The Heart & Soul of Modern Country Music

David:

Welcome to Disarming Data. It's Paige and me, David, talking to extraordinary people about interesting things and extraordinary things they've done. The twist is, we're doing so from two generations. I'm an old boomer-

Paige:

I'm a millennial who grew up in the tech generation.

David:

I don't know anything about tech. I usually lose my cell phone rather than use my cell phone. I'm a tech novice, but in this podcast, I think I can handle it because we're going to be talking to some really interesting people, including psychologists, chefs, undercover agents, active veterans, and on and on.

Paige:

And Dad, you forgot about whistleblowers, and other people who are interesting and influential to us.

David:

And Paige, you forgot to say thank you for listening to the show.

Paige:

Thanks for listening.

David:

We are extremely lucky today on Disarming Data. Paige and I have Jay Knowles. Jay Knowles is unbelievable. He has written songs for Luke Bryant, Trace Atkins, Billy Ray Cyrus, George Strait, Alan Jackson, including a number one Grammy nominated song, Jack Ingram, Blake Shelton, Collie Rose. I mean you've written for everybody, Jay. And we're going to talk to Jay about his background, how he got started, about country music, which we love, and then a little bit about the politics in Nashville. But Paige, you want to introduce yourself to Jay and then Jay, we'll let you introduce yourself. Thank you.

Paige:

Oh yes, I'm Paige. Thanks so much for coming on. And we like to know kind of the background of our guests, where you're from, kind of your path into music, and just any other interesting facts. I like random interesting facts as well.

Jay:

I was born in Texas, and so I claim Texas around Texans because they really seem to enjoy people from Texas. But I actually, I grew up here in Nashville. We came here when I was about six years old. My dad is a guitar player and he had met Chet Atkins backstage at a Chet Atkins concert and my friend of his who was a little bit more forward than he was, said, "John, you're a good guitar player. You should play this for Chet." And so my dad did, and then they kind of developed a sort a correspondence and my dad did some arranging for him from Texas. And then Chet encouraged my dad to move to Nashville, and so he led up the family and we moved to Nashville like everyone does. I'm always amazed at anyone who just packs up their life and moves to Nashville. I didn't have to do that. I was just sort of here the whole time and I knew that being a songwriter was a job my whole life, whereas, I think a lot of people come here, you don't even know that's actually a career you could have until they get further into the music business.

But so I just kind of grew up around all this stuff. Never really expected I would be involved in it just because I was kind of around it and went to college up in Connecticut at Wesleyan and was playing guitar and planning on being what we call a real writer, somebody who writes books, or short stories, or any kind of other thing other than songs. But I kind of got hooked into the idea of writing songs and a friend of my dad's who was a publisher here in town named Dave Conrad who had been a publisher of a bunch of different folks, my heroes, I met him, I mean, I was talking with him one time and he was like, "Jay, you're pretty clever. You should try writing songs sometimes."

And I kind of believed him, and so I started writing songs and then in college I would be in cover bands, but every now and then we'd slip one of mine in there to see if anybody noticed. People were so unfamiliar with country music up in that part of the world anyway that they didn't. But then after I graduated, I just kind of wandered back to Nashville. I was too nervous to go anywhere else and started pulling weeds and waiting tables and writing songs, and that gets you into the beginning of it at least.

David:

Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, I was going to say Greenwich Connecticut doesn't strike me as a place where they have a bunch of country music bars-

Jay:

There was one biker bar down the street that we were too afraid to ever go to, but we feel like they probably had country music there, but we were a bunch of college nerds and we weren't going to go test that out.

David:

I was just curious, why did you decide to go to Connecticut of all places, from Nashville?

Jay:

Well, growing up in Tennessee, I just kind of thought that the Northeast was where all the smart people were, and if you were going to go to college, that's what it was. And I'd gone up there one time on a trip and it was like that was what to me, college was, was old buildings in the Northeast and dusty old people saying and doing smart things. And so that's what I wanted to do. I was kind of right, but I mean there's smart people other places too. I have since learned.

Paige:

And there's some very dumb people in the north.

Jay:

There's some very dumb people and there's rednecks everywhere and I mean it's really just accents is the thing that kind differentiates people more than anything, I think. But that's what I thought and it was good for me. I kind of also suspected I might wind up back down in this part of the world and wanted to get away for a little while.

Paige:

Do you remember the story of your first song that you had written and it did very well or what song it was and who it was for? And if you had this sort of, I don't know if you did have this, but I feel like it would be kind of this imposter syndrome sort of like, I can't believe this is happening or something like that?

Jay:

To answer the last part of your question first, I still have imposter syndrome all the time. I think that is... I always say that I only know of two songwriters in town who are very good, who also think they're very good and it's very rare. And everyone else I know who's good is constantly thinking like this, maybe they wrote a good song one time, but that was just a fluke and they're never going to do it again and how am ever going to... And now I got to... That's kind of the mindset of all songwriters except for two who are very good and think they are, who I'll not name. I will not name them. I will not name names. They're lovely people. They just are very aware of their awesomeness. The first song I ever wrote, actually, I wrote with my dad when I was about five years old, and we were sitting around the table and I said, "I want to write a song dad about a gorilla and a banana."

