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You can't predict anything presented by Onex Hunt. Creators of the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play store. Know where you stand with Onex. OK. We're on we're on a I'm tempted to say we're on Luke Combs's tour bus, but that's not accurate. We're on the tour bus of Luke Combs's band, correct?

We are. We are on the band's bus and they sleep in little submarine mariner bunks. Yeah.

Which is also great because I feel like this is a prime opportunity to to tell them that I've just destroyed their bus. They're not going to the floor.

Feels a little bit right now as they're listening to this. What has he done to our bus? They won't know until show start again.

This is going to look a little funny prank in each bunk that you can't see here.

But we have a lot of great meat eater stickers, and I'm will soon be finding out which bunk my vegan band member sleeps in.

And I'll probably just pop this right above it so that every night when he goes to sleep, he'll be looking at a market sticker.

Yeah, OK. Um, starting with that, because that was that was the beautiful, lovely Lukan.

Don't do intros toss and turn and go as though Delingpole.

Yiannis Pantelis. Just regular old Jeanny Little League. Here again. Yeah, I'm Redesdale, younger brother of the brothers. I'm Dan as well, and I'm a member of the brothers and I'm also a member of the Fabian Eagles.

Yeah. Fabio single 7C Family in San Francisco to get the Living Eagle. Fabien's Eagles. Yeah.

And then Luke, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk to his new nickname is just let's just talk. It's kind of hard having to Luke's plain old talk. Yeah.

So just talk now. I guess we had to figure out like I originally I was like, oh man.

I was like really fighting to be the Luke. And Talk came along and I was like, damn dude, I wish I was like fucking reciprocating.

Saw something, you know, like acts or something cool like that.

But now I'm not horsepower maybe. Yeah. Horsepower HP. Yeah, yeah.

I get the Isbel you Isbel brothers are from born in Tennessee, were born and born in Jackson but from Savannah, Tennessee. West Western Westernising. Yeah right. Where is the easiest way to tell is. Right where Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee meets with a county above that and Savannah is the county seat.

But we spend the majority of our lives in Mississippi also.

So, OK, so that's I was trying to sort out. Yeah. I thought I assumed you were born there. Well, grandparents lived. Their parents are born. They're both. I went to Mississippi State. My band, like my my band mates, like Country Dad is from Mississippi, got you in the sophisticated Dan, you know, from Tennessee I guess, tell tell people what you do for a living.

So rittenauer both staff songwriters at a couple of different publishing companies and we literally write songs in hopes that artists cut them on records and maybe singles. It's kind of what we do know. Yeah, right. Dan writes for Sony and I actually write Luke and one of our buddies, Jonathan Singleton, started a publishing company and I did a joint venture with his company and a company called Big Machine Publishing. Yeah, we we write four or five times a week with different either co writers or artist and and go in with ideas, lyrics, melodies, whatever, and try to create a three minute product that an artist, you know, like Luke or somebody else will, will dig and can relate to and throw it on a record and hopefully throw it on the radio.

So when you're doing this, I mean, you're just you get together, you're like. Like in the words John Prine, 10 a.m. on a Monday morning, just about usually 11. Yeah, back then it was yeah. That because they're so close now.

So, yes, you get to go to 11 a.m. on a Monday morning, Harda in like an office early start.

I mean, it's not like, you know, we will now write a song pretty much Stormwatch.

It's kind of like that, weirdly enough.

Is it like a full on music studio? You just kind of like every instrument, each publishing house is different.

So like we're Dansa Sony ATV, they have actually two buildings once called the Fire Hall, which is an old fire station that they bought a couple of rooms in there.

That's kind of the vibe of your spot.

Yeah, yeah. And then they have their office that's across parking lot, which is like two storey newer looking office building where the track guys track guys.

But the executives are in there and they work in that same building. And then there are rooms provided.

But it can and that's where you're going in to do it. It can be sterile majority. It sounds like that in a very serious like going to a college classroom. It can be very sterile.

And it's because it feels like you're working from a cubicle up there, like it's very, very plain. And man, I mean, here's the thing is, like you're not going to be your job or whatever. You're not going to walk in inspired every day, regardless of where you're doing it. But but you can be inspired in other places and bring that kind of into the room and go, hey, man, my wife told me to wash the dishes this morning and I got to thinking that's a pretty decent hook.

I should wash the car, wash the dishes, but you can wash my love away from me or whatever.

And you were dead. Is it really quick? Yeah, because you're just sitting here in a tour bus right now. No, I mean, I'm just saying it can be like a somewhat sterile environment. But at the same time, when you're in your head and it's you're using the majority of your imagination anyway, it's kind of just a central meeting place to get it done, you know? I mean, so if you want to break for lunch, you can walk outside.

You're right there. The publisher that you're trying to get the song to is literally across the parking lot. And it's just kind of a central meeting place for I mean, if I walked into the place and it was just a bunch of John Prine posters and Willie Nelson's and they were incense burning in the corner, I don't know that I'd be any more inspired than I am, but I'm going to. That's a good point.

Which totally that that room's in Nashville somewhere. There's much out there. Is that there? If you were in that room, you'd be on a couch, these freakin pictures of Willie Nelson office wall.

So I could think, yeah, there's no rhyme or reason to how you do it.

You know, you just as long as you ended up in the product that everybody likes and agrees with and you write one in this bus, we've written songs on, you know, outside, we've written songs on the porch, just kind of wherever you feel like doing it.

Do you guys have an obligation to how many songs you're supposed to write per whatever? Twelve all songs a year is a standard contract, which doesn't sound like very much. But when you're splitting them up three ways in four ways to raise.

Yeah, counts as a fourth of a song or half of a song. I got you.

So contractually within the year you're supposed to write twelve. It's not the normal 12 full, quote, unquote. Yeah, so like but we rightway, I mean, yeah, we are all three of us, close to seventy eight tons a year. Yeah.

I'm amazed at the efficiency when you guys say that you guys can in four or five hours start, finish and have us on.

I would say probably what, 75 percent of the time that's the case. But there is that weird 25 percent where you go, man, my brain is absolute mush. My dogs piss pissing all over everything in the house at this point. Is it cool if we break and maybe come back and finish this up in some days? Dude, especially in like a lake, like a Friday when you just like, smoked after sitting in a room trying to make Werdum for 40 hours?

At this point, you may just cut it in half.

You know, I mean, yeah, if you're already like you don't have a clear direction of where that second verse is going to go or something like that and say, hey, maybe we just sit on this for a day and if I go on a big dude's like, don't a lot of big time guys aren't doing Fridays even now?

No. Like a lot of guys that are getting because, like, the quality of who you're riding with can be as important as writing that extra day. Absolutely. You know, if you write in four days a week with you know, if you write with Eric Church and then you write with whoever, you know, big time artist, writer guys, that's different than saying, you know, I got to go in and write with five people that I don't know, up and coming aren't true then or whatever.

That's tougher. That's tougher in my opinion to do so. The bigger guys are there doing less, less, quote unquote work. But they're just they have a lot more avenues to success for that potential song, you know?

Yeah. What is the. Is pardon me for saying this, but it's hanging out, you guys. It's I know there's a lot of mystique and creating stuff, but it seems like it's. Something that I thought used to kind of occur in people's minds are like on their back porch or whatever, like I realize it's formalized.

Is that normal for is that normal for other musical genres where you're like like are making it's like you're making a product?

I think you would be shocked. I think what I'm trying to say is that our genre is the most. Creative. Absolutely. All right. Like you pop up inspired by you pop out to L.A., Buddy, and it is like an assembly line. There's 14 guys on one song, three guys in a separate room working on lyrics, three guys in a separate room, right on the track on the demo, three guys in a separate room doing create trying to create a signature lick for this thing.

And it's like and then to a they may go after all that's gone. That's nine dudes. They may decide that sampling an old queen song is the way to go. So then you have to slap everyone that wrote that Queen song on top of the nine guys that wrote it together. And you're talking 14 or 15 dudes are credited with writing that one song. That's what it's really like on really popular music.

It's insane. That's even crazy to me, you know, and I've never been to L.A. to write, but I just from my experience in Nashville and how we do it there, you know, I can't imagine being in a room with that many people trying to get something done and then they meet back up together and then they put it all, you know, they might have a little 20 second track thing they build together in the beginning and go, all right, here's the basis.

And this guy sitting there humming something, you know, what would be a name? An artist who like a pop artist who's unless you don't want to, whose process is like this. All of them. Yeah, I would say, you know, I mean, wow.

I would think it would be easier to train the guys who aren't like I would say it's your insurance not doing that.

You definitely need insurance not doing that. He's a pure songwriter.

He's just absolute.

But he's also the biggest artist in the it would be a good example of someone who's probably not Adele, literally not even they're not literally connected to their songs as much as like, I would say, age or in her or us.

You know, I think Adele is probably one of the more organic. One's out there, but I guess what I'm trying to say is like like. There are there are inspired artists right there. I make this analogy all the time in Nashville, there's like I have a guy I work with who's like kind of a rock guy. Right. So when he comes in, everything he everything he throws out is going to be his he has to write his own original ideas, like has to.

He can't say anything that isn't true to his life. So it's he wants to do this. It's going to sound like this and we're going to do it. And your job as a songwriter that day is to help him convey the message that he wants to convey. Correct.

So then there are guys like Luke who are. Pretty consistently inspired and have ideas and know what direction they want to go with songs, but are also open to what maybe you've had happen in your life in the past six months. Right. Or some sort of hook that you took back for them. And then you have other guys. Look, I'm not saying any any one of these three people and I'm talking about here, you're wrong. It's just different ways of doing the business.

So this far. This far.

This guy over here, he may be just an entertainer and he don't necessarily care what he's thinking about as long as he's on Dancing with the Stars or something, you know what I mean?

He just all he wants you to do is to give him a product. So for this guy, there would be no real point in me and this other guy getting together. Write a song for this guy. Right? Maybe not even me. And look together, write a song for this guy, even though we could do that.

And I'll make the statement that the guy he's talking about is not a specific person, obviously, but the guy that goes in strictly cut songs is the is the pillar of given these dudes jobs, absolute 100 percent goes without those guys.

There's no these guys. Yeah. If all the artists wrote their own songs, there would be no songwriting community.

It wouldn't exist completely because those guys would just write their own songs in their house and put albums out and that would be it.

How big is the songwriting community? So like how many how many days are there?

I mean I mean, it's been I think in the year like 1990 to 95, there were almost 10000 professional songwriters in Nashville that had publishing deals. Now I think it's under 500.

There's like 400 covid right now. But the records, I mean, it's hard it's hard to make money. It's the records don't sell the records. You don't make you.

So you could get an album cut and not even a single, you know, on the radio in the 90s and make a make a good amount of money. I don't know the X amount of dollars I got.

I got a very specific offer situation. So the Shania Twain album that came out in the 90s is Double Diamond, which means you spin the news.

Well, you just do that one anyway. That's why I'm sold legitimately.

Sold you six more. Oh yeah. That album sold 25 million copies. Right. So the royalty, the predetermined royalty rate per CD sale is ten cents per song to the writer that wrote it. Right. So there is a song on an album that one dude wrote. It's a solo. Right. Which means he made two and a half million dollars having a song on that album that didn't even get played on the radio nowadays because it wasn't even like that particular tune never made like a billboard hit or whatever.

Yeah, right. And plus a CD.

So he gets but like, if me and Dan and Reed wrote that song, we'd be splitting that 10 cents three ways in which would still be a tremendous amount of money, money.

But now if you write a song that's not a single I mean, the revenue stream is just there's nothing there.

So you have two different albums sold that record. Yeah, it's one of the best selling albums of all time that we should explain.

Single, you say. Yeah, we should. That's like a good point.

