In this episode, we sit down with country music legend Steve Earle. We talk about his early days in Nashville, how he got into country music, and why country music is no longer as popular as it used to be. We also talk about the controversy surrounding Coachella, and how he almost got kicked out of the music festival because of his music. We also discuss how he went from being banned from Walmart to becoming one of the most successful country artists of all time. And we talk about why he decided to make a country music album that's a little edgier than most other country albums out there. It's a jam-packed episode that you don't want to miss. If you're a fan of the Foo Fighters, you'll love this one! And if you're not, you should definitely listen to this one. It's an absolute must-listen to this episode of the podcast! Enjoy, enjoy, and spread the word to your friends about this episode! -The 500 is a production of Native Creative Podcasts. Please rate, review, and tell us what you think of it in the comments section below! We'd love to hear your thoughts, opinions, thoughts, and thoughts on any of your favorite country music artists, songs, or anything else you've heard on the 500. Thank you for listening to the 500! Logo by Native Creative. - CC BY CC BY CREATE YOUR OWN PODCAST! and we'll get a shoutout on the next episode of NUDEFINDS coming soon! (featuring some of our favorite artists from the 500FM radio show, The 500FM crew) and more! CHECK OUT OUR FACEBOOK GROUP AND INSTAGRAM AND TWITTER! CRY AND SOCIAL MEDIA! Subscribe to our new WEBSITE! AND SUBSCRIPSYCLYNN GOOGLE CHALLENGE AND INSTA-LYNN BONUS EPISODE! .COM AND OTHER LINKS AND PODCYO CHAT WITH MEET THE PEOPLE WHO LISTEN TO OUR INSTA AND OTHER THAN THAT'SOME OF OUR PODGS AND OTHER SOCIETY AND LINKS! AND OTHER PLATINTS! & MORE! FREE MONEY CHAT AND OTHER MEETING INSTA FRIENDS IN OUR SOCIALS AND GOT A PRODCAST?
00:07:08.000They go, because it's real country music, and they don't play that on the radio anymore.
00:07:12.000Then I go, if I can get banned for playing real country, why not just fucking...
00:07:18.000Not censor myself at all and do it fucking x-ray.
00:07:20.000So that's what kind of convinced me just to do it my fucking way, you know?
00:07:25.000So as someone who is a country music artist and is a fan of country music, and we talked about country music before the show started, you've got to be some hope that these guys like Shooter Jennings and Sturgill, there's these new guys that are coming up that are really fucking talented.
00:08:21.000No, I got nothing but dicks and nuts, and I've gotten like four of the nastiest tits you've ever seen.
00:08:27.000Well, men are disgusting, so men take chances.
00:08:29.000Yeah, well, I mean, I appreciate- So if a guy's a gay guy, and you got all these songs about gay guys sucking dicks, they're like, I can get this guy.
00:08:33.000Well, the thing, they're not even doing- These aren't gay guys.
00:08:36.000These are guys who are just like, I love your album, I want to show you my fucking nuts.
00:09:04.000Well, what's funny about you and this whole thing is that no one had to give you the green light to do this.
00:09:09.000What I love about it is that you decided to take a chance, spend your own money, hire legit musicians, put it together yourself, and you're like, fuck it.
00:09:16.000Either I'm gonna go down in flames, or this is gonna take off.
00:09:21.000And, dude, I hear about you all the time now.
00:09:24.000Like, I don't know if you know what's happening, but there's like this wave of people who are finding out about you across the country.
00:11:35.000The guys from Shooter's First Band, who now are in Nashville.
00:11:38.000So it's like these killer players, who I think are the best players in Nashville, but they're not like Nashville's go-to, you know, not like the guys that these pop dog shit guys go to.
00:11:48.000And it's the guys who played on Sturgill's first record.
00:11:51.000And these guys, Leroy Powell, Chris Powell, Brian Allen, give them a shot.
00:18:39.000It's not the worst thing in the world.
00:18:40.000I think that's fine too, but my actual, my even bigger, not even bigger issue, but speaking, like, I like fucking pop music just like you, but the country pop is fucking 20, is 30 years, is, they're trying, I don't mind, like, Sturgill's a good example of someone who's taken Country and moving it forward.
00:18:57.000These guys aren't, they're adding beats from like the 80s and they're going backwards.
