How Earl Dibbles Jr Was Created

lot of this stuff might not make sense. Now. This podcast is not always going to be this kind of format. I'm not always going to just tell stories about how I got from where I was to how you know me now in the music business and personally, I'm eventually going to get to doing interviews. There's all kinds of different components I'm going to cover. But before I do any of that, I feel like I need to tell you where I came from, how I got to be the person you found on the radio or YouTube or

social media, whatever it was. You need to know where I came from. And it's important for me to tell it because telling it reminds me of you know, the path that I'm on is forged. It's forged in failure, and fired. It was worth the ride. I'm on the bus, the back of my bus, Wildflower. I'm in South Dakota. It's February. I'm on the Cane Brown Tour. It is really really cold, pulling up my phone right now, Well, okay,

it's not that bad. It's fifteen degrees. The forecast has been at like zero, and I've seen it at negative forty five when I was looking at this date. Tomorrow is North Dakota and it's going to be really cold there. Let let me look that up. I got to eight right now. Tomorrow is going to be negative nine cold. People always say why do you tour and when it's cold, why don't you just tour in the summer or just

tour in the Southern States. That you've got to understand that when it's cold like this, especially in a place like the Dakotas, there's nothing to do but go to a concert. So that's why we do it on purpose. We come to places where you can't go to a barbecue or or hang out at the lake with your buddies or play some backyard ball. You know, the only thing to do is put on a coat and go to the concert. So, yeah, that's why we're here. I've

been doing something new lately this year. I've been running every day, jogging in the mornings. And I'm not a runner. Actually, I should wear one of those shirts that says I hate running. I do. I hate running. It's it's not something I feel like I'm very gifted at. I always you know, I'm one of those people that say that, like to say I'm a sprinter, but I'm just not. I'm not a long distant try runner. And that's why

I'm doing it. That's exactly why I'm doing it. Because I've decided that it's important for me to do at least one thing a day that i'm uncomfortable with, something that challenges me, something that I don't like doing. So when I put on those running shoes and I go stare at the pavement and it's still dark outside, you know, it's way before dawn, and I take that first step and then another and then another, and I hear that little voice in my head that says, stop, this sucks.

What are you doing? You're crazy? Why are you doing this? And I kind of thrive on that because then when I finish and I had that feeling of accomplishment. Then throughout the day, the entire day, I feel like I could take on a mountain. You know, if you got a problem, bring it to me. I could definitely solve it because I just ran this morning and I freaking hate running at least that's my mentality. My wife thinks

I'm crazy with this, but I'm on a streak. I've been running every single day and so I didn't want to end that streak here in South Dakota when it got to be frigid temperatures. Now you're probably thinking, why don't you just go to a treadmill? That kind of defeats the purpose. You know, a treadmill is in a nice, air conditioned or heated place. And remember, part of this

for me is doing something that makes me uncomfortable. And there's nothing more uncomfortable than going out in single digit weather and putting on a couple layers of sweats and jogging. So tomorrow will be my big test North Dakota. That's going to be the coldest for a Texas boy, the coldest I've ever run in in my whole life. And that'll be a good mental test for me. Hey, if you ever want me to answer a question on one of these podcasts. Go to social media hashtag Grangersmith podcast,

ask your question. I'll search for it and I see what I could do. I'm looking right now and I found Trenton shoe Maker and he says found out about the Grangersmith podcast two days ago. And I've officially listened to every podcast. Now I want to hear a podcast all about the bee keeping. All right, Trenton, I am a hobbyist beekeeper, and I will talk about that. Hey, I'll go into it on one of these future episodes. I will say that. Meanwhile, I'm up here and it's

in the teens in South Dakota right now. In Texas, it's in the eighties. And a couple of days ago I went and actually checked. I have two hives, and I checked one of them. You know what, I think I lost one of them. I think one of them left. I'm serious. You more experienced beekeepers out there, I might need some advice. I'm only three years in and this would be the first time in a spring now. Granted I haven't kept up with them. I haven't fed them

all winter like I did the last two years. But I think one of them left me I might have to do something about that. All right, let me try to paint the scene for you. It's twenty eleven, July, hot as hell in Central Texas. Me and my brothers, both of them, Tyler and Parker, have decided to make a video, and we've been making a bunch of videos lately. The goal is to get one viral, one million views.

