Ep. 33: Jamie Davis on Soul Gravy, Touring with Luke Combs, and a Zombie Buck

Published Aug 6, 2024, 9:00 AM

This week Reid and Dan Isbell host hit-song writing, stadium-guitar playing, Jamie Davis, out in God's Country. Jamie is a longtime friend of Reid and Dan's and went from touring the south as the lead singer in his band "Soul Gravy" to playing lead guitar for Luke Combs in front of thousands of fans every weekend. Jamie talks about his Nashville journey, what it is like to hear his number one song "The Kind of Love We Make" screamed by fans every weekend, and how that song afforded him the ability to buy his family farm in Mississippi. Jamie ends the episode with how he lost a county-record deer in Mississippi, and with his gravorite with some serious "soul."

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What's something. You're out in God's Country with Breed and also known as the Brother's Home when we take a weekly drive to the intersection of country music and the great outdoors, two things that go together like Jamie Davis, soul Grave.

Boys, Bumpy Roads in the State of Mississippi, brought to you by iHeart and Meetied Podcasts.

We've got a brother from another mother on the couch today. We go way back. Dan and Jamie were in a band together for a bunch of years and and some of my first road experiences were on a van with these guys, going and watching them play gigs and figuring out cutting my teeth on stage and let me sing some songs every now and then.

Yeah, man, there was anybody there to watch us for the first couple of years, but that that changed, so uh.

And man has just been there with us and through our whole journey through Nashville and we we you know, we have some success with him, wrote our my first hit, his first hit together, kind of Love, We mate with lou and just getting to chase the stream together. It's been awesome. We're gonna talk about that.

If you want a deep dive on on how songwriting works in the pursuit of it. You're gonna get it in this in this episode.

Uh, he's a hit songwriting stadium guitar.

Playing slinger, A bit of a guitar slinger.

Yeah. Mister Jamie Davis from Mississippi, al love this one.

Good hair, good hair, that's right.

That's right. Thanks for hanging out with us. Go follow, go watch YouTube, Go subscribe, like go, like everything, and hopefully knew Guy Ray got this all recorded. He didn't get our last intro recorded.

One was better.

Thanks for hanging out Guy's Country. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. You kick this off, bro, you this is this is your boy, brow your boy. This is absolutely my boy. But I can live with you for college and you usually started this guy has molded part of your life. Yeah you so you started, mister Jamie Davis. We're all out of swords this morning where it's like nine forty five, we're supposed to be here. Now, what time do you get here?

We were here, me and Jamie were here.

How did you miss all that traffic?

I went right through it. I thought you were ahead of me.

I'm not sure that I know how I beat y'all.

Here Jamie Davis on the couch in case we didn't intro him fast enough. Your listeners out.

There, Mississippi. Boy, Yeah in the state, brand on the chick.

Y'all like it takes me forty five minutes to get here or whatever. I'm like, it takes me three hours. Not today, but because I stayed I stayed closer to town last night.

But yeah, you're still commuting, man.

Yeah, you know, I lived here for a while. We came up we moved to Nashville together kind of thing. And and when Marie and I got pregnant, we we went back home. All our families down there, you know. So it's all our all of our safety needed is right there in North Alabama, North Mississippi. So yeah, so yeah, I come up here and work do the thing like y'all do.

But yeah, we're well, we'll we'll get into that, man, j D. And both of us go Me and Dan both go way back. But Jamie was was one of your first literally first friends, and in college that gave you the fastest way.

I know how to run this down is that I moved. We both had music scholarships at a at a community college there in North Missississsissippi. That was actually Jamie's hometown. I was an hour from my hometown. So when I moved in.

Out campus country campus country.

Yeah, and uh we did intros. Do I remember intros? What song? I remember you playing a song and being like that, dude is cool?

I think I did, like Toby Key, sorry, try out? Was it when country comes to town?

Is that? Tobe?

That's when country comes.

Any questions, it's almost I remember the first time I ever saw you in those first those first the first days you had the it was almost like and this is not a shot at you, this is just I'm just telling a great hair.

I don't care, but but it's like, yes, great hair.

He had long, long hair, but it's like he put a hat on his lowsy cuts swooping and then like hair dried and like blew it around. It was like it was like the sweep.

The bats, the baseball hat, sweet swoop before it was cool, it was cool.

Yeah, yeah, it was the rips up before your your hair stuff catches up with country music. You know, It's like you were was still in high school baseball player mode.

Yeah, yeah, you know the pearl snap you have the pearl Snap, the faded you know, faded jeans with the rips and cowboy boots. Man he was, he was. It was country cool dude.

So we both got it scholarship to go there and do this uh class, which is actually really cool. You would get college credit for basically gigging, Yeah, singing and playing and uh. Jerry Reins came to Savannah where all from, and presumed me with the scholarship there. It was awesome. I was like, I can't know this is happening, went northeast, but it's still kind of nervous, like just because I mean, I didn't know anybody. I didn't know he sold it not a soul. One other person from my town was in the group, so I guess I knew them. But immediately me and Jamie just kind of it came friend. You know what's really funny is the other day, Jordan goes to Costco. We don't have a membership, so we cheated so Jordan will pick up like, they have these these chicken nuggets that my kids love that are way better than anything you can get at Kroger. It's the exact ones that your mom used to cook us. You remember we used to go to your mom's chicken jocks. It is the.

Yeah they're still good.

It's still really good. Yeah. I had to back off, man, instead of cooking like ten, you had to cook at four otherwise I'll smoke them. Anyway. That's how long me and James go. Do you remember any of our first like hangouts, Like I remember that class we ran.

We had a class together, and then I'm gonna be honest, I don't think it was like I remember a month or so in the end of the thing us writing a song on the table at my mom's house.

Really.

Yeah, they're not so perfect, man, Yeah, but that was like we were we were in eighteen or nineteen. Oh yeah, I remember that we had been we hadn't been friends probably really that was the first song with a month where we wrote a song.

I just remember it being pretty immediate, Like it wasn't like I remember us fishing, like we were fishing your grandass pond, like I mean first week of school or something. It was quick.

I got a fishing story. I tell a lot about y'all's dad. Do you remember us going to catching? I guess y'all probably done this a bunch where we caught like some crawt baby crawfish or something. We're catching stripes. Yes, yeah, yeah, you probably you were there, but you took me. We're like, man, I got this spot, we can go catch a much fish whatever. So we get We went and got the stuff from your dad's house and he was like, now y'all, don't catch but one bucket of fish that'll feed all of us or whatever. And you and I went and we caught crawfish. We went down there and started fishing, and we were it was like by this old restaurant maybe or something. Yeah, and we were on the rocks and we started smoking them and we just kept.

Just kept were supposed to do, not fish.

I don't know what the limit was. I'm sure we got we just had one limit apiece, I'm sure exactly either whatever it was, whatever it was, we didn't stop. However many crawfish we had we caught, which was a lot.

Yeah, and you rip them up, so you one crawfish was pretty much to fish, dude, the bottom of it. But I remember we end when we long that, and you were like, I mean, I was like, we finish catch him, and you're like, I mean, if you can fish, you can catch.

Them, and I was like, who is this if I can fish? So he started sticking. Oh dude, we started sticking with always like respect. He was like, he started ripping. I was like, okay, so he can fish and I started. He was like, oh he can fish a little bit too, So we start.

When you take guy fishing, yeah, absolutely, But dude, we brought back two or three buckets of fish and your dad was hot.

He was like, he was like, boys, I told y'all one bucket of fish, defeat us, have fish for us.

After or something. And we but we, uh, he's gonna clean all this. Oh he made us, he said. So now he said, now y'all sit here and clean every single one of these.

It's like taking a guy fishing is kind of like like playing golf with the guy for the first time, Like you like you see a swing and your leader like this guy knows what he's doing, like he's played before, or man, it's gonna be a long day because we about it. He's about a hacking around the course.

Man. I always say this, it's like an immediate like you know where you stand with somebody when he's got it. When you're throwing a spin, care cast and he's got it flipped over doing that.

You're like, hey, man, if you if you're fishing with spin cast out there, flip flip it.

A buzz bait. If you're throwing I mean, uh sorry, bake casting, bait caster. You're throwing a bait caster. You real with your left hand.

Well some of them real with the right. Yeah, you can flip.

Oh that's true, that is true. Yeah, I have one that does that. Yeah, but anyway, spin cast is on your left, well some some go with right. It's on your left though, but you can switch. You can splitch. A spin supposed to be under either way.

Its supposed to be honest, it ain't all right.

Spin Yeah. If you see a guy doing this with a spind.

It correcting, man, flip it over.

Te him.

It was that day.

The respect thing was like again, we were uh cleaning those fish. It was like your dad was told us come over and he came over and checked on this and we were slapping and he's like, well, these guys, this guy's just wasn't a very good punishment. These guys, these guys clean all these fish in ten minutes.

