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Do 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.
Working with computers is, you know, it's like a songwriting jam.
You get all three songwriters in a room, you're on three different, you know, keys and nobody gets together.
That's what computers are like sometimes.
And I am a total idiot.
I have been for 30 years.
I just don't get it.
My kids get it.
My wife gets it.
I don't get it.
And our business has gone all computer, you know.
It's all Pro Tools and stuff.
I'm still on a two-inch tape recorder.
There we go.
Aaron, one of the things is, and let's just dive right in.
I mean, we're talking here as we record.
One of the things you just mentioned, and I've talked to a lot of songwriters in the last little bit, and we're going to do even more.
This is just one of my passions, as you well know.
But one of the things is, is this new, and I've talked to younger songwriters, I've talked to older songwriters, those have been in the business for a few days, you know, for 50 years.
And this idea of the digital Zoom songwriting, you know, sessions is, what's your thoughts?
I mean, because you wrote a lot of good stuff.
I mean, how are you adapting to it?
Well, I'm not.
I've written by myself most of my life.
I do co-writing.
I did more when I was signed with the Herb Woolsey Publishing Company over there, Muy Bueno, because it's kind of expected of you to kind of spread all the resources and get them all combined.
But I kind of have an anxiety about it.
Getting into new places and new people and stuff.
It's always been really challenging for me to co-write, even here at home.
So I don't do a lot of it.
And so the Zoom thing, Well, one, I never did it during COVID, which is when it got very popular.
I think a great tool for those who used it.
But I live so far out in the country, we had to get Skylink.
Is that what it's called?
Starlink?
Well, the Elon Musk satellite system to get enough megabytes or whatever they are out here to get online.
For years before that, we couldn't hardly get online.
We certainly couldn't zoom.
I was working with a writer, well, you may remember singer-songwriter Peter Yarrow from Peter, Paul, and Mary, and it was all Zoom, and it was a particular project, and I just couldn't involve myself.
We tried and tried, so finally we got this Starlink and It's working today.
Let me see.
Well, there you go.
Aaron, like I said, it's been interesting to see.
I go to some younger writers, Lance Miller, Rob Hatch, and then Neil Thrasher and some others that we've talked about.
And Bart has talked about it.
Herbison talks about it as well.
It's just sort of changed the dynamic a little bit.
Well, it has.
I think chemistry is always important in any creative endeavor when there's a collaboration going on.
And I don't know how to get chemistry On a Zoom call.
You know, I just don't know.
I don't know.
I've tried it.
It doesn't work for me.
Okay.
Well, the good part about it is we're going to get just talked.
One good thing on this one, we just get to talk and talk about stuff.
For folks who don't know, you're from Texas.
You're one of the Texas writers.
And again, we're going to talk about your stuff with George Strait and many others.
But I had one that I wanted to sort of start out with, and I've seen this on some of your stuff and the internet.
You do...
Commercials and stuff for one of my favorite ice creams.
Is this still true, Blue Whale?
Absolutely.
Tell me about how you get into that.
That is amazing.
This is work of angels, I have to tell you.
Angels have done a lot for me over the years.
But when Baby Blue came out, George cut that, and a guy called me named Lyle Metzdorff.
Who turned out to be one of the greatest mentors I've ever had in my life.
He's passed away now, but he was one of the best advertising human beings I've ever met.
And he worked out of New York.
He was a Houston fella.
He was older, but he was an absolute genius.
And he built the Blue Bell brand.
I mean, he really took it to the next level where we're all familiar with it now.
He called me, just cold called me.
And he said, I heard a song of yours and I really liked it.
Do you think you could write something like that for our product?
And I said, well, what's the product?
He said, Blue Bell ice cream.
And I went, you bet I can.
And this started in like 1988 or 89. And all I did at first, Doug, is just kind of fix some of the stuff that they liked and wanted to update it.
So I was just kind of adding my part to it.
And finally, they took the leash off after about five years and said, you write something that That you feel good about.
And then we'll shoot the video to it and go with that.
And they gave me that freedom.
And I wrote...
Let's see.
It's called Have Yourself a Blue Bell Country Day, I think.
But it's a 60-second ad.
And it shows a couple of old people walking into their childhood home.
And as soon as they go through the door, they're kids again.
And in 60 seconds, it's just one of the...
My favorite works that I've ever done.
They just shot such great video to tell the story of that 60-second jingle or commercial, whatever you call it.
And anyway, about every four years, Doug, they come back and ask for a little bit more.
You know, another one kind of, right now they're moving more urban.
They're They've always been a kind of an out-in-the-country, very rural-type presentation, which I feel capable of.
As they get more rural, or as they get more inner-city, urban, and not bad, they're kind of moving into suburbs, in a sense, and I don't know that I'll be good for that.
