#595 - Hunter Hayes on Child Stardom, Leaving Nashville, His Love of Coldplay & New Music

This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed human. No gloss, no filter. Just stories, spoken without fear. A person who is not generous cannot be an artist. The world will be at peace only when it is ruled by poets and philosophers. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Bhachon on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty, stay for the fire. I realized how much community was something that I hadn't worked towards. So I took it as an opportunity to be intentional about making new friends and giving them space and giving myself space to be human. He's a five-time Grammy nominee, multi-instrumentalist, which we talk about, platinum selling artist. He does it all musically. It's Hunter Hayes. He's been doing this since he was a small kid in Louisiana. He played for the president at seven. He toured with Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood. He had his first number one in 2012 with Wanted, which we talked about, which was a jam. His album Evergreen is out now and you can see him on his Evergreen tour. Get tickets at hunterhays.com. Here he is, Hunter Hayes. Hunter, good to see you, man. Good to see you, man. It's been a while. I was trying to remember the last time. I'm glad you asked. Thank you for asking. I was just talking to the guys about the last time that I saw you. So I was playing, and you may not remember this, but it talks to your generosity, but I was playing a show at the Bluebird for a charity and you played, and it was me, you, John Party and Larkin Poe. And so we played in the round at the Bluebird. Yeah. And I was like, because I was trying to figure out the last time that I'd seen you. And also social media is weird because I see you on social media or pictures. And so you feel like you've kind of seen everybody? Yeah, I totally agree. I totally agree. Especially at Nashville, right? Because I'll run into Dirk Spintley at the coffee shop next door. And I feel like I've seen him every day for the past six months, but it's just because he's on social media. Yeah, what's awkward is, whenever you feel like you've seen someone a lot, and they're like, oh my God, I can't believe it. It's great to see you again. And I didn't meet with the same energy, because I've seen you 30 times in my mind. And I'm like, what's up, Hunter? And you're like, oh, yeah, that's all I go awkward. Yeah. Yeah, well, good to see you. Good to see you, man. Let's start with the record you brought, because we have a lot of people who stop by and bring music. Grab that right there and show the cameras. Because I do love this album. When you walked in, I'm a Coldplay guy myself. And so we have people come in and bring records that have meant a lot to them for whatever reason. Hold this up so the camera can see it and tell me why you brought it here. I love an artist or a band that is comfortable or seemingly comfortable evolving in big ways rapidly. And I love how many layers there is to the Coldplay discography musically. If I'm being honest, I'm gonna say something I haven't said yet. Every time I prep for doing interviews, I just listen to Chris Martin do interviews, because he just has such a centered energy. But we're talking about Brian Eno as well. When we talk about this project, this kind of blew my mind to open. And even though, I think big records, sometimes conversations about massive records like this can kind of lose sight of how revolutionary some pieces of it can be, especially this one in my opinion. And I still reference this record. What songs are on Viva La Vida? Well, I mean, Viva La Vida. Obviously Viva La Vida, yeah. I think of Violet Hill or Strawberry Swing. There's a lot of stuff that I do that references Strawberry Swing. Life in Technicolor is something that I think about a lot because I'm always trying to figure out how to open an album. And there's a lot of thought and intentionality behind it. But not all of us can get away with an instrumental opening. There is something that they keep on everything that they do, right? Which is this sort of, the first song is an introductory piece into the world that they're creating that I've pinpointed and kept. So this felt appropriate. Well, yeah, I love it too. And I have 50 versions of this vinyl. So I felt okay with. Well, thank you for donating it to the cause here. We have a lot of people that donate really great music. And that's one of my favorites of all time as well. The Coldplay that I really love, because I said this to Kenny Chesney when he was in, there are different versions of artists that I think I'm drawn to the most. And it's always the saddest version of any artist. Like for me, the sadder it is, the more piano bass it is, like the more that it makes me feel. So with Kenny, I don't really like Beach Kenny. I love freaking Sad Kenny. Like Ewan Tequila, like any of the songs about time. I get where you're at with that. With Coldplay, first two records, freaking crushed me. I remember watching and seeing Yellow, the video on MTV when he's just walking on the beach. I was shaken by the whole thing. And then I did this trick where I've always had trouble sleeping. And I think I have trouble sleeping for a couple of reasons. One, I have like hyper ADHD. My brain doesn't stop enough for me to relax. And the only time it feels like it's threatened is when I stop. So that's when I'm laying down. So I have trouble sleeping. So I train myself to go to sleep to a rush of blood to the head. So every night I would listen to that record. It was the perfect record for it too, because it's down for the most part. But now anytime that I hear a song like that at the grocery store, I feel sleepy. It's like I'm hypnotized. I can't stop listening to the first song in my head now. Yes. What were you out on ghost stories? Anything that starts to grow as far as, listen, I respect an artist growing and changing, like you said, because you're risking money by doing that. Yeah, that's fair. Because let's say you come out, you experiment, and people don't love it, and wow, we don't like the sound. Maybe people don't love you as much. They don't buy the record. Or you could just keep replicating the same sound and selling a ton of records. But I love when an artist tries new things, because again, they're risking everything to do that. But when Coldplay started to be real anthemic and started to put in techno beats, but they were building out what you see now, where they can play stadiums. I don't think they could play