The First Words from a Songwriter

where I am. Have you heard of it? Maybe because of Mount Rushmore is right down the road, or maybe because of the huge biker rally, which is why we're here today, Not because I'm a biker, but because I'm here playing music. It seems like I always get to go to every town's coolest event, and that's why I love my job. How could you not? We get to go to your town when she's got her best dress on.

Of course, it wasn't always that way. It all started me in my guitar in my room at home with nobody listening, and I was needing to tell a story and I had a means to tell it through six strings and a few chords that I knew. What happened after that was life changing for me. Songwriting provided an outlet for me to get out some emotions that I didn't want to talk about, or maybe I didn't know how to talk about. And then later I come to find out that those songs, those ideas would connect with

other people, and that feeling made it worth it. It made me want to dig deeper. And that's what I'll talk about on episode three. All right, I'm pulling up the trustee Wikipedia right now. Sturgis is a city in Mead County, South Dakota, population six six hundred and twenty seven. Sturgis as notable as a location of one of the largest motorcycle events in the world, which is held annually

on the second full week of August. Motorcycle enthusiasts from around the world flocked to this town during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. We just pulled in. It's early morning, and first of all, amazing foothills surrounding this place. Beautiful town, green pine trees, which is a refreshing sight because we haven't seen a single tree, and the rest of the state of South Dakota as we've been driving through it this morning. It's the month of August, but it is

sixty five degrees outside. That's pretty awesome. At home right now, it's ninety one to put it in perspective in Texas, so it feels good. It feels like a nice October day. Everywhere you look right now, it's motorcycles and black leather. I've never seen so many in my life. I'm not a biker. Maybe I will be if I'm sixty years old and retired and looking for a hobby. I could see the appeal of it. It's a big, old, loud

beast of a machine. You're wrapped up on it, hugging a windy two lane road, sunglasses and leather jacket, the breeze and beautiful countryside all around you. You stop at a little cafe, grab an ice cold draft beer all the while. Leonard Skynard is your theme music. Yeah, it sounds like a pretty good time. How did music get me here? I've asked that question in some crazy places all around the world. I remember thinking that in a black Hawk helicopter a couple thousand feet above Baghdad in Iraq.

And that's what I'm thinking right now. And Sturge just at a bikeer rally? How did my music get me to a bikeer rally? And I don't know all the workings of it, but I'm just glad that it did. If I was going to narrow down anything, pinpoint anything of where things began and music, it's a no brainer. Everything starts with the song, and there was a time when I had to start writing them. And that's what

I want to talk about in this podcast. The very first ones, the awkward, left footed, very vulnerable first once and here's one of them right here. I found this old cassette. This is me playing one of the first songs I ever wrote. Please don't judge. I'm just a teenager. You a small cafe off twenty two. I have to tuck her. What I should do? Said, I need a

place where I could settle down. You look at me with the tired brand, said, if I could do it all over again, I'd be heading sound without looking back, because I've been on the road from coast to coast, and there's one place I love lost. If us me for ball, it's worth there rained nothing done on earth as it is in Texas. So of course I was too young to actually go coast to coast. I hadn't done that, and I didn't ask any trucker life advice. But there was an old cafe on Highway twenty two

that I love to eat at it. But what ended up happening was that song called as It in Texas plus nine others made my first ten and I went in and recorded them in a cheap little studio in Wiley, Texas. I made this album called Waiting on Forever. You can still find it. It's out there on the internet. Me white cowboy hat, button up shirt, looked like a baby. I looked like I was twelve, and I wasn't too

far from twelve. But that studio album, that first album for me, was so important and I didn't know it at the time, but it got into the hands of some people that ultimately started a chain of events that took me to this place called Nashville, Tennessee. So this is what it sounds like on the streets of Sturgis, South Dakota. Right now, let's turn that off. So Sturgis is crazy today. I've never seen anything like this. Thousands

of motorcycles out here in the street. I mean's like a bunch of fire ants going everywhere, and it's it's chaotic. This is a time when I really feel thankful to be in the back of my nice quiet bus making this podcast for you guys. So guess what happened to that album Waiting on Forever. Somehow, through somebody, through some friend of a friend, that ends up on LeAnn Willmack's bus. You remember LeAnn Walmack. Yeah, of course you do. She's amazing.