That was the goal. That seems so far out because all of my videos before that they just had maybe tens of thousands maybe, but more like tens of hundreds. So we had a pretty good idea that what Tyler called this the country guy, and it was a voice

I had. I had listened to family members, I had listened to bar owners, patrons of old bars that I'd been going to for years and years, and so I had this little boys and every once in a while I would talk like it, and I would just doing it so that people would laugh at me, probably the guys in the band, because I'd talk like this and the band would start laughing. So Tyler called it the country Guy, so we thought that he needed a video.

So we're out at my mom and dad's place. We meet there and we start going through the closet and I pull out all these these different things that I think this country guy would wear. So I had some old denim overalls. Now, I had these overalls from high school football. We wore them as seniors on game day, we wore them the class. So, yeah, okay, he's gonna wear some overalls. And I found one of my old white tank tops. Now that seems like a good combination.

Found my old red wing boots that I wore in high school. They were perfect. I probably got those when I was thirteen years old. So then when I needed a hat, so I went into my dad's closet. He has tons of trucker hats, old feed store caps, all kinds of caps. And I found one and it said Terrell Sand and Gravel Valley Mills, Texas. It seems perfect for Earl. We went out and we got in my old pickup truck. Now, this truck, which now has has seen a lot of YouTube, has a pretty good history

with me. It was my very first truck I drove. I took that puppy to my first job, to school, back and forth to the ranch for years and years. It's a nineteen seventy four GMC three on the tree. Now, as you know, I've written a lot of songs about that kind of truck, and that's the reason why, because of this one. It was an old just almost a gross faded green color with patches from different dents I

had made on it. The roof is completely wrinkled up and dented because when I was seventeen years old, I had the truck in neutral and I was working on a fence with my brother Tyler, and it was on level ground in my defense, but a wind picked up and blew this truck down the little dirt road and it went up on an eight foot fence and turned all the way over and flipped it. So can you imagine. I had to call my dad and tell him, hey, Dad,

I flipped the truck. Luckily before Dad got home. Had we found some old boys that were working on a pipeline down the road and they brought their truck in, hooked a winch up to it, flipped it back over without doing any damage to the engine. It just had a bunch of wrinkles on the hood. Now it's missing a door, that is what that's really what made this truck famous is it's missing a door. That was when I was about I was probably about twenty years old then,

and I was backing out of the barn. I had the door open, but I had a brand new puppy in the back. My dog, Rio was a puppy and he was in the back, and I was worried about him because he was jumping around, and I was thinking, Oh God, he's going to jump out the back of the truck and I'm going to hit him when I'm backing out. So I had my eyes on him focused on that. That's my excuse at least, because when I backed out of the barn, I left the door open, and the door tweaked on the side of the bar

and bent far enough where it never shut right. So my dad and I just took it off and decided to drive it without a door. So you can imagine us going into town in this truck, especially my dad, which is still a funny sight to me, seeing him go into town with this truck with no door. That's country cracking cold. This country boy, love is what you need. And in the rud baby you'll might know. And he let's make a bed with all these meds feed in

the back of my truck. What we put in the back of the truck was probably just important is how it looked on the outside. We had an old bag, a deer feed, We had an old blanket, a box fan, some Levi garrett dip, some old corps light from the barn, a couple shotguns, single barrel that we always kept behind the seat. What else. We had dough urine, we had deer antlers, we had knives, we had all these country things. It ended up being all the perfect utilities for this video.

We were going to make. It's like it just fell into our laps pretty easy. You know. One of the last things we did is we were walking out of the house was we brought some sharpies with us, and Tyler, my brother, just kind of threw on some tattoos, a tribal tattoo on the left arm and on the right arm, barbed wire tattoo with a deer skull with a Texas flag in the middle. Now, we just literally threw these

tattoos on, not much thought behind it. And to this day, if you were going to say we had any regrets about that video, it was those damn tattoos because we put way too much ink on it, and we did way too they were way too elaborate, and we didn't know that we would be repeating these one hundred thousand times after this video. So we get the camera, three

brothers in the front seat of this pickup truck. We start driving down to this old house that's on mom and Dad's place and it says his old eighteen fifties house built by an old Norwegian farmer. It's pretty much abandoned. But we thought that this is going to be this guy's house. This is gonna be where we shoot the video. And Tyler looks at me about that time and he says, you know, I want this guy's name to be Earl Dibbles Junior. You know, I kind of pause for a

minute and I said, I like it. Why And he said, well, I played football with this guy named Dibbles. It seems like a good last name. And he said, and I love Earl. That's a really strong country first name. I said, I agree, and he goes and of course it has to be junior. Earl Dibbles Junior, I said, cool, and he was born. This podcast is brought to you by EEE Energy, our official energy drink, the one that me and my brothers made and we are so proud of it.

