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

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/c00119b2722ae1c5

Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it's my job to deconstruct world class performers from all different disciplines to tease out what you can use, what you can apply in your own lives. And we have a very
Tactical, very detail rich.
Interview.
Ahead
And my guest is Tim McGraw. To say Tim McGraw is a Grammy Award winning singer is an absurd.
Understatement. He's had forty nine number one singles and nineteen number one albums, making him one of the most played country artists of all time. But
Calling him a country artist.
is also too small of a category. He's been named Nielsen BDS Radio's most played artist of the decade for all music genres, and also had the most played song of the decade for
Oh.
Music.
Genres. He's written four New York Times best selling books, and you've also seen him in Friday Night Lights, The Blind Side, and Yellowstone, not to mention
his three time Emmy nominated eighteen eighty three, in which he stars alongside his wife Faith Hill and Sam Elliott. You can find tickets for his upcoming pawn shop guitar tour at
Tim McGraw.com. That's Tim T I M.
McGraw M C R A W
Dot
com. Check it out. I will certainly
be aiming to attend.
And without further ado, please enjoy a very
Very wide ranging.
Very, very detailed, very fun conversation with the one and only Tim.
Okay.
Optimal minimal.
At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
Can I answer your personal question?
No seen it kinda.
A cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal enter scale.
Tim, it's so nice to finally meet in person. You as well, Tim.
Really fantastic. Absolutely.
Big fan.
Likewise, and I've not been
To Nashville so long.
And
It's just lovely around here. It's incredible and it changes every day.
I mean I get lost.
Anytime I come downtown.
I get lost'cause everything looks so different.
Franklin looks like it's just had facelift after facelift after facelift. I know and
When I first moved here in eighty nine.
All of that.
Cool springs, all that stuff was still
All countryside.
And I remember land being not very expensive out there.
And I didn't have two nickels or rubber. I'm thinking, man, if I could just buy some land out here and build me a little cabin.
Find me a club gig.
You know it really would be great.
cut to two years later and it's just everything's through the roof. I mean, it's just going crazy. And then
And it doesn't seem to be slowing down.
At all.
You just offer me the perfect segue.
Because Well that's what I'm here for. Thank you, you know. I appreciate this tango that we're
We're we're getting started here. I was looking back, you were kind enough.
to answer some questions for
Tribe of Mentor. Yeah, your book my last book.
And I was going back.
To reread it.
And I looked at your bio.
And at the time it reads.
Tim McGraw has sold more than fifty million records dot dot dot and all these amazing accolades.
Then I looked at the more recent
And it's more than a hundred and six million records worldwide.
Your longevity
Is
Mind boggling.
On a number of different levels. It's just boggling to me too. People still
But not with me. And I'm wondering
How have you thought about or how has your creative process
Changed.
over the years. Like what is what has remained the same
What has changed.
Because there's so many ingredients that you have to get right for you to
not just last, but succeed over the decades that you have. Well one thing that doesn't change
It's great songs.
That's the first
Check.
should be the first check on any artist list. I mean
I write I write for every project and I've been lucky enough to
Have some success with some of the things I write.
But for me the song always has to win.
Wherever the song comes from.
That's what it's gonna be. And I'll listen to songs.
Constantly. I'm constantly writing.
Constantly listening.
I'm hard on my own songs, that's probably why I haven't cut as many.
But my process is pretty much the same. I I think
material wise
I look for different kinds of music than I used to.
I still like fun songs.
Then if I find the right fun song I'll do it.
But it's tougher.
At a certain age to sing about
you know, Daisy Dukes and Tailgates all the time. You know, it just doesn't doesn't quite ring true to me.
But you know, every now and then something comes along that's funny and you just do it because you're an artist and you're telling a story and you do it. But
I gravitate more towards songs now.
Yeah.
Not only have meaning to me, but I think have
People can find a deeper meaning in
In their own situation, in their own life.
I would love for you to
If you could.
Maybe
Unpack for us a song.
Could be any song.
And
But I'm
Angling for is
Of course the genesis, but also what do you do?
When the muse goes a little quiet.
'Cause you can't just as a working musician be like, Well, I'm gonna wait.
A year for
Lightning to strike. There's probably some process behind it.
And
I am not a musician, but I'm deeply interested in it. One of my favorite albums of all time is Graceland by Paul Simon. Oh my God, yes. And I was listening to his backstory as he explained how
A number of those songs came together and I was just mesmerized. Yeah. So could you tell the story of
Any song that comes to mind in the Genesis.
Probably live like you're dying would be a good place to start because
That song came to me, it was right after my dad
was diagnosed with brain cancer, glioblastoma.
And
Tim Nichols.
And
Craig Wiseman sent that song to me, they wrote it.
about my dad when I found out that that was happening.
And send it to me.
And I never played it for my dad.
He was sick at the time. I just felt
That was
Not appropriate to play a song about dying to your dad.
Who was dying.
Although
I'm sure he would have loved the idea of
Having a song.
That was about him.
Um
Inspired by him.
I didn't play it for him, I had the song.
And
In his last days he he was at our farm.
in the cabinet of formats where he wanted to be for his last days and
Spent a lot of time with him.
And
I think it was right around
Two weeks.
Two to three weeks after he passed away that we went to the studio.
To record.
And we recorded in upstate New York at a place right outside of Woodstock at a place called O'Laire Studios.
You know, it's it's beautiful. It's the old
Dutch farmhouse and barn up on top of a mountain.
Beautiful. We had like three foot of snow.
We were there for three weeks. We
S two semi trucks full of
Persian Rogues.
furniture and just deck the place out for the band and
I saw for three weeks while we were cutting.
And
My dad's older brother, Hank.
I invited him to come hang with us because, you know, Tug had just died and I know he wasn't doing very well.
So I invited him to come hang with us while we were recording.
And it was probably
Six or seven days into the recording process and
We would start late and we would go till three or four in the morning recording.
And I remember it was about one in the morning.
And I
Had this glass booth built.
In the middle of the studio so I could see everybody.
And there was fireplaces at each end, and the fireplaces were roaring.
I have my glass booth in the middle. We were cutting a song, my uncle Hank was
Smoking a joint.
If you know my Uncle Hank, he's passed away, he passed away last year now, but
He was all
All American athlete, three sports, played pro baseball for thirteen years.
Greatest guy in the world, look just like Sam Elliott.
But
Was a pothead from the from day one.
So I watched him and he was sitting over there and I just got to thinking, I thought
You know, this might be a good time.
Could live like you were dying.
So
We just finished a song, we were doing some overdubs.
I gathered everybody around and I gathered Hank around.
And I asked everybody what their opinion was if they felt like tackling that song.
So about two in the morning.
We cranked it up.
Before the sun came up we had that song done.
And
It was so tough because I'm sitting in the booth.
In the glass booth.
Recording the song.
You know, directing the band or getting the parts right.
Yeah.
Can't help but watch my Uncle Hank the entire time that we're doing it.
And
He's just in a puddle.
Over in the corner.
And then he's laughing.
And then then he starts telling stories about tug after thing. So we recorded the song.
We got finished probably about four or five in the morning.
And then we just sat and listened to Uncle Hank tell stories about Tug for the rest of the night.
And I have to believe that.
All that magic of that night.
Of Hank being there.
Tug had only been gone for a couple of weeks.
And then Hang telling the stories afterwards.
I have to believe that all of that went into that record.
Yeah, there's there's so many different
aspects to that. Yeah. Each of which you can unpack.
When you mentioned it seemed like a good time.
Or it might be a good time.
Why did it seem like a good time? Was it a feeling inside of you as you looked at your uncle? As I looked at my uncle.
It just felt like
That I was being told.
To cut the song.
Everything. The vibes coming off of him.
What I was feeling at the time, and I think we would be had just cut something really up temple and
Pretty rocking.
And
I don't know, it was the mood, the snow outside, the fireplaces, my uncle sitting there.
Being so late at night, maybe.
There was a melancholy that sort of struck.
At that time.
I'm sure there were some other factors that might have been involved that struck about that when you're in the studio that late.
It just felt like there was magic in the air at that moment.
And we wanted to capture it.
And we always like to say, you know, you can have the greatest song in the world.
Greatest man in the world, greatest singer in the world, which I am not.
But you can have all those factors.
And it's still not work. We and we always say sometimes God just walks through the room.
All right. I wanna pick up on that thread and then we're gonna go back to some of your family history because
I mean millions upon millions upon millions know your music, but I think fewer know
the origin story. So we will get to that.