stadiums without that version of themselves, because that's what grew them internationally. So that's my TED Talk on Coldplay. I love Coldplay, but the sadder it is, the more I love it. That's so funny, because I feel like they're still like, everyday life has some sad shit on it. So can I? You can say whatever you want. OK, good. I feel like everyday life has some sad shit on it, but that's also what I loved about it. But also, I think when they switch gears, I feel like they do it because they have to. Not business have to, personal have to. Like it's inside out. The anthemic stuff, I feel, comes from a place of, and I'm making all of this up. But again, just after studying, watching interviews, and my class that I made for myself off of their career, I feel like it's coming from a place of, I have to do this. I need to do this. I feel this sense of we want to create joy. We want to bring unity, et cetera. Or ghost stories, everyday life. I'm doing this because I have to. I feel that with them. And that's what I love about their evolution. It doesn't feel forced. It doesn't feel calculated. It feels the opposite. It feels like you have to calculate to understand it, which I love. And I feel like that is a common thread for all the artists that I study in that there are so many eras with all of my favorite artists where people will say, I only liked this era, or I liked this era more. I think it kind of takes that to be a timeless artist. And I think maybe that's because I believe that if you're doing that, if you're doing something that polarizing or that challenging to yourself to grow, then it has to be coming from a real place. I think there are artists that have, even in our lifetime, have made, we call it drastic art, because it was so much different than the last piece, the last couple of pieces they put out. I think even like a machine, Hunk Kelly did that, where he's a rapper. And then he completely grabbed a guitar and was like, dude, now I'm punk. And you have to be so good to get people to accept you doing something different if you're really switching it up. You gotta be committed. I remember when Maroon 5 started putting Techno Beats in. But that made them so much bigger. And I didn't like it that much, but that also made them a massive brand, not just a band. Yeah, also that's like what I love about Post. That's a good point. That's another one. I mean, my God, did I love Hollywood as bleeding? And then Circles was like, hang on a minute. And then to hear this, some of the first songs that he made in the country world, I was like, oh, this feels real. This feels studied. This feels present. Do you think that people felt the same way about Post Malone? The people did about Bob Dylan when he won Electric? I have no idea. Like hip hop fans. I'm so unqualified. Hip hop fans are doing what is happening. He's singing country songs the same way that Bob did. When people were so mad that he plugged in and started playing Electric. Yeah, it's so funny to think about things like that. I have no idea, because I have no context for really, honestly, either. I just have my own perspective. I've read one book and seen one documentary. So I have all the context. You know, so I should. I know everything. You should answer this question. Yes, well, I'm going to say yes. I'm going to say Post Malone is our Bob Dylan. Clip that. Put that on a tile card. Love that. Yes. What was your first single? Storm Morning. And how did that do? Really well. To my memory, it got to 11 on the chart. And it had been 52 weeks. So I think we all kind of collectively said, I think we should probably take the foot off the gas for a second, because we also had wanted in the queue. We knew that that was the next single. And we were getting closer to the Kari Underwood tour that I had just accepted or just got invited on. And a lot of things were happening at that time. And we were like, OK, we should probably shift. Did you feel like Wanted was going to be a massive hit? I think I had so many people telling me that it was going to be. The songs that I knew would be, because I always preface with, like, I don't know what's going to work really well, because there's so much involved with it. And I think I've spent a lot of my life struggling to sort of like make an algorithm, and it's changing every day. So it's impossible to figure that out. But I knew crazy. I believed in crazy, even when I played it for the label. And they were like, meh. I was like, OK, all right. I also felt that way about somebody's heartbreak. I did three different versions of that song before everybody was like, oh, OK, we get it. Wanted, I think, I didn't know. But also, for me, it was just a piano love song ballad. I was like, I don't know how big this is. Did it feel like a shot out of rocket ship, though, once they committed to it? I mean. Or is that just revisionist history, where I think that because I saw how big it was in the end? Well, I think that is a credit to all the people in the marketing department, because they did a really good job of positioning everything and putting everything at the right time. And it did light off like a firework. But obviously, I remember years of going around and introducing it to people. And a lot of times, I spent figuring out all the bits and pieces to the timeline of it all. Is that the first time you felt super famous when that song was at its peak? And honestly, I felt a lot of momentum read. As soon as, again, from the outside looking in, I went out on my radio tour and things just went nuts. And I remember, obviously, years of getting to that point. So when radio tour came around, I was like, let me go. Let me go. I'm ready. I'm practicing. I'm waiting. So to me, the storm warning timeline is nuts. More so? I think so, yeah. Because I also had this vision, and I had been watching artists and studying timelines, because I analyze and study all these things like a nerd. And to me, it was going to take about three times longer than it did for all the things that happened in the lifetime of the storm warning being on the radio. To me, we're going to take another two or three years. And then, bam, we were just off the races. Was that song bigger than wanted? No. OK. I didn't think so. But again, I don't know. That's a while ago. And I think my brain now associates with, again, the end parts of all those stories, more so than the actual story. When one had happened, were you getting these TV show spots that were kind of crossing over a bit? Well, wanted was the first, let's call it crossover. So yeah, wanted was