You know, I love the country.
I'm a hillbilly.
Oh yeah, I agree.
I'm a North Georgia boy.
I'm an Appalachian boy up here.
I got that.
So I don't know.
I'll continue to attempt it, but now there's a board of directors on Bluebell that there wasn't then.
It was just Lyle Metzger.
And it gets a little tougher, too.
It's hard to make.
Yeah, hopefully your compensation included some ice cream.
So that would be a...
It does.
And you know, I'll throw this in.
I do a lot of outreach programs for young school children.
And it could be anywhere from preschool to high school.
And we're just reaching out to kids who love music and would like to know some of the pathways into the music business.
But I can call Bluebell and say, I've got 387 elementary school kids showing up tomorrow for a lecture.
Yeah.
And they'll show up with ice cream for all of them.
And they're just absolutely amazing.
So, yeah, I get it free, but I don't use it all.
I use it.
I don't know, Aaron.
I mean, Aaron, if I'd have known this and I got it, we could have had Bluebell delivered for this podcast.
I mean, we could have had Bluebell.
They are so great of it.
Y'all have, did they have that in Georgia?
Did they have Bluebell in Georgia?
They got it about, well, it came in about 20 years ago.
Yeah.
And then, you know, Bluebell had their issue there for a little bit.
Yeah, yeah, they did.
I think they come back out.
And now I believe they're back.
I don't see it as much, but when they first came, I had a guy come into my church, and he had moved in from, I think it was Texas or wherever, he moved in the neighborhood.
And at the time, I'd never heard of Bluebell.
And he said, well, I've came to help drive truck for Bluebell ice cream.
And I was like, okay, well, that's pretty cool.
And he brought some.
Yeah.
Son.
It's good.
That vanilla, that homemade vanilla.
I'm a chocolate guy, but I'll tell you what, that homemade vanilla.
And one of the Kruse brothers, the owners, previous owners, family members, developed that flavor.
And he worked so long and so hard on that.
And it was just so neat to meet him and kind of go through the process.
But I got to tell you, did y'all have Mayfield ice cream in Georgia?
Yes, we do.
That's close by.
That's home.
Yeah.
Let me tell you...
I asked them why they weren't in Nashville and why they weren't in some of these southern states, because they were in Alabama a long time ago.
Right.
And he had asked me if we have Mayfield here.
Yeah, and that's what I'd been eating because they didn't have Blue Bell.
I love Mayfield ice cream.
Right.
And he said, well, that's why we're not there.
And I said, what?
And he said, the Mayfield family and the Cruzee family have been friends for over 100 years.
And we don't step on each other's toes.
And I just think that's the way business should go.
And he said eventually they'll get bought up by a corporation and then we can move in.
And they did.
I mean, but isn't that a great thing, man, that they just respect the territory, you know?
Aaron, is that just so much about, you know, as we talk about writing?
I mean, I had a guy on, he's a news broadcaster, but we were talking about Georgia music the other day, and he was on earlier in the podcast earlier in the week.
But we were talking about that, that's just a different feel.
That nowadays, the music, and especially country music for me, I grew up on it, I mean, it was there, had that feel of hometown.
It had that feel of, hey, I respect your boundary, you respect my boundary, we love each other in the middle.
Well, Doug, I've played in a rock and roll band, a traveling cover band for 20 years, and we played a lot of cover music.
But I always loved country because it did get more intimate with people.
And I always thought even the songs that people criticize about drinking and divorce and all, I feel like that was helpful to the person out there who was going through something like that.
It let them know they weren't the only ones, they weren't alone.
So I always thought country music had this ability to reach people on a more intimate level and be useful, you know, be meaningful or relevant.
And that's what I loved about country music.
Well, I'm going to take it a step further, and we're going to get into your stuff here in a little bit, but I mean, I want to just delve in this, because I think it's so important.
I mean, think about the 70s, okay?
And going back before we got, you know, stuff that you and I would have grown up on a little bit, and hearing it, you know, the Conway Twitties, the George Jones, the Loretta Lenz, the Tammy Wynettes, the D-I-V-O-R-C-E, you know...
Loretta Lynn coming out on feminist issues.
I mean, you had, on the other hand, you know, my trip later on, but you had, you know, he stopped loving her today.
I mean, all of those old stuff, they hit you where you live.
And, you know, as much as rock and roll was viewed as the, you know, the change agent, country dealt with the real life.
It did.
And I think what's happened, this is just, you know, my opinion, my experience, because it happened when I was in the rock and roll band.
And about 1980, we went from Leonard Skinner and Journey and Doobie Brothers and Kiss, and we went to this, I'll call it disco, because that's what they called it.
