You know, Amber and I have had a had a crazy year, you know, and through grief and loss and and rebuilding, we've learned a lot. And part of that is that, you know, a crazy economic crisis doesn't compare to losing a loved one, and so it's really not that big a deal to me. It's a big deal in terms of we're gonna have to drastically change our lifestyle. But that's just that's that's it. It's lifestyle. It's not life. Hey, guys, what's up. It's Granger Smith. Welcome to the Granger Smith Podcast,
Episode twenty four. What a time to be alive? Man, Can you imagine? Just think about how much has changed since the last time I actually sat down and recorded a podcast, which was one week ago, And imagine how much has changed since the time before that two weeks ago. We are living in history, y'all. We are living in
unprecedented times. I'm a history buff. I love history. I don't necessarily love living in something like this, but it does definitely puts perspective on so many of the past events we've read about, like the World Wars or the Great Depression, and we are not at the level of any of those right now, but the way things are progressing, you just never know. Thank you guys for listening, thanks for joining, thanks for watching on YouTube. I'm going to
use this podcast. We put these out every Monday morning, and I'm going to use these to answer questions that you guys are asking. I'm fielding those questions from social media hashtag Grangersmith podcast. I'm also fielding them from questions in the YouTube comments. And I'm going to use these also to just kind of tell you guys how we're doing here in the Smith family and how we're handling this craziness and kind of get the pulse on what
you guys are doing it. And this will be, you know, as we're all drawing more and more to our homes, this will be my way to really communicate with you guys. Let me dive into some of these questions here. I wanted to I wanted to talk about this and this is a this is a podcast episode. I did several
several episodes ago about hackers. A lot of these hackers are from Lagos, Nigeria, and there has never been a time more important than now to be very aware on social media of who you're talking to and who you're getting messages from. It could be celebrities that are reaching out to you, are friending you, and they are not
the actual person you think they are. Now. The reason I say it's so important now is because there's going to be a lot of these celebrity impersonators that are coming in and asking for money for some kind of charity because of the world is in a crazy place, and so you're going to be getting all kinds of messages like this. The most important thing is look for
that blue chain. So if Tim mcgrawl, you know, friends, you make sure you look at it and see if it's got the blue check on top of that, I promise you timocral is not going to friend you, and timcral is definitely not going to send you a personal message. I'm not going to send you a personal message either, So just throwing that out there, I'm probably not going to friend random people right now, and I'm probably not gonna send random messages that say things like things are
tough right now? Can you donate some money on an iTunes gift card? Keep that in mind so and so so so important, and tell your friends that the celebrities are not messaging. If they if it doesn't have a blue check, it doesn't necessarily mean it's not that person if they haven't gotten verified yet, but it is. That is the first line of defense to see who you're talking to. Probably the most, the most important or not important.
The most common question I should say that I got on all these was are you going to do a live stream concert of some sort? And I have been getting that question, and of course it crossed my mind starting day one, and I've noticed that social media, how it's just everyone's kind of going live, live, live, live, live, live, and it seems to be a little boring for me and or a little boring for you to watch me doing that. And I'm not sure how that works yet.
It's definitely not a viable source of income for a musician because of the massive amount of income we're all going to be losing. There's no way a live stream concert could even start to make up for what we're doing. So I'm kind of putting more of my eggs in the basket of keeping you guys as close to me as you can as fans, so that when things do re energize, we could have a closer relationship than we do before I guess. I guess that's my best way
to answer. I probably will go live. I'll probably play you guys some songs, but it's not a number one priority for me right now. Here's another question. What's going to happen with the shows that are canceled? Refund question mark or reschedule question mark? Well, they're all going to be rescheduled when I don't know. I know some of the shows that I that we've canceled already have been rescheduled, and sometimes that's in May or June, sometimes of July.
I've seen a few come in in August. So everything, yes, will be rescheduled, But a question of when who knows? You know, we we can't even say June right now. And by the way, I'm involved in any of those decisions, that's not me at all. That is people that are more high up in the booking than I am. Refunds, Yeah, you certainly could be able to get a refund, but this will be done through through the local venues that put on the concert. So they're the ones that control tickets.
