#324 - Tracy Lawrence on Why Radio Stations Didn’t Want to Play One of His Hits + The Story of When He Got Shot 4 Times + Celebrating 30 Years in Country Music

Tracy Lawrence stops by the house to talk about all his biggest hits from the 90’s like Sticks and Stones, Alibis, Time Marches On and so many more! Bobby and Tracy talk about how it’s crazy his song “Paint me A Birmingham” didn’t go No. 1. Tracy recounts the story of when he got shot back in 1991 and had to get back on the road to support his debut album. Tracy talks about celebrating 30 years in music with his new project Hindsight is 2020. 

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to episode. Pretty great episode with somebody that I
love Tracy Lawrence. First of all, he talks about why
radio stations did not want to play one of his
biggest hits, which is interesting. Also the story of when
he was shot four times, and he celebrates thirty years
in country music. So Tracy Lawrence just in a few minutes.

(00:23):
Top five releases This week, Hardy released a new song
featuring Travis Denning and Josh Thompson. It's called Beer with
My Buddies. And here's the clip of that and the
drinking and the buddies. And put a Christmas song on
the list here. At number four, Dan and Shape put
out a new Christmas song called Officially Christmas. It's a

(00:45):
Physic Christ. At number three, Taylor Swift released Red Taylor's version.
Here's a new song with Chris Stapleton called I Bet
You Think about Me? Done so that is hot beave

(01:09):
that I'm harder forget was thinking that me. Combs has
a new song out called Doing This, which he performed
at the c m AS and released right after the
show on Wednesday night. Here's the clip Coud saying a

(01:34):
band singing the same damn songs like Now and at
number one. Nirvana released he never Mind thirtieth Anniversary Edition.
If you're a Nirvana fan like I am or was,
the album itself has been remastered, which to me isn't
always the coolest. That just means the move some levers

(01:56):
up and down. But they've added some stuff to you know,
some concerts from the never Mind World tour, I think
for complete concerts. So that's pretty cool stuff you hadn't
heard yet. Here's a never before released version of Lithium.

(02:16):
That's awesome. It's cool. Yeah, I love that hearing that
old school concert footage. That's awesome. That's cool. That's cool.
Al Right, there you go. Those are my favorite releases
this week as far as albums go. Eric Clapton has
one rise against Silk Sonic an evening with so sonic Um.
Other than that, that's your music, you guys, go check
it out. Tracy Lawrence coming up in a second. It's funny.

(02:39):
When I was walking over here, I was I was like,
got Tracy's over, come over and talk to you. And
I started in my head as I was walking to
the front door, I just started going, pay me, burn me.
It's like I can think about you and that's the
song that comes to my mind when I think about you.
It's iconic song, wouldn't it was? It was a massive record,
you know. I've been blessed with a lot of number

(03:00):
were ones in the business. That one only got top five,
which we were talking about before you got here, because
I'm always fascinated by songs that become an artist's, you know,
one of your career songs. But and it doesn't matter
if it was number one now because everybody knows it
and an associated with you. But that wasn't a number
one song. Do you remember what beat it out? I

(03:21):
don't remember, you know it was. Uh. It was the
first thing that we had released when I moved over
to DreamWorks from Warner Brothers, So there was there was
a political shuffle that had happened that whole time frame.
That album was actually cut on Warner Brothers and uh uh,
James Stroud was running DreamWorks at the time. Scott board
Shadow was the head of promotion. So we had our

(03:41):
own deal worked out and we couldn't get Warner Broths
and Brothers to release us. They wouldn't get the paperwork done.
We waited and waited, wait, and we're trying to be patient,
getting all the tease cross and eyes dotted and all
that stuff, and then low and behold, if Ken Melons
didn't drop a single the same song and uh, then
the lawyers got involved, then it's like, okay, we're done.
We've been waiting to release a single. Here here's somebody
else has got their hands on it. So we we

(04:02):
came and got aggressive and it Uh. I think there
was just some some things going on around DreamWorks at
the time, and it was probably Toby that was ahead
of us that kept us from going in. But they
just felt like it was time to let it go
and move on. But it but it was a massive
hit man. That thing impacted hard. Yeah, I was gonna
ask is it massive because it's lasted or was it

(04:24):
massive then? And for some reason You're like, why can't
we get this the number one? Because I'm feeling it
when I'm playing shows. You know, Uh, it was massive
because it was massive, it really, and you know all
number ones aren't aren't that way. I've had a lot
of them that you know, they they manipulated the numbers.
They went in on a dying breath, some things fell
out at the top. Whatever the reasons were, Uh, I

(04:46):
don't think. I don't think the longevity of the song
needs to be determined by how far it went up
on the charts. And there's a there's a there's a
you know, a marquee to all that stuff too. But
I think the longevity of it speaks for itself. I mean,
it's it's one of those songs that just connected with people.
You know, Hank. I don't think Hank Jr. Had a
number one song for years and years all that early
stuff that was so massive for him. I mean most

(05:06):
of those were just top tens, but they impacted, they
left up, they left an indelible mark in people's mind.
I remember, and I didn't know at the time. As
a kid listening to that song, I didn't know what
a key change was. It was only later in my
life when I learned a bit about music to understand
what a key chain watch was and how hard it
was to do. But there's a key change in paying
me at Birmingham that you do that. When listening back

(05:30):
to it, I still get chill bumps because it's like
it goes to the next level when you do stup
and what we do live. I closed the show with it,
have been closing the show with it for a long time,
So we built this big power of pop guitar solo
into it that just really elevates it. When you hit
that mod, it just who'll, you know. I think one
of the things that made that record so special too,
is nobody really knew what a Birmingham was. They thought,

(05:51):
you know, you had people that thought I was talking
about the city that I left my love in Birmingham.
You had people thought about, you know, it's a uh
whatever the area was. But what I found out later
on it maybe I didn't really even know what it
was until later on, But the song is actually written
about a house called a Birmingham. It's a style of
house and we've talked about that in the past before.
So I think the being able to interpret that song

(06:14):
and be something that anybody wanted it to be made
was one of the things that made it so special.
It wasn't locked into just being what it was. You
can interpret it many different ways, which a lot of
great songs have. That absolutely, because what makes it great
is so many people can relate and sometimes so many
people find their own relationship with the song. And I
think that's what this song does, Like everyone finds in

(06:35):
a relationship with this song absolutely and they make it
fit their own mental picture of what that is. Another
song that that was locked that for me was Texas
Tornado and all the things that I've had. I think
Texas Tornado impacted the young kids more than anything else
that I ever did. And and the only thing that
I can correlate that too is how many times as
a kid did your mother say your room looks like

(06:57):
a tornado hit it? So I think that it had
that perception to young kids, and they were they found
a way to relate to it on a different level
because I never saw that that that correlation when I
cut that song either. I mean, I associate you with Arkansas,
but you mentioned Texas. You were born in Texas. I
was born in Atlanta, Texas, nineteen sixty eight. All my

