Nashville Country Music Awards

Yes. Hey, welcome, everybody. And thank you, Brad, for having me on

your show today. I’m an honor. I’m honored to be here.

Yes, we just persevere. We’re giving this another shot. And it’s much, much more clear, we just kind of got the cobwebs out of the way. And we’ll kind of go back from where we started. And the question is, where are you located? And I already know because I’m psychic.

But let’s tell them because they don’t know Nashville, Nashville, Tennessee, Music City USA. And I believe you said you

had been there I visited

I did you know, only one time I went to a convention there. Were at the Hard Rock with the big guitar You know, a lot of fun being down there as a lot of but that’s kind of like the place to go kind of like Hollywood’s where actors go. It is a natural

Yeah they call it the third coast I think or something like that the third coast even though we don’t have any water well we have lakes. I can’t wait to come see your you know up in Minneapolis I will in Minnesota. At least 10,000 Lakes it could be more but

Yep. And we started with the Mississippi River starts beautiful country, Mighty Mississippi. So are you married you got kids down there y’all by yourself?

Well I’m married my wife Audrey and I live here and we she says she teaches at a college local college English and and then I do my writings and all the things I do and and we have kids Yeah, one of them is an animator in Hollywood out in Los Angeles animator for a show that he’s doing. And my my son is Alex and my daughter our daughter is works for a college, something called general General Assembly where she you know is very popular today online. Classes college classes. So she does those kind of things for for

for Star Wars, we’re kind of along the same road there. I’m a magician is where I got my start doing magic as an entertainer, as a musician, and his wife taught Spanish and your wife was English. So

just just try turn around.

So how long have you been involved with music? Well, I’ve been involved

since I was five years old. So that’s a really long time up till today. So

I don’t I want my I give credit to my parents for starting me out in music and in writing, too, because it all led to one thing led to another. I started at five years old and my, my mother got me into piano lessons. And I was I started making up these little, little ditties on the piano, and they didn’t seem like they meant anything but they did. They ended up to being writing hit songs today and But it’s, they My parents always thought I was wasting their time, you know, by making up these little cities instead of actually concentrating on a program get with the plan, you know. So, so 1000 songs later I’ve written 1000 songs which which have been published, published, and 100 I’ve had hundred 50 of my songs recorded by major and independent artists, some of the artists are love it is Engelbert humperdinck, who is the king of romance singer and Gloria Gaynor, who did the song I will survive. And anyway, my song garnered a platinum album. That means 1 million units sold or more, and then also was nominated twice as songwriter I was actually awarded Songwriter of the Year twice here in Nashville, and also in have won several Grammy and Dove nominations and now it’s led me to 2012 is where I’m starting to write books. I started writing books. And my, my philosophy is your writer, your writer, you know, even if you can’t write music, at least you write lyrics. And my, I believe a novel is nothing more than a three minute song gets song three to four minute hit song or vice versa, you know, it’s just condensed, you know, a hit song is three to four minutes and a novel is probably at least 60,000 pages or more than that, plus, and so I have 32 traditionally published books, decided to go the route with traditional there’s nothing wrong with self publishing, it’s great and works for people, some people, but I get advances on some of my books. That means money ahead of time, on the royalties, they’re not it’s not free money. And then the I also sign traditional contracts where they, they do all the work, they pay for everything and then they send me a check for money.

Well, that makes a lot of Sounds it’s kind of good that your parents could not corral you into, you know, doing the program as the program does let your artistic vibe flow so to speak. In my situation as a kid, I started doing magic as, as a kid when I was like four or five years old, a friend of my brothers made a quarter disappear in a year and just fascinated me and you just kind of got to go your own space, you really can’t corral an artist because it’s it’s very nebulous and it sounds like you just kind of just took off and you have all these all these hit hit records, I guess, hit songs or songs 100 Another thing that’s interesting what you’re talking about as far as going to self published route versus are not going to self publish Roth versus traditional, because, you know, they both have their pros and cons with them. Because if you’re self published, that means you got to self promote, to

Well, yeah, and you but you do own all your everything, your own everything. All your writes everything total.

