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Feb. 27, 2023 - Doug Collins Podcast
38:11
Fly Over States
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You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
In this house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
I gotta admit, if you're watching video today, the, the, the, the, where do you hunt mostly now?
Oh, uh.
Gosh, I hunt all over.
Let's see.
Hang on a minute.
Let me fix this.
Sorry.
I hunt here.
I've got a farm here.
I go down to Louisiana a lot.
I've got a buddy that's got an island down there on the Mississippi River.
I went to Illinois this year.
Went to a few different places.
You haven't been up with Rob in Illinois, have you?
Rob who?
Rob and Lance.
Rob Hatch and Lance Miller?
No.
Their place up in Illinois?
No.
I haven't got that invite yet.
I barely get it.
I haven't been able to go.
It's pretty wild.
They got this place up here.
It's pretty wild.
So, look, hunting from a songwriter perspective, sitting in the stands, sitting in a...
Do you get ideas when you're sitting there?
Very rarely.
Whenever I go hunting, I'm like, I've checked out when I go hunting.
I'm all about, once I go through the gate, I leave Nashville behind.
I don't, I mean, sometimes it happens.
Sometimes you'll be sitting there if it's a lull or whatever and it's peaceful or whatever.
I mean, I may go to a song, look up a song on my phone and maybe work on a verse.
Maybe, but not, usually I don't.
Usually I'm in tune with the woods.
Usually it's time just to get away, huh?
That's a fact.
That is a fact.
That's what hunting is to me.
I get that.
Believe me, I get that.
From all my stuff traveling all over the world and being on, you know, you're in the slime lot, all that, sitting in that tree, sitting in a stand or blind, you know, it's just, you know, something that you'd love to do.
Now, you from Birmingham, you born and raised in Birmingham and go to Nashville, or how did that work?
That's right.
I went to high school, grew up in Birmingham, went to high school, and as soon as I graduated high school, I moved up here.
I was a kicker in high school, and I got a bunch of letters from different schools.
But back then, I mean, you know, in 83, that's when I graduated.
It wasn't a big thing that kickers got scholarships right out of high school.
I mean, you had to be a phenom.
You know what I'm saying?
I got a bunch of letters.
I got a letter from Auburn and I got letters.
The one school, because I'm a huge Alabama fan, I was like, the one school I never got a letter.
I never got a letter from Alabama to come walk on.
But every letter was to come up there and try your hand at it.
And I got them from Auburn.
I got them from a bunch of schools up here, Vandy and Middle Tennessee State.
And I was like, well, I want to be close to Nashville because I know I want to chase the music thing.
So I wound up going to Middle and I kicked for a couple of years there and got sick, came down with a strep infection when my time was because the guy before me just got drafted by the Buffalo Bills.
And then it was my turn.
Had a great spring game.
Came down with a strep infection.
Was in the hospital for like two weeks.
And it was touch and go there for a little while.
They never knew what happened to me, but it went away.
And by the time I got healed up and everything, this other dude stepped in and started kicking.
So I hit the road.
And started singing.
And of course, my folks and my dad wasn't too happy about that.
I mean, even though I grew up in the music business, dad wanted me to do that because I went to all kinds of kicking camps in high school.
I mean, he was screwing me to be a kicker.
But anyway, I did that and I was like, no, this is what I want to do.
I did, and everything kind of just evolved over into songwriting after that.
Well, it works out, though.
You and I are about the same age.
I was 84 graduating high school in 83, so we come through that similar time.
You know, we talk about this a lot, and I'm just curious that you brought it up a little bit in that time frame.
Isn't it interesting, our generation, I mean, we're born in the late 60s, came through the 70s, early 80s.
We're sort of tagged with a little bit of the 60s.
We've got a lot of 70s in us, and then we've got a lot of 80s in us, you know, especially...
I've always said that music, and when I worked, you know, we worked with the songwriters, and I've been doing this for a long time with y'all and doing the Music Modernization Act and everything we got to that.
And when I started learning y'all's heart more, I've learned that there's such cyclical natures of songs and songwriting.
Having similar...
You know, of course, you know, I would say stories, if you would.