(07:18):
Lawrence family lives lived in Texas, lives there. I didn't
My mother remarried when I was very young, so I
didn't grow up there. But I spent all of my
summers in Christmas holidays in Queen City, Atlanta, when I
was a kid growing up. Because to me, you're in Arkansas,
and when I was going back looking at You know,
sometimes I feel like I know people so well that
I need to go back and relook at them as
as a researcher. And it was like, Tracy is born

(07:39):
in Texas. I was like, he was, We'll see, I'm
I could be a little bit of an oaky too,
because where I grew up in that form in Arkansas
is right in the very last little corner of the
state of Arkansas at borders Red River cross Oak Rever River.
Going to Texas, Oklahoma's like seven minutes away because that's
where the beer joint was. I know it well. Uh,
And so that architects area is what we called it.
So I got influences from Arkansas and Texas and Louisiana

(08:01):
and Oklahoma and all that stuff r out there. So
it had its kind of own unique vibe. As a kid.
What were you listening to? Man, I listened to everything.
I remember his early back three or four years old.
You know, Glenn Campbell Variety Show was owned, So I remember,
you know a lot of Glen Campbell stuff, a lot
of early Charlie Pride stuff. But I also remember listening
to some pop stuff when I was a kid growing

(08:22):
up to just whatever things were on the radio, but
country was always Country was a foundation for me. I
was talking to somebody recently, and for me, you know,
being my formidable years were the nineties and so I
mean I turned ten and country music was the first
music to me growing up in a rural town in
Arkansas that talked about where I was from, because no
nothing else talked about rural towns, what it was like

(08:44):
growing up in the South, and so I had country
music as my base. But alternative music in the nineties
to me was talking about how I felt, and so
it was those were the two types of music that
you know, I listened to Kissing ninety six and let
Rock Bob Robbins in the morning, and then I would wish,
I want I'm not station now, so it's super cool
to be on the stage now. But then I would

(09:05):
listen to alternative music to go, okay, I have like
angst and country music wasn't the angst music then. But
what was great about country music back then was you
could actually have adults sing adults songs, and so we're
now you got you know, you'd be ten and listen
to country music and relations you know, you were probably
like me even even when I was a kid, when
I would hear really sad heartbreak songs, they would they

(09:26):
would move me. I'd get emotional about it love songs
and about love going wrong and your woman cheated on
you and all that stuff. I've never experienced any of it,
but there was something about it that moved me inside. Now.
The other really style of music that really grabbed a
hold of me that I wish that I would have
had the voice range to do that was a C
d C and this easy top and the really early
trashing guitar stuff. I really got into that stuff a

(09:47):
lot in the mid eighties when I was in high school.
I mean, I loved all that. That was the cruising
around music that we listened to a whole lot, Uh,
mixed in with a lot of the George Strait and
Bo SFAs and all that kind of stuff too. Those
were my two goats. What about in your house growing up?
What was kind of put on to you that that
that influenced you nothing? You know, Um, my mom had

(10:09):
a record player and it had Jim Reeves stuff and
a little bit of old Elvis. But I didn't grow
up in a musical household. Uh, Daddy was just never
into it there. I remember times riding in the car
and never even listening to the radio. I mean there
were times he had turned it off. He just didn't
want to hear it was noise to him. So I
was kind of on an island by myself as a
kid growing up, just really hungry I for your music

(10:30):
and soaking it in any place that I could get it,
and really didn't grow up around very many musicians. There
weren't a lot of people that played instruments around me.
Got in the band and junior high school, played trumpet
in the marching band for many years, but really just
started gravitating more guitar, country music and that kind of
stuff as I kind of grew. But you say gravitating,
like for the gravity to pull you, there has to

(10:51):
be some sort of influence that makes you think there's
a chance even the two the two for that man,
it was. It was a defining moment. Twelve years old.
Uh uh. I was already getting into Merle Haggard. Uh
and I was starting to learn to play guitar. I
mean a lot of that early stuff, the Haggard stuff.
I had a natural voice to sing Merrole Haggard when
I was young, and and most of the songs were,
you know, three or four chord things that were pretty

(11:12):
easy to learn to play as you were learning to
play guitar. And then and then George straight hit. So
when George Strait came out that that Texas Hockey talk
a little bit of Bob Will's influence with the twin
fiddle sounds, man, I fell in love with it. I
was done then. And really that was the time that
you had the Fireman that came out. You had unwound
those early records. Uh, and then then the Chair came out,

(11:35):
you know, and and it was so cool. When I
came to Nashville, I got to write with Dean Dillon,
and I got to write with Hank Cocker, and I
got to spend time with those guys. So that's those
are pretty cool things for me as I as I
evolved into this place and became successful in the business,
to be able to meet some of those guys that
that had such an impact on my life. Were you
a decent horn player? You know? I was first year
for a long time, awful sight reader. I didn't like

(11:57):
to read the music. I had a guy named a
Smith is sat next to me, so the first of
every year. J J. Was a great reader of music,
so he would he would learn how to play it,
and I'd figured it out and I'd smoke him bore.
And you learned of your love, not of listening to music,
but playing music in the band. Uh. Yeah, really, but man,

(12:19):
country music was always there. I mean I I my
mother's told me the story. Obviously I don't remember it,
but she would tell me when I was, when I
was three and four years old, that I said, I
look like Glenn Campbell and I sang like Charlie Bryant
to them. Were you a performer in the house at
six seven years old? I was. It was just it
was just there. It was part of my identity, you know.

(12:40):
When I was born, Uh, my mother had uh. I
have an older brother and an older sister by by
our biological parents, and they divorced, and then my mother
remarried our father and UH had me. So she says
that it was like the happiest time in her life,
and she spent a lot of time listening to the radio.
If I would have been born a girl, my name
was gonna be little readily in So I was. I

(13:02):
was indoctrinated before I even hit the ground. At what
age did you move to Nashville? Uh? I moved to
Nashville and nineteen ninety twenty three came in September of ninety.
So what did you do from high school? When you
finished high school? Up until twenty three years old? College
for a couple of years, went to s A. U.
Mual Writer's Baby, South Arkansas, went into Mascom study radio

(13:22):
television production. Uh was there on a choir scholarship, saying
in the coral ensemble with the blue tuch seedles and
smoke gets in your eyes all that stuff. Hated it,
but you know, I didn't really I didn't know anybody,
and the smartest path to me was to at least
go to college and check it out and see if
the radio was the avenue to get in because I

(13:42):
didn't know what to do. Uh, And and I knew
that just sitting around playing vfws and stove was not
the answer. So I was just searching for a path.
Were you doing that where you're going around playing all
the b fws? Yeah? Uh? I started off when I
was fourteen. I had a sheriff's deputy that that I met.
I was playing a talent show at a county fair
and when I was about fourteen, and he kind of

(14:03):
took me under his wing. He played Jerry Lee Louis
style piano and his wife had seen the Patchy cline stuff.
And we had a jamboree hall and Derek's Arkansas. There
was a jamboree hall and ashdown where they had converted
an old theater. There was one a guy named Buster
Doss had one called Buster DOSses Frontier Jamboree and Mount Pleasant, Texas.
So there were there were several of them around and

