John Rich (of "Big & Rich") Tells the Story of His Rise in Country Music and His Redneck Riviera Brand

On this episode of Our American Stories, John Rich has climbed to the top of music charts during his recent career. But like so many of our lives, he didn't get there without ups and downs. Here's John himself, sharing his remarkable story and the impact his father had on his life.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. John Rich is
a country music singer and songwriter, among many other things.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
As we'll soon learn.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
He's a former member of the band Lone Star, and
since nineteen ninety eight has been changing the country music
game with Big Kenny in their band Big and Rich.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Here's John with his story.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
You know, my dad's a preacher. He started preaching at
nineteen years old when he was still in college. Never
preested in the big churches, never draw a big paycheck
or anything like that. He really focused more on either
really small churches, or prison ministries or street ministry. Matter
of fact, my dad went to thirty four marty grass

(00:59):
in a row without missing one, went down there in
the biggest party of the year, and would sing and
preach on the corners in the French Quarter, which I
don't have to tell you how crazy that must have looked.
But he did it thirty four times in a row,
so he was getting results and kept at it. So,
you know, because of that and not a lot of

(01:22):
extra income coming in, we lived pretty lane. We had
missed meals, but we lived in a double wide trailer
Emerald of Texas out in the Panhandle and you know,
that's how I grew up. I was taught young that
hard work counts, that big ideas count. If you're willing
to go risk it and go out there and fail,
you never know where you might wind up. That's what

(01:43):
was always sold to me. Hey, Johnny, you just never
know where you might wind up. So don't be afraid
of anything. Go out there and get him. You're an
American kid, you know, you've got the right to pursue happiness.
All of that was told to me at a young age,
so that stuck with me throughout my entire life. To
this exact interview. Well, you know, anybody that's willing to
go to Marty Grass decade after decade and preach at

(02:06):
the French Quarter with all manner of insanity going on,
that's a dedicated individual. It's also a person with thick skin.
It's also a person with a lot of passion. You know.
That's a thankless thing on a lot of levels. But
he didn't do it to be popular. He did it
because that's what he was called to do, and so
he just did it. Watching him dedicate his life to that,

(02:29):
you know, you learn a lot of lessons. That's what
he's called to do, and he's going to do it.
Come hell or eye water, that's what he's gonna do,
and he's going to figure the rest of it out.
So my dad is a great singer guitar player. He
used that in his ministry. So growing up, my dad's
always playing the guitar. Matter of fact, one of his
side jobs, which he had many side jobs, was to

(02:51):
give guitar lessons at the local music store in Emerald
of Texas. So when I was about five, my dad
was leaving to go give guitar lesson and he looked
at me and he goes, you want to go with
me to guitar lessons. I'm like, yeah, let's get of course.
So I walk out the door. I sit down in
a music store and he's got eight or ten adults
kind of sitting in a semicircle, and he's sitting in
front of them, and he hands me this little kid

(03:13):
guitar and says, here, just sit behind me and try
to follow along. So that was my first guitar lesson,
was sitting with adults, and I was so into it,
mainly at that point because I wanted to be able
to play a song with my dad. I mean, what's
cooler than that? So I really liked it and I
picked it up quick, and after about I don't know,
a couple of months, my dad says, man, you're really

(03:36):
good at that. You're better than a lot of the
people I'm teaching. He goes, you want to play with
me in church one time? Sure? Sure, a dad, So
I sat down. I remember sitting behind the poolpit, kind
of hiding behind him with my little guitar banging along
to you know, Amazing Grace and you know, the old
gospel song. So that's really where I got the bug.