But
I also want to ask
When is the first time when you felt
God walked through the door.
With
One of your songs where you're like, Oh
Oh.
Okay.
I think maybe we have some lightning in a bottle here. I would like to say it was Don't Taste the Girl, but I didn't feel that way after we recorded it.
Because
I never felt like
I captured exactly what I wanted on that record.
Until we finally finished it. When we finally finished it, I felt like we had it. But in the process of it, I felt like a struggle.
On that song.
But Indian outlaw.
Because
I
had that song for my first album and nobody liked it. The label didn't like it.
James Stroud didn't like it.
Byron liked it.
But I couldn't talk James into let me record it. I couldn't talk the label into let me record it. What were the reasons they gave you? They just said it was too controversial and it was a bad song. It wasn't country music, it won't work on radio. All all the things that they were right about.
I heard that song the first night I moved to Nashville.
I got to Nashwitt.
one or two in the morning on a Greyhound bus.
Walk down to the hall of fame lounge.
And hotel where I ended up staying for a couple of weeks.
Walked into the bar.
And everybody was closing down, the band was packing up.
And Tommy Barnes.
And Max D Barnes.
We're sitting at the
Bor
Thanks, Max D Barnes. He's sitting at the bar. The bar's closing down, so I walk in and
Just ordered a beer and she said we
We just had last call, but I'll give you a beer.
I sat down, so I started talking to these two guys.
So
Tommy says.
Do you have a room? I said, Yeah, I said let's go and play some music.
So me, Tommy, and Max Barnes went up.
started playing music within stepping off the bus stepping off the bus and Tommy played Indian Outlaw and I don't wanna be there in the morning when she wakes up and finds me gone, which ended up cutting both of those. Have three more songs of his that I heard that first talk that I'm gonna cut eventually.
But Indian outlaw heard that first night.
And I started playing it immediately, learned it, started playing it in all the clubs around town, the honky talks around town.
When we would go travel and play clubs all over the country, I was playing that song and we'd end up having to play it two or three times a night, four times a night,'cause people loved it so much.
And I kept telling the label and I was
going in to cut my first record. This was before I had a record in Louis.
I knew it worked.
And I didn't have any say so on the first album.
So when Winner Cut's second album I just
That's where we're cutting, period.
And when we cut it, I felt like
This is either gonna
Work in a huge way or it's gonna ruin my career forever.
Yeah.
Luckily it worked. And it worked.
The fortunate thing
It worked.
And I think that what
kept me from being just sort of a novelty act.
That had this sort of funky weird song that made some noise.
was being able to come right behind it with don't take the girl.
I'll forever believe that the combination of those two songs
is what set my career in motion and gave me
Momentum that
That
Probably couldn't have gotten any other way.
How would you describe both of those songs as a one-two punch? The the first one for people who don't know.
Why was it potentially controversial or different. And and I understood why it was controversial because it was stereotypical. It was sort of a
You know, a play on Native American stereotypes.
And there was a lot of controversy around it and I understood the controversy and I wasn't upset about the controversy.
In fact I met with
Several Native American leaders.
Some liked the song, some didn't like the song.
And my answer was look.
I understand what your concerns are. The song's not meant to be that way. I understand your concerns.
My opinion?
If you need to go after me in order to
raise attention and awareness to your calls, by all means use my song for that.
So
If you like it or don't like it, if you can ha make something good happen from it.
Yeah.
By all means, I'm not gonna be offended.
And now
When I play Native American casinos, I always
When I meet with the elders.
Or the Chiefs before the show I always say, you know, I have Indian Outlaw on my set, but I'm happy to take it out if it's offensive and
Ninety nine point nine percent of the time. They that's why we hired you just to sing that song. So they love it. So it's it's been really good to me.
And what about the follow up straight? The one two. Oh, but the don't take the girl. Exactly.
That song was just so powerful and such a great s I it was
The epitome of what country music is all about.
A great story that gets right to the heart of the matter, that hits right to the emotion.
Leaves it a little open ended. It makes you guess a little bit about what happened.
But to this day singing that song.
There are times where it chokes me up still every time.
And
That song was one of my first dances.
As an artist.
So we're
I wasn't sure if I was doing the right thing or not, but it was my first opportunity to perform on the CMAs.
After Don't Tate the Girl came out.
And Walter was the guy who used to run the CMA. Do you remember Walter?
They wanted me to do Don't Take the Girl, but they only gave me three minutes and the song's five minutes. And
I was trying to explain to him that there's no way to sing the song without telling the complete story or it wouldn't make sense.
So I actually turned down my first opportunity to perform on the CMAs because I couldn't do the whole song.
Was that an obvious choice, or did you second guess that choice?
After you turned it down?
You know, the next day or the next hour where you're like oh
I think it was an obvious choice.
Yeah, and I wasn't too worried because the song was doing so well.
And I just I just thought.
There's no upside here to doing part of this song.
There's it's not gonna do anything for me.
It's not gonna do anything for anybody else.
I
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A few things come to mind for me.
The first is that
In a digital world.
Or we perceive to be virtual.
Folks try to do a lot virtually and you can do a lot in terms of testing and this, that, and the other thing.
But
Still if you can get front of live audiences to test your material.
Whether you are a musician
A comedian, even in my case, could
As a writer, my first book
Was turned down thirty plus times by publishers.
Not an exaggeration.
But because I had taught the material in front of classes for years and years and years, I knew that it worked. You knew it worked. I knew it worked.
That is the only reason. You had a practical sense that it worked. Yeah. Yeah. I could see it and I'd
Honed it.
Taken out the equivalent of jokes that didn't work. Dumbledore down on the ones that did.
And that still is just so incredibly valuable having that real time feedback, especially when you're playing multiple times a night.
Your process when you're writing a book.
And you're talking about trying material out.
People do you
Have an idea or a nugget of what you want to do and then you just start riffing on it.
Around people just to sort of get feedback.
I do.
I would say that
These days I will
Often test on the podcast.
To see like segments or parts. Exactly. See what resonates or doesn't resonate.
So for instance, I'm considering doing
A huge
collection of case studies.
from the first book. Because of course people hear the four hour work week and they're like, bullshit. That guy is a liar. And I get it. I get it. It's a controversial title and
Deliberately so.
But there are hundreds and thousands of case studies. And so for every
Every reason someone might have why they object to the title, I'm a single mom. I've got five kids. I have this, I have that. I'm sixty and not twenty.
I have an example.
That has walked the walk in their shoes.
So
That said, a book is a huge commitment. I still find writing so difficult. And I know you've had experience with this.
So
I will
put together a few episodes on the podcast where I'm basically testing different sets of questions.
with case studies. And I'm gonna see, all right, look
I enjoy doing this.
But how does the audience respond?
At the same time.
I would say for me, I think it's very dangerous.
to
Ask your audience or really anyone if you
have developed a creative muscle and you value it.
What should I do?
Because then you can get shaped by
The masses in a way that
really leads you down, I think, a lost path.
In my case, I might have two or three things I'm excited about.
Then it's a question which of these three?
And I will feel good about any of these three, then it's okay.
So I test that. I still think to this day and I've thought about
Potentially approaching.
U T Austin.
To do a class. It's because the feedback is so fast. Yeah. They can't fake it. Even if they say they like it, if you look at their face and they are spacing out, checking their phone, you're like not working. Not working. It is not working.
Like you said, you try things out musicians.
Comedians, writers.
I do the same thing. If I I run across a new song that I really like.
Have the band work it up, so let's play it a couple of times live and see what their reaction is. Now
There's a caveat to that because when
I've been doing this for thirty five years now. So when you have
Songs people expect to hear.
And then you throw a new one in on them.
Sometimes you get the reaction's not exactly what you want it to be, but it's not necessarily the reaction that you're gonna get if they know the song.
So it you know, there's a little bit of a
Curve that you have to put on it when you're doing it.
Yeah.
Back again also to not letting the audience determine
What you do.
That's really true because like you said, you can get lost. If you start chasing what you think people wanna hear.
Then you're I think you're you're in trouble then.
I think you've got to chase what you wanna hear.
And what you want to play.
And
Look.
My taste is not gonna match up with everybody's taste.
And probably
Less and less people's taste as the days go forward. Who knows? It may grow more. I don't know. But I have to cut stuff.
That speaks to me.
If it doesn't speak to me, especially if I didn't write it.
It doesn't speak to me and I can interpret it in in a way that speaks
From my heart and speaks to someone else. If it doesn't speak to me first, there's no way I'm gonna make it speak to somebody else. Yeah. It turns into a guessing game. Yeah.
And people can spot that a mil away.
Whether they realize it or not, they can.
It just strikes me how how similar if you're pursuing
Creative expression and longevity, by the way.
In so many disciplines, it's the same thing. It is just the same thing.
Whether it's podcast, whether it's music.
Whether it's
writing Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite writers. Yeah. Hilarious cat.
Breakfast of Champions, et cetera. People can pick up any of his books. They're really fun to read.
And he used to say along the lines I'm paraphrasing, but he's if you open up the window and try to make love to the world, you're gonna catch the flu. Basically, if you're if you're trying to if you're trying to catch more than the flu. If you're trying to appeal to everybody
You're lost. You're lost.
And
least you know you have an audience of one if it's resonating with you. And the personal can be so universal. Well and
Again.
We're so lucky as artists.
Writers, musicians, whatever you are as an artist.
'Cause that's therapy.
You have your own built in
Therapeutic machine. Yeah.

So there's the
Aspect of creative longevity. Right. How many years you've been doing this again?
Thirty five, I guess. Somewhere around there. Thirty five. Thirty five years. So you have?
Creative longevity.
How do you continue to follow the right scent trail, which is very personal.
And not get lost because there's gonna be a lot of temptation, a lot of external forces
Expectations, right? So there's that, which we've spoken to a bit.

Physically.
I know a lot of people are gonna want me to talk about this. I wanna talk about it.
How do you think about physically being capable to do what you do? I mean, you are still performing.
That is intensely physical. I have never performed as a musician on stage, but I know a few
Even when you're not
running around is physical. Yeah. Because of the energy they expect. And in
In my case
I can't sit still when I'm performing. Yeah, I'm all over the place.
But yeah, focus is
The biggest word.
I think in my vocabulary when it comes to what I do for a living.
'Cause the times where I'm not focused are the times things aren't working.
I tell you the the last three years have been tough to focus.
With what I've gone with with surgeries. With the surgeries I've had four back surgeries and double knee replacements.
And
Tried to work through all of it and and did work through all of it.
But there was a moment in time back in the spring this year.
After my third back surgery.
I was it last year.
All the years running together. Anyway, after my third back surgery when it it just didn't work.
That I thought.
That I was gonna really.
Be looking at.
Not being able to do this anymore.
'Cause I can't imagine
Not doing it the way that I do it.
There's no way that I'm gonna go out there and sit on a stool.
Mm.
Sing for an hour and a half.