(14:23):
they would bring it in kind of like the with
a the Opery type situation where you would have a
house band, you would have the young acts that would
do a couple of songs, and then you would have
a headliner that would come in and play the back
half of the night. And so UH that my buddy
would he would come in with him and his wife
and play the show and that would go. And so
that was my introduction to getting on stage playing with
a band. Wound up with my first band, UH that

(14:44):
was based out of the Light, Arkansas, which is the
home of Glen Campbell. A lot of got guys that
they were in their late thirties, early forties and stuff,
and here I'm a sixteen year old kid and I'm
starting to play at the v of WS and the
Elks lodges and all that kind of stuff. So that
was that was a big growth period for me where
I really started going and playing, you know, four sets
a night and really having to learn to grind things
out and finding my voice, and uh, learning which things

(15:07):
which artists I could emulate. You know, there was you
HADJERICKI Van Shelton's and your Head your you know, you're
Dwight Yoakum was and all those things were big, and
Randy Travis was out. So a lot of those baritone
singers were people that I really I would really try
to emulate everything down to the way they breathed them
between phrases and all that stuff. And and it took
me getting to Nashville to really find out what my

(15:27):
true voice was. So but but that was the foundation
for all of that for me. When you're playing a
band in your sixteen and there thirty to forty, what
are you? Are you the lead singer? Are you playing
rhythm guitar? I was the lead singer. I sang the
whole night. It was all me. I was an awful
guitar player, so I don't think they ever put me
in the mix. But I would stand up there with
my bangor hat on. It was about that, bigg around

(15:48):
like a broom mantle and sing all the George Straight
songs I could work up. You know, So you go
to college, did you did you graduate college? Or later?
So when you leave, did you, well, what did you pursue?
Because there's still a gap between Before you moved to Nashville.
I went back to Texakana for a little bit more
construction for a while. Uh, still playing with the same
little band that I played with through high school musician

(16:09):
changes and stuff, and I played with them through the
first two years of college, where I'd go play on
the weekends and stuff. To come back I was. I
had got a strange call from a band out of Louisiana.
The band was called Phoenix and Uh. They invited me
to come start singing with them, and they were playing
a pretty a little bit better circuit with some bigger
knoightclubs and things. So I wound up moving to a

(16:30):
spring Hill, Louisiana. Lived there for a little bit from there.
I lived in Rustin for a little bit. Uh, and
was living in Ruston in nineteen ninety prior to when
I moved to Nashville, and I had I had re
enrolled in Louisiana. I had enrolled in Louisiana Tech. I
was gonna go back and finish my degree. And uh,
I was getting close to the time where I had
to make some decisions. And I and it just dawned
on me. If I if I start classes here, I'm

(16:52):
gonna wind up getting married and had some kids. If
I'm gonna go, I need to go down. And I
packed up everything and and said, I sign arc inter Nashville.
So when you get to Nashville, was it to be
a singer? Be a songwriter? Like? What was up first
in your your plan? Uh? You know what I did? First?
I started hanging out at all the clubs that I
could find, where the local uh, where the songwriters hung

(17:15):
out and the road musicians played. Uh. And UH I
started writing a ton of songs. That was really the
very foundation for me. But it might have happened a
really fast man. So from September of ninety I started. Uh.
There were places back then were like Gabes. There was
two clubs on Trinity Lane, Gabes in the Broken Spoke.
The Broken Spoke was in the hotel right there. I

(17:35):
think it was Remodi in back then Gabs was a
little center block building that was right behind it. You
had the Rose Room that was out on Stewart's Ferry Pike,
and there was another one that changed name several times
that was out on Murpha'sboro Road. But I would go
hit all those places, any place that they would let
me get on stage and sing, and I did that
for a few months. That led me to getting me
getting invited up to play at a jamboree style place

(17:57):
called Live at Livy's that was all the weather and
days We'll Kentucky and every Saturday night from in like
the middle of December, and I started going up there
and it was the same top opery situation that I
started off doing, where they have you know, young kids
opening up to a couple of songs and then they
have a headlighter. So they had there. They had the
George Jones impersonator and the Johnny cast impersonator and all

(18:18):
that kind of stuff. So I started going up to
to Day's Well singing it live at Libby's on Saturday night.
We'll radio station called can I say? They called it
w b VR broadcast back in the Nashville every Saturday night,
So people started hearing me on the radio. Uh. There
was a young lady that was performing on the show,
and she was working with the management group, and they
had brought some executives from Atlantic Records over to see

(18:40):
her before Christmas and nineteen nine, and they liked me
better than they liked her. The wheels started turning. In
January of ninety one, I did a showcase of the
Bluebird Cafe where Rick Blackburn from Atlantic Records agreed to
sign me. In May of ninety one, the third week
of May ninety one, I walked in the studio, I
signed my contract and I cut sticks and Stones. That's quick.
Seven months, that's way. I mean, that's one of the quicker.

(19:01):
That's as fast as I've ever heard anybody, no management,
no relations. I never knocked on the door and never
did any of it. I walked in the studio and
cut ten songs, your first number one, Sticks and Stones.
And I want to get to that in a second. Um,
when we start talking about music, but when you say
you moved here in ninety and so many of my friends,
we we kind of have like a class. Like when

(19:23):
I moved to town, it was all its people like
Dan and Shade, they had moved to town, and like
We're all new at the same time, and so I'm
in and I'm becoming friends with them, and none of
I don't really have much going on. They don't have
much going on. So you kind of have all these
folks that are are getting their feet wet in Nashville
at the same time when you moved to Nahville. Can
you think of anyone back that was around, you know,
new class. There was two of them, Uh, the two

(19:45):
that I was friends with actually did pretty well for themselves.
There were quite a few of them that running the
bars that that kind of fell off the tracks there
never but Tim mcgrawl and Kenny Chesney. They did all right.
They did, Yeah, they did all right. And man, men,
timor still close. You know. I hadn't talked to Kenny
in a while, but we were all really good friends.
We ran around together a lot. Tim was already already

(20:06):
had a couple of songs out um, but they really
didn't have any impact. And then I got my deal.
Sticks and Stones, Pop and Tim came out with Indian Outlaw,
and it was still a couple of years before before
Kenny hit hard. Here is Sticks and Stones. So when

(20:29):
this song starts to get some traction, you're a brand
new artist. I mean, is the record label like we
knew it? We knew you are a guy? Like are
you treated differently? Rick Blackburn didn't believe in that song.
Elroy Kahanak who found me up in Days will Kentucky,
believe in that song. He literally got in his car.
He was the head of promotions in Atlantic and he
would drive all over the place and bring p d's

(20:50):
out and stick him in the car in the parking
lot and make him listen to it. El Rakhne made
that a hit. He shived it down everybody's throat. But
it was so different when it came on the radio.
There was nothing else it was like it. And that
was the thing that that change in musical style when
I was trying to figure out and the summer of
ninety when I was living in Louisiana, what do I
need to do? Because you got to think about all