(03:56):
Was was just because I looked up to my dad
and I thought that was so incredible how he could
stand up and play something and move all these people,
make them react to something that just seemed like a
powerful thing to do and a lot of fun. Never
thought it would be a serious thing. In Emerald, Texas,
you better know how to either herd cows or drive
a combine, do something in the agricultural sector. I have

(04:20):
a good living. Music is not something people get paid
to do and a mailla. So it never crossed my
mind until sixteen seventeen when we moved back to Tennessee
that while people actually make money playing music, being willing
to put yourself out there and probably failed. I had
that attitude from a young age, and so we got

(04:42):
to Nashville. We moved back to Tennessee, where my mother's
from Tennessee. So I moved back and I started entering
talent contest in Hockey Talks in Nashville when I was
sixteen and seventeen years old, so obviously not old enough
to even be in there, and the people running the
talent show would look at me and go, how old
are you kids? Then totally sixteen, Okay, you can come

(05:05):
in and sing, but you're gonna sit right here next
to me, and here's a can of Coca cola. Do
not drink anything other than what them this can. You know,
they stapped me down, and so the first talent contest
ever entered Tracy Lawrence trace Atkins. All these guys like
that were in the talent contest. They didn't have record
deals at that point either, so I got to really

(05:25):
see what great singers could do. And of course I
never won any of those talent contests and was totally
outclassed and outgunned by these guys. But I got to
understand where the bar was set. You know how good
you got to being if you're going to really break in.
So that's how I started. And I intended on going
to college. I had a full ride vocal scholarship to
three different universities and fully intended on going. But then

(05:50):
I auditioned for this big theme park we used to
have a Nashville called opry Land, USA, which I wish
we still had, But I went and auditioned for that,
thinking I would do a summer job there and then
start college. Well, I auditioned, I got the job. I'm
making three hundred and ten bucks a week, which I
could not believe somebody's going to pay me that much
money to sing. I was pretty excited about that. But

(06:12):
while I was at oppery Land, I met some guys
that said, hey, we're starting a band, and we think
you ought to be in the band. We're all from Texas.
Year from Texas. Let's start a band and just play
around Nashville a little bit. So that's so I'm fun.
I said, absolutely, let's do it. And what happened was
very rapidly. The band was great. We got noticed by

(06:32):
a booking agent. Next thing you know, this booking agent says, hey,
I could book you guys two hundred days a year
all over the US if you want to do it.
I tell the guys in the band. I said, well,
I'm supposed to go to college, and they go, what
do you want to do? I said, I don't know
how much money am I going to make playing those
kind of days. She said, man, you'll probably make four
or five hundred dollars a week. Said I could not

(06:53):
believe I was make that kind of money. So I said,
you know what, I'm going to give it a year
and to Stevee. Thing happens with this band, which my
dad wasn't happy about, my mother wasn't happy about. They're like,
what are you doing at eighteen nineteen years old? I said, well,
I'm going to get in a van and drive around
all over the US and Canada with these guys and
play music and see if anything happens. Well, after about

(07:17):
two years of that, something did happen. It was a
band called Lone Star. We got a record deal in
nineteen ninety four. Our first single came out, went to
the top of the charts, and I was in the ballgame.
I never looked back. Long Star was made up of
a bunch of guys obviously from Texas, but they had
been playing the Texas circuits down there. So at that

(07:39):
time in country music, you could make a real living
and never lead to stay in Texas. A matter of fact,
still can. That's what red dirt country music is. A
lot of guys down there never even come to Nashville
because the scene in Texas is so big. I mean,
they got hockey tongs down there that hold three or
four thousand people. Billy Bobs holds fifty five hundred people,
massive places, and so these guys had been playing those

(08:01):
circuits for probably ten to twelve years. They were all
quite a bit older than me, And so I'm stepping
on stage watching them. How professional they are, Watching Richie
McDonald the lead singer, how he talks to an audience,
how you build a set list, how you deal with
a promoter, how do you get paid, the logistics of
the road, I mean all those things. It was a

(08:22):
crash course in touring and on stage presence, all those things.
So they wound up being pretty much like Big Brothers
to me, and I learned a lot of my chops
being in that band. It got to a point where
I was writing a lot of it hit songs for
the band, and I wanted to start writing stuff that
would down the road. It would have been more in
the vein of save Horse, Rader, cowb Played and stuff

