Takin’ A Walk Nashville: Skip Ewing on Nature’s Role in Authentic Country Music and Songwriting Journey

Hey y'all, it's Sarah Harrelson, your host of the Take It a Walk Nashville podcast. Thank you everyone who has been tuning in this year. If you want to follow us on socials, you can find me at Sarah Harrelson on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and now we have an Instagram for Take It a Walk Nashville at Take It a Walk if you want to follow us there, and then at Taken a Walk podcast on Instagram for all Buzz Night Media Productions podcasts, so I hope you will follow along on socials. And today with me here in East Nashville, back at the Russell podcast studio in the Russell Hotel, I have with me Skip Ewing, a natural born storyteller, his gift for vivid songcraft and true to life human connection made him a chart topping star at the turn of the 1990s, with six top 20 hits including the top five country classics, Burn In A Hole In My Heart, and It's You Again. Ewing's eagerly awaited new album, Dragonfly, now sees the veteran artist bringing his extraordinary life experiences to bear on such essential new songs like I Want It All, which is climbing the country radio charts and say yes. Please join me today for my conversation with Skip Ewing. This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Welcome to Take It a Walk Nashville with your host singer-songwriter Sarah Harrelson. Hey everyone, it's Sarah Harrelson, your host of Take It a Walk Nashville. And today here with me as I mentioned is Skip Ewing. Skip, thank you so much for being on Take It a Walk Nashville today. How are you? Absolutely my pleasure and I'm well. Thank you. It's nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. So you have released a few songs already this year, including Stronger Where You're Broken featuring me, Estes. Tell me about how this collaboration came about. I love the concept behind the song. Well, the concept just came because one, I love Mae Estes. Yeah. And two, as we went into record this record, I had a feeling there might be some features, but I sort of let it sort of let the tracks tell me what might work. And I met Mae, this is before she had her record deal. And she and a friend of mine, Josh Matheny, covered a Randy Travis song that I wrote. And I shared it on my socials because I just thought she did a great job of it, you know, and that's how we sort of knew each other and then ended up seeing her in Nashville one time, just meeting her and she was delightful, you know, and she's incredibly talented. So when it came up for that particular song, I had from the outset thought that it would benefit from a feature with a female artist. And so I just called her first. I said, if I have a choice, it's you. She was like, she was very kind about, she's like, okay. So yeah, so we went and we booked a studio, went in and just cut it that day and shot a music video in the same studio we were recording in. That's the way that came down. Yeah, I saw the music video, was that at a recording studio in Nashville? That was at Blackbird. Okay. Blackbird Studios has, I don't know, ABCDEF and G Studios at least. And we cut that, we cut the album. In fact, we cut the first half of the Dragonfly album that's coming, that stronger where you're broken is going to be from the Dragonfly album. We cut that, we just finished, that's why I'm in here in Nashville with you, is we just cut the second half of the record. We cut both of those in the, in Studio D and it just seemed natural to go ahead and cut the rest in one of the smaller studios there. Nice. Yeah, it's such a beautiful song. You've already released a few singles from the new record Dragonfly. You have more music coming out this year, including April 24th, a single, Me and God and a Fishing Pole. This is also a beautiful song. What's the inspiration behind this one? Truly the inspiration behind that one was exactly what the song is about. Although I have to say I wasn't, I wasn't, you know, sitting out with a fishing pole and, you know, and thought about the idea. What that song really is about to me is the kind of connection that we, that we make, or at least that I make, and I think a lot of other people make, to just being out in what is real, not being in the concrete, you know, if we don't have to be. And I think that, I think that if you spend time outside, we live in Northwestern Wyoming. So I jokingly, not so jokingly say, just take the Grand Tetons National Park and Yellowstone, put them in a bucket and dump that in my backyard. And that's where I live. It's not really true, but where I am, there's nobody there. You know, it's my wife and I and our dogs and our horses and, and sometimes the people who own this historic ranch that were blessed to, to, to live on. And, and so the time that I spend when I'm out hiking, when I'm out on a horse, or when I'm, you know, when I'm fishing, when I'm just out on the lake, that time is reflective, puts me in touch with myself. But there's a communion about that. However you think about what is bigger than you. And most of us, most of us agree that there's something bigger than us. Okay. Whether you have a, whether, you know, there's a faith that you, that you have, or, or whether you just know there's something bigger than you, I can't, I can't look at the stars and not know there's something bigger than me. So when I go out, I like to make that connection. And it always humbles me. And, and when that happens, I tend to, I tend to feel really grateful for the life I have for the relationships that I have. And it'll put you back in touch with it. And then also there's a, sometimes a bit of healing. It can be everything from forgiving yourself to just being joyous that you're taking breaths and that kind of, of a space that you have that as an option, even if that's just your freedom. And so thanks. And so that, you know, it starts off with the very first words are, Hey, old man, are you listening? You know, old man, I don't know. I don't know, you know, but I'll tell you something I haven't told anybody. Have you ever, if you've ever seen the movie Cool Hand Luke in cool, it's a very old movie. And I watched it when I was little and Paul Newman, he's, he's, it starts raining and they tell him