#100 - Kristian Bush from Sugarland

we're doing it. Mike set it up, been in two houses and here we are episode one. How didn't get your hands up? We're about to start with a Christian in a second. But I just want to say thank you so much for listening. We're trying to get on songwriters and producers and artists and have our long conversations just can't hear anywhere else. I think we've been able to do that. And check out just scroll through and check out Mary Moore's, Chris Stapleton and Ross Comperiman and

Shane McNally. There are so many there, just stories up stories. We've tried to bring that to you. Even John Oates from Hall of Notes. You know, we've had a John Mayer, a lot, a lot of ones that aren't in the format too. So I want to say that on the Nashville Podcast Network and here we are, Episode one hundred, we also have a network of shows. I like to encourage you to check out Good Company with Jake Owen.

I like to encourage you to check out Geeking Out with Christian Bush, which is not even about music really, it's just about people geeking out over things. Whiskey ref Raff with the guest from Whiskey Riff to a show from Chicago about country music has the fans perspective. So thank you for letting us do that special music for episode one hundred. Although I might keep this and I'll like to you like I kind of fee all and I love that get your hands up. Here we are

Episode one hundred. Here we are, Episode one hundred. I didn't know would be so much funding. Episode one hundred. All right, I'm gonna in this down. We're gonna start with Christian Bush. But appreciate everybody for listening. And Mike, let's keep this music, okay, because I feel like eating something human. It feels like a zombie movie. Alright, Christian Bush, Episode hundre. Here we go. I welcome to the biggest episode in the history of our podcast. For two reasons, yeah,

for two reasons. One, it's our one episode. Yes, oh my god. We were going to do some sort of special for one hundred. This is honest, God truth, and I said, well, Christian is going to come up in the next few weeks. So we saved episode one hundred because I wanted it to be you, and that's why. So it's all. And I've always said a car or something, no does everybody in the room is a thing. Not so much. But you can have my hat. I guess

we can trade hats. So it's are I've always said to myself, you're not a legitimate podcast that has proven that you will stay the test of time until you hit one hundred episodes can be, but you needed a hundred so people trust that you were going to be there. And so we have over a hundred hours of content of artists, producers, songwriters, and this is our one hundred. So we're officially today. We're really yes, that's right, we are a real podcast. Everyone yep, So that decide. I'm

very happy you're here. Mr Christian. Well, thank you for having me, but so much to talk about, and I feel like, why don't we start with today? Because Christian has a new podcast that's up now and we'll get to that, and we're gonna get to life. But why don't we just start with today and let's talk about sugar Land coming back. So I had mentioned to you that it was difficult for me to interview you and

Jennifer because I just knew too much. I knew you guys were coming back together before, and I'm a good secret keeper. Yeah, but we'll back story that. Okay, I'll

back story for you. And this microphone the right one. O. UM, I remember the moment where uh, my phone blew up because um, people and that were listeners, and especially people in the industry knew that you and I knew each other because I you invited me to write on your your first record, and you had said something on the air about, you know what, why don't we bring sugar

Land back together together? And that was like a week after I had gotten a phone call that said, hey, so, if by chance, would this be something you'd be interested in from Jennifer and and her people. And I was like huh, and she said, look, do you can't tell anybody that I've called you. And the first thing that I thought to myself was, oh, my god, they think I told Bobby, And well, that's what I was worried because I have like five friends on Earth, and I

would consider you one of them. But I'm not sure I would have disclosed that to you even if we were friends. I did not, but I immediately thought that I was. Oh. So I called my people and say, can you call Bobby's people and tell him that he's too close to the truth. He's flying deep throat, is too close to Watergate. You know, I'm random. And because I got a call that day from Tom, who we both worked with, and Tom says, hey, can you come to the office, I said, yeah, sure, I really get

called in. He just didn't want to tie text anything or he goes, hey, I need to not talk about sugar Land. So I think it's a great idea. What if we got him back together for one show? Hey, we need to not talk about sugar Land because they're talking about sugar Land. And I was like, oh, I'm out nothing. It was completely random and rare, and I just felt my heart like they should be together again, and I'm if for everybody listening that thinks maybe there

was nothing up. No, but I love your thank you. Apparently it has the ability to will things into existence. So I'd like you to say some other things on the on the air, like you know, still the same number one record. I feel still the same should be a number one record. So I was trying to think back because I don't know how we know, how we actually met met? Okay, I do, I do? I do. I loved Southern your record, That's what I want. What

I felt was because I didn't know you. I felt like Trailer Hitch was one of those songs they screwed up on Big Time because it was so good and radio didn't give it the shot that it deserved. And I remember just screaming about radio just I couldn't believe that that was not a massive hit because it was so good, and I was a little bit upset everybody, and I said, hey, why aren't we helping this song?

It's so good. I didn't know you. We never met, and that was the first time that someone said, hey, you would you like to meet Christian And I was like, yeah, sings and I didn't know came up came to the studio. We talk, We talked a bit, but a lot of people come to the studio. I talked a lot of people, and I don't ever even do anything outside of my bubble, and uh, I say, hey, we should get together, and never do I follow that up because I never think

it's real. But for some reason I felt like you were real, Like you like, hey, you want to just come over, we'll do something. We'll right. And so you were back in town because your permanent residences in Atlanta, your main residence, and you're like, hey, I'm not gonna place, come over. Well, I was writing a record and I went over and we wrote every day is a good day. Every day it is a good day, and that's how. And I was like, I have to be friends with

that dude. He has three iPads going seven guitars to mandolin's his whif he's playing with his feet on a poco ball. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen. He's crazy, like I have it in a different way. And then I thought, yeah, we should be friend. And then since then we've actually kept up a relationship. I mean, I don't live here, so I can't. I don't have a whole lot of, you know, time, but I also I'm not here very often. I know you're not, but

I do appreciate it. You know. It's I've been doing this for a very long time, and it's very rare that you find like minded people within the same work that you do or and like minded for me also includes this um passion would drive of things that you

want to do. You know, It's like I wake up in the morning and I feel like there's just not enough time left to write all the songs I want to write, or to do all the things I want to do, and I kind of get that off of you when I'm around you, Like I get that feeling like and I may be wrong, I don't know if I'm being presumptuous, but you got a lot you know that you're that you're it feels like in my imagination that you want to jump into Like if it was

a movie time, you'd be like, yeah, let's make a movie. Hey, you want to go? You know, do we have enough money with Let's let's buy a ticket on SpaceX, you know, let's you know whatever it is. My therapist, you nail me, and I kind of but I like that about and I, you know, I'm super suspicious of human beings after doing this long enough that not everyone's intentions are out in front of them. They're always a little bit guarded, and your intentions are always in front. So I appreciate that

about you. You know, it's funny too, as I was mentioning to you before we started, can you turn the air down a bit? It's a little hot near and Mr Bush isn't a coat, and I want to make sure I'm in my French provincial outfit. To me a vest under a nice jacket. Well it's actually stitched into the jail. What the jacket with the vest built in? How about that? Very lazily French. And then there's a little French up here. We French. What did you do

today to be so dressed? You know? And look I I even put on my leopard glass, my kind of leopard breathing glasses. Um. I was helping Tyler Farr pick songs for his new record that I'm producing, and I thought that, um, the way I would intimidate the song pictures that I'm the the side of the table was to bring my pencils and my pencil sharpener and dressed

this way today. This is the opposite of Tyler farr And and and just quietly sharpened my pencils to a fine point while I looked at their songs as they pitched me crappy songs and then and then yeah, I just needed I needed something today to intimidate, because I'm the least intimidating person on earth in my imagination when I woke up that this is this is what would help. It's crazy and cool that you're working with Tyler, because

I like Tyler a lot. And I feel like because now I kind of know you as a producer because a Lindsay and you know, you did a wildly successful album and it's not even started to be a successful it's going to be. And you did it with at a time with Lindsay when they did have a single out, like they did an odd thing and said go make a record, and you and Lindsay go make a record

and there was no single plan, there was nothing. Yeah, you made a record with going into it with out of sound a sign to you, right, And I think that's maybe where I can help when it's an artist and you did with her, and I was you know, Lindy and I are still close, but we were really closed in Apparently I was the very last to know. Oh really as her producer, you know, and I live here and you and I knew each other, but I

had no idea. And so I'm in there like helping her pick songs and like, oh, I hear you're writing this. I don't know, what do you think about this? You know? And I just never brought up the question, like in relationship songs that sounds like you're feeling good about a relationship. I never asked what relationship. So finally she had to actually stop me and go, hey, I just want you to know. I know you don't listen to the radio often and because in Atlanta we don't get your show.

