Zane Williams

Full episode transcript, auto-generated from the audio and lightly formatted (verbatim, not edited).

[Music] like on a tuesday afternoon wearing a hat with a bunch of feathers on it i thought do i think i am you know all these people got to be looking at me like look here look at this richard petty mofo richard petty but i don't know now i just i've gotten so used to it that i don't even really think about

it and every once in a while i get a you know i could get a compliment on it and somebody'll be like hey man i dig your swag is it always dudes that talk like that no but it was a dude one time it was in a gas station at 2am this guy goes hey man i dig your swag i dig your

swag to be honest thank you i gave you credit for immediately knowing that he was talking about your hat you know what i mean yeah because that might freak me out i was wearing a hat i was coming from i was driving the bus home from a show so i was still wearing my show clothes so i had on the hat and

a you know a sports jacket uh like a sport coat i was i was in my fancy schmancy zane attire so anyway yeah hey whatever gets you out there to the people you know if it's 2 a.m at a gas station i have been thinking about taking this hat in though for a an oil change i think it's got plenty of oil

on it does have you know i don't know how you wear a felt still in like the summer yeah how many fans do you i know this is a weird question it's hyper-specific but like i sweat uncontrollably on stage and i can't seem to get enough fans on me and then not to mention the blowing on the uh the mic yeah from

the wind do you use a bunch of fans no i don't i don't really sweat that's my that's my thing really yeah i uh i glisten occasionally but um but no i'm i don't know if uh i guess i'm cold-natured maybe or something but i don't i just don't get hot easily and so i can wear a felt head any old time

it doesn't really bother me how interesting my wife gave me a hard time about that at first she was like dude that's like wearing like a wool sweater like in the summertime you can't do that and i was like man i don't know i would just die i had cameron make me a straw hat that was you know had some feathers and

stuff on it but so kim didn't like it as well cameron's at standard hat works sandra morris yeah i think we said that before we started rolling oh cameron morrison cameron morris stander hat works and he makes hats for like freaking everybody yes yeah how did you meet him um is he in waco he's in waco standard hat works and um i

just saw on instagram where he had made some hats for a bunch of people i know cody jenks and jason edie and whiskey myers boys and the midland guys and i was just like well yeah i want a hat you know so i think i just sent him an instagram message and said hey i like your hats guy i'd like to have

one sometime and he was like is that your impression of yourself and he was like man i'm a big fan i'd love to make you a hat and i was like oh thank goodness i was hoping he would say yeah heck yeah dude so yeah so that was 2016 or so and then that's been my main hat since then i don't that's

my thing is i got i'd worn a bunch of hats before that and never and this no cowboy hat ever looked right on my head why what do you think we have a pretty narrow face i don't know narrow face or something i don't i don't know why but most of them just look goofy on me but then so do ball caps

so i was just i had to actually comb my hair for like a long time and for a while i was even doing this kind of a poofy thing where i had to like blow dry it and put product in it and god it was a pain the image of you putting did you just hold on you just used the word product

yeah product hey babe are you going to store your product yes could you pick me up my product my product that was a short-lived phase in the phase of zane williams but um you can you can see that look on my the cover of my texas like that cd yeah oh like clean cut sort of yeah does that have a little too

late on it yeah no that a little too late it's on overnight success yeah you're right aren't you buying a tree or something yeah with a borrowed guitar that i didn't think to bring my guitar on that photo shoot and so we were at this restaurant and they had you know guitars hanging up on the wall and we asked if we could

if i could use one so that's like some cheap like 200 yamaha or something but dude i was in uh well actually our backgrounds are relatively similar in the sense that like growing up i didn't listen to a lot of country listened to a lot of uh i was a huge clapton guy almond brothers bob seger john mellencamp a bunch of sting

but never really got in the country thing until later into high school and then in college and so i was going to college down in south florida in uh i was probably like 22. and my sister was trying to do this songwriter thing out here and she had opened for you a couple times and i think it like maybe 11 war or

something like that so she sent me your stuff and it was pretty close to the front end of when i was starting to get more into texas artists and country music singer songwriters and she sent me that one dude and a little too late was my jam i was driving around in a freaking bmw in south florida jamming a little too late

yeah and i'd be trying i'd be listening to the turnpike and y'all cool like turning my buddies on to it that's a damn good song thank you yeah i uh i love me some turnpike they're great that's the takeaway that's the that is the humble takeaway love me some turnpike no dude that's a jam oh thank you i love him just a

little too late yep i'm i think that's my most streamed song on the spotify and is it really yeah and does that surprise you yes it kind of surprises me it doesn't it doesn't now but i wouldn't have thought that when i wrote it but i basically i've learned that people love a good like mid-tempo groovy danceable like song it's just a

good it kind of it's in that sort of randy rogers-ish sort of mid tempo danceable tune true the good fiddle part but i think you're being like humble with that because i think that song is better yeah it's mid tempo and i get it from a groove standpoint that people would dig it but that song is like exceptionally strong but it's got

a depth to it that i just wouldn't normally think that people would dig into so that's the reason that it surprised me that it's as popular as it is because you have some other stuff that if it was popular i'd be like yeah that makes sense or like uh oh um 87 chevy 4x4 right which is a killer tune right somebody was

like that's my number one stream song on spotify i'd be like yeah that makes total sense right a little too late kind of surprised me a little bit yeah well it's um that's the thing is you know you write all the songs and i kind of like them all equally they're kind of like my kids i love them all in a different

way and then you just put them out there and then some of them get popular and some of them don't and i don't know can't go real high with the highs so you don't go real low with the lows it's true i'm definitely very even keel i will say that's one thing i never really liked about that's one of the ways in

which i don't fit in the mainstream is that the mainstream and when i'm talking mainstream i'm talking like big labels top 40 stuff yeah top 40. it's a it's a world that's um very focused on singles like what's the single gonna be because they're gonna spend millions of dollars or at least a million dollars on the single and you know you got

to get it up the chart and have a number one with the single what's the single and i've never been like a single oriented type of artist you know even in the texas format because you have a lot of that even here i've had singles on the radio but i always have a hell of a time picking even which one it's going

to be and it always seems like every time we go to pick a single there's like no consensus it's like my manager likes this i don't have a manager anymore but my old manager would like this one and my wife likes this other one and my band likes this other one and the few fans that i've talked to like these other three

over here and it's just kind of like i don't i don't know i feel like i'm good at writing at not writing bad songs so all my songs are like good or hold on hold on you're good at not writing bad songs okay so i don't put out crap but you know it's i also don't know if i have like the you

know i don't know if i have that one or two song per album that are just like mind-blowingly catchy and hooky and like a perfect single i don't i don't feel like i normally do so anyway that hurts you i think in the in the mainstream world but it's all that's always kind of bugged me that you know even just to pick

one song out of everything it's like in nashville so many times it feels like you're betting everything on this one song if it works you're going to have a career if it doesn't work screw you're finished but in a lot of ways too much pressure that's how their model works though i mean they plunge a bunch of money into these people they'll

create an ep if the first single doesn't work i mean think about the whole vaults of music that's been recorded but they got shelved right is the record label saying not we don't want to sink any more money into this i know and so and you know i think it's a result of the business model right because if it does take hundreds

of thousands or a million or more to work a single then yeah man you can't do that with every song you get you get your one or two and then sorry if it didn't work it didn't work i don't blame them for not throwing even more money down a hole that has already swallowed hundreds of thousands of their money but what it

