Shake the dead wood out of the tree

I'm going to answer some more questions that I fieled it off Instagram. I want to start before I say anything else. I want to start you with this one. I heard this this morning. Abraham Lincoln said people are just as happy as they make up their minds to be. Thought, that's a great way to open this podcast. And happiness is something that's constantly misunderstood, misquoted, and Lincoln said it right in my mind, Lincoln said it right. Your's happy as you make up your mind to be. How do

we know this? How do we know there's evidence of this? Well, because you hear stories all the time of people in prison or in death camps, or in the rock bottom what might appear to be rock bottom, and they have good days, they find happiness. People are so resilient. And then look at the opposite. You see people living life in Hollywood at the very top of what you think could be the financial food chain, and they're not happy. They're addicted to drugs, they're getting divorces, their kids don't

even come around. So success in a financial term, in a monetary term, in a career type term, is not relative to happiness at all. Happiness is mental. Happiness is something that you make up your mind to be. Abraham Lincoln and said it right. The guy became president for a reason, and I think that's a that's a great thing to be thinking about during this time, during the craziness. I just talked to a guy just now that's busier than he ever has been, working more than he ever

has been. Business is great. And at the same time, right before that, I talked to a guy who's out of work completely with no side of coming back. So I'm seeing both both sides to the story. The world is not completely tanked, you know, because there's a lot of people that are doing great, and I would like to think that those people that are doing great could then in turn stimulate the economy in certain ways that will lead to helping the people that aren't doing great

the music business. Where I am, the touring business is tanked. There's nothing, there's no word of anything I've been I've been trying. It's been, you know, the top priority to get us touring again in some capacity, not even to make money, but just to get our feet wet and

just to kind of begin the story. So we've been talking to this amphitheater in South Austin about coming in and everyone's social distancing, wearing masks, all that kind of stuff, and us putting on a concert for that that kind of environment, maybe selling out a couple of nights in a row. But a bunch of people got cold feet. So you know, I don't I don't totally blame them.

I mean, I'm gung ho for it, but there's people that are getting cold feet in terms of you know, whether it's a vendor or the venue itself, or insurance companies, booking agents, radio stations. Because everyone looks at this as their reputation is on the line. I look a little past that, but most people are looking at it like you don't want to be the pioneer in this field, because the pioneers get the arrows, if you know that what I mean, the first one, the first one out

on the prairie, gets the aros. And that's kind of what everyone's thinking right now as far as the music booking world. They don't want to go out on a limb and put on a concert and then have the media just crucify them saying you're being unsafe, you're putting people at risk, you're causing death, you're putting lives in your hands. The blood is on you. You know. They don't want to hear that. That's going to look bad

upon them. So the plan B for me was possibly a parking lot concert, going and putting on a show to a parking lot where everyone's in their car or sitting on their tailgate. So that's a really good option. And then the third option is online concerts, which we're planning on starting here next week with the band. We're going to do live from the Eege Farm, and we're gonna do several, probably two episodes a week, several a month,

and different locations on the EEG Farm. We'll do some old songs, we'll do some acoustic, we'll do some full band we'll play in the cornfield, We're play by the lake, and we'll do it probably like Facebook Live and do it like a Venmo tip jar for the band, something like that. And and it is worth saying that, you know, I've done well. I've done well in the music business, me and my brothers, but not well enough to pay

everybody in the in the band and crew. Not not well enough to pay seventeen people in their families and keep everyone everyone you know. So and this is this is not a rant, this is not a complaint because as of right now, as of today, I feel very blessed. And as Abraham Lincoln said, I feel happy because I was talking to my accountant today this morning, and it's doom and gloom for a lot of accountants in the music business. It's like, oh more bad news. Here's here's

the next bad news. You know, here's the next loan, or we extended the line of credit again, or we're to take another loan out. And I just I told her this morning, I said, you know what, she said, this is terrible, it's terrible. And I said, it's not terrible. It's not terrible. It's a setback. It is an obstacle, and I firmly believe that we will learn from this and will be better because of this obstacle, because of

the setback. I firmly believe that I believe that we'll all be kind of shaking the dead wood, shaking the dead limbs out of the trees, and that makes for a much more beautiful tree. When you do that, you know, it might take some weight off of it, it might open up some sunlight a little bit, but it makes a much more beautiful tree. And so we're gonna move. We're gonna get out of this house. We're gonna go. Me and the family are gonna go live in an RV for a while, and so much more to that story.