Uh and um, She's like, I want you to know that you know, Bobby and I are dating. I was like, you're freaking kidding me for a while and she was like no, really, I was like, well, thanks, I appreciate it. So which songs am I ascribing to this? You like to think of me in the head and you have right now she has at the time of us recording, this her highest song ever with Criminal. Yeah, it's a

twenty nine right now, her highest song ever. Yes, and I remember hearing the work text and then after she was done with you, I was like, oh yeah, Christians adding a whole live bit. It's like, too brilliant. It's really cool to see you in that element. I've been able to see all the sides except the dad's side. Have me as your kid, and then I'll have it all. I'll know at all. Let me come living every one of your kids and I get it. My kids are

pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, well that's okay. I got sidetracked by far. You are doing Tyler's I'm doing Tyler's record with him right now, and Matson and Budlines record. Pardon Who's uh? Who's the duo? You did? Uh? Walker McGuire. I didn't produce that, but I wrote their song that's on the radio and an that's what it is called. Okay, that's why you put it in the force. I was in that little box. I was just it was I'm

having to pinch myself recently. You know, you you do this work for so long and you have to get no so often that there are times in which things fall into place, much like you know you see actors on movies, like suddenly they look like they're super hot because they're in five movies at the same time. Well that wasn't really the case. They made the movies at different times, and the studios just accidentally released them all at the same time. And suddenly, you know, Iron Man

is Robert Downe Jr. Has a comeback or something. Well, you know what, you know, all this stuff happened, and now it wasn't didn't happen on top of each other. It just released on top of each other. And I have a very difficult time taking the moment to stick of candles into a cake and light them and then blow them out and take a moment to acknowledge what's happening. So I've been trying to do that this year a little bit, and things have been all in on top

of each other. I mean, I'm just so proud of the work that that Lindsey did and and and edited with her. And then it's Walker McGuire single. I had no idea. I mean, we wrote that in forty five minutes at high noon on a Tuesday at a lake somewhere. I didn't even know these guys, and I loved the song. But then they decided to record it. And I'm not sure I've had a song on the charts with someone else.

I didn't. I wasn't in the band at the same time that surely, and now's we're back in the things that all these songs are kind of hitting at the same time. And I was giggling the other day because someone said, Okay, so it's either you or you that's going to be the most added this week. And I was like, what do you mean? And I was like, Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? So I've always wondered about these guys who live here in town and they have like nine number ones in a year or

something something astronomical. I'm like, how does that happen? Um? Now I now at least know what kind of the storm looks like. I don't know if it's the perfect storm. I hope there are many perfect storms to come. Man. I guess I missed the first round of sugar Land. I didn't miss it as a fan because I went to a Sugarland show even as a fan better, Yeah, but I missed it in Laurel, Arkansas. I went and

watch Sugarland. I wouldn't watched you guys play with Kenny So and that's where I saw all the excitement and jumping around, and it's I mean, it's a lot, That's what I remember, Yeah, very much, so, lots of bodies moving around and so. But I was a sugar Land fan more so than a Kenney fan, frankly at the time. So I went to the show and before I moved to Nashville. You guys weren't sugar Land, right, We never

crossed paths, right. So the first time we crossed paths was you doing your solo record, which I think is cool too because I liked you for you. So when everybody gets out to say be my friend, just remember I liked you for you, just like Blessing do the souls. She likes me for me. You remember those guys? Did you know those guys? I did not know them, but I know this. Let me talk about this for a second.

So sleep number. Oh yes, So I did this podcast in my bedrooms actually, which about the way we have to like shut the door and Michael, people will come up here because it's weird my bedroom doors open, but I guess they do. See the old sleep number bed in there. I have a sleep number because for me. I do struggle with sleep. And the great thing about sleep number is it's actually for me. It's the ideal

firmness for me. I went into a sleep number store where you buy the bed and you can lay on the bed there and there's a screen the one I went to the screen above, and you look at it and it shows you how you're laying and maybe why you're not laying right or not getting the right amount of sleep. And they give you a sleep number that's just for you. And my sleep number setting was and I've been back since. But it's a thirty. And if your partner has a different one, you both can have

your own sleep number setting. The beds are so smart they sent you every move that automatically adjust to you, keeping you sleep comfortably to the night. There's even adjustment for snow and lift up a little bit. I don't know if your bed does that. And honor of fift two weeks of an honor of fifty two years of football, not weeks, but years of football. Take fifty dollars off any item from over a hundred bucks from Sleep Number, which,

by the way, the pillars are awesome there too. Sleep number dot com slash Big Game to because you're fifty two dollar coupon now through February four again sleep number dot com slash Big Game. So I don't really know the origin of you you guys coming together. She really was this interesting beginning, you know. Um yeah, if you

put it in time. Um. I was signed to a record deal in Atlantic Records in New York as a rock act, like a folk rock act called Billy Pilgrim, and we were kind of a critics darling and for us we were a huge success. But compared to our label mates, which were like Matchbox twenty was signed the same time we were, and Hootie and the Blowfish and and I uh ed Roland and the Soul and those guys, we were all at you know. It was all out of the Southeast at the exact same time. And our band, um,

you know, Rolling Stone loved it. The review of our first album was in the Kurt Coobing issue when he died. So if you ever want to go read my first band's first national review, it wasn't that issue. Yeah you can find it. Oh yeah, there you go. My hair, who's insomniac? G's what's the vocal situation here? That's me singing, and my partner Andrew was also a singer, and that's my friend Ellis Paul there in the background. I'm going, but I'm the lead singer on this again. Down the

Black Hands, sad the textures? Do you sing? Do you sing? Different? And a little bit. I mean I was twenty two, you know, but I've always had a raspy quality of my voice. But I was worried that country music wasn't gonna take it. It wasn't gonna accept my raspy voice. And at the time, Billy Pilgrim was kind of in its waning years. We had had a really pretty good run of it, you know, hundreds of thousands of records, which for us was giant, And we've been on tour

around the world. Like I we opened from all of Ethadge for a couple of years, and we had opened for Bob Dylan and Beck and Tom Petty and all these bands, right and learned how to travel the world playing arenas. And I wasn't even twenty six yet, and I had a terrible tragedy. My mom died. Um, then they flew the planes into the buildings. Um. We I've been working on other people career. We'd helped John John get started in Seawan Mallins and he had moved to Atlanta.

He had moved to Atlanta at the time and was he with Clay When I met him. He and Clay were working and my brother Brandon worked on that first record with them and then worked on John's first record UM. And our bass player from Billy Pilgrim was Dave Jabrier.

