My Worst Night on Tour

I've fallen off the stage, broken ribs, punctured lungs, dislocated shoulders. I've got eight stitches in the front of my forehead from running into a speaker one night. If you tour as long as we have, you're bound to have crazy stories. This one is none of those that I mentioned. This is something I haven't talked about ever before, and it's probably the worst night we've ever had on tour, and it's worth telling. I'm very grateful that this podcast has

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dot com. That's Features f E E t U r E s dot com promo code Granger ten dollars off your first pair. I am a little embarrassed to tell you about this story. I'm a little embarrassed to tell you about the most embarrassing slash, the worst night of my touring life. But like I said, it's worth telling. New album comes out September twenty fifth. Thank you guys for pre ordering, pre saving, getting ready, I'm gonna start teasing more and more of that music as we go.

Welcome to the Grangersmith podcast. Rolled the intro did change in D much times and long line by four of uspan down going back, it's range cogation. So the worst night in my career, the worst night on tour. I had forgotten about this, and I guess it's hard to forget, but maybe I wanted to forget about it. But this was Oklahoma City. I don't I don't remember exactly the year.

I think it was around two thousand and nine, twenty ten, somewhere in that that era of me tour, and we were in a van in trailer and we were playing the Wormy Dog Saloon in Bricktown, Oklahoma City. I don't even know if Warming Dog is still around, So you guys comment below if you're if you know, if you're from there, and you know if Worming Dog is still around. But man, what a place that was Warme Dog Saloon. You can imagine by that title what kind of place

this was. We were not very popular. We would usually draw if we played Oklahoma City, we would draw one hundred people. I'd say it probably held about eight hundred and we were good for drawing a hundred. So then you add in the people that would have been there on a normal night anyway, on a Friday or Saturday, maybe that's fifty. So we would end up like one hundred and fifty people. That's to put in perspective what kind of band we were at the time. We did

have an opening act. I remember it was Kyle Park and Kyle was opening for us, and I'll never forget his face when he witnessed what happened. It all started when we went to eat dinner before the show. We went to a Mexican restaurant in Oklahoma City and I got shrimp enchiladas. A lot of you might know where this is going already, but shrimp inchiladas. And as soon as I got back to the hotel. This is like before we were on a tour bus. This is when

this is what our routine would be. We'd go in, we'd load in soundcheck, go eat some dinner, go back to the hotel and rest for a little bit, and then get up there about an hour before showtime. So we go back to the hotel and my stomach just started feeling it started feeling not right. You know that feeling when you eat something bad, and it's different. It's a different kind of something wrong with my stomach feeling than any other normal time, and it comes on quick.

So it's not like the flu or it's food poisoning, as you all know what that feelings. It's like, it's very different. So I'm thinking I'm in denial. I'm thinking, oh no, not tonight, not now, which is a funny way to think, because we tour all the time. Besides the shutdown we've had in twenty twenty, touring happens all the time. So you just have to be good, you know, if you have if you have the flu or some kind of sickness, you either have to play through it.

Like I said, this is before pandemic days, but you either have to play through it or god forbid, you have to cancel for something like that, which I never have. I've never canceled, ever canceled a show because of a sickness. I've always played through it, and I've had I've had some nightmare ish shows playing through a sickness. And the worst of that is when you have some kind of sinus infection or some kind of lung problem that really

bad out allergies where you actually can't sing. And so I've been through shows where I have to sing everything. I have to sing a different melody to these songs, usually laying off the high parts of the show. So if I have to sing high melodies, I would sing the lower harmony of that particular chorus, and that sucks. And usually, luckily, people don't really know I'm doing that on purpose. They just think maybe I'm kind of loose with my melodies that day, or maybe they don't even

notice at all. Maybe they're just happy to be there, partying in a concert environment. And that hasn't happened very often. It's only happened a couple times. I can remember this night. This wasn't allergies, This wasn't I couldn't control my voice, I couldn't sing high notes. This wasn't any of that. This was a stomach bug. This was food poisoning. This was bad shrimp enchiladas. And I felt that, and I was in denial. I was just thinking, no, please, not that,

not that something else, indigestion. We'll blame it on that something. Maybe I've got a cold coming on and tomorrow i'll be I won't be that good, but I can get through tonight. No, it just kept getting worse and worse. And I wasn't really telling the band about it because I just I didn't want them to be thinking about something that was going to be my problem, not theirs. So we get to the show, I'm just all kind of grumbly, you know, my stomach's just kind of gurgling.

