Remembering the Trailer Keys and Forgetting Fans

the Good Guys Win is now out. If you listen to episode seven, I went through every single song, told the story of every song from my point of view, not just how I wrote it, but why I recorded it, you know, the reason that I chose each song to be on the album. But now the album's out, we've been playing it live and it's a whole new game putting it in the live show and seeing what song works. Where should it start the show, should it finish the show,

and where does it go in the middle. That's all something we have to discuss all the time to try to figure out the perfect combination of the perfect chemistry. It also has to work with the crowd. I mean, we can't put together a high energy show for a very laid back crowd, and then in turn, we can't put together a very laid back show for a high energy crowd, so we have to know these things before we hit the stage. Now, that took years and years and years, and I'm still trying to perfect that. But

I'm proud of those years. The Honky song heres and I want to talk more on where I came from in this podcast. Something that I did on this new album is a little insane, but it has been so much fun. I decided to call every single person that bought this album the first week. This is gonna take

a long time. It's a lot of people. In fact, it's probably gonna take me months and months and months, but anyone that bought it and submitted their receipt to the special website that we set up got added to this call list, and so I personally call everyone on that list and thank them for buying the album, because buying is rare these days, and I don't know if people actually understand how much buying actually does affect the artist.

And in a world of being able to find the music for free anywhere, it's pretty amazing to see that kind of support from a fan. So I thought it was the least I can do to call these people, and I think on this podcast. It would be kind of fun if I pulled up this list right now and we called the next person. All right, so here we go. This is Josh and he's from Tennessee. It looks like, hey Josh, it's Granger Smith. How are you, man? I'm right, how man, I'm doing? Go hold on speak

I see your name will come. Man, this is Granger Smith. Dude. I am calling you to say thank you for buying the album. Man, that that means a lot. I know that buying records is rare these days. And and uh, I really appreciate you, buddy, No carble, man, just keep doing I will, I will keep doing. Earl man, I promise you did you really? You really put on a show. Well, thank you, buddy. I appreciate that. Man. What's your what's your favorite song so far in this album? Welcome very

old Devil song. Well, uh, buddy, I hope to are you in Tennessee? All right? Well, I know we'll be back to Tennessee soon and hope to see you when we head back out there. That's awesome, awesome man. Well, I hope you have a good rest of your Sunday. Hey, Hey, Hey, who's hey? Girlfriend. I uh uh, we hope to see you guys down the road very soon. All right, all right, y'all take care, Hi, bye bye, there we go. I got two of them in that phone call. That's that's

so cool to me. So Josh there says that don't treadle Me is his favorite song, which doesn't surprise me. It's one of my favorites too. Everything Earl Dibbles Junior does is polarizing. I love every bit of it. And I asked you to ask me some questions on social media hashtag Granger Smith podcast and I would answer them. And so here's one right here from Jonathan Seppenfield. It says, how did Earl Dibbles Junior become a thing? Now, Buddy, I could go in here and answer this question, but

it's gonna take a while. So I think I'm gonna save that for its own future podcast because the story of Old Dibbles Junior it's gonna take some time. I'm a survivor, you damn right, I'm a bidder, I'm a big bucks head and Trump I'm bringing Dank Junior disable. So don't just be offended when Granddad needs defended. This back up Wakeman says, I'm staying break. Don't tread of me, don't tread off me. So I'm sitting in the back

of my bus Wildflower. I'm in the parking lot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, parking lot of the hotel that we're staying in tonight on an off day. We're playing Tulsa tomorrow. But yesterday we came from clear Lake, Iowa. Before that was Columbia, Missouri, before that was Chicago. So this is a typical place for me to do a podcast, is a little bit of time off between shows. Things weren't all It is crazy. I didn't always have this many shows to play. In fact, I want to take you there now. I want to

take you back to the scene. And I believe it was podcast episode six that I was last talking about my history, and I've talked about moving back home to my home state of Texas and starting a band, and I look at that that was in two thousand and four. I look at that is the beginning, in a lot of ways of my touring career. So it's the year two thousand and four. I've just moved back to my home state of Texas and college station. I'm living with my uncle Johnny. Life is good. A few years before,

