Hello boys and girls ladies and germs this is tim Ferriss welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where's my job to deconstruct world class performers from all different disciplines to tease out what you can use what you can apply in your own lives and we have a very tactical very detail rich interview ahead and my guest is Tim McGraw to say Tim McGraw's a Grammy award winning singer is an absurd understatement he's had 49 number one singles and 19 number one albums making him one of the most played country artists of all time but Colli a country artist is also too small of a category he's been named Nielsen BDS radios most played artist of the decade for all music genres and also Had the most played song of the decade for all music genres He's written for New York Times best-selling books and you've also seen him in Friday night lights the blind side in Yellowstone Not to mention his three-time Emmy nominated 1883 in which he stars alongside his wife faith Hill and Sam Elliott You can find tickets for his upcoming pawn shop guitar tour at Tim McGraw calm. That's Tim T. I. M McGraw MC GR AW Dot com check it out.
I will certainly be aiming to attend and without further ado Please enjoy a very very wide ranging very very detailed very fun conversation with the one and only Tim McGraw Nice to finally be in person you as well to really fantastic big fan likewise and I've not been to Nashville so long and it's just lovely running. It's incredible and it changes every day. I mean, I get lost. Anytime I come downtown, I get lost because everything looks so different.
Franklin looks like it's just had facelift after facelift after facelift. I know. And when I first moved here in 89, all of that cool springs, all that stuff was still all countryside. And I remember land being not very expensive out there and I didn't have two nickels of rubber here.
I'm like, man, if I could just buy some land out here and build me a little cabin, find me a club gig, you know, I really would be great and cut to two years later. And it's just everything's through the roof. I mean, it's just going crazy. And then it doesn't seem to be slowing down at all.
You just offer me the perfect segue because that's what I'm here for. Thank you. You know, I appreciate this tango that we're getting started here. I was looking back.
You were kind enough to answer some questions for Tribament from your book, my last book. And I was going back to reread it and I looked at your bio and at the time it read Tim McGraw sold more than 50 million records dot dot and all these amazing accolades. And then I looked at the more recent and it's more than 106 million records worldwide. The longevity is mind boggling on a number of different levels.
It's just not boggling to me. People still put up with me. And I'm wondering how have you thought about or how has your creative process changed over the years? What has remained the same?
What has changed? Because there's so many ingredients that you have to get right for you to not just last but succeed over the decades that you have. Well, one thing that doesn't change is great songs. That's the first check.
Should be the first check on any artist list. I write, I write for every project and I've been lucky enough to have some success with some of the things I write. But for me, the song always has to win. Wherever the song comes from, that's what it's going to be.
And I listen to songs constantly, I'm constantly writing, constantly listening. I'm hard on my own songs. It's probably why I haven't cut as many. But my process is pretty much the same.
I think material wise, I look for different kinds of music than I used to. I still like fun songs. If I find the right fun song, I'll do it. But it's tougher at a certain age to sing about Daisy Dukes and tailgates all the time.
It just doesn't quite ring true to me. But you know, every now and then, something comes along that's funny and you just do it because you're an artist and you're telling a story and you do it. But I gravitate more towards songs now that not only have meaning to me, but I think people can find a deeper meaning in their own situation and their own life. I would love for you to, if you could, maybe unpack for us a song.
Could be any song. And what I'm angling for is, of course, the genesis, but also what do you do when the muse goes a little quiet? Because you can't just as a working musician, like, I'm going to wait a year for lightning to strike because there's probably some process behind it. And I am not a musician, but I'm deeply interested in it.
One of my favorite albums of all time is Graceland by Paul Simon. And I was listening to his backstory as he explained how a number of those songs came together and I was just mesmerized. So could you tell the story of any song that comes to mind and the genesis? You know, probably live like you were dying when you were in a good place to start because that song came to me, it was right after my dad was diagnosed with brain cancer, glioblastoma.
And Tim Nichols and Craig Wiseman sent that song to me. They wrote it about my dad when I found out that that was happening and sent it to me. And I never played it for my dad. He was sick at the time.
I just felt that it was not appropriate to play a song about dying to your dad who was dying. Although I'm sure he would have loved the idea of having a song that was inspired by him. I didn't play it for him. I had the song and in his last days, he was at our farm in the cabin, at our farm.