the effect that it creates is that young artists get one or two songs that you get one or two songs you get your shot and then if it doesn't work out then you're what you're can forever they just forget you exist they pass over you for the next person like that's lame to me but what to me i love about the texas

music scene is that there's a different business model where you know you're making more of a living off of your live shows and yeah you make hopefully some money off of cd sales you make some money off of merch you make some maybe a little bit of money off some songwriting royalties but it's not so single oriented to where if you have

a good body of work overall then you know you can just live to make that next record and hopefully make that next record better and then you live to make the next record and the next record it's not about having some one mega hit or whatever which i've never really had i mean even a little too late like i said it's my

most streamed song but i don't know i don't know what it has but it's nothing like earth shattering as far as the number of streams yeah but i would imagine it's millions and millions of streams that's like a few million maybe millions and millions and millions of streams okay so it was actually more than i said all right okay more than i

know you were trying to be humble but you actually overshot me [Laughter] one more million yeah but in the grand scheme of like that's why i think and i come from a different generation but the internet i think is you know it's always a double-edged sword there's a good and the bad part to it but when the heck as an independent artist

were you gonna sell probably combined with all your songs people have listened to some of them i mean we're talking millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of times and like how often yeah i'll take a little bit more you another beer sure yeah uh i mean how often just selling cds would you sell that many cds right or even

play for that many people live you wouldn't even so in a lot of ways in the purest sense of just wanting to make good music and have people listen to it and maybe appreciate it take a ride with you uh i think that's actually pretty powerful and the in the purest sense of making art and having people come along for the ride

i agree with you my opinion is that the internet broke the music industry and is now that we've sort of figured out how to use the internet it's now basically making the music business and music industry better than it ever was better than it ever has been in my opinion because what like one of the things we're doing with our new band

is we're doing a um thing on our what's the name of that new band oh it's like how long did it take him to start talking about his new band all right here we go uh it's called also zane has a new book yes i'm a new book out i'm not zane williams anymore everybody i'm now the wild the lead singer of

the wilder blue which has some controversy in it as well the name of the band well we are we were originally don't let him do that he's going to get into that in the book um we were yes we were originally called hill country for like oh like what a few months or something i was just messing with you long enough to

put out an album under that name um a nightmare in and of itself oh well anyway we getting back to the internet thing here's what i feel like happened is that yeah you get you got in the days before recorded music you had basically patrons of the arts and it's like oh bach if you're gonna if you'll like work at our church

you know we'll you can make art and you know you your expenses are paid for by this rich church or this rich family or something the medici or whatever see i'm so historical really hey i got you dude all right bad news is about that is what if they die or what if they don't like your latest art piece of work and

they decide to kick you to the curb all right if all your money comes from one rich person okay then you move on to recorded music now you've got this recording that you can sell all right that's pretty awesome so now people are selling these recordings all over and there was kind of a golden age where awesome artists were selling you know

millions of recordings and making lots of money and then they were able to spend make big budget albums and do all that stuff only downside of that was you know there were a lot of independent artists during that time frame who you know weren't on the major label for one reason or another and they probably got somewhat left out well now then

the internet came along and kind of messed up the cd sale and so those went way down and streaming happened and now you got digital downloads but it's still not anywhere near as much money as the cd sales used to be and so record labels just like freaked out and they started like not taking any creative chances and just doing like the

most boy band selling thing that they could okay so are you saying this was like early 2000's yeah i think so this is like napster years or when that was first starting to happen yeah it's like i moved to nashville in 99 and that's you know around the time napster came out and everybody was file sharing and oh lord i remember my

brother told me you know he was like i'm sorry zane you just picked the wrong career man there's it's the wrong you're never going to be able to make money off of music ever again it's it can be converted into ones and zeros and it can be you know it can be copied and you can fight against that and they can try

to suit people but they'll never be able to stop them all and so you know you're just never going to make money off of recorded music ever again was with what my brother was telling me in 99 and for all i knew he was right and the record labels were freaking out and so i feel like they stopped taking chances and you

know people artists started needing to also have some of the songwriting money coming in and so they started insisting on being a co-writer on all the songs and it's been hard on like pure songwriters in nashville guys that just write songs to other people like the outside they call it an outside song if an artist records a song that they didn't write

and their producer didn't write nobody in their immediate little bubble wrote that's called an outside song and outside songs these days still to this day are rare it used to be the norm but it's rare there's from what i've from what i understand the number of professional songwriters in nashville is way down from what it was in the 90s say but anyway

what i think has happened is that we finally got first itunes came along and then you had at least a way that people could pay for a download and you found out yeah actually some people want to do that because they don't want to have to mess with all the crap of like the streaming services or whatever and they actually do want

to support the artists and if you give them a convenient way to do it they'll do it but downloads still then you got then you have the streaming thing come along and become more and more robust and now you've got a situation in my opinion that's it's not too bad where you know you don't get paid very well for a stream on

spotify but you do get paid for every stream forever on the lifetime of that song right so instead of 15 up front from a cd sale and then they can play that cd as many times as they want you get like you know fractions of a cent per stream but you get that forever so if you look at a legacy artist like

the eagles for instance i doubt they're selling very many cds right even if we didn't have the internet i don't think they'd be selling that many cds but they're getting but people are streaming the crap out of that their catalog and so they're getting all of that money coming in and especially as people transition from listening to the radio to streaming more

the difference between radio and streaming that a lot of people don't realize is that radio pays royalties to the songwriter but not to the artist okay so if you get that i didn't know so they don't pay like a standard mechanical royalty on the correct right radio stations pay money to ascap and bmi who parcel it out to songwriters and publishers but

not to the record labels or artists all right and the reason reasoning behind that was back in the day like at some point in the past you know radio stations their reasoning was hey look we're playing your music and we're helping make you into a superstar so we shouldn't have to pay you or whatever but the songwriter is not getting to play

sold out arenas and sell a bunch of merch so yeah okay we'll pay the we'll pay the songwriter does it make sense it does but it's not that way my understanding is outside of the united states there are a lot of countries where radio does have to pay the artist and sometimes the producer as well as the songwriter but in america it's

just the songwriter all right well anyway streaming comes as more and more people switch over to streaming some of that income does go to the songwriter but some of it also goes with the artist so people's old catalog if you're an if you're an artist that has a big catalog that was getting that's getting a lot of radio play if you're not

the songwriter you're not making that much money off of it but now that people start streaming it instead of listening it to it on the radio then you are making money off of that and so now what i think is happening what do i know it seems to me like record labels who are sitting on huge catalogs of recorded music that is

now being streamed more and more and more and more and more as more and more people start you know when they're having a backyard barbecue they're listening music on their phone now uh over a you know bluetooth speaker or alexa or whatever instead of the radio then those catalogs of recorded music that those record labels on are starting to earn money from

streaming and it's not very much per stream but if you add it up over a huge catalog and it is a lot of money that's starting to come in so what i think is record labels are starting to ease up a little bit and take a few more chances and they're starting to not always insist on a 360 deal where they take

a piece of your touring and your merch and everything else it's starting to they're starting to ease up on some of that restrictiveness and then also at the end of the day what it what it means for an independent artist like myself is that if you build up you know a catalog of 10 albums or something and people are streaming that stuff

and they have it saved a playlist and there's it's just getting played every so often however so often you're getting paid off of all that stuff so it's not it's not cd sales up front but it is sort of passive income over the long run yeah but it's uh if somebody buys a cd for 10 bucks and then listen to it a

million times you got 10 bucks right somebody listens to your song a million times you get 4k right like on streaming right relative so like close yeah so depending on how it works out it could be more money but just more way more spread out right and then so what we're doing with the new band is [Music] we are using the internet

