Someone broke into my tour bus while I was sleeping

a story I have to tell you. And of all the times that people have said, what's the weirdest thing that's ever happened, this is going to be one of the top of the list. Between breaking my ribs, falling off the stage and busting open my all the injuries that I've had, this this is takes everything to a whole new level. I wanted to tell you about it. This podcast is brought to you by Express VPN, so I got to give them a shout out. They are part of the reason I get to even have this podcast.

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here we go. Roll the intro did cat and d sels and so long line of bifle of up and down the back Rangey col Wage, Yeah bation special addition to the podcast today, I am on Wildflower back of my bus, so I always feel like I need to apologize if you hear a like low rumble, if you're listening to this podcast in your car and you hear like a rumble, that's the generator from either this bus

or the one next door of here. Montana and I wanted to do this podcast today because I wanted to talk about what is quite possibly top five strangest things to happen to me on tour. And it happened last night. And I've a lot of times talked about I've told so many stories through the different episodes of this podcast. This is episode fifty eight. I've talked about so many

strange stories and embarrassing stories. And scary stories and exciting stories that's happened on the road, and then something happened last night that it's pretty much topped at all. And I'm going to try my best to explain it, and I will do as good as I can explaining something that happened while I was awakened in the middle of

the night. So, and what I mean by that is if it's it's like if I were to say, Hey, you got up last night to go to the bathroom, you got you got up last night to go pee, Tell me everything that happened when yere walking to the bathroom, because that's that's kind of the equivalent of what happened to me. Let me paint the scenario twenty twenty, when

this craziness hit and the tours shut down. As things started opening back up around August and September, we started taking shows in places that we wouldn't have normally gone, places that we would have played in, say twenty twelve, twenty thirteen. And that's kind of the joke amongst the guys is we've we've literally gone backwards when it comes to touring. Just to go out and be able literally just to pay health insurance and show pay for my

band and crew. It really financially does nothing for me. It maybe even takes me backwards a little bit. But we're going out and we're playing shows just to keep food on the band's table, and we're taking shows that we would have ninety nine out of one hundred times said no to in the last five years. And we joke about it with the band. It's like we're living

twenty twelve and thirteen again. For instance, last night, we're in Broken Bow, Oklahoma, and we were playing in a stage that was so small that we had to play acoustic. We couldn't bring the drum set. Dusty's drums wouldn't even fit on this stage we went to last night, and we've come to expect that, and I could tell you right now from this story. I'm about to tell you those days are stopping. We're not going to do this anymore.

I'm gonna go ahead and make it official. We're not going to be playing places that a we can't afford to get into and b that are much too small for us to be putting two buses and all this crew and trying to get our gear out of these

trailers and through the gravel. So and that's a different story for a different time, and what that is going to mean to my future leading up to when things finally open up again in the world from the shutdowns, and we'll still be playing you know, outdoor, big events, socially distanced. You know, when that stuff comes around, will take it because usually those places are more secure, they have tighter security, law enforcement on site. Last night, I

had none of that. This was straight out of the book of twenty twelve for me, and I had been playing places like this since probably two thousand, so it's nothing new to me. But we were parked in the parking lot and after the show, here comes the story. I go to sleep about twelve thirty, and I'll tell you my perspective of what happened. I go to sleep at twelve thirty. There's nothing strange about that. The show was like a very average dive bar. You know, people

were rowdy in Southeast Oklahoma. That is completely expected, no big deal. It's on par right, the show is on par for what we would expect. I go to bet and I have this little routine and I'll just share with you guys. It's kind of embarrassing, but My routine is I sleep on this bus. I sleep with a weighted blanket because it when we're bouncing up and down, driving down the road, it holds me, you know, tight. So I've a weighted blanket all the way around my neck.

I have a mouthguarden because i have a tendency to grind my teeth, especially when I'm on the road and I've got a lot going on in my mind. I'll grind the crap out of my teeth, and so much so that the dentist is like, hey, you need to do something about this. You're gonna file your teeth down. So I've got a mouthguard in and then I wear ear plugs, foam earplugs because of the bouncing and the I sleep right by the engine, which is right behind

the camera if you're watching this. And then on top of that, my phone is on my little night stand on my bed. It's a twin size bed back here in the back of this bus, and I have a phone on the nightstand that's cranked up with a sleep machine. It's like a running water noise, you know, but it's just mask any more sounds of parking lot, you know, things go on, people yelling, gear getting smashed into the back of the trailer or us driving down the road.