That's where he wanted to be for his last days and spent a lot of time with him. And I think it was right around two weeks, two to three weeks after he passed away that we went to the studio to record. And we recorded an upstate New York at a place right outside of Woodstock at a place called Olair Studios. It's beautiful.
It's an old Dutch farmhouse and barn up on top of the mountain. Beautiful. We had like three foot of snow. We were there for three weeks.
We sent two semi trucks full of Persian rogues and furniture and just decked the place out for the band and I suffered three weeks while we were cutting. And my dad's older brother Hank, I invited him to come hang with us because you know, Tug had just died and I know he wasn't doing very well. So I invited him to come hang with us while we were recording. And it was probably six or seven days into the recording process.
And we would start late and we'd go to three, four in the morning recording. And I remember it was about one in the morning and I had this glass booth built in the middle of the studio so I could see everybody. And there was fireplaces at each end and the fireplaces were roaring. I had my glass booth in the middle.
We were cutting the saw. My uncle Hank was smoking a joint. If you know my uncle Hank, he's passed away, he passed away last year now. But he was an all American athlete, three sports, played pro baseball for 13 years.
Greatest guy in the world. We just like Sam Elliott, but was a potty head from day one. So I watched him and he was sitting over there and I just got to think and I thought, you know, this might be a good time to live like you were dying. So we just finished a song with us over dubs.
I gathered everybody around and I gathered and hank around and I asked everybody what their opinion was. They felt like tackling that song. So about two in the morning, we cranked it up before the sun came up. We had that song done and it was so tough because I'm sitting in the booth in the glass booth, recording the song, you know, directing the band or getting the parts right and I can't help it watch Michael Hank the entire time that we're doing it.
And he's just in a puddle over in the corner and then he's laughing and then he starts telling stories about telegatan. So we recorded the song. We got finished probably about four or five in the morning and then we just sat and listen up and talk about Hank tell stories about the rest of the night. And I have to believe that all that magic of that night of Hank being there tug it on him and gone for a couple of weeks and then Hank telling the stories afterwards.
I have to believe that all of that went into that record. There's so many different aspects to that. Yeah. Each of which you can unpack when you mentioned it seemed like a good time or it might be a good time.
Why did it seem like a good time? Was it a feeling? As you looked at your uncle. As I looked at my uncle, I just felt like that I was being told to cut the song.
Everything divides coming off of him. But I was feeling at the time and I think we would just cut something really up to him and pretty rocking. And I don't know. It was the mood, the snow outside, the fireplace is my uncle sitting there being so late at night, maybe there was a melancholy that sort of struck at that time.
I'm sure there were some other factors that might have been involved that struck about that time. I mean, you're in the studio that late. It just felt like there was a magic in the air at that moment and we wanted to capture it. We always like to say, you know, you can have the greatest song in the world, greatest band of the world, greatest singer in the world, which I'm not, but you can have all those factors and it's still not work.
We always say, sometimes God just walks through the room. All right, I want to have to pick up on that thread and then we're going to go back to some of your family history because I mean millions, millions of millions know your music, but I think fewer know the origin story. So we will get to that. But I also want to ask, when is the first time when you felt God walk through the door with one of your songs where you're like, oh, oh, okay, I think maybe we have some lightning in the bottle here?
I would like to say it was don't take the girl, but I didn't feel that way after we recorded it because I never felt like I captured exactly what I wanted on that record. And until we finally finished it, we finally finished it, I felt like we had it, but in the process of it, I felt like a struggle on that song, but Indian outlaw, because I had that song from my first album and nobody liked it. The label didn't like it. James Drow didn't like it.
Byron liked it, but I couldn't talk James and let me record it. I couldn't talk the label and the reasons they gave you. They just said it was too controversial and it was a bad song. It wasn't country music.
It won't work on radio. All the things that they were right about. I heard that song the first night I moved in Nashville. I got to Nashville at one or two in the morning on a Greyhound bus, walked down to the Hall of Fame Lounge and hotel were ended up staying for a couple of weeks, walked into the bar and everybody was closing down.