But tell me how that influenced your writing.
Because, I mean, you wrote for something with Lee Bross.
You wrote for Jason.
I mean, some of the best songs Jason ever put out.
Kenny Chesney's.
I mean, these are the kind of things.
How did that...
Because I know it's impacted me.
And my kids talk about it all the time.
You know, this is the way I think and everything else.
How did that time frame affect you and your songwriting?
Oh, gosh.
Whenever I'm writing songs, you're talking about where I grew up and how I grew up.
You're talking about how that...
Yeah, and it's that time frame, the music, everything.
Oh, it affected me.
I'm always, to this day, I still go back to that neighborhood.
I still go back to where I first learned how to fish, where I learned all about the outdoors.
Just the growing up part.
I always go back to a certain street or a certain place or a certain body of water or whatever down in Alabama when I'm writing songs.
My brain goes there automatically.
You know, like, for instance, like Tattoos on This Town, for instance, you know, and that song.
Let's talk about it.
Tattoos on This Town, Jason Albain.
Yeah, well, that's, I mean, I was there.
I was back in Alabama when we were writing that song.
Rearview Town was the same way.
Just about all of them.
Just about every single one of them.
Well, when you thought about, and Tattoos on This Town is one for those, and we're going to play a clip here, we'll weave it in here to the podcast, but in our time, in fact, we'll take a listen right now.
We let the world know we were here With everything we did We laid a lot of memories down Like Tattoos on Tattoos on this town really spoke a lot.
And I noticed one thing, I don't know about you, is I've gotten older.
Those little quote tattoos, those things that you remember, those places you remember, the things, they mean more and more the older you get, don't they?
Oh, big time.
No doubt.
You get sentimental.
I have found out the older I get, the easier I am to tear up, the more sentimental I get about yesterday.
I used to kind of look at my dad.
I would see him get more and more sentimental the older he got, and I'm like, wow.
Is that going to happen for everybody?
And it does.
Especially if you're close to everything.
If you're a close-knit family and you got some really good friends that you still talk to and you still love where you came from and all of that, you're going to get more sentimental the older you get.
Because I do.
Neil, I got to the point, buddy, where I told people, you know, the older I was getting, and this was a few years ago, I said, look, I cry at store openings now.
You know, it's just like, hey, I'm crying.
Is it all good?
Right, right.
When you're, and I know from a perspective, and we have a lot of folks who listen to this who, some of them are, you know, trying to break in and some of them are songwriters and all.
When you take songs like Tattoos on This Town, you know, flyover states, Jason, Jason has such a big, you know, music presence and he goes all, you know, from a stylistic.
When you were thinking about that, were you thinking about a particular artist when you wrote it?
I know some people do, some people don't.
How did that come about and how did it get pitched?
You talking about flyover states?
Or tattoos on this town, either way.
Any of them?
Yeah, I never...
I was talking about this with a buddy of mine who I write with the other day.
We were talking about how we never...
I've never hardly ever tried to write a particular song for a particular artist.
I can't write that way.
It kind of puts me in a box.
And then I start thinking about what they would want to say.
I get out of my own brain and I start trying to think about what they would say or what they wouldn't say.
And it just stifles me.
And I was like, I can't write that way.
I've got to just write what I feel.
And if it relates to another artist, then so be it.
And it just so happens that a lot of my stuff related to Rascal Flatts and a lot of it related to Jason Aldean.
They all kind of became fans of my writing.
And I took it from there.
So I just kept doing what I was doing with them.
And didn't look back.
I didn't try to write for them, what I'm trying to say, like from that point on.
Once I started having success with those guys, I didn't just try to write for them.
I just kept doing what I do, and they kept loving it.
Let's take another one of the ones that Jason picked up from you, you know, after tattoos, and we mentioned it here recently, and that's the flyover states.
We're going to take a pause right here for, you know, hear a clip of flyover.
Coming back on it, that song just resonates with so many...
And it was several years ago when it came out.
But you see, your song, I don't think, came from a political perspective.
Maybe it did, but do you sense that in our country that there's a lot of us who grew up in, like, I grew up in North Georgia.
