Speaker 02

  So that was a time when that was happening to me. And I thought, you know, well, it's gonna be hard to restart the momentum.

• 1:35:34Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:35Speaker 02

  And then after these surgeries, there's another one of those times.

• 1:35:37Tim Ferriss?

  Legal battles, it's just exhaustion upon exhaustion.

• 1:35:40Speaker 02

  It's just crazy.

• 1:35:41Tim Ferriss?

  And sometimes you can't avoid it, but if you can avoid it.

• 1:35:44Speaker 02

  I don't want to be involved in legal battles unless it's just absolutely. But that was at a point in my career that if I didn't do something, my career was going to be over. And if I did do something, there was a chance.

• 1:35:53Tim Ferriss?

  There was still a risk. What were some of the most important things in retrospect that you did to rebuild your career, regain that momentum afterwards?

• 1:36:02Speaker 02

  Well, choosing the right partner, for one thing, which was Scott Borchetta, who happens to be the son of Mike Borchetta, who signed me to my first deal.

• 1:36:11Tim Ferriss?

  What a small world.

• 1:36:12Speaker 02

  I know. Who I signed with on Big Machine afterwards because I knew he was a hard worker. So that certainly being first, but I was also recording the best album I think I'd ever recorded in my life while all this was going on. Well, once I was cleared to record. And so I had an album ready to go. By the time everything, all the dust was settled, I had an album ready to go and Scott Borchetto was ready and the album worked and the juice was back. A lot of that was my team kept fighting for me the entire time. When I went to Scott, to his label, he, he knew what, what had happened and he fought really hard because he didn't like what had happened either.

• 1:36:56Tim Ferriss?

  I would imagine that also injected a helpful amount of piss and vinegar to demonstrate, to really relaunch in a meaningful way.

• 1:37:07Speaker 02

  It turned me up to 12 after that. I mean, it, it kicked me into high gear for sure. And that's the way I feel now, after all of this and worrying about being able to come back and worrying about if I did come back, what's my show's gonna be like, how I was gonna be able to perform, was I gonna be able to be me again. Now I feel like that same way I felt after coming out of Curb and starting with Big Machine and getting the ball rolling again. I feel like that we're right on the edge of just tipping that boulder over the hill and let it go again.

• 1:37:35Tim Ferriss?

  I am so curious because you must get approached all the time, one way or another, from musicians at different stages in their careers. Maybe it's the son of a friend or the daughter of a fill in the blank, or it could be someone who's just coming up. Maybe they're trying to be an opener for you, who knows. Someone who is earlier in their career, I imagine the advice you might give them has changed over time, but if they want to be more than a flash in the pan.

• 1:38:10Speaker 02

  Take charge.

• 1:38:11Tim Ferriss?

  To really last. Yeah. What advice do you give them?

• 1:38:12Speaker 02

  Take charge.

• 1:38:14Tim Ferriss?

  All right.

• 1:38:14Speaker 02

  Take charge of your career. Take charge of your career. Take charge of what you do. Be confident in your decisions. Listen, of course you want to listen to people, listen to people that know what they're doing, but ultimately you have to make the decisions. You have to make your choices and you have to make the right choices for you. And nobody can do that but yourself. And if you just coast, you, you might have a career for a little while, but if you want a long career, you're gonna have to take charge and ownership of it. And you're gonna have to guide it. And you're gonna have to be, have your finger on the button all the time. And you're gonna have to say yes or you're gonna have to say no. And you're gonna have to use your skills to.

• 1:38:52Speaker 02

  Manage people, you're gonna have to use your skills to be managed.

• 1:38:57Speaker 02

  And both of those things can happen simultaneously, and they have to happen simultaneously. You have to listen to smart people. But if you don't have a vision about what you want to do, if you don't have a plan about what you want to do, if you don't act on it every day, it's not gonna happen. It's just not gonna happen. And you can do all those things and it's still not happening.

• 1:39:18Tim Ferriss?

  Right. But if you do all those things and it doesn't happen, back to your second album, right, it's like you're taking the risk that you fail on your own terms. As opposed to gambling on something that doesn't resonate for you.

• 1:39:32Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:39:33Tim Ferriss?

  That someone's talked you into.

• 1:39:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:35Tim Ferriss?