Please try it. You can get it at grangersmith dot com or Amazon dot com and sign up for a subscription for that stuff so you could love it and get it every day. This also brought to you by Yeee Apparel. We have so many brand new things rolling out very soon next month, my brand new American flag shorts for brand new hats, stuff that I think you guys are gonna absolutely love. Go to gee apparel dot com or grangersmith dot com. I'm now in North Dakota.

We've moved. I'm in the back of my bus Wildflower. It's freezing cold outside and we have a show tonight. I did my run this morning in subdegree temperatures, just like I always wanted. That's a first for this Texas boy, and that's what I wanted. I wanted the mental challenge to callous the mind. It helps me if I could, if I could overcome something like that, get out and run and subdegree temperatures, then I feel like I goccomplish anything.

And you know, I probably needed that kind of advice back in the day, back about twenty eleven, because although in my story, we're just about to come up with Earl Dibbles Junior, a video that would soon be the beginning of a chain reaction that led me to where I am today. But I didn't know that at the time. In fact, would you believe me that that twenty eleven

was a really tough time. I was losing a bunch of band members, whether or not they were going to another band or they just needed some time off from the road, because my road at the time in this van and trailer was tough. We were traveling a lot, we were playing a lot of shows for not a lot of money to not a lot of people. But I believe so passionately that what we were doing was right,

that we were on the right path. And it's hard to get an entire crew to believe in that with you and I would come off so strong, you know, on the outside, and I would I would be a tough guy, and I would I would say, follow your dreams, and we're doing the right thing, and yay, we're leading the charge and being creative. But I didn't always feel like that. On the inside, I was very vulnerable. I

felt insecure about what we were doing. And that's what happens when you're every single day you're playing shows and you're getting a lukewarm mild reaction or no one is showing up. And parking lots are such a big deal because we would go when we take the van and we would sound check and then go to a restaurant and then go to the hotel and get cleaned up and get dressed and come back. And as soon as you're pulling back into that venue, man, that first look

of that parking lot, that's a big deal. You pull around that corner and you kind of hold your breath because you're gonna see that parking lot. You're gonna see either a bunch of trucks and a bunch of cars and it's full and people are walking from across the street because they can't find a spot. And that was rarely, ever,

ever the case. Usually you pull in and you see about fifteen or sixteen cars right pickup trucks, cars, and you think, well, crap, there's either fifteen people in this club that holds a thousand, or hey, maybe everybody took a taxi and the rest of the people just piled in and caravan with each other inside the same vehicles, And so you take sixteen cars and then multiplied times they piled six people in each car. Nah, that never

was the case. And so then we would get set up and we'd get you know, parked behind the venue, and I would the band would go in first and they would get the first sight of what the dance looked like. And they would come back out and I would say, how does it look? How does it look? How does it look? And they would say, oh, you know, about maybe seventy five, maybe eighty people, but it's not that bad because they're not at the tables. They're kind of up around the dance floor area, so it looks

it looks pretty good. And the people that are there are having a good time. They're kind of rowdy. And they would do this to make me feel better because they knew that it's really hard for me to go out there and face nobody and give them everything I have to give them all my passion. That's something you know, like I was talking about with waking up early and going out into subdegree temperatures and jogging, that's mental callousing, and that's what I was doing every night during these times.

One time we were playing a club in Oklahoma. It was called the Squander bar. It was just a crappy place. It's since burned down, which tells you what kind of place it was. It burned down, and there was twelve people there that night, And in this placehold's probably six or seven hundred, and there was twelve people on a Saturday night when we played. You know, that wasn't the first time, it wasn't the last time. But for for whatever reason, that number twelve stuck with us, and we

would judge crowds by that number twelve from then on. So, for instance, I would go in and I would say, how does it look, guys, and they would say, it's about a three or four squander. Okay, so that's you know, twelve times three or four. But then we got to a point where we could call it a super squander. A super squander was one hundred and twenty, so we would say it's about it's about a super squander and a half. Wow, Okay, there's like one hundred and eighty

people in there. And that was when we were getting really good. I want to tell you one more story, and I know I'm getting kind of sidetracked here, but the reason I'm leading you from these days of squander numbers when we had twenty four thirty six fifty people

