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The Tim Ferriss Show
#852: Tim McGraw — Starting Late with a $20 Guitar, Selling 100M+ Records, and 30+ Years of Creative Longevity
01:57:40
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- [00:00]
Tim Ferriss
Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is 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 is 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 country artists of all time. But calling him a country artist is also too small of a category. He's been named Nielsen BDS Radio's 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 four New York Times bestselling books and you've also seen him in Friday Night Lights, the Blind side and Yellowstone. Not to mention his three time Emmy nominated 1883 in which he stars alongside his wife Faith Hill and Sam Elliot. You can find tickets for his upcoming Pawn Shop guitar tour@timmgraw.com that's Tim T I M McGraw M C G R A W.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.
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Tim McGraw
At this altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.
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Can I answer your to see my birthday?
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Tim Ferriss
What if I could be?
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Tim McGraw
I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.
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Tim, it's so nice to finally meet in person.
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You as well, Tim.
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Really fantastic.
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Absolutely big fan.
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Likewise. And I have not been to Nashville in so long and it's just lovely around here.
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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.
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Franklin looks like it's just had facelift after facelift after facelift.
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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 rubbed here. I'm thinking man, if I could just buy some land out here and build me a little cabin, find me a club gig, you know, everything 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. And it doesn't seem to be slowing down at all.
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You just offered me the perfect segue
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because, well, that's what I'm here for.
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Thank you. You know, I appreciate this tango that we're. We're getting started here. I was looking back, you were kind enough to answer some questions for Tribe of Mentors.
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Yeah.
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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 has sold more than 50 million records and all of these amazing accolades. And then I looked at the more recent, and it's more than 106 million records worldwide. Your longevity is mind boggling on a number of different levels. It's just.
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Yeah, me too. It's mind boggling to me too. People are still putting up with me
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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.
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Well, one thing that doesn't change is great songs. That's the first check, should be the first check on any artist's list. I mean, 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 gonna be. And I listen to songs constantly. I'm constantly writing, constantly listening. I'm hard on my own songs. That'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, and if I find the right fun song, I'll do it. But it's tougher at a certain age to sing about, you know, Daisy Dukes and tailgates all the time. You know, it just doesn't. 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 have people can find a deeper meaning in. In their own situation, in their own life.
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I would love for you to, if you could maybe unpack for us.
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Tim Ferriss
A song could be any song.
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Tim McGraw
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, be like, well, I'm going to wait a year for lightning to strike. There's probably some process behind it. And I am not a musician, but I'm deeply interested in it.
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Tim Ferriss
One of my favorite albums of all
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Tim McGraw
time is Graceland by Paul Simon.
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Oh, God, yes.
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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
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the Genesis, you know, probably live like you were dying would be 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 they 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 about him or inspired by him. I didn't play it for him. It 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 in upstate New York at a place right outside of Woodstock at a place called Allaire Studios. You know, it's beautiful. It's an old Dutch farmhouse and barn up on top of a mountain. Beautiful. We had, like, three foot of snow. We were there for three weeks. We sent two semi trucks full of Persian rugs and furniture and just decked the place out for the band and myself for 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 would go till 3 or 4 in the morning recording. And I remember it was about 1 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 some. 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 All American athlete, three sports, played pro baseball for 13 years. Greatest guy in the world. Looked just like Sam Elliott, but was a pothead from. From day one. So I watched him and he was sitting over there and I just got to thinking. I thought, you know, this might be a good time to cut live like you were dying. So we just finished a song. We were doing some overdubs. I gathered everybody around and I gathered Hank around and I asked everybody what their opinion was, if 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, you know, getting the parts right. And I can't help but watch my Uncle 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 Tug after things. So we recorded the song, we got finished probably about 4 or 5 in the morning. And then we just sat and listened to Uncle Hank tell stories about Tug for the rest of the night. And I have to believe that all that magic of that night of Hank being there, Tug had only been gone for a couple of weeks and then hang telling the stories afterwards. I have to believe that all of that went into that record.
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Yeah, there's so many different aspects to that, 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? It was a feeling of you as you looked at your uncle.
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As I looked at my uncle. It just felt like that I was being told to cut this song. Everything, the vibes coming off of him, what I was feeling at the time. And I think we had just cut something really up tempo and pretty rock. And I don't know, it was the mood, the snow outside, the fireplaces, 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 when you're in the studio that late it just felt like there was magic in the air at that moment, and we wanted to capture it. We always like to say you can have the greatest song in the world, greatest band in the world, greatest singer in the world, which I am not. But you can have all those factors, and it's still not work. We always say sometimes God just walks through the room.
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All right, I want 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 upon 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 a bottle here.
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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 until we finally finished it. When 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 Stroud didn't like it. Byron liked it. But I couldn't talk James and to let me record it, and I couldn't talk the label into what were the
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reasons they gave you?
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They just said it was too controversial and it was a bad song. It wasn't country music. It won't work on radio. Radio. All the things that they were right about. I heard that song the first night I moved to Nashville. I got to Nashville at 1 or 2 in the morning on a Greyhound bus. Walked down to the hall of Fame lounge and hotel where I 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 Steve Barnes, he's sitting at the bar. The bar's closing down. So I walk in and just ordered a beer. She said, we just had last call, but I'll give you a beer. I sat down. So I started talking to these two guys. So Tommy says, do you have a room? And I said, yeah. He said, let's go play some music. So me, Tommy and Max Barnes went
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up and started playing music within Stepping off the Bus.
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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 gone. Which ended up cutting both of those. Have three more songs of his that I heard that first night that I'm gonna 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, the honky tonks around town. When we would go travel and play clubs all over the country, I was playing that song. And we'd end up having 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 in to cut my first record. This was before I had a record deal. I knew it worked, and I didn't have any say so on the first album. So when I cut the second album, I just. That's what we're cutting, period. And when we cut it, I felt like this is either gonna work in a huge way or it's gonna ruin my career forever. Luckily, it worked.
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And it worked.
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And I think the fortunate thing, it worked. 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 with 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 momentum that. That I probably couldn't have gotten any other way.
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How would you describe both of those songs? As a one, two punch. So the first one, for people who don't know why, was it potentially controversial or different?
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Well, because it was. And I understood why it was controversial because it was stereotypical. It was sort of a, you know, 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 is 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 outlaw 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 just to sing that song. So they love it. So it's been really good to me.
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And what about the follow up straight, the one two.
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Oh, the Don't Take the Girl.
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Exactly.
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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. It 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 doing the right thing or not. But it was my first opportunity to perform on the CMAs. After don't take the Girl came out and Walter was the guy who used to run the CMAs. You remember Walter. They wanted me to do Don't Take the Girl, but they only gave me three minutes and the song's five minutes. And I was trying to explain to him that there's no way to sing this song without telling the complete story or it wouldn't make sense. So I actually turned down my first opportunity to perform on the CMAs. That's because I couldn't do the whole song.
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Was that an obvious choice or did you second guess that choice after you turned it down? You know, the next day or the next hour, were you like.
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I think it was an obvious choice. Yeah. And I wasn't too worried because the song was doing so well and I just thought there's no upside here to doing part of this song. It's not going to do anything for me. It's not going to do anything for anybody else.
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Tim Ferriss
Just a quick thanks to our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. What many of you may not know is that I actually run two private invite only communities for some of my projects. The no Book, which eventually will come out after God knows how long, and Coyote the card game. And the feedback from those groups has been absolutely invaluable. Moreover, perhaps most important, the connections that members have made and the interactions have been just a joy to behold. It's been so much fun and I generally view communities as headache after headache after headache. Way back in the day with like V Bulletin and whatever, not to slam those guys, but man oh man, running communities can be a pain in the ass. And in this case, it's been easy.
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Tim McGraw
Why?
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Tim Ferriss
Well, both of them are built on Circle, this episode's sponsor. And before committing to using Circle, I did so much homework. I asked you all on social media, talked to dozens of creators, pressure tested alternatives, talked to all sorts of people on the phone, and Circle is where I landed. Circle quietly backs some of the most popular communities online, run by folks like Kevin Rose, my buddy Dr. Becky from Good Inside, Ali Abdaal, Jay Shetty, Pat Flynn, and many others, including some giants I can't mention here. But it doesn't need to be giant. My two communities are maybe 100, 150 people a piece. They're not gigantic. If you run an online community, a membership or a course business, Circle makes it easy to build a professional home for your audience. Events, courses, payments, custom branded apps, all in one place. And also, once I had my first
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Tim McGraw
one set up for the Notebook to
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Tim Ferriss
spin up another one for Coyote, the card game. It took minutes. It was so, so fast. And as you might have noticed, things are getting pretty squirrely out there on the Internet. We're moving from content businesses to connection businesses. People want connection. They want to know you're real. They want accountability, real progress. And communities are the most effective way that I have found to make that happen. So check it out. Go to Circle so tim to get $1000 off circle plus exclusively for you guys, listeners for a limited time. Check it out. You can also look at other options at Circle so Tim. Back in the day, this was 2004, maybe I had someone approach me in a coffee shop and say g' day mate and introduce himself. Who was that?
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Tim McGraw
It turned out to be the founder of AG1, believe it or not, way back in the day.
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Tim Ferriss
And people often ask me what has survived. After 20 plus years of testing every supplement under the sun, just about what actually has stayed in the rotation in the toolbox. This episode's sponsor, AG1, is at the top of that very, very short list. I started using it close to 15 years ago when it was still called Athletic Greens. I put it in the four hour Body. Didn't get paid to put it in there. And it's outlasted almost everything else that I've tried. One scoop covers your nutritional bases, right? Fills the gaps.
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Tim McGraw
You want to eat good food, of
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Tim Ferriss
course, but 75 plus ingredients including probiotics, B vitamins and whole food nutrients act as, in my opinion, pretty cheap nutritional insurance. I take it first thing every morning with cold water and at this point it's automatic, like brushing my teeth. If you're looking for one simple dip belly habit that supports gut health and fills common nutrient gaps, this is where I'd start. Right now. New subscribers to AG1 get a free welcome kit worth $87, including AG1 and AGZ travel packs.
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Tim McGraw
That's for sleep.
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Tim Ferriss
It's actually great. And vitamin D3 plus K2. So that's a whole bunch of free stuff worth 87 bucks. So check it out. Take a look. Visit drinkag1.com Tim and that's the number one. So drinkag1.com Tim to check it out one more time. That's drinkag1.
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Tim McGraw
A few things come to mind for me. The first is that in a digital world or what 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.
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You knew it worked?
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I knew it worked. That is the only reason you had
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a practical sense that it worked?
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Yeah, I could see it and I'd honed it and I'd taken out the equivalent of jokes that didn't work, double down on the ones that did. And that still is just so incredibly valuable having that real time feedback, especially when you're playing multiple times a night.