So I've got that plus the earphone, so I'm I'm kind of setting the scene. That's black, pitch black. Back here. There's two doors between here and the front door of the bus, so my door is closed and then the bunk door is closed. Lights are off. We have a very strict rule, and we've had this, this rule ever since we started consistently touring in a bus to lock the doors. We always lock the doors. It's a big deal.

We religiously locked the doors even in places. We almost have to say, in places where it's totally secure, we have to remind each other, Hey, you don't have to lock it, you know. We got we're gated in here, you know, but we do anyway. I remember being on like the Luke Brian tore and we were parking underneath the amphitheaters and we were still locking the bus doors because that's how religious we are about that. Last night it wasn't locked for whatever reason, I don't know, And

I'm not going to throw any blame around. I'm not even going to come close to blaming anybody for this. Chris Lee, my tour manager is not with us this weekend. He has a couple games for his son playing football, and they're getting trophies this weekend, so he asked if he could stay home and via that trophy ceremony. He's not here, so basically, I'm building up like the perfect storm. Another thing, we're parked here till six am where we were last night, because it was only a ninety minute

drive to where we are in Texarkana. We never park that long in a parking lot because we hardly ever play a show that's only ninety miles. I said, minutes ninety miles to the next show. Okay, that's enough of I'm trying to paint the picture of what's happening Herelve thirty. I go to sleep at one thirty. I wake up in a complete days to a girl sitting over me in my bed and she's saying, do you need anything? Do I need anything? And in my mind, first of all,

how long was she there? I don't know. Is that not the creepiest thing you can imagine? How long was she sitting there staring at me? I hope not long. I hope it wasn't very long. Trained in the background sorry. She says, do you need anything? She says it at least three times before I coherently say no. And I still haven't put this situation together. I don't really know where I am. I don't really know why. I haven't toured in a long time, so I'm here in this bus.

I don't it doesn't Nothing is making sense to me. I don't know how better to put that. Nothing is making sense to me. Why am I here? Why is someone talking to me? Why is she asking me if I need anything? Does that have anything to do with the venue? Because the side note she used a bartender at the venue we just played, So I'm thinking, is something something wrong? Are we inter wreck? Did we wreck? Or is there was there a fire in the venue?

And she's seeing if I am I okay? Like it is so far fetched from anything that's ever happened that I cannot put together why this is. And she says, I'm sorry. What's your name? And for some reason, I said Sean. That's her lighting guy. I said Sean, and she goes, oh, you're married, aren't you? And I said yeah, and she goes, I'm so sorry. I didn't realize you're married, And she leaves and suddenly it's coming together. What just happened? I grabbed my phone on the nightstand, and we have

an app that we all talk together. It's called grout me. So I put on our tour app. I say, and all caps SOS fan on WF, which is Wildflower SOS fan on Wildflower help all caps because I'm in here in my shorts, you know, nothing else but my shorts. So I didn't. It didn't occur to me to like jump out and chase her off. And I know every all my guys are still loading, they're right around here.

So she's up in the front lounge. I see her lean around the corner and I see her up here, and she's writing on a napkin, on a paper towel that she got off of our counter, and she's writing her name and number on the napkin. And the door bust open and Blake my sound guy and Sean and Johnny my baby where they all come busting in. Todd's there. Everyone's there because they saw the SOS and they grab her and take her out into the parking lot and

slam the door. And I'm just so finally in my mind over this is all This happened in twenty seconds from when I first realized when I first answered no, I don't need anything to the door opening, It's probably twenty seconds. It seems like it was five minutes in my mind. But I'm finally now awake to the situation, and the severity of what of what this was starts

sinking into me. So I get up, put on a shirt, put on shoes, and all this stuff's running through my head like this is of one in a million scenario. In fact, I told my mom this morning. She's like, don't say that in your podcast. It'll give people an idea that they could do that. I'm like, Mom, you don't understand. This is one in a million. This she beat all the odds to even make it. Imagine, guys, she came in. She tried a locked bus door and it was unlocked. So she is brave enough to go on.