So the first record do you mean like the EP inside, Once Out or Over Squares which which UM the first record on Aware, which was Room for Squares, and then the one before that was kind of the one that had like the sweatshirt song, and that's just Brandon working on that. Your brother he worked on both those records, and so that's that was the world I was in. I was kind of trying to help new artists get

started UM on the Coat Tails or whatever. Billy Pilgrim was able to go forward, and that's how I knew Jennifer as she was an opening act for Billy Polgram as Jennifer Nettles as Jennifer Nettles AM, and before that it was a duo she was in and then they broke up, and and then she went on by herself to keep making money in the Atlanta scene, and I had a major label record deal, so that was a it was a big feather in the cap from down there. You they didn't hand them out like candy like they

do here. It was one at a time. So we were after the Black Crows and before Sean Mullins. Actually we would have been right after the Black Crows and then Collective Soul, then Billy Pilgrim, then Sean, then John Mayor then back to sugar Land. Then this is all out of the same four blocks. I mean, it's all

right there. It's all in one space. And if you go backwards, it was the Indigo Girls, and then it was Um Michelle Malone and Dragged the River, and then you then you're kind of moving towards Athens like um to be fifty two s R em Pylon and those those bands Um and maybe after us there was hoped for a Golden Summer, which was like a more Athens

Atlanta band and more alt. But did they start looking for bands in that area since there was success because a lot of times with the sound, well just use Seattle, which is the one that choosed a lot when that Seattle sound happens and Nirvana turns all the hair bands into now It's grunge, and they go find Pearl Jam and they go find out they find they start to search the scene from where do they do that in Atlanta to where they Okay, we have a few, so

let's go see what else is in this? Very much And it would come through either a lawyer or two that they were friends with, A and R people on Sony or different places, and they would come and they would you know this this little club and we played it was called track Side Tavern. And then the guy who was the bartender their name Eddio, and opened up Eddie's at it, and so we all. I was the first show at Eddie's really painted the walls the night

before and opened for Michelle Malone on the Wednesday. And I graduated from college three days later and u and got a record deal that summer on Atlantic Records. So I have had a major label record deal since I got out of college, which is really like, it's it's asinine, it's a it shouldn't probably have happened. But did you

and Jennifer when you met was it? Hey, we're just artists and we're our own respective artists, or was it hey, we should maybe share ideas, or saying, how does that happen because she's coming out of a duo, obviously that's successful. Well she it wasn't. Actually it was an invitation. UM. I didn't know her very well. So during Billy Pilgrim World, she came in and she was recording with Corey I think in the studio where I recorded all the time, and I remember walking in on one of their sessions

and going, oh, that's kind of cool. But I didn't really know her, and she opened for us, and I unfortunately have to say at that time I didn't show up early to hear the openers all the time. UM. And I regret that I do it a lot more now. UM. But we never became friends. And then I remember being on a writer's night with her, which I think is irony at some we're not irony, but I think it's fascinating.

After Billy Pilgrim was kind of slowing down, I had started um writing songs with a local songwriter named Kristin Hall, and she was the third person in Sutterland at the very beginning. Kristen was the guitar tech for the Indigo girls. Yeah, and they just knew that she was a great songwriter and she had moved back to Atlanta from l A and she wanted to write songs and she knew me, and she called and said, you have any songs left over?

And I was like, yeah, I have a lot because Andrew and I aren't working as much, but I still have the same amount of songs. She's like, well, why don't you come over and help me and let me help you finish them. It's like okay, And within two or three weeks she's like, let's start a band. I was like, I need a band, like I need a hole in the head. I already have a band and

I don't need another band, but I would. I'm enjoying writing with you, and so we asked Dave Librier to come over and I was like, you know, I like being in a band with him. He and John were working at the time, and we wrote a song called Girl called Tennessee and it was on the first sugar Land record and we just kept writing songs and pretty soon Dave didn't show up anymore, but Kristen kept calling and saying, look, I've got a band in the basement.

Where you come, right. I was like, really, okay, well all right, and I would show up and we would audition a singer because I was pretty convinced that my voice was not going to make it against Billy Currington. Okay, so you thought that, you thought I'm not going to be the front voice. I don't. I didn't think I could sell it because at the time two thousand and two country music singers were all they were all smooth.

It was very interesting. And I kind of said, all right, well, what do you suggest and she said, well, I suggest we get a female singer because there's a big hole in the world that's been left by the Dixie Chicks them stopping working. I think it's some of the best music I've heard. And I said, all right, I don't know if I can get on board, but let me work at this a little bit. And I went out and I started. I bought UM an Emmy Lou Harris record, uh that Daniel lamb Wide produced and it was called

Wrecking Ball. And the reason I bought it it's because when my My the Billy Pilgrim record before that went, the guitar player who was hired UM was producing Emmy Lou Harris up until that moment, and he put one of my songs on hold, and I had never had a song on hold in my life. I didn't know what that meant. And because I thought you had to write the songs that you're sang, I didn't know there

were two different jobs. And I was fascinated because the day after we finished that Billy Pilgrim record, or the day we finished it, I walked out into the hallway and left, and I met a guy named Steve Earle that was in the waiting room, and and he had just gotten out of jail, and he was he was coming in to make as record with the same band,

with the same producer in the same building. And I thought to myself, note to self, whenever this guy puts out his record, go buy it, because it's gonna sound exactly like your record. And wouldn't that be cool to see what it sounds like when the same band plays

a different kind of songs? Right? Um? So I had then bought also a Steve Earl record, very close to the time I bought that Emmy Lou Harris record, and between the two, um, I thought to myself, well, if this is country music, I can do this because it sounds like YouTube plus country music, right. Um. And what I've quickly learned is that country music had nothing to do with a fiddle, which actually was my first instrument.

Like it, It had more to do with the story of this in the songwriting, and in the nineties, we weren't telling stories. We were telling emotions, right we had. We were just trying to make you feel what it felt like it was in that lyric. And so as soon as I knew this, I was like, oh, okay,

I think I can do that. I went over to Christin's house and I started playing things, and we started auditioning people, and there were five or six different people, and we came up with rules where we had to write a song or two with each audition to see

if we could write with them. And so if you look at the first sugar Land record, five or six of those songs have writers on it that none of them are Jennifer because she wasn't even in the band yet, Like we were just cycling through and the songs were so good that we were getting and so when she came into auditions, she sang the songs and uh, I remember there was one song. It was a song that

was the namesake of the band. It's called sugar Land and I kind of wrote it in my shower one morning and came in and brought it to this group of people in the basement of Christin's houses. Is it wrong or a curse if I write a song with called the name of the band that we heared out last night? And she was like, I don't think so. I think bad Company has done it or things like this. And I was like, all right, well, if this is

a curse, it's my fault. And Jennifer auditioned on that song and when she got to the bridge of that song and was singing it, I just about lost my mind. I was like, that that I can do. And so we sat down and we wrote two songs and the first song was it was a song called honky Ton Kevin and I don't think that it exists anywhere. We recorded it, but we didn't give it, we didn't show it to the label. And the second song we wrote was a baby girl. Wow? Is that right? Damn? My dad?

How about that that quick found it? Found it? Did you know you found it? I knew the song was good, and so it's hard to know. So we decided to play a show, and we only had four songs or five songs that we could play, um like four the ones we had previously written, maybe six maybe. We played hockeytoll Agavan that night and Baby Girl, and no one knew who our band was because we hadn't played out.

But we each had individual crowds, like Jennifer had a crowd that we had two or three other people that come see her, and Billy Pilgrim, you know, we had a couple or more people that would come to see us. And Kristen had a following of people that would come see her. And we thought, well, let's just play like a Tuesday or something, bill it as sugar Land and then put our individual names in there and see if

anybody shows up. And we got to Baby Girl and we played it and people cheered after the lad when it got to the last course, they just got on their feet and started cheering. And I was like, holy crap, this must be what it's like if you're Darius Rucker and you finally sing hold my Hand for the first time and everybody goes bonkers, you know, and um, so I remember telling her. I was like look, I really don't want to do this in a van. I want if we're gonna do this, I've done this before, I

want to do it in a bus. And I want to shoot for arenas or stadiums, like I want the target to be so high that if we miss, it's gonna be awesome. That costs money. We had no we had nothing to even do it, so we we bankrolled it all from our little place. Um. We got our record deal because we we sold tickets on a gray on a bus that we rented. I got a passenger bus.