I grew up in the country, North Georgia.
You know, everybody says, where are you from in Georgia?
You know, I have to say Atlanta.
Oh, okay, 60 miles north of Atlanta.
They don't know when I say from Gainesville.
You know, Is there a lot of folks that maybe you've talked to when you've been out on shows and everything, you do the flyover stage, that recognize that?
Do they feel that?
How did that come about for you?
That song right there, I wrote with a buddy of mine named Michael Delaney, and it was his title.
And he had taken that song to like three or four different writing sessions.
And he kind of just like, when we get together, everybody will kind of start blurting out titles or what about this?
What about this?
And he brought that in.
And when he said it, it was like instantaneous.
The movie started playing in my head.
You know, it was like from an airplane and looking down and starting to paint that picture.
And we wrote that song.
It came out pretty quick.
And funny enough, it's like that song sat on the shelf.
I pitched it to everybody I knew and so did Michael.
And it sat on the shelf for like eight years before it ever got around to Jason.
Yeah, it was that old.
I mean, it was like eight years went by.
And finally, I pitched it to Jason, and he heard it like I heard it, and he fell in love with it.
As soon as they recorded it, they knew that they had done something big when they cut it in the studio, and they put it out, and it was like one of my biggest songs ever.
Oh, it's an amazing song.
One of the things that I know you do rounds and, you know, out and doing stuff like that, when you're out, In a song like that, you play a song that was very familiar to a lot of people.
What are some of the comments you get from people in the audience?
They'll come up to you after the session or the round and talk about it.
Do you get some interesting stories about, hey, this related to me this way?
Absolutely, all the time.
That's what's so cool about what we do.
And if we're fortunate enough to have a big hit like that, we get to hear how it affected people when we get to go do writer's rounds and stuff.
And that one, Fly Over States, and probably There Goes My Life, I get the most feedback from those two songs more than anything.
And I got a funny story about Fly Over States.
It was during the election.
It's when Biden was running.
And they contacted my publisher and they contacted Al Dean's people about using it on the campaign trail, flyover states.
And before I could respond, Al Dean got back to his people with a big ol' hell no.
And that never came to fruition.
And I told that story.
We've done the governor's hunt up in South Dakota for Christy Nome the last two years.
And we go up there and we do our round up there.
And I told that story at the show out there in Sioux Falls.
And the place erupted.
It was awesome.
And now I can't wait to tell it.
And sometimes I don't tell it because I don't know the crowd I'm playing for.
But I knew the crowd I was playing for up there.
It was awesome.
Oh, that is cool.
Well, Christy's a good friend.
We served together.
She's done a great job up here in South Dakota as well.
Yeah, yeah.
We've become really...
Our family and her family's become really close.
I went up and sang at Kennedy, her daughter's wedding.
They asked me to come up there, and I went and did that.
Oh, really?
Yeah, and that was out in Arizona, and that was quite an honor to do that.
And now Kennedy...
Worked for my wife's company.
So that's how intertwined and tight we've all become.
It's really cool.
Really cool family.
Love those people.
Yeah, good folks.
Good folks.
She's got another good buddy of mine, all three, you know, that we knew.
Jason Smith out of Missouri.
I'm sure you met Jason.
I was going to ask you.
I was going to ask you if you knew Jason.
I knew you did.
I was like, I didn't...
He's a cool dude.
Yeah, Jason's one of a kind.
He is good.
Well, let's move a little bit, because Jason's got some great stuff, and those two that you did.
Kenny Chesney, totally different personality, totally different persona than Jason and even Rasp and some of the others, but has two of you, and you mentioned a couple of his songs, and one of the songs to me, and we're going to put a lot of people here a clip, and I'd love to hear this, and we're going to get really a couple of Kenny songs, but the first one Is I Lost It.
And here's a clip.
Alright.
I mean, that song to me, I have to tell you, there's a lot of songs that made some real heavy impact on me.
Lee Thomas Miller is a dear friend of mine and several of his songs, they just kill me with where he wrote.
I Lost It is one of those that kill me.
And Especially, you know, coming from the whole, you made something that was great, and I want to hear you describe this more.
The word picture.