Yeah that’s true. But it can be said for that pros

and cons to that but I have never actually self published so I don’t know what it is but I have friends that have

and all the way out of it.

I want to say something really cool Brett today is a special day for me too. It’s not an anniversary or any of those things but what it is is my latest song I wrote a song called cry myself to sleep it’s actually an up tempo pop song it releases on radio worldwide today with artists from Nashville he’s a pop artist not country pop artist and his name is lucky boy l u c. k IE lucky boy and it’s it’s a it’s got it’s been released to radio today it is being released radio as we speak. And and so we’re we’re watch stations Europe and in the us too. So what’s wrong with

cause for that? Well, thank

you so so it just happened to coincidentally coincide with our our interview today my interview. So just want to mention that

that’s always exciting when you have something like that happen. You know, little milestone kind of thing. You can look back on it.

Mm hmm. It is it’s kind of exciting. So, but

enjoying every minute of it, I have a lot of passion for it.

I don’t I would do this, whether I made two cents, five cents, whatever it is a couple dollars or was doing, you know, making millions and millions. It’s just, it’s a passion for me and I don’t want to stop doing it wasn’t that

I mean fun about that. They say if you do what you love the money, do what you love. You’ll never work a day in your life. But that’s what they say. Just doing what you love. The money will follow it if you accept it. I mean, it’s because I want to pay you for it. Accept it. What the heck yeah, it’s out there. Sure to earlier on when we were talking you were talking about how you write and you just kind of kind of do a rough draft of it and then you start adding some things you said you mentioned something about a snowflakes. Could you reiterate all that? Yeah,

yeah. Well, um, um, they tell writers experts tell writers to write every day whether it’s good or bad stuff, okay. And I do a little bit of that. But usually I get inspired by some moment. It can be a picture of something, someone, anything that can instantly inspire me a true story. And one of the stories happen 2014 which became a hit on the radio worldwide, it’s played every Christmas and holiday. It’s actually a winter song. It’s called catcha snowflake and what happened was, I was walking out of a school building, visiting and all of a sudden, all the sky just flakes you’ve seen little snowflakes, but these are just gigantic ones. You can almost see every detail of it. And the kids were around were just captivated and enchanted by the snow and you could just tell the joy what it brought to them and, and so they the whole ground was just blanketed by it. I suddenly got this idea that whole song came to me. I wrote it down, went home and started perfecting and working on it. See, I believe in capturing a Kodak moment, even though that’s a dated word Kodak moment, but it’s a photo moment of everything, every bit of emotion, everything that’s there and it could be just raw. And then I come home and I work on it and perfect it and edit it till it’s great. And a Nashville artist named Matt Newton Newton, like Isaac Newton, but Matt Newton recorded it back in 2014. And went to the top of the charts in euro charts and around the world. And it’s played every every holiday Christmas and or during the winter season.

Okay, yeah, that makes less sense cuz I like I’m sort of I’m a Gemini so I got the logical and the emotional stuff kind of going both ways and right. I

places on places, which means creative, creative office.

Yeah, there you go. All that creative stuff. I’m kinda To create it, but it’s more in the logical strategic way of doing things. I’ve seen situations where people are like they, you know, art where they write with a pencil, and they sketch it out, it doesn’t look like anything. And then as they add layers on to it ends up being looking just like a photograph. So it kind of sounds like that’s how you write you kind of just draft it out, hey, there’s a snowflake it fell on the ground with his mouth and whatever. And he’s tweaking that thing. And pretty soon it ends up being perfection.

Exactly. It’s the same way with books to some of the books I’ve written particular children’s books. I’ve dreamt him actually word for word, everything can you believe wake up and see it? I say it in my mind the entire thing in it, write

it. That’s how I write.