The band was packing up and Tommy Barnes and Max D Barnes were sitting at the bar. I think it's Max D Barnes. He's sitting at the bar and the bar is closing down. So I walked in and just ordered a beer and she said, we just had to ask Robin, I'll give you a beer.
I said, now I started talking to these two guys. So Tommy says, you have a room? I said, yes, let's go play some music. So me, Tommy and Max Barnes went up and started playing music.
With him stepping off the bus and Tommy played Indian outlaw and I don't want to be there in the morning when she wakes up and finds me going, which ended up coming up. I have three more songs to his. I heard that first night that I'm going to cut eventually, but Indian outlaw heard that first night and I started playing it immediately, learned it, started playing it in all the clubs around town, honky, honky, tonks around town. When we would go travel and play clubs all over the country, I was playing that song and we didn't have to play it two or three times a night, four times a night because people loved it so much.
And I kept telling the label and I was going into the cup of my first record. This was before I had a record. You knew it worked. I knew it worked.
And I didn't have any say so in the first album. So I went to cut the second album. That's what we're cutting, period. And when we cut it, I felt like this is either going to work in a huge way or it's going to work.
And I think that what kept me from being sort of a novelty act that had this sort of funky weird song that made some noise was being able to come right behind it but don't take the girl. I'll forever believe that the combination of those two songs is what set my career in motion and gave me a momentum that I probably could have gotten any other way. How would you describe both of those songs as a one, two punch? The first one for people who don't know why was it potentially controversial or different?
And I understood why it was controversial because it was stereotypical. It was sort of a play on Native American stereotypes. And there was a lot of controversy around it. And I understood the controversy and I wasn't upset about the controversy.
In fact, I met with several Native American leaders, some like the song, some didn't like the song. And my answer was, look, I understand what your concerns are. The song's not meant to be that way. I understand your concerns, my opinion, if you need to go after me in order to raise attention and awareness to your calls, by all means use my song for that.
So if you like it or don't like it, if you can make something good happen from it, then by all means I'm not going to be offended. And now when I play Native American casinos, I always, when I meet with the elders or the chiefs before the show, I always say, you know, I have Indian out on my set, but I'm happy to take it out if it's offensive. And invariably 99.9% of the time, that's why we hired you to sing that song. So they love it.
So it's been really good to me. And what about the follow up straight, the one to? Oh, but don't take the girl exactly. That song was just so powerful and such a great story.
It was the epitome of what country music is all about. A great story that gets right to the heart of the matter, that hits right to the emotion, leaves it a little open ended and makes you guess a little bit about what happened. But to this day, singing that song, there are times where it chokes me up still every time. And that song was one of my first stances as an artist to where I wasn't sure if I was a guy who was doing the right thing or not.
But it was my first opportunity to perform on the CMA's after Don't Take the Girl came out. And Walter was the guy who used to run the CMA's. They wanted me to do Don't Take the Girl, but they only gave me three minutes in the song's five minutes. And I was trying to explain to them that there's no way to sing the song without telling the complete story or it wouldn't make sense.
So I actually turned down my first opportunity to perform on the CMA's because I could do the whole song. Was that an obvious choice or did you second guess that choice after you turned it down the next day or the next hour? You're like, Oh, I think it was an obvious choice. Yeah.
I wasn't too worried because the song was doing so well. And I just thought there's no upside here to do in part of the song. It's not going to do anything for me. It's not going to do anything for anybody else.
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So drinkag1.com to check it out. One more time that's drinkag1.com.com. Tim. A few things come to mind for me.
The first is that in a digital world where we perceive to be virtual, folks try to do a lot virtually and you can do a lot in terms of testing and this, that and the other thing. But still, if you can get front of live audiences to test your material, whether you are a musician, a comedian, even in my case, as a writer, my first book was turned down 30 plus times by publishers, not an exaggeration. But because I had taught the material in front of classes for years and years and years, I knew that it worked. You knew it worked.
I knew it worked. That is the only reason. You had a practical sense that it worked. Yeah.
I could see it and I'd honed it and I'd taken out the equivalent of jokes that didn't work and I'd double down on the ones that did. And that still is just so incredibly valuable. I have that real time feedback, especially when you're playing multiple times a night. So in your process when you're writing a book and you're talking about trying material out, do you have an idea or a nugget of what you want to do and then you just start riffing on it around people just to sort of get feedback?