You know that feeling I go on. What I remember is the first song going out there, and the lights from the stage were on me, and those lights felt like they were a thousand degrees. It felt like I was out in the hot sun. And so I started sweating just from the slight temperature change of being in the lights. I started sweating. My forehead has just started dripping. And I made it through probably about three songs, heating

up like that and starting to sweat. And then I felt my stomach and I felt that feeling when there's no turning back, you know what I mean? You know that feeling when you think, am I going to throw up? And there's a lot of am I am I, am I? And then there's this there's this point of no return when you think, okay, I am I'm definitely going to throw up, and I need a place. It's like that, you know when a dog goes off to die, they need to go find a place to die. That's kind

of where I was. Where am I going to throw up? I have a ninety minute show ahead of me, and I'm three songs in, I'm gonna throw up. Well, once that thought, I don't know about you, but once that thought gets in my head, I'm going to It doesn't take long after that. So I remember being play in this song, and we have these microphones on the stage. We call them talkback mics, and these we wear an ear monitors, so it's in our their earbuds, inside our ears.

So I go to the talkback mic, which only talks to the band, not the crowd, and I say, I say, just vamp. Vamp means just play, just keep playing, just keep making up stuff as you go, no singing, just instrumentation, just play just vamp. And I leave the stage and I go out back, and luckily, hindsight, this was a

little bit a little bit of a blessing. Luckily, there's a back door to the stage with steps that go down to the alley, and there's dumpsters out there, so hopefully you guys are listening on Monday morning and not eating right now. I don't want to gross anybody out, but I go back to the dumpster and I throw up, and it's, you know, like in my ears. I hear the band. They're just playing and it seems like they're playing for an hour. It was probably like an extra

thirty or forty five seconds. And I come back on and you know that feeling right, like right when you relieve yourself, you feel good. You're like, okay, whoa man, that was good. I feel better. I feel better. So I got it back up and I finished that song, started another song, started another song, and by by about two and a half songs later, I felt it again, and then it started. The whole process starts over mentally, it's like I think I'm gonna go again. No I am,

I am gonna go again. So we get to the guitar solo, go back to talk back, Hey guys, vamp. By the way, nobody knows what's happening, not the crowd and not my band. No one knows that I'm going out. And so then after that one, it was just dry heaves, go out to the dumpster, just dry heave. They're they're in there playing in my ears. I go back, all right, okay, I think I feel good. I feel good, go back in, start over. Two songs later, I go back. Guys, we

played twenty songs that night. That's about an average amount of songs we play in ninety minutes, about twenty songs every two songs. I was going out to the dumpster and just dry heaving my brains out, just like so dried, nothing's coming out, you know, just oh, terrible, terrible, terrible. And I was going back in and it probably every time I came in. My face is more pale, I'm weaker, I'm sweating profusely, and I think, you know, the crowd

started to know something's wrong with this guy. The band definitely knew by then by the time I left the second time, Like maybe the first time they thought I just had to pee really really bad and misjudge my time my bladder. But by the second time they knew that's not in my personality. This is not something I normally do. I look over and I see Kyle Park the opening act, staring at me, just wide eyed, like

what is going on? Maybe people thought I was a methoad like, I just really had to get my fixed. I was shooting up Heroin. I don't know. I don't know what they thought. I didn't. I didn't talk to many people that night, but every two songs I would go and dry heave, So like ten times out of twenty songs, I went out there and humiliated, embarrassed, and the emotion that trump's all those is just sick. I was just sick, and that is an emotion at some level.

I was so sick, and we finished the shot. Never been happier to finish the show, but we went all the way through. We played all the way to the end, and by then the band knew, like, man, he's getting this guy's he's sick. He must have got food poisoning. So we were in the van, and in the back of our van we had the two bench seats. It's a it was a Chevy thirty five hundred Express van, so it has four bench seats and we still have

that van away. I took the two bench seats out in the back and made bunks, so we had four bunks in the back. So I was laying back there in a bunk and my head was in the back of the bunk right where the van door's open, and so I had to right off the show. I went straight there, you know, boots on, everything on, all my clothes on. I'd go get in the bunk and I leave that back van door cracked and I would just open it up, dry heave, close it, open it up,

dry heave, close it. And the bands loading the trailer, and which is also another thing for me, I always helped them load the trailer, so losing two more hands from me was made the loading take even longer. And by this time, a couple of hours have gone by since I've been on stage, and I was just exhausted, so tired, completely dehydrated. But every time someone would bring me like a little sipagatorad, I would throw it up dry heave or it would just come you know, the

gatorway would come right back. And then we drove home from Oklahoma City to Central Texas Is. I believe we were living in College Station. That's about six hours six hour drive. So for six hours I had a little bucket back there and nothing was coming out but air, but I was dry heaving the whole way home. Finally caught a little bit of sleep, made it home to College Station, Texas, crawled out of the van. God blessed the band for picking up where I left off and

picking up the slack and taking turns driving. I was always a big part of taking turns driving and helping load up and navigating home. And I wasn't a part of anything. And when I went to bed that night, I slept like a baby and woke up the next day and it was fine and lived through the worst day on tour, and I pray to God. Like I said in the intro, I have broken ribs, punctured lungs, dislocated shoulders, got stitches, numerous other injuries, and I would

take any of those over I've lost my voice. I would take any of those over having the stomach bug, food poisoning and trying to play a ninety minute show was absolutely terrifying. And I hope I didn't gross you guys out. It's good to tell the story. I'm going to answer some questions that you guys sent in and I harvested these questions from Instagram, and I set something