(08:44):
like that. I heard it in my head a different
way that they heard, and at one point they said,
you know what, you're going in a different direction then
wherever going to go? Why don't you go out and
just do it on your own? And so that was
a tough one. I had to leave a band. At
the very song that they put out after I left
the band was a song called Amaze, which was the

(09:04):
biggest song that come out in the past ten years
in coach of music. So another level of you know,
really treachery. These guys are out selling four or five
million records and I don't even have a record deal.
What did I do?

Speaker 1 (09:19):
And you're listening to John Rich share his story, and
my goodness, what a story, What an influence his father had.
He wasn't teaching his son how to earn a living,
he was teaching him how to live a life. And
by goodness, if we all had more fathers like that.
And of course John applies what he learned from his
dad hard work. Take the shot, boy, take the shot,
but live it, commit yourself to it. Go all in,

(09:41):
and my goodness, John Rich was all in. When we
come back, more of John Rich's story. It's not a
straight path up. It's like so many of our lives,
and it's upset, its downs. More of John Rich's real
life story here on our American Stories. And we returned

(10:10):
to our American stories and the country music star John
Rich sharing his life story.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Let's pick up where we last left off.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
As a songwriter, I don't think you can be a
good songwriter if your whole life there's been nothing but upside.
I mean, what do you got to write about just
how great everything is? I mean, okay, good for you
if you've got that life. But I don't think that's
real life. And I think in country music, especially that
give and go, the push and the pull up and down,

(10:41):
that's the DNA of country songs. A blank sheet of
paper and a pencil is the most daunting thing a
person can look at, because it's looking right at you, going, okay,
write something on me. It's going to change your life
or change the world. Write something that counts. I remind
people all the time that the pages of the Constitution

(11:02):
started off with blank paper and a quill pen, the
pages of the Bible started off as blank pages and
whatever they were writing with back then. You know, blank
paper and a pencil are the two most powerful things
in the world that anybody can afford, a pencil and
a piece of paper. The only thing I really had
control over at that point was a pencil and paper.

(11:22):
That's it. The phone was not ringing, nobody's booking me
for a concert, you know, very lean, a little apartments,
you're renting, driving your car, you know the whole story.
But I could control that pencil and paper, And at
that point I didn't know if I'd ever get another
stot in. So I just went for broke. I started
writing exactly what I thought and exactly how I see things,

(11:44):
And out of that I did get a solo record deal,
and I put out a couple of singles. They both flopped,
total disaster. I lose that deal. So now I'm out
of a band. I failed as a solo artist only
like twenty seven and so I'm hanging out in Nashville,
and at that point I'm thinking, you know what, I'm

(12:05):
just gonna write stongs I'll just be a songwriter. That's
totally fine. And I'm hanging out a round a bunch
of songwriters and I hear about this guy Big Kenny
that's moved to Nashville. Everybody's telling me, you gotta go
see this Big Kenny Goud. I'm like, I'm like, big
al big and tall, big and loud, big and bad.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
What is he? Now?

Speaker 3 (12:23):
The calling this guy Big Kenny, that's the goofiest thing
I've ever heard. He said, Oh, trust me, you'll understand
it when you see him. Just come see him, Okay.
So I go down to this little place called Douglas
Corner in Nashville, and there's this guy Big Kenny. And
he's not contrary, and he's not rock. I don't know
what he is. He's kind of a It's almost like

(12:44):
watching meat load for somebody, Like what am I watching?
I couldn't really put my finger on it, but it
was no doubt it was highly creative and highly impressive
and totally different. So when he got through singing, they
had been telling Big Kenny, you got to meet this
guy John Rich used to be in the band Lone.
He's like, oh, no kidding. So we met after his
show and decided we would try to write a song together.