00:19:01.000You know, they're trying, I know people who go into studios of major country artists with one of those fucking clicker things and making sure it's the right, it's not made up, making sure it's the right beats per minute.
00:19:11.000So slow it down, speed up to make sure we get on the radio.
00:25:15.000No, my theory, though, is when my face is up there and you're wack, if you jizz right when you see my face, you ain't forgetting that face for the rest of your fucking life.
00:25:23.000You have a very distinct look, and then if you, like, went to, like, a video that you really enjoyed, and then your face was off to the side of it, it could get confusing.
00:25:30.000Well, yeah, it clicked right to the fucking record.
00:25:32.000Yeah, that's like some Manchurian candidate type shit.
00:27:12.000There's a certain frequency that you can hit when you make like really dull, bland stuff and people like that.
00:27:18.000There's a lot of people that like that.
00:27:19.000So they know how to do it and they bang it out.
00:27:21.000And I think that's what's happening with producers, but it's not what the public wants.
00:27:25.000And that's why you're getting these shows like Mad Men or Walking Dead or Game of Thrones.
00:27:35.000You're getting these interesting shows that are so much different than all these formulaic bullshit shows that have been on television forever.
00:28:18.000I mean, we're still at the very beginnings.
00:28:20.000I mean, what's so crazy is, you know, The amount of records I've sold and these rooms I'm playing, we've still only reached a fret, because, you know...
00:28:29.000Yeah, it's pretty early, but there's this band, Florida Georgia Line, who, by the way, just blocked me on Twitter, because I was talking so much shit about him.
00:29:46.000I like their medallions, like the fake soldiers.
00:29:49.000I got nothing against it, but I'm also the only fucking dude in Nashville talking shit about him and Sam Hunt, this guy who fucking raps and, you know...
00:30:55.000Listen, the other thing you know is the other reason I think people dig me is because I don't give a fuck if what I'm saying is true or not.
00:34:11.000Well, it sold a lot fucking more than me, but like I said, I'm the only one who's...
00:34:15.000And you were saying people coming at me, which has been happening some, but for the most part, they don't want to piss off the real money makers, so they don't want to be associated with that shit.
00:34:25.000It seems like there's a lot of country music that's sort of reinforcing...
00:34:30.000And it's one of the only music genres that reinforces a mindset.
00:34:35.000And that mindset is, I'm a simple person, I got a nice truck, I got a good dog, I got a woman, but someone broke my heart, or maybe I love you, maybe I die for you.
00:34:45.000There's all these really noble and really iconic country music Themes and iconic country music ideas that get pushed in these,
00:35:00.000and they just get repeated over and over and over again.
00:35:03.000It's reinforcing the benefits of living in a rural environment.
00:35:06.000It's reinforcing being near nature and rivers and shit like that, but it's also reinforcing being dumb.
00:35:17.000And there's some of that shit that I listen to where I go, this can't be real.
00:35:21.000I don't think Sergio Simpson is a CIA assassin, but I've listened to some country music songs where I go, okay, this is a fucking cyberplot.
00:35:29.000This is the government is trying to figure out how to get into people's minds and make them dumber.
00:35:33.000Well, the other thing, too, is as a guy from, and I'm with you 100%, it feels like it was made to brainwash us.
00:35:50.000But also, as a guy from Kentucky, I grew up in Kentucky, most of my family's from Tennessee, and it makes me look like a fucking dumbass, that this is not what the South is.
00:37:40.000But they're talking about, you know...
00:37:43.000The struggle of the devil versus—like, that's interesting to me.
00:37:47.000Okay, yeah, I know what you're saying.
00:37:48.000They know—I'm not—you know, I don't—you know, it's hard to sing what I sing and talk about that, but if they're talking about the struggle between the two sides, then maybe I can listen.
00:37:56.000But if you're just talking about this— This is pop music.
00:39:45.000And that's the other thing where I was talking about, I ain't touring until I got an audience, but someone like him, and he's on tour with a giant band, and the record company's fronting the bill, but he's got to end up paying it back.
00:41:36.000When they heard the record, and I went to the top of the top of those big record companies, and I sat there, and they were loving it, blah, blah, blah.
00:41:44.000But also, you know, we gotta cut this song, and we gotta take this line out.
00:41:58.000And I will tell you this, and this is a credit to the producer, Dave.
