Parker McCollum

And then I'd never really, you know, I just didn't know...

anything, I didn't know, like I wasn't learning how to play other singer songs.

Like I was just playing guitar and trying to write.

And then, so once I started to kind of learn to play like a George Strait song or a Chris Knight song was the first song I ever learned to play on guitar and sing at the same time.

Um, and so I'd like, once I started doing that, then I really started like learning how to formulate a song and, um,

I write songs now the exact same way I did then.

Just sit down and just make some shit up until something sounds cool or sounds pretty or moves something in you or is an earworm for yourself or whatever.

And I've done that since, I mean, even when I was 12, 13, I wrote a song called West Texas Lover.

Yeah, I was like 12 or 13 years old.

And my grandma, my dad's mom, she's 90.

And she still asked me to play that song.

I don't think she knows any of my other songs.

I think that's the only one she knows.

A girl I was dating, and I got dating when you're 12, I guess.

My girlfriend.

Yeah, like fifth grade, fourth grade, whatever it was.

So I don't know.

I was just super aware when I was really young.

Like I was very aware of the Texas scene, the Pat Greens, the Randy Rogers, the Cross Canadian Ragweeds, you know, and then like the, you know, Steve Earle and Rodney Crowell and Hayes Carl and all these just incredibly like –

raw real songwriters I was very aware of like what they were doing and what they looked like and how they dressed and how they toured and when I was very young and so I just kind of started to I was like those are the guys I want to be like would you ever release West Texas Lover I don't think so no it's not it's like name drops like Stoney LaRue Todd Snyder it's very bad it's it's it's yeah I can't remember all the words I could probably remember most of them but it's uh