Charlie Worsham

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Welcome, welcome, welcome back to the Bob Lefsetz Podcast. My guest today is Charlie Worsham, who's got a new album, Once Upon a Second Time Around. Charlie, why an album? Why now?
00:00:15
Speaker 2: It's the only way I can get what's in my heart out onto the page, Bob. And Once Upon a Second Time Around is kind of where I feel like I'm sitting in my life right now. I'm celebrating 20 years in Nashville this month, August 2026. And I've been making records since I was literally 13 years old. And it's all I know to do. It's part of my emotional process. And that song, the title track to the record, is a song that kind of had its own second act, if you will. This is my first independent record. and I spent 12 years at Warner loving being at a home where I could make records, work with bucket list producers and writers and musicians and learn about making records. And at this 20-year mark, it kind of feels like the analogy I've been using is, and I'm the last guy to use sports terms accurately, but at halftime in a football game, you go into the locker room for 15 minutes, you assess how you played the first half of the game, get back out there and play the second half. I'm sort of in that halftime moment. And I'm assessing those first 20 years in Nashville, everything that I gleaned from my time and gearing up to go kick off the second half. And I'm also kind of realizing that this, you know, there's a line in the title track. You got to let go of that fairy tale for the next one to begin. And what I've sort of learned to let go of and pick up now is what the original dream was when I was a kid, which is I just love making music. If I can wake up every day and be creative and be surrounded by people that challenge me to be better, that's the dream. That was what the dream was at 12. And of course, now as an adult, I got to figure out how to pay the bills doing that, but that's happening. And so there's a lot of gratitude in this record.
00:02:14
Speaker 1: Okay. When you talk about the dreams, Do you mean from a Muppet movie, the famous rich and standard, standard rich and famous contract, which you had, but the MTV 80s and 90s where you're known ubiquitously as opposed to today's muddled world where it's hard to raise your head above and you're just thrilled you can make a living making music?
00:02:38
Speaker 2: I think what I always imagined, so you got to go back to, I grew up in Mississippi, struck out at T-Ball. Gave up on karate once we had to start breaking boards with our bare hands. This is not for me. And music was it, man. My earliest memories are seeing my dad play drums in a local band. I was hooked on the power music seemed to have on grownups. It made them act like kids. And pretty soon I was taking piano lessons and I became a bluegrass kid. And Vince Gill became a hero. Marty Stewart became a hero. And so the idea... I'd be in the woods behind the house where I grew up with foam headphones on, plugged into a Sony Walkman, listening to a Marty Stewart record with a stick in my hand. When my eyes closed, I was on stage with Marty. That was the dream. It was never anything past that or past, uh, you know, I'd be sitting cross-legged on the floor, watching the CMA awards and dreaming of being on that stage, either accepting an award or, uh, performing on that stage. And, uh, Those are now both things I can say I've done. Coming to Nashville, where I grew up in Mississippi is a five-ish hour drive from Nashville. So we made frequent trips here to the Opryland theme park, which when I was a kid was still in operation. And if you go to the theme park, it's right next to the Opry. So you got to end the day at the Opry. And that's, I think what I mean when I talk about the dream is at my purest point of grasping music and understanding that it was what I loved, what I was meant to do. That was the dream. That was the seed that was planted. And then between that and young adulthood and the experience of signing a record deal and going on a radio tour, all these sort of attachments, and you've got a legal background, so you know all about the addendums to contracts and things. All these additional pieces of the idea got attached and That's great. And I still have a desire to go out and conquer other forms of success. But at the end of the day, I've reached a point in my life, especially now being a parent, where I understand just the gift of my daily experience and that for my inner child, that deepest desire to make music is something that I get to do every day. Um, so, so that's, I think what I'm talking about, you know, the fame part of it, fame was never a goal for me. I was so fortunate. I was sort of the last to come up before smartphones and YouTube, which I could have used some YouTube guitar videos to learn some of the solos I wanted to learn, you know, but I learned listening to the record and hit and repeat, you know? So, uh, so fame was never the point. It was always this sort of necessary result of, being great at what I do. It was understood that it was a part of what comes with, air quotes, success or whatever. But it was never the goal, if that makes sense. Okay.
00:05:52
Speaker 1: Why an independent this time?
00:05:55
Speaker 2: That's a great question. I had spent about 12 years on Warner here in Nashville. And the person who signed me, a woman named Chris Lacey, at the time that she signed me, was just part of the A & R staff there. And she now runs the Nashville division of Warner. And she's always been a dear friend. And if Warner had played by conventional wisdom, I probably should have been at that label for about two or three years. I mean, it was obvious I had not recouped, but they kept allowing me to go make records. And they kept doing it in a way where I was only ever encouraged to follow what my heart wanted to make, the music that my heart wanted to make. And they kept putting it out there. They kept trying everything they knew to do. And so it's not lost on me how long I was able to have a home there and the belief they had in me. And essentially, Chris and I sat down and had a really open and heartfelt conversation a couple years ago. I was getting ready. I had sessions booked on the calendar for what would become the basic tracking for this record. I had songs that my dear friend, Josh Van Valkenburg is his name, publisher at Sony. My publisher at the time and probably future publisher as well. That's a whole other story and podcast at this particular moment. But Josh is a dear friend and we had had this meeting where he played me a bunch of songs and we had this batch of tunes. And we had the dates in the studio and I was talking to Chris about the plan. And she did what a good friend does, which is just give me the information. And the information was, you know, here's your contract, which I had signed probably the tail end of the like 360 deal era, which I haven't looked at a record deal in a long time. So it may still have elements of that, but certainly owning your masters and licensing them was not a part of the conversation when I signed that deal. And I was in the hole ever so much, I think somewhere around a million dollars probably. And she basically said, look, we love you. She literally told me, you can stay here at Warner and we can record a couple songs at a time, but that's kind of all that we can do. And if you need these giant levers pulled, which is the whole point of signing a deal with a major, that's something we can't do unless you've had this viral moment that you're going to have to create for yourself. But here's the thing. If you create that viral moment for yourself in this contract, you're starting out at this massive negative number. Whereas if you create that moment for yourself outside of this deal, you own your master, you're generating income for yourself from the first spin, essentially. And what she didn't say, but what I understood and was implied there too, At Warner, I could have a couple songs at a time. I could kind of record what I wanted in terms of how much outside of the deal. And I am an album guy, whether you think you're talking about me as a consumer or me as a creator. And I recognize, I am under no delusion that asking a fan who doesn't know you to consume an entire album, especially in the attention economy we live in today, You're asking them to go in from day one and buy a season ticket. And that's not necessarily something a stranger new to you is going to do. I get that. And I also was around when the careers of Eric Church kicked off, where he had three albums before he ever had a number one. And people bought in on a song. But once they bought in on a song, they discovered all of this material. They discovered this catalog of music. And so they could get into the season pass. at their own pace. And it helps me. I think you put different kinds of songs on a full-length, an LP, than you do when you're picking a single or when you're putting out an EP. And so it was on my heart to make a full-length record. And after that heartfelt conversation with Chris, I just felt this clarity felt sort of a burden lifted, honestly. And I felt peace. And we made a decision to amicably part ways. And I kept the sessions that were on the calendar and we started making this record. And it's just been a joy. It's also, the analogy I love to use as well is, like I remember being a high schooler and my parents helped get a car for me when I first got my license. And when somebody gets you a car, you drive it a certain way. When you buy a car with your own money, you treat it a little different. And this record is me buying my own car for the first time. And it felt that way, and it still does. So there's a pride there.
00:11:05
Speaker 1: I think. Okay. So you paid for it.
00:11:09
Speaker 2: I did. Now, here's another thing from that conversation that I don't think Chris will necessarily ever admit to publicly, but somewhere in those 12 years, I had signed one of those additions to the contract in which I agreed to take smaller amounts of, oh my Lord, what do you call it? Advanced money. And the last two projects I released on Warner were EPs. And in that conversation, I was asking, I was like, hey, I'm just curious, how do we navigate where we are in this contract as far as my exit? And do we count these two EPs as one LP? I'm just curious. She didn't really say anything. But next thing I know, the advance for that option, what would have been my third EP, the last piece of it arrived. And that chunk of money is what bankrolled the first big chapter of making this project. And so I did pay for it with money that came to me and I guess was my money. But also there's a lot of grace there. And I'm always grateful to Chris for that kind of a, that's a cool move, you know.
00:12:18
Speaker 1: Okay, as opposed to spending their money and going in the hole, and if you have overage, you go have a conversation and they give you the money, you're now in control of the money.
00:12:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a different thing.
00:12:30
Speaker 1: So how did you decide how much you were going to spend and how long you were going to work? Because it literally is your money. Right.
00:12:38
Speaker 2: Well, one of the great things about my life to this point in music is, and one of the great benefits of a longer path to that point in the distance for me is that along the way, I have worked as a session player. I've worked as a side musician. I've not just made my records. I've been a part of making records for lots of others, particularly my peers in the industry that I really admire, that I know I can learn a lot from. And I was always taking notes. And so to be able to cut a record with people who I already spend a lot of time with, my fellow friends in the session musician community, I know what makes a great day for them. And I know what they need to be able to execute well and feel good about their performance and operate at their maximum, their peak performance, their efficiency. So the charts are already made. The pace of the record is quick enough that we can be efficient with how we're spending money, but also slow enough that we have time to get the creativity out, that we have that process of Let's try it this way. Let's try it that way. And I've had all this practice all these years of speaking that language amongst other creatives, whether they're other musicians or songwriters or engineers. I had a co-producer on this record, Jaron Johnston. So I was in lockstep with all of my collaborators and it allowed me to make a record that I would argue outkicks its coverage, just in terms of dollars spent versus what we got for those dollars spent. I also... again, not just the grace of Chris Lacey, but my longtime friend, John Osborne, who's half of the duo Brothers Osborne. When I moved to Nashville in 06, I joined a band and most of the band lived in one house. And John and TJ, his brother, the other half of Brothers Osborne, they lived in the house across the street. And we were in a band together, me and John. And John now lives down the road from me. And so John donated some studio time from his studio and Sony Publishing and has a policy where if you're an artist writer on the roster, you can get into their studio and you can do overdubs there free of charge and everything. So, you know, it was just one of those things that it took me 20 years to get to a place where I could make a record this particular way. But it just so happened that all of these timelines happened to line up at this moment for me to be able to do this.