on a Saturday night. The reason I'm telling you these stories is because what was happening at the time of the creation of all these videos was that we were we were about to break through, and we were about to change to a nobody band that was trying really hard to a band that actually had some following growing. And Tyler and Parker were with me from the very

beginning of these days, and they're my brothers. And maybe I'm also telling you this because I feel like this podcast is probably going to get some more listens because it's about the creation of Earld Dibbles. And people have been asking me for this story for a long time and I've never been this in depth and telling it. But there's one night. There's one more story. There's one

night that stands out in my mind. And we were in Tyler, Texas with a band with my brother and it was one of these times when we pulled up and the parking lot was kind of crappy and it looked pretty thin from the outside, and the band went in and I knew that they were going to probably come back and tell me a lie and tell me that it was okay, just to get my confidence up. But Tyler goes in and he comes back out and he says, I said, how's it look? And he said,

it's shit, man, there's nobody in there. I was like, oh, come on, man, there's there's got to be somebody, and he said, yeah, I mean there's there's probably eleven or twelve people in there, maybe a one squander. I'm talking to show night about ten o'clock. You're telling me there's ten people in there. And I don't know what it was inside me, but I had been I had been building this up over ten years, you know, and we had some songs on regional radio, you know, there was

no reason. And I had these guys. I was paying my band members, you know, and they were supporting friends and families and girlfriends and they were depending on this stuff. And we had played this place many times before, and how could we be slipping, how could we be going backwards? And that's what that's what young musicians and baby bands go through. And it snapped inside me. I was sitting on the edge of my trailer side door open, half dressed for the show. I should be walking inside within

about five minutes and I snapped. I started grabbing suitcases, you know, our bags that were packed inside the trailer, and I just started throwing them as far as I could, and tears just started pouring out of my eyes, and I was just so pissed off, and I was yelling, and I just couldn't. I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't take that. Nobody's coming to watch you. You made an art for him, and no one gives a shit.

I couldn't. I couldn't take it anymore. And I'm just tears flowing down my face, and I just headed off across the street, and the first place I saw was this storage unit facility, you know, And I wanted to disappear into that storage unit facility because I wanted to

just break down and start crying. I didn't want Tyler to see me, and so I just disappeared behind some of these buildings and find it, found a you know, wove my way in there and found a spot and sat down and just put my head between my knees and just started bawling. I just couldn't take it. It finally stacked up enough and I sat there and it felt like forever and I knew that showtime had come

and gone. And to me, it didn't matter because there was ten people, and those ten people probably didn't really want to see me anyway. They were just there for the beer. So I sat there and uh, and Tyler found me. Man, he found me behind this building, and yeah, he sat down with me, and he said, we got to do that. We got to keep going, man, bro, we got to keep going. You got this. You know your band's dependent on you. We got to do this. We got to take it one day at a time,

and we will get better. We will figure this out. And so I stood up, you know, brushed my pants off and why my face, went back and put my hat on, went into the clubs, dropped on my guitar, and we played a show. And that's what we did. We kept going. I'm over the top. I say what I think. I get out of hand with too many drinks. I hate to be wrong when I know that I am. I need to be strong and sometimes I can't. And just when I think I'm complicated things, she makes it

so easy. She beats it when you chuck about loving me so compleasely, she know just who I am. I'm the sentences Grace, I'm Yea's lace and we perfectly. She makes it so easy to be all right. So continuing the story, and I thought it would be appropriate if I brought in the two guys that were with me at the time. We were driving the truck from the house down to the old Norwegian home and Tyler comes up with this idea that this character is going to

be called Earl Nibbles Junior. And there were three of us in the cab, and now there's three of us sitting in the back of Wildflower, and no better than to hear it from the guys themselves. I got my two brothers, Parker and Tyler. So did you guys when we came up with this idea. I've been saying that it was just another It was just another idea on top of many ideas to try to get a viral video to ultimately promote an album that was going to

come out called Dirt Road Driveway. But did you guys have any idea this was going to become what our

lifestyle now? Well, the majority of my childhood was spent with a camcorder in my hand, filming you doing something, something dumb, something that we thought was funny from I remember being in middle school out at some radio station the very first time that you were out doing a radio tour for your very first single, Colorblind, way back in the day, and you being like, wouldn't it be funny if we couldn't find the radio station and just uploading videos like that, and then going in the radio

