#852: Tim McGraw — Starting Late with a $20 Guitar, Selling 100M+ Records, and 30+ Years of Creative Longevity

27:01I've had four back surgeries and double knee replacements. And tried to work through all of it and then did work through all of it. But there was a moment in time back in the spring this year, after my third back surgery, or was it last year? All the years were running together. Anyway, after my third back surgery, when it just didn't work, that I thought that I was going to really be looking at not being able to do this anymore. Because I can't imagine not doing it the way that I do it. There's no way that I'm going to go out there and sit on a stool and sing for an hour and a half. it's physically impossible for me to do.

27:41Yeah, you're a kinetic creature. And I don't know that anybody wants to see that from me. So if I can't go do the shows the way I do shows and the way that I have fun doing shows, then I'm not going to give everybody what they're paying for, and I'm not going to get satisfaction out of it. So there was a time where, until the last back surgery that actually worked, knock on wood, that I didn't think I was going to be able to make it back. and not make it back the way I wanted to make it back. Now my focus is back. My body's back. My brain fog's clearing up from all the anesthesia. So I'm feeling like I'm back on a good path.

28:22I'm actually feeling like I've got a second wind now and something to prove, which is good for me because I need that. I want to be the underdog. I want to be the guy nobody expects for it to work. I want to be that guy. Make yourself a little hungry. Yeah, absolutely. It's like a... Metaphorically, and literally when I'm working, I like to be hungry. I don't like to eat before I go on stage because I like to be hungry for that reason. Because metaphorically, it works for me. I just had my first real experience with falconry. And the falconer was very clear. He's like, you need that bird to be hungry if you want it to hunt.

28:56Yeah. It will not perform. If you're sated. Otherwise. If you're sated, you're not going to do much. And actually fed up with someone is an expression taken from falconry. Because if the bird is fed up, it won't listen to you. ah that up with it's from falconry i have to remember that it's just a good little piece of knowledge yeah i love those little details there are all these little words from hood winked also and they put the hood on also from falconry so focusing in tribe mentors you mentioned my gym is how i get refocused that's my meditation and you you talked about this five rounds of 12 exercise with the bar complex kind of adding weight and then going back down Do you still do that or has your training changed over time?

29:37You also mentioned a pool workout. I'm not sure if you still do that, but what is the training regimen? What has it looked like and what does it look like now? Well, maybe it's changed. It's changed a little bit. I have to be a lot more deliberate and a lot more careful. I'm sure that my workout routine, my three workouts a day. Three workouts a day. That's what I did for a long time, especially on the road touring. Was that just like before breakfast, before lunch, before dinner? Yeah. Really? Yeah. And they were distinctly different exercises. And the afternoon exercise was sort of an outdoor CrossFit thing with the whole band.

30:13So that was like an hour and a half. Then I would do my two-hour workout in the morning. Which was mostly weights? Mostly weights and some cardio. And then before lunch would be running the arena or stadium stairs and doing a discipline at the top of each stairs. a push-up or a squat or an ab or something. So you run all the stairs, and then we take a break and eat, take a nap or whatever. And then at 2, 2.30, we go out for an hour and a half and do the outside stuff. Like a border collar. You need to work and dogs got to run. That being said, I'm sure that I hastened all of my injuries. But I remember specifically when it happened, it was 1883.

30:53When we shot 1883, that was pretty physically demanding, and that wore us out pretty good. That was six months, six days a week, 16 hours a day pretty much solid. And at the time I was doing shows while we were doing, because I'd had shows booked. So I would work till filming till seven, run and jump on a plane, go do a show, get back at three in the morning or two in the morning, get up at four, try to get a workout in, and then be in the makeup trade or go the next day. Can't imagine why you wore yourself out. Not only was I tired though, I was strangely uncomfortable on stage during that because I had this big beard on and people didn't know what I was doing because we were filming a show that wasn't out yet.

31:38So people didn't know what I was doing. And I'd put on about 10 pounds. So you didn't explain it? No, I tried to a couple times, but you know, and I'd put on about 10 pounds of weight because there's just protein everywhere. So, I mean, it wasn't fat or anything, but I was working out steady work, but they always had steak and stuff. So it wasn't fat for people who haven't seen the series I mean, that hotel scene with the pajamas or whatever it is. You want to fuck with anyone else? Want to fuck with my family? You do not look fat. But I'm standing on stage, and I got this big dyed black beard.

32:07And I think, these people are thinking that I'm dyeing my beard to look young because my beard's gray. I mean, my beard's snow white. And I had this big black beard on. So I was just so uncomfortable on stage and worn out and tired. Were you uncomfortable because it didn't feel right to you or because you knew the audience was a little off kilter? It didn't feel right to me. And I could tell that they were trying to figure out what the hell was going on, too. So it was just, it was uncomfortable. But we got through them, and it wore us out. And I tweaked myself a little bit a few times with my knee.

32:37And I'd had some knee trouble before. At 20, I had a meniscus done on my, scoped on my left knee. And at 30, I had a meniscus on my right knee. But they hadn't bothered me. I think my problem is I have really high pain tolerance. So I remember specifically, we were in Montreal, and I think it was three weeks into the tour, maybe four weeks into the tour, we were in Montreal. And my knees were hurting, my back was hurting. Things were starting to fall apart. And I remember turning, just a normal turn, and felt both my knees just felt like they exploded. and I went to bed that night and I woke up the next morning and from my hips to my ankles my legs were twice the size that they were before I went to sleep swollen it's terrifying yeah and so I got up went to the gym so I spent two years in the gym just on a treadmill doing anything I could to try to stay in shape where I had to lean over the treadmill to walk because I couldn't stand up straight just to get walking in brutal and then doing the show we finished out the tour where they literally had to carry me backstage.

33:44I'd get on stage, fake it through the show without acting like I was limping too badly. And then they would carry me back to the bus after the show. And then right after that tour, I had to spend a month just sort of prepping myself for surgery. And then I went straight in and had the double knee replacements. And then another back surgery after that. Hey, you know, I don't want to turn this into a Tim Ferriss confessional, but the pain tolerance you mentioned having high pain tolerance like blessing and a curse it's a curse because i've had multiple just had elbow surgery a few months ago which i should have had probably 15 years ago i've had one i just kept i just kept like i walk it off it's fine and you know shoulder reconstruction and i won't turn this into like my litany of complaints about things but i just did but the ball the back in particular you know i've had crippling back issues for the this crazy accident long ago where I basically caught a huge dresser falling off the loading bay of a shipping truck because I want to prevent it from shattering on the ground.

34:49And it twisted my body around and basically like tore my lat off of my body. It was a horrifying accident. But I suppose looking back, because I've wondered this, I have a friend, his name is Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired Magazine, great guy. I would say for his entire life has basically done and no offense, Kevin, no exercise except for lots of walking. That's it. Lots of walking. He has, as far as I can tell, no aches and pains. Well, walking is the best exercise you can do. He's got to be early to mid seventies now. And so I look back and I'm like, I wonder what I would have done because I had a lot of intense training back in the day.

35:29I used to compete in judo and all these various things. Took quite a few lumps from all that. And I look back and I'm all right, what would I have done differently? I think there are certain things I would have toned down, probably would have given a slightly different prescription, would have still been pretty aggressive because I don't know if I would be where I am now otherwise without that. So looking back during the, just over the decades, right? What would you have changed about your training in retrospect, if anything? I would have been smarter about it probably. In what way? Well, I would have trained less, for sure, and paid more attention to small aches and pains instead of waiting until they were debilitating.

36:11Big aches and pains. Big aches and pains. I would have waited for that. Although, as you said, I honestly believe that if I hadn't decided that I was just going to get myself back in shape, because I'd always stayed in shape, but after having kids and stuff, you're eating chicken nuggets all the time. So I sort of let myself go for a little while. And then I did a movie called Four Christmases, which I've never seen, still haven't seen to this day. Why is that? Because I think I weighed 215 when we shot that movie. How much do you weigh now? Right now, 170. We went to see another movie, and I'd taken my kids, and they were small, and completely not even thinking about my movie.

36:56And of course, the very first trailer that pops up is Four Christmases, the movie that I had just done. And my face pops on the screen. And my daughter looked at the screen and looked at me. She said, geez, Dad, you need to do something. Because it looked like you could stick a pen in me and I would have just flew across the room. And that's when I decided to get back in shape. But I do think that, and people will argue with me about this, but I believe it to my core, that had I not done that and decided to change my lifestyle, change my workout routine, the way I looked and took care of myself, that I don't think my career would have lasted this long.

