https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=9CkzxRV9H0Q
In your situation, I read today that you had an $8 million contract offer that you turned down. I’m wondering if that’s true, if it’s true why you did it, what your alternative plans are, and if you have like a real devout vision for what it would be like to keep doing what you’re doing, but also be successful. That’s a lot of questions. Oh, that’s okay. I knew what I was getting into when I came on the program. I understand. Yeah, music is important to me individually. Like these songs that I wrote, I wrote for me. And inadvertently, it has helped a lot of other people, like not just Richmond, North of Richmond, but I’ve got to get sober. Like that’s one that I just recorded on my Android phone. And if you look through the comments and emails I’ve gotten, I had a gentleman the other day at Moyak, we played at a farm market. And he told me that his brother had committed suicide. He had been struggling with drugs for years. This is like a big, rough guy, like a guy that looked like he could kill me with two fingers. And we hugged each other as he cried and told me this. That’s what’s important to me, is like people are just so desperate to restore some element of humanity back in our life that we’ve somehow lost. So I don’t want to make this into some enterprise where everything’s about beating the algorithm and being at the top of the charts and posting in social media at just the right time to capture the most audience. There’s plenty of people who are out playing that game and they’re good at it. And I’d like for them to continue to do that. I just want to feel like I have the freedom to do whatever I find it is necessary in that moment of time to impact people the way I have so far with the music that I’ve produced. I have something like 21,000 emails right now in my Gmail. I’ve got 2,500 unread messages on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and they’re not just people telling me, good music, dude, keep it up. No, it’s like it’s paragraphs of stories of like people having to work two jobs because they lost their business during COVID and their kid committed suicide. And like, I mean, it’s just wretched stuff that it is the, it is the full transparent narrative of what a lot of us already see on the surface level of what’s happened the last few years. And yeah, so like, I don’t know what I want my music to turn into. It may manifest itself into some form of a, of like a nonprofit or a ministry more than just me going out. Like, I don’t want to just go yell all my songs in a stadium every weekend for the rest of my life. Like I want this to turn into something that’s more meaningful than that, if that makes any sense. Well, there’s a bunch of things you said there. I mean, when I started to blow up and started working in a much more broad public manner, one of the things that was really hard on me was the kind of emails that you’re describing. I’m not complaining about this. I’m just pointing it out. Like I’d done a lot of clinical work and I’d seen a fair bit of misery in my clinical practice. I mean, that’s really, that’s an understatement. But you know, it was limited at most to a couple of dozen people. And then all of a sudden I was doing lectures for thousands of people and meeting thousands of people and also, and then hearing the kind of stories that you’re hearing from hundreds or thousands of people. And you know, you talked about dehumanization and desperation and it’s really quite overwhelming to start to see that in that heartfelt sense you described. You know, that big guy was giving you a hug and breaking into tears. I mean, you meet a couple of hundred people like that in a week who do the same thing. And I found that extremely, extremely difficult because I didn’t really understand how widespread that demoralization and desperation was. And to see that on a large scale was really heart-stopping. That’s dangerous. And to add to the point, it exists within the music industry. Like they say never meet your heroes, but I’ve gotten to meet quite a few of my heroes the last couple of weeks. And they have ridden the roller coaster of signing a big deal and playing shows and being in those contracts and in that algorithm. And they are, I can’t speak for everyone. I’m sure there’s people that love to go out and tour and do it, but like a lot of my heroes in music that I’ve talked to are not happy doing what they do. Like they’re not happy having to go out. And so they’ve told me off the record. All right, so let me tell you what our experience. Yeah, yeah. Well, so my wife and I have been touring now for four years. And I’ll tell you how we’ve managed it if you’re interested. First of all, it’s a real privilege, right? To be able to go out there and speak in front of thousands of people. And it’s been a real adventure to go all over the world. Now we have allied ourselves with top rate people and that’s unbelievably helpful. So I’ve got a personal staff that handles security and logistics. And they take care of all the travel details, flights, hotels, getting me to the venue, Tammy and I to the venue. That’s 100% off my plate. And we had a rule that we learned well touring, which was that if you have anyone with you that causes any trouble at all, that they don’t immediately fix. So if they’re troubled, they have to leave. You have to have people along who are like 100% zero trouble because it’s a lot of work to move from city to city every day and to be there for thousands of people. And you can’t have unnecessary trouble. And then you have to figure out how to time it so that it doesn’t wear you to a frazzle. You can die from an overdose of great opportunities as