The World Isn't Flat

fan first. But what you need to understand is that my journey was a little bit different, a little bit unorthodox, from a lot of other country artists. I got my start on the road over a decade of beating up honky tonks and dance halls and trying to make one fan of the time, as opposed to staying in Nashville and writing songs and creating a buzz within the industry. Now, there's a reason that I did that. There's a reason that my path drastically changed because I was living in

Nashville and I was on the songwriting path. And by the way, neither way is right or wrong, but there was a couple of events that led me in the opposite direction. There's even a place that helped me make my mind up, and I should probably thank them, but I'll never support them again because they exploit the dreams of young country singers, and I guess I'll talk about that here we go. You hear that, Yeah, that's the sound of nothing. That's the sound of a lonely quiet

hotel room. And I kind of welcome the quiet because we're we're in the middle of a lot of craziness right now. Luke Bryan, who we're on tour with, is currently doing his farm tour, so we're not on that part of his tour. So in the meantime, we're doing what we call flight dates. That means we we fly commercially to all these different cities and then we put on a show with rented gear. Let me give you a window into this craziness. Pulling out my phone looking

at my schedule. Yesterday we were in Tampa, Florida. We drove to O Calla, Florida. Today, Nashville, Tennessee, then Mobile, Alabama, home for a day, then Westfield, Massachusetts, Norfolk, Virginia, Boston, mass Fort Collins, Colorado, Indianapolis, Indiana, home for a day Perry, Georgia, Jacksonville, Florida, Green Bay, Wisconsin. And then finally we fly out to Fresno, California, where we're going to meet the buses and they're going to take three or four days to drive out there

on their own. We play three days in California with Luke Bryan home for four and then I'm gone for thirty one days. That will be the longest I've ever been gone as a musician from home. Thirty one days in the US. That's insanity. That's going to be me living a lot on faith time, talking to my three little ones and my wife. It's not easy. It's not

the glamorous life that you might think it is. It's a lot of missing home, which is probably part of what inspires me and the guys to be better, to be better versions of ourself, because we have that passion to win, because we better not lose. If we're using this much time away from home, we can't lose. We got to be at our best right. A lot of this craziness is happening because I have a brand new

album coming out on October twenty seventh. It's called When the Good Guys Win And If you don't mind before anyone else hears it. I would like to play a little bit of this record exclusively right now, right here on this podcast. Here's a snippet, so I don't get in trouble, but this is the title track, When the Good Guys Win. He's a greasy ranch turning on a big black Chevrolet, first in, last out every day. He's a mega give a dollar if you need me hotter

kind of good old boy. There's a single white trailer, couple lakers on the edge of town front or sun going down and Matt Bruded Banks swinging and the swing like a dream is where it is ring. Don't you love it? When the Good Guys? When? Don't you love it? When a ship comes in? Yeah? Man, every now and then what goes around comes around again? Don't you live? A little long shot? Prayer? Und your dog on a hill of a tailor. He wants a kiss and she

leans in. Don't you love him? Win? The good Guys win? And there you have it. I hope you guys like this album as much as I enjoyed making it, and I'll be I'll be playing a lot more of it before October twenty seventh, when it comes out. You know, things weren't always this crazy, quite the opposite. When when I first started, I was a rocky road Let me tell you about that. So I was a teenager. I had an album out. One album. I had ten songs. It was called Waiting On Forever. I was a sophomore

at Texas A and M University. I was in the core cadets there, and so I had I had friends, I had a built in fan base already, and the only thing I didn't have was a band. So I went to the school paper and I put out an ad and it said country singer needs country band, serious gigs in line. And I was truthful about everything except for the serious gigs in line. I didn't have any gigs.

