Jelly Roll and Joe Rogan revisit their first meeting at Madison Square Garden, where Jelly Roll’s career shift—inspired by Kill Tony’s raw, unfiltered comedy—mirrored the grunge movement’s impact. His 100-pound weight loss, guided by nutritionist Ian (who worked with Bilal Muhammad), and newfound discipline contrast past struggles with substance abuse, now channeled into creative growth like Beautifully Broken, a 16-month project born from writing about universal hardships instead of self. Rogan’s Mitzi’s back bar concept fuels Jelly Roll’s Nashville bar, Goodnight Nashville, while his "Music Mothership" aims to replicate comedy clubs’ organic creativity—phone-free, like Rogan’s late-night sets. Ultimately, their bond proves that relentless effort and shared passion turn chaos into art. [Automatically generated summary]
It was like feeling the grunge movement in the 90s.
Like, when you first heard a little something, you were like, this is different.
And you were like, this could be something.
And then it just turned out to be the explosion.
It's like, I felt that happening.
So to see Tony at fucking Madison Square Garden, and then to see how y'all showed up for Tony at Madison Square Garden, every fucking comedian on earth came to see that dude to fucking kiss him on his fucking cheek.
I tell Tony all the time, I say, Tony, I love you, and that panel is the coolest thing I've ever seen, but you are the show, brother.
We would all tune in if you were sitting up there by yourself.
Like, you were just so sharp.
I relate to it, too, Joe.
I compare art forms.
It's just something I like to do.
I know some people don't.
But watching Tony, I feel a kinship to Tony and Andrew Schultz in a certain way because I feel like we all kind of met each other right before it happened for all of us.
Like I remember me and Schultz doing the opener up song at the five, four, you know, he was doing two nights at Zaney's, two shows, one show, you know, one show a night.
You know what I mean?
And I was doing a thousand seat club in the South.
You know what I mean?
And Tony was still kill Tony.
And you know what I mean?
And we're all fucking old.
The fact that it happened for all of us in our late 30s is even cooler.
So it's this double kinship.
When I was nominated for New Artist of the Year at almost 40, that's the first time that it ever happened in CMA history in country music.
But this year, most of those kids are 27 and under.
Like, Ron White used to worry about that all the time.
I think I'm too old.
What are you—you're Ron motherfucking White.
You're a legend.
But it's like that humility that he has, even though he's got great confidence in his ability, like Ron is a very humble guy, as successful as he is, but that humility that he is is also that constantly has him writing, constantly has him working.
I have more Ron White bits memorized than any other comedian.
Just by default of how good he is at weaving these little quick two-minute stories of just complete white trashery and drunkery, which is just my fucking specialty.
I lived there for a little while, in 2009. But when I think about Montana sometimes, I think about just someplace more peaceful, Wyoming.
Somewhere just a little more peaceful.
Cold as fuck in the winter, but just like more real.
And that was my thought when I was living in LA, but it was like a necessity to get the fuck out of there.
When the COVID stuff was going on, I'm like, they're not gonna let this go.
They're gonna keep us in control.
Once they have control of you like they had during the pandemic, wear a mask, gotta get a vaccine, can't go here, can't go there, no businesses, everything's shut down, all the restaurants go under, all the comedy clubs go under.
When they were doing that, I was like, they're not gonna let this go.
I gotta get the fuck out of here.
And when we came to Texas, It was wide open.
Some places made you wear a mask, but it was a joke.
It was a goof.
It was weird.
It was like a completely different universe.
My kids were young, man.
They were 10 and 12, and they wanted to go to restaurants.
I'm like, we can go to a restaurant here and sit indoors.
Everyone was terrified in LA, and they just weren't here.
And the same result, the same thing happened to everybody, but over here it was a way more peaceful experience.
And Ron, when we were out here, we started doing shows at the Vulcan.
And one night, the first time Ron had been on stage in like eight months, he just grabbed me by my shoulders.
He's like, whatever the fuck we have to do, we're going to keep doing this.
He's like, you got to open up a club.
And I'm like, all right, that's it.
We're opening up a club.
And the process began.
All because of Ron.
Ron led me to think about moving here.
Ron was already out here.
So I knew that if I did move to Austin, at least Ron's here.
And when you came, that stale water stirred and it awakened everybody.
Like, hold on, there's choices outside of the same routine that we've been, because, you know, I mean, I'm sure y'all's life was store, store, store, weekends out, store, store.
I was like, it's the gym for the greatest comedians in the world, Tuesday through Thursday, and then the other greatest comedians in the world come and rent it from Friday to Sunday.
Kill Tony is the anchor of comedy in the known universe.
Really, that's a grandiose statement, I know.
But what Kill Tony shows you is like every comic wants a reaction.