to basically collect money from our fans and turn all of our fans who want to do it into sort of our patron of the arts by everybody just kicking in just a little bit so it's similar to a there's a website called patreon but we do it through our own website and uh oh interesting you don't use like a third party to

crowdfund it no so you know there's kickstarter there's patreon kickstarter is sort of a one-time fundraiser thing to like say make a cd or something one problem with that is then your next cd you got to do another kickstarter your next video another kickstarter and there's patreon where it's like people sign up for a monthly thing and you give them some something

every month or every so often or whatever um and so our thing is more like the patreon thing but we um but we just do it through our own website and then that way we don't have to deal with patreon's rules and they're so essentially your fans are just paying you all a salary to create your art that they want you to

yes and then we have an audio vault that's password protected for our we call them hideout members and we they get access to that audio vault where they can stream or download from their phone or their computer so they're each kicking in you know the minimum amount is like five dollars a month or 50 a year and they're all kicking in that

and we take that money and the good news is there's no middleman taking a cut like the only cut that comes out of that is i guess the transaction credit card processing yeah and i think our website builder wix we do our website through wix and i think it's like 33 bucks a month it's a very small cup and then we take

that money we go into the studio we make our music and then we just send the music we upload the music to the audio vault and our fans get to listen to the music that they paid for that they helped create how fascinating and what we can do that way is we can put because it's not exactly public it's kind of just

our most hardcore fans i put stuff in the audio vault for our hideout members that i don't put on spotify or itunes or anything else like brand new songs that i just wrote i'll just dude you are so on it i'll just record it on my iphone you're ahead of it because this is like goes into the whole nft thing yeah i

don't know if you've looked into that yeah have you yeah heck yeah but so on the audio of all i'll just make a an iphone recording of a new song and i'll stick it up there and people can download it or stream it if they want and i wouldn't do that i wouldn't put that on spotify sure because i don't want just

i don't want some random person who's looking me up for the first time for that to be the song that they hear yeah but for my hardcore fans who are like subscribed to our music and they're helping make our music possible i think of them as being our record label yeah man it would be the same we had a record label i'd

send them the new stuff that i could be the same as your buddy sitting on the couch and go do you like this right like but you can't do that to anybody because you don't trust their opinion they haven't been there along with the process but that type of fan you could be like you like this what do you think about this

right and they understand it they're there yeah what a freaking cool thing to do man i'm not just saying that too because i went down the whole uh nft blockchain rabbit hole deal and that's essentially what you're talking about in the same way that an artist can you know like a painter you paint a painting but the first time that it goes

for sale they might get paid on that but when that person sells it to the next person there's no royalty coming back to the original artist right so it's like why couldn't but it's all based off of scarcity so why could a songwriter like you not write a personal song for a buyer like i will pay you zane williams or wilder blue

cut this song for x amount of dollars i own it i own the actual graphic identif identity of it digital identity right they want to sell it to somebody that's up to them but then on like a blockchain you could get paid a royalty for the time that they sell it right but it's a scarce asset that only one person owns i

think it's fascinating for me this is fascinating now that's that is kind of a different thing than what we're doing but it's sort of it is fascinating i mean they're both i'm saying like you're using the internet to do the music business in kind of a new way right sure so like our thing is kind of like um it's like instead of

having the medici family or some rich you know dude somewhere right it's like if you have uh however many fans giving you just five dollars a month it could add up to that but it's a lot more of a stable situation because if that one rich person doesn't like your new album they can cut you off or if they die or their

funding goes away or whatever then you're screwed but if you if it's coming from a fan base five dollars a person any of those people can drop off if they want you're gonna have it's gonna go up it's gonna go down but it's fairly especially what i encourage our fans to do is just pick an amount that you can really just set

it and forget it and like that really makes no difference in your life like i mean you know i thought five dollars a month was pretty i mean you don't want to do that for everybody and everybody but if it's your favorite band five dollars a month you're probably never going to notice that's gone and then you just get all this cool

music that nobody else gets and we also give them like priority seating at our shows and like we do some like special events for them only like when our when our album does when our second album comes out that will have been paid for by with hideout money we're gonna do some special album release things that are for hideout members only and

stuff like that interesting so there i think of them as kind of it's kind of like crowd sourcing your record label right so instead of having a record label we just have fans that are willing to subscribe to our music in return for special access to our music and some other special perks and then we don't need a record level anymore forget

those people unless they unless they bring something special to the table but we don't need them you know yeah and that's what's so beautiful about nowadays yeah i think everybody was held hostage in the past in my opinion yeah and that's why i'm saying i think that i think the internet kind of broke the music business like in the late 90s early

2000s there was kind of a golden era before that uh where you know i think a lot of great music got made and there were big budgets and people could really chase their artistic vision and record labels some of them would take chances and stuff i think that got broken by the internet but i think what's taking shape now is a way

that artists can make music specifically for their fans and not be beholden really to anybody and use the internet obviously the promise of the internet has always been that anybody can reach the whole world you know with their art um the problem has been is it's been hard to do that because everybody's on it and every there's so much noise that's one

of the problems another problem is that the main way that evolved to reach your fans was social media and you're at that point though your fan base is exists on this platform that's owned by some company and they can do whatever the heck they want like they can shut you down and you've got no all your fans are gone right or they

can um you know like what facebook did is they got us all to get on there for free and it was free and it was awesome woohoo it's fun and then they were like oh well if you're gonna have more than you know five thousand friends you're going to have it's going to have to be a page like what's a page well

you that's what you're going to have to do man okay all right i'm going to get a page so then i get a page this was you know like seven years ago yeah but none of those friends translate over to i think i was you're a lot i was allowed to do it one time i was allowed to like make all my

friends into likes on my page but what happened was i was immediately cut off from all from like viewing any of their profiles because we were no longer friends they were just people who liked my page yeah right so it sucked it did it did remember at the time that i did that uh i felt like i had to do it facebook

was forced me to do it because i had outgrown my 5000 friend limit if i wanted to grow any more beyond that i had to switch to a page but when i switched to a page it was less personal with the interaction with the people and then what happened was they started every time i would post on my page fewer and fewer

people would see it unless i paid facebook money yep and now it's to the point where if i want anybody to see anything on facebook i gotta get facebook money practically like i have 60 some odd thousand likes on my page and like if i post something maybe a few hundred people will see it unless i pay money and then if i

pay like you'd be surprised i have to pay like a hundred bucks and then like what like five thousand people will see it or ten thousand at that point it's like it's not even your fan base it's just you're like you have to pay facebook to access your own fan base it's weird it's very weird forget those people dude forget facebook get

them and you know what they have no customer service dude if you're going to take my money for something to then at least freaking pick up the phone when i need to talk to you about a problem on my page but they don't here's you cannot talk to a human being i don't know if there's any human beings that work there hey

here's the scam that they're running now is you run the paid advertisement but then they tell you that the transaction didn't go through and then so it says you're gonna have to try again so you try again that one doesn't go through you try again that one doesn't go through and then finally i do one it goes through and when i discover

when i go back the next day and i look at the ad like the advertisement i see that there's four oh snap and i have to go and cancel the previous three because i just hit it like five times in a row but they actually went through they basically just lied to me and so i just spent for that advertisement that i'm

spending 20 bucks for i just spent like an extra four bucks for those other ones that all of a sudden you're famous you didn't even mean to do it [Laughter] why are there 3 000 people in this show yeah right i wish if only yeah i know that if only it was that easy it's like i just clicked the boost button too