They're the ones that take all the money from tickets. Bands get paid when we show up and play, and so all the money. None of that has ever gone to me. The money if you ever buy a ticket, that's going to the venue itself, so you'll have to handle refunds through them. Actually has nothing to do with me or the bands. Let's move on here. Stage gear. Somebody said, stage gear, what's the most important piece of your of all your stage gear, and they said, besides microphone,
And the answer is crew. The crew is that the people. They're the most important part of the crew. I mean their most important part of the stage gear, because we could have them the worst gear you've ever seen in your life, but a really good crew could make it sound pretty good or make it work at least same with a bad guitar. A really good guitar player could
make a bad guitar sound good. So the people are the most important thing, and the people is they're they're also the most valuable things are the most they were the most expensive thing. So through through all of this we've had to take out a massive line of credit loan. I could only go maybe two months max without getting into debt having to pay everybody because everybody's on salary. So took out a massive loan. And that's how the guys are going to stay getting paid. So for those
of you concerned about that, thank you very much. I know there are some questions on how could we support your band and crew. They're going to be supported through a loan, and then over the next several years, all you know, my concerts will be as much as I can paying back that loan. So thank you for the the concern. But the reality is things are just gonna
be a lot different from from here on out. When it comes to the live show, there's a lot of the the cool video wall and lights and things like that that we had semi truck, you know, all the neat toys, They're all gonna be gone. And I think you guys could could be okay with that. We're just gonna come in bare bones and we're gonna play some concerts and it's gonna be all about the music and all about the fans. And I don't think you guys are gonna have a problem with it. I'm certainly not.
I'm not gonna I'm not gonna miss all that all that cool jazz. We're gonna be We're gonna be just fine. We're gonna be paying back this loan, and uh, In the meantime, we've got a lot of band and crew that's gonna be able to live live their normal life and support their family through a very normal time, have normal time. Next question, what can what can we do to stay engaged as fans? And that kind of goes
back to the question on how how can you support us? Well, hey, guys, it's amazing that y'all even think about these kind of questions. But but the fact is, you guys have supported us for so long through going to concerts and doing what you could do as fans that it's okay, We're going to be okay. You don't have to think financially how
to take care of us. That's more of my job to think financially, how can I take care of y'all, or at least how can I provide you with valuable information on how to how to stay calm, how to relax, how to how to get rid of some of the stress that you might be carrying. And you know, Amber and I have had a had a crazy year, you know, and through grief and loss and and rebuilding, we've learned
a lot. And part of that is that, you know, a crazy economic crisis doesn't compare to losing a loved one, and so it's really not that big a deal to me. It's a big deal in terms of we're gonna have to drastically change our lifestyle. But that's just that's that's it. It's lifestyle. It's not life. So hey, if I quite honestly, if I get this virus and I die, that's the quicker. I'm gonna get to heaven and see my see my
little boy, see my dad. Don't take that the wrong way, you know, don't don't take that as there's no will to live. But my soul is prepared. I'm not worried. What can what can you guys do to stay engage as fans? We did drop our uh this that's why the Dirt Road single, we dropped it to sixty nine cents, So we're trying to do that. You could you can get a hold of me on cameo dot com and cameo dot com is is going to allow me to
give you personal shout outs. That's kind of one of my only forms of income right now is to be able to give you guys personal shout outs and say hey via video and then other than that that the most important thing is watch these videos, share these videos, comment on these videos. Like these videos, whether it's the
Smiths or my Granger personal page or these podcasts. Amber has a show coming out on YouTube called A Rise with Amber that the first one comes out just came out yesterday for you watching this and so yeah, just be engaged in those and that is That's enough, y'all. That's enough to to feel the love and to feel supported, spread the spread the message. Sorry, if you hear background noises, that's the kids run around like crazy out of school.
As you know. Here's an interesting question, has nothing to do with anything we've talked about. How do you know when it's the right time to say I love you? And I think that that question stood out to me because when we're in a world like this right now, when we're in this this craziness, don't you think that now is the time if you feel like you need to ask that question, or if you feel strongly enough about someone, don't you think that now is the time
to tell them how you feel? Because haven't we learned enough in this last amount of time, this craziness that tomorrow is not guaranteed. We have no idea what tomorrow is going to bring and what do you have to lose? If you feel that way about someone, what do you have to lose? Tell them today? Tell them now. Here's another one stood out to me. Another question says, what's wrong with you concerning this dangerous virus? Why are you
so selfish? I wrote that down because that's first of all, I'd like to note that came from Country Blue sixty three on Instagram. So my question to you is, what are you talking about? What's some more information on behind this question? What's wrong with you concerning this dangerous virus? Why are you so selfish? I'm assuming you're talking about either Amber and I talking on the Smiths or me when I made a video called What's going On on YouTube?
I'm assuming you're talking about that. And what I'm trying to do with this is not diminish the severity of
our current situation. It's it's an attempt to try to spread a message of hope and resilience and faith and try to quell some anxiety and try to get people to stop posting rumors on social media that in turn starts scaring everybody and making people impulse by the grocery stores, and that has nothing to do with being prepared, being ready, being being being prepared for the worst and and hopefully being wrong. If you if, if, if, all this doesn't happen.