to get in the truck. He's a prisoner. He's getting the trucks, getting the trucks. And he's like, I'm not afraid. And he stands out in the rain. And he basically says that, Hey, old man, are you there? Are you really there? Show me anything? Just give me a sign. Give me, and nothing happens. You know, and he gets back in the, in the truck and acts like there wasn't a God basically, because he didn't have a lightning strike. Right. That always struck me like, well, were you waiting for God to kill you? It was already raining. It was raining. And that in itself is a, is a connection. So all those elements, I just try to look into those and gather what I can from my own life to, to better my, the way I posture my thinking, not my mindset, but basically my mind posture. Is there something I need to adjust? Is there something that will make, that will encourage me to be a more understanding? Is there a place where I can just go and feel better about being with myself? And that is hard for some people. That's where that came from. That's where me and God and the fishing pole came from. And in it, it also says, man, this is how some Sunday mornings go, or how my Sunday mornings go. Well, some people will go, well, it's Sunday morning. Shouldn't you be at church? And I say, that depends on if you go to church, not everyone goes to church, not everyone who believes in something being bigger than them goes to church or even has that option. And so I don't know, you know, I don't know everyone's beliefs. I only know mine, but, but as I'm, as I'm on my walk and, and talking with people, when I sing that song, it's amazing how many people go, that's exactly how it, that's exactly how, and that's what I hope for when I'm doing what I'm doing. We want to, I do it to reach, to genuinely reach people. I say it's about hearts and not charts. I don't know if me and God and the fishing pole is going to be on mainstream radio or allowed to be there. I don't know if it's going to be a number one song, but I believe we're going to reach people with it. And, and by doing that, it's a chance for this artist career that I'm taking on that I really haven't had like this before. It's a chance for that to be, you know, embraced and, and grow up to where we can share that song with many millions of people. Yeah, that's beautiful. And you're just telling your own story in that sense that, you know, fishing by a creek or being in nature, that's your own version of church. And that's a lot of people's own version of church, especially up in Wyoming, was Wyoming the place where you wrote most of these songs on the upcoming Dragonfly album? Well, for me, some people, I think, when they, when they think about Nashville and songwriting, they think about many, many people because it's been, it's just been spun that way, go into a writing appointment and they write together that day and they come up with a song and they write it. And that happens in Nashville in a writing room or in someone's living room, or sometimes, you know, people go down to Florida and they'll all gather it. And for me, it's not, it's not quite that since, and I'll just back up for just a, just a sec because you may know that in the mid-2000s, I was a bit artistically unfulfilled. If I'm just heart open, I wasn't really ever able to be the artist I wanted to be. I wasn't really allowed to do that. And I was difficult for me to continue making a living as a songwriter with the kind of songs that I write and that I felt good about writing. I sold everything in Nashville and I went on the road to study horsemanship. That's all I did. I didn't really play guitar that much and sing and play. Some people knew that I did that. A lot of people, I was around, had no idea that I did anything except work with horses and that was a spiritual pursuit for me. So by the time we got to Wyoming, which is why I was doing all those horse, the horsework brought me to Wyoming. I started messing around. Just what do I have to say? And if I don't have any confines, can I sing, you know, can I sing a song about a petroglyph? Can I have a dog sing a song? Can I, and it sounds odd, but these were things I really needed to say. Can I have someone in the 1800s speaking a way that we don't even speak now because it's the right thing to do? Yeah. And I played with that. But I wrote all that by myself. And as I was doing that, I kept looking into, why does that move me? And so I will come up with things now. Could be a little piece of music, could be an idea, could be a line that's going to be in a song, could be a title. But that doesn't mean I write it right then. It might mean that I kicked that around for a while and just basically say, do I understand everything I need to understand to be able to write that seed and grow it up into a, if you want to call it a tree of a song, right? Well, I don't know. So sometimes I'll start something in Wyoming, be on the road, be in a hotel in Houston, get an idea and work on that in the hotel in Houston, tell what you have to do a show. And the next time I'm in Nashville, I'll pull it back out and go, that's, I got, I got to work on that. I don't know because I'm writing by myself. And it's a different journey. So I would say a lot of it came from, for me when I was in Wyoming, but honestly, it was just because I was in Wyoming, you know? And, but me and God, I remember, I was, I was at a, was that an Airbnb in, on 12th Avenue in Nashville. And I just had been messing around with the guitar thing, you know, and I had this, this idea, is there any way to make that connection that's not religious, so much religious that it identifies as only that space, but could identify for anyone's, however anyone is getting their arms around who they think God is or who they think the universe is or who they think they are. And I sort of came up with it there and then finished it. It's beautiful. I'm really looking forward to the upcoming single, me and God, in a fishing pole. Can you tell us more about your journey with Nashville, what led you here to having your success in Nashville and your first record deal, and then talk more about your transition, what made you feel like maybe you were starting to feel out of your element in Nashville and wanted to go work in