They like fish and people hate them stripe. But if you get them good and clean, and they're good fish. Absolutely.

Well, it's not it's not a stripe. It's it's it's like a it's like a white mass, is what it is.

Like a hybrid?

Yeah, rock bass.

I heard them call so many different things.

Man.

Those days, Man, some of the best days of fishing in my life. We're on that bank ripping those fish out.

That was a particularly good and you can catch.

It when that eddie was coming around that turn, and that that just that bait ball was sitting there spinning. Bro throw out the legs and you throw it deep, pull it up that lead and you better so you better get ready.

There's some dudes in Savannah and Corn that are.

Like, I can't believe they're putting.

Yeah, yeah, it's well.

I was like, dang, I gonna have to show now. I got to show this guy fishing spot. Yeah you know what I mean. Yeah, gave up one for me and I was like, oh, I've never been back. That's the only time I ever been there.

Showing brush pile and base springs probably probably or just taking.

Them out of the basketball.

I'm telling you that we used to do that. I mean, I used to live for that. Time of year to go do that. But now it's like, I don't even know if you so. The way the whole setup, which is really fun, it's kind of it's kind of an event, which made it fun because like you had to get this crawfish rake, then you had to like kind of trespass onto these river bottom places.

To they're kind of like roads.

It was really now we were absolutely on someone else's land without permission. But it wasn't really trust.

But everybody rake crawfish out of those, and everybody knew that the holes you went down to.

And man the good ones. To me, the size was about the size. If you could get a crawfish about the size of your fingernail, dude, you could murk.

The small of your fingernail.

Yeah, dude, the smaller crawfish the better, if you want to know the truth.

Yeah yeah.

I mean if you could use a whole one, if you could stick a hole one on there, you're definitely If it was.

Big, we were just terrible half just tail you a head. I mean, god, that was some.

It was fun. We used to I mean, even living up here when it was when it was right, we would drive down and spend.

The night night, so we would do it. We did it a couple of times. I hadn't done it in ten years.

No, no, no, I'm not saying. I mean we should definitely go do that. Our lives have come way way farther than that.

Now.

Yeah, household days, dude, Jordan looked. Last night, she showed me a video of like this, like this, it was like this influencer. She was like, come check out the houseboat I live on. Of course, it looks like a million dollar spread in this house boat. And she's got a.

Tough the size of yeah.

And she she was and Jordan was like, yeah. She sent Dan's wife a text and said, I bet this is what house bowl. I was like, I was like, pull up hype in Google nineteen eighty nine, thirty seven foot Carver and she did bro and she started flipping through there and man, it was nostalgic.

Dude, it's crazy, that's been ten And I told you, I was like.

She was like, I was like, we lived in I was like, that was my room, the the hole of that boat was my room for four years. And she pulled up a picture and there was those little bitty kubbies under the thing and there was a little ass claw like little it was like I called it a closet, but it was like it held a fire extinguisher, like literally that that was the purpose of it.

And I stay on the several nights I cut down a rod for a for a hanging up and I had like seven things in there hung up as tied and everybody it was crazy.

It must have been so fun, and there were times when it was fun, but everything kind of always smelled like diesel or our old or mold or sewage. It's like you just couldn't get away from the boat stinky.

Well, that's what I told Jordan. I was like, man, I was like for four years, that's fourteen hundred days almost that we lived on that boat. And I was like, man, I really I loved it till I didn't love it like I loved it up until the day like I figured, I was like, oh, man, I gotta do something different. At that point, it was like, all right, we got to get.

Off this boat. I'm glad we got off the boat, but man, good days. Jamie spent some nights out there, dude.

I spent some nights on the songs on that thing. Sure, I have to have some direct TV up out there one day and something else.

Yeah, we have you put the DIRECTORV in.

Yeah, well I help y'all put a directory or something. It never worked while I was there, but that's probably because I used to find hook it.

Yeah. I used to pull Like if you saw a better direct TV box on the side of the road that somebody fell out of somebody, just a look and grab and go there and put it on the boat.

Okay.

Yeah, Yeah, we get mad sometimes, JD. We get mad and glad.

This morning, I can go either way.

Uh, I'm I'm I mean, I'm not.

Mad, but I got a thing.

What too mad?

Just tell us what it is?

What's you mad?

Is it you in lost? Kids?

Might be your boss man? Oh your neighbors care?

Tell us what you mad?

A I wasn't. I'm not like mad these days, but I'm just a little chippy. I wanted to look at trail camera pictures this morning. Got on my trail camera app. Three of the cameras of the seven cameras, I got out. Need firmware updates and quit taking pictures. And that's what I'm just a little bit like, dude, do one firmware update and then when it's working, just leave it. Just leave it alone. Just leave it alone. Cell Phone cameras, man, because you want I mean, and right now you know deer growing into your you can kind of tell what they're going to become. And but you can't if your cell phone cameras don't work. And then you got to go out there. Most of them some like highalute cameras that cost seven hundred dollars. You can hit the firmware update on your phone. It'll update on the thing real. Yeah, no update from like the next connection, but nothing on that. I hear the fourteen, the fourteen ones I got. You got to go out to the I think.

We as a podcast could probably get a heavy consensus on try real cameras to to kind of dwindle it down to the ones that really work. So if you're using a camera that you love and it's awesome, just drop a little comment or something. Man.

Everybody says the reveal is really great. Tax cam, Yeah, attack cam, I've heard that too.

They're getting good reviews. I'm mad at deodorant that doesn't have the aluminum stuff in it. Okay, and here's why, because I don't like the I'm not like the old spots. Cat dude, it rips my armpits up right, So you had to puie the more expensive stuff without all the stuff. I remember you had some sensitive pits.

I'm doing something. All this they got all this new all.

I don't. I mean, they don't work, dude. They work, but they work for like an hour.

Like I'm not going to die from the aluminum, but I'm.

A sweaty dudevy stinky or like what you know. Native is what I get and the like eight twelve dollars a stick and it don't know, you gotta pay for it. Oh, don't do it. It doesn't I mean we're talking about it.

Don't do it. We're talking about it.

Don't do it.

It just makes your pitts look like this. I don't know why I keep been wearing gray shirts.

On this podcasts. Dude, you got ways. Yeah, that's what I'm mad at. I'm mad at paying fifteen dollars a stick for supposedly good you've if you found one of words.

That's I'm on the native train right now. That's that's what everybody's doing.

I don't know, well, I mean, the alternative is to not wear is go, Matthew McConaughey, is Jami. You don't play Jamie Jamie, said Matthew McConaughey. Earlier, he's like, he's like, I ain't got the home. Now everybody knows he's nowhere on Well, it's okay, I mean does he stick. No, he's not yet.

It's early, but it's hot. Yeah. Yeah, I literally forgot to put together one. Well, you can put my fifty dollars stick on the charging five dollars of swat mad anything, Jamie.

I started to get mad at the traffic this morning because I'm not used to that. I forget how terrible that driving into town sometimes is, because like said, we we ride at ten or eleven. I'm driving over Mississippi. In Mississippi, if it's five miles, it's five minutes, you know, even in high traffic areas. It seems like So I started getting mad at that. But that's kind of a common thing here right now. I am mad at whatever is going on with my road at my house.

Oh what's happening? Like this is a good one road work.

Our road's terrible. It's been terrible. You know. We we bought land there and built a house there, my wife and I and and it's just like I feel like it's eating my truck and vehicles to death, just going to home every day all the time. You know, the road is so terrible. So you know, I think whatever the supervisors we got now came by the house, you know when they're politicking and you know we're going to help, and I was like, dide, I just I just want good roads, want better road before we paid, we paid a lot of taxes, a lot of taxes, and oh man, I'm gonna do it, and I'm sure they are. But they came. They they worked on it the other day for however long, came by and it just like graded the road and it's like a I'm assuming they'll probably come to fix it, and I'm probably mad at nothing, but it just after a couple of rains made it worse than it already was.

This is what this section is for.

So now not only not only do I need a new alignment every ten trips back to my house, now my truck's getting really dirty. It was just you know, rough, but pavement, yeah, you know, like now a dirt and dust. Now they've graded it and it and the rains washed out a couple times, so the holes are worse, and now that the vehicles are nasty every time you drive down. I'm just like, man, I you know, I have a money. I have a money, muddy dirty, full war drive cool whatever. But it's like, what are you'll do?

What do y'all do?

I mean, hopefully they're setting up to fee. It looks like they're setting up to do it.

I know.

But if they don't do the classick enough, if they don't do it quick enough, it starts getting bouncy and holy and yeah.

So I'm trying to be mad at it, but I don't know if if maybe maybe my guy comes through, I know the guy, maybe he comes through, and I'm like, hey, you know what, not mad anymore.