00:42:03.000When he told me how much it cost, and listen, it was pretty much all the money I had, but the amount of money that it cost to make a record in 2016 is not that much fucking money when you look at it.
00:42:19.000The labels will make it cost a million by charging you all that fucking bullshit and, you know, ordering pizzas every day that you don't want, you know, hiring all these big gun players and shit.
00:42:30.000People are making albums on their fucking computer.
00:43:20.000I almost feel guilty mentioning him because he's, you know, he does some good shit that's selling a lot.
00:43:26.000I don't want to, you know, talk about him producing this dirty shit, but he did such a fucking amazing job.
00:43:33.000I mean, he's such a music fan that he knows, and he's kind of from the South like me.
00:43:38.000I've noticed that people like that, people like Sturgill, Shooter, we all had the same kind of, music-wise, same kind of upbringing, which was...
00:43:46.000Grew up in the South, country music everywhere.
00:43:49.000You're like, fuck this, I'm not listening to Friends in Low Places or whatever.
00:43:52.000You start listening to Zeppelin, you start listening to rock, and you start going to all this other...
00:44:38.000You listen to their shit and you just go, wow.
00:44:40.000And then there's stuff that you listen to that even if you enjoy it, you know it's heavily produced and someone created it in a pop factory.
00:44:47.000And it just doesn't hit you the same way.
00:44:49.000And the crazy thing is, too, is like, You listen to someone, like you really got to see, and I hate TV using it, but like, I know Sturgill is just the example we're using.
00:44:59.000You got to see them live because nowadays...
00:48:26.000I think someone was telling me at the place that distributes the record that 80 or something more percent of my albums sold have been iTunes and Amazon.
00:49:50.000To fucking hear this shit there's you can't press on the fucking article and yeah, it's like the mystery of it's gone But that being said the positive is that I can actually sell my My record fuck the mystery.
00:50:03.000Oh, yeah You can sell your record also that like like people start talking about you through Twitter and Facebook and things along those lines And it just spreads across the whole country like that.
00:50:12.000Well, can you imagine even ten years ago or if not more like Like, I'm banned from Walmart.
00:50:19.000Imagine getting that call 10 years ago.
00:50:39.000And listen, it ain't gonna sell a million fucking copies, but there's a section of, you know, the audience that wants real shit, and there's a section of people who are sick.
00:51:50.000Why do you think podcasts were going to happen no matter what happened?
00:51:55.000I don't know who fucking started, but it had to happen because people want to listen to what they want to listen to, and when you fucking start up your car again, you want to listen where you left off.
00:52:04.000It takes it right where it left off, and it just syncs up to your car.
00:52:35.000You know, so fucking get with the time.
00:52:36.000So there's a lot of people still clinging on to the old, you know, how things, like you said, people need to watch a show at a certain time or listen to the radio.
00:52:45.000Who listens to radio on the fucking drive in the morning?
00:52:48.000Well, the first thing that switched it up was Sirius XM. Because when Sirius, when it was XM... You know, and Opie and Anthony were on, and Howard Stern is on, and what they figured out when they were doing this was like, look, we don't have to have any censorship.
00:53:01.000We can just say whatever the fuck we want.
00:53:03.000But they started getting in trouble, too.
00:53:04.000Like, Opie and Anthony got banned off the air once because they brought in a homeless guy, and he started talking about banging Condoleezza Rice.
00:53:22.000But I remember, it was funny, too, because I think you're right about that Sirius XM was a big thing, because I remember when Stern, who I used to listen to, who, by the way, I didn't listen to later, because...
00:53:33.000My hometown didn't have a stern going on.
00:53:35.000But I started listening to him, and I loved him, and I said he's going to satellite radio where he can stay wherever he wants.
00:53:40.000And they're like, well, he's not going to be as funny.
00:53:43.000Half the fun is listening to him trying to talk around him.
00:53:45.000And then you listen, and you go, that's such a fucking...
00:53:47.000It's so much fucking funnier when he's not...
00:54:17.000Well, maybe it was more in the South, but I kept hearing, you know, now that he's not got, like, the FCC to fight against, and he can, you know, the fun was him trying to get around the censors.
00:54:29.000Just to be free, completely free to express yourself without any worry about a word that's going to get you fined for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
00:54:36.000You've got to remember, he got sued by the FCC, right?