horsemanship and be in Wyoming? Big story there. I know you guys dig pretty deep here, so that's kind of why I'm giving you some, some longer answers than I might, than I might otherwise. So I'll answer that the best way I can. I don't remember when I didn't play guitar. So I was told by my family at the time that I had asked for a guitar. I was about four, and I had seen something on television. I think it might have been a episode of Glenn Campbell's Good Time Hour or something, right? And, and, you know, I just, I don't know, but that's kind of what they told me. So I don't remember not playing guitar. And so long story short about guitar, I didn't know what I was doing. I had no idea. There was so much work to be done and not really any money or opportunity to have very many guitar lessons. I had a few, but I would take a pink foam curler, like women still wear with those little snap pink plastic things and foam curlers, and I would push that up underneath my strings on my guitar, all the way up against the saddle, and it mutes the strings so you can still hear the tone, but nobody else in the house could hear me play. And I just played whatever I could think. So basically I was making up stuff on the guitar, and I was listening to what I could, when I could, but I would make stuff up. Well, the next thing, if I was making that up, I had to have other stuff to go with it. So I started making stuff up to go with it. I learned how to play a lot of different instruments, and I wasn't worried. And I didn't think about commercialism. I just thought, what goes with this? What am I thinking about? Well, at the time I was a kid, I didn't know much about life, and I learned as many songs as I could. Well, I just followed music for a while. I did musical theater. I played lead guitar for Jesus Christ Superstar for a while. I sang in magical groups. I did so many different, I studied classical guitar some, learned how to play piano, five string banjo. Heck, man, I kind of ran away at least two or three times to go to a bluegrass festival that I wasn't supposed to go to. And anyway, I got offered a chance to work in Nashville. And it wasn't originally my thought, oh, I'll do country music. It was the opportunity I had. And I just sat in the trailer behind the theater where we were doing this show. And I would play this gut string guitar that I had bought from somebody for 90 bucks. And I would just write whatever I could while I was out there. Some people heard about that, asked me to a writer's night. I got a publishing deal. And that is what led me to where I was. So then I think there was still, well, no, I know, there was still self discovery that whole time, learning about songwriting and then getting a real lesson in what was commercial, what was writing for someone else, because I never thought about that. I mean, when I was a kid, you could have said, you know what, someday you're going to write a song and Merle Haggard's going to sing it. Or Willie Nelson's going to sing it or George Jones is going to sing it or George Strait is going to sing it, you know, go out or Keith Urban's going to sing it or Sac. And then if somebody said, oh, no, never mind, they're all going to sing your songs. Okay. I would never have thought that that would ever have happened. But that was the journey. Well, that was me honestly, just writing the best I could. It wasn't me already being a good writer. It was me maybe having some of the raw goods because I'd worked on it. I don't know how that works. I don't, I still don't know if there's some seed in someone that says you're going to be a good writer, or you're not going to be a good writer, or you'll never be even if you apply yourself. I tend to think that it's something that can be learned. I think that I think you can, you can get better at any, at any pursuit that you want to if you apply yourself. Maybe there's some natural proclivities that someone has that leads them there. But you know, otherwise we wouldn't know what a good song was if we hadn't written it. You listen to a song and you know it's good. So if you know it's good, you could chase it in the other direction and probably get closer. Right. Well, you know, by the time that I got, I tried, worked on being an artist, I was offered a record deal, had a very, I shouldn't would say very successful, but I had a fairly successful first record had five hit songs off of it. And it sort of, it's, it sort of became where the people around me that I was cutting records for were telling me the songs I was writing were terrible, and they weren't going to work on country radio. And I started trying to please them in one way, but I was still writing the songs that I really liked. Those are the songs that got recorded. Love me that I wrote for the Colin Ray recorded, for instance, it was nominated ACM song of the year. It's been played millions of times on the radio. I can't go to a country and do a show where people don't know the words to that. And I was told it was a terrible song would never be played on the radio. I couldn't record it. And if I would bring them something that was good, then we might have a record together. So you can see how that, how that it's conflicting information. You can't point a finger and say, look how wrong those guys were. Everything sound, every song sounds more like a hit after it's a hit. It's never a problem to hear a song as a hit after it's a hit. So they were just offering their opinion. Well, that opinion was incorrect at the time, you know, as we now know. And it led me into songwriting. Well, fast forward that, you know, a few years, songwriters don't get paid a heck of a lot. We all know that we say we know it, but then we don't, then we kind of don't think, well, wait a second, how much does a songwriter make? How many songs, how many successful songs do you have to write in a 25 year period to be able to afford, you know, to everything that you need? Not only that, when I got to a space in that kind of time, I had a number of different music business frustrations. There were some things that happened to me that again, I just went, how can somebody justify doing that? I'm not going to throw anyone under a bus, but it was enough for me to go, this is, I don't want to be involved