How did that make its way to Ernest?

Uh, it, I, I'm...

I think it made its way to Lainey and Ernest very close together and separately.

What happened was, uh, my catalog, or at least part of my catalog, as well as Dean Dillon's catalog is at Sony, the, you know, the big, big company.

And, and, uh, somewhere along the line, Apple Music was gonna start a program called Lost and Found, and it was, it was, uh, exclusive to Apple.

And without my knowledge, Sony went ahead and pitched that, 'cause I have quite a few songs in our, on our catalog, and this song a- obviously is very, a very country song and, and it didn't, wasn't recorded by, by anyone at the time.

And, uh, you know, that, that just, that just happens.

Let's hear it.

Mm-hmm.

And that, the, the, the love being a verb, that, that's, like, in process to me.

It was something that you're doing, not that you've done.

And that, I, I just was, you know, thinking some- something that we do, and came up with that guitar movement, [clears throat] and Clint came down, and I, and I said, "Man, I think I've, I think this is, you know, definitive enough.

We might be able to build a melody around it." And, um, [clears throat] one of the things that I said to Clint was, I said, uh, "I don't think there's any way to approach this but vulnerability." And I said, "You know, sometimes we, sometimes w- we, you know, and there's songs that are...

I've already learned this, and so I'm imparting the knowledge, like, like Better Man," like the song he had called-

Hm.

And, and, um, doing that brought me to a different...

Yes.

So, so for me, for me, though, I, I actually go through a lot of different ideas and songs.

I'll, I may, I, I can't even tell you how many I'll, I'll toss aside.

I'll work on something, go, "That's not really gonna flesh out as the way that I would like to," and then when I have what I like to work with, I spend a good bit of time on it.

Uh, um, and I- All of these things I wrote by myself.

Some co-writing situations, that might not be the case, but I have found that if I give some of my, my ideas, uh, some breathing room and offer them some, some love, maybe even set them down and come back to them and go, "Is this really...

Is this, is this right?" Then I'll know.

How, uh, uh, for you, it w- um, is it hard to let go of a song, not perform it yourself? Uh, ha- have you ever had a, a situation where you wrote a song and you had an artist in mind, like this should be, uh, z- so and so kinda singing it? And then was there ever an experience where somebody has just done something with a song and you're like, "Oh, wow, you just took it to another level"?

[guitar music] I've got scars where you can't see them.

But if you could, you'd see the roadmap of my heart.

All those lines and intersections make you think the whole damn thing would come apart.

That's not how it works.

That's not the road of hurt.

You lose until you win.

Oh, my goodness.

But the song we're talking, it says, You say that you would like to try again.

Hmm.

And I just sat at, in the trailer behind the theater where we were doing this show, and I would play this gut string guitar that I had bought from somebody for 90 bucks, and I would just write whatever I could while I was out there.

Some people heard about that, asked me to a writer's night.

I got a publishing dealAnd, uh, that is what led me to where I was.

So then I think there was still...

Well, no, I know there was still self-discovery that whole time, learning about songwriting and then getting a real lesson in what was commercial, what was writing for someone else, 'cause I never thought about that.

I mean, when I was a kid, you could've said, "You know what? Someday you're gonna write a song and Merle Haggard's gonna sing it, or Willie Nelson's gonna sing it, or George Jones is gonna sing it, or George Strait is gonna sing it.

but if you had a, if you have a metaphoric one, please share.