stations like, wouldn't be funny if they didn't even recognize me? Yeah? That was you. How old were you, Parker when you were filming where it's the radio station in two thousand and six. Yeah, I was probably twelve or thirteen years old. You've shown me how to use a camcorder and get into angles and stuff. So so then you fast forward from two thousand and six to twenty eleven, and so you're teenager now and you're with Tyler and we're filming

what is to become Earl Dibbles. And this is not only the story of the creation of Earl Dibbles, but almost more importantly, it's the creation of EEE, which has now become snomous synonymous with livet and and everything that we do in EUE apparel and YEEE Energy and what's what you do full time at our warehouse, Parker. You know, that's all you do is ee apparel. It's just it blows my mind that that what was about to happen as we drove this truck down to the old house

was going to become a path for our life. So the plan was, roughly, and I think we talked about it in this truck. The plan was, I'm gonna sit on the porch and I'm going to go down the list of my day, what I'm going to do during the day, my schedule, my tough schedule, and then we would go and act out all the things that I said. So, Tyler, you you had the camera, I mean, you tell it. Well. I have a question for you, Okay, was this the

first time that we ever did Earl? I know when telling this story, we tell people that you kind of did some this character in the van, But did you say those things in the van or like I explained earlier in this podcast that you called it the country guy, And it was more like driving around in the van and we would be at a gas station and we would be really low on gas, and we'd pull up to the station on empty and I'd say we got to get up and come out there and get that gas.

You put that gas in there and get going on the road. So you did that, Yeah, but it was it was kind of just to make people laugh. But

he didn't have any specific sayings at the time. Interesting, I don't remember any specific instances before we filmed that, but yeah, I mean as far as the day that we filmed it, I just remember laughing a whole lot and knowing that it was probably you know, like you said earlier, there's absolutely no way anybody would ever predict or like sit here and say, yeah, we planned for this EE to happen and for us to you know,

have this empire of EE. There's no way. But I knew that we had something special because we were laughing and I was just laughing hysterically throughout the video when I was filming it, so much that I, you know, I had to give Parker the camera for different scenes so I could, you know, get out of range of the microphone to laugh. You were laughing so hard it was making me laugh. So you could see a little

bit on the outtakes that are still on YouTube. But I would literally do five seconds of a line and then start laughing. But it was usually because I was looking at you and you were laughing, so you had to go around the building and then Parker took over. Yeah, I remember specifically the fixed the tree scene. I was laughing so much that that, you know, that whole scene was cut up so much because I was laughing. Yeah, come on, yeah, it was all so funny to me

the first time seeing that. So what happened with Yee though, I mean, because I don't really remember that, but you know, I was in the field and by the way, it was, it was what like over one hundred degrees in July and Texas it was probably one hundred and two degrees nothing, no clouds in the sky, and I was out there in these overalls, in a white tank top and almost

damn near having heat stroke running around. And I remember, especially during the gun scene, I almost had a heat stroke because first of all, just wasn't in great shape at that time, and I was running through the field with boots, with my overalls tucked in the tops of my boots, with the shotgun over my head, and you were calling out instructions like shoot from the hip, hold it above your head. And then as you're yelling, got out and I was about to die with the heat stroke.

That's when you said hold over your head and yell ye yee or whatever you said. So at the time there was a crazy fan, which we didn't have many of. Yeah, yeah, we didn't have many. And she I think she was

from Colorado or something. But the reason I knew who she was is because she used to tweet you all the time and she used to say she would just say yee, why I, And so it was kind of at the time it was kind of like an inside joke because she was you know, we saw her tweets every day, so we talked about her a lot, and we kind of we were aware of yee or whatever

that meant. And so I think at the time when you were doing all that stuff, for whatever reason, it popped in my head and I said, you'd say ee and then it turned into y e y e, not why why I? Yeah, it was, uh, that's all it was. And throughout the video we did we do that before the video? Though? Is that the first time you that was the first time. That's the first time in video? But did you do that before? No, Earl never did it.

I think it was so I just said sayee, and you said it, and how it became yeah, I said, and when you called it out, like I could have said ye or you know, but it was born that day and when we did it, you know, I'm about to have heatstroke and uh, you're you're about done, you know. And we were never thinking that that was going to carry on and that was going to be what I'm looking at you right now, but what's on your hat and your and your sweatshirt? And you know, it's just

become a thing. And I think the coolest part ABOUTE is that inn Earl itself is that we never pushed any of it like it was a marketing plan. It never was. Everything that came from that was brought by the fans. You know. The fans then started going to shows, and that's another story for another time. But the reason it took off was because fans adopted it and they started saying it, and they started having signs that said EEE.