many times dude talking to people or that where it's like man i'm just really hustling and i'm hoping you know some people are going to come out to this one and they're like did you post and i'm like yes i posted they're like did you did you boost it's like uh wait is that the grapefruit flavored stuff that i'm supposed to drink

every day i don't know yeah that's facebook oh yeah spark boost whatever i don't know i don't know if i did it's some uh pyramid scheme yeah you're supposed to drink the energy drink so moving up into this new band that you developed before we started we were talking about the nightmare that it is trying to get a band together people that

you like to play together with what was that process with some of these guys because you have some you have some dudes that are not easy to get in a band yeah so about a few years ago i was kind of leveling i felt like my career was kind of leveling off and i was like in danger just becoming a b level

red dirt party band for the rest of my life and that's not really what i got in the music to be i was kind of playing the same old venues uh for like either the same size crowd or maybe even a little smaller and then i lost some of my band members to better paying gigs and then a couple of them just

got tired of you know being on the road for not very much pay there's only so much like sleeping in a van and stuff that people can deal with after seven or eight years of stuff it gets old dude after seven or eight years ten years whatever it gets old it can get old and so i'm sitting there thinking man i want

i want to like make a better record than i've ever made and i want to have a better band than i've ever had like how do i you know how do i get there and i kind of felt like it occurred to me one day that i that i might at this point in my career at least have a certain capital as

a songwriter maybe some respect in the scene well there's no doubt about that yeah and i thought all right well you know why shouldn't i have like this badass band then if i'm a if i'm uh if i'm a great song singer songwriter why shouldn't i have a band that's equally as good the thing is that a lot of them were already

paying playing if like if you're talking about somebody that can maybe play multiple instruments and maybe sing maybe even write songs and they're not an [expletive] i mean they're dude they're already they already have a gig they already have a game oh yeah or they don't exist they already probably have a good yes like a unicorn they're very rare and they already

have a great gig i mean there were that's another thing that happened was there were there were some multi-talented people who i would have liked to hire um like uh jake who plays for cody johnson i mean he plays league guitar mandolin banjo he's banjo champion and he sings great and you know i wanted to hire he quit the sam riggs gig

like i don't know this was like a long time that's interesting i didn't know he played rigs yeah he was like 18 or something i know it was weird whoa so he well but i guess at that time he's probably playing a little bit more reserved types yeah it probably wasn't quite somewhat but it was still you know it was still rot

very rock leaning and so yeah jake was like 19 or something and he quit that gig and you know i uh had just hired mike tuck um as my guitar player and mike's awesome too i didn't have enough money i knew jake was something special and i wanted him in my band but i didn't have the money to hire a sixth person

so you know he played a couple shows with us as a sixth person and then you know then he shortly after that he got the cody johnson gig and then there's another guy named hank early he played some shows with me and he plays you know steel guitar and electric guitar and accordion and you know he sings and you know i would

have loved to have had him in the band he did some shows with us but i couldn't hire i can afford a six member uh consistently and then he got on with turnpike he was like the guy that they added to the band you know he was like he was their sixth member and um so anyway there were i'd had that happen

a couple of times was like i knew somebody was exceptional but i couldn't i didn't have the popularity and the wallet to be able to reel those guys in so it's a dilemma right and it eventually occurred to me that well dude what if i like offered them like an even split band because i don't know a lot of people know this

but the randy rogers band is an even split band and randy he talks about that sometimes really yeah no kidding even on like songwriting not on songwriting but uh well i don't know for sure all i know is that he's he said in a few interviews and stuff that it's like even steven they that when they first started that band they were

all just equal members and they were all they're all making the same off of like live shows and stuff gotcha and so i always thought that was kind of interesting because you know randy writes a lot of the songs and sings does all the singing and it's like you know why couldn't he have just been a solo act and paid those guys

per show you know but i after hanging out with the randy rogers guys and seeing their deal over you know they've been together as a band they've stayed together you know for a long time they've been together like 20 years and uh one time i was on parker mccullum's bus with randy who was managing parker at the time maybe sort of i

don't know yeah i think they split up but i think he was probably yeah and so randy was telling parker he was like man i tell you what the key to this whole music business is the best thing about is just brotherhood you gotta it's all about the brother it's not about the money it's not about the anything else it's about the

brotherhood man he's like my band we've been together since day one we've been together for 20 years we've been together through births and deaths and sicknesses and hard times and divorces and every other thing but we've stuck together and you know it's i hope you can he was telling parker i hope you can find that you know that brotherhood because it makes

it all worthwhile and i just remember thinking hey i want that you know i've always been friends with my with my guys in my band you know but they're side men i pay them per gig and you know i don't fault them if they go to a better paying gig you know or if they decide that you know the money's not good

enough they want to do something else for a living or whatever there's no long there's never been a long-term commitment there so it occurred to me that well hey what if i wonder if i could attract some of those exceptional players uh to sort of join forces with me if i if we made it an even split band where everybody was equal

owners equal decision making clout um and we really uh did it together as a group and um and so that's i just reached out to a few different people who i thought you know i thought if they do it at first we're not they're probably not going to be making very much money but there is potential in the long run if we

become a turnpike troubadours if we become a band on that level that they could all be making more than they would ever make as a side man even for a bigger name artist because there is kind of a ceiling on that you know like you'd be shocked that's another thing too is you'd be shocked at how little some sidemen are making even

for like big name artists playing arenas but when you really think about it makes sense because they could get almost anybody they want they could get anybody they want right so if you don't want the job there's like a thousand guitar players in nashville that are in line to take that gig for freaking peanuts so there's kind of a there are there

are arena headlines almost like to get there you have to pay more yeah until when you get there and you have the money to pay them it's like oh now i don't have to yeah it's incredibly frustrating for me yeah and i mean there are guys that when they get to that level that arena level they're loyal to their bands and they

take really good care of them and that's i think that's a good way to be but it's also true that if you're a solo act like if you're tim mcgraw or whatever i mean tim mcgraw has the dancehall doctors and they've been with him for a long time so maybe he's a bad example but certain types of artists it's all about that

individual artist it's their name it's their face that's recognizable and let's face it the band is just kind of in the background in the shadows and they're playing their asses off but you could swap any of them out with somebody else that was great and the crowd would never know the difference sure so there's only so much you're ever going to make

as a side man but if you're a band you know i'm talking like the eagles or the beatles or turnpike or whatever if you're a band then you know for one thing if you have that equal piece of it you're getting paid off of you're getting paid an equal piece off of whatever your abandons i'm doing if you're if your music gets

used in film and tv or if you're uh if you sell a bunch of merchandise or you know if you get a sponsorship deal or something um then you would participate in that and you could theoretically make more than you would ever make as a side man so i thought maybe i could talk to some people into doing that and i'm completely

fine with giving up that ownership and control to have a better musical product like to have a better band like i'm 100 okay with that because i'm i've i but i wanted that brotherhood that randy was talking about anyway like i'd i would rather have that than to be the boss man who tells everybody what to do and can hire and fire

at will like you know that i don't really care about being that guy some people like to have that control i don't necessarily think it's about the power element of it's more about the attention so there's a lot of guys that just get off to the idea of everybody liking them being the center of attention getting on stage from the state they

don't really care as much about the music or the quality of the music but they get off on the idea of the attention yeah what strikes me about you is that just really doesn't get you that jazzed up no i mean i'm married with a couple of kids man i don't i don't i just want to make a living i don't care