And what I think happened socially, Doug, and again, my observation, is that people...
We're just ready to celebrate.
They didn't want cerebral music anymore.
They didn't want to have to think about exactly what you're talking about.
And I think that's what's happened in country music is people are at a place right now with the stressors that are in our social structure right now.
And it just happens periodically.
And they don't want to be talked to about divorce.
They don't want to be talked to about being drunk.
They want to dance.
When Varble, a dear friend of mine and a great songwriter, came up to a...
he interfered in a conversation I was having with another songwriter about this very dilemma about country music not being so relevant lyrically.
And of course, we were complaining and griping about it.
And when Varble walked up and said, boys, you have to understand right now they're listening with their feet.
And that pretty much explained it, Doug, because that's what we're going through.
That's why you're not hearing, not that there aren't any out there, but a lot of it is really production driven.
And that goes back to this digital era that we're in.
There's so much production capability that you can make people dance.
I mean, it's real easy, just if it's a drum loop.
But I think that's where we're at right now.
People have had enough lessons and they just want to dance.
They just want to party.
Yeah, and one of the things I found out when I was working on the Music Modernization Act and all the stuff we were going through, especially with the labels, and you're familiar with this term, 360 deals.
Oh, yeah.
And it began to be the labels were not as concerned.
They needed a product.
And I don't mean this harshly, and I know you understand what I'm saying.
They would take young artists, and I remember the stories of Luke Bryan coming to Nashville, and they held him back for two or three years.
You know, they wouldn't let him out there because they were working with him to get that image, so to speak.
And that does take away.
But it goes back to, you know, I remember you mentioned the early 80s, Journey and the rest.
I remember when Journey and REO Speedwagon and all those others, after what we had such great time with Leonard Skinner, you know, the Allman Brothers, everybody else, became what was known as Corporate Rock.
Yeah, that's right.
And then you have sort of a corporate country as well.
Not that it's bad.
It's just that sort of framework.
That's a good definition of it.
It is.
I think some of that, these 360 deals, I mean, the publishing deals have changed.
Everything has changed more in favor.
And you've helped a great deal with this, by the way, helped fix it, where it got so broken.
But in the 90s, Doug, there was so much money.
We had 40% market share.
We had Garth Brooks out there and Randy Travis and George Strait, and we were tearing it up.
And guys like me could make so much money just on a cut.
You get a cut on a gold or platinum record, you could buy a used BMW and go wave at your friends and show them how good you did.
You can't go shopping on it now for groceries.
It's changed so much.
But I think what happened is these industries...
The executive end of this was making so much money in the 90s.
And when this digital format crashed all of that income revenue, resources for revenue, that they had to adjust their portions.
And of course, that came from the writers and the artists.
And it's kind of tragic.
But they needed it.
They were so...
Used to making these big bucks.
I mean, it was detrimental to the writers and to the artists because their big deal was merch, you know?
I mean, you go out and take a six-piece band and a crew and you drive 800 miles and you do a big theater and for $8,000 you're not even breaking even but you get that merch going and you offset your costs and it's a big source of income for artists and, you know, the The labels kind of got into that part of their life too, you know?
Boy, they want that publishing too.
I'll tell you, when you write now with an artist, they'll send a You've probably heard of the track guy, you know?
So you go in a room with a writer who's written seven hits, and there's this guy there writing drum parts for you while you're writing, and they get a full cut of that.
Well, they've been sent over by the label or the publishing company, because now they get a little bigger portion of it.
And I don't do that.
I'm just...
I'm not going to do that.
Yeah.
I can write my own drum track right here at the house.
Anyway, that's how much it's changed.
They're grabbing for everything they can get, and I don't know if that's bad.
That's corporate America, you know?
But these kids want to be stars so bad, they'll give up a lot, you know, to get it.
Sometimes that's necessary.
Think about what you just said right there.
We talk about it back in the day, and you can go back to the big Elvis movies out right now and up for Oscars, but it goes back to when Elvis and all these writers, as they were in song people coming up, 60s, 70s, they were willing to give up everything to have that shot.
And then we had sort of a turn.
80s, 90s, you saw that turn.
Artists were more, people weren't giving up their songwriting credits.
They weren't giving up their publishing credits.
And now it looks like we've almost come full circle, doesn't it, Aaron?
Yeah, and they're being leveraged into it now.
I believe it was ignorance in the beginning.
It was for me.
I didn't know anything about publishing.
I turned out pretty good on it.
I was with good people, you know, that weren't just mongers, you know.
But the ignorance is what got most of the early people.
I think when writers became publishers, the Mel Tillis's and stuff, They got it kind of straightened out because they knew both sides of it.
But now I think it's more of a take it or leave it.
You know, if you want to be on our label, you're going to give up this, this.