I still continue to learn from the greats like john Grisham and James Patterson, I take workshops where I’ve taken workshops and everything with them and they you know, talk about doing outlines and everything I I kind of find that constricting to me as a creative person. Do that, you know, but you might have some people that have the more logical, you know, like you said creative and logic together might find that very helpful. So when I think when an idea comes to me of a book like a dream, I do the entire, I write a synopsis out like a short beginning, middle and end, just a very brief like paragraph of what it’s all about. And then I go from there and I start writing. So

well that makes sense. Again, going to the more the painter, the artists kind of, there’s some people who kind of have to sketch it out first. And other people like to see some of these guys that just start painting with like spray paint, or just moving stuff around with their fingers and stuff like that. Art is a fascinating thing to me because I logically just don’t understand how somebody can see something and then paint what they see. And then what you got is you kind of I guess you hear music in your in your head, and you got to figure out this is gonna be a high odor alone odor.

Hmm It’s kind of like I have my antennas out you know like and I’m hearing things you know I’m not literally hearing thing I’m gonna hear voices but I hear things you know ideas coming to me just heard the voices they’ll be plagiarism you

know, I know I know

well they have that now and check Did you know that on Grammarly

I do editing with Grammarly, professional Grammarly and they have a plagiarism check where it says, checks to see if you’ve stolen it from anybody or something like that. But

anyway, oh, I do have though

I know before we go on everything I do have a new book out on Amazon. It’s called a novel life and we’d like to talk just a little bit of that too. It’s

absolutely and then also when I beam this up to YouTube and things I’ll put the Amazon link in there in case somebody wants to make that purchase. So what tell us more about the book and another novel life,

a novel life it’s a play on words. I love wordplay just love it. It’s a double Andre just like it’s kinda like magic. To the novel is obviously a novel that 17 year old Colton Tucker wrote. Well, at least he thinks he wrote it, but he didn’t really write it. You have to find out who really wrote the book, because somebody is writing that controls his every move, every action, every move. And what he wrote over a year ago on his 60. He’s taken a 60 city book tour. And he is experiencing a deja vu moments of what he wrote. How cool is that? Amazing. And so, because when he was 17 years old, he wrote his debut book called a novel life, and which I’m the author, but he have. So a novel life means living in the novel. He’s the protagonist of the novel, and he also has an odd and strange life too, which is novel. That’s why it comes and it’s a free and clear title. Nobody’s ever written a title like that

before I’ve checked it out and played it, but

it’s really interesting. And anyway, he does find that somebody else is controlling his actions, his moves and everything. And he has a love interest he meets and Taylor’s name in in Laramie, Wyoming. If you’ve ever been to Larry Laramie, Wyoming, he meets her and discovers that she’s been his book he’s written and something catastrophic happens to her in the last chapter. And you realize if this is all happening, then he’s gonna, something’s bad’s gonna happen her so so. So he tries to tries to, to reach the editor and convince the editor in chief of the book that he signed a deal with, and he can’t convince him to sign it. I mean, to change, change the ending, he can’t convince the editor to change the ending of his book. So he takes destiny we’re talking about Colton, the protagonist takes destiny into his own own hands. Because the author of the editor won’t cooperate.

Interesting This almost sounds like it’d be like Groundhog Day kind of thing. Like there’s a sequel

it is it’s sort of similar, but it’s not as funny. It’s it’s a psychological thriller, actually. So it kind of messes with your mind a little bit, you know, kind of toys with your mind has has a really good twist and reads fast too. It goes really, really fast. It’s published by si p, which stands for Southern yellow pine publishing company. They’re in Florida, and the publisher. I met the publisher here in Nashville when I was this is really funny. years ago, I met her and it was at the southern festival books. It’s one of the biggest it’s like hundred thousand people come to this in Nashville Book Festival. And I met her and I loved her books. I think her books are just fabulous in the picture her drawings and you know, illustrations on the front covers are gorgeous. And so I wanted to be a part of that company. And so I asked her how I could picture write, send her a manuscript and she said, this is how you do it. So I sent it to her and she, she really loved that love the manuscript. And it’s been edited and edited and edited.

I’m like, you’ve kind of got a life of serendipity. You just knew where you wanted to go. And everything just kind of fell into place, you’re kind of going with the flow of how things go.

Exactly. Have you had that moment where you see something or someone says something, and you know, you’ve got to be there with that person, or that or that opportunity? Whatever it is, and you go, Wow, how do I do it next? I do.