00:15:10
Speaker 1: So how much did you spend?
00:15:12
Speaker 2: All in, and I would say this includes... like the photo shoot, not necessarily once the record's done and packaged, but just getting a piece of vinyl or a digital image or however you want to describe distribution, something you can distribute. I'd say around 60K is probably what we spent.
00:15:37
Speaker 1: Okay. Today, there are ways to record... Unlike yesteryear, you might cut basics in a big room. You might cut, you know, parts in your bedroom. Where did you actually cut the record?
00:15:48
Speaker 2: I am very partial to Sound Emporium here in Nashville. It's on Belmont Boulevard. It's across the street from the church where I got married. It's next door to Martin's Barbecue, which is certainly a plus. And it is chock full of all that great Cowboy Jack Clement lore. And it's also just a great studio. Juanita does a great job managing the place. They take great care of their customers. And I love the vibe of the room. I love the sound of the room. And so do all my pals. And so we cut at Sound Emporium A. We had two different tracking dates. I think those were both in 2024. Once we wrapped tracking, all the overdubs took place either at the Sony Publishing Studios there on Music Row, on the naked statue end of Music Row, as we say here, Um, if you get for people listening, if you come to Nashville, you'll, you'll find out about the naked statues soon enough. Um, and then John Osborne's place, we cut a lot there. His studio is called Pine Box. Now the one or the two exceptions are, we did a bluegrass version of one of the songs. One of the songs I cut two ways and the bluegrass version of that song, it's called Wrap My Porch Around. We cut that at Vince Gill's house. Uh, he has a great studio at his house and the Traveling McCurries came over. There's also a song towards the end of the record where, uh, It's just me and a guitar. And it's an old song Walker Hayes, the artist from 16 years ago when he was broke and working at Costco wrote. He co-wrote this song called Good Hurt. And I recorded that sitting here in this chair, honestly, probably on this microphone with these headphones while somebody was building a house next door. And I had to wait in between the nail gun and like our daughter was napping across the hall. I had to make sure she wasn't waking up crying. But that's kind of the beautiful part of it, right? Like outside of sound emporium, I didn't really pay a studio fee. I had to deal in the currency of relationship, which to me is a gift.
00:17:47
Speaker 1: Okay. So if you started cutting basics in 2024, when did you finish?
00:17:53
Speaker 2: Well, it took us right up to the 11th hour, if you count the last collaboration that took place. So there are three collabs on this project. Going back to that stack of songs I mentioned that my publisher, Josh, helped compile for me, that stack of songs came from a year of him listening, both throughout the entire Sony catalog and my catalog. Half the songs he played me that day in a meeting that we had where we narrowed everything down were songs that I had written. A lot of them I kind of had forgotten about or just written off as you know, forever in the dustbin. The other half were these outside cuts, one of which was a song Lainey Wilson had co-written. That song is called They Never Do. And that ended up becoming a song she sang on. She featured it in her documentary called Keeping Country Cool. And then the second collaboration, the Traveling McCurries, this bluegrass one. And then the last collaboration is a song called Years Go By with Stephen Wilson Jr. And Stephen, I was actually in Mississippi doing a tour of with the Parchman Band. Parchman is Mississippi's state penitentiary. It is the story of American history, all of the good, bad, and ugly in one place, 28 square miles of prison, formerly cotton plantation, which we should talk about that. That was a transformative week. But while I was down there performing with the Parchman Band, Stephen Wilson Jr. was over at my co-producer, Jaron Johnston's house, singing and playing. That was May of this year. Singing and playing on Years Go By, which is a song... Stephen Wilson Jr. and I co-wrote. And so we rushed to get all of that turned around and everything else has been done since early 2026. But as busy as Stephen has been and everything else, even though he expressed interest, it just took till the 11th hour to get him on there and get the mixes turned around. and um but we made it happen.
00:19:50
Speaker 1: Okay when you originally did the tracking how many of the songs were written.
00:19:56
Speaker 2: Uh i think everything i think everything was written um this is my first post-covid piece of artistic statement or work or however you want to put it, you know, collection of material. And like a lot of people who during COVID weren't able to tour, that extra time, I mean, the one thing you could do is get on the laptop and write a song over Zoom. And so I had the benefit of having a larger than usual catalog for the whatever number of years that was. And some of these songs for me go all the way back to the late 2000 teens. See, I got married in 2018, and some of the songs are from that season of my life. So it's really a record that had a good seven, eight years to incubate.
00:20:51
Speaker 1: Okay. How long have you been with Sony Publishing?
00:20:56
Speaker 2: When did I sign there? Probably right around that time, probably 2018.
00:21:00
Speaker 1: So who were you with before that? I, my.
00:21:05
Speaker 2: First publishing deal when I moved to town was with Chrysalis and it was a band deal. That band I was in with John Osborne. There were six of us in the band. About half of us were really serious about songwriting, but we were all for one, one for all. We were all in the same deal together. And it's partly the reason that I exited the band when I did in 2009. And because we had to re-up the contract. And I went to Berkeley in Boston. I took some music business courses. And I knew if something goes down with this band and we're signed, all six of us, to this deal, they can own my publishing individually just like they can collectively. And I didn't want to do that. And so I exited that deal. And a guy named Arturo Buenahora Jr. was exiting his season as A & R at a label called Show Dog, Toby Keith's label here in Nashville and getting back into publishing, which funny enough, ironically, his first publishing gig was at Sony Publishing Nashville and his current company, Little Louder, which was one of my, well, let me, I'm giving you my whole history here. After Chrysalis, I signed at Olay. Arturo went to work at Olay, signed me to Olay, which is another company now. And I was at Olay for four or five years. Then Arturo started his own company, Little Louder, which is next door to Sony Publishing on Music Row. And I spent three or four years at Little Louder. And when that ended, I spent about a year building up a new Schedule A and was starting to talk to another publisher, Josh, that guy I keep talking about who was instrumental in the creation of this record, He texted me randomly and said, hey, would you be willing to write with Frankie Ballard? And if so, who do I call to book you? And I jokingly texted back, kind of in between deals, I guess you text me. And next thing I know, he goes, hey, can you come into Sony? This was like the next day or two days later. And this was when Troy was still, I forget Troy's name. He's running Universal now. Oh my goodness. He was at my wedding, Bob. We all know and love him. He's like a senator in Nashville.
00:23:27
Speaker 1: At least you remember he was there, unlike with McCain's daughter was criticized by somebody and she said, you were at my wedding. It'll come back to you.
00:23:39
Speaker 2: It will. It will. And Troy is the best. He was great. And he had the whole staff up in his office and full court press. And so after I walked out of that office and felt seen and appreciated for my particular color of Country Music Crayon and the big crayon box that is Music City, it was a no-brainer. It was like, this is where I want to be. And so that's where I've been ever since.
00:24:03
Speaker 1: Okay. You have a whole career on the road. In these publishing deals, let's just call it 20 years, did you need the advances to stay alive? Did you take advances? How did it work?
00:24:18
Speaker 2: I did take advances and I did kind of need them. And they grew with as my life grew and evolved. Between Little Louder, Arturo's company, and Sony, I did have this epiphany of, man, I don't like the feeling of being dependent on this as an income stream. And as that seed that was planted in my mind in the next six years unfolded, it was nice to have the Sony advance. And I'm still in a deal where the options kind of actually... Also, leaving Little Louder had slacked off on fulfilling my obligation, my 12 copyrights each year. And I was like, never again. I'm going to always be writing. I'm always going to stay ahead. And boy, for the first like five years at Sony, I was turning in three times what I needed to turn in. And once we started growing our family and now we have two young kids and I got busy on the road again, I was trying to make this record. It finally kind of caught up with me for the first time. And I owe Sony about six copyrights right now in the current deal. And my plan, and I knew that was coming. I've known that for the last year or two. And they're cool with it. And I'm cool with it. I'm grateful for that. It's all good. I'm certainly grateful to live in a town with such a great songwriting well, where you can just, well, I'm going to go dip my bucket over here because there's a million great songwriters in this town. And it's funny too, the minute this record came out, Bob, the The gates opened again for my writing. It's like, oh, now I'm free. I've got that bandwidth now to start thinking about new songs. This has been delivered. What's next? But I've known now for a couple of years, I don't want to, and I'm fortunate to be able to say, I don't need to depend on a draw from publishing. I want to own my copyrights completely. I've been generously afforded the chance to have co-publishing. Even a little louder, I had co-publishing on songs that I cut, not anything that would be an outside cut. But at Sony, I've had a blanket co-pub. And I'm interested in an admin deal. And it speaks to what you talked about when I was telling you, you drive a car different when you paid for it with your own money. I think you write songs different when the motivation to write them is something other than a check every month. And I like that feeling. I like needing to write a song because my heart has something it needs to get out. And so I feel pretty determined unless really terrible things, sequence of events happen and I really, really need that income stream. I like the idea of having an admin deal and going out and making the income for myself.
00:27:06
Speaker 1: Okay. But the songs you've written under a co-pub deal, when the deal's over, Sony owns them with you. You're never going to get it back.
00:27:15
Speaker 2: Unless they recoup or I'm able to buy the catalog and work a deal somehow, yeah. And that's okay. Because that would never stop me from using a song creatively, you know, putting it on a record or anything. That's the last thing I think about. But yeah, yeah.
00:27:34
Speaker 1: Okay, how many co-writing sessions have you and do you still do?