I lost it is a gigantic word picture for those of us who've been married.
I've been married 35 years, but I remember those times, and when I counseled as a pastor for years, I could see the young kids.
Talk to us about that word picture that I lost it in.
That's an interesting story behind that song.
And it's funny, not many people ask me about that song.
They usually want to know about the other ones because that was one of the ones...
Like, I had three number twos before I had my first number one, and that was one of the three number twos.
And I didn't think I was ever going to get my first number one.
I kept getting...
They kept going to number two, and it happened three times in a row.
I'm like, man, I'm never going to get that number one.
It was kind of like a pride thing.
But I lost it.
The way that song came to be, we weren't married very long.
My wife, Lana, and I weren't married very long.
And we were in an apartment.
And it was new.
And of course, I probably said something that I shouldn't have said.
I don't remember what I said, but I remember I was sitting in bed.
We didn't even have a headboard.
It was just like one of them mattresses with a frame underneath it up against the sheetrock.
And I'm leaning against the sheetrock and she's already up and at them.
I don't even know what it was about.
But anyway, I said something, and I had this smart aleck look on my face.
She took her wedding ring off and threw it as hard as she could.
And that thing came fast as a bullet and stuck in the sheetrock, like a perfect circle, stuck right in the sheetrock, right next to my head.
And I was like, I had this look on my face like, what?
And I looked, as soon as I turned and looked at the ring, As soon as I made eye contact with the ring, the ring dropped down and landed on the bed.
And I was like, if that had hit me right here in the forehead, I'd have had a permanent ring right on the middle of my forehead.
Anyway, that's how that song came to be.
No one, you know, no one can make me laugh, make me mad, make me smile, and all that stuff that's in the song.
So that's where that song came from.
That's how that song started, a big fight that she and I had.
Yeah.
Well, it comes, and I'll say this, you know, because your life experience brings, as you've already said, but you can feel that in the song.
I mean, and Kenny does a great job of bringing out...
What I've always loved about songwriters, as I've always said, it comes from your heart, through your head, through your hands, and it touches lives in other ways.
But the person who performs it also provides something to it as well.
And Kenny's perfect, and I lost it.
You know, the way he drops his octave.
He couldn't have been a better signal there.
Uh-uh.
No, he was the perfect artist for that song.
And that's what kind of launched my...
My story with Kenny in his career early on was that song right there.
Okay, you got me curious now.
I Lost It was one of the three.
What was the other two?
He did a song called Some People Changed that he wound up cutting on the same album that There Goes My Life was on that he didn't put out on the radio, but Montgomery Gentry wound up cutting, and that turned out to be a top ten hit.
And that was one.
He cut a song called Coastal.
I've had a few songs by Kenny, but There Goes My Life was by far the biggest one that he did.
What was the other?
You said you had three that went to number two.
I lost it.
Yeah, I lost it.
That's What I Get for Loving You, the Diamond Real.
That was my first hit.
That was in 96. That was my very first hit.
That went to number two.
I lost it, went to number two.
And What Do You Say by Reva McIntyre went to number two.
I usually call the Reba song a number one because it went number one in one of the trades.
But in Billboard, it only went to number two.
And that was actually in 1999. And that's the song that actually made me come off the road and quit chasing the artist's dream and start writing full-time.
That was the one.
So it was...
I think it was, that's what I get for loving you.
What do you say?
And then I lost it was after that.
Because what do you say was in 99. That's what made me come off the road when that song became a hit.
And I remember Lana calling me on the road because she got our first check in the mail and she was crying.
And she thought it was a misprint.
And I was like, no, we can actually make money at writing songs if we put our minds to it.
So I did.
And I just came off the road and quit chasing, quit trying to be an artist and wrote full time.
It was the best decision I ever made besides marrying my wife.
I love it.
Well, let's do the other Kenny.
Let's do the number one, and that was There Goes My Life.
The video for this, I mean, this was one of those that, you know, just you have it.
I've talked to a lot of songwriters when they see it.
They just see it and they know it.
Give us the story behind it.
Let's do it first.
Let's do a little clip right quick.
There goes my life.
There goes my future.
