You talk about the tour, the tour is almost over. What happens when the tour bus parks for a while and you get to get off the bus and chill out, you go back to Nashville. What does life look like outside of the tour?

Um, well, the funny thing is, um, there's not a lot of life outside of the tour for me this year, which I'm very grateful for. I mean, I live for this. This is where I'm my feeling the most like live. But home is um it's just a very relaxed, Right now, home is like a Sunday. That's, that's pretty much all we get at home. But um, but home is a Sunday on the couch, probably binge watching something finishing, maybe like the OA or going back and rewatching Chernobyl because I still don't understand what's happening. Um, or, you know, it's just, it's just, it's just a nice relaxing day, either outside smoking a cigar on the back patio with my two dogs just running around. They have a whole like acre and a half gated that they can just play and run and they're. So I have a retired greyhound. So he and so he loves kind of. He's lazy until he gets up and goes around the yard and then he's very playful. But uh, and then I've got Ella who's a miniature greyhound. So, I've got two very fast dogs that love doing laps in the yard. So that's entertaining.

You have such a good heart. You rescued a greyhound.

well, yeah, you know, the old saying, they they rescued me. I mean, that's, that, that truly can be said. I've learned a lot about myself from those dogs. Like. Yeah, um, just I don't know, just how impatient I can be. And how OCD I am and how I need to get over it. Um,

No, don't get over it. It's part of your charm, right?

Uh, I don't know about that part, but

Listen, your future person will think that is part of your charm.

Hopefully. Yours. That's the dream. Right?

So let's talk about your upbringing in Louisiana. You're this child prodigy. You were all over the map a rising star. TV, music gigs at like, three, four, five, six, seven years old. But you've turned out good. Like, you're a success story.

I appreciate that.

If that makes any sense, like starting from so young to now, you could have hit many bumps as as some do.

Oh, I did. There's no question.

You got more wounds but who doesn't.

Yeah, exactly.

But you're a success story.

Yeah, well, thank you for saying that. I think well, for me it's like music was just my thing, you know, everybody around me had sports. I was not athletic, so that was never gonna happen for me. Nothing. And no, not at all. But humorously so, pathetically humorous, but um, but I just I loved I loved writing. I loved working on demos. I loved just making stuff up, creating stuff out of nowhere. And I loved touring, too. I mean, even though, you know, when I was younger, you can't call it this kind of touring. But we still, we went out every weekend and we played one, three shows and, and I had a blast doing it, you know? So like I think I was just lucky to have found the thing that I love and to have kind of passed the threshold where people tell you you can't do it for a living, without anybody telling me that I couldn't do it for a living. You know what I mean? I went from a kid who just loved making music to um, sort of I guess just a teenager where I was still making music and, um, and was never told and that's supportive parents. You know, I didn't have stage parents, they were just supportive parents. They were just like, you can do honestly anything you want to do, but you just have to like, you have to dedicate yourself to it. The best thing that I've seen in retrospect over the past, like, let's say 18 months, Okay. is looking at the success stories and the things that worked and the things that really sparked and realizing that all of those things weren't manufactured. You know, the the the most magical moments came from purity. Came from uh, actual transparency. Came from um, just genuine, uh, writing, um, you know, the best shows were just the ones that we just had fun and and that's why this tour has been so important for me is because this has been the application of all those lessons. You know what I mean? Like, hey, let's take all of that and let's put it all into the one thing that I love the most and, you know, live in it.

You were talking about being on tour. Something you've done plenty of in your lifetime already. You've been on tour with some of the best in the business. Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, Rascal Flatts. Give me some like behind the scenes of touring with those superstars. Behind the scenes. Starting with Taylor.

Yeah. Um, well, the Taylor tour that we did was, uh, it's like 10 years ago. I mean, that was Speak Now tour, which is crazy to think that that much time has passed. And that was actually my first time ever stepping foot on a stage in an arena was that show. Uh, and that was obviously like that's the dream. It's like arena shows. And so that was an introduction. I would walk out every night and start with just me on acoustic and then the band would eventually come up, which I actually loved because it allowed me to kind of like process the amount of stuff going on in my head when you walk on stage in an arena. So, I don't know, I think that tour was more of a blur for me because I think I was just trying to learn how to be an artist that plays on an arena stage, you know, which was that's that's a lot. There's a lot to process. And also like show days. That was my first tour where the show days were just crammed from 7:00 a. m. to midnight. And that was just that was a blur. I don't remember very many things from it, if I'm being totally honest, you know?

That's okay. A lot of 5-hour Energy. That which you don't need any more?

I still do. Yeah.

And Carrie? How was that tour?

That was great. I was that was a really long tour. I think that was the most change I ever experienced. That was the the era from, you know, going from Storm Warning to Wanted as a single. And then Wanted obviously, you know, having its incredible trajectory and experiencing that for the first time. There were 95 shows on that tour. Those show days were the most intense for me because we had, I mean, we had stuff going all day. So, again, you talked about a blur. It was a longer tour. Um, but even more of a blur because there was so much going on outside of touring. You know, so it was, it was that. It was also, I was writing for the next record on the buses. So, like I had writers come out and spend the weekend and um, we actually wrote a lot of stuff on that tour on the bus and I finished a lot of stuff on that tour.

Did they sleep on the bus, too?

On the bus. Yeah. We had we had just a whole a whole crew, you know, basically making making a record on that tour. So, anyway, so that all that to say a lot happened on that tour and I don't really remember much of it. It's a blur.

And then Rascal Flatts. Any any fun memories of that one?

Flatts was uh, Flatts was yeah, Flatts was a blast because it was that the vibe on that tour was like really loose. Like really just, you know, those those guys have been they're gonna kill me for saying at this point, but they've been been touring for a while and they're pros. You know, I think that's what I'm trying to say is not not age. It's just their pros. Um, it was inviting. It was relaxing. It was just it was like hanging out with with your best buddies and I, I, you know, I grew up being a big fan of Rascal Flatts. So, feeling like, you know, we were all kind of just in the same boat and not like, you know, one was a headliner. It was very like, I don't know, just there was a good vibe, good people, good attitudes and and a lot of laughs, a lot of pranks. A lot of laughs.

Pranks. Oh yeah. Anyone that sticks out that you remember?

Um, I know there's just one guy that it seems really really minor. But until you realize how ADHD I am. Um, there's just one guy that's really good at throwing picks and he could nail something like 50 yards away with a guitar pick, right? Like and he would just come up and just start throwing bags of picks at me in the middle of the show and this doesn't seem like a lot.

In the middle of the show?

It when yeah, when you're trying to focus and sing and play and entertain and, you know, all those things has getting pelted with guitar picks. It's it's a little distracting.

I thought you were gonna say maybe when you were sleeping, but actually during the show.

During the show. Yeah. That was but that was minor. I mean, they I I can't remember what our what our all of our end of tour pranks were for that, but it was uh, it was it was pretty brutal.

Wow, Well, you were talking about good vibes and good people. I'm getting that feeling right now, sitting here with you. Love that. On your bus.

Good. This is the magic moment. Cheers.

Cheers to magic moments.

Cheers to magic moment. Take a sip of your coffee. All right. Okay.