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So in your process, when you're writing a book and you're talking about trying material out, people 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.
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Tim Ferriss
I do.
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Tim McGraw
I would say that these days I will often test on the podcast to
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see like segments or parts.
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Exactly. To 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 hear the four hour work week 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. I'm a single mom, I've got five kids, I have this, I have that. I'm 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 see. 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, which of these three? And I will feel good about any of these three. Then it's okay. So I test that. I still think to this day. And I've thought about potentially approaching UT
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Tim Ferriss
Austin to do a class.
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Tim McGraw
It's because the feedback is so fast, they can't fake it, even if they
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Tim Ferriss
say they like it.
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Tim McGraw
If you look at their face and
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Tim Ferriss
they are spacing out, checking their phone,
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Tim McGraw
you're, like, not working.
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Not working.
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It is not working.
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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 would have the band work it up. So let's play it a couple of times live and see what their reaction is. Now, there's a caveat to that, because when. Cause 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's not exactly what you want it to be, but it's not necessarily the reaction that you're gonna get if they know the song. So, you know, there's a little bit of a balance curve that you have to put on it when you're doing it back 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 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, if 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.
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Yeah, it turns into a guessing game
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and people can spot that a mile away, whether they realize it or not. They can.
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It just 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 a podcast, whether it's music, whether it's writing. Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite writers, hilarious cat, breakfast of champions, et cetera. 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 he's. If you open up the window and try to make love to the world, you're going to catch the flu, basically.
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Catch more than the flu.
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Tim Ferriss
If you're trying to.
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Tim McGraw
If you're trying to catch more than
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the flu, if you're trying to appeal to everybody, you're lost.
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You're lost.
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And at least you know you have an audience of one if it's resonating with you. And the personal can be so universal.
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Well, 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.
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Yeah. So there's the aspect of creative longevity.
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Right.
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How many years you've been doing this again?
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35, I guess. Somewhere around there.
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35. All right, so 35 years. So you have creative longevity. How do you continue to follow the right scent trail, which is very personal,
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Tim Ferriss
and not get lost?
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Tim McGraw
Because there's going to be a lot of temptation, a lot of external forces, expectations. 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.
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Even when you're not running around as physical.
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Tim Ferriss
Yeah.
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Tim McGraw
Because of the energy that you expend. 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 surgeries, with the surgeries. I've had four back surgeries and double knee replacements and tried to work through all of it, and did work through all of it. But there was a moment in time, back in the spring this year after my third back surgery, or was it last year, all the years running together? Anyway, after my third back surgery when it just didn't work, that I thought that I was going to really be looking at not being able to do this anymore. Because I can't imagine not doing it the way that I do it. There's no way that I'm going to go out there and sit on a stool and sing for an hour and a half. It's physically impossible for me to do. Now you're kinetic, and I don't know that anybody wants to see that from me. So if I can't go do the shows the way I do shows and the way that I have fun doing shows, then I'm not going to give everybody what they're paying for, and I'm not going to get satisfaction out of it. So there was a time where, until the last back surgery that actually worked, knock on wood, that I didn't think I was going to be able to make it back and not make it back the way I wanted to make it back. Now my focus is back, my body's back, My brain fog's clearing up from all the anesthesia. So I'm feeling like I'm back on a good path. I'm actually feeling like I've got a second win now and something to prove, which is good for me, because I need that. I want to be the underdog. I want to be the guy nobody expects for it to work. You know, I want to be that guy.
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Make yourself a little hungry.
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Yeah, absolutely. It's like, metaphorically and literally when I'm working, I like to be hungry. I don't like to eat before I go on stage because I like to be hungry for that reason. Because metaphorically, it works for me.
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I just had my first real experience with falconry, and, oh, wow. The falconer was very clear. He's like, you need that bird to be hungry if you want it to hunt.
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Yeah.
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It will not perform if you're Sated.
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Otherwise if you're sated you're not going to do much.
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And actually fed up with someone is an expression taken from falconry. Because if the bird is fed up, it won't listen to you. Ah, fed up with. From falconry.
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Let's remember that. Just a good little piece of knowledge. Yeah, I love those little details.
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There are all these little words from falcon. Hoodwinked also. And they put the hood on also from falconry. So focusing in tribe mentors. You mentioned my gym is how I get refocused.
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That's my meditation.
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And you Talked about this 5 rounds of 12 exercise with the bar complex kind of adding weight and then going back down.
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Yeah.
- [29:35]
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 is the training regimen? What has it looked like and what does it look like now? Well, maybe it's changed.
- [29:46]
It's changed a little bit. It's. 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 how. Three workouts a day, that's what I did for a long time, especially on the road touring.
- [30:02]
Was that just like before breakfast, before lunch, before dinner?
- [30:05]
Yeah. Really? Yeah. And they were distinctly different exercises and the afternoon exercise was sort of a 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 ab or something. So you run all the stairs and then we take a break and eat, take a nap or whatever. And then at 2, 2:30 we go out for an hour and a half and do the outside stuff.
- [30:42]
Border collie, you need working dogs gotta run.
- [30:45]
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, when we shot 1883, that was pretty physically demanding and that wore us out pretty good. That was six months, six days a week, 16 hours a day, pretty much solid. And at the time I was doing shows while we were doing, because I 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 get a workout in and then be in the makeup trader. Go to the next day.
- [31:23]
I can't imagine why he wore yourself out.
- [31:25]
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 about. So you didn't explain it? No, I tried to a couple times, but, you know, I'd put on, you know, about 10 pounds of weight because there's just protein everywhere. So, I mean, what fat or anything? But I was working out, steady work. But they always had steak and stuff,
- [31:53]
so it wasn't fat. For people who haven't seen the series in that hotel scene with the. I guess, kind of like the pajamas or whatever it is you want to. With anyone else want to. With my family, you do not look fat.
- [32:04]
But. But I'm standing on stage and I got this big dyed black beard. And I think these people are thinking that I'm dying my beard to look young because my beard's gray. I mean, my beard's snow white, and I had this big black beard on. So I was just so uncomfortable on stage and worn out and tired.
- [32:19]
Were you uncomfortable because it didn't feel right to you or because you knew the audience was a little off kilter?
- [32:25]
It didn't feel right to me. And I could tell that they were trying to figure out what the hell was going on too. So it was just. It was uncomfortable. But we got through them and it wore us out. And I tweaked myself a little bit a few times with my knee. And I'd had some knee trouble before. At 20, I had a meniscus done on my scoped on my left knee. And at 30, I had a meniscal hemorrhagne. But they hadn't bothered me. I think my problem is I have a really high pain tolerance. So I remember specifically we were in Montreal, and I think it was three weeks into the tour, maybe four weeks into the tour, we were in Montreal and my knees were hurting, my back was hurting, things were starting to fall apart. And I remember turning, just a normal turn, and felt both my knees just felt like they exploded. And I went to bed that night, and I woke up the next morning, and from my hips to my ankles, my legs were twice the size that they were before I went to sleep. Swollen.
- [33:23]
It's terrifying.
- [33:24]
Yeah. And so I got up, went to the gym. So I spent two years in the gym, just on a treadmill, doing anything I could to try to stay in shape, where I had to lean over the treadmill to walk because I couldn't stand up straight just to get walking in.
- [33:39]
Brutal.
- [33:39]
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 limping too badly. And then they would carry me back to the bus after the show. And then right after that tour, I had to spend a month just sort of prepping myself for surgery. And then I went straight in and had the double knee replacements, and then another back surgery after that.
- [34:04]
You know, I don't want to turn this into a Tim Ferriss confessional, but the pain tolerance you mentioned, having high pain tolerance, like blessing and a curse. It's a curse because I've had multiple. Just had elbow surgery a few months ago, which I should have had probably 15 years ago.
- [34:19]
I've had one.
- [34:20]
I just kept. I just kept, like. I walk it off, it's fine. And 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 tore my lat off of my body. It was a horrifying accident. But I suppose looking back, because I've wondered this. I have a friend, his name is Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired magazine. Great guy, I would say for his entire life, has basically done, no offense, Kevin, no exercise, except for lots of walking. That's it. Lots of walking. He has, as far as I can tell, no aches and pains.
- [35:17]
Well, walking is the best exercise.
- [35:19]
And he's in his. Gotta be early to mid-70s now. And so I look back and I'm like, I wonder what I would have done. Because I had a lot of intense training back in the day. I used to compete in judo, and all these various things. Took quite a few lumps from all that. And I look back and I'm like, all right, what would I have done differently? I think there are certain things I would have toned down. Probably would have given a slightly different prescription. Would have still been pretty aggressive because I don't know if I would be where I am now otherwise, without that. So looking back during the. Just over the decades, what would you have changed about your training? In retrospect?
- [35:58]
If anything, I would have been smarter about it, probably.
- [36:02]
In what way?
- [36:03]
Well, I would 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, you know, after having kids and stuff, you know, you're eating chicken nuggets all the time and, you know, so I sort of let myself go for a little while and then I did a movie called Four Christmases, which I've never seen, still haven't seen to this day.
- [36:41]
Why is that?
- [36:42]
Because I was. I think I weighed 215 when we shot that movie.
- [36:45]
How much do you weigh now?
- [36:46]
Right now I'm 170. We went to see another movie and I'd taken my kids and they were small and completely not even thinking about my movie. 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. She said, geez, dad, you need to do something. Because it looked like you could stick a pin in me and I would have just flew across the room. And that's when I decided to get back in shape. But I do think that, and people argue with me about this, but I believe it to my core that had I not done that and decided to change my lifestyle, change my workout routine, the way I looked and took care of myself, that I don't think my career would have lasted this long.
- [37:37]
And when was that?
- [37:40]
Early 40s. Like 42, 43.
- [37:42]
How old are you now?
- [37:43]
I'm 58 now.
- [37:45]
Yeah. I mean, that's insane, man. You hear this, I'm sure, from lots of people, but you are in great. I mean, you look like you're in great shape and not hitting on you, but that's okay. Yeah, but what has your work out looked like? And I won't belabor this too much longer, but it's. I feel like mind, body, brain, these are all the same thing. They're all a superorganism.
- [38:07]
Absolutely.
- [38:07]
And the exercise is a fundamental pillar of all of it for me and for you, I suspect. So what has your exercise regimen looked like for the last, let's call it year year?
- [38:19]
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.
- [38:33]
That's a story of my right meniscus too.