37:37And when was that? Early 40s, like 42, 43. And how old are you now? I'm 58 now. Yeah, I mean, that's insane, man. And you hear this, I'm sure, from lots of people, but you are in great, I mean, you look like you're in great shape and not hitting on you. That's okay. Yeah. But what has your work out looked like? And I won't belabor this too much longer, but I feel like mind, body, brain, these are all the same thing. They're all a superorganism. Absolutely. And the exercise is a fundamental pillar of all of it for me and for you, I suspect. So what has your exercise regimen looked like for the last, let's call it, year?

38:18Year. Well, there was about six weeks where I didn't do anything at all, which was almost impossible for me to do. And that's probably why some of my back surgeries didn't work as well as they should have, because I tried to go back too soon and get back in shape. That's the story of my right meniscus, too. I've tried to cut it down to two hours a day, but that includes, I usually walk an hour or 30 minutes to warm up for my knees to get going, my back. So walking is always my start out, whether it's 30 minutes or an hour, just to walk. Loosen everything up and do a lot of body weight stuff and a lot of stretching.

38:53I never lift heavy weights. I don't do heavy weights at all. I try not to do deadlifts anymore because of my back. Although the doc says I can do them light, but I'm still scared of them. So I do a lot of body weight stuff and a lot of circuit training and then just try to do everything I do with intent and purpose and discipline and make sure everything's lined up properly. When before I never would do that, I knew what I was doing. I've had some good trainers in my life. I knew what I was doing, but you know, you get in a hurry and you fall back and start doing the same old stuff and you don't think you don't put your head into what you're doing.

39:23I just have to be a lot more conscious about how I move and what I do. And are those two hours all in the morning typically? In the morning. Yeah. If I don't do it in the morning, it's tough for me to do it. And then that also includes the older you get, and especially with injuries, you've got to really try to every advantage you can get. So I do a lot of red light therapy, red light hot therapy, steam, cold plunges. So I do a lot of that. So that's a good 30 minutes at the end of the workout to get all that stuff in. Because I do multiple circuits of that. We have a similar recipe. and two or three of the smartest athletes and trainers I know who used to be absolute monsters in the gym.

40:02I mean, they are power cleaning 300, 400 pounds. I mean, just monsters, front squatting 400, 500 pounds. And now they do lighter weights. These are guys now I would say kind of late forties, early fifties. They do lighter weights. They use blood flow restriction cuffs and they are in fantastic shape they've lost a little bit of muscle mass because they're not eating like 12 chickens a day yeah but that's fine probably good for your longevity too for sure and my goal when i work is i never want to be big i don't want to be yeah muscle cube on stage no i don't want to be i want to be athletic you know what i mean and yeah the whole big muscle thing i don't wanna i'm not gonna fall into that i'm too skinny for that anyway yeah i think there's a point where probably as a musician it's just raises more eyebrows more distracting than helpful yeah let's go way way back as promised my delayed gratification for the audience sorry it took me this long guys but the exercise for me is so present every single day and would love to talk maybe after our recording we can talk more but for the deadlift for instance like the zurcher deadlifts or zurcher squats where you're you're holding the barbell in front really has protected my back yeah in an interesting way for a lot of good reasons but we'll see if we come back to that okay if we go way way back uh-oh i would i mean not to like when the delivery enough that i can remember yeah back back oh you'll remember you'll remember so could you tell the story of finding your birth certificate.

41:36Oh, God, yeah. Wow. I'd gotten home from school, and mom - How old were you at that time? I was 11. And mom had kept in her closet like a crown royal bag that was full of coins, but she always put it in different places. Because when I was going, you know, you had the concession stand at school. For a quarter, you could get a candy bar back then, or like 10 cents, you could get a Coke. And just so people can put you in space, where were you at the time? In Louisiana, a little town, start Louisiana where I grew up, a little farming community. I mean, it's just a caution like a cotton gin. That's where I grew up.

42:12So I was in her looking for the little bag, trying to find some quarters or something to go buy a candy bar at the store or something. I found the bag and there was a box right next to it. I opened the box and right on top was my birth certificate. And I didn't think much of it. And I started looking at it. And I saw McGraw where a line had been drawn through it. and right above it written by hand in pencil was Smith, which was my stepdad's name. And then it said, Dad's Occupation Professional Baseball Player. And of course, of being 11 years old and growing up, we were like low, low middle class and didn't have any money.

42:53And seeing something like that, it was just so hard to register. It didn't seem real. And oddly enough, I had three baseball cards on my wall in my room. I mean, his was one of them because he was one of my favorite players. So I instantly called my mom, and I could tell that it hit her like a ton of bricks. She was at work. And I'm like, Mom, what is this my birth certificate? What does this mean? And then she was like, Oh, my God. That's all she said. And she said, I'll be right home. And then she came home, and we went for a ride, and she told me the whole story. What was the story? Her junior summer in high school, her mom had just left her dad, my grandpa, and they were staying in a motel that had a pool with the outdoor, you know, like a motor court motel they were staying in.

43:44And it just so happened that my grandmother and my mom were staying there, but it just so happened that the minor league team, Jacksonville Suns, minor league team for the Mets, all the ballplayers were staying in that hotel as well. So Tug and my mom met at the pool and sort of dated over the summer. And when he left, he got called up or whatever. She found out she was pregnant. My mom was a dancer, and she had just gotten invited to try out for Where the Action Is by Dick Clark, which was like his first show, the precursor of American Bandstand and all that stuff. So my mom had just gotten a letter inviting her to audition for it.

44:21And she had just found out she was pregnant with me. And then I have her senior portrait that she took that they always take at the beginning of the senior year. And she had just found out two days before the senior portrait she was pregnant with me. And every time I look at that portrait, I can see it in her eyes. I can see that her whole future had just disappeared in front of her. She told me the whole story and said that she hadn't talked to him since and hasn't heard from him. And I said, but I'd like to meet him, you know. So she got in touch with his lawyer somehow, his agent, somehow. He was still playing at the time.

45:02And they arranged somehow. Mom borrowed a car from her boss and some money from her boss. He said he would leave tickets for us and have lunch with us. We drove there. He met us for lunch. We talked for a little while. And he just said, you know, I'm not your dad. I don't think I'm your dad, but we can be friends. kind of deal. Went to the game. I had a Pete Rose magazine where Pete Rose was about to break the hitting record that I brought with me. And he took me in the clubhouse and Pete Rose signed that. I got to meet Pete Rose. Got to throw the ball a little bit with some of the guys for batting practice.

45:40And my mom had got me a McGraw shirt made and a Phillies hat and all that stuff. So she had me all decked out. So the next year, so we met, never saw him after the game or anything. Never heard from him again. So of course I was obsessed as an 11 year old kid would be about something like that.

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47:53What were the emotions that you felt at the time? Was there anger? Was there confusion? Was there admiration? What was the mixture of emotions that you felt? I think at the time, I don't think there was anger. I think there was some affirmation in it. We grew up in a very dysfunctional life. The guy who I thought was my dad growing up was an alcoholic and very abusive to my mom and to me. And then the second stepdad was worse than the first one. So we grew up in really, you know, the commercial you see now when footsteps are coming home, kids are scared. That's the way our house was when you'd hear the truck drive up.

48:37So for me, there was an affirmation of why I felt like I didn't belong with that guy. So it wasn't a confusion. I don't think I was young enough to register confusion. I think I was more, certainly it was more about the excitement of finding out that your dad's a professional baseball player. It's certainly in the circumstances that I was growing up in. So for me, it was sort of a ray of light in a lot of ways. So the next year they were playing in Houston again, and I asked mom if I could go see the game again. She got in touch with the agent again and said he would leave two tickets, but he's not going to see us.

49:14So he left two tickets. It was in Houston, which was the only time I'd seen him play. Cut to the first time I saw him play, he came in and gave up a grand slam. The first time I saw him play. But the bullpen is right along, right by the stands. I mean, the stands are to that desk where the bullpen is. 10, 12 feet away. Yeah, you're right there. He wouldn't see us before the game or anything. So he was warming up in the bullpen, and my mom says, why don't you go down and say hi to him? He's warming up in the bullpen. So I walked down to where he was warming up, and I was as close to me and you.