I put out an album called Waiting On Forever. It was ten songs. But you know I've grown since then. I have a lot of new songs, songs that I've already recorded as demos for this publishing company I've been writing for. So I collect ten of those songs and I make an album. My second album is called Memory Road. I take this album and I'm armed and ready to find a band and get some gigs. And they came pouring in. Actually they didn't. I didn't. I didn't have

any gigs. But I did go down the street to this place called Bourbon Street Bar, and I asked them if I could host and start an open mic night on Thursday nights. No money guaranteed. The only thing for me would be exposure. I would play a bunch of these songs off of these two little albums that I had out, and then I would host open mic for everyone else in the bar could sell beer, and I could sell CDs and make a few tips, and everyone was happy. It wasn't long after I moved back that

my uncle Johnny said, Hey, I've got this buddy. He's a drummer and he's in a band right now, and their singer just moved to Florida and they're looking for someone to take over. And I said, man, this sounds perfect. Let me meet him. So he takes me over there, and these were great guys. There was a drummer, bass player,

a guitar player, and a keyboard player. And all of them were significantly older than I was, fifteen twenty years older than I was, And that actually was a huge blessing because these guys had a lot more touring experience than I did. They had a lot more knowledge of the music business, a lot more understanding of building PA systems. They knew how to tour and I didn't. This was such a key thing for me, and what I provided to them was a young singer with a fresh outlook.

It gave them another round, another shot at it, and we became a very tight knit group immediately. Never too old to finde a two lane road. See how fast that four by four can go, burn the tread right off of them tires. You never too to turn the radio. I'm so loud that the speakers flown. Let your neighbors know you're about to throw it all night, Woo, Let's go to night, is to night for the rest of

our lives. They ain't never too old to die young, never too tall to grow up, never too late to did to living because you only did one, never too good to be back. He ain't never too scared to be tough. Don't count them candles on the cake, over the trips around the sun. I ain't never too old to die jump. So during this year I also re enrolled in Texas A and M University, so I had a lot on my plate. I couldn't tour too much and steady enough to pass classes. I needed to finish

college before I could really focus on music. This year was a lot about playing private parties, private weddings, friends, graduation parties. Of course, the open mic night on Thursdays, an occasional gig that we might have picked up in a club here and there. But it wasn't serious touring yet. I did buy a little white trailer, a little six x ten. I was pullting it behind my pickup truck.

There was five of us in the band, and we were cramped in the cab making do There's so many mistakes you have to make when you're just starting out touring to learn everything that everything we progressed with over those months and over those years was from mistakes that we never wanted to do again. I remember a lot of trailer mistakes. It seems like trailers have been one of my biggest problems for a long, long time. I remember a trip driving to Amarillo for a gig. Now

Amarillo from College Station, that's a long way. It's about eight hours. I new to touring. I don't have any kind of checklist, I don't have a tour manager. And I remember thinking, about six hours down the road, I wonder if I've brought the key to the padlock on the trailer so that I can get to the gear. I ask around. No one knows where the key is. We ended up leaving it at home. So we pull over to this middle of nowhere, small town, Texas welding shop.

We got to get the guy with the cutting torch to destroy the lock so that we can get in there. Now, this is one of those circular master locks. It's theft proof. It's also idiot proof, because I'm an idiot, and you wouldn't believe how long it took us to sit there and put a piece of a sheet of metal behind the lock, so the torch didn't destroy the wall of

the trailer. But this thing took forever. I think it took like fifteen minutes of straight cutting to finally get it off so that I could learn the first lesson in touring, don't leave your trailer keys at home. Man. This podcast is brought to you by my ninth studio album called When the Good Guys Win. I'm so proud of this thing, and thank you if you've heard it, if you've streamed it, if you've heard us play it live. I hope you like it and it means a lot

to me to get your feedback. So let me know what you think about it. Go to social media, let me know your favorite songs so far. Of course, this is also brought to you by Yee Yee Energy, my energy drink. I'm so excited to tell you guys that out of this homegrown business that we have my brothers and I, we have now made our first re order, which is a lot of cans. It's like two hundred thousand cans, so that's a big deal. They are shipping

to our warehouse in Texas as we speak. That means a lot of you are liking this drink, so thank you for that. I hope you like to drink so much that you drink it all the time responsively because it's got a lot of caffeine in it. I drink one before every show, and I love the way it makes you feel. I love the way that it tastes. Go to grangerspent dot com you can find out more.