in that kind of thing. I don't, I don't want, in fact, there's a song on Dragonfly that's coming out. And it's, it's, it's, well, maybe we'll do another one of these and we can play that song or so we can talk about that song specifically, because I illuminate that, not anything specific, but something people will understand. And this caused me to look deeply into myself and go, if I can't make a living enjoying what I'm doing, if I have to sort of bang my head against the, the writer's room window or wall to write something that's going to make someone else money and I'm unhappy, I don't see that as something that blossoms at all artistically. I don't see that as something even where I'm able to offer the hearts of people that I care about and those people, I don't know my best work. In the meantime, I had fallen in love with horses and I had fallen in love with horses, not just because I was riding them. I was going to Wyoming, I'd been going there since 2000. Every time I went, I stayed longer. And every time I stayed longer, I spent more time around horses, not just riding them, but watching them going, there's a lot here. There's a lot of communication I know nothing about. I am sitting on top of a, of a being who has so much more going on than I gave any credit to. I'm blind. I'm absolutely blind. I need to find, I need to find out what I don't know. What do they got to teach me? Well, I started digging that in. I was humbled. I was knocked over. Might as well just hit me with a truck knocked over by what I didn't know and what they had to show me. So I said, at that time, well, I'm not really able to do what I have to, you know, what I, what I can do that is bringing me any kind of joy. I'm not really making a lot of money. That's for sure. So it's not worth the money. So what about all the relationships I have in life, including the one with myself? What will I not have? What will I not be able to go around the sun with? I got, how many times am I going to go around the sun? I don't know. How many breaths am I going to take? I don't know. But I am now going around the sun taking breaths with the information I've got from that that showed me more of who I enjoy being as a person. And it gave me a much deeper appreciation for what I could allow other people and seeing them. What I could, what I could be immediately forgiving of, I mean immediately forgiving. If you watch a horse, you know, in a, in a field and they have a problem, this is a really interesting thing. A horse will basically say no, this is not okay. And if they have a difficulty, this is not, not if, not if it's two stallions going after each other because they want to mate. Okay, that's not, that's not it. But in another situation, somebody says, you're not eating with me, whatever it is, I got, I'm this, I'm going to move your feet. It happens quick. It's like, I'm warning you when I warn you again, then, hey, and then it's done. Seconds later, it's all that go up and they're eating. They're just hanging out. That doesn't happen with people sometimes. But it happens with me now more about myself and a lot more for other people. Well, I had let music basically go. I mean, I could still play, I still did that. But as I got into that, I was learning about relationships. And then I began even doing clinics and working with other clinicians, having looked deeply into that relationship. And, and, and really being able to, to help a horse understand how to have a relationship better with humans. But more importantly, how to help us humans often be able to go, this is how we have a better relationship with the horse. And most of the time, you might as well say to the horse, you know what sis, that was my fault. Let me get out of your way. Let's try that again. I might be inviting you. You're might supposed to be doing something, but I've got to set you up to win because you're a horse and you don't know, you don't know what I'm really asking you. I've got to help you understand that. And you know what's really cool? There's not been a horse ever who asks me about Kenny Chesney. Haven't had a single horse ever say, Hey, what's Kenny Chesney like? Okay, that's not bad. Right. It also doesn't know any song I've ever written. Doesn't care what my name is. The only thing it cares about is what is real. Like what is real, not what I think is real, but what's really going on with my body. What's the energy I'm sending? How authentic is how genuine is it? And how skillful am I at expressing that with my body and the energies that I, that I give. And if you ever go out and around a horse with me, I can very quickly show you what I mean. This was so akin, so closely related to what I realized was songwriting because of my relationship to what I was writing and the people for whom I was writing myself included. I don't think I don't write for myself and only for others, but I do think about both of those things all the time now. It's like when you're working with a horse, if the human forgets that you have a relationship, if it stops being we and the horse goes one way and the person goes another, it's almost never good for the person. Right? So for me also, as I'm doing music, I think about those other people. I think about you. If I know you, if I'm going to sing right here, if I was going to sing right here, I would be thinking about this whole situation and who's listening. So if you're listening right now, basically what I imagine is there is someone listening, not a million people listening, but a million individuals are listening with the possibility of putting their life into the words I'm offering or the song I'm offering and seeing how it fits. Can I get my life in there somehow? Does that move me? Because it brings up what the, it brings up the experiences that I've had where I can grow, where I can celebrate, where I can cry, where I can be super happy. Maybe so. I hope so. Because that's what we're doing. Well, by the time we got to Wyoming, that's when my wife said after I was messing with these other ideas, she said, you need to put the journeys together. That's what you need to do. And so then I was just going to do stuff for fun because I didn't know for sure I'd be able to come back and do something in Nashville commercially. So