49:46You are to him, and he's warming up. Something's yelling at him, tug, it's Tim, tug. And he wouldn't look at me. He wouldn't look at me or acknowledge me. And so I just sort of dropped it for that. Went back home. I didn't use McGraw. Paul U. Smith, just sort of forgot about it. Didn't forget about it, but not even, only a handful of my friends even knew about it. I didn't tell very many people about it. Sort of, then I got embarrassed, I think, after that. And I was just, like, sort of thrown away. What happened? What changed? Well, when I was 18, graduating high school, we didn't have any money for college.

50:25I was counting on sports scholarships, and I had a few, when I was small, I graduated high school, I was 5 '10", barely, and 140 pounds, getting football scholarships and basketball scholarships, thinking, this is probably going to work out when I get to the next level of my size. So she was going to call about paying for college, see if she could see if he would pay for college. This is a long story. She was going to see if he'd pay for college. So I was staying out of it. I was too busy with my life. And then I remember the last high school football game. I'm getting ready. I'm down on the field getting ready for the game to start.

51:04We'd already ran through the banner and done all that stuff. And somebody taps me on the shoulder. And it was my mom. I'm on the sidelines getting ready to go. I'm playing. I'm like, Mom, what are you doing here? We're about to play a game. You can't be down here on the sidelines. She goes, well, I heard from Tug's lawyer today. And I said, okay, Mom, can we wait until after the game we get home to talk about this? So played the game, got home, and we talked a little bit about it. And then we talked about the next morning. And the deal was they'd sent a contract, and they said that he would pay$300 a year towards my college and that I would never be able to contact him again.

51:46And if I did, the money would – anyway,$300 a year for college, and you can't contact me anymore. And that, to me, was enough to say, you know what, fine. My only request is that I don't even need the money. $300 a month's not going to do anything. I don't need the money. Don't need anything. My only request is that he has to meet with me one last time. And then if he wants me to sign a contract to leave him alone, I'll do whatever. So we flew to Houston or drove to Houston. Drove to Houston. He had retired at this point. And I'd just graduated high school, so I was as tall as him. And we walked into the hotel, and Mom said, well, there's Tug standing, checking in over there.

52:29And he had somebody with him who was his lawyer slash agent. So I walked over to him and tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned around and looked at me and said, I Tug, I'm Tim. Because he hadn't seen me since I was 11. And I introduced myself to the guy standing next to him, and the guy standing next to him turned completely white because I looked just like him. So he knew that the gig was up.

52:54So we sort of spent the day together hanging out a little bit. And then we went to dinner that night, he, mom, and I. There was a point during dinner, a small talk, where I asked mom if she could leave us alone and let us talk for a minute. And, of course, mom didn't want to do that. And I assured her that I had this. This was fine. And as soon as she left, I just looked at Tug and said, look, I'll sign your contract. I'll never talk to you again. I won't bother you. I just have one question for you. And I asked him, do you think you're my dad? And he says, yes, I believe I am. And he said, we'll tear the contract up.

53:30And then I didn't hear from him for a year after that. But after that, we ended up starting to see more of each other. And me going while I was in college, I would drive up to Philly and visit and got to know my little brother, Mark, and my little sister, Carrie, which was great to come out of that. But this is what I'll get back to. At the end of the day, I get asked a lot. And you said it right. A lot of people now don't know the story. They knew it at the beginning of my career, but a lot of people that know my career now that know who my dad was, they think that I grew up in that world and I didn't.

54:03So I'm glad we're talking about this because a lot of people can understand now that I didn't grow up in that world. But the long and short of it is when people ask, how could you have anything to do with your dad? How could you have not hated him? How could you have just not turned your back on him? my answer always is he gave me something that was so precious and that was hope. Whether he meant to and he didn't or knew it or any of those things, he gave me a reason to think that I can get out of the situation that I was in. That if he can do that, then I have it in me to do something. And so for that reason alone, I couldn't hate him.

54:43Hope, man. Yeah. That is just... It's a bedrock of everything else. If everything else is gone, if you've got hope, you've still got a chance. I remember talking to a friend of mine. He's got a couple of kids now, now mostly grown. I think that is all grown. Think about it. I mean, the older I get, the younger people seem. Oh, my gosh. But yeah, they're adults. Tell me about it. And he said, and we went for a hike at one point, and he's just a really sweet, very smart guy. And I asked him, like, all right, what would your advice be to an aspiring parent? Me. I don't yet have any kids, but really am looking forward to that, building a family.

55:20And he said, it's really simple. Your job is to love your kids. They don't owe you anything. It's not their job to love you. Number two, you have to teach them to be optimistic. That's it. Those two things make perfect sense. Your vision of their life and your expectations of their life, don't let it cloud your love and guidance for them. I have lots of questions about family because it's top of mind for me. but i want to ask you about guitars here's why because i was looking up on the way here yo yo ma famous cello player picked up cello probably got handed a cello at age four wow all right my understanding is you did not do that no with guitars no so how did this music thing come about Well, the music thing came about because of my mom's love for music.

56:14Because from my earliest memory of the time, I can remember my mom was always singing and playing records around the house and always had the radio wide open. So I knew every song on the radio, and she would encourage me to sing. She always wanted me to sing along with her on the radio. So I knew every song on the radio. I would sing with my mom all the time. We'd walk around the house singing, singing in church. I mean, my friends used to give me shit all the time playing baseball because I played shortstop. And the whole time I'm out there, I'm singing songs and playing around. So I was always singing to the point where my sisters were always like, shut up.

56:48Just shut up. Just stop singing. And I still do it to this day. Somebody can say a word and I'll sing a song that's got that word in it. It's just in me. I can't get it out. So it was always something. But I was in the same category that you were thinking that, you know, the guys you're here on the radio, are guys that have been doing this since they were three or four years old. They're trained musicians. They're guys that... Jackson 5. Yeah, this is something you can't just do unless you're trained to do it since you were a little kid. So I got into college. That's when I realized when I got into college and I went out for the first football roundup and see everybody when I looked around and thought, all right.

57:29I'm going to get killed. I'm going to meet on the practice squad, never see the field, and get the hell beat out of me, and spend all of my time here. So I ended up not playing ball, joined a fraternity, pawned my high school ring, and bought a guitar for$20. Why did you decide to get the guitar? Because I thought I love music. I love singing. Chicks might dig it if I got a guitar and learned to play a few songs. Okay, so it wasn't so far ahead as to, this is my career plan. No, I wasn't thinking about moving to Nat. It wasn't a career move. This was a move, but it wasn't a career move. And I thought I could play some clubs around town.

58:11It'd be fun to do. I even thought, look, my biggest dream I could have here is get a house gig somewhere where I'm making money every week and playing music. And remind me, where were you at the time? I was in Louisiana, Monroe. In Louisiana. At Northeast Louisiana, which is ULM now. But back then, it was Northeast Louisiana University. so i bought the guitar and all of my friends had moved away for the summer as my freshman summer college i had a job where i worked four hours a day to plant nursery in the mornings just moving stuff and i'd come home and just i'd watch cmt and watch where their fingers were on the guitars early youtube yeah early youtube and then on music sheets you it had these little guitar fret things where it would show you where your fingers went so i spent a lot of years where My fingers were in the wrong position, but I would still make the chord.

58:58And my buddy, my roommates would hide my guitar for the longest time because I was so bad. But then when I started getting pretty good at it, they would hide it. I couldn't find it. But when chicks would come over to the house, they would grab my guitar and bring it to me and want me to start playing songs. Dance, monkey, dance. Exactly. So over that summer, I learned about 50 songs. And I just started playing just me and a guitar at this little catfish house called Cock of the Walk. And that was my first gig. and that's how I paid my rent for a while. What was the first? By the way, I am still a terrible guitar player.

59:32I can play well enough to write my songs in the place and stuff. You seem to have made it work for you. When was the first inkling or the first sign, feeling maybe, where you're like, okay, I think this could be a thing? First off, the encouragement I got from my friends in college, my fraternity buddies, which that could go either way. when you're trying to play guitar and sing songs from your buddies in a fraternity. That could go the wrong way. But when it didn't, when they were encouraging me and they were giving me credit and telling me how good I was, to me that was a big deal for a bunch of guys to tell you, your friends to tell you that when you're just trying to figure it out and you don't even know anything about it really.