- [38:35]
I've tried to cut it down to two hours a day, but that includes I usually walk an hour or 30 minutes to warm up for my knees to get going my back. So walking's always my start out, whether it's 30 minutes or an hour just to walk, to loosen everything up and do a lot of body weight stuff and a lot of stretching. I never lift heavy weights. I don't do heavy weights at all. I try not to do deadlifts anymore because of my back. Although the doc says I can do them light, but I'm still scared of them. So I do a lot of body weight stuff and a lot of circuit training and then just try to do everything I do with intent and purpose and discipline and make sure everything's lined up properly when before, I never would do that. I knew what I was doing. I've had some good trainers in my life. I knew what I was doing. But, you know, you get in a hurry and you fall back and start doing the same old stuff and you don't think, you don't put your head into what you're doing. I just have to be a lot more conscious about how I move and what I do.
- [39:27]
And are those two hours all in the morning?
- [39:29]
Typically in the morning, yeah. If I don't do it in the morning, it's tough for me to do it. And then it also includes the older you get. And especially with injuries, you got to really try to every advantage you can get. So I do a lot of red light therapy, red light hot therapy, steam, cold plunges. So I do a lot of that. So that's, you know, that's a good 30 minutes at the end of the workout to get all that stuff in. Because I do multiple circuits of that.
- [39:52]
We have a similar recipe and two or three of the smartest athletes and trainers I know who used to be absolute monsters in the gym, 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. Probably good for your longevity too.
- [40:31]
For sure. And my goal when I work is I never want to be big.
- [40:34]
I don't want to be muscle cube on stage.
- [40:37]
No. I don't want to be. I want to be athletic. You know what I mean? Yeah. The whole big muscle thing. I don't want to. I'm not going to fall into that. I'm too skinny for that anyway.
- [40:48]
Yeah. I think there's a point where probably as a musician, it just raises more eyebrows and more distracting than helpful.
- [40:54]
Tim Ferriss
Let's go way, way back.
- [40:56]
Tim McGraw
As promised, my delayed gratification for the audience. Sorry it took me this long, but the exercises for me is so present every single day. And would love to talk. Maybe after our recording we can talk more. But for the deadlift, for instance, Zercher deadlifts or Zercher 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. If we go way, way back. I would. I mean, not too
- [41:29]
far enough that I can remember.
- [41:30]
Yeah.
- [41:30]
Back.
- [41:30]
Oh, you'll remember. They'll remember. So could you tell the story of finding your birth certificate?
- [41:36]
Oh, God, yeah. Wow. I'd gotten home from school and Mom.
- [41:44]
How old were you at that time?
- [41:45]
I was 11. And mom had kept in her closet like a crown royal bag that was full of coins. But she always put it in different places because when I was going, you know, you had the concession stand at school for a quarter. You could get a candy bar back then or like 10 cents, you could
- [42:01]
get a Covid out just so people can put you in spot space. Where were you at the time?
- [42:04]
In Louisiana. Little town Start, Louisiana, where I grew up. A little farming community. I mean, it's just a caution light in a cotton gin. That's where I grew up. So I was in her looking for the little bag, trying to find some quarters or something to go buy a candy bar at the store or something. I found the bag and there was a box right next to it. Opened the box and right on top was my birth certificate. And I didn't think much of it. And I started looking at it and. And I saw McGraw where a line had been drawn through it and right above it, written by hand in pencil, was Smith which was my stepdad's name. And then it said, dad's occupation, Professional baseball player. And of course, of being 11 years old and growing up, we were like, low, low middle class and, 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 my wall in my room. His was one of them because he was one of my favorite players. So I instantly called my mom, and I could tell that it hit her like a ton of bricks. She was at work, and I'm like, mom, what is this? My birth certificate. What does this mean? And then she was like, oh, my God. That's all she said. And she said, I'll be right home. And then she came home and we went for a ride, and she told me the whole story.
- [43:26]
What was the story?
- [43:27]
Her junior summer in high school, her mom had just left her dad, my grandpa, and they were staying in a motel that had a pool with the outdoor, like a motor court motel they were staying in. And it just so happened that my grandmother and my mom were staying there, but it just so happened that the minor league team, Jacksonville Suns, minor league team for the Mets, all the ball players were staying in that hotel as well. So Tug and my mom met at the pool and sort of dated over the summer. And when he left and got called up or whatever and 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 show, the precursor to American Bandstand, all that stuff. So my mom had just gotten a letter inviting her to 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 she was pregnant with me. And every time I look at that portrait, I can see it in her eyes. I can see that her whole future had just disappeared in front of her. She told me the whole story and said that she hadn't talked to him since and hasn't heard from him. And I said, but I'd like to meet him, you know? So she got in touch with his lawyer somehow, his agent, somehow he was still playing at the time. 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. Went to the game. I had a Pete Rose magazine where Pete Rose was about to break the hitting record that I brought with me and he took me in the clubhouse and Pete Rose signed that. So I got to meet Pete Rose, got to throw the ball a little bit with some of the guys for batting practice. And my mom had got me a McGraw shirt made and a Phillies hat and all that stuff. So she had me all decked out so the next shirt. So we met. Never saw him after the game or anything, never heard from him again. So of course I was obsessed this little 11 year old kid would be about something like that.
- [46:02]
Tim Ferriss
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. It was a giant headache. And since then, over the years, and sometimes very quietly, I've started e commerce websites and guess what I've used?
- [46:25]
Tim McGraw
I've used Shopify.
- [46:26]
Tim Ferriss
Now how did I first bump into Shopify though? That was in 2008 when I asked you guys, my dear readers, how I should revise the four hour Workweek for the expanded edition which came out in 2009 and people said Shopify, Shopify, Shopify. You have to check it out. It was just an elegant all in one solution and man oh man have they grown and improved things even further. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses now around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US which is nuts. From household names like Mattel and Gymshark to brands just getting started and little, little e commerce sites like the ones that I have after the larger one. It's packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, improve your photography and they can take it from that where you're creating the website, all the way to finding customers with email and social media campaigns. And if you ever get stuck at any point, their award winning 247 customer support is always there to help. Shopify is the world class commerce expert and platform I wish I had in the beginning. From managing inventory to international shipping, to processing returns and beyond, they make it as easy as is humanly possible. You can handle it all in one place and it's getting Easier every day. So check it out. Go to shopify.comtim and sign up for your $1 per month trial today. That's shopify.comtim one more time. Shopify.com Tim
- [47:54]
Tim McGraw
what were the emotions that you felt at the time? Was there anger? Was there confusion? Was there admiration? What was the mixture of emotions that you felt?
- [48:06]
I think at the time, I don't think there was anger. I think there was some affirmation in it. We grew up in a very dysfunctional life. The guy who I thought was my dad growing up was an alcoholic and very abusive to my mom and to me. And then the second stepdad was worse than the first one. So we grew up in really. You know, the commercial you see now when footsteps are coming home, kids are scared. That's the way our house was when you hear the truck drive up. So for me, there was an affirmation of why I felt like I didn't belong with that guy. So it wasn't a confusion. I don't think I was young enough to register confusion. I think I was more certainly. It was more about the excitement of finding out that your dad's a professional baseball player. It's certainly in the circumstances that I grew or was growing up in. So for me, it was sort of a ray of light in a lot of ways. So the next year, they were playing in Houston again, and I asked mom if I could go see the game again. She got in touch with the agent again, said he would leave two tickets, but he's not gonna see us. So he left two tickets. It was in Houston, which was the only time I'd seen him play. Cut to the first time I saw him play. He came in and gave up a grand slam the first time I saw him play. But the. The bullpen is right along, right by the stands. I mean, the stands are to that desk where the bullpen is 10, 12ft away. Yeah, you're right there. He wouldn't see us before the game or anything. So he was warming up in the bullpen, and my mom says, why don't you go down and say hi to him? He's warming up in the bullpen. So I walked down to where he was warming up, and I was as close to me and you as you are to him. He's warming up. Some yelling at him, Doug, it's Tim. And he wouldn't look at me.
- [49:52]
Me.
- [49:52]
He wouldn't look at me or acknowledge me. And so I just sort of dropped it after that, went back home. I didn't use McGraw, used Smith. Just sort of forgot about. Didn't forget about. But not even. Only a handful of my friends even knew about it. I didn't tell very many people about it, sort of. Then I got embarrassed. I think, after. After that, that I was just like, sort of thrown away.
- [50:16]
What happened? What changed?
- [50:18]
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 small. I graduated high school, I was 5, 10, barely, and 140 pounds, getting football scholarships and basketball scholarships, thinking, this is probably gonna work out when I get to the next level, fit my size. So she was going to call about paying for college if she could see if he would pay for college. This was a long story. She was gonna see if he'd pay for college. So I was staying out of it. I, you know, 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'd already ran through the banner and done all that stuff, and somebody taps me on the shoulder, and it was my mom. I'm on the sidelines getting ready to go out and play. I'm like, mom, what are you doing here? You know, we're about to play a game. You can't be down here on sidelines. She goes, well, I heard from Tug's lawyer today, and I said, okay, mom, can we wait till after the game we get home to talk about this? So played the game, got home, and we talked a little bit about it, and then we talked about the next morning. And the deal was they'd sent a contract, and they said that he would pay $300 a year towards my college and that I would never be able to contact him again. And if I did, the money would. Anyway. $300 a year for college, and you can't contact me anymore. And that, to me, was enough to say, you know what? Fine. My only request is that I don't even need the money. $300 a month is not going to do anything. I don't need the money, don't need anything. My only request is that he has to meet with me one last time. And then if he wants me to sign a contract to leave him alone, I'll do whatever. So we flew to Houston or drove to Houston. Drove to Houston. He had retired at this point, and I just graduated high school, so I was as tall as him. And we walked into the hotel and mom said, well, there's Tug standing, checking in over there. And he had somebody with him who was his lawyer agent. So I walked over to him and tapped him on the shoulder. And he turned around and looked at me and said, I Tug him, Tim, because he hadn't seen me since I was 11. And I introduced myself to the guy standing next to him. And the guy standing next to him turned completely white because I looked just like him. So he knew that the gig was up. So we sort of spent the day together, hanging out a little bit. And then. And we went to dinner that night, he, mom and I. There was a point during dinner small talk where I asked mom if she could leave us alone and let us talk for a minute. And of course, mom didn't want to do that. And I assured her that I had this. This was fine. And as soon as she left, I just looked at Tug and says, look, I'll sign your contract. I'll never talk to you again. I won't bother you. I just have one question for you. And I asked him, do you think you're my dad? And he says, yes, I believe I am. And he said, we'll tear the contract up. 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. While I was in college, I would drive up to Philly and visit and got to know my little brother Mark, and my little sister Carrie, which was great to come out of that. But I always, this is what I'll get back to at the end of the day. I get asked a lot, and you said it right. A lot of people now don't know the story. They knew it at the beginning of my career. But a lot of people that know my career now, that know who my dad was, they think that I grew up in that world and I didn't. 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 long and short of it is when people ask, how could you have anything to do with your dad? How could you have not hated him? How could you have just not turned your back on him? My answer always is, he gave me something that was so precious and that was hope. Whether he meant to and he didn't or knew it or any of those things, he gave me a reason to think that I can get out of the situation that I was in, that if he can do that, then I have it in me to do something. And so for that reason alone, I couldn't hate him.