the first song that went to anything other than country radio. But that's got to be weird, too, right? Like, that wasn't the plan. But all of a sudden, now they're playing you on pop? Well, I came to town wanting to be on every single radio station. I remember pitching my idea that I wanted a song for my debut album on country radio. I wanted a song on pop radio. And then I wanted a song on Christian radio, because that's all the places where I had been influenced. I mean, honestly, everything. How do you see, you know? In your mind, what's the same song or different songs? You name it. I think I saw different songs, especially obviously for Christian radio at the time. One of the rules was for the debut album was it is one version. We're not going to remake it for anything. I'm trying to remember how that conversation went. I think we all kind of agreed that we really wanted the album to just be wanted. The pop version was the exact same as the country version, with the resonator and everything, with the slide, with the steel, with everything. So somebody's heartbreak was the only one that we kind of broke away and did a slightly different mix for. But we didn't add anything. We just kind of rebalanced some things in the mix. Yeah, I remember that part. So it went wanted. After wanted, it was. Somebody's heartbreak. Then it was. I went crazy. Which was, my intention for I went crazy was to be part of the second record. And we went back and forth a lot. I remember, to the degree that you can call it fighting, I remember fighting with my sort of manager at the time. So I was like, no, this is the first single for the second record. And the point that was made that made me change my mind was yes, and what if this would feel more like an update, like a real time check-in of the music that you're making versus this structured, this doesn't go here, this goes here. And I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense, because I'm playing to a lot of people right now. And they're hearing something I made two, three years ago. And it would be really nice if I could play them what I'm making now. So was it put on a target re-release or something? We did a deluxe. We called it Encore. Those deluxe, if they work, that's pretty awesome. Yeah. So I'm kind of trying a new thing. I call them series now. So any album can be born out of the series. So I make series, because I love making albums. But it works better to release singles. But I believe in albums. I believe in projects with themes and all that stuff. So I work in albums, but I release in singles. I mean, it's not a comment. I've seen a few different people doing it and doing it really well. My version is they're all, Evergreen is a series. So season one is an album. And then there's also a season two. And what that means is anything from the past can come back in a season. There are still six songs for the album, Wild Blue, that came out in 2019 that even didn't make it to the complete version of Wild Blue. So there has to be a season three of that at some point. Do you have a bunch of music that you've recorded, locked up some more, that if you died, they could keep releasing music a la Tupac? I mean, I have a lot of music, yeah, unreleased. That could be probably released for probably, yeah, five, One song a week for what? Five years? One song a week? That's 52. Probably three years worth, safely. We could keep the 100 A's is still alive. Because you also couldn't do Christmas time. I mean, if I'm being technical, you'd have to cut off at Thanksgiving. So you'd have to subtract a couple of weeks from that. So maybe three and a half years. So probably three years. We could keep it up. Safe. Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor. No gloss, no filter, just stories, spoken without fear. Addiction is a disease. And it should be looked upon as any other disease. How did you cope with a reckless father like me? Join me, Pooja Bhatt, as I sit down every week with directors, actors, musicians, technicians, and beyond. You don't need to work with the biggest people and the biggest sound to have great music. I have gone through the Saab Siddhi Khachakar, reached the pinnacle, stung by the sneaker, and I've fallen down again. Yeah. I am not writing actively anymore. And when I see my old work, it kind of saddens me. I'm only as good as the last shot that I gave. Mom's gone, but don't shut the theater. The show must go on. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Bhatt Show, on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty. Stay for the fire. And we're back on the BobbyCast. Did you leave Nashville for a while? I did. Did you move or did you just go away? I just kind of went away. I just tried to leave. Why did you leave? Time. I needed a reset. Why? I needed a reset. Because I had been going, I had been just sprinting for so long that I needed space to be a human. And I didn't even know that at the time. But I felt it. I think I was struggling with not having enough lenses to choose from, to sort of see all the things that I was experiencing. I didn't have enough elevation, as it were, to get the big picture, echo chambers, or call it the people that you're around, things that you hear combined with limited beliefs, combined with just kind of circumstances. All of the above kind of happened in this storm and right before the pandemic. So I was like, well, there's never been a better time to disappear. So I decided to just find a new thing and kind of give myself time to grow up as a human. Did you stop playing music at all? No. Oh, you kept playing music? Oh my god, no. I never took a day off. Yeah. I learned how to take a day off during that time, to be fair. Yeah, no. I made parts of Evergreen during that time period. Did you pack up a car or did you get on a plane? Packed up a car and a box truck. Oh, really? Yeah, I like said goodbye to my house for a while. I was just, I rented an Airbnb. I brought kind of my team slash friends at the time. The goal was just to be gone for a couple of months and change scenery. And then I found a spot that I had been looking at for four months and kind of had on a vision board. It was still available. And I was like, oh my god, I could build this studio retreat. I could host retreats. Are you still being musical though? For sure. He didn't like put on a mustache and go weigh tables in Mississippi or something. I did not do that. OK. I had infected none of those things. But in particular, the mustache, I didn't try that. No, my thing was just like, I need a new place. I need to shake up