it's one thing to write a song about somebody it's a whole other thing to write a song about somebody who probably lives down the road and it's a whole other thing it's a whole other thing to get cheryl crow on the radio away where that's a hell of a line man that's a hell of a line well thank you i wish i could take credit for writing it but i
didn't get i didn't write that one so i i have to have to defer to the songwriters on that but it did hit me the same way that it hits you i i just thought it was a really unique way to talk about a relationship and and use sheryl crowe as sort of the the the the the i don't know the metaphor for a relationship i guess is the best way to say it
a walking living breathing metaphor that is cheryl crow to a t you can apply her life and her righteousness and her rebel spirit and rebel heart to almost any part of your life she's a she's a true force of nature she sure is and i i i know you remember when you're you're younger than i am but when she first came out and her music first came
out it was it was uh it was pretty incredible i mean it just i mean it was all over the place and it was huge and it's true you you listen to every single song on there and listen to that album over and over and over again to me she was also you know actually in a stealth way and we didn't really realize it until later she was a really interesting bridge between the kind of
craft the craftsmanship of writing songs that occurs every day in nashville and to the wider world that to some degree it probably compartmentalized country music as something that existed within its own state um and she really opened it up and put it on on the world stage i feel i think so as well and you know the thing about country music that i've come
to find um and it's been this way for a long time it's just it's reached a broader audience now um i run into so many pop artists and and and other genres of music artists and rap artists just other artists that really appreciate country music and appreciate the songwriting and the storytelling her country music and storytelling
yeah and then her and their influence but in a lot of ways i mean i think you can just like you know i'm influenced by everything that i listen to i mean that's heavily influenced by the eagles and in the style of music that i do but also george strait and earl haggard at the same time so so all those influences come together and i think
what's happened through the years is you know when when you're when we were younger i mean growing up in the 70s and then the artists that come before us the opportunity to listen to different types of music was sort of a narrow band which you could find on your radio stations now you can go on your phone to an app and you can listen to radio stations all over the world
and kinds of music all over the country so so the the lines are getting more and more blurred where the influences come from and i think that's a good thing for music because i think it makes each genre grow a little bit including apple music country our newly launched dedicated station to country 2020 and beyond whilst also paying respects to
the great people who have carried the torch um tim mcgraw you were one of those people it's great to finally meet you congratulations on the new album here on earth it's a beautiful lush honest reflective album it's got some beaut really fantastic production touches experimentations but the songs are incredible so respect so thank you sir i appreciate
that i mean we we used to spend a lot of time working on we worked on it for a couple two and a half years at least and and what we wanted to do is sort of marry all the experience that i've had and all the influences that i've had throughout my career including going back and listening to all the records that i've made and sort of using those as an influence as
well um songwise and production-wise but adding it's like going back to to some of the sort of song choices and melody choices and and things maybe from the 90s of the music that i was making but sort of sprinkling 2020 sauce all over all of it and trying some different vocal sounds and some different and some different production sounds and we recorded it all
in the old analog way full band all the band there at one time all on two inch tape you can hear it i mean song number one la it's it's so rich with that i mean you've referenced jimmy webb and glenn campbell for that song and writing but i also hear things like bread in that song a lot melodically it's yeah melodically and some of the
sort of the modern candy stuff that sprinkled throughout it that that you can hear that it goes that that that blends really well with the strings and boy i tell you when when when we were putting that song together and we went to go to get to put strings on it david campbell did the strings on a who who's done strength who's out here in la and who's done done
tons of strings for me and faith throughout my career he's beck's dad oddly enough but but yeah and he's so incredible and such a talented guy and he puts his heart and soul in everything that he does with the strings and and um when i tried to describe what i wanted with that sort of swirling thing at the beginning with the strings and boy he just flat nailed
every piece of it he just makes that record sore he's so distinctive with his arrangements as well and um you know what i really love about david campbell is that he really shows up for great artists like you and faith but he always saves a little something special for his son and the strings on sea change and on morning it's just unbelievable he just he pulls