  So that seems to be a piece of it. There is, as you said, having your finger on the button, being willing to say yes and no.

• 1:39:41Speaker 02

  Being willing to say no is a big deal.

• 1:39:44Tim Ferriss?

  Why do you think people are bad at that?

• 1:39:46Speaker 02

  Saying no?

• 1:39:47Tim Ferriss?

  Sure.

• 1:39:48Speaker 02

  Because people want to please people. You know, they want people to like them. And I want people to like me. But if you don't learn to say no,

• 1:39:56Speaker 02

  not in a mean way or not in a bad way, but just say, no, that's not right for me. And that's back to knowing what's right for you and what isn't right for you. There could be something that on the surface, everybody that works for you says this is the perfect thing. But you've got to know whether it is or not. And sometimes you don't. You know, it can get it right all the time. There's plenty of times you get it wrong. But I think if you go with your gut,

• 1:40:23Speaker 02

  there's a caveat to all of this too. Cause there are plenty of artists who succeed, who don't pick their songs,

• 1:40:33Speaker 02

  don't have any involvement in their production, really don't have any involvement in their management, don't have any involvement in their stage design. And they just show up and do their thing. There's plenty of artists who do that and are successful. So there's, there's always exceptions to the rule. But I think for the most part, the artists who have been around for a long time, the artists I know who have been around for a long time, they take control of their careers.

• 1:40:57Tim Ferriss?

  I interviewed quite a long time ago, he's since sadly passed away, but Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks from the UK. Large religious figure.

• 1:41:06Speaker 02

  Well, if you're a lord rabbi, you gotta be a big religious.

• 1:41:09Tim Ferriss?

  He's a big deal and very good at conflict resolution, incredibly open-hearted man. And he, I recall at one point with me, he shared this quote, which I'm going to paraphrase, but it was effectively like, one of the most important things in life is to be able to distinguish from an opportunity to be seized and a temptation to be resisted.

• 1:41:30Speaker 02

  Hmm, because they can look awful alike.

• 1:41:33Tim Ferriss?

  They can look very similar. And what I've seen over and over again with like all the startups I've been involved with, when I'm talking to authors who are just getting started, especially if they, they have a flicker of something that might ignite, is that as soon as there is a certain velocity of success, there are a lot of temptations that can pull you away from the thing that you spent so much time getting good at, that brought you to that point.

• 1:42:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:01Tim Ferriss?

  And I'm wondering if there are any categories of things. So for me, for instance, after about a year or two of getting very distracted, speaking engagements was one of those things where I was like, I'm just going to end up on the road doing speaking engagements, talking about the same thing every day for the rest of my life, if I actually continue to say yes to this. And it's very seductive because they pay really well.

• 1:42:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:23Tim Ferriss?

  And I was like, all right, so I'm going to say no for a year. That's it. So that I can focus on these creative projects, writing. Are there any things along those lines at a point where like, okay, I need to say no to this, that, or the other thing?

• 1:42:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, there have been times where I probably should have said no and didn't. I mean, there's been times where I've got myself in too much work, but I've gotten pretty good, I think, at saying no. I think the older I get, I don't know about wiser, but the older I get, the more I apt I am to say no, mainly because you get to a point where I don't care to be more famous.

• 1:43:00Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, I think there's a point of diminishing returns.

• 1:43:03Speaker 02

  So you look at things that are under those lenses, like, all right, this will give you higher visibility. All right, I've got plenty of visibility. I don't need to do that. You know, the only thing that it gets into is, all right, you got to sell tickets to your concert. Then there's some things that you'd probably say no to that you'll say yes to. You got to pay everybody. So there's some compromises that you have to make to your, not principles, but to what you're willing to do work wise. But, um, yeah, the older you get, the more it's easier, it's easier to say no, because you know more about what the outcome's going to be. And whether the outcome's going to be beneficial enough for the time, or it's not.

• 1:43:41Tim Ferriss?

  So let's talk about putting people in seats and tours. You have the upcoming Pawn Shop Guitar Tour.

• 1:43:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:49Tim Ferriss?

  This summer.

• 1:43:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:51Tim Ferriss?

  You've got new music in the works.

• 1:43:55Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. In the middle of working on an album right now. In fact, next week, I'm in the studio again.