00:56:45.000If I were to say that to someone who didn't know, they would think, oh, you mean the 50s or the 40s?
00:56:50.000This is fucking 2004. And if he didn't go through that, if there wasn't this backlash from the public finding out about it, because everybody I know that heard about it was like, what?
00:56:59.000How are they wasting our fucking money suing him over a radio show that, by the way, has...
00:57:05.000Twenty million people listening to it every morning.
00:57:08.000It's pretty obvious that people are enjoying this radio show, and when they stop enjoying it, it'll go off the air.
00:57:13.000That's what the fucking free market is about.
00:57:16.000What it was about is controlling someone.
00:57:18.000Because it wasn't just his dirty shit.
00:57:20.000That's not what concerned them as much as his criticism of the Bush administration, his criticism of political policies, and his willingness to say whatever the fuck he wants.
00:57:32.000You think that's what kind of started podcasts?
00:57:36.000No, I don't think that's what started podcasts, but I think that for him, that started the journey eventually to XM. He had to, to Sirius, whatever it was at the time.
00:58:46.000I know, but I'm saying, have we seen the actual...
00:58:49.000Well, Bernie Sanders just released his tax returns, and his tax returns said that he made less money last year than Hillary Clinton did for one single speech.
01:00:47.000Speaking of that shit, talking about First Amendment freedom fighters, a major hero, and people don't know about it, from Kentucky's own Mr. Larry Flint, He did a lot of...
01:01:01.000I don't think people realize how important...
01:02:05.000But also, I think when he dies, they'll be talking about it.
01:02:08.000They'll be the jokey national news shit.
01:02:11.000But there'll be some really interesting...
01:02:15.000Fucking pieces written about what he actually did because he really he changed everything like this album literally I couldn't make this album without literally I agree and I think that what was going on with him at the same time as what was going on with Howard Stern they were all real similar It was real similar and the government was trying to decide what people could and couldn't do and the people that didn't get defended were the dirty ones Totally.
01:02:36.000The dirty magazine guy, the dirty radio guy.
01:02:38.000For whatever reason, they didn't get defended.
01:02:41.000Where a journalist, if a journalist is getting attacked like that for revealing the truth about something, people would be up in arms.
01:02:45.000The intellectuals would be up in arms.
01:02:47.000But nobody recognized that it's just as dangerous to tell people that they can't jerk off to Hustler as it is to tell a political dissident that he can't speak out.
01:02:57.000And that's what they said at the trial.
01:02:58.000I mean, the Ed Norton guy who played him, he's like...
01:03:00.000This has nothing to do with whether you like Hustle or not.
01:03:02.000It's no different than any free speech trial anywhere.
01:03:07.000But by the way, if you rule against this, that it could lead to people being censored in all different forms, but it took something that crazy to get it to the Supreme Court and someone that fucking crazy.
01:03:23.000When you tell people what they can and can't talk about, it's too problematic.
01:03:27.000You know, if you censor someone for, especially like sexual stuff, like you censor someone for putting out a magazine where people have sex in it, obviously people have liked that forever.
01:03:37.000You do know what the actual trial was.
01:04:58.000He's like, it's obviously a fucking joke.
01:05:01.000Like, I don't think, you know, this is fucking comedy.
01:05:04.000And he sued him, and it went to the fucking Supreme Court.
01:05:06.000And I went and saw Larry Flint talk, and when the lawyer, Larry Flint said, this is when he knew he was going to win the Supreme Court trial.
01:05:16.000When his lawyer repeated what the article said, That his mom had sex, that Jerry Falwell had sex with his mom in an outhouse.
01:05:26.000He saw the judge just giggle for a second.
01:05:30.000And the lawyer stopped him and was like, And that's when he knew he had the trial won, because the whole point is, you laughed when I said it.
01:05:38.000That this guy fucking his mom in an outhouse, obviously, how are we going to have an argument that's not comedy when all you fuckers just started laughing?
01:05:46.000He said from that point on, he knew he was going to win.
01:05:48.000And it was funny, too, he also said that Jerry Falwell came to him years later, and they became friends.
01:05:54.000And he wanted to go do a speak, because I guess he had, you know, maybe not watched his money, he wanted to go do a speaking tour with Larry Flynn.