1:00:12For them to tell you that you're good and they want to hear you do it and they ask you to sing all the time. So when I started playing clubs and stuff, I would get good reaction from the crowds and then the owners would come over and say, hey, would you want to come back? And, you know, you guys are the best band we've had. You know, stuff like that. And then I took a military science class. Military science, like strategy, studying class generals. Yeah, and I got to know the instructor. Captain Whitehead was his name. He was an Army guy, head of the ROTC and everything there. And all the guys in the class were ROTC guys, ROTC.

1:00:44Anyway, we took the class, and it was tactics, and we were in the field doing stuff. We'd spend a weekend tracking. Even doing all the stuff with repelling and all kinds of stuff. Sounds like a cool course. It was a great course. And at the end of the course, everybody was asked to vote who was our platoon leader. Well, I got voted by all the ROTC guys as the platoon leader for the class for the year. So I was the top student in the class. And so Captain Whitehead took a big interest in me, but he thought I should be a Marine. So he kept taking me to the Marine recruiting office. So I visited the Marine recruiting office quite a bit.

1:01:18Filled out all my paperwork. and one night I decided I had everything packed. I sold everything I had, sold my car, water skis, shotguns, sold everything I had. I think I ended up with about$3 ,000. I had my guitar, one suitcase, and my Marine paperwork sitting on my dresser, and I said, when I wake up in the morning, I'll decide whether I'm going to move to Nashville or join the Marines. And I fell asleep, woke up the next morning, looked over, got up, picked up the Marine paper, tore it up, put it in the garbage, and went and bought a Greyhound bus ticket and ended up in Nashville. I have so many questions.

1:02:03So why did Captain Whitehead think you should be a Marine? I don't know. I guess because I did well in the class. And we got along well. He kept coming to our fraternity house and hanging out with us. We just got along well, and he liked me. As a matter of fact, we played. It had to have been 15 years later after I had a lot of success. We played the base in San Diego, military base in San Diego, and it was huge. It was packed. And I'm singing and playing. I'm standing in front of the stage, and I look down, and Captain Whitehead's right at the front of the stage. And I got to say hi to him and talk to him a little bit afterwards.

1:02:39He just says, you would have been a good Marine. You missed the boat, son. No, I didn't. I'm kidding. The platoon leader piece is interesting to me. What do you think, even if you had to speculate, why did that happen? Why did they vote you platoon leader? I don't know. I mean, I just enjoyed it. If you had to guess, what do you think? Because presumably a bunch of guys in the class or a bunch of people in the class. Yeah. I think there were a few obstacles that I was able to figure out, like moving stuff and how to build a bridge across, just little things that I was able to figure out. Or if I wasn't able to figure out, just acted like I did and took charge of it and got it done.

1:03:27But I don't know. It was one of those things that was really interesting to me. It made sense to me. And when you step into something you don't know anything about and all of a sudden it clicks and makes sense, it just made sense. And it really sparked my interest into being in the military because I thought, wow, if I can be around all these guys who want to do this and this works out, maybe this is a career path for me. Thank God I didn't. But I have so much respect. I mean, who knows? My sister was in the Army. She was Army Intelligence, cousins, uncles. So I've got a long history of military family.

1:04:00What was it that morning? It was a long time ago, of course, but it seems like such a sliding door moment, such an important fork in the road. What was it that led you to tear up the paperwork? I thought that I could always go back to that. And I can't always go back to the music. because there would come a point where that's passed. But the hardest part was having to call my mom because my mom was really intent on me making something out of myself because of how hard our life was growing up and how hard her life was. She worked three jobs and going to work with black eyes and busted lips and just all the struggles that a single abused mom, well, not single, but abused mom has to do.

1:04:47She's pretty single for all intent and purpose. but I had to call her. I was in pre-law. My joke now is that I have paid more lawyers in my life than I would have ever made as well. That is probably true. Yeah. So I had to call my mom and I was scared to death because I knew how badly she wanted me to complete school and go to law school. And I know how badly she wanted that for me and for her because of the sacrifices that she had made. Because, you know, people wanted her to give me up for adoption, all sorts of stuff. And And she was a 17-year-old girl that hung on to a kid. But I called her and told her what my plan was, embraced myself, fully expecting my little Italian mom to give me a good wearing out because she can do that.

1:05:29And what she said, it's going to make me cry what she said, but she said, son, I'm surprised you haven't done it already. And if you don't, you'll never know. So you should go. and it was so shocking and unexpected that um it gave me all the confidence in the world i needed and then when i first moved here back to where you think everybody grows up since they were a little kid with a guitar in their hands and singing and that's how they become famous when i first moved here and started going to clubs and sitting in i was thinking wait a minute i can hang with these guys i can hang with these guys i can find my niche here how many shows do you think How many gigs had you played up to the point that you got on that Greyhound bus?

1:06:11A year or two gigs? I don't know, 100 maybe at clubs. Mostly just me and a guitar, some with a band. I actually went to Jacksonville for about six months because my mom had moved to Jacksonville after I started college because she just went through another divorce, and it was a terrible divorce. But she moved to Jacksonville, which is where she grew up. So Jacksonville Junior College had just won the Junior College World Series. Coach heard about me a couple years ago back in high school. He knew my mom somehow. Anyway, invited me to come to play baseball at Florida Junior College. So I thought, all right, this is getting old here.

1:06:52I'm playing music. I'm not really going to class like I should. Maybe I should go out there and try to play baseball, see what happens. So I moved to Florida. Same thing, showed up. I was going to play baseball, hung around for a little while, realized that I really didn't want to do that because I was playing clubs at night there too and just decided to go full-time and start playing clubs in Florida. I did that, and I moved back to Monroe, played for about three months, and then moved to Nashville. I'm curious what Nashville did for you because it makes me think of Bob Dylan, before he was Bob Dylan, but moving from Minnesota to, I think it was Greenwich Village, right?

1:07:33Moose to the epicenter. It's like, I'm going to find Guthrie and I don't know how I'm going to make it work, but I'm going to figure it out. And I'm going to the center of the action. And that story was really laid out for me in detail by this very, very impressive investor and fascinating human, Bill Gurley, who is in Austin. But he has a book coming out soon called Running Down a Dream, which is about sort of pursuing passion and finding that lightning in a bottle for yourself. But one of his sections is on going to the epicenter, like going to where the action is. And I would love for you to describe what effect Nashville had.

1:08:14I mean, in a sense, you already showed some of what can happen by the fact that you get off the bus, you go have a beer after last call, and then bada bing, bada boom. You hear a great song. Right. Yeah, and songs that end up making my career. I think instantly it just lit a fire under me. When you jump into a pool of people who are like-minded and who are all chasing the same thing, there's just such an energy that you get from everybody that's doing it. Tracy Lawrence, Kenny Chessie, and I were best friends, and we ran around together everywhere. None of us had record deals, and we would compete.

1:08:54All these clubs, you could get up and sing, and you could win 50 bucks. Ooh, I got the most hand applause. So we were always competing to get rental money. That's cool. Try to outdo it. Tracy usually always won because he was the best singer out of all of them at the time. But just running around, being involved, every night being at somebody's apartment, playing music, writing songs every day, out every night singing in all these clubs. It was just an immersion experience of art where you learn so much. You learn from different singers. You hear somebody sing and you think, wow, how do they do that?

1:09:26How can I? You imitate people. You figure things out. You see what somebody's doing on stage. You see how somebody's singing. You see how somebody's songwriting. It just becomes this sort of gumbo of all this magic that you find, and it just comes into every pore of your body, and you just open yourself up to it and just try to learn as much as you can. It can be heartbreaking, too, at the same time. And then also recognizing where you're getting held back, where you start realizing you need to put more aspirational people around you as opposed to people who are just being happy doing what they're doing.

1:10:02And I try to tell it to my daughters all the time. That sounds like it could be very difficult. It can be difficult because it's not about dropping friends, but it's about gathering friends, people that you want to be like. They have traits that you want to emulate. Could you describe an instance of when that happened and how you navigated it? I don't know if I can describe an instance. or just why that even occurred to you, I guess, and how you went about finding those people. Well, because I needed to learn, for one thing, because I knew nothing about the music business, how to make a record.