Don't worry, I will inform you of everything. And I know I've kind of been teasing that idea we're gonna inform you of everything on the Smiths, But there's a lot more to that. And I'm so excited about this, y'all. I'm fully embracing it. The family's pumps. This is gonna be a huge adventure and we're gonna we're gonna wade out this craziness until we start touring, and it's going to be so good. We're shaking all those all the dead wood out, and I feel good. I feel really good.

I'm way past the shock of twenty years of touring and staying at home. Now is the new the new life I have, and I'm I'm rejecting the term new normal. We're just we'll be back to where we were, and I know that I feel confident about that. And when we do start back, we'll be better. And and you watching and you listening, you will too. You will too.

There is no doom in gloom. This isn't terrible. You know that this is uh, this is just a setback, and a lot of us are going to learn from this, and we'll we'll learn as a world, and we'll learn who to listen to and learn who to trust, learn learn what information is real and what's not. And and by doing that we'll pay attention. We'll keep our eyes open, you know, we'll we'll keep our eyes open once again. Not a rant, not a rant, But I just want

to tell you guys, I am feeling good. I'm feeling good because I do not tie my happiness or my well being, or my gratitude or my gratefulness to a paycheck. No no, And I feel like, and I've said on here before, our worth, our value is people, me and you. Our value is us. It's within us. It's not the paycheck or what's sitting in some bank account or asset of some kind. It's us. We're the value. We choose

to be the value. It's within us, and we are the ever flowing waterfall of wealth that will keep replenishing itself if we just let it and we realize that and we don't stress over the few things that we do have. Right. How's that for a Monday morning. Thank you guys for listening questions coming. All this brought to you by ye Apparel company my brothers and I built, and thank god, thank god, e commerce is okay at this point. And so you can go to yee dot com.

You can go to Yee apparel dot com sign up for your T shirt subscription, which we are so excited to offer a T shirt subscription, something that we work really hard on making really cool t shirts that you can't get anywhere else, that are not available anywhere else but this one subscription, and it shows the It allows you to become a true member of a group that's way bigger than me, or way bigger than Earl Dibbles

or the music or any of that. It's a way of life that that I'm proud to be a part of, and I hope that you are too, and I hope that that's what we are offering when you join us in a club like EE Apparel. I'm gonna get to these questions. Filled it off of Instagram. Welcome to the Granger Smith Podcast. During that intro break, I did a conference call with the record label and we talked new songs, and so I might as well just tell you guys what we talked about. But we talked about I have

several songs. I have nine of them that are finished, and like several more that are in progress that I've been writing and or they're already the work tapes are done, their demos are done, and we're ready to record the record, which I always do remotely. I do half of it here. I sing everything right here in this room, So there is this whole shutdown thing. Is not any different for

me to be recording songs like this. So we're just trying to decide on how to get them to you guys, talking about maybe a full album in September, talking about maybe an EP before that. That's an option. There's many options. So the cool thing is we're getting approval on all these songs to go ahead and put them out to you. It's exciting. Love it. I want to get to some of these questions for you guys. How do you get amped and ready for a show when you're not feeling

it that day? And I like that. I screenshoted all these. I did not prepare any of these, didn't take any notes, so I'm just gonna spit ball off the top of my head. But I like that one. How do you get amped and ready for a show when you're not feeling it that day? And the reason that's a good question is on a normal touring season, we will play two hundred shows, and I'd be lying if I said

