Kix Brooks (@KixBrooks) of Brooks & Dunn hangs out with Bobby to talk about his extremely impressive career. Brooks & Dunn is the best-selling country duo of all time, and even though they got their start in the '80s, Kix shares how they are currently playing their biggest shows right now! He'll also share inside details on why they broke up and what Merle Haggard told them that caused him to have an issue with them. Kix has also been hosting the 'American Country Countdown' since 2006, and he'll share how he had to go to interview school to get better at radio. Kix also recalls getting discovered at The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, the first song he wrote that was special to him and more!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
I was fortunate that, you know, people believe emmy here
or there, and I you know, had a couple of
record deals that was on Capitol, you know, didn't pan
out that him. Du Bois felt like, you know, it's
a good enough singer that me and Ronnie Dunn might
make some noise.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
We've been trying to get Kicks Brooks in here for
a while and this is episode four oh nine, and
there was no real promo except he was just on
the road forever. Yeah, that's it. But he was super
cool to come over because he didn't have anything to promote,
so he finally just gave into our constant requests. My
favorite ones are when they have nothing to promote and
they just come over. I always feel like they're doing
(00:41):
it because they feel sorry for us though, because we've
been asking for like eight years. They're like, fine, I'll
do it. I'll come over Brooks and done. You want
to do the first five number ones? Yeah, all right,
nineteen ninety one, brand New Man Lot, I've been nineteen
ninety one. My next broken hearts were being on my
(01:02):
necks broke and I don't ever play that one whenever
I play, like all their hits that's a jam that
one gets overlooked so much. Nineteen ninety two, Neon Moon,
I've been most empriend nine Jam, nineteen ninety two, boot
Scoot and Boogie. In nineteen ninety three, she used to
(01:25):
be mine.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
I did har Breger.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
A couple quick notes here about Brooks and Done. They
formed in nineteen ninety they're the best selling duo of
all time, twenty number one songs. You know I love them,
We all love them. About Kicks, Brooks specifically grew up
in Sreeport, Louisiana. I mean he's lived everywhere. Lived obviously
in Louisiana, but also in Alaska. We talk about that
and Maine, his dad and how much of an influence
(01:52):
his dad was. He had some record deals before Brooks
had done. But I just really enjoyed Kicks. The reason
I love Kicks. Then go, hey, Kicks, what's up? He
takes it away because he does this too. Yeah, he
knows what it's like to be a good guest because
he likes it when he has good guests. I like
it when you can get somebody on what they're passionate about.
And whenever he starts talking about wine, he just like
really gets into it, and I know nothing about wine,
(02:14):
so it was like a teacher teaching like an infant,
and I'm like, so you drink it? What hold?
Speaker 1 (02:20):
All?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Right? Kicks Brooks. You can follow him at Kicksbrooks on
Instagram here. He is one half of Brooks and Done
Kick Kicksbrooks. We should start with what we were saying
right before we started recording, where I was looking at
some of you guys's crowds and Ronnie will send me
a video occasionally if it's like an absurd crowd and
he'll say, what you just said to me. I don't
(02:40):
know how this is still happening thirty years later.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
So he didn't send you the one where nobody showed up.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
He doesn't, you know. He's like a gambler friend that
I have who never tells me about his losses. Nobody
lost ever ever. But it's like there's a popularity for
you guys together now that I don't think. In my
ticket buying life, i've been able to see because if
(03:04):
you got started in ninety, right, I was ten, nineteen
years old. I couldn't buy tickets then, so that I
really didn't. But since i've been like an adult, uh, huh.
I don't think you guys have ever been more popular
in my opinion then right now? Do you feel that now?
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Certainly in terms of, you know, the tour that we've done.
I mean, when in twenty ten, when we thought we
were quitting, you know, we did we did kind of
a last go round and we did good business then
up until then, you know, short answer, it's been a
long time since we blew out colosseums like this.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
It's like a passion crowd too, it is.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
It's really fun and I didn't for a while last
year and then I just started looking at you know,
these are not all people that were supporting us thirty
years ago, you know, and I just asked, how many
of you miss your first Brooks and Dune show? And
it blew my mind. I started doing it every night
because it looks like seventy percent of that crowd it's
(04:07):
our first time. And that's what really makes me scratch
my head and go, wow, what kind of into y'all?
You know? I mean is that our reboot album? Is
it just this nineties thing that people have just kind
of latched onto a lot of nineties music? You know
that whole formats obviously has really kind of had a
resurgence as well. And for me, at the risk of
(04:30):
even sounding like I would compare what we do to
the music or the legacy. I mean when I first
got into country music, William Whalen, you know, even before
the Eagles, were the guys that really pulled on my strings.
And I was in college, you know, and started going
to Willie picnics and stuff like that, and it was
just this whole It was like, you know, down country
(04:53):
woodstock stuff going on all the time, and it was
just so much fun and it was country, and it
was good. Whaling and really just had this thing about
him that was was really cool and yeah, and I
just wanted to be a part of that. And then
I started. But I was also young. I mean I
was hooked on Almon Brothers and Charlie Daniels and all that.
I mean, Charlie wasn't considered country back then, like Nashville country.
(05:17):
You know, those guys were playing their guitars loud and rocking,
and you know, I grew up with Hank Williams down
the street. But but literally, you know, rolling Stones and
all that stuff. When you started having bands, those were
the songs you could play. You know, you could go
turn you know, five of us playing guitars and our
band were all doing that lick.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
You know, it's crazy to think. Again, you're talking about
the crowds, and you're like, I don't know why. I
really have spent some time thinking about this. I think
it's a little bit of the reboot album. I think
it's a I don't think it's as much of the
nineties country comeback as maybe even if you really think,
I don't, I think you guys would be here regardless. Again,
(05:58):
I also think you're both still good. I think if
you were just a not if you were still just
playing because you were only successful in the nineties, some
of the artists don't have it still physically, don't have
the ability to You guys are also so funny on stage.
I just think you still are good. And if you
(06:20):
weren't good, I don't think that the crowds would still
be as big because I've been lucky enough to watch
you guys, or play alongside you guys. Or But again,
I think you guys are still You're both so tall too,
and that's that angers me, both of you. You're both
so tall that it, guys, it's very upset and you're
in cowboy boots at the same time when you're so
tall and I consider myself a pretty tall guy. But
(06:40):
nothing there. But yeah, I was thinking about that too,
because you guys are selling out arenas still and it's
not like, let's you mentioned the Eagles, the Eagles where
it's like I went to watch the Eagles and I
was like, this maybe the last time I ever get to
see the Eagles. To let me go, I don't I
feel like we got like six more rounds with you guys,
like we see. I just don't feel like it's any
(07:01):
of that. I just feel like it's a good show.
We'd like the songs, and I think like the combs
is and the cases vouching for you guys to even
younger crowd. I think that probably helps too, Sure it does.
That reboot album was pretty genius.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
That was a good pull and it was fun to
do because we didn't I mean, for years we've just
you know, you grind and you stress over songs and
this and that and whatever, and it was so neat
of our manager, Clarence really reached out to those people.
So it wasn't like we had to get in the
middle of the accordinates of basking Yeah exactly, and that
(07:37):
you know, that was that was a real important part
of it. That that really mattered. And they came back
with all those acts that were like, all these guys
are great, you know. And what I was really impressed
with was, and I mean this in all sincerity, there
was not one person that walked into that studio. Most
of them we certainly never worked with before. Most of
(07:58):
them we never met. And just out of the blue.
I mean Ashley McBride literally was driving her car out.
I was singing You're going to miss me to her
over telephone in the car and we got a key
before she got to the studio. That day she walked in,
we said hey, hugged it out, went in the vocal
(08:19):
booths and cut the song and it was just a
lot of There was never any ego, There was never
any even there wasn't any even any fan love or
anything going on, you know. I mean, everybody was there
was really nice and you know, this is really cool.
You know, we're getting to do this, but everybody was
real pro I mean, you just got the feeling these
(08:40):
are young acts that really got their legs under them.
They're really confident, they're not cocky, they're just we're all
just kind of working here and having some fun. And
it was a great experience. And with Dan Huff, it
took no time to put that record together. That's the
other thing. Just making the record. You're not grinding for
weeks and weeks, you know, stressing over every and all.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
That was that a big part of you guys getting
back together and then going on the road and like formalizing, hey,
we're doing this again, that record or were you guys
already working on Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
We get on one hundred and five shows with Reba.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Before that you had was that that? But had you
guys been out on your own tour like just YouTube
with your own band.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Not what you would call a tour. But really it
was about probably three years. It was probably I'm guessing
probably twenty thirteen when we kind of stopped. In twenty ten,
we started getting some offers to you know, play I
think we played you know, super Bowl in New Orleans
and not super Bowl but the super Domant you know,
(09:45):
Daytona and just some special things that came up, and
you know, we just realized this we don't. We don't
have a beef with each other. This is kind of fun,
and we definitely still remembered how to do it. You know,
we still like a us at each other and go,
I don't know, man, which we have since day one
because we didn't know each other then. And you know,
(10:07):
we still stay on separate buses just to have that
kind of you know, good to see you again when
we hit stage that night. It really is kind of
that way. It's not like we hang out all day
or anything.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
You know, people feel that my radio show, and we've
been friends for twenty I mean we've been together forever
and twenty years that we just go home and all
eat dinner together. And yeah, if we didn't have some
sort of again I used a formal separation, right, we
would kill each other. Yeah, we would get but I
love them, yeah, and there we've been at it for
(10:42):
twenty years, right and so but yeah, they think, oh,
you must go on vacation together. No, No, if we
did that, we would not be able to do what
we do at the level that we do it at.
And I'm sure it's like a second marriage with anybody,
if you're with anybody that long, especially like you and
Ronnie and you travel that much together, like you have
to invest in that right to keep it healthy.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Yeah, and it's you know, we've been told by our
you know, our biggest Merle Haggard, you know, just kept
reminding us that you guys got a thing. He goes,
That's what he goes. It's just a thing, and you
need to respect that. You know. I've told the story before,
but I mean I remember on our last run, we
(11:29):
were in Woodstock, New York, and Merle agreed to play
with us if we would play with him every night,
And but he got to pick the song, so he
it was never working Man Blues or Silver Winds. It
was always a really obscure thing that we'd have to learn,
you know. He'd make us grinds. Jumped up on the
bus one day to get our song and he's sitting there,
(11:51):
you know, having a smoke and looking out this window.
We had a sold out crowd at Woodstock, and he goes,
sit down. He goes, I need to talk to you.
I said, okay, because what the hell are y'all doing?
I said, I don't know, Marle, what the hell are
we doing? I said? Look out there? He said, why
in the hell, all them people come out here and
see you what you quit? Merle? You know Patcha on
(12:16):
Left Eats probably one of my favorite songs ever, you know,
and it's a great video. I mean, you and Willy
are like great friends. Y'all made one album together. Okay,
I've been, Ronnie and I done. And I met on
a Tuesday and wrote our two first hits on Thursday
and Friday. We didn't even know each other. You know.
We managed to.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Grind this out for twenty freaking years and we needed
a break. Here said, and you made one album with Willie?
And he goes, well, we only had one hit. I said, Okay, Marle,
what's our song?
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Damn it? I love it? Manny.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
I spent a lot of time in Streeport from marketsas
so we go down to the boats.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
We drive down first place you could gamble, So that's
where we went. And so by doing they also played
a lot of ball and Report being the markets all
I played baseball. Tree Reports closest Louisiana big town both
the city but big town and Treport like childhood home?
What's what's home as a kid?
Speaker 1 (13:18):
For you?
Speaker 2 (13:18):
What town? Treeport is literally the Streetport, Well, what school?
Speaker 1 (13:22):
I went to Riverside Elementary and literally he might have
heard me tell his story. But two blocks away over
on Autubun, Billy Jean Horton lived and after she was
the last wife of Hank Williams. They got married in
Treeport and they got married down in Baton Ridge. I
think got married twice in one day, was kind of
unheard of at the time. After after Hank got divorced
(13:46):
from Audrey, so he died, and then she married Johnny
Horton and their daughter, Nina Horton, was my age and
we were in grade schools together at Riverside. We still
stay in touch, I mean, Billy gan and she was
a number I mean for a kid in grade school.
When she pulled up in that white convertible Cadillac and
(14:06):
those leopard skin pants, it's just like, wow, hello, missus Horton.
But Nina hired us Billy Jane actually five bucks. You know,
we got a dollar a piece. There's five of us
in the band, but we like saying five bucks at
the playground. That was our first gig. In their driveway
(14:28):
and their little white house is just like we had.
I mean to think Johnny Horton and Hank Williams. This
is I mean, this is a little white house, you know,
it's probably a three bedroom on a just a plain old,
you know, suburban Shreeport Street, just like us. It seems
so average, you know, but going inside and seeing those
(14:49):
gold records and those guitars and portraits of Johnny Horton
and over the fireplace and all that stuff, it was
real special and real cool and it really really it
set something inside of me going, that's for sure?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Did it you being able to see those did it
actually let you know that it was possible to do that.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
That's what I mean. It seemed like something that it
wasn't just some pie in the sky starring the sky,
you know. It was it was something that people did,
you know, regular people like my dad. You know, they
just lived down the street. But they were playing music.
And I mean, from the time I can remember, our
family sang as much as we talked. You know, you
get in the car, you start singing songs. It was
(15:29):
just a thing, so that really you know it, and
we always had bands, you know, and from grade school on.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Who buy your first guitar?
Speaker 1 (15:37):
My dad did, but my grandmother bought me a ukulele
when I was like six years old, because my mom
died when I was like four, so I spent a
lot of time with her, and they were She was
real musical, and my cousins were too. And I remember
that came from Sears and Roebuck. It was nine to
ninety five. I'll never forget. It's white and had red
stripes on it. Really cool, and I had a songbook
(15:58):
and I just learned to play chords and sing songs
with that ukulele. I learned how that worked. But I
really wasn't strong enough to play a guitar. My dad
got me a still string guitar when I was ten
or eleven.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
And what was my grandma raised me too for a
lot of my life. What was your grandma like?
Speaker 1 (16:13):
She was salt of the earth. Both my grandparents there
was There was never anything like divorce or anything like that.
Was never even something to be considered, you know. They
were just country people. My great grandfather had been the
town doctor there in Maryon, Louisiana, which is kind of
(16:34):
northeast Louisiana. And yeah, they they still lived in that
house was a big house right in the center of town,
which is kind of the hospital at one point, you know,
and they were just My grandfather had the Thompson General
Store just maybe one hundred yards from the house, and
you know, went with them to buy stuff for it
all around in Monroe or wherever, you know, the big cities.
(16:55):
You had to get jeans and shoes, and they sold everything,
food and whatever. He was also the vice president at
the bank and he was the mayor. So they were
you know, but they were. It was funny and in
town and I think they had about six hundred people
there that they had friends, they played bridge with. You know,
they had a little boat. My grandfather if he was
(17:16):
at the bank that day, everybody that came in, we're
the fish bite. And when he got home and him
threw that little ten boat in the back of a
pickup truck, old beat up pickup truck and took off
to wherever we'd heard and we fished all the time.
That was just a big deal for us.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
When you get a ukulele and your kid, what do
you play it publicly?
Speaker 1 (17:37):
First, For my grandparents, we just put on shows all
the time. You know, that's for them for sure.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
And so when you get a guitar, you're ten eleven
years old. When do you play? When do you decide
to go out and play for somebody that doesn't know
you super close?
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Whenever your dad, who was real proud you could do that,
you know, go to you know, just cousins' houses and
stuff like that, and you know, bring your guitar, you know,
and he you know, play.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
What do you make you do it? Like?
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Let's think the business? Oh yeah, you know, especially those
hey good looking and I'll you know, Hank and Johnny
Horton songs. Just because they were down the street. I
learned a lot of that kind of stuff. And Johnny
Cash was a big deal for me.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
And Johnny Cash a big deal for me because again
being from Arkansas, my grandma would always be like, all right,
he's like you. I'm like, well, except he's not. But yes,
but Johnny Cash, you know, even Conway Twitty, who you
know named it for Conway, Arkansas, but he also Louisian.