My dad had never really written songs, he had done like guitar things, but he was not really a songwriter at that point. He said, "Okay." So we kind of started doing it. It was really just sort of like a family drive around. Let's make up another verse to, it was called The Gorilla Song. We would just kind of make it up. Then I guess when you're young, you don't have imposter syndrome and you think you are good. And so when we made a visit to Nashville before we moved there, so I was five or six years old and we'd had this little song and we were in Chet Atkin's office, which I was not impressed by, and Shell Silverstein walked in, which I was very impressed by. I mean, he was the guy. But then of course, because I was young, I said, "Hey dad, can we play our song for Chet and Shell?"

And Chet was like, "Yeah, play it." And so we did. And then Chet was like, "That's pretty good, why don't you do it again?" And so he pushed record on his little tape player and play it for him. And fast-forward to, I don't know, probably 15 years later, almost 20 years later, my dad and I met Raffi at a hotel. He was staying in a hotel where a friend of my dad's was playing in the jazz bar lounge and same thing, but this time because I was fully invested in my imposter syndrome at that point it was my dad who said, "Hey Jay, let's play that song for Raffi, he might dig it." And he did, and he put it on his next record. So there was really, the first song I ever wrote was the first song I got recorded, but then there was about 500 between that one and number two.

Paige:

Come on.

Jay:

Because then you just got to just start because really the way you learn how to write songs is by writing songs and just do it and do it, but writing poorly a bunch until you finally stumble into one that's not terrible, and then proceed.

Paige:

Do you think that your songs are, when you're writing songs, do you take it more from personal experience, or is there a big aspect of what will appeal to people most and that's kind of how songwriting just goes?

Jay:

The way I kind of have come to do it. I mean, I do have friends who write just fully, this is what happened to me this week and I got to get it out of my system. But those are not usually work a day songwriter people because we only have so much autobiography to pull from. The thing I've learned over the years is a lot of times I'll start a song from a cool clump of words, or a little melody, or a little hook that sounds like a thing or an idea, or something I saw somewhere else or whatever. But it's usually about halfway through the writing of it. I'll pause and be like, "Now why is this song about me?" And not about me in terms of what the situation is or what the nouns are, or what... Somebody's got a blue truck, I got a red truck, whatever, that doesn't matter, but can I put my heart into this song if I were listening to it?

And that's where it becomes a song about me at that point, because my theory at least is if it's not about me, it's not going to be about you either because the idea is supposed to be about everybody when they hear it, they're supposed to be able to do that same thing. Can they put themselves in it and feel like it's a song that's about them? And people talk a lot about relatability, and to me, relatability is not like I'm four foot whatever. I'm not going to talk on that. I'm this height or I'm from this town, or I'm from a small town, I'm from a big town. It's like all those things don't matter in terms of relatability. As much as, is there a human emotion thread, that's something that we can all pull from? And that's the thing that I think that that's why you don't have to be country to like country music or you don't have to be with this to like that. It's really about is your heart connected to it in some way? This is my theory. I'm wrong a lot, and there's multiple examples of where that's entirely untrue, but that's the way I approach it.

Paige:

Did you always know you were going to write country music from the start? I will write because of... I feel like we listened to a lot of country, my dad and I, but I feel like there is a really big lyrical aspect to country that maybe, I mean it's in so many different genres honestly, but-

Jay:

It always felt like the one that I was a part of, myself, when it didn't occur to me to think about other... I mean I liked other kinds of music, but it felt like this was mine, mine that I was a part of and like I said, looked like said lyrically when I was learning how to write songs, the two things that I sort of gravitated toward was country music, and then going backwards to learn the history of country music, and then show tunes from the forties, and fifties, and thirties. Like Rodgers and Hart, and Roger and Hammerstein, and Gershwins and that kind of thing. Classic song making skills were a big part of what I was trying to figure out. I think there's a thread there to those kinds of songs and to the kind of songs that I like to write.

But yeah, country music always seemed... And country music was... We talked about that. We'll talk about that later, I'm sure. There was a broader thing of what it meant back then too, and I felt like I could participate in all the versions of that more so than going to Los Angeles and becoming a pop person. And Los Angeles terrified me at that point or whatever was happening in New York at the time was very, little too scary.

Paige:

What do you think your favorite part of the history of country music kind of is?

Jay:

In terms of the era of music or-

Paige:

In terms of the era? Maybe just the people that are surrounding country or even the introduction of, I mean, I don't want to say introduction, but I feel like once country started coming out, a lot of different instruments in America mainly, I feel like I'm going to say we hear it for the first time.

Jay:

For me, there's that little window from '68 to '74 is kind of true for all genres of music, that there was something that was going on, it was happening. And movies too, I guess it hadn't quite gotten corporationized, but there was enough of infrastructure there to support people doing things. Then I think that was true in Nashville as well as it was true in if you listen to those Rod Stewart records, or the end of the Beatle records, or stuff that David Bowie was doing, or any of those things, or Carol King, that's when Joni Mitchell was kind of doing her thing. I mean all that was... Something was going on that was kind of crazy during that little window, as was Willie Nelson was getting figured out, and Christofferson was figuring his thing out, and Dolly Parton was getting going and there was something, I don't know that, that little window of stuff remains exciting to me to go back to.

David:

Oh, I liked the Outlaws.

Jay:

Feels like a lot of what we do is we're still referencing that thing continuously or either that or Nickelback, which we reference now apparently, which that's not my cup of tea.

David:

Well, they changed... Country music was a little too instrumental before then. I mean it was like lush melodies and stuff in the background. Am I remembering right?