00:27:39
Speaker 2: The writing and part of why it's caught up to me in the last couple years is in juggling... The other jobs that I hold in the industry and also trying to be as present a husband and father as I can be in an industry where half the time my job is to be in another state or country even. Songwriting is something that has slipped for me in terms of daily habit and practice. I do maintain a pretty decent journal and I haven't been as diligent about it. but I can feel the ideas coming back and welling up. And I remember learning this lesson at the end of my first album cycle, my debut record on Warner, I think it was 2012 or 2013, a record called Rubber Band. I went on a radio tour. I went on back-to-back-to-back tours. And that was the first time I was so busy that writing fell by the wayside. And then all of a sudden, everybody's like, well, time to make another record. What you got? And I felt like I got kind of caught empty-handed. And I promised myself I would start journaling and filling up morning pages. And the more I did that, the more I realized if I caught myself on a lucky day, if I had that habit, sometimes I could just write stream of consciousness. And it's a pretty decent first draft of a verse and chorus. And boy, once I get a verse and chorus lyrically, I can sit with that with a guitar, find the right kind of music, the right cadence for it. and really start chipping away at the idea. I'm in the song creation mode at that point. And so right now, while I've got a lot of catching up to do as a writer, I've got three or four notebooks full of those song starts. And a lot of them actually rhyme and have a bit of a verse form, chorus form. So I'm not too worried about once I can clear the decks in the next three to six months, I'll go back to the songwriter's gym. Right now, I'm in the musician's gym. I'm out there playing in Vince Gill's touring band and It's like lifting with Arnold Schwarzenegger every day. You know, at Soundcheck, it's a heavy, heavy bunch of cats in that band. And it's been so good for my chops. And that feeds the songwriting. If I feel good about my playing, I'm going to feel more confident trying to come up with a new melody or a riff. But the lyric writing I've always recognized is something that... It always behooved me to have a lyric writing practice. The music always came so naturally. But I really have loved being a student of lyric writing.
00:30:11
Speaker 1: Okay, going back to the new album, how did it end up at 1 RPM?
00:30:15
Speaker 2: You know, I've had a couple of very... What's the word? Um... cosmic breakfast meetings this year. The first one was back in January with a guy named Michael Bryan. I first met Michael Bryan when he was program director at WSIX, the radio station here in Nashville, one of the radio stations here in Nashville. And he was one of the good guys. He was like this bright spot in that radio tour season where I was like, man, this guy, I think listens to bluegrass. I think this guy goes to the station in like I do, you know, he really gets me. And he was playing my records. That was the first time I heard a song of mine on the radio was driving. I could point you to the little stretch of Wedgwood. I was going down a hill on Wedgwood Avenue when my song came on the radio, 97.9 WSIX. And that's because of Michael Bryan. I had breakfast with Michael January of this year. And I've known him through seasons of life from his program director days to his days at CAA. to his days eventually running, being the global head of country music for Apple. He was the first person to get me on a podcasting gig, a show called Pickers Radio that I did for Apple that I thoroughly enjoyed. That's a whole other thing we should talk about. I am a student of this right here, man. I love interviews. It is such a cool format to me. I'm a fan of Late Night. I'm a fan of... I actually was listening to your episode with Ketch Secor because he's a good friend, and it's great. But I had that breakfast with Michael Bryan back in January and he said, you know, I'm ready to start my own company. I'm interested in becoming a manager. I've been a part of the corporate world for a long time. He had a couple of friends who developed cancer and passed away really young and just kind of had that moment of like, man, life is too short not to go chase the thing that fires me up the most. And by the end of that breakfast, it was us looking at each other going, because I had been without a manager for about a year at that point. And we were both kind of looking at each other like, are we, is this, I'm just going to tell people you're my manager now. And that's what it's been. Through Michael Bryan, I had a similar breakfast with Mike from 1RPM. And we sat down and we started talking about being dads. We started talking about music we love, concert memories. He knew so many things about the record I had made or was nearly finished making. Um, never once did we have the conversation about like, well, I don't know about this song working in this way or anything like that. It was just like, I'm a fan dude. And I want you to create. And for me, that was the, all I needed to get the gut feeling of like, boy, it feels right. You know, cause here's the thing, Bob, it's, it's not just this record, but when I signed with one RPM, part of the stipulation was I have to put out more music in the next year. Which, and I love Warner. The last thing in the world you're going to hear me do, talking to you or anybody else, is trash Warner. They gave me a home. They gave me experience. They gave me faith and showed me belief and respect in what I do musically. I'm forever grateful for that. No bad blood at all. And the hurdle with a massive label like that is how narrow the definition of success becomes because of the way it's structured. Not because of anybody, any person there working. And, um, and the hurdle was always trying to get music through all those hoops. And it just felt like it always took so long and it was so agonizing to jump through all the hoops to where the music could actually be recorded and get out into the world. And so often it felt like by the time the music was getting out into the world, I was already in another season of life. And I just accepted that as a reality and that's okay. You know, but with one RPM, I have this feeling of the opposite. It's almost like, man, I really got to, I got to hustle and get the next piece of music out. And I love that because what it means, especially having seen the industry evolve over the last couple of decades, we are in this time of immediacy. And I think people are craving not just authenticity, but they want to know, they want what's hot off the presses, man. What were you feeling two weeks ago? What song did you post the day you wrote it? When can I get the recording of it? And I am here for that, man. I love... that kind of pressure. And I think I thrive under that kind of pressure. And so with 1RPM, it was the chance to put more funding behind the promotion of this record. And it was also the opportunity to say, hey, you don't have to sweat or figure out how you're going to pay for the next record. You're still going to own it. And oh, by the way, you need to get cracking because it needs to come out in the next 12 to 18 months. So I'm just fired up about it. I love Mike's heart. and his expertise. And I'm a student, dude. I'm a lifelong student. I will be the first to say I've got so much to learn. I'm just grateful I am still here and I get to still learn. And yeah.
00:35:29
Speaker 1: Okay. So you had experience of putting music out through Warner. What's the difference between that and putting music out through 1RPM?
00:35:39
Speaker 2: Well, there is a more direct, there's less machinery between me and the music industry. or even just the decisions around the music. I have a text thread with my management team, or I'll text Mike at 1 RPM, and everything happens pretty immediately. And it's coming directly from me. It's not this cut and drop, but a great example being, at Warner, you... You get the record all together. You get through the approvals process. Promo team feels like, okay, we got something we can work with over here. A & R feels like this over here, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, marketing. You have the big expensive photo shoot. You shoot the big expensive music video. And all of that takes, I don't know, months and months and months. And then everything's ready. Everything's loaded up. And then it's this sort of four to six week intense moment of, Let's go. Every bit of our weight's getting thrown at this thing. And then nothing. It's all over. Now with 1 RPM, it's more like, hey, while you're in Mississippi, we're going to spend a couple thousand dollars. We're going to send a camera person down. And every day on your way to the next gig, hop out of the car, stand next to a creek or on a dirt road or in a cotton field or like sing the Ode to Billy Joe, sing this song off the record. Let's get you eating at... And talking about Spencer's Dairy Cream, this is a local haunt when I was driving through my hometown of Grenada. We stopped there and got cool images and footage. And then literally a week later, let's start putting that content out in the world. And so it's just so much more immediate and it's so much more hands-on, which demands of me my presence, my thought, my heart, my creativity. I think that's healthier for me.
00:37:33
Speaker 1: Okay, and what's the promotion like vis-a-vis Warner?
00:37:39
Speaker 2: You mean now as opposed to with Warner? You know, I mean, I think that so much was, and I don't know that it'll be this way for the kid that moved to town two years ago and is about to sign a record deal next year, right? But for me, like radio was the only path and there was no workaround for that. And I think now there's so many ways to reach an audience and to find your specific audience. I also think at Warner, this brings up an important dynamic. I was in a conversation once with one of the guys, the head of promotion, and I'm friends with the guy. And if he were here now, I'd give him shit and he'd give me shit right back about it. And we'd laugh and we'd go drink a beer together. But I remember saying to him, because one of the big things I did on Radio Tour and on the tour's in those early years at Warner was get my banjo and play a cover of crazy train and people lost their minds. Cause it's, you know, it's crazy train on a banjo. It's, it's, it's an oddity. It's not something you see coming and it's, it's Instagrammable, right? I was so drained from that because I felt like, man, if I'm going to play banjo, I want to play the theme to the Martha White theme song from flattened Scruggs live at Carnegie hall. You know, like I want to play shucking the corn. That's the song I played on the Opry when I was 12. I mean, come on, man. And I was there with the promotion guy in his office one day. I was just like, man, I'm so tired of playing Crazy Train on banjo. And he said, yeah, but you play banjo. Frankie Ballard plays guitar. That's what makes you different. And I'm just like, I don't think that's what makes me different, dude. I never said that out loud, but I was just like, I don't think that's what makes me different, man. Like, put your radio on right now. Like Jesus does. Eric Church is in the top 10. It's about to play on this station. That's me playing acoustic. I don't think Frankie Ballard is doing that. And that's not a dig at Frankie. He's a friend. He's a super talented dude. It's just like, I think that's what makes me different. But there wasn't margin for that conversation because that wasn't how the format worked. And being a multi-hyphenate kind of worked against me. Whereas now with 1RPM, they get that on Tuesday, I might be a podcast host with this thing called Mississippi on the Map that explores Mississippi's creative legacy. And I might be interviewing Marty Stewart for that podcast. And then on Wednesday, I might be back in town and playing on an Ella Langley session. And on Thursday, I might be opening a show as me, Charlie, playing my songs. And all of that is part of my persona and my brand. I hate using the word brand. And all of those are the things that only I can do. There isn't really another person doing that exact thing. And boy, if I've learned anything in these last 20 years, it's like, boy, if you're going to invest in something, invest in the thing that only you can do. And don't try to truncate what you are to fit the scene in the moment. And so... That is a big shift, I think, is that the way everything is structured now, and it's not just 1RPM, it's the management team I have right now. It's the work I've done. It's my own mindset. And the fact that I've reached a point where I don't have to prove that I'm different as a session player. I mean, I've got it. And I'm not trying to look at me thing, but it's like, I've got a CMA on the shelf over there, right? For musician of the year. Like, okay, I did the thing. I rang the bell. Like, I can officially talk about that. on the stage where I am playing. And I did just two weeks ago in Manchester in the UK at this club where I played. And it's a part of a bigger thing that is who I am. And there isn't a blueprint for it. There's a great book I have. It's all these amazing quotes from Nobel laureates. And the title of the book is from one of the quotes. It's called The Impossible Takes Longer. And I'm not trying to compare who I am, what I do to a Nobel prize winning work or anything. What I am trying to say is when you're trying to cut your own path, I do think it just takes a little bit longer. So many of my heroes I can point to, that was their journey. I mean, Vince Gill and Marty Stewart are prime examples. But I think I'm just finally deep enough in my own journey where I'm starting to see that and to be able to own it and to be able to reap the benefits of having stayed the course. And for a long time, it didn't feel that way.