• 1:43:59Tim Ferriss?

  So could you talk about, just tell us more about both?

• 1:44:03Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:44:03Tim Ferriss?

  And then you've got family, you've obviously got, obviously have your lovely wife, you have, still have a lot going on.

• 1:44:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:13Tim Ferriss?

  So I'd love to know, and I'm sure the audience would, more about both of these, right? Where can they learn more? When can they expect things? And then also how you actually schedule your time, structure your time?

• 1:44:26Speaker 02

  Well, album wise, we're, like I said, we're in the middle of an album. And the album's going to be called Pawn Shop Guitar as well. It's a song I wrote, back to the story I told you when I got my first guitar, where I pawned my high school ring, my freshman year of college, and bought the guitar. Luckily for me, my grandfather found out about it, went back and got my ring for me. Although I don't know where it's at. I think my wife has it somewhere. So I wrote the whole song around that story. And we were looking for tour titles, you know, trying to find the right tour title. I thought Pawn Shop Guitar was good. We all thought it was good just because of the story that it told, and it conjures up some good imagery. So we start that tour, I think it starts in July, the

• 1:45:06Speaker 02

  tour starts in July, I think we're doing three or four stadiums, and sheds. The chicks will be out on the stadium tours with us. And I'm a huge fan of those guys. They We did a George Strait tour together years ago and then they opened for me on one of my tours years ago and, and just a huge fan of their music and I'm excited to get out with those guys. And then we're doing sheds for the summer and then we'll, we'll do, we'll do some more shows as well. We'll be doing some fairs and festivals and it's gonna be a busy year. We're gonna be doing a lot and there's a couple movie and TV projects in the works. And then my, my oldest daughter's working on a Broadway, she's a Broadway actress and singer. So she's working on some stuff. My youngest daughter is a singer, she's an actor, she's in Land Man.

• 1:45:49Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no kidding?

• 1:45:50Speaker 02

  She just toured, opened for Brandi Carlile on a European tour last summer. My middle daughter works for Earth League International, a big nonprofit. She sings as well, but she, she's more the brainiac, she went to Stanford, got her master's degree from Stanford. Worked in Congress for a long time, so they're all doing well.

• 1:46:09Tim Ferriss?

  Seems like, seems like this, this like fathering thing, you've done pretty well.

• 1:46:13Speaker 02

  Well, I got a good mom. Yeah, and then my nephew Timothy Wayne is out there doing well too, he's a singer, so. I'm the worst singer in the family, but for real.

• 1:46:24Speaker 02

  I mean, that's not, that's legitimately not a joke.

• 1:46:28Tim Ferriss?

  Why do it? Now, that might sound like a strange question.

• 1:46:31Speaker 02

  Why do what?

• 1:46:32Tim Ferriss?

  Touring. It's so grueling, I have to imagine, right? Very demanding.

• 1:46:36Speaker 02

  It is.

• 1:46:37Tim Ferriss?

  Right? It's physically demanding, it's psychologically demanding. Is it something you feel on stage? Is it a quickening that you just can't get any other way? What is it that keeps you going back?

• 1:46:47Speaker 02

  Well, you can't get it any other way, that's for sure. And they're always good, but every third show or so, you have that one show that's like, this is why I do it. This is why I do it. And you're right, touring is more grueling, touring's more expensive. You pay for everything, you know, you're doing three nights in a row. But it's your stage, your design, your ideas, the way you want it to look, all those things. That's the fun in it for me, is the building the stage and putting the show together. And that's also the hardest part is putting the setlist together because, you know, after 35 years and... A ton of records, you're never gonna get everybody's favorite song in. You know, there's you're somebody's always gonna miss a song that they wanted to hear

• 1:47:29Speaker 02

  because you can only do 22, 23 songs in a show at the most. And you've got, you know, 70 or 80 singles and, you know, a bunch of number ones, you can't get them all in.

• 1:47:41Tim Ferriss?

  You can't.

• 1:47:41Speaker 02

  So you just try to create a ride and an emotion and an experience. And that's the fun part for me is try to create a movie for everybody to see.

• 1:47:49Tim Ferriss?

  What on those magic nights, just a few more questions and then we'll land the plane. But what does that feel like? I'm so curious because I've played sports. I've had flow states in various contexts. But I've never experienced anything with that type of environment.