I do. I would say that these days I will often test on the podcast to see like segments or parts. Exactly. See what resonates or doesn't resonate.
So for instance, I'm considering doing a huge collection of case studies from the first book because of course people here at the fore I work with and they're like, bullshit. That guy is a liar. And I get it. I get it.
It's a controversial title and deliberately so. But there are hundreds and thousands of case studies. And so for every reason someone might have why they object to the title, the single mom, I've got five kids. I have this.
I have that on 60 and not 20. I have an example that has walked the walk in their shoes. So that said, a book is a huge commitment. I still find writing so difficult and I know you've had experience with this.
So I will put together a few episodes on the podcast where I'm basically testing different sets of questions with case studies. And I'm going to say, all right, look, I enjoy doing this, but how does the audience respond? At the same time, I would say for me, I think it's very dangerous to ask your audience or really anyone if you have developed a creative muscle and you value it, what should I do? Because then you can get shaped by the masses in a way that really leads you down.
I think a lost path. In my case, I might have two or three things I'm excited about. Then it's a question of which of these three and I will feel good about any of these three. Then it's OK.
So I test that. I still think to this day and I've thought about potentially approaching UT Austin to do a class. It's because the feedback is so fast. Yeah.
So they say they like it. If you look at their face and they are spacing out, checking their phone, you're like, it's not working. Not working. It is not working.
Like you said, you try things out. Musicians, comedians, writers, I do the same thing. If I run across a new song that I really like, I have the band working up. So let's play it a couple of times live and see what the reaction is.
Now there's a caveat to that because when I've been doing this for 35 years now, so when you have songs people expect to hear and then you throw a new one in on them, sometimes you get the reaction is not exactly what you want it to be, but it's not necessarily the reaction that you're going to get or they know the song. So you know, there's a little bit of a balance that you have to put on when you're doing it. Like again, also to not letting the audience determine what you do. That's really true because like you said, you can get lost.
If you start chasing what you think people want to hear, then you're in, I think you're in trouble then. I think you got to chase what you want to hear and what you want to play. And look, my taste is not going to match up with everybody's taste and probably less and less people's taste as the days go forward. Who knows?
It may grow more. I don't know, but I have to cut stuff that speaks to me. If it doesn't speak to me, especially if I didn't write it, it doesn't speak to me and I can interpret it in a way that speaks from my heart and speaks to someone else. If it doesn't speak to me first, there's no way I'm going to make it speak to somebody else.
It turns into a guessing game. And people can spot that in a way, whether they realize it or not they can. It strikes me how similar if you're pursuing creative expression and longevity, by the way, in so many disciplines, it's the same thing. It is just the same thing, whether it's podcast, whether it's music, whether it's writing, Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite writers, Larry S.
Cat, Breakfast of Champions, etc. People can pick up any of his books, they're really fun to read. And he used to say, along the lines, I'm paraphrasing, but if you open up the window and try to make love to the world, you're going to catch the flu. Basically, if you're trying to appeal to everybody, you're lost.
And at least you know you have an audience of one, if it's resonating with you. And the personal can be so universal. And again, we're so lucky as artists, writers, musicians, whatever you are as an artist, because that's therapy. You have your own built-in therapeutic machine.
Yeah. So there's the aspect of creative longevity. How many years have you been doing this again? 35, I guess.
It's going around there. 35 years. 35 years. You have creative longevity.
How do you continue to follow the right centrail, which is very personal, and not get lost because there's going to be a lot of tension, a lot of external forces, expectations, right? So there's that, which we've spoken to a bit physically. I know a lot of people are going to want me to talk about this. I want to talk about it.
How do you think about physically being capable to do what you do? I mean, you are still performing. That is intensely physical. I have never performed as a musician on stage, but I know a few.
Even when you're not running around as physical. Yeah. So does the energy there's. And in my case, I can't sit still when I'm performing.
I'm all over the place. But yeah, focus is the biggest word. I think in my vocabulary when it comes to what I do for a living. Because the times where I'm not focused are the times things aren't working.