physically impossible for me to do.
Yeah, you're kinetics.
I don't know
know that anybody wants to see that from me.
So if I can't go do the shows the way I do shows and the way that I have fun doing shows.
And
I'm not gonna give everybody what they're paying for.
And I'm not gonna get satisfaction out of it.
So there was there was a
Time work.
Until the last back surgery that actually worked, knock on wood.
Did I think I was gonna be able to make it back.
And not make it back the way I wanted to make it back.
Now.
My focus is back.
My body's back.
Mm.
Brain fogs clearing up from all the anesthesia. So um
I'm feeling like I'm back on a good path. I'm actually feeling like
I've got a second win now and something to prove.
Which is good for me because I need that.
I wanna be the underdog.
I wanna be the
The God always expects to for to work.
You know, I wanna be that guy.
Make yourself a little hungry. It's like uh metaphorically and and
Literally when I'm working, I like to be hungry. I don't like to eat before I go on stage'cause I like to be hungry for that reason. Cause metaphorically it works for me. I just had my first real experience with falconry.
And Oh wow.
The Falconer was very clear. He's like
You need that bird to be hungry if you want it to hunt. Yeah.
It will not perform. If you're sated otherwise. If you're sated, you're not gonna do much. And actually fed up with someone.
Is an expression taken from Falconry because if the bird is fed up, it won't listen to you.
Ah.
Yeah.
I'll have to remember that. It's also a good little piece of knowledge. Yeah. I love those little details. There are all these little words from Falcon. Hood winked also when they put the hood on. Also from Falconer. So focusing.
In uh travel mentors, you mentioned, my gym is how I get refocused. That's my meditation.
And you you talked about this.
Five rounds of twelve exercise with the bar complex kind of adding weight and then going back down. Yeah.
Do you still do that or has your training changed over time? You also mentioned
A pool workout. I'm not sure if you still do that. But what is the training regimen?
What has it looked like and what does it look like now? Well maybe it's changed.
It's changed a little bit.
I have to be a lot more deliberate.
And a lot more careful.
I'm sure that
My work out routine, my three
Work outs a day and
That's true workouts a day. That's what I did for a long time, especially on the road to touring.
Was that just like
Before breakfast, before lunch, before dinner? Yeah.
Really? Yeah.
And they were distinctly different exercises and
In the afternoon exercise was sort of a
outdoor crossfit thing with the whole band.
So that was like an hour and a half. Then I would do my two hour work out in the morning.
Which was mostly weights. Mostly weights and some cardio.
And then
Before
Running the
arena or stadium stairs and doing a discipline at the top of each stairs.
A push up or squat or ad or something.
So you run all the stairs, and then you we take a break and eat, take a nap or whatever.
And then it
Two two thirty, we go out for an hour and a half and do the outside stuff. A border call. You need to work and it's gotta run. That being said, I'm sure that I've a I
Hastened.
All of my injuries.
But I remember specifically when it happened. It was
You know, eighteen eighty three when we shot eighteen eighty three.
That was
Pretty physically.
Demanding. And that wore us out pretty good. That was
Six months, six days a week.
Sixteen hours a day pretty much. Solid.
And at the time I was doing shows while we were doing
'Cause I'd had shows booked. So
I would work till
Filming till seven.
Run and jump on a plane.
Go to a show, get back at three in the morning or two in the morning.
Get up at four, try to get a workout in, and then be in a makeup trader and go the next day.
Can't imagine why he wore yourself out. Not only was I tired though, I was strangely uncomfortable on stage.
During that because
I had this big beard on and people didn't know what I was doing because
We were filming a show that wasn't out yet.
So people didn't know what I was doing and I'd put on about I I tried to a couple times, but nobody explained. Then I'd put on you know about ten pounds of weight'cause there's just protein everywhere. So I mean what
fat or anything, but it was working out steady work, but they always had steak and stuff. So it wasn't fat for people who haven't seen the series. I mean that hotel scene with the I guess the kinda like the pajamas or whatever it is. You want to fuck with anyone else want to fuck with my family. You do not look fat.
But the
But I'm standing on stage and I got this big dyed black beard and I'm thinking these people are thinking
That I'm dying my beard to look young,'cause my beard's gray. I mean my beard's snow white. And I had this big black beard on.
So I was just so uncomfortable on stage and worn out and tired of it. Were you uncomfortable because it didn't feel right to you or because that you knew the audience was a little off kiltered. It didn't feel right to me.
And I could tell that they were trying to figure out what the hell was going on too.
So
It was just it was uncomfortable.
But we got through.
And it wore us out.
And I tweaked myself a little bit a few times.
What's my knee?
And I'd had some knee trouble before.
Yeah. Twenty.
I had a meniscus done on my scoped on my left knee.
That thirty I had a miniscalem or right knee. But they haven't bothered me.
I think my problem is I have a really high pain tolerance. So
I remember specifically
We were in Montreal.
And I think it was three weeks into the tour, maybe four weeks into the tour.
We're in Montreal.
And my knees were hurting, my back was hurting.
Things were starting to fall apart.
And I remember turning.
Just a
Normal turn.
And felt both my knees just
Felt like they exploded.
And I went to bed that night.
And I woke up the next morning and from my hips to my ankles, my legs were
Twice the size.
That they were before I went to sleep swollen. It's terrifying. Yeah.
And so I got up.
Went to the gym. So I spent two years in the gym.
Just
On the treadmill, doing anything I could to try to stay in shape where I had to
Lean.
over the treadmill to walk'cause I couldn't stand up straight.
Just to get walking in. Brutal. And then doing the show. We finished out the tour where they literally
Had to carry me backstage.
I'd get on stage.
Fake it through the show without acting like I was lipping too badly.
And then they would carry me back to the bus after the show.
And then right after that tour
I had to spend a month just sort of prepping myself for surgery and then I went straight in and had the double knee replacements.
And then another back surgery.
After that.
Tim.
Ferris confessional, but
The pain tolerance you mentioned, having a high pain tolerance. Like
Blessing and a curse. It's a curse. I've had multiple
Just had elbow surgery a few months ago, which I should have had probably fifteen years ago.
I just kept I just kept like I walk it off, it's fine. And yeah, shoulder reconstruction.
And I won't turn this into like my litany of complaints about things, but uh just but the ball the back in particular, you know, I've had
crippling back issues for the last three to five years, which were precipitated by this crazy
accident long ago where I basically caught a huge dresser falling off the loading bay of a shipping oh wow.
truck because I want to prevent it from shattering on the ground and it
twisted my body around and basically like tore my lat off of my body. It was
Horrifying accident.
But
I suppose looking back'cause I've wondered this, I have a friend
His name is Kevin Kelly.
Founding editor of Wired magazine, great guy.
I would say for his entire life has basically done
No offense, Kevin.
No exercise except for lots of walking. That's it.
Lots of walking. Yes.
As far as I can tell, no aches and pains. Well thinking is the best exercise. Easing has gotta be early to mid seventies now.
And so I look back and I'm like, I wonder what I would have done.
Because I had a lot of intense training back in the day used to compete in judo and all these various things.
Took quite a few lumps from all that.
And I look back and I'm like, all right, what would I have done differently?
I think there's certain things I would have toned down.
Probably would have given a slightly different prescription. Would have still been pretty aggressive because I don't know if I would be where I am now otherwise without that.
So looking back
During the
Just the that's I mean, over the decades, right? What would you have changed about your
training in retrospect.
If anything.
I would have been smarter about it, probably. Yeah. In what way? Well I would uh
Trained less for sure. And paid more attention to
Small aches and pains.
Instead of waiting until they were debilitating.
Big aches and things. I would have waited for that.
Although as you said.
I honestly believe that if I
Hadn't
Decided that uh
I was just gonna
Get myself back in.
Shape.
'Cause I'd I'd always stayed in shape, but I'd you know, after having kids and stuff.
You know, y you're eating chicken nuggets all the time and you know. So I sort of let myself go for a little while. And then
I did a movie called Four Christmases, which I'd ne I've never seen.
Still haven't seen to this day. Why is that?'Cause I was I think I waited two fifteen when we shot that movie.
How much do you weigh now?
Right now I'm one seventy.
We went to see another movie and I'd taken my kids and they were small.
And
Completely not even thinking about
My movie.
And of course the very first trailer that pops up.
Is for Christmas is the movie that I just done.
And my face pops on the screen.
And my daughter looked at the screen and looked at me. She said, Jeez, Dad, you need to do something.
Like you could stick a pin in me.
Yeah, would have just flew across the room.
And that's when I decided to get back in shape.
But I do think
Yeah.
And
People will argue with me about this, but I believe it.
My core.
That had I not
Done that.
And decided to change my lifestyle change
My work out routine the way out.
Looked and took care of myself.
that I don't think my career would have lasted this long.
And when was that?
Uh.
Early forties.
Like forty two, forty three, how old do you know? I'm fifty eight, yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's insane, man. You hear this, I'm sure, from lots of people, but you are in great I mean, you look like you're in great shape.
And not hitting on you. That's okay. Yeah.
But
What has your work out looked like? And I won't belabor this too much longer, but it's I feel like
Mind, body, brain, these are all the same thing. They're all a super organisms. And the exercise is a fundamental pillar of all of it for me.
And for you, I suspect. So
What has your exercise regimen looked like for the last
Let's call it.
Year. Year.
Well there was
About six weeks where I didn't do anything at all. Which
It was almost impossible for me to do.
And that's probably why some of my back surgeries didn't work as well as they should have'cause I tried to go back too soon.

That's uh that's the story of my right meniscus, too. I've tried to cut it down.
So
Two hours a day.
But that includes
I usually walk an hour or thirty minutes to warm up for my knees to get going, my back
So walking's always my
start out, whether it's thirty minutes or an hour, just a walk.
They loosen everything up.
And do a lot of body weight stuff and a lot of stretching.
But never lift heavy weights.
I don't do heavyweights at all.
Try not to do
deadlifts anymore because of my back. Although the doc says I can do them light, but I'm still scared of them.
So I do a lot of body weight stuff and a lot of circuit training.
And then just try to do everything I do.
With intent and purpose and discipline.
And make sure everything's lined up properly.
When before I never would do that.
I knew what I was doing. I've had some good trainers in my life.
I knew what I was doing, but you know, you get in a hurry and you fall back and start doing the same old stuff and you don't think you don't put your head into what you're doing.
I just have to be a lot more conscious about how I move and what I do.
And are those two hours all in the morning typically? In the morning, yeah. If I don't do it in the morning, it's tough for me to do it. And then that also includes
The older you get and especially with injuries, you've got to really
Try to every advantage you can get. So I do a lot of red light therapy, red light hot therapy.
Steam.
Cold plunges.
So I'll do a lot of that. So that's
No, that's a good thirty minutes at the end of the workout.
to get all that stuff in because I do circ you know, uh multiple circuits of that.
Yeah, we have similar recipe. And two or three of the smartest
Athletes and trainers I know.
who used to be absolute monsters in the gym. I mean, they are power cleaning three hundred, four hundred pounds. I mean, just monsters.
Front squatting, four hundred, five hundred pounds. And now they do lighter weights.
These are guys now I would say the kind of late forties, early fifties.
They do lighter weights, they use blood flow restriction cuffs.
And
They are in fantastic shape. They've lost a little bit of muscle mass because they're not eating like twelve chickens a day. Yeah.
But that's fine. Probably good for your longevity too. For sure. And and
My goal in Orcas, I never want to be big. I don't want to be
Yeah.

I want to be
Athletic.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, the whole
Big muscle thing. I I don't wanna
I'm not gonna fall into that.
Too skinny for that anyway. Yeah, I think there's a point where probably as a musician, it's just it raises more eyebrows and more distracting than awful. Let's go way way back.
As promised, my delayed gratification for the audience. Sorry, it took me this long, guys. But the exercise is for me
is so present every single day. And
We'd love to talk. Maybe after our recording we could talk more, but for the deadlift, for instance, like the Zercher deadlifts or Zercher squats where you're you're holding the barbell in front.
really has protected my back. Yeah.
In an interesting way, for a lot of good reasons, but
We'll see if we come back to that. Okay. If we go way, way back.
I would I mean not to if I when when the delivery far enough that I can remember. Yeah, back back oh you'll remember. You'll remember.
So
Could you tell the story of finding your birth certificate? Oh god, yeah.
Well
I'd gotten home from school.
And
Mom
How old were you at that time? I was eleven.
Mom had kept
In her closet like a crown royal bag.
That was full of coins.
But she always put it in different places.
'Cause when I was going you know, you had a the concession stand at school, you for a quarter you could get a candy bar back then, or like ten cents you could get a Coke or just so people can put you in space. Where were you at the time? In Louisiana, little town start Louisiana where I grew up.
Little farm and community. I mean
It's just a caution like a cotton gin. That's where I grew up.
So I was in her looking for
The little bag trying to find some quarters or something to go buy a candy bar at the store or something.
I found the bag and there was a box right next to it to open the box and
Right on top was my birth certificate.
Yeah.
Didn't think much of it. I started looking at it and
And I saw McGraw.
Where a line had been drawn through it.
And right above it, written by hand.
And pencil with Smith.
Which was my stepdad's name.
And then it said dad's occupation professional baseball player.
And
course of being eleven years old.
Growing up.
They were.
Quite low low.
Middle class.
And you know, didn't have any money and
Seeing something like that, it was just
So hard to register.
It didn't seem
Real and oddly enough.
I had three baseball cards on my wall in my room, his was one of'em.
Because he was one of my favorite players.
So
I
Instantly called my mom.
And
I could tell.
that it hit her like a ton of bricks as she was at work.
And I'm like, Mom, what does this my birthday what does this mean?
And then she was like, Oh my God.
That's all she said.
And she said, I'll be right home.
And then she came home and
We went for a ride.
And she told me the whole story.
What was the story?
Her junior
Summer in high school.
Her mom.
had just left her dad, my grandpa.
And they were staying.
And a motel.
That had a a pool with the outdoor you know, like a
Motor court motel.
They were staying in.
And it just so happened.
that my grandmother and my mom were staying there, but it just so happened that
The minor league team, Jacksonville Suns, minor league team for the Mets.
All the ball players were staying in that hotel as well.
So
Tug and my mom met at the pool.
And sort of dated over the summer.
And
When he left and got called up or whatever.
She found she was pregnant.
My mom was a dancer and she had just gotten
Invited.
It's a Tryout for Where the Action Is by Dick Clark.
Which was like his first show, the precursor to American Bandst and all that stuff.
So my mom had just gotten a letter.
Inviting her to audition for it.
And she had just found out she was pregnant with me.
And then I have her senior portrait.
That she took.
That they always take at the beginning of the senior year.
And she had just found out two days before the senior port that she was pregnant with me.
And every time I look at that portrait, I can see it in her eyes.
I can see.
That her whole future.
I just disappeared.
In front of her.
So tell me the whole story and
So that
She hadn't talked to him since.
And hasn't heard from him?
And I said, But I'd like the meeting.
You know?
So she got in touch with his lawyer somehow.
His agent.
Somehow.
He was still playing at the time.
And
They range somehow.
Mom borrowed a car from her
boss and some money from her boss.
He said he would leave tickets for us and have lunch with us.
We drove there.
He met us for lunch.
We talked for a little while.
And he just said, You know, I'm not your dad.
I don't think I'm your dad, but we can be friends.
Kinda deal.
Went to the game.
I had a Pete Rose magazine where Pete Rose was about to break the hitting record.
that I brought with me and he took me in the clubhouse.
And Pete Rose signed that.
I got to meet Pete Rose.
Got to throw the ball a little bit with some of the guys, but
for batten practice and my mom had got me up.
McGraw shirt made and a Philly's hat and all that stuff. So Jamie all decked out.
So the next year so I we sp met
Never saw him after the game or anything. Never heard from him again.
So of course I was obsessed.
as an eleven year old kid would be about something like that.
I
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Yeah.