• 1:48:07Speaker 02

  Well, that's what it reminds me of is sports. Certainly reminds me of football before the games and it reminds me of locker room. It reminds me of the, just when you get your uniform on, you feel like you're 10 foot tall and bulletproof. It's when I put the cowboy hat, it's like Superman's cape. You put the cowboy hat on, you're ready to go. But, uh, there's a symbiotic relationship that happens. And to me, art is magic. That's what real magic is, is art, any kind of art. And the magic happens when you're up there and everything's going great for you and you can tell everything's going great for the audience and you have this symbiotic electrical relationship where you're all in this groove together and you're all sort

• 1:48:51Speaker 02

  of in suspended animation for a while where you leave the world outside and all of a sudden, we're all in this fantasy world that we create that we're all living in for this hour and a half. And when that happens, when the whole world just sort of shuts down and you're in this make believe world that all of a sudden becomes the real world that you're in for an hour and a half, two hours where nothing else exists except for that world. Then you're in a movie. Then you're in this alternate universe that there's nothing but joy.

• 1:49:20Tim Ferriss?

  It's like a utopia that you are able to create.

• 1:49:22Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, on the good nights.

• 1:49:24Tim Ferriss?

  On the good nights.

• 1:49:25Speaker 02

  And, you know, and sometimes you think it's not a good night because your ears don't sound great or your voice isn't doing what you want it to do. And sometimes those turn out to be the best nights. I mean, my best basketball game I ever had, I think I scored 52 points and I had the flu and it kept trying to get the coach to take me out of the game because I thought I was hurting the team. I thought I was playing terribly and then he showed me the book.

• 1:49:50Tim Ferriss?

  Tim, if you could have a billboard, metaphorically speaking, put anything on it for millions, billions of people to see, right? Could be a quote, could be a mantra, could be scripture, could be anything, right? Could be an image, anything non-commercial.

• 1:50:07Speaker 02

  Humble and kind.

• 1:50:08Tim Ferriss?

  Humble and kind.

• 1:50:09Speaker 02

  Humble and kind.

• 1:50:11Tim Ferriss?

  Tell me more about that.

• 1:50:12Speaker 02

  Because that song to me represents so much, the video too, so much of what the world needs and what we don't have right now is humility and kindness. And of course, love should be in that as well. But without humility and kindness, we're lost and we seem to be lost right now. So that song to me is a beacon in a lot of ways. That one, "Live Like You Were Dying," to me are songs that don't belong to me. I just happen to be lucky enough to be able to sing them for people. They belong to everybody.

• 1:50:50Tim Ferriss?

  Here, here. Humble and kind. Tim, we're going to link to everything related to Tim McGraw in the show notes. You've got plenty.

• 1:50:59Speaker 02

  Not everything.

• 1:51:00Tim Ferriss?

  We'll leave out your OnlyFans page. We have, you know, X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube. You're not hard for people to find. But is there anything else you'd like to point people to? Anything you'd like to say, closing comments, public complaints? Anything?

• 1:51:17Speaker 02

  I've got plenty of public complaints, but I'm not going to hear them.

• 1:51:19Tim Ferriss?

  Stand-up comedy, raw material, anything you'd like to say before we?

• 1:51:24Speaker 02

  Well, first of all, thank you for having me and allowing me to be a part of your book.

• 1:51:28Tim Ferriss?

  My pleasure.

• 1:51:29Speaker 02

  One of your books.

• 1:51:29Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you.

• 1:51:30Speaker 02

  And enjoy listening to you and I hope we can do it again.

• 1:51:33Tim Ferriss?

  Absolutely. It's been such a pleasure. I've wanted to connect in person for years. So much fun.

• 1:51:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:40Tim Ferriss?

  And I hope it's not the last time. I love Nashville, so I'll be back.

• 1:51:44Speaker 02

  Good. Well, and when you're back, we'll talk again.

• 1:51:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:51:47Speaker 02

  I'll cook dinner for you one night.

• 1:51:49Tim Ferriss?

  I'm in.

• 1:51:49Speaker 02

  Or have Faith cook dinner for you. It'd be better. Although I'm a pretty good cook.

• 1:51:54Tim Ferriss?