But as of today, they got some backwards payment stuff going on in Mississippy, Like for his electric bill, he has to deposit a check to the bank.

Of my water bill.

Water bill.

They don't know.

They ain't got.

Direct the line, ain't no website, bro, it ain't know nothing. You you you have to your water bill. You take a check and deposit it into their account.

They have a gal that comes say who deposited.

It's not like I don't even know. I don't even know they know it can't boom. It's the only bill that I have in my life. It's like somebody it's like read, It's like somebody's said.

For twenty twenty four. It's the only it's the only thing that I know of that you can't like pay a line or with a card or something. You know, you know what I mean, Like you can't you do everything on your phone on your phone with Apple pay.

Now you probably have to order checks just to pay your water bill. Yes, because there ain't nobody else you're writing checks.

Too, yeah yeah. And then if you pay with cash, there's no record of who deposits.

You gotta pay with check. Yeah, y'all got state tax down there in Missippi? Oh yeah, yeah, what is it? I don't know.

I don't know. You know, state text Tennessee. Man, Pretty great, there's a Mississippi buddy. Well, they want to fix those roads.

They're gonna fix them.

Jamie Davis is an accomplished songwriter, an accomplished musician, and accomplished vocalist himself. He is all around, I would say, triple threat musician.

Accomplished outdoorsman. Throw it back to like your earliest memories of like of country music in your life. Obviously from North Mississippi, so I mean, oh yeah, oh was that your daddy was at your granddaddy was your grandmama? I introduced it to it.

My parents loved music. They didn't they didn't like play music or anything, and but they they were both country fans. They listened to country music. George Strait, you know, it was my mom's guy for years and years I'm sure still is. My dad was more like funky R and B soul stuff, but they both liked country music. So uh. I remember they took me to see George Strait when I was nine.

That was your first show. First show was George Strait, had this, had this.

Guy, had a guy opening for him named Garth Brooks.

Decent.

He did okay, And I.

Saw that show.

Garth just stood there the entire really time they dropped the thing. He stands at the mic, sings the thing, they do the thing. I'm like, you know, you sell this crazy wild stuff in him part you know at his show, stood there and did the thing and uh and then George Tray came out and played a course. It was awesome. I was nine he's I gave George Tray my boot, I think he signed it, and then I have no idea where that is now. But some guy put me on his shoulders down there and he grabbed my boot and son and I thought, man, I'm that's what I'm gonna do one day. I want to I'd like to do that. But how cool is that guy up there, you know, singing his songs?

But what a first show to see the king?

Yeah.

I saw a thing later on where I never really thought anything about it, but I saw I think an interview with Garth later on that where he was like, that was his first big tour and Georgie's show was him just standing there playing so out of respect for him, he didn't go crazy on stage and do his normal one thing. He just stood there and did own that one tour. I think that's probably the only one is never because shirt.

Yeah. I didn't know how how much of an idol George Strait was to Garth Brooks until we started reading the History of Country Music book to my two year old daughter, and it talks.

About earlier for that. But I'm with it.

What do you mean, Well, it's just like it's a kid's book. It's not it's not it's not like the history yeah uh, but it's like it's like, George Straight is king. I can't remember what it says, and then the next page is like and George Straight was g was was another country music Superstars idol. That's the reason why he wears the cowboy hat and all this stuff is George. It was a huge George George Straight fan.

Garth was, Yeah, that's it.

My My My first show was that show, and I just we dug in after that. I mean, they listened to country radio. The Wizard one O six was the country radio, the big radio station around my area, the biggest one, and it was country. So you you know, the clear the clearest one that came through on the radio was was country music.

So when'd you When did you pick up a guitar?

Man?

It was around that time whenever I after that show inspired me, like I came back wanting like I'm gonna learn to play guitar, you know, And I was nice. I wasn't very driven with it. Couldn't hold my attention. So I started, like, I learned a couple of chords then, but I didn't I didn't put any I just learned the chords and I was done, you know, I was on the baseball or something. And then my granddad worked with a guy, mister Harold, that played bluegrass, and so when I was about twelve or so, he started taking me over there, getting guitar lessons from him, learn from a bluegrass player, from bluegrass picker guy, and he the first thing I learned was whyd wood flower, you know thing, and so we did that. I probably took ten lessons from him, and lessons from him was him. And through these three or four bluegrass cats got together and just played and you could either play along with him or not. That was his and he would stop and show you bit of stuff movie your finger. But it was like they just loudly played and you could. You just sat there and played with them until you figured it out, which.

Is probably I mean taking lessons and learning one on one from somebody. And and I'm watching YouTube and playing like that. But but I've always heard and I'm not a guitar player, I know enough to write a song, but like I've heard the best way to play it's just like freaking learn how to swim like throat, throw them in the pool Man and started kicking, like, get in a circle of guys that are playing and figure out where you can step in, step out and play with guys. Just jam, just jam with cats.

Yeah, and he was the first guy that made you like he you know. I used to say, he showed me how to play the Wildie Flower thing and then they would play and then he would be like, all right, you gotta step in like you're turning and.

Do your thing.

It's like you you fumbled through it. It was awful, you know. And he was like, all right, we're gonna go around the thing. And the next time it comes to you, you know, you play the yeah and you and it was great. He was great. But yeah, So around twelve, I did probably ten went over there with him ten or ten or twelve times, and then and then started digging into all the information. It grabbed me then and I started trying to find out all the guitar stuff. I can learn all the songs, but I wasn't really like trying to play notes or solos. I just wanted to learn how to play guitar so I can stand there sing like George.

Strait, what was the first song you could play and sing it the first time.

Oh god, it was a want me catch your fall like Blessed You and the soul.

That's a damn dude.

Oh yeah, I've seen it all. Whatever that was, I don't really I don't even know the name of the song now, but that was it.

Because it was like, ye, did you play the beauty Reviews? I don't know, maybe probably I remember this. Uh, it was a very clear distinguishing moment in my mind of when Jamie and I had our band and we were playing, and I mean we were living together. I mean, shoot, we lived. We lived a lot of different places, but I remember there was a time where like, like you're hunger or for learning more about guitar. Uh, it just passed mine as to where I was just like I kind of learned guitar in order to to to put it two words. But Jamie like was in he wanted to be a better he wanted to get better. I did not want to get better. I was kind of like whatever gets the job done. But I remember you like wood shedding, and there were years in there where you really wood shedding, and I think it put you on a level to where when this opportunity with Loop popped up, like, not only could you contribute as a singer and as a songwriter, but like, I mean, you can hold your on on freaking stage in front of eighty thousand people too. That's got to feel pretty cool to know that work that you put in got you.

Yeah, I mean, who would have thought? I mean, I guess that was the kind of the plan. Uh was, Like I said, I don't want to be George straight, but just to get up on that stage.

Let's not skip to the best part of the story that les.

Yeah, bro, I mean, I like, uh, I all I did was the same thing as you. I mean, I learned just chords. I didn't after a while with Flower. I don't think I picked out a melody on a song on the guitar like you were probably doing. When I met you. You're already doing like licks and stuff.

We were both ear driven.

I mean, but you were already doing licks on the guitar and I didn't. I didn't even know what a lick was because I played widle with Flower. Didn't tell me that was a lick. That was just the melody to the thing. But I just learned, of course, I was till I'm till I met you until I met uh was it Dustin Nunley was the first real guitar player that we saw that in Camus Country, which he plays with Loot now too. But uh, but we we walked in first day, saw him ripping nothing I have ever seen, like nothing I had ever seen before. Yeah, so he mad. I was like, oh, you can do that on the guitar, like I thought, you just you learned the guitar to strum and sing, like to put my you know, moybe to write songs or cover songs. But I needed I couldn't. Nobody else in the house was playing guitar, so I had to have something to make me some music to sing too. I didn't learn a liquor of guitar until I met all y'all kids, dude, and then I started learning. Then I started diving into okay, well you can do this. Oh well this is this. He's a guitar leagues, these are scales, these are this you know.

He saw he's referencing the guy that is, I mean, arguably top one percent in the world pickers, which is Dustin Ny and he just he was always like shrad dude. I remember walking in that room here. I thought these guys only existed in like eighties hair metal music videos, and here's this country. I mean, I'm talking about Turnip Green Country absolutely ripping a guitar about with a part with a mar I.

Remember you and I said they were watching him play one day and they did the Devil went down to Georgia but about ten or twelve bpm, faster than it than it is, burning it and he played it on that been here Telly.

Though. We were like and everything was I'm never gonna make it man showing me thinking about you know what I mean?

But I was like, we look, we looked like, damn we sucking. What this guy ain't that much older than us? What happened? What happened?

Who showed him?

What? What do we how do we learn?

How do you do that? You know? It's like you don't you know. I've been trying to I've been trying to chase that guy for years. I had. We had another guy in the band that played in the band with Dan and I.