And some comics, unfortunately, if you're in specific areas, like very liberal areas, like Silver Lake has a problem with this, like those kind of places, where everyone's like super woke and they want to let everyone else know that they're super woke.
It's like a kind of thing you have to do.
So you get ideologically captured.
You make material that's bullshit.
You get claptor.
What Kill Tony makes you do is you have one fucking minute.
You have one minute and there's obviously no rules.
By the time you get on stage, you've seen Cam go crazy, you've seen Hans Kim say some ridiculous shit, maybe you've seen William Montgomery or Brian Holtz, but you've seen maniacs on stage killing.
And so you got one minute just crack.
It's time to crack.
So it sets a tone for comedy.
That comedy is just entertaining.
No matter how you put it out, no matter what it is, what your style is, what you like to talk about, whether you're Nate Bargatze or whether you're Shane Gillis.
There's just a different way to do it.
Everybody's got their own way to do it.
But it's just, just go try to find your way.
Don't try any tricks.
Don't try to sneak in some fucking ideological bullshit just because you think people are going to agree with you and like you more and clap and cheat and you're going to say something profound.
The other thing about Kill Tony was, in the beginning, Tony wasn't famous, no one was famous, and they were just going hard.
And then, as everyone got famous, they kept going hard.
Whereas it's very hard to just jump in and do something that wild now.
And there was nothing like it during COVID. There was nothing like it.
You had this live show every week in front of a live audience, and everybody else is locked down where you have to wear your fucking mask where you're walking your dog.
But you're talking about people that do more when they get there.
And me and you were talking off-record, I mean off-record, off-microphone when we were walking in here about, you hang around nine long enough, you'll be the tenth.
When you're sitting around the campfire, that was the only time.
It was dark out.
There was nothing to do.
You found all the food you're going to find and you're going to get up in the morning and go right back at it all day long again and then eventually find your way back to the campfire.
So the campfire was like the time where people would sit around and entertain each other.
How many times they had to go through it and go back and go, listen, y'all, I've done this a few times and I'm pretty confident that there is this thing that grows in a pile of shit that makes me feel fucking like God.
So this guy thinks that all of religion is stories about mushrooms.
He thinks that the entire Christian religion was about psychedelic mushrooms and fertility rituals.
He thinks that what they were doing was they would have these stories, especially when they're conquered by the Romans, they'd have these stories so they would hide the truth in stories and in allegories and all these different tales.
But he thinks that the entire Christian religion was based on the consumption of psychedelic mushrooms.
You know, because if you have a story, in the story, Noah has an ark, and he brings the animals in the ark, and God tells him he's going to do this, and he's going to do that, and he does it, and then, you know, if you have a story, then that information keeps getting told essentially the same way over and over and over again.
Like, we can read the Epic of Gilgamesh today.
That's a 6,000-year-old story, something like that, 5,000.
We can read that today.
That's nuts, right?
That's crazy.
Because it's a story.
But if it was just people talking about what you should do or what happened and, you know, like, when it's history, man, we can't trust history from the 60s.
History from the 60s.
We're finding out new shit every day about the Kennedy assassination.
The thing about stories, too, is they said, I've never been to the pyramids, but they said that All that stuff on the inside of it is just a story, right?
Yeah, the hieroglyphics are like telling stories, or when they have the guys chasing these things with the spears, they're like trying to show a story.
What's really important is to keep people from losing their mind and losing their ambition and becoming like the hippies were in the 1960s following Timothy Leary.
That's what everybody's worried about.
Everybody's worried about this collapse of society because people, they give up on capitalism, they tune in and drop out, you know, that whole thing.
You know what the wildest theory I've ever heard about psilocybin is?
Is that it came from outer space.
That's an organism from another planet.
And the reason for this is that they know that spores can survive in the vacuum of space.
And there's a thing called panspermia.
What panspermia is, is the idea that like an asteroid slams into a planet And it takes amino acids and biological organisms that can survive in space and a bunch of different elements from that planet and then introduces those new elements to another planet by way of an asteroid.
And that's a real thing that we know for sure happens, right?
And they know that that's how we get iridium.
There's a lot of iridium on Earth, like in places where there's been an impact because it's really rare on Earth but really common in space.
So we know that some shit gets to us.
And apparently, I'm too stupid to understand this, but the way botanists describe it, and see if you can find any information on this, there's something very unusual about the compound psilocybin and psilocybin and cubensis mushrooms.
They're very weird, and they're not really connected to a lot of the other fungus that's here in some strange way.
The way they work is also very tied into human neurochemistry.
It's really close to dimethyltryptamine, which is a part of human neurochemistry.
And so, the craziest theory is that it's come from space.
Living spores have been found and collected in every level of Earth's atmosphere.
Mushroom spores are electron dense and can survive in the vacuum of space.
Additionally, their outer layer is actually metallic and of a purple hue, which naturally allows the spore to deflect ultraviolet light.