I mean, the difference between album cut and want to sing a song promoted to radio by your record label is a single what you're hearing on terrestrial sound that you're hearing when you turn on the pop station on and you hear that Justin Bieber song or whatever, his team, he's cranking out his own shit for sure on his back porch.

I hope that. OK, listen to the sound dripping with sarcasm. He's a big honor for sure. Yeah, I know.

But it's like so that their team is collectively going, we think this is a hit. So that's the song they're choosing to promote to radio as their next single. Yeah. And so an album cut, quote unquote is a song that's on the record that never gets chosen as a single, but as a part of the collective.

What is on that song.

But I don't get too deep in the weeds out here on industry stuff. But it used to be a single was released as a single ace.

I'd be so sure that was the same way as old days. Yeah.

That's the you know, when they were doing 40 fives and you know, and vinyl and stuff, that was what was going on. That's where it came from. A single song. Right. And then there was a B side.

There was two songs on it. You know, you played the one side, it's the single and then you play the beats and some unknown tune, which is what another word for album cuts would be.

Besides, OK, it's the same thing is A is a B side. Can you guys take a stab? I don't care which one of you does it. Take a stab at articulating the connection between. Contemporary country music and in a broad sense, the outdoors, like the outdoors, is revered by nature and I know about nature. The outdoors and outdoor lifestyles are revered by country music. It's like you do not say bad stuff about that stuff.

I'm not exactly sure what your question. I get what I think. It's not a question and not a question. I'd like you to speak to that.

Oh, I think he's saying speak to the correlation of the outdoor lifestyle and our particular genre of music.

OK, touch is is it touchy?

Well, I just don't think it happens as much as it used to. There you go. Oh, really? No, I guess it's more prevalent.

No, I don't. Are you saying, like, lyrical content lyric or the lyrical content?

OK, let's say this would oh, I mean, who are the toughest guys? You know, the guys that cut logs, the guys that. Yeah, I mean. I mean. Well for sure. Yeah, yeah. I mean I could see him outside. I could see him running to my brother Matt. Yeah. Probably outdoors. He's tough. Hernani.

No way is he really a dude way. Is he faster than him in this age. No software man.

I'll tell you man, I had the old kind of tough romance traditional to. Oh, man.

Had strength like weird shit. All right. My point is, is that now perception is reality, right?

Especially with the concept of social media. So to me, I feel like as an outsider, I am a peer. What what Nashville would refer to is a lunchpail songwriter. All right. I have no desire I have no desire to come and explain that to people, OK? I go into work, I write a song and I go home. I don't live with that song for the week, and you know what I mean. I write another one tomorrow.

It's my job. I call it a cock out kind of deal.

You take your lunch pail to work right here. No performing. I mean, I'll do a Bluebird show every now and then, but nothing I'm not really surprised. I don't want to lose track of it. Surprised me the way you guys used the word artist.

Like, you don't regard yourself as an artist. You feel that this is a performer, I regard myself as the utmost of an artist, but that's not who I hear. But this is artist as a performer.

Yeah, that's not what Nashville toddled.

Well, there's a miscommunication of what artist really means in an industry term as an industry.

I mean, Luke is an artist because he's literally developing his own ideas. That's what to me art is.

Yeah, that's what I would define it as well. So I say, you're an artist. You're a songwriter. Sure you're an artist. You're a songwriter, you're an artist. You're a songwriter and a performer.

Let's so let's say just not the word performer out and replace it with artist. Yeah, they're the same thing because we're saying that we word at a time you wanted to be an artist, but now you're a songwriter. Something boring professional about this.

Just replace artists with performers. Yeah. At a time you wanted to be a performer and now you're just a songwriter.

True. Of an artist. Oh, wow. OK, so back to the back to the back to the perceptions reality.

So I think it looks pretty cool to be a big country tough guy. Right. To be seen as that.

And so if you sing about it now, you back it up with a little bit of social media. Then before you I mean, you post one picture with your head or maybe out there just fishing, you know, or maybe you're, oh, do a little trap shooting and all of a sudden there's a little bit of manliness attached to the name.

And so when that song comes through, talking about drinking cold beers on the outside, under the stars, they can back it up with a little bit of picture.

It's like it's like KRED or something. Could you create. That's what we call it. Yeah.

Like like you're like trying to up your credibility to.

So I think it's more almost that because if you were to go listen to the top songs on the radio right now, I mean, I don't think there's maybe not one that mentions the outdoors. The song that me and and wrote that's about to go to radio talks about eight books out of the cornfields, but that's probably the only one.

Oh, yeah.

But it's like, yeah, I could almost guarantee arms about you in it, but it used to not usually what you get with pop music is them talking about, you know, their money or or the girl or their boys or whatever in a confined space.

But with, with country music, it's it's more nostalgia, you know, and you write to to a feeling that you're comfortable with, which is which with most of guys like us, we we grew up in the outdoors. And that's and you try to write what you know. And so for me and Luke and Dan and we're yeah, we're trying to write music that speaks to people and people can see and putting a little color in there. If it's a if it's Coke and Coke cans with the B.B. gun on the creek or whatever.

Yeah. Like the song I playing last night. The real kids too. I like that to appreciate that. That, that's, that was that tune out there.

Yeah.

Just, just a more catechisms out there but not with you doing it. No. Well I'll say, I say you may do well that be cute.

Anyway, my whole point is that, that you've got to think about your audience. Right. So especially as an artist, I mean let's just go back to Bieber babies not carrying his. He did he didn't care to be represented as an outdoors guy because the people listen to me give a hot shit. Listen, if he's ever shot a duck in his life as opposed to country music, where you have guys who are are appealing to these people who think manliness associated with country this.

Is hot, sexy, cool, or someone that they'd like to be depending on male or female, kind of a couple of years ago I read this book.

I wish I could remember the name of it was about Nashville in the 60s. It has a history. Nashville focus on Nashville in the 60s. And reading it, I was surprised.

That dude's like Wailin, right, and people from his era and David Cole comes in and out of it, um.

Drug addicts. And they it that they spent at times in their life the bulk of their time playing pinball. But that. Isn't what the like in describing their life, they don't describe their life that way. No. There would be like, let's go to Luckenbach, Texas, correct? Right, not like let's go snort a bunch of cocaine. Do you like Shiloh's amphetamines and play pinball for days on end?

Correct. Yeah, absolutely, because how that's kind of boring, right, the market, right, and where they went. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I got an interesting story. One of our best friends songwriters got a Michael Haiti, and he's from that era. I mean, he was he's had hits in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, early to mid 70s, 70s, 80s starts there.

Yeah. He's the only one running right now that's got hits.

And so he tells us like five different decades he's had in a while. He's also no kid, just a decades old, crotchety man. Just that you would also takes no shit.

Yeah, no, I'm not a performer. No lunchpail.

So I wrote a bunch of those Eric Church songs.

He wrote George Jones doing time.

Still doing that. Yeah. And he also wrote Eric Church's Drink in My Hand. So that's how far apart he wrote ten rounds.

Yeah. He said some great, great songs.

But my point is so back in the day him christofferson. I think it was Whalan and maybe Myrl were at Akef Rose, which is an older version of what Sony ATV is now where I work now, and that's exactly what they would do. They would all pile in on a Thursday after they'd written for four days and they play songs to each other and they just two lines of cocaine. And he said, man, we were thinking maybe same as we were jacked out of our brains.

And we went to it was like three thirty four o'clock in the morning. And they went to pharmacy to lock the door and they lost the keys to lock the publishing company up to leave. So they were like, well, what do we do? And they're like, I don't know, we're all right. None of us can drive.

You know, there were taxis back there and so they just all leaned up against the door. Right. Like that way, if anyone came in to steal something, it would knock them all over and they would wake up.

So they the next morning when the secretary guy came in the back door unlocked, came in in there and it took a picture of my buddy Weland, Kristofferson and Haggard all lined up against this glass house, passed out after a night of rocket outscores that he's got that picture.

But speaking to your point, I think it's also like those guys are saying, you know, Doolan's and then go play pinball and you can't you can't write songs about those artists are very in tune and in touch with their fan. Their fan base is just about the same.

It's very similar to what happens now. Absolutely.

Because those guys were were doing something that their fans would totally have not liked to hear them sing about, sing about, because at that time, the country fan was even more conservative. Yeah. As far as their religious beliefs and their lifestyle than they are nowadays, you know what I mean? Nowadays you can be more loose with what you talk about and and do this. It's still the most conservative, you know, ethically speaking genre that exists, but way less so than it was in the 70s.

And those guys were doing way more extreme shit than the guys are doing now. Yeah, that kind of stuff doesn't go on anymore because it just can't.

But in the area of social media and, you know, you just you would be, you know, quote unquote canceled in, you know, a hot second man if it were to get out that you were doing that kind of stuff.

Yeah, I mean. Reason I bring that up is in hanging out with you guys. It's going to sound corny. And hanging out with you guys for a few days, I was kind of. I felt like, oh, you know. They they they exemplify. What?

I felt like you exemplify the things that are applauded in the genre of that in a way that I was I was like would have been more cynical about not cynical in a bad way, but just like like I understand that, that there's certain tropes and certain things that are going to, you know, that seem appealing to people going to the river at night to swim whatever. Like like agriculture being like agriculture being good. Right. Right. I mean, there's like like a certain ideal stereotypes and like good ideas to that, like you when you make a commitment.

But let's be your friend, make a commitment to your wife, your family, like you stay.

Absolutely right. And like anyone, you realize, there's probably a lot of there's probably a lot of B.S. that gets built into it.

But then out you guys, if he doesn't like holy shit, man, he's dudes like country songs.

Well, I take that as a compliment. I take that as a compliment. Yeah. Yeah, man. I mean, that's that's what that's what you want to be.

Because, you know, the last thing I want to do is, is try to write a song that that is fake to, you know, to me or and not understand.

We can't take the credit for that. Well, I mean, I do. I got to back up what I'm saying better. OK, OK. Dan was telling I'm not going to tell what the story is about. Dan here was telling. He'll have to tell you the story on his own. He's told me very funny story. They had a way different point. But within the story, it touched on agriculture. But within the story, he explained, it's an important part of the story that he explains how an evening goes down.

Yes. In his home and in his home at night before bedtime, him and his wife like to go outside and light a fire and sit by the fire and spend an hour throwing the tennis ball for the dog in which they have a couple drinks, stare at the flames and go to bed. I'm like this country music shit right there. And he wasn't telling me to be like the damn country. No, he was telling me a crazy story that I want to tell you.

Well, but it was just a detail in the story. And I'm like Masika Country Song. Well, I think that had me going, think about how me, my wife, by the time we put our kids to bed.

Sometimes, man, we just like we don't do the whole fire and everything. Yeah, you do. You just kind of like put the house back together, go to bed. I'm scared to you. There's nights that they don't go outside and I'll sit around the fire to this day and every night I'll walk out.

That's not true.

Every night I walk out shirtless and show that that is what I was say that I was about to say. It's not like we do that, but don't lives don't come creeping on me at six a.m.. Are you going you're going to see a lot more than me that you want to because I'm going to let them chickens out in my drawers.

But I mean, it's just it's what we love to do. And it was never contrived. It was never hey, man, let's learn these things to see more country. Yeah. I mean, our dad and our mom made we ate gravy and biscuits and we listen to skittered all the way to church.

Yeah. Well, fishing on the weekends. We went fishing on the weekends off the bank. We, we pulled out stripers and Fallada them by I mean we were never like hot dogs as best friends constantly.

It wasn't just I mean we played tennis ball baseball. The backyard is kind of where we grew up. And so it's it's it's a beautiful thing to be able to not have to fake it. And I think that may be what makes our point of view or songwriting craft, if you will, feel a little more authentic is because that's all we know how to talk about.