- [54:43]
Hope, man.
- [54:44]
Yeah.
- [54:45]
It's just. It's a bedrock of everything else.
- [54:49]
If everything else is going, if you got hope, you still got a chance.
- [54:53]
We were talking to a friend of mine. He's got a couple of kids now. Now mostly grown, I think. Bag is all grown. Think about it. I mean, the older I get, the younger people seem.
- [55:02]
Oh, my gosh.
- [55:02]
But, yeah, they're. They're adults.
- [55:04]
Tell me about it.
- [55:05]
And he said as. And we went for a hike at one point, and he's just a really sweet, very smart guy. And I asked him, like, all right, what would your advice be to an aspiring parent? Me, I don't yet have any kids, but really am looking forward to that building 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.
- [55:29]
Yes.
- [55:30]
That's it.
- [55:31]
Those two things make perfect sense. Yeah. Yeah. Your vision of their life and your expectations of their life. Don't let it cloud your love and guidance for them.
- [55:41]
I have lots of questions about family because it's top of mind for me. But I want to ask you about guitars. Here's why. Because I was looking up on the way here. Yo Yo Ma, famous cello player, picked up cello. Probably got handed a cello at age four.
- [56:00]
Wow.
- [56:01]
All right. My understanding is you did not do that with guitars.
- [56:05]
No.
- [56:06]
So how did this music thing come about?
- [56:08]
Well. Well, the music thing came about because of my mom's love for music. Because from my earliest memory of the time I can remember, mom was always singing and playing records around the house and always had the radio wide open. So I knew every song on the radio, and she would encourage me to sing. She always wanted me to sing along with her on the radio. So I knew every song on the radio would sing with my mom all the time. We'd walk around the house singing. Singing in church. I mean, my friends used to give me all the time playing baseball because I played shortstop. And the whole time I'm out there, I'm singing songs and playing around. I was always singing to the point to where my. My sisters are always like, shut up. Just shut up. Just stop singing. And I still do it to this day. Somebody can say a word, and I'll sing a song that's got that word. And it just. It's just in me. I can't get it out. So it was always something. But I was in the same category that you were thinking that, you know, the guys you hear on the radio, guys that have been doing this since they were three or four years old, they're trained musicians. They're guys that.
- [57:08]
Jackson 5.
- [57:09]
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. That's when I realized when I got into college and I went out for the first football sort of roundup and to see everybody when I looked around and thought, all right, I'm gonna get killed. I'm gonna be meat on the practice squad, never see the field and get the hell beat out of me and spend all of my time here. So I ended up not playing ball, joined a fraternity, pawned my high school ring, and bought a guitar for 20 bucks.
- [57:49]
Why did you decide to get the guitar?
- [57:52]
Because I thought, I love music. I love singing. Chicks might dig it if I got a guitar and learn to play a few songs.
- [57:58]
Okay, so it wasn't so far ahead as to, like.
- [58:01]
No, I wasn't. I wasn't thinking about moving to Nat. It wasn't a career move. This was.
- [58:04]
This was.
- [58:05]
It was a move, but it wasn't a career move. And, you know, and I thought, you know, I could play some clubs around town. It'd be fun to do. I even thought, look, my biggest dream I could have here is get a house gig somewhere where I. Making money every week and playing music.
- [58:18]
And remind me, where were you at the time?
- [58:20]
I was in Louisiana. Monroe. In Louisiana, at Northeast Louisiana, which is Ulm now. But back then it was Northeast Louisiana University. So I bought the guitar and all of my friends had moved away for the summers. My freshman summer college, I had a job where I worked four hours a day to plant nursery in the mornings, just moving stuff. And I'd come home and just. I'd watch CMT and watch where their fingers were on the guitars.
- [58:46]
Early YouTube.
- [58:47]
Yeah, early YouTube. And then I would. On music sheets, you. That had these little guitar fret things where it would show you where your fingers went. So I spent a lot of years where my fingers are in the wrong position, but I would still make the chord. And my buddy. My roommates would hide my guitar for the longest time because I was so bad. But then when I started getting pretty good at it, they would hide it. I couldn't find it. But when chicks would come over to the house, they would. They would grab My guitar and bring it to me and want me to start playing songs.
- [59:11]
Dance, monkey, dance.
- [59:12]
Yeah, exactly. So over that summer, I learned about 50 songs, and I just started playing, just me and a guitar at this little catfish house called Cock of the Wall. And that was my first gig, and that's how I paid my rent for a while.
- [59:27]
What was the first, by the way?
- [59:28]
I am still a terrible guitar player. I can play well enough to write my songs and play.
- [59:36]
It work for you. When was the first inkling or the first sign feeling maybe where you're like, okay, I think this could be a thing.
- [59:45]
First off, the encouragement I got from my friends in college, my fraternity buddies, which. That could go either way. When you're trying to play guitar and sing songs from your buddies in a fraternity, that could go the wrong way. But when it didn't, when they were encouraging me and they were giving me credit and telling me how good I was, to me, that was. That was a big deal for a bunch of guys to tell you. Your friends to tell you that when you're just trying to figure it out and you don't even know anything about it, really, for them to tell you that you're good and they want to hear you do it and ask you to sing all the time. So when I started playing clubs and stuff, I would get good reaction from the crowds, and then the owners would come over and say, hey, would you want to come back? And, you know, you guys are the best band we've had. You know, stuff like that. And then I took a military science class.
- [60:31]
Military science, like strategy?
- [60:32]
Yeah.
- [60:33]
Studying general?
- [60:34]
Yeah. And I got to know the instructor. Captain Whitehead was his name. He was an army guy and head of the ROTC and everything there. And all the guys in the class were ROTC guys, rotc. Anyway, we took the class, and it was tactics, and we were in the field doing stuff. We'd spend a weekend tracking, even doing all the stuff with rappelling, you know, all kinds of cool course. It was a great course. And at the end of the course, everybody was asked to vote who was our platoon leader. Well, I got voted by all the ROTC guys as the platoon leader for the class for the year. So I was the top student in the class. And so Captain Whitehead took a big interest in me, but he thought I should be a Marine, so he kept taking me to the Marine recruiting office. So I visited the Marine recruiting office quite a bit, filled out all my paperwork, and one night I decided I had everything packed. I sold everything I had Sold my car, water skis, shotguns, sold everything I had. I think I ended up with about $3,000. I had my guitar, one suitcase, and my Marine paperwork sitting on my dresser. And I said, when I wake up in the morning, I'll decide whether I'm going to move to Nashville or join the Marines. And I fell asleep, woke up the next morning, looked over, got up, picked up the Marine paper, tore it up, put it in the garbage, and went and bought a Greyhound bus ticket and ended up in Nashville.
- [62:01]
I have so many questions. So why did Captain Whitehead think you should be a Marine?
- [62:08]
I don't know. I guess because I did well in the class and he liked. We got along well. He kept coming to our fraternity house and hanging out with us. We just got along well, and he liked me. As a matter of fact, we played. It had to have been 15 years later, after I had a lot of success, we played the base in San Diego, military base in San Diego. And it was huge. It was packed. And I'm singing and playing. I'm standing in front of the stage, and I look down, and Captain Whitehead's right at the front of the stage. And I got to say hi to him and talk to him a little bit afterwards. He just says, you would have been a good Marine.
- [62:44]
You missed the boat, son.
- [62:46]
No, I didn't.
- [62:49]
I'm kidding. The platoon leader piece is interesting to me. What do you think? Even if you had to speculate, why did that happen? Why did they vote you platoon leader?
- [63:02]
I don't know. I mean, if you just enjoyed it, I think.
- [63:06]
What do you think? Right. Because presumably, I think there were a few. Bunch of guys in the class or a bunch of people in the class.
- [63:11]
Yeah, I think there were a few obstacles that I figured was able to figure out, like moving stuff and how to build a bridge across just little things that I was able to figure out or. Or if I wasn't able to figure out, just acted like I did and took charge of it and got it done. But I don't know. It's one of those things that was really interesting to me. It made sense to me. And when you step into something you don't know anything about, and all of a sudden it clicks and makes sense. It just made sense. And it really sparked my interest into being in the military, because I thought, wow, if I can be around all these guys who want to do this and this works out, maybe this is a career path for me. Thank God. What was it? But I have so much respect. I mean, who Knows my sister was in the army. She was army intelligence. Cousins, uncles. So I've got a long history of military family.
- [64:01]
What was it that morning? It was a long time ago, of course, but it seems like such a sliding door moment, such an important fork in the road. What was it that led you to tear up the paperwork?
- [64:14]
I thought that I could always go back to that and I can't always go back to the music because there come a point where that's passed. But the hardest part was having to call my mom because my mom was really intent on me making something out of myself because of how hard our life was growing up and how hard her life was. She worked three jobs and going to work with black eyes and, and busted lips and you know, just all the struggles that a single abused mom, well, not single, but abused mom has to deal with. She's pretty single for all intent and purpose, but I had to call her. I was in pre law. My joke now is that I have paid more lawyers in my life than I would have ever made, as that is probably true. Yeah. So I had to call my mom and I was scared to death because I knew how badly she wanted me to complete school and go to law school and, and I know how badly she wanted that for me and for her because of the sacrifices that she had made because you know, people wanted her to give me up for adoption, all sorts of stuff. And she, she was a 17 year old girl that hung onto a kid. But I called her and told her what my plan was, embraced myself, fully expecting my little Italian mom to give me a good wearing out because she can do that. And what she said is going to make me cry. What she said, said. But she said, son, I'm surprised you haven't done it already and if you don't, you'll never know, so you should go. And it was so shocking and unexpected that it gave me all the confidence in the world I needed. And then when I first moved here, back to where you think everybody grows up, since they were a little kid with a guitar in their hands and singing and that's how they become famous. When I first moved here and started going to clubs and sitting in, I was thinking, wait a minute, I can hang with these guys, I can hang with these guys, I can find my niche here.
- [66:05]
How many shows do you think, how many gigs had you played up to the point that you got on that Greyhound bus?