00:42:12
Speaker 1: To what degree is radio a component of 1RPM' s plan?
00:42:17
Speaker 2: It's definitely, I would say, something we would welcome with open arms. And I think that it's the kind of thing where we are staying wide-eyed and will know if and when the time is right to pursue that on a larger scale. One of the crazy, awesome things about this point in my life is that I'm not worried about it. That might sound terrible, but I would love to be able to turn on the radio and hear myself. I just, man, I'm thinking about the next song I'm going to write and who's going to be my co-pilot in the studio and picking up my kid from kindergarten. And I think that's healthy for me. Yeah. I think the answer to that question might be different in three months or six months. And that's, that's another beautiful thing is that, you know, this record has been out a few weeks now, but I feel like I'm just getting started. You know, I'm just starting to be able to tell the story of this record and that's okay with me. I'm not, I don't have to try to compete in those sort of zero sum corners of our industry. to feel like I've accomplished what I need to accomplish with this music. And I also, you know, I mean, spending this summer with Vince, he's great about this sort of thing. There's also an acceptance for me of like the parts of this that are out of my control. And by no means am I saying I'm not giving this hell, giving it all I got. I just, I think in my early twenties and my, all the way to 30, you know, I really felt like I somehow was supposed to have control over this. Uh, and I should have realized that when my debut record and the song cruise were out within weeks of one another at that point is when I probably should have picked up on the fact that dude, a lot of this is out of your control. Some of it is timing. Some of it is luck. The part I can control my work ethic, being authentic, uh, taking care of myself, taking care of the people around me. That's, that's the part I have control over and can focus on.
00:44:45
Speaker 1: So how did you decide to go to Berklee College of Music, not the one in California? And what was your experience there like?
00:44:53
Speaker 2: Oh, it was a magical place. It was Hogwarts for music nerds, dude. All the big fish from the little ponds from around the world in one little corner of Boston. uh, how it started, I went to like a five week summer camp between my, I think junior and senior years in high school at Berkeley. And I fell in love with the place and, uh, I had done pretty well. I was, I was a good student academically. I enjoyed, I loved school. Uh, I never had that moment where it's like, oh, I got to do music. There was just never a moment where there was any other plan. It just kind of, constantly was like, well, things are pointing in this direction. But going to that summer camp kind of sealed the deal for me. You know, my parents could see the value in it. I could see the excitement of, wait, what? When classes are over, you mean we can sign up for practice time in the studio that has an SSL? I can go put up eight Neumann mics if I want to and see what that sounds like? Like to me, it was just the playground, man. And And if I'm going to book a band, I got to call all my buddies. Where do I sign up? And it's also why I chose the production and engineering major. And what I loved about Berklee too was a couple of things. I loved going there with what I call a three-chord chip on my shoulder. I was a banjo picking kid who, and to this day, I get excited when I hear a G run on an acoustic guitar. And if there was one thing that kind of I was taken aback by it was some of the students kind of turning there. And I remember there was a, what was it? It was like one of the big concerts. Maybe we were giving an honorary doctorate to Don Henley or something. But for whatever reason, I was in the house band at this Berkeley event. And one of the songs we played was Hotel California. And the like scholarship, you know, super heady jazz playing student was the other guitar player in the band. And he was just like, oh, you know, this solo, it's beneath me. And I'm like looking at him like, bro, what? Like, come on, dude. Like, let me introduce you to my friends, Leonard Skinner, my man. Come on. I need you to feel something in your heart, bro. Take the elevator from here, forehead down to the heart, my friend. It's much cooler. Anyway, so I had that three-chord chip on my shoulder. Like, I do want to learn all this stuff, but I never, never want to not be excited by simple things in music because it fires me up. Why would I ever forfeit that feeling? The other thing being, you know, this community of people that I did find that were like me, you know, I got to move to Nashville with a dozen pals. And I never had this experience of just being all by myself in Nashville, freaking out. What am I going to do? Who am I going to talk to? I had like a pal who had a studio at the end of the street. I had another buddy who was starting to play on sessions and another buddy that wrote songs or that had gigs and needed me to play with them. So it was a community and it was that access to the gear and it was the flexibility of the curriculum. And it was the not just transfer of information from the professors, but this real mentorship with them. And it was the spring break Nashville trip. Every spring break, about 100 and something Berkeley students would come down to Nashville for a week. And we'd be able to sit, oddly enough, ironically, in the conference room at Warner and hear from all of these people across just a cross section of the industry. And so Nashville always felt like home. Berkeley helped make it feel even more like home. And it gave me tools and it gave me more than that community.
00:48:48
Speaker 1: Okay. How long did you go for before you dropped out?
00:48:54
Speaker 2: Well, I only owe about six hours of credit. I was there two and a half years. My last two semesters were a summer semester. And then in the fall, this would have been the fall of 06, that August as the summer semester wrapped. I drove down, split a Penske with a drummer buddy. We drove down to Nashville, stopped at the Kennedy Center along the way, played on the Millennium Stage. Our buddy from Atlanta who had already graduated and was back home in Atlanta flew up and met us. We played at like noon, stayed in DC, woke up, drove the rest of the way. And then that fall, I worked it out with my professors to come up once a month and take all of my MP & E senior project courses. I had to make a three song demo as the artist producing myself. And then I had to do another three song demo for another artist and producer in which I served as engineer. And I took those last two classes that fall. What I failed to do was complete the last of my core classes. I still have traditional harmony two. I tested out a traditional Harmony 1 and then Counterpoint 1 and 2. I kept trying to sign up for Counterpoint, dude. The problem was I couldn't get the teacher I wanted. I'd get bored after the first class and drop out. And then what really happened, I was going to do it my last couple of semesters, but one of my MP & E professor friends said, hey, I'm starting a class. It's Speaker Building 101. And literally, we're just going to solder together the motherboards and put together a pair of studio monitors. And at the end of this semester, you get your own studio monitors. I'm like, done, you know, goodbye counterpoint. So because of those speakers and because of getting the chance and why I moved to Nashville in that August was to join that band. They had a guy that dropped out. I had been coming down to Nashville anyway, getting to know folks and they called me to come join the band. It was a built-in publishing deal. It was a built-in place to live. It was a built-in set of all the big brothers I never had having grown up an only child. And so I jumped at the chance, the school and my professors were cool with it. Uh, I just never got around to the last of those, uh, core classes.
00:51:10
Speaker 1: Well, like on the album, Bruce Springsteen's mother says you can always go back in the back of your mind. Hey, I'm going to finish it one day or are you done? Yeah.
00:51:21
Speaker 2: Uh, that's an open-ended question. At this point, there's a little bit of stubbornness of, uh, wanting to hold out for the honorary doctorate. Uh, uh, I bet as my children approach that age, it'll reframe this for me. As of right now, I'm leaning towards letting it ride. Yeah, but that might change.
00:51:48
Speaker 1: Okay. You're a boy from Mississippi and you're in Boston. Yeah. What's the difference between Boston and Mississippi?
00:51:59
Speaker 2: It's the best culture shock you could hope for. It's... Well, I grew up traveling. I'm the son of a banker and an educator, my mom being a teacher, my dad having made his career as a banker. And something they believed in and did for me was by the time I left home, I had been to Europe half a dozen times. I remember the first time I went across the pond to tour, I think this was 2016 maybe. And I was with a bunch of other country artists from that class, that era. And They were all just kind of like, where's the McDonald's? And I'm like, let's get on the tube. We could go across town. East London's got amazing Indian food. Let's go. It was familiar to me. You wouldn't expect a guy from Mississippi to be worldly in that sense. But because of this gift of showing me the world that my parents gave me, Boston, it still was culture shock, but it wasn't this.
00:53:01
Speaker 2: It wasn't like that in that sense of– I embraced the opportunity to walk across the city on Saturdays and go to the Italian market in the North End and get prosciutto and some pecorino and bring it home. And so, yeah, Boston was kind of great. And it was also a chance– this is a common theme for Mississippi writers. Willie Morris, who within the borders of Mississippi is like a pope. This guy lay in state in the rotunda of the Mississippi State Capitol, and really only governors up to that point had done that. Outside of Mississippi's borders, I don't know if Willie Morris is as well known, though he certainly wrote some amazing books that were acclaimed. But he had a memoir called North Toward Home, and I've read that book twice now, once as a teenager and once in the last couple years. And it reminded me of a something that is important, I think, especially for Mississippians in particular, which is you need to go be an expat to fully appreciate being a Mississippian, especially if you're a white dude. It's something to be in a town like Boston and say, hey, I'm Charlie, I'm from Mississippi, and to see that look on people's eyes. Because obviously, Mississippi has a history, and there can be an easy assumption. There can be a story one tells themself about this person they've just met and them being from Mississippi. And so I think it was important for me to get beyond the borders of my home state to better appreciate it and to better appreciate what my role can be in the ongoing story of Mississippi. And it made coming back to Mississippi more meaningful, especially in really recent years through the work of this podcast I host. I've spent more time in more corners of Mississippi that I've always wanted to visit and never have. And I think it's an important time in our story as a nation. You can look to Mississippi, man. It's all there. All the information, all the original time around all this stuff happened in Mississippi. And we can learn a lot from the story of Mississippi, and that's my goal. And I know I'm talking more about things outside music here, but especially as a Mississippian, our music and our pain are intricately woven together. And, you know, you don't get Muddy Waters without the story of sharecropping and without the story of the Great Migration. And I mean, why were the blues electrified? Well, it's different when you're singing on your front porch than in a club in Bronzeville on the south side of Chicago. You got to plug that guitar in to make it loud enough to hear for people to dance to. And so I take being a Mississippian really seriously. And it's deeply embedded in my musical DNA.
00:56:00
Speaker 1: So the town you're from in Mississippi, what is that like relative to Mississippi at large?
