Finding Success Without Losing Yourself: Larry Fleet on Fame, Fatherhood, and Staying Grounded

What do you do when you go from singing at local bars to millions of video views, playing at Madison Square Garden with Morgan Wallen, and hearing 20,000 people sing your lyrics back to you? If you’re Larry Fleet, you still shop at Ace Hardware. 

Larry Fleet writes the kind of country songs that feel like your own memories — jumping railroad tracks in a truck bed, learning how to tell stories in a barbershop chair, the sound of truck tires in the gravel. In this conversation, Larry opens up about the “simple” mistakes we’re making in modern storytelling, what fatherhood has changed in his songwriting, and how he's managed to tour and write with Willie Nelson, Morgan Wallen, and other heroes of the genre without losing the guy from White Bluff, Tennessee. 

The conversations we have on Human School are shaped by the work happening every day at Onsite. If you feel stuck in the same patterns, Onsite's Living Centered Program helps you slow down, go deeper, and do the inner work that changes things. If you’d like to learn more about Onsite, visit us –– experienceonsite.com

In this conversation: 

• Why “clutter” might be the enemy of great storytelling 

• The $5-a-head night Larry still keeps close, and why he never lets himself forget it 

• Why he built his newest record with zero radio in mind — and what happened when it hit anyway 

• The ways fatherhood has changed him, including teaching him new ways to communicate with others 

• The surprising place his storytelling voice actually comes from  

• What it actually takes to stay a person instead of becoming a product once people start paying attention 

• How to build a songwriting career one bad song (then a hundred more) at a time 

• How to stay "a normal dude" while touring arenas with Willie Nelson and Morgan Wallen 

• Why simple, honest storytelling can reach people that polished products can't 

Episode timestamps: 

 00:00:00 — Welcome to Human School 

00:06:30 — Small-town origins

00:25:30 — Another Year Older — the new record 

01:01:30 — The true story behind "5:25" 

01:04:00 — Why Larry stopped writing for the radio 

01:07:30 — What We Can Learn from Kids

01:15:00 — $5 a head in North Georgia 

01:19:30 — The Radio Said "No" to "Where I Find God"

01:20:30 — The call from Morgan Wallen, and Madison Square Garden 

01:38:30 — What it means to stay human when you're a "product"

01:47:00 — The barbershop that taught him how to tell a story 

01:51:30 — What "Where I Find God" means to the people who needed it 

01:59:00 — Scotland, and the tears neither of them expected 

02:07:30 — Larry on prison ministry and San Quentin 

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