- [66:12]
A year or two gigs, I don't know, 100 maybe at clubs. Mostly just me and a guitar. Some of the band. I actually went to Jacksonville for about six months because my mom had moved to Jacksonville after I started college because she just went through another divorce and it was terrible divorce. So she moved to Jacksonville, which was where she grew up. So Jacksonville Junior College had just won the Junior College World Series. Coach heard about me from a couple years ago back in high school. He knew my mom somehow, anyway, invited me to come to play baseball at Florida Junior College. So I thought, all right, this is getting old. Here I'm playing music, I'm not really going to class. Like I should. Maybe I should go out there and try and play baseball, see what happens. So I moved to Florida, same thing. Showed up, was going to play baseball, hung around for a little while, realized that I really didn't want to do that because I was playing clubs at night there too, and just decided to go full time, start playing clubs in Florida and did that. Then I moved back to Monroe, played for about three months, and then moved to Nashville.
- [67:20]
I'm curious what Nashville did for you, because it makes me think of Bob Dylan before he was Bob Dylan. But moving from Minnesota to, I think it was Greenwich Village, moves to the epicenter. He's like, I'm going to find Guthrie and I don't know how I'm going to make it work, but I'm going to figure it out and I'm going to the center of the action. And that story was really laid out for me in detail by this very, very impressive investor and. And fascinating human, Bill Gurley, who is in Austin. But he has a book coming out soon called Running Down a Dream, which is about pursuing passion and finding that lightning in a bottle for yourself. But one of his sections is on going to the epicenter, going to where the action is. And I would love for you to describe what effect Nashville had. I mean, in a sense, you already showed some of what can happen by the fact that you get off the bus, you go have a beer after last call, and then bada bing, bada boom.
- [68:26]
You hear great songs, right? Yeah. And songs that end up making my career. I think instantly it just lit a fire under me. When you jump into a pool of people who are like minded and who are all chasing the same thing, there's just such an energy that you get from everybody that's doing it. Like, you know, Tracy Lawrence, Kenny Chessy and I were best friends and we ran around together everywhere. None of us had record deals and we would compete. You know, all these clubs, like you could get up and sing and you could win 50 bucks. Who got the most hand? Applause. So we were always competing to get real money.
- [69:03]
That's cool. That's cool.
- [69:04]
Try to outdo it. Tracy usually always won because he was the best singer out of all of at the time. But just running around, being involved every night, being at somebody's apartment, playing music, writing songs every day, out every night, singing in all these clubs. It was just an immersion experience of art where you learn so much. You learn from different singers. You hear somebody sing and you think, wow, how do they do that? How can I. You imitate people, you figure things out. You see what somebody's doing on stage, you see how somebody sings. You saw somebody songwriting. It just becomes this sort of gumbo of all this magic that you find. And it starts. Get. Just comes into every pore of your body, and you just open yourself up to it and just try to learn as much as you can. It can be heartbreaking, too, at the same time, you know, when you see. And then also recognizing where you're getting held back, where you start realizing you need to put more aspirational people around you as opposed to people are just being happy doing what they're doing. And I try to tell it to my daughters all the time.
- [70:04]
That sounds like it could be very difficult.
- [70:07]
It can be difficult because it's not about dropping friends, but it's about gathering friends that people that you want to be like, they have traits that you want to. That you want to emulate.
- [70:17]
Could you describe an instance of when that happened and how you navigated it?
- [70:21]
I don't know if I can describe
- [70:22]
an instance or just why that even occurred to you, I guess, and how you went about finding those people.
- [70:29]
Well, because I needed to learn, for one thing, because I knew nothing about the music business, how to make a record. I knew nothing about anything except for how to sing along to the radio and then, you know, play some songs. I learned on the guitar. I was an amateur, period, at everything. So I just wanted to be around people who knew what they were doing and people who could teach me things and people that were willing to teach me stuff and people that if I wanted to compete, if I can't compete with this guy who's playing in a club up in downtown Nashville, then I'm not going to compete with the guys who have record labels of records.
- [71:05]
So how did you find those people to learn from?
- [71:08]
I think it's just a matter of just being out and being around people and just learning who. Who the people are who are going to Be aspirational to you and inspirational to you, and who the people are going to hold you in place.
- [71:21]
Do any people stand out in those. I don't know, first, like, five years?
- [71:28]
Let's just say, well, Mike Borchetta stands out. Mike Borchetta is who signed me to my first record deal at Curb Records, and he was somebody who I walked off the street, had a demo of a few songs. He tried to kick me out of his office, and I made him listen to the songs.
- [71:43]
How did you get into his office in the first place?
- [71:45]
The way I got into his office is because, oddly enough, it was because of Tug. Because a guy named Bruce Wendell was a friend of Mike Borchetta's, and he happened to be a friend of Tug's. So Tug was talking to Bruce Wendell one day, and Bruce says, I know a guy named Mike Borchetta down in Nashville. Maybe I can get him a meeting attempt. And that was it. So I got his phone number. That's all he gave me. So I kept trying and trying and trying to get a meeting with him. I couldn't get a meeting with him. So it was during fanfare one year. What is fanfare now? It's what the big thing they have at the stadium every year where everybody plays. But back then, fanfare was when you would just sit and stand in a booth for three days and sign autographs for thousands and thousands of people that would come through. So this was going on when you're. Of course, I wasn't signing an autograph. I didn't have a record label. So I decided I'm going to go buy Curb Records and see if Mike Borchetta is in his office. And I'd had a demo of these
- [72:42]
Tim Ferriss
after him not returning.
- [72:43]
Tim McGraw
After him not returning my calls. And I have to back up just a little bit because there was this little place called Poboy Dons in Tallulah, Louisiana, that was in the middle of a cotton field. And it was just a little wood frame shack, but it was like a convenience store slash deer butcher shop, slash crawfish bowl kind of place. And in the back of the store, they had a bunch of stumps and an old wood stove. And there were a bunch of guys all in their 70s and 60s that were all playing country music. And I happened to go walk, be out that area one day, and it was in the middle of nowhere. And so I stopped in and sat down and started playing guitar with these guys. So they kept inviting me to come back. So it ended up being. It was about 30 miles from school. So every Thursday night it ended up being like five or six cars of my fraternity brothers. We'd all go to this little hole in the wall place with all these 70 year old guys and they would give us free beer and crawfish as long as I would sit back there and sing with them. And it ended up that place becoming packed and packed and packed where there were just people there every Thursday night. And it just became a really fun thing. So when I moved to Nashville, Po boy Don, who owned that, and it was a farmer too, and he owned all the farmland around and just he played the bass and the thing and his store. And he just really loved me and loved to hear me sing. So I needed a demo. I didn't have a demo, didn't have any money for a demo. So I called him and he sent me $3,000 to record a demo. So I recorded a demo. And that's the demo I played for Mike Borchetta. When I walked into his office, anyway, I sat down, he said, well, leave the CD with me.
- [74:20]
So you're just knock, knock.
- [74:22]
Well, I walked past the secretary because I saw he was in his office. And I walked past the secretary. She goes, excuse me. And I said, I'm just gonna say hi to Mike. I walked in, I said, hi, Mike, how you doing? He said, who are you? Then I told him my name. He goes, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He says, call me next week and we'll meet. And I said, well, I have my demo here. I'd like for you to listen to it. He goes, we'll leave it on the desk and I'll listen to it. I says, well, can you listen to it now? And he goes, no, I'm headed out to fanfare. I gotta go. I says, well, can you just listen to part of a song? He goes, all right, I'll listen to a song. So he put the song in and halfway through the first one, he goes, you got a record deal, kid.
- [74:54]
Wow.
- [74:55]
And that's how I got a record deal.
- [74:57]
Halfway through the first song.
- [74:58]
Yeah. First half.
- [74:59]
Tim Ferriss
Was it the first song?
- [75:00]
Tim McGraw
All the demo?
- [75:01]
Yeah, first song of the demo. Yeah. And then it was convoluted after that. But I got a record deal, so I got my foot in the door. So, you know, it started from there, but he was somebody that when a guy who runs a record label and you know nothing about how that works, and it's the first record label I went to sits down and listens to half of your demo, which you're not even sure is any good. And says you have a record deal. Well, I think you get exponentially better in that instant.
- [75:30]
Yeah. Yeah. You're giving wings in a way.
- [75:33]
Absolutely. Yeah. The luster seed.
- [75:38]
Yeah. So we're going to hop around a little bit because we could go a million different directions. I mean, we could spend 20 hours talking about your career and still not run out of material. I believe it might have been in Parade. It could have been in a different interview. But correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you've said that your wife saved your life.
- [75:57]
Oh, God.
- [75:58]
Along those lines, yeah. Why is that?
- [76:01]
Because I was running pretty hard. I was running hard back in the day.
- [76:07]
What does that mean?
- [76:09]
Well, I was drinking a lot, which that didn't stop after we got married. But she beat it out of me after a while. But, you know, I was just doing everything. I was a kid in a candy store, you know, especially after I got successful and never had any money before, never been around any of that stuff before. And then all of a sudden it became a tool that was useful until it was when Faith came along. I was burning it wide open when we met and she started tapping the brakes for me.
- [76:42]
How did she do that? In a way that didn't repel you.
- [76:46]
Well, look at her.
- [76:47]
Well, I mean, right?
- [76:48]
Yeah. I mean, yeah.
- [76:50]
She's got a lot on offer, this is for sure. Sure. But I would imagine we don't know each other well, but that strong willed guy, high gear, high intensity, high velocity kid in a candy store. Faith is incredible on a million different levels. And you also have a lot of options around. So what allowed her to dial some of those things back, which ended up being really important long term for you and for both of you without scaring you off in a sense?
- [77:21]
Well, A, I knew that I was at a point where I needed to slow down.
- [77:26]
Got it. So you had the self awareness.
- [77:28]
I had the self awareness that I needed to slow down at the time. B, when we met, we were 28 years old, so we were a little older. We both had success. And then C, once I met her, I didn't want to lose her. I just didn't want to lose her.
- [77:47]
What was it about her?
- [77:49]
She's just magic. She's magic. She's not just her singing and her looks and all that's done. Of course, that's all a bonus. But as a person, she's just magic. She just lights up a room and she lit me up and still does. And I wouldn't be the same Artist. Had I not met her, I certainly wouldn't have the career that I've had. Had I not met her. Certainly wouldn't have lasted as long. I wouldn't have lasted as long. I would have burned out really quickly, I think, especially if I had lost her after I found her. If I had lost her because of not sort of bringing myself around a little bit, then I definitely would have been in a downward spiral.
- [78:33]
So you guys met at 28. When did you change the drinking?