And as if all this wasn't unique enough, the outer shell of the spore is the hardest organic compound to exist in nature.
His theory hypothesized that mushroom spores possess all the necessary requirements to travel on space currents.
Furthermore, they could have settled in the brain matter of primitive hominoids and following the lines of modern-day hallucinogenic mushrooms directly contributed to our modern-day intelligence and self-awareness.
Yeah, his theory is that's why I mean if you can see it there click on that back again you can see Where it was talking about his theory so his his theory is very very bizarre So he went on to theorize that mushrooms are the reason there's human life on Earth.
Yeah.
So while it may seem like material from space, from a science fiction novel rather, there is no avoiding the fact that mushrooms possess many traits that are unique to their kingdom alone.
Fungi build cell walls of, I don't know how to say that word, chitin?
Chitin?
Chitin?
The same material that makes up the hard outer shell of insects and other arthropods.
These cell walls contain similar chemicals found in butterfly and beetle wings as well as the plumage of some colorful birds such as peacocks, living spores.
Okay, so we've read that, but there was something about his theory where he was explaining his theory of how it would have worked.
That's it?
Well, essentially his theory was that they experimented with mushrooms, and it made them better hunters, and it made them more creative, and it made them figure out language.
And he thinks it's responsible for this weird mystery of the human brain size.
It doubled over a period of two million years, and there's no real solid explanation.
It's a very strange thing.
Apparently the biggest mystery in all the fossil record when it comes to animals and evolution.
Really?
Yeah, how'd the human brain double over two million years?
I was just with our boy Brigham doing some blood work and getting some shit to make my feel, but I broke my heel.
And we were talking about that of like...
Living in the gratitude of it and realizing, even you saying that we're such a special simulation.
Yeah.
The time of this, I know I keep going back to the same point, but it's where my heart is right now, is watching me and a bunch of guys that were all at this kind of same thing at the same time three or four years ago, that you could feel the teapot bubbling.
And all of us being like a little left of center.
You know what I mean?
Like, I wasn't supposed to be in country music the way that they've embraced me.
Outside looking in, you'd have never guessed.
Outside looking in, you could have never said that Kill Tony would be the number one live podcast on the internet.
You know what I mean?
Or that Schultz's podcast would be...
Or that...
Me and Zach Bryan would have this similar...
Of course, he ended up being way bigger than me, but this similar kind of...
We're writing songs our whole life that nobody really heard, and then all of a sudden they got just...
It's probably the craziest synergies that could have ever happened in any scenario for me in any way.
And it's inspired me to get healthy.
It's like gave me purpose and I've never felt more loved.
I've never felt more warmed or welcomed.
I spent so much time feeling the opposite of loved, you know?
Even walking in here and playing with Carl, there was a time in my life where I would have walked in here and that dog would have let y'all know I was not a good person.
You know what I'm saying?
You would have just looked and been like, why is Carl acting weird with this big guy?
You know what I mean?
Kids were the same way, dude.
Kids would look at me and squall.
You know what I mean?
And it's really inspired me to start focusing on my health, too.
They watched me get off lean They've watched me figure my life out slowly and they knew that the last mountain for me was food So we started putting a real structure around I hired a real nutritionist.
He's out here with me now I mean like I'm only eating his food.
I'm just like super with it We're getting anything that could you know out of the green room for just so I'm working out every day walking around the arenas and And one day they have a basketball court, because we're fucking playing in a...
This is insane, by the way, that I'm playing fucking NBA arenas.
And, like, I'm playing where the fucking Orlando...
Especially like, because I don't get in my head about stuff, but just this week was the first time the label called and said, hey, we want to put this on your radar because it might make you want to promote the record.
You might have a number one album.
And I was like, whoa, dude, this shit wasn't even in my mind.
When I had a number five album last year, you couldn't have told me I didn't have a number one album.
I had a moment the other day, I was telling Schultz this.
It was a really small win, but for a lifelong food addict.
Joe, I was up to 550-something pounds.
I was having to weigh myself at meat places.
And I was telling him that I used to walk in and like a drug addict, I would scan the room and make a count of everything I could eat.
You know what I mean?
Like if you had like the little baby Snickers and a little thing or...
The other day I was in my green room and somebody was in the green room and they picked up a piece of candy and said, you want one of these?
Because we just got hit in a dab or something.
I didn't even know the candy was in there, Jeff.
Because normally they get the candy, they don't put shit like that in my room.
And that was the first time I was like, oh, I'm on to something.
Like, I'm fucking winning right now.
Like, I didn't even notice.
I could have been eating them for five hours.
I didn't know.
I would have ate them all.
I didn't even scan for candy.
It's not even a thought now when I walk into places.
Is there a candy dish here?
You know what I mean?