I call that sort of like, like verbal algebra, like when I’m doing marketing, or if I have a plan or something. I’ll just put something out into the future. And then you just got to put the stuff in place for it. So algebraically you know, if you want the number 10 you just got to put the right digits in place that equal 10. And that’s how you get there. Anybody? Exactly. It’s, it’s rarely a straight path, you know, because sometimes you might think it’s going to be a two but it ends up being two ones.

Right. And so I saw the opportunity, potential opportunity potential because she could To turn the book down, she could have said, I like this story. And I would,

I would kind of disagree because you kind of described me and said, Okay, this is gonna happen, and I need to start putting the things in place until it happens.

Oh, no, I didn’t mean it that way. I meant you’re I agree with you on that part. I did put it out there. But I mean, it could have been her. That publisher or it could have been somebody else you seen, right?

But that’s exactly what I mean. It’s, uh, you never know how stuff’s gonna go. Because I’m sure when you were five, and you thought, I’m gonna play the piano. You never thought well, I’m going to be in Nashville writing. Yes. I mean, I think that but that’s the way it worked.

And that need is exciting. There’s a book called Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. And I love it. I’ve written it read. And she talks about all these ideas are floating around. This is like magic to all these ideas.

Gilbert Is that the one that did?

Pray Love, he prayed.

I met her and when I was in Asheville, North Carolina,

really, she she’s awesome. She’s awesome. And she says all that These ideas are just floating around in the universe all over the idea. It’s up to us to grab them and season. But she says not to procrastinate with them. Once you get an idea, like for a song or magic trick, or whatever it is or a book, you need to get on it and jump on it. But she said most people procrastinate, most of us procrastinate. Wait, and then we complain. She says, like years later we go, Wait a minute, somebody stole my idea took my there. And it really wasn’t your idea. It’s not my solder it was. It was there for the taking, if all I’m saying so.

Yes, sir. You got to stake your claim and then go for it and start building stuff around it. So it manifests. Yeah, right. Like 10 people

could be picking up the idea at the same time, but it’s kind of like Edison got there first right for the light bulb, right maybe? Possibly for the filament.

Yeah, absolutely. And I’m, I’m in total agreement and there’s nothing wrong with two people having the same idea of different places and then they come together at some other time and and meld the ideas together into an One song good.

Yeah, like that. So I’ve never really remember I was talking earlier about our local Prince number Prince. He created himself as a symbol because I was under contract. And you should check with that. I’m gonna shift gears and I’m no, I’m just, I’m formerly known as Prince and now I’m just a concept. try and steal that from me.

Exactly. Mr. Purple Rain, right? Yeah, that’s great. That’s awesome.

Wow. And that’s where like, the artists perseverance, they can get their creative so it’s really tough to you can’t really corner them and put them into a pen or anything like that because they need to be out and be nebulous and radiant.

Very good. Great. So do you do have anything planned in the future you got your book, you’ve been doing the hits you got it. I’m sure you’re gonna continue to write But do you have any plans like doing like a music retreat or something in some exotic location or, or do online workshops and teach other people how to write or anything like that coming up?

Yes, I’d like I haven’t yet but I, my one of my goals is to offer to other people to help people because I want to help people as much as possible. Other authors, potential authors and people that are up and coming and through workshops, and maybe camps and things like that. And, and then I continue to always grow, I always want to learn, I don’t want to just stay stagnant or whatever and want to be able to or stale. So I’ve always take lots of workshops, and I mean, I’ve done one with RL Stein, I’ve done one with just James Patterson, john Grisham, just different people I continue to learn and I want to continue to grow and up my what they call the upgrade are up your level, you know, continue to

climb up the level or higher.

You know, they say you’re either green and growing or ripe and rotting

out to be the green and Cohen in

Florida and I appreciate you taking the time. I don’t like to do these too long so people can consume it. All right. Sounds like you might have something on the horizon and maybe we’ll do another one of these later on down the road. Yeah, stay on for a couple minutes. I’m going to sign this off and you’ll stay on level of conversation. Okay. appreciate you taking time I will beam this up to the universe and we will see who can find it.

Yeah, and best best of luck to you and your prep everything all year.

Okay. Thank you. third piece. Thank you pace.