(21:11):
the stuff that would happen had that happened in eighty nine,
you had Alan Jackson that came out, Mark Chestnut, Vince
gil Uh, Garth Brooks as all this new music, this
new sound that was happening, and it was exciting back then,
and I was like, I've got to go be a
part of that. I've got to go be a part
of it now. So when I got the shot to
cut my record and James Stroud and I were put

(21:32):
together and all the wheel started turning on that kind
of stuff. I mean, James had cut that first record
on Clinton Black, so I was with part of that
new sound that was making that change in country music.
That's when the young country slogan, that whole thing just
exploded out of Nashville. It was it was awesome time.
Did you get any pushback? Since your sound was different
and every kind of different generation gets a pushback, was

(21:53):
there any there? You know? I never felt it personally
towards me, and I know a lot of the older guys.
I heard the Whalens and the Haggard grumbling underneath the surface,
you know that they weren't getting their played on the
radio anymore. And there was there was not It was
not a there's not a love A lot of love
toward us from those guys early on. I think it

(22:14):
kind of eased up as time went on. But the
one person that I never felt that from was George Jones.
Never uh. And you know, George and Nancy they found
a way to embrace that change, and so they just
they gathered us all up and made us part of
I don't need no rocking chair and all that stuff.
And me I went on tour with Jones, so it
was it was. It was a great time. But George,

(22:34):
they just approached it from a different perspective. But yeah,
there was there was some pushback. But you know, these
guys have been getting there and played for thirty plus years,
and then all of a sudden, all these young kids
are coming in town. The music change and taking over,
and they're not getting air played anymore. They're they're a
little bit better at times. It's funny you bring up

(22:56):
I don't need your rocking ship. I mean that to me.
I can remember singing that, and I George Jones was
a bit before me. As I got older, I started
to listen to more George Jones because I love the format.
I want to learn as much about country music as
I could. But when that song came out. I remember
all you guys being on that song. I mean it
was every country superstar I could have ever imagined on
that song with him and and the ones of us

(23:16):
that weren't on it. I didn't get to sing on
the record, but I got to do it every now
at the conference, there were so many I was looking
at the c m as are recording this and they're
actually tonight, But that song was nominated for a c
M A and it was just like seventeen people on
that song. It was I thought it was so cool
because every all those people love George Jones, respected George Jones.

(23:36):
They did, But do you know what, how could you
not respect George Look at look at what he had
been through. He lived alive. I mean he survived himself
and uh and and lived to a place where he
was able to still be relevant in a time where
the music business was changing all around. And you gotta
have a lot of respect for that. That first number

(23:57):
one was Now were their singles that happened after that
that did not hit his heart? Six and Stones hit hard, Uh,
the couple of big ones off that record, So Sticks
and Stones, the four off that album were Sticks and Stones,
Today's Lonely Fool running behind that were number ones, and
then Somebody Paints the Wall was a top five, so
we had three number ones on the top five. And
now as we progressed into Alibis, which was my second release,

(24:20):
we had four number ones off of it. But there
was some friction there because I was wanting to grow.
By this time, Indian Outlaw had popped and I was
wanting to do a heavier guitar sound, and James and
I were on board that. James Stroud who produced the album,
so we were we were pushing things. Alibis was a
massive hit. When I remember being in the studio, we
cut Can't Break It to My Heart, which was a single,
and uh, that track was originally cut with a screaming

(24:42):
rock and roll guitar on it, and I thought the
head of the label was gonna blow us top and
he lost his mind, made us go back in and
put a fiddle solo on it. There's too much rock
and roll guitar that couldn't stand it. Another song that
was the number two air placed song of the year
called Can't Break It to My Heart, that I was
a co writer on. I thought he's gonna drop me
off the label because he told me not to cut it,
not cut it anyway. It's wild to hear those stories
about songs that I just associate being so freaking country.

(25:05):
I mean, now I look at those and I'll play
some allibies. Here's alibis and here is Can't Break It
to My Heart. Where this is as country as I
could as the country of a song can be. Absolutely,
he hated this song, hated it, hated everything about it.

(25:26):
Why I have no idea because he told me not
to do it, and I did it, and that's why
didn't really like it. But you know, there's you know,
I always say, people ask how you know when you're
get in the music business, when can you push? How
do you know when to push? When you get momentum,
you better push because if you don't, you'll never get it.
When you get an opportunity to take advantage of a situation,

(25:46):
or you will never have any creative control your whole life.
And I took advantage of the opportunity and I pushed
back a little bit, and I don't think they knew
quite what to do with that. And I had managers
that stood behind me to I wasn't out there by myself.
My manager faultify it for me. What was your reputation
after that? Those first two albums with College Wow? Where yeah?
You so you yeah, you're hitting it yeah. I mean

(26:12):
it's not like you came from from much so I
mean what what what does everybody back home? Think? You know,
I never thought about the impact that it would have
on my whole family, but it changed everybody. You know. Uh,
I'm a kid that grew up in a town of
eleven people. I graduated in the largest class that ever
came out of the school. I think there was fifty
two of us and forty nine graduated. I mean that's

(26:32):
almost exactly my town people. And then and then to
come to Nashville and and do all the things when
nobody knew anybody here, I mean, to be able to
do all that it affected my family, and and some
of it was you know, there's a lot of jealousy,
you know, all that stuff that goes on. It's it
affected their lives. It affected my brothers and sisters in
a lot of ways. But we survived it all. You know,

(26:52):
did they treat you differently? Did you become I guess, celebrity?
To them. It's kind of hard not to. We grew
past it, but I think there's a lot of excitement
around it early on um. But you do have to
adapt to it, and you do have to find a
new normal, you know what I'm talking about. You have
to make it as normal as you possibly can and
push all the background noise out of the way, because

(27:15):
if you don't, you can't deal with your stuff, stuff
in your own mind. And you've got you've got to
get back to just being normal you and doing your
work and doing your thing and let people say what
they want to say. It's easier for you to do
it when you're getting on the stage and you're getting
that release and stuff at now than it is for
the people that are still living there in the same
house and the same things. To that one. I gave
a lot of cars away, I'll say. I'll say that
I bought a lot of cars for family members. You know,
anything that I could do to to to there's guilt

(27:39):
attached to it, you know. I struggle with that so much.
There's so much guilt, and you feel bad about being
successful and and but you you have to you have
to make it as normal as possible. Yeah, that's that's
been a constant struggle for me. Again. I grew up
in poverty, and so you know, I go back home
and my talent is still impoverished, absolutely, and I try
to do as much as I can. No matter how
I do, I feel like I think I should be

(28:00):
doing more. I have more, why don't I keep doing?
And so I can never meet that. You know. What
I did is is there came a point, uh, And
I did it for fifteen years while I would go
back home and I did a charity concert there and uh,
in doubt, two different scholarship funds. One was for s
A U and one one of H Junior College in
Texas County. But we put money back. We gave money

(28:22):
to the police department, the fire department, the town beautification committee.
We we've put stuff back in the town, you know,
waits in the locker room, and all the stuff for
the football team. We did all that stuff until the
point that it just got, you know where people didn't
want to buy tickets anymore, you know, and I had
used up all the freebees and swapouts with every friend
I had the music business. After fifteen years, and nobody
everybody wanted a free ticket. Nobody wanted to come and