up this is new for this podcast. Today. I set up an email address and this is Granger Smith Podcast at gmail dot com, Grangersmith Podcast at gmail dot com. So if you have a question, email that and put question in the subject line and ask your question. And so then I could start going through Allstar instead of

going to Instagram all the time. I'll grab questions from your email, and I think that'll be a better way for me to And you could also write more because I've noticed that people when they go on Instagram they can't there's only a certain amount of characters. They can't say their full questions sometimes, So you can write a whole paragraph if you want, and I will read these personally. This is not going to be fielded by a producer

of any kind. I'll go on and check this email personally and go through these questions and then I'll use these for future podcast. This first question comes from Brandon on Instagram. He says, what are your plans for the truck after it's restored? And he's talking about our series on this channel on YouTube called Restoring Earl Dibble's Old Truck, and we are we see the finish line, we see the light at the end of the tunnel. This is Restoring Earl's Truck and after it's finished. First of all,

I'll answer that two ways. Brain. And first of all, I'm gonna drive this truck. I'm gonna drive this truck a lot. It's probably going to become my main vehicle. Doesn't have air conditioning, so I'll probably use it as my main vehicle in the fall and winter, and when it heats up again in twenty twenty one in the early summer, I might go back to an air conditioning truck.

But man, I'm gonna drive the heck of it. But another way I'll answer this is what are we gonna do with the channel after we finish with Butch and Bull my two bus drivers. What are we going to do when we finish the truck and we're gonna start something else, We're gonna start restoring something else. So comment below, shoot me an email Crangersmith Podcast at gmail, and let

me know what you'd like to see us restore. My thought is that we moved to sticking with the theme of mom and Dad's ranch where I got the old truck from out of the barn. I'm thinking about bringing that old Massy Ferguson. It's we have an old Massy two four oh and it's a song that I it's a tractor. I've used a lot in my life. It was dad's and I've used it in a bunch of songs. There's a song I have called Tractor that talks about

this particular Massy two four oh. It's in several music videos of mine, most known for the music video Tractor, and it's also driven by Earl Dibbles a bunch and this is just an old tractor that's kind of falling apart. So I'm thinking about getting Butch and Bull and bringing that me old Massy into the shop here at EEEE Apparel and starting that. So let me know if that's something you'd like to see or maybe we should do something else. Here's a question that says, what's the story

with your food poisoning? Amber mentioned it on The Smiths. There you go. Woul answers that one for you. Tori. By the way, if you're if you're listening to this podcast and you haven't seen The Smiths, that's our family vog channel and it has a separate YouTube channel called The Smiths and love that channel. Very passionate about it. It's much more it's much more personal usually uh, and it involves my family and it's a very personal vlog style.

We're gonna start building a farmhouse and restore and building that farmhouse. I'll do a series on this channel and on the Smiths as well. Here's a question that's ironic that I kind of answered earlier too, is what do you do if you get a bad sore throat and you're on tour? That is, uh, something I got to work through. I gotta play. I don't cancel shows because of sore throats, so we keep on playing. Sometimes I have to change the melodies, but it sucks. I could

use different different things to spray in my throat. Sometimes you could spray vodka, yeah, literally on the back of your throat, and it gives it just a little bit of energy to get you through several songs. How do you feel when you see EEE stickers on cars when driving? I feel great. I love seeing EEE stickers on cars.

And I screenshot of this to remind myself that one of these days we've wanted to see one at the right time, the right place where maybe we're in the bus and we could actually stop the bus and it would be amazing if we saw a EE truck, a truck with the EE sticker parked at a house in a driveway, and we could literally stop the bus and all get out and go knock on the door of that house and see who drives that truck. I think that would be the coolest thing ever, and it would

have to be the right place, right time. But if you have if you have a sticker on your truck or on your car, park it in your driveway and one of these days we'll the bus in and come say hot to you. It's a good question from Bailey on Instagram. It says, what can I do to teach myself to think in the present and not overthink the future. It's a great question, and it's a great it's a

great strategy. And living in the present is such a such an important aspect to sanity, and it's it's important when I mention the concept of living in the present, because there's a difference between frivolous expedient living, like don't worry about anything, just live in the present, do it, do whatever comes to your mind. There's a there's carelessness

to that thought. And so I'm pretty sure what Bailey means is the more conscious present living, where you plan for the few, but you are aware that it can change, and you're not devastated if it does. You're not completely thrown off the rails if the future you plan for doesn't happen, because the fact is it might not. It's not guaranteed. You can't change the past, you can't guarantee the future. So the only thing you can control is right now, in the present. So how do you teach yourself?