01:06:02.000And, uh, He's like, I thought, I just, you know, I want the biggest Supreme Court freedom of speech race ever.
01:06:09.000He said he realized, that's when they kind of, he's like, to Jerry Falwell, too, it's all a show, you know?
01:06:14.000It's all, it was just a, it was just theater to him.
01:06:18.000Like, we can go out and make some money on the road and talk about it.
01:06:27.000I would like to party with Jerry Falwell, find out what goes down, take a couple of drinks with him.
01:06:31.000They did become friends, and another one I have to look, I'm almost positive that when he died, Larry Flint wrote his, maybe for the LA Times, I think Larry Flint wrote his obituary.
01:08:25.000Yeah, I mean, the real story, it's one of those things where the real story's crazier than the fucking movie.
01:08:29.000Well, it's crazy that it's such a pivotal moment in free speech history, yet, like you said, it's not something anybody ever talks about, that he actually had to go out there like that.
01:08:38.000I mean, they were saying before, they're saying SNL might not exist if that was, if he hadn't won that case.
01:08:55.000And here's a way to prove it, it's sort of a roundabout way, but marijuana is still illegal in 2016 because of some bullshit propaganda that was made in the 1930s.
01:09:05.000So that momentum carries on, even though it doesn't make any sense, you could still go to jail today for growing pot.
01:09:11.000So if you think that if Howard Stern didn't have those lawsuits, didn't pay all that money, didn't make this big public outcry, didn't have to go to Sirius Satellite Radio, if all those things didn't happen and they won, what if they shut him down?
01:09:31.000How long would it have taken for the internet to happen?
01:09:33.000How long would it have taken for things like Reddit or 4chan or these fucking uncensored blogs or uncensored YouTube content where you could do whatever you want.
01:09:44.000That ripple from those two guys is like one of the most important ripples for free speech media in 2016. It's one of the most important pivotal moments in the history of free speech.
01:11:15.000There's some people out there that are so hairy.
01:11:17.000There's this Russian wrestler, I forget what his name is, but he fights in MMA. We were talking about him on the podcast recently because he's entering into some grappling tournaments.
01:18:31.000There's lots of stuff that helps, but there's still, you know, when you're a kid, you're just like, oh, getting fucked up, getting pussy, playing rock and roll, playing country, whatever it is, sounds like the ultimate life, and these people not having fun doing it.
01:18:45.000Well, they also should get a fucking real job and remember what it's like to have to go somewhere every morning.
01:20:23.000And you remember when they did that thing where Johnny Depp read the passage that he talked about, like, the change that was coming in the 1970s and how it all pulled back and that he saw it all happen?
01:20:35.000I mean, he was the perfect guy to capture.
01:20:39.000Johnny Depp was the perfect guy, but I mean, Hunter was the perfect guy to capture because he had been in the 60s in Berkeley during the acid times and, you know, the Timothy Leary and the Merry Pranksters and all that shit.
01:20:49.000He had been with those guys and the Ken Keseys and then when it all pulled away and everybody just got locked up and went to jail and the war on drugs and all the things happened, he saw this death of the American dream and he put it so eloquently and then Johnny Depp, pretending to be him,
01:21:05.000did it for a scene in that movie and it's...
01:21:41.000That's his, well, between that and, there's a few things that he wrote, like small pieces that he wrote too, that just go, ugh.
01:21:48.000There were some pieces right before he died that he wrote, I think it was on ESPN's website, that kind of predicted the whole world that was going to happen.
01:26:20.000They were worried about that with the Octagon.
01:26:23.000They were worried about that ever happening.
01:26:25.000You know, the only breaks we've seen on legs and arms have been non-compound breaks.
01:26:29.000But I think when it happens like that guy just had it, it becomes more problematic because when it breaks the skin, you have all this possibility for infection that exists.
01:27:20.000It seemed like the whole movie was just, like, getting to the blowjob.
01:27:24.000Like, I was like, blah, blah, blah, let's cut to the scene here.
01:27:27.000But why isn't it in there if I can go home and get on a fucking website in two seconds and see all that shit?
01:27:31.000Well, I think his idea was, why can't we have a real sex scene?
01:27:36.000Like, if you can have, like, people kissing for real and rubbing each other for real, but you know intellectually that they're not actually having sex, but...
01:35:17.000Don't tell the drummer, guitar player, and the, you know, bass player that it's gonna go to the sucking dick, because they hadn't seen the clip.