That used to be literally one of the first things I would look for.
You know, is there a candy dish here?
I've had to make so many different small habit changes, but it's been the fucking...
I was just telling Bubba out there, and I was telling Bruce on the way in here, I feel this good just losing 100 pounds, Joe, and I'm still...
I've never told my weight, but I'm going to tell it here because I want some accountability from people.
I'm 420-something now, 420. And...
Imagine, I'm walking around different, talking different, my shoulders are setting different, I'm fucking my wife different, I'm just kind of, you know, I'm moving different.
Did you hear what they did to the Nashville Zanies?
So you know Brian and them own that building and through the back bar, so you know Zanies doors here, the front door, not the door, we go through the front door.
Whatever that place was right here, he's turned that into a place called the lab now.
It's funny how I love when anything you talk about has a theme, and this one has been storytelling.
And that's, it's all I ever wanted to do.
Before I was writing songs, because I knew that music could be written that way, I would just write these kind of stories for my mother.
You know what I mean?
I would just try to, you know the story, we've talked about it a lot, but it was a way to connect with her, even before music.
And then when I found out music was her shit, I was like, oh, this is the double connection.
Like, oh, this is, I'm doubling down on this.
And I still to this day think I'm writing for my mama.
Like, to this day, I'm still like, when I'm really finishing a song, I'm thinking to myself, I wonder what my mama would think about this, you know, in this really weird way.
Like, first thought.
Like, I wonder if mama would like this, you know, does this represent?
And then the second thought is, why does this song exist?
That's always my second following thought.
First of all, it's like, would my mama dig it?
And then the second is, you know what I mean?
And the second is like, why does this exist though?
And if it's, it could be anything as much as it's just, you know, it just makes me happy or it could make people happy or it could make people move is enough of a reason.
But sometimes you just know that it's like, I couldn't sing this with a certain amount of conviction.
You know, like for me personally.
You know, it's not that I couldn't, you know...
I don't know if this is a good comparison, but it'd be like, I could write a song about hating my wife, but I could never sing it because I don't really hate my wife.
I could never sing it with conviction.
Now, as a songwriter, do I have the skill set to write a song about hating my wife?
For sure.
But would I ever sing one and represent myself that way?
I couldn't sing it with conviction.
But there might be a guy in Nashville who just got his heart broke.
Yeah, I'll watch it for bursts, but then my knowledge of orthopedic surgeries that these people are going to be receiving and injuries and concussions, they're just like, I got to stop watching this.
And I feel like somewhere, it's kind of like everything goes in themes, and then country music went through, like, you know, the hunting and fishing era.
But in the 70s, it was more of the storytelling era, like the poncho and lefty style stuff, you know what I mean?
But to me, the 90s cowboy music was, like, still some of the best country music ever made.
Reba McIntyre was like Oklahoma or somewhere, and she would sing the national anthem at all the local rodeos because they knew she was a local singer, but she was a real cowboy.
So one night she was singing.
This is back in the day when it was old school, like a record exec discovered you.
When you think about yourself becoming artist of the year at 39, how many people are like that out there that are just super talented, that just never get that crack?
I think about doing something for 10 years to no avail is really, really hard, man.
This is what I tell people.
I was a desperate, delusional dreamer, Joe.
And everything I regret, I did out of desperation.
But I don't regret one thing I did as a delusional dreamer.
You know what I mean?
Because there was moments...
I went to the Juvenile yesterday in...
Columbus, Ohio I went to go play cards with the kids in their units before my show I try to do stuff like that all the time and we were all talking about You know time energy stuff into this and songs and I talked about writing 170 songs last year And I was like do y'all know that there was so many moments in my life where I in hindsight I'm glad nobody sat me down really that I had to have looked fucking crazy You know, that kid asked me, he said, when did you feel like you made it?
I was like, I think that's why God kept blessing me is that me and DJ Highlight, that's my DJ's from Columbus, Ohio, he was there with me.
We did the one o'clock slot at Rock on the Range 12 years ago, right?
The festival, you know Rock on the Range, Jamie.
This is a big deal of where Jamie's from.
We played the fifth stage of five stages.
So we played the smallest stage there, 30 minutes after they opened the gates.
Joe, we started drinking at 10 o'clock that morning because we were rock stars in our minds.
We had made it.
We were that delusional.
We were backstage full-blown shooting shots and celebrating.
There was 40 people there.
There was thousands of people just walking right past our stage to the stage they were going to.
Well, the thing is, if you could figure it out, right?
People figure out everything.
They figure out how to write books.
They figure out how to play baseball.
People figure it out, but not everybody figures it out.
That's why it's so exciting when you do.
That's why it's so exciting when you make it, because you know it's not just that a bunch of lucky things had to happen to you, because they all do with all of us.
There's a lot of good circumstances to happen your way just to keep you alive, right?