My everything.
Might as well kiss it all goodbye.
Alright, give us the story behind There Goes My Life because how many, this one, I mean again, whether it actually happened to you or not, there's so many people who relate to this song.
That's a fact.
Like no other song that I've been a part of We've gotten more response, more feedback, more letters and emails about how this affected their life.
And this song actually was my co-writer, Wendell Mobley, who Lee Miller is good friends with.
We all write a lot together, but I've had most of my success with Wendell.
And this was his idea.
And he actually lived a little bit of this song way back when he was young.
And we held on to this idea.
It was his idea.
He brought it to the table.
We had it all written down, but we hadn't started working on it.
I bet a year went by and we had that idea laying around.
The only line that we had was...
What line?
We had a line.
One of the lines in the song...
I can't even remember which one it was we had laid down, but I know we had the title written down in our notebooks back when we were still actually writing words down and not typing them down.
We had There Goes My Life, you know, the teddy bear line and all that stuff was written out, but we hadn't actually put the song together.
And then one day we just did and it happened so fast.
By the time we got that song written, to the time we we recorded it like the next day in a week's time kenny had heard it and was going to record it and it seemed it seemed like a week or two later it was on the radio but i know it wasn't that quick but it felt like that's how fast that song happened and it went up to the charts and hung up there for about seven weeks at number one it was a big old song i i wound up I wound up singing it at one of my daughter's graduations.
They asked me to come do it when the school called, and I about threw up when they asked me to do that because I'm like, there's no way I'm going to be able to get through this song looking at those caps and gowns.
I mean, I can't do this.
But I did, and I made it through it.
We did good.
We got nominated for ACM Song of the Year.
Went to Vegas.
And we didn't win.
Didn't matter.
They say it's just an honor to be nominated.
Oh, God.
I got to get some of y'all together to tell me.
I'll get you and Lee and several of you to tell you the stories about going to Vegas on ACM and not winning.
Oh, we got them, buddy.
We got them.
I do it in my writers' round a lot.
I love it.
Before we sing that song, we'll tell the story about getting dressed up and going out there.
You'll tell them you got nominated for ACM Song of the Year, and everybody starts clapping.
You gotta go, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.
We lost.
We lost.
All that stuff they say about it's just an honor to be nominated is a bunch of crap, you know?
Exactly.
Exactly.
It's like, how did we get here?
No, we wanted to win that thing.
You brought her up.
Speaking of another, I mean, you've written for a lot of different art.
I mean, you know, Rascal Flatts.
I mean, there's others.
But the one that caught my mention, and you said it, what do you say?
Reba.
How is it to have a song?
I mean, Kenny, of course, icon.
You know, Jason, icon.
But when you think of icons like on almost Rushmore level in country music, Reba's up there.
And how did that feel to have?
And before we do it, let's do What Do You Say?
A little clip from Reba here.
So what do you say in a moment like this When you can't find the words of Alright.
What was that like?
That was pretty life-changing as far as my career went.
That song right there, I wrote that again with Michael Delaney, who I wrote Night Train with, wrote Flower States with.
He was on Tattoos on This Town.
Me and Michael Delaney wrote that song, and when we pitched it to Reba, she loved it, loved it, loved it, but she wanted us to rewrite the third verse.
So we actually had to go back in and rewrite a new verse.
And I can't remember what the original verse was, but we rewrote a new verse for her and she cut that.
And like I said before, it was the one that was a big time video she had too.
There's a real famous video on that.
And that's the one that changed the course of my career.
It made me come off the road.
When Reba put that out as a single, I came off the road and started writing full time, and it was that one.
I have since had a couple of two or three more songs recorded by Reba.
One was Strange, a song called Strange that I think was a top 10 hit for her.
It wasn't all that big, but she put it out and have had a couple of other ones recorded by her.
She put one, I think it's called Say a Prayer.
That she put on one of her gospel records, too.
And looking at it, I mean, you've written for a number, a number of years now.
You've covered the artist.
What do you see?
And I always ask this of my writers when they're on.
Do you see your style changing?
As, you know, the wins, I mean, we go back into the, you had Garth who blew up with everything in the 90s.