I mean Conway Twitty, Mississippi, you know that area. There
were all those artists that my grandmother really looked up to,
(18:45):
who I guess I thought was just they were current
until I got a little bit older and realized they
were just her favorites from when she was younger. Uh,
what about your grandparents or your dad, Like what music
did they really like that you just naturally took on.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
My dad liked he liked country, but he liked hits,
you know, like I can remember and he'd stop and
get a forty five and bring it home, you know,
and like Harper Valley, Pta or you know something that
was that was a hit like that, or you know
King of the Road. You know, I can remember him
bringing that home. Just as far as listening to Nashville
(19:18):
country music, not so much. He probably gravitated to And
his dad sharpened saws in a sawmill in Urine, you Louisiana,
I mean, and his dad got struck by lightning fish
and when he was eight years old and died. And
his mother was a first grade school teacher. So he
came from very humble background. But I think when he
(19:39):
was in the Navy he really picked up on big
band music. He loves Gene Crooper and stuff like that, so,
you know, he had a sophisticated kind of side to him.
He loved delta blues, real old school lead belly on up,
you know, through old delta blues. And then whatever hits
were on the radio that he'd heard about. He liked
that stuff. He wasn't really a Nashville country music guy.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Did you graduate high school in treport?
Speaker 1 (20:05):
I didn't. I went to boarding school where in Swanee here. Yeah,
it was a military school when I went there for
two years.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
And did you go to I don't understand? Helped me
understand boarding school in general? Yeah, Were you bad kid?
Speaker 1 (20:17):
I was? You know, it was my first step mother
was the one that really kind of got under my skin.
We didn't get along very well, and it just caused
a lot of problems, uh, in our family. And I was,
you know, I wasn't necessarily a class clown with weapons,
but I probably stirred up.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I would think you would started up.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
So I mean that's why still I got in trouble
all the time. But just you know, I was. I
was partying at a pretty early age.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
And how do you feel about those two years? Now?
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Four years? And I wouldn't wouldn't give anything for it.
It definitely made especially two years of military and that
was during the Vietnam War and we kind of started
a rebellion basically brought down one hundred and four years
of tradition at Swanee Military Academy became a boarding school
for my last two years, and it was pretty crazy that,
(21:17):
you know, pulling all that off. It was sort of
like Taps if you ever saw that movie.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
When you finished there, then what do you do?
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I went to my uncle was the dean of business
at SMU, and so he encouraged me to come to SMU, and.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
I did for a year.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
My dad wouldn't buy me a Ferrari, so I couldn't
really get a date at SMU. So I went back
to Lisiana Tech where all my friends were and had
a great, great time there.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Yeah, did Terry Bradshaw get all be? Then? He did?
Speaker 1 (21:47):
He did? And Phil Robertson was, you know, played starting quarterback.
I didn't know that, yeah, and Terry was his backup.
Terry and I are still really good friends. And he
said he'd have never thrown a passive. Phil hadn't gone
down hunting, but he did. He quit and went duck hunting.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Is that true?
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Absolutely the truth. And it's funny because he got approached
by the pros after that because he was such a
strong quarterback. And the story goes, I guess they came
down from Oakland to see if he'd be interested in
coming and trying out, and he said, don't you all
play football at the same time. We're duck hunting at
the same time. Them country boys there, He said, yeah.
(22:26):
I said, then I'm not interested.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
You know I saw Terry at the Opry a few
months ago. Yeah, yeah, I didn't really know Terry saying yeah, you.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Know he had a I don't know it was the
top ten record. I think, wasn't It wasn't for me
so I could cry. Yeah, he had an album out.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Did you know him back then? Or do you guys
meet later on because you're from the same place we did?
Speaker 1 (22:46):
We actually we met because of Tech and his daughter, Rachel.
You know, I'd met her and we started having a
golf tournament at Tech to raise money and just had
a lot of fun and got to be friends.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
He seems like a pretty funny guy.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
He's hysterical and he's always He's just that is so him.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
Hank Ty The Bobby Cast will be right back and
we're back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Did you have Louisiana people that you I mentioned? Johnny Cash,
like Brooks, Robbins, I played third base for the Orioles
way before me. But he was from Arkansas. Yeah, did
you have a Louisiana people like that to you that
you were like, they're from where we're from. Sure, I
really like I admire what they're doing. Who would that be?
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Well, obviously the you know Hank Williams and Johnny Horton
and Merle Kilgore. You're familiar with him. So Merle was
Hank Junior's manager and also wrote Wolverton Mountain and I
was just.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Surely as a writer and he managed.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Yeah, it managed Hank Junior, but famous. And I met
him through this CMA board the first time and we
got to be great friends. But yeah, he was famous
for you know, he had big rings on all his fingers,
you know, this jeweler diamond. Dan you know, made it
really really outgoing, you know, over the top, really fun guy.
(24:22):
But you say, Merle, you're doing good man, everything okay,
and you go, are you shitting me? Just those rings?
Speaker 2 (24:33):
What was this? What was this? I mean when you
mentioned a guy like that, I think about Nashville when
it used to kind of be like that. Oh yeah,
low and it's still its own way of loud, but
like low you would just see somebody and know that they.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Lost a lot of our carnate factor.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Carnie, That's yeah, it's definitely. What was it like when
you moved What was this talent like when you moved here?
Speaker 1 (24:52):
I'll tell you the For me, it was all I
just wanted to be a songwriter in this town. That's really.
I mean all most all songwriters have some dreams and
you know, they play their songs. We've gotten some recognition.
There's exceptions to that, but most songwriters like to think
of themselves as artists. I mean I did, and I
had a couple of record deals before Ronnie and I
(25:13):
got together, but not because I was that great. I
don't know. But I started singing a lot of demos,
you know, for stuff like that. But the town the
ability to My first publisher is a guy named Don Gant,
and man, he would hold court every day, we'd write
songs all day. But he had been at Tree Publishing
and was responsible for some of the great careers from
(25:35):
Roger Miller and Mickey Newberry, got Sonny Throckmorton, people you
may not be familiar with, but people that Harlan Howard.
Of course, they were all at Tree I mean they
owned independent publishing, but there were still great publishing company
companies like Combine where Christofferson and you know, Whalen and
all those guys were too little, smaller company. But when
(25:58):
we were done at the end of the day, people
would start piling in that door, and Don would always
send out for a few cases of beer. We just
packing his office and start passing the guitar around. We
really make you want to write something special, because if
that guitar came your way, or Don said, did you
write anything today? But at the same time, even if
I written something that wasn't that good, he would find
(26:20):
that one line in a song and go, man, wait
a second second verse, what was it you said you?
Because y'all hear that, it's like and all of a
sudden he would make you feel like he might not
tell you it was a great song because it wasn't,
but he would also make sure you knew that's what
you need to be. That's that's a great line. Give
me a whole song full of that kind of stuff.
(26:42):
You know, it's a great teacher. But also by the
end of by the end of the night, we're all
well oiled. Then then you know, Mackey Newberry or Ray
van Hoy or some of those guys that Throckmorton who
are just writing this brilliance. They get the guitar and
then you got the opportunity. Man, it was it was
all up and down the street and where's it happening
(27:04):
kind of thing, and I just I don't, you know,
there's so so much you know, I don't sound like
an old guy, but there's so much concrete where there
were little houses all the way down Music Row, and
you just wander up and down. You could hear it
a lot of times, up and down.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
People just doing the thing.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah that's going or and somebody come running down to
your publishing company and go, man, come on down to Combine.
You know, whaling's down there and there singing, you know,
and dad, that kind of stuff is going on.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Do you remember when you moved here, like and again
you're in the majors now because you have all the
great songwriters around you, which elevates at least hopefully you
to to get to their level. Do you remember the
first like song you wrote where you were like, man,
this is special, Like I have now reached a new peak.
I've learned it and I've written this song. Do you remember
the first great song you feel like you wrote?
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Honestly, I had quite a few number ones at that point,
but I think I think Red Dirt Road was was
a time when I really put the period on that
song and went, it's a freaking hit and it's it's
really saying it's you know. Ronnie and I did that together,
and he actually we had it was just a place
(28:16):
where we talked about, really got real with each other,
talked about where we came from. Like, you know, he
was telling me about Elderad. I was telling me about
where my grandparents was. That's where it was, and somehow
I was telling about driving those roads with my grandfather
looking you know, looking at at timber. You know what
he was going to cut, and I said, man, that
dirt was just so he goes, I know it was
(28:37):
up and said that'd be a good name for an album.
So now we got to write a song, and we
kind of puttered around at it three or four times
and never really got more than a line or two.
And he got off the plane we were we had
a gig and Sacramento and we flew to San Francisco
and got off the plane, and he handed me a
cocktail napkin and it had those lines about you know,
(28:58):
drank my first beer and you know, wrecked my first
car toward it all the pieces, something about Jesus and
you know, life ain't just for high achievers. And he said,
what do you think. I think it's freaking great, man,
This is exactly what we were talking about. And I
jumped on a bus and you know, wrote the pretty
much the music and the verses. He had already told
(29:20):
me about Rule route three. You know, that's kind of
when we kicked around where he came from, and he
came and knocked on my bus, had Terry McBride and said, man,
let's go get a steak. And I said, you got
to hear this song though, and we both just kind
of slapped it up in here and and I couldn't
wait to record it. It was it was It was
really fun to put it down too.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Did you ever to write a song and go this
one's special? Then you recorded it and you're like, I
think it's lost what we were trying to do, so
let's do it again, or I think.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
More just sometimes when you write songs for a living
and songs get recorded you know, Don Gant had a
plaque on his desk that said, it's not as good as.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
The demo, you know, you ever hear Yeah, it would
just be tough if like you feel it. And then
you even like comedy songs, like if I play them
live and we try to record them, I'm always like,
it doesn't sound as good when I recorded it, like,
and it probably does probably sounds better, yeah, but because
it's like live or like if I'm creating something on
(30:22):
the spot, it just feels newer and fresher.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
You're married to the thing. And I would never would
never mention what song or that was, you know, or whatever,
because it's I mean, it's the greatest honor of all
for somebody to risk their career on something you made up,
you know, as a songwriter. You know, but it is demolias.
(30:46):
You just get here. It used to hearing it one
way so many times. I remember, like Modern Day Romance,
I wrote that with a Dan Tyler, only song we
ever wrote together, and we had both had he wrote
Bobby Sue on the Oak Rich Boys album, and I
had a cut that I'd written on there and called
that was actually my first cut called Old Kentucky song
(31:08):
ever ever, Yeah, which was pretty lucky to be on
a million selling album because you get your songwriter role
teach you. All of a sudden, Don started paying me
one hundred bucks a week, and I'm a professional songwriter.
You know. It's really really where it went from. But man,
I really believed in modern day romance. I said, Man,
this song is cool. It's got a good vibe to it,
(31:30):
and everybody seemed to like it, but nobody would cut it,
you know, and finally Can't said look, I'll cut it
on you. He said, and he produced above Ittt's first
five records. You know. He did come Monday, did all
the backgrounds. He was a great producer, and I said, wow,
that'd be cool. He said, we'll get you a record deal.
So let's do it. He said, you sing it great
and die. So we did. We cut it. Actually got
(31:53):
a film company interested, cut a demo on it, I
mean a video on it, and was about to put
it out is it is an independent thing. And Warley
called and said, hey, man, dirt Man, just cut this song.
He said, it's a freaking hit. Okay, I'll put no
mine in the trash because I'm a huge dirt band
(32:14):
fan and Jeff Hannah sang the heck out of it. Anyway,
it was you know, sometimes things, sometimes things won't just
work out with songs. But you never know.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Where did kicks come from?
Speaker 1 (32:27):
There's a couple of weeks before I was born, was
what I was heard. I was trying to bust out
of there. You know, I don't know about you, but
nine months.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Was trying to Mary. I knew a good place when
I had it, I was the officite.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
I don't know. Fetal position wasn't really my thing. I
wanted to stretch.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Out with Mike because I you know, Bones is not
my real name is not Bones. It's est So kicks
nickname is a kid or nickname later? No, it was
I was always kicks, always from a young.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Young kid, from the time I was born.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Really, but not your birth certificate.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
No, it's on Eric. I'm the third. My son's the fourth.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Is he kicks that you call him kicks as well?
Speaker 5 (33:05):
Though?
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Has he kicked Junior?
Speaker 1 (33:06):
No? Call him quatro?
Speaker 2 (33:07):
What do they call it? But they really call you
kicks that you kicked.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Not really call him rick. Yes, they've always gone me kicks.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Because you kicked in the womb because you came out
of baby. It's because you mess so much. I don't
know if you're kidding or not. No, that's the truth,
but you do understand. You mess so much that sometimes
it's hard for like douse, I'm looking at you, like, okay,
so kicks came from you were always.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Kicks, that's correct. Okay, So if you can, if you
can find any defiance of that, Bobby, you have no
full credit on here.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
I have no defiance I just.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Because I've removed all of that, so you won't well
find it.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
You just a couple of my early stories here. The
first person that the first one played the opry. You
won't remember that you've done this ten thousand times with
ten thousand people. I was doing stand up and I
was about to play the opry for the first time ever,
and you were there, and you came in the room,
my first room and said hey, and we're like congratulate,
and I was like, that's freaking awesome, and I thought
it so kind of you to do because you exactly
(34:02):
that's right. It was me and the time before that.
You don't get your name right, you billy billy bones. Yeah,
you call them billy bones. Yeah, it was nice. I
peed next to you to urinal In, Texas once.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Remember that next to me, man, I remember everybody that
pays yes stand me Austin, Texas and outside each other
and I.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Did. You were at case one on one of the
radio station down there, and I was working a kiss
and I was in and I was like, I didn't
even know that you were in town. I think you may
have me.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
You didn't try to shake hands or anything.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
I did not not right then I left you. But
it was like, were you doing a solo project? Twelve ten,
two thousand? Did you do?
Speaker 1 (34:46):
So?
Speaker 2 (34:46):
When did you do a solo your solo thing, like
when you put out your record.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
After Brooks and done?
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Or that would have been yeah, probably, Well we'd last
toured and ten, so it would have been eleven or twelve.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Because that's when it was. That's when we were probably
eleven before I moved here.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
I think you remember, now, don't you. I did that? Yeah? Yeah,
you were peaking over the corner. That's how I get there.
Speaker 5 (35:07):
The Bobby Cast. We'll be right back. This is the
Bobby Cast. I've never been to Alaska. It's the one
state I haven't been to now. Just went to Maine
for the first time. Really, it's awesome Maine.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
I do know that in New Hampshire did that, Never
been there, but I've not been to Alaska. But you
lived in Alaska, you worked in Alaska.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
I did spend You're on the pipeline up there.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Took a break from college. And my dad was a
pipeline contractor, built pipelines all over the world. It's actually
a part of the team that designed the Alaska pipeline
and his his background wasn't testing, and so is mine.
But basically, when you test a pipeline, except for just
a couple of suspended pipelines in Japan and here and there,
(35:58):
pipelines are all in the ground. So when you test
a pipeline, you fill it up with water and you
put a lot of pressure on that water. So if
it blows up, it just blows out, you know, a
hole in the ground, and the pressure dissipates immediately. There's
really no not much damage involved. When you've got a pipeline.
The biggest pipeline in the state's forty eight inch diameter.
(36:21):
Alaska Pipeline's fifty six inch diameter, and it's on stilts,
so when you fill that up with water and something
bad happens. You know, we did millions of dollars worth
of damage test in that pipeline. Was really really exciting
and some real dangerous work.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
But what was it like to live up there and
do that for a year? It was.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
It's crazy. I worked twelve hours a day, seven days
a week for almost a year without coming home.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Was it to save money?