What were the emotions
that you felt at the time. Was there
Anger, was there confusion, was there admiration? What was the mixture of emotions that you felt? I think at the time I don't think there was anger.
I think there was some affirmation.
In it.
We grew up in a very dysfunctional life.
The guy who I thought was my dad growing up.
Was an alcoholic and very abusive.
To my mom and me.
And then the second step dad was worse than the first one.
We grew up in really
You know,
No commercial you see now when
Footsteps are coming home.
Kids are scared.
That's the way our house was.
When you tear the truck drive up.
So for me
There was an affirmation of why I felt like I didn't belong.
But
That guy.
So it wasn't a confusion.
I don't think I was young enough to register confusion. I think I was more
Certainly it was more about the excitement of finding out that your dad's a professional baseball player.
It certainly in the circumstances that I grew was was growing up in
So for me it was sort of a a ray of light.
In a lot of ways.
So the next year they were playing in Houston again and I asked Mom if I could go see
The game again.
She got in touch with the agent again said he would leave two tickets, but he's not gonna see us.
So he left two tickets.
It was in Houston, which was the only time I've seen you play.
Cut to the first time I saw you play, he came in and gave up a a grand slam.
The first one play.
But the
The
Bullpim is right along.
Right by the stands. I mean the stands are to that desk where the bullpen is.
Ten, twelve feet away. Yeah.
You're right there.
He wouldn't see us before the game or anything, so he was warming up in the bullpen and my mom says, Why don't you go down and
Say hi to him. He's warming up in the bullpen.
So I walked down to where he was warm up and that was as close to me and you.
You worded him and he's warming up. Something's yelling at him, tug his tell him to. And he wouldn't look at me.
He wouldn't look at me or acknowledge me.
And so
I just sort of dropped it.
Went back home.
I didn't use McGraw, used Smith.
Just sort of forgot about it. Didn't forget about but not even
Only a handful of my friends even knew about it.
I didn't tell very many people about it.
Sort of then I got embarrassed I think after after that.
Yeah, it's just
Like sort of thrown away.
What happened? What changed?
Well
When I was
Eighteen.
Graduated high school.
We didn't have any more for college.
I was counting on sports scholarships and I had a few.
When I was small, I graduated high school was
Five.
Tienen barely.
And a hundred and forty pounds.
getting football scholarships and basketball scholarships. They can
Mm, this probably gonna work out when I get to the next level. My size.
So
She was gonna call about
Paying for college.
See if he would pay for college.
This is a long story. She's gonna see if you'd pay for college. So
I was staying out of it. I you know, I was too busy with my life.
And then I remember the last high school football game.
I'm getting ready, I'm down on the field getting ready to
for the game to start, we'd already ran through the banner and done all that stuff and
Somebody taps me on the shoulder.
And it was my mom.
I'm on the sidelines getting ready to go out and playing like mom.
What are you doing here?
You know, we're about to play a game. You can't be down here on the sidelines. She goes, Well, I heard from Tug's lawyer today.
And I said, Okay, Mom, can we wait?
Till after the game we get home.
To talk about this. Play the game.
Got home.
And we talked a little bit about it.
And then we could talk about the next morning and
The deal was
They'd send a contract.
I said that he would
Pay three hundred dollars a year.
What's my college?
And that I
Wouldn't
Never be able to contact him again.
Then
If I did.
Money with anyway.
Three hundred dollars a year for college.
Then you can't contact me anymore.
And that to me was enough to say.
You know what, fine.
My only request is that I don't even need the money.
Three hundred dollars a month, so I can do anything. I don't need the money, don't need anything.
Um my only request is that he has to meet me with me one last time.
And then if he wants me to sign a contract to leave him alone, I'll do whatever.
So we flew to Houston or drove to Houston.
Drove to Houston.
He had retired at this point.
And
I just graduated high school so I was as tall as him.
And we walked into the hotel and mom said, Well there's Tuck standing.
Checking in over there and he had somebody with him.
Who's lawyer slash agent?
So I walked over to him and tapped him on the shoulder.
And he turned around and looked at me and said, I talk I'm Tim.
'Cause he hadn't seen me since I was eleven.
And I introduced myself.
to the gas standing next to him, and the gas standing next to him
Turned completely white.
'Cause I look just like him. So he knew that the gig was up. So um so we sort of spent the day together hanging out a little bit and then
We went to dinner that night.
He, Mom, and I.
There was a point during dinner
A small talk where I asked mom if she could leave us alone and let us talk for a minute.
And of course, Mom didn't want to do that.
And I'd
Assured her that I I had this, this was fine.
As soon as she left, I just looked at Tug and says, Look, I'll sign your contract. I'll never talk to you again.
I won't bother you.
I just have one question for you.
And I asked him, Do you think you're my dad?
Well he says.
Yes, I I believe I am.
And he said we'll tear the contract up.
And then I didn't hear from him for a year after that.


But after that we ended up
Starting to see more of each other and
Me going while I was in college, I would drive up to Philly and visit and got to know my little brother Mark and my little
Little sister Carey.
Which was great to come out of that. But I always this is what I'll get back to.
At the end of the day
I get asked a lot.
And you said it right, a lot of people now don't know the story.
They knew it at the beginning of my career, but a lot of people that know my career now that know who my dad was, they think that I grew up
In that world.
And I didn't. So I'm glad we're talking about this'cause a lot of people can
Understand now that I didn't grow up in that world.
But the long and short of it is when people ask
How could you have anything to do with your dad? How could you have not hated him? How could you have just not turned your back on him?
My answer always is he gave me something.
That was so precious.
And that was hope.
Whether he meant to
And he didn't.
Or knew it.
Or any of those things. He gave me a reason
to think that I can get out of the situation that I was in. That if he can do that.
And I have it in me to do something.
And so
For that reason alone.
I couldn't hate him.
Hope. Yeah. Yeah.

Everything else. When if everything else is gone, if you got hope, you still got a chance.
We were talking to a friend of mine, he's got
Couple of kids now now mostly grown.
I think the egg is all grown.
Think about it. I mean it's like the older I get, the younger people seem. Oh my gosh. But yeah, they're they're adults. Tell me about it. And uh he said as and I we went for a hike at one point, and he's just a really sweet, very smart guy. And I asked him like All right, what would your advice be to
Aspiring parent. Me.
I don't yet have any kids, but really am looking forward to that.
Building family. And he said it's really simple.
Your job is to love your kids. They don't owe you anything. It's not their job to love you.
Number two, you have to teach them to be optimistic. Yes.
That's it.
Yeah.
Those two things make perfect sense. Yeah. Yeah.
Your vision of their life and your expectations of their life, don't let it cloud.
Your love and guidance for'em.
I have lots of questions about.
Family'cause it's top of mind for me. But I wanna ask you about
Guitars. Here's why.
Because
I was
Looking at
Up.
On the way here, Yoyo Ma.
Famous cello player.
Yeah.
Picked up cello.
Probably got handed a chill. At age four. Wow. All right.
My understanding is you did not do that with guitars. No.
So how did this music thing come about? Well
Yeah.
Well, the music thing came back because of my mom's love for music.
Because
From
My earliest memory of the time I can
Remember mom was always singing and playing records around the house and always had the radio wide open.
So
I knew every song on the radio.
And she would encourage me to sing. She always wanted me to sing along with her on the right. So I knew every song on the radio, we'd sing with my mom all the time. We'd walk around the house singing.
Singing in church. I mean my friends used to
Give me shit all the time.
Playing baseball'cause I played shortstop and the whole time I'm out there I'm singing.
So
Playing around.
So I was always singing to the point where my my sisters are all were always like, Shut up. Just shut up. Just stop singing.
And I still do it to this day, somebody can say a word and I'll sing a song that's got that word in it. It just it's just in me, I can't get it out.
So it was always something, but I was in the same category that you were thinking that
You know, the guys you hear on the radio guys that
have been doing this since they were three or four years old. They're trained musicians. They're guys that
Jackson Five. Yeah.
This is something you can't just do.
Unless you're trained to do it since you were a little kid.
So I got into college
That's when I realized when I got into college and I
Went out for the
First uh football.
Sort of round up and
See everybody.
When I looked around and thought.
All right.
I'm gonna get killed. I'm I'm gonna be meet on the practice squad, never see the field.
And get the hell beat out of me.
And spend all of my time here.
So I ended up
Not playing ball.
Joined a fraternity.
On my high school ring.
And bought a guitar.
For twenty bucks.
Why did you decide to
Get the guitar.
Because I thought
I love music.
I love singing.
Chick might dig it if I got a guitar and learn to play a few songs. Okay, so it wasn't so far ahead as to hike
No, it wasn't I wasn't thinking about moving to N it wasn't a career move. This was this was a it was a move, but it was a s wasn't a career move.
And you know, I won't and I thought I you know, I could play some clubs around town, it'd be fun to do.
I even thought look, my b biggest stream I could have here is get a house gig somewhere where I
Making money every week and playing music. And remind me where were you at the time? In m I was in Louisiana Monroe. In Louisiana. North East Louisiana University, which is U L M now. But back then it was North East Louisiana University.
So I bought the guitar and and all of my friends had moved away for the summer. It's my freshman summer.
College.
I had a job where I worked four hours a day to plant nursery in the mornings just
Moving stuff.
And I'd come home and just
I'd watch CMT.
And watch where their fingers were on like guitars.
Early YouTube. Yeah, early YouTube. And then out on music sheets you it had these little
guitar fret things where it would show you where your fingers went. So I spent a lot of years where my fingers are in the wrong position, but I would still make the cord.
And my buddy, my roommates would hide my guitar for the longest time'cause I was so bad.
But then when I started getting pretty good at it, they would hide it. I couldn't find it, but when chicks would come over to the house they would they would grab my guitar and bring it to me. They want me to start playing songs. So um
Yeah.
Over that summer I I learned about fifty songs and I just started playing just me and a guitar at this little catfish house called Cock of the Walk.
And that was my first gig and that's
How I paid my rent for a while.
What was the first I am still a terrible guitar player.
I guess you play well enough to write my songs and made it work for you. When was the first inkling or the first time?
Sign, feeling, maybe.
Where you're like.
Okay.
I think this could be a thing.
First off the encouragement I got from my friends.
in college, my fraternity buddies. Which
Deck.
Could go either way.
When you're trying to play guitar and sing song from your buddies in a fraternity, that could go the wrong way.
But
When it didn't when they were encouraging me and they were giving me credit and tell me how good I was
To me that was
That was a big deal for a bunch of guys to tell you.
Your friends to say that when you're just trying to figure it out and you don't even know anything about it really.
For them to tell you that you're good and they they want to hear you do it and they
Ask you to sing all the time.
So when I started playing clubs and stuff, I would get good reaction from the crowds and then the owners would come over and say, Hey, would you want to come back? And you know, you guys are the best band we've had, you know, stuff like that.
And then
I took a military science class.
Military science, like strategy. Yeah, studying general science. Yeah. And um I got to know the instructor
Captain Whitehead was his name. He was an army guy.
Head of the Rotsi and everything there. And all the guys in the class were Rotsi guys.
R to C
Anyway, we took the class and it was
tactics and we were out in the field doing stuff. We'd spend a weekend tracking, even doing all the
Stuff with repelling and
It was a great course.
And at the end of the course
Everybody was asked to vote who was our platoon leader.
All I got.
voted by all the Razi guys as the platoon leader.
For the class, for the year. So I was the
Top student in the class.
And so Captain Whitehead took a big interest in me, but he thought I should be a Marine, so he kept taking me to the Marine Recruiting Office.
So I visited the the Marine Recruit Office quite a bit.
Filled out all my paperwork.
And one night I decided

Everything packed, I sold everything I had, sold my car, water skis, shotguns.
Sold everything I had. I think I ended up with about three thousand dollars.
I have my guitar.
One suitcase.
And my marine paperwork.
Sitting on my dresser.
And I said when I wake up in the morning
I'll decide whether I'm gonna move to Nashville or join the Marines.
And I fell asleep.
Woke up the next morning, looked over, got up.
Picked up the marine paper, tore it up.
put it in the garbage and went and bought a greyhound bus ticket.