But but don't don't misunderstand my wanting to spread a message of hope and faith and trust. Don't don't misunderstand that is a be and so fish and be discounting a dangerous situation. So please don't don't get those lines crossed. I'm not a scientist, I'm not a doctor. I'm not a politician. So as a musician, I feel like part of my duty is to spread calm and to to kind of help people through a very anxious time, because anxiety is deadly in itself. We know this for a fact.
Another question I see all the time is regrets. Do you have any regrets? I see that all the time, And honestly, the answer is no, I don't have any regrets. And that's that's kind of a learned a learned thing for me. I like to look at any mistake it's ultimately a lesson. So instead of looking back and saying here's my regrets, I look back and say, here were the stumbling blocks, here were obstacles and I learned from them,
and I'm grateful in those situations. You don't have to be grateful for every situation, but you can be grateful in every situation. And one of the ways you could be grateful in a situation is realizing that in some way you are better for an obstacle, or for a setback, or from a mistake because you learned something from that that made you a little bit better in this world. You learned something that you could share with someone else.
You learn something that helps you better protect you or your family, or your finances, or whatever that might be. So I don't have any regrets, only lessons, and that is a glass half full versus glass half empty mentality. You can call it what you want. You can call it regrets. I'm gonna call it lessons. Another question I get all the time is what does ye ye mean? And I've made a lot of YouTube videos about what
does ye mean? I've talked about it many times on the podcast, and I don't mind going down that road again. But quite simply, we have defined it as living life to the fullest, living your best life. Ye yee is synonymous with live it and when we made ye yee. My brothers and I when we created that with Earl Dipples Junior through YouTube and fans kind of started latching onto it. We trademarked it, and we quickly needed to make it mean something, and to us, that's what it meant.
It's an old Texas cattle call. You know, people used to call their cows in ye. But we had to kind of hone in and say, you know what, this represents a lifestyle. This represents a feeling and a mentality, a state of mind, and that state of mind needs to be live life to the fullest. That's ye yee. Next question, what are your goals for twenty twenty? I would like to I like that question because I like to talk about goals, and this is the perfect example
of what I'm about to say. Twenty twenty. What are your goals for twenty twenty? I think we could all agree that if we did have any kind of goals for twenty twenty, there are most of them. As far as business is concerned, are shot right. It's changed, It's completely different. And so what I like to say about that is instead of setting goals, I like to set intentions.
And what I mean is you could set. You could set an intention to do your best to be the best version of yourself, to give your best effort, to do everything you can in your life to line up the dominoes correctly so that you have the best chance that being the best version of yourself, being the best version of your career self, or family self, for godly self, for whatever that might be. You set an intention instead of a goal, because if you set a goal, either
two scenarios could happen. One, you don't come anywhere close to that goal that you created out of nowhere. The goal that you created came from a perception of what you think the future might look like. The reality is we never know what the future is going to look like. It's only ever a guess, that's all it is. So if you set a goal, you could fall way below that goal, and then what you're a failure. No matter how you look at it your mind, you are a
failure if you didn't reach that number goal. Another scenario is you shoot way past the goal. You go way past it, and you realize the goal wasn't set high enough, the bar wasn't high enough. So then you try to recreate a new bar and you try to put it out there even farther and that stuff as well. And once again, goals are just to guess. That's all you can do is guess that we're going to be doing this or I want this to happen by this date.
You're completely guessing, and you don't know that life and everything that happens around it is set on a different path than you might think it is. And this whole virus right now is a perfect example of how if we set intentions to be our best version of ourselves, then no matter what happens upon us during that time, we're going to power through it as the best versions of ourselfs and we're still completing that mission instead of that numeric goal. If that makes sense, And I'm glad
you asked that question. Another question I get a lot is do you have any devotionals. I'm a Christian, so Christian devotionals are a big deal. I like to start my day with it. It's actually the first thing I like to do in the morning, especially staying away from social media or emails or anything business related. I really can throw you in a funk if you see a text or an email, or a social media post or a news headline that really sets the tone of your day,
and it could be in a negative way. It's a good chance, especially these days, that it could set your day off in a negative way. So I like to start my day with a devotional I have several that I like to read. My two number one go tos is. One of them is called Jesus Calling, and I like to always start the day with Jesus Calling. It's very simple read. It's always about you know that much, you know hands length of text, and it's always seems to
be very relevant to what I'm going through. So it gives a little little verse, it gives a little description, and then it kind of wraps it up and you always fill a little bit like it was speaking to you for a reason. And they're such a cool feeling. And I've gone through this book through several years, but it has a day by day. So when I'm recording this podcast right now, it's March twenty first, So this morning I read March twenty first. The second one is
called Hearing His Voice, and this is a one. This is one that I was recommended by a good friend, and so this is also my second year on this one. It's a little deeper, a little you have to think a little bit more on hearing his voice, But it's
about the whole devotional. All three hundred and sixty five days is about hearing what God is trying to tell you, having the ears to hear it, having the heart that's open to take in that information, with the understanding that God is God speaks to us when we're ready to listen, and if we're ready and we're prepared to listen, then
that's when we could hear him the best. And so it's kind of training your mind and your ears to silence a little bit all the earthly thoughts that you have and listen to what He's trying to tell you, which could come through other people, which is interesting. So some he could work through. He could do anything, but he could work through another person that then in turn comes and speaks to you, and you have to be in tune that this could be something you need to
be hearing right now. So it's a great way to start my day. And that's another great question. What else we have? You know? Another very common question during this time is how do you deal with stress and fear? And correct me if I'm wrong? But I think this is a really important subject right now. And this kind of goes back to the girl that said, what did she say? What's wrong with you? Why are you so selfish?