She sees no one in that front lounge, so she moves into the bunk room, opens the door, walks into a dark bunk room, moves through that, sees no one's there. Opens my room door. It's dark, there's a sleep noise going on, and I'm in here asleep, and she is brave enough to sit down on the bed and start talking to me, and you must assume that this has happen. Maybe she's tried this before with another band. I don't know, but she's super brave and super on drugs and super

on alcohol, no doubt. At least that's what the guys told me after when they got her out in the parking lot. So I have multiple measures of defense in here. I don't know if I could say the words firearms, I have multiple I don't want I don't want YouTube to uh to grab these words, but you guys know what I'm talking about. I have multiple in this room. And it didn't maybe because it was a female and the what in the question she was asking do you

need anything? Maybe that didn't send off the alarm in my head, grab grab your firearm. But that's scary to me too, because what if what if I was so delirious that what if instead of being polite like I was like. I don't know why I was polite, I don't know why I didn't start yelling, But what if I had been the other side of delusion where I pulled out a firearm and put it in her forehead? Either way, Hey, it's all bad. I mean that could

have been terrible and so on so many levels. And there's no way that this girl would listen to this podcast. She seems far from a Granger Smith podcast listener, but if she was, I would say, don't ever ever enter a dark bedroom when someone's sleeping, especially if you know they're from Texas, because they're they're gonna be armed. And I would consider this a very lucky situation for her that it didn't escalate. And I'm thinking, was she filming

me sleeping? Was she watching me? There's so many things going on in my head when I got up this morning and I finally kind of put more of that together. I really got creeped out and to Blake my sound guy this morning, and I just said, tell me everything you know, and he said that when they got her out in the parking lot, kicked her out, she got in her car and left, but then they told the venue and because she was an employee there, they called

her and quote, they said, what are you doing? And she said, quote, I'm driving to Arkansas to pick up my kid. I hope that that would give you an idea of the kind of girl that this is guys driving to Arkansas to pick up my kid. So they said, well, we turn around, come back here because we need to talk. So she came back. They fired her and started to press charges for breaking and entering on their property. I don't know if they are going to press charges, if

they're pushing that through or not. I would prefer to be not involved and just get out of this situation completely. Chris was on the phone. They woke him up. He was home in Texas and they woke him up, and so he was involved last night. What a what a deal?

What a deal? And I wanted to get I wanted to get on this podcast and throw it out in the universe, like my mom was like, don't they went on the podcast, But I wanted to put it out in the universe because I wish I could live every day in my life knowing that the world is shutting down on March fifteenth and martial laws coming. You guys remember what that felt like in twenty twenty. And then I want to live every night like someone might be looking at my face at any point of my sleep

and I want to be ready for that. So my closest means of defate is about five feet away from my bed, and I'm going to start changing that to six inches from my bed for obvious reasons. And that's my story. That is my very very strange story. And I'm going to take a break and be right back, all right. This podcast is also brought to you by Raycon.

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and you don't want to miss it. That's buy Raycon r a y con dot com slash granger to unlock twenty percent off your racons. Buy raycon dot com slash Granger. It helps me if you get your racons with that promo code. Back to the podcast. So we've had a lot of interesting things happen, and I guess what's happened to us on tour is just when you do something anything enough times, it's enough scenarios play out that they're worth telling stories about. So it's not I don't necessarily

think it's just me. If you talk to anyone that's done one thing for a long time, if you talk to, you know, a firefighter that's been doing firefighting for twenty years, he's going to have collected enough stories out of the routine to have some crazy ones like we have. And I seriously think, like I said at the beginning, I think this is a little bit of a catalyst for me to need to back down off of uh trying to constantly play any place that will book us to

pay the bills for my guys. I think I'm gonna I'm gonna back off of that. And I wanted to explain the story on this podcast so that you could you could kind of see part of that decision making for me one of these days. Comment below if you want to hear more of these crazy stories. We have so many, and I could. I could literally bring in like Blake or Chris or will or Johnny Todd, I

could Dusty. I could bring in these guys and we could sit down and go through some of these really funny stories and tell more of them as a group. In fact, this story I just told might might have been funnier if Blake was involved, because Blake's very animated and he was like, oh, I gotta get out of here. What are you doing that you want his bus? So, I, as promised, will always read your questions to me on

this podcast. You guys, if you haven't already, email anything you want conversation wise question comment anything to Grangersmith podcast at gmail dot com. I will read it on this podcast straight back at you. And so I want to dig in here. This question is from Ryan in Sawmills, North Carolina, says, Hey Granger, My name is Ryan Dula from Sawmills, North Carolina. Both my family and I love your clothing line and your music. Shout out to North Carolina.