You have to get lucky.
But then you also have to have that thing.
Like, what is that thing inside you that you gotta get out?
And you can figure out a way to get the best version of it and display it for people.
Just in case you've got to negotiate a publishing thing.
Bert, I wrote a song on the album.
It didn't make the album, but Bert one night said something.
He was like, yeah, man, this is where dreams go to die.
And he was talking about a bar he used to go to where everybody would talk about what they would do but never did, so he quit talking about what he was going to do.
But what he don't know is I just quietly grabbed my phone and wrote, dreams die here.
It's also a connection to some strange realm where ideas come from.
The ideas that come to you, they just come to you out of nowhere.
They just feel like gifts.
They really do.
Like when you sit in front of the computer and an idea just comes to you and you start writing it down or when you wake up in the middle of the night, take a leak and you can't get this idea out of your head and you gotta grab a notebook.
Like, the Somebody Save Me melody was in my dream.
The first words...
The problem was, me and D-Ray joke about it.
It took us two hours to write the song that would have took us 20 minutes to write, because I was convinced, Somebody Save Me was supposed to be the chorus.
John Manili, my manager, calls me and goes, he says, Paul Rosenberg just called me.
That's Em's manager.
He says, I think Eminem wants to do something to save me.
I didn't...
I asked John Manili, right then, Joe, I said, man, I hope he takes the first verse and samples it.
That's all I said.
And John said, whatever.
I don't know what he wants to do with it.
We just sent it over.
Because, you know, M&M's the greatest ever.
You don't send them instructions or notes or ideas.
You know what I'm saying?
You're just like, yo.
And we didn't talk about that until we met.
And he was just as whipped out, too.
Because the funny part about him was...
He was struggling with whether or not he was going to keep the original chorus and do somebody save me at the end or do somebody save me as the chorus and put the original chorus at the end.
And he ended up doing somebody save me in the original chorus at the end.
So he fought the battle the opposite of the way I fought it.
And it has been so—talking about muses—I wasn't sure if I was going to tell this story, but I will.
As a part of my journey of my mental health and with things I struggle with, I will pop into when I'm home, NA or AA meetings, even though I still drink and smoke pot.
I don't claim to be a part of the program because I have so much respect for those who are sober, like can really live the clean, sober life by the program.
But it's helped me so much not to go back to some of my demons.
It's taught me about gratitude lists.
It's just helped me a lot.
And I go to, you know, a few a year, never say nothing, just sitting back quietly.
I'm just in there trying to learn, you know.
Never went in there thinking like an artist.
Just kind of going there thinking like an addict.
So I just want to be an addict in here.
That's why I don't talk.
And I watched a man having a breakdown in there.
And this happens.
You know what I mean?
People are coming in here.
You know what I mean?
It's an AA meeting, right?
And he's shaking.
And at the end they go, does anybody want to get a 24-hour chip or a desire to change?
And the guy said, I drank this morning, but I do have a desire.
And he was already shaking where he hadn't drank in five, six hours.
And The guy goes...
Old head walks over.
Most gangster shit I've ever seen.
Puts his arm around him and says, I'm sorry, baby.
None of us came in here on winning streak.
Dude, I was like...
I had no intention of going to this meeting.
The only reason I even went, believe it or not, wasn't because I was having a craving, even.
I had an hour to kill on the way to a writing session.
And I was like, well, fuck it.
I could either spend this hour scrolling on fucking TikTok and thinking about how fucking Ukraine's going to kill us, or...
And I went into the meeting and I left and I walked in the writer's room and they was like, you know, it's fun when we write together because everybody's got an idea.
I said, boys, I don't know if this is the idea, but I want to tell you what just happened to me.
I just seen one of the most beautiful acts of humanity I've ever seen.
My father, who I named Buddies after in my bar, we were driving down to Gulf Shores, Alabama one time.
I was a kid, and we started listening to Fire and Rain.
My family would tell these stories.
About music.
I don't know what it was, but before they would play a song, it was like they would take, and I'm like this to this day, I would take great pride in being like, oh, I'm fixing to show you something.
So I'd give you the setup, you know?
So my dad goes, I'm not going to set this song up.
To me, this is some of the best, the whole song, but right here.
unidentified
I've been walking my mind to an easy time With my back turned towards the sun So simple for real.
Lord knows when the cold wind blows It'll turn your head around There's hours of time on the telephone line To talk about things to come Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.
Oh, now I've seen fire and I've seen rain.
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end.
The idea was, and Neil Young was speaking a lot about what was happening down there in the South at the time, and Ronnie's position was just simply like, hey man, We stay the fuck out of your business.
It's hard to say because of Hendrix and Steve Ray Vaughn and a bunch of other people, Eddie Van Halen, but that solo was the same every time they did it.