00:56:09
Speaker 2: Grenada, Mississippi, it's 100 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee, which we kind of claim. And 100 miles north of Jackson, which is dead center in the state and the state's capital. So we're sort of the center of the northern half of the state. If you drive west 20 minutes from the house I grew up in, you exit the Pine Belt, the Pine Hills, and you enter the eastern edge of the Delta. And it's flat from that point to the Mississippi River. Grenada is a county of probably 20,000 and growing. And it's a medium-sized town. I graduated in 2004, Grenada High School. I think our class was 185 students graduating class. It's probably bigger now. Uh, and it was a great place to grow up. And it was a place where, uh, I put in my first 10,000 hours playing in cover bands and bars and playing weddings. And, you know, before that it was bluegrass bands and playing the Kiwanis club and playing the nursing home and literally playing like the men's clothing section at the Walmart in Grenada. Uh, and it was a community that raised me. I had a piano teacher there in town. That was my first experience of learning music theory. And I don't really play, I wouldn't call myself a pianist today, but I visualize music on the piano keys. And I can read music if I need to because of those lessons. I understood delayed gratification because of Cindy Dugan, my piano teacher. I understood technique and posture and the importance of that from those piano lessons. So it's a community that raised me.
00:57:56
Speaker 1: Okay. In Grenada, They're more black people than white people. So tell me about race in Mississippi.
00:58:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was so blessed. I think about my high school and it was what I hope my own children will experience as they grow up in their primary education years. It was a perfectly accurate cross section of our town to be in Grenada High School. It was 50-50 black-white, all of the rungs of the financial ladder there. And I was also fortunate to not be like the coolest kid or to be the one that everybody picked on. I kind of lived in the middle, kind of had my own thing going. And I had great teachers. Don't even get me started. I think we should be taking care of our teachers better. better than we are, uh, because that's, that's the, uh, root system for all the good things to come in, our world, in our nation and whatever. But I lucked out on timing, Bob, in terms of when and where I came of age in Grenada and in school. And I was fortunate to have parents who understand social justice, who understand what it means to be from Mississippi and white. And now as an adult in these last couple of years, primarily spurred on by this podcast that I've mentioned, but I've been fortunate to educate myself even more in recent years. I think about the Parchman tour I did and all the books I've read, whether you're talking about Murley Evers' For Us to Living, which is incredible. And I would argue required reading for every American upon becoming an adult. or the William Winter, who he was a great governor for us. Mississippi was the last state in the nation to have universal kindergarten. And William Winter made it happen just three years before I was born. Thank you, William Winter. And he's a Grenada dude. He grew up in Grenada. And reading his life story, you know, he was running for office in the 60s. I mean, dude, I grew up 45 minutes from Oxford, Mississippi, where James Meredith, uh, basically desegregated the schools where there were the riots. And the backup quarterback on the football team that year, that was also the winningest year in Ole Miss football history. And the backup quarterback was a guy named Jim Weatherly, who wrote a song called Midnight Train to Georgia. So yeah, man, I don't even remember the question. Now you just got me on my Mississippi stump speech.
01:00:48
Speaker 1: Well, let me just explain. You said a lot of great stuff. You know, the recent news is the Mississippi miracle where the improvement in reading scores amongst students. But if one grew up in the North at this late date, they tend to look down on the South and primarily Alabama and Mississippi. They're seen as poor rural states where the whites lord over the blacks. But that's from a distance. You actually grew up there and continue to have contact there. So I'm looking for a firsthand viewpoint.
01:01:25
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'd point to my buddy, Marty Stewart. He grew up in Philadelphia. Now, if you want to talk about having to wake up every day and set foot in the world under the worst of headlines, look up Philadelphia, Mississippi, and the Freedom Summer in the 60s. That's the three civil rights workers that were murdered. And Marty Stewart was growing up in Philadelphia at that time. If you go to Philadelphia today, what you're going to find is a red carpet rolled out for you, no matter who you are. And you're going to find the Congress of Country Music, this amazing city block of just pure Mississippi magic. Marty was at some benefit show with B.B. King. And B.B. said, come sit with me. And he said, Marty, look over at my place in Indianola. We got the Blues Museum. We got that story told. You know, look up at Tupelo. Look at Elvis Presley's birthplace. We got that story told. Rock and roll, blues. What else has Mississippi got a claim to? Lord, Jimmy Rogers, the father of country music, he said, we need a spiritual home for country music in Mississippi. Well, Marty got to work, and that is now the Congress of Country Music. Beautiful concert space, the Ellis Theater, soon-to-be museum and education center. And, of course, Marty's collection, I think, is something like 20% of the Country Music Hall of Fame's collection. of artifacts and music history. And where I'm going with this is that I performed on that stage with the Parchman Band just a couple months ago. Where I'm going with this is if you get to Mississippi and you see it up close for yourself, you get a different story. And I think that it is important that we not forget the harder parts of our story. I am by no means saying that we should skip over that part of the story. What I also would say and encourage folks to think about is Yes, many of the villains in the story are from Mississippi. Byron D. LeBeckwith, right? It's there. But you know who else? All the other people from Mississippi. You've got James Meredith. You've got Medgar Evers. Goodness, his name is escaping me. But with Emmett Till, you know, Emmett Till was abducted from his uncle's house in the Mississippi Delta in 1955. 55? 55? It's been 71 years. It's been 71 years. Yeah, 1955. We're coming up on the anniversary this weekend of that. His cousin, I think he was 12. Goodness, I should know his name. We should have his face on money for crying out loud. That 12-year-old boy who had to go into hiding. You know who picked him up on the side of the road? The money road, which is also the road Fannie Lou Hamer walked, which is a road that was paved by... Oh Lord, they just took down the ugly statue of this dude, the guy that founded the KKK. Anyway, we don't need to remember his name. Where I'm going with this is that 12-year-old kid got on a witness stand in the courthouse in Tallahatchie County and he testified under the threat of his life and terrorism, you know? And that's a Mississippian, man. And that's a hero. And Fannie Lou Hamer, Mississippian, absolute hero, uh, The heroes of the story are also often from Mississippi. And so I feel like we should give Mississippi a fair shake and tell the entire story. And we got a lot of good people from our state. And that continues to this day. People doing good work, deliberate work. Parchman's a great example. Even just a few years ago, man, it was terrible conditions at Parchman. Really, really horrific stuff. And the new leadership there has turned things around and they believe in the dignity of the men incarcerated there. You know, the men in that parchment band, they travel the state and they get on a stage and they testify to their life and they show people that they are more than the stripes they wear. And so I'm really proud to be from Mississippi and proud to be a part of something that I think is this future Mississippi is creating for itself. And I think that it's a great example of what our whole country can be and what we could take note from. You know, don't ignore the pain. Don't ignore the hard parts. And also, man, look at these heroes, look at the helpers, because they're a part of that story too.
01:05:58
Speaker 1: Okay. Why did you take piano lessons?
01:06:03
Speaker 2: Well, striking out at, I was trying all the things, you know, ran the wrong way down the soccer field, struck out at t-ball, didn't want to punch lumber with my bare hand. it was just a curiosity, but that's what got me in the door. And then the minute I sat down on that piano bench, I was hooked. It just, it was the thing that clicked. It made sense. I think it connected me to those early memories I had. I remember my dad's cover band coming over to our house and rehearsing. They played the country club in town and that afternoon they all came over and they were just kind of jamming on the back porch. And I think I said it earlier, but it was like, Okay, this thing starts, the sound, this music. All of a sudden, the grownups, they start acting like kids. They start having fun. They're not so serious. So that was in my mind. And then I sit at that piano bench and I see that I can create that sound for myself. And so I was off to the races. The why that got me in was I was just a kid trying all the things.
01:07:06
Speaker 1: So how long did you take piano lessons?
01:07:09
Speaker 2: I stuck with piano lessons through my high school years. I maybe dropped off after junior year. And those last couple of years, I was driving up to Oxford to take lessons from one of the professors at Ole Miss. And I could tell he wasn't as patient as my teacher, Ms. Dugan, was all those years because she was encouraging me and making sure I learned to read music. But she didn't reprimand me if I came in and said, hey, hey. I heard this song on the radio and I picked it out by ear. She made room for both. And he was in the business of helping prepare musicians for a different world, the symphony world or whatever it is. And so he maybe didn't understand. The other beautiful thing I think about is the Grenada Municipal Library where we had the piano recitals. I was probably the only kid in America at a piano recital who finished his song on piano, walked over, picked up a banjo and played an Earl Scruggs tune. In the same suit, you know, with the same pomp and circumstance. And so hats off to Cindy Dugan, you know, for honoring that. It's a big reason that I stuck with it.
01:08:18
Speaker 1: Okay. So you're taking piano lessons. At what point do you learn another instrument?
01:08:23
Speaker 2: We came up to Nashville for one of those many trips to Opryland theme park. And Mike Snyder, Grand Ole Opry member, had a steady gig at Opryland. He played at the New Orleans bandstand. I can't remember the exact times, but probably like three or four times a day, you know. And he had these songs, dude. He played banjo and he sang this song about his wife was, you know, after him to buy her a fur coat and he didn't have the money and he was scared to steal. And the next thing you know is he hits German Shepherd on the interstate and he takes the hide from the German Shepherd and makes a fur coat for his wife out of it. And then the last line of the song is, she's been real depressed since I backed out over the cat, but I think she's going to smile real big when I give her that new fur hat. And dude, you got a nine-year-old kid in the crowd. I hear that. It's over. That whole drive up to Nashville, I was begging my parents for a guitar. Well, after Mike Snyder and the fur coat song, can I get a banjo? And they found me a banjo, $ 50 Sears and Roebuck banjo. Sherman Clark, I think his name was, guy in Jackson they found, sold the banjo to me. I started taking lessons. Pretty soon he was like, look, I'm not really a banjo teacher. You need a proper teacher. Here's this guy, Larry Wallace. He plays for Jimmy Martin, Jimmy Martin being the king of bluegrass, Larry being a 10 year veteran of Jimmy's band, the Sunny Mountain Boys. So by second grade, every Wednesday night, my mom would take me Home from school, we load up the car and we drive to Starkville, about an hour, 15-minute drive. And take lessons with Larry, drive back home. And those lessons continued for a good long while, probably through seventh, eighth grade, something like that. And eventually got around to getting a guitar, you know.
