How is your mom still with you today?

Through the music.

I look up a lot, and people ask me...

The other day, uh, asked, asked me why I look up so much.

I'm just having a conversation with her constantly.

Mm-hmm.

Talking to her, and it's the weirdest thing.

It's the heaviest thing I've ever been through in my life, and it's made me a better person, not bitter, and that's the key right there.

... happen?

She had a patient that was in a really bad car wreck, so she was in the hospital for a while, and the father that would come visit is one of the great producers here in Nashville.

And at the end of the visit, uh, one day towards the end, she gave him a cassette tape that we made at home, and she said, "Here, I want you to hear this." So she gave the cassette to the father, and the father took it, and he said he kept it in his trunk forever.

And he took it out one day, and he heard it, and he went, "Oh, my God." And he got in touch with us and came over to the house and brought a guitar player named Don Potter, who became our instrumentation.

And the two of them literally guided us through three or four songs, and we recorded them, and then we went and had a live audition at RCA Records, and we made it that day.

We went in and sang for the executives, sat down, gave them the harmony, and they said, "We want this act."

Where, where did it become the two of you?

My mother.

Can you talk to me about the process? Is it, is it the same formula when you and your mom used to write songs that you and Cactus write songs? What does writing a song look like w- with your mom in comparison to writing a song with your husband? You get out the guitar, same process, or is it a little different?

Well, I'll give you a little story, and this is how it works on this record.

My...

I never knew my daddy.

I've got his ashes.

Someone gave me the ashes in my family, and I still got them, and I don't know my daddy.

I never met him.

What's the greatest concert that you've ever attended in your life?

Raised on Radio.

We woke up every day.

getting in that car and turning on the radio and waiting for your favorite song to come on.

And that is my most excited thing about this tour is it's going to take us back to a time when we all can remember.

I started the Etheridge Foundation after my son passed away about five years ago from an opioid overdose and there's just so much research that needs to be done and just help for way too many families going through this.

If I can sing a song and help somebody, hello, that's everything.

Just wrote a song called Broken and Blessed and there's a line in the song that says, I'm somewhere between hell and hallelujah.

I want people to know that they're not alone.

[laughs]

It's not about being produced.

It's about being, um, alive and real.

And so the music I'm putting out is like, "This is what not to do.

My book is exactly the same thing, what don't do.

It's about the default.

[laughs] Not making mistakes I made.

Woo!