I tell you that the last three years have been tough to focus with what I've gone with with surgeries with the surgeries. I'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, I was the last year, all the years around the other. 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 the stool and sing for an hour and have this physically impossible for me to do. 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, 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. I'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 to 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 work and I like to be hungry, I don't like the evil for all the stages. I like to be hungry for that reason because metaphorically works for him. I just had my first real experience with falconry.
Oh, wow. The falconer was very clear. He's like, you need that bird to be hungry. If you want it to hunt, it will not perform.
If you're stated, otherwise if you're stated, you're not going to do much. I'm 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, fed up with from falconry. So remember that's just a good little piece of knowledge.
Yeah, all these little words from Falconry. 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 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? You also mentioned a pool workout. I'm not sure if you still do that.
But what does the training regimen? What has it looked like and what does it look like now? 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 and that's what I did for a long time out, 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. So 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 squat or have or something.
So you run all the stairs and then we take a break and eat, take an nap or whatever. And then at 2-30, we go out for an hour and a half and do the outside stuff. A border comment. You need to work your dog.
That being said, I'm sure that I hastened all of my injuries. But I remember specifically when it happened, it was, you know, 1883, we shot 1883. That was pretty physically demanding. 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 had shows booked. So I would work till filming till 7, run and jump on a plane, go to a show, get back at 3 in the morning or 2 in the morning, get up at 4, try to go work out in and make a trade to go to 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. So people didn't know what I was doing and I'd put on... I tried to a couple of times, but you know what I was doing.
And then I'd put on about 10 pounds of weight because there was protein everywhere. I mean, wasn't fat or anything, but I was working out at state. I was always in fat, but people who haven't seen the series, I mean, that hotel scene with the pajamas or whatever it is, you're a fucker than anyone else. You do not look fat.
But I'm standing on stage and I got this big dyed black beard. I think these people are thinking that I'm dying my beard to look young because my beard is gray. I mean, my beard is snow white. 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 to you.
It was just uncomfortable. But we got through and it. I had to get the wore out and I tweaked myself a little bit a few times with my knee and I had some knee trouble before that 20. I had a meniscus done on my scope to my left knee and that 30 had a meniscus going to right knee.
But they had 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 hurt and 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. I went to bed that night and I woke up next morning 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 and went to the gym. So I spent two years in the gym just on the 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. And then doing the show, we finished out the tour where they literally had to carry me backstage. I'd get on stage, fake it through the show without acting like I was leaping 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, 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. 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 it like I walk it off. It's fine. And yeah, shoulder reconstruction.
And I won't turn this into like my litany of complaints about things. But I just do it. But the ball, the back in particular, you know, I've had crippling back issues for the last three to five years, which were precipitated by 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 and it twisted my body around and basically like tore my lap off my body of horrifying accident. But I suppose looking back, I've wondered this.
I have a friend whose name is Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired Magazine, great guy. I would say for his entire life has basically done no offense given, 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. And he has the best ideas. He's in his gotta be early to mid 70s. 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 days to compete in judo and all these various things took quite a few lumps from all that.
And I look back and I'm like, all right, what would I have done differently? And I think there's certain things I would have toned down probably would have given a slightly different prescription would have still been pretty aggressive. So 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. And 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 big aches and 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 I have to have kids and stuff. You know, you're eating chicken nuggets all the time. And 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 in this day. Why is that? Because I think I'll wait two 15 when we shot that movie. How is she going now?
Right now I'm 170. We went to see another movie and I've taken my kids and they were small and completely not even thinking about my movie. And of course, the very first trailer that pops up is Four Christmases, the movie that I just done and my face pops on the screen. And my daughter looked at the screen and looked at me and said, Gee, dad, you need to do something.
Because you could stick a pin in me and I want to just fool across the room. And that's when I decided to get back and show. But I do think that and people 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 look and took care of myself that I don't think my career would have lasted this long. And when was that?
Early 40s. Like 42, 43. How old do you know? 58 now.
Yeah, I mean, that's insane, man. You hear that I'm sure from us people, but you are in great. I mean, you look like you're in great shape and not hitting on you. But that's okay.
Yeah. But what has your work out looked like and I won't be labor this too much longer, but I feel like mind, body, brain, these are all the same thing. They're all a super organism. Absolutely.