Speaker 1 (36:48):
And yeah, absolutely so you didn't have to pay Alaska taxes.
I sent all my money home and yeah, I got
home and bought a hot Camaro and a new guitar
and I could get a date again.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Are you a guitar guy as in a nerd? Do
you really love old guitars?
Speaker 1 (37:07):
I do love old guitars, but I'm really I'm not.
I'm not a collector. You know, I've got a couple
of I've probably got, you know, four or five guitars
that are like from fifty one and earlier. They sound
really cool, they still play, They still play great, and
I love the way they sound, but they don't really
(37:29):
amplify very well. You know, most of the guitars that
I play on stage J two hundreds are kind of
There was a couple of days that I got guys
that play guitar in the band that had a bunch
of acoustics, just stood out front with the man playing
playing with play by yourself, you know. And J two
hundreds is that for strumming? And right now a lot
(37:49):
of songs, I'm the only guy playing acoustic guitars, so,
you know, for a good even big, big strum sound
when I'm playing rhythm, I love J two hundreds and
I had I was playing a goal Les Paul at
the Gold top less Paul at the time. And for
this stuff I played electrically. I mean in college, I
was the only guitar player in some of my bands.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
You know.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Now I got two great guitar players that run circles
around me, and so I play acoustic and sing and
you know.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Do what I do.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
But it's fun. I'm not People ask me all the
time how many guitars you got, and it's not tons.
You know, I probably have twenty or thirty guitars.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Maybe, well that's a lot of guitars. It is you
have a music part of the house.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Yeah, I got a couple of music parts, but I
have guitars everywhere I mean, I do not. There's not
a day in my life that I don't pick up
a guitar.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
I was gonna ask if you still play around the house. Ever, Yeah,
I do, and you still enjoy music.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
I still love music, and God love my wife because
I just I give myself concerts somedays, or I just
play a lot of songs that just remind myself. Especially
you know, you're just getting situations, whether it's on stage
with your friends or whatever, and you go, oh, I
love that song. I need to remember how to play that,
and you know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
You're still driven to pick up a guitar and just
play for fun.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Absolutely, absolutely, that's.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Not always the case.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
It's just, man, what do you do to shake out
your yayas in the morning? I mean, just what do
you do to you swim laps in that.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Pool or what Sometimes?
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Yeah, I did this morning too, But it's not the
same as just singing my heart out for two or
three songs, to really put my heart into some music
all by myself and just sing and just really give
it to the air.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Do you still keep notes if you get an idea
like a songwriting adia, Oh gosh, yeah, so yeah, I
keep yeah, I come off and you right all write.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Something all the time? Really yeah, I mean, but it's
finishing songs is that's the work, and that's what takes
the time that I'm like you, I've surrounded myself with
money spenders, and I the work that I have, you know,
even you know, just getting ready for a tour. You know,
(40:04):
I do a radio show too, as you know, and
got the wineries rocking pretty hard, and that's something that
I have given quite a bit of attention to. So
I just kind of in the morning, I start going
through all the stuff, and you know, I call it
checking the traps, and just you know, it gets in
the way of really spending a lot of time. If
(40:24):
I get focused on a song, I need two or
three days to really get from top to bottom to
feel like it's any good.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Explain this winery to me, because I've never take a wine,
uh huh, but it seems to be a pretty popular thing.
Wine and coffee two things I think are catching on nowadays.
It's pretty popular, too, too popular. But I drive by
your place if I go play golf, yeah, over a troubador,
and I see people out there sometimes not even drinking
wine is hanging out, sitting out there on blankets and stuff. Yeah, so,
(40:51):
what the heck's happening over there. I've never actually been
there except driving by.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah. Well, it was never a goal of mine to
have a bar. That's a lie, that's a lot, because
that's how I got to Nashville. Honestly, when I graduated
from college, a good friend of mine the most popular
bar in Sreeport where I played all the time. It's
a really cool club, about a three hundred seater and
on the weekends it was blowing up. But he was
(41:15):
losing money on the weekdays because he was trying to
hire acts. People you know, don't go out to bars,
not in a lot of towns during the you know,
keeping a bar, going a big entertainment bar, it's hard.
But he wanted to sell it five thousand dollars. So
my dad and I were like best friends, and I
called a meeting with him though, because I wanted to
borrow this money. Didn't have any money, but I had
(41:37):
this idea. I was going to be the house band.
You know, we could sell it wouldn't cost anything during
the week weekends were blowing it out. Can make a
lot of money. This is kind of working. So I
went in there and said, hey, Dad, here's my plan.
He said, I die. I gave him the whole rundown
and whatever like that. And he's sitting there behind his desk,
smoking his cigar, nodding his head and said, you know
what I need five thousand dollars. I I was hoping
(41:59):
maybe you could go sign for it. Okay, So well
that first that that's not going to happen. He said, Really,
two things here it goes. The first one is I
think you got a lot of talent, he goes, I
believe in you, he said, But you don't want to
be a big fish in a small pond here in Nashville.
(42:21):
I mean in Shreeport, there's not a handful of bands
doing any good. And really, if you if you want
to prove to yourself and everybody that you really got
what it takes, you need to go to Nashville or
New York or Los Angeles and see if you can
really make it in the music business. Okay, Oh see,
I mean it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
And the second thing, you don't know a damn thing
about the bar business. So yeah, that that got me
out and going.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
When you move here to Nashville. How soon after that,
after he has that talk with you, like we ain't
doing a bar, but you got to You got to
go because you're good enough to go. You just got
to go. You chose Nashville, obviously, But how long until
you get here and actually feel like this is home
or that you can actually thrive.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Well, it took a minute, because not like it did
for a lot of people. I was fortunate. Jody Williams
and I were roommates in military school, and Jody was
running Charlie Daniels publishing company. His sister was married to
Charlie's guitar player, so he kind of got it in
there me and I could. It was the first place
I'd ever been, because I've worked in New Orleans for
seventy two nights before I came here, that I couldn't
(43:34):
take my guitar and a handful of you know, newspaper
articles that i'd gotten at least let somebody I could
play for somebody and get a gig making some kind
of money, like in the airport kind of thing here now.
But when I got to town, this was the first
place I'd ever been where I couldn't make a living
playing my guitar.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
I mean it was everybody. Everybody was trying to do it.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Yeah, it was just there weren't any.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
And there's not enough places.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah, if there's a cover band or something, but everybody
he played for free. Everybody's trying to get noticed, you know.
I mean I auditioned and played at the Bluebird all
the time. It's actually where you know, like in the movies,
I got discovered. Bob Dole, who wound up managing Garth Brooks,
was working at ass Cap, saw me playing at the Bluebird,
invited me to his office the next day, introduced me
to Don Ghenton. Don got me, you know, my first
(44:20):
couple of cuts and gave me a publishing deal.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
I mean, that's the Nashville story here the Bluebird. I
know somebody sees you. Did you were you like a
picture who was being scouted or you knew the scouts
were in the stands that night?
Speaker 1 (44:31):
No, no, I really I didn't have really didn't have
anything going. And what I learned was my songs weren't
that good. I'd written a lot of songs, but and
me and David Lee Murphy were sweeping floors for Charlie Daniels.
We got thirty bucks at night for sweep sweeping the
War Memorial where the hall for the Musicians Hall of
Fame is right now, I'm not kidding. And we worked security.
(44:54):
We worked the barricade behind the barricade to keep people
from jumping on the stage, and then we'd work the room,
you know, when after the show was over, making sure
nobody got in there or anything, and then we sweep
the floors.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
Did you ever almost give up?
Speaker 1 (45:08):
No, I shouldn't say that. I mean there were probably times,
you know, if you're a songwriter, and I had, you know,
like four number ones and quite a few cuts and
had some you know, good years. But it was ten
years before I met Ronnie, and there's there was valleys
in there where I went, I'm not making that much money.
(45:29):
I got a couple of kids. Now, hm, is this?
You know? Where does this go from here? You know,
I'm not really hot right now. I've got a publishing deal.
But you know, three or four hundred bucks a week
whatever I was making, you start looking around going, you know,
that's what people do, a lot of people throwing the towel.
I never did. Fortunately, you know, every time I just
(45:50):
start to get a little discouraged, something good would happen
and just enough to enough to keep you in the game,
you know. It always I was fortunate that, you know,
people believed them here there even people that were doing
advertising jingles and that kind of stuff. I always had some
singing going on to and and I you know, I
had a couple of record deals. It was on Capitol,
you know, didn't pan out, but people were aware. And
(46:13):
I guess that's how eventually, you know, Tim Dubois felt like,
you know, it's a good enough singer that me and
Ronnie Dunn might make some noise.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Okay, back to the wine, Like, what do you sell there?
Other than why what if people pay money for when
they go there? One is our big deal. I would
think it would be one of the major.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
One different kinds of wine. So we bring hundreds of
thousands of pounds of fruit in from from all over California.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Not all grapes grapes, but all grapes, we say fruit.
I don't know if you may like wine, we don't,
but we do make some a couple. I know nothing
about wine kicks, so I've never had drink of alcohol.
So I'm gonna talk to you like a.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
Kindergarten ferment oranges. You know people in prison do that
all in the toilet.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
I know. I mean I've seen those present shows. Yeah,
you've ever.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
Left fruit in your refrigerator? Anything will ferment like that. Okay.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
So when you say fruit, though, you mean grapes, I
mean grape.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
Yeah, that's they have a sixteen acres of fruit of grapes,
and we use every grape we grow, but we can't
grow a lot of these grapes they grow in California.
You probably heard of cabernet, are low or chardonnay. Those
are actually types of grapes and they need that climate
like in northern California. They like it hot in the daytime,
(47:26):
but at night they need to shut down and rest,
And our nights here are warm enough that the flavors
of those kind of grapes just kind of blow off
at night. So we grow certain kinds of grapes that
do well here, that are hardy. But it depends on
the variety.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
You're telling me, those are different greatly. Cabernet, chardonnay, what
was the other one you said, are low? So those
are just different grape.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
There are different kinds of grapes.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Green, purple. This is the two kind I know.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Yeah, so there's white that makes white wine and red wine.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Did you know, Mike, That's that's what it was. There
are different grapes. We're idiots, I mean we're Idiot's just
something you're not into. So can you do the way
when people the taste of mind, they spit it out
and they're like, hmm, there's some tree bark from a
pine tree? Can you do? Are you that your palette
that distinguished?
Speaker 1 (48:15):
It's it's not. I'm not a somalier by any means,
but I can tell. I can tell Cabernet from Sanchio
Vesi grapes that I can tell, certainly, Bordeaux ones from
California ones. You know, certain big areas that have real
distinct tastes to them. I can tell the difference.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
You can taste an area.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
I can some areas, wow, you know, because some areas
are real. You know some Italian ones, you know, spend
a lot of time in Italy one they have exactly
you know the difference in New York and you know
pizza and Chicago. What's fair?
Speaker 2 (48:54):
I definitely can't. Okay, if you were to give me
a piece of New York or Chicago deep dish. I
could tell you the difference. I definitely could.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
That's what it's like. It's like you start there and
then if you're really into pizza, you go, well, okay,
this is Papa John's is not the same. Well what's
the difference? You know, That's how some people would go.
You can't tell the difference? Yeah you can?
Speaker 2 (49:14):
You know, right, how did wine?
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (49:17):
Oh no, for her, I can. How did wine? Did
it be in your thing? Though?
Speaker 1 (49:21):
Well from Louisiana, So I started drinking at a very
early age. I like wine. It's great, you know, it's
great with food. That's a big deal with wine is pairing.
If you, you know, start doing that. There's certain because
of the acidity and red wines and white ones, and
you know, a great cabernet if you really like steak,
(49:41):
it pairs great. One thing that wine does, like good wines,
nice ones. You know what makes a great wine? Well,
one thing is what's called a long finish. And if
a wine has a you know, especially a Cabernet or
more lower great steak ones, if they have a long finish,
you like the taste of that wine. You take a
big sip of that and you cut your steak. You
taste that wine with that steak, and it's just a
(50:03):
great pairing of food and drink. And that's that's all
part of it. You know, you really learn to pair.
You know, some like Senjia Vassi, a wine we may
call red Fox. Red is a great what I call
a table wine. And there's a lot of great Italian
table wines which are just great with cheese and crackers.
You know, it's just it's a great pairing that you know,
(50:24):
just drink a little wine, and it's also something fun
with your friends. You know, you cap cop a little buzz,
you start talking about some stuff you might not have
been talking about before, and just you know, it's it's nonsense,
but it's it's fun.
Speaker 2 (50:37):
That is, you do wine sell wine, but people go
either just to hang out too, right, the just sit
in the build.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
Most people are drinking. They are, yeah, most of their
children are, you know.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
At least five and six year olds. You don't sell
wine to the kids.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
That's we don't sell wine to the kids. And it's
it's hysterical online. You know, the rare complaints that we
get are because you know, there's not enough things for
their children to do.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
At the winery.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
Yeah, you know, we're trying to drink here, you know,
could you please set up a bouncy you know, house
or something for the kids so you know, we can
drink in peace.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
Do you have one of those lives where you can
go places? Because if you have the cowboy hat on,
it's over. We know it's you immediately. When you were
on the ball cout, I would know what's you, obviously,
but I would think that because your cowboy hat is
such a large part of your persona that sometimes people
don't go, hey, Kicks Brooks.
Speaker 1 (51:30):
They don't. It's rare. You know. We did, like I said,
we did four years, one hundred and four or five
shows with Rieba in Las Vegas. So Ronnie and reeb
we're both very recognizable. They would always take a car
from their rooms around to the back of the coliseum
and go in, and I would come out of my
room just for enjoyment, would walk through all the slot
(51:52):
machines and whatever by the crap table where I would
play every night after the show, you know, walk through
the crowd that's in line for our show. Literally, excuse me,
pardon me through them, and sometimes even walk in and
check out the merchandise room, which is they're all right
next to the coliseum. Not one time in four years,
one hundred and four shows, not one time to one person,
(52:12):
no matter how many times they've been to that show,
and we keep a record of that. You know, some
of them have been to those shows thirty times or something.
Recognize me.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
I don't think it's because you're not recognizable. I think
it's because what we recognize you for is so big
with the cowboy hat and the boots, and now you're
just hanging out. You know, if I saw you at Starbucks,
I'd be like, yeah, that's kick. But again, but because
you are always in the cowboy how people see you publicly,
(52:41):
it looks just like him, only older. It's the perfect
life of celebrity. You get to be famous when you
want to, and if you don't want to, you just
put on a ball cap. I would imagine George stra
can do that.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
Sometimes he does do that, and I wasn't going to
mention him, but since you did, I can. I remember
somebody came up to me and said, we're on the
sideline at an NFL playoff, game in Dallas, and then
somebody goes that straight over there and they're arguing, no,
it's not I swear it's it's not him.
Speaker 2 (53:09):
You know.
Speaker 1 (53:10):
And I finally walked over and said, hey, George, you
know it, he's gonna ball calf on, you know.
Speaker 4 (53:14):
But yeah, let's take a quick pause for a message
from our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
Welcome back to the Bobby Cast. I was playing golf
at a program with a professional golfer from San Antonio
and he plays with George some Obviously George loves down there,
and he said that they were in Ireland playing golf
together once and they had played and they went to
a pub, but there was a guy doing some covers
(53:47):
and he was playing George straight songs and George was there.
He didn't and the whole time he never knew that
two tables down when there were like eleven people in
the whole bar or pub, that George Strait was sitting
right there, and he was because George was a baseball
cap and nobody recognizes them.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
That's funny.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
I went to think of the name. There's an island,
a small island that my CFO has a house, and
I went and stayed on this island, and George had
a house that was right next to it, and so
you have to take a boat to get to that.
I'm sure you've been there, if you don't, order if
you have a house there. Do you have a house there?