That's a lot of information. Let me go back to the that had no information going on in fact, but two thousand and four version of myself was very much looking forward to two thousand and five because that's when I decided to take the last of my demos, my songwriting demos, and put them together ten more songs, and make another album called Pockets of Pesos. Pockets of Pesos

was different from me for a couple of reasons. One I recorded and played my own acoustic guitar that had never happened before, and two I recorded my own vocals right there by myself at Uncle Johnny's house in his living room. Now, this was the beginning of something very very important for me in my career. I had no idea how valuable it would be to me to record my own vocals to record my own band eventually. I had no idea that someday being able to do this

would actually save my career. My pockets of pay A twenty dollars bill in my pails. Phone tell me what, tell me? What's in gona take? Two thousand and five, I was very much coming into my own pockets of pay. SOS was the most original so far music that I had made, even though I had always written my own music. I was getting closer to becoming the artist that I needed to be. We were touring a lot more. I was still in school, but we were stacking up our weekends.

We called ourselves weekend Warriors. At this point, it bothered me a little bit that I didn't have as much control as I wanted to on the actual recordings themselves. On the previous three albums, I knew I had a dilemma coming up because those are the last of the songwriting demos that I had paid for me, and if I was gonna make anything else in the future, I was gonna have to pony up my own cash, which I didn't have. I'm a call and I'm making tip

jar money now out of that necessity. The greatest challenge with the greatest reward showed itself in this new opportunity. If I was going to make another album, the only way that would happen was if I recorded it myself in my own house. And what happened at the end of two thousand and five changed everything. So the song you're hearing here sounds like it's live. It's even called Mockenberg Road Live, but it's actually not live at all. This is my first experiment at recording my band myself

in my house. Actually every instrument is recorded separately by me putting microphones around and experimenting. I was getting pretty good, pretty savvy with pro Tools, which is a computer software for audio recording. It's the same software I'm using right now to record this podcast. After recording the instruments, I brought in some friends and the band. We got some

glasses of beer and clanked them together. I recorded that, added it to the background of the song to make it sound like a live performance that I'm going to burn out to where my favorite lives, you know, good friend Chap Sacond every time between Calisande, the winning thing, but burning so there. It is the secret behind Mokenbird Road Live. My very first attempt ever at recording a band. It's funny. I just looked on Spotify and iTunes and

it's on there, immortalized forever. Uh set in stone? Is that memory? For better or for worse? But that was a very important transition for me because once I knew I could do that, once I knew I had broken the ice of home studio recording, I knew I could attempt maybe to record my next album completely by myself at home, in the living room, in the hallway and the closet, utilizing everything, utilizing my band, And so that was my new mission. What I didn't know was that

concept would change everything for me. That would put me on a path of musical freedom. It would give me the opportunity to put up music no matter what, to change my mind, to change the songs, to put out a funny song, a parody song, to put out a tribute song, regardless of what people said, and most importantly, regardless of budget, because this would cost me next to nothing. That would put me on the path that got me here today. Hello, Hey Brooke, it's Granger Smith. How are you.

Oh my god, I'm good. How are you here? I'm good. I'm calling to say thank you for buying the album, and I hope you like all the new songs so far. Oh my god, I love this so much in this obviously I want that day. Have no idea good good? Do you have a favorite song yet? Yeah? I love it A loving wine. That one's a beautiful song. Well, thank you, thank you. Where are you right now? I'm in North Carolina? Okay, awesome, we love coming to North Carolina.

I've actually seen you. I've actually seen you a few times. The first time I ever saw you, you were you Goes. That was the true where I ever saw you playing. I have such a great time with much after that, I'm so talking, don't it's okay, No, you don't. You don't have to say anything. I'm calling you to uh to say thank you and uh You're an amazing fan and and I appreciate people exactly like you, Brook, So thank you, and I hope to see you next time

we come to North Carolina. Well, I appreciate you, and thank you. Be greater and really I love your music. Thank you. Take care of Brooke. Have a good Sunday. You all right, bye bye? All right? Nice but loving blind he last see it all the time tonight, it's wearing a dress, making me smile, stealing my friends. I used to think it was you lop a baby. It's love loving blind because I see so by now, two thousand and five is turning into two thousand and six.