And I'm a fundamental pillar of all of it for me and for you, I suspect. So what is your exercise regimen looked like for the last, let's call it year? Year. 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 sounds good. Story of my right meniscus too. I've tried to cut it down to two hours a day, but that includes usually walking an hour or 30 minutes to warm up for my knees to get going on the back.
So walking is always my start out, whether it's 30 minutes or an hour, just to walk, they're loosening everything up and do a lot of body weight, stuff, a lot of stretching. But never lift heavy weights. I don't do heavy weights at all. I try not to do dead lifts anymore because of my back, although the doc says I can do them like 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. And before I never would do that, I knew what I was doing. I've had some good trainers in my life and 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. I just had to be a lot more conscious about how I'm moving what I do.
And are those two hours all in the morning? 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 in special with injuries, you got to really try to every advantage you 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, do all that stuff. And I do certain, you know, multiple circuits of that. So we have similar recipe and two or three of the smartest athletes and trainers I know who used to be absolute monsters in the gym.
I 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 40s, early 50s, 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. But that's fine.
Well, good for longevity too. For sure. And my goal is I never want to be big. I don't want to be muscle cube on stage.
No, I don't want to be athletic. You know what I mean? Yeah, the whole big muscle thing. I don't know.
I'm not going to fall into that too skinny for that anyway. Yeah, I think there's a point where probably as a musician, it's just raises more eyebrows and more distracting than I thought. Yeah. Let's go way, way back as promised my delayed gratification for the audience.
Sorry, you took this long guys, but the exercises for me is so present every single day. And we'd love to talk maybe after our recording, we can talk more, but for the Dev Lift, for instance, like the Zerture Dev Lift, or Zerture Squats where you're holding the barbell in front really has protected my back 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, I would, we're I mean, not to like when we deliver it. I can remember. Yeah, back back. Oh, you'll remember.
No, remember. So can you tell the story of finding your birth certificate? Oh, yeah. Well, I'd gotten home from school and mom told me that 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 a concession stand at school for a quarter, you could get a candy bar back then or like 10 cents, you could get a code. Just so people can put you in space where we're at the time in Louisiana, little town start Louisiana where I grew up, little farming community. I mean, it's just a caution like a cotton gin is the swear I grew up. So I was in her looking for the little bag trying to find some quarters or something to go back and he barked the store or something.
I found the bag and there was a box right next to it open the box and right on top was my birth certificate. And I didn't think much of it. I started looking at it and I saw McGraw where he had a line had been drawn through it and right above it written by hand in pencil with Smith, which was my stepdad's name. And then it said dad's occupation professional baseball player.
And of course, at the 11 years old and growing up, we were like low, low middle class and you know, didn't have any money and 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 the wall in my room. This was one of them.
This 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 and she was at work and I'm like, Mom, what is this person? What does this mean? And then she was like, Oh my God.
That's all she said. 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 by grandpa and they were staying in a motel that had a pool with outdoor, you know, like a motor court motel. They were staying in. It just so happened that my grandmother and my mom were staying here, but just so happened that the minor league team, Jacksonville Suns, minor league team for the meds, all the ball players were staying in that hotel as well. So tugging my mom met at the pool and sort of dated over the summer.
And when he left, he got called up or whatever. He left. 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 or the precursor to American man's analysis.
So my mom had just gotten a letter inviting her audition for it. And 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 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 taught it to him since and hasn't heard from him. And I said, but I'd like a meeting, you know, so she got in touch with his lawyer somehow, his agent somehow.
He was still playing at the time. And 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.
I 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. 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 baton practice. And my mom had got me a McGraw shirt made and a fillies hat and I said, I said, I said, I'll deck out. So the next year we met never saw him after the game or anything. Never heard from him again.
So of course I was obsessed because an 11 year old kid would be about something like that. Just a quick thanks to our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. Back in the day, 2001, I started my first e-commerce business and it was a mess. You had to cobble together all these different tools that didn't want to talk to one another.
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Go to Shopify.com and sign up for your $1 per month trial today. That's Shopify.com.com. One more time, Shopify.com. What were the emotions that you felt at the time?
Was there anger? Was there confusion? Was there admiration? I think sure of emotions that you felt.
I think at the time, I 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 now calling him very abusive to my mom and 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 hear the truck drive up. So for me, there was an affirmation of why I felt like I'd been belong with that guy.