The question is what can I do to teach myself to think in the present and not overthink the future. The first thing that comes to my mind is devices phones, and you have to limit your phone time because it creates an unconsciousness in the present for your brain. There's a lot of things in life that become such a distraction that it creates a literal unconsciousness of where you

are and what you're doing. It creates an unintentional daydream where you are transported from the present moment to whatever you're focusing on, your scrolling or on your mindless tiktoking, whatever your vice is. So limit your time on there and start with the mornings. In the evenings, those are precious times. You can't spend your first waking hours scrolling social media because it's going to take you way off your path. And then the same thing, you can't do

it at night right before you go to bed. You need to give yourself about an hour, so for me, an hour before you go to sleep. So for me, I don't sleep with my phone in the same room. I have a charger plugged into the wall outside of my bedroom that forces me to leave the phone side at night and in the morning, so when I wake up, I can't just reach forard on my bedside and start scrolling. There is an addiction to that. I feel it. Everyone

feels it. And then at night you don't have a tendency to sit there and stare at that screen right before you're so tired. You got to close your eyes and then you put it on your nightstand. So I get it out of my room. I get it completely away from me, to get away from that kind of temptation. Part of that problem is just that blue light. Looking at that light. And we've all heard about this blue light problem of staring at screens and what that does

to your brain as far as keeping you awake. But it's such a huge problem in distracting you from being having a conscious living. Another thing you could do is whenever you lay your head down on the pillow, which is such a huge tendency at that time to start worrying or planning for tomorrow. Like you hit your head on the pillow and the lights are out and you close your eyes and you think, Okay, what do I need to do in the morning again? I need to Okay, I need to make that I need to return this

phone call, I need to pay this bill. Oh and on my way to work, I've got to remember to put air in my right front tire that's low. And then oh and I forgot I'm gonna have a I need to go to the dentist at three o'clock, so that means I need to take a short lunch break. I'm you know, these are things that are not necessary when you get in bed, when you close your eyes. So I have a strict rule in my brain, like I'm not thinking about tomorrow once I lay my head down.

So how do you get away from that? Sometimes it comes all the way down to focusing on your breathing, focusing on instead of thinking about tomorrow, thinking about the breaths coming in, the breath's going out, the chest rises, the chest falls, the belly rises, the belly falls, the air conditioner whirling out of event. You think about things that are present for you right now. It's also a really good way to fall asleep, and then during the day you could do the same thing during the day.

Driving is a good example. So many times when we're driving, were so distracted by daydreaming about the future or reminiscing about the past. It's easy to let miles go by in the car and you go, man, I forgot where I was the last five minutes. I've been unconscious. And I've heard people say to grab that present moment back

when you're driving. Sometimes you got to put both hands on the steering wheel and grip that steering wheel and feel your hands and feel that vibration of the seat you're sitting in, feel the moment you're in, and feel your hands on that steerwell, feel what that vinyl feels like in your grip, and that present thought of being right here, right now. Not where I'm going, not that I'm running late, not that I'm in traffic. This ruins my day, but I'm right here. I'm right here in

the seat driving my car. Those are ways to hack your brain into not overthinking the future. I'm gonna take a quick break. This is an interesting question that says, did you ever break up with your wife before you married her? Amber and I have an interesting story, and I guess we have an interesting relationship. But I met Amber on the music video shoot, my very first music video shoot. She was the love interest in that music

video called Don't Listen to the Radio. So you can you can go back and look at the two thousand and nine music video of mine and see us on our first day, the first day we met, the first day we knew each other, and we fell in love.

I fell in love with that girl. And we thought that maybe, or at least we worried that that love or that infatuation we felt for each other was because of the environment we were in and because the fairy tale set up that we were living in for that music video, and so we wanted to at least I wanted to be cautious moving forward into a real relationship.

And she had a boyfriend at the time, So the first thing that needed to happen was she needed to break up with it with her boyfriend, because regardless of me or how she felt for me, she had a wondering eye, meaning she wasn't totally satisfied or happy, I should say, with the guy she was with. So she did she broke up with that guy, and or three weeks later or so, we met up for coffee at Starbucks after a show of mine, and we shut that

place down. They closed down and put put chairs on top of the tables while we were still there with they kicked us out, and we had a really good connection. And it was just a few months later after that I bought her a ring for her, a wedding ring, and then a few months later after that I proposed, and then a few months later after that we got married. So all within a year of meeting, we were already married. The funny thing is in that video don't listen to

the radio. The song is about trying to forget a girl. So I'm remembering in the video scenes of us in our good times and scenes of us in our bad times in a fictitious relationship. And we had a fake fight on set on in the video, So if you watch the video, you'll see like a fake fight where she's mad and she's thrown clothes into a suitcase and she leaves in a hurry and flies off in her car, and that is the only time that that's ever really happened to us. We've never gotten into a big, drag

out fight. We've never had a big heated argument, and I don't know why. I don't know why. I know why from my perspective, because she's an amazing girl that is very patient with me and takes my side a lot when maybe she shouldn't take my side, but I do that in return to her. So what comes first her her being so patient with me and me repaying that back to her or vice versa. I don't know,