When Gary's family gave me that guitar after he passed away, it still is up there with my top probably ten possessions that I've ever been gifted.
You know what I mean?
I have it in my studio now, and I hung it in a case with the note that his family wrote me with the picture that we took the night he played the guitar.
And I put a lock on the case.
Instead of just casing it forever, I put a lock on it so I can still play it.
So when we do the album, there's a couple of tracks that we played a Gary Rossington guitar on.
And like I tell people, the average Lynyrd Skynyrd fan that's not like me and you, obsessed with him to a degree, they don't know anybody other than him to be their singer.
Because he's been their singer four years longer than Ronnie was.
That band has only been out for four years when Ronnie died.
When he first started hanging out at the store about, I guess it was about 10 years ago, he never had like a club like that before where it was like a home base.
You know, he was always a successful touring comedian.
So he'd bring guys to open up for him on the road.
But it was basically the Ron White show.
And then he started hanging out with us at the store.
And he was like, man, this is what I've been missing.
You know, I've been missing, like, a real camaraderie, like the base, the home base, where everybody goes and just hangs out.
When you're in Nashville, too, I mean, think about how many different amazing artists there are that you go see live in Nashville just fucking around on a regular night.
That's something else that comes with being on that stage a bunch.
The more you do it, the more circumstances you've been up against, nothing starts to scare you no more.
Even if I walk out to a crowd, like if I'm opening for somebody still and I walk out and I'm like, I'm going to have to really work for this one, I'm not panicked.
I've done it enough now.
I'll even watch some guys in my band get a little panicked.
We'll be on the second song and you'll see them going like, why are they not just so excited we're here?
You know, I tell people all the time, you're not going to be a good performer until you've performed in a place where people looked at you like you were interrupting them.
Right.
You know what I mean?
You ever been in a place where you're like, hey, I'm sorry I'm bothering y'all by playing loud music up here?
You fucking knew you were coming to a bar, bitch.
You know what I'm saying?
It's just, you know...
But those are the funnest, too, though.
I got to open up for Morgan Wallen this year a few times, and it was really fun because in the last few years we've just been headlining.
We haven't got to really, you know, go out and do something that was so much dramatically bigger than us that it made sense for us to do it.
And I love Morgan, so I was like, I'm in.
And we went out there, and it was cool because you feel it immediately.
You're like, even with the hits I have, you know, there's 70,000 people here that bought a ticket to see Morgan Wallen for they knew my name was on the bill.
You know, so there's a lot of people here that are with me, but I'm still having to tell you, I'm still up here like, oh, okay, tonight.
You know, I see there's three scenarios in my business, and I don't know if this is probably different for y'all's, but in mine, my three scenarios are this.
One is the you're welcome, we're here.
Right?
Which is the simple, like, thank y'all.
We thank each other.
You came to see me.
I'm going to give you a great show.
Thank you.
It's the easy one, right?
The other one is the, thank you for listening.
I appreciate that you gave me enough respect that you sat here and listened to me.
And the third one is the one that makes men.
It's the, hey, motherfucker, I'm singing.
And you have to go through a couple hundred of those before you get good.
You know what I mean?
Like, I don't care.
And that's what's been so about like the tick tock explosion is you have these kids that'll have this big hit, Joe, and they'll have five or six hits in a row and they can start selling 2000 seats at a theater overnight.
It's kind of like the podcasters that have a quick, quick flip and they go to the comedy clubs on a Friday.
Yeah, but can't make nobody laugh or stay.
These kids go straight into 2000 seat rooms and then stand up there like I've never done a fucking show.
I've never stood in front of anybody.
Oh my God.
Imagine getting a big TikTok hit, Joe.
Never doing a show in your life.
You know what I mean?
Or imagine it's even worse.
They put you on an opening tour for somebody.
They're like, we got an amphitheater act that'll let you be two of four.
This'll be great.
And you're going out there looking at 6,000 people?
You know, I see fighters that come out and they compete in the UFC and like their first fight they look fantastic and they're fast-tracked.
And sometimes guys get broken because they meet top flight competition before they're really ready.
They're really like an up-and-coming fighter honing their skills and they run into a wily veteran who's like a top 15 guy and they get fucked up and they're kind of never the same.
Because they really shouldn't have been fighting that guy.
Whereas boxing is a lot more clever.
If they have a guy who's like a Terence Crawford or someone who's a really good fighter, they'll match him up correctly until they can make the big money and until their skills are at a very, very high level.
And then they start challenging for a world title.
But they prepare him.
They get him.
They put him...
The thing about the UFC is sometimes you just get thrown right to the wolves.
And if you're Jon Jones, that's fine.
Jon Jones wins the title at 22. But most guys are not Jon Jones.
Most guys could be an elite fighter, but the circumstances just derail them before they ever get there.