But I figured if I could get a band, if we could find a place to practice and rehearse and play some of these songs off at this album, and we'd be off to the races. I ended up meeting a bunch of the guys from that ad. Started with a keyboard player, and then we found a guitar player, and then one of my friends that kind of knew guitar, then he learned bass. So we weren't the best band, but we were able to play the songs well enough to go get us a gig. Now, the college station

music scene, it was good to me. I was able to get a couple of local bar gigs. I met some of the owners. They were very willing to have us play their stage because when I came to play, I brought all my friends and they would pile in there and make the bar money. You know. That's the way that I got my first publishing deal. We had several companies from Nashville flying down interested in seeing me play, and I ended up signing with EMI at the time. Now,

I went over this in my songwriting podcast. But I left Texas A and M to go to Nashville to write songs. What I didn't know was how much I was gonna miss playing the songs live. And I hadn't even really started yet. And it didn't take long in Nashville. And I don't know what came first, the lack of success from my songwriting career at the time, or my need to jump back on the stage. But I met this guy named Trent Willman, and Trent and I became

great friends. He was a fellow Texan. We wrote a lot of songs together, and he was starting a band. He had a house gig in Louisbourg, Tennessee, this place called Big Gems Now where I fit in with Trent and Big Gems is. I had been spending a lot of my spare time after songwriting during the day learning the steel guitar, the pedal steel guitar. I had a lot of hours at home by myself. I always loved the steel guitar and it was a passion of mine to learn it. Now Trent knew that he had heard

me play just hanging around. He said, hey, man, you want to be in my band. I said, yes, I do. I spent the night with Jim Beamon, Johnny Walker Red woke up with a very train running through my head. I'm a bear man. I had a blast in that band. We called ourselves cow Camp. I actually turned twenty one on stage at Big Gym's playing for Trent Now. These days were very important to me for a couple of reasons. One, that was my first and only true experience as a

band member, not the front guy. I was learning how to take directions and follow his set list. The other really important thing was every night Trent let me sing a couple of songs. So during this house gig, not only did I learn a lot from watching Trent, but I got to get up and practice a little myself too. Now you know a side note. You know who our drummer was during that time. It was Chris Lee, who's now my current tour manager. So as you can imagine,

Chris knows a lot about me. He's seen many phases of my life. In fact, let me call Chris real quick and see if he has anything to say about cal Camp. What's that? Brother? I just was gonna call you real quick. Do you ever think about cow Camp? I'm actually on the podcast right now talking about caw Camp days. Hard to believe that you're a great stoke guitar fighter back dude and you a drummer. Yeah, yeah, even more so be a drummer. Yeah, I was just

talking on this podcast. So that's kind of where I cut my teeth in the honky Tonk World, my one and only time of being a band member and not the front guy. Yeah. That's uh, that's caite a way to cut your teeth. Because we drove an hour to get there and then played for about five hours, taking ten minute breaks between sets, and then we drove an hour back home. Those were some regulous nights for sure. Yep, I'll see you somewhere on Friday, Boston something West Springfield, Okay.

I had a great experience at big gyms, and it lasted for a few years. I think what ended that gig for me was Trent got a record deal on Sony Records. He took off and went and put out a big radio single and hit the road. And now it was time for me to really focus on me being a singer. And that's when I made my best

worst decision at the time of my career. I turned my focus to downtown Nashville, Broadway Street, broadways, cutthroat singers, guitar players, musicians, songwriters, all trying to make a name for themselves, to get a record deal or end up on somebody's big tour. You've seen it. It's a big tourist attraction in Nashville. There's a bar on every corner, and every one of them has live music seven days a week, starting at ten am, going all the way to two am. It's four hour shifts with no breaks

for the bands, and they're playing only for tips. At first, I loved it. Challenge accepted. Right, you have to stand out. You have to have something about you that draws people in more than the guy down the street. Otherwise you're not gonna get customers. You're not gonna get people standing and there watching you play, and you're not gonna get tips. Now I won't name the name, but it's the Purple