if you know people think zane williams is hot stuff or not sure and you just want to make some good music and some stuff that makes you feel something i think right i mean that's the way i've always actually listened to your music too even watching you live oh dude uh my first uh my first man i want to say my first

date with my wife was at one of your shows i'll be darned i'm not positive about that i know we went to one in love and war uh when they had the one in plano and they don't no i'm sorry the one in great one in grapevine they don't have that one anymore and i'm pretty sure it was either our first date

or was the first time i introduced her to like some of my family yeah at yours anyways fun little fact that's cool but what i noticed and i think i've seen you one other time but you're a killer entertainer and it might just be because i do it or at least i try to do it you know whatever i'm doing sort of

doing it but maybe it's just because i have i can identify with a little bit but when i watch you i can see that there's a part that even in the entertainment thing i don't know i guess i've just seen guys that i can tell they're really just like soaking it in to a point where it's unhealthy because i know like when

they walk off stage and they have a conversation with somebody they're probably not gonna act very cool they're probably not a real cool guy off stage and i can just i can see it on stage and when i like watch you and there's some other guys that i really like that i can tell that they're great entertainers and they can engage with

the audience but i can tell they're just it's different and when they walk off stage you could probably have a genuine conversation with them and you always struck me as that well that's how i feel i'm glad i come across that way yeah pretty much all i'm thinking about when i'm on stage it's like you know playing my guitar right and singing

really good in keys you know i'm just trying to tune you know smile at some people and like put on a somewhat decent show but um hey here's a question this is maybe just specific like hyper specific but the idea of uh eye contact um like when people are really close and they're pressed up right there right it can be weird yeah

like super weird but you have to do it and i'm still trying to figure out that because i mean dude you do it but there's a it's maybe like a second and a half yeah cause you want to develop a moment but like three seconds is like okay this guy's just staring me down right now yeah any advice on that one i

think you got to find your own path man there i know some guys so i've seen some artists who i really admire and respect and they will not make eye contact with an audience member for any reason ever it's either eyes closed or it's like looking out into space above the crowd and you know you're talking they won't even ever look down

it i mean i know some guys that it seems like they like to be in their own little world and i will say it is if you are kind of going to this musical place in your mind where you're just really into the music and you're really listening to what the band is doing and you're really into what you're playing and you're

just 110 percent caught up in this musical river that's happening it can be jarring to like look down at like some and it's like some guy hitting on some girl or whatever and whatever's happening in the crowd can take you out of that river that you were in sure you know what i mean so i don't or that one person that's on

their phone and they like have their back to the stage yes right it's just destroyed it brings in all kinds of other thoughts right you think you're crushing it this sounds so good and then i open my eyes and it's like no one's even looking they have my they have their neck turned to me right now they are way more interested in

that miller light that they're ordering right now then but i so i do think there is good reason for it kind of depends on what kind of music you make if you if you're that kind of a band that's really into the music and it's about the music and you don't you know you know some bands that's like they don't even talk

to the audience it's almost like cool to not even dane to like acknowledge the audience at all because you're so such a cool artist okay so yeah like it looks what is that though because i don't identify that's weird i don't go that far okay i don't i don't like to go that far but i you know some people love that like

my old bass player was like man i went i went to see sufjan stevens one time and he just walked onto the stage and he just played for like an hour and 15 minutes with no breaks and he never spoke a single word to the audience and then he just left and it was the best show i've ever seen i just don't

understand wow so i'm not going to be that guy but at the uh the other the flip side of that is like i remember so they were back in 2008 there was a guy named jason michael carroll i mean he's still around he's alive he's got rescue still exists there was a guy in the news there is and was a guy named

jason michael carroll who recorded one of my songs and he was on sony at the time and the song was called hurry home and uh anyway he so i got on his radar and he had me open a show for him in nashville one time at the exit in and i just remember dude the place was packed and he was like singing

these love songs and he was just looking deeply into the eyes of like okay everybody in there i think everybody in there got an eye moment with jason michael carroll and sometimes like because he's he wasn't playing guitar so it was like a hand touch or just like he was just like reaching out and touching people and dude they were so into

it man but i did notice that a lot of them you know like a lot of them were females probably like 75 female crowd and i think a lot of them that's what they come to adjacent michael carroll show for is to like have that moment where they're like looking deeply into his eyes as he sings this love song dude here's the

other thing though if you're in a packed crowd like that you're married if your wife's standing sidestage and you're doing that i don't know i know the way my wife is she probably wouldn't dig that very much yeah i mean i don't even i don't know could you get away with doing that me personally no yeah i don't know i don't even

know for sure if jason is married or not or was married i don't know but i just remember being struck by how like where were a lot of artists shy away from eye contact he was like fully embracing the icon and how long could you tell how long he was like digging in i mean the whole entire song he was looking at

somebody's eyes he was just going from person to person and singing it like to them and like i said it was it was really cool but it's also i think that's the spectrum and you got to ask yourself where do you fall on the sufjan spectrum all the way to the j smart curl spread where are you at and i'm comfortable in

the middle man i'm like if it's a depending on what the song is if it's a song that especially maybe it's a little bit more challenging for me to play and sing and i just or if it's a song that's really groovy and jamming and i just want to listen to the band i'll close my eyes and i'll ignore the audience i

and i allow myself that little selfish pleasure to just ignore the audience and yeah not even let them interrupt my stream of consciousness for a little while but then i try to have some like up-tempo fun songs where i am just being goofy and like entertaining the crowd and you know cheers and a beer with them or fist-bumping them or i mean

i can definitely be that guy too and in my old show as zane williams nine bottles of beer was that it was that song where i'd freaking high-five every person in the crowd and jump up on a table and sing and here's a question while you're playing a show if it feels like they're not quite that engaged like i've noticed that if

they aren't engaged if i just develop this little world with my band and sort of become a little reclusive like if i start putting myself out there tell a couple stories tell a couple jokes it's just not landing if i get a little bit more reclusive and just have a moment with my band we just start jamming enjoying each other's music that

sort of thing it's a weird thing where some of those crowds will suddenly be like they'll become more of a part of it kind of attracted yeah have you noticed that at all or is that odd i don't know the main thing i've noticed i don't know if i've ever noticed that the main thing i've noticed is that people respond right to

music that they're familiar with so like for me the main thing you know is to if i want to draw them back in is to just go ahead and kick off a song that i know for sure that uh a fair number of them probably know uh and with the zane williams show that we used to do we did some cover songs

we actually did like a medley we did a 90s medley of 90s country songs and we did a what i call the fiddle medley of country songs with great fiddle parts and both of those medleys were like the crowd was just in the palm of our hand for those because it's just song after song that they know and love and it'll just

get them right up front rocking out and screaming and shouting my problem was is that them after that we have to go follow it up with one of our original ones that they don't know and you lose them and then that makes you want to turn yourself into just a cover band and just you know cut the ties with all of your

artistic hopes and dreams yeah you can't go down that road wow this actually makes me feel better yeah people the way the best way to get people fired up is to play a song that they know and love sure and they will people respond the best to especially if it's like a noisy bar environment like it's different if it's a listening room

like if it's a listening room you can almost bomb playing stuff that they know yes in the listening room right listening room is different if it's a listening room you can play a song that they've literally never heard once in their life and you can like bring them to tears yeah or just completely blow their minds or make them laugh you know

whatever you that's i think that's why listening rooms um have kind of been my forte in the past because i do have the ability to make people laugh make people cry and really affect them emotionally even if they've never heard that song before and so that's a certain thing that you can do in a listening room but then if you try that