That was Jerry Carna thing.

Oh yeah, and he's a monster guitar player. There's differences between the two, like Dustin. But but I remember one time we were Dan and I had the big head. We'd learned some licks and our solo.

I always we crushed it.

Yeah, he crushed the solo at the show, you know, like we had a forty songs. We got two solos right right that night between the two of us, you know, playing forty songs at night, and we were we were highing ourselves and we're like our guitar player, Jerry Carthan, who absolute monster players on the level, was like us, that's good boys. You know, y'all getting better.

They were like.

Thanks, man, He's like, but I'm getting better to you never gonna catch me, And he was right, but he was like, you know, that guy was already playing like that when we saw him, you know, and it's like, I mean, I've been striving to catch those guys for the rest of my life and it's made me tons better. But they're all chasing those guys, but it's like they're getting better too the whole time. You know, you never you can't catch them.

But there's a level of existence in those guys that like it's all they want to do, man, Like it's all they want. I can't even explain it, Like it's all they want to do, Like all Jerry Canarthin wants to do is work on cars and play guitar, and all the other ones to do is it's smoke cigarettes to play guitar. And I mean, he look, he's a great dad, great husband, not all that I'm just saying as far as.

Everything, but I think I think it probably goes for y'all too. But once I hit once, I played that insane that first too. Dude, all I ever wanted to do was play guitar, sing fish deer hut. That's it.

That's it.

I didn't I didn't think about anything else. I haven't thought about it. We went to college because that's.

What we were. It was beating my head to do. Bro, Let's be honest. We went to college to have a band and play music.

Yeah, but you know what I'm saying. But that was the thing that they were showing you.

All Right, you go to high.

School, you do this, you go to college, you get a degree, and that's what you do.

You know.

But but even though we went through the motions of that, and I loved every minute of it of our college experience. But like man, I never want to do anything but just play music. So I get like those guys is like that's all they want to do. Every time you see them, there's a guitar in their hand.

That's all they want to do. But y'all get it too. All you've ever wanted to do, Really.

That's all I was make up some songs and get to fish and hunt.

Totally thousand percent. I mean we we started when I remember telling my granddad, uh Ernest Paul you which you knew, I remember telling him when he asked me what I want to do when I grew up. I was I said, I want I want to be Garth Brooks. And that was I was nine years old. And and really I didn't know you could write songs. I don't think we really knew we were writing songs, but we didn't know you could really commercially professionally do that.

Yeah, talk about your introduction to Nashville and and and and coming to Nashville a living by playing music.

I'll get to that, but let me say this. While we were he was in the college mode there for a second. And the and the thing that Jamie's real, like real humble about is that he's like a damn genius, like like mathematical genius, like smart guy. It is the craziest and the way he talks, and so all this to say, dude, you are a math. If I ever have any kind of like percentage question, I called Jamie like, hey, dude, just tell me the percentage of this, and he'll and then I will hang up. I mean it'd be like three minute conversations. He's like, all right, what'd you making your a CT? Dude? Yes you do, I know thirty one?

Yeah, dude, that's what I'm saying.

I mean a twenty two. You know what I mean. I mean, like the kid's smart, right, and he's real humble about that anyway, So it's good at taking tests.

Man, you are well.

You just even prove my point even better. So we are in our single wide trailer in Mississippi State and I have the biggest example it. Listen, every class I ever passed, I had to work my tail off to get a sea. Right. This dude don't even go to class, rolls up in there, it comes out with B plus time about I can't believe it didn't make an A in there. It's just that it's just that's it's always been that way in my life.

So y'all, y'all road dog it for a while. You got soul gravy. What was your like, Hey man, let's let's take this from North Mississippi to Nashville and try to try to make it happen.

We actually, they came call. They called us. I mean, we were just kind of doing our thing down there and doing like a a Southern circuit, right, but we played Georgia. I'm leading you into the story, but this is to me, this is what it was. We were playing that that South South circuit SEC school, yeah, and and having some some good success and a couple of songs that were doing great. There was no streaming really back then. It was we were just making hard like discs and people were buying CDs at shows and it started spreading like crazy. You take from there, and then we started and then the next thing we know, we started getting calls.

I mean, the we were we come up here and made a record because that's where everybody was doing that. You know, It's like there's not any uh, not a lot of working studios, I guess down the Mississippi, you know at the time. And so we did that and then once those records got popping, out here. I think it was just the general you know rule of any musician in the South was if you especially where I'm from and and West and West Tennessee, where you guys are from, it's like, man, you just went to Nashville. If you did music at all, it didn't have to be country.

Try to take so if you wanted.

A proper record of which of your song that you've made up, you you took it to Nashville and hired players, or if you could play ourselves. I mean we weren't good enough to be playing on our stuff ourselves then I guess we did. But yeah, but yeah, I think we it got going so well in in the Mississippi Alabama area that we, uh we thought it would be like, you know, doing ourselves, uh an injustice if we didn't try to come up here. Yeah, because it was like, well, I mean, ain't that what people do? It was like you build a following down here and then do all that and then you take it up there and somebody replicates that nationwide. You know who I remember doing that right before we tried was Zach Brown. You had a CD of that Chicken Fried song, and that was like he was.

Just popping and then Brantley. We played shows with Brantley and then he kind of popped off and got into the Nashville thing.

I remember one we were playing on a Fraturny road maybe at Ole, Miss one night in Mississippi, and it was like Zach Brown band our band and somebody else that hit yeah or somebody like at three three Houses in a row thing and it's like, you know, those two guys made it, Well, we can go do it.

Yeah, we were.

It wasn't two years ago. We was all playing on the road down there on a thing. When they can do it, I can do it. I don't see what the fuss is about.

Yeah, And we had some help again talking about that little I always talk about it little, that little North Mississippi brotherhood that came through lucky for us. A buddy of ours, Jonathan Singleton, had kind of his band had started popping off. He had watching airplanes with Gary Allen and uh something else don't don't. It was a big one man, And that's kind of you can hear those kind of uh soultry R and B inflected tones in kind of what we do too, because I feel like if you're from that area, there's there's a bit of what you talked about earlier, where your mom loved country music and your dad was into you remember what was that Superman song? Used to play me that Uh what was that guy's guitar? Watson there? It was just funky man And so it just a meld of those cultures. And you also have the Showals right there, which was forty five minutes from I mean, we were influenced by some of the greatest Looking back now, the greatest was exact.

That was another thing too that that took us up here was Jonathan uh Nonely and these guys Jonathan had already moved to town had the watching airplanes thing on, So that helped us.

Like, oh we can, we can Like he was.

It wasn't some it wasn't just stories we had heard.

He was in campus country before yall.

He was in the campus country before us, and he came up here and he got the deal.

So I got the cut and we was like, Okay, we know this guy. Yeah, we're one degree from it.

He did it, yeah, you know, And turns out he was a nice enough guy to kind of like take us under his wing and show us around. He's like you know, we we took it to Nashville when we did our thing. We were doing stuff and it was like, man, we got to get better songs. Well, in order to get better songs, we're gonna have to write them ourselves because nobody's gonna write him for some no name band that nobody, you know, nobody gets making any money with. It's like, so Dan and I are gonna have to write the material. Well, in order to write the material, we need to write better songs. We already writing songs. We need better songs. So it's like we got to go up there and get into the Nashville songwriting one on one. Well, then it was like okay, well Dustin takes us over to meet Jonathan and it was like, well, y'all want to get in song right. You know, it's kind of like, well, oh you want to get into some song, right, Well I can get you into some song right, and just come up here and talk to this person. You know, only introduce you to people. The next thing you know, you're you're booking rights and then doing the thing and then it just you know, the whole thing. But that was another big reason why we came up. He just I don't know that if if we had to know them help or not from him, if we had had to witness it happened, we might still be sitting there there going man, what if we should have trust them? Guys up there probably are doing crazy, but we didn't have. We not known a guy that you know from from around home that that actually did it.

How bad would that hurt? Man? If I was stuck in costsuit watching and you were down there and Cupil or something working some bang job, knowing we were writing music and wanted to do music and our buddies were doing it and made a career out of Man, Oh my gosh, I'm glad we tried it.

But yeah, and then you just get stuck in it, I mean not stuck in it. Like I wanted to be in it. I wanted to stick myself in it, try to make try to get in and dig my claws in so that I could be up here or at least work up here. And we, I say, for several years, And like I said, I moved back to Mississippi, but I still work out of Nashville. There's there's not a lot of songwriting and recording going on in Mississippi. There's some good there's good studios down there now, but and and people come down there to make some music. But the majority of my business and work comes up here. So you know, although I don't live here, you still gravitate here to if you want to write songs and play music, this is where you got it. I think you still have to kind of yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's present. When I do, I think.