And with that, I mean, I think.

Yeah, and and I would I'd venture to say that if even if Luke wasn't a performer, artist or, you know, and we weren't songwriters, nothing about our lives, which we still be doing, we'd be doing we'll be doing the same thing.

We live in the same way where we're at, you know. But thank you for saying that, I appreciate you saying that. Yeah, I think we bring out the good. Yeah, that's a great compliment for sure. No, I've enjoyed it, man. I'm going to do you guys a. This might not come, there's a thing that goes on in the north, we're now and then in the north, people like to just as a joke now and then speculate upon the lives of Southerners.

OK, we do the same thing. It's crazy. That's what I didn't know until this. I didn't know there was a thing. What the Georgia Kósa. I didn't know that you guys were down there goofed on us.

Oh, for sure. All our terms of plot or plot to even plant food, we just plant persimmon trees.

He is a good percentage. Give them the oil persimmons. You got some persimmon trees up there, you know, or you do falaise to falaise person. And usually two blocks will come in person and wait about six o'clock. So come on, you guys not know what you sound like. He's like, I mean, it's got it's nice, we're always told, going up to the reason that you don't realize that you have an accent because everybody on the news does it in like a Midwest accent.

When I heard in the news, you know, it's like done how we sound. And so you don't notice it.

I had to take a class called, I think I saw by Roger Gillis. And I thought it was a class called the structure of Modern English. And thrilling, I actually just it actually just kind of interesting and I'm kidding. And in this class, in this class, it talked it had like all these dialects on the map and it was saying and it was looking at it was he was focused for a while. I came, airfield's him or not.

But it doesn't matter.

He was focused and he was focused on three figures. Dan Rather. Peter Jennings and Brokaw, because that era. And he was like, what? How did we decide what a normal American sounds like? Oh, man, I love that. That's pretty interesting. And and it focused on this circle. They kind of like included like I remember it captured Chicago and was like the circle. Oh, that's cool. It was kind of like this is what we've decided it sounds like.

And here's where and this is the steps that you go to to represent that sound. And he presented it through like who presents America's new super cool man? And like, that's America. Yeah, everything else.

Derivates, yeah, well, and that can leave people who are from that area probably feeling pretty damn cocky. Yes. And those left out feeling pretty left out really quickly.

He also in the same class that got into this notion that if he said that if at the time. I wish I could remember the Revolutionary War or the Civil War, if you had somehow made a barrier along the Mason-Dixon line. That there was no exchange that by now, which is now then because it's a long time ago, that by now these two groups would not be able to communicate well and talk about because and he looked at the technology that's emerged, everything to do with automobiles, everything to do with computing, everything to do with materials, fabrics, cultural stuff.

It's like it would be at this point. No way are you going to say all that stuff was made up north will be the same. We wouldn't have had the shared. We wouldn't have. No, no, not at all. We wouldn't have to share it. We wouldn't have the shared exchange about how quickly things would drift. Like the point being, it was like the vernacular of the South. On. The. Agrarianism of the south industrialism of the north at that time, it would have been like we would now look at it like France to celebrate it.

That's super interesting. Dreft, one of our good buddies, Marty Smith, he he was gone from North Carolina with a a hard draw. All right.

But he he was he wanted to be in some sort of broadcasting thing, right? Yeah. He wanted that's all he wanted to do was being broadcast. But he says he has this quote. He says, but, you know, you boys know guys, it took him a long time.

He said guys like guys that talk like guys don't get those positions said that. And now he's an ESPN analyst. He works on NASCAR, of course, but he sounds like a starter. And he didn't ask me to go to a language coach or something. No, no.

And it's almost like what makes Marty Marty, too. Is that his appeal? Absolutely. It's like he's I mean, one, he's very intelligent. Oh, yes. But he did start out in NASCAR. So you kind of get the prejudice of like, well, stick the southern guy in the NASCAR thing. Right. And he does love NASCAR. So, I mean, he's very knowledgeable on that subject. So he's a great speaker choice. And but now he is mainstream.

Now it is college football right back. I mean, he does everything now.

He's, I would argue, one of one of the most recognizable personality media decided to celebrate him as opposed.

Absolutely. Yeah. But I think it took him a long time to get there, though. So I break down that thing. I mean, you don't you don't sound appealing to the entire United States because of your Southern accent.

Yeah, his personality out speaks his Southern drawl. And that's why I think that's what ESPN gave in to. And now it has become a part of the Marty Smith brand. Is is the way I talk, you know, the way he talks. I'm aware of it, man.

And like, it's almost look a lot better for me to not look a lot better for me to not acknowledge this.

But I think that it's like fair to acknowledge that there there is a legit. It's not fanged, I mean, like it doesn't have, like, strong teeth, there is a legit perception. It's true, man. There's people like in the North be nice as shit to whoever, but it's people that when they hear like a southern country thing, it's like whatever that person's saying is less important or somehow less reliable.

Really, dude, I'm telling you, I hate you.

I hate you. I've never experienced I hate to say it, but it's like seen you. I've even had good friends of mine talk about like me, like they may be like, you know, meeting an engineer from from somewhere. But at first they're kind of like, how.

Yeah, but you I like it. I get what you're saying.

Like, how would you like who are you to tell me about, like the structural integrity of the such and such. You're from Birmingham Metal under duress. Like look, how would that should you be telling me about corn?

Well, I'll be. I mean it. Right? Yeah. Tell me exactly. I hate to admit it, but it's like a thing that you grew up around. We grew up we grew up on all kinds of other prejudice that I don't really feel like even talking about. But like it's just shitty things.

People say there's cultural differences and there's no doubt about it. I probably shouldn't say talk about this, but I actually the I dated a girl recently, you know, my past relationship, little sticky.

I don't know if you want to go there, but. Oh, please, please.

She was from Ohio, northern Ohio, and and had a northern accent and then the whole thing. And I would go up there and visit her family and almost would feel out of place. No, not almost. I felt out of place every time I went because it was such a different environment that I grew up in and that I knew every day. And honestly, that put a big thing between me and her. And we never like it was never unspoken thing, but like the way we were raised in the way, you know, belief systems or whatever, like it just something about where she's from and where I'm from did not match up.

Yeah, well, I don't think he's I think you're kind of addressing more of the fact that there there was like a little bit of a negative connotation whenever someone spoke. Yeah. Just terrible. I used to work with a guy in Denver that is kind of like a melting pot. It's like not really anywhere. It's Midwest. It's West where it's so transient. Right. So he was in a huge Hispanic influence to, you know. Yeah.

So he was from Oklahoma, had a really strong Southern drawl, one of the smartest people I've ever worked with. And it took a long time for do we claim Oklahoma to the South, claimed Oklahoma, if you like.

I don't think so. I don't think so. We'll tell you. We'll tell you what south is.

That's that's southern. But he had he had this really strong field that once he's crazy, he's crazy smart.

But when we were working at this company, it took a while before people would acknowledge that what he was saying was intelligent. And some of the people that were maybe from the upper Midwest, maybe not as smart, are good at their job. But it seems like people took a more serious right away because he talked differently, because he talked different.

That is really interesting, really. I would venture to say the majority of those guys could give a rat's ass what you think.

Not obviously it kind of comes with the territory, it's like I don't necessarily care if somebody thinks I'm not as intelligent because my dialect, I'll happily walk out there in my Gucci shoes, stop a model that I just go home.

That's at my buddy. I was talking to him about it one day. He was fluent Mandarin.

Nobody would even believe him. Wouldn't believe that that Mandarin that he was he would say something. He's just joking. Nobody could verify whatever. But I was talking to.

He's like, no, I'd rather them assume that I'm I'm an idiot and then surprise them than the other way around. Yeah. You know. Trust me, because I went through this before shopping for life insurance can be daunting, but up policy genius makes it much easier. They combine a cutting edge insurance marketplace with help from a licensed experts say you bunch of time, bunch of money right now, you could save 50 percent or more by using policy genius to compare life insurance.

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I welcome it. But like, some things that are funny are often funny because they're like there's like a hint of a little girl.

Absolutely. So you mentioned like you joked about pretentiousness and then you joked about how we you said you felt like we're sometimes that we sometimes, like on this show, discuss the South, discuss the South in the way you're like. They they talk about it. They don't know what they're talking about. I just. Well, it would be like me talking about persimmons, you know. I mean, obviously. I know.

I'm just saying, in order to get the the flavor correct of of what you think you're talking about, you got to spend a little time with it, you know what I mean?

And I'm not going to tell you or or anybody else. I mean, we make we make a lot of fun of people had strong accents, but it's not because it's my family. If I could lay out my favorite things in life, it's my favorite is listening to you guys tell us how we sound.

We're pretty close, right? Oh, yeah.

That knocks. I'm just saying now, man, I think it's interesting that you said that about that. There's some truth.

It always seems to be a little funny. If there's a little truth in it. I would venture to say that songs are the same way. If you can find a way to sprinkle in some of your reality into what you're trying to sing, I mean, you can speak to this way better than I can as far as it's probably a little bit easier to sing to 40000 people every night if it's something you actually live to believe for sure.

Yeah, I would agree, man. I mean, I think for me it's like there is no need for me to feel like authentic, you know, like I don't feel that pressure that I think a lot of other performers in my genre feel, you know, because I feel like I'm very open and honest with my fans about, you know, where I came from and how I grew up and the things that I did, you know, the things that you did right.

And things that I do now, you know. And then, like, I think there's there's something there's something to be said about, you know, somebody who can just be themself, like, fully. And that's me, you know, I feel, you know, so I absolutely listen, man, like, I'll tell you right on this podcast I didn't grow up on. I didn't it's not something that my dad did. He grew up in the Rust Belt in Ohio.

And he didn't go hunting with my grandfather because he was a truck driver, you know, for his entire life. And they lived in a, you know, suburban neighborhood and outside of Akron, Ohio. So it just wasn't something that they did. So that wasn't something that my my father passed on to me. It was something that I gained an interest in after I started doing music as an escapism type thing from the daily grind of my job.

Yeah.

So I don't go out and say, man, you know, I've been skinning squirrels since day one using bones like a toothpick.

You know, I'm it's like I just don't say that because it's not true. Yeah.

And so, you know, I've always been cool with that, you know, I'm just fine being who I am and just just telling people like it is, you know.

And I think you feel like that. Yeah, I know you've made you've made it.

I think you've made being open about who you are and like. Verbalizing your flaws or whatever you're part of, like your thing, which puts you in a pretty comfortable position. Absolutely. You're not sitting there saying, like, man, I hope shit doesn't catch up to me. Yeah, I know.

And I definitely I definitely think that that would be an exhausting position.

But isn't that what a lot does? Isn't that what a lot does across the board? Absolutely.

If you make this no matter what it is, regardless of what it is and I realize recognize this honestly about what 10 years ago in my life that I told you is this long-legged legged almost as a dude, if you want to find the quickest way back to the truck, you need to follow your boy, because I'm going to Farmanfarmaian.

I'm going to find the easiest, fastest way back to the truck. And he was like, All right, man.

Well, we'll try your way this time, you know, which actually turned out to be wrong.

Sorry, but I mean, I I decided ten years ago that it it took less energy because because we all have energy. Right.

You're devoting so much energy towards certain things. Right. You only have so much to get. Mental energy being a huge part of that. Absolutely. And it takes more mental and sometimes literal energy to keep up the facade and sell the lie than it does to just tell the truth and deal with the consequences.

And so we stopped. We stopped. Why fudge and anything? And I think in honesty, I think the interesting thing is like.