Speaker 1 (54:23):
I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (54:24):
There's an island. It's like in the Bahamas.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
In the Bahamas, yeaheah, probably Bakers but that's just for
Georgia's Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2 (54:29):
Yeah, you ever go over there?
Speaker 1 (54:31):
Yeah? I fish in the Bahamas a lot, really, but
I haven't been to Baker's Bay.
Speaker 2 (54:35):
It feels like a real very close to there.
Speaker 1 (54:37):
Andros and Exama down there.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
Do you still fish a lot all the time. What's
your favorite kind of fishing?
Speaker 1 (54:43):
Bone fishing? Probably? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (54:45):
I like blue It feels like a mobster thing, like
you kill somebody. Yeah, like bone fishing. What what what?
I don't know? I know, lake fish, I like blue,
bluewater fishing, fly fishing, you know, got it?
Speaker 1 (54:54):
Long casting not? I mean I fish in Alaska every
year with my son, you know, I after twelve years
ag and that's I love fly fishing for when the
salmon are running, you know, I mean those are those
are big fish and they're like they put a whack
on it. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. But bone fishing,
you know, you might. You can walk for five miles
and a foot and a half deep of water and
(55:16):
those flats out there, and it's just really fun because
it's slight fishing. You can see them and they're traveling
across and then you're kind of stalking. You've got to
get in the right position where you can make a
fifty or sixty foot cast in the.
Speaker 2 (55:27):
Right spot and fifty or sixty foot in the right spot.
Speaker 1 (55:30):
Yeah, and the wind's always blowing down.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
What's the bone part of it?
Speaker 1 (55:33):
They're just called bonefish. They're not fishy eat.
Speaker 2 (55:36):
So literally it's like like bonefish, girl, I'm familiar with that. Yeah,
right there we go. I went. I grew up fishing
a lot, but lakes never, never ocean never, never went
to a beach never, but so but also didn't fly
fish a lot. But we went. And I know Johnny
Morris a little bit who owns Batspro, and he was like, hey,
(55:58):
you should come up, you should stay up here. Let
me know when you're gonna be in town. I'm gonna
come see you guys, And so like Johnny Will coming
up and he's like, okay, cool. And so first of
all he's super nice and sets us all up with
fishing and golf, and he goes, I'm gonna send you
guys to the honey hole. I don't know what that
means right right then, and I was like, okay, great.
I'd figure if Johnny Morris is sending this over it's fishing,
(56:21):
it's gonna be legit. So somebody comes and gets us
in a van. He goes, you know, Johnny doesn't let
many people go to the honey hole. We don't know
the honey hole list. We don't know. It's got to
be where it and we get in, so they give
us a ride. We're fly fishing, and it's probably as
big as this room here, the whole pond, the whole hole,
(56:42):
massive trout, every inch of you throw you it's the
only time of my life. It's cheating because he's it
was so stocked that as soon as as soon as
the flight would hit what we're just jerking them out
of there?
Speaker 1 (56:58):
He says, Are they lake trout? You're saying? Or is there?
Speaker 2 (57:01):
But they're massive lake trout? I mean I'm talking we
have a trout truck go by and drop trout off
Mountain Pine. Now, uh huh. These trout were small, and
the trout truck would open, they'd all pile out, and
you catch those, you just pull them over. You gotta
have trout stamps, game boardings, watching, it's the whole thing.
But this the honey Hole with Johnny Morris, it was
like sharks. They were. That's what I think about when
(57:23):
you say Alaska, like Alaska fishing, the fishers.
Speaker 1 (57:25):
There's more room and the trout get huge up there.
When we go, you know, end of August first to September.
You know, the socc I have all kind of died out.
They're the ones you see jumping up the bears or
catching in their mouth and whatever. But they're all dying out,
and they've all spawned. And those trout have been eating
those eggs, you know, the whole season. And they're eight
and nine pounds rainbow trout or not uncounting.
Speaker 2 (57:48):
That's that's a big fish. So okay, I just have
a couple more questions for you. What every once in
a while whenever. The last night, for example, I was
sitting back are on the back porch back area and
I was like, dang, look at that. That's pretty cool.
Like I got a nice how Like I've done some
pretty good stuff in my career, and I don't slow
down enough, probably to acknowledge that. Now I have a wife,
(58:10):
she slows me down sometimes. Do you ever just go dang,
I'm famous and rich and I've got lots of songs
and it's cool.
Speaker 1 (58:18):
I quit doing that a while ago.
Speaker 2 (58:21):
You wake up a month like, oh, good morning, fas
this pretty cool. I feel like I would if that
was awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (58:28):
No, I mean, you know, you'd expect me to say
all the humble things that you would expect me to say.
And that's really the only answers that I have because
I'm really not that impressed with myself. Honestly. One thing
you learn in Nashville, whatever whatever your dream was here,
whatever you hope to accomplish, which for me has been,
(58:53):
has really exceeded any reality dreams that I had. You know,
I mean, you got a dream in your heart, you know,
to but that's kind of keeps you going. But to
think that, you know, all that stuff would really kind
of come true. What I realized that all the things
that I do play guitar sing you know, there's people
(59:18):
that are so much better at it than me in
this town. And if you there's not many people I
think that are real with themselves that don't feel that
way unless they are really the best singers here, the
very best singers here, which I don't think that's necessarily
my talent. I am. Really I do feel real fortunate
(59:42):
that my singing was so bad in the first five
years of our career, just because I had just been
playing and screaming and bars, you know, and you get
on a big stage and I just had no control
over my air basically. And I really think talking on
(01:00:05):
the radio for the last seventeen years has really helped me,
especially when you're doing a four hour show and you
know this forever, you can't just be huffing and puffing
the whole time. You've got to find your air somewhere
else in order to have any quality of voice. And
that started translating into my singing, and it's really made
being on stage a lot more fun because I can
(01:00:26):
kind of go through a whole show and feel like,
you know, I was saying pretty good tonight, you know,
which I wasn't feeling that way early in our career. Fortunately,
I had a great singer standing next to me, so
you know, he pulled most of the weight, and in
the studio I could do it. But getting on stage
bouncing around and start huffing and puffing, it just wasn't
very good. So I guess a long answer to a
(01:00:49):
short question is I feel blessed, but I'm very humbled
by the success that I've had with I guess what
actual ability I do have. I think probably, if anything,
I like to think that I've got a good ability
to communicate and I'm not intimidated by the stage at all.
(01:01:11):
I'm not that great at it, but I got a
lot of confidence. So by the end of the night,
I do feel like, you know, that crowd's really on
their feet clapping because they had a good time, and
I had something to do with it. Why radio, Because
I was basically ask again, I'm a communications major, and
(01:01:34):
I always was always a fan of radio, like a
lot of people, was always a fan of countdown shows,
and I kind of played around with it a little
bit over the years. When I say played around, was
asked to host an overnight show or something here and there,
and it was just kind of fun to talk and
you know, ABC approached me when Bob Kingsley, you know,
and then got sideways, and Bob was one of my
(01:01:55):
dearest friends. Was the first person I called and said, hey,
you know, I said that, you know, you're maybe sideways
on your deal and you're going to do your own thing.
I said, I would never even try stepping into your
shoes without your blessing. And he said, man, I think
you can do this. I think it'll be great at it.
And it was such an opener, you know. I mean,
(01:02:16):
I'm used to listening to myself singing going that sucks
and trying to make it better. But when I started
air checking myself on the radio, I was so bad.
Just everything I thought I was doing good sucked. And
I guess, I guess part of just being able to
notice that and not thinking you're doing great when you're
not kind of helped me get to a level I
(01:02:37):
couldn't believe they didn't fire me. For the first couple
of years.
Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
It was just really.
Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
Awful, but you know, a lot of affiliates hung in
there and whatever and whatever reason. I mean, at least
I can listen to myself now and I really enjoy
doing it. It doesn't wear me. It used to take me
hours and hours to do that countdown show, and now
you know, just you know, getting through the copy. I
really kind of enjoy it and love my team, and
(01:03:01):
I would imagine you feel the same way.
Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
Not at all. Do you do it from home?
Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
No, I have done it from home during COVID, you
know I did it. We all worked remotely like a
lot of other people. But I built a studio down
in the old RCA building and you know, the original
RCAA building and right across from Chad Atkins office. And
it's cool. It's all like turn of the century, I mean,
mid century furniture and everything. It's real quirky, and I
(01:03:28):
like going down there. I like hanging out. We talk
about the business, what's going on whatever, even not stuff
that's on the air. But it also gets me in
the mood to do the show. And when bits come up,
you know, I think about, well, you know, that's cool.
But you know, when we did that, I try not
to do that very much. You know, I did learn
of Yeah, I got sent to interviews school back when
(01:03:48):
you know, Disney owned ESPN. So I don't know if
you've ever done that.
Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
But interview school. Yeah, no, I need to go.
Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
One of the most amazing things that I've ever done.
Speaker 2 (01:03:57):
But what do you do? What do you do in interview
school for two weeks?
Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
This guy from Canada who is really good at it.
We listen to all the great interviews of all time
and where even the people that are considered the greats,
you know, like Larry King and Barbara Walters in particular,
here's the mistakes they made. Here's where this could have
been world changing. But here's you know a lot of things,
(01:04:24):
simple things like double barrel questions if you know, and
you see a lot of local newspeople ask five questions
to somebody. You know, when the tornado came through, what'd
that sound like? I mean, did everybody run for cover?
It's like, was it did it tear the top off
the house? You know? So which in that kind of question,
You know, it doesn't really matter that much, but when
(01:04:46):
you're really trying to get to the bottom of something,
And of course with sports guys, they don't want to
talk anyway. They just want to do that. They want
to compete, you know, it's what they're doing. And our business,
you know, we love talking about ourselves. I mean, that's
just that's where we come from. So you don't have
to ask much of a question to pull my string.
And you know, you got to shut me down at
(01:05:08):
some point and ask another question. But in that world,
it was really interesting just to get some basic tools.
If you'd like to get an answer to something, ask
that one question at a time, and the people that
were really good at it, or people would ask a
question and wait, because that's where Barbara Walter is one
of the things as good as she was, like she asked.
(01:05:31):
She asked Teddy Kennedy. She got the interview after he
was accused of cheating on his wife, and her first question,
did you cheat on your wife? How will the Kennedy
survive this bang? He's a smart guy, guyes well, you know,
Kennedy's have made it through thick and thin and da
da da dad. She asked him, you know, ten questions,
but never never stuck with did you cheat on your wife?
(01:05:53):
Just there was it's almost kind of like a you know,
and I can't. You know, Barbara Walters is a legend,
did tons of great interviews and whatever, but he just
gave us examples of you know, if you if you
want an answer, to something wait for the answer.
Speaker 2 (01:06:09):
You know, my favorite thing to do is to sit
in silence because and I can't do this to you
because you know all you know the tricks. But if
I'm with someone, I don't mind awkward. So if I'm
with someone and let's say you're John Smith, I'm interviewing,
I'll just if I ask a question and then I'll
just sit and then you'll feel the need to fill
(01:06:29):
time because you'll feel awkward. And so what happens is
people will just start giving the greatest answers because I've
sat in silence for a few seconds. But you're so
comfortable with yourself. I can't use those tricks on you
because you're just staring back at me, like, all right,
what you got next? What you got next? But that's
that's pretty cool that you went and you just got
to watch all the greats I had to go to
like the library, watch the old those old movie I
(01:06:52):
forget what I've watched, like old Jack Parr Tonight Show episode,
What was that thing called that you talk about the
black and white machine? But I would do that and
then I would watch. Then YouTube changed everything, so now
you just watch it. I just watched all my old
interviews and go, that's what I want to do, just
like that guy. I'm my own hero. It's pretty cool.
It's pretty cool. Well, look, I'm super pumped. He came over.
(01:07:13):
I was talking to Mike and I was like, Hey,
what what can we promote of Kises? And what he
literally said was we'd been working on getting you for
a while that there was really nothing to promote. We
were just happy you were coming over. So thank you
for coming over. You bet, We'm glad we got to
visit aal Yeah, me too. Are you guys gonna do that?
Are you guy gonna go out again? You're gonna do
a whole tour Brooks and Dune massive tour.
Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
Let's go. I mean, I don't see why we wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
Really when you finished, were like I can't wait to
go out again in a few months. Or you're like,
oh my god, I need a break. We'll figure that
out the rest of it late.
Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
Really, you know, we did nineteen shows with Scotty and
Megan Marony and that's you know, people go, gosh, it
must be crueling, you know. I mean, like, you never
worked on a pipeline, you never stood Wyte deep in
mud with his shovel from candle Cane and my dad
(01:08:08):
he would always find the hardest, roughest job that that
was on the pipeline, and there's some really dangerous, really
bad jobs out there. He had me. I mean, I
had a chainsaw cutting sixteen hundred railroad ties a day
at one point. I mean, I'm pretty good at sharpening
the chainsaw. I'm keeping that.
Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
Sucker gave you the gift of perspective. Yeah, Absence, you
didn't know what the kind of invaluable the gift was
going to be at the time. That's like me, I
roof houses forever, and I didn't mean it's on golf
courses and I was like this sucks. But now it's
like I just appreciate everything. You roofed houses.
Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
Oh yeah, pred dude.
Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
So I built some stuff, folks. Oh Man started off
his tearoff crew. First of all, clean up crew, then
tear off crew. Then after a while, I figured how
to fix a nail gun. So they let me actually
use it because I was all, way, you can't use it.
You know, there's a compression guns like oh, and so
I figured how to fix it. And so once I
fixed it, they knew I could use it. So then
I started actually roofing houses. All right, Bobby, you got crid,
(01:09:03):
no cry no, no crid.
Speaker 1 (01:09:05):
If you were on a freaking roof, roof and houses,
you got my respect, dude. Roofs and draw wall. Anybody
that's done either one of those for any length of time.
Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
And see we had sea walls too, got credit. Seawalls
sucks to seawalls? Which fine? Are you on the lake
in river in Arkansas? We would go and we would
do bids. We'd drive the flat bottom down what lake
Lake Hamilton? Okay, so we'd go down Lake Hamilton and
we'd look people seawalls. They had a crack, we'd go
knock on the door and be like, there's a cracker
in a seawall. We'd make a bit and if they
were like, okay, cool, we'd go there's heavy buckets. It
(01:09:38):
was just but again that perspective. Yeah, here we are
sit a nice air condition room with your big faith
right here behind me, go celebrating the day.
Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
And I went to Ozark Boys Camp for like five years.
Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
What'd you do there? Mount not Arkansas mount that is
like twenty minutes from Mountain Pine. They were our main
rival yeah, oh high school. Yeah, I'll be yea very close,
very close one from what'd I do?
Speaker 4 (01:09:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:09:57):
What do you do there? At that camp?
Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
Everything? You know? They had a one of those things
you had a skis that were bolted together with roller
skates on it. One of those lines that went down
until you smashed into the water down there, rope swings.
They had a little golf course. There had a baseball
golf field and do our golf.
Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
Heck, yeah, I don't know you golf.
Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
Yeah, I'm a member at a troubadoor and golf, Yeah,
golf club at Tennessee.
Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
Let those who are nowhere near each other. You're driving
all across the state to get both of those.
Speaker 1 (01:10:22):
You know. That's well. You know, I've got a winery
that backs up to tribute door.
Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (01:10:27):
See, well, that's my ambition is to be able to
play golf in the evening, drink all night, play golf
in the morning, and ever leave the campus.
Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
See. But I feel like you're almost there anyway, almost
there if you're a tributor and you have the winery
inns when I'm talking, Yeah, but do you live over there?
Speaker 1 (01:10:43):
No? I live in Forest Hills. That's what my wife said,
do you really need another house? And absolutely.
Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
All right, Kicks. Thanks, I really appreciate the time there
is Kicksbrooks, go get some wine. Everybody get get on
kickspit on a tab. Thanks for listening to a Bobby
Cast production
I was fortunate that, you know, people believe emmy here
or there, and I you know, had a couple of
record deals that was on Capitol, you know, didn't pan
out that him. Du Bois felt like, you know, it's
a good enough singer that me and Ronnie Dunn might
make some noise.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
We've been trying to get Kicks Brooks in here for
a while and this is episode four oh nine, and
there was no real promo except he was just on
the road forever. Yeah, that's it. But he was super
cool to come over because he didn't have anything to promote,
so he finally just gave into our constant requests. My
favorite ones are when they have nothing to promote and
they just come over. I always feel like they're doing
(00:41):
it because they feel sorry for us though, because we've
been asking for like eight years. They're like, fine, I'll
do it. I'll come over Brooks and done. You want
to do the first five number ones? Yeah, all right,
nineteen ninety one, brand New Man Lot, I've been nineteen
ninety one. My next broken hearts were being on my
(01:02):
necks broke and I don't ever play that one whenever
I play, like all their hits that's a jam that
one gets overlooked so much. Nineteen ninety two, Neon Moon,
I've been most empriend nine Jam, nineteen ninety two, boot
Scoot and Boogie. In nineteen ninety three, she used to
(01:25):
be mine.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
I did har Breger.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
A couple quick notes here about Brooks and Done. They
formed in nineteen ninety they're the best selling duo of
all time, twenty number one songs. You know I love them,
We all love them. About Kicks, Brooks specifically grew up
in Sreeport, Louisiana. I mean he's lived everywhere. Lived obviously
in Louisiana, but also in Alaska. We talk about that
and Maine, his dad and how much of an influence
(01:52):
his dad was. He had some record deals before Brooks
had done. But I just really enjoyed Kicks. The reason
I love Kicks. Then go, hey, Kicks, what's up? He
takes it away because he does this too. Yeah, he
knows what it's like to be a good guest because
he likes it when he has good guests. I like
it when you can get somebody on what they're passionate about.
And whenever he starts talking about wine, he just like
really gets into it, and I know nothing about wine,
(02:14):
so it was like a teacher teaching like an infant,
and I'm like, so you drink it? What hold?
Speaker 1 (02:20):
All?
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Right? Kicks Brooks. You can follow him at Kicksbrooks on
Instagram here. He is one half of Brooks and Done
Kick Kicksbrooks. We should start with what we were saying
right before we started recording, where I was looking at
some of you guys's crowds and Ronnie will send me
a video occasionally if it's like an absurd crowd and
he'll say, what you just said to me. I don't
(02:40):
know how this is still happening thirty years later.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
So he didn't send you the one where nobody showed up.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
He doesn't, you know. He's like a gambler friend that
I have who never tells me about his losses. Nobody
lost ever ever. But it's like there's a popularity for
you guys together now that I don't think. In my
ticket buying life, i've been able to see because if
(03:04):
you got started in ninety, right, I was ten, nineteen
years old. I couldn't buy tickets then, so that I
really didn't. But since i've been like an adult, uh, huh.
I don't think you guys have ever been more popular
in my opinion then right now? Do you feel that now?
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Certainly in terms of, you know, the tour that we've done.
I mean, when in twenty ten, when we thought we
were quitting, you know, we did we did kind of
a last go round and we did good business then
up until then, you know, short answer, it's been a
long time since we blew out colosseums like this.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
It's like a passion crowd too, it is.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
It's really fun and I didn't for a while last
year and then I just started looking at you know,
these are not all people that were supporting us thirty
years ago, you know, and I just asked, how many
of you miss your first Brooks and Dune show? And
it blew my mind. I started doing it every night
because it looks like seventy percent of that crowd it's
(04:07):
our first time. And that's what really makes me scratch
my head and go, wow, what kind of into y'all?
You know? I mean is that our reboot album? Is
it just this nineties thing that people have just kind
of latched onto a lot of nineties music? You know
that whole formats obviously has really kind of had a
resurgence as well. And for me, at the risk of
(04:30):
even sounding like I would compare what we do to
the music or the legacy. I mean when I first
got into country music, William Whalen, you know, even before
the Eagles, were the guys that really pulled on my strings.
And I was in college, you know, and started going
to Willie picnics and stuff like that, and it was
just this whole It was like, you know, down country
(04:53):
woodstock stuff going on all the time, and it was
just so much fun and it was country, and it
was good. Whaling and really just had this thing about
him that was was really cool and yeah, and I
just wanted to be a part of that. And then
I started. But I was also young. I mean I
was hooked on Almon Brothers and Charlie Daniels and all that.
I mean, Charlie wasn't considered country back then, like Nashville country.
(05:17):
You know, those guys were playing their guitars loud and rocking,
and you know, I grew up with Hank Williams down
the street. But but literally, you know, rolling Stones and
all that stuff. When you started having bands, those were
the songs you could play. You know, you could go
turn you know, five of us playing guitars and our
band were all doing that lick.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
You know, it's crazy to think. Again, you're talking about
the crowds, and you're like, I don't know why. I
really have spent some time thinking about this. I think
it's a little bit of the reboot album. I think
it's a I don't think it's as much of the
nineties country comeback as maybe even if you really think,
I don't, I think you guys would be here regardless. Again,
(05:58):
I also think you're both still good. I think if
you were just a not if you were still just
playing because you were only successful in the nineties, some
of the artists don't have it still physically, don't have
the ability to You guys are also so funny on stage.
I just think you still are good. And if you
(06:20):
weren't good, I don't think that the crowds would still
be as big because I've been lucky enough to watch
you guys, or play alongside you guys. Or But again,
I think you guys are still You're both so tall too,
and that's that angers me, both of you. You're both
so tall that it, guys, it's very upset and you're
in cowboy boots at the same time when you're so
tall and I consider myself a pretty tall guy. But
(06:40):
nothing there. But yeah, I was thinking about that too,
because you guys are selling out arenas still and it's
not like, let's you mentioned the Eagles, the Eagles where
it's like I went to watch the Eagles and I
was like, this maybe the last time I ever get to
see the Eagles. To let me go, I don't I
feel like we got like six more rounds with you guys,
like we see. I just don't feel like it's any
(07:01):
of that. I just feel like it's a good show.
We'd like the songs, and I think like the combs
is and the cases vouching for you guys to even
younger crowd. I think that probably helps too, Sure it does.
That reboot album was pretty genius.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
That was a good pull and it was fun to
do because we didn't I mean, for years we've just
you know, you grind and you stress over songs and
this and that and whatever, and it was so neat
of our manager, Clarence really reached out to those people.
So it wasn't like we had to get in the
middle of the accordinates of basking Yeah exactly, and that
(07:37):
you know, that was that was a real important part
of it. That that really mattered. And they came back
with all those acts that were like, all these guys
are great, you know. And what I was really impressed
with was, and I mean this in all sincerity, there
was not one person that walked into that studio. Most
of them we certainly never worked with before. Most of
(07:58):
them we never met. And just out of the blue.
I mean Ashley McBride literally was driving her car out.
I was singing You're going to miss me to her
over telephone in the car and we got a key
before she got to the studio. That day she walked in,
we said hey, hugged it out, went in the vocal
(08:19):
booths and cut the song and it was just a
lot of There was never any ego, There was never
any even there wasn't any even any fan love or
anything going on, you know. I mean, everybody was there
was really nice and you know, this is really cool.
You know, we're getting to do this, but everybody was
real pro I mean, you just got the feeling these
(08:40):
are young acts that really got their legs under them.
They're really confident, they're not cocky, they're just we're all
just kind of working here and having some fun. And
it was a great experience. And with Dan Huff, it
took no time to put that record together. That's the
other thing. Just making the record. You're not grinding for
weeks and weeks, you know, stressing over every and all.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
That was that a big part of you guys getting
back together and then going on the road and like formalizing, hey,
we're doing this again, that record or were you guys
already working on Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
We get on one hundred and five shows with Reba.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Before that you had was that that? But had you
guys been out on your own tour like just YouTube
with your own band.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Not what you would call a tour. But really it
was about probably three years. It was probably I'm guessing
probably twenty thirteen when we kind of stopped. In twenty ten,
we started getting some offers to you know, play I
think we played you know, super Bowl in New Orleans
and not super Bowl but the super Domant you know,
(09:45):
Daytona and just some special things that came up, and
you know, we just realized this we don't. We don't
have a beef with each other. This is kind of fun,
and we definitely still remembered how to do it. You know,
we still like a us at each other and go,
I don't know, man, which we have since day one
because we didn't know each other then. And you know,
(10:07):
we still stay on separate buses just to have that
kind of you know, good to see you again when
we hit stage that night. It really is kind of
that way. It's not like we hang out all day
or anything.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
You know, people feel that my radio show, and we've
been friends for twenty I mean we've been together forever
and twenty years that we just go home and all
eat dinner together. And yeah, if we didn't have some
sort of again I used a formal separation, right, we
would kill each other. Yeah, we would get but I
love them, yeah, and there we've been at it for
(10:42):
twenty years, right and so but yeah, they think, oh,
you must go on vacation together. No, No, if we
did that, we would not be able to do what
we do at the level that we do it at.
And I'm sure it's like a second marriage with anybody,
if you're with anybody that long, especially like you and
Ronnie and you travel that much together, like you have
to invest in that right to keep it healthy.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Yeah, and it's you know, we've been told by our
you know, our biggest Merle Haggard, you know, just kept
reminding us that you guys got a thing. He goes,
That's what he goes. It's just a thing, and you
need to respect that. You know. I've told the story before,
but I mean I remember on our last run, we
(11:29):
were in Woodstock, New York, and Merle agreed to play
with us if we would play with him every night,
And but he got to pick the song, so he
it was never working Man Blues or Silver Winds. It
was always a really obscure thing that we'd have to learn,
you know. He'd make us grinds. Jumped up on the
bus one day to get our song and he's sitting there,
(11:51):
you know, having a smoke and looking out this window.
We had a sold out crowd at Woodstock, and he goes,
sit down. He goes, I need to talk to you.
I said, okay, because what the hell are y'all doing?
I said, I don't know, Marle, what the hell are
we doing? I said? Look out there? He said, why
in the hell, all them people come out here and
see you what you quit? Merle? You know Patcha on
(12:16):
Left Eats probably one of my favorite songs ever, you know,
and it's a great video. I mean, you and Willy
are like great friends. Y'all made one album together. Okay,
I've been, Ronnie and I done. And I met on
a Tuesday and wrote our two first hits on Thursday
and Friday. We didn't even know each other. You know.
We managed to.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Grind this out for twenty freaking years and we needed
a break. Here said, and you made one album with Willie?
And he goes, well, we only had one hit. I said, Okay, Marle,
what's our song?
Speaker 1 (12:53):
Damn it? I love it? Manny.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
I spent a lot of time in Streeport from marketsas
so we go down to the boats.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Uh huh.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
We drive down first place you could gamble, So that's
where we went. And so by doing they also played
a lot of ball and Report being the markets all
I played baseball. Tree Reports closest Louisiana big town both
the city but big town and Treport like childhood home?
What's what's home as a kid?
Speaker 1 (13:18):
For you?
Speaker 2 (13:18):
What town? Treeport is literally the Streetport, Well, what school?
Speaker 1 (13:22):
I went to Riverside Elementary and literally he might have
heard me tell his story. But two blocks away over
on Autubun, Billy Jean Horton lived and after she was
the last wife of Hank Williams. They got married in
Treeport and they got married down in Baton Ridge. I
think got married twice in one day, was kind of
unheard of at the time. After after Hank got divorced
(13:46):
from Audrey, so he died, and then she married Johnny
Horton and their daughter, Nina Horton, was my age and
we were in grade schools together at Riverside. We still
stay in touch, I mean, Billy gan and she was
a number I mean for a kid in grade school.
When she pulled up in that white convertible Cadillac and
(14:06):
those leopard skin pants, it's just like, wow, hello, missus Horton.
But Nina hired us Billy Jane actually five bucks. You know,
we got a dollar a piece. There's five of us
in the band, but we like saying five bucks at
the playground. That was our first gig. In their driveway
(14:28):
and their little white house is just like we had.
I mean to think Johnny Horton and Hank Williams. This
is I mean, this is a little white house, you know,
it's probably a three bedroom on a just a plain old,
you know, suburban Shreeport Street, just like us. It seems
so average, you know, but going inside and seeing those
(14:49):
gold records and those guitars and portraits of Johnny Horton
and over the fireplace and all that stuff, it was
real special and real cool and it really really it
set something inside of me going, that's for sure?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Did it you being able to see those did it
actually let you know that it was possible to do that.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
That's what I mean. It seemed like something that it
wasn't just some pie in the sky starring the sky,
you know. It was it was something that people did,
you know, regular people like my dad. You know, they
just lived down the street. But they were playing music.
And I mean, from the time I can remember, our
family sang as much as we talked. You know, you
get in the car, you start singing songs. It was
(15:29):
just a thing, so that really you know it, and
we always had bands, you know, and from grade school on.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
Who buy your first guitar?
Speaker 1 (15:37):
My dad did, but my grandmother bought me a ukulele
when I was like six years old, because my mom
died when I was like four, so I spent a
lot of time with her, and they were She was
real musical, and my cousins were too. And I remember
that came from Sears and Roebuck. It was nine to
ninety five. I'll never forget. It's white and had red
stripes on it. Really cool, and I had a songbook
(15:58):
and I just learned to play chords and sing songs
with that ukulele. I learned how that worked. But I
really wasn't strong enough to play a guitar. My dad
got me a still string guitar when I was ten
or eleven.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
And what was my grandma raised me too for a
lot of my life. What was your grandma like?
Speaker 1 (16:13):
She was salt of the earth. Both my grandparents there
was There was never anything like divorce or anything like that.
Was never even something to be considered, you know. They
were just country people. My great grandfather had been the
town doctor there in Maryon, Louisiana, which is kind of
(16:34):
northeast Louisiana. And yeah, they they still lived in that
house was a big house right in the center of town,
which is kind of the hospital at one point, you know,
and they were just My grandfather had the Thompson General
Store just maybe one hundred yards from the house, and
you know, went with them to buy stuff for it
all around in Monroe or wherever, you know, the big cities.
(16:55):
You had to get jeans and shoes, and they sold everything,
food and whatever. He was also the vice president at
the bank and he was the mayor. So they were
you know, but they were. It was funny and in
town and I think they had about six hundred people
there that they had friends, they played bridge with. You know,
they had a little boat. My grandfather if he was
(17:16):
at the bank that day, everybody that came in, we're
the fish bite. And when he got home and him
threw that little ten boat in the back of a
pickup truck, old beat up pickup truck and took off
to wherever we'd heard and we fished all the time.
That was just a big deal for us.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
When you get a ukulele and your kid, what do
you play it publicly?
Speaker 1 (17:37):
First, For my grandparents, we just put on shows all
the time. You know, that's for them for sure.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
And so when you get a guitar, you're ten eleven
years old. When do you play? When do you decide
to go out and play for somebody that doesn't know
you super close?
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Whenever your dad, who was real proud you could do that,
you know, go to you know, just cousins' houses and
stuff like that, and you know, bring your guitar, you know,
and he you know, play.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
What do you make you do it? Like?
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Let's think the business? Oh yeah, you know, especially those
hey good looking and I'll you know, Hank and Johnny
Horton songs. Just because they were down the street. I
learned a lot of that kind of stuff. And Johnny
Cash was a big deal for me.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
And Johnny Cash a big deal for me because again
being from Arkansas, my grandma would always be like, all right,
he's like you. I'm like, well, except he's not. But yes,
but Johnny Cash, you know, even Conway Twitty, who you
know named it for Conway, Arkansas, but he also Louisian.