(13:06):
So a couple days later we wrote one song together.
The next day we wrote another one, and the next
day another one, and that moved its way into us
writing over a thousand songs together, and that led to
this whole different, unique sound in this duo Being and
Rich that really took Nashville by surprise and with the

(13:26):
entire equation upside down as to what was possible with
country music. Eighth of November is a Big and Rich
song about a Vietnam veteran in Deadwood, South Dakota that
Big Kenny and I met on a road trip one time.
He's bartending in this little room that we were playing
an acoustics set in and we get to know this
guy and he's got this just incredible story about November eighth,

(13:49):
nineteen sixty five, with the first major ambush of the
Vietnam War happened, and he was there and only him
and two others survived it out of twenty nine men.
And he gets back home. It spends two years at
Walter Reed Medical Center. He was shot up that bad.
He gets out of the hospital after two years, signs
up and does three more tours of Vietnam for the

(14:10):
US Army. You know, short of me and Kenny running
into that guy, nobody knows that story. And what we
found on the road is that when you play a
song like that, even though it's about this specific guy,
guess what every veteran and every active duty in the audience,
regardless of their age, identifies with the song. We've never

(14:31):
had the industry really behind us one hundred percent. We've
never won any of the big awards at the award show.
We don't have racks and racks so of number one plaques.
But what we do have is legitimate, real sterious music,
whether it's seriously thought or seriously serious. And because of that,

(14:52):
we're still out touring. I mean, we played a show
in Nevada, in the middle of nowhere, and about it
not Vegas Areno, It's some little bitty town I never
heard of. We showed up out there. That was sixteen
thousand people at the Bigger Rich Show. And the only
reason they're there is because they identify with our music,
our lyrics, our energy and everything that goes along with
the Bigger Rich Show. So that's something I'm pretty proud of.

(15:17):
I've written songs for a lot of other people. Gretchen Wilson.
I was my bartender back in ninety nine two thousand.
Me and Kenny are hanging out. I hear the bartender
get up and sing, and I went, good, Lord, listen
to that girl. I've introduced myself. I started working with her.
Jason Alde had just come to town. He's hearing some of
the songs I'm writing now that me and Big Kenny

(15:37):
are right, and he likes our song. So out of nowhere,
I've got hit songs happening on Big and Rich. Gretchen Wilson.
Jason Aldean, Faith Hill starts calling, going, hey, can you
write one for me? I wrote Mississippi Girl Like We
Never Loved at All, which was a Grammy Award winning song,
and I was the ASCAP Songwriter of the Year for

(15:57):
three years in a row, so a three And what
that means is that the songs I wrote that year
had more airplay than any other songs in all of
country music that year. But what's crazy is those songs
were not written when I was in the middle of
Big and Rich taking off. Those songs are written in

(16:17):
the den ze in between Lone Star and Big and rich.
When the phone wasn't ringing, nobody cared what I was
doing or where I was. That's when I was stockpiling
all those songs. So it's a good lesson learned. If
you feel like you're in a you're in a down spot.
Nothing's happened and nothing's going the way you want them
to go. That doesn't mean you sit around. That's actually

(16:39):
when you get to work, you can. You can dig
yourself out of that ditch and get back up, and
you want to use that downtime as a time to
sharpen yourself and be ready for the next thing that
comes along. You know, I got married No. Eight. I
have two sons now, Cash and Cult. One named after
Johnny Cash, one named after Sam Colt. And by that

(17:00):
is important. I can tell you that because the lifestyle
of a single songwriter and then into bigging riches when
several words ride a cowboy, you know that's a rockous lifestyle.
Your music is your life. You're pretty much limbing out
your lyrics Waylon Jennings style, Johnny cast style. And while
it's fun for a while, that's not sustainable. We all

(17:21):
know the stories. I mean, it can get you. And
so I think when my kids were born and I
started realizing, Okay, I got other eyeballs looking at me,
I got other other ears listening to me. It's time
to cut some things out. So I radically changed the
way I lived, who I was hanging around, stayed on
my music, and I think the focus got even even