in a noisy like dance hall or sports bar you know most the time it just doesn't land because they're just not paying close enough attention and so that to me the definition of a hit song is a song that you can like groove to and get into even though you're not listening to it that closely because you already know it or it's

just that catchy and that's i think a lot of hit songs part of the reason that catches hold on though what's how do you define a hit song because we're gonna like measure success i guess right yeah i mean to me a hit is just a super popular song so i think most hits are really catchy which is to say that um

you can kind of get the gist of the song and get into it and feel like won over by the song like feel like you like that song even when you weren't paying all that close of attention to it like you because i have a lot of songs that aren't that way where you have to kind of listen to the whole thing

all the way through to really get the power of it and that's uh you know it's hard to have a hit with that kind of a song like i have one called pablo maria and it's like five and a half minutes long and it's like it's slow it's a story song and if you just kind of like turned on your radio and

it was just in the middle of that song and you were like talking to your friend in the car and you weren't even really paying attention i don't think that song would really grab you as much as like sure but what's funny is like if you were driving down the road talking to your friend you're probably being honest with yourself it probably

wouldn't grab you right so you're just like being honest with us i don't think i would i wouldn't really i wouldn't really hear the story and really get it sure you have to kind of listen to that song from beginning to end because there's an arc of the story and it's yeah you got to give it five and a half minutes of

your life to really get it whereas there are tons of songs that uh that i recognize and i'm really familiar with that i think of as being hits where i couldn't even really tell you what the person's even saying in the verses i don't even really think about it but it's just got such a catchy beat and such a catchy like maybe

instrumental hook or of course it comes i love that you use the word catchy like mo especially in the texas format it's as i you use the word catchy it's like a dirty word which i don't understand and i usually i'm not saying that i'm like some like veteran of songwriting i'm still trying to figure stuff out and make some things happen

but when i talk to some younger dudes uh and i tell them like look man we're all writing pop songs structurally or like the way that we're moving a melody the way that it the whole format of the song goes the way we're delivering a hook they're freaking pop songs yeah it just kind of is what it is and most of us

for the most part uh are trying to develop a catchy memorable so like for me catchy means like memorable for a lot of people it's a super dirty word it's like you're taking advantage of somebody or something oh yeah because i've played songs for people and they'll be like i mean it's catchy right i'm like what's the point what are you yeah

so how do you like because i like the story stuff too i love like the whole guy clark robert earl i love that but then also like i like a tight concise pop song it sounds nice right grooves good hook so how do you like meld those two together yeah exactly oh you don't have to i thought you would have the answer

well no i don't have the answer i will tell you i think i do think my favorite music melds substance with catchiness together it has both of those qualities and so that's i think the best of the best but it is true that there is i think the reason some people consider catchy a dirty word is because there does seem to be

[Music] us in some instances it's not always true but there is somewhat of a trade-off between i would say authenticity and catchiness so if like there's a certain type of song that is kind of rambly and it sounds like it's like basically somebody's diary entry just spilled out as a song and there's no hook at all but what that sound that sounds

really authentic though you see i'm saying why because it doesn't sound planned out it doesn't sound formulaic the thing with catchy is that it's usually simple and repetitive right catchy memorable as you said memorable what's the best way to be memorable simple and repetitive that's it so the simpler more repetitive you get that usually comes at the cost of lyrical depth let's

say right so like i like that but you said sometimes right because i mean like there are exceptions where there are some songs that are that have that i think have lyrical depth but that also are very memorable and that's to me that's the gold standard that you're shooting for but i can understand why yeah hey there are some artists that they

would even think that uh just being popular is a dirty word is bad and um for that for that kind of artist i think yeah you should avoid being catchy and memorable and just be forgettable yeah like yeah if you don't if you literally think that being popular is bad i mean i think i think the alternative for some people is to

just be sort of uh you know the sort of uh a tortured soul artist that hardly anybody knows but like maybe a few people like really appreciate or whatever and that can be cool too there's a lot of people who try that are bad uh or that come across as bad in my book it's all subjective there are a few of them

who i think there are a few people who write what i consider they write songs that blow me away but that are not catchy songs and they never got that popular but people like that are kind of rare there's a lot more people that just aren't very good and that's why they never got popular and they just they're just the metaphors aren't

very good the melodies aren't very good that's the problem i like i do think there's a that's the thing about art is it's subjective but man there is such a thing as imagery there is such a thing as metaphor i mean there is such a thing as language can you use it are you good at using language like i'm sorry but there

is such a thing as saying something well like to me a great song like paints this beautiful interesting perfect picture that really rings true or really like turns you on in some way uh with just a few perfect words you know like almost the simpler the better but then that's why that's where i get back to that there can be a trade-off

between catchy and substance but there doesn't have to be it is possible to do both dude not to like stroke your ego but like a great example of that is uh that palomino gold song so there's a kid that sells merch for me and drives the van and stuff and he's tried to write some tunes he's like 19. and so he'll read

me some lyrics and stuff and it would it'll be like you know i walked in the room and she was a [expletive] you know that kind of thing and it's like well what type of room was it yeah what did what was the when you walked in what was the light like right and that to me is the songwriting part of it

not just i walked into the room well how did the door feel in your hand right and so palomino gold it's like man and i showed him that song i was like here's an example and it's adjectives right just like uh how does that start like well for one the melody because it's so catchy beautiful melody and like when you say in

ripples over smooth gray stones yeah it's like i mean how many adjectives is that right it's like three or no it's a verb ripples over uh smooth gray stones eyes like the pools of the frios eyes like the pools of the frio river we're like ripples overseas give me a freaking break that's insane and so i showed him that and it was

it was more like and so i told him like eyes all you have there is like you have eyeballs and you have stones and then you use a simile in the middle like her as i'm like dude this is like this is sixth grade english class right what type of eyes like the freo river right that song was weird for me because

essentially like all we're really talking about here is eyes and hair like it could be easy for that song to just be like not well no man that's like the brilliance yeah that's what's so great is because you could take a simple and i remember doing it in like middle school english class where they would say here's the color gray it was

creative writing like write me something about the color gray and then you would just go down this whole rabbit hole of that and that's what that is girl's hair i mean how many times have you heard a stupid song about a girl's hair right but that one i mean the depth in there and then you start applying yeah just the imagery anyways

i'm not gonna stroke your ego anymore but i did i did uh use it as an example for him to like understand how all that works it's freaking beautiful it's great and then you have the whole other component of the melody and like you don't those words don't come across the way they do without that melody right and then you have the

guitar part right i know it's like in the production of that's why songwriting is so hard is because you're juggling you have to it has to be firing on a bunch of different cylinders and so to me a great song has great lyrics uh also a great melody and they have to be seamless together and then also it has a great groove

and then also it has a great production where it's just the right the guitars are playing just the right part with just the right tone and just the right feel and i mean it just takes so long to just get really good at all that stuff but you're doing the right thing even with showing him that stuff because that's what you got

to do is you gotta at least be trying to get there you know it's like so it's a lot of things to think about at once and what i've learned is it's like it's good if you can um do it so much that a few of those things just almost come naturally by on autopilot you know what i mean so it's like

you've um maybe you've written so many songs that have such a such a they have a good groove that next time as soon as you start up a melody and a lyric you're not even really thinking about the groove but it turns out it has a really good groove that the band can really groove to but you weren't even really necessarily thinking

about that for me i start i've always started off as coming from a lyric standpoint and i never really thought about groove and so i've had to learn groove i learned groove second or third but eventually over after time with playing with a band i did learn or i have learned i'm still learning um groove how important groove is i think it's