Jay:

Yeah. There was that era, country had been very much more acoustic or electric kind what you think of country, country. And then when rock and roll showed up, that was Nashville's attempt to compete with that was to add strings to everything and to make it be a bigger production and all that. And that was a lot of what Chet Atkins was doing and Owen Bradley, and I think there's a lot of folks who don't... That era of music is kind of not appreciated and I understand why, but also it's kind of why there was able to still be in Nashville around a decade later to be cool again. Because otherwise, I think Nashville would've become, Memphis became, or Detroit or there's other cities that had music scenes that were as big as and important as Nashville's was in the sixties, but then Nashville was the only one who kind of maintained one after the explosion of rock and roll and corporate record selling. There's not a lot of other towns that do that, but there used to be.

Paige:

Could you just touch on or explain, I guess, I get confused about the differentiations between country music, Southern Rock, Americana, Jason Isbell is one of my favorite, and I thought he was country for the longest time, and then someone corrected me and they were like, "No, he's Southern rock." And I was like, "I don't know what the difference is." So I was wondering if you could explain it to me a bit more?

Jay:

Boy. Yeah, I mean it's all part of the same soup, and like I said, I would say Isbell is more Americana than southern rock, but then his initial band he had was more southern rock, but then I also think that REM is a southern rock band and The B-52s are a southern rock band. So southern rock is that sort of whatever was going on during that thing. And so to me, that's anything that's sort of related to Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers in that era of stuff that's kind of coming from that. And there's newer bands that I'm not thinking of right now, but who were part of that tradition. But it influenced, I mean, say probably the closest that became sort of popular of Nashville country music would be some of the stuff that Hank Williams Jr. was doing was kind of tied to that. But he was also kind of had tighter song structure and was more radio the way he was doing stuff, and more Nashville Music Row kind of an approach. So he was part of it, but to me, the southern rock stuff is not really geared at what country radio kind of stuff.

Probably the way I see things, when I think of country music myself, I think of 615 Music Row Nashville. That's what country music is. Whatever we are deciding it is at the moment is what that means, what that word means. And then everything else is related to that is something else that is also a part of that. What Isbell does, or even what, there was a time when you would say that Emmylou Harris and people like that were country music, but she started over in California rock, and then became country music, and now she's more Americana and it has less to do with her changing who she is and more with what the definition of country music is as it shifts over time.

David:

But Taylor Swift, she made a conscious decision to get out of country, is that right?

Jay:

And it's funny, but I think that part of what is so great about her and why she has managed to become the international sensation that she is that she was trained on how to write songs and lyrics specifically in Nashville, Tennessee by Nashville's Best. And I think that once you learn that you can't unlearn that. And so even though her music, she may be musically more pop or the subject matter or some of the song structures are more pop music, she still has that Music Row Nashville notion of what does a hook do? When you've done a hook, what does that mean? And the second verse is supposed to relate back to this and how does the lines connect? All those things that are just kind of in our bones are in her bones. And so she has that skillset, but she has kind of a broader brush to paint with because it's all, it's pop music now, I guess. And I think that's probably part of why she decided to move outward is because especially for women in country music during this last little whatever, 15 years we've been in, has been a very narrow lane that they've been allowed to act in at least as far as country music, radio success. There's been a lot of women doing really kind of cool things, but it's all been sort of off to the side of the main highway.

Paige:

Why do you think that shift happened?

Jay:

I think some of it was... I think it started off as just a massive overcorrection. Now I'm just making, I mean, this is my theory, I'm probably wrong, but there was a time before that, when if you listen to country radio, it was very, there's a lot of female artists. There was a lot of stories that were really geared toward women and women's stories and things like that. And I remember unfortunately, at the time saying, "This is all great, but if I was a 13-year-old boy, there's no way I would want to listen to country radio right now. It just is all a bunch of women talking about women's stuff." And that's interesting to me as an adult man because I have a broader understanding of humanity, but as a 14-year-old boy, that's just not going to be my thing. So I think that the powers that be in country radio land realized that that was an aging demographic and they needed to get young kids in and best way and then they just start going for these young boys.

And then that became the thing, and then every song became, what is that? That became the prevailing thing that they were trying to accomplish. And then once that became the thing, I think it got to where if the object of radio is not so much to make you listen as it is to make you not change the channel, they want you to stick around to listen to the commercials and they want the commercials to stick around just long enough so you listen. That's the idea, to keep you there. So if things get too jaggedy and too unlike Old Am Radio that everybody talks about, the idea is to keep a similar vibe and a similar situation and then kind of change it over time so people don't get jarred. I don't think anyone ever really figured out a way for a woman to sing that style of music and what that story would be.

The thing that, and I don't bust on any of these people, some of my pals, and they do good, but there's not a way to be a woman and Luke Bryan at the same time. I mean there may be, but they never figured out what that is. The closest they figured it out was Miranda Lambert figured it out a little bit and Carrie Underwood figured it out a little bit, but that's kind of like it in any large way. Now that's changing as we speak. Finally, I think that people are gotten tired of that thing and the idea of a woman singing country music is now almost like this exciting, novel, new thing and it's like, "Whoa, what's that like? That's cool." And so now that those are still, stories are becoming interesting and new to people, and so I'm hoping that, that'll change, but I think for a while there, there was not a way to get into that wall.

Plus sexism is obvious and gross, and that's a huge part of it as well. That, "We don't want a bunch of chicks..." And that's obviously a big part of it too, but I think that that other is part of it as well.

Paige:

And would you say part of that kind of exit that women take out of country, I know Marin Morris just left, I know that Taylor Swift obviously left, I think. Do you think there is a part of it that has to do with there's going to be more space for me in other genres?