We sold fifty dollar tickets to fifty fans, and we bought a keg of beer and put it on the bus, and we got a gig at the last place I had gotten a record deal out of Nashville, which was twelfth and Porter. I got my Billy Pogram record deal out of that room. So I called the same piece. Can we play and you know whatever your showcase time is before you have to really open for business. And they said sure, and they said you know you're you

can only have the tickets that you sell. And I was like, that's cool, we don't need to sell any tickets. And they were like what do you mean We're like,

we're we're bringing all of our people. They were like okay, and they were kind of confused, and and we said what we really need or the seats for the like record people, because we couldn't get anyone to come to Atlanta where we actually had two or three people that show up, So we bust everybody in and walked in and played our five or six seven songs and then handed our copy of our homemade record out to the

record they won. Luke Lewis signed us that night. Did you feel like this might be a little too fast? Did you feel like we're ready? Oh, there's no such thing as that. For me, I had already done it. It It might have felt that way to other people, but I've been on a major label for eight years before then. But you had to be with that. And for me, that's and what are I do? In all aspects of my life? Chemistry is the most important thing because I

can't do anything with that great people around me. Even when I do stand up, if I don't have the right people running lights and sound, I have to surround myself with better people than what I do because it makes me better. So here you are, there are three of you. You haven't spent a ton of time together, and now you're embarking on this new life a little was there any apprehension like, man, I don't even know if I like these people. Well, I think there's this

kind of a joy and at least shared ambition. Um I knew Kristen kind of. I didn't know enough that. I mean maybe I did that she was going to get anxious like that was not really a life she wanted. Um. I didn't know Jennifer very well at all. But um, we both seem to have the skill to be in duo's you know. Um we knew how to, we knew how make music. It wasn't our first time. This is where we gotta pay the bills real quick. I'd hand it to you, like I love Christian grabbing for the spot.

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to monitor all transactions at all businesses. But LifeLock can uncover the threats that you missed ten percent off if you used the promo code boneslock use bones or LifeLock dot com. Use the promo code bones and save ten percent now and there you go. They see that's how we do it. You are really good at this job. That's all I know how to do. You have to find what you know how to do in really target, just go right into it. So what was the first single for sugar Land? Wasn't baby Girl? It was the

first song, and um, yeah, it took forever. It was fifty two four weeks, the whole year, and uh it died a couple of times revisionist history. This is just a huge song that made you guys instantly famous. It was never it was never number one? Why it's so funny because I want to like about Sundays kept it out of number one? What I about? Yeah, Craig Morgan. So I was talking to Keith. He but it's funny you say this, and Keith and I were talking about

number one. I think I was talking about whatever I have this convert I'm so fascinated with number ones for the sake of it, and how this format throws them away so much that the number ones, it's a nice little you get a trophy. But those aren't the songs that last They were not. I mean it wasn't always

this It wasn't always this way. Okay, so I know the way now and I completely grab I got about the system so much and nausea people it's and we're also not able to live with music because we're just cycling through so much quick now. But the fact that that wasn't a number one song and could quite possibly be one of the three biggest songs that people associate with sugar Land ever, and you guys are grant you guys have done at all, and that wasn't a number one.

That just shows you that a song doesn't have to be given a ranking to last to test the time, right, well, I mean whether what I learned very quickly is that the check that you get is the exact same for number two as you get for number one, basically basically the same. And and I didn't know that it was such a science or a chess game to move up

a chart. And it was a real humbling for me because, um, in Billy Pilgrim, we had we had four number ones in triple A, you know, and we we thought that was fantastic, but we didn't really know what that meant because at the time, you couldn't really tell what was

the real chart or wasn't. And we remember stepping off an elevator at the A c M S and the maybe David Mobralely or maybe it was John Anger, one of the radio guys came to me and shook my hand and said congratulations and said congratulations for what And they're like, you have the longest charting single and recorded country music history. And I was like, what does that mean? And they were, well, it stayed on the chart the longest, it went up, the slowest it it. It had the

longest arc, and I've never forgotten that moment. I'm sure it's been surpassed because I think I think Lee Brice ended up beating it with like fifty seven weeks. But I would say that I love the idea that even if it goes slow, as long as it goes, what you're doing is just reaching more people. I'm really agnostic about the award. I don't really care, but my my ambition has always been reached the most amount of people that you can reach. What doesn't matter what it is.

Put it in a commercial, give the song away, put it on the radio, put it on television. I don't care. Just I want to reach the most amount of people. So the song takes fifty let's just say fifty two weeks, let's sake of the story. That also to credit your label because I wasn't involved. That costs money to continue pushing a song, and not only that, it takes their heart being in it to go. We know that this song is moving slow, but we have faith and not

only the song but the band. And there's something to be said about commitment these days in the creative industry, and even these last fifty years, there's something to be said about that. So did you feel like, okay, they have our back a bit, like they sat and pushed us for fifty weeks to record to radio stations. Yeah, well I was. I was impressed. I had I've really had quite a run with record label presidents. I was

signed by it they turnover. Yeah, well I was signed by Ahmed Ard again to Atlantic Records with his very first female and our person. It was Jennifer Stark and she she she's the one who signed Billy Pilgrim and he was in lieu of Uncle Tupelo. I guess they didn't accept the deal and they and all that stuff and and uh, we you know, we were the second choice. But I have to say that the commitment that I learned from those employees and and the habits I learned,

you know, um translated. So when I got to Mercury and it was Luke Lewis and and and all of the people that worked there at the time, they were into making artists. They were not into making singles. And I understood that and it made sense. You know, um Shania Twain was the big winner on that label when we signed, and uh, George Strait was pulling in a lot of money, and Billy Currington was the new signing, and you know, like it was very interesting at the time.

And I knew how to stay off their radar to keep from draining their coffers because I had learned it ten years earlier. Probably had to do it just for your own sake. Yeah, And we didn't. We didn't take an advance really, you know, we didn't take to our support. We we never took anything from the label. I want one of the few bands that I think at that label, UM got checks, which makes it easier to spend money on you if you're not taking money already. Yeah, I

wanted that was my idea. That's what I had learned in the nineties was all my education, which I you know, I absorbed everything about how to be in the record business as as early as I could, and got out of college and applied that knowledge as fast as I could. And by the time we got here, um, they were still in the business of spending money, but they just didn't have to spend it on us. So after that song runs its course and puts you guys on the map,

what did it? What did it? Peak? Number two it was there's a moment. You can do this. You can have this moment if you want it. Get online, go to the YouTube and type in Sherland playing Baby Girl the a c NS and you will see people who are broke closing the show. We were broke. I was forty in debt. Was that when Jenny had our shoes off? So that show we were supposed to sing thirty seconds of Baby Girl into the presenter microphone early in the show.

Did something happened with a closing guy? Something happened. So if you go back and figure it all out, there was there were two or three things that went down, and suddenly they asked us, Hey, can you sing a minute instead of thirty seconds and do you have your instruments? And you're like sure, and they said, okay, I know this is short notice, but can you get a band here in two days? We're like why. They're like, well, can you do an abbreviated version of your song like

a a real performance? Can you get a drummer? Do you have a track? What can you sing to it? We're like yeah, we're on the phone calling me. And then there they got up to the rehearsal day before the show and they said, so, George Straits, that's what it was. I remember that sick and we were wondering if you would close the show, and so we closed

the show. We were people that nobody knew, and Jennifer had on the same shoes as like Sarah Evans or something, and she's like, oh, forget it and just threw them off and ran out there. And then the curtain goes up and we start singing baby Girl right and I'll never forget and I will forever be grateful. There was this, to me, incredible pause between us finishing the last note and people clapping. It was just nothing. It was like dead.