Well, I mean I'm having to drive up to be present.

I'm not. I'm not getting it done solely from Mississippi. That's what I'm getting at those like, even though I moved back to Missippi, I'm still having to drive up here and be present at a right to you know that kind of thing.

That's what we were talking about earlier too. It's like if you want to learn how to play the guitar from really good guitar players, getting a group of guitar players, absolutely, And it's the same thing I feel like with writing songs, Like yeah, man, you can stay wherever you're at, and if you've got a little group of guys that are gonna write songs in your hometown, you know, that's great. But like, if you want to sharpen the knife if you want to if you want to try to get better and be able to hold your own with the best songwriters in the world. Man, you got to get in the room with the best song and I believe that's in Nashville, Tennessee.

You somebody out there may be that guy that you know don't need any help and write. Sure it happens the masterpiece every couple of years, every time he sits down by himself. Sure never comes to nash I'm not saying that, but but you know, I just thought you had to be here. I wanted to get better. I've always wanted to get better. I still go to rites daily trying to improve how I do whatever. Whether whether it's working or not, I don't know, but I still learn your tar stuff daily. I mean, I just think that you should come up here and want to be getting better.

So you're writing songs during the week on weekends, though most weekends, you're standing on stage with an acoustic or electric and you're singing harmonies, some lead on on a on a tune to thousands, Yeah, your own songs. Watch them being played at this point, hundreds of hundreds of thousand peoples on weekend.

We try to.

We we tried to think about the other day, like how many gigs you and I played to say, like five hundred people in the bar, and we thought that was packed, like people you know we put we put five hundred and three hundred and fifty cap room though, and it would be squeazed in there with man, this is we're going to do the rest of our life. Yeah, sure, yeah, it will never get better than that.

Yeah.

And then we were putting them in a thousand people rooms and we're like, man, it will never get better than it will never never And then we're an arena and it's like it will never get better than this.

You're going three hundred to a thousand. You start off with two man's in a quarter of a chicken booth.

Chicken yeah, a Mexican but yeah, yeah.

But yeah, like you said, remember hundred fell a couple of times we had two hundred, three hundred and four person.

Are in one thousand and then.

Ten thousand, and how much do arenas hold ten five to fifteen twenty so the ego sheds, which is getting bigger twenty five, twelve twenty five some of them I don't know. And then arenas now you're in stadiums and I mean, I mean Dallas was sixty eight thousand.

It's a lot, dude. It's overwhelming if you stand up there and let it. If you let it, it's it's overwhelming.

Oh I trust me, I know it is. Are you you're out there with us? I know it's over. You're out there with But I wasn't playing, dude.

But still walking out there is intimidating, even if you're carrying a guitar about which I did that for a while.

To take us through for the listener. Like what because everybody sees your life, everybody sees you on stage, and they see you for that two two and a half hours that you're playing. But like, what, what is what Wednesday to Sunday for you? What is like coming to town? And if you're writing like Wednesday, so like I no Wednesday, Like if he comes to town before bus called button to coming back? What is that like for a touring musician and one of the if not the biggest band in country music right now?

Yeah, So usually I'm coming up, say I'll drive it Wednesday morning, write a song for Sony and then and then you get on the bus Wednesday night and we get on there, try to go to sleep. Roll when you wake up the next day, you're at whatever venue.

You're making the most venues in the in the night. If they were within the States.

Yep, yep. Most of the time, you know they'll take the if it's over so many miles, you take a couple of drivers, and then they just stop and swap and keep rolling. But driving we're asleep most of the time. And then we're on the bus at the stadium. The band is Thursday, you're going over stuff. They're checking gear and doing all this stuff set up, and then sound check Thursday night, and then it's sit around all day Friday till showtime. Sometimes we have rehearsal. We've got a rehearsal rig that's set up in the green room a lot of times, and we'll run songs in there something, or I'll try to sit around and rite. Most time we're once we get up and around, we got a guitar in our hand, doing something until showtime, and then it's me and Tyler King and Luke did a little warm up at eight pm and then show at nine. You over eleven try to come down from the adrenaline rush. It takes you till about one.

You still get nervous, You still get like is it adrenaline or is it nerves?

And it's straight adrenaline. Now it's it's a little farther removed from like the club thing that we were. We come up and get used to where the people are right in your face, and then as the venus get bigger, the people get further away, barricase further away, stage is larger, they're further away.

So it's like I always did better like that.

Where they're not up in my grill in my face. It's like, it's it if you can like clear out all that mechanism and and just focus on the stage and what you got going on, then I don't have any like super nerves. But no matter how you try to control whatever, you can't you can't control the adrenaline of walking in front of fifty thousand people. No, ain't nothing I figured out how to do, like to like you're shaking your bodies. It's a drug, dude, your body, Yeah, your body is in a yeah, like this is amazing right now thing for a couple of three songs, and then then it then it comes down. That's still it's still pumping. You can't tell as much, you know, but but for me anyways, that's how money is. Yeah. But but yeah, I still I mean, I'm still nervous. I mean, you're if you mess up, it's in front of fifty thousand people, not having not sixty people. Yeah, first year, what's your worship's first first? I mean I got the worst mess up by the way. First, get Jamie guitar tech for Luke for a couple of tours.

So I did.

I did about a year taking for UH Rob Williford and Kurt Ozon and the keys player.

And UH for about a year.

And then they put Luke's tech in the band, which was destiningly and then I became Lukes tech and I did that for I guess three and a half four years. Yeah, I was Luke's tech. And then when Rob took some time off the road, I stepped into the band Slide all right, first gig, so the first So so they called me in the They told me to come to Luke's dressing room one day and they're like, hey, Luke's got talked to about something. I was like, all right, cool, So as I'm going in him and Tyler King are in the dressing room and they're like whispery, you know stuff. And I walk in there like, oh, could you give us a minute?

And I was like, I'm bad dog. Y'all told me to come here.

I fall do whatever.

And I saw go I like to take a walk around. I'm thinking like, hey, I'm chacking. I'm like double checking himself. What do I messed up on to day? I meant, did I jack a guitar? So you had no clue? Really, you're gonna pick to be asked? No, no, no, no idea? What was going on? And I finally walked back. I gave him tow or three minutes while we up there, and Tyler comes out the dressing room and shakes my hand. He's kind of grinning, and I'm like whatever. And I had just seen Rob at somewhere down the hall and he was like, Luke talked to you yet like kind of like he was real stern, not like mad, but you know, and he Rob yeah, Rob, and he was he was cool. He was like, Luke talked to you. And I said, no, man about what he was like. I just went on and I was like, man, I'm getting fired. I don't know what I did. I don't know what I said something to somebody. Finally finally came out and finally came out and said something to somebody that I shouldn't have or something. I don't know, And but I walked back in there, and Tyler come out and walk in there, and Luke asked me something like, hey, man, what what I I want you to come in here? I like, what song should I do on the acoustic thing tonight? I was like, I don't know, this is your show. I quit being an artist several years ago, you know, kind of kind of do that. I'm not telling you what song to sing to do. If I pick something whack and you go out there and sing it, it's on me. I'm out there and crazy. He's like, no, man, but what's something cool? I could do whatever? So starts kind of getting like he knows what he wants to do. He ain't never asked me or anybody.

Else, so he yeah, he knows what he wants to do. So I'm like, this ain't right, yea, this is super fishy.

And I was like, dude, I don't know.

As I and he sat there.

For a minute, he just like awkward, stairs like that, you know, And I'm like, what's something man, Because most of the time we're buddies. Everybody's buddies out there loose one of our boys. But at that moment, when he was giving me the awkward stairs, like damn, he went to super.

Sauce man mode real quick. I was like, dude, I don't finna get fired, and he was like.

And after a few minutes and just offering us, I was like, all r dude, if you don't want it, it's that's that's all you need Before I'm out, bro, I'm thinking like, nah, man, the real reason I needed you come in here is like, I need somebody to play guitar.

I was like, oh cool.

I was like, well, who's who's got to miss a show? Is it Kurt or Tyler or Dustin or right? Who's missing the guy? What? You know? Whose part do I need to learn for the thing or whatever? He was like no, I mean like like I needed you to play guitar in the band. And I was like, what, Who's which guy's missing? That's all I could think of. Somebody can't get the flu or still. I was like, well, yeah, yeah, I'm like, well if somebody gotta take some time offer somebody, you know, somebody pass away or their wedding or you know anything. And he was like, no, man, I'm like, you want to play guitar in the band. And immediately I was like, hell, yeah, yeah, I think. I was like, man, my eyes cheered up, I'm sure, and gave him a big hug and it was it was over. I was like, man, I've done it. Yeah, you know, this is where I wanted to be at the whole time. That's why he took the guitar tack gig in the first place. Was to so sick, be there, be present to win. You know, wasn't Nashville, but I but I was in camp and and uh, you know, if I had never done, if I had never taken the guitar tak job, my name wouldn't even have been in the house. They wouldn't even known who I was. Nobody knows them, wouldn't have been friends of all them guys. You know, Rob wouldn't recommend me for the job.