And of course, a kid's going to give up anything for that.
That's their life.
And I don't know if I can even explain what's in it for a young person that they've lived this probably most of their conscious life for that moment for a record deal.
That's it.
That's the end all.
And it's good when it happens, even if you're giving up a lot.
But the heartbreaking thing for me in Nashville, as a writer, you get a lot of calls from the new guys in town.
They want to write with you that you get that record.
And I meet these people and I love them and they're so excited and just ambitious and it's all ahead of them.
And in weeks it can be over, done.
And usually there's not a second chance.
That breaks my heart, Doug, because this is The industry doesn't let them down easy.
They just cut them off.
They're gone.
And it's over.
And that's been the hardest professional thing for me to deal with because these kids are so in love with this and so excited.
And they'll go in and cut some spec demos and then it's over.
Or like you said, they'll hold them for years.
They'll just work.
You know, John Michael Montgomery, I signed with Atlantic the same time he did.
All of us, you know, Tracy Lawrence and all of us got on Atlantic to make records.
I watched John Michael go From this young, trim, healthy-looking, beautiful-looking human being excited about his record deal with Atlantic to just miserable.
He was so tired.
They cut over 30 sides on him over these years.
He was up there every day working, trying to do something and couldn't move forward.
I felt so bad for him.
I think in the long run, that hurt him because he was so...
Tired by the time it all happened and compensating with other means.
You know, he was keeping himself, you know, and I don't want to get into all that, but I think that kind of hurt him.
He did great.
I'm not, you know, I don't think he's complaining, but I watched him just get the heck beat out of him by these labels.
It's not intentional.
They think they're doing the right thing, but it's tough, man, and At least he got his chance, a lot of these young people.
There you go.
There you go.
Well, Aaron, I want to take on something.
You just, you made a comment.
I wanted to hit on it before we moved on to some other stuff with your music, but you hit on the fact that you could get a, and this is so foreign to my kids, okay?
Cameron and Copeland and Jordan, my kids all are grazed, you know, they're raised on the digital, the Spotify, the YouTubes.
I mean, this is where they're raised.
They have never, I'm not sure, and I may be wrong, they may have purchased one.
Have never purchased an album.
Sure, they don't.
So explain, if you could, for just a second, because there's some people out there listening who still don't get this.
They think that songwriters are being greedy.
But, you know, an old album would have 11 to 12 tracks, maybe 14, depending on what was there.
You get one or two.
They have to buy the whole album.
So you're getting paid.
Explain how that's different these days.
Okay, yeah.
Back in the 80s and 90s, There weren't digital formats, so they did vinyl, they did cassettes, and they had these X number of songs on the album.
Well, each song, when that album retailed, each song got a percentage of that retail price or that wholesale price, and it's pennies, it's maybe a nickel per sale for that song.
Well, if people don't buy the album and they just buy one song off of there, only that song is going to get that nickel.
Right.
All the other 10, 11 writers and songs, they're not involved anymore.
But when you had to buy the full album, everybody would get a little piece.
So just to put that into everyday terms, in the 90s, if I got a cut...
An album cut.
The only time you make real money is when it's on the radio.
That's airplay money, and that's different.
That's a lot of money, because you're getting a nickel of play every time they play it on 2,000 country music stations, and when you're in the top five, you're getting played every hour, 24 hours a day.
So that's a lot of nickels, and it adds up.
But that's airplay.
What I'm talking about and what we're discussing It's mechanical royalties off of retail sales.
So there aren't retail sales of albums much anymore.
So that whole...
If you're on the album, you just...
You don't really expect to make any money unless it singles and goes on the radio.
So in the 90s, if I got on a George Strait or a Clay Walker album or a Lone Star album, and they went platinum, which wasn't unusual at all in the 90s, As a solo writer, I'm going to do it as just if I wrote it so it doesn't get confused.
I could make $80,000 just off of being on that record because people are buying the album and I'm getting that nickel, even if it's not on the radio.
Nobody ever heard of it.
I'll make $80,000.
That's huge.
That's huge.
And a man told me when I got here, one of the writers that I met, he said, those mechanicals, that's your living, that's your livelihood, because you're not going to get hits all the time.
But if you can stay consistent getting on these albums, you'll have these mechanicals, and that'll be your retirement, that'll be your livelihood that you count on.
And that's all gone now.
But now, because there isn't that per-purchase CD or vinyl or cassette, these royalties, you get a little bit off of digital.
But maybe where it was $80,000, it might be $2,000 now.
I don't really know.
But it's very, very little...
That Pharrell guy that wrote the Happy Song or something.
Right, right, right.
He posted his statement online and it was so pitiful because that was a global hit and I think he made $2,500 on...
Well, there's that song, All About That Bass.