(17:43):
deeper and sharper. And so I'm thankful for the beatdowns
that I've taken over the years because I have been
able to really drill that into some of my lyrics,
drill it into songs, and what do you know, millions
of other people have also up and down. Everybody has
and when they hear the lyric that a certain way,

(18:04):
they respond to that lyric. They identify with it, It
rings a bell, it says it in a way that
they feel it, but they've never been able to put
it into words. You ever write a song like that,
That's how you know you wrote something special. So short
of the failures, I think I'd be a pretty average,
if not below average songwriter.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
And you're listening to John Rich share his story, and
what a story he's telling. My goodness, when he said
the words a blank paper and a pencil are the
two most powerful things in the world. I've heard so
many writers say that so much of what we love
starts with almost nothing, and the power of that individual
to push through and turn that pen and that paper

(18:46):
into magic, into magic, that is work. Not only did
we find out he found his true partner, and this
was Big Kenny, but he also found out that he
was one heck of a writer, and so much of
the writing that he would end up doing for other
people did during his wilderness time. We've all been there
in that wilderness time, and we have two choices, wallow
or work, and he worked his way through it. And

(19:08):
what was manifested from that work was the pain he
was going through, coming out through the songs, and in
the end connecting with all kinds.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
Of people who were listening to those songs.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
When we come back more with John Rich's remarkable story
here on our American stories, and we returned to our

(19:39):
American stories and to country music artist and one half
of Big and Rich, I'm talking about John Rich.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
Here he is with the rest of his story.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
I've always believed that we shouldn't be pigeonholed to what
it is that you're known for. I think that goes
for anybody. If you're a mechanic, they go, Yep, that's Bill.
He's the best mechanic in town. Okay, well that's a
great thing for Bill. But Bill, what else can you do?
You know, if that's no longer a challenge because you're
really good at it, what else can you do? Now?

(20:11):
I've always applied that to myself, like, Ah, if I've
got a fire burning for something, I'm going to go
chase after it. Whether I get it or not is
to be determined. The rednick rivi Era. You know, that's
a phrase that's been around since the early nineteen sixties.
It was kind of the tongue in cheek jokes to
her way of saying, well, we can't afford to go

(20:32):
to the French rivi era, so where are we going
to go this summer. Let's go to the redneck riviera.
Let's go to the blue collar rivi Era, which originally
would have been talking about the Gulf Coast, No Panama City, Beach,
Golf Soores, Alabama down through there. Well, I'd always called
it the rednick Riviera too, But one day Kenny and
I had a show down there in Gulf Shores, and

(20:52):
I started wondering, I wonder who owns the trademark to
the phrase redneck rivi era. So I called my attorney
and I said, hey, can you see who owns the
trademark to rednick Revier. It calls back ten minutes later.
He goes, you're not going to believe it. It's never
been trademarked. And I said in any capacity, like what
about barbecue sauce? He goes, he said, I'm telling you
it's never been trademarked at all. Ever, what do you

(21:13):
want to do? I said, well, I'm going to try
to trademark it. How do you do that? He said, well,
it's different than songs. You have to apply for the trademark,
and if they give it to you, then you have
to decide what you want to sell with that praise
on it. What do you want to sell? I said,
ball caps and T shirts. This is two thousand and eight.
He goes, okay, well that's category seventeen. You need to
build a logo, put it on ball caps and T shirts.