1:10:35I knew nothing about anything except for how to sing along to the radio and then play some songs I learned on the guitar. I was an amateur, period, at everything. So I just wanted to be around people who knew what they were doing and people who could teach me things and people that were willing to teach me stuff And people that if I wanted to compete, if I can't compete with this guy who's playing in a club in downtown Nashville, then I'm not going to compete with the guys who have record labels and are selling millions of records. So how did you find those people to learn from? I think it's just a matter of just being out and being around people and just learning who the people are who are going to be aspirational to you and inspirational to you and who the people are going to hold you in place.

1:11:20do any people stand out in those I don't know first like five years let's just say Mike Borchetta stands out Mike Borchetta is who signed me to my first record deal at Curb Records and he was somebody who I walked off the street had a demo of a few songs he tried to kick me out of his office and I made him listen to the songs how did you get into his office in the first place the way I got into his office is because oddly enough it was because of Tug because a guy named Bruce Wendell was a friend of Mike Borchetta's, and he happened to be a friend of Tug's. So Tug was talking to Bruce Wendell one day, and Bruce says, I know a guy named Mike Borchetta down in Nashville.

1:12:06Maybe I can get him a meeting with him. And that was it. So I got his phone number. That's all he gave me. So I kept trying and trying and trying to get a meeting with him. I couldn't get a meeting with him. So it was during Fanfare one year. What is fanfare? Now it's the big thing they have at the stadium every year where everybody plays. But back then, fanfare was when you would just sit and stand in a booth for three days and sign autographs for thousands and thousands of people that would come through. So this was going on when, of course, I wasn't signing autographs. I didn't have a record label.

1:12:36So I decided I'm going to go buy Curb Records and see if Mike Borchetta's in his office. And I'd had a demo of these three. After him not returning. After him not returning my calls. And I have to back up just a little bit because there was this little place called Po' Boy Dons in Tallulah, Louisiana, that was in the middle of a cotton field. And it was just a little wood-framed shack. But it was like a convenience store slash deer butcher shop slash crawfish bowl kind of place. And in the back of the store, they had a bunch of stumps and an old wood stove. And there were a bunch of guys all in their 70s and 60s that were all playing country music.

1:13:16And I happened to go walk, be out that area one day and it was in the middle of nowhere. And so I stopped in and sat down and started playing guitar with these guys. So they kept inviting me to come back. So it ended up being, it was about 30 miles from school. So every Thursday night, it ended up being like five or six cars of my fraternity brothers. We'd all go to this little hole in the wall place with all these 70 year old guys. And they would give us free beer and crawfish as long as I sit back there and sing with them. And it ended up that place becoming packed and packed and packed where there were just people there every Thursday night.

1:13:47And it just became a really fun thing. So when I moved to Nashville, Po' Boy Don, who owned that, and it was a farmer too, and he owned all the farmland around. And just he played the bass and the thing. And it was his store. And he just really loved me and loved to hear me sing. So I needed a demo. I didn't have a demo. I didn't have any money for a demo. So I called him. And he sent me$3 ,000 to record a demo. So I recorded a demo, and that's the demo I played for Mike Borchetta when I walked into his office. Anyway, I sat down. He said, well, leave the CD with me. So you were just knock and knock.

1:14:21Anybody home? Well, I walked past the secretary because I saw he was in his office. And I walked past the secretary. She goes, excuse me. And I said, I'm just going to say hi to Mike. I walked in. I said, hi, Mike. How are you doing? He said, who are you? Then I told him my name. He goes, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He says, call me next week, and we'll meet. And I said, well, I have my demo here. I'd like for you to listen to it. And he goes, well, leave it on the desk, and I'll listen to it. I says, well, can you listen to it now? And he goes, no, I'm headed out to Fanfare. I got to go. I says, well, can you just listen to part of a song?

1:14:47He goes, all right, I'll listen to a song. So he put the song in, and halfway through the first one, he goes, you got a record deal, kid. Wow. And that's how I got a record deal. Halfway through the first song. Yeah. Was it the first song on the demo? Yeah, first song on the demo. Yeah. And then it was convoluted after that. But I got a record deal, so I got my foot in the door. So, you know, it started from there. but he was somebody that when a guy who runs a record label and you know nothing about how that works and it's the first record label I went to sits down and listens to half of your demo which you're not even sure is any good and says you have a record deal well I think you get exponentially better in that instant yeah you're giving wings in a way absolutely the luster seed yeah so we're gonna hop around a little bit because we could go a million different directions i mean we could spend 20 hours talking about your career and still not run out of material i believe it might have been in parade it could have been in a different interview but correct me if i'm wrong but i think you've said that your wife saved your life oh god along those lines yeah why is that because i was running pretty hard i was running hard back in the day.

1:16:07What does that mean? Well, I was drinking a lot, which that didn't stop after we got married, but she beat it out of me after a while. But I was just doing everything. I was a kid in a candy store, especially after I got successful and never had any money before, never been around any of that stuff before. And then all of a sudden, it became a tool that was useful until it wasn't. When faith came along, I was burning it wide open when we met, and she started tapping the brakes for me. How did she do that in a way that didn't repel you? Well, look at her. Well, I mean, right. Yeah. I mean, yeah, she's got a lot on offer.

1:16:51This is for sure. But I would imagine, we don't know each other well, but that strong-willed guy, high gear, high intensity high velocity kid in a candy store like faith is incredible on a million different levels and you also have a lot of options around so what allowed her to dial some of those things back which ended up being really important long term for you and for both of you without scaring you off in a sense well a i knew that i was at a point where i needed to slow down goddess you had the self-awareness. I had the self-awareness that I needed to slow down at the time. B, when we met, we were 28 years old.

1:17:35So we were a little older and we both had success. And then C, once I met her, I didn't want to lose her. I just didn't want to lose her. What was it about her? She's just magic. She's magic. She's not just her singing and her looks and all that's done. And of course, that's all a bonus. But as a person, she's just magic. She just lights up a room. And she lit me up and still does. And I wouldn't be the same artist had I not met her. I certainly wouldn't have the career that I've had had I not met her. Certainly wouldn't have lasted as long. I wouldn't have lasted as long. I would have burned out really quickly, I think.

1:18:19Especially if I had lost her after I found her. if I had lost her because of not sort of bringing myself around a little bit, then I definitely would have been in a downward spiral. So you guys met at 28. When did you change the drinking? It took a while. I certainly calmed it down quite a bit. And it fluctuated. You know, it would be times where it was not bad, then times where it was bad. And then it just got to where it was just got out of control. That's when she sat me down. Well, actually, she'd set me down a few times, but actually there was one morning in particular where I woke up and realized that it was 7 in the morning.

1:19:03I was going to have to take the kids to school soon, and I realized I had a bottle of whiskey in my hand at 7 in the morning. And I had the bottle in my hand, and I walked straight back to the bedroom and told her that I need help. She goes, all right, let's do it. I'm with you. and she's stuck by me the whole time and look it's not been a linear path as anybody knows it's ever gone through that kind of thing it's not a linear path there's always pitfalls and steps backwards and steps forward but um she's a rock she's a rock you know this is just a random thought but at some point if you haven't met laird hamilton and his wife gabby laird hamilton's i know layered his yeah yeah in any case a lot of parallels yeah in your lives and i think also gabby gabby reese who used to be a professional volleyball player in any case just a lot of parallels i mean intensity right high gear and it's very common at least among my friends certainly and even in my case way back in the day it's like that type of intensity can also get misapplied or reapplied to something like alcohol.

1:20:17Absolutely. And it's not always a selective intensity. No, it's not a selective intensity. And then when it becomes a physical dependency, then you're in trouble. Then you're in trouble. Yeah. How has fatherhood changed you? Wow. Well, you certainly see with different eyes. And it changes what your definition of love is, more so than even getting married, I think, when you have children. because there's such a responsibility and a weight that comes with all the brightness and the light and the love that causes you to realize that that's your true eternal life, is your children, and how they carry their perception of you forward.

1:21:05And it's a scary proposition because you're not going to do it right. Nobody does it right. You just hope you do 30 % of it right, and you just show up. I think the thing that it changed more than anything, and I think anybody would tell you this, and it's pretty simple. It takes a lot of the selfishness out of you. Part of you has to have that, I guess, in order to succeed and to push forward. But, boy, it takes a lot of selfishness out of you and puts a lot of drive and passion and responsibility in thinking of the future in your path, which provides more structure for you. And what I've also found out, too, is as the kids grow up, and Faith and I both have found out, that structure was so good because you had to be on the ball.