that extra little bit out for his for his son which i love you know i actually love it he sure does i mean he's the best in the business and and of course beck is just a genius of what he does absolutely wow what a one-two punch on this playlist i mean you know talk about a way to get to know you i'm taking a look at these songs i feel like i know you already straight
out of the eagles into doobie brothers you're talking about my childhood really i mean that's backseat of the car for me all day every day you know and again you know two artists that are steeped in that kind of storytelling writing about the wide open spaces the great americana i mean hearing those songs right now for me in particular is a little bittersweet
because of you know the grow the growing pains this country is going through and then you hear a song like take it easy it just seems so innocent and naive when you listen back to it now a lot of those eagles songs were so steeped in country music i mean if you if you could listen to some of the country music certainly some of the country music that was being made
in the in the late 90s and early 2000s you could hear a lot of that influence and like i told you before that in the doobie brothers as well i mean certainly rhythmically the doobie brothers were absolutely incredible with the stuff that they were doing um and the songwriting as well but you you you can really hear a lot of that
influence in country music and a lot of their the influence of country music in their music as well um i like i said there was an album that i made um the first album i made with my band at the time called the dancehall doctors album and we recorded that up in up in um in new york at a place called air studios which is not there anymore
it's right outside of woodstock and we spent three weeks up on a mountaintop and three foot of snow and this great studio up there with fireplaces roaring and you know we just sort of camped out and made it the old way and our and our whole influence when we went there to make that album was sort of 70s and the way they made albums in the 70s and the eagles were a
big influence on that record and i can go back and listen to that record now and just hear all the thought processes that we were going through and it was and it was a lot of that comes from this playlist that we have here brian henry into mike henley into michael mcdonald and co and then straight into the boss bruce springsteen and back with tim mcgraw in
a second at home with apple music come on man we're born to run let's go i mean you could you could handpick any bruce song in a group of 100 people we could family feud that and survey says survey says born to run i'm sorry i know you could say born in the usa you could say you know uh um i mean there's so many but but it's born to run
i'd say that that's you know that's where that's where we're going number one answer i have to say absolutely it's it's such a signature for him and it's it and it's a signature and a metaphor for all of his music and the way his music is and what he writes about in the in the landscape that he paints in the cinema some cinematic sort of view that he
gives you every time he writes a song he's one of my favorite artists of all time and one of my favorite people of all time he's the coolest dude in the world to be able to hang out with hang on he dropped something turn i'm sorry you might want to pick that up hang on a second somebody i think you draw something right there dude it's pretty cool
you can say that that's bruce springsteen and i know you're a legend to mcgraw but that's the boss no it's the boss and it's funny story because the the very first time i met him he was doing like 15 nights in a row at the meadowlands and faith had recorded should i fall behind on her album and bruce had sent her a really nice letter about the record that she
had made on it so he was playing at the meadowlands we happened to be in new york so we wanted to go see him so we get there we go to the show we're just going to see the show we go to the show and they take us right into his dressing room and he wasn't in there at the time so we're just standing in his dressing room and then he walks in
and i'm i'm such a huge fan so faith and he were talking the entire time so when we left we walked out of the room faces do you realize that you didn't say one word the entire time we were in there and i told her i said i was scared to death and i was scared to death i was going to call him the boss while i was talking to him and i didn't want to embarrass myself
it's nice to be on the receiving end of that because i mean the amount of times that you've been in a situation where fans find themselves lost for words when they meet you it's a beautifully humbling moment people often think that a gas is an artist and it feeds the ego in my experience it's the opposite it's a very humbling experience watching
people lose lose their you know themselves around around people that inspire them i think yeah for sure i mean sometimes for me it's i i it takes me a minute to even get it because i'm i just want to have a regular conversation but you know i appreciate it and i appreciate you know what i really appreciate is how music speaks to people and how music
becomes a part of people's lives and and i've been lucky enough throughout my career to have a few songs that sort of um are beyond me as an artist that that that i feel like that they're not my songs and when i'm singing them and being able to sing them on stage in front of a lot of people to see how they affect people that they're that they're something