01:35:24.000So they love the song, and they still like it, you know, they still love it, but, you know, it would be funny to, uh...
01:35:30.000I thought it'd be funny to fuck with them, because I always just like fucking with people, you know?
01:37:37.000We're talking about like merch so we have this that shirt I gave you with the logo on it and a bunch of people were kept emailing me to That they I wish I had an example of it, but they kept email By they kept emailing me that we don't have fat fuck sizes.
01:37:52.000That was what their literal words I get that at higherprimate.com too.
01:39:43.000Going to the studio, not giving a shit, putting out an album about how fucking shitty your life is and how everything's going to shit, and not giving a shit what people think, this is the one that's gonna work, you know?
01:39:55.000So we call, he's like, you're, you know, like I said, we had a bunch of pre-sales, too.
01:40:02.000Like, I guess on iTunes you can buy it before it comes out.
01:40:42.000Well, that's the whole point, is making music and writing songs is supposed to be fun, and when you write from the heart, and you write without censoring yourself, the unfun part is trying to fit your nasty thoughts into something clean.
01:42:59.000A couple years ago, they gave him this award for, you know, there's like a Charlie Chaplin Award for like greatness in comedy or something.
01:43:10.000And he did this bit, I don't want to give it away if you haven't seen it, but it was the funniest fucking thing I've seen.
01:43:47.000It's the perfect time for you to come out with this album.
01:43:50.000What I say, every day is the new best day for this crazy shit.
01:43:54.000Because every day people give less of a fuck.
01:43:58.000The honest truth is, you know, I met the producer and I talked to Sturgill and I said, you know, I asked about the, you know, because he was the only guy I knew who knew Dave.
01:44:29.000You know, I'm sure your audience knows, but there's people out there who think the phrase don't give a fuck is a negative, you know, like I don't care.
01:44:35.000I care too much that I need someone who doesn't care about the other shit.
01:44:50.000Listen, I could get banned from Nashville, but I don't give a fuck because I'm making the record I want to make.
01:44:56.000Well, it's just amazing that that's how it worked out, you know, that this thing's taken off because you just said, fuck it, let's just go all in.
01:45:02.000And like I said, this is like the perfect time.
01:45:23.000It's actually the opposite, which is, I assume no one's going to ever hear this, so I'm just going to go fucking all out.
01:45:29.000So actually, it's kind of not scary, but when it debuted, like I said, number nine on the Billboard country charts, outselling all the big boys, I'm like...
01:48:54.000Yeah, I mean, like, well, the title track, Redneck Shit, I try to talk, he finally talked me into recording, because it's my demo, you know, because it's weird, because it's your song.
01:49:35.000Every fucking country record on iTunes, it's all five stars, because everyone who buys it on the ratings, they all buy it, they know what they're getting, they love it.
01:50:41.000Yeah, or like, Family Tree's a song about my girl...
01:50:46.000That I like her sister better, but then I... All you do is you just add to, you know, it's like, I'm dating this girl, but I want to fuck her sister.
01:50:52.000But then, of course, I take it a step further.
01:53:57.000So these people like Elvis or Johnny Cash, Hank Williams even, they're like, I want a suit like they wore in, you know, whatever, Western movie.
01:54:06.000And then he started making clothes for musicians.
01:58:56.000I did everything in my power to make sure no one would listen to it, and I think that's the key, you know, because there's something to piss off everyone on here.
02:00:38.000If I'm not doing it the way I want it, then I'll be miserable.
02:00:41.000But because you are doing it the way you want it, it's fucking hilarious.
02:00:44.000So like, what kind of people, you don't have to name names, what kind of people have come up to you and have tried to get in on this?
02:00:49.000What kind of music executive type characters?
02:00:53.000I'll say, and I'm talking about country stars and country music executives, I won't name names, the biggest of the biggest.
02:01:01.000I'm not gonna name names, but I'm talking about the biggest stars in country have contacted me Well, a couple different things.
02:01:10.000I've heard through the grapevine, because I don't travel in those circles.
02:01:13.000But some people who really love it, some people have reached out to friends of mine who know me, making sure that I don't shit on them, because I talk shit about everybody.
02:01:24.000And they're like, couldn't you tell them I'm cool?