And ended up in Nashville. So many questions. So
Why did
Captain Whitehead.
Think you should be a Marine.
I don't know. I guess because I did well in the class.
And
He liked we got along well. He he
He kept coming to our fraternity house and hanging out with us. We just got along well and he liked me. As a matter of fact, we played
It had to have been fifteen years later after I was
had a lot of success. We played
A base in San Diego, a military base in San Diego.
And it was huge. It was packed.
And I'm singing and playing, I'm standing in front of the stage and I look down.
And Captain Whitehead's right at the front of the stage. And I got to say hi to him and talk to him a little bit afterwards. He just always he just says, You would have been a good Marine.
You missed the boat, son. Uh no, I didn't kidding.
The platoon leader piece
Is interesting to me.
What do you think, even if you had to speculate?
Why did that happen? Why did they vote you Platoon Leader?
I don't know. I mean if you just enjoyed this, what do you think?
But presumably a bunch of kids, a bunch of guys in the class or a bunch of people in the class. Yeah.
I think there were a few
Obstacles
That I figured was able to figure out
Like moving stuff and how to
build a bridge across you know just little things that I was
Able to figure out or
Or if I wasn't able to figure out just acted like I did and took charge of it and got it done.
But um
I don't know. It was just it was one of those things that was really interesting to me. It made sense to me.
And when you step into something you don't know anything about and all of a sudden it clicks and makes sense.
It just made sense.
And it really sparked my interest in being in the military because
I thought wow.
If I can be around all these guys who wanna do this.
And as works out, maybe this is a career path for me.
Thank God I have so much respect for my sister my sister was Army in the Army. She was Army intelligence.
Cousins, uncles, so I've got a long history of military family.
What was it that morning?
This is a long time ago, of course, but it seems like such a
Sliding door moment.
Such an important fork in the road.
What was it that led you to tear up the paperwork?
But
Thought that I could always go back to that.
And
I can't always go back to the
To the music.
Does there come a point where that's passed?
But the hardest part was having to call my mom.
Because
My mom was
Really intent on me making something out of myself.
And so
You know, how hard our life was growing up and how hard her life was.
And she worked three jobs and
Going to work with black eyes and
Busted lips.
Yeah, just all
The struggles that a single abused mom
Right.
Not single, but abuse mom has to do. She's pretty single for all intent and purpose.
But I had to call her. I was in pre-law.
My joke now is that
I have paid more lawyers in my life than I would have ever made as well. That that is probably true. Yeah. So I had to call my mom and I was scared to death because I knew how badly she wanted me to complete school and go to law school and
I know how badly she wanted that for me.
And for her because of the sacrifices that she had made.
'Cause you know, people wanted her to give me up for adoption, uh all sorts of stuff. And she she was a seventeen year old girl then.
I'm going to a kid.
But I called her and told her what my plan was.
Embrace myself, fully expecting my little Italian mom to
Give me a good wearing out.
She can do that.
And and uh
What she said is gonna make me cry what she said.
But she said, Son.
I'm surprised you haven't done it already and if you don't, you'll never know.
So you should go.
And it was so shocking and unexpected.
Yeah, um
It gave me all the confidence in the world.
I need it.
And then when I first moved here
Back to where you think everybody
grows up since they were a little kid with a guitar in their hands and singing.
That's how they become famous.
When I first moved here and started going to clubs and sitting in, I was thinking, Wait a minute, I can hang with these guys.
I can hang with these guys. I I I can find my niche here. How many shows do you think how many gigs had you played?
Up to the point that you got on that Greyhound bus.
A year or two gigs.
I don't know.
A hundred maybe?
The clubs.
Mostly just me and a me and a guitar.
Somewhere band.
I actually went to Jacksonville.
for about six months'cause my mom had moved to Jacksonville after I started college'cause she just went through another divorce and it was terrible divorce.
So she moved to Jacksonville, which is where she grew up.
So
Jacksonville Junior College had just won the junior college world series.
Coach.
Heard about me.
Sure.
couple of years ago back in high school
He knew my mom somehow.
Anyway.
Invited me to come.
to play baseball at Florida Junior College.
So I thought all right.
This is getting old here. I'm playing music.
I'm not really going to class like I should.
Maybe I should go out there and try and play baseball, see what happens.
So I moved to Florida.
Same thing, showed up.
Was gonna play baseball, hung around for a little while, realized
But I really didn't want to do that.
'cause I was playing clubs at night there too.
And just decided to go.
full time start playing clubs in in Florida.
And did that.
Then I moved back to Monroe, played for about three months and then moved to Nashville.
I'm curious what
Nashville.
Did for you because it makes me think of
Bob Dylan.
Before he was Bob Dylan, but like moving from Minnesota.
too I think it was Greenwich Village, right? Moves to the epicenter.
It's like I'm gonna find Guthrie.
And
I don't know how I'm gonna make it work, but I'm gonna figure it out and I'm going to the center of the action.
And that story was really laid out for me in detail by this very, very uh
Impressive investor and
And fascinating human Bill Gurley, who
Is in uh
In Austin, but
He has a book coming out soon called Running Down a Dream, which is about sort of pursuing passion and
Then finding that lightning in a bottle for yourself. But one of his sections is on going to the epicenter, like going to where the action is.
And I would love for you to describe what
What effect?
Nashville had. I mean in a sense you already
showed some of what can happen by the fact that you get off the bus, you go have a beer.
After last call. And then but a bing but a boom. You hear a great song.
Right. Yeah, as long as it end up making my career.
Um

I think instantly it just lit a fire.
Under me.
When you
Jump into a
pool of people who are like minded.
And who are all
Chasing the same thing.
There's just such an energy that you get from everybody just doing it like
You know, Tracy Lawrence, Kenny Chesley and I were best friends.
And we ran around together everywhere. None of us had record deals.
And we would compete.
You know, all these clubs like you could get up and sing
And
You could win fifty bucks who got the most hand applause. So we were always competing to get cool money. That's cool. Try try to outdo it. Tracy usually always won. But uh
Just run around being involved.
Every night being at somebody's apartment, playing music, writing songs every day.
out every night singing in all these clubs. It was just an immersion experience.
Well,
You learn so much, you learn from different singers. You hear somebody sing and you think, Wow, how do they do that? How can I
You imitate people.
You figure things out, you see what somebody's doing on stage, you see how somebody singing, you see how somebody's songwriting.
It just becomes this sort of gumbo.
Of all his magic.
that you find and it starts to get just comes into every pore of your body.
And you just open yourself up to it.
And just try to learn as much as you can. It can be heartbreaking too at the same time, you know. I mean
When you see and then also recognizing
Where you're getting held back.
Where you start realizing you need to put
More aspirational people around you.
As opposed to people are just
Being happy doing what they're doing.
And I try to tell it to my daughters all the time. That sounds
Like it could be very difficult.
It can be difficult because it's not about dropping friends.
But it's about gathering friends that
People that you wanna be like, they're they have traits that you wanna