01:10:11
Speaker 1: The big problem with kids taking music lessons is they don't practice. So you go to the lesson... Were you infatuated playing? What was it like?
01:10:23
Speaker 2: Another great lesson in delayed gratification, like with Cindy Dugan, Larry Wallace, my banjo teacher, I bet we had four or five lessons before I ever played a note on the banjo. He was demonstrating. He was playing records for me. He was talking about the physics of playing banjo. You want to hit the string with the right amount of intensity to get as much tone as you can out of it, as much volume without sacrificing tone for volume. You don't want, you know, if this is the string and this is the pick, you don't want it to hit like this. You want it to hit like this. And I mean, this was literally the lesson, man, for like weeks. And, you know, here's, listen to Earl Scruggs playing banjo. Okay, listen to that groove and tone, timing, playing in tune. Oddly enough, things that 20 years later, as I started to get into session world, yeah, it ain't your hot licks. It's, can you play in time? Can you play with good tone? Can you play in tune? Can you play tastefully? You know, and then of course, can you also be a good hang? But it was the fundamentals. And I just, man, I was just eaten up with it. I, especially once I got over that hump of like being able to control my right hand enough to get a decent roll going. And then songs became like levels on video games. You know, if I could, you know, I had this, I wish I had it right. I probably do have it within arm's reach here if I dug around. But Earl Scruggs and the five string banjo, it's probably out of print, but you can find it online. And it's just this perfect, you know, if you want to play Scruggs style banjo, that's the place to start. And so every time I could get a song mastered from that book, from that catalog, it was like I'd, you know, entered a new world in Super Mario Brothers. And also my mom being an educator, she understood a lot about the psychology of educating a young mind. And I remember I used to get a dollar for every hour I practiced. That certainly helped. That didn't hurt. But I just loved it. I loved it.
01:12:21
Speaker 1: Okay, so when did you pick up the guitar?
01:12:24
Speaker 2: I got a guitar as a gift from my grandparents. Cheap little $ 200 Alvarez Acoustic in fifth grade, whatever birthday that was. And at the time, a record that had just come out, we had it on CD, was George Jones's Bradley Barnes sessions. And it was one of those where it was George paired with, uh, you know, uh, Emmylou Harris, George paired with Tammy Wynette's again, singing golden ring all these years later, Keith Richards did a song on, uh, on that. And a great side story of that one is as Keith is leaving the studio, George is like, tell me again who that guy is. You know, he's like, he's Keith Richards. He's in the Rolling Stones. Like, Oh, are they, are they big? He's like, Yeah, George, they're big, so Keith's saying bye, and George is like, good luck with your band. But I had that on CD, and all the songs were three chords. And so the banjo and the guitar, they share the D, G, and B string. And the E string's just two half tones up on a guitar from what the banjo is. So I could figure out the basic chords, and I had enough basic technique from banjo that I could sit with that CD and learn– to change from G to C to D or A to E until I got fast enough to keep up with the record. And that's where guitar started. Now, I still really, really, really wanted an electric guitar. Did I have an amplifier? No. Did I have an electric guitar? No. I had a PVPA system that I was doing my little banjo gigs with. And I had money from my banjo gigs and another trip to Nashville on the books. So we come to Nashville, I have $ 500 saved And I had my banjo. We go to Gruen Guitars. At the time, it was down on Lower Broadway where Dierks Bentley's Whiskey Row is now, just down the hill from the Ramen. And walk into Gruen's with $ 500. I start looking at the guitars, looking at the price tags. I wanted a Telecaster. All my heroes played Tellys, Vince and Marty and whatnot. There it was. Tobacco Burst, 80s Telly, Maple Neck. $ 600. $ 600. So I get my banjo. I go out on the sidewalk right in front of Gruen's. And at that time, I could average about 50 bucks an hour playing for tips. So I just started playing. I had my banjo case open. After about two hours, I counted up my dollars. I had $ 100. Walked back into Gruen's. Here it is, $ 600. The last hundred is literal singles and quarters, maybe a couple fives in there. And I walked out with that Telecaster. And that was my first electric guitar. And so I went home, plugged it into the PVPA system. And that's when I started to graduate to B.B. King Records and Leonard Skinner Records.
01:15:13
Speaker 1: Okay. If you go on Wikipedia, it seems like you're kind of a prodigy at banjo. You play on the Grand Ole Opry. They have some resolution in the government. You know, sometimes... What was going on? Was this hype or were you like a phenom?
01:15:30
Speaker 2: You know, it's funny. I... I struggle to embrace the prodigy term, but that's probably because I'm a parent of young kids now. And I see things like that through the lens of what kind of pressure and anxiety it can create in terms of expectations. And maybe that's part of why I'm like, no, I don't know. But you know, I was good, man. I was good. I was putting in my time. And, uh, you know, part of it was making this record in Nashville. Um, so let me back up, I guess I'm 10 years old. Uh, My teacher, Larry Wallace, had a gig with his boss, Jimmy Martin, the Bluegrass Nights at the Ryman series, which continue to this day. And it's like Tuesday nights in the summer at the Ryman. And it's all these greats of bluegrass that headline the shows. Well, Jimmy Martin was headlining. We came to Nashville to catch the show. Jimmy's bus is parked outside the Ryman. It's called Widowmaker. It's one of his big songs. Widowmaker, Widowmaker. About an 18-wheeler guy that Spares the life of a family and runs off a cliff and dies, you know, whatever. Just your typical country music bluegrass song, if you will. But right up my 10-year-old alley at the time, too. I thought every kid loved songs about guys driving an 18-wheeler off the cliff. But Larry Wallace knew this. He knew if he got me on the bus in the front lounge after soundcheck to play Will the Circle Be Unbroken for Jimmy, that I might get an invitation to join him because that was going to be the encore song. Well, sure enough, that's what happened. Dude, I didn't have a shirt with a collar on the trip. So we go down to the Hard Rock Cafe. It's Margaritaville now. I buy a Hard Rock Cafe button-up shirt. I have jorts on and Timberlands. And there I am playing on the encore on the Ryman Auditorium stage with the King of Bluegrass. And we made the cover of the Tennessean. And I look now and I see that photo over my other shoulder behind me is Tom T. Hall, which is bonkers. So that's my point of no return. I keep up with it. I start playing contests. Well, turns out Mike Snyder, the guy at Opryland, the whole reason I play banjo, he's from Smithville, Tennessee, which is home of the Junior National Banjo Championship. And you have to be 12 or under. Well, this is my last time entering because I'm 12. Go up to Smithville, enter the contest. I win it. In another moment where one of the grownups in my life kind of understood, I bet if we do this, you know, so I'll write a letter to Mike Snyder Thank you so much. You inspired me to play banjo. I just won this competition in your hometown. Grateful for you. Be tuning in on the Opry. By the way, that's always been a dream of mine. Here's my elbow. Next thing we know, we're having supper in the kitchen. Phone rings. It's Mike Snyder. Hey, I want to come up to Nashville. Charlie, I want to come play the Opry. Well, there we go. There I am driving up, about to play the Opry, 12 years old. And Mike invites me into the Opry circle. And I get introduced not just to Mike, but to his band. Well, his mandolin player at the time, Bobby Clark, happened to live, I think, in Madison, Tennessee, just north of me here in East Nashville. Bobby had a two-inch tape machine in his spare bedroom and a couple microphones. And this is the beauty of having parents who supported this dream of mine. They knew the value of this. They booked me a few days at Bobby Clark's home studio. Now, Bob, this band is Bobby Clark, Charlie Cushman. These are guys that people call on to this day to play. Blake Williams, same thing. He played upright bass. But then This guy named Bobby Hicks on fiddle. Bobby Hicks played with Bill Monroe. He was a master of the double and triple stops on the fiddle. Just an absolute straight king on the fiddle. On Dobro, we had Uncle Josh Graves who played in Flattened Scruggs. I mean, this dude is like legend, legend, legend. And a young Brian Sutton, who at the time was the new kid in town, starting to play on records. You know, he played the, I remember at the time I was enamored with Brian because he played the acoustic solo on the Chick's song, Sin Wagon. Just ripping, you know. Of course, now Brian is like the guy in session world and beyond. And he's the guy that Billy Strings calls to tell people at Bridgestone like, yo, I'm walking to the side here. Y'all need to know about Brian Sutton. That's Brian Sutton. But at the time he was new to town. That's the band. And then me at 13 at this point. And that's my point of no return being a gear nerd. That was the reason, that moment is the reason I chose an MP & E career at Berklee. I'm remembering this now. sorry if I'm getting ahead of myself here, but between that experience, making that record and being at Berkeley, I looked into the fact that Norbert Putnam married a Grenada girl. And in my high school years, Norbert Putnam, who produced Margaritaville, who produced Joan Baez, who had quad studios here in Nashville, who, uh, Lorde played bass on Elvis records. You know, this guy, original Muscle Shoals cat, uh, He had that Mackie D8B system, one of those early digital systems, a 24-track system. It looked like a heavy-duty VHS you could slip in there. And by that time, I was playing in bar bands and making pretty good money. I could clean up. If we had a Friday and Saturday gig, I might have $ 400. And he essentially sold me that gear for nothing, next to nothing. And next thing I know, I've got that gear in my bedroom. And so all during high school, I'm recording stuff. Uh, and of course now it's not just banjo, it's electric guitar. And I'm, well, I'm running out of instrumentals. I'm running out of fiddle tunes. So I got to start writing songs, I guess. Got to start singing on songs, I guess. And that's what got me singing along with the bar band gig. That's what got me writing songs. Uh, and then of course, at that point it was kind of, there was no other choice for me, but to stay on this path.
01:21:28
Speaker 1: Okay. So you have all these experiences, uh, The traditional path is you meet people in high school and you play in cover bands. What was your experience in high school playing music in groups?