And that's ultimately what we had to latch onto what the fans already grabbed, and so we got to give credit where it's due. For sure. I remember specifically when I created the socials for Earl. You know, I can't remember I guess I could go back and see when when his account was created. Does it say that on

the Twitter like created? I think it does. So I think it was a little bit after the video came out and we realized that we had something with this video, and for whatever reason, I wanted to create socials and create this, you know, try to catch this character we made. And so anyway, I remember knowing, like you said, did we have any idea? Well, I knew, like somewhere deep

down that we had something really special. So for whatever reason, I was walking I was in Austin at the time, and I think I was at south By Southwest, and actually it was right when I saw jay Z get out of a black, blacked out suburban. I was screenshotting the Earl Devils Junior account because it had zero followers, and I was like, one day this is going to have a lot more followers than zero. So I still got that screenshot somewhere. Yeah, it's been crazy because I've

had that feeling a couple of times. I thought Donnie was going to take off when we first came out with Donnie the other character, which by the way, Donnie has something I'm very excited about coming soon. So Donnie's not done yet. I'm not going to give up on him yet. But we finished shooting that and we went back to the house and I edited it that night, threw it together, you know, showed it to mom and dad. Dad was just laughing his ass off at this thing.

And we put it up on YouTube and it instantly got more views than we had ever seen. And this was this was when YouTube was really living on its own more than now. Instagram drives so much stuff and Twitter drives so much stuff. But back then you could just you know, YouTube was getting emailed around. I don't think Instagram was around yet, probably not. And we we saw that video after we woke up the next morning.

It had like twenty five thousand views, right something like that, and that's about ten times more than we had ever seen in day one. And it continued to gain momentum and we boom. We had we had our goal, We had our million views by what Tyler by August. I don't know if it was that quick when we release it July July. I don't think it was that quick, right, Maybe like a couple of months, maybe six months, maybe September. I think I can go back on that insights and

analytics and check maybe on YouTube. Regardless, it by far was the fastest growing, most viral video that we'd ever done, and that was the goal for that. That's that's what we always wanted. And from that point on we went on a little bit of a chase. You know, me and you always talk about farming and hunting, and when we made Early we were hunting big time. We were out in the woods hunting. And then when you finally get something, you got to pull back and you got

to farm a little bit. You get a farm what you killed. And that's what we did. We farmed Earl and to some extent we still farm Earl. And what that is? Did you plan it? Yeah? What happened after that was a big learning experience because we got a viral video and nothing changed for me though as far as anything. I like, you created that Earl account and it got a few followers, but we didn't really know how to grow it yet. Wasn't the first ever Earl post, Like,

we didn't know what to do with him. We were like, so is it just gonna be like earls on these socials? And so I remember when whenever we first created his Instagram. It was like just a picture of a feedback and it was like my pillow for the night. Really. Yeah, it was like like morning y'all from his bed and it was just like a picture of his little blanket on that dirty floor. Dude. It's all his socials and himself. Like, there's different seasons in evolution, like when you came on board,

like when I was running. I don't know if I'm supposed to say that when I was like doing a lot of his tweets and socials. Yeah, everybody knows that if you see an Earl Divil's tweet or Instagram post, it's one of three brothers. You know what's funny about that. Back in the beginning of Earl, when you I was so like OCD, when you were playing your show, your ninety minute set, I wouldn't ever tweet from Earl because

I just had a feeling. I was like, Man, if somebody sees you tweet, they're gonna know it's not you. So I never would. I think it's fair to say that. I don't know, I do not post everything from Earle, but it comes from one of the three brothers. Yeah, yeah,

every one hundred percent, every tweet. But what I was saying was the different seasons of Earl, Like when I was running the socials, I had, you know, my own twist on what I would do, and I was doing so many different things, and so I felt like at some point I was getting a little careless and I

would just like repost a meme. And when we brought you on, Parker, you just totally every thing exploded because you were able to really focus and do more creative content and you know, real like use Earl for things as opposed to like doing meme stuff like I was doing, like which was great at the time, but yeah, it's

just fun to see it continue to grow. So that that that first few months after Earl, we saw the video go viral, but nothing changed in my live show, like I'm still going out there and playing you know, colorblind and living like a lone star, and and nothing, nothing was growing that way, and there was a huge disconnect. And so I think the first was the first thing we did with Earl make a T shirt? Is that the first thing we did? Not sure because we made