Jay:

I think a lot of that is that, and I think also it's the people who played country music up until this kind of current generation, meaning people who were in their thirties now, I would say, everyone else who had ever showed up in Nashville to be a country music singer, not everyone else, but most people grew up listening to country music. They were country music people. They were country, country. And then they sang country music. They were country music, and that was all they knew. Whereas, Taylor Swift, Marin Morris, all them grew up listening to country music and loving country music, but also listening to Beyonce and also listening to whatever. They showed up with a wider experience and palette. And so the idea of them doing this other kind of music is not strange to them. Whereas, if Loretta Lynn had decided to go pop, that would've broken so many things and it would've been weird, and awful, and strange, and probably great, but she wouldn't even known how to do it because it just is not in her bones at all.

Paige:

And maybe you don't have an answer, which is fine. Do you have a favorite song you've written and if so, why?

Jay:

I have some I like that no one has ever heard or will ever hear other than about three people. That one that Alan Jackson, that You Don't Have To Love Me anymore. It felt like that Adam Wright, who I wrote it with, and I. We really kind of did the thing that we were trying to do there. And still when I sing it, even though it's 10 years old now, it feels like I can go be in that emotion in a way that feels very true, even if I'm not feeling that emotion at the time. The thread of it is all really true, and that means a lot to me. So of course people like it. That helps too.

David:

Yeah, a lot of your songs, Jay, they seem like they're about, maybe it's a country music theme, but a lot of them are broken hearts, like taillights being blue and driving away. Hank Williams doesn't write somebody leaving in a Camry.

Jay:

It's really... Everybody wants songs that are just like, "Hey, hey, everything's awesome. We're in love. Yay, yay, yay." But there's just, and if you can find one of those, it's great, but there's no drama in that thing. It's kind of like I always talk about how if you go watch one of those romantic comedies, which are my favorite kind of movies to watch, they don't make my stomach hurt, but it's always like, "Hey, I love you. You love me. No, you don't. Oh no, he's gone, what's going to happen? But she just wrote a letter and he didn't see it in time." And then they're chasing each other through a thing and then they get together and then they kiss and it is over because that's the end. Now, Being in Love Together Forever is not a movie that's boring. That's just life. So songs are the same way. There's a lot of songs in that. "Oh no. Oh, I'm sad. Oh, I am happy." There's a bunch of songs in that, but there are no, there's very few songs in, "I love you and you love me and whoopie do."

David:

Right? Oh, because you got to migrate. Yeah, I've heard a good country music song. It always tells a story. It's always got a beginning, a middle, and an end. And the most difficult thing about it, is to put that in three minutes, but I'd like to hear your thoughts about that.

Jay:

Yeah, that's funny. I was talking with a friend of mine about that the other day is, is that idea. It's like I don't really think... I mean, there are people who write good story songs like what we call story songs, like, "He did this and then she did this, and then this happened, and dah dah dah or whatever." And I'm terrible at those, but that doesn't mean that to me, all good songs are story songs, meaning that there is a story that's happening within that song, and you figure out a way to tell that story that is not "Once upon a time, it's here we are in the middle of this thing, here's some details." Your brain is going to fill in the rest of the stuff with things that, but there is a story there the whole time, and that is existing kind of as the framework of it.

Even if you're not saying, "It was a rainy night in July." It doesn't matter. But if you can figure out which details to give people, then the story is as apparent in there the whole time, and those are the songs that I really like. The Tail Lights Blue song, Adam and I wrote that one as well, and it's like, you don't have to say, "They were together and the thing, and then they had a fight." It's like, no, you, that's happened. You just see it. That's all happening in the context of the song and you know you're telling the story by picking which details you choose to share. And then at the end you realize that this is not going to work out for him in the long run.

David:

Oh yeah, yeah. The opposite would be Take the Girl where it starts off when he is a kid and then-

Jay:

Yeah, exactly. And those are cool. I'm bad at that.

David:

Oh, is that-

Paige:

Is that what you try first?

Jay:

I'll try every now and then if there's an idea that's happening, but that's just not where my strengths lay and I have some, but it always feels like I'm writing somebody else's song when I'm doing it or writing something... I'm like, I'm copying a way of doing it from somebody else or something. It feels kind of hacky.

David:

Ah.

Paige:

That's so interesting.

David:

Yeah. Something else that you hear a lot in country music that I didn't hear as much in your songs is I think the phrase is oxymoron. I got to be bad to feel good. And you have those sort of contrasts. You've got some of that, but you seem to use it as much. I just interested in what you have to say about that?

Jay:

And probably are some, but yeah, that just doesn't... And that may just be the sampling. I'm not against it, but it's got to resonate somehow in the moment for what I'm doing. But then I was just thinking of a song the other day that Tracy Berg wrote that Patty Loveless recorded called You Can Feel Bad if it Makes You Feel Better. And that's one of my favorite songs of all time. Yeah,

David:

You've got the one is I'm Half in You or It's Half in You, I'm All In You... Or Halfway you've got that pairing up in that one song. That's cool.

Paige:

How long does it take for you to write a song generally? Is it a very long process? I know I don't have friends that write for famous artists, but in their spare time they do songwriting and some of them will have a feeling, write one out in 10 minutes and then be done and others will be working on the song for months.

Jay:

The usual typical workday for me and most of my compadres is well start around 10:30 or 11:00 and try to wrap up around 3:00. And usually during that time we've written a song, and the reason that Workday is kind of short, maybe 2:00 really is, and I'm sure all those brain science people have finally realized what we've known all along is that you can't work hard and be smart for more than two and a half or three hours, really.