existential in a lot of ways and i just feel like you tapped into something yeah then i'm lucky to be on stage and do it the song is called i call mama and uh you know an important piece of music that came out at a time when we're celebrating those that have raised us nurtured us and hopefully put us on on the right path given us guidance and
a strong moral compass and um it was a beautiful song and it must be nice to be able to just to sort of dial into that experience and and and have that moment to share that moment and put it out you know the thing about is all this music was really recorded before the world changed and that song was one of the last ones that we had done and it was right before the
world changed and um when i recorded it it was it was a it was a nice beautiful simple song about you know something in life happening and and you know who do you who do you lean on when something hits you in the gut and sort of changes your your thought process about the way you're living your life and the way you looking at life a little bit differently
so it was a nice song about that how you reach out to your mom and your mom sort of your rock and stabilizes you when things are going crazy and then once we started mixing the song is when the world went crazy and we we had the pandemic strike and everything started changing and our whole outlook on what life was really about started changing
and i think that song took on a different meaning at that time then it was not only about mom and about losing a friend it was about it was about a bigger picture it was about everybody in your life who you can lean on and can count on to stabilize you when it's it's like you know you know sometimes when you're when you go to bed and you've been drinking a
little too much and the in the bed and the bed starts spinning you know you got to put a foot on the ground to keep it from spinning sadly term i do increasingly in pandemic times as well i might add for sure but that's what your those friends and those people who ground you and put you you know bring you back down to earth so
to speak those people in your lives and that's what that song took on me and not only that who are those people who look to you as that person that that that's a stabilizing force in their life and are you living up to that so so the song sort of runs along with a great lyric and a great story and a great melody but i think in the times that we live live
in it really expands and there's a thousand lyrics and a thousand stories that go along with that now that you can sort of interpret that a little bit differently so i'm going to imagine you in faith it's friday night you got a little it's it's it's private time you get a little okay you're on the couch you get a little time to yourself no one's buzzing
you the phones are off you've done your job everything's moving smoothly on comes uh chicago because i can't imagine any other time that chicago gets played this is couples music right here for sure you know chicago 16 chicago 17 those are the things that in high school man in junior high uh i mean timeless timeless music and before they even had
hits they were just brutally funky so funky and the chord changes and the melodies that they did and the harmonies and certainly uh jimmy panko and the horns that that he put together just unbelievably i mean and still to this day they're rocking when they i mean well now that we can't tour but when they were toured and doing you know 100 shows a year or whatever i mean and
just loving it um to me they're one of the all-time great yeah they're incredible um i tried to sample chicago once on a record i was making for a rapper in the uk and i got as far as can i no man i mean it's chicago period period yeah and i don't blame them yeah not me neither i wasn't even mad at them i was like you know but it was brilliant
i think i got like hello my name is and then it was just like return to sleep daryl hall and john oh it's one of the great collaborated collaborations one of the great duos of uh of modern music you know um and just that classic you know one one one's a talker one's not you know one's one's a dancer one's not you know it was just like this yin and
yang that was so interesting about those two and yet the songs are undeniable the songs are incredible i mean and and and daryl hall singing i mean come on talk about blue eyed soul i mean he's just one of the greatest singers of all time and and you know you're a rich girl and you're going to farm and come on how cool that was a good daryl
oh that was good man well that was my country fine version of daryl hall there you go there you go you got it you got it with daryl hall and those kind of things you got to you've almost got to push your register to the point where you can't quite reach it but you always do that's the sweet spot that's the sweet spot uh he and that's what i love about it it's like
the greatest singers i think in a lot of times are you're always they're on a precipice and a tight rope are they going to make it are they going to make it are they going to make it because you got to mean it because you got them and if it comes too easy sometimes it's not as believable as it is if you're not sure they're going and somebody else who
always walks that tightrope and his voice is always right there on the edge and creates so much tension as phil collins is another artist that i really love totally i love him man you know there's a great video of him and i don't want to waste too much time there's a great video of him on one of his uh one of the last shows he did on his farewell tour when he was