the energy. I need to shift. I need to get out of some habits. I need to get out of some ways of thinking. I need some new perspective. I need some new energy. Yeah, just kind of shocked my system on purpose. And that helped you? Yeah. Well, I mean, both and, right? Like there was definitely some like, I mean, I wanted to grow up and I feel like I did. There's some challenges to that for sure. But yeah, it helped immensely because it helped me fall back in love with Nashville, ironically. Being away from it helped you? Well, I was still living here too, right? Like I was still back and forth. So the more I came back, the more my circle grew. Because I wasn't just kind of in the same. And my friends helped me a lot. I was very intentional about my community at the time. Because I think being away for a minute made me realize in the pandemic, I mean, tail is all this time, right? Like we all kind of realized, I'll speak for myself. I realized how much community was something that I hadn't worked towards because I was just busy and I used that as an excuse. So I took it as an opportunity to be intentional about making new friends and giving them space and giving myself space to be human and learning from people. And really just allowing opportunities to show up. And it allowed me to really rebuild my relationship with being here. I was looking some stuff up on you. So my algorithm now feeds me a lot of hunter-a-money stuff. Yeah. And I had never seen the video of you. I don't know how old you were, like four playing the Hank. What is this? What's this thing called? The accordion. Is that what it is? I should know what an accordion is. Playing the accordion at four years old and you're on stage and you're dancing around. Yeah. I don't remember anything before five. Like my earliest memory is five years old birthday party. Yeah. I've tried to get back. Can't see before that. Do you remember stuff at four? Some. Do you remember that? Which was it with the one with Hank Williams? It was on a stage. Yeah. Yes, it was. Hank Williams, a country of science in 1997. It was outside, right? It was outside. Yeah. Texas Motor Speedway. I barely remember that. Well, here's what I remember. I remember Lee and Rhymes and Brian White were there. And I was a huge Brian White fan and Lee and Rhymes fan. At four? At five or six. OK. I don't know how old you are. So you're five or six at this point. Yeah. Got it. So I say was I need to say I am a Brian White fan and always have been. And Lee and Rhymes was there and Travis Tritt was there. And I loved like his rock and roll approach to music. And Hank was there and that's and Charlie Daniels was there. And so I remember I remember the catering tent because they were they were doing like acoustic sets. And I was like, this is weird. And now having done thousands of them, I understand that now. I remember standing side stage and my dad gave me some sharpies to play drums to keep me busy while I was waiting for my little my little moment on stage. And I broke every sharpie that he gave me. So there was ink everywhere on the accordion case. I don't remember being on stage at all. I don't know how you could. But I remember being around. I also remember there was a little race track in the in the field earlier that day with lawnmowers and you could race lawnmowers. They obviously didn't have blades. But those are the things that I remember about. I also remember the hotel room. You could look out and see the festival grounds, Texas Motor Speedway and this giant area with hundreds of there were 260,000 people there during Hanks set. I have no idea what that part was like because I was that was out of body experience as much as you can have one when, you know, were your parents musical? No. That's crazy. Then how do they know you were so musical? Oh, that's a good question. I should ask them that. I don't know. I'm my. I have no idea because the legend of Hunter Hayes is you're a small child and the legend. Well, that's well, because people don't start playing instruments at four. Yeah. Because that's, I guess, when they say you started. When do you say you started? Well, so here's what I do know. And I don't remember any of this either, but the stories that I've heard from my mom and my grandmother consistently, I had a babysitter who watched a TV program with live music. And also we were always like every restaurant in Louisiana for a while and still to this day, a large percentage have live music every night. From bands everywhere, their festivals every weekend. So there's a lot. There's a huge music scene, right? All kind of Cajun centric Cajun Zodico. So I think my babysitter noticed that I was picking things up around the house and making instruments out of them. And she suggested, I think, to my grandmother, you should get them on accordion. And my grandmother got me a toy accordion for my second birthday. That's the first instrument someone suggests they get a kid, an accordion. I know. Wow. I know. And how I got here, heaven only knows. So when you learn the accordion, you have to learn the keys. Yeah, it's not chromatic. It doesn't make any sense still to this day. I don't understand the scale. Was that your first instrument, the accordion? And who taught you the accordion? I. Allegedly, I learned I just listened to the radio and just picked up certain songs that were easy enough to play. You know, a lot of the melodies in Cajun music, accordion melodies are kind of one or two notes max. So it's like a lead line. So if you can hum it, you can probably play it. And I think that's what my dad says. He heard me play along to a song on the radio. And that was kind of I just learned. It was a by ear thing. I didn't really have my little brain. I've learned so much about my brain in the recent months, but lessons were not something that were going to work for me. I had no patience. My ADHD, et cetera. Yeah, I kind of had to figure out everything on my own. I figured that out on my own and everything since then has been just a I'll figure it out on my own. Some people are born, they can run fast. Some people are born. They have great vision. Like I'm pretty quick. My brain works quick. You are. Yeah. But yours is very musical. Like there's a there's a really natural element of music in your brain, right? That you probably don't even know what it's like to not know how to know music. No, no. In fact, just you saying that scares the shit out of me. No, I don't know. Thank God. Like I bought a court sheet from Walmart because I and I was in college and I thought I want to play the guitar