(21:33):
You got to sell it across state lines, turning the receipts,
and then we'll see what the US government says at
the trademark office. So that's what I did. I built
out this red, white and blue star logo with these
waves going to it, and the original phrase was blue water,
white sand rednecks, Rednick Revie. I thought that was pretty good,
so I sold ball caps and T shirts for a

(21:54):
few months. I turned in my receipts. The turning calls
me back and he says, well, now I know it's
never been trademarked. I said, why is that. He said, well,
they just denied your trademark because they say you cannot
trademark at geographical location. I said, what is that supposed
to mean? He goes, can't trademark Texans can't trademark Nashville can't.
I said, well, it's not a geographical location. It's the

(22:16):
same place Margaretaville is. It's just a different group of people.
I mean, Rednick Rivier is a state of mind. He goes, well,
I'm just telling you what they said. I said, Is
this an attorney in Washington, d C. Telling you where
the Rednick Riviera is? He laughed, He goes yeah. I said,
all right, ask him this question three words. Where is it?
Where is? Because you can't mail a letter there, nobody's

(22:38):
addresses to Rednick Riviera. And nobody pays taxes to the
Rednick Rivier? So where is it? So he hits this
attorney back. John wants to know where it is, and
this attorney, I kid you not. This guy copies and
paste the Wikipedia answered to where is the Rednick Riviera?
I have it framed on my wall here in Nashville
at the house. The Wikipedia answer was Rednick Riviera is

(23:01):
a colloquial term used to describe the beach frunt between Dustin,
Florida and Gulf Stores, Alabama, otherwise known as the Emerald Coast. Well,
the second he gave that answer, I thought, I've got
you now, because you forgot about South Padre Allen, Texas,
and you forgot about myrtle Beat, South Carolina, and on
and on and on. And I start going on social
media searching the praise Rednick Rerivie, and I'm finding people

(23:24):
coast to coast, Midwest, you know, the Great Lakes, all
kinds of people calling it Rednick Revere. And I think
the one that finally broke them was a lady that
took a picture of herself on Facebook. She got her
feet propped up. The sun's going down in the ocean.
She says, another beautiful sunset here in the Rednick Riviera.
And you look at her location, and she was in Delaware,

(23:44):
because that's where all the Rednecks hang out's in Delaware.
And so I took a screenshot on that and all
the other ones, and I thought it back to DC,
and I said, it is not geographical. It is a
state of mind. It is a lifestyle. It's the same
place Martaritaville is just a different of people. And what
do you know, I've got to stamp. I got that
first trademark back in early two thousand and nine, and

(24:06):
since then, Rednick Riviera has built into a nationwide brand.
We now have Rednick Rivier, a whiskey and eleven thousand
stores all over the United States. I have a Rednick Riviera,
a hockey tonk, state of the art, hockey talk right
downtown on Broadway in Nashville, and expanding and expanding and expanding.
So it goes back to the attitude I learned as

(24:27):
a kid, and that is just because you don't know
how this is going to turn out, or you're afraid
of the results, are afraid of failing, and everybody is
afraid of failing, it's not fine. It doesn't mean that
you don't go out there and swing for it. Because
guess what, kid, you're an American. You have a right
to pursue happiness. How lucky are you that you even

(24:47):
woke up in this country today, So go out there
and exhaust your potential. So, red Neck Rivier is a brand.
One of the big important things that I attached to
it right out of the gate was that ten percent
of our profits go to the Folds of Honor, which
is a group that puts kids to college who lost
a parent in combat or they have a parent who's
one hundred percent disabled from serving our country. And today,

(25:10):
between the bar, the whiskey and merchandise and things like that,
we've now spent one point six million dollars back to
the Folds of Honor. We're in their top one percent
donors for that great organization. So and like I say,
high school diplomat and a trailer, that's okay. You do
not have to have some fancy pedigree to go out here.