retiring and he was playing in the air tonight there's a great footage of him stalking the stage with one of those kind of like like uh those mics are wraps around the chin and he's got this big drum kit in the center of the stage and and everyone's freaking out because he's so far from away from the drum kit and the big phil's coming in yeah the phil is coming in and
he's is he gonna get there is he gonna get there it's so funny watching everyone on the crowd like watching is he gonna make it he just gets there within an inch of his life i got to work with his daughter in black on blind side lily collins was was my daughter in in the in the movie blind side which and all i did was talk about her
dad the whole time you were that guy you're just fanboying out about it i'm a big fan of your dads did you talk to your dad today hey what's his number yeah cool thanks yeah thanks tim yeah nice one should we run mines no no let's talk let's talk about your name did you ever get a chance to meet tom petty in your time and his time on the honor i
never met tom petty um i wanted to i certainly wanted i was always a big fan of tom um there's a song i've always wanted to uh the southern accents a star of his that i've always wanted to cover and i've just never had quite got my nerve up to try to tackle it covers are interesting aren't they because even even when you're in a situation
where you're successful in your own right with your own voice but then you hear a song that moves you so much it you have to really check yourself before you attempt it don't you because it's ultimately changing the landscape of what you love yeah for sure i mean i've done a few covers in my career i i mean i did tiny dancer uh cover and i only did it because
it was funny we were doing a um a charity show and david foster was putting it together faith and i were on it um it was andre augustin's charity thing that he did in vegas for years that was a really big deal faith in our own and now john was on it and i get there and david foster comes over to you which makes you nervous any when david foster
comes over and asks you hey do you want to do a song with elton and you know my heart drops to my knees and i'm thinking i'm thinking yeah i want to but i'm not going to because i'll screw it up but he said he wanted he said how about tiny dancer and i said i know that one and i'll do it so ellen and i practiced it and then we did it and we ended up doing a couple
times we opened the american music awards with it one time um this was after i recorded but after we did it together at that andre obviously function i talked about he said he told me he said you should record that song so i did record it and it's still it's become one of our favorite things to do live alton is the best he is unbelievable i love
the rocket man movie and we've actually got sort of a tip to the hat to him on our new album with a song called chevy spaceship it's got a little bit of a rocket man vibe to it back-to-back og business right here uh on this playlist you know going from randy i go from travis triden to randy travis and you know two of the most amazing artists to have come out of
the space that that you know that you call home and uh you know must be great to be able to play these songs on your playlist but no these are these are individuals that you've gone to know and through living out your dreams ultimately you know you expand your frame of reference into into your heroes you start to make friends with people who helped raise
your talent well absolutely and i'm still in awe every time i meet these guys and um run across guys that that i get to work with i actually got to work with randy travis in the studio he did a duet salve and i got to do a duet with him and it was just flabbergasted to go into the studio and to hear that voice that just such a rich voice and i remember
the first time not the first time i heard him but the first time it really knocked me off my feet i was in high school and he had come out with on the other hand and i would happen to be walking through the living room and my mom was walking watching the country music awards and i was headed out to for a party or something that you do in
high school and i walked by the tv and he was singing on the other hand and it stopped me dead in my tracks and went out and bought the album as soon as it came out and just played it over and over and over again that was one of the moments that that kind of put you on the path yeah that was one of the moments that that really made me think that gosh this is there
it's changing and somebody that's singing the kind of music that i like that's younger you know because you know growing up great i love merle haggard and waylon and willie loved all those guys but you can see the sea change happening in country music with a lot of the younger guys another guy clint black you know he had a killing time and better man when i
was in college and those are a couple of the same tracks as well that goes you know i think that this is i can make a i can make a run at this at least i can try you know they're the kind of music that i love that's got the haggard influence and the george strait influence and and there's a new crop of guys coming up and i don't i don't want to miss the
boat i want to try it out and you've become a part of that congratulations on a brand new album streaming now on apple music and thanks for lovingly taking us through a selection from this playlist that will sit in full alongside this this conversation tim until next time be safe be well and all the best right on good talking to you man you