I'm thinking about that kid like Chase is that getting put into that national spotlight at the biggest fighting organization in the world at 19. You know what I mean?
And you're like, Tavondre Sweat is the defensive end for the Tennessee Titans.
I'm a huge Titans fan.
He was our first round pick this year, defensive end.
I went to go hang out with him because I just think he's great.
I think he's going to be a superstar.
He's 22 years old.
He's probably 6'5", 300-something pounds.
Jeez.
And he can't grow a full beard yet.
You know what I mean?
You know what I'm saying?
It's patchy.
You know how it is when you're in your early 20s?
It's still patchy.
And I'm looking at Jeffrey Simmons, who's our veteran defensive end, who's 6'6", just cut like a...
Oh, that's where you're going to be at in four years, three years.
You know what I mean?
Because we picked up Jeffrey Simmons as a rookie, too.
It's like, even at 22 years old, they haven't fully developed in yet.
I'm looking at Devandre Sweat right now, and I'm like...
You still got a baby face.
You know what I mean?
Look at baby face sweat.
You know what I mean?
You see this face of him right here?
That's all you need to know about his personality.
That's who he is as a human.
He's the sweetest dude ever.
But you can still tell by the look of his face.
You know what I mean?
That face is going to slim down and get a little more, you know.
That was when Nate Bargassi hosted Saturday Night Live, not this time, but last year, he did that skit joke about it coming from the UK, and he was like, and we will have a sport named football.
And they were like, oh, where you'll kick a ball?
They'll go, no.
And they'll go, so you never kick the ball?
They go, sometimes.
It's so funny about trying to explain football to somebody not from here.
I just couldn't believe that I'd be in a place where Theo Vaughn would, one, be my buddy.
He came to my L.A. show.
It just made me so happy.
I'd almost cry when I see him.
I was so excited.
But then to have him, you know, just fuck, dude.
I've said this a lot.
There's a dream for an artist.
There's nothing more pop culture than being brought up in a comedy special.
Like, if you was an artist back in the old days, and you got brought up on an HBO special, you were on fucking fire.
You could not be bigger.
You know what I'm saying?
So it's like, I have those, that to me is like those unreal moments when you watch a guy like Theo with his platform impersonating me to a T, and we're friends too, and it's just like...
I would have never even...
I never thought I'd win an award to give a speech.
Or more or less that the speech would be so viral that a comedian would have an impression of it.
You know what I mean?
I don't know.
It's the greatest...
That's the greatest compliment you can be paid in pop culture is if a comedian will burn on you a little bit.
Before I got here last night, just the few people that knew I was coming, I'd already got texts from my friends down here, from Kerry to Bruce to people that, you know, just...
Even my wife was like, you love it there.
I was like, she loves Texas anyway, so she's all in.
And I was like, I think if I came down there, we would get, you know, if I brought the culture, the way I approach songwriting in Nashville here, I think we could have a little paradigm shift down here, too.
I've told you this before, drunk, and I meant it then and I mean it now.
I'm going to come to you one day, and it's not going to surprise you, I hope, and I'm going to, with a concept about doing the mother, you're just giving me the right to call it the music mothership in Nashville.
So what happens is the songwriters who are writing all these big hit records in town...
They go to these bars and they do writer's rounds.
They'll set up three or four bar stools.
And every songwriter will have a guitar and they'll sing a song they wrote and tell you the story about the song.
And it's the coolest thing ever because it's a dude, not being funny, but a dude that looks like me if I wasn't.
Me or a dude that looks like young Jamie.
And then he sings Live Like I'm Dying by Tim McGraw.
And he tells the most heartfelt story about where he was at in his life when he wrote the song and how he came up with the concept for it.
And it's this beautiful thing.
And there's only one place in town that's really famous for it.
It's called the Bluebird Cafe.
They happen everywhere.
And the first time I left the mothership, I was like, I'm doing this for music.
I'm going to create this same culture for our songwriters.
Because what happens is, if you can create a place where people feel safe, they show up.
So what happens is, because I don't go to the Bluebird Cafe a lot because it's a pain in the ass to get in and out of.
So if one of my friends calls, like, hey, I'm at the Bluebird, it's a legendary spot and I love it.
They're like, when you come sing something with me, it's like, you know what I mean?
There's no structure.
You built your club for comedy.
You knew that if the comedians were happy, they would show the fuck up.
And that if you did everything you could to cater it to the comedians first, that they would come and bring their best and the best comedians would be there, which means that people were going to come see the best art, right?
Same concept I'm going to try to do with music.
It's my next move, dude.
Let me open my bar first, Bobo, and I'm going to circle back about this.
Because then it goes from, like, not only will I sing you the hit I just wrote, how about I got a song Morgan Wallen's finna put out next month that nobody's heard.