really more of a groove world than it is a lyric world anyway i'm a lyricist living in a groove world ah there you go dude hey there's you some merch that's some new merch right there for sure if you don't do it i'm going to steal it so it's the same thing as the catchy and the substance it's like you got to

do both well it's the same thing with lyrics and groove you gotta the best music does both but it's that's a lot of balls to be juggling at once when you're uh when you're you know writing a song which is essentially making some stuff up and so it you know the best way to do it's it our brains are capable of doing

things that are super complicated but just doing it intuitively like our brains are capable of super complicated actions and thoughts and stuff um intuitively so some people the way that they get there is not by overthinking it but by just feeling it real hard and thinking about the music that they love and how it makes them feel and then just doing stuff

that feels good and then it just happens to have because it feels good to them it checks all those boxes other people are a little bit more aware of the techno of the technical things that are going on underneath the hood and i'm a little bit more that way i think about melody and i think about groove and so were you clumping

melody into like sort of a similar category as groove because you said you typically start more lyrically based so are you pushing melody a little bit more over into another category or is that along with lyric um i they are all obviously interwoven because your melody is gonna your melody is in many ways gonna determine your groove they're definitely they have to

be married but i do i guess in my mind i kind of think of you got a lyric you got a melody and then you've got a groove i think of those as kind of being three separate but related intertwined things because what you can do is you can like i've had it happen before where uh i really like the lyric and

the melody let's say but let's say i don't really like the groove like i we i wrote this song called feeling the miles and um it's uh i just dig that song oh yeah it's pretty cool so the original version of that song came out very um kind of james taylor-y feeling and it when we went to the studio it was like

we the band loved it but they didn't know it wasn't really clear what the band could even play on it and i was wishing that it had a good groove and a good a cool bass part and a good drum part and just i was just i didn't want another song that sounded like a singer-songwritery song where the band just kind of

tries to stay out of the way and not play too much i wanted like i wanted to turn it into a band song so i actually rewrote that song but i used the same lyric and mostly the same melody but i just i actually did have to change the melody some but i basically rewrote that song same lyrics but completely rewrote the

groove and the melody is different so that it so that it had that groove that we ended up with and my wife hates it or no she doesn't hate it what she no my wife was a little freaked out about she let's not let's not because like i could so she likes the original version far slower the original one the original one

was far slower you would have it would have been real finger picky and slow right a little rolling finger pick thing didn't know where i knew where this was headed okay so but did you start with did you see the way that hideout members can hear the alternative version that's cool dot com and that's a badass radio voice do that again hideout

members can see thewilderblue.com right now the alternative version feeling the miles also could you could probably be like a rodeo announcer too yeah i ain't got time hey nobody got time for that maybe that could be my plan f plant's plan yeah so did you did you have that so you probably got a chorus pedal and some reverb on that acoustic right

on the on the recorded version like on the studio version uh feeling the miles i well so i didn't when i was recording it i don't know what all because it's real space we put on it sounds amazing after this after the fact yeah i don't know what all so that we recorded that as a band and we recorded in denton at

the echo lab with matt pence engineering but we just basically self-produce and our drummer lyndon really does the most um and he mixed it and so it was probably a combination between matt pence and linden putting some mojo on that i don't know for sure what all they put on it i was i had my hands full just trying to play the

part right it seems like you actually made it you sung is that the right he sung you sung different sang different how do i say that maybe saying different you seem to have had a different vibe singing in that than i've ever heard before especially when you go into that chorus part because you're like halfway like mixed voice like falsetto kind of

thing and i've never really heard you do that especially like in a lower register which i thought was cool yeah and it gives the whole song like a uh like an earnestness that yeah because it kind of wanted to groove and had a like super grooving 70s thing and then the way that you sang it had more of like a really subtle

uh like singer-songwriter thing i thought that was a cool juxtaposition i practiced that word on the way here cool nice yeah i uh we recorded that all the tape and that was our first foray into like no pro tools recording since then we've kind of landed on we normally most of the rest stuff that's going to be on this next record we

recorded like drums and bass to tape pretty much all in one take and then we do the overdubs of everything else to tape but then bounce it to pro protools but feeling the miles was all to tape and it was it's fun to do that you know the difference for people that aren't familiar with the technicality of it is because you're recording

to a reel of tape you only have a certain number of channels and so you have to kind of decide like uh we were kind of short on channels so it's like uh well let's put the tambourine and this harmony part both on the same channel right you know it's like you got to kind of do them together on one channel and

which means that you don't have separate volume control or eq or whatever on those two things so you're limited on channels and it's also a lot harder to you can do what's called punching in where like if you did the whole thing right but you let's say you messed up the beginning of the second verse you can fix that but usually but

what you can't do that you could do on pro tools on the computer is on pro tools you could just like grab that little section and scooch it to the right to make it be in time or you could tune it or you could copy and paste it to the other section and you can pretty much you can freaking do whatever you

want to it you can even pitch shift it to be a different pitch or whatever and on tape you can't do that it's pretty much uh like if you're being strict about it the way we were on that song it was which was tape only and basically all they can do is punch you in at one part and then punch you back

out so you can fix that one part and then other than that uh you played what you played and then and then we bounced that down to the computer and then you we mixed it after that but we didn't do any tuning or copying and pasting or anything yeah so that's that was fun the most raw unedited version that you could that

you could get other than literally live yes and what's cool about that is it's um [Music] how many tastes you have to make decisions so like on the thing is with if you're recording onto a computer you're just like i'll just do 20 takes of this and then we'll figure it out later and then later somebody has to come along and listen

to every single take and like comp together apart which means you take your favorite sections from each take like if you played the whole song 10 times through you take the first verse from this or even just the first line from this or the first half of the first line or this syllable of this from this and you just piece it and

you have you end up with this frankenstein thing that sounds pretty perfect from that's taken from like 10 different takes that's called comping well it's easy to do that on the computer but on tape you have to basically decide was that the take or was that not the take and if it was then we're good if it was not then do we

need to punch just a certain part or do we need to start again from the beginning and just try it again so did you say the whole record was to tape just some you bounced stepped into that song was all to tape in the miles okay and so like that particular song how i mean around about how long how many takes with

that type of thing um i do remember it took us like three days to get that song completely done um so as far as like full band takes how many we did i don't know probably like eight or ten at least or ten or fifteen and then you have to take one of those and then we pretty much yeah we pretty much

well what we did is pretty much with bass and drums we pretty much picked one i think i think it's one drum part all the way through we have a badass drummer so lyndon shout out to lyndon hughes we pretty much we pretty much keep doing takes until he's happy and when he's happy then our bass player if there was a note

or two that he got wrong it's pretty easy to punch him in and fix that and then we've got the rhythm track and then and then you can go then you can go part by part and record the tape you can you can go part by part but you just can't copy and paste stuff and you can't you can't like now you

know you can't and you can't uh you can't record like 10 different takes and then save them all for later you don't have that many channels it's just the part so if you want to if you didn't like your second verse you got to punch the second verse but when it's done that's you're you that's it you don't have 20 tapes were

y'all just like wanting to go were you all wanting to challenge yourselves or was it for like a general vibe that you were going for or like why even put yourself through that right because it's already i mean most people don't know how strenuous just recording is right even with all the bells and whistles and fancy stuff that you can do it's

still a freaking nightmare right so our motivation number one was we like how tape sounds so and i and that's why we still do drums of bass to tape for sure and the other stuff if we can but especially drums and bass seem to i don't know they it's subtle but they have sort of a little bit of a vibe if you