All About That Bass.
Yeah, yeah.
Pop music here.
Megan Trainor and New The Rider.
$8,000.
Billion YouTube hits.
$8,000.
That's not bad.
Think about what you just said.
You could have had a cut on a George Strait album that never got played on the radio, was the B-side of a lonely disc, so to speak, and you made 80 grand.
Yep.
And that's not too hard...
To maintain, you know, to get a cut, you know, on a decent artist.
Not that it's easy, but it's more likely than getting number one songs every time you get on a record.
So it was a good stabilizing income, and for people who had draws, it kept them even, you know, it I never had a draw, so I don't know how that works, but for people who did, it kept them balanced with their publishers.
Anyway, it has changed so dramatically, and it's really sad.
These young people, they don't know how different it is, and they're growing up in this new environment, so I don't preach this too much.
I don't want them to go, wow, y'all had it made.
Well, we did, but...
They need to work with what they have, and they're doing a great job, I think.
And relevance is coming back around.
I'm getting calls now that I'm really surprised at because my response to somebody wanting to write is, look, I'm a pretty traditional country guy.
You know, I don't do production-driven stuff.
And they say, well, that's what we're looking for.
So there are artists out there coming into town that That really want to combine the good production with the relevant lyric.
And so I'm looking forward to that in the very near future.
I think it'll...
Oh, that'll be fun.
Yeah, it'll be.
Well, wow.
I mean, right now we've got enough of an encyclopedia almost to do one pass here.
But let's jump in because you...
Okay, Aaron, I have to tell you.
I told my youngest son, who's...
He'd be 25 this year.
One of your songs, when I told him that I was interviewing you today on the podcast, he's beside himself.
And we'll get to that song in a little bit.
But it really ties into, that song ties into your connection.
And I've seen this with a lot of writers over time, because I can look at it from just a fan point of view, so to speak.
Look at the writers.
Is you get an established working relationship with a recording artist, with one of the artists that is hitting.
For you, George Strait has been one of those things.
In fact, you're number one Baby Blue.
What we're going to do right now is, I want to pause here just a second, we're going to put a little bit of baby blue in and we're going to come back and talk about it.
Baby blue was the color of a rash.
Baby blue was the color of a rash.
Like the Colorado skies, like a breath of spring she came in black.
And we're back.
All right, Aaron.
Baby blue.
George Strait.
I mean, the king, 60. But we've got to point this out, too.
And this is important.
60 number ones, George Strait.
Okay?
60 number ones.
He did not write any of them.
And I think that is so many people get that mixed up with the artist being, oh, they wrote this and sang it.
George Strait, king of country music, everything.
Never wrote a song.
No, he doesn't.
And I think that's the smartest thing he never did because he had access to Dean Dillon and Frank Dykus and people like that, Whitey Schaefer.
And he got the greatest songs.
George is a great song guy.
And my relationship with him was more through Irv, his manager, another Texan.
We were good friends.
I had a great relationship where at least I could get heard.
I don't think I had any advantages, maybe because they had some of the publishing or something, but George liked what I did.
I have no idea why.
Doug, when I was out on the road with that band and I carried a $79 Ventura acoustic guitar with me, and I would sit around and try to write country songs.
I wasn't thinking country.
What I was thinking At the time was James Taylor, Carole King, acoustic singer, songwriter, music.
And that's what I thought I was doing.
And when George heard Baby Blue, he liked it.
And I wasn't going to argue with him that it was a country.
What did your thought come out for Baby Blue?
I've kind of held that back all my life because it's just really, really personal, Doug.
But it's just a great...
It touches a lot of people.
That personality, and I'm asking you to share, but that's what I think made the song so good, and Straight made it even more personal when he sang it.
It was real personal, and George Straight owned that song, and it's very unfortunate, in my opinion, that the terrible tragedy of Jennifer, his daughter, being killed about the time that came out.
That song is forever...
Connected to that tragedy.
And I hate that for George.
I hate that for the song.
It's got this underlying tragedy connected to it.
And most people, just listeners, are sure that George wrote that for his daughter.
But like I said, George didn't write anything.
And that was just timing.
It had nothing to do with Jennifer.
And I think, I don't know, I don't go to all of George's shows, but I believe he never...
He never played that song live again after that tragedy.
So I don't know that for a fact, but I've heard that as well.
But it's just too bad.
But no, it's written off of a similar situation that I experienced.
And I'm going to probably keep that quiet for a while.
But the song...
You know, I didn't know who George Strait was.
I'd never heard of him.
He lived right up the road in San Marcos, right up the road from San Antonio where I was.
But I was still into the rock and roll end right then with that band.
I didn't know who it was.
And when they called and said he wanted to cut one of my songs, Doug, I thought they would send me $500.