the songs that I were writing were very different on the Wyoming record. There's some really interesting stuff and I will forever be happy that I wrote them because now I can't go and do shows without people asking me. And it's for the more obscure songs sometimes like Marga Lane or Cowboy Inside or, you know, or a railroad or Petroglyph. These things that are much different than you, you know, are going to get played on mainstream country radio or even Americana. And yeah, so that just took steps from there to a second record. And we had a little bit of a really fun song called Road Dog that was about a dog literally singing about, about loving to be in the truck. I mean, or the car or whatever it was. And that hit a chord with so many people, you know. And so then we started this Dragonfly project. And although we have released a few songs on it, we certainly haven't released the record. And, you know, we put out a song called I Wanted All, which was basically the first, the first radio single. But it didn't go out to mainstream radio. It went out to radio stations who are still able to make a choice about what they want to play on the radio station. We found out that a lot of people wanted to play what I was making. And we ended up having a number one song on the independent, you know, on the fully independent chart, because I don't have a, I don't have a record label. And it stayed in the top five for weeks and weeks. Okay, this was an indication that people were enjoying listening. And I went, I, and a team began to gather around me. When all this starts to happen, it resonates with right as far as it resonates with possibility. And I have to listen to that. If I'm going in that direction, and everyone around me is loving what they're doing, believing in what we're doing. And it's, and it's, when I say resonate, I mean, you can, you know, you can, you can feel that sometimes you get an inkling. This is just, why are we wasting our time here? You know, we'll do it because the money's there. But if that starts happening, then you reassess, but that's not what's happening right now. And so that, I know is a little bit longer, edit it how you want. But that's really how it's not a journey of song after song, or one state to another, or one horse to another. What it is, is it's, it's a journey of, of understanding. It's a journey of not me having humility, but of me being humbled. Whether I liked it or not, I could not be, you know, imagine me saying, okay, I'm not going to do anything with music. Now, okay, that's what I did my whole life. That's what I did. If people liked me, it was because of that. You know, if people were making money off of me, it was because of that. All of a sudden, I, it doesn't matter what my name is, doesn't matter what I've written, doesn't matter who I know, doesn't matter what kind of money I'm making. When I walk down there and I'm going to spend time with this amazing animal, like a horse, or a dog, there's many similarities. And I go down there, that, that, that's what I am. And that's all, that's all there is. That's it. That is, in its own way, freeing, humbling, a bit scary. And it is both an opportunity and a responsibility. If I'm going to take responsibility for this horse, which I am, is his or her safety and well being while we're doing that. I'm also taking that responsibility for me, but it's an opportunity for us both to learn, for us both maybe to have an incredibly positive experience, learning how to have a relationship together. Because I kept going, if a horse doesn't have a relationship with humans, if a horse doesn't have that relationship, it really doesn't have a life. Nobody wants to keep it around. And yet when a horse is born, its mom doesn't go, Hey, you better do good with these guys because otherwise they're going to send you off somewhere and you're not going to be around anymore. Nope, they don't do that. They don't know any better. They just have to learn, this is why. And when it feels good to do that, when it feels good to do that, when that invitation is like, Hey, I got an idea. Let's do this together. Okay, because I know this is good for you. Let's, let's do this together. And then if I'm wrong, I'll probably be more wrong more than you. And anytime I'm wrong, I'm going to do my best to go, Oh, wait, wait, that was my fault. I'm putting no pressure on you. Please let's do that again. So imagine that in a person's place, right? Let's say you're so kind because I'm sitting here like talking so much. I know that's what you want and you're letting me. Right? So, so if I, if I go, Oh, right, next time we do it, did I talk too much? Maybe so. But if I did, you know, what I'd want to handle is I would want to say, you know what, I'm sorry, I talked too much all at the same time. That really wasn't as skillful as I could have done that. Let me try that again. Let's try that again. I know I can do better. That will take away a lot that could have manifested between us that could have been negative. And this is a random thing I'm saying, right? Happens all the time with a horse. Just know, let's try it again. Let the whole thing go. Let's do it again. And when it feels good, we'll both know. And the next time it comes up in any relationship, I feel, if you can realize quickly, you made a mistake, you really could have done it more skillfully. The minute you say that to a person, I believe they'll see themselves in it. If you're authentic, you go, that was so unskillful of me. Okay. I whatever it is, I raised my voice, I use language I shouldn't have used. It can be worse than that can be, or I didn't even see that. You know, I am so sorry. Let me do, look, I can do that way more skillfully. You didn't deserve that. Give me another shot. They'll almost always let you. So now we're back to music. So here I am. I wanted to be an artist. They wouldn't let me cut the songs I wanted to cut. Now I'm older. Some people even say my voice is better. I don't know. It's different. That's for sure. The way I look at relationships is certainly different. And the way I offer music is different. But it does have all this time that I've spent working on a craft that I really believe in. And there are new ways to think about the way we make records. And there