And so usually we'll be done with a song. Somebody'll have kind of an idea. You spend the first half hour just kind catching up as your friends or getting to know each other, but then you'll kind of talk about, "Well, this idea for a song, I got this." And you have little chunks of words, a little bit, some melody and things like that you're starting from, it's not starting from zero, usually. It's like if you get it and if it's working, then it just starts to unfold and you kind of don't want to think too hard about it because then your brain starts getting in the way of doing it. And just that thinking part of your brain kind of comes in at the end of the day more where you're like, "Okay, no, is this really a thing?" Because you don't want to get in the way of yourself, the feeling, and the vibe in the room and all that kind of stuff.

And then the other thing is if you write a song and it's not that good that day, and that's the difference between professional songwriters and versus people who do it... Because in any given day, the future of the universe does not hang in the balance. It's just another song, just another day. And you do your best to get it as good as you can that day and with what you started with. And if it's not great, you're like, "Ah, okay, it's not going to be great. Tomorrow will be great."

And so you don't... It's a weird balance of caring and not caring at the same time. And then a lot of times you don't know if a song is that good until a week later, or 6 months later, or 15 years later. It's like, it's very, so judging yourself as you go, just slows you down more than anything.

David:

Oh, that's really interesting. Where physically do you work? And do you always have a co-writer with you or do you do something first, and then find a co-writer? And how's that whole process work?

Jay:

Yeah, I have a studio where I work, but most people do have some kind of spot either if a publishing company will have several offices for writers to use or little studios for writers to use depending on the size of the company. Like Warner Chappell has a whole building that's like the writer's building and then they have, I don't know, 8 or 10 rooms maybe more than that, and a drink machine, and a pool table, and a whole kind of setup. They got a bunch of people coming and going, and so you'll meet up there to write that day. Some people like to do it at their house. I like to kind of not be at home when I'm doing it. If I'm at home doing it, then all of a sudden I'm thinking, well, "I should do some laundry while... I might as well get some dishes done."

I like having a spot that's a space where that's the thing that you do, is that, because you can get very distracted from the other stuff. But like I say, I think usually, sometimes somebody will have a thing that they're working on, but a lot of times if somebody's too far down the road on it, they'll just say, "Man, that's really good. You should finish that." Unless I feel like there's something that I could really add to it that they're stuck on something, "I'm like, well, here's the solution to the problem that you have." If I have some actual helpful something I can do. And I write by myself a good bit, but I also write with other people. Most Nashville is co-writing at this point. You learn how to write by yourself and then you learn how to write even better by writing with people, and that enables you to write faster.

It makes it more likely to be something that more people would want to hear because it's not as an individually weird, it's less idiosyncratic. But then also, it helps you, if I'm writing with somebody else, they know people, they have different connections within the music business of who to play it for, who to pitch it to. They might know somebody like, I might be friends with these guys, but they're friends with those folks and those kinds of things. Or if there's any number of those kind of considerations or I'm writing with somebody who wants to be a singing star or who is a singing star, and that increases the chances of them recording it because they wrote it. And not just because they're trying to get more money, but because it can feel more like a song that they would say because of their languages, you can use the way they talk and talk about things that are concerning to them or as an artist, stuff that they want to put out there.

Paige:

Do you have any advice, and this isn't just for songwriting, I work with in college and career prep, so kids will get stuck all the time on these personal statements because they're not used to having creative writing. And I just was wondering if you had any advice for when you're stuck in a writing process, like what to do next?

Jay:

The best thing is just to stop and walk away. That helps a lot and then come back. Fresh brains is always the best cure for most things, I think. I think sometimes if you get stuck, and I've learned this from writing songs a lot, is if you're halfway through a song and you're just like, "Ergh..." It's probably because you just started wrong. And so sometimes stepping back and being like, "Maybe the beginning, maybe this is not the way this should be." So if you're doing something like that going, "Well, this isn't how this should go, what's a whole entirely different way to revision this thing?"

Especially when I was early on writing songs that would be a lot of, there were some songs I would start and be like, "No." And there's a song that Casey Beathard and I wrote, Blake Shelton recorded, and then Billy Ray Cyrus recorded it and a couple other people, and I'd written the whole song, the whole idea, and it was not good, but I was like, "Man, this idea is really cool." And so I took it to Casey and I was like, "I wrote this song, I'm not going to play it for you because I don't want you to have any ideas, but this is the idea." And he is like, "Oh man, that's cool." Then so between the two of us then we just totally different song, totally different thing and it became really cool. And so that's a lot of it I think sometimes too is if it's something that you're really into, you start it wrong.

David:

So when you write a song with someone, you're physically in the same room with them and trading ideas back and forth and-

Jay:

Up until April of 2020, the answer to that question was always yes, but then that was a thing that we all learned how to do out of necessity, was how to write Zoom style. And so we started doing that and I think people hated it. People loved it, I loved it because I didn't have to go places and be nice to people and things like that. You could just show up and be a songwriter and then close your computer, and then do whatever you needed to do. But I say that until we can start writing in front of people again and it was like human people, and songs, and things, and there are some people, who write, "Here's some stuff I did and I'm going to send it to you and you work on it now." But I think that's more of a pop music thing.

The kind of traditional Nashville way of doing things is get everybody in a room and start banging on it until it's done. And that seems to be the best way. Because it's that things where it's like you don't know. Even if it's a song that I wrote with somebody else where I came up with all the words and all the melody, technically, while we're doing it, we wrote that song together and it's 50/50 because usually if that's true, it's not what I would've done had, had they not been there because their thing, and their what, and their stuff. So having someone else's energy, and brains, and what abouts? And things like that makes a song be something that you did with somebody and there's no replacing that I don't think.