And I watched Tim mcgrawl and Faith Hill stand up and they were dead sinner in that room, and they stood up and started clapping, and then every in my mind they guilted everyone looking back. When do you as signed that silence to that break? What do you assign it to? Huge amounts of adrenaline and shame and worry? Like you know, adrenaline slows down your perception. So I think we hit the last note. And I didn't know if we had sucked or if we hadn't, or if

we sounded good or if we didn't. I didn't know anything about performing on television like that, and sure enough, you know, people talk about that day as, oh, that's when we found out who you were. That's when I remember the shooting, when you started. That's something. I remember seeing her on with no shoes, and I was like, that's really cool. They seem like normal folks were just that alone. That's small and it wasn't a contrived thing. I guess she was just one of the same shoes

as someone else. Yet still didn't Oh yeah, I wasn't on purpose. But I mean, if you put in your head, I mean I try to remind new artists of this all the time. That you can close the A C M. S. And seven hours earlier you were in your hotel room trying to do computer programming in order to pay your bills. Because you in the hole like that's real, that's going to happen, and you're gonna have to make those choices. Early on, we didn't take publishing deals, we didn't take anything,

you know, we just went the long way. And sometimes that's the right choice. It's not always the right choice for everyone, especially not today, but um, at the time, that's what it is. So there's this kind of authenticity to the song being performed by people who actually done right. Um. But in retrospect, you know, I we didn't have a number one song until our second albums. That yeah, on the first On the first record you had what talking what were the hits? Um, we had a baby girl,

and then we had something more. Now I know all the answers to this as you're talking through that, I'm not letting you tell I know all the answer. I don't like to know all the answer we had. We had a song called just Might Make Me Believe, which was Kristen's song. It was the only song that she wrote myrself and then we had um uh down in Mississippi and up to No Good, which was on that record, and then they then Kristen quit right at the end of that and we had to go in and make

a second record in two weeks. So really she and I, Jennifer and I wrote that whole second record in two weeks in jan January? Did you not have to write the record? Had to shoot all the photos and the whole image had to be kind of altered, right because everything you had all this. Yeah, we we started over, but it was kind of cool and we knew how to start over because we had just done it, I guess a couple of times, you know. So it was just I had to keep reminding us that you just

start over. And for Terryll and then to want to was on that change and a minute just kids could stop it span and we could thank it three, you know, and then um my version of the Who which was settling that. And if you listen to that song and you listened to Sweet Louisiana Sound, you'll hear a lot of the same stuff from Billy Posum. Maybe I won't, but you would, because this is a jam. Yeah up straight, it's that to me. I hear the nineties ish third

Eye Blind on that Yeah, same thing. Yeah, because that's where I'm from. Um, and then uh, what Everyday America was the next single, and then we were pulling from my bag of old billy pogram tricks during that because we just needed songs. I was like, pull out of

this basket. We'll write whatever the lyric is. And I had had that song for a lady named Beth Wood in the early nineties, and I just redid it and we got to rewrite it with Lisa Carver and Jennifer loved it, and so we rewrote that whole song and then uh, then stay, you should know we don't have to live this way, don't. We recorded this three or four times, and this is me and my brother and

Jennifer playing at once. So that's Brandon playing Hammon and he and I are looking at each other and doing the little brother speak because there's no tempo and I'm watching her singing and we're doing it live. So that's one performance. This track is one performance, no click track,

just visual cues. Yeah, that's it. And I it was a song that she had written by herself years before, and the Kristen who was in the band didn't really like the song and I kind of did, and so when it came up on the second record, it was I was like, hey, what do you think about that? And she was like, oh, I love that song. But we tried it with a band. We tried it sound like the Black Crows. We tried all these different different and it didn't work, and Uh, we were kind of

at the end of our rope. I was like, can I just call my brother? Can we just do that? It seems like sure? And it was magic? Was that the song that stadiumed it for? You guys? Well, I think that Kenny stadium Us is what happened, and we were a very good compliment to his show. I went to that show. We were like, he taught us a lot about how to take your music and do that.

But I think, um, I think settling probably turned us into a stadium act and stay Uh showed people that her voice and her ability to emote was so highly developed. The video moved people to when you think of over the last ten years, the videos that really stick with you, I remember that video. So they we ran out of money at the label. They didn't want to put out any more songs, and we said, but we want to

why don't we try this? When they were like, you want to put out an almost five minute acoustic song for the radio, and they're like, well, I mean all you have to say is no. And we said, can we have a video budget? They're like, no, you're out of money. You have like fifteen or thirty thousand dollar or something to do this, which bought us half a day. So that video is the way that it is because

we didn't have anything. We we had just played the stadium in Philadelphia the night before we shot that, and we were doing it in New York in a sound stage that we could have word with somebody who would only work until two or three o'clock. And I didn't even have a good like my guitar. Tech forgot to put a guitar in the back and I had to

borrow a guitar. I ended up buying the guitar a borrow and I loved it so much, but um we we We went in and filmed two passes or three passes, and Jennifer was on the edge in her personal life at the time, and she just started weeping absolutely real, and I got an upset the director. I was like, hey, I was like a gorilla. It's like, why are you imagine making her do this everybody else? And she's like

I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay. And then there's a second pass of the video and then she just kind of loses it to stop singing at some point, and we didn't have a chance to do anything other than what you just saw. And the people at the label loved it because it was so real, and then they said it they sent it to the record company or the radio stations, and I think the video is what really helped the programmers get on board. Um, and I'm forever grateful. I mean, geez, that's from one of

a Grammy, you know, like, that's unreal. The video, it just sits with me. That's cool. And now that I know the story, the video is so awesome. Guys, you're yeah, yeah, Well, I mean it was the end of what was going to happen, and then we were supposed to just go make another record. And I'm so happy that that song had what it had because it it creates this thing that I see a lot now, which is you get momentum on something like um like girl Crush or something

like I was. I was telling those guys. I was like, you guys got one. You got one of those, because your next one is going to be all of the fuel that that one generates you will burn on your next rocket stage. And it's incalculable and you can't you can't predict it. But if you keep your head down and you keep working, you'll come across it. So that song does what it does. There's an immense pressure to follow up a monster with another monster, right, so what

do you do? We went to Atlanta and we told everyone that we were no longer making records in Nashville and you will have to come to us. And how did that go over? Like a lead bricks? But you know, you gotta remember, like we rolled into the studio where Springsteen had been making The Rising, where Stone Temple pilots and made all their records, or Pearl Jam made their records.

We rolled into the exact same place, right, and we brought our producer down in our our Nashville kind of players, and we wrote that record while we were on the road. But it took a while, and we were obsessed with using the acoustic nous and the authenticity of the music we grew up with in atlat which was like Aaria I'm and the Indigo Girls and and Black Crows and all these kind of Atlanta southern but pop but rock.

But we're based primarily on country music. You know, um, Georgia satellites and all this stuff, and can we make that kind of album? And I think everyone was expecting us to go, at least in the in the record label. They were hoping that we would go super anthemic, gigantic, whatever, and then we made this essentially acoustic rock record. Um love on the inside. I had all I want to do totally love that. Had U shi it happens? Had happened? Did you try to go and write that on the CD?

And they said make it happens. But we did that when we were writing it. We wrote that with Bobby Pinson. He kind of had the groove to it, and we're really fast writers together, and Bobby did a great job on that song. I was trying to get it in there because I thought it would be funny, and then

already Gone was on that record. Many songs were going to the top of the chart in even ten weeks at a time, So where we had been fifty four weeks on our first song, we're now eight or nine weeks on a song, going from when it hits the chart to the top of the charts. We were burning through songs um and this tour ended up being on television, so we had a summer special. I was obsessed with

remembering seeing concerts on television. I remember seeing the Karth Park's concert and York New York one, and I was like, how do we do that? And this record, Jennifer and I were completely aware that the distance between what was happening in culture and what was happening on television was closing. The gap was closing, and we vowed to each other that every song on this record would be on television

some way, somehow. We would make it so that every single song we would either perform or there'd be a video or something. And we did it. We pulled it off, and I don't know how we did it, but I mean, we're four performances later on the A c M. S playing what I'd Give or something. We're like in deep deep tracks. But we had a summer special in ABC. They allowed us to do this. Now they didn't. They we had to pay for it ourselves, which the entire

filming and the recording and everything. So we took the money from our shows and we had a twenty two camera shoot in Lexington, Virginia. One time. We had one shot and then we took all the footage back and they edited it together and they made a an hour and a half concert video and then they edited it down to forty five minutes and put it as a primetime special in the summer. Did they buy that back from you? No, So you take your money and create it,

they air it, but they don't buy it back from you. Um, we got the label paid us for our investment, but we didn't get any money after that. And UM, what we decided was they were going to put it out as a They were afraid people are gonna buy DVDs anymore, and uh so we put out a cover record to go with it, and they sold it. They were doing exclusives with different box stores and this one was with Walmart and so they bought three copies and then never came out again. I don't think you can get it

anywhere right now. But that was the kind of trajectory. Is that we had to keep investing in ourselves and um using our money because the labels were going broke. Then remember less than less money was coming in and by love on the inside, we were making more sales for the label than anyone else on the label. So suddenly we're carrying the We're in the front of the cart where Shanaya used to be and it was weird.