and it's irrelevant. The fact is we just have a really good relationship and we have for ten years now, eleven years now, ten years married, and I'm very grateful for that. I feel like she's the biggest blessing of my life because relationships I had before her weren't like it. We fought all the time, and she talks about her past relationships they fought all the time. So it's not something in my personality that is just non confrontational to a girl, and same with her. It's just something that

when we come together, our personalities work. It's a match that's not to say that we don't disagree, but we never let an argument because we want to be right get in the way of our affection for each other and our passion for keeping each other happy and content, and our fear of ever damaging with words the other person damaging Amber with words is a much greater fear of mine than me just being wrong in any in any given situation. And so when we we don't see

something eye to eye, we talk it out lovingly. And that's just how it's been. Some people might think, well, how could you have a relationship if you don't have passion. I love passionate fighting, because then we make up and it's amazing, and then we're better than we were before because we had we let it all out and we had a big, drag out fight, and then we had this this beautiful makeup with each other and then we're better. Hey, man, that's amazing. If that works for you, my hat's off

to you. And if you're truly getting better each time that happens, that's great. But at the same time, I don't have something lacking in my relationship because we don't have passionate fighting. So that's the way it is, and to answer your question specifically here do you did you ever break up with your wife before you married her? So that brings up an interesting point here because you could be listening and in a relationship without being married and you fight all the time, and to that, I

would say, maybe you should break up for good. And sometimes that's that's a hard reality to think about. But that's what I would have done, and that's what I would do now before I was married. Now when you're married, it's different. You got to work through things. That's your obligation is too, for better or for worse. You got to you got to find a way, even if it's

through passionate fighting. You've got to find a way to make it work because you have committed yourself to this other person in front of your family and before God. So marriage is very sacred to me. I believe marriage is a sacred thing. So you don't have that luxury

just to back out as you would. But if you're dating and you're just fight all the time, and you might you might be in love, because I believe you can be in love with many people in your life, and then sometimes the love is small and then it could grow to a massive spousal love, or sometimes it could just fizzle away. I think love my belief can you could have a strong infatuation that feels like love and might even be love that doesn't turn into a

lifetime of love. It could go away. So if you're in a situation where you fight all the time, I think you could break up, and you're good unless you're married. Don't do that if you're married, But if you're if you're just dating, I think you'd be good with that. You might be better off. You got to be kind of selfish when you're dating. You can't be selfish when you're married. It's all about the other person when you're married. But when you're dating and you're single, Hey, you could

be selfish. That's okay, you need it's actually more fair to that your partner if you are selfish at the beginning, it's only fair to him or her that you're making the right decisions for yourself so that you could give your full self to them later. Does that make sense? This question says, why didn't you build your new house

on your farm you already had? Just curious and I think you're talking about the eee farm where I am right now, why didn't I build a house right here on the eeee farm, right next Toyeee Apparel and a couple answers it's probably a good question. This farm is

not all mine. I own this with my brothers, So it would be a serious decision to make a three way decision if I'm just going to build my house right out here in the front of the property, because I would be carving out a homestead in the middle of a commercial property that I don't fully own, and what happens if they don't totally agree with that. That creates problems big time. So another reason is there's people that work here. There's delivery services, there's a you know,

it's very busy here at the Eee Farm. There's people coming in and out all the time. And when I go home, I always want a home that is not business related all the time. So I wouldn't want to live in a spot with my family where it's like, well, Granger's not here, but he's home, and it's just a couple hundred yards right that way you can just walk down to his house. I would rather keep that separate.

So although it would make financial sense to build a house right here, it doesn't make a total sense for me as a human being. Owen Dixon on Instagram says, how do you stay motivated? What helps you push through and do your best? It's a great question, and it's a tricky one. How do you stay motivated? What helps you push through and do your best? Discipline is the first thing that comes to mind. Discipline in my daily habits. It's easy to get off the track of motivation if

you don't have a squared away schedule. When you don't have to have a squared away schedule, meaning if you've got to be at work at eight o'clock and you got and you get off at five whatever, that's your schedule.

That's what your boss makes for you. But when you could choose on a Saturday or Sunday, whatever your schedule might be, you have to kind of be careful with that because I choose me personally to set my alarm the same time every day, and then if something happens, like like we work till on a music video till two or three o'clock in the morning, I'm gonna look at my alarm and go, uh, probably not gonna get up at that time. I'm gonna I'm gonna try to

get my seven hours in here. But I like to set my schedule and get up at the same time, eat the same kind of breakfast, and that keeps me motivated to stay on task to eventually do my best. And I want to set instead of setting specific goals, I like to set intentions so that I'm gonna wake up and my intention is to do this and this and this and this ultimately to have the best day that I can, instead of worrying about next week or

next month or this entire year. It's hard to have a new Year's resolution and say, in twenty twenty one, I'm gonna do this. It's way easier to go day by day. I have three hundred and sixty five days in twenty twenty one, and each of those days, I'm gonna set an intention to be my best, to hold my tongue when I want to say something sharp to someone else, to listen more, to learn more. Maybe that's with reading or listening to people that know more about

life than I do. I'm going to be more involved with my family. You could set intentions like that, I'm gonna be the best I can for Ye Apparel and for my tour and for the new album, and so to me, that starts with some kind of regimented schedule. It's the first thing I want to do to stay motivated. Otherwise I'm gonna go probably just stay in bed for a while. Let me parlay that right into the next question. Do you ever struggle with anxiety? And how do you

overcome it? That question really parlays into what I've said a couple times on this podcast already. Anxiety is a tough thing, it's a dangerous thing, and it could be triggered by many things. The many things includes things that you can't control, and you really have to open yourself up to life, the struggle of life, and know that it's real, know that it exists, and be open to accepting that struggle as part of the plan. What do

