Hardy

Tyler and Seth, Seth England. And one of the biggest ones was that Joey Moy, Canadian. I know Joey. It was my favorite producer, not only in the rock world, but in Nashville. I just loved everything that he did, everything he touched. I love the rock thing. And he called me out of the blue one day before I knew him at all. I was like, hey, this is Joey. And now I understand.

I'm sure that somebody was like, hey, give Hardy a call. I bet he'd really appreciate it. But it worked. I mean, and he was like, dude, I just want you to know, if you ever wanted to put out a record, like I would love to produce you. And I was like, dude, this is, this is, I need to do this. Like I'm an idiot if I don't take this opportunity and just try and see what happens.

And, and you know, the rest is history and put music out and just, that was it.

It's funny because he's Canadian, so he's really nice about it. He does it with a, I'm sorry, but you fucking suck. Yeah, yeah. Everything is just polite. It's just never anger. Joey has a very, very good, not mediation, but just a very good way of being stern but fair. Or kind of telling you that you're sucking without...

But with no emotion behind it that makes him seem like he's disappointed or angry. Thankfully, he and I have gotten in a really good rhythm when I do vocals with him because I've heard the Joey Gauntlet.

But in the studio, if we have somebody that's playing an instrument and we're trying to get them to nail a part or a tone or something, and it's 3.55, 4.30 in the afternoon and everybody's tired and kind of ready to go home and they keep hitting the part wrong. I have seen him hit the talkback button a hundred times and go, nope. And they just run it back. No, do it again. No, that's not it.

And, you know, it's just who he is, man. And it's very non-emotional, though, and very just professional. And it's great. I wouldn't have it any other way. But yeah, he can be tough, man. I've even heard, you know, he's the only person I've ever worked on, been in a session with. So I have nothing really to compare it to. But I hear people a lot just be like, yeah, Joey's a tough one to work for.

To me, a big flip was really even, excuse me, prior to the FGL record, the first one was that Jake Owen, Barefoot Blue Jay Knight. It was the first thing he ever did without a drummer. Yes, I believe so. It was all in the box. But that was such a shift in sound. And then he did the FGL record. And when that happened, it was just like, you could forget about everything else, dude.

And so everything sounded like that for years. And now with Morgan... he's just done it again and created a, he's just created sonically something that now, now country is a little more widespread these days. And, you know, I feel like it's, we're not all chasing Morgan, but he definitely has kind of controlled the market.

I feel like for, for damn near, I mean, I would say 15 years now, which is pretty crazy.

Dude, this is awesome. It's been too long. I know we've tried to do it a couple times, but I'm happy to finally get back.

Actually, I always thought it was cool when I was a little kid. But when I was like a freshman or I was like a sophomore in college. And I was at MTSU, and it was my first year there, and I had made good friends with a guy named Clay. And Clay was like, I don't know how the conversation got brought up, but he's from East Tennessee, and he was like, all of my cousins will go look for arrowheads.

And I was like, oh, I didn't really know that you'd look for them. I thought you'd just kind of find them as you find them. And he was like, no, it's like a thing. People look for them. And spring break was coming up, and... And he was like, you know what, dude, we should go to your hometown and just like poke around and see if we can't find some for spring break. And I was like, fuck it.

All right, let's do Philadelphia. Yeah. So we go back to Philadelphia, Mississippi. And, uh, the first, literally the first afternoon he's like, okay, I'm like, dude, there's a Creek that kind of runs through my, our deer hunting property back on the, kind of on the backside of our land. We should go there. And he was like, all right. And dude, within 10 minutes, we find one.

And the next morning we go back and we found another and then another and another. And then I was just like hooked. And my biggest thing was like, man, I've hunted here my whole life. And it's so freaking cool to know that somebody probably my age, uh, was doing the same thing that I do now, but literally some of those arrowheads are like thousands of years old.

And like some of them can be seven, eight, 9,000 years old. And I was just like, dude, it's just that whole process of like, I was the first guy to find this and tell them what happened to it and how I got there. And the fact that it was some kid, probably half my age running around chasing a fucking deer, just like I'm doing and have times never change, you know, it's, it's cool.

But that's why I really appreciate it is, is just the, the, the untold story that we will just never know about everyone. I love it. I love it. I love it. But yeah, I appreciate you letting me poke around. You were, you were doing something in your backyard. You had a lot of loose dirt. I driven by because Ashley lives next to you. Yeah. That's what it was. It was the trees.

I'm always looking, dude. And I was like, I was like, Troy's got a lot of loose dirt down there. So I was like, Hey, I'm going to go poke around your backyard. I didn't find anything.