I think that kind of goes back to that question, because because I'm going to focus a lot on these podcasts and on my own YouTube and on my Instagram post and stuff like that, I'm going to focus a lot on trying to quell fear and trying to diminish stress, trying to diminish anxiety, trying to put some calm back into anyone that wants to listen. And by doing that, by me saying it, it also helps me and it reminds me of the core fundamental facts of meaning and
purpose in God and faith. And how many times you guys that know the Word, that know the Bible, know how many times did Jesus speak about don't be anxious, don't stress, give everything to him. He mentions it all the time, almost as much as he mentions love each other, you know. And so it's so important to realize that
we're not in control and that's okay. We don't have to be all the time, and that fear, in its essence, fear is an anxiety about the unknown, and so it's a natural form if you don't know what's going on, if you're uncertain about the future or what you're involved with, then fear is the natural reaction to that. So it's okay. So being in that fear and realizing I'm a little
scared right now, Realizing that is okay in itself. Being with that understanding and instead of saying, don't be scared, don't be afraid, don't be scared, it's okay to just go you know what, God, I'm a little scared right now. I'm gonna give this to you and be with that because it's being scared is just anxiety about the unknown, and there's a lot of unknown right now. Stress is
the build up of that fear. It's the build up of your anxiety of trying to be trying to predict the future which is unpredictable, trying to plan and trying to set goals and all this stuff. It results in stress. And one of the best ways to deal with stress, and this is not just me talking, it's just a
lot of things that I've read. The best way to deal with it is mindfulness, having some sort of quiet in your mind instead of constantly online or constantly talking or chatting with others about how bad things are or what are we going to do, or worrying, instead clearing your mind with mindfulness. And there's the quickest best way to do that is through there's different apps on your phone and so to in today's age, that's really easy to get an app like there's one called Calm, there's
one called ten percent Happier. There's endless apps that can deal with stress through mindfulness. And if you could be mindful five or ten minutes a day. Meditation and once again, I want to say meditation not in a spiritual way, like when you think of meditation, don't think of like you know, am sitting around some Buddha doll. It's not that. Mindfulness and meditation is more of clearing your brain, focusing on the present, focusing on you here in this moment,
right now, is all that matters. Your breath in and out, your heartbeat, focusing on the now. If you're driving the steering wheel, if you're sitting in a chair, it's your butt right there on the chair, it's your feet on the floor, it's the oxygen you're breathing in It's everything
right now, in this moment. And if the more you could focus on that, the more you could feel that anxiety start to leave, feel that stress start to leave, because it doesn't matter what's going to happen tomorrow or tonight, it doesn't matter what happened yesterday. The only thing that really exists is right now, this moment. And you guys have heard me say that so many times, but it
is a fact. This can help you. If you're overwhelmed with anxiety right now, go to your phone and get and stop all the social media junk and get an app like Calm, which is free. I believe it's free at least ten percent happier. A lot of these have like free until you get to a certain point. But go get it and just put on your headphones, close your eyes, and follow a guided meditation of some sort that just clears your brain. I'm gonna leave you guys
with that. I'm gonna get back to the kids in there. Love y'all. Thank you for listening, Thank you, thank you for understanding all these different situations. Thank you for supporting. If you're watching on YouTube, please subscribe to this channel and comment below. Shoot it Up a little like. Wherever you are listening to this on Monday morning, you're probably not on your way to work like you used to. Some of you probably are, but most of you aren't.
Stay safe out there, watch out for misinformation, hold the ones you love close, and make sure you go easy on that toilet paper. See you, guys, ye