Paige:

Not to shift gears, but can you talk about Whalefarm and what it is, why you created it, and the purpose?

Jay:

Yeah, the idea behind it really started from this notion that there are just a bunch of songs out there that are written by me and my friends, and people I know, and other songwriters that are kind of the best ones in Nashville, and they get lost because everybody's always writing another song the next day, and another song the next day, and another song the next day. And so if you write... And I feel like in everybody, everybody feels like, he stopped loving her today that exists on a hard drive somewhere in the basement somewhere. At the end of the day, they wrote it, they're like, man, this is pretty good. And they went and they played it for whoever was cutting that month in Nashville, but the equivalent to that song is, George Jones was on the road, and so he just never heard it because he just wasn't around, or he'd already cut his record, and they played it for everybody else and they're like, "Man, that's cool, but that's really not for me."

And so it was really kind of came up with there's got to be a way to have those songs be available not to the public because it's business facing thing. So you've got to kind of be in the Whalefarm club and you got to be a songwriter, or a record producer, or a label executive, or somebody who's artistry or somebody who's in the business of finding songs to use. But it was a way to get those songs heard. And so hopefully somebody will be like, "Oh wow, look there. That's that one. That's from 15 years ago." Who was it? Somebody was telling me the other day that there's a guy whose job at Sony Publishing, his name was Dale Bobo and he had been in my publisher a long time ago. His job is to find songs that are in the catalog down there and get them recorded, and he's about to get a song recorded that's 57 years old.

David:

Wow.

Jay:

That's never been recorded. I mean it's not an old hit, it's just a song that he found going through old tapes and he's like, "Man, this is cool." So Whalefarm really is, it's a way to use technology to accomplish a similar idea.

Paige:

That's awesome.

David:

That is awesome. Yeah, Apple Music has something like that now where they try to find an old song that's been sitting around and then they just redone. I think they had two of them out now I think. So if you were to put your songs, and I like a amateur on this stuff, but they seem like you like the nineties country music style most, or am I wrong on that? That was sort of an era. Obviously Alan Jackson seems to be part of that era, or is there a certain era you like and you think about when you're write now and what do you think about-

Jay:

It's like that probably, probably that time just because that was when I was learning how to do it, so it's kind of stuck in my bubble and the late eighties kind of. The stuff I really kind of gravitated toward when I was learning was there's a little window of country music that happened before Garth Brooks showed up, and I'm not busting on Garth, he's got good songs, but it was before... Country music was not popular in the larger world before then. And so there was a lot of things happening, was more experimental and a little more weird, and they were like, "Whoa, it's cool. Here's a record. We'll just put this out. What's the worst thing that could happen?" They were trying to succeed, but the stakes were lower. But Don Williams was a big during that time and as was Steve Earle was a country artist back then.

David:

Wow. Oh, no kidding.

Jay:

And there were some other groups and things. And so when I was figuring things out, that was kind of what I was really into. I liked the thing that I'm trying to always pull from all of the history of country music, but except to make a thing that can exist regardless of the era, is the dream. And I have songs that sound exactly like they were written in 2017, that I wrote in 2017 that we'll never see the light of day because then it became 2018 and nobody cared anymore. And we all have those. But the idea really, especially in country music, is to write one that does not exist with it... You put on different drum sounds and a little bit different singing style and the synthesizers change, and it could be 1977, or '87, or 2017 and it wouldn't matter. And there's always a style, but there's always a thread of country music that exists and then everybody... So that's the hope.

Paige:

And then just to ask you, we're both big country music fans also, I mean my dad raised me extremely liberal. I was just wondering, did you grow up liberal, or did Wesleyan influence you heavily?And what it's kind of like to be more liberal and I don't want to say a right wing, because I do know a lot of a more mixed, I would say there's definitely a more mixed space than other genres of music.

Jay:

No, if there were a union for us, I'd be a third generation union member. My granddaddy was an oil tank inspector for Mobil Oil down in Texas, and he was a union man, and my dad is in the resistances union and there's not one for us, but that sort of permitted, and my dad's dad was a preacher in Texas. But he was a civil rights guy then, and they would get hate calls when my dad was a little kid because he was trying to get black people to do things they shouldn't be allowed to do. And this was in Texas in the fifties. So yes, I mean I kind of came by my politics kind of honest. It was just how I was raised to think. Wesleyan definitely kind of opened up my eyes to a lot of things and stuff because I went to a boys school here in Nashville, the things that I was not exposed to, that's a short version of that.

And it's funny, when I came back to Nashville, it was a little bit, I kind of thought that people who made up stuff for a living and artistic people, and all that were sort of naturally inclined to be sort of liberal-minded and open-minded and things like that. And so it was a little bit shocking to me to find out that was not true universally, here in this town, but it's been good for me to, I think, how do I say this? I have friends who are longtime friends of mine who have never voted for the same person I've voted for in their life and never will again, but as soon as we stop and they know it and I know it, but it's amazing how many things we agree about. As long as the words we use are not the words that the media uses to describe those things.