So her bass player, his name is Brett Beavers and he is a producer, writer, musician, and he has written a song at this point for Darryl Dodd called on Earth As it Is in Texas. Somehow my CD is up on their bus and it's face down. He's looking at the back, he's looking at the track list and he sees that song as it Is in Texas and he says, hey, that's the same title as my song. So he plays it and I guess he heard something. He heard some kind of potential. So he finds out

how to get in touch with me. This is when things started changing big time. You can take a shot if you want to try. And just missed a call from Chris, my tour manager. I'm gonna call him back because I think he's out there in the street right now. Everybody, Hey, did you call? Yeah? Man, I don't know if you've been over here to the main street, dude, but This is really really cool. I think you would regret not

seeing this. What's up? What's over there? It's just this, thousands of motorcycles, all part of the bars Cato shops. It's all really really cool. Okay, well, I'll head over there and meet you and see what's up. I'll tell you what back towards you will meet you, uh at that intersection there at the front of the venue. Okay, Hey,

I'll see you in a second. Okay, So I'll go brave the thousands of motorcycles and report back in So Brett Beaver sat down with us, me and my family, and he said, hey, I heard every song on this album, and I think you guys should start considering Granger writing songs for a publishing company in Nashville. We hadn't thought about this before. This is the first I didn't even know what publishing companies were. But there's companies in Nashville that will pay you to write songs and then they

pitch it to other artists. Now, sometimes if you're an artist yourself, especially young artists like me, they can kind of groom you and prepare you to get a record deal one day, and then they own publishing on your songs. That's how that works. So by now I'm at Texas A and M University. I'm a freshman in the core Cadets. So my life is already crazy. My lack of life actually is pretty crazy. But I have a band and

we're playing a lot of these original songs. So the next logical step is for somebody from Nashville to fly down to little college station, Texas and hear me play

with my band. So that's exactly what happened. I had a couple really cool publishing companies fly down from Nashville, had some of their executives come, and they would come to this bar it's called Shadow Canyon, and we would pack it out just because we knew everybody and it was a big party, and you know, for some reason, they really liked what they saw and they really wanted to offer me a publishing deal. So at this point, I'm nineteen, maybe almost twenty years old, and I have

to make a decision. I have to not only choose one of these companies, but I have to decide if I'm going to leave college and go to write songs, something so unorthodox in a state that I've never been to. I don't know anybody. It's a huge risk, and I've got to make the decision right now. Meanwhile, in searge to South Dakota, I just made another decision right now,

and that was to get a tattoo. I'm at a biker rally and I'm with my band and there's tattoo shops everywhere, and I thought when in Sturgis, so I got a Texas tattoo the outline of Texas on my right arm. I did just now, and Chris was right, is it's total insanity out there. I've never seen so many bikes in my life, and I'm glad to be back on the bus again. There's now bands playing in the background on the stage that we're sitting next to, So I apologize if that bleeds through the mic onto

the podcast, but it's all part of the experience today. Right. I'm realizing as I'm telling some of these older stories that I'm leaving a lot of gaps. There's a couple of gaps in the timeline. But I don't want to tell everything. I don't want to tell every detail because I want to have stuff to talk about in the future. Right, So, by now I'm a sophomore at Texas A and M. It's December and I've made a decision. I'm gonna finish out my sophomore year and I'm gonna leave after spring

semester move to Nashville. I'm gonna sign with EMI Music Publishing, packed everything I have, which wasn't much, and start a life as a songwriter, at least to see what it is. I have amazing parents, and they they provided me with the greatest gift you can give a child, and that was the freedom to dream. They did not hold me back.

I think they saw it in my eyes. They saw they saw that A, this was a rare opportunity to sign with a big publishing company and B I'm twenty years old and I'm only going to get this chance once now before life starts. So I found an apartment, moved my stuff in. My mom came with me. She kind of helped me get settled in a little bit. And on July third, I'll never forget the day she

left and I officially became a Nashville resident. Quick sponsor break I want to talk about EEEE Energy, and that's because it's my only sponsor and not sponsored by money. It's sponsored by love because it's my family, me and my brothers. It's our drink, and it's kind of a passion project, I guess you could say. But I really do love this thing because we made this from scratch and I'm very proud of it. We created the recipe