I like to uh too, I like to take a little credit, you know, no big two big shockers. I just happened to be on the bus the night that Loop decided he needed a new he needed another tag. He was like, I was, I was there. We were in Alabama. Uh, we're an Alan Dolphin. No, not Dolphin Alabat, what was it. Dolphin Island is down there somewhere the wharf in Alabat, Southern alban We were down there and he said, yeah, I need a new guitar. I need another guitar. Tak it's just getting so big.

And uh.

I was like, second, I went, I found I called I found Dustin and I was like, hey, dude, we gotta get Jamie on this, like that's the guy. And he was like, oh, man, for sure, for sure we'll get Jamie. He said that. I was like, he said, he's going to hire a new tag. I called Jamie me like, hey, dude, Loot needs a guitar.

Attack.

He was like so. I was like, so this is it, dude, Like you got to take this thing. It'll get you up here. He's like, man, I'm doing pretty good on these gigs down there, and I was.

Like, no, I'm fishing.

I was like, this is the intro into the door, dude. And man, he took and it was I'm not saying it really has nothing to do with me not only would have clearly got him in, but it's just fun to have like the boys in a spot where we can all kind of, hey, you should try this guy, you should try this guy. You should try this guy.

I mean, I think you know, take credit or not I take credit. I mean, it's definitely all I mean you Norly, I mean, Jonathan, all these guys in your friends dude. Yeah, out of all the people I met up here, and all the songwriting I've done, and all the artists we've written with, played with, picked up gigs with, done everything at the end of the game, not the end of the game. Hopefully we're not at the end yet. But I mean saying like it eventually ended up just being my buddies that helped me get where I was at, Like the people that I had invested in my time in relationship wise, you Dustin Yea, and these people that were my friends.

It was like that was the guys that got me.

Put my name in the hat. We may you and I got to go write a song here in a little while. It's like we may meet this I don't know the guy we're writing with the day, but it's like you, we may meet him, become friends with it, you know, and that and if we do cool, if we don't cool. But it's like, man, if you invest in that, the rest of it seemed to come along. Maybe not as quick as you like it sometimes, but I think my entire career is based off of my buddies helped me out, you know, reaching reaching out and me too for sure, and lending a hand once they once they got to where they could help. It's like I remember having a conversation with you years ago. You had no big cuts, no thing. You were in the writing deal and stuff, and it's like, man, I'm trying to do this and I'm trying to do this, and you're like, hey, man, I I.

Can't help you yet. I can't do anything because I.

Mean, like he already cares about what you're Yeah, you're already anything though, And I'm like, I'm sure I was annoying at the time because I was like, well, you got a deal already. I mean I got to come there and get a deal, like you can help me now, you know, And you're like, no, no, I can't, not yet, not yet, you know, And it's dust in the same way it was like, you know, but once once my friends started getting in the circles where they could help, we have all helped each other and all that.

Yeah, and it all became a thing. But it was like, yeah, and it's not like anybody's work can any harder than anybody else.

But I bet on that. Yeah, yeah, but I didn't bet on like I still knew that. We still all know that you have to go write the damn song, or you got to sing the train, or you just play the lick or whatever, like you have to go do the work obviously, But I never had any worries about it. I was like, well, I just keep playing my gigs and do the thing. Man. It's like I don't feel like going to chasing down these one hundred people. I know this guy is going to be successful at some point in time. I just knew. I knew that from the first time I met you. I was like that, you know, you know, like, whatever this guy decides to do, he's gonna do it. If he wants to be the top insurance salesman in the United States, that's what he's gonna do. Yeah.

I knew that.

Yeah, almost like you know, good at everything you try, you know what I mean? So it was like, I can't help you yet, but one of these days I'll be able to bet on that.

Dude.

Yeah, I bet on all my friends working out on their dreams, just like I was chasing mind, and we were all chasing it, and then when it started working out, it just starts working out.

For it everybody together, which is yes and creating it again.

I mean that this conversation puts puts us in a room in your house in Mississippi one Saturday morning when it's raining and we're supposed to be turkey hunting.

And that ties in hunting too, which is great.

Segue and uh Dan picks up a guitar and plays.

A lick man. We got to talk about the guitar first. That was the most interesting thing to me. We had planned this turkey hunt. We were going to Mississippi hunt and it starts. We get there and it is I mean buckets due, Like we couldn't have hunted that morning it was rain.

I think we all zoomed different co writes the day before, like that's how bad we wanted a turkey hunt. We went down there, zoomed on Friday, went to sleep. We're gonna wake up in Australia, didn't I really y'all into that. Yeah, it was like yeah, yeah, we'll do it, but we're zooming. Yeah.

I made y'all do it.

I was zooming in White's room with my co ride.

I did a double that.

You wrote in the whites room and double and then uh, and then we zoomed with yeah yeah Australian go Brad.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so like seven or eight at night and it was daytime for him.

Was nine in the morning, so it rains. We're like, well, we can't go hunt. We might as well write a song or do something. And uh, your wife, Maria, who was also an unbelievably talented individual, her dad passed what probably thirty years thirty forty years I in a while when she was very young, Yeah, and left her a guitar and which eventually got moved some to your house or given to you or something.

It's hers, but yeah, it stays at my house, right, and uh, I just literally we didn't have anything else to do, and I reached over and grabbed the guitar and sat down and the first thing was that.

It just and I was.

Like, I remember, I remember you played the Little River for the six month or one thing back and forth for it.

This thing, so the.

One something like that, but a couple of passes through and we were like, what's that.

I had no idea.

First, we were like, bro guitar on a Saturday morning.

It was the very first thing you played. It was played very it was the first.

Thing I played. And obviously tell that that.

But it's but even that that.

That feels like everything that we're about. I mean the three of not me and and that's what I'm saying. Naturally did that. I felt like I was just a vessel. Though I don't feel like I didn't have that lick contrived. I didn't like I feel like that guitar wanted that lick to be written on it that day. And I mean no, literally, thank god. I feel like Maria's dad, who was also an accomplished Uh, there's another North Alabama, North Piss musician that gigged and played did the thing. I mean just kind of slid us a little bonny. And I've told Maria that that's no secret, man, I mean, you almost but he was a co writer on the team.

I think that's a nineteen sixty eight y'amaha. One of those red labels things.

It's great. It's my favorite guitar. That's a great record, acoustic stuff. It was cool that that that that's what led us into the I mean, that's all y'all's melody is get a verse of course.

Go. We been burning booth and keeping the light song. So I've been thinking we need a little time along. What see we cancel our place tonight the morning, gonna be your man, get some can little burning and some records, turning all the lights down, taking night saying so the away, your body moving, keep doing what you do to me off nine riding out love so, oh god, I haven't left the bass, and take us to a high bay making kind of m weeding me.

How I can go in to that? Sorry, I'm kid, go right.

There ain't no way baby to give me out this high. I don't even know if I know.

You. Look, that's good work.

Could I even think of bout.

Besides turning around and locking the door, watching your red dress falling floor. Let's get some candles burning, some records, turn in all the light spell taking that say so they bodies moving, keep doing.

What you're doing to me out, riding out love.

So girl, I want it kind of handle that passion, take us to a.

High place.

Making that candle.

Right we're doing I'm just trying to remember the thing. Uh yeah, How cool is that? Man?

How cool is that? I mean, just like it's it's a full circle moment, our.

First number one together man. Yeah, the three of us from the I mean from the boats and the trailer parks and the gigs and no people showing up two gigs to hear in. Uh, you're in fifteen seventy five thousand people send that song back to you every night. It's gotta be pretty cool, dude, one of the with our best buddy dude, I mean, and that's our that's that's our guy. Man.

All those guys man have are have become some of my best buddies in the world. And and to get to write around play music with them, it's crazy crazy, so that many people is even crazier. And then it's just I mean, on half the nights I get to walk out there and open the show with that lig Wow. I mean, I'm playing guitar to a song we wrote in front of that many people like every night looking up like man.

That is allowing, Yeah, that's allowing us to pursue and continue to pursue this dream.

As mad as you get at it.

Yeah.

Music absolutely, I mean it's what brought us all here. It's what brought us together. It's what I mean helps feed our kids. You know, it's pretty pretty incredible story. Man.

We usually talk about hunting, fishing, you catching, you catching hogs on brush piles.

Yet I honestly have not been in the boat one time this year. I've been taking I've been untangling bird's nest from bait casters and getting that time, getting baits h out of chess. My my fishing is getting baits out of trees, out of weeds, pulling moss off stuff. That's three times, you know, getting fished off the hook. That's what my fishing consisted.