01:21:43
Speaker 2: I was 95% of the time in a band with guys in their 40s, grownups. And we were playing bars throughout North Mississippi, as far up as Memphis, and then the more that we got sort of known, we would play more like country club gigs or weddings or, you know, uh, that sort of thing. But I mean, man, we were playing four 45 minute sets, you know, 10 to two, uh, place called spectators, which was like gravel lot in the back door on the other end of the gravel lot was the levy on the other end of the levy was Mississippi river, you know, it's Greenville, Mississippi. And, uh, you walk in, When in 10 minutes you smell like a cigarette, you know, because it's smoking in bars still. But one of my favorite memories from those days was playing at Spectators in particular. I look out in the crowd and on the dance floor, it's my biology teacher. She was mortified. You know, I was like, this is awesome, you know. But yeah, what a great education. That was... The introduction of, okay, dude, you've been in your bedroom, you've been in rehearsal spaces, performing is different. There's this other piece of the equation, the audience. You're going to keep the dance floor full? How are you going to do that? And so, I mean, God, man, we used to do, and thankfully I had these guys who indulged me. So we would do medleys of things. We'd do like a Michael Jackson medley, and I took golf gloves and I bedazzled them. And we all had like the fingers cut out of these golf gloves and we'd all put on one sparkly glove and we'd do our Michael Jackson medley and do the thing. And we had beards and we'd do this easy top thing. And so just learning the art of entertainment and in some cases learning what not to do the hard way maybe, but there's no other way to do it, right? I mean, you can be the most rehearsed band in history and you're still not cruising altitude until gig number seven, just because you can't rehearse without an audience and cover all your bases. You just can't. You got to have that X factor. You got to go live. There's a reason when people play on a late night show, they kind of have to get it right, right? You understand on a psychological level that there isn't a second take. And so that was where that element of all of this sort of introduced itself to me.
01:24:15
Speaker 1: Okay. You moved to Nashville permanently. to join this band signed to Chrysalis that you ultimately leave. How long are you in that band? Do you think this is going to go and what's your plan once you exit? Yeah.
01:24:33
Speaker 2: Uh, so when that, it was a three year stretch and it began within a couple of days of my 21st birthday. And so 21 to 23, 24 in there. Uh, And similar thing, that was the next level of bar, more than a bar band, but we would get in a passenger van and we traveled to the West Coast and back playing gigs. And some nights were great and some nights weren't great.
01:24:59
Speaker 1: What kind of music was it?
01:25:01
Speaker 2: It was country music. It was modern country music at the time and we were writing songs of our own. And we were playing covers, but not indiscriminately. We weren't just... super thirsty. I'll say that, you know, we weren't like playing covers cause we were super thirsty just for any kind of applause at any cost. We were, we were trying to incorporate familiar songs alongside the songs that we were working on and writing. And, and, uh, and we had a thing, man, you know, I played a lot of mandolin and banjo and acoustic through an amplifier and next to me on stage, uh, it was a musician named Josh Matheny, who's, who's now in demand session player. playing Dobro and lap steel through an amplifier. We were singing harmonies that were influenced and informed by a lot of our bluegrass roots. But we were rocking out and we were playing Love in an Elevator, covering Aerosmith. I mean, if we're going to cover something, we're going to cover Love in an Elevator, you know? And we had the drums and the bass and the thing. And it was just this great first time around. I mean, it's funny, this album's called Once Upon a Second Time Around. I had so many first time arounds. That without them, I couldn't be at this point in my life and literally have a second time around. And it's not lost on me how many people don't get the second time around. I mean, and I know I've worked to earn this second time around, but it's also a product of grace and a product of trust and respect and faith in me that this community has poured into me all these years. And that band was instrumental in getting me started off. I think that I loosely had this concept of being... the guy, being the solo guy, when I was in college and all the way up to that point, I had also always been in bands. So I never had a problem sharing the stage because that was the whole point. It was, let's make music.
01:26:52
Speaker 1: It's fun.
01:26:53
Speaker 2: Now, the band was this opportunity that felt like a no-brainer. Like, dude, you're going to literally, before you even move to town, you're going to be in a pub deal, get a chance to write with Nashville writers. Because at that point, I had been writing a bit on my own and had studied writing formally, especially Pat Patterson at Berklee, just an absolute legend, and was performing songs as a solo artist myself. But to move to Nashville and be in a band, have a place to stay, have a pub deal, have gigs, felt like a huge leg up. And I was the youngest guy in the band. The band was already cooking. They'd been going for a year or two already. So I jumped into it and looking back, I think there was probably a quiet voice in the back of my head going, hey, you sure you don't want to be the guy? But they had a guy, they had a singer. And it's interesting that towards the end of those three years, there was one particular song I had written that we were recording and I had a higher register voice than our singer. And the song felt better on the neck of a guitar and the higher key sounded better. I wanted to sing the song. And I went to the guy that was sort of our producer, you know, slash almost felt like a parole officer at that point because it turned out to be a great example of what not to do in the industry, which those are important too, right? And I got into it with the guy about like, dude, I want to sing this song. Why can't I sing the 11th track? I mean, hell, we're a band. We all sing. And he kind of read me the riot actions, this whole thing. It's so funny too. I love, I don't often get to tell this story if I haven't even, I don't know if I've told this story publicly, but it's a Velvet Taco now, just north of Five Points in East Nashville. But at the time it was a local joint called Calypso Cafe. That guy, we had had the fight in person. It was the next day. I'm outside Calypso Cafe. I'm going to go in and pick up my food. Dude calls me, the band's producer. And this is at this point, I'm starting to say, I don't know if I want to sign this pub deal. I think I might have to, you know, I'd love to still be in the band. Just can't sign the deal, bro. Like I've taken music business classes. I know too much. I'm not going to risk my future if something happens with this band. But I'm committed to the band, just not in this pub deal. And he's coming after me and he's going to just, you're a speck of dust in this town. There's people lined up around the block to replace you. You don't know how lucky you are kind of a thing. And it just felt shitty, to be honest. And to a young impressionable mind, it really messed with my confidence too, if I'm being honest. Here's the beautiful part. We had a residency. And here's the other part of that season. We had a residency at 12th and Porter here in town. Great club. Vince Gill's always been my North Star. A couple of weeks later, I'm out of the band. Their first gig without me, Vince Gill was the special guest. I'm crushed, man. My girlfriend at the time went to the show, broke my heart again that way. And of course, now it's like, well, hell, Vince just invited me to be a member of the Opry. I think it's all cool, you know? But going back to that Calypso Cafe and standing outside of there, a year and a half later from leaving that band, I play a showcase at the same club, 12th and Porter. I go to Calypso Cafe that night to pick up my food. Guy named John Esposito, who was at my last show with King Billy. He had just moved to town to take over Warner and we were starting to play showcases. And that's where I met Espo was at a King Billy show, at my last King Billy show. Well, I'm outside that same Calypso Cafe. I get a call from Espo. Hey, we really love you. We'd love for you to be a part of the Warner family. So I'm looking up going, all right, God, I get it. I see you. It was this beautiful moment of redemption. And if anything, the point of telling you that story, Bob, is there's some young dreamer who's going to listen to this, who's taking notes from you and listening to your interviews. They should take that to heart, because it's so important to, I think... Maintain your confidence, not cockiness, but remember who you are. Remember who you're meant to be. Remember what got you here. Remember why you're here. And don't ever let anybody discount that.
01:31:14
Speaker 1: Okay. Ultimately, do you jump or are you pushed? And what's your situation? Do you have any money? What's your plan? Yeah.
01:31:24
Speaker 2: So this was November of 09. We had a meeting at our lawyer's office. And it's funny, he's now my lawyer. And we're talking through as a band with our lawyer, like this deal. And they're trying to talk me into signing the contract. And I just am going, man, I can't do it. I just like, if there's any way for me to be in this band and not be in this contract, I'm in. I'm as committed to this band as ever. I'm just not like, gosh, there's this idea. And you would be able to tell me, is it jointly and solely? Is that the legal term? So I was like- Jointly and individually, whatever.
01:32:07
Speaker 1: Yes. Okay.
01:32:08
Speaker 2: Jointly and individually. I'm like, gosh, those three words, that's the hangup. Like I'm in this band, I'm committed, but if something happens and I catch any kind of momentum- They're going to snatch me up and I'm locked into these terms. And let's be honest, they suck. Like we all had to go play for other people as their backup band to pay the bills. And dude, this is when rent for me was like 350 bucks a month in Nashville, a block from Music Row. That house is now Airbnb that lists for like two grand a night. That's what five guys paid in a month to stay in that house. And this is, of course, before the renovation. I don't know how they even were able to renovate the house, to be honest. But it was not that I was pushed out. I volunteered my way out. But there were a lot of hurt feelings because, I mean, we were brothers. And it was a weird season because all my best friends and what, oddly enough, like the next day, the band had a two-night run in Oklahoma and they were getting in the van to go. And they got in the van, went to Oklahoma. And over that weekend, I cleared all my stuff out. I'd find a place to stay. And I didn't really have a bunch of money, but I also didn't have a high overhead. And I had started to play some shows of my own and I had met the guy Arturo. And Arturo was telling me right after this happened, like, hey, I'm still with this label, but I'm about to be out. I'm about to go back into publishing. If you can just hold on for a few months, like I'm going to get you in a pub deal. We'll get you some money. Just hold on, man. I want to work with you. And, uh, so I held on and by that next March I'd signed or April, cause I was at the Key West Songwriters Festival when I signed my deal. Uh, so, you know, five, six months later and, uh, I was in a pub deal. Now in the interim, we had worked some with like Chuck Ainley had worked on our, our record, the record that we made that was never quite all the way out in the world. Uh, and Chuck noticed my playing. I had been introduced to Frank Liddell, a guy named Matthew Miller at the time was working for Frank Liddell and was producing this young kid named Brent Cobb who was making demos. I would play on the occasional demo. There was one guy that made demos for people from out of town and he worked out of the spare room in a print shop on Whitebridge Road and the songs were terrible, but I needed it. Not that we should get into AI, but there's an argument for the pitfalls of AI. It's like, don't rob future A-list musicians of the 10 years of playing on shitty songs that they need to do to be ready for an A-list gig. But one of our friends was Tom Bukovac because at the time he had just married Sarah Buxton and we were Sarah's backup band. We'd gig with her, open for her and then back her up. And like Buk was trying to get rid of a big screen TV and we were like, we'll take it. And so as I leave the band, I'm calling guys like Buk, I'm calling anybody I know, just saying, hey, I'm out of work. I know I'm not the best session player, but I'm eager to learn. My buddy, Eric Massey, who had moved down from Berkeley with me. So I was just hitting on my friends and just enough came in, just enough work to get me through. And then I was in that pub deal at Olay and things started to work out.