You know, I didn't know.
I knew nothing about it.
And I've been a member of BMI since I was 14 because I was writing for myself and for my band.
And God, Doug, I was cutting records on the lathe at the time.
We'd go right on to a lathe live, you know.
Oh, wow.
Oh, my God.
So anyway, he cut it and I waited for that $500 check and it never showed up.
And I went, well, I guess that George Strait guy didn't make it.
I didn't know what he was.
He already had, you know, eight number one son.
I just hadn't heard.
So anyway, then this envelope came from BMI and I was afraid to open it because I thought it was they were going to start charging a membership fee and I was pretty frustrated.
I was about to lose my house.
But anyway, I had a check in there.
This is 1988-ish, 89-ish and I had a house that Real normal, just tracked house.
I think it was $50,000.
That's when interest rates were 12%.
I was really struggling to keep that house after the band broke up.
So here's this envelope in there, and I opened it up, and I think that check was for $54,000 from BMI. And I thought, well, that's more than my house cost me.
And that's what I was afraid of losing.
And I thought, okay, they have sent me Robert Plant's Stairway to Heaven statement here.
This cannot be mine.
This is an error.
But that was a Friday evening, Doug.
I love it.
So I couldn't do anything about it.
I figured it was a mistake because there is no way I'm going to make that kind of money.
But I was excited about it, so I I took it over to my mother's house because she had put up with me all those years, you know, practicing with my bands in the garage till the cops showed up and the neighbors complaining.
She put up with all that.
So I took the check over there and I didn't tell her it's most likely a mistake.
I just let her have that joy, you know, and showed it to her.
She was so excited, Doug.
And she handed the check to my stepdad and he held it like in his, between his thumb and his palm and each hand just kind of looked at it like you would a newspaper.
He looked at that check and he said, Aaron, I get these all the time and you never really win.
He thought it was publishers clearing house check.
They used to send out those fake checks, you know.
So anyway, that was pretty funny.
But on Monday, I called BMI Monday and they said, no, that's yours, Aaron, from that George Trey record.
I went, oh my God, it was life-changing, Doug.
And then before I hung up, he said, who was this I was talking to?
Harry Warner over at BMI. And he said, Aaron, by the way, you know those will be coming about every three months now, right?
So it was just life-changing stuff.
Oh, I can imagine.
Well, and lightning struck again, not two years later, with a different style song, again, still George Strait, but one that today, if I hear it once, it'll stick in my head most of the day.
Love without an end, amen.
Yeah, that was, again, the angels at work.
We're going to stop right here, but we're going to pause just a second.
Let everybody hear love without end.
Amen.
He said daddies don't just love their children every now and then.
It's love without end.
Amen.
All right, Aaron.
Angels watching after you.
Can you talk to me a little bit about love without end?
Amen.
I consider angels my co-writers.
They just show up with these things sometimes.
And Love Without End, I had an experience with my son.
He was born...
I had been 17 for four days when he was born, so I was still in high school.
Now I'm raising a kid and I've got a wife, and that's why this struggle with the house and everything.
But...
As he got older, it dawned on me that I just can't be his friend all the time.
I've got to be the dad now.
That was just a stunning revelation to me.
I didn't want to do that.
I wanted to be his friend.
I wanted him to be my buddy the whole time, but we had to raise him.
The night after that, the biggest part of that revelation hit me.
I was up just banging on my guitar and I thought, well, I'm going to have to learn from my dad experience, which is extremely limited.
But I did have, my dad left pretty early.
I was about three, but I used God on Sunday and Andy Griffith during the week for my dad lessons, you know.
They were kind of my role model.
So I was thinking, I'm going to have to be this guy, and how do I get Stern enough and still be soft enough?
You know, all these questions for a young father.
And so I started writing that song.
And after I told the story about me going home with a black eye and my dad being more understanding than I expected, and then me becoming a father, after that, I was stuck.
I did not know where to go.
And the angels came in And they said, where do you think this goes from here, idiot?
You know, who's the real father here?
And so this last verse, where the guy thinks he dreams he dies and goes to heaven, and he gets the same message from the other side of the gate.
Yeah.
It's about a father's love.
It never ends.
And it was so obvious.
And why I was missing it, I'll never know.
But these little...
Stephen King, the author, calls it the muse.
And I called it God for a long time, but I think God's too busy to help me write.
But angels are messengers, you know?
And I think they bring us these gifts.
They bring us these things.
If we can shut up and listen long enough to hear of, you know?
I can't say that.
A real experience on that song, and it has been such a great gift.
I got to tell you, man, I get great feedback from that song now for over 30 years.
It's on the 60 number ones.