you’re definitely going to find out and maybe already have. And so you have to figure out for yourself how you can take enough time so that you have that opportunity to do your creative work and not to exhaust yourself. And that takes a certain amount of testing to see where that balance is. I travel with my wife, that really helps. We often travel with some friends or some family. The same rules apply. We won’t travel with people that cause any trouble, but it’s nice to have people along because that keeps you, well, you get to know them better. It’s a good adventure for them and that keeps you together. I mean, it’s possible to do this in a way that’s like hyper enjoyable. And so that you get an opportunity to play for many people. But it’s a demanding enterprise and you have to 100% make sure that you’re surrounded by people who take what can be taken off your plate and that you can seriously trust. And then it can be, well, it can be an insane adventure. Yeah. I’m excited for the opportunity to travel. Yeah, like we’ve had, it’s, as you’re aware, like just the initial song broke in so many countries. Like I’ve gotten an outreach. It was a shame that I couldn’t travel abroad yet. I don’t have a passport, but like I just got a message last night from a girl in Rome saying that, you know, she and her boyfriend had been riding around all night listening to my music and Ireland and Scotland. Like I do intend to travel. I just want to do it in a way that is more meaningful than just showing up in an amphitheater and shouting some lyrics at people. And then everybody gets drunk and goes home. Like I’m sure there’s a way I can conceptualize this to have more impact because that’s the importance of the song to begin with is the impact that had. It somehow broke beyond the political front that has like almost encapsulated every part of our society today, not just in the North America, but really globally. Like the message resonated with people in all types of different cultures and countries. It’s like this is something, this phenomenon of politics sort of almost parasitically capturing the way we think about everything. That’s a global thing. That’s not just a North American thing at this point. It’s happening very quick. Okay, yeah, okay. So two things on that. Well, okay, first of all, one of the things that’s happened, I think is that the sacred has collapsed into the profane. And so the political has now become sacred. You have to have a space for things that are sacred so they stay out of the political. And everything has become too touchy to talk about because everything political has become religious. And that’s really not a good thing. It’s part of the reason that we need a, that a religious foundation isn’t optional. I know you talked about that a little bit with Rogan. Now, the other thing that’s interesting, you said you don’t wanna go just to a stadium and shout out lyrics and let everybody get drunk and go home. And one of the things I’ve also seen that’s unfortunate is that many of the artists I’ve talked to, and these were often people who had stellar like international careers, they’re afraid, and I’m not saying that this is necessarily the case with you, but I’d like to talk about it with you. They’re afraid that their mere art isn’t good enough given the importance, let’s say, of all the political and maybe religious upheaval there is in the world. But I actually don’t think that’s true. I don’t think, like I’ve gone to a lot of concerts and I’ve watched the kind of quasi religious nature of a great concert. And I actually don’t think there’s anything more important than an artist can do than for in your situation, for example, is to give the best damn concert you possibly can. And I can see you’re torn between that to some degree, cause you say, well, you don’t wanna go and shout out a bunch of lyrics so that people can get drunk and go home. But then that what you’ve done has spoken to many people very deeply all around the world. And that what you’ve done was a genuine expression of what you really believe to be true. And I would say that if you go to a concert and what you do is you really sing what you believe to be true, there actually is no better service that you can possibly do to people, no matter what it is that you’re doing. Like I don’t think there is anything except for what’s truly religious. I don’t think there is anything that supersedes genuine art, not in terms of potency and truth. And I think you’re seeing that because of what happened in relationship to your song. And I think that’s also partly because of that other point you made, which is, and the same with the song about sobriety, is you’re actually writing your songs. I think Hank Williams did this and Johnny Cash too, unbelievably effectively, the genuine songwriters. They’re not writing to max out the algorithm they don’t have contempt for the audience, that’s not what I mean. But they’re not doing it for their own fame. They’re doing it to express something approximating the truth in the way that they see fit. With you, that’s obviously gonna be musical. So one of the things I would say is don’t be thinking there’s any higher purpose you can serve than the genuineness that you bring to your art, man. Good musicians are, I think people die without good music. I think that’s the way it is. I think that’s the way it is. I think that’s the way it is. I think that’s the way it is. I think that’s the way it is. I think that’s the way it is. I think that’s the way it is. I think that’s the way it is. I think that’s the way it is. I think that’s the way it is. I think that’s the way it is. I think that’s the way it is. I think that’s the way it is. I think that’s the way it is.