are, there's a different sort of spectrum of the way people pay attention to music. And one thing I know about me is there's going to be Easter eggs. No doubt. Okay, there's not a song I'm going to rise is not going to have some kind of Easter egg. And if you listen to it a second time, I'm hoping you'll find something you didn't find the first time. But also there's the opportunity for me to say it differently than anyone else, which allows me to be both an artist as a writer and an artist as a singer. And by from me, when I say artist, my artistic voice is how I express myself on the guitar. I have done that my whole life. I don't remember when I didn't how I sing and that and by how I sing, I'm not talking about the notes that I choose so much as what's the well I'm drawing from, what's the emotional well, whether that's fun, whether it's romantic, whether it's powerful, whether it's scary, whether it's sad, whether it's ultra happy, where am I drawing from? And that is an artistic voice in the same way it will be a way that I write something. Hey, old man, are you listening? It's the first line of a song. If nobody knew what that is, I'm hoping they go, well, is he is he talking to you? What is that? Let's listen to the next line. Are you listening? I know my life's been full of sin. I probably got no choice, no chance of getting in. I don't know anyone who hasn't thought, okay, that's it. I'm not getting into heaven. If you think there's a heaven, it's a little tongue in cheek, but it's, I believe it's, it's all of us. And I think that I'm starting to be given an opportunity to be heard. And that's all I can ask for. That's all I can ask for. And the, and the great thing is that after doing that, which is a bit scary to do, to do it different than other people, you know, to do it a little different. That's how we, that's how we are actually artists, I think. That's how we're not clones. That's how we're artists, you know, and you get, it's, it takes a chance. But man, give me a chance to do it. And now all of a sudden I'm high as a kite because people are listening. People are going, Hey, have you heard this? You should hear this, you know, and the numbers start to grow. And more people play the song. And I get on more awesome podcasts like this. And that's all, that's all I can ask. That's all I can ask for. Yeah, that's beautiful. Yeah. I love, thank you for sharing your story and your journey. And I love the perspective of between a horse and human connection and how that helps you be more connected with humans. And, you know, like you said, we have to have something to draw from when we're writing or doing music. And if you're in a head space or place where you can't draw anything anymore, that's definitely a good way to realize that maybe you need to put yourself in a different place. And for you that was going to Wyoming be more connected to nature. And that's where you found more inspiration to draw from. And of course, with all the success you had, you were just in a place where you needed a little break from Nashville. And now you're releasing more music again. We'll be right back with more of the Take a Walk Nashville podcast. Welcome back to Take a Walk Nashville. I love when songs are just so timeless where, you know, you write it, you think nothing is going to come of it. And then for you 20 plus years later, you heard that Ernest and Lainey Wilson are recording a song you wrote in the 90s with Dean Dillon. What if I could, were you surprised to see the resurgence of that song after all these years? Well, certainly. I mean, nobody expects that. Nobody expects that. And so, and for it to be then have a chance to be a hit. And that had a really funny story, you know, because Apple invited Lainey to do a version. She did a version of it. Ernest had heard it in the meantime. He wanted to cut it on his record. So he asked Lainey if she would do a duet on his record. And then when she sort of, sort of with the understanding with her record label, wasn't able to put it out as a single with Ernest, which is understandable, then Ernest went in and, you know, recorded his second half of the song that Lainey and otherwise sang, put it out. And now people are playing Ernest by himself and Ernest and Lainey ended up being a hit. In fact, it's on the charts for 50 something weeks. And you just go, how does that happen? I don't know because somebody discovered it. And because we did a pretty good job writing a song, you know, 20 something, 20 something years ago. And you go, why didn't they get cut then? I don't know. Did not get cut then so that Lainey and Ernest would do a version of it? I don't know. You made me think, can I, could we just take a baby step back to something? You made me think of, and you, because you made me think about an experience that relates exactly to what you said, like how you look at something differently, you know, that you need to sort of step away. I think we, I do believe that. I think we need to do that a lot. But it reminded me of something I do sometimes that's a really interesting thing. So if you've never tried this, try this. I also have done martial arts for 25 years at least. Ever since I was younger, it was part of what my family did, my adopted family. And there's this warrior technique. Okay. So the role with me on this, because I know it's different, but you got to try this. Okay. So, so you can do something with your vision that is unusual. You can look somewhere, just look at the same place. Okay. But make sure there's sun there. Make sure there's, there's good sun. Then after you do that, close your eyes and leave your face towards the sun and do that for 20, 30 seconds. Keep your eyes closed. Don't do not look at the sun. Doesn't have to be full on straight at you, but just close your eyes and let the sunlight be it be across your eyes. Then after that, turn back and look at the same place. When you open your eyes, your vision will be substantially different because of the way you took in that light. And you'll see it with a different clarity. And that's kind of what you described right there, where you take a minute and then you can see it a little more clearly. That's a very quick, that's 30 seconds later, that that really does happen. And so, so try