Like, all of a sudden, because of necessity, because you're forced into this situation where you're trying to, like, it's literally like you're calling on the muse on the stage.
And, you know, a lot of times it's nothing.
Like, seven out of ten times, you ain't got shit for that bit.
But every now and then, you catch fire, and that becomes, like, a bit.
Yeah, it was fun, man, because I got to watch the same set, but you fuck around a little more and kind of get lost in it sometimes, just having fun with it.
You know, like you could tell you were like, you did the first one like, this is what I know I got, and the second one you had a couple cocktails, like, I'm going to riff on this point a little bit, just fuck off.
It helps me to expand on them because it takes longer to type a thought than it does to think it.
So if I'm thinking of a coffee cup, I'm thinking of it instantly, but it takes a couple of seconds for me to write it.
And that gives me chances to explore left, right, down, up, all these different ways you can go with an idea.
And then I'll usually try to write it out like an essay form.
So if I have an idea and it's funny and it does really well in the bottom of the barrel or a riff out of nowhere, Then I take that idea and I just write out like an essay.
I'm not even trying to be funny.
I just try to think about all the different angles of this idea and then I'll extract like little pieces of it and try these little pieces on stage.
She's already so much better than I was at 16. But she would come to me a couple years ago and she'd be like, hey, I want to put some of this stuff out.
I've been writing all this stuff.
And I was torn because I was like, well, you should have the right to put out whatever you want.
That's the freedom that exists.
But I know something you don't know.
That you just wrote your first 30 songs.
And they're incredible.
For your first 30 songs.
You know what I mean?
You go write a hundred.
And let's see if we can find five that are worth rewriting.
Reworking, refiguring out.
You know what I mean?
And I was cool.
It taught me a lot about her personality because she was like, I get it.
She got it immediately.
I wouldn't have got it at 15. You know what I mean?
And then they hear people talk about, like, the love of writing songs that you have, the passion you have for creating a thing, how you piece it, how you jump up and write down the premise.
You write down an idea for a lyric.
And then in their head, they're like, I can do that with something.
And he said, Jason, if you're working as hard as you really, as I know you are, if you're really writing every day, if you're doing shows every week, and I was opening up 50 bucks a night.
I mean, you know, my story is that old school, get in the van and go do a thousand shows for fucking gas money.
You know what I mean?
He was like, if you're really doing that, there's no way it's not going to work.
If you're really doing it, not you're faking it, not you're half-assing it, if you're really, this is all that matters to you.
If you were going to Vanderbilt right now and you did it for another five years, you'd finally be a brain surgeon.
He said, if I was you, I'd wait and see if I was a brain surgeon.
For me, it was a little different because it became the muse.
The chaos that was happening around me just became—I had a moment where—and this is such a cool epiphany I had, Joe.
For the longest time, I thought I was special because I was from Antioch, Tennessee, and I grew up in a certain kind of way around certain kind of people, and that I was special because that was—I hung on to that like, I'm different.
And then I realized what was happening was I was just like everybody else.
That's what the superpower really was, is that every fucking neighborhood in America is like Antioch almost.
You know what I mean?
So it was like a totally different thing.
So I started realizing, oh, this is the muse.
I'm speaking for every man when I'm writing just the chaos that's happening around me right now.
You want to pretend that you have some special quality and ability that other people don't possess, so that's why you can get to this bizarre position that everybody wants, where everybody in our business wants to be successful and famous.
So you have to be bizarre.
And then once you get there, you're like, oh, shit, everybody's just the same.
And he comes out, and towards the end he ends up fighting this championship fight, and it's a crazy movie to watch.
But when he's running, he goes by the old dock, and they're all cheering for him.
And I relate to this because this happened to me.
And he didn't understand it.
So he looks at his manager.
You remember this scene?
This is the scene that I related to the most.
He looks at his manager and goes, why are they cheering for me?
He goes, because you're them.
I was like, I'm the fucking Cinderella Man.
That's why this worked for me at 40. You know what I mean?
But I ended up calling it Beautifully Broken because as I started really writing, because that was my idea going into the project, I'm going to write the Cinderella Man story.
And all I could think about was other people.
Every time I'd pick up a pen, I would think about this young lady at a show who told me that Save Me helped her because she was raped by her uncle.
I think that's one of the things that people really dislike about stars, like famous people, like people that you think of as stars, that they somehow or another think they're better than everybody else.
That's the thing that people dislike the most.
Like, oh, they think they're better than us.
They live in Beverly Hills.
They think they're better than us because they're a star.
You ain't better than us.
When someone can do what you do and stay the same person and stay them, just a better version of who you used to be, but stay normal.
Just think about the arc that you've gone through from being a kid, getting arrested as a kid, spending all that time in juvenile and jail, and then getting free, and then figuring out that you're talented, and then pursuing this crazy, impossible dream, you know, to where you are now.