An instance of when that happened and how you navigated it?
I don't know if I can describe an instance.
We're just
Why that even occurred to you, I guess.
And how you went about finding those because I needed to learn for one thing.
'Cause I knew nothing about
The music business.
How to make a record.
I knew nothing about anything except for how to sing along to the radio.
And then you know, play some songs I learned on the guitar.
Was an amateur.
Period.
But everything.
So I just wanted to be around people who knew what they were doing.
And people who
could teach me things and people that were were willing to teach me stuff. And people that
If I wanted to compete.
If I can't compete with this guy who's playing in a club
In downtown Nashville.
Then I'm not gonna compete with the guys who have record labels out there selling millions of records.
So
How did you find those people?
To learn from.
I think it's just a matter of just being out and being around people and just
Learning who
Who the people are.
Oh.
Are gonna be aspirational to you?
And inspirational to you and who the people are gonna hold you in place.
Do any people stand out in those
I don't know. First like five years.
Let's just say
Mike Borcetta.
Stands out. Mike Borschettis who signed me to my rec first record deal at Curb Records.
And he was somebody who
I walked off the street, had a demo.
A few songs.
He tried to kick me out of his office and I made him listen to the song. How did you get into his office in the first place?
The way I got into his office is because
Oddly enough, it was because of Tug.
Because
A guy named Bruce.
Window.
was a friend of Mike Borshetta's.
And he happened to be a friend of Tug's.
So tug was
talking to Bruce Wendell one day and Bruce says I know a guy named Mike Mike Borshetta.
Not a national
Maybe I can get him a meeting.
Yeah.
And that was it.
So
I got his phone number.
That's all they gave me. So I kept trying and trying and trying to get a meeting with him. I couldn't get a meeting with him.
So it was during fanfare one year.
What is fanfare?
Now it's what the big thing they have at the stadium every year where everybody plays, but back then fanfare was when you would just sit and stand in a booth for three days and sign autographs for thousands and thousands of people that would come through.
So w this was going on when you're of course I wasn't signing hard grass, I didn't have a record label.
So I decided I'm gonna go back herb records.
And see if Mike Borschetta's in his office. And I'd had a demo of these.
I have to
Back up just a little bit,'cause there was this little place called Poboy Dons.
In Tolula, Louisiana.
That was in the middle of a cotton field.
It was just a little wood
Frame shack.
It was like a
Convenience store slash
Deer butcher shop slash crawfish bowl kind of place.
And in the back of the store they had a bunch of stumps.
And on old wood stove.
And there were a bunch of guys all in their seventies and sixties that were all playing country music.
And
I happen to go walk.
be out that area one day and it was in the middle of nowhere.
And so I stopped in.
And sat down and started playing guitar with these guys. So they kept inviting me to come back.
So it ended up being it was about thirty miles from school.
So every Thursday night it ended up being
Like five or six cars of my fraternity brothers. We'd all go to this little hole in the wall place with all these seventy year old guys.
And they would give us free beer and crawfish as long as I'd sit back there and sing with them.
And it ended up
that place becoming packed and packed and packed where there were just people there every Thursday night.
It just became a really fun thing. So when I moved to Nashville, Pullboy Don, who owned that and it was a farmer too, and he owned all the farmland around.
And just
He played the bass and the thing and his his his store. He just
Really loved me and loved to hear me sing.
So
I needed a demo. I didn't have a demo, didn't have any money for a demo. So I called him.
And he sent me three thousand dollars.
To record a demo.
So I recorded a demo and that's the demo I played for Mike Borschetto when I walked into his office.
Anyway I've sat down
He said, Well leave the CD with me. So you're just knocking knocking anybody. Well, I walked past the secretary because I saw he was in his office. And I walked past the secretary. She goes, Excuse me, and I said, I'm just supposed to say hi to Mike.
I walked in and I said, Hi Mike, how you doing? He said, Who are you?
Then I told him my name he goes oh yeah yeah yeah he says um
Call me next week and we'll meet and I I said, Well I have my demo here, I'd like for you to listen to it. He goes, Well leave it on the desk and I'll listen to it. I says, Well
Can you listen to it now? And he goes, No, I'm headed out to fanfare. I gotta go. I says, Well, can you just listen to part of a song? He goes, All right, I'll listen to a song.
So he put the song in and halfway through the first one he goes, You got a record deal, kid.
Wow.
That's how I got a record though.
Halfway through the first song. Yeah. First halfway thing. Was it the first song on the demo? Yeah, first song on the demo. Yeah.
And then it it was convoluted after that. But I got a record deal, so I got my foot in the door. So
You know.
That started from there.
But he was somebody that
When
A guy who runs a record label.
And you know nothing about how that works, and it's the first record label I went to.
Sits down and
Listen to half of your demo.
Which you're not even sure is any good.
And it says you have a record deal.
Yeah.
I think
You get exponentially better.
In that instant.
Yeah.
Yeah. So you're given wings in a way. Absolutely.
Yeah.
The Lustard Seed.
Yeah.
So we're gonna hop around a little bit because
We could go a million different directions. I mean, we could spend twenty hours talking about your career and still not run out of material.
I believe it might have been in parade. It could have been in a different interview.
But correct me if I'm wrong, but
I think you've said that your wife saved your life. Oh god. Along those lines. Yeah.
Why is that?
Because I was
Running pretty hard.
I was running hard.
Back in the day.
What does that mean?
Well, I was drinking a lot.
Which that didn't stop after we got married, but
She beat it out of me after a while. But um
Yeah, I was I was just doing everything. I was I was a kid in a candy store, you know, especially after I got successful.
And never had any money before, never been around any of that stuff before.
And then all of a sudden
It became a tool.
Yeah.
was useful.
So it was it.
When Faith came along I was burning it.
Wide open.
When we met.
And uh
She started tapping the brakes for me.
How did she do that in a way that didn't repel you?
Well look at her.
Well I mean right. Yeah. I mean yeah, she's she's got a lot on offer. This is this is for sure.
But like I would imagine we don't know each other well, but
That
Strong willed guy.
High gear.
High intensity, high velocity.
Kidney Candy store. Like
Faith is incredible on a million different levels, and
You also have a lot of options around. Mm-hmm.
So what allowed her to
dial some of those things back, which ended up being really important long term for you and for
Both of you.
Without
Scaring you off in a sense.
A
I knew that I was at her.
point where I needed to slow down. Got it. So you had the uh the the self awareness. I I had the self awareness that that I needed to slow down at the time.
B
When we met, we were twenty eight years old.
So we were a little older.
We both had success.
And then C
Once I met her.
I don't want to lose her.
I'm just doing a loser.
What was it about her?
She's just magic.
She's magic. She's
Not just her seeing and her looks and
Oh, that's done.
Of course that's all a bonus. But uh
As a person, she's just magic. She just lights up a room.
And
She lit me up.
And still does. And
I
Wouldn't be the same artist.
Had I not met her?
I certainly wouldn't have the career that I've had had I not met her.
Certainly wouldn't have lasted as long. I wouldn't have lasted as long.
I would have burned out.
Really quickly, I think.
Especially.
If I had lost her.
After I found her.
If I had lost her because of not.
Sort of bringing myself around a little bit.
Done.
I definitely would've.
Been in a dollar spot.
So you guys met at twenty eight. When did you
Change the drinking.
It took a while.
I certainly calmed it down quite a bit.
And it fluctuated, you know, it would be times where it was not bad than times where it was bad.
And then it just got to where it was just
Got out of control.
That's when she set me down. Well actually
She sent me down a few times, but actually there was one morning in particular where I
Woke up.
And
Realized that it was seven in the morning.
I was gonna have to take the kids to school.
S
And I realized I had a bottle of it.
Whiskey in my hand.
At seven in the morning.
And I had the ball in my hand, I walked straight back to the bedroom and told her that
I need help.
She goes, All right, let's do it.
I'm with you.
And she's stuck by me the whole time.
And look, it's not been a linear path.
As anybody knows it's ever gone through.
That kind of thing. It's not a linear path. There's always pitfalls.
Steps backwards and steps forwards. But um
She's a rock.
She's a rock.
You know, this is just a random thought, but
At some point if you haven't met
Laird Hamilton.
And his wife Gabby, Laird Hamilton's. I know Laird is, yeah. Yeah. In any case. A lot of parallels. Yeah in your lives. And I think also
Gabby.
Gabby Reese.
Used to be a professional volleyball player. In any case, just a lot of parallels.
I I mean, right.
High gear.
And
It's very common, at least among my friends, certainly and even in my
Case way back in the day.
It's like
That type of
Intensity can also get misapplied or
reapply to something like alcohol. Absolutely.
Yeah. It's not always a selective intensity. No, it's not selective intensity and in
Then when it becomes a physical dependency, then then you're in trouble. Then you're in trouble. Yeah.
How has fatherhood changed you?
Well.
Well, you certainly see with different eyes.
And
It changes what your definition of love is.
More so than even getting married.
Th
When you have children.
Because it it's
There's such a
Responsibility and a weight.
That comes with the all the brightness and the light.
Love.
That causes you

Yeah.
That's your true
Eternal life.
Is your children.
And
Oh, they carry.
their perception of you forward.
And it's a scary proposition.
'Cause you're not gonna do it right.
Nobody does it right.
You just hope you do
Thirty percent of it right.
And you just show up.
I think the thing that it changed more than anything
And I think anybody would tell you this, and it's pretty simple.
It takes
A lot of the selfishness out of you.
And
You know.
Part of you has to have that, I guess, in order to
to succeed and to to push forward.
But um
What?
It takes a lot of selfishness out of you and puts a lot of drive and passion.
And responsibility.
And thinking of the future.
in your path. Which
Provides more structure.
For you.
And what I've also found out too is
Is as the kids grow up, and Faith and I both have found out.
That structure was so good because
You had to be on the ball.
You had to get up every morning at six, you had to break breakfast, you had to take your kids to school, you had to help with homework.
To go to practices, you coach softball, coach all those things that keep you in a good balanced routine.
So when the kids start leaving the house
All of a sudden you start, What am I gonna do with
The rest of my day.
You know, I I uh now I've got I don't have to get up at six.
It can take away some of your focus and it can take away some of your routine and it can take away a little bit of drive once the kids are out of the house.
It comes back.
But at first you're sort of lost and sort of figuring out what what do I do with my time here?
I've got a few chapters to get through before I get I get there. But uh and then after about six or eight months, a year
Then you realize you're you and your wife, you realize you're home alone.
Then the fun begins.

How did you
decide to
be a father in the sense like how did you
Set rules for yourself or goals.
Hopes.
Without
necessarily a model for it. So part of the reason I think that I've delayed building a family for as long as I have
Is that
God bless my dad in in certain ways, but I want to do things differently if I did it at all. Very differently.
And since I felt like I had no role model.
I felt like I had no confidence that I would be a good father.
And so I was like, Well
Fundamentally if I'm bringing helping bring some life into the world.
They didn't ask for it necessarily. I mean we could debate gets into some deep
philosophical territory and religious territory quickly, but
I wouldn't want to do a bad job.
Or more harm than good.
And so I've waited and waited and waited. And Well you're gonna do a bad job.
Yeah.

That's just I mean everybody does a bad job. Yeah.
There's no training manual, but I'm
I was in the same boat.
I didn't know if I was gonna be a good dad or bad. I didn't know what kind of dad I would be. I I knew that I
Wanted to be a dad.
And I wanted to be a good dad and I knew that I didn't want my children's life to be like mine was.
So
I think in a lot of ways.
Maybe that
The life that I had growing up prepared me to be a better dad.
Because of what I knew I didn't want to do.
And
I found this business has really made me find out that
Learning what you don't want to do.
And what doesn't work for you is better than knowing what does.
All right. So I'm gonna grab that and run with it.
There's an expression in Japanese. I I went to Japan as an exchange student called Hamenkoshi. Hamenkyoshi is like opposite teacher.
Basically like an anti role model.
And they show you what not to do.
So I'm wondering if they're
Professionally have been any experiences
A tour.
How you
made a song or
Even shows.
A song in the first place.
that really taught you what not to do.
Like an event, a song, a performance, a commitment, a partnership, anything where you're like
Mm.
Okay.
Oh I
Put myself in plenty of positions that I wish I hadn't.
I don't know if I could specifically say.
What not to do.
I can say be prepared.
All the time? Is there always a good thing?
But I can tell you my most embarrassing moment.
in the music business. It might be the best way to go.
Bruce Springsteen, who I'm a huge fan of.
And
He's a friend and I've known him for a long time. One of the greatest guys in the world. Sweetheart.
Music cares. You know what music cares is? It's where they do a big concert the night before the Grammys to raise money.
And it honors a specific artist.
And other artists come in and do their songs.
So
Bruce was being honored.
So he called and asked if Faith and I would do tougher than the rest together.
That's part of the thing. Of course we said yes, we would love to do it.
So
Everybody's doing their songs and their stinging you know, there's all the big guys.
Playing Bruce's songs.
So we do tougher to rest and we do a great job on it and everything turned out good and we're sitting at Bruce's table.
We're talking and
And Bruce is like, Hey man, you know, at the end of this
No, we're gonna do uh glory days. Everybody's gonna come on stage and
Just sing along with the choruses.
Thank you and Faith that wanna come up and do that. And I'm saying, sure, we'll come up. I mean we can do the course.
Sing along the course of Glory Days.
So we're up there, we're on stage.
We're all singing along, so
Bruce is in the second chorus and he he looks over at one artist. Yeah.
It's like
Come sing the second verse and they always are like, mm mm.
No.
So he looks at another artist like I'll sing the second verse and that artist is like mm mm, no no no.
So on the microphone
He goes, Hey Cowboy Hat, come sing the second verse.
And in my mind I'm thinking, all right, it's glory days.
I know it.
But
I don't think I've ever sung and Bruce's phrasing.
This is some of the hardest phrasing in the world, the way he writes.
And I thought, all right, I can get through the second verse of this. I can figure it out. The words were up there.
So I step up.
And
I I have no idea where to come in.
I don't know the phrasing. I don't know anything and
Everybody who is anybody in the music business.
Is out there.
And I'm standing there.
With that.
When your mom
has caught you doing something r or your wife has caught you doing something really bad. And where all the blood rushes out of your body.
And your gut punch.
So I couldn't sing the song. I'm just like
And Bruce is comes up beside me is like I like that. Then he starts singing the song.
So then I step back beside Faith. I'm gonna s can I stand up? Yeah, I step back beside Faith.
Very.
And I step back beside her and this is what faith does.
You stepped away from it.
Luckily
They shot it in a way'cause it's always recorded and released and everything.
So they shot it in a way that I could go back and fix the vocal where it didn't look like I screwed it all up, but boy, that was
I didn't have fun that night at the hotel, actually. Do you get a lot of ball busting after that? I I did. I did. But no no none worse than mine, what I did to myself'cause it was it was
Really the most embarrassing moment.
There are a few moments where you feel like you're over your head sometimes and you get I'm
And it usually works out well, but
Well I tell
Performing on the Oscars was one of those moments where
Everything just seems to your body defies you.
You know, you you think you got it under control when you start
Like everything goes it worked out. Everything was fine. I did a good job, but in the moment you're feeling like it's falling apart on me right here in front of everybody.
So I would love to
Flesh out the humanizing.
Uh Tim McGraw a little bit, right? Because for people who may not know your career, they
Might be like, Man, this giant just gets off the Greyhound bus and then it's like
Is it a double and a triple and a home run and it's just
Endless home runs, right? Green lights the whole way.
And
I'm curious if there are any
Favorite failures, things that didn't work.
That ended up.
teaching you something important or laying the seeds for something later. Or
If there was ever a
Period of feeling.
Plateau or stuckness.
And how you dealt with it.
I think
Failure.
that I learned a lot from was my first album.
Which we always say went wood.
I think we had one song that m made it to thirty eight off of that album.
Yeah, but would.
So no hits on it.
So the label just sort of forgot about me after that.
And so I was
Slowly gathering songs.
But I learned a lot. I learned what I didn't want to do.
The way to make music. I learned what I didn't want it to sound like.
So I slowly started gathering songs.
From songwriter friends of mine. Not really big songwriters, just friends of mine who are songwriters.
Slowly sort of collecting songs.
The label.
Never even called me after the album came out'cause it didn't do anything.
Didn't talk to him at all.
So I collected these songs.
And
I went to bar and
I said, All right, I'm ready to go record these songs. Byron again. My producer Byron Gallamore.
That we produced together. I said, I'm ready to cut these songs and
He goes, Well, it's curb.
Hurt'em or they're
Proved on says no, we're just gonna book a session and go cut the album.
And so we booked the session. So it's like an album on spec. Yeah. We
We build curb.
Mm-hmm.
We build curbs for the whole thing. Cut the album.
Did all the artwork.
Had the CD ready with the artwork done and turned it into'em.
And of course they hit the roof.