  That is a deal for sure. And everybody listening, we will put links to anything and everything we can find, obviously, all the ways to find what you're up to, the tour, the music when it's ready.

• 1:52:08Speaker 02

  There is one new song before to interrupt you that people can find that we didn't put on streaming or anything. You can only find it on my socials, but it's a song called Different that I think people should give a listen to.

• 1:52:18Tim Ferriss?

  All right. We will find Different and we will link in the show notes at tim.blog/podcastforfolks. And as always, until next time, this is how I close almost every episode, a bit kinder than is necessary, not just to other people, but also to yourself. If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete, as Jack Kornfield has said. And also, as always, thanks for tuning in, guys. See you next time. Thank you, Tim.

• 1:52:46Speaker 02

  Thank you. Adios.

• 1:52:48Tim Ferriss?

  Adios. Hey, guys. This is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get

• 1:53:28Tim Ferriss?

  sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. Back in the day, this was 2004, maybe, I had someone approach me in a coffee shop and say, "G'day, mate," and introduce himself. Who was that? It turned out to be founder

• 1:54:09Tim Ferriss?

  of AG1, believe it or not, way back in the day. And people often ask me, what has survived after 20-plus years of testing every supplement under the sun just about? What actually has stayed in the rotation, in the toolbox? This episode's sponsor, AG1, is at the top of that very, very short list. I started using it close to 15 years ago, when it was still called Athletic Greens. I put it in the Four Hour Body, didn't get paid to put it in there, and it's outlasted almost everything else that I've tried. One scoop covers your nutritional bases, right? Fills the gaps. You want to eat good food, of course, but 75-plus ingredients, including probiotics, B vitamins, and whole food nutrients, act as, in my opinion, pretty cheap nutritional insurance. I take it first thing every morning

• 1:54:52Tim Ferriss?

  with cold water, and at this point, it's automatic, like brushing my teeth. If you're looking for one simple daily habit that supports gut health and fills common nutrient gaps, this is where I'd start. Right now, new subscribers to AG1 get a free welcome kit worth $87, including AG1 and AGZ travel packs, that's for sleep, it's actually great, and vitamin D3 plus K2. So, that's a whole bunch of free stuff worth 87 bucks. So, check it out. Take a look. Visit drinkag1.com/tim, and that's the number one. So, drinkagnumber1.com/tim to check it out. One more time, that's drinkag1.com/tim. What many of you may not know is that I actually run two private invite-only communities for

• 1:55:37Tim Ferriss?

  some of my projects. The No Book, which eventually will come out after god knows how long, and Coyote, the card game. And the feedback from those groups has been absolutely invaluable. Moreover, perhaps most important, the connections that members have made and the interactions have been just a joy to behold. It's been so much fun. And I generally view communities as headache after headache after headache. Way back in the day with like B Bulletin and whatever, not to slam those guys, but man, oh man, running communities can be a pain in the ass. And- In this case, it's been easy. Why? Well, both of them are built on Circle, this episode's sponsor. And before committing to using Circle, I did so much homework. I asked you all on social media, talked to dozens of creators,

• 1:56:20Tim Ferriss?

  pressure-tested alternatives, talked to all sorts of people on the phone. And Circle is where I landed. Circle quietly backs some of the most popular communities online, run by folks like Kevin Rose, my buddy, Dr. Becky from Good Inside, Ali Abdal, Jay Shetty, Pat Flynn, and many others, including some giants I can't mention here. But it doesn't need to be giant. My two communities are maybe 100, 150 people apiece. They're not gigantic. If you run an online community, a membership, or a course business, Circle makes it easy to build a professional home for your audience. Events, courses, payments, custom branded apps, all in one place. And also, once I had my first one set up for the notebook, to spin up another one for Coyote, the card game, it took minutes. It was so, so fast.

• 1:57:05Tim Ferriss?

  And as you might have noticed, things are getting pretty squirrely out there on the internet. We're moving from content businesses to connection businesses. And people want connection. They want to know you're real. They want accountability, real progress. And communities are the most effective way that I have found to make that happen. So check it out. Go to circle.sotim to get $1,000 off Circle Plus, exclusively for you guys, listeners, for a limited time. Check it out. You can also look at other options at circle.sotim.