Thank you, buddy, Thank you for being you. My full time job, I'm a dispatcher for Caldwell County Emergency Services E nine to one one center, where I'm a shift supervisor. I also work part time for Sawmills Fire Department. Emergency services is pretty much my life. My question is have you ever had any aspirations of a job in emergency services, fire, EMS, law enforcement or military? And if you're ever in the Charlotte or Hickory area, come by the firehouse and hang

for a while. Thank you, brother. I appreciate that, Ryan, and thank you for your service. It's funny I just mentioned referenced firefighting. Thank you for serviceman, and I'll tell you that I have thought about that a lot, and during nine to eleven in two thousand and one, I was ready to go at that point and sign up. And it was that moment because I had several buddies that were in the military and that were going overseas, and I would have personally gone Marines because that's what

they were all doing. I had seven buddies from college that went into the Marine Corps, so I would have gone on that path. But I felt I felt a calling through music that I felt like I could make more of a difference in music through giving back to the military, and that would be a bigger impact from

me in serving my country, if that makes sense. And so because of that, and because of that sentiment of a feeling, instead of using that as a cop out, like and I'm not going to it's nine to eleven, I'm not going to go join the military because I'm going to play music and that'll be my way of serving, I wanted to make that concrete and said, okay, if you make this decision, because I felt a longing to serve.

If I'm going to make this decision, I got to put pen and paper to this, and so I started right then working on what then became my first entertainment tour to Iraq in two thousand and seven, and then we went twice in two thousand and eight, including Christmas

and New Year's. We played Christmas shows and New Year's shows in Iraq, and then after that I started one hundred Mile Walk, which I did for six years, walking one hundred miles over the course of five days from South Austin to Fort Hood, raising money and awareness for those men and women that have served. Then that culminated

in the they were their documentary of mine. So to answer your question, Ryan, I yes, I definitely that there's a good argument that between high school football coaching and Marine Corps that would have been my two things if it wasn't for music. And but I didn't want to use music. It's just a cop out. So I constantly want to be able to give back through my services with music to help with that effort. So thanks for your question and thank you for your service. This question

is from Destiny, says Hey Granger. I had a question on the T shirts. How do I get one and how much are they? Well, Destiny, you go to ee dot com and you could find a plethora of T shirts there. I'm not sure if that's your question or not, if you're speaking about a specific T shirt that you

maybe you saw me wear, but yeparelgee dot com. We have a lot of T shirts, always have and coming up if you're interested in one, I would say, coming up on the twenty seventh of November, it's going to be Black Friday, and you're going to start seeing us post about our Black Friday sales. And that's always such a great deal for you guys, because we'll just do a blowout and you'll be able to get the best

deal that you can on those shirts. We also have I don't know if you I don't know if you mean this too, but we also have a T shirt subscription service where that's like ten bucks the first month and then it's like twenty something, maybe twenty fifteen or twenty after that, and you'll get a shirt at the first of every month, which we love. That's one of my favorite things we do at ee Apparel is you

sign up for our T shirt of the month. We design the fact I'm wearing one of them from a few months ago now, but we personally designed these shirts. We get them already, we get your size, and you do nothing. You just one day, you open your door at the first of every month and right there on your front porch is a box from us with your T shirt of the month. We don't sell those anywhere else.

They're totally exclusive, so I love that. The other subscription I have that is fairly new is ye nation dot com, and I've I wouldn't encourage you guys just to check that out. It's free to start. But ye nation dot Com is essentially a fan club, glorified fan club that I take very close effort and attention to, and we built that from scratch, and so it's a really cool

way to interact and get exclusive information. I'm gonna be teasing the new album Country Things, Volume Two, which comes out on Black Friday, and be teasing those songs first on ye nation dot com. So check that out too. We'll see you can me do another one here. This question is from Daniel says, Hey, Buddy, I got a question for one of your next podcasts or whenever you're going to answer fan questions again. What happened to the band and part of the crew back at the beginning?