I was excited about every single one. Now, what determines me being excited, I've learned, for the most part is getting good sleep. If I don't get good sleep, it doesn't matter if it's a stadium full of crazy people. It's hard when you get four hours of sleep to get amped for anything and you're just you're mentally exhausted. You go through meet and greets, you go through soundcheck,

and then here comes the show. And there's there's those times there's there's a lot of shows that I'm so excited for, and there's also a handful of shows that I think I'm gonna be excited for, and then when the day as the day starts unfolding. And a lot of this, Guys, has to do with the flights man, and we take a lot of flights. And if I if I, for instance, if I leave Austin, Texas on a five am flight, I have to leave my house

two hours early. So I'm leaving the house at three, which means I'm waking up at two forty and then I'm flying to Pennsylvania and we're doing a big show there that night. If I don't, if I'm doing constant meet and greets radio stuff, i don't have a nap, and by the time the show comes around, I'm exhausted. So it's so this is why it's a good question. So I have to amp myself up. I have to kind of get myself in the zone thirty minutes before

the show. I mean I have seriously sat backstage sometimes and just slapped myself or have my drummer slap me. We like to do some kind of tequila or whiskey shot that usually Guy opens my eyes. I used to drink Aye Energy all the time. One before every show, we turn the music up really loud, whether we're on the bus or in a green room, to kind of acclimate our ears to the loud craziness that it's going

to be. And what usually happens is I'll walk out on the stage and the lights come on and the crowd's amped up, and it will energize me no matter if I'm down or not. So I could literally be backstage ten minutes before the show and feel like I'm not ready. I don't have it. This crowd is too good for me right now, I don't have it. But then walk out there and it slowly charges me back up, and by song number three, I'm feeling great. The good thing after that is then I'll crash and sleep so

good as soon as I get off the stage. The next question is will you have an album with all of your music from Holler and forward? And that kind of goes to what this phone call I had, And that was one of the exact questions that we talked about will we include on this album Holler, Heaven, Bound Balloons,

Damn Straight. That's why I love Dirt Road's four songs that came out kind of on their own without an album, And the answer is probably yes, maybe not all four of those, but maybe half of them, because we don't want to come out with an album that has too many songs that you already know, Otherwise that it decreases the value for you as a listener if you're like, great, there's a new album and it's got most of the songs I already know. So that's that devalues it a

little bit. So we want to we want to heavy load it with things you've never seen or heard before, and that's going to be important, but we will probably include a couple of those. What's the most humbling experience you've had, without a doubt, as far as business, as far as music business is concerned, without a doubt, falling off the stage, breaking ribs, puncturing a lung in New Jersey and then going to the emergency room right after

that show. And they didn't know it at first, but there was a some kind of spinal threat that I could have had a spinal problem, and so when they figured out there could be a spinal problem, they immediately put me on a stretcher to put me on an ambulance and sent me to another hospital that was specialized in spinal injuries, and they had a neck brace on me. And when I got to that hospital, they cut all

my clothes off of me. So I'm talking, no sheet, no nothing, I'm just laying on the you know, the bed, and there's like eight doctors and bright lights, and they cut all my clothes off of me, and in fear that you know, you start pulling clothes off and it could rupture a spine that's already out of whack. So I was just I was really drugged up, you know, I had morphine in me and whatever else they were

pumping me, so that that really helped that situation. But at the same time, it was still the most humbling thing. And I remember then finally covering me up and wheeling me out, and I was I was kind of in the hallway on the bed, the rolling bed. I heard someone down the hall plane if the boot fits on the computer looking me up to see who I was. So humiliating, humbling. At the same time, I was grateful that they were working so hard to get me feeling

good again. It was a terrible can those two ribs in the back and puncture the lung. Is Oh, this is such an annoying pain. It just constantly hurt. If anyone's broken a rib, comment below on this YouTube page or comment on social media. Have you broken a rib? And mine were like split all the way, so completely separated, and then they went into the lung so it punctured it and I couldn't breathe. And if you if you've had this happen, comment below. If you know someone that's happened,