because I was doing comedy and I was just doing parody music. I was using somebody else's went to Walmart. I don't remember the big flaps. They had the big flaps with the posters in it at Walmart. Yeah. So I went through and I found a court sheet. I bought that and I went home and I just CCCCGGGGDD just the big chords. And I did that and I struggled because one obviously hurt your fingers. But two, I just don't have a good ear. Like I still struggle finding like singing harmonies. I can double somebody like crazy. Can't really sing a harmony. I don't have that in me where you have an innate ability to hear and then create based on your hearing, especially at four or five years old. Did that happen with other instruments as well? Could you pick up a guitar and hear the notes and go, I got it. Hear the chords as well. I mean, yes, and it kind of started my I have to give credit my technically speaking. So my parents weren't musical, aren't musical now. My mom for a year decided that she was going to there was one summer where she there would offering guitar lessons at her school. And so she took two weeks of a guitar class and she would come home every night and teach me the chords. And she just, you know, I mean, she was working two jobs. You know what I mean? She was she she never really picked it up again. And I'd never put it down. So like I did like there are times when I have learned from, I don't know how to answer the question, I guess what I'm getting at. It's got to be so hard to be so elevated and answer a dumb question, though, too. And I don't mean that in a way. No, that's really what I mean. And that was my point with this. Like you don't know what it's like to not know because it's naturally built inside you like somebody who runs fast. They naturally are able to do that. They can improve by working, but they but you're not going to make them slow. Well, I mean, but that's just because you don't see the the times when when when they're struggling to figure it out. I hear you, but not fully because an Olympic sprinter doesn't know what even if they're slow, they're still faster than everybody else. Like they're working to be in that margin of the point one, one, one percent to get better. And yeah, they got to do a lot of work to get there, but you have to naturally have this ability. I feel, do you feel like that ever inhibits you because you don't know. And I'm not saying this to be funny. You don't know what it's like to like talk to dumb guys about music. Well, I disagree. But I think because I've spent so much time studying music and analyzing music, and I enjoy that a lot of times the difficult. So being my own producer, I love producing. It is so much easier to like produce other people because I know exactly what they want. Whereas for me, what is it called decision paralysis? Like there's so, there's so many options and I hear things. And for me, when I hear something, it means so many different things. There's depth to every part on the album and every sound that I choose has a story. You know, people listening might not, might not even give a shit. So I think it took me a while to like trust myself as a producer because my analytical brain enjoys the details of it and values some parts of it that in the listening experience might not necessarily come across. I would say most doesn't to the general consumer. And I mean this in a complimentary way. Like you're hearing and seeing things so different, even in your own music. We're not going to hear that. Right. Yeah. Which is great. I mean, fine. It's like, and that's, I think that's the understanding, but that's just being a good conversationalist. Right. Like that's just being able to sit and say, what are you here? And listen, are you a genius? That is such a bizarre question. What do you, what is, I don't know. The fact that you're struggling with that answer means yes. No, you're being humble about it. No, I'm struggling with that answer because over Christmas, over Christmas, I got drunk and asked my parents about a test that I took when I was a kid and it came out that I was in a book. You'll never find it. My name's not in it, but I was, I was in a book that studies like, you know, kids that are very invested in their, in their, in their craft. So no, I don't think that. And I, it's a weird word to use. When I need affirmation for sure, I'll put that in my journal and I'll be like, that's the goal, but I don't, yeah. I don't know. I don't know that I see it that way. You really don't, you're not playing humble. Like a little bit, you have to think musically, you're a genius because you're able to see, you're able to see. If you spent enough time, if you've spent as much time as I've spent with music with anything, you know, I think you'd, you'd probably. Yeah. You'd, you'd probably feel very comfortable with your craft or with your tools, with your art. Um, yeah, I think anybody, I think anybody, I think everybody is really. I don't. Um, let's talk about the instruments that you play proficiently. Okay. Cause on the internet says Hunter plays 30 instruments. Now, if I say, man, you can crush 30 instruments, you're going to do that thing. Well, I play them all at different levels. What, what instrument do you play that someone can just hand you and you feel great about just going to town on it? Love being an electric guitar. That's your number one instrument. I'd say yeah, probably. Okay. Yeah. Electric guitar one. We're drafting instruments here. Number two. Okay. Piano. I love writing on a piano because I can close my eyes and, um, that is the place where I feel flow the most. The sitting at a piano. Number three. Drums. I love playing drums, man. I, I, every now and then my tracks will make it to the album. Most of the time it's just the template, but I love crafting the, uh, and I also just love when other people to hear other people's interpretations of the parts that I hear, because it gives the album so much more depth than when it's just one person, but, uh, I love playing drums. Do you ever just want to escape and go be the drummer for a band for like six months? Oh dude, I had that for, that was, that's been a goal. That's like a, like, I wouldn't say 20%, right? Like the, the whole like 20% thing, but, uh, meaning like my interpretation of it is just like, here's something I really want to do for fun. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to dedicate 20% of my time to doing that. But there have been bands that I've wanted to join as a, uh, as a guitar player. The Bobby Cast will be right back. No gloss, no filter, just stories, spoken without fear. Addiction is a disease and it should be looked upon as any other disease. How did you cope with a reckless father like me? Join me, Pooja Abhatt, as I sit down every week with directors, actors, musicians, technicians and beyond. You don't need to work with the biggest people and the biggest sound to have great music. I have gone through the Saab Siddhi Khachakar, reached the pinnacle, stung by the snigger and I've fallen down again. Yeah, I am not writing actively anymore. And when I see my old work, it kind of saddens me. I'm only as good as the last shot that I gave. Mom's gone, but don't shut the theater. The show must go on. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Abhatt show on the iHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty. Stay for the fire. This is the Bobby Cast. There's a guitar right there if you need it and it's tuned. OK, great. Now he's grabbing the guitar. This is what I like. Now we're in my world where I just get to sit back and enjoy the show. So, so like, re-harming. I'm going to do a terrible job. All the musicians watching this are going to roast me and that's fine. So like, you know. So that's a one, six, four, C, A, F. But you could also do you could do an A on the bass. You could do an A. So you do a six on top of the one. So. And that's what you like doing at three in the morning. Three. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like watching Netflix. You can just lay it right over there. It's fine. Same. Yeah. See, we have, we have, yeah, different, different minds for that. Yeah. OK. So bass. Bass. Give me two more. Man, I love mandolin. It's upside down, meaning the string. The tuning is if you know how to play a guitar, if you're comfortable playing a guitar, playing a mandolin is just like, it's like doing a totally different workout. I thought you were going to say crack. I thought you were going to say crack doing crack. Really? Yeah. OK. And I thought you stopped yourself. Were you going to say doing crack? I mean, I was I had not thought about it. OK. I didn't know. I didn't know if that's where you were going. Not yet. OK. There's still time to think about that. And I will on my drive home. But to think about it, not do crack. No, you know, think about it. Yeah, sure. I have to drive. I am very sober. The I love mandolin because it's upside down scale wise. So it's like it's a challenge to play. And and it just like it's made me more. Just capable on guitar as well. It's made you so much easier because mandolin is nearly impossible. I mean, I was I'm the huge Punch Brothers fans. So like I followed Chris everywhere. He's gone, Nickle Creek, etc. So give me one more. Steel. Oh, that's cool. Steel bends your brain, dude. Like you play a chord. First of all, there's no frets, so you're on your own. You got you got the bar right. And then like every so every single thing that you can use to like press. So there's pedals, there's levers, and every single muscle move changes one string in some kind of way. So as you're hearing parts, it's a as a somebody who loves playing guitar. It's so challenging to know that here my hands can't actually do anything other than like sliding from one place to another. Everything else has to think my knees have to move. This foot has to press this pedal and probably this pedal. But also like there's a volume pedal to it's like it's the ultimate like sobriety test. Did you ever try to play any wind instruments? I have. Yeah, I really want to. I have failed miserably every time I've grabbed a wind instrument and a violin. Funny enough, I struggle with those fretless things. But you just said steel, don't they have frets? Well, a little different just because you do have like fret lines, I think. So that helps. But yeah, violin. I mean, yeah. Did you do normal school? I did. So even as you were playing and you're playing big shows and you were a much celebrated child, you still went to normal school. I love a much celebrated child. That's a great book title. I yeah, I mean, I was that was the rule for for mom and dad. I really wanted to do homeschool or travel. There was a family band I really wanted to travel with. And they were like, listen, somebody you're going to thank us for this, but you're going to keep doing this. And and meaning like they were really adamant that I have an experience that was that allowed me to have community and consistency. And I'm really grateful for that. Even though all I wanted to do was was run off and, you know, join the family band or like, which I'm an only child. So I think part of that was just wanting to have siblings. But yeah, school five days a week. And then and then there was one point where my grades started slacking and dad was like, all right, that's it. No more weekend, no more weeknight gigs, no more checking out of school. If we can't get to it after school on Friday or if it's not on a Saturday or Sunday, then you can't do it. Wow. Good for him. Yeah. Good. Yeah. So I suppose you could say that. Yeah. I love him. Good for him in the consistency. Yeah. So regardless of how you felt about it or even you feel about it. Now, at least he was consistent with his message. 100 percent. And I think that's where I say good for him. For sure. And like there was a year where like, because, you know, all kind of one thing leads to another. I mean, it is crazy to think about it. It's crazy to tell my story because. Obviously, I've seen it from different different sides and I've seen all the different pieces and but and. There was a year starting, you know, we just said yes to everything. I said yes to everything. I always wanted to play music and, you know, it got to a point where I was like 15 or 16 and we're playing, you know, 80 shows a year festivals, you know, clubs, whatever I could get into. And there was definitely that moment. Dad sat me down at the beginning of one of the years and he was like, listen, I just want to make sure that this is what you want to do. I want to make sure that you're doing this because you you want to and not because this is, you know, I'm using my words, but like not. But just because this is momentum and you're, you know, just doing it because you have to. And that was the most miserable year of my life because I didn't have any shows. That's everything for me. And, you know, the pandemic felt very similar. Worst year just because I didn't have any of the things that I loved. I did have the studio and I'd had the songwriting sessions and I had music that I could make, which saved me. But yeah, that