(28:44):
contribute back into their town anymore. It's like, you know,
I'm done here, and it comes a point in time
when you gotta walk away. Alabama did it from June
jam to that comes the point this time I'm done.
I don't feel guilt anymore. It's okay. If a new
artist called you today, we'll just call him Mike Smith.
He's like, I got my first number one hit. Yeah,
it's like you've been through this, Tracy, Like, what would
you tell a new artist who's just starting to get

(29:05):
some of that heat they got the first number one hit.
Everyone's like, oh, you're the guy now, Like, what what
are the the pitfalls? Did you see? Given too much
money away, you never know what tomorrow is gonna hold it.
It's not just in the music business and in the
sporting warning everything else. The best advice is get a
really good, licensed, bonded financial planner and business manager that
will take care of your money. Don't trust your managers,

(29:27):
don't trust nobody else. I agree in the world of separation,
this person does this job, this does it. You have
somebody that takes care of your money. Everybody gets paid accordingly.
Everybody agrees to what they're getting, but don't leave anything
out there to be taken advantage of because they will.
It's it's too easy to do. Um and and somebody
that's gonna be the voice of reason to you, that
will make you understand it's okay to do nice things

(29:49):
for people, but you create figure out what you're disposable
income is and secure the rest of it because there's
no guarantees you're gonna have a tent to your career.
There's no guarantees to that for anybody. My second home
I'll ever died now the second has become. I mean

(30:13):
this one put a smile on my face. You know,
this is one of those songs that was not an
impact record. So my my manager, Wayne Edwards at the time, Uh,
Wayne was a salty old dog. Now Wayne had he
had been a fighter pilot. Supposedly, I had heard a
lot of stories. Who knows Wayne, Uh, I do know
that Wayne was a pretty heavy hitter promotion guy for

(30:35):
r c A. He was one of the holy people
that Elvis trusted, so he was very knowledgeable. He knew
everybody in radio. Uh. When I when he came on
board with my management team, he was working an independent
promotion account. He had an independent promotion company, so he
was doing stuff on the side. Wayne knew how to
make magic happen on the charts. I saw him take

(30:55):
that record from seven to one on a dying breath.
It was gonna die and he up. He didn't jump everything,
he killed everything in front of it, because you could
manipulate things a little bit different back then than you
do nowadays. It's not it's not easy to do that anymore.
But he knew how to make that stuff happen. You
talked about how that song wasn't one of your impact records,
but if the good die young, that's got to be one. Absolutely.

(31:16):
I mean a year later, I want to roll through
a couple of these here, but Texas Tornado, what your
referenced a second ago and then pays my favorite and
what I think of with you most. But I think,
and I could be wrong, but I would think time
marches on, you know, Time to me artistically is the

(31:40):
best lyric that I ever recorded. Uh, And Bobby Braddock
is an absolute genius, and I gotta do some clarifications.
So Bobby, Bobby text me the other day and I
had said something you know, over the years, there's I
have a few blank spots along the way. So sometimes
my memory is not a accurate there's things that maybe
have evolved a little bit through the course of time.
And and I swear to God in my mind, I

(32:02):
remember sitting at the at the desk with Don Cook
and uh I I, for the life of me, I
really believe that Ronnie Dunne got his hands on this
right after I didn't try to put it on hold. Well,
Bobby sent me a text and he was pretty upset
about it, and he said, no, it wasn't Brooks and Dunn.
Brooks and Dunne kicks didn't like the song at all,
and Ronnie never heard it and it didn't get try
to put on hold by them. He said it was

(32:23):
it was uh Tim du Bois over at Arista that
had put it on for Diamond Rio and for Alan Jackson.
This is who it was put on hold for. So
my memory wasn't a So apologize to Bobby Braddick. This
is the first time I've had a chance to do that.
So I hope it goes everywhere and you hear this, Bobby,
I love you, brother, So you cut time. March or
as you call it, time time marches on. Well that's

(32:45):
what's on the scene, right. Um. Was that a for
sure single? You know it was for me? Um, So
that there were some things that happened through that progression
rout there. James Stroud had done the first three albums
that I had done, and that was Uh, Sticks and Stones,
Alibis and I sit now uh and James and I

(33:06):
sat down and had a conversation. I said, James, I'm
here in the same musicians on everybody that you're working with.
He's doing mcgrawl, now, he's doing John Anderson, he's doing
you know, Clint Black and and it's like, I gotta
make a change. So we had a little bit of
an issue there, and I went with Don Cook. Really
like the sound and what he was cutting on Brooks
and done at the time. Uh, huge completely different section

(33:26):
of players, just really a really dug the groove he had.
And so that song came to me just because of
that new relationship with Don, and it was really fresh
from me. I remember the thing that drove me. See
at that time, as as we had evolve passed Alibis
and a little friction with the label and all these
things that I really had had some strong legs underneath

(33:48):
me where I had control of my career. The thing
that made me cut that song specifically, the one thing
that did was Smokes a Lot of Dope because I
knew it would shock people. I knew it had shock
factor to it, and and everybody it was terrified of it.
I knew it would either be the biggest record that
I've ever had or kill my career. But there was
no in between. Were people saying, don't cut that line,
change the word? There was no. It was like we

(34:10):
I swung for the fence. Absolutely, And and the weird
thing about it, so if the world had a front
porch was on the album previous to that, and there's
a song a line in there. Uh, Granddaddy taught me
how to cussom how to pray. I had a couple
of radio stations that wouldn't play it because it said
the word cuss in it, not even you're not cussing. Yeah,

(34:31):
absolutely so were there stations that wouldn't play Smokes a
lot of Dope? Did anyone come to you and go,
we can't do it? It was so big that couldn't
stop it. That song was That's great problem to have,
and you bet on you. Yeah, like you said, I
believe in this. We're gonna take it. We're gonna just
kill swing for the fans. Man, that's awesome. Where do
you put that in your set list? Uh? It is

(34:53):
right before paint. I would think it's got to be.
It's that escalation where you're just speaking out at the
end of the night. Man, you brought hold the mic
at the whole crowd. Time marches on, Yeah, marches ten
years later. And I get to this because you mentioned

(35:13):
my girl and Chesney around the same time that you
got here. You do find out who your friends are
two thousand six. Now was this kind of a hey
I'm back boys, bad baby. The three of us had
talked about doing something together for a long time. Um,
we were just waiting for the right song to come along.
And when I when I got this song from Casey Bethard,

(35:36):
I really hadn't thought about this being a duel or
a trio and we had to finished the song. I
had a finished vocal on it. I was done, and
I'm like, you know what, this lyric screams to me
that this is what we've been looking for as friends,
old friends, that have been talking about doing something like
this for a long time. So I just picked up
the phone, called them and send him a copy of it,

(35:56):
and they were both like, let's do it, man, and
we got in the studio knocked it out. There was
no labels involved, there was no conversation. They they really
wanted us too, But by the time anybody found out
about it was done. That's awesome. You know. As we
talked about impact songs, I pulled a few of these
that if you just would have quizzed me, I would
have said, oh, yeah, these are the biggest songs ever