And then we went and essentially made a rock record that everyone thought we were crazy for and now it's probably one of my favorite records we ever made. Was the incredible machine, you know, and it had it had stuck like clue on it again, did you write this one? Yeah? Did you write this with Kevin? It did? Actually Kevin pitched me the chorus to this song. So Kevin, by the way, Kevin Griffin from Better than I probably the twenty better than I was such a diehard better than

as in. And so last night we played a show at the Rheman and I had Kevin came out and we did good and desperately wanting it was a great Christian I've got to play and do a lot of cool things in my life. Did that freak you out? It might have been my favorite musical moment that I've ever been a part of. And Kevin so nice and kind, and he says, whatever, whatever you want to do, we'll

do it. And I said, well, I would play deeper tracks like this time of year, or I said, but the the fans won't want to hear good obviously, And so we played good and desperately wanting and I was just doing b g VS and was playing guitar and I knew this song when I was a kid, right, But and then he threw to me and let me. It really was full circle. There were two things that happened last night. And we had actually invited you guys to come play, and then you were hosting a different award.

Then you got the flu and they do. But but um so Darius came out and Darius my first ever radio interview at seventeen years old, first person that ever interview, my gosh. And so Darius and I have paralleled with each other for a long time and yeah, and so he's been my guy, like in different formats. And so Darius comes out and he jumps on stage and the metal we're close enough where Darius just walks out the end of our set. He doesn't care. He just walks out.

We're doing Purple Rain. Darius walks out and starts singing Propple Rain with this and he's like, I sing the song with my I said, I'm gonna sing it. So him and Natalie Soball are going back and forth and it's amazing. Than he does his new single that his waggon well, and I said, hey, you can't interrupt our set without me making you do something extra. So I played Cracked Review five million times on tape and then DVD A on CD, and I said, I would like for you to do hold in my Hand and I'd

like to sing it with you. And he goes, okay with a little love and he passed it over and I'm like, this Heaven I did better than ever and Hootie the same night, This is awesome. So that was pretty exciting. But Kevin Griffin wrote that song with you, and I have to say that I attribute our drummer

Travis McNabb, who i've referenced a toimes our conversation. But Travis was originally who helped me and Billy Pilgrim get our record deal, and then he went on to play in a band called the Beggars where maybe he was in Seven Simons. Then he worked with me and all my recordings, and then he went on to be in the Beggars, and then he went and joined Better Than

Ezra for fifteen years. And I called him at some point when sugar Land had kind of graduated into Kenny Chesney stadium shows and said, hey, man, you're not gonna believe what I'm doing now, but I have a country band and I could really use your drumming awesomeness. I see that Better Than Ezra is not on the charts anymore. What are you doing? And he was like, oh, well, I'll come audition, and so he came an audition and eventually got the job right. And so I've always felt

a little terrible that I had taken right. And uh So, at some point Kevin uh try Us started representing, Hey, look, let me let Kevin pitch you a song. I said, well, Jennifer and I are writing incredible machine all by ourselves. We're not going to take outside songs. And if I if I open it up to that, I gotta call Bobby Penson. I gotta call all these people you know that had been on our records that a very small amount of writers that we had written with, because I'm

taking money off their table. If I don't allow them in, and if I get one guy in and it happens to be the all rock guy, they're gonna kill me. I'm just starting to make friends, you know. He said, well, just let me pitch. Having pitched one thing, I said, we'll make sure it's not a full song and make sure that um if we if we don't like it, we don't have to take it. And if we do like it, then we can write it to make it fit as sugar Land because we're the only people who

know how to make a Sugarland song. No, we've never cut an outside song. And uh, he pitched us that chorus and it freaked me out. I loved it so much. How does the chorus it? Uh? It was the go Beat again, hawk Beat Again. And he had a co writer named Shy Carter who was new in town. He was like a Nellie writer or had written in the Nellie's camp. And I was half being kind to Travis to just because he asked me, and I felt guilt.

And then the other half is the song was so catchy and it was at the very end of our recording sessions, and I was like, geez, Jennifer, I kind of like this. It scares me and I like things that scare me a little. And she listened to it and she's like, okay, I'm game. So we wrote the rest of it and sent it back to them and

said do you hate this? And they're like no, no, no. I got right ahead and we recorded it that day and Kevin, you know, I had to keep calling him because I said, you know, this is gonna be a single. The label likes it the most, and it's got to like a rap part in the back of it. I hope you don't hate it. But we were gonna we were going to get a guy from Atlanta to rap and he wanted like hard cold cash. We thought, well, with save the money and Jennifer, why don't you just

do it? So I went upstairs and we wrote the rap in the back of it, and then people started on radio cutting the rap out and like radio programmers were shortening the song on their own, and it caused a bit of a stir, and so I had to call Kevin and say, Kevin, I don't know your co writer, but can you get him to keep signing off on these promos because the writers all have to agree to things. And I didn't know the guy, and he was causing trouble. He was like, no, I'm not gonna sign that, and

I'm not gonna do this. And I was like, look, Kevin, you need to get your buddy in the because I've been over backwards to make this work and I love it, and I think it's actually polarizing enough that people are listening to it and it sounds enough like Shirley and but also it was weird. You know, it's challenging people because no one had ever had a rap or anything all. Dean didn't exist with his collaborations yet and so we were kind of getting carved out of Oh. I think

Jennifer and Christian went off the reservation. I think we're now done with the big string of hits with sugar Land and the record. They will kind of stayed on it, and Shy came around and started to understand that he could get more business if we did this, and uh, and then things started to smooth out and that that song went really well and the album sold really well, and we then we launched probably the most ambitious tour

we've never done. Was that tour. If you saw a sugar Land tour that you will never forget, it will be that. I remember we were playing and you've been nice enough to play with my goofy band, the Raging Idiots, And I was like, Christian, I felt. I was like, we played, You're like, no problem, I'll play. Get talking about with sing songs? And I ask and you said, hey, when you're playing stadiums, like, is it just amazing? You know?

You know what? Sometimes sound done work in stadiums. Either it's like you're playing at a bar, like you get it, you get one year that where it's just bigger. I still remember that conversation. You're like, you think it's everything's perfect, but sometimes it's worse because there's just so many more things to happen. Yeah, like that you're messing with in your head that nobody even knows. Yeah, there's a whole

psychology to performance that on those large scales. That's that's super interesting, and it's there's no one to ask because not a lot of people, you know. I remember asking Kenny, how do you start your show in the back of the stadium and he said, oh, because you can't once you walk out in front of those stadium speakers. The delay is so great that in your microphone you're hearing

yourself two or three seconds after you're singing right. And I said, how do you do it on the other end of the stadium when you're like come up out of the ground magically? He said, Oh, I learned this from the rolling stones, the flicker light. There's a strobe that keeps you on time. Just sing to the to the light. So how do you learn that unless somebody You're in a stadium of practice? Right? What is that?