- [78:39]
It took a while. It certainly calmed it down quite a bit, and it fluctuated. It would be times where it was not bad, then times where it was bad, and then it just got to where it just got out of control. That's when she set me down. Well, actually, she sat me down a few times, but actually there was one morning in particular where I woke up and realized that it was seven in the morning. I was going to have to take the kids to school soon. And I realized I had a bottle of whiskey in my hand at 7 in the morning. And I had the bottle in my hand. I walked straight back to the bedroom and told her that I need help. She goes, all right, let's do it. I'm with you. And she stuck by me the whole time. And look, it's not been a linear path, as anybody knows, it's ever gone through that kind of thing. It's not a linear path. There's always pitfalls and steps backwards and steps forwards. But she's a rock. She's a rock.
- [79:37]
This is just a random thought, but at some point, if you haven't met Laird Hamilton and his wife Gabby. Laird Hamilton's.
- [79:45]
I know who Laird is.
- [79:46]
Yeah. Yeah. In any case, a lot of parallels in your lives. And I think also Gabby Reese, who used to be a professional volleyball player. In any case, just a lot of parallels. I mean, intensity. Right. High gear. And it's very common, at least among my friends, certainly. And even in my case, way back in the day, it's like that type of intensity can also get misapplied or reapplied to something like alcohol.
- [80:18]
Absolutely.
- [80:20]
It's not always a selective intensity.
- [80:21]
No, it's not selective intensity. And then when it becomes a physical dependency, then you're in trouble. Trouble.
- [80:26]
Then you're in trouble.
- [80:27]
Yeah.
- [80:28]
How has fatherhood changed you? Wow.
- [80:32]
Well, you certainly see with different eyes. And it changes what your definition of love is. More so than even getting married, I think, when you have children, because there's such a responsibility and a weight that comes with all the brightness and the light and the love that causes you to realize that that's your true eternal life, is your children and how they carry their perception of you forward. And it's a scary proposition because you're not going to do it right. Nobody does it right. You just hope you do 30% of it right, and you just show up. I think the thing that it changed more than anything, and I think anybody would tell you this, and it's pretty simple. It takes a lot of the selfishness out of you, and part of you has to have that, I guess, in order to succeed and to push forward. But, boy, it takes a lot of selfishness out of you and puts a lot of drive and passion and responsibility in thinking of the future and your path, which provides more structure for you. And what I've also found out, too, is, is as the kids grow up, and Faith and I both have found out that structure was so good because you had to be on the ball. You had to get up every morning at 6. You had to break breakfast, you had to take your kids to school, you had to help with homework and to go to practices. You coach softball, all those things that keep you in a good, balanced routine. So when the kids start leaving the house, all of a sudden you start, what am I going to do with this the rest of my day? Now I don't have to get up at 6. It can take away some of your focus and it can take away some of your routine, and it can take away a little bit of drive. Once the kids are out of the house, it comes back. But at first you're sort of lost and sort of figuring out, what do I do with my time here.
- [82:33]
I've got a few chapters to get through before I get there.
- [82:37]
And then after about six or eight months, a year, then you realize, you and your wife, you realize you're home alone. Then the fun begins.
- [82:48]
How did you decide to be a father in the sense? How did you set rules for yourself or goals, hopes, without necessarily a model for it? So part of the reason I think that I've delayed building a family for as long as I have is that God bless my dad in certain ways. But I wanted to do things differently, if I did it at all very differently. And since I felt like I had no role model, I felt like I had no confidence that I would be a good father. And so I was like, well, fundamentally, if I'm helping bring some life into the world, they didn't ask for it necessarily. I mean, debate gets into some Deep philosophical territory and religious territory quickly. But I wouldn't want to do a bad job or more harm than good. And so I've waited and waited and waited.
- [83:41]
Well, you're going to do a bad job. Yeah, that's just. I mean, everybody does a bad job. There's no training manual. But I was in the same boat. I didn't know if I was going to be a good dad or bad. I didn't know what kind of dad I would be. I knew that I wanted to be a dad, and I wanted to be a good dad. And I knew that I didn't want my children's life to be like mine was. So I think in a lot of ways, maybe that the life that I had growing up prepared me to be a better dad because of what I knew I didn't want to do. And I found this business has really made me find out that learning what you don't want to do and what doesn't work for you is better than knowing what does.
- [84:24]
All right, so I'm going to grab that and run with it. Because there's an expression in Japanese. I went to Japan as an exchange student called Hamen Kyoshi. Hamen Kyoshi is like opposite teacher. It's basically like an anti role model, and they show you what not to do. So I'm wondering if there professionally have been any experiences, a tour, how you made a song or even chose a song in the first place that really taught you what not to do. Like an event, a song performance, a commitment, a partnership, anything where you're like,
- [85:00]
okay, oh, I put myself in plenty of positions that I wish I hadn't. I don't know if I can specifically say what not to do. I can say, be prepared all the time is always a good thing. But I can tell you my most embarrassing moment in the music business. It might be the best way to go. Bruce Springsteen, who I'm a huge fan of, and he's a friend, and I've known him for a long time. One of the greatest guys in the world, sweetheart. Music Cares. You know what Music Cares is? It's where they do a big concert the night before the Grammys to raise money, and it honors a specific artist, and other artists come in and do their songs. So Bruce was being honored. So he called and asked if Faith and I would do tougher than the rest together as part of the thing. Of course, we said yes, we would love to do it. So everybody's doing their songs, and there's Sting, you know, there's all the big guys playing Bruce's songs. So we do tougher in the rest, and we do a great job on it. Everything turned out good. And we're sitting at Bruce's table, we're talking, and. And Bruce is like, hey, man, you know, at the end of this, you know, we're gonna do Glory Days. He says, everybody's gonna come on stage and just sing along with the courses. So do you think you and Faith are going to come up and do that? And I'm gonna say, sure, we'll come up and do the course. Sing along the course of glory days. So we're up there, we're on stage, and we're all singing along. So Bruce is in the second chorus, and he looks over at one artist.
- [86:24]
Yeah.
- [86:24]
He's like, hey, like, come sing the second verse. And the artist is like, no. So he looks at another artist, like, I'm singing the second verse. And that artist is like, no, no, no. See, on the microphone, he goes, hey, cowboy hat, come sing the second verse. And in my mind, I'm thinking, all right, it's Glory Days. I know it. But I don't think I've ever sung. And Bruce's phrasing is some of the hardest phrasing in the world, the way he writes. And I thought, all right, I can get through the second verse of this. I can figure it out. The words were up there. So I step up, and I have no idea where to come in. I don't know the phrasing. I don't know anything. And everybody who is anybody in the music business is out there. And I'm standing there with that. When your mom just caught you doing something or your wife has caught you doing something really bad and where all the blood rushes out of your body and your gut punch. So I couldn't sing the song. I'm just like. And Bruce comes up beside me. He's like, I like that. Then he starts singing the song. So then I step back beside Faith. I'm gonna. Can I stand up?
- [87:27]
Yeah.
- [87:28]
I stepped back beside Faith, embarrassed. And I stepped back beside her, and this is what Faith does. She stepped away from me. Luckily, they shot it in a way, because it's always recorded and released and everything. So they shot it in a way that I could go back and fix the vocal where it didn't look like I screwed it all up. But, boy, that was. I didn't have fun that night at the hotel after the Grammy piercing.
- [87:56]
Do you get a lot of ball busting after that?
- [87:58]
I did. I Did, but none worse than mine, what I did to myself, because it was really the most embarrassing moment. There are a few moments where you feel like you're over your head sometimes, and you get. I mean, and it usually works out well. But, boy, performing on the Oscars was one of those moments where everything just seems to. Your body defies you. You think you got it under control, and when you start, everything goes. It worked out. Everything was fine. I did a good job. But in the moment, you're feeling like it's falling apart on me right here in front of everybody.
- [88:30]
So I would love to flesh out the humanizing of Tim McGraw a little bit, because for people who may not know your career, they might be like, man, this giant just gets off the Greyhound bus, and then it's like he's in a double and a triple and a home run. And it's just endless home runs, right? Green lights the whole way. And I'm curious if there are any favorite failures, things that didn't work that ended up teaching you something important or laying the seeds for something later, or if there was ever a period of feeling, plateau or stuckness and how you dealt with it.
- [89:07]
There's both of those. I think failure that I learned a lot from was my first album, which we always say, went Wood. I think we had one song that made it to 38 off of that album. Yeah, went Wood. So no hits on it. So the label just sort of forgot about me after that. And so I was slowly gathering songs, but I learned a lot. I learned what I didn't want to do, the way to make music. I learned what I didn't want it to sound like. So I slowly started gathering songs from songwriter friends of mine. Not really big songwriters, just friends of mine who are songwriters. Slowly started collecting songs. The label never even called me after the album came out because it didn't do anything. Didn't talk to them at all. So I collected these songs, and I went to Byron. I said, all right, I'm ready to go record these songs.
- [90:00]
Who's Byron again?
- [90:00]
My producer, Byron Gallimore, that we produced together. I said, I'm ready to cut these songs. And he goes, well, has Curb heard them or they proved us? Nope. We're just gonna book a session and go cut the album. And so we booked a session.
- [90:12]
So it was like an album on spec.
- [90:13]
Yes. We build Curb. We build Curb for the whole thing. We cut the album, did all the artwork, had the CD ready with the artwork done and turned it into a. And of course, they Hit the roof because we had spent a bunch of money making an album that we weren't approved of. And then they listened and it was the Not a Moment Too soon album. Then they listened to the album and then they were all on board. And the good thing about that is the first one didn't work. Second one, I said, I want to do this my way and to do this, and had Indian Outlaw. I'm going to do the songs I want to do. I'm picking all the songs, doing the songs I want to do. Don't cut them the way I want to cut them. And if it fails, it fails on my terms this time. And luckily it worked.
- [90:56]
So that's why you didn't reach out for approvals. I don't want some album by committee.
- [91:02]
No, I don't. It never works. Not for me. I'm sure it works for other artists. But anytime I've done that, anytime that I've let somebody else talk me into a song, whether it be a record label head or somebody else taught me into a song that I knew wasn't right for me, it's never worked. Never worked. And there's been tons of times where people didn't like the song at all and it worked.
- [91:25]
How did you decide? Or when you say you knew what you didn't want it to sound like, can you say more about that?
- [91:34]
Well, you can go back and listen to my first album. You can figure it out. I just knew that there were three songs on the first album that they sort of let me run loose with.
- [91:42]
Well, they're also like what other people hear, and then there's what you hear and what it means to you.
- [91:46]
Absolutely. And you also realize quickly in this business that, you know, you think when you move to town, you find your producer, you find your. You get a record label, you get all those things, and everybody knows what they're doing. That's not necessarily the case.
- [91:59]
Sounds a lot like book publishing.