I mean by that? I mean today I could come in here thinking, Kevin, I got to knock out this podcast. I gotta do a bunch of cameos. I gotta do, I gotta do a promo for the new album. I gotta go in there and I got to do we have to do a photo shoot for the new apparel line. I have to meet with my brothers and we have a conference call with the new product we're gonna put out, and on my way to the farm, a terrible storm comes in and blows out the road ahead of me

and my truck gets flooded. Whatever. That is something that is inevitable. The struggle, the roadblock is inevitable, and I can't control it. But what I can control is how I react to it. Now, I could I could look at that as like my day's ruined, everything's ruined, or I could say, well, this sucks, but I expect a certain amount of suck with life because I'm a human. I expect a certain amount of struggle because I'm a human.

And if you could open yourself up to that, that's amazing. Now, at the same time, there are certain anxieties that you can control, right, So you've got a bunch of things coming in that you can't, and you've got a bunch of things coming in that you can. So let's focus on the ones that you can. So let's go back

to what I said about the cell phone. The cell phone you can control being addicted to social media and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling mindlessly, becoming unconscious at times that you don't need them morning, night, your lunch break, whatever that might be. You can control that. You can control when that phone rings and it's that someone that you didn't they there's someone in your life that drives

you crazy. Every time they call, they always have a problem, they want you to fix it, or they just want to complain about something and expect you to soak it in and listen. So you can control that too. You could either an you don't have to answer that call anymore. Be you straight up tell them listen, we'll throw mom and their moms are notorious for this from people I

talk to. Mine is not. I love my mom, But you can get a call from your mom and go, you know what, Mom, I don't have space right now for this problem. I love you, I want to be here for you, but I have heard you complain about this situation, and I don't have space with everything going on with me right now to help you walk you through this problem. It's only going to make me worse. And I need to be my best for you so

that when you you really need me. I need to be recharged and ready for your problem so I can handle it. And right now I'm not. I'm dealing with some anxiety. I got some stuff going on work, I got stuff at home, and I can't be my best if I absorb your problem. So you gotta with that right now. Everyone's got that person in your life. You got to deal with that person right now. It could be you don't have to text them back right now. Right they text you and there's this long text and

it's this big problem and you're part of it. You don't got to reply right now. You could wait till tomorrow to reply. You could train them to know that you're not going to come at them and help them fix their own problem right now, or their perception of how they think you messed up and you did them wrong. You don't have to fix that right now. Right that's a big deal. Let's deal with that together. Okay. This question says, will there be an actual CD talking about

the new album or is that too old school these days? Yes, there will be an actual CD. So this new album is divided up into two volumes, Volume one in volume two. Volume one is gonna come out September twenty fifth. Volume two is gonna come out around Thanksgiving. Now, when volume two comes out, all of the songs from volume one will join it, and they will combine into one big digital piece and one CD and one vinyl, so around

Thanksgiving it'll all suit. It's called Country Things Volume one and Country Things Volume two, but by Thanksgiving it'll just be Country Things and it'll be all of them together vinyl, CD, digital. This question says, will you be releasing new music with Earl Diuvilis Junior anytime soon? Yes? Yes, yes, So this new Volume one will have a song featuring Earl with me singing with Earl, and Volume two will have two Earl songs by himself, so yes, I will hang in there.

We'll be doing music videos with those. Also, here's one and it says, what's your greatest advice for someone who wants to do country music. It's a hard one to even find a place to start with that question, but I would I would highly suggest staying in your hometown. Staying in your hometown. Don't move to LA or New York or Nashville. Stay where you are, build your following where you are. I can't I can't stress that enough.

Build your story. This industry needs a story nowadays. It can't just it's not like the old days where you move to Nashville, and you you get discovered and then you blow up. There's way more to it. You got to have a past, you got to have a struggle, a story of a way, a path of building a following in your hometown. And then what I always like to say too, and I answered this same question a lot of times, and I'll keep doing it. But learn

an instrument. If you know an instrument, learn another instrument, write songs like create, learn a recording software. I use pro Tools. I'm recording pro Tools as we speak for this podcast. There is not another producer in this room right now with this podcast. It's me a camera and pro Tools recording audio through this microphone. And I can do that because I've spent many, many years recording audio.