Thank you. I'm stoked.

It's so funny, man. I see... I still... I feel like I'm still just like...

new but i guess i'm kind of like not now and i can i'm already seeing this the the the um second guard like the new guard like i can see it already and it's crazy to me and i'm like who is going to be the cat who's going to be of these you know 10 or 15 artists that are about you know the ones that are starting to be on the radio and all the stuff and doing well touring like who in two or three more years is going to be like headlining one of these things it's always you and sometimes like you know and sometimes you just don't know

I mean, Darks is never going to be there. Come on. Look, he should never be there. He's amazing. I've thought about this a lot recently because although I do still feel like my career is just starting again, seeing the new people come in and I'm like, man... it's the first time this year really is the first time that I'm like, Oh, I'm entering into like sophomore, junior year of school.

It's like, it's fucking crazy. Right. I feel. Cause I've just had felt like the kid or like me and Morgan and earn and whoever, all the Laney, all I'm, tight crew of people who were like the new, the new guard. And now we're kind of a little bit seasoned for the first time. And we're seeing the Gavin Adcox and Ella Langley and just Zach top who's, you know, on fire.

And it's like the moment you wake up and you're, you ache and you realize you're starting to get old for the first time, you know, hang over last two days or some shit like that.

Dude, I just, I mean, I've always had it in me, you know, and I think... It just took a little time. Early on, songs like Boots and Sold Out and some of the songs that were really teetering into the rock world, the biggest thing was they would go over so well live. Those were the songs. One Beer Great was the number one. It has all these streams, but Sold Out blows it out of the water live.

It reacts so much better live. That really gave me the courage to really dive into the whole rock thing. Really, with Mockingbird and the Crow was the first attempt at that. Great record. Thank you very much. Great record. I love it, man.

I still think that to this day, of all the things I do, I hope that I have some that blow it out of the water as far as sales and stuff, but that's such a cornerstone defining who I am record for me that I hope it lives forever.

I mean, I just think that I have been so inconsistent, even from the beginning that my fans are just like, you know what I mean? Like we could go straight from a fucking metal. We're going to do it tonight. Right. Straight from something insane, straight into like a country song. And yeah, It just works because it's just me, and I just have always been all over the place, and it works.

But I do think that, man, to Barbara Mandrell, I was country when country wasn't cool. Man, I have never felt... more in tune with that sentence than in the last, like, four or five years with, like, the biggest pop stars in the world wanting to make country records. And it just feels good to be like, yeah, come on over. We've been here for a while.

Yeah. It feels really cool, man. I mean, everybody now, dude. Even Lana Del Rey, I think, announced that she's doing one. Chapel Roan, obviously Post Malone, Beyonce. I mean, so many people are wanting to do a country record.

I'll give you a great example. Me, myself, and two of my other writers co-wrote I'm a Little Crazy, which is a song that Morgan just put out. To think that it's tough that we won't really make a lot of money. And if that song were just on the radio, it would make these guys a life-changing amount of money.

Yeah, and it's just, I think that a lot of things, I mean, God, we'll get in the weeds on this, but I personally think that labels should start shelving out points for album cuts for artists like Morgan who can have, who's actually selling like Garth was back in like actual, where people could get a last song on the album, two minute, you know, song and it make,

250 grand because it was on a record that sold life changing money for, for a young song, right? Absolutely. Right. Yeah. I mean, surely to God, these people have great lawyers and they go restructure their deal every few years, you know, where they have a big record and stuff like that. But, um,

Yeah, to think about, to compare like Alanis Morissette, you know, to a chaperone or somebody of a somewhat of a similar thing these days who are kind of putting up the same numbers when it comes to outreach and things like that. And probably the difference in money that like somebody in the 90s or whenever made, you know, to post internet.

I don't even want to know. It would make me sick, dude.

Dude, they were flying people.

private on radio tours and stuff even in country i have buddies that had you know old songwriter guys and stuff that are like yeah we had a deal in the 90s and they'd sony just fly me around on pj all day and just fly from here there and everywhere just on radio tour the money was just insane but the money's i feel like labels are making a lot of money again now because of streams

There's way too much money, uh, being made for songwriters to not do something. I think it's, I think it's ridiculous. I think that's the biggest chip on my shoulder of the past couple of years is just seeing how much money a song can make, but just because it's not a single on the radio, you know, that's the only reason it doesn't make, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't pay songwriters six figures.

It's like ridiculous.