What you guys did? You're in a big space of practice this singing to no no. But it's invaluable that kind of wisdom. And that's why I take my mentoring so seriously. When I'm working with new artist, is like, look, there's no book and most of these people quit and the people who taught me are not here to teach you. So it's my job to pass this flag onto you. Here are the following tricks I learned. Go pass it

onto somebody else. You guys have this phone conversation you're talking about coming back, and you come back, and then here's this song when you hear it on the radio again after you've been through it and not through it, And is it cool to here struggle in on the radio again. I haven't heard it yet. You have it. My friends have all heard it, and my kids have heard it, and I was like, oh, I can't wait

for me to hear it. And you know, it doesn't count if someone knows you're listening and they play it. I tell this new artist too. If if you're in the station and they go, hey, Jimmy, Jim's coming in. Here's this new song. We know he's listening right now, that doesn't count. You gotta you gotta discover it, huh. And I'm really excited to know because as a producer, you know, I produced this song as well as wrote it. And there's things I want to know on because radio

processing does something to songs. And I learned from Hugh Pagum, who's the guy who made the Police records and the Phil Collins records, and he taught me things about how to record stuff so that when it gets on the radio, it sounds bigger. And that was in three and his

rules I applied to this song. And I still want to see if it's true well, after you hear it on the radio, you let me know, because you know, I was just I was looking at a lot of you because I I love that solo album that you did too, and I know what I've been talking about that, But I even thought after the solo abum, I thought sing Along was such a freaking good song. You hear

it going. I remember playing it because you and I get really disenfranchised with the bubble of Nashville, which is why I'm also polarizing, because I will yell at myself, which means my people, and be like, what are you thinking? Like you're just not seeing the forest in the tree sometimes, and I thought that twice with your songs with trailer Heads and sing Along. I remember playing sing Along like crazy, Hey,

listen to this. You know who cares. I'm on a hundred stations and I have the like the love of this song. How can you and Paduca not love It's just you're not taking a risk. I don't know. It's so frustrated, Chase. Maybe, well, I thank you. First of all, I'm not asking for thanks because I just thought it was that good. If you were not here, I would say the same thing. I'm so disappointed in just what

the people that do what I do. And I disappoint people too, I know that, but they all disappinted me in this that sense. Well, you're a music fan, which is different than being a radio host, Okay, and I'll you gotta you gotta accept that. But um, I will say that, uh before this sugaring phono game, I've finished my next solo album which is now sitting here waiting and I cannot wait to play it for people. I can't do that yet, but um, holy smokes, I had no idea, um that all the stuff was gonna land

on top of each other. But I'm very grateful. But I'll tell you this much, and I love it because I like it that you're the only one who kind

of gets this information. Um. I got encouraged by my wonderful manager over there and uh and and my publisher at the time still publisher, Julie, and the two of them, I played a show on the fourth of July this past year, and I got asked to do it by the guys that I sit on the Grammy board in Atlanta with and a guy named uh J Fly who's the a drummer An R And b like huge session drummer, and he also played with like Bobby Brown and all sorts of people. And he said, Christian, will you please

come out and play? I keep asking you every year, but will you and your brother please come out and play my Fourth of July show. It's on television. It's downtown in Centennial Park. And I was like absolutely. I had no excuse this year. I was like, okay, j I'll come because I really did need to and I had been busy the other years and this year I was free and there was no reason I shouldn't do that. But I told him, I said, Jay, you know I

can't imagine that. You know, sixty African American people are going to know trailer Hitch or baby Girl? So what do you want me to play? Like? I'm trying to be entertaining for you. I want to I want to

reflect well on you help me. And he's like, oh, I love trailer, which and I said okay, and I we we rolled in and we did sound check and there were five background singers and they're like seven horn players and three keyword guys and I they landed a freaking earth wind and Fire song on top of trailer hitch and I have never been so happy in my entire life. And I remember turning around after that, after we had finished the song, and I watched sixty strangers

dance to a song they probably never heard. And I turned around to Jay and I was like, country music meets this party. I don't think it's ever seen this party, and this party needs to happen, and we ever get a chance, let's do that. And I left the stage, and I thinked everybody, and I went on with my day, and I think I said the same thing to to Whitney and to Julian and even my brother Brandon. He's like, well, why don't we do it? And I'm like, oh no, we can never do that. I don't even think I

have the songs for stuff like that. And they were like, you have millions of songs, just go through them and figure it out. So I had this crazy thing happened where I took songs that I normally write songs in Atlanta and bring them to Nashville and record them with Nashville great Nashville musicians, And in this case, I took a bunch of songs I wrote in Nashville and took them to Atlanta and played them with that band, and I couldn't be more confused as to how to ever

perform these songs live. Like I I remember calling you and saying, I just recorded something I can never play because I don't know how to do it. Um. It was like Aretha Franklin's horn section and Jill Scott's horn section. And I was like justin timber Lakes music directors in there and and and I mean it was insane what was happening. And I love the fact that it felt

like I was coming so out of control. I was discovering my songs through the fingers and the mouths and the rhythms of people that were complete strangers to me. And it made so much sense. So in a lot of ways, Um, it felt a lot like what I had imagined Paul Simon felt like when he made Grace Land, Like you took songs that you knew in a place that you didn't know, and you stopped holding onto it so tightly and you started to discover what's going on

around you. And when you say that, you think of that record, it's like, you know, Diamonds, Yeah, and how that song start? I mean, I have that there are things on this set of recordings that I just did that I don't know how it happened. Well, I don't know when it's gonna come out, but I listen. I can't. I cannot wait to share it with everyone, and and I hope it happens this this calendar year. Um, maybe in pieces or parts it'll start to happen, especially with

the you know, new attention on shore Land. I'm sure people will start digging backwards through our catalogs and our solo records and things and start to really assimilate. And I may be able to play some of these, I mean, if I can physically do it, UM, play some of these on while we're on tour. And I'm just super excited. So thank you for me for supporting what I like you. But if it wasn't good, I was supported, well, I I appreciate that. Like, don't play the ones that saw Yeah,

I try not to have so much. Um, do you have any more spots that we could perfect? Because I have more things? Okay? You brother? By the way, Brandon Brandon Bush probably just from Lindsey. I've been I've been Brandon before, but just from Lindsay working with she comes in, It's like Brandon is one of the greatest musicians. I've ever seen him with my eyeball. And Brandon also played with train right. Yeah, he was the piano player and trained. He likes to call it the nadier of their career.

But he he got the job after Drops the Jupiter because they didn't have a piano player and did they have to get one because of that song. Apparently that's what Brandon's job was. So, um, they they had the song happen and then they just put the piano on track because they didn't have anybody who played it, and then he went out to audition on the calling a meaning they're playing live for the TONI computers just a

button to play the piano. There's a computer playing the piano and then they play to the click in their ears. But that song was so popular that I don't care who you are. Once it comes on, you start singing it. You know. It was It was Pavlaviam for me, and I loved the song. When it came on the radio, I was like, oh my gosh, this is everything I wanted from Elton John except through Pat Yeah Monahan. You know, it was so good and um Train was kind of borne out of the same space as Billy Pilgrim and

kind of a little bit before John Mayer. It was the same of the aware of people or the people Ladderman and all the people are that discovered both of them, and Brandon joined the band as a sideman, and then they were like, oh my god, the same thing as lindsay, you're so talented, can you just be a part of our bank? So he joined into the band all right, as Calling All Angels. That next record came out, and he was there all the way through the Ascension of

sugar Land. And when Pat started making solo records, I called Brandon. I said, Man, we're playing stadiums. Will you come. I think we can afford a keyboard player? And uh, he plays every record I've ever made since I was thirteen. There's not been a record he hasn't been on that I've either produced or it wasn't an artist. I mean two kids that because you played by ear, you know

you would hear things and play things. And to get that once is a lottery win with a kid who but to get that twice with one the work ethic but to the natural ability, and it's always a combination. If you just have even a whole lot of one, it usually doesn't work out. You've got to have some collective of both, and they can be different levels. But you and your brother both where why where did that come from? I don't know. That's that's so, but it

was part of our our are raising like we were raised. Um, we both got signed up for the same Japanese experimental program. We were. We were kind of guinea pigs at the University of Tennessee. You're not making a joke. I'm not making a joke. Um. There is a program called the Suzuki method, which was this Japanese idea that if children learned music at the time their brains learned language, they

would learn it as a language. And at the time, in the early seventies, it was just a theory that nobody had proved it, but they were running pilot programs around America, and the University of Tennessee Knoxville was one of the pilot programs. And my mother signed me up when I was three, and so I played violin and I was from not Knoxville. I was from the mountains outside of Knoxville. So they called them fiddles, but I was playing like Bach and Vivaldi and stuff by ear.