If you're honest from the jump and in our genre. I don't I don't think there are any consequences. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think you're is going to go that got don't skin big bucks. Well, if you don't talk about skin and big box, no one's going to say that you're not doing it right. So just sing and talk about the shit that you actually do. That's the thing that people need to understand. Like they try to come in and fit this mold mold that's perceived.

That's really not even there, man.

There's nobody in town. Go sign. And a guy is going to we got to get this guy off the pot.

I mean, you know, I mean, ideally, that's not happening.

You know, nobody's doing that, you know what I mean? And so I don't understand why there are some guys who are feel so pressured to try to, like, fit in with their fan base. A guy that does it well is their church.

Yeah. Does well. Just does what he does so unapologetically and is so left of center of what I think the stereotypical the guy that maybe doesn't listen to country music thinks what a country music singer is.

He's so left of that mold and so outside of the confines of that particular, you know, stereotype. And but he's never in a magazine going, dude, I'm a big hunter and I'm out fishing all the time. Like, he never says that.

So he doesn't have to try to acknowledge that. Are back it up with photo evidence or, you know, I need to feel like he's cooler than somebody else so he doesn't do that, which fucking makes him cool.

That's what makes him cool, is that he doesn't do that, in my opinion.

The like it or leave it. Yeah. You know, it's take it or leave it thing.

Take me as I am or not. Yeah. I make music that I like, people like it and I don't make music for people that aren't going to like it. So I don't care if people don't like it.

Oh I like that. Like good stuff.

That's a hook I wrote, you know, six way. I appreciate about a thing I appreciate about country is that you can. Embrace. Things that are becoming increasingly hot for people. Outside, like you look at a dude, you know, even like actors, who's the who's the creator? Yeah. Oh, he does. Well, yeah, but he gets slapped in the face every time he does it, man.

Really. Oh. And he like, be like, oh yeah.

We killed a lamb on the farm and all of a sudden it's like a murder.

Yeah. That he's got to kind of chill on it. You know, he the lamb up by the back of the neck just saying like oh no.

And I've had other people I wish I could I wish I could say this dude's name, but it to just it'd be helpful if I could say it like explain it to me flat out. Explain to me over the phone that he's a closeted hunter and he's got a secret game room.

No way a secret game room because he has to hold a certain perception that he had a little thing built off in case did for me.

Well, sounds serious. There's like people that can't go near it, can't be seen with it. And it's like the fact that that the fact that on one hand in America, you could have involvement. Right. Involvement in media and be in the public spotlight and have it be that you can't. And if you do, you got to lie to have it be that you don't. But then here's this other, like thriving industry where you have to lie and say you do.

Were you it's like how people come and hit me.

I mean, honestly, like people talk about the polarization of America, you know? And I'm like from the from a media standpoint, I'm super sensitive political media. I'm like very sensitive, very nervous of the polarization of America. Like, I don't want to happen, man. I'm like very worried about the fabric of the country. But then the thing I keep reminding myself is every single time I go outside, every time I go outside, nice shit happens around me.

Yeah.

I don't have any idea what the dude next to me, the dude next to him, the dude next to him to do next to him. I have no idea who they're going to vote for. But when I see those guys. It's what's going on, man, needed help with anything, I got to be out of town for the weekend, if you don't mind checking in, I'm going to go ahead and like what? I know you got to go away and watch your situation heads up.

I saw the kids over there. They seem to have a gun like it's like friendliness.

I would agree with positive interaction after positive interaction. I go to the gas station, people are cool at the gas station. Oh yeah. Like everywhere you go, like someone's cool with you guys. They're very cool. But then all we hear about is like the world's falling apart. But then I think, like, how can it be like you take something like affinity for hunting. How could it be that if you like this kind of music, it's celebrated?

If you like this kind of music, you got to hide it? Oh, yeah.

And there's a and a lot of the same people are listening to all the same stuff. Exactly right. I can't figure out where that's just like an example of it's just hard to picture that we're all in these wildly different trips. You think there's guys wildly different things like that particular guy, right? For instance, I'm not sure who it is we haven't discussed. But you think that particular guy has like.

Another Instagram account, like just to follow mediator, I don't know, but you know what, I couldn't figure out why he wanted I could not figure out why he wanted to get me on the phone.

And I was like, oh, my God, this guy wants to talk to the phone, so I was like, I don't know. I had no idea. I was like, well, like, if this dude calls, you call. I call his call.

I'll tell you later. All he wanted was all he wanted to me to do is tell all he was all he wanted to. He just wanted some justification. Never heard another word from him.

Wow. He's one chick.

Forty five minutes on right now. That's with a fellow hunter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dude, I can't imagine having to hide. Oh. Oh. Let me also I don't think I could just make your own stock with your box box box box stock. I'm you know, you can't even put that on the board, put that on Instagram, Instagram, you know, Instagram.

That's going to be my next Instagram box to analyze the box, the black box on the ground. I think you bring an interesting point. The second I get outside and see, I go to the gas station and people go, you know, yeah.

You know, like, holy cow, the world's falling apart. I went to the gas station and they punched me right. Immediately I'll take two people to, uh.

I completely agree with that.

I mean. It just. You know, you get here, I think we got on the bus and we Manlio Northern speaking jokers. We were just like the.

You're not a jerk in that whole group. We're like, this is going to be long before you guys are expecting out of eight of us, there'll be one. You try to, like, sniff them out. There's more there's more than you all out there. I mean, there is a there's a little bit of a pause. I cook gravy for hours last night, but I must tell you, this will be the gravy alone. I know, but I'm just saying, you know, it's usually it's usually one in there and there.

One man. We've had an unbelievable week. The landowners have been cool. You know, I just I don't know if it's as bad as they like to say it is. Yeah.

And I guarantee you, based on if anyone listening could see if you lined up all the people here, I feel like it would be a massive spectrum of political, religious and social beliefs.

Absolutely.

And there hasn't been one guy that's like, man, I don't like that dude, man. I don't get that guy because we all have this common bond of like being out here, enjoying ourselves, cooking, eat food, talk and laugh and stuff. Like there's never once been like. Janice, who are you voting for? Well, you like not just like that doesn't matter to me. No, and that's that's another thing.

That's the beauty of the outdoors is like in a in a world and in a culture that is ever changing daily outside is a constant, you know, that that going to hunt that and sitting in a tree in Washington but walk out is that that's the same, you know, like that's that's a that's a constant thing that you can always escape to Broe coming in with those good nuggets right there.

Well, I would lose I'm with you and I've been thinking about it.

I've been thinking about. That idea of the constancy of nature, because we've been working on this book project, um, not to be confused with our wilderness skills and survival book project, ladies and gentlemen, you'll pick it up soon for preorder.

You can preorder now. In fact, you can't preorder Diceman. Where can they preorder Steve? Anywhere.

Books are sold. Get them anywhere. Books are sold anywhere. Boxers box anywhere. Go get your box paperbark.

We're going to this other book project about kids like having to do with kids in nature and in it in thinking about this book. I mean, think about this idea that we invite. Kids, our kids invite people to like, feel. We invite them to all these like forms of community. In life, sure, meaning like your community, like, you know, the little place you live. We are invited to be participants in the social media community.

We could be invited to be participants and like being fans of Luke Homes. Right. Or fans of the local high school community. And you feel like you're part of that. And you might feel like you're part of the, you know, church and you're part of that, but not doing enough to make. Not doing enough to invite kids to feel like they're part of an ecosystem. Wow.

Right. Or like part of a like nature show or something. And so I was like, looking at all these ways in which. You know, you can you can just in your own yard, whatever it is, if you live in an apartment like your balcony, I don't know, wherever you are, you could participate and be like, man, I noticed that the sun was a few months ago, rose over there and not rises up here.

And I turn on my water and water comes out. Where did that water come from? Like that? It falls. Rain, snow. How did it get here? Is that part of an aquifer? Is the aquifer grow shrink when you flush the toilet, like what does that water's path to the ocean. Right. And you start piecing together. That you're sort of involved with the world, the threading of the physical world. Absolutely. And you're invited to be in that community and ask about how it's perhaps really comforting because there's this constancy.

Right, son, all these like predictable patterns, and I always tell my kids this way every day. A couple weeks ago, we look up on the mountain. Near our house and was like a pillar of smoke. Coming out of the mountain and its size, it looks like like the size of a wheelbarrow burning. But I might go inside and get my spotting scope that some bitches like over the ridge top. The next day burns down houses of friends of ours.

We're like under evacuate, standby for evacuation orders at super small to. Like we saw it like a campfire. Is that what it was? We saw it so small that we're debating whether to call 911 or not.

Here's the thing. Two weeks earlier, they have this map that shows all the lightning strikes. Now saying to firefighters, but when you guys go, if you know where they're at from radar, why don't you just go to them all? He because there's a thousand of them.

But, you know, you don't like this because you can't. I was like, well, you know, there's one there.

Once you go put it out, it's like, good luck. Yeah. You know, it might be hundreds or thousands.

That's that was what ended up doing doing it.

I hit a tree, a lightning strike two weeks earlier, got hit a tree. And it's smouldered while inside the train underground, then whatever, one day at Smouldered its way out from the outside in or so.

Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, just smoldered inside the tree.

No one knew people. It's right by this, like, hiking trail.

No one who's like a little ember, an air from a lightning strike that was about to buy whole force that blows up and like, you know, four, eleven thousand acres. And then I'm sitting there thinking this is like a long digression. But then I'm like and there's also the really scary, wildly unpredictable shit about being involved. In the natural world, like it's real, consistent, cool, and all of a sudden it burns your house down things like it burns your house down, man, so it's like a complex relationship with it.

Well, I don't remember. I was talking about what you were talking about is.

Oh, yes, I heard this analogy one time. That was pretty cool, man. I hope you didn't say it otherwise. It's going to I'm giving you like a compliment and we don't have that terrible.

But it's essentially like if you guys.

Yeah. So if you take a bunch of plastic toys to if we had a gymnasium and we put 100 kindergartners in it, you took a bunch of toys, you put them in the middle and all the kids just flooded it, played with them for 15 to 20 minutes and eventually would get pretty exhausted, not covered, safe, not would say if I sat in this current area, we would do that. But it's OK.

And, you know, in the old days, you put them back, you know, you took all the toys out, you took a little bag and you walked over. You open the bag and there was a puppy in it. And how many kids would eventually just, bam, get right on it? Everybody wants to touch it. Everybody wants to see it.

And I think I think deep within us, even as children were were born with the idea of of wanting to be connected to that world, it's just we as adults have wrapped work in life and city and concrete around it so much they have to literally fight through layers of existence to even feel the grass under their feet.

Mm hmm. And I want to make sure that with my child, I have a little one year old.

I mean, we're already taking our shoes off and walk it outside and dealing with with, you know, with figuring out that we are connected to that and how to take care of it responsibly and enjoy it at the same time. It doesn't have to be work all the time, you know. Yeah.

Shane Mahoney said that on Randy Newberg's podcast. Oh, Randy Dan Loves Podcast, the first guy to podcast my scarf.

What what's your look? This is your first. Hunting trip out on the Great Plains. Yeah, yeah. Impressions. It's great, you know, they are the Great Plains. Planes are great and they are plain and they are great.

No, no, man, it was I mean, it's obviously drastically different than anything I've done. You know, like I said, I'm not not a lifelong hunter checking in here.

So then I'm drawn off the past five or six years of my personal experience, which has mainly been hunting in the South, you know, and then the hardwoods of the south pretty much is where I've, you know, deer, turkey. That's pretty much my lexicon of of going and hunt, you know, some bird on and stuff like that, but all in the same environment. So it wasn't a gradual move.

It wasn't like, oh, man, when we went to Tennessee and then we slowly paddled out to like Missouri and then we got into Kansas and it was like, you know, it wasn't working my way out. It was like it went from Tennessee to Wyoming, like in two and a half hours.