And so my friend who's like, he's anti-woke, but I was like, "So you hate gay people?" He's like, "Oh no, I don't care. Everybody should love whoever they want to love." And I'm like... It's like, so what is the difference? And so I think the thing I've learned from having friends from everywhere, that's the thing is that the language change. If you change the language about how you talk about things, everybody kind of just wants to do their thing and take care of everybody, but it gets real dicey as soon as the politics start to get political. And there's people who I don't work with because they are doing things I'm not cool with and I'm sure vice versa. I don't know, does that answer the quest... That was your-

Paige:

Definitely answered the question. And I would agree. I think it never gets talked about in a public kind of forum. The middle ground that many people have. My best friend is much more right than I ever will be, and she and I can have discussions all day. And I think there's a different... What I would assume she's thinking when we first got together about politics as friends is not actually what her real views are, if that makes sense?

Jay:

Yeah, no, it is. The words get in the way a lot of times because you start saying things, but everybody gets in their corners real fast.

David:

Do you think though, because things have gotten so polarized over the past four, I don't know, seven, eight years or so, that it's become more accentuated and obviously you talk about Jason Aldean's song and all that stuff. What are your thoughts on that? Has it changed in Nashville since you got there?

Jay:

Yeah, I would say, I think the thing that's changed here is the same thing that's changed everywhere. And I definitely think that country music has, how do I say this? I don't think that country music has ever been on the forefront of any sort of political wave. And it's always been conservative, but not at the same time. And that's always been the... And so I think as soon as you start trying to make it be conservative thing, then you're like, "Well, what about this and this, and this, and this? And they think these things and you're like, oh, well..." It has never fit into the slot as easily as people would want it to fit. And that's what's enabled me to do my thing and be my thing is that it really is, in as much as it is about traditions and things like that, I mean it's also kind of always moving forward and becoming its own thing and it's changing constantly too.

So it's very strange to think that the way country music sounds now is not the way it sounded five years ago. So that's progress, that's progressing, grabbing up things, and a lot of what they're borrowing from is musical traditions that theoretically we should not be too concerned with. And that's what makes country music kind of remain interesting and awesome to me. If it was actually as conservative as we want to claim to be, it would've died a long time ago. We would still be going, [singing]. Which I love, myself, but that's not, it's been done. I think it's just like people, there's times you go and you're writing with somebody and they'll... You don't talk about politics because it's not polite and somebody will say something, and occasionally somebody will just go off on a tangent and you'll be like, "Wow, buddy, you're kind of creeping me out now." And then you just know that's how that is and do I want to participate in that, and to what degree? But for the most part it's everybody kind of quietly goes about finding, let's talk about people who we used to love, and why it makes us sad. And that keeps it from going too far off the rails.

Paige:

Do you find that people in cities like Nashville and just the South in general because of the culture more, I feel like here, yes, you're not supposed to publicly talk about politics, but I'm in Philadelphia, everyone says they're about everything without thinking twice. Do you think that's part of just the culture there as well? That there's kind of the undertone of southern hospitality in a way?

Jay:

Yeah, I think that's a lot of it. And it's just that general sort of, it's just not nice to do that, which can be helpful in terms of reactions. It can also allow crappy things to go on without speaking up about it too. And that's the double-edged sword of that approach. My sort of approach to all of it is, I just try to be the person who I am without flying a flag too broadly. And then when somebody's like, "Well, you know he's one of them Democrats or whatever." And they're like, "Well, maybe they're not all bad." Rather than going in and being like, "Here's the other thing that he did wrong last week." Because you're not going to make any friends that way. It's just if you're going to shut people down. So I'm here to be here for 50 years that's my plan is to be writing songs and being a Nashvillian for my whole life.

David:

Oh, yeah. Well, you will be. What are you listening to now, outside of country? If you were to say something that's non... What are you listening to when you're not listening to country?

Jay:

Well, I have kids, one is 16 and one's 23, and it's very helpful because they can kind of keep me going where everything is going. And so right now my son really is into Elliot Smith, which I used to be into a lot. And so I really listened to a lot of Elliot Smith, and George Harrison, and in those kind of things. And that's super fun. My daughter's kind of kept me up with the other stuff. And right now I'm a big fan of Boygenius and all three of those folks. I think they're all fantastic, those three women. And then there's some things that are kind of adjacent to that. Big Thief is one of my favorite bands right now. And it is funny, they're writing songs, and my favorite thing about those songs, all of them, is that they are very tied to, even though they don't follow all of my personal rules, they are very emotionally direct and they're all emotionally correct, meaning that the emotion they're expressing through the course of the song is one unit. And that's a thing that I think that I respond to more than anything else is this is the story you're telling really hitting me in the heart. So that's what I like about them and the stuff that my son's listening to too, it's that.

Paige:

Is he the older one or the younger one?

Jay:

The younger one. The younger one.

Paige:

Oh, I'm glad to hear, because I feel like it's like a tradition in high school now, and I'm glad it's still going to go through an Elliot Smith phase.

Jay:

It's got to be done. It's almost like you're not going to ever have good taste in music if you don't.

Paige:

I just remember when all the guys would perform in high school, the songs they were always singing were the early Elliot Smith songs back in day. We were trying to tune the guitar.

Jay:

That's it. That's what you got to, you got to.

David:

Well, we got to let you go. Well, I guess two things, one is, and then on country, other than the songs that you write, what songs in country would you say that we might hear on the radio now, you think are just killer songs?

Jay:

I tell you the one that I heard recently, and it sounds like I'm kind of harping back on the same idea, but it really is true. It's the thing, there's that young woman named Meg Maroney and she has a song called Tennessee Orange. And I remember I went through recently and was just listening to a bunch of new, got a Spotify list, I was on an airplane, I'd saved everything on my phone and just listened through to all this stuff. And that one just jumped out at me as being, it sounded like a girl who had met a boy who she loved, and she loved everything about him other than the fact that he was from Tennessee, and she was telling her parents about him and that's what the song's about.