it today. Just turn to that and then try it. So that's a sort of a micro, you know, a micro thing, but that's a, that's a good way of kind of saying, yeah, you know, you don't have to, you don't, you don't lose the sun. You don't think you just kind of close your eyes and give it a, give it a minute and then look at it again. And what will you see? What will you appreciate better? Yeah, so. That's interesting. Is that kind of your perspective returning to Nashville now that you don't live here? Do you look at it in a different light when you come here now? Well, I don't point my finger at Nashville in any way at all. In other words, I think that, you know, like I told you that I have a song on the new record that basically is saying, you know, that there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a really not good thing about the music business, but it's in almost every business. There's things like that, you know, that really, so I can write that because I've lived it, but Nashville is not the problem. Nashville is not a problem. It's, it's, it's different than it was in the past, but I guess I don't think about Nashville as an entity. Now I sort of see the opportunities that are clustered here. And I also see some really capable people who care about what we're listening to, such as whether it's AI, such as whether the content is something that should be shared, you know, how are, how are we making the decisions about what is getting played and what's not getting played? Is it only money? Cause if it turns into only money for everyone, it will never feel good. And there are still some things that feel good. I can tell you that I'm fortunate enough now that I've put this, my artist's career together differently and it's starting to grow exponentially that, that I have, I've had people reach out to me and I have reached out to people that have that kind of resonance. If the kind of team that can get around me is in Nashville, inherently, and I know that it is, that means there is a hell of a lot, that's okay for me to say, a hell of a lot of, of heart in this town and in this business, still right now, no matter what some things are having to, no matter how frustrating it can be, no matter how sort of scary it can be, and no matter how many people sort of, you know, put it down, say country isn't what it used to be, et cetera, et cetera. Well, there's merit in all those ideas, but when I look at Nashville, I see Nashville has changed dramatically. Well, one thing that hasn't changed is a lot of people's love for what country music is able, the way country music is able to express itself, if the things we're able to say still. And so for that, I treasure Nashville, which is different than I think what some people might, you know, might come at it. It doesn't mean I can't write a song in Wyoming, doesn't mean I can't be on tour and write a song in Arizona. And it doesn't mean that I can't come and spend time here. I spent more time in Nashville this year than I have in the last, you know, six years, even though I was putting music out, and I love it. I do, I've had a lot of, a lot of fun here. Are there things about the music business that I wish weren't the way they are? Of course, just like everybody else, there's not a single person in Nashville in the music business who doesn't wish something was different. All right. So, for me, the main thing is Nashville affords us the community that is able to get behind artistry they believe in. And I'm finding that still happening. It's a slowly but surely thing. There are some people who have come out and said, you know what, we want to help you skip seriously. If this is a skipping record, we want more of them and we will work our tails off because that's what we, this is the kind of thing we want. It doesn't happen as often for whatever reason. If that's happening for me, it's happening for other people, which means the heart of what country music has always been about and what's going on with Nashville from that is still very much alive. You know, there might be some places where we have to dig a little deeper to see it or feel it now because there's so much. We're just inundated with music, you know. But no, I haven't lost my faith at all. In fact, maybe it's just a renewed faith because I'm seeing that manifest. And if it can manifest, then all we have to do is be incredibly skillful continuing to make that manifest. I want to write the very best I can to reach those kind of people so that anyone who's around me, anyone who gives me a chance can look at that music and go, yeah, we're okay to represent that. We believe in that talent or my voice or who I am or the writing or hopefully all of it. And then you don't usually say it about country, but let's rock. Let's go. Let's country. And yeah, so I have nothing but positive in that sense. That's beautiful. Yeah, thank you for that insight. I was going to say you keep such a positive perspective, which is so important to have in the music industry to keep that positivity going, especially through your music. Skip my last question for you today. We are on taking a walk Nashville. So what is the most memorable walk you have taken in Nashville? You mean a physical walk because that could be metaphorical too. So yeah, I say physical, but if you have a metaphorical one, please share. Well, the funny thing is that I spend a huge amount of my time walking. So and by that, I mean that, you know, I've played guitar for a long time. If I have a musical idea and I have the arms of my sort of understanding of that musical idea, I can set my guitar down and I can still work on something and work with the changes or the melody without having to play my guitar or piano or anything. I can just do that in my head a good bit. And so work on a lyric that way. And very often, even if I'm inside, I will walk. And I have this thing, there's a couple places where we are really, you know, creative and we free ourselves in the shower, driving and walking. Those are all places psychologically, maybe physiologically, they say that that is because we do it the same way every time you take a shower exactly the same way every time when you're driving, you kind of know the way so you can kind of check out. And you're not, you