'Cause we'd spent a bunch of money an album that we weren't approved of.
Then they listened and it was the Not a Moment Too Soon album.
Then they listen to the album.
Then they were all on board.
And the good thing about that is the first one didn't work.
Second one.
I said I wanna do this my way and do this and had Indian outlaw. I'm gonna do the songs I wanna do. I'm picking all the songs, doing the songs I wanna do.
Don't cut'em the way I want to cut'em.
And if it fails, it fails on my terms.
This time.
And
Luckily it worked.
So that's why you didn't reach out for approvals. You're like, I don't want some
Album by committee. No, I don't it never works.
Not for me. I'm sure it works for other artists, but any time I've done that.
Any time that I've
Let somebody else taught me into a song.
Whether it be a record label head or somebody else.
taught me under song that I knew wasn't right for me. It's never worked.
Never work.
And there's been tons of times where people didn't like the song at all.
And it worked.
So how did
You decide.
Or when you say you you knew what
You didn't want it to sound like.
Can you say more about that?
Well you can go back and listen to my first album, you can figure it out.
I just knew that
There were three songs on the first album that they sort of let me run loose with.
Well they're also like what other people hear and then there's what you hear what it means to you. Absolutely.
And you also realize quickly in this business that
You know, you think
When you move to town you find your producer, you find your you get a record label, you get all those things and everybody knows what they're doing.
That's not necessarily the case. Sounds a lot like book publishing. Yeah. Most of the time the artist knows what they're doing and then
Everybody sort of follows what the artists that get successful.
Starts doing what they're doing.
But there are great people like boy, without Byron Gallimore I wouldn't know my right hand from my left. He's my
partner in the studio and I would can't imagine making a record without him.
But
You find out very quickly.
If you don't have
an idea about what you want and how you want to make your music and how you want it to sound.
And how you want your career to go and if you don't get in control of that and you don't do it the way you want to do it.
It might work.
But it's not gonna work for long.
And there have been times in my career where I've sat back and decided all right, I'm gonna let
Just float and let other people make the decisions. Everything's fine for now.
Um
Sure enough. If I don't
Get involved. It doesn't go the way I want it to go. Now I've got people around me now that's been around me for twenty, thirty years.
That I trust.
But even still.
If they don't get regular input from me.
Nobody knows what's in your head.
Nobody knows exactly what you picture.
Even though you might think they do.
They don't.
When they get close.
But um
You have to stay involved.
I'm learning that more and you know, these last few years have been tough for me.
to be involved as much as I want to be because I've been battling just trying to get my health back.
And I'm fortunate that I have the right people around me that helps me through those periods.
When your focus is on and you're paying attention to what you're doing.
And you know what the path is.
It makes it easier for everybody around you.
What about the
Periods of stuckness outside of the most recent injury period.
Obviously the multiple surgeries.
Well the biggest period of stuckness and the biggest period where I thought
Besides this period where I thought it was might be over is when I went through a whole legal battle with Curb Records.
That was a very dark period of my career.
They kept extending my contract by putting greatest hits albums out. So every time I would turn in an album, that would be the final album for my
Contract. It would drop a greatest hits.
Which didn't count.
Against the contract. So I think they ended up putting like ten greatest hits out.

So finally I I decided I either had to
Bite the bullet and
Try to go to court with them and get out.
Or be stuck with them.
Either way, I'm taking a chance on my career.
We battled for a couple of years and
I had to pretty much rebuild my career after that.
That was a scary time.
Because
Momentum's a tough thing.
And
I heard a quote the other day, it was it's actually a landman, I was watching it.
And uh great show.
Sam Elliott was talking to Billy Bob, he says, You know that
monkey at rodeos that rides on the back of the border collie.
And the border color just runs around and runs around and the monkey's just hanging on for dear life.
And he can't let it go because he'll die.
So he's gotta hold on. He looked at Bill said
You're that monkey.
And I th looked at face and goes, Jesus Christ, I'm that monkey.
But I feel like I'm that monkey.
Ha.
But
I don't know that if it's in
Intentional.
If it's
Innately in you?
But there's something about
Even when you know you need to take a break, or even when you know you need to slow down.
When things are rolling.
There's this.
sixth sense in your body that knows you can't let the momentum stop.
'Cause it's so hard to restart.
Even if consciously you're not thinking that.
There's something in you that keeps it driving'cause you don't want the ball to start rolling.
'Cause you're scared.
'Cause you're scared if the ball stops rolling, you'll never get it rolling again. For sure. So that was a time when when that was happening to me and I thought
No.
Well, it's gonna be hard to restart the momentum. Yeah. And then after these surgeries, it was another one of those stuff. Legal battles. This is just exhaustion upon exhaustion. It's just crazy. And
Sometimes you can't avoid it, but if you can avoid it.
I don't wanna be involved in legal battles unless it's just absolute But I was at a point in my career that
If I didn't do something, my career was gonna be over.
If I did do something like that. What were some of the most
important things in retrospect that you did to rebuild
your career regain that momentum afterwards.
But choosing the right partner.
For one thing, which is was Scott Borshetta, who happens to be the son of Mike Borschetta, who signed me to my first deal.
But a small world. I know.
Who I sign with.
Um big machine afterwards,'cause I knew he was a hard worker.
So that
Certainly being first, but
I was also recording
The best album I
I think I'd ever record in my life.
While all this was going on.
Well once I was cleared.
To record.
And so I had an album ready to go.
By the time
Everything
All the dust was so I had an album ready to go.
And Scott Borshetto was ready.
And
The album worked.
And
The juice was back.
A lot of that was my team.
Kept fighting for me the entire time.
When I went to Scott to his label, he f he knew what
What had happened.
He fought really hard because he didn't like what had happened either.
I would imagine that also.
Injected uh
Helpful.
Amount of piss and vinegar.
Two.
Demonstrate.
to really relaunch in a meaningful way. It turned me up.
Twelve.
After that.
I mean it it kicked me into high gear for sure. And that's the way I feel now after all this.
And worrying about being able to come back and worrying about if I did come back, what's my show's gonna be like, how I was gonna be able to perform.
Was I gonna be able to be me again?
Now I feel like that same
Way I felt.
after coming out a curb and starting with big machine and getting the ball rolling again.
I feel like that.
We're right on the edge of just tipping that boulder over the hill and let it go again.
I am so curious because you must get approached all the time, one way or another.
From
musicians at different stages in their careers.
Maybe it's
The son of a friend or the daughter of a
fill in the blank, or it could be someone who's just coming up. Maybe they're trying to be an opener for you. Who knows?
Someone who is earlier in their career.
I imagine the advice you might give them has changed over time.
But f if they want to
Be more than a flash in the pan.
Take charge. What advice do you give them? Take charge.
All right. Take charge of your career.
Take charge of your career, take charge of what you do.
Be confident in your decisions.
Listen, of course you want to listen to people, listen to people that know what they're doing, but ultimately you have to make the decisions.
You have to make your choices and you have to make the right choices.
For you.
And nobody can do that but yourself.
And if you just coast, y you might have a career for a little while, but if you want a long career
you're gonna have to take charge and ownership of it.
And you're gonna have to guide it.
And you're gonna have to be
Have your finger on the button all the time and you're gonna have to say yes or and you're gonna have to say no.
And you're gonna have to
Use
Your skills.
So
Manage people?
You're gonna have to use your skills to be managed.
And both of those things can happen simultaneously, and they have to happen simultaneously. You have to listen to smart people.
But if you don't
Have a vision.
about what you want to do. If you don't have a plan about what you want to do.
If you don't
Act on it every day.
It's not gonna happen.
It's just not gonna happen.
And you can do all those things and it's still not happening.
Right. Yeah.
But
If you do all those things and it doesn't happen.
Back to your
Second album.
Right.
Taking the risk that you fail on your own terms.
As opposed to gambling on something that doesn't resonate for you. Absolutely. That someone's talked you into. Yeah.
So that seems to be a piece of it.
There is, as you said, having your finger on the button, being willing to say yes and no.
Be willing to say no is a big deal.
Why do you think people are bad at that?
Saying no.
Sure.
Because people want to please people.
You know, they want people to like'em.
I want people to like me.
But if you don't learn to say no.
Not in a mean way or not in a bad way, but just say, No, that's not right for me.
And that's back to knowing.
What's right for you and what isn't right for you. There could be something
That on the surface, everybody that works for you
Says this is the perfect thing.
But you've got to know whether it is or not.
And sometimes you don't. You know it can get it right all the time.
There's plenty of times you get it wrong.
But I think if you go with your gut
There's a caveat to all of this, too.
'Cause there are plenty of artists.
So
Succeed.
No
Don't pick their songs.
Don't have any involvement in her production.
Really don't have any involvement in her management.
Don't have any involvement in her stage design.
And they just show up and do their thing. There's plenty of artists who do that and are successful.
So there's there's always exceptions to the rule.
But I think for the most part.
The artists who have been around for a long time.
I know.
We've been around for a long time.
They take control of their careers.
I interviewed quite a long time ago. He's since sadly passed away, but
Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sachs from the UK.
Large religious.
Or if you're a Lord Rabbi, you gotta be a big religious. He's a big deal. And very good at
Conflict resolution. Incredibly open hearted man.
And
He I recall at one point with me shared this quote which
I'm gonna paraphrase, but it was effectively like one of the most important things in life.
is to be able to distinguish from an opportunity to be seized and a temptation to be resisted.
'Cause they can look awful. They can look very similar. And what I've seen over and over again with like all the startups I've been involved with.
When I'm talking to
authors who are just getting started, especially if they they have a
flicker of something that might ignite.
Is that as soon as there is certain velocity of success.
There are a lot of temptations that can pull you away from the thing.
That you spent so much time getting good at?
That brought you to that point. Yeah.
And I'm wondering if there are any categories of things
So for me, for instance, after about a year or two of getting very distracted
Speaking engagements was one of those things. I was like
I'm just gonna end up on the road doing speak engagements, talking about the same thing every day.
For the rest of my life if I actually continue to say yes to this.
And it's very seductive because they pay really well. Yeah.
And I was like, All right, so I'm gonna say no for a year.
That's it.
So that I can focus on these.
Creative projects. Writing.
Are there any
Things along those lines.
At a point where like okay.
I need to say no.
Two.
This, that, or the other thing.
Yeah, there have been times where I probably should have said no and didn't.
I mean there's been times where I've got myself in
Too much work.
But I've gotten pretty good.
I think it's saying no. I think the older I get
I don't know about wise or
But the older I get.
The more I apt I am to say no.
Mainly
Because
You get to a point where
I don't care to be more famous.
Yeah, I think there's a point of diminishing returns. So you look at things under those lenses, like all right
This one
Give you higher visibility.
I don't need to do that.
You know, the only thing that g that it gets into is is all right, you gotta sell tickets to your concert. There's some things that you probably say no to that you'll say yes to just'cause you gotta pay everybody. So there's there's some compromises that you have to make to your
Not principles, but to what you're willing to do work wise.
But um
Yeah, the older you get the more it's easier.
It's easier to say no because you know more about
What the outcome's gonna be.
And whether the outcome's gonna be beneficial enough.
For the time.
Oh.
So let's talk about
Putting people in seats and tours. You have the upcoming pawn shop.
Guitar tour. Yeah.
This summer. Yeah.
You've got
New music.
In the works. Mm mm. In the middle of working on an album right now. In fact, or next week I'm in the studio again.
So
Could you talk about
Just tell us more about both. Okay. And then
You've got
Family, you've got obviously got uh obviously have your your lovely wife, you have
Still have a lot going on. Yeah.
So I'd love to know and I'm sure the audience would.
More about both of these, right? Where can they learn more?
When can they expect that?
And then also how
You actually
Schedule your time, structure your time.
Well, album wise, we're like I said, we're in the middle of an album.
And the album's gonna be called Pawn Shop Guitar as well.
That's a song I wrote.
Back to the story where I told you where I got my first guitar where I pawned my high school ring.
My freshman year of college.
In Balticator.
Luckily for me, my grandfather
Found out about it, went back and got my ring for me.
Although I don't know where it's at.
I think my wife has it somewhere.
So I wrote the whole song around
That story.
And we were looking for