Yeah, you know what I mean? And so you come out and it's like I remember thinking the first day that we went out when me and you went out and it was like, you see this animal that's.

Eight hundred or a thousand yards away from you, it's cool to be able to see that in Tennessee, it's like a it's a gorgeous there's so many trees you can't see a glimpse like they come out in an open spot and they might be out there for five minutes, tops.

And then they're back on the other side of the woods. You know, they're passing through or they're coming in to feed for five or ten minutes and they're back in the woods like they're safe places where they want to be. There kind of is no safe, quote unquote, safe place for an animal to be in that sense here. Like, there's not a lot of cover. There's not a lot of, you know, places to eat, like there's not a lot of holes and crevices to get in.

When we saw that and we saw that mule deer, you know, pushed up against that cliff face there, it was like, where's he going to sit out in the middle of the you know, the thousand acre feel like I mean, we're like very hard to find a little spot or something.

Couldn't see him. And here we are, you know, you know, ruining his spot, you know.

I mean, but it was so different, man.

And it was so fun to to have, like, the challenge of getting to the animal, I think was my favorite part of it in a way. You know what I mean? It's to me, it's never been about killing something that's not.

You mean all the sneaking around and going around and like that was the neat thing. And like and like obviously a huge part of it has been, you know, learning from you spend time with you out there was also, you know, really awesome for me as well. That's not normal.

And obviously, we're not going to be hunting together every weekend, you know what I mean? So, like, that was neat and I took that in as well. But it was like. Going with someone who knew what they were doing was huge for me, like it wasn't like, all right, well, we're going to park the truck and there's one over there on the side of the road. It was like, you know, good, just get out and we'll get it and we'll drive the truck up there and go get it.

And then that'll be it. It wasn't that, you know, I would never have wanted it to be that.

So going down and hiking down this huge, you know, mountain for lack of a better term, I mean, it's not, you know, Mount St. Helens or something, but it's definitely not Hill either, you know?

I mean, and so going down that and going back up and, you know, getting spotted and then you're like, well, it's not going to work and just trying things. And then finally when you get there and it all works out like being a part of that, like that doesn't happen in Tennessee except for when you're turkey hunting, you know, which is why I love turkey hunting in Tennessee so much is it is Casey kept telling me that Casey's the land owner, I believe.

But he kept saying, all my buddies call turkey hunting. Poor man's all cunning. I'll call them back to you, trying to file a response. You know what I mean? Like, so and I think that's a really solid analogy, but I think it was a little bit.

It was everything I loved about turkey hunting on a way more grandiose scale, minus the, you know, the call and response element of it, you know, trying to stay hidden. You're trying to figure out how you're going to get there. Where do we need to set up? How do we approach it? I don't know. It's just there's something you can really get lost in that moment, you know, and my job can be so insanely chaotic and like it over over sensory, you know, deprivation.

It's like doesn't even begin to describe, you know, being in like a television studio. And it's like, all right, three minutes. We're doing this in two minutes. We're like down to the minute of what we're going to do and just sit in there for an hour waiting for somebody, you know, waiting for something to walk out on top of a mountain with people that you like hanging out with. Is just I mean, it's pretty refreshing, you can't even put a price on it in mind, but you know what I mean.

Yeah, you know, the thing I was explaining to. It's a loop. I need to explain it to him, but we're just, I guess, more like we're discussing this is in the there are very few trees here. I mean, usually you can't see a tree. Usually there, like most places you go in this area in Wyoming, there's you can't see any vegetation that would be higher than your calf tree. Like most of the time that's the case.

Might be like a scattered bit of Juniper's or something. But like typically within a thousand yards of you, there'd be like no higher kneecap. And I was saying that it creates the illusion because you can see so damn far, you always see something out there and antelope or whatever, it creates the illusion of there being a whole bunch of stuff. Like matters because we're like being oh, my God, are so over there. So we're like always animals by saying if you took every square mile section and took all the.

Things that live there and put them in a pile right in the middle of that section. It would be small little pile. Yeah, yeah, and there would be a lot of sections that the pile, there was nothing to put in the pile. Mm hmm. And he went down to Tennessee and farmland in Tennessee and took all that square mile and put it in a pile.

You'd have a heaping pile that's very typical with a pile of like a pile of all a tour bus piled up there like a crew bus drove us a second to like a jungle even I feel like only second to like a true job.

Yeah. You know, in my job, I actually don't have that much life, really.

We've gone from being down there. Really? Yeah. And you've heard a lot, a lot of vegetation legislation.

We've never toured the Congos. We haven't been.

Well, you know, the early explorers that went and did trips had that same thought and went down there and got their butts in big trouble because they just thought, oh, there's going to be fish and game everywhere.

I mean, I think I found this moment just in of really interesting southerners did.

We're so dumb. So we are we are governors.

Yeah. No, I wish I wish I can just support a lot more that, you know, the habitat can to support a lot more animals.

So we're talking about cows per acre. And Casey's father here said that it takes roughly, what was it, forty eight acres to support a cow in a calf for a year. And then Dan was saying that back in Tennessee, you can do that on a one.

Yeah, that's Keppra water. Yeah, makes them different, right? Yeah, and they were saying that, oh, he said, well, we consider that irrigated and I was like, there ain't no pipe and water coming to my stuff. He was like, no, no. It's like rain.

That's I was like, oh, yeah. I was irrigated by the rain.

I think I think a good a good, you know, a good thing to get into to describe what we're talking about, too, is off camera on this time that we've been here. I got to shoot a turkey and we opened up that pouch.

You know, how vibrant was this as Chris opened that thing and you were like, so keen on, like, what's in there?

Did one of the camera guys just throw that on his plate? Like, I think it was large, but it was just.

Grass, pretty much what was one of the Russian or non-native plants, again, a non-native plant. Sure. That is spreading like what was Russian olive really Russian.

But when you go to Tennessee, man, you cut that thing open and it's got everything under the sun in there, man. I mean, there's corn in there. It's acorns in. There is grass in there.

There's, you know, I mean, the bird seed I found mouse rabbits in one of my turkeys crawls. Oh, is that right? Yeah. I like that word crawl the Cellcom, not a crop crop crop. Is it that it's one of them, them Yankee?

Yeah. Thanks, man. The border Mason-Dixon. No crop. Not a crop. Thank.

We could communicate. What's your. You guys could explain what you guys cooked to us the other night, cooked for us last night, we did a we had a. backstrap chocolate country fried in a little country throughout that.

Oh, yeah, yeah. We we do a dreg of milk and buttermilk.

Buttermilk and I'm sorry you don't give me no egg wash. Do it and just cut cut and a little backstrap to to to finger with and and we scored it last night because the antelope hadn't had a ton of time to break down those muscles and be super tender. So we scored all the pieces and went into a buttermilk dredge and then we went in to sell for as a flour little Tony Sacha's mixed in with it will kick in.

A little kid was a nice little and you throw that into a pot of of canola oil. That's that you get heated up or vegetable or whatever or bare.

Or if you're a fan of the meat or pot, apparently that's a real. We got a bear for you guys. I no, I'm not.

You better not use that without us by the way. Oh, I'm assuming it's artists. I'm going full artist dang artist like um.

And then uh.

Yeah we would shallow fry shallow. I don't know, not like. Yeah. You don't fully submerge, you don't dunk them in there. It's a flip for you know, you're going to flip halfway through it.

Um we had that and and then to top it off we'd made a little saw mill gravy that uh that was passed down from Miami Mall to my dad down to me. And our we were our apartment. And I told the camera last night, like, every time, you know, we would show up at my grandmother's house, my my mom's house, you would either smell one of two things.

You do smell chicken and dumplings that she that she made or Palmos.

You're always smelling that.

You're always smelling that, um, chicken and dumplings or a big thing of of gravy and biscuits and sausage and bacon. And that's what we had last night. We just had a little southern fried antelope with a little sawmill gravy and biscuits, palm oil mill gravy, y'all.

Mom, you guys feel you. Like day in, day out, do you guys feel like you're like you eat Southern? Pretty much, I don't know when I Taco Bell Southern, I mean, consider that Southern I this week or Southwest, we definitely grew up everything from growing up.

I mean, we do we fried chicken or fish, you know. But now, ma'am, I think we've we've branched out a little bit or tried to calm your cholesterol down a little bit.

I don't. Do you I mean, do you consider that the only way for a country meal to be made is fried? Like I've been?

I would say just like even. Eating country is a lot of chocolate pie around. I'll admit that, you know, there's I mean, there's there's some other things.

Yeah, there's yeah, there's something that's a chocolate pie as other I mean, I would consider that pretty, pretty southern pecan pie.

Pumpkin pie for sure.

He said yes. Correct. To say it correctly.

How do you say it. It'll be early. Oh, that's how we said it.

I thought down south I say I say P and I'd say both. Sometimes it's kind of back and forth for me. Steel is the number one selling brand of gasoline powered hand-held outdoor power equipment in America, and it's built right here in America, in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

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Oh, please, man, I was going to ask you more about Southern food for all of our friendships, but we were talking about how we all didn't ask each other different things. But this is one thing I will be judging all year upon. I'm just going to go.

So let me let me paint the room for you here. We're in my boss. I'm sitting on a nice love seat. Mr. Patel, this is to my left. Read is to his left than Steve taught.

Clockwise, clockwise. A circle. Yeah, clockwise. So I'm going to start with Johnny and go crappier croppy. Croppy Gross, yeah, Croppy Croppy, Croppy Groppi, brutal, really, you're correct, we can't be friends anymore.

I'm just going to take it just like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Do you OK, if you go to the military, take a crap or a crop crap.

Right? It was I mean, there's two there's not two piece of crap. Right. Stupid of me. And my third is not a fish. You're not also.

So how does the Steeves an English guy. How does the second pee change the vowel sound of of the A to an R ok.

You put an E on the end of the word, it would be crape. Mm hmm. If you put a it's too to crop to piece this crop does not know that's not true because crop does not mean peas. I don't really I don't know.

I would like to know. Sloppy Joes. Sloppy Joes.

I don't know that they're I don't know that there's that it's I don't know that this question. No, not everybody can talk yourself out of it. I don't think it's it's. I don't know that this is like rule dictated man.

I don't know if there's a rule for it.

Yeah. I don't know if there is either might be addiction. You guys go to crappies. That's what we would joke about.

You guys can't be too happy. So this is a separation.

And even the Southern situation, because this is like this is a bunch of us is like this is like like Ole Miss.

Mississippi State. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is like like Florida Georgia game.

What would your record come out. Which one. Crappy Argo's crappy Oswal right there.

Right. Yeah. You know better together. It's not really.

No I think it's crappy. I think it's, I think we'll just pull your car like ice cream and everything.

And if you're listening and pull out one here, I tell you about this.

Tell people about the the process of like how you guys you guys hang out. You guys are like really good friends, right? Yeah. Yeah. To us. Yeah. This is just your first um. This is the first single is that right. The Road Together. Our first single together.

Yeah. Where did what was this.

Tell the song and tell what the seed of the idea was. And so the song's called Better Together. It was written in the summer of twenty eighteen I believe in Boone, North Carolina, on a retreat, on a writing retreat. So I specifically going to write specifically on the right. That's usually how I operate. I take two weeks at a time, probably four weeks a year and go and write the majority of my stuff. So I'm not quote unquote a lunch pail rider like these guys.

And where do you go to do it? Sometimes I go to Boone and I was going to Florida, sometimes at his house. At my house sometimes.

But you clear the deck and that's what's going on. That's it. There's no other there's no press. There's no interviews. It's so far gone. So when I first started doing that, I would kind of do so like let's say I'd bring Steve and talk in, be a good move, man, because I got some clothes.