I mean Conway Twitty, Mississippi, you know that area. There
were all those artists that my grandmother really looked up to,
(18:45):
who I guess I thought was just they were current
until I got a little bit older and realized they
were just her favorites from when she was younger. Uh,
what about your grandparents or your dad, Like what music
did they really like that you just naturally took on.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
My dad liked he liked country, but he liked hits,
you know, like I can remember and he'd stop and
get a forty five and bring it home, you know,
and like Harper Valley, Pta or you know something that
was that was a hit like that, or you know
King of the Road. You know, I can remember him
bringing that home. Just as far as listening to Nashville
(19:18):
country music, not so much. He probably gravitated to And
his dad sharpened saws in a sawmill in Urine, you Louisiana,
I mean, and his dad got struck by lightning fish
and when he was eight years old and died. And
his mother was a first grade school teacher. So he
came from very humble background. But I think when he
(19:39):
was in the Navy he really picked up on big
band music. He loves Gene Crooper and stuff like that, so,
you know, he had a sophisticated kind of side to him.
He loved delta blues, real old school lead belly on up,
you know, through old delta blues. And then whatever hits
were on the radio that he'd heard about. He liked
that stuff. He wasn't really a Nashville country music guy.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Did you graduate high school in treport?
Speaker 1 (20:05):
I didn't. I went to boarding school where in Swanee here. Yeah,
it was a military school when I went there for
two years.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
And did you go to I don't understand? Helped me
understand boarding school in general? Yeah, Were you bad kid?
Speaker 1 (20:17):
I was? You know, it was my first step mother
was the one that really kind of got under my skin.
We didn't get along very well, and it just caused
a lot of problems, uh, in our family. And I was,
you know, I wasn't necessarily a class clown with weapons,
but I probably stirred up.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
I would think you would started up.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
So I mean that's why still I got in trouble
all the time. But just you know, I was. I
was partying at a pretty early age.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
And how do you feel about those two years? Now?
Speaker 1 (20:54):
Four years? And I wouldn't wouldn't give anything for it.
It definitely made especially two years of military and that
was during the Vietnam War and we kind of started
a rebellion basically brought down one hundred and four years
of tradition at Swanee Military Academy became a boarding school
for my last two years, and it was pretty crazy that,
(21:17):
you know, pulling all that off. It was sort of
like Taps if you ever saw that movie.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
When you finished there, then what do you do?
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I went to my uncle was the dean of business
at SMU, and so he encouraged me to come to SMU, and.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
I did for a year.
Speaker 1 (21:35):
My dad wouldn't buy me a Ferrari, so I couldn't
really get a date at SMU. So I went back
to Lisiana Tech where all my friends were and had
a great, great time there.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Yeah, did Terry Bradshaw get all be? Then? He did?
Speaker 1 (21:47):
He did? And Phil Robertson was, you know, played starting quarterback.
I didn't know that, yeah, and Terry was his backup.
Terry and I are still really good friends. And he
said he'd have never thrown a passive. Phil hadn't gone
down hunting, but he did. He quit and went duck hunting.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Is that true?
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Absolutely the truth. And it's funny because he got approached
by the pros after that because he was such a
strong quarterback. And the story goes, I guess they came
down from Oakland to see if he'd be interested in
coming and trying out, and he said, don't you all
play football at the same time. We're duck hunting at
the same time. Them country boys there, He said, yeah.
(22:26):
I said, then I'm not interested.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
You know I saw Terry at the Opry a few
months ago. Yeah, yeah, I didn't really know Terry saying yeah, you.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
Know he had a I don't know it was the
top ten record. I think, wasn't It wasn't for me
so I could cry. Yeah, he had an album out.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Did you know him back then? Or do you guys
meet later on because you're from the same place we did?
Speaker 1 (22:46):
We actually we met because of Tech and his daughter, Rachel.
You know, I'd met her and we started having a
golf tournament at Tech to raise money and just had
a lot of fun and got to be friends.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
He seems like a pretty funny guy.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
He's hysterical and he's always He's just that is so him.
Speaker 4 (23:06):
Hank Ty The Bobby Cast will be right back and
we're back on the Bobby Cast.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Did you have Louisiana people that you I mentioned? Johnny Cash,
like Brooks, Robbins, I played third base for the Orioles
way before me. But he was from Arkansas. Yeah, did
you have a Louisiana people like that to you that
you were like, they're from where we're from. Sure, I
really like I admire what they're doing. Who would that be?
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Well, obviously the you know Hank Williams and Johnny Horton
and Merle Kilgore. You're familiar with him. So Merle was
Hank Junior's manager and also wrote Wolverton Mountain and I
was just.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Surely as a writer and he managed.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Yeah, it managed Hank Junior, but famous. And I met
him through this CMA board the first time and we
got to be great friends. But yeah, he was famous
for you know, he had big rings on all his fingers,
you know, this jeweler diamond. Dan you know, made it
really really outgoing, you know, over the top, really fun guy.
(24:22):
But you say, Merle, you're doing good man, everything okay,
and you go, are you shitting me? Just those rings?
Speaker 2 (24:33):
What was this? What was this? I mean when you
mentioned a guy like that, I think about Nashville when
it used to kind of be like that. Oh yeah,
low and it's still its own way of loud, but
like low you would just see somebody and know that they.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Lost a lot of our carnate factor.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Carnie, That's yeah, it's definitely. What was it like when
you moved What was this talent like when you moved here?
Speaker 1 (24:52):
I'll tell you the For me, it was all I
just wanted to be a songwriter in this town. That's really.
I mean all most all songwriters have some dreams and
you know, they play their songs. We've gotten some recognition.
There's exceptions to that, but most songwriters like to think
of themselves as artists. I mean I did, and I
had a couple of record deals before Ronnie and I
(25:13):
got together, but not because I was that great. I
don't know. But I started singing a lot of demos,
you know, for stuff like that. But the town the
ability to My first publisher is a guy named Don Gant,
and man, he would hold court every day, we'd write
songs all day. But he had been at Tree Publishing
and was responsible for some of the great careers from
(25:35):
Roger Miller and Mickey Newberry, got Sonny Throckmorton, people you
may not be familiar with, but people that Harlan Howard.
Of course, they were all at Tree I mean they
owned independent publishing, but there were still great publishing company
companies like Combine where Christofferson and you know, Whalen and
all those guys were too little, smaller company. But when
(25:58):
we were done at the end of the day, people
would start piling in that door, and Don would always
send out for a few cases of beer. We just
packing his office and start passing the guitar around. We
really make you want to write something special, because if
that guitar came your way, or Don said, did you
write anything today? But at the same time, even if
I written something that wasn't that good, he would find
(26:20):
that one line in a song and go, man, wait
a second second verse, what was it you said you?
Because y'all hear that, it's like and all of a
sudden he would make you feel like he might not
tell you it was a great song because it wasn't,
but he would also make sure you knew that's what
you need to be. That's that's a great line. Give
me a whole song full of that kind of stuff.
(26:42):
You know, it's a great teacher. But also by the
end of by the end of the night, we're all
well oiled. Then then you know, Mackey Newberry or Ray
van Hoy or some of those guys that Throckmorton who
are just writing this brilliance. They get the guitar and
then you got the opportunity. Man, it was it was
all up and down the street and where's it happening
(27:04):
kind of thing, and I just I don't, you know,
there's so so much you know, I don't sound like
an old guy, but there's so much concrete where there
were little houses all the way down Music Row, and
you just wander up and down. You could hear it
a lot of times, up and down.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
People just doing the thing.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah that's going or and somebody come running down to
your publishing company and go, man, come on down to Combine.
You know, whaling's down there and there singing, you know,
and dad, that kind of stuff is going on.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Do you remember when you moved here, like and again
you're in the majors now because you have all the
great songwriters around you, which elevates at least hopefully you
to to get to their level. Do you remember the
first like song you wrote where you were like, man,
this is special, Like I have now reached a new peak.
I've learned it and I've written this song. Do you remember
the first great song you feel like you wrote?
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Honestly, I had quite a few number ones at that point,
but I think I think Red Dirt Road was was
a time when I really put the period on that
song and went, it's a freaking hit and it's it's
really saying it's you know. Ronnie and I did that together,
and he actually we had it was just a place
(28:16):
where we talked about, really got real with each other,
talked about where we came from. Like, you know, he
was telling me about Elderad. I was telling me about
where my grandparents was. That's where it was, and somehow
I was telling about driving those roads with my grandfather
looking you know, looking at at timber. You know what
he was going to cut, and I said, man, that
dirt was just so he goes, I know it was
(28:37):
up and said that'd be a good name for an album.
So now we got to write a song, and we
kind of puttered around at it three or four times
and never really got more than a line or two.
And he got off the plane we were we had
a gig and Sacramento and we flew to San Francisco
and got off the plane, and he handed me a
cocktail napkin and it had those lines about you know,
(28:58):
drank my first beer and you know, wrecked my first
car toward it all the pieces, something about Jesus and
you know, life ain't just for high achievers. And he said,
what do you think. I think it's freaking great, man,
This is exactly what we were talking about. And I
jumped on a bus and you know, wrote the pretty
much the music and the verses. He had already told
(29:20):
me about Rule route three. You know, that's kind of
when we kicked around where he came from, and he
came and knocked on my bus, had Terry McBride and said, man,
let's go get a steak. And I said, you got
to hear this song though, and we both just kind
of slapped it up in here and and I couldn't
wait to record it. It was it was It was
really fun to put it down too.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Did you ever to write a song and go this
one's special? Then you recorded it and you're like, I
think it's lost what we were trying to do, so
let's do it again, or I think.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
More just sometimes when you write songs for a living
and songs get recorded you know, Don Gant had a
plaque on his desk that said, it's not as good as.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
The demo, you know, you ever hear Yeah, it would
just be tough if like you feel it. And then
you even like comedy songs, like if I play them
live and we try to record them, I'm always like,
it doesn't sound as good when I recorded it, like,
and it probably does probably sounds better, yeah, but because
it's like live or like if I'm creating something on
(30:22):
the spot, it just feels newer and fresher.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
You're married to the thing. And I would never would
never mention what song or that was, you know, or whatever,
because it's I mean, it's the greatest honor of all
for somebody to risk their career on something you made up,
you know, as a songwriter. You know, but it is demolias.
(30:46):
You just get here. It used to hearing it one
way so many times. I remember, like Modern Day Romance,
I wrote that with a Dan Tyler, only song we
ever wrote together, and we had both had he wrote
Bobby Sue on the Oak Rich Boys album, and I
had a cut that I'd written on there and called
that was actually my first cut called Old Kentucky song
(31:08):
ever ever, Yeah, which was pretty lucky to be on
a million selling album because you get your songwriter role
teach you. All of a sudden, Don started paying me
one hundred bucks a week, and I'm a professional songwriter.
You know. It's really really where it went from. But man,
I really believed in modern day romance. I said, Man,
this song is cool. It's got a good vibe to it,
(31:30):
and everybody seemed to like it, but nobody would cut it,
you know, and finally Can't said look, I'll cut it
on you. He said, and he produced above Ittt's first
five records. You know. He did come Monday, did all
the backgrounds. He was a great producer, and I said, wow,
that'd be cool. He said, we'll get you a record deal.
So let's do it. He said, you sing it great
and die. So we did. We cut it. Actually got
(31:53):
a film company interested, cut a demo on it, I
mean a video on it, and was about to put
it out is it is an independent thing. And Warley
called and said, hey, man, dirt Man, just cut this song.
He said, it's a freaking hit. Okay, I'll put no
mine in the trash because I'm a huge dirt band
(32:14):
fan and Jeff Hannah sang the heck out of it. Anyway,
it was you know, sometimes things, sometimes things won't just
work out with songs. But you never know.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Where did kicks come from?
Speaker 1 (32:27):
There's a couple of weeks before I was born, was
what I was heard. I was trying to bust out
of there. You know, I don't know about you, but
nine months.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Was trying to Mary. I knew a good place when
I had it, I was the officite.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
I don't know. Fetal position wasn't really my thing. I
wanted to stretch.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Out with Mike because I you know, Bones is not
my real name is not Bones. It's est So kicks
nickname is a kid or nickname later? No, it was
I was always kicks, always from a young.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Young kid, from the time I was born.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Really, but not your birth certificate.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
No, it's on Eric. I'm the third. My son's the fourth.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Is he kicks that you call him kicks as well?
Speaker 5 (33:05):
Though?
Speaker 2 (33:05):
Has he kicked Junior?
Speaker 1 (33:06):
No? Call him quatro?
Speaker 2 (33:07):
What do they call it? But they really call you
kicks that you kicked.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Not really call him rick. Yes, they've always gone me kicks.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
Because you kicked in the womb because you came out
of baby. It's because you mess so much. I don't
know if you're kidding or not. No, that's the truth,
but you do understand. You mess so much that sometimes
it's hard for like douse, I'm looking at you, like, okay,
so kicks came from you were always.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Kicks, that's correct. Okay, So if you can, if you
can find any defiance of that, Bobby, you have no
full credit on here.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
I have no defiance I just.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Because I've removed all of that, so you won't well
find it.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
You just a couple of my early stories here. The
first person that the first one played the opry. You
won't remember that you've done this ten thousand times with
ten thousand people. I was doing stand up and I
was about to play the opry for the first time ever,
and you were there, and you came in the room,
my first room and said hey, and we're like congratulate,
and I was like, that's freaking awesome, and I thought
it so kind of you to do because you exactly
(34:02):
that's right. It was me and the time before that.
You don't get your name right, you billy billy bones. Yeah,
you call them billy bones. Yeah, it was nice. I
peed next to you to urinal In, Texas once.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Remember that next to me, man, I remember everybody that
pays yes stand me Austin, Texas and outside each other
and I.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Did. You were at case one on one of the
radio station down there, and I was working a kiss
and I was in and I was like, I didn't
even know that you were in town. I think you may
have me.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
You didn't try to shake hands or anything.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
I did not not right then I left you. But
it was like, were you doing a solo project? Twelve ten,
two thousand? Did you do?
Speaker 1 (34:46):
So?
Speaker 2 (34:46):
When did you do a solo your solo thing, like
when you put out your record.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
After Brooks and done?
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Or that would have been yeah, probably, Well we'd last
toured and ten, so it would have been eleven or twelve.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Because that's when it was. That's when we were probably
eleven before I moved here.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:02):
I think you remember, now, don't you. I did that? Yeah? Yeah,
you were peaking over the corner. That's how I get there.
Speaker 5 (35:07):
The Bobby Cast. We'll be right back. This is the
Bobby Cast. I've never been to Alaska. It's the one
state I haven't been to now. Just went to Maine
for the first time. Really, it's awesome Maine.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
I do know that in New Hampshire did that, Never
been there, but I've not been to Alaska. But you
lived in Alaska, you worked in Alaska.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
I did spend You're on the pipeline up there.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
That's crazy.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Took a break from college. And my dad was a
pipeline contractor, built pipelines all over the world. It's actually
a part of the team that designed the Alaska pipeline
and his his background wasn't testing, and so is mine.
But basically, when you test a pipeline, except for just
a couple of suspended pipelines in Japan and here and there,
(35:58):
pipelines are all in the ground. So when you test
a pipeline, you fill it up with water and you
put a lot of pressure on that water. So if
it blows up, it just blows out, you know, a
hole in the ground, and the pressure dissipates immediately. There's
really no not much damage involved. When you've got a pipeline.
The biggest pipeline in the state's forty eight inch diameter.
(36:21):
Alaska Pipeline's fifty six inch diameter, and it's on stilts,
so when you fill that up with water and something
bad happens. You know, we did millions of dollars worth
of damage test in that pipeline. Was really really exciting
and some real dangerous work.
Speaker 2 (36:39):
But what was it like to live up there and
do that for a year? It was.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
It's crazy. I worked twelve hours a day, seven days
a week for almost a year without coming home.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Was it to save money?
Speaker 1 (36:48):
And yeah, absolutely so you didn't have to pay Alaska taxes.
I sent all my money home and yeah, I got
home and bought a hot Camaro and a new guitar
and I could get a date again.
Speaker 2 (37:01):
Are you a guitar guy as in a nerd? Do
you really love old guitars?
Speaker 1 (37:07):
I do love old guitars, but I'm really I'm not.