So I think it's important. It's important to learn a recording software and then play your songs into the recordings and listen to them over and over and over and critique yourself that way. This question says, do you remember

your first show and how'd you feel about it? I first remember playing Amarillo by Morning at a little camp retreat with a bunch of my high school friends junior middle school friends, and getting up there because I played the guitar a little bit and sang a little bit, but not in front of people besides people in my

own house. So people were nudging me like, hey, you should get up there, you should sing, And I remember getting up there and singing, and I sang George Strait Emerald by morning, and people started singing it back to me because it's a very popular song, and that feeling was very addicting. It's like, wait a minute, I could play these chords and sing and then you guys will sing it back to me in a big party atmosphere.

This is something I like. And I got very addicted to that, and then it became more and more and more the second part of that question, and how do you feel about it? It wasn't too long after that that I started messing up and having mistakes, bad mistakes, or maybe I was more conscious and aware that I wasn't good and I was messing up a melody or

a word or a lyric or forgetting a verse. And then it got almost more addicting because I would get so mad at myself for messing up that I want I needed to redeem myself and come back and sing another show and try to be better than I was on this terrible mistake. I remember having a few video recordings of those early days and destroying those recordings. I wish I had them now, but I remember destroying them so that they would be gone forever because I messed up.

I really wish I could play that for you right now, but I don't have them. Here's a question that says, what's the hardest thing about being on the road. That's got to be a being away from family and friends, being sacrificing that country music dream for being there for funerals and weddings. And there was a lot of a lot of my buddies from college. There's a lot of ways things that I missed of theirs that on some

levels I regret not being there for those guys. At the same time, that was part of the sacrifice to build a career, meaning that if I had made a decision to be at a one wedding, then why wouldn't I make the decision to be at another, or a birthday party or a bachelor party? Or where does it end? Before you know it, you've lost the foundation of your commitment to that dream. And unfortunately, the music business and dream and being on the road revolves around weekends, and

that's when everyone else does their parties. That's when all the weddings and birthday parties and bachelor parties and even funerals are on the weekends, usually because no one else is working. So I would joke with my buddies and say, man, I can't be at your wedding, but could you make it on a Monday. No, because everyone works on Monday exactly. I would say, Monday is my Saturday. To you, I'll tell you what a lot more questions. I want to take a quick break, reset the camera, you right back.

I'm very grateful to have this podcast brought to you financially supported by ship Station, another sponsor. The holiday season's right around the corner, and this year we know that people are going to be buying a lot of stuff online, maybe more than ever before because of this crazy shutdown. So if you're an e commerce seller, are you ready to meet the demands of the record breaking online shopping season?

You've got to be ready. With Shipstation. That means if you're selling online getting a massive amount of orders, you can get those out quickly, and that could be really tough to do, right, So, how do you even keep tracking? Where do you even start keeping track of all that stuff? Which shipping carriers should you use? Are you getting the best rates? These are all really good questions, and that's why my choice is shipstation dot com. It's the fastest, easiest,

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That's not something you want to be worried about when you're worried about dealing with your product, no matter what you're selling Amazon at s your own website, shipping Station brings all of the orders into one simple interface that makes it super easy to manage from even your cell phone. Here's a call to action right now, the Grangersmith podcast listeners can try ship station free for sixty days when

you use the offer code granger. Make your business ready to meet the demand of a massive online shopping season. You can get started at shipstation dot com today. Click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in Granger. That's shipstation dot com. Enter the offer code Granger shipstation dot com Make ship happen. I also want to tell you guys about Cameo. The best way to get a hold of me to find me right

now without meeting greets. You go to cameo dot com, or you could download the app right there on your phone Cameo See am e oh, and you can find me. Type in Granger Smith and you could go on there. You could send me direct messages. I check those personally. No one else checks them but me. You could direct message me and we could have a conversation that way. You could also consign me to deliver a video for you. So I'll get on my phone and I'll record a

video message to you or your friends. Congratulations, happy anniversary, happy birthday, motivation, answer a question, whatever that might be. I could do that for you at cameo dot com. Really exciting times with this new album coming out, and I'm gonna be really excited when I could finally have these songs out for you guys to listen to and I could ask you what your favorite one. That's one of my favorite things is to say, hey, what song are you guys digging right now? Hate you like I

love you? And country things out there in the world. And I can't wait for the other six to come out, and then for volume two to come out and you get another eight songs, so sixteen songs total. Yege Nation.