1:21:57You had to get up every morning at 6. You had to break breakfast. You had to take your kids to school. You had to help with homework. You had to go to practice. You coach softball. All those things that keep you in a good, balanced routine. So when the kids start leaving the house, all of a sudden you start, what am I going to do with the rest of my day? Now I don't have to get up at six. It can take away some of your focus, and it can take away some of your routine, and it can take away a little bit of drive once the kids are out of the house. It comes back, but at first you're sort of lost and sort of figuring out, what do I do with my time here?

1:22:32I've got a few chapters to get through before I get there. And then after about six or eight months, a year, then you realize you and your wife, you realize you're home alone. Then the fun begins. How did you decide to be a father in the sense, how did you set rules for yourself or goals, hopes, without necessarily a model for it? So part of the reason I think that I've delayed building a family for as long as I have is that God bless my dad in certain ways, but I want to do things differently if I did it at all, very differently. And since I felt like I had no role model, I felt like I had no confidence that I would be a good father.

1:23:19And so I was like, well, fundamentally, if I'm helping bring some life into the world, they didn't ask for it necessarily. I mean, we could debate. Yeah. Gets into some deep. philosophical territory and religious territory quickly, but I wouldn't want to do a bad job or more harm than good. And so I've waited and waited and waited. Well, you're going to do a bad job. Yeah. That's just, I mean, everybody does a bad job. Yeah. There's no training manual, but I was in the same boat. I didn't know if I was going to be a good dad or bad. I didn't know what kind of dad I would be. I knew that I wanted to be a dad and I wanted to be a good dad and I knew that I didn't want my children's life to be like mine was.

1:24:03So I think in a lot of ways, maybe that the life that I had growing up prepared me to be a better dad because of what I knew I didn't want to do. And I found this business has really made me find out that learning what you don't want to do and what doesn't work for you is better than knowing what does. All right. so i'm gonna grab that and run with it because there's an expression in japanese i went to japan as an exchange student called hanmen kyoshi hanmen kyoshi is like opposite teacher it's basically like an anti-role model and they show you what not to do so i'm wondering if there professionally have been any experiences a tour how you made a song or even chose a song in the first place that really taught you what not to do?

1:24:53Like an event, a song, a performance, a commitment, a partnership, anything where you're like, okay. Oh, I put myself in plenty of positions that I wish I hadn't. I don't know if I can specifically say what not to do. I can say be prepared all the time is always a good thing. But I can tell you my most embarrassing moment in the music business. It might be the best way to go. Now, Bruce Springsteen, who I'm a huge fan of, and he's a friend, and I've known him for a long time, one of the greatest guys in the world, sweetheart. Music Cares, you know what Music Cares is? It's where they do a big concert the night before the Grammys to raise money, and it honors a specific artist.

1:25:35And other artists come in and do their songs. So Bruce was being honored, so he called and asked if Faith and I would do Tougher Than the Rest together as part of the thing. And of course, we said, yes, we would love to do it. So everybody's doing their songs, and there's Sting. There's all the big guys playing Bruce's songs. So we do Tougher and the Rest, and we do a great job on it. Everything turned out good, and we're sitting at Bruce's table. We're talking, and Bruce is like, hey, man, at the end of this, we're going to do Glory Days. He says, everybody's going to come on stage and just sing along with the chorus.

1:26:09He said, do you think you and Faith are going to come up and do that? And I'm going to say, sure, we'll come up. I'll make a movie. We can do the chorus, sing along the Chorus of Glory Days. So we're up there. We're on stage. We're all singing along. So Bruce is in the second chorus, and he looks over at one artist. He's like, hey, come sing the second verse. And the artist is like, mm-mm, no. So he looks at another artist. He's like, come sing the second verse. And that artist is like, mm-mm, no, no, no. So on the microphone, he goes, hey, cowboy hat, come sing the second verse. And in my mind, I'm thinking, all right, it's Glory Days.

1:26:41I know it. But I don't think I've ever sung it. And Bruce's phrasing is some of the hardest phrasing in the world, the way he writes. And I thought, all right, I can get through the second verse of this. I can figure it out. The words are up there. So I step up, and I have no idea where to come in. I don't know the phrasing. I don't know anything. And everybody who is anybody in the music business is out there. And I'm standing there with that, when your mom has caught you doing something, or your wife has caught you doing something really bad. and where all the blood rushes out of your body and your gut punch.

1:27:16So I couldn't sing the song. I'm just like, and Bruce comes up beside me. He's like, I like that. Then he starts singing the song. So then I step back beside Faith. Can I stand up? Yeah. I step back beside Faith, like embarrassed, and I step back beside her, and this is what Faith does.

1:27:35He stepped away from me.

1:27:40luckily they shot it in a way because it's always recorded and released and everything so they shot it in a way that i could go back and fix the vocal where it didn't look like i screwed it all up but boy that was i didn't have fun that night at the hotel after the grammy do you get a lot of ball busting after that i did i did but no none worse than mine what i did to myself because it was really the most embarrassing moment. There are a few moments where you feel like you're over your head sometimes. And it usually works out well, but boy, I tell you, performing on the Oscars was one of those moments where everything just seems to, your body defies you.

1:28:18You know, you think you got it under control. And when you start, like everything goes, it worked out. Everything was fine. I did a good job. But in the moment, you're feeling like it's falling apart on me right here in front of everybody. So I would love to flesh out the humanizing of Tim McGraw a little bit, right? Because for people who may not know your career, they might be like, man, this guy just gets off the Greyhound bus. And then it's like, he's in a double and a triple and a home run. And it's just endless home runs, right? Green lights the whole way. And I'm curious if there are any favorite failures, things that didn't work that ended up teaching you something important or laying the seeds for something later, or if there was ever a period of feeling plateau or stuckness and how you dealt with it.

1:29:07There's both of those. I think failure that I learned a lot from was my first album, which we always say went wood. I think we had one song that made it to 38 off of that album. Yeah, it went wood. But so no hits on it. So the label just sort of forgot about me after that. And so I was slowly gathering songs. But I learned a lot. I learned what I didn't want to do, the way to make music. I learned what I didn't want it to sound like. So I slowly started gathering songs from songwriter friends of mine, not really big songwriters, just friends of mine who are songwriters. Slowly started collecting songs.

1:29:46The label never even called me after the album came out because it didn't do anything. didn't talk to him at all so i collected these songs and i went to byron i said all right i'm ready to go record these songs my producer byron gallimore that we produced together i said i'm ready to cut these songs and he goes well this curb heard them or they proved us as nope we're just gonna book a session and go cut the album and so we booked the session so it's like an album on spec yes we we build curb we build curb for the whole thing cut the album did all the art artwork, had the CD ready with the artwork done, and turned it into them.

1:30:25And of course, they hit the roof because we'd spent a bunch of money making an album that we weren't approved of. And then they listened, and it was the Not A Moment Too Soon album. Then they listened to the album, and then they were all on board. And the good thing about that is the first one didn't work. The second one, I said, I want to do this my way, and I had Indian Outlaw. I'm going to do the songs I want to do. I'm picking all the songs, doing the songs I want to do. I'm going to cut them the way I want to cut them. And if it fails, it fails on my terms this time. And luckily it worked.

1:30:55So that's why you didn't reach out for approvals. You're like, I don't want some album by committee. No, I don't. It never works. Not for me. I'm sure it works for other artists, but anytime I've done that, anytime that I've let somebody else taught me into a song, whether it be a record label head or somebody else taught me into a song that I knew wasn't right for me. It's never worked. It's never worked. And there's been tons of times where people didn't like the song at all, and it worked. How did you decide, or when you say you knew what you didn't want it to sound like, can you say more about that?

1:31:34Well, you can go out and listen to my first album, and you can figure it out. I just knew that there were three songs on the first album that they sort of let me run loose with. Well, they're also like what other people hear, and then there's what you hear and what it means to you. Yeah, absolutely. And you also realize quickly in this business that, you know, you think when you move to town, you find your producer, you find your, you get a record label, you get all those things and everybody knows what they're doing. That's not necessarily the case. Sounds a lot like book publishing. Yeah. Most of the time the artist knows what they're doing and then everybody sort of follows what the artist that gets successful and starts doing what they're doing.

1:32:07But there are great people like, boy, without Byron Gallimore, I wouldn't know my right hand from my left. He's my partner in the studio and I can't imagine making a record without him. But you find out very quickly, if you don't have an idea about what you want and how you want to make your music and how you want it to sound and how you want your career to go, and if you don't get into control of that and you don't do it the way you want to do it, it might work, but it's not going to work for long. And there have been times in my career where I've sat back and decided, all right, I'm going to let this float and let other people make the decisions.