I'm gonna out here, my little my little guys are doing it. So that's where I'm at. I'm gonna out here right here. So uh with the with the climb of that song, A particular instance, uh circumstance happened where your granddad was ready to sell his place right and you bought that ship.

Dude, straight up, that is awesome.

That's such which was a dream you've always.

I think I told I think I told my granddad when I was when I was tiny, man, I was like, one of these days, I'm on this because I thought, you know, when you're little, you think that your granddad just gives it to you.

Everybody just gives you everything.

You know, like that one day, one day you'll give this to day and one day Daddy'll give it to me.

And then my dad has six kids.

Yeah, it's like if I had gave it to you, if they gave it to you, and he gave me my piece down the line, it ain't gonna be in this whole place.

He's gonna be a sixth though it, you know. Uh yeah.

But I told him that I was gonna buy it when and I think he was like he kind of like snickered, like you know, cool. And then time goes by, man Land goes up. Things things don't happen til you're gigging up. Until I took the job with Luke, you know, I was, I was playing four or five nights a week. I was either playing guitar with other artists or doing my shows and stuff like that gets further and further from reality, you know, It's like it starts becoming sad because I'm like, man, I put all my eggs in this basket. Dude, sure I put all maggs in this music basket. Here, I'm, you know, nearly forty years old, and I don't have a hit. Yeah, you know, I make I do make a lot. I was making a full time living playing guitar. I'll get it wrong, but my family wasn't prospering. We were surviving, and so the saying you're gonna buy that when you're little, and then when I turned fifteen, I was like, yeah, I'm definitely I'm gonna buy this form one day. And then we're twenty in your dreaming, I'm still sitting out there on it fishing, doing everything. Man, one of these days is not gonna be mine. And then twenty five you're like, man, that's expensive.

Yeah.

At thirty, I'm like, well, damn, I'm just playing in bars. And then you know, thirty four, thirty five, I've got a wife and kids, and it's like, man, these I ain't never gonna be able to afford nothing buying all these damned diapers. Yeah, yeah, you know, the lands out of the question.

Yeah, baby food's expensive.

Yeah, so so all they kind of like, you know, in a sad way. I'd like, I'll never be able to buy his place. They'll get old and have to sell it before I'll ever make anything, you know, and.

Which was getting ready to happen, I mean got to that point.

I mean they're in their eighties, dude. Yeah, that's their life saving. He worked his whole life to pay the pay that place off to so one day his plan was to for them to get old there and then once they get old enough to go to nurse on, sell that place. And that's his that's there, that's the rest of their existence. And so they told he told me, I don't know, a couple of years from it was before we ever wrote that song. I mean, I go with there. One day we're doing something, don't if we were hunting, fishing or something. It was like, well, Son, I might have to sell the place. And I'm like, dang, yeah. I was like, well, dude, I'm.

I just got a cut.

I think I just got it. We just got my first cut of my kind of folk. Yeah, I just we just got that. And I was like, dude, this ain't gonna this ain't gonna an album cut. It's not going to pay enough to get it done.

I was like, a good one. But we're in the door.

I'm I'm about to sign a song, right deal. You know, I don't know a high school work cut, but I promise I'm gonna give one hundred percent to try to get something going to get money either either yeah, horse or something. I don't know how we're gonna. I don't know what's gonna go on or what you gotta. He didn't tell me a price or it was just like, you know, well, all right, well then you know, a year goes by or so, and I think we wrote kind of Love at that wind, maybe written kind of Look we wrote kind of Love at that point, and it hadn't made a record it or something. It was like, hey man, it's getting it's getting time of white to sell the place. I'm like, dude, you got to give me six more give me six more months or a year. I got something cracking on a song right now that may do something. I don't know. Yeah, it still won't him on the record. Yet we were still trying to talk uh luke and a singing Yeah, like I guess he had he had he had written, he had he had written a song with us that it was like talking him into doing it. Yeah, right, we felt like it was a hit. I felt like we felt like it was a hit that day. I did. I think y'all did too. On some of the tapes I have, it's like us were like, hey, man, this real, this is a real thing.

Yeah, I might have done something.

Yeah, And but it was like trying to get him, talk to him to do it. But I was like, man, I'm telling my granddad. I was like, but if you can, I don't know, but it's something in my mind, like if you can give me six more months, well then then then finally he did. He's he holds off on ceiling and it was like nothing happened to you.

And I was like, oh god, yeah, he's.

Gonna sell it. I know he's gonna say that. My luck is I'll have the hit. I'll have a hit after if I have one over at all. Yeah, two years after his song or something not that I'm telling you. I'm I'm, i'm, I'm I'm writing all this. I'm writing a hundred songs in a year. Pope out one of them is gonna pop. But I got one in the works right now that I that I swear it's gonna do something. He and it was like, I don't know if I played him a song or anything like that, but but but he he like he believed me.

Wow.

Had a neighborhoods that was trying to like hounded him, trying to buy that he he had done some big trade or some land and sale or something and made of this guy made a bunch of money, sold some land to a pilot gas station or something. And it was like, I could pay for it. And my Granddad's just putting him off and put him off, and I'm like, dude, you ain't got to put him off anymore, dude, So it sell it, dude, you got to do it. And he was like, nah, he gonna buy it any time, dude.

Always He's like I can, I can wait? Wow, you know.

So he gave me enough time to get it going. And finally the song gets on the record. Still didn't know if it was, you know, single, but it's on there, and I'm like, oh, dude, please, just just if Papaul will.

Hold out just a few more thinking about this land the whole time.

Oh God, that was it thinking.

It is thirty.

I mean, it's beautiful, hell yeah, long story short of the song they released sung as a single. It smokes the charts, and you bought it. We bought the.

And now your kids will always be able to go to that bank and catch fish out of that pond on the backs of something that came from your brain. Man, that's pretty cool.

I coffee there when I was I learned a bass fish in that pond for my dad and my boys learning from the bass fish.

Awesome, what do we do?

First grader? Oh yeah, I'm sure that was born that thing. You had to say. It's a part of the shoe for the one that.

Got o one that got away for you, JD. Could be a fish, my dear, what comes to my.

Song?

A few of those probably I got a cold.

I got a couple of ones that got away necessarily on the hunting thing. I think, I guess. I guess.

My biggest one that got away was a deer story.

I don't know when this would have been, like twenty ten.

He called, and is it? I can't even remember what you're it was.

My dad had killed a giant uh in one of our in one of the fields we hunt, one of the least we have. That's the top typical from my county still to this day. That's it's the top, it's the top scoring typical. What was it buck from my county? What what is scored? Oh that's one fifty ish something like that.

I mean, it's just shit.

One fifty right at it. Maybe it's a big wide team anyways. But but I was sitting in that same deer stand. This was two or three years everything, I will say twenty ten ish, and I had it was the last day of season. I had hunted probably three days, the last three days season in that field, and I had hunted the other side of the field for two evenings and this big deer had come out on me. I hadn't didn't have him on camera to know anything about him, just seeing him and got eyes on him at like six hundred yards two three evenings before, watched him for forty five minutes of the binoculars. I was like, man, he's a stud. Too far to make him. I couldn't make a move or anything. So I went back the next evening. I went halfway. I sat halfway down, I set up halfway down the field, split the distance from me and him. He came back out again like five hundred yards stayed in that four five hundred yards in a different spot of the field. He was with a couple of days that were regular to that field, I'm assuming, and but I couldn't get it was just too far. Third evening, last day of season, I went sat in the stand. My dad shot that deer out of which he had been telling me if I want to he told me, it's for two minutes in a row. If I want to kill that deer, to go site that stand. And I hadn't done it. If I'd have been in that stand both those evenings, i'd had a seventy five yard kind of kind of deal. But anyway, I sat there. Probably it's probably forty five minutes for dark before it was four no shooting light, something like that four thirty four forty five here in Mississippi at the time, and probably a one ten one fifteen eight point comes out. I'm like this last day, you know, And he said, dear man, it was an old enough deer. It wasn't wasn't no baby. But he's probably one hundred and ten inches, three year old, something like that. And I he comes and stops broadside. He comes from six hundred yards out fast walking and takes him just a couple of minutes and just broadside stops it about eighty yards. I like clicking the rais fronts like eight eight eighty eighty five steps. I'm like, I get prod. I clicked the safety off. I was like last day due, sorry, sorry, sorry, my guy. I mean like, I love jerky and dang right and snacksticks and they.

Especially with the halapinion cheese.