comment below. I'll see there, I'll see your comments. But it is a it hurts really really bad. That goes without saying. But at the same time, I like to say, it's also just annoying. Man. It's annoying because you just you finally kind of get comfortable and then you then

you gotta go pee. And there was this moment I'll never forget from between getting comfortable with the ice pack on my back, am I you know pillow under my knees, I'm kind of propped up watching Netflix, and I'd have to go pee really bad because I'm you know, drinking a lot of water. So there's this moment halfway between sitting and standing. That's the most excruciating pain I've ever

had in my life. So it was, you know, right when i'd lean up, it would just send this shockwave of nerves that were just nerves touching the spine and on, you know, the ribs. You can't secure them. You can't you can't wrap your ribs or put a cast on because it contracts your breathing. You have to breathe otherwise you'll get in pneumonia. You have to deep breathe, so

that's part of the practice. So they're just flopping around and you could feel the ribs flopping around and rubbing on each other and hitting the spine all in the nerves and it's like I've never been tased, but it feels like it's just someone's just tasing you in the back when you're trying to stand up. It's terrible. Let's see the next question here. I'm ready for a new guitar. I want a twelve stream. What brand should I get?

I have a lot of thoughts and I kind of feel like maybe one of these days I should do a podcast on learning guitar and I am a little bit against twelve string unless you're just a virtuoso and you're a studio player and you or you love the Eagles, or you know, unless you have a real reason for getting a twelve string, I would be against a twelve string guitar. It sounds cool, it looks cool, it's nice for an album, you know. I used to have one just for playing on the records, where I could just

give a nice little strum every now and then. But what you really need is a six string, And especially if you're a beginner, and the more of a beginner that you are, I recommend Rick, or excuse me, I recommend putting nylon strings on your six string, taking them these steal strings off, just to go a little bit easier on your fingers. And nylon strings are a lot softer. Some people call them gut strings. They're a lot softer on your hands. When you're trying to learn and you're

trying to build up callouses. On a twelve string, it's double the strings on each finger, so you got two strings on each finger, and they are just it's harder on your fingertips, and until you build those callouses, there's just not a point to have a twelve string, So I would stick with six. And when you stick with six, I would go with more of a name brand. I'm always a Martin guy. You could go and when I say Martin, there's high end Martins, and then there's there's

very affordable Martins. There's tailors, there's Takamini's, there's there's a lot of brands. I would say, go with a more well known brand and a lower model of that well known brand, and then put nine on the strings on it. Any advice for feeling stuck in life, I'm on the right track, bad timing or so, it seems. Great question,

really great question. And it's so easy to get stuck in life, and it's so easy to feel like it's so easy to feel like we are not achieving what we need to be achieving, or we're not going in the direction and we need to be going, when in reality, all of that is mental. All the roadblocks are mental

that we have created. For instance, this whole shutdown thing, it's is it is it a derailment of what we do or is it a way to refocus ourselves, knock off some of the dead wood out of the tree and refocus ourselves to a better way of doing the same thing. And it's such an interesting mindset that feeling stuck might not exist. It might all be mental. The other thing to do is, if you're truly feeling stuck,

why not quit? Why not quit what you're doing. If you're feeling stuck in your job, or if you're feeling stuck in a relationship and you're not married, it's time to break up. Period. As long as kids aren't involved, that makes it more complicated. As long as you're not married, that makes it more complicated. If you're feeling stuck in a career, why not quit. If there's something you feel like you could be doing that's better, why not go

after that? And that might require getting upgrading a degree of some sort, which might require working some night hours or studying some night classes while you're on the current job you feel stuck in. So you feel stuck in your job, and during the evenings you're upgrading your education online, helping your resume build towards something that's bigger and better. If you're feeling stuck monetarily money wise, why not sell

some stuff? Why not get out of that car that costs six hundred dollars a month that it's you know, it's a really nice car, it looks cool, but it's six hundred dollars a month. And you know, you could turn it in and you can get something that's one hundred dollars a month, or you could pay cash or something you could pay. You know, you could, you could, you could buy something for two grand. You know, borrow a little cash from your uncle, get something for two grand. Uh.