Jim is one of those guys that like his thing is money and that's what that, that is, that is his job, but he loves music. Typically, you know, of course in Nashville, you might find this a little more often, but like, those are two things that you wouldn't think would be a common thing, you know, but, um, Man, I have spent more nights out in Midtown way back in the day.

Now, this is 10 or 12 years ago.

He bought me beers when I had negative money in my bank account. I mean, truly. So, yeah, I love Jim, man.

Yes. Picked great songs.

I think that's really cool. I didn't know that. I didn't know that that was really being popularized. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's such a culture and there's such a cool thing to these guys that just look like dudes. And you'd see them at the grocery store and you would have no fucking idea that they wrote, like Craig Wiseman.

You know, just a dude in a Hawaiian shirt at the grocery store that wrote, live like you were dying, plus 40 others. But like, you just, that you would never know. And there's such a cool thing, especially with Nashville. I feel like in LA, you know, like even the songwriters are like an artist themselves and there's a big personality and they have a following and people know who.

The culture of being a Nashville songwriter is so different, and it's also so supportive, and it really tries not to be competitive and dog-eat-dog or anything like that. To me, the Nashville songwriter scene is like the coolest shit ever. I love it.

In Nashville, man, it could just be Joe Blow, dude. And he's just like- Literally walking down the street and nobody, unless you're connected in the industry, this person, this normal looking dude or girl right here wrote your favorite song. It's cool.

I don't know how many people have publishing deals these days, but I would say four or 500 people, you know, throughout a 10, maybe a thousand throughout a 10 year span that are just normal people that don't want to be famous.

They don't want to be like a star or, or have that, even that artist like bone in their body moved to Nashville just because they're like, I have a voice and I have something to say. I have like, I have a pencil or a pen in my hand that I have words that I, I think, you know, somebody could, could sing. And, uh,

It's just such an eclectic or just such an acute dream to chase but it's such a cool thing and there's such a really cool common thread with most Songwriters and how just different it is. This is the culture of being a nashville songwriter is so different and it's also so supportive and like You know, it really tries not to be competitive and dog-eat-dog or anything like that.

To me, the Nashville songwriter scene is like the coolest shit ever. I love it.

yourself how did that come to be how did that originate I mean I would say it was kind of it was definitely like gradual process I think my biggest pivot moment was shout out to Dane Schmidt Jordan Schmidt who's a big songwriter and buddy of mine I've written a lot of my stuff with I know Dane called me when he was still working for Tree Vibes. Okay.

And was like... Which is Tyler... FGL's publishing company. And he was like, hey, the guys have been hearing your name a little bit around. I had nothing. Still nothing. And they were like, they would love for you to... You hadn't been cut yet. Hell no. Dude, I had... At that point, I had...

goose egg cuts i had nothing dude but they i you know a lot of times i mean i see a lot of writers that they they won't have the cuts but they get momentum and they're a good writer and it just it just hasn't happened and that's what was happening to me so they had me out on the road and and i wrote with them and i think it just kind of you know our hang and just our songs and stuff was enough for them to want to have me back and that that was a big moment for me because then i

You know, back then they were all Big Loud. Well, Big Machine label, but Big Loud management just covered up. So then I met Seth England. Seth was out there, you know, and we started hanging. And then through Seth and just through kind of being now intertwined in the Big Loud camp, this kid named Morgan Wallen comes around. And so Seth is like, hey, would you write with Morgan?

I'm like, yeah, absolutely. Morgan comes to my house, you know. And then out on the road, they have Ernest, who was a rapper back in the day. And he went by Snow, but he would write country songs.

And, uh, so he would come out and, and, uh, anyway, just, just, but that it was that early stages of like me riding with and for FGL that really kind of, that was the center of the spider web and everything just sort of started to come, come together after that.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My first time ever on a moving tour bus was, God, dude, it was Nashville to freaking Hartford. Oh, geez. So we left at like 6 p.m. and rolled up. We had two drivers and we rolled up at like, you know, 10 a.m. the next morning or something crazy like that. That's wild, man.

I did.

Yeah, yeah, man. I was on what I think is the most legendary FGL tour they had. It was them. Dan and Shay was direct support. Morgan was second of four, and I was first of four.

Yeah, that was an awesome tour. And yeah, I had been writing songs for them for a couple of years.

well Up Down was yours right Up Down was mine that was my first number one really one of my still one of my first cuts great fucking song thank you dude I love it thank you so much but they you know at that point I had been talked into doing the artist thing and was a little apprehensive but that was like who talked you into that T-Hub was one of them, actually. Tyler Hubbard was one.