And I was about to squeeze off on this deer and and I caught something, a flash of something in the corner of the feld out of my eye, and I looked and it was like six hundred yards coming out of the corner that I had sat in the first evening, the very where I sat, And this deer comes out, and all I saw was the how wide he was. And I was like, that's the that's the differm came out on the this n that I'm sitting on today for tunes in a row. I swapped it this in he comes out O there he's making the same line at this eight point, just made so I'm like, I clicked safety back off, sat down and got up a binoculars and I watched him he's slow feeding through this cut bean filled. It takes him till thirty or twenty thirty minutes of light left to see to get one hundred and eighty two hundred yards. He took a curve that the eight point didn't take and goes out and when he stops, I dotted him at like one eight five, which I can do, Yeah, surely with the two seventy.

So I get.

I get he's standing there looking. I don't know if he was he had finally got in my line a wind or something, and he's clearly an older deer, older deer, but he was something. He had stopped and he was feeding. He had stopped feeding, was either looking at some doze or he had my wind was going crossing ways. I think he had maybe catching me. Anyways, I put the gun on him, squeeze trigger, boom, he drops. I was like, oh, yes, this has been at the time, my biggest year by far. He's probably I'm guessing here, mid thirties, one thirty five somewhere in that range.

Nine point could have been one forty five you.

Maybe, yeah, but he uh, it's I mean, I watched him for thirty minutes with the monoculars to get him to one one hundred eighty five yards or so, and so I knew he had he was a nine point. I was guessing him at say, I'm gonna guess, say nineteen and a quarter inside.

That's how long I had to just say, you know, like I was looking at him like a man through a corner.

My man gonna be he's gonna be like eighteen twenty. I'm thinking nineteen and a half.

I done decize him up like big time, like ticle to death because I know if he stepped with.

Him to smoke it. Yeah, you know, I was in a good prop situation. I mean, like he had no idea I was there.

So he dropped.

I shoot, he drops. I look, he just stands back up. And I was like, gosh, dude. So I chambered another shell, put it on him. Shoot he drops. I was like, yeah, it's over two in him right, still still plenty of light just see him and all this kind of stuff. And I'm like, but just getting dark. And I was like, all right, So I just I put the scope on him and just look, I can see white belly on the ground toward me. Man, that's something of his feet flinched about twice. I was like, no, I chambered another round, just centered his belly and put another one in him. He jumps one again. He done. I called Dad. I was like, hey, you have you at the house. He said yes, and man, come down, come down. That told him where to come down the creek. I was like, I just smoke the giant, my biggest butt.

Yeah.

He was like, that's the one you've seen yesterday to day for yep. Got him. He's done. He's I'm looking at him on the ground, been watching him for five minutes. He's out. Hung up with him. I think I called you. He was like, my voice is still shaking, dude, don't take that scope off. I just killed the big stair that I've shot shot and uh, it got dark. I waited till I saw Dad's headlights coming down on the other side of the creek, a little wolf creek or whatever. And I so I got down the stand when I saw them coming and started walking towards the deer. I probably was like I was close enough to it that it dark. I could see the a dark mass where he was laying at but it was dark. You know. I didn't have a flashlight or any time that I could find. And I was probably fifty seventy four yards and when Dad's headlights turned towards the field and shine on him, all you see was the sillo of deer and he just got up round on.

I can't even laugh at that. Oh my god.

I put three two semi rounds in this guy, right, And I thought, well, he's not going far.

Yeah, I mean laid that belly Dad.

Outside the truck. We come over there, I go to where he was laying at it. It's just a it's just a pool of red. Yeah, you know, I'm like, he ain't far. And so we looked with what flashlight they had, me and him and my granddad I think was with him, and we looked for thirty forty five minutes.

We go back to the house. You don't know this story. Did We go back to the house.

Got a beagle that well, my little brother had a bagel at the time that was that would track deer. And we went and got I think got his dog, and and one of my cousins went down there with me. There was five of us, and we got the dog on the blood and followed it all the way, probably four or five hundred yards to UH. A guy named Duane Ryan Hart was his name. He was a game moredenan to his property and.

That should we cut us out? Are we good on that?

He was one of my grandad's friends lived up there. He's passed away now, but all right, yeah, no good.

He's cool with that.

Some some of my UH friends out there. But he he knew the guy and was friends with him though, and he he owned the property that had joined where we hunted at. And so we got to the fence where the deer had crossed and went over this guy's property and I was like, I'm I don't see y'all, I'm across, I'm crossing the fences. Yeah, yeah, my deer. And my Granddad's like.

Nope, mm hmm.

Is it as big as you say it is. I'm like, it is my biggest buck. He was like, don't do anything illegal trying to get that thing.

Yeah, we're gonna do it. Was like, let's just go the house.

It's midnight at this point. Yeah, he was like, let's just go the house and called you ain't in the morning, and uh, and he's not gonna carry for us to go in and looking for this deer on his place. But I'm gonna call him in the morning and we'll go. So I mean like I went home, didn't sleep the whole night or whatever, and uh in daylight the next morning, I'm I'm getting the truck driving back out to my grandparents house, like, hey, get him on the phone, let's go get that deer whatever. And uh so he calls, uh calls a guy or something, and this guy had grand kids. It's time.

Some boys are there.

I guess they deer hunting and stuff too, but they uh he told him the deer was there, and we got permissioned. I had to wait on somebody to wait on Dad or somebody to do something.

For a wee could go.

We couldn't go to about lunch, and Dad wanted to go with me to be with me. When we walked up on the deer whatever it was, we knew it was dead. It was poor, too much blood and we so we went down there and looked nothing. We just came up to a barber fence. We trailed to a barboar fence, so nothing, just to pool of nothing, hair and different stuff. I was like, man, is it right? And one of that guy's grandkids was there. I guess when my granddad called that morning, told him we had a big one down and they went and got it and the colties that ate it up. I guess because it was dead. It was dead that night. The grandkids went't got it, yes, and they I don't know if they skull matter or what it was. The the guy took it to work with him. One of my cousins worked with him, becausein Brent worked with the guy and he was like, man, it's a nineteen and a half inch inside spread nine point and I was like, he's like it's a monster. He's like it looks like something that don't even bend come from around here. And I was like, oh god, dude. And my little brother was like, I go steal it out of the back of his truck. It's in the back of the truck at work right now.

I will get it right.

My cousin was like, he brought it to work this morning. Oh I heard.

My little brother was like.

I's gonna get out of the back of his truck right now. I don't worry about it.

And I was like, no, I don't do it. We'll call him and ask him. So we I don't know. Somebody that knew the kid or whatever. We called him and asked him, but they were like, oh no, we didn't find any bullet holes in this year.

He was eight byck Coties. He wouldn't give the deer back.

Let's get that deer back, man, Hey, dude, let's get that deer back. Guess what this is the best far the story.

The guy who has the deer built a house next to me is my next door neighbor. Now, really, I'm assuming he probably still has the school at his house. I've never seen it in person, but would he.

Like to trade some tickets? I mean, I think, but just ident the deer.

It's about a nineteen inch inside.

With a really light color.

Now, but y'all that they found whatever, and I don't know they made. I guess they probably didn't believe us that we killed or something. I don't know how it goes what their reason was, but he wouldn't let it go.

Man, Maybe we get that dear back. Maybe get that.

I'm not giving you a choice on favorite, because I think you've probably got a bunch of songs that are your favorites. But I can't leave. I can't leave the podcast out here and you sing this, or just to give us the first chorus.

I keep the habit, the smoking back sometime.

Man.

I tried the heart stuff, but I had to let all that go. The toughest thing I ever gave was today m hm. Smoothing old habits lacking.

You are hard hard to bread.

Old habits lacking. You are hard hard to bread love with someone new. It's so hard to me and I have grown so steel, and all of your an old habits a lacky.

You are a.

Man, mister Jamie David.

Everybody I know. It's a long one. Brother, your brother, you don't know. I love you, proud of you, great dad.

Great, this is a family man.

He ain't say I didn't see this part. Covid which part this part? Oh? I think I like we all.

Bet on the writing songs and the singing. I thought Reid would be big artists.

Lamp, so did I. I thought we were just right for Reid.

Yeah, and I thought we'd be writing reed songs.

But turns out I wanted to hunt all the time.

God same.

But I didn't see the podcast. I didn't see the podcast. Well it has to do with Jordan. It's great. No, I love it.

I'm just saying I bet on the rest of it.

And and well, it's like we said earlier, man, it's it is. It's it's awesome catching a dream, chasing a dream, catching a dream, but the fact that you get to chase it and catch it with your brothers and your best friends, and you get to do it and have success for hopefully the rest of our lives in Nashville, in Mississippi and Tennessee and wherever in the Midwest hunting big deer man like, I'm just grateful and thankful we get to do it together.

So don't drop your dreams.

You can kill that they bet on your body.

And a half inch wide. Dear, you can write that number one song and bet on your buddies. Dude, I was rot that. That's right there. Thanks for hanging out.

With us, hang out with us. We'll see oll next time.

Peace.