01:35:27
Speaker 1: Okay. When do you start going on the road as a gun for hire?
01:35:34
Speaker 2: Well, the first things I did post-band were I got a call to open for Taylor Swift. Turns out Arturo had signed Taylor to her first pub deal and was an early champion of hers. And she was going out on the Speak Now tour and she made a point for her first of three openers to be like a who's who of people who needed a leg up. And looking back, it might've been that some of the people connected with all those artists, somebody they worked with maybe had a relationship in her story like Arturo did in mine and hers. And so all of a sudden, I had a pub deal and I had 10 dates on the Speak Now tour. And it paid really well. I got to ride on one of the buses, so I didn't have a big overhead. And because I was on that tour, I started to get noticed by the labels. And there was enough momentum at that point to warrant... We were making demos, and the demos we made would eventually become the first half of what was my debut record at Warner Rubber Band. And so I had music passing up and down Music Row, had those showcases, signed the deal. And then... was a season of pure just solo guy. I was playing Charlie shows, whether it was a headline thing or an opening gig or whatever. If I was in the studio, I was making my record. After Rubber Band, somewhere between Rubber Band and that next record, session work crept back in. But it wasn't until, I think Vince Gill took me out, took Ashley Monroe out and took his daughter, Jenny, uh, Jenny Van Valkenburg or Jenny Gill, uh, as she stage name, actually, it's not a stage name. It's her given name, but you know what I'm saying? Uh, and he did this cool little, like three week run of shows where we were all in Vince's band. And it was like a variety show, like the old Opry traveling shows, you know, Vince was the anchor, but like, then we turned to Ashley and she'd do a few songs. They turned to me and I do a few songs. And that was the introduction for me. A couple of years later, Vince called and gave me a bonafide spot in the band. And oddly enough, That would have been 2018, maybe 2019. I was starting to date my now wife. We were getting married. We got married in September of 2018. And right at that time, I was still playing gigs of my own, but I had the opportunity to go Old Crow and catch Secor Called and offer me a spot to play in Old Crow's touring band. And I took it. And it just so happened within a week, Vince called, offered me the chance to be in his band. I looked at the tour schedules. There was only one weekend that overlapped. Vince was cool with me missing it. So I honored the first obligation, which was Old Crow. And I remember I got like two hours of sleep in a hotel in Savannah and flew to meet Old Crow somewhere. But that year I did double duty and that was the year of side musicianship. And not long after that COVID hit and the side musician work... obviously nobody was touring, it shifted. I did the thing I did when I left the band back in 2009, started calling all my session friends, you know, hey, excuse me, I know nobody's touring. I'd love a chance to play on sessions if you could use me. And so the phone started ringing. And did a lot of work with my pal Jaron Johnston, which was part of us becoming closer friends and him co-producing my last project for Warner, which was an EP called Compadres. And of course this record, Once Upon a Second Time Around, the full length. And session work picked up and I started playing on bigger records. I started saying no more. Like, man, isn't that a lesson? Like you start out, you got to say yes to everything. Even if the question is, can you play mandolin? And you kind of can't like say yes. And then between then and the gig, learn to play mandolin. Eventually, you're afforded the chance to say no. And so I've sort of earned this season of life where I can say no. And now if I'm playing on a session, it's usually a really cool record, cool master session. And so during COVID is when my session career really blossomed. And as we all came out of COVID, I was putting out my swan song at Warner, even though I didn't know that's what it was at the time. And everything was leading up to this moment.
01:39:47
Speaker 1: Okay. You're talking about playing sessions. In the old days, there were people who worked every day, maybe three sessions a day. How many sessions did you work?
01:39:59
Speaker 2: I never got to where for weeks and weeks on end, I was playing every day on a session, but I would be involved in three records in four to six weeks. And That might mean a one-day session for one of those records, and it might be camping out for five days on another. It was a bit sporadic, and then at times it would get more concentrated. I should mention early on in the Olay days, I did have the opportunity. My first time on a real master session was Eric Church's chief record. And Arturo was a longtime part of Eric's team. They're executive produced and published records. unofficially maybe A & R Eric's records, you know, and they got me in. This was back when Jay Joyce had the headlamp and was working out of his basement in Bellmead, which if I look back now and I think about, man, talk about your average Bellmead resident and Jay Joyce, he's more at home in East Nashville, you know, where he is now. But anyway, that was my first taste of playing on a big song, on a big record. And that gave me that opportunity to sort of have cred. You know, the next person to call was Dierks Bentley. And so throughout the 2000 teens, I might play on one big session in a year, you know, it'd be Eric and then it'd be Dierks. And then because of those, the groundwork was laid to be more involved. But it's always been a juggling act. You know, it's always been, you know, well, these six months I'm playing more on records. And then these next six months I'm writing for my own record or making my own record, or I get a tour go out with Brandy Clark or whatever it is, or Old Crow for a year. And between the first time I played in Vince's band, from that moment through the end of COVID, I would say that was the fire that I walked through that helped me understand that I could let go. As the title track of this record says, you got to let go of that fairytale for the next one to begin. That allowed me to let go of a fairy tale that I had bought into when I first signed at Warner and start to embrace the idea that I could create my own path, even if it didn't exist yet. And it helped me kind of regain some confidence and not be afraid to zig where everybody else was zagging.
01:42:24
Speaker 1: Okay. You know, your record just came out. You're promoting it now. But if somebody calls you up to do a tour in the future, you're going to say what?
01:42:34
Speaker 2: Well... the goal is that, uh, this weekend I'll wrap this Vince tour, uh, in Memphis, Tennessee too, which is awesome. I love Memphis. Uh, and ideally that's gonna, and it's bittersweet, honestly, cause I love it. But the idea would be, that'll be my last touring gig for someone else. Uh, I'm currently co-producing a project with John Osborne, uh, and really excited about that. I think we're getting close to being wrapped into being able to start talking about it, which we can't quite do yet. Uh, but I love producing and I hope that the next year brings more of that. Uh, I would say yes to the session. Um, and I would hopefully say no to the tour. Uh, and hopefully it's because I'm so busy, uh, channeling that main character energy with this record and what comes after it, uh, that I don't have the time for it and that I'm also in a position financially that I don't need it. But even as I say that, boy, do I appreciate those opportunities. I love it. Because like I think I might've said right at the top, man, it's like the ultimate goal for me was always just, I want to be playing music. I want to be creative. And one of the things I learned, you know, I spent four years with Dierks Bentley that wrapped up at the end of last year, about this time last year. And something I learned in those four years with Dierks was, Not everything about that part of the dream coming true is ideal for me. If you've got to be Dierks Bentley or Miranda Lambert or right now Ella Langley, you actually really have to fight hard to carve out enough time to be creative. A good chunk of your schedule is promoting, is business, is keeping a couple dozen people employed. And not that I wouldn't embrace the opportunity if that success started to come my way or that I'm not aiming for success like that. But I am wide-eyed and clear-eyed about the fact that with that type of success comes its own set of challenges. And right now, part of the sweet spot that I'm in is the common thread in everything I do is it's creativity forward. More often than not, the phone is ringing because I am needed to play an instrument, to write a song, to sing a song, to perform with someone. And so I really love that. And it's hard to think of giving that up should certain things transpire.
01:45:05
Speaker 1: And how about work-life balance?
01:45:10
Speaker 2: Oh boy, that's an ongoing struggle. And something I really love about being a parent is that it's this great do-over every day. It's a chance to examine my own childhood and look at the generational blessings that I was given and keep those going, pass them down. And then also a chance to like edit the script a little bit and put my own feelings about and thoughts about it into the generations. And, you know, our son, Gabe, he's five and a kindergartner now. And he's come to a couple of gigs now, a couple of soundchecks at least. He's been to a Dierks soundcheck. He's been on Dierks' bus. He talks about getting out He wants to go camping and fishing, but he also wants to go ride the bus for the weekend. Has nothing to do with the chart position of Dierks' song or my song or anything like that. It's just like it was for me as a child. It's, this is cool. Grownups acting like kids. We kind of live in this adventurous life and there's loud noises and it's awesome. And I embrace where I can invite my family into this part of my life in that way. And I embrace the opportunity to practice, you know, after this interview, I'm going to go downstairs about halfway through. I heard, uh, my wife come in the door, uh, and our son come home and it'll be suppertime. And if I wake up tomorrow and I'm proud of myself, it'll be because I'll leave this in this room until they go to bed. And that's a struggle, but, uh, it's a challenge I accept and, and I'm, I'm here for it. And, uh, Yeah, I don't write as much as I would like to say I'm writing. Sometimes I show up for a gig less prepared than I'd like to be. And sometimes I'm parenting on less sleep than I'd like to have had, or I got a shorter fuse than I'd like to have had, but that's the great beauty in repair. It ain't about the rip, it's about the repair. And it's just, dude, it's active. It's 24 seven right now. And I'm just in the trenches of all of that and learning. And hopefully if I speak to you in a year, It's a new story and I've learned all these things and I can look back at where I am now and see growth from then till future me or from now till future me. But yeah, it's a struggle, man. It definitely is a challenge.
01:47:35
Speaker 1: Okay, Charlie, I wish you all the luck with this album and your solo career. You're quite the raconteur. I can see that you're a good hang, which gives you a good advantage in the music world. Thanks so much for talking to my audience.
01:47:49
Speaker 2: Bob, thank you. And thank you for the information you put out into the world. Because for me, and I may have said it earlier, but, you know, I kind of just barely missed like having the resource that is YouTube, but having resources like this. And so I think about, you know, the next crop of folks that are going to come to town, like probably a lot more than you realize, like you're offering perspective and wisdom and It's that old saying, I think it comes from AA, where the guy falls in the hole and he's yelling up for people passing by. to like help him out. And then all of a sudden the dude jumps in with him and he's like, what are you doing? He's like, well, I've been down here before. I know the way out. And so that's something you're offering to future generations. So thank you for that. And thanks for having me on. Wow.
01:48:34
Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Till next time, this is Bob Left Sets.