Watching all the old videos starting at two thousand and eight on YouTube, seems like you had a bunch of fun. You have come a long way proud of your journey. Yegee from Germany, Danny, so hey, Danny, shout out to Germany. I love me some Snitzel. I love traveling Germany, loved the culture there. So yeah, you have been observant in watching my old videos dating back to when we started YouTube really in two thousand and eight, and I've been through a lot of band members since then. They have

all turned over at least once. Every position has turned over or drums, bass, guitars. So those guys, I still keep in touch with them. Everybody that's ever been in my band that's an alumni of my band, we all keep in touch. We all are on group text together. We all meet up and they go to shows. I had Mitch and Manny, my keyboard player and bass player from back in that day. They were at my show with me last week and they were on the bus and they hang out. So it's a tight knit group.

And everyone that's ever left my band, it was usually for a musual reason that it needed to be, It needed the change to happen. So I still love those guys. I was lucky enough that in the early days they were a lot older than me. Those guys were a lot older. So I learned so much from them about the road and about about performing and adapting to different situations. And I wish they had told me to always keep your bus door locked. Just kidding, but I do keep

in touch with him. And then thank you Danny for your question and shout out to Germany. Let's do one more question here, well, maybe two more, because here's one from Mateo that says, will you ever come to Finland? Shout out to Finland. I've never been to Finland, and I would absolutely love to. I would love to. That sounds like a place I would probably tour as a tourist before I tour as a musician. But if you want to come, hear me, I would love to play

a show there. Absolutely. Here's another random I'm just scrolling through these the email grangersmith podcast at gmail dot com. I'm just scrolling through it and I'll find a couple here. This question says, Hey granger my name is a Medio Plett. I'm a beginner songwriter from Chihuahua, Mexico. So what is your advice for early songwriters and how do I can with more professional songwriters virtually? Is there even a chance for a songwriter from Mexico to take a stand in

country music. Love your music. I'm Adeo, So I'm Adeo. That is first of all, absolutely a songwriter from Mexico could make a stand in country music. And it's great that you're listening to this podcast and you're reaching out to guys like me. I would use I would use YouTube and Instagram and Facebook to your favor and continue

to write songs and perform them. You didn't say anything about you being a singer, but I would perform them in any way possible on YouTube and Facebook and get them out the space, get them out into the universe, and people will start gravitating towards good music. I would start friending some of these songwriters you're talking about, the

professional songwriters. As you said, I would start f these guys on Instagram or Twitter, whatever and just saying, hey, my name is Amedeo and I have some songs and I love your stuff. You just start the conversation like that, and I say, absolutely, a songwriter from Mexico could take a stand in country music. I've never been to Chihuahua, but I do know my grandmother has been, and I've had some friends that have been and it sounds like

a really cool place and I love your culture. So from that perspective, you're gonna be able to bring a fresh light to country music songwriting. I think it's important that we are well versed in what you have to bring. So thanks for your question, man, keep at it, and I hope to hear from you again. On one of these questions. I probably shouldn't get into another one. I've talked a lot. I feel like today you guys out here on the bus and I'm about to go do soundcheck.

We are in Texar, Canada today, so I'm gonna go do soundcheck, And as always, I appreciate you guys listening. And today today was a special addition to this podcast. And what a weird story. This is gonna be one of those stories that I tell when people ask me, like on the radio, and they say, what's one of the craziest nights you've ever had on tour? I'll say this night. I'll say this night, It'll be the first I'll never forget the night I woke up to a fan in my bed looking at me saying if asking

if I need anything creepy. I did take a shower right after that just in case. You know, you never know these days, So love you guys. We'll see you, yegee. Thanks for joining me on the Grangersmith Podcast. I appreciate all of you guys. You could help me out by rating this podcast on iTunes. If you're on YouTube, subscribe to this channel. Hit that little like button and the notification spell so that you never miss anytime I upload

a video. If you have a question for me that you would like me to answer, email Grangersmith Podcast at gmail dot com. Ye