I got I got a couple guitar lick. You got this. I got to man. You guys. I know we know we were OK, but give us a little bit of it you can't work with.

Oh well give us a little it's a little hook I came up with yesterday.

I had nothing to do with that. Thanks man. I thought I didn't know what a hook was. Then you explained it.

So now it's yours.

And I was I said I was yelling, I was yelling at the flip flop last about something.

I feel like yeah, I think the flip flop question was lamenting that said, yeah, oh that's awesome. Was lamenting we're skinning and antelope and I feel like he was lamenting not having something glove's. Right now, he had gloves off off the back of a tool of some sort. Oh, no. You know, it was he was lamenting having to do with me.

That's right. That's what it was, which I did.

I wasn't holding it up. The I wasn't doing enough. You were holding the was I was doing it right. Because I was talking with you.

That's right. And I said to him, I want to get this right because it's like pretty good. But think about it. I said to him, you got to work.

You have to work with what you got, not with what you wish you had, not with what you wish you had. You get to work with. But you get so I'm developing this into a wish. Well, it's not that I was hoping it'd be more of a country hit Snapchat.

If you guys are kind of taking in a wild direction, you gotta work with what you got.

So that's a hook. So who. Oh, yeah. So so I want to get to the hook. I go through the whole damn deal.

A hundred and there's a hundred fishing in there is there. Is your first thing in it. The first thing in it. This is another thing I want to get. How did you guys know that the engine should be a Johnson? Because we know did it come on, because it wasn't it can't be too hot to know.

No, we don't we don't really have I mean, nobody really uses to hot. It's like we disagreed the right to steam. You know, the there I was pleasantly surprised.

It's like when you're watching this guy sell the short, you know, a cow for HP Johnson.

If you got a flat about the South, you got to Evinrude or Johnson. All of it used to.

Well, if you're male, if you're making forty thousand dollars, you still got one on there.

Yeah, you got a forty. You've got about a twenty five. That's what I'm trying to applaud.

Meaning, um. Now and then, I do want to get back to the song, I want to applaud the choice because lyrically I thought it was astute. Because and I'm just curious, like where this stuff comes from, because now and then. Like I somehow, much like Cormac McCarthy, the writer Kormákur, yeah, because he does his homework right, when someone has like when someone like has a firearm or something, it's like it's the firearm.

Yeah.

That they would have brought to you by Wetherbee, and it makes sense, so every time he references something, whatever, like something about someone's footwear, something about like some detail, like God, that's exactly the correct word like that. Right. Exactly. Right.

Right. Um, and having to.

Yeah, I thought that the inclusion of that it was a Johnson. Outboard like seawalls was listeners know the Johnson over, like, can you see it is a Johnsonville, but I wasn't even there, but it has a better chance than Southerner's run them damn Johnsen's.

But it's like it sort of you hear like someone having a Johnson gone and it's like right away it's an old ass engine that someone has put in a lot of effort, rebuilt the car at least eight times. It's like it's not running by accident anymore. It's running as someone had to keep it running. Yeah. So the inclusion of having it be that.

I thought I said no, I took note. It helps sell the authenticity to me in the right. It sent me where I felt as though I was in good hands. There you go.

That what you just described is what we as songwriters.

Work so hard to craft is something undeniably honest, but pictures that not only you can visualize, but tap into a little bit of of life, you can go back to what we can accomplish that and we could convey that.

I mean that to me, that's that's the bones of a successful.

Would you have been less there if it was an Evinrude? Good question. It would have been nothing would have occurred, I wouldn't have I wouldn't have took note because it's more prevalent.

No, I just would have been like, it feels more buzz words. No, I was just like I wouldn't have it wouldn't have brought me, like, you know, there's that little bit of delight that occurs when something's perfect.

Yeah. Some of the book. I'll take that I was telling you about, there's a great book about the Great Plains called Great Plains Share in the Great Plains. The writer Ian Frazier describes a red tailed hawk sitting on a power line and he talks about that it would fan its tail. Right, and he mentions that somehow he draws a simile between someone working a deck of cards. Oh, yes. Right. It's so beautiful. It brings it's like it's like there's like a delight that occurs.

Absolutely. It's a split screen that you got. You get half votes. Seriously?

Yeah. So, you know, had he said some other analogy or some other metaphor or some other simile, it just wouldn't have clicked.

So if you had said Evinrude, I don't know what it's been like in.

I would have been like, I wouldn't have balls, right? I wouldn't have thought, what a mess Yoni's is a bit of a songwriter. He's a bit of a critic, too.

Oh, tell me about with him for four days where he did dancing around the floor, the Latvian dance to me last night.

So this song is called A Little Jig Out in My Backyard.

That's one of the songs I wrote, numbers, numbers, numbers and back to back to the song.

So I digress, saying, like I took note of the Johnson mentioned and I was just pointing out that there are some like there are some outdoors references for sure in the song. And so you go to write in retreat. Yeah, go to writing retreat. We're in Boone and Dan was there on that particular day and our buddy Randy Montana was there as well. That his birthday. No, yeah.

It's not his first name, but that's the moniker that his dad as a Hall of Fame songwriter who went by Billy Montana. And so he, you know, assumed that pseudonym once he went into songwriting.

Would you guys think about went with Steve Fevre? Steve what? Sea fever, fever. Fever, fever. It would feel a little mushy. OK, Stever, you know, like it would sound like you were saying, Steve, I've you in a fever, you know, leave it to Stever like that. Who's got a fever? Yeah, leave it to Stever.

But now, anyways, we're up there and and I think we wrote the chorus yesterday and the first verse. Yeah. So that's what you start with. Course we wrote course first and that's typical.

No, no. It's just a bit depends on the day. Can you tell me the chorus? Of course, Ken. Yeah.

You know, some things just go better together. If we're going to say we're going can say no, you sing it, man. No, it's better.

Like we can sing the song on your local streaming service, Dan, with like an 80 HP Johnson or 20.

But but that's the idea was like it was about things working in in correlate in the keys.

Can you talk about that? Like who was there was that was the beginning of that idea. Yeah. Who said how about it be about this.

I do know this. So Randy Montana said, man, I got this hook and we said, OK, what is it? He said. I got this circus, it's just like we go together like good ol boys and beer. And it's a bit much what what is what is. That as the chorus, correct, that's the hook of the song. To define a hook for me, I think I misunderstood. Oh man. So it means like the conceit upon which it's built?

Not necessarily. There are many. Consider a country song a bit of a trot line. So you have multiple hooks. The hook that got you 40 HP jumps. Oh, so you try to sprinkle those in.

Now, the main hook of the song, if you're talking about that, that is the ending.

Essentially the ending was a chorus girl, but like good ol boys and B you and me as long as you write to her.

So the thing that is in the chorus is the thing that hooks you. Is that up to the entire song? You have no clue what we're talking about until the last line. And that's the first chord.

That's a fake. That's not a bad thing. That's another thing. That's another thing that I found pleasure in.

Yeah. You guys some chill bumps, something else. Tell me about the song I thought was very flawed. Who's at home with the flawed song with I don't want to have to be a friend, you guys, and make it really doesn't matter. Oh, you tell my dad is. I think that's my boy. OK, Greg Campbell. No, no, no, no. You're talking about oversharing. That's my boy. Yeah. Where is it?

The one where he's a stepfather now? No, no, no, I'm not exactly sure.

I had a song called No, that's boy, that's not the same thing in the first verse.

In the first verse. That's the story. It's like the high school football game. And his kid kicks the shit out of some other kid and he stands up in the bleachers like, that's my boy.

That was I describe the Tea Party guys I know I'm talking about, although I thought you'd pay attention to everything, man, I've been seeing a lot of stuff, you know, I don't mean that.

I mean all country songs.

I mean, we only like you said, the song was flawed. I probably just dismissed it. If it was only thing being.

There's there's a there's no redemption. There's some reason to bring it up. It's I never go to the whole song. I'm waiting for the hook through the whole song. I'm waiting for the payoff. Right. And there is and I feel that the payoff is going to be that he's painting a picture of this kid. There's this dad and this dad is like absolutely loyal to his son, even his sons. Even when it sounds wrong, he's loyal to them.

I'm expecting the end of the song that it's going to be something like he the boy throws himself on a grenade in Iraq to save his body or whatever, which is or does like and he'd be like, oh, yeah, man. This dude, like, he's he's like, that's my boy. Right or wrong, that's my boy. One of the verses is his kid goes down in and takes a twenty two and whatnot and goes down and shoots up this other guy's property.

And all the kids come home and the old man comes over, you know, the old man, you drive, this young man comes over and he says, one of these kids shot up my property.

And he says that's and he's like, that's my boy.

So I'm thinking in the end, the kid's going to do some, like, heroic fare. Any better pay off be like, that's my boy. That's what I'm saying, man. That's my boy. But in the end. It never had the kids just kind of still an asshole on the side of the street and it's like, so yeah, as a listener, it led to so much disappointment in me.

And Moe found his tablet all the time. Every time the song came on, we feel like it just leads me to be like but like we thought that someone screwed up and they and they left a verse off the track to bring it back to talking about myself. Yes.

Because here's the thing, I, I got the pleasure.

The pleasure that was denied me, you got a bow, and that was when you're doing all these like I like all these things that are like that match up, all of these things in life that match up makes sense to me.

OK, but I think that's what makes sense.

And then also, I'm like, oh, shit, man. Like a. like this dude woman. Yes, the country loves her. Yeah, and so when you finally go, like, why is he telling me all this? Right? Why is he telling you all this stuff that goes to register again, that delite.

If Steven Reynolds. True. And I was we were flatfish. We're just back for back for we just lofted that will fly out there, you know, stripping in a little bit and sipped it.

But you set the fire. I just got you. We got you with 40 HP Johnson.

So I liked it. Thank you. Know, I like like lyrically, like, it's I like that it delivered me a product.

Yeah. And as a songwriter, you want that hook to be that aha.

Moment, you know, that's what this is all going. Yeah. And that's even in the room. You know, if somebody throws out a hook and you want to say, well what's that, what's the twist on it. Like what's the spin on it. What's it, what's going to grab them. How do we make that, that. Aha.

And there are many different ways to get to that. They're you sure there are many different approaches to getting to that. Aha.

Moment and it doesn't always have to be this way. If everything was, you know, it was the butler moment then, you know, it was Colonel Mustard in the study with a brain. Oh man. We get pretty annoying, right.

So I mean, it's OK. Just don't be afraid of songs that don't have the grandioso. It was the guy on the curtain.

I'm not I'm not afraid of it, in fact.

I don't get that Yarl's process, but I like the films of David Lynch and what David Lynch toys with you, if you could listen to it, be good to as a songwriter, might be good to watch David Lynch movies, because what David Lynch messes with you often is the whole time you're like, OK, where's it all leading? Like, what's the point where it's all leading? What's the point? And the movie ends. And you're like, damn me for thinking they're like, yeah, you don't want to see soccer, so you're right.

Oh yeah.

But I think that's what he's showing you. He's like showing you. And that would be hard.

He does the same thing to the whole book. You're like, I can't wait till this super evil guy gets is the trap.

The book just ends like the evil guys find, like all the good people are dead. Evil guy drives off into the sunset. Do you think he's.

Do you think he's doing that for your own imagination to continue the that process? See, I don't want to I think he's doing it to mess with you. How he's doing to show you that you're a sucker. OK, OK.

I want to bow on my books or a bow or my movies, man. Yeah. And wrap it up there. Know, Sarah, I don't want to be left hanging out like loose ball game.