(36:17):
because these are the songs that I love the most.
Stars over Texas as one of those that I'm assuming
when you sing this people sing it top of their lungs.
You know. Um, this song is kind of an anomaly
in my set list because it's really one of the
very few positive lyrics that I've ever recorded. I don't
do these very much. Most of my stuff is crowning
your beer, it's cheat and love gone wrong, all that

(36:39):
kind of stuff. That's the stuff I think my teeth into.
So this is a very rare thing. You know. I
never did that I swear things or any of that stuff.
This is the only one that I've ever done like this.
I'd imagine this was a big wedding song for a
long time, probably still is, but I would imagine like
this was just such a love wedding because it was
so lift of center for me. This is not this
is not my bread and butter. Well, why did you

(36:59):
cut it? Because I wrote it? Okay, yeah, and I
and it was one of those things that it was
just so good you could not cut it. It was
just a really man Paul Nelson and Larry Boone wrote
that song I'll be a better man Better I mean,
also another one, not a number one, but if you go,
let's Tracy's top ten. And I'm like, oh, for sure,
this is an OnCore song. This this was a big one, um,

(37:22):
you know. And this is a continued part of the
musical growth through that period of time. This is this
is my free bird man, This is the guitar playoff
of the m this is this is what that was
for me, And I thought sonically it was really one
of the best sounding records I ever cut. Are you
now feeling an appreciation for you, your music, your style
unlike any other time in your life? Because people, And

(37:46):
I'll just use me as an example. Now I'm starting
to in this industry get some prominence, and I look
at what was the best, what affected me the most
to get me here, and it's people like you and
music from you. Are you feeling this more than ever before?
You know? What really brought that into focus for me
is when we did an album three or three years
ago called Good Old Days, and I took a lot

(38:08):
of those hits and when the studio and Chris Young
sang on it, the good guy Young, Dustin Lynch did
Time March his own, uh, Justin Moore did Alibis with me,
So there was there was a lot of people that
were on that record, and I, you know, I never
had really sit down and realized what an impact I'd
had on a lot of the younger artists that were
coming into town, but across the board, all of them

(38:30):
when they came in the studio and sat down, and
it was pretty overwhelming for me to realize that I'd
had that kind of impact on those kids. And since
that moment, I really felt an embraced from the younger
generation that's coming in. I feel it when I walk
in the room and I can't say that I felt
that for a long time. Do you feel it out
your shows too, because not only do you have your fans,

(38:52):
but like the kids of your fans who now have
an appreciation not because of their parents, but because that
sound from the nineties early two thousands is like the
sound again. I feel like it is. I feel like
people are they're rediscovering it again, and it's it's I've
said this for a long time that I felt like

(39:12):
the bulk of the music from the nineties and from
that era that was gonna be our classic rock that
gets replayed for a long, long, long, long, long long time. Uh.
And a lot of it is because the sonic sonically,
the way that it sounds when it's played on the radio.
But I do, I do feel that from a lot
of younger people, and they have access to so much stuff,
you know, because if they if if they grew up

(39:33):
love and haint me of Birmingham and they really didn't
hear any other stuff from me through that period of time,
they all they got just go on Spotify or Pandora
or whatever, and that's all right there and go to
YouTube and you can find at all. And I think
being able to have that instant access to not only
know what the hits were, but be able to go
through and find the stuff that you like that maybe
you never found its way to radio. And I mean
I get requests for things that I've never even worked

(39:55):
up with the band before. So there's stuff that people
are funding and and I think that's pretty cool. Spotify
had put out some data showing what people listen to
most when they listen to country. In nineties, country was
their biggest absolutely, I believe you know. The other thing
that I've noticed from our production standpoint too, and you
you probably know this too being in radio, because you
can hear how things line up. It's like sonically things

(40:18):
things work contin your groupings. So you'd go through the
early eighties all the way through about eighty eight, and
then you had your Garth Brooks era that kind of
changed everything, and that went through about right in through there.
And what happened as the recording techniques changed. The first
album that I recorded was recorded on a twenty four
track analog machine, the next one was on forty eight

(40:38):
did and then we started moving into pro tools and
hard drives and all that kind of stuff. So as
we phase tape out. You're able to sonically push those
sounds up if you listen to how much verb and
how much looser things are miked with the recording recording process.
Every ten years, it gets a little tighter, it gets
a little more compressed, it gets shoved up in your
face a little bit. That's why the stuff from right now,

(40:59):
if you're all contemporary music on a format right now,
it's really hard to go back and play an oldmoral
song because sonically it doesn't fit. Even if you love
the song and it's got its time and place, you
just can't get it loud enough to sit in the
pocket in the right place. You know what. I do
know what you're talking about, because there are times and
don't even playing because I have pretty much freedom to
do what I want at this point, and I'll play
some old Johnny Cash stuff on the air, even like

(41:20):
get rhythm right, good rhythm. And as much as I
love the song, if I'm playing it up against other
songs every it doesn't. It lacks the it does like
the sound, then it almost diminishes the record. And then
if you overcompress it then it loses something too, because
it's it's not it's not the way that it was
meant to be played. But that's why, that's why I

(41:43):
really have pondered on how music evolves and the stages
that it takes, as as some artists get phased out,
and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just a natural,
natural part of the evolution of music getting phased out
the gold things that sonically stay in play. Sometimes a
gold song stays there because it just sounds better though
the cat rest the catalog. We all we understand that.
But it's it's a fascinating thing to ponder on watching

(42:05):
the musical evolution of the industry. Who did you see
come in after you? Because you know when you and
you you mentioned the young guns of country come in
and the older guys went, oh, man, this is not
what we're doing. It's it's a bit different. Who did
you see come in as an artist after you? And

(42:26):
you went, Wow, that's not what we're doing. It's a
bit different, and they just they really killed it. Freaking
Urban man. Keith Urban was the bomb. And still like
him a lot man, but he was I remember that
first record on the Ranch that came out. I just
I thought he was bad at the bottle man and
I really dug his sound, and I really enjoyed watching
his evolution and uh Alden too. All Dan has got

(42:47):
a great sound. I really like Michael Knox's productions and
what he's done with them, but there's been a handful
of them. Uh. It's but I tend to lean into
the wind a little bit. I like the more aggressive stuff,
not the sappy pop stuff, the more heavy rock and
real guitar stuff that's just in your face hindsight. Volume
to Price of Fame out now, it's been out since August.