one year. And but but again, credit to him. He was just like, I'm not booking anything this year. He was disciplined about that, you know. I didn't have a lot of friends growing up. Obviously, it's kind of the weird kid. Same. How was junior high school for you? Weird. I mean, I say I say same. I have to acknowledge like I did have a small group of friends. We were all I I see them very much as all very creative and very weird as well. And I think that I loved that about all of them. I didn't know how to connect with them. I was sort of living this sort of double life at the time. You know, the more I think about it, the more I'm like, yeah, OK. Hannah Montana, like it was it was it was weekends and I was out with my band and totally different group of people. And then I had school and I had, you know, my friends. So you were older too, right? Everybody was older. Like everybody was older. Yeah, everybody was grown ass adults. So I was kind of like trying to fit in with grown ass adults. And yeah, so like I I I think maybe because of that. I but also like I was an only child. So I attended and music was such an addictive, happy place and safe place that I think that that was, you know, the responsibility that I take is just that I was if I couldn't figure something out if it was awkward trying to make friends or awkward trying to be at parties or be social. I kind of always had that to fall back on. I could always look forward to going home and making music. And I still do. Would you ever be somewhere? Yeah, I don't have trouble connecting with people in a social setting. Yeah. And setting like this. I'm great at it. But as soon as the microphones go away and the cameras go away and it's just supposed to happen organically, I'm really bad at it. And maybe I've manifested that by always thinking and saying I'm really bad at it, too. Right. I think there's something to that. Fair to call that. Yeah. If I had a tool, though, like a guitar and we were just at a group of people or a piano, I would go sit down at the piano and I would just rip out some music and use that. Did you ever use that in those situations? Or take a guitar to a party so you could have that? No. No, man, that's weird. Yeah. No. Did you go to parties at all? Never tried that. Not as a kid. No, not as like high school, anything. Even now. I mean, no. Same, bro. Yeah, dude, I'm not. I will not. Yeah. There's one person and sitting in this room who they invited me to a party. I'll go. But that that list is very small. Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor. No gloss. No filter. Just stories. Spoken without fear. Addiction is a disease and it should be looked upon as any other disease. How did you cope with a reckless father like me? Join me, Pooja Bhatt, as I sit down every week with directors, actors, musicians, technicians and beyond. You don't need to work with the biggest people and the biggest sound to have great music. I have gone through the sub-city, Hachakar. The reach, the pinnacle, stung by the sneaker, I've fallen down again. Yeah, I am not writing actively anymore. And when I see my old work, it kind of saddens me. I'm only as good as the last shot that I gave. Mom's gone, but don't shut the theater. The show must go on. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Bhatt show on the iHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty, stay for the fire. And we're back on the BobbyCast. Your new record, are you doing that? Are you taking chances? Are you sounding sonically different? I would. The way that I've described this record is my dream because I can't, obviously I can't determine how people are going to hear it or feel it. But for me, it feels like a new home that has pieces from everywhere I've traveled. It feels like home, but there's memorabilia. There's things from all different places. It feels traveled to me because it's got a lot of pieces. One of the best compliments that I got was one of my friends was like, you know, I don't feel and I guess we did this on purpose, which is why it felt like a compliment. I don't guess we did it on purpose. I didn't want it to be like, oh, this is a pop song or this is a rock song. This is I wasn't reaching for that. I very much wanted. I wanted to break all the rules I thought existed. I'm not saying that there are rules, but all the self-imposed rules, I think, were things that I wanted to kind of break through. And I wanted every song to have a little bit of the pieces that make me. Why do you call it evergreen? It's been evergreen for a minute. Since 2018, I started with a project called Wild Blue, which was this sort of optimist letter to the world. You know, I made that in my basement. It was the first time I made an album without a spreadsheet and a lot of people voting on what songs went on the album. To be honest, I didn't think the album would ever come out. I just made it. And then Dear God found its way around the label and surprisingly had its own little fan base in the label, meaning people that I didn't think would connect with it or understand what to do with it. Still insisted that that be a song that we put a lot of effort and energy behind promoting, which was a huge green flag for me. And while I was making Wild Blue, which ended up getting out into the world and I ended up putting an extended version of it out, Red Sky was born because I wanted this duality. I realized that there was this duality with the optimist comes somewhere to put all the other shit. And it was more angsty. It was more experimental. It felt like a very not angry, but it felt like, I mean, it kind of was me getting in the car and disappearing. I left Nashville and got in the car and went to, you know, went to a place I'd never spent a lot of time in kind of close to a place I'd been to before, but a new a new life for a minute. And Evergreen always sat as a third piece to the puzzle. And it just always felt really grounded. And I think parts of me felt like I didn't know what to do with it. Because I didn't see myself as grounded enough to justify me calling an album Evergreen. And then I think it clicked, you know, we all talk about this quite often now, which I'm really grateful that it's more of a conversation in the world. But the healing, learning, all of the stuff that we talk about is a process that is never ending. You grow and you heal. It's not a destination, right? It's a it's a it's a mindset and it's a way of living. And when I kind of downloaded and realized, oh, that's that's whatever green is. Evergreen is the desire to grow, the desire to