I'm not a collector. You know, I've got a couple
of I've probably got, you know, four or five guitars
that are like from fifty one and earlier. They sound
really cool, they still play, They still play great, and
I love the way they sound, but they don't really
(37:29):
amplify very well. You know, most of the guitars that
I play on stage J two hundreds are kind of
There was a couple of days that I got guys
that play guitar in the band that had a bunch
of acoustics, just stood out front with the man playing
playing with play by yourself, you know. And J two
hundreds is that for strumming? And right now a lot
(37:49):
of songs, I'm the only guy playing acoustic guitars, so,
you know, for a good even big, big strum sound
when I'm playing rhythm, I love J two hundreds and
I had I was playing a goal Les Paul at
the Gold top less Paul at the time. And for
this stuff I played electrically. I mean in college, I
was the only guitar player in some of my bands.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
You know.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Now I got two great guitar players that run circles
around me, and so I play acoustic and sing and
you know.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Do what I do.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
But it's fun. I'm not People ask me all the
time how many guitars you got, and it's not tons.
You know, I probably have twenty or thirty guitars.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Maybe, well that's a lot of guitars. It is you
have a music part of the house.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Yeah, I got a couple of music parts, but I
have guitars everywhere I mean, I do not. There's not
a day in my life that I don't pick up
a guitar.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
I was gonna ask if you still play around the house. Ever, Yeah,
I do, and you still enjoy music.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
I still love music, and God love my wife because
I just I give myself concerts somedays, or I just
play a lot of songs that just remind myself. Especially
you know, you're just getting situations, whether it's on stage
with your friends or whatever, and you go, oh, I
love that song. I need to remember how to play that,
and you know that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
You're still driven to pick up a guitar and just
play for fun.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Absolutely, absolutely, that's.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Not always the case.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
It's just, man, what do you do to shake out
your yayas in the morning? I mean, just what do
you do to you swim laps in that.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Pool or what Sometimes?
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Yeah, I did this morning too, But it's not the
same as just singing my heart out for two or
three songs, to really put my heart into some music
all by myself and just sing and just really give
it to the air.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
Do you still keep notes if you get an idea
like a songwriting adia, Oh gosh, yeah, so yeah, I
keep yeah, I come off and you right all write.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
Something all the time? Really yeah, I mean, but it's
finishing songs is that's the work, and that's what takes
the time that I'm like you, I've surrounded myself with
money spenders, and I the work that I have, you know,
even you know, just getting ready for a tour. You know,
(40:04):
I do a radio show too, as you know, and
got the wineries rocking pretty hard, and that's something that
I have given quite a bit of attention to. So
I just kind of in the morning, I start going
through all the stuff, and you know, I call it
checking the traps, and just you know, it gets in
the way of really spending a lot of time. If
(40:24):
I get focused on a song, I need two or
three days to really get from top to bottom to
feel like it's any good.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
Explain this winery to me, because I've never take a wine,
uh huh, but it seems to be a pretty popular thing.
Wine and coffee two things I think are catching on nowadays.
It's pretty popular, too, too popular. But I drive by
your place if I go play golf, yeah, over a troubador,
and I see people out there sometimes not even drinking
wine is hanging out, sitting out there on blankets and stuff. Yeah, so,
(40:51):
what the heck's happening over there. I've never actually been
there except driving by.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah. Well, it was never a goal of mine to
have a bar. That's a lie, that's a lot, because
that's how I got to Nashville. Honestly, when I graduated
from college, a good friend of mine the most popular
bar in Sreeport where I played all the time. It's
a really cool club, about a three hundred seater and
on the weekends it was blowing up. But he was
(41:15):
losing money on the weekdays because he was trying to
hire acts. People you know, don't go out to bars,
not in a lot of towns during the you know,
keeping a bar, going a big entertainment bar, it's hard.
But he wanted to sell it five thousand dollars. So
my dad and I were like best friends, and I
called a meeting with him though, because I wanted to
borrow this money. Didn't have any money, but I had
(41:37):
this idea. I was going to be the house band.
You know, we could sell it wouldn't cost anything during
the week weekends were blowing it out. Can make a
lot of money. This is kind of working. So I
went in there and said, hey, Dad, here's my plan.
He said, I die. I gave him the whole rundown
and whatever like that. And he's sitting there behind his desk,
smoking his cigar, nodding his head and said, you know
what I need five thousand dollars. I I was hoping
(41:59):
maybe you could go sign for it. Okay, So well
that first that that's not going to happen. He said, Really,
two things here it goes. The first one is I
think you got a lot of talent, he goes, I
believe in you, he said, But you don't want to
be a big fish in a small pond here in Nashville.
(42:21):
I mean in Shreeport, there's not a handful of bands
doing any good. And really, if you if you want
to prove to yourself and everybody that you really got
what it takes, you need to go to Nashville or
New York or Los Angeles and see if you can
really make it in the music business. Okay, Oh see,
I mean it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
And the second thing, you don't know a damn thing
about the bar business. So yeah, that that got me
out and going.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
When you move here to Nashville. How soon after that,
after he has that talk with you, like we ain't
doing a bar, but you got to You got to
go because you're good enough to go. You just got
to go. You chose Nashville, obviously, But how long until
you get here and actually feel like this is home
or that you can actually thrive.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Well, it took a minute, because not like it did
for a lot of people. I was fortunate. Jody Williams
and I were roommates in military school, and Jody was
running Charlie Daniels publishing company. His sister was married to
Charlie's guitar player, so he kind of got it in
there me and I could. It was the first place
I'd ever been, because I've worked in New Orleans for
seventy two nights before I came here, that I couldn't
(43:34):
take my guitar and a handful of you know, newspaper
articles that i'd gotten at least let somebody I could
play for somebody and get a gig making some kind
of money, like in the airport kind of thing here now.
But when I got to town, this was the first
place I'd ever been where I couldn't make a living
playing my guitar.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
I mean it was everybody. Everybody was trying to do it.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Yeah, it was just there weren't any.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
And there's not enough places.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah, if there's a cover band or something, but everybody
he played for free. Everybody's trying to get noticed, you know.
I mean I auditioned and played at the Bluebird all
the time. It's actually where you know, like in the movies,
I got discovered. Bob Dole, who wound up managing Garth Brooks,
was working at ass Cap, saw me playing at the Bluebird,
invited me to his office the next day, introduced me
to Don Ghenton. Don got me, you know, my first
(44:20):
couple of cuts and gave me a publishing deal.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
I mean, that's the Nashville story here the Bluebird. I
know somebody sees you. Did you were you like a
picture who was being scouted or you knew the scouts
were in the stands that night?
Speaker 1 (44:31):
No, no, I really I didn't have really didn't have
anything going. And what I learned was my songs weren't
that good. I'd written a lot of songs, but and
me and David Lee Murphy were sweeping floors for Charlie Daniels.
We got thirty bucks at night for sweep sweeping the
War Memorial where the hall for the Musicians Hall of
Fame is right now, I'm not kidding. And we worked security.
(44:54):
We worked the barricade behind the barricade to keep people
from jumping on the stage, and then we'd work the room,
you know, when after the show was over, making sure
nobody got in there or anything, and then we sweep
the floors.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
Did you ever almost give up?
Speaker 1 (45:08):
No, I shouldn't say that. I mean there were probably times,
you know, if you're a songwriter, and I had, you know,
like four number ones and quite a few cuts and
had some you know, good years. But it was ten
years before I met Ronnie, and there's there was valleys
in there where I went, I'm not making that much money.
(45:29):
I got a couple of kids. Now, hm, is this?
You know? Where does this go from here? You know,
I'm not really hot right now. I've got a publishing deal.
But you know, three or four hundred bucks a week
whatever I was making, you start looking around going, you know,
that's what people do, a lot of people throwing the towel.
I never did. Fortunately, you know, every time I just
(45:50):
start to get a little discouraged, something good would happen
and just enough to enough to keep you in the game,
you know. It always I was fortunate that, you know,
people believed them here there even people that were doing
advertising jingles and that kind of stuff. I always had some
singing going on to and and I you know, I
had a couple of record deals. It was on Capitol,
you know, didn't pan out, but people were aware. And
(46:13):
I guess that's how eventually, you know, Tim Dubois felt like,
you know, it's a good enough singer that me and
Ronnie Dunn might make some noise.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Okay, back to the wine, Like, what do you sell there?
Other than why what if people pay money for when
they go there? One is our big deal. I would
think it would be one of the major.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
One different kinds of wine. So we bring hundreds of
thousands of pounds of fruit in from from all over California.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Not all grapes grapes, but all grapes, we say fruit.
I don't know if you may like wine, we don't,
but we do make some a couple. I know nothing
about wine kicks, so I've never had drink of alcohol.
So I'm gonna talk to you like a.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
Kindergarten ferment oranges. You know people in prison do that
all in the toilet.
Speaker 2 (46:55):
I know. I mean I've seen those present shows. Yeah,
you've ever.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
Left fruit in your refrigerator? Anything will ferment like that. Okay.
Speaker 2 (47:02):
So when you say fruit, though, you mean grapes, I
mean grape.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
Yeah, that's they have a sixteen acres of fruit of grapes,
and we use every grape we grow, but we can't
grow a lot of these grapes they grow in California.
You probably heard of cabernet, are low or chardonnay. Those
are actually types of grapes and they need that climate
like in northern California. They like it hot in the daytime,
(47:26):
but at night they need to shut down and rest,
And our nights here are warm enough that the flavors
of those kind of grapes just kind of blow off
at night. So we grow certain kinds of grapes that
do well here, that are hardy. But it depends on
the variety.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
You're telling me, those are different greatly. Cabernet, chardonnay, what
was the other one you said, are low? So those
are just different grape.
Speaker 1 (47:48):
There are different kinds of grapes.
Speaker 2 (47:50):
Green, purple. This is the two kind I know.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
Yeah, so there's white that makes white wine and red wine.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
Did you know, Mike, That's that's what it was. There
are different grapes. We're idiots, I mean we're Idiot's just
something you're not into. So can you do the way
when people the taste of mind, they spit it out
and they're like, hmm, there's some tree bark from a
pine tree? Can you do? Are you that your palette
that distinguished?
Speaker 1 (48:15):
It's it's not. I'm not a somalier by any means,
but I can tell. I can tell Cabernet from Sanchio
Vesi grapes that I can tell, certainly, Bordeaux ones from
California ones. You know, certain big areas that have real
distinct tastes to them. I can tell the difference.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
You can taste an area.
Speaker 1 (48:39):
I can some areas, wow, you know, because some areas
are real. You know some Italian ones, you know, spend
a lot of time in Italy one they have exactly
you know the difference in New York and you know
pizza and Chicago. What's fair?
Speaker 2 (48:54):
I definitely can't. Okay, if you were to give me
a piece of New York or Chicago deep dish. I
could tell you the difference. I definitely could.
Speaker 1 (49:01):
That's what it's like. It's like you start there and
then if you're really into pizza, you go, well, okay,
this is Papa John's is not the same. Well what's
the difference? You know, That's how some people would go.
You can't tell the difference? Yeah you can?
Speaker 2 (49:14):
You know, right, how did wine?
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (49:17):
Oh no, for her, I can. How did wine? Did
it be in your thing? Though?
Speaker 1 (49:21):
Well from Louisiana, So I started drinking at a very
early age. I like wine. It's great, you know, it's
great with food. That's a big deal with wine is pairing.
If you, you know, start doing that. There's certain because
of the acidity and red wines and white ones, and
you know, a great cabernet if you really like steak,
(49:41):
it pairs great. One thing that wine does, like good wines,
nice ones. You know what makes a great wine? Well,
one thing is what's called a long finish. And if
a wine has a you know, especially a Cabernet or
more lower great steak ones, if they have a long finish,
you like the taste of that wine. You take a
big sip of that and you cut your steak. You
taste that wine with that steak, and it's just a
(50:03):
great pairing of food and drink. And that's that's all
part of it. You know, you really learn to pair.
You know, some like Senjia Vassi, a wine we may
call red Fox. Red is a great what I call
a table wine. And there's a lot of great Italian
table wines which are just great with cheese and crackers.
You know, it's just it's a great pairing that you know,
(50:24):
just drink a little wine, and it's also something fun
with your friends. You know, you cap cop a little buzz,
you start talking about some stuff you might not have
been talking about before, and just you know, it's it's nonsense,
but it's it's fun.
Speaker 2 (50:37):
That is, you do wine sell wine, but people go
either just to hang out too, right, the just sit
in the build.
Speaker 1 (50:43):
Most people are drinking. They are, yeah, most of their
children are, you know.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
At least five and six year olds. You don't sell
wine to the kids.
Speaker 1 (50:50):
That's we don't sell wine to the kids. And it's
it's hysterical online. You know, the rare complaints that we
get are because you know, there's not enough things for
their children to do.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
At the winery.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
Yeah, you know, we're trying to drink here, you know,
could you please set up a bouncy you know, house
or something for the kids so you know, we can
drink in peace.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
Do you have one of those lives where you can
go places? Because if you have the cowboy hat on,
it's over. We know it's you immediately. When you were
on the ball cout, I would know what's you, obviously,
but I would think that because your cowboy hat is
such a large part of your persona that sometimes people
don't go, hey, Kicks Brooks.
Speaker 1 (51:30):
They don't. It's rare. You know. We did, like I said,
we did four years, one hundred and four or five
shows with Rieba in Las Vegas. So Ronnie and reeb
we're both very recognizable. They would always take a car
from their rooms around to the back of the coliseum
and go in, and I would come out of my
room just for enjoyment, would walk through all the slot
(51:52):
machines and whatever by the crap table where I would
play every night after the show, you know, walk through
the crowd that's in line for our show. Literally, excuse me,
pardon me through them, and sometimes even walk in and
check out the merchandise room, which is they're all right
next to the coliseum. Not one time in four years,
one hundred and four shows, not one time to one person,
(52:12):
no matter how many times they've been to that show,
and we keep a record of that. You know, some
of them have been to those shows thirty times or something.
Recognize me.
Speaker 2 (52:21):
I don't think it's because you're not recognizable. I think
it's because what we recognize you for is so big
with the cowboy hat and the boots, and now you're
just hanging out. You know, if I saw you at Starbucks,
I'd be like, yeah, that's kick. But again, but because
you are always in the cowboy how people see you publicly,
(52:41):
it looks just like him, only older. It's the perfect
life of celebrity. You get to be famous when you
want to, and if you don't want to, you just
put on a ball cap. I would imagine George stra
can do that.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
Sometimes he does do that, and I wasn't going to
mention him, but since you did, I can. I remember
somebody came up to me and said, we're on the
sideline at an NFL playoff, game in Dallas, and then
somebody goes that straight over there and they're arguing, no,
it's not I swear it's it's not him.
Speaker 2 (53:09):
You know.
Speaker 1 (53:10):
And I finally walked over and said, hey, George, you
know it, he's gonna ball calf on, you know.
Speaker 4 (53:14):
But yeah, let's take a quick pause for a message
from our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
Welcome back to the Bobby Cast. I was playing golf
at a program with a professional golfer from San Antonio
and he plays with George some Obviously George loves down there,
and he said that they were in Ireland playing golf
together once and they had played and they went to
a pub, but there was a guy doing some covers
(53:47):
and he was playing George straight songs and George was there.
He didn't and the whole time he never knew that
two tables down when there were like eleven people in
the whole bar or pub, that George Strait was sitting
right there, and he was because George was a baseball
cap and nobody recognizes them.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
That's funny.
Speaker 2 (54:04):
I went to think of the name. There's an island,
a small island that my CFO has a house, and
I went and stayed on this island, and George had
a house that was right next to it, and so
you have to take a boat to get to that.
I'm sure you've been there, if you don't, order if
you have a house there. Do you have a house there?
Speaker 1 (54:23):
I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (54:24):
There's an island. It's like in the Bahamas.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
In the Bahamas, yeaheah, probably Bakers but that's just for
Georgia's Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2 (54:29):
Yeah, you ever go over there?