You had, then you had, you know, again, Kenny, you had the women, you had the men again.
Now you had the, what they call it, you know, the men country, bro country.
Do you see your style changing or do you just see it sort of fitting artists who come along?
How do you see that?
It's more of that.
I think a lot of writers try to change with the scene when it comes, when it starts changing.
We try to adapt a little bit.
But I've never been good at that.
I've never been good at trying to adapt to what's new in town or what's new on the radio.
And whenever I've tried it, I've never been successful at it because I got away from doing what I do.
And you're right.
When you said kind of waiting on somebody else to come back around that can relate to what I do, it's usually the best bet for me.
To just keep doing what I do.
Trying new things, you can keep on trying new things, but also you never, you know, incorporate doing what you do.
Don't try to change totally.
The country stuff, like the broke country stuff, for whatever reason, I got into that because it's who I am.
You know, a lot of that good old boy, down home, small town stuff, that's just who I am.
And I incorporate a lot of that with the 80s rock stuff that I grew up with.
The real melodic stuff.
There we go.
And it worked.
And that's why Rascal Flatts took off on a lot of that stuff.
They loved a lot of my stuff when I would do that.
And Al Dean loved it too.
He loves the melodic old 80s, 90s rock stuff incorporated with the good old boy stuff.
Well, that is it.
And, you know, for me, like we said, we sort of that same era.
Did how much of the old, because there's a new movement a little bit, not as new, it's just sort of always been there.
It just comes out better at times with the Stapletons of the world who just, by the way, Chris just killed it at the Super Bowl.
Oh, McDonough.
I mean, just killed it.
But you see that sort of when we go back to traditional rock.
We talk about rock in the 80s, but now you've got traditional country.
Going back to the Conway Twitties, the Charlie Prides, even the George Strait early.
Do you see that moving in and out?
I mean, what do you see in Nashville right now?
Where do you see the next few years going?
I have no idea.
Best answer I've heard all day.
Here we go.
Couldn't tell you.
I have no idea.
We kind of sit, us songwriters, especially the veteran songwriters have been here 25 or 30 years doing this and we're still having some success.
We just kind of have learned just to sit back and watch and see what's going to take place.
I'm serious because I have no idea.
I don't think anybody really has any idea until the next guy comes along.
Morgan Wallen comes along and nobody saw that coming.
Nobody saw him coming and he is so good at what he does.
It's so funny to watch people try to be like him and write like him and you can't do it.
Only he can do what he does.
And we all kind of just sit around and wait for that next guy.
I have no earthly idea what a hit song is.
I know what a good song is, but I have no idea what a hit song is.
So we don't, I quit thinking about that and quit predicting on who's going to be the next big thing or what's going to be the next big thing or what song is going to be the next.
I have no idea.
I have no idea.
Well, it's so random.
I mean, you take a guy like, you know, you mentioned Morgan, but you need to take a guy like Luke Combs.
Uh-huh.
I mean, Luke just sort of, I mean, not what you would expect.
I mean, in the genre of Luke Bryan and Jason Aldean and all, here comes Luke Combs.
He's just got a monster of a voice.
Yeah.
But not, I mean, just not a social, I have to admit, I'd heard his song and then I saw a video and I said, Wait, that ain't the same guy.
It just didn't hit me.
As you look at it, I'll tell you one, though, that's interesting to me, is how songs get discovered, and it's Chris Jansen, you know, Buy Me a Boat.
Yeah.
And it is always amazing to me how that story come along, and Bobby Bones, of course, up in Nashville, and he sent it to him.
My understanding of the story is Chris had sent it a couple times, and his wife said, look, I'm going to send this one more time to Bobby, see if he played it.
He played it on the radio, he played it on his show, and sort of the rest is history.
That's not the anomaly.
That's really not the abnormal in Nashville, is it?
I mean, the stuff that you said once sat on a song for eight years, it's just that, is it the right moment, right time, right place?
Oh, timing.
You know, timing is just about everything in this world up here.
It is.
And not quitting.
You just got to show up.
I've learned over the years, because I've been tempted many times to just hang it up.