(25:31):
And when in the United States, well, about four or
five years ago, i was watching my son's watch me
and I'm watching the news. I'm talking to the TV
like a lot of us do, like can you believe this?
Look at what this guy's doing, Look at what they're
doing in DC, look at all this stuff. But then
the music industry that I spent my whole life working
in is one of the perpetrators of a lot of

(25:53):
this stuff. I mean, they're part of it. And I
had been told multiple times by my record label, Warner
Brothers and huge record label John, stop talking about this subject,
Stop making these comments, don't do interviews with these people.
Those people are that network or this network. You're gonna
upset people. Stop it. And they were getting more and

(26:14):
more aggressive with telling me what I could and could
not stay. I played that ballgame with him for a
few years, and one day I just decided, Okay, my
two boys are watching me. Am I going to be
the guy that yells at the TV but then puts
my boots and hat on and I go walk the
red carpet and play paddy Cake with the same people
that I was just yelling about, because that's called being

(26:36):
a hypocrite? And am I going to have my boys
look at me and say, well, yeah, Dad. Dad felt
strongly about it, but when it came down to making
a dollar bill, Dad rolled over. I don't think. So
I decided, you know what, I'm going to say what
I want to say. I'm going to make the stands
I want to make. I'm going to probably lose the
entire music industry, in all of country radio, which is
what I spent my whole life pursuing. But at the

(26:58):
end of the day, I have integrity. Do I as
an American? Did I let somebody take away my freedom
of speech? Did I allow them to scare me into silence?
I thought, no, I'm not going to be that guy.
So where I sit today is I'm completely independent. I
have no publishing deal, I have no record deal. I

(27:19):
answer to no one other than God, my wife, and
so I write my songs, I put the songs out,
and of course on the road live and I tell people, Hey,
here's my new song. What do you think about it?
And guess what. The last four songs that I had
put out, all four of them went to number one
on the all genre download chart on iTunes, which is
the holy grail of downloads. Not number one in country,

(27:43):
number one across the board. The last one I had,
called Progress, set at number one for two weeks. Number
two was Lizzo, Number three was Beyonce a number four
was Billy Island. And here I am John Rich at
the top for two weeks because that many people are
going and downloading the song. So I like where I'm at.
I like that I don't have to answer to people.

(28:05):
I like that I don't have to edit myself. I
can be an American, I can be a Christian, I
can be a dad. I can say when I don't
like it, and I can say when I do like it,
and it's okay if everybody doesn't like that. That's a
pretty free place to be. And so for me, you learn,
you know, the right to pursue happiness. We're the only
country in the history of written history of the world

(28:27):
that recognizes what they call inalienable rights, meaning rights that
are not granted to you by mankind or a government.
They're granted to you at birth by the creator with
a capital seat. And those rights are life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness. And one thing that I've always
pointed out to people, it doesn't say you have the
right to be happy, says you have the right to

(28:47):
pursue it. Get out of my way, let me go
try let me go pursue happiness. So what made my
dad happy was was preciate Marti Garss, preciate at prisons
having impact on people, And for me it was, Man,
I wonder how far I could go with this guitar.
I wonder what I could do as a songwriter. I wonder,
you know, can I even compete? And what do you know?

(29:08):
It is through throughout the years, a lot of disappointments,
a lot of contracts came and went. The phone would
ring and the phone would stop bringing. And that's when
you find out what you're made of or you are
you doing this as a hobby or are you doing it
just because it's fun and easier. You're going to do
it when it's hard too, And I've done it on
both sides. I've done it when it's fun and I've
done it when it's hard. And that's because that's what

(29:29):
I love to do. And that is my pursuit.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
And a terrific job on the production and editing by
our own Madison derik Utt and a special thanks to
John Rich for sharing his story and download his new
record The Country Truth wherever you download your music now
those words the pursuit of happiness. It's not the pursuit
of pleasure that's in the Declaration of Independence. It's not
the pursuit of property, though it was there for a minute.
What an empty thing to have a whole lot of

(29:54):
property and know happiness. And it wasn't the pursuit of wealth.
And his dad taught his son what pursuit of happiness
meant by doing what God called him to do. And
John had to figure out for himself what God called
him to do.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
And I love that, he said. And they don't have
to like it. That's fine.

Speaker 1 (30:09):
That's so American too, a quintessentially American story. John Rich's
story here on our American Stories