Bar on that street, and that's where I started. And I played three gigs per week on that stage, Monday morning at ten am to two pm, Wednesday afternoon two pm to six pm, and Friday six pm to ten pm. These shows were every week of the year, so my Monday morning gig was just me and a guitar. The only other person in the room during that hour was the bartender because people aren't drinking beer at ten am,

usually on a Monday morning. But we always left the doors open, even on the cold months, because God forbid, some tourist might be walking down the street that wants to hear some music. I don't think there's ever been another season of my career that I've been more excited to tell you about. More things. We've got Yee Energy, the energy drink that me and my brothers created that I call the unofficial sponsor of this podcast. We have a whole new apparel line coming out in the fall.

We have a brand new album called When the Good Guys Win, releases October twenty seven. Right after that, we're gonna start a headlining tour called the Don't Tread On Me Tour, and we're probably coming to a city or town near you. Oh when there's this guy named Earl Dibbles Junior, who I need to explain, by the way, one of these podcasts. But he has a new song coming on this album and I cannot wait to show you guys the music video that we made for it.

I realized that it is you, guys that allow me to do what I do. Thank you for that support. Back in the Purple Bar that I'll leave unnamed, the owner is always on me. He's always on me about the time that I wasted in between songs. He wanted one song to end and another song to start right away. He didn't even want me to tell the band what the next song was. He wanted the band just to follow along because he didn't want any space for a customer to have the opportunity to leave and go to

one of his competitors. He also had a big say in the songs I was playing. He wanted the most popular songs played all day repeated. Of course, no originals. Don't even thinking about playing an original song, you know. And I was okay with that, especially at the beginning, because this wasn't about me playing my original music. This was about me being on stage consistently in front of crowds.

The crowds were all different. Sometimes I had to perform in front of seven people, and then sometimes on a Friday night it would be so packed you couldn't put another person in there. And it was a good education for me to learn how to put on a good show no matter what, no matter what song I was playing, or no matter who or how many people were watching. Now, even though this was a great education, I still had

a little bit of a problem. I wasn't able to pay the bills with these tips, and more importantly to me, I couldn't pay the band very well on the tips. Keep in mind, we had a tip jar and it was all based on one dollar bills, so everyone on the street, everyone in Broadway was asking for one dollar bills tips. So one night I decided to change that I started saying on the microphone this little slogan. I

would say, we have the best deal in town. We will play any song you want for a twenty dollars bill. And we acted like it was this that was a huge bargain and they were getting a great deal, and people would kind of chuckle and laugh. They knew, but you know what, people started pulling these twenties out and putting in the tip jar, and the band is they're kind of getting jazzed up because they know we're all

splitting this four ways. At the end of the night, we went backstage and we took this pickle jar at the big tip jar, and we turned it upside down and there was just twenties falling all out, wadded up, and we were getting excited and we were unrolling these twenties and counting them. Up ended up being four hundred and eighty dollars divided four ways. That was one hundred and twenty bucks each. That was about sixty or eighty bucks more than we ever made in a single night.

Of course, Chris Lee, my tour manager, is my drummer at the time, and with this epic night on Broadway, we decided to celebrate, so we hit the town bar after bar after bar. The only thing I remember in the aftermath of that night was that we ended up using every dollar that we made on beer. In fact, I think Chris spent another additional three hundred bucks or so, and then we were even more broke than we started.

But at least it's a good story. That was the night that things changed between me and the Purple people. You see, when I came back for the next show, the owner who was never really on my side, I was a pawn in his game. Well, he called me up one day and he wanted to discuss this twenty dollars a song thing, and he said, if you're going to ask for twenty dollars a song, I'm going to get a cut of it because this is my bar.

I said, no way, man. If I'm going to ask for it and somebody tips me twenty bucks out of their pocket, that's for me and the band that's playing the song, And that's not what he wanted to hear. I showed up that Friday ready to play like I always did, and when I got there there was another band loading in onto the stage, putting their stuff up there. He had double booked me on purpose because he knew that's all I had. All I had was that stage. I stormed into his office. I said, what the hell man?