You know, trying to find the right tour title.
I thought Pod Shop Guitar was good. We all thought it was good just because of the story that it told.
And it
Conjurs up some good imagery.
So we start that tour, I think it starts in July. The tour starts in July. I think we're doing three or four stadiums.
And sheds.
The chicks.
Will be out on the stadium tours with us. And I'm a huge fan of those guys. They
We did
A George Strait tour together years ago and then they opened for me on one of my tours years ago and
And just a huge fan of their music and I'm excited to get out with those guys.
And then we're doing sheds for the summer, then we'll do we'll do a we'll do some more shows as well.
We'll be done.
Some fairs and festivals and
It's gonna be a busy year.
And there's a couple.
Movie and TV projects in the works.
And then my my oldest daughter's working on a Broadway. She's a
Broadway actress and singer, so she's working on some stuff.
My youngest daughter's a singer. She
An actor, she's in Land Man.
She just she just did tour open for Brandy Carlisle on her European tour last summer.
My middle daughter
Works for Earth League International, big nonprofit.
She sings as well, but she
She's
More of the brainy actually went to Stanford, got her master's degree from Stanford.
Worked in Congress for a long time.
So
Well seems like seems like this this like fathering thing you've done pretty well. I mean they've turned a good mob
And then my nephew, Timothy Wayne.
Is out there doing well too. He's a singer, so
I'm the worst singer in the family, but for real.
I mean that's not that's
Legitimately not a joke.
Why do it?
Now, that might sound like a strange question, but Why do what?
Poor.
It's so grueling, I have to imagine, right? Very demanding. It is. Right. It's physically demanding. It's psychologically demanding.
Is it something you feel on stage? Is it a quickening that you just can't get any other way? What is it that you can't get any other way?
That's for sure. And they're always good.
But
Every third show or so you have that one show.
That's like this is why I do it.
This is why I do it. And you're right, touring is more grueling.

You pay for everything.
You know, you work doing three nights in a row all
But it's your stage.
Your design.
Your ideas.
The way you want it to look.
All those things. That's the fun in it for me.
It's the building a stage and putting a show together.
And that's also the hardest part is putting a set list together because
You know, after thirty five years and
A ton of records.
You're never gonna get everybody's favorite song in. You know, there's you're somebody's g always gonna miss a song that they wanted to hear'cause you can only do
twenty two, twenty three songs in a show at the most.
Then you've got
You know.
Seventy or eighty singles and
Yeah.
Bunch of number ones, you can't get them all in. So you just try to create a ride and an emotion and an experience.
And that's the fun part for me is try to create a movie.
For everybody to see.
What on those magic nights.
Just a few more questions and then we'll land the plane. But what does that feel like? I'm so curious,'cause I've I've played sports. I've had flow states.
In various
Contacts. Mm-hmm.
But I've never experienced anything with
that type of environment. Well it that's what it reminds me of.
Yes.
Sports.
Certainly reminds me of football before the games.
And it reminds me of the locker room and it reminds me of the
Just when you get your uniform on and you feel like you're ten foot tall and bulletproof. It's it's when I put the cowboy held, it's like Superman's cape.
Yeah, you put the cowboy head on, you're ready to go.
But uh
There's a symbiotic relationship that happens.
And to me, art is magic.
That's r what real magic is, is art.
Any kind of art.
And
The magic happens.
When
You're up there.
And everything's going great for you and you can tell everything's going great for the audience and you've had this
Symbiotic electrical relationship. We're all in this groove together.
And you're all sort of
in suspended animation for a while, where you leave the world outside.
And all of a sudden we're all in this fantasy world that we create that we're all living in for this hour and a half.
And when that happens, when the whole world just sort of shuts down
And you're in this make believe world that all of a sudden becomes the real world that you're in.
For an hour and a half, two hours.
Where nothing else exists except for that world.
Then you're in a movie.
Then you're in this alternate universe.
That there's nothing but joy.
It's like a utopia that you are able to create. Yes. Yes. On the good nights. On the good nights. And and you know, and sometimes you think it's not a good night because your ears don't sound great or your voice isn't
Doing what you wanted to do all this.
And sometimes those turn out to be the best nights. I I mean
My best basketball game I ever had. I think I scored fifty two points.
And I had the flu.
And it kept trying to get the coach to take me out of the game because I thought I was hurting the team. I thought I was playing terribly, and then he showed me the book after the game.
Yeah.
Tim, if you could have
A billboard.
Metaphorically speaking, put anything on it for
millions, billions of people to see, right? Could be a quote, could be a mantra, could be scripture, could be
Anything.
Right. It could be an image. So anything non commercial. Humble and kind.
Humble and kind.
Humble and kind.
Tell me more about that.
That song to me.
Represents so much.
The video too.
So much of what the world needs.
And what we don't have.
Right. Yeah.
It's humility and kindness.
And
Of course love.
Should be in that as well.
But uh without humility and kindness.
We're lost.
And we seem to be lost right now.
So that song
To me is a beacon.
In a lot of ways.
That one and Live Like You're Dying to me are songs that
don't belong to me. They're just I just happen to be lucky enough to be able to single for people. They belong to everybody.
You're here.
Humble and kind.

Tim, we're gonna link to everything.
related to Tim McGraw in the show notes. You've got plenty of things. We'll leave out your OnlyFans page. We have, you know, X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and you're not hard for people to find.
But
Is there anything else you'd like to point people to? Anything you'd like to say, closing comments, public complaints? Anything I got plenty of public complaints, but I'm not gonna hear them. Stand up comedy, raw material, anything you'd like to say before we first thank you.
For having me.
Absolutely. Allow me to be a part of your book. My pleasure. Thank you. And uh
Enjoy listening to you.
And hope we can do it again.
Absolutely. It's been such a pleasure. I've wanted to connect in person for years.
So much fun. Yeah.
And I hope it's not the last time. I love Nashville, so I'll be back. Good. Well and when you're back, we'll talk again.
Yeah, absolutely. I'll I'll cook dinner for you one night.
I'm in. Or I'm in. Or have faith faith cook dinner for it. Although I'm pretty good cook. That is a deal for sure. And everybody listening
We will put links to
Anything and everything we can find, obviously.
All the ways to find what you're up to.
The tour.
The music when it's ready.

There is one new song before to interrupt you that people can find that we didn't that we didn't put on streaming or anything. You can only find it on
On my socials, but it's a song called Different that I think people should give a listen to.
Fine different. And we will link in the show notes at Tim.blog slash podcast for folks.
And
As always.
Until next time.
This is how I close almost every episode. A bit kinder than is necessary.
Not just to other people, but also to yourself.
If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete, as Jack Cornfield.
As said.
And also as always, thanks for tuning in, guys.
See you next time.
Thank you, Tom. Thank you. Adios. Adios.
Oh.
Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel.
It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kinda like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading.
albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmas, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests, and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then
I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash.
Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one.
Thanks for listening.
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Right now, new subscribers to AG1 get a free welcome kit worth$87, including AG1 and AGZ travel packs. That's for sleep, it's actually great, and vitamin D3 plus K2. So that's a whole bunch of free stuff worth$87. So check it out.
Take a look. Visit drinkag1.com slash Tim, and that's the number one. So drinkag number one.com slash Tim to check it out. One more time, that's drinkag1.com slash Tim.
What many of you may not know is that I actually run two private, invite-only communities for some of my projects. The No Book, which eventually will come out after God knows how long, and Coyote, the card game. And the feedback from those groups has been absolutely invaluable. Moreover, perhaps most important, the connections that members have made.
and the interactions have been just a joy to behold. It's been so much fun. And I generally view communities
as headache after headache after headache, way back in the day with like B Bulletin and whatever, not to slam those guys. But man oh man, running communities can be a pain in the ass.
And
In this case, it's been easy. Why? Well, both of them are built on circle.
this episode sponsor. And before committing to using Circle, I did so much homework. I asked you all on social media, talked to dozens of creators, pressure tested alternatives,
Talk to all sorts of people on the phone.
And Circle is where I landed. Circle quietly backs some of the most popular communities online run by folks like Kevin Rose, my buddy, Dr. Becky from Good Inside, Ali Abdoll, Jay Shetty, Pat Flynn, and many others, including some giants I can't mention here, but it doesn't need to be giant.
My two communities are maybe 100, 150 people apiece. They're not gigantic. If you run an online community, a membership, or a course business, Circle makes it easy to build a professional home for your audience. Events, courses, payments, custom branded apps all in one place. And also, once I have my first one set up for the notebook,
to spin up another one for Coyote, the card game, it took minutes. It was so, so fast.
And as you might have noticed, things are getting pretty squirrely out there on the internet. We're moving from content businesses to connection businesses. People want
connection. They want to know your real. They want accountability, real progress, and communities are the most effective way that I have found to make that happen.
So check it out. Go to circle.so slash Tim to get$1,000 off Circle Plus. Exclusively for you guys listeners for a limited time. Check it out. You can also look at other options at circle.so slash.
Tip.