1:32:41Everything's fine for now. And sure enough, if I don't get involved, it doesn't go the way I want it to go. Now, I've got people around me now that's been around me for 20, 30 years that I trust. But even still, if they don't get regular input from me, nobody knows what's in your head. Nobody knows exactly what you picture, even though you might think they do. They don't. I mean, they get close. But you have to stay involved. I'm learning that more. These last few years have been tough for me. to be involved as much as I want to be because I've been battling just trying to get my health back. And I'm fortunate that I have the right people around me that helps me through those periods.

1:33:21When your focus is on and you're paying attention to what you're doing and you know what the path is, it makes it easier for everybody around you. What about the periods of stuckness outside of the most recent injury period, obviously the multiple surgeries? Well, the biggest period of stuckness and the biggest period where I thought, besides this period where I thought it might be over is when I went through a whole legal battle with Curb Records. That was a very dark period of my career. They kept extending my contract by putting greatest hits albums out. So every time I would turn in an album that would be the final album for my contract, they would drop a greatest hits, which didn't count against the contract.

1:34:01So I think they ended up putting like 10 greatest hits out to keep me from dropping my album. So finally, I decided I either had to bite the bullet and try to go to court with them and get out or be stuck with them. Either way, I'm taking a chance on my career. We battled for a couple of years, and I had to pretty much rebuild my career after that. And that was a scary time because momentum's a tough thing. And I heard a quote the other day. It's actually a land man. I was watching it. It's a great show. Great show. And Sam Elliott was talking to Billy Bob. He says, you know that monkey at rodeos that rides on the back of the border collie?

1:34:38And the border collie just runs around and runs around, and the monkey's just hanging on for dear life, and he can't let go because he'll die. So he's got to hold on. He looked at Bill and said, you're that monkey. And I looked at Faith and said, Jesus Christ, I'm that monkey. So I feel like I'm that monkey. But I don't know that if it's intentional, if it's innately in you, but there's something about even when you know you need to take a break or even when you know you need to slow down, When things are rolling, there's this sixth sense in your body that knows you can't let the momentum stop because it's so hard to restart.

1:35:18Even if consciously you're not thinking that, there's something in you that keeps it driving because you don't want the ball to stop rolling because you're scared. Because you're scared if the ball stops rolling, you'll never get it rolling again. For sure. So that was a time when that was happening to me, and I thought, you know, well, it's going to be hard to restart the momentum. Yeah. And then after these surgeries, there's another one of those times. Legal battles, it's just exhaustion upon exhaustion. It's just crazy. And sometimes you can't avoid it, but if you can avoid it. I don't want to be involved in legal battles unless it's just absolute.

1:35:47But that was at a point in my career that if I didn't do something, my career was going to be over. And if I did do something, there was a chance. There was still a risk. What were some of the most important things in retrospect that you did to rebuild your career, regain that momentum afterwards? Well, choosing the right partner for one thing, which was Scott Borchetta, who happens to be the son of Mike Borsetta, who signed me to my first deal. What a small world. I know. Who I signed with on Big Machine afterwards because I knew he was a hard worker. So that certainly being first, but I was also recording the best album I think I'd ever recorded in my life while all this was going on.

1:36:26Well, once I was cleared to record. And so I had an album ready to go by the time everything, all the dust was settled. I had an album ready to go. And Scott Borchetto was ready, and the album worked, and the juice was back. A lot of that was my team kept fighting for me the entire time. When I went to Scott, to his label, he knew what had happened, and he fought really hard because he didn't like what had happened either. I would imagine that also injected a helpful amount of piss and vinegar to demonstrate, to really relaunch in a meaningful way. It turned me up to 12 after that. I mean, it kicked me into high gear for sure.

1:37:12And that's the way I feel now. After all of this and worrying about being able to come back and worrying about if I did come back, what's my show going to be like, how I was going to be able to perform, was I going to be able to be me again. Now I feel like that same way I felt after coming out of Curb and starting with Big Machine and getting the ball rolling again, I feel like that we're right on the edge of just tipping that boulder over the hill and let it go again. I am so curious because you must get approached all the time, one way or another, from musicians at different stages in their careers.

1:37:46Maybe it's the son of a friend or the daughter of a fill-in-the-blank, or it could be someone who's just coming up. Maybe they're trying to be an opener for you. Who knows? Someone who is earlier in their career, I imagine the advice you might give them has changed over time. But if they want to, be more than a flash in the pan. Take charge. To really last. Yeah, what advice do you give them? Take charge. All right. Can you say more? Take charge of your career. Take charge of your career. Take charge of what you do. Be confident in your decisions. Listen. Of course, you want to listen to people.

1:38:22Listen to people that know what they're doing. But ultimately, you have to make the decisions. You have to make your choices. and you have to make the right choices for you. And nobody can do that but yourself. And if you just coast, you might have a career for a little while, but if you want a long career, you're going to have to take charge and ownership of it. And you're going to have to guide it. And you're going to have to have your finger on the button all the time. And you're going to have to say yes, and you're going to have to say no. And you're going to have to use your skills to manage people.

1:38:53You're going to have to use your skills to be managed. and both of those things can happen simultaneously and they have to happen simultaneously you have to listen to smart people but if you don't have a vision about what you want to do if you don't have a plan about what you want to do if you don't act on it every day it's not going to happen it's just not going to happen and you can do all those things and it's still not happening Right. But if you do all those things and it doesn't happen, back to your second album, it's like you're taking the risk that you fail on your own terms, as opposed to gambling on something that doesn't resonate for you.

1:39:32Absolutely. That someone's talked you into. So that seems to be a piece of it. There's, as you said, having your finger on the button, being willing to say yes and no. Being willing to say no is a big deal. Why do you think people are bad at that? They're saying no? Sure. because people want to please people. They want people to like them. I want people to like me. But if you don't learn to say no, not in a mean way or not in a bad way, but just say, no, that's not right for me. And that's back to knowing what's right for you and what isn't right for you. There could be something that on the surface, everybody that works for you says, this is the perfect thing.

1:40:10But you've got to know whether it is or not. And sometimes you don't. You know it can get right all the time. There's plenty of times you get it wrong. But I think if you go with your gut, there's a caveat to all of this too. Because there are plenty of artists who succeed, who don't pick their songs, don't have any involvement in their production, really don't have any involvement in their management, don't have any involvement in their stage design, and they just show up and do their thing. There's plenty of artists who do that and are successful. So there's always exceptions to the rule. But I think for the most part, the artists who have been around for a long time, the artists I know who have been around for a long time, they take control of their careers.

1:40:56I interviewed quite a long time ago. He's since sadly passed away, but Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sachs from the UK. Large religious figure. If you're a Lord Rabbi, you got to be a big religious figure. He's a big deal. and very good at conflict resolution, incredibly open-hearted man. And he, I recall at one point with me, he shared this quote, which I'm going to paraphrase, but it was effectively like, one of the most important things in life is to be able to distinguish from an opportunity to be seized and a temptation to be resisted. Because they can look awful lot alike. They can look very similar.

1:41:34And what I've seen over and over again with all the startups I've been involved with, when I'm talking to authors who are just getting started, especially if they have a flicker of something that might ignite, is that as soon as there is a certain velocity of success, there are a lot of temptations that can pull you away from the thing that you spent so much time getting good at that brought you to that point. And I'm wondering if there are any categories of things. So for me, for instance, after about a year or two of getting very distracted, speaking engagements was one of those things where I was like, I'm just going to end up on the road doing speaking engagements, talking about the same thing every day for the rest of my life.

1:42:17If I actually continue to say yes to this, and it's very seductive because they pay really well. And I was like, all right, so I'm going to say no for a year. That's it. So that I can focus on these creative projects, writing. Are there any things along those lines at a point where like, okay, I need to say no to this, that, or the other thing? Yeah, there have been times where I probably should have said no and didn't. I mean, there's been times where I've got myself in too much work. But I've gotten pretty good, I think, at saying no. I think the older I get, I don't know about wiser, but the older I get, the more I apt am to say no.