When Billboard, when that record came out, George Strait also turned 60 years old the same year he had, same week he had 60 number ones.
60th number one.
So Billboard did a big article, a big feature article on turning 60 and having 60 number ones.
And they rated all 60 as though they were their own Billboard chart.
Oh, wow.
Love Without End was rated as number one.
So that was a big compliment.
It was also H.W.'s George H.W. Bush's favorite song.
I mean, it's just given me so much pride.
Because these songs are like our babies.
When you're bragging on them, you're not bragging on yourself.
You write them, you turn them loose, and then they have their own life or they don't.
So that song has really been great.
Well, that is good.
You continued on.
I want to get a few of them.
Easy come, easy go.
George Strait.
I'd like to have that one back.
Again, number one, number threes.
Doug Superdahl.
Not enough hours in the night.
Then you made it back to George Strait in the mid-90s.
And this one is one.
I know she still loves me.
Went to five.
The one, though, that didn't make number one, but I'm shouting this one out for my son Cameron.
We call him Bo.
I can still make Cheyenne.
That one is one, and it is a song, and we're going to play it right now, so we're going to go ahead and play it.
He said, I'm sorry it's come down to this There's so much about you that I'm going to miss But it's all right, baby, if I hurry, I can still make Cheyenne Alright, we're back.
I want to say something, because when I got into working with national songwriters, working with BMI, ASCAP, everybody talking about songwriters, I began to be somebody, the more I got into it, because I use words for a living, and that's how I make a living, and I've shared this before.
That's how I pay my bills.
What I got was, is I began to have such an appreciation for turn of phrases.
There's a song, Tim McGraw says, I ride in a truck that the bank lets me borrow from month to month.
I mean, what a way to say, hey, I got a car and I got a car payment.
Yep.
Chris Stapleson, Lee Thomas Miller, you know, whiskey.
He said, I drink because I'm lonely and I'm lonely because I drink.
Yep.
I mean, those things.
And now for you, you have one that just, I mean, and for my son, he tears up every time he hears it.
Wow.
And he's young.
I do as well.
And it's in this song, I Can Still Make Cheyenne.
There's a part of it in there where he says, it's toward the end of the song, where he says he turns back, he lets the phone drop, he turns back and looks at it one last time, and then he goes on to Cheyenne.
Yep.
How many of us have ever had those moments, that last sort of conversation?
Just tell me about this song.
Okay, well, first of all, Irv Woolsey had the concept.
You'll see him as a writer on there, on that song, as a co-writer, and we didn't collaborate like sitting face-to-face and going in a room, but Irv and I would go out in the evenings and socialize, and he would mention this idea, and he must have mentioned it over the course of a year several times, and I just couldn't get a grip on it, because I'm not a rodeo guy.
I'm a watcher.
I'm an observer of the rodeo.
I don't I don't get on bulls.
I don't get on horses and buck.
I just don't do that.
So I couldn't really get a grip on it.
But Irv had this idea about this cowboy and that situation.
So one night I was in a hotel room here, a motel, whatever it was, and it dawned on me because George Strait got me really involved in rodeo as far as getting a backstage view of it.
But George had taken me, let me go to a lot of his roping competitions and stuff like that.
So I got pretty familiar with how these, when I was stunned at these guys' lives, you know, they're athletes for one thing.
They're not just idiot cowboys, you know, or guys that want to be cowboys.
They're tough and they're dedicated.
And what I realized this particular night was that their life is so much like the life I was living when I was in that band.
Traveling all the time.
You've got to get to the next one.
You've got to be on time.
You've got to be at your best.
There were so many correlating points of activity.
It was just so much like that.
And so kind of combine the two to make it real for me.
You know, I'm not a cowboy.
I'm not an idiot about it.
I have some farm experience, but I'm not a cowboy like that.
And so I used my experience on the road and that life of leaving the things you love for something that you really don't have a choice on.
And I don't think rodeo guys have any more choice.
To go to the rodeo than guys like me do to go get on the road and play with that band.
It's just the way it is.
And so I connected those two and came up with this song.
And it's just a very real story.
And I'll tell you what, no, it wasn't number one.
A lot, you know, the fireman wasn't number one.
Can you believe that?
Yeah, it was like number four, too.
But what I've learned, and I like young people to know this, because a lot of young people will get a top 10 or a number 11, and they're all disappointed.
Look, the term hit, Doug, comes from impact.
It's the impact of the song.
It's how it hits people.
It's not a number.
It's not sales.
And I'll tell you what, I've had some big, big radio hits and stuff and chart hits.
But I can still make Cheyenne is really up there among the very top of them as far as requests and stuff out on the road.
So it's got something to it.
And a lot of the number one stuff, it goes on timing and how they're doing their charts.
That all varies.