And as soon as my brother was three years old, he did the same thing, and within a couple of years he was like, can I not play violin? Can I play piano? And that happened so that by the time I was in middle school, I was really being made fun of for moving a violin case around because I was being kind of shipped into the Knoxville for school. My parents like, we're trying to get me into a private school. And I begged my mother to let me

play guitar. I just begged her, and she said, you know, if you can play one season in the youth Symphony, I'll let you do it. She knew I couldn't read music, so I I went the long way. I took my little walkman that should have just been invented at the time, and I've recorded the person next to me on Wednesdays and I would learn it on Thursday and Friday, and I would perform it on Saturday to it and then

play it back. I played my ear and that's how I survived, and I got to learn to play guitar because once I got through that season, she gave me a guitar, and within a year I had said, Brandon, we need to make a record and I don't know how to do that. Let's figure it out. Do you believe in the Suzuki method. Oh yeah, I think it's pretty cool. It's changed a lot. That's my blood. And Brandon learned how to read music because they had incorporated

it earlier than they did with me. I was so early in the program um and he is U an orchestrator. Now you know when I did the musical last year and Atlanta, he was the music director. He's he and I have scored things for turn of Classic movies like we we do things anytime. Sugarland has a string section like still the same, the end of that has this giant string orchestra, and Brandon's scoring all of that. I mean, you got he did a musical, your solo records, sugar Land.

You had a wedding song on the on the flupping Duke channels at one in the morning, and it's like Christian Buss sing about a dress on That's that's pretty nutty as Nutty goes that that is almost full Amon Joy crazy. I want to talk about your podcast because let's talk about a podcast. It's called Geeking Out with Christian Bush, and it's about people that geek out about, not just music. No, it doesn't have to be you

told me it didn't have to be done. And it's the best because in Granger you're talking to grand Smith in the first episode about bee hives. I'm gonna tell you I learned so much on this podcast. Have a friend that has be hives. But when you guys were sitting you're you're like talking and eating or after. But he's taught Granger Smith is so into beehives. And oh my god. First of all, I was a Grander. I know Grandjer well grandj and I Granja lives in north

of Boston. I lived on in the the fourteen years that we have. You know each other, yes, And I was thinking, I did not know you was to nerd about beehives. Then I thought, I didn't know behaves is so interesting. I had no idea. I had no idea. And that's what I love about this podcast. You know that when the when you had come to me and said, Christian, I'm interested in what you would be interested in. And I thought about it for a while and I think

I sent you two or three ideas. And this has really stood the test of time of this concept that a podcast is good when you have rules, right, because they're boundaries that you can stay keep your conversations within. And so the rule for the podcast is, I want to talk to you about what you are completely into, what you are geeking out on that has nothing to

do with your job. So people introduce themselves, they tell me what their job is, and then we stopped talking about their job, and they have to know what it is that you're interested in. And I learned so much. You will not believe some of the things people say. I mean what Granger started talking about bees. I had so many questions and he had so many answers and all the answers, and I was also blown away at how much you knew about freaking bee hives. Huh. But

so I was this so on multi levels. I thought, Wow, that's weird Granger, Wow, bees do that. Wow, it's what Granger and bees do that. Christian, well you Christian just asked what I was thinking the whole thing. I was like you, I'm interested if you like I told him. At some point, have you put a GoPro camera at the beginning at the opening of your beehive covers. I want to see the bouncers, you know that the bees that fight the other beasts you can't come in here,

and who slips through and who doesn't. I mean, it's fascinating to me. And then the middle part of it, um I then we kind of take the same idea, but we do something really quick, like I trade you something, like I give, I turn you onto something, and then

you turned me onto something. And he was talking about it's crazy cold water therapy where you dunk yourself into like fifty or forty degree water for a certain amount of time until all the blood rushes to your core and then you get out of the water and the blood all rushes back to your you know, extremities, and that somehow this cleanses your body, like your bone marrow starts to make more blood fresh blood, right, And I was just kind of looking at him like this is

I had not was all I could see when I look at you as Earl Dibbeles Jr. And then like Granger Smith and I just didn't expect naked Earl Dibbeles Jr. In a pool talking about bees, you know, like that is cool? To me and is the most interesting part about people. And I love that this podcast is happening because I can't wait for other people to go through this process. Yeah, I went through and think my grander two is he he's really ripped, like you wouldn't know

it because he can you just see Earl Oh. Yeah, man, he's and and you know, he doesn't seem like a guy that would tear his shirt off, right, But he's totally a guy who I can tell after meeting him and spending time with him. You know a lot of people when you feel like your life is out of control, you control the one thing you can your body, your haircut, your whatever. You control one thing that is completely within

your control. And it seems like his life has brought him into a place of real joy controlling his body. And that's cool. I really enjoyed that guy. He's good. It's good guy, dude. And I gotta tell you. When I was on the record label and they told me they were signing him and I went in research him, I was like, I think this is a terrible idea. You know. I was really concerned about the message that

the Earl Dibel's piece was doing. I was like, I don't think a lot of the fans know that he's kidding. So I'm talking with you. I was like, I think, what, I don't want white supremacists on my label, you know, like forget that. I don't think they understand that this is a farce. And uh. It made me very nervous. And so I feel even doubly interested in him being a first guest because I believe that um, in our time of bouncing through information so quickly, that someone would

miss what a great guy he is. I think they can, and I think some do and some don't care. And you look at his accounts. I think Earl Doubels has a couple million followers, and Green Dress a couple tho. You know what, I'd be happy to provide a rabbit hole for people to go dive into to find out more.

Geeking out Christian Bush, I think it's fantastic. I just I feel like we could sit here for three hours and just talk and then we have and I'll tell you, just because I got so close to the Lindsay project that I would hear the songs early and then I would hear them when they were done. What what you and Lindsay did with this song. Here you make me feel Champagne the band, you know what's cool about us.

So the backbeat is me playing acoustic guitar with my hand without any cord, so like muted, muted natural day, just call me rain until So the rhythm is you holding a mutic chord. I can open my own door. I think music is beautiful when it's really simple. That's funny. You can hear that. I mean, you're so. I would have never heard that. And it happened in the right here in your left here went yeah, man here that. I'll be honest with you. Yeah, at different level, I

didn't do it. I didn't do the old yamahal Suzuki. Yeah. You know. I learned to make records by listening in headphones. So it's a good rule that if you see my name on an album, either as an artist or as a producer or writer, even but mostly as an artist or profuser, you should take the minute to put on the big headphones, the big Princess Leah ones and listen.

Because I left you secrets law east Reg's yeah and so depending when you hear this, and people listen to podcasts for years after But as we do, the sugar Land is about to go out on the big tour and I'll be coming for sure. I'll be coming sugar Land. And you have Frankie Ballard and Claire Bowen out, and you have Lindsay l and you have Brandy Clark, who is one of my absolute favorite. I love Brandy boss Lindsay's but raisons again. But Brandy Clark, I don't know,

man that she is good people, but Brandy's great. Man. I'm excited about our openers, you know, a little big town with our openers. For about three years, we just never gave up on them. I just kept thinking, these guys are so good and it's just not falling. The cards aren't falling for him, and they just put their head down and they just kept working and kept working. So I love the idea that people can come to a Shutland show and discover music they've never thought that

they would be madly in love with. And if you can trust us for that, much like people trust you on your radio show for music. When you turn people onto something, I think it's the I think it's a trust that you earn and you got to do everything you can to keep it look at you, sugar Lands back, you gotta secret album, The Troubadour is gonna go and Sarah So it's it's being stages in Florida. You gotta podcast, Yes, you got, you got a lot. Oh yeah, you're writing.

You have a song on the radio that you wrote. You didn't even produce. You're seeing it. You wrote it. I mean, this has been a dry number of years. You're like Jennifer Lopez. Man, the desert has been a long desert. It's great to see water. Thank you for coming over to the house. I really appreciate you coming over. You know, I'm a huge fan. I'm a I'm a big fan of yours man. Christian Book, Episode one hundred and it's been a special episode one. Check out geeking

out with Christian Bush. Go out and see sugar Land on the road. Give him culled bluck. See I'm walking down the road. Like you said, it doesn't been dry Box one hundred, one hundred and we cast it's episode hundred, Cast one hundred one hundred. Thank one zero zero. Appreciate you, my friend. Appreciate you. All right, thank you very much. You next time about you