I'm super excited to finally get those to you. One of these questions on the Instagram says, Yegee storefront question mark, And that's tough, especially these days, thinking about all the stores being shut down earlier in twenty twenty and thinking about I'm sure glad we didn't have Ayee appearl storefront. But I will say that one of my dreams is to be able to have a ee Seed and Feed like a general store slash feed store slash apparel slash good old boys drink coffee and hang out on the

front porch and talk about the weather. That's something I think would be so cool. Ee Seed and Feed that was Tyler's title. I think it has such a good, a nice ring to it, and it might be something we actually start up. So stay tuned for that. It's a good question. Will we get to watch your new house being built on the Smiths Yes, you're gonna watch. I'm gonna do a version of it on the smith I'm also gonna do a version right here on the

Granger Smith YouTube channel. It'll be something like building my dream farmhouse, and we'll go in different parts so that I could show the extreme details of the build through this channel and then the family aspect of it through the Smiths channel. And you could also be able to so like you know, part It'll say part putting on the roof, whatever you know, and everything we're doing is customs,

so it should be really fun. But then you can go back and watch part one, part two, part three leading up to it, just like we're doing with a truck restore. Here's a question. Can you tell me more about Cameo please? I'd love to keep in contact with you. Yeah. So, like I just mentioned Cameo, you just download the app on your phone or go to on your computer cameo

dot com and search Granger. You'll find my profile, click on it and then you could see the options send me direct messages or make video request and I'll do whatever you want. Super easy. Are you currently selling merch at your shows? I'll be in Cincinnati on the second. Yeah, we're still selling merch. I know it's a crazy time. I know it's a very unknown time, but we are

carrying merch and we are selling it. It depends on the venue, on how you line up and social distance or wear your mask or whatever whatever rules of the venue. We follow those. But you could still get ee apparel at all the shows. Just no meet and greets. Yet that sucks. Hate that. Here's a question that Molly Tisdale asked me every single time. Every time I say ask me questions for the podcast, Mallly Tisdale comes on here and says this, do you believe you need to be

baptized to get into heaven? Molly? It's such a deep question and it would take me an hour to go through everything. And there is a great divide amongst Christians. Some believe you do need to get baptized to get into heaven. Some believe you don't, that it is instead an outward expression of an inward change, which I think is such a that's a cool sentence. Let me say it again. Baptism is an outward expression of an inward change.

That's what I believe. So my answer, my quick answer is do I believe I need to get baptized to get into heaven? My quick answer is no, I do not. I do believe it's important, and I do believe that if you dig enough into the scripture, there is enough evidence for me, not listening to anyone's advice, not listening to preachers, not listening to evangelist, there's enough evidence right there in the Word of God, in the scripture, that you do not need to get baptized. There is a

there is the reason you're asking. I don't know which way you feel, Molly, but there is there is some scripture that can seem vague that well maybe maybe that's what Peter was talking about, that you you actually physically need to get baptized to experience heaven. Well, I want to before I get, you know, instead of getting super deep into those particular scriptures. I don't have that in front of me. I do this podcast completely off the cuff.

I don't have notes in front of me. I'm not prepared to give you those specific things I'm talking about, but I will refer you to a really good podcast called Desiring God. It's led by an amazing preacher named John Piper. J O H N p I p E R. John Piper is fantastic human being, older gentleman, very knowledgeable. He could you could type in how about this? You could type in and on YouTube John Piper baptism and he will lead you on a really good path that

I fully endorse. The short answer just from the just from surface level, I can answer that without scripture, just surface level. And why I disagree with thinking that you have to physically get baptized is because look at are

you telling me that what if you're in prison? What if you're in prison and you you become a Christian, meaning you accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior, except the fact that he came and and died on the cross as a as a forgiveness of the sins of humanity, and that by believing in him is the way, the truth, and the light that that you will be a follower and have eternal life in heaven with him. What if you do that in prison and then you die and you were never baptized, are you saying that

you are damned eternally? What if how about this, Molly, what if you're in your car, or you're at home and you become a Christian, fully, wholeheartedly become a Christian. And you get in your car and you say, that's it. I'm reborn, I'm a Christian. I am now a follower of Christ. And you get in your car to head to church to get baptized. You get in a car accident and die. You think God's going to go ooh, technicality, gotcha. If you had just not gone through that intersection, you

could have gotten eternal life. Sorry, I don't think that's the case. I believe wholeheartedly that's not the case. And there is one very distinct time in the Bible when Jesus is on the cross and the thief next to him, which we are led to believe lived a life without Christ, and the thief looks at Jesus and says, well, you remember me when you go into your kingdom, and Jesus looks back at him without hesitation and says, yes, today,

you will be with me in heaven. Well, Jesus didn't say, I think you need to step off the cross real quick, get baptized to come back to me and then we'll talk. And I don't mean to make a joke out of it. But that's just the way I feel, and I would encourage you guys not to take my word for it, but go to scripture yourself, and then even further, maybe if you can't interpret it as well, go to John Piper. Type in John Piper Baptism and I think you'll get

You'll get the answer that I believe in. I'll say that you'll get my full endorsement behind John Piper. He's a magnificent human being. And it's probably my favorite podcast other than this one. Thank you guys for listening. Love y'all so much, and I seriously appreciate the fact that you guys could come in here and listen to this podcast, and especially the ones that can make it to the end. That's like a new You guys are a new level for me. We have been sitting here at the EU

Farm together having a conversation. If you're on a road trip, if you're driving your truck right now, if you're on a big rig, love you guys, man y'all, stay safe, ye ye will see you soon.