02:01:28.000And a couple people, some of the big boys, and some of these I wouldn't even mind naming, but they don't want...
02:01:35.000It's funny, too, because I have some fans who are literally the biggest country stars on planet Earth who won't Until it becomes okay to say it, they're not saying it right now.
02:02:11.000They were talking to me about that, you know, because one thing you do is play late-night shows, and they're like, they ain't gonna have you.
02:02:49.000And I know Stern's played it a couple times.
02:02:51.000That shit's so much bigger than doing a fucking Tonight Show or whatever those shows are.
02:02:57.000Which, listen, if I'm in town and they want me to play, I'll do it, but they can't have me on, so it doesn't matter.
02:03:02.000Well, yeah, they can't have you on, and one of the problems with those shows is, like, say, you know, no offense to any of these guys, but say if Conan has someone on a show that's a band, I don't know how much input Conan has.
02:03:12.000Or, like, maybe The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
02:03:14.000How much input does he have on what the guests are?
02:04:18.000It's bizarre, like, seeing him scream, you fucking cocksucker, like, whoa!
02:04:22.000I remember hearing stories, you know, because I obviously have so many friends and musicians, like, who, they'll be playing a show, and they're like, oh, somebody canceled on the, this was years ago, canceled on The Tonight Show.
02:04:32.000If you can get out to L.A. to play The Tonight Show, you can do the show in whatever.
02:04:36.000And they crunch the numbers, and it costs, you see, it's not, you know, moving a band is so expensive.
02:06:22.000Yeah, and my uncle Vinny was an artist, and so he would, him and this guy Dennis that he worked with, would do these album covers for Kiss.
02:06:55.000I don't know who the guy who did the painting was.
02:06:57.000I think they hired someone to do the painting.
02:06:59.000But what the advertising agency would do was design the inside of it, graphic design, put all the photos in place, and decide how the font would look and all that stuff.
02:10:14.000And then you get older, you realize you can listen to both.
02:10:16.000It's kind of what happened to, like I was talking about before with me and all my, he's like, when you got into rock, it's like, wait a second.
02:10:23.000Waylon and John Lennon aren't that fucking far apart.
02:10:27.000They're much closer together than what's playing on the radio right now.
02:11:02.000Because back then, dressing like that, wearing the cowboy hat, and playing kind of old-style Buck Owens country was thought of as crazy as it...
02:12:11.000Well, even then, you know, the 90s, like, you were talking about shit changing so fast.
02:12:14.000Even the fucking, like, you look back at mainstream country in the 90s, it sounds like fucking raw field recordings compared to what we got out there right now.
02:12:22.000Like, it's changed so much so fast that, like, actually, like, this is the kind of what mainstream Alan Jackson, Randy Travis, that shit sounds like fucking...
02:12:38.000Like, could you imagine if Johnny Cash could watch those guys, like, throwing their fucking hands, those hip-hop hand signs, the perfectly coiffed outfits on, and buying jeans with rips already in them?
02:15:20.000Well, that was when country music, which, by the way, that country on the radio then sounds, like I said, sounds great now, but it was a lot of strings and got really lush.
02:17:06.000They have those spotlights that stream the sky, and they'll have, like, some fucking grand opening thing or some press release thing, and you'll see, like, these tour bosses and paparazzis, and, like, what is going on?
02:17:16.000Well, that's the thing, too, is when I was a kid, you know, I had family who was friends with the country.
02:17:21.000Not because they were in the business, just if you're in town, that's what a lot of people do.
02:17:25.000There were never no fucking paparazzi.
02:17:27.000I know people there, you know, when you got to, like...
02:17:32.000Warn people where you're going, do this.
02:17:34.000That's why I'm hoping people like Jason or Sturge will start moving there for the right kind of music.
02:17:41.000There's got to be some that are doing that, right?
02:18:08.000When Sturgill puts out a CD, and then people find out about it, and people aspire, and then they want to be like that, and then it sort of gives birth to more people like that, or more people who can express themselves that way.
02:18:35.000And there's going to be a lot of Sturgill copycats coming out soon, and they're going to be doing it because they think it's going to sell, not because Sturgill did it, because he had something on his mind that he wanted to sing.
02:20:07.000So I played a few songs with them acoustics, and they came out in costume and backed me up for a couple songs, because they had the record, but it wasn't out yet.