don't have to spend that energy on your body. You can spend it thinking. So I take advantage of it. And so I'll tell you one that came up, but it's not because it's not because of the title. It's not necessarily because of what happened, but it's because of what we can discover when we do stuff like that. Where we live, there's nobody around us. And everyone goes, oh my gosh, when we see pictures on your socials of what that you really have mountains, you really have like bighorn sheep in your driveway that many those guys. Yeah, we really do. Oh man, I wish we lived there. I'll say, well, okay, but what are you wanting to give up? Where do you want to give up till that there? There's no pizza delivery. There's no Asian food. There's no stop signs. There's no fast food. There's an, and there's an eight mile drive just to get on a dirt road that will beat any truck up that we usually have to use an ATV, etc, etc to get there. And we're out in the, in nothing except for beauty, beauty. Right. So I can step out my back door with my dogs who I don't have to put on a leash. They could go anywhere they wanted to, but our dogs stay on the property because they're both those kinds of dogs, but they'll go with me. And I will leave my house and I'll just walk. I can go any direction I want. That's not a typical thing. I don't have to go to a certain park or take a certain trail or walk around the block at my house. This is a blessing. It's a gift that we don't, that I didn't even think about it first. And I can go out and I can, I can let that be part of my artistic journey. Every one of those walks is part of my artistic journey. And they're all connected. They could be connected to a zillion songs, but this is what happened this year, which this is true. I left with the dogs and we're walking out and about halfway through the afternoon, this blue bright blue dragonfly literally came over and flew next to me not for a long time, but enough time that you could tell it was like right there. I don't know if it, you know, why? I don't know, but it was there. And I noticed it. And I didn't really, you know, it's beautiful. They're there sometimes. They're fairly rare, but they're there because we have a lot of water where we live. I thought that was so cool because you're staying, I'm like looking at it. You know, you don't usually, you can, he's like, just getting a look at him. And then he's gone. And he went off on his way. As I'm walking back, I went, wait a second, that is really unusual. It has snowed three times already. It is late fall kind of seemed like to me. I don't know how to say that in Wyoming because you just judge it by how bad the weather is. And, and I went, it has snowed three times, which means it has also been freezing cold multiple days, very cold. How in the world did a dragonfly larva turn into an adult or how did an adult stay alive when that's not how, how did that even happen? It's kind of magical, you know. Now that's one of the kinds of walks that I took, but that ended up being the title of the album, the dragonfly. So this is a memorable walk, but it's, it's memorable for the title, but it's also memorable for the rarity of it. I don't know. I don't think it was anything magic. I don't have a big thing about magic. Even working with horses, people say horse whisper stuff. I don't think that's true necessarily. I think it's a poetic way of describing something that is pretty black and white and concrete working with, with a horse. These things happen and this is why, you know. By that one, I don't know. I don't know how it happened, but it happened and I came back and I said, I wonder if we should call this record dragonfly because what are dragonflies about? Spiritual maturity, maybe, you know, in the same way that butterflies do, they go through a metamorphosis. There's so many things you can look in that are said through indigenous societies all the way up until right now, you know, over in the place where they sell candles, right? So that was, that was memorable to me because it reflects where we are. I also like to say we. I will leave that with a we because I don't like to say I have an album coming out. I would prefer to say we have an album coming out. We have a single coming out. Some people go, why do you say that? Because my, the only thing that's different is my name is usually the one that's printed in the largest type. But every single person who's around it has something to do with it. So on that walk and on those decisions and what I was doing, I'm literally walking with everybody that I know, even though I'm by myself. I come back with these kinds of thoughts and it happens, it happens a lot. But that's one of the most memorable walks recently that I've had for a different reason because even then that day I started going, what can I learn from that? What can I learn from that? And what are we going to record for it? And there you go. That's beautiful. Yeah, I love that the Dragonfly album is connected to taking a walk and Buzz Knight who owns the, taken a walk podcast, he usually gifts his guest with a book that says how to take a walk and it guides people on how to focus and just stay and check with their surroundings while they take a walk. So you're not just walking with your mind thinking about other things, but staying present and definitely sounds like you stay present with your walks and you are aware of your surroundings and it becomes music based on your walks. And I think that's so beautiful. I think that can be an aspiration. I don't think I'm skillful enough to never, you know, not get lost in my thoughts. But yes, I think there is a great deal to find on any walk, but especially when you can be out in what we would call nature, walking, you know, walking in the mall is still a positive thing. But walking in Wyoming where there's nothing and you know, you could just as easily, you know, see a bear as anything else. That's, that's, it's powerful. Yeah, or a dragonfly. Or a dragonfly. Yeah, as little or as small as a kid. There you go. Let's skip you and thank you so much for being on Taken a Walk National today. It was a pleasure to learn about your journey and we are looking forward to your upcoming album, Dragonfly. Me too. Let's take another walk soon.