- [92:01]
Yeah. Most of the time the artist knows what they're doing and then everybody sort of follows what the artist that gets successful and starts doing what they're doing. But there are great people, like, boy, without Byron Gallimore, I wouldn't know my right hand from my left. He's my. My partner in the studio and I would. Can't imagine making a record without him. But you find out very quickly if you don't have an idea about what you want and how you want to make your music and how you want it to sound and how you want your career to go. And if you don't get in control of that and you don't do it the way you want to do, might work, but it's not going to work for long. And there have been times in my career where I've sat back and decided, all right, I'm going to let this float and let other people make the decisions. Everything's fine for now. And sure enough, if I don't get involved, it doesn't go the way I want it to go. Now, I've got people around me now that's been around me for 20, 30 years that I trust, but even still, if they don't get regular input from me, nobody knows what's in your head. Nobody knows exactly what you picture. Even though you might think they do, they don't. I mean, they can get close, but you have to stay involved. I'm learning that more and more. And, you know, these last few years have been tough for me to be involved as much as I want to be, because I've been battling just trying to get my health back. And I'm fortunate that I have the right people around me that helps me through those periods. When your focus is on and you're paying attention to what you're doing and you know what the path is, it makes it easier for everybody around you.
- [93:30]
What about the periods of stuckness outside of the most recent injury period, obviously, the multiple surgeries?
- [93:37]
Well, the biggest period of stuckness and the biggest period where I thought besides this period, where I thought it was might be over, is when I went through a whole legal battle with Curb Records. That was a very dark period in my career. They kept extending my contract by putting greatest hits albums out. So every time I would turn in an album that would be the final album for my contract, they would drop a Greatest Hits, which didn't count against the contract. So I think they ended up putting like 10 greatest hits album out to keep me from dropping my album. So finally I decided I either had to bite the bullet and try to go to court with them and get out, or be stuck with them. Either way, I'm taking a chance on my career. We battled for a couple of years, and I had to pretty much rebuild my career after that. And that was a scary time because momentum's a tough thing. And I heard a quote the other day. It's actually a Landman. I was watching it, and it's a great show, great show. And Sam Elliott was talking to Billy Bob. He says, you know that monkey at rodeos that rides on the Back of the border collie. And the border collie just runs around and runs around, and the monkey's just hanging on for dear life. And he can't let go because he'll die, so he's got to hold on. He looked at Billy, said, you're that monkey. And I looked at Faith, goes, jesus Christ, I'm that monkey. So I feel like I'm that monkey's. But I don't know that if it's intentional, if it's innately in you. But there's something about. Even when you know you need to take a break, or even when you know you need to slow down when things are rolling, there's this sixth sense in your body that knows you can't let the momentum stop because it's so hard to restart, Even if consciously you're not thinking that there's something in you that keeps it driving because you don't want the ball to stop rolling because you're scared. Because you're scared if the ball stops rolling, you'll never get it rolling again for sure. So that was a time when that was happening to me, and I thought, you know, well, it's gonna be hard to restart the momentum.
- [95:35]
Yeah.
- [95:35]
And then after these surgeries, there's another
- [95:37]
one of those times, legal battles. It's just exhaustion upon exhaustion.
- [95:41]
It's just crazy.
- [95:42]
And sometimes you can't avoid it. But if you can avoid it, I
- [95:45]
don't want to be involved in legal battles unless it's just. Absolutely. But that was at a point in my career that if I didn't do something, my career was going to be over. If I did do something, there was
- [95:53]
a chance, there was still a risk. What were some of the most important things, in retrospect, that you did to rebuild your career, regain that momentum afterwards?
- [96:03]
Well, choosing the right partner, for one thing, which is. Was Scott Borchetta, who happens to be the son of Mike Borchetta, who signed me to my first deal, A Small World. I know who I signed with on Big Machine afterwards because I knew he was a hard worker, so. So that certainly being first. But I was also recording the best album I think I'd ever recorded in my life while all this was going on. Well, once I was cleared to record, and so I had an album ready to go. By the time everything, all the dust was settled, I had an album ready to go, and Scott Borchetta was ready and the album worked, and the juice was back. A lot of that was my team kept fighting for me the entire time. When I Went to Scott, to his label. He knew what had happened and he fought really hard because he didn't like what had happened either.
- [96:56]
I would imagine that also injected a helpful amount of piss and vinegar to demonstrate to really relaunch in a meaningful way.
- [97:07]
It turned me up to 12 after that. I mean, it kicked me into high gear for sure. And that's the way I feel now after all of this and worrying about being able to come back and worry about if I did come back, what's my show's gonna be like, how I was gonna be able to perform, was I gonna be able to be me again? Now I feel like that same way I felt after coming out of Curb and starting with Big Machine and getting the ball rolling again. I feel like that we're right on the edge of just tipping that boulder over the hill and let it go again.
- [97:36]
I am so curious because you must get approached all the time, one way or another, from musicians at different stages in their careers. Maybe it's the son of a friend or the daughter of a fill in the blank. Or it could be someone who's just coming up. Maybe they're trying to be an opener for you. Who knows someone who is earlier in their career. I imagine the advice you might give them has changed over time, but if they want to be more than a flash in the pan, take charge. To really last.
- [98:12]
Tim Ferriss
Yeah.
- [98:12]
Tim McGraw
What advice do you give them?
- [98:13]
Take charge.
- [98:14]
All right.
- [98:14]
Can you say take charge of your career? Take charge of your career. Take charge of what you do. Be confident in your decisions. Listen. Of course, you want to listen to people. Listen to people that know what they're doing. But ultimately you have to make the decisions. You have to make your choices, and you have to make the right choices for you. And nobody can do that but yourself. And if you just coast, you might have a career for a little while. But if you want a long career, you're going to have to take charge and ownership of it, and you're going to have to guide it. And you're going to have to have your finger on the button all the time. And you're going to have to say yes or you're going to have to say no. And you're going to have to use your skills to manage people. You're going to have to use your skills to be managed. And both of those things can happen simultaneously. And they have to happen simultaneously. You have to listen to smart people. But if you don't have a vision about what you want to do, if you don't Have a plan about what you want to do. If you don't act on it every day, it's not going to happen. It's just not going to happen. And you can do all those things and it's still not happening.
- [99:20]
But if you do all those things and it doesn't happen, back to your second album.
- [99:26]
Right.
- [99:26]
It's like you're taking the risk that you fail on your own terms as opposed to gambling on something that doesn't resonate for you.
- [99:33]
Absolutely.
- [99:33]
That someone's talked you into. So that seems to be a piece of it. There's, as you said, having your finger on the button, being willing to say yes and no.
- [99:42]
Being willing to say no is a big deal.
- [99:44]
Why do you think people are bad at that?
- [99:46]
Let's say no.
- [99:47]
Sure.
- [99:49]
Because people want to please people. You know, they want people to like them. I want people to like me. But if you don't learn to say no, not in a mean way or not in a bad way, but just say no, that's not right for me. And that's back to knowing what's right for you and what isn't right for you. There could be something that on the surface, everybody that works for you says, this is the perfect thing. But you've got to know whether it is or not. And sometimes you don't. You know, you can get it right all the time. There's plenty of times you get it wrong. But I think if you go with your gut, there's a caveat to all of this too. Because there are plenty of artists who succeed who don't pick their songs, don't have any involvement in their production, really don't have any involvement in their management, don't have any involvement in their stage design. And they just show up and do their thing. There's plenty of artists who do that and are successful. So there's always exceptions to the rule. But I think for the most part, the artists who have been around for a long time, the artists I know who have been around for a long time, they take control of their careers.
- [100:57]
I interviewed quite a long time ago. He's since sadly passed away. But Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks from the uk, large religious figure.
- [101:07]
If you're a Lord Rabbi, you got to be a big religious.
- [101:10]
He's a big deal and very good at conflict resolution. Incredibly open hearted man. And I recall at one point with me he shared this quote, which I'm going to paraphrase, but it was effectively one of the most important things in life is to be able to distinguish from an opportunity to be seized and a temptation to be resisted because they
- [101:32]
can look awful, they can look very similar.
- [101:34]
And what I've seen over and over again with all the startups I've been involved with, when I'm talking to authors who are just getting started, especially if they have a flicker of something that might ignite, is that as soon as there is a certain velocity of success, there are a lot of temptations that can pull you away from the thing that you spent so much time getting good at that brought you to that point. And I'm wondering if there are any categories of things. So for me, for instance, after about a year or two of getting very distracted, speaking engagements was one of those things where I was like, I'm just going to end up on the road doing speaking engagements, talking about the same thing every day for the rest of my life if I actually continue to say yes to this. And it's very seductive because they pay really well. And I was like, all right, so I'm going to say no for a year, that's it, so that I can focus on these creative projects, writing. Are there any things along those lines at a point where, like, okay, I need to say no to this, that or the other thing?
- [102:38]
Yeah, there have been times where I probably should have said no and didn't. I mean, there's been times where I've gotten myself in too much work, but I've gotten pretty good, I think, at saying no. I think the older I get. I don't know about wiser, but the older I get, the more I apt I am to say no. Mainly because you get to a point where I don't care to be more famous.
- [103:00]
Yeah, I think there's a point of diminishing returns.
- [103:04]
So you look at things under those lenses like, all right, this will give you higher visibility. All right, I've got plenty of visibility. I don't need to do that. The only thing that it gets into is, all right, you got to sell tickets to your concert. Then there's some things that you'd probably say no to that you'll say yes to just because you got to pay everybody. So there's some compromises that you have to make to your not principles, but to what you're willing to do work wise. But yeah, the older you get, the more it's easier to say no because you know more about what the outcome's going to be and whether the outcome is going to be beneficial enough for the time or it's not.
- [103:41]
So let's Talk about putting people in seats and tours. You have the upcoming Pawn Shop Guitar tour this summer. You've got new music in the works
- [103:55]
in the middle of working on an album right now. Next week, I'm in the studio again,
- [103:59]
so could you talk about. Just tell us more about both.
- [104:03]
Okay.
- [104:04]
And then you've got family, you've got, obviously have your lovely wife. You still have a lot going on.
- [104:13]
Yeah.