record the tape so that was one reason was the sound second reason was to challenge ourselves yeah and then the third reason because it's like we're gonna have to play it live anyway we need to learn the song we need to be able to play it consistently we need to play it great at a consistent level so if we have to play

it a million times so be it um and then the third thing though is um we had just never done it before we just kind of wanted to prove to ourselves that we could because a lot of the records that we love are from the 70s and they didn't have pro tools back in the 70s so it's kind of like it's almost

like this like could we do it can we do it are we good enough are we like because if you've your whole it's almost like if you've ridden a bike with training wheels your whole life you're like could i ride a bike with no training wheels i think i could but what happens i've never taken them off i don't know it's like

we took them off and it's like okay yeah actually we can do this we it was fun you know were you all even like worried about failing at it though i mean i wasn't i personally favor a kind of music that's not super slick and perfect anyway so i wasn't too worried about it being a little bit raw you know like a

vocal out of tune here and there doesn't bother me all that much as long as it's a emotional performance and a vibey performance some people are really bugged by a vocal that's just a little bit out of tune or a guitar part that's just a little bit rushed or you know little things like that um i wasn't too worried about it i

figured we could probably do it i knew because like i said you can still do multiple takes it's not like one take so one take would be the hardest right that's the highest level of thing and that's what that's what you're going for i cannot even react with your life that's well true yeah you know if you make a live record that's

even live records there's ways to cheat i mean or not but just yeah you can record 10 shows and take the best recording of each song just which one of the 10 shows did you do that still aren't there's still one you can do you can do yes you can do all that stuff i didn't know that for the longest i wouldn't

well sure but some of these people i've listened to and i'm like how do they sound like that this is insane and then you're like oh okay man with the wild or blue our goal is to just sound like that y'all do that's just how that's the goal is to be that's just how we sound also i don't know is but that's

hard is paul easton the one playing dope bro who's playing dobro no that's andy rogers andy rogers plays dobro banjo he plays acoustic guitar in a couple but mostly dobro it's like it's not very often that you hear a full band with the dobro that sounds that good yeah it sounds good yeah and he's he was my bass player in my old

man so he plays bass as well was he really yeah huh just a seamless transition over there yeah like he was when i put when i put the wilder blue together i called paul and then we got lyndon so we had paul plays electric guitar and acoustic guitar mandolin and then linden plays drums and so we got together with andy who was

my bass player and we did some demos as a four piece and andy recorded bass and then he was he pulled out his banjo and his dobro and recorded those as well and we just loved his bass playing i mean his banjo playing in dobrev we loved it all but we it was just way easier we realized to find another bass player

than it would be to find somebody who could play dobro and banjo like that and mandolin guitar and sing so that's so andy got moved uh from the base to the other and he's a little bitter about it he loves the bass man yeah but he's like he's playing a quintessential part of y'all's sound yeah i know i know he's much i

tell you he's much more of a rock star at in the position he is but i think he just has to think a lot more you know it's harder for him to play the dobro and the banjo and all that stuff and bass he just loves the bass man he loves the groove and just get down on the bass but so in

terms of songwriting are you are you do you still actively pursue having people cut some of your tunes or what's kind of that process for you like do you have a publishing deal or like what i do not right now so i do not work very hard at trying to get other people to record my songs i mainly write songs like for

my band nowadays pretty much what i do but there have been times in the past you know for a couple years uh i guess 2006 to 2008 i had a publishing deal and lived in nashville and that's all i did was write songs and pitch them are we talking like nine to five kind of gig yeah just writing songs yeah okay i

lived i lived on music row um and from in it's like i said i was about 2006 to 2008 i would just uh my publishing company was like two blocks down the street on 17th avenue and i would just walk down the street to my publishing company sit in a room every day and just try to write a song five days a

week monday through friday trying to write a song and then my publisher would pitch those songs to other people and the only one that ever got recorded was that jason michael carroll doing that hurry home but since then since i've been in texas my main focus is writing stuff for myself and then it's kind of like if i put something out that

some other artist hears at some point and they dig it and they want to record it that's cool a lot of people don't really know how that works but basically if i write a song and i record it if somebody else wants to come along and record it for one thing they don't even need my permission they can as long as it's

been released to the public before by any artist then they don't need permission they just they do have to send the money to me as a songwriter but they don't have to actually have permission so like if i want to record a beatles song sure i have to send money to paul mccartney or whoever wrote it but i don't have to have

paul mark earn his permission and so but that's different it's different if it's the first time it's ever been recorded so if i'm if i write a song like if i wrote a song today then you know you can't just record it unless you have my permission right so and then that allows songwriters to have the power to control who gets to

record it the first time and they can pitch it to tim mcgraw and he can put it on hold and then if he doesn't want it they can pitch to somebody else and they have that control it seems like in the old school texas uh music world there was a lot more of cross-pollination with that type of stuff that doesn't really exist

that much anymore right i know i also feel like the stories i always heard was like after a show like everybody kind of hang out right most of the cats i go play with like i don't meet him nobody talks to anybody right which i've always thought is a little bit odd it seems like a lot less of a commute if you're

especially if you're talking about like the 70s back when it was like jerry jeff yeah gary p nunn played in jerry jeff's band and then they all you know ray wiley was hanging out with them and then guy clark and townsvanzant were in the mix and willie would come into town and record some of their songs and they would record his song

and he would record everybody's songs yeah i'm i won't say it all but i vote for that coming back huh why do you think that changed um i don't know it could be i know for me the main thing that's holding me back from being doing more of that is that i just don't live in a music town um so like i

live in mckinney because it's where my family lives where my parents and my in-laws live and we like our kids to be close to the grandparents and especially when i'm on the road that helps so i guess if i lived in austin or nashville i would do more of that i think i'm about to run to the bathroom y'all been feeding me

feeding me beer yeah dude you're all good uh i mean we can end it now too if you want to if we gotta run home i think the batteries on the camera are about to die too we're reaching the bottom okay well um man i would like for that community to come back and i would like it for it to come back

where people just recorded a great song just because it was a great song and a great song could get recorded by multiple artists and uh and where we would all just kind of like do shows together and hang out and like uh that's my goal with the wilder blue like i write a lot of the songs but i would love to i'm

always on the lookout for young or it doesn't matter if they're young or old just singer songwriters in texas other artists obviously i don't want to record somebody else's current radio single maybe sure but like you know i want to record like a john bauman song sometime i'd like to record a robert earl keane song i'd like to record a town's vans

and song i'd like to record a rodney foster song a steve earl song i'd like to do all why don't we do a uh i want to do a marty robbins uh that whole gunfighter ballads yeah i want to do that entire record nice so why don't you just instead of covering a song just covering an entire album we can just go

down the list we can do every person all right will you do at least a song with me whenever i do the marty robbins one i'm gonna do it that sounds good okay you'll do a song with me yeah okay i have you on record now telling me okay all right what one would it be man i would i have to listen

to that and then i feel like there's i'd have to make sure i don't know like there have been some people that have been re-recording some of those songs here lately it's gotten a weird like resurgence we're a little bit of a resurgence we cover uh in our set i do master's call i don't know if you've heard that no but on

your way home listen to master's call all right cause that knocked my socks off the first time i heard it cool it's a little bit weird in the middle of like a rowdy ruckus crowd to do master's call you'll get it once you hear it but i like to do it hopefully you dig it maybe we can do that one together yeah

well thanks for coming in yeah [Music]