Not everyone remember at the end of no country for old men. I do remember that. Yeah. He goes like the one person left the beautiful sweet girlfriend. But there's a bit of a he goes to their house and like he comes out and checks the bottom of his boots, resiliency of her blood all over his boots. Though he promised her he was going to do it. Wasn't the end of The Sopranos like that. Like people were all up in arms.

Like it was like this guy comes in and they're all sitting around the table at the restaurant.

And this dude comes in and it was just like, you're like, oh, man, something's going to happen. And then it was just like boom. And that was just the end of the whole scene.

I don't like that. I like that. I like a change in change completely that feels lazy to me.

Like there's got to be certain enjoyment for the creator of that, though, to be like, know what it's like. Yeah.

That's why you're right for me kind of side of the fence there, because, like, I like to I like when that same The Sopranos, that thing goes down. I like to imagine what happens. You know what.

But isn't it your job to tell what happened? Absolutely. I'm not watching your movie to imagine. So I'm watching it to see what? You're mad? Yeah. Like, if I want to do that, I would've just done it from the start.

I was just sat there and watched all the cool Coulthart story. I just thought, oh yeah, man, what a great ending to that story. But when Dan told me the story earlier that I can't that want to tell the details about.

But he told me the story that included that happened to include his his night at the campfire with his wife. My joy in that story.

It was primarily how excited I am to tell his story. Oh, absolutely.

I'm like, I'm gonna tell the shit out of this story. Every time the subject comes up from that guy will tell this guy I got work for him. All right.

So Johnny Montana, Joe Montana, I've got Randy Montana book Dream, say, Joe Montana, Montana. Shania comes into North Carolina, the writer.

Yeah, he says that thing.

And then that eventually works, too.

We're discussing I remember this and you're in the room or not. Yeah.

We're actually sitting on a deck of a house in the mountains looking over grandfather. Yeah, that's how I picked this up.

Seventy seven degrees every day in the middle of the summer there.

Rainstorms come through rainstorms through every day. But it's awesome.

So we're out there holding guitar, presumably just one guitar, probably just one honestly, you know, kind of gets to be a bit of a town hall meeting. If there's more. Yeah. If there's more than one, everyone's going. Oh, really? Do people get to noodling one or two usually, you know what I mean? And you're like, OK, can we get some focus here? But anyways, I remember I still have this.

We sat down guitar.

Real crap. Sorry, who's holding a guitar. So you don't get the whole loop, sometimes it's ever changing. OK, we got to get dance on the guitar, OK? I mean, I'm in I'm leaning over the all. I'm in the seat clutching.

No, it's more like I'll be like in a lot of the times there's nothing happening on guitar. It's not like Dan's just sitting there playing for three hours. Four hours.

You could you could you could just feel like it's like, it's like I'll sit there and I'm like, hold on, let me get that, you know what I mean? Like, he'll pass it over to me, sussing out something in my own head.

But I explicitly remember Randy had that idea. We were discussing it and had landed on the better together thing. Yeah.

And we were like, what's the best avenue to approach this thing? And so I sat down, I had my pen and paper and I just wrote out a bunch of stuff that I felt like went together really well. Johnson for you, the flat bottom. Exactly. It was all these different things and it was a list, you know, it was ten or twelve lines long of just different things that I felt like work together really well. And it was like, how do we, you know, in a in a in a clever way, make all these things?

Not maybe these explicitly. But this is I was writing with a guy named Charlie Worsham this past week, and he had a great analogy for it. As he says, I have to just say these things for everyone to hear him because he referred to it as fertilizer. It might be shit, but sometimes the shit is the fertilizer leads to absolutely the growing of the common goal.

That's a metaphor. And it was awesome.

And so he throws it down. So I'm throwing out this fertilizer, you know, all of these different things, and then we're all gone. And then it was almost like an explosion of yeah. Like, oh, well, this and that and this nurse and and, you know, we. And how much time elapsed at this point.

A couple hours. Probably two hours maybe. You know, there's a lot of coffee drinking and, you know, just kind of shooting the shit. And I don't remember specifically in the second verse, if I could take this part.

Yeah, I remember looking at Luke and being like, man, I feel like this is the point where we start because we get out of the bag at this point on the girl being.

Yeah, better because of the song.

I said, well, why don't we give this second half to them?

And I said, oh, is there anything specific? Like that, you feel like you and Nicole do, that's kind of just very specific to your relationship. He was like, no shit he is. Marinho. Whenever we go to town, she puts her license in my wallet. That was a fucking great detail. Yeah.

And as soon as I said I was like, whoa, whoa, we are writing that down.

I don't know how we're making that fit, but we're making that fit. And immediately was like your license in my wallet when we go out downtown. I said anything else? He goes or Lipstick's all over my car. He goes, Next, Largos, your lipstick stain.

Every coffee cup that I got in this house to put in, you always move in my shit from one cabinet to another.

So please stop your mother, for some reason, takes my really good knife and cuts my kids grilled cheese sandwiches in a pan, in a pan, in the pan for some reason, probably for some unknown reason.

But I think my favorite spot of any song and I think and I don't want to sound like I'm toot my own horn here, but I, I feel like my strongest points in my songs are the bridges.

The bridge of the song is that it's it's different from the verse in the course of your verses, in your course and you have the spot.

That sits on its own melodically, structurally and lyrically from the rest of. Oh, I forgot this. You wrote this by yourself. Did you know we wrote it in in in the fire? That's right.

Just educate people on this, because this is something this is a concept I get, but I don't get. Can you take a well-known tune?

OK, sure. To take whatever song you think most clearly exemplifies. Do you want your own or whatever the hell.

I mean where you're like you're like like lay out like like how how a song could be structured and what function the bridge has so I don't get. OK, so typically for example and better together, the song we're talking about just for clarity. Oh it's great. We'll do.

The first verse is for DHP Johnson on a flat bottom boat and then that's the length that it is. It's four lines or something. Yeah, that's verse one.

That's normal structure is that's first one.

Then you're usually right into a chorus of course. Don't Borrus get to the chorus as we always say.

Then you write your course which usually stays the same throughout the entire song.

So each time you're referencing back to that chorus it correlates with a verse be considered a universe.

Of course it stays the same universal chorus. Then you're going into verse two, which will be the same length and melody as the first verse. They're all identical in that sense. Just the words are interchangeable. Right. And so then you hit your second chorus, you know, so you've got you've got two minutes or two and a half minutes. So your song about at this point. Yeah.

And so then you're probably going to go into this. There's one or two options here. You're going to go if you feel like you've said everything that you need to say. And in that amount of time, you're going to go with a straight up solo talks on the Strat.

You know, he's been working the fingers on that thing to get in there. And then you're back to Universal Chorus, whether it is whether it be guitar, his whether you guitar shredding, fluted neck on that thing, you know, and no muscle break is off suppressor. There's just one word for.

And so if you feel like you've said everything you need to say in that amount of time, you're going back into a chorus after that solo and then you're out.

So the chorus sits in for the verse. What? No, there's not another verse, because the verses is where you're saying. Lengthier wordier things, no, describing what you're talking about in the course, right, generally speaking.

And so if you feel like you've said everything you need to say, you do another chorus and the song ends because there's nothing to verses, that's for sure.

Usually because you're trying to say you're trying to stay usually in this three minute certain, three to four minute like three nights, even getting smaller now.

Yeah. Now it's getting worse after forty five. That's what their mark is right now.

When I first came to town it was three 40 and then it hit 330 with 350 that it was three minutes and now we're sitting at about two. Who decides this number.

The listener. The radio. Yeah, radio. Just because we focus attention spans. You guys are way out. Yeah, absolutely.

But so anyways, but if you haven't said everything that you want to say this after that second chorus, you usually go into a short solo section, like a half length solo section, and then you'll go right into what we refer to as the bridge of the song, which is I'm not sure why it's called that. I guess it's different bridges. The gaps were exposed to be a bit of a departure from the departure of what you've what you love.

Exactly. That's the bridge making. That's why know, I knew what you were talking about was the bridge, but so essentially you want a completely different melody.

Completely different lyric structure in that small section of the song. It could be two lines, it could be four lines, it could be one line.

But if you wanted to contribute to the story, absolutely both would not have any bridges in his songs because he'd leave you hanging after the second chorus.

You just roll it all out and be out of there and you be like, Oh, man, I feel like he was going to say one more thing.

What did you say, Cormac or Paul Carver author said Paul McCarthy. Well, Paul McCartney, that's. Oh, that's it.

Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, so the bridge and better together. It's a normal structured teen. Verse one chorus verse two course short piano solo section because the song is just me and piano and then it goes into the bridge which is so sometimes we roll in the water but I wouldn't have it any other way.

And if I'm being honest, you first and my last name, would you sound better to get that into the chorus tied up? You know what I mean?

It's like a different thing, you know, and then it takes the song just from like, oh, they're a cute couple to like, hey, I'm trying to get married, you know?

So, yeah, man takes it to another level. That was I got to admit to you, I didn't get that till right now. Yeah. I thought he was saying like. That he felt. At a time, yeah, I didn't know that it was that he had he was advancing and like now he's like one like seal the deal. Yeah, absolutely. I thought you said, like, you know, I've always liked it and that's the way it is.

I didn't know he meant, like, I sure would like this to happen. Yeah.

And my thing, I think then a double delivers, I think.

And I think the maybe triple delivery is like the the juxtaposition of all the things that go together. And then when you say sometimes where oil and water, like we sometimes we don't always get along like we're not. Sometimes we have those moments where we're very contentious and but we wouldn't have any, but we wouldn't have it any other way.

Like, you have to have that in a good relationship, in my opinion, after tune starts to make its own game.

And listen, here's the thing. I pride myself on sniffing the gravy out. And I was missing some of the great. Yeah. And that's your health that delivered. Well, you only heard it one time to. You had to. Yeah, true.

Yeah. And the full version, you know, I like outside, you're not getting the voice projection and in the I mean, I didn't cancel or I didn't catch the oil and water. I thought, you're a bridge guy on the bridge.

I was getting hit. I was getting inundated with stuff. OK, I'm going do some fade.

You get the oil rock and roll song.

No, I think I said that. I feel like there's some famous rock and roll song where they actually call out Bridge and then it goes into that's like Tenacious D.

I think the song to the yeah, I'll say this, that song seems to connect so well with and I guess I'm kind of toot my own horn here, but a lot of it has to do with the delivery. Right. It's kind of a heartfelt delivery, especially on my album. I played it for you. You were right around. Listen to spot an envelope and I actually platform it was a piano ballad. Right.

And the last show I saw Luke play before it was Rupp Arena in Kentucky. Biggest show ever down there, by the way, Brooke. Paul McCartney's record.

Oh, that's that's for Valentine's Day. Very good hosting. I'm guessing you're guessing to the level of hosting.

Yes. It was a meat eater Segway badge for that.

So in the midst of of him playing that song, which he encored with.

When it got to the bridge, sometimes we're all on water, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I look around me and I see. Multiple dudes dropping in, I saw six couples get engaged from where I was standing there, you know, telling them and he saw, yeah, no, I go up and how do they get pictures in the song?

In the song, I took pictures with them. So they're like they've come in preparation. But you haven't had the song had released it, it released and they released.

It was just wasn't the singles. Oh OK.

So the album was out and that song was out into the world and he's like in case he does this song, you know, and I have no reason to believe you will come to pretty my shit. That's true. That's very true. Yeah.

My buddy laid up he goes, this guy wrote that like, can we get a picture? And I was like, I guess let's get back to the creation of the tune because how hot is Randy on it? Yeah. Yeah.

So he's one of the he's one of the writers. He's my co-writer. Big fan of yours, by the way. Oh, he's a big man.

Yeah. So he he's in on it. Luke. You're in on it. Dan you're in on it. And anybody else get in there.

Unfortunately no. And he's not.