- [104:14]
So I'd love to know, and I'm sure the audience would, more about both of these. Where can they learn more? When can they expect things? And then also how you actually schedule your time, structure your time well, album
- [104:27]
wise, Like I said, we're in the middle of an album and the album is going to be called Pawn Shop Guitar as well. It's a song I wrote back to the story I told you when I got my first guitar, where I pawned my high school ring my freshman year of college and bought the guitar. Luckily for me, my grandfather found out about it, went back and got my ring for me. Although I don't know where it's at now. My wife has it somewhere. So I wrote the whole song around that story. And we were looking for tour titles, you know, trying to find the right tour title. I thought Pawn Shop Guitar was good. We all thought it was good just because of the story that it told and it conjures up some good imagery. So we start that tour. I think it starts in July. The tour starts in July. I think we're doing three or four stadiums and sheds. The chicks will be out on the stadium tours with us. And I'm a huge fan of those guys. They. We did a George Straight tour together years ago, and then they opened for me on one of my tours years ago. And. And just a huge fan of their music. And I'm excited to get out with those guys. And then we're doing sheds for the summer and then we'll do. We'll do it. We'll do some more shows as well. We'll be doing some fairs and festivals and it's going to be a busy year. We're going to be doing a lot and there's a couple movie and TV projects in the works. And then my. My oldest daughter's working on a Broadway. She's a Broadway actress and singer, so she's working on some stuff. My youngest daughter is a singer, she an actor. She's in Landman. She just.
- [105:50]
Oh, no kidding.
- [105:51]
She just did tour, open for Brandy Carlisle on her European tour last summer. My middle daughter works for Earth League International, a big non profit. She sings as well, but she, she's more. The brainiacs. Went to Stanford, got her master's degree from Stanford, worked in Congress for a long time. So they're all doing well?
- [106:09]
Tim Ferriss
Seems like.
- [106:10]
Tim McGraw
Seems like this, this like fathering thing. You've done pretty well.
- [106:13]
I mean, they've turned a good mom. And then my nephew Timothy Wayne is out there doing well too. He's a singer. So I'm the worst singer in the family.
- [106:22]
Tim Ferriss
For real.
- [106:24]
Tim McGraw
I mean, that's not, that's legitimately not a joke.
- [106:29]
Why do it? Now that might sound like a strange question.
- [106:31]
Why do what?
- [106:32]
Touring. It's so grueling, I have to imagine, right? Very demanding.
- [106:37]
It is, right?
- [106:38]
It's physically demanding, it's psychologically demanding. Is it something you feel on stage? Is it a quickening that you just can't get any other way? What is it?
- [106:46]
Well, you can't get on back, that's for sure. And they're always good. But every third show or so you have that one show that's like, this is why I do it. This is why I do it. And you're right, touring is more grueling, touring's more expensive. You pay for everything. You know, you're doing three nights in a row. But it's your stage, your design, your ideas, the way you want it to look, all those things that's the fun in it for me is building the stage and putting the show together. And that's also the hardest part, is putting the set list together. Because, you know, after 35 years and a ton of records, you're never going to get everybody's favorite song in. You know, there's. You're. Somebody's always going to miss a song that they wanted to hear because you can only do 22, 23 songs in a show at the most. When you've got, you know, 70 or 80 singles and you know, a bunch of number ones, you can't get them all in.
- [107:41]
You can't.
- [107:42]
So you just try to create a ride and an emotion and an experience. And that's the fun part for me is try to create a movie for
- [107:48]
everybody to see on those magic nights. Just a few more questions and then we'll land the plane. But what does that feel like? I'm so curious because I've played sports, I've had flow states in various contexts, but I've never experienced anything with that type of environment.
- [108:07]
Well, that's what it reminds me of is sports certainly reminds me of football before the Games. And it reminds me of the locker room and it reminds me of the. Just when you get your uniform on, you feel like you're 10 foot tall and bulletproof. That's when I put the cowboy on. It's like Superman's cape. You know, you put the cowboy hat on, you're ready to go. But there's a symbiotic relationship that happens. And to me, art is magic. That's what real magic is, is art, any kind of art. And the magic happens when you're up there and everything's going great for you and you can tell everything's going great for the audience. And you have this symbiotic electrical relationship where you're all in this groove together and you're all sort of in suspended animation for a while where you leave the world outside and all of a sudden we're all in this fantasy world that we create that we're all living in for this hour and a half. And when that happens, when the whole world just sort of shuts down and you're in this make believe world that all of a sudden becomes the real world that you're in for an hour and a half, two hours, where nothing else exists except for that world, then you're in a movie, then you're in this alternate universe that there's nothing but joy.
- [109:20]
It's like a utopia that you are able to create.
- [109:23]
Yes. Yes. On the good nights. On the good nights, sometimes you think it's not a good night because your ears don't sound great or your voice isn't doing what you want it to do and all this. And sometimes those turn out to be the best nights. I mean, my best basketball game I ever had, I think I scored 52 points and I had the flu. And it kept trying to get the coach to take me out of the game because I thought I was hurting the team. I thought I was playing terribly. Then he showed me the book after that.
- [109:51]
Tim, if you could have a billboard, metaphorically speaking, put anything on it for millions, billions of people to see, right? Could be a quote, could be a mantra, could be scripture, could be. Be anything, right? It could be an image, anything non commercial.
- [110:07]
Humble and kind.
- [110:08]
Humble and kind.
- [110:10]
Humble and kind.
- [110:11]
Tell me more about that.
- [110:12]
Because that song to me represents so much, the video too. So much of what the world needs and what we don't have right now is humility and kindness. And of course, love should be in that as well. But without humility and kindness, we're lost. And we seem to be lost right now. So that song to me is a beacon in a lot of ways. That one and Live like youe Were Dying to Me are songs that don't belong to me. I just happen to be lucky enough to be able to sing them for people. They belong to everybody.
- [110:50]
You're here. Humble and kind. Tim, we're going to link to everything related to Tim McGraw in the show notes. You've got plenty of time.
- [110:59]
Not everything.
- [111:01]
We'll leave your only fans page. We have, you know, X Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube. You're not hard for people to find, but is there anything else you'd like to point people to? Anything you'd like to say, Closing comments, public complaints, anything?
- [111:17]
I got plenty of public complaints, but I'm not going to air them.
- [111:20]
Stand up comedy, raw material. Anything you'd like to say before we.
- [111:24]
First of all, thank you for having me and allowing me to be a part of your book.
- [111:29]
My pleasure.
- [111:29]
One of your books. Thank you and enjoy listening to you and I hope we can do it again.
- [111:34]
Absolutely. It's been such a pleasure. I've wanted to connect in person for years. So much fun and I hope it's not the last time. I love Nashville. So I'll be back.
- [111:44]
Good. Well. And when you're back, we'll talk again.
- [111:46]
Yeah, absolutely.
- [111:47]
I'll cook dinner for you one night.
- [111:49]
I'm in.
- [111:50]
Or have Faith cooked dinner for you. It'd be better. Although I'm pretty good cook.
- [111:55]
That is a deal for sure. And everybody listening. We will put links to anything and everything we can find. Obviously all the ways to find what you're up to, the tour, the music, when it's ready.
- [112:09]
There is one new song before dinner up to that people can find that we didn't put on streaming or anything. You can only find it on my socials. But it's a song called different that I think people should listen to.
- [112:19]
All right, we will find different and we will link in the show notes at Tim Blog podcastforfolk. And as always, until next time, this is how I close almost every episode. A bit kinder than is necessary. Not just to other people, but also to yourself. If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete, as Jack Kornfield has said. And also as always, thanks for tuning in guys. See you next time. Thank you, Tim.
- [112:47]
Thank you. Adios.
- [112:48]
Adios.
- [112:50]
Tim Ferriss
Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take take off. And that is five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend, between 1 and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter. My super short newsletter called five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums, perhaps gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field.
- [113:36]
Tim McGraw
And then I test them and then
- [113:38]
Tim Ferriss
I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short. A little tiny bite of goodness before
- [113:45]
Tim McGraw
you head off for the weekend.
- [113:46]
Tim Ferriss
Something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim Blog Friday. Type that into your browser. Tim Blog Friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. Back in the day, this was 2004, maybe I had someone approach me in a coffee shop and said G' day mate and introduce himself.
- [114:07]
Tim McGraw
Who was that? It turned out to be founder of AG1. Believe it or not, way back in the day.
- [114:12]
Tim Ferriss
And people often ask me what has survived. After 20 plus years of testing every supplement under the sun, just about what actually has stayed in the rotation in the toolbox. This episode sponsor AG1 is at the top of that very, very short list. I started using it close to 15 years ago and it was still called Athletic Greens. I put it in the four hour Body, didn't get paid to put it in there. And it's outlasted almost almost everything else that I've tried. One scoop covers your nutritional bases, right? Fills the gaps. You want to eat good food, of course, but 75 plus ingredients including probiotics, B vitamins and whole food nutrients act as in my opinion, pretty cheap nutritional insurance. I take it first thing every morning with cold water and at this point it's automatic. Like brushing my teeth. If you're looking for one simple daily habit that supports gut health and fills common nutrient content gaps, this is where I'd start. Right now, new subscribers to AG1 get a free welcome kit worth $87 including AG1 and AGZ travel packs. That's for sleep, it's actually great. And vitamin D3 plus K2. So that's a whole bunch of free stuff worth 87 bucks. So check it out, take a Look, visit, drink ag1.com Tim and that's the number one. So drink ag number1.com Tim to check it out one more time. That's drinkag1.com Tim what many of you may not know is that I actually run two private invite only communities for some of my projects. The no book, which eventually will come out after God knows how long, and Coyote the card game. And the feedback from those groups has been absolutely invaluable. Moreover, perhaps most important, the connections that members have made made and the interactions have been just a joy to behold. It's been so much fun and I generally view communities as headache after headache after headache. Way back in the day with like B bulletin and whatever. Not to slam those guys, but man oh man, running communities can be a pain in the ass. And in this case, it's been easy.
- [116:10]
Tim McGraw
Why?
- [116:11]
Tim Ferriss
Well, both of them are built on Circle, this episode's sponsor. And before committing to using Circle, I did so much harder. I asked you all on social media, talked to dozens of creators, pressure tested alternatives, talked to all sorts of people on the phone, and Circle is where I landed. Circle quietly backs some of the most popular communities online, run by folks like Kevin Rose, my buddy Dr. Becky from Good Inside, Ali Abdaal, Jay Shetty, Pat Flynn and many others, including some giants I can't mention here. But it doesn't need to be giant. My two communities are maybe 100, 150 people a piece. They're not gigantic. If you run an online community, a membership or a course business, Circle makes it easy to build a professional home for your audience. Events, courses, payments, custom branded apps, all in one place. And also once I had my first one set up for the notebook to spin up another one for Coyote the card game. It took minutes. It was so, so fast. And as you might have noticed, things are getting pretty squirrely out there there on the Internet. We're moving from content businesses to connection businesses. People want connection.
- [117:13]
Tim McGraw
They want to know you're real.
- [117:15]
Tim Ferriss
They want accountability, real progress. And communities are the most effective way that I have found to make that happen. So check it out. Go to Circle so tim, to get $1,000 off Circle plus exclusively for you guys, listeners for a limited time. Check it out. You can also look at other options at Circle. So Tim, it.