My point is stuck is such. I don't blame you, but but it's stuck as such a mental roadblock that there's always a way to get around that. You could quit, you could break up, you can get a new education, you could sell that car, you could get out of that house. There's a lot of ways. But but ultimately it starts with discipline, and it starts mentally. Question from my husband, what brand of boots are your favorite? And what knife do you carry? I'm typically I like to

wear everyday boot. I like to wear a riot and this I'm not sponsored, I just I just they feel comfortable, they feel like tennis shoes, and they have rubber soles. I'm a rubber soul boot guy because leather makes me slip everywhere, especially on the stage. So I like ariat knife. I always have Kershaw. Kershaw is just my favorite brand and uh it's very well made. I don't know what kind this is. I have several Kershalls, but uh, yeah, everyone's got a got a favorite knife in mine. Mine.

Is that deep question here? Oh deep question time? Or take a sip deep question? When striving for success? How do you know when you've made it? There? It is right, that is that's the question when striving for success. How do you know when you've made it? So let's look at that question logically. Let's just break apart that question when striving for success, how do you know when you've made it? Well, let's dumb it down. The first thing you have to ask is what is success? What is success? Well,

it's not tangible. Everyone has a different definition. So then I would have to read you my favorite poem that I've said before on this podcast, Ralph Waldo Emerson. It's the success point. What is success? To laugh often and much, To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, To earn the appreciation of honest critics, and endure the betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty, To

find the best in others. To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition. To know that even one life have breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. That's so good. That's so good. I got to read it one more time because this is not This is Ralph's idea of success, and it doesn't have to be yours. But you notice that here he never says anything about achieving the certain rung on the

ladder of your career. It never says, if you're a singer, once you've achieved ten number ones, then you have succeeded. Once you have sold out your first stadium in Pittsburgh, you have succeeded. Because guess what, guys, All those things don't account for real success. They don't. Let me read this poet again. To laugh often and much, To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, To earn the appreciation of honest critics, and endure the

betrayal of false friends. To appreciate beauty, To find the best in others. To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition. To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded. Damn, that's so good. That's so good. I could read it over and over. So when striving for success, how do

you know when you've made it? I think, do you want to be able to look back when you're when you're old and it's the end of your life, you want to look back, And in my opinion, everyone's different, But in my opinion, you want to look back and say, you know what. I laughed a lot. I won the respect of a few intelligent people and the affection of children. I earned the appreciation of honest critics. I endured the

betrayal of false friends, which will happen. I appreciated beauty, whether that was mountains or oceans, or beaches or woods or whatever. I found the best in others. I left the world a bit better, either by a healthy child, a garden patch, or redeem social condition. And I learned that even one life has breathed easier because I have lived. Isn't that a good feeling? To know that? That is true success? In this poem, and that could be yours.

It's definitely mine also, good question, and I love to answer it that way. What is one thing you do to clear your head h We've talked about on the last podcast. We talked about meditation, ten percent, Happier or Calm one of these apps you can get on your phone. Great, super easy. They're free, follow instructions, great way to clear your mind. For me, I love to drive. I love to get in my truck, winds down. I love to just cruise and field, especially right now, beautiful month, beautiful

temperature outside, feel that wind in my face. It's like if I put on an old George Strait record Greatest Hits, Volume two and just get right in the middle of that album and turn it up with the windows down. Nothing in the world can be wrong in my opinion. How do you write songs and how do you put music behind your lyrics. It's a very multi layered process. And sometimes it starts with the title, sometimes it starts with a melody. Sometimes I start with nothing. Sometimes I

just do this. Yeah, I'll trusty here and I'll just I'm writing songs on this podcast. Don't really know how long it will last. I'm just making up words and making up melodies. I hope y'all like this song, because this is how I do hit, y'all, And it's just playing and sometimes I'm just mumbling literally like that, making