Even if he was more, if he was more like Machiavellian, he'd be he'd be like take a little swipes.

Sure. He'd be like yeah guys are really the song.

I mean could have improved greatly with, you know. Sure. Sure, sure. Know, it's a very it should have been a top to bottom. It does a Yamaha.

But in that moment when you guys are like well onto this idea. Yeah. And the lyrics are come in and you've written down all the things that go better together. Has music been introduced yet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Of course. Course was done already at that time.

I would say you could absolutely smash this. I'm not I'm not trying to give myself credit in any form or fashion, but I think my natural.

Progression towards songwriting comes from like a bit of a storytelling basic chord structure, which is extremely simple because I'm not a great guitar player, right.

So literally we were just going one for one four. And that's if if if I am going to be a part of a ballad, I'm going to try to push that simpleness onto the tune and onto the Karatas. Does that make sense? So the chorus was already done.

And I think I think I was just kind of like, what if we kept it extremely basic and let the Grizzly Bear vocalist? Smashed, that's. Yeah, the grizzly bear vocalised, I mean, in my opinion, he sounds like it.

They're longit lion on stage, not a grizzly bear or a grizzly bear, depending on what continent you're in. You know, to me, it would be a grizzly bear, lesli bear, apex, apex predator for sure.

Man, you can't listen to what you listen to last night. Go. That's probably the best vocalist I've ever sat in front of Chester Dark.

Yeah, that's I thought she did surprisingly well. Oh yeah, I know. I saw you on Welling with pride. Oh, you know.

Yes, I know the best part of it. I got to tell this was real quick. So Chester the molester. I'll do it. Cut that out.

What's his name? Felicia Chester. Whoever.

Oh, Chester just got married in Chester, sang a song at his wedding. He just sang a love song and didn't didn't properly intro it. So that generated some confusion on the part of the attendees who then a rumor spread how Chester wrote that song and how great the song he wrote was, made everybody cry. And I can't believe Chester knew how to write such a beautiful song. It just got up. Failed to say like, Oh, and by the way, this is a little number written by so-and-so.

So then he had to go around. He had to go around, like clarifying to people. Yeah. In all honesty, you know. And last night Seth said Seth told me the you know, Chester told me that Seth said to him six months ago, would you have believed that you'd be singing a song next to or playing your guitar and singing next to Luke Holmes? And Chester said six months ago, I wouldn't have been to tell you that I knew how to play a guitar.

Pretty cool because he learned to like he had to learn just to like at his wedding played as well, which I think is like the cutest, sweetest thing in the world.

And I literally said that I want to go on record here and say, if that guy has been playing guitar for six months, how incredibly impressive that is.

That note. Absolutely. That was oh, was Dagar Engli impressive?

It was. I'll say this. It was as impressive and as as pressurized as me and you and Rick cooking dinner in front of these jokers, man.

I mean, I feel that the night before, like, why do they believe in me?

God, we're standing there whipping up gravy, biscuits and antelope. And Steve's got his hands in his pockets looking over the thing. I sprinkled a little dust in there.

He goes too early. He's not ready. Mean it's the same kind of pressure Chester gets up there in front of a guy that's got nine. No one's in a row. Biggest artist in country music. Does it give you that guitar? He's like, I'll take a swing at her. I knocked it out of the park to that part.

That was a great tune. It was. It was so cute. Oh, it's cute. Again, the reason I celebrate, like celebrating him is like instead of trying to be Mr. like, detached and can't be bothered. The old lady, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Just to hang it all out there. I will tell you that it's, you know, the serenade her at a wedding that might not be like, oh, I don't know, the old lady want to have a wedding. So I guess I showed up. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. But we had a bit of a plan working all day long to try to convince Chester to sing that song. All right. Did you hear? You probably heard. We were in the truck together with Chester. I was laying the groundwork to ask him to play, but it was it was really easy. I mean, just kind of like a circle hook, like the killed himself.

Yeah. All I had to do was really mad.

And he's like, yeah, I'll play. What if you guys will. I'm sorry. I'll play one if you guys will let me close.

Absolutely. Chester, we would love to hear it. Heard you play Lady Mary.

And he was like, well, I know what couple it was. It didn't take much convincing then. Oh, no. I stepped up to the play. It was. And he was ready. That was really cool to see.

I'd like to formally extend a thank you to you guys for having us. Next time, maybe pair with somebody a little slower, less athletically, a little less honest.

Oh, I'll tell you, honest, every time is a classic and then I'll miss an envelope with that guy all day. Well, appreciate you having us. Well, it's great. You got to look down. You can download someone called Dan'l.

Yeah. No need. We don't need to tell people how to find new homes. No, just popguns on it.

Turn your radio, just Google it on its scan and wait five minutes.

There is you'll find somewhere in the amidst the air waves, you know, but brothers hunt Isabelle brothers laid out, laid off.

People locate you there.

We've got a we're mainly probably based out of our Instagram right now and Facebook. And you can go check us out just Instagram, the brothers or Facebook, the brothers hunt and tell people what the brother is.

We've been taught about the songwriting. Yeah. The brothers started actually on a porch at our deer camp in West Tennessee. And we were sitting there just kind of talking, kind of going over the the scenarios of what we do and and and how we're this affinity for hunting out West is becoming a thing for us and and our dad. You know, he's such a fan of staying home and hunting the whitetail deer. It's his favorite thing. He has no passion about coming out here.

No, no.

Um, I'm trying to say no. Want to know want to come out here to the West and hunt. And so we were we were sitting on a sitting on the porch just kind of talking about it and decided that, you know, if we were going to go for for this thing, that we were going to go all in.

And that was probably, what, five years ago, four or five years ago.

And since then, the Brothers Hunt brand is is kind of I always thought I was going to have to choose between songwriting and maybe the brothers on one day.

But tell Steve how many girlfriends you've lost. Oh, yeah, every one of them.

Except this one, hopefully. Yeah. I mean, literally two seasons gets them to season. Yeah. They can make it through like a turkey season because you're kind of in and out during the day. But then when a fall comes they would always, they would always break up with rain.

Yeah. For sure.

And so we started talking about the idea of this thing and it got to the point where we wanted to, you know, showcase hunting and in an ethical way, in an ethical light, because we thought we were seeing a lot of hunting portrayed in the grip and grin.

We conquered this animal, man. And, you know, we we we deserve to do this and we feel a different way and and the way we hunt more privileged rather than deserve.

Sure. Sure, sure. And honestly, a lot of that was birthed from being in the writing rooms. I'll never forget the prime example. I have this we wrote with a guy from Australia. He's a good friend of mine. He wouldn't let me say this. Name's Lindsay Graham's.

And we write with an artist, an artist just tripping over what he wanted to do and just could not get out of his own way.

Right. And so far, I was like, all right, man, I'm going to grab some lunch out of the. Out of the refrigerator in the in the break room, I'll be right back.

And when I walked in, Lindsay was in there and I broke out a little baggie that had a Dyster Tenderloin and grilled it.

And so it was a little nice, neat little circles, dear to the wall.

And then when I broke it out with our cookies and I was like, no man.

Now he's British. Well, he's Australian. Was that.

No, no, no. I was good. All right. See those cookies? And I said, nah, man, you should do this is dear to them.

And who's teaching them cookies? I hate their cookies. Yeah.

He goes, Oh, I said, would you like one? He's like, No, no, mate. I buy my meat from the store. So he didn't understand the concept of how you could take your own meat and with a rifle or a bow and convert that into a male that you might eat the next day at work.

It didn't even compute. He said, I like my meat from the store, you know, and the reason I was talking about that, well, you know, it's safe. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so right now we're talking about we were like, man, there are many people that we come into contact with that that don't understand, even even in the country music industry, that don't understand how how hunting translate lights into food.

And once we you said, well, maybe we can have we could use that platform, whether it be through our artist friends or just the success we have, it kind of helped turn people to towards a more ethical and responsible way to enjoy the outdoors and to enjoy hunting specifically and and try to paint a little more accessible light on being able to to turn your your passions and your in your heart and into some some pretty damn nice table tableware.

And through that and through that filming that we were doing and started filming all our haunts and out West and putting them, you know, into a 30 minute YouTube videos, we were doing that to, you know, what dance speak speaking to. But it turned into us getting comments on YouTube and messages on Facebook or Instagram about guys who who have lost touch with our brother or our hunting buddy or a dad.

And they loved watching me. And Dan, you know, communicate in the way we, you know, we hunted together and that that camaraderie that we had in camp. And we just started getting tons of messages of guys going, man, just from watching you guys, it's going to make me reach out to my brother.

And I'm going to I'm going to reach back out to him and I'm going to try to get a trip because I haven't busted his balls in two years, probably. So that's a lot of it. I think I've seen it, man. We're pretty rough on each other. But I mean, it's it's all out of love and it's all love.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's become the coolest part of this for me is, is being able just to do what we do. But, but being able just like a song and to to speak to somebody you know, and try to try to maybe inspire someone to to get out there and do it a little more often, maybe do it with some people you love.

And then if they want to hear the hard part is the hard because you're a songwriter. And if you do got stuff, how do they hear what they want to go hear you do something?

I mean, they get to show otherwise we kind of keep it locked up, lunchpail, man, lunchpail, WorldSpace Lunchpail, what we do is click Papà oh oh guys, this fun man drayman.

Thank you. I really I I've had such a good time man to us to man for sure.

We haven't laughed as much on a shoot in quite some time. Long time.

So yeah we were talking about last night and you always coming into these camps or Heintz you don't know what to expect because you've never met these people or in who you're hanging out with and being talked about it. But there's not been best friends about what spooled Apple top right now.

Yeah, they've been following all week. We've been killing goats with each other all week.

I'll sell this. This is my final conclusion. I'll sell. And I think I was sharing a salute the other day. I was saying, like, if Americans like one story. If they like to know what an asshole a celebrity is. The second favorite story is when they learn, like how great a celebrity really is in that order and that order and that order.

My wife's one of those guys are, like I said, man, these guys are great. Yeah. My mom said, oh, she's like really like she was glad to hear it there.

And she was like, oh, dude, I have to say I have to say, I want you to tell me a story about a horrible Lucozade. Know, she was really my wife loves you, dude. Oh good. She loves to show me your no man.

No, she's like, yeah. She's like, oh I just. Yeah. Jordan, we're all big media.

We're big fans, man.

I mean this is so cool for us. Dude, we're it's kind of. Kind of out of I can't keep saying that the whole way, we were like, I can't believe this. I mean, it's it's almost been like a little shell shock. Oh, yeah.

Because, yeah, we have about Steve being a hard ass when he came and Steve Steve, we were like the artist ghost in us. He goes there, he artists just for show to work on that performance.

No doubt this guy is the last man I, I, I view it that you were guests that were trying to lay something out and I was immediately very interested in just getting the lay of the land and everything.

Everything's good and lined up.

It was you once I got that. OK, this is cool, everything's cool. And then I'll settle down.

And I was ready to tell you about the South and what's really going on in the south.

I found I had a great time on this trip last time I was on the what was it, the expensive podcast, the name of it when we announced the the Wetherbee. We don't know exactly. Yeah. And it was awesome to be very expensive. Vodka is very expensive sarcasm. So. Yeah.

So hell of a rock which is a few months ago and now a couple of months later, you guys all using that rifle down, some great phenomenal ride for fun.

We did all hunt with that rifle for. Oh absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for sending them to us for you. Thanks for everything.

Whether it be six five, three hundred tradition, six of which may drop a goat in its tracks.

Maybe the third time I read it. That's right.

Airball Challenged did read one there, but I shot the kind of shooting it was wasn't shooting but my gun battle. Huh. Let's go eat something a little bit. Thank you. Hey, thank you guys for this guys. He's had a blast.