(43:07):
What month we I don't know a month right now,
we're in November. So I want to play a couple
of clips here. So let's do from Volume to a
Price of Fame with Eddie Montgomery. Expensive. You're gonna play
this game everything? How do you and Eddie get together

(43:39):
for this song? You know? I I co wrote that
song and about uh two thousand thirteen something like that.
It was before I changed management companies. So I wrote
that with Rick Huckaby, who I've been working with off
and over years, and Brad Arnold from Three Doors Down.
I love Brad, He's my buddy mane uh and uh

(44:00):
we had had that same setting in the can for
a while. And and uh uh. When we got done
with the Volume one, which was all new stuff, and
we were kind of figuring out what the next stage
of the whole trilogy was that we were working on,
we decided we were gonna do five old remakes and
then five new songs. Uh And as I was looking
at what I had, stuff that I had written, and
where we wanted to take it, Eddie and I've been

(44:22):
friends a long time and and this song is about
sacrifice and things that we lose in the business. Not
whining about that kind of stuff, but we all do
make some sacrifices. You give, you give a PC stuff
along the way. With some of this you have to
make sacrifices, um and some of them are pretty painful,
you know. And and knowing that you just the personal
loss that he's been through. I mean, when Troy died,

(44:43):
it it jerked the rug guy from under him. And
you know, I know a lot of his personal issues too,
And I just didn't think there was anybody that could
sink his teeth into that song with Eddie. Could Another
song I liked from from this project was Tracy Bird
Holes in the Wall. I pulled this one. Yeah, they're

(45:05):
all gone. There have only been a couple of songs
that you've like, like, smiled right when I when I
mentioned this is one of them, lit up a little bit.
I'm doing this in the show Man. I love the
hockey talk stuff. Man, It's uh, I've always liked it
since I was a kid. It just it makes me happy,
even if even and that's what people don't understand about
country people that really don't get into it. Just because

(45:28):
it's a sad lyric and it's talking about bad things
that go into your life doesn't doesn't mean it's not
supposed to make you happy. Because it does. That song
brings a smile to my face. I was reading too
that in January you have more music coming out Volume three.
So the whole premise of this thing, with the headlines
Hindsight Collection, this is my This year is my thirtieth anniversary.

(45:48):
In May of this year, it would have been thirty
years since I cut Sticks and Stones. So we decided
that to commemorate that, we wanted to do three albums,
ten songs a piece, three volumes to commemorate the whole thing.
Volume three would have been out the first of this month.
But we had some COVID issues back in September and
I could get in the studio to finish vocals, and
then we got kicked out of the distribution release cycle.
So now I think the official release date is now

(46:10):
the twenty eighth of January for the third album. Whenever,
I was just kind of looking at some of the
stuff that we had done on uh, like my National
Countdown back from Volume one. We had Lonely one on one, right,
we played this, so yeah, we did yeah, yeah, But
I was thinking, I was like, I know, I played
something from Volume one on like the National Countdown show.
Let me shut up and play a little bit of

(46:30):
this for for people that slow. I mean, you still
got it. It's a good record, but you still got
that voice like that, that same Tracy Lawrence like like texture,
like you haven't still I feel like you haven't lost it.
I still love it. How is how is your like
physical voice these right now? My physical voice is struggling.

(46:50):
And we we went from doing nothing last year to
doing you know, instead of going back and doing a
couple of days, normal normal work days, normal work weeks,
I went to doing three and full. I had thirteen
shows in October two golf tournaments that I had to
sing at, a UH television special with Lee Greenwood and Huntsville,
and a political rally for a senator here in the state.

(47:13):
At seventeen events, and I was cried and I'm saying
it every one of them, and uh, I saw him.
I'm kind of the place where I feel like I'm
just going to hold you know, I'm just trying to
get through the end of the year. Right now, I'm
pretty burnt. You get a little breakdown, thanks you hav
Christmas or now. Uh, the week I'm taking after I'd
get done with my charity event at the Nastural Rescue
Mission the week of Thanksgiving, I'm taking the weekend off
and do some stuff with the family. And uh then

(47:35):
I only had like five days in jail. Taking the
weekend off. He's like, I have no voice, but I'm
gonna take two whole days. A couple of you mentioned
with the Nashville Rescue, which is something that people just
beloved drown here because of of what you do with
the you know, with with feed and folks. How did
how did that start with you? That started with me
and a few buddies frying turkeys in the parking lot

(47:57):
of the house. Uh and UH and offering that service
up to old people of the church or people that
were scared of frying and everything. Sometimes we get up Thanksgiving,
we might cook twenty turkeys and wrap them up and
and go deliver them and do that kind of thing,
and it's like, you know, this would be a great
thing to do with the Mission. I've always wanted to
do something for them. I've always felt a connection. And
after that year, I think, I think this is our

(48:19):
sixteenth year. So I reached out to the people at
the Rescue Mission. I said, I've got this idea. We'd
like to try this, and they said, sure, come on.
So I the first year that we did it, we
buried propane tanks from the folks at church I was
going to at the time, and everybody brought their own friars,
and we we got people to donate as many turkeys
as we could not I think we cooked a hundred
turkeys or something like that. And then the next year

(48:41):
we started picking up sponsorship, and then we got friars donated,
and then all this stuff kind of ballooned into this
thing that we do now. It is UH and Uh,
So it's uh. We we cook all that they can store,
and so we could cook a lot more, but usually
we get to about five hundreds or so, and they
don't have the refrigeration capacity to keep more than that,

(49:01):
so they'll deemon everything and feed it throughout the week.
But we've we've got got some plans to grow a
little bit more locally next year. I want to do
more stuff with more outreach programs locally and be able
to affect more people. I was talking with a friend.
I said, Hey, Tracy Lawrence coming over, and he was like,
ask him about the time he was shot. Now, some
people in my life that have been shot don't like

(49:21):
talking about when they were shot. It's uh, it was
a tough time in my life that happened. The uh
may have not even one. I just finished the background
vocals on the last track on the album, and I
had a friend of mine that came in town that
I'd grown up with a young lady that I graduated
high school with a completely platonic relationship, and she was
excited she was coming through to go see some other
folks who graduated with that lived in Indiana, and so

(49:44):
she stayed a couple of Nights came to the studio.
We went out. I took her some of the bars
and stuff that I liked a frequent when we had
a couple of beers and I was taking her back
to drop her off her a hotel opened the door
and had a pistol stuck in my face and uh,
they were trying to force us up to her room.
They were going to do and imagine what And I
was able to fight him off, and she ran to
the front of the hotel and an empty two pistols

(50:05):
on me. I've had a gun into my head. I
wasn't literal you were shot. I thank god I wasn't shot.
I remember that I got pistol with I didn't feel it.
You know, they had a gun to my head and
they're like I couldn't rember pen number, like I blanked
out where I was like, I don't know my pen
number to get in the A T M. And so
they pistol at me, and I was like, I don't
feel that, and I was just praying, like please don't

(50:27):
pull the trigger. But because I don't remember it or
didn't feel it, did you feel when you got shot.
I didn't feel the initial impact but what I do
remember is that they shot the worst of it. I got.
I grabbed the pistol with my left hand. The guy
was right behind me, and I grabbed the gun and
it went off and shot my finger and then uh

(50:47):
so I hit him in the mouth. The other people
came back on me. She took off run to the front,
and they got hit in the hip, which I still
carry a bullet there. I got hit in the upper
right arm and they shot me right through the left knee,
right through the joint went from the outside of the
leg all the way through. So I had three three
surgeries and wound up having to have a totally replacement
in two thousand sixteen. So this is one though this