So it wasn't a confusion. I don't think I was young enough to register confusion. I think it was more certainly it was more about the excitement of finding out that your dad's a professional baseball player is certainly in the circumstances that our group 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 asked mom if I could go see the game again. She got to touch with the agent again and said he would leave two tickets, but he's not going to see us. So he left two tickets. So I was in Houston, which was the only time I'd seen him play cut to the first time I saw he played, he came in and gave up a grand slam.
The first time I played the bull pin is right along right by the stands. I mean, the stands are to that desk where the bull pin is 10, 12 feet away. Yeah, you're right there. He wouldn't see us before the game or anything.
So he was warm up and bull pin and my mom says, why don't you go down and say hi to him. He's warming up in the bull pin. So I walked down to where he was warming up and I was as close to me and you do already on these warming up some yelling and he said, I'll get still and he wouldn't look at me. He wouldn't look at me or knowledge me.
And so I just sort of dropped it for that. I didn't use McGraw, you 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. Then I got embarrassed I think after that. And I was just sort of thrown away. What happened?
What changed? Well, when I was 18, graduating high school, we didn't have any money for college. I was counting on sports scholarships and I had a few. But I was a small graduate high school.
I was 5' 10 barely and 140 pounds getting football scholarships and basketball scholarships. I was like, mmm, this is probably going to work out when I get to the next level. I got my size. So she was going to call about paying for college.
She could see if he would pay for college. This is a long story. She could 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. We 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 like, mom, what are you doing here? You know, we're about to play a game.
You can't be down here. I'm like, I heard from Doug's lawyer today. And I said, OK, mom, can we wait till after the game? We get home to talk about this.
So play the game, got home, and we talked a little bit about it. And then we can talk about the next morning. And the deal was they'd send a contract. They said that he would pay $300 a year towards my college and that I wouldn't never be able to contact him again.
And if I did, money was anyway, $300 a year for college, then you can't contact me anymore. And that to me was enough to say, you know what, fine. My only request is I don't even need the money. $300 a month, I don't need the money.
I don't need the money. I don't need anything. My only request is that he has to meet me 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 just graduated high school. So I was just calling him.
And we walked into the hotel and mom said, well, there's tugs standing, checking in over there. And he had somebody with him, who is a lawyer or a class agent. So I walked over to him and tapped him on the shoulder. And he turned around looking at me.
I took him to him 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 look just like him. So he knew that the gig was up.
So 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 since she left, I just looked at the tugs.
I'll sign your contract. I'll never talk to you again. I will 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. And 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 to Wobbles in college, I would drive up the Philly and visit. And got to know my little brother Mark and my little sister, Kerry, 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, I think, that I grew up in that world. And I didn't. So 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 longest 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 haven't even needed to do something. And so for that reason alone, I couldn't hate him. Hope. Yeah, it's just a better octave.
Everything else. If everything else is going, if you've got hope, you still got a chance. I'm talking to a friend of mine. He's got a couple of kids now, now mostly grown.
I think back is all grown. I think about it. The older I get, the younger people seem. Oh my God.
Yeah, they're there. That's a good point. And he said, 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 aspiring parents?
I don't yet have any kids, but really I'm looking forward to that building family. And 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. Yes, that's it. Those two things make perfect sense.
Yeah, 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 to 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, well, the music thing came about because my mom's love for music because from my earliest memory of the time, I 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. So I knew every song on the radio, we'd sing with my mom all the time. We'd walk around the house singing in church.
I mean, my friends just give me shit all the time playing baseball. I played shortstop in the whole time I'm out there. I'm singing songs and playing around. Because I was always singing to the point where my sisters were always like, shut up.
Shut up. Just stop singing. And I still do it to this place. I make a sound.
I'll sing a song that's got that word in it. It's just me. I can't give it out. So it was always something.
But I was in the same category that you were thinking that, you know, guys, you're going to rate your guys that have been doing this since they were three or four years old. They're trained musicians. They're guys that Jackson five. Yeah, this is just 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. And that's when I realized when I got into college and I went out for the first football sort of roundup and see everybody. When I looked around and thought, all right, I'm going to get killed. I'm going to be meet on the practice squad, never see the field and get the hell beat out of me and spend all of my time here.