He said, oh, well, I'm sorry. He played it off like he had no idea. He goes, I'll tell you what, Granger, I don't want things to go bad between us. So I'm opening up a bar across the street, and I would like you to play my grand opening. It's going to be a big deal, so big that I'll actually pay you one hundred bucks for you to split between you and the band, and then you can keep whatever tips you get on top of that. Okay, done, I'll book it. I've never heard of him paying a band,

but I'll take it. I need the money. So that show rolls around. I go play it with the band. After the show, I collect my tips and I go to the bartender and I say, hey, I'm just here to get my hundred bucks, and she goes, I don't know what you're talking about. And I said, well, the owner agreed that he was going to pay me a hundred bucks if I played the show. And she said, well,

you're gonna have to talk to him about it. So I went down there, and he said, man, I never told you I was going to pay a hundred bucks. You know, it's tips only around here. Man. I was so mad. That was the first time, straight to my face, a bar owner had lied to me. Unfortunately, it wasn't the last. It would happen many times after that. But that's when I learned about what this business is. Sometimes the dark side of it, screwing over an artist, a

starving artist. It's just I'm just trying to make a few bucks to keep this stream alive, you know. So I went home. I didn't have an argument. I went home, and that Friday came, you know, my big Friday gig, and I didn't show up on purpose. My phone rang, it was him, didn't answer. Rang again. I didn't answer, and I was just hoping that minutes were going by at six o'clock when all those customers would start leaving because there wasn't a band playing, and he would have

to scramble to find somebody. I don't know what happened after that. I never talked to him again. And you could do whatever you want. I'm not gonna tell anybody not to go there, but I'm not You're not gonna see me there. But you know, that was an important night for me. Something changed in my mind. I was done with Nashville officially, and it wasn't the people, and it wasn't music row, it wasn't all the reasons you commonly hear it. I needed to get back on a stage,

a real stage where I could play my songs. I had been writing a bunch. I had a bunch of songs that I felt like were good enough to play in front of an audience, and I needed that. I needed Texas. I needed a real band. I needed to go home and become the artist that I wanted to be. And then, really, it's been big to follow. It might be the death of me today when he sayn the os, the Poms didn't have a man, you ain't going nowhere.

You're thinking that the word slash. I remember writing those words driving in a U haul truck with all my stuff from Nashville to Texas one rainy night, and it was the best drive I've ever made. Even what's ironic is before that, the best drive I ever made was moving to Nashville. But now I was armed with knowledge of the business, knowledge of the craft of songwriting, and I was ready to take on the stage. I was ready to start a band, a real band that was

going to play original music with me. And I did just that. I put together a band. I moved to College Station, Texas, lived on my uncle's couch, re enrolled to Texas A and M. And people asked me when did you get your start. Now, there's a couple answers. I could say when I first started playing guitar and doing those North Texas oprys at home. I could say when I got my first big songwriting gig in Nashville.

But to me, what really feels like the start is this moment April two thousand and four, when I moved back to Texas, started the band and began the journey that I'm still on today. I went and bought a little used trailer in an old PA system and hooked it up to the back of my truck, piled in the band, and we were armed and ready to play any gig that we could possibly find. And that's what we did, and it led to all kinds of crazy stuff.

I even got punched by a fan one time while I was singing that feels like a whole new podcast. That's probably gonna be on episode seven when I talk about the Honky Song Journey. Thank y'all for listening. Happen sack that out of the blue Sky listener bo last Yeah. When it happens like that, nothing in Loones turns right into you, Julie. All you can do just to keep her around until the moon goes down in her back at your house. One things to another, you loveing each

other and when looking you never look back. It happens like that. Don't forget. You could ask me questions, tweet me hashtag Greater Smith Podcast and I'll answer them on the next one. Love you guys, thanks for listening.