up words as I go. And every once in a while some cool things pop out, or sometimes there's something that I really want to say, and I'll start with that title and then I'll start playing, you know, in different keys, and I hum around to think about how to say this song, and I change chords and see if anything else comes out like that. And you do that long enough, you do that enough times, and then it becomes part of what you do. We'll see what else we got here. My question is what are some

things you and Amber do to strengthen your marriage? And the most important thing, I think is trust with each other and trusting her and knowing her limits and knowing hopefully her knowing my limits, but knowing that she's on the edge right now. She's kind of upset with me, she's frustrated with something I said or something I did. Don't push her past that limit. If she's upset with something that I did, why not take her side and listen fully to her story? Listen listen and hear her out.

There's no point in arguing to be right, because in the end, all you get to be is right, and then she is frustrated or devastating, or wrong or corrected or inappropriate or a subordinate of the conversation, and there is that doesn't help anybody. You being right doesn't help anybody, doesn't even help you. It doesn't even feel that good to be right. You know, you might get to pound your chest for ten seconds, and then then you feel a little bit guilty that you wore somebody out just so,

just for the point of being right. So it's much better. And this is, by the way, this is a lot easier said than done. But it's a lot easier to hear someone out and listen to them as if they could teach you something, as if they might know something that you don't. Because that don't you think that's possible that if we looked at the world is constantly a place that could teach us something, even though we might not agree with it on the surface, even though we

might be adamantly against it. Why not just listen, just listen, and hear it out. Instead of always wanting to be right to me that's such a key thing in marriage, and we don't. We didn't start out our marriage and say that that's what we're going to do. It just almost happened by accident that our personality has met and worked out pretty well that way. But it does take work. And it wasn't like that in relationships for me in

the past, and it wasn't for her either. But if you're finding yourself in a problem in a relationship and you're and you're seeing yourself argue a lot, you might want to ask yourself, how often am I trying to be right when we argue or when we have discussions. How much of a factor in our argument is me just being right and winning the argument, Because if that's a factor at all, you might want to look at it. The opposite is saying it's not my fault. They're just wrong.

They're just you know that they're wrong, and I am going to teach them a lesson for how wrong they are. And if the more I teach them a lesson that they shouldn't mess with me on this kind of subject, the more they'll learn not to do it again. And if I don't bring it up, and if I don't correct them, they will never learn. Well, guess what, guys, your job ain't the teacher. Your job ain't being their daddy. So unless you are the daddy. But and that's a

different that's a different conversation. That's not what you asked. But anyway, I think that's such a key that's not only key to a marriage, but to friendships and so many other kinds of relationships. Do you guys have more of these kind of questions? Will you comment below on here? Will you comment on this YouTube page? Is there something that maybe I answered that you disagree with? Will you comment that. I'm going to go through all these on

this particular podcast episode. I'll dig in these and I will I'll try to respond back on here and then and then on the next Monday's podcast I'll address some of them. But I would love to hear your thoughts and if anything, just like this video, and if you're listening on the podcast app, thank you for that. And you can go to social media and you can engage

that way, whether it's Insta or Facebook or Twitter. You can hashtag Grangersmith podcast And it's one of the uh, it's one of the things that I have going on right now. You know, without touring. I did so many of these podcasts on the back of my bus, and right now that bus is just sitting at the Eyegi farm going nowhere. In fact, the biggest problem we're having with buses right now is mice getting up in there.

I mean, we've we're doing everything we can, from shaving up Irish spring soap, which is something that actually works, and putting it, you know, and placing it all all over the buses. But it's it's a crazy time and I appreciate it. I'm so grateful for you, guys. I'm sure I'm grateful for your questions. I'm grateful that you even care about me answering. But I will see you

next Monday. Thanks for watching. If you haven't subscribed to this channel on the podcast app or on YouTube, please subscribe. It helps me know I'm doing something right. It is free to you. This content is free to you. All I ask is like and subscribe. Love you guys. We'll see eye