be grounded, the realization that you're not always there, the realization that it's it's not a destination, but that it is the most beautiful part of living. And so that was it's a cook. There's songs that were written for it early on that I didn't know what to do with until she comes along, has been there for a hot minutes in 2016. That song has been kind of hanging out. Evergreen was written in 2018 as the like poster child of the song and or as the theme song of the record. And the. Yeah. And then every song that I've written since then. A lot of it was actually just like manifestation practice. A lot of it was written about things that I hadn't lived yet. And I decided that that's what I wanted the album to be. I wanted it to be a place where people can pray, manifest, dream, you know, letters from your future self of sorts. And you're going out on the Evergreen tour. Do you play all the hits? Yeah. OK. I don't know. Sometimes geniuses like you are like, I don't want to live back in the past. I'm going to play songs that I just wrote today. And that's all I'm going to do. Man, something I'm really grateful for is when I listen to because I I started my year with an intensive was my third one. I say that only because I love them. And I said, if you if you get the chance to do something like that, I've done one life changing. It's life changing. And I made a promise to myself that I would do it at least every other year when I did it. I mean, a year behind, but I did it. And I was on a plane back and I was like, OK, I got a prep for this tour. I got to know what's working. I got to know what's feeling good. Man, I dug back through some old stuff and I love all of it. Like I love because I hear versions of me and that, too. And I think I feel love and I mean, immense gratitude that I was surrounded by people who allowed me to try the things I tried, do the things I did musically. And and I'm still really proud. There's there's not much that I'm not still very humbly attached to. What song do you play? And they know what it is immediately and go the loudest, the craziest four. It depends on where we are. Depends on what the context is. I mean, wanted. Also, crazy, those two. Do you remember writing wanted? Yeah, I do. Yeah. How old were you? Oh, God, I'm 17, I guess. Yeah, 17. And did anything just fall out of you? It was something that a mentor of mine had said about his relationship. What works about us is that we we don't operate on a need. Each other basis we want. And it was it was like his lesson was like it comes from a choice. We choose each other every day, right? And I thought that was beautiful. And so, yeah, I remember taking the idea into to Troy and this really cool historic old house and Troy had this room that we'd never written. And we'd always written in this other room around guitars, but he had this piano in this other room and it was painted sky blue. And it like had it faced the south. So it had all the natural light and I was like, should we try that? And so I jumped on and like those sort of walk down riff was just kind of was just me trying to do something on the piano. It was just like C position. Walk down from a four to a three to two to a one kind of felt like a just background music for a conversation. I mean, I've written with so many incredible songwriters. Troy is one of those that just makes it seem so easy. It's remarkable how easy it feels to write songs with with him. And we got it in like 45 minutes. It was all there. You wrote the whole song of 45 minutes. Yeah, maybe less, but I don't want to like go and I could be wrong. If Troy wants to if Troy has a better memory of it, then I'd love to hear his recollection because I think sometimes also like we remember it differently. But I remember that song having very fast. Do you start with a chorus? Do you go with want to make you feel or do you start with lyrics? I think that one we started with the I think we started with the verse because that's what I was playing first is that riff. You know, it fall apart without you. I don't know how you do what you do. Like at the time, I really thought those are going to be placeholder lyrics. I thought we were going to sit around and really work on it, you know, but it works. Thank God. And then everything that don't make sense about me makes sense with when I'm with you. I mean, that that's just that's a result of Troy and I just toss and stuff back and forth. You know, he'll sing a line, I'll sing a line and it's very stream of conscious. That's crazy. It was 45 minutes. He got that the best songs kind of do that. The ones that you make that you feel like are supposed to be there. You're kind of just along for the ride as they fall from the sky. And you're collecting it. I never read a song like that before. When I wrote Hobby Lobby Bobby took me like eight days. But but there are parts of it that you know, you don't take me that seriously because I'm not like you and I appreciate you. You know, like what I said made sense to be fair. Yeah. To be fair, though. But you know those moments when it's like, oh, that's it. Agree. Yeah. But I appreciate you humoring when I reference this stupid comedy song that I wrote. And you're like, yeah, of course, of course. Hey, man, I'm a big fan. OK, look, I hope the record is everything you want it to be. I'm sure it is or you wouldn't put it out. And I hope everybody comes to the tour. We were talking about it before you come in. It was really great to see you again. Good to see you, man. Thanks for the time. Yeah, I feel like it's been great. How do you feel about this? Great. Will you go back and reevaluate everything you said or do you just let the past live? For sure. Oh, you do. Yeah, you'll be analytical about it. Yeah, I'm still reliving yesterday's interview. But yeah, I'll do that. I heard that was terrible. I heard that was terrible. Like a couple of days. Yeah, the person interviewed you. Not good. I heard. Huh? I heard the person in the interview was terrible. Yeah. No, disagree. No, I heard it was the. I have no idea who interviewed yesterday. Hunter, good to see you. Good to see you. Thanks for listening to a Bobby Cast production. No gloss, no filter. Just stories, spoken without fear. For a son who is not generous, cannot be an artist. The world will be at peace only when it is ruled by poets and philosophers. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Bhachow on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty. Stay for the fire. This is an iHeart podcast. 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