according to what we like. We made this cameo can We made a box that has a target on it. So if you like to shoot guns like I do, and you like to drink EEE Energy like I do, you just flip that little four pack box over and use it as target practice. Now we're in a lot of mom and pop stores all across the country. We're on Amazon. We're not working on a big distribution deal yet. I'm not sure if we want to go that route quite yet because it's very close to me and I

don't want to lose that kind of control. But I want you to try it, So go to Grangersmith dot com or ee Energy dot com and get you one. See what you think. Have you ever moved to a city by yourself when you didn't know anyone, not only in the city, but in the entire state. Well that was me twenty years old, Nashville, Tennessee. The only people I knew were just a couple people over at EMI Publishing that signed me to that job. But you know, if I was going to leave Texas and do this,

I was all in. I wanted to learn the craft, and I wanted to immediately start writing with as many people as I could, especially some of the older guys that had big, old hits on the radio. Because if I could learn from them, and I didn't even have to get a great song with them, but if I could just get in the room with them and learn their process, then that was going to be something I

could take with me forever. So a lot of those George Strait songs that I grew up listening to, I found those writers and I got in the room with those guys and I said, tell me the story of you wrote that song. And sometimes we would we would intend to write a song together that day, but I would get so caught up and asking them questions and then listening to their stories that we wouldn't we wouldn't get anything, but that was still a successful day for me.

So a typical morning would be I would have an appointment at ten am, and E and I would set these appointments up for me these co writes, and sometimes I didn't even know who the person was until I walked in at ten am. We would shake hands, grab a cup of coffee, and I would usually start by playing a few things that I'd written to let them know who I was and what I was all about, and then would we would dive in. They would say, well,

have you ever thought about something like this? And they would play something and I would say, I love that. Let's try to write that song, and you know we did. We got a lot of cool things. But I wasn't writing granger songs. I was writing songs that they thought should be granger songs. So I was learning the craft, and I was thankful for for that. But I hadn't yet found my niche. I hadn't yet found what I needed to say to feel something. Yet that was about

the change. So I'm laying in bed one night, can't sleep. I'm gods could have got this lonely feeling to me, heartsick from being gone from Texas for so long, looking around the room at the alarm clock, and these lines start coming to me. I can't fall I can't fall asleep tonight. I don't remember that I don't remember the bedroom ever, be in this bride from just the alarm clock, like it's the alarm clock. It feels like a song about me. Now it feels so cold, it feels so

cold at the end of the sheets. I'll stay I'll stay warm as long as I don't move my feet over where yours used to be, over where yours used to be. Sometimes I closed my eyes and you're not gone. I hold you tied and kiss you all night. And then I found my hook. Dream on dream dream every night in my mind. I put this back in love where we belong, dream for passion, bird, emotionster, funny, how this bet is seen it all, funny, how this bed is seen it all? And now it's just here. Now

it's just here to dream on to dream. And I had a song now that I wrote in about thirty minutes that felt better than anything I had written there with these professional writers. And by better I mean more like me. It was my story. It was the first time I ever felt like a real songwriter because I had told a story that meant something, that had some

kind of emotion. It wasn't just rhymes and chords. There's a difference right well now I knew there was, and I was so homesick from Texas and all my friends and my family and being away from them for so long, And then I was able to channel that emotion into a song. So after five years of writing songs, I felt like dream On was my first one, my first real song. I'd written a hundred songs before that, but this was my first real one. And nothing ever happened

with Dreamond and that wasn't the point. No one ever even heard it, but it was a snapshot of my emotion that night in bed, couldn't sleep, lonely as hell from being gone from Texas, and that's what mattered. That's what made it a real song, as opposed to a couple guys in a room drinking coffee thinking about what's popular on the radio. So I go on a mission to write more songs like dream On, and it's way harder than I thought. But it's funny how one song

changed the entire way that I approached songwriting. It ultimately set me on a path that then moved me back to Texas, where I started a band, wrote more songs, and then found fans to connect with those songs. But that's another story. For another podcast. I got a crowd I need to connect with tonight and starred to South Dakota and they're ready to rock. I'm gonna get dressed and go do my thing. This is granger Smith. Thanks for listening to Episode three. Happens that Out of the

Blue Scat's interview last year. When it happens like that, nothing to Lowes turns right into you, dude, Oh you can do just to keep her around. To the moon goes down in her back into your house. One thing will do another. You love each other when looking you never lived 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.