I mean, the band are still together, the same guys, were playing more and more shows, but no one's coming to these shows. I mean a lot of times it's just us and the bartender. But we're playing these shows like we're playing arenas. I remember staring out into dark, empty dance floors, closing my eyes and just envisioning what it would be like to have a full arena singing these songs back to me. And we couldn't have been any further away from that dream. Do you know? We

are having a great time. I look back on pictures and videos from those days, and we were always smiling, We're always laughing, we're always joking, because it's all relative and ed. At the time, that was the dream. That was as good as it got, you know, And if anyone was listening, if anyone was clapping or smiling or dancing, that was it for us. That was worth it. We were getting better. I had T shirts for sale. Now. My first merch I had blue navy blue shirts with

a silver Texas Ranger style star. I said Granger Smith. I was kind of playing up to that Ranger and Granger thing. I wanted so badly to have a brand, something you could see and look and identify, like a Nike swoosh, and so at the time, that was it. That was the star, the badge related to Granger, or at least I wanted it to be that way. And no one really bought those shirts. I still have one though.

You know. Early on, I loved the business of touring, and I loved the challenge of trying to make touring better, trying to overcome the challenges and the rigors of the road to make our show better. Early two thousand and six, I was still driving that same pickup truck and we were changing before shows in the parking lot. Usually we put our boots down on the ground and you could kind of switch your jeans, you know, while you're standing on your socks. You're standing on the boots so you

don't get dirt on your socks. I was thinking, Man, why can't we transform this trailer into a dressing room. So I started getting in the white trailer, and it was difficult because you have to put them down. And so I eventually traded in that white trailer and I got a slightly larger black trailer. It had a side door.

Oh that's a big upgrade. So now that I have a side door entrance, I had this idea that I could build a partition wall right after that door to close that space in like our own personal dressing room. We hung a pole in there to hang our clothes on, had lights inside, a little bench where we could sit down, carpet on the floor. I mean, we had it figured out.

One night, we're playing this dance hall and this girl I was kind of dating has this little yippie dog and she didn't have a place to put it during the show, so she sticks it in that dressing room. My guitar player goes out after the show and opens it up to get a guitar case out, and this dog jumps out. He says, granger, Come on, man, since

when is our dressing room become a kennel? Somehow that name stuck and from then on, that homemade dressing room in the front part of our trailer would be called the kennel. So I was almost finished with college. I had one more semester left. I'm calling myself a weekend Warrior. We're playing these shows, dragging this black trailer with a dressing room all around Texas. Meanwhile, I have something even

cooler going on at home. I was right in the middle of recording a brand new album, but for the first time ever, recording every instrument, every vocal right there in my house. Whether it was good or if it was bad, it was mine and there was something so special about that, and I was so so motivated to get it out there. So there I was in two thousand and six, just graduating from Texas A and M University, just putting out a brand new album called Living Like

a Lone Star. The most proud I'd ever been so far in my career of my music. It seemed like everything was going my way. It seemed like the next stop was George Strait right, and I couldn't have been more wrong. I didn't know it, but this right here, this moment in two thousand and six, was another beginning for me. It was another milestone for me, and I think because of all that excitement around what I was doing, as passionate as I was about it. I think that's

what caused the crash. I think that's what caused the bottom to fall out. But when the bottom fell out, that's when I had to reinvent again. And every time I've reinvented, it seems like that's when things changed. In the next podcast, i'll tell you about that change. I'll tell you about that crash. I'll tell you why Living Like a Lone Star didn't do what I wanted it to, even though it had one of my favorite songs that I've ever written in my entire life on it. But

I had to learn a big lesson first. It wasn't just keys to the trailer. I was forgetting. It was fans. I didn't have it. And when I realized what was really important to me, things started changing. And that was just the beginning. It happens like that out of the Blue Scadock in her Blue Last. Yeah, when it happens like like that, nothing to lose turns right into you, Julie, or you can do just to keep her around until the moon goes down in your back at your house.

One thing was do another You love each other when looking you never looked back. It happens like that. This podcast is brought to you by EEE Energy. Come find us on tour grangersmith dot com, Forward Slash Tour, see you down the road.