(51:09):
was May of ninety one. This happened before you. I
mean it was it was a random thing. But I know,
but I'm saying you went through. You then got to
have major success after you were shot multiple times, like
you toured after you had to go through all of this.
And the bad thing about it, you know what, uh
you know how how fragile a launch is, and and

(51:32):
if you've got the priority of anybody at a record
label or the powers that be, you better capitalize on
your opportunity while you have that moment, because they're gonna
move on to the next flavor of the month pretty
quick if you don't hit or get something rolling. So
I'm I'm I'm getting ready and dropped my first record.
I got all this momentum, all this belief around me,
and here I am. I can't even freaking walk. That's
my point. And I'm and I'm like, I'm mad. I'm
mad that that I'm about to lose my slot and

(51:55):
if I don't come back quick. So I never took
care of my mental health. I didn't rehab properly. I
had a lot of physical issues with it that have
that have plagued me for years and years and years
that I still struggle with this day. But I knew
that if I didn't get out of that hospital bed
and get back on the bus as fast as I
couldn't start working that first album, that I'd lose my
shot and I probably wouldn't get another shot. And that

(52:15):
was my point with you toward like you had success,
you probably went back too early. If you pull up
the Sticks and Stones album cover, I don't know if
y'all have, but if you look at the back shot.
I'm in a pair of red acid wash jeans, and
you can tell how skinny I am. I lost so
much weight through that because I was in hospital bit
for a while. Uh. And they literally we we did
a photo shoot for that album, part of what was

(52:36):
done out at Percy Priests, and I'm I'm actually bent
down on a rock and they had to carry me
out there because I couldn't walk on that left legs,
so they literally I literally got on the guy's back
and he carried me out there and set me on
that rock. And I can't bend my knees. So you
can tell by the way I'm sitting that that that
knee is. I mean, it's it's probably as big as
a candle opened that photo too. But I had lost
so much weight through that period. I really I really

(52:59):
needed to take six months before I got out there
and started doing what I did. And how much you take?
Oh so uh that would have happened in May. I
think I was probably on the road July August, wild stupid,
but but I didn't have a choice, you know here,
I mean I had to just wild it too much

(53:20):
because it's not like you can go half throttle either. No,
that single dropped in August six and Stones dropped in August,
so I had to was that a big story? Then
they used it, the label used it for everything that
could squeeze out of it because it it just gave
us something to talk about. I didn't want to do it,
but I didn't have any control over it. Uh. But

(53:41):
you know, who who's to say? Would would they have
been able to launch my career without that nugget? I
would have preferred not to get shot. But I got
to take advantage of the opportunities you've given thirty there's
volume one, two and three ten tracks per volume. What

(54:06):
is the key to longevity and country music? For me? Uh?
It continues to be passion because if I didn't still
care about it, I don't. I don't think I could
deal with the grind of it because it older, you
get the herders and and uh and somewhere in the
very near feature, I'm gonna have to start slowing down
to some degree because I've been grinding it out for
a long time. Back in the day when you were

(54:28):
doing interviews, did you have to pull over to a
pay phone to do an interview with the radio station?
You know? Back then we went to the stations. When
we did showcases back then, they weren't like what they
are now. We would actually before Elliott Spitzer stuck his
nose in it, we we would actually build I did
four showcases that launched my career. I did one in Atlanta,
I did one in Marina del Rey, I didn't want

(54:50):
in Dallas, and I did one in New York City.
And so you would do those regional things where each person,
each each reasonal promotion person would set that up and
you would deal banquet hall or whatever. The in the
New York was at Radio City Music Hall, so they
would fly all the radio people in, put them up
at a hotel, feed them, drink them. You do a showcase,
they're usually at least two acts from the label on

(55:10):
the bill, and they would come out and they would
work those folks to get them to the p ds
and and all these So you worked a region at
a time instead of having to go to every individual
station like we do now. So radio tour back then
was you go to the hubs and the station's come
to you because they made it appealing to the stations
because it's like, hey, we're gonna be a vacation basically absolutely,

(55:31):
and then you would do follow ups. You would go
do some station visits and stuff. But you were able
to get everybody together and create that festive atmosphere and
and you do your show and they you liked here
or they didn't. You ever go back to the Blue
Burning play. Uh. You know, it's been a while, but
the last thing I did there, Uh, I've done some
acoustic shows there. We were talking about doing um uh

(55:52):
the Price of Fame, a video for the Price of
Fame there with me and Eddie doing it, and we
just couldn't get the time frame worked out. We just
couldn't get it all squeezed in. But I thought it
would have been real cool to do part of this,
this this memory collection of all that in that place.
How hard has it been to start your own label
and manage that? You know? Friends was on my own label.

(56:17):
That was after after DreamWorks merged with Universal. I had
a couple of records there and then I got off
of that. So when I got Friends to number one,
that was that was on my own label. That was
the first single on my own imprint. Uh. And it
was what I thought was very expensive at that time. Uh.
Now it's about three times the cost to work a
single radio and it's almost impossible as an independent label

(56:39):
without an in house promotion staff. And I know that's
hard to explain to people, but just trying to hire
a staff to do it and outside promotion staff it's
very expensive. Uh. Radio stations really want you to have
an in house promotion staff, but to do that, you
gotta have three or four acts because you gotta spread
that recruitment around a little bit or financially absolutely impossible
to make it work. And I never did the resources

(57:00):
to put that whole kind of thing together. So you know,
but we have tools out there now. We've got a
lot of great streaming platforms and get a lot of
love from YouTube and all the all the things that
we're able to do without working mainstream ready or have
been very useful tools for me. You know. I said, hey,
we should say his voice and I keep it for
an hour. We notice how this man I just can't.
I just have so much. Okay, here's what I'm gonna say.

(57:23):
Volume one and two are out now. Volume three is
that January, we know for sure, Jane, and the title
of it is called Angelina and why uh it was
one of the coolest things I found. It's a the
The opening line is our mama was a Mississippi roller
Debbie Queen and her daddy learned to hustle down in
New Orleans. So it's a it's just a straight ahead
hockey talk song. Pretty cool track. Volume one, Volume two

(57:46):
are out, Volume three out January. You can follow the
real Tracy Lawrence. I was following the fake Tased Lawrence
for a while, just not the same. Guy's a real tool,
you know, man, I get it seems like every week
somebody that I know send to me this is this.
Really you gotta stop these people, man. They're they're they're
cutting thirty heads a week trying to get these people.
But you can't stop him. Man, It's just constant. The
real Tracy Lawrence. Uh, he's busy. He's only got a

(58:09):
weekend off. Basically, he's got a hit completely hill on
a weekend. But he's done. He's done bigger than he's
done bigger. He got shot and he was on the
road a day later. Tracy, good to talk to you, man.
Just keep killing it. You know, so much respect from
me to you. And if it wasn't for guys like
you guys like me wouldn't be in this business. Now
I appreciate. So yeah, just a massive fan there is.
You guys go follow at the real Tracy Lawrence. Volume

(58:32):
one and two are out now, Volume three comes out January.
All right, there we go,