When something new would come to town and they didn't like my stuff, I'm like, well, I guess my time's over.
You know, find something else to do, I guess.
They're done with me.
They're done with my songs.
That's not the case.
It's just you keep showing up, keep writing, and wait for the next guy to come along.
And that's what we're doing.
As long as, you know, and we're working on Jason Aldean's new record right now, like Hard and Heavy.
He's fixing to go in the studio this week.
Outstanding.
Yeah, and all I've been doing is just working and working and working with a couple of guys in his band, Curt and Tully, and we're just writing and writing and writing and writing for this next record.
So we're still relevant for some reason.
I keep trying to quit, but they keep pulling me back in.
Are you excited about the new Aldean stuff?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it's going to be really good.
He's cutting one of them this week, and I'll tell you the title, but I can't.
But it's like...
I got a buddy down here.
He lives pretty close to me, actually.
He's Brantley Gilbert.
And you talk about others who are just sort of their own person.
Oh, wow.
He is his own person.
That's right.
Brantley is something else.
That's why he's successful, because he's so original and he just doesn't care.
I mean, he just is who he is, and you like him or not, he's going to keep doing what he does.
Before we get out here, Neil, one thing, you got somebody, you got a kid who's listening to this podcast, you got a 30-year-old, you got a 25-year-old, you got even a 50-year-old.
They've been sitting here and they've been talking about songs, they heard your songs.
What's the one thing, I always ask my writers, what's the one thing you would tell that person who maybe has something in their heart, but they don't know what to do with it?
I wish I had a good answer to that.
I'm going to tell you the same thing that everybody else is going to tell you.
It's just...
I mean, you got to listen.
You got to pay attention to what's going on on the radio and what hit songs sound like.
If they want to write songs for a living or they want to chase that, you know, you have to.
I was a sponge when I was young.
When I was younger and coming up as a writer, I was a sponge.
I had the opportunity to write and listen to some songs, write with some guys and listen to some songs that I knew these guys were pros.
And I was dissecting on how they wrote them and how simple they sounded, but how hard it was to get to simple.
It's so hard to be simple and be good, but I was such a sponge when it came to listening to the craft of songwriting and how they put words together, what to say and what not to say.
The more you do it, you start finding out, instead of finishing a song and thinking it's done, When in your heart you know that it could be better, you don't settle.
I quit settling a long time ago.
Like, I know that's not the right line.
I'm not going to go with that.
And everybody's process is different, but you need to listen and just be a sponge as far as songs go.
The content and just how songs are put together and the quality of the lyric and the storyline and how it flows and all of it.
That's cool.
You just, whether you knew or not, you just had a line in there that may end up being the title of this podcast, but it may end up being a song for you.
It's so hard to be simple.
Oh, it's, it's, it's, that's one of the...
When you said that, when you said that just a second, it just, it just resonated with me.
So hard to be simple.
I mean, because communication is such a, we put so much to it.
Oh yeah, we overthink everything.
I still, to this day, overthink things.
I mean, I'll overthink writing a song and I'll have to just shake it off and get up and walk around and go practice putting or something just to shake that trying to be brilliant.
Get that out of my brain because we try to be brilliant all the time because we try to outright the last song that we wrote.
That's not a good idea.
That's a horrible place to go because then all you do is you just continually let yourself down when you're trying to outright the last song you wrote.
And I'm still doing that.
After 30 years of this, I still have to make myself go, what are you doing?
You're overthinking this way too much.
You never quit learning.
Folks, there's one thing you can't overthink, and that's Neil Thrash.
Neil is one of the best up there.
He's one of the best in the business, and you've had a taste of that today.
Neil, you're a pro, and it's my honor.
I look forward to maybe coming up to Nashville.
We'll go out and hit a few on the green, and maybe see us one day in the woods together.
How about that?
Let's do that.
That sounds fantastic, and I appreciate you having me, and I wanted to thank you for your service.
Well, thanks a lot.
I appreciate it.
Well, y'all have a good one, and everybody, that's it for the Doug Collins Podcast.
You don't want to miss this one.
Share it with a lot of folks.
We'll see you next time.
We'll see you next time.
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