the T shirt country boy? Is that what it said, you know, the country Boy t shirt? Tough schedule? Yeah, that was the first one. It said I'm a country boy on the front and on the back it said I got a tough schedule and listed I Wake up. Put a good dip there. We still sell it. Yeah, well that's one of lightly. We don't. So what happened was you'll you'll remember, but we got a cease and assist letter. Oh yeah, we changed it. Yet within a few weeks of releasing this country Boy, we actually sold

a lot of them. For for who we were at the time, we sold a lot of this I'm a country Boy, I Got a tough schedule, And then we made a pink one that said I'm a country Girl. I Got a tough schedule. So we made two, and we got a cease and assist letter from this company that had trademarked country Boy and country Girl. Yeah I reached dude. I saw a tweet a couple of days ago from somebody that said, I couldn't do this because this company sent me a season to cists from that

same company, Like apparently that's all they do. Yeah, really shitty, But they don't. They don't have any shirts of their own, really, they just they just prevent everyone else from doing it. That's how they That's how they survived. They have a girl. Okay, well it's but crappy probably, but I mean they went after I know they went after Luke Bryan when he did country Girl Shake It from Me or something like that.

He had a shirt and they stopped him from We have a shout out to our Instagram account called at yee Girls just hit ten thousand followers. But one of our yee girls, she has a very successful country girl page and it was called country Girl Paradise, and they sent her a season desist for her Instagram account, so she had to change it to like country girl. Sorry

country gal. Anyway, Well, what's really important about that, though, is that we that if that hadn't have happened, if that strange company that trademarked country boy and country Girl, if they had never reached out to us, then we never would have grown into what has become Yeee Apparel. Because what that did is it opened our eyes. We realized that, you know, you can't just make a T shirt and sell it. You have to do your research,

you have to trademark things. And the first thing we did is we changed that shirt to I got a tough schedule, which is now still we still sell it right and it's still our we call it our OG. And from then on we had to if we're gonna make a T shirt, we needed to research if it was trademarked or not. And once again it's just us, this little mom and pop company. But the biggest deal that happened was I was driving through Lamb Passes, Texas,

and I'll never forget it. There was a truck dealership and I've said this story on the radio a lot because it impacted me. But in the windshield on every truck in the front that's parked along the road that said ye ye, And it hit me like, oh my god, we've we've got to get control of ee or somebody is going to trademark it and use it against us and then we'll never be able to say it or put it on anything. And so we we instantly went to an attorney. What did we even have one? Is

that where we found Jonathan? Now Dad told us he said, hey, you need to trademark this. Yeah, So we went and we reached out to an attorney, which we didn't have. We we found one. They were a friend of a friend who ended up being awesome. I think I did it through like the US dot go okay, okay for that then whatever, And it was like five thousand dollars you remember that. Yeah, it was something, and it was

an idea. We had more money than we possibly had an in a bank account, and we we freaked out because we realized we we either had to do that and drain everything we had to put it into a stupid trademark, but knowing that if we didn't do it, somebody else was going to do it and hold it against us, So we pulled everything we had together and Dagam trademarked yee yee, and then we trademarked Earl Dibbles Junior and put a good dip in and crack a cold one so we could still say all of those things.

And at the time it seemed like this is one of the stupidest business moves we've ever made. I mean, all this money costs more than my whole van and trailer that we're traveling with. But now looking back, you

know that it saved our ass for sure. And then the last piece of that puzzle was the live show, because it's still twenty eleven and there was there was a moment that I'll never forget a moment when some guy came up to me and meet and greet, and he told me something that that would forever change how I operated. May have in the city trying to take my rifle. There's something that he needs to understand. Second Amendments, only second to the Bible. He'll have to pull it

out of my dead hands. Yeah, he have opinions. I don't have to agree with him. I ain't nothing wrong with me and he'll ben every Oh no, no, but I think that he she no, no, no, how I roll. I'm a survivor. You damn right. I'm a fighter. I'm a big box kidd and try out breaking junior disciple. So don't you be offended when granddad needs defended. It's fact I'm waiting, says, I'm staying break. Don't tread on me. No,