Speaker 1 (54:31):
Yeah? I fish in the Bahamas a lot, really, but
I haven't been to Baker's Bay.
Speaker 2 (54:35):
It feels like a real very close to there.
Speaker 1 (54:37):
Andros and Exama down there.
Speaker 2 (54:39):
Do you still fish a lot all the time. What's
your favorite kind of fishing?
Speaker 1 (54:43):
Bone fishing? Probably? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (54:45):
I like blue It feels like a mobster thing, like
you kill somebody. Yeah, like bone fishing. What what what?
I don't know? I know, lake fish, I like blue,
bluewater fishing, fly fishing, you know, got it?
Speaker 1 (54:54):
Long casting not? I mean I fish in Alaska every
year with my son, you know, I after twelve years
ag and that's I love fly fishing for when the
salmon are running, you know, I mean those are those
are big fish and they're like they put a whack
on it. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. But bone fishing,
you know, you might. You can walk for five miles
and a foot and a half deep of water and
(55:16):
those flats out there, and it's just really fun because
it's slight fishing. You can see them and they're traveling
across and then you're kind of stalking. You've got to
get in the right position where you can make a
fifty or sixty foot cast in the.
Speaker 2 (55:27):
Right spot and fifty or sixty foot in the right spot.
Speaker 1 (55:30):
Yeah, and the wind's always blowing down.
Speaker 2 (55:31):
What's the bone part of it?
Speaker 1 (55:33):
They're just called bonefish. They're not fishy eat.
Speaker 2 (55:36):
So literally it's like like bonefish, girl, I'm familiar with that. Yeah,
right there we go. I went. I grew up fishing
a lot, but lakes never, never ocean never, never went
to a beach never, but so but also didn't fly
fish a lot. But we went. And I know Johnny
Morris a little bit who owns Batspro, and he was like, hey,
(55:58):
you should come up, you should stay up here. Let
me know when you're gonna be in town. I'm gonna
come see you guys, And so like Johnny Will coming
up and he's like, okay, cool. And so first of
all he's super nice and sets us all up with
fishing and golf, and he goes, I'm gonna send you
guys to the honey hole. I don't know what that
means right right then, and I was like, okay, great.
I'd figure if Johnny Morris is sending this over it's fishing,
(56:21):
it's gonna be legit. So somebody comes and gets us
in a van. He goes, you know, Johnny doesn't let
many people go to the honey hole. We don't know
the honey hole list. We don't know. It's got to
be where it and we get in, so they give
us a ride. We're fly fishing, and it's probably as
big as this room here, the whole pond, the whole hole,
(56:42):
massive trout, every inch of you throw you it's the
only time of my life. It's cheating because he's it
was so stocked that as soon as as soon as
the flight would hit what we're just jerking them out
of there?
Speaker 1 (56:58):
He says, Are they lake trout? You're saying? Or is there?
Speaker 2 (57:01):
But they're massive lake trout? I mean I'm talking we
have a trout truck go by and drop trout off
Mountain Pine. Now, uh huh. These trout were small, and
the trout truck would open, they'd all pile out, and
you catch those, you just pull them over. You gotta
have trout stamps, game boardings, watching, it's the whole thing.
But this the honey Hole with Johnny Morris, it was
like sharks. They were. That's what I think about when
(57:23):
you say Alaska, like Alaska fishing, the fishers.
Speaker 1 (57:25):
There's more room and the trout get huge up there.
When we go, you know, end of August first to September.
You know, the socc I have all kind of died out.
They're the ones you see jumping up the bears or
catching in their mouth and whatever. But they're all dying out,
and they've all spawned. And those trout have been eating
those eggs, you know, the whole season. And they're eight
and nine pounds rainbow trout or not uncounting.
Speaker 2 (57:48):
That's that's a big fish. So okay, I just have
a couple more questions for you. What every once in
a while whenever. The last night, for example, I was
sitting back are on the back porch back area and
I was like, dang, look at that. That's pretty cool.
Like I got a nice how Like I've done some
pretty good stuff in my career, and I don't slow
down enough, probably to acknowledge that. Now I have a wife,
(58:10):
she slows me down sometimes. Do you ever just go dang,
I'm famous and rich and I've got lots of songs
and it's cool.
Speaker 1 (58:18):
I quit doing that a while ago.
Speaker 2 (58:21):
You wake up a month like, oh, good morning, fas
this pretty cool. I feel like I would if that
was awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (58:28):
No, I mean, you know, you'd expect me to say
all the humble things that you would expect me to say.
And that's really the only answers that I have because
I'm really not that impressed with myself. Honestly. One thing
you learn in Nashville, whatever whatever your dream was here,
whatever you hope to accomplish, which for me has been,
(58:53):
has really exceeded any reality dreams that I had. You know,
I mean, you got a dream in your heart, you know,
to but that's kind of keeps you going. But to
think that, you know, all that stuff would really kind
of come true. What I realized that all the things
that I do play guitar sing you know, there's people
(59:18):
that are so much better at it than me in
this town. And if you there's not many people I
think that are real with themselves that don't feel that
way unless they are really the best singers here, the
very best singers here, which I don't think that's necessarily
my talent. I am. Really I do feel real fortunate
(59:42):
that my singing was so bad in the first five
years of our career, just because I had just been
playing and screaming and bars, you know, and you get
on a big stage and I just had no control
over my air basically. And I really think talking on
(01:00:05):
the radio for the last seventeen years has really helped me,
especially when you're doing a four hour show and you
know this forever, you can't just be huffing and puffing
the whole time. You've got to find your air somewhere
else in order to have any quality of voice. And
that started translating into my singing, and it's really made
being on stage a lot more fun because I can
(01:00:26):
kind of go through a whole show and feel like,
you know, I was saying pretty good tonight, you know,
which I wasn't feeling that way early in our career. Fortunately,
I had a great singer standing next to me, so
you know, he pulled most of the weight, and in
the studio I could do it. But getting on stage
bouncing around and start huffing and puffing, it just wasn't
very good. So I guess a long answer to a
(01:00:49):
short question is I feel blessed, but I'm very humbled
by the success that I've had with I guess what
actual ability I do have. I think probably, if anything,
I like to think that I've got a good ability
to communicate and I'm not intimidated by the stage at all.
(01:01:11):
I'm not that great at it, but I got a
lot of confidence. So by the end of the night,
I do feel like, you know, that crowd's really on
their feet clapping because they had a good time, and
I had something to do with it. Why radio, Because
I was basically ask again, I'm a communications major, and
(01:01:34):
I always was always a fan of radio, like a
lot of people, was always a fan of countdown shows,
and I kind of played around with it a little
bit over the years. When I say played around, was
asked to host an overnight show or something here and there,
and it was just kind of fun to talk and
you know, ABC approached me when Bob Kingsley, you know,
and then got sideways, and Bob was one of my
(01:01:55):
dearest friends. Was the first person I called and said, hey,
you know, I said that, you know, you're maybe sideways
on your deal and you're going to do your own thing.
I said, I would never even try stepping into your
shoes without your blessing. And he said, man, I think
you can do this. I think it'll be great at it.
And it was such an opener, you know. I mean,
(01:02:16):
I'm used to listening to myself singing going that sucks
and trying to make it better. But when I started
air checking myself on the radio, I was so bad.
Just everything I thought I was doing good sucked. And
I guess, I guess part of just being able to
notice that and not thinking you're doing great when you're
not kind of helped me get to a level I
(01:02:37):
couldn't believe they didn't fire me. For the first couple
of years.
Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
It was just really.
Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
Awful, but you know, a lot of affiliates hung in
there and whatever and whatever reason. I mean, at least
I can listen to myself now and I really enjoy
doing it. It doesn't wear me. It used to take me
hours and hours to do that countdown show, and now
you know, just you know, getting through the copy. I
really kind of enjoy it and love my team, and
(01:03:01):
I would imagine you feel the same way.
Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
Not at all. Do you do it from home?
Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
No, I have done it from home during COVID, you
know I did it. We all worked remotely like a
lot of other people. But I built a studio down
in the old RCA building and you know, the original
RCAA building and right across from Chad Atkins office. And
it's cool. It's all like turn of the century, I mean,
mid century furniture and everything. It's real quirky, and I
(01:03:28):
like going down there. I like hanging out. We talk
about the business, what's going on whatever, even not stuff
that's on the air. But it also gets me in
the mood to do the show. And when bits come up,
you know, I think about, well, you know, that's cool.
But you know, when we did that, I try not
to do that very much. You know, I did learn
of Yeah, I got sent to interviews school back when
(01:03:48):
you know, Disney owned ESPN. So I don't know if
you've ever done that.
Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
But interview school. Yeah, no, I need to go.
Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
One of the most amazing things that I've ever done.
Speaker 2 (01:03:57):
But what do you do? What do you do in interview
school for two weeks?
Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
This guy from Canada who is really good at it.
We listen to all the great interviews of all time
and where even the people that are considered the greats,
you know, like Larry King and Barbara Walters in particular,
here's the mistakes they made. Here's where this could have
been world changing. But here's you know a lot of things,
(01:04:24):
simple things like double barrel questions if you know, and
you see a lot of local newspeople ask five questions
to somebody. You know, when the tornado came through, what'd
that sound like? I mean, did everybody run for cover?
It's like, was it did it tear the top off
the house? You know? So which in that kind of question,
You know, it doesn't really matter that much, but when
(01:04:46):
you're really trying to get to the bottom of something,
And of course with sports guys, they don't want to
talk anyway. They just want to do that. They want
to compete, you know, it's what they're doing. And our business,
you know, we love talking about ourselves. I mean, that's
just that's where we come from. So you don't have
to ask much of a question to pull my string.
And you know, you got to shut me down at
(01:05:08):
some point and ask another question. But in that world,
it was really interesting just to get some basic tools.
If you'd like to get an answer to something, ask
that one question at a time, and the people that
were really good at it, or people would ask a
question and wait, because that's where Barbara Walter is one
of the things as good as she was, like she asked.
(01:05:31):
She asked Teddy Kennedy. She got the interview after he
was accused of cheating on his wife, and her first question,
did you cheat on your wife? How will the Kennedy
survive this bang? He's a smart guy, guyes well, you know,
Kennedy's have made it through thick and thin and da
da da dad. She asked him, you know, ten questions,
but never never stuck with did you cheat on your wife?
(01:05:53):
Just there was it's almost kind of like a you know,
and I can't. You know, Barbara Walters is a legend,
did tons of great interviews and whatever, but he just
gave us examples of you know, if you if you
want an answer, to something wait for the answer.
Speaker 2 (01:06:09):
You know, my favorite thing to do is to sit
in silence because and I can't do this to you
because you know all you know the tricks. But if
I'm with someone, I don't mind awkward. So if I'm
with someone and let's say you're John Smith, I'm interviewing,
I'll just if I ask a question and then I'll
just sit and then you'll feel the need to fill
(01:06:29):
time because you'll feel awkward. And so what happens is
people will just start giving the greatest answers because I've
sat in silence for a few seconds. But you're so
comfortable with yourself. I can't use those tricks on you
because you're just staring back at me, like, all right,
what you got next? What you got next? But that's
that's pretty cool that you went and you just got
to watch all the greats I had to go to
like the library, watch the old those old movie I
(01:06:52):
forget what I've watched, like old Jack Parr Tonight Show episode,
What was that thing called that you talk about the
black and white machine? But I would do that and
then I would watch. Then YouTube changed everything, so now
you just watch it. I just watched all my old
interviews and go, that's what I want to do, just
like that guy. I'm my own hero. It's pretty cool.
It's pretty cool. Well, look, I'm super pumped. He came over.
(01:07:13):
I was talking to Mike and I was like, Hey,
what what can we promote of Kises? And what he
literally said was we'd been working on getting you for
a while that there was really nothing to promote. We
were just happy you were coming over. So thank you
for coming over. You bet, We'm glad we got to
visit aal Yeah, me too. Are you guys gonna do that?
Are you guy gonna go out again? You're gonna do
a whole tour Brooks and Dune massive tour.
Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
Let's go. I mean, I don't see why we wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (01:07:36):
Really when you finished, were like I can't wait to
go out again in a few months. Or you're like,
oh my god, I need a break. We'll figure that
out the rest of it late.
Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
Really, you know, we did nineteen shows with Scotty and
Megan Marony and that's you know, people go, gosh, it
must be crueling, you know. I mean, like, you never
worked on a pipeline, you never stood Wyte deep in
mud with his shovel from candle Cane and my dad
(01:08:08):
he would always find the hardest, roughest job that that
was on the pipeline, and there's some really dangerous, really
bad jobs out there. He had me. I mean, I
had a chainsaw cutting sixteen hundred railroad ties a day
at one point. I mean, I'm pretty good at sharpening
the chainsaw. I'm keeping that.
Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
Sucker gave you the gift of perspective. Yeah, Absence, you
didn't know what the kind of invaluable the gift was
going to be at the time. That's like me, I
roof houses forever, and I didn't mean it's on golf
courses and I was like this sucks. But now it's
like I just appreciate everything. You roofed houses.
Speaker 1 (01:08:39):
Oh yeah, pred dude.
Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
So I built some stuff, folks. Oh Man started off
his tearoff crew. First of all, clean up crew, then
tear off crew. Then after a while, I figured how
to fix a nail gun. So they let me actually
use it because I was all, way, you can't use it.
You know, there's a compression guns like oh, and so
I figured how to fix it. And so once I
fixed it, they knew I could use it. So then
I started actually roofing houses. All right, Bobby, you got crid,
(01:09:03):
no cry no, no crid.
Speaker 1 (01:09:05):
If you were on a freaking roof, roof and houses,
you got my respect, dude. Roofs and draw wall. Anybody
that's done either one of those for any length of time.
Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
And see we had sea walls too, got credit. Seawalls
sucks to seawalls? Which fine? Are you on the lake
in river in Arkansas? We would go and we would
do bids. We'd drive the flat bottom down what lake
Lake Hamilton? Okay, so we'd go down Lake Hamilton and
we'd look people seawalls. They had a crack, we'd go
knock on the door and be like, there's a cracker
in a seawall. We'd make a bit and if they
were like, okay, cool, we'd go there's heavy buckets. It
(01:09:38):
was just but again that perspective. Yeah, here we are
sit a nice air condition room with your big faith
right here behind me, go celebrating the day.
Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
And I went to Ozark Boys Camp for like five years.
Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
What'd you do there? Mount not Arkansas mount that is
like twenty minutes from Mountain Pine. They were our main
rival yeah, oh high school. Yeah, I'll be yea very close,
very close one from what'd I do?
Speaker 4 (01:09:56):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:09:57):
What do you do there? At that camp?
Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
Everything? You know? They had a one of those things
you had a skis that were bolted together with roller
skates on it. One of those lines that went down
until you smashed into the water down there, rope swings.
They had a little golf course. There had a baseball
golf field and do our golf.
Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
Heck, yeah, I don't know you golf.
Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
Yeah, I'm a member at a troubadoor and golf, Yeah,
golf club at Tennessee.
Speaker 2 (01:10:18):
Let those who are nowhere near each other. You're driving
all across the state to get both of those.
Speaker 1 (01:10:22):
You know. That's well. You know, I've got a winery
that backs up to tribute door.
Speaker 2 (01:10:26):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (01:10:27):
See, well, that's my ambition is to be able to
play golf in the evening, drink all night, play golf
in the morning, and ever leave the campus.
Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
See. But I feel like you're almost there anyway, almost
there if you're a tributor and you have the winery
inns when I'm talking, Yeah, but do you live over there?
Speaker 1 (01:10:43):
No? I live in Forest Hills. That's what my wife said,
do you really need another house? And absolutely.
Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
All right, Kicks. Thanks, I really appreciate the time there
is Kicksbrooks, go get some wine. Everybody get get on
kickspit on a tab. Thanks for listening to a Bobby
Cast production
Host
Bobby Bones
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