So I don't want people feeling bad about, oh my God, I only went to number 11. There are some huge...
If you look back historically, some of the most lasting...
Biggest songs of all time were never hits and never number one.
And so don't go by the numbers, guys.
Go by the impact.
And yeah, this one's held its own.
What you were talking about earlier is how people say things in these songs, turn a phrase kind of.
There's a generation before me, the Doodle Owens and the Whitey Shapers and the Chris Christophersons, They were, they had a thing that we call clever.
They were clever, Doug.
They weren't cute and they weren't funny.
They were clever.
It's unbelievable.
You know, I woke up Sunday morning, found my cleanest dirty shirt.
Things just, little turns like that.
And they're masters of it.
My generation, not so much, but we try.
Fortunately, some of us got to get with these gifted earlier generation guys and learn to try to be like that.
So that cleverness, when it shows up, I absolutely love it.
It's very hard, though.
I think for them it was more natural.
I don't know why, but they're so good at it.
Those 70s riders were so good at being clever people.
If I could give you a funny example, Whitey Schaefer, who wrote All My Exes, Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind?
The Way Love Goes for Haggard.
Just tons and tons of hits, over 40 years of hits.
We became closest friends for about the last 20 years of his life.
So I got to sit with him and watch him be clever for so many years.
And one day, he was looking for a way to describe his brother moving farther out of town because of urban sprawl.
And he said, Aaron, how do we describe him, how far out he had to move?
And I said...
I thought for a minute.
I said, well, how about he moved over the horizon?
That's a long way out.
You know, that's kind of subjective.
And he said, no, no.
He said, everybody says that.
And he thought for a minute.
He said, you know what?
He said, my brother moved a little farther out.
Now the sun sets between his house and town.
Oh, wow.
Wow.
Are you kidding me?
This is the clever I've tried to be for 55 years, and I don't know if I'll ever hit it, but boy, these guys were great.
You've just hit something in me that I would love to do, and you've now sort of lit it under me.
I want to get with Bart.
And national songwriters, maybe, and we get in a room there in the old studio at the building, and we bring in some of the old and the new and do a podcast with everybody.
Because, folks, and I want to tell you, just what he just talked about with this, I mean, you go back to some of those 70s, you know, the singer-songwriters you brought up earlier.
Simon and Garfunkel, I mean, America.
He says, you know, he looked at his girl and he said, I'm lost, but I knew she was sleeping.
How many times you cry out to somebody, you know they're sleeping, but you just got to give it off your chest.
But folks, if you didn't catch what I said earlier about this song, just listen to this for a second.
He left that phone dangling off the hook.
Then he slowly turned around and gave it one last look.
Then he just walked away.
He aimed his truck Toward that Wyoming line, with a little luck, he could still get there on time.
And in that, Cheyenne win, he could still hear her say.
I mean, buddy, I choked up reading it, okay?
Because how many times have we spoken to that person, that relationship that ended, that last time, you don't want to hang up the phone.
For those, I mean, I was in Iraq, and I didn't want to hang up the phone with my wife, that I can still see looking at that phone, and that picture of that phone dangling.
My God, man, I'm telling you, God, the angels were right there.
That killed it.
You know, when I put in, I'm real cautious about using technology.
It's just the back of my mind, kind of, be careful.
A lot of writers used Codafone back in the 70s, and it dated, you know, she left a message on my Codafone.
Well, that really dated those songs.
When I put, left the phone dangling off the hook, it never crossed my mind.
That we were one generation away of people not having any idea what that meant.
So I took a picture of the phone at the Nashville International Airport out here.
I took the, whatever you call it, the receiver off the hook and let it hang.
And I took a picture of it so I can show people what that is.
This is a phone.
That's a phone dangling off the hook.
Because they're getting to a point they don't even know what that means.
It's pretty funny.
But it's not really dating the song.
Enough people still get it.
They do.
They do.
I never saw that.
Never saw that coming.
My God.
Aaron, we could spend the rest of three days doing this.
We're going to slow it up here and come to an end.
We'll do this probably again.
But I'm serious about what you just said.
I'm going to talk to Bart and maybe you help me out.
We may just come to a live version of this in Nashville.
I think it'll be just get some of the different generation songwriters in.
That'd be a blast.
That'd be great.
You have been amazing.
I just want to say thank you from my family for what you've done and had the impact of songs like I'll Still Make Cheyenne Mean.
I know my son wanted to tell you he loved you, he appreciated you, and it's just amazing.
So, buddy, thank you for being a part today.
This has been amazing.
It's been one of the best shows from my perspective we've done.
Aaron, thank you so much.
Thank you, Doug, and thank you to Bo, and God bless you all.
I could talk about this for days.
Thank you for sharing your time with me.
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