But it sounded like that and it felt like that, and it just was so correct. All of it just was emotional and she's just was doing it. And when you listen to a lot of songs even, and there's a lot of great songs about, "Hey, you're good looking in this bar and let's go dance." But a lot of songs that are about that don't sound like that's what's actually happening. And there are some that do also. But I also thought it was so great about that song is that it just felt like it was the thing that it was. And so that's why it's more my current one that I'm really fond of.

David:

That's wonderful. That is wonderful. God, we could talk forever. I got to ask, so do you take your kids to Broadway and show tunes, because you mentioned that as being an influence on you.

Jay:

Take them to where?

David:

The other Broadway, Broadway, New York and see the show tunes because you said those were-

Jay:

It's funny. As much as I like all that stuff, it's kind of far away. My daughter and I went and saw a show up in New York, but it was think it was just a play, play. We were excited because Laurie Metcalf, Jackie from Roseanne was in it, and we were, "This is awesome." When you are from here, you're just small town, Tennessee kids, and we're just like, "Hey, that's the guy from that thing." But I like a lot of those individual songs and I'm a big Steven Sondheim fan, but I've never seen one of his plays done by professional people because I live in Tennessee and it's hard to get up there and get tickets to go. And so I've missed out on a lot of that stuff, as much as I enjoy it.

Paige:

Were you surprised by, I feel like Zach Bryan and Chris Stapleton, they're very unique in the extreme mainstream sellout stadium tour, venues kind of artists. Were you surprised by how big they got so quickly, or no? Does it make sense with kind of the landscape?

Jay:

Chris, he's been a friend of mine since he first moved to town. And no one is surprised by that. He was almost as good as he is now when he came to town 15, 20 years ago, he just showed up that voice, and his thing, and he was a good songwriter. And now he's a great songwriter. And he also, unlike a lot of people who want to be famous, he would not do anything that they asked him to, to be famous. He already had a very strong sense of, this is who I am. If I do that, I'm going to look foolish. And as good as he is, there are things he could do that would make him look foolish and he knows what those are and he doesn't do those things. And he never did. And so we always knew, and I told him a long time ago, I said, "Here's what's going to happen. You're going to tool around and everybody's going to know how great you are. And then something's going to happen publicly on a national stage, and then everyone's going to know who you are and you're going to be famous for the rest of your life."

And that's the only time I've ever been right. And that's why I bring it up, because that is what happened is that everybody in town knew how great he was. Everybody wanted him to be a star. And then that thing happened where he was on with Justin Timberlake. And then from then on it just was easy. I'm sure it wasn't easy, he works his butt off. But I mean, it was just like apparent this is going to happen and now Chris is going to be a star until the end of time. Zach Bryan, who knows, I have no idea where that came from, but he obviously, and he has done a good job and he's very good also. But a lot of it has to do with the new ways of people discovering music and all that. And then you take that, combine that with, then Warner gets ahold of him and does all the things that they're good at doing as a international powerhouse record label, you combine that plus the TikTok and the thing and all that stuff from social media and that's has blown up.

So anybody who was not paying close attention saw that coming. I mean, somebody did obviously because then it came. But most of us who were just hanging out doing our thing, it wasn't like we didn't know who he was until everyone knew who he was. I think that'll happen some more now, that there's other ways to get famous beyond showing up in Nashville with a guitar and being like, "I want to be a star someday." That way of doing it is not the only way it's done.

Paige:

Yeah, that's true.

David:

So just to close out, what do you think Nashville and country music is going to look like 10, 15, 20 years from now? You think it's going to be different? And how so?

Jay:

Boy, if you want to know what the wrong answer is, I'll tell you what I think so you'll know what it's not going to be like. I think that this will continue to be a music place. I think country music will continue to be a thing. I think that thing of this newer generation, I really like the people when I'm meeting people now who are in their early twenties who come to town to want to do this job. I really like them a lot. I like their taste in music more than I probably have liked the taste in music of any generation I've dealt with, mine included. I think that's because they also have access because of Spotify growing up with that. They have access to the entire history of Western music from the age of eight. And that allows them to really learn, and dig in, and figure out what's good, and what's bad.

And then they can go, you can have somebody who wants to be a country music singer who also went through Elliot Smith phase, but also knows who Frank Sinatra is, but also listen to Mendelssohn Piano Concerto. I mean, it's like what? And so they're showing up now and they're really fun to write with because they have a deep well to pull from early. So I think that's going to be the thing that'll be interesting in 10, 15 years just because those will be the people who are my group of people. They will be me. And it'll be fun to see what that turns into.

David:

That's wonderful. Well, Jay, we'll let you go. I just can't tell you how much, just getting ready for this podcast, listening to your music was unbelievably great. I mean, I just love it.

Jay:

Thank you.

David:

So I want to thank you. Yeah, thank you for giving us that. And then thank you for coming here and just wish you the very, very best. And I don't know what else we can say Paige, you got something else to say?

Paige:

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Jay:

Thank y'all. Y'all have a good day.

David:

All right my friend. All right, good to see you.

Thank you for listening to Disarming Data and thank you to Eric Montgomery for producing this podcast. To support the podcast, please rate, review, and follow on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. If you'd like to learn more about the current state of data security, head on over to our website, disarmingdata.com.