don't tread on me. No. So I'm sitting here with my two brothers, Tyler and Parker, and uh, where could I find you guys or where could everyone find you guys on social media? Because both of y'all are still single and I do need a yee sister and some yege nieces and nephews. So where could we find you, guys, Parker, you can just pass it. Mine is mine Instagram is just at Tyler Smith eleven at Tyler Smith won one. Mine's Parker double underscore. Smith Fancy on Instagram, formerly known

as sugar Smith. Why were you Sugar Smith? Because I'm sweet you all right? That's still my Twitter sugar Smith eleven. That's like a heavyweight boxing camp. So I've told I just got through saying that. That guy came up to me in a meet and greet and it changed the way I looked at everything. Do you know what I'm about to say, Parker, No, I've never heard this. Okay, So guy came up to me and he goes, keep in mind Earl's out. He's mildly viral. I think he

might have even had a million views. But my show is still is exactly the same as it was before Earl. So this guy goes, man, you're a funny guy, and I was like, oh thanks, man, he goes, but I don't see that in your show. And I was like, oh shit, Earl has to be in the show. That's the only answer. We can't have a viral video that's going crazy and I go out here and play, you know, sleeping on the interstate. We needed something more than that, and that's when I knew I need to write Earl

a song. Was it immediately, he's going to write a song, or he's gonna sing? Or was it maybe I'll bring him up for a comedy bit in the middle of the show. People always said that, and it was always going to be a song, because I've never looked at myself as a comedian, and people in the early days thought that they would go to my show and see a comedy bit and then a concert, And to this day, it's never been that, and I don't think it ever

could be. It was always going to be Earl talks to people through his music in public, which, ironically, weren't you Variety's top ten comedians to watch in like twenty fifteen it was, which I think is I think it's a kind of a big deal. And then all nine of them went on tour together and you're the only one he had. Variety named the top ten comics to watch, and I was one of them. And whenever that happens, evidently in the comedy world, they go on tour together.

It wasn't a. They didn't all go on tour together. They just took the top ten comics for that year. I think it was twenty sixteen. I was looking it up, but they invited you. It's basically like an award show. First award show we would ever win anything, and we couldn't go. So nine of them went except for me

because I was playing a concert. And I think to this day that probably there was whoever that guy the runner up like number eleven on that variety list probably hates me forever because he would have been in the top ten and would have gone to this award show and just started his career. We started getting offers from our agency that people were submitting offers to William Morris for you to go do stand up for pretty substantial amount of money. But you know, we didn't ever obviously

do that. Yeah, So that was another another turning point in my career because as that's taking off, I have a decision to make. I could I could write Earl a song, or I could pursue comedy. I knew, I knew that the answer to that it was and there's no way it was going to do that. There's no way I was going to try to chase some some

comedy gigs. But but what happened was I decided to go back and chase the Granger music along with it with an Earl song and uh, and so I dove in and I started writing, and I started trying to complete the projects that that motivated the entire Earl thing to start from the from the very beginning, and that was what was going to become Dirt Road Driveway. And that is kind of the beginning of my story. I mean, Dirt Road Driveway for a lot of people is the

first album that they ever heard from me. Earl was the first thing they ever saw from me. But that is a story for another podcast. But I could mark this is almost the beginning this story. This time period at the end of twenty eleven was the beginning. It was the beginning of a new era. It was the beginning of a popular band that I was about to be part of, a band that actually put people in venues and was kind of in demand in the small club areas. What's really fun is we still consider it

the beginning. Yeah, what it could grow into. Yeah, that's what keeps me going is waking up knowing that this is just the beginning we have. We have so much more to do. We have the very first ever You've already said this, right, Granger Earl song and Granger song like them together. People have seen them kind of like. We've done a few videos for fun together, but like never a music video where they're together in a song

that they're actually singing together. Yeah. Marks of twenty and nineteen, the first ever Granger and Earl song together, both on the same track and the music video we have it planned for. We're shooting in a couple of weeks and it should just be insane. It's gonna be the most epic video of all time, it says Tyler Smith at Tyler Smith left. All right, that's all I got. Thanks so much for having us. Thank you guys, thanks for listening to the Granger Smith Podcast. We'll see you next time.

It happens like that out of the Blue scat Listner Blue last year. When it happens like that, nothing to Louis turns right into you, Julie, Well you can do just to keep her around here. The moon goes down in your back, into your house. One thing is doing another, you loving each other, and when looking you never lived back it happens like like that. Thanks for listening. If you wanna support me or any other artist, the best

way is to see us on tour. Go to grangersmith dot com backslash tour, See you down the road.