1:42:54Mainly because you get to a point where I don't care to be more famous. Yeah, I think there's a point of diminishing returns. So you look at things under those lenses. Like, all right, this will give you higher visibility. All right, I've got plenty of visibility. I don't need to do that. You know, the only thing that it gets into is, all right, you've got to sell tickets to your concert. Then there's some things that you'd probably say no to that you'll say yes to just because you've got to pay everybody. So there's some compromises that you have to make to your, not principles, but to what you're willing to do work-wise.

1:43:27but um yeah the older you get the more it's easier it's easier to say no because you know more about what the outcome is going to be and whether the outcome is going to be beneficial enough for the time or it's not so let's talk about putting people in seats and tours you have the upcoming pawn shop guitar tour yeah this summer yeah you've got new music in the works in the middle of working on an album right now next week i'm in the studio again so could you talk about just tell us more about both okay and then you've got family you've got obviously got obviously have your your lovely wife you have still have a lot going on yeah so i'd love to know and i'm sure the audience would more about both of these right where can they learn more when can they expect things and then also how you actually schedule your time structure your time well album wise we're like i said we're in the middle of an album and the album's going to be called pawn shop guitar as well it's a song i wrote back to the story i told you when i got my first guitar where i pawned my high school ring my freshman year of college and bought the guitar luckily for me my grandfather found out about it went back and got my ring for me Although I don't know where it's at.

1:44:48I think my wife has it somewhere. So I wrote the whole song around that story. And we were looking for tour titles, you know, trying to find the right tour title. I thought Podshock Guitar was good. We all thought it was good just because of the story that it told. And it conjures up some good imagery. So we start that tour. I think it starts in July. The tour starts in July. I think we're doing three or four stadiums and sheds. The chicks will be out on the stadium tours with us. And I'm a huge fan of those guys. We did a George Strait tour together years ago, and then they opened for me on one of my tours years ago.

1:45:21And just a huge fan of their music. And I'm excited to get out with those guys. And then we're doing sheds for the summer, and then we'll do some more shows as well. We'll be doing some fairs and festivals. It's going to be a busy year. I'm going to be doing a lot. And there's a couple movie and TV projects in the works. And then my oldest daughter's working on a Broadway. She's a Broadway actress and singer, so she's working on some stuff. My youngest daughter is a singer. She's an actor. She's in Landman. Oh, no kidding. She just opened for Brandy Carlisle on a European tour last summer. My middle daughter works for Earth League International, a big nonprofit.

1:45:59She sings as well, but she's more of the brain reaction. She went Stanford, got her master's degree from Stanford, worked in Congress for a long time. They're all doing well. Seems like this fathering thing you've done pretty well. Well, you've got a good mom. And then my nephew, Timothy Wayne, is out there doing well, too. He's a singer. I'm the worst singer in the family, for real. I mean, that's legitimately not a joke. Why do it? Now, that might sound like a strange question. Why do what? Touring. It's so grueling, I have to imagine, right? Very demanding. It is. It's physically demanding.

1:46:39It's psychologically demanding. Is it something you feel on stage? Is it a quickening that you just can't get any other way? What is it that keeps you going back? Well, you can't get any other way. That's for sure. And they're always good. But every third show or so, you have that one show that's like, this is why I do it. This is why I do it. And you're right. Touring is more grueling. Touring is more expensive. You pay for everything. You know, you're doing three nights in a row. But it's your stage, your design, your ideas, the way you want it to look, all those things. That's the fun in it for me.

1:47:13It's building the stage and putting the show together. And that's also the hardest part is putting the set list together because after 35 years and a ton of records, you're never going to get everybody's favorite song in. Somebody's always going to miss a song that they wanted to hear because you can only do 22, 23 songs in a show at the most when you've got 70 or 80 singles and a bunch of number ones. You can't get them all in. You can't. So you just try to create a ride and an emotion and an experience. And that's the fun part for me is try to create a movie for everybody to see. On those magic nights, just a few more questions and then we'll land the plane.

1:47:53But what does that feel like? I'm so curious because I've played sports. I've had flow states in various contexts, but I've never experienced anything with that type of environment. Well, that's what it reminds me of is sports. It certainly reminds me of football before the games. And it reminds me of the locker room. It reminds me of just when you get your uniform on, you feel like you're 10 foot tall and bulletproof. It's when I put the cowboy hat on, it's like Superman's cape. You put the cowboy hat on, you're ready to go. But there's a symbiotic relationship that happens. And to me, art is magic.

1:48:33That's what real magic is, is art, any kind of art. and the magic happens when you're up there and everything's going great for you and you can tell everything's going great for the audience and you have this symbiotic electrical relationship where you're all in this groove together and you're all sort of in suspended animation for a while where you leave the world outside and all of a sudden we're all in this fantasy world that we create that we're all living in for this hour and a half and when that happens when the whole world just sort of shuts down and you're in this make-believe world that all of a sudden becomes the real world that you're in for an hour and a half, two hours, where nothing else exists except for that world, then you're in a movie.

1:49:15Then you're in this alternate universe that there's nothing but joy. It's like a utopia that you are able to create. Yes, yes, on the good nights. On the good nights. And sometimes you think it's not a good night because your ears don't sound great or your voice isn't doing what you want it to do and all this and sometimes those turn out to be the best nights i mean my best basketball game i ever had i think i scored 52 points and i had the flu and it kept trying to get the coach to take me out of the game because i thought i was hurting the team i thought i was playing terribly then he showed me the book

1:49:50tim if you could have a billboard metaphorically speaking put anything on it for millions billions of people to see right could be a quote could be a mantra could be scripture could be anything right it could be an image so anything non-commercial humble and kind humble and kind humble and kind tell me more about that because that song to me represents so much the video too so much of what the world needs and what we don't have right now is humility and kindness and And of course, love should be in that as well. But without humility and kindness, we're lost. And we seem to be lost right now. So that song to me is a beacon in a lot of ways.

1:50:41That one in Live Like You Were Dying to Me are songs that don't belong to me. I just happen to be lucky enough to be able to sing them for people. They belong to everybody. Hear, hear. Humble and kind. And Tim, we're going to link to everything related to Tim McGraw on the show notes. You've got plenty. Not everything. We'll leave out your OnlyFans page. We have, you know, X, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube. You're not hard for people to find. But is there anything else you'd like to point people to? Anything you'd like to say? Closing comments, public complaints, anything? I've got plenty of public complaints, but I'm not going to hear them.

1:51:19Stand-up comedy, raw material. anything you'd like to say before we first I want to thank you for having me and allowing me to be a part of your book my pleasure one of your books thank you and enjoy listening to you and I hope we can do it again absolutely it's been such a pleasure I've wanted to connect in person for years so much fun yeah and I hope it's not the last time I love Nashville so I'll be back good well and when you're back we'll talk again yeah absolutely I'll cook dinner for you one night I'm in Or have Faith Cook Dinner Play. It would be better. Although I'm a pretty good cook.

1:51:54That is a deal for sure. And everybody listening, we will put links to anything and everything we can find. Obviously, all the ways to find what you're up to, the tour, the music when it's ready. There is one new song before we interrupt you that people can find that we didn't put on streaming or anything. You can only find it on my socials. But it's a song called Different that I think people should get a listen to. All right. We will find different and we will link in the show notes at Tim dot blog slash podcast for folks. And as always, until next time, this is how I close almost every episode.

1:52:31A bit kinder than is necessary, not just other people, but also to yourself. If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete, as Jack Kornfield has said. And also, as always, thanks for tuning in, guys. See you next time. Thank you, Tim. Thank you. Adios. Adios. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off. And that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday.

1:53:07Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange, esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about.

1:53:46If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, tim.blog slash Friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. Back in the day, this was 2004 maybe, I had someone approach me in a coffee shop and say, G'day, mate, and introduce himself. Who was that? It turned out to be founder of AG1. Believe it or not, way back in the day. And people often ask me, what has survived after 20 plus years of testing every supplement under the sun? Just about. What actually has stayed in the rotation, in the toolbox? This episode's sponsor, AG1, is at the top of that very, very short list.

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1:55:44And the feedback from those groups has been absolutely invaluable. Moreover, perhaps most important, the connections that members have made and the interactions have been just a joy to behold. It's been so much fun. And I generally view communities as headache after headache after headache, way back in the day with like B Bulletin and whatever, and not to slam those guys. But man, oh man, running communities can be a pain in the ass. And in this case, it's been easy. Why? Well, both of them are built on Circle, this episode's sponsor. And before committing to using Circle, I did so much homework.

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